he learned it was no accident. As he was
finishing his talk with the Commandant the Psychiatrist that had tested
him was talking on the viewer with the Fencing Instructor, telling him
why North had attacked him. The Psychiatrist noticed that the Officer
was getting more and more upset. In the middle of a sentence the
Officer stopped him and hurriedly told the Doctor he had to sign off.
The screen went blank.
41 The Doctor's training told him that this was a man at the breaking
point- a man about to lose control. He quickly called the Officers'
quarters and asked them to send someone to the Officer's room until he
could get there. The Officer arrived at the Instructor's quarters and
found the door open. As he walked in, he saw the man sitting on his
bed, looking at the point of his dagger. The other Officer tried to get
the weapon but he didn't make it. Just as his hand touched it, it
discharged.
42 The Instructor had enough sense left to put the weapon on low yield.
But even that setting was enough to incinerate his face and most of his
brain, and flash-blind the other Officer, who struggled to a
communicator to summon aid. There would be no charges against Northern
Star.
43 The six month's probation passed, and everyone almost forgot the
incident, but several Instructors and Cadets that had been VERY
friendly to North started giving him a great deal of distance.
Sometimes having a certain notation on your record could be useful!
44 One evening shortly after this incident, Morn sat in his room,
meditating, and called Running Fox. His Spirit Worker quickly appeared.
"What troubles you?" he asked.
45 "When I touched North's mind," explained Morn, "I felt the fire in
his Soul. How can he survive?"
46 "What you touched," explained the Spirit, "was not North's anger,
alone, but North is the focal point of all his race's anger, the result
of fifty-thousand years of rule by that thing that dwells in The Holy
Of Holies the result of such misery as we cannot understand.