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what? Some did. They let me into their houses; they let me sit in their
kitchens and on their porches. I showed them pictures of my wife and daughter
and they showed me the ones they’d lost . . .
    “The first time you cry that the way I did when I
lost my girls, you feel like you’ve got some disease, like there’s something so
wrong with you that you’re ashamed to be in so much pain . . . and
then you see someone else like that, letting it all out just as shamelessly, and
you realize no, it’s not a sickness. Even when I got doors slammed in my face
it still felt better, because I was doing something—for me, for all of
us.”
    I liked the way she looked when she was listening. Beatific was the word that came to mind, after some scrounging. I took
in some extra breath and headed for the finish.
    “So. My former employer got wind of what was going
on, and he dumped a few more metric tons of cash into my bank account and told
me to go stick my head in the sand somewhere and stop making us all look bad.”
I slapped my knees. “And, well, here we are.”
    It didn’t hit me until after I’d finished speaking
that the buzz—the sick, free-floating feeling in my head—had long dissipated by
the time I mentioned kitchens and porches. Now there was just the weight of
wasted years.
    “You were under no obligation to do any of those
things,” she said. “If anything, you were being obliged to do the exact
opposite.”
    “Yeah, and after a while, I did. Do the exact
opposite, that is.”
    “But still . . . ” She eased herself off
her cushion and took a few steps to the blank wall opposite the garden view.
There wasn’t anything there—not a picture, not even an especially interesting
design—but she turned herself partway towards that wall as she spoke. “We talk
all the time of what is moral or right, but you had the courage to put your
feelings of what is right into action, even at great personal risk. And I
imagine, from what you have said, that you do not consider what you did an act
of ‘courage’. It needed to be done, from your point of view.”
    She turned her face towards me. She was expecting
an answer, and I wasn’t sure I had one that would have satisfied her.
    “You got that right,” I said.” It was my turn to
sound humbled. She, on the other hand, now sounded a little more breathless and
pleading.
    “Henré—all of us, in some way, have power over
others. I tell few people that when I was first coronated for this position many
years ago I could have cared less about it. It was simply something that was
destined to happen to me whether or not I had any say in the matter.” She knelt
down next to me, and I felt myself flinch a little. “We who hold the title of
Supreme Kathaya are chosen for it because we show at an early age the signs of
being ascendant to the qualities that demand it. If others in the Achitraka,
including my predecessor, had not seen then what I could be capable of they
would not have chosen me. But all the same being chosen sped my growth into the
role.
    “You were a talented designer, and you were
surrounded with people who were willing to help make those designs reality.
Your community of peers, your family, your creations themselves . . .
You were prepared to surrender all of that for something you felt was more
right than all of it put together. I have not seen this in even five other men
in my lifetime. But I ask you this: would you be willing, somehow, to take back
up all that you surrendered? Is the only reason you cannot continue your former
work because you believe you are still at fault for what happened, even if you
do not quite know how? Do you feel you have no right to create anymore?”
    I didn’t just want to throw an answer back at her.
I deserved to take it as seriously as she did.
    “ . . . I can’t come up with an answer
to that while just sitting here. I—” I shook my head.
    It’s always a shame when you find yourself in
front of