Ballroom of the Skies (10 page)

——Ten parsecs beyond the outermost star system the great ship rested. It had been built in space. No planet crust could withstand its weight, and thus it had never felt the full tug of gravity at close range. It was the flagship
for a full division. On the master control cube, three dimensional diagram of a galaxy, tiny red spheres showed the placement of each ship of the division. In this hour it was a nervous ship. Quick flick of eyes. Lick of tongue tip across dry lips. Silence. The launch had arrived an hour ago. At last the bell called all officers. They hurried to central assembly, stood in formation at attention.

After five minutes the earthling arrived, with his cold and bitter eyes, the flat iron slab of a face, wearing his symbols of command. The prisoner was taken to the vast open space in the middle of the hollow square of the formation.

They said he could give you a writhing agony with a mere glance, read your most secret thoughts, turn you to a mindless thing. The officers stood like statues.

The harsh voice of the earthling filled the huge room. “Officers. Observe the prisoner. He commanded a ship. He forgot the need for endless vigilance.” The prisoner stood with a face like death.

“They came once. They came out of the blackness between the galaxies. They would not communicate. They were merely a patrol. Yet it took the total strength of the galaxy to hurl them back. They will come again, in strength. We are stronger now, yet not strong enough. The prisoner grew bored with vigilance. For two thousand years there has not been one second of relaxation. Nor will there be until they return, as they inevitably will. Remove the prisoner.”

He was marched away, head bowed.

The earthling said, in a quieter tone, “Defense cannot remain static. Every ship in this division is obsolete.” There was a stir and murmur in the ranks of officers.

“The first ship of the new class is being assembled. It has better shields, heavier weapons, a new and more effective hyper-drive. This crew has been selected for immediate return and training. I shall transfer command headquarters to one of your sister ships. On your return with the new ship I will once again command the division from your ship. Within five years complete replacement of the ships of this division will be effected. Obsolete
ships will be placed in reserve. Patrol areas will be twice as far from the galactic rim as we are now. I have recommended brief leave for each of you on his or her home planet. Dismissed.”

——At Bionomic Research they had all been uneasily aware of the new earthling who had replaced gentle, easygoing The’dran. But the long days drifted by and they slowly became used to his habit of roaming through the low gray buildings. They prepared the metal tapes which listed, in minute detail, the almost infinite ecological factors of the unbalanced planets and fed them through the whispering calculators, getting the slow results that so often looked like utter nonsense. It was very slow work, but who could hasten it? Nature moved slowly. If the answer was to eliminate one certain type of shrub on such and such a planet, who was to hasten it? In perhaps fifty of the planet years in question, elimination of the shrub would have caused the extinction of a certain class of insect which in turn was the food source for a specific class of lizard which restricted the natural watershed by tunneling too indiscreetly among tree roots and stunted growth.

So they began to accept the earthling as a symbol, and nothing more.

Until one day, in a cold flat voice, and with unfriendly eyes, he called them parasites and time-wasters and fools. He revised all the old ways, formed them into research teams, assigned one field team to each research team, demanded synchronized recommendations, with a target date for putting them into effect. The old ways were gone. The slow warm days. Now it was hurry, hurry. Planets must be bionomically balanced, with resources utilized toward the setting of an optimum population level. Transportation of necessities between planets is a waste. Hurry, hurry, hurry. It should have been done yesterday, the day before yesterday. Please the earthling with your energy, or end up at Center with your technical qualification erased and your number changed to manual labor.

——On Training T, far from the power webs, far from the intricate geometric pattern of the space cubes, gleaming on the vast metallic plain, far from the black training buildings and the instruction beams, a Stage Two wept. The mind, seemingly strong, flexible, elastic, had not been able to take the Stage Three instruction. A hidden fracture line. They would not go on with it. Another attempt would result in mindlessness. He was a strong, bitter, powerful man, graduate of the Irish slums of New Orleans. With fists and teeth and grinding ambition he had fought his way up. And he wept because here, so very clearly, so very precisely, was the end of the line. Yet a young girl—linguist, dreamer, poet—had made it, knew what her assignment would eventually be.

——In Madrid, behind the egg-shaped barrier that enclosed and concealed the luxuries of the sun-bleached castle, Shard checked the agent credits, made out his requisition for personnel. Forty Ones, sixteen Twos, two Threes. No Stage Three could keep track of his own credits. He realized sourly that the filling of the requisition in total would be his only indication that he had served well in this, his third tour. He yearned to be rid of the stinking, brawling, sniveling billions, to be clear of the miasmic stench of fear and hate. Endless battle for a world. An endless stirring of the pot.

He asked that the Gypsy girl be brought in. She had a boldness he liked, a boldness stronger than her fear. He produced illusions for her, watching her mind closely, always slanting the illusions more and more closely toward the secret focus of all her fears. Knives and worms and things with claws that crawled. Nineteen, she was, yet through her man she had been leading her tribe of
gitanos
for over two years, and leading them with an iron will, leading them well.

He turned her breasts to lizard heads and her fingers to tentacles and she fainted, blood on her mouth. Yet when she revived, she spat at him and cursed him, with
flamenca
fury. She would do. One of the unbreakable ones. One of the precious bitter ones.

Shard took her down the slanting tunnel to the small space station. He took her personally. A signal honor. He touched the stud and the orifice slit in the gray cube opened. He thrust her in, reached in and touched the guide stud for Training T, stepped back. The cube shimmered, iridescent. Projected thought of the power web of the parent planets, caught here in plus mass stasis. It changed from pink to a watery greenish silver, and then, achieving minus mass, it disappeared at once, the air filling the vacuum with pistol shot sound. Little Gypsy, who now would age one year in ten. Shard stood, wishing somberly that they had enlisted him at nineteen, rather than at forty. Yet, at nineteen, he hadn’t been ready, as she was ready. At nineteen he would have broken, utterly. She might break, under training. He doubted it. He had seen too many. He walked back up the tunnel, denying himself the ease of the Pack B, trying, as he walked, to anticipate Larner’s next strategem, to plan for it, to nullify it.

Miguel Larner sat on the apron of his diorama pool
, dangling his legs in the water. The Stage Three who was to be his eventual replacement lounged in a chair nearby. His name was Martin Merman and he was a bland-faced young man who, in prior life, had been an exceptionally successful guerrilla leader. His very successes had brought him to the attention of one of Miguel’s predecessors.

The two men had a warm relationship, based primarily on the essential loneliness of all Stage Threes. Miguel made a point of keeping Martin Merman well versed on all current operations. Not only did it train Merman, but he often came up with quite acceptable alterations in established programs. Para-voice between them was reserved for those situations when speed of communication was essential. When there was no pressure they preferred the leisure of actual conversation.

“The Branson operation has been one of the subtler ones,” Miguel said. “We couldn’t handle it openly because of the possibility of interference by Shard. That’s why I stepped in over a year ago and steered Enfield and Branson into handling it as a secret mission. Looked like a better chance of getting it all wound up before Shard realized it.”

“How did he get onto it? Do you know?”

“When he blocked the assassination of George Fahdi, and I still insist it wasn’t your fault it didn’t work, he left an agent close to Smith, unfortunately a Stage Two who caught in Smith’s mind the details of the pending trip to see Branson. They found they couldn’t control Branson properly. That’s when they made the substitution. Lorin
could still snatch our fat from the fire. They tried to block him with illusions. We lost him and picked him up again at the hospital and Karen brought him here. I can get his account of the conferences published. Fahdi is the trouble point. World indignation might be just enough to tip him over.”

“Won’t Shard’s people be hunting for this Lorin?”

“Obviously, but I suspect they know he’s here where they can’t touch him.”

“What are you going to do then, Miguel?”

“He’s finished the article. Damn good, too. As soon as I place it, I’m going to turn him loose.”

“And let Shard’s people pick him up and force a repudiation?”

“Exactly.”

“Then what’s the point of the whole thing? What is gained?”

“It’s a feint, Martin. The real target is Smith.”

Merman frowned and then grinned. “I see what you mean. Let Smith see his opportunity. Let him give George Fahdi a false account of the talk with Branson, now that Branson is dead, and then use his own knowledge of the
sub rosa
deal to ride into power and …”

“He has already given Fahdi the false account. He was quick to see the advantage after a little … gentle suggestion. Too bad he’s a psychopathic personality. Be good material otherwise. Tough enough. Ambitious enough. Keep Shard concentrating on Lorin and maybe Fahdi can go the way of most dictators. If he’s tipped over, that will put the fear of God into Stephen Chu and Garva for a time. Will of the people. All that sort of thing.”

“So this Lorin becomes your stalking horse.”

“Which won’t please the fair Karen. Bit of an emotional set there.”

“Really? It does happen sometimes. I remember a girl, back when I was a Stage Two. Talked myself into believing she could make it. Cracked up in no time at all.”

“Lorin has some good latent abilities. But he won’t survive Shard’s gentle attentions. He’s already had just
about as much as he could take. There was a flaw in the substitution and he noticed it. And he can’t quite bring himself to look squarely at all the inferences.”

“Fahdi is prime target?”

“Like Hitler, back when I was a Stage One, Martin. That was a wild and merry chase. The Stage Three in charge arranged three assassination attempts, and each one was blocked, barely in time. Good Lord, that was nearly forty years ago.”

“When you were nearly four years younger, Miguel?” Martin Merman asked gently.

“When you are a Stage One you believe in too many things. Fahdi is prime. I have three people building up the student revolt in the Argentine, several lobbying on the trade agreements at New Delhi, one teaching Garva some new and more destructive pleasures of the flesh. Those are top order. Except for this Branson thing, Shard seems to depend on those old trustworthy ‘border incidents.’ They’re effective, but only in a limited way. Stability, unity, must come from within. That’s why I’ve assigned so many of our people to the routine job of agricultural research—helping the actual researchers see old things in a new way. But I have a hedge against defeat, too.”

“That’s a nice trick if you can manage it.”

“Back to the oldest continent, Martin. Back to the newest power rising in the heart of Africa in another forty, fifty years. We’re stirring them up there. Making them think. Making them come alive. Like all the years of labor in India.”

Martin frowned. “What would happen, Miguel, if … one side or the other achieved a victory so sweeping that … there was no turning back.”

“You mean if the pot boiled over? It won’t. It can’t.”

The soda hissed into the glass as Miguel made a drink for Dake Lorin. He handed the tall man the glass.

“Drink a toast to yourself, Dake. You get it on the front page of the
Times-News.
Bylined. Wire services all over the world.”

Dake stared at him. “They wouldn’t touch it when I took it to them.”

“You couldn’t tell them those Disservice people wouldn’t raise a stink. I can. Old friends I got down there. Here’s your money back. Didn’t need it.”

“What’s your object in helping me, Mr. Larner.”

Miguel shrugged his thick shoulders. “The way I work. I do you a favor. You do me a favor. That makes the world go around. Got any plans?”

“Not yet. I thought I’d see if I can’t get back into the same sort of thing I was doing working for Darwin Branson. I want to see if I can get an appointment with Enfield.”

“Want me to fix that?”

Dake smiled. “I guess you could, all right. I guess there isn’t much you can’t do. But I think I better try this on my own.”

“He isn’t going to be too happy when that paper hits the streets. And that ought to be in … about two hours.”

“Think the article will do any good, Mr. Larner?”

“That kind of thing is over my head, Dake. I see it this way. Nothing will keep that dope from filtering into Brazil, North China, Irania. Of course nobody will try to keep it out of Pak-India. So the world gets to know that all the big boys were right on the verge of making a deal, and didn’t quite do it. Enough people yelling and maybe it will go through anyway. Public opinion might scare the big shots. Then we’d have that free exchange of information, reopening of frontiers to air travel, cooperative use of the canals, a few disputed boundary lines redrawn to satisfy both parties. As I see it, it could work. Lloyds of Calcutta is giving seven to three on war within the next year. Maybe your article will change hell out of those odds.”