“Winding up?”
“Yes, actually we’re getting out of lunar trade—”
“Out of trade! After forty years, Father?” The depth of her own reaction surprised her. “Free trade” had been her goal for so many years, before the rise of the great Houses.
“The new restrictions make it uneconomical.” Hyalite looked her straight in the eye as he said this. “Mining is the thing now. You can’t imagine what minerals lie untouched on the floor of that ocean. Enough to even our trade with distant planets and to pay half our taxes to Torr.”
Berenice’s fingers closed tight around her glass. “No more profit in seasilk?”
“Oh, the new raft rakers will take care of the silk and spice line. So much more efficient.”
“It’s…hard to think of, Father. After all these years.”
Hyalite’s face lit up, and the lines stretched. “Even you are sorry to see those days pass. Why not? You built the business as much as I, in the early days. As a child, you picked up the language before anyone; at age eleven, you were my official interpreter, remember that?”
Despite herself, the corner of her lip pulled into a smile. “I remember that, and how I swam among Sharer children. And I remember the way we traded then.”
“Oh, yes.” Hyalite laughed. “It was marvelously informal at first.” He nodded to Realgar, who listened politely. “No shops had been built yet, so we just heaped all our goods in a pile on the raft. A few days later the stuff would disappear, and we’d find a pile of native stuff, not just seasilk but preserved octopus, herb leaves, even odd sorts of powders that we didn’t yet know were medicines.”
Yes, thought Berenice, it was all so informal that Malachite came and went three times without concern for the “native humanoids” of the Ocean Moon. “Won’t you miss it, Father? Won’t you deal with the natives at all anymore?”
“Well, yes, but the new regime is bound to change things.”
Realgar caught her waist. “Berenice, love, you must be starving,” he said a little too loudly.
“Sh, I’m never hungry.”
But already her mother’s gown whooshed toward them. “Into the dining room,” Cristobel commanded. “I’ll warn you, though, your father has taken to redecoration in his old age.”
“My dear,” Hyalite chuckled. “New surroundings keep us young, don’t they?”
At first glance, Berenice saw nothing new, just the velvet wall with the same polished mosaic panels. She swirled her train back and seated herself between Realgar and the Pyrrholite woman. As her father pulled out a chair across from her, he tangled himself in his own train, despite the little servos scurrying behind. Hyalite was always an outdoors man, never quite used to the city.
Servo arms reached downward with cocktails. The arms were not white but deep amethyst, with ultralong fingers linked by stylized scallops of webbing.
Her breath stopped. For an instant she was back on Shora, in the late afternoon, where eager arms and laughing faces hovered over plates of crabmeat and steaming succulent fillets and seaweeds, and the lively hands were speaking and laughing, almost as much as their lips did. But here, Sharer “arms” were just another—
“Marvelous,” the Pyrrholite woman exclaimed at Berenice’s ear. “You’re an artistic genius, Hyalite.”
But Hyalite saw his daughter’s face. “Berenice, it’s just a novelty. I thought you’d—”
The table shuddered beneath her palms as she shot upright. “What have you done? What will become of Shora?”
“I? Why, nothing, child. Please, why upset yourself—?”
She wheeled and ran from the dining room, her train tearing under a hasty step. From behind, her mother hissed at her father, “I told you so.”
In the foyer she spoke to the wall terminal. “What date next passage to Shora?”
As a voice flatly recited the freighter list, Realgar came and caught her by the shoulders. “My love, what’s come over you?”
She struggled until his hands fell to his sides. “I’ve come to my senses, that’s all. I warned you about my parents.”
“And you were warned to keep out of affairs of state.”
Fear chilled her again. As if he read her thoughts, Realgar said, “No one wants to hurt you. We want you safe from a situation that does not involve you.”
“Does not—involve—me.” Her words dropped like lead. Unbelievingly she shook her head. “You never took me seriously. At all.”
“Seriously? Do you realize all the trouble I’ve gone to?”
“It’s too late, Ral. You’ve forced me to choose, and I’ve chosen.” Her throat stuck. She had not actually chosen until that moment. She turned again toward the terminal, but Realgar pulled her back.
“You can’t go to Shora.”
“Why not?”
“Martial law.”
Dazed, she repeated, “Martial law? On Shora?”
“We’re responsible for them, Berenice, responsible to the Patriarch. The High Protector must govern them somehow.”
“He’s invaded them—he’s—”
“No, by Torr.” Realgar’s sudden anger checked her. “Nothing’s happened at all—yet. Nothing’s happened to your precious Merwen or her precious children. We’re about to tighten discipline, that’s all. We have to start somewhere. If they’re as peaceful as they seem, they won’t give us trouble. Trust me, Berenice. I’ll go easy on them.”
“You.” She crept backward until her palms met the velvet wall. Her nails sank into it as if clawing at a padded cell. Her surroundings detonated into unreality; wall moldings and table knobs stood in bold, jagged outline, meaningless fragments apart.
Realgar was holding her, shaking her. “Berenice, do you hear me? You can’t go on like this forever.”
“It’s over, all right.” Her own voice sounded dead. “It’s hard to realize just how over it is.”
“I can’t leave you like this; I know you too well.” Genuine anguish shook his voice. “What will become of you,” he whispered, “if you don’t come round, this time?”
That was it. She was trapped in her parents’ house. Sirens and searchlights, combing the seas—inside her head, this time. “A sanatorium.” She spoke now with calm dignity. “Realgar, would you let them put me away in a sanatorium? Would you?”
He did not answer right away. Every tendon of his neck stood out. “I only want what is best for you. You need a long rest. There’s my hunting lodge in Sardis. My servos will escort you.”
A sanatorium or a Sardish retreat. What a choice. “I’ll go, Ral. Just let me be.”
“You’re sure, now? You won’t do anything foolish?”
“Oh, no, I promise.” The wealth of Hyalite, a brilliant husband, a ready-made family. Bring me a whorlshell, Mama Berenice. Flute of whorlshell lift in hand…Somewhere, another name was screaming.
6
THE MORNING AFTER the Spirit Calling in the Chrysolite market square, another Dolomite battalion was brought into town. Soldiers crowded the streets, disrupting traffic and setting tempers on edge. Regular commerce had to carry on, and the vendors put up with it as best they could. By evening most of the entrances were blocked off, but twice as many villagers as the night before stayed for another Calling with Uriel, whose collection bowl was so full he could almost have slept at an inn. That night they remained without incident, despite the hordes of soldiers that bristled outside.
In the days that followed, an unspoken truce seemed to develop: in the market square, one was safe, but anyone caught out at night in a back alley could still expect arrest or a beating. A new mood of pride infected the populace, as if they had snatched something back from their oppressors. Most soon forgot about Spirit Calling and started playing music and dancing to pass the time until dawn.
The new night life even began to draw traveling acrobats and theater troupes who used to ignore the sleepy town, especially once the garrison was cut back again (there were other campaigns, after all) and the pass regul
ations began to break down. People mislaid their passes with disconcerting frequency, and the lower-ranked soldiers grew increasingly tired of replacing and enforcing them. The job of soldiers was to besiege cities and bring home fortune and glory, not to issue summonses to barefoot villagers. And the garrison commander was reluctant to start anything that might disrupt the flow of tax revenue to Dolomoth.
A month later, only Spinel seemed to remember how it all started. Spinel wandered around town with Uriel, getting an intriguing glimpse of the life of a Spirit Caller. Problems of all sorts were brought to the Caller for his wisdom, and it both fascinated and disturbed Spinel to realize the hidden weights of misery that could bury the simplest of lives. A young woman suffered a hideous skin disease that spread slowly, with no affordable cure. A brother and sister had become mortal enemies after their birth-home was left to one but not the other. Each knew that only the Patriarch could rectify the matter, but somehow Uriel always had an answer, or at least a question, that made them feel better.
At his house, Spinel was introspective. Beryl asked, “Where’s your tongue got to, these days? What’s a talespinner without a tongue?”
His mother warned, “Wrinkle your brow long enough, and when the cock crows, it will stay.”
Spinel ignored them, so long as they tolerated Uriel, who often slept over in their bit of a hallway. In summer Uriel would sleep out on the beach, but winter’s chill sent him indoors with whoever would take him in.
On a warm day, Uriel returned to the sea to bathe himself. Spinel watched as the old man lathered his shoulders amid the waves that snarled and foamed at the shore. It was easy to imagine that the entire sea, encircled by shore, was just an outsized bathtub compared to the ocean Shora. “Uriel, do you ever get sick of people’s complaints?”
“All the time,” Uriel said.
Spinel frowned and pursed his lips. He had not expected such a frank answer. Sand-clouded water swirled around his hands.
“Well, do you think I’m a servo?” Uriel’s eyes were laughing at him. “Some more than others. Each soul is unique. Each day brings something new, and much that is the same. How about you?”
Spinel squinted at him, shy of revealing foolishness but curious for a reaction nonetheless. “I think there are two sorts of troubles people have: one sort, the world lays on people; the other sort, people lay on each other.”
“And most, we lay on ourselves.” Uriel waded to shore and dried himself with a rag. He replaced his amorphous robe, then the sparkling starstone.
Spinel was trying to decide about something that had puzzled him for a long time. “You know, when I met Malachite on Shora, I got the feeling that his Patriarch didn’t seem to care much about folks like Sharers, or even us. He cared mainly about the Protectors, and a few Iridians maybe, and Merwen if she could ‘run’ things. But when the Patriarch talks to you, He cares about us.”
“The Patriarch has many messengers.”
“But He must care the same, no matter who He sends. Uriel, when this Spirit calls to you, how do you know it’s Him?”
“When your own father speaks,” Uriel asked, “how do you know?”
“I can see him, touch him.”
“Trust your senses.”
“But Torr is four light-years away,” Spinel insisted. “You can’t sense Torr in an instant; it’s—it’s against physics.”
Uriel’s lips turned up a bit.
“All right, I don’t really know any physics. Even so, Uriel—well, what if there’s more than one Patriarch on Torr?”
“Did I ever speak of Torr?”
Spinel froze as if something were crawling up his back and all the way over his scalp. Uriel stood there as always, his cheeks sagging with age. Spinel felt himself overcome with mental vertigo. “Your Patriarch…He’s not on Torr?”
“Is He? Sometimes He seems more distant than the farthest galaxy. At other times, He whispers in my ear.”
“Then He’s everywhere, like Shora. Or could it be that ‘He’ is the same as Shora?”
“Is the sea half empty or half full?”
Spinel’s lips parted, but he stood without speaking. Dried sand itched on his leg; absently he rubbed it off, one foot, then the other.
Suddenly he was angry. “Why do you cheat us, then, all you ‘Spirit Callers’? If ‘He’ is everywhere, anyone can call ‘Him.’ You play the Protector’s game making us think the Torran Patriarch really cares about us somehow, when He wouldn’t give a day-old fishhead for any one of us.”
“Didn’t I invite you all to call with me, that night in the square?”
“But we couldn’t, not like you do. Like you say you do.” Spinel was incensed: a common charlatan had been unmasked.
“You called as much as I did.”
“I sure didn’t hear anything.”
“You heard, but did not understand. Understanding takes time.”
“Then make people understand. Isn’t that your job?”
For a moment Uriel twisted his face as if in intense pain. Then he relaxed and sighed. “I’m not very good at my job.” He reached into a deep pocket of his robe and pulled out something on a thin chain. It was a starstone. He slipped it around Spinel’s neck. “Perhaps you’ll do better.”
“Hey, what’s that! I’m not apprenticed or anything—”
“Who is, then?”
Spinel stood speechless, while the sand blew all around, and the startling object lay cold on his chest. He had given up hope of a stonesign for the Ocean Moon, only to receive without asking an ocean-blue star of stone.
7
WHILE LADY BERENICE had promised to retire to Sardis, Nisi the Deceiver had no intention of doing so.
Years before, after the abortive kidnap attempt and the subsequent truce with her parents, Berenice had prepared a daring escape plan. The plan was to do away with her Iridian identity altogether, disappear among the Sharers, and raise a child among them, as she was now illegally capable of doing.
Somehow, with the plan in place, she had put off its execution, until Realgar had swept her off her feet with his promises and with the seductive vision of enjoying two worlds at once. Now that Realgar’s true expectations for her were unmasked, it was clear that she had only put off the final day; but would her plan still work, on such short notice?
Outside her door the next morning, Realgar’s two servos were waiting, as they had been all night since she got back to her penthouse. At least he had had the decency not to humiliate her with human guards. Well, she would return the compliment, by sending not herself to Sardis…but a servo.
The servo was a life-sized replica of Berenice, down to the smallest details of hair and skin texture, heartbeat and odor. The face in particular was a masterpiece of simulation.
The servo “Lady Berenice” was programmed with all her most typical responses and idiosyncrasies, and she had spent most of the previous night setting up a subprogram for the trip to the Sardish hunting lodge. Now that it was done, she watched with an eerie unsettled feeling as the machine pulled on her own traveling suit and her stonesign.
Something was not quite right about the machine. Was it too perfect? No—too young, that was it. Too few wrinkles about the neck and forehead, as she must have looked seven years ago. Her throat constricted; this ruse might not work at all. She did not dare try her skin-texturing facility, because the machine “skin” was artificial. At any rate, whether it worked or not, she had nothing else to try. Nisi/Berenice had met a fork in the tunnel.
She left “Lady Berenice” getting dressed and went to open a window beside her main entrance, partly for the air and also for the benefit of Realgar’s servos, who would listen and record. A salt breeze blew in from the harbor, the last day she would ever smell a Valan ocean. For a moment she closed her eyes as if to store up the memory forever. Then she turned to the household monitor and loudly ordered supplies for the hunting lodge. “A week’s menu, vacation style number two. A dozen video selections from my library. A r
ecessed pen gun. One maxi-pack Argo personal explosive.” Realgar would understand the last two items, since she was supposedly headed for Sardis, where Azurite assassins were feared. And of course, an “assassin’s blast” was what would put an end to “Lady Berenice,” whose carapace already contained a clock set and timed for oblivion.
The personal weapons she had just ordered were in fact not meant for assassins. If all else failed, Nisi would end herself, rather than submit to a sanatorium.
At last she gave “Lady Berenice” her final order. Her hands shook so that she could barely turn on the bedroom monitor to observe what would happen as the machine left her house. What took place was almost anticlimactic: servo met servo at the threshold, as unquestioningly as when Merwen and Usha had met Malachite.
She dressed herself now as Dolomite woman, in a black woolen cloak that covered all but her eyes. Thus disguised she departed for the moonferry, her heart pounding and her hands pawing at her neck for the nonexistent stonesign, without which she felt more naked in Iridis than she ever had on Shora. Only when Dak’s moonferry took off and Iridis fell away from her could she relax, sinking limp in her seat, eyes glazed, too stunned yet for tears.
Lady Berenice of Hyalite—she must never use that name again. Lady Berenice was a refugee, stranded forever in the Sardish wilderness. Only Nisi the Deceiver was going home.
8
AT RAIA-EL, THE raft blossoms bloomed again in profusion, but Merwen the Impatient felt much alone. Usha brought solace as always; but with Spinel gone, Lystra became impossible to share a silkhouse with. Lystra left at last with Mithril and the other refugees of swallower season, to help establish their new raft. As for Nisi, there was an enigma that only brought pain to Merwen’s heart. Death ruled those who ruled the dead; could Nisi escape or not?
It was a shock, then, the day that the Deceiver returned to the doorhole of the silkhouse. Merwen could not bring herself to share speech again, but Usha did. “So, Deceiver,” Usha observed in a thoughtful tone, “you slipped back before Death quite shut the traders’ door.”
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