I know.
Then why didn't you?the collective asked, even though the answer floated through their shared mind.
Perhaps they just needed him to say it.
I had to do that,Number One thought. And you know why.
And you know why you didn't have to, the collective responded.There was no immediate need to disclose. You could've waited for after the extraction, and by then, she might have committed to you, and the disclosure would have arrived in a context that allowed for adjustment.
I didn't want to manipulate her into loving me, Number One thought.That would have been deceitful.
It's not about manipulation,the collective rebutted. You would have just given her the chance to develop feelings for the part of you she could understand first. It would have been easier for her and for you.
How can you claim that's not manipulation?Number One thought. She would have fallen in love with a lie, and you would have told her the truth only after she was so deep that she couldn't swim ashore.
The collective couldn't refute his logic, but it wasn't happy with him. She might have accepted us. People adapt.
That was a simplistic assessment that didn't befit their collective intelligence, and Number One let the others feel what he thought about that.Sullha might have adapted and compromised because to do otherwise would have been too painful for her at that stage, but she would have felt deceived.The trust between us would have been broken. I did not want to build a relationship with her on a foundation of lies.
So, you built nothing instead, Number Eight thought.Worse, you destroyed what little had been there.
Number One absorbed the statement and did not respond immediately because the words had delivered a painful blow. He shifted his focus to the empty road ahead and the headlights that were cutting two cones of light through the deepening dark.
I can start fresh and build our relationship on a foundation of honesty, he thought finally.And if all she can give me is friendship, it's still more than what I would have had with a lie.
The friendship was already there, the collective thought.And you managed to preserve it. Perhaps it was the right thing to do after all.
For the first time since they had left the enclosure, there was some sympathy in the way the others considered his action. Not agreement, because they did not agree with the timing of what he'd done, but recognition that the cost of his choice had been paid by him, and that the part of him that was still Yaaf was the part that had paid it.
She is brave, Number Four said.
And kind, Number Three added.The friendship she offered was an act of generosity. She did not want to wound you, so she found a category of relationship that allowed her to continue being warm to you without requiring her to feel something she couldn't. Not right now, anyway.
Sullha would still act friendly with him. She would still talk to him about books and her son, and she would still help him compile the list of women to extract. But she would not touch him again, not the way she had touched him on the bench, with her thigh pressed against his and her hand resting on top of his. The warmth of that moment had spread through him to the collective, like the first green shoot pushing through hard soil. But that shoot had been pulled up by the roots and discarded like a weed.
Feeling the pain of his loss, the collective wrapped itself around him, absorbing his grief and helping him compartmentalize it.
Number Seven turned the Humvee onto a service track that led away from the main road. It climbed the steep ridge and ended at a flat patch of dirt that was used by the maintenance crews servicing the water tower and other facilities. The headlights illuminated the bare ground and a few twisted trees, and beyond them, the dark expanse of the ocean was just visible through a gap in the vegetation.
Number Seven cut the engine, and in the silence that followed, the sound of the wind moving through the shrubs seemed to intensify.
Number One opened the door and stepped out.
He walked twenty paces from the vehicle and stopped at the edge of the flat ground. The wind was stronger up here, and he could taste the salt in it.
He pressed and held the receiver to his ear for three seconds.
A soft click. Then the faint hum of the connection establishing, and then Onegus's voice sounding clear and immediate as if the man were standing beside him on the ridge.
"Good evening, Number One."
"Good morning. I'm calling to submit our report."
"Go ahead."
"It was done. Kolhood, Hocken, and Hazok are no more."
There was a pause on the other end, and then a letting out of a breath. "Any problem with the execution?"
