They had affected a Kharemoughi lifestyle with excruciating dedication: a sophisticated, refined, and soulless imitation of a lifestyle she found obscure and unappealing to begin with. The patina of her own possessions scarcely altered it. She fantasized an overlay of ornate, rococo frescoes and molding, the unashamed warmth of a palette of garish colors everywhere… closed her eyes with her hand as the unrelenting subtlety of the truth seeped through like water, to make the colors blur and bleed.
This place hung with ugly memories had been forced on her — a part of her burden, her punishment. She could have struck back, cleared this mausoleum of its morbid relics and replaced them with things fresh and alive… she could even have gotten rid of it entirely, gone back to her old, cramped, comfortable set of rooms down in the Maze. But always, when her day’s work was through, she had returned here and done nothing, one more time. Because what was the point? It was useless, hopeless… helpless… She lifted her locked hands to her mouth, pressed hard against her lips. They’re watching, stop it—!
She sat up, pulling her hands away, bowing her head so that the caftan’s hood fell forward about her face. The Queen’s spies, the Queen’s eyes, were everywhere — especially, she was sure, in this townhouse. She felt them touching her like unclean hands, everywhere she went, everything she did. In her old apartment she had been free to be human, free to be herself, and live her own heritage . free to strip off her chafing, puritanical uniform and go easily naked if she wanted to, the way she had been able to do on her own world, the way her people had done for centuries. But here she was always on display for the Queen’s pleasure, afraid to expose herself, physically or mentally, to the White Bitch’s unseen scorn.
She picked up the tape reader that had dropped to the floor, gazed at without seeing the manual on ultrasound analysis that she had been trying to study for a week… two weeks… forever. She had never been one to enjoy fiction, in any form: she heard too many lies on the streets every day, she had no patience with people who made a living doing it. And now she could no longer concentrate on facts. But still she could not let go and allow herself to escape into fantasy… the way BZ had always done, so easily, so guiltlessly. But then, to be a Kharemoughi Tech was to live in a fantasy world anyway, one where everyone knew his place, and yours was always on top. Where life functioned with perfect machinery . only this time the machinery had broken down, and the chaos that waited outside had rushed in to destroy him.
She imagined the patrol craft vaporizing, releasing two spirits from this mortal plane into — what? Eternity, limbo, an endless cycle of rebirth? Who could believe in any religion, when there were so many, all claiming the only Truth, and every truth different. There was only one way she would ever learn for herself… and a part of her own spirit had already passed over that dark water without a ticket, gone with the Boatman, and with her only friend in all this world of enemies. Her only friend… Why the hell did I listen? Why did I leave those bottles on the shelf? She stood up, the tape reader falling from her lap to the floor again unnoticed. She took one step, knowing that she was starting for the door; stopped again, her body twitching with indecision. Motivation, Jerusha! desperately. I wanted to leave those bottles there, or shed never have changed my mind. Her muscles went slack, she slumped where she stood, her whole body cotton-wrapped with fatigue. But I can’t sleep here! And there was no escape, no haven left, no one…
Her searching eyes stopped on the dawn-colored shell that lay like an offering on the Empire-replica shrine table beside the door. Ngenet… Oh gods, are you still a friend of mine? The solid peace of the plantation house, that inviolable calm in the storm’s eye, crowded her inner sight. She had seen it last more than a year ago; had been both consciously and unconsciously separating herself from even the loose and superficial ties of their infrequent visits as her depression deepened, as her world shrank in and in around her. She had told herself she did not want him to see the knife-edged harridan she had become… and yet perversely, at the same time i she had begun to hate him for not seeing that she needed his safe haven more than ever.
And now? Yes… now! What kind of blind masochism had made her wall herself into her own tomb? She crossed the room to the phone, punched in one code, and then another and another from i memory, putting through the outback radio call to his plantation. ‘ She marked the passing seconds with the beat of her fingertips against the pale, hard surface of the wall, until at last a video less voice answered her summons, distorted by audio snow. Damn this place! Storm interference. There was always storm interference.
“Hello? Hello?” Even through the interference, she knew that the voice was not the one she needed to hear.
“Hello!” She leaned closer to the speaker, her raised voice echoing from room to silent room behind her. “This is Commander PalaThion calling from Carbuncle. Let me speak to Ngenet.”
“What?… No, he isn’t here, Commander… out on his ship.”
“When will he be back?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t say… leave a message?”
She cut off the phone with her fist; turned away from the wall shaken with fury. “No message.”
She crossed the room again to pick up the dawn-pink shell, held it against her while she traced its satin-rubbed convolutions with unsteady fingers. She touched the flawed place where one fragile spine had snapped off. Her fingers closed over the next spine, and broke it. She broke another, and another; the spines fell without a sound onto the carpet. Jerusha whimpered softly as they fell, as though she were breaking her own fingers.
29
“Everything we do affects everything else.”
“I know…” Moon walked beside Ngenet down the slope of the hill that lay ochre and silver with salt grass, rippling like the wind’s harp below the plantation house. The house itself melted into the sere, burnished hills beyond; its weathered stone and salt bleached wood were as much a part of this land as — as he is. Moon studied his profile moodily from the side of her eye, remembering how strange it had seemed to her the first time, the last time, she had seen it. Five years ago… it was true, she could see five years of change in his face; but not in her own.
And yet she had changed, aged, in the moment that she saw the life light go out of Elsevier’s eyes. Death had let her pass… but Death had not been denied. Grief lifted her and dropped her, the storm tide of mourning trapped in a bottle. If she had not willfully challenged Death, this death would not be on her soul. “If Elsevier hadn’t brought me back to Tiamat, shed still be alive. If I’d stayed on Kharemough with her, she would have been… happy.” Suddenly she was seeing not Elsevier, but Sparks. No one’s dreams ever mattered as much as mine. Moon’s legs trembled under her.
“But you wouldn’t have been.” Ngenet looked down at her, steadying her with a firm hand as the slope steepened. “And knowing that you were unhappy, shed have been unhappy too. We can’t spend our lives living a lie for someone else; it never works out. You have to be true to yourself. She knew that, or you wouldn’t be here now. It was inevitable. Death is inevitable, deny it though we will.” She glanced up at him sharply, seeing him distorted by her own grief, and away again. “After TJ died, she was never the same. My father always used to say that she was a one-man woman. For better or worse.” He pushed his hands into the pouch of his parka, gazing northward, following the coastline into the white-hazed distances where Carbuncle lay. “Moon, everything affects everything else. I’ve lived this long without learning anything, if I haven’t learned that.