(I—) she began, not knowing what answer she would make; feeling as if the words had swept her up into a whirlwind, leaving her centerless and without refuge.
(It’s all right—you don’t have to answer.) As if he were trying to convince himself, he repeated, (It’s all right… . I’m not coming there to force myself on you. I believe in what you’re doing for your world, and I mean to preserve that. But to help Tiamat we will have to work together. That’s why I’m warning you now—not to make you afraid of me, but to give you time to prepare. That’s also why I didn’t contact you sooner … because until now I wasn’t absolutely certain that nothing would go wrong; there was still doubt in my mind that everything would happen as I believed it would.)
(And there is no doubt in your mind now—?)
(I know that the Hegemony wants Tiamat back; they want the water of life. I’m not certain yet of how high I can climb before it happens. But my prospects are good. I hope to be the new Chief Justice by the time I get there.)
She was silent, filled with brilliant noise, filled with the future his words had painted inside their spectral prison of light.
(Moon—?) He called her name again, as softly as rain, when she made no answer. (Are you still Queen? Have you been Queen all this time? Have you done what you set out to do—shown your people the truth, and begun to rebuild?)
(Yes…) she murmured, as realization rose inside her, wave upon wave in a blinding flood. All she had done to create a new, independent technological base for Tiamat would be useless. She had believed Tiamat had a century in which to reach a level of development where they could protect themselves, and the mers, from the Hegemony They had come so far … but nothing like far enough. Even if she had known from the beginning, there would not have been enough time. It had been an impossible task … futile from the start. The Hegemony would come, and they would slaughter all the mers in their blind greed. (But why—?) she said, asking it of the sibyl mind itself, the invisible Other whose presence must be all around them. (Why did I begin this, if there was never going to be time to finish—?)
(But you’ll still be the Queen. And I will be Chief Justice.) It was BZ who answered her, with words like the light of stars falling. (Have faith in what you have done already, have faith in me. I believe now what you always believed, that there is some reason for all of this, and for what our lives have become. It doesn’t mean we’ll win. But it means we have a chance…. Moon, when I left Tiamat, I left it feeling as if I was a moth that had been caught in a flame. I’ve come so far since then, along stranger paths than I ever dreamed of, because of what I shared with you—)
(Yes,) she thought, feeling an infinity of clear skies suddenly illuminate her soul. (Yes, we both have. I would have had nothing, no past at all, all these years, if it weren’t for you…. And it will come to nothing in the end, without you.)
(Are you still… with Sparks?)
(Yes,) she said again, and there was a dark silence. (BZ, there is something you don’t know,) she pressed on, forcing brightness, (about Tiamat, about the mers. Something more important than you are or I am, more important than you ever imagined. The mers are sentient.)
(What?) he murmured. (No … how is that possible?)
(The Hegemony knows—on some level they must know; because the sibyls know. The Hegemony has been slaughtering an intelligent race for centuries.)
(But, it makes no sense… he protested.) (The mers were an experiment left over from the Old Empire; they’re only animals. It couldn’t be that the Hegemony would knowingly—)
(Ask, and you will see.)
(But why? Why make the mers intelligent, and then abandon them on a lost world like Tiamat? What purpose could there possibly be for such a thing?)
(The most important purpose imaginable, BZ, and it will be lost, destroyed, if the Hegemony is allowed to go on killing them. Because … because the mers … ) She became aware that the luminous lightmusic was beginning to dissipate, the waves of limpid sound breaking up into static, into the rush of rapids, flickering geometric patterns of lost image. (BZ—)
(I’m losing you… . It’s breaking up….)
(BZ … the mers, ask … BZ—) But only silence answered her, and she felt herself falling again, back through the conduit of night….
Coming to in the reality she knew, she found herself still clutching the cold marble table-edge, blinded like an insect by the artificial lamplight of her office. Gradually her vision cleared, and her eyes registered the concerned face of her husband gazing back at her across the cluttered desk.
“Moon—?” Sparks murmured. “Are you all right?”
Moon nodded, slumping forward, propping her head in her hands. “Yes.”
“A Transfer?” he asked, with a matter-of-factness in his tone that his expression did not quite support.
She nodded, lifting her head again as strength began to come back to her. Her time in that nameless otherwhere had drained her more than the Transfer normally did; she wondered whether the contact had broken because their physical bodies—or their sanity—had reached some limit of endurance. “How long was I—like that?”
Sparks shook his head. “Maybe five minutes.”
She felt a brief pang of disbelief. “Only that long? Did I say anything?”
He looked surprised. “No. It was like a trance. You didn’t move the whole time.” Something passed across his face that suggested he had not been particularly comfortable during the wait.
Moon sat silently for a moment, as all she had experienced, and felt, rose into her conscious mind. “It was BZ Gundhalinu, Sparks,” she whispered.
“Who?” he asked, uncomprehending. And then his face changed. “Him,” he said, and his voice was curiously flat. “Why—?”
“He told me the Hegemony has found a source of stardrive plasma,” she answered, the words dropping like stones between them. She stood up, suddenly too restless to remain sitting.
“What?” Sparks actually laughed, his disbelief was so complete. “That’s impossible. There’s no source of stardrive plasma within a thousand light-years—”
“He said that Fire Lake is made of stardrive plasma.”
“Fire Lake? I’ve heard of that. But that’s…” He shook his head, looked up again. “It’s actually true?”
Moon nodded, folding her arms against her stomach. “The Hegemony is building starships.”
He jerked as if he had been struck. “So they can come back here.”
“Yes.”
“How soon?”
She let her hands fall. “He thinks no more than three or four years.”
“Three or four years—?” His face filled with the stunned disbelief that had torn the center out of her own existence only moments before. His eyes went on gazing at her, but for a long space they did not seem to register anything at all. “I thought we were safe.” He looked away.
I thought we were safe. Moon looked down at her own hands, saw them clenched, white-knuckled, on the table’s littered surface.
“You learned all this in Transfer?” He glanced up at her finally, half frowning. “From Gundhalinu himself?”
“Yes.” Moon sat down in her seat, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. “It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It was as if I’d been drawn into the Nothing Place—the mind of the computer itself. And yet somehow he was there too; not physically, but like a … spirit. We could speak freely. …”
He shook his head, still half frowning. “You’re sure it was really him?”
And not the sibyl mind. “The net has never spoken to me like that. … It hasn’t spoken to me at all, since it made me Queen.” She heard something that was almost forlorn creep into her voice. She looked up again, at his dark surprise. “I’m sure it was him.” She went on, telling him the rest of it, watching him; feeling herself watched, in turn. “… He said that he intends to come back with them. As the New Chief Justice.”