After a hundred yards, he reached a railed balcony at the edge of the city. There he found Everynne on a parapet at the forest’s edge, watching the suns set. The tide was rushing in over beaches they had negotiated a few hours earlier. The sea had turned coppery orange, and huge white breakers smashed against the limestone rock formations. Beneath the wild, tormented waves, he could see a vast line of green lights.
Everynne stood very quietly. Though she held herself erect, proud, she was so petite that he could have lifted her with one hand. Though her back was to him, he saw tears on her cheek. She shook softly, as if she tried to hold back a wracking sob. “Have you come to watch the torchbearers?” she said, jutting her chin toward the waves and the green lights beneath. “They’re beautiful fish. Each bears its own light to hunt by.”
Gallen walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. She started a bit, as if she had not expected his touch. Beneath his hands, her muscles were tense, strung tight, so he began kneading them softly.
He wanted to ask permission to follow her, but she seemed so troubled, he could not bear to do so. “I don’t want to talk about fish. They aren’t important. What are you crying about?” Gallen waited a long moment for an answer.
Everynne shook her head. “Nothing. I just-” She fell silent.
“You are sad,” Gallen whispered. “Why?”
Everynne looked off, staring at the sea. “Do you know how old my mother was?” Her voice was so soft, Gallen could hardly hear it over the crashing of breakers.
“A few thousand years,” Gallen guessed. She had, after all, been immortal, and Veriasse claimed to have served her for six thousand years.
“And do you know how old I am?”
“Eighteen, twenty?” Gallen asked.
“Three, almost,” Everynne answered. Gallen did a double take. “Veriasse cloned me after my mother died. He raised me in a force vat on Shintol, to speed my growth. He couldn’t risk that I might have a normal childhood-couldn’t take a chance that I might cut myself or break a bone. While I grew in the force vat, he used mantles to teach me-history, ethics, psychology. I feel as if I have learned everything about life, but experienced none of it.”
“And in a few days, you fear that your life may end?”
“No-I know it will end,” Everynne said. “My mother was far older and wiser than I. The dronon had been lurking on her borders for thousands of years. She had millennia to prepare for her battle with them, and still she died. I think my chances of winning are nil. But even if I win, I will be changed. You know what it is to fuse with a personal intelligence, the wonder and pain that all burst in on you in a moment. But an omni-mind is the size of a planet and stores more information than a trillion personal intelligences combined. I am … less than an insect compared to it. My mother and it grew to become one, and when her body died, it would download her personality into her clones. It stores everything that was my mother-all her thoughts, her dreams, her memories. And if I fuse with it, I will no longer be me in any way that matters. Her experiences will overwhelm me, and it will be as if I never existed.”
“You would still be you,” Gallen said, hoping to comfort her. “You wouldn’t lose that.” But he knew he was wrong. As far as the omni-mind was concerned, Everynne was just a shell, a template of the Great Judge Semarritte, waiting to be filled. In the space of a moment, Everynne would grow, learn more than he or billions of other people could ever hope to know. Yet her personality, her essence, would be swept away as something of no importance.
She turned and looked into his eyes, smiled sadly. “You’re right, of course,” she said, as if to ease his mind. The wind blew her hair; Gallen looked into her dark blue eyes.
“Maybe,” Gallen offered, “someone else could take your place. There are other Tharrin. Perhaps Grandmother would reign in your behalf.”
Everynne shook her head. “She is a grand lady, but she would not take my place. A Lord Judge must earn that position, but Grandmother could not earn that title. All of the Tharrin knew of Semarritte’s plan to return as a clone. I sometimes wonder if I am worthy to become a Servant of All, but the Tharrin treat me as if I am but an extension of Semarritte. They say that once I join with the omni-mind, my own short life will have meant nothing. I will be Semarritte.” She paused, took a deep breath. “I want to thank you for what you did today.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you pulled the incendiary rifle on us. I’m glad that you’re not the kind of person who would follow me blindly. Too few people question my motives.”
“Do you feel that your motives need questioning?”
“Of course!” Everynne fell silent for a moment; Gallen heard someone laugh in the distance. It was growing dark, and Gallen felt he should go, but Everynne was standing close to him, only a hand’s breadth away. She gazed into his face, leaned forward and kissed him, wrapped her arms around him.
“Question my motives,” she whispered fiercely. Her lips were warm, inviting.
Gallen took her request literally. “You’re afraid that you will die soon,” Gallen whispered, and he kissed her back. She leaned into him, her firm breasts crushing into his chest.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” she whispered. “I want to know what it’s like for me to be in love.”
Gallen considered the way that she had said it, pulled back. “Veriasse was your mother’s escort. Was he also her lover?”
Everynne nodded, and suddenly Gallen understood. Once the omni-mind downloaded its memories, Everynne would become Semarritte in every way. Veriasse was not just trying to restore the Great Lord Judge to his people. He was rebuilding his wife. “He has never touched me, never made love to me,” Everynne said. “But I can see how I torment him. I’m but a child to him, a shadow of the woman he loves. Sometimes he watches me, and I can see how his desire tears at him.”
Everynne leaned close for a long moment. Gallen could feel her heart hammering against his chest. “Give me this night,” she said. “Whatever comes later, let me stay with you tonight.”
Gallen looked into her wide eyes, felt the heat of her body next to his.
“I know you want me,” she said. “I’ve felt the intensity of your gaze from the moment we first met. I want you, too.”
Gallen found himself shaking, stricken. She was indeed the most beautiful, most perfect woman he had ever seen, and it hurt to know that they could never be together. He could not deny what he felt. If she asked him to become her Lord Escort, fight the dronon in her behalf, he would gladly do so, lay his life on the line day after day, hour after hour.
Yet she could only promise him one night of love. Everynne pulled off her own robe and undergarments, stood in the dusk and let him hold her. Her breasts were small but pert. Her hips were shapely, strong. She began breathing deeply, pulled off Gallen’s robe, then pulled him down to the deep sweet grass there on the parapet, and together they made love long and slow.
Afterward, they lay together naked. Down in the sea below, the waves covered the limestone and the torchbearer fish lit the ocean in pale green. Above them, the clouds passed and stars sprinkled the sky, until everything was light. The warm winds blew through the trees, and Gallen felt peace inside.
Everynne cuddled closer, and they slept awhile. When he woke, the winds were beginning to cool. The great school of torchbearer fish had departed, and the night draped over them like a tent. Gallen kept his arms wrapped around her protectively. He could not help but think that this was the beginning and the end of their love. They had sealed it with one, small, nearly insignificant act. Now, the future lay before them, and no matter what happened, tomorrow the winds of change would blast them apart like two leaves scattered in a storm. The sky above them was so vast, so nearly infinite in size, and it seemed to Gallen that they were lying naked while the infinite, appalling darkness prepared to descend.