I am mad to have come this far.
His finger hovered over the red button. Panic coursed over him, which had nothing to do with conspiracies and politics. It was something primal and ugly. He fought it down, remembering his duty.
And the vehicle stopped.
Dead. The machinery rested in utter stillness.
Waited.
The fourteen Intimates at in their circle, hands demurely folded, observing the old woman's sleep. They waited, with downcast eyes, mental zero, for the Vision was silent. Mishell trembled.
And thrust herself to her feet.
The thirteen lifted their faces and stared, round-eyed.
Mishell crossed the polished floor to the Oracle's couch.
Maranthe still smiled in her sleep. The bliss, spread now even to these hours, maddened, mocked them. Mishell smoothed the thin gray hair, touched the age-spotted temple, the cheek, the frail throat . . . closed her hands, pressed. Something snapped. The smile ceased. The blind eyes opened, forever blind.
There came a soft fluttering about the room, Servants on their feet, whispering in dismay. Mishell hurled the body to the cold floor, where it lay, graceless and half-naked. She sat down on the Oracle's bed, trembling, as the others surrounded her.
Soft hands touched her, smoothed her robes, her hair, wiped the perspiration from her brow. Anxious faces hovered near. Trays, long prepared, rattled in shaking hands.
"Drink, Mishell."
"Eat, Mishell."
"Time to go back, Mishell."
How easy it was, she thought, and smiled. Of course they must hold to the tradition. That is all they know. It was only I who dreamed the dream.
She mounted the steps.
Seated herself. Extended her hands over the cold plates. The lights flared. The car moved.
Cosean caught himself with a gasp. The car ran smoothly only a little distance into a dock. Locks meshed. The windows unsealed, revealing a dim, circular steel hall garishly lit by screens. He disembarked cautiously, keeping well within the white lines marked on the floor. At his left a huge screen lighted, showing a vast interplay of light and machinery. There seemed a. mote of a white-robed figure locked within it, on a manner of throne.
The Anethine Sibyl? he wondered. Is it screen or window? The white lines did not permit near approach. He felt an unaccustomed awe, and loathed it, fighting for his fashionable cynicism. A light flashed, the question symbol.
Cosean cleared his throat, stood squarely between the white lines at the nearest approach.
"Sibyl, the Shantran Technarchy asks: What are the surest means to guarantee our increased prosperity?
Wait, the screen flashed. A light came on to indicate a bench. Cosean sat down and waited. The temperature of the air was neutral, the lighting dim, sound lacking. Time distended. The light flashed. He arose. A white paper began to issue from the console before him. He took it for his answer, vaguely angry at the mechanical character of the response. He tore it free of the machine.
"Shantran Technarchy." The machine's voice seemed to vibrate through his bones. Female, if a machine could be female. The Sibyl? "You will most surely prosper through peace with your neighbors."
Swill, he thought, almost shaking with sudden relief. It's after all a sham.
". . . The resources for which you prepare to go to war, Shantran Technarchy, lie within your own domains, on the second planet of the star Dazech, as yet undiscovered. Seek there. The resources are more than adequate for your needs. Precise coordinates are noted on the printed response. The audience is ended."
He stood still a moment. The window went dark. He turned finally in the direction of available light and reentered the car, seated himself, still clutching the paper. The car slid away from the station, the windows darkened and sealed.
Cosean was shaking.
He unfolded the paper and stared at the answer and the coordinates.
The Oracle gave an answer the accuracy of which could be checked . . . dared give something of such value.
It was . . . real.
A great gift first. . . to ensure that the Technarchy returned to consult again. But then they could not longer afford to stay out of the close circle of the Pact; no government could abstain from its constant advice, its close direction . . . if the Oracle gave true answers. And in his keenest fears . . . it did.
Faces blurred, flesh indistinct, so many, men and non-men, far-scattered, ambitions and fears and desires, empires and all of time.
Maranthe, Mishell, the same pattern . . . diamonds and helices of life, bright tapestry. Bodies of the Builders, globular, many-legged, and slender and fine the filaments they spun. The mythic Fates were weavers, and the pattern was one, and old.
Mishell saluted them who waited—and felt awe, seeing all the web before her, knowing now the immediate design.
Draw in a thread here, a new color, bind it fast. A design became complete, begun in remotest antiquity, at an old, old shrine. She set her hands to its ending, felt the work alive and yielding to her touch. Her reach grew surer, wider. The whole fabric of the Web quivered to her younger, stronger hands, cloth of space, and time.
This Vision Maranthe had seen, had woven, drawing her thread in . . . Mishell abandoned guilt, and humanity, and smiled.
There were other species to be gathered.
A new design began.
1989
WINGS
At 13:05, on September 3, 2152, two things happened.
Spec. Amir Jefferson watched the plastic cup drop in the rec hall dispenser and cant sideways, after which the beer he'd punched should have frothed over it and down the drain. Instead it righted itself, filled, the door lifted and the cup waltzed out in thin air—
And the third time this shift duringthe Federation audit, withthat sleek fancy Federation ship in dock and a squad of federal inspectors snooping through records and making copious notes on their slates, the red alert went off in station control, screens lit up and station chief Isadora Babbs took another antacid and ordered a stand-down from red to green.
God.
"Find that bug," she told the Maintenance chief, personally, on the comm. Please God, no bananas today; and please God the auditors didn't look in core-sec 18, where they had stowed the fruit that didn't show on the supply manifests, a zero- geecore-sec where apples and limes and mangoes drifted in the dark, little orange planetoids and apple moonlets performing their slow revolutions and occasionally nudging one another.
"Chief Babbs?" the comm said. "Code 15 in the rec hall." Babbs had her hand on the pill bottle before she remembered she'd just taken a dose. "What's it doing? Where is it?"
"Beer machine," the report came back, "autobar, beers and whiskeys flying like—"
"Anybody in there?"
"Whole shift'sin there, chief, word's got around—"
"Clear the section! Shut down the power! Call Maintenance! Get the crew out of there and get it stopped! Hear?"
After which, down in Maintenance 4, two junior techs looked at each other and one said:
"Suppose we ought to call the super?"
"He's with the auditors," the other said, and called up the Procedures Manual. "There we go . . . red safety button, right there, top row."