“Mother O’Reilly!” Henry gasped.
“See?” Jake said triumphantly. “I read a book on logic once. A guy tells you a crazy story and then if he proves one part of it you’ve got to give him odds on the rest of it panning out.”
Will cursed softly and monotonously. Henry still wore a dazed look.
“Well, are you going after ’em?” Jake demanded.
“I’ll compromise,” Henry said. “Let’s get back to the cars and tail them.”
“We’ll have to make it fast. We’ve got a longer distance to go,” Jake said. “We can pick them up at the fork this side of Port Isabel.”
He lay where they had thrown him, the rug soft under his cheek. He felt the volition returning to nerve and muscle. At first it was but an intensification of the feeling of weakness, and then a rising strength. He stood up then, shrugging the toga of rank into the proper position on his shoulders, wiping the crust of blood from his cheek, smoothing his grey hair back with his fingers.
The room was small. He saw the two of them sitting there, side by side, facing him. Their expressions were gloating. A puffy old man with traces of waning strength in the set of his jaw. An old woman who trembled constantly.
He knew how he looked to them. A smallish weary nondescript man — whose time had run out. His mind was racing, selecting, discarding, sorting.
To be forced to stand was a disadvantage. He moved back and leaned against the wall, folding his arms in his habitual posture. He made himself smile casually.
“Greetings, Dolpha — and you, Renaen.” He gave them a small, ironic bow. “If you had found the opening we provided more quickly I would have had the pleasure of meeting your friend Kama. But we grew tired of waiting for you to take me.”
The old man’s face purpled. “You, sir, are not supposed to be that well acquainted with the innermost organization of the League.”
“Oh but I am. I know many things. I know that there is a wall between us, and so I shall not make a fool of myself by walking into it.”
Renaen pulled at her chin. She said, “You made Dolpha so angry that he missed the point you made. You speak as though it were planned that we should capture you in the way we did. Isn’t that rather a poor bluff? You seek to make us uncertain of ourselves and thus gain the advantage. Isn’t that correct?”
“The fact that I wasn’t killed at once indicates to me that you were uncertain about many things before you put your plan into effect. And we have been so certain of your uncertainty that I was willing to take the risk.” He gave his words a quiet confidence. He was rewarded by the look in their eyes.
Dolpha’s eyes narrowed. “All right, sir. Suppose, just to amuse the two of us, we accept the premise. That it was your desire to be taken captive. That would indicate that you wish to speak about something.”
“I did wish to. Now that I’ve seen the two of you, I wonder if it is worth while. You showed a certain amount of intelligence in risking having me brought to Strada but that may be just senile shrewdness.”
“There are ways that you can pay for insults,” Renaen said shrilly.
He laughed. “I hardly think so. You must have X-rayed me. And the pellet put torture out of date before any of us were born.”
“We have ways of making it ineffective,” Renaen said.
Again he laughed. “Oh, come now! We are wasting time. And you will be surprised at how little time there is left. You have one fairly competent man here — Rellovo. I want to state a concept and a few formulae to him. Then you can test his reaction. Send for him.”
“Can you give us orders?”
“Can you afford to pass up the chance of learning how the Center has finally won?”
The cold confidence and finality of that statement staggered the two of them. He could see that. The wall between them became suddenly opaque. He waited patiently. When it cleared again Rellovo stood behind them.
The Chief stated crisply the reasoning behind the formulae, the formulae themselves and the result. He watched Rellovo’s face as he talked, seeing first the doubt, then the high excitement of the scientific mind, then the staring fear as he suddenly realized that it was in the hands of the enemy.
“Well?” Dolpha said.
“It... it sounds convincing,” Rellovo stammered. “There would have to be tests made — we know a little about the nature of negative matter — I would have to think about it and—”
“But there’s no time for thinking,” the Chief said. “We went through that doorway some time ago. And we’ve been preparing. Major weapons have been taken into that adjoining world. Installations have been constructed. You cannot attack us there. But we can emerge at any time at any place on this planet and smash you.”
“Could this be true?” Dolpha yelled at Rellovo.
“On one hand, it would appear that—”
“Don’t write me a text! Could it be true? Is it possible!”
“Yes, sir.”
Suddenly the fear went out of Dolpha’s rheumy eyes. He leaned back in his chair and said softly, “Very clever. For a moment your bluff came close to working. But there is one question you can’t answer. If it is true why haven’t you struck?”
“Very simple. We are too closely interwoven here. We can’t hurt you without hurting some of our own installations and if you were desperate enough you might attempt quite successfully to destroy the whole planet. The Center needs Strada as the administrative headquarters for the entire system. Now that victory is so easy there is no point at all in hunting you down and wiping you out. Too much trouble. Just give up.”
“And if we don’t?”
“One hour and — let me see. One hour and forty-one minutes from now this structure will have suffered a slight change. Some of it will be dust, heading toward the stratosphere, and the rest of it should be a fairly large molten pool.
“Every other principal League installation on Strada will suffer the same consequences. The entire attack has been coordinated or an automatic basis and it is now controlled by a timing device in my headquarters. The timing device is so adjusted that no one can disengage it but myself.” He saw Rellovo bend over to whisper in Dolpha’s ear.
He said more loudly, “Naturally the destruction of my headquarters would set the entire affair off a bit prematurely.”
Rellovo straightened up, his face white, his mouth working. “We can arrange to strike back,” Renaen said. “In fact, it—”
“—it is already arranged, I know,” the Chief said, “and has been for a long time. We haven’t underestimated you. We both have had a knife at each others’ throat for many years. But it now happens that our knife is sharper.”
“If we hold you here,” Dolpha said, “you die with us.”
The Chief shrugged. “Why not? I would say that my work is over. They can call me the man who defeated the League. When I permitted you to capture me I was taking that chance. One hour and thirty-six minutes now.”
Once again the wall became opaque. He let out his breath in a long shuddering sigh. So far it had gone well. The minutes went by. Fear grew in him, fear that they had sensed the bluff, had decided to wait until the designated time.
The wall cleared. Dolpha sat alone. The other chair was empty. And there was a tiny smear of blood on the arm of it.
“Now there is only one of us to deal with,” Dolpha said. “She had passed her usefulness to the League. I have been in touch with the others. They will abide by my decision. I see no reason why the League, recognizing the Center as the ultimate authority, cannot continue to function on a dependent basis.