He stopped talking. Hal had made no effort to interrupt him and continued to say nothing, now. "You disagree, of course," said Bleys, "or perhaps you don't. In any case, I've made the offer. You've no choice but to consider it. "And I've told you," answered Hal, "what you know as well as I do. What would happen if Earth let you colonize like that."
Bleys nodded. "But you know," he said, "that while you and I may ride the winds of history, we're not just completely helpless passengers. Of course what you say is right. But the result of those colonies moving in doesn't have to be what you suggest. Perhaps you can let them in and still bend the winds to your advantage. It's possible." "Possible, not probable. What you suggest is a road downhill to what you want. But for we who want something else, all roads would be uphill if I agreed." "The alternative's invasion and the blood bath-very soon now. "
It was true, thought Hal, even if the invasion Bleys talked of was not likely to come quite as soon as he implied. It was also true, unfortunately, that there was an element of truth in what Bleys offered. It was possible Old Earth could absorb the enclaves Bleys suggested, without war, and the future be settled that way.
But - Hal felt an echo of the same uneasiness he had told Bleys he had felt three years before when they had been face to face in the phase-shield. The feeling nagged at Hal that if Bleys got what he asked for, somehow the road to the Creative Universe that he now thought he saw so plainly before him would be blocked as surely as it would be by Tam's death, unless he found the entrance to it before then. Should Hal reject this now - that might be the answer for everyone now alive - in a gamble on what he might be able to do for them and all generations to come?
He knew which choice he wanted. "Maybe you're right and it would work," he said to Bleys slowly, "but I was never one for shaking hands with the Devil." "I thought," Bleys said, "you were the Devil, the Chief Devil?" "Only according to your doxology," said Hal. "But in any case," Bleys smiled, "what'll you tell Old Earth, when the people there learn they had a chance to be free of the phase-shield and the warships of the Younger Worlds, but you turned it down?" "That'll depend on whether you actually make such an offer officially and publicly," said Hal. He smiled back. "There's nothing official about me, outside the Final Encyclopedia. You'd need to make your proposal formally from the United Younger Worlds to the Consortium of Old Earth governments and give them time to consider it. In the end, you may decide not to make the proposal, after all." "Oh?" said Bleys. He sounded genuinely intrigued. "You think so? Why?"
Hal kept his own smile. "Wait and see," he said. "The pattern of the historic forces changes constantly. You know that as well as I do." "I do, indeed," said Bleys softly. He hesitated for a moment. "I think you're bluffing." "Try me and see," said Hal. "Yes," Bleys nodded, "I'll do that."
He had looked away from Hal and at the fire, musingly for a second. Now he looked back. "Tell me," he said to Hal, "the last time we met, why didn't you carry through? Why didn't you move to resolve what's between us two, at our last meeting? I'd expected that to be the moment of our confrontation. You'd undeniably stolen a march on me. You'd gotten all the people you valued and needed safely hidden behind that phase-shield you'd had built around Old Earth, before I could sweep them up, one by one, or group by group, from their native worlds. When I met you in the wall of the phase-shield, itself, we were at a moment in time when you had a definite advantage. Why didn't you push for a conclusion then?"
Hal remembered again how at that particular last meeting he had noticed how Bleys had become more physically powerful in appearance, how he had put on weight in the form of compact muscle. He and the Other had been about the same height since Hal had come into his growth - that had been the original height of Hal's uncles, Ian and Kensie. Bleys had always been an unusually tall man. But when Hal had first seen him, there had been none of the evidence of physical strength that was part of him now.
Now, Bleys had apparently deliberately built himself up to match Hal. It dawned on Hal that the Other man must have put in an incredible number of hours physically developing and training himself for every possible kind of hand-to-hand conflict, with or without weapons. This, because the extra strength by itself would be only a part of making himself a physical match. for Hal. Therefore he had, for his own reasons, been looking forward even at that meeting in the phase-shield wall, to possible conflict on that level with Hal.
But, even as he realized this, Hal also realized that what Bleys had tried was impossible. No adult could possibly train himself to the point of physically matching a Dorsai of comparable size, age, reflexes and ability, who had been trained from the cradle upward.
Only then did Hal remember, once more, that he now was no match for such a Dorsai either. All his physical training as Hal Mayne had been some of the tutoring from only one of his tutors, as a child of Old Earth, and even that had been a long time ago. He had tried to keep himself in shape since, helped by an active life at times, such as when he had been a miner on Coby, or a member of Rukh's Resistance band on Harmony, but that didn't make him a Dorsai. Recognition and realization took place in his mind in barely the time it took him to start answering. "You come at an interesting time to ask me that," he answered. "Maybe it isn't so surprising though. Many of the historic forces that move you parallel those that move me, and it's natural that we'd come together under coincidental conditions."
"But you didn't answer my question," said Bleys, his eyes steady on Hal. "That's why I say you come at an interesting time," said Hal. "If I'd had to answer you then, there in the phase-shield, I wouldn't have been able to. All I knew then was that I noticed that you were ready for a showdown, and instinct told me to back off from it. I felt - you'd have to call it an uneasiness about accepting any try to settle things there and then. Now I understand why. What I'd realized unconsciously was, as I told you then, that you couldn't win. But, as I later realized, if I agreed to the confrontation, then and there, neither could I. "I don't follow you," said Bleys. "I mean I believe I would've won that contest," answered Hal. "But either of us could have, and, I'll give you this, you might have won after all. We were at a point where, with one of us gone, the other would have had an advantage. Pressed home, that advantage might have given a seeming victory." "Seeming, only?" Bleys' voice was pleasantly curious. "Yes," answered Hal. "Seeming only, because we'd merely be once more repeating a cycle of time-worn history. I learned a long time ago that even having all possible power over all the worlds doesn't make you able to change human nature, and it's that that's been the point of argument between us from the beginning, whether the individual human's nature is going to be changed or not. If I'd won I'd have gained a victory, but it'd have been only a partial victory. As, if you'd won, you'd have had only a partial victory. And the problem with any partial victory for either of us was that final victory, the ultimate victory, would've been closed off from the survivor, forever, or at least until some later generation should create the confrontation once again, and in that future time be wiser in its decision. So I chose to leave things at stalemate so that I could try for the greater victory, in my own time."
As I do again now, he thought to himself. It's the same uneasiness, the same decision. "Did you?" said Bleys. "And, do you see your way to it now?"