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when he had taken a blow on the head no adult combat-trained Dorsai would have
taken, through his own ineptitude. . . .
So now he must face it. He was no longer a Dorsai. He realized now that he had
not been one for a long time; but for that same long time he had refused t(
face the fact. Now, it was inescapable. There were the Dorsai, and there was
Hal Mayne, who had been Donal. But Donal was gone, and Hal Mayne had never
been one of them, for all that he had believcd himself to be so. He was
separated from them as surely as Bleys had been locked away, once in a dream
of Hal's, behind a gate of iron bars.
He half closed his eyes at the agony of realization. But it mounted still
inside him, until he suddenly found his elbow
THE CHANTRY GUILD
91
caught, and the forward motion of his walking body stopped in its tracks. He
was turned, and looked down into the face of Amanda. "What is it?" she said.
He opened his mouth to tell her; but he could not answer. His throat was so
tight that no words were able to force their way out.
Amanda flung her arms around him and pressed herself against him, pressing her
face into his shoulder. "My dearest dear," she said. "What is it? Tell me?"
Instinctively, his own arms went around her. He held to her, this one living
link with humanity that he had; as if to let go would be to lose not only that
life, itself, but all eternity before and after it. His voice came, brokenly
and hoarsely, out of him. "I've lost my people . . . "
It was all he could manage to say. But somehow she read through them to what
was in him. She led him away from the road, out of sight of it. There, she
made him sit down with his back to a tree and fitted herself to him, as if he
was dangerously chilled and she would warm him with her body. He held her, and
they lay together wordlessly.
He felt a tremendous comfort in her presence and her closeness to him. But it
brought peace only to the top level of his mind. Below that was an
ever-widening wound; as if he was a figure cut out of cardboard in which a
hole had been made with a pinprick, which was now being enlarged and torn
apart into a long rip by a pressure too great for him to resist.
But his gratitude for her comfort at this time was immeasurable. After a
little while, still unable to speak, he lifted one hand and began to slowly
stroke the shining curve of her hair. It seemed so wonderful to him that she
should be this beautiful and this near to him; and so quickly understanding of
what was breaking him apart inside.
After a long silence, she spoke. "Now, listen to me," she said. "You've lost
nothing." Her voice was low and soft, but very certain. "I have." His voice
was ragged with tears he did not know how to shed. "First I sold my people
into a death contract; then I lost them." "You did neither." she said. in the
same soft. even tones.
92
Gordon R. Dickson
THE CHANTRY GUILD
93
"Do you remember when you came to the Dorsai to talk about our folk coming-as
many as could-to help defend Old Earth?" "And I met you," he said. "You met
the Grey Captains, and I was one of them." "You arranged for the rest to meet
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
me," he said, "and I sold them a contract with the Encyclopedia, to die,
defending Earth. " "You sold nothing," she said, her voice unhurried,
unchanged. "Have you already forgotten that the chance of death was always a
part of any Dorsai military contract? Of those who met with you, only two
others besides myself had never actually been in the field. Do you think, even
not counting those three, that the men and women you talked to had not
realized, long before, that one day they would have to face the Others? It was
only a question of where or how."
She paused, as if to let her words sink in. "You showed them those things, as
you had to others, when the part of you that was Donal broke through to your
surface," she went on, "and made it plain to all of us; as he had always made
things plain to people. Has your opinion of the Dorsai mind fallen so low that
you think they-the Grey Captains -thought they could forever put off an
eventual conflict with the Others? When it was the Others who wanted
everything humanly owned, including the Dorsai itself? Our people couldn't
become the assassins that the Exotics asked them to be, to kill the Others one
by one; because life isn't worth certain costs, particularly if that cost is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]