"If you can," said Athalia.
"We'll see," he answered.
"All right," she got to her feet. "I'll go right now and set the machinery working to find out - if I can get Hilary off that phone for five minutes."
"How soon do you think we might hear?" he called after her as she headed toward the small office.
"I don't know. Forty-eight hours at least, I'd say," she answered over her shoulder.
But it was not forty-eight hours. Before noon the next day Athalia heard from the fish dealer who supplied the Barracks section kitchen in the Center and was on easy speaking terms with the mess cook and his staff. Rukh, he had been told, was in an isolation cell; but, as of the previous day, she had been alive.
Eight hours later, as soon as darkness had cloaked the streets for an hour, sixteen people gathered in Athalia's warehouse, around a table of boards set up on trestles for the occasion.
Chapter Fifty-three
Hal sat at one end of the table looking down its length at Athalia and at all those between them. Again, as when he had talked to her the evening before, he was strongly reminded of the moment in which he had faced the Grey Captains in the dining room at Foralie. Outside of Athalia herself and Hilary, those at the table were all faces he did not know, with the exception of two from Rukh's Command, the perky, aggressive features of Tallah, and the long face of Morelly Walden. Morelly had evidently healed from his wound, but he had lost weight and now his body was as thin as his limbs. He had supported himself with a stick as he had walked into the warehouse, and he looked twenty years older than the man Hal had known.
If any of the other twelve people Athalia had invited were also members or former members of Commands, they showed no sign of it. It seemed to Hal that with the exception of Tallah and Morelly, he looked at all city faces; hard faces, in some instances, but city ones nonetheless; and his instincts told him that he could expect no help from either of his former comrades, or from Hilary - if Hilary had indeed come to the point of wanting to help - in convincing these others.
Athalia began matters by briefly rehearsing Hal's credentials as a former member of Rukh's group and stating what he wanted.
"… and as you all know," she wound up, "we did hear earlier today that Rukh was still alive in the Cells at Center - in an isolation cell, but alive. He's made certain offers to us you know about. Now, I'll let Hal have his chance to tell you what he's got in mind."
"Thanks," said Hal.
He looked at the men and women he did not know; and their expressions were not encouraging.
"I take it for granted," he said, "that there's no one here who'd hesitate at anything I've got to propose, if he or she thought there was a real possibility of getting Rukh free from the Militia. But I'm going to have to ask one uncomfortable question before I start talking to you - is there anyone here who seriously feels that it's a waste of time even listening to me? I'm asking each one of you to examine your own conscience."
The eyes around the table stared back at him. No one stirred or spoke.
"I ask that," said Hal, "because I know many of you feel that simply because no prisoner has ever been recovered from a Center, no prisoner ever could be; and I'm here to tell you not only that that's a belief that's mistaken, but that bringing Rukh safely out of the hands of the Militia is the sort of thing that people like us have done down through history. It's not only possible, it's practical. However, there's not one of you here I can convince of that, if you've already made up your mind there's no point in listening to me. So, I'll ask you again, for Rukh's sake, are there any of you here who've got a completely closed mind on this subject?"
There was a moment of silence and stillness. Then the people about the table looked at each other, and after several seconds there was a screech of metal on concrete, as a tall man in a dark leather jacket, near the far end of the table, pushed back the barrel-like metal container that had been serving him as a seat. He stood up; and at the sight of his rising, a shorter man in a business suit, at the table's very end also stood up.
"Wait," said Hal.
They paused.
"I honor your honesty," he went on, "but please - don't leave. How about sitting in, with the rest of us, after all? Not to join in the discussion, but just to listen?"
The two standing men looked at him. The one who had been the first to rise was the first to sit down. The other followed.
"Thanks," said Hal. He paused to look around the table before going on. "Now, let me make one other point first. I've told Athalia, and I believe she's relayed what I said to the rest of you, that the main reason an effort has to be made to free Rukh is there's a job to be done by her no one else on any of the worlds can do."
"She belongs to Harmony," broke in a heavy man in a dark green, knitted jacket, seated next to Tallan.
"Right now," said Hal, "I could answer that statement by saying the only thing she belongs to is the Militia. But I know what you're talking about - that she's a Harmonyite, one of the Chosen, and that she's got work here. That's true, she does have work here; but she also has it everywhere, now, as well. I'll ask you again, all of you, to keep listening to me with open minds for the moment."
He paused. Their faces still waited, without expression.
"Stay with me, first," he said, "while I go through something you already know, but something that's going to be important in this case. I can't emphasize too much that the Others are only a handful, proportionally speaking, compared to the rest of us, on all the settled worlds. By themselves, no matter what their abilities and powers, they couldn't be a real threat to the whole human race. What makes them a threat is that they're able to use other people, people like your closest neighbors, as a lever to multiply their original strength many times and make it possible to control the rest of us."
He paused again, waiting for anyone who might want to argue this point, but none of them said anything. He went on.
"They can use others as levers, because they're able to make these people into followers, into believers in them," he said. "Everyone knows there are many the Others can't do anything with - people like yourselves who're strong in faith, and the Dorsai, and the Exotics. What's not known so well is that there are also a lot of people the Others can't use among the people of Old Earth - "
"I've heard that," said the man in the knitted jacket. "It's hard to believe."
"The reason you find it hard to believe," Hal said, "is because, if true, it sounds like it makes a mockery of your own hard-won strengths, to say nothing of the strengths of those who can also resist on the Dorsai and the Exotics."
He looked around the table at them all.
"But really," he went on, "it doesn't do that at all. It's not even strange. Let me ask you a question. Your forebearers, the ones who emigrated from Earth, and made the first settlements here on Harmony and Association, would you say that they had less faith than you here, and those of your generations of these two worlds, nowadays?"
There was an instant hum of negation around the table.
"More!" came the strong voice of a heavy, middle-aged woman with bright, dark eyes on Hal's left and about five faces down the table.
"Well… possibly," said Hal. "We tend to remember the best about our ancestors and forget what in any way diminishes them. Let me ask you another question, then. Do you all believe that every person capable of the special faith that you consider makes a Friendly left Earth and came here? Couldn't there have been some who, for personal reasons of anything from finances to a simple preference for Old Earth, stayed there, married and had children of their own there?"