“She does, from what you’ve told me,” Aspundh said mildly. “But what you really want to know is whether she still wants you. Isn’t it?”
Gundhalinu nodded, as sudden longing closed his throat
“What if you get there, and she doesn’t?”
Gundhalinu took a deep breath. “As you say… at least she’ll still need me.” His mouth twitched up.
“Does she know about your discovery? Or that you’re coming back—that the Hegemony is, for good this time?”
“No.” He looked down again. “I—wanted to make sure it would happen, first, before I… before I…” He broke off. “And… I needed to find a medium I could trust—” Another sibyl, to form the triad that it took to initiate directed contact.
“Sensible,” Aspundh murmured, as if his guest had not suddenly turned into a stammering brain wipe.
“I think I’ve found one.” Gundhalinu pulled his voice together, and faced Aspundh’s measuring state. “Have I?”
Aspundh smiled, and something that might have been sympathy filled his eyes. “Then perhaps now is not too soon to let her know.”
Gundhalinu sucked in a breath of surprise. “You’re willing—now?”
Aspundh nodded. “Are you ready? Ask, and I will answer.”
Gundhalinu swallowed his disbelief and nodded, realizing that he had been ready for this moment for years, rehearsing what he would say to her, and how he would say it, to make her understand. He began to speak the words that would put them into a mutual Transfer, opening a line of communication that would finally give {both Moon and himself the freedom to ask, and to answer….
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
Moon began to fall, drawn down into the helpless, vertiginous spiral of the Transfer; taken by surprise, because there had been no question asked. She was being called—to someone else, somewhere else. Her vision of the room and the face before her faded as reality began to turn inside out; she fell into the timeless moment, expecting in another moment to find herself captive inside someone else’s reality, looking out through the eyes of a sibyl on some other world….
But this time the blackness remained. She drifted inside it, formless, like an embryo. She waited, calm because she had been here many times before, in what the sibyls called the Nothing Place, which the offworlders had taught her was the lifeless heart of the sibyl computer itself…. But she had never been called to it like this; only in answer to someone’s direct question.
Her confusion began to slide into a darker emotion, her fear quickening with every measureless second. The sibyl mind had touched her, murmured its will to her own mmd before—goading her on to achieve its goals—but never like this. Its guiding voice had rippled through her subconscious, leaving impressions of rightness, visions, compulsions to do that could have come out of her own thoughts, until in her worse moments she had sometimes wondered if they had. It had never called her here… .
(Moon…) Her name came singing through the void, and suddenly a golden wind enfolded her, and swept her beyond the heart of absence. She shimmered through an infinite spectrum of sensation that fired all her nonexistent nerve endings, into a rippling symphony of light.
(Moon—?) The vision of her name filled her, she watched it transform the darkness again, wave after wave of opalescent music echoing, fading fading fading… .
(Here—) She tried a response, with sudden urgency as the sensation diminished; watched as her own thought charged the unspeakable emptiness with a flare of brilliance.
(Moon…)
Once more the sensory song of her name touched her, this time caressing her impossibly, like the gentlest lover’s hand. Impossible, improbable longing filled her, and with it, fear. (Who… What? What do you want?)
(Moon, it’s BZ. BZ Gundhalinu—) There was an odd, shadowy hesitation in it, as if the voice imagined that she might have forgotten the name, forgotten even that she had ever known the man who bore it.
(BZ …) Her astonishment flowed out into the darkness and silence like bright waves, overlapping the radiant music of his words. (BZ. How? Where are you—we—?) Not understanding why she could not see him, or why she was able to speak freely.
(In Transfer. A special kind of Transfer.)
(Are you in the Nothing Place? I feel you….) Feeling herself lifted, raised, exalted by light, by the sensation, the realization … Realizing, in that moment, that the years had not diminished her need to know his fate, or her memory of the sacrifices he had made for her in the name of love. Or the memory of all they had shared, so fleetingly, so long ago…
(I’m not sure where we are.… I feel it too, but it’s completely indescribable. Moon, I…) Dark-bright, the sound of his sudden silence lapped her consciousness.
(BZ?) She called out his name. (Oh, BZ, I dreamed once before that you spoke to me like this. Was it a dream? Is this a dream?)
(No,) he answered softly, the word touching her like a sigh.
(Then why haven’t you done this before … since … if you can control the Transfer? I’ve wanted—) She broke off, as the radiance of her sudden longing warmed her like the dawn sea.
(Have you—?) he whispered. Again, the shadow of his silence lengthened across the waters of her thought. (I couldn’t,) he answered at last. (I couldn’t, because I wasn’t certain… . Certain you’d want that; certain that there was any point in torturing myself, or torturing us both, when there might never be a future where we would ever meet again.)
She absorbed the radiance of his words, her double vision falling through them into their deeper meaning. (Are you saying … that we will?)
(Yes.)
(How … ?) Feeling something within her catch fire, burning her with an exquisite pain that was as much fear as wonder, as much desire as dread. (It isn’t possible. It can’t be possible—)
(It is now. It will become a reality very soon. Moon, after I contacted you in Transfer, at Fire Lake—I found out that the Lake was made up of stardrive plasma. I brought it back to the Hegemony. I’m on Kharemough now. They’re building starships.)
The exquisite pain inside her turned suddenly to fear as cold and inexorable as glacial ice. (The Hegemony is returning to Tiamat?)
(Yes.) One word, falling out of the brightness like a sword.
(Soon—?) She was barely able to ask it.
(As soon as they can. I’m overseeing the construction project. In three or four years, I estimate, it will be possible to reestablish contact.)
(And you—made this happen? Why—?) she asked, her disbelief metamorphosing. (Why are you telling me this? To make me afraid? Because you’ve changed your mind about Tiamat’s right to a future?)
(No! Because … Damn it, I don’t know how to…) His voice strobed in the darkness. (Moon, if I could only see your face! Do you remember what I told you, when I called you to me in Transfer at Fire Lake? What I … felt, when I thought that I would never see you again?)
(Yes.)
(That hasn’t changed… this doesn’t change it. When I realized the truth about Fire Lake, I realized it couldn’t be kept secret. I knew the stardrive plasma had to be given to the Hegemony, for the future. And I knew… I realized a stardrive would make it possible for me to see you again. But I also knew what it would mean for Tiamat. And I knew that because I would be responsible for that, I would owe you a debt 1 could only repay in one way. I’m coming back with the Hegemony, I’m coming back in charge, if I can manage it—to stand between your people and mine, to make certain we don’t destroy you. I didn’t know… can’t know… whether you even want to see me, after all this time—)