It did not matter to this man that he was no more than a noncommissioned officer, a lesser functionary among thousands such, from a poor and stony planet, and I was one of only a few hundred on sixteen inhabited worlds intensively educated, trained and privileged to wear the Newsman's cloak. It made no difference to him that I was a member or Apprentice of the Guild, that I could talk with the rulers of planets. It did not even matter that I knew him to be half a madman and he knew me to be a product of education and training many times his own. None of this mattered, for he was one of God's Elect, and I was without the shadow of his church; and so he looked on me as an emperor might look at a dog to be kicked from his path.
And I looked back at him. There is a counter for every human emotional blow, deliberately given. Who knew this better than I? And I knew well the counter to anyone who tries to look down his nose at you. That counter is laughter. There never was a throne yet built so high that it could not be rocked by laughter from below. But I looked at this Groupman now, and I could not laugh.
I could not laugh for a very simple reason. For half-mad as he was, narrow-minded, limited as he was, yet he would have calmly let himself be burned at the stake rather than give up the lightest tenet of his beliefs. While I could not have held one finger in a match flame one minute to uphold the greatest of my own.
And he knew I knew that was true of him. And he knew I knew he knew what was true of me. Our mutual knowledge was plain as the counter between us. And so I could not laugh at him, and win my self-respect back. And I hated him for it.
I gave him my papers. He looked them over. Then he handed them back to me.
"Thy papers are in order," he said, high in his nose. "What brings thee here?"
"A pass," I said, putting my own papers away and digging out Dave's. "For my assistant. You see, we move back and forth on both sides of the battle line and-"
"Behind our lines and across them, no pass is necessary. Thy Newsman's papers are sufficient." He turned as if to go back to his desk.
"But this assistant of mine" - I kept my voice level-" doesn't have Newsman's papers. I just took him on earlier today and I haven't had time to make arrangements for him. What I'd like would be a temporary pass, signed by one of your Headquarters' officers here-"
He had turned back to the counter.
"Thy assistant is no Newsman?"
"Not officially. No. But-"
"Then he hath no leave or freedom to move across our battle lines. No pass can be issued."
"Oh, I don't know," I said carefully. "I was going to get one from your Eldest Bright, at a party on Freiland, just a few hours back, but he left before I had a chance to get it from him." I stopped, for the Groupman was grimly shaking his head.
"Brother Bright," he said, and in his choice of title I saw at last that he would be immovable. Only the purest of the fanatics among the Friendlies scorned the necessities of rank amongst themselves. Eldest Bright might order my Groupman to charge an enemy gun emplacement bare-handed and my Groupman would not hesitate to obey. But that did not mean that my Groupman considered Bright, or Brother Blight's opinion of the rightness of things, to be better than his own.
The reason was a very simple one. Bright's rank and title were of this present life, and therefore, in my Groupman's eyes, no more than toys and dross and tinkling cymbals. They did not weigh with the fact that as Brothers of the Elect, he and the Groupman were equal in the sight of the Lord.
"Brother Bright," he said, "could not have issued a pass to one not qualified to go and come among our numbers and perhaps be a spy upon us to the favor of our enemies."
There was one last card to play, and it was, I knew, a losing card; but I might as well play it anyway.
"If you don't mind," I said. "I'd like to get an answer on this from one of your superior officers. Please call one - the Officer of the Day, if no one else's available."
But he turned and went back to sit down at his desk.
"The Officer of the Day," he said, with finality, returning to some papers he had been working on, "can give thee no other answer. Neither will I summon him from his duties to repeat what I have already told thee."
It was like the crashing down of an iron portcullis upon my plans to get that pass signed. But there was nothing to be gained by arguing further with this man. I turned about and left the building.
Chapter 8
As the door shut behind me, I paused on the top of the three steps leading up it, to try to think what I could do next. What I would do next. I had gone over, under, or around what seemed to be immovable barriers of human decision too many times to give up so easily. Somewhere, there must be a back entrance to what I wanted, a trapdoor, a crack in the wall. I glanced again at the officers' parking area, jammed with floaters.
And then, suddenly, it came to me. All at once the bits and pieces floated together to give me a completed picture; and I kicked myself mentally for not having seen it before.
Item, the strange look of familiarity about the aide who had come to take Eldest Bright from the party of Donal Graeme. Item, Blight's own precipitate departure following the aide's appearance. Finally, the unusually deserted Headquarters' area, contrasted with the crowded parking lot here, the empty office within, and the refusal of the Groupman on duty reception even to call the Officer of the Day.
Either Bright himself, or his presence in the war area, had triggered some unusual plan for military action on the part of the Friendly mercenaries. A surprise blow, crushing the Cassidan forces and ending the war suddenly would be excellent publicity for the Eldest's attempts to hire out his Friendly commands of mercenaries in the face of some public dislike on the other worlds of their fanatic behavior and attitudes.
Not that all Friendlies were dislikable, I had been told. But, having met the Groupman inside, I could see where it would not take many like him to prejudice people against the black-clad soldiers as a group.
Therefore, I would bet my boots that Bright was inside the Command Post now with his top brass, preparing some military action to take the Cassidan levies by surprise. And with him would be the aide who had summoned him from Donal Graeme's party - and unless my highly trained professional memory was misleading me, I had a hunch who that aide might be.
I went quickly back down to my own floater, got in it and turned on its phone. Central at Contrevale looked abruptly at me out of the screen, with the face of a pretty, young blonde girl.
I gave her the number of my floater, which of course was a rented vehicle.
"I'd like to speak to a Jamethon Black," I said. "He's an officer with the Friendly forces; I believe he's right now at their Headquarters' Unit near Contrevale. I'm not sure what his rank is - at least Force-Leader, though he may be a Commandant. It's something of an emergency. If you can contact him, would you put him through to me on this phone?''
"Yes, sir," said Central. "Please hold on, I'll report in a minute." The screen blanked out and the voice was replaced by the soft hum that indicated the channel was open and holding.
I sat back against the cushions of the floater, and waited. Less than forty seconds later, the face returned.
"I have reached your party and he will be in contact with you in a few seconds. Will you hold, please?''
"Certainly," I said.
"Thank you, sir." The face disappeared. There was another half minute or so of hum and the screen lit up once more, this time with the face of Jamethon.