"They've never had to worry about the cost of anything at all, in their entire lives," Toni interrupted.

"Right," Bleys said. "They've come to believe they're invincible ... it's a little like an economic version of how the Elect among the Friendlies feel about themselves."

"We've never been able to make any headway with the religious fanatics," Dahno warned.

"True," Bleys said. "But we've managed to work with some of them, just by giving them what they want in return for getting what we want."

"If true, that makes them good candidates for our people to work on," Dahno said, grudgingly.

"It's even better than that," Bleys said. "This situation is made to order, because when we get quick results—and we will—the Families will become even more open to listening to us—"

"—And before long they'll be completely in our hands," Dahno finished, his grouchiness apparently forgotten. He looked interestedly at his brother.

"You've already got something in mind to give them those 'quick results,' haven't you?"

"I told them that if they get us access to top power holders not already in their camp, we can persuade them to help our program of taking business away from the Exotics. They liked that idea: our persuasion doesn't cost them as much as the money they've been spending on bribes."

"Well, even if it all works," Dahno said, "how docs that help us get the remaining Younger Worlds into our camp?"

"I think our people are more efficient than the Families, and more organized. We'll soon have results, using just the tools the Families are giving us access to—results that will make it even more obvious that the Exotics are getting less of a share of Ceta's trade. Any Cetan groups not already on our side will see there's something to gain in going along with our program, and in turn, with their support, we can guarantee that Exotic ships get even fewer cargoes, and even fewer Exotic experts are hired."

"How can you guarantee something like that?" Dahno asked.

"With the help of the worlds we've already got in our pockets,"

Bleys said. "Any faction on Ceta not initially willing to go along with us will likely jump at the chance to get a larger share of trade with, say, Newton. In fact, we can probably encourage the growth of a planetary' government on Ceta—which would make our control less complicated—by using whole-planet most-favored-nation sorts of incentives."

Dahno looked unconvinced. "What you're saying," he said, "is going to cost a lot of money, because most of those actions will be running a deficit."

"What kind of deficit?" Toni asked.

"Those kinds of trade manipulations have always been carried out only by governments seeking political gains," Dahno said. "Which is of course exactly what we'd be doing, too. But that kind of manipulation almost always runs counter to the normal workings of trade, and results in making everything more expensive for everybody. What Bleys is suggesting is that we draw on the resources of the planets we control to artificially deprive the Exotics and the Dorsai of wealth, a kind of economic warfare."

"I think what you're saying," Toni said thoughtfully, "is that we'd be using the capital built up on the worlds under our control to change the normal ebb and flow of trade—as if we were building a breakwater along a beach—"

"A breakwater made of bales of old-fashioned money," Dahno said.

"Well, I can see how that will take trade away from the Exotics and the Dorsai, and hurt them," Toni said. "But how does that help put those other planets into our camp?"

"On every planet there are always people who instantly understand that a program like that means the goods are being made to go elsewhere only because government money is pushing them about, and they'll want a piece of that money," Dahno replied. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier skepticism, and to be wrapped up in contemplation of the strategy he was exploring.

"They'd sell their souls for opportunities like that," he went on, "and turning their planets over to us, to get those opportunities, won't worry them until later, if at all."

"We can afford it if the Younger Worlds we control begin to run big deficits," Bleys said, "if in the short run it helps us get the uncontrolled worlds under our thumbs—because in the long run it won't matter."

"It ultimately comes out of the pockets of the people," Dahno said. "In the mid-term, that might be very unpopular."

"There will be ways to handle that, once we're firmly in control," Bleys said. "And we can alleviate those effects a bit by forcing the Exotics—and the Dorsai, too—to pay even more ruinous prices for the things they need to import. That will recover some of our losses, while impoverishing them ... for them, it will seem as if a depression has set in."

"We'll have to be very, very adroit to carry out a complicated scheme like that," Dahno said, shaking his head. "You're essentially buying the support of some elements on each planet by surreptitiously robbing other elements on those, and other, planets, as well as the Exotics and the Dorsai. It's a bit of a house of cards, don't you think?"

"If we were only engaging in the financial manipulations, it might well be prone to fall apart," Bleys said. "But that would be only one of our tactics, and not the major one, either. And they're all worth it if they help us further consolidate our control on the five worlds we have, and gain the other four worlds. The same trade considerations I suggested for Ceta will pull Freiland into our camp, too—they won't want to be the odd man out when it looks like the other planets are getting good deals."

"What other tactics can we use?" Dahno asked.

"Big lies," Bleys said. "All the planets have some tinge of jealousy and hatred for the Dorsai, the Exotics and Old Earth herself, and I've already laid the groundwork, in my talks and recorded lectures over the last few years, to get people to dwell on such things. There's a well of emotion ready under the surface of many of those people, that we can open up with a whispering campaign, saying that those three groups have been secretly working together to try to take control of the rest of the planets.

"We'll also tell them that Old Earth, using the facilities of the Final Encyclopedia, has been secretly working to develop super-weapons to be used in its campaign to take back control of the colonies it once lost."

"Won't that bring Old Earth in against us?" Dahno asked, his voice challenging.

"Not for a long time, if at all," Bleys replied. "That planet is totally splintered, and it's an enormous and time-consuming task to bring those people into any sort of alignment... but probably that question won't even arise, because most Earthmen won't notice what we're saying about them—the mother planet tends not to pay too much attention to the Younger Worlds, after all."

Bleys stood up, his napkin, forgotten like the rest of his meal, falling to the floor as he turned his back on the table and strode over to the gigantic map.

"All of this," he said, waving an arm before the map, "should be powerful enough to at least give our people on the uncontrolled planets a start. If we can fan the conflicts properly, we can only gain politically. If civil wars break out, we can send in peacekeepers, voluntarily provided, out of fellow feeling, by the planets we already control." He turned to look back at Toni and Dahno.

"Coby won't be a big problem," he said, pointing without looking over his shoulder; "it's the greatest source of metals in the Younger Worlds, and once we control it, a lot of the planets will tend to go along with us just because they need metals so much."

"But Coby doesn't even have a government we can take over," Dahno said. "It's owned by a consortium of commercial enterprises that won't be susceptible to our normal tactics." He walked over to join Bleys at the map. "The consortium's control has always been totalitarian, and the people there have no power."

"Even easier for us," Bleys said; "we won't have to try to raise popular support there. We'll simply give the owners and managers of those companies a quiet word that if they don't cooperate, we'll make all sorts of trouble that will cut into their profits." He turned back to the map, and reached up to point to the Procyon system.

"The Exotics, living in the same system, of course have always owned a large slice of the shares in Coby. But they can be outvoted by the other owners." He turned back from the map.

"Both the people on Coby and the companies that control every aspect of their lives have essentially cut their ties with or citizenship in any other world. The people are the only ones who're willing to work there: the outcasts of the other worlds. They're virtually slaves already; they won't even notice when we take over. And the owners?" He shrugged.

"The owners long ago learned their profits increased if they cut their ties with their native planets; they didn't have to pay taxes, and no other planet has ever been willing to interfere with how they treated their people—it would threaten their access to Coby's metals—allowing the owners to pay low wages to workers with no political voice at all. They may regret that strategy when they find they have no off-world friends to rescue them from us—all we have to do is threaten to take everything if they don't give us control."

"Which we could make palatable by leaving them large and secure incomes," Dahno nodded. "For the moment, anyway."

"What... ? What did you just say?" Bleys asked, late that night. "I'm sorry; I was thinking. ... I guess I was far away."

"Do you want to talk?" Toni repeated. She was lying on her side facing him, her head propped up by one arm.

He looked at her for a moment. She did not usually probe at him like this.

"What's on your mind?" he said.

"Tell me about Hal Mayne," she said.

"Hal Mayne? I've talked about him before."

"You have, yes," she said. "But mostly you're talking to Dahno about how dangerous Hal Mayne is, and I only happen to be in the room."

"I guess that's so," he said. "I'm sorry; I don't mean to be leaving you out."

"I know you don't," she said. "And you're not, really. It's not so much that you're not telling me—something—about Hal Mayne, as that I can see there's something about your reaction to him—or maybe your feelings for him—that I can see the edges of, but you never talk about."

He found himself at a loss for words, and the silence stretched long enough that it was she who finally broke it.

"Maybe it's something you haven't even thought about, yourself," she said. "So let me tell you what it looks like to me." She paused to raise herself off her arm and move the pillow her elbow had been nestling in to his stomach; and then rolled onto it, so that she could look down into his face.

"To me it looks as if you react to Hal Mayne in some way you never react to anyone else—no, wait!—that's not exactly what I mean." She took another moment to think.

"Something about him makes you sad," she continued. "Not the way a person would feel about an enemy." Her finger was poking lightly at his chest. "I know you're sad a lot, but this is different.... Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

"Well...," he said, stretching the word out a little. "I guess I'm disappointed."

She looked at him, simply waiting for him to continue.

"I think you know—" He stopped. This is hard! Why do I keep running into these hard places? "—no, I know you know," he went on, "that I've always felt I can never have a friend." He was looking now at the ceiling of his bedroom, which as usual was set to display the starry night sky. Like the sky, he was oblivious to her reactions.

"I know that. I've always known it," he went on. "I accepted it as the way of my life, long ago. But for some reason I don't fully understand, when I learned about him, and even more when I met him, some part of me insisted that this man could be the friend I never thought I could have."

"Could be—but isn't?"

"Yes." He exhaled, a release of tension almost loud enough to be a sigh. "Instead of my friend, he's become my enemy—and the most dangerous possible enemy. There are already people who are beginning to pay attention to him, like the Exotics."

"Are you sad because he refuses to be your friend—or because he's your enemy?"

"I don't know how to answer that," he said, looking back to her face, framed by her black hair.

"Then let me ask this," she said: "if Hal Mayne were to become your friend, would you turn back from your plans, from your goal in life?"

He looked at her for a long moment.

"No," he said, finally. "I think I see what you're getting at—I can't very well expect him to give up his goals for my friendship, when I would never do the same."

"That's not what I'm saying," she said. "I'm saying you already have a friend, one so big there's no room for another... I mean the purpose you've devoted your life to."

For a long moment he just looked at her.

"I've been blind," he said then. "How do you handle it?"

"I knew what I was getting into when I joined you," she replied, a fist thumping him on the sternum. "But what do you think about what I just said?"

"I believe you're right," he said, after taking a brief moment to think. "I tell myself frequently that my—my purpose—is more important than everything else—"

She interrupted him.

"You mean you need to remind yourself frequently, because— because other things in life distract you?"

"Let's say: because sometimes the things I may be required to do are too hard."

"I'm sorry; I interrupted you," she said. "Go on with what you were saying, please."

"I was saying that I tell myself, frequently, that my purpose is more important than anything else," he said. "But I hadn't thought, until now, to relate that to Hal Mayne." He stopped for another moment, thinking.

"I guess subconsciously I interpreted his escapes—first from his estate and then from that prison cell—as a personal rejection of me, and of my offer of friendship. Of course that's a stupid reaction on my part." He shook his head.

"That reaction—my reaction, I mean—was a mistake in itself. It was a weakening of my resolve. And that applies regardless of whether Hal Mayne rejects me as a friend, or accepts me." He stopped, looking into her blue eyes.

"I used to worry," he said, "that you'd reject me, too, once you learned enough about my plans." He shook his head. "We're beyond that now, aren't we?"

She closed her eyes, and lowered her head to his chest; and held him.

CHAPTER 23

Bleys keyed off the circuit over which he had been talking with the Others' personnel office, six stories below him; and leaned back in his chair, looking down the length of the lounge at the great map he used to keep track of his nemesis. Years of self-control kept him from grimacing.

Dahno would not have hesitated to express his scorn, if he were here and Bleys had mentioned that word, nemesis. There was little concrete evidence to speak for Mayne's dangerousness.

Yet Bleys remained convinced Hal Mayne was the biggest single danger to his plans.

In a way, Mayne was irrelevant—no single human being, including Bleys himself, carried sufficient historical mass to control the direction of those threads of historical forces Bleys had pictured for Toni, that night on Ceta.

But those forces were closely balanced; just a small weight, added to one side or subtracted from the other, could alter their direction— alter it enough to change the course of the human race, as a puff of wind could alter the flight of a bullet.

The historical forces, that he pictured as a many-threaded tapestry flowing through time, were made up of all the decisions ever made by human beings, across the entire span of the race's history; and so they had a weight, an inertia, no single person could turn aside.

So his task was not to shift the forces himself, but to move members of the human race—convince them that his was the correct path. If enough people went along with him, their combined weight could dominate the direction of the forces ... within himself he felt a feeling of familiarity, as if what he had just thought echoed something he

had heard, or thought, or seen—somewhere before ... he could not pin it down.

On the other hand, if Hal Mayne convinced enough people not to go in the direction Bleys knew was needed to save the human race, the forces might tend to the other direction.

It saddened Bleys to think that the entire future of the race depended on unknowing decisions made by the totally ignorant, but he could not tell them—not yet—that the very future of humankind was at stake in this conflict. They would not believe it. They would find it unlikely, ludicrous—too far from their own personal lives to be accorded either credibility or interest.

It was yet another sad fact about the human race, he thought: most did not think ahead far enough to imagine a future beyond the lives of their grandchildren—more accurately: to care about such a future time.

It had taken him years to learn that fact about his fellow humans. When he was much younger he had occasionally tried to bring conversations around to considerations of the far future and the destiny of the race; but most of those around him seemed to lack interest in such concepts.

Eventually, he had theorized that those reactions resulted from a strange kind of fear—that most people were very uncomfortable dealing with the concept of a world in which they, or something they had created, no longer existed.

Bleys was utterly sure Hal Mayne thought that far ahead. Bleys did not know why he knew that, but he knew it. Which meant that Hal Mayne must feel something like the same sadness, the same loneliness, of being almost the only one he knew who saw what he saw.

In an attenuated way, that was what had made Bleys so sad, on that day when he first met Hal Mayne, in his prison cell, and offered him friendship. At the time Bleys himself had not really fully understood how deeply similar their situations were ... perhaps Hal Mayne, too, had not really understood he was being offered the gift of an understanding friend.

Will he come to see it, someday? When will it be too late for even that understanding to change things between us?