Mons Olympus

Later in the afternoon, Eclipse sat on a garden bench, tranquilized by the curvate geometries of Pickering's garden. Its first flowers were in bloom. Star and Aurora joined her, glances over their shoulders confirming that they had slipped away unnoticed.

``Star!'' Eclipse's voice was a razor slash, followed by a lambent blue glow that swiftly filled the gap between her opposed palms. ``Screen! Hard!'' The glow lunged at him. His body screens snapped to full density, cloaking him in the finest of gold-yellow meshes. He lurched back a half-step, readying a counter, and realized that her attack was not aimed at him. ``Fine,'' she continued, smiling. ``Just hold like that. GR?''

``Why? What's the trade?'' he asked. ``Against who?''

Eclipse shrugged. ``Mayhaps no one. Mayhaps whoever mayhaps mind-warped Comet. Aurora, don't check if Comet's been bent. I already looked; you can't tell.''

``You, like, want to, like, explain?'' asked Star. He leaned back on a tree trunk, screens remaining a thick golden weave around his figure.

``Your mentalic defenses? They're mostly only there when you're engifted? I needed you to call your gifts. Without making whoever suspicious. So I pretended to attack you.'' Eclipse's voice trailed into a soft apology. ``I'm sorry I frightened you. I couldn't think how else to do it. Aurora and I, we're always mind-screened, but I need you too.''

``You? Frighten me? Be real! I'm never afraid! Not of a girl. I mean, I got a bit startled, but, hey, if it was for Comet...'' Eclipse nodded deeply, gratefully, regretting only slightly that her need for his aid interfered with her deep desire to strangle him until he stopped making wisecracks about Comet, Aurora, and every other female person in the universe. She told herself that Comet's opinions of boys were just as distasteful, and no more tactfully phrased. Boys detesting girls and vice versa was as deeply American as the flag, apple pie, and maple sugar ice cream, but to Eclipse it was like taking snuff. Being American as American could be didn't make the habit attractive. ``Why not Cloud?'' he asked.

``He doesn't screen. He's a GR fellow, but being incredibly pigheaded isn't the same as mentalic defenses.'' She waited for questions. ``Comet went to Mars alone. She's for sure GR, but she can't set a mind screen. Someone good could have fooled her, so she thought the Temple was gone, when it was right in front of her.''

``Now what?''asked Aurora. ``We could fix her mind. Couldn't we? You and me together? We can't leave her that way. She's my sister.''

``Right,'' agreed Star. ``You've gotta save her mind.'' He pointed a finger at Eclipse. ``Yes, you.''

Eclipse bit her lips. Having Star along was right, but he was a mite stubborn. ``I can't find anything to fix. The mindwarp is seamless. Or she's GR. Fix her? First we've got to find what they did. Poking around in her mind, trying to fix I-don't-know-what, that's pretty rough on someone.'' Star looked unconvinced. ``Star, she's your sister. I'm not real light fingered when I do mentalics. Sometimes when I work through people I don't leave their minds in working order. I could really hurt her. GR?'' He shrugged.

``So what do we do?'' asked Aurora. ``She's my sister. We don't have secrets from each other. I don't mind working on her thoughts. But pry into her ground mind? I'd rather you did that, Eclipse. Sometimes the ground mind gets ...ugly. I don't want to know that, not about Trisha. I could do it. I guess. I don't want to.''

``First we go to Mars,'' announced Eclipse. ``Sneak in, look around. Are you with me? I could go alone, but I miss things. Whoever it is might get rough.''

``Now?'' asked Star. ``Sure, it's a chance to blast something.''

``You don't want garb, do you? No one's going to see us. Vacuum gifts called?'' Eclipse noted their answers and focused her mind inward, reforming the metric tensor until here was there and then was now. A cerulean waterfall; the methodic toll of a carillon. The three found themselves forty thousand miles in space, the earth a blue-white throw rug spread over an ebony-black silver-flecked void of a floor.

*WHAT IS THIS?* shouted Star, his sister carrying the conversation. *OUTER SPACE?*

*Well, yes,* answered Eclipse. *You didn't think I could teleport to Mars in one jump, did you?*

*WHO TELEPORTED US?* Star caught the girls' impatient silence. *Eclipse?* The impatience faded. They held hands, Aurora linking their minds while Eclipse accelerated them through and past the speed of light.

*You found Mars?* asked Star.

*Hasn't moved in three days,* answered Eclipse. *Last time, it took me half an hour, computer and star charts, figuring where to look when I got here.*

*Trisha'd just look,* said Aurora of her sister.

*Comet has her telescope built in,* reminded Eclipse. *Like Keck III, only lots better. She probably did this trip in closer to three minutes than thirty, too. I do what I can.*

*You beat walking!* observed a jovial Star.

A teleport carried them the final hundred thousand miles from deep space to the Martian equator, a third of the planet's circumference away from Mons Olympus. Eclipse sat on a boulder to recuperate, gradually realizing that the boulder and the air around her were warm, heated by Star to ease the load on her body field. Aurora, encased by a pyramid of light, probed beyond the horizon, looking for hints of the mentalic web that had trapped her sister. *Nothing,* she announced.

*Agreed,* came Eclipse's response. The trio teleported closer, each step smaller than the previous one until they stood on the volcano's slopes.

*That's gotta be the Temple, right here,* said Star, his sister intermediating the conversation. *We just can't see it.*

*It's solid rock,* said Aurora. *As deep as I can probe, it's all rock.*

Eclipse paled and winced at an unspoken strain, then pressed hands to temples. *That didn't work, either. It's rock. Or someone buried the Temple and turned it seriously invisible.* The trio stared at each other.

*Guys?* asked Star. *Invisible things are still solid, right? You can touch them? DeathMaster, when he tried invisible against me, I still zorched him, and you could see the flare where I was hitting his screens? And the Temple is indestructible, right?* Raised eyebrows formed Eclipse's response. *I promise I'll be gentle,* he countered.

A point on the further cliff flared to incandescence. Star focussed his gift, driving deeper and deeper into the mountain while clouds of hot ash and a gush of molten rock blasted back out of the hole he was making. Sparks flew overhead. He paused, once and again, notching the base of his tunnel so lava drained freely. An hour later, having created a glowing tunnel whose end was too deep to see, he stopped and set hands on hips. *That's gotta be deep enough, right?* The girls nodded in agreement. *Must be four thousand feet I went in?*

*You didn't go all the way through the mountain,* said Aurora.

*It's gotta be far enough? I mean, how much rock could the Temple be buried in?

*An inch more than you dug,* snipped Aurora.

*People?* said Eclipse. *Please? I landed here `cause we're right where the Great Gate is? Up there* she pointed at the cliffs above them *those shoulders in the rock, they point right at the Gate. [Memories of past landings, different times of day, certain distant ridges being aligned precisely at their position.] I looked every time I've been here. We're a couple hundred feet from the Gate. Star, your tunnel would go right through it. If it were there.* He smiled. Eclipse was taking his side for once.

Aurora yielded gracefully to a third party. How often, she asked herself, how often has Eclipse come here, to remember that?

*So where are we?* asked Star. *Trisha told the truth. Or someone's good enough to mindwarp us three at once. Good enough we can't see the Temple. Good enough I think I drilled the rock when I didn't do a thing.*

*Comet told the truth,* announced Aurora. *No one is that good a mentalist. No one. Not and give absolutely no hint. Not against three of us at once. Not when we all have good screens, and knew to keep them locked up. Well, mayhaps the Silver General.*

Eclipse frowned, peering off into the rose-pink sky. *No one.* She looked Star and Aurora in the eyes. *No one. Not the Silver General. Not Solara. I'm sure.*

*Right. How do you know?* challenged Star.

Eclipse peered off at the horizon again. Star was close to things she absolutely never talked about. *Say we've met. Say the Silver General tried. My screens stayed solid.*

*They did?* challenged Aurora. She withdrew in embarrassment.

*That's it!* announced Star. *I've got it! Like the Namestone! If you tried shooting your way into the Maze, the Tomb went unsolid, so you couldn't touch the Stone. Now the Temple's unsolid.*

*Someone can do that?* asked a disbelieving Aurora. *Turn a quarter of the largest mountain in the Solar System unsolid?*

*Someone rebuilt the Earth from the ground up. In two days. And didn't leave one persona behind,* answered Eclipse.

*How? How do we stop them?* asked Aurora.

*Line'm up,* said Star, *and blow them to dust.*

*How? Change a building? High-precision telekinesis, mayhaps atom-scale, does that. Convince one person he's never heard of personas or Lemuria or Marik? Telepathic imprinting and mind control,* answered Eclipse.

*But they changed everything in two days!* protested Aurora.

*Yes. You'd need much power for that.* Eclipse acknowledged the protest with the slightest of shrugs. *Or time travel. Then you'd have forever to do the changes.*

*Line'm up,* said Star, *and blow them to dust. Small pieces of dust.*

*Be sure you get the first shot, Star. Guys? Mayhaps we're just out-classed? Mayhaps we should quit and go home?* suggested Eclipse.

*We can't go home!* cried Aurora. *It's NOT THERE!*

Eclipse's shoulders slumped. *Sorry, I forgot. You do have that problem.''

*You don't?* asked Star.

*I've been here before. No home, no place to go, no money. No one to talk to. Nothing but wits.* A gloomy fog enshrouded Eclipse's thoughts.

*No! I want Daddy and Mommy back! I want to find who did it. Make them stop.* Aurora crossed arms across chest, face a defiant frown.

*I know you want home, Janie.* Eclipse hid her own feelings, softening her thoughts to appear sympathetic. *I'll try to take you there. I just don't know how. Except whoever did is so strong. Unbelievably strong. Might be we should quit.*

*Quit?* asked Aurora.

*Quit,* came Eclipse's matter-of-fact reply. *If you can't possibly win, can't possibly hurt the other side, mayhaps you can hide. Put together a few pieces of your life. Remake the fragments you found beautiful. Go live amidst the ruins. Hope you don't get noticed.* The trio absorbed Eclipse's pessimistic evaluation of their position.

*Wait a minute,* countered Star. *The great Eclipse? The girl who took the Lesser Maze? By herself? The girl who told off the League of Nations to fire off. Face to face in the Peace Palace? By herself? With a billion and a half people watching on video? And teased them, pulled the Namestone so they all saw it, and no one had the nerve to stop her from leaving? Now she says `quit'! Quit without a fight! What's wrong with you? Are you sick? That's silly! Only girls quit!* He turned his back, recognizing as he did a certain critical defect in his concluding argument.

*STAR! THAT'S MEAN OF YOU!* shouted Aurora. *HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?*

*REAL EASY. SHE SAID `quit', NOT ME. So there!* Well, he thought to himself, she really is a girl. What if she agrees with you? Then what do you say? Tell her she's really as good as a boy, even if she happens to be a girl, and boys don't quit? That will not work. You don't have a hint where to start blasting. You need Eclipse and Janie to find the hint for you.

An abashed Eclipse looked across pink-gray sky to the far horizon. Why did it have to be her? She'd saved the world from its greed, almost dying in the process, when she grabbed the Namestone. Did she have to save the world again? Already? She was so tired. Couldn't she sleep for a week first?

She stared at a distant spire of rust-red rock, withdrawing from the gloom and fatigue within her. When she answered Star, her thoughts brought the silent calm of a deep jade-lined well, a green-blue grotto that trapped Earth's sky so one could seemingly peer deeper and deeper without limit. *Thanks, Star. You're right. Let's go someplace quiet. Find who did it. Get you a target. So you can wipe them out. Put everything back, the way it was before? I'll help you blast them, Star. I promise. But we need targets. Does that make a teeny bit of sense?*

Star, his back to Eclipse, beamed. *Yeah,* he answered casually. *A bit of sense.*

*Even for a girl?* His sister's voice had a trace of steel in it.

*Oh, sure,* he answered. *Especially for a girl.* They made faces at each other, then burst into laughter.

* * * * *

The dinner hour approached. Cloud and Star stood in a small clearing, backs to the trees, facing so they could look across the lake. ``You went to Mars?'' asked Cloud, watching the breeze ripple the water's surface. ``You didn't ask me along.''

``Hey,'' said Star. The younger boy tried to assuage Cloud's hurt pride. ``It was Eclipse's idea. What could I do? If I pushed, she'd leave me behind. She didn't want you. What can I say? She knows you're the leader. But she's a girl. I mean, it's not like she's going to understand anything obvious like that. It's not that girls have brains. So I went along. So I could tell you what she did.''

``You went along. Oh, to spy on them. Great idea! Keep doing it,'' Cloud nodded affably. ``Stopping the talk this morning worked more ways than one, then.''

``More ways than one? I thought it was funny. Usually you have us mindblitz until you figure everything out,'' said Star.

``Right. It worked. Except I couldn't say anything. Not with Eclipse there,'' answered Cloud.

``You figured it out?'' said Star admiringly. ``That's great! Can we put things back?''

``I don't know. I don't know. And, honest, I'm not sure I believe it. It just all makes sense. It started real early this morning, when I told Pickering about the Namestone,'' answered Cloud.

``The Namestone? What's that got to do with anything?'' asked Star.

``What does the Namestone do? It brings Heaven, right? It -- you get to memorize the poem in seventh grade --`cleanses evil from men's arts// summons heaven from wielders' hearts,'' quoted Cloud.

``Right,'' answered Star. ``It does these great things.''

``Yes, but who tells it? Who tells it where to put the cities, what's evil or good? The wielder. Whoever holds it,'' explained Cloud. Well, he thought, that was how the poem was explained to him.

``Right. Whoever ...Eclipse? You mean, instead of the Grand Master bringing Utopia, Eclipsewill ? That's gross! What's a girl gonna think heaven is? Every house painted frou-frou pink? No clothes in the whole world, except garb and party dress-up best? You saw what clothes she packed! No more hot dog or Buffalo kimmelweck stands, only real restaurants? The type where they serve salad and vegetables in separate courses, so you've absolutely got to eat them?'' groaned Star.

``I haven't a hint what she'll do. She might be GR. After all, she did play half-lot nines with us, not real games of course, but her being almost the only girl. But I'm glad it's not a Master with the Namestone. Those guys give me the creeps. Well, I didn't have a hint. Not until we talked,'' Cloud answered. ``Wherever we are, it's terrible. Our friends are gone. My parents are gone. Home is gone. There aren't any personas. Boston is down to one base ball nines team.'' Star nodded his agreement. ``One exception. One big exception for it being terrible! Eclipse.''

``Eclipse? Eclipse being here is wonderful?'' asked Star. ``Why? I agree, she's got brains, like she's not a real girl at all. Almost like she's a a boy in disguise. Not that a boy would conceivably imagine disguising himself like that. And she was real frigid, telling the League to fire off, not even raising her voice.''

``No, no,'' interrupted Cloud. Mayhaps, he thought, mayhaps his bright idea really wasn't that bright. Star was missing it completely. ``For Eclipse, here is not terrible. No one's heard of the Namestone. There's no League of Nations. Everyone doesn't want to kill her. No one is trying to take her Precious. For her, this is great.''

``Right. For her,'' Star made the leap to the Namestone. ``She has the Namestone. She used it? To rebuild the world the way she likes. This is the world she likes?'' Cloud smiled.

``Except things don't compute,'' said Cloud. ``Why'd she rename RTI? Why should she care? She likes us. Why did she take our moms and dads? When? Everything was fine when we left. Eclipse was with us all the time. She mayhaps had an hour someplace by herself, bits now and then, with the Namestone. That's not enough time. I think. The Grand Master said he'd need months to change the world. He's got to be better at world-changing than a twelve-year-old slink of a whining girl.'' Cloud stared intently at the lake.

``Cloud?'' said Star.

``Yes?''

``Eclipse is a girl. And a nuisance. And she keeps pretending she's smarter than grownups. Right?'' asked Star.

``For sure!'' answered Cloud.

``She may be a complete hick, making enemies of the whole world. She could have been the greatest persona of all time, just by giving over the Namestone. But she's not a wimp. She took the Maze. She stood there in the Peace Palace. And looked totally frigid. And she got away afterward, when the French and the Greeks jumped her.''

``Yes,'' answered Cloud. ``But change the whole world in an hour, when the Grand Master needs weeks? That's unreasonable.''

``So what do we do?'' asked Star.

``Get the Namestone. Take it from her. I'll use it myself and fix everything. Or make her put it back,'' answered Cloud. ``I tried the easy way. You guys were all gone, so I searched her room. It's not there. That carryall of hers is full of clothes, a couple weird books, but no Namestone. That thing's the size of a grapefruit. It glows sky blue. I couldn't've missed it.''

``You searched her room?'' Star squirmed uncomfortably. It was Pickering's house.

``It's not ...Star, she's a criminal. A rogue persona. The greatest villain in history. There's a hundred tons of gold waiting for whoever brings her in. I didn't touch her stuff. I just floated things. The Namestone belongs to the League. They said so,'' answered Cloud guiltily. In hindsight he should have asked. He could give all the excuses he wanted, but using gifts like that, sorting through what was hers without asking, that wasn't what you learned in school.

``Yeah, I guess,'' mumbled Star. ``It still makes me -- I don't like it.''

``But, mayhaps, what you learn in school? The Namestone is completely different from all that,'' rationalized Cloud. ``At first the League couldn't even name the crime she committed, when she was obviously guilty. They invented a new crime, only for her. Right?''

``I guess,'' answered Star. He drew gently on his gifts, sending a line of sparks out over the water. ``But if we can't find it, what do we do? I mean, you can say `make her'. What if she won't?''

``You don't think the four of us can take her? If I get us surprise?'' asked Cloud.

``Lemme think,' answered Star. He sent another line of sparks across the lake, watching them slow and fall hissing into the water. ``Comet doesn't do combat. That's if she's on our side. Aurora does all sorts of frigid mind stuff. But she says Eclipse has super-good mind screens.''

Cloud pounded his fist against a rotting tree-stump, sending shards of wood flying. ``You and me? No, we know that. We fought DeathMaster. I got knocked for a loop. You got singed. Before you fried him, of course. Eclipse took his three replicants, who were better than him. She trashed all three at once, and didn't get hurt a bit, even if she did groan and moan afterward about feeling sick, and whined and whined that she was going home to go to bed, when it was the middle of the afternoon. So she's got to be stronger than us.''

Star sent more sparks arching across the lake. ``She told me I should attack two guys at once, not one at a time, and if I did that I'd have stomped DeathMaster easy. She said it like two full-power attacks at once is something she does all the time. Great! Really great! Besides, taking her out doesn't help. If she's out cold, or say dead, how do we find the Namestone? I mean, it could be anywhere.''

``And if she's conscious,'' said Cloud, ``she's gonna be shooting back, not helping us.'' He leaned forward, brow propped against one fist. ``Okay, I guess forcing her is out. Even if Aurora helps a lot. Besides, there's another reason not to start things.''

``Yes?'' Star inserted supportively.

``The world now hasn't got any personas. Only us. And one of us is the biggest villain ever. Right now, I can keep an eye on her, so she's got to be careful. She knows I might pick a fight with her and win. Me winning stops her. But if I pick a fight and lose, she's got the world to herself. Pickering's people haven't a hint what personas are, or how ungifteds beat personas by being smart. I can't take a chance. If something happens to me, she takes over everything,'' said Cloud, a note of despair sinking into his voice.

``Right,'' agreed Star. ``Eclipse, Empress of Earth. Aw-ful! But if she's got the Namestone, and changed the world in an hour, how can we beat her? If we try and jump her, she pulls the Namestone. We'll be dead. Or turned into frogs.''

``Okay, picking a fight is out. How about we try being smart? Ungifteds can beat personas by being smart. So personas can beat the Namestone the same way,'' concluded Cloud.

``Right,'' agreed Star. ``Sure. Completely obvious. How?''

``I don't know. Yet. Mayhaps she makes a mistake, and I grab the Namestone when she's not watching. I know what I do first,'' announced Cloud.

``Bring back Mom and Dad!'' announced Star.

``Turn off her brain!'' explained Cloud. ``So she does nothing, knows nothing, thinks nothing, not until we've put everything back, and the League's ready to try her.''

``All right!'' responded Star. ``A fair trial. A swift hanging. What could be better?''

``You've got it,'' said Cloud jovially. ``Except the League, I read it, they won't hang her. They had a committee to decide it. This Italian, he convinced them to nail her by the wrists to a dead tree, with drains and dampers zorching her gifts so she doesn't get away until she dies. Crucify her. After her trial, of course.''

* * * * *

Far past sunset, Pickering sat in his locked library, reviewing the latest report from his accountants. It may not, he considered, have been precisely electrochemical or fusion, but it's used across the world, and almost everyone pays their modest royalties. A fitting tribute to your genius, he assured himself. He turned to Telzey, who had decoded the latest messages from Washington.

His good friends on the Potomac were most interested to learn that he knew the nature of the Washington object. His assurances that the object was not hostile had been met with doubt. The nation was deeply troubled. Unidentified reconnaissance aircraft were making regular sweeps over North America. Daily terrorist attacks and bombings left hundreds dead and law enforcement agencies flailing blindly for clues. Rumors of war swept the world. The Washington permanent bueaucracy was in a state of turmoil. Pickering never asked about the silence from the White House.

Telzey's news service listed the day's events. Bomb explosions dropped two major bridges into the Mississippi. Black-robed terrorists appeared in a Minnesota shopping mall, spent several minutes blazing away with automatic weapons, and disappeared without a trace. Anti-tank rockets disabled a California oil refinery. The list was long.

Acute scepticism had answered his report that the Lemuria would -- perhaps -- soon be rescued by an eclipse and a comet. With the Lemuria solidly on the ground, scepticism had been replaced by an unhealthy level of curiosity. Pickering directed Telzey to cycle test the intrusion detectors, confirming that the region's most extensive set of burglar alarms still protected his estate.

Tomorrow he would have to persuade Comet to demonstrate her powers -- gifts, he told himself, gifts, use their language -- to the Air Force. The demonstration would convince the Air Force that the Washington object was not a crisis. The alternative looked dismayingly like a major war, an alternative seriously bad both for his royalties and his tax bills, not to mention the possibility that there would be attempts to interfere with his studies.

Pickering's librarians in New York had made an extensive search. Even if the police report omitted flight, teleportation, and other powers from the description, there were no missing children resembling the five. His friends on the Potomac, after an elliptic description of his guests, their gifts, and their connection with the Lemuria, had arranged legal protection for him against suit by the five's hypothetically irate parents.

The rational explanation for their powers, he told himself, was that the five were a hoax. The Lemuria, parked on a runway not four hundred miles away, made that interpretation difficult to sustain. But if the five were real, where did they come from? You could find strange and wonderful things in secret research facilities, but things were clever new technology. Powers -- gifts -- implied new laws of nature.

The five's explanation was that someone had tampered with the past, so reality and dream had been interchanged. The notion that world history had been adjusted via time travel was not believable. Such intervention would have left its mark on history: history would reveal armies with incomprehensible weapons and people with inexplicably advanced thinking. No such mark was apparent. In contrast, the more the five said about their world and its history, the less believable their own history sounded. Multiple coexisting civilizations? Historical men, none of whose motives could be understood? An amusing possibility suggested itself to Pickering. Perhaps there had been temporal intervention twice: Once to change the real world into his guests' world; again to restore normalcy. On this interpretation, the children were a remnant from moments during which the earth's timeline staggered along some utterly irrational path. Of course, for this interpretation to be viable one would need working time machines, a scheme for predicting how changing the past would change the present, and a motive.

The time machine. That was the important theme. If the past could be altered, then he too could find the means to alter it, to arrange that certain events came to pass. Aurora had shown him memories, the appearance of the stars as one passed the speed of light. Every detail was not yet pinned down, but once one saw the remarkable effects visible near c the alterations to special relativity were almost obvious. Obvious, he decided, if contemplated by one of his genius. Undoubtedly the modifications would be inapparent to men of talents more limited than his own. The time machine would take a while yet to complete, but would undoubtedly follow. Then that which had not been would be made to have happened, and his life's sole ambition would be fulfilled.

* * * * *

The grandmother clock on the front stairs tolled the hours. One! Two! Three! It was pitch dark. Eclipse, shuddering, forced herself to look over her blankets at the darkened room. All was quiet, even Pickering having drifted to sleep. Nothing moved. Nothing seemed out of place. She gestured with one hand, drawing faint sun-yellow light out of air until hints of color could be seen in drapes and walls and carpet. Nothing was there. Nothing was creeping at her, closer and closer, nothing like the Maze's solid shadows that haunted her dreams until she sprang to terrified awakeness. Lying back in bed would not get her back to sleep, not quickly. She released her light, rolled noiselessly out of bed, and changed from nightgown to her garb.

She tiptoed down the stairs, stepping lightly on the end of each tread. The loudest sound was the rustle of her cape, the soft hiss of fabric against fabric. Teleport? she asked herself. No! She would not become slave to her gifts, unable to act without their support. When she crossed the kitchen, a soft click marked the back door unlocking itself. Pickering's computer? ``Thank you, Telzey,'' she whispered. ``No lights, please?'' She wasn't sure what the machine understood.

The moon, waning, was overhead. Her breath made little clouds of smoke. She pulled her cowl over her ears and shrugged her cape's broad folds forward onto her arms. Drawing on her gifts, she had set foot on Triton, stood calmly on the sunside of Mercury, and taken photographs from the surfaces of each of Jupiter's moons. Now, gifts grounded to zero, she felt the chill as deeply as the most humble of the ungifted.

She slipped across the lawn, hoping the stillness would reach her quaking heart and quiet the fears that came to her every night. She had walked the Lesser Maze, come to the tomb of its alien creator, and taken his Namestone. Then she had climbed a flight of stairs, ascending into the bright sunlight, a smile of joyous triumph on her face. At night, what came to her was not triumph but terror. When it wasn't the Maze, she dreamed of the League of Nations, the Manjukuoan Ever-Victorious Army, loneliness .... She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, watching the condensation swirl away into the darkness. Her feet brought her to Pickering's lake.

The early spring sky was brilliantly clear, stars thick as clotted cream drowning out the skeletons of constellations. There was absolutely no breeze: the waters of Pickering's tarn were still as black glass, a mirror in which the brighter stars were frosty white blurs. She had learned the constellations from her mother. Now she remembered the warmth of her mother standing behind her, one hand on her shoulder while the other traced figures across the sky, Pegasus and Unicorn and elusive Merlin. That was a past gone forever. She stuffed her hands into her cape's inner pockets, staring hard at the water, using the flickers of the stars to trace an unseen ripple's progress across the lake. Reason said that she trusted her mother's inexplicable decision to send her alone into the world. Her heart still ached.

Sand grated softly underfoot. The stars were majestic in their watchful solitude. She took one step after the next, letting the night's beauty relax her. Finally she paused, arms across chest. She had walked far enough for one night, been outside long enough that she was downright cold. Now she could retrace her path to her bed, drawing on gifts but once; the swiftest flicker of screens wove around her feet to deposit beach sand outside the porch. Her sleep, once she was back in her nightgown and buried deep under the bedquilt, was dotted with gentle dreams of rolling fields, hollyhocks waving slowly in the breeze.