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repentance. Im'ran gasped, then turned aside and translated to Hogan. A murmur
rose as the Simes told the Gens how they read Digen's nager. Some thought he
might be using Tecton tricks to present a false reading to them. Over the
sound of argument, Digen said, "I have nothing to offer as bond but my bare
word that I will never touch the shiltpron again. But Rior seems willing to
accept my pledge, which is tacit endorsement of my word. Forgive me. Please
forgive me, and accept my word."
As Roshi saw that Digen had gained a consensus, manipulating Roshi's own
members against him, his anger rose another notch. "Your word is not good here
unless you pledge Rior!"
The general discussion among the onlookers surged in another direction, and
someone suggested that a houseless man had no honor and thus no word to offer
on anything. It was an attitude that had been valid before Klyd Farris had
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founded the modern Tecton.
Pledge Rior? No! I can't! But not to pledge to take llyana into exile? If
they'd let us go? To leave all this, which has been so good, and go back
to the old life. I can't.
Turning back to Roshi, hands falling lifelessly to his sides, Digen was torn
beyond endurance. But as his eyes came to the man on horseback, something
Im'ran had said the night before floated to the top of his mind and locked
into place within his sense of reality.
"Roshi, I can't pledge Rior. Zeor is not disbanded, as I thought it had been
when I came here. It lives. And as long as it lives, I am not a houseless man
and am not free to give my pledge!"
Roshi backed his horse a few steps. Around Digen the murmured conversations
burst into a roar. Roshi brought his stallion into the crowd in little,
mincing, sideways steps. He faced Digen and said, for all to hear, "You came
to us as a houseless refugee, and we sheltered you in good faith, only to be
betrayed, as I have said, and now now you admit that you gained entrance here
under false colors!"
"He didn't know until Im'ran told us last night!" said llyana. "But he's laid
down his office in Zeor, and last night he refused to go back with them and
take it up again. If Roshi won't validate his pledge to Rior I will be proud
to accept it! Dual allegiance between parent and daughter houses must have
some kind of legal precedent and if not well, what does Rior stand for if not
establishing new precedents for others to follow?"
She was right. The word "rior" itself meant forepoint, the prow of a ship, or
the leading edge the cutting edge of a flying object the vanguard of a
movement. Audacious leadership had always been the hallmark of Zeor. What
could be more fitting than the reuniting of Rior and Zeor? But he had not
truly refused to go back. He had merely put off making a decision that he
simply could not make yet.
The surging conflicts within him were cracking him open along the stress
lines that had just so recently healed. He began to feel the same sense of
unreality, enervation, and hopelessness that he had felt during the trip by
train and horseback from Westfield to Rior. He stood slumped, head bowed, and
could not even feel embarrassed when his voice came in a strangled whisper.
"Ilyana I can't do it. I can't& " He was shaking.
Roshi guided his horse out in front of the group, strut-ring in triumph.
"Since you will not pledge Rior and clear your name, then you will be confined
within Ilyana's house  under sentence of banishment from the life of Rior
until such time as you do offer me your pledge. And any who choose to enter
your house of banishment will incur the same sentence of banishment. This is
the official pronouncement of the Acting Head of the House of Rior."
Digen's whole body was shaking as if from palsy. Im'ran and Ilyana moved up
on either side of him, applying their fields, but doing little good because
his problem was not systemic or functional but purely emotional.
From astride his horse, Roshi said, "Touch him on pain of banishment!"
Immediately, Im'ran and Ilyana took Digen's hands and looked straight up at
Roshi in silent defiance. Hogan, who had only half understood the
conversation, and who had learned enough in six months to keep away from a
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channel in trouble, waited for Im'ran to explain before he, too, touched
Digen.
All the people around them shrank back, falling silent. Roshi said, "Put them
all in the house then and if they any one of them emerges before Digen has
publicly pledged Rior, the guards will shoot to kill."
The next morning, Digen watched from the window as the harvest crew moved in
to finish his field. They were not permitted even to use the porches of the-
house while people were near. Every few days, Ilyana told him, somebody would
pick up and fill their shopping list if they left it outside. But that was all
that would be done for them.
Under the sheltering nager of his friends, Digen gradually emerged from the
fringes of nervous collapse. They didn't urge him to come to a premature
decision, and little by little they came to see just how deeply the issues
affected Digen's ego structure, the whole integration of his personality.
They realized the limited usefulness of conscious, verbalized argument in
such a situation, and most of the time they left him to private meditation, or
merely provided silent, supportive companionship. But from time to time they
would get into the deep, philosophical waters that Digen trod for his very
life, and they would argue for hours over tea and nuts.
Digen felt stretched tight between hundreds of opposing points like a
drumhead tuned to highest pitch. Sometimes he would follow the arguments to
the relentless conclusion that he must try to escape and return to the
Tecton for the sake of thousands who would die if the Tecton collapsed. At
other times he would become convinced that the Tecton way of life was indeed
the disgusting travesty of the human spirit he had once glimpsed it to be. The
entire concept of the householdings that channels must shoulder the entire
responsibility for transfer because renSimes simply could not keep from
killing would seem the fallacy underlying what had become an essentially evil
way of life. It would seem obvious that the Distect precept  that in any
transfer situation, the Gen and only the Gen was wholly responsible for
anything that happened was the only solid and obvious truth in life.You can
not separate authority from responsibility : a fundamental maxim of Zeor. The
power, the authority, always rested in the Gen if he was master of himself, he
could master any Sime.
Digen had seen this operating in Rior, and, seeing it, he had found that he'd [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]