WHILE LADY BERENICE had promised to retire to Sardis, Nisi the Deceiver had no intention of doing so
Years before, after the abortive kidnap attempt and the subsequent truce with her parents, Berenice had prepared a daring escape plan. The plan was to do away with her Iridian identity altogether, disappear among the Sharers, and raise a child among them, as she was now illegally capable of doing.
Somehow, with the plan in place, she had put off its execution, until Realgar had swept her off her feet with his promises and with the seductive vision of enjoying two worlds at once. Now that Realgar's true expectations for her were unmasked, it was clear that she had only put off the final day; but would her plan still work, on such short notice?
Outside her door the next morning, Realgar's two servos were waiting, as they had been all night since she got back to her penthouse. At least he had had the decency not to humiliate her with human guards. Well, she would return the compliment, by sending not herself to Sardis ⦠but a servo.
The servo was a life-sized replica of Berenice, down to the smallest details of hair and skin texture, heartbeat and odor. The face in particular was a masterpiece of simulation.
The servo “Lady Berenice” was programmed with all her most typical responses and idiosyncrasies, and she had spent most of the previous night setting up a subprogram for the trip to the Sardish hunting lodge. Now that it was done, she watched with an eerie unsettled feeling as the machine pulled on her own traveling suit and her stonesign.
Something was not quite right about the machine. Was it too perfect? Noâtoo young, that was it. Too few wrinkles about the neck and forehead, as she must have looked seven years ago. Her throat constricted; this ruse might not work at all. She did not dare try her skin-texturing facility, because the machine “skin” was artificial. At any rate, whether it worked or not, she had nothing else to try. Nisi/Berenice had met a fork in the tunnel.
She left “Lady Berenice” getting dressed and went to open a window beside her main entrance, partly for the air and also for the benefit of Realgar's servos, who would listen and record. A salt breeze blew in
from the harbor, the last day she would ever smell a Valan ocean. For a moment she closed her eyes as if to store up the memory forever. Then she turned to the household monitor and loudly ordered supplies for the hunting lodge. “A week's menu, vacation style number two. A dozen video selections from my library. A recessed pen gun. One maxi-pack Argo personal explosive.” Realgar would understand the last two items, since she was supposedly headed for Sardis, where Azurite assassins were feared. And of course, an “assassin's blast” was what would put an end to “Lady Berenice,” whose carapace already contained a clock set and timed for oblivion.
The personal weapons she had just ordered were in fact not meant for assassins. If all else failed, Nisi would end herself, rather than submit to a sanatorium.
At last she gave “Lady Berenice” her final order. Her hands shook so that she could barely turn on the bedroom monitor to observe what would happen as the machine left her house. What took place was almost anticlimactic: servo met servo at the threshold, as unquestioningly as when Merwen and Usha had met Malachite.
She dressed herself now as Dolomite woman, in a black woolen cloak that covered all but her eyes. Thus disguised she departed for the moonferry, her heart pounding and her hands pawing at her neck for the nonexistent stonesign, without which she felt more naked in Iridis than she ever had on Shora. Only when Dak's moonferry took off and Iridis fell away from her could she relax, sinking limp in her seat, eyes glazed, too stunned yet for tears.
Lady Berenice of Hyaliteâshe must never use that name again. Lady Berenice was a refugee, stranded forever in the Sardish wilderness. Only Nisi the Deceiver was going home.
AT RAIA-EL, THE raft blossoms bloomed again in profusion, but Merwen the Impatient felt much alone. Usha brought solace as always; but with Spinel gone, Lystra became impossible to share a silkhouse with. Lystra left at last with Mithril and the other refugees of swallower season, to help establish their new raft. As for Nisi, there was an enigma that only brought pain to Merwen's heart. Death ruled those who ruled the dead; could Nisi escape or not?
It was a shock, then, the day that the Deceiver returned to the doorhole of the silkhouse. Merwen could not bring herself to share speech again, but Usha did. “So, Deceiver,” Usha observed in a thoughtful tone, “you slipped back before Death quite shut the traders' door.”
“Listen to me,” Nisi began unsteadily. “They're not done with you yet. You've traded traders for death-hasteners; do you see?”
“When death comes, life will rise to meet it. But you, Nisi; what does this mean for you?”
“I want to learn whitetrance.”
Usha stopped, clearly awaiting a sign from Merwen.
Merwen wavered between hope and apprehension. Was Nisi really ready? she wondered, sickening with doubt. Yet Nisi had a selfname; she must be as ready as anyone.
Merwen said to Usha, “You are the lifeshaper. You will have to share this with her.”
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Nisi faced Usha in the lifeshaping chamber. Each sat crosslegged and carefully relaxed. At least, Usha was relaxed.
“Nothing to fear,” Usha reassured her. “whitetrance is your final self-protection.”
Resentment flared; for a moment Nisi felt as trapped as when Realgar had forced her to let him “protect” her. But of course this was very different. Whitetrance would be her own, her last line of defense, the state of consciousness that said, I choose freedom above life. Intellectually, Nisi shared this belief. That was why she hid an explosive pack within her body and would keep it so long as a single Valan remained
on Shora. Yet whitetranceâit panicked her, for some reason. It was only self-hypnosis, she told herself.
Usha set a mindguide upon her own head, a black spider shape with long tendrils that draped down her scalp. She extended another one to Nisi, as it curled from her fingers like little monkeys' tails.
A mindguide, a miniature version of that used on starworms. Nisi shrank back, hand to her mouth. “You won'tâshare my thoughts?”
“Nonsense.” Usha's voice was sharp. “To âshare thought' is as paradoxical as âshare death.' No Sharer would try such a thing. Only our main brain currents will run parallel, like light waves in phase.” Usha lifted the spidery thing to Nisi's forehead. “We could manage without, but it would take months or years. This way, a single hour will show you how; then you can do it yourself, always.”
Every muscle of her neck rebelled against the thing that squirmed and settled on her scalp. She wanted to fling it off and run, but where? “Lady Berenice” had run already, and the door had slammed behind her by now. Only one path lay ahead, for Nisi.
Sound took on a hollow quality, as if echoing within an airbell. A haze filled her senses, as the world recededâ
Panic snapped her back. Her surroundings returned to normal; the echoes were gone.
“You see,” Usha said, “you can dephase any time. You choose.”
Nisi breathed deeply until the hollow, echoing world returned. She could turn it on and off, by throwing a mental switch.
Ahead of her a dark tunnel opened, dilating like the doorhole of a silkhouse. The tunnel rose to meet her, bringing first darkness, then light, as the planets, stars, galaxies rushed behind her ⦠. The outer world was still there, yet at once light-years away. She could reach out and touch it, if she wished to badly enough, but it would have to be something urgent, as urgent as a frightened child.
As the tunnel brightened, it took on shapes, and she knew at once what it was. This place was
hers
, where she could choose to stay at any time, even to close the doorhole so that none could follow ⦠.
She streaked back through the tunnel, back to her mat of seasilk upon the hard raftwood floor. Color was oozing into her white fingertips. The mindguide fell inert in her lap.
Nisi looked down at her crossed legs. It was easy, almost too easy. A question pricked her. If Sharers were so willing to kill themselves for
freedom, why could they not kill those who threatened their freedom? Her lips parted to ask, but when her eyes met Usha's, she shuddered and looked away.
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At High Command, Realgar was staring at the blank plate of the monitor that had just informed him, with the appropriate tone of apology, of an incident at his hunting lodge. Already the Azurite underground had claimed responsibility ⦠.
It was impossible. Azurites were few and scattered nowadays. How could they have breached his security?
The vision of his wife flitted before his eyes, with Cassiter's hair and laughing smile; then the sight of her crushed form. This time, however, the blast had been so strong that not a trace of the victim remained. Once again, barefoot peasants turned terrorist had destroyed his woman in his own household for no other motive exceptâ
His fist cracked the desk. The monitor came back into focus, just a blank plate on the wall. Methodically Realgar sorted his thoughts as if they were files upon his desk.
Perhaps Berenice had been careless. She wanted to die, rather then yield to him; had the explosive been hers? No, that was not like her. Berenice was a survivor, she always had been; not one to suicide, however she might threaten otherwise.
The Azurites had got her. They would take any chance to strike back at him, even the slaughter of an innocent. For years those guerrillas had ravaged the Sardish province of Azuroth, until Realgar's divisions had snuffed out their camps one by one. The few that remained were fanatics, sworn to vengeance on Realgar and all his House. That was the price of his success.
All peasant insurrections were like that, no matter what lofty slogans they started out with. First they invoked Spirit Callers and dragged their heels at regulations, then they sent their young men off to the camps; it always ended with grenades in the hands of their children. In warfare there were no innocents.
That was Berenice's mistake: for all her distrust of power, she believed in innocents. And where was she now? Which of his treacherous foes had she trusted?
Berenice . .
.
His eyes focused on the blue globe hovering above his desk, a hologram of the Ocean Moon. That was the site of his next assignment, Operation Amethyst. Objective: to bring Patriarchal Law to Shora.
No invasion, he had promised Berenice; what was there to invade? On the globe, red points of light marked the inhabited raft systems, two hundred and seven in all. Hardly a jungle for guerrillas to hide. Though now, in a blacker mood, Realgar wondered whether even helpless Sharers would find some way to strike back, vicious as any Azurite terrorist.
If only those points of light were targeted for destruction, Realgar's job would be done within six hours, the time for interlunar transit of a missile.
Unfortunately, that was not his assignment. The Envoy wanted those natives alive.
Malachite had made that quite clear at his final briefing. “If the Patriarch destroyed every planet that ever rebelled, we would be left with little more than charred planets. As for Sharers, they possess invaluable knowledge of life scienceâknowledge lost to us from before the rise of Torr.”
The days when men lived as gods, Realgar thought with amazement. Though they died as gods, as well.
Yet Malachite had insisted, “There is no threat to you, at present. Subject Shora to law; that will suffice. As it should have for Pyrrhopolis.” A stinging rebuke for Protector Talionâand for Realgar's own predecessor at High Command.
So instead of missile targets, Realgar was left with an entire planet full of bases and satellites to set up, plus medical inspection posts at all the rafts, and all to control a few hundred thousand women and children. He was a soldier, after all, not a colonial governor. But at that Malachite had condescended to warn, “Do not deceive yourself, General. Sharers will yield only to a stronger will.” A fine vote of confidence for one who commanded all the armies of Valedon.
Alone, now, he burned with sudden hatred for that Torran servo who could reach from a far star to grind a city beneath his boot and lecture Valan rulers like a schoolmaster. But Realgar shook off the thought. The Envoy had a duty to enforce unpopular decisions. The duty of Commander Realgar was to control Shora, and, by Torr's Nine Legions, he would not fail.
REALGAR'S SHUTTLECRAFT FROM Headquarters Satellite Amber settled easily upon the former traders' raft of system Per-elion. As he emerged, a gust of air brought that scent of rose and orange peculiar to this ocean. The wind tugged at his Iridian blue uniform, an odious requirement of his new post. Major General Sabas and six other Iridians saluted smartly, parade-style. Realgar returned the salute with equal precision and hoped that Iridians would prove good for something else besides parades. He still wished that Talion had allowed him a good Sardish division instead.
His chief of staff, Colonel Jade, strode briskly to his side. Her promotion was still held up by the Palace bureaucrats. Jade snapped her heels together, and her blond head turned slowly as she scanned the horizon, an endless ocean riveted to the sky. “So where are all the rebel catfish?”
Realgar allowed himself a half smile. “They're not in rebellion yet, officially. They don't even know we're here.” Nonetheless, he thought, if any natives did start to cook up grenades in their kitchens, Jade would be the one to find out. A member of that covert Sardish guild, her interrogation skills had served him well throughout the Azurite campaign.
He turned to Chief Medical Officer Nathan and asked, “Is the inspection team all here?” Realgar planned to start with inspection of one of the subversive “lifeshaping places” where the natives conducted their forbidden science.
“All except Dr. Siderite, sir.”
“You mean the civilian plant-breeder? He's not still stuck up there in his lab?” Siderite was a Palace agronomist whom Malachite had briefed on Sharer science, or what little was known of it. However brilliant Siderite was, the choice of a civilian cut against the grain. Realgar glared at Nathan; the doctor's mustache quivered.
Jade laughed shortly. “A fine campaign this will be. How shall we even tell them anything, in that cat's tongue they call a language? With what passes for âverbs,' you never know who's doing what to whom.”
“Stick to Valan. They'd better get used to it.”
“Excellent, sir.”
Another shuttle from Satellite Amber touched down at last, and Siderite burst from the door, puffing and in a hurry. His loose civilian tunic emphasized his rounded shoulders and air of preoccupation, as if his mind were left behind somewhere. Annoyed, Realgar turned away; it was Nathan's business to keep the fellow in line.
With the inspection team complete, they all filed into a helicopter to take off for the first Sharer raft: Raia-el. He had chosen Raia-el because the inhabitants had a cooperative reputation and because the Palace still listed Merwen as the official “Protector” of Shora. Within minutes the raft appeared, a brown disk that bristled with outlying branches and had no harbor cut into it. By the time the helicopter landed, Sharers already were gathering to meet it. Realgar scanned them for familiar faces. Their nakedness bothered him much less without Berenice here. (Bereniceâhe pushed back the pain.) Something, though, was missing ⦠children, he realized. The last time he had come here, children had found their way into everything, even that ludicrous “conference” with the Envoy.
He saw Merwen, who had received the Envoy the last time, only to reject him. “Greetings, Protector,” he said stiffly, aware of the more hospitable circumstances of their previous meeting and annoyed at himself for recalling it. “I come under orders of the High Protector of Valedon, of which Shora has been declared a province by the All-powerful Patriarch of Torr. My orders are to inspect your âlifeshaping' facilities.” The sooner she got used to Valan orders, the better for all concerned.
“Share the day,” Merwen said. “Does your Protection-sharer wish to share learning as an apprentice?”
“No,” he said curtly. Her conversion of Valan terms into Sharer-type forms was surely deliberate. “We come to regulate hazardous activities.”
“Usha is very good at that.”
“Then she can guide us.”
“She is busy today, improving our airblossom strain.”
Realgar stepped forward, and his officers snapped to attention. “We must inspect today,” he said very clearly. “We carry out the High Protector's orders. You must accept that, from now on.”
For a while she made no response, and Realgar could read nothing from her face. Suddenly he thought that he would give half a division just to know what went on inside one of those bald dark heads. No matter what the Envoy had said, Realgar still could not convince himself they were human.
Merwen appeared to reach a decision: she sighed and lowered her eyelids. “Come on, then. Usha understands the needs of the sick.”
The rest of the natives watched in silence as his inspection team went on toward Merwen's house of twisted seasilk that still reminded him of crumpled blue paper. A pair of officers stayed outside; the others stepped one by one through the rabbit-hole of a doorway, passed the outer rooms, and descended to the maze of tunnels and caves. Roots and vines twisted from the walls at odd angles. This was where “lifeshaping” took place, although there was no sign of laboratory benches or plumbing, not even a stray petri dish.
At last they found Usha, the “lifeshaper.” While the officers crowded into the cramped chamber, Siderite struck up a conversation with Usha, half in Valan, half in Sharer. Excellent, thought Realgar; now they would get somewhere. Merwen withdrew watchfully to a niche in the chamber but did not seem inclined to start trouble.
“Fascinating,” he overheard Siderite say. “Where is your laboratory?”
“This is my laboratory,” Usha said.
Siderite exchanged glances with the medical doctor, Nathan. Realgar was annoyed; he knew for a fact that this hole was the “laboratory,” since he had come here before with Malachite. This Siderite had no business showing open doubt of the general's authority. He would need a good lecture or two.
Siderite then asked, “How do you perform your species manipulations?”
“Living things manage that themselves,” Usha said. “Let's share some basics. Do you know ofâ” The rest went beyond Realgar's vocabulary, even in Valan.
In the meantime, Jade stood stiffly at attention, as if to show her contempt for the proceedings. No one else was short enough to stand up straight in the cavern. Sabas leaned into a leafy patch of wall, and one of his officers stifled a yawn.
A movement caught Realgar's eye. At a bend in the entrance tunnel, a pair of little eyes shone, like a lurking gnome. In an instant it had
vanished. Realgar looked back to Siderite, who was still listening to Usha.
Sabas cried out, and his officers reached for their firewhips. The major general stretched out the hack of his jacket: its material was white and crumbling.
Usha hurried to his side, oblivious of officers and firewhips. “You mustn't touch theâ” She went on in an excited stream of Sharer. A sudden wet spray drenched Sabas and washed away the crumbling fabric. Sabas stared with chagrin at the dripping, ragged edge of his uniform.
“By Torr, it was some sort of enzyme secretor he sat upon.” Siderite sounded almost gleeful. He stared up at the ceiling with its tangle of vines and mouthed calculations to himself.
“I see.” Realgar signaled the officers to relax and warily observed the patch of leaves where Sabas had leaned. At least there was plumbing of a sort, the first sensible thing he had seen.
Usha said, “I usually do not share this part of my workplace with children.”
That was reasonable, if irrelevant. He thought of the little face he had seen hiding in the tunnel. Siderite resumed his discourse with Usha.
A tug at Realgar's sleeve startled him. He looked down: it was a girl, barely up to his waist. Her mouth opened wide to say something in squeaky Sharer. “Do you really hasten death? Why doesn't your Gathering Unspeak you?”
“Wellen
!
”
Usha shrieked. She grabbed the child by the hand and yanked her out through the tunnel, scolding all the while. Merwen came out of her corner and watched Realgar as if she expected an answer to the child's question. The whole thing was incomprehensible.
Realgar drew Siderite and Nathan aside. “Well? Have you found what you're looking for?”
Siderite reluctantly took his attention from the leaves and vines. “Oh, I can't begin to say.”
The reply and its casual tone were an affront. Realgar said curtly, “Then you'll need another visit.”
“Or ten, or a hundred.”
Nathan added, “We knew it would look nothing like one of our own labs.”
“Yes, from the Envoy's briefing, but certain basic features at
leastâ” Siderite waved his hand to grasp at something insubstantial. “As yet, I could not even tell you for sure that this is their âlaboratory.'”
Realgar said in a level tone, “This is the place Malachite visited.”
“Oh, yes,” Siderite hurriedly agreed, “this is it.”
But was the place their laboratory? Was even Malachite uncertain of that? It could be an elaborate hoax of theirs, these helpful natives. Realgar's inspectors had no way to tell.
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At orbital Headquarters Satellite Amber, Realgar made a brief call to Talion. “If you please, my lord, this plant-breeder assigned to my staff is not up to the job. He can't even tell a laboratory when he sees one. Surely the Palace has someone better?”
The light-image of the High Protector glimmered, and its head turned from side to side. “Siderite was briefed hypnotically by Malachite. He's also our best agricultural geneticist. Genetics is genetics anywhere, right?”
“He's worse than useless. Whatever I ask, he rolls up his eyes like a frog.”
“Give him time. He's a research man; he likes to hedge his bets.”
The general reflected on his limited experience of science or scientists. Progress in science, other than the handouts from Torr, was discouraged on Valedon. Yet now the Torran Envoy had dumped a problem of applied science into their laps. It disconcerted Realgar when a superior switched orders without warning.