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He knew that his words were a mild rebuke-- why weren't you home when I needed you-- but he couldn't resist saying it. Sitting here with Deet, even in this strange and redolent place, felt right and comfortable. How could she have withdrawn from him? To him, her presence was what made a place home. To her, this place was home whether he was there or not.
He tried to put it in words-- in abstract words, so it wouldn't sting. "I think the greatest tragedy is when one person has more allegiance to his community than any of the other members."
Deet only half smiled and raised her eyebrows. She didn't know what he was getting at.
"He speaks the community language all the time," said Leyel. "Only nobody else ever speaks it to him, or not enough anyway. And the more he speaks it, the more he alienates the others and drives them away, until he's alone. Can you imagine anything more sad? Somebody who's filled up with a language, hungry to speak, to hear it spoken, and yet there's no one left who understands a word of it."
She nodded, her eyes searching him. Does she understand what I'm saying? He waited for her to speak. He had said all he dared to say.
"But imagine this," she finally said. "What if he left that little place where no one understood him, and went over a hill to a new place, and all of a sudden he heard a hundred voices, a thousand, speaking the words he had treasured all those lonely years. And then he realized that he had never really known the language at all. The words had hundreds of meanings and nuances he had never guessed. Because each speaker changed the language a little just by speaking. And when he spoke at last, his own voice sounded like music in his ears, and the others listened with delight, with rapture, his music was like the water of life pouring from a fountain, and he knew that he had never been home before."
Leyel couldn't remember hearing Deet sound so-- rhapsodic, that was it, she herself was singing. She is the person she was talking about. In this place, her voice is different, that's what she meant. At home with me, she's been alone. Here in the library she's found others who speak her secret language. It isn't that she didn't want our marriage to succeed. She hoped for it, but I never understood her.
These people did. Do. She's home here, that's what she's telling me.
"I understand," he said.
"Do you?" She looked searchingly into his face.
"I think so. It's all right."
She gave him a quizzical look.
"I mean, it's fine. It's good. This place. It's fine."
She looked relieved, but not completely. "You shouldn't be so sad about it, Leyel.
This is a happy place. And you could do everything here that you ever did at home."
Except love you as the other part of me, and have you love me as the other part of you. "Yes, I'm sure. "
"No, I mean it. What you're working on-- I can see that you're getting close to something. Why not work on it here, where we can talk about it?"
Leyel shrugged.
"You are getting close, aren't you?"
"How do I know? I'm thrashing around like a drowning man in the ocean at night.
Maybe I'm close to shore, and maybe I'm just swimming farther out to sea."
"Well, what do you have? Didn't we get closer just now?"
"No. This language thing-- if it's just an aspect of community theory, it can't be the answer to human origin."
"Why not?"
"Because many primates have communities. A lot of other animals. Herding animals, for instance. Even schools of fish. Bees. Ants. Every multicelled organism is a community, for that matter. So if linguistic diversion grows out of community, then it's inherent in prehuman animals and therefore isn't part of the definition of humanity."
"Oh. I guess not."
"Right."
She looked disappointed. As if she had really hoped they would find the answer to the origin question right there, that very day.
Leyel stood up. "Oh well. Thanks for your help."
"I don't think I helped."
"Oh, you did. You showed me I was going up a dead-end road. You saved me a lot of wasted thought. That's progress, in science, to know which answers aren't true."
His words had a double meaning, of course. She had also shown him that their marriage was a dead-end road. Maybe she understood him. Maybe not. It didn't matter-- he had understood her. That little story about a lonely person finally discovering a place where she could be at home-- how could he miss the point of that?
"Leyel," she said. "Why not put your question to the indexers?"
"Do you think the library researchers could find answers where I haven't?"
"Not the research department. Indexing,"
"What do you mean?"
"Write down your questions. All the avenues you've pursued. Linguistic diversity.
Primate language. And the other questions, the old ones. Archaeological, historical approaches. Biological. Kinship patterns. Customs. Everything you can think of. Just put it together as questions. And then we'll have them index it."
"Index my questions?"
"It's what we do-- we read things and think of other things that might be related somehow, and we co
"I never thought of that. Do you think a couple of indexers might have the time to work on it?"
"Not a couple of us. All of us."
"Oh, that's absurd, Deet. I wouldn't even ask it."
"I would. We aren't supervised up here, Leyel. We don't meet quotas. Our job is to read and think. Usually we have a few hundred projects going, but for a day we could easily work on the same document."
"It would be a waste. I can't publish anything, Deet."
"It doesn't have to be published. Don't you understand? Nobody but us knows what we do here. We can take it as an unpublished document and work on it just the same.
It won't ever have to go online for the library as a whole."
Leyel shook his head. "And then if they lead me to the answer-- what, will we publish it with two hundred bylines?"
"It'll be your paper, Leyel. We're just indexers, not authors. You'll still have to make the co
Suddenly Leyel understood why she was so insistent on this. Getting him involved with the library was her way of pretending she was still part of his life. She could believe she hadn't left him, if he became part of her new community.
Didn't she know how unbearable that would be? To see her here, so happy without him? To come here as just one friend among many, when once they had been-- or he had thought they were-- one indivisible soul? How could he possibly do such a thing?
And yet she wanted it, he could see it in the way she was looking at him, so girlish, so pleading that it made him think of when they were first in love, on another world-- she would look at him like that whenever he insisted that he had to leave. Whenever she thought she might be losing him.
Doesn't she know who has lost whom?
Never mind. What did it matter if she didn't understand? If it would make her happy to have him pretend to be part of her new home, part of these hbrarians-- if she wanted him to submit his life's work to the ministrations of these absurd indexers, then why not? What would it cost him? Maybe the process of writing down all his questions in some coherent order would help him. And maybe she was right-- maybe a Trantorian index would help him solve the origin question.
Maybe if he came here, he could still be a small part of her life. It wouldn't be like marriage. But since that was impossible, then at least he could have enough of her here that he could remain himself, remain the person that he had become because of loving her for all these years.