Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,126

other criminals. "Pull," he said. "Pull."

As they rowed, Juan turned the tiller hard to port.

"What are you doing?" demanded Bartolome, when he saw that the launch was pulling away from the Santa Maria instead of heading for the bow, where the anchor was already beginning to descend.

"Do your job and I'll do mine!" shouted Juan.

"We're supposed to lie under the anchor!" answered Bartolome.

"Do you trust your life to the Genovese? We're going to the Nina for help!"

The seamen's eyes widened. This was a direct contravention of orders. It bordered on mutiny against Colyn. They still didn't resume pulling on the oars. "De la Cosa," said Pe陇a, "aren't you going to try to save the caravel?"

"It's my ship!" cried Juan. "And it's your lives! Pull on your oars and we can save everyone! Pull! Pull!"

Bartolome took up the chant, and they pulled.

Only now did Colyn trouble to notice what they were doing. Juan could hear him crying out from the quarterdeck. "Come back! What are you doing? Come and lie under the anchor!"

But Juan looked fiercely at the seamen. "If you want to live to see Spain again, then all we can hear is the splashing of the oars."

Wordlessly they rowed, hard and fast. The Nina grew larger in the distance, the Santa Maria smaller behind them.
* * *

It's amazing which events turn out to have been inevitable, thought Kemal, and which can be changed. The sailors all slept with different native women in Paradise Valley this time, so that apparently the choice of bedmates was entirely by random whim. But when it came to disobeying the only order that could have saved the Santa Mafia, Juan de la Cosa apparently made the same choice no matter what. Love is random; fear is inevitable. Too bad I'll never get a chance to publish this finding.

I'm done with telling stories. I can only act out the end of my life. Who then will decide the meaning of my death? I will, as best I can. But then it will be out of my hands. They will make of me whatever they want, if they remember me at all. The world in which I discovered a great secret of the past and became famous no longer exists. Now I'm in a world where I was never born and have no past. A lone Muslim saboteur, who somehow made his way to the New World? Who in the future will believe such a fantastic tale? Kemal imagined what the learned articles would sound like, explaining the psychosocial origin of the Lone Muslim Bomber legends from the voyage of Columbus. It brought a smile to his face, as the crew of the Santa Maria rowed for the Nina.
* * *

Diko came back to Ankuash with two full baskets of water hanging from the yoke over her shoulder. She had made the yoke herself, when it became clear to them all that no one in the village was as strong as Diko. It shamed the others, to see her carry her water so easily when for them it was so hard. So she made the yoke so she could carry twice as much, and then she insisted on hauling the water alone, so that no one else could be compared to her. She made three trips a day to the stream under the falls. It kept her strong, and she appreciated the solitude.

The others were waiting for her, of course -- the water from her large baskets would be poured out into many smaller vessels, most of them clay pots. But she could see even from a distance that there was an eagerness to them. News then.

"The white men's canoe was taken by the spirits in the water!" cried Putukam, as soon as Diko was close enough to hear. "On the very day you said!"

"So now maybe Guacanagari will believe the warning and protect his young girls." Guacanagari was the cacique over most of northwestern Haiti. He fancied sometimes that his authority extended all the way up the mountains of Cibao to Ankuash, though he had never attempted to test this theory in battle -- there was nothing this high up in Cibao that he wanted. Guacanagari's dreams of being ruler of all of Haiti had led him in the prior history to make a fatal alliance with the Spanish. If they had not had him and his people to spy for them and even fight beside them, the Spanish might not have prevailed; other Taino