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Before our dinner was served, I walked forward and stood beside him. I was
catching some of
Salap's attitude and feeling impatient, even reckless. He peered up at me
expectantly.
"You make everybody nervous," I said softly. "Is that what you want?"
"I am a powerful man, Ser Olmy. But I'm not capricious. I've ruled this part
of Lamarckia with a steady hand and done well, under the circumstances. Rough
times make for rough decisions."
"At the risk of displeasing you, I'd like to describe what I saw upriver from
Calcutta."
Brion turned away with a roll of his eyes. "No doubt some of General Beys's
doings," he said.
"Not one of his successes."
"I haven't spoken about such things with General Beys," Brion said.
"You gave him orders to look for resources, to gather children and equipment
from undefended villages?"
"I know him well. He is not a monster. I appointed him after the worst famine,
after he had lost his children and his wife ... He had no family at all then.
He had a look in his eye that told me he would be useful. So little left to
live for."
"I arrived on Lamarckia near a village called Moonrise. Nearly everybody in
the village had been killed. They would not agree to give Beys small deposits
of ore. I presume Beys wanted to take the ore without working through Lenk ...
and that the ore you get here was not sufficient."
"Are you going to put me through some sort of inquisition? I gave up
self-criticism after
Caitla died."
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"I just want to pass on this bad memory."
He blinked slowly. "If you have to."
I told him about the bodies piled high within the buildings in Moonrise, the
implacable soldiers on the flatboats on the Terra Nova, about the trap above
Calcutta and the children spilling into the river. I described the expression
on the face of the soldier as he methodically and dispassionately fired his
rifle from the prow of the flatboat. "He was shooting at everybody.
Even at the children in the river."
"He was frightened out of his _wits,_" Brion said.
"He was your hand," I said. "Your killing hand." My anger had built so
suddenly I heard a hissing in my ears, my heart pounded, and I bit my lip
until I felt under control again.
Brion had been saying, almost unheard, "I don't understand what you mean. He
was a soldier."
"You made him," I said, voice low. Salap came forward, concerned. I was
putting us in danger. I was the one who should have stayed behind.
But Brion's face was bright, almost cheerful. "Tell me how you think I am
responsible for everybody on Lamarckia," he said. "That's a curious idea."
"What good does it do your people when you set loose monsters and fools, who
kill without need, who destroy what you can't use?"
"I expect better from the Hexamon. Are you sure you're not a pretender?" He
chuckled and shook his head.
He was right, of course. I was not expressing myself clearly. "General Beys
did nothing to help Naderville or you," I said. "You have caused people to be
killed for no reason. You've opened the gates to old, evil history. You won't
be able to close them when Lenk is gone."
Brion leaned forward, eyes wide and sharp, lips drawn back in a feral grin. "I
have thought long and hard about these things, Ser Olmy. What you call 'old,
evil history' is the growth and maturation of small groups of humans. If
Lamarckia were ever populated to the density of
Thistledown, we'd behave very differently. Lenk opened the doors to history
when he brought us here, four thousand people alone on a huge world. If you
want to find the father of that poor bastard on the flatboat, don't look to me
... Look to Lenk."
He waved his hand then, and Frick hastened us back to the benches amidships,
under the canopy, telling some inane story about how many celebrations there
had been when the food on the flatboats first began arriving.
A light shower fell as evening set in. Brion stayed out in the wet, staring at
the northern bank of the canal, now and then wiping the rain from his face
with a measured and exactly duplicated swipe of his hand.
The steward, a man whose qualifications were efficiency, quiet reserve, and
such a presence that he would fade from memory and pass unnoticed, served a
dark sweet beer and cold cakes with a tangy syrup. He switched the lights on
around the boat. We kept to the center of the canal, the motors humming and
pushing us along at seven or eight knots, the boat a small spot of light in
fixed and endless obscurity.
Brion came back to the seats beneath the canopy, dripping and soaked, his hair
hanging dark and shiny, and accepted a towel from the steward.
"I'm no monster," he said.
"I'm no monster," he repeated after he sat, hoisting the glass of sweet beer.
"I did not come here to impose a single mind's philosophy on strangeness and
wonder. I did not convince four thousand people that my every word was truth
and that the world they had grown up in, that had shaped their thought, was an
evil place full of evil schemes that had to be escaped from."
"You blame all this on Lenk," I said. "Even what you do, or order done." Frick
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sank back into a shadowy corner. Salap murmured that this discussion was
useless.
But Brion flared. "Do you know how this all began, Ser Olmy? Has anyone
discovered my little personal bit of history in Lenk's private domain? Caitla
and I loved each other from a very young age. We went to Athenai as Lenk
school teachers, and were privileged enough to meet with
Lenk himself, _Good_ Lenk, _Able_ Lenk. Lenk became enamored of Caitla and her
sister -- "
"Ser Brion -- " Frick attempted to interrupt. He seemed ready once again to
leap overboard.
"This is _my_ story, damn us all," Brion said, reaching out and pushing
against Frick's outstretched hand. "If Ser Olmy is from the Hexamon, then he
plays a judge -- he must! he cannot do otherwise -- for the people I would
most like to emulate. I was very young when my parents brought me here --
seven years old. I had no choice. Neither did Caitla."
He leaned back against the rear pad of the bench and glared at me, then cursed
under his breath and leaned forward, folding his hands as if in prayer,
touching his nose to his thumbs.
"Lenk became enamored of Caitla. He paid formal suit to her. He was already
married, of course, file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Legacy.txt
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file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Legacy.txt and she refused him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]