Veracity by Mark Lavorato Page A

drive that fuelled these people to take action, was something to be admired. They were only doing what they thought was right. And really, once I figured this out, the rest was easy.
    I suddenly wanted to learn from them. I wanted to learn about our fumbling mistakes, our cyclic tragedies, our foibles, blunders, the enterprises that always ended in catastrophe. And after that, I wanted to learn about the third phase, about the area our island's expedition would be searching through, about who had lived there, what kind of damage they'd caused, who their traditional scapegoat was. I wanted to become an involved pupil again, to absorb their knowledge like a sponge, to finger their wisdom like a greedy child. I wanted them to teach me about the world.
    The Elders saw these changes taking place in me, and accordingly, their questions became more tame, their answers less sharp. They were slowly reverting into their gentle selves again, letting their kindness resurface. And for the first time in my life, I noticed their mannerisms becoming less formal; they seemed at ease, calmed, as if they were happy to have another person they could speak openly in front of. Every day that passed found us talking to each other more like friends: for my part, feeling comfortable asking things that were really on my mind, and for their part, answering my questions with a kind of relaxed candidness, a complete and serene honesty. It was wonderful. Finally, I felt like I was almost part of their circle. Almost.
    I discovered that there
were
still issues that made them stiffen a bit, made them clear their throat and think very carefully about their wording before they spoke. And, understandably, these were usually the issues that had details or implications that were hard for me to accept as well.
    "Harek," I began one day, putting down my fork during our midday meal at the shelter, "I was wondering about something." Harek, who had already finished eating and was peeling some fruit for dessert, looked up and gestured for me to continue. "It's just that, we're always speaking about men when we talk about the phases of The Goal. What about women? What role do they play? I mean - why is it they're never even mentioned as an option for going on the expedition?"
    He sat up a bit, put the fruit and knife onto his plate for later, and then proceeded to lick his fingers for a long, thoughtful while before speaking. "Women aren't as well-suited to deal with... different aspects of The Goal on the 'front lines', so to speak. Their role will be to help in the training here on the island instead."
    I cocked my head. As far as I could remember, the Elders had always taught us that the sexes were completely equal. What did he mean exactly by 'well-suited'? I needed a little clarification on that. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand. Do you mean that women
couldn't
do something that might be needed, or
shouldn't
, or
wouldn't
, or...?"
    "Okay. I can see you're not going to leave me alone with this," he said, sounding a little terse. He moved his chair back enough so he could lean forward and talk with his hands, "It has to do with the very organization of our brains. See, as you well know, we have two hemispheres in our brain. Very,
very
simplistically speaking, one is responsible for logical thought, strategy, and spatial tasks, and the other for language, emotion, and the expression thereof. As any one task could involve things from both sides of the brain, there is an organ devoted solely to the communication between the two hemispheres. That organ is called the
corpus callosum
, and if one were to compare it between the sexes, they would find that it's much more developed in women than it is in men. What this means is that women make decisions that are more holistic, automatically taking into consideration things like the value of life and the potential of suffering, blended with technical stratagems, which may or may not be compromised by the input of the