"Yes," he said, "but also much more than that, very much, much farther back than that."
She watched him.
"I don't understand," she said.
"I'm Time's soldier," he said softly. "I always have been. And it's been a long, long campaign. Now we're on the eve of the last battle."
"Now?" she asked. "Or can it still be sidestepped?"
"No," he said, bleakly. "It can't be. That's why everyone's in it who's alive today, whether they want to be or not. I'll take you to the Encyclopedia one day and show you the whole story as it's developed, down the centuries - as I've got to show it to Tam Olyn and Ajela as soon as I get back."
"Ajela?"
"Ajela's an Exotic - only about my age." He smiled. "But at the same time she's Tam's foster-mother. She's in her twenties now, and she's been taking care of him since she was sixteen. In his name she does most of the administrating of the Encyclopedia."
Chapter Fifty-six
Amanda asked nothing more, for the moment. A temporary silence closed around them and by mutual consent they turned back to each other and into the universe and language that belonged only to the two of them. Later they lay companionably quiet together on their backs, side by side, watching the last of the moonlight illuminating a far corner of the room; and Amanda spoke.
"You didn't expect it at all, then, that I'd be waiting at the spaceport when you came back?"
He shook his head.
"I couldn't expect that," he said. "It would have been like expecting to grow up to be like Eachan Khan Graeme - too much to imagine. I just thought that when I came I'd look you up, wherever you were. I only hoped…"
He ran down into silence. Amanda said nothing for a moment.
"I've had more than a year to think about you," she said.
"Yes," he smiled, ruefully. "Has it been that long? I guess it has, hasn't it? So much has been going on…"
"You don't understand."
She raised herself up on one elbow and looked down into his face.
"You remember what I tried to tell you when you were here the last time?"
"That you were like the other two Amandas," he said, sobering. "I remember."
He looked up at her.
"I'm sorry I was so slow to realize what you meant," he went on. "I do now. You were telling me that, like them, you're committed to a great many people, too many to take on the possible conflict of an extra commitment to someone like myself. I understand. I've found out how little I can escape from my own commitments. I can hardly expect you to try to escape from yours."
"If you'll listen," she said, "I might be able to tell you what I'm trying to tell you."
"I'm listening," he answered.
"What I'm trying to say is that I had a chance to think about things after you were gone. You're right, I sent you off because I didn't think there was any room in my life for anyone like you - because I thought I had to be what the second Amanda had been; and she'd sent Ian away. But with time to think about it I started to realize there was a lot there I hadn't understood about both the earlier Amandas."
He lay waiting, listening. When she paused, he merely continued to look up at her.
"One of the largest shocks was realizing," she said, almost severely, "how little I'd understood about my own Amanda, the second one, in spite of being raised by her. I told you I grew up with Ian around the house so much of the time that as a young child I thought he was a Morgan. He and Amanda were both at a good age then, his children were grown and had children of their own; and his wife, Leah, was dead. He and Amanda, eventually in their old age, had come to be what life and their own senses of duty had never let them be until then - a love match. This was all right there, under my nose, but I was too young to appreciate it. Being that young and romantic-minded, all I could see was Amanda's great renunciation of Ian when she was younger, because of her obligation to the people of the Dorsai."
She paused.
"Say something," she demanded. "You are following me, aren't you?"
"I'm following you," he said.
"All right," she went on. "Actually, when I began to see Ian and Amanda as the human beings they really were, I was finally able to see how there'd been a progression at work down the Amanda line. The First had her obligation only to her family and the people of this local community. My Amanda had hers to the Dorsai people as a whole. The obligation I carry, I think, is the same as yours, to the human race as a whole - in fact, I think that's one of the forces that's brought us together now, and would have brought us together, sooner or later, in any case."
He frowned a little. What she had last said was an obvious truth that had never occurred to him.
"I realized finally," she was going on, "that, far from our personal commitments making us walk separate roads, they probably do just the opposite. They were probably going to require us to walk the same road together, whether we wanted to do so, or not; and if that was so, then there was no problem - for me, at least."
She stopped and looked down at him with an almost sly smile he had not expected and did not understand.
"Are you still following me?" she demanded.
"No," he answered. "No, to be honest, now you've lost me completely."
"My, my," she said, "the unexpected limits to genius. What I'm telling you is, I decided that if it was indeed inevitable that the factors involved were going to bring the two of us together, then it was just a matter of time before you came back here. If you never did, I could simply forget about the whole matter."
"But if I did come back? What then?" he asked.
She became serious.
"Then," she said, "I wouldn't make the mistake I'd made the first time. I'd be waiting for you when you got here."
They stared at each other for a long moment; and then she took her weight off her elbow, lay down and curled up against him, her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He put his other arm over and around her, holding her close. For a moment or two neither of them said anything.
"The last thing in the universe I expected," he commented, at last, to the ceiling. "It took me two tries at life to realize I had to develop the ability to love, then a third try from a standing start to actually develop it. And now, when I finally have, at a time when it ought to have been far too late to do me any good - here you are."
He stopped talking and ran the palm of his hand in one long sweep down her back from the nape of her neck to the inner crook of her knee.
"Amazing," he said thoughtfully, "how you can fit yourself so well to me, like that," he said.
"It's a knack," she answered, her lips against his chest. There was a second's pause. "Except all these hairs you have here tickle my nose."
"Sorry."
"Quite all right," she said, without moving. Another momentary pause. "I won't ask you to shave them off."
"Shave them off!"
She chuckled into his chest. They held each other close for a little while.
"I shouldn't do that sort of thing," she said in a different voice, after the time had passed. "I don't know what makes me want to tease you. It's just that it's like being able to ride a wild horse everyone is afraid to get close to. But I can feel something of what it must have been like for you, all those years and all those lives. It's so strange it doesn't show on you more, now that you know who you were and what you did."
"Each time was a fresh start," he said, earnestly. "It had to be. The slate had to be wiped clean each time so there'd be no danger of what had been learned before getting in the way of the new learning. I set myself up fresh each time. That way I could be sure I'd only remember what I'd known before after I'd progressed beyond needing it in my newer life. I've been learning - learning all the way."