"I merely say," he said to her, "that I don't see why you should bother to ask me about it. I've never placed any restraints on you, or Tam. Do what you want." And his fingers closed on the book that was face down on his knees as if he would pick it up again and resume reading.
''Tell me what to do!'' cried Eileen. She was close to tears and her hands were clenched into fists at her side.
"There's no point in my telling you what to do," said Mathias remotely. "Whatever you do will make no difference - to you or me, or even to this young man, over here-" he broke off and turned to me. "Oh, by the way, Tam. Eileen's forgotten to introduce you. This visitor of ours is Mr. Jamethon Black, from Harmony."
"Force-Leader Black," said the young man turning to me his thin, expressionless face. "I'm on attache duty here."
At that, I identified his origin. He was from one of the worlds called, in sour humor by the people of the other worlds, the Friendlies. He would be one of the religious, spartan-minded zealots who made up the population of those worlds. It was strange, very strange it seemed to me then, that of all the hundreds of types and sorts of human societies which had taken seed on the younger planets, that a society of religious fanatics should turn out, along with the soldier type of the Dorsai World, the philosopher type of the Exotics, and the hard-science-minded people of Newton and Venus, to be one of the few distinct great Splinter Cultures to grow and flourish as human colonies between the stars.
And a distinct Splinter Culture they were. Not of soldiers, for all that the other fourteen worlds heard of them most often as that. The Dorsai were soldiers - men of war to the bone. The Friendlies were men of Devotion - if grim and hair-shirt devotion - who hired themselves out because their resource-poor worlds had little else to export for the human contractual balances that would allow them to hire needed professionals from other planets.
There was small market for evangelists - and this was the only crop that the Friendlies grew naturally on their thin, stony soil. But they could shoot and obey orders - to the death. And they were cheap. Eldest Bright, First on the Council of Churches ruling Harmony and Association, could underbid any other government in the supplying of mercenaries. Only - never mind the military skill of those mercenaries.
The Dorsai were true men of war. The weapons of battle came to their hands like tame dogs, and fitted their hands like gloves. The common Friendly soldier took up a gun as he might take up an axe or a hoe - as a tool needing to be wielded for his people and his church.
So that those who knew said it was the Dorsai who supplied soldiers to the sixteen worlds. The Friendlies supplied cannon fodder.
However, I did not speculate upon that, then. In that moment my reaction to Jamethon Black was only one of recognition. In the darkness of his appearance and his being, in the stillness of his features, the remoteness, the somehow impervious quality like that which Padma possessed - in all these I read him plainly, even without my uncle's introduction, as one of the superior breed from the younger worlds. One of those with whom, as Mathias had always proved to us, it was impossible for an Earth man to compete. But the preternatural alertness from my just-concluded experience at the Encyclopedia Project was back with me again, and it occurred to me with that same dark and inner joy that there were other ways than competition.
"...Force-Leader Black," Mathias was saying, "has been taking a night course in Earth history - the same course Eileen was in - at Geneva University. He and Eileen met about a month ago. Now, your sister thinks she'd like to marry him, and go back to Harmony with him when he's transferred home at the end of this week."
Mathias' eyes looked over at Eileen.
"I've been telling her it's up to her, of course," he finished.
"But I want someone to help me - help me decide what's right!" burst out Eileen piteously.
Mathias shook his head, slowly.
"I told you," he said, with his usual, lightless calm of voice, "that there's nothing to decide. The decision makes no difference. Go with this man - or not. In the end it'll make no difference either to you or anyone else. You may cling to the absurd notion that what you decide affects the course of events. I don't - and just as I leave you free to do as you want and play at making decisions, I insist you leave me free to do as I want, and engage in no such farce."
With that, he picked up his book, as if he was ready to begin reading again.
The tears began to run down Eileen's cheeks.
"But I don't know - I don't know what to do!" she choked.
"Do nothing then," said our uncle, turning a page of his book. "It's the only civilized course of action, anyway."
She stood, silently weeping. And Jamethon Black spoke to her.
"Eileen," he said, and she turned toward him. He spoke in a low, quiet voice, with just a hint of different rhythm to it. "Do you not want to marry me and make your home on Harmony?"
"Oh, yes, Jamie!" she burst out. "Yes!"
He waited, but she did not move toward him. She burst out again.
"I'm just not sure it's right!" she cried. "Don't you see, Jamie, I want to be sure I'm doing the right thing. And I don't know - I don’t know!"
She whirled about to face me.
' 'Tam!'' she said. * 'What should I do? Should I go? "
Her sudden appeal to me rang in my ears like an echo of the voices that had poured in on me in the Index Room. All at once the library in which I stood and the scene within it seemed to lengthen and brighten strangely. The tall walls of bookshelves, my sister, tear-streaked, appealing to me, the silent young man in black - and my uncle, quietly reading, as if the pool of soft light about him from the shelves behind him was some magic island moated off from all human responsibilities and problems - all these seemed suddenly to reveal themselves in an extra dimension.
It was as if I saw through them and around them all in the same moment. Suddenly I understood my uncle as I had never understood him before, understood that for all his pretense of reading he had already worked to decide which way I should jump in answer to Eileen's question.
He knew that had he said "Stay" to my sister, I would have gotten her out of that house by main force if necessary. He knew it was my instinct to oppose him in everything. So, by doing nothing, he was leaving me nothing to fight against. He was retreating into his devil-like (or godlike) indifference, leaving me to be humanly fallible, and decide. And, of course, he believed I would second Eileen's wish to go with Jamethon Black.
But this once he had mistaken me. He did not see the change in me, my new knowledge that pointed the way to me. To him, "Destruct!" had been only an empty shell into which he could retreat. But I now, with a sort of fever-brightness of vision, saw it as something far greater - a weapon to be turned even against these superior demons of the younger worlds.
I looked across at Jamethon Black now, and I was not awed by him, as I had ceased to be awed by Padma. Instead, I could not wait to test my strength against him.
"No," I said quietly to Eileen, "I don't think you should go."
She stared at me, and I realized that unconsciously she had reasoned as my uncle had, that I must end up telling her to do what her heart wanted. But I had struck her all adrift now; and I went eagerly ahead to anchor my judgment firmly in those things she believed, choosing my words with care.
They came easily to my mind.
"Harmony's no place for you, Eileen," I said gently. "You know how different they are from us, here on Earth. You'd be out of place. You couldn't measure up to them and their ways. And besides, this man's a Force-Leader." I made myself look across sympathetically at Jamethon Black; and his thin face looked back at me, as free of any resentment or pleading for my favor as the blade of an axe.