Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,79

In the meantime we have scientists working on our machinebut working with confidence, because we've seen that a physical object can be pushed backward through time. When all these projects are complete -- when we have the power to travel back in time, when we know exactly what it is we're trying to accomplish, and when we know exactly how we intend to accomplish it -- then we'll make our report public and the decision whether to do it will be up to them. To everyone."
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Columbus came home after dark in the chilly night, weary to the bone -- not from the walk home, for it wasn't that far, but rather from the endless questions and answers and arguments. There were times when he longed to simply say, "Father Talavera, I've told you everything I can think of. I have no more answers. Make your report." But as the Franciscans of La Rabida had warned him, that would mean the end of his chances. Talavera's report would be devastating and thorough, and there would be no crack left through which he could escape with ships and crew and supplies for a voyage.

There were even times when Columbus wanted to seize the patient, methodical, brilliant priest and say, "Don't you know that I see exactly how impossible it looks to you? But God himself told me that I must sail west to reach the great kingdoms of the east! So my reasoning must be true, not because I have evidence, but because I have the word of God!"

Of course he never succumbed to that temptation. While Columbus hoped that if he were ever charged with heresy, God might intervene and stop the priests from having him burned, he did not want to put God to the test on this. After all, God had told him to tell no one, and so he could hardly expect miraculous intervention if his own impatience put him in danger of the fire.

So it was that the days and the weeks and the months stretched on behind him, and it seemed that the path ahead would have at least as many days and weeks and months -- why not years? -- before at last Talavera said, "Columbus seems to know more than he's telling, but we must make our report and have done with it." How many years? It made Columbus tired just to think of it. Will I be like Moses? Will I win consent to launch the fleet when I'm already so old that I will only be able to stand on the coast and watch them sail away? Will I never enter the promised land myself?

No sooner had he laid his hand upon the door than it was flung open and Beatrice greeted him with an embrace only slightly encumbered by her thick belly. "Are you mad?" asked Columbus. "It could have been anybody, and you opened the door without so much as asking who it was."

"But it was you, wasn't it?" she said, kissing him.

He reached behind him, shut the door, and then managed to extricate himself from her embrace long enough to bar it. "You're doing no good for your own reputation, letting the whole street see that you wait for me in my rooms and greet me with kisses."

"You think the whole street doesn't already know? You think even the two-year-olds don't already know that Beatrice has Cristobal's baby in her womb?"

"Then let me marry you, Beatrice," he said.

"You say that, Cristobal, only because you know that I'll say no."

He protested, but in his heart he knew that she was right. He had promised Felipa that Diego would be his only heir, and so he could hardly marry Beatrice and make her child legitimate. Beyond that, though, was the reasoning that she always used, and it was correct.

She recited it even now. "You can't be burdened with a wife and child when the court moves to Salamanca in the spring. Besides which, right now you come before the court as a gentleman who consorted with nobility and royalty in Portugal. You are the widower of a woman of high birth. But marry me, and what are you? The husband of the cousin of Genovese merchants. That does not make you a gentleman. I think the Marquise de Moya wouldn't be as taken with you then, either."

Ah, yes, his other "affair of the heart," Isabella's good friend the Marquise. In vain had he explained to Beatrice that Isabella was