He ran out of words. He was fumbling for the words he wanted. An unusual thing for him, and an unusual feeling.
"You didn't want even me to get my expectations up, in case you weren't able to do it," Amanda said. "I suppose so. Yes," he answered, "you're right. That was why- Even you." "Didn't it ever cross your mind you didn't have to prove yourself to me by success?" "I don't know." He hesitated. "Maybe I was afraid of just what's happened. I mean - not afraid that I wouldn't be successful, but that I'd have to decide to stop trying while there was still life in me to try with."
He waited for some response. But she said nothing to help him. He turned again to face her dark shape. "You know this is different," he said. "No matter what you feel, and I feel, you know we have to go different ways, if I turn away, take myself out of the equation while you're still in it. And you know you'll stay in it. You're what you are. The Third Amanda could never turn her back on worlds full of people needing her, simply to follow me into nothingness, for my own sake. What you were born to be and all you were trained to be won't let you. Isn't that so?" "It would be so," she said slowly, "if you did turn away yourself. Yes."
It was almost a relief to hear her say it, and know that it was at last stated, out in the open, final. "That's why I've delayed like this, telling you," he went on. "Oh, Amanda... Amanda... "
His throat closed up on him. He could not say any more. Her hand reached out and stroked his forehead, gently, soothingly, as if he was a child with a fever. "You're not gone yet," she murmured. "But that's just it," he said, able to talk again, although talking was painful. "I've already delayed too long. There's more to it. It's not just me stepping away from an insoluble situation before it drives me insane. If it were that alone, I'd keep trying until they had to carry me off. But every day I wait, I hold back the time when Bleys finds out I'm gone. One day longer to the change that has to come when the historic forces move into the vacuum where I was." "Are you sure when they do move, that'll be for the good of what we've all worked for'? What if it's for the worse?" "I don't know what'll happen, of course," he said. "There's only one thing I know. My quitting's going to leave an imbalance. One that the forces - which are the result of the reactions of all the people on all the worlds - won't be able to tolerate. By going I leave Bleys unopposed, too strong. I explained that to Rukh and Ajela. The imbalance has got to react against Bleys, where up until now the forces of history were working for him and the Others." "You're sure of that?" she said. "How can it be or have been any other way?" He stared through the darkness at her, wanting to see the expression of her face more clearly. "In all our history, no one person, one side, ever held the race to its own will for any length of time. Sometimes inside a generation - or less - all that a great conqueror took, or builder erected, was gone. Something else had come to replace it. You can say the civilizations of Egypt, the Dynasties of China, the Roman Empire, lasted for hundreds of years. But steadily, even while the names lasted, what they stood for changed. Always. Even the great religions grew, splintered, altered - until from one generation to another, even a hundred years later, they'd all have seemed very, very different to someone used to their earlier forms."
Amanda said nothing. She continued to stroke his forehead. "You know this is true!" he said. "When the balance leans too far one way, it automatically swings back. If I go, Bleys can never have what he's fought for - a single, unchanging Old Earth, where all the humans alive are permanently under the control of him and his kind. The historic forces will make an adjustment - hopefully for the better. It must happen, just as a child grows into an adult and an adult grows into old age and death - inexorably. Without the constant change that brings adaptation, the race can't survive."
Still she said nothing. Her hand continued to stroke him, that was all. It seemed she was ready to listen eternally. "I never hoped to stop that ceaseless back-and-forth, that oscillation," he said. "My only hope was to take advantage of its momentum to break through to some kind of permanent improvement in people, a growth, not in anything put together by men and women as a society, but already waiting in the very hearts and souls and natures of each one of them, individually. So that on the next swing each living human would have more be more, and choose more wisely. And this improvement would have to have come inevitably, as the value of the learning and self-discipline acquired by each individual, as the price of being able to use the Creative Universe. If only I could have found the way into it for them, that pass through the mountains! "
He stopped talking, out of words. They stayed as they were a little while, Amanda's hand still gently soothing his forehead. At last, however, she ceased, and took her hand away. "You've thought of what your leaving is going to mean to Tam, of course?" she said. "Of course," he answered, his voice thick with self-anger and disgust. "He had faith in me, in my finding a solution. I've been holding off telling him just as I held off telling you. But perhaps it's better to, now. But it'll be hard on him, after struggling to live all these years until an answer could be found. I know it. But I can't delay leaving any longer. Bleys is driving the Younger Worlds to produce ships and man them, to the point where it'll kill them. Of course, he wants them to die. And that makes it only a matter of time before he has what he needs for a massive breakthrough. As the time before that event shortens, the time in which my quitting can begin to cause a change in the balance of forces gets smaller and smaller. I have to tell Tam now, and go - now."
He hesitated. "I'd rather do anything than face him with that news. Anything, but not face him with it." "You think it means only disappointment to him?" "What else?" he said. "He counted on me to find it. He counted on me to take over the Encyclopedia. I can't do either. If I stayed here, there'd be no true vacuum of power created, and affairs would haul me back into position again." "But only disappointment, that's all you think it'll mean to Tam?"
He stared through the darkness at her, at the face he could not read. "What else would there be? What do you mean?" he demanded.
She said nothing for a second. Then, when she spoke, her voice was a little different, almost detached. "Do you know the children's story of the Great Dark Place?" she asked.
His mind drew a blank, made an automatic half-effort to call up the knowledge center of the Encyclopedia to find it, but he was too sick and weary inside for the effort. Besides, he knew Amanda must have some reason for wanting to retell it herself, or she would not have mentioned it so. "No," he said.
"The sun, the rain and the wind happened to meet one day," she said softly. "And the rain was upset - so upset that he was almost turning into sleet. It's just terrible,' he told the sun and the wind, 'I've come from seeing something I wouldn't have believed if anyone had told me about it. A Great Dark Place. I've never seen a place so dark and terrible. I got away just as fast as I could. It scared me to death.' " The wind laughed. " 'Come on, now,' the wind said, 'no place can be that frightening. In fact, I don't believe it even exists. You're making it up. Isn't he, Sun? " 'I certainly can't imagine any such place,' said the Sun.