For amorous Jove hath snatched my love from hence,
Meaning to make her stately queen of heaven…
Behold me here, divine Zenocrate,
Raving, impatient, desperate and mad…
Come down from heaven and live with me again!'
In the end, Tamburlaine himself cannot triumph over his own mortality. He takes ill, he fights and wins his final battle, and when he admits at last that death is upon him, he calls on his men to bring in the hearse of Zenocrate.
From the hearse, lying still, visible to the audience and yet disguised somewhat by the frosted glastic walls, Diana watched Vasil give his final speech. She watched him cry. Not for himself. Tess Soerensen was wrong about one thing, at least: It wasn't true that Vasil hadn't given up anything. This much Diana had learned-obliquely- from Karolla. Vasil had simply given up the only thing- the only person-he had ever truly loved outside of himself.
'For Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God must die.'
He died, and still tears leaked from his eyes as Hal spoke the final lines. 'Let heaven and earth his timeless death deplore. For both their worths can equal him no more.'
Vasil was crying for what he had lost, and for what Ilyakoria Bakhtiian would never know.
Diana cried, too, because Tess Soerensen was, after all, right. Anatoly couldn't come to Earth. It would be cruel, above all else. Anatoly belonged on Rhui, just as she belonged here. He had agreed to abide by her decision, and though so often he found some way to make the decision fall the way he wanted it to, this time she had to make the choice. She knew what her decision must be. It was time to let him go.
CHAPTER FORTY
David liked Meroe Transfer Station because he had designed it. Together with his two codesigners, he had worked in a unifying motif of huge pyramidal chambers and buttresses in the open concourses that resembled giant wings, all linked by an enclosed stream that ran through most of the station. He had managed to weasel out enough money from the design budget to commission fifty artists from varying disciplines to decorate the interior, with serpents and rams and giraffes, groves of date palms and acacia trees, sandstone statues and intricate mosaics of fused glass inlaid into gold.
Twenty years later, he still liked it, he decided as he strolled through Concourse Axum on his way to the gate from which he would take ship back to Odys, and Charles.
He wished Nadine could see it. He would have liked to share it with her, to show her how it interlocked, how the architecture and the ornamental motifs reflected each other, how the dimensionality of building in space both freed and limited the engineer. Had it really only been eighteen months since he had left her? It seemed like one month, she remained so clear in his mind. It seemed like a hundred years.
Impatient with himself and these pointless reflections, he tapped his one piece of luggage against his leg. The plastine tube thudded gently against his thigh, light but sturdy. It contained three hand-drawn maps that David and Rajiv had done together, to send on to Rhui, to Tess. They were ostensibly a map of the principality of Jeds, a detailed map of the city, and a detailed map of the palace of Morava and its grounds, based on his survey, but coded into the key was a secondary matrix on which Tess would build a secondary architecture for the saboteur network based on the architecture and layout of the palace of Jeds, the palace of Morava, and-although this wasn't mapped-the traditional spiral layout of a jaran camp, which made the arrangement of tents look haphazard until one divined the pattern by which they were set up.
Under a winged buttress, he paused to admire his second favorite sculpture, this one done in light, in three dimensions, by the famous artist Surya Neve Lao. It depicted the Meroite queen, the Candace Amanirenas, as she directed a dawn attack on the Roman garrison at Syene together with her son, Prince Akinidad. Silhouetted against the flames rising within the garrison walls, David recognized a woman as she tipped back her head and stared up at the sculpture curling back along the concourse wall.
'Diana!' he cried.
She turned and blinked at him for a moment. Behind her, the battle raged endlessly on, never to be lost, never to be won.
'David!' She smiled suddenly and it seemed that the whole concourse was brightened by her. She hurried over to him, and they embraced.
'Where are you off to?' he asked. 'When I left Rajiv, he said the Repertory Company was in Bangkok. You haven't left them, have you?'
'No, I-' She hesitated and glanced behind at the sculpture, then back at him. To his surprise, she still wore the scar of marriage on her face. Right now, she looked nervous, and even a little embarrassed. 'I'm meeting someone. At Scarab Gate.'
'Oh, I'll walk you. I'm leaving through Antelope Gate, and it's right next door. Anyway, my favorite sculpture is at Scarab Gate.'
'Your favorite sculpture? Do you go through Meroe often? You must be quite the traveler.'
David grinned. Oh, well. He was proud of his work, and it was worth being proud of. 'I designed it.'
'This station!'
One of the things David loved about Diana was that her emotions were so wonderfully distinct. He laughed.
'But it's wonderful! Why did you make the buttresses like that, like they're wings?'
'Because they are wings. They're the wings of the Goddess.' So they walked to Scarab Gate and he told her about the design and the arguments and compromises and the choices that had gone into building Meroe Transfer Station.
A beautiful bronzed arch made of huge linked scarabs bridged the concourse wall that led into the steep, four-walled chamber that was Scarab Gate and a lounge for departing and arriving passengers. A second scarab arch, smaller and less ornate, sealed off the port tube that led to the pier and the locks.
'Where are you going?' Diana asked finally.
'I'm going to Odys. Business for Charles.'
Diana smiled. 'His Nibs. That's what Maggie O'Neill always.called him. Where is she?'
'There. On Odys.'
'Ah,' said Diana, and that was another thing David liked about her. She knew when he had said as much as he could say.
'Here it is. My favorite sculpture.'
She stopped. 'It's very simple.'
It was simple, a simple gray sandstone statue of a young Candace, a queen, a resolute soldier bearing a sword and wearing a crown. To David, that statue was Nadine; not that it looked anything like her, but that it captured her spirit.
'I like the way the sculptor has suggested hair just by using hatching,' said Diana.
'Are you coming to meet family?' David asked.
Her mouth tightened. She held in some overwhelming emotion. 'Tess Soerensen told me once that it's easy to act on impulse and much harder to think about what the consequences might be. But the consequences will show up sooner or later, and then you must prepare yourself to deal with them.' She looked up at him. A man could drown in the blue of her eyes. Despite himself, he found his gaze darting down to the scar. It looked oddly fresh.
'It's what we've done to Rhui, isn't it?' she asked bitterly. 'We walked blithely in and watched how it changed us, but we never thought about how it might change them. They're the ones who will suffer the most.'
He had thought the same thing many times. 'Who are you meeting?' he asked, but by the expression on her face, he could guess who it was. So this was her guilt talking, that she had wanted Anatoly and had somehow managed to persuade Charles or Tess to let him come to her, and only now did she realize how hard the transition would be for her husband.
The boards lit. The familiar monotone announcement began, detailing the arriving ship and its coordinates.
