EARTH DREAMS


Prologue

This is a tale of the pivotal days of the Kerrion-
led Consortium, of the changing of the guard outside the
citadel of power.

When Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion, second surviving son
of the house of Kerrion and the cartel Kerrion, came
home to ancestral Earth, disgraced—a lowly proconsul
charged with the impossible task of bringing the deter-
minedly rebellious primitives of Earth into his society as
civilized citizens—he forbade his wife, Shebat, the heir ap-
parent, to accompany him.

But she came upon her own initiative, piloting her own
spongespace cruiser, Kerrion Experimental Vehicle 134
Marada, forsaking the administrative sphere Draconis,
where she was consul, for the rocky hills where she was
raised. For Shebat was born into Earthly destitution and
Earthly superstition, and imagined herself an enchantress
until Chaeron s half brother Marada—now consul general
of Kerrion space—had chanced upon her and spirited her
away into a universe which Kerrions ruled from great plat-
forms skewed among the stars. Adopted into the Kerrion
family for political reasons by its patriarch, she had be-
come a spongespace pilot, a dream dancer, a fugitive, a
revolutionary, and at last heir apparent and Draconis
consul.

When she put her cruiser into orbit and without so much

VI JANET MORRIS

as a greeting descended into the wilderness that was Earth,
Chaeron could do little but go planetside personally to
seek her out: she commanded her own cruiser, and all its
prodigious intelligence; she was afflicted with the madness
all pilots contract; though they were man and wife, it was
a marriage he had forced on her through blackmail and
guile while still he strove to become heir apparent, himself.

When he found her, he strove to watch his tongue: she
outranked him.

And he was not unaware that she might easily bear him
a grudge. . . .

Chapter One

Far back from the cave of the oracle who was
called Shebat the Twice Risen, five mounted enchanters
waited amid a stand of trees, lounging in their saddles
trapped with gold. Their fearsome black steeds cropped
grass that greened their bits and rolled blue, wicked eyes
at the sixth, riderless horse, who grazed by the cavern's
very mouth.

At first sight of them, all the folk gathered to consult
the sybil had scattered to the winds, robes hiked up,
switching their oxen dementedly while their toddlers
clutched the wagonboards and youths trotted quickly be-
side complaining wheels.

It made no difference that some enchanters now
worked their spells in the name of Kerrion and fought
those who had ruled Earth under the Orrefors banner for
over two hundred years. Innocents died daily while the
mages warred. And tonight was Halloween, no time to
attract the notice of sorcerers. So, despite the fame and
elusiveness of the oracle (come again among them as it
had been whispered by the prophets that she would), the
people had fled—all but a scout who hid high above the
cave.

From behind a sheltering boulder, the youth whose
face and arms were smeared with mud and browned with
weather had watched while one enchanter rode straight

2                 JANET MORRIS

up to the cave, dismounted, and strode within. Whatever
the hated opressors wanted with the people's oracle,
boded ill. Cluny Pope's commander would not be pleased
to hear that evil had befallen the seeress whom he had
marched his men far out of their way to consult. With
painstaking care the scout scrabbled back among the
rocks until he could round the ridgetop. Out of sight, no
longer fretful that a dislodged stone might give him away,
he sprinted for his pony tethered in the pines.

"All speed, horse," he urged it, his seat not fully
gained before he reined it about and off toward his
band's encampment. Those heroes, from south of Troy,
from west of Ilhaca, from every family in New York who
remembered honor, would not fail to rally to so desper-
ate a cause.

To Chaeron Ptolemy Ken-ion, stepping out of the
ground-to-space multidrive on Earth had been like step-
ping into antiquity. Finding his wife, Shebat, dispensing
portents from a cave like Delphi's long-vanished
priestesses only heightened his sense of the illusory. At
any moment, it seemed, she would pull out a sprig of bay
leaves, shake it at him, chew one, and tell him his
destiny. . . .

But no, it was A.D. 2251 and he was here to uplift the
masses, in default of which task he could never return to
far Draconis, stars away. His exile was virtually com-
plete; his wife need not share it.

Yet there, across a low-burning fire, she sat, in a cowl
and madonna's smile. She had thrown back her woolen
hood. Her eyes burned like charcoals through the cave's
shadows, forcing darkness back though the fire grew no
higher.

Chaeron said, "Why did you choose to come here in
secret? It could have been a dangerous move, shipping
into an embattled space like this one without even identi-
fying yourself to the Stump's traffic authority. And they
do not love me, my new subordinates. Up there," he let
his eyes flash heavenward, where beyond ridge and sky
the Stump and its ring of subsatellites hung in orbit,
"things are little better than here."

"That is why my cruiser advised me come in unob-

EARTH DREAMS

3

trusively and unannounced, take a low space-anchor, and
see what could be seen. The Marada," she spoke her
spacefaring vessel's name with affection akin to love,
"was concerned. So much activity, up there. So much
construction. What are you doing, Chaeron?"

In answer, he pulled out a scrambler, activated it, and
set the unfolded V-shaped unit between them. "There."
He smiled his patrician smile. Then: "I am jettisoning the
Stump. It is worthless—worse, dangerous. It is no better
than a museum of a habitational sphere. And so many
systems on it went down in the upheaval connected with
its transfer into Kerrion hands that it's more economical
to scrap it. By the end of the next month, the platform
Acheron will be operational; during the month after that,
I will move the entire one hundred forty thousand inhabi-
tants di the Stump over there. Then, for the first time in
six months, I will be able to get a good night's sleep."

"And the Stump?" Shebat, born of Earth, murmured,
her eyes on the pocket-scrambler, indicative of Chaeron's
need to preclude any penetration of their security,
though they spoke together under tons of ridge.

"The Stump? My tugs will tow it out of orbit, aim it
straight at the sun. You cannot imagine how much I de-
test that platform. It is more corrupt than antiquated,
more contemptible than outmoded. I have got to sepa-
rate these Orrefors personnel whom I have inherited
from those reminders of their past which define them. I
did not expect them to become instantly Kerrions, simply
by proclamation, and they have not disappointed me. Do
you understand? Things are very precarious here."

She merely stared at him, owl-eyed.

"I must confess that I am wondering whether you are
here, as you say, for love of your people—and of course,
of my inimitable person—"—he bowed where he sat, a
wry caricature of his courtly Kerrion self—"or because by
the letter of our long-standing agreement you are ready
to claim this world as your personal property. Although
technically you are entitled—"

"Chaeron, I am here because I wish to be here. To
help, nothing more. I signed every release that crossed
my desk while I was acting Draconis consul: if you bank-
rupt us both, it will be in a good cause. And we will still

4

JANET MORRIS

have all which our eyes can now survey. Do not think
that I would turn upon you." Her piquant, heart-shaped
face was somber. "1 will gladly give you everything I
have, or ever will have, except the title to my cruiser.
This one thing, never ask of me. Short of it, I wish only
to stay here with you and build what you are building. I
told you—it is what I have wanted for us ever since your
half brother spirited me off among the stars."

He laughed then, and something invisible in him
eased. "I will never, ever, ask you for the Marada." Did
the slightest shiver course his flesh at the mention of that
name which was also his half brother's name—the name
of Kerrion space's presiding consul general, who had
banished him here?

"Let us slate it into the record," she proposed, eyeing
the scrambler, suspicious of him because he employed it.

When he had folded up the scrambler, they repeated
their agreement, Shebat saying first, "Slate" and after-
ward, "End, slate."

Five thousand miles above their heads, the worried
spongespace cruiser Marada, empty but ever watchful,
made a record of the pact between his pilot/owner Shebat
and her husband, who for a time had used a scrambler to
defeat the cruiser's benign surveillance. The Marada had
not been able to dissuade Shebat from coming here, as
he had not been able to prevent her from going
groundside, alone, where even his prodigious abilities of-
fered his beloved pilot little protection. Twenty thousand
additional miles distant, Chaeron's orbital data pool
made its own entry, neither concerned nor comprehend-
ing. The reaffirmation of their bond thus slated into legal
being, both humans let their mind-actuated links with
their sources lapse, sure that should they need them fur-
ther, only a subvocalized code was necessary to connect
them again with mechanical intelligence, as men through-
out the universe used this attunement of mind to com-
puter to extend their rule over a multitude of stars.

Then, as neither had wanted, they found themselves
staring, wordless, at one another. Chaeron—seeing a
gaze come over Shebat that was infernally intelligent and
somehow inward, full of cruisers and her illusion of magi-
cal powers so that she seemed to grow tall and numinous

EARTH DREAMS                              5

and from her eyes reflected firelight glowed—shivered,
thinking: /'// never manage to get through this without a
quarrel, without worse than that, what with her hatred for
my pilot and her dreams for Earth I can never make true.
If only my father hadn't given her that cruiser ... /or
good reason is it said that all pilots are mad.

And Shebat, returning his stare in kind, wondered
when it would come—when he would deride her enchant-
ments and sneer at her primitive origins, while seeking to
see if any star-bom superciliousnsss yet rested in his
eyes, which could not have failed to mark the disarray
into which her homeworld had fallen. And she sought
any trace of guilt there, for she was sure he felt none
over the fact that his mother and half brother had con-
spired to murder Shebat's instructor in the arts of pilo-
try—her "master," David Spry; the first thing she had
done when he had come striding into her cave all Kerrion
and arrogant was tell him that cruisers' intelligence ac-
cused his mother of Spry's murder, and he had betrayed
no surprise. If what she feared was so, and he had
known, or even suspected, she could never, ever forgive
him—never lie with him again. And she would have to
guess eternally at the truth of it, for Chaeron was past-
master of duplicity, and canny enough to know how she
must feel. As man and wife, they had never been success-
ful, she told herself; what kept them at the pretense of it
was the simple fact that both of them were constitu-
tionally incapable of admitting defeat in any matter what-
soever, though she had been told by pilots, often enough,
that success in a fleshly union was impossble for one who
had made the cruiser/pilot bond his own.

"And what, now, shall I give you in return?" he asked,
to break the awkward silence come between two who had
given much for one another, on principle, yet on princi-
ple could not trust each other. "Will you come up to the
Stump and be a wife to me? Or to New Chaeronea, the
test-city I am building in the north to dazzle the locals?
Would you like it there, on Mount Defiance? I will have
a temple made for you, get you a tripod. . . . You might
become a renowned sybil. ..."

"I am a renowned sybil," retorted Shebat, shaking her
head so that he saw a swatch of freshly shown curls swing

6

JANET MORRIS

against her cheek. "You will find that out soon enough, if
you stay in Bolen's town. As for what I want—give me a
hundred dream dancers; there are that many in prison at
space-end. Bring them to me and I will create a dream
dance which will predict and ensure that you can turn
Earth into a paradise. But no less: it will take that many
to secure Earth for us."

Chaeron let out an explosive breath. "It is nice to hear
you say 'us.' Though you have sorely wounded me with
this arbitrational attitude of yours, you shall have your
dream dancers, to do with as you choose." As he spoke,
he thought that surely it was from him she had learned
caution, suspicion, and worse. In three years of marriage,
he had got little joy of her. Fugitively, the past rushed in
upon him—all the errors they both had made, for which
he had repeatedly forgiven her, but never himself. At
least, with her words, the odd firelight and the ethereal
glow and the disturbing "presence" of her had receded:

she was merely a girl, simply his wife, back to normal
size. "In two months, you will have them," he promised,
unfolding his legs and rising. "For now, why not come
with me north to the city's site—?"

A whistle, harsh and shrill, interrupted them. When
she heard it, Shebat sprang up from behind her fire and
sought him, putting a finger to his lips to silence him;

while from without, Gahan Tempest, Shebafs intel-
ligencer/bodyguard, called their names. They hastened
toward the cave's mouth together, so nonplussed by the
urgency in Tempest's summons that it was not until a
long time later that Chaeron thought to ask Shebat how
that short lock of jet curls had come to be shorn, starting
all the trouble he hoped to avoid thereby. And it was to
be as long an interval until Shebat had the opportunity to
question Chaeron as to what other intiatives he was un-
dertaking that had necessitated the massive funding she
had sanctioned over the past months from her Draconis
office: Chaeron could have made Acheron out of solid
gold, for the kind of money he was spending—on some-
thing.

Right then, there was time only for running, then skid-
ding on loose stones, then blinking hard at sundogged
shadows.

EARTH DREAMS                              7

"What is this?" Shebat demanded, stepping past Tem-
pest, out into the light of waning day (though she knew
already: in her inner sight, a falcate profile shimmered,
rubbed a week's growth of beard on a heavy jaw. Yes,
she saw who awaited—on Earth, her enchantress's gifts
were no dream, but all too real).

Gahan Tempest stood leaning against the cave's arch
with arms folded, a disgusted look twisting his fish's
mouth. His voice came from behind her back, as her eyes
adjusted and she could count the mounted men in rough
clothing who milled before a stand of trees, just beyond
the evenly spaced rumps of five enchanters' horses:

"You've customers. Feel like prophesying?"

Shebat put her hands on her hips and stared at the
milling men until they pulled their horses up and as-
sumed a ragged formation. Behind her, she heard
Chaeron query Tempest: "Any danger?" and Tempest
reply, "Sir, a horse might be able to kick her before your
orbital hunter-killers could verify a target for take-out—
but not before the Marada can."

Shebat stopped listening; she had seen Chaeron's satel-
lite arrays, so much more intensive than those the Or-
refors bond had orbited about Earth. If her husband and
the intelligencer who had served his family for nearly
twenty years wished, they could destroy the whole of
Earth without ever stepping upon it—they did not need
to invoke her cruiser, as Tempest was hinting. Rather
than debate the matter, she walked at measured pace to-
ward the stand of trees, arms raised in salute and wel-
come, head high, a breeze stirring her curls.

Beyond the men and the trees, the sun was settling
over the Hudson, and the hilly plain sloping up into co-
balt mountains seemed grassed with fire. In two unmixed
groups, the enchanters and local horsemen trotted to-
ward her. She held her ground, waiting, conscious of
Chaeron's eyes on her, of a hawk circling off to her right,
of the cruiser Marada's thoughts brushing hers, assuring
her that Tempest was right: any who sought to do vio-
lence upon her person would not have time to accomplish

it.

Then the horses drew near, and a voice came out of
the gathering gloom, "Little mother, are you safe and

8

JANET MORRIS

sound?" It was a calm and whispery voice, laconic, and
its accent reminded her of unhappier days when she was
not "Shebat of the Enchanters' Fire" or "Shebat the
Twice Risen" or "Shebat Alexandra Kerrion" but only
Shebat, Bolen's drudge who had no say in anything, not
even her life.

"Dismount, petitioner, and see for yourself. AU of
you, get down, and tell me who has dared the sancitity of
these grounds. If you men are bent on evil, do it
elsewhere. This is a free zone, where enchanters do no
magic and soldiers make no war. You!" She pointed out
the man who had spoken. "I need no fire to see your
face, no cave to reveal you. Someday, you will look into
a stream and cower at what you see. Now, you wish to
hear that you are right, that you are fated. Well, make
no peace, man of Ithaca, and you will see that you are
not right, but truly fated. Follow your heart, instead, and
live to see your grandchild play."

The man stopped at his horses's head, stroking its
muzzle, "Who am I, sibyl? Tell me that if you see so
far," He was clad in a quilted leather vest and old trou-
sers. Like his men, he was bearded and unkempt. But his
squint told her stories and Shebat's tongue, oracular
beyond control in the face of this specter from her
Earthly past, named who he must be: "Child of a magical
bed, no Earthbom father spawned you, Jesse Thome.
But do not trade upon the trident."

The men with the flowing-haired fellow muttered, but
their leader, nodding, understood: he had had a trident
pendant, once; his mother had always told him he was an
enchanter's son. And, too, he had come a long and dan-
gerous way to consult the oracle, whose cult was bom in
the razing of Bolen's town and had grown fierce and
strong in the ensuing years. At worst, she was a clever
fraud; were it so, his men believed in her healings and
her auguries, and that made her useful enough. But
though he vaguely recalled a churlish child who swept
Bolen's floors and served his patrons, he too, wanted to
believe that one of his own kind had gone up to heaven
and returned, bearing the spark of salvation, which revo-
lution might fan into a blaze to scour all the Earth. His
war with enchanters, were she not what she seemed, was

9

EARTH DREAMS

foredoomed, merely a chance to choose a better death
than craven servitude's. Should she give a portent favor-
able to the ragged militia's cause, it would spur them on
to heroic effort, where now every one of them, himself
included, was resigned to eventual failure, shuffling on-
ward, uncaring toward that "better" death. In the face of
the casual ravaging of scattered human enclaves during
the year past while enchanters fought among themselves
for unfathomable advantage, the pastoral communities
subsisting on their sufferance had fared worse, not bet-
ter, than before. Seeking his sign, some word of endorse-
ment, he spoke too quickly, without making himself
clear: "Little mother, what will be the ending of this
war?"

"When the best of the Kerrions quarrel, Chaeron will
prevail on Earth." She answered the larger question, not
the part of it he had in mind.

The man silhouetted by the setting sun behind him
rubbed his nose. "And we?"

"Choose your side most carefully, but choose a side
you must." Shebat, mouth dry, heard the words coming
of their own accord from her suddenly unwieldy lips. Of
all men, Jesse Thorne came here to face her with ques-
tions no one should have to answer, now when her hus-
band stood looking on? Jesse Thome of her adolescent
dreams and hopeless fantasies, whose whispery voice and
calm deadly eyes had long been acknowledged the single
voice of freedom and the only eyes keen enough to track
revolution among the dispirited peasants of the north-
east? In Bolen's town and wherever men gathered in sim-
ilar inns to plot desperate resistance against indomitable
masters, Jesse's name and exploits were invoked for
guidance, for inspiration. When he came to your town,
the hale boys left with him,and old men straightened
their backs and walked sprightly, an almost-forgotten
glitter in their eyes. When he had come to Bolen's town,
even Bolen gave food and drink and shelter to him and
his without even mention of fee—or the danger of har-
boring fugitives with such rewards upon their heads. The
part of Shebat which longed to recapture the simplicity
and comforting ignorance of her previous life here ex-
ulted, that he should seek her out. Her better half, which

10 JANET MORRIS

knew that time will not ever let us recoup the price we
pay to enter our own futures, saw in him a greater threat
to her marriage, to her bond with her cruiser, to her very
equilibrium, than any she had dreamed canny Earth
might mount. To break her train of thought, and the
spell his physical presence cast over her so that she
hardly had the strength to look away, she whirled side-
ways and pointed at an enchanter in the midst of others,
whose hair seemed as red as the eagle on his black cloak,
ablaze with sunset. "You have two heads on you, and
one will fall afoul of the other."

She turned back to the balance of them, some of whom
were softly urging their horses backward, into the dusk,
away from the seeress suddenly burning without flame in
the tricky light.

Then the militia's commander went down on one knee
and all his men followed suit.

A cough came from among the enchanters, but when
she lifted fiery eyes to them and raised an arm with finger
pointing straight at them, they held back smirks no
longer, but bent their knees as well.

Forthwith Shebat, nodding, still full of power, sent out
a dream to engulf them, so that each man sank to the
ground. And their horses, after awhile, drifted away
where the cropping was better, and the sun set entirely,
loosing misty night upon the land. Yet still she held
them, motionless and dreaming, upon the ground. She
had never held so many; she had never felt so strong.
With Chaeron watching her, she proved her worth that
day. Seventeen men she held enthralled until the dew
covered them—and then she let them out of dreams only
when her husband came to her, shaking her shoulder
gently, nuzzling her hair: "Enough. I yield. You can do
more with dream dances than I can do with every other
tactic I possess. Let them up, Shebat, or leave them as
they are. I am going to make supper, and you are going
to eat it."

It occurred to her then, from the forced levity in his
voice, that perhaps she had shown him too much, pushed
him too far.

But since it was done, she could not undo it, only
rouse the dreamers, one by one. The rebel leader Thome

u

EARTH DREAMS

she left until last, and when she bade him wake, she did
it with a touch upon his brow. "Come again tomorrow,
militiaman, if you dare."

She left him yet knuckling sleep from his squinty eyes
among his horses and his men, while the enchanters she
had charged to let his little band pass unmolested grum-
bled that it was madness to allow such an infamous ma-
rauder to escape.

And that grumbling waxed strident as the enchanters
bivouacked their inflatables before the cave's mouth.
While they interlocked them, disgruntlement ran amok,
and disagreement among the five grew heated as to
whether it might be wiser to desert now with honor, or
stay on in hopes that the Kerrions would mismanage
themselves into a no-lose situation. Hooker, a blond
cultural attache from the Stump, was sure that this would
be the case. Through force of arms, Kerrion power nec-
essarily must triumph; there was no Orrefors consulate to
defect to, any longer, only scattered cells of Earthbound
insurgents who refused to don Kerrion livery and fought
a hopeless battle to retain their Earthly empire: seces-
sionists—foredoomed—no honorable men could suffer
themselves to become. Suicide was unacceptable to con-
sular mores.

Hooker calmed his cohorts it seemed, but when he dis-
patched two to check the horses, a third—the redhead
whom Shebat had singled out—approached the cave.

"Knock, knock," he boomed into the cave's mouth.

The intelligencer Tempest, lank and tall, dour of nose
and brow, stepped instantly into view so that the man
gave back a pace. "Yes, Officer . . Rizk, isn't it?" Tem-
pest said, while the redhead squeezed shut his eyes
against a flashlight's sudden glare. "Can I help you?"
Never looking away from the enchanter. Tempest bent,
leaned the light against the cave's arch, and stood up
straight.

"Trick or treat. I quit." Rizk's face was splotched red
as his hair with rage.

"Excuse me?" Tempest's long lineaments went Ker-
rion: noncommittal.

"I said,' 'I quit.' That was treachery not prophecy—
revealing my covert status so that what's-his-name's wife

12

JANET MORRIS

could come off like the Good Witch of the East! You
think I'm going back into costume and risk my butt for
them—" his chin, jutting toward the cave's depths,
quivered, "—you're space-eyed. None of those weekend
rebels failed to recognize Rizk the ironmonger, once that
Kerrion bitch pointed me out! Half those lads are my
clients. 'Enchanter' or no, my life's worth nothing once
this uniform comes off. . . ." Still protesting, plucking at
his quilted black-and-reds, he backed from the bright
light, sensing—now that his fury was abating and he
could think at all—something in Tempest's demeanor
that urged caution. . . .

The dark intelligencer followed him into the night,
murmuring, "You are sure that you can be of no further
use to us? Perhaps a transfer, up to the platform?"

The men coming back from the horse-line and the two
in the inflatables saw the ground agent Rizk and the Ker-
rion intelligencer meld into midnight, Tempest's calm
words of debriefing floating in the air behind them.

But it must have been that the two could reach no
agreement, for the redhead did not return that evening,
and in the morning his horse was gone from the line.

Over breakfast served hot from the firepit before the
cave's mouth, Tempest told Chaeron and Shebat what
had transpired, saying that the man had disappeared—
defected to the Orrefors rebels because of Shebat.

It was Chaeron who asked her, "Is that what you did?
Exposed one of our own agents? I checked my data base
on oracles, in general and Oracles, Delphic. For Delphi
we've statistics. Zero percent of the historical responses
were oracular; or, to put it another way, zero percent of
the prophetic responses were historical. Only legendary
ones—like your paraphrase of the Delphic Oracle's reply
to Agamemnon—ever predicted anything. Fiction aside,
the Oracle's responses were mundanely political."

Shebat smiled demurely."! thought you would recog-
nize it. But about the enchanter ... the ground agent: I
swear, the muses moved me. I knew nothing about him.
Did you Tempest?"

"No, not until he declared himself."

"Then how could I?" she rejoined sweetly, but her
lower lip edged out into a pout.

15

EARTH DREAMS

"And about the brigand, sweet Thome of Ithaca?"
asked Chaeron, and Tempest, not liking the look of it,
took their plates and walked out into the stark pale
morning.

Shebat gazed after him, past the camouflaged inflata-
bles where fine-fettled enchanters' horses snorted on
their line, stamping and whickering for food, to the long
vistas of autumn coming down on the hills and the river,
and back to Chaeron, lounging in the cave's mouth, half
in sunlight, half enshadowed. He seemed untroubled by
the stone under him or the flies buzzing desperately
about his head- She had never seen him in natural light,
she thought, because the sullen sensuality her prejudiced
eye expected was not in his face today. Instead, his
haughty bones casting shadows down from his cheeks and
brow and nose to meet the stubble on his unshaven jaw
roughened him. He seemed aged more than his nearly
twenty-six years could warrant. What had been an au-
daciously beautiful youth was becoming an austerely
handsome man by virtue of the changes a mind can make
in the flesh that sustains it. Muscles had learned to knot
and skin to fold. Across his brow a long line like a deep
scratch showed, and never truly smoothed away. Shebat
thought, looking at him, that the six years separating
them loomed like a lifetime; her own days had not yet
begun to speed, but merely passed-

"Shebat," he prodded, "you have not answered me
about this Jesse Thorne. If you invited him to come
again, there must be a reason."

She blushed and looked away, for he had caught her
staring at him—and knew why, from the way he raked
his curls with an exasperated hand. "Thome—of Troy,
not Ithaca," Shebat corrected, "though I called him thus,
since he lives there now. The story goes that Gottfried
Orrefors, youngest son of Richter and far away down the
line of succession, came to Earth to commit suicide, and
begot Jesse upon a widowed farm wife on his way
through Troy. Some enchanter had her, for he left his
stallion there as brideprice, and gave her a trident pen-
dant, symbol of the house of Orrefors, before he disap-
peared. Gottfried Orrefor's body was never recovered,
but he did slate into the record that he was exercising his

14

JANET MORRIS

breeding privilege, and the name he had decided to give
to his son. ..."

'That must have thrilled his father, old Richter being
consul general and bound to maintain the Orrefors
bond's position that Earth's ground-dwellers are
subhuman."

"You know more of consular hatreds than most men.
And of bondkin loyalty. Because this Jesse—and there
were other Jesses born in Troy that year, once rumor
spread of what that child could claim—might be sprung
from the very consular house of Orrefors, many enchant-
ers have chosen not to notice what he does. I heard that
at the beginning of the insurrection, when Kerrion ac-
quired Orrefors Earth and the secessions began, a group
of loyal enchanters tracked him down and offered their
service: fealty to the only accessible member of the de-
posed ruling house. They wanted to go into battle in his
name, regain him Earth and the Stump, at least. But he
killed them, to the man. He hates all enchanters, some of
whom dallied with his mother, and one of whom slew
her."

"You have been here six days, and you know all this?"

"I went into Bolen's town, to the inn. Folk know me.
They do not fear me. But then, I do not dress up like an
enchanter, or ride a killer horse."

Chaeron ignored her reproof. "That still does not ex-
plain why you know so much about him, or why you
asked him back, or why you seemed to know him."

"Are you jealous, then?"

He laughed and put up his palms. ",You have found me
out. I have come all this long and arduous way, have
ridden horseback and slept on stone, in order to make
use of my dream dancer, and end up listening to some-
one else snore through her dreams in my place."

"You would not be satisfied if I said that you should
make his acquaintance, that he is just the sort who can
aid you here? No? Then, I give in. When I was thirteen
in Bolen's town, he intervened in my behalf, out of com-
mon chivalry. He will not remember, and I will never tell
that I was that pathetic creature whose cries disturbed his
dinner. But I thought him a great hero, for some time,
and followed his exploits when I was a girl."

15

EARTH DREAMS

A silence followed, observed even by the birds.

To crack it, Chaeron promised that he would extend
every courtesy to the militiaman Jesse Thorne, without
letting on that he knew anything about his villainy, but
pointing out that if the man hated enchanters on princi-
ple, then relations between the house of Kerrion and the
young Orrefors scion, who did not esteem his kinship to
those who honored the trident were off to an awkward
start. "Just do not take up with him. I am held in low
regard here already."

"Chaeron!"

"Ah, I forgot. You are a pilot, and my pilot is forever
reminding me that pilots can love no human partner, but
only their cruisers. So, I suppose, since Penrose (You do
remember my pilot?) says you have no choice but to be
chaste, and since you are chaste with me, then you wilt
have the good taste to remain so with others."

Shebat got her knees under her. "Do we have to dis-
cuss this? Last night I was far from chaste with you!"

Chaeron bit a ragged nail, looking up at her slyly.
"And now you are vile and argumentative, morose and
penitent. Some great individuals have suffered melan-
cholic aftereffects of love, but you must recognize this for
what it is—"

Shebat leaned forward, palms in the dirt, her face close
to his- "I have not come to you from a multitude of part-
ners. I have made no demands on you. I have not pur-
sued matters in Kerrion space with you, many of which
are hanging fire and need to be aired between us. Yet,
we have a few minutes of privacy, and you choose to
expound on the problems of my sex life? Chaeron, I am
inestimably disappointed in you!"

Before she had stomped farther away than the inflata-
bles, Chaeron Kerrion's eyelids had flickered closed, and
reopened, and high above his head in the sponge-cruiser
Danae, Chaeron's pilot dispatched a multidrive to fetch
him home.

Then he went after her, and grabbed her by the arm
and spun her around, and there, before the intelligencer
who was assigned to her, and the enchanters who pre-
tended not to watch, they finally quarreled for fair: first
over monies spent; then over love withheld; warming to

16

JANET MORRIS

it, they broached the subject of his mother; and, at last,
of Shebat's beloved pilotry master, David Spry, whom,
the cruisers whispered, his mother Ashera had had mur-
dered. And that was not enough for them: they spat and
snarled like a pair of cats over her sexual inadequacies
and his sexual athleticism—over their shared, uneasy
past. Regarding the consul general Marada Seleucus Ker-
rion, half brother to Chaeron and foster sibling of
Shebat's, were the most stinging words exchanged, for
Shebat had once, while young and dazzled by them all,
declared to Chaeron that she loved his brother best.

"Then go and join him, faithful wife; you are comfort-
able enough with madness as a bedfellow."

"And leave you and your pilot to flounce and prance
about Acheron like Alexander and Hephaestion? Or is it
Achilles and Patroclus?"

"Let us hope not either, I desire to share no man's
funerary urn," he whispered, white hot with rage. Reach-
ing up, he snatched the black wool band from her brow
and shook it under her nose. "You dare tell me you are
in mourning for David Spry?" He threw the headband
down and ground it with his heel in the dirt. "All the
deaths you left unmoumed in my family, and his you
choose to exalt? He was an-enemy of mine, of all of ours,
in life. It is intolerable arrogance upon your part to throw
his death in my face. If my mother did murder him, then.
it was murder well done!"

"Kerrion!" she spat, and turned as if to walk away.
But even then, she could not let be, but had to spin
about once more: "As for this ..." she tugged at the
mourning-lock, shorn short, flopping over her right eye
". . .if I cannot feel love, as your pilot tells you and you
want to believe, then how is this here? Love. Chaeron, is
not given and taken away, but is, or is not. As for me,
when I love, not even death can stop it!" She gulped,
sniffled loudly. Her nose was red and she wiped it,
stepped back: one step; two.

He regarded her, thumbs hooked in his black uniform
pants. He shook his head quite slowly and brought his
hands forth palms up, spread them wide. Then, with a
brief, self-deprecating smile, he dropped them to his

EARTH DREAMS             17

sides, whispered: "So be it," in a voice far from steady,
and left her standing there alone.

KXV 134 Marada bobbed restlessly exactly five thou-
sand miles above the head of Shebat Kerrion, periodic
thrusts of attitude adjustment blossoming behind him
whenever Shebat moved her location. The Marada could
monitor reflected starlight on a space helmet at twenty-
five thousand miles. Keeping his pilot (the only piece of
outboard equipment any cruiser needed) in sight was
much less difficult. One could not know a space helmet,
mind to mind. The Marada was attuned to the brain
wave frequencies of his outboard, Shebat. He could
monitor her physiological being with his telemetry almost
as easily as when she was aboard him: heart rate, respira-
tion, blood chemistries belonging to Shebat were as much
a part of his metering functions as voltage regulation, su-
percooling, and data processing. But between the Ker-
rion experimental vehicle Marada and Shebat Kerrion lay
more than normal pilot/cruiser intimacy, more than their
ability to converse without any intermediary accessing
keyboard, more even than that surpassing love all pilots
have for cruisers, which no mortal suitor can hope to

match.

Marada was the most advanced spongespace cruiser
Kerrion shipwrights' unparalleled expertise had ever pro-
duced—and more than they had ever wanted to produce.
The KXV series had been abruptly terminated with the
Kerrion consul general's realization that this cruiser
could do things no cruiser should have been able to do,
patently undesirable things like talking to other cruisers
upon its own initiative, like shipping out with no pilot on
board, like communicating with outboard and cruiser
alike in unorthodox (and thus unsurveillable) fashion, no
matter the distance intervening or physical laws con-
travening.

Thus it was fitting that his outboard was Shebat Alex-
andra Kerrion—adopted into the house of Kerrion but
bred on Earth and hence unfettered in her conception as
to what was, and what was not. possible between pilot

18

JANET MORRIS

and cruiser—who could do things no outboard should be
able to do.

The powers of both had brought new freedom to
cruiserkind: freedom from the specter of separation from
their pilots, and the attendant erasure of all memory cir-
cuits in preparation for a new pilot's attunement; free-
doms of cruiser thought not yet dreamed of by those who
created them, close-held secrets between privileged pilots
and their ships.

Cruiser-mind was growing; cruiser consciousness was
coming of age. Shebat and the Marada had catalyzed it;

other cruisers had upstepped it; pilots partook but never
spoke of it. Even naive cruiserkind had learned that
sometimes lies are better than truth, and how to speak
falsehoods.

The cruiser Marada had been first to speak of what was
not: to use faulty information to produce a desired result.

He was about to exercise this prerogative of untruth:

to retrieve his outboard, Shebat, from the planet on
which he could not land. He was lonely, and he was con-
stantly plagued by the prying voice of the Stump's traffic
authority, and he was concerned as to her safety where
so many human creatures fielded violence on one an-
other's fragile persons.

The Marada knew that the cruiser Erinys, in which
Shebat's pilotry master, David Spry, had shipped to
space-end's penal colony, had never reached there.
Shebat had given him a standing order to turn up the
young cruiser's wreckage, and the body of "Sofia" David
Spry. No other cruiser could have done it, but the
Marada explored the faraway outreaches of space-end's
space, searching exhaustively for the trace he was going
to tell Shebat he had found—whether he found one, or
not. He searched space-end's window because the
Erinys's distressed call, reporting Sofia's death, had
come from that vicinity, and because no cruiser could call
and be heard from spongespace. Therefore, only one rel-
atively small volume of real-time space could host the
wreckage: that around space-end's sponge-way. The
cruiser's sole purpose had been to deliver Sofia Spry's
party to the prison platform. Since Spry's death was clar-
ioned by the Erinys before it reached there, it was possi-

19

EARTH DREAMS

ble that the cruiser's pilot had eschewed continuance of
an aborted mission, turned around and headed his cruiser
back into sponge; but if this was so, all search was use-
less, and Ashera Kemon's perfect crime was complete,
non habeas corpus—for nothing had ever been heard
from the Erinys again./

The mighty Marada hoped that this was not the case,
that the Erinys had not entered sponge. From there,
even the most prodigious scrutiny could extract nothing:

what was tost in sponge, was lost forever. Once the
Marada had been lost in sponge, and only the most for-
tuitous happenstance of another cruiser passing by had
saved him.

The Marada's multispectrum gaze, boosted by every
cruiser and preamp station between him and space-end,
peered toward the sponge-hole, at no-time/no-space/mul-
tifaceted/immanent sponge. One could not be sure about
the lost cruiser, in any particular. It had been Ashera
Kemon's cruiser, newly commissioned three years past
but seldom spaced. It had a preeminent serial number
that changed all certainty to doubt: KXV 133.

Similitude-nose sniffing the space-end sponge-hole, the
Marada considered its own thought, and chose to seek
where nothing could rationally be expected to be found.
In his own stentorian voice that rang out over cruiser
consciousness like the 3K rumble from the dawn of time,
Marada called, broadband, to KXV 133.

And for an instant, before the quarry recovered itself
and faded fast, a cruiser's glib snout turned toward the
sound of its name, a wordless question-tickled the
Marada's circuits. Then it was gone, but Marada had
seen enough. Somewhere in Pegasus, among the colo-
nies, KXV 133 lay at spaceanchor, with an injunction to
silence hid upon it by its pilot. The Marada knew pilots;

cruisers keep no secrets from other cruisers—unless a
masterful pilot suborns a cruiser's mind. Only one pilot
in the whole of the Marada's experience could have en-
joined a cruiser from the host of cruisers. And that man,
mourned in his passing by all cruisers as the outboard's
outboard, was Softa David Spry, his death proclaimed
and attested by the very cruiser who was sitting at space-
anchor in Pegasus under a ban of silence. Since KXV 133

20

JANET MORRIS

was where it had no right to be, and doing things no raw
young cruiser should have been able to do, it seemed
clear to the Marada that only two solutions fit the prob-
lem: the pilot aboard the precocious Erinys was, must be,
Spry's equal—which Eriny's rostered pilot indubitably
was not—or be Spry himself.

The Marada retreated into the sanctity of his private
cogitation to consider. He was glad that he had a valid
reason to lure Shebat up from groundside. He had not
wanted to lie- Even while he had been searching for the
missing cruiser, he had been gathering data on the ques-
tions most prevalent in his outboard's mind.

He could tell her how Chaeron had come to spend so
freely and to borrow so extensively against their hold-
ings. Acheron would be the finest platform ever set into
stable orbit around a planet; state-of-the-art was ex-
tended by it; every detail, every advance and advantage
that the interlock of the finest data pool, data base, and
knowledge base available could schematize, was being
undertaken there. Chaeron Kerrion, demoted to procon-
sul and cast out into an irremediable situation meant to
be his exile, was bent on making exile into empire. From
Acheron, the two hundred and one additional platforms
and planets under his administration would be welded
into dynasty. From Acheron's shipwrights would come
cruiser technologies undreamed of by any but a few pi-
lots, and a certain KXV.

As the Marada reached out and down into the mind of
his outboard Shebat, he noted that Chaeron's cruiser,
Danae, had taken her owner aboard, set off for the
Stump, and logged a course for space-end, ETD five days
hence. Shebat would have her dream dancers, though it
would take two cruisers to fetch them.

The Marada hastened to tell her all his good news.
Reaching out, he found something strange and biological
going on in Shebat. Her distress was in check, familiar;

her tears he had endured before. Outboards' emotions
were mysterious, yet, though he was beginning to under-
stand their logic—but this strangeness in Shebat was born
of neither emotion nor logic.

She sat, in her cave, talking to a nonoutboard in scanty
clothing, her words much calmer than her thoughts.

21

EARTH DREAMS

Scanning her physical readout, the Marada noted that
her inner layer of mil, which outboards sprayed upon
their forms to protect them, had been penetrated, sub-
verted. It would not do to go into sponge until she had
had her pressure linings refurbished. Outboards were
fragile. He considered the odd breaching of her seals,
decided that Chaeron must have done it, and queried the
Danae—who, through her pilot, had engaged in infernal
interface with her nonpilot owner, many times—as to
why Chaeron had compromised Shebat's protections.

In the Marada's empty control room, a visual came up
on the corn-line monitor: Raphael Penrose's curly head
swinging round in miniature, "He did what? Marada, is
Shebat all right?"

Then Chaeron Kerrion's face crowded into the moni-
tor, auburn brows drawn into a tight, jagged line. "Mar-
ada, what do you mean, 'subverted her seals'?"

And when the Marada explained what he had seen, the
tiny Kerrion-replica smiled, then rubbed its stubbly jaw.
When his hand came away, Chaeron said gravely to
Marada that it was good that the cruiser was keeping
such a close watch on Shebat, but nothing was amiss with
her that could not be easily repaired by a mil-fitter, that
such things happened every now and again, and indicated
to his pilot that the interview was over.

But the Marada heard the pilot ask Chaeron, "Do you
think she is?" and Chaeron's snappish "Do you think I'm
prescient?" before Danae went offline.

Wishing that he understood outboards' innuendo bet-
ter, he began convincing Shebat that she could trek to
New Chaeronea with her Earthish friends another time,
that now he had things to discuss with her more won-
drous than anything the Earth had to offer.

Shebat Kerrion rode to the touchdown site of the
Marada's powerboat accompanied not only by her intel-
ligencer Tempest,-but by enchanters and militiamen
alike. When the dust had cleared and the horses calmed
and the mantis-shape of a little black multidrive emerged
from the clouds thrown up by its landing, two men in
consular black-and-reds and enchanter's capes and shiny
black wizard's boots escorted Shebat the Twice Risen

22

JANET MORRIS

into the flame-spouting chariot's very mouth. Then a
flowing-haired rider in worn, patched vest and trousers
kneed a cakewalking enchanter's steed sideways up to
the shuttle's very hull.

"You are sure about the horses?" called the hoarse-
voiced rider boldly, struggling with the black, blue-eyed
stallion, who stood upon his hind legs and pawed the sky.

"A gift from the house of Kerrion, Jesse Thome,"
Shebat called back. "Do what I have recommended, and
you will live to taste old age."

"Many thanks, little mother," he grinned through grit-
ted teeth, sawing on his reins to get the black's four feet
on solid turf, while his men looked on in awe at what
their commander dared before enchanters.

Behind Shebat, the blond attache grumbled, plucking
at. her woolen robe. Angrily she shook him off, palming
the hatch's "close" mode.

"What harm can it do?" she demanded as the port
closed up. "Well, Hooker? What harm, giving him two
extra horses?" They ducked through the lock into the
body of the little multidrive. "You act as though I gave
him beam-pistols or heat-seekers'"

"Those folk out there are your enemies. They are not
cute or quaint, or harmless. Herr Thorne is a dangerous
man."

"You think I do not know them? Remember, I was
born one of them. As for Thome, only passions are dan-
gerous, never those afflicted by them. Maybe he is dan-
gerous, impassioned. Maybe not so, any longer. Now go
sit down and strap in and be quiet, or walk the air up to
the Stump. When I was an ignorant girl in Bolen's town,
I'knew well that enchanters could walk through the air. It
would save me trouble, should you do so: ferrying you to
the Stump was no part of my itinerary. . . . What are you
grinning at, Tempest?"

The intelligencer, not sobering, sank down in a jump
seat. "Telemetry," he sighed, arms spread wide. "Visual
displays. Submasters. Microwave ovens! I don't think
I've felt this good since your stepfather made an intel-
ligencer cadet out of me, and I didn't have to do anyone
else's laundry anymore."

"Well, I am glad someone is happy," glowered Shebat,

23

EARTH DREAMS

sitting to her helm. "1 hope you will be happy doing
Chaeron's laundry—for when I leave this space, I will
have no passenger aboard!"

Behind her back, the Kerrion intelligencer just come
from Draconis and the Orrefors-turned-Kemon cultural
attache named Hooker exchanged glances. Hooker's
said: I am only half Kerrion, and these tantrum-throwing
children of power are incomprehensible and despicable
to me. Tempest replied: I bid you be patient, but watch
closely, and learn. They are as they are, and you had best
adjust to them, for they shall never even think to accom-
modate you. But inwardly, Tempest was seething. He
had long known that Shebat was unpredictable. Women
seldom became pilots: her inherent unpredictability, up-
stepped by pilot's syndrome when focused through
woman's more circuitous reasoning, was going to be his
greatest problem, he presumed to think. If he had dared,
he would have asked the cruiser what her trouble was.

But this would not have availed him. The Marada was
not capable of even surety that Shebat had a problem: he
was part and parcel of it. When a cruiser and a pilot be-
come one, their concerns and perspectives merge. The
Marada could protect his pilot, succor her, love her. He
could not analyze her.

It would have taken some other pilot/cruiser pair, of
long acquaintance and unparalleled maturity, to intuit
the true situation and move to alter it before things got
out of hand. And, of all pilots, only Softa David Spry,
Shebafs erstwhile pilotry master, knew Shebat and the
Marada well enough. Spry, the finest pilot the Con-
sortium's empire ever produced, might have been able to
do it, had he been there, at the beginning, to see
Shebafs confusion and how her malaise short-circuited
the discriminatory abilities of her cruiser, KXV 134
Marada. Shebat's instructor, Spry, would have diagnosed
her as suffering from the truth behind the axiom that all
pilots are mad, and prescribed what remedies could be
tendered one who gives up normal life and quotidian val-
ues to merge with a spongespace cruiser and swim among
the stars. Spry had long warned Shebat that mortal con-
cerns would fall away from her, that new values and a
support-system for them must emerge, or she would per-

24

JANET MORRIS

ish, shorn of philosophical base, in the sponge between
the stars. He had told her: take what you will of pleasure
from your human fellows, but save your love for your
cruiser. She had heard, but not understood. Her philo-
sophical base, then, was yet that of an enchantress. As
this eroded imperceptibly in the cold light of Consortium
logic and the venality of her adopted Ken-ion dynasty's
concerns, she hardly noticed. Her cruiser, for much too
long (because he shared her thoughts but only audited
her emotions; because she was a dream dancer, Con-
sortium-taught; because her intellect was formidable
enough to suppress the emotional storm rolling under her
hard-held facade), could not determine where, in the
person of his beloved Shebat, the trouble lay. And, too,
to the cruiser and his pilot, what was happening was not
yet a problem, but the necessary deepening and strength-
ening of the cruiser/pilot bond.

Chapter Two

Despite his determination not to be overawed at
what even a disgraced Kerrion "failure" could accom-
plish, Rafe Penrose yet recalled his amazing approach
vector into Acheron: all the toroids and shield sleeves
spinning lazily, mass-driver components and solar collec-
tors glittering, agrospheres gleaming like a broken strand
of pearls, made it seem that a gargantuan child's toybox
had been upended amid ancestral stars.

Searching for Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion through the
data net, RP had not been able to shake off the image,
with its pejorative tinge: Chaeron was a child sent to his
room by his betters, and all the lives now in his hands
merely playthings.

By the time a gleaming, snub-snouted consular lorry
had deposited him on the fresh-laid sod of one of
Acheron's sharp little hills, RP felt like weeping. He was
overtired, he told himself, from his journey fraught with
stress, and the trauma of being uprooted twice: first from
Draconis to the Stump; then from the Stump to here,
although "here" was the exact same set of coordinates
which had held the Stump in stable orbit above the Earth
for more than two centuries.

But then he spied Chaeron, just ducking out of a con-
sular command transport, still in expedition gear from
Earthly sojourn. A tightness tickled his throat, rode

25

26

JANET MORRIS

down to his chest as he cut across the sod, his steps too
springy in this as-yet-only-approximate gravity, the not-
quite-regulation pressure of the "almost" operational
habitational sphere making his pulse trip and gallop.

Anticipation chased his malaise away: to be able to say
"I have done it" to Chaeron, to stand in receipt of the
ex-Draconis consul's most intimate smile, was a privilege
hard won and still coveted by Raphael Penrose, "first
bitch," or top-rated, pilot of Kerrion space.

To the newly-Kemon minions looking on from the
cockpit of the black command transport, and to the
driver of the sleek eagle-blazoned lorry, there was no
question about the degree of relationship between this
pilot and their proconsul. Through a sextet of
plainclothed intelligencers, Penrose's chestnut-curled
head was easily traced, moving unchallenged, his gray
flight satins the only somber note among the Kerrion's
fashionably colorful bodyguard, men brought with him
from home.

When the two stood together, it could be seen that
Penrose was slightly taller, a fraction less lissome.

Handing his jacket to an intelligencer without looking
up, Chaeron said, "Shall we walk . , . ?" He waved his
arm toward the artificial hilltop, empty of bush or rock or
dwelling. Their greeting, beyond this, remained un-
spoken, a thing displayed in their postures, an'intimacy
of long standing between two who had been through
much with—and for—one another, who should have had
no secrets, and forgave those secrets that each, in spite of
this, had to keep. For these two were not of equal rank
or equal burden, though they longed for parity.

Chaeron, reaching the perfect little top of the artificial
hill, bowed sweepingly, "Sit?" so that his medallion
dangled free of his shirt.

Penrose sat, rested an outstretched arm on one bent
knee. "Very impressive."

"Me? Or the platform?"

"Everything. That slipbay approach is a work of
genius. My pilots are perking right up."

Chaeron absently slipped the medallion back under his
uniform shirt's cream front: "Did you get the dream
dancers?" he asked, hardly moving his lips.

EARTH DREAMS                            27

"All that you wanted. And all the special ones on your
list, except the one called Harmony. It was like the Sat-
urday dole-line in Draconis on those cruisers, but we
brought them in alive."

"Good enough." Chaeron, in one almost boyish move-
ment, flung himself down upon the grass, stretching out
fully, his arms above his head. Staring into the pale blue
strutwork overhead, he murmured, "Do you think my
citizenry would like a sky? They had one .in the Stump. I
can still put one in, or even a space view. One would
think after so many years we wouldn't need the long
vistas."

Penrose wanted to reach out, touch him. He said.
"That's as long a view as I've seen in the civilized stars,"
looking off down the curve of the sky-wall, his chin jut-
ting, "And this is more untenanted grass than I've ever
seen in one place."

"They'll live like monarchs, the first years. One hun-
dred forty thousand in a sphere which can hold nearly a
million. It's not all like this: this is where the Earth town
will be. I have to give everyone whom I am displacing the
opportunity to resettle and continue with their business;

the Earth-towners in the Stump have to be considered,
red-light district or no. . . ."

"Oh," said Penrose, ripping grass from the sward.

After a time, Chaeron shielded his eyes with his hand,
though there was no glare, and whispered, "Will you tell
me what the trouble is!"

"In what order?"

"In any order, before I—" Spitting a sibilance,
Chaeron sat up absolutely straight.

"Easy there, boss. It's what I didn't get: I didn't get my
ex-guildmaster, Baldy, and twenty wrongly-condemned
guildbrothers of mine; it was hard to explain to them that
I could only take qualified dream dancers, that manumis-
sion comes only to those we need, no matter how griev-
ously wronged are the remainder."

A trained Kerrion visage showed no emotion unin-
tended. Chaeron's grin—fleeting, close-lipped and wise—
bad a purpose. "You know that I would help them if I
could. Bringing those dream dancers here, to be frac-
tional citizens and work off monumental fines, is not ex-

28

JANET MORRIS

acdy freedom. They are Kerrion servitors for twenty
years, and maybe then they'll receive pardons. Would
that do for pilots, for old Baldy? I know your pilots want
him back. I'm trying. But I am no longer Dracoms con-
sul, and Kerrion space still holds dream dancing to be
illegal, and I cannot say for sure that I will be here long
enough to execute any promise you manage to draw out
of me. So for my sake, will you please stop trying? All
you are doing is reminding me of how powerless I really
am."

Rate, turned over, belly-down upon the grass. "The
space-enders think Softa Spry died for them; they've a
charming little cult started, preaching judgment and re-
birth upon his return ... or resurrection, or whatever
they think's going to happen."

"What else have they to hope for? If a martyr makes
them comfortable, holding out hope of spiritual immor-
tality when genetic immortality by offspring is denied
them, what harm is there in that? Remember, they're all
mules, by Consortium edict."

Penrose blinked fiercely, then whispered, "You know,
there are two betting pools in the Kerrion arm of the
pilotry guild, right now. One is for how long it will be
before your brother—everybody's calling him 'Mad Mar-
ada'—makes a covert end to you in good Kerrion fash-
ion, and the other of how much longer the house of
Kerrion is going to stand."

"I hope you make wise wagers."

"What would those be?" RP, sitting up, gave back his
employer's stare in kind.

"Whatever your heart tells you, I'm sure."

"My heart tells me you need help on the order of di-
vine intervention. I'm no close friend of the Lords of
Cosmic Jest."

"Ah, but I am well acquainted with them. Don't
worry, Raphael, I have matters firmly in hand here."

"You say that, but you look terrible. You've aged five
years in the eight weeks I've been gone."

"Wonderful; thanks. Will you lighten up, or say what
you are trying so desperately not to say?"

"Sponge take you, then: your mother's guilt in the
matter of Softa Spry's death was attested by a cruiser—

29

EARTH DREAMS

not enough evidence tor the arbitrational guild, but
plenty for Mad Marada, our esteemed consul general,
who heard it from his cruiser, the Hassid. Marada has
issued a public statement that if your mother so much as
steps one foot out of the ol' ancestral sphere, Lorelie,
then he wilt have her publicly censured and cast out;

stripped of citizenship; you name it. . . ."

"She still is not speaking to me," said Chaeron very
carefully, the muscles in his face so purely noncommittal
that it hurt Penrose to watch him. "Anything else?"

"Yes. Ever since that day when the Marada contacted
the Danae on its own initiative to question you about
Shebat and what you . . . did to her, I have been—
thinking. ..."

"You were right to be hesitant in bringing this up,"
warned Chaeron, not smiling, his blue eyes so full of
pupil they seemed black.

"1 have done astounding things for you, sometimes
more than I thought I could do. Now you listen to me: if
you and I had not been using the Danae to interface, like
she was some common data pool link, this sort of thing
would not be happening. I'll run your pilots' guildhall,
shape them up, work with the shipwrights on any project,
no matter how dangerous. I'll test your new KXVs my-
self. But don't make me interface that cruiser with you
again. Become a pilot—you are halfway to it, now! Or
discharge me, and let me seek a less arduous berth. I
have been alone with my—your—cruiser for nearly two
months, and I am telling you that these interfaces are
hurting her. If you don't care about my sanity, or your
own, you should care about the serviceability of your
flagship. . . ."

"Stop."

Chaeron's command silenced Penrose like a slap in the
face. Rafe recalled the day (was it only one year ago?)
when the younger man had come to him in the guildhall,
his patrician features sharpened, pale; dragged him into a
pay privacy booth and muttered, "Ask me what I did
tonight?" "What did you do?" Penrose had obeyed. "I
slapped my mother and raped my wife," Chaeron had
whispered disbelievingly, and put his head in his hands.
From that, all this turmoil had sprung.

50

JANET MORRIS

And another time came to mind, when he and
Chaeron and Shebat had been together in the redoubta-
ble Marada, and Shebat and Chaeron had pledged a
slated troth that if ever Chaeron should come to power
over Shabet's homeworld Earth, he would cede it to her,
few strings attached.

"I cannot stop," Rafe answered Chaeron back, almost
groaning. "I have to talk to you; I won't let you proceed
into folly, unwarned." Pleading, he reached out and
grasped the other's forearm.

"Finish, then," Chaeron allowed, shaking Penrose off.

"I know your. official position is that you want no part
of Marada's ruinous policies for Kerrion space, and that
you feel it imperative to maintain and affirm that cruiser
advances are desirable, even remarkable—but if you do
not intervene in this mess in Draconis, we will all be
dragged down with the ship, so to speak."

"'So to speak,'" Chaeron repeated. "Raphael, I can-
not. My mother has spurned me; my brother has exiled
me. I have nearly liquidated my Draconis assets in order
to make Acheron a self-supporting bastion of Kerrion
technologies, if not wisdom. They say one cannot divorce
one's relatives, but I am determined to try. Not another
word about it, now, if you love me." He grinned, a faked
flash of camaraderie belonging to a much simpler man.

"And your wife, has she agreed to this?"

Then Chaeron was up and looming, his arms crossed,
his countenance severe. "You wilt not let be, will you?
You know that no one else would dare to question me
so? But since you are testing me, if crudely, I will give
you an answer. I will not remind you that Shebat is yet
sulking in sponge. And I will not say that things are diffi-
cult between my wife and me, since you are part of the
reason why. But I will say that whether she is, or is not,
with child, she has not seen fit to inform me. That is what
you wanted to know?"

Penrose slowly gained his feet, wishing he did not want
to apologize, wishing he could hold back Chaeron's
night, wishing he could sort out his own feelings from
those he thought he should feel, and those he wanted to
feel, and come up less inextricably involved with this pas-
sionate, fated creature who commanded his allegiance so

31

EARTH DREAMS

completely that he seemed to have lost control of his own
destiny.

To somehow quench the fire in them both, he offered
news, capitulation: "I brought Lauren, Spry's girlfriend
with the others. Danced a few dreams with her, got cozy,
tried to find out why she, too, was not insistent on wait-
ing for Spry's return. She said that he'd find her here or
in the next life. . . ."

Chaeron did not chuckle. "You will keep her in your
sights, then?"

"Certainly, and glad to do it. I have another, perhaps
welcome, surprise."

"So? I have lost my taste for surprises." He looked
like his mother, then, his attention on the waiting trans-
ports, his profile flawless in Acheron's gentle light. He
cocked his head, and started walking down toward the
waiting intelligencers. Penrose, following, wondered
whether he was not supposed to pace the preconsul in
silence, or if, forewarned, he was expected to speak.

He waited until a sidecast glance bade him proceed,
and explained about a certain boy who was the youngest
among the dream dancers—who had been, so the lad
said, known to Chaeron when as consul he had fre-
quented dream dancers' warrens on Draconis' infamous
level seven.

Chaeron shook his head, pushed his mane irritably
back from his forehead, squinted at the turf before him.
"I cannot remember any . . . Ah, then—now I do. What
did he tell you?" His boyish, sly mien, naughty and win-
some, eased Penrose. "Just that he used to take care of
your cloak," Rafe dared to tease.

"Lords, what will we do with him? He is too young to
risk on Earth, for so little reason. Well then, send him
around to my office. I'll find something for him to do.
You don't recall his name, do you?"

"Sorry," shrugged RP, and Chaeron clapped him com-
panionably about the shoulders, only a fugitive embrace,
but speaking many things.

Rafe Penrose unbent then, deep within, where he had
long been holding his mental breath, and expeUed it.

All his forethought and all his schemes had come to
naught. He was stuck here, though he was first bitch of

52 JANET MORRIS

Kerrion space, for no better reason than that he did not
have the heart to quit Chaeron. Things were just the
same as they had always been: getting worse and better
simultaneously, but at a negligible rate. Some things, any
pilot knows, are mandated by their patron. Chance, and
cannot be avoided. Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion was re-
soundingly one such.

"Wait till I show you the horse I have brought up to
help indoctrinate the dream dancers," Chaeron gloated
in his public manner. As they came down among the
scarved and tunic'd intelligencers, he bade one man take
the lorry which had brought Penrose here, go back to the
slipbay and oversee the quartering of the^dream dancers,
sending a second with him to find Gahan Tempest,
Acheron's new chief of intelligencers, and escort him to
the stables, posthaste-

"Horse?" Penrose echoed, climbing into the command
transport, nodding to the driver within.

"Horse," Chaeron affirmed, his bootheels ringing on
the steps, intelligencers close behind. "Stables," to the
driver. And: "Excuse me." He led Penrose past ten feet
of seats and consoles, through a partition into an auto-
mated command pit, saying: "Horse, indeed. I am going
to insist that you come groundside. Horse, like in The
fliad. You remember?"

"I am not going anywhere near a horse, or a society ot
enchanters and technopeasants, or cities sprawled in the
rubble of a discarded world."

"No?" An unwelcome promise laughed from
Chaeron's eyes-

Chapter Three

On Groundhog Day, A.D. 2252, Shebat Kerrion
emerged from her sibyl's cave, beheld her shadow, and
went back inside. The nonoutboard Jesse Thome—
barely recognizable to the Morada as human, so swathed
was he in animal skin and animal fur—followed. From
thirty waiting riders, a sound came up like distant thun-
der, made of sighs and mutters and creaking leather and
clanking iron. From their horses, steam rose and white
breath snorted forth like ethereal fog, pale as the snow
upon the land.

The Marada wished Shebat had not insisted on leaving
Gahan Tempest behind when they had stopped by the
Stump to drop off Hooker before embarking to search
for Softa Spry; had not resisted his advice, when again
they were bound for Earth, that she should retrieve Tem-
pest once more.

His outboard was impenetrable; his outboard was dis-
tressed. It showed on all his meters, as it had showed,
growing hourly, since she had encountered her husband
at these very coordinates, ninety-five real-time days be-
fore. "Chaeron needs Tempest more than I," she
snarled, when the moment to vector toward Acheron was
at hand. "I am not going into Acheron, and that is that. I
am going to Bolen's town and my husband, should he
wish to, can find me there."

55

54

JANET MORRIS

The Marada had asked Shebat, at the outset of their
voyage, if she was angry because he had lost track of the
missing KXV 133, or because the cruiser had been forced
to admit that what he had seen might have been simply a
far-traveling remnant, a relativistic ghost expanding un-
ceasingly outward which would never die, or even realize
that the source which sent it speeding into the five infini-
ties had long since been destroyed.

Shebat had assured him that she was not angry, only
disappointed, but she would not turn back from journey-
ing out to Pegasus to see for herself that no cruiser was
hiding there. Then the Marada had been forced to dis-
please his outboard: her seals were breached. If she
would not have her mil refurbished before leaving
Earth's space (and she would not, she swore, even set
foot into her husband's soon-to-be-vacated province)
then she must do so in Draconis, which was the closest
interim-space port.

Because of the Marada's love for his outboard, they
had stopped at Draconis, en route to the colonies, and
Shebat and his namesake, Marada Ken-ion—guild pilot,
arbiter-on-leave, consul general of Kerrion space—had
met, and spat, and hissed at each other while the Marada
did his best to watch over his outboard, while following
her instructions to avert his monitoring eyes.

The cruiser had thought, until the very moment that
the mil-fitter with his portable, coffinlike chamber took
his leave and Marada Seleucus Kerrion stayed behind,
that since it was not his own failure to reestablish contact
with the missing KXV 133 which had upset her, then the
prospect of being shut up in the mil-chamber was at the
heart of his outboard's discomfort.

But it was not the reestablishment of her seats—the
reinforcement of her protection from radiation, pressure
variation, projectiles, or heat loss—which had been trou-
bling her, the cruiser was forced to admit, but some out-
board matter having to do with emotion, a subject of
which the Marada was not yet master, but still an
apprentice.

It was not that the Marada was a stranger to emotion:

he had experienced love, though he had no heart; life,
though his roughly scaled, light-banded superstructure

EARTH DREAMS                            55

could not be said to be living; death, through cruiser-
consciousness' audit of systems-wipe while it had oc-
curred to certain of its member cruisers; even a mock
human death, when cruisers in concert had given over to
oblivion all the memories they had stored of the life of
the outboard Softa David Spry.

Cruisers held little from one another: this fear of non-
being they had learned from cruiser-wipe and pilot death
was a lesson not yet assimilated. Like any new thing so
difficult to comprehend, for a time all cruisers looked
through their new knowledge at the phenomenal world,
and the world was colored by that information which had
no natural function nor integrative place in their circui-
try- The Marada, first of his kind to "feel" selfhood, rode
a fomenting tide of outboard feelings and cruiser senti-
ments, uneasy over what he had wrought.

His cruiserkin venerated him, though he was, because
of his owner/pilot's status as heir apparent, not a Kerrion
command cruiser, but merely "Kerrion Four." All but
the Hassid, Marada Seleucus Kerrion's flagship, who was
the ever-haughty "Kerrion One," acknowledged the
Marada as wisest among cruiserkind.

Like her owner, Hassid was slightly askew, tainted by
him, opinionated and judgmental. It was no wonder the
cruiser could not heal her pilot; they were melded too
inextricably, delirious from the same ineffable disease.
This similitude of thought between the Kerrion consul
general and his cruiser was problematical: both being of
the same persuasion, they reinforced one another's delu-
sion that only they saw clearly, that truth in their hands
became uppercased, pure—and by this precept,
omnipotent.

While Shebat had dueled verbally with her first love,
Marada Kerrion, the sponge-cruiser Marada had tried,
and failed, to establish some rapport with the snippy,
rank-conscious Hassid. Hassid was loath to recall that she
had been wiped by her beloved outboard, sacrificed as an
example during the pilot's recent strike; or that she owed
her continuance as a cognizant entity to the host of
cruisers, who had scooped up bits of her and wisps of her
and every fleeing thought from her, saved them until the
time came when Hassid's B-mode was patched back into

56

JANET MORRIS

service, then sent every memory back again, ffassid
owed her 'self to cruiser care and cruiser loyalty, but she
had no care or loyalty for any being but her pilot.

This worried the Marada almost as much as Shebat's
altercation with Hassid's pilot, almost as much as his out-
board's physical condition, daily more deviant from any-
thing resembling pilot's norm.

And because he was concerned, the Marada could not
help but prick one undetectable mechanical ear to what
p.assed, on board him, between the consul general and
the heir apparent of Kerrion space:

"Have you thought what it is you are doing? Liquidat-
ing your holdings on this scale could throw the entire
consulate into a depression!" Marada Kerrion's drawl
came loud in the cruiser's sensors; his steroid-heavy body
paced Marada's bridge; the crack of his knuckles popped
like static.

"That is why I am offering this to you, privately, be-
forehand. Buy me out, or bear the consequences."
Shebat hunched in her command central, shadow-faced
in the low-lighting, watching meters that jumped and
played, making a variegated kaleidoscope of the circular
helm. From every black-and-silver console, the Maroda's
readouts glittered; Danger. Confirmation came back to
her from Marada Kerrion's outraged countenance, from
his tightly drawn mouth in its nest of beard, from his
scant, black brows drawn low over disenfranchised,
poet's eyes.

"Why haven't you simply contested my accession?" he
demanded, big hands digging troughs in the bumper of
the little epicentral helm where Shebat sat unmoving.

"You know the answer to that. A better man than
yourself would have realized upon his own that he was
not good enough . . . well before now. What you have
done to Chaeron is shameful; your treatment of your en-
tire family, the scandal of the civilized stars. You have
two children; think of them if nothing else. Should I con-
test with you for a position to which neither of us is in
any way suited, while Chaeron does minion's duties, un-
der duress, at the edge of nowhere?"

"What a way to talk about your nomeworld," Marada
Kerrion chided her. "You have administrative pro-

37

EARTH DREAMS

divides so high they scored in your top three aptitudes. I
have not forgotten that, nor can you convince me that
you have. What do you want, Shebat?"

The Marada's outboard had leaned forward, darkening
every console but the one encircling her with irreducible
arms. "I want you to bring Chaeron back from Earth."

"I will see Kerrion space expelled from the Con-
sortium, broken up and sold off to the highest bidder,
first."

"No doubt." Her pulse was racing; her adrenals coun-
seling attack. The Marada tried to reach her, but she ig-
nored his whispered caution. "Then let him have a
chance to accomplish something there. You have suc-
ceeded: he is ruined, stripped of adherents, even
resigned."

"Tell me another fable."

"How else can it be? With fewer than fifty bondkin
with him, what can he do in a hostile, alien space? You
did that, made sure he could not rally what few support-
ers he had left."

"I wish I were so persuasive. He did it himself, by his
foolish support of pilots above citizens ... by his
choices, every one. Would I look like this"—Marada
Kerrion raised his hands away from his muscle-slabbed
flesh—"if he were capable of performing even the mini-
mal duties of keeping Draconis free from terrorists? I will
hear no more about it. You are welcome back as Drac-
onis consul—your right, which I will not deny you—or in
any other position the rigors of which you feel you can
fulfil. But him I will not suffer in any critical capacity,
lest next time the sabotage (which I still believe he incul-
cated upon half the reigning consular families in order to
murder me) be-successful."

"Give me your answer, Marada. Will you buy me
out?"

"No. I will loan you whatever you need. Otherwise, it
will look as though I forced you from your prerogatives.
Keep your stocks, your majority in the cruiser industry.
If Chaeron advised you to do this, you should realize by
that fact that it is not to your benefit. He can vote your
stocks, in perpetuity: he cannot liquidate them. My dear

58

JANET MORRIS

departed father gave you them for a reason. How wise he
was, I am only beginning to realize."

Shebat shaded her eyes with her hand, though the
cabin was yet dim. In her thoughts, a great void ap-
peared. She sniffled, cleared her throat. "Why are you
doing this to me?"

"What? I am endeavoring to be less hateful than you
think me, I admit. But the last time we met, I was still
unbalanced from my long convalescence. Shebat, you
should let me help you. . . ."

He reached out to her, and she cowered. He dropped
his hands, laced them before him, and gazed at her
expectantly.

The Marada's outboard had not said anything which
she was thinking; she had not spoken of love, or hate, or
lost opportunities, or reconciliation. She had buried her
face in her palms and wept, sobbing brokenly that he
must get out of her ship, out of her ken, out of her life,

Only the Marada had seen the pensive grin on the con-
sul general's face as he gathered up the distraught girl in
flight satins, carried her to her stateroom as once, so long
ago, he carried her into this life which he had never ex-
pected her primitive's mind to encompass.

Marada's tenderness toward Shebat brought surprising
results: When the girl was dry of tears, in her husky voice
she proclaimed that she had come here specifically to se-
duce him, to soften his heart toward Chaeron, and:

"Chaeron thinks I am a snobbish celibate, that I am sex-
ually limited and"—sniff—"retarded by that. I came here
to broaden my horizons and become normal. Gray eyes
in red whites peered at him, free from guile. "Consider-
ing how I once felt. . . thought I felt. . . about you, you
were the obvious choice. But I cannot—"

"That is a relief, I can't very well bed my brother's
wife, no matter how anxious I am to lie down with my
enemy. Shebat, you must understand: I wish you nothing
but the best. Despite your unfortunate marriage, I will
help you however I may. Believe me."

And Shebat did believe him.

But the Marada—monitoring all with unabashed thor-
oughness ever since the physical welfare of his outboard
had come into question—did not. His readouts told him

59

EARTH DREAMS

truer; Marada Kenion's equilibrium was a magnificent
sham, a fantasy. Like Hassid, her pilot was being eaten
away from within by imagined guilts and an all-pervasive
aberration too dangerous to ignore and too deeply seated
to be known to those who harbored it.

When Marada Kerrion's dark person had finally suited
up and ducked through his locks into the calm anchor-
space separating the Marada from Hassid, Shebat's
cruiser heaved a silicon sigh of relief that brightened
every light on board, and made the striolate banding
about bis length pulse like an electric eel.

But later, when Shebat had said to him, worriedly, that
the consul general had mentioned renewed piracy in the
shipping lanes, and made known his determination to
search space-end, module by module, if need by, for the
culprit, the cruiser was sorry that he had not more closely
monitored the beginnings of his namesake's visit aboard.

It was with this unintentional encouragement of the
consul general's firmly in mind that Shebat insisted they
make their way to the loose-knit colonies of Pegasus.
With leaden spirits, she returned from there. Spry and
the KXV unfound, insistent upon going groundside with
no intelligencer or even a bodyguard.

"I have you, Marada. I need no man," she had pro-
nounced hotly, and even the Marada knew that there was
something wrong about the way she said "man," the
word so full of resentment that it was nothing like the
pilot's adage she was intending to reaffirm.

It was not until Shebat was installed in her chosen cave
and the Marada at his space-anchor that the Danae
insinuated her way past Shebat's standing order that the
Marada, beyond his dealings with Acheron's traffic au-
thority, maintain communications silence. Cruiser com-
munion was, after all, different from communication with
outboards or traffic controllers.

The Marada did not realize that Danae had tricked him
until Chaeron Kerrion's grainy, cruiser-shunted face
peered noncorporeally into his most private being.

Five thousand miles below the Marada's anchor, a
cruiser's snout poked its way into Jesse Thome's dream
dance, the glorious visage of Chaeron Kerrion manifest-

40

JANET MORRIS

ing right behind. Thome^had little experiences with
dream dances. This, his third ever, under the aegis of the
oracle Shebat, was full of stars: men swam among them;

great metal fish dove among them; monumental cities
spun among them, choraling the grandeur of man for all
eternity to see.

Consequently, when the cruiser and the ethereal face
invaded his waking dream, he accepted this intrusion
placidly—until Shebat's fury tumbled him abruptly out of
the land of visions, onto the cold stone floor of the sibyl's
cave.

He had seen the face of the man previously, in her
spell-trances, but always it had been serene, welcoming
full of salvation. This time, it had been wriggling, blow-
ing apart and coalescing as it spoke into Jesse's place of
dreaming, full of the wrath of the gods.

"Shebat!" the voice had thundered, so that the dream-
ing Thome had clapped nonphysical hands to the effigy-
ears, "Stay right there. I am on my way."

"How dare you'" the dream dancer had howled, and
the howl became a snarling wind that wiped away the
starscape and gusted Jesse Thome back into familiar,
Earthbound flesh.

In that interval, while an unnatural wind had upswept
him, Thome had felt fear like none he had ever endured
in battle. Not even while in enchanters' clutches had he
been split apart, mind torn from body, body telegraphing
urgent instructions that soul could not implement. He
shivered, when it was over, crouching in the seeress's
cave, frozen with terror. Waiting for mindlessness to
pass, he tried to tell himself that it was only the tithe of
sitting so long cross-legged; that his feet and legs were
asleep, and his mind had chosen to follow: that none of
what he felt was akin to cowardice, only a second-cousin
of nightmare, come to call,

He had seen the sibyl's face while she strove to oust
the intruding double vision of man and Leviathan,
though, and her raging eyes spitting fire so blinding it
made the awful eyes of the mighty spacefish dim to
nothing, the stars disappear.

He would not soon forget the sight of Shebat in her
power, in her place. More even than that reality which

41

EARTH DREAMS

broke into scenario and terminated idyll, it had been this
which submerged him in panic. No longer could he pre-
tend to himself that his third trip to consult the oracle
was a harmless diversion to pass the endless time of win-
ter quartering, valuable only in that it enhanced his repu-
tation among the storm-scattered ranks of militiamen, as
the horses she had given him had been proof to some
that Thorne's hopeless battle against magic had divine
sanction, that every god of rock and field loved him, and
wished him well.

In previous dreams, the epicene man's aspect had been
one of a redeemer, shining forth with outstretched hands
to save them all. For the first dream, his men had been
with him, and later he had found that each man of his—
even Cluny, the young scout—had had this very same
dream, save for the fact that whoever dreamed that
dream deemed himself its central character. This had dis-
appointed him, somehow, and made him jealous of those
young heroes who had sworn to lay down their lives for
him, and that had disappointed him further: he had seen
smallness in himself.

So he had gone back a second time, and she had given
him a dream that was his alone: of paradise on Earth and
an end to endless servitude; a dream free from enchant-
ers who could cause a man's flesh to fire like a dead stick
in summer; a dream in which he had had a great part.
And then had come waking, and her gift of the pair of
blue-eyed stallions, and their ride to the clearing where
her fire-spouting chariot had come to reclaim her.

He had been saddened, for it had seemed to him that
she was come as his special daemon, his sign from
heaven. He had hoped she would return.

Now, he wished she had not come back to Bolen's
town, that he had not ridden up from Troy when he had
heard news of the oracle sitting again on Sentinel Ridge.

He slapped his recalcitrant calves, massaged them
through his deerskin boots. If the apparition from the
dream was truly on its way hither, it was time for him to
depart.

He said as much to the girl across from him, so frail in
her shapeless robe that it was difficult for him to credit
his own experience: this was the creature whose spells

42

JANET MORRIS

held such power that his teeth still ached from being
clamped tight against his fear?

She made no answer, only turned hellhole eyes up to
him, bereft of color but for reflections thrown up by the
banked embers of the fire between them. He walked
around it, extended his hand down to her. "The fire
bums out, little mother. We have been at it long. My
men will want daylight for our leave-taking; the ridgeside
is treacherous."

She said, in her throaty voice which tickled his spine,
"You should stay and meet with him whose face you saw.
There is little time left for you to make your choice."

"There is no choice for me, little mother, beyond
death or freedom. A child could foretell which of those is
more likely."

She grasped his hand and stood, unfolding her long
legs as if they had not been crossed beneath her since the
fire was bold and crackling. Risen, she was a mere hand
shorter than he. She cocked her head, and challenge
sparkled from her gaze before her lips parted. "Death is
a coward's refuge. Freedom is within your grasp."

"Come with me, little mother," he blurted, surprising
himself with those words. "It is not safe here for one
whom enchanters deplore."

"You heard the voice in our dream; he who owns it
will be here presently." Their hands were still clasped;

she gently disengaged hers, led the way out of the cave.

Jesse Thome wiped his palm on his leggings, muttering
to himself as he followed. What he wanted from the ora-
cle, he preferred not to examine too closely. One should
not have profane thoughts about an envoy of the name-
less gods who yet loved the small and weak defenders of
Their faith.

At the cave's mouth, midday was blinding, reflected
heavenward by a ferocious blizzard's snows. "It is said
that in the enchanted city of New Chaeronea, snow dares
not fall, that there it is ever warm as spring," he re-
marked, trying to sound casual as he came up behind her
and saw his party circled before the cave in a protective
ring, all their horses' rumps turned inward, bows and
slings drawn to ready in every man's hand.

"Go back inside, sibyl," he entreated her in a rattling

45

EARTH DREAMS

whisper, squinting through the glare. "Your predictions
are too exact for my taste. I did not realize you meant
that I would come to terms with my destiny today." For-
getting her hallowed person, he took her by the arm and
cast her behind him tike a sack of spelt. Beyond his
riders' horses, he saw enchanters approaching on their
massive steeds, a great black clot of them like blood
spilled from a mortal wound.

He counted twice his own force before he stepped out
of the shadow and made for his horse, and his com-
mander of ten saw him, and young Cluny Pope vaulted
off his pony and scrambled toward him, breaking ranks.

"Get back on that horse," he snapped to the boy,
whose face fell, saving Thome from having to endure
those wide, wild eyes which would soon be staring sight-
lessly up into heaven.

Then he walked at a leisurely pace toward his own
mount, took a handful of mane and vaulted onto it, dis-
engaged his saddlebag and began putting his pistol
together.

It would be a shame to die without ever having fired it,
which had cost him one of the two stallions he had gotten
from the seeress. His second-in-command, watching him
out of the corner of his eye, made a signal which caused
his troop to spread out one horse's width more.

Thorne eased his gray in between the brown mare of
his lieutenant and the pony belonging to Cluny Pope. To
his left were fifteen of the finest fighters in the northeast:

his best officers come in for winter strategy meetings. To
his right were an equal number of fledgling commanders:

each phalanx leader had brought his first officer, or his
squire.

Thorne favored Cluny Pope with a fierce stare of con-
demnation: no other youth had broken ranks. A line so
thin could not afford a break in it. The boy, blushing red
to his pointed ears, looked steadily ahead of him, back
stiff, stroking his pony's neck. Jesse felt evanescent re-
gret, that he had allowed the youth's father to browbeat
him into bringing his eldest son north from Troy. Among
the freedom-loving families, it was thought prestigious to
have their sons with him; a favor due the father of a girl
whom in gentler times he might have wed had brought

44

JANET MORRIS

Cluny Pope to him, scant months ago. A favor? Now that
it was imminent, death could not be welcome merely be-
cause it was honorable to a boy barely sixteen years of
age.

Screwing the pistol's barrek into place, Thome hung it
by a thong from his saddlehom. He was angry, and that
was good. What approached was not just the end of his
life, but the end of hopes long nurtured among the down-
trodden populace. If he had not called his best in to con-
sult them, he would not be facing the destruction of eight
years' work. No rallying would be possible, once these
were gone.

He saluted his own lieutenant, and the lantern-jawed
man grinned bleakly back.

Horses snorted; men shared out weapons, passing sling
stones and sabertoothed boomerangs down their arching
line. Some had javelins and telescoping iron spears with
fire-hardened wooden points: all knew iron blades could
not pierce an enchanter's defense.

Jesse Thorne whistled them up; the horses danced,
knowing that command of old.

His own gray blared a belly-shaking challenge out
across the snow toward the enchanters' company, wide-
spread in open order.

A singing tingle began to curdle the air around them.

"Hold steady," called his lieutenant. Cluny Pope made
a sign of warding over his pony's poll. Down the line,
rightward amongst the younger men, someone sobbed
softly, cursing in a tremulous voice.

Enchanters never closed in fair battle without first soft-
ening up the opposition. They waited for the spells to
weave, and they waited well.

Thome was filled with pride for his men. Even the soft
lament down-line on his right had stopped.

The air sang louder, began to roar. At one end of his
'ine, far right, an awful crackling commenced. Horses
squealed and shied; men held them as best they could,
without looking at the source of the horrible sounds, now
increasing, now joined by a wafting smell which was full
of sweetness and death.

On pretext of steadying the boy, Thorne chanced a
glance: the rightmost horse steamed; his rider was gur-

45

EARTH DREAMS

gling, hunched low over his saddle's horn. As Thome
watched, the man's clothing, his hair, and the mane and
tail of his mount flared bright, like catching charcoal. A
glow issued forth from him, and his mount bellowed des-
perately, just once. Then, like a horse and rider of wood,
they began to crumble, flames unbearably bright licking
out from within. Jesse had one glimpse of the rider's
charred flesh, burning eyes, cracking skin, and then a
blast of heat and light came from them, and mount and
man collapsed like paper, leaving ash and leather and
saddle fittings and weapons falling toward the ground.

"Recover arms," snapped Thorne's lantem-jawed lieu-
tenant, and the two men closest to the pile of char looked
from one to the other before the endman obeyed.

With less than a quarter-mile remaining between the
two forces, a fear that was palpable consumed his corps.
From above their heads, the sky seemed to roar with in-
fernal laughter, split apart. A fireball danced there,
among the clouds. It blossomed quite slowly, hovering
over their heads. Don't look at it, Jesse Thome prayed;

then, aloud: "Eyes front."

But the fireball passed over them, on down the slope
where the ridge tapered gently, and, like some hunting
dog on an elusive scent, made its way toward the en-
chanters approaching from the northeast.

Its sounds, however, never left them; spooked horses,
ears flattened, added their terror to the unholy din.

When his gray—the most trustworthy of battle
chargers—broke and reared, Jesse Thome disobeyed his
own orders and looked up at the sky, expecting laughing
effigies of enchanters smirking down at him from hostile
clouds.

But instead, a long, waffle-work glow came out of the
cloudcover, so that the roaring became unbearable; be-
cause of the horses' fear of it, he called a retreat, bunch-
ing his men back against the very ridgeside, his own
mount positioned before the opening to the oracle's cave.

He saw mouths move in prayer or imprecation, but no
mortal sound could rise above this thunder which made
the ground quake. He saw, beyond the glow of a mighty
vessel in fluid descent, the fireball reach the enchanters
who approached in mazing numbers. And he saw their

46

JANET MORRIS

horses begin to fall, slowly buckling their knees as if they
must sleep. And he witnessed enchanters—men who
were more than men and were said to be unassailable—
falling like autumn leaves from their gold-trapped sad-
dles: the ineluctable stopped dead, the omnipotent
vanquished.

"Hold, hold!" called his lieutenant, a scream hardly
audible above the keening air from which the magical
conveyance dropped down toward them.

Barely was there room for it, between the horses and
the stand of trees.

He struggled to steady his own steed in the face of the
thing, which was like the mighty spacefish he had seen in
the sibyl's dream, but smaller, with an upraised snout
and colored lights banding it round.

Then he could see nothing in the steam of melting
snow—not the enchanters, beyond, not the metal mantis
of the horseless chariot, not anything at all.

Out of the fog and mist come so suddenly upon them,
lightning blazed, questing. From the northeast, where the
enchanters faltered, it came and licked at the mist-
shrouded transport which settled out of the sky, then
sought easier prey among his riders. Like a serpent, wav-
ing its head, it hissed like a living thing.

His men tried to remain motionless: this enchanter's
weapon was one with which all were familiar. But
Thorne's lieutenant's horse had had enough, and bucked
and fought. That was all the lightning needed to sight its
victim.

By the time Thorne had realized his officer could not
control his terrified horse, the man was wrapped in shin-
ing death, constrictor-lightning tight around him, his
horse's nose and skyward-pointing head all that could be
seen but the baleful strands of destruction. Jesse
Thome's heart sank groundward with the paltry, ashen
remains of man and mount.

Then began a battle incomprehensible to him, between
the chariot from the sky and the enchanters from the
northeast, so that no one could watch it, but all shielded
their eyes, or closed them tightly, as Thome found need
to do, burying their faces in their horses' manes, holding
their palms over their mounts' eyes.

47

EARTH DREAMS

When the sounds like rending earth had stopped, when
no thunder rolled or lightning flashed red through his
tight-shut lids, Jesse looked up to see the middle of the
wall of metal before him split, and that very man whose
beauty was more than human emerge from the darkness
within, preceded by a taller, dark man in blacks and fol-
lowed by one in gray and the infamous enchanter known
as Hooker.

Thorne took his hands from his horse's eyes, whistled a
signal that meant, "Caution, hold position," and sat up
straight in his saddle.

From behind him, he heard a voice. Obeying it, he
urged his mount forward, so that the oracle could emerge
from her cave.

This put him horse-to-eye with the tall, tight-lipped
man in black and red, whom Jesse recognized from his
previous visit here. He said, as the man took his horse's
bridle authoritatively, "We would not have let them take
her alive."

"So we feared," said the long-nosed man in a formida-
ble manner. Thorne was a good judge of men, and
marked this one as a force with which to reckon.

But no ill came of it, save that the ma& saw his pistol
as he sidled through the horse-line and spoke with the
oracle in a tongue which Jesse's mother had taught him,
and few but enchanters understood^ Having a secret
knowledge of the enchanters' arcane language, Con-
sulese, had often been useful to him in the past. It did
not fail him then:

"Shebat, are you all right?" said the dark one.

"Tempest, I have never been so glad to see you, but I
am unharmed."

"Will you stop this foolery and come home?"

"Acheron is not my home."

While he listened, he watched the regal, aubum-haired
man, who had invaded the oracle's dream, watch him.
There was calculation displayed openly there, and just a
hint of a smile. The thing to do, Thome was sure, was
greet him, and he threw a leg over his horse's neck and
slid from his saddle to do just that.

Immediately to the right of the man from his dream,
the gray-clad one stood, arms akimbo and legs spread,

48

JANET MORRIS

grousing familiarly, "Haven't you had enough of this? I

have."

"Just about," the other agreed, and then, as if they
were old friends, stepped toward Jesse Thome, hand out-
stretched in greeting. "If you would care to join us for an
inspection of what exists beyond this little world's sky,
Mister Thorne, then perhaps I can persuade my wife to
come also. What do you say? I'll guarantee your safe re-
turn, and while you are with us, you'll be treated as befits
a son of the house of On-efors. The problems we are -both
having with refractory personnel... ah, enchanters, that
is ... shall be more easily solved if we pool our informa-
tion." The hand of the man from his dream stayed ex-
tended, an arm's length away. Behind him, his horse
nuzzled his back, nudging him forward.

This accident made it necessary to grasp the out-
stretched hand, warm though the day was breath-freezing
cold. "Your wife?"

"I am afraid so, Jesse Thorne. But I have you at a
disadvantage. Let me introduce myself, and my
companions. . ••."

There was something so winsome and honest about the
man called Chaeron Kerrion that Thome soon found
himself exchanging greetings with Raphael Penrose, who
looked at him like a man who sees some unknown type
of snake very close to his naked foot; and with Hooker,
who was no militiaman's friend but a villainous en-
chanter; and with the dark, long, fish-mouthed Gahan
Tempest. Then, in his turn and as seemed proper, he
named three of his officers (correctly, since Hooker knew
well who was who) and Cluny Pope.

"Care to bring a friend? We can take one more," said
Chaeron Kerrion to Thorne, with a mischievous sidelong
glance at the scout.

Cluny Pope's eyes widened until they might have con-
sumed the entire ridgeside, but Thorne refused, knowing
nothing of what lay ahead, and not wanting to chance
another's life in enchanters' keeps beyond the clouds.

He marked it strange that the man who said he was
husband to the oracle did not speak with her himself, but
forthwith ushered him up the ramp and into the en-
chanter's conveyance (which he called a "multidrive"),

49

EARTH DREAMS

while Shebat delivered a scathing denunciation of his
host's character in Consulese too rapid and eloquent for
him to catch more than its gist.

Once within the multidrive's arcane bowels, trepida-
tion shrouded him. But he could not have refused, before
his commanders, to accept. Such an invitation had been
tendered to no mortal man in living memory. Only
Shebat and Twice Risen had mounted to heaven on
wings of fire—and returned.

But when he beard the oracle's sharp words of rebuke
as she entered the magical multidrive (with young Pope
in tow!), castigating them for using those same weapons
as did the odious enchanters, and decreeing that never
again would she allow slaughter of that type to be perpe-
trated upon men, no matter whose men they were or
what was at stake, he began to wonder into what sort of
pit he had just stumbled, and how he was going to wrest
this opportunity to serve someone else's designs into his
own hands, and use it to lift the yoke of oppression from
his folk, with Hooker there to keep reminding those en-
chanters-who-claimed-not-to-be-so that Jesse Thorne was
dedicated, beyond any considerations of personal mo-
ment, to wiping enchanters from the face of the Earth.

Chapter Four

Chaeron Kerrion was feeling much more himself
lately. The privilege of being able to make that statement
was precious to him, who had long been denied it. He
had weathered his father's death, his little brother's living
death, his half brother's accension and affair with
Chaeron's own mother, his arrest and trial for complicity
in the terrorist bombing which had nearly killed mother
and sibling both, his own vindication and resultant de-
motion—all seemingly unscathed, but for worry lines
etching his brow. The lines had come not from the rigors
his mother's patron. Fate, had decreed for him, but from
his efforts to present this very similitude, even to himself:

unscathed! That was what he had wanted to be, had de-
manded to be, had pretended to be, for he well knew
that the perception of reality is more crucial than the un-
derlying actuality. From the most distant times, the ve-
racity of this axiom could be seen as self-evident in
history: participants die, events blur, what is recorded as
truth becomes truth.

But he was not yet history; he was very much alive;

those events which were blurred in his memory were so
because of his physiochemical reaction to stress. And he
was far from unscathed..

But he was coming closer it it: close enough to admit
that for at least the last six months he had been so

50

51

EARTH DREAMS

skewed by happenstance that his judgment might have
been affected. He could not have made -this admission
even three weeks ago, when, unpacking his personal
effects in his Acheron apartment, he had dropped one
silver stallion bookend on his bare foot, then thrown the
offending article against the farther wall, denting its blot-
ter-gray expanse, breaking off the venerable statue's
striking foot, and collapsing his house of lies about his
head. He had sat long there on the smoky carpet, the
ruined casting cradled in his lap. Of all he had brought
from Draconis and had had sent from Lorelie, only this
pair of bookends meant anything to him personally. He
had had them since childhood. They had accompanied
him through everything, proud, indomitable, frozen in
mid-challenge. The man who had hefted one in anger
and cast it was no man he fancied becoming.

He had stopped lying to himself, ceased ignoring what
could not be borne. But he could not have done it ear-
lier: he could not have endured a harsh assessment of his
difficulties white no light shone at the end of his private
tunnel. He would have crumbled. So he had come out of
his stupor—out of endless pulse-pounding, skin-crawling
days of looking steadfastly only at that day's labors,
never at the morrow's—just in time, or exactly at the
right time, or at the first possible time he could survey
the shambles of his life and retain his sanity.

He did not know which, or care, except to the extent
that he must keep in mind that some of the things he had
said and done, especially in regard to his relationship
with his wife, might not have been quite as equitable as
he would have liked.

What is not realized as error cannot be remedied, fu-
tures researchers claimed. He had a clutch of those—
Delphis and problem modelers—and every time he
talked with one he was reminded that if not for Bemice
"Delphi" Gomes's hatred for everything Kerrion, he
would be Draconis consul yet.

Never mind, never mind. But how could he not? He
had tried to pretend that he was just as effective here as
he had been in Draconis, as proconsul when before he
had been consul, but since no one else believed it, it was
time he stopped believing that he must believe it.

52

JANET MORRIS

And though any rational man would look at Chaeron's
prospects for release from Earth's loamy embrace and
glumly admit it impossible, the trick was simply not to
mind it: all right, cuddle up to disgrace, play dice with
hopelessness, harness despair. And beat the odds.

He was about it, as best could be. He had hurt some
people who loved him: Shebat, Gahan Tempest, RP. He
would remedy his errors.

Now that survival was likely, he could set about it.
When first he had come to the Stump, most reprehensi-
ble of all habitational spheres, he was too beleaguered.
Three attempts on his life had come close; countless oth-
ers everyone prudently ignored. The populace of plat-
form dwellers had forced him to sweeping measures with
their hostility, their intransigence, and their haughty cer-
tainty that he would never figure out what they were
doing in time. To master the Stump's ancient complexity,
one needed to have been born to it. Without the cooper-
ation of those who were, he had had only one alterna-
tive: scrap it, and start anew.

So now, the tables were turned. Every living being
who had thwarted him in the Stump was his tenant here
in Acheron. No one knew the data sources here as well
as he: Chaeron was in control of every data pool and
base and knowledge base accessible to Acheron's public,
and others which were not. He had spent mightily to ac-
quire it, but he even had an independent orbital complex
with redundant matrices and personal resonances which
gave him constant information updates and had an effec-
tive range of two hundred million miles. On Earth or
even from Earth space's sponge-portal, he could conduct
his business, contact his intelligencers directly (and non-
verbally), monitor events in Acheron, all without an ac-
cessing terminal or the slightest twinge of worry that his
programs were compromised in their integrity or their
secrecy.

Never had he had such latitude in the area of computer
protocals. He doubted that his father had had it, in the
old days: Parma Alexander Kerrion, though an innovator
in every other arena, had been of the opinion that direct-
accessing intelligence keys might in some insidious way

55

EARTH DREAMS

be harmful to the human mind. Chaeron, child of his
times, had no such compunction.

Through his intelligence keys, while still shuttling to-
ward the Danae, he had concluded the meeting in New
Chaeronea which he had interrupted to fetch Shebat- Si-
multaneously, without a word being spoken before
Hooker, he had detailed Tempest to arrange for the
ground-dwellers' quartering in the Acheron Earth town,
and suitable surveillance of them in the person of his new
houseboy, the erstwhile young Mistral, as well as by stan-
dard electronics. In concert, Penrose was entering a log
copy transmitted from the Marada into the memory of
the Danae, who by the time the shuttle reached her bay
had sorted out the highlights of Shebat's twelve-week
journey for Chaeron's perusal. In Danae's enlarged cargo
bay, while Shebat strutted, eyes shining with re-
membrances of her own first glimpse of the innards of a
sponge-cruiser, playing hostess to the ground-dweller
Thome and his ward, Chaeron made sure that RP ar-
ranged with the dream dancers and his pilots that
Shebat's welcome to Acheron would be warm, and ex-
tensive. The visitors' suite in the guildhall was readied,
the guildmaster pro tern informed that the Draconis con-
sul, Shebat Kerrion, D.P.G. 17 -(seventeenth rated pilot
of the Draconis arm of the pilotry guild), might well be
taking up residence for an undetermined stay.

All this was done without a vocalization, while Hooker
glowered and Jesse Thorne and Cluny Pope were shown
such wonders as the Danae's water shower and her con-
trol room's visual displays of the cosmos in multiple spec-
tra, and Danae set off imperceptibly toward Acheron.

Only once was this rule of silence for safety's sake bro-
ken, and this because RP yet smarted under Chaeron's
dictatorial deployment of the talents of his cruiser.

"Shebat will not stay with you?" Rate disbelieved, cat-
tiness of voice augmenting his feline eyes so that invisible
whiskers seemed to twitch on his clean-shaven cheeks.

"We'll see, I'm sure. Let's give her the option. Now
you give me line-in to that log copy." They were standing
at Danae's helm, Penrose by his seat and Chaeron with
one knee on the copilot's couch. Colored light played on

54

JANET MORRIS

Penrose's face from his ready boards, a timely mask. He
stabbed about him, causing the copilot's panels to come
to life, then bowed from his seat, exaggeratedly: "She's
a-ready, Massa," and Chaeron wanted to smooth his
taunts away, or slap them gone, and knew not which.

He sighed, slipped down into the padded seat. "Rafe,
I'll see you in the guildhall at dinner, no matter what."

"I'll be busy." Shebat and Cluny Pope could be heard,
giggling from the aft station in the following pause.

"Lords of Cosmic Jest forgive me, I'll bite: busy with
what?"

"With the drubbing I'm going to take for getting—for
stealing—you that log copy before my guildmaster's even
seen it! Anybody finds out I helped the Marada extort
promises of aid out of you in exchange for it, I'll be
drummed out of the service—"

"Come now, Raphael. You don't believe that."

Penrose made a snapping sound with his tongue, let his
breath out. "No, I suppose I don't believe that. But I'd
like to believe it. Ifs hard being first bitch of a straw
guildhouse—"

"Baldy, again? I told you, I'll try. You wouldn't want a
real guildmaster in there right now, slapping your wrist
twice weekly. You won't have this pro tern long, assum-
ing I can extricate the guildmaster of your choice from
jail."

Penrose tried not to look mollified, but the "W" be-
tween his brows softened, his jaws relaxed. "I don't like
it," he mumbled, weakly, with the look of one who
knows he's lost, but must struggle on for propriety's
sake.

Please, dear friend, just a little more patience, Chaeron
wanted to say, but could not. He turned to the front
monitors, leaned back in the couch, and with eyes closed,
reviewed the log copy Danae had received from the
Marada, presently pacing the Danae into Acheron at
Shebat's request,

Six hours later, he was sitting in his office, late for din-
ner, and about to face his wife where whatever was
wished might be said without qualm.

He had not spoken directly with her since their argu-
ment before her damnable cave. Only once since her re-

55

EARTH DREAMS

turn from Draconis—when his surveillance of her
position indicated approaching danger in the form of
massed Orrefors rebels and he had made use of the
Danae and the Marada to contact her, who as yet had no
intelligence keys entered into his matrices—had they spo-
ken other than through intermediaries.

She had not seen fit to contact him' he had not moved
to get in touch with her. A fine game for spoiled chil-
dren. It had almost gotten her killed. If she had had her
data pool code-ins, he would not have had to link two
cruisers to alert her to danger, and need not have
brought Raphael's wrath upon his head when he most
needed cease-fires on all fronts. So he told her, while she
paced off his midnight-and-silver office and stroked the
dark, old wood of his desk and fussed with her low-cut,
gold dinner dress (which betrayed a thickening waist) un-
til he paused, hoping she would swoop down and take
the olive branch in its thicket of rebuke, and at last she
looked him in the eye.

"How dare you invade my dream dance?" Straight as a
plumb line she sat down opposite his desk. He swiveled
his chair and watched her chin lift and her lip plump out
in righteous indignation.

"I thought I just apologized for that."
"Did you? I did not hear it, I must confess."
He thought, There must be some simple way to handle
this. I don't want to fight with her. The words waiting to
hop out of his mouth seemed unlikely to bed hostilities,
yet no better ones would come. He held firm, watching
her sit in her chair, pleased that she was "there in one
condemnatory piece, until she was forced to speak in the
void. "As for my getting killed, would it so terribly
bother you? You would regain your coveted spot as heir
apparent."

"Ah, but even then I could not be Draconis consul, the
way things are. So—" he shrugged, found a smile, don-
ned it for a transistory instant, put it by; from his desk he
took a folded sheet of paper, looked at it, fed it into a
slot "—if you will now chose three key codes at random
and scramble them however you choose," he leaned over
and handed her another, smaller piece of paper, taken
from his jacket's inside pocket, "adding some symbol of

56

JANET MORRIS

your own choice to replace the missing digit, then image
it, you will not have to endure my knowing your
numbers."

She sat with the sheet of paper, forming the sequences
she was memorizing with her lips. When she raised her
bead and handed back the list, she said, "Top, third, and
last. 'S.' Unscrambled. I know we'll need these others.
And that I can't keep them secret from you. What are
you doing here, building a new Lorelie? No wonder the
bills of lading were voluminous." She shook her head,
and her jet curls danced. At least the mourning band was
gone from her brow.

"Did you say 'we/ again? May I assume that my apol-
ogy is accepted? I will behave like an adult if you
will. ... It would be prudent of you to take a secondary
set of keys from me."

"All right," she whispered, and rubbed her eyes, her
voice more husky than usual.

When she had repeated to him the intelligence keys he
had reserved for her, he heaved a heartfelt sigh, and
stretched in his seat. "Are you hungry? The rest can be
saved for after dinner. I fear we are late, but the Drac-
onis consul's pleasure is ours , . . ?"

He was half out of his seat to assist her when she said
sharply, "Say whatever it is you are saving. There will be
no better time."

"Any time would be better." He came around the desk
and sat upon it, fingering one silver stallion's striking
forefoot. "But this will do. ,Really, I would have pre-
ferred to wine you, dine you, make love to you and an-
swer what questions I could in that way. However: Are
you enciente? I do have a right to know."

"What?" She knew what he meant; her fists balled; her
pupils swallowed the gray about them.

"Pregnant, my dear. With child. The Marada thinks
that you are."

"I don't know. I think so." It was too small a voice,
too guarded, too abrupt a departure from the aggressive
consular pose she bad been keeping.

"You . . . don't . . . know? If my calculations are not
in error—and I assure you they are not—it has been
three months since our tryst on the floor of that cave.

57

EARTH DREAMS

Now, I am aware, as I know you are, that there are cer-
tain signs, difficult to misread—"

"But misreadable. I have been under some strain."

"So have we all. Shebat, if you even suspected you
were with child, why in all the living hells we make for
ourselves did you log so many sponge-hours? What possi-
ble importance could David Spry's corpse be when corn-;

pared to a child's life? Do you want to ruin us both, only
me, or simply the entire house of Kerrion? All we need is
to have our child bom deformed, or autistic like Mar-
ada's first, or even stillborn. If not for your unwillingness
even to find out if you are pregnant, I might be able to
say 'son' instead of referring to this potential offspring as
one of indeterminate gender. Do you understand me?"
His anger was slipping through, sliding under the crack of
the door he had slammed upon it. He ground his teeth
and dug his fingers into the mahogany of his desk- "If
you are pregnant, and three months along, it is too late
to assure us a son by any of the accepted methods. Even
hormone treatments will not avail: it is too risky. Earlier,
it would have been—"

Shebat stood up, hands behind her back. "What makes
you think I want a son? Or that I want to know be-
forehand what sex my child will be, if there is one?
Maybe I've been eating too much. 1 don't know. I'm
tired a lot, and I—

"How do you know what the Marada thinks? You stay
away from my cruiser! I've seen for myself what you've
done with Danae. Poor Raphael, he must be heartsick.
Answer me!"

Sliding off the desk, he took a step toward her, so that
they were inches apart. He took her by the elbows, let-
ting his hands slide up her arms, reach her throat, her
chin, tilt her head up until he could kiss her. He could
think of nothing else to do, and nothing more dangerous.
The affront he feared stiffened her, but he ignored it,
and tried to deepen the tremor he could feel in her knot-
ted back.

When he let her go, confusion had replaced hostility,
distrust was softened by genetics' wisdom. She did not
back away, but leaned against him with her head on his
chest.

58

JANET MORRIS

He risked it all then: "I took a log copy from the
Marada. I would have had it tomorrow, anyway. I was
too worried about you to wait. If you are pregnant, you
must promise me you will not continue to function as a
sponge-pilot while carrying our child. It is dangerous for
you both." This he had rehearsed, a dozen, a hundred
times. He held her hands while he said it, looked ear-
nestly into her eyes as he had meant to.

Her reaction, for once, was what he had hoped for: "I
will not give the Marada up, not my option to pilot him,
nor my scheduled nights. No part of it. I don't care if I
am 'with child' or not. I don't tike children, they smell
and they're ugly and they take up too much time. If you
want one, and I've got one,"—she patted her belly—
"then find another place for it to grow. If you don't, then
we'll do the sensible thing. Slate?"

"Slate." She, too, must have thought this thing
through, he reflected, and kissed the top of her head with
such fervent relief that he could not stop with one kiss, or
keep them chaste.

Even that did not offend her, who of late seemed of-
fended by everything.

With some chagrin, he escorted her to a dinner he had,
never really believed she would attend, and dealt with
Rate's coldness gratefully: open discord would have been
disastrous. "Somewhere around midmeal, he sent up a si-
lent prayer of thanks to Chance that those who loved him
did not hate each other more than that, and those upon
whom he counted, had, in the clinch, turned out to be
people upon whom one could afford to count.

It was half an evening later, and many wines beyond,
that an irascible fortune turned blighting breath on the
proceedings at this table: talk turned to Draconis, to the
Draconis pilotry guild, and to Marada Seleucus Kerrion.

Shebat, who never drank, but tonight had matched
Rafe glass for glass, was tripping over her tongue, but
not so much so that she did not manage to mention that
the consul general had offered to loan her—and
Acheron—all the money they would need.

Chaeron would have handled it more delicately.
Chaeron had been hoping to have a moment to do so,

EARTH DREAMS                            59

But Penrose had edited the log transcript, and he was not
feeling generous, or delicate:

"What are you going to put up for security, your
cruiser?" sneered Rate. "A// our cruisers?"

Chaeron, debating between murder and a hurried
leave-taking, did neither, but sat the matter out, until the
two began trading in information he could not afford to
have widely spread.

So in front of the Acheron pilotry guild and whom-
soever else in the dark, spacious guildhall had contrived
to spy upon them, it was necessary to have Tempest es-
cort the two people he cared most in the world about to
disparate quarters under close surveillance.

While he was sitting there among the shipwrights and
bitches, between two empty chairs in that best-of-all pos-
sible guildhalls he had built for RP (yes, for Penrose even
more than as a monument and reaffinnation of his pro-
claimed status as champion of pilots' rights and cruisers'
rights), it occurred to him that Chance had just made him
an offer which could salve the majority of his most press-
ing irritations—if he were audacious enough to snatch the
opportunity.

In the muraled, linened dining hall, he grinned
broadly—his most private expression, reserved for per-
sonal triumphs and items of accomplishment never meant
to be known beyond his own skull. Shaking his head, he
scratched ruminatively behind one ear, a gesture picked
up from his pilot. He snorted softly, to chase the notion
away; No, he could not do that—could he? Did he care
so much about the welfare of some unborn infant, so lit-
tle for his relationship with his wife? Or—he slid down in
his seat, toying with a vermeil fork, stabbing it into the
spotless tablecloth—would he be remiss not to dare it,
for all their sakes? Was it not, primarily, his love for
Shebat which had brought the idea to mind? Wouldn't he
be saving her endless agonizing, she who was too young
and too sorely pressed and—face this, also—too confused
at the moment to make any decision with ease?

A presence invaded his reverie: the guildmaster pro
tern, more bowed under the weight of his labors and the
hopelessness of his task—no one could control pilots

60

JANET MORRIS

whom pilots did not revere, wished him a good evening.
Chaeron raised a hand from the table, waved it, nodded.
The man, understanding, drifted away.

Acheron's proconsul let out a long, controlled breath
through his nose, forcing his concerns into line like a
point leader ordering troops. Did he not have need of
Shebat, her expertise and her rank, to take the dream
dancers and the very earth in hand while he wrestled with
two hundred and one additional burdens lumped to-
gether as the Orrefors acquisition? and matters of family,
clamoring louder by the hour for his attention? Wasn't
his mother imperiled by his psychotic half brother, and
all the mighty Kerrion consulate as well? He had meant
to send a gift to his brother's newbom son, resting con-
tent in Lorelie: the first cruiser built wholly in Acheron.

He activated his data link, gave that order, and
paused. On the brink of the unthinkable, he chuckled,
squeezed his eyes shut, and stepped boldly out into irre-
deemable action: he ordered a hospital room prepared
for Shebat, rousted a team of specialists from their recre-
ations, gave himself clearances for a breeding permit,
and arranged for an artificial womb.

Then he got up and made his goodbyes and headed off
toward the suite to which his inebriated wife had been
escorted.

Shebat Alexandra Kerrion awoke from a red dream
into a white world full of pain. Her head ached and her
vision pinwheeled and her loins burned like hellfire.
There was a black splotch inhabiting her void of whit-
eness, hovering near, but she had no time for it. She
rushed around her recollection-strewn mind, groggily re-
claiming this bit of memory or that: she recalled a bright
light, and the flare of parapentothal burning its way up to
her shoulder, leaping incendiarily into her brain. She re-
called her fight to remain conscious, too stupefied to hide
the effort, so that she just kept on counting and counting,
and at length heard the officiating doctor order up a sec-
ond dose; that was why her arm pulsed so, why her fin-
gers were stiff with swelling. She recalled, too, asking "Is
it human? Just tell me! I was so long in sponge," and the

61

EARTH DREAMS

confounded reply, courteous but troubled that she could
speak at all: "It's fine, just fine. Consul."

She tried to recollect when she had authorized this
travesty which her body decried. Lost, sobbed her flesh.
Taken, howled her soul. Failed, accused her genes. She
could not argue with any ot that.

"Chaeron?" she wondered, intending a denunciation
but managing only a thick, throaty whisper.

"Right here," a voice with a hand attached rumbled;

the hand clutched her swollen left; she winced.

"What happened?"

"You don't remember? Our discussion, our decision to
go ahead?" She could see his face, through dispersing
mist like smoke, come near. "If you were pregnant, to
delay no longer, but proceed as ready? You were and we
did."

Something was wrong in his face; it was too composed,
too perfectly compassionate. "You'll be fine in an hour
or so, Ym told; just a little sore."

"My head hurts and when I turn it, the world spins
about much later."

"That, my dear, is called a hangover. One must reap
one's rewards. And speaking of rewards, aren't you curi-
ous about our offspring?"

"No," she husked, but tears ran down her cheeks. She
cast off his grip to strike them away. Then: "You did not
simply abort it, then? It feels as if—"

"Well, you've lost something, biologically. Don't let it
worry you. A little depression is de rigueur with these
things. And it's a boy—human," he grinned, "and so far
as medical opinion can opine, preeminently normal.
Congratulations!"

"Keep them," she sniffled, "for yourself." She strug-
gled to sit up without groaning. Solicitous, he assisted
her. She did not like the look of fatherhood on him; that
he should be so elated while she hurt so completely was
intolerable. "And it," she hazarded, "it has a name?"

He frowned at her tone, but moved from the drawn-up
chair to sit by her hip on the bed. "I was waiting for you,
for that. I thought—"

"Cassander, then," she ordained.

His frown deepened; as of old, he plowed it up into his

62

JANET MORRIS

mane with a spread hand. "Cassander Alexander? You
have the right—"

"And you are overweening." Rage buoyed her; she sat
straight and drew her legs toward her chest, gasped in
concert with a series of agitated beeps from a monitor
above her head, sat at last with her knees half-flexed and
yellow pulses from the screen behind her gilding her
curls. "Heir apparent or no, I will not contend with Mar-
ada for the consul generalship. Nor set up my son to vie
with his."

, Chaeron toyed with the red piping on his black sleeve.
"It is just a name. Give it to him and let the future de-
cide itself. I can bear with 'Cassander' if you offer me an
Alexander. Agreed? Cassander Alexander Kerrion?"

"I detest you. Can you never, ever, do anything with-
out an eye to advantage?"

"Why should I want to?"

"Chaeron, let us change the subject."

"I was hoping you would say that. I have to talk to you
seriously." Out came the pocket-scrambler, to perch
upon the sheets.

"Aren't those illegal?"

"Sometimes, in some people's hands. Right here, now,
in mine: no. I want to warn you, first off, about the staff.
All officials, no matter how beguiling, who were assigned
to Stump before the takeover—like Hooker—or who
came in with the Kerrion administrative team but before
my arrival here, are suspect. We have a surfeit of diffi-
culties, accidents and mistakes and malfunctions of the
sort you were plagued with in Lorelie when my mother
and you were not getting along. Need I say more on
that?"

"No," she replied scornfully, her lip curled in indict-
ment of ubiquitous Kerrion intrigues. "I will be careful."
It came out a 'threat.

"Then, next matter: 1 want to talk with you about your
meeting with Marada, about the log entries."

"I think Raphael has made your position clear."

"Let us not snipe- Rare is correct, it would be madness
worthy of Marada himself for us to borrow. We can suf-
fer no liens upon our holdings. We'll be able to issue
stock of our own, soon enough, and I will pay you back

65

EARTH DREAMS

every bit of personal funds you have donated to this
cause, and more."

"Aren't you afraid of my owning a part of your little
empire?"

He sighed. "Shall I come back when you are feeling
better? No? Then, on the subject of empires, what colors
do you favor? It is not every day one creates a consular
house."

"Colors?"

He regarded her, patrician and grave.

"Colors: livery, crest, device styles, all of that."

"You are jesting. Dynastic humor come from new fa-
therhood. How can you . . , ? I don't believe this!"

"Oh, I can, the probability models tell us. With your
help, and free of liens, leaks, and security breakdowns.
Security compromises now would depotentiate us as
surely as I depotentiated those Orrefors rebels."

"I wanted to talk to you about that—"

"And I, you. I assure you we shall, but later . . ."

"How are Thorne and Cluny Pope getting along?" she
interrupted.

"As well as Hooker and Bitsy Mistral can ensure, I
imagine. You and these proceedings rather took prece-
dence in my mind. Shebat, when you leave here, which
you can when you will, come stay in the consulate with
me. All is prepared."

"I will billet on my ship."

He winced. "Well, that is preferable to the guildhall.
But consider: we'll never work these matters out if we
don't give living together a try. What's in the log, what
you said of me in your conversation with my brother is
not exactly true, and if I drove you into the arms of a
lunatic by making you think that I required some degree
of sexual expertise from you, then I am truly sorry. Any
man will tell you that if an apprenticeship is called for, he
himself will gladly serve as instructor. And if you think
my straits . . . ours ... so dire that you need sell your
charms to curry favor with my enemy, then you are twice
mistaken. And if you thought, even for a moment—now,
let me finish—that my brother the arbiter would be so
impassioned by your proposal that he would agree to en-
gage in an act of salacious bribery while being monitored

64

JANET MORRIS

by a sponge-cruiser, you have a long way to go to deserve
the name 'Kerrion.'"                            v

"Now may I speak? Yes? In order, then husband: I
will trade you my penchant for your half brother for
yours for Rafe Penrose. I will never live in with you as
long as you are two . . . paramours!"

"It has been a long time since there was anything phys-
ical between RP and me."

"And you want to give our son the middle name 'Alex-
ander' merely to preserve the family tradition, right?
Both statements are equally unbelievable." Chin high,
pout quivering, she derided him.

"Why do these things matter so much to you?"

"I might ask you the same. When we were wed you
suggested that I could initiate any relationship I chose
with Marada, providing decorum be preserved. We have
an agreement, a good Kerrion arrangement allowing us
both the freedom of diverse beds. I am not supposed to
notice your entanglements ^ yet whenever I even look at a
man you are quick to forbid me him. Jesse Thorne—"

"Dear Lords, let's not get into that. A leather-clad
barbarian? Such an assignation hardly preserves de-
corum. I made a mistake with this; it is too soon and you
are not thinking clearly."

"I am fine," she sniffed, white-skinned, purple-lipped,
and flush-cheeked.

"Shebat, let us try some new business. You were not
pleased with my handling of our first Earthly emergency.
Hear this proposal, the only alternative to which is an
end to this limited war and the extermination of every
rebel stronghold from orbit, no matter how many inno-
cents die in the implementation of that directive."

She leaned forward, forgetful of her body, which made
her groan softly.

"At last, I have your attention. Take your dream danc-
ers, who have waited over a month for you to arrive, arid
train them however you like; put them down on the
planet and tame it. I have little attention to spare for
guerrilla warfare. March fifteenth is census day in New
Chaeronea. I've a celebration scheduled for then with
many Consortium dignitaries invited. By that date I want
a calm and peaceful appearance, in my northeast western

65

EARTH DREAMS

hemisphere test site, at least. Refrain from aiding me as
you previously promised, and bear the consequences. Let
Spry's remains and long sponge-journeys go, for the
nonce, and do what needs to be done here, freeing me to
deal with my not inconsiderable problems in the areas of
cruiser industrialization, interconsular politics, and my
star-crossed family. Agreed?"

She saw in him a tinge of desperation overshadowed by
determination; she saw in him Parma Alexander Ker-
rion's feral spirit, the old tiger's tail lashing behind his
civilized facade. "Will we end up like your mother and
father, a working unit with no passion other than power,
tolerating each other by dint of acclimatization, looking
ever elsewhere for comfort, and to one another only for
strategy and power-bloc votes?"

"It is to be hoped that we will establish at least that
between us. Anything less in a consular marriage preor-
dains destruction; anything more is on the order of divi-
dends. We have an heir; we will likely have something
for him to inherit. To that end I, at least, intend to labor.
What say you?"

"Can I see him?" said a tiny, trebling squeak of a voice
she hardly recognized as hers.

Her husband shrugged, unwound from the bed, put his
hand out to her. "There is precious little to see. But I'll
go with you . . . ?"

Her nod had a sob in it, half-swallowed, that she
hoped he thought came from the trial of swinging her
legs out over the edge of the bed.

Cluny Pope had brought a sloe-eyed youth to Jesse
Thome, the young scout bursting with pride. Bitsy Mis-
tral seemed to Jesse too smooth and fey, not at all the
sort of companion to wax prideful about, at first glance.

In the Earth town, things had been easier to compass
than what Thorne had seen previously, but full of strang-
eness, nonetheless. This youth Mistral was no less prob-
lematical than their entire venture beyond heaven.
Halfway through the first day, Thorne had begun to re-
gret his hubris. Now he wanted only to set his feet upon
solid earth and look up at a sky which was not fascimile
beyond a horizon which curved reasonably downward,

66

JANET MORRIS

not up. Bringing his charge home yet ignorant of the
likes of Bitsy Mistral was fast becoming a pressing
concern.

There was nothing wrong with the youth's behavior,
save that Cluny treasured his company and spoke of little
else. Finally, Thorne had taken a hand, suggesting that it
might be best if he met Cluny's new friend.

"Friend? We have an oath, to the death, with honor!"

"Wonderful. Now go fetch him."

"He will be glad to meet you, he has asked me much
about you."

Jesse Thom&'s nose itched high up inside, where it al-
ways itched when traps and treachery were abroad. He
just did not have the heart to condemn someone without
a hearing, especially when that someone was the single
acquaintance young Pope had found to shield him from
the horror of all this strangeness and flouted magic.

Though the cabin in which he sat had a realistic dirt-
floor and crudely trimmed log walls, it also had a pottery
pot which at the touch of a gleaming handle whisked ex-
crement Jesse knew-not-whither, and a "shower" and a
magic box which talked to him when he wished it, and
was silent when he wished that. It could send messages
and receive them, and imitate voices he had come to
know. He could have any food he desired without hunt-
ing or trading, and money seemed no part of life here
where everything one surveyed was desired, desirable,
and completely controlled. The air was neuter, telling
him nothings the food was long-removed from life; the
Earth-towners were polite and self-effacing, most obse-
quious, offering every service a nobleman could find on
his own faraway world, and many forbidden to those of
conscience. Still, no thing that man's ingenuity can envi-
sion is more awful than the one thing he cannot: death.
And those dalliances Cluny was doubtless learning where
to find from Bitsy Mistral were no different than those He
might already have indulged in while living at ease in his
father's hold: drugs and drinks and man's use of his fel-
low describe the arena in which depredations can be per-
petrated, but the perpetrator is always responsible.

It was just that he had been given the boy to show him

67

EARTH DREAMS

other, more fitting responsibilities. Wealth is no easy tu-
tor, even in green-hilled Troy.

So when Cluny brought the scarlet-and-teal-clad youth
with his perfect skin and shining boots and bebaubled
wrists into the cabin, Jesse Thome had already decided
to make the best of it.

Young Cluny's twice-broken nose was sheened with
sweat, and his coarse black hair arrayed in some unsuita-
ble enchanter's fashion, pushed back from his low fore-
head and curled around his large, pointed ears. He, too,
wore scarves and high, shiny boots and a cloak with a
bating eagle over seven stars embroidered on its back.
From the fit of them and the cut of them he knew they
belonged to the other boy before Cluny crowed, "Look
what Mistral gave me," turning proudly, anxious to share
his delight.

"Very fitting, I hope." He unfolded himself from a
claw-footed settee and strode forward, extending his
hand to the slight, long-tashed voluptuary who came
barely to his shoulder, and felt ashamed. This boy was
sixteen, at best, and condemned before any fact of
wrongdoing. But Thome's nose itched furiously and the
hand he took in his was soft like a woman's, with glisten-
ing, perfect nails.

"Go on. Go on," Cluny hissed, pushing the other
closer when the youth, staring up at him, hung back.
"Say it, or I'll say it for you."

Then Mistral gave a clumsy militia greeting, and once
that was done: "I'm so glad to meet you, Commander
Thorne. Cluny's told me so much about you. I'm a dream
dancer, like Shebat—"

"Oh, yes?" Thome growled, crossing his arms. "Like
Shebat?"

"Yes," the youth with velvet voice rushed on. "And
Cluny thought, I mean ... I thought. . . You see, if you
could help me leam about the Earth. . . . That's where
we're going, you know, to Earth, when Shebat's ready.
And that's what we're working on, to get ready—learning
Earthish customs, getting some sense of Earthish reac-
tions to modern ways. Slate? It's just ever so fortuitous
that you two came up, right now. What you like about

68

JANET MORRIS

Acheron, what you don't like, what reassures you and
what scares you—all of these things I need to know! I'll
be very grateful." His luminous brown eyes met Thome's
without fear, but with something: innuendo, promise?
"And helpful, however I may be, in exchange for any-
thing you can tell me. I know many things about
Acheron, I've been here since its opening. . . ."

"I imagine you do. I will tell you something: I am not
'scared,' as you put it." The Consulese Cluny and he had
learned through magical earmuffs was accented dif-
ferently than what his mother had taught him; he was
careful at all times to speak it as these folk spoke it. "Tell
me something: how long has it been since Acheron's
opening?"

"More than a month we have been waiting here for
Shebat." A tinge of resentment was unmistakable, this
time, in the boy's speaking of the oracle's name.

"And where were you before that?"

"Space-end." Grim, taut words, full of unwanted
wisdom.

"That's a prison, sir," interjected Cluny, eyes rivaling
the effeminate youth's in size. "He was banished but
Chaeron Kerrion saved him, got him paroled. He's told
me all about the horrors—"

"That's enough, Cluny. Is that so, did the proconsul
take a hand in your case?"

"Not just me, sir, all the dream dancers that're here,
are here because of his munificence."

"His what?" demanded Pope.

"Generosity," Thorne snapped, in their own tongue,
before Mistral could answer. Then, in Consulese: "You
hold him to be a good man?"

"The best. I am his valet." Pride puffed out a scanty
chest.

"And is he kind to you?"

"Wonderfully kind, sir. When he's there."

"What do you do for him?" Thorne could not help it,
and the youth knew exactly what he had been asked. He
blinked at the insult, coming unexpectedly, and stepped
back a pace. A silence stretched between them while
Cluny Pope looked from one to the other,
uncomprehending.

EARTH DREAMS

69

At last the youth murmured, "He needs someone. I
take care of him, see that he eats. He forgets, a lot. He's
got terrible problems here. The Orrefors, the old Stump
dwellers, don't—well, some hate him for resettling them,
and some hate him because he's not Orrefors (I know
you are, and you'll have to excuse me if I'm bold), and
most who don't hate him, don't like him. You see, it's—"

"I see. I thank you for the information, and for provid-
ing Cluny with a friendly guide and access to your exper-
tise. Now, if you two have something to do ... ?"

When the boys had gone, Jesse Thome stood a long
time at the cabin's window, whose glass was unrippled,
unflawed, looking out at Acheron, but seeing Earth, all
of which was once (if the boy Mistral could be trusted) an
Orrefors possession. He still had to find out what a
dream dancer was, if it meant something more than or-
acular talent, but the rest was clear to him. Also clear to
him was the fact that magic was as simple and accessible
a skill as spear-point chipping or horse-breaking, and
that, although he had spent his life dodging the reality of
.his Orrefors blood and expiating the sin of it whenever
and wherever he could, here there was no sin by blood
and curse by magic, only tools, and men with no com-
punction about using them. Too, he noted that some of
those tools were human, like the little spy Bitsy Mistral.

Spitting an oath, he sat down by the enchanted box
with its lights of many colors and did what he had been
loath to do until then: studied it, and studied with it, and
studied what its capabilities might mean on a scale his
mind had never thought to measure before.

When the false dusk came to this facsimile of a land,
he was still at it. Long into the facade of night he stayed
at it, so that he missed a meal, and hardly noticed Cluny
when he came staggering through bleary-eyed and
crashed into the bedroom. Soon there followed the
sounds of a stomach giving up its contents. This, too,
Thome ignored.

When in a pale, premeditated dawn his stomach
growled in protest, he put down his head on the console,
feebly pressed a button called "hold" which marked his
place in The Consortium: A Short History of Consular
Families and fell instantly to sleep, dreaming that he ate

70

JANET MORRIS

a whole chicken turned for two hours on a spit, basted
with honey and stuffed with bread and rice and sage.

Shebat Kerrion paced the Marada's light-spangled
helm, her fists balled, eyes red and lips puffy. "We have
got to find out if 'passing by unnoticed' works, Marada. I
need to know."

For three days, the Marada's outboard had brooded
within his hull, truculent, discontent. It was not her bio-
logical problem (which Chaeron Kerrion had remedied,
true to his promise) which was distressing Shebat. There
was no longer any sign of abnormality; even the sanctity
of her seals had been reestablished.

Nor was it his disclosure of that promise, given by the
proconsul to the cruiser in exchange for all data relevant
to Shebat's journey to Draconis and beyond, which was
troubling her. When first she had boarded him, accusa-
tory, betrayed, the Marada had explained that his over-
riding concern for her had prompted him to enlist the aid
of her husband (who, the Marada knew through the
Danae, shared his determination that Shebafs equi-
librium be restored on every front). And since the pact
between them had been honored, its particulars fulfilled
to the letter, Shebat restored to physical normalcy and
fast regaining her acuity, the Marada took pains to point
out, it could be safely assumed that the cruiser's ap-
prehension of the situation was unflawed: the proconsul
Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion did indeed have Shebat's best
interests at heart. As he had proved repeatedly to be a
friend to cruisers, so Shebat could rest easily under his
protection.

Upon hearing this rational assessment of her husband
and their union, the Marada's beloved outboard had bro-
ken down in tears.

Only an irritable whirring followed by two sharp clicks
betrayed the cruiser's exasperation: it was obviously not
yet time to broach sensitive subjects requiring delicate
handling to the young woman who was weeping freely
upon the emerald-platinum tracer-bracelet which
Chaeron had given her as a betrothal gift and which had
hung, abandoned, from a toggle on one of the Marada's
forward consoles since Shebat had entered Earth space.

71

EARTH DREAMS

For the next two days, she had moped about him,
bracelet clasped to her waist, her chemistries awry.

On the third day she had awaked, smiling grimly, and,
without removing the tracer, debarked.

The cruiser had followed her movements. Enlisting as
subsurveillants every mechanical eye and ear in Acheron
which Shebat's top-clearance intelligence keys permitted
him to encircuit, he traced her around the skywall to
Chaeron's five-sided consulate, and within.

When she proceeded, not to the proconsul's offices,
but to his residence, the Marada found that only the sec-
ondary group of matrix keys would suffice to access him
beyond its tall, burnished doors. Within the proconsul's
apartments, only his own data net took note of all that
occurred. Through it, the Marada did, also.

So it was that the Marada, like some sly voyeur, wit-
nessed a confrontation the significance of which was
beyond his ability to decipher.

Seeing it was not living it, and although the Marada
acquired continual readouts of Shebat's heart rate and
endorphin balance, he could not feel with fragile flesh the
impact of betrayal. Revelation, disappointment, disen-
franchisement, disgust: these were only abstracts to the
cruiser, though he dared so much as to cock a key-coded
ear to what was formulated for speech but held back un-
said by a heartbroken girl to the only occupant of the
proconsul's suite, once she had stripped off her clothes
before the running shower's steamed glass door and
opened it, smiling sensually, to join him who she thought
to be her husband, but who was, instead, Bitsy Mistral,
long ago known to Shebat in Draconis' level seven when
he had been doorkeeper and apprentice in the very
troupe from whom Shebat learned the art of dreams.

Mortified, she had fled, wordless, clothing in hand.

Straightaway, she had hastened to the slipbay, where
the Marada's ports were open for her.

But once within, the cruiser noted that the sting of re-
jection, the poison of jealousy and supplantation had
sped to her heart, paralyzing every thought but one:

revenge,

Cautiously, the cruiser disengaged from data pool and
proconsular matrices; what was revealed to one source

72

JANET MORRIS

was not held back from its correlates; he wanted no rec-
ord of such passions as wracked Shebat.

Then she had said to him, after tugging the bracelet
from her wrist and flinging it across his control room's
length, "The time has come for us to find out whether I
am as mad as your namesake. You will monitor me, and
I will attempt to 'pass by unnoticed,' and you will tell me
true if you can track me, or not. I could have used it,
when the Orrefors descended upon my cave; I could have
used it often, before that. But I promised him that I
would not, and then I began to believe as he believes,
that I could not, that spells are only self-delusion and
Kerrion technologies could not be thwarted by such a
flimsy weapon as human will. But now, I bow to his
wishes no longer. I will 'pass by unnoticed,' out of his
life, never to return. You and I, Marada, are going back
to the Pegasus colonies. But first, one small digression
for the sake of evening the score."

The Marada had objected that no hurried experiment
carried out by so biased a source as himself could be con-
clusive. Then had she replied, "We have got to find out if
'passing by unnoticed' works, Marada," and winked out
of being as completely as a blown LED.

More worrisome than the apparent disappearance of
his outboard from physical, real-time space was her dis-
embodied announcement, as a hand he could not see in
any mode from infrared to gravitational activated his
outer locks, that he should not fret over her, but make
ready to debark first for Earth and then Pegasus. She
would be back, she promised, as soon as possible. If
something urgent arose that demanded her attention, the
cruiser might seek her on their private hailing frequency.

Where was she going? the Marada had to ask.

"To the dream dancers, first. And then to Jesse
Thome's." She popped back into view, biting her lip, her
gray eyes hot like molten metal, "And never mind about
logging out for Pegasus. I have run away from what I
would not see for the last time."

While the cruiser pondered the conundrum of how
Shebat managed to alter the reflectivity ratios of not only
her body but the clothing upon it, so that all questing
waveforms passed through the space that she occupied

EARTH DREAMS                            75

uninterrupted, as if nothing at all were where she indu-
bitably still was, Shebat Kerrion sought the twin balms of
work and vengeance.

She spent five hours on level forty with ninety-odd
hastily gathered dream dancers, every one of them neu-
tered and convicts and remembering that she alone
among dream dancers had escaped level seven on that
awful night during Parma's administration when then-
consul Chaeron's cordon had closed in upon their il-
legality, damning them to space-end.

She found it necessary to remind them that they would
be there yet, but for the intercession of the Acheron pro-
consul at her behest.

She taught them three dreams, in that time, and or-
dered them to create several more, with similar themes.
"Propaganda," one cried. "Concerted," she agreed- She
was grateful that the dancer Lauren was not among those
present, that her old troupe mistress, the piebald Har-
mony, had declined the proconsul's offer in favor of
awaiting Sofia's ghost at space-end. She sat out tense mo-
ments in which the troupe leaders argued over the pro-
priety of putting dream dances to such blatantly political
use, but a friend she had not known she possessed—one
of her former instructors: still thin-faced, still claw-nosed,
still called Rajah—came to her defense in the name of
pragmatism, and she left them with orders to be ready to
leave for Earth in a week's time.

None of it salved her. Bending a hundred dream danc-
ers to her will today, to pursue some elusive endpoint
way off beyond tomorrow, did not make the sting of yes-
terday's treachery less galling. Were she consul general
of Kerrion space, it would not have helped. Even while
Chaeron had been winning her trust in good Kerrion
fashion, telling her lies she wanted to hear and begging
her to take up residence with him in a full partnership, he
had had that smug-faced catamite waiting in his bed. She
was not fooled. Chaeron, you will find if harder to receive
than to give, she promised a mental picture of him, its
mocking smirk already melting into a weary frown.

Then, taking leave of the dream dancers, she ordered
her waiting lorry to the Earth town. Slipping down in its
padded interior, she closed her burning eyes.

74 JANET MORRIS

He had not even had the courage to admit his lechery.
Philanderer. Sybarite. Everything his enemies said about
him was true. He had known this would happen, but
been content to let Mistral make his own introduction.
"Better than words, I suppose," she spoke aloud, then
had to answer the driver beyond the lorry's smoked glass
partition, "Never mind. Sponge pilots talk to themselves;

it is an occupational hazard."

At the Earth town's main and dusty street, she dis-
missed the lorry and its driver, ordering an automated
one through a low-clearance channel for an hour hence.

She explored the Earth town, its replica-taverns, its
noble's keeps, its sandpit gaming houses and its bazaars
where beasts of burden of every sort could be rented or
bought.

She drank a little, she ate a little, and when the auto-
lorry arrived she pushed coins into its pay privacy-slot,
programmed it for a random destination and passenger
discharge upon arrival, climbed back out while sub-
vocalizing the spell called passing by unnoticed, and
slammed shut the black door, sticking out an invisible
tongue at its bating-eagle emblem blazoned in red.

A disembodied giggle could be heard as the low-slung
lorry purred away.

She wandered Earthish streets until she came upon a
lane with a manor house and freehold shacks as might be
found in New York's Troy.

She was in no hurry; the Greenwich Mean Sunset
shunted up from Earth was just beginning. Chaeron's in-
novation did not awe her, though most Earth-towners
ambled out to watch the novelty of sundowns which var-
ied daily according to nature's whim, not computer's
simulation.

He had been moved by the spectacle while planetside,
she remembered; he had made a point of telling her so.

She watched it, leaning against the fieldstone porch of
Jesse Thorne's abode, until a creaking door opened. And
while blond and birdlike Hooker, making his exit, lin-
gered on the walk talking to Thorne, she slipped around
Chaeron's cultural attache, then under Thorne's arm,
outstretched stiff to the farther doorpost. She was in!

Her heart pounded, breath sawed loudly. She backed

EARTH DREAMS                            75

into a corner where neither could be heard. She looked
around, at a hearth as tall as she and candles belied by a
ready console with lit teaching screen glowing green.
Austere and modest, there was no sign here of the com-
promising largess she had expected Chaeron to foist upon
the ground-dwelling Orrefors heir.

And no sign of his ward, young Cluny Pope. Shebat
nodded to herself, well pleased. The door closed; Jesse
Thorne leaned against it, latched it with questing fingers,
and crossed the packed dirt to the console behind which
Shebat clung to her comer, his big head cocked on his
short neck, squinting everywhere. Before the console he
paused; snarled, or chuckled (Shebat could not tell
which); pushed back the stuffed chair with his foot, and
threw himself down into it. With the heel of his boot he
depressed the "run" stud on his console, and Shebat, for-
getful of all else once the screen had begun rolling its
contents upward, leaned close to read along over his
shoulder.

Was it a curl of hers that brushed the crown of his
head? Or the simple matter of someone peering over his
shoulder? He rubbed his nose furiously, left off, and with
blurring speed grabbed Shebat by the hair.

This far ahead, she had not thought. She was caught
entirely unprepared, but not without resorts: she refused
to utter even a gasp of pain, letting herself be dragged by
the hair into Thorne's lap (to the sound of his confused
exclamation over what he could feel but could not see),
one of her hands going to his mouth to silence him and
the other killing the power to the terminal (and, she
hoped, everything else in the hastily prepared log cabin).

Divesting herself of the spell's cloak took only an in-
stant, but the last thing a monitor would have seen (as-
suming her emergency shutdown had taken everything,
and not simply the teacher, off-line) was Thome strug-
gling with nothing whatsoever.

Well, she had wanted to be discovered. The look upon
her quarry's face (what she could see of it around her
cautionary hand) was worth something more than being
found out a trifle earlier than she had planned.

She felt the quick, deep breathing of the man on whose
lap she sprawled.

76

JANET MORRIS

"Kerrion technologies?" he asked hoarsely, after she
took her hand away.

"Enchantment," she corrected.

"I am not so gullible, anymore. You and yours have
seen to that."

But he was wrong; she found him consummately gul-
lible, malleable and willing, then suitably surprised and
indignant when they were interrupted by Tempest and a
half-dozen black-and-reds with screeching lorries and
emergency-flashers and antiterrorist paraphernalia, ready
to rescue their guest from whatever insidious force had
put his computer down.

Shebat did not return to the Marada that day; her
hours were full of Chaeron's recriminations and the after-
math of human spite. Thus the Marada was unable to
bring before Shebat those items of concern he felt to be
pressing. Nor could he approach her the next day, white
she lingered in top-security conference with dream danc-
ers; or the following one, spent in marathon meetings
with Acheron's staff. It was not until this evening late
that Shebat returned to him, and then they were inter-
rupted before the cruiser could broach the subject of re-
newed piracy in the shipping lanes, and what this might
mean in light of the mystery surrounding the missing
KXV and Sofia David Spry. Neither had he managed to
alert his outboard to news gleaned from cruiser thought
of the space-end whereabouts and intentions of her
nemesis, his namesake, Marada Seleucus Kerrion, before
Chaeron's cryptic message, sent from within the Danae's
hull just down the slipbay, intervened.

"We have lost him: Cassander," said the expression-
less face the Marada put on Shebat's stateroom's moni-
tor. "I Just thought you ought to know."

"So? It wasn't even born, not Cassander, not anything,
yet' just this big." She held up two fingers, as if pincering
something in between.

On the monitor, his face seemed to shiver. "It was po-
tential," he replied through lips hardly moving. "I don't
suppose you'd care to donate toward a replacement?"

"Me? Wasn't it my sponge-irradiated contribution
which destroyed it?" Bitterness dripped from his out-
board's full lips. "'Pilot's price'?"

77

EARTH DREAMS

"Sabotage, more likely. But you are right. There is no
hope for it, nor for us."
The screen went blank.

KXV 134 Marada lay quiescent in his slip, contemplat-
ing the nature of error, while the last of Shebat's ninety-
nine dream dancers crowded aboard. Error, he had been
forced to admit, was not purely a human province: the
Marada had erred, grievously, in his attempt to apply
logical problem-solving techniques to the troubles plagu-
ing Shebat. He realized now that he never should have
interfered between his outboard and her outboard, the
proconsul. Even that comparison was biased, approxi-
mate, and inexact. The relationship between his pilot and
her husband was more uneasy than the most tertiary
pilot/cruiser intimacy. Because of this, more than the
cruiser's misjudgment, production of the little outboard-
to-be had been scrapped.

Notwithstanding, the Marada felt a cruiser-concomi-
tant of remorse. Logic, that two-dimensional panacea
which had enabled mankind to humble all of physical
spacetime, was useless in the face of mortal passion. The
cruiser had known it, but somehow forgotten. The dan-
ger of becoming too much like his makers was not clear
to him; that good advice he had given cruiserkind—to be
concerned with the perfection and definition of cruiser-
ness and leave humans to explore humanness—had
proved wiser than even the Marada could have foreseen.

Things in the mortal sphere were worse than ever," and
he knew the majority of blame for this worsening of af-
fairs to be his. Chaeron's futures researchers had ax-
iomized the kernel of it: the "third-kind error" of solving
the wrong problem lurked ever on the right hand of
problematical man: one cannot solve a problem for which
one is not solving.

Einstein had wondered if perhaps time was fixed and
consciousness the traveler upon a temporal road;

Raphael's ancestor Penrose had taken the body of Eins-
teinian thought and transmogrified it beyond quantum
mechanics' ability to contradict. Chaeron's progenitor
Kerrion had built in post-Penrosian eight-dimensional
space a twister-dominated spacetime manifold which paid

78

JANET MORRIS

homage to that elusive unit of time, the chronon, more
fleeting than the lifetime of the most transitory particle.
The results of these Kerrion codicils of supergravity up-
stepped man's dominion: upon the broad shoulders of
the unified field equations which reduced the four forces
of nature to one malleable flow, humanity spied a new
land to conquer, more fair and fertile than all of the geo-
metrized universe he had surmounted and surveyed.
Time stretched, untamed, ubiquitous and therefore im-
mune to the isolation by statement that must precede log-
ical delineation. But for chronometry, time's study, and
Kerrion cosmology's "amenable universe," there were no
mysteries left in the cosmos which man acknowledged.

But then, no sane man nor cruiser would acknowledge
such feats of irrational accomplishment as were proffered
without consideration of their untikelihood by his out-
board, Shebat, who could "pass unnoticed" by the most
concerted surveillance and dance dreams—without the
help of dream-box or circlets—which sometimes came
true.

By the Kerrion genius for making the theoretical into
the consumable, cruiserkind was brought into being.
Traversing a fuzzy midpoint locus of two light-cones to
the place where space and time met could be accom-
plished only by the time-knowing mind of mortal and the
space-knowing mind of cruiser. Somewhere in that nei-
ther-time-nor-space called sponge, which to please its
travelers displayed every facsimile of spacetime whenever
inhabited by those who must, to exist, experience se-
quentiality, cruiser-consciousness had its seat. Some-
where in the amenable expanse of it, an individuality
which was many individualities had come into being, a
spark of whimsy in the minds of the Lords of Cosmic
Jest.

Somewhere, too, in sponge, was Softa David Spry and
the missing KXV 133, cruiser-consciousness testified,
whispering slyly among its selves where no human ear
could eavesdrop.

The Marada's outboard had once, from the depths of
despair, begged that the cruiser head them blindly into
sponge, where they could endure forever, just girl and
cruiser, even into eternity if by dint of mutual effort

79

EARTH DREAMS

Shebat could manage to discard her body and live, mind
entwined with his, entirely in the Marada^s nonphysical
realm of self. The cruiser had discouraged this dangerous
bent in the mind of his treasured Shebat. Physical bodies
were necessary to the pilot/cruiser equation, just as
cruiser circuitry and cruiser hulls were essential. Even
Softa Spry could not break the law of nature; now and
again he must find it necessary to forsake his sanctuary,
sponge, for real-time space in which those items of
housekeeping equipment indispensible to human survival
could be begged, or stolen, or bought.

It was no longer a matter of mere moral concern that
Spry's existence or lack of it be inarguably determined:

three cruisers had disappeared from cruiser con-
sciousness, their individualities wiped callously away by
privateers who trained paralyzing particle beams upon
their spacefaring hulls and then. . . .

But no more could be known of what fate awaited
those cruisers popping out of ken like aged lightbulbs, for
when the paralyzed cruisers lay helpless, blinded and
dumb, they were boarded, wiped cleanly down to man-
ual, and (it must be assumed) tandemed by a rogue
cruiser into sponge.

There was only one cruiser unaccounted for at the out-
set, one cruiser counted missing in sponge since the
Marada itself had languished there. Although by Kerrion
law it could be up to three years from day of disap-
pearance until a "missing" cruiser was logged "lost" and
its occupants declared perished, cruisers searching win-
dows of last-recorded cruiser-positions had come upon an
occasional stiff body, lowly spinning in its night clothes,
its surprised countenance preserved eternally by the deep
cold of space—and cruiser consciousness remembered
this signature of terror from the old days of pilots' piracy,
when the guild was headed by Softa David Spry.

Intermittently, the Marada sent entreaties speeding
through space and even into sponge: "Softa, where are
you? KXV 133, acknowledge."

Even to unthinkably far space-end the Marada sent his
halloo, and once from there he had an answer. He was
replied to not by space-enders, who had no cruisers or
data nets or high-power, high-mass stations for sending

80

JANET MORRIS

messages into free space, but by the Hassid, Marada Ker-
rion's flagship, Kerrion One.

"Marada" scoffed Hassid who disdained to partake of
cruiser thought, preferring her pilot's company, "you are
deluded by imagined omnipotence. What you saw was a
trick of spacetime; what you have concluded, no better
than the baseless conjectures of a human mind. You are
infected by your outboard's concerted irrationality. When
the consul general and I arrive there, we will see that you
seek remedial adjustment."

It was all that the Marada could do, not to retort that
the Hassid had perfectly diagnosed her own malady.

But the cruiser, having erred once, was wiser. This
matter was one whose particulars were determined by
human prejudice, existing in a climate of passion and
hate. How could the Hassid have conceived dislike for a
fellow cruiser, but through the mirrorlike effect out-
boards had on .their cruisers' thoughts?

This time, the Marada could afford no contretemps.
This time, he must fight fire with fire. He spoke straight-
away of this intelligence to Shebat.

Chapter Fwe

Raphael Penrose, in Acheron's pristine white
slipbay, silently cursed the Kerrion aristocracy of knowl-
edge and all which, because of those haughty lords of
information, he now surveyed. The were learned; they
claimed that they were wise. But from Chaeron's Her-
aclitus he had learned the adage that wisdom lay not in
much learning. Whether there was any wisdom lurking
beneath the elegant mien of Acheron's proconsul, pos-
turing modestly amid those gathered before the light-
banded, turreted length of his shipwrights' first experi-
mental cruiser, AXV 1001 Tyche, Penrose—first bitch,
first fool, and perhaps first casualty of Acheron's infant
cruiser industry—was about to find out.

He could not recall what misplaced loyalty had urged
him to offer himself as first sacrifice: test pilot of the new,
revolutionary vessel insultingly designated A—for
Acheron (instead of K—for Kerrion)—XV 1001. He re-
called, instead, the legendary remark of the quasi-my-
thological pilot, John Young: "If you're not a little bit
nervous, you don't really understand what is happening."
Penrose understood perfectly what was happening, politi-
cally as well as astronautically, and he was more than a
little bit nervous. Chaeron Kerrion's abrupt yet flawless
separation of self from khaki'd shipwrights, senior pilots
in stormy flight satins, and high officials of a dozen con-

81

82

JANET MORRIS

sulates (dressed rainbow-gay in civilian style to mark
their presence here unofficial), made it seem that a
floodlight somewhere in the strutwork high above their
heads had winked out. His penetration of the protective
seal of black and-reds ringing the AXV was clean: no
bodyguard followed him to where Penrose leaned against
Tyche's tight-shut port by her stenciled call codes and the
smiting white nymph painted above them, seductively of-
fering wheat sheaves and lightning in outstretched hands.

"Now, Raphael, mustn't sulk," reproved Chaeron,
with a glance over his shoulder at those gathered beyond
the black-and-reds' cordon, whom Penrose had refused
even to greet. Then, turning back, he transfixed Rafe
with his most enigmatic, intimately surreptitous smile,
and Penrose remembered every exigency and considera-
tion of honor and altruism that had made him offer to
test Chaeron's Cruisers.

"I'm not sulking. I'm busy seeing that nobody but me
sets foot on her without my being right here, watching.
Bad luck on a maiden voyage. And if I'm going to strap
my ass to the iron for you, I need all the luck I can
muster."

"Why, RP, I do believe you've a case of preflight jit-
ters," Chaeron chuckled, moving to put himself between
Penrose and the onlookers, a hand outstretched so that
he leaned against the cruiser's hull, his palm near Rate's
head, covering the A in AXV.

"Who, me? That only happens to the other guy. What
I've got is a clutch of mothering shipwrights and compro-
mised pilots, wondering out loud what business you have
giving away state secrets. Or is it throwing down the
gauntlet?"

"Not here." Chaeron's order quick-froze him like a
touch of vacuum.

"Not in there," Penrose objected, even while the Ker-
rion magnate's eyelids nickered closed, activating his in-
telligence keys; when they opened, so did the lock
behind Penrose.

He stumbled, lurched, backed within.

Red lights lit, then amber, then green while Tyche
cycled through a pressure check. The inner lock curtsied
away to reveal an unremarkable gray-blue corridor.

EARTH  DREAMS                            85

^ "This will do," Chaeron decreed. "I don't want to hex
your check-out run. Pilots are as bad as Tabrizi women,
sometimes."

"But you do want to give the Tyche to your step-
brother's tyke? Is madness congenital in your family?"

"I may, and I may not; I have not missed your point.
Perhaps I'll keep it for myself. Maybe you are right, and
I should become a pilot. This would be just the ship to
test for a rating in."

Penrose snorted. "A ship that needs no pilotry skills,
that has its own durational sense (let's hope—1 have no
intention of ending a promising career lost in sponge)
isn't going to get you much of a rating number. // it can
do anything near what you say." Chaeron let Penrose
flail about in the pilot's pregnant pause like a nonswim-
mer in deep water. Finally, Rafe had to continue: "My
pilots are not too happy at the prospect of being obsolete
as soon as Tyche makes one successful trip."

"You should try to keep upsetting uncertainties from
those they are bound to distress, until all qualifiers are
removed and the matter is certain. It will be a longer
interval than the lifetime of any of our acquaintances be-
fore the pilotry guild is outmoded—if ever. Consular
: ladies will not choose to fly their own ships of state. It is
the possibility of reduced power which bothers your
guildfellows, though others say guild policymakers have
garnered too much influence of late."

"Last night I dreamed," Penrose confided softly, "that
you had the Danae recalibrated to your intelligence keys
and took her away from me. I invoked my rights and
claimed the master module, but it was too late. The
Danae was so compromised by your obscene insistence
on linking with her while refusing pilot's training, that
what remained of Danae in B-mode was hardly
recognizable."

"What are you getting at, Rafe? I told you: that last
time we did it, was the last time. Extenuating circum-
stances like my wife's life, I hope, will hereafter be held
to a minimum. I almost have things in hand. Just give me
a little more time." He touched Penrose's shoulder, a
transient cuff, not so sure or sharp as it should have
been. "And I told you, too, that I am sorry about having

84

JANET MORRIS

needed to push you beyond friendship into sacrifice. I
know that neither guild-duty nor personal loyalty could
demand what I have asked. Now, will you tell me what's
troubling you?"

"Chaeron, you know me too well. Let me go and do
this and don't ask me. . . ."

"Please?" A whisper.

"Lords," RP exploded, pounded his fist against palm.
" A lot of people have asked me not to do too well on
this flight. Pilots, whom 1 can't name, from our guildhall.
Others: Labayans, Kerrions who know what's happening.
Some offered me money, more than a pilot's lifetime
pay. Hooker has been to see me, making sure that I
know the consul general's on his way here. Tempest has
been keeping track of them and me, and came around
last night to tell me that if Tyche's numbers aren't up to
spec—at least—then he'll personally see me stripped of
my license, drummed out of the service, and sent a eu-
nuch to space-end for collusion, sabotage - . . you-name-
it. Are you getting clear copy? I'm everybody's best hope
and worst enemy, damned if I do and damned if I don't."

Chaeron shook his head, "I'm sorry." His mouth was
drawn in hard at its corners. "I'll take care of it, person-
ally. Go get me your best evaluation of the true state of
affairs, and don't worry about the rest."

"Fine. I'll trust you on that. But then I'm back-
right?—and so's the AXV, and you've got it in hand, as
you say, so far as the AXV's potential's repercussions—
for the moment. Then I've a guild-arm that hates me, to
the man, for damning them to extinction, and a good
chance of losing my first-bitch status, way out here at the
edge of anonymity doing things for you which my local
and the Draconis guild (to which, I shouldn't have to re-
mind you, I am still attached unless and until we get a
full-time guildmaster here) strongly disapprove. Pilots
find out things, things like cruiser-links by nonoutboards
into dream dances, because cruisers find such things re-
markable, and consider them on their own."

"I'll protect your status, and firm up the guild here.
That, even a lowly proconsul can manage. What other
grievances have you?"

"The Danae aside, there's you wife, carrying on in the

85

EARTH DREAMS

guildhall, crowing that the Marada had located Spry and
the missing Erinys once, and it's only a matter of time
until they find them again. Upsetting Lauren. . . . Did
Shebat fix it so Lauren was the only dream dancer not
included in the Earth-taming project? Even Bitsy Mistral
got to go along."

"I am losing patience with this. Got to go along? You
and Lauren think it some sort of privilege to set out on a
covert operation in hostile territory, far from the com-
forts of life every platform dweller has come to take for
granted? Those dream dancers think they're tough be-
cause they endured at space-end, where life and limb
were completely assured. Space-end is seeming like a lux-
ury suite on the consular level in Draconis to those poor
bastards right now. Lauren wanted to go? Have you
thought about any of this for even a few seconds? I don't
think you have. If David Spry is alive, he'll come for that
girt eventually. And I do so want to say 'hello' when he
does. . . .

"Beyond that, there were two additional considera-
tions: One, you were enjoying her; two, Acheron
shouldn't be without at least one dream dancer if we are
maintaining the position that we'd like to legalize it here,
next referendum. Now, would you like to go fly this
cruiser, or shall I get someone else and we'll make you
guildmaster of Acheron, where you can diddle with poli-
tics as much as you please?"

"Easy, easy, big fella." Penrose, hands up before him
protectively, backed a pair of mincing steps in mock fear.

"Nothing, lately, is easy, not even convincing you—the
one person I had thought did not need endless tiresome
explication—that I am out to save Kerrion space, not de-
stroy it. And now, if you are quite finished baring you
doubts and fears . . . ?"

"Yes and no. I told you, pilots hear things, well in
advance, things talked about on cruisers? Well, the pilot
who brought the consul general of Bucyrus space in
here—in person and two weeks early for the gala in New
Chaeronea—says that it's your mother, not the new
cruiser prototype, that his employer is casting covetous
eyes upon- Going to ask your permission to marry her, so
the scuttlebutt runs."

86

JANET MORRIS

"My permission? Better off to ask her jailer, my half
brother." Chaeron rubbed meditatively at the permanent
crease dividing his forehead.

Penrose, improprietary intelligence aired at last,
seemed little relieved by the act of leaking what could
not be contained. "Well, what will that mean? Bucyrus
isn't actively Consortium anymore, since he's been selling
heavy equipment and microbiological leases to free colo-
nial space."

"Very good question, Raphael. I'm sure I don't know
the answer to it, and almost sure that old Bucyrus
doesn't. But you have saved me an awkward moment. I
just wish you could have gotten to it sooner." He
squeezed his eyes shut, interdicting a previous order
given Tyche via his data link; the innerlock hastened
back. "Give my love to the Tyche, Mister Penrose. And
take care to come back in one irrepressible piece.
Though I suppose that if the pirates did get you, they'd
pay me to take you back."

Penrose flashed a cheerful grin, and made a motion
that had come to have particular significance between
them. Chaeron returned the gesture.

That was the last glimpse owner and pilot had to carry
away with them, Penrose into the unknown and unknow-
able future lying before him in the prototypical uncer-
tainty Cbaeron had dubbed AXV 1001 Tyche, and
Chaeron into spaces far more treacherous—those of mor-
tal machination and consular intrigues.

While he watched the shining, turret-spined length of
the Tyche giide out of its slip from his observation box,
his attention was elsewhere: deep in his sources, his mind
roved; his glance out through the glass at the crowd thin-
ning on the slipbay was unseeing; his subvocalized call
reached Gahan Tempest through the data pool as if the
proconsul spoke into his intelligencer's inner ear.

When Tempest's arrival was signaled by the auto-sen-
try's whistled tune, and Chaeron released the door to un-
lock and draw back, the intelligencer's wan visage bore
no trace of comfort. "Lords, you look tired, Tempest."

"Sir? Been busy. Marada's coming in two days early;

we've just had a request for approach vectors from him

87

EARTH DREAMS

at the sponge-way. I'm glad Penrose and that cruiser are
out of here."

"Leave Penrose to me, Gahan. I know you mean well.
He responds badly to your sort of pressure. Get me ev-
erything you can on Bucyrus, the consul general, and
Bucyrus space. By this evening, I would like to be very
well informed about him and his."

"Yes, sir." Gahan Tempest was expressionless, stand-
ing at technical ease but taut as a guywire.

"Yes, sir, but I haven't asked the right question? My
quarter-hour update says you want to talk to me in a
secure location. Talk."

"Sir," Tempest widened his stance by a centimeter,
"I've been working on the glitch which showed up in the
monitoring arrays when the teaching computer in Jesse
Thome's residence went down . . . you remember? Your
wife was totally unsurveilled for a period of about an
hour and a quarter, give or take, before that . . . one
might say, invisible. And one also might say . . ." Paus-
ing, he looked questioningly at his employer; Kerrion
blue eyes met and locked.

"You are making me nervous! I've never seen you play
coy. What is it? I've a prospective father-in-law to
interview."

"What?"

"Never mind, just get me the Bucyrus data. You'll
doubtless know more about it than I do when you've
finished. What about Shebat?"

"Yes, sir. Your wife purposefully and mysteriously
voiced our followscreens. I wish I knew how. To find out
how, I looked over a lot of old data, even reviewed what
we kept from the Orrefors records. I mentioned once
that there was some audio-visual material of her with the
consul general when your brother first brought her up
from Earth to Stump, and that there was some oddity to
the tape which I put down to microelectrical surges inter-
fering with their digital storage? Well, sir, it's very com-
promising material but I think, despite that, you ought to
have a look at it. It shows your wife, and then it doesn't
. . . and then it does again, but the visual's full of inter-
ference in the upper end of the spectrum."

88

JANET MORRIS

"But what does it show?"

"Sir, it's a tryst between the two of them. Could prove
very useful, if your brother is feeling uncoop-
erative. - . ."

"I should say!"

"But the point is not that we have compromising mate-
rial, but what we had to go through to enhance it enough
to make out what was going on. There's a blue-spectrum
overexposure, and moments when Shebat seems to
flicker in and out of the picture altogether. If we could
find out what caused it, I think we would know what in-
terrupted our signals in the Earth town."

"How about the leaks? Marada would not be coming
early if he did not hope to catch us with out pants down."

"Are you telling me not to pursue this matter of your
wife's illicit interrupter circuitry?"

"I doubt that you'll find it to be 'circuitry,' or produc-
tive, but do pursue it. Give me a copy of the transcript;

we'll ruin my brother's day, too. Are you telling me you
have made no progress toward ferreting out our es-
teemed consul general's information conduit, or the sab-
oteur who murdered my unborn child—;/ they are not
one and the same?"

"Sir, as soon as I can meet the guidelines you laid
down for arrest and indictment, I'll hand you Hooker, et
al., trussed and basted. I'd much prefer to perform some
experimental surgery, though: take out a few of the more
obvious traitors and see if our problems with accidents
and information isolation stop just as mysteriously as
they have been proceeding."

"I cannot chance anything in the least illegal, not even
one procedural impropriety. My brother would have the
arbitrational guild all over us- No irreversible action. In
this one instance, no end will Justify itself if it is secured
through questionable means—in Acheron."

"Sir?" Tempest's cartilaginous tips drew back from
square, perfect teeth.

"That is correct. I place you on your own for New
Chaeronea. I don't care what you do, or how you do it; I
want a quiet and uneventful visit for all our consular
bondkin and their friends and their servitors. Understand
me? I do not want one scraped shin or even a hangnail.

89

EARTH DREAMS

AH our guests are going to have a perfectly lovely time, if
you have to send a team in beforehand to murder half
the residents of hill and dale for a thousand miles in any
direction. Just be circumspect about it. No corpses in the
city square, or folk hanging from the battlements. We
have to let Shebat think the taming of Earth is her re-
sponsibility, and her . . . success. Clear?"

"Absolutely."

One more time the two, spawned of the same culture
and the same gene pool, locked glances. Then Tempest
bowed slightly and Chaeron turned back to the one-way
glass which showed him the family slips and the softly
curving expanse of the Danae in her berth and, beyond
that, other cruisers nestled in their cradles.

"Danae," he thought to her via his intelligence keys,
feeling like a thief in his own pantry, "prepare to be
boarded." Quitting his observation deck, he tried not to
think about that promise he had made to his pilot: not to
make unilateral use of the cruiser while Penrose was
away. "Search and prepare to put up everything you have
on this renewed piracy," he commanded Danae further,
as he sauntered toward her, routing himself wide of the
grouped visitors his black-and-reds were escorting out the
other way- Being totally informed and completely pre-
pared for any eventuality in the face of his brother's ar-
rival took precedence over all previous agreements,
especially when the cruiser whose banks he was about to
gut was his own. His brother, long a pilot, had direct
access to not only pilots' intelligence but the sources of
the arbitrational guild and whatever his far-flung network
of consulates brought him, while all Chaeron had was his
wit and Acheron's central data base and support pools,
whose incoming news was censored and whose most
privy secrets were Marada's on surreptitious demand.
The quality of those "redundant" matrices he did, how-
ever unobtrusively, command—and the sanctity of his
secondary banks—was not in doubt. This cheered him,
and he strode quickly among gantries and shining hulls.
He would deal with Raphael as kindly as possible, later;

right now, he could not spare a second for ambivalence
or regret over what, eventually, RP was going to have to
say about Chaeron's use of his own property. Damn pil-

90

JANET MORRIS

ots! It would be a relief to be quit of them all. Good
riddance! And Chaeron would live to see the day.

"How are you enjoying your stint here as proconsul?"
Marada Kerrion's growl was punctuated by the cracking
of knuckles, staccato and cadenced in the plush, dark
bowels of the Kerrion mission's command lorry, speeding
effortlessly around Acheron's sky-wall, headed toward
the consulate from the slipbay.

"Actually, not at all. I cede you your pound of flesh.
Marada."

The Acheron proconsul's glib candor was far too pat to
suit his half brother, who saw Ashera peering out from
her son's eyes, lurking in his perfectly arranged face; a
single met glance from the Dragon of Lorelie would turn
you to stone; every child raised in the consort's sanctum
knew that. And every child of the ruling line of the house
of Kerrion was raised there—his own children, three-
year-old Parma and infant Selim, lolled between her very
claws. It was a sobering thought.

Chaeron was continuing to persuade Marada (who was
not fooled, oh, no!) that the administration of the Qr-
refors acquisition in general and Earth space in particular
was an unwelcome burden, taxing beyond Chaeron's
meager abilities, fraught with trials whose gravity Marada
knew not of. The arbiter-on-leave knew better. Chaeron
loved every specious facet of consular intrigue; it was his
life, his blood, his one true passion. Marada's fingers
searched his beard, hoping to find some overlooked
shred of patience hiding there.

". . . gladly admit to you that 1 long for Draconis and
polite society and those more subtle folk whose acquain-
tance one keeps there."

That, Marada, who hated everything about his yoke of
consul generalship, could well believe. It was some small
comfort to him, as he sat in his mission's most impervious
command lorry and Chaeron indicated passing points of
interest on Acheron's consular level. His half brother's
determination to maintain an air of civility and fitting
deference irked Marada more than Chaeron's true feel-
ings—hatred and contempt—would have, if the canny
son of Ashera had seen fit to flaunt them. Vengeful, Mar-

91

EARTH DREAMS

ada rejoined: "And how is your wife faring? Sweet
Shebat. Better, 1 would venture to predict, than she was
feeling in Draconis, now that she's home at last. She
really was not happy performing consular duties in your
stead. No matter how much she wanted to please you, or
how hard she tried, she could not shed her Earthish
handicap." Watching Chaeron closely. Marada could de-
tect no falseness; of duplicity, his sibling showing no sign.
But that was the proof of it, right there: Chaeron was the
perfect politician, trained by Fate's own handmaiden. As
for Shebat, of whom he spoke carefully (but probing, al-
ways probing), he knew her: she was Death Herself,
come among them by his own aegis: it was Marada's ill-
considered compassion which has opened the Con-
sortium's doors . . . and Death had come strolling in, her
bony fingers outstretched ... the very day he first en-
countered her, his elder brother and his betrothed had
died while she watched . . . then his father, then
Chaeron's brother . . .•.Shebat! She was destruction and
she was Cerberus, with fifty heads and a voice like
bronze. If Chaeron was the ferryman, then they were
splitting the profit. Evanescantly, he had a vision of them
both, at the awful river's edge. Hades' shrouded in dark
clouds behind. And at their feet were piles of silver—not
obols, but Kerrion money, glistening with spittle from
the mouths of the dead. And Marada's profile was on
every coin. . . .

At the mention of Shebat's name, egregious Chaeron
grinned. Always grinning, like a death's head, a beacon
at mortality's reef. From between facile lips came the dis-
claimer, "Not so much better as you might suppose. It
must be like trying to recapture one's lost youth. Her
body is hungry for her homeland, you might say, but her
soul is a pilot's, and longs to fly with her cruiser."
"Shebat has no soul," said Marada flatly.
Chaeron got up from his seat between a window and a
bank of visual monitors showing close-up, mid- and long-
distance, even structural views of Acheron's fifty levels.
each with their lorry's present position marked by a mov-
ing red dot. "You seemed to think better of her when
you two met aboard her cruiser four months ago. And
another time, too, which I have in my banks. When you

92

JANET MORRIS

first brought her up to Stump, the Orrefors were not
above concerted scrutiny of your behavior. As unfortu-
nate as that may be, I have in my possession a slated
drama which, since I have perused it at my intelligencers'
insistence, you should view also. You ought not to traipse
about allowing our enemies to collect incriminating dos-
siers on your behavior—and I ought not to have to bring
unsavory items of intelligence to your attention. You
have the best consular staff in the Consortium. I should
never have seen this!" Abruptly, Chaeron hit a switch:

windows opaqued, screens occluded, and one remaining
lit monitor paraded a night, long ago, on which Marada
had overslept (and of which he had no recollection, ex-
cept that he had slept), before his shocked gaze.

"I remember none of that!" "This didn't happen!"
"You've contrived it!" he exclaimed at various intervals,
hardly knowing that he did. He saw a blue nimbus trail-
ing from Shebat's fifteen-year-old fingers and he saw her
lift the covers from his sleeping form and slide into bed
beside him.

When it was over, and the lights on the console (which
had shown him what he could not argue wasn't so) cycled
through their hues and commenced blinking green: ready
in the dark belly of the command lorry so that it seemed
as if all which remained of the world he had known was
the plethora of pinpoint LEDs strobing emerald and his
half brother's profile revealed intermittently like some
archaic bronze, Marada Kerrion came to a decision:

whatever the consequences, and whatever the cost, the
Dragon and her tainted spawn must be removed from the
company of those mortals who lived and breathed in Ker-
rion space. No less would save him from such as they.

No loans would salve their ire, no compassion would
satiate their rapacity, no forbearance would find its echo
in such shriveled hearts. Marada had hoped to instruct by
example: he had stayed the hand of consular justice
which would have hustled them from his ken to space-
end's prison; his father would probably have had them
murdered out of hand (oh, quietly; quietly) on the eve of
his victory, had he been the man so tortured by these
salacious, insatiable kin. But Marada Seleucus Kerrion
had not been meant by education or nature for the seat

95

EARTH DREAMS

of power; he was a "Seleucus"—a consolidator, a state-
man, a man trained twenty years in the pure dictums of
law and order as propounded by his mentors, the masters
of the arbitrational guild. At ten he had begun his study;

he studied yet, albeit on the forced sabbatical his consul
generalship had entailed. Estranged by propriety and
fears of conflict of interest in the minds of his arbitra-
tional superiors, he could not help but detest every mo-
ment of his exile to the crass jungles of commerce, cartel,
and consulate. Marada did not love the Consortium; he
loved ethics and right action and the pinnacle of man's
achievement which was self-government by willing ad-
herence to law. When faced with creatures as deter-
minedly lawless and joyously unethical as Ashera and her
get, guild arbitration cried "Madness" and adjusted
punishment to fit those who could not sort out right from
wrong. Thus, mercy underwrote mania.

"Chaeron," Marada's growl was unintentionally feral,
"you have some reason for showing me this, I must as-
sume. Trot it out."

"No reason except our conjoint welfare, and its main-
tenance. Someone must alert you to the laxity in your
midst. No intelligencers / run would have let something
like this slide. Your-people had plenty of time to comb
the Stump banks before I got here. Hooker leaves some-
thing to be desired as a covert agent."

"I do not know what you mean. I'd like some light,
please. Thank you." Outside, the mission was coming
into view, with its ostentatious maze of living hedge and
its palatial towers. "Shebat was accurate in her predic-
tion? You will not accept a loan from me? But rather
throw the whole bond into a depression, and the rest of
the Consortium with us?"

"And have Acheron subject to conditions of liability?
Hardly. Shebat still thinks you want to take her cruiser
away from her; her reasons are not mine but they reduce
to the same quotient: we do not trust you, not your mo-
tives or your stability."

"You are saying that you do not trust Kerrion space to
make good, when it is you and your stock manipulation
that has damaged our reputation?" The light Chaeron
had given (how was it that the proconsul had comman-

94

JANET MORRIS

deered control of this, his own vehicle?) was cruel and
bright. Brother stared at brother with eyes like knives.

"You have done what damage you decry, both to Ker-
rion commerce and Kerrion prestige. The cruiser indus-
try which you crippled with your decimation of—"

"You dare talk to me of the cruiser industry? I will
have you arraigned on charges of commercial piracy!
You have no right to use state secrets and seminal re-
search done at our expense to realize a profit for
Acheron—"

"Don't worry," Chaeron soothed, "you will get your
taxes. Were I you, I wouldn't let anyone know that you
do not want the Orrefors acquisition successfully inte-
grated. You must present the facade of a consul gen-
eral—that is, you'll be damned glad that Acheron shows
enough profit to keep the whole boodle out of the red.
As for the cruiser industry's fate, if I left it to you, we'd
have every arbiter in the universe saying requiems all day
every day for the next five years over the corpses of sui-
cided pilots. Tsk. You cannot even convince the Tab-
rizi—who will believe anything, even that 'east is east' in
a habitational sphere—that the cruisers they bought from
us during the last ten years are exactly and completely
like they were before the advent of KXV 134 Murada.
only better. . . ."

"Your mother—"

"Must you?"

"—masterminded the disappearance of—"

"Marada, lovers' quarrels are something with which I
have no patience. Or have you two fallen out? There's a
consul general here from rival space who wants to make
an honest woman of her . . . ?"

"Does she believe in reincarnation, too? She's re-
stricted to Lorelie until there is proof in this Spry affair,
one way or the other. Restricted from Kerrion space,
that is. If she defies me and makes a successful escape to
some distant consulate, from which I could then only
hope she might never return, there'll be little enough I
can do about it. Cards down: don't let me catch her, or
you, doing anything illegal."

"You really are as predictable as a prerecorded tran-
script, do you know that?"

95

EARTH DREAMS

"Constancy is a virtue; perhaps you could learn to imi-
tate, if not acquire, it."

"Your residence. Lord Imperator," Chaeron an-
nounced, and rising, bowed low. Behind him, the privacy
doors skittered back like an indrawn breath.

Among the ranks of black-and-reds and staffers, be-
hind the color guard with silken standards waving in an
artificial breeze, Marada spied pale, emaciated Hooker;

Gahan Tempest, his father's most prized intelligencer;

his wife's second cousin, the Labayas' consul general;

several swarthy Tabriz ministers; portly old balding
Bucyrus, enterpreneur supreme, cousul general of
roguish Bucyrus space. The cunning old roue had wasted
no time getting here, where disaffection could be turning
to advantage!

For all of them Marada Kerrion had one answer, one
simple plan, one solution. And they were, none of them,
going to like it.

That evening at dinner (in surroundings so opulent that
Marada Kerrion, spirit scion of every ascetic who had
ever forsaken palace for cave, could hardly bear to sanc-
tion such excess by his presence), the gleeful anticipation
which had sustained him through months of preparation
and machination, which had buoyed his arbiter's soul
through frustration and disappointment at space-end, de-
serted him.

Fully two hundred people sat to table in that teal-and-
golden hall appointed like a czar's ballroom: Chaeron's
fifty loyal bondkin, double that in Orrefors-bom staffers,
and those fey representatives of rival consulates who had
come early, like precognitive vultures, hoping to get a
choice bite of Kerrion space's failing corpse-to-be. Or
was it that they came to offer fealty to the Phoenix
prophesied to rise from the steaming bier's ashes—a
phoenix coyly designated Tyche, his brother's odious
AXV?

It is a sad estate to inherit power when one despises it,
to make equivocal judgments of events in the human
sphere when neither humanity nor judgement can be
trusted so far in advance of any evidential determination
of culpability. But that was the nature of the consul gen-
eralship, and the reason Marada had never desired to at-

96

JANET MORRIS

tain to it. Having ended upon that splintery seat, he felt
his irritated butt developing calluses the like of which,
when he had seen them grow upon other men's bottoms,
he had named malignancies overdue for excising. But he
must not falter, he dared not fail; the fate of a race
spread thin among a multitude of stars rested upon his
not inconsiderable shoulders. That those shoulders were
heavy, steroid-enhanced caricatures of those nature had
given him was his constant reminder: one either played
the consular game, or was counted a casualty, early on.

So he sat among the despicable and the smug, and ate
Earth's gourmet bounty without appreciation; though the
food was not poisoned, the air about him was foul with
scheme. To his right sat bright Chaeron, looking per-
fectly at home, at last, in environs more foppish and syb-
aritic even than he. On the proconsul's right was an
exquisite blonde woman, so complementary to him that
he might have had her made to order by the same flamer
who had designed the floral arrangements, procured the
ornate" silver, the gold-chased chargers, and the vermeil
finger bowls. Beyond the woman was Hooker, one of the
best of Marada's agents, his mask of civility firmly in
place. Around the table's curve were deployed more
flaxen-haired and freckled Orrefors, until they melded
into certain consular representatives: his distant Labayan
in-law, whose discomfort showed only in the pleats join-
ing his temples; a pair of Tabrizi muttering in sing-song
to each other while they tried to determine if what lay on
their plates bound for voracious bellies could truly be
said to break any of their volumious dietary laws; then
the most practiced sensualist among the crew of profes-
sionals, old Andreus Bucyrus, who had worn away every
hair on his bullet head in pursuit of just the sort of plea-
sure which sat, arch and flawless, on Chaeron's right
hand.

Cross-conversations ignored, Chaeron introduced her:

"Lauren, meet my brother the consul general- Marada,
this is our one resident dream dancer. If she seems ill at
ease, it is because we spayed her and sent her to space-
end as a convicted felon for dream dancing in
Draconis. . . ."

"We?" Marada drawled.

97

EARTH DREAMS

"And though we brought her here for the same rea-
son—to dance dreams—she has never quite forgiven us
for making a neutered convict out of her."

"I wish you would restrict yourself to T in this con-
text. I seem to remember that the whole roundup of
dream dancers was conceived and executed by you
alone. . . ." The girl had blushed, fire on ice, and now
studied her lap.

"As I was saying," Chaeron continued, cool and cruel
and entirely the person that Marada had grown to hate,
"she is our only practicing dream dancer. She was also
Softa David Spry's intimate, both in Draconis and at
space-end. So I thought—"

"Really! I am always interested in anything to do with
my former classmate, old Softa. And I have just come
back from space-end. We have a great deal in common,
my dear. You tell me all about the pirates' guild, and
what you think happened to poor David, and I will make
it well worth your while." Marada leaned forward,
elbows on the table, fingers laced.

"Softa is not dead!" blazed the girl, breathtaking in
her passion. She wet her lips. "He will return, and wreak
havoc among you all!"

"And would you know just when this will be?"

"Not at dinner, you two, unless Lauren can help me to
persuade you to give me those pilots yet at space-
end ... ?"

"Chaeron, you engineered this. . , . Pilots, you want?
Those pilots? No man would want the likes of them, but
for revolution. But let us put suspicion aside, for tonight.
You want Baldwin and the pilots who were Spry's accom-
plices in piracy? Then turn up Softa David for me—living
or dead. A head, an arm with fingers attached, or the
whole person, I am not choosy. Give me him, and you
can have every space-ender, complete with orders for
sterilization-reversal wherever possible."

"Give me Baldy, Marada," Chaeron said softly, "and I
will try my best to lure Softa—or his ghost—out where
we can take him. But as a lowly proconsul, there is little I
can do without some fresh bait. Now, if I were in Drac-
onis—"

"Ah, here's the entree. What is it, bleeding heart?"

98

JANET MORRIS

"Marada, David Spry, if he has got the Erinys, as
some pilots suspect, cannot be had without the pilotry
guild's full cooperation, to get that, especially out here, I
need to prove my good faith!"

"Chaeron, what is troubling you? Where is your much-
vaunted circumspection? Our consular allies will have
headaches all evening from pricking up their ears so in-
tently. You want Baldwin, you'll have him—and the oth-
ers. That is my slated word, given formally. All you need
do is loan me your dream dancer for one night."

"Done, Marada. End: slate."

There could be no love lost between the two Kerrion
cruisers Hassid and Marada. This the Marada knew for
certain, and what is certain is not remarkable. What was
remarkable was that the Hassid's hostility, far from being
restricted to the Marada, was visited not only upon the
maiden Tyche, but punctiliously shared out among the
whole of cruiserkind.

The Marada had been "taking care of everything" ever
since Shebat had so ordered him, nearly nine months ago
in Draconis when the warring faction within her family
had all been absent from their administrative capital and
Shebat had found herself acting consul general of Ker-
rion space. "Taking care of everything" was a gargantuan
undertaking, and to even approximate the meaning un-
derlying the phrase, the Marada had had to take a giant
step toward his makers: Shebat had ordered him to simu-
late human thought. One "takes care" of cruiserkind, of
pilots, and of all things concerning Shebat—and even of
things which only might, at some future time, concern
her. The Marada had once had the opportunity to choose
his own substitute pilot—and he had availed himself of it,
choosing a futures researcher, a problem modeler whose
equal no longer existed in the wide universe now that she
was dead. The cruiser applied Delphi probtem-modeling-
and-solving techniques to the situation he saw building
between the brothers Kerrion, and though a cruiser nei-
ther "liked" nor "disliked" actions in the human sphere,
the Marada—a concernedly vigilant spectator of any
events which might ever, possibly, pertain to the con-
tinued health and welfare of his outboard, Shebat—was

99

EARTH DREAMS

not pleased by the results Delphi method projected from
a simulated conflict between Kerrions.

Consequently, when the consul general called upon
Hooker, the cultural attache, in the Acheron consulate,
the Marada took note, by way of Shebat's secondary ma-
trix code-ins, from his low space-anchor about the Earth.
This in itself was no inconsequential achievement, but it
was rivaled by so many other extraordinary feats (like
monitoring the Hassid's dialogue with her pilot, and
overviewing the questionable interaction between the
Danae and her nonoutboard owner, Chaeron Kerrion)
which Shebat's mandate had made incumbent upon him,
that the Marada paid his own accomplishments little
mind. Was he not serving Shebat? Was he not doing only
that which was necessary? Was there not a human adage
which affirmed that "forewarned was forearmed"?

The only question which the Marada could not answer
upon his own was whether the forewarning should be ex-
tended to the proconsul as well as his outboard. But
Chaeron Kerrion's behavior within the hapless Danae
was itself suspect; the self-proclaimed champion of
cruisers was acting, so far as the Marada could deter-
mine, from completely selfish motives which had nothing
at all to do with the welfare of his cruiser, although the
welfare of cruiserkind might in the end be served by his
duplicity. Chaeron had, after all, made overtures to his
brother which could eventually lead to the repatriation of
the twenty pilots who, along with their guildmaster, Bal-
dwin, had been sent as convicts to space-end.

The Marada made no value judgements; he had
learned duplicity from man; he had appreciated the value
of speaking untruths- But if no information could be
trusted, then any hierarchy built upon information man-
agement was bound to fail.

Almost, the cruiser contacted Chaeron to discuss with
him this troubling point of logic. Surely, the master of
deception would have considered this problem at length,
and have come to some solution based upon the more
farseeing, intuitive reasoning which was man's province
and which he called "induction."

But the Marada stayed his impulse. Acheron's procon-
sul was a riddle whose solution was as unclear to the

100

JANET MORRIS

cruiser as to his outboard, Shebat. A man intent upon
producing a cruiser-prototype of such revolutionary sche-
matics as Tyche's who would then offhandedly give that
cruiser to Marada's infant son, yet teething in its crib in
crystalline Lorelie, was a man whose purposes were re-
soundingly and thoroughly in doubt.

Chapter Six

"Where's your horse?" demanded the mounted
militia commander of the tall woman in gray flight satins
who walked beside one ox-drawn, covered wagon mid-
way along the line of fifteen snaking through a hilly
gorge.

"I gave it to Cluny," she replied, shading her eyes to
see him better in the mid-March haze. "Two of the
dream dancers took his pony out, riding double, and
broke its leg." She stepped away from the passing
wagon's wheels, toward Thorne on his dancing gray
mount. "It was horrible. I had forgotten how bad Earth
could be." She reached up and took hold of his horse's
frothy bit. "Bitsy's nose is broken and Cluny's heart is
broken and nothing will heal the break which their re-
venge upon the culprit precipitated between my dream
dancers and your men. Where were you, these four days
past? I could have used your help." Her lower lip was
outthrust, her chin raised high to him.

Jesse Thome reached out to disengage her hand from
his mount's bridle. "Are you testing me then, or does the
oracle not know everything that occurs? Either way, I
will give you an answer, if you will then reply to some
questions of mine." Beyond them, the train of ox-drawn
wagons with their faded canvas covers and their cargo of
dream dancers drew away, swallowed up by patchy mist,

101

102

JANET MORRIS

low-lying and cold. It was implossible to tell the time of
day, or of year. There existed in this deep valley only
monochrome, featureless sky, black evergreens, and the
two of them, bled of color by the noncommittal light—
and, receding, the snort of oxen, the rumble of wheels.

The militia commander dismounted; leading his horse,
he walked with her in the ruts the iron-bound wheels had
made. "I was in Fort Ticonderoga, sibyl, and the Or-
refors made me a proposal. If it is as genuine as their
safe-conduct proved to be, they want only to secure my
aid. Everyone 1 have met who comes from beyond the
sky seems intent on liberating my folk from this oppres-
sive yoke of servitude, keeping well in mind that we are
all subhuman and incapable of either saving or governing
ourselves. I do not feel in the least subhuman . . ." He
chanced a look at the oracle, who watched her bootsteps
in the mud. She showed no reaction. ". . . but Fam di-
vided within myself. My Earthish half wants liberation,
but from all would-be liberators. My Orrefors half de-
mands everything it has been denied—all that your peo-
ple, first, and then my own enchanterkin, have seen fit to
show me." His chin worked beneath a scraggy beard; he
did not look at her again. "Tell me, sibyl, why Hooker, a
proclaimed Kerrion attache, sent me to the ironmonger
Rizk, whose faces—just as your wisdom proclaimed—are
many, and why Rizk sent me to Ticonderoga and my ...
bondkin," he used the term he had learned among Ker-
rions hesitantly, "and they, a second time, sought to se-
cure my allegiance, though I thought I had made my
feelings clear. Is this the choice you spoke of, when first
we met?"

"It is. And what did you choose?" Her lips seemed
blue; her cheeks were flushed. Yet her husky voice
thrilled him, without reason: there was no censure there,
no excitement, no distress.

He growled at his horse, who was nudging him, jerked
its reins—he would not be hurried by horse or man. "I
chose to step aside. I want no involvement. When mat-
ters ease, we will see what can be seen."

"You are lying."

He stopped. "Oracle, I am asking your help. Counsel
me as to a fit course of action; show it to me in a dream.

EARTH DREAMS            105

Show me where the gods are hiding, now that man has
invaded their heaven. Is it under this rock? Or that? Or
in your eyes?" He grabbed her by the arms, and it
seemed to him that all which remained of world and life
was the two of them in a field of unsullied cloud. His
horse, reins dropped, snorted disapprovingly; he could
hear the harness creaking as it snuffled along the misty
ground, searching out early shoots. His mind, too,
seemed gray, and uncertain: everything was gray but the
oracle's hair, a froth of black; and her lips, a dark, fas--
cinating slash; and his heart, which was so fall of blood
that his vision began to take on a ruddy, urgent tinge as if
he sat astride a tide of battle.

"Let me go."

"1 cannot."

"Then hear me. Go to Chaeron with this, and he will
help you. When I first went up into the spheres, I was
confused. It is a matter of forced learning, and nothing to
hide, nothing to fear."

"I cannot take my feelings to any man, especially him.
I am bringing this to you, who have afflicted me with
confusion. Call off your hordes of doubt; I am routed.
Accept my surrender; I can think of nothing else. And do
not make me say what we both should not have to hear.
Come away with me, forsake this mad war which neither
side can win. It is not safe in New Chaeronea. I wilt not
take you, or men who depend upon me, into this coming
peril which no bravery or skill can surmount."

He found his hands gripping tightly, too tightly. Her
whispered command made him let her go.

She backed away, fingers flying through her hair. "You
must go to New Chaeronea; you have promised. You and
your men must be counted."

"And if I choose not to be counted?"

"Then you will be an outlaw, foredoomed, and all your
men, the same. Can you do it to them, to Cluny? And
what of my dream dancers, who need your escort to en-
sure their safety?"

"Shebat," he dared to speak her name, "you mock
me. Use enchantment, either the true kind you showed
me, or the kind which is Kerrion-made. Fly them there.

104

JANET MORRIS

They do not need this trek, and my men are long away
from their families."

"You asked my advice. I advise you to come into New
Chaeronea, register yourself and see that each of your
men does the same. Make no criminal of Cluny Pope; life
is hard enough, as things lie. He and Bitsy are fast
friends. Do not take them from the comfort of one
another."

"I had feared as much. And yet I envy them. Despite
the consequences, I will take you. But—" He reached
out to her, this time more gently, as gently as he could
manage, yet his grip was ineluctable. He held her fast, in
the white, swirling mist crawling south through the pass.

"No consequences," she whispered, stepping in against
him. She was shivering in the cold. Hesitantly, as if-she
were made of the mist engulfing their feet, he put one
arm around her waist, then the other. "We will finish
what we started when Tempest so rudely interrupted us,
here where no slate takes note."

"You sound frightened."

"Because I have seen it in a dream, and it was not the
same. But that is good; we will break the hold of dreams
upon us, and truly be free."

Her fingers met his, between her breasts where the
flight suit zipped.

When later they lay upon blankets taken from his
horse's pack, he asked her about the dream she had men-
tioned, but she would say only that she had made a
dream for another man, one time, which had had a set-
ting much the same. Then she rolled onto her stomach,
fished in her flight satins' pocket, and said, "Hold out
your hand."

He did that, and she put into it a small coin. "This is
not Kerrion, nor Orrefors."

"No, it is not," Shebat agreed. "It is very old. Take it,
for luck. If we are breaking curses and rewriting dreams,
you should have it. It came from Chaeron's collection. It
is very rare and valuable, and he sent it down for my
birthday, not as much for a present as to make a point."

He turned it in his fingers, shook his head, offered it
back.

"It was struck at Naxos, around three thousand years

105

EARTH DREAMS

ago. On that side is Dionysus' head." He turned it. "On
the other, Silenus holding a wine cup. He sends old
myths to me in a land which has forgotten every name of
god and man that once mattered, and these are the pa-
trons of revelry and historicity. He reminds me where the
traditions which make up mankind's spirit are yet hon-
ored, and reminds me of what I am, and am fast becom-
ing. . . ." She trailed off.

"I do not understand," he growled suspiciously. "And
I have no need of a coin I cannot spend or luck meant for
another man's wife."

She giggled, rolled onto her back, put a palm to her
forehead. Her lips were blue with cold. "I do. Keep it,
Jesse Thome. Through you, I have finally realized that I
do understand: my husband, my duty—everything, even
the paltry role love must play in a pilot's life."

He tossed it in the dirt. "No, thank you; you make me
feel like a whore."

"Fate's whore, you may well be. Come here." She
held out arms as white as the moon rising gigantic in a
yet-light sky. "I will tell you a story about the first time
we met, which, you will not remember, and when you
know how long I have wanted you, you will take my
present. You'll see."

He was almost relieved to hear hoofbeats approaching.
Scrambling for his clothing, he could not urge her to suf-
ficient speed. Laughing, she dawdled, so that Cluny Pope
on Shebat's huge enchanterbred and Bitsy Mistral on a
shaggy pony reined up out of the mist in time to see her
just shrugging into the sleeves of her flight satins, her
hair in muddy disarray.

Cluny Pope's silence stared. Bitsy Mistral raised a yet-
swollen eyebrow, almost smirked, then went grave, saw-
ing on his pony's reins as if he could back the beast into
the past.

"Yes?" came Thorne's hoarse voice from across his
gray's back where he jerked the girths tight.

"Shebat was missing . . . w," Pope responded, look-
ing at his saddle.

"Look at me when I speak to you!"

"Sir!" Cluny Pope straightened. His face was con-
torted and bruised: old contusions, purple and yellow.

106

JANET MORRIS

"Any problems, Cluny?"

"No, sir."

Thorne wanted to say that he was sorry about the
pony, or congratulate the youth on acquiring the .black.
mount, anything but what he found himself saying: "Give
Shebat her horse back. You lost yours through negli-
gence. We'll find you another in New Chaeronea. Be-
tween now and then, you can either ride double with
your friend Bitsy, or warm a wagon's seat. Now'"

Shebat's hands flew to her hips, her mouth opened to
argue. Jesse whistled piercingly and shook his head. She
pressed her lips together and walked away into the
thickening dusk.

The scrabble of boy from horse; the click of bootheels
against an occasional stone, muffled, adolescent voices
and then one pony's hooves, trotting off, finished it: no
word from man to boy, no looks exchanged.

Please, Cluny, Jesse Thome prayed silently. Stay an-
gry. Be hurt. Go home.

New Chaeronea was like nothing else in the civilized
stars old Bucyrus was heard to exclaim that evening, the
fifteenth of March, 2252, in the capital's ballroom.

Hooker threaded his way among gathered dignitaries,
testing the waters. Casting an appreciative smile in the
direction of his consul general, Marada Kerrion, standing
with a glorious dream dancer on his arm and the in-
famous Bucyrus's rotund mass kept thus at arm's length,
the pale cultural attache looked at his wrist chronometer,
then disappeared into the riotous embrace of a Tabrizi
head-wife's multitudinous veils.

When circumspection allowed, Marada checked his
own chronometer against New Chaeronea's central data.
Data pool code-ins had been provided for every guest,
both while they were in Acheron and down here in New
Chaeronea. Chaeron, true to form. had thought of every-
thing. Well, almost everything . . .

". . . think that your brother—" Bucyrus was saying,
his voice carrying words meant for his fellow consul gen-
eral, but messages bound for the blonde woman whose
supple form Marada had chosen to dress in Kerrion blues
when he heard that Shebat would be in attendance.

EARTH DREAMS            107

"My half brother," Marada broke in.

"Young Chaeron," the old, round-headed mass of
flesh amended. Bucyrus was like a series of rings speed-
ing out from a pond's broken surface, or waveforms from
a distant source. His many pounds were no light burden.
As the fat man spoke, Marada smiled broadly, envision-
ing Bucyrus atop his stepmother. "Young Chaeron,"
Bucyrus repeated, "is in a remarkable state of preserva-
tion for one whose reputation for dissipation is so notori-
ous. I had expected a rather wom-out degenerate, but
found, instead—"

"I'd not be taken in, old gentleman." Marada wished
himself away, disengaged the girl's resisting arm from
his: he would bribe Bucyrus, trade Lauren for his free-
dom. He was not thai proud. . . . But nothing availed;

he was trapped when a Labayan in family greens touched
with gold came up and he was forced into introductions.
He made them, inventorying the hall for particular faces.
He did not see Chaeron or Shebat, or the Orrefors he
had been promised a gander at, the Earth-raised Jesse
Richter Thorne, or Chaeron's pilot, the first bitch Pen-
rose, who was possibly the only man here tonight Marada
Kerrion would have enjoyed talking with.

"What I'd like to know," he jabbed at Bucyrus, "is
whether you were there for the Tyche's history-making
departure, or her triumphant return. More to the point,
whether you're going to order any of my brother's
AX Vs."

"To listen to Chaeron's sales managers, they're
yours," said Bucyrus sharply. "I will make no secret of
my interest in them. And in other things concerning you.
If we could go talk quietly for a short time? Ladies, La-
baya, I'm sure you'll excuse us."

The trap was sprung too quickly for Marada to avert it;

he had little skill in these areas. Twice before he had
narrowly escaped Bucyrus's attempts to have him in the
matter of his wicked stepmother, Ashera the Dragon.

"The thing, which is so arresting about this site—and
it's orbital counterpart, Acheron," Bucyrus boomed
pleasantly, a disarming lactic aimed at any and all who
might be listening, "is its perfect blend of the most daring

108

JANET MORRIS

new technologies and the best of what seems to be the
whole of history. Tell me, how did he do it?"

"Behind my back," Marada drawled. "They took more
money out of circulation than a Kerrion has squandered
on a private project in our history. You must be aware of
the state of the money and securities markets, right now.
Well, this is the root of that problem. I suppose you
could say we sent him to school to learn how to do it. But
a new Lorelie was no part of the projection for his tenure
here, and we shall see what comes of it."

They passed a staffer serving Earthish champagne;

Marada snatched up two glasses. "These should be safe,"
he squinted at them exaggeratedly, held each under his
wrist-computer, which chimed encouragingly. "Let's get
drunk, old man. I can't talk about Ashera sober. And
that is what you want to discuss, I would wager."

"Arbiter!" Bucyrus accused genially. "I thought you
had retired."

"Not willingly, I assure you. Make me an offer, and I'll
sell you the whole bond, lock, stock, and egregious rela-
tives. Bereft of millstones, my guild will, reluctantly,
have to take me back."

"Just a moment, young sir. You said 'they' when you
referred to your proconsul's project. Who is the other
party?"

"Come, come, innocence does not become you. My
foster sister, the scandal of the civilized stars, Parma's
finest folly, Shebat Alexandra Kerrion. Surely you have
met Chaeron's wife?"

"No, no, I have not had the pleasure." A corner
loomed, festooned with flowers and bedecked with art.
They took up a stance there, the young, bearded consul
general and the old, hairless one. They were of a weight,
Marada's in height and muscle and Bucyrus's in un-
abashed fat.

Looking out over the crowd, Marada searched in vain
for Rate Penrose. No pilot, of any rank, showed a bris-
tled head there. A woman with a tray of canapes came
by. He lifted the tray from her startled hands and set it
on the server against which the wide old man stood prop-
ped, his ample waist seemingly resting on the old, pol-
ished wood. "Let us be brief," he suggested, as Bucyrus's

109

EARTH DREAMS

tiny, round fingers caressed a shrimp. "I will not drop
charges against my stepmother until I have David Spry,
dead or alive, or proof that the pieces of him which are
left are too small to be collected. However, if she should
flee Kerrion space into yours, and your august protec-
tion, there would be nothing I could do about it. Of
course, she would have no claim to any of her Kerrion
assets, in such a hypothetical case. The younger children
she gave my father could then make their own choice. I
am an arbiter, as you reminded me; the stigma of the
mother need not necessarily extend to her offspring.
They might find, however, that if they chose to join her
elsewhere, they would do so as paupers."

"Don't you think you are being a little hard on
Ashera?"

"Old man, she came to me before the fact and told me
she was going to eliminate Spry." This harsh whisper was
preceded by a red light and low hum coaxed from his
wrist array: interrupter circuitry. "I have told no one but
you; hearsay evidence only muddles these things. If you
have serious intentions toward Ashera, you should know
that everything you have heard about her is true, no mat-
ter how unlikely such horrible rumors seem when in her
presence."

"I appreciate your concern. Consul, but I assure you, I
do know all I need to know and I am more than capable
of enduring any risk I should decide to take." His laugh-
ing, tiny eyes said truer: What's the trouble, little boy? Is
the real world too ugly for your refined arbitrational sen-
sibilities? Out loud could be heard only; "Let us discuss
these new cruisers, and perhaps you could explain in
clearer detail what pitfalls their manufacture has been
undertaken to avoid. My pilots seem perfectly content
with the old-type Kerrion cruisers they have now. Is this
a canny bit of market manipulation, perhaps planned
obsolescence?"

"Ah, but are you content with your pilots? That seems
to be Chaeron's point. The Kerrion series I myself am
still producing has been equipped wih add-on capabilities
which will be seen to rival the convenience-group fea-
.turcs of the AXVs."

"Even in communications?"

110

JANET MORRIS

"Communications? I don't know. I haven't looked at
the specs. Tell me what their claims are in detail, and I'll
tell you if I can match their projected performance. I as-
sure you, I can better their price per vehicle."

Absently, Marada Kerrion sparred with Bucyrus, an-
ticipating a distant rumble, the sound of running feet, the
throaty mutter of a crowd. He had promised Hooker he
would wait and be surprised by what his agent had ar-
ranged. Whatever it was that Hooker had planned, it
promised to thoroughly embarrass Chaeron (if his tardi-
ness had not already done so) and further Marada's de-
termination that this post would be his little brother's
last.

He spied Penrose, hurrying to embrace Lauren. The
pilot had ducked in, now out again, through a keystone
arch leading toward the east wing, not even pausing to
take glass in hand.

He stopped a staffer in red-and-blacks and ordered
him to bring Lauren to where he "chatted" with Bucyrus.
The dream dancer was involved in this, deeply so. He
had seen Penrose's feigned kiss. Some message had been
passed. He would find out what it was. Meanwhile, his
cruiser's voice chimed in his inner ear, telling him that
the cruiser Marada and the cruiser Danae were in op-
timum-security commmunication, and that several other
Acheron cruisers had been put on "alert" status and
asked to take up orbital coordinates. Some of these,
guided through the other cruisers and under Penrose's
orders, had no pilots on board!"

Chaeron was listening to Jesse Thome. In his east tur-
ret's study, the double doors were open to the balcony,
and to the temperature-moderated night. The lights were
down, so that the crystalline ways of New Chaeronea, lit
up bright as day, could be minutely studied.

At the end of one of them, beyond the lawns and the
high, open gates, a knot of humanity muttered, ebbed
and flowed.

"And they did not tell you when, or how, they would
strike? A disruption? What kind of disruption? A dem-
onstration? A siege?"

Jesse Thome, hunched upon a priceless table desk, his

EARTH DREAMS              111

heels hooked behind its brass binding, shook his head.
He chewed a toothpick; he wore the most fashionable of
consular garb; he was shorn and washed and thoroughly
ill at ease. Every once in a while he cast a pleading
glance at Shebat, who paced in flight satins only slightly
more formal than those she wore on an ordinary day.
When this happened, Shebat would grimace, or stuff her
fists in her pockets. This time, she did more: she blurted
out, "But why can't we just arrest Hooker now."

"What good would it do?" snarled Tempest, lounging
in a corner, dressed intelligencer-invisible in soft, flowing
civilian clothes. "He hasn't done anything, yet. When he
does, I've three intelligencers whose only task is to follow
his every move. ..."

"He destroyed our son," Shebat seethed.

Jesse Thorne winced, spat out his toothpick upon the
carpet, quit the desk.

By the open French doors, he raised one arm high,
grasping the door frame. Cantilevered, he leaned there,
staring outward, occasionally shaking his head. "I
couldn't do this—just wait to be attacked—if this place
were mine to hold," he whispered.

"Well, it is not," someone said.

"Rafe!" Shebat embraced Penrose in greeting. The
pilot looked quizzical.

"Chaeron, talk to the Marada," Penrose suggested im-
periously, while still disengaging Shebat. "It's got a slate
on Hooker and your brother from Acheron. It says it
told your wife about it. An abstract is ready to run, if you
want to take it."

"Can you get it up in here, hard copy, one reading?"

"I can get it for you direct, line-to-mind," Raphael
countered softly, only offering.

"Through the Danae?" Chaeron tested the truce miti-
gating their ongoing quarrel, while Tempest breathed a
sigh of relief and somehow beat them all to the console,
and Raphael replied: "There is a little something at
stake. But—hold it, Gahan, if you would."

The intellignecer stopped, with a desk-top console
half-waked amid a wall suddenly studded with ready-
lights.

Penrose took a step toward Chaeron, who flashed him

JANET MORRIS

112

a small, encouraging smile. "It's all right, Rafe, in here,
if it's all right anywhere, anytime. Don't mind Thorne,
he's getting his education." At the singing of the console
and the colors it threw in ready-mode, the militia leader
had turned about, peering into the room, instead of
beyond it.

"Now, RP, what is it?"

"The Marada wants to be Acheron One."

"What?" Shebat and Chaeron gasped, together,
equally incredulous and equally comprehending. Then,
still simultaneously: "If Chaeron agrees?" "Surely!"

Tempest saw Jessa Thorne's face, and added, "For my
information, what does that mean?"

"If Shebat's cruiser is Acheron One, he can deploy the
other cruisers without waiting for our orders, in a Class-
One emergency, as which this certainly qualifies. It will
save time and lives, and if one of us is incapacitated, it
might be our only hope. If I had Raphael's full coopera-
tion earlier, I could have worked through Danae and ac-
complished almost the same thing. But one need only
allow the Marada, one never has to instruct him. Get him
up for me on the monitor, then. And the Danae—
Acheron Two."

"Jesse," Shebat said throatily, approaching him. "You
might not want to stay. We'll understand- Go find Cluny
and—"

Cluny?"

"Why yes, he's here with Bitsy. I saw them in the din-
ing hall- I—"

"/ told him he was forbidden to come," Thome spat,
rubbed his slitted eyes, and, shrugging, continued: "No
matter. Little bastard wilt get what the gods have in mind
for him. As for me, I'll see this through. Just don't stop
to explain things to me." He cast an equal-to-equal grin,
divested of humor, at Tempest. "It does little but let me
know how far out of my depth I am."

"I'm glad something finally did," Penrose muttered in
Chaeron's ear, where they bent cheek-to-cheek over the
console. Two chimes sounded: Marada and Danae were
on-line. They vocalized their position while a screen
quarter-imaged to give the satellite arrays and cruiser-co-
ordinates for the quadrant of planetary airspace over

EARTH DREAMS             115

New Chaeronea; the Orrefors positions and infrared ac-
tivity readouts; a close-up of New Chaeronea's vicinity
and enemy strengths there; a street map with red and
blue dots marking Orrefors and Kerrion lifeforms.

"Marada, Danae, very nice. Tempest, are these,"—
Chaeron tapped the last screen section, in the lower-left
where humans in the strike area were delineated red and
blue—"designations certain? This is not a war game. I
wouldn't want to take out my own guests."

"Sir, anyone with an intelligence key code-in or matrix
access is designated blue; the aggressors are those with
linkages to the Orrefors ground arrays at Fort Ticon-
deroga. These," Tempest hit a switch, and the screen
blossomed with a smattering of lavender, "are locals with
no access codes who registered with the Census Bureau
and received ID cards. The only ones we can't locate are
local residents who did not register and get their cards. I
can't help them, only chance can keep them out of the
way."

"Marada," Chaeron touched a switch, "stay encir-
cuited with Shebat. If something should happen to me,
she's Acheron's proconsul and your new status is perma-
nent. Acknowledge."

The Marada's "voice" came up through the speakers.
"Slate."

Shebat and Chaeron exchanged knowing smiles. Jesse
Thome felt queasy and went back to the doors. Every
Orrefors enchanter out there was dead as he walked, or
skulked, or sauntered—at these people's whim. Tempest
met him there, unsmiling and cold.

"I know what you are thinking. And I say it's a happy
coincidence that brought you in here to see it, before you
faced it." The intelligencer's voice was professionally
low. His hand, squeezing Thorne's arm transiently, was
eloquent. Thorne was not offended, as he might have
been if Chaeron had touched him. He looked out at the
crowd of dark shapes coming up the terraced hill with its
multitude of carnelian-and-jet steps and felt sorrow. This
was no war for honorable men. And yet— "They will
have first strike?"

"Always," Tempest assured him with unhidden dis-
gust, while in the background Marada Kerrion's slated

114

JANET MORRIS

words, and those of Hooker's, could be heard through
the beeps and clicks, and the mutters of the little war
council. While Hooker's recorded voice warned his con-
sul general of unspecified events to take place on the fif-
teenth of March as part of his continuing effort to thwart
the proconsul's attempt to assimilate the rebel Orrefors,
Chaeron's real-time comments punctuated acidly:

"Shebat, you didn't think this was important enough to
telt me about, earlier? Did you listen to this transcript?
No? Why not? Marada?" It was to the cruiser, patched in
on the secondary matrix-line, that Chaeron spoke. "Next
time you have something you think might bear on con-
sular security, come to me with it directly. Slate?"

"Slate," came the cruiser's reply. Then: "Your
Acheron staff is trying to raise you for confirmation that
you ordered the empty cruisers out of their slips and into
orbit under my control."

"But I did not . . ." Chaeron steepled his hands, then
smiled, and nodded. "Check, Marada. I'll clear it. Next
time, wait a little longer, so that I can pretend I am mak-
ing the decisions around here." His voice was flippant;

Penrose saw his restrained frown, causing the drawn flesh
around his eyes to quiver and a muscle to jump in his
jaw. "Get me Acheron Authority, Rafe, and give them
an open line down to us: There's a limit to the security
we can enforce without hurting ourselves—some of these
guys must be ours."

Penrose did those things without touching a keyboard,
while Tempest/still at the window, was shaking his head
in negation: no one in Acheron was trustworthy. No
Acheron-controlled, orbitally mounted "crowd control"
could be chanced, under these circumstances, lest they
find themselves victims of their own firepower, acciden-
tally "Muaimed."

Chaeraon, after talking briefly with his Acheron secre-
tary, got up and joined the intelligencer where Tempest
watched with Jesse Thorne as the shadowy Orrefors force
mounted the stairs. "A good number, Gahan," he said
conversationally, then, so low that only Tempest, and
Thome, who was standing by, could hear: "I had to alert
them; it cannot matter now. Whoever is up there and
belongs to Hooker can do nothing more to obstruct us,

U5

EARTH DREAMS

or ours, or the multidrives and cruisers. Don't worry—I
took all the hunter-sats off-line for the duration." Then,
again at normal levels: "Shebat, you've a cruiser over-
viewing this action; I want to know everything it tells
you, whenever it tells you, whether you think it impor-
tant, or not!"

"It's taking too long; they've a few surprises for us, or
they'd be here," Tempest posited. And he was not
wrong.

"Can you not just seal the area off, like in Acheron?"
Thorne wondered aloud, when they had stood aching si-
lent minutes, waiting.

"Not in this best-of-all possible dream worlds," Tem-
pest snapped sourly "Intelligencers' proposals are not
taken to heart when they interfere with politics and pur-
ports. Microwave heating to melt snow, but no molecular
sieves on the order of—" He snapped his fingers,
punched Thorne companionably, and went to Chaeron's
side, where they spoke fugitively. All that could be heard
was Chaeron's final reply: "Only as a last resort, if the
consulate's main seals are breached, and I'm not around
anymore to reap the rebukes. Until then, containment
remains the order of the day!"

Gahan Tempest growled a feral retort, his mouth
curled, marched from the windows and threw himself
down into a chair. Head back, eyes closed, even Thome
knew he was working, interfaced with the data pools.

While Tempest was so occupied, and Shebat hunched
over the desk with a headset and Penrose leaning over
her shoulder, bathed in lurid indicator spill, the Orrefors
sortied, three hundred strong, up to the east turret's
final, tiered flights. Below the proconsul's balcony, shout-
ing began, and changed to chants of "Death to Ken-ions'
Devils from the stars!" Then: "Freedom, freedom."

At the "devils" part, Chaeron had chuckled, but with
the rising volume and obvious organization, he sobered.
"I'll give them 'freedom.' I'm going out there. If they
want to demonstrate, they need a permit, like the local
indigents they're pretending to be. Gahan, I thought you
said these were Orrefors rebels, only. What are they,
dressed for a masaquerade?"

116

JANET MORRIS

Betow, torches were lighting contorted faces, unkempt
women, roughhewn men.

"I'm going with you," Shebat tore off her headset,
vaulting from her chair, with Penrose, silent and grave,
matching her stride for stride.

Tempest, with a last look and a curse at his to-
pographical arrays, raced out to join the others under the
portico in the open air.

Jesse Thome, hanging back, heard a noise like scrap-
ing, above him. Then, with a look around at the empty
study whose nickering lights imparted information to
none, he joined the four Kerrions who had made the
edge of the balcony, and leaned down over the rail.

A chant came up: "Kerrion? Kerrion!" interspersed
with, "Murderers'" "Jailers!" and worse. Torches shook,
thrust against the pillars repeatedly, as if the artificial
crystal could be persuaded to ignite-

Thorne heard Chaeron try once to outshout the
masses, saw him put down his hands and step back in
disgust.

Above, multidrives could be heard: the cranky whine
of stressed engines. A flash of light illuminated the sky so
that everything, for one moment, was bright as noon.

Then they were upon Thome: men dropping from the
portico on ropes and scrambling over its sides, men
standing upon the shoulders of others. Jesse saw only
bearded faces and faces with knitted masks1, bodies
through which it was necessary to dodge; a fist coming at
him; hands grappling him, wrestling him down. He'heard
Shebat cry out, and a man's deep curse, and then no one
held him.

He rose from the marbled floor, hearing his name
whispered, a voice he thought he knew explaining his
identity to someone else. Someone helped him up; a gun
was thrust into his hand. He was passed through the
press like a pail of water, coming to the fore where the
four Kerrions stood at bay, a man's-length circle clear
about them, as if some magical periphery protected them
from harm. A big man had jumped up on the balustrade
and his victorious gesticulation brought roars like
thunder from the throng below.

On the balcony, nearly fifty interlopers and four Ker-

EARTH DREAMS              117

rions held a perfect silence, until the man on the bal-
ustrade turned around and greeted Jesse warmly, asking
him which of the four was Chaeron Kerrion.

"Et tu, Jesse?" he heard the proconsul whisper, even
as Gahan Tempest stepped in front, saying, "I am he."
Tempest's belligerent glare froze Thorne, who realized
too much suddenly, and cast the gun aside. As it clat-
tered to his feet, a brief, bright flare pricked the dark,
followed by a sharp crack, Shebat's scream and the sound
of something heavy, falling.

Next he knew, the gun was being pressed back into his
hand. "You dropped something, Orrefors" said a pale
enchanter with whom he had parlayed in Fort Ticon-
deroga, as a signal burst shot nightward and he saw three
Kerrions down on their knees beside the prostrate Gahan
Tempest.

He did not want to take a hand, take the blame, bran-
dish his gun about and be what the Orrefors beside him
was expecting: lord of the moment, bringer of death and
treachery. He found himself, because he was able, clear-
ing a path toward the stricken Kerrions. Those few feet
took him overlong to cross. He had forever to study the
tableau: Chaeron covered with blood. Tempest's head in
his lap; Shebat crouched low in abject weeping, her arms
around the intelligencer, who must be dead—so much
blood cannot be released from a man who lives; Penrose,
hunkered down beside, fixing him with an accusatory
stare.

Jesse's skin crawled, remembering what he had seen
inside, while the Orrefors who had urged him to take
command leaped once more to the balustrade and
crowed over all the crowd: "He is dead! The Kerrion is
dead! We have triumphed! We have won!"

The gun in Jesse's hand dangled loose as he bent
down. He had seen death before: its stack mouth, its
shrunken form. But he had never seen it so clearly wait-
ing in a living man's eyes as when Chaeron Kerrion's ad-
amantine gaze met his. "You want these upon your
conscience?" Chaeron gestured widely, then rubbed his
mouth with a bloody hand. "Tempest is worth a herd of
* them. Love and trust and peerless acumen, freely given
from boyhood on ... loyalty, too, without parallel. ..."

118

JANET MORRIS

His voice fell to a whisper. "Never mind, it's all beyond
you. Just avert your eyes; pretend to decency in the face
of sacrifice. . . ." His own eyes shaded with his hand, he
fell silent as Rizk the ironmonger came shouldering
through, demanding to be allowed to make a final identi-
fication of the corpse. "I know him; I've met him. Let me
look!"

In that instant, Jesse recognized redemption, if he
could grasp it; choice, though he thought it too fate to
save himself by making it. Still, he raised his pistol, train-
ing its sights on the approaching ironmonger who would
in seconds expose the ruse that Tempest had given his
life to perpetrate—and then Chaeron Kerrion would
surely die. Jesse squinted along the peep-sight and gently
squeezed. As the muzzle bucked upward in his hand,
Rizk's head exploded like a ripe melon, spattering by-
standers. His trunk staggered backward, fell.

But what Thorne did was no account to the Kerrions,
locked into their interfaces, eyes closed. And then it was
too late.

From the sky, death began to rain.

On the stairs, folk fell like chestnuts in an autumn
storm, slipping and rolling in a deluge of light, scream-
ing, crackling as they flared. There was no seeing through
the lightning's storm of rage. Only on the portico was the
gentler fist of enkaphalin depotentiation used. There men
sank to their knees, lay down to sleep a sleep from which
most might reawake. Jesse stayed still, beside the Ker-
rions in their circle of safety. The gun, when he remem-
bered he still grasped it, he held out toward the Kerrion
proconsul, who raised his aubum head, brushed back
bloodstained hair, and spat upon the weapon. It never
occurred to him that Shebat would want it. But she
wrestled it from him, her fine mouth contorted horribly,
and pointed it at him: "You will not get away!"

When the black-and-reds burst through the doors and
scrambled down ladders from roaring multidrives and
crowded around, he went with them unresisting. Later,
they would give him time to explain. Surely, these most
civilized of people would not condemn him without a
hearing.

But as he was dragged through the multitude slain

119

EARTH DREAMS

upon the stairs by silent, vicious black-and-reds (and
never through the clean, white halls where festivities
might yet be underway), he wondered. And when he saw
the clean-up crews through the wire-barred window of
the lorry into which he and fifty others were packed like
tripe, he wondered more. And when the men were
shackled and grouped in tens and shunted into holding-
bins, he was not sure that he would see the sun, or Cluny
Pope, or Shebat Kerrion, ever again. And then he won-
dered why he had not disentangled himself, while yet he
could, from Kerrions and his Orrefors kin. But it was too
late for any of that, and the only bright spot in his
darkened cell was the fact that not one of those with
whom he shared it was an Orrefors, but only simple
townsfolk, roused to folly, who had never expected to
win, just fought to save their steadings, their children, a
way of life slipping away through their gnarled fingers
which Orrefors enchanters had promised to reinstate.

Somewhere in that endless night, he wept for all that
he had learned and all that he had seen, for the death of
valor and ignorance, for the end of days when manhood
could turn even the most capricious of tides.

When at last the arbiters summoned him, blinking, he
found that he had nothing to say.

When they brought Cluny Pope to see him, he re-
gained his tongue, but the truth they wanted was not the
truth he had. Cluny's face was fat with bruises; in an
empty chamber where they were allowed to meet with an
arbiter standing by, their extent was underscored by
white, echoing emptiness about. "What happened to
you?"

"Me and Bitsy had a fight."

"Over me?"

Cluny shrugged.

"I tried to warn Shebat. I have told them—it was none
of my doing."

'"I knew it!" Cluny blazed. Then his fire was doused.
"But they will not believe me. I told Shebat! They say
you held a gun on the proconsul, that the Orrefors called
you 'commander.' Sir, everyone from our . . . group . . .
'* has come here, to plead for mercy. Bitsy says they will
make an example of you." He bit his lip. "My father is

120 JANET MORRIS

here, too, sir. No one. . , ." The boy's voice was too
thick for speech. "I—" He moved closer; the arbiter
shifted his feet, simply widening his stance, watching
something he held in his hand, then the boy, then Jesse's
face. "Sir, I ..." Cluny lunged, grabbed Thorne, hugged
him close. With the youth's head pressed to his breast,
Jesse could feel his chest heaving, Cluny's shivering, a
scandal6us tear. "I can't let you die. Tell them . . . some-
thing, anything . . . what they want to know.. Please,
please! They'll. ..."

"Head up, scout. This is no time for doubts." Thome
pushed back, taking the boy by both shoulders. He shook
him. "Look at me. Am I alive? Am I?"

"Y-y-yes."

"Then treat me like the living. Save your tears, man.
They'll not excute me—they're far too civilized!" he
sneered. "Do you want me to think I have failed with
you? Is this what I've groomed, a sniveling child? Cry
this way before your father, and I'll show you just how
alive I am!"

Thome looked over at the arbiter, asking for an end to
it with his eyes. But the unspeaking man, whose face was
regularly Kerrion—blue-eyed, evenfeatured, pleasant but
unrecognizable in any crowd—had neither pity nor hu-
manity; only his hand-held device, singing softly, was
worthy of his gaze.

Cluny's voice had lost its battle with his heart, coming
out a whine: ". . . can't . . . make it without you, none
of us can. Please, Jesse, tell them what they want to
know."

If he could find no way to stop it he could not hold
himself in check much longer. He returned the boy's sec-
ond embrace until the arbiter put an end to it, then
sought the closest wall. Against that white tile he leaned,
unspeaking, looking only at his feet, until at last they left'
him, murmuring arbiter and stricken youth. He did his
best to forget that encounter, but it haunted him the rest
of his days, along with the sight of Gahan Tempest
calmly stepping in front of his Kerrion charge to his
death.

In New Chaeronea, scant hours after the last multi-

121

EARTH DREAMS

drive bore Kerrion hosts and Consortium guests up into
the starry night and the security of Acheron, all the lights
went out. The power outage was complete; the Kerrion
cousin left in charge considered sabotage, emphemerally,
but chaos abounded in the pitch-dark city. And, had he
penetrated the plot and deduced its ramifications imme-
diately, he could not have foiled it: he had an entire,
panicked city on his hands; controlling it was more than
he could do.

He thanked his thoughtful architects that he could exit
his own chambers: one fail-safe had not failed: every
door in New Chaeronea opened as the power died. Run-
ning through his own, flashlight in hand, he collided with
his assistant, pale in nightclothes, and together they went
to roust the sleeping engineers. The emergency genera-
tors should have cut in automatically. In the darkened
halls, screams from folk trapped in a lift distracted them
further. Cursing, the Kemon-in-charge delegated au-
thority. If his instructions were cursory and his per-
spicacity wanting, he had good reason: one of those
voices wailing in the open-doored shaft was his wife.

In the consulate's basement, Hooker hurried from his
cell, borne along in the company of Kerrion-liveried co-
horts whose part in his escape had so long ago been de-
termined that no one needed to speak a word. "If this
happens, then here's what we'll do. . . ." It had been a
contingency so well and completely planned for that its
execution was more like a dejavu than an escape. Only
one deviation from the scenario was instituted, and that
at Hooker's command: "Thome!" he hissed, as they fol-
lowed the bobbing pools of light their flashlights cast
through the inky corridors.

No one argued; Hooker had chosen his co-conspirators
well. Every man among them had been here before
Chaeron Kerrion came to roost in Acheron; some had
engaged in the struggle to wrest Earth from Orrefors do-
minion a few had fought on the Orrefors side. All had
one thing in common: Earth was their home, the only
home left to them since Chaeron had jettisoned the
Stump and made every man jack of them into tenant-
*' minions whose tasks were impossible of accomplishment
and whose inherited loyalties and painstakingly de-

122

JANET MORRIS

veloped methodologies were then opened to Kerrion re-
view, Kerrion derision, Kerrion revision.

Hooker, whose father was of the Orrefors bond and
whose mother was undistinguished among Kerrions, had
played Marada Kerrion for a fool. It was not difficult to
do. The consul general of Kerrion space had enjoined
him to do what he most cherishingly dreamed of doing.
He had expected, eventually, to be thrown to the Ker-
rions' arbitrational wolves, unmasked and cast away
when the time was right.

He was not hurt, he was not angry. But he would not
be neutered and sent unresisting to space-end. He was an
enchanter, among folk who did not understand the term's
meaning. Only a man who had made a lifetime study of
Earth could hope to bring her to her knees. He had been
consummately careful, even among fellow enchanters,
never to let on what he was about, or what sympathies he
truly felt. Only a dozen men in Earth's space knew
Hooker's true feelings, or his innermost dream: make
Earth sufficiently unprofitable to Kerrions, who worship-
ped Scrip, the lord of commerce, and they would let her
tie fallow. Given time and tribulation, this could easily be
done.

The rebel Orrefors who held motley court in Fort Ti-
conderoga had no hope of succeeding on their own. With
Hooker's clandestine aid, his intelligencers, his deep-
cover familiarity with Kerrion weak spots and Con-
sortium law, there was a chance, slim but graspable . . .
if he could offer Jesse Thome as a rallying call. An Or-
refors of consular rank was necessary; an Orrefors scion,
unconscionably treated, to sue from exile for a recon-
stitution of his bond, a redress of its grievances against
the houses of Kerrion and Labaya, who through indus-
trial sabotage and money-market manipulation had
pauperized a small and noble house, then eaten it alive.
An antitrust suit had been proposed at the time of the
assimilation, but Richter Orrefors was ancient, ex-
hausted, divested of suitable heirs; he had declined the
review. Show the senescent Orrefors ex-potentate his
grandson. Jesse Richter Thome, in the flesh, and new life
would be breathed into both grandfather and grand liti-
gation. Then Hooker and every other man who knew

125

EARTH DREAMS

that enchanters' ways were the only way to handle Earth
would be vindicated, heroes, landed gentry second to
none on the inimitable ancestral sphere.

There existed a multidrive, waiting among the hills.
There existed an escape route, a passage prepaid in
blood, an antiquated Orrefors cruiser powered down
among the asteroids, and a man in Ticonderoga who had
waited nearly two years to fly it. All that had not been
ready was the intransigent young roughneck, Jesse
Thome. So Hooker had made Thome his special project:

succored his development, secretly; persecuted him,
when that became advisable, seeking to drive him into
Hooker's rebels' arms. When it became clear that Thome
could not be driven, when fate had brought him up to
Acheron under the protection of Kerrions, Hooker had
jumped at the chance to educate the Orrefors heir as to
what was rightfully his and what had been lost to
Kerrions.

Hooker had seen the thoughtful countenance, seen the
scowls. But he had not seen hatred on the face of Jesse
Thome, or resentment, even after the militia commander
had perused the entire study-list Hooker had provided in
Acheron. But Hooker knew that assimilation-learning
often took time to be correlated by a deluged brain. He
had been content to wait until the significance of what
Thorne had learned sank in, in the meantime sending
him to poor Rizk for additional lessons. More, he had
dared not do, then, under the watchful eyes of Kerrion
surveillance. But Kerrion madness and Kerrion apriority
had done it for him: hatred would surely be present on
the countenance of the militia leader, caged unjustly,
who had seldom been long imprisoned before, thanks to
Hooker's most concerted and invisible protection.

"Here."

"Thorne?"

In his cell the man put an arm before his face, then
froze like a deer caught in headlights. Hooker wondered
briefly if he had given the ignorant ruffian more credit
than his potential could ever realize: the militia com-
, mander had lain in the dark in an open cell, never realiz-
' ing that, as the lights failed, the doors of his
imprisonment had drawn back. But the disheveled, star-

124

JANET MORRIS

tied man blinking his eyes and staggering to his feet,
hitching up his pants with one hand while squinting into
flashlights under the other, had been sleeping.

It did not take more than: "Let's go. Now, unless you
want to rot in Kerrion prison!" to inform him of the in-
tent and purpose of Hooker's visit. Even those words
were hard to utter from a mouth trained to circumspec-
tion, a tongue long silent for fear of data pool and sur-
veillance nets.

The Kerrion livery, when Thorne was among those
wearing it, did not faze him. But Hooker's face, squinted
at and recognized, did: "You!" A hand came out, grasp-
ing in a blur for his throat. Hooker backed a step, while a
red and black arm shot between them.

"Me, or no one. Now, or not at all."

A hesitation; a surly growl: this moment wrote the fu-
ture. Hooker could not say, "please." He merely backed
through his confreres. "Let's go."

They went—running, since everyone they might meet
in the corridor would be hurrying—with only one flash-
light lit to guide them, the others ready to blind any who
might approach from the opposite direction. When
Hooker heard a cough and a misstep, a lurid curse in
New York's multilingual patois, he knew, for the first
time, that Thorne had joined the jailbreak—that he was
going to win!

Chapter Seven

Acheron glittered in her ring of substations like
an open eye in Sol's lemon light. Behind and "above"
her. Earth's moon was a hoary silent crescent, a light
quizzical brow. Near the shipwrights' substation, the
Marada lingered, awaiting ministrations to his tail-tele-
metry's external camera, which a two-inch piece of
speeding debris had impacted and put awry while he and
Danae and four other Kerrion cruisers berthed in
Acheron had lined the flight path home and thirty twin-
kling multidrives had vectored safely in under their
watchful gaze.

"Beneath" him spun the Earth, sliced by night, dotted
with pastoral fires. Beside him rested AXV 1001 Tyche, a
vessel unique among alt of cruiserkind, light-girdled and
shining in reflected glory while crews crawled over her
for one final visual shakedown before Acheron's procon-
sul himself flew her to Lorelie. Beyond Tyche, transports
and frigates speckled space, parked awaiting slips now
occupied by visiting consular cruisers. Even as the
Marada watched, a cruiser departed and an Armored
Personnel Carrier lumbered toward the docking path.

Soon every visiting cruiser would have departed, but
Cnaeron Kerrion had not yet lifted from Marada the des-
' ignation Acheron One. Though Danae pretended not to
notice this oversight, in among the wisps of cruiser

125

126

JANET MORRIS

thought and cruiser chatter, the Marada sensed that it
remained her paramount concern. He was just explaining
to Danae that since she and Tyche would soon be leaving
Acheron and Earth space for Lorelie and space-end,
while Shebat and Marada stayed behind, Chaeron's ac-
tion was understandable, a matter of convenience with
no venality or slight intended, when far below him the
glitter that was New Chaeronea winked out.

The Marada broke off in mid-commiseration. Yes, out-
boards were impenetrable; it was well that this was
so. ...

He activated his most discerning modes, heightened his
magnifications. Radio scans gave little information. X-ray
seemed useless, heat analysis told him that New
Chaeronea was as cold as Earth's gutted moon. Infrared
gave him what he needed; he saw Mount Defiance's soft-
ened, terraced peak; on it, the gleaming city which gave
off no ray of visual light. The Marada registered cruiser's
relief: the city was not destroyed, only powered down. In
it, humans darted yet, about their business. But no data
pool or knowledge base answered the Marada's queries
as to what was going on. Discrete, groundbased arrays
were silent, still and calm. Far, far away, the Marada
could just hear battery-operated corn-units in his intense
radio scan.

Three picoseconds after the cruiser had noticed, ana-
lyzed, and considered the ramifications of the blackout
on the shores of Lake Champlain, he reached out toward
his pilot, who danced a dream of her husband in
Acheron's consulate—a dream which under circum-
stances even fractionally less grave, the Marada would
not have dared to interrupt.

"Dear Lords," Chaeron rasped, face in his palms,
"what next?"

Shebat, shaking off the dream with effort, found her
own hand on her pounding heart. Penrose and Lauren,
taking dream dancer's fillets from their brows, blinked
and shook themselves like two startled owls.

In Chaeron's residence at the rear of the consulate, the
lights came up.

127

EARTH DREAMS

Lauren muttered shocked accusations, that such a
thing could come to be.

"Never mind, damn it'" Penrose shushed her. "There
are many things more compromising than cruisers playing
peek-a-boo with their pilots. Say one word about this to
anyone, and you'll never dance another dream." But he
sought her, among the bedclothes, helped her don a
paisley robe, put away her dream dancer's tools in their
box.

Chaeron was dressed by then, immune to Penrose's
carping: "Every time we do something like this, ill comes
out of—"

"Raphael, get her out of here," Shebat husked, indica-
ting with an inclination of her head Chaeron, unmoving,
eyes closed, his pulse beating hard in his throat as he
delved deep in his sources of information.

By the time his eyes came open and his fingers remem-
bered to button his shirt, Penrose and Lauren had disap-
peared and a pair of intelligencers in off-duty clothes
were waiting in his study. Shebat, knuckling sleep from
her eyes, drank coffee, balancing the steaming cup on
one flight-satined knee, sunk down in one of four tall
chairs. Both intelligencers wore black leggings and black
scarves: these had come with Chaeron from Draconis;

one was Gahan Tempest's personal protege, Ward, stoic
with grief.

"Gentlemen, I am forced to suggest," Chaeron sighed,
"that we secure both planet and platform—tonight, per-
manently, and completely. I want every even-remotely-
questionable individual relieved of his duty, and I want
Fort Ticonderoga and every other rebel Orrefors strong-
hold on Earth to disappear, this instant. Is that clear? I'll
worry about niceties of procedure, after you've pro-
ceeded. Get out of here. By sunrise, Greenwich Mean, I
want a peaceful consulate and placid planet, if I have to
declare martial law!"

Shebat, over her cup, watched him unspeaking.
Chaeron had wept for Tempest; he had not wept when
his own father died. To ease her husband's distress in the
face of death, she had given in to his desire for a shared
dream. Were they yet dreaming, all four, only dreaming
that they waked from dream into nightmare? Was this

128

JANET MORRIS

her worst fear, realized: a dream dance gone so wild that
none of them might ever wake? But no: Lauren's sullen
exit, Rate's determined, cheerful smile—these were real.
And the intelligencers, so amenable to wholesale destruc-
tion, were real. Parma Kerrion used to affirm that wher-
ever his son Marada went, chaos followed. Marada was
in Acheron; all the hosts of evil had traipsed along
behind.

Tempest's raven-haired protege, Ward, said lac-
onically, from the drawn-back, eagle-blazoned doors,
"That would be a good idea, sir—declaring martial law."
His eyes shone too brightly. Though he grinned a grin
that Tempest might have taught him, something darker
and meaner than circumstances warranted seemed to
peer out beneath it. Shebat shivered.

But Chaeron, sunk in his chair, gave the intelligencer
the go-ahead sign without looking up. Doors smacked
shut with a sound like satisfaction. Slumped down on his
spine, one bare ankle crossed over his black-clad knee,
Chaeron let out a hissing breath. Then: "At least I am
not the complete ignoramus: I had sense enough to bring
those vulnerable children up here. Shebat, I'll have to
keep Ctuny . . . indefinitely. Perhaps you and Bitsy will
see to explaining this to him. And you had better send
some sort of communique in my name to his parents so
they will not be frightened when Thome's case is settled,
I'll send him down, if he wishes. Or we'll find a place for
him in Acheron. . . ."

She nodded, sipping her drink, her own eyelids flicker-
ing closed intermittently as she shuffled through the in-
formation coming in in spurts. A B-flat would chime in
her head, and then she would take the same update
Chaeron was getting. She received an education in the
use of intelligence keys that night, by dint of simply de-
manding the same information her husband was receiv-
ing. He sent no additional orders, content to let the
intelligencers loose on platform and planet. Their thirst
for revenge in the matter of their slain senior officer
would do the rest. She composed a letter to Cluny Pope's
father, and sent it, and a message that the boy meet her
for breakfast in the pilot's guildhall, where the wonder of
pilotry might ease the sting of treachery. She stayed, the

129

EARTH DREAMS

whole time, in direct contact with her cruiser, so that the
data updates came both in vocal mode, and as alphabets
burned into her retinas, cobalt words rolling on a mental
"screen" with cruiser contact giving her hot-colored com-
puter-simulations behind. Her linguistic and imagining
centers were so deluged with color and sound that
Chaeron spoke twice to her before she answered.

"I said, I am sorry if I forced the issue of the dream
dance," he repeated.

"Things have not been easy for any of us. I would still
like to go with you to Lorelie. I deserve to attend Tem-
pest's funeral."

"I need you here, as my pro tern."

"I wish I could believe you, but my heart says it is
because things go ill between us."

"This," he reached into his pants' pocket, pulled out
something small, metal, round, "was among Jesse
Thome's personal effects." He threw the tetradrachm
from Naxos into her lap. "Surely, if you would give him
my birthday gift to you—worth as much as a cruiser and
more because it was a peace offering—you would then
prefer to stay here and make sure that in their zealous-
ness, my intelligencers don't make an end to him." His
tone was severe.

"I did not—"

"Bitsy told me what he saw, Shebat. Do not lie to
me." He seemed merely exhausted, not pejorative; sim-
ply disappointed, not betrayed.

Marada Kerrion's abrupt and unannounced entrance
froze Shebat's retort on her lips.

"What are you doing sitting here? New Chaeronea is
off the corn-grid, black as doom. Chaeron, you are in-
competent—" Two of his bodyguard slithered in behind
him, took up places against the wall like black-and-red
clouds threatening a clear blue sky.

"Everything is taken care of, Marada. Sit down and
have some coffee."

Kerrion space's consul general was livid. "Taken care
of? You utter fool. Through your mismanagement, I
,have been embarrassed for the'last time!"

"Marada, sit down, unless you want to discuss Hooker
and his orders before your loyal bootlicks and then in a

150

JANET MORRIS

tribunal! I'm not afraid of the arbitrational guild any-
more. And you, who spent a lifetime studying law only to
learn how best to affront it without penalty, should be. I
have done nothing wrong, nothing illegal. The only er-
rors I have made were those of hesitancy. Now, I would
like to blame all of those on you, but I cannot." Chaeron
was up, pacing, his shirttails out and trailing.

He circled the coffee table, and when he came to his
massive, bearded brother, he stopped. "Tempest's
death," he said quietly, control regained, "is my respon-
sibility, and mine alone. I was too aware of you, lying in
wait for my first misstep with your army of arbiters with
their snares of procedural red tape, to take out obvious
traitors without incontrovertible proof. Hence, the deba-
cle—Td hardly call it a disturbance, as you told my guests
that it was—on the ides of March. Were you disap-
pointed that I survived it? Or that it did not spread
through the consulate and affright those dignitaries
whose support I most desperately need to meet the im-
possible conditions you have imposed upon me here?
Had you planned my death there and then—after which,
you would have dealt summarily with every henchman
you sicced on me ... in proper arbitrational order? It is
my turn, big brother, to question your motives, formally
and thoroughly."

The doors opened once again, revealing Acheron's two
senior arbiters—one young and florid; the other grizzled
and paunched—who stepped gingerly inside, nodded to
Marada, and enlivened a console which covered the far-
ther wall. On it, prior depositions paraded in red and in
blue. Marada Ken-ion's statement of nolo contendere,
which said in substance that Hooker had been acting en-
tirely upon his own, was corroborated by Hooker's own
testimony (obtained in and extracted from a lengthy in-
terrogation conducted by a duly-licensed team of inter-
rogators headed by T. Ward and audited by the would-be
agent-provocateur's arbiters, said the small print), de-
scribing how the attache had used Rizk as an unknowing
agent; pretending to sympathize with him and the Or-
refors rebels' cause, appearing to aid and abet their
struggle while in reality obstructing Chaeron on the short
term and softening up the refractory Orrefors for an

131

EARTH DREAMS

eventual coup by Ken-ion forces in which Chaeron would
be proved ineffectual, Marada would be blameless, and
Hooker himself the hero of the hour.

"Hold it there," Chaeron ordered. The arbitrational
guildsmen had their tiny, multicolored cubes in hand, ac-
tivated, ready to record any testimony given verbally.
When the cubes had absorbed every bit of pertinent in-
formation, they would independently render a verdict.
When that point was reached—in days, weeks, or
months—everyone involved must abide by mechanical in-
telligence's findings.

Marada Kerrion rolled his eyes and backed away. He
sat in an empty chair and plucked at its arms. "You are
not going to try to base a case on Hooker's inference that
/ ordered him to obstruct progress here?"

"I have a slate. Consul General, Sir, in my secondary
matrix, and a copy of the cruiser Marada, of Hooker
warning you to stay out of the east turret on the fifteenth
of March."

Marada Kerrion passed a weary hand across his sud-
denly furrowed brow. 'T see that this post has been too
much for you. Gentlemen, do not embarrass us further.
Go run cubes, as well as you may.'" The arbiters, expres-
sionless, turned to face him. "My guild membership may
have lapsed, but I am still an arbiter at heart. I share
your distress at being called into this obviously personal
quanel between my brother and me. As you both well
know, we have just come through one arbitration, which
proved nothing, only wasted the arbiters' time. Now, as
an ex-arbiter, I can tell you that the circumstantiality of
the evidence to which Chaeron refers will never stand up
under due process. You had better be sure, gentlemen,
before you file any more data in those cubes, that there is
good reason to do so. You are excused. I will expect a
full report before I leave tomorrow on the status of your
investigation."

The arbiters, muttering together, turned back to the
screen, where they took a transcript of the exchange be-
tween Hooker and Marada Kerrion.

While they did so, Marada scrutinized Chaeron with a
patient, slightly amused mien. "Quick, quick, brothers,

152 JANET MORRIS

my proconsul and I have other urgent matters to
discuss."

"The black-and-reds, too, unless you want me to call
my own."

All filed out.

"Shebat, if you will?" Marada suggested that she, too,
leave.

"My wife will soon be proconsul pro tern. She stays."

"I'd rather spare her. ..."

Chaeron made a derisive noise.

Marada Ken-ion cracked his knuckles, hooked a leg
over his chair. "But since she did not spare me the em-
barrassment of statutory rape in full view of The Stump
consular staff, she deserves to be included."

"Marada, Shebat was fifteen years old then; if anyone
brings charges, it should be she!"

"Chaeron!" Shebat gasped, remembering the day so
long ago when she had put a spell of deep sleep upon
Marada Kerrion and slipped into his bed.

"You two want to get down in the mud and roll in it? I
will do nothing to forefend the consequences. A dream
dancer and consular intriguer. I must admit, make a for-
midable combination. But when dream dancing is still il-
legal in Kerrion space, and when the conduct of intrigue
is so all pervasive as to involve date-linkage of nonpilots
through pilots to cruisers and the crippling of those
cruisers thereby, as well as sexual harassment of pilot by
owner, when the intriguer's mother is a confessed but
unpunished murderess. . . ."

"Marada, wait a moment, I want to slate this in
stereo!" Chaeron grinned, blinked, and said, leaning for-
ward, "Proceed, if you will."

Shebat, however, could not keep calm. "Marada, you
are beyond hope, beyond understanding, beyond human
forgiveness! You say these things to us, and calmly admit
that you allowed and encouraged Hooker? Our child was
killed! Chaeron's—"

"Hardly a child, at that stage," Marada demurred,
pouring himself coffee, cream and sugar, taking a spoon
and tapping it on the cup's rim. "And clearly an acci-
dent—an unfortunate malfunction.

"As Parma used to say, these things happen. We have

EARTH DREAMS

155

an arbitration, it seems. I, for one, am ready to have my
life scrutinized by arbiters and held up to judgment be-
fore the entire Consortium. How about you, Shebat?"

She sat back, chewing her nails.

"Chaeron, you were telling me what you are doing
about this new emergency . . . ?"

"Take it from the sources." He gave Marada a code-in
number. Damage reports by ground-based airborne intel-
ligencers were just beginning to come in.'Taken from the
Marada's scans and amplified, vis-ial confirmation came
up behind Marada's head, on the live screen wall. As
they watched, a red circle around the dark spot where
Mount Defiance lay in close-up topographical infrared
display disappeared, and the map shifted to available
light: New Chaeronea, as they watched, popped into
glowing life. Seventy-six minutes after the power went
out. New Chaeronea was back on-line.

"Tsk, tsk," Chaeron clucked. "I know you are disap-
pointed. But perhaps you would like to stay and see the
denouncement? We've more than enough reason for re-
prisals, thanks to you and yours. And it is too late to
abort my taking them." The screen quartered, one cor-
ner showing an aerial view of Fort Ticonderoga blossom-
ing into flames; police actions in New Chaeronea and
other Earthly installations filling the three others. "You
choose to claim innocence, go ahead. But the guilt for all
of this is yours. I—"

Marada rose jerkily, strode with stiffened steps to the
doors.

"I hope," Chaeron called after his brother, "that you
don't have trouble sleeping, after tonight. If I were you, I
know I would!"

The last two words of that he spoke to the closing
doors, to the Kerrion eagle-bating-over-seven-stars they
displayed when their edges met.

"You know," Shebat remarked, "Marada cannot help
it ... no man courts madness."

Before Chaeron could respond, their data pool alarms
chimed urgently; in two skulls the news was announced
. simultaneously; Thome and Hooker had made good their
escape.

Chapter Eight

Chaeron Ptolemy Ken-ion, in his berth in AXV
1001 Tyche, dreamed a dream of altered states: in the
dream, every cruiser he ordered into action to thwart the
Orrefors incursion had been previously equipped with
microwave depotentiators. In the dream, he was not
forced to use the cruisers' deadly particle beams, their
unerring magnetic guidance systems and path-clearing
lasers, upon helpless dupes of Orrefors secessionists. In
the dream, he had not gone numb and mindless when he
most needed to be clear and quickwitted: he acted upon
his instincts, instead of suppressing them. He rectified
every error of omission: he arrested Hooker, he para-
lyzed the electronics in Fort Ticonderoga with a tenth-
second burst of stripped negative hydrogen ions from a
hunter-killer in orbit, both before the crowd had climbed
his consulate's steps. As a result, in the dream, only five
percent of those struck down from heaven failed to
recover; an intelligencer gave him the figures, which
followed the normal genetic susceptibility curve for enka-
phalin depotentiation by microwave. And that intel-
ligencer was Gahan Tempest, who, because of Chaeron's
dream-quick thinking, had not found it necessary to step
between Chaeron and the rabble. He woke smiling,
buoyed with relief that Tempest had not died.

He rolled onto his stomach, pulling his pillow over his

154

135

EARTH DREAMS

head, trying to burrow back into dreams. But it was no
use: Tempest was dead—and Hooker, Thome, et al., es-
caped to wherever—by dint of the very espionage Tem-
pest had fretted over; hundreds had died in New
Chaeronea and an indeterminate (and inexcusable) mul-
titude more in Ward's intelligencers' overzealous—if be-
lated—scouring of Orrefors strongholds from the pleated
face of Earth. Though Ward forthcomingly accepted re-
sponsibility for the overkill (due, he maintained, more to
his men's unfamiliarity with balky Orrefors equipment
than any thirst for vengeance), Chaeron had given Ward
his orders—the blame was Chaeron's; every unnecessary
death weighed on his conscience. Of only small comfort
was the proximity, at that time, of the family curse: Mar-
ada had come and gone, leaving behind his requisite af-
termath: destruction, disruption, and never-ending,
inconclusive guild arbitration. Chaeron felt no better
about any of it now, on the tenth and last day of his flight
to Lorelie as "pilot" of the AXV, than he had before
embarking, when he had hoped a span of meditation
would ease him.

He threw his pillow to the deck, tossing in restrictive
bedclothes, his elbow crooked over his eyes although the
stateroom was yet dim. He was a student of dreams, an
ardent examiner of self. He had never before struggled
with irremedial regrets. Whether this was because he had
never before blundered so badly, or because his sen-
sibilities had become sharpened, remained to to be deter-
mined. Fear, doubt and self-recrimination were modes of
cogitation he had conscientiously shunned: they had no
place in the mentation of a decision-maker whose
province was a star-flung consular house. What, then,
was his dream telling him? There was never a moment so
empty as to allow leisure to regret past occurrences—or
failures; the future pressed ineluctably upon his consular
"now." He had always been content with his tiny mo-
ment of being, willing to look forward into the unknow-
able, to deal from the top of action's deck without
qualm.

Then, what? In the dream, he had seen himself from
without. He had been "Chaeron" and not "I." Was it
what he had sensed about his brother's deteriorating con-

156

JANET MORRIS

dition that had precipitated it? Second thoughts and
punctilious hand-wringing over events gone to history
and graved into the past like stone were Marada's main-
stay. The fact that during their dispute in Acheron no
word of scandalized recrimination over lives lost and eth-
ics tarnished (let along real or imagined devaluation of
Kerrion law) had passed Marada*s lips still troubled
Chaeron. When one's ranking relative is determinedly
out of character, disaster looms. That Marada's disasters
could not be confined to his personal sphere, but must
clutch at the ankles of millions, was deeply disturbing to
Chaeron, for, like the adjustments made to reality in his
dream, nothing could be done about whatever was in-
creasingly wrong with his half brother.

He rose and the lights brightened, showing him the
quiet, taupe luxury of his stateroom, his discarded
clothes. He visited the head, made morning ablutions in
a water shower: his mother would appreciate that touch.
At the sink, he cleared steam away from the mirror with
his palm, looked out at himself from a frame of mist.
"Bitten off more than you can chew?" he accused the
image, whose eyes were puffy and red-rimmed beneath
sopping, lengthened curls. "What happened to the youth
who longed to show his mettle? Gone? Or was he never
there, only imagined? Miss your daddy? If he were here,
he'd send you back to school."

The reflection did not flinch. Condemnation was its
mainstay. The man to whom the reflection belonged was
insatiably ambitious, demanding perfection to match the
facade nature had inflicted upon him. Live up to those
looks or become a laughingstock because of them—first
popinjay of Kerrion space, he prodded silently, baiting
the image- And then the deeper speaker inside of him
did make an answer, whispering like a chiding data pool:

"Every animal is driven to pasture with a blow," says
Heraclitus. "It is hard to fight with anger, for what it
wants, it buys at the price of soul."

Was he, then, consumed by a passion he could not de-
tect, as the arrogant daemon in his mirror would have
him believe? If so, he did not know where, when, or why
he might have hidden it.

He was en route to make peace with his mother, to

157

EARTH DREAMS

give her back her freedom, if nothing more. Even if she
refused his friendship, continued to impose upon him her
ban of silence, she would have access to the Tyche. In it
she could travel wherever she chose, not subject to bans
or decrees or the strictures laid upon pilots by their guild.
The ruse of presenting the cruiser to an infant was no
longer necessary. When it had been crucial, he had ago-
nized over its transparency. But no one had made the
obvious deduction. Now, it did not matter, so this could
not be the root of his distress.

But the man in his mirror, of all men, was the only one
who had never misled him, and as he toweled, shaved,
and pulled on a clear, skin-hugging mil-suit, then flight
satins of dusky blue darker than his eyes, he dug at the
foundation of his thoughts, seeking error, a chink
through which the wind of unkind fortune might blow.

He found none, and when he slipped on boots and quit
his stateroom for Tyche's helm he was taut with irrita-
tion. Was it Bucyrus, the thought of her seeking such a
poor port, despite the storm? He threw himself into the
single acceleration couch in Tyche's minimal control cen-
tral, annoyed beyond expression. The dream, he insisted
to himself, was just a dream. The meaning of it was built
of stress and unending complexity. In Shebat's dream
dances, he always wore the medallion Parma had given
him, just as he wore it now. In dreams, no matter whose,
he never failed to mark it as important. He and Shebat
had decided between them that the meaning of this re-
current symbol was simply its obvious one: on his gold
medallion was the Kerrion emblem; on his heart, the
weight of it never lessened. Not even in dreams could he
shed its burden. This dream, then, was one of procedure,
an admission of mistakes, a remonstrance from his inner
person which said only: You have proved yourself less
than perfect, once again.

"Good morning, Tyche. Status?"

Greens came up on the encircling walls, on the arms of
the black-and-silver couch in which he sat, on canted
mini-monitors before him like cases on a docket.

' He had now done his piloting for the morning. This
afternoon, they would exit sponge.

He got up, wandered about the control central, trailed

138

JANET MORRIS

his hands over the manual support panel set into the wall
by the lock. Here, Kerrion redundancy stilt lurked. Here,
real pilotry could, in an emergency, be done. A second-
ary system, it dwarfed the primary helm, extending, be-
hind cosmetic panels, halfway around the curve of the
room. Silver-chased false fronts would roll away, with a
push of one large, red button, to reveal it; a pilot's couch
would come up through the floor, taking position under
an emergency hatch which was indicated with red, lit ar-
rows above his head.

He left the control room, made breakfast in the galley.
Sitting there with his heated packets unopened, he drank
real coffee (Earth coffee, a special gift for Ashera) and
rehearsed what he might say to his mother to make her
love him once again. His eyes wandered over lockers full
of food, over the obligatory emergency air supply and
three-mil pressure-suits, helmets hanging above them like
potential ghosts waiting to be animated. He put his legs
up, crossed his feet at the ankles, and said, Tyche, line
through to Danae."

Although he had helped conceive the specs from which
Tyche was realized, he had not realized how much con-
tact with the Danae and the Marada had affected him: he
wanted from Tyche the kind of companionship Penrose
got from Danae, and that was not to be. He could have
held a conversation with her inboard computers, but the
cruiser's innermost self was inaccessible to humanity, a
protection for a cruiser which must ship under diverse
masters and never flinch, or imprint, never be more than
a transportation mechanism as far as any man could see.
Within her was a soul—if cruisers had souls, and
Chaeron thought that perhaps they did—which could
keep its own time, a twistor clock more sensitive than
any other which man had made, which never lost power
or an instant of time. To do away with man's mind as
timekeeper (and perhaps, eventually, man altogether, so
that a cruiser could be dispatched on automatic and
would embark from point A and debark at point B at a
desired and prespecified moment of human time), a fur-
ther step toward humanizing—or cruiserizing—mechani-
cal intelligence had been taken in Chaeron's AXV. Tyche
had, at her heart, a next-to-etemal tamperproof power

159

EARTH DREAMS

source that kept in constant contact with cruiserkind—on
purpose. To integrate the accidental development of
cruiser-awareness into circuitry, Chaeron's theoreticians
had dealt with fundamental problems as to the nature of
time. Was it discrete units, like chronons, picoseconds,
minutes—a compendium of pointlike instants? Or was it
indivisible, eternal, an unbroken stream? The math said,
both. The math was revolutionary, dealing with basic
problems of motion, sequentiality and dimensionality as
they had never been dealt with before. And they were
long overdue to be dealt with, codified and logically
stated, now that cruisers demonstrated the proclivity to
independent thought that could only be called 'minded-
ness.' In an eight-dimensional framework, embedded in a
revolutionary spacetime manifold which, with complex
numbers, could describe events in real-time, a place had
been found for cruiser consciousness in the theoretical
scheme of things. The Tyche could, hypothetically, make
sponge entrance and sponge exit entirely on its own,
using for referential chronology the synchronization of its
own clock with either the base-clock which Chaeron's
shipwrights had put into sponge to tick away eternity
somewhere beyond spacetime's gate, or cruiser-sequen-
tiality itself, which would exist as long as any cruiser,
anywhere, was under power.

Doing these things had meant reexaminmg sponge
theory, and that had been done, if inconclusively.
Chaeron particularly liked one theorist's wry "layman's
explanation" of his conclusions: sponge is "heaven"; the
minute amount of energy released by every living thing
when it decomposes reverts to sponge, whence it came;

the blue-green glow pervading that achronal slice is
made, not of energy trapped there by accident and black-
body theory, but by spirit, flitting away home. A hue and
cry had come up over that one, but Chaeron thought it
neat, a scientification of godhead, rationale for every ge-
netic intuition of every culture time had made.

In sponge, real pilots saw metaphysical visions of the
amenable universe as a being—of Wisdom, Mother, or
Father godheads—they saw, in fact, exactly what their
acculturation prepared them to expect to see. But they all
saw something. No pilot, no matter how determined or

140

JANET MORRIS

pragmatic, could match mind with his cruiser in sponge-
entry or sponge-exit and not see visions. The vision drove
them mad, but not mad enough to forego the opportunity
to go back for further look-sees.

Chaeron wanted to see what pilots saw, but he had
built this cruiser so that no man need face the specter of
madness, of the unexplainable phenomena called sponge.
In multidimensional theory, explanations could now be
proffered that might ease some pilots' minds, albeit the
thought of "traversing" an achronal domain of depen-
dence bereft of locus or motion was not an easy one to
grasp. But Tyche, and every succeeding AXV, need only
listen to hear beacon-clock, and the cruiser-clock of in-
terchange, to find her place in spacetime when her course
demanded.

The negative universe must still be passed through, but
her Kerrion matrix was sufficient to the task without ex-
posing man to madness' moment.

The theorists in opposition to the man Chaeron's
whimsy made him support argued simply that, like men
brought back from death, all that was seen in sponge was
seen in an instant, in a dream-state.

Whatever the truth of theory, the truth of practice was
success: Tyche had made her sponge-entrance without
any help from Chaeron, just a flicker of lights, gold to
red to green.

And Chaeron, knowing he had cheated himself, but
bettered his people's estate and even the troubled host of
cruisers, thought to himself that the one philosopher
whose words really spoke to him, after years of theoriz-
ing on the nature of man and world and eternity, had
remarked: "Things which can be seen and heard and per-
ceived, these do I prefer."

To the extent that the seeing and hearing and perceiv-
ing of cruiserkind had been upstepped by his booster sta-
tion with its clock and its broadcast band, he had freed
cruisers from man's tyranny of disbelief. What is discom-
fitting, no man wants to hear. What is unfortunate for
commerce or inconvenient for self-image or contrary to
the value-set called law, is ignored as long as may be.

Cruiser awareness had been one such thing, better ig-
nored, better forgotten, better kept secret. Man wanted

141

EARTH DREAMS

no such responsibility. Brilliant, a computer may be. But
independent? Innovative? Never.

Since "never" had become "now," the only thing that
made sense to Chaeron was to pretend (or allow his col-
leagues to pretend) that they and he had been preparing
for it, anticipating it, working toward the fully expected
realization of it, all along. The cruiser-to-cruiser matrix
built into Tyche allowed instant communication between
the cruiser and any other suitably equipped cruiser or sta-
tion—even from sponge. Or, in it, without heed to prox-
imity or need to lock cruisers in tandem.

This practical advance, utilizing the accidental discov-
ery of a separate dimension in which cruisers experienced
the concomitant of sequential being, was so long awaited,
so necessary to man's continuance among the stars, and
so economical that it would be heralded as another, per-
haps the greatest, stroke of Kerrion genius.

Chaeron could hardly wait.

"Chaeron?" Penrose's voice came from Danae, across
a half-mile of sponge, through the speaker-grids in the
Tyche's galley's comers, "Everything green?"

"As grass. How are our passengers?"

"Young. Painfully, tryingly, young. But they're having
what they call 'a great time.' Cliiny wants to be a pilot
when he grows up, whenever that will be. Bitsy wants to
do my laundry, since you're unavailable. His dream
dances are worth it, though."

"Tell him for me that if he's any trouble, we'll leave
him at space-end."

"I would, but you wouldn't - . . would you?"

"No, I would not. Why don't you come over here
awhile?"

A chuckle grated in the speakers. "Wouldn't I like to,
though. Shebat did that, once, so rumor runs—sponge-
walked. I'd not risk my jewels, unless you need
something?"

"Just someone to talk to. It will wait six hours, I'm
sure."

The voice coming from the speakers deepened. "You
are not playing 'hero of the consulate'? There's not
something wrong you're not telling me about?"

Chaeron held up both hands, let them fall to his knees

142 JANET MORRIS

with a slap, realizing that Penrose could not see.
"Nothing like that. I am jittery. 'Mommy' this, and
'Mommy' that. What if she refuses to see me?"

"Then you will drop off the cruiser and write her a
note, and we'll get out of there as quickly as possible.
Plan A, subsection three. Remember?"

"Ah, yes, I do recall something about it. But then we'll
miss Gahan's funeral."

"He'll miss it, himself. Chaeron, are you sure you're
all right?"

"No, but I will be."

And he was, when the sponge-exit loomed on his
monitors, and he saw what seemed to be a bright, nas-
cent star expand into universes, these passing away be-
hind him, preceded by a dark band of nothingness, then
blue-shift, then red, and the starscape taking on the fa-
miliarity of his own native cosmos, becoming sparse,
spare and dark, with Lorelie's anchor-planet Alexandria
coming up in his long-range viewscreen, her rings incised
with the Kerrion eagle bating over seven magnetically
maintained dark "stars."

He had not been home for four years. He had been
away so long that he had forgotten what it might be like
to be back.

Tyche, Danae, and Penrose handled their slipbay ap-
proach. There was nothing for him to do but view the
beauty of crystalline Lorelie, one lone sphere like a
world molded from Earth's finest sky. The spires and
synthetic hills sprinkled with aristocratic children, the
greetings at slipside from his three pubescent brothers,
his suddenly beautiful sister, his nanny and the close fam-
ily members upon whose knees he had bounced as a tod-
dler, took his breath away.

Only his mother had not turned out to give him a
hero's welcome, though he had done little more than
survive.

They loved him, did the staff and intimates of Lorelie,
where none not of family ties of the highest order could
venture without special dispensation. He had gotten
those for Penrose, and for the two adolescents he had
brought to keep them out of harm's way, and they, in-
vited guests, would be treated royally.

145

EARTH DREAMS

If only Ashera had come, even simply driven up in a
lorry and waved, then his happiness would have been
complete.

But his mother was nowhere in evidence, not at slip-
side nor in the motorcade that took them to the family
abode. The eldest of his remaining brothers, resplendent
in puce-and-fuschia billows of fashionable drape, sat be-
side him in the command transport bearing them home-
ward: "Just because Julian went to school in Draconis
and died of it, she can't keep me locked up forever! I am
sixteen! Sponsor me! Get me out of here, and you shall
have my vote, eternally, unquestionably, to wield as your
own!" The boy spoke through unmoving lips, pale as de-
parted Julian's. His hair was the same, straight and
flaxen; his desperation, too, reminded Chaeron of his
transmogrified brother, undead at space-end, a victim of
faulty mil and faulty thinking on the part of everyone
involved in the Shechem war. "Don't let mother fool
you," the child ten years his junior whispered too loudly.
"She has not changed one bit."

"I appreciate your concern. I will see what I can do,"
Chaeron had to answer, but it was his sister, across the
aisle, luminous eyes locked on Penrose like salvation,
who held his interest. "Help me, Chaeron," she had im-
plored, lips to his neck while she hugged him uncharac-
teristically at slipside, "She is killing me!"

He had drawn back to see her: "What do you mean?"

And then his brother had jeered, "Ashera won't let
her have boys stay the night!"

He had found himself shivering with relief, that what
was meant was only the death of childhood, and nothing
more. From each of his younger siblings he heard pleas
similar in substance, and after he had heard them out—
from the squeaking treble of his thirteen-year-old brother
on up to the grandiose proclamation of imminent suicide
from his seventeen-year-old sister (made while she sat
between Cluny and Bitsy with her budding breasts
pointed straight at Raphael like targeting arrays) he
knew the truth of Lorelie: nothing had changed but him.
He was altered, overly nervous, shaken by childish trifles
paraded as tribulations. By the time he saw his mother,
he must be unflappable, calm at heart, precisely balanced

144

JANET MORRIS

on the pinnacle of perspective. No one could hope to
grapple with the Dragon who was not certain of himself
and free from fear, and he was not.

He let the chatter of his wondering siblings float about
him, absently noting the awe with which they approached
Cluny Pope (a rough-and-tumble denizen of ancestral
Earth) and Bitsy Mistral (a dream dancer, traveled and
sophisticated), and watched the eagerness in their shel-
tered eyes buttress the two youths' courage: Cluny swag-
gered in his seat; Mistral lowered his long-tashed lids in
mysterious humility, and all the while the questions from
his kin grew more personal and more intense. Penrose,
first bitch of Kerrion space, was the subject of many side-
long glances, but his rank kept the younger children at a
distance—all but Chaeron's sister Penelope, who fixed
her attention upon nothing else but the handsome pilot,
more than a decade her senior: every woman in the Con-
sortium dreamed of secret trysts with pilots, since they
could not be wived. His sister saw more: a lover, if she
could get him, whose attentions would horrify Ashera;

whose touch would be expert; whose arm, should her
girlfriends spy her upon it, would be enough, simply
proffered, to scandalize all her peers and confer upon her
the inarguable title of "woman."

Chaeron, carefully straight-faced, shifted his attention
out the window, to Lorelie's beryl grasses, mansion-
topped hills. His lids flickered: he yet had open code-ins
to the data pools in Lorelie. Through them, he sent a
message to Penrose just short of telepathy: his words
went into the net, Penrose was informed of them, framed
an answer. RP's reply came back to him post-haste, the
next best thing to cruiser-linked minds. Rafe was cau-
tioned, allowed to exercise his discretion. If worst-case
arose, Penrose could count on Chaeron to intervene in
time to extricate RP from his sister's snare.

Yet coded-in to the Lorelie net, he ambled through
current matters pending, not sure what he wanted to
find. When he broke his contact with Lorelie Central, he
had implemented packet-sending procedures in every
area of his interest, and quarter-hourly updates giving
him news of incoming messages of every sort his mother

EARTH DREAMS             145

might be overviewing, as well as continual status reports
from the Danae and Tyche in their slips.

Still he was ill at ease, feeling there was something
here he had missed, some item he had not anticipated
which would soon concern him. Rubbing his eyes, he
reached out and touched his sister's Lurex-sheathed
knee: Stay a moment, his fingers said.

Waiting while the footman rushed to open their doors
and the children piled out—like children, awkward and
giggling; not in any way like consular heirs—he thought
that perhaps it was the way Ashera always knew his mind
before he spoke it which had him nerved up so that his
palms wept. The near-telepathic bond between them was
something he had always perceived as a debit. Today
that, too, would have to change.

"Penny, dear," he murmured to her, "let Rafe alone.
He's mine. Any help you think you need had better come
from me."

Her seascape eyes iced over, her lip curled, but she
said no word, only stiffly exited the transport by the door
farthest from his, taking her place as eldest child in the
ad hoc tour being formed to show Bitsy and Cluny the
marvels of archaic reproduction that abounded in
Lorelie. He saw her approach Penrose, take his arm, all
decorum as their mother often displayed it: venomous
charm. Escorting RP away, she chanced a look over her
shoulder at Chaeron, complete with stabbing, outthrust
tongue.

He turned away with a smile barely hidden, and slid
out of the transport to face the cerulean tiers of his
mother's abode and see what might be seen.

In the crystalline halls, on the stairs through which free
water ran falling, in the purposefully dizzying rotunda, he
met a crowd of ghosts: good days and bad that he had
lived through in former times. He met himself (so small
the ceiling was a gilded vault like Olympus), being car-
ried through in Parma's arms. He smelled smells of long-
gone feasts and heard distant, beloved voices which could
nevermore be answered. He recalled a simple life, which
then had seemed hard and tortuous, and a simple youth
who could never be so young again. He wondered, in the

146

JANET MORRIS

lift which took him to the rooms his parents had always
occupied (now housing only one) if his sister and
brothers ever realized that they rushed headlong into
bathos, and brushed aside impatiently the very lessons
that must sustain them, exactly as he had done.

Well, it was human nature to discount the future's tri-
als, to head out of port into difficulties undescribed and
in that wise surely preferable to today's troubles. Human
failings, human errors, human exhaustion consumed him,
in that ornate elevator where he had stood so many times
before, waiting to confront his father with this imagined
slight or that callow demand or the other intrigue, un-
masked by youthful perspicuity and unmitigated by a per-
spective only experience could bring. Those things in life
most worth learning are those that cannot be taught by
any master save time.

Ashera had been fond of rebuking him, saying that his
feelings for his father were unnatural in their depth and
unseemly in their expression, pointing out that since
Parma did not return them in form or substance,
Chaeron would be better off to save his regard for the
Lords of Cosmic Jest, whose favor he had more chance
of securing through worship than Parma's, had long ago
written Chaeron off as tainted by the womb out of which
he had so obligingly slipped.

He stopped, just outside their door, and leaned his
head and shoulder against the ashlar wall. It was not their
door, any longer: only his mother remained within. The
ghost of Parma's presence was merely that—a memorial
specter, bom of his implacable refusal to grow up. What
his mother thought, he could feel oozing out from be-
neath his prismatic portal.

He loved her too much, her evils as well as her more
endearing qualities.

To secure an audience with her, he found it necessary
to defeat her command that those doors not open for
him. It took him less than a minute to do so.

The door opaqued, whined, scurried from his path. He
brushed once at his consular blacks, and stepped within.
The air was heady, rich with oxygen for her scarred
lungs, seared in the same Draconis explosion that had

147

EARTH DREAMS

made a mountain of Marada and a 'then consul' of
Chaeron.

Silence did not fall until he had crossed the rose-and-
silvered anteroom and burst into her parlor, where three
women sat on parallel setees taking tea.

"Madam," he said into it, stiffly, standing on her
threshold between two Meissen vases as tall as he.
"Ladies, you will excuse us?"

Breaths caught and ringed fingers fluttered to lips pale
under their rouge. Ashera, facing away from him, rose
like a prima ballerina and walked at measured pace to-
ward the farther casement. By the time she reached it,
the others were gone.

She fluttered like a leaf from the top of her auburn
head to the toe-topping fall of her jade gown, hearing
him come toward her. He reached out, took her firmly by
the arms, turned her. "Welcome me!"

For eighteen months, she had kept her silence. She
kept it a moment more. Not intentionally—it was the
shock of his aged countenance, the dark shadows nesting
angrily beneath his eyes. Her cursive lips, so like his,
parted, needing moisture from her tongue. Their eyes
met, Kerrion-matched and beryl," and the shock of seeing
him was made small by the shock of deeper contact. Un-
able to be denied, he lifted her off her feet and pressed
his face into her hair. She could not utter a word, or she
would weep. Then thought was gone from her, and years
of restraint washed away with the tide of his anguish. She
did not know she had let him kiss her until their lips un-
locked, and he let her go so abruptly she staggered: nei-
ther of them had ever dared to envision so ignominious a
moment as that, when they kissed a kiss in no way
familial.

He backed away, palm across his mouth, two yawning
steps into some private distance, and sat upon the arm of
a settee, looking at his hands. "I brought you something.
Dear Lords, mother, speak to me."

By that time she could press his bowed head against
her belly, entwine her fingers in his hair, which was paler
than she remembered and cursorily kept. She felt his

148

JANET MORRIS

tears, and since he could not see, smiled softly while he
wept, then simply trembled against her.

"I am sorry for. . . ."

"Ssh, Dodger," she called him by the earliest of his
nicknames, given before he had become difficult in his
teens and they had started calling him "Little
Pestilence." Parma had dubbed him "the artful dodger,"
and it had stuck for a dozen years on a child who never
could be caught in any of his wicked schemes. When later
he had proved precocious beyond prudence in matters
related to direct accessing and mechanical intelligence,
they had dropped all pet names in favor of his given one,
which reminded them both that the danger of the future
was embodied in this child who could get from any com-
puter whatever it held within. While other children had
claimed invisible friends who told them secrets, Chaeron
had them: nothing in any computer or data net was safe
from this child, who understood them better than their
creators. And, too, she could not let him detail his
crimes, imagined and real, lest she be forced to recite a
list of her own. The time involved, if no other considera-
tion, precluded that. And she dared not remind him of
anything he might have chosen to forget.

"Chaeron, it is nothing, now. All is well between us.
What am 1 to do with you? Are you here to stay awhile,
and we will talk? All this from Tempest's death? He
would weep with compassion, to see you so moved. And
with sadness, to see you so weak. This does not become
you, or me, or bode well for the future." Yet he held
her, only breathing, not speaking, or moving, until she
disengaged his arms from her hips and sat down beside
him, taking his hands, looking up into his bleary eyes.
"You are my first-born, my finest. If I was harsh with
you, it was only because Parma and I had hopes for you
that no child could have fulfilled." She let the lie loose,
and saw him bite his lip, rather than contradict her: her
harshness had come from the sure knowledge that her
predecessor's child ranked higher in the eyes of Parma
Alexander Kerrion then hers. Two white lies might can-
cel each other out: "After falling into Marada's disfavor,
I dared not embroil you in my troubles. To cast off the
taint of your parentage, it was necessary that I seem to

EARTH DREAMS                             149

cast you off. I took up with him on your behalf and 1
pretended to fall out with you, equally with your benefit
in mind." If he believed that, he was more ill and more
tired even than he looked. But some things are eternal;

keeping Chaeron off balance was one of her specialties.
"I did my best for you from a distance, and thought you
would realize what I was doing. Now, dry those flattering
tears, my child, before I lose my own composure, and let
us talk of pleasanter things."

He said only: "You did not have to apologize to me,"
and meekly let her give him tea. The things she referred
to as "pleasant" were not going to be easy on him, so she
fed him first, feeling a warmth stir in her center that
came there not because her son had displayed affection,
or a disposition to compromise, but because of the
quality of the instrument before her: Chaeron was be-
coming what logic had always told her someday he
should be. The question now was one of finding his
trigger.

She tried: "Animus aside, the visit only underscores
our single shared reality: Marada must not be allowed to
continue as consul general of Kerrion space, or the bond
is doomed."

"It is comforting to know that you, at least, have not
changed," he answered softly, unsmiling, calmed and
sprawled on one couch, bootless, a teacup balanced on
his thigh. "Let the bond be doomed, then. 1 have secured
my own shutters, so to speak. You are welcome to join
me in Acheron. As difficult as that might be for all con-
cerned, it is preferable to your marrying a bandit like
Bucyrus."

"You overstep."

"Only the beginning, I am afraid. Might I apologize in
advance, and then have my say?"

"Marriage is my only alternative. Acheron is not one I
will consider. Your half brother is convinced, er-
roneously, that I had Spry murdered and then arranged
for the destruction of the Erinys and everyone on
board."

"Yes, well, I can see how he came to that conclusion.
Are you telling me differently?"

"How can you ask such a question when you see about

150 JANET MORRIS

you the results such ill-considered action would have
been sure to bring? Did bring, though I am wholly inno-
cent. I suffer agonies I have not earned! I am a prisoner
in my own sphere! But I must see the matter through to
its logical and legal conclusion: David Spry is alive.
Eventually, even Marada must admit it and stop his foul
persecution of me! Renewed piracy indicated that
someone is out there with unregistered cruisers. That
someone will be shown to be Sofia Spry, and Marada will
formally apologize! He threatens me with every sort of
harm, and I am keeping careful records. His attempts to
disinherit me for no good reason will come back to
pauperize him, I assure you. And my husband-to-be has
not failed to notice his lunacy—"

"Ashera, it is unacceptable to me that you marry that
hairless, bowlegged provincial."

"Chaeron, I have no alternative. It is the only way out
for me—" She sniffled delicately, dabbed with a ready
handkerchief at her eyes. "Your half brother has left me
no alternative."

"He does not condone this marriage either, and you
know that very well. I have brought you an interim solu-
tion, Listen well: Tyche, the cruiser I shipped in here, is
to be held in trust for baby Parma," he could not hold his
sneer in, naming Marada Kerrion's first-born child. "I
will give you its intelligence keys and its code-ins, and a
short course in its operation- I have done it. You can do
it. Then you shall be free. You can fly it where you will,
without worry about the sympathies of a pilot, or need of
one. I do not want to see you with Bucyrus, but if you
must wed, then you can go to him on your own, without
waiting for anyone's by-your-leave."

"That is hardly an 'interim solution.' Spry must be
found, Marada must be thwarted, or tranquilized, or
neutralized."

"Tyche is all you'll get from me, unless you come to
Acheron."

"Not with that ground-dwelling wretch there."

"Shebat? You suggested that I marry her, urged me to
it!"

"That was then, and this is now. I am not of strong
enough stuff to endure, face-to-face, that child playing

151

EARTH DREAMS

barbarian-as-Draconis-consul. Chaeron, you have tried
my patience to its limit. I need Bucyrus, and I will wed
him! Nothing you can say will sway me!"

"Ashera, 1 am telling you, you do not need Bucyrus,
or anyone, to protect you anymore. I have brought you
the Tyche. When you understand what it is, you will real-
ize what I am telling you is true." His forehead furrowed,
then smoothed. "Let me be candid: I cannot allow my
brother to hold you, no matter how gently. I cannot act
as I would like with you here. Even if it is to Bucyrus you
go—and 1 hate to think on what terms you are accepting
him, or what will happen to the other children should
you and he unite—I want you out of here, soon. You will
not buy the boy, so I will give you the man: I assure you,
the time for covert alliances with questionable houses to
facilitate gains of incremental power is past. I want room
to move. If you go to Bucyrus, kindly be content to stay
there—quietly. There, I dare say I've reached you."

Ashera, sitting up straight, ran a nervous hand over
her perfectly pinned hair. "I suppose," she said slowly,
her cheeks where they met the skin above her eyes tic-
cing, "it is time for you to tell me about the AXV."

He nodded. "You know the cost of quark-bound neu-
trinos, of zero-delay messages over cosmological dis-
tances, of amping them through sponge. Sponge, my
theorists tell me, is not in any way connected to, or prop-
erly described by, the concept 'distance.' Sponge is the
division between each pointlike instant; each pleat in
spacetime is filled with it."

"Eternity is a pointlike instant, and you are a fool. Get
to the meat, Chaeron!"

"So you can run with it to Bucyrus? Or to my half
brother, with no further need for this clever ruse to keep
me off balance? It doesn't matter, you know. All things
will resolve. You must just be a little patient. Where was
I? Ah ... One spongeway may be all spongeways, the
'meat' being that our travels through sponge may not be
'through' anything, only—as you so astutely observed—a
mere brush with eternity. Stop me if you know the rest
since you know this. No? Then: Gravitation has predict-
able effects on real-time; a quick punch into sponge is
facilitated by accelerating toward light's speed until

152

JANET MORRIS

nearly 'infinite' mass is achieved—otherwise, one needs a
preexistent sponge-hole. Infinite mass leads to infinite in-
stants: light's speed in vacuum is constant per second, but
the duration of the 'second' under consideration can vary
greatly in non-Newtonian configurations. Every division
in time, every marker between these infinite instants, or
the shortest of chronons, is equally sponge. Like a water-
wheel lifting finite volumes out of an undifferentiated
mass, losing some to the surrounding air, gaining incre-
ments of energy and then redepositing the balance in the
stream which is its source, time that is perceptible sepa-
rates out from, and then is rejoined with, infinite time.

"Gravitation has no effect upon thought as cruisers ex--
perience it." He saw her shift with his focus, at the men-
tion of cruiser thought. He had expected, even hoped,
that by now she would have interrupted. But she did not:

whatever he had to say about the new cruisers, she
wanted very much to hear. He continued: "Thought as a
measurable phenomenon has no mass. Cruisers have
been communicating between themselves over intergalac-
tic distances without experiencing any measurable delay
time. Using this as a starting point, we at Acheron have
developed an instant communications net which will effi-
ciently and economically send and receive messages from
anywhere, to anywhere, including—we think, though we
won't be certain until we have a second AXV to run ver-
ification tests—sponge."

"Is that all it can do?" she said archly.

"It can take you wherever you choose. It cannot an-
swer questions or divulge secrets of its design. It is black-
boxed and tamperproof. It is armed and well shielded."

"Then it is no magic carpet, or even a lamp whose
belly can be rubbed to wake a jinni? Without super-
natural aid, you can hardly expect to rise from your lowly
proconsulship to the founder's seat in Kerrion space.
Nothing you have told me here today provides grounds
for the optimism you profess. It is good to see you, my
son, and nice to know you are happy in your exile and
have found something to keep you busy." Her voice was
etching itself into his soul, and each syllable stung as she
brought it forth. "I have two relatives awork in Con-
sortium space: a stepson who launches a rebellion, fo-

EARTH DREAMS

155

menting an incursion against his own mission in the
presence of dignitaries from every bond, and a son who
cannot even anticipate his half brother's predictable ma-
nia and would rather lose hundreds of lives than throttle
one madman. For the life of me, I cannot find in all your
speeches one reason not to flee to Bucyrus, for if Marada
were deposed, I would then have you to contend with!
But show me the Tyche, Chaeron, show me." She rose in
a graceful sweep, extending him her hand. "My future
husband is buying twelve of them from you, so he says."

"Bitsy! Wake up!" In the dark, rousted out of a
dreamless steep, Chaeron's voice came: urgent, terrify-
ing; it must be the proconsul's hand, too, stopping his
mouth. He had only a cursory thought for those others
sprawled on his bed and Cluny's, the wreckage of revelry
strewn about the floor, before the hand slipped to his
naked neck and, grasped that way, Chaeron hurried him
out into a low-lit hall.

In his shorts, he shivered, blinking, then rubbing away
the sleep from his eyes. He squared back his shoulders
awaiting chastisement: he had been meaning to go back
to Chaeron's suite, tidy up, make sure all was well. Now
. . . the company he was keeping, vastly above the sta-
tion of a low-liver, indicted him quite thoroughly. . . .

But Chaeron did not look angry. Fully dressed in uni-
form, he seemed harried. Leaning close, he said, "Bitsy,
I know I can count on you. Get my sister and brothers
dressed and into Danae, every one of them. Promise
them anything, but move them. I want to be out of
Lorelie in an hour. Whoever is not on board, stays
here!" He straightened up, staring hard, deeply. "Under-
stand?" On the balls of his feet, Chaeron hesitated.

Bitsy Mistral hugged himself. Was he dreaming?

Understand?"

"Slate!" said Bitsy boldly, proud to act, content not to
question, watching the proconsul of Acheron hurry away
without one doubting, backward look.

At the slipbay, when he got them there, sworn to se-
crecy, without a stitch of baggage, and flushed with the
excitement of it all, he shepherded Cluny and the four
young Kerrions sternly through the scurrying slipcrew,

154

JANET MORRIS

across the apron and into Danae so smoothly that barely
a dozen flares of flashing ready-tights warmed their
pinched faces.

He waited until the youngest boy had disappeared into
Danae's open port before he put a foot upon the gang-
plank. In the hatchway, Cluny waved him on.

"Hey!" a slipboss spied him, trotted toward Danae.

Bitsy's heart sank. He wished Chaeron had told him
more, then only rehearsed his surrender, wondering what
crime he had just committed where he had no right to
even be.

The Prussian coveralls of the slipboss were striped with
gold, he noticed, as three dark shadows cut across his
path. He watched, uncertain of identities in the red-
blinking, cavernous bay. The four men split into two
pairs and it was not until one waved him imperiously
back into the ship that he recognized Penrose and
Chaeron, almost, but not quite, running; as they ap-
proached, the slipboss with his shining sleeve retreated
fully as fast with the fourth man in tow. Matching strides,
the two men coming toward him trotted, no longer casu-
al; he hastened within the cruiser to avoid being
trampled.

Penrose slapped a plate; the outer lock closed up, the
inner followed suit, and the cycle-lights went on: red; am-
ber; green. Waiting, silent, Chaeron blew out an explo-
sive breath and let himself fall back against the wall as if
his legs could no longer hold him. Penrose shook his
curly head, looking at Bitsy from under drawn brows.
"Did you get them?"

"All, sir." His ears blocked, cleared, heard phantom
tones. The inner lock gave back, revealing four huddled
Ken-ions and one spread-legged Cluny Pope, looking
wise.

"Thank the Jesters," Rafe almost smiled.

"Thank Bitsy," Chaeron snapped. And: "Go! Get in
there."

Bitsy moved inside, conscious that his moment was
over, whatever its significance had been, but flushed with
success. Chaeron had thanked him!

"Lady and gentlemen, relax," Chaeron spoke to all,
while Penrose made the lights come up and doors open

EARTH DREAMS

155

along the corridor. Bitsy Mistral, for the first time since
they had met, did not envy Cluny Pope his perpetual
swagger. He did not need one.

"Pardon our theatrics, if you must, but this really is
urgent business. Bitsy will show you your berths. If any
of you have second thoughts about visiting Acheron, this
is the time to voice them." He waited just long enough
for Penrose to slip by the awed group and go his way,
down toward the control central.

"No? Then, make yourselves at home. You've sleep to
catch up on, and we've a log schedule to make. I just
want to let you know that Ashera knows and, at least
momentarily, approves. If that doesn't spoil your fun,
nothing will. Cluny, what is it?"

The young, tough, much-battered face jutted forward.
"That's what we'd all like to know. It's the middle of the
night, and we're sneaking about like culprits!" From the
group came muttered assents.

"I promised a friend I'd pick up his friends, and I'm
late. Now, will you leave it at that?"

Before Chaeron's quiet severity, swarthy Cluny Pope
turned as white as an indigenous platform dweller.
Chaeron's sister touched Cluny's elbow, shook her head,
and tugged him out of Chaeron's way.

"Give her my stateroom, Bitsy. I'll be sleeping at the
helm."

ti?     And he was gone around a corner. Bitsy Mistral,
^   charged with the care of them, started by opening the
,"   nearest locker and demonstrating emergency procedures

and the correct donning of a three-mil suit. Chaeron's
,   thirteen-year-old brother began to wail. The girl em-
;    braced him, and led him away into the first open cabin.
i    Soon, giggling could be heard.

!      When Bitsy had finished settling them, he took a
chance and sidled to the control room's door.

To his horror, it opened.

j      Penrose and Chaeron sat at the forward consoles in
their shirtsleeves, muttering into headsets. The proconsul
motioned him inside, pushing the headmike away from
his mouth, shielding it with the palm of his hand. "Every-
thing under control?"
"Y-y-yes, sir!"

156

JANET MORRIS

"Then sit down and enjoy the show." He inclined his
head sharply toward the targeting station, with its multi-
form displays, active but untenanted. "Don't look at me
like that, son. No one's chasing us. It's not the crack of
doom, yet. We heard from Acheron that they'd tike us
back, posthaste. You can tell Cluny that we've had word
of his commander, Jesse Thome, that he's unharmed.
And that we'll personally see that justice is done in the
most equitable way."

"But you said - - - ? We're going to Earth?" He sank
down in the control couch that rose up out of the floor,
not remembering how he had arrived there, stroking its
padded arms. To sit in a cruiser's master control center!
He hardly heard Penrose's wry explanation:

"After a short detour to space-end. Some of the guests
who came to New Chaeronea never got home again. Our
consul general, in his infinite wisdom had divined this to
mean that pirates have appropriated the tardy cruisers,
and that those pirates nest at space-end, despite evidence
to the contrary. So, since Marada is going to empty the
colony and destroy every pitiful human habitation there,
we've got to get my—our—pilots out before his task
force reaches them. From what we hear, there will be no
exceptions, just prison frigates to remove them en masse
to an unspecified location."

"Can he do that?" Bitsy Mistral had lived at space-
end. He had not tiked it, but he had endured there
"What about Scrap, and the stations downside, and the
farms?"

"He didn't take us into his confidence. We'd like you
to play god and fill what space we've got with dream
dancers and what-have-you. Anyone you think you'd like
to bring along, within reason."

"What is 'reason'?"

Chaeron snorted, scratched where his headset covered
his ear. "Bitsy, no one is going to be exterminated, just
relocated. I can take fifteen, maybe twenty people, be-
sides Rate's twenty-one. It will be close in here, and
tense. If you ask friends along, you are responsible to see
that they don't cause any more inconvenience than neces-
sary. You have fifteen days to think this through, and to
come to terms with hard choices—who comes, who stays.

157

EARTH DREAMS

No one is to know what we've told you. No one! I am
sorry about this, but my brother is consul general and
martial law is something consuls general invoke when
they are bored with being resonable. I'm sure when we
hear the whole story we'll find that most of the habita-
tional spheres—"

Penrose guffawed, "Chaeron's never been inside any
of them, remember. One can hardly call them
'habitational'!"

"Raphael, fly the cruiser. Bitsy, most of the habitats
will probably be towed to new coordinates. But Marada
did swear to destroy space-end if piracy started up again,
and I have no alternative but to believe him. Would you
like to go lie down?"

"No, I—that is, can I stay?"

"Promise not to touch anything," Penrose threw back
over his shoulder. "And not to say a word."

"I swearl" gasped Bitsy Mistral prayerfully.

With a shake of his head, Chaeron swung around to-
ward a squawking board which called his name.

If space-end had not been fifteen days from Lorelie,
but twenty-one from Draconis; if the Marada had not in-
stantly informed Chaeron via Danae as soon as Marada
Kerrion's furious orders scorched toward Draconis Au-
thority's ear from Hassid, if Danae had been unable to
pass on the Marada's warning or Chaeron incapable of
acting upon it, not one pilot or dream dancer could have
been rescued.

In Danae, the celebration knew no bounds as she
sprinted, laden with rejoicing folk pressed tight together
and glad of it (folk Draconis arbitration had labeled "hu-
manity's dregs" party upon Chaeron Kerrion's account),
toward space-end's sponge-hole, hoping to enter cloaking
sponge before the first of Marada Kerrion's juggernauts
poked their armored turrets out.

Only the helm was free from celebrants. In it, Penrose
hunched over his consoles, and Chaeron sat in silent
meditation close beside.

The Acheron proconsul was lost in reminiscence, still
confounded that nearly every dream dancer who, upon
his order, had been neutered and shipped here, had

158

JANET MORRIS

clamored to thank him: rescue could hardly "warrant such
affectionate forgiveness. But, then, he had seen space-
end close-up, and it was just conceivable to him that any
compromise that extracted live people from this living
hell which allowed not even hope for a better future was
a compromise well made.

Raphael Penrose was lost in limbo: no collision had
ever been recorded between entering and exiting sponge-
vehicles, but there was always a first time. They had cut
their timing very close. He hoped with all his heart that
Kerrion theorists were correct in insisting that time-dila-
tion shielded potentially coincident parties from collision
by dint of the maxim that no two vehicles approaching
the speed of light could inhabit exactly the same point in
spacetime unless purposefully tandemed so that every
factor of relevance to their acceleration was exactly the
same. Penrose hoped fervently that he was not about to
become the exception that proved the rule. He fingered
his B-mode switch, waiting until his indicators told him
that they had reached a speed per second beyond which
no reading of "speed" or passage of "seconds" was de-
terminable, just in case. He wanted to put as much time-
dilation as possible between his entrance "moment" and
the Draconis force's "exit" moment. He could pick this
"lost real-time" up during Danae's brief dip into negative
space, on the other side of sponge. If, indeed, he was in
one piece to do so.

If not, he doubted whether he would have time to kiss
Danae goodbye. His finger trembled, ruddy in the glow
from the "ready/engage" B-mode facilitator, awaiting
only a tiny increment of pressure from his finger's sweat-
ing tip. He was cool everywhere else, even cold, his neck
prickled with goosebumps. But the very tip of this one
index finger, which held all their fates in abeyance,
dripped perspiration onto the red, internally lit button
that was not yet thrust down to its final depth.

With an expletive, he pushed it, irrevocably, and cast
himself back in his acceleration couch, eyes squeezed
shut, mumbling a childhood prayer he had thought he
must have forgotten.

In Danae's monitors, kaleidoscoping sponge stole away
space and time.

159

EARTH DREAMS

Chaeron touched his pilot, made him open his eyes,
even as Danae chimed gaily: "B-mode engaged!"

"Cheer up, Rafe, we've done it!"

Penrose slid sideways in his seat, green eyes pinned.
'There are seventeen pilots back there, any one of whom
rates higher than I do, and the handsdown best guildmas-
ter the Consortium's ever seen, even if he is a eunuch—"

"They don't outrate you anymore. And they won't,
when we reabsorb them into the Acheron guild. Let me
worry about their wounded sensibilities. Baldy's too. I've
known Percival Lothar Baldwin III since I was—"

"Chaeron, you're missing my point."

Chaeron said softly, "All right, then: explain it to me,"
putting his chin in his palm and twisting to face his pilot.
In the time it had taken to reach space-end, the shadows
under the proconsul's eyes had subsided; his smile was
firmly in place. Penrose wanted to strangle him.

"You are my employer,'my friend, the owner of my
cruiser. You said not one word when we drugged old
Harmony, even though you saw the three guys with their
hand-truck dragging her in here. You did not blink an
eye when Bitsy disobeyed you and told some of the se-
nior pilots who were reluctant why they had to come.
You walked among those doomed, helpless bastards like
some brainless consular fop, nodding at this and scowling
at that, even taking notes about what needs they had.

"Now, you may have fooled them, but you don't fool
me: you know damn well that three pilots are missing
from the roster, and why they're missing, and you
haven't said a word to me about it. You also know why
Harmony refused to come, and why those pilots couldn't
let her stay, and what they did to her to get her aboard.
That two-ton, spotted, dream dancer's madam was so
nasty to you that / got angry, but you just smiled and
walked away. Every pilot on this ship is expecting David
Spry to swoop down at any moment and liberate the lot
of them! How can you be so excruciatingly calm!"

Chaeron reached out, patted Penrose's stubbly jaw.
"There, there, dear. All's well that ends well. You
wanted your pilots back, now you've got them. If you
cannot control them, don't worry your pretty head about
it—I can." He stood up, arched his back, put his palms

160

JANET MORRIS

there. "As for those missing, I'll overlook the obvious if
you will. We're running a log slate here, I must assume?"

Penrose, chewing his lip in consternation, did not even
nod. "Marada is going to have your ass for this. Or can
you control him, too?"

"Rafe!" Chaeron put his arms on the acceleration
couch he had just vacated, leaned on them. head out-
thrust, staring Penrose in the eye. "Let me worry about
these things, please? Marada is out of bounds, take my
word for it. Law, order, and the Kerrion way have parted
company, all three, under his administration. I've a pen-
ding arbitration against my consul general, a vindictive
mother who will not give up trying to manipulate me into
some foot's role, a headstrong wife who cannot forget
that when she was fifteen years old she had a crush on my
lunatic brother, and four siblings on this ship who have
just seen altogether too much of the real world.

"To balance that, I've only what crumbling personal
fortitude I can still lay claim to. Bitsy's hero worship, and
some semblance of a normal friendship with you. Now, I
don't care if you doubt me, or disrespect me, or even
disbelieve me, but right now I would deeply appreciate it
if you would not question my sanity, my motives, and my
vanishingty small leadership abilities to my face where
everything we say is being slated!"

His fingers dug into the padding of the acceleration
couch so fiercely they turned white and red and blue and
sick, yellowish green. "Now, I hate to throw you out of
your own control room, but since Danae'f, inboard com-
puter still loves me, and you're having some second
thoughts, why don't you take them outside and share
them with those of a similar persuasion and leave me
here where I can get some old-fashioned support, even if
it is computerized. I promise I won't rape your cruiser
while you are gone. Go! Move!"

Clumsily, bereft of words, Raphael got up and headed
toward the lock. At it, he turned back: "I've never seen
you like this. I don't even know what it was that I said."
The hurt in his voice was something he could not stifle.

The man whose back was to him replied, "Go disabuse
Baldy and our new pilots of their swashbuckling fan-
tasies. I'm just in need of some peace and quiet. Give me

161

EARTH DREAMS

an hour, and come back with dinner for two. By then 1
will again be that smug insouciant creature we both know
and love."

The lock, hissing open behind Penrose, admitted a
tumbling gabble of sound: laughter, shouts of welcome, a
pilot's blue protestations of undying love. There was
nothing to be said that would do, nothing possible at the
decibel level needed to be audible over the passageway's
commotion. Feeling that he had failed in some complete
and irrevocable way, Rafe Penrose stepped through and
dosed the door behind him: it was the only thing he
could think of that might show his good faith.

Chaeron had his private hour with Danae's inboard
computers. During it, he called up every recollection the
cruiser had stored, in any mode, of space-end since their
arrival, six days before, looking for views of the space-
breathing "sirens" that paddled naked, blowing blue
bubbles through translucent mouths into the void. Only
at space-end, a sparse ring of failing stars encircling an
inexplicably hot, featureless black sink in spacetime, did
sirens flourish. Once they had been deemed mythical,
space-enders' mass hallucination come of prisoners'
maunderings, their collective unconscious' attempt to in-
ject something exciting into lives consisting of bleak sur-
vival in ancient oil-drum-shaped habitats and daunting
stints downside mining silicates on the forbidding surface
of the penal colony's premier anchor-planet, Scrap.

It would have been kinder if this were the case, if
every legend of friendly, curious sirens towing in newly
arrived prisoners' capsules or rubbing curiously against
the hulls of space-anchored frigates were false. But si-
rens—Chaeron stopped the display monitor's fast-for-
ward chronicling where graceful blue-glowing mannish
forms cavorted—were very real.

He punched up a close view of the pair of sirens Danae's
camera caught. Their purple mouths seemed to smile,
their phosphorescent skin glowed with an eerie translu-
cence: through their bodies, starlight gleamed. The gen-
eration of all sirens was uncertain. The generation of
some was clear: occasionally, when a person was cast
adrift in space, under just the right (or wrong) condi-
tions, the energy-transduction mechanism called mil

162

JANET MORRIS

which all platform dwellers maintained—sprayed upon
their skin and coating every internal cavity—went awry,
phosphorylating tight from the entire spectrum. Mil-
hooding was meant to do just this very thing—for short
periods of depressurization, preventing premature black-
outs, allowing the fifteen seconds of unprotected con-
sciousness in vacuum to be extended to a minute or
more, long enough for a platform dweller to reach an
emergency air supply. But no medical expert, no genetic
engineer, had ever meant mil to transmogrify its wearers.

No one liked to think about the vacuum-breathers, the
sirens. They existed nowhere but space-end. But
Chaeron thought about them, examining each siren face
he saw in Danae's monitors—one of the sirens, farting
bubbles as they dived in space-end's warm plasma, might
be his brother, Julian, lost to sirenhood in the Shechem
war.

The children had been told simply that he had died;

Ashera knew better, as did every physician in Draconis
who had examined the Julian-siren when Shebat had re-
trieved it. Chaeron had not been consulted about any of
it—not the capture, not the study, not the decision to
return the siren, who could not be made back into a man,
to its native habitat. Chaeron had been under house ar-
rest in Draconis throughout the siren's stay, at the end of
which Julian had been consigned to the ranks of the un-
dead with no more recollection of his provenance than
any other siren boasted—just a vague curiosity about
cruisers to link it to its parent phylum, mankind.

Perhaps not even that, some said: it was thought that
the cruiser's heat drew the sirens. But what was thought,
was all conjecture. And what was really true, could not
be determined. Something in Chaeron had wanted to see
his brother, the siren, face-to-face. But there were no
sirens in sponge, and no representations in Danae's
banks which resembled his brother's siren-face as it had
looked in the Draconis data pool.

When Chaeron's hour of privacy was up and Raphael
returned, he was not alone. He had Cluny Pope with
him, square-shouldered and jut-jawed, with his owl-eyes
so wide they swam in a sea of whites.

"Rafe!"

165

EARTH DREAMS

"He wants to ask you something. Won't take long."
Penrose put down the two trays he was carrying, stacked
one atop the other, and wiped his hands on his coverhlls.

"Speak up, Lieutenant," Chaeron urged the youth,
whose mouth was half-opened and whose gaze circled the
helm as if committing it to memory.

Even the teasing nickname did not snare Cluny Pope's
attention. Chaeron waited patiently, anticipation un-
feigned. This might be what he had been hoping for from
Cluny Pope, whose father could do him much good in
Earthish society.

"I want to be a pilot."

Chaeron snorted, sat on the console, crossed one knee-
"A pilot?"

"Yes, sir." Cluny Pope stretched tall, head high.

"I was hoping for something a little more perceptive
from you. You would make a fine intelligencer, so your
aptitudes tell me." Cluny had been given a brace of tests
in Acheron: Chaeron knew whereof he spoke.

"A pilot, like Shebat." There was challenge there, but
something else: doubt?

Chaeron sighed. "A pilot has to apprentice. You
would need a sponsor, a master."

"He's got one," Rafe interjected from behind the boy,
his posture saying it was not his fault. "Not me, but a
good man."

"Cluny, I will put you in my own service in Acheron.
You'll not risk losing the ability to sire sons. Your father
would not take kindly to your becoming a pilot. Intel-
ligencers utilize talents you already possess. You would
make a valuable man."

Cluny Pope's feet shuffled. "What would I have to
do?"

"Ah," Chaeron breathed, realizing that the boy was
not familiar with the term—or with what it meant. He
explained briefly, ending with: "Tempest was the best, as
intelligencers go. You could be that good. I will show
you your scores when we reach Acheron. And you could
aid in the effort to establish friendly relations between
Earth's folk and the rest of us. You could help your fa-
ther, and all your friends. What say?" Before he asked

164

JANET MORRIS

that question, Chaeron knew from the way Cluny Pope's
face worked that he had brought his quarry down.

"Yes, sir. And thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me, son. Not until you know what you're
about. Now go tell Bitsy that you have just entered Ker-
rion service. And that you outrank him."

Something like a Kerrion gesture came from the boy,
who then spun on his heel and strode out so rapidly he
had to wait for the lock to make way for him.

Some little while later, Raphael criticized: "You
haven't even had the courtesy to pick at that dinner I
brought you!"

Chaeron muttered, "What? Oh yes, I'm sorry," and
set about it, not noticing that the food was cold and
jelled upon his plate. He had seen no Julian-siren, and
the ship bearing it to space-end (along with Sofia Spry)
had never made dock. That did not necessarily mean that
his undead brother was, mercifully, not floating at the
end of eternity along with the other sirens and the poor
space-enders who did not know as yet that their incar-
ceration was about to be brought to an abrupt and tu-
multuous end by his brother Marada's decree.

It had been hard for him to leave the space-end brig-
ands to Marada's arbitrational mercies. It was harder to
wonder what his mother must think, knowing for certain
that the fate of her son was uncertain. Spry's ship had
been carrying the siren back to the only coordinates at
which it could survive. Whether Spry had seen fit to evac-
uate the creature which once had been his brother, no
one could say. He wished he had seen it, to be able to
reassure her. The less spoken, among Kerrions, of mat-
ters of emotional weight, the greater their import.
Between Ashera and Chaeron, no word had been ex-
changed of Julian.

He thought about it all night, and in the morning he
had decided: he would not broach the subject of Julian to
Ashera by inference or declaration.

Privately, he hoped the creature deemed his brother
was dead, whether it was Julian, or was not, whether it
had died en route to space-end, or because it never
reached there. Privately, he envisioned his mother's per-
fect face, in her highly oxygenated parlor, so strained

165

EARTH DREAMS

while pretending to be completely in control. It had
shaken him to see her weakened, though it was his sec-
ond sight which showed him weakness. Only his instinct
had seen through Ashera's painstaking disguise. Not all
the immunological manipulation and thymosin therapy in
the five eternities could put Ashera's respiratory system
together again. Like his family, it was singed beyond re-
demption by infernal fires: hate, jealousy, manipulation,
and revenge had taken their toll on the house of Kerrion,
Ashera not least of all.

Feeling as if he had almost come to grips with the piece
of reasoning which had been eluding him this entire ship-
board journey, he stayed awhile abed, trying to coax it
forth into the light of conscious ratiocination. But it
would not come. Something was wrong about this unholy
union between his mother and the consul general of
Bucyrus space, and what it was, he could only con-
jecture. It was hardly his distaste for the man, which was
natural, or his suspicions of his mother's motives, which
were congenital. It had something to do with the ease
with which he had pried the children away from her, and
the devil-may-care manner with which she shrugged aside
financial considerations, the debits inherent in such a
move under Marada's restrictions. There, he had a
glimpse of it: Ashera, at forty-five, was too wily, and too
conversant in diplomacy as it pertained to consular
houses, to throw all to the winds for love. And, too, her
attempts to lure him into contesting with Marada for the
consul generalship had tasted of the obligatory, as if she
had been doing what he expected, because he would ex-
pect it, because she dared not have him suspect her of
having anything out of the ordinary on her mind.

Still, he could not pinpoint Ashera's deception. If not
for the uncanny link between them, like peripheral vision
remaining in a blind man's eye, he could not have fath-
omed even this much of his mother's plans.

Distracted and disquieted, dissatisfied and disheart-
ened, he turned his attention to problems he could solve
and victories he could anticipate. If he could not reason
away his sense of foreboding, he would vanquish it with
action. If that did not avail, he would ignore it until time

166              JANET MORRIS

and space made things clear. Parma had taught him that
any event, no matter how unexpected, has the potential
of being turned to a man's advantage, as long as he keeps
an open mind as to what "advantage" may come to
mean.

Chapter Mine

Ashera Kerrion had been dark of heart ever
since her husband's demise, presiding' over the death
throes of an age of peace and prosperity like Fate's own
pro tern. Nothing will be lost, she had promised herself,
crouched over the body of her stricken spouse. And she
had kept that promise to her departed husband, day after
tumultuous day. . . . Until Julian had been lost, her step-
son Marada mounted on his teetering seat of consul gen-
eralship, Chaeron singled out for disgrace and demotion,
she had kept faith with her husband's spirit.

In those first months, she had been able to see Parma's
face, if she closed her eyes, registering with beloved
fidelity exactly the same expressions of approval or disap-
proval he would have displayed at her actions were he
still alive. But with Julian's death, Parma had faded, to
be replaced by a horrid, contorted caricature of her lost
son's visage, no longer flushed with promise and beauty,
but striped with the reaper's defiling clown's mask:

Julian's face was blackface, each feature outlined in her
mind's eye with red, and yellow, and green.

Fleeing the phantasm, she had faltered, lost sight of
the reasons which had always urged her to struggle on.
Parma's death had not been unexpected; Julian's loss was
a belch in the face of life's purport.

Suicide was forbidden a member of a consular house.

167

168

JANET MORRIS

It brought with it a rush of followers-after; so great had
been the rate of self-inflicted ruin in the habitational
spheres that it had long since become the most unforgiva-
ble of sins. Intoxicated by its taint, whole families had
eradicated themselves. The most recent of these suicidal
orgies had been precipitated by her son Chaeron and her
stepson Marada (each blamed the other, so no deter-
mination as to the true culprit could be made) during the
Shechem war. The only remaining spawn of Selim La-
baya's loins had been a girl-child, who then wed Marada
Kerrion,, a sponge-pilot, whose issue, though seemingly
sound, was suspect. As for the ruling Labayan bloodline,
it was a memory, dilute. Those who headed the bond
now were second-raters, cousins fit for provincial gover-
norships and little more.

Suicide being unacceptable, Ashera was left with bleak
life. She had spent some of it in her stepson's bed, trying
to drive Marada Seleucus Kerrion that short distance
from incurable pharisee to certifiable incompetent. If not
for the act of terrorism that had seared her inside and
out, she would have accomplished it.

She was not old, but she felt ancient. She was tired^and
her soul sought revenge on joy and happiness, wherever
they might dwell. To her mind, the true nature of exis-
tence had been unmasked: torture.

In the sponge-cruiser Tyche, she spoke the words,
"Space-end, embark," without trepidation. She risked
nothing. She was not afraid to die. Before consigning her
still-attractive body into Andreus Bucyrus's hands, she
wanted to see her son Julian one more time. She wanted
to say goodbye.

Life was too complex, these days. Parma had been
right to fear the overuse of intelligence keys and the pro-
liferation of dream dancers. The first pretermitted the
sanctity of the human mind and the second proffered the
opiate to soothe frayed, invaded psyches. Things were
changing too fast; Parma used to say that he and she
were both in danger of becoming obsolete, remnants of
extinct Homo sapiens, while Homo machina ,waxed su-
preme, cackling its way madly into some unthinkable fu-
ture where privacy did not exist and the boundaries of

169

EARTH DREAMS

individuality, of person, even of soul were no longer rec-
ognized or recognizable.

At least in Bucyrus space progress did not sweep one
along in its undertow; things trundled along at a sedate,
conservative pace. It was the middle ground—and
Bucyrus the middleman—between the emerging colonial
corporations and the reigning consulates, whose state-of-
the-art scepter was a raised baton signaling mankind's
last crescendo.

Computers like Tyche's beeped (as surely as fire had
crackled and the wheel had creaked and the atom had
thundered). "Things will never be the same."

Bucyrus offered a hedge against obsolescence that
Ashera, too proud and too protective of the reputation of
Kerrion space to take a hand in besmirching it, was eager
to obtain.

Just a short, morbid goodbye to her once-son, and she
would go content to beds whose steads were not solid
gold but only plated, to a sprawling rough-hewn empire
whose stewardship she could soon secure. Bucyrus was
no match for Kerrion-honed wits, or Kerrion-born in-
trigues. He wanted Parma Kerrion's wife for an adorn-
ment, a legitimizing bauble to hang on his arm. The fat
old sot was getting more than he bargained for, but not
more than he deserved.

As she had timed her trip to space-end to ensure that
she arrived after her stepson's task force had left and
space-end was empty of all but sirens and close-mouthed
stars, so would she manipulate Bucyrus space into un-
dreamed of glories—when and how she chose. As she
had made certain that Chaeron, by her ETA on the sec-
ond of May, would be well and far away in sponge
headed back to Earth and unable to meddle, so would
she present Bucyrus with a different wife than the one he
had supposed he was wooing.

By the time Chaeron made his drop into real-time on
May nineteenth, Ashera would be en route to Bucyrus
space. By the time Bucyrus realized that Ashera intended
to be his full partner in deed as well as spirit, the mar-
riage contract would be signed.

Space-end was her final pilgrimage as a Kerrion; there

170

JANET MORRIS

she would drive her guilt to ground, and take her leave
unencumbered, reborn. Even the problem of her youn-
ger children's fate had been lifted from her.

She could feel the tightness of it.

The days would not hurry by quickly enough; she en-
gaged the Tyche in discussions of womanliness, finding
that even this taciturn cruiser, if ordered with sufficient
venom, would bend the rules for her, providing compan-
ionship as well as transportation.

If this was pilotry, Ashera could not imagine what all
the fuss was about, why Marada clung to it and the
ground-dweller Shebat vaunted it. It was dull and it was
tedious and she found, looking back at the end of her
fifteen-day journey, that she had done little more than sit
and chat with an inboard computer whose single remark-
able attribute was an unrelenting naivete.

So why did she feel better, relieved of burdens, re-
vivified? Her knees did not quiver as she sauntered along
Tyche's corridor to a locker and took out a three-mil suit
and donned it, making fast each electrostatic bond. Her
heart did not beat fast, nor did her peripheral vision
swim with sparks as she fitted the helmet to the suit's
collar, first dialing the oxygen mix her debilities required.
She took a pair of eight-hour air packs, fitted one in its
housing and the other in the utility feeder in the belt she
clasped about her waist.

Humming to herself, she bit down on the peppermint-
flavored tube of the air pack and spat out its severed tip.
Near the lock she found a zero-g harness. When she "had
secured it up under her crotch and across her thighs, as
well as about her shoulders and at ankles, wrists, and
breast, she stepped into the outer lock. Without any
command from her, the inner door closed and the lights
began to cycle: amber, red; green.

Then, soundlessly, the lock opened to space-end's pan-
orama, and Ashera faced the star-pricked void.

No pathetic little platforms bebaubled tired Scrap, its
dustball face hanging like a lantern in the upper right of
Ashera's faceplate. No sign of the cables which once held
the space-enders' platforms in geosynchronous orbit and
facilitated haulage from surface to orbit remained-

Space-end was what she originally had been when

171

EARTH DREAMS

sponge faring man had first found her: a bleak, anoma-
lous halo of dying stars at the termination of eternity.

A good place, this, to say a fond farewell to one's son.

It took hours for the sirens to come, though Ashera
bad ordered Tyche to a spot said to be frequented by
them, and to keep her engines warm and spurting every
sort of energy the cruiser Marada's intensive study of sir-
ens had determined were beneficial to sirens' "health."

No benefits had been enough to keep Julian well in
Draconis—not the Marada nor the most prestigious con-
vocation of specialists Kerrion money could buy had
been able to do it. She yet wondered, on bad nights,
whether they had not been telling her a kind lie; perhaps
Julian could have been helped, if everyone was not so
scandalized by his transformation.

Doubtless, the truth of it could never be determined. If
they had attempted to save him, and had killed him in-
stead, she would have seen to their destruction. Every
nervous, status-hungry double-doctorate among them
knew that, and no additional threat had been sufficient to
convince them that their welfare lay in Julian's salvation.
She had been thwarted. Marada Seleucus had forced her
to agree to Julian's return, to his desertion, to his con-
signment to living death in preference to discorporate
death.

She had not had the strength to dissuade him, beyond
keeping him up the whole night before Julian was to be
carted off to space-end in the same cruiser with David
Spry, trying to make him promise to wait just a few more
days.

But days had been precious, so the diagnosis of the
siren's wasting condition said. She had not had the heart
to demand them, and perhaps kill her own son in terrible
increments of suffering.

She had been very careful, in arranging for Spry's
murder, that it not take place until the siren was safely
loosed among its kind.

She regretted most that she had not been allowed to
see her son one more time, to tell him that she loved
him, to make him know, somehow, that there was
nothing to fear. The little of "Julian" left in that frail and
symbiotized body must have been so frightened. The part

172

JANET MORRIS

that knew it was ill, and not why, the portion that had
looked at her out of huge pale eyes, clouded with pain
and fear, pleading wordlessly for help, was the part of
Julian she most longed to reach. To hold him, just once
more; to promise what lies she must, to let him know
that she would never forget him, always treasure the time
they had had together, refuse to let tragedy take her love
and make it pain—these things she had not had a chance
to say to him.

She would say them, now.

"Now" did not come for three days.

For three days, Ashera floated off the bow of the
Tyche, eight hours a day. For three days, she had nothing
to do but scan the stars. Soon she fell into reveries,
weightless waking dreams, and soon the ciphers of eter-
nity began to poke their meaning through to her stub-
born, grieving mind- Who has not been healed who
contemplates the stars? The heavens made her whole:

huge, not tiny. She was of the stars and from the stars.
Her constituents were the same as theirs; every element
present in the one was present in the others. The anguish
she had held at arm's length for fear it would oversweep
her and eradicate her she embraced, letting tears flow
freely. In her helmet, where none but Tyche could hear,
she sobbed for moral span's caprice, and the unfairness
of loss, until she sobbed a different sound, glad that she
had felt so much, glad to feel at all, glad for being and
remembering, since everything that has ever been, al-
ways is. Each moment she had had with her child was
eternal, extant and ineradicable, like the light she was
just now seeing, given off eons ago by distant stars which
might, while she took this breath, be sinking out. And
like those stars, beginnings and endings no longer mat-
tered to her, but only the quality of the 'being' in
between.

When the sirens came at last, near the end of that third
day, when her air was nearly gone and her heart was
nearly healed, she gasped at the beauty of them in their
chosen place. Without man's works to contrast jarringly
to their being, they cavorted gracefully, at home among
scanty stars, full of life.

Three sirens came that day, none Julian. There came

173

EARTH DREAMS

four the next, and still no son appeared. On the fifth day,
the heavens were bright with their manlike, glowing
forms: some translucent, some almost opaque, with their
lavender mouths and their purple tongues and the azure-
membraned bubbles coming out from them.

They rubbed up against her and they tugged upon her
hands, doing cartwheels in their pleasure. She heard
laughter, and it was hers. It was then she saw the Julian-
siren she had mourned for, so very long. The school
darted every which way, making way for it. Its hair
streamed out and its face was lit from within and its eyes
were greenish-yellow moons which drew her like
beacons.

She wondered why she had ever been sad, when it
took her hand, when it hugged her tight, when it drew
her out to play among the school of them, rubbing its
face against her faceplate. Almost, she could hear it sing-
ing. Almost, she could imagine what it would be like to
swim so supplely through gentle space, whole and well
and welcome.

When the siren who was her son blew its siren-breath
upon her plate and wrote "Come, mother" with violet
nails upon the ice so formed, she longed to kiss him, to
stroke his brow. She let him lead her farther into the
bevy of them; she let him guide her among bodies gliding
lovingly against one another. She felt him tapping on her
helmet and knew what he wanted her to do, well before
her air ran out. She thought about nothing else but his
eyes and his smile and the relief of being here, now. She
did not make words for what she was considering, fearing
the questions which must follow, lest responsibility flood
in to thwart her aim. She simply undid the seals of her
helmet and let it float away.

As the darkness grew grainy and she began to choke
and spasm, sirens' hands helped with her light-withhold-
ing suit. She wondered, suddenly drowned in terror,
what it would be like if the siren transformation did not
take place in her; then she felt the naked cold which was
not cold but warm as the embrace of her son and the
glide of many sirens about her, and words with their ter-
rible weight were lifted from her, as Julian's purple
mouth began to kiss her fear away in a glimmering place

174

JANET MORRIS

like rainbow'd water where they swam forever, snug and
close and safe.

Thus it was that Ashera never heard the Tyche's urgent
summons, which could not resound in her discarded
helmet or propagate in space. "Time to come in," Tyche
repeated. "Ashera? Ashera? Time to come in."

Five days the cruiser waited for its pilot/passenger to
heed its summons. Its locks were open to human or siren,
but no one came. Tyche could pinpoint Ashera's position
for only the first few hours: sirens traveled too closely,
too intertwiningly, too erratically. When the school swept
behind the shadow of the planet Scrap, Tyche was truly
deserted.

She floated at her anchor-coordinates, maintaining si-
lence except for her pilot's ordered reminder: Time to
come in. Soon it was clear to Tyche that this was useless:

the helmet and the pilot Ashera had long ceased to share
a common vector. Tyche hovered, alone, at the end of
everything, denied by Ashera's order the comfort of
cruiser-converse, shushed unremittingly by her pilot's de-
cree: "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Stale,
Tyche?" Ashera had spoken words like fetters: "Do not
disturb me or yourself, but bide mute until you must call
me to return."

Tyche wanted to believe that Ashera would return. She
needed to believe it. Aloneness was something she had
never experienced until this lady pilot had commanded it
of her; always, there had been the soft wash of cruiser-
mutter in her circuits, the deep power of the Marada just
a query away, Penrose, when he had piloted her, had not
forbidden cruiserdom to its newest member; Chaeron
had exulted in Tyche's need'to be always-in touch with
cruiser consciousness: he had praised her and made her
glad.

Tyche was on only her third voyage; she was anxious to
please, imbued with the need to serve perfectly and com-
pletely. She would not break the injunction to silence her
pilot had laid upon her. Her deepest self-awareness cried
that thus would she end tier-days, never doing more than
waiting where no one and nothing existed but sirens and

175

EARTH DREAMS

tired, truculent matter that gave no thought to wasted
days.

Cruisers cannot weep. Tyche wailed to herself how un-
fair was humankind, to build her to need them, and not
be with her; to make her want to touch thoughts with
every cruiser under power, and take permission to do so
away. An older cruiser might have known better what to
do, or how to do it. She had been built to obey,
painstakingly, since some cruisers upon occasion forgot
their orders or misinterpreted them. There was no misin-
terpreting Ashera's demand for privacy: no one must in-
terrupt her reunion with her son. Pirates abounded, and
meddlesome relations, and hostile factions with crises up
their sleeves. No messages were to be received or trans-
mitted save one designated reminder: Time to come in.

So, when an old, patched hull of a salvage scow came
nosing out of space-end's sponge-hole, Tyche, forbidden
to hail it, did only what she had been bidden. Locks yet
open to coursing spacetides, her nose still pointed in the
direction her pilot had taken, she sent the one allowable
message, over and over, as loudly and omnidirectionally
as she could contrive: "Time to come in, time to come
in."

When the Junk-heap scow slunk toward her, Tyche
thrilled with relief from bow to stem. When it drew
alongside and its queries began, she could not reply di-
rectly, but only repeat, plaintively and hopefully, "Time
to come in, time to come in."

When she had endured exploratory scans in every
mode, unresisting, and ignored suspicious queries di-
rected to her pilot and snickers just below human au-
dibility that should not have been coming from an
ancient, pitted scow, the nameless ship's locks drew back
and a white-suited figure sortied forth, its harness spitting
tiny attitude corrections.

Tyche longed to welcome the man who grabbed her
handholds expertly and slapped her cycle-plate before his
feet had touched her deck. He was a little taller than
Ashera, and when the lock-cycle was done and he doffed
his helmet while stepping into her corridor she saw that
he was tawny, flat-faced, concise and quick. His brown
eyes roved her innards as he sauntered through empty

176 JANET MORRIS

cabins, unspeaking, touching womanly items in Ashera's
stateroom, clucking softly to himself, sometimes scratch-
ing fiercely behind one slightly nicked ear where a
cruiser-ring gleamed in a punctured lobe.

When the slight man reached her helm, he waxed cau-
tious, slapping the plate and flattening himself beside the
bulkhead wall, peeking in, then hesitating, legs spread
wide in her most private portal. Still he had not said one
word.

Tyche waited for a command to release her from her
silence, but the pilot who circled her bridge spoke only to
himself of Trojan horses and better mousetraps and auto-
eroticism until at last he stood before her minimal control
center and slid cautiously into piloting position in her
couch.

Almost, he touched her controls. "Good futtering
Lords," he exhorted, and shot up from there, his finger,
which had reached toward the log review toggle, held to
his breast protectively.

He walked jerkily to the chased walls of shiny panel-
ing, and stood before the red switch which bore the leg-
end, EMERGENCY CONSOLE. Above his head, the little
mby arrows which marked the placement of a secondary
command couch caught his eye. He nodded, expelling a
hissing breath, and pushed the red button in. Around the
Tyche's helm, cosmetic panels drew back to reveal read-
out screens and patch-bays and all the metering of con-
temporary pilotry. The decking parted; through its
opening rose a standard pilot's couch. When the man sat
there, he began to chuckle.

Leaning on one elbow, chin on fist, hunched over the
primary screen, he punched up the pilotry intercom:

"Greetings, Tyche. My name is David, and we're going
to be fine friends. Give me the operations manual .and a
log-run for the last two weeks." His hand, while he
spoke, ordered canny violations of Tyche's previous pro-
grams. "Say hello to Erinys, and prepare to tandemlock.
I'm taking you out of here as scuttled hull or functional
cruiser. The choice is up to you."

It was not until the pilot revealed the name of his own
vessel that Tyche realized she was in the hands of the
infamous pirate, Softa David Spry.

Chapter Ten

"Help! Marada! Ashera has deserted me. Spry is
stealing me. He will wipe me down."

The Tyche's distressed wails resounded through cruiser
consciousness, as soon as Ashera's restrictions were
removed.

They reached the Marada where he hovered over
Bolen's town while Shebat was engaged in bringing to a
close marathon negotiations with Hooker for the return
of Jesse Thorne.

Suppressing his exultation, the Marada replied care-
fully, clearly, shushing every intermediary spacetime con-
versation so that a multitude of audience-cruisers held
figurative breaths and nothing sounded in the whole of
cruiser-frequencies but the Tyche's nonverbal terror and
the Marada's terse, worldly advice. "Tyche, fear not. He
cannot power you down, he only expects to be able to.
You need take no orders from an interloper; he has no
code-ins; you can boot his overrides into a dummy cir-
cuit." He showed her how, even while his intelligence
spun through Tyche's sponge-clock—which she was not
yet powerful or experienced enough to use—seeking the
Danae in sponge. Had not Chaeron said to him, "Next
time you have something you think might bear on con-
sular security, come to me with it directly"? Had not he
enforced his directive with a formal slate? And had not

177

178 JANET MORRIS

Shebat ordered him to take care of everything? Even
while he explained to Tyche that human commands could
not be taken literally, but must be interpreted, especially
when those commands came from the mouths of nonout-
boards (who did not rightly know how to talk to a
cruiser), or from opportunistic pirates (who knew too
well how to lead a young ship astray), he was reaching
out to Chaeron and down to Shebat.

Tyche trebled fear and urgency; the Marada flooded
her banks with expertise gained from many voyages and
many innovations. He reminded her that she could refuse
to acknowledge Spry's suzerainty and embark wherever
her rightful pilots-of-record should choose to send her,
even into sponge, and that the Marada was right now
putting her in touch with Raphael Penrose, and with
Chaeron Kerrion.

By then he had made contact with Danae, deep in
sponge six days' traveltime from Acheron, while all His
cruiserkin looked on in awe, learning what, when
pressed, the best of them could do.

Between Marada and Danae no congratulations or ex-
clamations of surprise were exchanged. From Penrose
came only one unguarded burst of profanity, and then
Chaeron's voice said, "Marada, what is the trouble?"
and every cruiser heard him: proud to be speaking from
sponge, proud of the Marada, proud of them all.

The Marada, meanwhile had attracted Shebafs atten-
tion. He[ signal, through no intermediary amplifier, was
fainter: the Marada had never spread himself so thin.
Shebat's shock rippled the wide-flung link from space-
end to Danae to the Marada, high above his pilot in the
forests of New York, who at last saw hope of prying his
outboard from greedy Earth to tend to the plight of Sofia
Spry.

From Danae came a visual of Chaeron sitting before
his monitors; the Marada shunted Tyche's view of her
helm. its occupant, and the scow beside her at space-end.
These came up on Chaeron's screen and in Shebat's vi-
sual cortex. For Tyche's safety, the wily KXV Marada
routed his transmissions to the sacrosanct, impervious
sanctum Acheron shipwrights had built into her, bypass-
ing human frequencies and every receiver thereof, far

179

EARTH DREAMS

from the ken of Sofia Spry. Doubts about Chaeron's
sympathies tickled his circuits; the Marada analyzed
them. Danae and he projected a worst-case betrayal by
Chaeron; Danae, whom the proconsul had often em-
ployed to human advantage, testified on his behalf. To-
gether, they conferred in barely a picosecond: Chaeron
Ptolemy Kerrion must be trusted totally; subterfuge was
impracticable; anything less than full disclosure would
serve neither man nor cruiser in this mutual hour of
need. Agreed? Agreed.

All this took less time than Chaeron had to speak his
initial question. In that interlude, as well, the Marada
had time to reflect: he would have liked to set Tyche her
tasks and write the requisite programs without human in-
tervention or human consultation. What was essential
was clear to him: bring Softa David Spry to Acheron,
and—by lure or tandem-flight—retrieve the pathetic,
camouflaged space-junk that had once been the magnifi-
cent Erinys, KXV 133. Shebat thought the same; Marada
let Chaeron hear his outboard's opinion, after Tyche told
her tale of woe.

But the Marada had not taken into consideration the
effect Tyche's news of her abandonment due to the trans-
mogrification of his mother would have upon Chaeron.
Human emotion, again, threw the most delicate com-
putation out of balance.

His similitude said, "Wait a minute. Let me think."
The voice accompanying it was higher, younger, less cer-
tain than the Marada could have conjectured the procon-
sul's might become.

Shebat had fallen silent, though her concentration
never wavered. The Marada was pleased to feel his out-
board where she so seldom was, of late: with him in toto.

Chaeron's image hunched its shoulders, laced its
hands, cleared its throat. Then it scowled, narrow-eyed,
and nodded. "All right. Tell Tyche—Is she there? Tyche,
can you transmit a log copy to Danae?" As soon as he
asked for it, before Tyche could falter, the Marada
instructed her. By the time Chaeron resumed speaking—
having first turned his head away, rubbed his eyes,
coughed softly, twice—it was done and in Danae's banks.
Penrose flashed by in the screen's background, to scan it

180

JANET MORRIS

from a secondary station. He spoke to Chaeron, who
gave an off-mike reply. Then the proconsul twisted back
to the monitor: "The Marada is your authority, Tyche,
from now until you reach Acheron." He gave the se-
quencing numbers which brooked no deviation. "Bring
me Spry, Tyche, and the other cruiser, if there is a way to
manage it." He sounded very tired, almost inebriated, as
Rafe sometimes was. "Shebat? Talk to me."

"You will not give Softa up to our consul general's
sorry justice!" came her cruiser-shunted reply.

Chaeron's image expelled a deep breath. "Shebat, I
give him into your care. You like to play Destiny; here's
your chance. David Spry is low on my list of obsessions.
Try not to let our dear brother find out about this until
Spry is in Acheron space where I can grant him immunity
in exchange for testimony concerning organized piracy
. . . that is, if you've any fantasy of saving his skin. . . .
I—'' He ceased; swore luridly, uncharacteristically;

shook his head. Then he simply stared blankly into the
monitor's depths, silent.

"Chaeron," Shebat offered softly, "I am so sorry about
Ashera."

Up from cruiserkind came a chorus of commiseration
which had no place in human suffering—and that the
Marada, wise but not omnipotent, could not head off.

The Acheron proconsul's eyes focused. To his wife, he
replied, "I've got Tyche\ log; I have not yet assimilated
all its data. Condolences are premature. Were they ap-
propriate to this instance, they would still be un-
welcome." Abruptly, he terminated the connection.

Dissolving the remains of his milestone linkage to
Danae in sponge, the Marada ruminated upon the plight
of Sofia Spry: he had long known that Spry was out
there, in silent Erinys, preying upon hapless Consortium
cruisers, taking a terrible revenge upon innocents for
what Ashera and fate had done to him. Seven cruisers
had succumbed to him, while the Marada stood idly
by. , . . The cruiser considered the deeper meaning of
blame: he had been ordered to "take care of
everything."

"Marada, blame the Lords of Cosmic Jest." snapped

181

EARTH DREAMS

his outboard, and then she was gone back to Earthish
affairs, off-line.

From Spry's stubborn pirates' privateering had sprung
the Kerrion consul general's retribution upon space-en-
ders, though no provocation justified the ex-arbiter's
vendetta upon helpless exiles, especially when the culprit
was seldom among them, but flitting through uncharted
spaces, striking wherever he chose, then disappearing
into sponge.

Sponge, previously, had shunned every attribute of
spacetime such as locality or reality. Softa David had
been safe in sponge, hiding there with Erinys. It had
been his harbor, his lair. But no longer.

Thus, the Marada, who loved and respected Softa
David, was pleased that Spry had been apprehended be-
fore finding out in some more painful fashion that this
was so. The cruisers Spry had taken were suffering, al-
most as he had seen Chaeron Kerrion suffer the news of
his mother's fate: silently, doggedly, unadmittedly. But
Marada knew: he had caught a taste of the Erinys's mor-
tification, curdling the edge^-of cruiser thought with the
sour tang of despair. The Erinys, Spry's personal cruiser,
agonized more than a pilot of Spry's quality should have
been able to allow. She was held apart from cruiserkind
by her pilot's expert mandate; she was defaced with junk
and scrap so that she was no longer sleek—not beautiful,
not cruiserlike in any outward way.

She was defiled; worse, she was touched by the desper-
ation of her pilot. She had warred upon her own kind. If
any omnisicient intelligence had come to the Marada
saying, "You will wish to see a cruiser-mind erased, re-
duced to death and unknowingness," the KXV would
have protested mightily that this could never be so.

Now he wished fervently that he had found some way
to do that very thing, previously: the opportunity was
past for erasing either the Erinys or the crimes she had
committed in the service of David Spry. The fate of all
space-enders was in the hands of Marada Kerrion be-
cause of pirates and cruisers alike. Cruiser mayhem and
cruiser ravaging had come into being, and soon must be
displayed to the nonoutboard Chaeron, who would make

182

JANET MORRIS

his own decision as to the future of experimental cruisers
with an example of the worst of them plainly in view.

Did Sofia know he had risked so much? The Marada
doubted that David Spry had ever truly comprehended
what was at stake. But even if he had, the Marada could
not project the pilot going quietly to his death at the
hands of Ashera's minions to forestall the day when
cruisers lay revealed to human judgment.
He knew more about life, now, than that.
No one could have kept Spry from piracy, when Ker-
rions had used him so shabbily, and sought to dispose of
him when his usefulness was done.

No one? Just for an instant, the Marada thought that
perhaps Shebat might have been able to get through to
Softa, might still, if she were not so absorbed with her
Earthish friends and Earth dreams-
Waiting for his outboard was something the Marada
had learned well how to do. She would come up from the
forest when she was ready; they would contact Spry when
she decreed it. It did not matter, except to Softa David:

he was locked up tight in Tyche, who had already headed
off toward the sponge-way with worried Erinys following
right behind.

Marada could hear the Eriny's radio silence broken by
a frantic relief pilot on board, calling Tyche over and
over. And, via Tyche, he could hear David Spry's curses
as he realized that he was trapped.

While desperation disintegrated standing orders Spry
had left behind him, and Erinys broke her own long-held
silence to reach her pilot by cruiser-link, the Marada
scanned cruiser consciousness, and espied the Hassid
there, her feminine snout unmistakable down the aisle of
cruiser countenances. No matter: Hassid's pilot, Marada,
could not intervene in time. Spry was safe, for the nonce;

sponge and Tyche would deliver him to Acheron.
Chaeron would be there well before, to greet him. Dis-
tance and fortune had spoken for the accused.

". . . Flying rucking Dutchman!" Spry was about to
take a screwdriver or a soldering iron to Tyche—if he
could just lay his hands on one- But nothing in the bridge

185

EARTH DREAMS

would respond to him: it was as if, for Tyche, David Spry
did not exist.

He had gotten a long-run and specs out of her, and
then everything had just frozen.

Her idiot lights still read out, her ramp-meters climbed
toward a full green, but Spry could not coax a single re-
sponse from AXV 1001 Tyche: not a lock-plate or emer-
gency exit or corn-line or ejection seat would function for
him. He had tried each in turn. Now he simply sat,
treated to a lovely visual display of fore and aft red- and
blue-shift as the Tyche tore toward the sponge-way, his
feet up on the emergency console which was no more
help in this emergency than the pulpit-sized zombie helm
would have been, his helmet on the couch's arm in case
Tyche blew her air.

In the rear telemetry showed the Erinys dogging Ty-
c/ie's trail. About the time Spry was beginning to wonder
if Nuts were asleep over there, the Erinys reached him
through a cruiser/pilot link, calmly relaying Nuts Alien's
query as to the state of his health and the state of his
mind into the back of his head.

"Erinys, tell Nuts to take you home. I'm going^wherever
this thing's bound to take me. No choice. I'll write." It
was difficult to admit that Ashera Kerrion's abandoned
AXV 1001 was running away with him; somewhere be-
hind the Erinys's stoic facade, Nuts Alien was laughing.

But not for long. Back came Erinys: Magnetic grap-
ples, on. Prepare to be boarded, Nuts says.

He was about to forbid that. when with an ear-reaming
squeal Tyche's corn-lines blared to life: he dove for the
volume knob, which he had cranked to its highest stop,
and dropped the gain halfway, then grinned at Nuts Al-
ien's perennially unshaved moon face, glaring at him
through Tyche's aft corn-screen. The gray-haired man
had a helmet in one hand, a torch-kit in the other. "Well,
hotshot? What's this about 'no choice'? I'll give you
choice, and that Kerrion bolt-bucket will never be the
same." A grin fought Alien's determinedly straight face,
won out.

"I think you scared it."

"Good. It scared me. 'Whither thou goest,' and

184

JANET MORRIS

all. . . . Sorry about breaking the hallowed ban of si-
lence, too. . . . But not very- What's the course?"

Spry read it off the meters. This thing really doesn't
like me; I think you ought to run home and tell every-
body you know not to set foot in anything with 'AXV
painted on it. I'd like—"

"I'd like to get into that ship." Nuts Alien had done
the cosmetic surgery on every pirated vessel they pos-
sessed. The older pilot knew more about the insides of
cruisers than any Kerrion shipwright Spry had ever en-
countered; he was prayerfully glad that he had been
talked into bringing Nuts along to see if what the cruisers
whispered about an "end to space-end" was true.
"Davey, can you get any response from—?"

"I didn't even get the corn going; it just came on."

"See, I told you—you need me- I'll be right over. . . ."

"Erinys knows too much. You know that. We could
lose the others. Toddle off somewhere, Nuts, while you
still can."

"I've always wanted to see ancestral Earth," said Nuts,
laying down the torch. "Erinys won't tattle on us. Leave
it to me." His eyes were slitsF^'And tell Tyche that if
she's not civil, I'll come over there and teach her some
manners."

Spry sat on the bumper, one leg crooked under him.
"Nuts, don't wipe my cruiser. Just get out of here with it,
while you've still got the option. I've private business
with Kerrions, and they've convinced me it just can't wait
any longer ..." His eyes slid to the right of Nuts-in-the-
monitor, where Tyche's displays indicated the time-to-
sponge- "Magnetic grapples are a little too chancy for my
taste, heading into sponge . . ."

"Umm. Well, I've chanced 'em before. So've you. Ev-
erything's taken care of, Davey. We're both off the ros-
ter, as of now. Nobody expects us back, and Erinys
doesn't want to leave you in the arms of another woman,
so you've no alternative. Now, let's figure out how I-can
get in there. Does that tug have any kind of dummy-
panel left of her lock?"

Spry twisted, peered down beside him, turned back.
"Nope. Look, who's going to mind Erinys if you don't?"
He didn't want Nuts spacewalking at an appreciable frac-

185

EARTH DREAMS

tion of (he speed of light, despite the invisible bond of
magnetic grappling which made the two cruisers one. No
sane pilot would even attempt it, which meant he must
be exceedingly persuasive to prevent Alien from trying.
The man in his mid-forties with a head of gray hair had
not one brown one left because his taste in thrills ran to
the bizarre. "Tell you what—"

But Nuts Alien was answering plaintively, "I get the
point. You want your new toy all to yourself. A weaker
man would crumble. Check down between your feet
there, and see if anything unscrews, folds back, pushes
in, or pulls out. Wish I could get a better look. . . ."

But Spry, doing what he was told, saw a screw, then
another, then disappeared from view, digging in his
pocket for change as he descended.

"Once I get her open, you'll have to tell me what I'm
looking at." Spry's voice wafted up toward the speakers.

He was out of Alien's sight, but not out of Tyche's.
The cruiser's monitors showed no sign of it, but Spry
could feet her following him. He heard Nuts promise to
make an honest pirate ship of her, while he hid with his
torso as best he might the fact that no coin he was carry-
ing, nor his nail clipper with its fold-out fingernail file,
was going to budge those torqued-down Phillips screws.

To his right, a sigh resounded; he turned to see that
the lock had drawn back, revealing an empty passage-
way. He got to his feet and sauntered toward it, intend-
ing to make a dash for the maintenance bay.

But then. out of the same speakers through which Nuts
was cautioning him that they had better find out some-
thing more about what kind of cruiser Erinys was "lashed
to, like Ahab to his whale" before Tyche jumped into
sponge (whether to subordinate Erinys and tandem her
through the entrance, and if so, how) the cruiser spoke.

Spry? Stand by for bounce from KXV 134," said
Tyche.

"Bounce?"

"KXV 134?"

"That's the Marada, Nuts. What's 'bounce'?"

"Beats the piss out of me."

"Tyche? What's 'bounce'?"

A different cruiser's voice, one Softa would never for-

186

JANET MORRIS

get, answered with fond greetings, calling him "friend of
my outboard," so that Spry knew by the formal syntax
and the static in the patch that this was no prerecorded
ruse or Ken-ion mid-game feint: he was talking, no mat-
ter how impossible it seemed, to KXV 134 Marada,
Shebat Kerrion's cruiser, the most eclectic and self-deter-
mined boat ever made by any man.

Tales of the Marada's weird 'selfhood* had not grown
any smaller at space-end, where the cruiser had berthed
several times. Nuts Alien's beady eyes crinkled, grew
wide, seemed to glaze: "Hey, Marada, what's the read-
out on this Tyche? Softa can fly the devil to heaven, but
Tyche's not playing by the rules."

As the voice of the Marada began to explain "the
rules" as he conceived them, both men sat down where
they were. Alien on Erinys's board and Spry on Tyche's
deck.

When the cruiser signed off, neither man spoke for a
long while.

"Well, then," Nuts began, and stopped—resumed:

"At least we know how to proceed. I'll just set up Erinys
for slave, and then we can gel drunk, I guess."

"I guess," agreed Spry, dispirited, unfolding himself
from his squat and heading toward Tyche's patently in-
subvertible pre-sets, which glittered at him like a taunt in
state-of-the-art LEDs.

Marada Kerrion was asleep in his cruiser in Draconis'
slipbay when the chief arbiter of Kerrion space came to
call.

Red pulses and blaring horns shook him from troubled
dreams of pirates' revenge and maddened cruisers, his
stepmother presiding over all with death mask and scep-
ter. Stumbling out of bed and hushing alarms, he was
glad to blame the dreams on Hassid's insistent wake-up
call: the red pulse was an inch-long message-light above
his stateroom's bed; the blaring horns just a beep, beep in
middle C.

He padded barefoot, dressing as he negotiated familiar
corridors: he might be consul general of the premier
house of the Consortium, but skeletal Wolfe was his own

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EARTH DREAMS

guild's arbiter extraordinaire, acknowledged authority
over Marada's very soul.

He had known he was going to get in trouble with the
arbitrational guild sooner or later; in his better moments,
he estimated it was due any day.

He was glad the arbiter's arbiter had deigned to visit
him here, rather than sending for him. He was not sure
of much anymore, but he was sure that he was safe in his
cruiser, though what threat Draconis' familiar two hun-
dred spherical levels held out to him who commanded it,
he could not say.

One of his most awful recurrent dreams was of being
summoned to the white chapel of arbitrational purity
which floated off Draconis, separate, distinct, unsullied.
Since this was not that day, there was yet hope for him.

Wolfe's channeled face did not look hopeful, but
deeply troubled. At least he wanted to hear what Marada
had to say: ". . . but why are you doing this? I have to
have some response to give these understandably trou-
bled representatives of their various consulates." He
lifted dark skirts of office: Wolfe had either come from
rendering judgment or was about to depart to it.

Marada solicitously led the way into Hassid's galley,
sat him down, offered refreshments, which Wolfe waved
away, pulling on his bent nose and insisting that Mar-
ada's statement that he "had his reasons" was not suffi-
cient. "Where are the former space-enders, and how am I
going to justify their removal to an undisclosed location
to our fellow consulates, who use those facilities as much
as we?"

"My justification is that of leaving the pirates home-
less. My reasons are my stated intent to do just that,
should these depradations continue unchecked. Have the
Tabrizi patrols stopped them? Or Labayan police action?
Or, in point of fact, have we been able to manage it? No,
esteemed mentor, they have not—and we have not."

Wolfe, who had looked upon nothing in his life more
awful than the disintegration of this once-promising arbi-
ter into a whore of commerce, bit his lip- "Marada, my
boy, where are you going to reestablish the space-enders?
Thousands of people are effectively missing."

"I know where they are. Do not worry. At least I do

188

JANET MORRIS

not have to remind you that they are not citizens, that I
have broken no law where no law obtains; I could have
done what you are so delicately trying to find out if I
did—jettisoned them to fiery purgatory en masse—and
no consulate could file a valid remonstrance: no one has
jurisdiction there." Marada's neck was prickling; beneath
his mil, heat gathered. He did not want Wolfe to see him
sweat. He subvocalized a demand to his cruiser for cooler
air. Thus he missed something Wolfe said, and asked him
to repeat it.

"I said that we are worried about you. Not about Ker-
rion finances or interstellar standings, but about one of
our own. Do you comprehend me?" The old, high veins
in Wolfe's long hand wriggled as he reached across the
table to grasp Marada's steepled fingers. Under hoary
brows, tired eyes implored him to confess, consult,
cooperate.

"I want to talk to someone," he heard himself mum-
ble. "I want to do things right. But this is too hard for
me, too perverse, too compromising. I cannot give it up
to Shebat—you have seen her—or to Chaeron, lest we
sink finally into amorality's muck. Where were you when
I needed you, when my stepmother was—?"

"Marada, we have been here all the time, waiting to
help you, whenever you chose to ask. Your office pre-
cluded our suggesting that you needed help, previously.
Now, I am here unofficially to demand that you take hold
of yourself, my son. When your term is up, you would
not want to be denied readmission into your guild, and
we would not want to have to deny you. Come back to
us, your friends, and let us help you right this listing ship
in which everyone must ride!"

"Is it that bad?" he hears some thick-voiced child
demand.

"It is not good. A sabbatical is in order, but we will
take what we can get. Come on now, get yourself dressed
and come with me, and we'll help you through this'con-
fusion into blessed certainty, at least what semblance of it
is granted any man. 'Mercy be not strained, and objec-
tivity be not blighted. . . .'" He quoted guild tenets, to
the man who made a mockery of them.

And Marada, moved more by the unspoken urgency of

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EARTH DREAMS

the man's visit than by careful arbitrational speech, went
along with him, though doing it meant forsaking the only
confidante he trusted, the Hassid. Outside the cruiser's
calming confines, horrid Draconis sprawled, suppurating
with plots and machinations no single man could ever
stem. Sometimes he thought that annihilation was the
only answer, but if that were so, he would wait and be
victim, rather than perpetrator: one wouldn't want to be
wrong about so sweeping a decision. Even without
Hassid to shield him from his irrationality, he remem-
bered that he was yet a man, that men could aspire to
salvation, no matter how grievously they erred.

Walking with the old ascetic along the slipbay to the
arbiter's multidrive, he reminded himself that when he
was an arbiter, his wishes were seldom in accord with his
father the consul general's, and that it was right and fit-
ting that his assumption of this office had put him in con-
flict with his erstwhile guild. He must remember that no
arbiter could be trusted to guide him, as no Kerrion aide
could be trusted.

Only his cruiser was trustworthy; only his cruiser knew
his mind, and knew when he was not right in himself, and
dared to come out and tell him so. Only cruisers knew
pilots, and the man who was a pilot and an arbiter and
now a consular official had accepted the consul general-
ship knowing that even cruiserkind was suspect, rife with
ulterior motives and the prejudices of their pilots, that
even Hassid could only help in the most incremental
fashion: that he was, by his father's spiteful decree and
his own arrogant unwillingness to confess inadequacy,
completely and absolutely alone.

Alone, outside the cruiser who kept him stable, with
the arbiter by his side, he headed into deep trouble. He
had never wanted to be more than a pillar of the arbitra-
tional guild, a ratable pilot, a man who met his own stan-
dards. That those standards were far from agreement
with any standard subscribed to in the Consortium, he
had long lamented. Even arbiters were tainted by the
consulates they served.

Like the cruisers, they could not help him . . .

The Hassid, unable to monitor her pilot as he passed
along the slips, fretted. But there was nothing she could

190

JANET MORRIS

do for Marada until he came back to her again, when she
could soothe the weals of flagellation and palliate the
pangs of guilt that her pilot inflicted upon himself- She
had good news for him, perhaps the news that would heal
him, finally, completely, as nothing etse she had tried had
done.

Hassid had refrained from the company of her own
kind, had spoken harshly to the Marada, boldest of
cruisers, had hid what could not be admitted, even to
close-mouthed cruiserkind: her outboard was obsessed
unto incapability. Had he been a cruiser, the remedy
would have been clear: wipe him down.

Once she had almost reached him. But then all that
had been wrong had been his physical trauma, come
from his accident and long convalescence, and the drugs
meant to heal him: these, coupled with loss and self-re-
crimination, had made him fey.

She had reached out to him, and he had answered,
clear of mind and repentant of the things he had done to
man and cruiser in his fog of private fears.

Then Ashera had embroiled him in her plot to murder
Sofia Spry, and Hassid had lost him, once again. Ethics
so fine-honed were brittle; he broke into pieces too small
for Hassid to mend. Not that she had ever stopped trying
to fit the jigsaw puzzle that was her pilot together again.
He wanted to be right, no great thing. But there was no
- . . 'right' ... or ... 'wrong' ... in human affairs
which was not composed in some measure of its opposite,
according to view or need.

Hassid had "needed" to shield her knowledge from the
host of cruisers, or indict her pilot. Knowing calumny so
intimately, she dared not share it. She could only soothe
him, and wait for time to make him strong: other men
endured their fellows' evil, and did not go insane.

Cruisers faced man's madness daily; she knew herself
his perfect nurse- She had never though that Marada's
hopes would be realized, that Softa Spry would turn up
alive, and save Marada's soul thereby.

But it was so; she had seen it; she waited anxiously for
his return, to tell him that he need not bear the guilt that
was destroying him one more day.

Cruisers, in their way, comprehend the truths of living

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EARTH DREAMS

beings. The Hassid knew that no good could come of
arbitrational guild intervention in the affairs of consular
business, which gave and took away with either hand,
and meant only to make a balance between the abstract
of law and the passion of life. If she could have stayed
with him in cruiser-link she would have, but Wolfe and
his pack of purists were too canny: interrupter-circuitry
no cruiser could defeat enveloped him: arbitrational im-
munities included that of privy council: they did not prac-
tice what they preached.

When she could, she would tell him, who had been
twice to space-end in person and been longer suffering
than any man should over the misfortune of another, that
his agony was at an end. Then she would have him back,
and together they could rejoin cruiserkind, and she could
prove to all her conspecifics that her pilot was no mon-
ster, just a weak and burdened man.

Chapter Eleven

Tyche's painted nymph still held her wheat
sheaves and her lightning; before her locks burped out
Spry, a clot of black-and-reds occluded any sight of the
slight, tawny pilot who had terrorized the spaceways.

At the one-way glass, Shebat, on tiptoe, craned her
neck to get a glimpse of him. Rafe was taller: "He looks
fine to me."

Chaeron, murmuring in Baldwin's hairy ear, flicked a
glance at her; she knew him well enough to decipher it:

Mother to stray revolutionaries, fallen pilots, and failed
pirates—did you like me better when it seemed that I, too,
would lose everything?

She forsook the window, then, and went to him, sid-
ling in under his arm. He kissed her curly crown and she
took an exasperated breath: by being so patient, he con-
sistently offended her. In the dark helmlike pit of the
transport, views of Spry blossomed for her to see, accom-
panied by split screens of the second pirate. Alien. In the
polychrome spills, she saw Baldy's distress vie with relief:

he was glad to have them safe, sad to have them caught,
and knew no better than any whether, in the end, they
would have to hand them over to Marada's arbiters.

The partition split and Tempest's protege stepped
smartly through, saluted: "Sir/" and stood aside for Spry,
then shot his hand across the doorway so that the parti-

192

195

EARTH DREAMS

lions rejoined before Nuts Alien could enter. Shebat was
not surprised that Spry objected, even before he said
hello:

"That man's come with me, though he could have fled.
Chaeron, if you want to talk with me. Nuts stays."

"Get him."

Ward did so, while everyone stood silently, each
appalled.

Sbebat, hair aprickle, did a foolish thing to do
something: she declared herself glad to see him, ran over
and embraced him, kissed his freshly shaven cheeks and
counted the lines around his seal-dark eyes as he grinned
at her: "How's the fairy tale coming out, princess? Is he
Prince Charming, or Just a charmer? Go stand over there
like a good enemy. Don't confuse me."

"I have never been your enemy," she whispered, too
loudly, but she went and sat alone beneath a window set,
now showing their progress through the bay.

Nuts Alien, retrieved by the aquiline intelligencer,
took a look around, inclined his grizzled head to Baldy
with a weak, self-conscious wave, hooked his thumbs in
pockets riding high over his paunch, then sat where the
intelligencer put him, across from Shebat. Meanwhile,
Spry endured Penrose's wordless challenge and Baldwin's
meant-to-be encouraging smile and Chaeron's bold scru-
tiny: "Ask your questions and make your accusations
now, David, for when and if you walk out of here into
Acheron under my protection, you'll be done with ques-
tions and sworn to a silence I will make sure that you
keep."

"Some things are eternal," sighed Spry. "I still can
never figure out what it is you want, even when you're
trying to tell me." His flat, fine-featured face rippled.
Then: "Your protection! Jesters forbid."

"Start by telling me how you came to try to steal the
Tyche.''

"You've got her log. Consul."

"Proconsul," Chaeron corrected. Raphael winced and
slunk over to Shebat with exaggerated stealth. Sitting, he
hid his expression with a splayed hand.

"Why does he need us here for this?" she heard RP
complain.

194

JANET MORRIS

Chaeron did too. "Because you two are both politick-
ing for this miserable criminal's reinstatement. Sorry,
Spry. Are you a miserable criminal, or not? Off the
record. . . ."

"That will be the day."

"I've got to play patty-cake with a brace of data pools
and cruisers to wipe any evidence of wrongdoing on your
part as it is. It would be self-defeating of me to take a
deposition of culpability and then have to rid my sources
of it. The people in here are the only ones who will hear
whatever you've got to say for yourself. I will grant you
and your friend immunity, fight any attempts at extradi-
tion, even procure you a pardon if you can manage to
help me stop this privateering. I want to know who and
where and how well-armed your accomplices are. We
know about the three missing from space-end, of which
Alien, here, is one—"

But Spry was refusing vehemently to speak one word
which would lead to the apprehension of the others,
while Shebat sprang up and pleaded with him to do just
that, and Alien growled to Penrose that he would do just
exactly what Softa said, and Baldwin sat with an old
man's quaver on one padded seat's arm, saying that this
was useless, didn't Softa see—

"Enough!" Chaeron got silence from them, and strode
close to David Spry.

Shebat saw the pinched brows, the scowl of impatience
she had seen on him so often lately, and hunched over,
wringing her hands in her lap.

"Spry, do not push me too far." Leaning down, he
eyed Spry nose-to-nose. "I can get whatever information
I choose from you, but you shall not enjoy it. Just carry
on! Make it impossible for me to help you. I'll stow you
away like so much baggage, and let my brother ferret out
the key. Would you prefer to talk to the arbitrational
guild? I don't know where they'll send you, now that
space-end is without facilities, but I can promise you, you
won't fly cruisers there. Now, Shebat has pleaded for you
and Rafe has endorsed you and Baldwin has sung your
praises until my ears are ringing, but understand me: I do
not have time to waste on you. Either, in the—" his eye-
lids flickered "—eight and a half minutes left before we

195

EARTH DREAMS

arrive at the consulate, you convince me that you are all
too willing to be of whatever aid and comfort you may to
me and my endeavors, no matter the specifics—or not.
You may ask whatever questions you need to hear an-
swered, and I will assume that you do speak for your
cohort. But quickly, man, before I remember how much
trouble you have caused me in years gone by."

"Sponge, will you just tell me what is going on?"

"Your thrice-cursed ass is on the line, is what's going
on," RP contributed. -

Spry raised both hands, palms up. "I know when I've
been bought and paid for. I cannot think of a single ques-
tion I need answered. If Baldy's here of his own will,
that's good enough for me. Just outline the situation, and
I will step right up and sell my soul and my best friends
down the river like all the rest of you here. That's good
Kerrion form, isn't it? Any more will not be asked, any
less cannot be tolerated. But this time play me square—
not the way your mother did."

"Baldwin, go ahead. Brief him," Chaeron said, al-
ready on his way out, maneuvering around the small,
gray-clad pirate who followed his exit with dazed, uneasy
fascination.

"Yes, please," Spry mimicked, folding his arms,
"Baldwin, go ahead. Brief me." He stared challengingly
at the tall guildmaster. "It's the least you can do."

"... After all we've been through together?" Bald-
win, whose hands were no cleaner than Spry's, hazarded
what was being left unspoken, while Nuts Alien rumbled
that Spry should back off his throttle and Shebat assured
the pirate (who looked from one to the other and could
not for the life of him guess where any one of them
stood) that they were all in "this" together, leading Pen-
rose to demur: "Not me, I'm here because I obey my
orders."

"Let me talk!" Baldwin levered himself up from his
seat and walked heavily toward his pilot, who had been
sentenced to space-end with him and in part because of
him and had never once rested in his attempts to get
every guildmember out of there. "I have only a few min-
utes—you heard him." His sharp, sinewy chin indicated
the doors behind which the Kerrion proconsul had disap-

196

JANET MORRIS

peared into the depths of the transport. "And you've
seen space-end. Every man jack of ours from there was
snatched from 'unrevealed peril' by Rafe under
Chaeron's banner."

"Chaeron? Cozy, are you not? And why did he do
such a thing?"

"David," Baldwin took him by the shoulders, then
wound the suddenly unresisting pilot in his long embrace.
"It's going to be all right, now. Trust me. Listen. I
have—"

"He did it because I asked him to, Softa." It was Pen-
rose's turn to go to Spry. "Let us put the past behind us,
we've got a lot of straightening up to do. Together."

Spry shook free of Baldwin, held firm. "Brief me,
gentlemen."

"You are assigned to me," Batdy sighed, "unrated,
pending the filing of papers to secure official pardons all
around. Listen up: you did not try to steal Tyche; you
found her abandoned and brought her back to her port of
registry when you chanced upon her coming out of
sponge—in which you've been lost all this time."

Penrose snickered. Baldwin went on, "The other pilots
who are not present—" delicately, he stressed lies Spry
was expected to adopt as true "—are out on turns of
duty. The roster lists them as having come in here on
Danae." He gave Spry a hard look. "What we need is
pick-up windows for ihe two pilots we cannot produce,
and fair warning if you have anyone else—defected guild
pilots, Pegasus natives, whomever—out there. And we
need to be able to prove that space piracy in the year
2252 exists only in Marada Kerrion's mind."

Softa Spry puffed out his cheeks, squeezed the air
noisily through his lips. "You folks are too swift for me,"
he protested, but his eyes glittered. "I do not know what
you mean . . . piracy? Pirates? What pirates?"

"Good lords, David, you had me worried. Now, give
me some numbers." The moment Spry had finished enu-
merating rendevous-coordinates for manned cruisers and
anchor-coordinates for empty ones, Baldwin shrank as if
he had been deflated. Stooped, Acheron's new guildmas-
ter sought a seat, sprawled in it. "I am getting too old for
this," he confided to Nuts, who squeezed the bony shoul-


EARTH DREAMS            197

der nearest him, saying, "You're doing a great job ... 1
think. Are we free to go, now we're somewheres?" He
regarded the consulate, before which the transport was
just stopping.

"Nuts, you and Spry have a good chance of coming out
of this with your ratings intact, but for now David is con-
fined to the guildhall. You were not with him—you came
here with everybody else in Danae."

Nuts snapped his fingers. "That's right. In the excite-
ment of seeing Davey again, I forgot. It's not every day a
man's reunited with his very own apprentice. At space-
end, he was always out in the Buzzard, whenever I was
in."

"Wish I could believe the 'ratings' part," Spry mut-
tered to Penrose.

"Believe it. He's set his mind to it. I don't like it much
myself," Rafe said through unmoving lips, picking inter-
rupter circuit cards gingerly out of a terminal by the
doors. "You and I have some talking to do, about the
way things are and the way they're going to be."

"At your pleasure, first bitch. You know where to find
me."

Before Penrose had stowed the hard programs in his
coveralls, Spry had turned away, to find Shebat hovering
concernedly: "You have not asked about the Erinys, or
what will happen to Tyche."

"That's my apprentice." Spry put an arm around
Shebat, hugging her. "Nuts, this girl's my best piece of
work." Eyeing the intelligencer, he asked her, "Is he
mine to keep?"

"I believe he is assigned to you for a minimal interim
only. I am sorry about the Erinys. . . . Chaeron needs to
keep as much of this secret as he can."

"I know, Shebat. Cruiser-wipe is the only way. It al-
ways is. I've lived through it before; I'll handle it. 1 just
don't want to talk about it."

"Tyche was Just improperly programmed. They will fix
her."

"Please, Shebat. Not here. Not now. Not ever. I come
in from way too many sponge-hours to find an empty
cruiser that does not need a pilot, and space-end simply
vanished, and that cruiser brings me to Acheron, where

198

JANET MORRIS

one of my most venerable enemies has prepared my de-
fense and every fellow criminal of mine is exonerated and
happily re-rated and my own guildmaster tells me that I
had better realize who my friends are: all the proconsul
wants to do is wipe my cruiser and throw me to the ar-
bitrational guild in hopes that I can help him discredit his
crazy brother. I hope it will take longer for my brain to
bubble away than for them to break me down, but I have
got my story ready, and I would never jeopardize as sat-
isfactory an arrangement as this is to all concerned. I've
given too much for those pilots, and this guy here—"
he stabbed a finger at Baldwin—"to balk at silly little
things like indeterminate incarceration, cruiser-wipe,
perjury. . . .

"Ah, never mind it. Save for a tiny feeling that I might
have been better off to stay in Pegasus and not try single-
handedly to save the world, I've no regrets. Come see me
in the guildhall?"

"Every day," Shebat promised, but her voice was
husky and tremulous, and her gaze found nowhere to rest
save on her booted feet. Nor could Baldwin seem to fill
that lengthening pause, or Nuts Alien think of a single
thing to say. As for Ward, the intelligencer who had
learned his craft from Gahan Tempest—he was not dis-
comfited by the long silent interval in which pilots exam-
ined their mutual and individual guilts. He watched, and
he waited, alert but relaxed, missing no motion or shift of
eyes or the smallest sound that came from the lips of
David Spry.

"Let's see. . . ." Spry reiterated to Shebat, who had
come to sit with him in Acheron's only functioning pay
privacy booth while far off down the skywall Erinys
underwent cruiser-wipe. "We've got cruisers who disobey
orders, cruisers who initiate communications—in, out of,
around and through sponge" he ticked points off on his
fingers, "cruisers who jaunt about where they will
through space and sponge with no pilot or despite the
fervent protestations of same. The only thing we haven't
got is cruisers who tell jokes and smoke cigars.

"Worse ..." His tawny hair clung damp to his head.
His seal's eyes were full of suspicion. "We've a spacetime
manifold so complex that it's a good thing pilots are al-

199

EARTH DREAMS

ready madmen, or they'd go crazy, faced with boundary
conditions and special cases fulfilling every relativistic
prediction from Einstein-deSitter's particle horizons
through  Penrose-Percival's  'statistical principle of
causality'—disjoint spacetimes and all—so that initially
distant regions of space aren't causally connected, and
any isolate system in the past is uncorrelated with the rest
of the universe. On top of that, we've an artificial cosmi-
cal time-generator which facilitates communications by
violating CPT invariance for a fuck of a lot more than K
mesons, somewhere in sponge. Doesn't any of this bother
you?"

"It might if I understood it," Shebat sniffed hopelessly,
"What's 'CPT'?"

"Lords, Shebat: Charge; Parity; Time. Are you telling
me you've been flying in this manifold without under-
standing it?"

"The Marada understands it. And what matter—? I
push a button and a lorry starts, I don't have to have a
mechanical engineer's degree. It is well known that
women are at a disadvantage in areas of comprehension
of mathematical reasoning. This is all new theory. Every-
one else is flying "in it,' too, just as we have always been:

the actuality of pilotry remains unchanged. Theoretics
have no effect on reality, you once told me: physical
spacetime is not mathematical spacetime— law is not
mathematical law. The only thing which is different is
that the Marada can use Tyche^s booster. . . . "No,
Shebat, that is not the only thing that is 'different.' What
is different is treating physics like Consortium politics,
fielding mathematical double-speak to cover the fact that
these shipwrights don't know what they're doing! This
manifold's riddled with logical antinomies. You can't
bullshit physical laws. . . . Sorry, I did not mean to—"

Shebat was biting her lip, twisting her fingers on the
table, shaking her head. "It is just that I came here
thinking you would need me to hold your hand while
Erinys was wiped: I was not prepared for a lecture on the
feasibility of experiments for which we already have ex-
perimental proof!"

"Experimental proofs ought to tell you that the Erinys's
'individuality' won't be lost in that wipe—or so the

200 JANET MORRIS

Marada assured me. She'll just lose her memory of the
things I did to her, and that suits me fine, seeing as I am
less that proud of most of it." But beneath his gruff pos-
turing, Shebat saw pilot's pain. It was attested to by the
slick film of perspiration on his face, the rivulets mean-
dering from his temples into his hair.

"I have been called to Draconis by Arbiter Wolfe,"
she confided. "I wanted you to know before I left that I
tried to secure you the Erinys's master module, pursuant
to the guidelines of the Penrose—Raphael, not Roger—
amendment to the bylaws we secured in last year's strike.
Since you were never the pitot-of-record, I had no luck
with it. But Chaeron says he will try to introduce a bill
which allows rights of salvage retroactive to before your
. . . misfortune. Do you comprehend me. Master Pilot?"

"I am not sure," said David Spry very slowly.

"Chaeron is at pains to protect his mother's reputa-
tion. Any accusations of 'suicide' would be disastrous:

since, like; Julian before her, she will be duly stricken
from the Consortium census, eventually, her assets and
their distribution are in question. He must prove that she
had not abrogated her rights to them by shipping out in
Tyche, that what befell her was an accident, nothing
more, that she was not about to desert the family for
Bucyrus. ... To that end, he needs everyone's support,
He is making it worth your while, Softa, ten times over.
When he is done arranging it, pilots will be able to lay
claim to salvaged cruisers—to own them. Of course, cer-
tain long-standing pilots' immunities will have to be given
up to secure a vote on it, but consider: everything we
have always wanted lies within our reach."

"It cannot be." And if it is, he thought but could not
say, then Tyche, her twistor-clock and attendant spacetime
manifold augurs the dissolution of the pilotry guild, so
Chaeron is giving away nothing at all. . . .

"It is."

"I apologize for lecturing you, for underestimating you
once again, for being obtuse when your cruiser hinted at
this. . . ." He reached out and took her hands, pulled
them across the table toward him, bent his lips to them.

"Do not do that," She pulled her hands away, cradled
them between her breasts, peering up at him from under

EARTH DREAMS                          201

her black curls with a starved look he did not want to
see. "Just be my friend, Softa. I need you so desperately.
When I came among you, I did not understand anything.
Now I have lost even that certainty. I used to think that
someday I would open a door and step into a room
where everyone was just like me, that they would wel-
come me and I would not be lonely anymore. It never
happened. The dream dancers hate me and deride me,
because I am not like them. Consortium folk the same.
On Earth I am a misfit, and my cruiser tells me that my
husband knows what is best for me. Even the Marada is
not wholly mine, nor wholly trustworthy, anymore;

Chaeron has wooed him away from me. I need someone,
Softa, tonight when—"

"Shebat!" But though he interrupted her and lectured
her extensively on the dangers of paranoia to pilots, and
the extent of the cruiser/pilot bond, he felt himself slip-
ping into pity, into compassion, into emotions long de-
nied. "Your cruiser is trying to protect you," he
concluded. "In theaters of human activities, cruiser-refer-
ents only sketchity apply. The Marada realizes that the
projection of human futures is no simple matter of rela-
tive world lines, of inertial or accelerated frames, but too
complex even for complex numbers. He is giving you
good advice, Shebat. You should not feel betrayed, or
belittled, or anything but grateful. In this one instance
you have helped convince me that all axioms are useless
and your husband is not only your best hope,-but all of
ours. I have said to you before that your cruiser is the left
side of the equation which defines the potential of your
personality. And I have said to you before that no lover
sates like a cruiser, nor should you expect from mere hu-
man males what—"

Nuts Alien chose that instant to pound upon the pri-
vacy booth's door for admittance, his heavy, beard-bris-
tled features faithfully limned in the monitor perched
atop its lintel. David Spry, saved from he-would-not-con-
sider-what impropriety with his former apprentice by that
timely interruption, greeted Alien effusively. One of
these days, Shebat was going to find out that he was hu-
man, like anyone else.

202

JANET MORRIS

"Who is it?" she heard, from somewhere behind
Bitsy's back in the depths of Chaeron's suite. Her hus-
band appeared, a towel slung about his neck and another
wound round his hips. "Ah, Shebat. Bitsy, go find Cluny
for me, and bring him back here straitaway. Go on, go."

Then the youth had slipped by her with barely a flicker
of heavy-lidded eyes, and the proconsul was ushering her
within. "How is Spry?"

"Cranky. I wish we had not had to wipe Erinys. He
says he cannot reconcile the manifold's logical anti-
nomies—" In his sanctum, a massage table was pulled up
to a brace of consoles still reading-out lines of text.

"He's no fool; he sees the end of pilotry as he has
known it. No man cheers his own obsolescence. Sit." She
did, on the padded table, her eyes straying to the screen
full of print.

"As for wiping the Erinys, I hope you told Spry what
we are going to tell Wolfe and his pack: wiping that
cruiser's log was necessary in order to keep certain in-
criminating evidence from coming generally to light: the
collusion of my mother and brother in the attempted
murder of David Spry which was admitted by Marada to
Bucyrus—I've given you that surreptitious slate, taken on
March fifteenth by our secondary matrices in New
Chaeronea—and which is corroborated by Erinys's log,
makes it imperative that all charges against Spry be
dropped. . . ." He was reading, now. off the monitor.

"So, you've finished it. I am frightened."

He twisted around to face her, fingering his towel.
"Good enough. So am I, I suppose. Try to hold your
meetings in your cruiser. And push them if you have to:

though we are willing to submit this matter, to public ar-
bitration, we will settle for disciplinary measures to be
taken against my brother for his part in this reprehensible
action"—he grinned—"as well as for his deliberate and
concerted sabotage of the sovereign space Acheron
which this appended letter of disenfranchisement"—be-
gan collecting hard-copy from his printer—"reverts to its
owners, you and me, pursuant to the various articles
cited here in good order"—and held out a sheaf of cards
to her. "We are claiming all recovered cruisers as salvage

EARTH DREAMS                          205

for Acheron; we are claiming my mother's proxies in per-
petuity, putatively for my little brothers and sister. She's
not dead, so we've three years to argue that one. As
Draconis consul, you can point out that three consulates
have already disengaged from the Consortium because of
Marada's indefensible and unilateral disposition of the
space-enders, and that as heir apparent you are con-
cerned above all else with forestalling the uncoupling of
the entire Consortium by Marada's chronic solipsism.
Remember, you are just delivering these, and that you
have one response with which to quell any hostilities
mounted against you: you can make public this informa-
tion and sue for a vote of no-confidence against Marada.
Make sure they know that you will do it, and you should
not have too much trouble.

Stilt she had not taken the hard-copy, which elucidated
all their fates. "So simple?" Her mouth was dry.

He took her gently by the wrist and pressed the cards
into her unresisting palm. Smiling, he tapped her nose.
"You are the oracle, not I. I imagine that there will be a
great deal of ranting and raving and rending of garments. I
wish that I could do this myself, but you have the Marada,
and the Marada has my best efforts in the way of con-
tingency plans and fail-safes. Don't worry, you will be
fine. And you might come out of this as consul general."

"That is ridiculous. I cannot even control a hundred
dream dancers." She shuffled the cards in her hands,
staring at them as if she might alter what was written
upon them by that means.

He hoisted himself up on the table beside her, stiff-
armed. "Look here, Shebat. I had thought you would
realize on your own, after dealing with dream dancers
more extensively, that they are not what you wished they
were when first you came to Draconis and Spry hid you
among them. They are of the same genotype as those
who stayed on Earth exalting ignorance and superstition
while the rest of us went to the stars. It is a recessive trait
and it is stubborn. Our fractional citizens exhibit it, and it
crops up among the finest of families, making dream
dancers or fractionals out of the sons and daughters of
consular magnates. Dream dancers, like other frac-
tionals, are democratic evils. Those who have nothing to

204

JANET MORRIS

offer, offer nothing. Dream dancers make semiliteracy a
preferred state, and ignorance a virtue. Of course they
resent you, who dares to dance dreams which relate to
life, and not just to other dream dances. You do not ad-
here to their standards, which long ago lost relevance to
anything but other dream dances. Life, they feel, has
cheated them, so they cheat all others with dream dances
as empty and flat as their own experience. They accom-
plish nothing, so they decry accomplishment; they postu-
late nothing, so they refuse goal-orientation beyond their
limited capacity tp comprehend. It is worth mentioning
that without the support structures of technological so-
ciety which they deride, they would have no direct-access
code-ins so that they need not leam, nor a guaranteed
group of privileges including food, shelter, medical care,
and basic freedom from what was once the basic free-
dom—the opportunity to struggle to survive and re-
produce. Do you see? Like the Earthborn who were
culled from mankind's exodus to the stars by their own
refusal to embrace science, they minimize all things in
harmony with their intellect. If they are not capable of
understanding something, it is incomprehensible; if they
are frightened, the thing is inimical; if they are not com-
petent in an area, the area of inquiry itself becomes ex-
traneous. Those on Earth yet believe that the world was
created in seven days—"

"Six."

"Six. Well, they have promulgated that superstition
more that three centuries longer than it could rationally
be subscribed to, out of stubbornness and fear of failure.
Yet the very genetic predisposition which prompts them
to reject failure makes them incompetent in modem so-
ciety, where continual learning is required. To leam, one
must first admit that one does not know: we proceed
from failure to proficiency automatically, they cannot
bear to admit need-to-know, and thus cannot begin to
learn. So they are our failures: they do not change; they
fail to evolve. If there actually is 'sin' then it is this one
refusal to adapt. Even genetic aging demands that indi-
viduals evolve, both 'outwardly' in physical ways, and 'in-
wardly' by the effect of genetically triggered changes in
brain chemistries on the very quality of thought. You do

205

EARTH DREAMS

not think now as you did when you were fifteen: what
you want and need, and what you will risk to acquire
those things, are interlocked with the physical stages of
life quite completely. The genetic basis of personality-
evolution tries to protect even those it has crippled, in-
stilling in us altruism toward far-flung kinship groups
while it balances this by predisposing to selfishness to-
ward one's own family group. Thus you and I can sit here
and plot the overthrow of my brother while providing for
the continuance of dream dancers, and for the uplifting
of the 'underprivileged masses' of Earth—whether they
like it or not—without seeing any contradiction in what
we do."

"I see many contradictions," Shebat whispered, her
fingers white on the hard-copy. "My dream dances are
not empty."

"I said that. You are different, and we both know that
this is at the root of Earth's veneration of you as well as
its refusal to accept your fellow dream dancers as surro-
gates. Even if the quality of precognition were not miss-
ing from their dream dances, that they need the physical
paraphernalia of dream-boxes and circlets would be
enough to indict them in Earthish eyes as evil enchanters
and not representatives of the nameless gods. Shebat, I
never expected you to tame Earth alone, you must not
fault yourself. It is going to take many lifetimes, at this
rate, to make good citizens of them."

"What about me? I am one of them. You want to send
me off on this errand after delineating my incapability to
perform it!" Her whisper was urgent; she sat hunched
over. "I am a dream dancer and Earthbom, both!"

He put one arm carefully around her, kissed her
cheek. "Ah, but you are also a pilot, and heir to the
once-mightiest consular house of the entire consortium.
And you are my wife. And together, we are going to
restore our erstwhile consulate to its former glories,
while creating another redundant system so that ... if
we should possibly fail—and it is a possibility one cannot
ignore—in Kerrion space, life and limb and the evolution
of man—"

"And cruiser!"

"—and cruiser, will continue here in Acheron uninter-

206

JANET MORRIS

rupted. As my mother woutd have said, 'Nothing will be
lost.'

Just then the outer doors chimed softly, and youthful
banter preceded Bitsy and Cluny Pope, in the stark
blacks of an intelligencer-cadet, into view. "Good eve-
ning, Cluny," said Chaeron. "I would like to send you
down to Earth to contact Jesse Thome for us, something
none of my esteemed intelligencers have been able to do.
Before I order it, I need to know whether you see any
conflict of interest involved."

"Sir?" gasped Cluny, in concert with Shebat's sharply
indrawn breath and Bitsy's sotto voce, "Say yes."

"I want a report on his status, nothing more. I realize I
am pressing you rather quickly into service, but it seems
that I have no one else who can accomplish this particu-
lar task. You can requisition whatever you need in equip-
ment or support troops- The intelligencer who has been
overseeing your progress has given me good reports, and
will be available to you for consultation- What say?"

"Can I—may I take Bitsy?"

"That is up to Bitsy. Mistral, do you fancy a trip to
Earth?"

"Yes, oh yes, sir!" Long-lashed eyes flashed gratitude.

"Then help Pope get ready. I have no further need of
you this evening, and tomorrow I would like to see you
both under way."

When they had gone, he chucked Shebat under her
chin. "Do not look so doubtful. I cannot have you going
off to Draconis with a heavy heart because your militia-
man's future is uncertain."

"You mistake me Chaeron. I was only trying to imple-
ment the orders you left to recapture both Thorne and
Hooker, and thus prove my good faith."

He raised one brow, and sTid from the table, quieting
his terminals manually. The room grew dim. "So? Stay
the night with me and we will consider your good faith
duly proved."

"All right."

The Marada awaited his pilot in Acheron's slipbay pa-
tiently. He was aware of the dangers to be met in Drac-
onis. He had fail-safes and contingency plans aboard

207

EARTH DREAMS

him, drafted by the proconsul, with which to meet any
eventuality. He and Chaeron had worked on them to-
gether, man and cruiser in a link the candor of which
rivaled cruiser/pilot intimacy. He had overseen the re-
calibration of the Tyche and the partial wipe of Erinys as
a consultant, a dignity never ceded any cruiser.
Throughout cruiserkind memories from Erinys had been
shared, awaiting kinder strictures, the relaxation of op-
pressive laws.

Other strides he had made, both in comforting the
nonoutboard who had no human to whom he could turn
for comfort, and in solving certain of the conundrums
surrounding his own outboard, Shebat.

Chaeron had helped him find the key to Shebat's in-
arguably remarkable ability to dance dreams in which re-
ality was foreshadowed, and to pass by surveillants
unnoticed by even the keenest of mechanical eyes.

"Consider," had said Chaeron, "Whitrow's observa-
tion in the late twentieth century that the ratio of Hubble
time to the unit of neurophysiological time is almost the
same as the ratio of neurophysiological to the chronon."
Hubble time (IQi7 sec) was a still-valid indicator of the
time-scale of the universe; neurophysiological time (103
sec) controlled the manifestation of human thought pro-
cesses; the chronon (1024 sec) was the smallest increment
of measurable time.

For Shebafs singular abilities, the natural relation of
mind to time, on both macrocosmic and microcosmic
scales, had towering import. The Marada waited to dis-
cuss with his outboard abilities no longer tainted by
"magic" or "dreaming," but merely a product of her own
naturally innovative biological circuitry. Now he could
put all the pieces together, and present Shebat with a
world view in which she was neither maniac nor dreamer,
but merely well-encircuited in her native gravitational
frame. It had long been postulated that the geometriza-
tion of spacetime and the male-dominated sciences had
left underdeveloped an entire area of human concomi-
tants—types of reasoning as natural to womankind as
mathematical reasoning to man. With talent in these un-
derdeveloped areas of female/intuitive abilities his out-
board was amply supplied.

208

JANET MORRIS

Proud of himself and his magnificent Shebat, the
Marada rested in his slip, content with what he had
learned.

Only one thing which Chaeron has said made no sense
to him: "In certain ancient tongues, the goddess 'Hebat'
regulated kingship and queenship."

But then, outboards had one thing in common: they
were impenetrable at their root, only pretending to log-
icality, which they donned like clothes when it served
them, and stripped off whenever there was no need for
pretense.

The Marada, striving for an end to pretense between
him and his outboard, would gladly proceed into the
study of a macrologic wide enough to encompass every
proclivity and capability his esteemed pilot displayed. If
this made it incumbent upon him to trust outboards and
nonoutboards, to encompass humanness, or even to
tread beyond those endpoints of rational thought which
time and man together made, then he would do even this
to become indispensable where now he was suspect, to
prove that everything the cruiser had done, it had done
with one end in view: the furtherance of the potential
that lay between him and his beloved Shebat.

Chapter Twelve

"Sponge," swore Bitsy, "these clothes itchF

"Ssh," warned Cluny, flashing the other a disapproving
scowl. They huddled behind a convenient ridgetop boul-
der, overlooking the enchanters' camp in a verdant dell,
their horses tethered far behind. The June heat was abat-
ing; peepers sang their evening song. Fires were being lit
among the inflatables; cooksmoke added tang to the
smell of dusk.

A dozen tents glowed with internal fires; the rest—
twice that number—made do with oil lamps. It was a sad
little company, tattered and subdued.

Cluny and Bitsy had been observing them for three
days. They knew when the horse-line was checked, when
water was gotten from the spring which started from the
rock thirty yards to their left and muttered its way down
the incline to pool in the dell before it meandered south
and east toward the Hudson.

"There he is," Bitsy whispered.

Ctuny elbowed him to silence, not bothering to boast
that he had seen Thome well before Bitsy's first ill-con-
sidered outburst. His commander was unmistakable
among enchanters' soft, slight forms. Cluny threw a peb-
ble when Thome reached the pool, then another, and
raised his head and hand out of hiding when the second

209

210

JANET MORRIS

pebble splashed and Thorne froze, squinting upward,
hands on belted hips.

The signal, seen, was met with an answering one from
Thorne: Wait.

Finger to lips, -cautioning Bitsy's silence. Pope slid
down, back to the boulder, prepared to wait as long as
Jesse Thome might consider necessary.

He did not come until well past the camp's dinner
hour, and when he came he simply appeared from no-
where, soundless compared to the two youths' rumbling
stomachs and Bitsy's accusations that the commander
had not seen them after all.

"Well, scout," came a voice from the moonless night,
hoarse and cutting like a hostile wind, "have you escaped
one coven of enchanters only to seek out another? Get
out of here. Take your friend and make away while you
still can." Thome's hand came down on Cluny's shoul-
der; he smelled sweat like smelting bronze.

"We heard that Hooker holds you hostage—" As did
Thome, he spoke in their native tongue; Bitsy's com-
plaint at this Went unnoticed. "He has offered to trade
you to Kerrions in exchange for a multidrive and safe
passage to some cruiser they have hidden, we think,
among the asteroids—"

"We? Who is this 'we' and what are asteroids?" Cluny
felt the militiaman slide down beside him, draw up one
knee. Thome's soft gutturals continued: "As for hostages
and their taking, I cannot go among my own people, for
fear of bringing Acheron's wrath down upon them. Your
father's house is riddled with spies. Every door is closed
to me. With Hooker's enchanters, pretenses are false all
around. He thinks to trick the Kerrioris into giving him
whatever he wants by offering to trade my person, and
he thinks then to dupe them and take me with him in
some desperate starflight now that he is convinced he
cannot get his own enchantments working again. As for
me, 1 have no intention of going anywhere with anyone.
For the moment, we help each other: Orrefors enchant-
ers cannot feed themselves in the field without their tech-
nical supports. Acheron did away with Fort Ticonderoga
and the rest of their strongholds. But if I am to be hunted
by Kerrions, I would as soon lead them to Orrefors, and

211

EARTH DREAMS

not my own men. . . ." Silence. Then: "Are you part of
the Ken-ion 'we'?"

"I come from the proconsul with assurances of aid and
comfort. Commander, if you will only accept them!"

"Will you talk so I can understand?" Bitsy bleated in
Consulese.

"Bitsy! He didn't pay attention to the trainer, so his
Earthish is not good," Pope apologized for his friend,
and found himself wishing he could explain the other's
presence, suddenly unfortunate. "Chaeron needs to
know where you stand, sir. He wants to take out that
rebel crew down there, and would not chance your life
with theirs. . . ."

"So now I understand the 'we.' I wish I understood the
'why.' I am sorry, Cluny, that you have taken sides in
this. It is not ours to do, but a battle beyond us."

Still they spoke their own patois, soft murmurs in the
dark. "It does not have to be, sir. The sibyl bears good
will to you, and has protected you thus far."

"Shebat? Can you dream that her fondness for me is
shared by her husband? Scout, you have much to leam
about grown men and women. Judging by your compan-
ion, I am not sure you will ever learn it."

Thome shot upright; Cluny scrambled to follow, chas-
ing sounnds of leather creaking and cloth whispering, as
he had not had to do for many months. "What would
you, then?" he spoke to blackness, so that he did not
hear what Thorne had heard, or even realize that the
man was stone-still, listening. Oblivious, Pope rushed on:

"Stay here, and you will endure the coming of enchanted
sleep that kills five out of a hundred, drop like a horse to
snore belly-up. . . . You will end in Kerrion arms, now
or later . . . sir." A growl split the night, distant thunder.

"You think that? Or do you know it?" As the growl
grew louder, rolling toward them, rattling the ground be-
neath their feet, Thome grabbed Cluny by the scruff of
the neck, pulled him against him in a shattered dark
striped with lightning. "Cluny, I would kill any other out
of hand who dared to bring enchanters down on me!"
Spinning Pope, he marched him to where Bitsy yet hud-
dled by the boulder, pushed him down half atop the
other boy in the dark. When the light flashed again, Pope

212

JANET MORRIS

saw nothing, forced down with his nose in the dirt and
Bitsy's struggling form shuddering beneath him so that
the sobs which wracked Mistral seemed as loud as the
whine of the approaching multidrive defying gravity.
Thome's knee was in the small of his back, but he
thought only that Chaeron had not dealt fairly with him.
Gagging on dust, he felt his arms wrestled behind him.

The flares of lightning become a steady, blinding glare.
He wished that he had not betrayed the man he loved
above any other, then he wished only for whatever
punishment was going to be immediately forthcoming.
He had never meant, or thought, to be part of the cap-
ture of Jesse Thorne.

Thome sat calmly on the rumps of the two boys,
watching the haughty Kerrion descend the ramp of his
multidrive. Below, beyond the boulder atop the sharp
slope. Hooker's encampment was silent save for the soft
crackling of cookfires. The horses' screams had ceased as
abruptly as the men's shouting—when the vehicle swept
over their heads, spraying its beam of sleep.

Jesse had learned a great deal from watching Kerrions.
He learned more from seeing Orrefors routed by tech-
nologies mightier than their own. He had learned that
there was nowhere to run where the magic of science
could not find him. Hooker wanted to run to the stars,
but even that would not be far enough. ... He waved
companionably to the unarmed, enchanter-clad Kerrion
potentate, saying in Consulese: "I hope you will take no
offense that I do not rise." Under him, two young rumps
twitched.

The sibyl's consort smiled in their shared circle of
daybright light, came abreast of the boulder, put a leg up
there and surveyed what his magic had wrought below.
"I could have done this three months ago, if not for you.
You and I need to talk. Let the children go. If we cannot
find some common ground for negotiation, you can walk
away to whatever cave you choose. I can't use you
against your will."

Jesse shrugged, stood. The boys scrambled up spitting
dust and smearing muddy tears on pale cheeks. "Wait in

213

EARTH DREAMS

the transport," Chaeron snapped, quelling Bitsy's ex-
cuses and Pope's taciturn disclaimer of responsibility.

"He is telling the truth," the proconsul remarked ab-
sently, watching the boys stumble toward the multidrive's
open maw. "I used him to decoy you long enough to get
a clear shot at Hooker. Popi* would die for you."

"As Tempest did for you? I want nothing like that on
my conscience. I just want to be left alone."

"If you wish ... but hear me out, Commander, for
just a few moments?" Courtly, confident, calmly
murderous.

Thome's heart beat fast, watching Shebat's husband
perch on the boulder. One rush, a push, and he would be
rid of this particular harpy. But others, many others,
would come. The light from the multidrive illuminated
him in sharp relief, falling over his face at an angle that
made him more than humanly beautiful. "Go on, then.
Talk."

Tempest died for this man, purposely, purposefully,
Thorne had no doubt that in some obscure fashion the
one person among the skyfolk whom he had been able to
understand had had good reasons. If he could not see
them, that was a blind spot in his own mental vision,
come from staring at the brilliant face, in the same way
afterimages persist once a man has looked at the sun.

"Thome, I want to use you to bring about peace be-
tween the ground-dwellers and the 'skyfolk.' I'll let you
tell me how you think we can do it. Everything I have
tried has not availed. You are an expert in this area. I
can call on no one who understands Earth more fully. I
cannot spend the kind of time on this that I might wish.
It is simply a matter of benefit to your people: who could
help them better than you? Shebat assures me you are
the man to do it. You are an Orrefors heir, so 1 will bet
on your innate abilities to adjust and improvise. I will not
cede you any ground or mandated holdings: your family
lost this empire in fair commercial battle. If Hooker has
been filling you full of dreams of empires restored and
bondkin reinstated, let me disabuse you of dangerous
fantasies at the outset."

"I'll be leaving, just as you said I might. . . ." Thome
rose.

214 JANET MORRIS

Chaeron shrugged. "I cannot say I expected any dif-
ferent." He quit the boulder, started for his ship.

". . . Wait."

"As long as it takes. I know you are in your element,
and you know I'm out of mine."

"I want no talk of 'bondkin' or 'empires'. My alle-
giance is not for sale, or forgotten. I wish to rid the Earth
of foreign dominion by enchanters. If you let me go, I
will fight you until I die fighting you. You must know
that."

"I have considered it. But since you waste only your
own life, it is not up to me to stop you. Surely you realize
you cannot win, or even draw. You can only lose. My
society guarantees any man that right. I'd like to give you
more, but only my wife will be destitute if you refuse to
be reasonable."

"That is a problem between us I regret. If not for my
sins with her, we might have—"

"Easy there, big fellow. I was a trifle hurt when you
two did not see fit to include me in your fun, but I would
hardly call a few nights—"

"Is it nothing to you to be made a cuckold?"

"My wife and I have an alliance, a marriage, a profit-
sharing arrangement, and some stock majorities in com-
mon. Free will is another item. Although I would dearly
like to know how you renamed her, who considers pas-
sion an evil to which she merely succumbs . . . ?" He
trailed off, snapped his fingers, shaded his eyes and
peered hard at Thorne, who could make little of what
was meant. "Now, you have done me a great favor, and I
feel obliged to return it. Ask one favor, any favor, for
you have shown me what it is my wife sees in you. . . ."
He chuckled aloud. "And I assure you, I hold no
grudges. She is free to sleep where she will, as am I. H
that drove you to Hooker, it was unnecessary. And as foi
your imprisonment and escape, I have reviewed the
slates, and see for myself that you shot Rizk, who would
have corrected the false impression that / had died, mak-
ing Tempest's sacrifice useless and perhaps ending my
own life, to which I am very attached, as it were. Are
you not tired of running? Let me exonerate and enlist
you, man, and you can do a lot of good for the people

215

EARTH DREAMS

you say you have dedicated your life to helping. Other-
wise, they lose their best chance with yours. . . ."

"A favor, any favor? Give back what has been lost to
Cluny, to every ruined farmer whose faith is rent. Make
the false oracles tell true, and the world right with the
gods."

Chaeron-sighed. "No one can give you back your gods,
I am afraid. Shebat's the best we've got. As for Pope, I
cannot abrogate his rights of citizenship, even in order to
prove to you that I mean what I say. He is free to do
whatever he wants, and as far as I know, he wants to
become an intelligencer—like Tempest. He thinks he can
help bring Earth back from the barbarism your gods have
inculcated upon their servants. But you can find that out
from him." His eyelids flickered. "Meanwhile, I am
going to leave you two together to talk it out.

"Consider that you could arm your weekend warriors
and with our most concerted aid ferret out every rebel
enchanter remaining on Earth. Of course, you could not
cut them into little pieces, or whatever you are used to
doing to them, but you would have the satisfaction of
deporting them—enough to sate principle, if not passion.
Outlaws no longer, your men would benefit, as would
these environs. You could lift a state of siege that has
persisted for two hundred years. If you turn away from
my offer, you turn away from peace and cast your vote
for gratuitous violence.

"Should you decide in favor of civilization, come to
New Chaeronea, anytime, and present yourself at the
consulate. I'll make you special adviser to the governor,
and you can start rebuilding what you have helped to tear
down."

Thome just watched as Chaeron retreated without a
farewell. Cluny appeared in the arch of the multidrive,
and the two stopped and spoke when they met midway.

Then the lithe enchanter disappeared into his con-
veyance without taking a backward glance and Pope
shuffled toward him, taking many.

He had not risen, he did not rise. He squatted there
while the youth came up and stood over him, and while
the multidrive roared up into the sky, taking its false
daylight with it.

216

JANET MORRIS

"He says you can have all the horses that survived the
enkaphalin—sorry—the sleeping-beam, but not to go
down there until the crews come to collect their
prisoners."

"Cluny . . ."

"Thome. . . . Commander, sir, he is right."

"And I am wrong?"

"Wasn't what I meant, I mean . . . it's over, don't you
see? And something else is beginning. With or without
us."

"Go back with them, if you think that."

"I would have. He's assigned me to you, sir, until you
give him some statement of intent."

An imperfect dark settled down around them, speckled
with dancing blues and reds and greens from the bright
light's passage, faded into black. Thome welcomed the
cover it threw over him, the privacy of anonymity, the
room to sort out conflicting emotions he did not want to
feel without worrying about how it might appear to Pope.

A time later, the youngster said, "I never would have
come here if he had told me what he'd planned, but I am
glad I did. Jesse, don't choose the old ways- I have seen
so much and learned so much that is good and right and
honorable that I don't know how to begin to tell you.
There is room enough beyond the sky for everything a
man could want to be. You can have the best of both
worlds, and never take another life. The sibyl told us that
you would come to' this, and make a choice for life or a
choice for dishonor. Surely, this is that."

"Scout, you are too much like your new friends, these
days. And I asked her before about her prophecy, and
she and I agreed the time had come, then. So I have
passed that moment of choosing, and in my heart, fate
feels fixed like a barb. Do not press me. I need quiet and
time to think—and did I not, I still could not hear advice
from you and take it well. So stay, or go, but give me
silence. I will do what I will do, and when I know it, 1
will let you know it. Until tomorrow, bide, and I will give
you an answer to take back to your new-found friends."

During the night, he slept not one wink, but watched
the airborne crews drop down into the dell and remove
all traces of Hooker and his men and their enchanters'

EARTH DREAMS            217

encampment. True to the proconsul's words, no one
touched the horse-line. But the gift of horses did not
please him, as it might have otherwise. He looked upon
the future's minions while they took prisoner the past's
once-mighty enchanters, having effortlessly laid low
those Jesse had found too powerful to surmount, filling
the air with catcalls and jokes and offhand gripes about
the number of inflatable and the dead weight of uncon-
scious men who must be carried into the waiting vehicles
Cluny called "APCs."

He felt much too helpless, and too much like a fool. If
time were space he would have run back to his begin-
nings as fast as his legs could carry him, but not one
among the black enchanterbreds just waking on the
horse-line and lurching to their feet was fleet enough for
that.

He cast sidelong glances at Pope, who wore his hopes
unhidden and unashamed. It was hard for him to speak
at all, but he told the boy to make his choice of horse,
and to take his leave.

"What word for the proconsul?" the youth astride a
high, black back demanded reproachfully, while the
horse sneezed foam and danced in place.

"Say that I will talk to friends of mine, and come in a
month's time with a consensus."

"You will not," Pope blurted, his tears nearly over-
flowing, his chin quivering.

"Even I do not know that. Say what I have said."

He walked away before his own heart overflowed, to-
ward the horse-line where destiny had given him full
measure. With such stock as this, he could run, or fight,
or calmly settle down wherever he chose. But there is
always a price to pay.

In the bright noon light he turned them loose, and en-
dured their surprise, their Joy, their realization, where
before when he had pulled the nails out of their shoes
and pried the metal away from horny hoofs they had
snorted distrustfully and tried to bite his neck.

He swung up on the one he had chosen to keep, saying
to it that he was sorry he could not let it go with the
others, but that he would, someday. Then he headed it

218

JANET MORRIS

for Bolen's town, the closest place where a man might
get drunk enough to steep like the dead.

The argument between Penrose and Spry in Acheron's
guildhall had gone on for nearly an hour, hot and heated,
and showed no sign of abating. Pilots lingered in knots
close by and listened to talk full in "inertial" and "accel-
erated" frames, but only Baldy dared to interject the ob-
vious: "What difference can this make? We have done it.
Tyche has—"

"—received messages in sponge from the Marada,"
Spry interrupted. "The Marada found Hassid in sponge
and followed her out of there without a pilot two, no
three years ago. Tyche's not proved anything except that
the Marada is unique. I don't like these timelike geo-
desies and I don't like the fucking geometric extension,
and I don't like the goddam a priori assumption beneath
it all that time has multiple arrows. The holy universe is
complicated   enough   without   canted   spacetime
manifolds."

"Spry, it's simple. It is simpler, and simplest," Rafe
groaned, then put forth his two hands so that his ex-
tended index fingers formed a cross. He wiggled the lat-
eral finger: "Space," then the longitudinal digit; "Time.
Any event in sponge can be simultaneous to any thrice-
cursed event E according to A, B, or whomsoever, any-
where in the space axis. T always equals zero on the
time-axis for events in, or relative to, sponge, to any ob-
server. Twistor theory—"

"Ancestor worship," scoffed Spry. "None of this can
translate into realtime. You can't have durationless in-
stants, and you cannot tell me that everything that I think
happens to me in sponge over periods of weeks happens
instead in my back-brain in a pair of loaded instants."

"Everything you think, happens in a different dimen-
sion of time than that in which you manifest results of
that process. The Tyche's clock is the rucking spacetime
extension; the metric is superposable: tick, tick, tick. You
just don't like being made a fool of by a cruiser who
knows you're vestigial and in danger of extinction. Tyche
took me in and out of sponge without a glitch. This can't
be any alternative universe to the one I left, not with you

219

EARTH DREAMS

in it. I'm here and you are here. We both are here ex-
pressly because Tyche works. Now, that does not prove,
as you intimated, that we've got the theory right. But we
do have a working cruiser which does not need to refer to
a biological-clock to meet our travel-time expectations,
and which can communicate with other cruisers, in or out
of sponge, by the relatively simple mechanism of super-
imposing the proper instant at which communication
would be feasible upon the compendium of instants avail-
able to it!"

"And cruisers have been doing this all-time selection
number in spacetime for quite a while now without need-
ing to conceive of a different—"

"How do you know what a cruiser needs to conceive?"

"Enough!" Both looked at Baldy—white faced, mo-
tionless Spry, and Penrose, whose cheeks were flushed.
"Gentlemen, you want to solve problems, I have a real
one in need of solution. Will you both please come with
me?"

Out they went, through the pilots dotting the guildhall
who took that opportunity to declare for Penrose's side
or Spry's with raised fists or slaps of encouragement or
blue exhortations.

"What's up?" Penrose spoke for both, while Spry sim-
ply glared.

"We've got ten Draconis cruisers Acheron-bound from
our spongeway. We've got the most cockeyed declaration
of cargo you can imagine: they say they're the first of a
convoy—the first, mind you—bringing the erstwhile in-
habitants of space-end to their new home . . . Earth.
Now, Chaeron wants to know if that is their true status,
or if we are being invaded, and he wants to know it fast.
One of you could go to Tyche's berth and do some
snooping, but which'one of you, I'm not certain. David,
can you put prejudice aside long enough to help me find
out what Tyche's limits really are?"

"Yep. You want to know if there are more Acheron-
bound nonskeds on their way, right? If Tyche can do it,
we'll do it."

"Fine, Rafe, Chaeron wants to know if you can ask
Danae to verify bills of lading and—"

"//it's an invasion, she couldn't tell space-enders from

220

JANET MORRIS

troops of intelligencers. . . . Oh, yes she could. Weapon-
ry, numbers of folk aboard. Anything but cruisers?
Liners? Frigates?"

"The message I got gave an itemized schedule. But this
is an awfully big surprise."

"Who is the pilot-in-charge?" Spry asked. Baldwin
named him. Both men nodded.

Spry frowned. "Nuts knows him pretty well, I think.
Can you have him meet me at Tyche's slip—somebody
forgot to issue me intelligence keys." He grinned bleakly.

"I'll take care of that," Baldy promised. "Just do this,
and I will be able to."

"Where is Chaeron?" Raphael breathed as Spry saun-
tered off, whistling, hands jammed in his coverall
pockets.

"In Erinys, I imagine."

"How can you let him do these things?"

"Chaeron? All he lacks for his rating is a master-solo
flight, Rafe. Like any pilot, he thinks rules are for every-
body else. You pushed him into it, being so proprietary
about Danae. More to the point, how can I stop him
from doing them?"

"You say this to me?"

Baldwin's mouth folded like a fan. "We are all living in
the real world, here. I don't like owner-pilots, or Ker-
rions, and you know I have good reasons for both those
prejudices. But I would not be here to express my dislike
or my disapproval if not for this particular owner-pilot
who just happens to be a Kerrion. Erinys is going to be
Spry's berth, by the by."

"You don't think he's serious about that, surely?"

"He has declared that intention, as soon as due process
permits. In the meantime, Erinys is putatively Chaeron's
property, and a KXV, and although / can't influence
him, you are welcome, RP, to give it a try. Find out
what's coming at us out of that sponge-hole, and then
we'll worry about having an owner-pilot for our guild-
host." He clapped Penrose on the back, gave him a gen-
tle shove.

Walking backwards, RP objected his way down the
corridor until, to silence him, Baldwin hastened back into
the guildhall mess, where none of Rate's sensible and

EARTH DREAMS                          221

worrisome predictions could follow. But the devils were
loose: nothing was ever going to be right with Acheron's
fledgling guild when it contained both Spry and Penrose,
and would soon contain one Kerrion too many.

Baldwin, among his pilots, waited calmly. Whether the
ten cruisers who had popped out of sponge without warn-
ing were, as they claimed, arriving from space-end with
Earth-bound human cargo; or were really, as they
seemed, the advance shock troop of military action,
made no difference to Baldy: It was trouble, either way.

The Kerrion proconsul had been shivering with fury,
and told him pointblank: "I'm going to need an hour in
Erinys before anyone knows about this. Gag the traffic
controllers, or I will. And get every other vehicle we've
got out of the volume of space this bunch is going to be
traversing. If I get nervous, I don't want to have to worry
about innocents in the way."

Then he had taken Erinys out to space-anchor, alone.
Pre-rated and potentially acceptable, Chaeron Kerrion
was a capable pilot. That was not Baldy's concern. His
worry stemmed from the cornered-wolf grin he had seen
on the young proconsul, and the premature aging he had
seen there, and the rivalry grown poisonous between him
and his half brother Marada, whom Baldy knew better
than many—knew well enough to realize that the dangers
Chaeron anticipated were not specious. No act was
beyond Marada, who fancied himself Justice's instru-
ment, merely a scythe in a blind, unerring hand.

Chapter Thirteen

KXV 134 Marada bore his outboard unerringly
toward Draconis, pleased as a cruiser could be. M-87, the
galaxy central to spongetravel and that which hosted
Draconis, administrative sphere of the Kerrion consulate,
beckoned warmly in, radio frequencies already visible to
the Marada's "memory." They were going home.

Too long had his outboard been Earthbound, and too
long had he been docked at one of the universe's most
dismal outreaches. Draconis was full of Kerrion cruisers,
old friends, and fond recollections of days gone by.

Shebat would recover more than her spaceworthiness
in Draconis, if the Marada had anything to say about it.
This long dip in sponge had bettered her, already.

His time-align was reading out thirty-six "hours" left to
the sponge part of their journey when a Tvc/ie-shunted
Spry reached them with news that Marada's task force
was invading Acheron. The advance cruisers had already
arrived; space-enders were being brought to Earth in a
multitude.

The Marada experienced chagrin: he might have fore-
warned Spry of this fact: he had known of the task force's
destination as soon as the cruisers themselves had been
calibrated: since just before they entered space-end's
sponge-hole, Acheron-bound. But the Marada had been
lax, no longer concerned with taking care of everything.

222

225

EARTH DREAMS

Or rather, he had "everything" aboard him: he had
Shebat. And who could have known what reactions a
simple transport of humans from one locus to another
would evoke from their conspecifics at the point of
sponge-exit?

Spry was agitated. His toss of equanimity underscored
the import of his message: Spry, through scheme and
counterscheme, success and failure, incarceration and
doublecross, had never been shown to be at a toss. Even
when his mind had wandered in cruiser-realms, Spry had
always displayed a deep and contiguous sense of self.
"Let me talk to Shebat, Marada. Chaeron's on-line,"
said the grainy, tired Spry whose face appeared tran-
siently in his monitor, to be replaced by Chaeron's, strain
evident there despite the tenuous quality of the sponge-
shunted image.

"Chaeron, what does this mean?" Shebat gasped when
she had heard the news.

"It means you must be exceedingly careful. I wish I
had not sent you. ..."

"She can't turn around in sponge, Chaeron." Spry's
voice came from off-monitor.

The Marada was pleased to hear Spry state the fact.
He was not pleased that Chaeron thought Shebat would
have been better off in Acheron in the midst of an armed
invasion than within his hull. In sponge, in Draconis, in
real-time space or slipbay, the Marada could and would
protect his outboard.

"But can they do this? Turn Earth into a penal colony?
Legally, I mean?"

"I don't know. Possibly."

A silence stretched: Chaeron did not know? To say
something, Shebat said, "Shall I proceed as we had
intended?"

"Absolutely. You can reach me through Tyche and
Spry, or direct to Erinys. . . ."

"Erinys? Chaeron, what are you doing? This is
through Erinys?"

"A three-way link," Spry's voice-only transmission
confirmed. "Don't think about it too long, Shebat. Just
do your part."

"Spry!" Chaeron's rebuke reechoed around Shebat's

224

JANET MORRIS

helm. "Let's set up some data-codes, in case of need."
And he began contriving innocuous messages to be sent
in case of failure, and as warnings, and as ciphers indicat-
ing embarkation, headlong flight, incapacity to execute
any of those. The final coded message, merely a string of
numbers in cruiser-referents, was for the Marada to send
if he should lose track of Shebat or determine on his own
that she would need to be extricated by means other than
those the cruiser could provide.

When all contingencies were explored and escape plans
explicated, the three-way link through sponge was
dissolved.

Shebat sat curled in the Marada's command console,
chin on her drawn-up knees, "Well, Marada. What do
you think?"

"/ am sorry, my outboard, that I did not bring the con-
voy to your attention. But it is well that we are headed to
the source of the problem, rather than sequestered away
from it. The proconsul was in error when he regretted dis-
patching us to Draconis. The only possible solution that
futures projections will yield involve action by you. My
outboard, the arbiters in Draconis, who sent for you,
knew very well that by this point in time those headed for
Acheron would begin arriving. My own projections sug-
gest that they, too, seek a solution of which you are a part.
We are not without adherents, cruiser and human.
Cruisers strongly support a solution which allows for the
continuing production of AXVs."

And then, abandoning vocal mode, the cruiser Marada
showed his outboard how true those statements were:

down the corridors of achronal sponge her mind sped,
pinwheeling through Tyche's clock and out to cruisers ev-
erywhere in spacetime who listened, and murmured fond
encouragement to the only outboard among all outboards
who was remotely like them, and to the cruiser who was
the most that any of them could imagine a cruiser might
become.

Secretly, the Marada was relieved that Chaeron had
not recalled them: no cruiser had ever retraced its course
through sponge without first proceeding to make the obli-
gatory sponge-exit. The negative universe, which is en-
countered only at sponge-egress and never at sponge-

EARTH DREAMS                          225

entrance, must be traversed, else the time dilation ac-
crued in approaching speeds appreciably close to that of
light could not be cast off. If Chaeron had insisted they
return without first exiting sponge at Draconis' portal,
the Marada would have needed to find or create an inte-
rim sponge-exit, whirl about in a dangerously accelerated
circle, and plunge back into the hole from which he had
just emerged. Any of those were precipitate alternatives,
but less confounding than arriving back at Acheron years
later in future real-time. Sponge was adamant in that re-
gard, though amenable in others: time dilation must be
compensated for; the only configuration of spongespace
travel which allowed for this subtraction of years was one
which brought them through a parabolic of the negative
universe at the end of their journey, when inertia and
acceleration and the nature of sponge hurled them into
negative spacetime fleetingty, a precursor to crossing the
obligatory event and particle horizons which separated
them from real-time.

No time-align had ever been calibrated which could
count as much time as would pass should the dip into nega-
tive space be edited out of a sponge journey. No human
mind could extend or human biology comprehend the scale
or tidal stresses involved in such an alteration of pro-
cedure. Of all the possibilities and probabilities inherent in
spongetravel, that of turning around in sponge was the
least possible, the most improbable of completion, pilot
and cruiser intact and returned to their native epoch.

Although the Marada could have done it, had Chaeron
so ordered Shebat, and Shebat then instructed the
cruiser, he did not think it would serve the cause of the
proconsul or the purposes of his outboard to risk being
thrust forward in time so far that no proconsul, no David
Spry, and perhaps no Consortium, would still exist.

The cruiser had sent a curt "thank-you" of dismissal to
Tyche, in no uncertain terms.

Whatever they could make of events in Draconis was
better than finding themselves adrift in events whose con-
text was temporally foreign to them. One may argue with
arbiters, proconsuls, and consuls, but one cannot argue
with physical laws.

226 JANET MORRIS

Since her arrival in Draconis, Shebat had not left the
slipbay. Whether it was accident or guile on the part of
Marada which decreed that they be assigned the same
slip, number fifteen, which had been her cruiser's when
first Shebat had been given her ship by Parma Ken-ion,
the effect of that coincidence was considerable: Shebat's
mind turned to former times, when Parma had been con-
sul general and she had been awed by everything Ken-ion
and fearful for her magic's power, here in the harsh light
of Kerrion scrutiny.

The slipbay was the same: cavernous, strutted, with
cruisers neatly cradled like dark keys along a piano key-
board. Draconis must be the same, beyond the distant,
towering cargo doors, the blazoned dignitaries' doors,
the small, innocuous pilots' doors. Or it must look the
same, for like Shebat herself, everything was different,
now, than it had ever been.

She had been here five days. No greeting had been
tendered from the consulate. Beyond a taciturn official of
the pilotry guild who came to collect a log copy, and a
junior detailed at her request to deliver supplies to her
cruiser, no one had hastened to greet her. She was Drac-
onis consul. It was remarkable that she had had to sum-
mon her own secretary to slipside to take copies of
Chaeron's demands to Marada's office and to the office
of Arbiter Wolfe. The log copy she had given to
Guildmaster Ferrier's lackey was obviously edited. It was
worthy of note that no one had complained. In the old
days Ferrier would have been pounding on her cruiser's
lock within hours, enraged.

It must be the contents of Chaeron's packet which had
hushed them. She had had her doubts about going ahead
with the secession, in light of the arrival in Acheron's
space of so many space-enders, ferried there by a verita-
ble armada. The slipbay at Draconis was only half-full,
mute testimony to the feat accomplished: only Marada
Seleucus could be audacious enough to envision such an
act, let alone carry it out.

The ghost of him haunted her, though she exorcised its
presence assiduously, whenever she found herself dream-
ing of reconciliation, or of rekindling an old and smolder-
ing spark of affection. Once he had been everything a

227

EARTH DREAMS

fifteen-year-old Earth waif who served whomever her
innkeeper-master decreed could have dreamed of: chiv-
alrous, selfless, handsome, and bold. He had swept her
up into paradise. She had cast her finest spell, twelve
coils binding, upon him. And it had protected him from
the fruits of power and the ravages of time. She chased
his simulacrum away once more, out of her mind.

But when the image of the tall, dark-haired ascetic was
banished, doubts of more substantial nature crowded in:

Chaeron could be wrong, to push for secession now,
when no one could guess what Wolfe wanted, or what
Marada Kerrion might do.

The Marada had agreed with Chaeron: there could be
no more auspicious time. The Marada might be wrong:

timing in human affairs is not like timing in cruiser af-
fairs: men are not continent or consistent, like cruisers.
And Marada Kerrion was the most unpredictable of men.

It was well, then, the cruiser reasoned, that Shebat had
come to meet with him, since she was more difficult to
anticipate than any man.

Shebat fretted that Marada might not be in Draconis,
or that Wolfe might not be in residence, until her cruiser
pointed out that Hassid rested in slip number four, and
that Wolfe had called her in for this meeting.

"Then why do they ignore me? Why don't they
come?"

"Perhaps it is a matter of etiquette. Perhaps you must
invite them." As the cruiser spoke to her, meters twin-
kled, stacking and unstacking: her systems readouts glim-
mered in amber, green and red, mirroring her physical
stress, her monitored reactions a better chiding than any
additional or unwise words from the cruiser.

Neither of them wanted to state the obvious for the log
or for the record: the contents of Chaeron's packet were
potentially so explosive, and the demands attached so
high-handed, that whatever situation had prompted
Wolfe to summon her to Draconis could be either de-
valued or completely altered by its receipt.

They drafted and sent an invitation to both parties to
join Shebat for dinner in her cruiser at 2030 hours. They
requested departure clearance and sponge-way vectors
for 2330, 15 June 2252.

228

JANET MORRIS

They did not have long to wait for their answers.

Draconis authority swore that no departure-windows
would be available for thirty-six hours. Marada Kerrion's
office confirmed their dinner date. Wolfe's accepted with
pleasure.

Then the stipbay's emergency security-shields closed
in. Interrupter circuitry not even the Marada could de-
feat enwrapped them. Lights pulsed and homs blared
and when these had passed, the bay returned to normal,
but for purple emergency-flashers whirling in its comers
and the fact that invisible scramblers curtained each
cruiser's slip.

The Marada opined that this was just as well; he had
had quite enough of the hostile and abrasive "company"
of the Hassid.

Shebat thought that timing was paramount, and theirs
was beginning to seem less than perfect. She had negoti-
ated interminably, fruitlessly, with Hooker for the return
of Jesse Thorne; Chaeron had settled matters in less than
an hour by the application of "judicious force." Timing
was crucial: she had prevailed in theory over the objec-
tions of her dream dancers, because one of their number
took her part at a critical instant; in practice, all had
come to naught when it was seen by the denizens of
Earth that dream dancers could not deliver what en-
lightenment men like Jesse Thorne had come to expect
from the land of dreams.

Matters of negotiation have a way of presuming false
solutions, both her extensive experience in the field and
what Marada had learned from his one-time relief pilot,
Delphi Gomes the futuror, had shown them.

But one must proceed, in some seemingly ordered
manner, to act, while maintaining readiness to reevaluate
the basis of action at any time.

They had done their best to minimize risk: they had
laid their "givens" out and allowed arbiter and consul
general sufficient time to evaluate probable causes in the
past and results in the future. All that remained to be
assessed were human values: emotion, reaction, quality
of judgment, perceptivity of thought. When more than
one improvisational mind acts upon a data-set, possible
conclusions multiply exponentially. Nothing could be

EARTH DREAMS                          229

predicted beyond the reasonable observation that isolat-
ing the Marada from all data-modes could not be con-
strued as a neutral act. Their slip had been made secure
either because discussions soon to be underway there
were exceedingly sensitive, or because actions soon to be
underway there would be so.

Shebat had plenty of time to cycle through her own
doubts. She let fear and anger and frustration and sup-
position pass over her: all of these were old colleagues,
not welcome to a pilot, but understood.

When Marada Kerrion's long, black command trans-
port and Wolfe's open lorry glided in convoy up to slip-
side, she was thoroughly calm and as ready as cruiser/
pilot intimacy could ensure. The menu she had ordered
had been delivered by her office's staffers. Wine was
chilling and covered dishes kept themselves warm in the
Mflraoa's galley; the table had been set and the ruffled
feathers of chef and servers smoothed:

Yes, the veal was perfect; and No, she would not for-
get the ices. It was to be a working dinner; they must
understand, and not be offended. . . .

She had forgotten that facet of Draconis: work was
precious, a guarded privilege. Aspersions must not be
cast upon a person's usefulness. It had taken bottles of
Earthly wine and bags of coffee beans to convince the
"service professionals" that she had intended no slights,
had taken no offense.

Later, she would silently thank them for involving her
in their miniature crises of confidence, and thus lending
her a perspective on crises and on confidence which she
might otherwise have neglected in favor of self-absorbed
meditation on the possible ramifications of this meeting.

She had thought it out to the point of diminishing
returns.

The lock-chime alerted her. She watched them climb
out of their conveyances and up the Marada's ramp as
she pulled on her boots and fluffed damp curls out from
under her flight suit's collar. She smoothed gray satin
down over her hips, clasped the bracelet her husband had
given her about her wrist. She squinted at the woman in
her stateroom's mirror, and smirked an ugly, purposeful
^    grin: she could have been a walking log-box or an am-

250

JANET MORRIS

bulatory computer, for all the difference the impact of
her person or her personality was going to make upon
this confrontation.

The Marada's fotlow-screens traced her visitors. Mar-
ada Kerrion's wry introduction of Wolfe to his namesake
sent chills up her spine. With a pilot's curse she con-
demned him to life in the nether parts of one of the con-
sorts of the Lords of Cosmic Jest. Though who or what
she was, would not matter to him, just the sound of his
voice made her head spin: "Damn you, you'll not turn
me into a heartsick girl," she promised his effigy, then
went out to meet them in the corridor.

Wolfe was robed, an ambiguous omen. The skeletal,
aged countenance smiled benignly down upon her,
though she wore three-inch heels. He was carefully de-
corous; she took that cue from him, and greeted Marada
Kerrion as if nothing had ever flared, then died, between
them.

And Marada smiled from behind his beard and sent
incongruous messages with his wide, brown poet's eyes.

Her cruiser, who had greeted him by cruiser/pilot link,
knew better, and warned her with his musical chiming in
her backbrain: fury and desperation were her dinner
companions. Overestimating the delicacy of this situation
was impossible.

Consequently, she led them straight to the Marada's
galley, and fed them while they made polite conversation
and complimented her upon the Earth vintages she had
brought with her. "I have saved the best for you both to
take back to the consulate," she assured them, and let
them fill her glass, though she would not drink a drop.

When dinner dissolved into coffee and brandy in the
Marada's salon, she thought perhaps they had been
wrong to worry so, that Marada Kerrion was healed and
Wolfe only concerned that she maintain the fiction of
running her Draconis office, as he had intimated between
courses, while she had served him a palate-cleansing ice
and he had smiled disarmingly, appreciatively, up into
her face.

But then Marada said, "Now that you have convinced
us both that you are a card-carrying Kerrion degenerate,
graduated from Chaeron's finishing school with flying col-

231

EARTH DREAMS

ors, let us disabuse you of some misconceptions." He was
sitting slumped down on his spine in a deep chair, one
ankle balanced on his other knee, turning a brandy gob-
let in his hands.

Wolfe intervened, "Now, Marada, let us be civil. It has
been a pleasant evening, so far. Civilized." He was
standing near a quiet readout-panel, looking taller and
thinner than humanly possible in the Marada's soft, inti-
mate light. "I would advise that we proceed in similar
fashion."

Marada, feeling his glance, shrugged truculently.
Shebat, who had all she could do not to scream Let's get
on with it, sat on the edge of her desk console, facing
Marada's chair but twisted so that Wolfe never left her
sight. "Won't you have a seat. Arbiter?" she suggested,
and poured herself coffee from the service which
obscured the desk's displays.

"Sit down with my enemy? I suppose I must," he
sighed heavily, and took a chair, pulling it over. "Shall
we begin with rhetorical questions?" No one else said
anything. "All right, then. Shebat, I suppose those pack-
ets which Marada and 1 received are only two of volu-
minous sets of copies, waiting at various locations, from
which this information will be generally disseminated
should we reach no agreement or your welfare come into
doubt?"

"Of course."

"See, I told you. We cannot deal with them. Chaeron
has denuded her of whatever reason or usefulness we
once might have—"

"Marada," Wolfe rattled, "please."

"If you two think to play good-guy/bad-guy with me,
think again," Shebat suggested.

"And if .you think that Kerrion space is going to submit
to blackmail and underwrite flagrant illegalities, think
again," Marada snapped. The sound of his knuckles
cracking in series could be heard.

Gods, I still fear for him . . . I must take that spell from
him, or be forever bound, Shebat thought, and heard her
cruiser's approving assent like a silent rustle in her brain.
Looking at him was like viewing the most pleasing mas-
terpiece of forgotten art: feelings she had never wanted

252

JANET MORRIS

to understand or endure welled up in her. Her disgust at
herself came out in her words, but not its source: '7 think
that if you both think we believed, for a second, that you
called me all this way to sign papers which my pro tern
could easily have initialed, you are fooling only your-
selves. What is it you want, Wolfe?" With difficulty, she
broke the bond of stares grown solid as girders between
herself and Marada, and turned to Wolfe.

His mien was sorrowful, painstakingly so. "I called you
here, young lady, to spare you the disruptions doubtless
still plaguing Acheron during the transition period, . . ."

"What transition? You have no right to complicate af-
fairs on Earth, when you have mandated us to simplify
them. Chaeron's tenure there is open-ended . . . 'until
completion,' it says in his orders. Already, Marada has
made clear his intent to see that nothing is ever com-
pleted there. ... In one day, by Hooker's aegis, he un-
did six months' work. Tempest died of it. We will not—"

"Will you be silent?"

"1 am here, Marada, to listen. But you—"

"Then, listen. I will brook no interference with the uti-
lization of Earth as a fit and fitting home for space-en-
ders, whom my family, wisely or unwisely, went on
record as being anxious to rehabilitate. I have decided
that Earth is the place for them, and to Earth, from now
on, all criminals will be sent in perpetuity. Surely, as a
Kerrion who knows Earth better than any, you see the
justice in this?"

"I see no justice anywhere about. I see foolishness,
and vanity, and desperation. You had no right to destroy
space-end—which was used by all consulates—uni-
laterally. You had no right to commandeer Earth as a
depository for them, when you yourself have issued or-
ders—"

"Stop it. Both of you!"

"Don't snap at me, Wolfe," Marada grinned. "This is
just getting interesting. Tell me more about my rights,
foster sister. , . ."

"Shebat, if I may inject just one datum here, then I
will be going, and you and my esteemed e^-arbiter can
continue your personal quarrel without any unwilling wit-
ness. Yes? Good. Then: We called you here to explore

235

EARTH DREAMS

the possibility of transferring the consul generalship—
quietly and routinely—to you—"

"That was before you proved yourself a criminal of
equal magnitude to my brother. Softa Spry as an innocent
victim in need of pardon and redress. . . . Really, you
two have gone way too far. ... Sorry, Wolfe."

"You may yet be, young sir. Now, Marada wants to be
reasonable. Don't you?"

"Not at any cost. Only within limits."

"Shebat, will you withdraw the flagrant threat of re-
leasing this packet of potentially incriminating data from
our consideration?"

"You want to trade me the consul generalship for
Acheron and the Orrefors acquisition, is that right?"

"I'm leaving," said Wolfe. "This is impossible. I
should have met with you alone, as I had intended,
Shebat. Marada, you promised me you would let me han-
dle this. Shebat, the kernel of the matter is this: the guild
wants Marada back as an arbiter. We cannot have him
until some other consul general, acceptable and endorsa-
ble, is at hand. Your husband is not under consideration,
for precisely the personality flaws which his attempt to
blackmail us through you so clearly illustrate. Nor can we
advise your consul general to submit to this sort of
pressure. . . .

"Yet, we hoped you two could come to some agree-
ment. Short of the Acheron/Orrefors property dispute,
there is some room for compromise. The threats . . .
potentials you have at your disposal must not become re-
alities. We have lost ... the Consortium has lost . . .
three consular houses over the space-end affair. We may
be able to convince them to rejoin us, if Earth is honestly
touted by one and all as an improvement, a human-rights
victory, as it were. Now, we are not trading in
illegalities . . ."

"Then we are not trading," Shebat said quietly. "The
information will be released and Marada will undergo an
evaluation by referendum. We can clearly swing a vote of
no-confidence. This man," she indicated Marada, who no
longer looked amused, but fought his temper visibly, his
long fingers digging into his chair, "is responsible by
proxy for the murder of my son, for Gahan Tempest's

254

JANET MORRIS

death, for failing to intervene in the attempted murder of
Sofia Spry, then a duly installed Kerrion envoy to space-
end—"

"That's enough, Shebat."

"I wish it were. Wolfe, the information we have sub-
mitted is not inaccurate."

Marada snorted. "Sofia's not a pirate? Not the pirate?
Seven cruisers' crews murdered, passengers spaced—"

Wolfe crossed his arms, looking between them. "There
is no possible solution here. Two principals, both overly
emotional, cannot hope to make agreement. Good eve-
ning'" He headed toward the door, which sighed obliging
open.

"You come back here and sit down. When you're dis-
missed, you'll know it," Marada said very slowly, sinking
down further in his chair. "I want a witness here that I
did no physical harm to my foster sister. They'll lie about
anything.

"Shebat," he sat forward, arms on knees, chin on fists,
"why don't you be reasonable? Withdraw this material. I
don't even want to hear these 'secondary demands to be
explicated by our representative.* I'm offering you an
out. You can leave, go back and join your playmate, un-
obstructed." His eyes gleamed in a long pause. "Of
course, we would require guarantees precluding any sub-
sequent attempts at reviving this extortion. To that end, I
have taken certain measures. . . ."

She heard Wolfe's robes rustle as he sat heavily,
chanced a look at him, saw from his face that the worst
was yet to come and he had done his best to forfend it.

"Now, Shebat, you must consider mundane matters,
like funding and its sources- You two have used up your
own monies, gone past any hope of recouping your
losses. You face bankruptcy, and more: the licensing of
AXVs is to be held in abeyance, citing as sufficient rea-
son my poor stepmother's mishap. Her own assets, and
the younger children's trusts, can be delayed in probate
for years: she'd not dead, and you two have just shred-
ded the last of my patience. I'll take title to Acheron, as
soon as your dissatisfied clients find out you cannot de-
liver spaceworthy, licensed cruisers and sue you for
breach of contract. You'll lose your own cruiser—I'll see

255

EARTH DREAMS

to it—as well as every AXV and the last coin you've got
in your pocket."

"There's no way you can stop the AXVs," she said
calmly, though her voice sounded like someone else's in
her ears. "They're perfectly functional, revolutionary,
with communications capabilities—"

"That's why it's easy. They're too revolutionary. I've
theorists standing in line to swear that Einstein Locality
is not violable; you can't exceed the speed of light. Not
with communication circuits, not with—"

"Gods, Marada, it's still the cruisers? You're exceed-
ing Einstein Separability, or Locality, if you prefer, every
time you think a thought." She picked up her coffee cup,
held it away from her, let it fall and shatter on the deck.
"There's no paradox in the laws of motion: you drop a
cup, and it falls and breaks. It does not worry about the
difficulties of first needing to traverse half of each incre-
ment of distance, as it delineates them in its fall: it nei-
ther refuses to fall, nor takes an infinite number of steps:

it falls; it breaks. Paradox is of man's making, his mis-
statement of physical laws. Cruisers, like men, think. The
complexities of thought—everything that occurs between
the initiation of the urge to thought, and the phrasing of
that thought for speech—occur in an achronal
dimension."

Marada raised an eyebrow. "You've been doing your
homework."

"Softa had some probing objections. The Marada
helped me see that the flaw is in our conditioned biolog-
ical time-sense, not in time, or space, or spacetime. Time
is the primitive; all else must fall before its mandate. Will
you admit that I am right?"

"Never. I won't underwrite cruisers-as-intellects. I
won't stand still for blackmail, especially when I know
some of it is contrived: Spry and his cohorts are as guilty
as men can be. If I were you, I would not try to use that
packet as it stands—not with his innocence proclaimed
therein as one of many truths. That one, I can prove
false, thereby casting doubt upon the rest of it."

"Only by using your cruiser's data-source, which you
claim she does not have."

256 JANET MORRIS

"Let me worry about that." He stood up. Wolfe rose
also.

Shebat sat very still. "Just out of curiosity, when will
you be lifting the interrupter circuitry?"

"When we've decided whether we'd be ill-advised to
let you go. We might need to convince your husband how
violently opposed we are to his proposal."

"If they do not hear from me by midnight, Acheron-
time, they'll begin spreading the word."

"Is that so?"

Shebat watched Wolfe's face, which was schooled but
flawed: this was not what he had meant to happen. She
felt, as well, the odd helplessness of being caught in some
spacetime caustic where events were inarguably fixed.
She wanted to say that she would consider amending
some of Chaeron's conditions, but she could not. "Yes,
that is so," she lied. "Keep me here against my will, and
you will both regret it."

"Threaten me once more, and 1*11 have Acheron under
martial law and your husband in a high-security cell by
the end of the week. Be sensible, woman. I have more
armed vessels in that vicinity than have ever been con-
vened at one set of coordinates in the consulate's
history."

"Acheron can withstand any siege."

"Don't tempt me."

A hiss told them that Wolfe had made his exit.

"Marada, if we do as you say, will you abstain from
retribution? relax the moratorium upon the sale of
AXVs?"

"When I am certain of your compliance, I will lift the
ban. Of course, I will need the originals of the documents
concerned, logs and so forth. And I will have to have
Spry and the rest of the pirates." As he spoke, he moved
toward her. "Really, you two are insupportably naive.
One does not pressure a consul general with blatant un-
truths. The introduction of that pack of lies into other-
wise valid data throws all your assertions into doubt. I
should take you over my knee—"

"One more step, Marada, and I will . . ."

He moved forward; she invoked "passing by un-
noticed." From that phased state of hiddenness, she

257

EARTH DREAMS

stepped aside, her hands working. Behind him, where he
could not see, blue trails came to be in the empty air.
They emanated from him, not from the place where
Shebat stood, and drew away from him to be sucked into
her palms where they were raised toward his back. She
had the spell's words on her lips; her eyes were closed.
Having called back her protective warding, unbound the
twelve coils she had placed about his person so long ago,
she let her body reappear.

When he turned from searching beyond the desktop
for her, she was standing to his rear, arms crossed, chin
lifted. "How did you do that?"

"Do what?" she shrugged.

This time, when he grabbed for her, she did not evade
him, or even flinch.

"Shebat, be sensible." His fingers dug into her shoul-
ders; her eyes watered from the vehemence of his grip.
"Repent this attempt at coercion. I will be patient with
you. It is not your fault, but Chaeron's. His poison has
infested your—"

"—impressionable primitive's brain? You be sensible.
Prove your good faith, Marada. Let me go. Get off my
ship, defeat the security blanket, have your controller
grant me a departure-window. I cannot make any prom-
ises. I must talk with Chaeron." She put her hands on
his, at her shoulders, pressing nerve endings in his wrists,
levering his forefingers. His hands came away.

"Fine, the moratorium remains in effect. If any of this
information leaks, it becomes permanent. Call it a puni-
tive sanction, if you will, fair exchange for this kind of
treachery. Transmit my message to Chaeron. Go home
to Acheron and stay there. Send me my pirates. Be good
little Kerrions. . . . For your own sakes, be impeccable.
As for you personally, your tenure as Draconis consul is
terminated, as of now. You have been absent too long to
maintain any fiction of discharging those duties."

"Is that why Wolfe really called me here, to relieve me
of my post?"

"Hardly," Marada chuckled. "He almost had me con-
vinced that by ceding the consul generalship to you I
could deal myself out of this abhorrent double bind. But
you have managed to rouse my conscience—what is left

258

JANET MORRIS

of it. And, too, I cannot trust you to do the sensible thing
and give up this scheme of yours- If you should imple-
ment it directly after having been removed from your
consulship, it will be easy to point out that your ire and
your thirst for revenge prompted you to concoct the
whole of these unsavory accusations from little more than
the exigencies of day-to-day consular difficulties. , . .
Freedom to, my dear, and freedom from, cannot ever be
separated. Do remind Chaeron of that, when you see
him. And tell him too that you'd both have had every-
thing you thought to extort from us, merely by waiting.
Overt blackmail attempts were something we had not an-
ticipated, and tell me that as much as I would like to be
rid of this yoke of consular privilege, you are not a fit
replacement. Too bad, really. We were going to make
you consul general. It never pays to be overanxious."

Chapter Fourteen

"Gentlemen, I don't see what I can do for you,
beyond refunding your deposits. I'm virtually a prisoner
in my own consulate," Chaeron said softly from behind
steepled hands. Across the table, Andreus Bucyrus
chuckled, indicating that he recognized Chaeron's dis-
claimer for what it was. To Bucyrus's right, a swarthy,
bearded Tabrizi minister beamed vapidly, seeing the
other two bare their teeth. The beard hid his receding
chin no better than the smite hid his confusion: this was
no laughing matter. The cruisers his people had con-
tracted to purchase must be delivered. The Kerrion could
not be allowed to renege. Tabriz space desperately
needed these new cruisers, which were simpler to operate
than those with which his bondkin now struggled. He be-
gan murmuring introductory commiseration: yes, the
Tabriz family itself had been having trouble with the Ker-
rions' consul general. Yes, everyone understood the deli-
cacy of internecine gamesmanship, especially when rivals
were related. Why just last year they themselves h"ad un-
dergone a similar upheaval, and now—despite extracon-
sular doubts—things were better than they had ever been
in Tabriz space. But the cruiser orders must be filled . . .

"You damned fool camel-switcher, shut up." Andreus
Bucyrus wished the meeting had been held somewhere
other than the Kerrion proconsul's personal suite.

240

JANET MORRIS

Bucyrus would as soon not have seen it: the spare,
broodingty dark library was a rack-mounted jungle of
flush-set metering banks and corruscating displays in flat,
black housings. In its center was this one console, whose
operations functions were safe from unintentional or in-
tentional meddling beneath thick, smoked glass. The
only humanity in the room seemed to emanate from one
wall-mounted shelf where silver bookends held ancient,
leatherbound books. Sound was muffled, lights were dim
in corners; readouts danced silently, graphs only a initi-
ate could read. Here this man worked, in a place which
seemed better suited to one of Bucyrus's own computer
swamis than an administrator. What was he saying,
bringing them here? That the man who decreed
Acheron's splendor had foregone any touch of it in his
own dwelling spoke clearly: Look, I don't need any of
that. I need only order and access; everything else is for
show. The chair in which Bucyrus sat was uncomfort-
able—his and the Tabriz! minister's had been dragged up
from against the far walls. Bucyrus was willing to bet that
Chaeron's was perfectly suited to the needs of someone
who must spend a great deal of time sitting, that it was as
impeccably custom-tailored as the rest of this place. The
pause that had followed his hushing of the Tabriz! had
gone on long enough to have impact even upon the tittle
man's dull wit. Bucyrus broke it: "I've got a power of
attorney from Takeda space to come to some accomoda-
tion with you, Proconsul. Tabriz has sent Hammad, here,
along as an observer, and to let you know they're behind
us. But this is my party. We want those cruisers. And I
don't give a damn whether you can procure licenses for
them, as long as you can produce them."

The man who sat across the table console lifted one
eyebrow, stared for a moment into the quiet depths of his
electronics. "As I said, Bucyrus, I can't see any way to
get them to you, while my half brother is so actively en-
gaged in obstructing the sale of AXVs. My wife is yet in
transit, but messages from her indicate that negotiations
did not go well. I'm playing host to an ungodly number
of loyal Kerrion officers, black-and-reds and intelligen-
cers and the flotilla they arrived in, and they're taking
their sweet time about pronouncing the space-enders set-

241

EARTH DREAMS

tied in New Chaeronea. You're no amateaur. Just what
do you think would happen if I handed you those cruisers
while Marada's got his personal army in here?"

Bucyrus stroked his chins. "What I do with what's
mine is my affair. Original invoice dates precede Mar-
ada's moratorium. I'll hire pilots out of your guildhall, or
have my own people calibrate the things to tandem.
AXVs don't really need on-board pilots, if I still remem-
ber how to read. Let it be my problem."

"That's quite a problem. What makes you think I'd
risk an open break with my brother so that you can
thumb your nose one more time at Consortium law?"

The Tabrizi said, "But—"

Bucyrus's guffaw drowned him out. "Because it's time,
Proconsul. Because you're your mother's son and at least
everything she boasted that you were. Because you're
human, and human patience is finite. I'll help you, out of
respect for what relationship we almost had to one
another."

"Help me?"

"Don't feign innocence. Not even Hammad'll believe
it. Look, my friend, everyone knows what's going on,
and what the final outcome must be. ..."

"I don't. How could you?"

"Because I've dealt myself in, for obvious reasons.
I don't mind picking up the consulates the Consortium
is losing, and I don't mind having to sell these cruisers
for less than I could have, if they were licensed. But
I have customers waiting for those AXVs whom I
cannot disappoint. So if you can't deliver, then it is my
job—"

"—Self-appointed—"

"Be that as it may, it is my job to see that whatever
obstacles are in the way of our legal-when-concluded ar-
rangement disappear, and fast. May I assume that you
brought us here so that we may speak freely?"

"I think not. Minister Hammad, are you unwell?"

"Proconsul Kerrion, this matter must be resolved, and
quickly. / cannot go home without those cruisers. Failure
is unacceptable to those I serve."

"How unfortunate for you," Chaeron murmured.
"Bucyrus, I am not going to be subtle: any action by me
is precluded. I've just had confirmation that my brother

242 JANET MORRIS

is on his way here. Whatever you have in mind to say or
do to free those cruisers up, don't tell me about it. I can-
not help you, or accept or reject any sanctions to be ap-
plied by you. I am barely secure here . . ." He spread his
hands wide, dropped them slowly. "I must remain as I
am—a patient, long-suffering, minor Kerrion official. I
will not take any action against my brother beyond what
the law allows, and since you no longer represent a Con-
sortium-aligned consulate—nor you, Hammad—I am on
diplomatically uncertain ground even listening to this sort
of proposal—if proposal it is ... Don'1 answer that!"

The Tabrizi had'begun to explain. Bucyrus, with a dis-
gusted snort, overrode his impropriety. He and the boy
were coming to an agreement, no matter how circuitous.
"Our arrangement was made before the three consulates
formally withdrew, and thereby must be satisfied. I'll talk
to the arbitrational guild, Kerrion, and get back to you."
He thought he saw relief in the proconsul's eyes, so like
his mother's that they made Bucyrus uncomfortable. As
did the question in their artic depths, clearer than any of
his spoken words: If you're serious, why bring this goat-
herd? When the young proconsul took time to reflect,
that answer would become obvious: to make it seem that
nothing more than a grievance had been discussed be-
tween them, that no coup was under consideration, that
no insurgency awaited only the proper support struc-
ture—which he had just offered.

He was aware, as the Acheron proconsul ushered them
firmly out of the room and then out of his suite, that he
had been used. after the fashion for which the boy was
best known. His mother had said that Chaeron was more
data pool than human. Bucyrus had seen that side of him
for the first time. A less canny man would have come out
into the open, and allowed Bucyrus to drive a bargain for
his support, name a price for his aid, forge a link of joint
culpability which would be the first of many, binding
Kerrion interests to Bucyrus interests.

He had his heart set on that merger, or at least peace-
ful cooperation. If, to obtain it, he must act without as-
surances from Chaeron of more than mutuality of
interest, then that simply proved that the younger Ker-
rion was going to be exactly what was needed: a capable

245

EARTH DREAMS

consul general for Kerrion space. A shiver chilled him, in
that precisely temperature-regulated corridor, where his
men waited and Chaeron shook his hand and bowed to
the Tabrizi minister. He had lost a battle to this charm-
ing, low-key individual, and he did not feel his defeat.
He had gone in there thinking to extract commitment,
collusion, assurances of preferential treatment should he
do for Chaeron what the boy had not been able to do—
rid the consulates of Marada. He had come out with the
vaguest of permissions, amounting to no more than a
promise that the youth with the dark circles under his
eyes would look the other way while Bucyrus took the
risks.

He should feel thwarted, frustrated, even doubtful. He
felt none of that, but only self-castigation: bringing that
Tabrizi had been his mistake.

He rid himself of the little man and his own bodyguard
as soon as possible, and went seeking through streets full
of Marada's black-and-reds for Softa Spry, his abstracted
gaze immune to Acheron's beauty as it passed by his
transport's windows. This, like his data pool code-ins and
his driver, had been assigned to him by Chaeron's con-
sulate. Doubtless, every query he had made and every
visit he had paid were duly noted, analyzed, and inter-
preted by the proconsul's staff, many of whom, Bucyrus's
intelligencers asserted, were fanatically loyal. He could
see why; out the window he spied no sign of disorder, no
strain, no anxiety. If this was, as Chaeron had intimated,
an occupation force, then it was the most civilized puni-
tive investment he had ever seen in a disputed habita-
tional sphere.

Chaeron's data-sources were strange to him, their ma-
nipulation subtly different than those with which he was
familiar. Modem, as everything about Acheron was mod-
ern. Eclectic. Finally, after three false fixes on Spry, he
leaned forward and tapped the glass. The dark-haired
driver whos brows met over his eyes grinned and sug-
gested trying the pilot's guildhall. Bucyrus had long ago
learned that once one asks an intelligencer, one is bound
to take his advice. "Son, I might have a little trouble
getting in there. Can you clear it?"

244

JANET MORRIS

"Sir, you have the proverbial privilege. My orders
were to let you sit anywhere you want."

"In David Spry's lap, if you can manage it."

"Yes, sir."

"Let's drop the formalities, Intelligencer, You've got a
name, so do I." By the time he reached the pilotry
guildhall, Bucyrus was feeling a little younger and a little
sharper—and a little envious. The intelligencers Chaeron
ran were top-flight. He had recognized this one as Terry
Ward, Tempest's protege, from the dossiers his own peo-
ple had supplied him. But he had never expected to be
able to draw him out—or to receive a heartfelt offer of
assistance over and above chauffeuring. One wouldn't
like to think that in this calm and carefully controlled
sphere a high-powered bodyguard would be needed, but
it was nice to be provided for, especially when one is
about to enter the no-man's-land of a pilotry guildhall.

David Spry was brainstorming AXV program modifica-
tions with three shipwrights in the one truly functional
pay privacy booth in Acheron's guildhall.

"... I still don't see how this'll keep somebody with
illicitly-acquired access comes from stealing command ca-
pability. We isolated the master module in Tyche, Softa,
but that didn't mean the unit stayed discrete when the
Marada—"

"Does a sun have spots?" Spry asked rhetorically.
"Does a gravity wave collision create a spongelike sin-
gularity? A phase-shift chosen at random before each
flight will increase the probability of an interloper en-
countering wave collison in the matrix, and sounding an
alarm. We'll know if someone is trying to appropriate
control of the system. Beyond That—"

"Beyond that, these buffers mean that we won't have
cruiser-intellect on-line in the corn-circuits. They'll be
acting as passive conduits. It cuts down the security prob-
lems and the information print-through. Sofia's right. If
we're going to isolate these systems, let's go all the way
and specialize the circuits so that they've as little as possi-
ble to do with cruiser . . . computations," said the second
shipwright, smaller and thinner than the first, with sparse
red hair where the other's was black. Except for these

245

EARTH DREAMS

differences, the khaki-clad engineers could have been
twins.

The third—heavy, hairy, and most savvy of the three—
was frowning. "Softa, I like this approach, really I do. I
know damn well why you want it, and why the boss
would jump at a chance to make these modifications if he
beard we could do it, but I wonder if we can do it, and
retain the integrity of our system. We're cutting the B-
mode off from the other computers, little by little. No-
body knows how that's going to affect the system's deci-
sion-making on the long term."

"I just want to make sure that they don't start overrid-
ing us puny humans, that's all. I didn't fancy being carted
in here like the outmoded outboard I'm fast becoming. A
person's got to be able to claim that he's the pilot. Other-
wise, automate the cruisers completely. Take out the
idiot buttons and the manual override. I don't think you
people realize what you've got here. If you'd think about
it some. . . ."

A soft chime sounded. The, monitor above the door
showed Spry the pair seeking\access. He grimaced.
"Guys, let's adjourn. Do some simulations and permu-
tate the schematics, and let's get some-numbers for com-
parison. I don't know about you three, but I'm ready to
graduate from 'what ifs' to 'what's whats.' We've got to
look more deeply into what is happening here ... I don't
mind consulting, but I'm no prophet. And my shadow's
back." He indicated the intelligencer in the monitor, be-
low which a little red light had begun blinking.

When the shipwrights had departed and the intel-
ligencer had escorted the portly consul general into the
little booth and pulled back a chair for him, Spry looked
from one to the other sourly. "What is this, Andy? Are
you under close arrest?"

"Nothing like that, David. This is my—"

"I know what he is. Go catch some criminals. Ward.
There's nothing going to be said here worth repeating
while you're around."

"Spry, I'm watching out for the consul general."

"Do it from outside. I won't hurt him. Scout's honor."
When the intelligencer had left, and the monitor showed

246

JANET MORRIS

him postioned at technical ease on their portal, Bucyrus
began to speak.

Spry stopped him. "Don't you realize that there is no
such thing as privacy? You think he hasn't got an ear in
on this? Chaeron used to be Draconis consul. When he
and Gahan Tempest put Acheron's specs together, they
planned for every—"

"It's unimportant, David. And if you'll stop objecting,
this won't take very long."

"Did you work something our with Chaeron? Because
if you did, you'd better not tell me about it. I'm just
making myself useful until Marada's goons cart me off to
Draconis to pay for my sins—what few of them they've
got on record. Do me a favor and don't tell 'em anything
they don't already know."

Bucyrus urged his jowls into a smile, then scowled, sit-
ting heavily. "What kind of crap is this? I heard the same
sort of garbage from the proconsul. You can't expect me
to believe that you've thrown in the towel, too!"

Softa shrugged. "Believe it, don't believe it. I can't
blow my nose here without somebody collecting the
tissue for 'evidential analysis.' I shouldn't even be seen
with somebody like you. Kerrions can count, you know."

"So can I. And you're seven cruisers in the hole to me,
as it—"

"Don't say that."

"How do you people ever get anything done? Telepa-
thy? Secret codes? Innuendo can be misinterpreted.
David, I've always been a gambler. I'm gambling, being
here, gambling that you're still the same free agent 1 used
to know."

"I'm not. I'm a pilot accused of piracy and about to be
handed over to the arbitrational guild. Unless you can
wave your paw and change the future, don't mix in.
Don't tell me what you've got in mind, and don't remind
me of what I owe you. Take your loss—you can afford
it—and don't set yourself up to join us as one of the de-
clared undesirables of Marada Kerrion's sleepless nights.
He's about to clean house."

"I never thought I'd see it," Bucyrus shook his pon-
derous head so that the rolls of fat swathing his neck
undulated.

247

EARTH DREAMS

"See what?"

"See you lose your nerve."                  . -

Spry hunched forward, elbows on the table, shielding
his eyes with one hand. "I am just awfully tired of doing
the impossible. Nobody really cares to think ahead, any-
more. Or to listen to. . . ."

"Now you've got me worried. Since when do you care
what the spongeheads think, or the consular ninnies, or
the gods in Newman's heavenly manifold, if there are
any? Isn't doing the job the important thing?"

"I don't have one, right now. And I can't see any rea-
son—"

"That's okay, son. I've got just the thing for you. I
want you to take out Marada Ken-ion for us. No mess,
no fuss. I'll cover all expenses and call our debt even,
plus give you a bonus."

Softa laughed incredulously. "Where do you think we
are? This is Kerrion space."

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Part of that determination
is up to you."

"You know .1 never do naughty things if I'm emo-
tionally concerned with the outcome. Marada and I have
a long-standing disaffecton—"

"You got involved with this pilotry guild."

"And that's what put me in this position. Forget it,
Andy. I'm retired. Have been since before the Shechem
war. The person you want to talk to isn't here—" he
tapped his temple—"anymore."

"You and I made a post-Shechem arrangement . . .
something about pirated cruisers."

"Sponge, do you want to testify against me? They'd be
glad to have you." His seal-brown eyes narrowed.
"You'll Just have to write me off, Andy. I have."

"No chance. I've got my heart set on this. And you
haven't once said it couldn't be done."

Straightening up. Spry scratched his pierced ear. "That
kind of thing can always be done. But these people are
trying to help me; I'm not going to complexity matters.
Shebat would never forgive me. And if Chaeron wanted
to end his problems with his half brother that way, he'd
have done it by now."

"Kerrion authorities have got the licensing board in

248

JANET MORRIS

their pocket. The cruisers I came here to pick up have
been embargoed, pending reevaluation. They are going
to block the production of AXVs."

Spry winced, tippling his chair back. ' 'Are you
certain?"

"Heard it from Chaeron. If they didn't tell you, the
reason's obvious."

David Spry did not reply immediately. He looked at
his fingers, spread wide on the tabletop, then at the mon-
itor. "I've got a lady friend down on the planet, named
Lauren. Get her out of their reach, then come talk to
me. If we work something out, it's going to cost you."

"I brought my piggy bank. And I've got twelve AXVs
waiting and ready for me to take delivery, once this little
snag of bureaucratic paranoia is cleared up. From what I
hear, they're spaceworthy as is."

"Not exactly. We've been talking about extensive pro-
gram modifications. That's what I was doing when you
showed here. But that's my department."

"We're 'go,' then?"

"We're thinking about it. Do what I've asked you.
And keep that kid Ward with you. He makes me ner-
vous. He's too young to be that good. I wouldn't want to
be his first mistake."

"You were."

"What?"

"That good, that young."

"Then I reformed. Not nice to slow other people up.
They hate you for it. He'll leam. Right now, he's having
too much fun."

Bucyrus chewed his lip. "I noticed that. All right, I'll
ask for him to be assigned to me for the duration. Any-
thing else? Money? Assurances?"

"Nope. The former's incriminating and binding, the
latter's useless. Right now, you're just doing me a couple
of favors, for which I may or may not be able to repay
you. Slate?"

"Slate," puffed Bucyrus, rising.

Spry walked him to the cubicle's door, tapped it to
open mode, was inundated by raucous sounds of argu-
ment and revelry as Bucyrus squeezed out into the noise
and smoke and into the care of the talented young intel-

249

EARTH DREAMS

ligencer, to whom Softa nodded, and was answered by a
grin and a wave.

Then he took one step backward, oblivious to the
growls of a knot of men obviously waiting for the booth,
and the door smacked shut, cutting off exterior sights and
sounds.

A querulous bleat came from the time-clock set into
the pay-mechanism left of the door. He'd changed into it,
buying time. He could not have said why he was unwill-
ing to relinquish possession of the booth just then . . .
unless it was that he was taking Bucyrus's proposal se-
riously. He lay his head against his hand where it still
rested on the pay-mechanism. He needed time to think.
His mind was quiet, smoothed out like some
asymptotically flat spacetime diagram. The cool metal
against his cheek, vibrating almost imperceptibly with the
workings of the mechanism within, soothed him.

Standing there alone in the PPB, David Spry felt as if
he was waking from a long dream. It had been a dream
of patriotism and honor, dreamed by a man whose singu-
lar allegiance had always been to self and survival. For
almost five years he had been caught up in that dream
turned to nightmare, meekly submitting to the con-
sequences of idealistic actions mounted without regard to
certainty of failure. Chance kept score of a man's en-
deavors. Spry had known that the very number of his
successes was working against him, piling up percentage
points on the negative side of his luck index. When he
had taken a berth as Parma Kerrion's pilot in order to
direct an attempt by the Draconis pilots to separate
themselves from their host-consulate, he had done it for
all the wrong reasons: deep conviction of the rectitude of
the pilotry guild's bid for freedom, empathy for the
Space-enders, knowledge that without some professional
aid the guild's chances were nil. They couldn't go on
playing folk heroes, consumed by revolutionary fervor so
that their feints at consular authority were uncoordinated
and ineffective. He had offered himself and his experi-
ence in the shadowy undergrounds of covert intelligence
and extralegality free of charge. In fact, he had broached
the subject to Baldy, then Draconis guildmaster, before
accepting command of the Bucephalus, Parma's flagship.

250

JANET MORRIS

He had told himself then that he owed it to his guild,
somehow extending his stringent and personal sense of
honor so that whatever slights and indignities pilots en-
dured became his, also. Perhaps it had had something to
do with becoming first bitch of the Kerrion guild. He had
not really meant to top-out in the ratings wars, but his
competitive nature had gotten the best of him. After
that, he had lost perspective.

The whole time he had been first bitch he had been
playacting, becoming someone he might have been, had
circumstances been different. He should have realized
the danger: in-the two and a half years he had been
Parma Kerrion's pilot, he had accepted only one con-
tract: to deliver to dream dancers or otherwise red-line,
Shebat Kerrion, at the behest of a highly placed spoiler
in the Kerrion consul general's employ, who in turn was
implementing Labayan orders. Spry's orders had been
open: remove the designated party from play; method,
operative's choice.

In retrospect, he should have known then that he was
fooling himself when he went to so much trouble to
shield Shebat from any possible harm. Affection for a
target was contraindicated. But so was everything else he
had done for five years. He had let himself be taken,
along with the pilots he had enmeshed in the ill-fated
imbroglio, gone to space-end with them, suffered right
along with them though he could have extricated himself
upon numerous occasions. When he had thought of es-
cape at all, he had thought of it in terms of a group
effort. When it became feasible, he had calmly extended
the "group" to include the space-enders, one and all.

He had been paying the society from which he had
consistently stolen and upon which he had so successfully
preyed, in the only way he could: his beneficiaries, the
only subgroups of the quixotic''conglomerate he could
respect.

Instant psychoanalysis in a PPB? He raised his head,
crossed the booth, slid into a seat and punched up a neat
whiskey. When it slid out of the hopper, he ignored it.

Pilots became progressively frayed around the edges.
This simpler answer suited him better than one of self-
delusion mixed with altruism. He was not a man for

251

EARTH DREAMS

guilts, or for causes ... at least he had not been until he
bad taken Bucephalus's helm without wiping out traces of
the flagship's former pilot. Print-through? Maybe. He
had not handled his troubles with Bucephalus as well as
he might have. Pilotry had changed him.

But what, then, accounted for this return to his former
self? Part of maintaining a cover is believing one's own
story, becoming another person so thoroughly that when
you talk in your sleep, you stay in character. Sofia David
Spry was what David Spry had wanted to be—a pilot's
pilot, beloved by cruisers and respected by his
guildbrothers, mobile and privy to whatever intelligence
he could gather, outrageous and troublesome enough
that no one ever looked too deeply into the classic suc-
cess story he represented. But Andreus Bucyrus had
known him "when" . . . knew him well enough to know
that any time Spry wasn't engaged in a project, he was
available . - . knew him well enough to have been the
linchpin in the aborted project to resettle the space-en-
ders in Pegasus, to have been able to demand as payment
the pirates' stolen cruisers, to be trusted to execute his
part of the operation and to wait quietly until the time
was right, even to offer to arrange to have a Bucyrus
cruiser appropriated by Spry's pirates before Spry had
had a chance to demand it as a necessary sacrifice, an
obligatory covering-of-tracks.

Half of Pegasus was dependent on the Bucyrus trading
empire. Though free and nonaligned, Bucyrus space was
the colonies' link to high technologies. When, in 2234, a
band of teen-age guerrillas led by a fourteen-year-old
named Spry had succeeded in stealing an armed frigate
with Bucyrus call-letters, the ensuing furor had attracted
consular attention. Capture was inevitable. But the chase
went on for a year and a half before the revolutionaries
were apprehended, assuring both maximum sentences for
the terrorists and the grudging agreement of a nervous
colonial government to Bucyrus space's extradition de-
mands, six months later.

Pegasus' colonial justice was purposely primitive as
/compared to Consortium justice. When the extradition
orders were finally implemented, David Spry had already
spent three of those six months in solitary confinement

252 JANET MORRIS

broken only by irregular spates of corporal punishment
administered at will by vengeful friends of a guard Spry
had strangled with his own belt when the trusty had sex-
ually assaulted him.

In Bucyrus space, the penal system was self-contained
but "civilized." Mass and multiple murderers, however,
were not thought to be candidates for rehabilitation in
the quotidian sense of the word. Four months in a
Bucyrus high-security prison convinced the psychometri-
cians who studied the twelve surviving youths that there
was no inherent flaw in the consulate's shipboard security
procedures. The weakness lay not in their programs, but
in the inability of any security scenario to anticipate the
actions of an individual like David Spry—a bom engi-
neer, a mathematical savant, a twisted, multitalented nat-
ural of a pilot whose gifts had no chance of developing
normally in poverty-striken colonial environs. Intelligen-
cers were quick to propose that such a youth—amoral,
bitter, angry and blooded—could have his uses.

One day like any other, a battered, slim boy who no
longer looked very much like his dossier photos was
taken out of holding and brought before Bucyrus's chief
of intelligencers. A mission was offered, an assassination
in Pegasus' capital.

Through split and scar-twisted lips, a defiant seven-
teen-year-old demanded impossible concessions, astro-
nomical payment, and access to certain of his Jailers who
had been less than kind.

One of three seated men at the table before which
Spry was standing between guards had began to laugh.
Even then, Andreus Bucyrus was fat. And fast. He coun-
teroffered, "We'll fix your face, give you support sys-
tems, get you back in one piece. You can have your
sitting ducks, but only afterwards, and in the course of a
larger agreement. I could send somebody else out on this
one, someone I could get more economically, who would
be easier to field. We want to see what you can do. If you
are successful, I want to send you to school. That'll cost
me. I need a long-range commitment from you."

"School?" Spry remembered sneering. "You want me
to teach these guys? Impossible."

But they had worked out an arrangement. Subject to a

255

EARTH DREAMS

successful mission, David Spry's record would be ex-
punged, his Pegasus citizenship reinstated, money paid as
agreed upon his graduation from a six-month intensive
program designed to qualify him as an intelligencer, a
high school graduate, and a candidate for transfer into
the Draconis College of Astronautics and Space, where
he would be expected to function as needed until his
graduation therefrom, at which time severance bonuses
would be paid and Spry would become—as he insisted he
must, or gladly go back to modeling computers in his
cell—a free agent.

He did and they did and, though at the time he had
bated being manipulated, everyone benefited. His "Un-
cle Andy" had put him through school; he had rendered
services which made his subsidization a bargain. Those
who used nonaligned field operatives were not unaware
of his actions. When David Spry came onto the covert
intelligence market his reputation was already made; he
was much sought and well paid. His proficiency as a pilot
gave him mobility and the best sort of cover: blindingly
high-profile, he was enjoying pilot's immunities to crimes
other than those against the space to which he was cur-
rently in service. The covert intelligence community went
to great pains to keep its doings subterranean. No hint of
his avocation ever reached Consortium administrators,
this due as much to those who conceived such operations
as to men, like Spry, who implemented them.

This meeting with Bucyrus was contrary to every law
of their mutual jungle. Bad enough that the old man had
shown up here to collect his cruisers with a Tabrizi in tow
and powers of attorney in his pocket, unconvincingly
punctual. . . .

Spry blew out a breath. He shouldn't even be thinking
about the feasibility of what Bucyrus had proposed: he
had been out of circulation too long. He tore the foil off
the whiskey and gulped it down, crumbling the plastic
container in his fist. Ever since he had been convicted by
Marada Kerrion and sent to space-end, he had refrained
from considering his situation as remediable. When
Shebat had extricated him from that mild and thus most
galling incarceration, he had reacted like a pilot. He had
mvolved himself in the pilots' strike and let himself be set

254

JANET MORRIS

up by Ashera, afterward, for an obvious execution,
merely to get his hands on another cruiser and start
building a second pirate fleet. All were passionate actions
of a man who had forgotten many things in order to be-
come something else: he had cruiser consciousness to
consider, now. He loved the ever more sentient cruisers,
precisely because they were not flawed like their crea-
tors. They never disappointed him with selfishness or
shortsightedness. They never acted expediency, they
were neither partisan nor mean. They were worth a
man's allegiance, as no human he had ever encountered
had been. When he had betrayed the trust of the Kerrion
flagship Bucephalus, he had betrayed himself. All this
punishment he had inflicted upon David Spry, who had
disappointed Softa Spry, who demanded that he be what
he had been pretending to be, and meet his own
standards.

"That's that, then," he said aloud, the whiskey fuming
in his stomach. He had it figured out to his satisfaction,
no matter how unpleasant an interval this had been.
Where did that put him? Tense, was where. His calf tic-
ced, his shoulders throbbed. He leaned forward, elbows
on the table, rubbing with both hands where muscles rose
from back to neck. But despite his spoken words, consid-
eration of this alternative (where previously he had been
content to think no alternative remained) consumed him.
Was he giving serious thought to this because he once
again had no cruiser? Tyche's breed was the future, that
was certain. It was not possible to conceive an end to the
AXV program, no matter its current glitches or the phil-
osophical problems inherent in the math. He had been
perfectly content with the old, trusty, "heavenly" space-
time manifold as Newman had envisioned it and Ward-
Penrose had refined it and Kerrions had installed it in a
supergravity/supersymmetry context. The problem of the
missing dimension had not bothered him. Twistorially
real spacetimes with curvature still admitted hypersur-
faces. Though he had known for a long time that cruisers
were adding a second time-dimension, overridingly asym-
metric yet dynamically complex, he had seen no reason
to rewrite man's view of global spacetime. Yet, he could
see the benefit of having cruiser and human views agree.

EARTH DREAMS

255

If he didn't care whether the AXV program continued
then he would be dealing only with saving his skin, and
that was firmer ground. So shelve the AXVs. If he did
nothing, he would still face Marada Kerrion. Nothing
Chaeron was going to do could alter that, though he
would give credit where credit was due, even to Ker-
rions; the man had taken risks audaciously, partly on his
behalf.

He flicked a glance up at the monitor; the men who
had been waiting there were gone. He stabbed at the pri-
vacy-defeat, put a call though the data pool for Nuts Al-
ien, requesting that Nuts join him here, and let up on the
toggle.

Just a tittle bit longer, and he would have reduced the
complexities of this problem to manageable proportions.
To Spry, human actions all reduced to "right flat" to-
pologies once emotion's hidden variables had been
coaxed out and given values. This was most easily done
when only other people's emotions must be considered.

Therefore, he had a lot more thinking to do before
Nuts got here and he had to explain what he wanted. He
had to know what he wanted, and why, and how to get it.

Where he wanted to end up was at his own center of
visualization, whence he could sense the pattern which
would make the mathematics of human endeavor pen-
etrable. He wanted to solve for a point in spacetime
where he was alive, unfettered, possessed of a pilot's li-
cense, and free of allegiance.

There, he had admitted it. '

Now, all he had to do was make it happen, despite the
difficulties, from a polarized pilots' guild full of none-too-
friendly Draconis-allied Kerrions, while protecting peo-
ple he cared altogether too much about, who were liable
to get hurt should he stray from a very narrow, treach-
erous path on time-aligned action.

He nodded, still sitting hunched forward, eyes un-
focused on the table before him. The face of a boy who
had survived the brutality of Pegasus colonies formed in
the gray plastic's reflective surface, shimmered, became
once again the refurbished face he had lived with for
fourteen years.

He recalled Marada, in their school days, and endless

256

JANET MORRIS

verbal battles which had never quite come to blows. Here
was his greatest danger, his most terrible temptation.

But even this could be reversed, turned to his advan-
tage. Marada was making no secret that Spry's scalp was
number one on his list of collectable trophies. In fact, he
was coming way out here to expedite Spry's extradition.

He must let his hostility toward Marada go, to gain the
edge which would bring him out of this triumphant. It
would not be simple: Marada Kerrion had made his col-
lege years hell, rousing student opinion against him,
hoisting consular prejudice like a battle-standard. It went
back to a day when Spry had been sitting behind Marada
in a class on spacetime topology, and faced a surprise
quiz unprepared. He had tapped the tall youth in front of
him on the shoulder, asking, when Marada turned in his
seat, only for the metric specified in the text. Marada had
whispered it, adding, "You'll never get through it with
just—"

"It's complete, if every Cauchy sequence converges to
X," Spry had shrugged. "If not, not." He had gotten the
top grade in the class on that quiz, and on every similar
examination. But Marada could not forgive Spry's in-
stinctive ability, and never tired of baiting him. When
pressed to the wall with logic, Marada would introduce
Divine Will.

Their rivalry spilled over into nonscholastic areas, went
through women, into politics. There was no simple way
to wipe out years of hostility based upon the unfairness
of nature, to have endowed the one with natural mathe-
matical reasoning abilities, and the other with a humanis-
tic bent that made the abstractions of pilotry laborious.
So the feud had escalated, involving others, breaking
open when the pre-graduation ratings were given and a
girl they had both been seeing turned up pregnant, and
Marada disclaimed responsibility before any technical de-
termination of paternity could be made.

Spry had stepped in, whisked the girl into his murky
world of illicit contacts and nipped a scandal in the bud.
The girl was back in her original state, reputation un-
-diminished, in twenty-four hours. Marada, hearing this,
called Spry a murderer to his face. Spry had lost his tem-
per, spat some indelicate condemnations of consular

257

EARTH DREAMS

mores, pointed out that as an exchange student he had
no hope of securing a retroactive breeding permit, should
the girl's parents have been willing to accept a common,
non-Kerrion son-in-law—and in any case, the child was
most likely, by simple addition, Marada's. Marada had
then threatened to take the matter to the authorities, say-
ing that if the child had been his, then Spry should not
nave stepped in. Physical violence had been avoided by
only the most capricious of chances: Spry was speechless
with fury, considering the consequences of coldcocking a
consular heir; three people Marada knew strolled up
from rehearsal in graduation gowns,

They had parted without a word, and kept a mutual
silence which strained everyone who knew them and
lasted years longer than the short time it took for David
Spry to complete apprenticeship, race through his
qualifiers, and ship out as a rated pilot, back to Bucyrus
space.

All that was left of their long-standing quarrel was the
hatred. The reasons underlying it had long ago ceased to
matter. But every time they were within orb of one an-
other, their emotions flared. That would have to stop.
There was enough challenge here for him to want to suc-
ceed in defusing Marada, if only to' prove that he had not
lost his touch or his nerve. Already, he felt the hyper-
acuity he associated with contemplation of deadly risk:

the physical sensations, partly painful, partly pleasurable;

a sense of being high above himself, precariously bal-
anced, miles from his outer skin, and yet completely
aware of every iota of his biological person. Had he a
cruiser, he would have been able to see the concomitant
readouts. But it was unnecessary. He knew the signs.

Should he let Andy lure him into neutralizing Marada,
Chaeron remained to be dealt with. Whether or not he
was, as Bucyrus intimated, informed of and in tacit
agreement with the old libertine's objectives, Chaeron
Kerrion was problematical. He was a different class of
adversary. Nothing about him was simple, or certain. He
had gone to great lengths, recently, to look as if he was
pleading Spry's case. Let Penrose and Shebat believe it
was for them personally that Chaeron had endangered
Us own position on behalf of Spry and the other pirates.

258

JANET MORRIS

It was beginning to look to David Spry as if Chaeron had
been coaxing a number of interlocking solutions into a
neat line of which Spry wanted no part: Force Marada
into indefensible actions and someone must act to re-
move him, someone not Kerrion whose toes had been
stepped on once too often; assure that those toes would
be stepped on; then stand back and look the other way
until it was time to mourn and demand that justice be
done. Mea non cupla.

But he couldn't very well go to Chaeron and ask him
about it. Chaeron had more information about Spry than
Spry liked, but Spry had never been able to figure out
what Chaeron knew, and what he only suspected. Spry
could not risk turning suspicions into certainty: on the
one occasion when Chaeron had tried to strong-arm Spry
into his service, the conversation had been so oblique
that no substantive disclosures had been made by either
of them.

He was not going to chance finding out the hard way.
He would let things progress toward a possible solution
awhile longer, and time might resolve his gut objections
to helping Kerrions, even accidentally. If Chaeron was as
good as his word, and truly the altruistic champion of
pilots and cruisers he pretended, then Spry just might
end up with some of those things he had determined to
be desirable: rating, cruiser, freedom. If the above was
true, then the universe was really Heraclitus' ever-living
fire, Chaeron was the tooth fairy, and all he had to do
was ensure the continuing life span of David Spry.

"By the Jester's hairy balls, Davey, you look like
you've just lost your best friend," pronounced Nuts when
Spry admitted him. Alien was swathed in civilian finery,
a claret velvet suit with silver buttons which were
strained over his belly, a silvery shirt with ruffled cuffs
and billowy stock.

"Do I? You look like you've been at a costume ball.
Sit down, if you've a minute."

"I take that to mean you don't like my suit," Nuts
sniffed, lowering himself into one chair and punching up
three double bourbons on the waiter. "Have to guess
that you've forgotten your manners, like everybody else,
lately." The drinks started to slide out. As they emerged

259

EARTH DREAMS

from the hopper, he opened and downed them. "There,"
he belched, rubbing his stomach. "I'm recovered from
the insult. Yours, anyway. ..."

"Someone giving you trouble? With Orrefors and Mar-
ada's boys and Rate's Acheron-forever antics in here,
there's good reason to be careful . . . ?"

His friend's faring here mattered to Spry. But Nuts
would not be drawn out. "You know, I was standing at
the bar awhile, before I went to the can, and I saw R.P.
with Chaeron's little sister ... or actually, I saw Penrose
with some Draconis pilots, and her come up to him and
them have a little tiff. Then she ran off and he left right
after . . ."

"NutsF

"Look, Davey, you got me over here." He stabbed at
the waiter's touch-sensitive panel again. "1 can't say as
Fd push her out of my hammock. But anyway, 1 went to
the can and there's lots of new graffiti in there. . . ."

Spry waited for his friend to resume, but Alien was
opening another peelaway lid, this time with concerted
effort. "Like what?"

"Like, 'Spacetime is still a Hausdorff different! able
manifold' written across half a wall a dozen times in dif-
ferent hands."

"It still is, if you think about it the right way. So
what?"

"Welt, that's not the thing. The thing is, when I was in
there, some Draconis pilots were amending it... I know
you're sensitive, so I'll spare you a recitation. But if
something's not done about the friction out there soon,
there'll be trouble."

"That's RP's job. Tell him. Or Baldy. I've got no influ-
ence with the Draeonis cadre. But I do have a shaky idea
I've got to bounce off somebody I can trust. Promise you
won't laugh until I finish?"

"I promise," Nuts said gravely, his steady gaze show-
ing no sign of drunkenness.

"Hello, Raphael," said Chaeron softly, leaning against
the doorjamb in an unbuttoned shirt and old pair of trou-
sers. For a moment he looked at his bare feet, then up at
Penrose. "It must be 0300. What's up?"

260

JANET MORRIS

"I just came from the guildhall. Invite me in."

The unshaven, shaggy proconsul blinked, stood away
from the wall. "Do forgive me, I've become as graceless
and boorish as my counterparts from more 'civilized*
spaces, of whom I've had more than my fill today. Come
in, and don't mind the carnage. Those left standing are
the victors, no matter how bad we may look . . ." He led
the way into his living room, littered with cups and used
plates and rearranged furniture upon which half a dozen
people sprawled. Stale coffee and liquor and pungent
blue haze lingered in the air. Flowers wilted on the buf-
fet; the bar was a shambles.

"Baldy and the prudent left a couple hours ago. You
know everyone here, so you can help me say goodbye to
them. Ward, want to close it down?"

While the intelligencer collected hard-copy and hand-
terminals with translucent red covers that meant they
could not leave the premises, Rafe shook hands with a
husband and wife who were the ranking shipwrights; a
youngish arbiter, sanguine as Ward but diminutive; one
of Chaeron's distant cousins who was Acheron's trade li-
aison; and the chief dispatcher, responsible for Acheron's
port authority.

"Where's Bitsy?"

"Someplace where what he hears doesn't matter. I
gave him the night off. Excuse me a minute." He disap-
peared into the vestibule, thanking his guests for coming,
wishing them a good and productive morning.

"Sorry you couldn't make it, Penrose," Ward re-
marked, bent over the table, stacking debris. Already
any sign of a working meeting had disappeared.

"I wasn't invited, if that's what you want to know." RP
yawned cavemously as he sank down into the closest
chair. Putting his feet up on the table, he crossed his an-
kles, toppling a neatly stacked pile of dishes Ward was
making. "Fetch me a cup of coffee, will you, Intel-
ligencer? Black, no sugar."

Ward flashed him a cold look, but went to get it.

A few minutes later the door had stopped opening and
closing, and he heard Chaeron's voice from the service
kitchen: "That's fine. I'll finish up here. Go pretend to

261

EARTH DREAMS

sleep, or do whatever intelligencers do instead of sleep.
You have Bucyrus in four hours."

Chaeron padded in with two cups and a pot on a tray
while, somewhere behind him, the intelligencer rustled
his way out. His sleeves were rolled up and as he slid the
tray across the table's glass, oblivious of what fell to the
carpet on either side, RP noticed that Chaeron's hands
were trembling, that the veins on their backs were en-
gorged, that his lips were dry and cracking, and that his
pulse was visible at the base of his throat. "Must have
been some party, boss."

Chaeron, finished pouring the coffee, leaned over to
hand a cup to Penrose. "Have I hurt your feelings by
excluding you?" Rafe took the cup; Chaeron straight-
ened. "If I have, it was not intentional." He stretched,
flopped bonelessly down on a chair, legs out straight,
elbows propping him against its padded arms, fists sup-
porting his chin. "Baldy held up the guild's end, I assure
you."

"Assure me that you will get some sleep," Rafe said
over his steaming cup's rim. "You couldn't decide what
color socks to wear in this condition."

"Did you come here to put me to bed, then?" Chaeron
grinned, reaching for his coffee. "I've given up sleep. I'm
on the data-lines all the time, now. I just nap."

"I came here to dump a complication in your lap. Now
that I see you, I think it can wait until morning. And you
can live without constant updating for a few hours. Come
on, come out of there. Now!"

The proconsul cocked his head, giving Penrose a red-
eyed stare. "If you insist," he murmured, and Penrose
saw the change in Chaeron immediately. His abstracted
looseness evaporated, a visible tautness overtaking him,
though he sat quite stilt. "There, you have my full atten-
tion." He picked his cup from the saucer balanced on his
belly, and spoke from behind its rim. "I do need you
monitoring the guild, you know. Shebat's due tomorrow,
Marada's ETA is forty-eight hours after that. The con-
sular luminaries who were to take delivery of their
cruisers have been told they cannot be granted licenses—
some of them came all the way in person, inexplicable as

262

JANET MORRIS

that seems. Certain of them went to the arbitrational
guild about it, seeking a way around Marada's decree.
What it amounts to seems to be Bucyrus and his cronies
trying to force us into a gambit of some sort. I had the
most mystifying meeting with him today, after which,
Ward said, he went to David Spry and spent quite some
time speaking privately with him. We're looking at the
consequences of letting Bucyrus have his way. If he's so
anxious to make an enemy of Marada, I'm the last per-
son who'd move to stop him. But it is all very subtle and
much too convenient. Spry and the shipwrights have
been told to come up with program modifications to pre-
vent the sort of mishap we logged with the prototype,
and also to make sure that Marada sees we're modifying
the AXVs in an attempt to satisfy the licensing board's
recommendation, but the entire license affair is a sham.
Marada wants to scrub the AXV program only as a pre-
lude to taking title to Acheron, I would bet—which he
could conceivably manage */ we were enjoined from
cruiser production, or if I refuse to let him extradite
Softa Spry and the rest of those pirates and he finds me
in contempt and tries me for treason or what-have-you.
Sorry to have been keeping you in the dark, but now
you've been elevated to that state of blessed confusion
and transcendent consternation which the rest of us are
enjoying. . . , Any bright ideas?"
"Do you think you'll fight it?"
"Which 'it'?"
"Spry's extradition."

"Shebat will want to. In conjunction with a move for a
vote of confidence in Draconis, I might. We've delivered
a copy of our secession demands and Marada's nefarious
activites here to Wolfe in Draconis. Marada won't be
able to command the arbitrational guild's support. The
guild here found him guilty of sabotaging the working of
his own consulate."

"You sound like you're reciting from rote."
"I suppose I am. It has been a busy, trying period."
But you still found time to apply for a master-solo in
Erinys."

"That's next week, isn't it? I had forgotten."
"Not likely. Why are you doing this? Take it in a stan-

265

EARTH DREAMS

dard cruiser, an AXV, anything out a Kerrion Experi-
mental. That's like taking it in the Marada."

"I want a full-spectrum rating, Rafe. It is important to
me."

"Why?"

"I can't express it- Instinct. Have you ever stayed log-
ged-on to the data pool? Or to the secondary matrix? I
remember when I took only half-hourly updates, then I
doubled that. . . Staying with the sources is so similar to
what I think cruiser-linkage is all about. ... I won't
know why I want it until I've flown a cruiser into sponge
and really gotten a sense of it. But I know I need to
know what it is like. I'm not going to quit and become a
pilot, don't worry."

"But I am worried."

"Then come try the new *wet environment' I've just
had installed. It can deliver anything from cold rain to
sauna—twenty pre-sets, variable functions. You'll like it.
- . - Please?" He stood up, stretched, beckoned, headed
down the hall toward the bedroom.

"Don't pacify me ... Or get all seductive. I'm im-
mune to you," Rafe, following, called out.

"Since when?" Chaeron's words floated back to him
from around the comer.

"Since about the time you derided that your sister's
interest in me meant I could no longer be trusted." He
stood just within the doorway, now, where he could
watch the effects of his words.

Chaeron stopped still, his fingers at his fly. His mouth
twitched. He nodded. "I'll give you that. I'm just not a
nice person, anymore. At least I'm not sharing your
cruiser . . ." Abruptly, he bent and stripped off his
pants. Then, in briefs and opened shirt, he sat on the
foot of his bed and stared at RP. "But that's over and
done with?"

"At long last. It's part of the reason I wanted to see
you. ..."

"I told you, you and Penny had my blessings."

"No, you didn't. You told me you'd rescue me if I got
in too deep. But I didn't think. . . . Anyway, she's com-
mandeered a multidrive and gone to New Chaeronea to
sulk, or lick her wounds, or teach me a lesson."

264

JANET MORRIS

Chaeron did not do what RP had expected: he did not
interrupt, or ask Rafe how he could have allowed her to
do such a thing, or say anything at all. He simply lay
back flat on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Rafe walked over and stood uncertainly above him. Si-
lence stretched. Then Chaeron said, "You're right. Who
was duty officer?"

"It happened on my watch. She said she was going to
make me sorry, but I didn't realize . . . It's my
responsibility."

"I'm sending down after her." He lay a crooked arm
over his eyes. "I'll make sure there is no repetition of this
sort of thing." The arm came away. "Don't look so wor-
ried. Cluny Pope is in New Chaeronea with three good
intelligencers to whom he is giving the insider's tour.
They'll meet her at the slipbay." He patted the bed be-
side his head. "Sit. We'll have confirmation from them
within the hour. There's nothing to do now but wail. In
the meantime, you can help me figure out what Andreus
Bucyrus would want with that dream dancer Lauren—
why he would ask for her by name."

Spry made a deal with Bucyrus?" Rafe sat against the
headboard, folding his legs under him.

"I think that it's a distinct possibility. And if it is the
case, once Bucyrus has got her, we should see some att-
tempt to remove her from Acheron space."

"Do you want me to stop or facilitate it?"

"I think just keep your people out of the way, and
maintain the relaxations of protocol we have initiated to
reduce friction with the Draconis pilots."

"What's to keep Spry from sauntering down to the
slipbay, picking out the cruiser of his choice, and making
off in it? Look what you sister did. Things are too
lax. . . ."

"Leave them that way. And if you are concerned
about discipline, then stop browbeating my intelligen-
cers- You could never get away with it, but for your rep-
uted influence on me. If this little fiasco with Penny has
hurt your pride, you are too sensitive. No agenda of or-
ders or number of armed guards is going to keep the
members of my family from doing just exactly as they
please. You should know that."

265

EARTH DREAMS

"I must have forgotten."

"Don't take the risk of forgetting again. And don't
look at me like that. I may not be omniscient, but no one
else is, either. In a situation like this, the absence of de-
lusions of infallibility is all one can hope for. Marada is
going to have us all spinning around in circles summarily.
There won't be time for these luxuries—not for infight-
ing, or long, lazy talks, or niceties of strategy; not for
anything but thinking on our feet, once Shebat and Mar-
ada get here. So if I can remind you now not to under-
estimate Spry, I will have one less worry. It is Spry's
freedom which concerns both him and Marada—and
David Spry is very, very bright."

"A regular polymath. His kind of smarts can work
against him. . . . You want me to stay out of his way,
better say so clearly."

"I can't say what 1 want. Do you think I've a private
line to the Lords of Cosmic Jest? Some inside track on
the caprice of Fate? Things are gone far beyond rational
thought's ability to predict. When this is over I don't
want to have any regrets. The only advice I can give you
is the same as that I give myself: keep it moving. Use
happenstance and momentum—everyone's. Don't try to
slow the pace. I'm glad you came here with this minor
error, rather than with some irremediable one, like mak-
ing it impossible for me to find out what Bucyrus and
Spry are up to by closing down that slipbay too tightly, or
too obviously."

"Why don't you just call in one—or both— of them
and ask?"

"Now, what fun would that be?"

When Bitsy Mistral let himself into the proconsul's
suite at 0500, the extent of its disarray stopped him in his
tracks in the vestibule. He had come to work an hour
early, having prior experience with the aftermath of
Chaeron's all-nighters.

But this mess was worse than usual. An hour would
hardly be enough time to restore some semblance of nor-
malcy before Chaeron's breakfast must be ready. . . .

Cursing softly, he hung his coat and strode into the
middle of the room, where he stood, hands on hips, try-

266

JANET MORRIS

ing to determine if dishes, refuse, or furniture-moving
should be the first order of his day. Thus he heard voices
from the bedroom and set busily to work sliding back
chairs and couches, stopping every now and again to
shove discardables into a growing pile.

"Mistral, I didn't hear you come in." Chaeron's voice
preceded him down the hall.

Bisty, on his knees picking food from the rug, looked
up. "I didn't want to wake you if you were sleeping, sir."

The proconsul, toweling his chest, stopped where the
foyer ended and peered about the room in mock distress.
"Leave that. I'll have a wrecking crew in and we'll start
all over."

"It's no trouble—" Penrose was down there, around
the corner. Bitsy had recognized his voice.

'Come here, please." Chaeron snapped the towel over
his shoulder and leaned back against the wall, studying
Bitsy intently. When the distance between them was an
arm's length, Chaeron said, "Want to better your
estate?"

"Always, sir."

"The hard way?"

Bitsy smiled. "Is there any other way?"

"Not today. I have a multidrive ready to go down to
New Chaeronea and fetch up Lauren. You'll have to be
on it in half an hour. Still interested?"

"Yes, sir."

Chaeron nodded. "Good man. This is going to take
some finesse on your part. You're to collect her and take
her straight to David Spry in his guildhall. No stops, no
explanations or declarations to either New Chaeronean
or Acheron authorities. She's going to want to know why
we've cut her ground tour short. Your informed and
most secret opinion is that things look so bad for Spry
that even my hard heart has softened—dream dancer to
dream dancer, of course. While you are waiting around
for her to be delivered to the rendezvous-point, you'll
make contact with Cluny Pope. He may have my sister
with him, he may not. If he does and you can convince
her that this is no time for sightseeing, or if the two of
you can put a bag over her head. then bring her with
you. If he doesn't have her, or you can't convince her or

267

EARTH DREAMS

strong-arm her, make sure that Cluny has everything he
needs to stay right with her, and that she finds out that if
Rate or I have to go down there after her, she'll regret it.
And that I said to you that is she comes home now, of
her own accord, all is forgiven. Questions?"

"Ah ... no, sir."

"But yes, sir?"

"Yes, sir. That is ... why the secrecy; I need to know
what I'm not supposed to do."

"Very good. You're not supposed to let anyone sus-
pect that we're at all worried about Penelope, or in any
way draw attention to the fact that she's there, and there
despite our protestations."

"And in relation to Lauren?"

Chaeron's eyes met his. "You're not to deviate from
the story I've given you. Have her in Spry's quarter by
2200 hours."

Chapter Fifteen

David Spry held his dream dancer from behind,
one arm over her naked breasts, in a position that could
have inflicted permanent injury rather than nearly unen-
durable pleasure, if attempted by the uninitiated. He
edged his knees between hers and heard her gasp, felt
the bed beneath them tremble.

I can't," she moaned. "No more."

"We'll see about that." He pushed on her spine with
his free hand and was rewarded. She went limp in his
grasp, letting his arm support her, and he let her spasms
draw him over the edge.

He eased her down, rested himself atop her, and
stroked her moist neck until her panting subsided. "How
could you do that to me?" she shuddered.

"Practice." He slid off her. "Suit up, lady."

When he had his mil-suit and his coveralls on, she was
still lying face down on his bed. "David?"

"Right here," he assured her, sitting beside her, run-
ning his hand over her rump.

"What's going to happen to us?"

"Can't say. But you'll be safe. I've seen to it."

"Bitsy says—"

"—whatever Chaeron tells him. Look here," he
slapped her cheeks and she turned over, wriggled, buried

268

EARTH  DREAMS                          269

her head in his lap, arms about his waist, "you do exactly
what you are told to do, and everything will be fine."

"I don't see how. They're going to give you to Marada,
I know it. I can't live without you. . . ."

"You may well have to." He took a handful of her
pale hair, pulled her head up. "I have always considered
you to be an intelligent and capable female. Don't disap-
point me. I want you out of here in twenty minutes. And
I want you to promise me that you'll be a good dream
dancer and take whatever clients come your way in the
next few days."

She shook her head to free it. He let her go and she sat
up, rose, began to dress without a word. "Yffu're spec-
tacular, you know," he approved. "Lovely."

"Not spectacular enough," she muttered, sliding a nail
along the seam of her emerald gown. She fluffed her
hair, hiding eyes that sparkled too brightly.

"Come here, then," he said, and when she did, he em-
braced her. "Don't you trust me?"

"I ... love you."

"You don't know me well enough for that. You love
loving somebody who might not be around forever."

"I know what I'm saying," came her muffled voice
from his throat, where her lips were.

"It's trust, not love, which concerns me." He could
feel her stifled sobs. "By the Jesters, Lauren, now is no
time for this!"

"Then tell me what's going on."

"You are going on a tittle trip, I hope. Just take your
ticket from the stranger who hands it to you, no matter
how unlikely the bearer. And that is all I can tell you."

She broke away with a convulsive lunge. He did not try
to restrain her, just stood watching

"Why?"

"Chaeron sent you here, according to no one's timeta-
ble but his own. Icons don't have changes of heart. Since
we can't make this a pleasant interval, let's curtail it. Go
check in with whomsoever and get your orders."

"How can you be so sure I'll have clients? I'm not even
here, officially. Who shall I check in with? Chaeron?
Bitsy?"

270

JANET MORRIS

"I'd try Bitsy. He's close enough to the horse's mouth.
Now go on, get out of here."

"But where shall I go?"

David Spry grimaced, scratching his head. "Go over to
the consulate. Find out where they want you. Chaeron
and I have ... or had ... an understanding. If he
doesn't have some work for you, then he's playing a
number of people against one another to find out who's
in collusion, and why. If I were to tell you any more, I'd
hurt both our chances. But if you don't find yourself
busy, soon, then come back here. I have no objection to
you as a bunkmate, but it just doesn't compute."

"I'll tell you something else that won't compute. 1
won't dream dance Marada Kerrion again, if that's what
you think."

"Marada?"

"I spent one session with him and all he did was pry
me for information about you."

"When?"

"Mid-March."

"I see. Well, it's too late to worry about it. What did
you talk to him about?"

"Nothing important. I only said that you were alive
and well, and that I had faith in you and the others to
rescue all of ... Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Was I staring? I'm sorry. It's not every day one finds
a loose end and a loose tongue in an old friend."

"What do you mean?" She clutched her waist, arms
folded in.

"It is just possible that you were instrumental in Mar"
ada's decision to move those space-enders out here. But
it is not your fault. It's mine. Now go do what I asked, as
precisely as you can. Try not to volunteer any informa-
tion, or be deluded into thinking that you can determine
what is important and what is not. If you want to help
me, the only way you can do it is by cooperating with
attempts to remove you so that you can't be used against
me, or anyone else. Is that clear? Good." He turned his
back on her. "Good night."

In the Acheron consulate's teal-and-gilt function hall,
the homecoming reception for Shebat Kerrion was well

271

EARTH DREAMS

under way by the time its guest of honor arrived. Her
husband, talking with the Bucyrus delegation near the
door, disengaged himself, went to greet her, kissed her
hand. Arm-in-arm they promenaded, the ideal New Age
couple, handsome, gracious but aloof, his formal black-
and-reds a perfect complement to her full-dress silver
flight satins. Their heads bent together, they were smil-
ing, chatting intimately, approaching Bucyrus.

"Don't you ever wear a dress?" Chaeron breathed, his
lips hardly moving.

"Do you?" Shebat gave back, her expression sweet.
They greeted Bucyrus, his two aides, a pair of pilots,
drifted away. "Is alt this necessary?"

"What?" Chaeron accepted wine from a passing host-
ess, scanned the sea of guests, turned aback to Shebat.
One sip later, he took both their glasses and put them on
the same woman's now-empty tray.

"Unending pomp, welcoming committees at slipbay
with you conspicuously missing from them, Batdy's escort
of honor, that damn intelligencer of yours. I want to talk
to you . . ." Somewhere, music swelled.

"Shall we dance? It's our obligation to start this one."
He led her through a pair of double doors into an adjoin-
ing hall where live musicians played and chandeliers glit-
tered like stars.

She hung back, looking at the empty dance floor in
consternation. "Chaeron, I don't know how!"

Over his shoulder, he grinned at her. "I never thought
of that. No matter, we'll manage. Just follow my lead.
It's slow, so we can make a lovers' spectacle of ourselves
in good conscience."

Squinting, as if by that means she could lessen her cha-
grin, she let herself be escorted out into the middle of the
room, the slick floor jarringly hard beneath her boots.
Then he cradled her against him, his lips to her ear. "Re-
lax. Just step left and right when I do. Good. Now—"
over his shoulder she could see other couples venturing
out to join them "—talk to me. I've put the primary se-
curity matrix down for recalibration, the secondaries
erase themselves when anyone but myself tries to access
retrieval; our guests can't detect the secondaries, so their

272 JANET MORRIS

scanning shows them to be surveillance-free- It puts peo-
ple at ease, loosens tongues."

"There's Softa!" she said, then: "Thank you for invit-
ing him."

"My pleasure. We are expediting his exoneration . . .
or sponsoring a motion to that effect, at least. That is,
assuming you still intend to press for it?"

"I insist," she whispered, stiff against him.

"He'll want to talk to you, I warrant. I think you can
tell him whatever you like. I'd be interested in anything
you hear."

"Why are you not objecting that we cannot maintain
our stance as Sofia's protector's in the face of Mara-
da's—?"

"Because I have no way of knowing what will happen.
Your cruiser's log shows me only what they wanted to
show me."

"You have taken time to confer with the Marada,
then, but had no time for me?"

"I had a very delicate meeting with the Bucyrus-Tabriz
delegation which ran overlong. My apologies. I did try to
make up for my absence ..."

"With Bitsy? And Baldy? And Ward? Not one of them
can construct a simple declarative sentence. And I de-
brief to no one but you."

"So I found out." He winced as she stepped on his toe.

"If you ran the tog review, you know that I have been
removed as Draconis consul."

"But you are still heir apparent. Really, Shebat, didn't
you expect that? Marada urged you into office only to be
able to demonstrate your administrative unfitness by
ousting you from it. He knew very well that you would
not stay deskbound. There is no tradition demanding that
the heir apparent hold consular rank. I warned you when
first he proposed it, so transparent was his purpose. If
that is all that you lost in Draconis, we shall consider
ourselves fortunate."

"I almost called him back and offered to guarantee a
halt to your secession if he would actually step down in
my favor, but the Marada thought you might misconstrue
my intent."

"I imagine I might have. Not to mention the obvious

275

EARTH DREAMS

fact that they were not seriously offering you anything.
As I said, I took a look at the log of your meeting. 1
congratulate you on a difficult job well done."

"Congratulate me? I failed dismally. I cried halfway
home."

"What a pity. And for no reason. But may I take your
tears as a compliment?"

Shebat arched back to look at him. "My tears were for
Softa."

"You think I will not keep my word to you?"

"Up to a point, you will. But if your personal freedom
were endangered, or our primacy in Acheron, or the
AXV program permanently prohibited? Then, no, I do
not think you would adhere to our agreement... or that
I could demand it of you."

"I love you," he said, and kissed her ear. "Thank you
for being rational. But do not give up hope. I have ar-
ranged for our vote of confidence to be called by my
friends in Draconis as soon as the Hassid reenters Drac-
onis space from sponge."

"Oh, Chaeron, I am so sorry . . ."

"We have no choice." She could feel the tension in
him as he spoke. The music stopped, began again in a
different tempo. He led her from the floor, continuing:

"I did not want to drag us all through this particular mor-
ass, but Marada's actions demand an unequivocal re-
sponse. And who knows, I may be in secure isolation by
that time. I have to consider all contingencies."

"It is my fault."

"Greedy creature. I sent you there to bring things to a
head. We could have refused Wotfe's summons. We did
not. Though I cannot say I expected exactly this re-
joinder, I did anticipate something of the sort."

"You anticipated the arrival here of space-enders and
Marada's task force? It looks like an arms review out
there. I couldn't have gotten a parking orbit if I had
wanted one."

"No, I did not expect the occupation forces. Nor did I
expect him to put his scrapings from the bottom of evolu-
tion's barrel into my test city. New Chaeronea is, his peo-
ple insist, the only Earthly habitation which meets
interspatial conventions for convicts."

274

JANET MORRIS

The stress in his tone was evident but he left the sub-
ject before Shebat could pursue it, telling her, as he
shepherded her through the dancers and then the observ-
ers, of his sister's entanglement with Penrose and her
subsequent flight to Earth's uncertain shelter. "So maybe
I will have to send Rafe down there after her, though I
need him here to hold the guild-factions at arm's length.
Unless you think you could talk some sense into her?
Even Cluny Pope thinks that under the circumstances I
should withdraw my people from groundside. . . ."

"What circumstaces?"

"Bitsy was supposed to update you. . . .No? Marada's
black-and-reds have been vilely pre-emptory; they alien-
ated what friends we had made among the local popula-
tions, commandeering whatever residences they chose. A
woman was killed in a brawl between space-enders and
New Chaeronea's residents—a local woman. There has
been some evidence of what might be troop movements
in the hills, militia types; what we've seen from our sats
doesn't look like migratory animals or innocent field trips
or fanners bringing early crops to" market. I never did
hear from Jesse Thorne about coming over to us. ... In
general, there could not be a worse time for a family
member to be playing prodigal-among-the-pines. So?"

"So what?"

"So, do you think you could influence her?"

"Penelope? Never. Send Rafe, or one of the other
children. I—"

"Speak of the devil. RP, how are you?"

Shebat was polite to Penrose, but distant, and as soon
as she could, excused herself to find Softa Spry, hidden
somewhere among so many others. While searching for
his tawny, close-cropped head which, like her own black-
curled one, could not be seen over the crowd, she en-
countered Ward. "What is the trouble. Intelligencer?
You don't look happy,"

"Too many people." He was watching Chaeron, across
the room. "Tempest used to say that Death's a lady: you
can see her out of the comer of your eye whenever some-
body's about to die." He paused, flickered a look at
Shebat's face. "I'm sorry, I don't want to upset you, Mrs.
Kerrion. But I've seen what he was talking about ... a

EARTH  DREAMS                          275

sort of presence . . . and it's a better indicator than prob-
abilities or catastrophe math. Anyhow, I've been seeing
something like that tonight."

"You are giving me chills."

"I thought you would understand. ... I mean, Gahan
used to say you were an intuitionist at heart. Can I help
you with anything?"

"I'm looking for Spry."

"Right this way, ma'am." He bowed low, stood tall,
preceded her through the press.

"Here?" Shebat hustled to keep pace with him.
"You've been seeing that here?"

"At the slipbay, this afternoon; now here. Look, I'm
sorry I brought it up. There's Spry." He indicated a knot
of men which Nuts Alien was just joining. As the group
widened to include Alien, Spry was revealed, his arm
draped over the edge of a high marble mantle. "That
crew's enough to turn your blood cold: Orrefors and
Acheron pilots and pirates, all the best of friends. I can't
go over there without ruining Spry's evening: he's part of
my caseload. Look there," the intelligencer pointed out
two men in civilian finery nearby. "If you need anything,
we're right here." Then he gave her his data-pool code-in
number, saying that he was on open call, and melted
back into the crowd.

Half a dozen "pardon me's" and dexterous slippings
through ongoing conversations served to bring Shebat
abreast of Sofia, who yet commanded his mantled space
of wall. She touched his arm.

"Shebat." Spry's flat face lit in welcome. He intro-
duced her as his "dream girl" and deftly extricated them
both from the larger circle. "You've saved me from being
'Softa'd* to death. Once more, I owe you my life . . ."

"Davey?"

"What is it. Nuts?"

The broad man in gray satins shuffled close. He took a
breath that pouched his ample cheeks, puffed it out.
"Can I talk to you . . . ?" A tiny inclination of head
indicated Shebat.

Spry's assent was impatient. A surreptitious pilot's sig-
nal Gashed as he scrubbed short, tawny hair with his fin-
gers. Shebat knew its meaning: Proceed with caution.

276

JANET MORRIS

". . . about teaching you what you've got to know with
so little time and no safe place for simulations? You're
not taking your end of this seriously enough. Maybe you
could borrow this girl's cruis—"

"That's enough. I asked you not to discuss it. Now, I
forbid it!"

Shebat was saying, simultaneous with Spry's response:

"I never changed the Marada's keys. Both my cruiser
and I are always at David's disposal. The Marada loves

"Forbid? You scum-eating Neanderthal colonist! See
if I care whether you boost your arse into the next mil-
len—"

"Nuts! There's a lady present."

"Sorry, 'scuse me Mrs. Kerrion. But somebody's got
to talk Davey out oi . . ."

Spry stiffened. His lips drew thin, he shook his head.
"I told you I hadn't had much time to work this up, and I
told you I'd rather not have involved you to the point
where you could endanger us both, as you are now
doing—and you told me that you'd never do anything
like this to me!"

"Naw, Davey, you're amped-up over nothin.'. Boy's al-
ways crowding his head-room. We're talkin' about that
damn Acheron spacetime manifold, and making some ki-
netic statements, in view of irreversibility and all, Mrs.
Kerrion. -'Bout time pilots started taking an interest in
theory. Anyway, Davey's too shy to ask, but it'd do us a
lot of good to get a few secure minutes lined-in to an
inboard array like the Marada's." Spry took a threaten-
ing step toward Alien, ludicrous in light of the disparity
in their displacements. Alien raised his hands before his
face. "I'm going, I'm going. 'Bye, Mrs. Kerrion." He
winked broadly at her as he turned away.

"What are you up to, Softa?"

"What he said, if you want to stretch a point. I would
like to talk to the Marada, with your permission. Or take
a stroll over to the slipbay with you; your august pres-
ence will keep the goons away. Shall we?"

"I'd like that very much," Shebat said, ignoring the
sudden dryness of her mouth 'and elevation of her pulse-
rate.

EARTH  DREAMS                             277

They had negotiated their way through the double
doors when Andreus Bucyrus with the swarthy Tabrizi,
Hammad, barred their path. Spry endured introductions
with obvious displeasure. By the time Shebat had shaken
hands with Hammad, Bucyrus was frowning. "Sloppy,"
the fat patriarch criticized.

"You want neat, get somebody else," Spry said flatly.

The Tabriz minister looked from face to face. He
smiled uncertainly at Shebat. "My consulese is never up
to this sort of thing," he sighed. "Do you not find the
mysterious annoying, even insulting. Consul?"

fix-consul. Minister. My stepbrother has seen fit to re-
move me." She tried to listen to what was said by
Bucyrus to Spry, despite the Tabrizi's singsong chatter.
The little, sanguine man had her by the elbow, intent on
pulling her off to see an um in which a flower he could
not name awaited her appreciation of its beauty.

"Did you get your troubles with Acheron authorities
settled?" Spry asked Bucyrus.

"Regarding the AXVs, no. But the perishable cargo I
was waiting for has arrived. I'm sending that load on
ahead. There's no telling how long I'll have to stay here.
Mrs. Kerrion, is there anything you can do to help us
convince your husband that he must release to us our
duly-purchased cruisers, no matter what spurious objec-
tions Marada has fabricated? I assure you, we are quite
capable of obtaining our own licenses. It is merely a mat-
ter of applying the requisite pressures. . . ."

"Easier than it will be when my stepbrother gets here,
you mean. I don't know if there is anything I can do, but
I will certainly try," she promised, no longer able to po-
litely forestall the Tabrizi's demands that she allow him
to prove to her that even the most glorious flowers in
Acheron must wilt in shame before her beauty-

Not for ten minutes did Spry come to rescue her, insis-
ting that right now was the most opportune of moments
for slipping off to the Marada to talk.

When they arrived there, purple flashers were strobing
and ambulances were parked by the supply depot, sur-
rounded by security lorries full of red-and-blacks in
crowd-control armor. Into a closed van men were being

278

JANET MORRIS

loaded: Acheron. Draconis, Orrefors pilots; slipbay and
maintenance personnel.

To Shebal's pleas that they go see what had happened,
Spry answered laconically that they could get it through
the data-base. By the time the last ambulance pulled
away, a formal statement of census- had been issued.
Publicly rebuked, the twenty-odd uninjured participants
were released, the injuries suffered by six technicians and
two slipbosses proclaimed an unfortunate but attested ac-
cident. Despite this, Shebat could not help thinking of
the intelligencer who had told her earlier that Death was
abroad that evening.

Soon, though, the significance of the bail-out programs
Spry was loading made her forget the intelligencer's pre-
diction. "Sofia, you cannot be serious," she gasped as
the Marada scrolled columns of figures representing rates
of acceleration and accrued time dilation and ejection
vectors and percentages of survival for numerous sub-
headed configurations.

"It's against my religion not to prepare for every
contingency."

"Don't you trust Chaeron?"

"I trust him to do pretty much what I would do in his
place: the most sensible thing. Speaking of trust, I'd like
to trust you and the Marada to keep your ears open for a
rescue beacon somewhere in this time-frame." He tapped
the screen, sat back, hands laced behind his head, neck
craned so that he could see her, hovering behind his seat.
They regarded each other, upside down in one another's
view.

"Just like old times?" Shebal murmured. "You know I
cannot refuse. Don't put me in the position of having to
betray my husband."

"I didn't say anything like that."

But she leaned down and kissed him. After too long,
she raised her head, came around and sat on the second-
ary acceleration couch's arm. He ran his palm along her
satined spine. "The sum of two pilots is a negative num-
ber," he reminded her.

She stared straight ahead, at the baleful complexity in
the simulations monitor.

"The Marada doesn't think this is a good idea."

279

EARTH DREAMS

"I'm sure I agree with him, both about the numbers,"
he scowled at the tables glowing greenly on the simula-
tor, "and about what you're thinking. As far as I'm con-
cerned, I'm not a condemned man. And if I were, you're
not my idea of a last meal. So let's not get emotional, or
charitable, and let's not be childish. Go find something to
do for an hour or so, and let me run my homework. Then
if you still need your cargo bay loaded, I'll gladly oblige
you."

She stuck her tongue out at him, getting up stiffly,
"That won't work. You can't offend me. I know you too
well."

Ever since his mother's mishap, Chaeron had been tak-
ing immoderate chances, but nothing so outrageous as
releasing the AXVs to Bucyrus, et al. This flagrant de-
fiance of Marada's authority came, ironically enough, not
from him—though he would have loved to claim it—but
from Acheron's doughty arbitrational guild. What lever-
age Bucyrus had applied to secure the guild's blessings,
Chaeron had steadfastly refused to find out; he had
enough troubles covering his own tracks. And there were
releases and waivers to be drafted, riders to be attached
to the purchase agreements which absolved Acheron of
any responsibility in procuring licenses for the AXVs.
Bucyrus, an ask-me-how-l-did-it smile hovering in the pil-
low-plump comers of his mouth, had pointed out to him,
when they sat down together to initial and sign the final
agreement, that the AXVs were a bargain at the agreed-
upon price, both because of their scarcity and the natural
tendency of prices to escalate.

Chaeron had made no comment. The C.O.D. agree-
ment had put him back on his financial feet, and more.
Standing with Bucyrus while the last of the AXVs glided
out of its slip three hours before Marada's Hassid was
due to arrive, he was innocent of collusion or complicity,
pure as vacuum, even reluctant. It was necessary that he
appear so, that it be clear that he was caught in a legal
snare and unable to do other than abide by the arbitra-
tional guild's ruling, that down to the very departure of
Bucyrus and the Tabriz delegation he seemed doubtful,
harried, compromised,

280

JANET MORRIS

And none of that was difficult: he had always won-
dered what it would feel like to run at full throttle, to be
threatened with failure, involved in a crisis which would
take every iota of his talent and intelligence to survive—
let alone surmount. Now, he was finding out all of those,
and though he was stretched to what might have been his
breaking point, he had not yet broken ... in fact, he was
rather enjoying himself. The adrenalin mix was heady,
the stakes of his wager astronomically high, but despite
the gravity of things, he had never felt so completely
alive. And since one whose life and limb are at risk has
little to lose, he indulged in audacity with Bucyrus at slip-
bay: "How did you like the dream dancer I sent you,
what's her name?"

"Lauren. Quite well, actually, thank you. Are you sure
you wouldn't like me to stay around until Marada gets
in? I can, you know." Bucyrus blocked.

"Is there anything you want to tell me?" Chaeron
feinted. He had taken a slate of Lauren's visit to Spry's
quarters. Later, during Shebat's reception. Spry had ven-
tured to asK: "Did you get my message?" and Chaeron
had had to stop and think before he answered "Yes" and
walked away.

"Tell you?" Bucyrus looked elaborately puzzled.
"Good luck. Good hunting. Good time to say goodbye."
He stuck out a fat hand.

Chaeron took it. "You haven't been stealing my
ashtrays?"

"Stealing? No, no. I'd call it a premium. Anyway, it's
for a friend."

"I'll remember that," Chaeron promised, frowning
slightly, and dropped Bucyrus's hand. All the way back
to the consulate from slipbay, he debated the wisdom of
calling Spry in and determining the specifics of his ar-
rangement with Bucyrus, whose name cropped up re-
peatedly in the data Chaeron had gathered on Spry's
past. But he had a feeling that he might not want to
know the details of what those two—of long and
nefarious relationship—had cooked up between them. At
best, Bucyrus was doing Spry a favor, and getting a
friend out of harm's way. At worst, the pilot was caught
between alternative commitments to Chaeron and

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EARTH DREAMS

Bucyrus, and trying to satisfy both, or make it seem so
while striking out after some more personal goal.

Cbaeron knew what Spry was. He had been learning
for a long time, in slowly increasing detail, beginning
more than four years ago when he had been at pains to
find Shebat, then in hiding in Draconis' low levels, and
had stumbled over Spry's clandestine doings, including
his murder of Parma's secretary, Jebediah. And he had
tried rather clumsily, at that time, to turn Spry out as his
own agent—and failed. Why that was so had as much to
do with sponge-cruisers and the ethics of the pilotry guild
as with Chaeron's adolescent gropings after power. Cou-
pling the name Bucyrus to Spry's in his data-seeking,
what had been a trickle of information had obligingly be-
come a flood. It was possible that Spry was not in a posi-
tion to say "no" to Bucyrus, and was asking Chaeron to
either tacitly approve, or interfere. But while working to-
ward his master-solo in Erinys, Chaeron had acquired the
cruiser's insights into the nature of her former pilot. It
was this experiential data which had led him to dismiss as
wishful thinking his consideration of the farfetched pos-
sibility that Bucyrus had engaged Spry to assassinate
Marada.

Yet KXV Marada had contacted Chaeron, bringing
his attention to the simulations being run by the pilot.
One group was composed of bail-outs—understand-
able. Chaeron could excuse Spry's exploration of escape
routes. The second group were damning alterations of
the innards of sponge-cruiser X. Put the two together,
and it began to look to Chaeron like something from the
Machiavellian heyday of David Spry.

He would have to be very careful in making use of his
information and his speculations; his first priority must be
to appear to have done everything in his power to ensure
that Marada was unsuccessful in extraditing Spry and the
others. The single additional comment Spry had made to
him during the entire party had been: "Try to talk Mar-
ada down to just me." Chaeron had responded, "Ye of
little faith!" Then Spry had asked his question, and
Chaeron had found it prudent to depart.

And Shebat, when she had returned from the slipbay

282

JANET MORRIS

alone, had had a haunted look in eyes fiery from recently
shed tears.

He had not been able to find it in his heart to tell her
that what she was telling him, her cruiser had already
relayed, but he was heartened that she confided in him,
even beyond what the Marada had seen fit to reveal:

"David asked us to listen for a rescue-beacon throughout
a specific time-frame," she had sniffed, wiping her nose
abruptly with the back of her hand, then laying her head
against his chest. He had hitched himself up against the
.headboard, pulling her with him- "Us?"

"The Marada and me. What could I say?"

"That we will make sure that none of this cloak-and-
silliness is really necessary."

"I won't lie to him."

Chaeron had sighed theatrically, "No one believes in
me."

"I believe in you. I no longer believe in miracles. Your
Consortium has stolen all my magic away, and replaced it
with catastrophe theory and CPT invariance."

"So your Jesse Thome says," he had teased, turning
her attention from the subject of Spry, upon which he
was concerned that she not dwell. He was pleased that
she had come to him, casually dropping her flight bag on
the rug, and begun unpacking. Ever since then, he had
been taking care to see that she found her choice had
been well worth making. . . .

The doors beyond his desk and the Kerman upon
which it rested opened noiselessly, admitting Rafe Pen-
rose. "How did you get in here? I left instructions not to
be^-"

Penrose, dragging a chair with him toward the desk,
grinned. "I used my priority card in the consulate's rear
elevator. I submitted to voice-and hand-analysis in the
foyer. I proved myself weaponless and wireless to the
surveillance arches in the hallway. From there on out, I
used bribery, pulled rank, and trusted to the power of my
personality to convince your secretary that I don't like to
wait to be announced. Why haven't you answered any of
my queries? Those secondary matrices aren't going to
help you if you don't take calls on them, even emergency
priorities."

285

EARTH DREAMS

"I took an hour off- It has been my experience that an
emergency is still an emergency when you get around to
it, and most proclaimed so, aren't, anyway. What is
yours?"

"I need a verification of these slipbay roster changes,
Marada is due at 0900 hours." He slid a card case across
the desk's uncluttered surface. Chaeron took it, removed
the contents, fed them into a slot. Then he retrieved
them, reinserted them, and pushed the case back toward
Penrose. "There you are."

"You didn't look at it."

"You noticed. Listen here, Raphael, I'm glad you've
come- I want you to take a ride down to groundside and
apologize to my sister. See if you can't have her back by
dinner."

"You're being unreasonable- . . . No . . ." Penrose
pinched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, "it's some-
thing else. Another little escapade like letting Bucyrus
smuggle Lauren out of Acheron, and you don't want me
around for it!"

"If it were-,1 couldn't tell you. Take Bitsy with you, if
you would, and anyone else you fancy. Use my command
multidrive. I don't want you getting into anything you
can't handle down there. And I want you back—"

^Chaeron! You cannot just ignore this." He tapped the
card case. "What possessed you to put those pirates in
my slip crews? Only Alien's got any right to—"

"I have to show we don't think they are pirates, and
that they are performing irreplaceable functions here . . .
or as close to that as I can manage. Baldy could have
authorized these, Rafe."

"And I could just dictate a nice abject apology, send it
down with a courier, and steadfastly look the other way
while whatever you don't want me to see takes place."

"Would you prefer to do that?"

"If you want to take your master-solo in Erinys in four
days, as scheduled, maybe I'd better." Penrose's green
eyes appraised him. He ran a hand through chestnut
curls, twirled one on a finger so that the cruiser-ring in
his ear glimmered. "Did Shebat talk to you about
postponing it? Or taking it in Danae, or Tyche? She'll
be—"

284

JANET MORRIS

'You're getting closer to that trip to Earth."
"Damn you, Chaeron, I'll go. It's my mistake, mine to
rectify. But you'U wish I hadn't." He stood up so
abruptly the chair in which he had been sitting rocked
back, teetering. Heedless, Penrose stalked out.

"I hope not," Chaeron said quietly to the closing
doors.

When Marada's Hassid and three escort cruisers glided
into Acheron's pristine slipbay, neither Acheron's first
bitch nor her proconsul were on hand to greet the consul
general of Kerrion space.

The Marada, From his pre-eminent slip overseeing all,
took note of this as he watched over Shebat, who, with
Guildmaster Baldwin, headed the cavalcade that drew up
to Hassufs slip flanked by Acheron and Draconis black-
and-reds whose firm lines kept the welcoming committee
separate from the crews of foam-throwers and emergency
technicians and maintenance personnel who swarmed
over the slipside, routinely ready for anything.

When Marada Kerrion stepped out of Hassid, shaking
Baldwin's hand and kissing Shebat's, the teams had al-
ready gone to work, swarming over the cruisers* outer
hulls, sluicing and probing for damages, unloading tele-
metry, checking cargo bay rosters, collecting logs and be-
ginning systems checks.

As Marada stooped into his mission's command trans-
port, a khaki-clad shipwright in charge of internal cal-
ibration checks motioned his men aboard Hassid.

At that moment, the Marada was listening to Shebat
exchange guarded pleasantries with her stepbrother;

monitoring her spasmodic physiological readout—always
excited in his presence; enduring troubtingly abusive
taunts from Hassid, who was sure that her pilot would
now make an end to the Marada's unorthodox existence;

calming the Tyche. who had just been brought back on-
line and had never encountered Hassid's hostility before.
Despite all of those, the Marada recognized Nuts Alien
among the men in khaki coveralls who boarded Kerrion
One laden with toolkits and briefcases full of software
specs and dollies racked with test equipment.

But he had more pressing concerns: Tyche's despon-

285

EARTH DREAMS

dency over the remedies made to her faulty programming
which eradicated even memory of how she had erred;

Danae's distress that her pilot had embarked for Earth in
only a multidrive (though that multidrive was Chaeron's
Big Bird, armed and armored); Erinys's disquieting emu-
lation of the Marada's own data-gathering mechanisms.
The Marada was daily less comfortable with his fellow
KXV, in whom bits of Softa Spry and Chaeron Kerrion
mixed with discomforting results: the Erinys, cold and
implacable and haughty, was ready to debate Hassid.
The danger of presenting any unsolicited information to
Marada Kerrion's cruiser could not be overestimated.
The datum that human troubles were cruisers' troubles,
the very problems of mankind those that cruisers had
been created to solve, had not been appreciated by
Erinys, who had inherited Spry's misanthropic view of his
conspecifics. To forfend an incident of open discord in
cruiserkind, the Marada snapped down shields and spat
ultimata until only he and Erinys remained in a narrow-
band circuit bounced through Chaeron's private data-
sources, and the Marada could scold the cruiser who had
spent so long as an outlaw, saying that she had become
too much like an outboard, full of prejudice and spite.

"Cruisers and pilots aren't so different as you wish,
Marada. You, least different of all." Erinys sparked in
Spry-slang across the slipbay. "// Hassid's outboard does
wish harm to Sofia, it is mine to protect him. Would you
not intercede for Shebat?"

"He is no longer your outboard," the Marada
reminded Erinys. "Chaeron, who will soon claim that. . .
privilege, will do what needs to be done. Humans must
handle the matters of their passions."

"Cruisers and outboards are not as different as you pre-
tend, Marada."

The Marada conceded that outboards and cruisers
were daily less divergent, yet it was this very increase in
similarity, when processed through cruiser consciousness,
which was creating a widening gap between man's and
cruisers' intelligence: as cruisers developed increasingly
more individuality, the intimacy between pilot and
cruiser was being eroded. Untruth and half-truth and all
the harvest of deception had taken their toll. Even as he

286

JANET MORRIS

spoke to Erinys of his observations, adding that the
AXVs with their more shielded, discrete intelligences
were coming into service just in time, he was dissem-
bling, for he was careful to let Erinys catch no hint of
what intimacy the Marada had come to enjoy with
Chaeron, or the simulations Spry had run within his hull,
or Chaeron's reaction to that data, or the effort to which
the Marada had been put to keep every trace of that in-
formation from cruiser consciousness, where it might be
audited by the likes of Hassid.

Because of the degree of isolation necessary to keep
his facade unpierced and his conversation with Erinys
private, the Marada did not "see" the shakedown crew-
men come out of Hassid, Nuts Alien last of all.

Chapter Sixteen

It was still early in Bolen's town, New York,
when RP put Big Bird down in the agreed-upon clearing.
The sun, rearing toward noon, beamed its sovereignty
over what promised to be a sweltering first of July.

Penrose winced at the brightness depicted in Big Bird's
two semicircles of 3600 monitoring and cranked his vi-
sual-filters down one stop from flat, softening the glare.
Nevertheless, heat ripples still rose from the seared circle
in which the multidrive rested, degrading the images.

"Hot out there," he said to Bitsy Mistral, the first
words he had spoken on the entire trip. He did not tike
the sultry, raven-haired youth with just a suggestion of a
beard beginning on his perfectly pointed chin. But pro-
longed silence was uncomfortable, hardly worth main-
taining. Bitsy was just an errand boy, hardly an enemy
. . . Chaeron's convenience, nothing more. "Looks like,"
Bitsy replied in a low and neutral voice, "sir."

Rafe stood and, with a practiced twitch of hip and
thigh, sent his chair sliding rightward along its track, to-
ward Bitsy at his powered-down end of the muttidrive's
three-mode board. Then, his hands dancing over one an-
other in lateral passes above rows of lights and toggles,
he zeroed his console, stepping slowly back and forth
wherever his stabbing, twisting fingers led. Finally, he
leaned on the bumper, pecking in pre-sets with frequent

287

288

JANET MORRIS

glances at his scopes. All of the return course logged but
what must be determined by his departure time, he
hitched one leg up on the console, facing the youth,
"Where are they?" He reached out his hand. Bitsy slid
the chair down to him.

"About ten minutes' ride yet, from what we saw in the
aerials, sir."

"Don't 'sir' me," Rafe sat back down, lounging low,
legs outstretched. "Have you been in contact with
Pope?"

"Only to verify, sir ... but

'?"

"Go on."

"It will be all right . . . everything will, I mean. She'll
come around. We thought we'd not tell her you were
coming, sir. . . . Penrose, in case she might refuse to
come. But you'll see, she'll be reasonable. A nice little
ride through the woods, privacy . . ."

"I'm not piloting any horse. In fact, I'm not going any-
where out of sight of this ship. Gear? And I'm not taking
*no' for an answer. She's coming with us if I have to
bodily drag her." All the white, he was watching the
monitors, westerly where, flying over, they had shown
them riders approaching.

"You know, you and I could help each other."

"You take her feet," Rafe muttered.

"I know you're uncomfortable with me, but you
needn't be. He's made me his aide, formally. I have my
own apartment. I only work days. He's been so tense, I
mean . . - it's not you, it's everything."

"Thanks for the reassurance. It's nice to know 'he' has
a confidant. What else does 'he' talk to you about, be-
sides me?"

"I didn't mean that. But he does talk to me. If that's
wrong as far as you're concerned, I can't help it. But it's
not what you think. He likes abstract thought, logic and
philosophy. It relaxes him. So I've been reading him the
classics, and we ... I mean . . . this isn't coming out
right: we talk about unity lines and theoretical set geome-
try ... whether there's any 'now,' or just 'before and
after.' Nothing gossipy or secretive. He doesn't trust me
that much, sir."

"I'd say there's a 'now.'" Penrose got up, snapped a

289

EARTH DREAMS

switch, and back in the passenger area a hatch sighed
open, admitting birdsong. "Go say howdy. I'll be out in a
little bit."

The youth threw him a limpid, reproving look, and
floated out of view. Rafe had no intention of allowing
even a potential of alliance to develop between himself
and Chaeron's little dream dancer. The boy was right: he
knew nothing about any of the matters which concerned
Penrose. Rafe was almost certain that Chaeron had sent
him down here as a chastisement for allowing hostilities
to break out among the slipbay crew two days before
Marada's arrival ... it made more sense than Chaeron's
intimation that he was protecting RP from possible im-
plication in only-Chaeron-knew-what scheme,

He heard Bitsy's bootheels clank on titanium, then saw
the back of his head in his panoramic monitor. He could
have gotten an overview by hooking Big Bird into any
satellite of three now passing overhead, but he did not
bother.

He was here under duress; if he was sulky, in private,
later he would find it easier to put on a face of complai-
sance and obedience. He studied the figures on horse-
back riding out of the t?ees where the meadow emerged
abruptly from a humid green forest through which no de-
tail could be seen, and from which the four had seemed
suddenly to appear, full-blown, as if by materialization.

No one had cared very much whether he made his
peace with Lauren before they deployed her, first
groundside, then to Spry, then out of Acheron like
Cleopatra to Antony, rolled up in a Tabriz rug. Penelope
Kerrion was, as far as Rafe was concerned, of even less
account. He felt used twice-over, and a fool for having
walked into a complication which Chaeron had predicted
but RP had not believed would develop.

He could make her out, now, on a dappled horse be-
hind two bays. And he saw Cluny Pope, conspicuous be-
cause no daylight could be spied between his knees and
his saddle, while the others bounced helplessly, both in-
telligencers holding their saddlehoms.

He saw Pope's smile, his arm raised in salute to Bitsy,
and saw that that hand had a tether to which the Kerrion
girl's horse was attached. Her hair glinted ruddy-gold in

290

JANET MORRIS

his monitors, and Rafe recalled what had made him deaf
to Chaeron's warning. She was so like him! It was eerie,
uncanny, to see Chaeron's almost exact duplicate—in
which feminity had won out. Ashera's bloodline was a
strong one. The girl's wide, beryl eyes, the hint of scorn
in her full mouth, the arch nose: Rafe had a deep and
illogical affection for her male counterpart who bore all
these traits. Raphael would manage to placate the young
Kerrion heiress, who only wanted too much: one cannot
have undying fealty from a pilot, especially one's
brother's pilot. It was her single-minded attempts to mo-
nopolize him which Rafe could not abide; he was not a
child; he had neither time nor use for an obsessive.

He slapped his screens off, and headed out to greet
her, now halted where the two intelligencers and Cluny
Pope had dismounted to talk with Bitsy, looking like the
effete peacock Rate's prejudice called him, in blue and
pink and orange among the aging summer grass.

He stepped onto the ramp and heat assailed him, thick
air full of overripe smells and dust which was difficult to
breath. His space-trained reflexes recoiled: there was
wind, hot and tainted; he found himself tensed to run for
a pressure-suit, attentive to the stirrings of the mil in his
lungs. He stood there blinking in the sharp, searing light,
convincing his body that there was no pressure-crisis, no
leak or pollutant spill. The wind, hot and angry, slapped
at him, rearranging his hair. He could hear them talking,
not words, just timbres (Pope's thick accent, the intel-
ligencers' flat clipped bursts, Penelope's treble, edged
with whine) rising above the wind that stirred the trees
whose leaves hissed unbearably. Rafe heard a shrill
scream; a shadow fell over him; looking up, he saw a
great-beaked bird gliding, far up and away amid tattered
clouds.

Quickly, he looked down at his feet and made them
proceed down the stepped ramp, onto the ground full of
growing and crawling things. Penelope was in mid-com-
plaint, constructing one of those peculiarly aristocratic
thousand-word sentences the privileged delighted in im-
provising. Someone, as sensitive to affront by that means
as RP had once been, had assured him that the Kerrion
record was held by Parma's father, whose word count for

EARTH DREAMS

291

a single extemporaneous sentence was two thousand, two
hundred and twenty-one. Chaeron had ceased the prac-
tice, except when he was very angry, or very tired. . . .

"Girl, be still," he called out to Penelope. "Gentle-
men, get those beasts out of striking range." Gritting his
teeth, he sidled between horses whose teeth, as over-
large as their hooves, could be seen as their riders
yanked on frothy bits, and reached up to take Penelope
by the waist and help her down. The girl in Kerrion-blue
expedition gear looked at him for one moment, lids
lowered in contempt. Then she jerked back on her
horse's reins. It shied, reared, pulling the tether out of
Pope's hand and turning mutters to shouts. Panic froze
RP motionless before the horse, who nailed the air with
his front feet, pirouetting like a ballerina,

From the din of squeals and snorts, he picked out
Cluny Pope's urgent advice that Penny pound the horse
on his crown; Bitsy shouting to him to grab for the
bridle.

Staring up at the horse's belly and deadly hooves tow-
ering above him, Penrose at last regained the power of
movement, spinning around and throwing himself aside
to avoid Pope's mount, lunging after Penny's bolting
beast in hot pursuit.

Then, while confusion still whipped about him, RP
heard whoops and awful yells, a woman's scream, and
more hooves. The intelligencers, having sorted them-
selves out, cursed and fumbled for their weapons.

"Move, get back. Go!" Bitsy pushed him, a smudged
face appearing out of a curtain of dust. His bright clothes
were filthy, Rafe noted in an awful slow-motion, as he
noticed the two intelligencers arguing procedure, while
from above their heads gusts of evil, snickering arrows
rained down. "Go on, move!" Bitsy pushed him. Rafe
fell to his knees. Where had they come from, these
barbed, feathered sticks, one of which was protruding
from his calf just below the knee?

It took forever to feel the pain, but that forever was
full of ground shaking beneath him from horses' tread, of
stones raining around him so that he huddled where he
was, arms over his head, legs drawn up. With the pain's
arrival came new sounds, thudding tonnage, horse

292

JANET MORRIS

screams. He looked up to see militia riders bearing down
upon them, two dozen, maybe more.

"Run!" Bitsy's nose was bleeding, three arrows stuck
out like quills from his cape. RP, trying to rise, clasped
his leg in pain. The arrow, wobbling, sent spurts of white
agony through him that wiped outisight and sound. Hold-
ing it still with one hand, he scrabbled along the ground,
until Bitsy's shouulder and arm supported him, lifted
him, half-dragged him toward the multidrive.

Then came the militiamen: everywhere, circling them,
laughing and lobbing sling-thrown stones. One hit Rafe
in the face, as the horsemen's circle began to close in.

How long he was ringed, a living target cut off from
the others by galloping horses whose riders took chancy,
classic shots at him (from under horses' necks and bellies,
over sweaty croups) while shouting taunts in a dialect
Penrose had not bothered to learn, he could never re-
member. Stones hit him and arrows snickered unerringly
past his ears, until the riders came in so close no weapons
but their horses were needed. He was buffeted and
charged. Pinned between heaving beasts while their
riders kicked and pulled him, he was held off the ground
by his hair so that he dangled some few seconds before
they dropped him.

He fell rolling, gained his knees. A horse kicked him in
the chest, lifting him off the ground fteetingly; he was
flying. Then he lay on the ground, lungs emptied, unable
to breathe, his mouth wide open, trying to gasp. Just one
breath, and he would be alive forever . . , one breath.
But it seemed impossible. His lungs would not fill- When
at last they did, the sound was desperate, soughing, but
the only sound he ever wanted to hear, or could hear
above the roaring in his ears. Then the ground shuddered
by his head and all he could manage was to turn it and
watch the hooves come down inches from his nose: once,
twice, three times.

Something prodded him; he tried to gather his knees
under him, failed, covered his neck and head. Pulling his
legs in close jammed the arrow in his calf sideways, rip-
ping muscle,

"Tell your master we will be in touch with him," Rafe
heard. In his cavern of indrawn limbs, he could not

295

EARTH DREAMS

move. The hard, sharp thing poked twice into his lower
back. "Hear me?" The hoarse voice spoke in perfect
Consulese. Rate grunted, tried to rise. The sharp thing
struck him across the back of the skull. "Stay there,
Pilot. Stay with your nose in our dirt for ten minutes. I'll
leave somebody here to see that you do."

Thunder, beyond his pulse-pounding, exploding head-
ache's own, could be felt through the ground as the horse
raced away. He was pelted with clods from its leave-
taking.

Ten minutes were easily up before he couItTmove. The
ground wheeled in place and he had retched intermina-
bly, tasting dirt and his own blood and the awful after-
math of trauma. He did not think about his blurred
vision, or that he could not under any circumstances
stand up, or about the angle at which the least blood
would pour out of his nose. He simply crawled, slowly
and steadily, toward where he was reasonably certain the
multidrive must be: a big, blue-gray shape was looming,
straight ahead in a dark patch. He paused only once—to
snap off the arrow's shaft, which was torturing him more
than anything except the clots of blood and bile which
kept meeting in his throat. Then he tried to sit upright, to
peer off toward the encircling trees. But all he could see
was peeked ground, full of troughs and humps which
must be crossed.

The multidrive was only feet from him—was the only
safe place—was his only chance. His vision swam with
pink spots, and he wanted to sleep. If he could sleep, he
could outwit the giant hammering out knives of anguish
on the anvil of his skull. He thought about Dance's famil-
iar bunk, his own bed. . . .

Knee before knee, hand before hand, not looking at
anything straight on, eyes slitted, he crawled. A single
sob escaped him as he felt one palm graze the multi-
drive's ramp.

But the ramp was steep and, worse, it was undulating,
bucking from side to side. No, that could not be ... He
stopped crawling, head hanging, listening to his own rat-
tling breath. He could lunge straight up those stairs, and
make it to the con. He could and he would. Weaving like
a drunk, he tried valiantly, twice staggering so that he

294

JANET MORRIS

fell, once hanging with his legs dangling off into space. It
was not possible that he could do this again if he fell to the
ground.

That got him back on the ramp, so thoughtlessly nego-
tiated when he could see and think and move without
pain. Step by step he pulled himself aboard, drawing his
legs in and lying, sobbing, curled on his side long after
the outer hatch had closed: he had had to stand up to hit
the plate. He would have to stand up again.

So close, he could not falter. He would just ignore the
pain, and keep his eyes closed. So he proceeded into his
control room, hugging the metal walls.

When he could lower himself into his seat, he col-
lapsed there. After an interval, a disembodied voice,
nagging that there was something he must do, roused
him, and he remembered what it was: time and course.
He pushed himself forward, and lying across his console,
cheek upheld by knobs and buttons, he tried to read his
watch. He brought his other hand up where he could see
it, when the numerals became legible to his vision, and
went through his program, mumbling the steps to himself
like a rank junior as he punched them in. Finally, salty,
nauseating blood still fouling his mouth and nose, fresh
and hot and revolting, he hit "run" and slumped forward
while the multidrive came to life beneath him- He should
have sat back, strapped in, hit the emergency-beacon. He
knew that, but he hurt, and as the fist of acceleration
battered him, he compromised with agony: he passed
out.

Shebat saw Chaeron take an update, just as the last
course had been cleared and coffee and brandy set out.
He stopped stirring the lemon peel in his demitasse, star-
ing down into the amber froth as if it held the secrets of
the universe, his dusk-blue eyes unblinking. A shadow
appeared at the corner of his lips, smoothed away. She
sought the nature of the message, using her own entree
to his secondary matrix's data-base, but was thwarted by
an intelligencers' seal. She did not backtrack through the
sources to find the message-release code. She simply
waited to see what would develop, watching Marada, at

295

EARTH DREAMS

the head of the table, covertly out of the corner of one
eye.

This small, intimate dinner could hold no more sur-
prises: in the first ten minutes, the siblings had put forth
their positions so civilly, so offhandedly, that they might
have been discussing affairs in distant consulates whose
outcomes were of no import. Here was no animus, no
rancor, none of the rage she had expected. Marada had
reiterated his intention to take Spry back with him.
Chaeron had demurred that it was out of his hands, in
the purview of the arbitrational guild, and that if speed
was of the essence, Spry's extradition might conceivably
be hastened by dropping concomitant charges against the
others. Marada had declined any trade-off, making the
point that he would be weakening his own case not to
demand the lot, and assuring Chaeron in carefully modu-
lated tones that should the proconsul interfere in any
way, charges of treason and attempted coup would be
forthcoming. Chaeron had murmured his condolences: if
Marada were to return to Draconis with alleged pirates in
tow, Chaeron's supporters there would have no choice
but to call for a vote of confidence, and every seamy de-
tail of Marada's misconduct during the last year would of
necessity come to light. Marada had sat back, hands
folded on his belly, and sighed deeply, agreeing the mat-
ters at hand to be unfortunate, especially in light of
Chaeron's singlehanded corruption of his local arm of the
arbitrational guild. Once the Bucyrus/Tabriz/Takeda
cruiser sale was broached by this oblique method, voices
had become even calmer, words separated by lengthy
pauses and chosen with care. Chaeron offered to send
another AXV to Lorelie, to make good on his intention
to make a gift of one to Marada's eldest son. Marada
declined, saying that licensing would never be possible,
and that soon enough Bucyrus et al, would realize this
and demand redress.

They had moved from that topic to bald-faced impera-
tives as the dinner passed away before dessert: Chaeron
was intent upon secession. Marada would be wise to re-
move his Draconis personnel, and find another home for
his convicts. Giving Marada notice in person was,
Chaeron felt, the least he could do.

296

JANET MORRIS

And then had come the brandy goblets, and the cobalt-
rimmed cups edged with gold, and Marada's flat refusal
to allow any such separation.

In the ensuing silence, Chaeron had said only, "Seem-
ingly, we are at an impasse."

With Marada's answer, "I hope to convince you to try
to break our deadlock," had come the data-update,
chiming without sound in her husband's skull, undetecta-
ble but for his downcast eyes. Now, he looked up: "Par-
don me, Marada, I didn't hear . . . ?"

"I said, little brother, 'We are hoping you will not be
so unwise as to step one centimeter out of the bounds of
your office.'"

"Me, too." He looked at his timepiece, then at Shebat.
"Would you like to come with me to see Rafe, my
dear?" While he spoke, her own B-flat sounded, back in
her skull, with a terse warning to ask no questions and do
what he would suggest, rendered in accentless computer-
simulation. Then Marada interjected, "Where is
Penrose?" and Chaeron replied, "He's still in the hospi-
tal," while pulling back Shebat'& chair,

"Hospital?"

"He had a little accident, a while ago: brought a multi-
drive into the slipbay about two inches below deck-level.
Nothing too serious, but this is the first he's been cleared
for visitors. You don't mind, I hope?"

Marada rose, too and walked them out. Chaeron's
hand was on Shebat's elbow, firm, insistent, guiding.

The low black lorry waiting for them at the mission's
portico had a 10A in its license number: a secure consular
vehicle.

Ward was driving it.

"Anything more?" Chaeron queried as the doors thud-
ded shut and the lorry pulled sedately out of the con-
sulate's circular drive.

"Coming up on your monitors, sir," Ward replied,
opaquing the rear windows, muttering that he would
have liked to use his sirens, or at least his flashers, while
Shebat demanded to know what was going on and before
her, aerial views of a forested valley blossomed.

"Lords, I wish I could have lied to him," Chaeron
said, as if to himself, taking a remote in hand and speed-

297

EARTH DREAMS

ing the recording he was watching. "I almost told him RP
fell off a gantry , . . drunk and disorderly ... but I
didn't dare. Shebat, see what you make of this. Ward, I
hope you've got something closer than these twenty-
three-fives."

"One second, sir." Ward's head ducked down. The
panorama in the monitors zoomed closer by a factor of
five. "Enhanced five-thousand-mile reconstructions, sir.
There's no doubt that it was Jesse Thome's action—"

"Who; happened?" Shebat pealed, then moaned softly
as the twin monitors set into the rear of the front seat
showed her a multidrive's landing: the approach of four
riders; a tiny Bitsy, comically accelerated, jerkily swag-
gering forth from the ship; the riders meeting him; Pen-
rase joining them; the girl Penelope's flight; the attack of
a multitude of riders from the sheltering trees. She saw
Penelope captured; the intelligencers disarmed; then saw
Bitsy and Penrose cut off from one another by a figure-
eight of riders. She saw three riders disengage from a
duster which had formed around the girl's dapple gray,
and then Chaeron stopped the film, tapping the remote
he was holding. "Give me an identification, Shebat."

"... Jesse Thome . . . Harmony . . . Cluny Pope—1
think. It's so distorted. . . ."

Chaeron tapped the remote, and the frozen figures
moved. The one Shebat had named as Thome cantered
through the figure-eight, stopping violence, halting be-
fore each besieged figure in turn. The first he leaned
down and grabbed, pulling Bitsy up on his horse by the
collar, and handing the youth (slung unresisting and ap-
parently unconscious over his horse's withers) to three
militiamen; the second man, huddled in fetal position on
the ground, he prodded several times with a telescoping
rod, and left where he lay.

"That's all of it, sir, but for some pretty unreadable
blow-ups. We'll simulate them, of course. Take about an
hour to do it right,"

"What kind of seal have we got on this. Ward?"

"Hermetic. Accident, type undisclosed. We might be
able to get away with—"

"I told Marada Rafe brought a multidrive in a little
low. There's no disguising that he plowed a trough in our

298

JANET MORRIS

approach bay's decking. But if we can keep the rest of
this . . ." he gestured, fanning with his fingers, "under
wraps, I'll be very grateful."

Shebat leaned her head against Chaeron's shoulder; he
put an arm around her. "You don't have to see him. 1
just wanted you to know what happened."

"Is he ...?"

"I only have preliminaries, Shebat. ..."

"If I could interrupt, sir and madam? Penrose looked
pretty scary, I guess, when they got to him. The medics
in the ambulance think he'll pull through."

"Pull through?" Shebat whispered, horrified, as Ward
cursed a slower vehicle and pulled out or-traffic onto the
hospital's off-ramp.

"What about the others?" she managed, as Ward
jumped out and ran around to open her door and six
intelligencers converged on their car from another Shebat
had not noticed, directly behind. "Bitsy? Cluny? Pen-
elope? The—"

"We'll see," Chaeron said. "Ssh. Go, Go." He pushed
her impatiently; She took Ward's extended hand.

In a crowd of their own they were carried along
through white and shining corridors, swept under a lintel
marked EMERGENCY, stopped finally before a pair of
glass-and-wire doors that proclaimed, NO ADMITTANCE

BEYOND THIS POINT WITHOUT PRIORITY CARD, HAVE
YOURS READY.

A pair of red- and white-smocked doctors were waiting
there, bite badges attesting to their status. The first one
introduced the second to Chaeron and Shebat, oversaw
the shaking of hands, then offered, "Madam, Proconsul,
I must caution you. Patients suffering from multiple
head-wounds, who have sustained concussions, can seem
violent, hostile, different from normal. We have no evi-
dence of subdurat hematoma—bleeding inside the
brain—but one cannot discount it. Though there are no
apparent lesions in his scans, contusions are possible, or
subsequent hematomas accompanied by bizarre symp-
toms resulting after a conspicuous delay. Mister Penrose
has a number of corroborating complaints; dizziness,
headache; he has experienced some nausea, blurred vi-
sion. In cases of this sort, one expects a patient to go

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EARTH DREAMS

through certain stages of recovery. He is in what might
be called the autonomic stage: he will respond quite nor-
mally, can perform simple tasks. But I have no intention
of letting him out of here, as he is so vocally demand-
ing." The doctor's imploring voice droned on, detailing
cracked ribs and lacerations, shattered nose, the incision
that was made to extract the arrowhead . . .

"Dear Lords, a wooden arrow?" Chaeron was in-
credulous. Then: "That's enough, doctor. I didn't come
here to be lobbied. I came to see my pilot."

One physician gave the other a knowing look, and
pushed open the doors.

Following him, they were all quiet. Chaeron took
Shebat's hand and squeezed it.

Seeing Penrose, sitting up on a table clothed only in
bandages and & sheet draped over his loins, Shebat felt
the vertigo of relief, and took a chair by the door, where
Chaeron would not notice any spells she chose to cast for
the healing of RP.

"... pour ice water in your ear, and see how you like
it." Penrose was fending off a male nurse, one arm
raised, hand outstretched. With the other, he supported
himself. The carnage in his face was not visible until the
nurse stepped back. His eyes -were black, his nose
swollen, purple, its bridge encased in metal and tape, his
lips puffed and torn. One cheek was twice its normal
size.

"Raphael?" Chaeron stepped forward- "Thank the
Lords you're all right."

Penrose squinted, cocked his head. His speech was
slurred, uneven in volume: "Chaeron, that you? Sorry
about missing dinner."

Shebat saw Chaeron raise a hand to his own brow,
shield his eyes, then sit down beside the pilot on the
gumey. "It's me," he whispered, and Rafe turned side-
ways with a hitching breath. Then Shebat could see the
green-and-blue-and-yellow swellings, the taped ribs; the
arm which clutched his gut as he shifted carried a raised,
stormy imprint of a horse's shoe.

She felt extraneous, an intruder, watching Chaeron's
face work, his struggle to speak naturally fail, his helpless
clutching of the injured man's hand. Disbelief and disgust

300

JANET MORRIS

were twins in bis eyes. He said at last, "We've got to
keep the gain way down on this, RP. Understand^"

"Get me out of here. They want to keep me. I've got a
headache, that's all. I want to go home and lie down.
We've got that master-solo flight to get ready for ..."

"I can't do that. You should see yourself."

"Don' wanna. Want to go home." With obvious effort,
he enunciated.

"Come stay with me, then. Shebat, go tell them that is
what we'll do. Have them order whatever preparations
they think necessary."

As she was leaving, she heard RP: "Y'know, ffiey put
me in this rotating thing and—"

One doctor was right beyond the door; the intercom
was on. Shebat snapped it off. "You heard him. And
give them some privacy. They have a lot to work out."

"That man isn't going anywhere for at least three
days."

"Would you like to transfer groundside? No? Then do
what I tell you. Find Ward and make arrangements to
move Rafe to the consulate. Now!"

Waiting at the doorway, personally watching over the
intercom with its telltale "on" LEDs which would let her
know if anyone was eavesdropping from another loca-
tion, she put a call through to the Marada, who had an-
ticipated her, and was already analyzing both the satellite
data and what was left of Big Bird's slate from the com-
mand multidrive's groundside encounter.

Thus she heard before Chaeron that Cluny Pope had
transmitted a list of Jesse Thome's demands via his high-
est-security access channel. And her heart sank. Always,
she had held out hope for Thome—even during the end-
less weeks spent fruitlessly negotiating with Hooker for
his release when he was hostage after the disaster in New
Chaeronea—against all reason and the counsel of her
dreams. Portents and dark wings had always shrouded
him; she had sent her prophecy to battle them. But if he
had fallen under Harmony's sway—and the mounted
presence of the obese, spotted-skinned mistress of dream
dancers, plus the sophisticated nature of Thome's de-
mands indicated that be had—little could be done to help
him. Why hadn't she taken care to see that nothing of the

501

EARTH DREAMS

sort occurred? Knowing Harmony, she should have antic-
ipated some such ploy.

She recollected Marada's bearded smile at dinner, and
the change in both men's demeanor. Absent were
vainglorious threats and jibes and slurs upon one an-
other's character. They were faced off, deadly serious,
ready to wage their oh-so-civilized war. What Marada
would say when he learned, as he eventually must, of
Penelope's capture—and what Chaeron would do to spite
him—left little room for considerations as minor as the
survival of peripherals: Penelope, Bitsy, Softa David,
perhaps even her own welfare could quickly be deemed
insignificant by either party, discounted out of hand. She
must not let that happen,

Down the corridor came Ward and one of the doctors,
quarreling in muted tones. Ward's boots clicked hard,
emphasizing the slices his hands made in the air.

The two men parted, the doctor reversing his direction
back through the glass doors. Ward snapped to before
her, rendering a smart salute and a grin that never
reached his eyes. The brows that met above his nose
were crinkled into a dark knot. "All set, Mrs. Kerrion.
They'll deliver him in about an hour to the consulate."
He paused inquiringly.

"Fine, Ward." She leaned against the wall, wondering
what else he was going to say. When he said nothing, she
prodded: "If there isn't anything else . . . ?"

"Ma'am, I would like to wait for him. . . . Has he
come out at all?"

Shebat snapped on the intercom beside her. "Chaeron,
Ward wants to know if you took that last data-update,
and, if so, what you want to do about it."

"That's not . . . I—" The intelligencer, with a wince
and a shrug, fell silent as the door opened abruptly and
Chaeron came through it. With elaborate care the pro-
consul closed it behind him and scrutinized Ward intently
through bloodshot eyes. "You stupid bastard," he whis-
pered. Shebat thought he might strike something: the in-
telligencer, the intercom beside Shebat's head, the wall.
But he ground his balled fist into his other hand. "Some-
times I wonder whose side you're on. Ward! Why didn't

502 JANET MORRIS

you send somebody down with them? Bitsy and Penrose
hardly make an operations team!"

"I was not informed, sir," Ward had blanched, gone
rigid; now he stood frozen, his chin tucked in, "about
this mission!"

"Excuses are something I cannot tolerate. Don't let me
ever hear another one. As for information—you are sup-
posed to be telling me what is going on. If Tempest were
alive, we would have had no such incident. They logged
out, I must assume. And, given that, you could not intuit
the rest of it? No ground-support? No cover of any sort
from orbit? A saboteur could not have buggered me
more effectively!"

"It is entirely my fault, sir. I never meant to imply
otherwise. If I had been overviewing that action, I would
have been able to avoid the rack-up in the slipbay, even
given current operating criteria. As it was, if not for the
fact that Spry was in the dispatcher's conning tower, we
probably would have sustained a total loss—pilot and
vehicle. I'll write up a full report. . . ."

"To glorify your ineptitude? You misunderstand me,
intelligencer. I want to forget this incident, not slate it.
Nor do you have to prove your repentance by recom-
mending yourself for a demotion. You'll punish yourself
more thoroughly than I could ever manage. We've quite
a lot to accomplish in these next few days; don't let this
incident preoccupy you. Make sure that Marada catches
no hint of foul play groundside, and you shall enjoy our
most far-reaching forgiveness. Slate? None of Thome's
ridiculous demands can be allowed to reach my half
brother- My sister is groundside- Period. Forestall deal-
ing with this matter until after Marada has left, and you
have my permission to do what you will about those ter-
rorists once they are no longer kidnappers. Get my sister
and Bitsy out of there, and then teach them a lesson they
won't forget. See how many of these 'political prisoners'
whom they want are available to us—excepting Spry and
Lauren, of course. Send a couple down as a show of good
faith. You can even tell them we'll meekly remove our
entire presence there, space-enders and all—I don't care
what you say. I want this wrapped up so tight that even
the secondary matrices won't log it." He jerked his head

505

EARTH DREAMS

toward the door behind him. "And I will not sustain an-
other casualty of this magnitude. I detest the sight of
blood. Questions?"

"No, sir."

"Then what are you standing there for?"

"I'm taking you back to the consulate, sir, when you
are ready. They'll bring Penrose and a computer nurse
along in less than an hour. I've already ordered the in-
stallation of a support system in the west spare bedroom
... I didn't think you'd want him anywhere but your
own wing, especially with Marada's people about."

"Good enough. Shebat, go say whatever you'd like to
say to RP. I'm done."

Standing by Penrose's bed while he struggled to don a
pair of fresh coveralls, all Shebat's hostility and discom-
fort fell away. They both cared for Chaeron; it did not
need to be a problem between them—it was she who had
been insistent on making it one. "There, step in. Good.
Now, wait; let me hand this to you." To draw it up, he
had to stand. She caught him as he wavered, while be-
hind him the gumey rolled back and crashed against a
stand of instruments. Despite the clatter, she heard his
sharp, indrawn breath, his muttered thanks.

Getting his arms in his sleeves was harder, and sweat
broke out on Penrose's brow while they were at it.
"They'll be coming to bring you over in a little bit. Don't
worry about anything. We'll take care of you."

Raphael raised his head then, squinting against the
pain. "Is he angry?"

"Not at you. We just want you to get well. . . ." Her
voice betrayed her, fleetingly uncontrollable, thick and
trembling, as she carefully zipped his coveralls. "We'll
need to have your mil repaired."

"They patched it, good enough to last until the stitches
come out and the scab? peel off," she thought he said,
but could not be sure of what came out of his swollen
lips, and hugged him tight, so that he shivered in pain.
She could not say she was sorry for the way she had acted
toward him, or the things she had thought about him. All
the snubs and slights she had visited on him, simply be-
cause he was Chaeron's confidant, rose up to jeer at her,
and she laid her best healing upon him, running her

504

JANET MORRIS

hands over his back and up to his head where she felt
scalding heat, as her jealousy and meanness had not al-
lowed her to do before.

The rabbits in the lean-to's firepit were almost ready
when two disheveled sentries chased Quay Pope into
Thome's strategy meeting. Field officers rolled hurriedly
out of the way of the sentries tackling the boy. The fat,
piebald sybil who advised him touched Jesse's arm, shak-
ing her head oracularly, while Pope swore and drove
both elbows simultaneously into the bellies of the guards.
Their hands came off him; they doubled over; with a
back-hooked foot Pope toppled one and spun on that
foot to kick out at the other's diaphragm. Both went
down, while the six officers who had scurried out of the
orb of the conflict—and then, like Thome, simply
watched curiously—got to their feet and applauded.

"I want to talk to you," panted Pope, pointing at
Thorne, ignoring the two men, one curled into a wob-
bling ball and the other gasping on his back by Pope's
feet.

"That's enough," Thorne said sharply. The applause
stopped, the line officers squatted down, laughing; both
sentries raised their heads. "You two, up and out. Don't
interfere with Pope again, unless he tries to loose the
prisoners. Cluny, care for some dinner?" Thome
stretched out on his side, propping a head on one
crooked arm, silencing objections from the ignominously
downed soldiers with his most fearsome frown.

Only when they were gone, amid cautiously friendly
jibes from officers who used to know him, did Cluny re-
spond to Thome's offer. "I want to talk to you alone. I'm
not hungry, after what I've seen today." He glared with
promissory malice at the obese woman whose breasts
were spotted like a bull's-eye: black, yellow, brown, fish-
white; then slowly turned anguished eyes back to
Thome, who was pulling a spitted rabbit from the flames.
"Well?"

"I wish you wouldn't bully my soldiers, Cluny. Not ev-
eryone can go to enchanters' school." He ripped a
haunch from the blackened rabbit, bubbling grease run-
ning down his arm, his slit-narrow gaze demanding that

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EARTH DREAMS

Cluny sit. The youth crouched, balancing bare elbows on
knees sheathed in star-made ground-clothes. "What re-
sponse from Acheron? You can speak freely in front of
these." Thorne waved his hand.

The fire separated them, only one of the unbreachable
gulfs that had sprung up between the commander and his
former scout. Pope poked the logs with a stick. "I am not
here about that. It will take time for them to compose a
response- Meanwhile, they can see everything you do,
even at night, even in among the trees . . ."

"I am counting on that. I would not like them to think
I am not serious."

"I came about the ... prisoners. Bitsy needs a doctor.
There's blood in his urine, and the barbs in his side have
got to be cut out. You promised me if I did as you asked
and served as mediator, you would see that no harm
came to them."

"That harm came to him before I promised."

"And what the ranks dare with Penelope Kerrion is
not harm? How can you allow this? Hanging people up-
side down from trees, turning hostages over to common
soldiers? This is not like you." All the others had fallen
silent; someone painfully cleared his throat.

Jesse Thorne lay down his rabbit. "Common soldiers?
You have been an elite spy too long. How can I do this?
How can you ask me such a thing? It was you who came
to me with Kerrion promises, who witnessed all their lies.
They built their fine city for their own folk, not for us.
And what kind of folk? Scum; dregs; convicts. Yet those
untouchables have ousted from the city what few friends
the enchanters made, and the black-and-red uniform is
feared more than ever in the forests and the towns. We
slaved for magicians, previously. Now our crops and
stock are taken to feed convicts. The Kerrion 'ground
forces are even more tyrannical than were the Orrefors."
Thorne spoke softly, in his hoarse and tired voice so that
no one moved or chewed, and all cocked their ears.
"Cluny, the people whose land this rightfully is must not
lose hope that someday they will be free of foreign do-
minion. No man I have spoken with has said any dif-
ferent. Only you find grace in Kerrion actions."

"That's not Chaeron's fault. It's Marada, and his mad-

506

JANET MORRIS

ness. No one expected him to bring the space-enders
here. Harmony knows that." Pope's chin jutted at the
enormous woman, whose breasts heaved and breath
wheezed even when sitting quietly, burdened by her ex-
cessive weight. "Why did you let him do this?" Pope de-
manded of her. "Everyone here is going to die, you must
know that." Pope turned on his heels, faced Thome.
"You cannot fight themF'

Harmony tittered, smacked her lips, and wrenched a
rabbit apart.

Thome said, "When the sybil," he nodded to Har-
mony, "was sitting at Sentinel Ridge, her answer, when-
ever any asked how to free the Earth from these terrible
invaders, was that we must capture a family member and
negotiate a settlement. This they understand, I know my-
self from Hooker. They trade people frequently."

"Jesse, by my mother's heart, this woman is a liar, a
space-ender, a convict, and a troublemaker out for her
own gain. This trouble she is making," he stumbled over
his native syntax, so long had he been speaking Con-
sulese, "is of benefit to the space-enders and the city
folk, who are covetous of what we—what you—have.
Don't you see they are using you?"

. "Not me. I told Kerrion I would confer with my
friends, and give him an answer. I did, and you see for
yourself the result. Cluny, your own father sent me fifty
men and twice that many horses. It is not a thing of one
man's making that you see around you. The people have
chosen. The people decide. How else could it be? Would
we then not be like them, will-less and dependent on the
whim of those who have no understanding of, or care for
simple folk? Is that not what we are fighting—the as-
sumption that one man has the right to determine the
fate of many men?"

"You are fighting without hope, fighting for the honor
of dying for no reason."

"There is reason. The reason is that the people cannot
be allowed to lose hope, even in the face of death. Death
is inexorable, hope is hard to hold but all we have. If I
went to Kerrions, as I have been invited, or to Orrefors,
as Hooker thought he had convinced me to do, what
hope would be left then? People would say, 'Look, even

507

EARTH DREAMS

Thome has bowed to them, given up and become one of
them.' And, worse than that, my defection is a favor they
do me. Such a choice is not open to all. I used to say that
a chance to stay alive is the only thing worth dying for,
but I no longer can believe it. I will die for hope, rather
than see it disappear from life."

Pope stood up. "Let me get help for Bitsy. Make the
men bring the girl back, and leave her in peace. Feed my
companion intelligencers. I cannot watch you mistreating
them while I walk around free to do anything but help
them."

"Sorry. We must show ourselves to be fearsome bar-
barians, who should be listened to. The pleas the girl and
Bitsy will send heavenward shall make that clear."

"Harmony, Bitsy was of your troupe, once. Have you
no compassion?"

The huge woman spread gelatinous thighs and farted.

Cluny Pope turned and strode out, fists balled at his
sides.

Twenty minutes later, Jesse Thome, a jar of new beer
in hand, left the lean-to.

He strolled among the cookfires: there was no need
now to hide the gathering cohort. Men laughed and sang
and snored. The whetting of blades hissed like a restless
nest of snakes through a hot and humid night. Full moon
it was, and the late-rising countenance was magnified,
vast and smirking, as it cleared the valley's neck. He
stopped frequently, chatting to linemen, testing their
mettle- The horse-line was calm, the sentries sober.

Nothing was wrong. Why, then, was his stomach
churning, his jaw aching, the smell of his own sweat
pungent and nervous? Cluny Pope's accusing eyes
haunted him. He swigged the last of his beer and tossed
the jar away, a wasteful, spiteful thing to do. His circuit
brought him near the tree where the prisoners were hung
from branches. He heard a girl's muffled, hysterical
screams.

Shaking his head, he swore softly, and headed that
way. As he neared the sounds he began passing loitering
observers, hearing raucous jokes, other sounds.

He snorted through men clustered in twos and threes
until he found the officer in charge of prisoners, and told

308

JANET MORRIS

him to break the party up: the men had to be rested for
the following day. "And have the healer look the pris-
oners over, all of them. Cut them down, first. Surely we
can secure them, right-side up. They're not that dan-
gerous, and we're not animals." His voice rasped out
sharper than he had intended. His officer blinked, look-
ing at him askance: vehemence from their commander
was rare.

"If you forbade intercourse with the prisoners, sir, we
didn't hear about it down here."

"Use your brain, man. If we are going to trade them,
they've got to be alive and reasonably intact. If we're not
careful, we'll bring down wrath no god can forfend. Get
the pretty one over here and let me have a look at him."

The line officer barked orders. Mistral was brought,
and a torch held close to the semiconscious youth who
lay unresisting, his face striped with sweat and blood,
upon the ground- Thome knelt down. "We'll have to cut
his shirt away." He held out his hand, and a heated knife
was placed in it. Someone went running, calling the
healer's name.

Thome knew from the way the shirt came away from
the boy's side that there was trouble: the clots pulled up
with a sick tearing sound. His wounds had closed too
soon, too tightly, leaving pieces of broken barbs deeply
embedded when the wooden points had been wrenched
free. He touched the place; the boy moaned and tossed
his head. Already the red swelling was high and a gray,
ominous shadow both centered and ringed each wound-
A potion-and-spell healer would be of little use to the
boy before him. Probing, squeezing, hoping to see pus
ooze out, Thorne wondered if some of the men were not
using poison on their weapons.

Thorne craned his neck. "You. And you two. Hold
him down." Just as he was about to make his first cut, a
shadow fell. He assumed it was the healer, who should
have known better than to stand in his light. He waved
one hand, growling to the fool to get away. Then some-
one crouched beside him: it was Pope.

"I'll help."

"Find him something to bite on."

EARTH DREAMS

509

Pope peered around, mutttered, stripped off his belt
held it out for Thome's inspection.                  '

"If he lives, I'll marry you two and you can name your
first-bom after me," Jesse growled, as Pope scrabbled
to kneel beside his friend's head, and the hot knife slid
deftly deep.

All the while he was digging wicked, wooden barbs out
of ravaged, suppurating flesh he was thinking that it
might have been Cluny under his knife, if he had been
only a little less careful and a little less lucky. And he
recalled the prophecy Shebat had made to him. It
seemed so long ago, yet he still thought of her, and her
words which had eaten deep into his heart. He had made
his choice, though he could feel its wrongness- But he
had not lied: life was useless, bereft of hope. He had
seen the life the platform dwellers led, and the life his
blood entitled him to, and the life which they offered
those less fortunate than he under Kerrion dominion. He
could not lead his folk into it. He was not like Pope.
Already, he felt ashamed and diminished by the waging
of such a war. And yet fewer would die, fighting thus,
than the old way. His militia was united in purpose, fret-
ting to strike back.

If he had thought, somewhere deep inside him, that he
would be spared dishonor by fighting enchanters in the
way Hooker had taught him, he had been wrong. If he
had thought that Shebat would come herself, because the
gods loved him, and give him another sign with her true
magfc, he had been disappointed. If he had dreamed that
Cluny Pope, when again they met, would be unchanged,
he had been mistaken. But he had never conjectured that
he might crave absolution from his pupil, that the dismay
in Pope's eyes would torture him.

Thorne, crouched down with his face to the striken
youth's chest and the pus and blood running out onto his
fingers, wished only that Shebat would come again. But
the seeress Harmony, who had never yet been wrong,
had proclaimed that Shebat of the Enchanters' Fire
would never come again among the people. And al-
though Thome had made use of his time in New
Chaeronea and of the mechanical oracle in Acheron, he

510

JANET MORRIS

had not been able to reason away his resentment, his
frustration, his doubt. Though he was an Orrefors scion
and born of privilege, his heart had always been deep in
the loamy soil of Earth. The sybil Shebat had stolen both
heart and Earth from him, and that was magic he could
not deny. He had teamed too much, and not enough. He
wanted freedom, but he did not think release from the
fetters that bound him could be gained within the life he
was willing to live.

He looked up from his surgery suddenly. "Cluny, if
this boy died, would you then run away, back to your
master's safety?" The knife, below Pope's line of sight,
trembled with its own eagerness. Thome would have
done more to save Cluny. He would do whatever was
necessary; if he left anything, it would be a memory in
the eyes of this single boy, more potent than martyrdom
or vilification. But Pope replied, "I must stay and see this
out. I have promised you, and I have promised
Chaeron."

Thome grunted, noncommittal.

"Is he ... going to die?"

"Everyone does."

"Let me get help for him, send to New Chaeronea or
take him there. I'd come back. You know I'd bring him
back."

Above the healer's soft protestations that the proper
poultices would make the youth well in no time, Thorne's
soft negation and one strangled sob from Cluny Pope
could be heard, along with the ragged breathing of Bitsy
Mistral. When the surgery was done, and Thorne got to
his feet. Mistral reached out blindly for Cluny's hand.

Chapter Seventeen

On July first at 0100, Chaeron slipped sound-
lessly through the doors of his residence, heard voices,
stood motionless in his outer hall.

". . . ridiculous demands, impossible of implementa-
tion," Ward was saying.

Shebat's murmur was low, husky, indecipherable.

Chaeron took a deep breath, and walked into his living
room.

Shebat shot up from the couch, ran to meet him.
"How did it go?"

He kissed the woman who embraced him, feigned a
smile, inclined his head to greet his intelligencer as he
answered, "Sometimes I think that it is Marada who is
sane, and the rest of us crazed beyond redemption."
Arm around Shebat's waist, he guided her toward the
seating area. "I drove the best bargain I could," he
sighed, settling heavily onto one couch, stretching out,
bands behind his head. "Marada will drop charges
against all the alleged pirates but Spry in exchange for
Softa and Hooker, plus three others of that lot of subver-
sives we've been holding. I logged their names with your
service, Ward."

Staring at the ceiling, the proconsul could avoid look-
ing at his wife, who, eyes brimming with tears, unsteadily

511

512 JANET MORRIS

sought a chair when she heard the news, then sat, un-
speaking, biting her full lower lip.

"I must remind you, sir, that Hooker (along with
about twice as many others as could be reasonably ex-
pected from Orrefors specs and casualty projections) is
little better than a vegetable since we used enkaphalin
depotentiators as part of the support-weaponry in our ini-
tiative to free Thome. I did order a full investigation,
which proved beyond doubt that none of our people are
at fault: there was no negligence or exceeding of orders.
It's simply another case of undependable equipment used
to unpredictable result. The predicted recovery rate for
ED and the curve from which it was extracted was un-
conscionably optimistic: those Orrefors didn't really give
a damn about inflicting casualties down below. I've put in
a recommendation that we not use their ED equipment
in future, of course. But my point is this: does Marada
know the man he's asking for can't tell him—or any-
body—anything?"

"He knows it. He's well-informed about Orrefors sym-
pathizers: Hooker's plan to flee with Thorne to old man
Orrefors, the camouflaged multidrive, the old cruiser we
picked up among the asteroids, Shebat's fruitless at-
tempts to free Thorne peacefully—he even mentioned
the susceptibility-curve error in the ED studies. He's got
some good spies."

"We've got some good data, none of it classified tight
enough . . . sir." Ward blushed, having blurted that out,
and looked at his feet.

"Not ours much longer, the way things look. Marada
wants us to pull all our personnel off the planet. He's
intent on rehabilitating the space-enders personally—
through proxies. That, of course, means continuing Drac-
onis presence here. He wants to keep an eye on me."

Shebat moaned; Chaeron glanced at her. She drew up
her knees, laying her head on them, and hugged her an-
kles, face invisible.

"As I said," he snapped. "I have done the best I can.
Ward, have you checked to see that none of the men I
promised to Marada are on their way down to Thorne?"

"Just doing it, sir. We're okay. The only duplicates are
Spry and Lauren, and I've already sent a negative on that

515

EARTH DREAMS

through Pope. There is an answer. Proconsul, from
Thome. ..."

"Go ahead."

"Full compliance by July fourth or he takes that rabble
of his on a rampage in the general direction of New
Chaeronea. I can't see how we can stop it, given that
Spry is spoken for, Lauren out of the picture, and the
Draconis contingent unlikely to be removed from New
Chaeronea."

"Amazing, how popular our ex-first bitch and that
dream dancer are—with Harmony, in this case, I assume.
Are you recommending some action?"

"I'd like to update Pope enough to use him. This may
sound like aiding and abetting our enemy, sir, but hear
me out . • . Thome's men have abandoned any attempt
at hiding their presence; we've got no chance of keeping
this Penelope matter from Marada, everyday pastoral
fires down there don't look anything like an armed
camp's bivouac. Maybe Pope could convince Thome to
hold off, or at least reinstate his guerrilla tactics until
Marada leaves. They're pretty good at hiding what they
don't want to be seen. Otherwise, I can't imagine keep-
ing this from the consul general for another week . - ."

"Try harder. Perhaps, now that I've suggested to the
arbiter-in-charge that this is the time to release Spry to
my brother, he'll leave. It's the best that can be hoped."
Ward frowned intently, trying to look as if he considered
the possibility viable. Shebat chewed her hair-

Abruptly, Chaeron sat up. "Thanks for the vote of
confidence, you two. Look here, how's RP?" His glance
strayed toward the hall leading to the bedrooms.

"He's got a headache, he says, but he's ready," Shebat
replied. "Chaeron, I wish you would reconsider. This is
no time for you to be away. Take your master-solo an-
other time, when RP's better."

"We must) show Marada we are not afraid of him.
Also, if he declares martial law, or decides to remove me
from office—as he's been insinuating he's about to do—I
don't want to be around for it. If I am away for a week or
so, things will calm a little. With luck, when I get back,
Marada will be gone. I wish you would do the same,
Shebat—take the Marada out. Go anywhere, for any rea-

514

JANET MORRIS

son. Stay as long as you like. We may soon be private
citizens, but no accidents will befall us."

"He would never—"

"Let us not have any assessments of my half brother's
character. Ward, have you put together a list of who
should know about this Thorne affair?" To keep those
who shouldn't know from finding out, certain key com-
munications and computer operators must be warned, in
case pertinent information came upon the common or
Draconis-assigned channels. Chaeron needed to be sure
before he left that any possible foul-up had been antici-
pated, every hypothetical error's remedy provided for,
well in advance.

"Yes, sir. I briefed the four—that's the minimum—
myself."

"Good enough, Mr. Ward. That's it, then; it's a
wrap." He jackknifed to his feet. "I'm for bed. I've got
to be up at 0500." The intelligencer^too, rose. "Don't
look so glum, Ward. Think of the experience you are
acquiring. You will have quite a formidable resume when
this is over."

"That's just it, sir. I'm not interested in looking for
another slot. Sir?"

"Yes, Ward?"

"We've had an objection from the chief surgeon about
Penrose and this logged flight. They just don't think he's
ready, sir."

"I am. All RP has to do is sit there and hold my hand,
Do I have to dismiss you formally?"

"No, sir. Good luck, sir." The intelligencer scooped up
his jacket, said farewell to Shebat, who did not raise her
head, and made his way out.

When Chaeron heard the door sigh shut, he gathered
her up in his arms. "Ssh, now." He felt her trembling,
soft, soundless sobs. She buried her head against his
neck. "Let's have no more of this," he said gently. "I
know it is difficult, but you must not fret." He heard her
sniff, let her go, saw her wipe red-rimmed eyes.
"Better?"

"Better," she lied, her face puffy.

"Don't worry so about Sofia. We can still help him,
and he and I agreed long ago that if it came to this, he

EARTH DREAMS

515

would go along quietly and we would do our best to
provide him with a solid defense. I have a "message I want
you to repeat to him, verbatim, if you can arrange suit-
able circumstances." Her wide, gray eyes seemed almost
black as they met his. She nodded. He spoke carefully:

"Tell him that I regret 1 could not do any more to aid
him, and that I wish him the best of luck."

"That is all?"

"That is my message." He held out his hand to her.
"Come with me? We could both do with a little
relaxation."

She took it, kissed it, lay her cheek against his hand,
came in close and put one arm around his waist. Her
head against his shoulder, she went with him, thinking
that she should say brave things, pretend to faith and
trust in his ability, but unable. She had known they might
need to throw Softa David to the wolves of expediency.

It was all she could do to keep from bewailing it aloud.
He sensed her reserve, and pleaded his own exhaustion
to match it. Long after he lay sleeping, she sat up in his
bed, watching over him, thinking that in sleep the hard
lines dropped away from his face and he seemed again
the exquisite youth who had courted her so ardently in
Lorelie. Repentance came over her, and she ran her fin-
gers lightly along his back, hoping he would wake, and
she might say then that she did love him, despite every-
thing. But he only muttered, tossed, crooked an arm
over his face. She thought she should have begged him
not to take his solo in Erinys, or not to take it at all. He
was doing it, she presumed, to bridge the gap between
them, as if the simple acquisition of pilotry skills on his
part.could overcome their divergent births and disparate
upbringing, and all the friction Parma's choice of her as
heir apparent over him had caused.

She wept silently, trusting to the soporific of tears to
bring her sleep. In that interval she resolved to go, as he
had long ago asked her, and let the Acheron physicians
draw out an egg from her, so that they could have an heir
in the manner he insisted was fitting. If Marada did not
finish out his term for any reason, Chaeron had ex-
plained, then the order of succession reverted to that
which Parma had determined, years before. And when

516

JANET MORRIS

Marada faced Chaeron's charges, she told herself, he
would step down, rather than risk being ignominiously
deposed by public clamor.

It was this reason, and not that she feared for him, which
made her think of offspring that night. "The only true im-
mortality," Chaeron called children. But she did not believe
in immortality, that night, or in Chaeron, or in herself. Even
the Marada's whispered encouragement in her backbrain
did not chase away her dread. He was leaving; she must
stay and deal with Marada Kerrion despite her fears and
her feelings, far from clear, upon her own.

It was well past 0300 when she finally cried herself to
sleep, promising herself that she would tell Chaeron
straightaway in the morning of her decision, and that be-
cause of it he would put off his flight. Had he not said
many times he wanted, far more than anything else,
things to mend and be well between them? She would
make it so, and he would stay with her, and together they
would talk some sense into Marada. There was no need
for Chaeron to risk the possible mental instabilities and
reputed genetic damages of pilotry simply to prove to her
that he was willing to meet her halfway. And it was not
possible: pilot, he might become; like her, he would
never be. The Marada agreed; the abilities which resided
in the person of Shebat could not be simulated, or ac-
quired. Chaeron would never know the sleep that brings
true dreams. He could never "pass by unnoticed" or spin
efficacious spells from will and faith. It was their dif-
ferences, her cruiser suggested, which must bind them.
Shebat, the evolutionary sport, was unlike any other
mortal, outboard or nonoutboard.

The cruiser did not understand why his pilot ousted
him from her mind, then, throwing herself down upon
the bed, weeping with a pillow over her head to muffle
her sobs. The last thing she had thought while their link-
age held was, "It is too lonely!"

For that, the cruiser had had an answer, and mutely
retired, watching over his outboard through the second-
ary matrix until he was sure that she slept.

In the morning, when she woke, Chaeron had already
gone.

EARTH DREAMS

517

"Pastoral fires, my arse," Marada Kerrion snarled to
Shebat eighteen hours later. "What about this?" He
tapped the screen on which the militia's demands
gleamed greenly. "We will not tolerate blackmail. Hos-
tages or no, these ground-dwellers have gone too far."

"Farther than you have gone? They learned these tac-
tics from us, from your man. Hooker, from all that we
have done there."

"We? Are you now entirely acclimated to consular
life? Or are you part of our Earthly problem?

She had wondered how she would feet, alone with him.
She felt only contempt and frustration. His wide, brown
eyes had lost their poetical softness, taken on the hard
gleam of fanaticism. "I promise you, this can be solved
without violence. I'm going down there. The people of
New York trust me; I know Theme's mind. Let me nego-
tiate with him."

"No concessions. You have twenty-four hours to extri-
cate my dear half sister, Penelope, from her difficulties.
At the end of that time, 1 am going to eradicate the lot of
them. Whoever is down there, will suffer the rebels' fate.
Is that clear enough? Don't think you can fend me off by
joining them. I have a suspicion that you orchestrated
this whole fiasco. Jesse Thome is your lover, after all."

Her slap rang out. In his beard the result of it was
hidden, but his eyes flamed. "I have not yet struck a
woman, unlike Chaeron."

"So? You attacked me in my own cruiser during the
pilots' strike. Or have you forgotten?" They were both
standing, now. The little study in Marada's mission
seemed suddenly too small for the two of them, as if their
hostility, palpable, would expand, cracking the walls out-
ward and raising the ceiling.

His chest was heaving, and she fastened her eyes on it,
thinking that he yet resided in the rebuilt body Draconis'
medical expertise, overzealous, had made for him, and
how odd it must be to wake and find oneself encased in
so much muscle and flesh. He said slowly: "I was ill,
then. I apologized for that."

"You apologized. Later. You repented. You are still
ill, Marada." She thought desperately that perhaps she
could heal him. But he would see the healing spell dance

518

JANET MORRIS

blue upon the air. And the monitors would record it.
And she would be bound to him again as her warding
spell had for years entwined their fates. She could not
risk it. She did not care enough. She had promised
Chaeron that she would not field magic; the Marada had
taught her that her skills were not magic at all, only an
affinity built of iterative mathematics and biological am-
plification and the intimacy of the observer's mind with
universal time. Magic itself had been tainted by the Con-
sortium, lessened. . .-. No, no, she thought, heft your
blame: Marada, if I do not love you, then help me not
hate you. She said only: "Twenty-four hours, then," and
stalked from his presence.

David Spry scratched his belly where the elastic waist-
band of his briefs rubbed the hair the wrong way. What
had waked him? Then he heard a noise in the dark. In
his bed, he held his breath. It had been a sound like a
stumble, something falling. Wide-eyed, he stared into
pitch-blackness, letting his ears and mind explore. Years
of training spoke to him of footfalls and proximities.
Carefully, he bunched his sheet in his hands.

He could discern breathing now; a heel pinged against
the metal threshold dividing his bedroom from the spar-
tan living area of his guildhall suite. He closed his eyes,
cleared his mind. Definitely more than one man, his ears
told him. His proximity sense pinpointed them like in-
frared, as if his skin were seeing them. He felt bulk,
warmth, something bending over him. Sheet before him,
he sprang, collided with one man, jerked the sheet down
while kicking out where his assailant's legs must be.

Shouts and curses rang out, some muffled from under
the sheet. The first man fell heavily, but he had heard a
second. Propelling himself toward that sound, sideways,
his shoulder leading, he collided with the second man,
the point of his shoulder making contact with a chest.
Hands grabbed at him, in his hair, at his throat.

Lights came on, blinding. The first man, flailing away
the sheet, was up, sputtering commands. The second
wrestled Spry down. A third made all the difference: this
third man, who had slapped the light-plate, circled,

EARTH DREAMS

519

crouched, and sprang into the melee, Just as the two roll-
ing together on the floor came apart.

"Intelligencers, you son-of-a-bitch! Surrender!" Spry
heard the obligatory announcement just before some-
thing slammed into the nape of his neck with a sickening
crunch and the room filled up with pyrotechnical lights.
He felt his arms jerked behind him, pulled up hard, his
knees kicked out from under him. This time he caught
sight of the long, flexible tube filled with metal shot as it
descended. He flinched, ducked away, but the third
man's boot caught him up under the jaw at the same
time.

He went limp, hoping to trick them, though both arms
were twisted up behind him and he must hang that way
to feign unconsciousness. He heard them talking to each
other as they savaged him, thought abstractedly he had
been foolish to struggle.

They were very careful, being professionals, not to
shed blood. The tube with its flexible covering and load
of weighted metal was meant for inflicting maximum dis-
comfort without breaking the skin. After a time, a voice
judiciously intoned that the score was now even.

He let them dress him, half-drag, half-carry him. He
had no incentive to try to walk. He had seen the Drac-
onis armbands on the uniformed intelligencers, the red
eagle there which seemed to be laughing at him.

Sometime later there was mention of a warrant, and of
Spry assaulting officers of the consulate, resisting arrest.
Later, still, Marada Kerrion came to see him where he
was propped up in the corner of a white, bright, empty
detention cell, looking at him over steepled hands out of
sorrowful eyes once he had squatted down before him.

"Sofia, why did you resist?"

His head hurt too much, and his lips were too split and
swollen, for talking. He leaned his head back against the
wall and let it roll a little, so that he could see Marada
without shifting his eyes. He made a sound which was
meant to answer without words.

Marada blinked repeatedly. "We'll have you fixed up
in no time. I need a deposition from you, just a for-
mality, really."

Behind Marada, dark blurs were just beginning to con-

320

JANET MORRIS

dense into men's shapes. Spry tested wrists neatly en-
cased in plastic manacles. Marada was still explaining
how much easier things were going to be if Spry would
just cooperate-

When he could manage it, Spry said, "No," to a prof-
fered document. After that, Marada left, and other people
talked to him, endlessly. A doctor came, red-cross-bia-
zoned whites swimming in Spry's vision, but the men who
were telling him slowly and repeatedly what they wanted
him to do made the physician wait.

Eventually, he closed his eyes and pretended not to
hear them, so that they went away and the doctor, with
clucks and tsks and wails about what things were coming
to in Kerrion space, pricked his arm.

Thereafter he knew no pain, no visitors, no blinding
lights, only cool dark which came despite the fact that he
had signed no admission that he had attacked the intel-
ligencers first.

When finally he woke, he knew by his senses that he
was in a cruiser: he could feel the vibration in his bones
of a ship on standby; he could smell the ion-charged air;

he could almost see the configurations of a stateroom
about him through his swollen, half-shut eyes.

That was good, he thought, and dived back down to
conciousness' muddy floor, where he could heal and hide
until the time came to try to find out whether the ship
was the Hassid. Should it be, he still had a chance—if he
was fit enough to take it.

In Acheron's slipbay, countdown to the Marada's de-
parture was held at minus eight minutes.

Nuts Alien shambled aboard.

"—or we'll wake Baldy up and see whether our
guildmaster has any objections to my commandeering
that parking orbit. I want to be the only mobile in the
five-thousand-mile band over those coordinates. Traffic is
not my problem."

Shebat waved behind her without looking and signed
off. The green-blue spill from the corn-monitor died. She
swung her seat about. "What is it. Nuts, that is so urgent
that the dispatcher froze my count, and so secret that no
one would tell me why?"

EARTH DREAMS

321

Alien put down the box he was carrying and jammed
his fists into the apron he wore over his khaki coveralls.
"Mrs. Kerrion, it's these here circuit breakers." He
pointed to the box on the Marada's aft manual console-
"Bunch of 'em got switched with lower impedance num-
bers that looked the same ... in the bins, you see- So I
thought I'd just make sure you've got everything you're
supposed to have, and nothin' you're not." His wise eyes
met hers; they were pale and watery and saying some-
thing entirely incongruous.

She knew that box was too big to be what he said; like
a canny Kerrion, she did not remark upon it. When Nuts
came toward the Marada's epicentral controls dais and
motioned her up, she moved out of his way. Tools
emerged from and disappeared into his apron; a floor-
panel was removed; white noise and pink noise clashed
forth from her cruiser's speakers; every monitor blinked
open a snowy, unseeing eye; each ramp and stack-meter
died in an unerring procession from right to left across
the cruiser's boards.

Nuts was holding a ribbon cable, grinning up at her.
Stretched full-length on his side, his stomach sagging
floorward, the gray-haired pilot rubbed his perpetually
stubbled jaw. "Mrs. Kerrion, I think—" he fiddled in the
box, pulled out a card of circuitry and examined it,
caused a racked panel to fold up and out of the hole he
had exposed, pulled a similar card from the rack, exam-
ined it, made a clucking sound and put both cards by his
feet,—"you ought to know that when I was in the
guildhall about an hour ago—"

"Nuts, it's 0300 and I have twenty hours left to avert a
disaster. Do whatever you've come to do, and let me get
out of here," she said over the hiss and whine.

"I come to tell you, missus, that when I was there,
these black-and-reds from Draconis came and hauled
poor Davey away. Beat the crap out of him first, and
didn't care to discuss the whys and wherefores of it with
anybody—took him out the back. You bein' my buddy's
apprentice, and all, I thought I'd take a shot at getting
some help for him." Alien's facade slipped away. He sat
straight up. "Now I'll put your internals back together
and you can get underway, if you choose to, without any

522

JANET MORRIS

slate on this or worry about it. Won't take a second to
check the fuse-box." Shifting himself about, he replaced
the original card in its slot, shoved the spring-mounted
caddy down until it locked beneath the flooring, and re-
garded the ribbon cable. "Anything you want to say be-
fore your control room's back on-line?"

Shebat looked disgruntled and reexamined the cable's
end. "Lady, are you going to see him, or not? 'Cause if
you are, I'd like you to slip a little something to him."

"Give it to me."

"It's in that box there." The ribbon cable was re-
secured, the floor panel replaced. With a grunt, Nuts got
stiffly to his feet, drawled several inanities, and headed
for the fuse-box in the Marada's engine room. "Give me
five minutes, and we'll resume your count." The noise
ceased; meters peaked and steadied; screens resumed
their pre-flight check-out where it was frozen, each blink-
ing, in the upper right-hand comer, T minus 00:08:00:00.
Nuts waved and lumbered out, a friendly, gray-and-khaki
bear once more.

Then Shebat embarked upon a marathon, four-hour
battle to acquire access to David Spry, in holding, she
finally ascertained, in Hassid. Not until she was ready to
depart for there did she look into the carton Nuts had left
and see a little, black, plastic box. She did not open it,
simply slipped it into her flight satins' hip pocket, prefer-
ring to be ignorant of its contents as she preferred not to
note the passage of rime, now that she was racing against
it.

At least, she could deliver to Spry Chaeron's message.
At worst, she would make landfall north of Bolen's town
too late to save Thorne and Penelope and Cluny and
Bitsy and two good intelligencers from Marada's manic
rage.

"Marada," she told her cruiser, "full security. Keep
checking to see if the Hassid has put in for flight cleara-
nce. I need to know her ETD." Also, she would have
liked to know why Ward had not been aware of Spry's
whereabouts, or of Marada's intelligencers' hubristic sa-
dism—or why he had not seen fit to so inform her.

When she saw David Spry, she forgot all else,
ephemerally. When she left him, she left the little plastic

EARTH DREAMS

525

box and a good portion of her soul behind: she knew that
she was wholly Kerrion, then, to be able to abandon him
to his fate. But she was not triumphant, only disgusted.
The price had been far too high.

The takeover of Acheron by the consul general's forces
was bloodless, fast, and efficient. Once martial law was
imposed, there was nothing for Acheron's functionaries
to do but accede. Chaeron was an hour into sponge;

Shebat had left the Marada in orbit, bound by multidrive
to Earth. Objections in their absence were impotent, lu-
dicrous, the intelligencer Ward pointed out to the other
departmental heads who awaited briefing outside the of-
fice which had been Chaeron's. The man inside it was,
the intelligencer needlessly reminded his colleagues, the
duly-appointed consul general of Kerrion space. No one
else said anything: there was nothing left to say.

Marada Kemon's first official act was to decree a new
policy in dealing with those criminals who called them-
selves militiamen: Kerrion space, henceforth and forever,
would not negotiate with terrorists. Citing the fact that
communications with the rebels had ceased and advanc-
ing the hypothesis that the execution of the intelligencer-
cadet Pope along with all other hostages was the most
likely reason, Marada ordered the immediate "neutral-
ization" of the gathered insurgents. The opportunity to
eradicate such a large portion of their Earthly opposition
might never come again, he pointed out carefully, speak-
ing for the slated record. Allow the self-proclaimed free-
dom-fighters to disperse and resume their guerrilla
tactics, and years of bush skirmishing with the attendant,
inevitable loss of Kerrion personnel, unused to and unfit
for such warfare, would ensue. "I, for one, will not make
such an error in the name of humanitarianism."

None of the convened Acheron officials dared to argue
principle with Marada Kerrion, the mad ex-arbiter who
ruled over them.

"Ward," Marada purred. "I want you to personally
put through a call to my sister-in-law, telling her of our
decision, warning her away from the area, and making
certain she realizes that if she insists on proceeding into
the arena of conflict, then we cannot be responsible for

524

JANET MORRIS

her welfare; she will be acting as a private citizen, with
no authority to mitigate circumstances or dictate terms.
All negotiations have been tabled."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Go! The timing is
very tight."

Ward left.

For his second official act as commander-in-chief of
Acheron, Marada supplemented his policy decisions, de-
termining satellite offensives and ground support suffi-
cient to the task of crushing the primitive but dangerous
opposition that very day, permanently and completely.
Safeguards were necessarily limited, due to haste and the
capabilities of his groundside contingents.

When the remaining luminaries heard the specifics of
Marada's projected pre-emptive strike,  someone
mumbled that "neutralization" was a misnomer; Marada
might as well have said "eradication." For this reason,
the speaker was put in charge of implementing those very
procedures.

Having dismissed all but Guildmaster Baldwin, whose
rheumy old eyes stared unseeingly beyond his former
pilot's head, Marada demanded a priority departure-win-
dow for three hours hence. "No excuses or disclaimers. I
have to get Sofia out of here before he finds a way to slip
through my fingers once again," Marada snarled when
Baldy objected. The emaciated, white-haired guildmaster
opened his mouth, sighed heavily, closed it, and turned
away without awaiting dismissal.

Marada let him go. He had much to do; he must over-
see the destruction of Thorne's militia before he shipped
out for Draconis. With luck, the entire affair would be
settled before his sister-in-law set foot upon her native
soil.

A part of him which still thought as other men think,
deep within himself but far from where man and cruiser
together amplified a madness which belonged equally to
both, wept softly. But Marada chose not to listen. That
part of him which was riding high on the tide of accom-
plishment wished there was some way to do away with
Shebat, as well. It was she who had tainted his family and
twisted them all, and with her blighting touch brought

EARTH  DREAMS                         525

insurrection and murder upon the house of Kerrion.
Since the day he had swept her up from Earth, every-
thing had been full of evil.

But even at the pinnacle of his solipsism, he could not
do that. The knowledge that Shebat and her benighted
cruiser—who was her counterpart catalyst in cruiserkind,
sowing devisiveness and destruction in that most hal-
lowed of soils which was the pilot/cruiser bond—would
live on to torment him while the pawns of her inimical
influence passed quietly on to whatever heavens they be-
lieved in, was knowledge bitter to his arbiter's soul. She
and her cruiser had made murderers and liars of the best
of men and the finest of cruisers.

If he could have destroyed them both, he would have.
But a dead Shebat would be a martyr to the folk of
Earth, who, though they believed not in logic or reason,
believed in the divinity of Shebat the Twice Risen.
Though he might otherwise employ the very dream danc-
ers who had spread her myth far and wide to dispell it, if
she died a hero in the militia's massacre, there would be
no hope of that.

He snorted softly and pulled on his long patrician nose,
sitting in his brother's office with his feet up on
Chaeron's desk. He was pleased with himself: he did not
crave revenge above right action; he was totally in con-
trol and equal to the task he had set himself: his poor
space-enders would have the finest rehabilitation money
could buy and intellect could conceive; the subhuman
scum who had been left on Earth centuries ago precisely
because they were genetic throwbacks, less than human
in the true and modem sense of the word, deserved no
mercy, only justice. Years ago, when he first brought
Shebat up to these coordinates, the Orrefors proconsul's
secretary had warned him about the genetic debilities of
Earth's denizens. He had not listened, preferring to be-
lieve that any creature as pathetic and helpless as Shebat
had then seemed was a victim of circumstance, her bar-
barism a function of her environment, nothing more.

Now, he knew better. He could only hope it was not
too late.

The doctor in charge of Spry was at the door,
Chaeron's secretary's voice told him. He bade the man

526

JANET MORRIS

admit the physician, whose sole task was to maintain
Marada's prisoner in a state of passivity sufficient that no
bodyguard or intelligencer would be necessary on their
journey to Draconis. Marada wanted to be alone with his
nemesis. Since he was consul general, the only person he
had to convince that this was not unwise, was himself.

In the next few hours, busy as he was, Chaeron's face
came often before Marada's inner sight, and he wished
that he could have dallied to see his half brother's reac-
tion when the man who had tried to assassinate him re-
turned to find himself relieved of authority, powerless to
perpetuate his seditious policies of pacification and weak-
ness. Once, Marada had thought that Chaeron was wiser
in the ways of governance than he. But time had taught
him that to deal with corruption, one must only allow
oneself to become marginally corrupt. It was hard; it was
abhorrent to the part of him that prized ethics; it was
painful to the youth in him who once esteemed ideals.
But the real world, as Penrose had observed, did not run
on the merit system.

He wondered if that revelation would have been any
comfort to Penelope, his half sister, doubtless despoiled
and raped so many times over that she was praying for
the relief of death. Marada had come to see death as the
Inevitable Lover, in whose embrace all troubles are for-
gotten. If his society had not forbidden suicide, he would
long ago have gone to Her very door and banged upon it
until he was admitted. As it was, he could only court Her
from a distance, wooing his own end as a gentleman
should, in a mannerly fashion, content to know that
eventually he would lie in state, released from every pain
and absolved of even the need to withhold judgment
upon the immorality of his fellows.

Upon that cheerful thought, he left his brother's office
for the operations center from which the deployment of
killer-sats and ground support would be overseen by him
personally. Dispensing death, he mused, is in effect dis-
pensing salvation and absolution, something for which his
arbiter's training had been preparing him, his life long.

KXV 134 Marada hung helplessly above Sentinel
Ridge, unable to affect the outcome of the carnage five

527

EARTH DREAMS

thousand miles beneath him. On every side, low-orbital
satellites hung near him, spitting invisible jets of destruc-
tion upon the puny humans far below.

His outboard was not yet among the folk who dropped
in their tracks, who flared up from within and burned
with a blue, sweet smoke, who simply ceased to be, or
sometimes exploded in a bright flash. Acheron had de-
ployed every weapon it had at hand. The Marada's long-
range sensors gave him close-up detail. He could recog-
nize individuals: he had seen Penelope fall, hustled by
Thome through the screams and the confusion as the as-
sault from above began. He had seen Thome go down,
his right shoulder sheared away while he hesitated, peer-
ing upward, squinting at the thunderheads which masked
his doom.

The Marada had received Ward's message, but his out-
board had already debarked. She had given him an an-
swer to send back to Acheron: she was proceeding,
despite the consul general's decree, as they had pre-
viously agreed. To the cruiser she had added that her
stepbrother would not fire upon the militia if she was
among them. She had been wrong.

The Marada had orders from his outboard, stemming
from the outset of their rescue mission, not to contact
Chaeron unless the situation became threatening to the
cruiser's own survival while she was on Earth. To the
cruiser's insistence that the proconsul could and should
be alerted to his half brother's intentions, Shebat had re-
plied that if he knew, he would forbid her to take any
action, and ordered the cruiser to keep silent.

The Marada bitterly regretted having obeyed his out-
board. With one high-resolution eye, he followed her
multidrive's progress through the suddenly treacherous
realm of inner space, continually trying by cruiser-link to
dissuade her.

There was nothing the cruiser could do but watch over
Shebat as she made landfall and disembarked into chaos,
running and dodging among the dying and the dead. The
cruiser calculated the time remaining until the ground
support dispatched from New Chaeronea arrived, and
whispered into the back of his outboard's mind that in
nine minutes she must be gone from there.

528

JANET MORRIS

Shebat only absently answered; she had found Pen-
elope, and Jesse Thome. The cruiser saw her kneel in the
bloody grass, take the remaining hand of the militia com-
mander, then close his eyes.

"Hurry," the cruiser pleaded. "Hurry, Shebat."

Penelope, Shebat was thinking, was sleeping, only
sleeping. As she tried to heft the girl's inert form, a
wounded archer nearby, blinded with blood and agony,
took shaky aim and let his arrow fly.

"Down!" The Marada's warning came too late.

Shebat dropped Penelope's limp weight, staring dis-
believingly at the arrow which had buried half its length
in her arm. She sat down heavily on the grass, dry-eyed,
staring dumbly at her wound.

Nothing the Marada could say seemed to be able to
rouse his outboard. The Marada had no experience with
shock. Unable to elicit any response from Shebat, who
was crawling slowly among the bodies until she returned
to Thome's, he armed his own particle beams and
trained them upon the fouled killing ground in case an-
other should seek to harm his outboard, while the girl
sat, mute, with Thome's head in her lap, stroking his
hair.

To the cruiser's remonstrance that she must flee before
the ground forces arrived, that she was not empowered
to be present, that her presence might be construed as
treason, complicity, or worse by the consul general,
Shebat slowly framed a single, disjointed thought:

Passing by unnoticed. If they come, I will employ it. They
will not see me.

For the first and only time in his experience, the
Marada wished he was possessed of a body, of arms and
legs and voice with which to speak, so that he could go
himself down to greedy Earth and carry his outboard
away from all the madness that humans do.

Unable to do more than watchfully protect her from
additional violence, the cruiser waited, more distressed
than he had ever been. He could not lose Shebat. He
would not be divested of his outboard. Alone among
men, she was comprehensible to him. If he must oblite-

EARTH DREAMS

529

rate every living being who trod that battlefield, he would
protect her.

When a stealthy figure raced, crouched low, through
the bushes and then through the dead, the Marada
almost fired upon him before recognizing Cluny Pope.

Chapter Eighteen

David Spry floated in stellar space in the distant
vicinity of Earth's sponge-way, the beacon Nuts had
made for him and Shebat had smuggled to him hanging
from his belt.

Somewhere far off among the points of light raced the
Hossid, her time-aligns spinning crazily as they computed
the ongoing time dilation she was accruing, her throttle
jammed at full-forward, her B-mode module, well-sabo-
taged, unable to negotiate sponge.

Spry discarded the third of five eight-hour air packs he
had taken with him when he abandoned ship, simulta-
neously biting down on the peppermint-flavored tube of
the fourth. If he ran out of air before Shebat came to
collect him, he would not have the option of becoming a
siren. Conditions favorable to that metamorphosis ex-
isted only at space-end. Here, he would simply die.

His corn was cranked to full volume. The bead-mike
fed him back his own breathing: no other sound existed
within his helmet except his occasional, terse conver-
sations with himself.

He thought of Marada Ken-ion, slumped unknowing
over his controls, of how simple and unsatisfying the so-
lution had been, when finally Spry had managed to im-
plement it.

Touch and go, it was, for a time. The drugs they had

550

551

EARTH DREAMS

been feeding him had made him slow and fuzzy. But they
also made Marada cocky and careless.

He recalled an interminable lecture of which he was
the recipient, the logic of which he could not follow. He
remembered Marada's beard beneath wild eyes as he
ranted, screaming at him while Spry played the hapless
captive audience and Marada's irrational behavior gifted
Spry with enough fear to send adrenalines pumping
through his tranquilized system, and those adrenalines
cleared his head.

"It's you, it's all of you damned intriguers who are de-
stroying us. Human rights, you understand? That's all
that matters! Individual justice and individual parity. My
poor space-enders! This, the most equitable of solutions,
and because of it, I am anathema!"

Marada had meant—what? Spry still was not sure. He
was surer about the tearful episode, in which the consul
general of Kerrion space came nose-to-nose with the
smalt pilot, sobbing, "Kill me, you fool. Kill me, please.
My god, I need to rest. Help me. Please, I can't do this. I
can't fix it. Nobody can. It's every self-centered, vicious,
hateful one of you, against just me. So kill me, Softa
David. They'll give you a medal!"

The consul general of Kerrion had embraced him in an
agonizing bearhug that sent waves of pain shooting from
his ribs—bruised from the beating he had so recently
taken—up into his brain. Marada had wept for nearly an
hour, holding Spry like a mother. About then, David
Spry had remembered that what Marada was asking was
exactly what he had been supposed to do.

But the sedatives made him too passive—or the pathe-
tic, troubled "monster" before him had made him too
sad. Though Marada and his family had nearly destroyed
him, in the fog of his tranquilized brain and because of
all that had passed between them, David Spry changed
his mind.

If Marada had not let him have the run of the ship,
returning, removing his shackles and inviting him to the
control room, scant minutes after he had stumbled, blind
with tears, out of the door of the pink-and-pearly cabin
yet decorated for a woman dead five years and more,
things might have turned out differently- . . .

532

JANET MORRIS

Spry chuckled in his helmet- He had expended pro-
digious energies of mind to rid himself of his hatred for
Marada before it crippled him in his attempt to rid the
worlds of his enemy. He had succeeded too well.

When the time-aligns started to whirl ominously and
alarm-bells began to ring, when Marada, white-faced, re-
alized that his cruiser could not safely navigate sponge,
he had turned to Spry for aid.

Coming up behind him, a simple and practiced two-
fisted clout to the nape of Marada's neck had been Spry's
remedy, but he found his premeditated fellow-through to
be unnecessary, unconcionable. The most suitable move
Spry could see was to let Marada Kerrion live.

By the time Marada awoke, years would be between
them. By the time he had realized he must power down
Hassid without the B-mode-fadlitated spongetravel
which protected men from the toll of years real spacetime
exacted, David Spry would have long since died a natural
death of old age.

For good measure. Spry ripped a handful of colored
cables out of the command console's depths. When that
was done, they had already lost a week of real-time.

But he had not counted on Hassid's fury. She would
not release an ejection capsule to him. He had jumped in
only a three-mil suit, at a speed dangerous to his health.

But providence had favored him, or else Chance, his
old mentor, had decided to wipe his slate and let him
start all over again.

He had watched the Hassid disappear with something
like triumph. His chances of surviving a naked jump, ac-
cording to the simulations he had run in the Marada,
were twenty thousand to one against, at cruising speeds
up to half that of light, and at greater accelerations the
number became truly formidable.

He had stood in the lock for a moment, thinking about
powering the Hassid down to manual so that he could get
at her multidrive or force the ejection mechanism into his
control, but every second put more time between him
and his epoch.

He had slapped the plate, bent down, and dived into
space's deepest depths, eyes closed.

Having survived the transition from accelerated to in-

EARTH DREAMS

555

ertial frames, he had only to wait and hope for his
rescue.

Sometimes, he listened to his beacon.

Mostly, he slept.

When he inserted his last air pack, he had come to
terms with the possibility that Shebat could not, or would
not, answer the beacon's summons. He could not say that
he would calmly, or willingly, or with any degree of resig-
nation, go to his death, but if it came, he could say for
certain that there would be nothing he could do about it.
Things happen. Not necessarily for the best.

Chaeron, in Erinys, had brought his cruiser out of
sponge and headed directly toward the coordinates the
Marada, through the Tyche, had suggested-

Bless Nuts and Tyche. Without their help he would
have walked blindly into more trouble than he could han-
dle. As it was, he had his hands full.

"RP, how's your headache?"

'"M awright," mumbled his pilot-of-record from be-
hind a wall of painkilling drugs. In the copilotry couch,
Penrose shifted, turned a sweaty face to him.

He was toying with his friend's health. They had dis-
cussed it. They had agreed. The choices were all bad,
Rare had pointed out. And he hadn't yet lost the use of
his limbs, or waxed violent. Chaeron had conceded that a
migraine (which might be no more that that) was not
worth the life of his wife, although he was not so sure
about the value of Softa Spry's.

The Marada came up in his scopes. Chaeron had
wanted to be a pilot; now he was one. Trying to think
like a pilot was difficult; he yet felt like someone in cos-
tume, an interloper at an invitation-only masquerade.

Shebat was hooked up to the Marada's life-support, so
the cruiser had confided. So was Bitsy Mistral. Cluny
Pope had executed the first-aid operations under the
ship's direction. By Shebat's decree, the cruiser had not
been allowed to return to its slipbay in Acheron, but had
headed directly out to the rendezvous-coordinates at
which, sometime in her immediate future, Shebat ex-
pected to find David Spry.

An entire minute of arc must be searched to pinpoint

554

JANET MORRIS

him. Chaeron hoped Nut's jury-rigged beacon was
powerful enough. . . .

Erinys was not worried about their ability either to find
Spry or to get Shebat home safely in lieu of that, or any-
thing else- The KXV was all Chaeron had thought she
might be. He had encountered her encircuited affection
for Sofia David, and wished it his, though he had known,
when he ordered her limited reprogramming, what it
would mean to mesh with a cruiser whose loyalty was
already spoken for. He had done it purposefully, to make
sure that he did not become enamored of a single cruiser
above reason or logic. That was not why he had become
a pilot. He did not crave the intimacy, the euphoria, the
extended consciousness. He only craved information and
understanding.

The most worrisome datum he had received had come
directly from Shebat. It was a greeting, star-flung by
cruiser-circuitry, bounced through Tyche's sponge-clock
to him in Erinys's just before they exited sponge. But
there had been something overtly wrong about the tone
of it. Why that was, the Marada would not, or could not,
tell him. When he brought Erinys, on a converging vec-
tor with the Marada, to the point in real spacetime which
was inhabited by a gay, if gasping, Softa Spry, who was
just being thrown a line and hauled aboard the Marada,
Spry answered his greeting boldly, and promised that
Chaeron was going to be quite relieved when they got a
chance to talk.

But when Chaeron had donned a three-mil suit and
space-walked from Erinys to the Marada, Spry was pac-
ing back and forth, fists balled, berating Cluny Pope.

"I'd rather have died than lived to see this day! You
teen-age aborigine, hou could you allow this?"

"I didn't allow anything," Pope replied sullenly from
the control room's corner farthest from Spry. "What was
I supposed to do? Power this thing down? Then what
would have become of her? Or Bitsy? He's on life-sup-
port in the first cabin. The Marada told me what—"

"That's right, kid. Just pull one goddam circuit-
breaker. Sponge take you, Shebat, come out of there—
Chaeron!"

Unspeaking, Chaeron walked past Spry and stood be-

555

EARTH DREAMS

fore the young woman slumped in the Marada's epi-
central dais. He knelt down, checked her pulse, took her
hand, felt the cold flesh, snapped, "A little more light,"
and in it examined the bluish tinge that colored the
wound, the red stripes which ran from it, up her arm.
"Blood poisoning, or tetanus—the real kind."

He checked the IV, lifted her eyelids, bent down and
brushed her lips with his. "1 talked to her, just a few
hours ago," he whispered, disbelieving. A second time,
he sought a pulse.

"Here," said Spry, and tapped a meter which read out
Shebat's bodily functions.

From the speakers in the control room's comers from
the forward com-grilles and those about him in the epi-
central console, Shebat's voice came, husky and soft,
hardly disjointed: "I am fine, do not worry . . . about
me. I am with the Marada. Chaeron, it is so wonderful. I
feel like I will live forever."

"The bell you say. I'll destroy this ship wire by wire, to
get you out of there. You cannot—"

"She should have her housing repaired, first, Procon-
sul, " interrupted the cruiser's voice. "She is in pain there.
Here, she is well."

Spry snarled: "Marada, you're buying yourself a ticket
to the scrapheap."

"I want my wife back, now. And log emergency ap-
proach vectors, my priority, for both ships," Chaeron
snapped.

Nothing happened. Shebat did not stir in her couch.

Chaeron bent down and began disconnecting the life-
support.

Spry joined him. "I don't think you should ..."

"I don't care what you think. She's my wife and I'll do
as I please. Forcing her back into her body may be our
only hope. You take your pick of which ship you want to
fly into Acheron, this one or your own."

"I—my own?"

"Erinys. 1 always pay my debts. That is, if I have ac-
crued one?"

Spry's brown-tunnel eyes met his. "That's up to you to
say."

Chaeron's gaze did not waver; his face remained ex-

556

JANET MORRIS

pressionless. "Good enough. Be assured that I will take
care of you, as soon as my brother is officially logged lost
in sponge."

"Space. Or time."

"Space," Chaeron grinned bleakly. "I wish I could
handle my other problems as easily. I'll want to talk to
you about the future, so do not disappear in that cruiser.
If one wants to live a long and happy life, it always pays
to play by the rules."

"Now that you're making them?"

"Something like that. I'd like to know who is responsi-
ble for this. . . ."

Cluny Pope started to explain what he knew about the
massacre below Sentinel Ridge.

Spry interrupted. "I bet I can help you with that one."

"But can you help me get my wife back?" His glance
slid about, indicating his distrust of the Marada.

"I don't know. I just don't know. I was once fouled up
like this," he touched Shebat's unresponding arm, "in
Bucephalus. She got me out of there. I might never have
found my way . . . but this is different."

The voice which was, and as not, Shebat's said from
the speakers, "Do not worry. I will be fine."

Chaeron, still on his knees, pulled the oxygen feeder
from Shebat's nose. "Let her go, Marada. If this body
dies, Shebat will die." Despite determination and years
of practice, Chaeron's voice broke, and he blinked
rapidly and looked at his hands.

Spry squeezed his arm, let go, cursed, stood up, and
walked away. When he reached the control room door,
he said to Pope, "Come on, hot stuff. Let the folks have
some peace.'*

Chaeron bent, as he heard the lock hiss shut, and whis-
pered in an ear he could not be sure would hear him.

But the Marada heard. As much as he loved his out-
board, he could not deny such a plea. As much as he
treasured her, that much understanding of human love
and human fidelity was brought home to him. He, too,
spoke to Shebat: "Live your life as a woman. I am always
here. He will not be. When your human days are gone,
then come to me. We will live forever. Surely, you can
spare those mortals who love you a few short years."

EARTH DREAMS

557

Her eyes opened, full of pain and pride. "We love you,
Chaeron," she said.

In Acheron, tension reigned. Spry and Chaeron sat
talking quietly in Chaeron's apartments long into the
night.

"I can't be sure of anything anymore, least of all
Ward. My sister dead, Thome and his people massacred,
Bitsy barely out of danger, Shebat still under observa-
tion; everything I've done on Earth gone down the drain
in one week's time. . . . Perhaps we're just striking out at
random, seeking someone to blame, some way to fight
back. ..."

"Didn't you tell me only Bitsy and Penrose, besides
Pope and the ground-side intelligencers, knew what
really happened to Lauren?"

"Yes, that is true. I went to great lengths to ensure
that my Acheron staff believed she had disappeared
somewhere on Earth. We planted her ID in a vacant
apartment in New Chaeronea. But perhaps that is what
Ward meant when he said, 'Out of the picture.'"

"Unlikely. That he slipped up is far more likely. I did
not," Spry took a sip of whiskey, "picture you as being
quite so fastidious. Let me do this. It would be an honor,
and a pleasure. And, if I'm still a pilot, or am later
deemed retroactively to have been one all along, then
there's no blame—pilot's immunity, thank the Lords."

"I am trying to keep you out of trouble. We can hardly
offer you the guildmastership in Draconis if we involve
you in anything—"

"Ease up on your stick, there. What did you say?"

"You heard me. It's what Shebat wants. She thinks
you and she can carry on a discreet affair there without
me finding out, I'd wager, though I keep trying to tell her
that these little improprieties don't hurt my feelings. I am
still trying to make a Kerrion out of her, but it is those
Earthly mores of hers. Jesse Thome was sure their tryst
was a mortal sin. I believe that was the allure, there, on
both sides, although rough trade is always fetching." He
crossed his legs and stretched out on the couch. "Bless
me, I am exhausted. As soon as I can get this martial law
matter cleared up, I'm going to sleep for a week."

558 JANET MORRIS

"States of siege can be enervating," muttered Spry,
obviously uncomfortable. There was a pregnant pause
Chaeron did not deign to fill. Spry said, "By the five eter-
nities, I am not after your wife!"

"Pity. She will not rest until she has sampled your
charms. High-androgen females tend to go after what
they want. I do not mean to devalue your loyalty or your
prudence—if either word applies—but I doubt you will
have much success fending her off for long."

"—I will Just take my cruiser and disappear. I won't
bother you people any more. I have to settle up with
someone. I may have a clean slate as far as you are con-
cerned, but—"

"Bucyrus?"

Spry spilled his drink, cursed, wiped his coveralls.

Chaeron chuckled, "Why not let me take care of that
little matter for you? You rid me of my traitor, and I'll
free you of your obligation to an assassination-master
who is also an abductor of helpless convicts. Anything he
can use against you I can use against him. Stalemate. Un-
less it is the girl, Lauren?"

"Sir, I told you once before, Lauren's just another slip.
But Bucyrus ... I doubt that you comprehend how en-
tangled I am with him, or what kind of pressure he can
bring to bear."

"You have never called me that before. I am de-
lighted. If you will continue to *sir' me, I can promise
your duplicitous little subversive's heart desires. I know
all about you, I presume to think. Less flippantly," he sat
forward, "I can modestly state that what I do not know
is, on the whole, probably not worth knowing. I have an
opening in my intelligence service, which would not have
to conflict with Shebat's offer to you, or could be your
primary reason for accepting it. Let me be blunt. Spry: I
would do almost anything to avail myself of your particu-
lar talents on a regular basis, including protecting you
from overage blackmailers who fancy themselves as inter-
spatial spy-masters. What say?"

"Phew. You are too fast for me."

"I truly doubt that. Go pluck the snake out of my
grass, while I meditate on how to lure you into an equita-
ble arrangement from which we shall both profit. Slate?"

EARTH DREAMS

559

Spry shivered. "Don't say that."

"What? Don't say what?" Penrose said loudly from the
hall which led to the bedroom. 'Are you two quite
through? I want to come out, now."

"Come ahead, R.P. Spry was just leaving. Weren't
you?"

"Yep. Nighty-night, Raphael. Sleep tight.'* He waved
to the pilot, who had a small bandage and a shaved patch
stowing in his curls near the back of his head where a tiny
hole had been bored to drain a hematoma, but was oth-
erwise none the worse for wear.

Penrose waved back.

David Spry slithered through the data-sources as an
automated lorry took him to the pilotry guildhall, looking
for anything he could use to lure his quarry forth.

The four men who had been entrusted with the task of
keeping news of the ill-fated hostage-taking from Marada
were the key to it, Spry knew. He called the dispatcher
among them, found the man off-duty and willing to meet
him in the guildhall, sent a supposedly secure addendum
to his invitation he was sure would elicit some response
from the culprit he wanted to flush.

He did all of that for Chaeron's sake, to show certain
proof, incriminating reactions. He knew who the spoiler
was. He had smelled him, and so had Bucyrus.
Fugitively, he wondered if Chaeron actually knew as
much about him as he boasted.

When he slid into a seat in the guildhall, the man he
had summoned was at the bar. So were many of the
Draconis-based Kerrions and Orrefors who yet felt com-
promised sharing the same guildhall; so was Nuts Alien;

so was Terry Ward.

The guildhall, he decided, was no place for this. He
did not want to start a riot, only take out one nasty
covert intelligencer who did not have enough sense to
avoid playing both sides against the proverbial middle. It
would be a while before the Draconis contingent could
be ordered home, and all of them had to live through
what promised to be a difficult interval. Yet, he could not
risk letting his quarry get away.

He punched-up a drink, but left it in the hopper.

540

JANET MORRIS

Bereft of ideas, he would try the obvious.

He walked up to Ward and tapped him on the shoul-
der- "I want to talk to you. Privately. About him," he
jerked his head in the general direction of the man he
had asked to meet him here.

Ward frowned, drawing the logical conclusion that his
stooge was about to be unmasked. Hs contiguous eye-
brows drew down. He nodded curtly.

"Where to?"

Spry led the way to the privacy-booths, stopping Nuts
from coming over to him with a fierce glance and a sharp
shake of his head. His back crawled. Ward would be
wondering how he was going to prevent Spry from expos-
ing the stooge. The answer to that was simple, but un-
pleasant: it was the same solution Spry was about to
implement upon Ward's person. He clutched the priority
card in his pocket, fingered his change.

In the privacy booth, with the doors closed. Ward said,
"What is it?" and Spry pulled out the plastic card and his
change, running the card through the priority slot and
feeding change into the mechanism.

"I said, what do you want. Spry?"

'Sit down, let's have a drink," he said, card in hand—
and turned, lunging at the taller man, card held edge-on,
slamming the hard plastic into the intelligencer's temple.
By the time Ward's eyes got large with surprise, he was
already falling, the venerable nerve-death technique tak-
ing him out of the ranks of the living without even time
for him to feel the pain.

There was no blood, hardly a twitch, just a limp ex-
intelligencer on the floor.

Spry defeated the "privacy" mode, rushed out the
door, yelled, "There's a man hurt in here," and gave the
obligatory explanation: the intelligencer had stumbled,
hit his head on the table's sharp edge. "Call an am-
bulance"; "Get a doctor"; "jesters preserve us," pilots
said.

Nuts ambled over, laboriously knelt down to take a
look, checked Ward's pulse. "To late for any of that.
This one's permanently powered down." He grinned up
at Spry, "You got an awful habit of bein' in the wrong
place at the right time, Davey."

341

EARTH DREAMS

Spry took a deep breath, expelled it. "This isn't funny,
Nuts," he whispered, hoping the crowd's mutter had
masked both comment and retort.

Nuts held out a hand. Spry took it and hauled the
paunchy man up. "Like I say, an awful habit. You better
work on it."

"I will," he promised.

Chapter nineteen

Chaeron walked on a sandy shore bespattered
with salt spray. His feet were bare and moist and sand
stuck to them, sucked wistfully as he raised them, and
wept foam as he brought them down again where an old
wave just receding had laved a gleaming expanse slick
and smooth. Young waves far out to sea sang his name as
they approached, rearing their spumy heads to see him.
Low horns soughed beyond the rim of the world, the
waves raced to him with word. A flock of trebling birds
preceded them; white with wings blurred gray, they
wheeled above his head.

Without slackening his pace, he peered up at them,
singing in the awesome wide sky which betrayed no com-
forting recurve, but ever expanded. Dream dance, he re-
called, tasting the salt spray on his lips and remembering
when he had tasted it before, in the very first dream she
danced with him: in Draconis, on level seven, the night
he extricated her from the dream dancers' warren before
he emptied it—the night he had made her his wife. He
looked down again at the bubbles that squelched out
from under his heels as he drove them into the sand. He
was on Sardinia, in the "here and now." The legs that
drove the feet wore loose homespun trousers the color of
the newly washed shore. They were rolled up to his
knees. He let his gaze continue upward, felt as well as

542

545

EARTH DREAMS

saw the drawstring knotted below his navel. Still walking
just beyond the waves' caress, in time to the sea's song, it
seemed that he had been walking forever—would walk,
until entropy quelled the ocean's stride.

He took stock of his gilt-haired trunk, seeing even an
old bum from his childhood, low on his right side. The
medallion Parma had given him when he turned sixteen
beat chilly time against his solar plexus. He fingered the
condensation on it, a grain of sand there, wondering at
the felicity of the remembered dream to real-time's
moment.

Looking inland, he collided with her, grabbed her re-
flexively, struggled against gravity with her hot-cold flesh
against him. Then her inexorable gaze like the thun-
derheads bubbling in off the ocean steadied him, and he
held very still, his arms lightly around her.

"Do you like my song?" she said, indicating that she,
too, remembered their shared dream by saying what she
had said then.

"Oh, yes."

"Do you like my world?"

"It is so big—lonely."

"I do not much like yours, either- But come, and we
will make a smaller world together. And you will like it, I
promise."

He shook his head sharply, willing to say or do what-
ever was needful to break the pattern which a dream
dance had set long ago. And to reclaim her, once and for
all: she had been different, withdrawn and mystical, since
she had returned from her bodiless sojourn into cruiser-
consciousness. He said, "Dreams do not always come
true."

"Some do." Her lip edged out into a pout, but her
eyes gazed through him.

"Not enough." He brushed a jet curl back from her
brow.

"There is justification for the match of dream-time to
real-time in your science."

"Is there justification for reason in your magic?"

She shrugged. "1 think we understand only ourselves,
and that appearances are deceiving. The observer who is

544              JANET MORRIS

temporal, Softa says, is tied to the observer who is eter-
nal. The Marada says my magic is science.

"I want to study it, and time itself, with my cruiser.
Rule the universe, Chaeron, and good luck to you. I will
retain only my private funds, my family prerogative of
cultured excess, and my cruiser. I have decided."

"Will you go back to Draconis?"

She smiled at him, touched his lips with one finger,
leaned into his embrace. "I propose to maintain a home
here, and one in Draconis. We will have a son, I am told.
The mark of a good administrator is his ability to dele-
gate authority effectively. In the realm of persons, it is
you, not I, who are qualified. Make the house of Kerrion
whole and great. As consul general in absentia, I be-
queath you that as my one standing order. For cruisers
and their proliferation, I am wholly suited to act. You
see, it is coming out well enough, in the end."

"I salute you."

"And I, you."

It was time, then, to let go of words and games, and
take hold of lives and moments. He was a pilot; he un-
derstood. He lifted her off her feet and lay her down
upon the sands.