VIII

"It certainly didn't help matters," Ellud said, with the report aglow in his lap. He flung it aside and the optic draped itself over the stack of real paper and went on glowing with ghostly, damning letters. "I chastised my staffer. I don't know why I picked him. But, dammit, Duun-you passed him."

"For his faults," Duun said. "As well as his virtues. I never expected perfection. I didn't want it. That's why I stayed by your choices." "Damn hatani tricks," Ellud said after a moment. "I understand what you're doing. But I don't like it with my staff. Cloen could have been killed."

"I didn't judge so. In that, I was right."

"It's in the record what happened. It was too well witnessed. I can't get rid of it. And with all the sniffing about the council's doing, I wish to the gods I could."

"What did happen was my fault. Power without restraint. I counted on two more years at Sheon. Haras was restrained. I'll tell you something which should be evident. Hatani solutions are too wide for young minds. His morality is adequate to hold his power back. It isn't adequate to use it."

"To make him hatani-Duun, that's what's sent the wind up the council's-"

"I know."

"I took it for a figure of speech. That it was all you could teach. It was what you knew how to teach."

"Come now."

"Well, that it was easier. But you mean to go all the way with this. When they get that rumor-"

"Try to be discreet."

"If the Guild could just devise something- clever, if they could find a halfway status-"

"There's no halfway. To give him what I've given him-with nothing but restraint to manage it? No."

Ellud reached and turned off the recorder. There was dismay on his face. Terror. "For the gods' sake, Duun. Have you lost your senses? What are you after? What are you after, Duun?"

"Shbit will have gotten my letter by now. Things should be quieter, from council quarter."

A brief silence, no more comfortable. "What did you tell him?"

"I offered him salutation. I felicitated him on his council appointment. I wished him health. I signed it. It was a simple letter. He hasn't answered. I expect your supply difficulties to clear up slowly, but I do expect them to clear up."

"You're not the man I knew." Ellud fidgeted with the hem of his kilt. "I don't know how to understand you."

"Old friend. You had courage enough to stay in office this long. I trust you'll keep on with it."

"I have to. Without this office I'm a naked target. They'd go for me. Shbit and his crew. Dammit, I've got no choice. They'd eat me alive."

"I'm here. Trust me."

Ellud stared at him.

"Did Cloen hit you?" Duun asked when Thorn got home. Duun leaned easily in the doorway of his office, ears pricked.

"No," Thorn said. There was no satisfaction in that tone. (How much do you control, Duun? Do you know already? Do you always know?) Duun gave him no clues. " 'Cloen,' I said. 'I was wrong in what I did. I'll let you hit me once.' Cloen stood there with his ears back and he raised his hand no then. And walked off across the room and got busy."

Duun turned and went back into his office.

"Duun?" Thorn pursued him as far as the doorway. Duun sat down and turned on the computer. "Duun, did I do what you wanted?"

"Did you do what I wanted?"

Thorn was silent a moment. "I tried, Duun."

"Do I hear can't?"

"No, Duun."

The sounds grew less hard. Thorn worked, his eyes shut, his lips moving in repetition of the tape. When it played back it was the same.

"It sounds identical," Cloen said. "I can't tell a difference."

Cloen was careful, since that day. Cloen's face never betrayed anything but respect. And fear. There was that too.

"I've finished it then."

"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."