Aspundh nodded. “I begin to see your point. Have you brought this matter up at a Survey meeting?”
Gundhalinu shook his head. “I’m still feeling my way. I know what I have to do. But as you say, choosing between loyalty to one’s people and loyalty to what seems the greater good can be … treacherous and painful. And not just for you or me. I don’t yet have a feel for the motion of the wheels within wheels that I sense in the inner circles of the Golden Mean here.”
“So the power factions you spoke of are not simply confined to the halls of the Hegemonic government.”
“No.”
“Then my estimate of your judgment rises.” Aspundh smiled faintly. “There are indeed wheels within wheels, because there are many opposing views on how best to play the Game. And I think I can help you there.…”
Gundhalinu rubbed his eyes, slumping back among the cushions. “Gods—I’m so tired of trying to figure it all out.” He looked down at his hands. “I’ve carried this thing inside me for so long, and there’s never been anyone I could share it with. Sometimes it begins to feel like a delusion, and I wonder if I’m living a lie, gone mad with greed and power, all the while believing that I know what’s best for everyone else; just like all the rest of the manipulators.…”
“Rest assured, sibyl, you sound quite sane to me,” Aspundh said. Gundhalinu looked up again, with gratitude in his eyes. “Tell me, though—what made you so certain you could trust me to judge this guilty secret of yours? I did not think I had a wide reputation as the most understanding or liberal-minded of men.”
“Moon.” Gundhalinu shrugged, and smiled briefly. “That was enough.”
Aspundh nodded, his own expression still wry. “By the way,” he said, after a long moment, “do you know what happened to the techrunners who brought her here, and took her back?” He hesitated. “One of them was my sister-in-law.”
Gundhalinu choked off a laugh of disbelief, as he saw the expression on Aspundh’s face. Dimly he remembered that KR had inherited these estates from a dishonored older brother, who had been stripped of his rank for some scandal. “The Police spotted their ship on entry and shot it down; Moon said a woman named Elsevier died in the crash.”
Aspundh grimaced, and looked away.
“I’m sorry,” Gundhalinu murmured, no longer wondering about why KR Aspundh had techrunners to tea; wondering again how it had been possible for him to have believed, for so many years, that everyone else led exactly the perfect lives their perfect public faces had suggested to him.
“The end of a long story.” Aspundh sighed, and Gundhalinu saw the lines deepen in his face before he looked up again. “And while we are speaking of unfinished business—what about you, and Moon? What is it that makes you feel such a compulsive responsibility for her fate, and her world? Are you still in love with her?”
“Yes.” Gundhalinu’s hands tightened into fists on the tabletop. “I mean, I think so.… Ye gods, it’s been nearly nine years—sixteen, for her. And she was married to another man.” His voice faded. “But I saw her once, in Transfer; I spoke to her. She said she needed me—” He felt heat rise into his face.
“She does, from what you’ve told me,” Aspundh said mildly. “But what you really want to know is whether she still wants you. Isn’t it?”
Gundhalinu nodded, as sudden longing closed his throat.
“What if you get there, and she doesn’t?”
Gundhalinu took a deep breath. “As you say … at least she’ll still need me.” His mouth twitched up.
“Does she know about your discovery? Or that you’re coming back—that the Hegemony is, for good this time?”
“No.” He looked down again. “I—wanted to make sure it would happen, first, before I … before I…” He broke off. “And … I needed to find a medium I could trust—” Another sibyl, to form the triad that it took to initiate directed contact.
“Sensible,” Aspundh murmured, as if his guest had not suddenly turned into a stammering brainwipe.
“I think I’ve found one.” Gundhalinu pulled his voice together, and faced Aspundh’s measuring state. “Have I?”
Aspundh smiled, and something that might have been sympathy filled his eyes. “Then perhaps now is not too soon to let her know.”
Gundhalinu sucked in a breath of surprise. “You’re willing—now?”
Aspundh nodded. “Are you ready? Ask, and I will answer.”
Gundhalinu swallowed his disbelief and nodded, realizing that he had been ready for this moment for years, rehearsing what he would say to her, and how he would say it, to make her understand. He began to speak the words that would put them into a mutual Transfer, opening a line of communication that would finally give both Moon and himself the freedom to ask, and to answer.…
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
Moon began to fall, drawn down into the helpless, vertiginous spiral of the Transfer; taken by surprise, because there had been no question asked. She was being called—to someone else, somewhere else. Her vision of the room and the face before her faded as reality began to turn inside out; she fell into the timeless moment, expecting in another moment to find herself captive inside someone else’s reality, looking out through the eyes of a sibyl on some other world.…
But this time the blackness remained. She drifted inside it, formless, like an embryo. She waited, calm because she had been here many times before, in what the sibyls called the Nothing Place, which the offworlders had taught her was the lifeless heart of the sibyl computer itself.… But she had never been called to it like this; only in answer to someone’s direct question.
Her confusion began to slide into a darker emotion, her fear quickening with every measureless second. The sibyl mind had touched her, murmured its will to her own mind before—goading her on to achieve its goals—but never like this. Its guiding voice had rippled through her subconscious, leaving impressions of rightness, visions, compulsions to do that could have come out of her own thoughts, until in her worse moments she had sometimes wondered if they had. It had never called her here.…
(Moon …) Her name came singing through the void, and suddenly a golden wind enfolded her, and swept her beyond the heart of absence. She shimmered through an infinite spectrum of sensation that fired all her nonexistent nerve endings, into a rippling symphony of light.
(Moon—?) The vision of her name filled her, she watched it transform the darkness again, wave after wave of opalescent music echoing, fading fading fading.…
(Here—) She tried a response, with sudden urgency as the sensation diminished; watched as her own thought charged the unspeakable emptiness with a flare of brilliance.
(Moon …)
Once more the sensory song of her name touched her, this time caressing her impossibly, like the gentlest lover’s hand. Impossible, improbable longing filled her, and with it, fear. (Who … What? What do you want?)
(Moon, it’s BZ. BZ Gundhalinu—) There was an odd, shadowy hesitation in it, as if the voice imagined that she might have forgotten the name, forgotten even that she had ever known the man who bore it.
(BZ …) Her astonishment flowed out into the darkness and silence like bright waves, overlapping the radiant music of his words. (BZ. How? Where are you—we—?) Not understanding why she could not see him, or why she was able to speak freely.
(In Transfer. A special kind of Transfer.)
(Are you in the Nothing Place? I feel you.…) Feeling herself lifted, raised, exalted by light, by the sensation, the realization … Realizing, in that moment, that the years had not diminished her need to know his fate, or her memory of the sacrifices he had made for her in the name of love. Or the memory of all they had shared, so fleetingly, so long ago …
(I’m not sure where we are.… I feel it too, but it’s completely indescribable. Moon, I …) Dark-bright, the sound of his sudden silence lapped her consciousness.
(BZ?) She called out his name. (Oh, BZ, I dreamed once before that you spoke to me like this. Was it a
dream? Is this a dream?)
(No,) he answered softly, the word touching her like a sigh.
(Then why haven’t you done this before … since … if you can control the Transfer? I’ve wanted—) She broke off, as the radiance of her sudden longing warmed her like the dawn sea.
(Have you—?) he whispered. Again, the shadow of his silence lengthened across the waters of her thought. (I couldn’t,) he answered at last. (I couldn’t, because I wasn’t certain.… Certain you’d want that; certain that there was any point in torturing myself, or torturing us both, when there might never be a future where we would ever meet again.)
She absorbed the radiance of his words, her double vision falling through them into their deeper meaning. (Are you saying … that we will?)
(Yes.)
(How…?) Feeling something within her catch fire, burning her with an exquisite pain that was as much fear as wonder, as much desire as dread. (It isn’t possible. It can’t be possible—)
(It is now. It will become a reality very soon. Moon, after I contacted you in Transfer, at Fire Lake—I found out that the Lake was made up of stardrive plasma. I brought it back to the Hegemony. I’m on Kharemough now. They’re building starships.)
The exquisite pain inside her turned suddenly to fear as cold and inexorable as glacial ice. (The Hegemony is returning to Tiamat?)
(Yes.) One word, falling out of the brightness like a sword.
(Soon—?) She was barely able to ask it.
(As soon as they can. I’m overseeing the construction project. In three or four years, I estimate, it will be possible to reestablish contact.)
(And you—made this happen? Why—?) she asked, her disbelief metamorphosing. (Why are you telling me this? To make me afraid? Because you’ve changed your mind about Tiamat’s right to a future?)
(No! Because … Damn it, I don’t know how to …) His voice strobed in the darkness. (Moon, if I could only see your face! Do you remember what I told you, when I called you to me in Transfer at Fire Lake? What I … felt, when I thought that I would never see you again?)
(Yes.)
(That hasn’t changed … this doesn’t change it. When I realized the truth about Fire Lake, I realized it couldn’t be kept secret. I knew the stardrive plasma had to be given to the Hegemony, for the future. And I knew … I realized a stardrive would make it possible for me to see you again. But I also knew what it would mean for Tiamat. And I knew that because I would be responsible for that, I would owe you a debt I could only repay in one way. I’m coming back with the Hegemony, I’m coming back in charge, if I can manage it—to stand between your people and mine, to make certain we don’t destroy you. I didn’t know … can’t know … whether you even want to see me, after all this time—)
(I—) she began, not knowing what answer she would make; feeling as if the words had swept her up into a whirlwind, leaving her centerless and without refuge.
(It’s all right—you don’t have to answer.) As if he were trying to convince himself, he repeated, (It’s all right.… I’m not coming there to force myself on you. I believe in what you’re doing for your world, and I mean to preserve that. But to help Tiamat we will have to work together. That’s why I’m warning you now—not to make you afraid of me, but to give you time to prepare. That’s also why I didn’t contact you sooner … because until now I wasn’t absolutely certain that nothing would go wrong; there was still doubt in my mind that everything would happen as I believed it would.)
(And there is no doubt in your mind now—?)
(I know that the Hegemony wants Tiamat back; they want the water of life. I’m not certain yet of how high I can climb before it happens. But my prospects are good. I hope to be the new Chief Justice by the time I get there.)
She was silent, filled with brilliant noise, filled with the future his words had painted inside their spectral prison of light.
(Moon—?) He called her name again, as softly as rain, when she made no answer. (Are you still Queen? Have you been Queen all this time? Have you done what you set out to do—shown your people the truth, and begun to rebuild?)
(Yes …) she murmured, as realization rose inside her, wave upon wave in a blinding flood. All she had done to create a new, independent technological base for Tiamat would be useless. She had believed Tiamat had a century in which to reach a level of development where they could protect themselves, and the mers, from the Hegemony. They had come so far … but nothing like far enough. Even if she had known from the beginning, there would not have been enough time. It had been an impossible task … futile from the start. The Hegemony would come, and they would slaughter all the mers in their blind greed. (But why—?) she said, asking it of the sibyl mind itself, the invisible Other whose presence must be all around them. (Why did I begin this, if there was never going to be time to finish—?)
(But you’ll still be the Queen. And I will be Chief Justice.) It was BZ who answered her, with words like the light of stars falling. (Have faith in what you have done already, have faith in me. I believe now what you always believed, that there is some reason for all of this, and for what our lives have become. It doesn’t mean we’ll win. But it means we have a chance.… Moon, when I left Tiamat, I left it feeling as if I was a moth that had been caught in a flame. I’ve come so far since then, along stranger paths than I ever dreamed of, because of what I shared with you—)
(Yes,) she thought, feeling an infinity of clear skies suddenly illuminate her soul. (Yes, we both have. I would have had nothing, no past at all, all these years, if it weren’t for you.… And it will come to nothing in the end, without you.)
(Are you still … with Sparks?)
(Yes,) she said again, and there was a dark silence. (BZ, there is something you don’t know,) she pressed on, forcing brightness, (about Tiamat, about the mers. Something more important than you are or I am, more important than you ever imagined. The mers are sentient.)
(What?) he murmured. (No … how is that possible?)
(The Hegemony knows—on some level they must know; because the sibyls know. The Hegemony has been slaughtering an intelligent race for centuries.)
(But, it makes no sense … he protested.) (The mers were an experiment left over from the Old Empire; they’re only animals. It couldn’t be that the Hegemony would knowingly—)
(Ask, and you will see.)
(But why? Why make the mers intelligent, and then abandon them on a lost world like Tiamat? What purpose could there possibly be for such a thing?)
(The most important purpose imaginable, BZ, and it will be lost, destroyed, if the Hegemony is allowed to go on killing them. Because … because the mers …) She became aware that the luminous lightmusic was beginning to dissipate, the waves of limpid sound breaking up into static, into the rush of rapids, flickering geometric patterns of lost image. (BZ—)
(I’m losing you.… It’s breaking up.…)
(BZ … the mers, ask … BZ—) But only silence answered her, and she felt herself falling again, back through the conduit of night.…
* * *
Coming to in the reality she knew, she found herself still clutching the cold marble table-edge, blinded like an insect by the artificial lamplight of her office. Gradually her vision cleared, and her eyes registered the concerned face of her husband gazing back at her across the cluttered desk.
“Moon—?” Sparks murmured. “Are you all right?”
Moon nodded, slumping forward, propping her head in her hands. “Yes.”
“A Transfer?” he asked, with a matter-of-factness in his tone that his expression did not quite support.
She nodded, lifting her head again as strength began to come back to her. Her time in that nameless otherwhere had drained her more than the Transfer normally did; she wondered whether the contact had broken because their physical bodies—or their sanity—had reached some limit of endurance. “How long was I—like that?”
Sparks shook his head. “Maybe five minutes.”
She felt
a brief pang of disbelief. “Only that long? Did I say anything?”
He looked surprised. “No. It was like a trance. You didn’t move the whole time.” Something passed across his face that suggested he had not been particularly comfortable during the wait.
Moon sat silently for a moment, as all she had experienced, and felt, rose into her conscious mind. “It was BZ Gundhalinu, Sparks,” she whispered.
“Who?” he asked, uncomprehending. And then his face changed. “Him,” he said, and his voice was curiously flat. “Why—?”
“He told me the Hegemony has found a source of stardrive plasma,” she answered, the words dropping like stones between them. She stood up, suddenly too restless to remain sitting.
“What?” Sparks actually laughed, his disbelief was so complete. “That’s impossible. There’s no source of stardrive plasma within a thousand light-years—”
“He said that Fire Lake is made of stardrive plasma.”
“Fire Lake? I’ve heard of that. But that’s…” He shook his head, looked up again. “It’s actually true?”
Moon nodded, folding her arms against her stomach. “The Hegemony is building starships.”
He jerked as if he had been struck. “So they can come back here.”
“Yes.”
“How soon?”
She let her hands fall. “He thinks no more than three or four years.”
“Three or four years—?” His face filled with the stunned disbelief that had torn the center out of her own existence only moments before. His eyes went on gazing at her, but for a long space they did not seem to register anything at all. “I thought we were safe.” He looked away.
I thought we were safe. Moon looked down at her own hands, saw them clenched, white-knuckled, on the table’s littered surface.
“You learned all this in Transfer?” He glanced up at her finally, half frowning. “From Gundhalinu himself?”