ON CENTER WAY, the uppermost skystreet of Iridis, Lady Berenice of Hyalite walked purposefully toward the Palace Iridium. Within the hour she had an audience with Talion the High Protector of Valedon, who answered to none but the Patriarch.
But Protector Talion had some things to answer for, especially with the Patriarch's Envoy due any day nowâthat same Envoy who had half emptied the treasury for taxes on his last visit, ten years before. This time, besides the Pyrrholite uprising, Talion would have Shora to answer for, forty years of not-so-benign neglect of the Ocean Moon.
Three times in three decades, the Patriarch's Envoy had come and gone without questioning Valan stewardship of Shora. This time, though, the oversight would be corrected, if Berenice herself had to face the Envoy. Talion of course must suspect her intention. Why else would he summon her to the Palace again?
Jets screamed far above, their trails radiating from the same port where the Envoy's starship from Torr would appear. Three levels below Berenice's feet, beggars mingled with tradesmen of every province, among the famed electronics bazaars and moontrading centers; from this height, they crawled like little crabs at the bottom of an ornamental pool. On Berenice's level, slender hangcars passed between parallel walkways, shuttling to and from the Palace. Now and then one would slow to a halt beside her, but she ignored its shimmering doors. It was not just that she needed the exercise, to keep in shape for her travels on the Ocean Moon. Berenice like to absorb this glittering, ever-shifting metropolis where her parents had returned with their fortune rebuilt in the moon trade. Nowadays, she herself shuttled endlessly between this world and the other.
Berenice's childhood on the Ocean Moon had left her unfashionably thin, emphasized now by the plain straight talar she wore without even a border of the fashionable nested squares. And worse, as her beloved Realgar was quick to notice, her nose and hollow cheeks still carried a tinge of violet, from the symbiont microbes that stored oxygen for a swimming Sharer. Most moontraders took an antibiotic to ward off these “breathmicrobes,” but Berenice let hers flourish while she shared the home of Merwen and Usha.
Merwen the Impatient ⦠. Merwen was barely older than Berenice's own thirty-eight years, yet she exuded a greater sense of age than even the bones of the vanished trolls. Merwen rarely seemed to earn her “selfname,” the epithet chosen by each Sharer upon adulthood. When her impatience did surface, the waves rippled far. It was Merwen who had called on Gatherings from many rafts to send visitors to Valedon this yearâmuch to the Protector's dismay. Sharers had never cared to cross space before, Talion complained; why start now?
Sharers wished to find out why the Valan guests on their home world dumped noxious waste chemicals and raised trade “prices” without warning. At least, that was as much as Berenice herself knew of their purpose. She was not yet a “selfnamer,” a member of a raft Gathering. Sharers heard her politely but seemed to appreciate her advice as little as Talion did, for very different reasons. What selfname would she choose: the Unheeded One? In Sharer speech, that would also mean One Who Heeds Not. Yet who tried harder to listen to Sharers than she did?
To join the Gathering, though, would be an immense step forward. She had never dared to ask; but then one day had come â¦
Â
While her feet walked straight on, her mind drifted to another world, to that sparkling turquoise ocean with its sharp, sweetish scent. The scent came from raft blossoms, golden tricorners that festooned the branches above water, while below darted fish in bewildering swarms, hiding among streamers of seasilk and other weeds that hung from branches of the living raft.
Merwen swam downward among the deeper branches, gliding with an effortless grace, her feet beating smoothly as fishtails. The inner lids of Merwen's eyes gleamed like hooded pearls; they were natural goggles which retracted when her head surfaced. A quarter of an hour passed before her skin turned lavender, then white, as her microscopic symbionts gave up oxygen, and she surfaced again for a deep lungful of air. Berenice, at that time, was nearly as violet as a native Sharer, but even so she needed three breaths for each one Merwen took.
Some of the main branches thrust deeper, and intricate coral forests grew upon them, delicate as lacework yet solid as stone. Merwen and Berenice picked their way carefully to avoid scraping against coral while they gathered the edible shellfish that clung to slimy branchlets.
A whorlshell poked up, its conical armor spotted orange and cinnabar. Berenice plucked the shell from its hold and tossed it into the collection bag at her belt, which was all she or Merwen wore. Another shell caught her eye, and another, and she bagged six before she surfaced to gasp for air.
Abruptly Merwen grabbed her arm and pointed out along a level branch. A giant squid lay across, apparently dying; from its pear-shaped body the arms dangled so far that their tips were lost in the depths. Above was a sight that froze her blood: fleshborers in a swarm, brown streaks that writhed and snapped relentless jaws. They descended on the squid and burrowed in and out of it as if sewing a ghastly seam. Red clouds oozed, obscuring the frenzied feast.
Be rational, Berenice told herself; reason must keep her still, as she watched the red cloud. The “squid” was not a true cephalopod, since it had iron-rich blood instead of the less efficient hemocyanin; that was why cephaglobinid species ruled the Ocean Moon, from the kilometer-length seaswallowers to the petite fleshborers now devouring their hapless cousinâ
Merwen flicked a webspan down her own neck.
Watch out,
the signal meant: the beasts won't be full; they'll come for us next.
Come for
herself,
Lady Berenice of Hyalite? Nausea overwhelmed her until she fought it down. Very slowly she headed upward, and Merwen followed. The fleshborers were dispersing now. One broke away and darted up toward her.
Merwen's arm shot out; she caught the sinuous body in one hand and looked into its snapping jaws. Her other hand took a whorlshell and thrust it down the throat. The shell snapped, but the jaws jammed. The beast jerked away, thrashing about randomly.
Berenice surfaced, wheezing and choking for air. She swam inward to the dry raft core where all the branches fused into one massive disk, climbed up onto the rough bark, and sat there, trembling uncontrollably. Across from her sat Merwen, crosslegged on a patch of moss. A breeze whipped past, rapidly drying their skin. “We nearly shared death, there,” Berenice ventured in the lyrical Sharer tongue.
“No,” said Merwen. “Death alone can never be shared, no matter how hard we share life in her jaws.”
Berenice swallowed hard, and tears stung her eyes. Unconsciously she drew back from Merwen. She was
alone
here, among people whose
ways could still prove inexplicable after her many years of living among them. An ache filled her head that was worse than any physical pain. “I'm going home. To Iridis.”
“We'll miss you,” Merwen said. “You are strong, Nisi; you didn't panic at all. When you rejoin us, will you choose a selfname?”
She was as astonished as if someone had appointed her High Protector. Selfnamers were, collectively, the Protectors of Shora.
Â
She caught herself, now, safe in Iridis. Her hands were clenching a steel rail which bounded the terminal platform of the skystreet. Her pulse returned to normal, and she let go of the rail, where dark blotches marked the sweat of her palms.
Before her, beyond the interminable courtyard, rose the face of Palace Iridium. A blunted triangle, to symbolize the never-seen Patriarch above all, the facade inclined slightly so as to rise like a steep mountain slope. Mosaic tiles, a million shining tesserae set in iridium, depicted scenes from the founding of the Patriarchy: the First Nine Protectors, with their planets and legionary symbols, then smaller panels below for the hundreds of planets brought under protection before Iridis assumed the High Protectorship of Valedon. The uppermost panel, which could easily cover a city block, showed the Torran Envoy Malachite. The Envoy was ageless, enthroned with eternity in his gaze. He had brought the Patriarch's word to Valedon for nearly a thousand years.
At the foot of the Palace was a skeleton of scaffolding, cranes, and other metallic insects, all setting up for a lavish pageant of welcome. The Envoy Malachite was due within two days.
A hovercraft picked Berenice up from the end of the skystreet and deposited her at an entrance hall some distance up the Palace face. Inside, the vaulted ceiling glittered with every gemstone known; for stone was more than a passion for Valan citizens, it was a source of exchange with distant planets which had exhausted their own supplies of various rare minerals.
The mineral potential of Shora's untapped seabed was one reason for a new interest in that moon. Besides that, of course, there were the medicines and perfumes, and above all the fine seasilk that the councilors and courtiers wore; even now, they passed Berenice in their long talars and sweeping trains, such lengths of the gorgeous stuff that little
servitors like tortoises had to crawl in their wake to prevent the trains from snagging and tangling. Seasilk and mineralsâthat was what Shora meant to Talion.
The doors to Talion's office whined and parted and slowly swept inward. Talion sat as always behind his desk, a thickset man with tired gray hair and eyes nested in wrinkles. “At last,” he said, “the Lady of Hyalite. We were just speaking of the Shoran question.”
To her surprise, Talion was not alone. From a swivel chair at his right rose General Realgar, to whom Berenice had been engaged for over a year now. Realgar said quickly, “Don't look so startled, my dear. I came here on other business entirely.”
“Promotion,” said Talion. “To Commander of the Protectoral Guard.”
“Well, congratulations.” So the old commander who had let Pyrrhopolis get out of hand had finally been retired, and just in time for Malachite's appearance. Realgar had been aiming for the top post ever since his decisive victory over the separatists in Sardis.
Realgar bowed in acknowledgment. The immaculate shoulder line of his uniform swooped to the tips like the edge of a crescent moon. His fair complexion and straight auburn hair marked him as a Sard, and he still wore the orange-brown sardonyx of his former post.
Berenice smiled, genuinely proud of his honor and glad for what she knew it meant to him. There was a gleam of triumph, too, to think that, unconventional as she was, she had managed to captivate the second most powerful man in Valedon. Of course, she reminded herself, it did help to be Councilor Hyalite's daughter. Perhaps her father had clinched the promotion. “So long as it's not Shora you're bound for next, you have my blessing.”
His mouth lengthened slightly, the closest to a smile that he would permit himself in public. “That's your project, not mine.” He accepted her work on the moon, much as she put up with his tours in the field. “Shora is hardly a military concern,” he added.
“And let's keep it that way.” Talion pointed to a chair that had risen out of the floor.
Berenice seethed inwardly while she took the offered seat. She did not need such a crude reminder of the precarious position of her Sharer friends. If only she could get an audience with Envoy Malachite, Talion would sing another tune.
“Lady Berenice,” Talion began, “for three years now you have kept us informed of what goes on among these Sharers.”
“
And informed
them
of Valan objectives.” A devil's bargain it was, but someone had to do it. Better her than Talion's coldblooded agents, who had failed in any case to make much sense of Sharer ways. Berenice, however, had correctly forecast both the crisis in the stone trade and the mysterious “environmental” problems that plagued Valan fisheries on the moon. For herself, she could only hope to keep up a dialogue between minds so divergent that any success seemed a miracle.
“Then why do they persistently
ignore
our objectives?” Talion's eyes accused her. “After keeping to themselves for decades, they now start turning up on Valedon to bring their troubles here. I banned them from our ships a month ago.”
“But what have they done, for Torr's sake?” Berenice gripped the arm of her chair. Surely Merwen and Usha at least were safe; she had “shared learning” with them personally.
Talion ticked off his fingers. “Vagrancy. Traffic without a stonesign. Illegal medical counsel. Spying for a foreign power. Slandering the Patriarch. Immoral cohabitation.”
“My lord,” she interjected, “surely the last chargeâ”
“Applies well enough. This is Valedon, my lady; we cannot let the customs of other planets undermine our social order. The same goes for indecent exposure and witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft?” Her glance appealed to Realgar for support, but he was watching Talion politely. “You did say âwitchcraft,' my lord?” she asked.
“They turn into ghosts,” Talion added with a straight face.
Not that again. Berenice was annoyed. “I must have sent you a dozen reports on the whitetrance phenomenonâ”