Certainly we knew, intellectually, that a brick wall was nothing more than a whirring dance of specks separated by enormous spaces. But so long as we continued to perceive it as solid, no amount of intellectual knowledge of the illusoriness of matter made it any easier for us to walk through that brick wall. Faith, not knowledge, finally took us past that barrier.
—a physicist, quoted in TIME/NEWSWEEK for June 18, 2071
Tayn Kellyr looked grimly at the other members of the Council of Eight. She did not relish the announcement she was about to make, nor did she think the others would relish hearing it made. A slow chill wind from the curling fog outside blew in through a gap in the tree's outer layers, adding to her discomfort. She suffered from a mysterious disease that no doubt had a cure somewhere in the Inner Galaxies—if she could have spared the time from the affairs of Freeway to go seek it; for now it meant pain, and mysterious fevers, swellings in curious places, and always the pain. The time was fast approaching when she would have to pay attention to the problem. Today every breath hurt her as she drew it, and the wind at her throat; though it was only a late summer wind, cut her like a narrow knife.
"Dear cousin," said Aaron Begaye at her side, "I think all of us are sufficiently intrigued. Why do you keep us waiting?"
She gathered her thoughts and stood up, set aside the distractions of her illness, and chose her words with care. She could not afford to provoke any of these temperamental allies of hers. Not now.
"I'm not delaying my report to heighten the suspense," she said slowly. "I am just finding it very hard to believe myself what I must ask you to believe."
"Proceed, Citizen," snapped Nicol Asodelyr. "Forget your subtleties, set aside your diplomatic elegances, and proceed!"
"You are impatient, Citizen Asodelyr," she observed. "That is unlikely to impress me."
Beside Asodelyr, Philomena Bass placed one firm square hand on his, cautioning, and he swallowed his retort and waited. He knew, quite as well as did Citizen Bass, that Tayn Kellyr's behavior was not like her, and betrayed some uncommon strain.
"I apologize, Citizen Kellyr," he said, "I am upset and I am perhaps not fully in control of myself. The problem is that I have followed the instructions of this Council to the letter—as has every one of us—and the degree of unrest among the people is beginning to alarm me. We were told to aggravate that unrest, to increase it, and we have done so. We were also told that the whole affair would be over by now, and our lives and the lives of our people beginning to return to normal."
"I understand that, Citizen," said Tayn Kellyr.
"And," he continued, "if you have called us away at this time, when we are desperately needed in our Sectors, just to give us more details about this idiot so-called agent being kidnapped by children and drugged into a hallucinatory stupor—"
"TGIS men are not idiots," said Tayn. "However much it may seem so under this one circumstance, it cannot be. The conditions of their selection are more rigorous than those for choosing either the Communipaths or the Students. The episode to which you refer was an accident—a ridiculous accident, to be sure—due primarily to the fact that the agent was not expecting to be attacked by children. There are certain ethical problems involved in defending oneself against children, Citizen—would you have had the man whip out his weapons and kill them all?"
She stared at him and he glared back in silence, and she nodded slowly.
"Very well, then," she said. "No, the reason for this meeting is far more serious than the comic-opera kidnapping that was our first problem with this plan."
"An omen," observed Felice Manoux-Gerardain. "An obvious omen."
"I must tell you," said the lady of Castle Fra, "that despite the enormous investment of both our time and our funds that we put into computer analysis of our plans, something has gone wrong that neither we nor the computers anticipated. The agent from TGIS has converted to the Shavvy cult."
"What!" Asodelyr half-rose, but Philomena Bass pulled him back into his seat.
"Hush, Citizen, and let Tayn Kellyr continue!" she said to him brusquely.
"Never," Tayn Kellyr went on, "not in our wildest conjectures, did we envision this particular possibility. Remember: the agent is immune to telepathic projection. That is the one reason that he was chosen for this assignment. It should have been impossible for the Shavvy witch to take him in with her tricks."
"Perhaps she took him in with some other sort of tricks?"
Tayn Kellyr looked at Philomena Bass and shook her head, smiling slightly.
"Now, Citizen Bass," she said, "you know perfectly well that Drussa Silver is far too wise in the control of her followers to let any breath of humanity—in the form of ordinary sexual needs—be attributed to her. She is a spectacularly skillful strategist; she has demonstrated that amply. The particular mistake to which you refer is not one she would have made—ever."
"Then what in the name of Abraham's tent hangings did happen?"
Tayn Kellyr shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "I don't understand it," she said. "I admit that freely. It could not have happened, and yet it did. Perhaps we should not have let the agent go about freely among the Shavvies. Perhaps we should have foregone this Student masquerade and demanded that he come here and make an open arrest, despite the consequences and the exposure involved ... who can say? Hindsight is a waste of time. Our concern now must not be with what we should have done, but with what we are to do next."
Enaphel Smythe nodded vigorous agreement. "You are quite right, Citizen Kellyr. The turmoil in this country is too great to let us pull back now."
Tayn Kellyr sat down and folded her hands before her on the nishia-bella slab that served them as table. "Well, then," she said. "Let us see where we are. Citizen Begaye, will you summarize our situation?"
"It couldn't be simpler," said Aaron Begaye. "We can no longer get rid of the Silver by hiding a nerve-dart in the passenger seat of the TGIS man's flyer and blaming him for her death. He's not going to take her back with him for trial. He has reported to his superiors that she is violating no law of any kind, so that plan is out. Nor do we see any other way of arranging for her to be killed and the blame laid at his door—what possible motive could he have now? He's become a Shavvy. He owes her only his devotion—why would he kill her?"
"Under orders, perhaps," mused Citizen Cady. "Despite his own deepest feelings—well-trained officer denies own convictions to follow commands of his superiors—something like that."
"Nonsense!" said Philomena Bass. "People don't kill their gods out of devotion to their governments!"
"And," said Aaron Begaye, "this is not that sort of agent in any case. He is noted for his independence, his basic contempt for such things as orders, and so on."
"And?"
"And," said Tayn Kellyr, "we must therefore move on to Plan Two."
There was a soft whistle from Bent Cady, and a murmur of agreement from the others.
"It's risky," said Bent Cady. "You know yourself that only the first plan was relatively free of risk to us. There are grave dangers to implementing Plan Two, and I think we should consider them very carefully."
"Do you?" asked Tayn Kellyr. "Do you have a better suggestion? As the Citizen from Castle Helix has so aptly pointed out, we are into this too deeply to pull out. We cannot just calm the people now by ending the agitation, even if we were willing to sit by and see our tithes disappear until only we ourselves were tithing."
"Citizen Kellyr!" said Donald Minora. "You go too far in your exaggerations!"
"Not at all; I merely state the obvious. Defections to the Shavvies are up seventeen per cent—seventeen per cent, Citizen Minora—in the last three weeks alone. We have no choice but to proceed, and the odds have been carefully calculated for every single one of the plans. If we bypass Plan Two, we can only substitute another plan which the computers have told us has even greater risks and even lower probabilities of success."
"You are telling us, then, that there is no choice."
"Precisely," she said. "None at all."
The Head stood up and nodded to them all, pulling his rain cape about him and making it fast.
"Let us not waste time, then," he said abruptly. "I will get back to Castle Guthrie and take the necessary steps at once. As for the rest of you, you know what you are to do."
"Citizen Begaye," said Tayn Kellyr. "One moment."
"Yes?"
"I should like to know what it could have been about that madwoman's tricks that got to our agent."
Aaron Begaye looked at her, saw that she was serious, and sat back down again.
"I am sometimes impressed myself," he said.
"You can't be serious!" snapped Asodelyr. "Only a child or an ignorant outplanet savage—"
"I am neither of those," said Tayn Kellyr coldly, cutting him off, "but I am like Aaron—I am sometimes impressed. Do you have any idea, Citizen Asodelyr, how she manages to walk on water? Or, even more amazingly, how she manages to teach ignorant Fealtors to walk on water?"
"I neither know nor am I interested," Nicol Asodelyr said with disgust.
"Then you are a foolish and stupid man," said Tayn Kellyr. "When we have succeeded once again in bringing these Shavvies back into the Old Faith, their new skills will be extremely useful to us. You should be interested as a matter of simple economics."
"I have more important things to do than investigate her absurdities," snorted Asodelyr. "There is surely a trivial and simple explanation, as there is for any fraud."
This time Tayn Kellyr spoke with open contempt, leaning toward the angry man, her face white with her own anger. "You are posturing, Citizen," she hissed at him. "Out of what misplaced idea of self-image or pride, I cannot imagine, but you do yourself no credit. Do not ask us how Drussa Silver corrupted Coyote Jones, and then in the next breath declare that the whole thing is trivial and that you are not interested. Of course you are interested. We are all interested, because it is our life's blood that this woman strikes at and we haven't a clue how she does it! Not to be interested ... that is evidence of either senility or treason!" She stopped and caught her breath, and then turned away from Asodelyr to address the group assembled. "In any case, it no longer matters. What matters is to get rid of the creature and let her sorceries die with her. Now let's get on with it."
Asodelyr opened his mouth, took one look at her face, reconsidered, and kept his silence. He was impetuous, but not foolhardy.
"All right," said the Head smoothly, moving into the awkward breach with as much speed as he could muster. "Let it be agreed. The second plan is the one ranked best by the computers after our failed attempt, the mechanics for getting it underway are at hand, and we should lose no time. So be it."
There was a brief silence, and he said, almost under his breath, "It was not really exactly bright, you know, that business of getting kidnapped and drugged by a handful of teen-age boys. I mean, it does shake one's confidence in the man, and—"
But they were all gone, and he was talking to himself.