And they were taught the nature of their unnatural “infection,” how to use its potential to protect themselves from harm, how to protect their loved ones from its risk. A sibyl could even bear a child. The artificial virus did not pass through the placenta’s protective filters — ensuring the birth of children who might not share their mother’s temperament, but who would have more chance than most of becoming sibyls to a new generation. To have a child… to lie in the arms of the only one she would ever love, and know that they could be all to each other that they had ever been…
Moon sat up, startled out of her reverie by the sound of someone coming toward her across the patio. But he loves another now. The memory of the thing that separated them now, more than just a gap of distance and time, hurt her abruptly as she saw KR Aspundh approaching.
“Moon.” He smiled a greeting. “Shall we our evening stroll take?” Every evening he walked down through his gardens to the small building of pillared marble in the heart of a shrubbery maze, where the ashes of his ancestors rested in urns. The Kharemoughis worshiped a hierarchy of deities, neatly extending their view of a stratified society into the realm of heaven, and incorporating the pantheon that watched over the Hegemony’s other worlds. On its first tier were a person’s revered ancestors, whose success or failure determined their child’s place in society. Aspundh paid homage devoutly to his own ancestors; Moon wondered if a father’s success made it easier to believe in his divinity.
She got up from the swing. Each evening she joined him on his walk, and in the privacy of the gardens they discussed the questions her day’s studies had left unanswered.
“Are you warm enough? These spring evenings are chilly. Take my cloak.”
“No, I’m fine.” She shook her head, secretly defiant. She wore the sleeveless robe she had picked out on the threedy shopper’s-guide show. She had the feeling that even the sight of a bare arm embarrassed these people; she resented being forced to wear more than she wanted to, and so she wore less.
“Ah, to have a hardy upbringing!” He laughed; she felt a small frown form. “You’re not your lovely smile tonight wearing. Is it because tomorrow you back to the spaceport must go?” They began to walk together, Moon controlling her strides to match his slower steps.
“Partly.” She looked down at her soft slippers, the pattern of the smooth stones underfoot. Silky would spend hours crouching over them in fascination… She would even be glad to see him again, more glad to see Elsevier; to escape from the stifling perfection of this world’s artificial beauty. She looked forward to these evening walks, but during the day KR was preoccupied with business and ALV oversaw her studies, making certain that discretion was maintained while a young girl of questionable background stayed in her father’s house. ALV treated her respectfully, because of the trefoil at her throat; but ALV’s very presence could turn her every move into a clumsy stumble, a spilled bowl, a broken vase. ALV’s relentless sophistication made mispronunciation fatal, questions gauche, and laughter unthinkable. This was a world afraid to laugh at itself, afraid of losing control — control of the Hegemony, control of Tiamat.
“Do you feel that you more time need? I think there’s little more I can you teach… and time is critical now, unfortunately.”
“I know.” A startled creature spread its ruff of winking scales and shrieked in their path. “I know I’m as ready as I can be. But what if I’ll never ready enough be?” She had felt her belief in herself and in the trefoil tattoo she wore, the power that it represented, slowly reform as she learned the truth; but still she had not been able to begin an actual Transfer, for fear that a failure now would mean failure forever.
“You will ready be.” He smiled. “Because you must be.”
She managed a smile of her own as affirmation echoed in her mind. There were some things about the sibyl network that even the Kharemoughis couldn’t explain — anomalies, unpredictabilities — as though the all-knowing source of the sibyls’ inspiration was somehow imperfectly formed. Some of its answers were so involuted that no experts had ever been able to make them clear; sometimes it seemed to act toward ends of its own, although ordinarily it only reacted. This time it had chosen to act, and chosen her as its tool… She wouldn’t fail; she couldn’t. But what was her goal, if Sparks no longer wanted her? To get him back. I will. I can. She tightened her fists, not letting it go. We belong to each other. He belongs to me.
“That’s better,” Aspundh said. “Now, what final questions will you of me ask? Is anything still unclear?”
She nodded slowly, asking the one question that had troubled her from the beginning. “Why does the Hegemony want it on Tiamat a secret kept, that sibyls everywhere are? Why do you the Winters tell that we evil are, or crazy?”
He frowned as though she had broken some particularly strong taboo. “I cannot that to you explain, Moon. It’s too complicated.”
“But it’s not right. You said that sibyls vital were — they only did good things for a world.” She realized suddenly what that said about the Hegemony’s intentions; realized how much more she had learned here than simply what she had been taught.
Aspundh’s expression told her that he realized it, too, and regretted it — because he was powerless to stop it. “I hope I haven’t done, and shan’t do, too great a harm to my own world.” He looked away. “You must to Tiamat returned be. But I pray that it no grief to Kharemough brings.”
She had no answer.
They left the fragrant pathway through the flowering sillipha, wound into the topiary maze until the marble shrine appeared, reflecting pastel skylight, at its hidden heart. Aspundh went on into the shadowed interior; Moon sat on a dew-damp marble bench to wait. The scent of propitiatory incense reached her on the rising breeze; she wondered what prayers KR Aspundh spoke to his ancestors tonight.
Birds whose colors would be strident in the daylight fluttered down into her lap, pastel and gray, murmuring placidly. She smoothed their delicate feathered backs, remembering that it was for the last time; that after tomorrow there would be no peaceful gardens, but only the Black Gate… She rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling the night’s chill.
21
“Citizen, what are you doing in my office?” Jerusha glared across the landfill of official refuse heaped by her terminal and mounting in drifts to the corners of the desk, in the corners of the room. “I was told to come here. About my permits.” The shopkeeper twisted his ties, midway between uncertainty and truculence. “They said you’d tell me why I haven’t heard any th—”
“Yes, I know that. And any sergeant could look it up for you, any patrolman with half a brain!” Gods, if I could get through a day without raising my voice… if I could get through one hour. She ran a hand through the tight red-black curls of her hair; tugged. “Who the hell sent you here?”
“Inspector Man—”
“—tagnes,” she echoed him. “Well, he sent you to the wrong place. Go back to the front desk and tell the duty officer to find out.”
“But he said—”
“Don’t take no for an answer this time!” She waved him toward the door, already looking down at the half-read report still waiting her acknowledgment on the screen, reaching for the intercom button. “Sergeant, wake up your brain and screen these idiots! What do you think you’re out there for?”
“Hell of a way to run a world, damn—” The invective was lost as the door shut behind the shop man
“Sorry, Commander,” the sergeant said, sullenly disembodied. “Shall I sent in the next one?”
“Yes.” No. No, no more. “And get me Mantag-No, cancel that.” She let up on the speaker button. She could bust Mantagnes right off the force for his harassment… but if she did shed have open mutiny on her hands, instead of just open resentment. In the years since she had become Commander her position with the force had gone from bad to worse. And he knows it. He knows, the bastard… She stared at the report printout blindly. Their main computer had crashed monumentally — months ago — and thrown their entire records system into chaos. Even now it barely functioned at half normal efficiency; even Kharemoughi expertise hadn’t been able to put things right, because somehow they were missing the critical components… She had been trying to get their records back in order for months; trying to get through this one report for an hour, half a minute at a time, getting nowhere. She punched APPROVED, and let it pass unread. Getting nowhere. Sliding backwards, being buried alive-She rummaged among the crumpled, empty packets in her desk drawer for one with any iesta pods left in it. Damn, almost gone — how will I ever make it through the day?