"Again," said Tam, "why?"
Hal frowned a little.
"Because he's nothing else. Surely that much has always been obvious about him?"
Tam was silent.
"Yes," said Ajela, slowly, "I think it always has been."
"So," said Hal. "Since he doesn't dissimulate and therefore he really was interested in saving me if he could, we're faced with the fact that that reason alone isn't strong enough to bring him here, now. Also, his main reason for coming, whatever else it is, isn't likely to have to do with the Encyclopedia, which he respects but doesn't fear. So it must have to do with Earth. Earth's always been the one world where the Others have been inexplicably ineffective with a majority of the populace."
"As opposed to the Exotics, the Friendlies and Dorsai, you mean?" said Ajela, "where the reasons are plain why most of the people there manage to resist that charismatic talent of the Others?"
"Exactly," said Hal. "The people of Old Earth as a whole never have had the sort of commitment to the ideals of their cultures as members of the three great splinter groups have. But in spite of this a majority of the people on Earth seem to be able to shrug off the charisma. The Others know they'll have to control Earth, eventually; but in spite of this mobilization of theirs for what looks like an orthodox military movement against their enemies, their natural preference isn't for that way of doing things. Neither Bleys nor any others of his kind want to spend any large part of their lifetimes playing at being generals. What they really want is to sit back among worlds already conquered and enjoy themselves. So, since Bleys is here now, it has to mean two things at least. One, that he's planning to move soon on Earth, in a non-military manner—since any military effort they could mount is at least logistically unready; and two, Bleys, himself, wanted a first-hand look at the situation there before that effort got under way."
"All right," said Tam. "I still don't see what in this sends you off to Harmony, the Exotics and the Dorsai."
"The fact that Bleys is different."
"That's what 'Other' means," said Tam dryly.
"I mean," said Hal, "different from the rest of the Others. He heads their cause for a reason of his own I don't yet fully understand; and until I do, I've got to dig for every possible understanding of the situation."
He stopped and looked at Tam, who nodded slowly.
"And the situation right now requires that understanding," Hal went on, "if we're to get any clear idea of what Bleys and the Others are planning for Earth."
"All right, then," said Tam, "just what are they planning, do you think?"
"Well," answered Hal, "they know they aren't as successful at stampeding individuals there as they are elsewhere; but on the other hand, Old Earth's people have always been ripe for any emotionally powerful appeal, particularly in an apocalyptic time. You heard Amid. The argument they're already beginning to use in their mobilization on the other worlds—is that individuals on Earth with a traditional desire to dominate all other civilized planets, and armed with new, dark weapons from the Encyclopedia, are about to try to conquer the Younger Worlds. Note that the blame's being laid on individuals."
"Why's that important?" said Ajela.
"Because, since it's easier to paint individuals as villains than all those on Earth, the most obvious deduction is that Bleys plans to send charismatics to Earth, to preach a crusade in which the common people there will be urged to rise against the Encyclopedia and those supposedly evil individuals who're pushing the plan to take over the Younger Worlds. If they can get a popular movement of any size going down there, then the Younger Worlds can be asked to send help, to take power by force. Meanwhile, it's a good argument to use on Earth's people; and a good plan to gain power for the Others, there. It's using their special talent at one remove; but, given the special character of the old world's full-spectrum peoples, that makes it all the more likely to work."
He paused.
"Am I making sense to you both?" he asked.
Tam nodded.
"Go on," his deep, hoarse voice rattled against the walls of the room.
"So it's necessary I carry what we know and what I deduce to the Exotics and the Dorsai; and show the Exotics, in particular, that victory for the Others isn't a foregone conclusion—that they can be fought, if they try what I believe they're going to try. They can be fought and checked right here on Earth."
"And how are you figuring on fighting them, right here on Earth as you put it?" asked Tam.
"With counter-preachers." Hal's eyes met the dark old ones levelly. "What I finally realized in that cell on Harmony was that, at base, those charismatic abilities of the Others are derived from a talent evolved on the Friendlies; where the urge to proselyte has always been strong, powered by the quality of their faith. Rukh Tamani, if I can get to her, can tell me who the Harmonyites are, who're available and would want to come to Earth and oppose those who'll preach this doctrine of the Others. We'll need people who can oppose it with the same sort of force and faith that fuels the charismatic talent. Then, if the Exotics and the Dorsai see reason to hope, we may be able to get all those who ought to be united against the Others working together effectively as a unit—in time to stop Bleys."
Tam said nothing for a second.
"I see." He glanced at Ajela. "The minute you begin fighting him on Earth, successfully or otherwise, you'll force Bleys to fall back on the use of force to win. That's why you think we've got to start protecting the Encyclopedia right now?"
"Yes," said Hal.
Tam nodded.
"All right," he said, heavily. He turned to Hal. "I suppose you've taken into consideration the possibility that Bleys might already have someone, a saboteur, already here, at the Encyclopedia."
"Yes," said Hal. "But it's a long shot. The plans of the Others are too recent for it to be one of the regular personnel; and there's been none of the regulars who've been away from the Encyclopedia in recent years long enough and under conditions where they could be permanently corrupted, by even someone as capable as Bleys himself. That leaves the visiting scholars, as I say; and while it's unlikely one of them could have been gotten at—considering the general level of their ages and reputations—in the last year, we shouldn't take chances. In any case, there's no way I can see that we can check those we've got here now for possible intent to sabotage us, and be sure of what we find."
"Perhaps there is," said Tam. "Come along to the Academic Control Chamber. Let me take a look at the neural chart there and see what our current visitors have been working on in the last twelve months."
They went. The Control Chamber was as Hal had remembered it from his first visit to the Encyclopedia when he had been brought to it by Ajela. The room, which was large as rooms in the Final Encyclopedia went, was still banked on each wall with the control consoles, with half a dozen technicians in white shirts and slacks moving softly about it, recording the work done by the visitors and surveying it for what was new to the master files and should be added to them.
Tam led Ajela and Hal directly to the mass of red, cord-thick lines apparently hovering at waist level in the center of the room. The one technician beside it moved discreetly back out of view as the old man came to a halt and stared down at the intermittently glowing sections that came and went in the mass of lines. He stood, studying it for a long moment.
"Rotate this overall view forty-five degrees," he said, almost absently.
"Rotate… ?" the technician who had retreated came forward, staring. "But then all our present charting is going to be thrown off—"
He checked himself at the suddenly raised head of Tam and the glare of Tam's eyes. Tam opened his mouth, as if to speak, then closed it again.
"Of course. Right away—" The technician hurried to a console and Tam looked back at the display of the Encyclopedia's neural circuits, as they seemed, not so much to rotate, as to melt and twist into different patterns. After a second, the changes stopped taking place, and Tam considered the shapes b
efore him.
After a moment he sighed and looked at Ajela, then beyond her to the technician, now standing well back by the console he had gone to to rotate the display.
"Come here," said Tam.
The technician came forward. The other white-dressed figures in the room were not looking, not watching what was going on at the center of it; but they were very still and Hal thought he could see their ears tensed.
"I do my best nowadays," said Tam quietly to the technician, "not to lose my temper, but sometimes I'm not too successful. Try and remember that the rest of you don't know all the things I've learned in the last century; and that I get weary of having to make the same explanation over and over again to new people every time I want something done."
"Of course, Tam," said the technician hastily. "I shouldn't have spoken up."
"No, you shouldn't," said Tam. "But now you should also know why you shouldn't have; and from now on you should tell other people, so they know, too. Will you do that?"
"Yes, Tam. Of course."
"Good." Tam turned back to Hal and Ajela. "Jaime Gluck and Eu San Loy. I think both those visitors may have used up their welcome here."
"Tam—" began Ajela.
"Oh, I can't be sure," Tam said. "But let's go on that assumption that I'm right. Better safe than sorry, as Hal pointed out."
"All right," said Ajela. She turned to Hal. "I'll tell them, right away. How soon will you be leaving?"
"On the first available deep-space transport…" But Hal's eyes were on Tam, who had turned back once more to studying the neural display. Ajela's attention followed his and they stood in silence, watching the old man as the seconds slipped past. But Tam was paying attention only to what held his gaze. Finally, slowly, he looked back and around, at Hal, with an expression on his face Hal had never seen before.
"You're doing it," he said, on a long exhalation of breath.
"Not really," replied Hal. "Not yet. I'm just beginning to investigate the possibilities—"
"You're doing it—at last!" said Tam, in a stronger voice. "What Mark Torre dreamed of—using the Encyclopedia as a pure thinking tool. Using it, by God, the way he planned it to be used!"
"You have to understand," said Hal, "this is just a beginning. I'm only trying out poetry as a creative lever. I was waiting to show you until I had some firm results—"
Tam's wrinkled gray-skinned hand closed with remarkable strength on Hal's sleeve.
"This trip," said Tam. "Put it off. You've got to stay here, now. Stay, and work with the Encyclopedia."
Hal shook his head.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll get at it again just as soon as I can get back. But there's no one else to do what needs to be done on the Friendlies, the Exotics and on the Dorsai. I have to go, if the worlds are to be saved."
"Damn it, the worlds can take care of themselves, for once!" snapped Tam. "This is the doorway, the dawn of a new beginning! And you're the only one who can lead us into it. You can't be risked, now!" The technicians about the room were staring. Tam ignored them. "Hal!" he said. "Do you hear me?"
"I'm sorry." Gently, Hal pulled his sleeve out of the other's grasp. "I meant what I said. There's no one else to talk to the people who have to be talked to if the worlds are going to survive."
"Well, and what if they don't—as long as the Encyclopedia survives with what you can learn to do, now—what does the rest matter, then?" raged Tam. "Let Bleys and his friends have the other worlds, for fifty years—or a hundred years—or whatever. They can't touch you and your work here; and here's where the future lies. Isn't it the future that counts?"
"The future and the people," said Hal. "Without the people there wouldn't be any future. What good's a gift with no one to give it to? And you know as well as I do it's only if what I might find here turned out to be no use to anyone else, that Bleys'd leave the Encyclopedia alone. While if he already had all the other worlds and was really determined to get the Encyclopedia, eventually he would. With Newton, Cassida, and the stations on Venus, he'll have some of the best scientific and technological minds in his service. They'd find a way eventually to break through to us. Nothing ever made by humans stops other humans forever. Tam, I have to go."
Tam stood still. He did not say anything further. But his whole body seemed to hunch into itself, to become less. Ajela stepped to him and put her arms around him.
"It's all right," she said softly to him. "It'll work out, Tam. Hal'll come back safe. Believe him—believe me."
"Yes…" said Tam, harshly. He turned slowly away from her and toward the doorway that would take him back to his own suite. "You don't give me much choice, do you?"
Chapter Fifty-two
The first deep-space vessel available to carry Hal and Amid in the right direction took them both only as far as New Earth City on New Earth, from which point they went different ways. Amid, to Mara to talk to his fellow Exotics there in preparation for the message Hal was planning to bring them; Hal, to the city of Citadel on Harmony.
Hal had half a day to himself in New Earth City after seeing Amid off; and he spent it taking note of the differences that had come over that metropolis since he had paused there as a boy, on his way to Coby seven years before. The larger differences were ones that seven years of time alone could not account for. It was the same city, on the same world; and business within it was proceeding much as it had proceeded when he had seen it before; but in the people there, those Hal saw on the streets and in the buildings, a change had come for which ten times seven years would hardly have been enough to account.
It was as if a darkening sense of limited time had moved in upon them like some heavy overcast of cloud, to interdict whatever hope and purpose had formerly shone into their daily lives. Under this gathering darkness, they seemed to scurry with the frantic energy of those who would deny a rapidly approaching deadline when all their efforts would become useless. Like ants who appear to redouble their dashing about in the fading light of sunset, the people of New Earth City seemed obsessed with an urgency to accomplish all their usual activities, both with great dispatch and with a denial that there was any need for that urgency.
But, behind that denial, Hal felt a penetrating and overwhelming fear of an approaching night in which all they had done to prepare would turn out to be useless.
He was glad at last, therefore, to ride up to the ship into which he had transferred to get to Harmony. Arriving at that world, he rode a jitney down to the Citadel spaceport; and landed on a day there that for once was without weeping rainclouds. A watery, but clear, sunlight from the large yellow orb of E. Eridani, that same sol-like star Hal had picked out of the night sky back on Earth as a boy, gilded the stolid brick and concrete buildings of the city outside the port. He took an automated cab and directed it to a destination on that Friendly city's northern outskirts, to a dome-roofed building in the midst of a large, rubbled, open lot among dwelling places set at some little distance from each other. Releasing the cab, he entered the building.
Within, there was nothing to show that time had not stood still since his last visit. The air, barely a degree or two above the temperature of that outside, was as before heavy with the faintly banana-oil-like smell of the lubricant that those living on the Friendlies had harvested by tapping the variform of one variety of native tree they had discovered at the time of their first wave of colonization. Several surface vehicles with their propulsive units exposed or partially dismantled sat about the unpartitioned interior in the pale light through the translucent dome. In the far end of the floor, a stocky, older man in work clothes was head down into the works of one of the vehicles.
Hal walked over to him.
"Hello, Hilary," he said.
The head of the stocky man came up. Gray eyes from under a tight, oil-streaked skull cap looked at Hal, dryly.
"What can I do for you?" the other man asked.
"You don't recognize me?" said Hal, caught halfway between humor and sadness.
; It was not surprising. In the two years since the other had last seen him, Hal had crossed the line into physical maturity. He had been a tall, lean, intense stripling when Hilary had seen him last. Now, although there were no sudden age lines on his face and the twenty extra kilograms of flesh and muscle he now carried on his bones had only reasonably increased his apparent weight, a world of difference had overtaken him. He was no longer just very tall. He was big. Indeed, as he had fully realized at last only when Ajela had confronted him with his own image on his return to the Final Encyclopedia, he was very big.
He read the message of that size in Hilary's response—in the fact that Hilary seemed to tighten up slightly at the first sight of him, then settle in, become even more compact by comparison. It was an unconscious reflex of the other man, part of an indefinable, automatic measuring instinct in him, like that which causes one male dog to bristle at his original glimpse of a strange and larger other, only to lower the hair on back and shoulders when a second glance discovers that the difference in size between them was too great to make any thought of challenge practical.
Hal had encountered similar reactions from time to time, this past year, at the Encyclopedia; and once, turning a corner to find himself face to face with a mirror, in one of those unguarded moments where, for a second, the viewer fails to recognize himself—he had felt it himself. In that moment, before recognition and ordinary personal self-consciousness came back, he had seen someone who was not only large physically, but big beyond that size in some indefinable quality that was at once quiet, isolated and forever unyielding. For a fraction of a second there he had seen himself as a man he did not know, and when the recognition had came, it had brought not only a kind of embarrassment, but unhappiness; for until that moment he had been telling himself that he had at last learned to live with that inner difference and isolation of his, some time since. But now, here again with someone who had met him before, he had seen the mark of that difference, unerasable still upon him.
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