"I suppose you must miss this," Nith Immmon said.

The Teyj ruffled its four multicolored wings and gave a little trill.

Nith Immmon laughed. "You always did have a wicked sense of humor, Nith Einon."

I am not Nith now, the Teyj said in Nith Immmon's mind. My time has come and gone.

"Tell me, did disa.s.sembly pain you as much as it pains me?"

It took me a long time to discover that the pain was part of the privilege of being Nith.

Nith Immmon finished storing the exomatrix and approached the bird. "Your time has not come and gone, Nith Einon. On the contrary, it is my belief that it is just beginning." He held out his left arm, but the Teyj declined to flutter onto it. "As you wish."

He turned and, making a sweeping pa.s.s with his right arm, plunged his quarters into darkness.

A throbbing commenced. Light bloomed in the breathing darkness, at first just a pinpoint, then a pinwheel expanding. Stars burst into galaxies and nebulae, gas clouds, and the unimaginably vast emptiness of s.p.a.ce. At Nith Immmon's behest, the starfield shifted and changed, until they were looking at a single shoal of stars.

"Behold," Nith Immmon said. "h.e.l.lespennn."

Is this the past or a simulation!

"This is where the stars fell." Objects could be seen moving amidst the shoal. "This is where we engaged the Centophennni." Not vectoring, drifting. V'ornn gravships torn to twisted pieces, reamed inside out, some all but unrecognizable lumps. "This is our end, Nith Einon. Unless we can learn the secrets of the Centophennni, we are looking at our end." A graveyard of almost an entire V'ornn fleet, tumbling end over end in eternal torment. "For the Centophennni are searching for us."

This was a widespread theory even in my time.

Abruptly, the starfield shifted to another quadrant entirely, to another shoal of stars within the galaxy, to more V'ornn gravships torn apart and tumbling like deadweight.

"It is theory no longer." Nith Immmon's sigh rustled the curtains. "Twenty-seven sidereal days ago Fleet 1011 was engaged by the Centophennni. Nineteen gravships. Thirty thousand of us." The image was closer now, the horrifying details piling up into a magnitude that staggered the mind. "All gone."I see no sign of Centophennni casualties.

"There are none."

Just as at h.e.l.lespennn.

There was a kind of numb silence.

How far?

Nith Immmon knew Nith Einon meant how far away was this. "Not far enough," he said. "The Centophennni have gotten the scent of us. Sooner or later they will be coming."

Have you informed Gul Aluf?

Nith Immmon noted that Nith Einon did not mention the convocation or even the Gyrgon Comradeship as a whole. But then why should he be surprised that Nith Einon would know where the true power lay?

"I have not," he said.

Surely that was a mistake.

"I wanted to get your opinion first."

My opinion1. Nith Einon tried to snort his derision, but as a Teyj could not snort. What he produced was a sound halfway between a whistle and a caw. I am permanently disa.s.sembled. Why would you care about my opinion?

"Because you are who you are. And because you are Nith Sahor's father."

Nith Einon fluttered the Teyj's four wings, settling back on the potted sysal tree. Turn up the lights. I find this starfield depressing.

Nith Immmon shut down the photon exciter, and raised the lights. "I know what you had been researching just before your death."

I was retired, Nith Einon said shortly. I had returned to my sculpture.

"Yes, yes. I am familiar with the stories you and your son disseminated." Nith Immmon waved a hand.

"All lies."

Nith Einon pecked at imaginary nits in his glorious jewel-hued feathers.

Drawing up a chair beside the potted sysal tree, Nith Immmon sat down, crossed his legs. "Look here, I know you blame me in some measure for your son's demise."

How quaint a phrase is demise, Nith Einon said acidly. How neat and . . . antiseptic.

Nith Immmon opened his hands, palms up.

Oh, murder will do nicely, Nith Einon said. And, yes, I do in pan hold you to blame.

"Unlike Niths Settt and Na.s.sam I did not join Nith Batox.x.x in his fatal attack on Nith Sahor."

You feel that you deserve praise even though you did not lift a finger in my son's defense?

"If I had, I would have been murdered as well."

Good riddance!

"But I am still here, and Nith Batox.x.x is dead."

No thanks to you. And now you have Nith Na.s.sam to fear.

Nith Immmon sighed. "Nith Einon, I want only to help you."

My son is dead1. He and I are both beyond your-or any other Gyrgon's-help.

Nith Immmon sat sadly gazing at the Teyj. At length, he said, "All I ask is a chance to prove you wrong."

Bring back Nith Sahor.

"I cannot do the impossible."

This is the promise we promulgate among the other castes.

"But we are here in the Temple of Mnemonics. It is only you and I. You know better than any our limitations."

If you cannot do what I ask, then we have nothing further to discuss.

Nith Immmon rose and quietly brought the chair back to its original place. He took meticulous care to ensure that the foot of each leg was settled in its exact spot. Everything in his quarters had the same air of being precisely placed and never moved, or at least, like the chair, not for long. There was a sense of the magic of this placement, as if the physicality of the quarters was part of an unspoken incantation."When the Centophennni find us," Nith Immmon said softly, as if to himself, "it will be the end for us."

After all the b.l.o.o.d.y wars we have waged, the endless destruction we have caused, if that is the consequence of our actions, then we should be strong enough to accept it.

"Since when are you a fatalist?"

It ill becomes you, Nith Immmon, to pretend to know me. Nith Einon lifted one leg, then the other, the only outward sign of his inner agitation. We Gyrgon-and by extension the V'ornn as a whole- have been going down the wrong road for as long as I can recall. Mine was a lone voice in the wilderness. I was ignored, then, when I would not remain quiet, I was reviled. That animus devolved on my son when he took up the cause, refining the theories I had only time enough to outline.

"You were not alone, Nith Einon. And neither was he."

Coward! It is too late] Your holoimages of the new front prove it. Now you will reap what your inaction has sown. The Centophennni will do to us what we have done to the Kundalan. If you have even a grain of sense, you can see how perfectly the consequence fits our crime.

"I, for one, refuse to believe that."

Then do what you should have done days ago, Nith Einon advised. Show Gul Aluf what you have just shown me.

"Is this another of your peculiarities, consorting with Gul Aluf?"

The Teyj tried to laugh. Possibly, Nith Immmon, it is the only thing we have in common.

Minnum's tent within the vast archeological dig at Za Hara-at was abrim with warm lamplight and the smells of roasting slingbok and brewing ba'du. The dwarfish sauromician was at the fire, fist on hip, stirring a flame-blackened pan in which he was stir-frying blood-rose petals in a bit of limoniq oil.

"I did not know you were such a cook," Giyan said, standing just behind him and observing everything he did.

"You may find that I have many hidden talents." He tossed in a pinch of cinnamon. "Living on your own, Lady, makes good cooking a necessity. Especially when you have my refined taste buds!" He glanced over at her. "Pardon my bluntness, but you really should get off your feet. You look exhausted."

"An occupational hazard, I am afraid." Giyan offered him a smile as she poured herself a cup of strong thick ba'du. "But I thank you for your concern."

"Are you hungry? You must eat, at least."

"Everything looks delicious." She bent her head as he offered her a taste of the stir-fried blood-rose.

"And it is!"

She sat, then, and sipped her ba'du. Minnum had pitched his tent inside a ruined temple that fronted Reconnaissance Boulevard. Minarets rose in slender but truncated columns, fluted sentinels in the windswept night. She could hear the stirring of Za Hara-at all around her. It was these emanations, she was certain, that made the Khagggun guard uneasy. They ventured inside the ruined city only briefly during the day when they accompanied the architects. At night, they kept their distance behind the energy field the Mesagggun had erected around the V'ornn encampment.

"What have you discovered here?" she asked.

Minnum paused in his stirring for only an instant. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Our prizes are arranged in the corner there."

Giyan rose and went to take a look. Crouched down, she ran a hand over each item, absorbing its internal vibration.

Minnum looked nervously over his shoulder. He had come to have a healthy respect for Giyan's power. He knew she was, among other things, one of the Ramahan Chosen, a seer, and he was terrified that she would somehow intuit that he and Sornnn had found a banestone. She had in her hand the broken idol, half-male, half-female, he had found.

"Curious, isn't it?" he said."Extremely." Giyan ran her fingertip over the surface. "It is clearly a deity, but it is not Kundalan. Do you know its origin?"

"I do not, Lady. I confess I have never seen its like before."

"Look at this face. What do you see?"

He shook his head mutely.

"Acceptance and death," she said, "in equal measure."

She put it aside and, after picking through a half dozen other artifacts, came across the ceremonial dagger that had been beside the bane-stone. Minnum's heart flipped over in his chest, and he cursed himself for not hiding it.

Giyan rose and, with the dagger in the palm of her hand, turned to him. "Where did you find this?"

With a sick feeling, he told her.

"Take me there."

"But, Lady, our supper is almost ready."

"Now."

Minnum knew an order when he heard one. He put down the wooden spoon and set the pan aside.

Grabbing a lumane Sornnn had left behind, he took her into the rune-laden streets of Za Hara-at.

As they hurried along, he said, "The temple is on the boulevard Gather the Unknowing,"

"Of course it is."

She was staring at the dagger, which was carved out a single slab of lavender jade. Its hilt and handle had been fashioned into Venca runes. From her scrutiny, Minnum intuited that she attached some importance to it. There had been an urgency in her voice that gave him pause. He thought of the banestone found and as quickly lost. If he had fouled up again, he did not know what he would do.

At length, they turned onto Gather the Unknowing, a wide and, therefore, important thoroughfare. Just past the Plaza of the Unfinished Rune, the beam of his lumane found the enclosing wall of the temple.

Following it around to what was left of the entrance, he took her inside. His skin began to p.r.i.c.kle, as if he had been infested with a thousand insects. His shoulders twitched, and he tried to even out his breathing.

The temple had a complicated structure. Even with the roof off and many of the columns destroyed it was possible to get lost within the labyrinthine form, especially at night. A cold wind skittered red dust along the stone flooring. Over the eons the dust had filled in some of the heavily incised runes, giving them an eerily reddish cast.

"It is just here, Lady," he said as he led her down an aisle between two rows of corkscrew green-porphyry columns.

At the aisle's end, he came upon the site. "Sornnn and I determined that there had once been a ceremonial altar here. But it was either destroyed or carried away by looters."

She knelt in front of the dig. As her posture could be interpreted as reverential, he felt compelled to kneel beside her. He wanted to ask her a hundred questions, but he was terrified to speak. He was on probation, after all, and he had every reason to believe that the Druuge were monitoring his behavior.

Giyan had the authority to return him to the terrible limbo life he had been living before the advent of the Dar Sala-at at the Museum of False Memory. Having tasted freedom, he did not think that he could go back to the living death to which he had been consigned.

He watched, trembling as if ill with the ague, as she applied the tip of the jade dagger to the bed of the dig he and Sornnn had worked so a.s.siduously. He peered into her face, trying to divine her thoughts, but it remained unreadable. At length, she sat back on her haunches.

"Minnum," she said slowly and deliberately, "what else did you and Sornnn SaTrryn find here?"

"Lady?"

"Do not dissemble," she snapped. Her eyes bored into his very depths. "You have come such a long way. Do not revert now."