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a key, and said, “Here, like this - watch.”
On the screen, printed in luminous pale letters, the words appeared: HERE. LIKE THIS - WATCH. Jaelle swallowed as she slowly spelled them out.
“Wouldn’t it be simpler if I just told this to the person who needs to know this?”
Bethany shrugged. “I suppose it could be done that way, but we need it for records - then the next Director of Operations, and the one beyond him, will be able to get it in your own words, years from now.”
“Why should anyone be interested, say, fifty years from now, when we are no longer here and Rumal di Scarp is dead?”
“Well, it goes into the record,” said Bethany, sorely puzzled herself. That word again . “Even by next week, your memory will have distorted what happened… you really should have been debriefed, as Magda should have been, right after it happened, though I understand why it wasn’t possible - you all spent the winter snowed in at Ardais, didn’t you? But we have to get all this into the record, as clearly as we can. Then other Heads of Departments, or even people on other Empire planets, will have access to the information, even a hundred years from now. It all goes into the permanent record.”
But that, Jaelle thought, was impossible; for anyone to report anything with that kind of permanent, frozen, once-for-all objectivity. She said, choosing her words to try and convey her distress, “But the truth I tell now about what happened at Sain Scarp is not the truth I would have told then. And what I tell now will not be the truth fifty years from now. I will have to recall all of it, fifty years from now, to see what the truth is then, because the only truth then will be what we remember - and not just me, but what Margali - Magda remembers, and what Peter remembers, and even what Lady Rohana and Rumal di Scarp himself remembers.”
Bethany shook her head, clearly not understanding what Jaelle was trying to convey. “I’m afraid that’s too complicated for me. Just tell everything you can remember, and we’ll worry about that kind of ultimate truth some other time - all right?”
“But whom am I reporting to?”
“Does it matter? Tell it just the way you’d tell it to anyone who asked you what happened out there; put in every little detail you can think of - someone else will be editing the text and if there’s anything really irrelevant, she’ll cut it out.”
“But how do I know what to say if I don’t know who I’m saying it to?” Jaelle asked, confused again. “I mean, if you asked me to tell you, I’d tell it one way, and if, say, the Comyn Council asked, I’d tell it another way - “
Bethany sighed, and Jaelle could feel her frustration. She said, “I guess my casta isn’t as good as I thought. It sounded as if you were saying you’d tell two different stories to us and to your own people. That’s not what you mean, is it?” At Jaelle’s vigorous headshake, she nodded and said, “I didn’t think so; you look fairly honest to me, and Magda said nice things about you; I couldn’t imagine you being that two-faced. I’ll tell you what; just tell the story into the scriber, as if you were telling it to one of your Guild people, Elders - what’s the word - ?”
“Guild Mothers?”
“I guess that’s it. Tell it as if you were telling one of your Guild Mothers, why don’t you?”
She clipped the throat-mike, with its black snakelike attachment, to the neckband of Jaelle’s tunic. “That’s another good reason for wearing uniform; the standard uniform for your sector has a pocket in the neckband for a scriber-microphone and you can just tuck it in instead of messing around with clips.” She demonstrated on her own uniform tunic. Jaelle flinched a little at the thought of being hooked up to any machine, but she supposed she would get used to it. It wasn’t dangerous and she was not the barbarian they seemed to think her. It was up to her not to panic like a fish in a tree!
“Now just