Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 (138 page)

Bleys
stared
into
the
screen
as
Hal
Mayne
made
his
opening
remarks.
The
face
he
saw
there
looked
as
strong
and
powerful
as
before,
and
Bleys,
despite
his
recognition
of
the
primitiveness
of
his visceral
reaction,
was
finding
himself
captured
by
its
aura
of
power and
certainty.
Since
the
very
first
days
of
humankind,
people
had been
instinctively
drawn
to
those
they
could
feel
were
powerful enough
to
take
care
of
them,
and
Bleys
now
had
no
doubt
that many
Earthmen
would
find
in
that
face
the
comfort
and
security
of leadership.

"I've
been
honored,"
Mayne
was
continuing,
"by
being
chosen by
Tarn
Olyn,
Director
of
the
Encyclopedia
for
over
eighty
years,
to follow
him
in
that
post.
As
you
all
know,
the
only
Director
before Tarn
Olyn
was
Mark
Torre;
the
man
who
conceived
of,
planned
and supervised
the
building
of
this
great
work
from
its
earliest
form,
on the
ground
at
the
city
of
St.
Louis
in
the
northwestern
quadrisphere of
this
world.

"Mark
Torre's
aim,
as
you
know,
was
to
create
a
tool
for
research into
the
frontiers
of
the
human
mind
itself,
by
providing
a
storage space
for
all
known
information
on
everything
that
mind
has
produced
or
recognized
since
the
dawn
of
intellectual
consciousness.
It was
his
belief
and
his
hope
that
this
storehouse
of
human
knowledge and
creativity
would
provide
materials
and,
eventually,
a
means
of exploring
what
has
always
been
unknown
and
unseeable—in
the same
way
that
none
of
us,
unaided,
can
sec
the
back
of
his
or
her own
head.

"To
that
search,
Tarn
Olyn,
like
Mark
Torre
before
him,
dedicated
himself.
To
that
same
faith
that
Mark
Torre
had
shown,
he
adhered
through
his
long
tenure
of
duty
here.

"I
can
make
no
stronger
statement
to
you,
today,
than
to
say
that I
share
the
same
faith
and
intent,
the
same
dedication.
But,
more fortunate
than
the
two
men
who
dedicated
their
lives
to
the
search before
me,
I
may
possess
something
in
addition.
I
have,
I
believe, some
reason
to
hope
that
the
long
years
of
work
here
have
brought us
close
to
our
goal—that
we
are
very
near,
at
last
now,
to
stepping over
the
threshold
of
that
universe
of
the
unknown
which
Mark

Torre
dreamed
of
entering
and
reaping
the
rewards
of
exploring, that
inner
exploration
of
the
human
race
we
have
never
ceased
to yearn
toward;
unconsciously
to
begin
with,
but
later
consciously, from
the
beginning
of
time.

"When
the
moment
comes
that
this
threshold
is
crossed,
the lives
of
none
of
us
will
ever
be
the
same
again.
We
stand
at
perhaps the
greatest
moment
in
the
known
history
of
humanity;
and
I,
for one,
have
no
doubt
whatsoever
that
what
we
have
sought
for
over millennia,
we
will
find;
not
in
centuries
or
decades
from
now,
but within
our
lifetimes
and
possibly
even
in
a
time
so
close
that
if
I could
tell
you
certainly,
as
I
now
speak,
how
long
it
would
be,
the nearness
of
it
would
seem
inconceivable
to
us
all.

"But
in
any
case,
I
give
you
my
promise
that
while
I
am
Director of
the
Final
Encyclopedia,
I
will
not
allow
work
toward
that
future to
be
slowed
or
halted,
by
anything.
There
is
no
greater
pledge
I can
offer
you
than
that,
and
I
offer
it
now,
with
all
the
strength
that is
in
me.

"Having
said
this
about
myself
and
the
Directory,
I
will
now
turn from
that
subject
to
introduce
someone
who,
I
think,
means
so much
to
so
many
of
us,
that
this,
too,
would
have
seemed
inconceivable
a
short
year
ago.

"Peoples
of
Earth,
it's
my
pleasure
and
honor
to
introduce
Rukh Tamani."

Bleys
had
not
been
expecting
Hal
Mayne
to
turn
the
broadcast
over to
the
woman
who
had
so
recently
escaped
assassination.
He
gazed into
the
dark,
beautiful
face
on
the
screen
as
if
entranced.
He
had met
the
woman
in
person
once,
in
her
full
armed
power
in
a
wild
environment
beyond
Bleys'
own
control.
At
that
time
she
had
been
a wild,
uncontrollable
figure
of
danger;
now—he
searched
her
face— now
she
was
.
..
what?