Jan enfolded his friend's body, and wrapped a metallic sheet around the satin tapestry.
"If you had a stretcher, I could—"
"Never mind," he said. "I can carry her."
A long tunnel led from the Circle to the burial cave. Jan followed Mischa inside until the reflected light faded to darkness and he could no longer make out her form.
"Is there any light?"
"Sorry."
He supposed that, with practice, her eyes had learned to accustom themselves to darkness more quickly than his. She touched his arm and led him forward, around a corner, to a chamber suffused by a blue glow that rippled with the sound of water. "Thanks." Jan carried his burden to the bank of the wide, flat river. The water was black, reflecting him in silhouette. The body in his arms seemed even lighter in death than it had been in life. He kept hoping, irrationally, for some feeling of warmth or movement beneath his fingers. Mischa stopped beside him.
"Is there an outlet?"
"Outside," she said. "After a while. A lot of little springs break through the ground every year after the storms, and plants grow around them."
"And the bodies?"
"I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. The water's clean when it comes through the sand."
It was clear that the river could not be easily followed, for it bubbled against the roof of its outlet canal, leaving no air space. Only there did the surface ripple and break. Jan stared into the water, at reflections that seemed to multiply.
"I'll wait for you," Mischa said, and left him alone.
He knelt on the sandy bank. The embroidery on the cloth caught the blue light, and the figures seemed to come alive like the creatures in the stories Jan's friend had told.
Is this what you want, my friend? Do you want to be drowned and dismembered in this cold river? I would have sent you to a bright and glorious destruction in any sun in the galaxy, if you had asked. You deserve a funeral pyre heaped with sandalwood and silk, or a blazing ship and a dog at your feet. Is this all I can give you, a return to the earth?
But the words themselves touched a resonance, and peace slipped up to caress him. He leaned down and touched the old navigator's body to the river's surface. The water immersed his hands, then his arms, and pulled at him. Slowly, reluctantly, Jan let go of the satin-shrouded body. The current caught it and dragged it away, very fast. The silken figures spun before him, and then the currents pulled them beneath the surface, and Jan saw them no more.
He knelt there for a long time, with his hands hanging in the water and gradually growing numb. He felt very calm, but slowly he realized that the flaws in the glassy surface of the water, the small marks swept away and obliterated as though the river could not bear the imperfection, were made by his own tears.
Chapter 9
Mischa had never had a teacher before, nor access to a library, nor time and means to investigate anything that interested her. During the following weeks in Stone Palace, she had all those resources, and they gave her the planet, the solar system, the universe; a past, a present, a future. The Sphere worlds she read about did not disappoint her imagination. It was not long before she understood why Jan Hikaru had smiled when she told him she wanted to learn everything.
At first she was afraid that her ignorance would bore Jan, even disgust him. He could easily have told Subtwo that she was stupid and worthless, and thus relieved himself of responsibility and work. But as she got to know him better, she realized he would not have done any such thing even if she had been stupid, even if he had been bored. In fact he seemed fascinated, and sometimes even excited, by her progress, though he was by nature undemonstrative.
As they worked together, she watched him grow beyond his grief, neither forgetting nor dully resigning himself to it, but accepting the reason for it and cherishing his memories. Mischa began to trust him, though not quite enough to tell him everything about herself, until she knew how he felt about people not quite normal. Reading alone, she searched for explanations of her differences, and found only theories and new words that all had the same uncertain meanings.
Every subject she studied came easily. She seldom forgot anything she read. She was happiest with mathematics and theoretical physics: each level of study pulled more facets of reality into an elegant and intricate and consistent system of natural laws. The new knowledge pleased her in a way few things ever had, speaking to a sense of beauty and order that she had perceived, yet never had a means of expressing, as Chris had, in his work, before he changed.
Mischa had neither forgotten nor abandoned her brother, but she could not ask another concession from Subtwo so recently after winning the first. She knew she must prove herself here; she could not fail as she had failed before. If she did, Chris would have no chance at all. She put her concern into a separate part of her mind.
She discovered in herself a talent for making valid connections between diverse and apparently unrelated bits of information. She had no idea how she did it, and the ability sometimes startled her a little, inexplicable as it was. As her studies continued and the subjects became more complicated, more esoteric, she occasionally found herself pointing out the way to Jan. The reversal troubled her, but she could not say why.
And then one day, looking pleased but a little bemused that Mischa had explained a mathematical proof to him, Jan said, "I read that over last night, and I didn't really understand it. But you're right—what's the matter?"
Stricken, she stared at him. She suddenly realized why some of her intellectual jumps came so easily, so quickly, with intuitive understanding of the intervening steps. It only seemed that the information had always been there, locked up without framework or terminology. It had never really been there at all. Somehow, despite not being able to sense Jan's feelings through his self-control, Mischa decided that she must be transferring his knowledge to herself, stealing insights on the edge of his subconscious and claiming them as her own. She was no better than Gemmi, a relay for words meaningless to herself. She was worse than Gemmi: she pretended to understand, even to herself, which Gemmi did not and could not do.
Mischa dropped the library extension on the carpet and fled to her room.
She flung herself face down on the bed and pillowed her forehead on her arms. Perhaps every insight she had ever had was drawn from another person. Utterly empty, she could think only that she would have to keep up the deception, even in front of Jan, whom she had begun to think of as a friend. She would have to continue draining him, as Gemmi drained her, long enough to get Chris away from Center. Just that long. Though practiced in deception, she had never betrayed a friend.
As she lay in cool darkness, a slow and just perceptible change occurred around her, as though a soft sound, the flow of a quiet stream, the whisper of air, had stopped. She finally noticed it, turned over, and sat up.
It took her a few minutes to recognize what was wrong. She jumped up and ran across the hallway and flung aside the curtain to Jan's room. "Jan—" She approached him, silent. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his eyes closed, his hands palms up, resting on his knees, in a relaxed but deliberate position.
Finally he opened his eyes.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes," he said. "Of course. What's the matter?"