It wasn't until they were down to the main level and outside in the
little plaza to the east of the Airlines Building that his father
broke the silence.
"That was quite a talk you gave them, Conn. They believed every word
of it. I even caught myself starting to believe it once or twice."
Conn stopped short; his father halted beside him. "Why didn't you tell
them the truth, son?" Rodney Maxwell asked.
The question, which he had been throwing at himself, angered him. "Why
didn't I just grab a couple of pistols and shoot the lot of them?" he
retorted. "It wouldn't have killed them any deader, and it wouldn't
have hurt as much."
"There is no Merlin. Is that it?"
He realized, suddenly, that his father had known, or suspected that
all along. He started to say something, then checked himself and began
again:
"There never was one. I was going to tell them, but you saw them. I
couldn't."
"You're sure of it?"
"The whole thing's a myth. I'm quoting the one man in the Galaxy who
ought to know. The man who commanded the Third Force here during the
War."
"Foxx Travis!" His father's voice was soft with wonder. "I saw him
once, when I was eight years old. I thought he'd died long ago. Why,
he must be over a hundred."
"A hundred and twelve. He's living on Luna; low gravity's all that
keeps him alive."
"And you talked to him?"
"Yes."
There'd been a girl in his third-year biophysics class; he'd found out
that she was a great-granddaughter of Force General Travis. It had
taken him until his senior midterm vacation to wangle an invitation to
the dome-house on Luna. After that, it had been easy. As soon as Foxx
Travis had learned that one of his great-granddaughter's guests was
from Poictesme, he had insisted on talking to him.
"What did he tell you?"
The old man had been incredibly thin and frail. Under normal
gravitation, his life would have gone out like a blown match. Even at
one-sixth G, it had cost him effort to rise and greet the guest. There
had been a younger man, a mere stripling of seventy-odd; he had been
worried, and excused himself at once. Travis had laughed after he had
gone out.
"Mike Shanlee; my aide-de-camp on Poictesme. Now he thinks he's my
keeper. He'll have a squad of doctors and a platoon of nurses in here
as soon as you're gone, so take your time. Now, tell me how things are
on Poictesme...."
"Just about that," he told his father. "I finally mentioned Merlin, as
an old legend people still talked about. I was ashamed to admit
anybody really believed in it. He laughed, and said, 'Great Ghu, is
that thing still around? Well, I suppose so; it was all through the
Third Force during the War. Lord only knows how these rumors start
among troops. We never contradicted it; it was good for morale.'"
They had started walking again, and were out on the Mall; the sky was
flaming red and orange from high cirrus clouds in the sunset light.
They stopped by a dry fountain, perhaps the one from which he had seen
the dust blowing. Rodney Maxwell sat down on the edge of the basin and
got out two cigars, handing one to Conn, who produced his lighter.
"Conn, they wouldn't have believed you _and_ Foxx Travis," he said.
"Merlin's a religion with those people. Merlin's a robot god,
something they can shove all their problems onto. As soon as they find
Merlin, everybody will be rich and happy, the Government bonds will be
redeemed at face value plus interest, the paper money'll be worth a
hundred Federation centisols to the sol, and the leaves and wastepaper
will be raked off the Mall, all by magic." He muttered an
unprintability and laughed bitterly.
"I didn't know you were the village atheist, Father."
"In a religious community, the village atheist keeps his doubts to
himself. I have to do business with these Merlinolators. It's all I
can do to keep Flora from antagonizing them at school."
Flora was a teacher; now she was assistant principal of the grade
schools. Professor Kellton was also school superintendent. He could
see how that would be.
"Flora's not a True Believer, then?"
Rodney Maxwell shook his head. "That's largely Wade Lucas's influence,
I'd say. You know about him."
Just from letters. Wade Lucas was from Baldur; he'd gone off-planet
as soon as he'd gotten his M.D. Evidently the professional situation
there was the same as on Terra; plenty of opportunities, and fifty
competitors for each one. On Poictesme, there were few opportunities,
but nobody competed for anything, not even to find Merlin.
"He'd never heard of Merlin till he came here, and when he did, he
just couldn't believe in it. I don't blame him. I've heard about it
all my life, and I can't."
"Why not?"
"To begin with, I suppose, because it's just another of these things
everybody believes. Then, I've had to do some studying on the Third
Force occupation of Poictesme to know where to go and dig, and I never
found any official, or even reliably unofficial, mention of anything
of the sort. Forty years is a long time to keep a secret, you know.
And I can't see why they didn't come back for it after the pressure to
get the troops home was off, or why they didn't build a dozen Merlins.
This isn't the only planet that has problems they can't solve for
themselves."
"What's Mother's attitude on Merlin?"
"She's against it. She thinks it isn't right to make machines that are
smarter than people."
"I'll agree. It's scientifically impossible."
"That's what I've been trying to tell her. Conn, I noticed that after
Kurt Fawzi started talking about how long it would take to get to the
Gamma System, you jumped right into it and began talking up a ship.
Did you think that if you got them started on that it would take their
minds off Merlin?"
"That gang up in Fawzi's office? Nifflheim, no! They'll go on hunting
Merlin till they die. But I was serious about the ship. An idea hit
me. You gave it to me; you and Klem Zareff."
"Why, I didn't say a word ..."
"Down on the shipping floor, before we went up. You were talking about
selling arms and ammunition at a profit of two hundred sols a ton, and
Klem was talking as though a bumper crop was worse than a Green Death
epidemic. If we had a hypership, look what we could do. How much do
you think a settler on Hoth or Malebolge or Irminsul would pay for a
good rifle and a thousand rounds? How much would he pay for his
life?--that's what it would come to. And do you know what a fifteen-cc
liqueur glass of Poictesme brandy sells for on Terra? One sol;
Federation money. I'll admit it costs like Nifflheim to run a
hypership, but look at the difference between what these tramp
freighter captains pay at Storisende and what they get."
"I've been looking at it for a long time. Maybe if we had a few ships
of our own, these planters would be breaking new ground instead of
cutting their plantings, and maybe we'd get some money on this planet
that was worth something. You have a good idea there, son. But maybe
there's an angle to it you haven't thought of."
Conn puffed slowly at the cigar. Why couldn't they grow tobacco like
this on Terra? Soil chemicals, he supposed; that wasn't his subject.
"You can't put this scheme over on its own merits. This gang wouldn't
lift a finger to build a hypership. They've completely lost hope in
everything but Merlin."
"Well, can do. I'll even convince them that Merlin's a space-station,
in orbit off Koshchei. I think I could do that."
"You know what it'll cost? If you go ahead with it, I'm in it with
you, make no mistake about that. But you and I will be the only two
people on Poictesme who can be trusted with the truth. We'll have to
lie to everybody else, with every word we speak. We'll have to lie to
Flora, and we'll have to lie to your mother. Your mother most of all.
She believes in absolutes. Lying is absolutely wrong, no matter whom
it helps; telling the truth is absolutely right, no matter how much
damage it does or how many hearts it breaks. You think this is going
to be worth a price like that?"
"Don't you?" he demanded, and then pointed along the crumbling and
littered Mall. "Look at that. Pretend you never saw it before and are
looking at it for the first time. And then tell me whether it'll be
worth it or not."
His father took a cigar from his mouth. For a moment, he sat staring
silently.
"Great Ghu!" Rodney Maxwell turned. "I wonder how that sneaked up on
me; I honestly never realized.... Yes, Conn. This is a cause worth
lying for." He looked at his watch. "We ought to be starting for
Senta's, but let's take a few minutes and talk this over. How are you
going to get it started?"
"Well, convince them that I can find Merlin and that they can't find
it without me. I think I've done that already. Then convince them that
we'll have to have a ship to get to Koshchei, and--"
"Won't do. That'll take money, and money's something none of this gang
has."
"You heard me talk about the stuff I found out on Terra? Father, you
have no idea what all there is. You remember the old Force Command
Headquarters, the one the Planetary Government took over? I know where
there's a duplicate of that, completely underground. It has everything
the other one had, and a lot more, because it'll be cram-full of
supplies to be used in case of a general blitz that would knock out
everything on the planet. And a chain of hospitals. And a spaceport,
over on Barathrum, that was built inside the crater of an extinct
volcano. There won't be any hyperships there of course, but there'll
be equipment and material. We might be able to build a ship there. And
supply depots, all over the planet; none of them has ever been opened
since the War. Don't worry about financing; we have that."
His father, he could see, appreciated what he had brought home from
Terra. He was nodding, with quick head jerks, at each item.
"That'll do it, all right. Now, listen; what we want to do is get a
company organized, a regular limited-liability company, with a
charter. We'll contribute the information you brought back from Terra,
and we'll get the rest of this gang to put all the money we can twist
out of them into it, so we'll be sure they won't say, 'Aw, Nifflheim
with it!' and walk out on us as soon as the going gets a little
tough." Rodney Maxwell got to his feet, hitching his gun-belt. "I'll
pass the word to Kurt to get a meeting set up for tomorrow afternoon."
"What'll we call this company? Merlin Rediscovery, Ltd?"
"No! We keep Merlin out of it. As far as the public is supposed to
know, this is just a war-material prospecting company. I'll impress on
them that Merlin is to be kept a secret. That way, we'll have to
engage in regular prospecting and salvage work as a front. I'll see to
it that the front is also the main objective." He nodded down the
Mall, toward the sunset, which was blazing even higher and redder.
"Well, let's go. You don't want to be late for your own welcome-home
party."
They walked slowly, still talking, until they came to the end of the
Mall. The escalators to the level below weren't working. Now that he
thought of it, they hadn't been when he had gone away, six years ago,
but he could remember riding up and down on them as a small child. For
a moment they stood in the sunset light, looking down on the lower
terrace as they finished their cigars.
Senta's was mostly outdoors, the tables under the open sky. The people
gathered below were looking at the sunset, too; Litchfielders loved to
watch sunsets, maybe because a sunset was one of the few things
economic conditions couldn't affect. There was Kurt Fawzi, the center
of a group to whom he was declaiming earnestly; there was his mother,
and Flora, and Flora's fiance, who was the uncomfortable lone man in
an excited feminine flock. And there was Senta herself, short and
dumpy, in one of her preposterous red and purple dresses, bubbling
happily one moment and screaming invective at some laggard waiter the
next.
They threw away their cigars and started down the long, motionless
escalator. Conn Maxwell, Hero of the Hour, marching to Destiny. He
seemed to hear trumpets sounding before him.
And an occasional muted Bronx cheer.