“Three more years and we’ll have most of Europe too.”
“Why, I wonder?”
“Why?” He slammed shut the cabinet drawer which he’d been examining. He looked at me sharply. “You of all people ask why? Cavesword ... and all your words too, did the trick. That’s what. We’ve said what they wanted to hear ... just the opposite of my old game of publicity where we said what we wanted them to hear. This time it’s just the other way around and it’s big, ah, it’s big.”
I could agree with that but I pressed him further. “I know what’s happened, of course, and your theory is certainly correct if only because had we said the opposite of what they wanted to hear nothing would have happened. But the question in my mind, the real 'why,’ is Cave and us. Why we of all the people in the world? Cavesword, between us and any school of philosophy, is not new. Others have said it more eloquently. In the past it was a reasonably popular heresy which the early popes stamped out....”
“Timing! The right man at the right time saying the right thing. Remember the piece you did on Mohammed....”
“I stole most of it.”
“So what? Most effective. You figured how only at that one moment in Arabian political history could such a man have appeared.”
I smiled. “That is always the folly of the 'one unique moment.’ For all I know such a man could have appeared in any of a hundred other Arab generations.”
“But he never did except that one time ... which proves the point.”
I let it go. Paul was at best not the ideal partner in the perennial conversation. “There is no doubt but that Cave’s the man,” I said, neutrally. “Not the last of the line but at least the most effective, considering the shortness of the mission so far.”