Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Read Online Free PDF Page B

ago, while serving with a unit of Friendly Militia leased to a principality on that planet.
    Bleys had never seen Henry display any deep emotional reaction with regard to Will's death. But Bleys knew, on a level so detached that it might have happened to someone else, that he himself had reacted strongly to the news. He could no longer recall—he avoided trying to recapture—the explosion of emotion he had felt at the time.
    He was afraid to see what Henry's reaction might be.
    He stopped short in his pacing, remembering, suddenly, that he had lied to Henry, the first time he saw his uncle after Will's death.
    Bleys had been on Cassida, one stop on his first tour of the Others' organizations on the various Younger Worlds, when he received the news. He had finished his tour, including a stop on Ceta, before returning to Association—and almost his first stop upon arrival was a visit to Henry's farm, where Henry, almost casually, had asked Bleys whether his trip off-planet had taken him to Ceta.
    Bleys had immediately told Henry he had not gone there.
    Bleys could no longer recall, if he had ever known, why he had lied to his uncle. For the first time now it occurred to him he might have been trying to avoid reminding himself of the uncomfortable emotional reaction he had himself experienced.
    At any rate, he had lied, and it was a good thing he had recalled that fact now, before dealing with Henry face-to-face. He would have to watch how he spoke in front of his uncle, from here on— either avoiding any reference to that previous trip, or giving a vague impression it had occurred at some other time.
    For a moment he felt a touch of irritation, that he had let himself be so paralyzed; but the feeling was quickly forgotten as he turned to the screen that accessed his information stores. This trip was going to require a lot of preparation.
    By the time Toni was due back from whatever errand she had been on, Bleys was deep in his study of the Cetan situation, taking his researches down byways he had not had time to pursue before. His staff had prepared digests of all the materials relating to Cetan society available in the Chamber Library, here in Ecumeny, as well as of information gleaned from a number of government departments. He reserved for himself, however, the task of integrating that material with the data sent back, over the last decade and more, by the Others who had been sent to work on Ceta .. . the staff here never saw that kind of report.
    This was a time he could regret that the computers on each world were not fully connected to each other, as they had once been on Old Earth; it would have made his researches much easier. But humanity had taken to heart the lesson it learned when the Super-Complex, the great supercomputer, had rebelled and wreaked havoc on the mother planet: no one would ever again link computers in any quantity sufficient to risk that kind of incident.
    Instead, Bleys had to send out for information, including dispatching messages to the Others' groups on all the Younger Worlds— except, specifically, for Ceta—instructing them to send him as much data on that planet as they could locate on their worlds, and to do so quickly, sending it in installments, if need be. The information was unlikely to arrive on Association in any quantity before he himself left for Ceta, though; and in any case it would be so voluminous as to require it be winnowed by his staff... he would have to be sure to leave instructions on that.
    He realized he was becoming irritated again. He hated it when that happened; emotion hampered the mind's cool functioning.
    After a few moments of self-examination, he concluded that the irritation, this time, arose out of his deeply buried discomfort at having to leave it to his staff to digest the information for him. He had tried to select for intelligent people, and had worked to train them; but it bothered him nonetheless ... it was just so likely they would miss something