Not because the concern was unwanted. Because it was too present. The weight of Alistair's worry for him had been present since the staircase and was the most real thing in the back of the car and Tav was in it and did not want to increase it.
This was new. The management of someone else's emotional state in the service of their wellbeing rather than his own operational requirements.
He thought: caring about someone makes you manage their worry.
He thought: I have been doing this incorrectly by not telling them what's accurate. The management is not helpful. The accurate information is what they need.
"The shoulder is worse than I've said," he said.
Alistair's hand tightened fractionally.
"I know," Alistair said.
"You know."
"Yes." He held Tav's gaze with the steady quality. "The way you've been holding it. The way you've been breathing for the last hour." "I know."
"I was trying to—" Tav stopped.
"Not worry me," Alistair said.
"Yes."
"I know." His hand maintained the contact. "I know you were. And I know why." He held the look.
"But the accurate information is what I need."
Tav watched him.
"Yes," he said. "I know."
"Tell me."
"The second wound compounded the first. The bone took more of the impact than the first wound's soft tissue damage would have allowed it to. I believe there's a fracture." "I need the physician to assess it."
"Yes," Alistair said. "You do." He looked at Tav with the expression he used when he was being very precise about something. "Thank you for telling me."
"Yes," Tav said.
"Accurate information," Alistair said. "Both ways. We established this."
"Yes." He held the look. "I know."
Alistair's hand stayed where it was.
• • •
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The clinic was forty minutes outside the city.
Tav had long enough in the car to make his accounting: what had been done, what had been confirmed, what the state of the world was at 4:38 a.m. on a winter morning in a country that had woken up to a different kind of news.
The archive was public.
All eighteen nodes confirmed. Distribution active across six countries. Naomi's articles live and drawing attention that generated its own momentum — each person who read and shared generating
several more, the exponential geometry of information that had been too long suppressed and had now found an exit.
