Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,69

hadn't heard him laugh before, and she turned to him. "What's funny?"

"I thought when you stopped me it was because you didn't believe in me and you were being polite, with promises of meetings with Tagiri and Hassan and Kemal."

"Why would you think that, when I was saying that I thought this was important?" Diko was offended that he thought she was lying.

"Because I never before met someone who would do what you did. Stop a presentation that you thought was important."

She didn't understand.

"Diko," he said. "Most people want nothing more than to know something that people higher up don't know. To know things first. Here you had a chance to hear all of this first, and you stop it? You wait? And not only that, you promise others who are below you in the hierarchy that they can be there too?"

"That's the way it is in Pastwatch, " said Diko. "The truth will still be true tomorrow, and everybody who needs to know it has an equal claim on learning it."

"That's the way it is in Juba," Hunahpu corrected her. "Or maybe that's the way it is in Tagiri's house. But everywhere else in the world, information is a coin, and people are greedy to acquire it and careful how and where they spend it."

"Well, I guess we surprised each other," said Diko.

"Did I surprise you?"

"You're actually quite talkative," she said.

"To my friends," he said.

She accepted the compliment with a smile. His smile in return was warm and all the more valuable because it was so rare.
* * *

Santangel knew from the moment that Columbus began to speak that this was not going to be the normal courtier begging for advancement. For one thing, there was no hint of boastfulness, no swagger in the man. His face looked younger than his flowing white hair would imply, giving him an ageless, gnomic look. What captivated, though, was his manner. He spoke quietly, so that all the court had to fall silent to allow the King and Queen to hear him. And even though he looked equally at Ferdinand and Isabella, Santangel could see at once that this man knew who it was that he had to please, and it was not Ferdinand.

Ferdinand had no dreams of crusade; he worked to conquer Granada because it was Spanish soil, and his dream was of a single, united Spain. He knew it could not be achieved in a moment. He laid his plans with patience. He did not have to overwhelm Castile; it was enough to be married to Isabella, knowing that in their children the crowns would be united forever, and in the meantime he gave her great freedom of action in her kingdom as long as their military movements were under his direction alone. He showed the same patience in his war with Granada, never risking his armies in all-or-nothing pitched battles, but rather besieging, feinting, maneuvering, subverting, confusing the enemy, who knew that he meant to destroy them but could never quite find where to commit their forces to stop him. He would drive the Moors from Spain but he would do it without destroying Spain in the process.

Isabella, however, was more Christian than Spanish. She joined in the war against Granada because she wanted the land under Christian rule. She had long pressed for the purification of Spain by removing all non-Christians; it made her impatient that Ferdinand refused to let her expel the Jews until after the Moors were broken. "One infidel at a time," he said, and she consented, but she chafed under the delay, feeling the presence of any non-Christian in Spain like a stone in her shoe.

So when this Columbus began to speak of great kingdoms and empires in the east, where the name of Christ had never been spoken aloud, but lived only as a dream in the hearts of those who hungered for righteousness, Santangel knew that these words would burn like flame in Isabella's heart even as they put Ferdinand to sleep. When Columbus began to tell that these heathen nations were the special responsibility of Spain, "for we are nearer to them than any other Christian nation except Portugal, and they have set out on the longest possible voyage instead of the shortest, around Africa instead of due west into the narrow ocean that divides us from millions of souls who will flock to the banners of Christian Spain," her gaze on him became rapt, unblinking.

Santangel was not surprised when Ferdinand