"Hello, Force-Leader Black?" I said. "Probably you don't remember me. I'm Newsman Tam Olyn. You used to know my sister, Eileen Olyn."
His eyes had already told me that he remembered me. Evidently I had not changed as much as I thought I had; or else his memory was a very good one. He himself had changed also, but not in any way that would make him unrecognizable. Above the tabs on the lapels of his uniform that showed his rank was still the same, his face had strengthened and deepened. But it was the same still face I remembered from my uncle's library that day. Only - it was older, of course.
I remembered how I had thought of him then, as a boy. Whatever he was now, however, he was a boy no longer. Nor ever could be again,
"What can I do for you, Mr. Olyn?" he asked. His voice was perfectly even and calm, a little deeper than I remembered it. "The operator said your call was an emergency."
"In a way it is," I said, and paused. "I don't want to take you from anything important; but I'm in your Headquarters Area here, in the officers' parking lot just outside the Headquarters Command Building. If you're not too far from there, maybe you can step over here and speak to me for a moment." I hesitated again. "Of course, if you're on duty at the moment-"
"My duty at the moment can spare me for a few minutes," he said. "You're in the parking lot of the Command Building?"
"In a rental floater, green, with transparent top."
"I will be right down, Mr. Olyn."
The screen went blank.
I waited. A couple of minutes later, the same door by which I myself had entered the Command Building to talk with the Groupman behind the counter opened. A dark, slim figure was momentarily silhouetted against the light there; then it came down the three steps toward the lot.
I opened the door of the floater as he got close and slid around on the seat so that he could step in and sit down himself.
"Mr. Olyn?" he said, putting his head in.
"That's right. Join me."
"Thank you."
He stepped in and sat down, leaving the door open behind him. It was a warm spring night for that season and latitude on New Earth; and the soft scents of trees and grasses blew past him into my face.
"What is this emergency?" he asked.
"I've got an assistant I need a pass for." I told him the situation, omitting the fact that Dave was Eileen's husband.
When I was through, he sat silent for a moment, a silhouette against the lights of the lot and the Command Building, with the soft night airs blowing past him.
"If your assistant's not a Newsman, Mr. Olyn," he said at last, in his quiet voice, "I don't see how we can authorize his coming and going behind and through our lines."
"He is a Newsman - for this campaign at least," I said. "I'm responsible for him, and the Guild is responsible for me, as it is for any Newsman. Our impartiality is guaranteed between the stars. That impartiality of course includes my assistant."
He shook his head slowly in the darkness.
"It would be easy enough for you to disown him, if he should turn out to be a spy. You could say simply that he was pushed upon you as an assistant, without your knowledge."
I turned my head to look full into his darkened features. I had led him to this point in our talk for just this reason.
"No, I wouldn't find it easy at all," I said. "Because he wasn't pushed on me. I went to a great deal of trouble to get him. He's my brother-in-law. He's the boy Eileen finally married; and by using him as my assistant, I'm keeping him out of the lines where he's likely to get killed." I paused to let that sink in.
"I'm trying to save his life for Eileen, and I'm asking you to try and help me save it."
He did not move or answer immediately. In the darkness, I could not see any change of expression on his features. But I do not think there would have been any change to see even if I had had light to see by, because he was a product of his own spartan culture, and I had just dealt him a heavy, double blow.
For, as you have seen, that was how I handled men - and women. Deep in every intelligent, living individual are things too great, too secret or too fearful for questioning. Faiths, or loves, or hates or fears or guilts. All I needed ever was to discover these things, and then anchor my argument for the answer I wanted in one of these deep, unself-questionable areas of the individual psyche, so that to question the rightness of what I argued, a man must needs question the secret, unquestionable place in himself as well.
In Jamethon Black's case, I had anchored my request both in that area of him which had been capable of love for Eileen in the first place; and in that part of every prideful man (and pride was in the very bone of the religion of these Friendlies) that required him to be above nourishing a long-held resentment for a past and (as far as he knew) a fair defeat.
To refuse the pass to Dave, now that I had spoken as I did, was tantamount to sending Dave forth to be killed, and who could think this was not done on purpose, now that I had shown Jamethon the emotional lines connecting it to his inner pride and lost love?
He stirred now, on the seat of the floater.
"Give me the pass, Mr. Olyn," he said. "I'll see what can be done."
I gave it to him, and he left me.
In a couple of minutes, he was back. He did not enter the floater this time, but he bent down to the open door and passed in the paper I had given him.
"You did not tell me," he said in his quiet voice, "that you had already applied for a pass, and been refused.''
I stopped dead, still clutching the paper in midair, staring up and out at him.
"Who? That Groupman in there?" I said. "But he's just a noncommissioned officer. And you're not only a commissioned officer but an aide."
"Nonetheless," he said, "a refusal has been given. I cannot alter a decision already made. I'm sorry. No pass is possible for your brother-in-law."
It was only then I realized that the paper he had handed me back was unsigned. I stared at it, as if I could read it in the darkness and will a signature into being on the blank area where it should have gone. Then fury boiled up in me almost beyond control. I jerked my gaze up from the paper and stared out the open door of the floater at Jamethon Black.
"So that's your way of getting out of it!" I said. "That's how you excuse yourself for sending Eileen's husband to his death! Don't think I don't see through you, Black - because I do!"
With his back to the light, with his face in darkness, I still could not see his face and any change that might have come over it at my words. But something like a light sigh, a faint, sad breath, came from him; and he answered in the same, even tones.
"You see only the man, Mr. Olyn," he said. "Not the Vessel of the Lord. I must get back to my duties now. Good morning."
With that he swung closed the door of the floater, turned and went away across the lot. I sat, staring after him, boiling inside at the line of cant he had thrown at me in leaving by way of what I took to be excuse. Then I woke to what I was doing. As the door of the Command Building opened, his dark figure was silhouetted there for an instant, and then disappeared, taking the light with it as the door closed again. I kicked the floater into movement, swung it about and headed out of the military area.
As I drove out past the gateyard, they were changing guards for the three A.M. watch; and the dismissed watch were drawn up in a dark clump, still under weapons, engaged in some ritual of their special worship.
As I passed them, they began to sing - chant rather - one of their hymns. I was not listening for the words, but the three beginning ones stuck in my ear in spite of me. "Soldier, ask not-" were the first three words, of what I later learned was their special battle hymn, sung at times of special rejoicing, or on the very eve of combat.