• Sam and China went to the settlement office and made arrangements for extra milk for the cats, intensive cat sweeps of the warehouses, and round-trip cat transport to the escarpment, before walking over to China’s sisterhouse, where they sat on the porch, unwilling to separate but unable to do anything together that was either constructive or enjoyable. They felt a pained solidarity, a joint grief, which nothing seemed likely to transmute into either recovery or catharsis.
“You’re not yourself yet, Sam,” said China. While they were in the office together, she had decided to get it out in the open and talk about it. Sam had said almost nothing about Voorstod. Most of what China knew, she had learned from the kids. “Are you still grieving over Maire?”
“I’ve been … grieving over something,” he said with a grimace. “It won’t come clear for me. I’m not sure yet what it is I’m grieving over.”
She sat very still, not understanding him. When he said nothing more, she whispered, “What else could it be, Sam?”
“I don’t know.” He put out his hands, palms up, looking at them as though they should have held an answer. “I went to Voorstod for a reason, China. Not only my reason, I know what my reason was. But why was I allowed to go? It wasn’t to protect Saturday or Jep. They would have probably done fine without me. What was my purpose there?”
“Perhaps your reason was all that was necessary, Sam. To see your dad. To find out about him.”
He was silent a long time. At last he said, “I have the feeling there are things going on, things I have never seen. Things I have never recognized. As though I’d lived in some other world than this, all my life.”
“Like what, Sam?” she asked gently.
“Well, there’s the business of Maire. To save Jep, Maire Girat walked into Phaed’s hands, knowing she was risking her life. Gotoit Quillow assaulted an armed trooper with a rock to try and save Willum R.’s life. Maire died, Gotoit lived, but they were both doing the same thing. How many million women over the millennia have died, trying to keep their children or themselves or their loved ones from being slaughtered?”
“Many, I suppose. And many men, as well.”
“There’s little or nothing about them in the legends, China. The legends were my world, and there’s nothing about those people. Nothing at all.”
China knew that. She made no comment.
“All my life, China, I’ve been looking for the single wondrous thing.” He stood up and moved around, running his hands through his hair. “I put those stories into books, so I could take them down and look at them, feel them, see how the words looked on pages, the way our forefathers saw them, find in each one of them the single wondrous thing. In the legends, they always go after the single wondrous thing. The Holy Grail. The Enchanted Sword. The Kidnapped Wife. The Ring of Power. The Marvelous Jewel. Eternal Life. Summer’s Return. The Throne. The Crown. The Golden Bough. Whatever. Always seeking that special thing. The answer. The ultimate answer.
“That was my reason for going to Voorstod, really. I thought I’d find it there, with Dad. I thought it was one of the things Maire left behind.”
“Are you sure there is a single wondrous thing, Sam.”
“Why do we want one so badly, if there isn’t? Why do we long for quests? Why do we …”
She shook her head at him, beginning to feel as she had when he used to pick at her like this, questioning, questioning. “We don’t, Sam. I don’t. Africa doesn’t. Sal doesn’t. I don’t think women do, much. I don’t think we have time. Our lives are made up of many things, not just one. Many answers, not just one. It’s men that want one answer for everything. They’re always making laws, as though they could make one law that would be just in all cases. They can’t. They never have. I think men get derailed, sometime during their growing up. Instead of settling for what’s honest and real and sort of thoughtful, they go off on these quests. They go strutting and crowing, waving their weapons and shouting their battle cries. They say they’re seeking something higher, but it always seems to end in pain, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know …”
“I mean, like those laws they make. It’s almost always men who make laws, absolute laws, that don’t take into account what might be happening in each individual case. They particularly like to make laws regarding women, or children, as though the law could pin us down and make us be something we aren’t. Often the laws are unjust and cause great pain. But men are willing to trade justice for the law, because they can make the law but they can only approach justice, carefully and case by case. Like, on Thyker, those High Baidee make a law that says no killing, ignoring the times when killing is the only merciful thing to do, but then they make exceptions for war, because they like war. I know all about it. We women know all about it.”
He stared at her for a long moment, realizing the truth of what she said, then slumped to the floor beside her. “I guess that’s what I was saying. While all around me people were trying to live case by case, I was still questing, still looking for absolutes. While Maire was dying, I was still looking for the one perfect thing. Why didn’t I see? Why didn’t I feel the threat? Why did I come trailing along after, sorry when it was too
