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offer though."
"If you need to talk to anyone..." Steck didn't finish the sentence. "When
you face Commitment Hour, it's best not to have conflicts weighing on your
mind."
"Is that what happened to you?"
"I made a choice," Steck said. "That's all. A choice to be new."
"What do you mean by that?"
She glanced at me but looked away again quickly. "Zephram said he told you
how we got together: in the Silence of Mistress Snow. Did he tell you that no
one else in town chose to visit me?"
I nodded.
Steck shrugged. "There were reasons for that reasons I was living alone in my
final year before Commitment. I hadn't gone out of my way to make myself
popular. Things were better when I was with Zephram, but I couldn't imagine
he'd stay with me long. I convinced myself his feelings were... oh, just his
way of mourning, I guess. He was vulnerable because he missed his wife. Once
he got past the worst of his grief, he wouldn't need me anymore that's what I
thought. That he'd wake one day and wonder why he was spending time with a
girl who couldn't give..."
Her voice trailed off.
"You couldn't have been that bad," I said. "Leeta wanted you as her
apprentice."
"Leeta only took me because I badgered her," Steck replied. "I'd got the idea
that if I became priestess I'd suddenlymean something. It's hard to feel
worthwhile when you're a teenager with no friends... girl or boy, it made no
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difference. Leeta accepted me out of pity; or maybe she thought she could mold
me into a real person somehow. Either way, she didn'tlike me. I wasn't
likable, male or female. And on Commitment Day, I thought maybe if I picked
the third option, things would be different."
"You thought people would like you more as a Neut?" I asked. "Not in Tober
Cove."
"I thought maybe I'd likemyself more. A new body, a new personality. Leaving
behind all the stubborn habits that made me... difficult. I wanted things to
change for me. Inside."
"But you knew you'd be banished!"
"Did I care? What was so attractive about Tober Cove?"
"Me."
She sighed. "I know, Fullin. But I thought I could take you with me. I'd
leave Tober Cove with my baby... and Zephram would go with me, back to the
South... where he told me Neuts and normal people could live as husband and
wife..." She shook her head. "And I'd be a new person. I wouldn't make the
same mistakes. I'd stop being... oh, the kind of woman Zephram would hate as
soon as he came to his senses."
Women say such things for only one reason: to have a man tell them they're
mistaken.No, no, I was supposed to say,Zephram loved you for yourself. And I
think he did; when he spoke to me at breakfast, his voice had been full of
fondness, not "What was I thinking?" embarrassment. Still, it was hard for me
to treat this Neut, my mother, as a normal woman who wanted reassurance. A
wall of awkwardness loomed between us... and before I could speak, Rashid
reappeared at the far end of the pavement.
As before, he stopped at the rusting OldTech cart. For a moment, he leaned
into the engine again, presumably to look at the black radio box. Then he
suddenly straightened up, and lifted his eyes to the hill behind Mayoralty
House. His face broke into a jubilant smile.
"Damn," Steck whispered.
"What?" I asked.
"He's figured it out. He's figured it all out."
She suddenly flinched, as if she hadn't intended to speak those words aloud.
Before I could ask what she meant, Rashid started running toward us.
Rashid's feet slapped the pavement like waves clapping against a boat's hull.
His smile gleamed with excitement. Long before he reached us, he called out,
"On top of the hill... that antenna..."
"It's an OldTech radio tower," I told him.
"The hell it is," he answered. "Have you had a good look at that dish
assembly on top? The OldTechs never built anything close." He stopped in front
of me, panting lightly. "Quickly, O Native Guide show us the fastest route up
the hill."
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Steck put on an irritable expression as she got to her feet. "What's this all
about?" she asked.
"Radio relay," Rashid panted, pointing back to the rusted cart. His finger
swiveled around to point to the antenna on the hill. "Main receiving station.
That's got to be the answer."
"What answer?" I asked.
"Take me up the hill and I'll show you."
The top of Patriarch Hill was a patchwork of bare limestone ledges
alternating with scrubby clumps of brush and buttercups. Paper birch and
poplar ringed the area, like hair around a man's bald patch; the trees even
had a distinct lean to them, as if the prevailing westerlies had tried to comb
them over to hide the bareness.
The antenna squatted on limestone in the center of the open area, with three
wrist-thick guy wires strung out and anchored into other sections of rock.
Kids occasionally climbed a short way up those wires, going hand over hand
until they got high enough to scare themselves; but I couldn't remember anyone
climbing the antenna itself. Its base was enclosed by a rusty chain-link
fence, topped with barbed wire and big signs showing pictures of lightning
bolts. That meant you'd get hit by lightning if you touched the tower
itself... and heaven knows, the antenna must have had enough lightning to
discharge because it got hit a dozen times in every summer thunderstorm.
Neither the fence nor the signs fazed Rashid. In fact, he gave the chain-link
a quick look-over, then turned back to me with a gloating expression on his
face. "When you were a young boy, didn't you ever go places you weren't
supposed to?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]