But, thought Donal — to get back to Sayona the Bond, and his place in Exotic culture. He was one of the compensations peculiar to the Exotic peoples, for their different way of life. He was — in some way that only an Exotic fully understood — a certain part of their emotional life made manifest in the person of a living human being. Like Anea, who — devastatingly normal and female as she was — was, to an Exotic, literally one of the select of Kultis. She was their best selected qualities made actual — like a living work of art that they worshiped. It did not matter that she was not always joyful, that indeed, her life must bear as much or more of the normal human sorrow of situation and existence. That was where most people’s appreciation of the matter went astray. No, what was important was the capabilities they had bred and trained into her. It was the capacity in her for living, not the life she actually led, that pleasured them. The actual achievement was up to her, and was her own personal reward. They appreciated the fact that — if she chose, and was lucky — she could appreciate life. Similarly, Sayona the Bond. Again, only in a sense that an Exotic would understand, Sayona was the actual bond between their two worlds made manifest in flesh and blood. In him was the capability for common understanding, for reconciliation, for an expression of the community of feeling between people …

Donal awoke suddenly to the fact that Sayona was speaking to him. The older man had been speaking some time, in a calm, even voice, and Donal had been letting the words run through his mind like water of a stream through his ringers. Now, something that had been said had jogged him to a full awareness.

“…Why, no,” answered Donal, “I thought this was standard procedure for any commander before you hired him.”

Sayona chuckled.

“Put every new commander through all that testing and trouble?” he said. “No, no. The word would get around and we’d never be able to hire the men we wanted.”

“I rather enjoy taking tests,” said Donal, idly.

“I know you do,” Sayona nodded. “A test is a form of competition, after all; and you’re a competitor by nature. No, normally when we want a military man we look for military proofs like everyone else — and that’s as far as we go.”

“Why the difference with me, then’’” asked Donal, turning to look at him. Sayona returned his gaze with pale brown eyes holding just a hint of humor in the wrinkles at their corners.

“Well, we weren’t just interested in you as a commander,” answered Sayona. “There’s the matter of your ancestors, you know. You’re actually part-Maran; and those genes, even when outmatched, are of interest to us. Then there’s the matter of you, yourself. You have astonishing potentials.”

“Potentials for what?”

“A number of rather large things,” said Sayona soberly. “We only glimpse them, of course, in the results of our tests.”

“Can I ask what those large things are?” asked Donal, curiously.

“I’m sorry, no. I can’t answer that for you,” said Sayona. “The answers would be meaningless to you personally, anyway — for the reason you can’t explain anything in terms of itself. That’s why I thought I’d have this talk with you. I’m interested in your philosophy.”

“Philosophy!” Donal laughed. “I’m a Dorsai.”

“Everyone, even Dorsai, every living thing has its own philosophy — a blade of grass, a bird, a baby. An individual philosophy is a necessary thing, the touchstone by which we judge our own existence. Also — you’re only part Dorsai. What does the other part say?”

Donal frowned.

“I’m not sure the other part says anything,” he said. “I’m a soldier. A mercenary. I have a job to do; and I intend to do it — always — in the best way I know how.”

“But beyond this—” urged Sayona.

“Why, beyond this—” Donal fell silent, still frowning. “I suppose I would want to see things go well.”

“You said want to see things go well — rather than like to see things go well.” Sayona was watching him. “Don’t you see any significance in that?”

“Want? Oh—” Donal laughed. “I suppose that’s an unconscious slip on my part. I suppose I was thinking of making them go well.”

“Yes,” said Sayona, but in a tone that Donal could not be sure was meant as agreement or not. “You’re a doer, aren’t you?”

“Someone has to be,” said Donal. “Take the civi-lized worlds now—” he broke off suddenly.

“Go on,” said Sayona.

“I meant to say — take civilization. Think how short a time it’s been since the first balloon went up back on Earth. Four hundred years? Five hundred years? Something like that. And look how we’ve spread out and split up since then.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t like it,” said Donal. “Aside from the inefficiency, it strikes me as unhealthy. What’s the point of technological development if we just split in that many more factions — everyone hunting up his own type of aberrant mind and hiving with it? That’s no progress.”

“You subscribe to progress?”

Donal looked at him. “Don’t you?”

“I suppose,” said Sayona. “A certain type of progress. My kind of progress. What’s yours?”

Donal smiled. “You want to hear that, do you? You’re right. I guess I do have a philosophy after all. You want to hear it?”

“Please,” said Sayona.

“All right,” said Donal. He looked out over the little sunken garden. “It goes like this — each man is a tool in his own hands. Mankind is a tool in its own hands. Our greatest satisfaction doesn’t come from the rewards of our work, but from the working itself; and our greatest responsibility is to sharpen, and improve the tool that is ourselves so as to make it capable of tackling bigger jobs.” He looked at Sayona. “What do you think of it?”

“I’d have to think about it,” answered Sayona. “My own point of view is somewhat different, of course. I see Man not so much as an achieving mechanism, but as a perceptive link in the order of things. I would say the individual’s role isn’t so much to do as it is to be. To realize to the fullest extent the truth already and inherently in him — if I make myself clear.”

“Nirvana as opposed to Valhalla, eh?” said Donal, smiling a little grimly. “Thanks, I prefer Valhalla.”

“Are you sure?’ asked Sayona. “Are you quite sure you’ve no use for Nirvana?”

“Quite sure,” said Donal.

“You make me sad,” said Sayona, somberly. “We had had hopes.”

“Hopes?”

‘There is,” said Sayona, lifting one finger, “this possibility in you — this great possibility. It may be exercised in only one direction — that direction you choose. But you have freedom of choice. There’s room for you here.”

“With you?”

“The other worlds don’t know,” said Sayona,“what we’ve begun to open up here in the last hundred years. We are just beginning to work with the butterfly implicit in the matter-bound worm that is the present human species. There are great opportunities for anyone with the potentialities for this work.”

“And I,” said Donal, “have these potentialities?”

“Yes,” answered Sayona. “Partly as a result of a lucky genetic accident that is beyond our knowledge to understand, now. Of course — you would have to be retrained. That other part of your character that rules you now would have to be readjusted to a harmonious integration with the other part we consider more valuable.”

Donal shook his head.

“There would be compensations,” said Sayona, in a sad, almost whimsical tone, “things would become possible to you — do you know that you, personally, are the sort of man who, for example, could walk on air if only you believed you could?”

Donal laughed.

“I am quite serious,” said Sayona. “Try believing it some time.”

“I can hardly try believing what I instinctively disbelieve,” said Donal. “Besides, that’s beside the point. I am a soldier.”

“But what a strange soldier,” murmured Sayona. “A soldier full of compassion, of whimsical fancies and wild daydreams. A man of loneliness who wants to be like everyone else; but who finds the human race a conglomeration of strange alien creatures whose twisted ways he cannot understand — while still he understands them too well for their own comfort.”