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For a moment he almost said, Fine, have it your way; then he would have left, angry himself, frustrated that she wouldn't accept his comfort. But then he remembered that she had never been this angry before. She had never had to deal with a body that responded like this. At first, when she began rebuking Quara, Miro had thought, It's about time somebody laid it on the line. But when the argument went on and on, Miro realized that it wasn't Quara who was out of control, it was Jane. She didn't know how to deal with her emotions. She didn't know when it wasn't worth going on. She felt what she was feeling, and she didn't know how to do anything but express it.
"That was hard," Miro said. "Cutting off the argument and coming in here."
"I wanted to kill her," said Jane. Her voice was almost unintelligible from the weeping, from the savage tension in her body. "I've never felt anything like it. I wanted to get out of the chair and tear her apart with my bare hands."
"Welcome to the club," said Miro.
"You don't understand," she said. "I really wanted to do it. I felt my muscles flexing, I was ready to do it. I was going to do it."
"As I said. Quara makes us all feel that way."
"No," said Jane. "Not like this. You all stay calm, you all stay in control."
"And you will, too," said Miro, "when you have a little more practice."
Jane lifted her head, leaned it back, shook it. Her hair swung weightlessly free in the air. "Do you really feel this?"
"All of us do," said Miro. "That's why we have a childhood-- to learn to get over our violent tendencies. But they're in us all. Chimps and baboons do it. All the primates. We display. We have to express our rage physically."
"But you don't. You stay so calm. You let her spout off and say these horrible--"
"Because it's not worth the trouble of stopping her," said Miro. "She pays the price for it. She's desperately lonely and nobody deliberately seeks an opportunity to spend time in her company."
"Which is the only reason she isn't dead."
"That's right," said Miro. "That's what civilized people dothey avoid the circumstance that enrages them. Or if they can't avoid it, they detach. That's what Ela and I do, mostly. We just detach. We just let her provocations roll over us."
"I can't do it," said Jane. "It was so simple before I felt these things. I could tune her out."