Dad was waiting in the Red Cave on his big stone chair under the tree, with the empty seat next to it where my mother, Jane, once sat. Beside him stood his latest favorite helper, a tall girl called Purelight, holding a jug of water and some fakeskin wipes. The rest of the cave, though it could hold two hundred or more, stood empty but for the ringmen by the doors. Its walls smoldered red.
Dad dismissed Purelight with a flick of his scarred fingers, and I braced myself for the shouting to begin. But his voice stayed calm.
“So you decided not only to cross the water for a housewoman, but to cross the line between big people and small people?”
“She’s not really a small person, Dad. Where she comes from there are no—”
“Dixon tells me that when you met the girl, her tits were bare, and all she had on was a piece of raw buckskin. Is that right?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“And he tells me that her father’s dead but her uncle lives by making little boats out of bark. Is he telling the truth?”
“Yes, but—”
“He says her uncle had bare feet, too, and walked about naked except for a bit of rough buckskin over his dick.”
“Yes. But, Dad, Starlight’s great-great grandfather was Jeff Redlantern, John’s cousin.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? We’re all descended from the same two people, aren’t we? Everyone in Eden. Does that make me as small as some little holefaced stonebreaker up at Metal Cave, or him as big as me?”
“No, of course not.”
“Some of us are born big and some are born small, just as some are born men and some women. And you chose a small woman.”
“But Dad . . .” I began.
His eyes burned into mine and I bent my head and was silent. Now, surely, I thought, the shouting would start.
But there was no sound at all but his labored breathing, and the pulsing of the tree, and the trickle of the little stream flowing through its stone channel at the back of the cave.
“Lift your head so that I can look at you.”
Reluctantly, I did as he asked. His fierce eyes bored into me, poking and flicking through my mind like he was looking for some small object he’d mislaid in a pile of trash.
“Well,” he said at last. “You’ve finally done one brave thing.”
“Please don’t play with me, Dad. Be as angry as you like, but please don’t play with me.”
“I’m not playing with you.” His eyes held mine, refusing to let me go. “Haven’t I always said that a Headman needs to be able to say a thing, and mean it, and stick to it, no matter how much his chiefs and teachers might wail and whine? But you’ve always been so gentle and kind and worried about making enemies. You’ve always been your mother’s boy.”
He gave a little backward jerk of his head and bared what were left of his old black teeth. It was a kind of laugh.
“But this time, boy, you acted like your dad. You decided what you wanted, and you stuck to it, in spite of Dixon, who scares you, in spite of knowing that all the others would agree with him, and in spite of being scared scared of me.”
Again he gave that little jerk of the head that passed for a laugh.
“You’ve always been scared of me, haven’t you? But you’ve always been angry with me, too. Angry angry. Ever since I took your little playmates away from you. And this time your anger won out. That’s good. That’s good good. I don’t care if you love me or hate me. What I care about is that when I’m gone my son will be a strong Headman, who’ll build up Edenheart and New Earth until the time comes to cross the water again and take back Old Ground.”
He swallowed to push back a cough. He knew that once he started, he couldn’t stop.
“So listen to me carefully, Greenstone. I approve of your choice. I like its boldness. I even quite like the look of the girl herself: She’s no fool, I can see that, and there’s a bit of metal in her, too.”
“Thank you, Dad, I—”
“But any fool can make a choice. The hard part is defending it afterward. It’s like you’ve chosen to push the white queen right out into the middle of the board. Good. Fine. But now you have to keep playing, you have to use that queen somehow to advance your game, with all the black pieces trying to cut you down. In the end there are just two possibilities: You’ll either win or you’ll lose. And you know as well as I do that if you lose the game you’ll lose your life as well—you and the girl both.”
I knew he was right. I’d known since the beginning the risk I was taking. But back in Veeklehouse, where everyone looked at me as if I’d come down from Earth, I’d found it easy to tell myself that I’d manage somehow. Here in Edenheart, in the house I knew so well, with all its memories, and the chiefs and teachers waiting to confront me, I didn’t feel so sure. I could succeed, but I could also fail, and if I failed, not this waking, not next, but sometime in the future, they’d turn on me and . . . Well, I could almost feel the drop as it opened up beneath me, feel my skin blister in the heat. And of course Dad was right. It wouldn’t just be me but Starlight, too, Starlight who could have lived safely all her life in her little waterhill across the Pool.
“I understand, Dad. Once you start you can never stop. You’ve always said this is the price we pay for power.”
Tears began to stream down my dad’s cheeks, and for a moment I had the crazy notion that they were tears of pride or love, but of course they just came from the effort of holding in his cough.
“Go and put on a clean wrap. Most of the chiefs are here in the House, and nearly all the teachers. We are going to have a Council, and you’re going to have to defend yourself. You’ve never really played the game before, Greenstone, but this is where you start.”