ts? Supposed to remind them, of course, of the
bloodshed they had abhorred and renounced. But who did not secretly
enjoy it? And whose thumbs ever went up when the Moment came? And this
making of pets and servants out of Men--what was that but the worst
pride of all? Glorying that a few incisions in the brain and elsewhere
gave them the power to make forever absurd what came to them with the
seeds at least of sublimity.

Juba stood up. Who was she to decide what is right and what is wrong?

She faced the world and its ways were too dark for her, so she faced
away.

* * * * *

There was a sound in the brush near her, and she wished the stars
would wink out, for the sound had the rhythm of her Mother's
approach, and Juba wanted to hide her face from her mother.

The mother frowned at Juba, a little wearily. "You have decided to
forsake the world and become a Watcher of the Holy Flame. Am I not
right?"

"You are right, mother."

"You think that way you avoid decision, is that not right?"

"That is right," Juba answered.

She motioned the girl to the edge of the raised, round stone and sat.
"It is impossible to avoid decision. The decision is already made.
What you will not do, someone else will do, and all you will have
accomplished is your own failure."

"It is true," Juba said. "But why must this be done, Mother? This is a
silly ceremony, a thing for children, this symbolic trial. Can we not
just say, 'Now Juba is a woman,' without having to humiliate this poor
Man, who after all doesn't...."

"Look into your heart, Juba," the mother interrupted. "Are your
feelings silly? Is this the play of children?"

"No," she admitted. For never before had she been thus tormented
within herself.

"You think that this Man is different, do you not? Or perhaps that all
men are not so savage of soul as you have been taught. Well, I tell
you that a Man's nature is built into his very chromosomes, and you
should know that."

"I know, mother." For Juba was educated.

"There was a reason once, why men should be as they are. Nature is not
gentle and if nature is left to herself, the timid do not survive. But
if bloodlust was once a virtue, it is no longer a virtue, and if men
will end up killing each other off, let us not also be killed."

"No," Juba said. For who would mind the hearths?

"All that," the mother said, rising and dusting off her robe, "is
theory, and ideas touch not the hear