Her hands caressed her stomach, as she thought of her children and remembered the feel of life within her; the joy, the wonder, the doubt. Unexpected motherhood had given her a new perspective on the future, given her the strength to hold fast to her belief against the onslaught of the Goodventures’ furious insistence that she was violating the Lady’s will … against her own doubts, a seventeen-year-old girl trying to imagine how she would rebuild a world, or even a relationship.
She had needed desperately to believe that it was all worthwhile. Feeling the life within her had made her believe there would be a future worth struggling for. She had needed so badly to make Sparks believe it too … and yet all the while, she had wondered secretly whether the child she carried was actually another man’s.
She rose restlessly from the couch, rubbing her face, as the wraith of a dark-eyed stranger whispered through her mind … as a strange sensation began in the pit of her stomach, reminding her of morning sickness. She felt as if something were falling away inside her, turning her thoughts around, drawing her down into another reality— The Transfer, she thought; suddenly recognizing the sensation. But no one had spoken, to ask her a question. She caught the sibyl trefoil, feeling its spines prick her fingers; felt her hand freeze in midmotion as the immobility overcame her. She had been called. The Transfer enveloped her like a black wind, sweeping her away.
Blinking, she saw brightness again, through a stranger’s eyes—another sibyl, on another world, who saw now through her eyes, gazing out at a sky filled with alien stars… Her new eyes focused on the questioner who waited for her; she felt her borrowed body start with sudden disbelief at the sight of a face she had not seen for eight years, except in her dreams.
BZ Gundhalinu stood before her like a vision out of the past, his face weary and desperate, his eyes haunted—as she had first seen him so long ago, in the white wilderness of Winter… . The man whose need had become her salvation; who had become her sea anchor, her guide … her unexpected lover, for one night outside of time. Who had gone away with the rest of the offworlders at the Final Departure, without betraying her secrets. Leaving her to the future he had helped her win, to the man he had helped her win back; leaving her …
“Moon?” he murmured, his hand reaching out. “is it really you?” His fingers brushed her cheek; his dark eyes searched her own wonderingly, as if he were witnessing a miracle
“Yes …” she whispered, feeling her captive body straining with the need to touch him, to prove his own reality. “BZ!” She saw him start and smile as she spoke his name. How did you bring me here? Where are you? What’s wrong — “What do you … want of me?” She forced the words out between numb, unresponsive lips: the only words the Transfer would let her speak to the man she had not seen in so long. “Please … give me more information?”
He licked cracked, bloody lips, and mumbled something she could not understand. “I’m … I’m here. On Number Four. A place called Fire Lake.” He ran his fingers through the filthy tangle of his hair. “I need help. Something gets into my head all the time, and …”He broke off, wiping his hand across his mouth, shaking his head violently, as if he could shake free the thing that was inside his eyes. “I’m a sibyl, Moon! Someone infected me, the woman who sees me now for you. She wasn’t meant to be a sibyl… She’s out of her mind.” He swallowed visibly. “And I think … I think I am too. I’m trapped here, I can’t get help from anyone else. Tell me how you control the Transfer! Every time I hear a question—” His voice broke, and she saw naked despair in his eyes.
“A sibyl …” Her disbelief became empathy as she remembered her own initiation, how the bioengineered virus had spread through her system like wildfire— how much greater her disorientation and terror would have been if no one had been there to reassure or guide her. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, aching. “I know you … 1 know that—” her borrowed hands twitched impotently at her sides, refusing to obey her, as the memory came to her of words she had spoken before, gazing into those same eyes, “the finest, gentlest, kindest man I ever met … must have been meant for this. That you must have been chosen, somehow …”
As I was chosen, somehow. She took a deep breath, fighting to clear her vision of the memory of his face, eight years ago; what had filled his eyes as she had spoken those words to him then. Trying not to remember how his arms had pulled her against him, how he had kissed her with desperate, incredulous hunger … how often that moment out of the unreachable past still intruded on her inescapable present. Frantic with frustration as her voice went on mindlessly, relentlessly answering only his question, ignoring her burning need to ask and not answer. “… There are word formulas for the channeling of stimuli, patterns that become a part of your thought processes, in time—” The flow of words interrupted itself, she felt the sibyl mind stop and search for a meaningful analogy. “—like the adhani discipline practiced on Kharemough.”
“Really? I practice that—” Hope showed in his eyes, and she began to believe, at last, in the wisdom the sibyl machinery had forced upon her—the calm, insistent rationality of her response,
“Use it, then,” her own stranger’s/familiar voice murmured, as she searched her memory for things Clavally and Danaquil Lu had taught her. “… There is a kind of ritual to the formal sibyl Transfer; it starts with the word input. No other questions need to be recognized. Learn to block casual questions by concentrating on the word stop.”
“Stop’?” he echoed, his voice shaky with disbelief. “That’s all?”
“It’s very simple: it has to be. But there is much more. …” Her words flowed like water as she ceased fighting the tide of compulsion. He repeated every phrase with painful intentness, his eyes holding her gaze, barely even blinking, as if he were still afraid that she might disappear.
She went on until her voice was gone, and the wellspring of her knowledge had run dry. “… It takes time. Believe in yourself. This is not a tragedy; it could be a blessing. Perhaps it was meant to be. …”
His mouth quivered, as if he held back a denial; his gaze fell away, came back to her face again. “Thank you,” he whispered. His hand rose into her vision again, to caress her cheek. She felt her borrowed eyes fill with unexpected tears as he caught her hands in his and pressed them to his lips. “You don’t know what this means to me. I love you, Moon. I’ll never love anyone else. I’ve hated myself ever since I left Tiamat—” His voice fell apart. He took a deep breath, still holding her, “I can tell you that now … because I know I’ll never see you again.”
She felt the black tide begin to withdraw inside her, drawing her away, calling her back across the fathomless sea of night, back into her own body. His image began to shimmer and fade. Never see you again… never… She blinked her eyes, feeling hot tears slide out and run down her cheeks. “I need you—” She heard her borrowed voice cry out the words, did not know whether she was the one who had spoken them, or the stranger whose body she had stolen.
“Moon!” he cried, clutching her shoulders, clutching at her spirit as she began to fade. His kiss smothered the last words that came to her lips; “No further analysis—” The black tide drowned her, sweeping her away across spacetime, returning her—