Demon princes 01 05 the.., p.10
Demon Princes 01-05 The Star Ki, page 10
“You know my qualms in the matter, Mr. Kelle.”
Kelle’s response was only a small incredulous smile. Once more he studied the photographs. “These—er, dryads, I must say they are creatures of considerable interest .... Well, I can help you to this extent. I will consult university records for information regarding Lugo Teehalt. But in exchange, I would like you to assure me an opportunity to consider the purchase of this world, in the event that you do not find the so-called ‘sponsor..”
Gersen could not restrain a mild gibe. “You gave me to understand that you weren’t particularly interested.”
“Your assumptions are of no consequence,” said Kelle evenly. “This should not injure your sensibilities, for you clearly are not concerned as to my opinion of you. You approach me as if I were mentally deficient, with a tale which would not impress a child.”
Gersen shrugged. “The ‘tale,’ as it stands, is substantially accurate. Naturally I haven’t told you everything I know.”
Kelle smiled again, rather more generously. “Well, let’s see what the records have to tell us.” He spoke into the microphone. “Confidential Information. Authority of Kagge Kelle.”
The nonhuman voice of the information bank responded. “Confidential Information, ready.”
“The file on Lugo Teehalt.” He spelled out the name.
There was a series of subdued mutterings, a quiet eerie whistling. The voice spoke once more, reading off the information it had gathered. “Lugo Teehalt: his file. Contents: Application for admission, verification and appended comment. April 3, 1480.”
“Pass,” said Kelle.
“Application for admission to advanced regimen, verification and appended comment. July 2, 1485.”
“Pass.”
“Thesis for degree in College of Symbology: title: ‘The Meaningful Elements in the Eye Motion of the Tunkers of Mizar Six.’ December 20, 1489.”
“Pass.”
“Application for post as associate instructor, verification and comment. March 15. 1490.”
“Discharge of Lugo Teehalt, associate instructor, for conduct prejudicial to morale of student corpus. October 19, 1492.”
“Pass.”
“Contract between Lugo Teehalt and Department of Galactic Morphology, January 6, 1521.”
Gersen exhaled a small sigh at the relaxation of tension of whose existence he had barely been aware. It was definite:
Lugo Teehalt had been employed as locater by someone within the department.
“Quote in resume,” Kelle ordered.
“Lugo Teehalt and Department of Galactic Morphology agree and covenant to the following: Department will furnish Teehalt a suitable space vessel, provisioned, equipped, found in typical and useful manner, in order that Teehalt shall conduct, as agent of department, assiduous exploration of certain areas of galaxy. Department advances Teehalt sum of five thousand SVU and guarantees a bonus of graduated values for degrees of successful exploration. Teehalt agrees to devote best efforts to successful pursuit of exploration, to preserve results of said exploration secure and secret from all persons, groups, and agencies other than those authorized by Department. Signatures: Lugo Teehalt for Lugo Teehalt; Ominah Bazerman for department.
“No further information.”
“Mmf,” said Kagge Kelle. He spoke to the screen. “Ominah Bazerman.”
A click, a voice spoke. “Ominah Bazerman, Chief Clerk.”
“Kelle speaking. Two years ago a certain Lugo Teehalt was dispatched as a locater. You signed his contract. Do you remember the circumstances?”
There was a moment’s silence. “No, Mr. Kelle, I can’t say that I do. The contract probably came to me in a set of other papers.”
“You don’t remember who would have initiated this contract, who sponsored this particular exploration?”
“No, sir. It must have been either yourself, or Mr. Detteras, or perhaps Mr. Warweave. No one else would order out such an exploration.”
“I see. Thank you.” Kelle turned to Gersen, his eyes mild, almost bovine. “And there you have it. If it wasn’t Warweave, it must be Detteras. As a matter of fact Detteras is former Dean of the College of Symbology. Perhaps he and Teehalt were acquaintances ....
Rundle Detteras, Director of Exploration, seemed a man completely at his ease—at peace with himself, his job, the world at large. When Gersen entered his office, Detteras held up his hand in easy salute. He was a large man, surprisingly ugly for this age when a pointed nose or an overloose mouth could be repaired in a matter of hours. He had made no attempt to camouflage his ugliness; indeed, it seemed as if his rather harsh blue-green skin dye, almost the color of verdigris, accentuated the coarseness of his features, the rather gauche brusqueness of his motions. His head was the shape of a gourd; the heavy chin rested on his breast with no perceptible intervention of neck, the hair was a bristle dyed the color of wet moss. From knee to shoulder he seemed of uniform thickness, with a torso like a log. He wore the quasimilitary uniform of a Baron of the Order of Archangels: black boots, loose scarlet breeches, and a splendid blouse striped green, blue and scarlet, with gold epaulettes and filigreed breast plates. Rundle Detteras was of sufficient presence to command both the uniform and his odd physiognomy; a man with the slightest dubiety or self-consciousness would instantly have seemed eccentric.
“Well, well, Mr. Gersen,” said Detteras, “is it too early for a taste of arrack?”
“I’m out of bed.”
Detteras stared in brief puzzlement, then laughed heartily. “Excellent! This is when I usually hoist the hospitality flag. Tint, tang, or white?”
“White, please.”
Detteras poured from the tall slender flask. He raised his glass:
“Detteras au pouvoir!” and drank with gusto. “First of the day, like a visit home to mother.” He poured himself a second tot, settled back, turned upon Gersen a glance of leisurely appraisal, Gersen asked himself, which one: Warweave? Kelle? Detteras? One of these exteriors hid the ferocious soul of Attel Malagate the Woe. Warweave? Kelle? Detteras? Gersen had inclined toward Warweave; now he was once more dubious. Detteras had undeniable force, a rude, harsh-textured energy, almost palpable.
Detteras apparently felt no urgency about coming to grips with Gersen’s business, for all the reputed press of his affairs. It was not unlikely that he and Warweave had been in communication, and possibly Kelle likewise. “A never-ending puzzle,” said Detteras, rather pompously. “The modes of why and how men differ.”
If Detteras were in no hurry, thought Gersen, neither was he. “No doubt you’re right,” he said, “although I don’t understand the immediate relevance.”
Detteras laughed; a heavy booming sound. “Quite as it should be; I would be surprised if you professed otherwise.” He held up his hand to forestall Gersen’s response. “Presumption on my part? No. Hear me out. You are a somber man, a pragmatic man. You carry a heavy load of secrets and dark resolves.”
Gersen sipped suspiciously at the arrack. The verbal pyrotechnics might be intended as a distraction, a device to diminish his wariness. He concentrated on the arrack, senses keen for the faintest off flavor. Detteras had poured both drinks from the same flask; he had offered Gersen a choice of three distillations; he had taken up glasses without seeming calculation. There existed, nonetheless, enormous scope for ruse, which no normal vigilance could prevent .... The drink was innocent, so Gersen’s tongue and nasal passages, trained on Sarkovy, assured him. He focused his attention upon Detteras and the previous remark.
“Your opinions regarding me are exaggerated.” Detteras grinned, a great gap-lipped grimace. “But nevertheless essentially accurate?”
“Possibly.”
Detteras nodded complacently, as if Gersen had given him the most emphatic of corroborations. “It is a skill, or habit of observation, born of long years of study. I formerly specialized in Symbology, until I decided that I’d cropped the pasture as short as my teeth were long, and as far as my tether would reach. So here I am in Galactic Morphology. A less complicated field, descriptive rather than analytic, objective rather than humanistic. Still, I occasionally find application for my previous field. Now is a case in point. You come into my office, an utter stranger. I assess your overt symbolic presentation: skin color; shape, condition, color of your hair; features, clothes, your general style. You will say, this is common practice. I reply, true. Everyone eats, but a skilled taster is rare. I read these symbols with minute exactitude, and they provide me with information about your personality. I, on the other hand, deny similar knowledge to you. How? I bedizen myself with random and contradictory symbols, I am in constant camouflage, behind which the real Rundle Detteras watches, as calm and cool as an impresario at the hundredth performance of a glittering carnival extravaganza.”
Gersen smiled. “My nature might be as flamboyant as your symbols, and I might dissemble it for reasons similar to your own—whatever they are. A second point: your presentation, if it can be believed, illuminated you almost as clearly as the set of your natural symbols. Third—why bother in the first place?”
Detteras seemed much amused. “Aha! You show me for the fraud and charlatan I am! Still, I cannot avoid the conviction that your symbols tell me more about you than mine do about me.”
Gersen leaned back in his seat. “To little practical effect.”
“Not so fast,” exclaimed Detteras. “You occupy yourself exclusively with positivity! Consider negativity for a moment. Some people fret regarding the cryptic mannerisms of their colleagues. You protest that the symbols tell you nothing of importance; you dismiss them. These others worry because they cannot integrate a proliferation of information.” Gersen started to demur; Detteras held up his hand. “Consider the Tunkers of Mizar Six. You are acquainted with them? A religious sect.”
“I heard them mentioned a few minutes ago.”
“As I say,” Detteras continued, “they are a religious group: ascetic, austere, devout to an astonishing extreme. The men and women dress identically, shave their heads, use-a language of eight hundred and twelve words, eat identical meals at identical hours—all this to protect themselves from the perplexity of wondering about each other’s motivations. True. This is the basic purpose of the Tunker mode. And not too far from Mizar is Sirene, where for a similar reason men wear highly conventionalized masks, from birth to death. Their faces are their dearest secrets.” He proffered the arrack flask. Gersen held out his glass.
Detteras continued. “The practice here on Alphanor is more complicated. We gird ourselves for offense and defense, or sheer playfulness, with a thousand ambiguous symbols. The business of living is enormously complicated; artificial tensions are established; uncertainty and suspicion become normality.”
“And in the process,” suggested Gersen, “sensitivities are developed unknown to either the Tunkers or the Sirenese.”
Detteras held up his hand. “Again, not so fast. I know a great deal about both these peoples; insensitivity is a word which cannot be applied to either. The Sirenese will detect the most remote nuance of uneasiness when a man masks himself above his status. And , the Tunkers—I know less of them, but I believe that their personal differentiations are as refined and varied as our own, if not more so. I quote an analogous esthetic doctrine: the tighter the discipline of an art form, the more subjective the criteria of taste. In another category, becoming ever more didactic, consider the Star Kings—non-men driven by their psyches to literally superhuman excellences. They must enter the field cold, as it were, without even the human racial unconscious as a matrix for their symbolic education. Returning to Alphanor, it must be remembered that the folk thrust an enormous amount of perfectly valid information at each other, as well as ambiguities.”
“Confusing,” said Gersen dryly, “if one allows himself to be distracted.”
Detteras laughed quietly, evidently well pleased with himself. “You’ve led a different life than I have, Mr. Gersen. On Alphanor the issues aren’t life and death; everyone is fairly sophisticated. It’s easier than not to accept people at their own valuation. Indeed, it’s often impractical not to do so.” He looked sidelong at Gersen. “Why do you smile?”
“It dawns upon me that the dossier on Kirth Gersen, requested from the IPCC, is slow in arriving. In the meantime, you find it impractical to accept me at my own valuation. Or even your own.”
Detteras laughed in his turn. “You do both me and the IPCC an injustice. The dossier came promptly, several minutes before your arrival.” He pointed to a photostat sheet on his desk. “I ordered the dossier, incidentally, in my role as a responsible officer of the Institution. I think I can make a case for my caution.”
“What did you learn?” asked Gersen. “I haven’t seen the dossier recently.”
“It’s marvelously blank.” He picked up the paper. “You were born in 1490: where? Not on one of the major worlds. At the age of ten you registered into Galileo Spaceport on Earth, in the company of your grandfather, whose antecedents perhaps we should likewise check. You attended the usual schools, were accepted by the Institute as a catechumen, reached the eleventh phase at the age of twenty-four (quite respectable progress), when you withdrew. From now on there is no record, suggesting that either you remained permanently on Earth, or departed illegally, without registration. Since you now sit before me, the latter seems to have been the case. Remarkable,” said Detteras, “that a person could live to your age in a society as complex as the Oikumene with no small impingement upon the official record! Long years of silence while you were occupied where? How? To what purpose, and to what effect?” He glanced questioningly at Gersen.
“If it’s not there,” said Gersen, “I don’t want it there.”
“Naturally. There is very little more.” He tossed down the dossier. “Now you are anxious to make your inquiries. I will anticipate you. I knew Lugo Teehalt, far back indeed, in my undergraduate days. He involved himself in some sort of unsavory mess and dropped from sight. A year or so ago he came to me, asking for a locator’s contract.”
Gersen stared at him, fascinated. So here was Malagate! “And you sent him out?”
“I chose not to do so. I did not want him dependent upon me for the rest of his life. I was willing to help him, but not on a personal basis. I told him to apply either to the Honorary Provost, Gyle Warweave, or the Chairman of the Research Planning Committee, Kagge Kelle; to mention my name, that very likely they could assist him. This was the last I heard of him.”
Gersen took a deep breath. Detteras spoke with the assurance of truth. But which of them had not? Detteras at least had confirmed that one of the three—either himself, Warweave or Kelle was lying.
Which?
Today he had seen Attel Malagate, looked into his eyes, listened to his voice .... He was suddenly uneasy. Why was Deterras so relaxed? Presumably a busy man, how could he spare so much time? Gersen abruptly sat up in his chair. “I will get to the point of my call upon you.” He told the story he had already related to Warweave and Kelle, while Detteras listened with a faint smile playing over his coarse mouth. Gersen displayed the photographs and Detteras looked at them negligently.
“A beautiful world,” said Detteras. “If I were wealthy I would ask you to sell it to me to be my personal estate. I am not wealthy. On the contrary. In any event, you seem not so much anxious to sell your rights to this world as you do to locate poor old Teehalt’s sponsor.”
Gersen was somewhat taken aback. “I’ll sell to the sponsor for a reasonable price.”
Detteras smiled skeptically. “Sorry. I can’t admit to a falsehood. Warweave or Kelle is your man.”
“They deny it.”
“Strange. So then?”
“The filament is useless to me in its present condition. Will you furnish me the decoding strip?”
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”
“I thought as much. So I must sell to one or the other of you, or to the university. Or destroy the filament.”
“Hm.” Detteras judiciously nodded his head. “This demands careful thought. If your demands were not excessive, I’d be interested .... Or perhaps the three of us, in concert, could come to some agreement with you. Hm .... Let me speak to Warweave and Kelle. And then, if you can, come back tomorrow, say at ten. I might have a definite proposition to put before you.”
Gersen rose to his feet. “Very well. Tomorrow at ten.”
9
“Yes, we are a reactionary, secretive, pessimistic organization. We have agents everywhere. We know a thousand tricks to discourage research, sabotage experiments, distort data. Even in the Institute’s own laboratories we proceed with deliberation and discretion.
“But now let me answer some of the questions and accusations we often hear. Do the members of the Institute enjoy wealth, privilege, power, freedom from the law? Honesty compels the answer: Yes, in varying degree, depending upon phase, achievement.
“Then the Institute is an inbred, restricted, centripetal group? By no means. We consider ourselves an intellectual elite, certainly. Why should we not? Membership is open to anyone, although few of our catechumens achieve even so far as the fifth phase.
“Our policy? Simple enough. Space drive has given a terrible weapon to any megalomaniacs who happen to occur in our midst. There is other knowledge which, if equally free, could ensure them tyrannical power. We therefore control the dissemination of knowledge.
“We are scathed as ‘self-anointed divinities’; we are accused of pedantry, conspiracy, condescension, smugness, arrogance, obstinate self-righteousness; these are the mildest of the objurgations we hear. We are accused of intolerable paternalism, and in the same breath reproached for disengagement from ordinary human affairs. Why do we not use our lore to lighten toil, alleviate pain, prolong life? Why do we stand aloof? Why do we not transform the human estate into a Utopia, a task well within our power?
The answer is simple—perhaps deceptively so. We feel these are false boons, that peace and satiety are akin to death. For all its rawness and cruel excess, we envy archaic humanity its ardent experience We hold that gain after toil, triumph after adversity, achievement to a goal long sought, is a greater beneficence than prebendary nutrient from the teat of an indulgent government.”
