why?” THREE demanded. “If the Eighth Councilor has lost his mental balance, Supreme should be informed. But surely there is no need for we seven to inconvenience ourselves.”
Darzek silenced a babble of talk with a wave of his hand. “The Eighth Councilor has not lost his mental balance,” he said. “We all know how he persists in seeing dangers where there are none, but we also know that he faces any danger with gusto.”
“That is true,” FIVE agreed.
“So I think all of us should call on him,” Darzek went on. “Try to learn what is bothering him and let me know what you find out. As you are aware, I have shared many real dangers with the Eighth Councilor. This is the only time I have ever seen him frightened.”
* * * *
FIVE reported to Darzek later that day. She had visited Rok Wllon and asked if he had more poetry from the world of Kamm. He had promised to send her some. He seemed as rational and as stodgy as ever—which meant that he had returned to normal.
Darzek thanked her.
He went himself the following morning, but the Eighth Councilor was not at home. He returned that afternoon, and Rok Wllon received him in the vast study that ornamented his official councilor’s residence.
In response to Darzek’s questions, he activated a projection that filled the room: a shallow slice of the galaxy reproduced three dimensionally just above their heads. Darzek consulted the key and orientated himself; and then Rok Wllon touched a control and set one of the suns flashing on and off: Gwanor, whose only habitable planet was named Kamm.
“What’s the problem with Kamm?” Darzek wanted to know.
“There’s a Death Religion,” Rok Wllon whispered.
“Surely there’s nothing unique about that,” Darzek said.
Rok Wllon hesitated. He whispered again. “I can’t say more than that. Not yet. Not here.”
Darzek studied him thoughtfully. This was the same frightened Rok Wllon he had seen at the council meeting. “When can you say more?” Darzek asked. “And where?”
“Perhaps tomorrow.” Rok Wllon leaped to his feet and paced the floor excitedly, disrupting the pinpricks of light that wheeled about the room’s axis. “Yes. Tomorrow would be better.”
The following morning, when Darzek called again, Rok Wllon was not at home. Darzek went at once to the Department of Uncertified Worlds.
This was the anonymous service of the Galactic Synthesis. It attracted people with the peculiar temperament that was especially suited for world watching—a turn of mind and personality that enabled them to fit into an alien society and play a role there through their entire lives and simply observe.
The Uncertified Worlds were those planets that were, for one or more of a multitude of reasons, ineligible to join the Galactic Synthesis. Requirements for membership were based more upon the character of a world’s inhabitants than upon their achievements, and the Synthesis demonstrated no official interest in whether any world attained membership or not. Non-member worlds were ignored unless their activities posed a threat to Synthesis members or seemed likely to.
As Director of the Department of Uncertified Worlds, Rok Wllon placed observation teams on such planets wherever or whenever he thought they were needed. These teams supplied voluminous and continuing reports on the worlds, and if through some evolutionary coincidence a world achieved eligibility by way of its own self-improvement, the department recommended it for membership. Rok Wllon performed a highly responsible and thankless job, and he did it superbly. For all of his petty idiosyncrasies, he was the government’s best top level administrator.
Rok Wllon’s young administrative assistant, a compatriot of his named Kom Rmmon, politely expressed his regrets to Darzek. The director had left that morning with a team of administrators for the world of Slonfus to attend a conference about something or other.
That seemed perfectly normal. The Director of Uncertified Worlds spent more than half of his time traveling.
But he did not normally leave for that kind of conference unexpectedly—especially when he had an appointment with the First Councilor. Darzek’s uneasiness remained, but for the present there was nothing that he could do. He asked to be notified the moment the director returned; but Rok Wllon’s trip proved to be an extended one, and Darzek had his own work to do, and eventually his puzzlement over the Eighth Councilor’s conduct—and Kamm, the Silent Planet—faded.
* * * *
Periodically Supreme divested its computer self of a list of worlds under the heading, “Potential Trouble Sources.” The projected difficulties were sometimes monumental and sometimes unbelievably trivial, and the word potential not infrequently meant, as Darzek had discovered in the past, that even a computer’s imagination could be overly active.
But Darzek felt obliged to investigate each world named. In most instances the action needed was obvious and easily taken: to avert a medical crisis due to inept public health measures; to prevent a looming economic catastrophe caused by a failing source of critical metals; to defuse an interworld dispute with timely mediation. Darzek’s practice was to first skim through the columns, picking out those worlds he was familiar with.
On this particular list, his rapid skimming was brought to an abrupt halt by one word: Kamm.
CHAPTER 3
Darzek immediately asked Supreme for a posting on its councilors. Supreme did not know where Rok Wllon was.
Neither did the Department of Uncertified Worlds. The director was traveling, Kom Rmmon informed Darzek politely. Doubtless he would soon supply the department with a new itinerary.
Kom Rmmon had been trained superbly. He radiated efficiency and intelligence; but beneath the imposing veneer of those qualities, it seemed to Darzek that the youngster was as badly frightened as Rok Wllon had been.
As First Councilor, Darzek possessed an impressive portfolio of emergency powers. Although he disciplined himself to use them only in genuine crises, and as a last resort, he had little difficulty in persuading himself that the disappearance of a member of the Council of Supreme had to be investigated at once, with every means available to him.
Darzek went directly to the Eighth Councilor’s official residence and had himself admitted by Supreme. He sat down at the communications panel in Rok Wllon’s study and asked Supreme to show him, one at a time, the last things the Eighth Councilor had viewed before his departure.
A projection filled the room just above Darzek’s head—an enlarged portion of the same shallow slice of the galaxy that Rok Wllon had displayed to him. Darzek picked out the sun Gwanor and its one habitable planet, Kamm; but the pinpoints of light told him nothing.
The star projection faded, and the desk screen came to life. The beautifully drawn calligraphy shown there was Rok Wllon’s own angular script. Darzek moved over to the desk and pondered the three poems that filled the screen.
The night was cloudless
and shimmering with moon shadows
I reached for its beauty
and Death’s talons clutched my hand.
A
