And Thandi cut in, “We’re supposed to be getting him under control.”
“A?iū, Thandi,” murmured Grego, even as Elián said: “I’d like to see you tr—” And the word dissolved into a little cry.
Da-Xia hadn’t dropped her dark-goddess thing yet: her smile was a strange mix of distance and compassion. She nudged an upturned bucket toward Elián with the side of her foot. “Sit,” she said.
Elián dropped onto the bucket and let his head fall forward, lacing his hands behind his neck. Sunlight fell in stripes across him, one turning a streak of his shorn black hair into gloss, one giving shadows and gleam to the knots of his knuckles.
Da-Xia dropped into a crouch beside him. “What are you doing, child?”
“I’m the same age as you,” Elián muttered.
“Do you like ‘peasant’?” said Grego. “We might call you ‘peasant.’?”
“Was crucifixion too subtle?” snapped Thandi. “You need to behave better, or—”
Elián didn’t answer, didn’t lift his eyes from the floor, but he shook his head.
Xie stepped in front of him. “Look at me.” When he didn’t, she reached out and put her fingers against the corner of his jaw. He lifted his head.
“Elián,” she said, spreading her hand against his cheek. “What is your plan here? They’re machines. They don’t have qualms. They won’t become tired. They won’t simply give up.”
“So, what? I should just lie back and enjoy—”
A shock—loud enough to hear, a sound like one popcorn kernel popping. Elián didn’t even cry out; he just crumpled. He would have gone to the floor except that Xie caught him. She and Thandi held him for a moment as he flopped limply. Then Elián seemed to both strengthen and sag. Tension came into him, and he bent his head forward to rest in his own hands.
“Elián, I am impressed with your strength of will,” said Xie. “But you are one of the Children of Peace now. Other fates are tied to yours.”
Elián snarled without looking up: “I’m not a goddamned Child of Peace!”
Everyone drew breath, waited—but no shock came.
Elián lifted his head, looking for a moment bewildered.
Thandi shook her head. “You have no idea,” she said. “No idea.” She jerked upright and grabbed the apple buckets. “I have to— I am going to get more apples.”
Grego and Xie looked at each other—I was missing something here—and then Grego bowed to Thandi. “Certainly, you should.”
“Explain to him,” said Thandi to Xie, as she stalked out. “Explain to him that it’s all of us.”
Is it racist to think of Thandi in terms of African animals? I was not sure. Once, she’d told me I had a face like an Irish wolfhound, and that had not felt like a racial remark, merely an overly astute one. In any case, she went out, and I thought of a cheetah’s sway, fragile and strong and proud.
“What does she mean?” Elián surprised me—he could get up, and he did. Grego, meanwhile, set an unexpected example, turning one of the hand cranks that lowered the wooden press on the long spool of its screw. I took the other, and soon the friendly creak-click of the wooden gears filled the little space.
Elián stood there, bewildered. “Da-Xia, what does she mean?”
Xie shook her head, almost fondly, as if at a child’s folly. “The Abbot asked if we could be a stabilizing influence on you. And I—or rather, Greta and I—we said yes.”
“And if you can’t?”
We all just looked at him. Surely it wasn’t that hard to work out.
But Elián didn’t seem to be working it out. He looked at me, rather wide-eyed. Evidently Guinevere needed to spell it out for Spartacus. I said, “We’ll be punished collectively. We have been already. And we will be again.”
“But that’s not— I didn’t— That’s not fair!”
“It is the Precepture,” said Xie.
And it was.
7
A SPOT OF TROUBLE
However bullheaded and masochistic Elián had been on his own account, he settled down when he realized that other fates were tied to his. In the gardens, in the refectory—anywhere we were in sight of the younger children—he behaved less stupidly.
Or at least he dammed up his stupidity for a while. Like any force of nature, it sought new channels. In the classroom he was hopeless, and sometimes ended up flat on the floor, which can put a dent in the discussion of (say) aquifers.
For instance, there was the day when we fell to arguing about why the Children of the Preceptures spoke English—a practice that Thandi had picked as her cultural injustice of the day. Da-Xia had quoted from the Utterances: Too bad. They’ve got to speak something.
“He’s not a god,” Thandi had answered. “Talis is not a god, and the Utterances are not a holy writ.”