"Estas pronta?" Diko asked her.

"Pronta mas estoy con miedo." I'm ready but I'm afraid.

Chipa's Spanish was solid. Diko had taught her for two years now -- the two of them never spoke any other language between each other anymore. And of course Chipa was already fluent in the Taino language that was the lingua franca on Haiti, even though the villagers of Ankuash often spoke a different and much older language among each other, especially on solemn or sacred occasions. Language came easily to Chipa. She would do well as an interpreter.

Interpretation was the one thing that Cristoforo had never had on his first voyage. What could be communicated by hand signs and pointing and facial expressions wasn't much. The lack of a common language had forced both the Indies and the Europeans to depend on guesswork about what the other side really meant. It made for ludicrous misunderstandings. Any syllable that sounded like khan sent Cristoforo chasing after Cathay. And at this moment, in Guacanagari's main village, Cristoforo was no doubt asking where more gold could be found; when Guacanagari pointed up the mountain and said Obao, Cristoforo would hear it as a version of Opangu. If it really had been Cipangu, the samurai would have made short work of him and his men. But the most disturbing thing was that in the prior history it never crossed Cristoforo's mind that he didn't have the right to go straight to any gold mine he might find on Haiti and take possession of it.

She remembered what Cristoforo wrote in his log when Guacanagari's people worked long and hard to help him load all his equipment and supplies off the wrecked Santa Maria: "They love their neighbor as themselves." He was capable of thinking of them as having exemplary Christian virtues -- and then turn right around and assume that he had the right to take from them anything they owned. Gold mines, food, even their freedom and their lives -- he was incapable of thinking of them as having rights. After all, they were strangers. Dark of skin. Unable to speak any recognizable language. And therefore not people.

It was one of the hardest things for novices in Pastwatch to get used to, in studying the past -- the way that most people in most times were able to speak to people of other nations, treat with them, make promises to them, and then go off and act as if those very people were beasts. What were promises made to beasts? What respect did you owe to property claimed by animals? But Diko had learned, as most did in Pastwatch, that for most of human history, the virtue of empathy was confined to one's kinship group or tribe.

People who were not members of the tribe were not people. Instead they were animals -- either dangerous predators, useful prey, or beasts of burden. It was only now and then that a few great prophets declared people of other tribes, even of other languages or races, to be human. Guest- and host-rights gradually evolved. Even in modern times, when such attractive notions as the fundamental equality and fraternity of humankind were preached in every corner of the world, the idea that the stranger is not a person still remained just under the surface.

What am I expecting of Cristoforo, really? Diko wondered. I am asking him to learn a degree of empathy for other races that would not become a serious force in human life until nearly five hundred years after his great voyage, and did not prevail worldwide until many bloody wars and famines and plagues after that. I am asking him to rise out of his own time and become something new.

And this girl, Chipa, will be his first lesson and his ftrst test. How will he treat her? Will he even listen to her?

"You are right to be afraid," said Diko in Spanish. "The white men are dangerous and treacherous. Their promises mean nothing. If you don't want to go, I won't compel you."

"But why else did I learn Spanish?" she asked.

"So you and I could tell secrets." Diko grinned at her.

"I'll go," said Chipa. "I want to see them."

Diko nodded, accepting her decision. Chipa was too young and ignorant to understand the real danger that the Spanish would mistreat her; but then, most adults made most of their decisions without a clear understanding of the possible consequences. And Chipa. was both clever and good-hearted-the combination would probably serve her well enough.

An hour later, Chipa was out in the center of the village, plucking at the woven-grass shift that Diko had made for her. "It feels awful," said Chipa in Taino. "Why should I wear such a thing?"

"Because in the white men's country, it is a shameful thing for people to be naked."

Everybody laughed. "Why? Are they so ugly?"

"It's very cold there sometimes," said Diko, "but even in the summer they keep their bodies covered. Their God commanded them to wear things like this."

"It's better to sacrifice blood to the gods a few times a year, as the Taino do," said Baiku, "than for everybody to have to wear such ugly small houses on their bodies all the time."

"They say," said the boy Goala, "that the white men wear shells like a turtle."

"Those shells are strong, and spears don't go through them very easily," said Diko.

The villagers fell silent then, thinking about what this might mean if it ever came to battle.

"Why are you sending Chipa to these turtle men?" asked Nugkui.

"These turtle men are dangerous, but they're also powerful, and some of them have good hearts if we can only teach them how to be human. Chipa will bring the white men here, and when they're ready to learn from me, I'll teach them. And the rest of you will teach them, too."

"What can we teach to men who can build canoes as big as a hundred of ours?" asked Nugkui.

"They'll teach us, too. But not until they're ready."

Nugkui still looked skeptical.

"Nugkui," said Diko, "I know what you're thinking."

He waited to hear what she would say.

"You don't want me to send Chipa as a gift to Guacanagari, because then he'll think that this means he rules over Ankuash."

Nugkui shrugged. "He already thinks that. But why should I make him sure?"

"Because he'll have to give Chipa to the white men. And once she's with them, she'll serve Ankuash."

"She'll serve Sees-in-the-Dark, you mean." It was a man's voice, from behind her.

"Your name may be Yacha," she said without turning around, "but you are not always wise, my cousin. But if I'm not a part of Ankuash, tell me now, and I'll go to another village and let them become the teachers of the white men."

The uproar among the villagers was immediate. A few moments later, Baiku and Putukam were leading Chipa down the mountain, out of Ankuash, out of Ciboa, to begin her moment of peril and greatness.

Kemal swam under the hull of the Nina. He had more than two hours' breathing mixture left in the tanks, which was five times longer than he would need, if everything went as he had practiced it. It took a little longer than he had expected to chip away the barnacles from a strip of hull near the waterline -- you couldn't build up much momentum wielding a chisel under water. But the job was done soon enough, and then from his belly pouch he drew out the array of shaped incendiaries. He put the heating surface of each one against the hull, and then tripped the automatic self-driving staples that would hold them tight to the wood. When they were all in place, he pulled the cord at the end. At once he could feel the water growing warmer. Despite being shaped to put most of their energy into the wood, they still gave off enough heat into the water that before long it would be boiling. Kemal swam quickly away, back toward his boat.

In five minutes, the wood inside the hull burst into fierce flames. And still the heat from the incendiaries continued, helping the fire to spread rapidly.