As he contemplated his own frustration in dealing with Kestrel, he closed his eyes and told himself to relax. He remembered a car-enthusiast friend of his seething with a similar frustration during a televised race. When Mooncrow had asked why, the friend had explained how the power of the particular car he favored had been deliberately lessened by restrictive devices placed on it by “rules”. Now Mooncrow understood that frustration, watching Kestrel flounder. All that potential—and until she stopped making up the rules that restricted her power, the potential would never be fully freed.

No matter how he tried to tell her this, she simply did not understand, because she would not understand. To understand what he was trying to tell her would mean that she must give up some of her control, and put herself in the hands of Wah-K’on-Tah and all the mysteries. She wanted things, concrete things—“if a, then b and c”—not times and places where there were no rules, or where she would have to find the new ones.

And he could only relieve his frustration by stacking little electronic blocks.…

Jennifer had succumbed to the cable temptation some time ago, mostly for the news, but also to give Grandfather a little more choice in what he watched. Interestingly, what he watched was, in order, CNN, Discovery, and MTV. Sleighbow had been right; it was a relatively slow news day, and the explosion not only made the local news, it made the networks as well as CNN. In fact, the national coverage was better than the local, probably because the big guys were a bit less squeamish about gore than the three local stations.

Not that she blamed the local folk. The pictures, even “sanitized” for general viewing, were pretty ugly, and the local news people knew that there would be friends and relatives watching tonight. The local anchors hadn’t gotten around to listing the victims yet; CNN had. And one thing hit her immediately when she heard the names—most of the victims had been Indians, presumably the ones who hadn’t quit. Not whites.

That made her sit back in her chair and stare at the screen, ignoring the flash-flood story from Arizona that followed. Most of the victims were our people. Would an activist, even a fanatic, have planted an explosive, then triggered it, under conditions where most of the victims were his own people? You killed the enemy, not your own warriors. You killed “The Man,” not the presumed victims of his oppression.