Even lying here, listening to fountain and bird-song after several weeks of almost constant association with her, Hal had trouble summoning up in his mind's eye a clear image of her face. Following nearly three hundred years of concern with genetics, there was no such thing as an Exotic who was not physically attractive in the sense of possessing a healthy, regular-featured face and body. But for what Nerallee looked like beyond that, Hal's physical perception had become too buried under his other knowledges of her to tell. She had seemed to him unremarkable, at first, almost ordinary-looking in fact, during their first few days together, but after that from time to time she had appeared to have worn so many different faces that he had lost count. Those faces had ranged from the most dramatic of beauties to a gentle, loved familiarity that washed all ordinary notions of beauty away - the familiarity that finds the faces of parents responded to so strongly by their very young children, or the appearance of a partner who has been close for so long that there is no single memory-picture possible and the person is simply recollected in totality.
But she had been able to do for him what he had so badly needed without having realized that he needed it - absorb his attentions so wholly that she could give him rest. A rest of the sort that he had not known since the death of his tutors. It had been what he had required at the time. But, with his strength now recovered, he was no longer in desperate need of it; and, therefore, Nerallee would be going elsewhere, to others who needed her.
He lay listening to the bird voices and the tinkle of splashing water.
After a while there was the faint scuff of foot-coverings on the floor above the conversation pit, behind him. He turned his head to see Amid coming down the three steps into the pit, to take a seat facing him, in what appeared to be a rock carved armchair-fashion. Hal sat up on the couch on which he had been lying.
"So, we're going to have a chance to talk, finally?" Hal said.
Amid smiled and folded the rust-colored robe he was wearing around his legs. On each of the half-dozen earlier occasions that he had appeared, the former Outbond had spent only a few minutes with Hal before leaving, on the excuse that he had a great deal to do.
"The business I've been occupied with," the small, wrinkle-faced old man said, "is pretty well taken care of now. Yes, we can talk as long as you like."
"Your business wouldn't have been caused by my visit here?" Hal smiled back at him.
Amid laughed out loud. In accordance with his age, the sound resembled a dry chuckle, rather than a laugh; but it was a friendly sound.
"You could hardly come to Mara," he said, "without involving us with the Others, even if indirectly."
"Indirectly?" Hal echoed.
"Indirectly, to begin with," said Amid. His face sobered. "I'm afraid you're right. For some days now it's been directly. Bleys knows you're here."
"Here? At this place of yours?"
"Only that you're on - possibly in this hemisphere of Mara," said Amid. "Your exact location on this world is something he'd have no way of finding out."
"But I take it he's putting on pressure to get all of you to give me up to him?" Hal said.
"Yes." Amid nodded. "He's putting on pressure; and I'm afraid we'd have to give in to him, if we kept you here long enough. But we don't necessarily have to react right away. For one thing, it'd be rather beneath the dignity of one of our worlds to give in at once to a demand like that, in any case."
"I'm glad to hear that," said Hal.
"But not particularly surprised, I take it," said Amid soberly. "I gather you realize we've got a particular interest in you, and things to discuss because of it?"
Hal nodded.
"I suppose you've connected me with the calculations Walter InTeacher had run on me when he first became one of my tutors?" he said.
"That," said Amid, "of course. Your records were flagged at that time as someone who might be of force historically. Consequently, a record was kept on you that went without interruption until the deaths of your tutors and your entrance into the Final Encyclopedia - "
"Kept with Walter's help?" Hal said.
Amid gazed at him for a moment.
"With Walter's help, of course," Amid answered calmly. "After his death and your entrance into the Final Encyclopedia, we lost you; and only traced you to Coby after Bleys' interest pointed you out to us, again. The fact that you've been able to keep out of his hands is, to say the least, remarkable; and it's that, primarily, that's raised our interest in you. Generally speaking, you're someone we've all been keeping an eye out for, lately. When it became obvious Bleys was making a serious effort to flush you out on Coby, we arranged for one of us to be on each of the ships available to you then for off-world escape. I was lucky enough to be on the one you took."
"Yes," said Hal. "I see. You're interested in me because Bleys is."
"Not because - for the same reason - Bleys is," said Amid. "We assume he wants you neutralized, or on his side. We want you made effective in opposition to him. But not just because he's interested in you. We're interested - we've always been interested - in you, simply because our ontogenetic calculations recommend an interest."
"A little more than recommend, don't they?" Hal asked.
Amid tilted his head a little to one side like a bird, gazing at him.
"I don't believe I follow you," he said.
Hal breathed slowly before answering. The lethargy was all gone out of him now. Instead there was a sort of sadness, a gray feeling.
"Bleys threatens the very existence of your culture," he answered. "I suppose I ought to say that it's the Others who threaten its very existence. Under those conditions, don't your calculations do more than just recommend an interest in me? Or - let me put it a little differently. Is there anyone else they recommend an equal interest in, in that respect?"
Amid sat in the sunlight, looking at him.
"No," he said, at last.
"Well, then," said Hal.
"Yes," said Amid, still watching him. "Apparently you understand the situation better than we thought you did. You're barely into your twenties, aren't you?"
"Yes," Hal said.
"You sound much older."
"Right now," said Hal, "I feel older. It's a feeling that came on me rather recently."
"While you were on Harmony?"
"No. Since then - since I've had time to think. You talked about my staying out of Bleys' hands. I haven't been able to do that, you realize? He had me in a cell of the Militia Headquarters in Ahruma."
"Yes," said Amid. "But you escaped. I take it you've talked face to face with him, then, since the moment of your tutors' deaths?"
"I didn't talk to him at the time of my tutors' deaths," said Hal. "But, yes, a day or two before I got away he came to my cell and we talked."
"Can I ask about what?"
"He seems to think I'm an Other," Hal said. "He told me some of the reasons why he expects me to come over to their side in the end. Mainly, they add up to the fact that there's no other position that'll be endurable for me."
"And I take it you disagreed with him?"
"So far."
Amid looked at him curiously.
"You're not completely sure he isn't right?"
"I can't afford to be sure of anything - isn't that the principle you've always held to, yourselves, here on the Exotics?"
Amid nodded again.
"Yes," he said, "you're older than anyone would have thought - in some ways. But you did mail your papers to me. You did come to us for help."
"To the best of my knowledge I'm on the opposite side of Bleys and the Others," Hal said. "It's only sense to make common cause with those who're also opposed. I had a long time to think in that cell, under conditions where my thinking was unusually concentrated."