On the morning after the day when the crisis had reached its climax and the final lunacies had occurred, a strange hush settled over the Labyrinth of Majipoor, as if everyone were too stunned even to speak. The impact of yesterday's extraordinary events was just beginning to be felt, although even those who had witnessed what had taken place could not yet fully believe it. All the ministries were closed that morning, by order of the new Pontifex. The bureaucrats both major and minor had been put to extreme strain by the recent upheavals, and they were set at liberty to sleep it off while the new Pontifex and the new Coronal — each amazed by the unanticipated attainment of kinpship that had struck him with thunderclap force — withdrew to their private chambers to contemplate their astounding transformations. Which gave Calintane at last an opportunity to see his beloved Silitnoor. Apprehensively — for he had treated her shabbily all month, and she was not an easily forgiving sort — he sent her a note that said, I know 1 am guilty of shameful neglect, but perhaps now you begin to understand. Meet me for lunch at the cafe by the Court of Globes at midday and I will explain everything.
She had a quick temper at the best of times. It was virtually her only fault, but it was a severe one, and Calintane feared her wrath. They had been lovers a year; they were nearly betrothed to be betrothed; all the senior officials at the Pontifical court agreed he was making a wise match. Silimoor was lovely and intelligent and knowledgeable in political matters, and of good family, with three Coronals in her ancestry, including no less than the fabled Lord Stiamot himself. Plainly she would be an ideal mate for a young man destined for high places. Though still some distance short of thirty, Calintane had already attained the outer rim of the inner circle about the Pontifex, and had been given responsibilities well beyond his years. Indeed, it was those very responsibilities that had kept him from seeing or even speaking at any length to Silimoor lately. For which he expected her to berate him, and for which he hoped without much conviction that she would eventually pardon him.
All this past sleepless night he had rehearsed in his weary mind a long speech of extenuation that began, "As you know, I've been preoccupied with urgent matters of state these last weeks, too delicate to discuss in detail with you, and so—" And as he made his way up the levels of the Labyrinth to the Court of Globes for his rendezvous with her he continued to roll the phrases about. The ghostly silence of the Labyrinth this morning made him feel all the more edgy. The lowest levels, where the government offices were, seemed wholly deserted, and higher up just a few people could be seen, gathering in little knotted groups in the darkest corners, whispering and muttering as though there had been a coup d'etat, which in a sense was not far wrong. Everyone stared at him. Some pointed. Calintane wondered how they recognized him as an official of the Pontificate, until he remembered that he was still wearing his mask of office. He kept it on anyway, as a kind of shield against the glaring artificial light, so harsh on his aching eyes. Today the Labyrinth seemed stifling and oppressive. He longed to escape its somber subterranean depths, those levels upon levels of great spiralling chambers that coiled down and down. In a single night the place had become loathsome to him.
On the level of the Court of Globes he emerged from the lift and cut diagonally across that intricate vastness, decorated with its thousands of mysteriously suspended spheres, to the little cafe on the far side. The midday hour struck just as he entered it. Silimoor was already there — he knew she would be; she used punctuality to express displeasure — at a small table along the rear wall of polished onyx. She rose and offered him not her lips but her hand, also as he expected. Her smile was precise and cool. Exhausted as he was, he found her beauty almost excessive: the short golden hair arrayed like a crown, the flashing turquoise eyes, the full lips and high cheekbones, an elegance too painful to bear, just now. "I've missed you so," he said hoarsely.
"Of course. So long a separation — it must have been a dreadful burden—"
"As you know, I've been preoccupied with urgent matters of state these last weeks, too delicate to discuss in detail with you, and so—"
The words sounded impossibly idiotic in his own ears. It was a relief when she cut him off, saying smoothly, "There's time for all that, love. Shall we have some wine?"
"Please. Yes."
She signaled. A liveried waiter, a haughty-looking Hjort, came to take the order, and stalked away.
Silimoor said, "And won't you even remove your mask?"
"Ah. Sorry. It's been such a scrambled few days—"
He set aside the bright yellow strip that covered his nose and eyes and marked him as the Pontifex's man. Silimoor's expression changed as she saw him clearly for the first time; the look of serenely self-satisfied fury faded and something close to concern appeared on her face. "Your eyes are so bloodshot — your cheeks are so pale and drawn—"
"I've had no sleep. It's been a crazy time."
"Poor Calintane."
"Do you think I kept away from you because I wanted to? I've been caught up in this insanity, Silimoor."
"I know. I can see how much of a strain it's been." He realized suddenly that she was not mocking him, that she was genuinely sympathetic, that in fact this was possibly going to be easier than he had been imagining.
He said, "The trouble with being ambitious is that you get engulfed in affairs far beyond your control, and you have no choice but to let yourself be swept along. You've heard what the Pontifex Arioc did yesterday?"
She stifled a laugh. "Yes, of course. I mean, I've heard the rumors. Everyone has. Are they true? Did it really happen?"
"Unfortunately, it did."
"How marvelous, how perfectly marvelous! But such a thing turns the world upside down, doesn't it? It affects you in some dreadful way?"
"It affects you, and me, and everyone in the world," said Calintane, with a gesture that reached beyond the Court of Globes, beyond the Labyrinth itself, encompassing the entire planet beyond these claustrophobic depths, from the awesome summit of Castle Mount to the far-off cities of the western continent. "Affects us all to a degree that I hardly understand yet myself. But let me tell you the story from the beginning—"
Perhaps you were not aware that the Pontifex Arioc has been behaving strangely for months. I suppose there's something about the pressures of high office that eventually drives people crazy, or perhaps you have to be at least partly mad in the first place to aspire to high office. But you know that Arioc was Coronal for thirteen years under Dizimaule, and now he's been Pontifex a dozen years more, and that's a long time to hold that sort of power. Especially living here in the Labyrinth. The Pontifex must yearn for the outside world now and then, I'd imagine — to feel the breezes on Castle Mount or hunt gihornas in Zimroel or just to swim in a real river anywhere — and here he is miles and miles underground in this maze, presiding over his rituals and his bureaucrats until the end of his life.