Nonne stared at him.
"This is insane!" she said, finally.
"No," said Hal. He found himself feeling suddenly weary. "It's what's necessary. This battle between the Others and ourselves isn't going to be won with weapons at a shield-wall, or even on the face of any of the inhabited worlds. The only place it's ever going to be won is in the hearts and minds of men and women, on all the worlds; and the only source of the means to win that non-physical war lies here, in the potential of the Final Encyclopedia. This is where the meaningful battle is going to be fought, and won or lost; and this is where I'm going to have to do my real work."
Nonne still stared at him.
"Think," he said to her. "What else, or what thing different, could have been done to give us any chance at all before the inevitable growth of the Others to an overwhelming power that could threaten to make us prisoners of their philosophy? The only hope we ever had to resist them, and the worlds they owned, was for this planet and the other ones we still owned to combine their forces at one strongpoint. Because, unlike us, the only way the Others can win is to win utterly. And I explained to you once, I think, that the numbers of Earth's population and its existing physical resources made it the only reasonable choice for a citadel world, a world to garrison against the force that's going to be brought against us. How could we have asked in advance for Earth's permission to do this, making the possibility a matter of public debate for years, at least, without giving Bleys and his people the opportunity to move in while discussion was going on, and defeat us within at the same time as they were marshalling to take us over from without? As it was, Bleys saw the move we've just made, but moved to defend against it too late - the fault I explained to you earlier, Nonne. And so, we've stolen a march on him."
She opened her mouth as if to reply, but he went on without stopping.
"So tell me," he said, "given those imperatives, how could anything else have been done? Simply, from the beginning we've all been called upon to give whatever we had to give. The Dorsai, their strength; you Exotics, your wealth and information; Earth, its resources of people and material; and the Friendlies, their unyielding faith in an ultimate victory to hold all the rest of us together. Called upon that way, what could we have done differently? Give me the alternatives."
He paused again. But she had closed her mouth again and now sat silent.
"Your argument," he went on after a moment, more gently, "isn't with me, Nonne. It's with the forces of history - the movements of people that cause further movements; and so on, and on, until we finally have a situation like this that can only be dealt with in a single way. The choices have all now been either raised up and answered, or ignored. This is a final confrontation in the terms of our present moment; but every generation in its own time has had an equivalent confrontation, in its own terms. People have followed me in this, not because of what I say, or who I am, but because this is the only way things seem to have a chance of working out. There's no other path visible. Can you see one? If so, tell me what it is."
He stopped speaking.
She sat for a moment longer; and then when it became clear that he was not going to go on without an answer, she closed her eyes for a minute and sat blindly, tense and upright, in her chair for a long moment. Then she opened her eyes.
"You're right," she said. Her voice was brittle. "I've got no alternatives to offer. Go on, then - there's nothing more I can say, at this time."
"Thank you," said Hal in the following silence. He looked back around the gathering. "All right, we've already used most of our time before I'm to say my piece and introduce Rukh. I take it you understand the process by which the Dorsai are to be resettled here on Earth, with the help of the financial resources of the Encyclopedia and what we've been given by the Exotics? If not - if you want details - will you ask Rourke for them?"
He looked over at Rourke, who nodded at them all.
"We've no intention of announcing ourselves as coming here to be a defense force for Earth," Rourke said. "Our activity in that regard is only the subject of a private contract between our people and the Final Encyclopedia. We'll only fight for Earth if asked by the people of Earth, themselves; and with the Final Encyclopedia's permission, of course, which we take it won't be refused. So we'll wait until Earth asks us for help - if indeed that's what they want. All Rukh is going to say about us in her speech now - and she'll be the one to explain to Earth why we're here - is that we're refugees from the expansionism of the Others; and that the Exotics sacrificed all they owned to make sure we'd be refugees who'd be able to pay their own way and not be a burden on Earth - "
He broke off. The door annunciator had chimed.
"Forgive me, Hal," said the voice of Jeamus. "I've got some urgent messages for you."
"Bring them in," said Hal. "Go on, Rourke."
"That's all, actually," answered Rourke.
Hal turned back to the others.
"As I think I've said, I'm going to give the barest minimum of speeches," he said. Jeamus had entered and was circling the room to come up quietly at his shoulder. "I'll simply confirm the fact that Tam has given me a chance to take over the Directorship from him and I've agreed - thank you, Jeamus - "
Jeamus had slipped him a sealed envelope and a folded sheet of the single-molecule material used for hard copies in the Encyclopedia.
"The envelope's personal to you, brought by hand from the Dorsai," Jeamus whispered in his ear. "It's from an Amanda Morgan. The message is a picture-copy of a public letter Bleys had published on New Earth less than a standard day ago. It's even got his name signed to it. The Exotic Embassy on New Earth got hold of and sent it here by the new communication system. They also messaged they think that same letter's also being issued on those other worlds the Others control."
"Thanks," said Hal.
He slipped the letter from Amanda into his jacket's inner pocket and opened the folded sheet on his knee to read the message.
"Sorry again to bother you all," said Jeamus; and slipped out.
Chapter Sixty-six
As the door closed behind Jeamus, Hal was glancing over the sheet on his knee.
"I'll read this to all of you," he said. "It's a dispatch from an Exotic Embassy, which is still functioning in the city of Cathay on New Earth. Jeamus just got it over the new phase communications system. It's a copy of a letter to the New Earth people published by Bleys, and, the embassy thinks, to the peoples of the other worlds under Other control.
" 'To all who believe in the future for ourselves and our children:
"I have been reluctant to speak out, since it has always been my firm belief that those like myself exist only to answer questions - once they have been asked, and if they are asked.
" 'However, I have just now received information from people fleeing Old Earth which alarms me. It speaks, I think, of a danger to all those of good intent; and particularly to such of us on the new worlds. For some hundreds of years now, the power-center worlds of the Dorsai, with their lust for warlike aggression, the Exotics, with their avarice and cunning, and those the Friendly people have so aptly named the Forgotten of God - these, among the otherwise great people of the fourteen worlds, have striven to control and plunder the peaceful and law-abiding cultures among us.
" 'For some hundreds of years we have been aware that a loose conspiracy existed among these three groups; who have ended by arrogating the title of Splinter Cultures almost exclusively to themselves, when by rights it applies equally, as we all know, to hundreds of useful, productive, and unpredatory communities among the human race. We among you who have striven quietly to turn our talents to the good of all, we whom some call the Others but whom those of us who qualify for that name think of only as an association of like minds, thrown together by a common use of talents, have been particularly aware of this conspiracy over the past three hundred years. But we have not seen it as a threat to the race as a whole until this moment.