He went to the window, looked out to see what Kit was looking at: Annie and Monty, the two sheepdogs, playing out on the lawn, taking a bone away from each other and running around the yard with it. “But in the meantime, take a little while to feel good about what you’ve just done. Any victory that can be won in the physical universe is just a picture of the bigger, slower one that started happening outside of time ages ago, and will keep happening outside of time until it’s all over.”
“And we win?” Kit said. He sounded doubtful.
Carl put a hand on his shoulder. “As long as we don’t stop fighting,” he said, “we always win. Because what we do, They do.”
“Not the other way around?” Nita said.
Tom shook his head. “It’s a popular misconception.”
He stood up. “You both look wrecked,” he said. “You should go get some rest. I understand that tomorrow is a school day.”
“Don’t remind us,” Kit said.
“And over the next week or so,” Carl said, “we’d appreciate it if you went through the manual ‘overviews’ of recent events and annotated them. Your take on exactly what happened is going to be invaluable.”
Nita nodded, shouldering back into her backpack’s straps. There were already a number of things that were bothering her. The peridexis, for one thing, had gone silent, and she was wondering whether she was ever going to hear that voice again; the inside of her head was strangely lonely. She wished she had better understood the reassurance it gave her almost the first time it had spoken, when the shadow of the Pullulus first fell over her dreams: “There is only one to whom it will answer, and that one is not here.” It meant Ponch. But there’ve been so many other things it said that I still don’t understand. She still remembered the Transcendent Pig, on the Moon, looking at them all with an expression that suggested there was still something it was waiting for. Or did I just imagine that? Having to study your own life is a pain.
They all headed for the door. Tom looked at them as he opened the inside door. “You did good,” he said. “But you know that.”
“Yeah,” Kit said. “I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.”
Carl nodded. “I know,” he said. “Dai stihó… and hang in there. It’s all you can do.”
***
At around the same time, many light-years away, Dairine stood alone on the high platform outside the throne room on Wellakh.
Her clothes were much different than they had been when she came here last, and she didn’t care. The only one for whom she would have willingly changed her clothes was not here now, though she was still wearing one thing from that outfit that she wouldn’t willingly show anyone else.
Dairine stood there at the railing, looking out over the vast, blasted sunside plain. There was no sign of the huge crowd of people who’d been there before. They had had the Pullulus, Dairine’s manual told her, as Earth had, but when Earth’s infestation had been destroyed, so had theirs. Now they were probably cleaning up the local effects the same way that people were doing it on Earth. And like people on Earth, they’d be telling one another, for a long time, sad stories about the awful time the world changed, and how nothing now was the way it had used to be.
Eventually she heard the footsteps behind her on the stone. They stopped a long way from her. She turned, then, and saw the two tall figures standing there. Behind them, the great bronze doors stood open; in the great hall of the royalty of Wellakh, on the floor, halfway down that long, polished way to the throne, a single light burned. It was the same golden-yellow color of the planet’s sun; and very alone it looked, burning there by itself.
Dairine stood there a moment longer, and scrubbed at her eyes briefly. She was probably kind of dirty, but she couldn’t help it. If she’d stopped to take a shower—if she’d done anything except come straight here—she might have talked herself out of coming at all. And that would have been wrong. Slowly, she walked to them—Roshaun’s mother, Roshaun’s father, standing there together, waiting for her.
She could hardly bear their faces as she got closer to them. Wellakh’s sun was behind them; they stood in the shadow of the uprising peak from which the castle was carved. Their faces were in shadow, and their eyes. But that didn’t stop Dairine from seeing their expressions … and she wished she couldn’t.
She stopped a few feet from them, and looked up into their faces. They were so calm, and that by itself made the tears come to her eyes again. The hollow sorrow in Roshaun’s mother’s eyes was terrible to see. His father—Dairine looked up into that cool, set face, and realized that his mastery of his own expression was not as total as he might have hoped.
“I think we know,” Roshaun’s father said, “why you are here. And why you are here alone.”
Dairine looked up. “He did everything he could,” she said. “He did everything that was asked of him. More than was asked of him.” She gulped. “And it wasn’t enough. But that never stopped him…”
Roshaun’s mother stood very still, and only nodded, the tears running down her face. “Where did it happen?” Lady Miril said.
“In my solar system,” Dairine said. “We solved the root cause of the Pullulus, but after that we decided to go back to my world…”
“We decided?” Roshaun’s father said.
Dairine looked him in the eye. “He decided,” she said. “You of all people should know that nobody made his choices for him. Not you; not me.” Then she reached into her pocket. “But, afterward, this was left.” She brought out the collar with the Sunstone, looked down at it, and then held it out to Roshaun’s father. “Please,” she said, “take it.” Because having it hurts too much—
Roshaun’s father looked at the Sunstone, and shook his head. “I will not wear it again,” he said. “I think it’s yours now. For look—”
She looked at it. The stone had been clear; now it had gone a much lighter gold than it had been. “It did that before,” she said.
“It is a sign of the mastery passing to another,” Roshaun’s father said. “It seems to have become attuned to another star.”
“Mine,” Dairine said. “Ours is this color.”
There was a long pause. Roshaun’s father reached out to the stone, and then pulled his hand back. “It is still active,” he said. “There are some routines that you should learn. He would have wanted to know that its power was not wasted, that it was safe with one he had—” Roshaun’s father broke off. “That he thought worthy of his attention. Some of those usages you could be taught. With proper supervision…”
Dairine got a clear sense of what terrible control Roshaun’s father was exercising over himself. She was determined to show that hers could be as great as his; here, in particular, at this point in a life that had been so much about control—and in which she’d lost so much control lately. “I’d like that,” she said, “if you have the time.”
“There’ll be nothing but time now,” Roshaun’s father said. He gazed down at Dairine and reached out a hesitant hand to touch the necklace that just showed under the collar of her shirt. There, around her neck, where it would stay, was the fat, round, gleaming emerald threaded on a single sentence in the Speech. It was not until a little earlier, when Dairine had had a moment by herself, that she’d had time to read what that sentence was. She was determined not to think about it now. She’d just cry again. “And what we taught him—” Roshaun’s father said. “That we can teach you, so that you can guarantee the safety of another world as he guaranteed his. Another star.”
“Thank you,” Dairine said. She was controlling herself very tightly, for right now, more than anything, she wanted to say to them, even to shout at them, Stop talking about him in the past tense! As if he’s—But she couldn’t say it. Part of her was certain that she was deluding herself. The thought, You’re just in denial! was already coming up. To say out loud what she really believed would merely guarantee that other people would think she was in denial, too.