The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Thirty-eight

Hal lay, his long body clad in a forest-green Exotic robe, listening to the interweaving of the melody of birdsongs with the sound of a fountain beyond a screen of three-meter-tall, willow-like trees, to the left of the small, depressed sitting area, like a conversation pit, in which he was resting. The harmony that existed in all surroundings created by Exotic minds was soothing to the remnants of a tension that still lived deep inside him. Above, either blue sky or that same sky with a weather screen between himself and it, flooded everything about him with the distant, clear green-tinted light of Procyon A, which shared its energy not only with this world of Mara, but with its twin Exotic planet of Kultis, as well as with the smaller inhabited worlds of St. Marie, half again the distance of Mara out from that sun, and Coby.

He had been reading, but the capsule had dropped from his fingers into his lap, and the words printed on the air before him had vanished. He felt soaked through by that dreamy lethargy that continues to stain for days human bodies recovering from severe illness or great and prolonged physical effort; and his present surroundings, one of those Exotic homes in which it was often uncertain as to whether he was indoors or out, lent itself to a feeling that all eternity was available in which to do anything that needed to be done. At the same time, with the recovering of his strength, a note of urgency, that had kindled in him in the Militia cell, had been growing in insistence.

Something in him had sharpened. He had aged swiftly, these last few weeks. He was not likely now to imagine - as he might have, six months earlier - that the Exotics had smuggled him off Harmony to Mara, here, merely out of kindness or because of a private concern on Amid's part. In principle, the Exotics were kind; but, above all, they were practical. There would be further developments resulting from all this care and service; and, in fact, he welcomed them, for he, himself, had things to talk to his hosts about.

He had not seen Amid except for a few brief visits since he had arrived here, at Amid's home. Before that, from the moment in which he started off-Harmony, his contact had been almost solely with a woman named Nerallee, Outbond to Consulate Services on Harmony. She had been his companion and nurse on the voyage here. Lately now, as he had grown stronger, Nerallee had been less and less in evidence. He felt the sadness of a loss, realizing that she must, of course, soon be returning to her duties on that Friendly World; and that there was little likelihood that he or she would ever meet again.

He lay now, reconstructing the ways by which he had got here. When the door of the Exotic Consulate in Ahruma had opened for him, those within had simply led him to a room and let him sleep for a while. His memory recalled no drugs given to him; but then, while the Exotics had no objection in principle to using pharmacological substances, they preferred to do so only as a last resort. More to the point, he could remember no specific treatment or manipulation of mind or body. Only, the bed surface beneath him had been exactly of the proper texture and firmness, the temperature had been exactly as he would have wished, and the gently moving air about him had been infinitely warm, soft, and enfolding.

He had woken, feeling some return of strength. Staff members of the Consulate had given him quantities of different, pleasant liquids to drink, then padded and dressed him to resemble the tall, portly Exotic who had greeted him at the door.

Nerallee had been involved with him from the first moment; and it was Nerallee who had finally accompanied him out of the Consulate to a closed, official vehicle. This had then delivered them through special diplomatic channels past the usual customs and passport checks, directly to an Exotic-owned ship in the fitting yards, where Nerallee and the supposedly ill Consulate member she had in charge were ushered aboard.

Hal could not remember the ship lifting from Harmony's surface. He did recall the first few ship-days of the trip, but only as long periods of sleep, interrupted only briefly by moments in which Nerallee was always with him and encouraging him to eat. He recovered enough, finally, to realize that she had never left him, ship's-night and ship's-day, from the beginning; and that whenever he had woken he had found her in the bed beside him. So, simply and easily, without consciously thinking about it, he had fallen half-way in love with her.

It was a small, wistful, transitory love, which both understood could not last beyond the short time they would have together. Clearly Nerallee was a Healer, in the Exotic tradition, and making herself totally available to him was part of her work. Clearly, also, she had fallen in love with him in return, finding something in him beyond what she had discovered in any other of those before who had needed her ability to repair their bodies, minds and souls - he read this in her even before she told him that it was so.

But, even with her experience and training, she found herself incapable of telling him what it was about him that was different, although they talked in depth about this, as well as many other things. It was part of the requirements of what she did, to open herself to those she ministered to as fully as she attempted to bring them to open themselves to her. One of the things she did tell Hal was that, like all those in her work, she grew - and expected to grow - within herself, with each new person she helped; and that if ever she should become unable to do this, she would have to give up what she did.

Even lying here, listening to fountain and bird-song after several weeks of almost constant association with her, Hal had trouble summoning up in his mind's eye a clear image of her face. Following nearly three hundred years of concern with genetics, there was no such thing as an Exotic who was not physically attractive in the sense of possessing a healthy, regular-featured face and body. But for what Nerallee looked like beyond that, Hal's physical perception had become too buried under his other knowledges of her to tell. She had seemed to him unremarkable, at first, almost ordinary-looking in fact, during their first few days together, but after that from time to time she had appeared to have worn so many different faces that he had lost count. Those faces had ranged from the most dramatic of beauties to a gentle, loved familiarity that washed all ordinary notions of beauty away - the familiarity that finds the faces of parents responded to so strongly by their very young children, or the appearance of a partner who has been close for so long that there is no single memory-picture possible and the person is simply recollected in totality.

But she had been able to do for him what he had so badly needed without having realized that he needed it - absorb his attentions so wholly that she could give him rest. A rest of the sort that he had not known since the death of his tutors. It had been what he had required at the time. But, with his strength now recovered, he was no longer in desperate need of it; and, therefore, Nerallee would be going elsewhere, to others who needed her.

He lay listening to the bird voices and the tinkle of splashing water.

After a while there was the faint scuff of foot-coverings on the floor above the conversation pit, behind him. He turned his head to see Amid coming down the three steps into the pit, to take a seat facing him, in what appeared to be a rock carved armchair-fashion. Hal sat up on the couch on which he had been lying.

"So, we're going to have a chance to talk, finally?" Hal said.

Amid smiled and folded the rust-colored robe he was wearing around his legs. On each of the half-dozen earlier occasions that he had appeared, the former Outbond had spent only a few minutes with Hal before leaving, on the excuse that he had a great deal to do.

"The business I've been occupied with," the small, wrinkle-faced old man said, "is pretty well taken care of now. Yes, we can talk as long as you like."

"Your business wouldn't have been caused by my visit here?" Hal smiled back at him.

Amid laughed out loud. In accordance with his age, the sound resembled a dry chuckle, rather than a laugh; but it was a friendly sound.

"You could hardly come to Mara," he said, "without involving us with the Others, even if indirectly."

"Indirectly?" Hal echoed.

"Indirectly, to begin with," said Amid. His face sobered. "I'm afraid you're right. For some days now it's been directly. Bleys knows you're here."

"Here? At this place of yours?"

"Only that you're on - possibly in this hemisphere of Mara," said Amid. "Your exact location on this world is something he'd have no way of finding out."

"But I take it he's putting on pressure to get all of you to give me up to him?" Hal said.

"Yes." Amid nodded. "He's putting on pressure; and I'm afraid we'd have to give in to him, if we kept you here long enough. But we don't necessarily have to react right away. For one thing, it'd be rather beneath the dignity of one of our worlds to give in at once to a demand like that, in any case."

"I'm glad to hear that," said Hal.

"But not particularly surprised, I take it," said Amid soberly. "I gather you realize we've got a particular interest in you, and things to discuss because of it?"

Hal nodded.

"I suppose you've connected me with the calculations Walter InTeacher had run on me when he first became one of my tutors?" he said.

"That," said Amid, "of course. Your records were flagged at that time as someone who might be of force historically. Consequently, a record was kept on you that went without interruption until the deaths of your tutors and your entrance into the Final Encyclopedia - "

"Kept with Walter's help?" Hal said.

Amid gazed at him for a moment.

"With Walter's help, of course," Amid answered calmly. "After his death and your entrance into the Final Encyclopedia, we lost you; and only traced you to Coby after Bleys' interest pointed you out to us, again. The fact that you've been able to keep out of his hands is, to say the least, remarkable; and it's that, primarily, that's raised our interest in you. Generally speaking, you're someone we've all been keeping an eye out for, lately. When it became obvious Bleys was making a serious effort to flush you out on Coby, we arranged for one of us to be on each of the ships available to you then for off-world escape. I was lucky enough to be on the one you took."

"Yes," said Hal. "I see. You're interested in me because Bleys is."

"Not because - for the same reason - Bleys is," said Amid. "We assume he wants you neutralized, or on his side. We want you made effective in opposition to him. But not just because he's interested in you. We're interested - we've always been interested - in you, simply because our ontogenetic calculations recommend an interest."

"A little more than recommend, don't they?" Hal asked.

Amid tilted his head a little to one side like a bird, gazing at him.

"I don't believe I follow you," he said.

Hal breathed slowly before answering. The lethargy was all gone out of him now. Instead there was a sort of sadness, a gray feeling.

"Bleys threatens the very existence of your culture," he answered. "I suppose I ought to say that it's the Others who threaten its very existence. Under those conditions, don't your calculations do more than just recommend an interest in me? Or - let me put it a little differently. Is there anyone else they recommend an equal interest in, in that respect?"

Amid sat in the sunlight, looking at him.

"No," he said, at last.

"Well, then," said Hal.

"Yes," said Amid, still watching him. "Apparently you understand the situation better than we thought you did. You're barely into your twenties, aren't you?"

"Yes," Hal said.

"You sound much older."

"Right now," said Hal, "I feel older. It's a feeling that came on me rather recently."

"While you were on Harmony?"

"No. Since then - since I've had time to think. You talked about my staying out of Bleys' hands. I haven't been able to do that, you realize? He had me in a cell of the Militia Headquarters in Ahruma."

"Yes," said Amid. "But you escaped. I take it you've talked face to face with him, then, since the moment of your tutors' deaths?"

"I didn't talk to him at the time of my tutors' deaths," said Hal. "But, yes, a day or two before I got away he came to my cell and we talked."

"Can I ask about what?"

"He seems to think I'm an Other," Hal said. "He told me some of the reasons why he expects me to come over to their side in the end. Mainly, they add up to the fact that there's no other position that'll be endurable for me."

"And I take it you disagreed with him?"

"So far."

Amid looked at him curiously.

"You're not completely sure he isn't right?"

"I can't afford to be sure of anything - isn't that the principle you've always held to, yourselves, here on the Exotics?"

Amid nodded again.

"Yes," he said, "you're older than anyone would have thought - in some ways. But you did mail your papers to me. You did come to us for help."

"To the best of my knowledge I'm on the opposite side of Bleys and the Others," Hal said. "It's only sense to make common cause with those who're also opposed. I had a long time to think in that cell, under conditions where my thinking was unusually concentrated."

"I can imagine," said Amid. "You seem to have gone through a sort of a rite of passage, according to Nerallee."

"How much did she tell you?" Hal asked.

"That was all - essentially," said Amid. "She's got her personal responsibilities as a Healer; and, in any case, we'd rather hear what you wished to tell us about such things, in your own words."

"At least at first?" said Hal. "No, I've no objection to your knowing. When I talked to her, I assumed what I said was going to be made available to the rest of you, if you thought you needed to know it. Actually, what I went through isn't the important point. What's important is I came out of it with a clearer picture of the situation than - possibly - even you here on the Exotics."

Amid smiled a little. Then the smile went away.

"Anything's possible," he said slowly.

"Yes," said Hal.

"Then, tell me," said Amid. The old eyes, set deep in their wrinkles, were steady on him. "What do you think is going to happen?"

"Armageddon. A final war - with a final conclusion. A quiet war that, when it's over, is going to leave the Others completely in control; with the Exotics gone, with the Dorsai gone, what was the Friendly culture gone, and all progress stopped. The fourteen worlds as a large estate with the Others as landlords and no change permitted."

Amid nodded slowly.

"Possibly," he said, "if the Others have their way."

"Do you know any means of stopping them?" said Hal. "And if you do, why be interested in me?"

"You might be that means, or part of it," said Amid, "since nothing in history is simple. Briefly, the weapons we've developed here on Mara and Kultis are useless against the Others. Only one Splinter Culture's got the means to be effective against them."

"The Dorsai," said Hal.

"Yes." Amid's face became so devoid of life and motion for a second that it was more like a living mask than a face. "The Dorsai are going to have to fight them."

"Physically?"

Amid's eyes held his.

"Physically," he agreed.

"And you thought," said Hal, "that being raised as I've been - so that effectively I'm part Exotic and part Dorsai, as well as being part Friendly - I might be the one you'd want to carry that message to them."

"Yes," said Amid, "but not just that. Our calculations on you show you as a very unusual individual in your own right - it may be that you're particularly fitted to lead in this area, at this time. That would make you much more than just an effective messenger. You must understand how high some of us calculate your potential to be - "

"Thanks," said Hal. "But I think you're dealing in too small terms. You seem to be thinking of someone who can lead, but only under your direction. I can't believe that the Exotics, of all people, don't have a clearer picture of the situation than that."

"In what way?" Amid's voice was suddenly incisive.

"I mean," said Hal, slowly, "I can't believe you, of all people, have any illusions. There's no way what you've built here and on Kultis can survive in the form you know it. Any more than the Dorsai or the Friendly Culture can survive as they now are; whether the Others are stopped, or not. The only hope at all is to try to win survival for the whole race at whatever necessary cost, because the only alternative is death for the whole race; and because that's what's going to happen if the Others win. It'll take them some generations, maybe, but if they win, in the end their way will end the human race."

"And?" The word was close to being a challenge from the small man.

"And so the only way to survival means facing all possible sacrifice," said Hal. "What is it you and your fellow Exotics would be willing to give up everything else to preserve - when it comes down to that?"

Amid looked at him, nakedly.

"The idea of human evolution," he said. "That, above all, mustn't die. Even if we and all our work in the past four centuries has to be lost."

"That, yes. I think ideas can be saved," said Hal, "if the race is going to be saved as a whole. All right, then. I imagine you've got a number of people you want me to meet?"

He stood up. Amid rose also.

"I believe," he said, "we've underestimated you."

"Perhaps not." Hal smiled at him. "I think I'll change clothes first. Will you wait a minute?"

"Of course."

Hal went back to his sleeping quarters. Among the clothing suspended there, cleaned and waiting for him, were the clothes he had been wearing on Harmony when he had knocked at the door of the Exotic Consulate. He exchanged them for the green robe he had been wearing and went back to Amid in the conversation pit.

"Yes, we did indeed underestimate you," the old man said, looking at the clothes when Hal returned. "You're much, much older than when I met you aboard the ship to Harmony."