Pastwatch_ The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus Part 14

"Be my true friend, Hunahpu," said Diko. "Never speak of this to me again. Work with me, and when the time comes to go into the past, go with me. Let our marriage be the work we do together, and let our children be the future that we build. Let me come to whatever husband I do have without the memories of another husband or another lover to enc.u.mber me. Let me face my future with confidence in your friendship instead of guilt, whether it comes from denying you or accepting you. Will you do that for me?"

No, shouted Hunahpu silently. Because that isn't necessary, we don't have to do that, we can be happy now and still be happy in the future and you're wrong, completely wrong about this.

Except that if she believed that marriage or an affair would make her unhappy then it would make her unhappy, and so she was right - for herself - and loving him would be a bad thing - for her. So ... did he love her or merely want to own her? Was it her happiness he cared about or satisfaction of his own needs?

"Yes," said Hunahpu. "I'll do that for you."

It was then, and only then, that she kissed him, leaned down to him and kissed him on the lips, not briefly but not with pa.s.sion either. With love, simple love, a single kiss, and then she left, and left him desolate.

Chapter 8 - Dark Futures.

Father Talavera had listened to all the eloquent, methodical, sometimes impa.s.sioned arguments, but he had known from the start that he had to make the final decision about Coln by himself. How many years had they listened to Coln - and harangued him, too - so that all were weary of the same conversations endlessly repeated? For so many years, since the Queen first asked him to lead the examination of Coln's claims, nothing had changed. Maldonado still seemed to regard Coln's very existence as an affront, while Deza seemed almost infatuated with the Genovese. The others still lined up behind one or the other, or, like Talavera himself, remained neutral. Or rather, they seemed neutral. They merely wavered like gra.s.s, dancing in whatever wind was blowing. How many times had each one come to him privately and spent long minutes - sometimes hours - explaining their views, which always amounted to the same thing: They agreed with everybody.

I alone am truly neutral, thought Talavera. I alone am swayed by no argument whatsoever. I alone can listen to Maldonado bring forth sentences from ancient, long-forgotten writings in languages so obscure that quite possibly no one ever spoke them except the original writer himself - I alone can listen to him and hear only the voice of a man who is determined not to allow the slightest new idea to disrupt his own perfect understanding of the world. I alone can listen to Deza eloquizing about Coln's brilliance in finding truths so long overlooked by scholars and hear only the voice of a man who yearned to be a knight-errant from the romances, championing a cause which is n.o.ble only because he champions it.

I alone am neutral, thought Talavera, because I alone understand the utter stupidity of the entire conversation. Which of these ancients they all quote with such certainty was lifted by the hand of G.o.d to see the Earth from an appropriate vantage point? Which of them was given calipers by the hand of G.o.d to make an accurate measurement of the diameter of the Earth? No one knew anything. The only serious attempt at measurement, more than a thousand years before, could have been disastrously flawed by the tiniest inconsistency in the original observations. All the argument in the world could not change the fact that if you build the foundation of your logic upon guesswork, then your conclusions will be guesswork also.

Of course Talavera could never say this to anyone else. He had not risen to his position of trust by freely expressing his skepticism about the wisdom of the ancients. On the contrary: All who knew him were sure that he was utterly orthodox. He had labored hard to make sure they had that opinion of him. And in a sense they were right. He simply defined orthodoxy quite differently from them.

Talavera did not put his faith in Aristotle or Ptolemy. He already knew what the examination of Coln was demonstrating in such agonizing detail: that for every ancient authority there was a contradictory authority just as ancient and (he suspected) just as ignorant. Let the other scholars claim that G.o.d had whispered to Plato as he wrote the Symposium; Talavera knew better. Aristotle was clever but his wise sayings were no likelier to be true than the opinions of other clever men.

Talavera put his faith in only one person: Jesus Christ. His were the only words that Talavera cared about, Christ's cause the only cause that stirred his soul. Every other cause, every other idea, every other plan or party or faction or individual, was to be judged in light of how it would either help or hinder the cause of Christ. Talavera had realized early in his rise within the Church that the monarchs of Castile and Aragon were good for the cause of Christ, and so he enlisted himself in their camp. They found him to be a valuable servant because he was deft at marshaling the resources of the Church in their support.

His technique was simple: See what the monarchs want and need in order to further their effort to make of Spain a Christian kingdom, driving the unbeliever from any power or influence, and then interpret all the pertinent texts to show how scripture, Church tradition, and all the ancient writers were united in supporting the course that the monarchs had already determined to pursue. The funny thing - or, when he was in another mood, the sad thing - was that no one ever caught on to his method. When he invariably brought in scholarship that would support the cause of Christ and the monarchs of Spain, everyone a.s.sumed that this meant that the course the monarchs were pursuing was the right one, not that Talavera had been clever about manipulating the texts. It was as if they did not realize the texts could be manipulated.

And yet they all manipulated and interpreted and transformed the ancient writings. Certainly Maldonado did it to defend his own elaborate preconceptions, and Deza just as much to attack them. But none of them seemed to know that this was what they were doing. They thought they were discovering truth.

How many times Talavera had wished to speak to them with utter scorn. Here is the only truth that matters, he wanted to say: Spain is at war, purifying Iberia as a Christian land. The King has conducted this war deftly and patiently, and he will win, driving the last Moors from Iberia. The Queen is now setting into motion what England wisely did years ago: the expulsion of the Jews from her kingdom. (Not that the Jews were dangerous by intent - Talavera had no sympathy with Torquemada's fanatical belief in the evil plots of the Jews. No, the Jews had to be expelled because as long as the weaker Christians could look around them and see unbelievers prospering, see them marrying and having children and living normal and decent lives, they would not be firm in their faith that only in Christ is there happiness. The Jews had to go, just as the Moors had to go.) And what had Coln to do with this? Sailing west. So what? Even if he was right, what would it accomplish? Convert the heathen in a far-off land when Spain itself was not yet unified in its Christianity? That would be marvelous and well worth the effort - as long as it didn't interfere in any way with the war against the Moors. So, while the others argued about the size of the Earth and the pa.s.sability of the Ocean Sea, Talavera was always weighing far more important matters. What would the news of this expedition do to the prestige of the Crown? What would it cost and how would the diversion of such funds affect the war? Would supporting Coln cause Aragon and Castile to draw closer together or farther apart? What do the King and Queen actually want to do? If Coln were sent away, where would he go next and what would he do?

Until today, the answers had all been clear enough. The King did not intend to spend one peso on anything but the war against the Moors, while the Queen very much wanted to support Coln's expedition. That meant that any decision at all would be divisive. In the delicate balance between King and Queen, between Aragon and Castile, any decision on Coln's expedition would cause one of them to think that power had drifted dangerously in the other direction, and suspicion and envy would increase.

Therefore, regardless of all the arguments, Talavera was determined that no verdict would be reached until the situation changed. It was easy enough at first, but as the years pa.s.sed and it became clear that Coln had nothing new to offer, it became harder and harder to keep the issue alive. Fortunately, Coln was the only other person involved in the process who seemed to understand it. Or if he didn't understand it, at least he cooperated with Talavera to this degree: He kept hinting that he knew more than he was telling. Veiled references to information he learned while in Lisbon or Madeira, mentions of proofs that had not yet been brought forward, this was what allowed Talavera to keep the examination open.

When Maldonado (and Deza, for opposite reasons) wanted him to force Coln to lay these great secrets on the table, to settle things once and for all, Talavera always agreed that it would be a great help if Coln would do so, but one must understand that anything Coln learned in Portugal must have been learned under sacred oath. If it was just a matter of fear of Portuguese reprisals, then no doubt Coln would tell, for he was a brave man and not afraid of anything King John might do. But if it was a matter of honor, then how could they insist that he break his oath and tell? That would be the same as asking Coln to d.a.m.n himself to h.e.l.l for all eternity, just to satisfy their curiosity. Therefore they must listen carefully to all that Coln said, hoping that, clever scholars that they were, they could determine just what it was he could not tell them openly.

And, by the grace of G.o.d, Coln himself played along. Surely the others had all taken him aside, at one time or another, trying to pry from him the secrets that he would not tell. And in all these long years, Coln had never given a hint of what his secret information was. Just as important, he had also never given a hint that there was no secret information.

For a long time Talavera had not studied the arguments - he had grasped those at the start and nothing important had been added in years. No, what Talavera studied was Coln himself. At first he had a.s.sumed that Coln was just another courtier on the make, but that impression was quickly dispelled. Coln was absolutely, fanatically determined to sail west, and could not be distracted by any other sort of preferment. Gradually, though, Talavera had come to see that this voyage west was not an end in itself. Coln had dreams. Not of personal wealth or fame, but rather dreams of power. Coln wanted to accomplish something, and this westward voyage was the foundation of it. And what was it that Coln wanted to do? Talavera had puzzled about this for months, for years.

Today, at last, the answer had come. Departing from his usual scholarly bludgeoning, Maldonado had remarked, rather testily, that it was selfish of Coln to try to distract the monarchs from their war with the Moors, and Coln had suddenly erupted in anger. "A war with the Moors? For what, to drive them from Granada, from a small corner of this dry peninsula? With the wealth of the East we could drive the Turk from Constantinople, and from there it is only a short step to Armageddon and the liberation of the Holy Land! And you tell me that I must not do this, because it might interfere with the war against Granada? You might as well tell a matador that he cannot kill the bull because it might interfere with the effort to stomp on a mouse!"

At once Coln had regretted his remarks, and was quick to rea.s.sure everyone that he had nothing but the greatest enthusiasm for the great war against Granada. "Forgive me for letting my pa.s.sion rule my mouth," said Coln. "Never for a moment have I wished for anything but the victory of the Christian armies over the infidel in Granada."

Talavera had immediately forgiven him and forbidden anyone to repeat Coln's remarks. "We know that what you said was in zeal for the cause of Christ, wishing that we could accomplish even more than victory against Granada, not less."

Coln himself seemed relieved indeed to hear Talavera's words. It could have been the death of his pet.i.tion right on the spot, if his remarks had been taken as disloyalty - and the personal consequences could have been severe as well. The others had also nodded wisely. They had no wish to denounce Coln. For one thing, it would hardly redound to their credit if it had taken them this many years to discover that Coln was a traitor!

What Coln did not know, what none of them knew, was how deeply his words had touched Talavera's soul. A Crusade to liberate Constantinople! To break the power of the Turk! To plunge a knife into the heart of Islam! In a few sentences Coln had forced Talavera to view his life's work in a new light. All these years that Talavera had devoted himself to the cause of Spain for Christ's sake, and now he realized that next to Coln his own faith was childish. Coln is right: If we serve Christ, why are we chasing mice when the great bull of Satan struts through the greatest Christian city?

For the first time in years, Talavera realized that serving the King and Queen might not be identical to serving the cause of Christ. He realized that for the first time in his life he was in the presence of someone whose devotion to Christ might well be the match of his own. Such was my pride, thought Talavera, that it took me this many years to see it.

And in those years, what have I done? I have kept Coln trapped here, leading him on, keeping the question open year after year, all because making any kind of decision might weaken the relationship between Aragon and Castile. Yet what if it is Coln, and not Ferdinand and Isabella, who understands what will best serve the cause of Christ? How does the purification of Spain compare to the liberation of all the ancient Christian lands? And with the power of Islam broken, what then would stop Christianity from spreading forth to fill the world?

If only Coln had come to us with a plan for Crusade instead of this strange voyage to the west. The man was eloquent, forceful, and there was something about him that made you want to be on his side. Talavera imagined him going from king to king, from court to court. He might well have been able to convince the monarchs of Europe to unite in common cause against the Turk.

Instead, Coln seemed sure that the only way to bring about such a Crusade was to establish a direct, quick connection with the great kingdoms of the East. Well, what if he was right? What if G.o.d had put this vision in his mind? Certainly it was nothing an intelligent man would have thought of on his own - the most rational plan was to sail around Africa as the Portuguese were doing. But wasn't that, too, a species of madness? Weren't there ancient writers who had a.s.sumed that Africa extended all the way to the south pole, so there was no way to sail around it? Yet the Portuguese had persisted, finding again and again that no matter how far south they sailed, Africa was always there, extending even farther than they had imagined. Yet last year Dias at last returned with the good news - they had rounded a cape and found that the coast ran to the east, not to the south; and then, after hundreds of miles, it definitely ran to the northeast and then the north. They had rounded Africa. And now the irrational persistence of the Portuguese was widely known to be rational after all.

Couldn't Coln's irrational plans turn out the same way? Only instead of a years-long voyage, his route to the Orient would bring wealth much faster. And his plan, instead of enriching a tiny useless country like Portugal, would lead eventually to the Church of Christ filling the entire world!

So now, instead of thinking how to drag out the examination of Coln, waiting for the desires of the monarchs to resolve themselves, Talavera sat in his austere chamber trying to think how to force the issue. One thing he certainly could not do was suddenly, after all these years and with no significant new arguments, announce that the committee was deciding in favor of Coln. Maldonado and his supporters would protest directly to the King's men, and a power struggle would ensue. The Queen would almost certainly lose such an open struggle, since her support from the lords of her realm depended in large part on the fact that she was known to "think like a man." Disagreeing openly with the King would give the lie to that idea. Thus open support for Coln would lead to division and probably would not lead to a voyage.

No, Talavera thought, the one thing I cannot do is support Coln. So what can I do?

I can set him free. I can end the process and let him go on to another king, to another court. Talavera well knew that Coln's friends had made discreet inquiries in the courts of France and England. Now that the Portuguese had achieved their quest for an African route to the East, they might be able to afford a small exploratory expedition toward the west. Certainly the Portuguese advantage in trading with the Orient will be envied by other kings. Coln might well succeed somewhere. So whatever else happens, I must end his examination immediately.

But could there not also be a way to end the examination and yet turn things to the advantage of Coln's supporters?

With a half-formed plan in mind, Talavera sent to the Queen a note bearing his request for a secret audience with her on the matter of Coln.

Tagiri did not understand her own reaction to the news of success from the scientists working on time travel. She should be happy. She should be rejoicing to know that her great work could, physically, be accomplished. Yet ever since the meeting with the team of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers working on the time travel project, she had been upset, angry, frightened. The opposite of how she had expected she would feel.

Yes, they said, we can send a living person into the past. But if we do so there is no chance, no chance whatsoever, that our present world will survive in any form. To send someone into the past to change it is the end of ourselves.

They were so patient, trying to explain temporal physics to historians. "If our time is destroyed," Ha.s.san asked, "then won't that also destroy the very people that we send back? If none of us are ever born, then the people we send won't have been born either, and therefore they could never have been sent. "

No, explained the physicists, you're confusing causality with time. Time itself, as a phenomenon, is utterly linear and unidirectional. Each moment happens only once, and pa.s.ses into the next moment. Our memories grasp this one-way flow of time, and in our minds we link it with causality. We know that if A causes B, then A must come before B. But there is nothing in the physics of time that requires this. Think of what your predecessors did. The machine they sent back in time was the product of a long causal network. Those causes were all real, and the machine actually existed. Sending it back in time did not undo any of the events that led to the creation of that machine. But in the moment that the machine caused Columbus to see his vision on that beach in Portugal, it began to transform the causal network so that it no longer led to the same place. All of those causes and effects really happened - the ones leading to the creation of the machine, and the ones following from the machine's introduction into the fifteenth century.

"But then you're saying that their future still exists," Hunahpu protested.

That depends on how you define existence, they explained. As a part of the causal network leading to the present moment, yes, they continue to exist in the sense that any part of their causal network that led to the existence of their machine in our time is still having effects in the present world. But anything peripheral or irrelevant to that is now utterly without effect in our timestream. And anything in their history that the introduction of that machine in our history caused not to happen is utterly and irrevocably lost. We can't go back into our past and view it because it didn't happen.

"But it did happen, because their machine exists."

No, they said again. Causality can be recursive, but time cannot. Anything that the introduction of their machine caused not to happen, did not in fact happen in time. There is no moment of time in which those events exist. Therefore they cannot be seen or visited because the temporal loci which they occupied are now occupied by different moments. Two contradictory sets of events cannot occupy the same moment: You are only confused because you cannot separate causality from time. And that's perfectly natural, because time is rational. Causality is irrational. We've been playing speculative games with the mathematics of time for centuries, but we would never have seen this distinction between time and causality ourselves if we hadn't had to account for the machine from the future.

"So what you're saying," Diko offered, "is that the other history still exists, but we just can't see it with our machines."

That's not what we're saying, they replied with infinite patience. Anything that was not causally connected to the creation of that machine cannot be said to have ever existed at all. And anything that did lead to the creation of that machine and its introduction into our time exists only in the sense that unreal numbers exist.

"But they did exist," Tagiri said, more pa.s.sionately than she had expected. "They did."

"They did not," said old Manjam, who had let his younger colleagues speak for him till now. "We mathematicians are quite comfortable with this - we have never dwelt in the realm of reality. But of course your mind rebels against it because your mind exists in time. What you must understand is that causality is not real. It does not exist in time. Moment A does not really cause Moment B in reality. Moment A exists, and then Moment B exists, and between them are Moments A.a through A.z, and between A.a and A.b there are A.aa through A.az. None of these moments actually touches any other moment. That is what reality is - an infinite array of discreet moments unconnected with any other moment because each moment in time has no linear dimension. When the machine was introduced into our history, from that point forward a new infinite set of moments completely replaced the old infinite set of moments. There were no spare leftover moment-locations for the old moments to hang around in. And because there was no time for them, they didn't happen. But causality is unaffected by this. It isn't geometric. It has a completely different mathematics, one which does not fit well with concepts like s.p.a.ce and time and certainly doesn't fit within anything that you could call 'real.' There is no s.p.a.ce or time in which those events happened."

"What does that mean?" said Ha.s.san. "That if we send somebody back in time, they will suddenly cease to remember anything about the time they came from, because that time no longer exists?"

"The person that you send back," said Manjam, "is a discrete event. He will have a brain, and that brain will contain memories that, when he accesses them, will give him certain information. This information will cause him to think he remembers a whole reality, a world and a history. But all that exists in reality is him and his brain. The causal network will only include those causal connections which led to the creation of his physical body, including his brain state, but any part of that causal network which is not part of the new reality cannot be said to exist in any way."

Tagiri was shaken. "I don't care that I don't understand the science of it," she said. "I only know that I hate it."

"It's always frightening to deal with something that is counterintuitive," said Maniam.

"Not at all," said Tagiri, trembling. "I didn't say I was frightened. I'm not. I'm angry and ... frustrated. Horrified."

"Horrified about the mathematics of time?"

"Horrified at what we are doing, at what the Interveners actually did. I suppose that I always felt that in some sense they went on. That they sent their machine and then went on with their lives, comforted in their miserable situation by knowing that they had done something to help their ancestors."

"But that was never possible," said Manjam.

"I know it," said Tagiri. "And so when I really thought about it, I imagined them sending the machine and in that moment they sort of - disappeared. A clean painless death for everyone. But at least they had lived, up to that moment."

"Well," said Maniam, "how is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than a clean, painless death?"

"You see," said Tagiri, "it's not. Not any worse. And not any better, either, for the people themselves."

"What people?" said Marjam, shrugging.

"Us. Manjam. We are talking about doing this to ourselves."

"If you do this, then there will have been no such people as ourselves. The only aspect of our causal network that will have any future or past are those that are connected to the creation of the physical bodies and mental states of the persons you send into the past."

"This is all so silly," said Diko. "Who cares about what's real and what isn't real? Isn't this what we wanted all along? To make it so that the terrible events of our history never happened in the first place? And as for our own history, the parts that will be lost, who cares if a mathematician calls us dirty names like 'unreal'? They say such slanders about the square root of minus two, as well."

Everyone laughed, but not Tagiri. They did not see the past as she saw it. Or rather, they didn't feel the past. They didn't understand that to her, looking through the Tempoview and the TruSite II, the past was alive and real. Just because the people were dead did not mean that they were not still part of the present, because she could go back and recover them. See them, hear them. Know them, at least as well as any human being ever knows any other. Even before the TruSite and the Tempoview, though, the dead still lived in memory, some kind of memory. But not if they changed the past. It was one thing to ask humankind of today to choose to give up their future in the hope of creating a new reality. That would be hard enough. But to also reach back and kill the dead, to uncreate them as well - and they had no vote. They could not be asked.

We must not do this, she thought. This is wrong. This win be a worse crime than the ones we are trying to prevent.

She got up and left the meeting. Diko and Ha.s.san tried to leave with her, but she brushed them off. "I need to be alone," she said, and so they stayed behind, returning to a meeting that she knew would be in shambles. For a moment she felt remorse at having greeted the physicists' triumphant moment with such a negative response, but as she walked the streets of Juba that remorse faded, replaced by one far deeper.

The children playing naked in the dirt and weeds. The men and women going about their business. She spoke to them all in her heart, saying, How would you like to die? And not only you, but your children and their children? And not only them, but your parents, too? Let's go back into the graves, open them up, and kill them all. Every good and evil thing they did, all their joy, all their suffering, all their choices - let's kill them all, erase them, undo them. Reaching back and back and back, until we finally come to the golden moment that we have chosen, declaring it worthy to continue to exist, but with a new future tied to the end of it. And why must all of you and yours be killed? Because in our judgment they didn't make a good enough world. Their mistakes along the way were so unforgivable that they erase the value of any good that also happened. All must be obliterated.

How dare I? How dare we? Even if we got the unanimous consent of all the people of our own time, how will we poll the dead?

She picked her way down the bluffs to the riverside. In the waning afternoon, the heat of the day was finally beginning to break. In the distance, hippos were bathing or feeding or sleeping. Birds were calling, getting ready for their frenzied feeding on the insects of the dusk. What goes through your minds, Birds, Hippopotamuses, Insects of the late afternoon? Do you like being alive? Do you fear death? You kill to live; you die so others can live; it's the path ordained for you by evolution, by life itself. But if you had the power, wouldn't you save yourselves?

She was still there by the river when the darkness came, when the stars came out. For a moment, gazing at the ancient light of the stars, she thought: Why should I worry about uncreating so much of human history? Why should I care that it will be worse than forgotten, that it will be unknown? Why should that seem to be a crime, when all of human history is an eyeblink compared to the billions of years the stars have shone? We will all be forgotten in the last exhalation of our history; what does it matter, then, if some are forgotten sooner than others, or if some are caused to have never existed at all?

Oh, this is such a wise perspective, to compare human lives to the lives of stars. The only problem is that it cuts both ways. If in the long run it doesn't matter that we wipe out billions of lives in order to save our ancestors, then in the long ran saving our ancestors doesn't matter, either, so why bother changing the past at all?

The only perspective that matters is the human one, Tagiri knew. We are the only ones who care; we are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.

The light of an electric torch bobbed into view as she heard someone approaching through the gra.s.s.

"That torch will only attract animals that we don't want," she said.

"Come home," said Diko It isn't safe out here, and Father's worried."

"Why should he be worried? My life doesn't exist. I never lived."

"You're alive now, and so am I, and so are the crocodiles."

"If individual lives don't matter," said Tagiri, "then why bother going back to make them better? And if they do matter, then how dare we snuff some out in favor of others?"

"Individual lives matter," said Diko. "But life also matters. Life as a whole. That's what you've forgotten today. That's what Manjam and the other scientists also forgot. They talk of all these moments, separate, never touching, and say that they are the only reality. Just as the only reality of human life is individuals, isolated individuals who never really know each other, never really touch at any point. No matter how close you are, you're always separate."

Tagiri shook her head. "This has nothing to do with what is bothering me."

"It has everything to do with it," said Diko. "Because you know that this is a lie. You know that the mathematicians are wrong about the moments, too. They do touch. Even if we can't really touch causality, the connections between moments, that doesn't mean they aren't real. And just because whenever you look closely at the human race, at a community, at a family, all you can ever find are separate individuals, that doesn't mean that the family is not also real. After all, when you look closely enough at a molecule, all you can see are atoms. There is no physical connection between them. And yet the molecule is still real because of the way the atoms affect each other."

"You're as bad as they are," said Tagiri, "answering anguish with a.n.a.logies."

"a.n.a.logies are all I have," said Diko. "Truth is all I have, and truth is never a comfort. But understanding truth, that is what you taught me to do. So here is the truth. What human life is, what it's for, what we do, is create communities. Some of them are good, some of them are evil, or somewhere between. You taught me this, didn't you? And there are communities of communities, groups of group's, and-"

"And what makes them good or bad?" demanded Tagiri. "The quality of the individual lives. The ones we're going to snuff out."

"No," said Diko. "What we're going to do is go back and revise the ultimate community of communities, the human race as a whole, history as a whole here on this planet. We're going to create a new version of it, one that will give the new individuals who live within it a far, far better chance of happiness, of having a good life, than the old version. That's real, and that's good, Mother. It's worth doing. It is."

"I've never known any groups," said Tagiri. "Just people. Just individual people. Why should I make those people pay so this imaginary thing called 'human history' can be better? Better for whom?"

"But Mother, individual people always sacrifice for the sake of the community. When it matters enough, people sometimes even die, willingly, for the good of the community that they feel themselves to be a part of. As well as a thousand sacrifices short of death. And why? Why do we give up our individual desires, leave them unfulfilled, or work hard at tasks we hate or fear because others need us to do them? Why did you go through such pain to bear me and Acho? Why did you give up all the time it took to take care of us?"

Tagiri looked at her daughter. "I don't know, but as I listen to you, I begin to think that perhaps it was worth it. Because you know things that I don't know. I wanted to create someone different from myself, better than myself, and willingly gave up part of my life to do it. And here you are. And you're saying that that's what the people of our time will be to the people of the new history we create. That we will sacrifice to create their history, as parents sacrifice to create healthy, happy children."

"Yes, Mother," said Diko. "Manjam is wrong. The people who sent that vision to Columbus did exist. They were the parents of our age; we are their children. And now we will be the parents to another age."

"Which just goes to show," said Tagiri, "that one can always find language to make the most terrible things sound n.o.ble and beautiful, so you can live with doing them."

Diko looked at Tagiri in silence for a long moment. Then she threw the electric torch to the ground at her mother's feet and walked away into the night.

Isabella found herself dreading the meeting with Talavera. It would be about Cristobal Coln, of course. It must mean that he had reached a conclusion. "It's foolish of me, don't you think?" Isabella said to Lady Felicia. "Yet I am as worried about his verdict as if I myself were on trial."

Lady Felicia murmured something noncommittal.

"Perhaps I am on trial."

"What court on Earth can try a queen, Your Majesty?" asked Lady Felicia.

"That is my point," said Isabella. "I felt, when Cristobal spoke that first day in court, so many years ago, that the Holy Mother was offering me something very sweet and fine, a fruit from her own garden, a berry from her own vine."