In the same way now Bright held the life of Jamethon in his hand, but unlike the way it had been with me, in holding this he held the lesser part of the young man before him, rather than the greater.
"Your leave home here is ended, Force-Leader," Bright said sharply. "Tell your family to send on your effects to Council City and join us now. I'm appointing you aide and assistant to this Newsman from now on. And we'll promote you Commandant to make the post worthwhile."
"Sir," said Jamethon emotionlessly with an inclination of his head. He stepped back into the building from which he had just emerged, before coming back out a few moments later to join us. Bright ordered the staff car turned about and so we returned to the city and his office.
When we got back there, Bright turned me loose with Jamethon to get acquainted with the Friendly situation in and around Council City. Consequently, the two of us, Jamethon and I, did a certain amount of sightseeing, though not much, and I returned early to my hotel.
It required very little in the way of perception to see that Jamethon had been assigned to act as a spy upon me while performing the functions of an aide. However, I said nothing about it, and Jamethon said nothing at all, so that, almost strangely, we two moved around Council City, and its related neighborhood, in the days that followed like a couple of ghosts, or men under a vow not to speak to each other. It was a strange silence of mutual consent that agreed that the only things worth talking about between us - Eileen, and Dave and the rest - would reward any discussion only with a pain that would make the discussion unprofitable.
Meanwhile, I was summoned from time to time to the office of Eldest Bright. He saw me more or less briefly on these occasions and spoke of little that was to the point of my announced reason for being on the Friendlies and in partnership with him. It was as if he were waiting for something to happen. And eventually I understood what that was. He had set Jamethon to check me out, while he himself checked out the interstellar situation which, as Eldest of the Friendly Worlds, he faced alone, searching for the situation and the moment in which he could best make use of this self-seeking Newsman who had offered to improve the public image of his people.
Once I had realized this, I was reassured, seeing how, interview by interview, day by day, he came closer as I wanted to the heart of the matter. That heart was the moment in which he might ask my advice, must ask me to tell him what he should do about me and with me.
Day by day and interview by interview, he became apparently more relaxed and trusting in his words with me - and more questioning.
"What is it they like to read, on those other worlds, Newsman?" he asked one day. "Just what is it they most like to hear about?"
"Heroes, of course," I answered as lightly as he had questioned. "That's why the Dorsai make good copy-and to a certain extent the Exotics."
A shadow which may or may not have been intentional passed across his face at the mention of the Exotics.
"The ungodly," he muttered. But that was all. A day or so later he brought the subject of heroes up again.
"What makes heroes in the public's eyes?" he asked.
"Usually," I said, "the conquering of some older, already established strong man, villain or hero." He was looking at me agreeably, and I took a venture. "For example, if your Friendly troops should face up to an equal number of Dorsai and outfight them-"
The agreeableness was abruptly wiped out by an expression I had never seen on his face before. For a second he all but gaped at me. Then he flashed me a stare as smoking and hot as liquid basalt from a volcano's throat.
"Do you take me for a fool?" he snapped. Then his face changed, and he looked at me curiously. "-Or are you simply one yourself?"
He gazed at me for a long, long moment. Finally he nodded.
"Yes," he said, as if to himself. "That's it - the man's a fool. An Earth-born fool."
He turned on his heel, and that ended our interview for the day.
I did not mind his taking me for a fool. It was that much more insurance against the moment when I would make any move to delude him. But, for the life of me, I could not understand what had brought such an unusual reaction from him. And that bothered me. Surely my suggestion about the Dorsai could not have been so farfetched? I was tempted to ask Jamethon, but discretion as the better part of valor held me wisely back.
Meanwhile the day came when Bright finally approached the question I knew he must ask me sooner or later.
"Newsman," he said. He was standing, legs spread, hands locked together behind his back, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling window of his office at the Government Center and Council City, below. His back was to me.
"Yes, Eldest?" I answered. He had called me once more to his office, and I had just walked through the door. He spun around at the sound of my voice to stare flamingly at me.
"You said once that heroes are made by their defeat of some older, established heroes. You mentioned as examples of older heroes in the public gaze the Dorsai - and the Exotics."
"That's right," I said, coming up to him.
"The ungodly on the Exotics," he said, as if he mused to himself. "They use hired troops. What good to defeat hirelings - even if that were possible and easy?"
"Why not rescue someone in distress, then?" I said lightly. "That sort of thing would give you a good, new public image. Your Friendlies haven't been known much for doing that sort of thing."
He flicked a hard glance at me.
"Who should we rescue?" he demanded.
"Why," I said, "there're always small groups of people who, rightly or wrongly, think they're being imposed on by the larger groups around them. Tell me, don't you ever get approached by small dissident groups wanting to hire your soldiers on speculation for revolt against their established government-" I broke off. "Why, of course you do. I was forgetting New Earth and the North Partition of Altland."
"We gained little credit in the eyes of the other worlds by way of our business with the North Partition," said Bright, harshly. "As you well know!"
"Oh, but the sides were about equal there," I said. "What you've got to do is help out some really tiny minority against some selfish giant of a majority - say, something like the miners on Coby against the mine owners."
"Coby? The miners?" He darted me a hard glance, but this was a glance I had been waiting for all these days and I met it blandly. He turned and strode over to stand behind his desk. He reached down and half-lifted a sheet of paper - it looked like a letter - that lay on his desk. "As it happens, I have had an appeal for aid on a purely speculative basis by a group-"
He broke off, laid the paper down and lifted his head to look at me.
"A group like the Coby miners?" I said. "It's not the miners themselves?"
"No," he said. "Not the miners." He stood silent a moment, then he came back around the desk and offered me his hand. "I understand you're about to leave.”
"I am?" I said.
"Have I been misinformed?" said Bright. His eyes burned into mine. "I heard that you were leaving for Earth on a spaceliner this evening. I understood passage had already been booked by you."
"Why - yes," I said, reading the message clear in the tone of his voice. "I guess I just forgot. Yes, I'm on my way."
"Have a good trip," said Bright. "I'm glad we could come to a friendly understanding. You can count on us in the future. And we'll take the liberty of counting on you in return."