Gundhalinu brought his hand up to his mouth to cover a sudden yawn. Without tension driving him forward, fatigue was gaining on him, threatening to drag him down. “Gentlemen, this has been truly unforgettable. I am grateful for all you’ve shown me. But it must be close to dawn, and I’m expected to be coherent and vertical for a charity breakfast in my honor given by the Wendroe Brethren.” Irony pricked him, not for the first time, as he glanced at the Chief Inspector and the Governor General. “Forgive me, but I am exhausted. …”
“Of course.” The Chief Justice nodded. “But before you leave us, I must tell you two things: One is, of course, that you must not speak of this to anyone. You know the three of us now for what we are… . You will meet others in time, and be taught the ritual disciplines and also certain restricted information as you rise through the inner levels. But, more importantly, before you go there is one thing Jcnown only to the inner circles that we must share with you immediately, for the sake of the Hegemony’s security.”
Gundhalinu forced his weary, restive body to stay still. “What is it?”
“You hold vital information about the nature of the stardrive plasma and Fire Lake. That information must be transmitted to Kharemough immediately. They need lead time in fitting a fleet of ships. They must be ready to maintain order; because once the stardrive gets out, everyone in all the Eight Worlds will have the technology and the freedom to worldhop almost instantaneously, without the time-lags we now face. I’m sure you’ve already considered the tremendous change that will create in our interplanetary relations.”
“You want Kharemough to maintain its control of the Hegemony, then?” Gundhalinu asked. “I am a Kharemoughi, and I love my people … but I thought I understood that Survey does not play favorites—”
Estvarit nodded. “But we do play politics, as we said. We try to achieve the result that brings about the most good for the most people. Only the established Hegemonic government can effectively control access to the stardrive, and keep the technology from spreading like a disease, causing political chaos and interstellar war. Because it will spread. …” He looked down. “By ordinary means it would take several years for even the news of your discovery to reach any other world of the Hegemony, including Kharemough. But you, as a sibyl, have the means to change that.”
“How?” Gundhalinu asked, his hand searching for the trefoil symbol on its chain, which he was not wearing. “If no one on Kharemough even suspects this discovery, they can’t … ask the right questions, so that I can give them the answers.” And yet … In the back of his mind, he realized that he had done something very like it, when he had been lost in World’s End: He had called Moon Dawntreader, and she had come to him—
“There is a way; there always has been, but we have kept it to ourselves. I will give you the name of one of our members, a sibyl, on Kharemough. With the special Transfer sequence we will teach you, you will be able to open a port to this person directly.”
Gundhalinu made a sound that was not quite a laugh. “This is incredible! A means of instantaneous faster-than-light communication— Why haven’t you shared this?”
“Because if we are to keep faith with the trust of our ancestors, we must have our secrets—keep our edge.” Estvarit shrugged. “Now listen to me, and listen well. …”
Around them the lighting in the room dimmed and brightened, dimmed and brightened again. “Damnation!” Estvarit murmured. Abruptly the lights went out, smothering them all in pitch-blackness.
Ye gods, not again. The thought formed inside the blackness behind Gundhalinu’s eyes. Someone’s hands seized him by the shoulders, pulling him around with desperate urgency. “This way… .”He recognized the voice of the Governor-General. He let himself be led, fumbling but obedient, across the room and through what felt like a hole in the night—a change in deflected sound, in the quality of the air. He bumped up against a wall two steps farther on.
“Follow the tunnel up,” the Governor-General murmured. “Don’t worry, don’t ask questions. Everything is all right. Just get out. Come to the Foursgate Meeting Hall tomorrow evening. We’ll be in touch—”
And then he was alone, closed in … sure of it, even though he could see nothing. He stretched out his right hand, keeping his left firmly against the wall; fighting a sinking uncertainty for the second time in one night. He found the hard, slick surface of the narrow hallway’s other wall less than an arm’s length away. He began to feel his way along it, moving slowly, testing every step. The tunnel led him steadily upward, the air seeming to grow deader and more oppressive as he traveled, until at last he collided with a flat surface, the darkness suddenly made material.
But before panic could take hold of him, the surface gave under his pressure, releasing him into sudden daylight and fresh air.
He stumbled out into the street and the door slipped shut behind him, merging into the surface of the wall, until by the time he turned around he could not have said where it was. He stood staring at the wall for a long moment, breathing deeply, befuddled by the light and the chill, damp air.
He turned away again at last, taking in his surroundings and his predicament. He was still in Foursgate, but in the Old Quarter. Under his bare feet was a narrow stretch of moisture-slick pavement, all that separated the shuttered silent warehouses from the cold, lapping water of a canal—one of the myriad canals winding through the ancient duroplass buildings and out to the sea. He could smell the sea, even though its sharp, fresh scent was wrapped in the reek of stagnant water and rotting wood and other, even less appetizing odors.
The air around him was filled with moisture, as it always was, fog lying like a shroud over the Old Quarter, a fine, incessant drizzle wetting his face. The mottled gray of building walls faded into the wall of fog in either direction within a few meters of where he stood. The fog lay on the surface of the canal until the two became one in his vision, as seamlessly as the door had disappeared into the illusory solidness of the wall behind him. Somewhere in the distance he heard tower chimes begin a sonorous melody, their voices muffled and surreal. It must be barely dawn, and no one else seemed to be up and moving, even here.
He leaned against the building side, too weary not to, pulling his robe tighter around him as he began to shiver. He was all alone, wet, cold, half-naked and lost, without even the credit necessary to hire an air taxi to take him home. The events of the past hours suddenly seemed like an insane dream, but the fact that he was standing here proved their reality. One thing he was not, certifiably, was a sleepwalker.
“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded of the walls; heard his own words flung back at him. Why that unexpected, unceremonious exit from the depths of a hidden room? Was this supposed to be one final test—proving himself worthy by making his way home in the rain, creditless and barefoot—? He let out a short bark of laughter, sharp with anger and exasperation. But even as he thought it, he knew he did not believe that. Something unexpected had happened in there, and not just to him. Were there others trying to get at Survey’s secrets … or were the inner circles of Survey not the haven of order and reason they seemed to be? He shook his head, too exhausted to work it out, or even to feel much concern about it. They would be in touch…. Then he would have his answers.
“Ferry, sah?” a deep voice called out, resonating eerily off the walls around him. He looked up, felt water drip into his eyes from his hair. A shallow, hign-prowed canal boat was soundlessly nosing its pointed bow in toward the small wooden dock almost below him. The man standing in its stern poled it closer with motions that looked effortless, but probably were not. The boatman wore the shapeless, hooded gray cape they all seemed to wear, “to keep ‘em from molding,” his sergeant had remarked once.