She saw again in her mind the Ariele carrying Kirard Set Wayaways out to sea—the only one of her tormentors on whom she had been able to take revenge. She let herself imagine him reaching shore, half-drowned, exhausted, pulling himself onto the docks below the city … saw herself waiting for him there, with a knife in her hand, to keep her final promise to him.…
Sickened, she pressed her hand to her face; pain throbbed in her head with every heartbeat, as the headache that had been threatening her since she rose this morning burst into blinding life. She had eaten nothing all day, but the very thought of food repulsed her. She reached her own bedroom and stopped, leaning against the doorframe, unable to force herself to go inside.
She went on along the hall, until at last she reached the doorway to the room that had been Arienrhod’s. The bedchamber waited as Arienrhod had left it, over twenty years ago, and had not been slept in by anyone since she had died. Moon opened the door, and stood gazing inside.
“Do you need anything, Lady?” A servant passing in the hall hesitated, inclining her head.
Moon looked at the woman, pressing her mouth to stop its sudden urge to ridiculous laughter. Need anything—? “I need to rest,” she said finally, her voice thick. “I don’t want to be disturbed for a long time.…”
“Yes, Lady.” The woman nodded respectfully. She glanced at the open doorway and hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, before she went on down the hall.
Moon went into the room, retreating into its silence. Its wide windows were hidden by heavy curtains; it was entirely self-contained, a womb into which she could withdraw. She undressed and lay down in the nacreous, shellform bed, wrapping the bedclothes around her, her arms and legs embracing the softness and emptiness. No memory lay waiting for her here, no phantom arms to reach out to her, no whisper of gentle words, the remembered heat of no one else’s body to warm her own.…
She darkened the bedside lights, throwing the ghost-haunted shadows of the room into utter blackness, so that it did not matter whether her eyes were open or closed. Utterly alone at last, she folded her arms around her shivering flesh and began to weep, silently at first, and then wrackingly, because there was no one to hear her, no one to comfort her, no one to forgive her.
She wept until she had no strength left, until she could only lie still, closer to sleep than to waking. She waited there, her body unresisting, her mind surrendering, ready to be taken by oblivion.
But instead she felt something else seize hold of her—an irresistible force drawing her down into a darkness even more complete.… The Transfer.
She let go, let herself fall, through the darkness and into the corruscating light/sound of a place she remembered, feeling hope come alive inside her, almost unbearably. (BZ—?) she called, seeing her voice go out from her in ripple-rings of harmonic light. (BZ, where are you?)
(No …) the answer came, and the touch of it against her mind was a stranger’s.
(Who—?) she thought, because there was something almost familiar about the disembodied patterns of the other’s contact.
(KR Aspundh—)
(KR—?) Her disbelief rippled out from her like tolling bells.
(Yes, my dear.…) His thought turned fond and gentle, like the feathery touch of an old man’s hand against her cheek. (After so long. BZ told me what had become of you, all that you have become.…)
(BZ—where is he, KR? How is he? How can I reach him?)
(Slowly,) he whispered. (Go slowly, Moon—though I should address you properly as Lady—my strength is not what it was, even when you knew me. This is difficult for me.… BZ is being held by the Hegemonic government. He will be sentenced without trial, the Golden Mean will see to it, because they fear his popularity. They mean to be rid of him, because of his opposition to the water of life … to send him somewhere he will never return from. He told me to contact you. Why has all this happened, Moon? He said that you could tell me.)
(Lady’s Eyes— I can’t, KR.…) She felt her desperation and fear grow blinding, making her thoughts incoherent, drowning his contact. She forced the heart of ice that had formed within her these past weeks to cool her blood, letting her see clearly, and think dispassionately. (It’s impossible. I can’t explain it, any more than he can, even like this, even to you. I can only tell you that if I fail in what I was meant to do, every world on which there are still sibyls will suffer … including Kharemough. And there are only two people who can help me—BZ, and a man named Reede Kullervo. But something called the Brotherhood has taken Kullervo, and my daughter. I don’t know how to save them. My husband went after them to Ondinee … BZ believed you might be able to help them. But how can we save them, KR, how can we save BZ, if even the ones he trusted have betrayed us—?)
His thoughts enfolded her like warm hands. (The Golden Mean is only one facet of Survey’s hidden structure, as the Brotherhood is another.… I am taking a chance in assuming you understand that. There are others, they are all like mirrors within a kaleidoscope. There is still hope—there is always hope. I will see what can be done to help save your daughter, and bring Kullervo back to you. But beyond that … a balance was thrown off when Kitaro-ken was killed. She was a counterweight: with her support BZ might have held his own against his formidable opposition … Reede Kullervo and your daughter might not have been lost. The Golden Mean controls the water of life completely now, and we who see further than they know enough to see that they must be stopped.)
(Yes,) she thought. (Yes. The water of life has everything to do with what is wrong, what went wrong.… The sibyl net is in danger, because the mers are in danger … the mers.…) Strident waves of interference beat back against her brain, drowning her thoughts in undertow. (It has to stop! They must stop hunting the mers.)
There was silence, shimmering like a reflection on water through a moment’s eternity. (Very well, then. But what will make them stop?) Aspundh asked finally. (We must find something that will make them stop. Something that they desire even more than the water of life.…)
(I don’t believe anything exists that they want more,) Moon thought bitterly.
(It exists, somewhere …) Aspundh replied, with a faint ripple of pained amusement. (But it is nothing easily discovered, or they would have it already, like the water of life.)
(The stardrive plasma,) she thought. (But they have that, because BZ gave it to them.)
(Perhaps that was his mistake,) Aspundh murmured. (But then, we are all only human—none of us can see the future, and see it clearly. There must be something else they want.)
She thought of the secret of the computer itself; if they knew of its existence they would never touch another mer. But they could never be allowed to possess that knowledge, after having proved so profoundly how little they could be trusted with power. Even if she could give it to them … (I don’t know. I don’t know.)
(Nor do I. But we must not give up hope, or give up searching—)
(But where else can I search?) she thought, despairing. (Where can I go? I have no options.)
(You have all of spacetime,) he answered. (You are adrift in it now. You are what you are for a reason; I have never been more certain of it than now. I can send outward, through the network of contacts Survey has provided me. But you have the greater resource—the sibyl mind speaks to you, it opens itself to you in a way it does for no one else I know; this is something I had only heard tales of, before I met you. There are secrets the sibyl net hides even from its most trusted servants … but clearly not from you.)
She made no answer, suffused with the radiance of his words, and the vision they created in her mind.
(We are doing what we can for BZ. But the Golden Mean is powerful in the Hegemony. You may be the only real hope BZ has. He needs a force strong enough to turn back the tide … perhaps it is why you are called Moon,) KR thought gently, as strands of golden light began to unravel all around her. (May the gods of your ancestors help you …) Her mind sang with his final benediction.
ONDINEE: Tuo Ne’el
“There it is,” Kedalion said, pointing ahead over the blasted heath of the Land of Death as the citadel became visible. He called up enhancement, and a segment of the displays leaped into magnification, showing them more detail.
“By’r Lady…” Sparks murmured, beside him. “It’s huge. It must be bigger than Carbuncle.”
“They’re entire self-contained city-states,” Kedalion said, remembering the citadel’s labyrinthine streets and levels with sudden vividness. A part of him was still casually amused by Sparks Dawntreader’s tireless wonder, even while another, separate part of his brain felt sick with dread as he watched their final destination fill the screens.
It had been difficult to believe Dawntreader had never been offworld, when they were back in Carbuncle. He belonged to the same secret organization that Reede belonged to, and his single-minded obsession with getting to Ondinee made his confidence seem utterly unshakable. He even had a fair amount of knowledge about starships and how their systems worked; but it was all textbook knowledge. He had never set foot on an actual ship, and on board the Prajna he had been like a dumbstruck boy. It had reminded Kedalion of Ananke’s first transit; but Dawntreader was at least his own age.
Dawntreader had asked them endless questions about their past lives and homeworlds, and how they had come to be here, in these bizarre circumstances. He had not even complained about the cramped quarters—which had been designed to suit Kedalion’s size requirements, and not those of his passengers or crew. Dawntreader had tried everything, learned every task, no matter how tedious or unpleasant, aboard the ship; and for the most part, he had done them well. “I’ve waited my entire life for this,” he said once, when Ananke had asked him why he wanted so badly to scrub down the control room floor. There had been a desperate passion in his eyes when he said it; but the emotion had turned to ashes, as he remembered what had finally driven him to break the chains that had bound him to his homeworld.
Now Kedalion watched Dawntreader’s amazement slowly change, darkening, as he realized that this was the stronghold of the enemy, the place he had to bring his daughter out of. “Lady and all the gods.…” Dawntreader murmured, and Kedalion read the rest of the thought in his eyes: How—?
“Nobody told you it would be easy,” Kedalion said, expressionless. “You want to go to Razuma starport, instead? The citadel might still let us turn around…” He gestured at the image on the screen.
Dawntreader glanced over at him, and frowned. “No,” he said.
“Just asking.” Kedalion shrugged. He looked over his shoulder at Ananke, sitting in the back, brooding in silence with his arms folded across his chest. He looked naked somehow, without the quoll; seemed to feel naked, from the way he held himself. Every time Kedalion looked at him, the quoll’s absence was like a shout, reminding him of what they were planning to do here, shouting at him that they were insane, and going to die. Or maybe it was only his own common sense that he heard screaming. He sighed, and began the approach codes; listening to the answering signal burst tell him that he was doomed, they were all doomed now.…
The citadel beckoned them into its waiting mouth, on down its throat into the designated docking bay. They climbed out as their craft locked down, and were met by a reception committee of armed men.
“We were only expecting two of you,” the leader, a man named Samir, said, holding his stun rifle at roughly Kedalion’s eye level.
Kedalion felt sweat burn unpleasantly down his back, as he began the speech he had rehearsed in his mind a thousand times over on the way from Tiamat. “TerFauw ordered us to bring this man with us, because he has important data for Kullervo. He’s been cleared. Show him your hand,” he said, nudging Dawntreader.
Dawntreader held up his palm. He had learned to speak Trade on the way here, using an enhancer, practicing it on them. He showed off the eye he had burned into his own flesh, a reasonable facsimile of the Source’s mark; or at least Kedalion hoped so.
Samir stared at the brand, frowned. “Nobody told me about that,” he said flatly.
“How could they?” Kedalion answered, his tension giving it the snap of impatience. “I’m telling you now. Kullervo needs to see this man, he’s got special information, he’s a local expert on the mers. If Kullervo doesn’t get to see him, somebody’s going to be real pissed off.”
Samir looked at the scar. He looked back at Kedalion, his stare long and hard. At last he shrugged, and nodded. “All right,” he said, and waved them on.
They made their way through the maze of tunnels that led into the heart of the citadel complex, where transportation waited that would take them to Reede. Kedalion pushed his hands into his coat pockets, feeling for his huskball; hating the prospect of being a passenger and not a pilot, especially now, when he felt so powerless. The huskball was not much more than a rough nub in a nest of loose shavings now; he had nearly worn it out, with years of nervous fiddling. He wished he knew where to find another one; even though he knew a new one would never be the same, would be like encountering a stranger in his pocket. “Well, here we are,” he said, with relentless banality, as they reached a transport stop.
“That was great, Kedalion,” Ananke said suddenly, glancing over his shoulder. “The way you— Gods, I thought I was going to puke when Samir stuck his gun in your face. Reede couldn’t have backed him down better.”
“Actually,” Kedalion said, with a slow smile, “I was thinking how Gundhalinu would have done it, back on Four. Gods, he was slick.”
Sparks looked at him with a sudden frown, as if he had unintentionally hit a nerve.
“Sorry,” Kedalion murmured, realizing what lay behind the look. “I was also thinking about when I was a kid, and we used to go drafting, off the cliffs. If you didn’t keep your glider in balance, you’d kill yourself. You knew if you failed you’d die. So you didn’t fail.” His smile faded. “Actually, I’m still thinking about that.”
“Yeah,” Ananke muttered, as they sat down on a metal bench to wait for transportation; he tugged at his leather-gloved foot as he looked out over the scene. Dawntreader leaned back in his seat, silent, staring straight ahead.
* * *
“Reede—?”
Reede pushed back in his seat as Ariele’s voice reached him from the entrance to his lab. He shook his head, shaking off his stupor of fatigue. He had been resting here with his head on his arms for what seemed like hours, sleepless, while she still slept on in their bed, escaping reality a while longer. He wondered what her dreams had been like. Not like his own, he hoped.
“Reede? Where are you?” He heard panic starting in her voice.
“Here.” He got up from his seat, moving through the maze of equipment and imagers to find her, to reassure her. He did not want her to see him as he had been, wallowing in useless self-loathing, unable to work, or even to think. He should have killed her, should have killed himself, when he had the chance. But something incomprehensible had stopped him; had made him choose to live, when the only sane choice had been to die. Lunatic. Coward. Masochist. The litany repeated again in his mind, as it had been repeating ever since he had regained consciousness, and found himself back in the Source’s hands. He looked down at his own hands, still clumsy with bandages.
But the water of death was alive inside him again, invading and controlling every cell in his body, healing him with a vengeance. He did not really need the bandages anymore, but they were an excuse for stalling his research work that much longer. Because it was not his hands that he couldn’t control; it was his mind. He couldn’t even pretend anymore that he could do what was required of him, do the Source’s dirty work. He could only think about the mers, and the mystery of their existence. The patterns of the mersong, and the profound secrets he had discovered hidden within it, haunted him day and night: so alien, and yet so familiar. He could not think of the mers only as receptacles for the water
of life: to think of them that way was an obscenity, to think of the water of life at all was futility, it was—
He met Ariele, felt her trembling through the layered silken cloth of her Ondinean-style robe as she came into his arms. “What’s wrong?”
“I couldn’t find you.… Reede—” She looked up at him, with terror echoing in the depths of her eyes. “Am I all right? Do I look … changed? I don’t feel well.…”
He caught her arms with his bandaged hands, shook her, insistently. “You’re all right. You’re fine.” He touched her cheek, keeping his touch gentle although he could barely feel her flesh. He turned her so that she could see herself in the reflective surface of a cabinet. “Look. Look at yourself.… See?”
She shut her eyes; opened them, stared at her reflection. Slowly she nodded, her body going soft and yielding in his arms.
“You feel fine,” he went on, with calm reassurance. “So do I.”
“I had a dream—” Her voice was unsteady.
“It was only a dream. You have hours to go still before you even have to think about the next dose.”
She looked back at him suddenly.
“I have it,” he murmured. “I have it here already. Don’t worry.” He stroked her hair.
She clung to him, sighing. “I don’t feel bad. I feel good … I’ve never felt better. It’s true. You’re so good and strong and wise. I love you, Reede. I love you. I love you.…”
He put his arms around her again, feeling bile rise in his throat. He controlled the tremor that ran through his body, kept her from feeling it pass through her own. She was the one thing that could drive the mers from his mind; but seeing her, being with her, only filled him with suicidal guilt, as he watched her moods swing from euphoria to terror, and back again. He had been too sick for them to force him to commit the act—but he had been forced to watch, as they made her drink the water of death, starting the irreversible process of her dependency, not simply on the drug, but on him. He was to blame, and yet she did not cower or rage at him. She did this to him—she loved him.
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