“Sounds difficult,” I said.
“It is, but I don’t have to teach you everything there is to know about this lifestyle. To articulate the Taker vision, a
ll you really had to understand was how Takers make their living. Takers make their living by behaving as though the world belongs to them—and the Taker vision supports that behavior. There’s a lot more to the Taker lifestyle than this, but this was all you needed in order to articulate that vision.”
“Yes, I see.”
“I can be—and will be—just as selective as that when it comes to the Leavers.”
Silencing the inquisitor
Having said this, B fell silent. After a few minutes I made a mental check to see if I was supposed to be working on some question or other, but of course I wasn’t. She wasn’t in a trance or anything, just seemed to be staring vacantly into the middle distance. Soon I began fidgeting, and she slanted a look at me.
She said, “I’ve never done this before, Jared, and now that I’m right at the point of doing it, I don’t know how to begin. I know everything I want to happen, I just don’t know how to accomplish it. I know where I want to end up, I just don’t know how to get there.”
Since I didn’t really understand the problem, I couldn’t see any way to help, beyond giving her a reassuring pat on the back, which probably wouldn’t have done either one of us much good.
Finally she said, “I have an idea, but I’m not sure how you’ll take to it. I think my problem is that our relationship is inherently adversarial. I don’t mean it’s entirely adversarial, but it has an adversarial aspect to it that just won’t go away. This isn’t your fault or my fault, it’s simply what is. You were sent here to satisfy yourself and others, to ask questions you would ask and questions they would ask, so your role here, like it or not, is that of an inquisitor. ‘Like it or not’ is the right way to talk about it, I think, because you mostly don’t like it but feel you must do it anyway. You must ask for yourself, and you must ask for those others who sent you here.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What I’ve done so far has been fine for the inquisitor.” She laid a finger on our work of bricolage. “This worked perfectly well for him, didn’t it?”
I nodded.
“My trouble right now is that I can’t think of any way to fill an inquisitor’s eyes with the animist vision. I really don’t think it can be done. This means we have to take on a pair of new roles.”
I nodded again.
“I had a son once, Jared—not one of the lucky ones. He lived only a few hours, not long enough to be named, really, but privately I named him Louis, somehow a very grown-up name. I won’t be having others, for obvious reasons—or if they’re not obvious, you can work them out at your leisure. If Louis were alive, he’d be eight years old, and I’d certainly be teaching him what I now need to teach you.”
“So what are you asking?”
“I’m asking if you can turn off the inquisitor for an hour and listen to me the way Louis would.”
I told her I thought I could manage that.
“I don’t know whether I’m asking of you something easy or something hard. Probably a lot of men would find it impossible.”
“I don’t know either,” I said. “But, to be honest, it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Let me ask this, though. Are you saying that you want me not to ask any questions at all? That doesn’t sound right to me, because Louis would certainly be asking questions if he were eight years old.”
She seemed disconcerted by this, maybe even a bit irked. It couldn’t be helped, the question had to be asked.
She said, “An eight-year-old isn’t an inquisitor.”
“I know that. Give me a little credit.”
She gnawed on it for a while, then said, “Louis would ask questions.” I didn’t bother to point out that I’d just told her that. “Do you think you can ask his questions and not Fr. Lulfre’s?”
“I think I can, Shirin. Give me the benefit of a doubt.”
She shrugged an unenthusiastic agreement. After spending a few moments in thought, she looked away. “Don’t be surprised if I say things you don’t expect to hear. These are the things I have to say.”
“I understand.”
“I wish you knew sign language,” she added rather wistfully. “Barriers fall right away in sign.”
I wished I knew it too.