But by that time I was as little concerned with the news of it as was Mathias, for my success with Jamethon Black and my sister in that moment in the library had pointed me the way I wanted. My new perception was beginning to harden in me. I had begun to evolve techniques to put it to work to manipulate people, as I had manipulated Eileen, to gain what I wanted; and already I was hot on the road to my personal goal of power and freedom.
CHAPTER 5
Yet, it turned out that the scene in the library was to stick in my mind like a burr, after all.
For five years, while I climbed through the ranks of the News Service like a man born to succeed, I had no word from Eileen. She still did not write Mathias; and she did not write me. The few letters I wrote her went unanswered. I knew many people, but I could not say I had any friends-and Mathias was nothing. Distantly, in one comer of me, I became slowly aware that I was alone in the world; and that in the first feverish flush of my discovered ability for manipulating people I might well have chosen a different target than the one person on sixteen worlds who might have had some reason to love me.
It was this, five years later, that brought me to a hillside on New Earth, recently torn up by heavy artillery. I was walking down it, for the hillside was part of a battlefield occupied only a few hours since by the mutually engaged forces of the North and South Partitions of Altland, New Earth. The military both of the North and the South consisted of only a nucleus of native forces. That of the rebellious North was over eighty percent of mercenary Commands, hired from the Friendlies. That of the South was more than sixty-five percent of Cassidan levies, hired on contractual balance by the New Earth authorities from Cassida- and it was this latter feet that had me picking my way down among the torn earth and exploded tree trunks on the hillside. Among the levies in mis particular command was a young Groupman named Dave Hall-the man my sister had married on Cassida.
My guide was a foot soldier of the loyal, or South Partition Forces. Not a Cassidan but a native New Earthman, a cadreman-runner. He was a skinny individual, in his thirties and naturally sour-minded- as I gathered from the secret pleasure he seemed to take in getting my city boots and Newsman’s cloak dirtied up in the earth and underbrush. Now, five years after my moment at the Final Encyclopedia, my personal skills had begun to harden in me, and by taking a few minutes out, I could have entirely rebuilt his opinion of me. But it was not worth it.
He brought me at last to a small message center at the foot of the hill, and turned me over to a heavy-jawed officer in his forties, with dark circles under his eyes. The officer was overage for such a field command and the fatigues of middle age were showing. Moreover, the grim Friendly legions had lately been having a good deal of pleasure with the half-trained Cassidan levies opposing them. It was small wonder he looked on me as sourly as had my guide.
Only, in the Commander’s case his attitude posed a problem. I would have to change it to get what I was after. And the rub in changing it was that I had come out practically without data concerning this man. But there had been rumors of a new Friendly push and as time was short I had come here on the spur of the moment. I would have to make up my arguments as I went.
“Commandant Hal Frane!” He introduced himself without waiting for me to speak, and held out a square, somewhat dirty hand brusquely. ‘ ‘Your papers!”
I produced them. He looked them over with no softening of expression. “Oh?” he said. “Probationary?”
The question was tantamount to an insult. It was none of his business whether I was a full-fledged member of the Newsman’s Guild, or still on trial as an Apprentice. The point he was making implied that I was probably still so wet behind the ears that I would be a potential danger to him and his men, up here in the front lines.
However, if he had only known it, by that question he had not so much attacked a soft spot in my own personal defenses, as revealed such a spot in his own.
* ‘Right,” I said calmly, taking the papers back from him. And I improvised on the basis of what he had just given away about himself. “Now, about your promotion-”
“Promotion!”
He stared at me. The tone of his voice confirmed all I had deduced, one of the little ways people betray themselves by their choice of the accusations they bring to bear on others. The man who hints that you are a thief is almost sure to have a large, vulnerable area of dishonesty in his own inner self; and in this case, Franc’s attempt to needle me about my status undoubtedly assumed I was sensitive where he was sensitive. This attempt to insult, coupled with the fact that he was overage for the rank he held, indicated that he had been passed over at least once for promotion, and was vulnerable on the subject.
It was an opening wedge only-but all I needed, now, after five years of practicing my skills on people’s minds.
“Aren’t you up for promotion to Major?” I asked. “I thought-” I broke off abruptly, and grinned at him. “My mistake, I guess. I must have mixed you up with somebody else.” I changed the subject, looking around the hillside. ‘ ‘I see you and your people had a rough time here, earlier today.”
He broke in on me.
“Where’d you hear I’d been promoted?” he demanded, scowling at me. I saw it was time to apply a touch of the lash.
“Why, I don’t think I remember, Commandant,” I said, looking squarely back at him. I paused a minute to let that sink in. “And if I did, I don’t suppose I’d be free to tell you. A Newsman’s sources are privileged-they have to be, in my business. Just as the military has to have its secrecy.”
That brought him to heel. Suddenly he was reminded that I was not one of his infantrymen. He had no authority to order me to tell him anything I didn’t wish to tell him. I was a case calling for the velvet glove rather than the iron fist, if he wanted to get anything from me.
“Yes,” he said, struggling to make the transition from scowling to smiling as gracefully as possible.
“Yes, of course. You’ve got to forgive me. We’ve been under fire a lot here.”
“I can see that,” I said more sympathetically. “Of course, that’s not the sort of thing that leaves your nerves lying limp and easy.”
“No.” He managed a smile. “You-can’t tell me anything about any promotion affecting me, then?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. Our eyes met again. And held.
“I see.” He looked away, a little sourly. “Well, what can we do for you, Newsman?”
“Why, you can tell me about yourself,” I answered. “I’d like to get some background on you.”
He faced back at me suddenly.
“Me?” he said, staring.
“Why, yes,” I said. “Just a notion of mine. A human-interest story-the campaign as seen from the viewpoint of one of the experienced officers in the field. You know.”
He knew. I thought he did. I could see the light coming back into his eyes, and all but see the wheels turning in the back of his mind. We were at the point where a man of clear conscience would have once again demanded-“Why me, for a human-interest story, instead of some other officer of higher rank or more decorations?”
But Frane was not about to ask it. He thought he knew why him. His own buried hopes had led him to put two and two together to get what he thought was four. He was thinking that he must indeed be up for a promotion-a battlefield promotion. Somehow, although he could not right now think why, his recent conduct in the field must have put him in line for an extra grade in rank; and I was out here to make my human-interest story out of that. Being nothing but a civilian, he was reasoning, it would not have occurred to me that he, himself, might not yet have heard of the pending promotion; and my ignorance had caused me thoughtlessly to spill the beans on first meeting him.
It was a little disgusting the way his voice and attitude changed, once he had finished working this out to his own satisfaction. Like some people of inferior ability, he had spent his lifetime storing up reasons and excuses to prove that he was really possessed of extraordinary qualities, but that chance and prejudice had combined until now to keep him from his rightful rewards.