"I have to be getting back toa"" PalaThion glanced up as another knock sounded at her door. Moon sat up, her hands twisting on her belt as PalaThion disappeared into the atrium. She heard the sound of the door opening, of people entering the hall...

"You!" A voice sick with betrayal. A voice she knew Moon pushed herself up, started across the room. She saw three figures silhouetted in the light from the open door, red hair limned with gold.

"Hold it. Don't be in such a hurry, Sparks." PalaThion caught his arm in a steel grip as he tried to bolt back out into the alley. "If this was a trap you'd be in my jail, not my parlor."

"I a" I don't understand." Sparks eased under her hand, confusion showing.

"I'm not sure I do, either." PalaThion let him go. His father stood beside her, smiling rea.s.surance.

"Sparksa""

His head came up. "Moon!" He started toward her.

She put out her arms. He came into the room where she stood waiting; the rest of the world ceased to exist beyond the meeting point of their hearts.

"Oh, Moon! Moon ..." Sparks breathed the words against her ear, stopped her own words with another kiss.

"Sparkie..." She tasted tears.

"Sparks." They looked up together, at Sirus's voice. "I must be leaving you now. Now that you're in a" safe hands." He smiled his sorrow.

Sparks nodded, separated himself from Moon slowly and went back to his father's side. Moon watched them embrace for a last time, feeling her own heart torn, before his father went back out into the alley noise. PalaThion closed the door, looked at Sparks expressionlessly.

He forced himself to meet her eyes. "I'll tell you what I know about the Source. That's what you want, isn't it, to let me go ... that's all you want?" as if he didn't really believe it.

She nodded, but her face was strained.

"Look, Commandera"" He shut his eyes. "I don't know why you're doing this ... except I know it's not done for me. But I want you to know I'm sorry a" " Hastily, "I know it doesn't do any good, it doesn't change anything, it doesn't even mean anything. But I'm-sorry." He spread his hands.

"It means something, Dawntreader." PalaThion looked as though she were surprised to realize that it actually did.

"There's one thing I can do for you, anyway," abruptly. He strode to the far end of the room, pried the ugly geometric clock-face out of the wall. Moon watched, incredulous, as he threw it to the floor and stepped on it. He smiled, rubbing his hands together. "If you've hated this place for no reason a" that was the reason: a subsonic transmitter in the clock." He came back to Moon's side, hung onto her hand as though he were afraid she would disappear. "There might be others I don't know about."

The awareness of years of needless agony, of questioning her own sanity ... the awareness that it had finally come to an end, filled PalaThion's face. "I always meant to make this museum into a real room again. But somehow I just never got around to it..." Dreary disillusionment settled in again, as if it had never really left her. "Well, Moon. You got everything you came here to get; I'm glad, for somebody's sake. After Sparks gives his testimony, the two of you cease to exist as far as I'm concerned. That'll be the end of the problems you've caused for me... I just hope you can solve your own now." She went past them and into the back rooms of the apartment.

"What did she mean?" Sparks turned back.

Moon shook her head, not meeting his eyes. "All that happened in the last year, I suppose." Five years. "And all that's going to happen, after the Change." She looked away at the mask of the Summer Queen.

"What's that?" He followed her glance.

"The mask of the Summer Queen." She felt him stiffen and pull away.

"Yours? You won it?" His voice thickened. "No! You couldn't have a" you couldn't have won, unless you cheated."

Moon saw herself reflected, saw Arienrhod reflected in his eyes. "I won because I was meant to! I had to win a" and not for myself!"

"I suppose you did it for Tiamat! That's what she always said, too." He stood away from her.

"I'm a sibyl, Sparks, and that's why I won! And yes, I care about Tiamat a" and Arienrhod does too. She's seen more of what this world was, and became, and will stop being again, than anyone else has... And she cared about you; you can't deny that."

Sparks looked down abruptly; Moon felt different lands of pain start in her chest.

PalaThion came back into the room wearing her uniform; went on past them and out, without saying anything more. The door opened and closed behind her, cutting them off again from the celebration of the world outside. Moon fingered the trailing streamers of the Summer Queen's mask. Her mask ... my mask.

"Sparks, please, believe that it's right. My becoming Queen is part of something much greater, much more important, than either you or me. I can't explain it to you nowa"" She knew, with misery, that he had never been meant to know; that he had always been the enemy to the shapeless sentience that guided her. "But we have to stop the off world exploitation of Tiamat. When I was off world I met a sibyl on Kharemough; I learned that there are sibyls on all the worlds of the Old Empire a" the whole reason they exist is to help worlds rebuild and relearn. I can answer any question." She saw his eyes widen, and change.

"And while I was on Kharemough I began to see what you always saw, about progress, technology, the a" magic of what the off worlders do, and how it isn't magic to them. They understand so much more they don't have to be afraid of disease, or broken bones, or childbirth. Your mother wouldn't have died-We have a right to live that way too, or there wouldn't be sibyls on this world."

She saw hunger in his eyes, for what she had seen that he would never see. But he only said, "Our people are happy the way they are. If they start reaching for power, wanting what they don't have, they'll end up like the Winters. Like us."

"What's wrong with us? Nothing!" She shook her head. "We want knowledge, we're asking for our birthright. That's all. The off worlders want us to think it's wrong to be dissatisfied with what we have. But it's no worse than being self-satisfied with it. Change isn't evil a" change is life. Nothing's all good, or bad. Not even Carbuncle. It's like the sea, it has its tides, they ebb and flow... What you choose to do with your life doesn't matter, unless you have the right to choose anything. We don't have any choice. And the mers don't even have the right to live." And they have to live they're the key to everything.

Sparks grimaced. "All right, you've made your point! Someone should try to change it. But why us?" His hand closed over his medal. "You know ... my a" father said he could get us off Tiamat. He could arrange for us to go to Kharemough. It would be so easy..."

"They don't need us on Kharemough. They need us here." Seeing Kharemough, the Thieves' Market, the night sky: It would be so easy. Even if we can plant the seeds here, we'll never see the final harvest, we'll never know whether we lost or won.... "And we owe something to both places that we can only pay back here." Her voice grew dark.

"Some things can never be repaid." Sparks moved to the window; Moon saw someone outside wave in pa.s.sing. "And having to stay here, in Carbuncle, in the palacea"" He broke off. "I don't know if I can stand it, Moon. I can't start over, in the same place where I wasa""

"Look at the people out there. This is the Mask Night a" the night of transition. No one is what they were, or will be ... we're not anything, our potential is infinite. And when the masks come off, they peel away the layers of our sins, and leave us free to forget, and start over." And to prove to the sibyl mind that you are as I see you, and not wearing a death mask.

She went to stand beside him. "After tonight nothing will be the same. Not even Carbuncle. The Summers are coming here, and the future is trying to. It will be a new world, not Arienrhod's." But it will be hers too; it always will be. Knowing it, she didn't say it. "And I promise you I'll never set foot in the palace again." And I'll never tell anyone why.

He looked over at her in surprise; when he believed what he saw, relief freed his face. But still he sighed, and still she felt the s.p.a.ce between them. "It's not enough. I need time a" time to forget; time to believe in myself again ... and believe in us. One night isn't enough. Maybe a lifetime won't be enough." He turned to the window again.

Moon looked with him, not able to keep looking at him, letting the crowd blur and swim out of focus, oily colors on a water surface. It never rains here. It ought to rain ... there are never any rainbows. "I'll wait," biting off the words, to keep from choking on them. "But it won't take that long." She found his hand on the windowsill squeezed it. "Tonight it's my duty to be happy." Her mouth quirked at the irony. "This should have been our Festival, to carry with us in our memories forever. It's the last Festival; and we will remember it. Do you want to go out there and end our lives the way we were meant to? Maybe, if we tried, we could make tonight one we want to remember forever."

He nodded; a smile teetered on his face. "We could try."

She looked back at the Summer Queen's mask, saw it overlain by faces, all the many lives that had sacrificed so much to make it hers. One facea" "But first ... I have to tell someone good-bye." She bit her lip, a counterpain.

"Who?" Sparks followed her eyes.

"A a" an off worlder A police inspector. I escaped from the nomads with him. He's in the hospital now."

"A Blue?" He tried to take back the tone of his voice. "Then he's more than just a Blue: a friend."

"More than just a friend," faintly. She faced him, waiting for him to understand.

"More than ... ?" He frowned suddenly, and she saw his face flush. "How could you a" ?" His voice broke, like a stick snapping. "How could you ... How could I. We. Us ..."

She looked down. "I was lost in the storm, and he was my sea anchor. And I was his. When someone loves you more than you love yourself, you can't helpa""

"I know." He let his anger out in a sigh. "But what about a" now, you and him? And me?"

She ran her fingers down the colored front of her nomad's tunic. "He didn't ask me for forever." Because he knew he couldn't. "He always knew that no one would ever come before you, or come between you and me, or take your place for me." Even though he would have tried; wanted to try; did. She felt his face trying now to come between Sparks's pinched face and her own. "No one!" blinking hard. "He a" helped me to find you." He gave up everything, gave me so much; and what did I give him? Nothing. "Then he left me, asking nothing else. I have to know, to be sure, he'll a" be all right, when he leaves here."

Sparks laughed; the sound was raw in his throat. "What about us? Will we be all right, when they're gone? When we're the ones who get stuck, when we have to live on with their memories looking over our shoulders, reminding us how we broke our pledge, our promise a" and broke it, and broke it?"

"We'll make another. For our reborn souls a" tomorrow." After tonight. She picked up the Summer Queen's mask. After the dawn. "But I think we never broke the old one, in our hearts."

He kissed her once before she put the mask on again.

"What about a mask for you?"

"No." He shook his head. "I don't need one. I've already taken mine off."

Chapter 52.

"Well, this sure's h.e.l.l's not how I imagined spendin' Mask Night." Tor interrupted herself to fill her mouth with another sugary, alcohol soaked drunken-cake from the sack in her hand, doing her best to deaden body and mind against the coming end of the world. She pulled her mask back into place, hanging onto Pollux's stalwart bulk, an island of comfort in the thinning Festival crowd. "Not with nothin' but a hunk of cold metal to cozy up to, and a future of cleaning fish. h.e.l.l, I get seasick in the bathtub. And I hate fish, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" Shouting it.

"You're not the only one, sister!" A masked figure waved mutual disgust, disappeared after its chosen through a battered warehouse door, searching for a little privacy. Tor looked after them enviously; Pollux stared noncommittally down the Street. Nearly everyone who was going to had paired off for the night by now.

"I'm sorry things turned out badly for you, Tor," Pollux said unexpectedly. "If you want to spend your time with a person, I do not mind."

Tor glanced back at him, with the slightly irrational conviction that he would mind very much. "Nah. I can do that any night ... but this's the last night I'll see you." He didn't answer.

They had made a sentimental journey down to the docks and warehouses of the lower city, because she had decided that she would rather spend the last night of her world in the places of her childhood, her origins: remembering her youth, reliving the days when she had never even aspired to the things she had ultimately become. Hoping that if she could remember when they didn't exist, they might not matter so much when they were gone.

She wondered who was running the casino tonight a" Who's left?-or whether anyone was. Even Herne had disappeared, by Moon Dawntreader's strange magic. The h.e.l.l with it. She had gone back just long enough to collect the few things she wanted to hold on to from her time as Persipone, and left them at her half-brother's. She hadn't seen her brother hi a long time, and she hadn't seen him tonight either a" he'd already gone out on the town. But they'd never been exactly close, anyway.

"You're the closest thing to a fri en I've got tonight, Polly." She sighed. "Maybe you always were." She sat down on an abandoned crate, in a pile of departure rubbish, comfortable in her old coveralls and her old surroundings. "You never b.i.t.c.hed, no matter how hard I worked you, or how much c.r.a.p I gave you... "Course, I guess you can't complain, anyhow, so what does that prove?" She ate another cake. Pollux sat patiently on his tripod before her. She saw a red light begin to blink on his chest; the information short-circuited in her mind, and went unacknowledged. "Don't your feelings ever get hurt, really, down inside someplace? Didn't I ever insult you, or offend you, or something? Ye G.o.ds, I hope I never offended you, when you've been nothin' but good to me..." She snuffled maudlinly. "You could never offend me, Tor."

She looked up at his inscrutable face, trying to interpret the meaning of the toneless words. "You mean that? I mean, do you mean that? You mean you a" like me?"

"I mean "I like you," Tor. Yes, I do." The faceless face looked at her.

"Well, what do you know?" She smiled. "I thought you weren't supposed to. I thought you couldn't. Feel anything, I mean. I always thought you were a" uh, dumb. No offense," hastily.

"I contain a sophisticated computer, Tor. I am programmed not to judge, except for legalities. But not to judge is hard at my level of complexity. I need constant readjustment."

"Oh." She nodded. "I guess I always knew you were more than jus' a loadin' device. I mean, where would a loadin' device learn how to fix my hair? Or ..." She faded, as she remembered. "Or squeal to the Blues about every wrong word somebody says on the Street." She shrugged. "Or save my life; huh, Polly ... ?" reaching out to pat him on the chest. "Oh, h.e.l.l a" we had some good times, didn' we? You remember when old Stormprince a.s.signed you to me? G.o.ds, I was proud of myself! I thought being' in charge of you was gonna be the high point of my life, you know? Who'd've figured ... But in a way, maybe it was. I didn't have any regrets, then. I dunno." She ran a hand freely through her own limp hair. "I think it's gonna take me a long time to figure out what being' Perispone was." She looked at her hands, which had not had a trace of callus for a long time now. "What's that light flashing on you for? Did I forget to do something' for you?" She stood up unsteadily.

"No, Tor. That means my contract is expiring."

Surprise smacked her. "Oh. I know ... I mean, I know it runs out tonight. But I ..." I just thought maybe n.o.body'd notice. She gulped down the last of the drunken-cakes, crumpled the sack spitefully and threw it away. The trash precipitate of the Festival littered the Street for as far as she could see. "Do you want to go now?"

"No, Tor." Pollux looked at her expressionlessly. "But if I am not at police headquarters soon I will stop functioning and be paralyzed."

"Oh," again. "I didn't know that. Maybe we better get started, then." She took his thick, angular arm as they moved back into the street, to keep their trajectories on the same course uphill. She looked back as they went; until it made her too dizzy, and she had to look ahead again. "What's gonna happen to you now, Polly? Where you gonna go next?"

"I do not know where I will be sent, Tor. But I will be reprogrammed first with new information. I will forget everything that happened here."

"What?" She pulled him to a stop, digging in her heels. "You mean you're gonna forget all about Carbuncle? All about me?"

"Yes. Tor. Everything nonessential. Everything. Everything." He turned toward her. "Do you like me, Tor?"

She blinked. "Well, sure. How'd I ever have got along without you all these years?" But it wasn't enough, and somehow she could see that as she looked at him, although there was nothing of his face to see. "I mean ... I really like you. Like a real friend. Like a real person. In fact, if you weren't just a machine, y'know, maybe I could even've ..." She laughed self-consciously. "You know."

"Thank you, Tor." He made a movement that was almost a nod, and they started on again.

When they had nearly reached Blue Alley they pa.s.sed a small crowd of masked revelers going downhill as they climbed, trailing music and laughter. "Look, Polly, there's the Summer Queen! There's the future pa.s.sin' us by." Among the menagerie of masks, she glimpsed one face that wasn't hidden, a strangely familiar face under a crown of fiery hair ... Sparks Dawntreader? She tried for a clearer look at the face, but it was hidden again in the crowd going away. No ... She shook her head, refusing to believe it. Couldn't be. Couldn't.

Pollux slowed, and turned them toward the entrance to Blue Alley.

Chapter 53.

Jerusha sighed, leaning back in her chair at the night-duty desk, as her eyes wandered the nearly deserted room. Virtually all of the force were out patrolling the last night of the Festival; their final, most enervating duty on this world. Having nothing she wanted to celebrate, she had no heart for watching the rest of the world celebrate without her, and so she had stayed at headquarters. There had been few major problems: She had been surprised at how excruciatingly long and empty the night had been. Empty... that's the word for it. She sighed again, turning the radio up a little louder to drown out the future. G.o.ds, was it worse not knowing what was going to happen to me, or knowing it for certain?

Tor Starhiker stirred and rubbed her eyes, on the lonely bench along the wall where she had fallen asleep a couple of hours ago. Pa.s.sed out, more likely. Jerusha could smell her clear across the room when she had brought the Pollux unit in ... or it had brought her in, reeking and full of slurred, sloppy sentiment. The pol rob stood motionless at the end of the bench, looking for all the world as though it were watching over her. Jerusha found it hard to believe that anyone could feel that maudlin about a robot, drunk or not. But who knows? She's lost more than a robot in the past few days, I suppose. If she wanted to spend these last hours holding its mechanical hand a" or drugged to oblivion a" that was her business.

Jerusha took out a pack of iestas, the strongest thing shed had the nerve to touch in five years. She was sending a message to LiouxSked's family back on Newhaven, telling them what shed learned, at last... May it do them more good than it's done me.

"What a" ?" Tor started and sat up abruptly, yawning. "Ohhh." Her hands pressed her head and her stomach indiscriminately. "I may not even live till Summer gets here."

Jerusha smiled faintly, leaning across the computer console. "If you're going to throw up, use the facilities; don't do it out here."

"Sure." Tor propped her head on her hands. "What time's it, anyway?"

Jerusha glanced at her watch. "Nearly time for me to start down toward the docks." She typed a summons on the comm frequency, to bring back a few more men to watch the station while she was gone, and to accompany her to her final duty on this world.

"You mean, for the a" sacrifice?" Tor looked up. Jerusha nodded. "Hm. Well, you know, I just want to say ... thanks for letting me keep Polly here until the end of his cont rac I mean, I know you knew I heard a" you know." She shrugged.

"Don't remind me." Jerusha pushed herself to her feet, stretching. Lax, PalaThion, you were lax, talcing a spiteful pleasure in acknowledging it.

"Well, still, Polly an' Ia"" Tor broke off, turning toward Pollux as someone else entered the station: a tall man, an off worlder Jerusha caught at the corner of the duty desk. "Miroe!"

He stopped across from Tor in the middle of the room. "Jerusha." His voice sounded as stupified as her own. "I didn't think I'd find you here ... but I didn't know where else to look." He looked as though he hadn't known what he would say to her when he did find her. He was dressed like any Winter sailor, and showing a stubble of beard.

"Yes, still on the job, Miroe. Until the New Millennium," bitterly inane.

"I was afraid I wasn't going to reach Carbuncle in time; the weather was bad down the coast." She realized that he looked very tired. "One more day and I would have been too late; you'd all have been gone."

She shook her head, keeping her face and her voice even. "No. Tomorrow we cease to exist here technically; but it takes a few days to make sure nothing critical gets left behind. What are you doing here, Miroe? Your people said a" they said they didn't even know where you'd gone."

"It was a spur-of-the-moment decision." His eyes searched the empty corners of the room. "I didn't plan on making this trip. The G.o.ds know I couldn't afford the time. There's too much a" preparation left to do, showing my people how to do things in new ways new old ways." Jerusha had the feeling that she was hearing more than she understood; perhaps more than she wanted to know.