“The boy will be in the way.” His tone said she would be in the way, too, which perhaps she noticed.
“Leelson,” said Trompe from the doorway. I could see him through the hinge gap at the side of the door I stood behind. “Leelson. Stop talking and think.”
Leelson stopped talking. I assumed he was looking at Lutha. The silence had a peculiarly penetrating quality to it, one I have noticed before when he or Trompe reached out. So, he was reaching at Lutha, into her, understanding her.
“Stop it,” said Lutha. “Stop digging at me! I’m fully capable of telling you how I feel. I am not a gofer to be sent hither and thither at the whim of any presumptuous Fastigat who gets a burr up his rear! I’m a person. Until the Great Gauphin comes down from heaven and appoints you his lieutenant, I’ve got the same rights you have. I decided to come here, and I’ve decided to stay until our mission is finished. Since I had to bring Leely in order to get here, he’ll come along, no matter how much ‘in the way’ he is.”
Silence. I saw Trompe make a helpless gesture.
After a time Leelson said calmly, “Have you thought about your career? A lengthy interruption certainly won’t forward it.”
“Having a child didn’t forward it,” she said. “Quite frankly, I don’t anticipate it forwarding much in the future. About the best I can hope for is keeping my head above water.”
“She’s bored, Leelson.” This was Trompe.
More silence. Then her voice, quieter: “He’s right. I’m bored with my life on Alliance Central! I’m bored sick with it! I’m also terrified at the threat of the Ularians. I may mock the Firster assurance that men are the meaning and soul of creation, but that doesn’t mean I welcome being slaughtered by something bigger and meaner. The Procurator used fear for motivation, succeeding better than he knew!”
Even I, who am no Fastigat, knew she was not telling all the truth. Later, when the men had gone to sleep, she came to the storeroom door and peered in, looking for me.
“You’re still up,” she said, trying to be surprised. No doubt she had seen the light of my candle.
“I’m too … too something to sleep,” I confessed.
She sat on a sack of grain, crossing her ankles, then recrossing them, twiddling her feet, wanting to talk about something, obviously.
“Leelson was right,” I murmured. “You would be safer back in your home. And so would the boy.”
She looked up at me blindly. “I don’t want to be safe, Saluez.” There was a sob in her voice, betraying a feeling I knew well. She wanted to die. It is not so much an active thing, this feeling, not so much a desire to kill oneself as it is a desire not to be. An absence of hope. Despite everything she told herself about the boy, she had no hope. She saw herself getting older and older while he got bigger and stronger, his demands got bigger and bigger, more and more difficult. She saw herself victim to a helpless love for him, unable to help him or herself, desiring rather to be dead.
I found myself holding her, cuddling her as she had cuddled me, laying my own fingers on her lips.
“He should get to know his son,” she said, taking my hand in her own. “Get to know him.”
What was there to know? I wondered. I didn’t say it aloud.
“Leely has many … many interesting qualities,” she insisted.
“Of course,” I murmured. “Children do.”
“His artistic talent alone … ”
“Shhh,” I whispered, rocking her. “Shhh.”
So we sat together in the dark, reaching for light. My sisters tell me so women have done for lo these thousands of years.
CHAPTER 6
In the hive of T’loch-ala, which is Old Place in Lutha’s language, Mitigan of the Asenagi and Chur Durwen of Collis, being neither 1 linguists nor Fastigats, found that getting information out of the Dinadhi was easier assumed than accomplished. Though they were well served by the two women appointed to the task, one veiled and one barefaced, the women had no more to say than any other member of the hive. True, they spoke a little aglais, as did Chur Durwen, and Mitigan spoke enough Thibegan, which was a Nantaskan tongue, to make his wants known if he used sign language along with it, but neither of the men had any luck whatsoever in finding out where Bernesohn Famber might once have lived and even now held lease upon Dinadh.