“Both of those are sound advice,” IL Robanwi], the other Kharemoughi, said.
Gundhalinu looked up at him. “And what questions about my trustworthiness do you want to ask of me, then?”
“You believe that you know, better than the people who run the Hegemony— and possibly Survey itself—what is good for Tiamat.” Robanwil smiled faintly. “I suppose that I for one would like to know how much you trust yourself …”
Gundhalinu almost laughed, although he knew the question was not in the least frivolous. “If I don’t trust myself completely, I probably shouldn’t be attempting any of this,” he said slowly. “But if I don’t constantly question my motives, I’m probably a lunatic.… I guess I believe that I’ve earned the right to trust myself as far as I have to.”
“You have earned the right to be trusted further than most people, Commander Gundhalinu,” DenVadams, one of the offworlders, said. “That’s why we’re here… . Your accomplishments are impressive. Tell me, do you believe the remarkable things that have happened to you in your life are due to your own effort and intelligence, or random fate… or is it possible that you are actually part of a plan so great and complex that even your full part in it is incomprehensible to you?”
Gundhalmu’s mouth quirked. “I’ve believed all those things, at one point or another. But if I believed any of them completely, I expect you’d have every right to kill me.”
“Frankly, Gundhalinusadhu, we prefer conversion to coercion, whenever possible,” Robanwil said. “If someone were truly a madman, they would not present a meaningful danger to us. Someone who is influential and intelligent enough to create a major change of course in the flow of human history for our corner of the galaxy, on the other hand, must be reckoned with. To play god by deciding whether someone like that should live or die would not only be immoral, it would be a terrible waste of resources. We wouldn’t kill them, we’d recruit them.”
“And work to convince them that your version of universal truth is the only real one, and that you are on the side of right in the Great Game—?” Gundhalinu finished it for him. The ironic smile stretched his mouth again.
Nods and smiles that were equal parts irony and acknowledgment answered his, around the table. He glanced at Aspundh again, suddenly feeling like a man in a hall of mirrors. “Are all of you truly sibyls, or are you only wearing trefoils to make me trust you?”
They glanced at each other, and one by one spoke the words, “Ask, and I will answer.”
He asked. Each in their turn went into Transfer, and gave him the answer he anticipated to the question he asked of them. He looked back at Aspundh, expectant this time.
“The Survey that you know well, that calls itself the Golden Mean, is dominated by Kharemoughi interests. A number of cabals on other worlds of the Hegemony ally themselves with it, either because they want its strength behind them, or have reason to support the status quo,” Aspundh said. “You know that Survey exists on as many worlds as sibyls do, inside and outside of the Hegemony. It has existed for a long time, and it has a great deal of influence in some of those places. There are nearly as many factions of Survey as there are Meeting Halls in the Eight Worlds. They acquire local personalities, they change … power corrupts, as it always does.
What was done to your own brothers is a graphic example of the dangers we face when a cancer such as the Brotherhood occurs. And such mutations occur more and more frequently, in an organization so ancient and farflung.”
“You speak of all these—arms—of Survey as if you belong to none of them,” Gundhalinu said.
“We are all cells of its nervous system,” Aspundh said, touching his trefoil briefly, “for want of a better definition. We each belong individually to different cabals of the order, but at the same time we in this room are part of a still greater level of organization. Not all sibyls reach this level, but everyone who reaches this level is a sibyl.”
“Gods,” Gundhalinu murmured. “Wheels within wheels. And where is the brain … or am I permitted to know that?”
Aspundh shook his head. “I don’t even know the answer to that. … I don’t believe any of us do.” He looked from face to face. “Can the sky be said to end?”
Gundhalinu remembered the Parable of the Sky, which he had been forced to learn along with a vast number of other seemingly random bits of information that, little by little, he was beginning to see the point of. ” ‘I lived below the clouds,’ ” he recited softly, ” ‘never suspecting that anything lay above them. And then I rose until I was among the clouds, and thought I understood the sky. And then I rose above them, and realized that the sky was infinite.’”
“If you need someone you can depend on, this sign is as reliable an indicator as you’ll find in this universe, Gundhalinu-ken,” Aspundh said.
“Thank you,” Gundhalinu answered, feeling his own fogged-in vision of the future slowly brightening. “Thank you all.” They nodded again. He got up from the table, offering Aspundh a hand as the older man got up in turn.
“Good luck in your endeavors far from home, Gundhalinusadhu,” Robanwil said suddenly. Gundhalinu hesitated, looking back at him. “Tiamat has been a world underappreciated by everyone, including Survey, for far too long. That will only make your future there all the more difficult. May the blessing of your ancestors go with you.”
He nodded in turn, not smiling now, and followed Aspundh out of the room.
They reached the outside again just as the applause and cries of appreciation began to fade. Gundhalinu realized, chagrined, that he had missed the entire performance of his wife’s new work.
Pandhara came toward him through the crowd’s admiration, shining with pleasure. Her expression did not change as she saw him; he realized, relieved, that Aspundh had been right. She had been so preoccupied that she had not even noticed his absence.
She held out her hands to him. “Well, BZ—?” she said, with eager anticipation. “What do thou think of thy wedding gift?”
He took her hands in his, held them, smiling back at her with sudden, profound gratitude. “Unforgettable,” he murmured.
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
Sparks Dawntreader pushed up from the bench as his wife appeared suddenly in the doorway to the back room. He had been waiting with the patience of the damned there in the crowded, noisy, lower-city tavern for her to emerge from her latest in an endless round of meetings with Summers who had knowledge about the mers.
She stopped in the doorway, wearing the sea and earth colors, the rough handspun and knitted clothing of the fisherfolk, as if she had just come off a ship. She stared at him for a moment as if she had completely forgotten his existence, even though he had come here with her, and she had known that he would be waiting, no matter how long it took her to grant him his due share of her time. “Moon, we need to talk.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmured, with the cautious reserve he heard in her voice when she answered strangers. Jerusha PalaThion, who had been sitting with him, looked up at Moon, over at him, and away again uncomfortably.
Because, damn it all, that was what they had become since she had had a vision, heard a voice—the voice of her old lover—speaking to her in Transfer, telling her the world as they knew it was coming to an end. The offworlders were coming back, and BZ Gundhalinu was coming back with them, if what she believed was really true, if it had really even happened. Sometimes he wondered whether she had only dreamed it … or wished she had. She had sworn to him that nothing would change between them if it all came to pass; that he was still her husband and she was still his wife. That BZ Gundhalinu was the man who had made it possible for them to be reunited; that he was coming here only to help them, not to steal their world, or her heart… .