been acting for some time.
if they won an absolute victory, the prospect was bearable. The dreadful thing was the chance of their trving and losing. Then there would be two civilizations plunged down toward night.
And Trevelyan admitted to a prejudice in favor of his own society. His race bad created something unique, and be didn’t want it to go for naught.
He didn’t bate the Alori; more and more he came to love them. If their achievement died, a light would go out in the universe. Their wholeness-principle was something which bad never been properly formulated in Union logic. It should be possible to make integrators which would not fit isolated data together but consider a local complexsociety and its needs, physical environment, known scientific laws-in its entirety. Alori science, with the knowledge it bad of the nervous system, would indicate ways to build such computers.
He sat with Nicki on a small skerry to which they bad swum. You could never be sure bow much the forest heard.
“We have to escape,” be said. “We must warn the Union of what’s brewing here, and tell it that the answer to its biggest question is waiting.”
What mill happen then?” Her words were low, hardly audible in the ripping wind.
The Alori will accept a fait accompli,” be answered. “They’ll give in and make the best of it. It’s not as if we came to enslave them.”
“\Ve haven’t the ri-,,bt,” she whispered.
‘@at are they planning for us?”
“Oh, I know-but do two wrongs make a right?”
“No,” he said. “But this isn’t a matter of ethics. We’re going to stay free-and that’s that.” His gaze was challenging. “Dodt you ever want to go out to the stars again?
Not on a mission, not with a purpose, but because it’s your
own iife and you do as you choose with it?” She lowered her eyes. A bird winged overhead. It was native to the planet, not yet brought into the symbiosis; it was hunting for something to kill.
“The world is as it is,” be said. “We’NTe got to live with tbat-not with the world as we thiik it should be.”
She nodded, very slowly.
CHAPTER XIX
joachim’s Plan
wnERE Tm valley opened on the sea, there was a wide beach sloping from high grass-grown dunes to the steady wash of the tides. joachim’s party found themselves a place to sit and made a crescent, facing inward toward the captain. He stood up, a burly, hairy man darkened by the sun, and fumbled a cold pipe in his bands. Slowly, he scanned the ring of faces and bronzed bodies.
There were some twenty-five Nomads present, besides himself and Trevelyan. The Coordinator sat next to the skipper, one arm about Nicki’s waist. She leaned close to bil-n and her look was unhappy. The rest were strained with expectation. Sean was here, plunged into the gloom that had been his since he arrived on Loaluarn’.
Joachim cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “I think we can talk freely. No big fat trees to crawl up on us and eavesdrop. This one has been sort of sounding people out, and got the impression that all of you here are pretty much
of a mind. Then Micah came back and built a fire indet me, so I called this Picnic. I think all of You got the their eyes- “I want to get out
idea.” He paused, meeting me along?” of here,” he said then. @‘Anybody want to co
They stirred, and words muttered between them, an oath
snapped out, fists clenched. “It’s not too bad a life,” went
on Toachim, , but it’s got its drawbacks. I reckon they’re
diff@rent for each of YOU.”
” It , s plain enougl-i,” said Petroff Dushan. “I want to go
starjumping. This planet is-dulll”
“Yeh,” growled Ortega. “Tust a park. Every morning I
check my skin to see if ml;ss ain’t-started growing.”
“Remember Hralfar?” asked Petroff Manuel wistfully. “There was snow. You could feel the cold, like the air was liquid. You wanted to run and shout, and you could hear
sounds for kilometers around, it was that quiet.”
“Give me a city,” said Levy. “Bars and bright lights, noise, a wench and maybe a good fight. if I could sit in the Half Moon on Thunderhouse again, by the Grand Canal-I”