Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,11

over the Earth's surface. And when the TruSite II was introduced to replace the now-aging Tempoviews, she began to be able to explore farther afield, for rudimentary translation of ancient languages was now built into the system, and she did not have to learn each language herself in order to get the gist of what was going on in the scenes she saw.

Tagiri was often drawn to the TruSite station of one of her storyseekers, a young man named Hassan. She had not bothered to observe his station much when he was using the old Tempoview, because she didn't understand any of the Antillean languages that he was laboriously reconstructing by analogy with other Carib and Arawak languages. Now, however, he had trained the TruSite to catch the main drift of the dialect of Arawak being spoken by the particular tribe he was observing.

"It's a mountain village," he explained, as soon as he saw that she was watching. "Much more temperate than the villages near the coast -- a different kind of agriculture."

"And the occasion?" she asked.

"I'm seeing the lives that were interrupted by the Spanish," he said. "This is only a few weeks before an expedition finally comes up the mountain to take them into slavery. The Spanish are getting desperate for labor down on the coast."

"The plantations are growing?"

"Not at all," said Hassan. "In fact, they're failing. But the Spanish aren't very good at keeping their Indie slaves alive."

"Do they even try?"

"Most do. The murder-for-sport attitude is here, of course, because the Spanish have absolute power and for some that power has to be tested to the limit. But by and large the priests have got control of things and they're really trying to keep the slaves from dying."

Priests in control, thought Tagiri, and yet slavery is unchallenged. But even though it always tasted freshly bitter in her mouth, she knew that there was no point in reminding Hassan of the irony of it -- wasn't he on the slavery project with her?

"The people of Ankuash are perfectly aware of what's going on. They've already figured out that they're just about the last Indies left who haven't been enslaved. They've tried to stay out of sight, lighting no fires and making sure the Spanish don't see them, but there are too many Arawaks and Caribs of the lowlands who are saving some bit of their freedom by collaborating with the Spanish. They remember Ankuash. So there'll be an expedition, soon, and they know it. You see?"

What Tagiri saw was an old man and a middle-aged woman, squatting on opposite sides of a small fire, where a jar of water was giving off steam. She smiled at the new technology -- to be able to see steam in the holographic display was amazing; she almost expected to be able to smell it.

"Tobacco water," said Hassan.

"They drink the nicotine solution?"

Hassan nodded. "I've seen this sort of thing before."

"Aren't they being careless? This doesn't look like a smokeless fire."

"The TruSite may be enhancing the smoke too much in the holo, so there may be less of it than we're seeing," said Hassan. "But smoke or not, there's no way to boil the tobacco water without fire, and at this point they're near despair. Better to risk their smoke being seen than to go another day without word from the gods."

"So they drink."

"They drink and dream," said Hassan.

"Don't they give greater trust to dreams that come of themselves?" asked Tagiri.

"They know that most dreams mean nothing. They hope that their nightmares mean nothing -- fear dreams instead of true dreams. They use the tobacco water to make the gods tell them the truth. Farther down the slopes, the Arawaks and Caribs would have offered a human sacrifice, or bled themselves the way the Mayas do. But this village has no tradition of sacrifice and never adopted it from their neighbors. They're a holdout from a different tradition, I think. Similar to some tribes in the upper Amazon. They don't need death or blood to talk to the gods."

The man and the woman both tipped pipes into the water and then sucked liquid up into their mouths as if through a drinking straw. The woman gagged; the man was apparently inured to the liquid. The woman began to look very sick, but the man made her drink more.

"The woman is Putukam -- the name means Mid dog, " said Hassan. "She's a woman noted for her visions, but she hasn't used tobacco water