“Because they’re the same person,” Ariele said, her voice turning flat and strained.
“It isn’t that simple.” Jerusha repeated. “They wanted the same things—your father, and this world’s freedom from the Hegemony—but not in the same way.”
Ariele shook her head, her face twisting with disgust, and Jerusha knew that they had lost her. She started away down the pier, her bare feet splashing. As she reached the shore she began to run, disappearing down the diminishing strand of beach.
* * *
Ariele slowed again when she knew that she was beyond earshot of anyone calling after her. She stopped, looking out at the bay, waiting for the sight of Silky’s head. She whistled shrilly, calling the mer to her. Silky came out of the water, moving awkwardly up the beach on her wide, flat flippers, her neck weaving in curiosity. Ariele leaned down, nuzzling her; feeling the cold space inside her heart fill with warmth and love, feeling her mind fill with thoughts that held brightness and promise, a future not bound up in anyone else’s past.
“Come on, sweet Silky, you hear that?” she asked. “My fishbrained brother trying to make your music with his flute. Let’s go sing him some real music—” She began to walk again, slowing her pace this time so that the mer could keep up with her. She watched the shining sand under her feet, stooping to pick up an occasional agate pebble from the flotsam of stones and weed and shells underfoot.
Ahead of them was a steep hummock of eroded sandstone, almost like a castle. They had always called it the Castle, pretending it was something out of the stories that Jerusha had told them when they were children. Tammis still liked to sit up there in its sun-warmed crannies (and sometimes even she did) and play his flute, the way he was doing now. Merovy was probably up there too, hanging on every note, on his every word, like the infatuated little idiot she was.
They had all been happy enough as playmates when they were children. But Ariele had long since lost patience with the younger girl, just as she had lost patience with her cautious, moody brother and his obsession with his music. She was sure he only played to impress Da, but he would never impress Da, not until he stopped being such a whining bore.
She stopped at the foot of the Castle, listening to her brother’s music, which reached her purely and clearly now: a mix of old traditional Summer tunes and freeform improvisation on some of the mersong fragments she had taught him, all of it flowing together into a surprisingly coherent and—though she hated to admit it—beautiful whole. Silky raised her head and began a low singsong in response; breaking off, her head swaying, starting up again, as if she wanted to continue the music, but was uncertain of its pattern.
Ariele began to sing and whistle, encouraging her, until a head peered over the top of the rock far above them. Ariele looked up, seeing Merovy’s long, curly brown hair, her pale face and gray eyes framed by its thick waves. Her face disappeared again, and the music stopped.
Tammis looked down now, the sunlight glinting red-gold off the highlights in his darker brown hair, his expression caught between annoyance and concentration as he listened to their music. The expression turned completely annoyed as he realized she was only parroting back his own song. “Go away,” he said. “You’re interrupting me.”
“Oh—?” Ariele cocked her head. “Really? And I thought you were just playing with your flute.” She laughed, making her own face into a travesty of romantic longing, wriggling suggestively. “Come on, Silky, we’ll leave the lovesick birds in their nest.…” She sauntered away down the shore, picking up agates and carbuncles, with Silky trailing reluctantly behind her.
* * *
“Lady’s Eyes!” Tammis settled back into the warm palm of stone where he had been lying beside Merovy with his head in her lap, playing his music for her. He felt his face burning with anger and embarrassment as he looked away from his sister’s retreating back; back into Merovy’s gray, calm gaze. “Sorry,” he said, looking away again. “I just wish she’d leave me alone. She always has to ruin everything.” He looked at his flute, with the memory of how she had tried to take it from him, years ago, still as fresh as the way she had taunted him just now. The memory of how their father would have let her; how, when their mother had stopped it, Da had given her his very own flute. She had hardly touched it since, as far as he knew; while he had practiced and practiced. But the only time his father listened to him was when he had discovered a new fragment of mersong to play.…
He dropped his flute irritably, heard it clatter on the stone behind him.
“Oh, don’t—” Merovy leaned over and picked it up with quick hands, brushing off the sand, checking it for fractures. She held it out to him. “Here, it’s all right.…”
He grimaced, shaking his head. “I don’t care—nobody else does.”
She looked at him.
“Sorry.” He sighed, sitting back down under the gentle censure of her gaze. He took the flute from her; held on to her hands as he did, drawing her close. She settled into the curve of his body, putting her arms around him, kissing him on the cheek. He stroked her hair, turned his face to kiss her on the mouth, a little self-consciously; feeling the sudden giddy rush of heat inside him, the sudden uncomfortable pressure against the fastenings of his pants. He pulled back, catching his breath, still half-afraid of his body’s unexpected and unpredictable responses to things that excited it. But at least this time it was a girl’s body he was excited by, and this time it was not simply because she was a girl, and touching him, but because she was Merovy.…
What he felt for her ran far deeper than newly awakened sexual desire, far beyond the shared memories of old friendship. Because when he looked into Merovy’s eyes as he did now, he saw only himself reflected there, and not the son of the Summer Queen; not prestige or power or superstition or anything else. Only deep, unquestioning trust, and unspoken yearning. Shy and soft-spoken, half Winter and half Summer, she was lost in the casual wit and flash of their usual crowd of city acquaintances. But out here in the peace and silence, he saw her real beauty.
And, trusting her as she trusted him, he drew her down beside him into the warm hollow of the rock. He kissed her again with sudden longing, his hands touching her, cupping her breasts through the soft cloth of her shirt with gentle insistence. She let him, as she had let him before, only kissing him more passionately, her lips soft and open against his. She made no move to stop him as he loosened his shirt and then her own, slipping his hands up under it, dazzled by the softness of her skin, while her own hands caressed his face, his chest, the muscles of his back; never daring to wander below his waist. He felt himself aching for her to do it, to touch him there.… He let his own hands leave her breasts and slide down, loosening her pants, curving around the soft lines of her thighs and hips, in between, as her knees tightened, resisting, then loosened again.
They had done this much before, exploring each other tentatively, achingly; but always she had stopped him from going further, and always, afraid of hurting her or driving her away, he had been content to stop. There were girls he knew in the city who were more than ready, who had tried to make him feel what he suddenly felt now, as Merovy’s hands abruptly tried to push his own away. He had not given in to them, wanting it to happen with her, only with her; an act of love, not just the impulse he felt when he had looked at those other lithe, willing young bodies, both the girls and the boys.…
He pushed her hands aside, pulling open the fastenings of his own pants. “Come on, Merovy, please, let me, let me.…”
“Tammis—” She pushed at his chest, turning her face away from his kisses.
“I love you so much, Merovy. I don’t want it to happen with someone else.… It’s only you I want, forever; I want to pledge my life with you—”
She turned her face back again, her eyes wide with amazement, and he found her lips, kissing her long and deeply, smothering her attempt at words. He felt her hands give way, and her arms go around him then in answer. He freed himself, freed her, from th
e confinement and the protection of clothing, until there was nothing between his eager body and what waited to receive it. He slid in between her legs, felt her tremble beneath him; hating his clumsiness and confusion in the middle of his desperate need. She whimpered as he found the place where he was meant to be and began to push; cried out, like a seabird crying, as the membrane that held him back abruptly tore, and he entered her.
He froze as her arms tightened around him; held her tightly, kissing her with passionate tenderness as he saw the tears shining on her cheeks. And then, astonished by the sensation of being within her, he began to move, slowly and tentatively at first, and then more deeply, as her body began to respond to him, and he realized that the sounds she was making were muffled sounds of pleasure. His body controlled him now, carrying him like the sea through wave after wave of pleasure, until at last his pleasure crested and the tides flowed out of him. She gasped and sighed, and then she was kissing him wildly, gratefully. “I love you,” he whispered again, wonderingly, as he understood at last how a lifetime together with someone that you loved could seem like eternity, and yet not be long enough.
KHAREMOUGH: Aspundh Estate
BZ Gundhalinu stood smiling at the edge of the perfectly manicured expanse of lawn, as his wife began the introduction to her latest work. The lawn rolled like a wine-red sea into the twilight, toward the distant shore of trees, with KR Aspundh’s invited guests scattered over it in expectant silence.
“The performance is about to begin—?” Aspundh came up beside him, and Gundhalinu turned, with his hands in his pockets, to acknowledge their host.
“Yes.” He removed a hand to glance at his watch. “In precisely two and a third minutes, at sunrise. I wanted to thank you for your kindness in inviting my wife to debut the performance of her new work here, Aspundh-ken. The gods themselves couldn’t have picked a more perfect setting for it. Our own knob of rock would never accommodate such a display, even though it is a celebration of our marriage.”
“Yes, so Gundhalinu-bhai told me. She is a unique and charming woman.”
Gundhalinu smiled, glancing down. He looked away again at the view, as dawn’s lavender-blue sky brightened with rose and peach, as the last fragile vestiges of the night’s auroras began to fade from the zenith. He stifled a sudden yawn.
“Dear me,” Aspundh chuckled. “Is it the hour, or the company?”
Gundhalinu shook his head vehemently, feeling his face flush. “Neither, I assure you,” he murmured. “Well … the hour, perhaps; but Dhara insisted that the work had to be presented exactly at sunrise. And I’ve been on stims for three days straight; my body doesn’t take it as kindly as it did in my student days.” He touched the skin patch pasted unobtrusively on the back of his neck. “Production schedules up at the shipyards were lagging behind. It was only a run of last-minute serendipity—call it a miracle—that I was able to get down here for the performance at all. I really thought I wouldn’t make it. I would have hated that.”
Aspundh smiled, with fleeting, inscrutable amusement. “Your presence here is a provident miracle indeed, then,” he said.
“Dhara was pleased and honored at your offer to sponsor her performance, and so was I,” Gundhalinu added, sincerely. “It’s good to see you again, Aspundh-ken.”
Aspundh shrugged modestly. “The honor is mine. I’ve been an admirer of her work for years—and yours. And also I have felt it was time—past time—that we spoke together again, Gundhalinu-ken; in light of our mutual interests. I know that your private time is nearly nonexistent, but there are some strangers far from home who share our concerns—” He glanced over his shoulder toward the manor house. “They would like to speak with you too.”
Gundhalinu followed his glance, startled by the unexpectedness of the invitation. He looked back at the place where Pandhara stood, about to begin.
“She won’t notice that you’ve gone,” Aspundh whispered, apologetically but urgently. “We’ll be back before the work is over.”
“I—” One look at Aspundh’s face told him that this was not an invitation made lightly, and not one that he could refuse. He nodded once, and followed the other man inside.
They made their way through the now-empty rooms until they reached one which overlooked the silent, enclosed inner courtyard. Five people were waiting there, three women and two men, reclining around a table. They were playing tan on the sunken table-surface. The table had been inlaid with patterns of semiprecious stones to form the geometric intricacies of the game board; the entire piece appeared to be very old.
He glanced up again, looking in curiosity from face to face. One man and one woman were offworlders; the two other women and remaining man were Kharemoughi. Aspundh made introductions: One of the Kharemoughi women was TDC Dhaki, a researcher he knew by reputation. The other was a Police inspector; the datapatch on her uniform read Kitaro. She was wearing a trefoil; he looked at her a moment longer, because there were not many sibyls on the force, and not many women either, as a rule. He glanced away again, as he realized suddenly that everyone in the room was not only Survey, but a sibyl.
Aspundh beckoned him to a place at the table. He settled onto a cushion, as Aspundh sat down beside him with the obvious difficulty of age. The others around the table assessed him in turn.
“We will dispense with tradition today,” Aspundh said, leaning forward to gather up the colored-crystal gaming pieces scattered on the table surface. “Time is limited, and we have important matters to cover.” He turned to Gundhalinu. “You said to me the last time we met that you were unsure who to trust, that you sensed there were factions and rivalries even within the Golden Mean itself.”
Gundhalinu smiled ruefully, and nodded. “The man who helped me control the stardrive plasma turned out to be working for the Brotherhood.” He glanced from face to face again. “That was my first, rudest awakening. But since my return home I’ve come to feel more and more that when they speak of the ‘best interests of the Hegemony’ at the Meeting Hall, they mean ‘the best interests of Kharemough.’ And frankly I for one do not believe the two are necessarily synonymous.”
“A lesson brought home to me some years ago, by our mutual acquaintance from Tiamat,” Aspundh murmured. “It was a hard lesson, but one that made many things clear for me. I have always loved Kharemough fiercely, and believed in our way of life, perhaps to a fault, because of my own family’s experiences. But I have come to see that as a limitation rather than a virtue of mine … one of many insights I have gained, along the way to enlightenment within this order.” He shrugged. “The reality of things is infinitely more complicated, and yet simpler, than any of us will ever know. It’s a lesson you grasped much more quickly than I, Gundhalinu-ken.”
Gundhalinu glanced down. “I had some formidably insistent teachers, Aspundhken.” he said softly. “Sometimes I think the words we live by in Survey should not be ‘Ask the right questions,’ but ‘Trust no one completely.’”
“Both of those are sound advice,” IL Robanwil, the other Kharemoughi, said.
Gundhalinu looked up at him. “And what questions about my trustworthiness do you want to ask of me, then?”
“You believe that you know, better than the people who run the Hegemony—and possibly Survey itself—what is good for Tiamat.” Robanwil smiled faintly. “I suppose that I for one would like to know how much you trust yourself…”
Gundhalinu almost laughed, although he knew the question was not in the least frivolous. “If I don’t trust myself completely, I probably shouldn’t be attempting any of this,” he said slowly. “But if I don’t constantly question my motives, I’m probably a lunatic.… I guess I believe that I’ve earned the right to trust myself as far as I have to.”
“You have earned the right to be trusted further than most people, Commander Gundhalinu,” DenVadams, one of the offworlders, said. “That’s why we’re here.… Your accomplishments are impressive. Tell me, do you believe the remarkable things that have happened to you
in your life are due to your own effort and intelligence, or random fate … or is it possible that you are actually part of a plan so great and complex that even your full part in it is incomprehensible to you?”
Gundhalinu’s mouth quirked. “I’ve believed all those things, at one point or another. But if I believed any of them completely, I expect you’d have every right to kill me.”
“Frankly, Gundhalinu-sadhu, we prefer conversion to coercion, whenever possible,” Robanwil said. “If someone were truly a madman, they would not present a meaningful danger to us. Someone who is influential and intelligent enough to create a major change of course in the flow of human history for our corner of the galaxy, on the other hand, must be reckoned with. To play god by deciding whether someone like that should live or die would not only be immoral, it would be a terrible waste of resources. We wouldn’t kill them, we’d recruit them.”
“And work to convince them that your version of universal truth is the only real one, and that you are on the side of right in the Great Game—?” Gundhalinu finished it for him. The ironic smile stretched his mouth again.
Nods and smiles that were equal parts irony and acknowledgment answered his, around the table.
He glanced at Aspundh again, suddenly feeling like a man in a hall of mirrors. “Are all of you truly sibyls, or are you only wearing trefoils to make me trust you?”
They glanced at each other, and one by one spoke the words, “Ask, and I will answer.”
He asked. Each in their turn went into Transfer, and gave him the answer he anticipated to the question he asked of them. He looked back at Aspundh, expectant this time.
“The Survey that you know well, that calls itself the Golden Mean, is dominated by Kharemoughi interests. A number of cabals on other worlds of the Hegemony ally themselves with it, either because they want its strength behind them, or have reason to support the status quo,” Aspundh said. “You know that Survey exists on as many worlds as sibyls do, inside and outside of the Hegemony. It has existed for a long time, and it has a great deal of influence in some of those places. There are nearly as many factions of Survey as there are Meeting Halls in the Eight Worlds. They acquire local personalities, they change … power corrupts, as it always does. What was done to your own brothers is a graphic example of the dangers we face when a cancer such as the Brotherhood occurs. And such mutations occur more and more frequently, in an organization so ancient and far-flung.”
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