From her childhood, when Stone Palace had been a busier place, Val remembered the ways from one level to the next, and led her people through halls and alice tubes. She was glad she had left the children behind, safe, for they would be frightened and there was no time for reassurance or explanations. Simon stalked beside her, wary of the differences between this and what he was used to: light everywhere, passages more regular than any watercourse, the vast overuse of fabric, and finally the internal distortions of the alice tube as it drifted them slowly upward. Only Gemmi liked the feeling.
Val expected guards when they reached the main level, and her people were ready, but no one and nothing awaited them. She posted guards of her own, at the tube, at the silent barracks wing. The Palace had never used electronic surveillance fifteen years before, but that was during the old Lord’s time; Blaisse, his son, had always been much more suspicious and frightened of threats from the city. But everyone behind her knew the danger; everyone had agreed to what they were doing. She led them deeper into ornate corridors.
o0o
The ancient, senile old Lord used to wander through these halls, never very far from his living suite, and the children would fall silent in their playing when he passed. Val could almost see his ghost, drifting among the jewels and metallic embroidery, where he had never seemed quite comfortable.
Val sent her people around the suites. Here, she knew, there would be guards, but perhaps not many, since it was winter. She had to drag all this information back from years of trying to forget it.
The first guard was dozing in a comfortable chair; Val remembered that it was night, though the dim illumination of Center’s darkness had been, to her, like day.
She and Simon crept up on the young man. Simon held him by the throat, ignoring the fingernails clawing at his hands, until the man collapsed unconscious. They tied him with gold ropes.
The room beyond the small foyer was dark. Val pushed the curtain aside, letting in a shaft of light; the trim of baubles clinked and jangled.
“Who’s there?”
Somehow, Val’s biggest surprise of all was that she remembered her cousin’s voice perfectly. She had to fumble a bit for the light control: it was no longer at shoulder height. Even with the inadequate diet of the underground, Val had grown taller. The lights came on slowly, automatically set so they would not dazzle any royal person’s delicate eyes.
“Hello, cousin,” Val said.
Clarissa sat up in the wide, low bed, sleepily. She was still beautiful and elegant, but now in a slovenly sort of way. She had changed, as much as Val or more; she had been sent to Stone Palace by bad luck of being firstborn of her Family. It was much too easy to do nothing here. When they were children, all of them knew what their work would be, except Blaisse and his younger brother, who knew they would have no work.
“… Val?” Next to her, the pretty sleeping boy reacted to Clarissa’s voice. Beginning to wake, he shifted, and Val could see the marks of Clarissa’s fingernails and her whip on his back. Clarissa glanced at him and snatched a crop from her bedside. “Wake up!”
“Don’t”—Val shouted as Clarissa raised her arm—“do that,” she finished in a normal tone as her cousin jerked back the short whip. The boy cringed behind his arm.
“You never used to be so solicitous of slaves.”
“I never used to know any better.” Val was impressed by her cousin’s composure, though she had not known what reaction to expect.
“So you’re alive.”
“That was the whole point, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose it was, on the surface. But they really wanted you to die, you know. They just couldn’t do it themselves.”
“I know. Get up, Clarissa.”
o0o
Blaisse’s guard was awake, but could not oppose them without endangering the Lady. Val held her tightly by the arm, and it was not until the guard’s laser lance hit the floor that Clarissa’s taut muscles relaxed. Her laugh held an edge of fear. “Blaisse won’t thank you for that.” Leaving the guard well bound, they moved through the library, down the stairs. “I didn’t know,” Clarissa said, “what he might have told them to do if this ever happened.” It seemed to Val quite characteristic of Blaisse that he would never have told them anything. The subject of an attempted coup was not one he would wish to contemplate.
They found him sleeping peacefully, like a child, his head pillowed on the breast of his slave.
o0o
“What do you intend to do with me?” Blaisse had tried to run away and Simon had caught and hit him; now the Lord nursed a bruised cheek and would look only at Val.
“Perhaps—exile you? Drive you to the deep underground?”
“I had nothing to do with what happened to you.”
“No,” Val said. “Of course not. You stood up and said, ‘She’s a human being like the rest of us, how can we do this to her?’”
He had the grace, at least, to flush. “Well, what could I do?”
“Never mind, Blaisse. You can make up for it now. You can go to the Families and tell them that the underground people hold the Palace, and that I am with them and of them.”
“You want me… to go… out there?”
“You’re mad!” Clarissa said. “They’ll come and tear you all to bits.”
“Cousin, you know better. They couldn’t assassinate me even when I was a child. And if my Family could allow the others to kill me, would yours allow your death?”
“You expect me to stay here?”
“What do you care if you’re my hostage, or Blaisse’s?”
“They’ll cut off the electricity—they’ll turn out the lights—”
“You helped send me into darkness! Do you think we need their light to survive?”
“Val,” Clarissa said more reasonably, “the Palace and the Families are balanced very carefully against each other. If you disturb the balance…” She let her explanation trail off meaningfully.
“I remember all the plans our Families had. But they won’t work against anyone who doesn’t need all this.” She glanced around Blaisse’s bedroom. It no longer looked as grand as it had when she was a child, only overly ornate, and here and there a bit shabby.
“They’ll fight you.”
“At Blaisse’s request? I think not, cousin.”
Clarissa folded her arms and looked at the floor, sulking.
Val turned her attention to Blaisse. “Get ready, my Lord. You have a mission.”
Blaisse stood up unwillingly and walked as though still asleep toward his dressing rooms. “Saita!” The strange young silver-blue girl moved quickly to hold the curtain aside for him.
“Wait,” Val said. Blaisse turned back. “Are you still able to dress yourself, Blaisse?”
“Of course,” he said bitterly.
“Then do it.”
He glared at her, looked away, flung aside the curtain, and stormed out.
Val drew the two slaves aside. “You’re free,” she said. “You don’t have to do what Blaisse and Clarissa tell you anymore. Do you understand?”
They both looked at her, not yet responding. She remembered how she had felt, when what she was used to had crumbled around her.
“They know nothing of freedom.” Clarissa’s tone was derisive. “None of them do. They’re incapable of caring for themselves.”
“So was I, cousin.”
The young boy suddenly burst into despairing tears.
o0o
The settled order of Stone Palace had turned to chaos. Madame walked through it, untouched by it, still deferred to by those who passed: they stepped aside for her, but they did not wait for orders. She did not give any. She still would not dare to believe that she was free.
She remembered invaders, and she was afraid, but she heard no sounds of death or destruction. Clarissa’s suite was deserted, so she went to Blaisse’s.
Inside, strange wild people, underground people, outcasts, stared at her. Seeing them in the Palace allowed Madame to hope, at least, that the rumors might be true. The underground people returned to sampling bits of food and making faces not altogether disgusted. With the ease and intuition of long experience, Madame picked out their leader. The slender red-haired woman was sitting on one of Clarissa’s velvet cushions. Saita sat near her, head down, as the slender woman spoke to her gently and gravely. Clarissa’s attendant, the new boy, hunched in a corner and shuddered when anyone approached.
Madame spoke, hardly able to believe what she saw. “My Lady… Valdrienne?”
Madame remembered when Val had been driven out: a skinny little awkward child, bright, her arrogance shattered by the discovery that she was different from her siblings and cousins, different, and therefore less than human. She looked up, and their recognition was mutual.
“There aren’t any masters anymore. Will you call me Val?”
“Are we free?”
“Yes.”
Madame saw that Saita was crying, silently and stilly. “The child…” She did not know what to say about Saita, who had been forbidden knowledge of anything and everything but obedience, self-effacement, and the giving of sexual pleasure. “Her family had no future but poverty before they sold her. All her pride is based on that… She is a child.”
“I know,” Val said. “But only because they forced her to be. She can still grow, with the rest of us.”
“I do not wish to be discourteous…” Using titles was such an ingrained habit that she found it difficult to stop. “May I leave?”
“It isn’t necessary to ask.”
Madame stood another moment; for so many years she had asked, and asked if other services were necessary, and bowed, and feared those she served. She looked down at her hands: her own hands, now, the third finger of the left hand a little crooked from her twisting the slave ring off as she grew. But it slid off easily now, leaving a mark. She held the ring out. “Will you… give this to Blaisse?”
Val smiled. “Of course.”
Madame threw down her whip. “I never used that.”
“I know. I remember.”
Madame lifted her head. “Good-bye.” She turned and left Blaisse’s palace. I am not “Madame” anymore, she thought, and the knowledge was the sunlight she had not seen since she was eight years old.
o0o
She entered Subtwo’s quarters and found them empty. Suddenly she doubted what she had done: Subtwo had gone to the underground, but the underground people were here. She imagined him dead, bloody and broken at the foot of some cliff, lost, gone. She touched the arm of his chair, and knew no way to turn.
His suite was not as he had left it. A bit of furniture displaced, a closet door ajar, a few of his favorite things missing, not clumsily stolen by one of the invaders, but carefully chosen. He must have been here, and gone.
Why shouldn’t he leave? she wondered. I never responded to him… but he seemed to understand why I could not, though I wanted him…
She moved through the rooms until she reached the communications console and saw the destruction: the fused controls, the melted screen. She was afraid again, for a moment, but the only odor was of vaporized plastic: no seared-meat death-smell. Someone had wrecked the device as a precaution, or as a warning. Perhaps he had tried to contact her…
She heard footsteps and raised her head, hoping.
“Where are you—?” Subone stopped just inside the doorway. “Where—?”
“He is not here.”
Subone groaned. “Hikaru, that barbaric child, the freaks—they forced him!” he cried. “They— Has the ship taken off?”
“The ship… ?” She fell silent, clear in her understanding of what had happened. Subtwo was escaping from Subone, as much as Jan Hikaru and Mischa were escaping from earth. And if Subone caught them before they got away, he would be able to stop Subtwo, she had almost no doubt of that. If Subone caught them, he could return Subtwo to a kind of slavery as profound as her own had been. She faced Subone quietly, waiting for a minuscule vibration, a trembling of the city’s matrix that would build and climb and quite abruptly cease, as a ship fought free of gravity. But no sound came, and no vibration: Subone’s quarry still were earthbound, vulnerable.
He lunged forward and grabbed her wrist, hard enough to hurt her, crushing the velvet of her sleeve between his fingers. “Tell me!”
She remained silent, staring past him. She had never been flogged, but she had been prepared, every day, to endure it and survive it, knowing the people who owned her too well to think she could avoid it forever. She was as prepared to endure pain now that she was free.
Subone shook her, wrenching her shoulder. She was as unused to looking up at anyone as she was to meeting a free person’s gaze, but she had to look up at Subone, and she met his fury, her face set and hard.
“I have no time!” he cried, and flung her across the room. She felt herself falling, a sharp blow, and that was all.
o0o
The blockhouse was silent. Subtwo carefully packed his belongings into a protective case. The outside winds must have died down since he came to Center, for the whining no longer penetrated the thick walls, but the sand could still drift and float and insinuate itself into delicate mechanical places. When he was finished Jan and Mischa had already put on suits, while he was still only in his coverall.
“Hurry up,” Mischa said. Jan simply sat on the corner of one of the work-desks and crossed his arms. Even after the fight in which Jan had easily defeated Draco, Subtwo had thought of him as mild and peaceable; he had never seen the young man look so grim as now.
But Subtwo ignored the grimness and Mischa’s impatience. He was elated, yet disconsolate. The satisfaction of having rid himself of Subone was incredible, but he had also lost Madame… he could only hope that she would remain in the Palace until he could return. He was afraid something would change by then: Madame could believe he had left without even thinking of her, or, worse, she could become the focus for one of Blaisse’s incomprehensible rages. He could destroy her, and no one would ever know or care. Except Subtwo.
Revenge and grief, he realized, are for the benefit of the living only; the dead are beyond such actions and feelings. Revenge and grief were not what Subtwo sought.
“I must come back, you know,” he said without turning.
Mischa hesitated, and then he heard her sigh. “Subone—”
“Not Subone!” He cut himself off. Mischa had no reason to be certain he had cut oft the crippling relationship with his pseudosib. “No, not Subone.”
“Mischa kept her part of the bargain,” Jan said. “You might at least uphold yours with a little grace.”
“You don’t understand…” He felt himself blushing, fiery red from collar to hairline. He had never blushed before. It was impossible to say what he meant. “Because I’m free, and I might be able to give freedom as well…”
“What are you talking about?”
He knew that his oblique conversations angered people, but in this instance he could not be more direct. “You made me leave.” She’ll think I didn’t care, he thought.
“We haven’t left yet,” Mischa said angrily. “We never will if you don’t hurry.”
“But—”
“All right! I don’t care, you can come back if you want, you’re crazy. You have to take us where we tell you, first.”
He nodded, and lifted his suit and helmet from their hook.
“Leaving without me, brother?”
Subone, filthy and tattered, half-naked, stood in the entrance of the blockhouse. Mischa had the lance out, aimed at him, but he ignored it. “How could you desert me, brother?”
Subtwo knew the regret was false: it overlaid triumph and amusement. He stared at his pseudosib for what seemed a long time. The similarities he had seen between them were gone, eradicated; had any remained, they would have been hidden by the filth and the uncombed hanging-down hair and the awful smile.
“You began the process,” Subtwo said. “You pulled yourself away from me.”
“No,” Subone whispered. “We are still the same.” He stepped toward Subtwo slowly, gazing quietly at him, his dark eyes deep, deep. “The link is there. I feel what you feel.”
“Don’t!” Subtwo cried as Mischa shifted. “We made a bargain. You aren’t to kill him.”
“I said if he didn’t make me.”
“She will,” Subtwo said to Subone. “She is determined.”
“What will happen to you, if I die?” Subone swayed before him like a snake. “Your blood will boil like mine, and your brains explode in your skull…” He came closer, until Subtwo could smell his musky sweat and see the minute pale flecks of color in the black irises of his eyes. Subone’s hypnotic voice droned on, until Subtwo could well believe they would die together.
“I gave my word…”
“What’s your word, to thieves and murderers?”
Subone’s dark gaze leached the meaning from Subtwo’s unvoiced protest.
“We have no choice,” Subtwo said finally. Sadness overwhelmed him, that he had almost deserted the person closest to him in the universe, almost abandoned him here on a forsaken dying world… what might have happened, had they parted? He could imagine space-time’s collapse to a single dimension, to a dimensionless point.
“Yes, refuse them!” Subone said. “They can’t kill you.”
“I can,” Mischa said. “If you won’t keep your promise, I have nothing to lose.”
Subone laughed: a real laugh, not the acceptable response the pseudosibs had learned by rote. But it was ugly. “You still have your life,” Subone snarled. “Go back where you came from, and I’ll let you keep it.”
Subtwo wanted to turn to Mischa and apologize to her, explain what he must do, make clear that some obligations stretched beyond mere promises. But he continued to stare at Subone, rediscovering beauty.
“He’s buying you too cheaply,” Jan Hikaru said in his quiet way, as a statement of fact, not as an argument or persuasion.
Subone glared, his teeth glinting bright as a beast’s. “I haven’t given you your life.”
But Jan’s words caught in Subtwo’s thoughts. “I’m not a slave. I own myself,” he said.
“He owns you more than he could own any slave. He owns your soul.”
Subtwo stepped back involuntarily and grasped the edge of a counter that pressed against his thighs. “No, I want—” But he did not want what Subone wanted. He squeezed his eyelids shut, searching for a moment of peace in which to disentangle his confusion.
He heard footsteps and opened his eyes again. Subone grinned triumphantly. “Our raiders are coming,” he said. “Free and rearmed.” He turned, smiling, toward the entranceway, but suddenly, paling, faced Subtwo again.
“They’ll have to find the slave-ways first,” Madame said.
Subtwo pushed past his pseudosib, ignoring his stricken expression. Madame walked slowly out of the dimness, moving carefully as though on an unsteady deck. Running from a terrible gash just below her temple, blood marked the line of her jaw and stained the silver embroidery of her bodice. Subtwo reached to steady her, but abruptly hesitated.
Madame took his hand and clasped it tightly. “I’m free.” Her fingers were smooth and strong.
Subtwo gently touched her blood-matted hair. “How did this—”
“Never mind.” But she glanced past him and saw Subone again; her pain-contracted pupils shrank to pinpoints.
“She—she tried to kill me! I had to defend myself!”
Subtwo felt a great wrench of betrayal, for this time he knew without question or doubt that his pseudosib lied, gratuitously, selfishly, viciously. He spun in a fury and struck out.
“No!” Subone cried, and crumpled with the blow, for it was totally unexpected and unprepared for. When his pseudosib lay moaning at his feet, Subtwo cradled his aching hand, thinking that he had done an impossible, perhaps unforgivable, but necessary thing.
“We must hurry,” Madame said slowly, rational but vague. “I broke the alice tube, and the slave-ways are concealed, but the raiders will find them.” As destroying a mechanism in order to slow pursuit was an idea Subtwo would never have conceived, he was overcome with admiration.
He turned away from his pseudosib and steadied Madame again, touching her bruised face gently, causing necessary pain from which she did not flinch. “The bone is not broken,” he said with relief, and moved quickly to find her a suit.
o0o
Afraid that Subone would recover himself and interfere again, Mischa watched him until Madame was safely suited. He had only begun to stir, to push himself up, when Mischa opened the door of the blockhouse.
The sand squealed in the tracks, but afterward was only silence. That was what had been so strange inside, this time: the absence of the scratch and howl of wind-blown sand. As the door closed behind her, Mischa blinked in the glittery light. Sand yielded beneath her feet. She looked down from the plateau of the landing field across endless iridescent black sand dunes, like a glass sea frozen in midswell. The wind had died, only briefly, Mischa thought, for the clouds still hung and shifted, low and dark, here and there breaking as they moved, revealing glints of blue-gray sky. Near the horizon, the sun glowed scarlet, rayed about with orange, vermilion, purple. Beside her, Jan whistled softly in awe. Mischa unfastened her helmet, threw it back, and breathed the fresh dusty air for the first time in months. A breeze scattered particles of sand that pattered against the blockhouse, against Mischa’s suit. She glanced at Jan, also bareheaded, and he looked down at her. Suddenly she grinned, and felt laughter springing up from where it had long lain hidden. Jan smiled, the beautiful smile, untinged by irony, that Mischa had not seen in so long. The tiny lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper; only the ends of his golden hair were sunbleached white; his mustache made him look older. He was older. They both were older. “Let’s go.”
Cradled in the acceleration couch, Mischa forgot her scrapes and scratches and fatigue, and tried to memorize the control room all at once. Jan was in the couch beside her, eyes closed. On a third couch, Madame lay wrapped closely in a blanket; she was groggy from concussion, but she would be all right. Subtwo, his dirty hair tied carefully back, was embraced in the navigation frame, almost every part of his body attached to a separate control system. The ship shuddered as the engines started. The acceleration began, pressing Mischa gently down.
The ship battered its way upward, into the roiling clouds. It began to vibrate on a second frequency, and the harmonic beats rose and fell. Mischa urged the ship along, feeling joyful terror when the wind pummeled and tipped them, victorious gaiety when the craft fought free. Sometimes it seemed impossible they would survive, for the force of the wind seemed beyond the ability of the ship to withstand. They crept into the sky, battered, but when they broke through the storm, the transition was instantaneous. It sounded like silence, but was merely the cessation of the wind. The engines thundered. Mischa laughed aloud, half-intoxicated. Delighted, she turned toward Jan, but his golden skin was gray-pale, and his hands were clenched white-knuckled on the arms of his couch.
“What’s wrong?”
“I expected a takeoff, not ride-the-meteor in an amusement park.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, though it was obvious he objected to the quality of the ride. Subtwo disengaged himself from the controls. He, too, was pale. “The winds are less steady—” It was the first time she had ever heard him make an excuse. He went to Madame’s side.
“I liked it,” Mischa said.
Jan laughed and lay back in the acceleration couch.
And Mischa did not know what to do. She had no idea where to go. In all the time she and Chris had talked about leaving earth, the aftermath of their escape had been a nebulous, tantalizing mystery. They had discussed how to get away, and what the Sphere would be like when they got there, but now that she thought of it, they had avoided talking about how they themselves would fit into a new society. Perhaps they had known, unconsciously, that they would not.
“What are you going to do?”
She started: Subtwo had never before showed the least talent for empathy or even intuition.
“Will you still leave me my ship?” So his concern was still his own future.
No, Mischa thought, no, it’s more than that now, it’s his and Madame’s. “Yes,” she said. “You can have your ship back, and then we’ll be even.” And then, “I’m… I’m sorry I didn’t let you call her.”
“Where may I take you?”
“You…” She did not know the nearest Sphere world, but she would ask for it: she had made her way in Center; she could make her way anywhere.
“To Koen,” Jan said, “The coordinates—”
“I know them,” Subtwo said, highly insulted.
“Is that really where you want to go, Jan? Are you sure?” She had taken so much from him, she did not want to take more, or force him into still another unpleasant situation.
“Yes,” he said softly. “I’m more sure of that than I’ve been of anything in a long time. I want to. I have to.”
“But your father—”
He nodded, his eyes still closed. “Exactly. My father.” He sounded completely certain of himself, and content
“To Koen,” Mischa told Subtwo.
“We must finish an orbit.” He spoke to Jan, glancing quickly at him, then back to Madame. “There is time to see earth from the observation bubble, if you wish.”
Jan opened his eyes and pushed himself slowly from the couch. Mischa knew that his reluctance was not because he begrudged the time, or even that he was so completely exhausted, but that returning to the viewing bubble would bring back memories, still painful, of his friend the poet.
“You don’t have to, Jan.”
“Don’t be silly. Just give me a hand.”
He leaned on her, and they walked to the observation deck. Below them lay earth, the terminator creeping across its face, sunlight glinting from the clouds.
Jan lowered himself onto a bank of cushions, and Mischa sat beside him, gazing down, picking out the gray swirls of the sandstorms, moving out of night. Most of the other clouds were gray-brown; but here Mischa found a patch of white, there of green, there of blue: the ocean. She had never seen an ocean.
She thought of all the things Val had said at the very last, all the things that needed to be done; she thought of her half-promise to Crab. She knew she was doing the right thing, for now, in leaving earth, but the future was not set.
“Jan—”
She fell silent: he was asleep on the cushions beside her. But there would be time to talk, later on.
o0o
Jan Hikaru’s Journal:
Halfway to Koen. I slept through the first few dives. When I woke, we were about to dive again; Subtwo was showing Mischa how everything works. When the ship was safely under, he went back to Madame. She is recovering, and they spend almost all their time together, talking, or simply holding hands in silence. They’re rather like children in some ways, inexperienced at affection, sincere, hesitant. Learning.
I never thought I’d go home eagerly, but I’m glad to be on my way, I’ll be glad when we reach Koen. Ichiri can’t direct my life anymore—he never could, but that I let him. Knowing that, I think I can accept him as he is. I hope someday he’ll be able to do the same for me.
I’m going back to earth—not right away; I need more preparation first. At least this time I’ll know what I’m preparing for. And in the meantime Mischa and I will petition the Sphere with Val’s message. We in the Sphere can’t ignore earth any longer. Even Mischa, who has more reason than anyone to want to forget Center, no longer seems so determined to abandon it. But she has an almost infinite range of choices, now, and can decide what she wants to do with her future and with her abilities after she has seen what all the options are. For the present, the best thing is probably for her to apply for a Special Fellowship. She’s a little old for one, but the trustees value genius highly, and they’ll take into account her situation. A fellowship would be ideal: it would give her liberty, resources, and independence. Murasaki’s estate—or even my father—could easily provide for her education, and I’ll see that they do if it’s necessary. But Mischa is the kind of person who prefers a prize to what she would see as a gift. From now on, I think, she’ll have many prizes in her life.