become, and since then she hasn't into Transfer been able to go.' The fingers twined, twisted.
A high-albedo mechanical servant appeared in the doorway, moved to Aspundh's shoulder with a tray of tall glasses. He nodded, and it set the drinks down on the table. 'Will there anything else be, sir?'
'No.' He waved it away with a hint of impatience. 'You mean you her in Transfer for hours left, unprepared? My gods, that's the kind of irresponsible act I'd of TJ expect! It's a wonder she's not a vegetable.'
'Well, what were they supposed to do?' Cress interrupted angrily. 'Let the Blues us take? Let me die?'
Aspundh looked at him, expressionless. 'You consider her sanity a fair trade.'
Cress's gaze dropped to the trefoil at Aspundh's chest, moved to Moon's tattooed throat, but not to meet her eyes. He shook his head.
'I do.' Moon watched Cress's profile soften as she spoke the words. 'It was my duty. But I — I wasn't strong enough.' She took a sip from the tall, frosted glass in front of her; the apricot-colored liquid effervesced inside her mouth, making her eyes tear.
'Since you're me this now telling, I would you call one of the strongest-minded — or luckiest — human beings I've ever known.'
'Am I?' Moon cupped her hands against the soothing burn of the cold glass. 'Then when will I stop being afraid back into the darkness to go? When I feel it over me start to come, the Transfer — it's like dying inside.' Another swallow, her eyes blurred. 'I hate the darkness!'
'Yes, I know.' Aspundh sat silently for a moment. 'Elsevier, will you for me translate? I think it important will be that Moon every word perfectly understands.'
Elsevier nodded, and began to give Moon the words in Tiamatan as Aspundh spoke again: 'Tiamat is — undeveloped. Do you understand where you go when you're thrown into the darkness? Do you understand why sometimes you see another world instead?'
Elsevier shook her head at Aspundh as she finished. 'That's why I her to you brought.'
Moon looked toward the window, searching the air. 'The Lady chooses ...'
'Ah. So on your world your goddess is in charge — or you've always believed that she is. What would you say if I told you that your visions weren't a gift from the gods, but a legacy of the Old Empire?'
Moon realized that she had been holding her breath, let it out suddenly. 'Yes! I mean, I — I expected it. Everyone here knows I'm a sibyl; how could they know? You're a sibyl; and you've never heard of the Lady.' She had long ago stopped seeing the Sea Mother literally, a beautiful woman with seaweed hair, clad in spume, rising from the waves in a mer-drawn shell. But even the formless, elemental force she had sometimes felt touch her soul would not have left Her element or journeyed so far. If in fact she had ever even felt anything, beyond her own longing to feel... 'You have so many gods, you off worlders She was too numbed by loss and change to feel one more blow. 'Why do you have so many?'
'Because there are so many worlds; each world has at least one, and usually many, of its own. 'My gods or your gods,' they say, 'who knows which are the real ones?' So we worship them all, just to be sure.'
'But how could the Old Empire put sibyls everywhere, if no god did? Weren't they only humans?'
'They were.' He reached out to the bowl of sugared fruits in the mil table center. 'But in some ways they had the power of gods. They could travel between worlds directly, in weeks or months, not years — they had hyper light communicators and star drives And yet their Empire fell apart in the end ... even they overextended themselves. Or so we think.'
But even as the Empire fell, some remarkable and selfless group had created a storehouse, a data bank, of the Empire's learning in every area of human knowledge. They had hoped that with all of humanity's discoveries recorded in one central, inviolable place, they would make the impending collapse of their civilization less complete, and the rebuilding that much swifter. And because they realized that technical collapse might be virtually total on many worlds, they had devised the simplest outlets for their data bank that they could conceive of — human beings. Sibyls, who could transmit their receptivity directly to their chosen successors, blood to blood.
Moon's fingers felt the scar on her wrist. 'But ... how can someone's blood show you what's in a — a machine on some other world? I don't believe it!'
'Call it a divine infection. You understand infection?'
She nodded. 'When someone is sick, you stay away from them.'
'Exactly. A sibyl's 'infection' is a man-made disease, a biochemical reaction so sophisticated that we've barely begun to unravel its subtleties. It creates, or perhaps implants, certain restructurings in the brain tissue that make a sibyl receptive to a faster-than-light communication medium. You become a receiver, and a transmitter. You communicate directly with the original data source. That's where you are when you drown in nothingness: within the computer's circuits, not lost in space — or with other sibyls living on other worlds, who have answers to questions the Old Empire never thought to ask.' He lifted his glass to her with an encouraging smile. 'All this verbalizing makes me dry.'
Moon watched the trefoil turn against the rich, gold-threaded brown of his robe; saw her own turning silently, exiled, on a hook in an air-conditioned room somewhere high overhead. 'Is it the disease that makes people go mad, then? It's death to kill a sibyl ... death to love a sibyl—' She broke off, touching the cool stones along the table edge.
He raised his eyebrows. 'Is that what they say on Tiamat? We have that saying too; though we don't take it literally any more. Yes, for some people infection with the 'disease' does cause madness. Sibyls are chosen for certain personality traits, and emotional stability is one ... and of course a sibyl's blood can transmit the disease. So can saliva — but usually the other person must have an open wound to become infected. Obviously it isn't 'death to love a sibyl,' with reasonable care, or you wouldn't have seen my daughter today. I suppose the superstition was fostered in order to protect sibyls from harm in less civilized societies. The very symbol we wear, the barbed trefoil, is a symbol for biological contamination; it's one of the oldest symbols known to man.'
But she heard nothing after — 'It isn't death to love a sibyl? Then Sparks ... we don't have to be apart. We can live together! El sevier!' Moon hugged the old woman until she gasped. 'Thank you! Thank you for bringing me here — you've saved my life. Between the sea and the sky, there's nothing I won't do for you!'
'What's this?' Aspundh leaned on his fist, bemused. 'Who is this Sparks? A romance?'
Elsevier pushed Moon away to arm's length and held her there gently. 'Oh, Moon, my dear child,' she said with inexplicable sorrow, 'I don't want to have to hold you to that promise.'
Moon twisted her head, not understanding. 'We were pledged, but he went away when I became a sibyl. But now, when I go back I can tell him—'
'Go back? To Tiamat?' Aspundh straightened.
'Moon,' Elsevier whispered, 'we can't take you back.' The words rushed out like a flight of birds.
'I know, I know I have to wait until—' She beat the words away.
'Moon, listen to her!' The shock of Cress's broken silence stopped it.
'What?' She went slack in Elsevier's grip. 'You said we would—'
'We're never going back to Tiamat, Moon. We never meant to, we can't. And neither can you.' Elsevier's lip trembled. 'I lied to you,' looking away, searching for an easy way, finding none. 'It's all been a monstrous lie. I'm — sorry.' She let go of Moon's arms.
'But why?' Moon brushed distraughtly at her hair, strands of cobweb tickling her face. 'Why?'
'Because it's too late. Tiamat's Gate is closing, becoming too unstable for a small ship like ours to pass through safely. It ... hasn't been months since we left Tiamat, Moon. It's been more than two years. It will be just as long going back.'
'That's a lie! We weren't on the ship for years.' Moon pushed up onto her knees as comprehension melted and ran down around her. 'Why are you doing this to me?'
'Because I should have done it at the beginning.' Elsevier's hand covered her eyes. Cress said something to Aspundh in rapid Sandhi.
'She isn't lying to you, Moon.' Aspundh sat back, unconsciously separating himself from them. Elsevier translated his words dully. 'Ship's time is not the same as time on the outside. It moves more slowly. Look at me, look at Elsevier — and remember that I was younger than TJ by many years. Moon, if you returned to Tiamat now you would have been missing for nearly five years.'
