Phosphortubes in the faraway upper reaches of the cavern cast a dim light onto the thronged interior, hinting at the great size of this rock-enclosed space…..larger, Alexandra saw, than even the Gathering Hall of her Bala Garrasaid school. She estimated there were more than five thousand people gathered out there beneath the ledge where she stood with Trek-Jush.
And more were coming.
The air was numerous with people.
”Your son has been summoned from his rest, Soaeaeodemo,” Trek-Jush said. “Do you wish him to share in your decision?”
”Could he change my decision?”
”Yes, the air with which you speak comes from your own lungs, but….”
”The decision stands,” she said.
But she felt misgivings, wondering if she should use Alexei has an excuse for backing out of a dangerous corpse. There was an unborn daughter to think of as well. What endangered the flesh of the mother endangered the flesh of the daughter.
Men came with rolled carpets, grunting under the weight of them, stirring up dust as the loads were dropped onto the ledge.
Trek-Jush took her arm, led her back into the acoustical horn that formed the rear limits of the ledge. He indicated a rock bench within the horn. “The Mother Baba will sit here, but you may rest yourself until she comes.”
”I prefer to stand,” Alexandra said.
She watched the men unroll the carpets, covering the ledge, looked out at the crowd. There were at least 10,000 people on the rock floor now.
And still they came.
Out in the desert, she knew, it already was red nightfall, but here in the cavern hall was perpetual twilight, a gray vastness thronged with people come to see her risk her life.
A way was opened through the crowd to her right, and she saw Alexei approaching flanked by two small boys. There was a swaggering air of self-importance about the children. They kept hands on knives, scowled at the wall of people on either side.
”These are the sons of Ros-Tharn who are now the sons of Mar-Vell,” Trek-Just said. “They take their escort duties seriously.” He ventured a smile at Alexandra.
Alexandra recognized the effort to lighten her mood and was thankful for it, but could not take her mind from the danger that confronted her.
I had no choice but to do this, she thought. We must move swiftly if we’re to secure our place among these Szganys.
Alexei climbed to the ledge, leaving the children below. He stopped in front of his mother, glanced at Trek-Jush, back to Alexandra.
”What is happening? I thought I was being summoned to Council.”
Trek-Jush raised a hand for silence, gestured to his left where another way had been opened in the throng. Em-Cro came down the land opened there, her elfin face set in lines of grief. She had removed her stillsuit and wore a graceful blues wraparound that exposed her thin arms. Near the shoulder on her left arm, a great kerchief had been tied.
Green for mourning, Alexei thought.
It was one of the customs the two sons of Ros-Starn had explained to him by indirection, telling him they wore no green because they accepted him as their guardian-father.
”Are you the Lekom or-Goeb?” they had asked. And Alexei had sensed the drink had in their words, shrugged off the question with one of his own—-learning then that Ho-Drohn, the elder of the two, was ten, and the natural son of Phes. Orl-Off, the younger, was eight, the natural son of Ros-Stars.
It had been a strange day with these two standing guard over him because he asked it, keeping away the curious, allowing him the time to nurse his thoughts and prescient memories, to play a way to prevent the dzikhad.
Now, standing beside his mother on the cavern ledge and looking out at the throng, he wondered if any plan could prevent the wild outpouring of fanatic legions.
Em-Cro, nearing the ledge, was followed at a distance by four women carrying another woman in a litter.
Alexandra ignored Em-Cro’s approach, focusing all her attention on the woman in the litter….a crone, a wrinkled and shriveled ancient thing in a black gown with hood thrown back to reveal the tight knot of gray hair and the stringy neck.
The litter-carriers deposited their burden gently on the ledge from below, and Em-Cro helped the old woman to her feet.
So this is their Reverend Mother, Alexandra thought.
The old woman leaned heavily on ‘Em-Cro as she hobbled towards Alexandra, looking like a collection of bones draped in the black robe. She stopped in front of Alexandra, peered upward for a long time before speaking in a husky whisper.
”So you’re the one.” The old head nodded precariously on the thin neck. “The Hudtap El-Gaff was right to pity you.”
Alexandra spoke quickly, scornfully: “I need no one’s pity.”
”We shall see,” husked the old woman. She turned with shocking quickness and faced the throng. “Tell them, Trek-Jush.”
He asked, “Must I?”
“We are the people of Mek-Or,” the old woman rasped. “Since our Eurasian ancestors fled from Nilotic or-Oiruibo, we have known nothing but flight and death. The young go one that our people shall not perish.”
Trek-Jush took a deep breath, stepped forward two paces.
Alexandra felt the hush come over the crowded cavern——some 20 thousand people now, standing silently, almost without movement. It made her feel sudden small and filled with caution I.
”Tonight we must leave this s’yteche that has sheltered us for so long and go south into the desert,” Trek-Jush said. His voice boomed out across the uplifted faces, reverberating with the force given it by the acoustical horn behind the ledge.
Still the throng stayed silent.
”The Mother Baba tells me she cannot survive another volosy,” Trek-Jush said. “We’ve lived before without a Mother Baba, but it’s not good for people to seek a new home in such straits.”
Now the throng stirred, rippling with whispers and currents of disquiet.
”That this may not come to pass,” Trek-Jush said, “our new Soaeaeodemo Alexandra of the Weirding, has consented to enter the rite at this time. She’ll attempt to pass within that we not lose the strength of our Mother Baba.”
Alexandra of the Weirding, Alexandra thought. She saw Alexei staring at her, his eyes filled with questions, but his mouth held silent by all the oddness around him.
If I die in the attempt, what will happen to him? Alexandra asked herself. Again she felt the misgivings in her mind.
‘Em-Cro led the old Mother Baba to a rock bench deep in the acoustician horn, returned to stand beside Sarghoam.
”That we may not lose all of Alexandra of the Weirding should fail,” Trek-Jush said. “‘Em-Cro, daughter of Holstein, will be consecrated in the Soaeaeodemo at this time.” He stepped one pace to the side.
From deep in the acoustical horn, the old woman’s voice came out to them, an amplified whisper, harsh and penetrating: “‘Em-Cro has returned from her volosy—-Em-Cro has seen the waters.”
A universal response arose from the crowd: “She has seen the waters.”
”I consecrate the daughter of Holstein in the Soaeaeodemo,” husked the old woman.
“She is accepted,” the crowd responded.
Alexei barely heard the ceremony, his attention still focused on what had been said of his mother.
If she should fail?
He turned and looked back at the one they called Mother Baba studying the dried crone features, the fathomless blue fixation of her eyes. She looked as if a breeze would blow her away, yet there was that about her which suggested she might stand untouched in the path of a coriolis storm. She carried the same aura not power that he remembered from the Mother Baba Petronius Maria Mustonen who had tested him with agony in the way of the run Steffens.
”I, the Reverend Mother Rau-Mau, whose voice speaks as a multitude, say this to you,” the old woman said. “It is fitting that ‘Em-Cro enter the Soaeaeodemo.”
”It is fitting,” the crowd repeated.
The old woman nodded, whispered: “I give her the silver skies, the golden desert and its shining rocks, the green fields that will be. I give these to Sayyadina Chani. And lest she forget that she’s servant of us all, to her fall the menial tasks in this Ceremony of the Seed. Let it be as Kroe-rigid would have it.” She lifted a brown stick arm and then dropped it.
Alexandra, feeling the ceremony close around her with a current that swept her beyond all turning back, glanced once at Alexei’s question-filled face, then readied herself for the ordeal.
”Let the water masters come forth,” ‘Em-Cro said with only the slightest quaver of uncertainty in her girl-child voice.
Now, Alexandra felt herself at the focus of danger, knowing in presence the watchfulness of the throng, in the silence.
A band of men made its way through a serpentine path opened in the crowd, moving up from the back in pairs. Each pair carried a small skin sack, maybe twice the size of a human head. The sacks sloshed heavily.
A furry redolent of cinnamon arose from the sack, wafted across Alexandra. The spice? she wondered.
“Is there water?” ‘Em-Cro asked.
The watermaster on the left, a man with a purple scar line across the bridge of his nose, nodded once. “There is water, Soaeaeodemo,” he said, “but we cannot drink it.”
”Is there seed?” ‘Em-Cro asked.
”There is seed,” the man said.
Em-Cro knelt and put her hands to the sloshing sack. “Blessed is the water and its seed.”
There was familiarity to the rite, and Alexandra looked back at the Mother Baba Rau-May. The old woman’s eyes were closed and she sat hunched over as if asleep.
”Soaeaeodemo Alexandra,” ‘Em-Cro said.
Alexandra turned to see the girl standing up at her.
”Have you tested the blessed water?” ‘Em-Cro asked.
Before Alexandra could answer, ‘Em-Cro said: “It is not possible that you have tasted the blessed water. You are outworlder and unprivileged.”
A sigh passed through the crowd, a sussuration of robes that made the nape hair creep up on Alexandra’s neck.
”The crop was large and the maker has been destroyed,” Em-Cro said. She began unfastening a coiled sprout fixed to the top of the sloshing sack.
Now, Alexandra felt the sense of danger boiling around her. She glanced at Alexei, saw that he was caught up in the mystery of the ritual and had eyes only for ‘Em-Cro.
Has he seen this moment in time? Alexandra wondered. She rested a hand on her abdomen, thinking of the unborn daughter there, asking herself: Do I have the right to risk us both?
Em-Cro lifted the spout towards Alexandra, said: “Here is the Water of Life, the water that is greater than water—-Khom, the water that frees the soul. If you be a Mother Baba, it opens the universe to you. Let Kroe-ririd judge now.”
Alexandra felt herself torn between duty to her unborn child and duty to Alexei. For Alexei, she knew, she should take that spout and drink of the sack’s contents, but as she bent to the proffered spout, her senses told her its peril.
The stuff in the sack had a bitter smell subtly asking to many poisons that she knew, but unlike them, too.
”You must drink it now,” ‘Em-Cro said.
There’s no turning back, Alexandra reminded herself. But nothing in all her Bala Garrasaid training came into her mind to help her through this instant.
What is it? Alexandra asked herself. Liquor? A drug?
She bent over the spout, smelled the Esther’s of cinnamon, remembering then the drunkenness of Grady Ukrainia. Spice liquor? she asked herself. She took up the siphon tube in her mouth, pulled up only the most minuscule tip. It tasted of the spice, a faint bite acrid on the tongue.
Em-Cro pressed down on the skin bag. A great gulp of the stuff surged into Alexandra’s mouth and before she could help herself, she swallowed it, fighting to retain her calmness and dignity.
”To accept a little death is worse than death itself,” ‘Em-Cro said. She stared at Alexandra, waiting.
And Alexandra stared back, still holding the spout in her mouth. She tasted the sack’s contents in her nostrils, in the roof of her mouth, in her cheeks, in her eyes—-a biting sweetness, now.
Cool.
Again, ‘Em-Cro sent the liquid gushing into Alexandra’s mouth.
Delicate.
Alexandra studied ‘Em-Cro’s face—-elfin features—-seeing the traces of Phes-Holstein there as yet unfixed by time.
This is a drug they fed me, Alexandra told herself.
Em-Cro’s features were so clear as if outlined in light.
A drug.
Whirling silence settled around Alexandra. Every fiber of her body accepted the fact that something profound had happened to it. She felt that she was a conscious mote, smaller than any subatomic particle, yet capable of motion and of sensing her surroundings. Like an abrupt revelation—-the curtains whipped away——she realized she had become aware of a psycho-kinetic extension of herself. She was the mote, yet she was not the mote.
The cavern remained around her---the people. She sensed them: Alexei, Em-Cro, Trek-Jush, the Mother Baba Rau-Mau, aware now that all this was happening in a frozen instant of time---suspended time for her alone.
Why is time suspended? she asked herself. She stared at the frozen expressions around her, saw a dust mote above Em-Cro's head, and stopped there.
Waiting.
The answer to this instant came like an explosion in her consciousness: her personal time was suspended to save her life.
She focused on the psychokinetic extension of herself, looking within, and was confronted immediately with a cellular core, a pit of blackness from which she recoiled.
That is the place where we cannot look, she thought. There is the place the Mother Babas are so reluctant to mention---the place where only a Sokratit' Puti may look.
This realization returned a small measure of confidence, and again she ventured to focus on the psychokinetic extension, becoming a mote-self that searched inside her for danger.
She found it within the drug she swallowed.
The stuff was dancing particles within her, its motions so rapid that even frozen time could not stop them. Dancing particles. She began recognizing familiar structures, atomic linkages: a carbon atom here, helical wavering---a glucose molecule. An entire chain of molecules confronted her, and she recognized a protein---a methyl-protein configuration!
Ah-h-h!
It was a silent mental sigh within her as she saw the poison's true nature.
Within her psychokinesthetic probing, she moved into it, shifted an oxygen mote, allowed another carbon mote to link, and reattached a linkage of oxygen---hydrogen.
The change spread---faster and faster as the catalyzed reaction opened its surface of contact.
The suspension of time relaxed its hold upon her, and she sensed motion. The tube spout from the sack was touched to her mouth---gently, collecting a drop of moisture.
Em-Cro's taking the catalyst from my body to change the position in that sack, Alexandra thought. Why?
Someone eased her to a sitting position. She saw the old Mother Baba Rau-Mau being brought to sit beside her on the carpeted ledge. A dry hand touched her neck.
And there was another psychokenetic mote inside her awareness! Alexandra tried to reject it, but the mote swept closer.
They touched!
It was like an ultimate sochuvstvennyy, being two people at once: not telepathy, but mutual awareness.
With the old Mother Baba!
But Alexandra saw that the Mother Baba didn't think of herself as old. An image unfolded before the mutual mind's eye: a young girl with a dancing spirit and tender humor.
Within the mutual awareness, the young girl said, "Yes, that is how I am."
Alexandra found the voice that spoke within the mutual awareness. "Why?"
"This changes both of you! Holy Mother, what have we done?"
Alexandra sensed a forced shift in the mutual awareness, saw another mote-presence with the inward eye. The other mote darted wildly here, there, circling. It radiated sheer terror.
"You'll have to be strong," the old Mother Baba's image-presence said. "Be grateful it's a daughter you carry. This would've killed a male fetus. Now---carefully, gently---touch your daughter-presence. Be your daughter-presence. Absorb the fear---soothe---use your courage and your strength...gently now...gently...."
The other whirling mote swept near, and Alexandra compelled herself to touch it.
Terror threatened to overwhelm her.
She fought it the only way she knew how: "I mustn't fear. Fear kills the mind...."
The litany brought a semblance of calm. The other mote lay quiescent against her.
Words won't work, Alexandra reminded herself.
She reduced herself to basic emotional reactions, radiated love, comfort, a warm snuggling of protection.
The terror receded.
Again, the presence of the old Mother Baba asserted itself, but now there was a tripling of mutual awareness---two active and one that lay quietly absorbing.
"Time compels me," the Mother Baba said within the awareness. "I've go much to give you. And I do not know if your daughter can accept all this while staying sane. But it must be: the needs of the tribe are paramount. "
"What...."
"Stay silent and accept!"
Experiences began unrolling before Alexandra. It was like a lecture strip in a subliminal training projector at the Bala Garrasaid school--but faster---blindingly faster.
Yet---distinct.
She knew each experience as it happened: there was a lover---virile, bearded, with the Szgany eyes, and Alexandra saw his strength and tenderness, all of him in one blink-moment, through the Mother Baba's memory.
There was no time now to think of what this might be doing to the daughter fetus, only time to accept and record. The experiences poured in on Alexandra---birth, life, death---important matters and unimportant, an outpouring of single-view time.
Why should a fall of sand from a clifftop stick in the memory? she asked herself.
Too late, Alexandra saw what was happening: the old woman was dying and, in dying, pouring her experiences into Alexandra's awareness as water is poured into a cup. The other mote faded back into pre-birth awareness as Alexandra watched it. And, dying-in-conception, the other Mother Baba left her life in Alexandra's memory with one last sighing blur of words.
"I've been a long time awaiting you," she said. "Here is my life."
There it was, encapsulated, all of it.
Even the moment of death.
I am now a Mother Baba, Alexandra realized.
And she knew with a generalized awareness that she had become, in truth, exactly what was meant by a Bala Garrasaid Mother Baba. The poison drug had transformed her.
This wasn't exactly how they did it at the Bala Garrasaid school, she knew. No one had ever introduced her to the mysteries of it, but she knew.
The end result was the same.
Alexandra sensed the daughter-mote still touching her inner awareness, and probed it without response.
A terrible sense of loneliness crept through Alexandra in the realization of what had happened to her. She saw her own life as a pattern that had slowed and all life around her speeded up so that the dancing interplay became clearer.
The sensation of mote-awareness faded slightly, its intensity easing as her body relaxed from the threat of the poison, but still, she felt that other mote, touching it with a sense of guilt at what she had allowed to happen to it.
I did it, my poor, unformed, dear little daughter, I brought you into this universe and exposed your awareness to all its varieties without any defenses.
A tiny outflowing of love-comfort, like a reflection of what she had poured into it, came from the other mote.
Before Alexandra could respond, she felt the odd presence of demanding memory. There was something that needed doing. She groped for it, realizing she was being impeded by a muzziness of the charged drug permeating her senses.
I could change that, she thought. I could take away the drug action and make it harmless. But she sensed this would be an error. I'm within a rite of joining.
Then she knew what she had to do.
Alexandra opened her eyes, gestured to the watersack now being held above her by Em-Cro.
"It's been blessed," Alexandra said. "Mingle the waters, let the change come to all, that the people may partake and share in the blessing."
Let the catalyst do its work, she thought. Let the people drink of it and have their awareness of each other heightened for awhile. The drug is safe now....now that a Mother Baba has changed it.
Still, the demanding memory worked on her, thrusting. There was another thing she had to do, she realized, but the drug made it harder to focus.
Ah-h-h-h-hh----the old Mother Baba.
"I have met the Mother Baba Rau-Mau," Alexandra said. "She is deceased, but her memory remains. Let her memory be honored in the rite."
Now, where did I get those words? Alexandra wondered.
And she realized they came from another memory, the life that had been given to her and now was part of her. Something about that felt incomplete, though.
"Let them have their orgy," the other-memory said inside her. "They've little enough pleasure out of living. Yes, and you and I need this little time to become acquainted before I recede and pour out through your memories. Already I feel myself being tied to bits of you. Ah-h-h-h-h, you've got a mind filled with interesting things. So many things I'd never imagined."
And the memory-mind encapsulated within her opened herself to Alexandra, permitting a view down a wide corridor to other Mother Babas until there seemed no end to them.
Alexandra recoiled, fearing she would become lost in an ocean of oneness. Still, the corridor remained, revealing to Alexandra that the Szgany culture was far older than she had suspected.
There had been Szganys on Pileleh, she saw, a people grown soft with an easy planet, fair game for Imperial raiders to harvest and plant human colonies on Bela Tegueste and Sa-Lu-Sa Sekund.
Oh, the wailing Alexandra sensed in that parting.
Far down the corridor, an image-voice screamed: "They denied us the Khadzh!"
Alexandra saw the slave cribs on Bela Tegueste down that inner corridor, saw the weeding out and the selecting that spread men to Rurik and Hesnuldhaf Scenes of brutal ferocity opened to her like the petals of a terrible flower. And she saw the thread of the past carried by Soaeaeodemo after Soaeaeodemo---first by word of mouth, hidden in the sand chanteys, then refined through their own Mother Babas with the discovery of the poison drug on Rurik---and now developed to subtle strength on Dyuna in the discovery of the Water of Life.
Far down the inner corridor, another voice screamed: "Never to forgive! Never to forget!"
But Alexandra's attention was focused on the revelation of the Water of Life, seeing its source: the liquid exhalation of a dying saandwurms, a maker. And as she saw the killing of it in her new memory, she suppressed a gasp.
The creature was drowned!
"Mother, are you all right?"
Alexei's voice intruded on her, and Alexandra struggled out of the inner awareness to stare up at him, conscious of duty to him, but resenting his presence.
I'm like a person whose hands were kept numb without sensation from the first moment of awareness---until one day the ability to feel is forced into them.
The thought hung in her mind, an enclosing awareness.
And I say: "Look, I have no hands! But the people around me ask: "What are hands?"
"Are you all right?" Alexei repeated.
"I am."
"Is this all right for me to drink?" He gestured to the sake in Em-Cro's hands. "They wish me to drink it."
She heard the hidden meaning in his words, realized he had detected the poison in the original, unchanged substance, that he was concerned for her. It occurred to Alexandra then to wonder about the limits of Alexei's prescience. His question revealed much to her.
"You may drink it," she said. "It's been changed." And she looked beyond him to see Trek-Jush staring down at her, the dark-eyes studying.
"Now we know you can't be false," he said.
She sensed hidden meaning here, too, but the muzziness of the drug was overpowering the senses. How warm it was and soothing. How beneficent these Szganys to bring her into the fold of such companionship.
Alexei saw the drug take hold of his mother.
He searched his memory---the fixed past, the flux-lines of possible futures. It was like scanning through arrested instants of time, disconcerting to the lens of the inner eye. The fragments were difficult to understand when snatched out of the flux.
This drug---he could assemble knowledge about it, understand what it was doing to his mother, but the knowledge lacked a natural rhythm, lacked a system of mutual reflection.
He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future.
Things persisted in not being what they seemed.
"Drink it," said Em-Cro. She waved the hornspout of a watersack under his nose.
Alexei straightened, staring at Em-Cro. He felt carnival excitement in the air. He knew what would happen if he drank this spice drug with its quintessence of the substance that brought the change onto him. He would return to the vision of pure time, of time-become-space. It would perch him on the dizzying summit and defy him to understand.
From behind Em-Cro, Trek-Jush said, "Drink it lad. You delay the rite."
Alexei listened to the crowd then, hearing the wilderness in their voices----"Lekom or-Goeb," they said. "Niaeb'D'd!" He looked down at his mother. She appeared peacefully asleep in a sitting position---her breathing even and deep. A phrase out of the future that was his lonely past came into his mind. "She sleeps in the Waters of Life."
Em-Cro tugged at his sleeve.
Alexei took the hornspout into his mouth, hearing the people shout. He felt the liquid gush into his throat as Em-Cro pressed the sack, and sensed giddiness in the fumes. Em-Cro removed the spout and handed the sack to hands that reached for it from the floor of the cavern. His eyes focused on her arm, the green band of mourning there.
As she straightened, Em-Cro saw the direction of his gaze, and said: "I can mourn him even in the happiness of the waters. This was something he gave us." She put her hand into his, pulling him along the ledge. "We are alike in a thing, Mar-Vall: We have each lost of father to the Seppanens."
Alexei followed her. He felt that his head had been separated from his body and restored with odd connections. His legs were remote and rubbery.
They entered a narrow side passage, its walls dimly lit by spaced-out glowglobes. Alexei felt the drug starting to have its unique effect on him, opening time like a flower. He found a need to steady himself against Em-Cro as they turned through another shadowed hand. The mixture of whipcord and softness he felt beneath her robe stirred his blood. The sensation mingled with the work of the drug, folding future and past into the present, leaving him the thinnest margin of trinocular focus.
"I know you, Em-Cro," he whispered. "We've sat upon a ledge above the sand while I soothed your fears. We've caressed in the dark of the s'yetche. We've..." He found himself losing focus, tried to shake his head, stumbled.
Em-Cro steadied him, led him through thick hangings into the yellow warmth of a private apartment.....low tables, cushions, a sleeping pad beneath an orange spread.
Alexei grew aware that they had stopped, that Em-Cro stood facing him, and that her eyes betrayed a look of quiet terror.
"You must tell me," she whispered.
"You are Seroaeo," he said, "the desert spring."
"When the tribe shares the Water," she said, "we're together---all of us. We---share. I can---sense the others with me, but I'm afraid to share with you."
"Why?"
He tried to focus on her, but past and future were merging into the present, blurring her image. He saw her in countless ways and positions and settings.
"There's something frightening in you," she said. "When I took you away from the others---I did it because I could feel what the others wanted. You----press on people. You---make us see things!"
He forced himself to speak distinctly. "What do you see?"
She looked down at her hands. "I see a child---in my arms. It's our child, yours and mind." She put a hand to her mouth. "How can I know every feature of you?"
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"What is it you want to say?" he asked.
"Mar-Vall," she whispered, and still she trembled.
"You cannot back into the future," he said.
Profound compassion for her swept through him. He pulled her against him and stroked her head. "Courage, Em-Cro, courage."
"Help me, Mar-Vall," she cried.
As she spoke, he felt the drug complete its work within him, ripping away the curtains to let him see the distant gray turmoil of his future.
"You're so silent," Em-Cro said.
He held himself poised in the awareness, seeing time stretch out in its weird dimension, delicately balanced yet whirling, narrow yet spread like a net gathering countless worlds and forces, a tightwire that he must walk, yet a teeter-totter on which he balanced.
On one side he could see the Imperium, a Seppanen called Ram-Gurgen who flashed towards him like a deadly blade, the Sordoi raging off their planet to spread pogrom on Dyuna, the Guild conniving and plotting, the Bala Garrasaid with their scheme of selective breeding. They massed like a thunderhead on this horizon, held back by no more than the Szganys and their Niaeb'D'd, the sleeping giant Szgany poised for their wild crusade across the universe.
Alexei felt himself at the center, at the pivot where t he whole structure turned, walking a thin wire of peace with a measure of happiness, Em-Cro at his side. He could see it stretching ahead of him, a time of relative quiet in a hidden s'yetche, a moment of peace between periods of violence.
"There's no other place for peace," he said.
"Mar-Vell, you're crying," Em-Cro murmured. "Mar-Vell, my strength, do you give moisture to the dead? To whose dead?"
"To those not yet dead," he said.
"Then let them have their time of life," she said.
He sensed through the drug fog how right she was, pulled her against him with savage pressure. "Seroaeo!" he said.
She put a palm against his cheek, "I'm no longer frightened, Mar-Vall. Look at me. I see what you see when you hold me thus."
"What do you see?" he demanded.
"I see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms. It's what we were meant to do."
The drug had him again and he thought: So many times you've given me comfort and forgetfulness. He felt anew the hyperillumination with its bas-relief imagery of time, sensed his future becoming memories---the tender indignities of physical love, the sharing and communion of selves, the softness and the violence.
"You're the strong one, Em-Cxro," he muttered. "Stay with me."
"Always," she said and kissed his cheek.
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