A. Smith: Royal Road

It was a clever touch, Duke Harald had thought when first he heard of it. It added prestige, a certain quasireligious sanctity to adepts who had kept the vigil. And it reminded him most strongly of the ceremonies on far Arkady, when a nobleman was first inducted into knighthood.

It was still a neat touch if—as he was now convinced—that ceremony hid the true creation of the telepath. And certainly, no other moment in an esper student’s life was so well fitted to the covert administration of an unknown drug.

The various, separate buildings of the Institute were linked below the surface at subbasement level by a dimly lighted maze of tunnels; which gave access also to computer vaults, library stacks, and miscellaneous storage spaces. Duke Harald knew them well. Even had he not had from the first some night’s adventure such as this in mind, his military instinct would have driven him to learn the details of the system. And learn them he did : by dint of personal exploration, and the long scrutiny of variously acquired maps and building plans. Thus he made his way with speed and secrecy to Master Elwyn’s building.

Calling an elevator from the upper floors, Duke Harald reviewed his knowledge of the building. Master Elwyn had his office on the topmost floor, well removed from the daytime hum and bustle of the lower levels. The suite comprised, he knew, an inner office, a small washroom and refresher, and an anteroom where during daylight hours a secretary-Cerberus held the portals. At night—particularly this initiation night—that guardian should be gone.

The entrance to the anteroom—the main entrance to the chambers—was almost directly across from the elevator shaft. There was a second door, rarely used, which gave direct access to the inner office. That was some twenty feet along the corridor, just before the passage turned to lead to an emergency staircase.

Up in the elevator, then, to the floor below the one which wash is goal. As the metal doors of the cage sighed shut behind him, Duke Harald was already racing cat-footed down the corridor, around the turn, and up the winding stairs to his first “check point.” A quick glance showed him the corridor stretching bare and empty to the far wall of the building.

And now came the first really ticklish spot. Taking a case of tiny, glittering energy tools from his belt pouch, Duke Harald went ghostlike down the corridor; and began to trace the power leads to Master Elwyn’s door. And as he worked, swiftly and precisely, he smiled in silent amusement. His door had been shorted out; he would now repay the compliment!

His circuit tracer flashed. Stopping the slow movement of his hand, holding it rock-still—a millimeter’s error could defeat him—he read the tiny dial and marked his point of entry. Exchanging the tracer for a power drill, he sank a microscopic shaft to the indicated depth, and down it drove a silver grounding pin. Then—a quick re-check with his tracer, and this phase of the operation was complete.

And none too soon! Indeed, a faint humming from the elevator shaft warned him that his time was running out. And still another door to doctor!

Sweating with nervous haste, Duke Harald paused before the door of the inner office and forced his hands to repeat the cautious tracing of the hidden wires. Just as a soft pinging announced the arrival of the cage, he found the junction he was looking for, marked it with a hasty blob of color—fortunately, precision was not so necessary here—and, battle cloak streaming from his shoulders, almost dove around the corner to the concealment of the stairhead.

Half crouching, hands on weapons, he waited then for any possible alarm. There was none. Only the sigh of the closing elevator and, a moment later, the distant muffled chiming of a bell. Silently, Duke Harald flattened himself to the floor and extended a tiny pocket mirror around the corner. The angle of sight was strange, and the view narrow. But it sufficed. He could see the length of the corridor, could recognize Melton standing before the door of the anteroom, could just discern the faint blue flash of the scanning light.

Cautiously Duke Harald stood erect. In his hands were two new instruments. From around the corner he could now hear voices.

“Well! Melton,” came Master Elwyn’s tones, “come in, come in!”

“But, master,” the young Terran sounded puzzled, “the door—you haven’t opened the door.”

“Eh? What’s that? Wait there, and I’ll—” the adept’s voice faded out. A brief pause—not more than ten seconds—and Duke Harald heard the sound of an opening door. He tensed; poised himself lightly on the balls of his feet.

Master Elwyn’s voice came again, clearer, louder, and without the faint but unmistakable distortion of a caller-circuit. The jugglery with the door had worked; had decoyed the adept from his inner sanctum.

“Come in,” said Master Elwyn, “at last. I can’t imagine what has happened to this door. But we mustn’t delay your initiation to—” And the click of a closing door cut off the sentence.

Now! Duke Harald plunged around the corner and came to a skidding halt-before the entrance to the inner office.

Over the paint-marked spot on the wall he pressed one of his instruments. It droned faintly, and the door began to slide ajar. And as it opened, Duke Harald’s other hand went reaching in, found the finger slot—and pressed into its shadowed depth a sticky-backed and tiny Sonotec. Then he removed his “opener” from the wall and let the door slide home. All this in the few brief seconds while the Terrans crossed from anteroom to inner office.

Duke Harald sighed gustily and wiped perspiration from his forehead. Then, unreeling a thin, almost invisible thin cable, he resumed his station at the stairhead. This time he Was using a wired job; after his last experience he dared not risk even the tightest of microbeams. And now, he was ready to learn what really went 011 at the initiation of an adept!

“Now, Melton,” Master Elwyn’s voice came clearly along the wire, “sit down, my friend. For two years you have persevered at what must have seemed a slow and thankless task. You have been forced to know yourself, to sound the earliest depths of memory, to lay bare the tangled roots of your most fleeting wish—and all for no more clearly stated reason than that your masters deemed it necessary.”

“Why,” said Melton slowly, “I formed my own opinion about that. Perhaps I should not have kept at it, otherwise.”

“Quite,” said the old adept, approvingly.

“I,” Melton went on, “decided rather early that this training—or something very like it—was necessary. First, as a question of ethics; and then as a matter of survival.”

“No need to hesitate. I know what you are going to say; and you are right, of course.”

“Well, then. Ethics—because it concerns the fundamental Rule of Privacy. That Rule is basically, I think, an ethical conception. And I doubt,” said Melton warmly, “that, without a thorough training in stability, in psychological self-knowledge, any human could be trusted to observe without exception the Prime Rule. The temptation to pry, to peek, to take a furtive mental glance—all, of course, for the best of reasons!—would otherwise be irresistible.”

“What harm?” quizzed Master Elwyn. “What danger, in a small infraction?”

“Only the danger that in small infractions lies the seed of great abuses of the esper skill. And could society trust such power in unscrupulous hands? A power-seeking adept would have to be destroyed!”

(“By Khrom!” Duke Harald muttered, listening at the end of his secret wire, “now I wonder if Duke Charles used arguments like that, when he talked the Council into voting my recall?”)