Flandry met the fire-blue stare coolly and asked, “Won’t our captivity be a giveaway?”
“No, I think not,” Magnusson said, calming. “Nobody will expect those agents of yours to report back soon. Besides, the Merseians will start slipping the Terrans disinformation that seems to come from them. You can imagine the details better than I can. As for your mini-diplomatic corps here, won’t the Imperium be happy when it does not return at once? When, instead, courier torps bring word that things look surprisingly hopeful?”
“The Navy isn’t going to sit idle because of that,” Flandry cautioned.
“Of course not. Preparations for the next phase of the war will go on. All my side has done is stop an attempt by your side that could have been disastrous if it had succeeded. Yes, I’m sure there are people back there whom you’ve confided your suspicions to; but what value have they without proof? After fighting recommences in earnest, who’ll pay them any further attention?”
Magnusson sighed. “In a way, I’m sorry, Flandry,” he said. “You’re a genius, in your perverse fashion. This failure is no fault of yours. What a man you would have been in the right cause! I bear you no ill will and have no wish to mistreat you. But I dare not let you continue. You and your entourage will get comfortable quarters. When the throne is mine, I will … decide whether it may eventually be safe to release you.”
He gave orders. Unresisting, Flandry rose to be led away. “My compliments, Sir Olaf,” he murmured. “You are cleverer than I realized. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Sir Dominic,” replied the other.
Chapter 19
The climax was violent.
It began with delusive smoothness. “How I shall regret leaving this place,” Axor mused at supper. “Though I will always thank God for the privilege of having encountered wonder here.”
Targovi pricked up his ears. “Leaving?”
“Well, we cannot expect our hosts to maintain us forever—especially me, bearing in mind what my food must cost them. Working together with the lady Isis Zachary and her colleagues at the Apollonium in these past days, I have learned things of supreme value, and perhaps contributed some humble moiety in return, but now we seem to have exhausted our respective funds of information and the conclusions which discussion has led us to draw therefrom.”
“Apollonium?” Targovi’s question was absent-minded, practically a reflex. His thoughts were racing away.
Axor waved a tree-trunk arm around the room where he sprawled and the Tigery sat at table. He was really indicating the nighted campus beyond the hospice walls. “This center of learning, research, philosophy, arts. They do not call it a university because it has no teaching function. Being what they are, Zacharians require no schools except input to their homes, no teachers except their parents or, when they are mature, knowledgeable persons whom they can call when explanation is necessary.”
“Oh, yes, yes. You’ve finished, you say?”
“Virtually. Dear friend,” Axor trumpeted, “I cannot express my gratitude for your part in bringing me to this haven. While they have never undertaken serious investigation of the Foredwellers, the Zacharians are insatiably curious about the entire cosmos. Their database contains every item ever reported or collected by such of their people as have gone to space. I retrieved scores of descriptions, pictures, studies of sites unknown to me. Comparison with the facts I already possessed began to open portals. Isis, Vishnu, and Kwan Yin were those who especially took fire and produced brilliant ideas. I would not venture to claim that we are on the way to deciphering the symbols, but we have identified regularities, recurrences, that look highly significant. Who knows where that may lead future scholarship? To the very revelation of Christ’s universality, that will in time bring all sentient beings into his church?” The crocodilian head lifted. “I should not lament my departure,” the Wodenite finished. “Ahead of me, while this mortal frame lasts, lie pilgrimages to those planets about which I have learned, to the greater glory of God.”
“Well, good,” mumbled Targovi. “Know you when we must leave?”
“No, not yet. I daresay they will tell me at the next session. You might be thinking where we should ask them to deposit us on the mainland. They have promised to take us anyplace we like.”