“You know this?” Campas asked, his tone incredulous. “You can tell what’s going to happen over the next two hundred years?”
How to answer that? she wondered. How to explain the vast amounts of data correlated by her ship’s computers, and the long reams of probabilities they had produced?
And then, she thought, there was the cynical answer. Your people will survive to dominate the planet because we will be helping them.
No. Best be brief.
“We can’t see into the future, no,” she said. “We can’t be certain. But we think that’s the likely outcome.”
Campas blew his cheeks, lying back on his pillow, overwhelmed by the idea. “Can I tell Necias?” he asked.
She thought for a moment. “If you like,” she said. “But it won’t help him. His problem is to somehow survive the next year politically, and after that to arrange an orderly transition of power to his heirs. What happens in two hundred years doesn’t matter to him.”
“What does your — your foresight say about his chance of success?” he asked.
Fiona shook her head. “We can’t make predictions of that kind. Trends over a long period of time, yes; but there are too many factors involved in the fate of a single individual.”
He shook his head dubiously. “This is what you’re bringing to us?” he asked. “This kind of magic foresight? To be able to plan our fortunes over centuries?”
“It’s possible,” Fiona said. She reached out to put a finger on his oiled sternum. “But no person will ever know his own fate, Campas,” she said. “No one can ever predict that. And most people are more interested in what they’re going to eat for dinner, and where they’re going to get it, than in what political power will be dominant for the next century.”
She caught a shade of wariness in his eyes as he asked his next question. “Fiona?” he asked, his voice hesitant. “How old are you?”
A laugh bubbled up inside her: he’d come up with another puzzler. What would he say, she wondered, if she’d told him the truth: she had been born on Igara slightly over six hundred of his years ago. But that answer would be deceptive, as well as alarming; almost all of those six hundred years had been spent in hibernation. Counting only the years she’d been awake, she was thirty-three in her own reckoning. That would be thirty-one in Standard, used by Igara and the other advanced planets in communication with one another, and was based on the old Terran year. Or, in the slightly longer years of Echidne, she would be twenty-seven. That was what she told him.
Campas seemed relieved. “With foresight of centuries. I thought perhaps you were an immortal, hundreds of years old. That would have been a surprise!” He cocked his head and looked at her, his palm brushing his cheek. “You look younger than twenty-seven,” he said.
She gazed at him for a long moment, watching the pulse beat in his throat as she reached her own decision. It had to come sooner or later, she knew; and this night seemed made for truth.
“Campas,” she said, “you’re righter than you know.” She propped herself on her elbows over him, looking carefully down at his expectant face. “I’m not an immortal,” she said. “And right now I’m only twenty-seven. But I can live centuries, barring accident, or murder. With luck I’ll live over two hundred, and be young enough in body to enjoy it.”
Campas gazed back at her for a long moment, a little frown on his face, his expression fathomless. “True?” he asked, finally.
“True,” Solemnly.
He turned his eyes away, gazing up at the blank roof of her tent. When he spoke his voice seemed to come from a long distance. “Is this one of the gifts you bring, Ambassador?” he asked.
“No,” she said, as gently as she could. She knew that even if it were possible to begin giving the treatments to the people of this planet — and it wasn’t; there was no place for long-lived people here; the population would grow to huge proportions and starvation would result — but even if it were possible, it was already too late for Campas. The treatments had to be started when very young.
Best to lie, she thought sorrowfully, wishing the realities were otherwise, that the decisions her people made were not so heartbreaking as to deny long life to so many, even with justification. But it would be too dangerous if the local rulers realized that they could demand extended life in return for their cooperation.
“My people are naturally long-lived,” she said. “That’s the way we’re born. It isn’t anything we can teach you.”
“I see,” he said, his voice still distant. He took a deep breath and turned toward her. “That will change things with us, won’t it?” he asked. “I’ll grow old, you won’t.”
She took his head in her hands and kissed him solemnly. “It doesn’t have to change tonight,” she said. “Or tomorrow night.”
“No,” he said. “But it will matter eventually.”
“I suppose it will.” She gave him a small smile. “I don’t think about eventually very often. Like most people, I spend more time thinking of tonight.”
His arms came around her and he held her close, his hands moving over her back, stroking her through the supple material of her privy-coat. She pressed her cheek to his neck, feeling his pulse close to her ear. He drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly, a long, ragged sigh. She sensed he had made a decision.
“Yes,” he said. “You’re right. You said it yourself, no one can predict his own fate. Everything could change tomorrow, not just between us, but for everyone, and possibly even you couldn’t stop it from changing.” He looked up at her soberly, and she nodded. “But no matter what happens tomorrow,” he said, “we still have tonight. Tonight is what matters.”
“Yes,” she said, simply. He began to kiss her slowly, first her cheek, then the line of her chin, then lastly, gravely, her mouth. So, she thought, another barrier passed, passed only for tonight, if not forever. We have survived, she thought. Affirmed.
And accepted, with grace, the things that must be.
CHAPTER 23
Fiona was walking from the river barge to her tent when she saw Necias’ messengers waiting for her. Her busy stride slowed for a moment, then she took a breath and went on. This, she thought, was where she was asked, politely, to stay in her tent so that the Abessu-Denorru could look to her safety. And where she would demand to see Necias, make her protests, and after listening solemnly Necias would, ever so regretfully, confirm the order.
Well. She was ready, as ready as she’d ever be.
The delegation seemed to be led by Listas, Necias’ popeyed son. “Beg pardon, Ambassador,” Listas said, “but the Abeissu would like to see you.”
“Very well.” So Necias was going to do his own dirty work. Fiona looked down at her plain grey dress. She had been talking to the barge people for a long hot afternoon, and it was marked with sweat. “Have I time to change?” she asked.
“Of course. There’s no hurry. Please take your time.” Listas seemed to be going out of his way to be assuring. Fiona ducked into her tent, let the flap drop shut behind her, and opened her chest of clothing. She washed her face, neck, and arms in the water her servant had brought — he always complained that she’d wanted it boiled first — and then chose a gown of purple velvet she hadn’t yet worn in Necias’s company. It was plain by Abessla standards, but remarkably gaudy by her own; she topped it off with a broad-brimmed black hat trimmed with silver brocade. Always look your best, she thought, when you’re going to get the chop.