The two warriors shook hands then, untied their reins from the hazel bushes, and swung onto their horses. Sten turned back toward the encampment. Nils rode south.
XIII
Psionicists regard Ilse as the human cornerstone of psionics in the new renaissance. Her students remember and revere her as the calm, charismatic, and knowing listener who helped them find new dimensions within and outside themselves. Sean O’Niall insists that, in other times and circumstances, a new religion would have grown up around her memory, and indeed one might wonder if one hasn’t. Increasingly, philosophers recognize her as a major cultural transmuter, one whose unique insights and influence are moving mankind a step farther toward what we will become.
It is interesting to consider that she was a very primitive young woman on a primitive and often violent world. The neoviking composer of the Järnhann Saga, in one of the occasional departures from his usual meter that provide a parenthetical quality, gives us a sharp clear image of the young Ilse in action while describing her capture by horse barbarians in Germany. He may well have exercised his culturally conditioned imagination, but the characterization seems basically correct. Here is the original, for those who can read it, along with Professor Kumalo’s faithful translation.
D’ döjtsa häxen käste ned böjen, näpte bagen uppå spennte senan, önar stadi, pilan vjentanne mä fäädi döjn.
[The German seeress threw aside her bucket, quickly took her bow and drew the string taut, cool eyes steady, arrow waiting then with ready death.]
From ROOTS OF THE NEW MOVEMENT, by Mei-Ti Lomasetewa
XIV
Dr. Celia Uithoudt stepped into the little cabin.
“Ram?”
“What?” He responded without looking away from the tape screen.
She looked at her husband thoughtfully before continuing. “Did you read my mind just now?”
“You know I can’t do that at will.” He turned to her. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you sound grumpy—like a refusal waiting for a request. I thought maybe you knew I was going to ask you to do something.”
“I guess maybe I did. Do what?”
“Talk to Ilse.”
“What point is there in that?”
“Courtesy, if nothing else.” For those four words her tone had sharpened. Now it softened again, but the words were candid. “Ram, you should know what the point is without being told. With Matt gone, you’ve undertaken to direct the off-ship activities as well as the ship itself. And Alex is willing to let you, even though he was Matt’s second, because he’s not the command type and doesn’t feel up to the circumstances. And because you’re willing and he has respect for your . . . ”
“And you don’t like the way I’m handling things,” Ram interrupted roughly. “Maybe you ought to try it.”
“Let me finish talking, you sarcastic bully!” Her burst of open anger startled Ram, even shocked him. She seldom argued, rarely criticized bluntly, and he’d never seen her blow up before. He respected and appreciated her patience even more than her intelligence. To have broken that patience alerted him to how badly the situation had affected his frame of mind.
At a deeper level she had jabbed a hidden sore of self-distaste. He sometimes did use sarcasm to bully her, and despised this trait of his.
“Sorry, Cele,” he said quietly. “I’ll listen.”
She stood uncomfortably for a wordless moment, her anger gone. “If you’re going to make the decisions,” she said at last, “you need to know as much as possible about the people and circumstances you’re dealing with. And Ilse is a storehouse of information. She may seem like a primitive—I guess she is, in one sense of the word—but she’s from a pretty wise culture. The Kinfolk have kept alive quite a bit of the old knowledge. They’re scattered throughout feudal Europe and keep one another more or less informed of what goes on there. They’re sophisticated politically and they’ve been influencing feudal politics and culture for generations, so they have a lot better feel for intrigue and conflict than we do. They’ve retained a lot of twenty-first-century objectivism and rationalism, too, and on top of that she’s learned a lot about the Northmen and at least something about the orcs.