That still left a lot of stuff they could do if they felt like it, if you broke the rules, if they caught you. It was always Snark who got caught, even when it wasn’t Snark who’d done it. When a matron asked who did it, who bloodied the nose, who ripped the shirt, who broke the chair, somebody always giggled and said, the Snark did it. The Snark hit me. The Snark pushed me. The Snark bit me and bloodied my nose. Always when she had and often when she hadn’t.
So she figured she might as well. If they were going to say she did, she might as well. And she might as well do it right, once and for all. Might as well use something sharp or heavy, so afterward they couldn’t point fingers, couldn’t name names, couldn’t go running to the older ones yelling Snark, Snark did it.
In the simul booth, she groaned, heaved, grew red with fury at her persecutors.
Peace, whispered the booth. It’s all right. You don’t need to kill anyone. Don’t need to hit anyone, hurt anyone, bloody anyone. Peace. No one can find you here. You’re safe here. It’s better here than where you were before …
Here. Here at the edge of the cliff it was. Everywhere else the two feelings were all mixed up. Scared-hate. Threat-anger. Fear-rage. She couldn’t separate them. They were one feeling. What she feared she hated, what she hated she would kill …
Peace, whispered the booth.
If she could just kill whatever-it-was, whoever-it-was, so it would stay dead forever. Then, then …
Peace, the booth insisted.
Peace. See the jar your mother put there, in the niche. See the pictures on it. There is Father Endless and Mother Darkness. There are the peacemakers, the peace bringers. Here, with them watching over you, you needn’t kill or harass or bother. Here, with them watching over you, you are safe.
Eventually, the booth had its way. Snark quit fighting and slept. There in the simul booth, safe in the carapace, she slept, dreaming she was in the shrubbery at the sanctuary, wrapped in her old blanket, sleeping. And in that dreamed sleep, she dreamed she was in the even safer place at the edge of the moors. Sleep within sleep within sleep, dream within dream, she dreamed of becoming safer and safer still.
CHAPTER 3
Lutha, Leely, and Trompe arrived upon Dinadh at our only port, Simidi-ala (the Separated Place), which stands in an area of desolate coastland beside Dinadh’s only sea. This is the one place on Dinadh where there are garages for vehicles, where complicated things brought from off-planet may be repaired, where foreign wares may be housed. The stretch of coastline including the neighboring bay is called Tasimi-na-Dinadh, that is, the Edge of Dinadh, and visitors are told that when they came “across the Edge” and “through the Separation,” they have left behind them, symbolically at least, those things eschewed by Dinadh.
What things are eschewed by Dinadh? All those things that might draw us nearer other worlds. All those things that might make others look at us more closely, that might cause curiosity or speculation. These we eschew in favor of duty, gravity, privacy, knowing our place. Also beauty and order and reverence for … our chosen ways.
Lutha and Trompe were informed of this, there at Simidi-ala. Lutha looked over the head of her sleeping child as the latest of several informants departed, fretting over the time already spent in fruitless waiting. It is Dinadh’s way to make people wait and spend time and fret a little. Let them decide at first whether they wish to come to Dinadh at all. Let them think long about spending all those years with us. If they cannot stand a little frustration in Simidi-ala, they will never stand a winter in a hive!
“Why do people keep coming by and looking at us and then going away again?” Trompe demanded.
“You’re the empath,” Lutha breathed. “You figure it out!”
“They’re curious about us,” he said. “About why we’re here. And they’re very curious about Leely.” He sighed and rolled his head onto his shoulders, trying to ease aching muscles. He blinked sleepily and sat up straighter. Someone was coming.