Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 (60 page)

"So
in
fact
they
didn't
have
the
effect
you
found,
that
brought you
here?"

"Not
directly,"
Bleys
said.
"You're
correct
to
say
that
individuals can't
have
such
effects
on
planetary
scales.
But
it's
also
true
that every
organization—every
government
and
business—can
only
act if
the
individual
people
running
them
take
some
action
..
.
otherwise,
they're
just
dead
social
machinery."

She
frowned,
thinking.

"I
don't
understand,"
she
said
at
last.

"Let
me
give
you
an
example,"
he
said.
"I
don't
know
exactly what
they
did,
but
it
must
have
been
close
to
this
..
."
He
paused, thinking.

"Suppose
you
have
one
hundred
million
interstellar
credits
to spend
on
trying
to
ruin
Exotic
trade
with
Freiland,"
he
said
finally. "That
amount
won't
go
far,
if
applied
directly.
But
if
you
use
it
to bribe
key
Freilander
officials,
the
effect
of
that
sum
can
be
multiplied,
since
such
officials
usually
have
control
over
even
larger
economic
and
political
capital.
.
.
.
For
instance,
a
bribe
of
five
million credits
to
a
Freiland
Space
Force
procurement
officer
might
lead him
to
give
billions
of
credits'
worth
of
contracts—for
supplies,
for ships,
for
military
consultants—to
someone
other
than
the
Exotics and
the
Dorsai."

"I
see!"
she
said.
"That's
what
you
meant
when
you
referred
to 'leveraging
their
positions,'
earlier."

"Yes,"
he
said.
He
smiled.
"Do
you
see
something
familiar
in that
concept?"

"Yes,"
she
said,
thoughtfully.
"It's
exactly
what
you've
been
doing
to
take
over
the
worlds."

"But
in
more
ways
than
economic,"
he
said,
nodding. "Economic
assets
were
all
they
had,"
she
said.

"That's
right,"
he
said.
"Again,
they
were
in
the
right
place
at
the right
time:
they
were
in
a
position
to
corrupt
individuals
in
positions of
power,
during
an
era
in
which
the
interstellar
system
was
decay-ing."

"The
only
thing
that
can
really
stop
such
corruption
is
an
overriding
sense
of
morality,"
she
said,
"and
you've
been
saying
for some
time
that
that's
been
dying
away."

"Corruption
multiplies
itself,"
he
said.
"The
race
has
been
under stress
ever
since
it
went
into
space,
and
the
resulting
corruption
will kill
it
unless
I
can
lead
it
back
to
Old
Earth
and
make
it
face
the need
to
renew
its
sense
of
morality
and
responsibility."

"So
you'll
be
using
their
corruption
to
fight
future
corruption," she
said.
"It's
a
concept
the
aikido
masters
would
have
recognized."

CHAPTER
2
1

The
first
thing
Bleys
did,
upon
arrival
back
on
Association,
was
to check
the
great
Mayne-map,
as
Dahno
called
it,
on
the
wall
of
his private
lounge.
He
realized
immediately
it
had
been
updated
in
his absence.

"The
Dorsai!"
he
exclaimed,
more
to
himself
than
to
Toni,
entering
the
room
behind
him.
"I
should
have
known
he'd
go
there
next— he's
been
making
the
rounds
of
all
the
groups
that
aren't
in
our
camp." He
raised
a
hand
to
massage
the
side
of
his
head.

"Well,
that
seems
logical,"
Toni
said.
"But
why
didn't
he
stay with
the
Exotics
longer?
Surely
that
would
have
been
safer?"

"In
the
short
run,
perhaps,"
Bleys
said.
"But
this
is
no
longer
about safety—Hal
Mayne's
or
anyone
else's.
I
told
Dahno
that
Hal
Mayne is
actively
campaigning
against
us,
and
this
proves
it."

"How?"

"The
only
reason
for
him
to
go
to
the
Dorsai
would
be
to
try
to enlist
them
in
the
fight
against
us,"
Bleys
said.

"Is
it
likely
the
Dorsai
would
listen
to
a
lone
and
unknown
young man?"
she
asked.
"They
have
a
reputation
for
being
pretty
hard-headed."

Bleys
remembered
again
that
she
was
partly
Dorsai
herself.

"You
haven't
met
Hal
Mayne,
have
you?"
he
said.
"I
wouldn't put
it
past
him
to
be
able
to
get
the
Dorsai
to
listen
very
seriously
to him.
And
they'd
be
right
to
see
us
as
a
threat
to
them.
But
in
any case,
I
don't
think
he
went
there
entirely
by
himself."

"You
mean
someone
from
the
Exotics
is
traveling
with
him?"

"In
a
way,
perhaps,"
Bleys
said.
"I
don't
know
that.
But
I
think
he went
with,
at
a
minimum,
their
blessings.
In
fact"—he
nodded
to himself,
the
idea
catching
fire
in
his
head
even
as
he
spoke
it—"I'd
say
it's
probable
he
carried
some
kind
of
introduction
or
message from
the
Exotics,
asking
the
Dorsai
to
take
him
seriously."

"I
see
your
thinking,"
she
said.
"We
know
the
Exotics
are
inclined to
help
him
because
they've
already
done
so—and
if
they
weren't agreed
on
the
need
to
take
some
sort
of
action
together,
he'd
still
be there,
trying
to
move
them."

"Exactly,"
Bleys
said.
He
turned
to
a
desk,
where
he
could
use
a screen
to
get
access
to
all
of
the
Others'
information
files,
including data
that
had
arrived
while
he
was
off-planet.

"Let's
see
if
we
have
any
more
detail."

"We
were
lucky
to
learn
of
Mayne's
trip
at
all,"
he
told
Toni
a
short time
later.
"One
of
our
people
going
to
Sainte
Marie
was
making
a connection
at
a
pad
on
Mara,
and
just
happened
to
see
Mayne
passing
through.
He
managed
to
observe
which
ship
Mayne
boarded. Sheer
accident."

He
paused
to
think
for
a
moment,
massaging
his
temples,
his
eyes closed.

"We
need
to
be
able
to
monitor
travelers
better,"
he
said.
"We haven't
had
any
need
for
that
up
to
now,
except
for
trying
to
track Mayne
himself—for
that
matter,
we
haven't
had
the
people
to
put into
a
time-consuming
effort
like
that.
But
we're
entering
a
new stage,
and
we're
soon
going
to
have
more
of
that
kind
of
resource."

"So
now
we'll
try
to
watch
for
him
to
leave
the
Dorsai?"
she
said.

"We
will,
yes,"
Bleys
said.
"But
I'd
say
he's
already
left
there."

"What
makes
you
say
that?"

"He
only
had
one
thing
to
do
on
the
Dorsai,"
Bleys
said,
opening his
eyes.
"And
he's
busy." She
raised
an
eyebrow.

"He's
taken
the
next
step,"
Bleys
explained,
his
eyes
returning to
the
great
map.
"Now
he's
recruiting
his
army.
The
war
is
on."

Later
that
day
Dahno
appeared.
He
had
been
back
on
Association
for
more
than
two
weeks,
and
was
fully
recovered
from
his
wounds.
But
Bleys
had
been
quietly
told
that
his
brother,
on
his arrival
back
at
Others'
headquarters,
had
sequestered
himself
in his
suite.

"Come
up
if
you'd
like,"
Toni
said
when
Dahno
called.
"But
Bleys is
asleep
and
I
won't
wake
him."

Dahno
came
up
anyway,
arriving
via
the
interior
float
elevator within
minutes,
his
face
petulant.
Toni
thought
he
looked
a
bit
drawn, underneath
a
layer
of
irritation.