“Stop here, driver!” interrupted Bright; and the car pulled to a halt.
We were in a small village. Sober, black-clad people moved between the buildings of bubble-plastic- temporary structures which would long since on other worlds have been replaced with more sophisticated and attractive housing.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“A lesser town called Remembered-of-the-Lord,” he answered, and dropped the window on his side of the car. “And here comes someone you know.”
In fact, a slim figure in a Force-Leader’s uniform was approaching the car. It reached us, stooped slightly, and the face of Jamethon Black looked calmly in on both of us.
“Sir?” he said to Bright.
“This officer,” said Bright, to me, “seemed qualified once for high service in the ranks of us who served God’s will. But six years past, he was attracted by a daughter of a foreign world who would not have him; and since then he has seemed to lose his will to rise in rank among us.” He turned to Jamethon. “Force-Leader,” he said. “You have seen this man twice. Once in his home on Earth six years ago, when you sought his sister in marriage; and again last year on New Earth when he sought from you a pass to protect his assistant between the battle lines. Tell me, what do you know about him?”
Jamethon’s eyes looked across the interior of the car into mine.
“Only that he loved his sister and wanted a better life for her, perhaps, than I could give her,” said Jamethon in a voice as calm as his face. “And that he wished his brother-in-law well, and sought protection for him.” He turned to look directly into the eyes of Bright. “I believe him to be an honest man and a good one, Eldest.”
“I did not ask for your beliefs!” snapped Bright.
“As you wish,” said Jamethon, still calmly facing the older man; and I felt a rage swelling up inside me so that I thought that I would burst out with it, no matter what the consequences.
Rage against Jamethon, it was. For not only had he the effrontery to recommend me to Bright as an honest man and a good one, but because there was something else about him that was like a slap in the face. For a moment, I could not identify it. And then it came to me. He was not afraid of Bright. And I had been so, in that first interview.
Yet I was a Newsman, with the immunity of the Guild behind me; and he was a mere Force-Leader facing his own Commander-in-Chief, the Warlord of two worlds, of which Jamethon’s was only one. How could he-? And then it came to me, so that I almost ground my teeth in fury and frustration. For it was with Jamethon no different than it had been with the Groupman on New Earth who had denied me a pass to keep Dave safe. That Groupman had been instantly ready to obey that Bright, who was the Eldest, but felt in himself no need to bow before that other Bright, who was merely the man.
In the same way now Bright held the life of Ja-. methon in his hand, but unlike the way it had been with me, in holding this he held the lesser part of the young man before him, rather than the greater.
“Your leave home here is ended, Force-Leader,” Bright said sharply. “Tell your family to send on your effects to Council City and join us now. I’m appointing you aide and assistant to this Newsman from now on. And we’ll promote you Commandant to make the post worthwhile.”
“Sir,” said Jamethon emotionlessly with an inclination of his head. He stepped back into the building from which he had just emerged, before coming back out a few moments later to join us. Bright ordered the staff car turned about and so we returned to the city and his office.
When we got back there, Bright turned me loose with Jamethon to get acquainted with the Friendly situation in and around Council City. Consequently, the two of us, Jamethon and I, did a certain amount of sightseeing, though not much, and I returned early to my hotel.
It required very little in the way of perception to see that Jamethon had been assigned to act as a spy upon me while performing the functions of an aide. However, I said nothing about it, and Jamethon said nothing at all, so that, almost strangely, we two moved around Council City, and its related neighborhood, in the days that followed like a couple of ghosts, or men under a vow not to speak to each other. It was a strange silence of mutual consent that agreed that the only things worth talking about between us-Eileen, and Dave and the rest-would reward any discussion only with a pain that would make the discussion unprofitable.
Meanwhile, I was summoned from time to time to the office of Eldest Bright. He saw me more or less briefly on these occasions and spoke of little that was to the point of my announced reason for being on the Friendlies and in partnership with him. It was as if he were waiting for something to happen. And eventually I understood what that was. He had set Jamethon to check me out, while he himself checked out the interstellar situation which, as Eldest of the Friendly Worlds, he faced alone, searching for the situation and the moment in which he could best make use of this self-seeking Newsman who had offered to improve the public image of his people.
Once I had realized this, I was reassured, seeing how, interview by interview, day by day, he came closer as I wanted to the heart of the matter. That heart was the moment in which he might ask my advice, must ask me to tell him what he should do about me and with me.
Day by day and interview by interview, he became apparently more relaxed and trusting in his words with me-and more questioning.
“What is it they like to read, on those other worlds, Newsman?” he asked one day. “Just what is it they most like to hear about?”
“Heroes, of course,” I answered as lightly as he had questioned. “That’s why the Dorsai make good copy-and to a certain extent the Exotics.”
A shadow which may or may not have been intentional passed across his face at the mention of the Exotics.
“The ungodly,” he muttered. But that was all. A day or so later he brought the subject of heroes up again.
“What makes heroes in the public’s eyes?” he asked.
“Usually,” I said, “the conquering of some older, already established strong man, villain or hero.” He was looking at me agreeably, and I took a venture. “For example, if your Friendly troops should face up to an equal number of Dorsai and outfight them-”
The agreeableness was abruptly wiped out by an expression I had never seen on his face before. For a second he all but gaped at me. Then he flashed me a stare as smoking and hot as liquid basalt from a volcano’s throat.
“Do you take me for a fool?” he snapped. Then his face changed, and he looked at me curiously. “-Or are you simply one yourself?”
He gazed at me for a long, long moment. Finally he nodded.
“Yes,” he said, as if to himself. “That’s it-the man’s a fool. An Earth-born fool.”
He turned on his heel, and that ended our interview for the day.
I did not mind his taking me for a fool. It was that much more insurance against the moment when I would make any move to delude him. But, for. the life of me, I could not understand what had brought such an unusual reaction from him. And that bothered me. Surely my suggestion about the Dorsai could not have been so farfetched? I was tempted to ask Jamethon, but discretion as the better part of valor held me wisely back.
Meanwhile the day came when Bright finally approached the question I knew he must ask me sooner or later.
“Newsman,” he said. He was standing, legs spread, hands locked together behind his back, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling window of his office at the Government Center and Council City, below. His back was to me.
“Yes, Eldest?” lanswered. He had called me once more to his office, and I had just walked through the door. He spun around at the sound of my voice to stare flamingly at me.
“You said once that heroes are made by their defeat of some older, established heroes. You mentioned as examples of older heroes in the public gaze the Dorsai-and the Exotics.”
“That’s right,” I said, coming up to him.
“The ungodly on the Exotics,” he said, as if he mused to himself. “They use hired troops. What good to defeat hirelings-even if that were possible and easy?”