“Fear is only another weapon,” said Malachi, “no more dangerous in itself than a sharpened blade is. Treat it as you would any weapon. When it approaches, turn yourself to let it pass you by, then take and control the hand that guides it at you. The weapon without the hand is only one more thing—in a universe full of things.”
Up on the platform Nigel looked at them all.
“Pay attention to me, my friends,” he said softly. “Look at me.”
They looked, Hal with the rest of them. He saw Nigel’s lean, aristocratic face and pleasant brown eyes. Then, as he looked at them, those eyes began to expand until they would entirely fill his field of vision.
Reflexively, out of his training under Walter the In-teacher, he took a step back within his own mind, putting what he saw at arm’s length—and all at once it was as if he was aware of things on two levels. There was the level on which he stood with the other prisoners, held by Nigel like animals transfixed by a bright light in darkness; and there was the level in which he was aware of the assault that was being made on his free will by what was hidden behind that bright light, and on which he struggled to resist it.
He thought of rock. In his mind he formed the image of a mountainside, cut and carved into an altar on which an eternal light burned. Rock and light . . . untouchable, eternal.
“I must apologize to you, my friends and brothers,”
Nigel was saying gently to all of them. “Mistakenly, you’ve been made to suffer; and that shouldn’t be. But it was a natural mistake and small mistakes of your own have contributed to it. Examine your conscience. Is there one of you here who isn’t aware of things you know you shouldn’t have done …”
Like mist, the beginnings of rain blew upon the light and the altar. But the light continued to burn, and the rock was unchanged. Nigel’s voice continued; and the rain thickened, blowing more fiercely upon the rock and the light. On the mountainside the day darkened, but the light burned on through the darkness, showing the rock still there, still unmarked and unmoved . . .
Nigel was softly showing them all the way to a worthier and happier life, a way that trusted in what he was telling them. All that they needed to do was to acknowledge the errors of their past and let themselves be guided in the proper path in the future. His words made a warm and friendly shelter away from all storm, its door open and waiting for all of them. But, sadly, Hal must remain behind, alone, out on the mountainside in the icy and violent rain, clinging to the rock so that the wind would not blow him away; with only the pure but heatless light burning in the darkness to comfort him.
Slowly, he became aware that the increasing wind had ceased growing stronger, that the rain which had been falling ever heavier was now steady, that the darkness could grow no darker—and he, the rock and the light were still there, still together. A warmth of a new sort kindled itself inside him and grew until it shouted in triumph. He felt a strength within him that he had never felt before, and with that strength, he stepped back, merging once more the two levels, so that he looked out nakedly through his own eyes again
at Nigel.
Nigel had finished talking and was stepping down from the platform, headed out of the room. All the prisoners turned to watch him go as if he walked out of the room holding one string to which all of them were attached.
“If you’ll come this way, brothers,” said one of the guards.
They were led, by this single guard only, down more corridors and into a room with desks, where they were
handed back their papers.
* * *
Apparently, they were free to go. They were ushered out of the building and Hal found himself walking down the street with Jason at his side. He looked at the other man and saw him smiling and animated.
“Howard! “ Jason said. “Isn’t this wonderful? We’ve got to find the others and tell them about this great man. They’ll have to see him for themselves.”
Hal looked closely into Jason’s eyes.
“What is it, brother?” said Jason. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” said Hal. “But maybe we should sit down somewhere and make some plans. Is there any place around here where we can talk, away from people?”
Jason looked around. They were in what appeared to Hal to be a semi-industrial section. It was mid-morning, and the rain that had been falling when they had landed the day before was now holding off, although the sky was dark and promised more precipitation.
“This early . . .”Jason hesitated. “There’s a small eating place with booths in its back room, and this time of day the back room ought to be completely empty.”
“Let’s go,” said Hal.
The eating place turned out to be small indeed. It was hardly the sort of establishment that Hal would have found himself turning into if he had simply wanted a meal, but its front room held only one group of four and one or two customers at the square tables there; and the back room, as Jason had predicted, was empty. They took a booth in a corner and ordered coffee.
“What plans did you have in mind to make, Howard?” asked Jason, when the coffee had been brought.
Hal tasted what was in his cup, and set the cup down again. Coffee—or rather some imitation of it— was to be found on all the inhabited worlds. But its taste varied largely on any two worlds, and was often markedly different in widely distant parts of the same world. Hal had spent three years getting used to Coby coffee. He would have to start all over again with Harmony coffee.
“Have you seen this?” he asked, in turn.
From a pocket he brought out a small gold nugget encased in a cube of glass. It was the first piece of pocket gold he had found in the Yow Dee Mine; and, following a Coby custom, he had bought it back from the mine owners and had it encased in glass, to carry about as a good-luck piece. His fellow team-members would have thought him strange if he had not. Now, for the first time, he had a use for it.
Jason bent over the cube.
“Is that real gold?” he asked, with the fascination of anyone not of either Coby or Earth.
“Yes,” said Hal. “See the color …”
He reached out across the table and took the back of Jason’s neck gently and precisely between the tips of
his thumb and middle finger. The skin beneath his fingertips jumped at his touch, then relaxed as he put soft pressure on the nerve endings below it.
“Easy,” he said, “just watch the piece of gold . . . Jason, I want you to rest for a bit. Just close your eyes and lean back against the back of the booth and sleep for a couple of minutes. Then you can open your eyes and listen. I’ve got something to tell you.”
With an obedience a little too ready to be natural, Jason closed his eyes and leaned back, resting his head against the hard, dark-dyed wooden panel that was the back of the booth. Hal took his hand from the other’s neck and Jason stayed as he was, breathing easily and deeply for about a hundred and fifty heartbeats. Then he opened his eyes and stared at Hal as if puzzled for a second. He smiled.
“You were going to tell me something,” he said.
“Yes,” said Hal. “And you’re going to listen to me all the way through and then not say anything until you’ve thought about what I’ve just told you. Aren’t you?”
“Yes, Howard,” said Jason.
“Good. Now listen closely.” Hal paused. He had never done anything like this before; and there was a danger, in Jason’s present unnaturally receptive state, that some words Hal used might have a larger effect than he had intended it to have. “Because I want you to understand something. Right now you think you’re acting normally and doing exactly what you’d ordinarily want to do. But actually, that’s not the case. The fact is, a very powerful individual’s made you an attractive offer on a level where it’s hard for you to refuse him, a choice to let your conscience go to sleep and leave all moral decisions up to someone else. Because you were approached on that particular level,
you’ve no way of judging whether this was a wise decision to make, or not. Do you follow me so far? Nod your head if you do.”