"There is no gate," said Bleys. "No trail, no tower - everything but this land about us here is illusion. Face that, and learn to make the best of what is."
Hal shook his head.
"You're a fool," said Bleys, sadly. "A fool who hopes."
"We're both fools," said Hal. "But I don't hope, I know."
And he rode on, leaving Bleys standing, still leaning against the other side of the locked gate, until a turn in the narrow trail lost him to sight.
… Hal was roused again, this time by the chiming of a call signal, and opened his eyes to the phone screen at his bedside glowing white. Groggily he pushed himself to full awareness; and with that, suddenly, he was fully alert. No one except a few people at the Final Encyclopedia, such as Amid, Simon, Ajela and Tam, knew that he was here - or even had any reason to think that the estate was occupied.
He flung out an arm and punched on the phone. The screen cleared to show Ajela's face, tight with an unusual tension.
"Hal," she said. "Are you awake? They've tried to assassinate Rukh!"
"Where? When?" He pushed himself up on one elbow and saw himself screen-lit, imaged in a mirror across the room, the dark hair tumbled forward over his forehead, the strong-boned features below it scowling away the last numbness of slumber. The hard-muscled, naked torso above the bed covers was the brutal upper body of a stranger.
"A little over forty minutes ago, standard time," said Ajela. "The word is she's only wounded."
"Where is she?" Hal swung his legs over the edge of the bed, throwing the bed-covers back. "Will you get Simon down here to the estate for me right away?"
He got up and stepped past the screen, reaching for his clothes, from long automatic habit laid close and ready. He began dressing.
"We can't get traffic clearance down there for a courier ship," Ajela's voice came from the screen, behind him. "Not even for you, under Earth's regulations. An aircar'll pick you up and take you to Salt Lake - a shuttle'll be held there for you. It'll bring you straight to the Encyclopedia."
"No." He was almost dressed now. "I'll go directly to Rukh."
"You can't - where are you now?" Ajela said - and he moved back to sit on the bed and face the screen. "Oh, there you are! You can't just go to her. Her own people with her rushed her off and hid her after it happened. We don't know yet where they've taken her."
"I'd still be better on the scene, helping to find her."
"Be sensible." The tone of Ajela's voice was hard. "The most your being there could mean would be finding her a few minutes earlier. Besides, you've been out of touch with us and Earth, except for messages, for almost a year. You're needed here, to catch up. No one grudged you a day to make the trip you're on; but if it gets down to hard choices, your duty's here, not with Rukh."
He took a short breath.
"You're right," he said. "I need to talk to you all as soon as I can. The aircar's on its way?"
"Be with you in fifteen minutes. It'll land on that small lake behind your house."
"I'll be out there waiting," he said.
"Good." Ajela's voice softened. "It's all right, Hal. I know she'll be all right."
"Yes," said Hal, hearing his voice as if it came from someone else. "Of course. I'll be outside waiting for the aircar when it comes."
"Good; and we'll all be waiting for you when you get here. Come right to Tam's quarters."
"I will."
The screen went dark. He rose, finished dressing and went out.
In the open air behind the house, frost held the grounds and mountain areas beyond. In a cloudless, icy sky, the stars were large and seemed to hang low overhead. A nearly full moon was bright. The cold struck in at him, and his breath plumed straight upwards from his lips in the moonlight as he stood by the dark water's edge at the house end of the lake. After a while a dark shape scudded across the sky, occulting the stars, and dropped vertically to land on the water at the center of the lake. It turned toward him and slid across the watery surface to where he stood. The passenger door opened.
"Hal Mayne?" called a male voice from the lighted interior.
"Yes," Hal said, already inside the car. He dropped into a seat behind the driver as the door closed again and the vehicle leaped upward.
"We ought to make Salt Lake Pad in twenty minutes," said the driver, over his shoulder.
"Good," said Hal.
He sat back, letting his mind slip off into a calculation of the probabilities involved in Rukh's situation, using all of Donal's old abilities in that area. It was true enough, if she had not been killed outright and there was any decent sort of medical help available, she was almost sure to survive.
If.
He forced his mind to turn, coldly and dispassionately, to what it would mean to the confrontation with the Others if she had not lived; or had, but would no longer be able to lead Earth's people to an understanding of the cost of an Others' victory. The messages about her of which Ajela had just now spoken had, he knew, been painting a picture of strong successes, for Rukh and for those others she had recruited from Harmony and Association to speak elsewhere about Earth. He had been counting on those successes, taking them for granted.
If her help was now to be lost… it was true that he had fallen out of touch with the situation here on Earth, while he had been out scouting Bleys' military preparations on the Younger Worlds. What he had seen out there had not only confirmed his worst forebodings but driven the more immediate problem of controlling Earth from his mind. His losing touch with the Encyclopedia and Earth had, in a sense, been unavoidable - he could not be in two places at once - but its unavoidability did not alter the danger in which it had possibly put them all. The open contest with the Others here at humanity's birthplace was one in which lack of knowledge could guarantee defeat. Now that he knew what he knew, there was nothing for it but to move as swiftly as he could.
Ajela had been more right than she knew, in insisting he come back to the Encyclopedia just now. The breakpoint was upon them. How close upon them, he had not realized himself until the past evening. But the full implications of the realization was something to be explored later, when time was available. For now, even if Rukh had been no more than scratched, it was not. Every standard day now that he delayed in putting to work the information he had gained, more of its usefulness would leak away.
The shuttle, empty of passengers except himself, slid into the metal-noisy, bright-lit entry port of the Encyclopedia. Simon Graeme was waiting for him as he stepped out of the vehicle.
"I'm to take you to Tam Olyn's quarters," Simon said.
"I know."
They went quickly, bypassing the usual passage that led past the center of the Encyclopedia and stepping almost immediately through a side door into a quiet corridor that, by the internal magic of the Encyclopedia, led them only a dozen steps to Tam's entrance door.
Within, Tam's office-lounge was as Hal had remembered it, with the illusion of the little stream and the grove of trees. But both the temperature and humidity of the place were higher; and Tam, seated in one of the big chairs, looked further shrunken and stilled by the hard hand of age, into a final motionlessness in which there seemed to be no energy left for any movement or emotion.
Besides Tam, the office held Ajela and Jeamus Walters, the Engineering Chief of the Encyclopedia, standing facing Tam, one on either side of his chair. They turned together at the sound of the door-chimes; and both their faces lit up.
"Hal!" Ajela turned quickly to Tam. "You see? I told you. Here he is, now!"
She turned back to hug Hal as he reached her. But almost immediately she let him go again and pushed him toward the chair with the old man in it.
"Hal!" said Tam. His voice rustled like dry paper; and the fingers he put out for Hal to grip were leathery and cold. "It's good to have you here. I can leave it to you and Ajela, now."