Of course, Laurent realized, what was real or unreal would be determined in the years to follow. Falling in love was never genuine in itself; what had happened in these four days would be given meaning over their decades apart. Like some figment of the quantum, love was made true only when measured against the rest of the world.
The sled was slowing, and Laurent Zai sighed softly to himself. Thinking of the future, he had missed the present.
Nara kissed him and stood. They were at the blind end of the rift.
"What now? Climb out?" He looked back up the trail at the kilometers-distant house, just visible on its mountain peak. It would take hours.
Nara shook her head and pointed to a patch of icicles, which shattered as something metal rumbled behind it. A door opened, and warm air rushed out carrying the scent of jasmine.
"Just through the tea gardens, I think," she said. "I hope you don't mind riding in a drone elevator."
Laurent smiled. "So we can go again?"
"Of course. As many times as you like."
Something broke inside him, but the fissure didn't open onto the familiar well of sadness. Laurent found himself laughing hard, almost hysterically as he lifted the sled. Nara smiled quizzically, waiting as he gathered himself.
When Laurent found his breath, the echo of his laughter still played at the edge of hearing. It was a wonder he hadn't brought an avalancheVdown upon them.
He felt a small tear already freezing in the corner of one eye.
"Laurent?"
"I was just thinking, Nara: You have a very clever house."
Part 3
WAR PRIZE When a single nation's armies are ordered against each other, all is lost.
--ANONYMOUS 167
Dead Woman
The Other came to her talking of darkness.
There were no words, just gray shapes issuing from a maw, inside a cave whose blackness invoked faerie lights upon her optic nerve. So dark that whispers rode the ears. Her blindness made things calm and rich.
Rich, but so many things were missing now. The keen edges of desire, the pleasures of flesh, all the appetites of drama, expectation and dread, hope and disappointment--all the anguished terrain of uncertainty had been flattened into an arid plane. And soon, the Other explained, she would entirely forget the phantom shapes of those extinct emotions.
It led her toward a bloodred horizon.
She didn't know where they were headed, but she felt no worry. The Other explained that worry was one of those missing things.
The dead woman took a deep, calm breath. No more fear, ever again.
The red horizon opened up--like the slit of opening one's eyes.
"Rana Harter," a voice said.
The woman at the end of her bed was short and had the gray skin of the dead. She wore an Imperial uniform, the dully glinting, gun-metal robe of the Political Apparatus.
"Yes. I know who I am."
She nodded. "My name is Adept Harper Trevim."
"Honored Mother," she said. The Other had prompted her with the proper form of address. (The Other lived inside her like an organ, like a software guide, like a subtle form of second sight.)
"You will live forever." Rana nodded. Then a moment of disorientation troubled her, as she wondered if she should be joyful. Immortality was the highest reward her society could bestow on any citizen, an honor that had seemed utterly out of her humble grasp. But joy was such a gross emotion. Instead, Rana Harter closed her eyes again and regarded the subtle beauty of eternity, which had the pleasures of a geometrical simple, the ray of her lifetime extending indefinitely.
But the question lingered: Why was she--a militia worker, a lower-school dropout, and a recent traitor--one of the honored dead?
"How am I risen, Mother?"
"By the action of the symbiant."
A trivial answer, using the outsiders' word for the Other.
"I was never elevated, Mother."
"But you died at the hands of the enemy, Rana."
"I died in the arms of my lover," she answered. The self-damning words surprised her in a dull way, but it seemed that it was not within the dead to lie.
The honored mother blinked.
"You were taken hostage, Rana Harter. A terrible experience. The minds of the living are fragile, and under stress they are bent with strange emotions. You suffered from a weakness called Stockholm Syndrome. Your 'love' for your captor was a perversion caused by the t~~* ,,( Aa-stu -> nooH to hpnp nn to something, anything. But now you 237 have faced death and crossed it, and your mind is clear. Those feelings will pass." The adept brought her hands together. "Perhaps they have passed already, and you spoke out of habit."
Rana Harter narrowed her eyes. The Other prompted her to agree, but she found herself resisting. She remembered the avian precision of Herd's movements, the sure violet of her eyes, the alien pathways of her mind.
"We shall see, Mother."
The dead woman nodded, unperturbed.
"You will discover your old life slipping away, Rana. And ultimately, you will be glad to be free of it."
The honored mother held out a hand, and Rana grasped it. Tre-vim helped her rise into a seated position, and the bed re-formed to support her back. Her muscles felt different, strangely supple and free of tension, but a bit weak. Rana looked around the room. The walls were a deep, rich color, full of shapes and suggestive motions, immanent with potential, covered with old and pure ideas.
She realized that this eloquent surface was painted with the color she had once called black. It was more than a color now.
The two of them were silent for a time that could have been a minute or an hour, or longer. Then the honored mother spoke again.
"Rana Harter, let me ask you some questions."
"Certainly, Mother."
The adept pressed her palms together.
"In your time with the Rixwoman, did you ever see signs of... another presence?"
"You mean Alexander."
Her eyebrows arched. "Alexander?"
"The compound mind, Mother. It chose a name from the history of Earth Prime. The founder of a great empire."
"Ah, yes. He died young, I believe."
Rana shrugged, a gesture of millimeters among the dead. Trevim looked pleased, as if she were already making unexpected progress.
"The Apparatus has reason to suspect that this entity possessed certain critical information."
Rana looked up at the black ceiling. "Alexander is information. All the data on Legis."