Jad Gimli was a tall man with a hawk-nose. He was the whitest man I’d seen on Rhapsody. He was obviously proud of his provenance. He had grown his hair long and combed it back so that it swept away from his deep forehead and down to a point a couple of inches below his collar. His eyes were very pale and sharp, and his mouth very thin. He was impressive, by virtue of the fact that his etiolation had gone beyond the colourlessness which characterised most of the people of Rhapsody and taken on a boldness of its own. The whole effect was reminiscent of Angelina. But she was beautiful, and Gimli was hideous.
He waited on the outside of the barricade which had been formed by angling two ore trucks into an outward-facing V. I stepped across to join him. Bayon got up on top of the barricade and looked down on the two of us. Gimli didn’t look up at him.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, his voice sounding distinctly viperish.
‘Bayon holds the grotto,’ I said. It didn’t prompt a denial. Gimli simply waited. I continued. ‘The outcasts hold Akim Krist. There are three other people in the tunnel as well—Rion Mavra, Cyolus Capra and a girl named Angelina.’
‘Have you injured any of these people?’ asked Gimli.
‘No.’
‘Then what do you want?’
‘We want safe conduct out of the warren. For me and for all of Bayon’s men. And we want the price of the grotto—whatever you have agreed with either Charlot or the man from Star Cross.’
‘And we want you to tell the whole world who took the price’. This from Bayon. Gimli gave no sign that he had heard.
‘The council has not yet reached a decision,’ said Gimli. ‘We waited until we could hear what you had to say. You are Titus Charlot’s pilot, are you not?’
‘At the moment,’ I said, ‘I’m Bayon Alpart’s spokesman. You know Bayon Alpart, I presume.’ I pointed up at the man who towered over us. This time, Gimli did look up. But he gave no sign of recognition.
‘Why did you take the grotto?’ he demanded.
‘Because it was valuable,’ I told him, rather sharply. I had the feeling that he was trying not to communicate. I had expected it, but I wanted it out of the way as soon as possible. Once we were prepared to deal with the realities of the situation, then we could achieve something. Until then, it was all hot air.
‘You imagined that you could steal the contents?’ he followed through.
‘We could have stolen some of it,’ I pointed out. ‘But Bayon wanted it all. He wants the full price. Whatever you care to ask of New Alexandria or of Star Cross must go to him, and we must all leave the world in order to be able to enjoy it. You can go back to exactly where you were before the grotto was discovered.’
‘Except,’ added Bayon, ‘that you have a public renunciation to make.’
‘We could take back the grotto,’ said Gimli.
‘Krist and the others would be killed.’
‘So would you,’ he said. ‘You would gain nothing.’
‘Quite so,’ I countered. ‘Give us what we want and we will gain our price, you will gain one Hierarch.’
‘Another Hierarch can be elected,’ he said dourly.
‘Is that the council speaking?’ I asked. ‘Or Jad Gimli?’
‘You can gain nothing by killing Krist,’ he persisted.
‘Nor can you.’
There was a temporary halt while we stared at one another and contemplated the deadlock. Bayon jumped down from the truck. He rammed the power rifle into Gimli’s stomach and forced the Churchman back against the wall. Gimli flinched, more because of the dirt adhering to the rock surface than because of the gun in his belly. He pulled himself back to his full height, but Bayon topped him by a good two inches.
‘Who am I?’ said Bayon roughly.
Gimli—perhaps wisely—did not attempt to deny that someone had a gun in his gut. ‘I don’t know,’ he said—not very calmly.
‘You remember me,’ growled Bayon.
‘I don’t know you,’ insisted Gimli.
‘Well, hear me anyhow. I want my freedom. I want my price. And I want my peace of mind. Before I go, you’ll tell the people of Rhapsody that Bayon Alpart is not dead. He exists. He lives. And he is escaping this world for a better one. He has found his own Exclusive Reward.’
‘I’ll tell the council what you say,’ he said.
‘Good. But there’s one more thing before you go. Tell me my name’
‘I don’t know you,’ said Gimli.
‘Grainger,’ hissed Bayon. ‘Tell him what my name is.’
‘His name is Alpart,’ I said. ‘Bayon Alpart.’
‘That’s right,’ said Bayon. ‘Now. Tell me my name.’
‘You know your name,’ said Gimli, between tight lips. My heart fluttered. I expected to see his abdomen disappear in a great gout of smoke and a big stink.
‘Say it!’ shouted Bayon. He thrust his face closer to Gimli’s, and pushed harder with the barrel of the gun. But his finger didn’t tighten on the trigger. He was determined to make the Churchman back down. He didn’t want to kill him.
Seconds of agonised silence dragged by. Then Gimli decided that eventually compromise was inevitable.
‘Bayon Alpart,’ he said hesitantly, but not faintly.
‘Thank you,’ I said gently. ‘Now you can tell the council who it is you have to deal with. I’m sure they’ll have the same kind of difficulty which you have. But I’m equally sure that you can make them see what they have to see.’
Bayon took away the gun and stepped back. Gimli staggered off the wall, then collected himself together and set about dusting the filth from his shoulders.
‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘Go back to the council. Try to make them see our point of view.’
He turned his back, without a word, and walked away.
‘We should send Mavra and Angelina with him,’ I told Bayon. ‘They’re both prepared to acknowledge you. They could help us.’
‘Who knows what Mavra might say once he’s free?’ said Bayon scornfully.
‘You can’t doubt Angelina. She’s never denied you.’
‘Angelina doesn’t count. The council won’t hear her. Gimli knows how things stand. He can tell the council, behind closed doors. They can make a real decision.’
‘And what will that be?’
‘They’ll agree.’
‘You can’t believe that.’
‘Then you tell me,’ he said. ‘What will they do?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘For the time being, they’ll do absolutely nothing. Why should they? Time is on their side. They’ll make you sweat.’
‘It won’t change a thing,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to back down.’
‘I know that,’ I said glumly.
‘They’ll have to do something eventually.’
‘I know that, too.’
‘They’ll agree,’ he said again.
‘I only hope you’re right’
I wandered back down the tunnel, and went into the grotto to have a look at the most valuable worms in the galaxy. Considering that it was supposed to be a cakewalk, I reflected, this trip was causing me a great deal of heartache. I wished yet again that I’d had the sense to stay in jail. The escape had been Johnny’s fault. It simply wasn’t fair that it should be me who reaped the harvest of trouble.
If you were prepared to unbend a little, offered the wind, I could go a long way towards helping you get out of this mess.
‘I’m sure you could,’ I replied. ‘But I would rather it was me that emerged from my sea of troubles, and not someone else.’
You look at things from a point of view which is both illogical and uninformed.
‘So you keep telling me. Exactly how would you propose to extract me from my present predicament? Would we grow wings and fly, or grow spades and dig?’
We would need only the body and the mind which is already at our disposal. It would simply function more efficiently.
‘I’m afraid this is a one-mind body. It wouldn’t function very well for anyone else. I may not be much, but it knows me well.’
You’re being deliberately ridiculous.
‘You noticed.’
Only a fool refuses help when he needs it.
‘Maybe so. But I don’t think that my need is so great just yet. Come the day that I’m staring down Bayon’s gun barrel and his hand is tightening on the trigger I just might decide that assistance is necessary. Even then I may elect to do my own superhero act. I’m certain that your offer is backed by the best of intentions, but I’m simply not interested. I’m sorry if this makes your stay here less than pleasant, but I didn’t invite you into my mind. You picked me, you have to put up with me.’
Fine. But inside, you’re still scared. What it comes down to is that you’re more scared of me than you are of Rhapsody and all its terrors.
‘That seems to be a fair way of putting it’
You belong on a world like Rhapsody. Grainger, the man without a name, without a human identity. The man alone. You do your utmost to preserve your isolation, just like the cave-men. Grainger alone against the worlds, always taking a course which no one else has chosen. You can’t even justify yourself except in terms of compulsion and inner need. Why not admit to being a member of the human race? Why not admit that you’d still be a member of the human race if you allowed yourself to fuse minds with me? It’s not so difficult, you know. There are people who’ve been human all their lives. They even profess to like it. And there are people with symbiotes like me. They profess to liking it, as well.
He gave up again, in apparent disgust. I was beginning to be heartily sick of his nagging. It was worse than being married. He hadn’t been too hard to get along with at one time, when he first settled in. But ever since those few bleak moments in the Drift when he’d assumed command of my faculties, he’d been demanding complete emancipation. He made my head ache. He also made me even more determined that I wasn’t going to give an inch. For a good many years I’d been getting myself out of trouble. I wasn’t so old and feeble that I needed a nursemaid yet.
I sat down in the centre of the grotto, to wait. There didn’t seem to be much else to do but wait. Ezra came in to take some water from the pool, and I assumed that he intended to use it for making some soup. That, at least, was a moderately pleasant thought. Bayon didn’t seem to have had the time to let us all eat while we were busy playing at being bandits and making impossible demands of Jad Gimli.
A few moments later, Angelina came into the cave. The restrictions must be relaxing. Probably, the outcasts were inclined to be tolerant towards Angelina because she had never made an effort to participate in the invisibility game.
She looked tired, but interested in what was going on.
‘How did you get on with Gimli?’ she asked.
‘Not well. We took the toughest possible line. You’d be in a better position than I would be to guess how he might react.’
She stretched herself, painfully. A stone floor is a bad place to sleep unless you get a certain amount of practice. She had obviously inherited the usual quota of aches. But she didn’t seem to resent the fact that she was being held captive.
‘Gimli will get rid of the problem,’ she said.
‘Mavra seemed to think that kidnapping Krist might sway the council to his point of view.’
‘Mavra’s tongue runs away with him,’ she said. ‘Half of what he says is only froth. If he’d ever learned to be careful what he said, we’d never have been expelled to Attalus.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked, following the digression gladly.
‘Heresy, of course,’ she replied. ‘Nothing serious. Just talk. But when they decide to have an accusation of heresy around here they try to bundle as many people into it as they can. That way, they reckon that it won’t happen so often. The people here are naturally unfriendly and they mostly keep their ideas—heretical and otherwise—to themselves. But Mavra is a compulsive communicator. He talks to whoever will listen. Capra and Coria and the others were just unfortunate. They probably did no more than nod their heads in the wrong places. It was a very boring trial. They weren’t at all keen to kick us out—they worry a lot about the declining population, and they couldn’t really spare three young females. Two young females and Mavra’s wife, to be exact. They were fairly pleased to see us back again. We could probably have hopped any ship that was passing this way during the last year, but we weren’t to know what sort of a welcome we’d get.’
‘You talk a lot yourself,’ I commented.
‘I’m a real heretic,’ she boasted.
‘You picked up some ideas on Attalus, then?’
‘I had ideas,’ she said levelly.
‘What do you think Gimli will do?’ I asked her.
‘I told you. He’ll get rid of the problem.’
‘Sell the grotto to the highest bidder and leave it to them to collect?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about Akim Krist? And the rest of you, come to that.’
‘It won’t be his problem any more, will it?’
‘Will the council sit still while he deals fast and loose with the Hierarch’s life?’ I asked.
‘They’re experts at looking the other way. Once it’s not their grotto, it’s not their problem, and it’s not their responsibility.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’re right, they’d sure as hell better sell it to Charlot and not to Sampson. His solution is apt to be a great deal less direct. I only hope that they don’t hold it against Charlot that his favourite slave is down here sitting on the pot of gold. If I get in his way, he’s going to be extremely angry with me.’
‘Can you blame him?’ she commented. She sounded very much like my whispering companion.
‘It’s not my fault,’ I protested, and then tried to change the subject. ‘Whose side are you on? What do you want to see this treasure trove turned into?’
‘I’m on everybody’s side,’ she said. ‘This grotto doesn’t belong to Gimli, or Krist, or to the council—and certainly not to you and Alpart. It belongs to the miners and the machine operators, and the refiners and the clerks.’
‘That’s a fine social conscience you have,’ I said drily. ‘But as of now the guns control the grotto, and will probably continue to do so. Unless, of course, the miners use their guns to assure a socialist redistribution of wealth.’
‘They can’t,’ she said. ‘They’ve spent all their lives here, in these caves, with this faith. They were born in the dark; they scuttle around in the dark. The faith won’t permit them to bring the light they need down here. Light is a concession to weakness, and you need strength to win the Exclusive Reward. Light is always faint, because the voice of the Almighty, as reproduced by Akim Krist and his council, commands that the people should live in blackness, should work in blackness, should love and cherish blackness.
‘The miners can’t use their eyes any more. They’re ashamed to lend any credence to their own senses. All that matters is the faith which they’ve been taught. Only the outcasts are thrown back on to their senses, because they’ve already lost the Exclusive Reward. Only the outcasts can see, and even they court darkness for their stealing and their skulking.’
‘They live in a lighted cave,’ I interposed.
‘Do they? I’m glad for that, at least. But how bright is the light?’
‘Dim,’ I admitted.
‘Exactly. Everyone here is four-fifths blind.’
‘So you want to expel the darkness from Rhapsody?’ I mused. ‘That’s almost as wild as Akim Krist’s idea. Do you really think that you can re-educate the people? Do you imagine that replacing weak lights with strong ones will revitalise your whole society?’
‘Life down here doesn’t have to be the life of a worm,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to come out into the sun. We don’t want our air saturated with fog like the air of Attalus. But we don’t have to make this world a pit of limitless darkness.’
‘Maybe you do,’ I said, ‘if you want to receive your Exclusive Reward. Or have you given up believing in that?’
‘I think this is our Exclusive Reward,’ she said. ‘If we choose it, then we certainly deserve it as our reward. And it’s absolutely exclusive. There are no other worlds like this one, are there?’
‘Not quite,’ I conceded. ‘This one is rather unique. But where did you get all these revolutionary thoughts from, if this culture is so very careful about the training of its children?’
‘I used my senses,’ she said.
‘All by yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t ever see the sun? You didn’t read forbidden books? Nobody told you about the light?’
‘No.’
‘Well then,’ I said. ‘If it happened to you, it could have happened to a hundred others. The days of Rhapsody’s darkness could be numbered.’
‘Not while Akim Krist and Jad Gimli rule the council.’
‘They won’t rule for ever. All you need is one Rion Mavra, who talks too much because he thinks too much. And one Titus Charlot, to provide a link with New Alexandria. You could bring your light to Rhapsody, then.’
Bayon came into the grotto. The beamer was cradled in his arms like a baby. ‘We eat,’ he said. ‘Outside.’
‘How about you?’ I asked him. ‘Wouldn’t you settle for an invasion of light to make this world move? Or are you only interested in your personal grudges?’
But he didn’t know what I was talking about. He might even have thought I was being hypocritical. After all, the only reason I’d involved myself in the first place was in the hope of extracting a profit.
At that time, however, I didn’t know what I wanted, and I could only wait and see how things were going to turn out.