It did sound rather odd.
"I shall help you be convinced," he said. "When I spoke to you once about how it felt to be heir to the throne, you sad, quite bluntly-- your father was proud of your bluntness, as I remember-- you said-- and you were a little boy then-- you said, 'Lord Barton, I can only be comfortable as heir because father has no other sons. If I had a brother, I'd have to be more careful how I behaved, for then if they got rid of me there'd always be a spare.' I remember the words because your father made me recite them to five or six different people during my visit, as evidence of your precocity. Do you recall this?"
I did. I recalled the words. I recalled the moment. I even remembered old Barton, younger then, of course; he was much amused and slapped his thigh, roaring with laughter, repeating fragments of the remark. I had felt much impressed with myself at having won laughter from such a man.
I remembered, and at that moment I knew that Barton was right. I had no brother. I was an only child.
And I remembered something else. I remembered Mwabao Mawa. Not in Nkumai, but riding into Jones in an open carriage.
The servant who had brought me to the cliff house came in with toddy in a pitcher.
I had seen a middle-aged white man in that carriage. And then a moment later, coming out of quicktime, I had seen Mwabao Mawa in the carriage in precisely the same place. She saw me; I fled; and yet in all that time since then, I had never wondered why the man would have left the wagon in the midst of the streets of Jones to let Mwabao Mawa get on. Where had Mwabao Mawa been till then? Where did the white man go?
It fit the pattern. A seemingly powerless figurehead, run by the committee of scientists-- but when viewed differently, perhaps the very person who ruled.
The servant poured toddy for me first, at Barton's insistence, and was now carrying another to Barton.
I had been in quicktime when I saw the bald white man. Then, in realtime, I had seen Mwabao. Was that the difference, then? In quicktime, I saw the reality? In realtime, I was fooled like everyone else?
The servant leaned over Barton and I remembered having caught a glimpse, that very morning as I came out of quicktime, of a blue cape on a shorter man turning into a red cape on the gaunt servant who now bent over Barton, who now watched as Barton took the toddy to his lips.
"Don't," I said to Barton. 'Don't drink it."
Barton looked surprised for a moment, while the servant stood, blankly looking at me. Then, suddenly, the servant crumpled and Barton leaped to his feet, ran agilely out the door. I was startled. I was put off. I was slowed down. It took several precious moments before I looked again at the servant lying in a tumble on the floor and realized it was not the servant at all. It was Barton.
How had I seen the servant fall and Barton leave, and been in error? They had never changed places, not that I had seen. And yet there lay Barton, his head had been nearly severed from his body, held in place only by the spine. It must have been done in a single strong whick of a very sharp blade. But when had this happened? Why hadn't I seen?
An iron blade.
No time for speculation, of course. I knelt by Barton and pressed the head against the neck and did the kind of thing I had done for so many Humpers and their animals. I connected blood vessels, I healed torn muscles, I linked the skin together without a seam, I made the body healthy and whole. Then, because I was already doing the work and because I cared for the man and because it was easier to do something I knew how to do than to think about what to do next, I even found his rheumatism and his feebleness and his lung disease and his dying heart and fixed them, renewed them, made him healthier than he had been in many years.
He was conscious, looking at me. "Man-of-the-Wind," he said, smiling. "The stories are true."
"The servant was one of them," I said, though of course I had no idea who they were, except that somehow they had come to rule the world.
"That much I guessed as the blade passed through my throat. Dear Dul. How do they carry off their disguise, Lanik? I distinctly remember believing that Dul was born in this house, the child of my housekeeper. It never occurred to me to question the memory. He overheard our conversation, of course. I suppose he meant to poison us. You warned me not to drink-- tell me, how did you guess?"
I had neither time nor inchnation to tell him about Ku Kuei and the manipulation of time. "I just guessed," I said. "You had made me alert."
He looked at me doubtfully, then probably decided that if I had wanted to tell the truth I would have told it already. He got to his feet. He arose so suddenly, in fact, that he startled himself and nearly lost his balance forward. "When you heal someone, you don't go by halves, do you?" he asked. "I feel like a thirty-year-old."
"A shame. I meant for you to feel twenty."
"I didn't want to brag. Lanik, what are you? Never mind. Never mind. The question that matters is, What is Dul, what is Percy, what is Dinte? I doubt we'll find Dul, at any rate. Even if we chased him, he'd probably seem to be an old woman and then slip a knife into our backs as we passed."
"We?" I asked.
"I was waiting to see if you confirmed my theory before I acted," Barton said. "I was still-- in the back of my mind, I was still more than a little worried that I was going mad, that I had made it all up. But now, of course, I know I'm right and so do you, and since I'm also now in excellent youthful vigor, it's time to confront Percy and kill the little bastard."
Kill? "You don't seem the type," I said.
"Perhaps not," Barton answered. "But there's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger. He made a fool of me, and not over something small, but over my own self, over my own wife, over my own hope of a family. He became my heir, he used me is a springboard to power, and all by pretending, by ifluencing me into thinking he was my son. I'm very angry, Lanik Mueller."
"He'll also think you're dead, once Dul gets back to him. Is it wise to disabuse him of the notion soon?"
Barton paused at that.
"Besides, Barton, what good will killing one of them do? We already have evidence of four of them-- Dinte, your son Percy, Dul, and the woman from Nkumai, Mwabao Mawa."
"So now you're sure of her, too?"
"I saw something once that I didn't understand till now. Four, but surely there are others ready to step into their place. If we're to solve the problem, we have to find out where they're from."
"Does it matter?" he asked.
"Doesn't it?"
He smiled. "Yes, it does. It occurs to me that they've gone a long way toward taking over the entire planet. And Nkumai and Mueller both had iron, yes?"
"And now these people, whoever they are and however they do what they do, now they control the source of that iron."
Barton shook his head and laughed bitterly. "For thousands of years all the families have competed murderously for something to sell offworld through the Ambassadors in order to be the first to build a starship and get out of here. Now they'll be first, no matter who wins. Now they'll control it all. And no one but us even realizes they're doing it."
"It's not your normal swindle," I pointed out.
"You've taken all this so calmly."
"I'm used to seeing strange things in this world. I'm going to Gill, Barton, but I urge you to stay here. Here, at least, you'll be safe. And I think I have a way of recognizing them. Easily and safely. Recognizing them and getting around their illusions."