"Get him!" Corfua was shouting.
There was the pounding of feet on the pavement behind him, and the Militiamen ahead also broke into a run toward him. He looked right and left, but there was nothing on either side of him but the unbreakable glass of shop windows. Choosing, he charged the line of uniforms he was facing.
Almost, he broke through them and got away. They were not expecting attack, and they faltered slightly at the sight of him coming down on them. Nor were they trained as he had been trained. They converged on him and he spun into them as they came close, leaving four of them on the ground and a fifth, still on his feet, but staggering. But they had delayed him just long enough for the Militiamen behind him to catch up; and these swarmed over him, helped by those who could recover from the first group he had hit. Without warning, his momentary burst of strength exhausted itself. There were simply too many of them. He went down, conscious for a little while of blows raining on him - blows hardly, it seemed after a bit, more than light taps; until, after a little while, he did not feel them at all.
Chapter Thirty-two
He came to consciousness to find himself lying on his back on some flat, hard, cold surface that tremored slightly; and a second later he recognized the low, steady sound of truck blowers heard from inside a vehicle. His legs and arms ached, and he tried to move them, but they were held - ankles, knees and wrists pressed tightly together. For a moment he threw all his strength against whatever pinioned them, but they remained immovable. He slid back into unconsciousness.
When he woke a second time, he was still lying on his back; but the surface under him was softer and motionless, and there was no sound of blowers. A bright light glaring down into his eyes was in the process of being turned down slightly.
"That's better," said a memorable, resonant voice he recognized. "Now take those stays off him and help him sit up."
With unbelievable gentleness, fingers removed whatever had been holding his wrists, knees and ankles. Hands assisted him to a seated position and put something behind his back to prop him upright. There was a pricking sensation in his left arm that startled him, but not to the extent of betraying him into any sign that he was once more aware. Less than a minute later, however, warmth, energy, and a blissful freedom from pain and discomfort began to flood all through him.
With that, he recognized the ridiculousness of continuing to pretend unconsciousness. He opened his eyes on a small, bare-walled room, furnished like a prison cell, with two Militiamen on their feet and the width of the room away from the narrow bed-surface on which he lay. And Bleys Ahrens, standing tall, loomed close beside and over him.
"Well, Hal," said Bleys softly, "now we finally get a chance to talk. If you'd only identified yourself back in Citadel, we could have gotten together then."
Hal did not answer. He was face to face with the Other, now. The feeling of cold determination that had come on him when he had faced the fact that he was not staying at the Final Encyclopedia, nearly four years before, rose in him again. He lay still, studying Bleys as Malachi had taught him to do with an opponent, waiting for information on which to act.
Bleys sat down on a float beside the bed, which Hal felt to be some cot-like surface, covered with a single mattress of no great thickness. There had been no float beside it when Bleys had started to sit, nor had the Other Man given an order or made any signal Hal had seen. But by the time Bleys had needed it there, the padded float had been in position for him.
"I should tell you how I feel about the deaths of your tutors," the tall man said. "I know - at the moment you don't trust me enough to believe me. But you should hear, anyway, that there was never, at any time, any intention to harm anyone at your home. If there'd been any way I could have stopped what happened there, I would have."
He paused, but Hal said nothing. Bleys smiled slightly, sadly.
"I'm part-Exotic, you know," he said. "I not only don't hold with killing, I don't like any violence; and I don't believe ordinarily there's any excuse for it. Would you believe me if I told you that of the three there on the terrace that day, there was only one who could have surprised me enough to make me lose command of the situation long enough for them to be killed?"
Again he paused and again Hal stayed silent.
"That one man," said Bleys, "made the only possible move that could have done so. It was your tutor Walter, and his physically attacking me, that was the single action I absolutely couldn't anticipate; and it was also the only thing that could get in the way of my stopping my bodyguards in time."
"Bodyguards?" said Hal. His voice was so weak and husky he hardly recognized it as his own.
"I'm sorry," said Bleys. "I can believe you think of them in different terms. But no matter what you think, their primary duty there, that day, was only to protect me."
"From three old men," said Hal.
"Even from three old men," replied Bleys. "And they weren't so negligible, those old men. They took out three of four of my bodyguards before they were stopped."
"Killed," Hal said.
Bleys inclined his head a little.
"Killed," he said. "Murdered, if you want me to use that word. All I'm asking you to accept is that I'd have prevented what happened, and could have, if Walter hadn't done the one thing that could break my control over my men for the second or two needed to let it all happen."
Hal looked away from him, at the ceiling. There was a moment of silence.
"From the time you set foot on our property," said Hal, wearily, "the responsibility was yours."
The drug they had given him was holding pain and discomfort at bay, but still he was conscious of an incredible exhaustion; and even turned down, the lights overhead were hurting his eyes. He closed them again; and heard the voice of Bleys above him projected in a different direction.
"Lower that illumination some more. That's right. Now, leave it there. As long as Hal Mayne is in this room, those lights aren't to be turned up or down, unless he asks they be."
Hal opened his eyes again. The cell was now pleasantly dim; but in the dimness, Bleys seemed - even seated - to loom even taller. By a trick of his fever and the drug in Hal, the Other Man appeared to tower upward above him toward infinity.
"You're right, of course," Bleys said, now. "But still, I'd like you to try and understand my point of view."
"Is that all you want?" Hal asked.
The face of Bleys looked down at him from its unimaginable height.
"Of course not," said Bleys, gently. "I want to save you - not only for your own sake but as something to put against the unnecessary deaths of your tutors, for which I still feel responsible."
"And what does saving me mean?" Hal lay watching him.
"It means," said Bleys, "giving you a chance to live the life you've been designed by birth - and from birth - to live."
"As an Other?"
"As Hal Mayne, free to use his full capabilities."
"As an Other," Hal said.
"You're a snob, my young friend," replied Bleys. "A snob, and misinformed. The misinformation may not be your fault; but the snobbery is. You're too bright to pretend to a belief in double-dyed villains. If that was all we were - myself and those like me - would most of the inhabited worlds let us take control of things the way they have?"
"If you were capable enough to do it," Hal said.
"No." Bleys shook his head. "Even if we were supermen and superwomen - even if we were the mutants some people like to think we are - so few of us could never control so many unless the many wanted us to control them. And you must have been better educated than to think of us as either superbeings or mutants. We're only what we are - what you yourself are - genetically fortunate combinations of human abilities who have had the advantages of some special training."