Duun picked up the cap for the wer-knife. Looked back across the room where Thorn was doing the same thing. Ripple of muscle, the reach of an arm. Thorn was whole this morning. Duun wished to remember this.
“These are the words: I know you can remember them. You won’t need much study. Ship. Sun. Hand. Warning. They’re equivalents to these sound patterns.” Sagot played the tape in the recorder wand she held. It was all a complicated thing, and Thorn centered himself, not to diffuse his concentration on his surroundings. The guard had not brought him to the familiar room this morning, but two doors down, into a place with the slick, bare floors that shouted meds, a place that was large enough, but there were two large risers and a clutter of cabinets: the windows showed illusory desert, which only made the place seem starker, less comforting. Sagot was there waiting for him, sitting cross-legged on a desk with a keyboard in her lap; there was a keyboard and monitor at her knee. “Sit down,” Sagot had said, and the guard went out and closed the door on them.
“I. He. Go.”
Thorn had thought simulator when the guard brought him to a strange door. He enjoyed that, the fast interaction with the computer, the imagination of flight, and land skimming beneath illusory wings. Gods, they had a screen in one room that made it all seem real. He sat in a machine in that room that had controls very like the copter controls had looked, and the whole machine could move under him, incline and tilt with the screens so that the first time he had had to clamp his jaws to keep from screaming when he lost control and the room spun. He was better at it now.
(“Meds?” he had said at once to Sagot, alarmed. “Sit down,” she said, “it’s patterns today.”)
“Stop. Man. Radio. Stop.”
“Is it some kind of language?”
“Do your patterns, boy.”
(Something’s wrong. Sagot’s mouth is hard. Did I ask something wrong? Is she worried about this place?)
“Concentrate.”
Thorn worked at it. He put meanings with the patterns. Sagot left him listening to his tapes over and over again and he hated them. He mouthed the sounds, resenting it. It was not a good day. Duun had been surly at breakfast; surly in Duun’s way, which meant quiet and thoughtful and not giving him anything from inside him, only the surface, like a puddle frozen over. Sagot gave him stark orders and went off and left him in this room, disappearing through the inner door and coming and going in perfunctory checks on him.
(They’ve been talking to each other. Duun’s mad at me and he’s told Sagot. I haven’t done anything to make Sagot mad.)
(I was stupid about my moves yesterday, I can’t stop going to the right all the time, I’m worse when Duun yells at me, I wish he’d hit me, even, I don’t mind his hitting me, I deserve to get hit when I leave my side open like that. It’s like I’ve reached a point I can’t improve anymore, and Duun knows it, and I’m not good enough to be hatani, not quite. He’s worked so long to teach me, and I go off to the right like a fool and he ought to shout at me, he should have cut me and maybe I’d remember after that.)
There was a scar across his forearm and one on Duun’s.
(I always remembered that.)
“Boy.”
The machine went off, Sagot’s intervention. He blinked at Sagot, who had brought him a pill and a small cup of water. (Gods, it is meds. What’s wrong? Do they just want to look at me?) “Sagot, I don’t want to swallow that. I’m not sick.”
She went on holding it out. There was no choice, then. He picked the pill off her black, wrinkled palm and put it in his mouth. He had no need of the water to swallow it, but it made his stomach feel better; it threatened upset. (Is that what has Sagot acting strange? Is there something really the matter with me? Does Duun think so?)