Pastwatch

by Orson Scott Card

  “A new name,” said Colón. “And a new life.” And then, quietly, so only she could hear: “This woman you call Sees-in-the-Dark—can you lead me to her?”

  “Yes,” said Chipa. Then she added something that perhaps Sees-in-the-Dark didn’t mean for her to say. “She told me once that she gave up her family and the man she loved so that she could meet you.”

  “Many people have given up many things,” said Colón. “But now would you be willing to interpret for us? I need to have Guacanagarí’s help in building shelters for my men, now that our ships have been burnt. And I need him to send a messenger with a letter for the captain of my third ship, asking him to come here to find us and carry us home. Will you go back to Spain with us?”

  Sees-in-the-Dark had said nothing about going to Spain. In fact, she had said that the white men would never leave Haiti. But she decided this was not a good time to mention this particular prophecy. “If you go there,” she said, “I’ll go with you.”

  Pedro de Salcedo was seventeen years old. He might be page to the Captain-General of the fleet, but this never made him feel superior to the common seamen or the ship’s boys. No, what made him feel superior was the way that these men and boys lusted after these ugly Indian women. He could hear them talking sometimes—though they had learned not to try to engage him in these conversations. Apparently they couldn’t get over the fact that the Indian women were about naked.

  Not the new one, though. Chipa. She wore clothing, and spoke Spanish. Everyone else was amazed by this, but not Pedro de Salcedo. Clothing and Spanish were to be expected from civilized people. And she was certainly civilized, even if she wasn’t yet a Christian.

  Indeed, she wasn’t a Christian at all, as far as Pedro could tell. He had heard all her words to the Captain-General, of course, but when he was assigned to provide her with safe quarters, he took the opportunity to converse with her. He quickly found that she hadn’t the faintest idea who Christ was, and her idea of Christian doctrine was pathetic at best. But then, she did say that this mystical Sees-in-the-Dark had promised that Colón would teach her about Christ.

  Sees-in-the-Dark. What kind of name was that? And how did it happen that an Indian woman had received a prophecy telling of Colón and Christ? Such a vision must have come from God—but to a woman? And not a Christian woman, either.

  Though, come to think of it, God spoke to Moses, too, and he was a Jew. That was back when Jews were still the chosen people instead of being the filthy vile thieving Christ-killing scum of the earth, but still, it made you think.

  Pedro was thinking about a lot of things. Anything to keep him from thinking about Chipa. Because those thoughts were the ones that disturbed him. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t just as low and vulgar as the seamen and the ship’s boys, so hungry for venery that even these Indian women could become attractive to him. But it wasn’t that, not really. He didn’t particularly lust after Chipa. He could still see that she was ugly, and for heaven’s sake, she didn’t even have a woman’s shape, she was a child, what kind of pervert would he have to be to lust after her? Yet he also saw something in her voice, her face, that made her beautiful to him.

  What was it? Her shyness? The obvious pride she felt when she said difficult sentences in Spanish? Her eager questions about his clothing, his weapons, the other members of the expedition? Those sweet little gestures she made when she was embarrassed at making a mistake? The sheer translucence of her face, as if a light shone through from beneath the skin? No, that was impossible, she didn’t really glow. It was an illusion. I’ve been lonely too long.

  Yet he found that the only part of his duties that he looked forward to these days was tending to Chipa, watching over her, conversing with her. He lingered with her as long as possible, and sometimes neglected his other tasks. Not that he meant to; he simply forgot anything but her when he was with her. And it was useful for him to spend time with her, wasn’t it? She was teaching him the Taino language, too. If he learned it well, then there would be two interpreters, not just one. That would be good, wouldn’t it?

  He was also teaching her the alphabet. She seemed to like that most of all, and she was very clever about it. Pedro couldn’t think of why she wanted it so much, since there was nothing in a woman’s life that made reading necessary. But if it amused her and helped her understand Spanish better, why not?

  So Pedro was making letters in the dirt, and Chipa was naming them, when Diego Bermúdez came looking for him. “The boss wants you,” he said. At twelve, the boy had no sense of propriety. “And the girl. He’s going on an expedition.”

  “Where?” asked Pedro.

  “To the moon,” said Diego. “We’ve been everywhere else.”

  “He’s going to the mountain,” said Chipa. “To meet Sees-in-the-Dark.”

  Pedro looked at her in consternation. “How would you know that?”

  “Because Sees-in-the-Dark said he would come to her.”

  More of that mystical claptrap. What was Sees-in-the-Dark, anyway, a witch? Pedro could hardly wait to meet her. But he’d have his rosary triple-wrapped around his wrist and hold the cross in his hand the whole time. No sense taking chances.

  Chipa must have done well, Diko decided, for runners had been coming up the mountain all morning, telling of the coming of the white men. The most annoying messages were from Guacanagarí, full of half-veiled threats about any attempt by an obscure mountain village like Ankuash daring to interfere with the great cacique’s plans. Poor Guacanagarí—in the prior version of history, he had also had the illusion that he was in control of relations with the Spanish. The result was that he ended up being a quisling, betraying other Indie leaders until he, too, was destroyed. Not that he was any stupider than others who have fooled themselves into thinking that they’ve got the tiger under control just because they’re holding on to its tail.

  It was midafternoon when Cristoforo himself came into the clearing. But Diko was not outside to meet him. She listened to the noise from inside her house, waiting.

  Nugkui made a great show of greeting the great white cacique, and Cristoforo for his part was gracious. Diko listened with pleasure at the confidence in Chipa’s voice. She had taken to her role and did it well. Diko had clear memories of Chipa’s death in the other history. By then she was in her twenties, and her children were murdered in front of her before she was raped to death. She would never know that horror now. It gave Diko confidence, as she waited in her house.

  The preliminaries ended, Cristoforo was now asking for Sees-in-the-Dark. Nugkui of course warned him that it was a waste of time talking to the black giant, but this only intrigued Cristoforo all the more, as Diko had expected. Soon he was in front of her door, and Chipa ducked inside. “Can he come in?” she asked in Taino.

  “You’re doing well, my niece,” said Diko. She and Chipa had spoken only in Spanish for so long that it felt odd to Diko to revert to the local language with her. But it was necessary, for the moment, at least, if Cristoforo was not to understand what they said to each other.

  Chipa smiled at that, and ducked her head. “He brought his page with him. He’s very tall and fine and he likes me.”

  “He’d better not like you too well,” said Diko. “You’re not a woman yet.”

  “But he’s a man,” said Chipa, with a laugh. “Should I let them in?”

  “Who is with Cristoforo?”

  “All the big-house people,” said Chipa. “Segovia, Arana, Gutierrez, Escobedo. Even Torres.” She giggled again. “Did you know that they brought him along to be an interpreter? He doesn’t speak a word of Taino.”

  He didn’t speak Mandarin either, or Japanese or Cantonese or Hindi or Malay or any of the other languages he would have needed if Cristoforo had actually reached the Far East as he intended. The poor myopic Europeans had sent Torres because he could read Hebrew and Aramaic, which they considered to be the matrices of all language.

  “Let the Captain-General come in,” said Diko. “
And you can bring in your page, too. Pedro de Salcedo?”

  Chipa did not seem surprised that Diko knew the name of her page. “Thank you,” she said, and then stepped outside to bring in the guests.

  Diko could not help feeling nervous—no, why quibble? She was terrified. To finally meet him, the man who had consumed her life. And the scene they would play would be one that had never existed before in any history. She was so used to knowing what he would say before he said it. What would it be like, now that he had the capacity to surprise her?

  No matter. She had a far greater ability to surprise him, and she used it immediately, speaking to him first in Genovese. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Cristoforo.”

  Even in the darkness inside her house, Diko could see how his face flushed at her lack of respect. Yet he had the good grace not to insist that she call him by his titles. Instead, he concentrated on the real question. “How is it that you speak the language of my family?”

  She answered in Portuguese. “Would this be the language of your family? This is how your wife spoke, before she died, and your older son still thinks in Portuguese. Did you know that? Or have you spoken to him often enough to know what he thinks about anything?”

  Cristoforo was angry and frightened. Just what she was hoping for. “You know things that no one knows.” He was not speaking of family details, of course.

  “Kingdoms will fall at your feet,” she said, imitating as much as possible even the intonation of the voice in Cristoforo’s vision from the interveners. “And millions whose lives are saved will call you blessed.”

  “We don’t need an interpreter, do we,” said Cristoforo.

  “Shall we let the children go?” said Diko.

  Cristoforo murmured to Chipa and Pedro. Pedro got up at once and went to the door, but Chipa didn’t move.

  “Chipa is not your servant,” Diko pointed out. “But I will ask her to leave.” In Taino she said, “I want the Captain-General to speak about things that he won’t want anyone else to hear. Would you go outside?”

  Chipa got up at once and headed for the door. Diko noticed with pleasure that Pedro held the flap open for her. The boy was already thinking of her, not just as a human, but as a lady. It was a breakthrough, even if no one was aware of it yet.

  They were alone.

  “How do you come to know these things?” asked Cristoforo at once. “These promises—that kingdoms would fall at my feet, that—”

  “I know them,” said Diko, “because I came here by the same power that first gave those words to you.” Let him interpret that how he would—later, when he understood more, she would remind him that she hadn’t lied to him.

  She pulled a small solar-powered lantern from one of her bags and set it between them. When she switched it on, he shielded his eyes. His fingers also formed a cross. “It isn’t witchcraft,” she said. “It’s a tool made by my people, of another place, where you could never voyage in all your traveling. But like any tool, it will someday wear out, and I won’t know how to make another.”

  He was listening, but as his eyes adjusted, he was also looking at her. “You’re as dark as a Moor.”

  “I am an African,” she said. “Not a Moor, but from farther south.”

  “How did you come here, then?”

  “Do you think you’re the only voyager? Do you think you’re the only one who can be sent to faraway lands to save the souls of the heathen?”

  He rose to his feet. “I can see that after all my struggles, I have only now begun to face opposition. Did God send me to the Indies only to show me a Negress with a magic lamp?”

  “This is not India,” said Diko. “Or Cathay, or Cipangu. Those lie far, far to the west. This is another land entirely.”

  “You quote the words spoken to me by God himself, and then you tell me that God was wrong?”

  “If you think back carefully, you will remember that he never said Cathay or Cipangu or India or any other such name,” said Diko.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I saw you kneeling on the beach, and heard you take your oath in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  “Then why didn’t I see you? If I could see the Holy Trinity, why were you invisible?”

  “You dream of a great victory for Christianity,” said Diko, ignoring his question because she couldn’t think of an answer that would be comprehensible to him. “The liberation of Constantinople.”

  “Only as a step along the way to freeing Jerusalem,” said Cristoforo.

  “But I tell you that here, in this place, there are millions of souls who would accept Christianity if only you offer it to them peacefully, lovingly.”

  “How else would I offer it?”

  “How else? Already you have written in your logbooks about how these people could be made to work. Already you talk about enslaving them.”

  He looked at her piercingly. “Who showed you my log?”

  “You are not yet fit to teach these people Christianity, Cristoforo, because you are not yet a Christian.”

  He reached back his hand to strike at her. It surprised her, because he was not a violent man.

  “Oh, will hitting me prove how Christian you are? Yes, I remember all the stories about how Jesus whipped Mary Magdelene. And the beatings he gave to Mary and Martha.”

  “I didn’t hit you,” he said.

  “But it was your first desire, wasn’t it?” she said. “Why? You are the most patient of men. You let those priests badger you and torment you for years, and you never lost your temper with them. Yet with me, you felt free to lash out. Why is that, Cristoforo?”

  He looked at her, not answering.

  “I’ll tell you why. Because to you I’m not a human being, I’m a dog, less than a dog, because you would not beat a dog, would you? Just like the Portuguese, when you see a black woman you see a slave. And these brown people—you can teach them the gospel of Christ and baptize them, but that doesn’t stop you from wanting to make slaves of them and steal their gold from them.”

  “You can teach a dog to walk on its hind legs, but that doesn’t make it a man.”

  “Oh, that’s a clever bit of wisdom. That’s just the kind of argument that rich men make about men like your father. Oh, he can dress in fine clothing, but he’s still a country bumpkin, not worth treating with respect.”

  Cristoforo cried out in rage. “How dare you speak of my father that way!”

  “I tell you that as long as you treat these people even worse than the rich men of Genova treated your father, you will never be pleasing to God.”

  The flap of the door opened wide, and Pedro and Escobedo stuck their heads into the house. “You cried out, my lord!” said Escobedo.

  “I’m leaving,” said Cristoforo.

  He ducked and walked through the door. She turned off her lamp and followed him out into the afternoon light. All of Ankuash was gathered around, and the Spaniards all had their hands on their sword hilts. When they saw her—so tall, so black—they gasped, and some of the swords began to rise out of their sheaths. But Cristoforo waved the weapons back into place. “We’re going,” he announced. “There’s nothing for us here.”

  “I know where the gold is!” cried Diko in Spanish. As she expected, it brought her the complete attention of all the white men. “It doesn’t come from this island. It comes from farther west. I know where it is. I can take you there. I can show you so much gold that stories of it will be told forever.”

  It wasn’t Cristoforo, but Segovia, the Royal Inspector, who answered her. “Then show us, woman. Take us there.”

  “Take you there? Using what boat?”

  The Spaniards remained silent.

  “Even when Pinzón returns, he won’t be able to take you back to Spain,” she said.

  They looked at each other in consternation. How did this woman know so much?

  “Colón,” she said. “Do you know when I will show you that gold?”

  He
was with the other white men now, as he turned to face her. “When is that?”

  “When you love Christ more than gold,” Diko answered.

  “I already do,” said Cristoforo.

  “I will know when you love Christ more than gold,” said Diko. She pointed to the villagers. “It will be when you look at these and see, not slaves, not servants, not strangers, not enemies, but brothers and sisters, your equals in the eyes of God. But until you learn that humility, Cristóbal Colón, you will find nothing but one calamity after another.”

  “Devil,” said Segovia. Most of the Spaniards crossed themselves.

  “I do not curse you,” she said. “I bless you. Whatever evil comes upon you comes as a punishment from God, because you looked at his children and saw only slaves. Jesus warned you: Whoever harms one of these little ones, it would be better for him to tie a millstone around his neck and throw himself into the sea.”

  “Even the devil can quote scripture,” said Segovia. But his voice didn’t sound very confident.

  “Remember this, Cristoforo,” Diko said. “When all is lost, when your enemies have brought you down to the depths of despair, come to me in humility and I will help you do the work of God in this place.”

  “God will help me do the work of God,” said Cristoforo. “I need no heathen witch when I have him on my side.”

  “He will not be on your side until you have asked these people to forgive you for thinking that they were savages.” She turned her back on him and went back into her house.

  Outside, she could hear the Spaniards shouting at each other for a few moments. Some of them wanted to seize her and put her to death on the spot. But Cristoforo knew better. Angry as he was, he knew that she had seen things that only God and he had known.

  Besides, the Spanish were outnumbered. Cristoforo was nothing if not prudent. You don’t commit to battle until you know that you’ll win—that was his philosophy.

  When they were gone, Diko emerged again from her house. Nugkui was livid. “How dare you make these white men so angry? Now they’ll be friends with Guacanagarí and never visit us again!”