The Enemy of My Enemy (20 page)

Tonoro’s heart lurched, then calmed, immediately. Things could not have stayed completely concealed forever. The rumor could not be a complete surprise to him.

“Shocks you, doesn’t it?” Tilionoth asked. “Naturally. But if he hasn’t been here lately, then of course you know nothing of … . It may be a complete lie. It
is
a complete lie, I must hope. Why, I would rather see the Lords rule forever, than that the Guardians do such a thing! Indeed, really, there’s no other explanation for it: it must be a lie gotten up by the die-hard Lords, wouldn’t you agree? A last-ditch attempt to keep their hold … . But such a vile way to go about it!” The young man was working himself into a passionate belief that his guess must be true. “As though any true Tarnisi for a moment would ever be guilty of such a thing. Well, as you know nothing about it I won’t stay, I must go and see other people, track the slander down, crush it. Crush it!” His voice rose, his face began to work. In another moment he had gone.

A better method of disseminating the rumor than this one, it would have been hard to invent. Tonoro was himself quite disturbed. What would this disclosure, whether it was believed or not, do to the timetable for the take-over? Could it successfully be discredited, things proceed at the same pace according to the same schedule? Or would this unusual event in the Tarnisi scene-political result in the destruction of the power of the Guardians and perhaps even in their disappearance as a body? In which case, what would be his own situation, who was known to have involved himself with them?

The arrival of Cominthal found his cousin both nervous and concerned. “I want to talk to you about this matter of the Lermencasi,” he began, at once.

“Talk, then.” His face and voice were totally noncommittal.

Tonoro spoke of things, which, he said, hardly needed speaking of — the insufferable and sophisticated brutality of the Tarnisi, so much worse in both the long run and the short than the small-scale and primitive brutality of the Volanth. “You said that it can’t go on, and you’re only partly right. It
can
. But it isn’t going to. There’s that help from abroad that we both know about. Of course it isn’t forthcoming to help
us
, principally. That’s just a by-product of it. It would be nice to think that the sun would rise tomorrow on a Free and Equal Republic of Tarnis, with all three peoples friends and brothers. It isn’t going to, though.”

“No.”

“The Lermencasi aren’t moving in to liberate us or the Volanth. But their moving in will mean, if they recognize it or not, the eventual liberation of us
and
the Volanth. They’ll want the Volanth for labor, true, but there’s nothing wrong with labor as such. We’ve seen what living without laboring can do to a people, how corrupted and how decadent that can make them. The Volanth will be far better off working for the Lermencasi than they are now. And as for the Quasi? Us? We can be just as useful to the Lermencasi, but in a different way. As an intermediate group, I mean. The Quasi have less to discard — in the way of primitive habits — than the Volanth. Which means that they can learn faster. Our people can be to the Lermencasi more or less what the Pemathi here are to the Tarnisi … with the difference that this, Tarnis, is not just a place where we’ll work for a while and then go away forever. This is our country, too. And sooner or later the time will come when we, or, I suppose rather, our children, will have learned how to govern it for and by themselves.

“It seems to me worth waiting for. The years of the Lermencasi rule can be regarded as the years of schooling. Let us sow their crops and reap them, and let them make their profits. It will be worth it to them, but it will be worth it to
us
, too.”

Cominthal smiled, it was a thin and not a cheerful smile. “So now you have talked to me,” he said, “about this matter of the Lermencasi.”

“Yes … . I’ll have some food brought, and — ”

His cousin gestured the offer away. “Soon will be soon enough. I have something to talk about, too, you know. You will honor me by hearing me out, I must hope?” There was something chilling in this sudden return to the imitation of aristocratic courtesy. Tonoro only nodded. The late morning sun slotted in through the carven vertical slats of the window-blinds and now and then they shifted slightly with the breeze. Cominthal’s face, half-masked, seemed to undergo a subtle transformation with each small movement in the flux of light and shadow.

“Let me see if I understand your notion of this help from abroad. With its help, instead of being outcasts, we’ll be servants. Is that correct? And, if we are very good and learn our lessons well, our children … or, perhaps — eh? — our children’s children … will be allowed the free use of their own country. The helpers from overseas will be nice and obliging and will just go away when they’re asked to, ah? Well. You’ve lived among the foreign, cousin; you know them better than I. Will they go when they’re asked? Ah?”

Tonoro said, “If they do not, they must be made to.”

Cominthal’s smile was rather warmer now. “That’s right. If another people is ruling us and we don’t want to be ruled by them, if they won’t go, they must be made to go. We agree. But, then, cousin, why wait? I mean, you see: why let them in at all? If they never have our country, they’ll never have to face giving it up. As for learning, well, we can hire our own teachers, don’t you think? No, cousin, I’ll tell you what it is about, this help from abroad: It will never have a span of our soil. It will arm us, we and the Volanth, cousin — they are our cousins, too — eh? — and we shall destroy the Tarnisi and then we’ll rule ourselves. Not our children. We.”

Tonoro said, “The Lermencasi will never do it.”

And now the smile was very broad indeed. “The Lermencasi? No. That’s true. They never will. But, you see, despite your great foreign
gorum
, there are still things which you don’t know.” The light shifted, advanced, receded. The smile was still broad, but it still had no warmth. “The foreign help I’m talking of isn’t coming from the Lermencasi, ah, no.

“It’s coming from the Bahon … .”

• • •

“You’ll think about this,” Cominthal had said, after eating, before departing. He had eaten heartily, hungrily, with only now and then a pretense of courtly courtesy when a servant entered with another course. “You’ll think about it,” he said, confidently, brightly.

“ — But you won’t talk about it.”

And then he was gone.

The offices of the Commercial Deputation were maintaining their usual air of museum-like calm as Tonorosant walked down the corridors. The jewel-like settings seemed unreally beautiful. Could they actually have been the product of the same civilization which could — could?
had! did!
— sink so suddenly and so frequently and so utterly into savage coercion? And was it actually, need it actually be doomed: that same civilization which in them and by them demonstrated its title to be so called? He found his arms and legs were beginning to tremble. He walked faster. Then he slowed again. He did not know by whom he was likely to be seen, and it would not do to give his notice, by openly displayed agitation, that he knew more than he was generally known to know.

As he approached the screen of the Deputy’s office he heard a familiar voice. “My dear Mothiosant, how much I sympathize with you … how exceedingly tedious your conscript duties can become.”

The Pemathi clerk rose at Tonorosant’s entrance; he waved the man back to his seat and passed on in.

“It is true, Sarlamat, but I will not remain in this place of duty forever, I must hope. These bothersome contracts, for example — well, and is it my fault if there is not enough resin? Can I secrete it myself, like a tree? For — ”

His voice ceased and his face changed, pretense dropping from it, as he saw Tonoro. Sarlamat swerved about to look at him. There was a moment’s silence. Then Mothiosant continued, “For if there is not enough resin to fulfill the terms of the contract, thus it is, and indeed, what can I or any of us do? Boy!”

“Master?”

“You may go out to your food-chop, now.”

A polite mumble from the clerk, slight noises of departure, and then again silence. Sarlamat’s face now looked neither jovial nor ironic. Insofar as it bore a discernible expression, the expression was one of slight fatigue. Mothiosant, on the other hand, looked keyed-up and intent. He held out his hand now, palm up, fingers moving impatiently.

“Here is a hypothetical situation which may just possibly, if we can resolve its problems, throw some light on an actual situation,” Tonoro said. Mothiosant at once became a trifle wary. But still his fingers moved restlessly, demanding his visitor to talk.

“Suppose there is a world called, oh, not Orinel, its name would not matter, but very much like Orinel in its physical and its social make-up. Unlike a number of worlds, this one’s population is not confined to one ethnos or one kith — or race, or people; choose your own preferred term — nor has it only one planetary governance. The nations and people it does have are of varying types of social structure. Some are heavily industrialized, some are actively commercial, some are so overpopulated that they have slid downwards. Others are not only underpopulated but rather isolated and are still largely what we may call ‘backward’ in most things.

“Let’s concern ourselves with one of these in our hypothetical situation. Culturally and economically, this nation is not merely backward; it is archaic. Let’s pretend it’s Tarnis. Its potential as a producer-nation has not barely begun to be exploited. But the potential is there.

“Do you follow me, my brothers’ brothers?”

Sarlamat’s mouth had tightened just a bit. He was rotating his left forefinger between his right forefinger and thumb, around and around and back and forth, and gazing at it with a slight frown of concentration. Mothiosant’s expression had not changed at all. “Go on,” he said. His tone said,
Be quick
. His own fingers repeated their own urgent motion.

“Now two other factors enter this hypothetical picture. For one thing, every land has its laws. For another, there are always men who break or who are accused of breaking these laws. And who, in consequence, wish to flee from punishment. Let us assume the existence of an organization set up to capitalize on the needs of such men — an organization set up for the sole purpose — ostensibly — of commercializing on that need, of enabling these men to disguise themselves physically and mentally. Of enabling them, for example, to come to the island-nation which — hypothetically, of course — we’ve agreed to call Tarnis. What shall we call this imaginary organization? Shall we call them the Craftsmen?”

One looked at him still, and one still looked at his own hands only, and neither one spoke.

Tonorosant continued. “I said, ‘ostensibly … .’ Suppose this organization was not after all in business to make a profit out of its clandestine activities directly. Suppose, in fact, that the factual cost of its services were such that the fees charged, however high, could not cover them. Suppose, in further fact, that it was actually but one arm of an ambitious and gigantic commercial combine which was underwriting its expenses as a form of investment. That these men were never intended to be made free, but were intended to serve the aims of the organization, wherever they might go. But this is perhaps too large a subject for our hypothetical discussion. Let’s confine it to our one hypothetical nation of Tarnis, and — again, for the purposes of our discussion only, of course — let us refer to this entire organization as … say … Commerce-Lermencas.

“The aim was to subvert the social structure and the governance of the imaginary Tarnis, and make it the servant of Lermencas. The vast Outlands would be subjected to scientific cultivation and agriculture and arboriculture would no longer be limited to the crude methods locally employed. And the Volanth, for example, would cease to be outlaws and would become … oh, various possibilities exist … employees … serfs … . Whichever, they would be better off than now.

“
Now
. Suppose that the ruling class of our imaginary Tarnis becomes aware, at least in part, of these plans for them. And suppose that another nation does, as well — ”

They looked up, then, abruptly, the both of them.

“
What
other nation?”

“Again — hypothetically and nothing more — say — oh … the Bahon.”

Mothiosant: “Why would the Bahon — ”

Sarlamat: “ ‘Why would the Bahon’ is not the question. There are many reasons why the Bahon would. The question is,
‘Are
the Bahon — ?’ ” His full lips drew back from his even teeth. “An end to this nonsense, Jerred Northi. Your Bahon are not hypothetical. You are not conjecturing, you are speaking from actual knowledge.
What do you know about the Bahon’s intentions at the present moment?
”

He said, “The Craftsmen did not serve me for nothing and I am not going to serve the Craftsmen for nothing.”

“No one expects you to,” Sarlamat said, immediately. “By learning what you have learned, whatever it is, you’ve immediately become worth more to us than the whole amount you have cost us. Naturally, you have a price — and naturally, we’ll pay it.”

Mothiosant nodded instant and vigorous assent. They both listened, with total absorption and (so it seemed) total commitment. This remained unchanged even after Tonoro had finished speaking, as though, perhaps, his voice gave forth an echo which only they could hear … and which they dared not miss.

The Commercial Deputy shifted slightly, sighed slightly. He glanced at Sarlamat, who said, “I must confess that we were not expecting a price of that sort. An end to all offenses against Quasi and Volanth — that would be inevitable, eventually, in any case. But you want, am I correct, an immediate end? Full equality? A massive educational program to fit them for this, but this not to wait upon the completion of that? Inducements and concessions … yes … . I have it all, now. And I think — ” he turned to his associate.

“I think it can be done,” Mothiosant said. “Of course, we must get it confirmed; you would hardly want to take our word for it alone. Can this evening be soon enough? Then you will see us here again. Meanwhile, is not our almost certain conviction that it can be done enough to persuade you that you should tell us — ”