“Were you there? Well, perhaps you are right—about her early days. But the Triangles did not rise up on a whim.”
Donovan tracked the fey as he returned with the refreshments. He hated servility in all its forms, and the Kabuki that Gidula had played with the fey sickened him; yet even he had to admit that there were gradations to the thing. Obedience need not be servile—and Gidula had wept true tears. The philosopher R. V. Ambigeshwari had spoken rightly in the autumn of the Commonwealth when she wrote: Every system works—after its own fashion; and every system fails—in its own way. Maybe so, but he didn’t have to like it.
Podiin proffered the tray first to Donovan, who saw that “light-meats” meant thin slices of fish or meat wrapped around vegetables and caked in rice. The scarred man let the Silky Voice make the selection. Inner Child noted that the boy now wore Gidula’s ring on a chain around his neck. Podiin favored Donovan with a smirk, as if this small boon had marked him a man among men. Donovan did not know whether to rejoice with him on this small victory or pity him for his larger defeat.
“A stable system, you say. Yet, you want to overthrow it.” Gidula was supposed to be a leader of the Revolution. There was a limit to how far he might plausibly go in defense of the status quo.
Gidula made his own selection, then waved the boy aside, to stand by the wall out of earshot. “A dead man is stable,” Gidula said. “Only living men stumble. But that our social fabric has frayed at the top does not mean that the tapestry must be burned entire. Poor Ravn understood that. You see, Those do not command our customs the way they command our laws—and custom is king of all. If it is our part to obey Those, it is their part to be worthy of obedience.”
Donovan, the Sleuth, and the Fudir considered this while the Silky Voice and the young man carefully studied Gidula. “And some of Those are not.”
“It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it. I believe you Terrans have a saying. ‘Numpollyarky’ something, something.”
“Numpollyarky ysceala tattoo. ‘The act is unworthy of the person.’”
“You Terrans.…” Gidula laughed and shook his head. “You always have a great mouthful of words.”
“It gives us something to chew on.”
“Clever, too. I suppose with every man’s hand against you, the Fates have sharpened your wits, or you’d not have survived. Well, it’s been a long, hard time since the Commonwealth fell,” he continued. “Those were other days, and they worshiped other gods. The histories of the Late Commonwealth, while it was in power, were falsified through terror and sycophancy, and after its fall through the distortion of hatred. But the heat has gone out of it now; the coals are grown cold.”
Donovan looked at him oddly. “And so you enjoy,” he quoted, “‘the rare happiness of times, when you may think what you please, and express what you think.’”
Gidula shrugged and sipped from his drink. “When have there ever been such times? It is never too wise to express what you think. But our scholars now look back on the Commonwealth with neither the servility nor the enmity that once consumed men. We can begin, a little, to regard the age with dispassion.”
“I wonder if dispassion is an improvement.”
Gidula leaned forward. “Listen, Gesh. We must kill men in this struggle—our brothers in the Abbatoir, even some Names. Best if we don’t hate them in the bargain. Hate makes personal what should be detached. Those have done, as you Terrans say, acts unworthy of their status, and so must be expunged, some of them. But the act is no more a matter of hate than would be the stomping of a cockroach.”
The Fudir swallowed a spiced tuna roll wrapped in a banana leaf. “I’m no cockroach,” he said. “I’d rather be hated.”
Gidula grunted. “You may get your wish. The Names have been aroused from their delicate slumbers and have begun to meddle in affairs not proper to their offices.”
“Oschous told me about the business at the pasdarm on Ashbanal. And two or three intervened on Yuts’ga.”
“And that was only overtly,” the Old One agreed. “There have been covert moves, as well. And Those have shown … disturbing capabilities.”
“They did seem to come and go rather abruptly,” the Fudir said dryly.
“And given what Those have revealed, what might yet remain occulted?” Gidula leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “That is why I urged an infiltration of the Secret City itself. Do you see why we must end this, Gesh? And end it soon? Before the real revolutionaries, like Oschous or Domino Tight, burn the whole tapestry and we lose the good with the bad—and before Those of Name escalate the struggle with their meddling and we lose … everything.”
Donovan took over from the Fudir and laughed. “One more enticement, eh? ‘Help us prevent a worse conflict!’ Those did this to me…” He ran a hand through the furrows of his head, over the headlands and ridges and tufts of woodland-hair where the plows of his tormenters had broken the soil of his mind. “Why should I care how badly your Confederation suffers? How can it suffer too much?”
Gidula evinced no reaction. “Because,” he said in reasoned tones, “what has a shopkeeper on Henrietta or a schoolteacher on Delpaff done to merit slaughter? Ask yourself, who would suffer first and most of all should our cities burn? Why do you think we’ve labored these twice-ten years to keep the conflict tightly controlled? Why do you think we put boundaries to it?”
“Boundaries of straw,” Donovan retorted. “Why suppose they will stand one moment beyond the first hard blow?”
Gidula sucked in his breath and leaned back suddenly in his chair. “Ah. So. Wisdom dawns. You do remember—or some hidden part of you does.”
The response was unlooked for, and Donovan retreated in confusion. “Remember what?” He growled. And the Silky Voice, deep within, said, Some hidden part?
“How Padaborn’s Rising spun out of control. How whole city blocks were smashed in San Jösing and people whose only crime was rising early to go to work were scythed down because Padaborn rose too early for another purpose. You want to believe that the violence was inevitable, and not a misjudgment on your part.”
“Are you done telling me what I believe?”
“But Gesh, Gesh. A tumor can be carefully excised. There are medicines that invade the body and touch nothing but the malignancy. We can remove the malignant Names and not touch the benign ones, not touch the honorable neutrals, not touch the sheep.”
Donovan said nothing. His inner voices were silent. He bit into another light-meat and found the taste sour and the texture glutinous. “You almost had me, up to the ‘sheep.’”
Gidula lifted a hand, as if helpless. “Delicacy of nomenclature will not alter the facts. The great mass of men must be led—or driven. We propose they be led.”
“Are they to have no say in how they are governed?”
“Does it matter how they are governed, so long as they are governed well?”
“It matters a great deal. If it belongs to the people to choose a king, then it belongs to the people, if the king is become a tyrant, to remove and replace him.”
The Old One pressed his hands together and touched them to his chin, just below his lips. “That has the flavor of some ancient Terran sage. But tyranny travels with the fastest ship. Your League will feel the hand of the Ardry and his Grand Sèannad heavier on her shoulder now that your Ourobouros Circuit inserts its tentacles into each man’s world.”