"She couldn't."
"Ask her. No, I'll explain to her. She's old, she's canny, and she's female, and that's the best combination I can think of to handle this."
The guard still stood at the door, the same as always, and Thorn turned to look at the guard who escorted him to the upper floor-not a hard look, not vengeful. (He put Duun onto it.) At first Thorn had thought of Cloen. But Thorn had not been devious, had not-truly-thought of covering his tracks, not thought he had to.
Going through that ordinary door this morning was all that he could do. ("Betan's gone," Duun had told him yesterday. "She's been transferred. It was her request.") ("Did you kill her?" Thorn had asked, cold and shivering a second time. It was not a rational question, perhaps; but the very air felt brittle, full of doubts, full of duplicities. And Duun looked him in the eyes when he answered: "No. No such thing-" as soberly as ever Duun had answered him, as ever Duun had told him half-truths, had kept the world from him until Betan let it in.)
(What year are we in?)
(I shouldn't have laughed. Sheon's not quite the world capital, is it?)
Thorn walked in, into the foyer with its stark white walls, its plain white sand, the severely arranged vase-and-branch on its riser. The sand showed the raking it got at night; a solitary line of footprints led around the corner into the large main room in which all the windows were white and blank.
He followed it and stopped in the archway in front of all the vacant desk-risers. That single track led to the farther desk in the stark white room, the one that had been Elanhen's.
A stranger sat there, legs crossed, hands on thighs. The nose and mouth and eyes were rimmed in white that graduated to a dusting, except the eartips. The crest was stark white. The arms were gaunt. Thorn stared, thinking he saw disease.
"Come closer." It was a thin voice, matching the body. He walked closer and stood staring. "You're Haras. Thorn."
(Gods, doesn't he know?) Laughter welled up like blood in a wound, but he could not laugh in this great sterile quiet. (He?) Thorn suddenly suspected not, for reasons he could not quite define. "Where's Elanhen? Where's Sphitti and Cloen?"
"My name is Sagot. You're staring, boy. Does something about me bother you?"
"I'm sorry. Where are the others?"
"Gone, Sit down. Sit down, Thorn."
He did not know how to refuse a voice so gentle. Duun had not taught him how to say no to authority. He had learned it on his own; and the world was too perilous to go recklessly in it. He sought the nearest riser and sat on the edge of it, feet dangling.
"I'm Sagot. You haven't seen anyone old before, have you?"
"No, Sagot." Saying anything seemed difficult. (Age. Gods, she's so brittle-it is she, it has to be. Will I get like that? And she knows me… she's a friend of Duun's-)
"I'm going to teach you now."
"Not them?"
"No. Just you. Shall I call you Haras or Thorn? Which do you prefer?"
"Either. Either, Sagot." (What do I call her? Is she hatani? Or one of the meds? Oh, get me out of here, Duun, I want them back! Even Cloen, if not Betan, at least Sphitti! At least Elanhen, at least someone I know!)
"I've had two children. Both boys. They're grown and have children of their own and their children have grown children. It's been a long time since I taught a boy. I always liked it."
(O gods.) The gentleness found quick flesh, slid in like a knife: shocked the tears loose again so quickly there was no retreat, no covering it; Thorn put his face into his hands, disgracing himself and Duun, and his chest ached as if something had broken there. He sobbed. He shook with tears. When he had gotten control again he wiped his face and nose with wet hands and looked up because he had to.
"You're a fine young man," Sagot said. "I like you."
"You're lying, you're lying, Duun put you up to this-"
"Doubtless he did. But you're still a fine young man. I can see that in you. I can see more than you think I see, I've brought up too many boys not to have had a young man wail and pour his troubles into my lap now and again, and young women too-I confess to you, even a few who weren't so young, all wailing and shaking with the troubles that were great to them then. Lamentations like that, they're like great storms. They're good for you. They come sweeping through the woods and break a few limbs. But they herald change. They bring the turn of seasons. They make things new. There, that's good. Your eyes are bright-very handsome eyes, if different. They're blue, aren't they, when they're not running."
"Let me alone!"
"It's amazing how much young men are alike; first the wails, then the shouting. I know it hurts. I've buried two husbands. I know something about pain."
"Are you hatani?"
She smiled. "Gods, no. But I know Duun. You know a hatani can do a lot of things, but when it comes to others, well-reason can't solve everything. Take care of him,' he said, 'Sagot, talk to him, teach him-' 'Now why should I do that?' I said. 'I've got my work, I've got things to do, I've got fourteen great-greatgrandchildren, I don't need another boy-' But then I got to thinking, it's been so very long. They're all grown. I'm a hundred fifty-nine, young lad, and I've traveled all over the world, I've trekked down rivers, I've been to the two poles, I've written books-some of the books you study, by the by; I've had nine husbands, lovers I've forgotten, a few I haven't, and I've patched young knees, set bones, birthed babies and seen enough in this world not to be shocked at anything, that's the truth."
"Maybe that's why Duun wanted you with me." Bitterly. But somewhere in the chatter the pain in his chest stopped, and Sagot made it stop, and he had no more wish to run away. He sat there with his feet dangling, his five-fingered hands in his lap and the remnant of tears drying on his naked face. (But Betan's furred skin was silk and tasted like she smelled-)
"I don't think you think enough of yourself," Sagot said. "It's very well to be hatani, but you're not all that thing, you know, the way you're not just that pair of eyes or that pair of hands or that sex between your legs-" (The heat flew to his face.) "Oh, well, boy, I know, I know, you've only now discovered it and for a while it's the most of you, but that passes, it gets less important, the more of you there gets to be, the more abilities, the more thoughts, everything changes and shifts until the world's so wide and the things you are get so complex there's no containing them. You're not just Thorn who was born in a lab, right down this hall; you're Thorn the hatani, Thorn my student, Thorn who'll go places and do things and be things Thorn hasn't even thought of, and I haven't, and you'll find answers to your questions and questions yet to answer, which makes life, after all. So wail and take on if you have to, and if you want to come here every day and pour it all in my lap, well, that's doing some good, if you need to. But when you're done with that and you're quite ready I've got a lot of things I want to give you-it is giving, you know, a kind of gift. When you've lived as many years as I have you want to leave something in the world, and my teaching's that thing; it's what I do."
Another sob overtook him, unexpected, like a sudden breath. But it hurt less. Thorn wiped his face with a swipe of his hand, quick, distasteful. He slid back on the riser and tucked his feet up. There was no choice. Sagot left him none. "I'm listening, Sagot." (O gods, what has she got to teach?) Sagot teemed with secrets, frightening as Duun. As implacable. As difficult to get around. "Are you sure you're not hatani?"
Sagot laughed and even that was gentle, a fragility about her voice. "I take that for a compliment. What do you like best, what study?"