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the silva, find an open place, maybe beneath a cathedral tree, spread a blanket ... I ask about your
family, and you ask about mine. We talk about mutual friends, what our plans are. The rule is that we
have children soon. We talk about that."
"I've met a woman here who resented being made into a brood mother." After saying this, I realized
the phrasing might seem odd. I was speaking like a newcomer. Shirla mulled in silence before asking,
"Who was that?"
"The master's bondmother. In Calcutta."
We sat up on the makeshift mattress. Shirla idly poked fiber back into the bale. "Some women feel
that way. Maybe more than just a few."
"And you?"
She lifted her eyes. They glittered faintly in the dark. "I think Lamarckia will be the next Earth," she
said. "I don't know why, but I see us prospering here ... And I still do, despite what Salap found."
"So you won't mind having many children."
"I've never had any," she said. "Would you mind?"
I had never given the least thought to having children. On Thistledown reproduction was if anything
more ritualized and nuanced than sex; most Geshel couples chose _ex utero_ births. Many Naderites did
as well; it was cleaner and certainly less painful. But none of that had ever seemed real to me. I was much
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too young to be a father. The one artificial capability not removed from my body was conscious choice of
whether or not to be fertile.
"I asked you first," I said. My throat caught and I coughed.
"Makes you nervous."
"I suppose it does. It certainly should."
"Me, too. I've always been a little odd. I don't know whether the world needs children like me."
"Everybody feels that way," I said, though I could hardly know that.
"Not my sisters. They're already lost in thickets of kids. At any rate..." She held my shoulders and
squeezed lightly. "I do not do this to obligate you."
I said nothing. I could not tell her how unobligated I was forced to be.
"But I've never protected myself, either. I follow Lenk's dictates. I'm a little in awe that he's on the
same ship with us..."
I had a sudden image of Lenk personally encouraging Shirla to propagate.
"He'll be such a somber man now," she said. "And old. All this must wear him down."
"What, meeting us, out here?"
She pinched my nose. "I've always had bad taste in men."
Salap, Randall, Shatro, Shirla and I walked forward along the corridor to Lenk's quarters. Keo met
us midships. The craftsmanship on the _Khoragos_ was particularly beautiful as we approached the
forecastle. The walls gleamed black and gray and brown, using the inlaid cores of some Tasman arborid I
could not identify. Electric lights gleamed steadily every two meters, shining down on elegant carpet
woven in earthly floral patterns. Our muffled footfalls alerted a male guard, who came to stiff attention, a
short, broad rifle cradled in his thick brown arms.
"This is the first time in our history on Lamarckia that Able Lenk has felt it necessary to keep armed
security around him," Keo explained, nodding at the guard, who glanced at us with flat, emotionless eyes.
It was warm in the corridor and his face beaded with sweat.
Keo knocked on the door twice. It was opened by a thin, graceful young man dressed in a formal
gray suit. He swung his arm wide with a cautious smile. "Able Lenk is just finishing a nap. He'll be with us
in a few minutes. My name is Ferrier, Samuel Inman Ferrier." We shook hands formally.
A mechanical clock mounted on the bulkhead over the door chimed midnight. Salap sat on a couch.
Shatro sat beside him, eyes darting nervously, as if he were a little boy about to see a doctor. Shirla,
Randall, and I sat in individual chairs spaced around the cabin, which stretched across the bow of the
ship. The cabin beyond, Lenk's sleeping cabin, was much smaller. I thought it odd that he would choose
the bow; apprentices much preferred to stay out of the bow, especially in heavy seas. Perhaps he had a
perverse sense of asceticism.
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Shelves on the bulkhead opposite my seat contained a few dozen books, none of them ornately
bound, and all of them well-used. They seemed to include statute books and city record summaries.
I wondered where the clavicle was kept. Would Lenk take it with him on a journey as uncertain as
this?
Ferrier served us mat fiber tea on a black lizboo tray. As we drank, I heard faint shuffles behind the
door of the sleeping cabin.
The door opened, and Jaime Cart Lenk entered. I had seen pictures of him from forty-five years
before. Then, he had been a vigorous man of natural middle age, handsome and conservatively dressed,
with a presence even in the records that radiated assurance and power. Now, Lenk was still tall, unbent
by his years, his hair still mostly dark, his face deeply wrinkled but in all the right places: laugh lines at [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]