PREVIOUSLY.
["There is one last measure I want to announce to you today. It is the one that matters to me most and requires the most care. Variolation, which has worked well in Caribá and the nearest overseas territories, will begin to be applied in the rest of the regions. No objections."
I said "no objections" slowly, and looked each lieutenant governor in the eye, one by one, until closing the circle.
No one spoke, but near the window, a lieutenant governor with a round face and a freshly minted tunic—one of those who had attained office just a few months before—leaned forward with arched eyebrows and parted lips.
"Leader Chuta," he said, in an insecure voice, "excuse me. I was not aware. What is this about?"]
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Year 15 of the SuaChie Calendar, Fourth Month (June 1497).
Dawn City (Santiago de Cuba, Cuba), Caribá Region (FRFI).
Chuta's personal office, Stone Manor.
Four slices of wheat bread, still warm, spread with fresh cheese to the edges. On top, slices of smoked fish from the southern shores, and a handful of roasted peanuts in a small bowl.
The personal office smelled of ink, polished wood, and—beneath the salt air rising from the port—of the ripe fruit someone had left too long in the courtyard. On the road map unfurled to my left was a ring of moisture left by a cup.
I had an hour before Soca arrived. I thought it would be enough to clear my head, and immediately knew I was lying.
The previous day had left a ringing in my ears that wouldn't stop. I pushed the tray away, reached for the sheet where I had jotted down the afternoon's points, and held it in my hands for a while without reading it.
The elections were something that echoed in my mind. It had been the part they least expected.
I said it without embellishments, just as we had done with the previous divisions: the governors, upon finishing their term, would not be confirmed by decree or custom, but by election, according to their performance. And anyone with a leadership track record could run. The lieutenant governors themselves, of course, but also the chancellors of each district within the macro-regions.
"Anyone?" the lieutenant governor of Caribá had asked, with a tone not of doubt but of calculation.
"Anyone who has governed something well," I replied. "And none may serve for more than ten consecutive years... That is, two terms."
The silence that followed had a nuance I recognized right away.
In the veterans, it was a sort of masked relief, while in the younger ones, something else shone, hungrier. The aides along the walls had written faster than at any other moment during the session.
Then came the second half of the matter, the one I had the hardest time defending.
The chancellors and minor offices would also be elected in each region, and I had interceded to make it so, but with the concession that each macro-region would hold these elections internally.
The Central Government would only intervene in the event of improper procedure or proven manipulation.
I bit into another toast and chewed it without tasting it. I found myself staring at the moisture ring on the road map, and the next memory reached me through the hand that had caused it.
I had spoken alone with the lieutenant governor of my sister's region at the end of the first day.
He was a dry man who took care not to say anything he hadn't measured first. With him, I had spoken of what wouldn't fit in a room full of people: new industries, born from growing economies and what the people were starting to demand. A glass workshop where before there was only pottery. A mill that could no longer keep up, or a forge that could turn into twenty.
With the lieutenant governor of Eyadobida, the talk had been different. Longer and more prudent, with words placed like stones in a river. He was the same white-haired elder who had asked about the animals.
This time I held his gaze without hiding and we spoke, at last, of what lay behind that question: the valuables his region sold to the southern Incas. Which ones, in what quantities, at what price. He gave me figures that coincided with Zasaba's, and that, in this house, amounted to a confession of good faith.
The one from Roraimá told me how the tribes that had joined over the past year were doing, which ones welcomed teachers without misgiving, which ones welcomed them with spears in hand, and where traders were coming up the great river.
He spoke of that river with a mix of respect and anxiety, the way one speaks of a powerful relative. Controlling it, he said, was like trying to hold the wind with one's hands. I told him it wasn't a matter of holding it, but of always knowing where the nearest ship was.
And the last one, the lieutenant governor of the islands, the one from Foza. A coastal man, with eyes narrowed by the sun, who had spoken bluntly what others clothed in subtlety.
"The ports here are not what they were a couple of years ago. People arrive from Europe, from Guanza Quyca, from places I can't even name. And with the people come things that cannot be seen. I want to reinforce the coasts of the islands, Leader. More inspectors, more quarantines, more..."
The door opened at that exact instant.
"Leader Chuta," announced a mansion aide, with his body slightly bowed. "Chancellor Soca."
I left the sheet on the desk.
Behind the aide entered a man thinner than I remembered, his skin darkened by years of a sun that was not ours and his hands still marked by lime. He wore a sober, well-cut, sand-colored tunic.
He had stopped a step past the threshold with his back so straight it almost hurt to look at it. The aide bowed his head, greeted twice, and vanished without a sound, closing the door behind him.
"Leader Chuta."
"Soca. Come in. Sit down, please. There, in front of me."
I gestured to the chair with an open hand. He took the steps separating him from it with a measured slowness, and before sitting, for an instant he couldn't disguise, he looked me up and down. I saw his pupils shift from one eye to the other, the brown and the clear, and how he tightened his jaw just slightly.
"Forgive me," he said, sitting down. "It's just that I remembered you..."
"Taller?"
"Younger, Leader."
The word hung between the two of us, without harshness. I smiled.
"It was a long time ago. And yesterday you didn't have time to look at me. You were among twenty people and I, in the back, with a stack of papers."
"I saw you, but from afar." He ran his hand over his knee, slowly, as if smoothing a fabric that wasn't wrinkled. "Up close it's different."
I said nothing. I pushed the tray toward him, and he looked at it as if it were a test. He picked up a peanut, held it for a moment between two fingers, and put it back on the plate without eating it.
"Tell me about Guanza Quyca," I said. "How are you doing over there?"
He straightened up. It was an instinctive movement, that of a man who has just been asked the exact question he has a rehearsed speech for.
"I have done the best I can, Leader. The city has already finished its inner wall, the cistern system works even in the dry season, and the treaty with the neighboring kingdom was renewed on the terms you indicated. Peanut production exceeds last year's figures by a third, and cassava by..."
"Soca."
He stopped. There was a question on his face he didn't dare ask.
"I have that in your reports," I told him, without harshness. "I've read them. All of them. I didn't have you come so you could repeat them to me."
"Then, what...?"
"I want to know what you think. Not what you did or what you achieved. What you think of your territory across the ocean... Of its people. Of the cultures you've come to know."
Soca took a while to answer. He lowered his gaze to his own large, mason's hands, and looked at them as if they could give him an answer he didn't have. Outside, a cart loaded with barrels rolled over the street stones, and the noise slowly faded away. Then he let out a long sigh, breath accumulated over years.
"It's been a very fast-paced few years, Leader," he said in a lower voice than before. "At first, all I wanted was to return. I would wake up and the first thing I thought about was the kingdom, the mountain air, the food here. I counted the months... I complied with what I was ordered like someone serving a sentence they know is just."
He paused. He wiped his palm against his tunic.
"But the city was growing. First the cisterns, then the stone houses, then the schools. And I started going to see how the construction turned out. Before, I went to check that it was well done. Later, I went just to look at them. And the other cities I helped build, the same. One day I realized I was no longer thinking about fulfilling what the kingdom had given me. I was thinking about what they lacked... How much more they could become."
I let him finish, because there was something in his way of saying it that I didn't want to spoil with an extra word.
"That is very positive," I said after a moment. "More than you think. An objective that comes from above is fulfilled. One born from one's own work is defended."
Soca bowed his head, and for the first time in the entire conversation the stiffness of his shoulders eased a little.
"Tell me, then," I continued. "How do you find the people there? Their towns? What did you think of their way of living when you arrived?"
Soca looked at the tray, the map, the window. He took his time choosing his words.
"Strange, Leader. At first they seemed strange to me." A brief, almost guilty smile. "They ate differently, prayed differently, even greeted each other in a way that left me not knowing where to put my hands. I came from a land where people looked each other in the eye, and they lowered their gaze to show respect. It took me weeks to understand that what I took for mistrust was courtesy."
He stopped, and with his index finger traced a line on the desk that wasn't anywhere.
"But one learns. You sit with them, eat what they offer you, listen to their stories, even if you don't fully understand them. And little by little the strange becomes custom. It's no longer strange. It's just... theirs."
He paused. His hand stayed still on the wood, and it seemed to me there was something more beneath that last word, something he still couldn't bring himself to say.
I let out my breath slowly, from deep inside, and felt something settle in my chest as I did. I had heard it in his voice, that "it's just theirs," with a clarity that almost made me uncomfortable. It was my own story spoken by another mouth.
"I understand you, Soca," I said. "More than you imagine."
He raised his eyes. I had left the toast half-eaten on the plate and was watching the strips of sunlight that, during our chat, had crept across the desk until they touched the edge of the map.
"When it all began, when I saw how one town after another joined the kingdom, how they prospered, how the children survived their first winter and the granaries filled where before there was nothing, I felt a pride I don't know how to name. I had never felt it before. It swelled my chest until it hurt. I looked at how far we had come and couldn't believe it was our doing."
Soca didn't move.
"But that pride didn't come alone," I continued. "It was accompanied by something else, just as big and much more uncomfortable. I wanted to protect everything. Every village, every road, every school. I wanted to stand in front of all of it with my arms wide open, as if my body were enough."
Soca lowered his gaze to his hands. I saw his fingers slowly closing over the fabric of his tunic, and for a moment his shoulders stopped bearing the weight of formality. My words had struck deeper than he would have liked to admit. It showed in the difficulty with which he swallowed before speaking.
"It's true," he said softly, almost to himself. "I want to protect them. Those territories. My cities."
I remained silent.
It wasn't a reproachful silence. I was thinking of something else, of the way he had said "my cities," with a tenderness so clean I didn't know what to reply right away. But Soca couldn't read my mind, and I saw his face tense up. He had straightened in his chair, and the open palm on the desk was trembling slightly.
"Forgive me, Leader," he blurted out, quickly. "I didn't mean to say they were mine. I know they belong to the kingdom, that what is there belongs to the kingdom and that I only..."
"Soca."
My voice came out soft, without an edge. I raised a hand, not with authority, but like someone brushing a branch aside from a path.
"There is nothing to forgive. It doesn't offend me that you feel they are yours. On the contrary, it seems natural to me. Even more, it seems right."
The man's shoulders gave way a little. He let out a breath that seemed to have been held back for a long time.
I picked up the cup—now colder than lukewarm—made it spin a quarter turn on the tray, and set it back where it was. I needed my hands to do something while I organized the question.
"Tell me one thing," I said at last. "Why do you think the Central Government, why do I, have raised settlements so far away? In Guanza Quyca, in the north, in the south, now even on the other side of Sunset. What do you think we seek with that?"
Soca blinked. The question had caught him off guard, and I watched him think with his whole body, the way a man accustomed to solving things with his hands thinks. He furrowed his brow. His lips tightened into a grimace that started as pride for having been part of that, and twisted toward something more restless.
His eyes scanned the ceiling, then the window, then the road map lying between us, as if searching the ink lines for an answer that wasn't written. Almost a minute passed. In that time his fingers traced the edge of the desk, from one end to the other, twice.
"I don't know, Leader," he confessed at last. "I've thought about it many times, and I've never hit upon a reason that convinced me. Trade, yes. Defense, perhaps. But it has always seemed to me there was something bigger, and I can't think what."
There was no shame in his voice, there was honesty, and that was worth more than any correct answer.
"At first it was out of curiosity," I said. "And out of a need to know. We wanted to know the limits of the world the gods gifted us, how far it reached, what was on its shores, and who shared it with us. Every ship that set sail was a question thrown into the sea."
Soca nodded slowly.
"But when the kingdom reached what are now the eight macro-regions," I continued, "what lay ahead was no longer discovery. Those territories, yours, those of the north, those of the south, were simply the way to express something we wished to do with other kingdoms. A connection. A way for what we are and know to travel beyond our borders and reach other peoples."
Soca nodded again. He did it promptly, with the exact gesture of someone who understands, but his eyes remained fixed on a spot on the desk, unfocused. There was on his face the courteous expression of someone who has heard a beautiful phrase and doesn't yet know what to do with it.
I noticed it, and said nothing. I waited a moment.
"Then tell me," I continued. "Do you think the kingdom will be able to maintain overseas territories like yours in Guanza Quyca?"
The answer came to him instantly, and this time there was strength in it.
"Yes, Leader. We can. We have the ships, the academies, the cities already established. When one sees what we have built there, there is no reason to..."
He stopped.
It wasn't a rhetorical pause. It was the dry snap of a tautly pulled string. His mouth remained half-open, and the enthusiasm in his eyes went out piece by piece, like a lamp being deprived of oil. I watched as, deep in his mind, something that had been at his back for years turned around and looked him straight in the face.
I waited for him to see it fully.
"You've noticed it," I said, in a voice as low as I could manage. "They won't be able to belong to the kingdom forever. Your territory, those of Northern and Southern Quyca, even the new ones, those of Xiefiba Quyca. No matter how hard we try. No matter how powerful the kingdom is."
Color drained from his face. He didn't say it, but his entire body said it for him: his back slumped against the backrest, his hands motionless, his eyes fixed on me as if I had just blown out a candle he believed eternal.
He lost his breath for a moment. There was something very close to helplessness on his face, and behind it, deeper still, a worry that had yet to take shape.
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the desk.
"It's not that we are going to cast them aside," I told him, with a gentleness that cost me nothing, because it was true. "We won't abandon them. It's something else. It's the natural course of things, Soca. What happens when something grows far from where it was born. The gods see it... Even they see it."
I remembered, unwillingly, the maps of a school that didn't yet exist, with colored borders shifting from one sheet to another, page after page.
Soca didn't reply. He turned his head toward the window.
The shutters let in a ribbon of light and, beyond, a strip of sea opening toward where the sun was born. His gaze sank into that blue streak, searching for something. Perhaps the line of an invisible coast, the stone roofs of a city built with his own hands, the wall, the cisterns. Or perhaps he looked higher, toward the sky, toward where the old ones say the gods keep the answers. His lips moved slightly, as if reciting a prayer.
I let him be. A long minute passed, with neither of us doing anything to break it.
"And what will happen to them then?" he asked at last, without taking his eyes off the sea. "To them. To the people."
I didn't answer immediately. I looked at him, and instead of giving him an answer, I returned a question.
"What do you think of Suaza culture?"
Soca turned his face toward me, bewildered. He blinked. He observed me like someone suspecting a trap and finding none, meditating before answering. This time there was no hurry or pretense.
"That it is strong," he said slowly. "And wise. Both things. They don't always come together, and in it they do."
"Thank you." I nodded. "And the people of your territory, what do they think of it? Of our culture, how do they see it?"
"It's not like here, Leader. Here one is born within it and doesn't distinguish it, like water to a fish. There..." He paused for an instant, searching for the way. "There the approaches and expansion measures, just as you dictated them, caused what belonged to the kingdom to mix with the local. The foods. The festivals. The words. One sees a boy dressed in our manner who prays to his grandfather's gods and doesn't know where one ends and the other begins. The kingdom's culture is no longer something that arrived from outside. It has become..."
He left the word half-spoken.
Something lit up in his eyes. It wasn't joy. It was the kind of stillness that follows a discovery, when the piece being sought has been in one's hand the whole time. Soca's gaze remained fixed on me, and I watched him gather, one by one, the things he had just said and the things he had kept silent.
I nodded.
"That was the goal from the beginning," I said. "To bring a piece of us to every corner of the world. Through the overseas territories, yes, but also through something much simpler, and at the same time much more complex, like trade."