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But then the ahnit was not capable of killing him and he did not easily imagine that Sbi meant to do something tohim.
To do something with him, undoubtedly. Whatever use he had left in him that appealed to an alien mind. He thought of his own work in the heart of Kierkegaard, and of the lonely pair of figures in the hills which Sbi had so wanted him to see, and neither made sense.
Sbi’s hand massaged his back, over tense muscles. “Pain, Master Law?”
“No.” The voice had startled him. He had not known the ahnit was awake. It disturbed him and he tried to relax, while Sbi’s hand massaged a spot which was particularly tense.
“You haven’t slept much.”
“Nor have you.”
“I don’t sleep as much as you.”
“Oh,” he said, and shut his eyes again and accepted the comfort, tired and puzzled at once.
“Master Law,” said Sbi, “why did they cripple you?”
He stiffened all over. It was the Statement again; it was never, to Sbi’s satisfaction, answered.
“I don’t know, Sbi. What is it that I don’t see?”
Silence.
“And how could you know?” he asked. “You weren’t there. You don’t knowWaden Jenks. How am I missing the answer?”
Silence.
“Waden—couldn’t bear a rival. He warned me so.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Either. Why warn you?”
He thought about it. “It wasn’t rational, was it?”
Silence.
It lay at the center of what he did not want to think about. He lay still, staring into the dark. “Sbi. Where do you want me to go? What do you want?”
Silence.
“Whatever you want,” he said, “I’ll do it. I don’t see anything else. I don’t see anywhere else. You don’t make sense to me. I don’t know why you’re out here or why you bother or what you want. What is it?”
Silence.
“Sbi.”
More silence. He grew distraught. Sbi patted him gently, as if trying to soothe him to sleep.
“Let me alone.” He scrambled up, pushing with his hands, which hurt him, and stalked off close to striking at something, his bound ribs not giving him air enough. He stopped, staring out across the plains and finding nothing on the horizon but grass and night-bound sky, and stars, which belonged to strangers, the vast Outside, which went on and on, challenging illusions.
Suddenly he was afraid. He looked back, half expecting to find Sbi gone, or near him. Sbi simply waited.
And that did not wholly comfort him either.
XXVIII
Master Ly
Waden Jenks: Where I chose. Is that your concern?
Master Ly
Waden Jenks: I find its counsel superior.
Master Ly
Waden Jenks: Are you my friend?
Master Ly
There was no particular direction. Sbi walked east, this day, and sat down after a time, munching a grass stem, and seemed content to sit. Herrin lay down full length on his back and stared at the clouds drifting, fleecy white and far, with such a weight on his mind that it seemed apt to break.
“Sbi,” he said at last, “teach me.”
“Teach you what, Master Law?”
“My name is Herrin.”
“Herrin. Teach you what?”
“What reality is.”
“What do you see?”
“Sky.”
“What do you feel?”
“Pain, Sbi.”
“Both are real.”
“Whose reality?”
“Everyone’s.”
“What,” he snorted, having finally discovered Sbi’s depth, “ everyone’sforever and however far? That’s hardly reasonable.”
“Throughout all the universe.”
“You’re mad.”
Silence.
“How can external events be real to you, Sbi?”
“I feel them.”
It angered him. In frustration he slammed his hand against the ground and rolled a defiant look at Sbi, with tears of pain blurring his eyes. “You tell me you felt that.”
“Yes. All the universe did.”
Sbi proposed an insanity. He retreated from it, simply stared at the clouds.
“I’ve taught you,” said Sbi, “all I know.”
“You mean that I’m not able to perceive it.”
“Where shall we go, Herrin?”
He bit down on his lip, thought, trying to draw co
“Is this where you wish to be, then?”
“What does it matter what I want?”
Silence.
“Sbi, I was wrong. I’ve spent my life being wrong. What can I do about it?”
Silence. For the first time he understood that answer. He turned on his side and looked at Sbi, who sat chewing on another grass stem. His heart was beating harder. “What were you waiting for all those years in the city? For me? For someone who could see you?”
“Yes.
“And what difference does it make whether I see you?”
Silence.
“It makes a great deal of difference, doesn’t it, Sbi?”
“What do you think?”
“That it makes everything wrong. That the whole world is crazy and I’m sane. Where does that leave me, Sbi?”
“Invisible. Like me.”
He found breathing difficult, not alone from the bandage. He pushed himself up on his elbow. “You had to let me go back to my own house to find that out.”
“I had no idea what would happen. Reality is not in my control. Nor are you.”
“You’ll wander all over Sartre taking care of me if that’s what I decide, is that so?”
“I will stay with you, yes. And keep you from harm if I can.”
“Why?”
Sbi sucked in the grain-bearing head and chewed it. “Because I want to. Because when you struck your hand I had the pain, Herrin.”
“I could ask you; I could ask you question after question and when I got close to what I really want to know you’d say nothing.”
“The important questions are for you to answer. It is, after all, your world that’s in jeopardy; mine is long past that.”
“Why were you among us?”
“If someone had destroyed your world, would you not have an interest in those who had done so?”
“They did. And I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to see them again or be seen.”
Sbi simply stared at him.
There was no relief for the silence, none. He sat up with his bandaged hands in his lap and contemplated them, flexed his hands slightly against the splints and bit his lip at the pain which won him no great degree of movement.
“Who broke your hands, Herrin Law?”
He shut his eyes, weary of the repeated question.
“Why?” Sbi asked inevitably.
He shook his head slowly, drew a breath which suddenly stopped in his throat. His eyes unfocused. He thought to Fellows’ Hall, a certain evening, and a conceit which had gripped them both, him and Waden. “I’d begun to see you. I’d begun to see things the way they were; and Waden was never dull. I think he saw too, Sbi. I think he did. He does. Sbi, I’m going back.”
“Yes,” said Sbi.
He had reached for the bundles of toweling and grass rope which were all his possessions; and suddenly he caught Sbi’s expression, and Sbi’s tone, and it was not the same as when he had proposed going to the valley. Then there had been disappointment, vague reluctance. Now it was different.
“You’ve pushed me to this,” he said, wrapping his arms about the bundles and staring at Sbi. “Sbi, have I guessed enough of what you want? Or do you go on the way you have?”
“I don’t know that you’re right,” Sbi said. “But your logic seems irrefutable save by Waden Jenks. I will tell you what I want, Herrin. I have found it: a human who can see. I’ll tell you what I’ve waited for all these years as you say ... to learn what that human will do, when he sees. But one thing frightens me: what those who don’t see will do to him.”
“They won’t be ableto see me,” he said, disliking Sbi’s proposition. But he thought about it. “There are the Outsiders, aren’t there? And they see.”