Unless, perhaps unless, Hal could unlock the Creative Universe for him, along with all other people.
Somehow the mad man, Iban, the Exotics, the Encyclopedia, the war, Old Earth, the Younger Worlds - they all came together like lines converging to a point. He could all but feel the convergence right now as a living thing, held in his hands, like the willow twig of a divining rod. Oddly, he felt it in his mind as if it converged toward this place he had never seen, the place toward which he now moved. The new Chantry Guild.
Strange how the one person it was at once easiest and hardest for him to be was Bleys.
His inner eye watched the thing of greater importance, the thin fingers dropping the torn petals into the dark water. His mind went far, far back into his childhood as Donal Graeme, a century before. "You're thinking," said Amanda, after some time.
He started, broken out of his thoughts into the world about him again. "Yes," he said. "That man back there... I was like that, once. "
They continued walking. His eyes were on the trail ahead of him, but at the edge of his vision he saw her head turn and her eyes look at him gravely. "You?" she said. "When?" "When we got the news of James's death - my youngest uncle. I told you, once, didn't l?" "Yes," she said. "You were eleven years old, and Kensie came and found you in the stable, afterward - in a cold rage. What would you have done, even if you'd had the man responsible there, in that stable? Try to kill him - at eleven years old, as you were then?" "Probably," said Hal, watching the mountains ahead. "Pure destruction is a circular action. It trapped me then, as Donal, and I've spent all my time since growing out of it." "I know," she said softly. "You see," he said, looking at her, "it's got no place to go but back upon itself. It can only replace, the way that man replaces his plants, over and over, never adding to what's there. Creativity's the opposite, a straight line projecting endlessly forward. The trouble is, the urge to destruction is a racial instinct, useful for testing the individual's ability to control his environment. Children vandalizing a school are doing exactly the same thing as that man we passed. It's instinctive in each new generation, as it becomes conscious of time, to want to sweep away everything old and make everything new. It's instinct in them to feel that all the past went wrong, and now they're going to start the race on the right path from then on. "
"But the circularity of destruction traps everyone who does that, and they end up blamed, along with the rest of all history, by the generations that follow. That's why, even with the historic forces endlessly seeking a balance, Bleys and the Others have to lose eventually, because they'll be left behind while the creative people move forward. And evolution happens when that takes place. "
"You're saying," said Amanda, "that Bleys is out to destroy Old Earth and the best products of the human Splinter and other cultures, as nothing more than some sort of surrogate for what he really wants to destroy'? Like the man with his flower petals?" "Not exactly," said Hal. "His philosophy's sensible enough if you accept his premises, primarily, that humanity in the past let technology run away with it and went too far, too fast, too soon. No, it's not a ritual, instinctive reaction that moves him, but faulty reasoning - because he lacks empathy, and therefore a sense of responsibility. It's just that he could have gotten started toward it from the same sort of targetless fury as I did, like the man back there maybe did. Bleys could have begun turning into what he is, out of rage at a universe that gave him everything - brilliance, will, mental, moral and physical strength-and then, like the uninvited witch at the christening in the children's story, capped it all with the fact he could never find any other human being to share what he made with him." "You think so?" said Amanda. "I don't know," answered Hal. "But it could be. And it might be important."
Almost, he had become lost in his thoughts again. What brought him out of them this time was a glimpse he thought he had, momentarily, of an expression on Amanda's face. He came back to his surroundings and looked narrowly at her. "Were you smiling?" he asked. "Why?" "Was I?" said Amanda, her features now perfectly composed. She tucked an arm through his and squeezed it. "If I was, it was because I love you. You know, it's time we stopped somewhere along here to eat. Help me look for a good place. "
CHAPTER 13
They found such a spot, shortly. A small, fern-carpeted open area where a tiny stream of cold, drinkable water crossed the trail, from among the bushes and trees on the route's upper side. Seated there, they looked down a clear space of hillside to a heavily treed valley a hundred or so meters below. Amanda unpacked dried fruit and pieces of cornbread. The other food consisted mainly of sandwiches, the taste of which carried the flavor of the pith Hal had eaten before. They went well with the icy water of the stream, which must have its source in the mountains above.
They spent no more than twenty minutes at the most, eating. Procyon was already only an hour or less from the tops of the mountains that could be seen towering above the treetops ahead of them. The mountains looked only a few hundred meters ahead in the clear air, when they must be much more distant than that, Hal thought. He and Amanda went on their way. "We haven't seen anyone else, except the man by the pond. for hours," said Hal. "Aren't there any people at all up this way?" "Not as far as I know. That's why the Chantry Guild is back in here. There's nothing much to support a population," answered Amanda. "Oh, there're mountain meadows that could be used for grazing animals, but the Exotics were never herdsmen, even in their early years here, and of course the living's so easy, particularly here at the edge of the tropics, that they've never had any need to. Even before the Occupation, you'd have found it empty up here, except for an occasional traveler. But now the Occupation doesn't let natives make trips without special reason - and special permits. So from here on until we hit the Chantry Guild we shouldn't run into anyone."
Hal was ready to believe her. The road had long since become a foot-track, which had in turn become a trail, and now was nothing at all. It was as if Amanda was setting her course across open country, by memory or some other unseen means. Hal watched the ground carefully as they covered it. Tracking had been one of the many skills drilled into him by his tutors, so his eye was skilled enough to pick up even small signs of others having passed this way. In fact, he did so, from time to time - things as small as a scuff mark in the dirt or a broken twig - though those were few and inconspicuous.
He ceased to look, therefore, for sign and let himself simply enjoy the walk through the open country.
Enjoyment was there, to anyone raised in the mountains - and Hal was doubly so. As Donal he had grown up in the mountains holding his home, Foralie, on Dorsai, and as Hal he had been raised until he was sixteen among the Rocky Mountains of North America, on Earth. Being among them now brought an exhilaration to him that no other kind of country could evoke. Unthinkingly, his head lifted, his eyes read the lands and heights around him, his nostrils sniffed the clean, clear air... and his stride lengthened. "You can slow down now," Amanda said. "We'll be following along a stream course for a little distance, and it's almost level." "Oh. Was I pushing the pace?" said Hal. He was embarrassed. "Not for me. But we've got a way to go yet and the last part's a literal climb. Better take it easy."
Even as she said this, they were already among the unbroken strip of trees and bush, interspersed with leafy stalks of bright green fern, a meter or more in height, that filled the nearly even floor of earth between two steeply upward-sloping and wooded hillsides.