Hal smiled. "If I've found the answer, " he said, "it's there for everyone. Go find it for yourself."
Bleys looked at him for a long second. It was strange to see Bleys Ahrens pause like this. He must have done so only at very rare moments in his life. "So," he said at last, "not this time, either. But I think I'll do what you say and find whatever you say you've found, for myself. And I'll meet you at the end of the road, wherever that is. Look for me there when you reach it."
His voice softened suddenly. "Stop the little girl," he said. But Amanda had already been in movement. Her hand closed now over Cee's just as Cee's fingers closed on the glass paperweight containing the miniature pine cone, on Amid's desk. Amanda pried it loose from Cee's grasp. Cee struggled, silently if fiercely, to hold on to it, but her strength was no match for an adult's. Amanda came away with the paperweight. "We don't kill people," Amanda told her. "Ever."
Cee's eyes held Amanda's and the small face was unreadable. "She's decided you're dangerous," Amanda told Bleys. "Don't ask me exactly why. Smelled it in you, possibly, and I can't really blame her. She's right."
She turned her attention on Cee again. "But we don't kill people," she repeated to the girl. "You don't kill people. Leave this man to those who know how to deal with him, like Friend, here."
Bleys was frowning at Cee. "You don't actually mean," he said to Amanda, "she's that dangerous?" "Yes." Amanda still held Cee unwaveringly with her gaze. "Men sent here by you made her that way. Ask your four dead Occupation soldiers - if you can talk to ghosts." "Well... " said Bleys thoughtfully.
He stayed for a moment where he was, facing Hal. He rose, and Hal rose across from him. They stood close as brothers, two tall men under the close, dark ceiling of Amid's office. "Well, I've made my offer." Bleys pulled his cloak closed again around him, and its dark folds swirled and flashed for a second in the firelight. "I'll leave you with it. You might be kind enough to send someone with me to light me down the mountainside path, so I don't go in the wrong direction and fall off a cliff. From the upper side of that stone at the bottom that closes the path, he can easily roll it back into place alone. It's only opening it from below that's a hard job for one man."
He looked over at Amid. "Don't worry," he said, "I'll keep the secret of this place of yours, here, and any of the Occupation Army that's tempted to explore in this direction will find orders disapproving such a move after the pronounced nonsuccess of the late force-leader and his equally late groupman. You can go on living up here in peace. "
He turned back to Hal. "But they're lucky they had you with them." "I didn't kill those soldiers," Hal said. "So you're giving me to understand." Bleys' eyebrows raised. "This child did it for you. I find that a little hard to believe. " "It's true," said Hal.
Bleys laughed. "if you say so." "You see," Hal said, "you're making a mistake. Here, where you're standing, is the cradle of the new breed of Exotics. Exotics who'll be nowhere near as vulnerable to you as they've been in the past. " "If they can kill soldiers, perhaps you're right," said Bleys. "But I'm not particularly worried. I don't think this place and its people have very long to survive, even without a hand being raised against them. Now, what about that guide to light me on my way?"
"You must have rolled the entrance stone aside from below," said Amid suddenly. "How could you do it, alone?"
Bleys glanced at Hal. "How about you?" he asked. "Are you surprised, too? No, you wouldn't be, would you? You could do it yourself. You know that there're ways of concentrating your strength. Have been ever since the first caveman lifted a fallen tree he shouldn't have been able to move, off a hunting companion in a moment of frenzy he didn't think he had in him. But you might not have thought of me before now as being equal to you, physically. I am, though I think, in fact, we're just about equal in nearly all respects, though that's something neither of us will be able to check. " "If there is, it'll show at the end," said Hal. "Yes," said Bleys, more quietly than he had spoken until this moment, "at the end. Where's that guide?"
"I have called for Onete to get someone," said Amid. "Here she comes now."
In fact, the door was opening, and Onete came in through it, followed by Old Man, carrying a powerful fueled lamp, already lit. "Then too," said Bleys thoughtfully, looking at the slim, white-bearded man waiting by the open door, "there might be those about whom there could be a legitimate doubt if they could roll the stone back alone, even from the top side."
Old Man's eyes twinkled back at him. "Then, perhaps not," said Bleys, striding toward the door. "Lead on, my guide." Old Man stood aside to let the Other pass through the door first, then went out himself, closing it behind him. Amanda came forward to the fireplace so that she was together with the seated Amid and the still standing Hal. "You frightened me," said Amid to Hal, "when you told him that this ledge was the cradle of the new breed of Exotics, and right after he'd promised to keep our being here a secret! Do you think he was telling the truth about leaving us in peace?" "Bleys feels himself above ever having to lie," answered Hal. "But I'm sorry you were frightened. I wasn't just being thoughtless enough to raise a doubt in his mind, I was actually confirming his original notion you were harmless. "
Amid's already wrinkled brow wrinkled more deeply in a frown. "I don't understand," he said. "He's a fanatic," said Amanda. "You know his background, surely? You Exotics must have looked into his background. His mother was one of your people."
Amid nodded. "It's true she was an Exotic," said Amid. "But she turned away from us. If we were a religious people, you might have said she was an apostate." "She was brilliant, and knew it," said Amanda. "But not brilliant enough to gain control of all the Younger Worlds, the way Donal Graeme effectively did, back in his time, and fate had caused her to be born into the one Splinter Culture whose people were best equipped to resist manipulation by her." "Yes," said Amid, with a sigh, "at any rate she left us and went to Ceta."
"Yes," said Amanda, "and it was on Ceta, later on, Bleys was born. He's never known who his father was. Actually he was from Harmony. An unhappy older man she seduced merely to see how easily she could do it. But I think she really wanted to believe she was the only one responsible for Bleys, because almost from the day he was born it was plain he had everything in the way of abilities that his mother had liked to think she had herself, but hadn't. So she started cramming him full of knowledge from the time he was old enough to talk, and he was well on his way to being what he is now at only nine years of age, when she suddenly died. Possibly he was responsible for that. He could have been. She'd left directions that if anything happened to her he was to go to his uncle on Harmony. Do you know that part of his history?" "Not all of it," said Amid. "When we looked into Bleys' background, years later, we found out about his mother. She had no Friendly genes in either the maternal or paternal lines of her ancestry. But the man - the Friendly on Harmony he was sent to grow up with - couldn't have been Bleys' uncle! A cousin, a number of times removed, at most." "Well, she called him an uncle and the boy was taught to call him 'uncle.' In any case he was a farmer with a large family, and a fanatic, rather than a true faith-holder. He raised all his children to be fanatics like himself. Some of what Bleys is he caught from that man. Though I don't suppose it was more than a week or two after he got there that the nine-year-old Bleys was controlling that whole family, whether they knew it or not. He controlled them, but his 'uncle,' or all of them, infected him with their fanaticism all the same."
"'It's not easy to tell the difference between a fanatic and what you call a true faith-holder - particularly when you call them so, Hal," said Amid, looking from Amanda to him. "I'd hate to think we simply use the word fanatic for anyone whose views we disagree with. " "There's almost no difference in any case," answered Hal, "between a fanatic and someone of pure faith, though what difference there is makes all the difference, once you get to know them. Basically, they differ in the fact a faith-holder puts himself below his faith and lets it guide his actions. The fanatic puts himself above it and uses it as an excuse for his actions. But for practical purposes, the two are almost identical. The fanatic practically die for what he believes in as readily as a man or woman of faith came back to him a memory of a man who had been a fanatic and tortured Rukh Tamani close to death, but who now served her among the most loyal of her followers and was a Faith-holder. Amyth Barbage had been an officer of the Militia harried and tried to destroy such Resistance Groups as Rukh's on both Harmony and its sister Friendly world of Association.