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Not sir, not master! he wanted to warn her, fearing for her. He looked up at Metoy, trying to judge his attitude, and could not.
Gana finished her job. Metoy sent her off with a word, and sent the zadyo after her. Gana went gladly, Tema resisted. "General Banarkamye—" he began. Metoy looked at him. The young man hesitated, scowled, obeyed.
"I will look after these people," Metoy said. "I always have. I was a compound boss." He gazed at Esdan with his cold black eyes. "I'm a cutfree. Not many like me left, these days."
Esdan said after a moment, "Thanks, Metoy. They need help. They don't understand."
Metoy nodded.
"I don't understand either," Esdan said. "Does the Liberation plan to invade? Or did Rayaye invent that as an excuse talking about deploying the bibo? Does Oyo believe it? Do you believe it? Is the Liberation Army across the river there? you come from it? Who are you? I don't expect you to answer."
"I won't," the enunch said.
If he was a double agent, Esdan thought after he left, he was working for Liberation Command. Or he hoped so. Metoy was a man he wanted on his side.
But I don't know what my side is, he thought, as he went back to his chair by the window. The Liberation, of course, yes, but what is the Liberation? Not an ideal, the freedom of the enslaved. Not now. Never again. Since the Uprising, the Liberation is an army, a political body, a great number of people and leaders and would-be leaders, ambitions and greed clogging hopes and strength, a clumsy amateur semi-government lurching from violence to compromise, ever more complicated, never again to know the beautiful simplicity of the ideal, the pure idea of liberty. And that's what I wanted, I worked for, all these years. To muddle the nobly simple structure of the hierarchy of caste by infecting it with the idea justice. And then to confuse the nobly simple structure of the ideal of human equality by trying to make it real. The monolithic lie frays out into a thousand incompatible truths, and that's what I wanted. But I am caught in the insanity, the stupidity, the meaningless brutality of the event.
It was a kind of freedom.
No wonder he and Metoy had understood each other wordlessly and at once.
The zadyo Tema came to his door to conduct him downstairs. Back to the packdog room. All the leader-types were drawn to that room, its dour masculinity. Only five men were there this time, Metoy, the two generals, the two who used rank of rega. Banarkamye dominated them all. He was through asking questions and was in the order-giving vein. "We leave here tomorrow," he said to Esdan. "You with us. We will have access to the Liberation holonet. You will speak for us. You will tell the Jit government that the Ekumen knows they are pla
Esdan was light-headed with hunger and sleeplessness. He stood still—he had not been invited to sit down—and looked down at the floor, his hand at his sides. He murmured barely audibly, "Yes, master."
Banarkamye's head snapped up, his eyes flashed. "What did you say?"
"E
"Who do you think you are?"
"A prisoner of war."
"You can go."
Esdan left. Tema followed him but did not stop or direct him. He made his way straight to the kitchen, where he heard the rattle of pans, and said, "Choyo, please, give me something to eat!" The old man, cowed and shaky, mumbled and apologised and fretted, but produced some fruit and stale bread. Esdan sat at the worktable and devoured it. He offered some to Tema, who refused stiffly. Esdan ate it all. When he was done he limped on out through the kitchen exitways to side door leading to the great terrace. He hoped to see Kamsa there, but none of the house people were out. He sat on bench in the balustrade that looked down on the long reflecting pool. Tema stood nearby, on duty.
"You said the bondspeople on a place like this, if they didn't join the Uprising, were collaborators," Esdan said.
Tema was motionless, but listening.
"You don't think any of them might just not have understood what was going on? And still don't understand? This is benighted place, zadyo. Hard to even imagine freedom, here."
The young man resisted answering for a while, but Esdan talked on, trying to make some contact with him, get through him. Suddenly something he said popped the lid.
"Usewomen," Tema said. "Get fucked by blacks, every night. All they are, fucks. Jits' whores. Bearing their black brats, yesmaster yesmaster. You said it, they don't know what freedom is. Never will. Can't liberate anybody lets a black fuck They're foul. Dirty, can't get clean. They got black jizz through and through 'em. Jit-jizz!" He spat on the terrace and wiped his mouth.
Esdan sat still, looking down over the still water of the pool to the lower terraces, the big tree, the misty river, the far green shore. May he be well and work well, have patience, compassion, peace. What use was I, ever? All I did. It never was any use. Patience, compassion, peace. They are your own people. ... He looked down at the thick blob of spittle the yellow sandstone of the terrace. Fool, to leave his own people a lifetime behind him and come to meddle with another world. Fool, to think you could give anybody freedom. That was what death was for. To get us out of the crouchcage.
He got up and limped towards the house in silence. The young man followed him.
The lights came back on just as it was getting dark. They must have let old Saka go back to his tinkering. Preferring twilight, Esdan turned the room light off. He was lying on his bed when Kamsa knocked and came in, carrying a tray. "Kamsa!" he said, struggling up, and would have hugged her, but the tray prevented him. "Rekam is—?"
"With my mother," she murmured.
"He's all right?"
The backward nod. She set the tray down on the bed, as there was no table.
"You're all right? Be careful, Kamsa. I wish I— They're leaving tomorrow, they say. Stay out of their way if you can."
"I do. Do you be safe, sir," she said in her soft voice. He did not know if it was a question or a wish. He made a little rueful gesture, smiling. She turned to leave. "Kamsa, is Heo—?"
After a pause he said, "Is there anywhere you can hide out?" He was afraid that Banarkamye's men might execute these people when they left, as "collaborators" or to hide their own tracks.
"We got a hole to go to, like you said," she said.
"Good. Go there, if you can. Vanish! Stay out of sight."
She said, "I will hold fast, sir."
She was closing the door behind her when the sound of a flyer approaching buzzed the windows. They both stood still, she in the doorway, he near the window. Shouts downstairs, outside, men ru
"Come with me," Kamsa said, and took his hand and pulled him after her, out the door, down the hall and through a service door he had never even seen. He hobbled with her as fast as he could down ladderlike stone stairs, through a back passage, out into the stable warren. They came outdoors just as a series of explosions rocked everything around them. They hurried across the courtyard through overwhelming noise and the leap of fire, Kamsa still pulling him along with complete sureness of where she was going, and ducked into one of the storerooms at the end of the stables. Gana was there and of the old bondsmen, opening up a trapdoor in the floor. They went down, Kamsa with a leap, the others slow and awkward
on the wooden ladder. Esdan most awkward, landing badly on his broken foot. The old man came last and pulled the trap shut over them. Gana had a battery lamp, but kept it on only briefly, showing a big, low, dirt-floored cellar, shelves, an archway to another room, a heap of wooden crates, five faces: the baby awake, gazing silent as ever from its sling on Gana's shoulder. Then darkness. And for some time silence.