This Fortress World (8 page)

"I—"

"Never mind," he said. "You remember. You can stop pretending."

"I can't," I said wearily. "I can't give it to you. Even if I could give it to you, I wouldn't."

"You can," he said calmly. "And you will."

"I don't have it." His confidence gave me a feeling of desperation.

"I know. You can get it."

"I can't. It's hidden too well. No one can get it."

"I don't believe you," Siller said, and his mask of confidence slipped aside for a moment. Then it was back. "Let me tell you why you're going to give it to me."

I listened, frowning.

"Gratitude," he said. "I saved your life." He flipped a finger out negligently. "I have provided you with a hiding place. I've taught you what you need to stay alive."

"I am grateful," I said. "But I'm not that grateful."

He shrugged, but his voice was a little sharper. "Second, the matter of rightful ownership."

"The girl—"

"The girl is dead."

I flinched. "How do you know?"

He shrugged again, impatiently. "If she isn't, she wishes she were. She's in Sabatini's hands. From that moment, she was dead. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the object falls into the proper hands now. Mine."

"Why yours?" I asked wearily.

"We know what to do with it, my employers and I. You don't. More important, it was on its way to me when the girl discovered that Sabatini and his Agents were on her trail."

"How can I believe that," I asked skeptically, "when you don't even know what it is."

Siller smiled, mockingly. "It's a small pebble made of clear crystal. A Peddler found it among some ruins on a small planet of the periphery. There were no inhabitants, only ruins. And the ruins were old, old beyond description. They indicated that the vanished race had space flight and a considerable degree of civilization. The Peddler found the pebble, wanted it, and took it, suspecting that it held a valuable secret. Word leaked out when he landed on Brancusi. He was killed; his crew was slaughtered; the location of the world was lost. But the pebble turned up in the hands of the Emperor. He guarded it jealously, but yesterday it was stolen from the palace."

I listened. The information might be useful, if it was correct, but it proved nothing. "How do I know that the girl was bringing it to you? What was her name—?"

"Her name was Frieda. She was the Emperor's latest favorite." Siller described the girl and her relationship to the Emperor and what she was wearing when she left the palace. I listened with a strange, sick feeling growing in my stomach.

"It's not proof," I said, swallowing hard. "Sabatini would have known all this. And even if she was going to give it to you, why should I?"

"What do you want, man, documents?" he asked. His voice was rising. "You may have the pebble, but you'll never have anything else. You won't even stay alive very long. Give it to me!"

I shook my head bewilderedly. "I can't."

"Why?" Siller screamed. "Doesn't your life matter to you? Wouldn't you like to get away from Brancusi? Start life over? The pebble means nothing to you.…"

The pebble meant nothing to me.
The pebble had put me here now; it had lost me my hope of priesthood and given me terror instead and the threat of death and torture; it had made me kill three men. But more than that—I couldn't give it up.

"I can't!" I said. "It means—You wouldn't understand." He wouldn't. He couldn't. That was the one thing about him I was certain of.

He glared at me, white-faced.

"You've been kind to me," I said apologetically. "You've risked a lot to hide me. But if you expect me to give up the pebble because of that, I have no right to stay here any longer."

I got up from my chair and walked slowly toward the door. Here for a brief moment had been sanctuary. In less than a day I had come to look on Siller's suite as a second monastery, a refuge from the world. The day's training in self-defense had been academic, unrelated to reality. Now.…

"Don't be a fool, Dane," Siller said with great disgust. "You're not leaving." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Unless you get smart, you're never going to leave."

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I stiffened, my hand against the door. I pressed against it. But I realized, even before it refused to move, that it was locked. I turned around to face him. He was there, just in front of me. His hand dipped into my jacket and came out with my gun. Contemptuously he turned his head and tossed the gun onto the davenport in the middle of the room.

Panic washed over me. I swung my left arm around backhanded and slapped him across the face. My hands reached for his shoulders, to grab him, to shake him…

"Let me out!" I shouted. "Let—"

Something cold and pointed touched me just below the ribs. I looked down, suddenly chilled, my belly sucked in. The eight-inch blade of his dagger was at my diaphragm. My hands dropped.

He raised one hand to his reddening cheek and stroked it reflectively, but his eyes were glittering. "I should kill you for that," he said quietly.

I waited for him to push. I waited for the cold steel to force its way into my body and lick out my life with a hard tongue. Suddenly the pressure was released. Siller tossed the dagger in the air, caught it by the handle, and giggled as he slipped it back into his sleeve.

"I like you, Dane," he said. "We could be good friends if you'd let your mind do the thinking. Come back and sit down."

I came back and sat down. I sat down on the davenport where Siller had thrown my gun. I didn't pick it up. I was afraid.

"I can't understand you, Dane," he said. "Maybe it's because you don't understand me. Look at the galaxy! Tell me what you see!"

His voice was friendly and sensible. He acted as if nothing had happened, as if I were not a prisoner. But it was not easy for me to forget, and I sat there, chilled and unhappy, thinking that as long as we were talking sensibly nothing else would happen.

"Stars," I said. "The scattered stars."

"And I see billions upon billions of serfs, slaves, and freed-men," he said slowly, his gaze distant, "and above them millions of mercenaries, some Peddlers, some clerks, and a few nobles. But at the bottom of everything the serfs, slaves, and freedmen. You may have seen them when they came into the Cathedral, but you don't know how they live. Despair, disease, and death—that is their life. A little plot of ground or a narrow room—that is their world."

He stood up. He seemed taller.

"You don't know how they live," he repeated. "I know. You don't know what it is never to have enough to eat. Never. Not once in a lifetime. I know. What do they understand? Nothing but the most basic impulses. They breed, they struggle for a few years, they die. Animals. Worse than animals." He paused. He turned toward me. His voice softened. "If you saw one of them torturing his land into furrows with a crooked stick, would you give him a plow and land of his own? If you saw one of them filling rocket warheads with radioactive metals until the flesh dropped from his bones, would you take him out into the living air?"

"Yes," I said, looking into his eyes.

"Then give me the pebble," he almost whispered. "It is their only chance."

I tore my eyes away. My hand crept toward the gun. "Why?" I asked.

"Would you like to give it to the Emperor? What would he do with it?"

I didn't answer.

"He'd grip Brancusi a little tighter. Or, if the secret is potent enough, he'd look around for something to conquer. He's not too old, and there hasn't been a conquest in the imperial family since his great-grandfather. He'd like to be remembered as the Emperor who conquered Thayer.

"Or maybe you'd rather give it to the Peddlers."

I looked at him, waiting. My hand gained an inch toward the gun.

"They'd peddle it. To some ruler, perhaps, for a few concessions. It would go to the highest bidder. Perhaps you'd rather donate it to the Church."

I glanced away, flushing.

"The Church would turn it over to the secular authorities, you know," Siller said softly. That's what the Abbot wanted to do. Just as he turned you over—"

"You're wrong," I said. "It was the young acolyte."

Siller shrugged. "Was it? The point is—there's no one. No one on the side of justice, change, progress, humanity. Except—"

"Who?" I asked. "Who are so noble that they alone can be trusted with the pebble?"

"The Citizens," he said.

Somewhere I had heard the name, but it was only a name. "And what would they do with it?"

"They would make a united galaxy. Without emperors, dictators, or oligarchs. The power would be where it belongs—in the hands of the people."

"A pleasant dream," I said. "But your book insists that it is impossible." My fingers crept closer.

"The Dynamics?"
he said. His eyes grew bright. "An excellent book. But pessimistic. It did not consider the one possible solution."

He walked toward me, leaned over, picked up the gun. I sat, unmoving, watching him as he juggled it thoughtfully in his hand. Then he smiled, bent toward me, and slipped the gun back into the pocket inside my jacket.

"Now we can talk more easily," he said.

I had the gun now, and I should have felt more like a man. But I didn't. His action made me feel more like a prisoner than ever. "The solution?" I said.

"A simultaneous revolution all over the galaxy," Siller said quietly. "No power will be able to take advantage of the confusion. Afterwards, a confederation of worlds which will gradually develop into full union."

"A pretty plan," I said. "Why not?"

"The people," Siller said bitterly. "The stupid animals. They don't know enough to want to revolt. They think their lives are the way they are meant to be. They have nothing to compare them with. They never quite starve. They have their free teevee theaters. And we can't reach them. The rulers control every method of communication except one. And they've blocked that very effectively."

"Books?" I asked.

He nodded gloomily. "There's only one way to stop the people from reading, and they've done it. They've kept them ignorant and illiterate. If the people could read, they would have words and ideas to think with. We could educate them, organize them. And so the Congress says, 'Teach them to read.' Try it. I tried it. It's impossible. What we really need is power. Power to blast the rulers out. Let the animals stew in their ignorance. If we had the power—That pebble may be the weapon we're looking for, Dane."

"What do you mean, you were teaching them to read?" I said.

"There's no reason we both can't make a good thing out of it," Siller said softly. "So you know the value of it! That isn't any good, if you can't sell it. You can't handle something as big as this. You don't know where to go, who to see, how much to ask. All you'd get is a hole in the guts."

"You don't understand."

"Listen. The Congress is willing to go high. I could tell them that you want fifty thousand chronors for the pebble. They'd pay like that." He snapped his fingers. "Twenty-five thousand each. Or if we could find the pebble's secret first, there's no limit. To you it's worthless. To you it means only death and torture. To me and the Citizens it means life and hope for the galaxy."

"What do you mean," I said, "you were teaching them to read?"

He sighed, his eyes watchful. "The animals don't want to learn, you know. Thinking is fantastic effort for them. So you do what you do with other animals. You offer them some candy."

"Candy?"

"Simple stories about irresistible subjects: success for the unsuccessful, power for the weak, love for the despised.…We offered them stories about serfs overthrowing their masters to become their own rulers, laborers owning the factories and shops in which they worked, and passion—the eternal necessity to feel strongly.…"

He selected a book from the shelves filled with fiction and brought it to me. As I glanced at it, he twisted a knob on the teevee. The book was inexpensive but sturdy.

"…large type," Siller was saying. "Easy to read. Well-written, too. Lots of thought and money went into the project. In addition, they taught the ultimate subversion—the basic equality of men. A bargain? They were priced far below cost, but I would have given them away. I got rid of five. Do you know why? There, that's why!" He pointed to the teevee.

Captured in a block of crystal like an ancient work of art was a girl, living and moving, in exquisite colors of flesh pink and coral red and filmy black.…The technical feat was worthy of better things. It was shallow and pointless and stupid, but, more than these, it was evil.

Father Michaelis once told me that there is nothing evil except what man puts into the world or takes out of it. This thing that I watched was purposefully evil. Evil had been poured into it to satiate the viewer so that he would never want anything else. It was a thing of blackness that stained the soul; no amount of scrubbing would ever make it clean again.

"That's what they want," Siller said. "It's all imagined for them so they don't have to think, and—God!—how the animals hate to think!"

I dragged my eyes from the teevee and looked at the book. It was a collection of stories, told simply but expertly by an anonymous craftsman. They carried the reader on, unthinking, and I turned the pages with growing interest and a slow sickness…

This wasn't basically different from the Imperial Free Theater. There was in these stories an underlying immorality—a lack of any basis for right conduct—that made them evil, too, and perhaps a greater evil because it was less obvious.

It had been written by the bored, skillful fingers of decadence.… And, strangely enough, it was not the remembered monastery precepts of purity that closed the book for me but the image of a girl that came between its pages and my eyes. Whatever she had been, life to her was not old and weary, emotions were not nerves to be tormented, love was not merely desire. I saw her, clean-limbed and filled with terror, beautiful and touched with death, capable of great love and able to die bravely because of it.