“But your job—”
“Masani’s not going to fire me,” Tatian said firmly. “As for leaving—I’m going home, Warreven. I’m not sorry about that. What about you?”
Warreven laughed then, not a pleasant sound. “I have money, and I can still get at it. Tendlathe can’t block the off-world bank networks without annoying the pharmaceuticals even further.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant.” Tatian stopped, tried again. “What about the gender laws? You started this. How the hell can you back out now?”
Warreven’s gaze flickered, but 3e answered steadily enough, “I already tried fighting him, and look what happened. I don’t know how to fight the mosstaas, I don’t know if we can fight the mosstaas, and not all the wrangwys were on my side to begin with. Now they certainly won’t be, and you’d need all of us, and the Modernists and some of the mesnies to beat Tendlathe now. There’s no chance of any compromise if I’m here—Tendlathe is stupid enough, no, angry, enough, to make a martyr of me, and that would mean there’d be no way to get the laws changed. Not to mention that I have no desire to be a martyr.”
“What about Temelathe?” Tatian asked. “Are you going to let him get away with that—killing his own father, for god’s sake?”
“Do you think I have a choice?” Warreven shook 3er head. “It would be my word against his, Tatian—nobody else is going to come forward, no matter what they saw, not if it means speaking against the Most Important Man—and people will believe what they want to believe, anyway. It won’t do any good.”
“But he won’t revise the laws,” Tatian said again. “And the Modernists won’t push him on it, we saw that last night. Which still leaves people like you—the people you said you were speaking for last night, damn it—outside the system. Not quite human, you said that yourself.”
“And I don’t have a side anymore,” Warreven answered. “As you said last night.”
“Haliday, for one, and what’s-3er-name, Destany,” Tatian said. “Aren’t they your side?”
“Hal has money, too, and 3e’s in the off-world hospital,” Warreven said. “Malemayn can take care of 3im until 3e’s well enough to decide what 3e’s going to do—and Mal can take care of Destany’s case, too, for that matter.”
“Can he?”
“He’ll have to,” Warreven answered. “Do you really think it’ll do either one of them any good to have me around? It’ll be hard enough to disassociate me from the case—I doubt Mal can win it, now, though maybe he can get Destany off planet as a refugee, ask for asylum, or something.”
Ȝe shook 3er head. “I don’t want to abandon them, Destany or Haliday—especially Hal—but I can’t help them now. I can only hurt them at this point.”
“You can’t just walk away,” Tatian began, and broke off, shaking his head in turn.
“Watch me,” Warreven said. Ȝe took a deep breath. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t say how long I’d stay away.” Ȝe caught 3er hair, wound it into a loose twist, then seemed to realize what 3e was doing and released it. “But right now—I opened a door, all right; it just wasn’t the one I thought it was.” Ȝe smiled suddenly, almost whimsically. “Which I suppose is typical of Agede, when you think of it. But if there’s a door open at all, any chance not to get more people killed, then I’ve got to take it. I could maybe try to be a demagogue, lead the wrangwys in rebellion, but I didn’t exactly do it well last night. Look, Tatian, we don’t have a tradition for this, for revolution—we don’t even have a word for it, like we don’t have a word for herms, and I don’t know how to make one happen. We’ve got plenty of words for protest, for objections and obstruction and compromise, all the subtleties of ranas and presance and clan meetings and the spirits and their offetre, and I know how to do all of that. I’ve trained all my life to manipulate that system, and it’s not going to work this time. We need something new—there’s going to be a revolution, there’s going to have to be one now, because Tendlathe can’t keep this system stable forever, but I don’t know how to make it happen. Off-world, in the Concord—well, I can learn what I need there.”
Tatian said, “Will you?”
“I suppose I have to. I opened the fucking door.” Warreven made a face, reached for 3er hair again, twisting the loose strands into a solid bar. After a moment, 3e went on, in a smaller voice, “And, yes, I’m scared, Tatian. It’s not just that I don’t know what to do, or how to do it, which I don’t, but— It’s what I said, we don’t have a word for revolution or a word for herm, and I’m sup- posed to invent both of them. I’ve been a man all my life—yesterday, I was still a man. Now I’m a herm, and I don’t know what that means, except that half my own people say it’s not really human. How in all the hells can I lead anybody to anything when I don’t know what I’m asking them to become? I have to be able to offer something in place of what we’ve got.”
“You always were a herm,” Tatian said.
“Yes, but no one said it.” Warreven smiled. “As long as no one said it, it—I—didn’t exist. But now that it is said, nobody knows what should happen next. And I can’t act without knowing. I won’t.”
Tatian nodded slowly.
“And I’m sorry,” Warreven said again, “that I dragged you into it. I didn’t mean to do that. Out of everything, I didn’t mean to do that.”
Tatian looked at 3im, still in black from the night before, black hair wild, the bruises still very evident on 3er face beneath the dark bandage. He could see the shadow of the spirit in 3im, could see, too, the advocate he had run into at the courthouse. Behind 3im, light gleamed around the edges of the shutters, and he was reminded again of the people camped in the EHB court- yards. He still wasn’t sure it was right to leave them without a leader, was equally sure it was wrong for Warreven to stay if 3e didn’t know what 3e was doing. To stay was a man’s solution, in the stereotypes he had grown up with, to stay and fight. Maybe Warreven’s way, the herm’s way, to retreat to try again, would work better, this time, in this place.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You were right. That’s all there is to it, really. It didn’t work—it was the wrong time or something. But you’re still right.”
“I’ll cling to that thought,” Warreven answered, but the twist of 3er swollen mouth was almost good-humored. Tatian smiled back, and went to the media center to begin arranging his own departure.
They left for the starport in the first of the pharmaceuticals’ convoys, crammed into the cargo compartment of a six-wheeled triphibian along with a man and his two children and their lug- gage, and a trio of technicians, two off-worlders, a woman and a mem, and a fem who looked at least part Haran. There were more Harans in the other vehicles, and more families: hardly surprising, Tatian thought, shifting on his hastily packed carrycase. The companies were evacuating their most vulnerable people. Warreven had thrown a shaal over 3er head and shoulders, sat hunched in the corner of the compartment where 3e could see out the tiny viewport, but Tatian could tell from the sidelong glances that the others had recognized 3im. The father frowned, looked as though he might say something, but Tatian fixed him with a glare, and he subsided. Then one of the children tugged at his arm and he bent to listen to the question.
“—Mommy coming?”
“As soon as she can finish turning over the department,” the man answered, keeping his voice soothing with an effort.