The Dark Design

" 'Like most of your breed you talk too much.'he said. 'However ...'

"He hesitated, then said, "There is a third alternative, one which you will like. I did not want to tell you ... I won't, now. I do not have time, nor is this the best time. Perhaps the next time. I must leave shortly.

" 'First, though, is the matter of your loyalty and your aid. Are you with me?'

" 'How can I pledge my support when I do not know if you are worth supporting? For all I know, you may be Satan himself!' He chuckled hollowly, and he said, 'You are the one who denied both God and the Devil. I am not the Devil or any analog to him. I am in fact on your side, on the side of deluded, suffering humanity. I can't prove that to you. Not now. But think of this. Have my colleagues approached you? Have they done anything but bring you back from the dead for purposes they do not condescend to tell you? Have I not chosen you from many billions to help in this secret struggle? You and eleven others? Why have I honored you? I'll tell you. Because I know that you are one of the few who can aid me. Because your wathan tells me that you will be on my side.'

" 'It is, then, predetermined?' I said. 'I do not believe in predeterminism.'

" ' No. There' s no such thing, except in a sense which you would not understand or would find difficult to accept.

" 'All I can tell you at the moment is that I am on your side. Without me, you and most of your kind are doomed. You must have faith in me.'

" 'But,' I cried. 'What can we pitiful few humans do? We are pitted against superhumans with superpowers.'

"He replied that we twelve could do nothing without a friend in court. He was that friend. We twelve must get together and journey to the North Pole, to the tower in the middle of the sea. We must get there on our own, however. He could not fly us there. He could not tell me at the moment why not.

" 'I must proceed slowly and cautiously,' he said. 'And you must promise not to reveal this conversation to anyone. To no one except one of the twelve I've picked.

' "To do so might result in your being detected by an agent. That would mean that you would be stripped of all memory of your meetings with me. And I would be placed in even graver danger.'

" 'But how will I recognize these others?' I said. 'How will Iget to where they are or they to me? Where are they?'

"While asking these questions, I felt awed and elated at the same time. That one of the beings who had raised us from the dead and made this world should be asking for my help! I, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, who am just a human-being, however great certain of my talents are. That he should pick me from many billions!

"He knew his man, knew I would not be able to resist his challenge. If I could have stood up, I'd have crossed swords with him-if swords were available-and I'd have pledged my loyalty with a toast-if wine had been handy.

" 'You'll do as I ask?' he said.

" 'But certainly!'I said. 'You have my word, and I never go back on that!'

"Jill, I won't go into any more detail about what else he said. Except... he did say that I was to tell Sam Clemens that he should be on the lookout for a man named Richard Francis Burton. He was one of those chosen. And we were to wait for a year in Virolando for all of us to get together. If some didn't show, then we were to go ahead. And we would be hearing from him-the Stranger-in the near future.

"He gave me directions to find Clemens, who was down-River about ten thousand leagues. Clemens would be building a great boat made of ore from a meteorite. I knew who Clemens was though I'd died one hundred and eighty-one years before he was born. After all, was not his Earthly wife sleeping in my bed? I told him that, and he chuckled and said, 'I know.'

" 'Is this not embarrassing for me?' I said. 'And especially for Livy? Would the great Clemens even admit me aboard his so grand boat in this situation?'

''' Which is more important to you ?' he said with some degree of impatience. 'A woman or the salvation of the world?'

" 'That would depend upon how I felt about the woman,' I said. ' Objectively and humanely, there is no argument. I am humane but I am not objective.'

" 'Go there and find out what happens,' he said. 'Perhaps this woman will prefer you.'

' "When Cyrano is on fire with love,' I said, 'he does not cool off at command.'

"Then he stood up, and said, 'I will see you,' and he was gone. I dragged myself with my arms, my dead legs trailing uselessly, to the door, and pushed it open. There was no sign of him. The next morning, I a

Jill felt a sense of unreality. She believed Cyrano's story, but it nevertheless made her feel as if she were a player on a stage, the sets of which concealed something frightening. And she was also an actor who had not been given the script.

"No, I don't know the rest. What about you and Clemens? What did he know that you didn't? And did any of the others this Ethical had chosen show up?"

"Clemens was visited twice by the Ethical. Clemens calls him X or the Mysterious Stranger."

Jill said, "He wrote a book once titled The Mysterious Stranger. A very sad, bitter story, overwhelmingly pessimistic. The Stranger was Lucifer."

'' He told me about it. However, he did not know much more than Idid. Except that this X had somehow deflected a meteorite so that it would fall where Clemens could find it."

"Do you realize the energy that would take?"

"It was explained to me. Anyway, Sam broke his word to the Stranger. He told Joe Miller and Lothar von Richthofen about him. He said that he could not help telling them.

"Also, there were two more. A giant red-haired savage of a man named John Johnston. And... Firebrass!"

She almost dropped her cigarette. "Firebrass! But he ... !"

Cyrano nodded. "Exactly. He would seem to be one of these agents whom the Ethical mentioned but did not explain. I never saw the Ethical again, so I did not get any answers to my many ques­tions. But I think, though I can't be sure, that he would have been surprised to learn that Firebrass claimed to be one of the twelve. Perhaps Firebrass was an infiltrator. But that does not explain Thorn and Obrenova."

"Did Johnston or Firebrass add anything to your knowledge?"

"Of the Ethical? No, Johnston was visited only once. Firebrass, of course, was not one of the twelve chosen. I doubt that the Ethical knew he was an agent. How could he unless he himself had been disguised and in our midst? Which perhaps he may have been. But if he knew that Firebrass was an agent, he had reasons not to tell us.

"What worries me, among many things, is that the Ethical hasn't visited us again."

Jill sat upright.

"Could Piscator be an agent?"

Cyrano stopped walking, lifted his shoulders and eyebrows, and spread out his extended palms upward.

"Unless he returns, we may never know."

"Purposes, cross-purposes, counter-cross-purposes. Wheels within wheels within wheels," Jill said. "Maya lowers seven veils of illusion between us and them."

"What? Oh, you are referring to the Hindu concept of illusion.''

"I don't think Piscator was an agent. If he had been, he wouldn't have said anything to me about his suspicions that something dark and secret was going on."

A knocking on the door startled them.

"Captain! Greeson here, head of Search Group Three. All areas in this section except for the chart room have been searched. We can come back later."

Jill, rising, said, "Come on in."

To Cyrano she said, "I'll talk with you later. There's so much to puzzle out, so many questions."