I left her then, and groping, found my way to the beach once more, and for a long time I walked up and down the sand. But the thoughts I had there have no place here.
When I returned, Apheta was waiting for me still, her silver pulsing more importunate than before. “Can you?” she asked, and I told her she was very beautiful.
“But can you?” she asked again.
“We must talk first. I would be betraying my kind if I did not question you.”
“Then ask,” she whispered. “Though I warn you that nothing I say will help your race in the test to come.”
“How is it you speak? What sound is there here?”
“You must listen to my voice,” she told me, “and not to my words. What do you hear?”
I did as she had instructed me, and heard the silken sliding of the sheet, the whisper of our bodies, the breaking of the little waves, and the beating of my own heart.
A hundred questions I had been ready to ask, and it had seemed to me that each of the hundred might bring the New Sun. Her lips brushed mine, and every question vanished, banished from my consciousness as if it had never been. Her hands, her lips, her eyes, the breasts I pressed — all wondrous; but there was more, perhaps the perfume of her hair. I felt that I breathed an endless night…
Lying upon my back, I entered Yesod. Or say, rather, Yesod closed about me. It was only then that I knew I had never been there. Stars in their billions spurted from me, fountains of suns, so that for an instant I felt I knew how universes are born. All folly.
Reality displaced it, the kindling of the torch that whips shadows to their corners, and with them all the winged fays of fancy. There was something born between Yesod and Briah when I met with Apheta upon that divan in that circling room, something tiny yet immense that burned like a coal conveyed to the tongue by tongs.
That something was myself.
I slept; and because I slept without a dream, did not know I slept.
When I woke, Apheta was gone. The sun of Yesod had come through the spiracle at the narrow end of the spiral chamber. Ever fainter, its illumination was directed to me by the white walls, so that I woke in a gilded twilight. I rose and dressed, wondering where Apheta might be; but as I pulled on my boots, she entered with a tray. I was embarrassed to have so great a lady serve me, and I told her so.
“Surely the noble concubines of your court have waited upon you, Autarch.”
“What are they compared with you?”
She shrugged. “I am not a great lady. Or at least, only to you, and only today. Our status is decided by our closeness to the Hierogrammates, and I am not very near.”
She set her tray down and sat beside it. It held small cakes, a carafe of cool water, and cups of some steaming liquid that looked like milk and yet was not milk.
“I cannot believe you are far from the Hierogrammates, my lady.”
“That is merely because you think yourself and your Urth so important, imagining that what I say to you and what we do now will decide her fate. It isn’t so, none of it. What we will do now will have no effect, and you and your world are of importance to no one here.”
I waited for her to say more, and at last she said, “Except to me,” and took a bite from one of the cakes.
“Thank you, my lady.”
“And that only since you have come. Though I cannot but dislike you and your Urth, you care so much for her.”
“My lady…”
“I know, you thought I desired you. It is only now that I like you enough to tell you I do not. You are a hero, Autarch, and heroes are always monsters, come to give us news we would sooner not hear. But you are a particularly monstrous monster. Tell me, as you walked the circular hall around the Examination Chamber, did you study the pictures there?”
“Only a few,” I said. “There was the cell where Agia had been confined, and I noticed one or two others.”
“And how do you suppose they came to be there?”
I took a cake myself, and a sip from the cup nearest me. “I’ve no idea, my lady. I’ve seen so many wonders here that I’ve ceased to wonder about any save Thecla.”
“But you could not ask much about her — even Thecla — last night for fear of what I might say or do. Although you were ready to do so a hundred times.”
“Would you have liked me better, my lady, if I’d questioned you about an old love while I lay with you? Yours is a strange race indeed. But since you’ve brought her up yourself, tell me about her.” A drop of the white beverage, which I had swallowed without tasting, ran down the side of the cup. I looked around for something with which to blot it, but there was nothing.
“Your hands shake.”
“So they do, my lady.” I put down the cup, and it rattled against the tray.
“Did you love her so much?”
“Yes, my lady, and hate her too. I’m Thecla and the man who loved Thecla.”
“Then I will tell you nothing about her — what could I tell you? Perhaps she will tell you herself after the Presentation.”
“If I succeed, you mean.”
“Would your Thecla punish you if you failed?” Apheta asked, and a great joy entered my heart. “But eat, then we must go. I told you last night that our days are short here, and you have already slept away the first part of this one.”
I swallowed the cake and drained the cup. “What of Urth,” I said, “if I fail?”
She stood. “Tzadkiel is just. He would not make Urth worse than she is, no worse than she would have been had you not come.”
“That is the future of ice,” I said. “But if I succeed, the New Sun will come.” As though the cup had been drugged, I seemed to stand infinitely far from myself, to watch myself as a man watches a mote, to hear my own voice as a hawk hears the squeaking of a meadow mouse.
Apheta had pushed aside the curtain. I followed her out into the stoa. Through its open arch shone the fresh sea of Yesod , a sapphire flecked with white. “Yes,” she said. “And your Urth will be destroyed.”
“My lady—”
“Enough. Come with me.”
“Purn was right, then. He wanted to kill me, and I should have let him.” The avenue we took was steeper than that we had descended the night before, going straight up the hillside toward the Hall of Justice, which loomed above us like a cloud.
“It was not you who prevented him,” Apheta said.
“Earlier, in the ship, my lady. It was he, then, last night in the dark. Someone stopped him then, or I should have died. I couldn’t free myself.”
“Tzadkiel,” she said.
Though my legs were longer than hers, I had to hurry to keep up with her. “You said he wasn’t there, my lady.”
“No. I said he did not sit in his Seat of Justice that day. Autarch, look about you.” She halted, and I with her. “Is this not a fair town?”
“The fairest I’ve ever seen, my lady. Surely a hundred times more fair than any on Urth.”
“Remember it; you may not see it again. Your world might be as fair as this, if all of you wished it so.”
We climbed until we stood at the entrance to the Hall of Justice. I had imagined pushing throngs, such as we had at our public trials, but the hilltop was wrapped in morning silence.
Apheta turned again and pointed toward the sea. “Look,” she said again. “Can you see the isles?”
I did. They were scattered — endlessly as it seemed — across the water, just as I had beheld them from the ship.
“Do you know what a galaxy is, Autarch? A whorl of stars, uncountable, remote from all others?”
I nodded.
“This isle on which we stand judges the worlds of your galaxy. Each isle you see judges another. I hope knowing that will aid you, because it is all the aid I can give you. If you do not see me again, remember that I shall see you, nonetheless.”