Chavis, after a long moment, was the one who spoke.
"We're prepared," she said, softly, "to do anything in our power - to give them anything they need or want that we have to give, without reservation, including our lives. If we'll do that much to stop the Others, surely they can put principle aside this once, for this great need?"
Hal looked at her. Slowly, he shook his head.
"You don't understand," he said. "It's the one thing they'd never do, just as you'd never give up your faith in human evolution."
"They might," it was the voice of Padma, speaking across the great reach of years to him, "if you convinced them to do it."
"I convince them - ?" Hal looked at them all.
"Can you think of any other way to stop the Others?" Nonne asked.
"No! But there has to be another!" Hal said to her, violently. "And what makes you think I could convince them to do anything like that?"
"You're unique," she said. "Because of your upbringing. In effect, you can speak the emotional languages of all three of our largest Splinter Cultures - "
Hal shook his head.
"Yes," said Nonne. "You can. You proved that on Harmony, when you fitted in with one of the resistance groups there. Do you really think the native Friendlies in Rukh Tamani's Command would have taken you in, or kept you for more than a day or two, unless they felt, instinctively, that at least part of you was capable of thinking and feeling as they did?"
"I wasn't that accepted by them," said Hal.
"Are you so sure?" put in Amid beside him. "When I talked to you aboard the ship going to Harmony, you could have convinced me you were a Friendly, for all that you knew less about their history and society than I did. There's a particular feel to Friendlies, just as people of other cultures tell us there is to Exotics, and as everyone knows there is to Dorsai. Recognition of that Friendly feel is something I've spent a lifetime acquiring, and I don't make mistakes now. You felt to me like a Friendly."
"You also," said Alhonan, "feel to all of us like an Exotic. And to the extent of my specialty, you also feel to me like a Dorsai."
Hal shook his head.
"No," he said. "I'm none of these, none of you. The fact is, I don't belong anywhere."
"Do you remember," said Amid, against his ear, "a moment ago, when you first understood what Nonne was suggesting the Dorsai do about the Others? You answered right away that the Dorsai wouldn't do it. Where did you get the certainty you felt in telling us that? Unless you, yourself, trust yourself to think like a Dorsai?"
The words rang with uncomfortable persistence in Hal's mind. They also, without warning, touched off a sudden, inexplicable, deep sadness inside him; so that it was a moment before he got control of his feelings enough to go on. He made an effort to think calmly.
"It doesn't matter," he said, finally. "The idea of Dorsai individuals assassinating the Others, one by one, aside from anything moral or ethical about it, is too simplistic a solution. I can't believe I'm listening to Exotics - "
"Yes, you can," interrupted Amid. "Check the Exotic part of yourself."
Hal went on talking, refusing to look at the small man.
" - Whatever else the Others are, they've emerged as a result of natural forces within the human race," he went on. "Attempted genocide's no answer to them, any more than it ever was for any situation like this, as long as historic records've run. Besides, it ignores what's really going on. Those same forces that produced them have been building to this moment of confrontation for hundreds of years.''
He paused, looking at them all, wondering how much of what he now felt and realized could be made clear to them.
"When I was in that cell on Harmony," he went on, "I had a chance to think intensively under some unusual conditions; and I'm convinced I ended up with a clearer picture of what's going on historically, right now, than a great many people have. The Others pose a question, a question we've got to answer. It's not going to work just to try to erase that question and pretend it was never asked. It's our own race that produced the crossbreeds - and their Other organization. Why? That's what we've got to find out - "
"There's no time left for that sort of general investigation, now," said Nonne. "You, of all people, ought to know that."
"What I know," said Hal, "is that there has to be time. Not time to burn, perhaps, but time enough if it's used right. If we can just find out why the Others came to be what they are, then we'll be able to see what the answer is to them; and there's got to be an answer, because they're as human as we are and the instincts of a race don't lead it to produce a species that could destroy it - without some strong reason or purpose. I tell you, the Others were developed to test something, to resolve something; and that means there has to be an answer to them, a solution, a resolution that'll end up doing much more than just taking off our backs what looks now like a threat to our survival. If we can only find that answer, I'm sure it'll turn out to mean more to the whole race than we, here, can begin to imagine."
He felt his words dying out against the silence that answered him, as calls for help might die against a wall too thick for sound to penetrate. He stopped talking.
"As Amid's pointed out," said Nonne after a moment, "you react in part like an Exotic. Ask the Exotic part of yourself, then, which of two answers is most likely to be right - the conclusions you've come to on your own? Or the unanimous conclusion of the best minds of our two worlds, on which the best minds have been sought out and encouraged for nearly four hundred years?"
Hal sat, silent.
"We could, however, ask Hal what alternative he sees," said Padma.
For the first time Nonne turned directly to face the very old man.
"Is there any real point to it?" she asked.
"I think so," said Padma; and in the pause following those three words of his the silence seemed to gather in on itself and acquire an intensity it had not had until this moment. "You talked about being one of those who were seduced and blinded by the hope that the crossbreeds were what we had looked for, these hundreds of years. Your fault in that was much less than mine, who'd watched them for more years than any of you, and was in even a better position than anyone else to see the truth. I, for one, can't risk being seduced a second time, and blinded by our own desire for a quick and certain solution - a solution which Hal has properly called simplistic."
"I think - " began Nonne, and then fell quiet again as Padma raised his hand briefly from his lap.
"Not only did I make the mistake of assuming the crossbreeds were something they weren't," he said, "unlike the rest of you, I made another mistake, one that still haunts me. Of all Exotics I had the chance, and closed my eyes to it, to find out if Donal Graeme was a real example of evolutionary development. Now, too late, I'm convinced he was. But he was never checked; and I could have had that done at any time in the last five years of his life. If I had only done that much, we'd have been able to read him positively, one way or another. But I failed; and the result was that the chance he might have offered us, eighty standard years ago, was lost forever when he was. I don't want to make another mistake like that."
The other Exotics looked at each other.
"Padma," said Chavis, "what's your personal opinion of Hal's potential, then?"
The intensity that had come into the room a moment before when Padma had spoken was still there.
"I think he may be another like Donal Graeme," he said. "If he is - we can't afford to lose him; and in any case, the least we can do is listen to him, now."
The eyes of the other four robed individuals consulted once more.
"We should, of course, then," said Nonne.
"Then - ?" Chavis glanced around at the others, all of whom nodded. "Go ahead, Hal. That is, if you've got something specifically to suggest that's a workable alternative to our ideas."