The Lani People Part 28

Something important! A wave of ice rattled down Kennon's spine, and then he grinned feebly. Alexander didn't know. He couldn't know. It had to be something else.

"I'll be right up," he said, marveling at the calmness in his voice.

Kennon couldn't help comparing this meeting with the one a year ago.

The location was different--the conference room in Alexandria was more formal than Blalok's parlor but the same people were present: Alexander, Blalok, Jordan, and himself. Somehow Alexander seemed to have shrunk. He was no longer as impressive as he had been. But the man still radiated force, even though it didn't seem quite so overpowering. The year, Kennon thought, had done much to build his self-confidence. He felt a.s.sured rather than nervous.

"Good to see you, Kennon," Alexander said. "Reports say you're doing a good job."

"I can't claim the credit," Kennon said. "Eighty-five per cent of our success is due to co-operation from the operating staff. And that's Blalok's doing--he knocked the heads of the division managers together and they took care of their staffs. Otherwise we could have had a bad time."

"But you didn't," Alexander said. "And you were the motive force."

"I've darn near motivated myself out of a job," Kennon said. "They co-operate all too well nowadays."

"Which goes to prove that my theories on preventive medicine are right,"

Alexander said, turning to Blalok.

"It looks that way," Blalok admitted, "but that could be because you picked a good man."

"He's good in more ways than one," Alexander said. "Or did he tell you he saved Douglas's life out on Otpen One?"

"He's never said a word."

Alexander smiled. "Another point in his favor. He knows how to keep his mouth shut."

"Not when he's telling someone what to do about disease," Jordon interjected.

"Or telling someone off when they haven't followed directions," Blaiok added.

"Better and better. I was sure that he was the one we needed when we first met."

Kennon felt his ears turn flaming red.

"But that's not the reason I brought you here. This isn't a Jac Kennon admiration society. I called you because I want to expand the Lani breeding program."

"Why?" Jordan asked.

Blalok stiffened. "You know my feeling about that, sir. I've never liked the idea of selling them. If that's what's in your mind--"

Alexander shook his head. "Simmer down," he said, as he seated himself at the head of the table. "There's going to be no selling. The Lani are too valuable for that. We'll need them more than the money they'd bring on the market. You see--I've acquired a planet out on the periphery. A place called Phoebe. One of our ships found it, and I staked a discovery claim on the major land ma.s.s, and the crew made lesser claims that covered all the available land. Last month the Brotherhood allowed the claims. Last week the crewmen sold me their land. Phoebe's a lovely place--quite a bit like Flora--and the ecological tests show it's capable of supporting mammalian life. Just before I came here I sent three shiploads of exterminators to clean it up and make it ready for us. It should be ready in two years."

"What sort of an ecology are you exterminating?" Jordan asked.

"Not that it makes any difference," Alexander said, "but it's mainly reptilian. Nothing over Group I. We'll restock with Floran animals."

Jordan sighed. "Since that's the way it is, it doesn't make any difference," he said. "But it could have. The Lani are sensitive to things like that. If they thought that they were walking in over a pile of bodies they'd do badly. It'd be like Olympus all over again. And we couldn't keep them from knowing. We talk and we forget, but they'd tell each other--and they'd remember."

"I know," Alexander said, "somehow they've never forgotten that Grandfather trapped the last of the Lani males on Olympus."

Jordan nodded. "They can't stand the place. That's why we had to abandon the station."

"Does this new world have a moon?" Kennon asked abruptly.

"Yes--in fact it has two."

"Habitable?"

"No--they're too small to hold air. But men could live there in domes--but why do you?--oh! I see! I hadn't considered that point."

Alexander's hand darted to the phone beside him. "Get me Albertsville,"

he snapped. "Yes, my offices--I want Mr. Oliver in purchasing and contracting. h.e.l.lo--Ward? Alexander here. Yes--everything's fine. I have a job for you--use your scrambler-pattern two." Alexander dialed the scrambler code on the second dial at the base of the phone, effectively preventing eavesdropping by beam tappers. "Yes," he went on.

"It's Project Phoebe. Have you secured t.i.tle to the moons? You haven't?

Well--you'd better do it before some of our compet.i.tors get bright ideas. Sure they know about the project--do you think they're stupid?

Warren over at Consolidated practically told me that he was onto our scheme. So get t.i.tle to those moons. Since they're uninhabitable and within the planet's primary field they come under the Spatial Debris Act and you should be able to get Kardonian t.i.tle without any great amount of trouble. Naturally we want them.--For defense--what else? We'll have most of our eggs in that basket. No--I don't know how we overlooked that point. But if it wasn't for a bright young man out here we'd have left ourselves wide open. Now get cracking--get that leak plugged!" Alexander dropped the phone back in its cradle and sighed. "Well--that's b.u.t.toned up," he said. "Thanks, Kennon."

Kennon looked at Alexander's grinning face, his own impa.s.sive, but a shattering certainty exploded in his mind--Alexander was a telepath!

That was his difference! That was the thing that made him feared and respected by his business a.s.sociates. It wouldn't have been enough on the Central Worlds, where men knew of sensitives and took precautions against them. But out here on the periphery it was a deadly advantage.

"So I gave it away," Alexander said. "I suppose I was careless, but your thoughts about the moons shocked me."

"You practically told me once before, when you hired me," Kennon said, "but I never realized it."

"You were too excited then."

"I wouldn't know," Kennon said. "At any rate I didn't add the facts correctly." From somewhere deep in his memory an old quip came floating to the surface: "An executive is a man who picks brains--others'

brains." By that definition Alexander was an executive of the first cla.s.s. Alexander chuckled.

Suddenly Kennon wanted to run. Panic flooded him! What had he been thinking about? Had he thought of--two times two are four, four times four are sixteen, sixteen times sixteen are--let's see, six times sixteen is ninety-six, one times sixteen is--six, five, carry one--two--two hundred fifty-six. Two hundred fifty-six times--

"What's eating you?" Alexander demanded.

"I'm angry," Kennon said. "I told you the conditions I'd sign that contract, and you wrote a Peeper Clause into it. And then you peep in the worst way possible. There's no defense against a Telep unless you know about him; you've had my whole mind bare! You've violated my personal privacy like no man has done before. Sure I'm mad. I expected honesty from you--and you peep!" The anger was stronger now--a wave of raw emotion based on a lifetime of training in mutual respect of a man's privacy--a feeling intensified by his childhood environment of a crowded planetary ecology and the cramped crew quarters on a s.p.a.ceship. To Kennon, Alexander had committed the ultimate sin.

"I can see I made a mistake by not telling you," Alexander said. His voice was cold. "But you have no right to insult me."

"I'm not saying it, am I?" Kennon snapped. The moonflower on the bookcase behind Alexander was a thing of beauty. Alexander liked beauty.

He had said so, and the Great Hall below them bore it out. It was a lovely room. Those four bronze Lani in the fountain were works of art.

One of them looked remarkably like Copper. Copper in bronze. The little witch had probably posed for the casting. Maybe it had even been made from her body.

"They're all of Susy," Alexander said. "I can see why you are angry, and I don't blame you. But remember I warned you about Lani."

Copper--Kennon wrenched his thoughts back to the moonflower. It had twelve petals, limpid white on the borders shading to deep blue in the center-from which the cream-colored stamen surrounded by transparent pistils sprang to burst into a golden glory of pollen that dripped in tiny yellow flecks to the broad petals below. It was a magnificent flower. There was nothing like it on Beta. That was a marvelous thing about flowers--wherever one went in the universe, plants used the same methods to fertilize their seed and spread their germ plasm. It was too bad that--Kennon jerked his attention to Alexander's face. He detested the thought that his mind was common property. A man should have something he can call his own. There had been a clinics instructor in Year Six who was a sensitive. The cla.s.ses had protected themselves against his prying with a circlet--a thought screen--he had done it too.

Maybe he had brought the circlet with him. If he did, no one was going to catch him without it. It was a dirty business, this reading of others' thought. Now where had he put that circlet? Was it among his old books--or was it with his instruments?

"Why don't you go back to your house and find it?" Alexander snapped.

"As you are, you're nothing but a disruption. I want you in on this meeting, but not the way you're acting."

"I'm not going to act any other way until I get some protection from peeping," Kennon said grimly. "And if you think this is bad wait till I start going through comparative anatomy."