"I can imagine," said Amid. "You seem to have gone through a sort of a rite of passage, according to Nerallee."
"How much did she tell you?" Hal asked.
"That was all - essentially," said Amid. "She's got her personal responsibilities as a Healer; and, in any case, we'd rather hear what you wished to tell us about such things, in your own words."
"At least at first?" said Hal. "No, I've no objection to your knowing. When I talked to her, I assumed what I said was going to be made available to the rest of you, if you thought you needed to know it. Actually, what I went through isn't the important point. What's important is I came out of it with a clearer picture of the situation than - possibly - even you here on the Exotics."
Amid smiled a little. Then the smile went away.
"Anything's possible," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Hal.
"Then, tell me," said Amid. The old eyes, set deep in their wrinkles, were steady on him. "What do you think is going to happen?"
"Armageddon. A final war - with a final conclusion. A quiet war that, when it's over, is going to leave the Others completely in control; with the Exotics gone, with the Dorsai gone, what was the Friendly culture gone, and all progress stopped. The fourteen worlds as a large estate with the Others as landlords and no change permitted."
Amid nodded slowly.
"Possibly," he said, "if the Others have their way."
"Do you know any means of stopping them?" said Hal. "And if you do, why be interested in me?"
"You might be that means, or part of it," said Amid, "since nothing in history is simple. Briefly, the weapons we've developed here on Mara and Kultis are useless against the Others. Only one Splinter Culture's got the means to be effective against them."
"The Dorsai," said Hal.
"Yes." Amid's face became so devoid of life and motion for a second that it was more like a living mask than a face. "The Dorsai are going to have to fight them."
"Physically?"
Amid's eyes held his.
"Physically," he agreed.
"And you thought," said Hal, "that being raised as I've been - so that effectively I'm part Exotic and part Dorsai, as well as being part Friendly - I might be the one you'd want to carry that message to them."
"Yes," said Amid, "but not just that. Our calculations on you show you as a very unusual individual in your own right - it may be that you're particularly fitted to lead in this area, at this time. That would make you much more than just an effective messenger. You must understand how high some of us calculate your potential to be - "
"Thanks," said Hal. "But I think you're dealing in too small terms. You seem to be thinking of someone who can lead, but only under your direction. I can't believe that the Exotics, of all people, don't have a clearer picture of the situation than that."
"In what way?" Amid's voice was suddenly incisive.
"I mean," said Hal, slowly, "I can't believe you, of all people, have any illusions. There's no way what you've built here and on Kultis can survive in the form you know it. Any more than the Dorsai or the Friendly Culture can survive as they now are; whether the Others are stopped, or not. The only hope at all is to try to win survival for the whole race at whatever necessary cost, because the only alternative is death for the whole race; and because that's what's going to happen if the Others win. It'll take them some generations, maybe, but if they win, in the end their way will end the human race."
"And?" The word was close to being a challenge from the small man.
"And so the only way to survival means facing all possible sacrifice," said Hal. "What is it you and your fellow Exotics would be willing to give up everything else to preserve - when it comes down to that?"
Amid looked at him, nakedly.
"The idea of human evolution," he said. "That, above all, mustn't die. Even if we and all our work in the past four centuries has to be lost."
"That, yes. I think ideas can be saved," said Hal, "if the race is going to be saved as a whole. All right, then. I imagine you've got a number of people you want me to meet?"
He stood up. Amid rose also.
"I believe," he said, "we've underestimated you."
"Perhaps not." Hal smiled at him. "I think I'll change clothes first. Will you wait a minute?"
"Of course."
Hal went back to his sleeping quarters. Among the clothing suspended there, cleaned and waiting for him, were the clothes he had been wearing on Harmony when he had knocked at the door of the Exotic Consulate. He exchanged them for the green robe he had been wearing and went back to Amid in the conversation pit.
"Yes, we did indeed underestimate you," the old man said, looking at the clothes when Hal returned. "You're much, much older than when I met you aboard the ship to Harmony."
Chapter Thirty-nine
"As it happens," said Amid, leading Hal through the pleasant maze of rooms and intervening areas that made up his home, "the people who want to talk to you are already here. While you were dressing, I called around and they were all available."
"Good," said Hal.
He strode along beside the much smaller man, holding his pace down to the one that age dictated for Amid. The self-restraint reminded him, suddenly, of how frail the other actually was. Amid must be far up in years, considering the state of Exotic medical science; nowhere near as old as Tam Olyn, of course, but old in any ordinary human terms.
"I've no idea," Amid said, "where your knowledge of our ways stops. But I suppose you know that, like the Dorsai, for all effective purposes we don't have governing bodies on Mara or Kultis. Decisions affecting us all become the concern of those in whose field they most clearly lie; and the rest of us, in practice, accept the decision those experienced minds come up with for the situation - though anyone who wants to can object."
"But they generally don't?" Hal said.
"No," Amid smiled up at him. "At any rate, the point is that the four people you're to talk to aren't political heads of areas or groups, but people whose fields of study best equip them to evaluate and interpret your capabilities. For example, my own study of the Friendly Worlds makes me particularly fitted to understand what you did, and what the results may be from what you did, on Harmony. The others are comparable experts."
"All in fields as applied to ontogenetics?"
"Ontogenetics underlies nearly everything we do - " Amid broke off. They had reached the entrance to what seemed to be less a room than a porch, or balcony, projecting out from a wall of the general house. Beyond the graceful, short pillars of a balustrade there was nothing visible but sky and the distant tops of some deciduous trees. Some empty chair floats, but nothing else, were visible on the balcony. Amid turned to Hal.
"We're early," he said, "and that gives us a moment. Step across the hall with me."
He turned and led the way into a room with its entrance opposite that of the balcony. Hal followed, frowning a little. The neatness of the opportunity to tell him something was almost suspect. It could be sheer accident, as Amid had implied; or it could be that what the other was about to tell him was something that the Exotics had wanted him to know before they spoke with him, but something they had not wanted him to have too much time to think over beforehand.
"I should explain this, so you aren't puzzled by the fact that some of those you'll be talking to may seem to doubt you unreasonably." Amid closed the door behind them and stood looking up into Hal's face. "Walter InTeacher taught you at least the elements of ontogenetics, I think you said?"
Hal hesitated. At fifteen, he would have answered without hesitation that he understood a great deal more than just the elements of ontogenetics. But now, standing at his mature height, after five years of life experience with a number of people on two strange worlds, standing face to face with a born Exotic, on Mara, he found a certain restraint in him.