“I was just telling Mr. Jaspin, the irony of it, that I used to work with a man who was running a crooked thing involving journeys to other stars. Before any of these visions from the stars began reaching Earth. He would have gone to jail, but he got himself sent to one of those mindpick places instead, up near Mendocino, where they’re supposed to be turning him into a decent human being. Some chance.”
“My sister April’s in the same place,” Jill said. “Nepenthe, it’s called. Near Mendocino.”
“Your sister?” Jaspin said. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”
Lacy laughed. “It’s a really small world, isn’t it? I bet your sister and Ed are having a terrific wild affair up there right this minute. Ed always had an eye for the women.”
“He won’t have an eye for April,” said Jill. “She’s fat as a pig. Always has been. And very weird in the head, too. I’m sure your friend Ed can do a lot better than April.” To Jaspin she said, “When you’re finished here, Barry, go over to the Host bus, huh? They’re setting up for the Seven Galaxies rite tonight and Lagosta wants you to help out plugging in the polyphase generator.”
“Okay,” Jaspin said. “Five minutes.”
“Nice meeting you, Ms.—uh—” Jill said, and drifted away.
“Not very friendly, is she?” Lacy said.
“Downright rude and nasty,” said Jaspin. “Getting religion has made her go sour somehow. She’s my wife.”
“Your wife?”
“So to speak. More or less. One day the Senhor decided we ought to be married. Spur of the moment, married us on the spot, month or so ago. It’s for the rituals, the initiations, some of it: you have to be part of a couple. It isn’t what you’d call a happy marriage.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Jaspin shrugged. “It won’t matter, once the gate is open, will it? But until then—until then—”
“It can be rough, yeah.”
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got to go help set up for tonight. But I want to tell you, I’ll try to arrange an audience with the Senhor for you. Won’t be easy, because he’s been pretty scarce the last few weeks. But maybe I can get you in. That isn’t just bull. If I can do it I will. Because I know what it feels like, being a standard shabby twenty-second-century human being just faking your way through life and suddenly being lifted up and shown that there’s something worth living for besides your own crappy comfort. Like I say, we have a lot in common. I’ll try to get you what you’ve asked me for.”
“I appreciate that,” she said.
She offered him her hand. He took it and held it perhaps a moment too long. He debated pulling her toward him, just on an impulse, and kissing her. He didn’t do that. But there was no mistaking the warmth in her eyes and the gratitude. And the possibilities. Especially the possibilities.
Six
1
Elszabet felt a dream starting to come over her while she was still awake. In the beginning it had been terrifying when that happened, when the tendrils of unreality began to invade her conscious mind. But not any more. A lot of things that once had been terrifying to her terrified her no longer. She wasn’t sure whether she ought to be troubled by that.
She was lying in the hammock that hung from wall to wall along one corner of her cabin. Reading a little, dozing a little, not quite ready to get into bed. It was about an hour before midnight of a cool autumn evening, wind off the sea blowing through the treetops. And suddenly she was aware that the dream was there, hovering just outside the gates of her consciousness. She lay there, letting it happen, welcoming it.
Green World again. Good. Good.
By now she had had all the other dreams too, the complete set of seven, sometimes two or three of them the same night. It was a week now since the wandering mystery-man Tom had showed up at the Center, and all week the dreams had been coming to her thick and fast. Was there a connection? It seemed that there had to be, though it was hard for her to understand how it was possible. In the week Tom had been there Elszabet had seen Nine Suns, she had seen Double Star One and Two and Three, she had seen Sphere of Light and Blue Giant.
But of all the dreams, Green World was the one she cherished. In the other strange worlds of the dreams she was only a disembodied observer, an invisible eye floating above the bizarre alien landscape; but when she entered Green World it was as a participant in the life of the planet, plunged deep into its rich and sophisticated culture. She was coming to know the place and its people; they were coming to know her. And so every night, drifting off to sleep, Elszabet found herself hoping she would be allowed to go once more to that lovely place where she felt—God help her—where she was starting to feel so thoroughly at home.
Here it comes now. Green World, hello, hello.
It was as though she had never been away—never gone off on a sojourn to that scraggly troublesome place called Earth where she spent the other part of her life. It was Double Equinox day and the triads were gathering in the viewing-chamber. Here were the Misilynes, arm in arm in arm, and just behind them came the delicious elegant Suminoors, and those, those there, weren’t they the Thilineeru? The Thilineeru had doubled with the Gaarinar, so the gossip had it, and evidently the gossip was true, for there were the Gaarinar and they glistened with an unmistakable overtone of Thilineeru texture, a sheen like the ringing of bells.
And who was this? This heavy dusky figure with that single huge glowing eye rising like a fiery yellow dome from his broad head? He strolled serenely through the room followed by a vast entourage, and from all sides people came toward him to pay their respects. Elszabet thought she had seen him before. Or someone of his kind, at any rate. But she wasn’t sure where.
Ah. They were announcing him now: a shimmering tremolo of silvery sound dancing through the air, telling everyone at once that this was none other than the Sapiil envoy, His Excellency Horkanniman-zai, minister plenipotentiary of the empire of the Nine Suns and high representative of the Lord Maguali-ga to all outer-sphere nations. How imposing a set of titles; how imposing a personage! Elszabet waited her turn to greet him. Come, said Vuruun, who had been ambassador to the Nine Suns himself in the time of the Skorioptin Presidium of blessed memory, let me introduce you. And brought her forward until His Excellency Horkanniman-zai noticed her. The envoy of the Sapiil extended a thick black whiplike limb in greeting; and she touched it with one of her own crystalline fingers, as she had seen the others doing, and felt herself flooded with the light of nine dazzling suns.
It is a gift, said the envoy of the Sapiil gently.
And then he turned away, airily remarking to one of the Suminoors that this was the finest evening he had spent since that time last year, at the investiture of the Kusereen Grand-Delegate on Vannannimolinan, when the Poro sky-dancers had impulsively dedicated a whole season’s performances to him and—