"That one." Cloen licked his lips and looked diffident. "They sent another one. It's not my doing," Cloen said quickly.
It had to be believed. Cloen did not have the look of lying. Cloen drew the cassette from his pouch and offered it.
"I like chemistry better," Thorn muttered. He felt easier with them since the day Cloen had not hit him. He could say such things and hint at everyday needs, the way they did. He put that manner on and off at the door. It occurred to him that it made them easier with him. He could laugh with them, sometimes, because he had convinced himself he was not the object of laughter. Or if he had been, it was of little consequence.
(But I hate these sound-lessons. I hate this nonsense. I think they like giving them to me. Like a joke on the hatani they can't beat any other way. I play jokes too. I can make the computer give Sphitti a readout he never expected. He'd think it funny. I wish I could do more physics and less of this.)
(I wish Betan would sit here with me instead of Cloen.)
(I daren't think that. Duun would break my arm.)
"Thanks," he said dryly and pushed the new cassette into the machine.
Cloen let him alone. They were growing apart. Thorn's shoulders widened. Poor Cloen's baby-spots persisted.
Betan was absent a time. ("It's spring," Elanhen said, and sent heat to Thorn's face.
"She's been taking a suppressant but she wants to take a holiday. She'll be back.")
"It's spring," Duun said that evening. "I understand Betan's gone on holiday."
"Yes," Thorn said. He had the dkin on his knee, tuning it. He went all cold inside, for reasons he could not plainly define, except the matter of Betan was a place he protected from the others like some galled spot. And Duun knew unerringly how to find these things. "They said she was on suppressants but she wanted to go on holiday. I think she has some friend."
"Probably," Duun said matter-of-factly. "I'll warn you to be polite at school. Men don't have seasons. But their sisters and their mothers and half their friends do. And Elanhen and Cloen and Sphitti do have lives outside of the school, you know. Don't put any pressure on them."
(What about on me?) -You're hatani, Duun would say. If Thorn were fool enough to ask. Hatani don't have needs.
(Gods, I don't want to get into that with him, not today.)
Betan did come back. She came sailing in one day all smiles and what had been an all-male society of careful courtesies and few pranks became lively again.
(As if the heart came back into the place.)
Thorn felt something expand in his chest, as if some anxiety had let go. Spring was over.
"Have you missed me?" Betan asked.
The others flicked ears and rolled their eyes in a way that they would do when they talked about forbidden things. So it had a ribald flavor.
"Yes," Thorn said simply. Dignity seemed best. (They're joking about her being in season. I'll bet none of them got close to a woman this spring.)
(Neither did I. Neither will I. A hatani has nothing. Owns nothing. Betan has property in the city. She doesn't have to marry. She could have all her children to herself.) Between Duun and the ribald jokes Thorn had learned some few things. (But I'll bet someone will make her the best offer he can.)
"When Ghosan-hatani came to Elanten there were two sisters who asked her to judge between them and their husband. They had married the same man for a five-year, each in succession. They all three were potters and he was promised a potter's shop from his mother's heritage, so a marriage seemed profitable. But during the fourth year of the first sister the second sister bore a child which was only hers. The husband refused to consummate the second marriage if the woman did not disinherit this child. And both women would lose all they had invested in this shop. 'This is a small matter,' Ghosan-hatani said when the sisters came to her. 'Judge it yourselves.' Of course the husband was not there. He had no desire to have it judged. And the second sister looked at Ghosan and lost her courage. 'Come away,' she asked her sister. 'We were mad to ask this hatani.' And that sister ran away. But the first sister stayed. 'I want a judgment,' that sister said. So Ghosan-hatani went door-to-door in Elanten and asked everyone in the village what they knew. And she asked the magistrate. And everything confirmed what the sisters had said. 'Give me a pen,' Ghosan said. The magistrate gave the hatani a pen. And Ghosan wrote in the village records that the shop belonged to the child and to his descendants; and if not to them it belonged to the village of Elanten."
"They would hate the child," Thorn objected.
"Perhaps they would," Duun said. "But when the child was grown and the husband was beyond his prime, what would keep him from turning the husband out? The husband not only consummated the marriage, he wanted to marry the women for good, but they only married him one year at a time for the rest of his life, even through he was very kind to them and to the child. The industry still exists in Elanten, and exports all over the world."
"Do hatani marry?" Thorn asked. He was thinking about Betan. His heart beat fast. (Ought I to have asked that? It wasn't the point of the story.) But there was a feeling in him that came in the night, when he had a vague and disturbing dreams, when he waked ashamed of himself. But Duun said nothing about these times, Duun only looked at him with that guardedness that did nothing to reassure him. (Does Duun do these things in the night? Something is wrong with me. Why shouldn't it be? Who was my mother and father? Was I like that child?)
(Did some hatani judgment take me away from my mother? Was it Duun's?)
"There are instances," Duun said.
"Were you ever married?"
"Several times."
It shocked Thorn. (He's done-that-with a woman.) Thorn's face went hot. (I might.) He thought of the foenin in the woods. And shifted restlessly, and hugged his knees. (Think of something else. What else has Duun done? What made his scars? Is it all one story?)
"There was a hatani named Ehonin," Duun said. "He had a daughter with a woman not his wife. This daughter when she was grown trekked to another province where Ehonin was by then. She asked him to judge between him and her since her mother had married and disowned her. Ehonin made her hatani. She died in her schooling. This was her patrimony. Ehonin knew she was not able. She was weak. But he gave her what he had. To kill the wife wouldn't have helped."
"He could have made the daughter marry."
"That would have been another solution, but there was no other participant. He could hardly drag someone into the situation who wasn't involved. That's never right. When the hatani himself is involved in the case, the judgments are never what they ought to be: the fewer people the hatani has in the case to judge, the fewer solutions are available."
"He could have made the woman's husband adopt the girl!"
"Indeed he could, and there was a husband. If the girl had asked him to judge between herself and her mother's husband he might have done that. That was also how Ehonin suspected she would not be hatani. She asked in haste even when she'd had ample time to think. Or she didn't want anything to do with the husband. That's also possible. In any case he had nothing to work with: to have gone to the mother and asked her truth would have been pointless. There was no recourse in her. And the daughter had asked none. That left himself and the daughter for principals. He had no other answer."
"If she hadn't asked him a hatani solution he might have helped her."
"Indeed he might."
"She was a fool, Duun-hatani."
"She was also very young and angry. And she hated her father. None of those things helped her."
"Couldn't he warn her?"
"She was old enough to have walked across a province. What point to warn her? But perhaps he did. Anger makes great fools."
"This is the velocity of the system through the galactic arm."
"Is it absolute?" Thorn asked. He had learned to ask; and Elanhen looked pleased. "No," Elanhen said. "But consider it so for this problem…"