FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
She thought about it and nodded. 'Afraid you'd identify them?'
'If they had a place for me, they wouldn't put me in with a lady.' He spoke without irony. 'They had this ready for you. It must be somewhere in the city.'
She nodded. 'The car ride was half an hour or less. My head was in a bag. though.'
'They've sent a message to the Palace. They got no reply, or an unsatisfactory one. They want a message from you.'
'To convince the government they really have me? Why do they need convincing?'
They were both silent.
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I can't think.' He lay back. Feeling tired, tow, edgy after her adrenaline rush, she lay down alongside him. She had rolled up the Goddess's skirt to make a pillow; he had none. The blanket lay across their legs.
'Pillow,' she said. 'More blankets. Soap. What else?'
'Key,' he murmured.
They lay side by side in the silence and the faint unvarying light.
Next morning about eight, according to Solly's watch, the Patriots came into the room, four of them. Two stood on guard at the door with their guns ready; the other two stood uncomfortably in what floor space was left, looking down at their captives, both of whom sat cross-legged on the mattress. The new spokesman spoke better Voe Dean than the others. He said they were very sorry to
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cause the lady discomfort and would do what they could to make it comfortable for her, and she must be patient and write a message by hand to the Pretender King, explaining that she would be set free unharmed as soon as the King commanded the Council to rescind their treaty with Voe Deo.
'He won't,' she said. 'They won't let him.'
'Please do not discuss,' the man said with frantic harshness. 'This is writing materials. This is the message.' He set the papers and a stylo down on the mattress, nervously, as if afraid to get close to her.
She was aware of how Teyeo effaced himself, sitting without a motion, his head lowered, his eyes lowered; the men ignored him.
'If I write this for you, I want water, a lot of water, and soap and blankets and toilet paper and pillows and a doctor, and I want somebody to come when I knock on that door, and I want some decent
clothes. Warm clothes. Men's clothes,'
'No doctor!' the man.said. 'Write it! Please!
Now!' He was jumpy, twitchy, she dared push him no further. She read their statement, copied it out in her large, childish scrawl — she seldom handwrote anything — and handed both to the spokesman. He glanced over it and without a word hurried the other men out. Clash went the door.
'Should 1 have refused?'
'I don't think so,' Teyeo said. He stood up and stretched, but sat down again looking dizzy. 'You bargain well,' he said.
'We'll see what we get. Oh, God. What is going on?'
'Maybe,' he said slowly, 'Gatay is unwilling to yield to these demands. But when Voe Deo — and
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your Ekumen — get word of it, they'll put pressure on Gatay.'
'I wish they'd get moving- I suppose Gatay is horribly embarrassed, saving face by trying to conceal the whole thing — is that likely? How long can they keep it up? What about your people? Won't they be hunting for you?'
'No doubt,' he said, in his polite way.
It was curious how his stiff manner, his manners, which had always shunted her aside, cut her out, here had quite another effect: his restraint and formality reassured her that she was still part of the world outside this room, from which they came and to which they would return, a world where people lived long lives.
What did long life matter? she asked herself. and didn't know. It was nothing she had ever thought about before. But these young Patriots lived in a world of short lives. Demands, violence, immediacy, and death, for what? for a bigotry, a hatred, a rush of power.
'Whenever they leave,' she said in a low voice,
'I get really frightened.'
Teyeo cleared his throat and said, 'So do I.'
Exercises.
'Take hold — no, take hold, I'm not made of glass! — Now —'
'Ha!' he said, with his flashing grin of excitement, as she showed him the break, and he in turn repeated it, breaking from her.
'All right, now you'd be waiting — here' — thump — 'see?'
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'Ai!'
'I'm sorry — I'm sony, Teyeo — I didn't think about your head — Are you all right? I'm really
sorry —'
'Oh, Kamye,' he said, sitting up and holding his black, narrow head between his hands. He drew several deep breaths. She knelt penitent and anxious.
'That's.' he said. and breathed some more,
'that's not. not fair play.'
'No of course it's not, it's aiji — all's fair in love and war, they say that on Terra — Really, I'm sorry, I'm terribly sorry, that was so stupid of me!'
He laughed, a kind of broken and desperate laugh, shook his head, shook it again. 'Show me,' he said. 'I don't know what you did.'
Exercises.
'What do you do with. your mind?'
'Nothing.'
'You just let it wander?' 'No. Am I and my mind different beings?'
'So . .. you don't focus on something? You just wander with it?'
'No.'
'So you don't let it wander.'
'Who?' he said, rather testily.
A pause.
'Do you think about —'
'No,' he said- 'Be still.'
A very long pause, maybe a quarter hour.
'Teyeo, I can't. I itch. My mind itches. How long have you been doing this?'
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A pause, a reluctant answer: 'Since I was two.'
He broke his utterly relaxed motionless pose, bent his head to stretch his neck and shoulder muscles. She watched him.
'I keep thinking about long life, about living long,' she said. 'I don't mean just being alive a long time, hell, I've been alive about eleven hundred years, what does that mean, nothing. I mean ... Something about thinking of life as long makes a difference. Like having kids does. Even thinking about having kids. It's like it changes some balance- It's funny I keep thinking about that now, when my chances for a long life have kind of taken a steep fall... .'
He said nothing. He was able to say nothing in a way that allowed her to go on talking. He was one ' of the
