Number One shifted in his comfortable chair. “Was there ever a return, Rig?”
“Possibly that’s according to where you start from, Jim.”
The other shook his heavy head. “There is never return, Rig. No matter how seemingly powerful you are, it’s an illusion. You’re pushed, you don’t march bravely forth.”
“I’m not so sure I follow you,” the plumpish Temple Monk said. They were seated in the living room of the Presidor’s private quarters, as before, an old-fashioned wood fire in the fireplace.
Number One looked at him strangely. “Do you think that Caesar could have changed his mind and not crossed the Rubicon?”
Pater Riggin looked at him for a long moment. “You didn’t want power, Jim?”
“No. It was thrust upon me. When the collapse of the past regime came, power lay there on the streets for anyone at all to take up. Should I have left it to the Karlists, or some other crackpot group?”
The Temple Monk patted his rounded tummy and said mildly, “I have heard the story before, Jim. ‘If I didn’t do it, somebody else would.’ Also, ‘I did it for the sake of others.’ ”
Number One scowled. “Sometimes I wonder what you really think about me, Rig. And more often I realize I don’t want to know. You’re the one man I feel I can talk to. But, carrying out along this line, what could I have done otherwise? You know my career as well as I do. Where could I have taken this turning, rather than that one?”
Pater Riggin shook his head. “I doubt if you have ever read of a Yugoslavian named Djilas. However…”
“Yugoslavian?”
“A small country in Europe in the old days. During the Second War, it went Communist. Djilas was one of its top revolutionists, the right-hand man of the dictator-to-be, Tito. Djilas spent years in the government prisons, later fought for more years in the mountains as a partisan. When the war was over and his people in power, he was aghast. His comrades were quickly enriching themselves, entrenching themselves in lucrative government jobs for which they were often unsuited. Tito himself lived like an Oriental potentate. When Djilas, still the idealist, refused to conduct himself similarly and attempted to expose this New Class that had arisen from among the supposedly selfless leaders of the proletariat, he was imprisoned for his pains.”
“Your point?” the Presidor growled, finishing his wine and reaching for the humidor.
“I’m not sure I have one,” his old friend said wryly, “but I find in history few idealists who can resist wealth and power, once they are in grasp. It applies, of course, not only to political figures. Have you ever seen a religion which, once come to acceptance, does not indulge its leadership? My studies tell me most of the great religions were founded by men who foreswore material goods, but, once the religion was established, their following priests were seldom to be found among the poverty-stricken.”
Number One looked at him thoughtfully. “I sometimes wonder that the United Temple puts up with you, Rig.”
His companion chuckled. “You should be able to figure that out, Jim. I am your closest companion. My immediate Bishop, and his Holiness himself, might occasionally become impatient, but they can’t afford to bar from conclave the man who has Number One’s ear.”
“I’ve told you I don’t like that term,” The Presidor growled.
Before the other could answer, a light flickered on the door and the screen there hummed.
Number One glowered at it. “What is this, a shuttle station? I gave orders not to be disturbed. Once this damned war begins, I’ll be fortunate to sleep four hours a night.”
“Ignore it.” Pater Riggin shrugged plump shoulders. “Why do you have deputies?”
The other grunted, pressed a button set into the arm of his chair and came to his feet, scowling, to face the door.
It came open and Jon Matheison, close pressed behind by Mark Fielder, came hurrying through. The former’s face was livid with anger—anger and what would seem to be despair.
Number One was curt. “What is the meaning of this intrusion, Coaids? The Crusade is scheduled in a few days. I have need of time for rest and contemplation.”
His Deputy of Finance began to say something, but Mark Fielder cut in, even as his eyes shifted about the apartment, taking in this, taking in that, resting briefly on Pater Riggin.
The Surety man said, “The war, evidently, is already on.”
“What! You mean they’ve attacked first!”
Matheison said, “An unprovoked attack on my commissariat. I have still not completely evaluated the disaster.”
Number One was glaring. “Make sense, you two! What has happened?”
His financial head took a deep breath. “As far as we can make out, a group of a hundred or more Betastani, armed with bows and arrows, broke into the Treasury Building this afternoon. They…”
“Armed with what ?”
“Bows and arrows,” Fielder said grimly. “Their value as a secret weapon applies not only to this romp. The damned things don’t make a sound, produce no muzzle-flash, don’t affect capacitance-alarm circuits so they can be back-trajectoried to locate their source. They ring no alarms, since they’re of wood rather than metal. The funkers even had hard plastic arrowheads on the nardy things.”
“The Treasury!” Pater Riggin blurted. “Why the Treasury? You mean they made off with…”
Matheison shot a contemptuous look at him. “Gold? No, of course not. Even if there had been a good many more of them they couldn’t have taken off enough gold to make any difference, and even that’s if they could have gotten down into the vaults, which would have been impossible.”
“Then what did they do?” Number One rasped.
Uninvited, the Deputy of Finance sank down onto a couch. He shook his head unbelievingly. “They used some sort of device I didn’t even know could exist. I don’t know how it works. I don’t really know what they did. But all out data banks are scrambled. Scrambled, I tell you. We have nothing. Nothing we can depend on.”
Number One felt a certain relief. He hadn’t known what sort of emergency, what tragedy to the Alphaland cause, had been brought before him. This seemed comparatively picayune.
He went over to the bar and poured a drink, brought it back and handed it to his visitor. “Drink this,” he growled. “You’re upset.” He switched his eyes to his Deputy of Surety. “Just what happened? You two don’t make much sense.”
“The details aren’t in,” Fielder said, his voice returning to its usual suavity. “However, it would seem that a large body of Betastani agents, carrying weapons deliberately designed not to affect our Surety alarms, invaded Coaid Matheison’s offices in the records wing of Finance.”
“Are government offices that vulnerable!”
Fielder made a gesture of helplessness with manicured hands. “One wouldn’t expect an attack to take place at such a point. The romp was unprecedented in any case, but the last locale one would expect would be the innocuous records offices of the Finance Commissariat.”
“Go on!”
“They killed several of the few guards who are posted at Finance, and then set up a device that has wiped every memory tape within blocks.”
“Did you catch any of them?”
Fielder shook his head, his expression empty. “They must have been highly picked men. Dedicated. They”—he hesitated—“they finished off their own wounded.”
A look of distaste went over Pater Riggin’s face.
Number One came back to his finance chief. “All right, what does it mean? What difference does it make? Why’d they bother to go to the trouble?”
Matheison stared at him as though unbelieving. “What difference does it make?” For once his indignation overrode his awe of his leader. “But they were the banks of all our records. There are no others.”