As a politician, I could lead him into a politician's error.
I crumpled. I let the stiffness go out of me suddenly as I sat in my chair with his eyes newly upon me. And I heaved a long, shuddering breath.
"You're right," I said in a dead voice. I got to my feet. "Well, it's no use now. I'll be going-"
"Go?" His voice cracked like a rifle shot, stopping me. "Did I say the interview was over? Sit down!"
Hastily I sat down again. I was trying to look pale, and I think I succeeded. For all I had suddenly understood him, I was still in the lion's cage, and he was still the lion.
"Now," he said, staring at me, "what did you really hope to gain from me - and from us who are the Chosen of God on these two worlds?"
I wet my lips.
"Speak up," he said. He did not raise his voice, but the low, carrying tones of it promised retribution on his part if I did not obey.
"The Council-" I muttered.
"Council? The Council of our Elders? What about it?"
"Not that," I said, looking down at the floor. "The Council of the Newsman's Guild. I wanted a seat on it. You Friendlies could be the reason I could get it. After Dave - after what happened to my brother-in-law - my showing with Wassel that I could do my job without bias even to you people - that's been getting me attention, even in the Guild. If I could go on with that - if I could raise public opinion in the other seven systems in your favor - it'd raise me, too, in the public eye. And in the Guild."
I stopped speaking. Slowly I looked up at him. He was staring at me with harsh humor.
"Confession cleanses the soul even of such as you," he said grimly. "Tell me, you’ve given thought to the improvement of our public image among the cast-aside of the Lord on the other worlds?"
"Why, that depends," I said. "I'd have to look around here for story material. First-"
"Never mind that now!"
He rose once more behind his desk and his eyes commanded me to rise also, so I did.
"We'll go into this in a few days," he said. His Torquemada's smile saluted me. "Good-day for the present, Newsman."
"Good-day," I managed to say. I turned and went out, shakily.
Nor was the shakiness entirely assumed. My legs felt weak, as if from tense balancing on the edge of a precipice, and a dry tongue clung to the roof of my dry mouth.
I puttered around the town the next few days, ostensibly picking up background material. Then, on the fourth day after I had seen Eldest Bright, I was called once more to his office. He was standing when I came in, and he remained standing, halfway between the door and his desk.
"Newsman," he said abruptly, as I came in, "it occurs to me that you can't favor us in your news reports without your fellow Guild members noticing that favoring. If this is so, what good are you to me?"
"I didn't say I'd favor you," I answered indignantly. "But if you show me something favorable on which I can report, I can report on it."
"Yes." He looked hard at me with the black flames of his eyes. "Come and look at our people, then."
He led me out of his office and down an elevator tube to a garage where a staff car was waiting. We got in and its driver took us out of the Council City, through a countryside that was bare and stony, but neatly divided into farms.
"Observe," said Bright dryly as we went through a small town that was hardly more than a village. "We grow only one crop thickly on our poor worlds - and those are the bodies of our young men, to be hired out as soldiers that our people may not starve and our Faith endure. What disfigures these young men and the other people we pass that those on the other worlds should resent them so strongly, even while hiring them to fight and die in their foreign wars?"
I turned and saw his eyes on me with grim amusement, once again.
"Their - attitudes," I said cautiously.
Bright laughed, a short lion's cough of a laugh deep in his chest.
"Attitudes!" he said harshly. "Put a plain word to it, Newsman! Not attitudes - pride! Pride! Bone-poor, skilled only in hand toil and weapon-handling, as these people you see are - still they look as if from lofty mountains down on the dust-born slugs who hire them, knowing that those employers may be rich in worldly wealth and furniture, fat in foodstuffs and padded in soft raiment - yet when all peoples pass alike beyond the shadow of the grave, then they, who have wallowed in power and wealth, will not be endured even to stand, cap in hand, below those gates of silver and of gold which we, who have suffered and are Anointed, pass singing through."
He smiled at me, his savage, predator's smile, across the width of the staff car.
"What can you find in all you see here," he said, "to teach a proper humbleness and a welcome to those who hire the Bespoken of the Lord?''
He was mocking me again. But I had seen through him on that first visit in his office, and the subtle path to my own end was becoming clearer as we talked. So his mockery bothered me less and less.
"It isn't pride or humbleness on either side that I can do much about," I said. "Besides, that isn't what you need. You don't care what employers think of your troops, as long as they hire them. And employers will hire them, if you can make your people merely bearable - not necessarily lovable, but bearable."
"Stop here, driver!" interrupted Bright; and the car pulled to a halt.
We were in a small village. Sober, black-clad people moved between the buildings of bubble-plastic - temporary structures which would long since on other worlds have been replaced with more sophisticated and attractive housing.
"Where are we?" I asked.
“A lesser town called Remembered-of-the-Lord,” he answered, and dropped the window on his side of the car. "And here comes someone you know."
In fact, a slim figure in a Force-Leader's uniform was approaching the car. It reached us, stooped slightly, and the face of Jamethon Black looked calmly in on both of us.
"Sir?" he said to Bright.
"This officer," said Bright, to me, "seemed qualified once for high service in the ranks of us who served God's will. But six years past, he was attracted by a daughter of a foreign world who would not have him; and since then he has seemed to lose his will to rise in rank among us." He turned to Jamethon. "Force-Leader," he said. "You have seen this man twice. Once in his home on Earth six years ago, when you sought his sister in marriage; and again last year on New Earth when he sought from you a pass to protect his assistant between the battle lines. Tell me, what do you know about him?"
Jamethon's eyes looked across the interior of the car into mine.
"Only that he loved his sister and wanted a better life for her, perhaps, than I could give her," said Jamethon in a voice as calm as his face. "And that he wished his brother-in-law well, and sought protection for him." He turned to look directly into the eyes of Bright. "I believe him to be an honest man and a good one, Eldest."
"I did not ask for your beliefs!" snapped Bright.
"As you wish," said Jamethon, still calmly facing the older man; and I felt a rage swelling up inside me so that I thought that I would burst out with it, no matter what the consequences.
Rage against Jamethon, it was. For not only had he the effrontery to recommend me to Bright as an honest man and a good one, but because there was something else about him that was like a slap in the face. For a moment, I could not identify it. And then it came to me. He was not afraid of Bright. And I had been so, in that first interview.
Yet I was a Newsman, with the immunity of the Guild behind me; and he was a mere Force-Leader facing his own Commander-in-Chief, the Warlord of two worlds, of which Jamethon's was only one. How could he-? And then it came to me, so that I almost ground my teeth in fury and frustration. For it was with Jamethon no different than it had been with the Groupman on New Earth who had denied me a pass to keep Dave safe. That Groupman had been instantly ready to obey that Bright, who was the Eldest, but felt in himself no need to bow before that other Bright, who was merely the man.