108.  Reasons  

Gregor watched his peculiar patient out of the corner of his eyes,
mulling over what she had just told him.  She had freed herself from the
dragging pain-bond to Anubis, she assured him; she'd mastered the Gate.
But she seemed more disturbed than triumphant.

"What are you going to do now?" he ventured.

She was silent for a long moment, locked in the still-photo pose he had 
come to associate with deep thought.  "I am going to think very hard
about what I'm doing.  I need to know...if it's my decision to help
*him*, or someone else's influence."

"Does it matter?"

She looked at him incredulously.  "Of course it matters!  If the reason
I want to do it is that Paradisio wants me to do it--then I shouldn't.
I am *not* a servant of his."

"Why do you think you want to help him, then?"

She shook her head, a cascade of bells.  In a tense, clipped voice, she
said, "It would be comforting to think that it was out of a desire for
revenge--that simple death is not sufficient punishment for what he's
done."

"That isn't it."

"No.  That isn't it."  She ground her fists into her forehead.  As he
had many times before, Gregor found himself wondering just how
artificial those gestures were.  "It would be simpler, though.  As it
is, I can't help but wonder if they--"

"Well, how could you find out?"

She said nothing, but words scrolled rapidly across the bottom of his
screen:  /I thought possibly you would have some idea.  Silly me./  He'd
never seen her do that before; he wondered what it was meant to imply.
Not for the first time, he wished that Jones from the CompSci department 
would agree to monitor these conversations live, rather than simply 
looking at the tapes later.  The computing idiom was still foreign to him.

"What do you see as the possible reasons?  Maybe I can help you decide
among them."

"It could be mind control.  It could be something more subtle--if you
know enough about someone, I imagine you can find ways to nudge them
into doing things, just like a computer.  It could be that....It could
be that I'm just crazy.  It could be that having seen *him*, experienced
his pain, I....I don't know exactly.  It doesn't make sense to me."

"Do you have reason to believe that you might be under their control?  I
thought that the hawk you spoke to told you otherwise."

Her eye widened a little, and she touched the faint red scar on her
forehead.  "It did.  That's true.  No direct control...."  She shook her
head.  "That would be easier to understand too, if not to deal with."

"Do you care what they think of you--Martha, the other Paradisians, the
Dragon?  It's natural to be concerned with the opinions of those you see
as your peers."

That had hit home, he suspected.  "I care what happens to Martha," she
said slowly.  "I guess I do care what she thinks of me.  I don't really
understand that either, except that it seems like she's the only person
alive who might be able to shed some light on what I am, what I've done.
Aliantha's dead, and I destroyed her records.  And...she was kind to
me."  She shook her head fiercely.  "Not that that should matter, given
the circumstances."

"Do you see her as a victim of Paradisio, rather than an agent?"

"They're all victims.  Even *him*, if what she told me was true.  But
still--they've done so much harm, killed so many people, and worse--did
I tell you about the ghoul-plague in Seattle?  Why can't I be content to
let them carry out their self-destruction?"  In a whisper:  "I could
make it certain.  I don't know if Martha can cross the Void.  I can."

"But you don't want to."

"If he can't be healed, I *will* kill him.  But...."  She spoke softly,
looking not at him, he thought, but at some private vision.  "Being able
to heal him, to know that I'd done it, would be so glorious."

"That's why, then."

Her eyes snapped back to him.  "*That's* why?  Self-aggrandizement,
glory hunting?"

"No," he said carefully, "that's not quite what I mean."

"What do you mean, then?"  Her tone was almost hostile.

"I think you know, yourself; you're dodging around it, and it won't do
any good for me to tell you, but you have the answer there.  I don't
think it's necessarily such a bad one either."

She folded her arms, sat staring at him for a long minute.  "It's the
only way to save Martha, I think," she observed at last.  "And that
matters to me, God knows why.  Am I in love with her?"

"Are you?"  He was pushing the edge of her tolerance, he suspected, but
there was a sense of urgency about her, of terrible and irrevocable
decisions about to be made, that seemed to him to justify such tactics.

Jayhawk snorted.  "It seems a little silly.  When we were both human, we
were both women."

"Something else you have in common."

She was still, mulling over that.  He wondered if she were really still,
or if she just stopped updating the picture.  Perhaps it was a
meaningless question.  He still hadn't formed a clear conception of what
her life must be like.  And probably never would, he reflected.

"Could you ask Dr. Marsh to talk to me next time?  I have some questions
for him about initiation, and spirit journeys."

"I'll see if I can arrange that.--Have you decided?"

Her image on the screen vanished, replaced by the email utility she had
pre-empted; but he still heard her voice, whispering from the speakers.
"Oh, I've decided.  I only wish I understood why."

--

Copyright 1992 Mary K. Kuhner