Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,127

leaders might have been able to unite Haiti in some kind of effective resistance. But that would not happen this time. Guacanagari's ambition would still be his guiding principle, but it would not have the same devastating effect. For Guacanagari would only be a friend to the Spanish when they seemed strong. As soon as they seemed weak, he would be their deadliest enemy. Diko knew enough not to trust his word even for a moment. But he was still useful, because he was predictable to one who understood his hunger for glory.

Diko squatted down to take the yoke from her shoulders. Others held up the water baskets and began to pour them off into other vessels.

"Guacanagari, listen to a woman of Ankuash?" said Baiku skeptically. He was taking water into three pots. Little Inoxtla had cut himself badly in a fall, and Baiku was preparing a poultice, a tea, and a steam for him.

One of the younger women immediately rushed to Diko's defense. "He must believe Sees-in-the-Dark! All her words come true."

As always, Diko denied her supposed prophetic gifts, though it had been her intimate knowledge of the future that kept her from living as a slave or the cacique's fifth wife. "It is Putukam who sees true visions, and Baiku who heals. I haul water."

The others fell silent, for none of them had ever understood why Diko would say something which was so obviously false. Who ever heard of a person who refused to admit what she did well? Yet she was the strongest, tallest, wisest, and holiest person they had ever seen or heard of, and so if she said this, then there must be some meaning in it, though it could not be taken at face value, of course.

Think what you want, Diko said silently. But I know that the day has now come when I will have no more knowledge of the future than you have, because it will not be the future that I remembered.

"And what of the Silent Man?" she asked.

"Oh, they say he is still in his boat made of water and air, watching."

Another added, "They say these white people can't see him at all. Are they blind?"

"They don't know how to watch things," said Diko. "They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see. The Tainos down on the coast know how to see his boat made of water and air, because they saw him make it and put it into the water. They expect to see it. But the white men have never seen it before, so their eyes don't know how to find it."

"Still they're very stupid not to see," said Goala, a teenage boy freshly into his manhood.

"You are very bold," said Diko. "I'd be afraid to be your enemy."

Goala preened.

"But I'd be even more afraid to be your friend in battle. You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you, and your friend will die."

Goala went silent, while the others laughed.

"You haven't seen the boat made of water and air," said Diko. "So you don't know how hard or easy it is to see it."

"I want to see it," said Goala quietly.

"It will do you no good to see it," said Diko, "because no one in the world has the power to make one like it, and no one will have such power for more than four hundred years." Unless technology moved even faster in this new history. With luck, this time technology would not outstrip the ability of human beings to understand it, to control it, to dean up after it.

"You make no sense at all," said Goala.

The others gasped -- only a man so young would speak so disrespectfully to Sees-in-the-Dark.

"Goala is thinking," said Diko, "that it is the thing that will only be seen once in five hundred years that a man should go and see. But I tell you that it is only the thing that a man can learn from and use to help his tribe and his family that is worth going to see. The man who sees the boat made of water and air has a story that his children will not believe. But the man who learns how to make a great wooden canoe like the ones the Spaniards sail in can cross oceans with heavy cargo and many passengers. It is the Spaniard's canoes you