Dorsai! (23 page)

There was something entirely too pat about the way these two had horned in. He started to look over at Donal for confirmation of this suspicion but William's voice drew his attention back to the Cetan.

“I understand, of course,” said William. “However, I think I have the answer to all of your objections.” He smiled impersonally at all of them. “The top commanders, as you know, are few. Each one has various associations which might make him objectionable to some one or more of the delegates here. In the main, I would say what we need is a professional soldier who is nothing more than a professional soldier. The prime examples of this, of course, are our Dorsai—”

The glances around the table swung quickly in on Galt, who scowled back to hide his astonishment.

“. . . The Marshal of Freiland would, therefore, because of his position in his profession and between the stars, be our natural choice. But—” William barely got the word out in time to stifle objections that had begun to voice themselves from several points around the table, “Ceta recognizes that because of the marshal's long association with Freiland, some of you may not welcome him in such a position. We're therefore proposing another man entirely—equally a Dorsai, but one who is young enough and recently enough on the scene to be considered free of political prejudice—I refer to the Protector of Procyon, Donal Graeme.”

He gestured at Donal and sat down.

A babble of voices broke out all at once, but Donal was on his feet, looking tall, and slim, and remarkably young amongst the group of them. He stood, waiting, and the voices finally died down.

“I won't keep you for more than a minute,” said Donal, looking around at them. “I agree thoroughly with Prince William's compromise solution to the problem of this Conference; because I most heartily believe the worlds do need a watchdog over them to prevent what's just now taken place, from happening.” He paused, and looked around the table again. “You see, honored as I am by Prince William's nomination, I can't accept because of something which just recently came into my hands. It names no names, but it promises things which will be a revelation to all of us. I also will name no names, but I would guess however that if this is a sample of what's going on, there are probably half a dozen other such writings being traded around.”

He paused to let this sink in.

“So, I hereby refuse the nomination. And, further, I'm now with-drawing as a Delegate from this Conference in protest against being approached in this manner. I could not accept such a post or such a responsibility except with perfectly clean hands and no strings attached. Good-by, gentlemen.”

He nodded to them and stepped back from their stunned silence. About to turn toward the exit, he stopped and pulled from his pocket the unsigned and nameless contract he had received from William the previous day. “Oh, by the way,” he said. “This is the matter I was talking about. Perhaps you'd all like to look it over.”

He threw it onto the table in their midst and strode out. As he left the lounge behind him, a sudden eruption of voices reached to his ears.

He did not go directly back to his own suite, but turned instead to Galt's. The doorbot admitted him; and he made his way to the main lounge of the suite, striding in with the confidence of one who expects to find it empty.

It was not, however. He had made half a dozen long strides into the room before he discovered another person seated alone at a chess board on a little table, and looking up at his entrance with startled eyes.

It was Anea.

He checked and inclined his head to her.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I was going to wait for Hendrik. I'll take one of the other lounges.”

“No,” she had risen to her feet. Her face was a little pale, but controlled. “I'm waiting for him, too. Is the session over?”

“Not yet,” he replied.

“Then let's wait together.” She sat down at the table again. She waved a hand at the pieces, presently set up in the form of a knights-castles problem. “You play?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then join me.” It was almost an order the way she said it. Donal showed no reaction, however, but crossed the lounge and took a seat opposite her. She began to set out the pieces.

If she expected to win, she was mistaken. Donal won three swift games; but oddly without showing any particular flair or brilliance. Consistently he seemed able to take advantage of opportunities she had overlooked, but which had been there before her in perfect obviousness all the time. The games seemed more a tribute to her obtuseness, than his perception. She said as much. He shrugged.

“You were playing me,” he said. “And you should rather have been playing my pieces.”

She frowned; but before she had a chance to sort this answer out in her mind, there was the sound of steps outside the lounge, and Galt entered, striding long and excitedly.

Donal and she both rose.

“What happened?” she cried. “Eh? What?” Galt's attention had been all for Donal. Now the older man swung on her. “Didn't he tell you what happened up to the time he left?”

“No!” She flashed a look at Donal, but his face was impassive.

Quickly, Galt told her. Her face paled and became shadowed by bewilderment. Again, she turned to Donal; but before she could frame the question in her mind, Donal was questioning Galt.

“And after I left?”

“You should have seen it!” the older man's voice held a fierce glee. “Each one was at the throat of everybody else in the room before you were out of sight. I swear the last forty years of behind-the-scenes deals, and the crosses and the double-crosses came home to roost in the next five minutes. Nobody trusted anybody, everybody suspected everybody else! What a bombshell to throw in their laps!” Galt chuckled. “I feel forty years younger just for seeing it. Who was it that actually approached you, boy? It was William, wasn't it?”

“I'd rather not say,” said Donal.

“Well, well—never mind that. For all practical purposes it could have been any of them. But guess what happened! Guess how it all ended up—”

“They voted me in as commander in chief after all?” said Donal.

“They—” Galt checked suddenly, his face dropping into an expression of amazement. “How'd you know?”

Donal smiled a little mirthlessly. But before he could answer, a sharp intake of breath made both men turn their heads. Anea was standing off a little distance from them, her face white and stiff.

“I might have suspected,” she said in a low, hard voice to Donal. “I might have known.”

“Known? Known what?” demanded Galt, staring from one to the other. But her eyes did not waver from Donal.

“So this was what you meant when you told me to bring my opinion to today's session,” she went on in the same low, hate-filled voice. “Did you think that this . . . this sort of double-dealing would change it?”

For a second pain shadowed Donal's normally enigmatic eyes.

“I should have known better, I suppose,” he said, quietly. “I assumed you might look beyond the necessities of this present action to—”

“Thank you,” she broke in icily. “Ankle deep into the mud is far enough.” She turned on Galt. “I'll see you another time, Hendrik.” And she stalked out of the room.

The two men watched her go in silence. Then Galt slowly turned back to look at the younger man.

“What's between you two, boy?” he asked.

Donal shook his head.

“Half of heaven and all of hell, I do believe,” he said; and that was the most illuminating answer the marshal was able to get out of him.

Under the common market system, controlled by the United Planetary Forces under Commander in Chief Donal Graeme, the civilized worlds rested in a highly unusual state of almost perfect peace for two years, nine months, and three days absolute time. Early on the morning of the fourth day, however, Donal woke to find his shoulder being shaken.

“What?” he said, coming automatically awake.

“Sir—” it was the voice of Lee. “Special Courier here to see you. He says his message won't wait.”

“Right.” Groggily, but decisively, Donal swung his legs over the edge of his sleeping float and reached for his trunks on the ordinary float beside him. He gathered them in, brushing something to the floor as he did so.

“Light,” he said to Lee. The light went on, revealing that what he had knocked down was his wrist appliance. He picked it up and stared at it with blurry eyes. “March ninth,” he murmured. “That right, Lee?” “That's right,” responded the voice of Lee, from across the room. Donal chuckled, a little huskily.

“Not yet the ides of March,” he murmured. “But close. Close.”

“Sir?”

“Nothing. Where's the courier, Lee?”

“The garden lounge.”

Donal pulled on the trunks and—on a second's impulse—followed them with trousers, tunic and jacket, complete outerwear. He followed Lee through the pre-dawn darkness of his suite on Tomblecity, Cassida, and into the garden lounge. The courier, a slim, small, middle-aged man in civilian clothes, was waiting for him.

“Commander—” the courier squinted at him. “I've got a message for you. I don't know what it means myself—”

“Never mind,” interrupted Donal. “What is it?”

“I was to say to you ‘the gray rat has come out of the black maze and pressed the white lever.' “

“I see,” said Donal. “Thank you.” The courier lingered.

“Any message or orders, commander?”

“None, thank you. Good morning,” said Donal.

“Good morning, sir,” said the courier; and went out, escorted by Lee. When Lee returned, he found Donal already joined by his uncle Ian Graeme, fully dressed and armed. Donal was securing a weapons belt around his own waist. In the new glare of the artificial light after the room's darkness, and beside his dark and giant uncle, the paring-down effect of the last months showed plainly on Donal. He was not so much thinned down as stretched drum-tight over the hard skeleton of his own body. He seemed all harsh angles and tense muscle. And his eyes were hollowed and dark with fatigue.

Looking at him, it would be hard not to assume that here was a man either on the verge of psychological and nervous breakdown, or someone of fanatic purpose who had already pushed himself beyond the bounds of ordinary human endurance. There was something of the fanatic's translucency about him—in which the light of the consuming will shows through the frailer vessel of the body. Except that Donal was not really translucent, but glowed, body and all, like one fine solid bar of tempered steel with the white, ashy heat of his consuming but all-inconsumable will.

“Arm yourself, Lee,” he said, pointing to a weapons belt. “We've got two hours before sun-up and things begin to pop. After that, I'll be a proscribed criminal on any world but the Dorsal—and you two with me.” It did not occur to him to ask either of the other men whether they wished to throw themselves into the holocaust that was about to kindle about him; and it did not occur to the others to wonder that he did not. “Ian, did you make a signal to Lludrow?”

“I did,” said Ian. “He's in deep space with all units, and he'll hold them there a week if need be, he says—incommunicado.”

“Good. Come on.”

As they left the building for the platform waiting them on the landing pad outside; and later, as the platform slipped them silently through the pre-dawn darkness to a landing field not far from the residence, Donal was silent, calculating what could be done in seven days' time, absolute. On the eighth day, Lludrow would have to open his communication channels again, and the orders that would reach him when he did so would be far different from the sealed orders Donal had left him and which he would be opening right now. Seven days—

They landed at the field. The ship, a space-and-atmosphere courier N4J, was lying waiting for them, its ground lights gleaming dimly on steady-ready. The forward lock on the great shadowy cylinder swung open as they approached; and a scarfaced senior captain stepped out.

“Sir,” he said, saluting Donal, and standing aside to let them enter. They went in and the lock closed behind them.

“Coby, captain,” said Donal.

“Yes, sir.” The captain stepped to a grille in the wall. “Control room. Coby,” he said. He turned from the grille. “Can I show you to the lounge, commander?”

“For the time being,” said Donal. “And get us some coffee.”

They went on into the courier's lounge, which was fixed up like the main room on a private yacht. And presently coffee was forthcoming on a small autocart from the galley, which scooted in the door by itself and parked itself in the midst of their floats.

“Sit down with us, Cor,” said Donal. “Lee, this is Captain Coruna El Man, Cor, my uncle Ian Graeme.”

“Dorsai!” said Ian, shaking hands.

“Dorsai!” responded El Man. They smiled slightly at each other, two grimly-carved professional warriors.

“Right,” said Donal. “Now that introductions are over—how long will it take us to make it to Coby?”

“We can make our first jump immediately we get outside atmosphere,” answered El Man, in his rather harsh, grating voice. “We've been running a steady calculation on a standby basis. After the first jump, it'll take a minimum of four hours to calculate the next. We'll be within a light-year of Coby then, and each phase shift will take progressively less calculation as we zero in. Still— five more calculation periods at an average of two hours a period. Ten hours, plus the original four makes fourteen, straight drive and landing in on Coby another three to four hours. Call it eighteen hours—minimum.”

“All right,” said Donal. “I'll want ten of your men for an assault party. And a good officer.”

“Myself,” said El Man.