Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,139

trying to tame him. I'm only trying to show him a better, truer way to fulfill his own dream. When he understands that, those eyes win look at me with kindness, not with fury.
* * *

It was a long trip down the mountain, not least because some of the men seem disposed to take out their anger on the girl, Chipa. Cristoforo was caught up in his own thoughts when he became aware that Pedro was doing his best to shield the girl from the shoving and curses of Arana and Gutierrez. "Leave her alone," Cristoforo said.

Pedro looked at him with gratitude, and the girl, too.

"She's not a slave," said Cristoforo. "Nor is she a soldier. She helps us of her own free will, so that we'll teach her about Christ."

"She's a heathen witch, just like that other one!" retorted Arana.

"You forget yourself," said Cristoforo.

Sullenly Arana bowed his head in acknowledgment of Cristoforo's superior rank.

"If Pinzyn doesn't return, we'll need the help of the natives to build another ship. Without this girl, we'd be back to trying to talk to them with signs and grunts and gestures."

"Your page is learning their babble," said Arana.

"My page has learned a few dozen words," said Cristoforo.

"If anything happened to the girl," said Arana, "we could always come back up here and take that black whore and make her interpret for us."

Chipa spoke up in fury. "She would never obey you."

Arana laughed. "Oh, by the time we were through with her, she'd obey, all right!" His laugh got darker, uglier. "And it'd be good for her, too, to learn her place in the world."

Cristoforo heard Arana's words and they made him uncomfortable. A part of him agreed completely with Arana's sentiments. But another part of him couldn't help but remember what Sees-in-the-Dark had said. Until he saw the natives as equals ...

The thought made him shudder. These savages, his equals? If God meant them to be his equals, he would have let them be born as Christians. Yet there was no denying that Chipa was as smart and good-hearted as any Christian girl. She wanted to be taught the word of Christ, and to be baptized.

Teach her, baptize her, put her in a fine gown, and she would still be brown-skinned and ugly. Might as well put a monkey in a dress. Sees-in-the-Dark was denying nature, to think it could be otherwise. Obviously she was the devil's last-ditch effort to stop him, to distract him from his mission. Just as the devil had led Pinzyn to sail the Pinta away.

It was near dark when he returned to the half-completed stockade where the Spanish were encamped. He could hear the sound of laughter and revelry in the camp, and was prepared to be angry about the lack of discipline, until he realized why. There, standing beside a large fire, regaling the gathered seamen with some tale or other, was Martin Alonzo Pinzyn. He had come back.

As Cristoforo strode across the open area between the gate of the stockade and the fire, the men around Pinzyn became aware of him, and fell silent, watching. Pinzyn, too, watched Cristoforo's approach. When he was near enough for them to speak without shouting, Pinzyn began his excuses.

"Captain-General, you can't imagine my dismay when I lost you in the fog coming away from Colba."

Such a lie, thought Cristoforo. The Pinta still was clearly visible after the coastal fog dissipated.

"But I thought, why not explore while we're separated? We stopped at the island of Babeque, where the Colbanos said we'd find gold, but there wasn't a bit of it there. But east of here, along the coast of this island, there were vast quantities of it. For a little strip of ribbon they gave me gold pieces the size of two fingers, and sometimes as large as my hand!"

He held up his large, strong, callused hand.

Cristoforo still did not answer, though now he stood not five feet from the captain of the Pinta. It was Segovia who said, "Of course you will give a full accounting of all this gold and add it to the common treasury."

Pinzyn turned red. "What do you accuse me of, Segovia?" he demanded.

He might accuse you of treason, thought Cristoforo. Certainly of mutiny. Why did you turn back? Because you couldn't make any better headway against the east wind than I did? Or because you realized that when you returned to Spain without me, there would be questions that you couldn't answer? So not only are