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"How could you have miscalculated?"
" 'Miscalculated.' " Hans laughed softly. "That's your problem, Martin. Good
soul, but still too intellectual. You think first and see second. I see first
and think about what I see. I didn't
'miscalculate.' I slicked up."
"Did you ask Rex to kill Rosa?"
Hans jerked his head forward. "I did not. I swear I did not. But I
might have."
Martin shook his head, not comprehending.
Hans rubbed the palms of his hands together, tapped one palm with an index
finger. "Could we have done the Job with Rosa breaking the crew into little
bitty pieces?"
"She could have been dealt with."
"You're wrong. Rex broke from me because I slammed him. He didn't know who he
was, and he thought we all hated him. Rosa preached love. He came to her. She
used him. I didn't ask him to kill her. She wasn't what her people think she
was. She was a lot like me."
"Rosa didn't deserve to die."
"We wouldn't be here if she had lived."
Martin did not want to argue the point more. "When will you resign?"
"Right now. You take me someplace public, drag me on a chain if you like. I'll
give a sad speech. Old Pans never die."
"I don't understand you," Martin said.
"I understand you
," Hans said. "I only ask for one thing. I want to still be Pan when the
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report
is made."
The surviving crew of the
Dawn Treader came to the schoolroom in two groups. Martin entered with the
larger group, behind Hans, which drew looks of surprise. Ariel seemed to have
gathered her own small cluster of people. Martin saw a power center forming;
none of them knew of his talk with Hans.
Watching the way the people associated, Martin saw a swirl of sentient
particles working according to certain principles far from fixed, far from
immutable; but still, he saw the interactions, and could understand some of
their import. He had thought long hours about the conversation with Hans. When
he looked now, he saw first, thought about what he saw; he did not impose
wishes and patterns and ideals.
The new ability saddened him a little. Of all the illusions of childhood, the
one he hated to lose most was this: that humans worked according to unspoken
but noble goals, that they followed an intrinsic path to justice, that they
would resist error and move toward self-
understanding.
Two moms hung on each side of the star sphere, four in all. The ruins of
Leviathan's worlds filled the sphere, passing in slow, sad scale, majestic
rubble, caverns of nebulosity shot through with the glows of cooling chunks of
worlds, sparks of fake matter disintegration not yet complete.
"The analysis is not finished," the ship's voice said, neutral and close in
each of their ears.
"There is no precedent in memory for the use of weapons of this power and
type. Nor is there precedent for a civilization of precisely this character.
The after-effects are difficult to judge.
Destruction appears to be complete, but a definitive assessment cannot be
reached, perhaps for centuries to come."
Martin had suspected this. He had dreamed of unexpected survivals; of
civilizations encoded in tumbling boulders, hidden in the rubble, waiting for
a chance to rebuild; of staircase gods buried deep in Leviathan itself.
"The Law requires certainty. It does not require that you devote more of your
time, however.
You have made your judgment and enacted the Law."
"We want to know," Hans said.
"That is understandable," the ship's voice said.
"We need to know." Hans' face was even more drawn; he had expected something
final. In this, at least, Martin had been more realistic than he.
"Then you should decide to stay and devote more time."
"What are the choices?" Martin asked.
"Your alternative is to continue with your lives. As promised, we will either
return you to your solar system, or you may seek another system, find another
world not yet inhabited that is suited to your needs."
"That's another phase, another part of the journey," Martin said. He looked at
Hans.
Hans pulled himself closer to the sphere. "I've decided my time as Pan is
finished. I had hoped to know for sure whether we've finished the Job, but& I
don't think I should be Pan any longer. I
resign." His tone was calm, but his face seemed even more drawn, almost
wizened.
"Time to nominate," Anna Gray Wolf said. Martin saw the vortex more clearly.
The Wendys and Lost Boys of the larger group immediately conferred. Jeanette's
group seemed at a loss, left out. Martin moved toward Jeanette. She held her
ground, lips set tight.
"You're still with us, if you want to be," Martin said in an undertone. "We
can't divide now."
She shook her head. "It isn't enough for Hans to step down."
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"You can nominate from your own group," Martin said. "Come back in. I want you
to."
"You were part of the atrocity," Jeanette said, brows knit, mouth drawn up in
anger. "Coming back is like condoning what happened. We'd rather go with the
Brothers."
"Ask them," Martin said, raising his eyebrows in the direction of the
dissidents. "You can't make that decision by yourself."
Knots of activity formed, low voices rose in debate, sank again into
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