"Then, the Dorsai," said Hal. Malachi's gray thickets of eyebrows frowned at him.
"When you're ready and able to fight, then go to the Dorsai," the old man said. "Until that day, there's nothing they can do for you there."
"Where, then?" said Obadiah. "All other worlds but Earth are already under Other control. They'd only have to sniff him there, and he'd be gone with no one to aid him."
"Still," said Walter. "It has to be one of the other worlds. Earth, here, is also no good. They'll be looking for him as soon as they unravel the full story of his life and our teaching. There're Exotic mixed breeds among them, like that tall man who was there at our death; and they, like me - like all of us trained on Mara or Kultis - know ontogenetics. They're a historic force, the Other People, and they'll know that for any such force there must be a counter-force. They'll have been watching for its appearance among the rest of the race, from the beginning. They'll take no chances of leaving Hal alive once they have his full story."
"Newton, then," said Obadiah. "Let him hide among the laboratories and the ivory towers."
"No," said Malachi. "They're all turtles, there, all clams. They pull back into their shell and pull the shell in after them. He'd stick out like a sore thumb among such people."
"What about Ceta?" said Obadiah.
"That's where the Others are thickest - where the banking and the threads of interstellar trade are pulled," said Malachi, irritably. "Are you mad, Obadiah? Anyway, all of these unspecialized worlds, as well as old Venus and Mars, are places where none of the machinery of society is under any control but that of the Others. One slip and it'd be over for our boy."
"Yes," said Walter slowly. "But Obadiah, you said all worlds but the Dorsai, the Exotics, the Friendlies and Earth were already under Others' control. There's one exception. The world they can't be bothered with because there's no real society there for them to want to control. Coby."
"The mining world?" Hal stared at Walter. "But there's nothing there for me to do but work in the mines."
"Yes," said Walter.
Hal continued to stare at the InTeacher.
"But…" words failed him. Mara, Kultis, the Friendly Worlds of Harmony and Association, and the Dorsai were all places to which he had longed to go. Any beyond these, any of the Younger Worlds were unknown, interesting places. But Coby…
"It's like sending me to prison!" he said.
"Walter," Malachi was looking at the InTeacher, "I think you're right."
He swung to face Hal.
"How old are you now, boy? You're due to turn seventeen in a month or so, aren't you?"
"In two weeks," said Hal, his voice thinning at the sudden surge of old memories, of early birthday parties and all the years of his growing up.
"Seventeen - " said Malachi, looking again at Walter and at Obadiah. "Three years in the mines and he'd be almost twenty - "
"Three years!" The cry broke from Hal.
"Yes, three years," said Walter softly. "Among the nameless and lost people there, you can do a better job of becoming nameless and lost, yourself, than you can do on any other world. Three years will bury you completely."
"And he'll come out different," said Obadiah.
"But I don't want to be different!"
"You must be," said Malachi to him. "That is, at least, if you're to survive."
"But, three years!" said Hal again. "That's nearly a fifth of my life so far. It's an eternity."
"Yes," said Walter; and Hal looked at him hopelessly. Walter, the gentlest of his three tutors, was the least likely to be moved once he had come to a decision. "And it's because it'll be an eternity for you, Hal, that it'll be so useful. With all we tried to do for you, we've still raised you off in a corner, away from ordinary people. There was no choice for us, but still you're crippled by that. You're like a hothouse plant that can wither if it's suddenly set out in the weather."
"Hothouse plant?" Hal appealed to Malachi, to Obadiah. "Is that all I am? Malachi, you said I was as good as an average Dorsai my age, in my training. Obadiah, you said - "
"God help you, child," said Obadiah, harshly. "In what you are and in what we tried to make of you, you're a credit to us all. But the ways of the worlds are some of the things you do not know; and it's with those ways that you'll have to live and struggle before God brings you at last to your accomplishment and your rest. Your way cannot be in corners and byways any more - and I should have realized that when I suggested Newton as a place for you to go. You have to go out among your fellow men and women from now on and begin to learn from them."
"They won't want to teach me," said Hal. "Why should they?"
"It's not for them to teach, but for you to learn," said Obadiah.
"Learn!" said Hal. "That's all you ever said to me, all of you - learn this! Learn that! Isn't it time I was doing something more than learning?"
"There is nothing more than learning," said Walter; and in the InTeacher's voice Hal heard the absolute commitment of the three facing him that he should go to Coby. It was not something that he could argue against successfully. He was not being faced with an opinion by three other people, but by the calculation that was part of the pattern trained in him. That calculation had surveyed the options open to him and decided that his most secure future for the upcoming years lay on Coby.
Still, he was crushed by that decision. He was young and the thirteen other inhabited worlds of mankind glittered with promise like tempting jewels. As he had said, going into the mines would be like going to prison, and the three years - to him - would indeed be an eternity.
Chapter Three
Hal did not know at what point the shades of his tutors left him. Simply, after a while, the floats were empty and he was alone once more. His mind had wandered from his need for them, and they had gone, back into the land of his memories, like the flames of blown-out candles.
But he felt better. Even with the dreary prospect of Coby facing him, he felt better now. Purpose had come back to life in him; and the evocation of the attitudes and certainties of his dead tutors had given him a certain amount of strength. Also, though he was not consciously aware of this, the basic vitality of his youth was lifting his spirits whether he wanted them lifted or not. He had too much sheer physical energy to do nothing but sit and mourn, in spite of the severity of the emotional wound their deaths had dealt him.
He dressed, examined the controls of his room and ordered in some food. He was eating this when his annunciator chimed.
He keyed the screen on his bedside table-surface; and the bright and cheerful face of the young woman from the Transit Point took shape in it.
"Hal Mayne?" she said. "I'm Ajela, Special Assistant to Tam Olyn."
There was a split-second before the second name she had mentioned registered on him. Tam Olyn was the Director of the Encyclopedia - had been its Director for eighty-odd years. He had originally been a top-level interplanetary newsman; but he had abandoned that as suddenly as a man might turn from the world into the seclusion of a monastery to step in, almost at the moment of his entrance there, to being the supreme authority of the Encyclopedia. Hal had learned all about the man in his studies; but he had never thought that he might someday be talking directly to one of the Director's close assistants.
"I'm honored to meet you," he said automatically to the screen.
"Can I drop in on you?" Ajela asked. "There's something we should talk about."
Caution laid its hand on him.
"I'm just here temporarily," he said. "I'll be going out to one of the younger worlds as soon as I can get passage."
"Of course," she said. "But meanwhile, if you wouldn't mind talking to me…"