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"So you tell me," Hikari said, when Peter was done, "that because of my small book about the American bombs, the Necessarians have taken control of government and launched the Lusitania Fleet? You lay this at my door?"
"Not as a matter either for blame or credit," said Peter. "You did not plan it or design it. For all I know you don't even approve of it."
"I don't even think about the politics of Starways Congress. I am of Yamato."
"But that's what we came here to learn," said Wang-mu. "I see that you are a man of the Edge, not a man of the Center. Therefore you will not let Yamato be swallowed up by the Center nation. Instead the Japanese will remain aloof from their own hegemony, and in the end it will slip from their hands into someone else's hands."
Hikari shook his head. "I will not have you blame Japan for this Lusitania Fleet. We are the people who are chastened by the gods, we do not send fleets to destroy others."
"The Necessarians do," said Peter.
"The Necessarians talk," said Hikari. "No one listens."
"You don't listen to them," said Peter. "But Congress does."
"And the Necessarians listen to you," said Wang-mu.
"I am a man of perfect simplicity!" cried Hikari, rising to his feet. "You have come to torture me with accusations that cannot be true!"
"We make no accusation," said Wang-mu softly, refusing to rise. "We offer an observation. If we are wrong, we beg you to teach us our mistake."
Hikari was trembling, and his left hand now clutched the locket of his ancestors' ashes that hung on a silk ribbon around his neck. "No," he said. "I will not let you pretend to be humble seekers after truth. You are assassins. Assassins of the heart, come to destroy me, come to tell me that in seeking to find the Yamato way I have somehow caused my people to rule the human worlds and use that power to destroy a helplessly weak sentient species! It is a terrible lie to tell me, that my life's work has been so useless. I would rather you had put poison in my tea, Si Wang-mu. I would rather you had put a gun to my head and blown it off, Peter Wiggin. They named you well, your parents--proud and terrible names you both bear. The Royal Mother of the West? A goddess? And Peter Wiggin, the first hegemon! Who gives their child such a name as that?"
Peter was standing also, and he reached down to lift Wang-mu to her feet.
"We have given offense where we meant none," said Peter. "I am ashamed. We must go at once."
Wang-mu was surprised to hear Peter sound so oriental. The American way was to make excuses, to stay and argue.
She let him lead her to the door. Hikari did not follow them; it was left to poor Kenji, who was terrified to see her placid master so exercised, to show them out. But Wang-mu was determined not to let this visit end entirely in disaster. So at the last moment she rushed back and flung herself to the floor, prostrate before Hikari in precisely the pose of humiliation that she had vowed only a little while ago that she would never adopt again. But she knew that as long as she was in that posture, a man like Hikari would have to listen to her.
"Oh, Aimaina Hikari," she said, "you have spoken of our names, but have you forgotten your own? How could the man called 'Ambiguous Light' ever think that his teachings could have only the effects that he intended?"
Upon hearing those words, Hikari turned his back and stalked from the room. Had she made the situation better or worse? Wang-mu had no way of knowing. She got to her feet and walked dolefully to the door. Peter would be furious with her. With her boldness she might well have ruined everything for them--and not just for them, but for all those who so desperately hoped for them to stop the Lusitania Fleet.
To her surprise, however, Peter was perfectly cheerful once they got outside Hikari's garden gate. "Well done, however weird your technique was," said Peter.
"What do you mean? It was a disaster," she said; but she was eager to believe that somehow he was right and she had done well after all.
"Oh, he's angry and he'll never speak to us again, but who cares? We weren't trying to change his mind ourselves. We were just trying to find out who it is who does have influence over him. And we did."
"We did?"
"Jane picked up on it at once. When he said he was a man of 'perfect simplicity.' "
"Does that mean something more than the plain sense of it?"
"Mr. Hikari, my dear, has revealed himself to be a secret disciple of Ua Lava."
Wang-mu was baffled.
"It's a religious movement. Or a joke. It's hard to know which. It's a Samoan term, with the literal meaning 'Now enough,' but which is translated more accurately as, 'enough already!' "
"I'm sure you're an expert on Samoan." Wang-mu, for her part, had never heard of the language.
"Jane is," said Peter testily. "I have her jewel in my ear and you don't. Don't you want me to pass along what she tells me?"
"Yes, please," said Wang-mu.
