But then, Merwen had spoken: Protector Merwen, she who had stolen Berenice from him. Her life represented all that thwarted him on this Torr-forsaken Ocean Moon. Had she decided to yield at last and convince her sisters to obey? Or would she simply beg for her own life?
“Cease fire.” Realgar walked toward the stake, and the soldiers cleared a path. The sounds and confusion all receded from his mind. He halted a few paces away. Merwen looked at him, her eyes and cheeks flat, her old scar trailing up her neck and scalp.
“I know your wage, Death-hastener. But who will pay, when none are left to die?”
The Valan words knifed and twisted. Blindly he slashed her face with the end of his firewhip. Realgar struggled to shake off the dread she unleashed, in her challenge that every Sharer would die before one would yield. If it came to that, before Malachite returned, Realgar would have lost, failed completely.
Was there any way out? Could he let them all die?
An inspiration came to him. What Malachite really wanted was Sharer knowledge, knowledge of lifeshaping. That knowledge would remain, even with Sharers extinct: a trillion chromosomal libraries in every raft, even the raft Realgar stood on now. Malachite could find some way to tap those libraries.
His breathing slowed and his head cleared as he realized that he could exterminate the catfish if he had to. But he was not done with them yet.
Realgar nodded at Merwen and the other one. “Remove them to Headquarters, and let’s clear out.”
There was still a chance he might break them. He could turn their own psychological weapons against them, in a way that Jade was too conventional to try. If Merwen had broken Unspeech under pressure, then she had fallen, as judged by her own code, and that fall was the first step toward her defeat. She would live to see her planet die.
Part VI
THE
LAST
DOOR
1
RAIA-EL WAS QUIET now, except for the wind, whose thin sorrowful cry swept the ridge. High cirrus clouds splashed the sky, and the sea was a blue mirror. Spinel looked into the sea and thought he heard Merwen whisper again, What do you see? But when he turned, she was not there.
Lystra and the other adults were all in whitetrance, mourning the souls departed in haste the night before. Spinel was left alone with his thoughts, or rather non-thoughts; not-thinking about flames charring raftwood, not-thinking about those whose ashes were mixed in. He thought of his family again, for the first time in weeks. Beryl had told him he would never understand what they had undergone in Chrysoport. Now it ripped through him, what Beryl must have felt when Harran was killed, and he knew why Chrysolite villagers would suffer anything to keep the peace, would submit with equal resignation to Protectors or to Dolomite occupiers so long as peace held.
Yet Sharers would not. Was Spinel a Sharer yet? The knife of that question only twisted deeper.
A touch at his elbow startled him. Lystra had come out, her fingertips still white. Her arm curled around his waist, pressing warmth into him, her muscles leaner than they had been once but growing tough enough for the starworms again. Her cheek pressed into his, and Spinel closed his eyes to let all the ache drain from his head. Her breast was full at his side, and it was easy to float away with her breath as it brushed past his face. Only there was no time to rest. “Lystra, what are we to do now?”
“Feed the next starworm.”
Lystra’s matter-of-fact tone surprised him. Spinel turned and blinked at her.
“Without Yinevra, who else will make sure it’s done right?”
Spinel winced. “Yes, but what about the Leni-el starworms?”
Lystra did not reply right away. “Mithril will always be welcome here,” she said at last.
So Leni-el raft was not going to make it, after all the sweat lost in digging tunnels and implanting starworms, and the Sharers would be refugees again, scattered throughout Per-elion. His vision blurred, and he wiped his eyes. “What then, Lystra, after we feed the starworms?”
Her lips twisted. “A Gathering, today.”
“Oh, I’ll come this time.” Sensing her hesitation, Spinel added, “I’ll learn whitetrance, too. It’s my right, isn’t it?”
“That depends. Are you like Nisi still, or have you grown up?”
Anger filled him, until he saw Lystra’s hands shaking and realized what an effort it took her to say that. “You know what I am,” he told her. “Whatever that is, it has to be enough.”
In the lifeshaping place, Usha was sitting across from him an arm’s-length away, with the mindguide curling down from her fingers like a sleepy spider. Spinel shrank from it at first, but after all, he thought, it could hardly be any worse to turn white than to turn purple. The mindguide settled lightly on his head.
His mind rushed out like a train speeding through a tunnel while the wind screamed past. He blossomed out into the vastness of Shora’s ocean, then watched it curve into a blue bauble and slip away to a speck smaller than the moon ever seen from Valedon. Valedon, too, and even the precious sun receded as his mind pressed outward, crowding the stars in his grasp. Illusion, it must be, some sort of conjuror’s trick. Or could every mind hold a universe all in itself?
Then memory coalesced and paraded behind him, while he stood at the lip of the Last Door and realized how amazingly simple it would be to slip through. All it took was to linger long enough at that Door, to feel how meaningless was fear, how useless any threat to the mind. And yet…
When he returned to himself, Spinel stared at his feet for a long time, until the patterns blurred and left opposite colors in his eyes. He stretched his arms and glanced at Usha again. Usha tilted her head expectantly. “Well? You took a long time to come back.”
Spinel shivered all over and hugged his arms. “I could have stayed there forever. Why does anyone come back?”
“Well, why did you?” Usha sounded satisfied as she picked up the mindguide, which had fallen from his head, and patted it into a neat bundle.
For no reason, Spinel thought, except perhaps that a life worth dying for is worth living a little longer.
Before the Gathering, Wellen and Weia would not let Usha leave them alone in the silkhouse. Weia screamed and hung fast to Usha’s leg, while Wellen more politely insisted, “We have selfnames, Mother, we chose them at the soldier-place. We have to come.” Then Mithril’s daughter clamored to come too.
Usha relented at last, but Lystra was scandalized. “They’re too young; it’s just not correct.”
“These are highly incorrect times,” Usha replied. “Merwen would have thought this best.”
Lystra wanted to cry out, Don’t talk about Merwen as if she were already dead. She made herself think of the Gathering and of what must be done. Whether or not they yet lived, the Gathering would have to act without Merwen or Yinevra today.
And without Trurl to sift the speaking; Trurl was not there, would never be there or anywhere again, no matter how automatically Lystra looked to the center of the gathering place where Trurl always sat. She could not imagine a Raia-el Gathering without Trurl’s good sense, or without Shaalrim and Lalor, always optimistic despite their rough adventures on the Stone Moon. Only their infant Laraisha survived, now nursing at Elonwy’s breast while her lovesharer cradled their own toddler. And the raft carried blackened scars.
In the air clickflies still hummed the mourning songs sent from other rafts. Farther above, a lone helicopter hovered against the clouds.
The selfnamers shared greeting in subdued voices. Only Flossa and Mirri seemed happy, as they cuddled together; a romance had sprung up between them in the lifeshaping-place where they spent such long hours together. Lystra sat with Spinel and wished that her stonesick guests would get over their nervousness about Spinel and his starstone. Another headache to add to the rest.
An almost unbearable silence hovered among them all. Lystra doubted she was alone in her voiceless call; Shora, where are you now?
Usha was staring pensively at th
e weeds beyond her crossed legs, as if all the answers might be found there. She looked up and around at the gathered Sharers. “We all know why we are gathered here. How are we to go forward this day, after…what has happened?”
Hands and fingers stirred, and a voice said, “Somehow, Valans have to share healing.”
“What if they can’t heal?” asked Elonwy as she patted Shaalrim’s child, now her own. Her voice dragged with weariness. “Consider Nisi the Deceiver.”
Usha looked down, and Lystra thought she might be too overcome to go on. Merwen, Mother, where are you? Are they prying the skin from your fingers? The empty cry escaped Lystra’s mind, reaching past the raft and its branches full yellow with blossoms, dissolving in the sparkling water.
Usha said, “We share great sorrow for the Deceiver, but we can’t judge from one case.”
“Yet one is all we have left.”
“We have Spinel,” Lystra said abruptly, pulling him closer. “Spinel is one of us.”
Elonwy sighed. “That’s what I mean.”
Lystra thought hard. “Nisi was never wholly one of us, not inside where it matters. That was why she called herself Deceiver.”
Usha looked at her. “Suppose Spinel fails too, someday. Will you say the same of him?”
“It’s not the same.” Shaken, Lystra cast a stricken glance at Spinel, who blinked at the unexpected turn. “Are you a Sharer or not? Tell us.”
“You know that I am,” Spinel said in a low voice, his shoulders hunched as if to hide the stone that accused him. Even Nisi would never have been so brazen as to wear a stone at a Gathering.
Then Wellen piped up. “Spinel already has a selfname, like us. We all made a Gathering at the soldier-place. Spinel nearly died to help us escape.”
A sigh rippled among them, and Perlianir said to Spinel, “Will you name the Three Doors?” So he stood beside Lystra and named them, the Sun, the Last Door, and his own name, Impulsive One. He sat down again quickly and Lystra hugged him, amazed and relieved that it had come so simply. If only Merwen were here to see—she jammed her eyes shut; it tore her apart every time she had to think of that.
Kithril spoke up suddenly. “Merwen believes that even the death-hasteners may yet share healing, and that is why she and my lovesharer are still alive.”
Startled, Lystra looked up at Kithril, who rarely spoke at all when Yinevra was with her. Kithril stood tensely, snapping her fingerwebs. “Merwen never did want to Unspeak them,” Kithril said. “So she spoke at last, spoke straight to their fear. It was then that they stopped the—”
“They never listened before,” someone countered. “Why should they listen now?”
“They heard Merwen, more than once,” Usha said flatly. “That is why Merwen is still alive.”
“But she might be better off dead.” Elonwy shook her head. “I’m sorry, Usha, it has to be said. There are worse fates than an early death. So far, all the doors I see ahead are worse.” The infant Laraisha started to wail. Usha stared on into the sun as if she had not heard.
Ama was trying to speak, and Lystra helped her raise herself. “We have rarely spoken for the Valans, from this Gathering,” Ama said. “Always we sent selfnamers to ask after our own sisters and daughters. Merwen asked the soldier, What will become of you?”
There was a pause. Someone demanded, “What else can we share that we have not? Whitetrance is what Shaalrim said to share: where is she now? The Deceiver shared whitetrance, and what became of her?”
“Nothing left but ourselves,” said Ama. “That is all, in the end: to keep on sharing of ourselves, until the day comes when Valans see our eyes in the ocean of their own.”
“And if we die again at the soldier-place?” Elonwy’s voice was harsh and uneven. “Isn’t it just as shameful to die hastened as to hasten death?”
“Not if we reach beyond death,” said Perlianir. “We will show that death-hastening is no answer to fear. That’s what Merwen tried to share with the death-hastener.”
Lystra froze, knowing what must come next.
“I will go first,” said Perlianir. “My lovesharer is dead, my daughters are grown; if I must go, I am ready.”
“It’s not right.” Lystra stood quickly. “This Gathering can’t send one of us to a certain death.”
“No one sends me. I send myself to share with the death-hasteners.”
“Then I’ll go too.”
At her feet Spinel gasped and said, “No, Lystra.”
“No,” said Perlianir very quietly. “You don’t want to go, yet; only to share my choice. But this choice can’t be shared.”
The truth tasted bitter. Lystra wanted no more of death or soldiers or their coldstone cells. She had had enough; all she wanted was to live here forever, with Spinel and their daughters and daughters of daughters. Though forever was impossible, and she could not shake off the dread that she would yet suffer for not wanting to die.
Usha said, “No one wants to die. But someone has to tell these people in a way they can share that we will never join their madness. I can’t ask you not to go, Sharer.”
Ama called faintly, “I will go, after you. Even a death-hastener can’t share fear with someone in my condition.”
Others volunteered, and each name cut with a knife of ice until Lystra shivered from the cold. This could not go on. What would Shora be, when there were no Sharers left?
Spinel’s steps dragged as he walked back with Lystra and Usha. “It’s no use,” he said dully. “You’ll never make a Sharer of a Sardish soldier, not in a million years.”
Usha said, “It’s not a matter of making, but of finding what is lost and buried.”
Spinel had no answer for that, although it seemed to him that he had known the answers long ago and lost them. He looked out to the sea and thought again, What use, when even the ocean world is not to be spared? The web of life had still not recovered from the missed seaswallowers; certain weeds were hopelessly overgrown, stifling the silkweed groves, and fanwings were still scarce. What would happen the next time swallowers were due, just three months from now?
At the door of the silkhouse Siderite was waiting. With raucous giggles Weia reached up at him to pull at the material of his trousers, just as she used to tease Spinel. “What is your conclusion?” Siderite asked Usha, while he tried to unpry Weia’s fingers.
“More sharing,” said Usha. “Share on, until the ocean overflows.”
Lines tensed around Siderite’s eyes. He looked at Spinel, and briefly they shared an outsider’s perception of helplessness. Spinel only gripped Lystra’s hand tighter. He had no explanations; he only knew which side he had chosen.
“Usha,” Siderite asked, “how can you hope for mercy from the Guard, after all that has happened?”
Usha frowned over the Valan words. “I’m not sure what ‘mercy’ is, but sharing is what we want. Sharing works something like this: Think of those living molecules which you know so well. As molecules grow colder, very cold, fewer levels of energy remain that can bridge the barrier between them. But no matter how cold it gets, molecules never lose the lowest level, the zero-point energy. At zero point, they tunnel through the barrier to share electrons. Sharing between souls works like that; there is always a last door to tunnel through.”
Siderite might have known what Usha was getting at, but Spinel had only vaguely heard of “energy levels,” in atoms of stone where they absorbed light and spat it out again in colors. He scratched his toe on the raft and wished that Usha knew as much about stone atoms as she did about “living” ones. Then maybe he would get less trouble for his starstone.
“A last door,” Siderite repeated to himself. “Do you realize that the Commander now has a ‘last chance’ policy? That is, it’s your last chance to give up before you all die.”
“Each of us dies someday,” Usha said. “Like most children, Valans tend to forget this.”
Siderite opened his mouth to add something, then changed his mind and switched tongues. �
�Usha, we must share parting. Many thanks for all the learning we have shared; but it must end, before this learning can be used against you.”
Usha nodded. “Perhaps that is best. Some learning is too dangerous for children. But you could still stay with us, and learn whitetrance, and take a selfname.”
“And end as Nisi did?”
For long minutes they contemplated each other, then Siderite turned and plodded heavily back toward his tent.
Spinel watched in dismay. I won’t end like Nisi, he insisted to himself. Yet how can I know what I’ll do when the soldiers come for me, or for Lystra.
2
AT HEADQUARTERS EVERYTHING was under control. Siderite’s plague cure had done the trick, quarantine was lifted, and most of the troublesome Iridians and Dolomites had been sent home, replaced by Sards. On the home front, news of the attack had ignited public sentiment. Talion’s councilors called for a stunning counterattack: “Boil off their ocean,” said one. In fact, twenty Sardish divisions had been promised, of which eight had already arrived.
There were enough troops and submarines now to cover every woman and child on every raft, around the clock. Once the new regime settled in, every raft would become a prison.
Of course, it was ridiculous to keep a hundred thousand troops to guard a prison camp. Realgar’s staff was devising a plan to concentrate the natives in a more convenient facility, once their spirits were broken. That was bound to happen, sooner or later; around the planet, hundreds were dying daily, just for getting caught away from their home rafts. The Sardish machine was in control.
After the public executions on Raia-el, two prisoners had been taken, of whom one had died in whitetrance the first night. So much for the future guerrilla leader of Shora. Protector Merwen, however, was still alive. Realgar had her put on critical life support and made Doctor Nathan personally responsible for her survival.
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