The Light That Never Was (29 page)

“Certainly, sir.”

“Could you tell us something about them?”

“There are the meszs, sir.”

“Before that. Just a few examples.”

“Yes, sir. Did you know there is a world named Jorno?”

Wargen shook his head.

“It happened many years ago, when Master was quite young. He took a long tour on his yacht, and he happened onto this world—it was called something else then—where the settlers had caught an epidemic. Those who weren’t dying from it were starving to death. They’d come from a number of worlds, and their governments were arguing about which was responsible. Master hired doctors and brought all the supplies the world needed and saved the colony. He wouldn’t let them pay him anything. They changed the name of the world to Jorno.”

Wargen stepped to the referencer, punched the gazetteer code, and a moment later was reading a description of the world of Jorno. “That was quite a long trip that your master took,” he observed.

“Yes, sir. He was gone for several years, and he did many Good Works along the way. I may be the only one who knows about them. Sometimes late of an evening he would invite me to have a glass with him, and then—” His voice broke. He swallowed and continued hoarsely, “Then he’d reminisce about things he enjoyed remembering.”

“Tell us some of the others.”

“Yes, sir. Somewhere he kept a list of all the young people whose educations he financed. There are at least four universities named Jorno—he gave handsome gifts to many, but these four could not have survived without his help, and all of them changed their names to Jorno. Master felt very strongly about the value of education. I doubt if he knew himself how many Jorno hospitals there are—he founded so many, on so many different worlds.”

Wargen stepped to the referencer again. “How many?” Eritha asked.

“Three Jorno universities, but that’s only in this sector.” He returned to his chair and said awesomely, “The Jorno fortune must be enormous!”

“It was, sir. I’ve heard it said that Master’s father was the wealthiest man in the galaxy. His financial interests were galactic in scope.”

“To be sure. He amassed the money, and his son gave it away like a saint.”

“That’s true, sir,” the steward agreed. “I’ve had the pleasure of serving him and observing his generosity throughout his life. I wonder if the galaxy has ever had another man who has helped so many people in so many ways. He was entirely selfless where the needs of others were concerned. That’s what put him on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“On the verge of what?”

“Bankruptcy. That’s why he had to sell his space yacht to finance the mesz village and his resort. But both projects are unqualified financial successes. He was well on his way to accumulating another fortune.”

“To give away?” Wargen asked politely.

The steward looked surprised. “But of course. What else would he do with it? You said yourself that he was a saint.”

Wargen thanked him and let him go. The two of them remained silent for some time, and finally Wargen asked, “Did you have an inkling of a suspicion that Jorno was a saint?”

“I didn’t and I don’t. That’s your word.”

“What’s yours?”

“I won’t offer one. I’ll just say that I have one thing in common with Donov’s millions of overcharged vacationers. I’d be utterly astounded to find a saint running a tourist resort.”

Neal Wargen had a report to write. The Interplanetary Tribunal had requested full information, as had the twenty-four riot worlds, and a staff was at work sifting the accumulated evidence and preparing copies for the oppressive number of appendices the report would have to have. The analysis, the explanations, the conclusions were Wargen’s responsibility.

First he had a report to think. He had to understand before he could explain, and he began by placing a new star chart on the wall of his office. Resting both elbows on the thick files that littered his worktable, he studied it, traced the order of cruises up and down the spiral of riot worlds, and contemplated the malignant Odyssey of Jaward Jorno.

For Jorno, assisted by the crew of his space yacht—Jorno had caused the riots.

No one wanted to believe it.

The World Manager exclaimed, his face ashen, his sightless eyes peering incredulously, “Caused the riots? You mean he deliberately brought them about? Made them happen?”

There was the yacht’s log, there were the confessions of the crewmen, and once it became clear that Donov was working, not to embarrass individual worlds, but in the interest of the entire galactic community, the governments of the riot worlds reversed themselves and supplied volumes of supporting evidence.

What Wargen had called a spiraling galactic wind had been the cruise of a single ship. Jaward Jorno had studied the populations of twenty-four worlds until he plumbed their hatreds and discovered depths they themselves had not envisioned in their foulest nightmares. For more than a year before the riots, he moved up and down the spiral, spreading rumors with diabolical ingenuity, playing upon fears as a skilled lumeno virtuoso manipulated his keyboard. Finally he was ready, and he caused the riots.

On Skuron, where according to rumor industrial wastes had poisoned a reservoir, Jorno’s men had done the job with bacteria. “We went at night with unpowered boats and dumped cultures of Gelon 12 directly into the intake pipes,” one confession read. Gelon 12 did not occur on Skuron, and Skuron’s water-treatment procedures merely encouraged the bacteria to proliferate.

One of Jorno’s crewmen was an expert chemist. “Gelon 12 rarely has fatal results,” he said protestingly. “Why, if we’d wanted to kill people…”

Hundreds of thousands became ill; hundreds died. Chemical analysis of the polluted water found Gelon 12. The government suppressed that information, not wanting it known how easily the world’s water supplies could be sabotaged, and blamed industrial pollution, but the people were not deceived. Rumors, astutely planted and spread by Jorno and his crewmen, placed the blame on the animaloids, and the riots followed.

On Sornor, enormous tracts of grazing land were sprayed with chemicals. It wasn’t necessary to kill the vegetation, but only to produce a reaction that made the natives think it was dying. One of Jorno’s crewmen invented an apparatus that produced a spray fine enough to taint an area miles wide. “We rented winged transports and did several thousand acres a night for a week,” he confessed. The nonors were blamed, with Jorno guiding the rumors.

On Proplif, Jorno damaged grain crops with the same spraying apparatus. On Mestil, explosives caused the landslides and cracked the dam. A hundred thousand humans died; no one bothered to count the dead meszs. The Bbronan fires were arson, they were set by Jorno’s crewmen.

On world after world after world…

A light flashed, and Wargen started irritably. The World Manager said, “Eritha’s coming with Lester Harnasharn. They want to know if you can join us.”

“When?” Wargen asked.

“When they get here. They’re about to leave the galleries.”

“Let me know when they arrive.”

He got to his feet and paced back and forth, pausing from time to time to look at the new star chart.

Jaward Jorno. A good man. A saint. The author of more Good Works than his own steward had time to catalogue. Jaward Jorno had caused the riots. With no compunction that anyone was able to notice, he performed inconceivable evils merely so that he could go on doing good.

His dedication to Good Works had so reduced his father’s enormous fortune that he found himself rapidly approaching bankruptcy. His remaining assets were a space yacht, a devoted and talented crew, an estate on Donov, and a diminishing amount of capital. His eye fell on the animaloids, many species of them brilliant, all of them abused minorities. They could be an invaluable economic asset for the man who knew how to make use of them.

Jaward Jorno knew how. Everyone had been so pleased at the possibility of low-priced textiles for Donov that no one had stopped to ponder the fact that Jorno would have a textile monopoly for an entire world. His daily profits would amount to a fortune. With ingenious animaloids to achieve automation miracles, expansion of the monopoly to other worlds would be inevitable. Already Jorno had moved toward a dominant if not domineering position in Donov’s fabulously profitable tourist industry. He had taken options on properties with resort potential all over Donov, and with the meszs to construct quality resorts without labor costs, he soon would have been taking another daily fortune from that source.

And that was only a beginning. Nothing was known about Jorno’s long-range plans, but Wargen was certain that he’d had some. He’d established tarff in Rinoly years before his animaloids arrived to make use of it. He committed enormous evils, but it was enormous stakes that he was playing for.

Perhaps he hadn’t expected success on all twenty-four worlds, but he achieved it, and he selected the animaloid refugees with the most potential value for him. His project almost foundered on Donov’s immigration laws and the unexpected coolness of its officials toward accepting the refugees, but a trick saved him.

And he acquired three thousand uniquely valuable slaves. No other individual slaveholder in history possessed such brilliant servants. They could build anything, they could do almost anything, and all of them were willing to die for the man who rescued them from Mestil.

And yet—Jorno certainly returned the meszs’ affection, he respected their culture and traditions, and he was conscientious about his responsibility for them. He made them his heirs, and they now owned his entire estate.

Anyone doubting that Jorno had caused the riots had only to contemplate the fiendish efficiency with which he crushed the island of Zrilund. The poison used was the same that simulated the poisonous alga on Cuque, stained red instead of green. On Donov, Jorno was so certain of himself that he saw no need for subtleties.

Neither did he see any need to make the cost higher than absolutely necessary. His men dumped just enough poison at Virrab to divert suspicion from him, and the boats they blew up there were worthless hulks that Jorno acquired for that purpose. He reasoned that a wrecked boat looked very much the same as a good boat after an explosion, and he was light. Demron’s men never suspected a thing.

Jorno ruined Zrilund in a childish fit of temper. He was performing such splendid Good Works for Donov—prosperity for Rinoly farmers, low-priced textiles for the entire planet, a revitalization of Donov’s tourist industry that would benefit Zrilund and every other resort—and instead of being properly grateful, the stupid people and artists of Zrilund were subjecting him to every petty harassment they could think of. He lost his temper, he determined to show them that no one crossed Jaward Jorno with impunity. It took him just two nights to smash Zrilund utterly.

He forgot that his own animaloids were as vulnerable as the animaloids on other worlds, and he forgot that such enemies as Ronony Gynth were capable of clumsy but effective use of the same forces he himself had unleashed so skillfully. Ronony so little understood what she was doing that she aimed all of her efforts at Zrilund’s artists—and she still succeeded in arousing the townspeople and fishermen against Jorno.

Ian Korak signaled. “They’re here,” he announced.

“All right,” Wargen said.

The thing that disquieted him most was that so much good could result from Jorno’s evil. Rinoly would prosper as soon as the meszs rebuilt their factory, Donov would have its low-priced textiles, the meszs, despite their shattering experience, were much better off than their brethren on Mestil and possessed an incomparably brighter future; and Zrilund, which Jorno had utterly destroyed, would benefit most of all.

On Wargen’s suggestion, the arbiter had ordered the Zrilunders to help rebuild the mesz village. For several days an awkward silence prevailed on Mestil Island, the meszs being unwilling to believe that Jorno was a villain, and the Zrilunders being unwilling to believe that the meszs weren’t. Now friendships were developing, and the meszs had become interested in Zrilund’s problems. They’d resumed their crash program on the underwater ferries, they’d taken charge of Zrilund’s massive cleanup, and they were planning new attractions to make the town more interesting to tourists. The Zrilunders needed all the help they could get, and more than anything else the meszs desperately needed to be needed. It looked like a promising partnership.

But in an objective report on Jorno’s iniquity, how could one balance in that paradoxical good?

Ian Korak signaled again. “We’re waiting.”

Wargen took a final look at the star chart before he resignedly turned away.

The World Manager’s lair had the appearance of an art shop. Nine easels stood in a semicircle about him, with a painting on each. Korak was resentfully ignoring them.

“They’re the slug paintings!” Wargen exclaimed.

He touched wrists with Harnasharn, bowed deeply to Eritha, who made a face at him, and then he stepped forward for a closer look He had forgotten what they were like: The strange, woven texture, the unreal shapes, the dazzling melange of light and color.

“I was just explaining to the World Manager,” Harnasharn said. “Arnen Brance left a will, and I’m his executor. Under its terms I was awarded one of these paintings. I have made my selection, and nine remain. These nine I am to offer as gifts to nine worthy individuals. I consider the World Manager an eminently worthy individual, and I’m offering him first choice.”

“And I’ve been explaining that they all look alike to me,” Korak grumbled.

“That’s one reason I brought Eritha,” Harnasharn said brightly.

“She can made the selection for you. The other reason I brought her is that I want her to have one of the paintings for herself. And you, sir—” He turned to Wargen. “I want you to have one.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

Harnasharn smiled. “Kind, and also crafty. I’m hoping that all of these paintings will eventually find their ways into the Institute, they constitute a unique collection, and frankly I’m giving them to the people who are most likely to make that happen—though of course those receiving them are under no obligation whatsoever.”