Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 (37 page)

"Of course," said Ahram; "which files in particular?"

"All of them," answered Bleys.

Ahram's face showed a faint puzzlement.

"Forgive me, Bleys Ahrens," he said, "but you just now said your time was short—"

"It is," Bleys interrupted him; "nonetheless I want all the files brought to me."

"As you wish, it shall be done," said Ahram. He pressed a stud in the control pad among the padding of the right arm of his chair, and spoke to whatever sensor there was equipped to pick up his voice.

"Bring in all our files, also a reading table for Bleys Ahrens," he said, and turned back to Bleys. "They'll be here in just a few minutes. It'll take a little time to get them all together and bring them in. Meanwhile, are you sure you won't have something to eat or drink?"

It probably would do no harm to unbend a little at this point, thought Bleys. They could have hardly behaved more obediently and agreeably.

"Yes, I might as well have a d
rink, while I'm waiting," said
Bleys, "if you'll have one with me, of course."

"I'd be honored, Bleys Ahrens," said Ahram. He got to his feet and opened the door of a large wooden cabinet, jammed with bottles and glasses. "Would you prefer beer or something distilled?"

"Beer will be fine," said Bleys.

Ahram selected two tall tumblers, and filled them from a tap with a dark brown liquid giving a surprisingly wh
ite, thick head. He took one to
Bleys and sat down with one himself.

"This particular brew was Dahno Ahrens' favorite," he said to Bleys, "I hope you like it as well."

Bleys had already lightly tasted what was in his glass.

"It's fine," he said. He put the filled glass aside on a table near his chair as the door behind him opened and a cart wheeled in, bearing a screen and control board with a memory unit attached. A small square table that fitted comfortably across the thick arms of his chair followed and the memory unit was placed before him and turned on.

"Thank you," said Bleys to the young men who had brought it. They bowed their heads and backed out, closing the door behind them.

Bleys checked the control board, and it had its buttons and studs in standard position. He began to work through the files, not category by category, but simply alphabetically, file by file, flashing the equivalent of a page on the screen, reading it at a glance, and passing on to the next. Ahram watched him for some little time.

"Forgive an impertinent question, Bleys Ahrens," he said,

"but are you merely looking for something or are you actually reading parts of those pages?"

"I'm reading the complete page in each case," answered Bleys without looking at him.

Ahram sat silently after that, merely watching as Bleys went through the total extent of the files. He finished his first glass but did not refill it. Bleys' glass continued to sit, practically untouched, where he had left it.

The files, not extensive in Bleys' experience, took him a little over an hour to go through. When he was done he got to his feet and Ahram rose immediately with him.

"Now, what else can I do for you, Bleys Ahrens?" Ahram asked. "Would you like to see our men in competition? As Dahno has possibly told you we have here the finest body of modern
ninjas—"

He broke off.

"You recognize the name?" he said. "The original
ninjas
were assassins."

"I know," said Bleys, dryly. He was about to refuse, when it struck him that there might be some knowledge to be picked up here that he could be overlooking.

"Yes," he said, "but merely a sample of their unarmed combat and a sample of them with the weapons, plus watching some fifteen or twenty of them run an exercise course, will have to do. As I may have said earlier, I don't have a great deal of time. I need to get back to the airport."

"Whatever you wish, Bleys Ahrens," said Ahram. "If you'll come with me?"

He led the way out and Bleys followed him. Ahram went on a little bit ahead when they came to a room that apparently housed the leaders of groups or divisions within the general body of the Hounds. He spoke briefly to these leaders and then came back to join Bleys.

"If you'll follow me," he said, "the unarmed exercise can be set up quickest."

CHAPTER
31

Bleys sat back
with the atmosphere craft on autopilot, on the flight back to Ecumeny. The files he had just looked at and stored in his mind had not yet claimed his attention. He was still thinking of what he had seen in the demonstrations of the Hounds in practice.

On the surface, the young men were quite good. But after watching the first couple in action against each other, he began to suspect something, which was confirmed by the next two pairs he saw. Eventually he asked Ahram's permission to step onto the mat with one of the ones who had just finished demonstrating, and Ahram of course gave it. He knew the
katas
they were working with; they were the same ultimately-derived karate-type
katas
his earliest instructor had taught. Bleys entered into competition, and after a few moments, more or less because he assumed it was expected of him, he finished things by stretching the other man breathless on the mat, and stepped off himself.

"Thank you," he said to Ahram, "that was exactly what I wanted."

Looking into the eyes of Ahram, he could see that not even the leader had picked up on what had disturbed Bleys.

He said nothing more, accordingly, as they went on to the weapons demonstration. Again, he said nothing during the section in which a small group of them ran one of the exercise courses before his eyes.

Done with these demonstrations, he thanked Ahram; and accepted a driver to take him back to the airport. Meanwhile, two of the other members, both of them dressed in ordinary clothes for stepping outside the precincts of their own private area, took his rented car back to where he had picked it up.

Now, he sat thoughtfully with the session in his mind. What had leaped to his eye in the encounter of the first two demonstrating their unarmed martial art, was that they fought strictly at a fixed distance and in a straight line.

When he had stepped onto the mat, consequently, he had made a point of circling and either standing back beyond the distance to which they were accustomed, or moving inside it. Once he had done either of these things, he found them close to helpless and at his mercy.

What all this added up to was that they would be very successful against someone who fought under the same limitations that they had learned and imposed upon themselves. They might also be successful against someone who knew nothing at all of the unarmed martial arts. But they would be essentially useless in attacking anyone who was skilled outside the field of their training.

Later on, watching the weapons-use demonstration, he had found the same dangerous sort of limitations. A great many of them handled their weapons more by rote, than from the standpoint of having the kind of almost family-like familiarity with their weapon that a good, a really good, handler of that weapon would have had. Against a self-trained rifleman for example, who had spent his growing up years like Joshua, teaching himself how to use a needle gun to get small game, they could not hope to compete.

Finally, over the exercise course, he had seen them clearing each barrier the same way, all running in the same pattern. If this was ordinary competition with competitors a long distance apart, extreme individualism would have been shown in the way they acted.

In short, against someone who was an all-around athlete— self-trained or otherwise—but who thought as an athlete and who reacted instinctively as an athlete, they would be at a remarkable disadvantage. The thoroughly-seasoned, fully self-trained athlete would notice their weaknesses at once, and exploit them.

Well, thought Bleys, at any rate it probably did not matter. Barring the unexpected, he would be seeing that neither during Dahno's absence, nor eventually, would they be used. He put that element of the Hounds out of his mind and began to run through his memory and examine the files he had read.

The history of the Hounds ran back a little less than eleven years. That would be some five years after Dahno had left the farm and gone to live and find his own occupation in Ecumeny. Individual Hounds had been recruited when they were ten to twelve years old—an unlikely thing to happen on almost any of the settled worlds nowadays, but oddly enough not on Harmony or Association, where over-large families and undersized or non-productive farms often caused those who considered themselves old enough to strike off on their own, usually with family and community approval.

These young Friendlies, Bleys told himself, would have been particularly susceptible to being attracted and captured by the sort of organization that Dahno's Hounds offered. It had, obviously, its aspect of near-religion, in its concentration on the person of Dahno himself; and Dahno, in person, had undoubtedly been able to reinforce that by visits to these youngsters; and by doing what he could do so well, which was win them as friends and supporters.

It was in the setup for their training, including their instructors and all else, that Dahno had made his most serious error.

Uninterested in martial arts and weapons himself because of the natural advantage of his unusual size and strength—and in fact, very probably having enough of an inheritance from his and Bleys' Exotic mother, of feeling against the use of force, he had accepted too readily the first form of training organization he discovered; and the first teachers and trainers who had presented themselves for his use in educating the Hounds.

If he had studied across a spectrum of a number of schools of unarmed combat, and an equal spectrum of weapon types and uses, as Bleys had deliberately done, he would have seen what was lacking in the training they had been given.

Happily, as Bleys had suspected, and the files had confirmed, the Hounds had never been used. They had, however, been trained in one respect that made them dangerous; and had absorbed it well.

This was the same kind of training that was more often used with guard dogs. They were given the impression that they could never lose. That they would always win. The files, now that Bleys could read them, reflected a few occasions on which the Hounds had been secretly turned loose in situations in Moseville where they could encounter physically someone who was either untrained, or whose training was not equal to matching them in the area they worked.

The result had been that every one of them now believed himself invincible. They were given vacations and days off to go into Moseville for recreation, now that they were older; but always in ordinary civilian clothes, and under the condition that they in no way betrayed what they really were. The Hounds took eagerly to this idea; but just to make these days off safe, Bleys had read in the files, Dahno had had each one on his first few trips observed by hired private observers from cities that were neither Ecumeny nor Moseville, to see if in any way they gave away what they were, or boasted about their background.

None of them had.

On the other hand, unfortunately, as Bleys had said, they were now essentially a loaded weapon itching to be used. Just lately, Ahram had said, they had been training for a specific assassination exercise, although he volunteered no information as to whether this was merely an in-house training exercise, or if they were actually going to be given a live subject, as they had been when they were sent in to reinforce their training against civilians in Moseville.

By and large, most of the files concerned themselves with merely the cost and record keeping of the organization.

Having squeezed most of the juice of important information out of the files, Bleys closed his eyes, tilted his seat back and dropped into a light doze, which was not broken until his ship sat down at Ecumeny. He paid off pilot and airship, and took an autocab back to the apartment; where he climbed into bed and abandoned himself to serious sleep.

He woke later than his usual hour the following morning, but with his mind in that sudden state of crystal clarity that sometimes follows a good night's sleep, once body and mind together have fully come to.

The most immediate item on his program now wa
s
to deal with Norton Brawley.

He called the man's office while he was making breakfast. His call was answered by a female voice who turned out to be a receptionist; and who passed him on to a male voice.

"Norton Brawley's office," said the male voice, "how can I help you?"

"This is Bleys Ahrens," said Bleys, "tell him I want to see him here at the apartment in fifteen minutes."

There was a moment of astonished silence at the other end.

"Who did you say you are? What did you say?" said the male voice.

"Bleys Ahrens. He's to be here at the. apartment in fifteen minutes. Just get the word to him," said Bleys.

The male voice, when it spoke again, seemed to have recovered some of its composure.

"I'm afraid legalist Norton Brawley wouldn't be able to see you within fifteen minutes under any circumstances, let alone out of his own office—"

"That's up to you," said Bleys; "whether it's your doing or his, if he isn't here in fifteen minutes I'll have to assume that he no longer wishes to maintain his former connection with us. Good-bye."

"—Wait a minute. Wait a minute," said the male voice, "who did you say you were?"

"Bleys," said Bleys, enunciating very clearly, "Ahrens."

"And where did you say you were, at a place called the Apartment?"

"The apartment I share with Dahno Ahrens," said Bleys. "He'll know where it is."

"I don't see—it's completely impossible, of course—" the male voice at the other end stopped suddenly,
"Dahno Ahrens?
But you're not Dahno Ahrens."

"I'm sorry," said Bleys, "but I can't waste any more time talking to you. He's either here in the next fifteen minutes or not. Good-bye."

He hung up.

He went back to making his breakfast. He was sitting down to eat it when the annunciator chimed. "Yes?" he said, raising his voice slightly, but not leaving the table.

"Norton Brawley."

Bleys pressed the door release on the nearest control pad, which happened to be the one on the sideboard, without getting out of his chair. Every once in a while he was a little amused at the length of reach of his own adult arms. This was one of those times. He went back to eating as the door opened and a man in his late thirties or early forties and wearing dark business clothes, tall by ordinary standards but not by Bleys', came in.

His face was oval, his eyebrows and hair jet black and straight, and his skin was a dark olive color which made him look Mediterranean in ancestry.

It was a bit unusual, in that most of the European immigrants to the Friendlies had been northern rather than southern Europeans. He had a dapper look, somewhat marred by a slight sheen of sweat on his brow and a slightly flustered look.

"Norton Brawley!" said Bleys, without getting up from the table. "You made it in good time. I'm just about through here. Will you have a cup of coffee with me in the lounge?"

"I—I—" Norton Brawley pulled himself together visibly and stood even straighten "Certainly, Bleys Ahrens." "Black?"

"If you don't mind," said Norton Brawley.

Bleys stood up, and saw the other man's eyes widen a little at the sight of his height. Bleys smiled inwardly. It was always very shocking for a man who considered himself generally taller than most other men to run into someone who overtopped him not by a little but by a great deal.

"Take a seat in the lounge, then," said Bleys. "I'll bring the coffee in, in a second."

Norton went out of sight out of the dining area into the lounge. Bleys disposed of his tray and everything on it and drew two cups of black coffee, which he took around the corner into the lounge.

He handed one of these to Norton, and, with the other, sat down himself in a facing chair.

"Sorry to break you away from your work so suddenly," said Bleys genially, "but I've got a small crisis I wanted to talk to you about."

"If you mean Dahno's leaving and being off-planet now, I already knew that," said Norton, somewhat stiffly; "he phoned me as soon as he made the decision."

"Not as soon as he made the decision, Norton," Bleys corrected him gently. "He made the decision when he was with me."

"Ah . .
.oh,"
said Norton. He reached for his cup, which so far he had not touched, and drank from it. "I didn't know that."

"How could you?" said Bleys. "However, since he left me in charge I've had to make a quick review of things, just to make sure I had all the strings in my hand, so to speak. I find myself a little concerned about this assassination exercise, after seeing the Hounds themselves yesterday."

Norton drank from his cup again, holding it so tightly that his hand almost trembled.

"Why don't you give me your opinion of it?" went on Bleys.

He had nothing more than a
guess that the Hounds might be
put shortly to active use. But he had already read enough from Norton in the way of reaction and body signals, to know that this guess might have some basis in reality.

"I don't know how much Dahno told you about this . . ." Norton hesitated. His fishing for more information from Bleys himself was obvious.

"Don't concern yourself about that," said Bleys, waving the question aside with a hand, "just talk about it on the assumption that I, of course, know everything about it. Give me your opinion as if you were telling me about it for the first time. You see, I know Dahno's opinion, I know what's in the files and his secret files; and I'm sure the Hounds to be engaged in it haven't any idea whether it's simply another practice, or the real thing. Let's not waste any time now. Your opinion?"

For the first time since Norton had walked in, there was a hardening of Bleys' voice on the last question; a bit of a whip-crack, demanding an instant answer rather than asking for one.

"I'm sorry," said Norton hastily. "I didn't understand you'd have anything to do with it."

"Who else?" said Bleys. "Go on, now."

"Well, I don't see how there can be any problem to it," said Norton, falling back into what were obviously something like his ordinary office tones of judicious judgment. "Leaving the speech, any guards McKae's got are going to be relaxed. Also, with our men wearing ordinary clothes as well as whatever badges or emblem the
Arise!
people have handed out to their own ranking members, the odds have to be overwhelming that everybody will assume that McKae was the victim of enemies in his own church."