Like a prayer she repeated the litany of all she had learned: She did believe that sibyls were a universal truth; she did believe in the skill and the wisdom of the Old Empire; she did believe that the Nothing Place was not the land of Death, that it was no more frightful than the lifeless halls of a computer’s brain.

She was meant to do this thing; she would not fail. No gate was impassable, there was no gulf of space or time that could not be crossed, no gulf of misunderstanding or of faith, as long as she held to her goal. She fixed her gaze on the image on the screen, absorbed it into her consciousness. She spoke the word at last that came so familiarly strangely to her lips, “Input…” And fell into the darkness.

No further analysis. The sibyl’s cry, the end of Transfer, came to her distantly, rising on golden wings through a spiraling tunnel whose other end was utter blackness. The voice went on, sounds that would not coalesce into meaning; a high, thin, witless song. She raised her hands to her lips, pressed — only with the movement aware that her hands were free to move — squeezing her face, astonished by sensation and silence. With the awareness of feeling she was aware of its savage intensity, the red-hot filaments of muscle and tendon put on the rack by their passage… by their passage. The Transfer had ended, ended!

She opened her eyes, starving, craving, dying for light. And light rewarded her with a crescendo of brilliance, inundating her retinas until she cried out with joy/pain. Squinting through her fingers, wetting them with squeezed tears, she found Silky’s face hanging in front of her like a distorted mirror, the milky opacity of his eyes darkening with inscrutable interest.

“Silky.” There was no cocoon separating them. “I thought I might see Death…” She pressed her fingers into her flesh, devoured the sensation of her own substantiality. There in the sourceless halls of the Nothing Place she had hallucinated again, as she had before, consumed by her most primitive fears. Deprived of all her senses, her body was made of void; flesh, bone, muscle, blood… soul. And Death had come to her again in a dream of deeper darkness and asked her, Who owns your body, flesh and blood? And she had whispered, “You do.” Who is stronger than lije, and will, and hope, and love? “You are.”

And who is stronger than me?

With trembling voice, “I am.”

And Death had moved aside, and let her pass Back through the tunnels outside of time, and into the light of day.

“I am!” She laughed joyously. “Look at me! I am… I am, I am!” Silky’s tentacles clutched the control panel between them as she destroyed their precarious equilibrium. “Nothing is impossible now.”

“Yes, my dear…” Elsevier’s voice drifted down to her, lifting her eyes. Elsevier rested on air above her, also free of her cocoon, but not moving freely. “You’ve found your way back. I’m so glad.”

Moon’s eager face lost its celebration at the feebleness of Elsevier’s voice. “Elsie?” Moon and Silky rose like clumsy swimmers, pushing off from the stabilized panel; stabilizing themselves again by the suspended controls above Elsevier’s head. “Elsie, are you all right?” She reached out with a free hand.

“Yes, yes… fine. Of course I am.” Elsevier’s eyes were shut, but a silver track of wetness crept out from under each lid as she spoke. She brushed away Moon’s hand almost roughly; and Moon could not tell whether the tears were from pain or pride, or both, or neither. “You’ve begun to set things right, by your own courage. Now I must find the courage to see that we finish what we’ve begun.” She opened her eyes, wiping her face as though she were rousing out of her own black dreams.

Moon looked down through a sea of air, away at the screen, where no Gate lay before them now, but only the ruddy candle glow of a thousand thousand stars, of which the Twins were only two… the sky of home, of Tiamat. “The worst is behind us now, Elsie. Everything else will be easy.”

But Elsevier made no answer, and Silky looked only at her.

24

“BZ, I wish I didn’t have to hand you this duty; but I’ve put it off as long as I can.” Jerusha stood at the window of her office, looking out, confronted by the sight of the blank wall that was all her view. Boxed in. Boxed in…

“It’s all right, Commander.” Gundhalinu sat at attention in the visitor’s chair, the benign acceptance in his voice warming her back. “To tell you the truth I’m glad to get out of Carbuncle for a while. Certain people have been leaning a little hard on ‘shirkers’… it’ll be a relief to breathe fresh air, even if it turns my lungs blue.” He grinned reassurance as she turned back to him. “They don’t bother me, Commander. I know I’m doing my job… and I know who uses personal incompetence as an excuse to make you look bad.” Disapproval pulled his face down. “But I have to admit sharing the company of inferiors — wears on one.”

She smiled faintly. “You deserve a break, BZ, the gods know it; even if it’s only to waste your time chasing thieves across the tundra.” She leaned against her desk, carefully, trying not to dislodge a heap of anything. “I just wish I didn’t have to send you to oversee star port security because I don’t know how the hell I’m going to manage here, without your support.” She glanced down, a little ashamed to be admitting it; but her gratitude at his unshakeable loyalty would not leave it unsaid.

He laughed, shaking his head. “You don’t need anybody, Commander. As long as you’ve got your integrity, they can’t touch you.”

Oh, but I do… and they do, every day. I need that encouraging word, like life needs the sun. But he’d never really understand that. Why couldn’t she have been born with the sense of supreme self worth that seemed to be bred into a Kharemoughi? Gods, it must be wonderful, never having to look to anyone else for the reassurance that what you did was right! Even when she had promoted him to inspector, he had never questioned that it might be for any reason other than his competence as an officer. “Well, it’s only a matter of— months, anyway.”

“And only a matter of months until it’s all over, Commander. Come the Millennium! Only months until the Change comes, and we can clear off of this miserable slush ball and forget about it for the rest of our lives.”

“I try not to think that far ahead,” dully. “One day at a time, that’s how I take things.” She rearranged a stack of petition cards absently.

Gundhalinu stood up, concern coming vaguely into his eyes. “Commander… if you need somebody who’ll support your orders while I’m gone, try KraiVieux. He’s got a hard shell, but he’s got at least half his mind working — and he thinks you’re trying to do an honest job.”

“Does he?” surprised. KraiVieux was a veteran officer, and one of the last she would have expected to feel even the slightest willingness to accept her. “Thanks, BZ. That helps.” She smiled again, only straining a little.

He nodded. “Well. I suppose I’d better start packing my thermals, Commander… Take care of yourself, ma’am.”

“Take care of yourself, BZ.” She returned his salute, watched him go out of the office. She had a sudden, wrenching premonition that it was the last time she would ever see him. Stop it! You want to wish him bad luck? She reached into her pocket for a pack of iestas as she moved back around her desk; answered the chiming intercom with an unsteady hand.