Moon bit her lip against panic, against more words, the urge to cry out, Here, here I am! Wanting to believe that it was predestination, but no longer certain that anything was predestined. She couldn’t leave it to chance — not after she had come this far, and seen so much. She has to choose me. But how—?
Moon’s memory leaped forward to the next verse, and the two levels of her consciousness fused: “Input!”
“Who knows the one that She will call,
Or what their fate will be?”
The refrain faded as she fell into Transfer, came back with a sudden intensity that deafened her. She felt herself lurch with the shock, tried to open her eyes. But her eyes were open, and still the world she saw was barely brighter than moonlight, its edges blurred and indistinct. Her other senses fed her perception all out of proportion . because she was blind! In another second she had passed through terror to the understanding that she was — Fate Ravenglass. And that somewhere in that dimly seen line of figures circling past her immobile body was one that must be caught at the other pole of this Transfer…
She watched the dim figures pass, and pass, wondering what she would find, if she would even be able to tell what was taking shape. And then she made out the one figure that stumbled in line, supported, half-carried, on the arms of the indistinguishable women at either side: herself — she was seeing herself. And Fate Ravenglass looked back with her eyes; each of them seeing her own face and knowing they did… Abruptly Moon felt her borrowed body unlock and move forward freely toward her real one, the mask held out before her in her hands. As she closed with herself she could see at last that the face was really her own. It stared at the mask, back at her, with wonder and wordless fascination. She lifted the mask with Fate’s trembling hands, moved again by its beauty as she set it firmly on her own shoulders.
As the mask settled in place she felt herself wrenched back across the Transfer gap, into her rightful mind, and heard her cry as she ended the trance. Looking out now through the eye holes of the mask, she saw Fate standing dazed before her, felt her own arms still supported by the women beside her, heard the roar of the crowd’s jubilation. But all that she remembered of the moment was Fate touching the face that was her own again: “My face — I saw my face. And the mask of the Summer Queen…”
The crowd began to close in around them, smashing the fragile circle of hands, sweeping away the also-rans. Moon’s support broke away as she regained her equilibrium; she reached out and grasped Fate’s hands, holding her steady, face to face. “Fate — it’s happened! I did it! I am the Summer Queen!”
“Yes. Yes, I know.” Fate shook her head, tears putting light in her darkened eyes. “It was meant to be. It was. It must be the first time two sibyls ever looked out of each other’s eyes, and saw themselves—” She smoothed her collar of white feathers distractedly. “You’ll be everything as Queen that I made your mask to be.”
Moon felt her heart squeezed by a sudden, heavy hand. “But not alone. I’ll need help. I’ll need people my people can trust… and yours can. Will you help me?”
The feather collar rustled with Fate’s nod. “I’m in need of a new career. Whatever I can do to help I’ll do gladly. Moon… Your Majesty.”
The netted canopy shadowed them, and the Goodventure elder came up between them, gravely gay. “Lady!” The other Goodventures bowed around her. “Your duties today are three: To go among the people and show them that the Mask Night has begun. To be carefree. To rejoice. And your duties tomorrow are three: To go down to the docks when dawn comes beyond the walls. To deliver Winter to the Sea. To rule in her place as the Lady wills.”
To deliver Winter to the Sea. Moon looked toward the palace. “I understand.”
“Then come with us, and let the people see you. Until tomorrow we are all between worlds, between Winter and Summer, between the past and the future. And you’re the harbinger.” The Goodventure woman gestured Moon under the waiting canopy.
“Fate, will you come with me?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll be along.” Fate smiled. “This may be the last time I have a chance to see my fellow human beings in all their glory, and I want to make the most of it.” She touched her artificial eye with a loving fingertip, and sorrow. “All my masks, a lifetime’s work, will bloom and fade in this one night… and soon my sight will go into the sea with the rest of Winter’s bounty, good and bad together.”
“No!” Moon shook her head. “I swear to you, Fate — this will be a real Change!” The crowd began to pry between them.
“Moon — what about Sparks?” Fate called it across the widening gap.
Moon stretched her hand fruitlessly, losing control, lost in the mob. “I don’t know! I don’t know—” Strong arms lifted her up onto a garlanded litter, and she was borne away beneath the canopy down the Street, a leaf swirling on the stream.
Everywhere as she was carried along she saw masks appearing as the revelers hid their faces, cast off their own identities; becoming their fantasies, as the Summer Queen had — as she had done. Tonight there would be no Winter or Summer, off worlder or native, right or wrong. Everywhere costumes blossomed, music played,masked faces laughed and sang and shouted for the Queen. Everywhere people followed alongside her litter, offering her food and drink and gifts, trying simply to touch her for luck. It was her duty today, tonight, to be the merry mayfly, symbol of life’s fleeting joy; because not until tomorrow would her rule and the world become genuine again… And she was grateful for the mask she wore that was all those things to them, that let her hide the truth that whenever she became a part of the moment time leaped ahead again for her, and tomorrow took away her laughter. Because if her plan had failed, if Sirus had failed her, tomorrow she would speak the words and give the sign as Summer Queen, and Sparks would drown…
49
So she actually believes she’s going to be chosen Summer Queen. She hears voices telling her she’ll win. Jerusha paced slowly in the rattling emptiness of the Chief Justice’s antechamber, too nervous to sit still on the forlorn assortment of abandoned furniture. Against odds of hundreds to one? No, Jerusha, the universe doesn’t give a damn what she believes… or you do, or anybody else. It doesn’t matter.
There was nothing to distract her mind but the fuzzy negatives of places where things had been and no longer were in this sad, anciently naked room. But a new set of things, and people, would be back in their place when the Change came again to enduring Carbuncle. Things change all the time; but how much of it is real? Does any choice any of us ever makes, no matter how important it seems, really cause a ripple in the greater scheme of things? Passing the window, she saw herself superimposed on the image of the metamorphosing city, studied the reflection silently.
“Commander PalaThion. It was good of you to come. I know how busy you’ve been.” Chief Justice Hovanesse stood in the doorway, held up a hand in courteous welcome, and she managed to forget that she had been kept pacing out here well past the appointed time of the invitation.
She saluted. “I’m never too busy to discuss the Hegemony’s welfare, your honor.” Or mine. Or to watch a man eat his words… She touched his hand politely, and he gestured her ahead of him into the inner room. It was a meeting room, with a long table built out of smaller tables and cluttered with portable terminals. The usual assortment of local Hedge bureaucrats she had come to know and loathe sat around it, intermittent with actual assemblymen, mostly strangers to her. They had, she supposed, been making the last of the obligatory reports on every imaginable aspect of their occupation of Tiamat. Even on a world as unpopulated and underdeveloped as this one the process of departure was leviathan. The few Kharemoughi faces she could see clearly looked exceedingly bored. Thank the gods I’m only a Blue and not a bureaucrat. She remembered that since she had become Commander she had hardly been anything else. But yesterday I was a real officer again.