Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Read online

  "Why should they—try to stop us, I mean?" Dahno answered. "What's it to them, anyway? They could never've guessed we'd manage to take over those worlds, until we'd gone too far to be stopped." He laughed. "At that point, even we weren't thinking about really taking over any of the Younger Worlds!"

  "That's not what you were telling the classes of Others you ran through your training program and sent out to the Worlds to work for you," Bleys said. Dahno gestured, as if waving his brother's words away from his face.

  "You know perfectly well I only told them that to motivate them," he said. "Greed and ambition make people work harder. I never really intended any such thing, and I figured they'd forget about it, over time ... until you came along, with your talk about making it happen."

  "There's not much in your secret files about it," Bleys said, ignoring Dahno's last jab, "but I know that when you started sending your newly trained Others to begin infiltrating the various worlds, you never sent any to Mara and Kultis, the Exotic planets—and not to the Dorsai, either. I think you knew from the start that our abilities to influence and convince people wouldn't work on those worlds."

  "That's so," Dahno said. "The Dorsai doesn't even have much of a government, and not much by way of a corporate environment, either—so there was just no place for one of our people to get into Dorsai society, even leaving out their notorious clannishness." He paused; and then uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, putting the points of his elbows on his massive thighs.

  "You and I both know," he went on—his voice was lower and quieter now, his eyes earnest, as his hands moved as if to cup the open air between their two faces—"if only out of our mother's Exotic background, that the Exotics tend to have personalities that are largely immune to our abilities. I certainly wouldn't try to crack a way into either of those societies, and I wouldn't waste my trainees trying it, either. It's a culture-based characteristic that makes them immune to our persuasive talents, I think."

  The mention of their mother, Bleys thought, was intended to emphasize the seriousness of Dahno's words; the subject had always been a flash point for Dahno's temper, and for him to voluntarily bring her up was either a sign of great concern or a calculated arguing tactic.

  "I'm sure you're right about that," Bleys said, controlling an impulse to lean back in his chair, away from his brother, and cross his own legs. "But as I said, why didn't the Exotics ever try to stop our efforts to take control of other worlds? They have a centuries-old position as the major mercantile power among the Younger Worlds, second only to Old Earth itself—and for all their image as philosophers, they didn't get there by philosophy alone. They've always shown themselves to be pragmatic enough to quash potential threats to their position—they were a frequent employer of the Dorsai, remember."

  "What could they do?" Dahno said, leaning back again. "Ours was an attack they couldn't use military force against. And anyway, we weren't acting directly against them, and in fact we were going about it very quietly."

  "I'll tell you why they didn't act," Bleys went on, once more ignoring his brother's last words. "It's because they couldn't do anything!"

  "Isn't that what I said?"

  "It's not what you think," Bleys answered. "They couldn't respond because they were under attack themselves." "Attack? By who?"

  "That's just it, I don't know," Bleys said. "The attack, as I called it, hasn't been so major as to make the Exotics totally helpless. I think it's been strong enough, and going on long enough, to at least distract them, or confuse them—but let me tell my story in a proper order." This time he did lean farther back in his chair, but it was for the purpose of looking up at the great interstellar map mounted on the wall above them, on which he had tried to chart Hal Mayne's movements.

  "When I got the news that Hal Mayne had been taken in by the Exotics," Bleys began, "and then taken to Mara, it suggested to me that maybe the Exotics were going to try to get involved in his campaign against us—"

  "'His campaign against us'?" Dahno echoed. "What campaign is that? I haven't seen him doing much more than just trying to get away from you."

  "He's campaigning," Bleys said. "Trust me on that."

  Dahno put on his most skeptical expression and re-crossed his legs. Bleys continued.

  "You yourself said it," he went on. "We've got our hands full with those Younger Worlds we've gained controlling positions in. That means we're walking a knife edge in trying to balance the disparate groups we've manipulated, who are still at odds with each other. It's a system of control that might be tipped over with a nudge or two in the right places."

  "All the more reason to stay at home and consolidate our positions as fast as possible," Dahno said.

  "But don't you see," Bleys said, "that if the reason the Exotics haven't taken a hand against us before is because they're too weak and distracted to do much—and I'll concede that there're more reasons than one for that weakness, and some of it is based in the inevitable changes that come to any civilization in the course of its historic development, but if one of the reasons for that weakness is because they've been under a covert economic attack for more than thirty years—don't you think we should know who's been attacking them?"

  Dahno's face had sobered, but he said nothing.

  "I didn't realize it, either," Bleys nodded. "It's been a very quiet operation, and it's stayed that way for decades, at least. That alone suggests a group so disciplined it can keep its very existence secret for a long time—"

  "How could that be possible?" Dahno interrupted. "We've had the best intelligence-collecting organization on the Younger Worlds for the last ten years—well, maybe except for the Exotics themselves— and we've never even picked up a sniff of anyone out there!"

  "That's right," Bleys said, pointing an index finger at his brother for emphasis. "But the author behind that fictional Old Earth detective Sherlock Holmes once put his finger on it, when he spoke of how strange it was that a dog didn't bark...." As Dahno rolled his eyes, Bleys nodded and raised his hands, palm out, to forestall the acid comment he saw coming. Mercifully, Dahno kept his silence, although there was something very near a sneer on his face.

  "More technically put," Bleys went on, "the absence of something that ought to be there is itself a piece of data.... At any rate, once I realized that the Exotics might be taking an active role against us, I started to research what the combination of Hal Mayne and the Exotics could do to our plans—which meant I had to understand the bases of the Exotics' power. And that's how I learned more than I expected about what's been happening behind the scenes."

  He paused for a brief moment to marshal his presentation.

  "I mentioned the historical forces, a moment ago," he went on. "And as I said, some of the weakening of the Exotics' position is traceable to those very normal historical forces—the same ones I've told you about in the past. But I've also told you before that I believe our civilization—the whole human race—made a big mistake by going out into space too fast; and that I believe that mistake has accelerated the normal decline that comes to all civilizations over time."

  He could see Dahno's face beginning to take on the bored expression it generally wore when Bleys was giving one of the speeches he had become famous for, around the Younger Worlds, and which had earned him the honorary title of Great Teacher.

  "Look at it this way," Bleys said. "We Others in particular have been helped tremendously by that decay I'm speaking about."

  That got his brother's interest back.

  "Decaying societies are more corrupt than their earlier forms," Bleys went on. "And corruption in the leadership, in particular—in whatever form it may take—exacerbates frictions within the society. And that, in the case of every planet we've taken over, gave us entry and provided a way for us to leverage our relatively weak position into one of control."

  "Does that go for the Exotics, too?" Dahno asked. "I mean, are they decaying, too?"

  'in several ways, yes," Bleys said. "But their de
cline is not of a form that gives us any power over them. However, it has weakened their ability to oppose us—perhaps even their will—which is to our advantage. Decay at the tops of societies usually means that the richest elements of the society have found a way to take, and keep, control— which in turn means that their planets spend more on keeping the rulers secure, as well as on importing luxury goods, and less on what's needed by the masses. The less well-off get less chance to rise in the society, a comparatively lower standard of living, fewer social services ... and the gap between rich and poor increases—that's where we got a hook into New Earth, remember."

  "But that hasn't happened to the Exotics," Dahno said.

  "That's right," Bleys said. "And maybe that's because of those culture-based characteristics you mentioned a few minutes ago. At any rate, the consensual bases of their culture—the things they all live by, deep down inside, whether you mean beliefs or feelings or even instincts—seem to be very different from those of peoples on the other planets. For instance, they've been rich for centuries; but that doesn't seem to have induced any desire for more money or things."

  "And yet you say they've decayed, too?" Dahno asked. "In what fashion? And if they haven't spent their money on luxuries, where has it gone?"

  "To answer the last question first," Bleys said, "they've remained consistent to their purpose of advancing what they regard as the evolution of the human race. Remember, as just one example, that the Exotics provided the funds for the construction of the Final Encyclopedia, possibly the single most expensive project in the history of the race ... it was almost an act of faith for them, made out of a belief that somehow the Encyclopedia would be important to human evolution."

  "But once set up and running in its orbit around Old Earth," Dahno said, "I know the Encyclopedia makes enough money on its own, out of its research facilities and so on, that it supports itself. . . but we've gone off the subject: you suggested that the Exotics, too, have been decaying. What form does that take, that we can't make use of it?"

  "You know," Bleys said, "if you stop to think about it." He looked squarely into his brother's eyes, knowing he was risking an explosion.

  CHAPTER 3

  "Our mother," Dahno said after a moment. He was calmer than Bleys was used to seeing him, on those rare occasions when the subject of their Exotic parent came up.

  "Yes," Bleys nodded. "A highly intelligent woman from a rich society designed to help people rise to the limits of their talents—and yet somehow she came to feel she wasn't getting the recognition and status she deserved."

  "All societies produce people who just don't seem to fit in," Dahno said. "But that's probably been true all through history. So how do you come to see that as a sign of the Exotics' societal decay?"

  "I don't know of any way to prove it," Bleys said, "but I suspect that the proportion of people in similar situations has been increasing over the last century."

  "That I can believe," said Dahno, "if only because the very existence of crossbreeds like us can probably be largely traced to that fact."

  "If you mean that the dissatisfied tend to leave their worlds and move elsewhere, yes," Bleys said. "But don't make the mistake of thinking that our abilities arise out of a simple mixing of bloodlines from different worlds—we're the result of the mixing of cultures, not genes."

  "I'm not entirely convinced of that," Dahno said. "You and I are something special physically, too."

  "We may be," Bleys said. "But size doesn't mean all that much; remember that there are people on other worlds who can match us physically—some of the more legendary Dorsai, for example. But it's our power to persuade people to follow us that sets us apart, and that isn't based in any physiological part of us, as far as I can see.

  Remember, many of our Others have been showing great persuasive powers, too, even though none of them match us physically." Dahno, clearly reluctant, only nodded.

  "Your point was well taken," Bleys went on. "Our very existence, and that of the Others we've been recruiting, is a strong indicator that such decay must have been going on."

  "Well, it's a strong indicator that people have been moving about between the Younger Worlds," Dahno said. "I'll give you that. But there might be plenty of reasons for that, and some of them directly opposite to the idea of decay."

  "That's certainly true," Bleys said. "But we were talking specifically about the Exotics, and what form the decay of their society might take; and I repeat that our mother's life might illustrate that decay."

  "She was probably the single most self-centered person either of us has ever known," Dahno mused. "It must have frustrated the Exotics to have that result from one of their most celebrated and nurtured bloodlines—but are you saying that selfishness is the form decay has taken among the Exotics?"

  "She may well be an extreme example," Bleys said, making a note in his head to follow up on that remark about their mother's genetic heritage. No one had ever mentioned anything about that before, and he had never thought to look into it; Dahno's tendency to react strongly when their mother came up in conversation had generally led Bleys to avoid the subject. But Dahno seemed to be handling it well, for the moment.

  "After all," Bleys went on, "most of the Exotics haven't rejected their entire culture to go chase dreams of personal status among the wealthy of other planets. But it only takes a little extra concern for oneself to weaken a society's faith in what was once its ultimate goal—when that small amount of self-concern is exhibited by each one of millions of people."

  "How can you possibly prove something like that?" Dahno said. "You can't compare how the individual Exotic of today measures up to those of, say, two centuries ago. Even if you had Exotics of each time side by side, you couldn't measure something like selfishness."

  "You're absolutely right," Bleys said. "And I never claimed to be able to prove that the Exotics, taken as individuals, are decayed versions of their ancestors. But what I do claim to be able to prove is that the Exotic culture is no longer as strong and vibrant as it once was. The simple drop in their wealth as a society is an indirect proof of that. The rest is extrapolation—theory, if you want—that I use to try to explain what I've found.

  "All I'm telling you is this: whatever flame once burned inside the average Exotic, that caused them to work together for a common goal—that flame is weakened today." He raised a hand to forestall the interruption he saw coming from his brother.

  "It's not out. It's still there—strong yet, probably, in some. But it's weaker."

  "Even if you're right, we can't make use of anything like that," Dahno said. "We work by offering people something they want and convincing them, in a way that bypasses their usual rational abilities, that they can get it by working with us—which in turn works because of our ability to override their normal skepticism for at least long enough for them to fall into line—and then inertia, in the form of the normal human inclination to avoid painful self-examination, tends to keep them in line. And the Exotics, taught from birth to question everything, are just too skeptical to fall for our usual line."

  "That's one way to put it," Bleys said.

  "Well, as you say," Dahno said, "we may not be able to bring the Exotics under our control, but it must be to our advantage to have them become less rich, and so less powerful. But how did that come about?"

  "Except for the occasional expensive bit of advanced medical equipment and that kind of thing," Bleys said, "the Exotics have never been about manufacturing goods that other planets need to import. It's always been knowledge that they exported—the experts they sent out to the other worlds. The expense of interstellar freight has always meant that the biggest credit producer for any planet is the people it can send out to do things for other planets, things those planets couldn't manage to do for themselves. And the various Younger Worlds have, more and more, been producing their own experts, shrinking the market for the Exotic experts."

  "I understand that," Dahno said. "I know that the Friend
lies, for instance, who used to discourage their people from going off-planet, changed that policy some time ago. And that was only because of their desperate need for the hard currency of interstellar credits."

  "Exactly," said Bleys. "If you think about it, that by itself is an example of the kind of decay that's infected all the societies on all the planets. And it's only one illustration of my reasons for believing the race will die out unless it's made to grow up." He looked at his brother keenly, wondering if he might get through to him this time.

  "In the case of the Friendlies," he went on, "the change you mentioned was just one of many small ways they relaxed an old principle because of the pain of living up to it."

  "Or they finally started to become a little more human," Dahno said, almost to himself.

  "It was just that kind of decay," Bleys said, ignoring that remark, "that allowed you, followed by myself, to rise into a position of power here among the Friendlies. In past centuries we'd have been denounced as godless, and made virtual outcasts." He shrugged. "Some think that way about us even today, and many of them are willing to say so, and oppose us. But enough of the population finds reasons to go along with us that we're not only safe, but in control."

  "There are places on these worlds where I wouldn't go without a well-armed escort," Dahno said, scowling.

  "Yes," Bleys said. "That's true. But because Friendly society is divided, those parts cancel each other out, and we can keep control even though there are still many, possibly close to a majority, who would have rejected all those little things—and us—if they had realized what was going on. In their weakness they listen when we tell them, couched in the comforting words of their faiths, what they want to hear; and never notice, until it's far too late, that we've done something else entirely."