There was a small, tight silence about the table.
"All right," said Hal. "Go on. I'm listening."
"As I just said, what we have is yours, now," said Padma. "That includes some things you may know we have, but which are possibly a great deal more effective than you might have guessed."
His old, dry-throated voice failed him again. He reached for the filled glass on the table before him and sipped once more from its contents. Putting the glass down, he went on more clearly.
"I'm talking," he said, "of our ability to gather information - and our techniques for evaluating it. I think you'll be interested to hear, now, what we've concluded about both you and Bleys Ahrens."
"You're right." Hal stared hard into the old eyes.
"The result," Padma went on with no change in his tone, "of that gathering and evaluating gave us a pattern on each of you that could help you now to define the shape of the coming conflict."
He paused.
"The pattern on Bleys shows him aware of his strength and determined to use it in economical fashion - in other words, in such a way that he and the Others can't lose, since they'll simply operate by maintaining their present advantage and increasing it when they can, until there's no opposition to them left. This is a sort of dealing from strength that seems particularly congenial to Bleys' temperament. He seems to believe he and his people are fated to win; and, far from glorying in it, he seems to find a sad, almost melancholy pleasure in the inevitability of this that suits his own view of himself and reality. Apparently, he regards himself as being so isolated in the universe that nothing that happens in it can either much raise or lower his spirits."
"Yes," murmured Hal.
"This isolation of his bears an interesting resemblance to your own isolate character," said Padma, gazing at Hal. "In many ways, in fact, he's remarkably like you."
Hal said nothing.
"In fact," Padma went on, "to a large extent he's justified in his expectations. The ongoing factors of history - the forces that continue from generation to generation, sometimes building, sometimes waning - now seem to be overwhelmingly on the side of the Others. Our own discipline of ontogenetics, which we evolved to help us solve such problems as this, instead simply produces more and more proofs that Bleys is right in what he believes."
Hal nodded, slowly; and Padma took a moment to drink once more.
"If Bleys is the epitome of all that is orthodox aiming to win and moving to that end," Padma went on, "you, who should in any sane universe be the champion of what has been tried and established, are just the opposite. You are unorthodoxy personified. We have no real data on you before the time you were picked up as a mystery infant from a derelict ship in Earth orbit. You show no hard reason why you should emerge as the leader of an effort to turn back something like Bleys and the Others; but somehow all those opposed to Bleys have enlisted to follow you - even those of us on our two worlds, who've striven to think coolly and sensibly for three hundred years."
He paused and drew a deep breath.
"We," he said, "of all people, don't believe in mysteries. Therefore, we've had to conclude that there must be some mechanism at work here in your favor that we can't see and don't understand. All we can do is hope that it's equally invisible to, and equally beyond the understanding of, Bleys Ahrens."
"Assuming you're right," said Hal, "I'll join you in that hope."
"Which brings us to your pattern - what we know of it," said Padma. "What we have, in fact, concluded from the information we've processed - and we assume that someone like Bleys must have also come to the same conclusions - is that the only course open to you is to use the Dorsai as an expeditionary force against whatever military forces the Others may be able to gather and equip."
He paused and looked at Hal.
"Go on," said Hal, levelly. "What you've said so far's only an obvious conclusion in the light of the present situation. It doesn't call for any special access to information, or a Bleys-like mind, to read that as a possibility."
"Perhaps not," said Padma. "However, it's equally obvious then that, either way, such a use on your part can't end in anything but failure. On the one hand, if you hold back your Dorsai until the forces that the Others are capable of gathering are ready to move, then not even the Dorsai will be able to handle that much opposition. Am I right?"
"Perhaps," said Hal.
"On the other hand," Padma went on, "if you spend this irreplaceable pool of trained military personnel in raids to destroy the Others' forces while those forces are forming and arming, the gradual attrition of even such experienced fighters as the Dorsai in such encounters will eventually reduce their numbers to the point where there won't be enough of them left to pose any real opposition to the Others' strength. Isn't that also an inescapable conclusion?"
"It's a conclusion, certainly," Hal answered.
"How, then," said Padma, "can you hope to win?"
Hal smiled - and it was not until he saw the faint but unmistakable changes of expression on the other faces around the table that he realized how that smile must appear to them.
"I can hope to win," he said slowly and clearly, "because I will not lose. I know those words mean nothing to you now. But if it was possible for you to understand what I mean by that, there'd be no war facing us; and the threat posed against us by the existence of the Others would've already been solved."
Padma frowned.
"That's no answer," he said.
"Then let me offer you this one," said Hal. "The forces of history are only the internal struggles of a human race that's determined, above all, to survive. That much you ought to be able to understand yourselves, from your own work and studying to understand what is humanity. Apply that understanding equally to the large number of forces that seem to operate in favor of the Others and to the relatively small number that seem to operate in the favor of the survival of us - we who oppose them - and you'll see which forces must wax and which must wane if survival for the race as a whole is to be achieved."
He stopped, and his words echoed in his own ears. I'm talking like an Exotic myself, he thought.
"If what you're saying is the truth," Nonne broke out as if she could not hold herself silent any longer, "then the situation ought to cure itself. We don't need you."
He turned his smile on her.
"But I'm one of those forces of history I mentioned," he said, " - as Bleys is. We're effects, not causes, of the historical situation. If you got rid of either one of us you'd simply have a slightly different aspect of the same problem with someone else in replacement position. The truth is you can't get rid of what each of us represents, any more than you can get rid of any of the other forces at work. All you can do is choose your side; and I thought I'd just pointed out to you that you've already done that?"
"Hal," said Amid softly at his side, "that was an unnecessary, if not somewhat discourteous, question."
Hal sobered, turning to the small man.
"Of course. You're right. I withdraw it - and apologize," he said to Nonne. He looked at Padma. "What else have you got to tell me from this body of information you've gathered and evaluated?"
"We've got detailed data from all the sites on the worlds where the Others are gathering and training their soldiers," said Padma, "and from all the areas where work is going on to produce the spaceships and materiel to equip them. Hopefully, this will be sufficient for your needs, although of course there's information we can't get - "
"It's not that so much," said Hal, almost unthinkingly, "as that there's other information I have to gather for myself."
"I don't understand," said Padma.