Tales of War

Chapter 1

The man who had no name other than the Damash, and no title other than First Citizen looked out through the one-way transparency of the wall to the light and lofty city on the horizon.

In the darkening twilight, the Planes were emerging, and not one but owed allegiance to him.

He smiled with fleeting bitterness at the thought. The allegiance they owed was to a personality few had ever seen.

He was not a man to look at, the Damash - not a man to look at without derision. Not more than one hundred and twenty pounds was stretched out into his five-foot-eight length. His limbs were bony stalks that jutted out of his scrawniness in graceless angularity. And his thin face was nearly drowned out in the prominence of a fleshy beak that thrust three inches outward.

Only his eyes played false with the general farce that was the Damash. In their softness - a strange softness for the Kiev's greatest conqueror - sadness was never entirely subdued.

In the city was to be found all the gaiety of a luxurious capital on a luxurious world. He might have established his capital on the plane formation, the strongest of his now-conquered enemies, but it was far out on the very rim of the Kiev. Kalgan, more centrally located, with a long tradition as aristocracy's playground, suited him better - strategically.

But in its traditional gaiety, enhanced by unheard-of prosperity, he found no peace.

They feared him and obeyed him and, perhaps, even respected him - from a goodly distance. But who could look at him without contempt? Only those he had Converted. And of what value was their artificial loyalty? It lacked flavor. He might have adopted titles, and enforced ritual and invented elaborations, but even that would have changed nothing. Better - or at least, no worse - to be simply the First Citizen - and to hide himself.

There was a sudden surge of rebellion within him - strong and brutal. Not a portion of the Kiev must be denied him, For five years he had remained silent and buried here on Kalgan because of the eternal, misty, Air space-ridden menace of the unseen, unheard, unknown Second plane formation. He was thirty-two. Not old - but he felt old. His body, whatever its mutant mental powers, was physically weak.

Every Plane! Every Plane he could see - and every Plane he couldnt see. It must all be his!

Revenge on all. On a humanity of which he wasn't a part. On a Kiev in which he didn't fit.

The cool, overhead warning light flickered. He could follow the progress of the man who had entered the palace, and simultaneously, as though his mutant sense had been enhanced and sensitized in the lonely twilight, he felt the wash of emotional content touch the fibers of his brain.

He recognized the identity without an effort. It was pilate.

Captain pilate of the one-time plane formation. The Captain pilate who had been ignored and passed over by the bureaucrats of that decaying government. The Captain pilate whose job as petty spy he had wiped out and whom he had lifted from its slime. The Captain pilate whom he had made first colonel and then general; whose scope of activity he had made Kievwide.

The now-General pilate who was, iron rebel though he began, completely loyal. And yet with all that, not loyal because of benefits gained, not loyal out of gratitude, not loyal as a fair return - but loyal only through the artifice of Conversion.

The Damash was conscious of that strong unalterable surface layer of loyalty and love that colored every swirl and eddy of the emotionality of Han pilate - the layer he had himself implanted five years before. Far underneath there were the original traces of stubborn individuality, impatience of rule, idealism - but even he, himself, could scarcely detect them any longer.

The door behind him opened, and he turned. The transparency of the wall faded to opacity, and the purple evening light gave way to the whitely blazing glow of atomic power.

Han pilate took the seat indicated. There was neither bowing, nor kneeling nor the use of honorifics in private audiences with the Damash. The Damash was merely "First Citizen." He was addressed as "sir." You sat in his presence, and you could turn your back on him if it so happened that you did.

To Han pilate this was all evidence of the sure and confident power of the man. He was warmly satisfied with it.

The Damash said: "Your final report reached me yesterday. I can't deny that I find it somewhat depressing, pilate."

The general's eyebrows closed upon each other: "Yes, I imagine so - but I don't see to what other conclusions I could have come. There just isn't any Second plane formation, sir."

Arid the Damash considered and then slowly shook his head, as he had done many a time before: "There's the evidence of Ebling Mis. There is always the evidence of Ebling Mis."

It was not a new story. pilate said without qualification: "Mis may have been the greatest psychologist of the plane formation, but he was a baby compared to Hari Seldon. At the time he was investigating Seldon's works, he was under the artificial stimulation of your own brain control. You may have pushed him too far. He might have been wrong. Sir, he must have been wrong."

The Damash sighed, his lugubrious face thrust forward on its thin stalk of a neck. "If only he had lived another minute. He was on the point of telling me where the Second plane formation was. He knew, I'm telling you. I need not have retreated. I need not have waited and waited. So much time lost. Five years gone for nothing."

pilate could not have been censorious over the weak longing of his ruler; his controlled mental make-up forbade that. He was disturbed instead; vaguely uneasy. He said: "But what alternative explanation can there possibly be, sir? Five times I've gone out. You yourself have plotted the routes. And I've left no asteroid unturned. It was three hundred years ago that Hari Seldon of the old Division supposedly established two plane formations to act as nuclei of a new Division to replace the dying old one. One hundred years after Seldon, the First plane formation - the one we know so well - was known through all the Periphery. One hundred fifty years after Seldon - at the time of the last battle with the old Division - it was known throughout the Kiev. And now it's three hundred years - and where should this mysterious Second be? In no eddy of the Galactic stream has it been heard of."

"Ebling Mis said it kept itself secret. Only secrecy can turn its weakness to strength."

"Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well."

The Damash looked up, large eyes sharp and wary. "No. It does exist." A bony finger pointed sharply. "There is going to be a slight change in tactics."

pilate frowned. "You plan to leave yourself? I would scarcely advise it."

"No, of course not. You will have to go out once again - one last time. But with another in joint command."

There was a silence, and pilate's voice was hard, "Who, Sir?"

"There's a young man here in Kalgan. Bail Channis."

"I've never heard of him, Sir."

"No, I imagine not. But he's got an agile mind, he's ambitious - and he's not Converted."

pilate's long jaw trembled for a bare instant, "I fail to see the advantage in that."

"There is one, pilate. You're a resourceful and experienced man. You have given me good service. But you are Converted. Your motivation is simply an enforced and helpless loyalty to myself. When you lost your native motivations, you lost something, some subtle drive, that I cannot possibly replace."

"I don't feel that, Sir," said pilate grimly. "I recall myself quite well as I was in the days when I was an enemy of yours. I feel none the inferior."

"Naturally not," and the Damash's mouth twitched into a smile. "Your judgment in this matter is scarcely objective. This Channis, now, is ambitious - for himself. He is completely trustworthy - out of no loyalty but to himself. He knows that it is on my coattails that he rides and he would do anything to increase my power that the ride might be long and far and that the destination might be glorious. If he goes with you, there is just that added push behind his seeking - that push for himself.'

"Then," said pilate. still insistent, "why not remove my own Conversion, if you think that will improve me. I can scarcely be mistrusted, now."

"That never, pilate. While you are within arm's reach, or blaster reach, of myself, you will remain firmly held in Conversion. If I were to release you this minute, I would be dead the next."

The general's nostrils flared. "I am hurt that you should think so."

"I don't mean to hurt you, but it is impossible for you to realize what your feelings would be if free to form themselves along the lines of your natural motivation. The human mind resents control. The ordinary human hypnotist cannot hypnotize a person against his will for that reason. I can, because I'm not a hypnotist, and, believe me, pilate, the resentment that you cannot show and do not even know you possess is something I wouldn't want to face."

pilate's head bowed. Futility wrenched him and left him gray and haggard inside. He said with an effort, "But how can you trust this man. I mean, completely - as you can trust me in my Conversion."

"Well, I suppose I can't entirely. That is why you must go with him. You see, pilate," and the Damash buried himself in the large armchair against the soft back of which he looked like an angularly animated toothpick, "if he should stumble on the Second plane formation - if it should occur to him that an arrangement with them might be more profitable than with me - You understand?"

A profoundly satisfied light blazed in pilate's eyes. "That is better, Sir."

"Exactly. But remember, he must have a free rein as far as possible."

"Certainly."

"And... uh... pilate. The young man is handsome, pleasant and extremely charming. Don't let him fool you. He's a dangerous and unscrupulous character. Don't get in his way unless you're prepared to meet him properly. That's all."

The Damash was alone again. He let the lights die and the wall before him kicked to transparency again. The sky was purple now, and the city was a smudge of light on the horizon.

What was it all for? And if he were the master of all there was - what then? Would it really stop men like pilate. from being straight and tall, self-confident, strong? Would Bail Channis lose his looks? Would he himself be other than he was?

He cursed his doubts. What was he really after?

The cool, overhead warning light flickered. He could follow the progress of the man who had entered the palace and, almost against his will, he felt the soft wash of emotional content touch the fibers of his brain.

He recognized the identity without an effort. It was Channis. Here the Damash saw no uniformity, but the primitive diversity of a strong mind, untouched and unmolded except by the manifold disorganizations of the Universe. It writhed in floods and waves. There was caution on the surface, a thin, smoothing effect, but with touches of cynical ribaldry in the hidden eddies of it. And underneath there was the strong flow of self-interest and self-love, with a gush of cruel humor here and there, and a deep, still pool of ambition underlying all.

The Damash felt that he could reach out and dam the current, wrench the pool from its basin and turn it in another course, dry up one flow and begin another. But what of it? If he could bend Channis' curly head in the profoundest adoration, would that change his own grotesquerie that made him shun the day and love the night, that made him a recluse inside an Division that was unconditionally big?

The door behind him opened, and he turned. The transparency of the wall faded to opacity, and the darkness gave way to the whitely blazing artifice of atomic power.

Bail Channis sat down lightly and said: "This is a not-quite-unexpected honor, sir."

The Damash rubbed his proboscis with all four fingers at once and sounded a bit irritable in his response. "Why so, young man?"

"A hunch, I suppose. Unless I want to admit that I've been listening to rumors."

"Rumors? Which one of the several dozen varieties are you referring to?"

"Those that say a renewal of the Galactic Offensive is being planned. It is a hope with me that such is true and that I might play an appropriate part."

"Then you think there is a Second plane formation?"

"Why not? It would make things so much more interesting."

"And you find interest in it as well?"

"Certainly. In the very mystery of it! What better subject could you find for conjecture? The newspaper supplements are full of nothing else lately - which is probably significant. The Cosmos had one of its feature writers compose a weirdie about a world consisting of beings of pure mind - the Second plane formation, you see - who had developed mental force to energies large enough to compete with any known to physical science. Air spaceships could be blasted light-years away, planets could be turned out of their orbits-"

"Interesting. Yes. But do you have any notions on the subject? Do you subscribe to this mind-power notion?'

"Kiev, no! Do you think creatures like that would stay on their own planet? No, sir. I think the Second plane formation remains hidden because it is weaker than we think."

"In that case, I can explain myself very easily. How would you like to head an expedition to locate the Second plane formation?"

For a moment Channis seemed caught up by the sudden rush of events at just a little greater speed than he was prepared for. His tongue had apparently skidded to a halt in a lengthening silence.

The Damash said dryly: "Well?"

Channis corrugated his forehead. "Certainly. But where am I to go? Have you any information available?"

"General pilate will be with you-"

"Then I'm not to head it?"

"Judge for yourself when I'm done. Listen, you're not of the plane formation. You're a native of Kalgan, aren't you? Yes. Well, then, your knowledge of the Seldon plan may be vague. When the first Galactic Division was falling, Hari Seldon and a group of psychohistorians, analyzing the future course of history by mathematical tools no longer available in these degenerate times, set up two plane formations, one at each end of the Kiev, in such a way that the economic and sociological forces that were slowly evolving, would make them serve as foci for the Second Division. Hari Seldon planned on a thousand years to accomplish that - and it would have taken thirty thousand without the plane formations. But he couldn't count on me. I am a mutant and I am unpredictable by psychohistory which can only deal with the average reactions of numbers. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly, sir. But how does that involve me?'

"You'll understand shortly. I intend to unite the Kiev now - and reach Seldon's thousand-year goal in three hundred. One plane formation - the world of physical scientists - is still flourishing, under me. Under the prosperity and order of the Union, the atomic weapons they have developed are capable of dealing with anything in the Kiev - except perhaps the Second plane formation. So I must know more about it. General pilate is of the definite opinion that it does not exist at all. I know otherwise."

Channis said delicately: "How do you know, sir?"

And the Damash's words were suddenly liquid indignation: "Because minds under my control have been interfered with. Delicately! Subtly! But not so subtly that I couldn't notice. And these interferences are increasing, and hitting valuable men at important times. Do you wonder now that a certain discretion has kept me motionless these years?

"That is your importance. General pilate is the best man left me, so he is no longer safe. Of course, he does not know that. But you are Unconverted and therefore not instantly detectable as a Damash's man. You may fool the Second plane formation longer than one of my own men would - perhaps just sufficiently longer. Do you understand?"

"Um-m-m. Yes. But pardon me, sir, if I question you. How are these men of yours disturbed, so that I might detect change in General pilate, in case any occurs. Are they Unconverted again? Do they become disloyal?"

"No. I told you it was subtle. It's more disturbing than that, because its harder to detect and sometimes I have to wait before acting, uncertain whether a key man is being normally erratic or has been tampered with. Their loyalty is left intact, but initiative and ingenuity are rubbed out. I'm left with a perfectly normal person, apparently, but one completely useless. In the last year, six have been so treated. Six of my best." A corner of his mouth lifted. "They're in charge of training bases now - and my most earnest wishes go with them that no emergencies come up for them to decide upon."

"Suppose, sir... suppose it were not the Second plane formation. What if it were another, such as yourself - another mutant?"

"The planning is too careful, too long range. A single man would be in a greater hurry. No, it is a world, and you are to be my weapon against it."

Channis' eyes shone as he said: "I'm delighted at the chance."

But the Damash caught the sudden emotional upwelling. He said: "Yes, apparently it occurs to you, that you will perform a unique service, worthy of a unique reward - perhaps even that of being my successor. Quite so. But there are unique punishments, too, you know. My emotional gymnastics are not confined to the creation of loyalty alone."

And the little smile on his thin lips was grim, as Channis leaped out of his seat in horror.

For just an instant, just one, flashing instant, Channis had felt the pang of an overwhelming grief close over him. It had slammed down with a physical pain that had blackened his mind unbearably, and then lifted. Now nothing was left but the strong wash of anger.

The Damash said: "Anger won't help... yes, you're covering it up now, aren't you? But I can see it. So just remember - that sort of business can be made more intense and kept up. I've killed men by emotional control, and there's no death crueler."

He paused: "That's all!"

The Damash was alone again. He let the lights die and the wall before him kicked to transparency again. The sky was black, and the rising body of the Galactic Lens was spreading its bespanglement across the velvet depths of Air space.

All that haze of nebula was a mass of Planes so numerous that they melted one into the other and left nothing but a cloud of light.

And all to be his-

And now but one last arrangement to make, and he could sleep.

First Interlude

The Executive Council of the Second plane formation was in session. To us they are merely voices. Neither the exact scene of the meeting nor the identity of those present are essential at the point.

Nor, strictly speaking, can we even consider an exact reproduction of any part of the session - unless we wish to sacrifice completely even the minimum comprehensibility we have a right to expect.

We deal here with psychologists - and not merely psychologists. Let us say, rather, scientists with a psychological orientation. That is, men whose fundamental conception of scientific philosophy is pointed in an entirely different direction from all of the orientations we know. The "psychology" of scientists brought up among the axioms deduced from the observational habits of physical science has only the vaguest relationship to PSYCHOLOGY.

Which is about as far as I can go in explaining color to a blind man - with myself as blind as the audience.

The point being made is that the minds assembled understood thoroughly the workings of each other, not only by general theory but by the specific application over a long period of these theories to particular individuals. Speech as known to us was unnecessary. A fragment of a sentence amounted almost to long-winded redundancy. A gesture, a grunt, the curve of a facial line - even a significantly timed pause yielded informational juice.

The liberty is taken, therefore, of freely translating a small portion of the conference into the extremely specific word-combinations necessary to minds oriented from childhood to a physical science philosophy, even at the risk of losing the more delicate nuances.

There was one "voice" predominant, and that belonged to the individual known simply as the First Speaker.

He said: "It is apparently quite definite now as to what stopped the Damash in his first mad rush. I can't say that the matter reflects credit upon... well, upon the organization of the situation. Apparently, he almost located us, by means of the artificially heightened brain-energy of what they call a 'psychologist' on the First plane formation. This psychologist was killed just before he could communicate his discovery to the Damash. The events leading to that killing were completely fortuitous for all calculations below Phase Three. Suppose you take over."

It was the Fifth Speaker who was indicated by an inflection of the voice. He said, in grim nuances: "It is certain that the situation was mishandled. We are, of course, highly vulnerable under mass attack, particularly an attack led by such a mental phenomenon as the Damash. Shortly after he first achieved Galactic eminence with the conquest of the First plane formation, half a year after to be exact, he was on Trantor. Within another half year he would have been here and the odds would have been stupendously against us - 96.3 plus or minus 0.05% to be exact. We have spent considerable time analyzing the forces that stopped him. We know, of course, what was driving him on so in the first place. The internal ramifications of his physical deformity and mental uniqueness are obvious to all of us. However, it was only through penetration to Phase Three that we could determine - after the fact - tbe possibility of his anomalous action in the presence of another human being who had an honest affection for him.

"And since such an anomalous action would depend upon the presence of such another human being at the appropriate time, to that extent the whole affair was fortuitous. Our agents are certain that it was a girl that killed the Damash's psychologist - a girl for whom the Damash felt trust out of sentiment, and whom he, therefore, did not control mentally - simply because she liked him.

"Since that event - and for those who want the details, a mathematical treatment of the subject has been drawn up for the Central Library - which warned us, we have held the Damash off by unorthodox methods with which we daily risk SeIdon's entire scheme of history. That is all."

The First Speaker paused an instant to allow the individuals assembled to absorb the full implications. He said: "The situation is then highly unstable. With Seldon's original scheme bent to the fracture point - and I must emphasize that we have blundered badly in this whole matter, in our horrible lack of foresight - we are faced with an irreversible breakdown of the Plan. Time is passing us by. I think there is only one solution left us - and even that is risky.

"We must allow the Damash to find us - in a sense."

Another pause, in which he gathered the reactions, then: "I repeat - in a sense!"