He broke off, abruptly. He had been about to say - just as I am myself - and had stopped just in time. Somehow, since the night with Amanda, he was not only more open to the universe, but also less self-guarded. But neither Rukh nor Amid seemed to notice the check in what he had been about to say. He went on.
"The point is," he said, "your culture, Rukh, like the cultures of the Exotics and the Dorsai, ties back into Old Earth cultures at their roots; and there've been times in history before this when the faith-holders have managed to stampede the general culture around them. Look at the rise of Islam in the Near East in the seventh century, or the Children's Crusade, in the thirteenth. The Others won't need to control the Exotics directly, any more than they'll need to control the Dorsai, as long as the rest of the inhabited worlds are under their direct control. But Old Earth is a different problem than the Dorsai or the Exotics. It's like the Friendlies in that the Others can be satisfied there with a division of opinion about them that effectively keeps the world as a whole from organized opposition. But on Earth, unlike Harmony or Association, the Others can't afford open civil war. A peaceful Old Earth is still necessary as an economic pivot point for interworld commerce - which will have to go on. But if they can prevent Earth from becoming a potential enemy, short of crippling her economic roles, they'll control absolutely the interworld trade in skills - the base of our common interplanetary credit system that's let all our worlds hold together in one common community of humanity this long."
He looked at Amid.
'The Exotics have always known that, haven't they, Amid?"
The wrinkles in Amid's face rearranged with his smile.
"We've known it for three hundred years," he said. "That's why, from the first, we made it our major effort - in a secular sense - to dominate interplanetary trade, so as to protect ourselves."
He sobered.
"That's why, Hal Mayne," he said, "you'll find us probably more hard-headed about this situation with the Others than anyone else. We know what it'll mean to have them in power, and we've known it from the first move they began to make as a group."
Hal nodded, turning back to Rukh.
"So," he said, "you see. The one world it's absolutely necessary for the Others to neutralize is Earth. The reason they've got to do that goes beyond the obvious fact that, in spite of the way the Old World was plundered and wasted in the early years of the early centuries of technological civilization, it's still far and away the most populous and resource-rich of the inhabited planets. The further reason's that, quite literally, it's the storehouse of the original gene pool, the basic source of the full-spectrum human being, from which we all came."
He stopped, and waited to see if she wanted to respond to all this he was saying, but she simply sat, relaxed and still, waiting for him to go on.
"If successful opposition to the Others is possible from any people at all, in the future," he went on, "it's most possible from the people of Old Earth. They've got their past all around them - there's no way they can be blinded to what the Others would take from them. Also, as their history shows, they're intractable, imaginative and - if they have to be - capable of giving their lives for what they consider a necessary goal, practical or otherwise. For the Others, the necessity is obvious - Earth is the one citadel which must be taken and controlled, to ensure a permanent end to all opposition to them. As a last resort - but only as a last resort - they'll destroy it rather than have it go against them. They've got no choice, if it comes to that." He paused. Rukh watched him. Amid watched him.
"In the long run, the Dorsai can be starved to death. The Exotic Worlds can be rendered helpless. The Friendlies can be kept fighting among themselves to the point where they never emerge as a serious threat. But Earth has to be either cancelled out or destroyed, if it's to be taken out of the equation at all. Nothing less's going to answer for what the Others need."
He stopped talking, hearing the echo of his own words in the following silence; and wondering if he had gone too far into rhetoric, so that Rukh would instinctively recoil from him and from what he was about to ask her to do. But when he paused she still merely sat silent, her gaze going a little past him to the greenery around the further bend of the pool, then turned her eyes back a little to look onto his.
"There's only one way for them to do this, as things stand," he told her. "They've got to work inside the social structure and pattern of Earth if they want to bring about a large enough division of opinion there to keep its people as a whole stalemated. And that's what they've been trying to do from the start with the individuals they've already got there, talking up their cause. But with things on all the other worlds moving to a showdown - "
He paused and shrugged.
Somewhere in the depths of the garden a soft chime rang once, and a small sound in Amid's throat intruded on the silence. Hal turned to look at the smaller man.
"I'm afraid I've been waiting for a chance to tell you something," Amid said. "You remember, you wanted it arranged for you to talk to the Exotics as a whole. A gathering of representatives from both Mara and Kultis are here, now; and they're ready to listen to you as soon as you can talk to them; by using single-shift phase, color code transmission, we're going to try to make it possible for everyone on both worlds to see and hear you as you talk - this may not work, of course."
"I understand," said Hal. As phase shifting went, the distance between the two worlds under the sun of Procyon was easily short enough to be bridged in a single shift. But the problem here would be the tricky business of ensuring that the distance between disassembly point and reassembly point of the transmitted data was bridged exactly at all moments during transmission. Even with no more than a single shift, and orbital points whose positions were continuously calculated from outside referrents like that of Procyon itself, keeping precise contact over that distance for any period of time at all would be a staggering problem.
"However, what I really have to tell you is that Bleys Ahrens is here, here on Mara - here with us." The voice of Amid held no change of expression. "He seems to be remarkably lucky at making guesses; because he apparently assumed you'd be coming to speak to us at this time. Under the circumstances, the sooner we finish talking here and let you go to that talking, Hal, the better. Everyone's ready, including Bleys. He's asked for a chance to address us, himself. We said yes."
"I wouldn't expect you to do anything else," answered Hal. "As far as his ability to guess my being here to talk, he could be using an intuitional logic, like the one Donal worked with."
Amid's eyes narrowed, and his gaze sharpened.
"You think the Others have that, too, now?"
"No… not the Others as a group," Hal said. "Bleys alone might - but almost certainly no one else. Or, he could just have made a lucky guess, as you say. It doesn't disturb me that he's going to talk. Before me - or after me?"
"Which would you prefer?" Amid's voice was still expressionless.
"Let him speak first."
Amid nodded; and Hal turned back to Rukh.
"As I was saying," he went on, "there's no real alternative for the Others, then. They're going to have to send to Earth some of their own number, plus as many disciples as they can who seem to be able to use something of the charismatic talent. With these they can try to make an all-out effort to enlist enough of Earth's population to build a division of opinion large enough to block anything that might be done by Earth people who could realize what the Other's control of the civilized worlds will mean."