Sears patted her shoulder and ignored her speech as she ignored the
touch. "Chris, I've labored, myself, over that damn knotty little
brain of Pakriaa's. She can't see things our way. We need a hundred
years."
The conference lengthened into the morning. Sometimes it seemed to
Paul that his teacher's stubbornness degenerated into the obsession of
a man who won't leave a blazing house until the rugs are saved. Wright
longed for the island, which he had seen only in photographs. There
had always been some compelling reason why he must stay by the
fortress, if only to hoe voracious weeds out of the gardens. Yet to
Wright it was unthinkable that the island community should start
without the pygmies: he returned to it with haggard insistence. "I
know--I can't actually like Pakriaa--she's got a mind like a greased
eel; but we've made a beginning. They speak our tongue--well. A people
intelligent as they are--"
Paul thought: _It's not Lucifer that's aged him--it's us. We are not
big enough_. Aloud he suggested: "Doc, can't we make a start without
them and just keep the door open? Bring them in when we're stronger
ourselves?"
"Oh, son, if we desert Pak now, she's finished. Over-confidence.
Lantis will go over her like a tide. We might just turn that tide. If
not, we _must_ be ready to help her escape with--whatever's left....
Well, at least we agree on this: Helen and the women must go to the
island, at once."
"Tomorrow." Dorothy choked. "If the boats haven't started yet--"
"All right, dear. Tomorrow. And one man should go with them."
"You," Paul said. "You."
Wright said inexorably, "No." His stare groped at Sears Oliphant.
Sears was nakedly desperate. "Chris, I beg of you--you must not ask me
to go away from this battle." He was sweating, white. "I am--in a
sense--a religious man. The--Armageddon within, your own
phrase--please understand without my saying any more. Don't ask me to
go."
"Ed won't go.... Paul?"
_Leave him, with Sears' inner torments and Ed's arrogance?_ "No, Doc."