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For a long while Aidan just sat on the ground, his gaze fixed on an odd pattern of rocks that seemed deliberately centered between his legs. Aware that no one in the sibko was allowed to comfort him, and probably did not want to, he ignored them by concentrating on getting his head cleared and on watching the rocks. His head stubbornly refused to clear, and his vision went in and out of focus. Whenever the rocks came into focus, he tried to look up to see what was happening around him and in the Circle of Equals, but the slightest movement of his head returned him to dizziness. The sensation was something like looking into firelight: everything became hazy and there was pain where intense illumination struck the retina. He would have tried to shake his head clear, but after doing it once, the pain it caused had nearly knocked him out completely.
The pattern of the rocks was irregular, which fascinated Aidan. He realized that if one were to isolate any group of rocks strewn across the ground of this exceedingly rocky planet, one would find any number of irregular patterns. The regular pattern would be the exception. Nevertheless, everything elseabout life was in such a fixed pattern that he never, until now, thought much about irregularities. Growing up in the sibko, days and nights were arranged, schedules were kept, a regular process of regular progress was meticulously noted and recorded so that a warrior's codex, his or her lifetime in a collection of data, could be maintained. If this entire process were to be significantly violated, Aidan was certain that the Clan would devise some other pattern to replace it. Patterns were all, all was pattern. Had not Dermot said that last week? The sibko itself was a pattern, created out of patterns in a gene, itself a pattern in a cell. Their differences were minimal, their similarities praiseworthy. A sibko joke: DNA means Don't Need Anything. (The use of the forbidden contraction seemed, to childish minds, a bit of rebellion, and they loved to say it.) They did not need anything because all was pla
He could discover no pattern in the rocks, and that troubled him. With his training, he should be able to see the pattern in anything.He picked up one rock and placed it down again so that it formed a triangle with the two other rocks, so that there was at least one pattern amid the anarchy. But it didn't satisfy him, the triangle. It was more out of place than the irregular setup had been. Because he had formed it, he could not help but concentrate on it. Now the triangle was taking on too much importance among the other rocks. He picked up all three rocks and tossed them away, refusing to note where they fell.
The sounds coming from the Circle entered his consciousness, but he refused to look up. He did not want to see what was happening there, not even when it was Joa
What he would have liked would be for her to tell him that he had done something well. It was wrong, he knew, to wish for credit from anyone because after the nurturing stage came the warrior training stage; after the pattern, the pattern—and there was no praise for achievement. There was, in fact, only one achievement—the victory at the Trial of Position that waited for the few who survived the training to the end. By that time, praise was no longer necessary. Dermot had said that a kind word could alter the quickness of a warrior's response and that could mean the laser blast could catch you in the throat instead of your enemy.
A wave of surprise swept among the sibko, punctuated with gasps that were sudden enough to make Aidan finally look up.
Ellis now knelt on Joa
How she did it, Aidan was not sure, but instead of trying to avoid the blow, Joa
Joa
Ramming him from the rear, she knocked the already off-balance Ellis onto his face. He quickly curled up his body, however, and somersaulted to his feet, a maneuver at which Ellis had always been particularly adept. Unfortunately, Joa
The rock caught Ellis, who was turning around at the moment and consequently stepped right into its path, on the side of his forehead, just above his temples. He blinked hard a couple of times after the impact, looking for a moment as though he might pass out, then he growled fiercely and charged at Joa
Until his last step, Joa
But Joa
In a move that seemed to Aidan more dancelike than warriorlike, Joa