Dawntreader.'
'The mask maker Jerusha pinned an identity on the woman at last. 'Yes, I remember. I remember, all right. Saving that little BAStard was the second biggest mistake of my life.
'I saw you talking to him outside.' (Saw? Jerusha experienced a moment's disorientation as it registered; tried to conceal her obvious irritation.) 'He still comes to see me now and then; when he needs shelter. There aren't many people he can talk to any more, I think. I'm glad he talked to you.'
Jerusha said nothing.
'Tell me, Commander — have you been as sorry to see the changes happening in him as I have?' She bridged the void of Jerusha's silence as though it did not exist.
Jerusha refused to face the question, or the questioner; touched the hollows of her own changed face with morbid fingers. 'He hasn't changed at all as far as I can see. He doesn't look a day older.' And maybe he isn't, damn him.
'But he is, he has...' heavily. 'He's aged a hundred years since he came to Carbuncle.'
'Haven't we all.' Jerusha reached out and took a small dark plastic bottle of viriol oil off of the shelf, hesitated; took another one. She thought suddenly of her mother.
'Sleeping drops, aren't they?'
Jerusha's hand knotted possessively, defensively, over the bottles. 'Yes.'
A nod. 'I can smell them.' The woman grimaced. 'I've used them; I had insomnia terribly, before I got my vision sensors. I tried everything. Without sight I didn't have any guide to the pattern of day and night ... and I'm not properly tuned to Tiamat's rhythms. I suppose none of us are, really. We're all aliens here in the end — or the beginning.'
Jerusha glanced up. 'I suppose so. I never thought of it that way... Maybe that's my whole problem: Wherever I go, I'm an alien.' She heard herself say aloud what she had only intended as thought; shook her head, past caring. 'The more I want sleep the less I get it. Sleep is my only pleasure in life. I could sleep forever.' She turned, tried to move past the woman to the shop man at the door.
'That isn't the way to solve your problems, Commander PalaThion.' The mask maker blocked her path without seeming to.
Jerusha stared, felt her legs turn to soft wood. 'What?'
'Sleeping drops. They only make the problem worse. They take away your dreams ... we all have to dream, sometime, or we suffer the consequences.' She reached out; her touch wavered toward the handful of bottles Jerusha held, pushed them away. 'Find a better answer. There must be one. This will pass. Everything passes, given enough time.'
'It would take an eternity.' But the pressure remained against her hand ... against her will ... she felt her hand give way and the bottles go back onto the shelf.
'A wise decision.' The mask maker smiled, looking through her, into her.
Jerusha made no answer, not even certain how to answer.
The woman stood aside at last, somehow releasing her as she had somehow held her prisoner; moved past her toward the shelves at the rear of the store. Jerusha went on to the door and out, without buying anything, or even speaking to the shop man
Why did I listen to her? Jerusha reclined, motionless, on an elbow on the low serpentine couch. She absorbed the sensation of cotton wrapped twigs that crept inexorably from hand to wrist to elbow as her arm went to sleep. Each time she entered this place a paralysis seemed to overcome her, destroying her ability to act or even react, to function, to think. She watched the seconds blink out on the sterile clock face embedded in crystal in the sterile matrix of empty shelving that cobwebbed the room's far wall. Gods, how she hated the sight of this place, every lifeless centimeter of it-It was just as it had been when the LiouxSkeds departed, the same facade insulating its occupants from the timeless reality of the building and the city that had surrounded them.
They had affected a Kharemoughi lifestyle with excruciating dedication: a sophisticated, refined, and soulless imitation of a lifestyle she found obscure and unappealing to begin with. The patina of her own possessions scarcely altered it. She fantasized an overlay of ornate, rococo frescoes and molding, the unashamed warmth of a palette of garish colors everywhere ... closed her eyes with her hand as the unrelenting subtlety of the truth seeped through like water, to make the colors blur and bleed.
This place hung with ugly memories had been forced on her — a part of her burden, her punishment. She could have struck back, cleared this mausoleum of its morbid relics and replaced them with things fresh and alive ... she could even have gotten rid of it entirely, gone back to her old, cramped, comfortable set of rooms down in the Maze. But always, when her day's work was through, she had returned here and done nothing, one more time. Because what was the point? It was useless, hopeless ... helpless... She lifted her locked hands to her mouth, pressed hard against her lips. They're watching, stop it — I
She sat up, pulling her hands away, bowing her head so that the caftan's hood fell forward about her face. The Queen's spies, the Queen's eyes, were everywhere — especially, she was sure, in this townhouse. She felt them touching her like unclean hands, everywhere she went, everything she did. In her old apartment she had been free to be human, free to be herself, and live her own heritage free to strip off her chafing, puritanical uniform and go easily naked if she wanted to, the way she had been able to do on her own world, the way her people had done for centuries. But here she was always on display for the Queen's pleasure, afraid to expose herself, physically or mentally, to the White Bitch's unseen scorn.
She picked up the tape reader that had dropped to the floor, gazed at without seeing the manual on ultrasound analysis that she had been trying to study for a week ... two weeks ... forever. She had never been one to enjoy fiction, in any form: she heard too many lies on the streets every day, she had no patience with people who made a living doing it. And now she could no longer concentrate on facts. But still she could not let go and allow herself to escape into fantasy ... the way BZ had always done, so easily, so guiltlessly. But then, to be a Kharemoughi Tech was to live in a fantasy world anyway, one where everyone knew his place, and yours was always on top. Where life functioned with perfect machinery only this time the machinery had broken down, and the chaos that waited outside had rushed in to destroy him.
She imagined the patrol craft vaporizing, releasing two spirits from this mortal plane into — what? Eternity, limbo, an endless cycle of rebirth? Who could believe in any religion, when there were so many, all claiming the only Truth, and every truth different. There was only one way she would ever learn for herself ... and a part of her own spirit had already passed over that dark water without a ticket, gone with the Boatman, and with her only friend hi all this world of enemies. Her only friend ... Why the hell did I listen? Why did I leave those bottles on the shelf? She stood up, the tape reader falling from her lap to the floor again unnoticed. She took one step, knowing that she was starting for the door; stopped again, her body twitching with indecision. Motivation, Jerusha! desperately. I wanted to leave those bottles there, or shed never have changed my mind. Her muscles went slack, she slumped where she stood, her whole body cotton-wrapped with fatigue. But I can't sleep here! And there was no escape, no haven left, no one...
Her searching eyes stopped on the dawn-colored shell that lay like an offering on the Empire-replica shrine table beside the door. Ngenet... Oh gods, are you still a friend of mine? The solid peace of the plantation house, that inviolable calm in the storm's eye, crowded her inner sight. She had seen it last more than a year ago; had been both consciously and unconsciously separating herself from even the loose and superficial ties of their infrequent visits as her depression deepened, as her world shrank in and in around her. She had told herself she did not want him to see the knife-edged harridan she had become ... and yet perversely, at the same time i she had begun to hate him for not seeing that she needed his safe haven more than ever.
And now? Yes ... now! What kind of blind masochism had j, made her wall herself into her own tomb? She crossed the room to the phone, punched in one code, and then another and another from i memory, putting through the outback radio call to his plantation. ' She marked the passing seconds with the beat of her fingertips against the pale, hard surface of the wall, until at last a video less voice answered her summons, distorted by audio snow. Damn this place! Storm interference. There was always storm interference.
'Hello? Hello?' Even through the interference, she knew that the voice was not the one she needed to hear.
'Hello!' She leaned closer to the speaker, her raised voice echoing from room to silent room behind her. 'This is Commander PalaThion calling from Carbuncle. Let me speak to Ngenet.'
'What? ... No, he isn't here, Commander ... out on his ship.'
