Sitting, he examined his shattered leg. He detected no breaks, evoked no pain. He wriggled his toes and was gratified to find those members responding with enthusiasm.
Tina Zhi entered the patio through doors that had replicated the bower and so had appeared a part of it. Domino Tight glimpsed the interior of a house in black and silver and red: comfortable chairs, a carpet, a ramp curling upward. Then the doors closed and there was nothing but the trees and the yellow lilies and blue hyacinths that bordered the patio. He looked up, but saw no sign of a second floor to which the interior ramp might have led.
She wore white, translucent robes with billowing sleeves and silver borders. A silver cincture girded her waist. A necklace, also of silver but with turquoise highlights, encircled her throat, and seemed in constant motion. Her short-cropped hair had been silvered as well. Her skin was dusky, her nose long, her cheekbones high. Her body was softened by the fat of youth, yet her eyes seemed immeasurably old.
“Ah, my Domino,” she said as she swept toward him and gathered him to lay his head in her lap. “You are awake at last.”
Domino Tight had never seen the point of telling someone what he already knew. “How long was I in a coma?” he asked, thinking it might be a very long time indeed if his leg were so completely healed.
“Oh, a day, two days. Who can say when we flit from world to world?” Her hands fluttered, her voice trilled. But the flightiness that he had once found so endearing now seemed too contrived. The robes, when they billowed, were solidly opaque; but where they draped, they may as well have been spun glass. As she moved, parts of her body made brief cameos before ducking coyly behind the curtains. Her hair dye, he saw from his vantage point, overlooked no patch; and the complementary nail colors extended to her decorative nipple caps.
“How did you happen to be on Yuts’ga?” he asked. “How did you find me so quickly?”
“Oh, love.” She brushed his lips with her own, stroked his forehead, brushing back his curls. “I am never far from you. Love entangles us.”
“That sun,” he said, nodding toward the great orange disk now nearly atop the sky. “It’s not the Yutsgar sun, and no world lies but two days sliding from her.”
“An age before an age ago,” she told him in a singsong voice, “the god Aspect decreed that two hearts that had beat as one would beat always together, however far apart they wandered. And this same is true of patches of space.
“For this reason, it is called a ‘quondam state,’ from an ancient word that meant ‘in the past,’ ‘in the future,’ and ‘sometimes’ all at once, because what was one in the past will be one in the future. Do you understand?”
Domino Tight bobbed his head. “No.”
“It is Technical, with many prayers in the hailipzimou, and so understanding is not given to all. Thus the mystery must be tightly guarded by those of us in the Gayshot Bo. But the consequence is this: that by entering the quondam state at one place, you may exit from it at another. I entangled with you when first we met and so I can be at your side quondam.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” And he thought, Should Padaborn and the others possess this techne, the Revolution is won!
She kissed him gently once more. “And neither would you have, save that your life wanted saving. There are vestiges, the Seven Wonders, and the world must be guarded from them. Yet necessity—and the Fates—rule us all. I could not let you die.”
“And I thank you. My life is yours, now and forever.” He pulled her head down to meet his, and kissed her deeply. But more deeply inside him there was that hard nut where no Shadow ever allowed Love’s entry, and affections were wedded always to craft. Seven Wonders? Kept from the world? Another of the Wonders was undoubtedly what had healed him so swiftly and seamlessly. What were the other five?
“Vestiges,” he said. “That means ‘remains, leftovers, widows.’ Remains of what? The Commonwealth? The prehumans?” His hand found an opening in her robes and ran lightly up her back
Tina Zhi laughed like wind chimes. “Oh, the storied Commonwealth! Everything wonderful is given to it. But it fell from pride and arrogance, and its pride came from its techne. We use techne judiciously, with what wisdom we can muster—because every change in technique means a change in culture; and when a culture has been perfected, as ours has, any change would lessen that perfection. That is why the Vestigial Virgins guard them from impious use.”
Domino Tight laughed and drew her to him once more. “You are no virgin!”
“Oh,” she touched a finger to his lips to silence him, “it is just a name.”
Was there something in the way she said “name”? Domino Tight shivered, and not entirely from her strokes. “Tell me about these techniques,” he said. “I want to know all about them.”
She disengaged and stretched out beside him on the divan. She searched him out and held him. The blankets were lighter even than silk; they may as well have been air. “I can make you strong,” she said. “I can make you fast.”
“I’m already strong and fast.” He laughed.
“Not like this. And I can let you … see things.”
He squeezed her gently. “I’m already seeing things.”
“No. I will give you special lenses that you wear directly on your eyes. With them, you can see my colleagues when we wear our Cloaks.”
“What cloaks are those?”
“These.” And Tina Zhi whirled her robes about her, and disappeared.
For a moment, Domino Tight lay amazed and unmoving on the divan. Then he grew aware of her warmth next to him, the sough of her breath on his neck. He reached and found that which he desired, and heard again the wind chime of her laughter.
“Yes,” she said. “I am still here. This too, is one of the Seven Vestiges.”
“But … How is it possible?”
Tina Zhi hesitated, then said,
“Light flows like a river
Through the channels of the fabric
Around the obstructing one.
The eye sees straight
While the light bends.”
Then, dismissively, “It is Technical. It can be imitated, but not understood. The ancient god Fengtzu wove it on his loom in the age before the age.”
Domino Tight, who believed in the gods only inasmuch as he scorned them, translated that to mean that long ago there had been a man who actually did understand. “And your special lenses will enable me to see those who wear such Cloaks?”
He was no longer certain that he wanted the ability to see the Cloak-wearers, for he now understood who Those must be.
“Yes,” his lover told him, throwing her clothing aside and appearing once more very much in the flesh. “But none of them may you hurt … save this one.” Her voice hardened again at the last and her eyes grew very old. She flipped her hand, palm up, and it was as if her palm were a holostage—for a tiny figure appeared in the space above it.
It was a woman of deep chocolate brown and hair bound up in a complex weave that left neck and shoulders bare. She had the solid, muscular grace of a swimmer and in the image was emerging naked from the ocean. The image captured not an instant, but a moment: The figurine stepped toward Domino Tight as she unbound her hair, and it fell cascading to her waist.