Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,60

me to see it, my Felipa," he said.

She wanted to believe it, or rather wanted to believe that he actually desired it, but she knew better. "I ask only this promise: Diego will inherit everything from you."

"Everything," said Columbus.

"No other sons," she said. "No other heirs."

"I promise," he said.

Soon afterward she died. Columbus held Diego's hand as they followed her coffin to the family tomb, and as they walked, side by side, he suddenly lifted up his son and held him in his arms and said, "You are all I have left of her. I treated your mother unfairly, Diego, and you as well, and I can't promise to do any better in the future. But I made her this promise, and I make it to you. All that I ever have, all that I ever achieve, every title, every bit of property, every honor, every scrap of fame, it will be yours."

Diego heard this and remembered it. His father loved him after all. And his father had loved his mother, too. And someday, if his father became great, Diego would be great after him. He wondered if that meant that someday he would own an island, the way Grandmother did. He wondered if it meant that someday he would sail a ship. He wondered if it meant that someday he would stand before kings. He wondered if it meant that his father would leave him now and he would never see him again.

The following spring, Columbus left Portugal and crossed the border into Spain. He took Diego to the Franciscan monastery of La Rdbida, near Palos. "I was taught by Franciscan fathers in Genova," he told his son. "Learn well, become a scholar and a Christian and a gentleman. And I will be about the business of serving God and making our fortune in the process."

Columbus left him there, but he visited from time to time, and in his letters to the prior, Father Juan Perez, he never failed to mention Diego and ask after him. Many sons had less of their fathers than that, Diego knew. And a small part of his dear father was far greater than all the love and attention of many lesser men. Or so he told himself to stave off the humiliation of tears during the loneliness of those first months.

Columbus himself went on to the court of Spain, where he would present a much more carefully refined version of the same unprovable calculations that had failed in Portugal. This time, though, he would persist. Whatever Felipa had suffered, whatever Diego was suffering now, deprived of family and left among strangers in a strange place, it would all be justified. For in the end Columbus would succeed, and the triumph would be worth the price.

He would not fail, he was sure of it. Because even though he had no proof, he knew that he was right.
* * *

"I have no proof," said Hunahpu, "but I know that I'm right."

The woman on the other end of the line sounded young. Too young to be influential, surely, and yet she was the only one who had answered his message, and so he would have to speak to her as if she mattered because what other choice did he have?

"How do you know you're right without evidence?" she asked mildly.

"I didn't say I have no evidence. Just that there can never be proof of what would have happened."

"Fair enough," she answered.

"All I ask is a chance to present my evidence to Kemal."

"I can't guarantee you that," she said. "But you can come to Juba and present your evidence to me."

Come to Juba! As if he had an unlimited budget for travel, he who was on the verge of being dismissed from Pastwatch altogether. "I'm afraid that such a journey would be beyond my means," he said.

"Of course we'll pay for your travel," she said, "and you can stay here as our guest."

That startled him. How could someone so young have authority to promise him that? "Who did you say you were?"

"Diko," she said.

Now he remembered the name; why hadn't he made the connection in the first place? Though it was Kemal's project to which he was determined to contribute, it was not Kemal who had found the Intervention. "Are you the Diko who--"

"Yes," she said.

"Have you read my papers? The ones I've been posting and--"

"And which no one has paid the slightest attention to? Yes."

"And do you believe me?"

"I have questions for you," she said.

"And if