"That you tried to ruin his life!"
The older version's eyes flashed, an expression of impatient fire, and for a moment, the two women looked exactly alike. Daphne Prime Rhadamanth said in a voice like a queen: "Fool! I loved him enough to die for him! How can you imagine! How can you know! How can you know what it is like to see yourself in the looking glass and to know you are unworthy of the man you are married to?! Unworthy! Holding him back! Keeping him down! And no matter what you try to do you end up helping the people who hate him!"
The elder Daphne leaned back, smoldering, and petted the cat with such angry strokes that he miaowed, and slithered from her grasp, falling heavily to the floor. The cat gave them both a haughty stare and gracefully waddled off.
The elder Daphne said in a quieter voice, "I saved up my money and bought time from the Eveningstar Sophotech. I did not trust Rhadamanthus for this; he would have just told me to be stoic. And Silver-Grays don't allow radical self-editing in any way. Eveningstar examined me, but she thought I could not make myself into the kind of woman who would be good for Phaethon. Not and still be the same person in the eyes of the law. The change would be too great. It's a question of core values again, a question of fundamental differences. That's what I meant about helping his enemies; everything I thought or said in public reflected a mindset more cautious than his. There were so many times when I humiliated him in public, something I had said, or written, or thought, was published in salons against him"
"And children. How could we have children, if he was going to go away? Away and away, to die in the dark, and never return? And so our marriage was never completed.
"I honestly thought he would fail. But I did not want to think that, because, without me, without my support, he might fail. So I had to leave him. I could not go with him; I don't want to die in the sunless cold of space; but he kept telling me he would not leave without me. So what could I do?
"I had to leave. I made you to take my place. You. The woman I could never become. The same way Phaethon is the man Helion could never become.... Our whole society evolves. We each made the next versions of ourselves more perfect. But we who are less perfect stay behind."
Both women were silent for a moment, looking deeply at each other's eyes. The look was one of sorrow.
But then the younger Daphne laughed. "And just think, older sister, you would have gotten Helion, too, if he hadn't married Lucretia, or whatever it is Un-moiqhotep is calling herself these days!"
The older Daphne leaned her chin on her palm, fingers curled so that her pinkie lightly touched her lips. She nibbled delicately on her fingernail, and said: "Perhaps, daughter. Perhaps. But... You know, it is really sort of odd. First Helion adopts, as his son, a man who turns out to have been a colonial warrior from a Transcendence drama, a burner of worlds. Then he marries the girl who tried, this time, in real life, to destroy as much of the Oecumene as she could. I wonder what his secret obsession with destruction is? He does live, after all, in the most dangerous spot in the Solar System..."
The younger Daphne exclaimed, "I'm sad for you about Lucretia. I would have preferred if the extrapolation had come true, and we could all have had a lurid trial, with hundreds of weeping girls being sentenced to death, and Atkins shooting down rioters who stormed the Courthouse steps..."
The elder one smiled a faint smile. "I'll write that one up. Especially the rioters. All cacophiles, of course, but, in my story, they'll turn out to have been mind-poisoned by Xenophon, merely tools of the sinister Silent Empire. And for my hero ..." But then her face fell again. "Oh ... But I cannot really use someone like Helion for my hero again, can I? Or Phaethon? Everyone will think I'm copying you. The dream-world you composed for the Oneiromantic Competition ..."
The younger Daphne snorted, and said, "That was your world! I looked in the records! All the work was done, the plots, the setting, all the characters, the laws of nature, everything, years before the competition. While I remembered making it up, those were your memories. The Gold Medal actually belongs to you!"
There was a look of hunger on the older Daphne's face. They both knew how badly she had longed to win the gold. It was a lifelong ambition.
The older Daphne stood up, and turned away, hands folded against her stomach, pretending to stare out the window.
Daphne Tercius Eveningstar said nothing, not wishing to increase her older self's upset. She let a moment of time go past, and then said lightly, "That lake out there. Looks familiar. Where are we?"
"Ah. This used to be part of the exposition grounds. That is Destiny Lake."
"What? The place where Phaethon saw that performance of the burning trees? I was looking all over for him here! You'd think I'd remember every damn rock and stone. Sure looks different. Water level is lower. Guess they tore down part of the mountain. But- say... ? Those little colored lights in the water? Those dots fading in and out like that... ?"
The older Daphne looked over her shoulder and smiled a cryptic smile. "Survivors. Parts of the tree are still growing down there, long after the performance ended. The life adapted to a less energy-wasteful form, and the trees altered and specialized so that they were no longer in direct competition with each other. It's more like a banyan tree now, with long root-systems under the soil, connecting the widely scattered colonies."
Daphne Tercius Eveningstar stood up and stepped closer to her older self. She said in a low voice. "I am leaving. If you want to claim the gold medal, it's yours. I'll trade you for the energy sculptures. Or ..."
The older one shook her head. "The plots and characters and setup were mine. But you made up your own ending. There was not ever going to be an industrial revolution in my little world. I never had a plotline about a young prince deciding to shatter the sky. That was your muse speaking, your heart, your convictions. And it set the world on fire. Everyone fell in love with the idea. And when they all remembered, later, what it was Phaethon was actually trying to do ... Well. No one was as eager to stop Phaethon as they had been before. Even some of the Hortators seemed to drag their feet."
"Thank you. I don't think my little story had that much to do with it."
The older Daphne smiled. "It's tales that make the difference. Facts kill; but it is myths that people give their lives for."
"Thank you very much...." The two women stepped closer to each other, smiling, and both grasped two hands, a fond and girlish gesture.
"How did it end ... ? I never saw the finale of your piece."
"Ah," the younger Daphne said. "The young prince broke the sky."
"Was the world crushed by the falling fragments?"
"Only the people too stupid to look up, and see what was coming, and get out of the way."
"And what was there?"
"Where?"
"What lay in the regions beyond the sky?"
"The shining fields of paradise were waiting there, wider than the sky, opening on all sides without limit. They only were waiting for the hand of man to come and plant them."
A rose-pink light stole across the lake and trees outside. It was the early part of true dawn, and it mingled with the pale, silver-red light of Jupiter to form (if only for a moment) a landscape of strange and expectant mystery, tangled double shadows, fabulous and familiar at once. The sky above was imperial purple, and only the brighter stars shone through.
"It is a wonderful tale," said the elder one softly. "I wonder if I shall ever write one to match it."
"Write whatever you believe in."
"But you've taken my hero...."
The younger Daphne gave an impish smile. "If the predictions are right, the New College will make old war stories and tales of honor true again. How about that?! You can have Atkins!"