In moments Bleys was in the back of a silent float vehicle, its lights dimmed as it moved through a park toward an area where the nighttime lights were still on; until at last, turning on its lights, it slid over the edge of a trafficway to join the stream of vehicles. The lights in this area were on; and, looking back, Bleys could see what appeared to be a pocket of blackness surrounded by the city's night lights.

In another twenty minutes they reached a private landing pad, where the float drove right up to the side of a space-capable shuttle. As the vehicle settled to the ground, and the panel separating Bleys from the driver's compartment opened, a face he knew smiled at him: the face of one of Henry's Soldiers.

"The shuttle will take you up to a low-orbit transit station, sir," the Soldier said. "You'll get there in time to board a jitney that'll take you to High Africa—that's a high-orbit station—where you can catch a ride to your ship. Everything you need's in this packet—" She passed it over to Bleys. "But—" She stopped.

"Well?" Bleys said, after a moment.

"Sorry," the Soldier said. "I'm getting a message—you need to get on board right away."

"I was told it was police who came after me," Bleys said. "Do you know why they'd be interested in me?"

"No," the Soldier said. "We alerted you as soon as John saw them arrive and begin blocking exits."

It had been John Colville's voice that Bleys had recognized in the stairwell.

"Then you don't know it was me they were after?" Bleys asked. "No, sir," she said.

"But Henry's people take no chances," Bleys said, a little grimly. He wondered if he had not made that long drop in the darkness to no purpose.

They had reached the ramp at the shuttle's side, and the Soldier lifted a hand to an ear, listening; and then smiled.

"Our people say the police have made their way to your floor," she said. "You need to be in the air before an alarm goes out."

Rather than making his way through the corridors of High Africa, Bleys had the jitney's crew call for a shuttle to meet the craft as it docked. It was not so unusual a request as to raise suspicion: any traveler well-off enough to be embarking on an interstellar voyage would likely also be both able to afford the cost of a little extra service, and in a hurry to make a connection.

Thus, while the rest of the jitney's passengers made their way through the craft's main passenger hatch, now securely docked at the station's main concourse, Bleys was climbing down through a smaller hatch in the jitney's belly, to which the shuttle he had called for had locked itself. It took only a few moments for Bleys to give the shuttle driver the data for the orbital slot that Favored of God— once again traveling under a false name—was parked in; and they were undocked and on their way before the last of the jitney's other passengers had reached the concourse.

Wary of the possibility that any radioed message might be intercepted, Bleys had not spoken directly to Favored of God himself, but only had the shuttle driver call ahead to tell the ship that one of her passengers was coming aboard—Bleys had been provided with a false identity, and that was the name the driver gave to Favored of God.

Despite his discretion, Bleys found himself greeted by Captain Anita Broadus herself, her beaming dark countenance appearing, to his eyes, very like an emblem of safety. He could not prevent himself from smiling back.

"Great Teacher, it is so good to see you." The captain's voice fairly boomed throughout the entry corridor. "We were all hoping, when we were sent here, that we would be able to help you in some way!"

"Why, Captain," Bleys said, "surely you know by now that wherever you're sent, it's for our work?"

"That is my wish, of course, Great Teacher, and that of all my crew. But you must forgive me: Antonia Lu and Henry MacLean never tell us more than we must know to carry out our task, and in the times of silent waiting—as we have waited quietly in this boring orbit for three weeks now—sometimes we feel we are pushed to the side and forgotten. But please do not misunderstand me, Great Teacher—we are always faithful!"

"Of course you are!" Bleys said. "But everyone's mind plays the devil's tricks on them in those hours when there's nothing to do but wait. My uncle Henry will tell you that's the very time when faith and courage are most needed."

"And most hard to find," the captain said. "It can be a hard lesson."

'That's so," Bleys said. "I think you're aware that you're sometimes sent off to wait because I foresee the possibility of some need for you. But you must steel yourself to the fact that sometimes that need simply will not come about, and you'll be unused. But that doesn't mean the trip was taken for nothing. Simply in knowing you're near while I undertake some important work, I'm comforted."

The captain's smile blossomed once more, belying the seriousness of their conversation.

"Come, Great Teacher—would you like to rest? Or perhaps a meal? What would you like?" Without really waiting for a reply, the captain waved a hand, and a young crewwoman stepped out of the background, all but coming to attention at the captain's side.

"Shira will take you to your quarters, Great Teacher," the captain said. Although her words were a simple statement to Bleys, they were clearly an order for the crewwoman.

"Have there been any messages for me, Captain?" Bleys asked; and the crewwoman, who had already turned away, stopped, looking over her shoulder.

"Nothing by radio, of course, Great Teacher," the captain said. "But we've had four courier deliveries in the weeks we've been here. They await you in the same lounge you used before, and your stateroom is nearby."

She waved the crewwoman on her way, and Bleys followed.

By the time Bleys had worked his way through the messages, Shira had reappeared. Perhaps emboldened by some prodding from the captain, she was carrying a tray laden with a large meal and several beverage containers.

As she silently put the tray down on the desk, Bleys looked at it distrustfully; but then his nostrils picked up the scent of some tangy spice, and he suddenly realized he was starving.

He looked up at Shira—she was short enough that he did not have to look very far up—and she interrupted her silent backing away.

"Did you prepare this, Shira?" he asked.

"Yes, Great Teacher," she said, her voice tiny in the large room.

"You're new on Favored of God, are you not?"

"Yes, Great Teacher," she said again. "I graduated from the crew training facility at New Earth City two months ago, and the captain hired me for my first job."

"I think you're originally from one of the Friendlies?" he asked. "Your voice tells me so."

"I was raised on Harmony by my grandparents after my mother and father died," she said. "But I was born on Mara and spent the first part of my life there."

"I'm sorry to hear about your parents," he said. "Would you tell me what happened to them?"

"They were killed in a trafficway accident on Freiland," she said. "They were on leave from their ship."

"And you decided to go into their profession?"

"Yes," she said, her brown eyes shining a little. "The crew of the Sombok became like family to me, and helped raise me." She smiled. "Captain Broadus was one of them, although only a junior officer at the time, and that's why she hired me."

"You've come to the right ship," Bleys said, nodding seriously. "The captain will turn you into a veteran."

"Yes, Great Teacher."

"You prepared this, you said," he continued, looking down at the large plate in the center of the tray. It had a cover that prevented him from seeing the dish that awaited him, but an exotic aroma was rapidly filling the room. "What is it?"

"It's a curried lamb dish, Great Teacher," she said. Then she blushed. "It's from a recipe of my family, but I've changed it a little."

"I see you brought me coffee, orange juice and water," Bleys said. "Are those appropriate to drink with your dish?" Shira blushed again, but smiled.

"Perhaps the Great Teacher would like a glass of beer?" she said. "Tea is traditional with curry, but in my family, we find that a good Japanese-style beer sets off the flavor of the spices very well."

"Would you get me one, then?" he asked.

She did.

CHAPTER 35

The elderly shuttle had been ordered to hold its distance from the Final Encyclopedia; there was other traffic. But the driver had his hands full doing so, because the Encyclopedia was no ordinary satellite.

Of all the artificial satellites orbiting Old Earth, only the Final Encyclopedia spent the energy to hold itself in an unnatural sort of geosynchronous orbit.

Properly placed, satellites falling in their orbits about a planet could remain, seemingly stationary, above a fixed point on the ground below. But the laws of physics dictated that a satellite could occupy such a geostationary position only if its orbit followed the planet's equator.

The Final Encyclopedia, however, held a fixed position above a point in Earth's northern hemisphere; and it did so only because it constantly used drive engines to counter the demands of the laws of physics.

Bleys knew that the fixed point the Encyclopedia hung above was the location of the estate where the boy Hal Mayne had been raised. And that knowledge haunted the Other.

The day after he learned that fact, Bleys had gone to the Mayne estate, at Dahno's orders, to take it over for use as the site of the first meeting of the Others' top leaders—a visit that turned into disaster when the boy's three elderly tutors were killed. The boy himself had vanished, running from the only home he had known since, at the age of two, he had been found, alone, on a spaceship drifting near Old Earth.

As his shuttle strained to remain in place near the Final Encyclopedia, Bleys looked out a port at the mother planet. She was close, and she was beautiful, a ball of blue draped with white swirls that crept from under the black crescent of the planet's own shadow.

Bleys had never been able to learn why the Encyclopedia was held in its unusual, and so particular, orbit. The satellite's staff had never explained its positioning, and he could find no logical justification for the effort.

He had speculated that the Encyclopedia might have been placed there so it could keep an eye on the boy. But that made no sense: the Final Encyclopedia had gone to its place about seventy-five years before Hal Mayne was even born.

As for the converse of that idea—that the boy had been purposely placed in a position to be raised directly beneath the Encyclopedia— he could find neither a reason for doing so, nor any indication that the boy's guardians had sought to arrange it.

When Bleys had discovered that strange quasi-connection between the boy and the legendary orbiting institution, he had examined the public records. He had learned that the land on which the Mayne estate sat, after being the site of a series of hobby ranches and recreational resorts for more than two hundred years, had been purchased by a Europe-based investment bank—more than fifty years before Hal Mayne's birth and well after the day the Final Encyclopedia had achieved its orbit. The land had then remained unused until it was sold to the trust that had been set up for the boy out of the proceeds of the sale of the ship in which he was found.

That trust had been organized in accordance with unsigned instructions found on the ship, and was overseen by directors appointed by designated financial institutions, government bodies, and humanitarian groups—none of whom seemed to have any connection at all with the Final Encyclopedia.

It was the kind of story that begged the listener to make up some sort of mystical relationship between the boy and the satellite. Bleys had no belief in mystical relationships—but he also had nothing to offer in their place.

That was only the first of the strangenesses that had led him to see in Hal Mayne—as boy and later as man—an opponent to be respected—

"Sir," the driver's voice interrupted his musings, "I have the Encyclopedia for you. Switch the intercom to channel C and I'll put her through."

"Thank you," Bleys said; and reached to the intercom mounted on the bulkhead in front of him. He pushed the plastic button marked C; it seemed to stick for a moment—like the shuttle, this intercom was elderly—but then he heard a click—

"This is Orbital Communications, the Final Encyclopedia," a young-sounding soprano voice said. "We're told you have a request."

"Thank you for speaking to me," Bleys said. "My name is Bleys Ahrens, and I'd like to speak with Hal Mayne—I understand he's presently working in the Encyclopedia."

"I will advise Hal Mayne you wish to speak with him, Bleys Ahrens. Please stand by."

"Wait!" Bleys said.

"Yes?"

"I should have been more specific," Bleys said. "What I'd like is permission to meet Hal Mayne in person, there in the Final Encyclopedia. Would you ask him if he'll agree to that?"

"I'll ask him," the voice said. "Please have your shuttle maintain its position."

The voice keyed off without waiting for his reply.

Bleys sat back in his seat, away from the intercom he had unconsciously leaned into while speaking. The voice had been pleasant and polite, blending innocence with competence; and he thought he could, sight unseen, almost draw a portrait of the speaker.

The vast majority of the populations of the Younger Worlds would never listen to voices like that. Voices like that, or other contact with the human people inside the Final Encyclopedia, would negate the propaganda campaign that was portraying the Final Encyclopedia to the Younger Worlds as an inhuman institution working to craft superweapons to be used against the Younger Worlds. The Final Encyclopedia, it was said, hid behind its phase-shield to conceal its part in a grand conspiracy that included Old Earth, the Exotics and the Dorsai; a conspiracy aimed at robbing Old Earth's former colonies of their freedoms.

If the Final Encyclopedia had no hidden purpose, it was asked, why did it need a shield that, using the same physics that allowed interstellar travel, would disintegrate any physical object that touched it, scattering its component subatomic parts evenly throughout the Universe?

The message was, so far, being spread quietly, in unofficial forms and in subtle terms; but it was effective, at least among a small minority⁷. A simplistic view of history, after all, supported fears of such a conspiracy: Old Earth had certainly tried, several times in the past, to dominate the Younger Worlds; and every planet had near-mythical stories about the fearsome Dorsai men of war and the crafty Exotics.

It did not concern Bleys that the majority of the Younger Worlds' populations had not yet bought into the rumors; over time the minority voices would get louder, until the unpersuaded were run over, stampeded or intimidated by fears of being labeled unpatriotic.

The Younger Worlds, without quite realizing it, were well on their way to being prepared for war. Economic structures were being altered and assets appropriated. Recruitment of military personnel, although it had plateaued of late, would soon be phased out; the mechanisms for large-scale conscription were even now being put in place on those worlds that did not already have such.

Most of the populations as yet had no idea what was going on; control of the media and governments prevented reporting of the more sensitive news, or of any significant analysis.

Many of his Others had found it difficult to understand that it was not necessary that a majority of their worlds' populations actually believe the propaganda. All that was required, he had explained, was that those unconvinced of the reality of the conspiracy and the superweapons become apprehensive—which they would if they heard no contradicting voices. Afraid of the consequences if their skeptical instincts were wrong, they would see little harm in supporting enhanced defensive measures; that was all that would be needed. Fear and hatred, even if limited to a minority, would cow many of the potentially dissenting voices, who could not stomach setting themselves up to be denounced as traitors.

Now only a small portion of Old Earth could be seen from the viewport. Bleys hoped the young voice he had spoken to would not be killed when the end came for the Final Encyclopedia.... The shuttle's slow movement had been altering his view of the mother planet; he didn't mind: he could see a small portion of the vast sea of stars.

It was slightly less than two minutes more before the driver told Bleys that the Final Encyclopedia was calling for him. "This is Bleys Ahrens."

"This is the Final Encyclopedia," a voice said. It was not the young soprano he had spoken with before, but a slightly more mature, but still female, alto voice.

"Hal Mayne says he'll see you, Bleys Ahrens," the new voice continued. "We'll advise your driver when we have an opening, and you'll be vectored into Bay One. Someone will meet you there."

"Thank you," Bleys said. He registered a slight uncomfortable-ness at not addressing, in a more polite fashion, the person who had spoken to him; but she had not given her name.

No matter.

He was committed, now. He felt relief.

He had called for a hired shuttle to pick him up from Favored of God, on a kind of whim, and he had been wondering whether he was making a silly mistake.

It's never a mistake to scout out your opponent, he reminded himself. It's been well over a year since we met in that prison cell, and I need every chance I can get to learn what might be going on in that boy's head.

After all, he was nearby anyway.

As Bleys stepped out of the shuttle's lock, the bay was quieter than he had expected. He looked around, wondering what it would take to get a complete tour of this huge technological wonder—and quashed the notion, irritated at himself for being weak enough to be taken by the same fascination with toys that had led the race too quickly into space. It might be better to simply destroy this place, rather than try to control it; it was too tempting.

The lights high up in the walls were bright and harsh to his eyes, glaring at him as he began to walk down the ramp. Against the glare he could make out a figure apparently waiting for him on the bay floor. Other figures were moving about, but none seemed to be paying him any attention.

The person waiting for him, he found, was a woman, small, and probably in her thirties, with black hair framing a faintly oriental face. She wore clean-looking lime green work coveralls that fit as if tailored, and black, slipperlike ankle boots.

"Bleys Ahrens?" she asked. It was the alto voice he had spoken with from the shuttle.

"Yes," he said, nodding politely.

"My name is Chuni Maslow," she said. "Hal Mayne asked me to take you to him. Would you follow me, please?"

She turned and led the way to a hatch, which opened itself at her touch on its controls. Stepping through behind her, Bleys found himself in a corridor much like those in good hotels on Old Earth. It seemed to be wallpapered in a motif of white flowers—not roses, he thought, but something showier, elongated—on pale yellow. It lightened the effect of the royal blue carpeting.

He knew, from his reading, that this corridor was a unit, a movable piece that could be maneuvered about within the vast interior of the satellite. It had probably been set in motion as soon as the door closed behind them, and by the time they walked to the other doorway, the corridor itself would have reached their destination and attached itself there. But he felt no movement.

At the second doorway, Chuni operated the control pad, and the door opened.

"Hal Mayne asks that you wait here in comfort," she said. "He won't be long."

"Certainly," Bleys said, nodding.

Out of habit, he ducked his head in the doorway, but he did not need to do so.

The room appeared to be a simple, comfortably furnished, lounge. He explored it briefly, as any innocent visitor would, and found that both food and drink were available from mechanisms in the walls. A video screen provided entertainment and news channels, and he could see control pads that indicated the availability of communications.

He did not try any of the controls, settling for a glass of fruit juice. He chose the sofa as a seat, since it was larger than any of the chairs.

As he sat, he examined his interior state, and found that he was a little on edge. He began to practice some of his silent breath-control exercises.

In just over ten minutes the door opened, and Chuni Maslow appeared, framed by the portal but not coming in.

"If you'll follow me," she said, "I'll take you to Hal Mayne."

Bleys rose and stepped back through the doorway, this time stopping himself from ducking his head.

He found himself in a different corridor, this one paneled in dark red wood above a pale yellow carpet that showed no sign of soil.

I wonder if those fools who used to run Newton ever came here? They wanted so much to impress people with how advanced they were.

Even as he had that thought, they had reached the next doorway, and Chuni was operating its control pad.

"Here you are, Bleys Ahrens ...," she said, as the door opened. At her gesture he stepped into the room ahead of her; and, seeing Hal Mayne, he lost track of the woman until the door had closed behind him.

The figure before him was undeniably Hal Mayne, but it was not the young man he had seen, sick and exhausted, on the too-small bed in that prison cell. At that meeting, Bleys had been surprised to see that Hal Mayne, the boy he had never met, had grown into a man; now he had the feeling he was meeting with a completely different person.

Although tall, the person in that cell had been still a boy. But all of Bleys' instincts told him the figure before him now was that of a full-grown adult male—full-grown in every way.

He stood as tall as Bleys, but with massive shoulders and chest that made Bleys feel suddenly smaller; yet the difference from the boy in the cell went beyond size. This man gave an instant impression of being older than Bleys was. Bleys was disconcerted: how could that boy could have become so different in less than two years?

Bleys could not remember a time when he had not been aware that there was a part of himself, that he thought of as being in the back of his mind, that perpetually monitored his actions and his thoughts, helping him control his emotions and instincts. Now, he suddenly realized, it had shut down—vanished; at least it seemed that way, because he was suddenly being flooded by feelings of rage. He suppressed it with harsh willpower, telling himself it was simply the instinctual response usual to a large male unexpectedly confronted with a larger one.

Fear?

He was shocked as the notion came to him. Anger, like many other emotions, usually arose out of the body's fear reaction; but he had never thought that might apply to him.

He was abruptly, absurdly conscious of how his own appearance contrasted with that of the man before him. He had spent years cultivating the picture he presented to his audiences, and he knew his tall, lean body, clad in a short, black jacket, and gray trousers tapering into black boots, presented a dramatic image that focused attention on him, making it easier for him to get his message through to audiences.

Hal Mayne presented an entirely different sort of figure; but somehow, in his simple, utilitarian silver-gray coverall, that difference failed to detract from the fact that his body, his face—even his attitude—presented an icon of power and strength that must awaken a large number of instinctive responses in those who saw him.

People will listen to him, too.

As Hal took a step forward, Bleys found his voice. "Well," he said, "you've grown up."

"It happens," said Hal. His voice, too, was more mature, deeper and controlled. But it was distant. There was a strange moment of silence as they stood facing each other. Bleys was acutely aware of the ceiling over both their heads; he'd been used to being closer to ceilings than other people, but now, with Hal's own height so near, that sense of closeness became uncomfortable.

Hal's face showed no emotion at all. That, too, was an indicator of how the boy had changed. Bleys had, he knew now, been expecting to meet that same youngster, and to find him still prey to the emotional volatility of young men; but he had been badly wrong.

Even as he had that thought, he saw a slight change in the features of the man before him, as if a momentary shadow had passed over his soul... that face, too—something about it rang the bell of some distant familiarity. . ..

He dismissed the thought, reminding himself that this man must still remember the first time they had impinged on each other's lives; Hal Mayne would never be able to see Bleys without remembering his tutors, killed on the terrace of their home. Perhaps one day he could be brought to see it was not Bleys' doing.

To cover the moment, he turned and stepped over to the desk Hal had just left. It was a float desk, apparently made of a reddish wood that concealed the metal frame of its technology.

The room appeared to be an office, but it seemed unusually bare. Half a dozen float chairs were scattered about, some with high, winged backs covered in an antique gold floral pattern on a muted dark red field. They seemed incongruous against the off-white walls and neutral-colored floor—unless this was one of those technologically enhanced spaces that could be commanded to change its color and shape as easily as the lighting, one which had been put into neutral settings.

Intelligent! He's not giving away any clues.

He felt a new sadness: for all that he had prepared himself, mentally, to find Hal Mayne an enemy, he regretted that the young man saw him as a predator.

It was Hal Mayne who looked the predator, Bleys reminded himself. ... Again he felt that tiny ring of familiarity, even as he pivoted to sit down on the edge of the desk.

He turned his attention back to Hal, who had himself turned, as smoothly as a trained athlete, even as Bleys moved to the desk.

How could he have changed so much, so fast?

"A big change to take place in a year," Bleys said. Sitting on the desk, he was now looking upward at Hal. The angle gave him a slightly different perspective on the younger man's face, bringing out the strength of the chin and opening the caves of his eyes, under the heavy brows, to better view.

Without a word, Hal moved back past him, returning to his chair and forcing Bleys to swivel. Now Bleys was looking down on his host, although not at a great angle.

He doesn 't care. He's beyond size games.

"The biggest change took place in that Militia cell in Ahruma, in the day or two after you left me," Hal said, responding to Bleys' comment of a moment before. "I had a chance to sort things out in my mind."

"Under an unusual set of conditions," Bleys said. He had to look sideways, from where he sat, to see Hal fully. "That captain deliberately misinterpreted what I told him."

"Amyth Barbage—have you forgotten his name?" Hal said. For all the sharpness of the words, the tone in which they were uttered was not accusatory. "What did you do to him, afterward?"

"Nothing," Bleys said. "It was his nature to do what he did. Any blame there was, was mine, for not understanding that nature, as I should have. I don't do things to people, in any case. My work is with events."

"You don't do anything to people? Even to those like Dahno?"

For a very short second Bleys was startled into wondering just how much Hal knew of the workings of the Others' organization; then he shook his head, both in answer to Hal and in denial of that concern.

"Even to those like Dahno," Bleys answered. "Dahno may have created the conditions that could lead to his destruction. All I did was give the Others an alternative plan; and in refusing to consider it, Dahno put himself in other hands than mine. As I say, I work with larger matters than individual people."

"Then why come see me?" As Hal said those words, Bleys finally put his finger on something else that had been bothering him about this whole meeting: Hal Mayne was being entirely too still.

It was not, Bleys thought now, the stillness of someone trying to be motionless; rather, it was the utter stillness one sometimes found in the very old, or the very wise—a stillness of simple waiting.

"Because you're a potential problem," said Bleys. He felt almost removed from his own answer, as if his mind were trying to deal with another concern and letting his body speak on its own. He didn't like that image, and made himself smile, trying to become more immediately engaged.

"Because I hate the waste of a good mind—ask my fellow Others if I don't—and because I feel an obligation to you."

And even as he said it, he knew his answer, while true, was not complete, and he felt a small twinge of shame.

CHAPTER 36

This meeting was not going as he had expected. He had thought the encounter would be an emotional event, one he would be able to direct with his superior experience. Almost always, in the past, he had been able to find the things that really motivated people— things hidden deep inside them—and use those needs to lead those possessed by them. But in the face of Hal Mayne's imperturbability and self-control, he had so far been unable to find the handle that put the man in a ready frame of mind.

"And because you have no one else to talk to," said Hal, responding to Bleys' statement of a moment before.

For a bare fraction of a second something seemed to turn over in Bleys' chest, as if his long-dead hope of friendship had abruptly raised its head.

No, that could not be; not with our history. Bleys quashed his reaction fiercely. Was Hal being clever, trying to manipulate Bleys' own emotions—did he recognize Bleys' tactics, and seek to turn them back on Bleys himself?

Was he even more like Bleys than Bleys had known?

Bleys put on a smile that denied weakness.

"That's very perceptive of you," he said. He kept his voice soft, concealing the effect of Hal's words. "But you see, I've never had anyone to talk to; and so I'm afraid I wouldn't know what I was missing. As for what brings me here, I'd like to save you if I could. Unlike Dahno, you can be of reliable use to the race."

"I intend to," said Hal.

"No." Bleys' control almost deserted him once more—this time out of fury. Fury that this man, whose similarity to Bleys teased him, should be at the same time so persistent in his wrongness.

"What you intend," Bleys said, "is your own destruction—very much like Dahno. Are you aware the struggle in which you've chosen to involve yourself is all over but the shouting? Your cause isn't only lost; it's already on its way to being forgotten."

"And you want to save me?"

"I can afford what I want," Bleys said. "But in this case, it's not a matter of my saving you, but of you choosing to save yourself. In a few standard years an avalanche will have swallowed up all you now think you want to fight for. So, what difference will it make if you stop fighting now?"

"You seem to assume," said Hal, "that I'm going to stop eventually."

"Either stop, or—forgive me—be stopped," said Bleys. "The outcome of this battle you want to throw yourself into was determined before you were born."

"No," said Hal, slowly, "I don't think it was."

The ember of anger in Bleys continued to grow, fanned by Hal's stubborn refusal to see the obvious. He was just like his tutors, Bleys thought—particularly the Exotic, the one who had been reading poetry.

"I understand you originally had an interest in being a poet," he said. The memory of that poetry-loving tutor reminded him again of his search of the boy's house—the search in which Bleys had come upon the boy's handwritten poetry.

"I had inclinations to art, too, once," Bleys said. "Before I found it wasn't for me. But poetry can be a personally rewarding lifework. Be a poet, then. Put this other aside. Let what's going to happen, happen; without wasting yourself trying to change it."

Hal only shook his head, at first; but then gave a longer answer:

"I was committed to this, only this, long before you know," he said.

Bleys was disappointed that this man, of whom he had come to expect so much, should indulge in childish melodrama, repeating lines straight out of old novels.

Or, was he? Maybe that answer was deeper than it appeared. Bleys reminded himself of the need not to underestimate this man. Give him the benefit of the doubt, and try another key in the lock that led to his motivations.

"I'm entirely serious in what I say," Bleys said. He was sure Hal would not be persuaded, but possibly he could be brought to explain himself a little more, giving Bleys something to read meaning into.

"Stop and think," he continued, trying to put into the words all of his persuasiveness. If there was any doubt inside this man at all, any desire to avoid what he must surely recognize would be a disastrous war, he must be brought around to seeing the certainty within Bleys—must be made to feel unsure, hesitant. .. enough that he might want to be freed of that burden.

"What good is it going to do to throw yourself away? Wouldn't it be better, for yourself and all the worlds of men and women, that you should live a long time and do whatever you want to do— whether it's poetry or anything else? It could even be something as immaterial as saying what you think to your fellow humans; so that something of yourself will have gone into the race and be carried on to enrich it after you're gone. Isn't that a far better thing than committing suicide because you can't have matters just as you want them?"

"I think," said Hal, "we're at cross-purposes. What you see as inevitable, I don't see so at all. What you refuse to accept can happen, I know can happen."

Bleys shook his head, the disappointment rising up once more. Gould the man really be so blind?

"You're in love with a sort of poetic illusion about life," Bleys said. "And it is an illusion, even in a poetic sense; because even poets—good poets—come to understand the hard limits of reality. Don't take my word for that. What does Shakespeare have Hamlet say at one point... 'How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world'?"

Hal was smiling, and for a brief moment Bleys felt a small fear. He quelled the sudden memory, of how his attempt to quote poetry to Hal's tutor had blown up in his face.

"Do you know Lowell?" Hal asked.

"Lowell? I don't believe so." The name sounded like something out of North America, Bleys thought. Where could Hal be going with this?

"James Russell Lowell," Hal explained. "Nineteenth-century American poet." And he seemed to rise a little in his chair as he spoke a few lines:

"When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin s lamp "

Bleys felt as if he had been hit in the pit of his stomach. Hal only sat there watching him, as within himself Bleys struggled to control the sudden welter of emotions the words had evoked.

"You've been researching my childhood, I see," Bleys said. It seemed to him as if it had taken a long time to get himself under enough control to say the words without unwelcome emphasis. Somehow, he thought, this man knew him—knew his past, knew the virtual captivity of the years with his mother . .. but that could not be: Dahno had long ago altered the historical records—and even if some correct record remained somewhere, how could it tell the sort of life that had been imposed on a young boy twenty years ago?

Could Hal Mayne somehow see so deeply into Bleys, as to be able to pick up that hidden hurt?

Or—the idea sprang suddenly into his mind—had Hal been talking with Dahno? Had they come to some agreement? Was that why Hal had mentioned Dahno, earlier?

Instinctively, Bleys rejected that idea; but he recognized it had shaken him.

It was time to leave.

He got to his feet, seeing Hal stand at the same time.

"You're better at quoting poetry than I am," Bleys said. He regretted the words instantly, but could think of no way to recall them.

"I think," he said finally, "that those events that took place at your estate keep you from listening to me now. So I believe I'll have to accept the fact I can't save you. So I'll go. What is it you've found here at the Encyclopedia—if anything—if I may ask?"

He suspected Hal recognized his victory; and forced himself to meet the other man's eyes, as if denying any such result.

"As one of my tutors would have said," Hal answered, "that's a foolish question."

Bleys went cold once more ... had the boy somehow been close enough to that terrace to overhear his conversation with the boy's tutors? Those were the exact words the ancient Exotic had said— no, that was impossible.

"Ah," said Bleys. The syllable felt lame even to his own ears.

He turned and began moving toward the door, feeling loss and pain rising up in him. Somehow, this man had been too clever for him, had beaten him back at every turn. It was his own fault; he had gone into this insufficiently prepared.

At that moment, Hal's voice came once more from behind him. And the voice was vastly different—younger, somehow.

"How did it happen?"

Bleys stopped and looked back over his shoulder; then turned.

"Of course," he said. He felt, suddenly, a desire to reach out to the younger man before him; a desire that had not been in him only a moment before, and which was followed almost immediately by a determination to quell the stir of sympathy within him ... in the same moment he recognized he might have been presented with a way to penetrate Hal's armor.

"You'd like to know more, would you? I should have seen to your being informed before. Well, I'll tell you now, then." He paused, collecting his thoughts and planning how his next words could carry the connotations he wanted.

"The men we normally use to go before us in situations like that had found two of your tutors already on that terrace, and the third was brought to join them a minute or two after I stepped out onto the terrace myself. It was the Friendly they brought. The Dorsai and your Walter the InTeacher were already there. Like you, he seemed to be fond of poetry, and as I came out of the library window, he was quoting from that verse drama of Alfred Noyes, Sherwood. The lines he was repeating were those about how Robin Hood had saved one of the fairies from what Noyes called The Dark Old Mystery. I quoted him Blondin's song, from the same piece of writing, as a stronger piece of poetry. Then I asked him where you were; and he told me he didn't know—but of course he did. They all knew, didn't they?" "Yes," said Hal. "They knew."

"It was that which first raised my interest in you above the ordinary," Bleys said. There was no point in letting the man know that Bleys had researched him. "It intrigued me. Why should they be so concerned to hide you? I'd told them no one would be hurt; and they would have known my reputation for keeping my word."

He paused for a second.

"They were quite right not to speak, of course," he added softly. The admission burned in him, but he felt compelled to make it... he knew now he betrayed nothing by telling the truth, this time.

Hal Mayne gave him no sign.

"At any rate," Bleys continued, "I tried to bring them to like me, but of course they were all of the old breed—and I failed. That intrigued me even more, that they should be so firmly recalcitrant; and I was just about to make further efforts, which might have worked, to find out from them about you, when your Walter the InTeacher physically attacked me—a strange thing for an Exotic to do."

"Not—under the circumstances," Hal said, a peculiar emphasis in his voice.

"Of course, that triggered off the Dorsai and the Friendly," Bleys went on, watching closely now for the reactions that might come with the climax of his report.

"Together, they accounted for all but one of the men I had watching them; but of course, all three of them were killed in the process. Since there was no hope of questioning them, then, I went back into the house. Dahno had just arrived; and I didn't have the leisure to order a search of the grounds for you, after all."

"I was in the lake," Hal said. "Walter and Malachi Nasuno—the Dorsai—signaled me when they guessed you were on the grounds. I had time to hide in some bushes at the water's edge. After... I came up to the terrace and saw you and Dahno through the window of the library."

"Did you?" Bleys' response was almost perfunctory. Suddenly he felt dull, exhausted, as if he had expended all his energy in some burst of effort.

The two of them stood there silently, just facing each other; and at last Bleys shook his head, recognizing finality.

"So it had already begun between us, even then?" he said. It was not really a question.

Bleys turned to open the door; and stepped through it. In the corridor, he tiredly forced himself to be gentle as he closed the door behind him.

No one was in the corridor, but when he got to the door at its far end, that door opened on the entry bay; and the woman who had escorted him before took him to his shuttle. He managed to thank her politely, and then to direct his driver to return him to Favored of God. But those were the only words he said for some time.

As the misty, silver-gray orb of the Final Encyclopedia dwindled behind, and now above, his shuttle, Bleys pulled his eyes away from the sight. He wanted to think, but it was as if the phase-shield panels that protected the satellite also fractured his thoughts, breaking them into tiny bits that scattered about the Universe, beyond recall.

What was it about Hal Mayne that had such an effect on him? He had known there was something unusual about the boy, and had come to believe the man had the potential to become a friend of the sort that might alleviate his perpetual loneliness. But he could not explain why he felt that way, any more than he could explain the mystery of Hal's childhood beneath the Final Encyclopedia.

The only similar feeling Bleys had ever had in his life had come on a day long ago when he began to discover the works of the great artists and writers of the past. For a while he had believed he had found a bond with them, dead people who had once lived lives made full and rich by their unique abilities; was he recognizing a similar talent in Hal Maync? Was that what drew him?

Did Hal still write poetry, he wondered? Or had he set it aside to deal with the dangerous realities of the universe? Or, indeed, had Bleys' own actions killed that seed in the boy?

Bleys thought not. He found it unlikely he could kill anything at all in Hal Maync, beyond his body ... far from killing the seed of artistry, might he not have strengthened the character of the artist?

Still thinking, he absently reached out to raise the shutter over the viewport—to open himself once more to the stars. If Hal still wrote poetry, a look at it might tell Bleys a great deal about the changes that had come upon the boy. Or perhaps Hal still painted— there had been some primitive examples of that art, too, in the boy's room, evidencing early attempts to come to grips with perspective and balance—

The port was open now, and his eye was caught by the great blue and white globe of Old Earth, close by as they killed velocity to drop to the lower orbit in which Favored of God was parked. That globe almost filled the viewport, so that the stars he wanted to see were crowded out, only a stray few visible around the misty edges of the planet, as if paying court, and existing only by the great globe's sufferance.

He stared at the huge, dominating planet for long minutes, his thoughts of his human antagonist forgotten.

And he returned to Favored of God, to order that the ship take him elsewhere.