The old woman sat surrounded by her machine.
Maranthe was—wholly—the machine. She saw, and smiled, forever, maddeningly smiled, her aged face rapt and her dimmed eyes fixed, lost in the power of the Vision. And Mishell envied.
Mishell did not speak of it. Possibly all the Servants of Aneth envied. Surely they must, for there was nothing on Aneth which approached the glory, the importance of Maranthe. Servants came and went, living and dying and being carried away. Maranthe was all. And there was no exit from Aneth, least of all for those sealed within the inmost enclave of the Machine. Only the visitors, who were never withinAneth, came, asked their single questions, departed. They went, and where they went Mishell could not imagine, could never imagine, sealed within white walls, silent, in silence. She had nothing of the Vision. They asked, these visitors, and what they asked Mishell could not hear. Only the Sibyl, only Maranthe—heard. Visitors went away to act, to pursue their lives and the fates the Oracle gave them—as Servants could never leave and never act, whose fate was to serve, tending Maranthe.
Mishell served. She guided the frail, bent woman from Machine to couch, from couch to Machine. With other Servants she fed her, bathed her, performed all minute and lowly things for her, who was the sole reason for their existence. Tiny, frail, blind, yet Maranthe smiled, constantly smiled while she waked . . . for long, long hours wrapped in the Vision, where Maranthe saw . . . and they could not.
In those hours, their own duty over, the Servants themselves must eat and sleep and dream. And in her dreams Mishell sought life. Armed only with the gray and white sameness of the Enclave, she built colors, and beauty, and tried with all her senses to attain to the Vision which was Maranthe's, which hovered palpably in the Enclave, a presence which seized and shaped, and gave them what dreams they knew.
It ended with waking. The world was cold again, steel and white garments and white plastics, and Servants moved soft-footed and whispering within it, for they must not intrude their small reality into the greater. Gently Mishell bathed Maranthe's wasted limbs, and gently folded the skeletal body into soft garments, and gently tucked her to bed.
And daily sat (or was it night?) through Maranthe's sleep, waking while the Vision was numb, and the walls were void and stark, the dreams dead within the Enclave's waking. There were other worlds; Maranthe saw them; they dreamed of them; the visitors came from them; but the worlds were dreams.
"It's a charade." The major paused with his hand on the rail of the boarding area, looking back at the port facility where the shuttle rested, with deepening regret. "Rational beings flock to this place. I find it incredible."
"Enough," the minister said, silencing him, and stepped from the in-terworld soil of the port onto the floor of the Anethine ground transport, committing himself.
The major glowered, shook his head, and followed. After him came the attendant clutter of aides and secretaries, with recorders and sensors surprisingly permitted beyond the outer ring of the oracular enclave. Cosean, the minister, prime in the third rank of the Shantran technarchy; Segrane, the major, from the military fifth; the aides and secretaries had no rank at all save as appurtenances to the minister and the major. An Shant risked as little as possible in the venture, augmented its delegation with expendables in expensive garb. The Confederate enemy had consulted the oracle; the military grew nervous on the matter: An Shant had determined to investigate any potential leak or exchange of information. Therefore they were here inconveniencing themselves with this farce.
They were seated. The automated vehicle began to move.
"Irresponsible," Segrane muttered, affecting nonchalance, his eyes shifting to this side and that while he faced ahead, relaxed. "Something could go wrong with these machines. And then where should we be stranded? I find their notion of security less than adequate." The barren plains of Aneth rolled past the windows, grassland and purple forest. The windows suddenly sealed, viewless, black. The major set his jaw and continued his surreptitious scan. The velocity of the car increased. There was perceptible descent, and aides and secretaries clutched in panic at cases. The minister sat still, outwardly calm. The angle of descent eased; the speed remained constant for a time in which the aides found occasion to investigate the console at the rear of the car and to call up informational lectures from the screen . . . time in which novelty eventually yielded to utter tedium, and aides and secretaries, enjoined to strictest silence, sat primly half-asleep, hypnotized by the smoothness of their passage and the soft hiss of air. Then abrupt deceleration: windows unshielded themselves on darkness, which broke into glowing colored bars and triangles whisking past in a distorted neon flow, broke again into view of a white, sterile concourse. The car braked smoothly; doors hissed open. Signs blinked, in Shantran and two related dialects of the colonial sequence which had populated An Shant. ENCLAVE SECOND RANK, the signs proclaimed in Shantran idiom. The boarding station at the port had been ENCLAVE THIRD RANK. It all seemed impeccably Shantran, as it could doubtless seem Confederate, or Tyrang, or Inush, or Syncrat.
Slippered Servants arrived, alike in their white garments, silent as their guests chose to be silent. Doubtless they, like the signs, could change. They took the baggage and led the way. RESIDENCE AREA 110, the sign advised, giving directions. The entourage walked, following the Servants. It was not far from the concourse, down a corridor of right-triangle arches. Doors opened, sealed again; the baggage was deposited; the Servants took silent leave. Major Segrane looked about him at blank steel walls, at sterile white plastic benches, at the Minister Cosean An Homin, his personal charge. He remained amazed that they had not been searched, that they had not been forbidden the recording and scanning devices. "There is," he observed to Cosean, "no evidence of scanning. But that means nothing."
"No. It does not." Cosean settled into a chair and opened his notebook. Segrane excused himself into the adjoining set of rooms, discovered that one of the aides had transferred his baggage there, that a nervous group of secretaries waited for instruction. He pettishly dismissed them to the rooms which lay further within the apartments assigned them, advising them to stay close about and to refrain from needless chatter; they departed in dutiful silence. He paced, realized that finally as a manner of communication to any spies, and settled into a chair, arms folded. The Confederacy had consulted the Oracle, credulity utterly out of character for a polity blood and bone akin to An Shant itself. Last of the holdouts against the Pact, save the Shantran Technarchy itself, the Confederacy had come submitting to the Pact and asking its questions, as any private or representative individual might join and come, who had the fare to Aneth and the requisite fee. Had the Confederacy consulted once and ceased, the Technarchy of An Shant would have found it amusing, a desperate move by the Confederacy to allay the fears of its citizenry, a sinking of Confederate morale before the rumors of war.
Twice . . . brought forth a more ominous possibility. Three times . . . Three times at such expense, in such rapid succession . . . indicated some manner of success; and that suggested something more sinister here than superstition, the exchange of data more substantial than hundred-year predictions. The Confederacy adopted a more aggressive stance, broke relations on its own initiative, embargoed ores the Technarchy vitally needed. War was in preparation; the Confederacy was absolutely right in that. Shortages mandated it. The preparations were far advanced.