Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,91

the community. When it matters enough, people sometimes even die, willingly, for the good of the community that they feel themselves to be a part of. As well as a thousand sacrifices short of death. And why? Why do we give up our individual desires, leave them unfulfilled, or work hard at tasks we hate or fear because others need us to do them? Why did you go through such pain to bear me and Acho? Why did you give up all the time it took to take care of us?"

Tagiri looked at her daughter. "I don't know, but as I listen to you, I begin to think that perhaps it was worth it. Because you know things that I don't know. I wanted to create someone different from myself, better than myself, and willingly gave up part of my life to do it. And here you are. And you're saying that that's what the people of our time will be to the people of the new history we create. That we will sacrifice to create their history, as parents sacrifice to create healthy, happy children."

"Yes, Mother," said Diko. "Manjam is wrong. The people who sent that vision to Columbus did exist. They were the parents of our age; we are their children. And now we will be the parents to another age."

"Which just goes to show," said Tagiri, "that one can always find language to make the most terrible things sound noble and beautiful, so you can live with doing them."

Diko looked at Tagiri in silence for a long moment. Then she threw the electric torch to the ground at her mother's feet and walked away into the night.
* * *

Isabella found herself dreading the meeting with Talavera. It would be about Cristobal Colyn, of course. It must mean that he had reached a conclusion. "It's foolish of me, don't you think?" Isabella said to Lady Felicia. "Yet I am as worried about his verdict as if I myself were on trial."

Lady Felicia murmured something noncommittal.

"Perhaps I am on trial."

"What court on Earth can try a queen, Your Majesty?" asked Lady Felicia.

"That is my point," said Isabella. "I felt, when Cristobal spoke that first day in court, so many years ago, that the Holy Mother was offering me something very sweet and fine, a fruit from her own garden, a berry from her own vine."

"He is a fascinating man, Your Majesty."

"Not him, though I do think him a sweet and fervent fellow." One thing Isabella would never do was leave the impression with anyone that she looked on any man but her husband with anything approaching desire. "No, I mean that the Queen of Heaven was giving me the chance to open a vast door that had long been closed." She sighed. "But the power even of queens is not infinite. I had no ships to spare, and the cost of saying yes on the spot would have been too great. Now Talavera has decided, and I fear that he is about to close a door whose key will only be given me that one time. Now it will pass into another hand, and I will regret it forever."

"Heaven cannot condemn Your Majesty for failing to do what was not within your power to do," said Lady Felicia.

"I'm not worried at this moment about the condemnation of heaven. That's between me and my confessors."

"Oh, Your Majesty, I was not saying that you face any kind of condemnation from--"

"No no, Lady Felicia, don't worry, I didn't take your remark as anything but the kindest reassurance."

Felicia, still flustered, got up to answer the soft knock on the door. It was Father Talavera.

"Would you wait by the door, Lady Felicia?" asked Isabella.

Talavera bowed over her hand. "Your Majesty, I am about to ask Father Maldonado to write the verdict."

The worst possible outcome. She heard the door of heaven clang shut against her. "Why today of all days?" she asked him. "You've taken all these years over this Colyn fellow, and today it's suddenly an emergency that must be decided at once?"

"I think it is," he said.

"And why is that?"

"Because victory in Granada is near."

"Oh, has God spoken to you about this?"

"You feel it too. Not God, of course, but His Majesty the King. There is new energy in him. He is making the final push, and he knows that it will succeed. This next summer. By the end of 1491, all of Spain will be free of the Moor."

"And this means that