"That's all I have to say," he told them, finally.
Their eyes went to him, then. Miriam Songhai sighed.
"It's not an easy picture to look at, the one you've just painted," she said. "I believe I need to think this over."
There was a mutter of agreement around the table. But the cadaverous man got to his feet.
"I don't need to think it over," he said, looking directly at Hal. "You've answered every question I could have asked. You've convinced me. But the only answer you have isn't for me."
He looked for a moment around the table.
"You know me," he said. "I'll do anything necessary for my people. But the Dorsai as it is now is what I've lived and fought for all my life. I can't change now. I won't have any hand in making it and its people change. The rest of you can travel this new road we've just been hearing all about, but you'll do it without me."
He turned toward the door. Two other men and one woman pushed their chairs back also and got up. Ke Gok started to rise, then sat down again, heavily. In the doorway, the cadaverous man stopped and turned back for a moment.
"I'm sorry," he said to Hal.
Then he was gone and the three others followed him out.
"I gather," said Hal, in the following hush, "that most of you, like Miriam Songhai, want to think about what I've said. I can wait on Dorsai up to another week, if any of you want to talk to me further. Then, as I said, I'll be leaving for the Final Encyclopedia."
"He'll be at Fal Morgan," said Amanda.
The meeting broke up.
Hal had assumed that he also would now be heading back to Fal Morgan. Instead, he found the living room half-filled with fifteen of the Grey Captains who wanted to talk to him further about the situation as he saw it. Ke Gok, surprisingly, was one of them.
They were, Hal learned from what they had to say, those who had already brought themselves to a belief in the historical situation as Hal had explained it - though not necessarily to him or whatever plan he might develop for dealing with it. He found discussing matters with them to be a clean mental pleasure after the uncertainties and secrecies of the Exotics. They were people who were used to taking problems apart and dealing with them either in section or in whole; and clearly they had accepted him as one who worked in the same manner.
At the same time he was uneasy, conscious of a difference as he talked to them informally in the big living room. For a little while in the dining room he had found himself wearing a cloak of certainty so strong that he had not even needed to think of the words to use. What he had wanted to say had simply come to him out of the obviousness of what they needed to understand. Now, in the living room, with an audience already half-convinced, that diamond-brilliant clarity and conviction was gone once more. His own, usual abilities of expression were still more than adequate to the occasion; but the difference in that from what he had tapped for a short while in the dining room was jolting; and he made himself a promise to find out what it had been that had so touched him then, as soon as he had time to examine his memory of it.
In the end it was five hours later when he and Amanda rode back through the early evening to Fal Morgan.
"What were these strong reasons you hinted at, according to Rourke di Facino?" he asked her, when they and their horses were lost to sight from Graemehouse.
"I told them I was convinced you had greater ties with the Dorsai than it might seem in this situation."
He considered that answer for a few seconds as their horses walked, side by side.
"And what did you say to the ones who asked you what those ties were?"
"I told them it was a perception of mine, that they were there." She turned her head as she rode and looked at him squarely. "I said they could take my word and come, or doubt it and stay away."
"And most came…" He gazed at her. "I owe a lot to you. But I'd like to know more about this perception of yours, since it's about me. Can you tell me about it?"
She looked away again, back out over the ears of her horse.
"I can," she said. "But, in this case, I don't think I will."
They rode on in silence for a few seconds more.
"Of course," he said. "Forgive me."
She reined her horse to a standstill so sharply it tossed its head against the pressure of the bit. He pulled up also and turned to see her almost glaring at him.
"Why do you ask me?" she said. "You know what happened to you at Graemehouse!"
He studied her for a second.
"Yes," he said, finally. "I know. But how could you?"
"I found you there," she said, "and I knew something like it was likely to happen."
"Why?" he said. "Why would you expect anything to happen to me at Graemehouse?"
"Because of what I saw in you, your first night here." Her voice was challenging. "You don't remember, do you? Do you at least remember telling me that you felt an identity with Donal - because he'd always been considered such an odd boy by his family and his teachers at the Academy?"
The echo of his own words sounded in his memory.
"I guess I did," he said.
"How did you know that about him?"
"Malachi, I guess," he said. "Malachi must have told me. You said yourself he'd probably been involved in contracts taken by the Graemes."
"Malachi Nasuno," she said, "would never have known. The Graemes never talked about each other to people outside the family. They didn't even talk about each other to Morgans. And no teacher at the Academy would discuss a student with anyone but another teacher, or the student's parents."
Hal sat his horse, saying nothing. There was nothing in him to say.
"Well," she demanded, at last. "What made you think Donal was isolated? Where did you get the idea that his teachers referred to him as an odd boy? Are you going to tell me you made it up?"
Still, he could find no response in him. She started walking her horse again. Automatically, he put his in motion to follow her; and they rode on again, side by side.
After a while, he spoke; not so much to her as to the universe in general, staring forward meanwhile at the route they followed together.
"No," he said, somberly, "whatever else may be, I didn't make it up."
They rode on. His mind was suddenly so full it blinded him, and Amanda did not intrude upon his thoughts. When they reached the stable door at Fal Morgan and dismounted, she took the reins from his hand.
"I'll take care of the horses," she said. "Go and think things out by yourself for a bit."
He went into the house. But instead of continuing on down the corridor to the privacy of his bedroom, he found himself turning into the living room. The lights there went on automatically as he entered, and the brightness jarred on him. With a wave of his hand at the nearest sensor, he turned them off. The living room was left dimly lit by only the light from the corridor to the kitchen down which he had just come. The gloom was comforting. He walked in and dropped into a chair before the unlit fireplace, staring sightlessly at the kindling and logs laid waiting there.
There was a strange mixture of emotion in him. Part of it was a large feeling of relief and triumph; but another part was a dark sadness he had never experienced before. Once again, he was conscious of his own isolation from everyone else. The memory of the cadaverous man turning in the doorway to say he was sorry would not leave him. He was inescapably aware of all that the other man had to lose. In fact, he was aware of how they all would lose, if they followed him into the struggle against the Others. But they would lose even more if they did not join him. Still, with him, they would lose much; and he could not turn away from the fact there was no way to temper what would be, just to protect them from their pain.