Gallilei:
[frames a reply, but he's talking to air]
[unspoken]
It will be dawn soon, anyway. Sleep will be impossible for at least an hour.
[ponders over the adrenal rush he's under]
So this is how the morkons live. So intensely. So crystal clear.
[looks at his hands, they quiver ever so slightly]
Fascinating.
Narrator:
Gallilei sits for a moment. He retrieves his flute and tries to begin his morning as he would any other. To his further fascination, he finds that impossible. So large a dose of adrenaline in one whose life has been so stable for so very long is an extremely unsettling experience.
He decides instead to take a short walk. He walks aimlessly, first through the meadow, then through the camp. So rapt is he in his own thoughts that the thought that the sleeping guard at the perimeter of the camp should have challenged him. He looks about the camp, listens to the sounds of the camp at night, studies the smells of so large a congregation of humans -- well, he doesn't study the smells THAT closely.
He tries to call up the memory of the rush he felt when he realized why he had awoken, and finds that it is fading. The memory is still there, but the intensity of it, the clarity, the immediacy of the moment is largely gone.
He studies it from afar, as if it were someone else who had been awoken on the meadow, someone else who had felt the metal head nick his ear, someone else's memory. But, it was not.
He wonders for a time how the humans manage to live at all. The fading of the memory with the fading of the hormones play a large part in their ability to sleep at night, he feels certain. Morkons, while more extreme in the rush, at least have their Elder Tribe. Certainly, there are the needs of the moment, the thrill of living for this particular instant. But, tempering it, are the connections to a long past, a tradition of ancestors that goes back as far as you can find. How must it be for the Males of the Morkons, or for the humans, with nothing to live for, nothing to plan for except the here and now? How must it be for them, they who have no long past to connect to, whose only reference to the ages gone are mere stories passed from parent to child -- and mutated with each passing?
Fascinated by these questions, and seeking the answers for them, Gallilei walks through the camp. At first he simply observes. He attempts to join in with the morning's work. But, he quickly finds that his hands are simply not welcome in many places where another's would be. In some cases, it is the natural deference for a friend of their leader's (High Born). In most cases, it is an almost paranoid fear of him and his presence. This is another new situation. Gallilei is not accustomed to being feared. Respected, yes. But never this sort of race motivated fear.
By the time he realizes that this is going to take much more time for study and observation, the sun is high in the sky.
Gallilei: [thinking]
The little one said to call his name in a shadow and he would hear. Yet, it was not a name, but a title he gave.
He must, therefor be able to hear within other shadows.
I would not have all that I speak to Jhereg carried to other ears.
[looks at the sky, it is clear and bright]
This must be a good time to talk.