"The a.s.sembly will take up the matter after we leave Tiamat. When we've made our decision, the Hegemonic Coordinating Center on Kharemough will be notified of any policy change that needs to be made."

"You will question a sibyl, at least." She twisted her watchband below the table's edge, longing for a handful of iestas.

"We have one among us, on the ships," not entirely answering the question.

A pity the poor bleeder, with a clientele like that. She wondered in her heart whether this one question worth asking would ever be asked again.

"In any case," Hovanesse frowned at her silence, "whatever is decided won't have to concern you, Jerusha; you'll spend the rest of your career, and your life, light-years away from Tiamat. Just like we all will. We appreciate your concern, your honesty in speaking your mind. But the question and Tiamat become purely academic for us from here on."

"I suppose so, Your Honor." And even the rain doesn't jail if it doesn't fall on you. She got to her feet again and saluted them all stiffly. "Thank you for your time, and for asking me here. But I've got to be getting back to my duties before they become academic, too." She turned without waiting for a sign of dismissal and went quickly out of the room.

She had gotten as far as the hallway before Hovanesse's voice called her to a stop. She turned back, half hot and half cold, saw t him coming after her alone. She couldn't quite read his face.

"You didn't give the a.s.sembly the opportunity to give you your new a.s.signments, Commander." His eyes castigated her for her tacta" I less ness and ingrat.i.tude before the a.s.sembly members; but he said nothing more.

"Oh." She took the printout automatically from his hand, with I fingers that felt nothing. Oh, G.o.ds, what's my fortune to be?

"Aren't you going to look at it?" It was not a casual inquiry, or a friendly one, and she felt the numbness spread.

She almost refused, but some perverse part of her would not ignore the challenge. "Of course." She unsealed the flimsy paper and let it fall open, her eyes striking the page randomly. The Tiamatan force was being split up, as she had expected, rea.s.signed to several ; different worlds. Mantagnes had been given another chief inspectorship. And she ... she ... her eyes found her own name at last and she read... "There's been a mistake." She felt the perfect calm of perfect disbelief. She read it again: a sector command, almost the equal of her position here. But at Paradise Station, Syllagong, on Big Blue. "There's nothing there but a cinder desert." j "And the penal colony. Extensive mineral mining goes on there, Commander. It's of considerable importance to the Hegemony. There are plans for starting an additional colony; that's why they're expanding the force there." i "d.a.m.n it, I'm a police officer. I don't want to run a prison camp." The paper sighed as her hands tightened. "Why am I being given this? Is it what I just said in there? It isn't my fault if thea""

"This was your original a.s.signment, Commander. But because of your accomplishments, your rank has been raised to a sector command."

He said the words deliberately, oozing the smugness of a man who lived by influence and prior knowledge. "Rehabilitating offenders is i just as important as apprehending them, after all. Someone has to do j,;! it, and you've proven you can handle a a" difficult position." ; v "A dead-end position!" To argue was only to humiliate herself I further, but she fought a losing battle with her temper. "I'm the Commander of Police for this entire planet. I've just been given a commendation. I don't have to stand by and let my career die!"

"Of course you don't," he patronized. "You can take it up with the a.s.sembly members a" although you probably won't earn much sympathy after the disgusting and outrageous charges you just made in there." His dark eyes grew darker. "Let's be blunt about this, shall we, Commander? You and I both know you owe your place at the top to the Queen's interference. The only reason you were made an inspector hi the first place was merely to humor her. This new position is more than you deserve. You know as well as I do that the men under your command here never accepted taking orders from a woman." But that was Arienrhod's doing! And it's changing now, changed already a" "Morale was terrible, as Chief Inspector Man tagnes frequently reported to me. You are neither needed nor wanted on the force. Whether you take this a.s.signment or resign is up to you, but it's all the same to us." He locked his hands behind his back and stood before her, as immovable as a wall. She remembered the glowing plat.i.tudes he had mouthed about her so short a time ago.

You set me up for this, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I saw it coming. I knew it was coming, but after yesterday I thoughta" I thoughta" "I'll fight this, Hovanesse." Her voice trembled with rage, half the rage turning back on herself for letting it happen. "The Queen couldn't ruin me, and neither will you." But she has, Jerusha; she has... She turned and walked away from him again, and this time he did not call her back.

Jerusha left the Court Building and started back down the un congested Blue Alley toward police headquarters. (Even hi Festival time, the carousers avoided this piece of the city.) Her first and only thought was to go to her men, tell them her problem, see if she could get their support. It was true, thena" feeling toward her was changing, because of yesterday; she had seen it in almost every face. But had it changed enough? If she had the time now, she might be given a fair chance to prove that she could hold their respect as well as any man. But she didn't have that much time. Did she even have time to try to get them behind her now? And even if she did ... was it worth it?

She found herself standing alone in the alley before the station house: that ancient, hideous fossil which had grown so familiar. No other building, no other post would ever be quite so hated a" or, she suddenly realized, quite so important a" in her life. But wherever she went, if she went in the uniform she wore now, she would always be an outsider, would always have to be fighting not simply to do a good job, but to prove that she even had the right to try. And there would always be another Hovanesse, another Mantagnes, who would never accept her, and try to drive her away. G.o.ds, did she really want to spend the rest of her life that way? No ... not if she could find something else to do with it that meant as much to her as this job, something she believed in as much. But there was nothing else nothing. Beyond this job she had no life, no goal, no future. She went on past the station house, on to the alley's end, and out into the river of celebration.

Chapter 50.

Sparks moved through the dimly lit rooms of Starbuck's suite like a stranger, sleepless, aimless. No longer a part of them a" but no longer free to leave. Both the public and the private entrances to the suite were watched now a" not by the Queen's guards, but by Summers furious over her attempt to stop the Change. They were guarding Arienrhod, too a" and somehow her plot had been overthrown. But when he had tried to ask them about Moon, and whether she had been the one who told them, they didn't know, or wouldn't tell him. And when he had tried to get them to let him out, or to convince them that he was only a Summer like they were, they had laughed at him, and driven him back into the room with harpoons and knives: They knew who he was; Arienrhod had told them. And they would keep him here until the sacrifice.

Arienrhod would not let him go. If her dreams were ruined, then his would be, too. He would die tomorrow if she died; she had bound him to her as inescapably as they would be bound together when they were thrown into the sea. She was the Sea incarnate, and Starbuck was Her consort, and they would be reborn on the new tide ... but as new bodies with fresh, untainted souls a" Summer souls. That was the way it had been since the beginning of time, and even though the off worlders had twisted it to suit their own purposes, it had endured, and always would. Who was he to change Change? Moon had tried to save him from it, but his fate had been stronger than them both. He tried not to think about what had happened between Arienrhod and Moon after he had been taken away a" when Moon must have learned the truth about herself at last Even if Moon had somehow escaped Arienrhod, there was no way she could come back to him now. He could only be grateful that he had been given one last hour with her, a condemned man's last comfort and the final irony of a wasted life.

He rummaged in a gilded chest, found the bundle of clothes he had worn when he first came to the palace, and brought them out. He spread them carefully on the soft surface of the carpet, finding at their core the beads he had bought himself on his second day in the city ... and his flute. He laid the flute aside, took off the clothes he wore, and pulled on the loose, heavy pants and the rainbow shirt that belonged with the beads, dressing as though for a ritual. He took up his father's medal from the dresser top when he finished, hung it about his neck in completion. He picked the flute up gently and sat with it on the edge of the heavy-legged reclining couch.

Sparks raised the flute to his lips, lowered it again, his mouth suddenly dry, too dry for song. He swallowed, feeling the pulse in his temple slow. He raised the fragile, hollow sh.e.l.l again. Positioning his fingers over the opening, he breathed into the mouthpiece. A tremulous note filled the air around him, like a spirit amazed to find itself free from the silence it had thought would be eternal. The breath clogged in his throat and he swallowed again; melody after melody filled his head, trying to escape into the air. He began to play, haltingly, with wrong fingers responding to memory's patterns, shrill overtones stabbing his ears. But gradually his fingers loosened, the water of song poured sweet and pure from the depths of his being again and carried him back to the world he had lost. Arienrhod had tried to ruin his last meeting with Moon, to take away even that, as she had taken away his pleasure in any beauty or joy that was not of her; but she had failed. Moon's pa.s.sion and belief were as pure as song, and the memory of her carried away all shame, healed all wounds, righted all wrongs...

He looked up, the song and the spell broken, as the guarded door to the suite unlatched and opened unexpectedly before him. Two figures hooded and robed entered. One moved slowly, grotesquely.

The door closed again behind them. "Sparks Dawntreader Summer..."

Sparks squinted, reaching up to brighten the suspended lamp. "What do you want? It isn't timea""

"It's time ... after twenty-odd years." The first man, the one who moved easily, came forward into the globe of light and pushed back his hood.

"What?" Sparks saw the face of a man on the young end of middle-age, an off worlder. A Kharemoughi, he thought at first, but with paler skin and a heavier frame, a rounder face. That face ... some-thing about it he knew...

"After twenty-odd years, it's time that we met, Sparks. I only wish the setting were more appropriate to a joyful reunion."

"Who are you?" Sparks rose from the couch.

"I am your first ancestor." The words registered, without meaning he shook his head. "Your father, Sparks." Something in the your was incomplete, as though the stranger could not express all that he really felt by it.

Sparks sat down again, dizzy, as the blood fell away from his head. The stranger a" his father a" unfastened his cloak and shrugged it off onto a chair; under it he wore a plain silver-gray jump suit, and the ornamental badge and collar of a member of the Hegemonic a.s.sembly. He made a small, formal bow, somehow awkward for all its grace, as though he were equally uncertain about how to begin. "First Secretary Temmon Ashwini Sirus." The second man a" a servant? a" turned and shuffled away, disappearing into the next room without comment, leaving them alone.

Sparks laughed, to cover another sound. "What is this, some kind of joke? Did Arienrhod put you up to this?" He covered his off worlder medal with his hand, wrapping his fingers around it, tightening his fist until it whitened ... remembering how she had teased him and tormented him, telling him she knew who it belonged to, the name of his father; telling him lies.

"No. I explained to the Summers that I had come to see my son, and they showed me where you were."

Sparks jerked the medal off over his head. He threw it out to land at Sirus's feet, his voice harsh with disbelief. "Then this must belong to you, hero a" it sure as h.e.l.l doesn't belong on Starbuck. It took a lot of guts to come here and stick a knife into me ... here's your reward. Take it and get out." He shut his eyes, trying not to look for resemblances. He heard Sirus lean over and pick up the medal. "To our n.o.ble son Temmon..." The resonant voice grew transparent. "How is your mother? I gave her this on the Mask Night... your legacy."

"She's dead, foreigner." He opened his eyes deliberately to watch Sirus's face. "I killed her." He let the shock recoil. "She died the day I was born."

The shock turned to grief, disbelief. "She died in childbirth?" as though he actually cared whether it had happened.

Sparks nodded. "They don't have all the modern conveniences in Summer. They won't have them here either, after the Change." He ran his hands along the rough cloth of his pants. "But that won't matter to me. Or you."

"Son. Son ..." Sirus turned the medal over and over between his fingers. "What can I say to you? The Prime Minister is my own father, your grandfather. When he came back to me, it was all so sun pie. His blood in my veins made me royal in the eyes of my league a" it made me a leader; gave me a right to rule, nothing but success and happiness. When he returned again to Samathe, he gave me this medal with his own hands, and took me into the a.s.sembly." He let the medal slip through his fingers. It circled on its chain, catching light, like a fiery wheel. "I gave this to your mother because she was so like my mother's people, with her eyes as blue as a woodland lake, and her hair like sunlight... She carried me back to my homeworld for a night, when I was lonely and it was far away." He looked up, offering the medal from his outstretched hand. "This was hers, yours, and it always will be."

Sparks felt his bones dissolve and his body turn to smoke. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d ... why did you come here now? Where were you then, years ago, when I needed you? I waited for you to come back, I tried to do everything to be what I thought you'd be, so you'd want me when you saw me." He spread his hands, surrounded by the technological mysteries he had solved so painstakingly, so pointlessly. "But now, when it's all gone, and I've ruined my life ... you come and see me like this!"

"Sparks, your life isn't ruined. Your life isn't over. I've come to make amends." He hesitated; Sparks turned back to him slowly.

"Your cousin Moon told me about you. It was Moon who sent me here."

"Moon?" Sparks swallowed his heart.

"Yes, son." Sirus's smile filled with encouragement and rea.s.surance. "Her mind is behind this reunion, and her heart, I think, is waiting for another one... Having met your cousin, I know that you come from a fine family line." Sparks glanced away, silent. "And having collided with her belief in you," ruefully, "I don't think there could be anything that would make me ashamed to have you for a son." Sims gazed past him and around him at the instruments and machines, the silent testimony of their common blood, their shared heritage.

Sparks got to his feet as his father came toward him. Sirus hung the medal around his neck again, looking at his face and deeply into his eyes. "You favor your mother more ... but I can see that you have a Technician's need to know why. How I wish there were an answer for every question..." He put his hand on Sparks's shoulder tentatively, as though he was not sure that it would be allowed to stay.

But Sparks held his father's eyes, absorbing the moment and the touch, as the cold empty cell where a part of his wholeness had been captive for years was thrown open at last, to let light and warmth pour in. "You came. You came for me a" Father ..." He spoke the word he had never expected to hear from his own lips; put his own hands over Sirus's hand on his shoulder, clinging to it like a child. "Father!"

"Very touching." The second man shuffled back into the room, breaking apart the moment. "Now, if you don't mind, Your Holiness, I want to get this over with."

Sparks released his father's hand, turned resentfully to see the other man unfasten his cloak and take it off. "Herne! What a" ?"

Herne grinned darkly. "The Child Stealer sent me. I'm your changeling, Dawntreader." His paralyzed legs were meshed hi a clumsy exoskeleton.

"What's he talking about?" Sparks looked back at his father. "What's he doing here?"

"Your cousin Moon brought him to me. She said he was willing to take your place at the sacrifice of the Change."

"Take my place?" Sparks shook his head. "Hun? You? ... Why, Herne? Why would you do that for me?" Not letting himself hope. Herne laughed once. "Not for you, Dawntreader. For her. They're more alike than you know. More than you know ..." His eyes turned distant. "Moon knew. She knew what I needed, and wanted: Arienrhod, my self-respect... and an end to it, the last laugh. And she's given it all to me. G.o.ds, I want to see Arienrhod's face when she learns she's been cheated in everything! I'll have her to myself forever, after all ... that should be enough of h.e.l.l, and heaven, for both of us." His vision telescoped back to their faces. "Go to your flawed copy, Dawntreader, and I hope you're satisfied with her. You never were man enough for the real thing." He held out the cloak.

Sparks took it from him, threw it around his own shoulders. "That's one way of putting it, I suppose." He fastened the catch at his throat. His father held out a small jar of brownish paste. "Stain your face and hands, so that the guards will take you for a Kharemoughi."

"One of the galaxy's Chosen." Herne smirked.

Sparks went to the mirror, smeared the stain over his skin obediently, watching himself disappear. Behind his own reflection he saw Sirus waiting, and Herne searching the room with eager possessiveness a" saw Starbuck in his element, and a son with his father and they were two different men. Two different men, who had been the same man; who had loved the same woman who was not the same woman, and loved her now for the ways in which she was different. One of them ready to return to life, and one of them ready to die...

He finished coloring his skin and raised his hood, went back to Sirus's side. "I'm ready," smiling at last at his father's smile.

"Son of a First Secretary, grandson of a Prime Minister ... you suit the role admirably." His father nodded. "Is there anything you want to take with you?"

Sparks remembered his flute lying on the couch, picked it up. "This is all." He glanced at the clutter of hardware briefly, and away again.

"Hernea"" Sirus said something humbly in Kharemoughi, and for Sparks repeated it: "Thank you for giving me my son."

Sparks took a deep breath. "Thank you."

Herne folded his arms, enjoying something that Sparks did not fully understand. "Any time, sadhu. Just make sure you remember that you owe it all to me. Now get out of my chambers, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I want to start enjoying them, and I don't have much time left."

Sirus tapped on the door; it opened. Sparks looked back quickly at Herne standing in his element, taking his own place. Goodbye, Arienrhod... Sirus went out with his shuffling servant, leaving Starbuck alone.

Chapter 51.

Moon was swept on the crowded tide from one end of the Street to the other, down to the creaking docks of Carbuncle's underworld where the city waded in the sea. There the procession made offerings to the Sea Mother and set her free at last, after an eternity compressed into hours, to spend her own Mask Night however she chose until dawn. Until dawn.

She made her way back up the Street toward Jerusha PalaThion's townhouse, fending off giddy worshipers and eager would-be lovers in the crush of costumed bodies, feeling all around her the quickening pulse, the rising pa.s.sion of the night's promise. But the electric energy all around her only made her more sharply aware of her own solitary journey through it, and that she might spend the rest of her life alone if she spent the rest of tonight that way.

Night was bluing into black at the alley's end when she reached PalaThion's townhouse at last and banged on the door. PalaThion opened it, wearing a shapeless robe instead of her uniform; started, at the face of the Summer Queen confronting her.

Moon lifted the mask from her shoulders, held it in her arms, saying nothing.

"My G.o.ds ..." PalaThion shook her head, as though this were only one more blow in a beating that had already left her dazed. She stood aside, letting Moon escape into sanctuary, out of the mauling mobs beyond her door.

Moon went on through the atrium and into the living room, her heart in her throat, searching' No Nothing yet." PalaThion followed her in. "He hasn't come back."

"Oh." Moon forced out the word.

"There's still time."

Moon nodded silently, laid the Summer Queen's mask across one end of the reclining couch.

"Is that too heavy for you already?" PalaThion's voice grew less kind.

Moon glanced up, saw the weary disillusionment that turned the woman's eyes to dust. "No... But tomorrow at dawn, if Sparks isn't a" isn'ta"" looking down again.

"Did you win that mask honestly?" PalaThion asked bluntly, as though she actually expected an honest answer.

Moon reddened, smoothing its ribbons. Did I? "I had to win it."

PalaThion frowned. "You're telling me that you really believe it was fore-ordained ... sibyl?"

"Yes. It was. I was meant to do this, if I could. And I did. The reason for it is more important than either one of us, Commander. I think you know what the reason is ... do you still want to stop me?" She held the challenge out in her open hands, watching the unnameable uncertainty on PalaThion's face.

PalaThion rubbed her arms inside the sleeves of her caftan. "That depends on the answer you give me next. I have a question, sibyl."

Moon covered her surprise, nodded. "Ask, and I will answer. Input."

"Sibyl, tell me the truth, the whole truth about the mers."

Moon's surprise followed her down, into the black void of the Nothing Place, as the computer's brain replaced her own to tell another off worlder the truth.

But behind the truth there lay a deeper truth, and as she floated formlessly in the darkness the vision came to her, and spoke to her alone. She saw the mers, not as they were a" innocent, unknowing playthings of the Sea a" but as they had originally been created: pliant, intelligent beings that carried the germ of immortality. The first step toward immortality for all of humankind ... and still more than that. They had been given immortality for a reason, intelligence for a reason. And the reason was one that she alone knew: the sibyl machine, the secret repository of all the sibyls' guidance that lay here on Tiamat, below Carbuncle, beneath its sea. She saw the mers reigning peacefully over this water world a" guardians of the sibyl mind, possessing the knowledge that would maintain it and allow it to function. The Old Empire scientists whose plan this had been had hoped the sibyl network might even buy them time enough to perfect immortality for human beings; or that it would at least halt the spreading decay that ate away the Empire from within.

But the decay had reached this world first, hi the form of petty kingdoms broken loose from the atrophying higher order, whose shortsighted freebooters wanted imperfect immortality for themselves now, if perfect immortality wasn't available. The Empire's own subjects began a slaughter of the mers that destroyed their ability to perform their duties, crippling the potential sibyl network before it had really taken hold. The Old Empire fell completely, irrevocably, of its own weight ... but the deadly open secret of the water of life hung on in informational stasis into the present, resurrected with the Hegemony's rise, and the cycle of slaughter had begun again. But by this time the mers had lost all understanding of their purpose here and fallen back into primitive, unquestioning unity with the sea. The refugee human colonists, struggling to make a new home here, no more understood the secret beneath the sea than the mers themselves did; but they paid its vestigial memory homage as the Sea Mother, and called its immortal children sacred.

The sibyl network continued to function, dispensing its knowledge to the crippled cultures picking themselves up out of the Old Empire's ruins; but its answers had grown obscure and exasperating through lost potential... And Moon saw at last that it had lost an even more profound aspect of its power. The fumbling manipulations it had used to guide her hi doing its will were not a fluke, were never meant to be a rare or erratic phenomenon. Sibyls had been designed as more than simply speakers of secondhand wisdom a" they had been designed as agents of social change, to bring stability and humanity back to the cultures they were born a part of. And their function had almost been lost, along with much of the clarity of the original data files.

But she, Moon, had become the Summer Queen a" as the sibyl mind had meant her to. And now that she was Queen, she would begin the task of rebuilding all that had been destroyed. She was the last hope of the sibyl mind; it had put all of its faltering resources into guiding her quest. Only if she could reverse its disintegration could it begin to function again fully a" and only then could it help her put an end to the cycle of off world exploitation forever. It would continue to guide her while it could; but she would carry the burden of making the ideal real...

"We further a.n.a.lysis!" Moon swayed on her feet as the Transfer set her free. PalaThion supported her, let her down safely onto the couch.

"Are you all right?" PalaThion searched her face for a rea.s.suring sign of comprehension.

She shook her head, sagging forward under the weight of her final revelation. "Oh, Lady ..." A moan, as she realized at last to what she made her prayer. "How? How can I change a thousand years of wrong? I'm only one, only Moona""

"You're the Summer Queen," PalaThion said. "And a sibyl. You have all the tools you need. It's just a question of time... Do you have enough of that, before the Hegemony comes back again?"

Moon lifted her head slowly.

"No," PalaThion looked away. "I'm not going to stop you. How could I live with so much death, and live with myself? And for what a" ?" Her hands tightened.

It took Moon another moment before she understood that what PalaThion had heard was only what Ngenet had heard, and not what had been whispered in her own mind there in the secret darkness. What PalaThion saw as the challenge was not the real challenge a" not a match of sheer technological strength, but a challenge on a far different level, with far greater repercussions a" a change that would ripple across a galaxy. But PalaThion had understood that there was a challenge, and that its outcome could be measured in suffering and death; and that had been enough. Moon nodded. "This means more to more people than I can ever tell you."

PalaThion smiled tightly. "Well, that's some consolation." She moved away, across the room, to the sh.e.l.l sitting on a table by the doorway. She picked it up, held it for a long moment with her back to Moon.

Moon stretched out on the couch, her body leaden, her mind numbed with overload; wondering how she would get past tomorrow dawn to face the long years of the future.