Orson Card - Wyrms

No gebling is strong enough to endure that."

Patience could see that Ruin was not pretending now; he was yielding to his sister's arguments. If she said nothing, it was clear the dispute would be settled with the scepter left peacefully in her possession, perhaps even implanted in her brain. Yet if it was so dangerous that Ruin would not use it, she had to know more of what it would do to her.

"Are human and gebling minds so alien to each other?" she asked. "We speak each other's languages, we-"

"You don't understand the beginning of the gebling mind-" began Ruin.

"It's our strength," said Reck, "and our weakness.

We're never alone from the moment of our birth. Isolation is a meaningless word to us. We can feel other geblings on the fringes of our consciousness, awake and asleep. When we swallow a mindstone, we become the person whose stone we swallowed, for days, sometimes weeks and months, until we can sort out all the memories and put them in their place. If Ruin had to become human that way, three hundred times over, the isolation would probably be unbearable, like the death of half himself. You, though, a human being-you're used to loneliness because you never know anything else. And the mindstone doesn't bond so perfectly with you. A strong human-like you-"

"You want me to implant it in her, don't you," Ruin said.

"I think so, yes," said Reck.

"It may make her even more subject to Unwyrm's will," he said.

"But what does that matter? At worst, it would make her a helpless pawn to Unwyrm. Since that's how she'll probably end up anyway, what difference does it make?"

Patience shuddered inwardly at their utter lack of sympathy for her. Even she, a sometime assassin, still felt some understanding, some elementary kinship with the people that she killed. Now, for the first time, she realized that they regarded her as a beast, not a person. They assessed her as a man might assess a good horse, speaking of its strengths and weaknesses candidly, in the horse's presence. The difference was that Patience could understand.

Ruin, still angry despite having to admit that his sister was right, turned to Patience. "I'll implant the mindstone, on two conditions. First, that you give it back to me or Reck or our children when you die."

"Why, when you can never use it?" asked Patience.

"When all this is over," Ruin said, "and my work is; done, then I can use it. If it mads me, then it's no worse than death, and I'm not afraid to die. But if I succeed in mastering it, then all we lost will be restored to us, and I can pass it to my heir."

"I'll make you a different oath," said Patience. "Implant it, and if I die in the presence of the king of the geblings, I'll make no effort to stop them from taking it, whoever they are."

Ruin smiled. "It amounts to the same thing. Only you must promise to make every effort to die in the presence of the king of the geblings."

"If you promise to make no effort to hasten that day."

"I hate politics," said Heffiji. "You don't need any oaths. You'll implant it in her because it's no use to you, and you'll get it back when she's dead if you can." She snorted. "Even a dwelt with less than half a brain can tell you that."

"What is the second condition?" asked Patience.

"The first gebling king," said Reck. "He was Unwyrm's brother. His memories of Unwyrm are in the stone. You must tell us what Unwyrm is. You must tell us everything about him that you can remember, when the mindstone is in place."

"So the Heptarchs remember Unwyrm," she whispered.

"They have known who the enemy is, all these years."

"Only the ones with courage enough to put it in their brains," said Reck.

"And strength enough to keep their sanity when they did," said Ruin.

Reck asked again, "Will you tell us?"

Patience nodded. "Yes." And then, deciding not to be the careful diplomat, she let Reck and Ruin see her fear.

"Do you believe that I'm truly strong enough to bear it?"

Ruin shrugged. "If you aren't, we're no worse off than before." She was still an animal to him.

But Reck noticed her vulnerability this time, and answered with sympathy. "How many times has this been done in the history of the world? How can we know how strong a human has to be, to hold geblings in her mind, and still remain human? But I'll tell you what I know of you. Many humans, most humans, cringe in their solitude, frightened and weak, struggling to bring into themselves as many things and people as they can. To own so much that they can feel large and believe, falsely, that they are not alone. But you. You are not afraid of your own voice in the dark."

Patience put the loop back in her hair, and slid the tube into its wooden sheath. The geblings visibly relaxed.

"You said your name was Heffiji?" asked Patience.

"Yes. A scholar gave it to me once, long ago. I forget what my name was before that. If you ask me, I'll tell, you." I

"A gaunt, wasn't he? The scholar who named you?;

Heffiji is a Gauntish word."

"Yes, she was. Do you know what it means?"

"It's a common word. It means 'never.' Never what?"

"Mikias Mikuam Heffiji Ismar."

"Never to Lose the Finding Place."

"That's me," said Heffiji. "I don't know anything, but I can find everything. Do you want to see?"

"Yes," said Patience.

"Yes," said Reck.

Ruin shrugged.

Heffiji led them back into the rest of the house. Every room was lined with shelves. On the shelves, in no apparent order, were stacks of paper. Rocks or pieces of wood served as paperweights in the rooms where th& glassless windows let in the wind. The whole house was' a library of papers scattered in a meaningless order.

"And you know where everything is?" asked Reck.

"Oh, no. I don't know where anything is, unless you; ask me a question. Then I remember where the answer is, because I remember where I set it down."

"So you can't lead us to anything unless we ask you."

"But if you ask me, I can lead you to everything."

She smiled in pride. "I may have only half a brain, but I remember everything I ever did. All the Wise came by my house, and they all stopped and gave me every answer, and they all asked me every question. And if I didn't have the answer to their question, I kept asking others the same question until one of them could answer it."

Patience started to lift a rock from a stack of papers.

"No!" screamed Heffiji.

Patience set the rock back down.

"If you move anything, how will I find it again?" shouted the dwelf. "Anything you touch will be lost forever and ever and ever! There are a hundred thousand papers in this house! Do you have time to read it all, and remember where each scrap of it is?"

"No," said Patience. "I'm sorry."

"This is my brain!" shouted Heffiji. "I do with this what humans and geblings and gaunts do with your large heads! I let you dwell in it because you will add to my memories. But if you move anything, you might as well burn down the house with me inside, because then I'll be nothing but a dwelf with half a brain and no answers at all, none at all!"

She was weeping. Reck comforted her, the long, many- jointed fingers stroking the dwelf s hair in a swirling pattern like a bird's wing closing. "It's true," said Reck, "humans are like that, they stumble into other people's houses and break and destroy without any thought of the havoc that they wreak."

Patience bore the abuse; she had earned it.

But Ruin took her silence to mean that she hadn't got the point of Reek's remark. "She means that you humans came to this world and ruined it for all of us who were here before you-geblings and dwelfs and gaunts."

Suddenly Heffiji was no longer weeping. She pulled away from Reck with a broad smile on her face. "It's my best answer," she said. "Ask me the question."