Here at last was the Dorsal legend come to life. Here was the grim man with the iron heart and the dark and solitary soul. In the powerful fortress of his body, what was essentially lan dwelt as isolated as a hermit on a mountain. He was the fierce and lonely Highlandman of his distant ancestry, come to life again.
Not law, not ethics, but the trust of the given word, clan-loyalty and the duty of the blood feud held sway in lan. He was a man who would cross hell to pay a debt for good or ill; and in that moment when I saw him coming toward me and recognized him at last, I suddenly thanked whatever gods were left that he had no debt with me.
Then we had passed each other, and he was gone around a corner.
Rumor had it, I remembered, that the blackness around him never lightened except in Kensie’s presence, that he was truly his twin brother’s other half. And that if he should ever lose the light that Kensie’s bright presence shed on him, he would be doomed to his own Hghtlessness forever.
It was a statement I was to remember at a later time, as I was to remember seeing him come toward me in that moment.
But now I forgot him as I went forward through another entrance into what looked like a small conservatory and saw the gentle face and short-cropped white hair of Padma above his blue robe.
“Come in, Mr. Olyn,” he said, getting up, “and come along with me.”
He turned and walked out through an archway of
.purple clematis blooms. I followed him, and found a small courtyard all but filled with the elliptical shape of a sedan air-car. Padma was already climbing into one of the seats facing the controls. He held the door for me.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I got in.
He touched the autopilot panel; the ship rose in the air. He left it to its own navigation and pivoted his chair about to face me.
“To Commander Graeme’s headquarters in the field,” he answered.
His eyes were the same light hazel color, but they seemed to catch and swim with the sunlight striking through the transparent top of the air-car as we reached altitude and began to move horizontally. I could not read them or the expression on his face.
“I see,” I said. “Of course, I know a call from Graeme’s HQ could get to you much faster than I could by ground-car from the same spot. But I hope you aren’t thinking of having him kidnap me or something like that. I have Credentials of Impartiality protecting me as a Newsman, as well as authorizations from both the Friendly and the Exotic worlds. And I don’t intend to be held responsible for any conclusions drawn by Graeme after the conversation the two of us had earlier this morning-alone.”
Padma sat still in his air-car seat, facing me. His hands were folded in his lap together, pale against the blue robe, but with strong sinews showing under the skin of their backs.
“You’re coming with me now by my decision, not Kensie Graeme’s.”
“I want to know why,” I said tensely.
“Because,” he said slowly, “you are very dangerous.” And he sat still, looking at me with unwavering eyes.
I waited for him to go on, but he did not. “Dangerous?” I said. “Dangerous to whom?”
“To the future of all of us.”
I stared at him, then I laughed. I was angry.
“Cut it out!” I said.
He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. I was baffled by those eyes. Innocent and open as a child’s, but I could not see through them into the man himself.
“All right,” I said. “Tell me, why am I dangerous? ”
“Because you want to destroy a vital part of the human race. And you know how.”
There was a short silence. The air-car fled on through the skies without a sound.
“Now that’s an odd notion,” I said slowly and calmly. “I wonder where you got it?”
“From our ontogenetic calculations,” said Padma as calmly as I had spoken. “And it’s not a notion, Tarn. As you know yourself.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Ontogenetics. I was going to look that up.”
“You did look it up, didn’t you, Tarn?”
“Did I?” I said. “I guess I did, at that. It didn’t seem very clear to me, though, as I remember. Something about evolution.”
“Ontogenetics,” said Padma, “is the study of the effect of evolution upon the interacting forces of human society.”
“Am I an interacting force?”
“At the moment and for the past several years, yes,” said Padma. “And possibly for some years into the future. But possibly not.”
“That sounds almost like a threat.”
“In a sense it is.” Padma’s eyes caught the light as I watched them. “You’re capable of destroying yourself as well as others.”
“I’d hate to do that.”
“Then,” said Padma, “you’d better listen to me.”
“Why, of course,” I said. “That’s my business, listening. Tell me all about Ontogenetics-and myself.”
He made an adjustment in the controls, then swung his seat back to face mine once more.
“The human race,” said Padma, “broke up in an evolutionary explosion at the moment in history when interstellar colonization became practical.” He sat watching me. I kept my face attentive. “This happened for reasons stemming from racial instinct which we haven’t completely charted yet, but which was essentially self-protective in nature.”
I reached into my jacket pocket.
“Perhaps I’d better take a few notes,” I said.
“If you want to,” said Padma, unperturbed. “Out of that explosion came cultures individually devoted to single facets of the human personality. The fighting, combative facet became the Dorsai. The facet which surrendered the individual wholly to some faith or other became the Friendly. The philosophical facet created the Exotic culture to which I belong. We call these Splinter Cultures.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I know about Splinter Cultures.”
“You know about them, Tarn, but you don’t know them.”
“I don’t?”
“No,” said Padma, “because you, like all our ancestors, are from Earth. You’re old full-spectrum man. The Splinter peoples are evolutionarily advanced over you.”
I felt a little twist of bitter anger knot suddenly inside me. His voice woke the echo of Mathias’ voice in my memory.
“Oh? I’m afraid I don’t see that.”
“Because you don’t want to,” said Padma. “If you did, you’d have to admit that they were different from you and had to be judged by different standards.”
“Different? How?”
“Different in a sense that all Splinter people, including myself, understand instinctively, but full-spectrum man has to extrapolate to imagine.” Padma shifted a little in his seat. “You’ll get some idea, Tarn, if you imagine a member of a Splinter Culture to be a man like yourself, only with a monomania that shoves him wholly toward being one type of person. But with this difference: instead of all parts of his mental and physical self outside the limits of that monomania being ignored and atrophied as they would be with you-”
I interrupted, “Why specifically with me?”
“With any full-spectrum man, then,” said Padma calmly. “These parts, instead of being atrophied, are altered to agree with and support the monomania, so that we don’t have a sick man, but a healthy, different one.”
“Healthy?” I said, seeing the Friendly Groupman who had killed Dave on New Earth again in my mind’s eye.
“Healthy as a culture. Not as occasional crippled individuals of that culture. But as a culture.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t believe it.”
“But you do, Tarn,” said Padma softly. “Unconsciously you do. Because you’re planning to take advantage of the weakness such a culture must have to destroy it.”
“And what weakness is that?”
“The obvious weakness that’s the converse of any strength,” said Padma. “The Splinter Cultures are not viable.”
I must have blinked. I was honestly bewildered.
“Not viable? You mean they can’t live on their own?”
“Of course not,” said Padma. “Faced with an expansion into space, the human race reacted to the challenge of a different environment by trying to adapt to it. It adapted by trying out separately all the elements of its personality, to see which could survive best. Now that all elements-the Splinter Cultures-have survived and adapted, it’s time for them to breed back into each other again, to produce a more hardy, universe-oriented human.”
The air-car began to descend. We were nearing our destination.
“What’s that got to do with me?” I said, at last.
“If you frustrate one of the Splinter Cultures, it can’t adapt on its own as full-spectrum man would do. It will die. And when the race breeds back to a whole, that valuable element will be lost to the race.”
“Maybe it’ll be no loss,” I said, softly in my turn.
“A vital loss,” said Padma. “And I can prove it. You, a full-spectrum man, have in you an element from every Splinter Culture. If you admit this you can identify even with those you want to destroy. I have evidence to show you. Will you look at it?”