Hal sat for a moment.
"I see," he said at last.
"The Others have advertized themselves as leaders and organizers of the effort to save the Younger Worlds. According to them, all the historical henchmen of the Encyclopedia, such as the Dorsai, Exotics, and the wrong kind of Friendly, are known to be in with the Encyclopedia in this, helping to soften up the Younger Worlds for Earth's final attack; and so they must also be rooted out at the same time, once and for all."
Amid paused.
"You'll notice," he said, "how neatly this line is set up to be developed later into one that says that, if all people are to have lasting safety, all knowledge, science and related demons must be done away with or strictly controlled; so that they can never rise again in the future, to threaten the ordinary human."
"How large a proportion of the formerly uncommitted on those nine worlds seem to have been recruited by this, at the present time?" Hal asked.
"Perhaps twenty per cent," said Amid, "and that's why we've calculated that there's no hope for us. Effectively, twenty per cent is more than enough to commit an overwhelming supply of cannon fodder for the Others to throw against us. For all practical purposes, twenty per cent might as well be a hundred per cent. It represents so many individuals that they could march upon us, twenty abreast, forever. They'd be self-renewing down the generations, if the war against us could last that long."
"The Others may have the people," said Hal. "But it's something else to mount an attack between worlds with a force that massive, logistically."
"True," said Amid. "So we do have some time. But on the Exotics, our best calculations see the attack eventually, and our destruction, as inevitable."
His eyes were steady on Hal's.
"So you see," he went on, after a second. "Oh, I know. Ten years ago, anything like such a military attempt of worlds upon worlds would have sounded as wild as a fairy tale come to life. But what everyone took for granted was that no people would consider such a tremendous wastage of life and material as would be necessary to gain such an end. But to the Others, the costs don't matter as long as they get the results they want."
Hal nodded.
"Since that's the case," he said, "and since I assume you don't find any flaws in the Exotic calculations - "
"No," said Amid.
"Why bother coming to me?" finished Hal. "According to what you say, what you and I can do isn't going to make any difference. Under those circumstances I'd expect a mature Exotic to give up philosophically."
"Possibly then I'm not a mature Exotic," said Amid. "In spite of my wrinkles. As I say, I'm free now to do what I want; and, being free, I'm allowing myself to indulge an irrational, unprovable hope that, just as the Others with this charismatic talent of theirs pulled a rabbit out of their hat which nobody'd ever suspected, you just might be able to pull out an equally unsuspected counter-rabbit. Consciously, of course, I have to realize that such a hope is nonsense. But I believe I'll feel better if I go down resisting, so to speak, until the bitter end. So, I'd like to stay as long as I can and be of as much use to you as possible."
"I see," said Hal. "You don't happen to have some Dorsai blood in your ancestry, by any chance?"
Amid laughed.
"I just think I can be useful to you," he went on. "You've got your inferences; but I can give you access to specific, hard information, much of it through a network of communication the Exotics have developed and improved over the centuries. If I could set up a communication center for you, here, I think you'd find what I could bring in would be very useful to you."
"I'm sure I would," said Hal. "All right, thanks; and welcome."
He stood up. Amid in response got to his own feet.
"I'm sorry to cut this short," said Hal. "But we'll have time to talk later. I've got someone else to see, now."
"Perfectly all right," said Amid.
Hal reached down to the console on the arm of the float he had just left and touched for Ajela.
"Hal?" Her voice came clearly into the room, but without picture on the phone screen.
"I'd like Amid to stay with us," Hal said. "Can we arrange quarters for him?"
"If one of the regular rooms for visiting scholars will do, certainly," said Ajela. "Tell him to turn right when he steps out of your room and he'll find me through the first door he comes to."
"Thank you, both of you," said Amid.
He left. Hal sat down again and touched the phone. This time the face of Chuni, the reception leader who had spoken to them in Tam's office, came on the phone screen.
"Hal?" said Chuni.
"Where's Bleys now, Chuni?"
"He's waiting in the private lounge here by the dock."
"He's alone?"
"Yes," said Chuni.
"Send him - no, bring him up yourself, would you please?"
"All right. Is that all?" Chuni looked tensely out of the phone at Hal.
"That's all," Hal said.
He sat down again. After only a few minutes, the door opened and he got to his feet again.
"Here you are, Bleys Ahrens…" the voice of Chuni was saying; and the two of them came through the door, with Bleys in the lead. Chuni stopped just inside the threshold, nodded past Bleys at Hal and went out again, closing the door behind him.
Bleys stopped, three steps inside the room. He stood, lean and tall in a short black jacket and narrow gray trousers tapering into his boots. His straight-boned, angular face with its penetrating brown eyes under straight black brows studied Hal.
"Well," he said, "you've grown up."
"It happens," said Hal.
They stood, facing, little more than a meter of distance between them; and, strangely, the sight of the Other brought back the memory of Amyth Barbage, standing facing the other Militia captain who had not wanted to keep pursuing Rukh's Command. The feeling struck Hal that the room seemed suddenly to have grown small around them; and he realized that for the first time he was looking at Bleys without the stark emotion of his memory of the day on the terrace, standing like a drawn sword between them. It surprised Hal now - but not as much as he would have been surprised before he had discovered that his head had touched the same top of the doorway as had Ian Graeme's - to discover that he now stood eye to eye, on a level with Bleys. From nowhere, a strange poignancy took him. This individual before him was, in a reverse sense, all he had left of what he had once known; the only one to whom he had any connection from before the moment of his tutors' deaths.
Bleys turned and stepped to Hal's float desk, sitting down on the edge of it, almost as if Hal was the visitor, rather than he.
"A big change to take place in a year," Bleys said.
Hal sat down in his chair. Perched on the desk, Bleys sat a little above him; but that advantage in position no longer mattered between them.
"The biggest change took place in that Militia cell in Ahruma, in the day or two after you left me," said Hal. "I had a chance to sort things out in my mind."
"Under an unusual set of conditions," Bleys said. "That captain deliberately misinterpreted what I told him."
"Amyth Barbage," said Hal. "Have you forgotten his name? What did you do to him, afterwards?"
"Nothing." Bleys sat still, watching him. "It was his nature to do what he did. Any blame there was, was mine, for not understanding that nature as I should have. I don't do things to people, in any case. My work is with events."