The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Forty-seven

As they all sat watching him and waiting, an awareness he had never felt before woke suddenly in him.

Later, he was to become familiar with it, but this was his first experience; and it came on him with a shock that there could be a moment in which the universe seemed to stand still, like a ballet dancer poised on one toe; and for a fraction of a second all possibilities were equal. In that moment, he found, a form of double vision occurred. He saw the surrounding scene simultaneously from two viewpoints - both directly, and at one remove. So that he was at the same time both observer and observed; and he became aware of himself, for the first time, as part of something separate and remote. In that transient moment, for a split-second, his detachment was perfect; and his remote, viewing mind was able to weigh all things dispassionately, itself included.

Caught so, he understood for the first time now how those who knew they would be staying in Foralie Town under the vapors of the nickel carbonyl could have made the decision to use it. For at the core of such a moment was a perception tuned too sharply in self-honesty for fear or selfishness to affect decision.

Caught up in wonder at this new perception, Hal did not react for a long moment to the waiting faces as he ordinarily would have; and Rourke di Facino, far down the table on Hal's left, spoke instead to Amanda.

"Well, Amanda? You hinted at some strong reasons for our coming to this meeting. We're here."

Hal had not realized the quality of the acoustics in the dining room. Di Facino had spoken in no more than a soft conversational tone, but his words had sounded clearly across the length of the space between himself and Hal.

"I said there might be strong reasons for listening to Hal Mayne, Rourke," answered Amanda, "and I think there are. One, at least, is the one I told you about - that he's been sent here from Mara by the Exotics, to give us a message. And we could have other reasons for listening to him, as well."

"All right," said di Facino. "I only mention it because - no offense intended, of course - the ap Morgans have been reported before this as seeing things that aren't there, on occasion."

"Or perhaps," said Amanda, "they merely saw things other people were too blind to see. No offense intended, of course."

They smiled at each other like friendly old enemies across half the length of the dining room. Still caught in his moment, watching them all, Hal found Amanda standing out among the others as one very bright beacon might stand out in a bank of duller ones. The average age of the Grey Captains was at least in the fifties; and she, in her apparent youthfulness, looked almost like a young girl who has slyly slipped into a solemn gathering of family elders and waits to see how long she can hold her place before being discovered.

"In any case," the booming voice of Miriam Songhai reached them all, we've no prejudice on the Dorsai against people being sensitive, simply because what they're sensitive to isn't easily measured, weighed or tagged - I hope."

She turned to Hal.

"What's this message from the Exotics?',' she demanded.

Hal looked at the waiting faces. There was a quality of difference in those here, compared to the five he had faced on Mara. It was a difference in quietness. The Exotics had not fidgeted physically; but he had been conscious of conflict and uncertainty within each of them. Those sitting at this table with him now radiated no such impression of inner concerns. They were at home here, he was a stranger, and it was their job to decide whatever needed decision. In the hard daylight, here and now, there was no room for the ghosts and the memories he had found in the dining room earlier. He felt isolated, helpless to reach them and convince them.

"I was on my way to the Dorsai, in any case," he said. "But as it happened, I got to Mara first; and so it was the Exotics I talked to - "

"Just a minute." It was a heavy-bodied man in his fifties with a brush of stiff, gray hair; the one person there with oriental features. Hal rummaged in his memory for the name he had heard when Amanda had introduced them. Ke Gok, or K'Gok, was what he remembered hearing her say. "Why did they pick you to carry their message instead of sending one of their own people?"

"I can tell you what they told me," Hal said. "Amanda may have explained to you how I was raised by three tutors, one of them a Dorsai - "

"By the way, does anyone here know of a family named Nasuno?" Amanda's clear voice cut in on him. "They should have a homestead on Skalland."

There was a moment's silence, then the cadaverous man - whose name, in spite of the mnemonics of Hal's early training, had freakishly been lost - spoke, thoughtfully.

"Skalland's one of the islands in my area, of course. I know you asked me about that when you called, Amanda. But in the time I had I couldn't seem to turn up any such family. Which doesn't mean they aren't there - or weren't there - a generation ago."

"It's hardly likely someone could pose as a Dorsai for a dozen years, even on Earth, and get away with it," said Ke Gok. "But what I'm still waiting to hear is why the Exotics thought someone tutored by a Dorsai should be particularly qualified to talk to us for them."

"I was also tutored by a Maran - and by a Harmonyite," said Hal. "They seemed to feel the fact I'd been brought up by people from both their culture and yours might make me better able to communicate with you, than one of them could."

"Still strange," said Ke Gok. "Two worlds full of trained people and they pick someone from Earth?"

"They'd also run calculations on me," said Hal, "which seemed to show I might be historically useful at this time."

He had been dreading having to mention this; and he had chosen the mildest words in which to put the information, fearing the prejudice of practical people against anything as theoretical and long-range as Exotic calculations in ontogenetics. But none of those before him reacted antagonistically, and Ke Gok said no more.

"In what way," said a slim, good-looking woman named Lee, with large, intent brown eyes and gray-black hair, "did they think you could be historically useful?"

"Useful in dealing with the present historical situation - particularly with the situation created by the Others," he answered. "It's that same situation I'm concerned with, myself; and that I'd like to talk to you about, after I've given you the Exotic message - "

"I think we'll want to hear anything you've got to tell us - Exotic message and whatever else you want to talk to us about," said Lee, "but some of us have questions of our own, first."

"Of course," said Hal.

"Do I understand you right, then?" said Lee. "The Exotics are concerned about the Others; and they sent you to us because they thought you could do a better job of convincing us to think their way than any one of their own people could?"

Hal breathed deeply.

"Effectively," he said, "yes."

Lee sat back in her chair, her face thoughtful.

"How about you, Amanda?" di Facino said. "Are you part of this effort to bring us around to an Exotic way of thinking?"

"Rourke," said Amanda, "you know that's nonsense."

He grinned.

"Just asking."

"Don't," said Amanda, "and save us time, all around."

She looked about at the others. No one else said anything. She looked up at Hal.

"Go ahead," she said.

Hal looked around at them. There was nothing to be read from their faces. He plunged in.

"I assume there's no point in my wasting your time by telling you what you already know," he said. "The interstellar situation's now almost completely under the control of the Others; and what they're after in the long run is no secret. They want total control; and to have that, they've got to get rid of those who'll never work with them - some of the people on the Friendlies, essentially all of the Exotics, and the Dorsai people. The point the Exotics make is that the Others have to be stopped now, while there's still time. They think that, of all those opposed to the Others, the Dorsai are the one people who can do that; and they sent me with word that they'll give you anything they have to give, back you in any way they can, if you'll do it."

He stopped.

The faces around the table looked back at him as if they had expected him to continue.

"That's it?" said Ke Gok. "How do they think we can stop the Others? Don't they think we'd have done it before this, if we knew how?"

There was a moment of silence around the table. Hal thought of speaking and changed his mind.

"Just a minute," said the cadaverous old man. "They can't be thinking - this isn't that old suggestion we go out and play assassins?"

It was as if a whip cracked soundlessly in the room. Hal looked down the room at the hard faces.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I was obligated to bring you the message. I told them you'd never do it."

The silence continued for a second.

"And why were you obligated?" said Miriam Songhai.

"I was obligated," said Hal, patiently, "by the fact that delivering the message gave me the chance to speak to you all about what I, myself, believe is the only way to deal with the Others."

Another tiny silence.

"Perhaps," said di Facino - very softly, but the words carried through the dining room, nonetheless - "they don't realize how they insult us."

"Probably they don't - in the emotional sense," said Hal. "But even if they did, it wouldn't matter. They'd have to ask you anyway, because they don't see any other way out."

"What he's telling you," said Amanda, "is that the Exotics feel helpless; and people who feel helpless will try anything."

"I think you can tell them for us," said the cadaverous man, "that the day they give up the principles they've lived by for three hundred years, they can ask us again. But our answer will still be that we don't give up our principles."

He looked around the room.

"What would we have left, if we did something like that to save our necks? What would the point have been of living honestly, all these centuries? If we'd do assassin's work now, we'd not only not be Dorsai any longer; we'd never have been Dorsai!"

No one nodded or spoke, but a unanimity of approval showed clearly on the faces around the table.

"All right," said Hal. "I'll tell them that. But now can I ask, since I've got you all here, what you do intend to do about the Others, before they starve you to death?"

Hal looked at Amanda. But she was still merely sitting, a little back from the table, watching. It was Miriam Songhai who spoke.

"Of course we've no plans," she said. "You evidently do. Tell us."

Hal took a breath and looked at them all.

"I don't have a specific plan, either," he said. "But I believe I've got the material out of which a plan can be made. What it's based on, what it has to be based on, is an understanding of the historical situation that's resulted in the Others being so successful. Basically, what we're involved in now is the last act of an era in human development; and the Others are there to threaten us because they stand for one attitude that exists in the race as a whole; and we - you Dorsai, the Exotics, the true faithholders on the Friendlies and some others scattered around all the other worlds - stand for the attitude opposed to it. Natural historical forces in human development are what are pushing this conflict to a showdown. We're looking not merely at the ambitions of the Others, but at an Armageddon…"

He talked on. They listened. The light lancing in through the windows made the long, smooth surface of the table glisten like wind-polished ice; and the Grey Captains sat listening in utter stillness, as if they had been carved in place as they sat, to last forever. Hal heard his voice continuing, saying the same things he had said to Exotic ears; and much of what he must have said to Amanda, that first night here. But there was no sign or signal from this audience to tell him if he was reaching them. Deep within himself, the fear grew that he was not. His words seemed to go out from him, only to die in the silence, against minds that had already shut them out.

He glanced fleetingly at Amanda, hoping for some signal that might give him reassurance; and found none. She did not shake her head, even imperceptibly; but the unchanging gaze she returned to him conveyed the same message. Internally, Hal yielded. There was no point in simply continuing to hold them hostage with words, if the words were not being heard and considered by them. He brought what he had been saying to a close.

There was a moment without anyone speaking. The Captains stirred slightly, as people will who have sat for some time in one position. Throats were cleared, here and there. Hands were placed on the table.

"Hal Mayne," said Miriam Songhai, finally. "Just what plan do you have for yourself? I mean, what do you, yourself, plan to do next?"

"I'll be going from here to the Final Encyclopedia," he said. "There's where most of the information is, that I still need, for an effective understanding of the situation. Once I've got a complete picture, I can give you a specific plan of action."

"And meanwhile?" said Ke Gok, ironically. "You're merely asking us to hold ourselves in readiness for your orders?"

Hal felt a despair. He had failed, once more; and there was no magic, no ghosts were here, to save the day. This was reality; the incomprehension of those who saw the universe limited to what they already knew. Unexpectedly, an exasperation erupted in him; and it was as if something put a powerful hand on his shoulder and shoved him forward.

"I'm suggesting that you hold yourself in readiness for orders from someone," he heard himself answer, dryly.

There was a shock in hearing it. The voice was his own, the words were words he knew, but the choice and delivery of them was coming from somewhere deep within him; as far back as the ghosts he had heard speaking at this table. He felt a strength move in him.

"If I'm fortunate enough to be the one who first gets on top of the situation," he went on in the same unsparing voice, "they could indeed come from me."

"No offense, Hal Mayne," said di Facino, "but may I ask how old you are?"

"Twenty-one, standard," said Hal.

"Doesn't it seem, even to you," went on di Facino, "that it's asking a lot of people like ourselves, who've known responsibility on a large scale for twice or three times your lifetime, to take you and what you suggest completely on faith? Not only that, but that we should mobilize a planetful of people in accordance with that faith? You come to us here with no credentials whatsoever, except a high rating according to some exotic theory - and this world is not one of the Exotics."

"Credentials," said Hal, still dryly, "mean nothing and will never mean anything in this matter. If I find the answers I'm looking for, my credentials are going to be obvious to you, and to everyone else as well. If I don't, then either someone else is going to find the answers, or no one will. In either case, any credentials I have will be very much beside the point. The Exotics knew this."

"Did they?" said di Facino. "Did they tell you so?"

"They showed me so," said Hal. The strange sense of strength in him carried him forward irresistibly. It was as if someone else spoke through him to them; and the exasperation within him had given way now to a diamond-hard sense of logic. "Sending me here with their message, which they had little hope you'd agree to, guaranteed I'd have a chance to give you my side of things, without their having in any way endorsed it. If it turned out you accepted me, they'd have no choice but to accept me, too, in the long run. If you didn't, they had no responsibility for what I said to you on my own."

"But," said Ke Gok, "we haven't accepted you."

"You'll have to accept someone, if you're going to deal with the situation," Hal said. "You were the one who just said a few moments ago that you'd have stopped the Others before this if you'd known how. The plain fact is you don't know how. I do - perhaps. And there's no time to wait around for other solutions. This late in the day, even all the strength that can be joined against the Others may not be enough. You and the Exotics are in the same camp whether you like it or not - if you don't face that, you and they are going to perish singly, as you're both on the road to perishing now. Only unlike the Exotics, you Dorsai are a people of action. You can't close your eyes to the need for it, when that need crops up. Therefore, the only hope for you and them is that someone will come along who can lead you both, together - and no one has, but me."

"The necessity to accept someone," said the cadaverous man, "hasn't been proven, yet."

"Certainly it has." Hal looked directly into the almost-black pupils of the other's eyes. "The Dorsai is already beginning to starve. Slowly… but it's beginning. And you all know that starvation is being caused deliberately by the Others, who are also doing other things to other people. Clearly, this is no problem that can be kept contained between you and the Others, only. It's a case of one part of the human race, spread over many worlds, against the other part. You don't need me to tell you that, you can see it for yourself."

"But," said Lee, softly, "there's no guarantee it has to explode into Armageddon, with what that would mean for all our people - who are the fighters."

"Take another look if you believe it doesn't have to," said Hal. "The situation's been developing for over thirty years. As it develops, it grows exponentially, both in numbers of peoples involved and in complexity. How else can it end except in Armageddon? Unless you and the Exotics and those like you are willing to abandon everything you've believed in, to suit the Others; because that's the only thing the Others'll settle for, in the end."

"How can you be sure of that?" said Lee. "Why shouldn't the Others stop before they push it that far?"

"Because if they do, they'll be the ones to be wiped out in a generation; and they know it," said Hal. "They're riding a tiger and don't dare get off. There's too few of them. The only way to make life safe for themselves, as individuals, is to make the worlds - note, I said worlds, all the worlds - safe for all of them together. That means changing the very face of human society. It means the Others as masters and the rest of humanity as subordinates. They know that. For everything you love, you have to know it, too."

There was a long moment of silence in the room. Hal sat waiting, still strangely gripped by the clarity and fierceness of thought that had come on him.

"It's still only a theory of yours - this idea of historical confrontation between two halves of the human race," said Miriam Songhai, heavily. "How do you expect us to trust something like this, that no one ever proposed before?"

"Check it out for yourselves," said Hal. "It doesn't take Exotic calculations to see when and how the Others started, how they've progressed, and where they must be headed. You know better than I how the credit and other reserves of your society are dwindling. The time's coming when the Others'll own the souls of everyone who might hire you, off-world. What happens to the Dorsai, then?"

"But this idea of them as a historical force, with all the dice loaded in their favor against us," the cadaverous man said, shaking his head, "that's leaving common sense for fantasy."

"Would you call it a fantasy, what's already happened on all the worlds but Old Earth? And it hasn't happened there only because the Others have to get the other worlds under control first," Hal answered. "The Others' specialty is to attack where there's no counter. There's no present defense against them. How else could they explode the way they have, into a position of interstellar power in just thirty standard years?"

He paused and looked deliberately around the table at all the faces there. There was a strange brightness, almost a light of triumph in Amanda's eyes.

"Against their charisma, and the pattern of their organization," he went on, "none of our present cultures have any natural defense. If you could put all of the Others on trial in an interplanetary court right now, I'd be willing to bet you couldn't find legal cause to indict one of them. Most of the time they don't even have to suggest what they want done. They bind to them people with exactly the characters they want, put each in the specific situation each one is best suited for, and each one does exactly what the Others want, on his or her own initiative."

Hal turned to speak to the table as a whole.

"Look at the large picture, for your own sakes," he said. "Think. The Exotics could have handled in its beginning any ordinary economic attempt to dominate all the worlds. You could have handled early any purely military threat. But against the Others you've both been helpless; because they haven't attacked in those forms. They've attacked in a new way, one never anticipated; and they're winning. Because the pattern of human society is changing, as it's always done; and the old, as always, can't resist the new."

He paused.

"Face that," he said. "You, the Exotics, the Friendlies, everyone else who lives by an older pattern, can't resist the Others as you've resisted other enemies until now. If you try going that way, you'll lose - inevitably - and the Others will win. But the possibility is there for you to resist them successfully, and win, if you let yourself become part of the new historical patterns that are shaping up into existence right now."

He paused again; and this time he waited for comment or objection, a response of any kind. But none came. They sat silent, watching him.

"The Others aren't aliens," he said. "They're us, with a difference. But that difference can be enough to give them control as things stand. Again, as I say, it's simply one more instance of the old giving way to the new; only the problem in this case is that the new way the Others want to bring in is a blind alley for the race. Humanity as a whole can't survive in stasis, with one Master to millions of slaves. If it's made to go that way, it'll die."

He paused. None of them made the slightest movement or sound. They only continued to watch him.

"We can't allow that," he went on, "but not allowing it doesn't mean we can keep things as they are. That would also mean stasis - and a race death. So, we have to acknowledge simply what is. Once more, the face of human society is changing, as it's always done; and as always we'll have to change with it or go by the boards. Here on the Dorsai you're going to have to be prepared to let go of many things, because you're a Splinter Culture that always held to tradition and custom. But that adaptation will have to be made, for the sake of your children's children. Because, I tell you again, what's at stake isn't the hard-won ways of the Dorsai, or those of the Friendlies or the Exotics, but the survival of the whole human race."