"How long, do you think, before the vote will be in, from both worlds?" Hal asked Amid.
The small, old face looked sideways and up at him.
"It was in before you landed."
Hal walked a few steps without saying anything.
"I see," he said, then. "And, when Bleys appeared, it was decided to hold up the results until everyone had heard what he had to say."
"We're a practical people - in practical matters," said Amid. "It was that, of course. But also, everyone wanted to see and hear you speak, before a final announcement of the decision. Wouldn't you, yourself, want to meet the one person who would deal with the end of everything you'd ever lived for?"
"All the same," said Hal, "the option was reopened for them to change their minds, if Bleys was able to bring them to it. Well, was he?"
"Except for a statistically insignificant handful, no, I'm told." Amid's eyes rested on him as they walked. "I think that in this, Hal Mayne, you may fail to understand something. We knew there was nothing Bleys Ahrens could say that would change any of us. But it's always been our way to listen. Should we change now? And do you really think so badly of us that you could believe we'd fail to face up to what we have to do? We here have our faith, too - and our courage."
Amid turned his gaze away from him, looking on ahead to the end of the corridor, to the double doors of heavy, bolted wood, standing ajar on a dimness that baffled the eye.
"It'll take a day or two for our representatives to get together with you on details," the small man went on. "Meanwhile, you can be discussing with Rukh Tamani your plans for her crusade on Old Earth. In three days, at most, your work will be done here, and then you'll be free to go on to wherever you've planned to, next. Where is that, by the way?"
"Earth…" said Hal.
But his mind was elsewhere; and his conscience was reproaching him. He had felt a small chill on hearing that Bleys was here; and that chill had come close to triggering an actual fear in him when he saw the man standing before those assembled in the amphitheater, and heard him speak. It was no longer a fear that Bleys might have the talent and the arguments to out-talk him; but a fear that the Exotics, even recognizing the falsity of Bleys' purpose, would still seize on what the Other said as an excuse not to act, not to join the fight openly until it was too late for them and everyone else.
He had been wrong. From the time he had been Donal, he thought now, one failing had clung to him. With all he knew, he could still find it in him to doubt his fellow humans; when, deeply, he knew that anything that was possible to him must be possible to them, as well. For a little while, there in the amphitheater, he had doubted that the Exotics had it in them to die for a cause, even for their own cause. He had let himself be prejudiced by the centuries in which they had seemed to want to buy peace at any price; and he had forgotten their dedication to the purpose for which they had bought that peace.
Now he faced the unyielding truth. It was far easier for anyone simply to fight, and die fighting; than to calmly, cold-bloodedly, invite the enemy within doors and sit waiting for death so that others might live. But that was what the people of Mara and Kultis had just voted to do.
Amid had been right in what he had just said.
With this last act, all of them, including the unwarlike little man now walking beside him, had demonstrated a courage as great as any Dorsai's, and a faith in what they had lived for during these last three centuries, as great as that of any Friendly. Out of the corner of his eyes he watched Amid moving down the corridor; and in his mind he could see - not himself - but the ghosts of Ian and Child-of-God walking on either side of his ancient and fragile companion.
"Yes," he said, breaking the silence once more as they came to the double doors. "Earth. There's a place there I've been trying to get back to for a long time now."
Chapter Fifty-nine
They went on together, passing from the light of day into the relative obscurity of the space lying beyond the double doors, which closed behind them.
Within, warmly lit by an artificial illumination that in here was more than sufficient, but which had been unable to compete with the cloudy brightness of the late winter afternoon beyond the leaded windows, was a hexagonal room with a slightly domed ceiling, under which nine Exotics were seated about a large, round table. Their robes warmed the interior space with rich earth-colors in the soft light. Two floats at the table sat empty; and it was to these that Amid brought Hal and himself.
Sitting down, Hal looked about at those there, four of whom he recognized. There were the old features of Padma, the small, dark ones of Nonne, the dry ones of Alhanon and the friendly expression of Chavis - all of those who had talked to him on his last visit here, sitting with him and Amid on a balcony of Amid's home. The others he saw were strangers to him; strangers with quiet, Exotic faces having little to make them stick in the mind at first glance.
"Our two worlds are at your disposal now, Hal Mayne," said the age-hoarsened voice of Padma; and Hal looked over at the very old man. "Or has Amid already told you?"
"Yes," said Hal, "I asked him, on the way here."
Nonne started to say something, then stopped, looking at Padma.
"I won't forget," said Padma, looking briefly at her. "Hal, we feel you ought to understand one thing about our future cooperation with you. We don't sign contracts like the Dorsai, but three hundred years of keeping our word speaks for itself."
"It does," said Hal. "Of course."
"Therefore," Padma put his hands flat on the smooth, dark surface of the table before him as if he would summon it to confirm his words, "you have to understand that we've chosen to go your way in this struggle, simply because there was no other way we could find to go. What's ironical is that the very calculations we'd been using to find out if you ought to be followed, now unmistakably show that you should be - primarily because of the effect of our own decision on the situation."
The hoarseness in his voice had been getting worse as he talked. He stopped speaking and tapped the tabletop before him with a wrinkled forefinger. A glass of clear liquid rose into view; and he drank from it, then continued.
"It's only right to tell you that there was a great feeling of reservation in many of us about following you," he said, " - not in me, personally, but in many of us - and that reservation was a reasonable one. But you should know us well enough to trust us, now that we've voted. Effectively, those reservations don't exist any longer. Irrevocably and unchangingly, we're now committed to follow wherever you lead, whatever the cost to us."
"Thank you," said Hal. "I know what that voting has to have meant to you all. I appreciate what you've done."
He leaned forward a little over the table, becoming suddenly conscious of how his greater height and width of shoulders made him seem to loom over the rest of them.
"As I said out there, what I'll probably have to ask your two worlds to give me," he said to them all, "to put it simply, is everything you have - "
"One more moment, if you don't mind," Padma broke in.
Hal stopped speaking. He turned back to Padma.
"We know something of what you've got to tell us," Padma said. "But first, you ought to let us give you some information we can share with you now; we couldn't tell you, earlier, before we were committed to working with you."