Angeles. Dryke was nursing a cold fire and trying to hide it; at the opposite end of the table, Sasaki was hollow- eyed and startlingly frail.
They heard from Reid and Talbot first. The ersatz missile had been detonated by the PDS lasers 2.1 kilometers away from the ship. The explosion was a mercy—it hurled the bulk of the disintegrating satellite away from, rather than toward, the target. Fifty-eight fragments, the largest the size of a child’s fist, escaped the HEL beam and tore through the fringe of the aft structural skirt. It looked worse than it was—no critical systems had been hit, and no pressurized spaces had been breached.
Then Sasaki ordered the links closed. “We did not deserve the luck which befell us,” she said to the others. “This is unrestricted war, and we were not prepared. We were not prepared, and no one stood ready to help us. Governor Wian bears a measure of the blame—he has been unreasonably opposed to allowing weapons or weapons platforms on Takara. I believe he has sufficient reason now to reconsider—”
“He’d better,” said Marshall, the only one present who would dare interrupt Sasaki at that moment. “Who knows if there are any more sleepers parked up there?”
Sasaki’s gaze flickered in Marshall’s direction, but she did not otherwise acknowledge him. “Our opponents are still strong, still determined, and growing desperate. We must take
“We’ve got an opportunity here,” Donovan injected. “The real damage isn’t serious. How serious do we want the official damage to be?”
“Will anyone who counts believe it?” Oker’s expression was skeptical.
“I hear that the explosion was visible all around the Pacific rim,” said Marshall.
“It’s number one on the nets,” said Donovan. “Even though they’re starved for facts. That’s the best time to feed them bullshit—if you can get there before they start producing their own.”
“This discussion does not interest me,” Sasaki said. “Issue what statements you wish. Mikhail, I would like to hear from you.”
Dryke looked down the table to her. “This feels like the Kasigau incident. A variation on a theme.”
“The same mind?”
“No. But someone schooled under it. Someone’s taken Jeremiah’s place at the helm.” He frowned and looked away. “Goddammit, it didn’t do any good to kill him.”
She nodded. “Mikhail, I am sorry. It is possible I was wrong about Christopher McCutcheon.”
Shaking his head, Dryke said, “I can’t gloat. It looks like I was wrong about Anna X.”
“What do you mean?”
He touched his earpiece. “I heard from Horizon a few moments ago. The McCutcheon kid passed through there five days ago on his way to Sanctuary.” He stood up, driving his chair away from the table. “With your leave, Director, I’m gonna go correct those mistakes.”
CHAPTER 30
—AAG—
Ten and half again had come to the Spring Grotto to hear the story, but the story could not be told with voice alone, or heard only with the ears.
To tell it as Deryn told it required eyes, sad sparkle laughing— hands, signing soaring—a body fluid and supple. She moved among them as a breeze in the many-tiered chamber, hovered as a spirit in the field of firepoint stars beyond the sky windows, rested as a stone on the tumbledown cascade of the waterfall. She told the story from the heart, not from memory, and invested it with her love.
“ ‘Will you stay with us?’ asked Cho. She was first among Asa’s daughters, and the boldest. ‘Stay in the golden house, and be our guiding fire.’
“But Tetsu said gently, ‘Is this as much as you’ve learned, to keep me as an idol in a monument?’
“Cho was shamed, but the others begged Tetsu to stay. They offered their houses and their worship and their love. Tetsu refused all but the last.
“ ‘I have been away long enough,’ she told them. ‘I am going back to my home in the Earth.’ ”
It was then that Anna X appeared at the arched Spring Corridor entrance. She entered the grotto silently, advancing several steps toward where the audience was seated, but stopping before she intruded on anyone but Deryn’s attention. Deryn noted her presence and wondered, but went on without a pause or a break.
“Asa had learned the most from Tetsu, and acceptance was the first of those lessons. ‘How shall we remember you?’ she asked.
“Tetsu smiled, and stole a tear from Cho’s cheek with a touch. ‘When I am in the Earth, I cannot hear your voices, for the air is too thin,’ she said. ‘I cannot know your thoughts, for they belong to you alone. I cannot use your gifts, for I am in all and of all, without form. Remember me with your lives.’
“ ‘You will forget us,’ cried Cho.
“ ‘I am in you and of you as much as the river and the cliff and the forest. I will not forget you.’
“ ‘Is there nothing we can give you?’ cried Cho, her heart breaking.
“Tetsu took the child in a mother’s embrace. ‘I will feel you walking in the world above my world, and hear your footsteps like the echoes of your heartbeats,’ she whispered. ‘And when you gather with light hearts in the circle and dance to the celebration songs, your feet will speak to me of your joy. That will be gift enough.’
“And so we dance.
They applauded warmly, and several—among them the two youngest children and the oldest crone—came to thank her with a hug. Anna X waited calmly until Deryn was free and then led her by the elbow toward White Corridor.
“Next time, I’ll have to come in time to hear the whole story,” said Anna X. “You hold them in your hand, seven or seventy. It’s a gift.”
“You have it wrong,” said Deryn. “They hold me. I’m never tired, because they send back to me as much as I give them.”
“Never tired? If you ever decide to conduct a workshop on that bit of magic, put my name down first.”
Deryn smiled. “Did you come to listen, then?”
“I came to tell you that you have a petitioner in the Shelter.”
A look of surprise crossed Deryn’s face, and her steps slowed. “Claiming as what?”
“Claiming as your son.” Studying Deryn’s expression, Anna X added, “You don’t have to see him, of course.”
Deryn closed her eyes, the better to see a memory.
“
“No,” said Deryn. “But I will see him.”
In contrast to the open-door policies on Horizon and New Star, but in keeping with its own founding purpose, Sanctuary was a virtually closed society. Long at or over its design population, Sanctuary accepted only a handful of new immigrants a year—all women. Only Hanif discriminated so openly (against non-Moslems), though Takara and the Soviet colony-sat, Lukyan, were in their individual ways nearly as effectively closed.
But the isolation of Sanctuary went even further. It and Takara were the only satlands which did not cater in some way to tourists, and Takara had Diaspora traffic to replace the lost revenue. Sanctuary restricted visitors of either sex to a portion of the inner ring of the old-fashioned wheelworld, called Entry by residents and “Mama’s doorstep” by annoyed shuttle pilots.
The Shelter was part of Entry. Its forty small one-a-beds, clustered adjacent to the docking spar, were a buffer between Sanctuary and the outside world. For the wounded who needed only a place to hide and heal, the three-by-five compartments were cocoons. For the hopefuls who had reached the final stage of scrutiny by Anna X and the Council, they were way stations. And for petitioners hoping to visit women who had already crossed through Shelter, they made passably comfortable prisons. The Shelter guide met Deryn as she entered the
