Part 49 (2/2)
McCajfrey and Moon
25.
rejection. He had never had a child, and they had had this discussion before.
”I am not speaking of your child,” he said. ”A mother's instinct is beyond training ... so it must be. But the years you have lost, that you call yours: no one owns time, no one can claim even an instant.”
Her heart steadied again. She could feel the heat in her face; it would have betrayed her. That shame made her blush again.
”Venerable Master . . . what I feel... is confusion.”
It was safest to say what one felt, not what one thought. More than one tradition had gone into the concept of Discipline, and the Venerable Master had a Socratic ability to pursue a lame thought to its lair and finish it off She dared to look at him; he was watching her with those bright black eyes in which no amus.e.m.e.nt twinkled. Not now.
”Confused? Do you perhaps believe that you can claim time as your own?”
”No, Venerable Master. But ...”
She tried to sort out her thoughts. She had not seen him for so long . . . what would he know, and not know, about what had happened to her? How could he help if she did not explain everything? Part of her early training as a novice had been in organizing and relating memories and events. She called this up, and found herself reciting the long years* adventures calmly, softly, as if they had been written by someone else about a stranger's life.
He listened, not interrupting even by a s.h.i.+ft of expression that might have affected her ability to recall and report what had happened. When she was through, he nodded once.
”So. I can understand your confusion, Adept Lunzie. You have been stretched and bent past the limits of your train-ing. Yet you remained the supple reed; you did not break.”
That was acceptance, and even praise. This time the warmth that rushed over her brought comfort to cramped limbs and to s.p.a.ces of her mind still sore despite Cleans- ing the Stone. She had been sure he would say she had failed, that she was unfit to be an Adept.
”Our training,” he was saying, ”did not consider the peculiar strains of those with repeated temporal displacements, even though you brought the original problem to our attention. We should have foreseen the need, but ...” he shrugged. ”We are not G.o.ds, to know all we have not yet seen. Again, you have much to teach us, as we help you regain your balance.”
”I live to learn, Venerable Master,” said Lunzie, bowing her head.
”We learn by living; we live by learning.”
She felt his hand on her head, the rare touch of approval, affirmation. When she looked up again, he was gone and she was alone in the pavilion with her thoughts.
Retraining, after that, was both more and less stress-fill than she had feared. Her pallet in the sleeping hut was comfortable enough after Ireta and she had never minded plain food. But it had been a long time since she'd actually done all the physical exercises; she spent the first days constantly sore and weary.
All the Instructors were perfectionists; there was only tme right way (they reminded her) to make each block, each feint, each strike. Only one right way to sit, to kneel, to keep the inner center balanced. She had never been as good with the martial skills of Discipline; she had always thought them less fitting for a physician. But she had never been this bad. Finally one of them put her at rest, and folded herself down nearby.
”I sense either unwillingness or great resistance of tfie body, Lunzie. Can you explain?”
”Both, I think,” Lunzie began slowly, letting her breathing slow. ”As a healer, I'm committed to preserving health; this side of Discipline always seems a failure to me . . . something we haven't done right, that let things come to conflict. And then some physician- * perhaps me, perhaps another-will have to work to heal what we break.”
”That is the unwillingness,” said the instructor. ”What fs the body's difficulty? Only that?”
26.
27.
”I'm not sure.” Lunzie started to slump, and reminded herself to balance her spine properly. ”I would like to think it is the many times in coldsleep-the long times, when I spent years in one position. Supposedly there's no aging, but there's such stiffness on waking. Perhaps it does something, some residual loss of flexibility.”
The instructor said nothing for a long moment, her eyes half-closed. Lunzie relaxed, letting her sore muscles take die most comfortable length.
”For the unwillingness, you must speak to the Venerable Master,” said the instructor finally. ”For the body's resistance, you may be right-it may be the repeated coldsleep. We will try another approach on that, for a few days, and see what comes of it.”
Another approach meant hours in hot and cold pools, swimming against artificial currents. Lunzie could feel her body stretching, loosening, then re-knitting itself into the confident, capable body she remembered, almost as if it had been a broken bone. Her conditioning included gymnastics, running, climbing, music, and finally-after several long conferences with the Venerable Master-renewed work with unarmed combat.
She would never be a figure of the Warrior, he had told her, but each aspect of Discipline had its place in every Adept, and she must accept the need to cause injury and even death, when failure meant the deaths of others.
But her dislike of conflict was not all they discussed. He had lived the years she had spent exiled in coldsleep; he remembered both her as she had been, and all she had missed of those years. He let her talk at length of her distress at the estrangements in her family, the guilt she felt for disliking some of her descendants and resenting their att.i.tudes. About the pain of losing a lover, the fear that no relations.h.i.+p could ever be sustained. She told him about meeting Sa.s.sinak, and about the strains between them.
”She's the older one, really-she even said so-” her voice broke for an instant, and he insisted on hearing the whole conversation, every detail.
”That hurt you,” he said afterwards. ”You are older, you feel, and you want the respect naturally due to elders . . .” He let that trail away in a neutral tone.
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