I paused only to check my mail on Earth and then transshipped immediately for Harmony, and the site on that planet of the United Council of Churches, which together governed both Friendly worlds of Harmony and Association. I spent five days in the city there, cooling my heels in the offices and wardrooms of minor officers of their so-called Public Relations Bureau.
On the sixth day, a note I had sent immediately on arriving to Field Commander Wassel paid its dividend. I was taken to the Council building, itself; and, after being searched for weapons - there were some violent sectarian differences between Church groups on the Friendly worlds themselves, and they made no exceptions, evidently, even for Newsmen- I was admitted to a lofty-ceilinged office with bare walls. There, surrounded by a few straight-backed chairs, in the middle of the black-and-white tile of the floor, sat a heavy desk with the seated man behind it dressed entirely in black.
The only white things about him were his face and hands. All else was covered. But his shoulders were as square and broad as a barn door and above them his white face had eyes as black as the clothing, which seemed to blaze at me. He got up and came around the desk, towering half a head over me, to offer his hand.
"God be with you," he said.
Our hands met. There was the hint of a hard touch of amusement in the thin line of his straight mouth; and the glance of his eyes seemed to probe me like twin doctor's scalpels. He held my hand, not hard, but with the hint of a strength that could crush my fingers as if in a vise, if he chose.
I was face to face, at last, with the Eldest of that Council of Elders who ruled the combined churches of Harmony and Association, him who was called Bright, First among the Friendlies.
Chapter 19
"You come well recommended by Field Commander Wassel," he said after he had shaken my hand. "An unusual thing for a Newsman." It was a statement, not a sneer; and I obeyed his invitation - almost more order than invitation - to sit, as he went back around to sit down behind his desk. He faced me across it. There was power in the man, the promise of a black flame. Like the promise, it suddenly occurred to me, of the flame latent in the gunpowder, stored in 1687 by the Turks within the Parthenon, when a shell fired by the Venetian army under Morosini exploded the black grains and blew out the center of that white temple. There had always been a special dark corner of hatred in me for that shell and that army - for if the Parthenon had been living refutation of Mathias' darkness to me as a boy, the destruction wrought by that shell had been evidence of how that darkness conquered, even in the heart of light.
So, viewing Eldest Bright, I connected him in my mind with that old hate, though I was careful to shield my feelings from his eyes. Only in Padma had I felt such a penetrating power of gaze, before now - and there was a man here, too, behind the gaze.
For the eyes themselves were the eyes of a Torquemada, that prime mover of the Inquisition in ancient Spain - as others had remarked before me; for the Friendly Churches were not without their own repressers and extinguishers of heresy. But behind those eyes moved the political intelligence of a mind that knew when to leash or when to loose the powers of two planets. For the first time I realized the feeling of someone who, stepping into the lion's cage alone for the first time, hears the steel door click shut behind him.
For the first time, also, since I had stood in the Index Room of the Final Encyclopedia and loosened the hinges of my knees - for what if this man had no weaknesses; and in trying to control him, I only gave my plans away?
But the habits of a thousand interviews were coming to my rescue and even as the doubts struck and clung to me, my tongue was working automatically.
". . .the utmost in cooperation from Field Commander Wassel and his men on New Earth," I said. "I appreciated it highly."
"I, too," said Bright harshly, his eyes burning upon me, "appreciated a Newsman without bias. Otherwise you wouldn't be here in my office interviewing me. The work of the Lord between the stars leaves me little time for providing amusement for the ungodly of seven systems. Now, what's the reason for this interview?"
"I've been thinking of making a project," I said, "of revealing the Friendlies in a better light to people on the other worlds-"
"To prove your loyalty to the Creed of your profession - as Wassel said?" interrupted Bright.
"Why, yes," I said. I stiffened slightly in my chair. "I was orphaned at an early age; and the dream of my growing years was to join the News Services-"
"Don't waste my time, Newsman!" Bright's hard voice chopped like an axe across the unfinished section of my sentence. He got to his feet once more, suddenly, as if the energy in him was too great to be contained, and prowled around his desk to stand looking down at me, thumbs hooked in the belt at his narrow waist, his bony, middle-aged face bent above me. "What's your Creed to me, who move in the light of God's word?"
"We all move in our own lights, in our own way," I said. He was standing so close above me that I could not get to my feet to face him as my instincts urged me. It was as if he held me physically pinned in my chair, beneath him. “If it weren't for my Creed I wouldn't be here now. Perhaps you don't know what happened to me and my brother-in-law at the hands of one of your Groupmen on New Earth-"
"I know." The two words were merciless. "You'll have been apologized to, some time since, for that. Listen to me, Newsman." His thin lips quirked slightly in a sour smile. "You are not Anointed of the Lord."
"No," I said.
"In those who follow God's word, there may be a cause to believe that they act from faith in something more than their own selfish interests. But in those without the Light, how can there be any faith to anything but themselves?" The quirking smile on his own lips mocked his own words, mocked at the canting phrases in which he called me a liar - and dared me to deny the sophistication in him that had permitted him to see through me.
I stiffened this time with a look of outrage.
"You're sneering at my Newsman's Creed only because it isn't your own!" I snapped at him.
My outburst moved neither him nor his quirk of a smile.
"The Lord would not choose a fool to be Eldest over the Council of our Churches," he said - and turning his back on me, walked back around to sit down once more behind his desk. "You should have thought of that before you came to Harmony, Newsman. But at any rate you know it now."
I stared at him, almost blinded by the sudden brilliance of my own understanding. Yes, I knew it now - and in knowing it, suddenly saw how he had delivered himself out of his own mouth into my hands.
I had been afraid that he might turn out to have no weakness of which I could take advantage as I had taken advantage of lesser men and women with my words. And it was true - he had no ordinary weakness. But by the same token he had an extraordinary one. For his weakness was his strength, that same sophistication that had lifted him to be ruler and leader of his people. His weakness was that to have become what he was, he had to be as fanatic as the worst of them were - but with something more, as well. He had to have the extra strength that made him able to lay his fanaticism aside, when it came to interfere in his dealing with the leaders of other worlds - with his equals and opposites between the stars. It was this, this he had unknowingly admitted to me just now.
Unlike the furious-eyed, black-clad ones about him, he was not limited to the fanatic's view of the universe that painted everything in colors of either pure black or pure white. He was able to perceive and deal in shades between - in shades of gray, as well. In short, he could be a politician when he chose - and, as a politician, I could deal with him.