Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,39

and I've never said so." She smiled ruefully. "I was shaped, you see. I was given the charge to look at the past as if I were an artist. To see if it could be given a new shape. A better shape. If it can't, then I'll do nothing. But if it can ..."

Kemal was not expecting such frankness. He had come expecting to find a group of people committed to a course of madness. What he found instead was a commitment, yes, but no course, and therefore no madness. "A better shape," he said. "That really comes down to three questions, doesn't it. First is whether the shape is better or not -- a question that's impossible to answer except with the heart, but at least you have the sense not to trust your own desires. And the second question is whether it's technically possible -- whether we can devise a way to change the past. That's up to the physicists and mathematicians and engineers."

"And the third question?" asked Hassan.

"Whether you can determine exactly what change or changes must be made in order to get exactly the result you want. I mean, what are you going to do, send an abortificant back and slip it into Columbus's mother's wine?"

"No," said Tagiri. "We're trying to save lives, not murder a great man."

"Besides," said Hassan, "as you said, we don't want to stop Columbus if by doing so we'd make the world worse. It's the most impossible part of the whole problem -- how can we guess what would have happened without Columbus's discovery of America? That's something the TruSite II still can't show us. What might have happened."

Kemal looked around at the people who had gathered for this meeting, and he realized that he had been completely wrong about them. These people were even more determined than he was to avoid doing anything foolish.

"That's an interesting problem," he said.

"It's an impossible one," said Hassan. "I don't know how happy this will make you, Kemal, but you gave us our only hope."

"How did I do that?"

"Your analysis of Naog, " said Hassan. "If there's anyone who was like Columbus in all of history, it was him. He changed history by the sheer force of his will. The only reason his ark was built at all was because of his grim determination. Then because his boat carried him through the flood, he became a figure of legend. And because his father was a victim of the Derku's brief return to human sacrifice just before the flood, he told everyone who would listen that cities were evil, that human sacrifice was an unforgivable crime, that God had destroyed a world because of their sins."

"If only he had told people slavery was evil, too," said Diko.

"He told them the opposite," said Kemal. "He was a living example of how beneficial slavery could be -- because he kept with him his whole life the three slaves who built his boat for him, and everyone who came to meet the great Naog saw how his greatness depended on his ownership of these three devoted men." Turning to Hassan, Kemal added, "I don't see how Naog's example inspired you with any kind of hope."

"Because one man, alone, reshaped the world," said Hassan. "And you were able to see exactly where he turned onto the path that led to those changes. You found that moment where he stood on the shore of the new channel that was being carved into the Bab al Mandab, and he looked up at the shelf of the old coastline and realized what was going to happen."

"It was easy to find," said Kemal. "He immediately started for home, and to his wife he explained exactly what he had thought of and when he had thought of it."

"Yes, well, it was certainly clearer than anything we've found with Columbus," said Hassan. "But it gives us the hope that perhaps we can find such a moment. The event, the thought that turned him west. Diko found the moment when he determined on being a great man. But we haven't found the point where he became so unrelentingly monomaniacal about a westward voyage. Yet because of Naog, we still have hope that someday we'll find it."

"But I have found it, Father," said Diko.

Everyone turned to her, She seemed flustered. "Or at least I think I have. But it's very strange. I was working on it last night. It's so silly, isn't it? I thought -- wouldn't