Balance of Power Read online

  “You think the colony would hail us as heroes?” he said. “They’d curse us as they cursed our father.”

  “How do you know?”

  He laughed. Again it was the laugh of the worldly wise confronted with the naive. But he didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said: “This is our home. The Ore’l are our people. Our father turned his back on the colony as it turned its back on him. The colony’s troubles are no concern of ours. We have our own work to do.”

  He struck me as being a master of unsubtlety. With a little practice he could have doubled for a comic-opera villain. But I had to remember that he was part feral child. He had known only a handful of human beings in all his life—most of them his immediate family. He had never had to learn generalized techniques and responses for dealing with others of his own kind—only for dealing with the aliens, whom he placed in a very different existential category. I knew that it was going to be difficult to talk to him. His mind didn’t have much capacity for flexibility. Even less than Jan’s. The idea of contact with Lambda would make sense to Jan, in the context of trade. But to Piet, it simply sounded like heresy against what he’d been taught to believe. He had no means of access to the idea—it was closed around by walls that Bernhard Verheyden had built.

  I looked at the others. I couldn’t begin to fathom what they were thinking, but I knew that Mariel would tell me later. None of them seemed to manifest the open hostility that was in Piet’s eyes and voice. Jan, over the period of the voyage, had grown accustomed to us, and felt a certain responsibility for us simply because he had brought us here. Anna watched me closely, but seemed interested in what I had to say. Christian didn’t watch me at all. He seemed to have other things on his mind.

  A long silence developed while I waited. The general atmosphere was uncomfortable. I guessed that there were some tensions here that had nothing to do with us. Old disagreements, temporarily submerged while we were here but not forgotten. Perhaps something to do with the epidemic in the distant provinces. Perhaps something much deeper than any issues of state.

  “You’re mistaken about the attitude of the colony’s government,” said Nieland, in the tone of a man who feels duty-bound to speak but doesn’t know how to say what it is he intends to convey. “We would welcome trade with Delta. It could be of great value to both of us. When the Floreat set sail, you know, that was partly its purpose...to establish contact with the aliens and to explore the possibilities of trade. It was part of your father’s mission.”

  “You know nothing about our father’s mission,” said Piet, his voice like a knife edge.

  “But don’t you see?” Nieland continued. “The colony will build more ships now. Once it’s known that you’re here...the colony will want to trade. You can’t keep Ak’lehr to yourself forever, you know....”

  He let go the end of the sentence unhappily, knowing he’d gone too far. It was with difficulty that I refrained from raising my eyes to heaven in despair. He had really laid the issue open, now. There wasn’t a mind in the room that couldn’t run on to all the ifs that were stacked inside Nieland’s statement. Including the most important if of all: if Piet Verheyden let us go back to Lambda.

  The tension was redoubled while Piet stared at Nieland and let the thoughts pass slowly across his mind, unaware that Mariel was reading their every nuance.

  Then there was a knock on the door.

  It opened to admit an alien in the flimsy garments of a priest. I hadn’t yet learned the meaning of the various insignia, but I guessed from his youth that he was a novice. He spoke to Piet in his own language.

  If Piet’s expression had been dark before, it now grew positively thunderous. He spat back half a dozen words in Ak’lehrian. The youth in the doorway quailed somewhat, but answered at some length. Piet suppressed his anger and gave an equally lengthy answer. The youth left.

  I glanced at Mariel, hoping that she had managed to glean some significance from the exchange. She nodded slightly. I looked at Piet.

  “Ul’el would like to see you,” he said. “It is, I fear, unavoidable. I told him that you were very tired because of your journey and could not see him tonight. I said that all three of you could be formally presented to the officers of church and college in the morning. It’s not what he wanted, but it’s what he’ll get.” He glanced briefly at Jan.

  “I told them nothing,” said Jan. “I thought it best to leave such matters to you.”

  Piet looked pleased, for the first time.

  “Ul’el,” he said to me, “is one of the magisters of the church. I don’t know quite how to render his title into English, but magister is what my father called him. We refer to the others either by that name, or as officers, or as masters, but Ul’el is always a magister. You will understand that our presence here is not equally appreciated by everyone. There are those who are jealous of the influence we have, of the things we have done for the empire. Insofar as the opposition is organized at all, it is organized around Ul’el. He is our enemy, if that is not too strong a word. Christian will probably say that it is, but I think it is a correct assessment.”

  Christian made no objection to this comment, but simply looked elsewhere while Piet’s eyes rested on him.

  “Be careful of Ul’el,” said Piet, quietly. “He is your enemy too. He is sure to use your coming here against us, in some way. Don’t talk to him unless one of us—Anna or myself—is with you.”

  I was interested by the way that “one of us” translated into “Anna or myself.” I was also interested in Ul’el.

  “In what way does he oppose you?” I asked.

  “He is jealous of our influence,” said Piet, simply repeating the formula he had used previously.

  I let it go. “Well,” I said. “You were right in what you told our visitor. We are tired after our long journey. Very tired. We’d like to retire to our rooms now.”

  He looked slightly surprised by this, and almost raised an objection. But they were his own words that we were quoting back at him, and though they’d been the most obvious of pretexts he didn’t want to deny them.

  And so the party—not the best one I’d ever been to—broke up.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Our apartments were quite handsome. They were, in fact, quite the best accommodation I’d had since leaving Earth—and, on reflection, a good deal better than anything I’d ever enjoyed on Earth. They had central heating, private bathrooms, and good furniture. They were less spacious than Piet’s, but otherwise similar. We all had three rooms each. There were no connecting doors, but we were all on the same corridor.

  I wasted no time in seeking out Mariel as soon as I was rid of Anna, who had been appointed to show me where everything was.

  She was testing the softness of the bed, and apparently finding it to her liking.

  “Too soft,” I said. “Give you a backache.”

  I sat down in a chair. All Ak’lehrian chairs had high backs. Most of them also had long legs, but the ones in our rooms had been specially shortened for humans.

  “Heavy,” she said. She wasn’t talking about the bed,

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s start with Piet.”

  “He’s mad,” she observed.

  “We already knew that. What’s his immediate reaction to us?”

  “He’s scared,” she replied. “Our arrival here is an unlooked-for complication in a situation that’s already tense, for a great many reasons I can’t begin to guess. He’s worried about this epidemic, he’s worried about his brothers—all three of them—and he’s worried about this priest-character. Those worries I could see...there are probably more. He wants to keep us in his pocket. He has vague ideas about being able to use us, provided that we’re obliging puppets. He has no intention of shipping us back to Lambda—not at present. Maybe not ever. He wants to spend a good long time finding out what we’ve come here for and what kind of force is at the back of us. He’s paranoid...but we knew that already. He’s very paranoid.”
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br />   “What’s he got against his brothers?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Can’t tell exactly. He and Christian are bristling with mutual hostility. He mistrusts Jan, although Jan doesn’t seem aware of it. Possibly it’s nothing specific...just a manifestation of the paranoia. He seems to have a curiously intense reaction when he refers to Anna. Maybe he feels she’s the only one he can trust. Maybe it’s more than that.”

  “Brotherly love,” I said. She didn’t reply, but left me to draw my own conclusions.

  “What do the others think of us?” I asked.

  “Christian seems quite pleased to see us,” she said. “He’s not hostile. But that mighty simply be a reflection of the fact that Piet is. Any enemy of yours is a friend of mine and all that. Anna....”

  There was a pause.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Anna’s feelings are mixed,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to attempt a summation. She’s confused. But basically, she’s with Piet.”

  She didn’t seem disposed to go into more detail. I pressed on: “What about that conversation with the alien?” I asked.

  “What was said was probably what Piet reported,” she told me. “I’m slowly getting the hang of the language, thanks to Al’ha and one or two of the others aboard ship. Reading between the lines is still beyond me. But the situation really brought out Piet’s paranoia—as you presumably saw. At first he wanted to tell Ul’el to go to hell, but he had to modify it because of the way the alien framed the request. What he offered was a compromise...and an empty one. We’d have to be introduced to the powers-that-be anyhow. Piet wants to keep us very much his property—to mediate between the aliens and us. He seems pretty confident in that department. After all, he knows everything and we’re outsiders who know nothing. He thinks he can work us like puppets. If he knew about my talents, maybe he wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe he wouldn’t.”

  There was a pause.

  “Nieland’s scared,” she said, pulling the observation out of the vacuous silence.

  “I noticed,” I replied. “He’s out of his depth. He’s a shipbuilder at heart. The only one he has anything in common with is Jan. But he’s still our link. We need him if we can talk them round.”

  “They’ll never accept him as a kindred spirit to their father,” she stated flatly.

  I’d already come to that conclusion.

  “You’ll have to talk to him.” I said. “You can read him. You’ll know how to guide him. You’ve got to get him into some kind of shape to be the colony’s ambassador to Ak’lehr. Like it or not, that’s what he is.”

  “I’ll try,” she promised.

  “And in the meantime...,” I mused.

  She caught something in the tone of my voice and looked hard at my eyes.

  “If you’re planning what I think you’re planning....”

  “Why the if?” I asked. “Losing your touch?”

  “It’s a bit precipitate,” she said. “We’ve only been here a matter of hours. Couldn’t you just play it cool for a few days? We aren’t going to be murdered in our beds. We’ve plenty of time.”

  “I’m not going to be used as a pawn in a chess game,” I said. “It’s an existential situation that I don’t find too comfortable. And that’s the way Piet’s going to play it. He already is. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I know he’s under pressure. I think the best thing to do is to establish myself as a player instead of a piece. That way I’m less likely to end up being moved to a square I don’t want to occupy.”

  “He’s not going to like it,” she said. “Annoying paranoids isn’t diplomatic. Plotting against them is downright dangerous. It confirms all their nastiest feelings.”

  “He doesn’t have to know,” I said. “I’ll wait until all good humans should be in their beds.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said, unkindly. “How can you stop him finding out?”

  I just looked at her levelly, and let her read the rest. She saw that I was determined simply in the fact of my silence.

  “Be careful,” she advised.

  “Look after yourself,” I answered. “I need you. You’re our secret weapon, remember.”

  “I know,” she said, not without bitterness. “I know.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It is said that life imitates art. It’s probably true—most people wouldn’t know how to go about the business of living if they didn’t have something to imitate. One might, however, make the corollary observation that life has very bad taste.

  In virtually every melodrama featuring primitive societies written while such romances were in their heyday there is a villain, and he is always the high priest. He is either small and thin and bald with glittering eyes and an evil disposition or tall and thin and bald with glittering eyes and an evil disposition. He resents the respect in which his hitherto docile flock hold the noble and humane heroes who have come from the world outside and are putting a stop to his human sacrifices and general terrorist activities. He is a phantasm invented by Christians and adopted by rationalists to symbolize the evils of paganism and superstition.

  The power which such stereotypes have over the human imagination is absurd but alarming. These ruts in our minds might be hacked out crudely with stone-age chisels, but they are nonetheless effective when it comes to channeling thought. It seems that there is something basic within us that responds to such ludicrous caricatures and their characteristically overwritten menace. No matter how wise we become we always have to fight to crush the tissue of our nightmares.

  Trepidation would be too casual a word to describe what I felt as I knocked gently upon the door and opened it. My heart was hammering with an irrational fear...a fear far more dangerous because it was irrational. A great deal might hinge upon this meeting, and the presence of that evil, stupid phantasm could so easily spoil it.

  Ul’el, despite the lateness of the hour, was still awake. He was seated before his desk, with papers everywhere—scattering the desk-top, piled upon the floor, heaped on shelves behind him. Most of them were loosely bound into great sheaves, wrapped around with protective covers of soft leather.

  He looked up as I entered. I was learning to read alien faces, but there are some emotions whose reflections appear so rarely that one hardly has a chance to master them. I could not tell whether he was astonished or so calm that he showed no surprise. He made a sudden, brisk series of gestures, tidying up the mess on his desk somewhat. He nodded toward a chair. I had to drag it a few meters across the room, and must have appeared rather clumsy in so doing. When I sat down my feet did not touch the floor—this chair had not been specially remolded for human use.

  “I believe you wanted to see me,” I said.

  He looked at me, carefully and unhurriedly. Because he was seated I couldn’t tell how tall he was, but he seemed like a person of considerable size. His fur was paler than was usual among his kind—a tawny yellow, with reddish marks. His eyes didn’t glitter unduly, though they did seem a little bright because the only illumination in the room was the electric desk lamp he had been using for study.

  “I know it’s late,” I said, trying to keep my voice level and show no sign of embarrassment, “but I felt it best to be discreet.”

  “How did you find me?” he asked. Like Al’ha he had difficulty in pronouncing certain consonants, but be did not substitute the indeterminate throatal pauses common in his own speech. He tried very hard to work within his natural limitations, and with a fair degree of success. I had no difficulty understanding him.

  “I slipped away from our corner of the building and just walked until I found one of your people. He didn’t speak English but all I had to do was keep repeating your name. He wouldn’t hang about, though—he just showed me the door and beat a hasty retreat.”

  He made a small sound in his throat, as though clearing it. “You are the man from Earth,” he said.

  “Alexis Alexander,” I agreed.

>   “I am Ul’el,” he said, just to make it clear. “Why did you come?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I told him. “Piet Verheyden isn’t an easy man to deal with. He regards us as his personal property. We’re not. We didn’t come here to see him, or to deal with him. Our business is with people who are empowered to speak for Ak’lehr.”

  He was still studying me minutely. He didn’t trust me. How could he?

  “The children have told you about me?” he asked.

  “I think you know what they have told me,” I replied.

  “They are children,” he said. “Only children. They are trying hard to hold on to what they were. I knew their father well. I was one of his pupils, though I was adult when Piet was a small boy. I learned his language and his writing. He taught me everything...freely. He taught me because he wanted me to know. He did not make conditions. The children...they do not see that what is freely given is freely to be used. They bargain. They think that they have a right to administer what they have learned with us, as though it were somehow their own. They have turned themselves against us. They have made us into enemies by attempting to make demands which were never theirs to make. They are still trying to exercise a proprietary right over what is free, what is now ours. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “They have told you that I am plotting against them...that I want to undermine their authority...that I am jealous of their influence. All of these things are true. You must understand this, if we are to talk. Had you not come here as you did, I would have held this back, let it remain covert, at least for a while. But you have come to talk, and it is well that we are honest. I do not consider that we owe the children anything. They think that all that their father gave us somehow remains theirs. But they learned it alongside us. Everything they know came from the same source, in the same way, as what Bernhard Verheyden taught me and a hundred others. Even to their father we owe no debts. We are grateful for what we now have, but it was sika’y’su, a gift from god. It does not matter whether you understand this as metaphor or literal truth.”