Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,83

No one in the past will have shared our goals or worked as hard to help us achieve them as we've done for each other. No one will know you and love you as I do. And even if you're right, and there's no future for us, I for one would rather face whatever future I do have with the memory of knowing that we had each other for a while."

"Then you are a romantic fool, just as Mother always said!"

"She said that?"

"Mother is never wrong," said Diko. "She also said that I would never have a better friend than you."

"She was right, then."

"Be my true friend, Hunahpu," said Diko. "Never speak of this to me again. Work with me, and when the time comes to go into the past, go with me. Let our marriage be the work we do together, and let our children be the future that we build. Let me come to whatever husband I do have without the memories of another husband or another lover to encumber me. Let me face my future with confidence in your friendship instead of guilt, whether it comes from denying you or accepting you. Will you do that for me?"

No, shouted Hunahpu silently. Because that isn't necessary, we don't have to do that, we can be happy now and still be happy in the future and you're wrong, completely wrong about this.

Except that if she believed that marriage or an affair would make her unhappy then it would make her unhappy, and so she was right -- for herself -- and loving him would be a bad thing -- for her. So ... did he love her or merely want to own her? Was it her happiness he cared about or satisfaction of his own needs?

"Yes," said Hunahpu. "I'll do that for you."

It was then, and only then, that she kissed him, leaned down to him and kissed him on the lips, not briefly but not with passion either. With love, simple love, a single kiss, and then she left, and left him desolate.
Chapter 8 Dark Futures
Father Talavera had listened to all the eloquent, methodical, sometimes impassioned arguments, but he had known from the start that he had to make the final decision about Colyn by himself. How many years had they listened to Colyn -- and harangued him, too -- so that all were weary of the same conversations endlessly repeated? For so many years, since the Queen first asked him to lead the examination of Colyn's claims, nothing had changed. Maldonado still seemed to regard Colyn's very existence as an affront, while Deza seemed almost infatuated with the Genovese. The others still lined up behind one or the other, or, like Talavera himself, remained neutral. Or rather, they seemed neutral. They merely wavered like grass, dancing in whatever wind was blowing. How many times had each one come to him privately and spent long minutes -- sometimes hours -- explaining their views, which always amounted to the same thing: They agreed with everybody.

I alone am truly neutral, thought Talavera. I alone am swayed by no argument whatsoever. I alone can listen to Maldonado bring forth sentences from ancient, long-forgotten writings in languages so obscure that quite possibly no one ever spoke them except the original writer himself -- I alone can listen to him and hear only the voice of a man who is determined not to allow the slightest new idea to disrupt his own perfect understanding of the world. I alone can listen to Deza eloquizing about Colyn's brilliance in finding truths so long overlooked by scholars and hear only the voice of a man who yearned to be a knight-errant from the romances, championing a cause which is noble only because he champions it.

I alone am neutral, thought Talavera, because I alone understand the utter stupidity of the entire conversation. Which of these ancients they all quote with such certainty was lifted by the hand of God to see the Earth from an appropriate vantage point? Which of them was given calipers by the hand of God to make an accurate measurement of the diameter of the Earth? No one knew anything. The only serious attempt at measurement, more than a thousand years before, could have been disastrously flawed by the tiniest inconsistency in the original observations. All the argument in the world could not change the fact that if you build the foundation of your logic upon guesswork, then your conclusions will be