Pel and I left. In the corridor outside, Whallo was already gone and the young Force- Leader was absent. Only Moro stood waiting for us. Pel turned on me, furiously.
"Who asked you to show up here?" he demanded.
"Moro," I answered. "And a good thing, too. Pel, what"s got into you? You act as if you had some personal axe to grind in seeing the Exotic mercenaries level Blauvain-"
He spun away from me.
"Excuse me!" he snapped. "I"ve got things to do. I"ve got to phone my Headquarters."
Puzzled, I watched him take a couple of long strides away from me and out of the outer office. Sud-denly, it was as if the winds of those ma.s.sive forces I had felt for a moment just past in lan"s office had blown my head strangely clean, clear and empty, so that the slightest sound echoed with importance. All at once, I was hearing the echo of Pel saying those identical words as Kensie was preparing to leave the mercenary encampment for the non-existent victory dinner; and a half-recognized but long-held suspicion in me flared into a raging certainty.
I took three long strides after him and caught him. I whirled him around and rammed him up against a wall.
"It was you!" I said. "You called from the Encampment to the city just before we drove in.
It was you who told the a.s.sa.s.sins we were on the way and to move into position to snipe at our car. You"re Blue Front, Pel; and you set Kensie up to be murdered!"
My hands were on his throat and he could not have answered if he had wanted to. But he did not need to. Then I heard the click of bootheels on the floor of the polished stone corridor flagging outside the office, and let go of him, slipping my hand under my uniform jacket to my beltgun.
"Say a word," I whispered to him, "or try anything... and I"ll kill you before you can get the first syllable out. You"re coming along with us!"
The Force-leader entered. He glanced at the three of us curiously.
"Something I can do for you gentlemen?" he asked.
"No," I said, "No, we"re just leaving."
With one arm through Pel"s and the hand of my other arm under my jacket on the b.u.t.t of my beltgun, we went out as close as the old friends we had always been, Moro bringing up the rear. Out in the corridor, with the office door behind us, Moro caught up with me on the opposite side from Pel.
"What are we going to do?" Moro whispered. Pel had still said nothing; but his eyes were like the black shadows of meteor craters on the gray face of an airless moon.
"Take him downstairs and out to a locked room in the nearest police post," I said. "He"s a walking stick of high explosive if any of the mercenaries find out what he did. Someone of his rank involved in Kensie"s killing is all the excuse they need to run our streets red in the gutters."
We got Pel to a private back room in Post Ninety-six, a local police center less than three minutes drive from the building where Ian had his office.
"But how can you be sure, he-" Moro hesitated at putting it into words, once we were safe in the room. He stood staring at Pel, who sat huddled in a chair, still without speaking.
"I"m sure," I said. "The Exotic, Padma-" I cut myself off as much as Moro had done.
"Never mind. The main thing is he"s Blue Front, he"s involved-and what do we do about it?"
Pel stirred and spoke for the first time since I had almost strangled him. He looked up at Moro and myself out of his grey-dead face.
"I did it for St. Marie!" he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "But I didn"t know they were going to kill him!
I didn"t know that. They said it was just to be shooting around the car-for an incident-"
"You hear?" I jerked my head at Moro. "Do you want more proof than that?"
"What"ll we do?" Moro was staring in fascinated horror at Pel.
"That was my question," I reminded him. He stood there looking hardly in better case than Pel. "But it doesn"t look like you"re going to be much help in answering it." I laughed, but not happily. "Padma said the choice was up to me."
"Who? What"re you talking about? What choice?" asked Moro.
"Pel here-" I nodded at him, "knows where the a.s.sa.s.sins are hiding."
"No," said Pel.
"Well, you know enough so that we can find them," I said. "It makes no difference. And outside of this room, there"s only two people on St. Marie we can trust with that information."
"You think I"d tell you anything?" Pel said. His face was still grey, but it had firmed up now. "Do you think even if I knew anything I"d tell you? St. Marie needs a strong government to survive and only the Blue Front can give it to her. I was ready to give my life for that, yesterday. I"m still willing. I won"t tell you anything-and you can"t make me.
Not in six hours."
"What two people?" Moro asked me.
"Padma," I said, "and Ian."
"Ian!" said Pel. "You think he"ll help you? He doesn"t give a d.a.m.n for St. Marie, either way. Did you believe that talk of his about his brother"s military record? He"s got no feelings. It"s his own military record he"s concerned with; and he doesn"t care if the mercenaries tear Blauvain up by the roots, as long as it"s done over his own objection.
He"s just as happy as any of the other mercenaries with that vote. He"s just going to sit out his six hours and let things happen."
"And I suppose Padma doesn"t care either?" Moro was beginning to sound a little ugly himself. "It was the Exotics sent us help against the Friendlies in the first place!"
"Who knows what Exotics want?" Pel retorted. "They pretend to go about doing nothing but helping other people, and never dirtying their hands with violence and so on; and somehow with all that they keep on getting richer and more powerful all the time. Sure, trust Padma, why don"t you? Trust Padma and see what happens!"
Moro looked at me uncomfortably.
"What if he"s right?" Moro said.
"What if he"s right?" I snarled at him. "Moro, can"t you see this is what St. Marie"s trouble has always been? Here"s the troublemaker we always have around-someone like Pel- whispering that the devil"s in the chimney and you-like the rest of our people always do-starting to shake at the knees and wanting to sell him the house at any price! Stay here both of you; and don"t try to leave the room."
I went out, locking the door behind me. They were in one of a number of rooms set up behind the duty officer"s desk and I went up to the night sergeant on duty. He was a man I"d known back when I had been in detective training on the Blauvain force, an old-line policeman named Jaker Reales.
"Jaker," I said, "I"ve got a couple of valuable items locked up in that back room. J hope to be back in an hour or so to collect them; but if I don"t, make sure they don"t get out and n.o.body gets in to them, or knows they"re mere. I don"t care what kind of noises may seem to come out of there, it"s all in the imagination of anyone who thinks he hears them, for twenty-four hours at least, if I don"t come back"
"Got you, Tom," said Jaker. "Leave it up to me, sir."
"Thanks, Jaker," I said.
I went out and back to Expedition Headquarters. It had not occurred to me to wonder what Ian would do now that his Hunter Teams had been taken from him. I found Expedition Headquarters now quietly aswarm with officers-officers who clearly were most of them Dorsai. No enlisted men were to be seen.
I was braced to argue my way into seeing Ian; but the men on duty surprised me. I had to wait only four or five minutes outside the door of lan"s private office before six Senior Commandants, Charley ap Morgan among them, filed out.
"Good," said Charley, nodding as he saw me; and then went on without any further explanation of what he meant. I had no time even to look after him. Ian was waiting.
I went in. Ian sat ma.s.sively behind his desk, waiting for me, and waved me to a chair facing him as I came in. I sat down. He was only a few feet from me, but again I had the feeling of a vast distance separating us. Even here and now, under the soft lights of this nighttime office, he conveyed, more strongly than any Dorsai I had ever seen, a sense of difference. Generations of men bred to war had made him; and I could not warm to him as Pel and others had warmed to Kensie. Far from kindling any affection in me, as he sat there, a cold wind like that off some icy and barren mountaintop seemed to blow from him to me, chilling me. I could believe Pel, that Ian was all ice and no blood; and there was no reason for me to do anything for him-except that as a man whose brother had been killed, he deserved -whatever help any other decent, law-abiding man could give him.
But I owed something to myself, too, and to the fact that we were not all villains, like Pel, on St. Marie.
"I"ve got something to tell you," I said. "It"s about General Sinjin."
He nodded, slowly.
"I"ve been waiting for you to come to me with that," he said.
I stared at him.
"You knew about Pel?" I said.
"We knew someone from the St. Marie authorities had to be involved in what happened,"
he said. "Normally, a Dorsai officer is alert to any potentially dangerous situation. But there was the false dinner invitation; and then the matter of the a.s.sa.s.sins happening to be in just the right place at the right time, with just the right weapons. Also, our Hunter Teams found clear evidence the encounter was no accident. As I say, an officer like Field Commander Graeme is not ordinarily killed that easily."
It was odd to sit there and hear him speak Kensie"s name that way. t.i.tle and name rang on my ears with the strangeness one feels when somebody speaks of himself in the third person.
"But Pel?" I said.
"We didn"t know it was General Sinjin who was involved" Ian said. "You identified him yourself by coming to me about him just now."
"He"s Blue Front," I said.
"Yes," said Ian, nodding.
"I"ve known him all my life," I said, carefully. "I believe he"s suffered some sort of nervous breakdown over the death of your brother. You know, he admired your brother very much. But he"s still the man I grew up with; and that man can"t be easily made to do something he doesn"t want to do. Pel says he won"t tell us anything that"ll help us find the a.s.sa.s.sins; and he doesn"t think we can make him tell us inside of the six hours left before your soldiers move in to search Blauvain. Knowing him, I"m afraid he"s right."
I stopped talking. Ian sat where he was, behind the desk, looking at me, merely waiting.
"Don"t you understand?" I said. "Pel can help us, but I don"t know of any way to make him do it."
Still Ian said nothing.
"What do you want from me?" I almost shouted it at him, at last.
"Whatever," Ian said, "you have to give."
For a moment it seemed to me that there *was something like a crack in the granite mountain that he seemed to be. For a moment I could have sworn that I saw into him. But if this was true, the crack closed up immediately, the minute I glimpsed it. He sat remote, icy, waiting, there behind his desk "I"ve got nothing," I said, "unless you know of some way to make Pel talk"
"I have no way consistent with my brother"s reputation as a Dorsai officer," said Ian, remotely.
"You"re concerned with reputations?" I said. "I"m concerned with the people who"ll die and be hurt in Blauvain if your mercenaries come in to hunt door-to-door for those a.s.sa.s.sins. Which is more important, the reputation of a dead man, or the lives of living ones?"
"The people are rightly your concern, Com-missioner," said Ian, still remotely, "the professional reputation of Kensie Graeme is rightly mine."
"What will happen to that reputation if those troops move into Blauvain in less than six hours from now?" I demanded.
"Something not good," Ian said. "That doesn"t change my personal responsibilities. I can"t do what I shouldn"t do and I must do what I ought to do."
I stood up.
"There"s no answer to the situation, then," I said. Suddenly, the utter tiredness I had felt before was on me again. I was tired of the fanatic Friendlies who had come out of another solar system to exercise a purely theoretical claim to our revenues and world surface as an excuse to a.s.sault St. Marie. I was tired of the Blue Front and people like Pel. I was tired of off-world people of all kinds, including Exotics and Dorsais. I was tired, tired...
It came to me then that I could walk out. I could refuse to make the decision that Padma had said I would make and the whole matter would be out of my hands. I told myself to do that, to get up and walk out; but my feet did not budge. In picking on me, events had chosen the right idiot as a pivot point. Like Ian, I could not do what I should not do, and I must do what I ought to do.
"All right," I said, "Padma might be able to do something with him."
"The Exotics," said Ian, "force n.o.body." But he stood up.
"Maybe I can talk him into it," I said, exhaustedly. "At least, I can try."
Once more, I would have had no idea where to find Padma in a hurry. But Ian located him in a research enclosure, a carrel in the stacks of the Blauvain library; which like many libraries on all the eleven inhabited worlds, had been Exotic-endowed. In the small s.p.a.ce of the carrel Ian and I faced him; the two of us standing, Padma seated in the serenity of his blue robe and unchanging facial expression. I told him what we needed with Pel, and he shook his head.
"Tom," he said, "you must already know that we who study the Exotic sciences never force anyone or anything. Not for moral reasons alone; but because using force would damage our ability to do the sensitive work we"ve dedicated our lives to doing. "That"s why we hire mercenaries to fight for us, and Cetan lawyers to handle our off-world business contracts. I am the last person on this world to make Pel talk"
"Don"t you feel any responsibility to the innocent people of this city?" I said. "To the lives that will be lost if he doesn"t?"
"Emotionally, yes," Padma said, softly. "But there are practical limits to the responsibility of personal inaction. If I were to concern myself with all possible pain consequent upon the least, single action of mine, I would have to spend my life like a statue. I was not responsible for Kensie"s death; and I am not responsible for finding his killers. Without such a responsibility I can"t violate the most basic prohibition of my life"s rules."
"You knew Kensie," I said. "Don"t you owe anything to him? And don"t you owe anything to the same St. Marie people you sent an armed expedition to help?"
"We make it a point to give, rather than take," Padma said, "just to avoid debts like that which could force us into doing what we shouldn"t do. No, Tom.
The Exotics and I have no obligation to your people, or even to Kensie."
"-And to the Dorsai?" asked Ian, behind me.
I had almost forgotten he was there, I had been concentrating so hard on Padma.
Certainly, I had not expected Ian to speak The sound of his deep voice was like a heavy bell tolling in the small room; and for the first time Padma"s face changed.
"The Dorsai..." he echoed. "Yes, the time is coming when there will be neither Exotics nor Dorsai, in the end when the final development is achieved. But we Exotics have always counted on our work as a step on the way to that end; and the Dorsai helped us up our step. Possibly, if things had gone otherwise, the Dorsai might have never been; and we would still be where we are now. But things went as they have; and our thread has been tangled with the Dorsai thread from the time your many-times removed grandfather Cletus Grahame first freed all the younger worlds from the politics of Earth..."
He stood up.
"I"ll force no one," he said. "But I will offer Pel my help to find peace with himself, if he can; and if he finds such peace, then maybe he *will want to tell you willingly what you want to know."
Padma, Ian and I went back to the police station where I had left Pel and Moro locked up.
We let Moro out, and closed the door upon the three of us with Pel. He sat in a chair, looking at us, pale, pinch-faced and composed.
"So you brought the Exotic, did you, Tom?" he said to me. "What"s it going to be? Some kind of hypnosis?"
"No, Pel," said Padma softly, pacing across the room to him as Ian and I sat down to wait.
"I would not deal in hypnosis, particularly without the consent of the one to be hypnotized."
"Well, you sure as h.e.l.l haven"t got my consent!" said Pel.