love you’. And yet of what moment they are when they call attention to that which is beyond words, older than words and deeper than words, which no words, in any language, can express.
One evening Brenner was lying on the height of the cliff, as was his wont. In the distance was the village of the Pons. Near him, also recumbent, was the sleek female. On this evening, for no reason he clearly understood, he felt the isolation of his being, how alone, in a way, he was. She was there, of course, but she was only an animal. Brenner looked to the village. How he longed to speak to her of what had occurred there, how he longed to tell someone, how he wanted to express so many things she could not comprehend. He wanted to share his grief, his history, the story of his office. He wanted someone to understand what he had been, and what he now was. He wanted someone to understand that he was not a mere beast. He wanted someone to whom he might tell the secrets he knew. He looked over to the female. Her jaws opened, revealing the white fangs, the long, rough tongue, and she yawned, and blinked, sleepily. Brenner turned away, angrily. I am alone, thought Brenner. I am alone! And he was angry, for a moment, selfishly, irrationally, with Rodriguez, for having left him. He might have continued to bear the burdens of that wretched body, the pain of it, its blindness, to bear me company, thought Brenner, angrily. Then he put such thoughts from him. How unworthy they were! A wave of hatred swept over him for the female, in her simplicity, that she was what she was, that she could never understand. She could never comprehend his pain, his suffering, his sorrow. She could never understand the knowledge that was his burden. To one such as she, a simple beast, a mere animal, with no thought beyond the day, he could never make clear the intent, the meaning, of thousands of years, the fates of civilizations, the hopes and fears of a race. To one such as she he could not even make clear the intent, the meaning, of the duties which were incumbent upon him. He looked toward the village. There, as in a cradle, rested a race, a declining, perishing form of being that was his own. Was it his role to be only another shepherd of its dying days, to protect it, watching over it, in his turn, as others had in their turn, while it quietly vanished in the darkness of a vast forest, not even noted? He felt great sorrow.
The female rose to a sitting position.
How Brenner then hated her!
You do not understand me, he thought. You cannot understand anything. You are stupid! You understand nothing!
He looked up at her, she sitting there, from where he lay. She had her large, broad head lifted, as though she might be regarding the stars. The wind moved gently in her fur, making tiny ripples in it.
How is it you dare to lift your head in such a way, Brenner thought, as though you were regarding the stars.
I hate “you, he thought.
But you are very beautiful, he thought.
Angrily he stood up. He looked to the village. Then, in anger, in frustration, in loneliness, in desperation, to himself, to the female, to the stars, to the forest, to the moonless sky, he cried out, “I am the father!”
“I am the mother,” she said.
Chapter 41
“My contract was purchased by Pons,” she said. “I was brought from Company Station handcuffed, and on a chain. In the village I was kept muchly gagged, chained in a small box.”
“Probably a slave box,” said Brenner.
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Once I was brought forth to view a large cage, in which was a terrifying animal, that which I now occupy, or am. I was then taken back to my box and placed once more within it.”
“You did not know what they intended?”
“Not at that time,” she said.
“I sometimes had strange dreams,” she said. “I did not understand them.”
Brenner nodded.
“Or I thought they were dreams,” she said.
“How is that?” asked Brenner. To be sure, he himself had once experienced something like this.
“In one dream,” she said, “I dreamed that I was knelt naked before my small captors. I was on several leashes, held to the side and back. I was tightly bound. It was explained to me that I was to be the “mother.” I