"No," she said. "Nothing." She was looking hard at Nonne.
"We've got to go with what advantages we've got," Hal went on, "and in most cases that means turning the advantages of the Others to our use. Did you ever read Cletus Graeme's work on strategy and tactics?"
"Cletus—? Oh, that early Dorsai ancestor of Donal Graeme," said Nonne. "No. My field was recordist—character and its association with activity or occupation. Military maneuvers didn't impinge."
"I suppose not," said Hal. "Let me explain, then. Bleys is the most capable of the Others—you know that as well as I do. Otherwise he wouldn't be leading them. Someone more capable would have taken the leadership from him before this. So we've no choice who we've got to fight—we either defeat him, or lose. All I can tell you about my winning any duel with him is that if it ever comes down to that, I intend to be the winner; and as to why I think I might, it's because I've at least one advantage over him. My cause is better."
"Is that all?" Nonne's face was completely without expression.
"That can be all it takes," said Hal, gently. "A better cause can mean a better base for judgment; and better judgment is sometimes everything in a close contest."
"Forgive me," said Nonne, "if I boggle at the word everything."
"Think of two chess masters playing opposite each other," said Hal. "Neither one's going to make any obvious mistake. But either one can misjudge and make an obviously right move a little too early or a little too late. My job's going to be to try to avoid misjudging like that, while trying at the same time to lead Bleys into misjudgements. To do that, I'll be taking advantage of the difference in our characters and styles. Bleys has all the apparent advantages in this contest of ours. He can lead from strength. Earlier than anyone else among the Others, I think, he perceived that about the situation from the beginning. Certainly, his use of that fact has been the major factor in his being accepted by the rest of the Others as their most capable member. Since his recognition of this has worked for him so far I believe his perception of it is going to continue to lead him, as I said earlier, to wait until he's fully ready before he moves against us."
He broke off.
"Am I making my point clear to you?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," said Nonne.
"Good," answered Hal. "Now, then, it'd be bad strategy for him to change tactics that are winning for him without a strong reason, in any case. But I think we can count on this other factor in his thinking, as well. So, this leaves the initiative with us—which he will be aware of, but doesn't worry about. However, that same initiative can give us an advantage he may not suspect, if we can use it either to lull him into waiting too long to make a move, or startle him into moving too soon. It'll all depend on how good the plans are we've made."
"Then I take it you feel you've made good plans?"
He smiled gently at her.
"Yes," he said. "I do." He turned to Ajela. "I shouldn't have sent Jeamus away," he said. "Could you get him back here?"
Ajela nodded and reached to the control panel set in the arm of her chair. She touched one of the controls, murmuring to the receptor in the panel. Hal had turned back to the others.
"When you say you're ready to move," he said to Rourke, "do you mean just combat-ready adults, or all adults, or the whole population?"
"Nothing's ever unanimous," said Rourke, "and least of all, on the Dorsai, as I'd expect you to appreciate, Hal Mayne. A fair percentage of the population is going to stay. Some because age or sickness gives them no choice, some because they'd rather wait in the place they were born for whatever's going to happen to them. Nearly all of those of service age are ready to go."
"Yes," said Hal, nodding, "that was pretty much what I'd expected."
The voice of Jason sounded almost on the echo of his last word.
"Go where, Hal?" asked Jason.
"You didn't know?" Nonne looked across at the young Friendly.
"No," said Jason slowly, looking from her to Hal. "I didn't know. What was it I was supposed to have known?"
Instead of answering, Nonne looked at Hal.
"In a minute, Jason," Hal said. "Wait until Jeamus gets here."
They fell silent, looking at him. For a moment, as they sat waiting, Hal's mind went away from the immediate concerns.
He was aware of the four of them as individual puzzle-boxes, unique individual universes of thought and response, through which must be communicated what those they represented would need to understand. Once, as Donal, he would have seen them only as units, solid working parts of an overall solution to an overall problem. His greatest interest in them would have been that they should execute what he would direct them to do or say. Their objections would have been minor obstacles, to be laid flat by indisputable logic, until they were reduced to silence. The tag-end of some lines from the New Testament of the Bible, spoken by the Roman Centurion to Christ, came back to his mind, "I say to one, go, and he goeth and to another come, and he cometh…"
That sort of thinking could indeed produce a solution on the Donal level. But he had lived two lives since then to find something better, something more lasting. It had been his awareness of the need for that which had bothered Donal near the end of his time, as he stood, finally in charge of all the worlds and their workings, looking out at the stars beyond the known stars. He had seen the future clearly, then, and the fallacy in the idea that it could be won, even to a good end, by strength alone.
It had never been enough to make people dress neatly, walk soberly and obey the law. Only when the necessary improvement had at last been accepted by the inner self, when the law was no longer necessary, had any permanent development been accomplished. And if he could not show to these people here in this room with him now what would need to be done and achieved, then how was he going to show it to the billions of other individual human universes that made up the race?
It was not that they were not willing, any of them, to move to a higher and better land. But each of them, one by one, individually, in their billions, would have to make the trip by himself or herself when the time came; and for that, they would need to be able to see the way clear and the goal plain and desirable before them, so that each would move freely and on a personal determination to find it. Because the goal was not one that could be reached by intellectual decision alone. In the case of each person, it would require a combined effort of the conscious and the unconscious minds, of which only a handful of people in each past century had been capable. But now the way would be marked. Those who really desired to reach it could do so—they could all do so. Only, they would first have to see the marking of the way; and grow into a belief in their own abilities that would make them set their feet with utter confidence upon it.
And as yet that way was cloudy, even to him. He must go first, like a pioneer into new territory, charting as he went, making a road for the rest to follow—and that road began with these here, with Rukh and these others who had shown some desire to listen to him and follow him—
The chiming of the annunciator and the opening of the door to Tam's suite to let in Jeamus interrupted that train of thought.
"Come in, Jeamus," said Hal. "Take a seat if you like. I want to explain to these people what I asked you to design, in the way of a planetary shield-wall."
"Isn't this wasting valuable time?" Nonne broke in. "We all know he's been working on a shield-wall, and where it has to go—"
"I don't," said Jason, interrupting in turn. The eyes of the rest turned to him, for there was a strength and firmness to his voice that none of them, except Hal, had ever heard before. "Let's hear that explanation."
Jeamus had reached the circle by this time. His eyes rested for a second on the standing figure of Rourke, and he ignored the float that was within arm's reach of him.
"More than a standard year back," he said, "Hal asked me to look into making a phase-shift shield-wall, like the one we have around the Encyclopedia here to protect it, but large enough to protect
a world. He specified a world slightly larger than Earth. We've done that. Once the ships to effect it are in proper position about that world, and in proper communication between themselves, it can be created instantly."
He looked at Hal.
"Do you want me to go into the principle of it and the details of its generation?"
"No," said Hal. "Just tell them what it'll do."
"What it'll do," said Jeamus to the rest of them, "is enclose what it surrounds in essentially a double shell which from either side will translate anything touching it into universal position—just as a phase-shift drive does. Only, in this case, the object won't be retranslated into a specific position again, the way a phase-drive does. I suppose all of you know that the phase-drive theory was developed from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle—"
"Yes, yes," said Nonne. "We know all that. We know that the Principle says it's impossible to determine both the position and velocity of a particle with full accuracy; and the more accurate the one, the more uncertain the other. We know that in phase-drive terms this means, for all practical purposes, that in the instant of no-time in which velocity can be absolutely fixed, position becomes universal. We know this means anyone or anything trying to pass a shield-wall like the one around the Encyclopedia would be effectively spread out to infinity. We know that Hal Mayne plans to set up a garrison world with such a shield-wall around it—as no doubt Bleys Ahrens also does—and defend it with the Dorsai, and that world is to be our Exotic world of Mara—"
"No," said Hal.
Jeamus' head came around with a jerk. Ajela leaned forward, her face suddenly intent. Nonne stared at him.
"No?" she said. "No what? No, to which part of what I said?"
"It won't be Mara," said Hal gently. "It's to be right here—Earth."
"Earth!" burst out Jeamus. "But you told me larger than Earth! The dimensions you gave me—"
He broke off, suddenly.
"Of course!" he said wearily. "You wanted to enclose the Encyclopedia in it. Of course."
"Earth?" said Nonne.
"Earth," Hal repeated.
He touched the control panel on the edge of his float and one side of the room dissolved into a view of the Earth as seen from the orbit of the Encyclopedia. A great globe, blue swathed with white, it hung before them. Hal got up and walked toward it until he stood next to the view, seeming to the rest of them almost to stand over the imaged world, as someone might bend above something infinitely valuable.
"But this makes no sense!" said Nonne, almost to herself. "Hal!"
At the sound of his name he turned from the screen to face her across the small distance that now separated them.
"Hal," she said. "Earth? What's the point of defending Earth? What kind of a strong point can it make for you when more than half the people there don't care if the Others end up in control? You haven't even got their permission, down there, to put a shell around them, like the one we've been talking about !"
"I know," said Hal. "But asking first would've been not only foolish, but unworkable. They'll be surprised, I'm afraid."
"They'll make you take it down."
"No," said Hal. "Some will try, of course. But they won't succeed. The point is, they can't. And in time they'll come to understand why it has to be there."
"Wishful thinking!" said Nonne.
"No." He looked at her for a second. "Or at least, not wishful thinking in the sense you mean. I'm sorry, Nonne, but now, for the first time, we're at a point where you're going to have to trust me."
"Why should I?" Her answer was fierce.
He sighed.
"For the same reason," he said, "that's been operative from the time you first heard of me. You, your people, and everyone else who hopes to escape the Others hasn't any other choice."
"But this is madness!" she said. "Mara's willing to have you put a shield-wall around it. The people on Mara are even expecting it. The people on Mara are behind you to a person. They're ready for sacrifice; they've faced the need to sacrifice in order to survive. Hardly enough individuals to count on Earth have even thought of opposing the Others, let alone the cost of it."
"Something more than that, Nonne," put in Ajela. "Rukh's crusade has been a real crusade. They've been flocking in their thousands and hundreds of thousands to listen to her and the other people she brought in to carry the message."
"There's several billions of people on Earth!" said Nonne.
"Give Rukh time," said Ajela. "The process is accelerating."
"There's no more time," said Hal; and the eyes of all of them came to him. "Bleys has moved faster than any of you realize. I've just spent the last months seeing the evidence of that. A decision has to be made now. And it has to be for Earth."
"Why?" demanded Nonne.
"Because Earth holds the heart of the race," said Hal, slowly. "As long as Earth is unconquered, the race is unconquered. A man once said, talking to an Irishman in a hotel at five o'clock in the morning, back in the twentieth century, 'Suppose all the poets, all the playwrights, all the songmakers of Ireland were to be wiped out in an instant. How many generations would it take to replace them?' And before he could answer his own question, the Irishman held up one finger, as the answer the man had been about to give."
He looked at them all.
"One. One finger. One generation. And they were both right. Because not only the children who were still young would grow up to have poets and playwrights and songmakers among them; but those adults presently alive who'd never written or sung would suddenly begin to produce the music that had always been in them—in response to the sudden silence about them. Because the ability to produce such things never was the special province of a few. It was something belonging to the people as a whole, in the souls of every one of them, only waiting to be called forth. And what was true at the time of that conversation, and before and since, with the Irish people, is true as well, now, for the people of Earth."
"And not for the people of the other worlds?" asked Jason.
"In time, them too. But their forebearers were sent out by the hunger and fear of the race, to be expendable, to take root in strange places. For now, they stand—all of you stand, except Tam—at arm's length from the source of the music that's in you, and the future that's in you. You'll find it—but it would come harder and more slowly to any of you than it would for any of those down there—"
He gestured at the blue and white globe he had displayed.
They sat watching him, saying nothing. Even Nonne was silent.
"I told the Exotics," Hal went on, in the new silence, "I told the Dorsai—and I would have told your people, as well, Jason, if I'd had the proper chance to speak to them all—that in the final essential, they were experiments of the race. That they were brought into being only to be used when the time came. Now, that time's come. You all know the centuries of the Splinter Cultures are over. You know that, each of you, instinctively inside you. Their day of experimentation is done. Your kind lived, grew, and flourished for the ultimate purpose of taking one side of the great survival question of which road the race as a whole is going to follow into its future among the stars. Not to you and your children, unique and different, but to the children of the race in general, the future belongs."
He stopped. They still said nothing.
"And so," he said, tiredly, "it's Earth we have to end by protecting; Earth with all its history of savagery, and cruelty, and foolishness and selfishness—and all its words and songs and mighty dreams. Here, and no place else, the battle's finally going to be lost or won."
He stopped again. He wanted them to speak—if only so that he would not feel so utterly alone. But they did not.
He looked back at the blue and white globe of Earth.
"And it's here the question of the future is going to be decided," he said, softly, "and such as you and I will have to die, if that's our job, to get the answer needed for that decision to be made."
He stopped speaking
and looked again at the imaged Earth. After a second or two, he was conscious of another body close behind him, and turned, lifting his eyes, to see that it was Ajela.
She put her arms around him; and merely held him for a minute. Then she let him go and went back to her seat by Tam.
"You give us reasons," said Nonne to him, "which aren't military reasons, and may not even be pragmatic, practical reasons. My point remains that Mara's a better base for a stonewall defense than Earth is. You haven't really answered me on that."
"This isn't," said Hal, "exactly a war we're entered into for pragmatic and practical reasons—except in the long run. But the fact is, you're wrong. Mara's a rich world, as the Younger Worlds go; but even after centuries of misuse and plundering of its resources, Earth is still the richest inhabited planet the human race knows. It's entirely self-supporting, and it still maintains a population twenty times as large as that of any other inhabited world, to this day."
He broke off abruptly, holding all their eyes with his. Then he went on.
"Also, there's a psychological difference. Enclose any other world, cut it off from contact with the other inhabited worlds, and emotionally it can't escape the feeling that it may have been discarded by the community of humanity, left behind to wither and die. As time goes on, it'll become more and more conscious of its isolation from the main body of the race. But Earth still thinks of itself as the hub of the human universe. All other worlds, to it, are only buds on its branch. If all those others are cut off, whatever the cost may be otherwise, emotionally the most Earth will think of itself as having lost are appendages it lived without for millions of years and can do without again, if necessary."
"That large population's no benefit to you," said Nonne, "particularly, if—as it is—it's full of people who disagree with what you're doing. They're not the ones who're rallying to the defense of Earth. You're planning to defend that world with the Dorsai."
"In the beginning," said Hal, "certainly. If the battle goes on, I think we'll find people from Earth itself coming forward to man the barricades. In fact, they'll have to."