rlin."

"Well, can do. I'll even convince them that Merlin's a space-station,
in orbit off Koshchei. I think I could do that."

"You know what it'll cost? If you go ahead with it, I'm in it with
you, make no mistake about that. But you and I will be the only two
people on Poictesme who can be trusted with the truth. We'll have to
lie to everybody else, with every word we speak. We'll have to lie to
Flora, and we'll have to lie to your mother. Your mother most of all.
She believes in absolutes. Lying is absolutely wrong, no matter whom
it helps; telling the truth is absolutely right, no matter how much
damage it does or how many hearts it breaks. You think this is going
to be worth a price like that?"

"Don't you?" he demanded, and then pointed along the crumbling and
littered Mall. "Look at that. Pretend you never saw it before and are
looking at it for the first time. And then tell me whether it'll be
worth it or not."

His father took a cigar from his mouth. For a moment, he sat staring
silently.

"Great Ghu!" Rodney Maxwell turned. "I wonder how that sneaked up on
me; I honestly never realized.... Yes, Conn. This is a cause worth
lying for." He looked at his watch. "We ought to be starting for
Senta's, but let's take a few minutes and talk this over. How are you
going to get it started?"

"Well, convince them that I can find Merlin and that they can't find
it without me. I think I've done that already. Then convince them that
we'll have to have a ship to get to Koshchei, and--"

"Won't do. That'll take money, and money's something none of this gang
has."

"You heard me talk about the stuff I found out on Terra? Father, you
have no idea what all there is. You remember the old Force Command
Headquarters, the one the Planetary Government took over? I know where
there's a duplicate of that, completely underground. It has everything
the other one had, and a lot more, because it'll be cram-full of
supplies to be used in case of a general blitz that would knock out
everything on the planet. And a chain of hospitals. And a spaceport,
over on Barathrum, that was built inside the crater of an extinct
volcano. There won't be any hyperships there of course, but there'll
be equipment and material. We might be able to build a ship there. And
supply depots, all over the planet; none of them has ever been opened
since the War. Don't worry about financing; we have that."

His father, he could see, appreciated what he had