Hal nodded again and looked finally at Rourke di Facino. But the spare, dandified little man answered before Hal could speak his name.
"We're ready to move," he said.
His arms were still folded. He stood, unaltered, as if the four words he had just brought forth were the sum total of anything that he could contribute to the conference.
"Thank you," answered Hal.
He looked at the others.
"Thank you all," he said. "To give you my own information in capsule form, Bleys has going what'll amount to an unending capability to attack us. He's got more than enough bases, more than enough materiel, more than enough people to arm and throw at all our capabilities for resistance. It's only a matter of a standard year or less; then he can begin that attack any time he wants; and, if pushed, he could begin it this moment. Being Bleys, I expect him to wait, until he's fully ready to move."
"I take it," said Nonne, "you want to force his hand, then?"
Hal looked soberly at her.
"We have to," he said.
"Then let me ask you a question," Nonne said. "I said there were a multitude of things I wanted to discuss with you. Let me ask you about one."
"Go ahead." Hal looked at her thoughtfully.
"We seem to be heading inevitably for the point," said Nonne, "where it's going to boil down to a personal duel between you and Bleys. For the sake of my people I have to ask you - do you really think you can win a duel like that? And if so, what makes you think so?"
"I'm not sure at all I can win," answered Hal. "There're no certainties in human history. As an Exotic, of all people, you should realize that - "
He checked himself. Ajela had just made a small sound in the back of her throat as if she had begun to speak and then changed her mind. He turned to her. She shook her head.
"No," she said. "Nothing." She was looking hard at Nonne.
"We've got to go with what advantages we've got," Hal went on, "and in most cases that means turning the advantages of the Others to our use. Did you ever read Cletus Graeme's work on strategy and tactics?"
"Cletus - ? Oh, that early Dorsai ancestor of Donal Graeme," said Nonne. "No. My field was recordist - character and its association with activity or occupation. Military maneuvers didn't impinge."
"I suppose not," said Hal. "Let me explain, then. Bleys is the most capable of the Others - you know that as well as I do. Otherwise he wouldn't be leading them. Someone more capable would have taken the leadership from him before this. So we've no choice who we've got to fight - we either defeat him, or lose. All I can tell you about my winning any duel with him is that if it ever comes down to that, I intend to be the winner; and as to why I think I might, it's because I've at least one advantage over him. My cause is better."
"Is that all?" Nonne's face was completely without expression.
"That can be all it takes," said Hal, gently. "A better cause can mean a better base for judgment; and better judgment is sometimes everything in a close contest."
"Forgive me," said Nonne, "if I boggle at the word everything."
"Think of two chess masters playing opposite each other," said Hal. "Neither one's going to make any obvious mistake. But either one can misjudge and make an obviously right move a little too early or a little too late. My job's going to be to try to avoid misjudging like that, while trying at the same time to lead Bleys into misjudgements. To do that, I'll be taking advantage of the difference in our characters and styles. Bleys has all the apparent advantages in this contest of ours. He can lead from strength. Earlier than anyone else among the Others, I think, he perceived that about the situation from the beginning. Certainly, his use of that fact has been the major factor in his being accepted by the rest of the Others as their most capable member. Since his recognition of this has worked for him so far I believe his perception of it is going to continue to lead him, as I said earlier, to wait until he's fully ready before he moves against us."
He broke off.
"Am I making my point clear to you?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," said Nonne.
"Good," answered Hal. "Now, then, it'd be bad strategy for him to change tactics that are winning for him without a strong reason, in any case. But I think we can count on this other factor in his thinking, as well. So, this leaves the initiative with us - which he will be aware of, but doesn't worry about. However, that same initiative can give us an advantage he may not suspect, if we can use it either to lull him into waiting too long to make a move, or startle him into moving too soon. It'll all depend on how good the plans are we've made."
"Then I take it you feel you've made good plans?"
He smiled gently at her.
"Yes," he said. "I do." He turned to Ajela. "I shouldn't have sent Jeamus away," he said. "Could you get him back here?"
Ajela nodded and reached to the control panel set in the arm of her chair. She touched one of the controls, murmuring to the receptor in the panel. Hal had turned back to the others.
"When you say you're ready to move," he said to Rourke, "do you mean just combat-ready adults, or all adults, or the whole population?"
"Nothing's ever unanimous," said Rourke, "and least of all, on the Dorsai, as I'd expect you to appreciate, Hal Mayne. A fair percentage of the population is going to stay. Some because age or sickness gives them no choice, some because they'd rather wait in the place they were born for whatever's going to happen to them. Nearly all of those of service age are ready to go."
"Yes," said Hal, nodding, "that was pretty much what I'd expected."
The voice of Jason sounded almost on the echo of his last word.
"Go where, Hal?" asked Jason.
"You didn't know?" Nonne looked across at the young Friendly.
"No," said Jason slowly, looking from her to Hal. "I didn't know. What was it I was supposed to have known?"
Instead of answering, Nonne looked at Hal.
"In a minute, Jason," Hal said. "Wait until Jeamus gets here."
They fell silent, looking at him. For a moment, as they sat waiting, Hal's mind went away from the immediate concerns.
He was aware of the four of them as individual puzzle-boxes, unique individual universes of thought and response, through which must be communicated what those they represented would need to understand. Once, as Donal, he would have seen them only as units, solid working parts of an overall solution to an overall problem. His greatest interest in them would have been that they should execute what he would direct them to do or say. Their objections would have been minor obstacles, to be laid flat by indisputable logic, until they were reduced to silence. The tag-end of some lines from the New Testament of the Bible, spoken by the Roman Centurion to Christ, came back to his mind, "I say to one, go, and he goeth and to another come, and he cometh…"
That sort of thinking could indeed produce a solution on the Donal level. But he had lived two lives since then to find something better, something more lasting. It had been his awareness of the need for that which had bothered Donal near the end of his time, as he stood, finally in charge of all the worlds and their workings, looking out at the stars beyond the known stars. He had seen the future clearly, then, and the fallacy in the idea that it could be won, even to a good end, by strength alone.
It had never been enough to make people dress neatly, walk soberly and obey the law. Only when the necessary improvement had at last been accepted by the inner self, when the law was no longer necessary, had any permanent development been accomplished. And if he could not show to these people here in this room with him now what would need to be done and achieved, then how was he going to show it to the billions of other individual human universes that made up the race?