'There is no secret,' Shoel had said. 'It's training and hard work like anything else. You exercise what they call 'petit perception,' the ability to detect very small variations in human reactions.'
Rebecca could see such small reactions in those who stared down at her. They want me dead. Why?
Speaker had advice. The great one likes to show off her power over the others. She does not do what others want but what she thinks they do not want.
'Great Honored Matre,' Rebecca ventured, 'you are so rich and powerful. Surely you must have a place of menial employment where I may be of service to you.'
'You wish to enter my service?' What a feral grin!
'It would make me happy, Great Honored Matre.'
'I am not here to make you happy.'
Logno took a step forward onto the floor. 'Then make us happy, Dama. Let us have some sport with -'
'Silence!' Ahhh, that was a mistake, calling her by the intimate name here among the others.
Logno drew back and almost dropped the goad.
Great Honored Matre stared down at Rebecca with an orange glare. 'You will go back to your miserable existence on Gammu, wretch. I will not kill you. That would be a mercy. Having seen what we could give you, live your life without it.'
'Great Honored Matre!' Logno protested. 'We have suspicions about -'
'I have suspicions about you, Logno. Send her back and alive! Hear me? Do you think us incapable of finding her if we ever have need of her?'
'No, Great Honored Matre.'
'We are watching you, wretch,' Great Honored Matre said.
Bait! She thinks of you as something to capture larger game. How interesting. This one has a head and uses it in spite of her violent nature. So that's how she came to power.
All the way back to Gammu, confined to stinking quarters in a ship that had once served the Guild, Rebecca considered her predicament. Surely, those whores had not expected her to mistake their intent. But... perhaps they did. Subservience, cringing. They revel in such things.
She knew this came from a bit of her Shoel's Truthsay as much as from the Lampadas advisors.
'You accumulate a lot of small observations, sensed but never brought to consciousness, Shoel had said. 'Cumulatively, they say things to you but not in a language anyone speaks. Language isn't necessary.'
She had thought this one of the oddest things she had ever heard. But that was before her own Agony. In bed at night, comforted by darkness and the touch of loving flesh, they had acted wordlessly but had shared words, too.
'Language obstructs you,' Shoel had said. 'What you do is learn to read your own reactions. Sometimes, you can find words to describe this... sometimes... not.'
'No words? Not even for the questions?'
'Words you want, is it? How are these? Trust. Belief. Truth. Honesty.'
'Those are good words, Shoel.'
'But they miss the mark. Don't depend on them.'
'Then what do you depend on?'
'My own internal reactions. I read myself, not the person in front of me. I always know a lie because I want to turn my back on the liar.'
'So that's how you do it!' Pounding his bare arm.
'Others do it differently. One person I heard say she knew a lie because she wanted to put her arm through the liar's arm and walk a ways, comforting the liar. You may think that's nonsense, but it works.'
'I think it's very wise, Shoel.' Love speaking. She did not really know what he meant.
'My precious love,' he said, cradling her head on his arm, 'Truthsayers have a Truthsense that, once awakened, works all the time. Please don't tell me I'm wise when it's your love speaking.'
'I'm sorry, Shoel.' She liked the smell of his arm and buried her head in the crook of it, tickling him. 'But I want to know everything you know.'
He pushed her head into a more comfortable position. 'You know what my Third Stage instructor said? 'Know nothing! Learn to be totally naive.' '
She was astonished. 'Nothing at all?'
'You approach everything with a clean slate, nothing on you or in you. Whatever comes is written there by itself.'
She began to see it. 'Nothing to interfere.'
'Correct. You are the original ignorant savage, completely unsophisticated to the point where you back right into ultimate sophistication. You find it without looking for it, you might say.'
'Now, that is wise, Shoel. I'll bet you were the best student they ever had, the quickest and the -'
'I thought it was interminable nonsense.'
'You didn't!'
'Until one day I read a little twitch in me. It wasn't the movement of a muscle or something someone else might detect. Just a... a twitch.'
'Where was it?'
'Nowhere I could describe. But my Fourth Stage instructor had prepared me for it. 'Grab that thing with gentle hands. Delicately.' One of the students thought he meant your real hands. Oh, how we laughed.'
'That was cruel.' She touched his cheek and felt the beginning of his dark stubble. It was late but she did not feel sleepy.
'I suppose it was cruel. But when the twitch came, I knew it. I had never felt such a thing before. I was surprised by it, too, because knowing it then, I knew it had been there all along. It was familiar. It was my Truthsense twitching.'
She thought she could feel Truthsense stirring within herself. The feeling of wonder in his voice aroused something.
'It was mine then,' he said. 'It belonged to me and I belonged to it. No separation ever again.'
'How wonderful that must be.' Awe and envy in her voice.
'No! Some of it I hate. Seeing some people this way is like seeing them eviscerated, their guts hanging out.'
'That's disgusting!'
'Yes, but there are compensations, love. There are people you meet, people who are like beautiful flowers extended to you by an innocent child. Innocence. My own innocence responds and my Truthsense is strengthened. That is what you do for me, my love.'
The no-ship of the Honored Matres arrived at Gammu and they sent her down to the Landing Flat in the garbage lighter. It disgorged her beside the ship's discards and excrement but she did not mind. Home! I'm home and Lampadas survives.
The Rabbi, however, did not share her enthusiasm.
Once more, they sat in his study, but now she felt more familiar with Other Memory, much more confident. He could see this.
'You are even more like them than ever! It's unclean.'
'Rabbi, we all have unclean ancestors. I am fortunate in that I know some of mine.'
'What is this? What are you saying?'
'All of us are descendants of people who did nasty things, Rabbi. We don't like to think of barbarians in our ancestry but they're there. '
'Such talk!'
'Reverend Mothers can recall them all, Rabbi. Remember, it is the victors who breed. You understand?'
'I've never heard you talk so boldly. What has happened to you, daughter?'
' I survived, knowing that victory sometimes is achieved at a moral price.'
'What is this? These are evil words.'
'Evil? Barbarism is not even the proper word for some of the evil things our ancestors did. The ancestors of all of us, Rabbi.'
She saw she had hurt him and felt the cruelty of her own words but could not stop. How could he escape the
