Simon frowned. "They're different from any of the people on the Younger Worlds I've met," he said, "and than I'd imagined them. It's hard to put my finger exactly on how."
He still frowned. "It's as if they're all very aware of the ornamental things of life, I mean, the things you've got time for after you've won the daily struggle for existence. Certainly, they've rebuilt Earth itself in the past hundred years into a green and pleasant world. But, particularly this last year or so, I get a feeling from them of a hunger, of sorts. As if they were lacking something but didn't know exactly what. Rich but unsatisfied, says it maybe. Perhaps that's why, in spite of belonging to a million different sects, groups and so forth, they all flock so to listen when Rukh, or one of her people, lectures them on faith and purpose. I don't know. " "I'd have said myself that they were in an evangelically ready state," said Ajela. "There's no doubt about the hunger behind their coming to listen to us. But Simon Graeme is right. They don't really know what it is they're hungry for." "Yes," said Hal. "You've noticed changes, too, then. All right. Another reason to take a look at Kultis. Also, come to think of it, another reason why we need to get moving as soon as possible."
He reached out to hug Ajela, who was closest, but the golden-haired woman pulled back from him. "You will not - I tell you flatly," said Ajela, "you will not leave without seeing Tam before you go."
Her tone was angry, but there was something more than anger in what she said. "I hadn't intended to, of course," said Hal softly. "I wouldn't leave the Encyclopedia without seeing him. Can I talk to him now, or is he resting?" "I'll see," said Ajela, still with an edge in her voice. She got up and went out of the room by another door than that by which the rest had all entered - a door behind her desk.
She was back within the minute. "It's all right," she said. "You can see him now, Hal. Amanda, do you mind if I just take Hal in by himself. Tam tries to respond to everyone who comes to see him, and he hasn't got the strength for more than one person at a time, really." "Of course not," said Amanda - and smiled. "Not that I imagine you'd let me in, even if I did." "Of course not. But, I'm sorry - you may have another chance later to meet him and he's not strong... these days. "
"Take Hal in and don't worry about my being upset over missing a chance to meet him," said Amanda. "Common sense first. " "Thank you for understanding," said Ajela. She turned and went to the door she had just come through, and Hal followed her. The door opened, and shut behind them.
Within, suddenly, Hal found himself in a dimness. No, not actually a dimness, he realized, but a dulling of the light after the level of illumination of Ajela's office and the corridors. For a moment it baffled him - as if a thin mist had sprung up to obscure all that was around him.
Then he remembered that these quarters of Tam's were kept always on a lighting cycle matched to the day and night of the Earth directly below the Encyclopedia, as Hal's illusion of his estate had been under the same rain and wind as the actual place itself would have been at that time.
On the Earth's surface, directly under them now, it would now therefore be the ending of the day, a time of long shadows, or of no shadows at all if the approaching evening was closing, in behind a sky obscured by clouds, as it must be. The light was going from the surface underneath them, and from this room alike.
Aside from that, the room itself was as he had always remembered Tam keeping it - half office, half forest glade, with a small stream of water flowing through it. Beside that stream were the old-fashioned overstuffed armchairs, and Tam in one of them, though that particular chair had become elongated and more slantwise of back, so that it was almost as much bed as chair. In this Tam sat, or lay, dressed as he had been every time Hal had seen him, in shirt, slacks and jacket. Only this time a cloth of red and white, its colors garish in the lesser light, lay across his knees.
As his eyes rested on it, he saw Tam's index finger make a sideways movement, and Ajela came hastily around Hal and went swiftly forward to take up the cloth and carry it away out of sight beyond the trees. It was only then that Hal recognized it as the Interplanetary Newsman's cloak Tam had been qualified to wear before he came back to the Encyclopedia for good. The cloak was still set on the colors of red and white Tam had programmed it for over a century ago, before the death of David Hall, his young brother-in-law, for whom Tam had considered himself responsible, and for whose death at the hands of a Friendly fanatic Tam had never forgiven himself.
Hal looked into the old man's eyes, and for the first time saw the stillness there. A stillness that echoed like a sound, like some massive blow in a tall, dark, many-chambered structure so that the echoes came back, and came back again, bringing Hal strangely, in sudden, powerful emotion, a vision of the weary King Arthur Pendragon, at the end of Alfred Tennyson's poetic Idylls of the King. Without warning the room was overlaid in Hal's mind with even darker shadows from the vision built by the poet's lines about that last battle by the seashore.
. . .but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind, clear from the north, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen, only the wan wave
Brake in among deadfaces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be....
For a long second Hal could not think what had brought these lines and Tam together in his mind. Then he realized that, like Arthur then, Tam now looked out and saw no one but the dead. They were all dead, all those he had known as a child, as a young man, as a man of middle age. He had left them all behind, in the closed pages of history, long since.
Hal chilled. For in the same way those he had known as Donal were now gone, all dead. Including Kensie, his uncle, who was one of the deaths Tam carried on his conscience. And as he looked at Tam now, a whisper came and went in Hal's mind, a question - will I, too, come to this?
He shook himself out of the vision, went forward and took one of Tam's hands, where it lay in Tam's lap. It had been an old hand when Hal had first touched it, years ago, and it was hardly older looking now. Except that perhaps the skin had sunk a little more between the tendons, and made the veins stand out more on the back of it. Tam looked up at Hal. "Here you are," he said. His voice had been hoarsened by years, long since. Now it was faint in volume as well. "Is she with you?" "I'm here," said Ajela. "Not you," said Tam, faintly still, but with a hint of his old asperity. "The other one - damn my memory - the Dorsai!" "You mean Amanda?" said Hal. "She just got here, but she's leaving right away, again. I'm going with her for two months to Kultis - if you can wait for me that long. She thinks she's found Exotics there who are evolving - that's what I came to tell you. " "Bring her in here," said Tam. "Tam, too many people-," Ajela began. "It's my life still," whispered Tam. "I have to see her. I want."
Ajela went off. Tam's eyes sought Hal's. "You should go with her, yes," he said, his voice strengthening, so that almost, as Hal stood holding the ancient hand still in his, there now seemed almost no change at all between this moment and that when Hal had first taken it, those long years past when he had come here in flight. He had been running then away from Bleys and the murder of his tutors, and toward a maturity that would begin with more than three years working in the mines of metal-rich Coby. Only now, the full weight of the hand he held hung strengthlessly against the palm of his own larger one. "I knew she was here. I knew you'd be going off for a while. Got to talk to her," said Tam, and for the moment - for just the moment now - his eyes were looking no longer on the dead but on the living. "She'll be right here," said Hal, and in fact at that moment Ajela brought Amanda through the door behind him up to the chair. "Tam," said Ajela, "here she is. Amanda Morgan."