"Log, PF plus fourteen Tellurian days. Lieutenant Seward reporting in.

"The genotype seeder isn't functional any longer. The nutrient vats are empty, as I guessed.

"Luckily, the chirality-restriction process seems to work. I had my first steak of Tellurian venison today. It tasted like--well, it was food. The Jews didn't want to eat it. Something about a lack of cloven hoofs on the native fauna. I force fed it to them. They seemed grateful that I gave them no choice.

"Jacob's getting worse. Burn wounds are a bitch to treat, especially when you're roughing it. He needs to be better hydrated. Well, about that...

"Bad news about the river. It's drenched with right-handed poison. The amount of energy we'd need to purify it is prohibitive unless we can get the ZPE and the masslesses in the terraformer running again.

"Guess what my next job is going to be? Sorry, Hilda. You'll have to wait just a little longer."

--Recording recovered from Site Resh, reconstructed 1887 CE (restricted access)

----

11 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

The Nameless City

Shaking more from anger than from fear, Oralie climbed into the lift to stand next to the tanned, sweat-sheened servant, who bowed as she entered.

The servant tugged on a tendon sticking out of the control panel in the wall. The lift door closed and the elevator began to rise. "Welcome to the Nameless City and the Palace of Ascension, Era," the man said.

"This is hardly a welcome," Oralie snapped. Normally she kept her temper better than this, but she was so tired of playing the games of people who believed themselves to be her superiors. Of playing the game, and of being used as a pawn in their games. "I've come. Where is Rosabella?"

"I am Muoro," the man said, as if he had not heard. "Please be patient, Uxor Principis, and you will be rewarded."

"I have traveled a week to get here, Muoro," Oralie said. "A week in cramped military skywhale quarters. Do you know why?"

"For the Ambassatrix's sake, I am led to understand, Uxor Principis."

Oralie's mind settled on the frantic Synapsis message she'd received from Rosabella. Her dreams had been dark, impossible to remember, and then into the darkness Rosabella had crashed, begging for aid. "Help me," she'd said. "The High have me, and they won't let me go. Oralie, they demand to speak to you. They insist you come alone."

There had been so much fear in the words.

So Oralie said to Muoro, "Understatement."

Muoro nodded as if he understood. "Be patient, please, Uxor Principis," he repeated. "I am Ambassatrix Rosabella's liaison. We will see her in moments."

"Liaison or jailer?" Oralie asked.

"We are all prisoners to our duties," Muoro said, telling Oralie literally nothing. She tried to relax into the motion of the lift as it climbed.

This audience ought to have been an honor. Even Sodalitatis rarely met with the High, and fewer Generosi. It was Oralie's first time in the Nameless City, to boot. During the short walk from the landing pad and the entry to the scarlet Southern Tower--so called because its entrance was the southernmost of the two towers that made up the Palace of Ascension, though they spiraled slowly around one another like DNA strands as they climbed into the air--she had heard the fluting of the buildings as the wind blew through them.

It had been a symphony of sound. Rosabella would have liked it; surely did like it, when she could hear it. When her own people weren't keeping her prisoner against Oralie's good behavior.

Oralie shifted uncomfortably in her dress of green and gold, trying to slough off the vague sense of damp. Her Symbiont had kept her from sweating, but outside she'd almost felt as though she was swimming through the air, it was so humid.

The lift spiraled left and back, forward and right, as it ascended. Oralie held her head high. She was a princeps's consort and, despite the Symbiont's partial restoration of her youth, a matron older than the servant who was her guide.

Or perhaps her jailer.

A year ago, this venture would have been impossible for her. Weakened not just by the cancer but by her ailing body, back then she would have wanted nothing more than to curl up by the fire with a good book or to quietly watch her children frolic.

Now, she was a Maga in her own right, and her power inside her drove her to action.

The door slid open, and Oralie strode out into the hallway. "Where is she?" she demanded.

Muoro hurried to catch up to her. "This way, Uxor Principis," he said. She allowed him to take the lead, since he knew where he was going.

He opened the door into an enormous suite in white and green. Oralie took little notice of the enormous bed, the ruby diamondglass window that took up a whole wall, or the waterfall tumbling through the grand vanity, though both pieces of the set looked as though they had been grown rather than carved, and that from the most exquisite patterns of biological furniture.

Oralie did notice the vanity's chair, but only because Rosabella was sitting in it, staring at the vanity's mirror. Her head snapped around as Oralie entered.

A look of shock crossed her face for a mere moment; then serenity covered it back up. The Ambassatrix swept to her feet in a smooth and graceful motion, took up her skirts, and curtsied low. "Uxor Principis," she said.

Oralie crossed the space to her in a heartbeat. "Rosabella." She embraced the Ambassatrix; her hands brushed the other woman's bare back. Now Oralie truly understood that Rosabella came by her immodest fashions honestly; she had spent years in this hot, humid jungle.

Rosabella pulled away from Oralie but gripped her arms, not letting her get too far. "I am very glad to see your face, Oralie," she said. "These past few weeks have seemed...longer."

Oralie glanced over her shoulder at Muoro, who stood by the door, a bare-chested butler. She took Rosabella's hand. "Come. We're leaving."

Muoro didn't move to stop them, but Rosabella tugged Oralie's hand back. "I must apologize," she said.

"For what?" Oralie asked. "Come. Tell me on the way."

"Muoro. Leave us for a moment, please."

The man nodded, stepped past them, and vanished into one of the four doorways connected to the suite. Rosabella kept quiet until he was gone.

"Rosabella, what's going on?"

Rosabella glanced at the corners of the rooms, then laughed to herself. "There are aural and ocular units everywhere," she said. "However, as the High are already aware of my purpose here, I suppose it does not matter if we are heard. Oralie, I came here seeking knowledge regarding our unique shared condition."

Oralie nodded. "I understand."

"I had reason to believe that the High had knowledge about our Synapsis. Oralie, I could not keep dreaming you in bed with Dorsin." Rosabella smiled; it lit up the room despite the obvious strain she was in. "Not because it is unpleasant, but because I have not been invited."

That's what this was about? "Rosabella, it wasn't so long ago that you would have considered those dreams to be invitations themselves."

Rosabella tilted her head noncommittally and laughed, a sound that made the air ring like chimes. "Perhaps, Oralie, my dear. Perhaps. But you and Dorsin have your General Principles, and they do not look kindly on the involvement of third parties in nightly pursuits. Come. Your journey has been long. Sit with me on the bed.

"Oralie, our connection has grown stronger since you've received the Symbiont. In some ways. You have gained control, Oralie, but I have lost it. The bond is changing our connection. You connect to me..." Rosabella frowned. "Frequently. I, however, can hardly reach to you."

The silks of the bed were so soft, Oralie wouldn't have minded falling into it and sleeping for a week. "What of it?"

Rosabella took Oralie's hands and squeezed them. "What we have is unusual. Unknown, Oralie. I have found no records of two people sharing Synapsis without a Tool, certainly not when one of them was not even a Maga. But you and I knew each other's dreams for years." She brushed hair away from Oralie's forehead, and Oralie closed her eyes as Rosabella spoke softly to her. "What we have is new. That makes it frightening. Perhaps even dangerous."

"You believe that the Symbiont within me is reacting unpredictably to whatever it is we share," Oralie concluded.

"Unpredictable is worrisome, Oralie. And then, when I came across the records of the silver desert..."

Two suns burning in the sky. Grains of sand gleaming like metal below. Oralie shook her head, chasing away the memory. Or was it a vision?

She had dreamed it first the night after she received her Symbiont. A strange dream, nothing more; so she had thought, at least.

But it had recurred.

Rosabella nodded. "You've seen it, then."

"And you have too."

Rosabella rose and began to pace. Even agitated, she was graceful, but how terrible her thoughts must have been if she was allowing herself to wear her concerns on the outside. "No, Oralie. I have never seen it, save through our Synapses. Save through you."

"I thought it was a dream."

"So did the inquirers of the Last Era, my darling." Rosabella's scarlet hair swished around her shoulders as she turned to look at Oralie. "But I believe it is something more. If in the throes of the genophage they saw it, and now you see it, it must have meaning."

Oralie shuddered.

"I told the High what we share. I am sorry, my darling. I would never hurt you." A shadow of pain darkened Rosabella's composure; only long experience allowed Oralie to pick it out. "Never deliberately."

"Rosabella, what--"

"Nothing, darling. What's done is done. I spoke to the High, and what I saw there, what I recognized, confirmed that they know something. I asked for answers, and they demanded I call out to you to prove our connection. I could not reach you, as I told you. Not without inducement."

Oralie rose, the anger rising within her. "They tortured you?"

"What's done is done, and you are here." Rosabella shook off her discomfiture; just like that, she was the graceful, imperturbable Ambassatrix of the Sodality again.

Just like putting on a mask. Or taking one off again, perhaps.

Masks. A terrible thought struck Oralie. Had she ever known this woman?

"And now that my message has confirmed our Synapsis, they wish to meet you," Rosabella concluded.

The High could have sent for Oralie. They could have asked her what they wanted to know. Now she didn't want to have anything to do with them. Oralie owed her Symbiont to the shadowy heads of this house--a Gens yet not a Gens, who ruled no fiefdoms yet held the other Gentes in the palms of their hands by controlling access to SOPHIOS and the quiescence factor that made it possible to create a Bond over the course of many treatments--yet knowing what they had done to bring her in for an audience, she would have given up her Bond in an instant to be rid of them.

But that would leave Rosabella in their clutches. Oralie rose. "When do we speak to them, then?"

At that moment, the door opened. Muoro entered and bowed respectfully. "The High await your presence."

Aural units everywhere, indeed.

Muoro led them back to the lift, which took them downward.

"Why are we descending?" Oralie asked. "Shouldn't we be going up instead?"

"The irony of the fact that we meet the High beneath the earth has not been lost on me, either," Rosabella said.

The lift doors slid open; the iris beyond them dilated. Rosabella and Oralie stepped into a wet, fleshy hallway beating faintly with the pulse of life. It reminded Oralie of an enormous throat. Eyeballs on stalks twisted to stare at them, and Oralie shivered at their unblinking gazes. Rows and rows of spines on the walls and floors retracted as they passed.

"The least of the security systems," Rosabella said. The walls quivered at the sound of her voice.

They left Muoro in the lift. They passed by rows and rows of closed irises and took turns left and right down hallways where sphincters opened to reveal the route only when they were practically atop the new path. Oralie would never be able to find her way out on her own. "These tunnels are another security system?"

"No invader will ever find the heart of this manse."

They stopped before a triple-sized iris. Rosabella approached and put her hand on a palm-print indentation in the fleshy wall. The doorway dilated open silently.

"Now," Rosabella said, turning back to Oralie, "there are forms to be observed. You may be uxor principis, but in this house the High are sovereign. Do not address them until they have addressed you. They will address you as 'Era' or 'Ascending'; you will address them as 'Highness.' Answer their questions straightforwardly and without dissembling. Their sensitivity to your biorhythms will be quite accurate, so lying will do you no good."

"What about nervousness?"

"To be expected. Take off your shoes. You are going to be treading on holy ground."

"All right." Oralie did so, then drew herself up to her full height and set her face toward the darkness that lay beyond the open portal. She was an uxor principis. She would meet her mysterious summoners with all of the grace and honor of her station. More than they deserved, given what they had done to Rosabella. "I'm ready."

Rosabella took her hand. "None of us is truly ready, Oralie."

Rosabella led Oralie forward into the darkness for a short eternity, then stopped. Oralie halted behind her.

As seconds ticked by, Oralie wanted desperately to ask the Ambassatrix what they were waiting for, but she held her tongue. She might precipitate a diplomatic incident by speaking out of turn.

The darkness melted slowly away, a murky gray dawn banishing the artificial night as a chandelier, a single lumin bulbed with two spheres, like a pair of suns eclipsing one another, began to glow above their heads.

A pair of suns. Oralie caught Rosabella's sideways glance.

The contours of the room itself were not obvious in the dimness. Drifting particles luminesced in the strange chandelier's light.

The floor itself glowed, the same eclipsing-suns symbol, yards wide, becoming evident beneath their feet. The surrounding surface remained pitch-black save for specks of biological detritus that sparkled across its surface.

Rosabella, her flesh gleaming where her gown left it bare, a pattern of darkness and light, fell to her knees as living figures appeared high on the walls above them. The seven High surrounded the floor, a semicircle of masked men and women overlooking their supplicants from thrones on a ledge that ran half the room. Bioluminescent symbols shone above each throne in the chandelier’s light.

Oralie kept her feet. These were the High, and she owed her Bond to the Sodality that they managed, but they owed their continued existence to the neverending labor of the Gentes in reclaiming the Wildlands and fighting back the Chimerical threat. She would observe the forms, but she was their equal.

She would not kneel, not to those who had tormented Rosabella. They could have called on Oralie themselves!

"Maga Ambassatrix Magistra Uxoris Rosabella Sodalitatis," one of the figures announced. The symbol above his throne was a broken triangle, its sides concave, its vertices twisting around the center as if the force of gravity were tugging them in. The same symbol was etched in darkness on the shining forehead of his wide-eyed, open-jawed mask. "May your Ascent be swift."

"I am here, Highness. May I Ascend swiftly by your grace. I bring before you Maga Uxor Principis Oralie Generosus Nethress Ortus La Table d'Or, by your request."

"Her feet are bare. She tastes of the Wisdom."

"Yes, Highness."

"You are nervous, Ambassatrix." A new, androgynous voice emanated from a throne beneath the symbol of a four-pronged arrow in flight.

"I kneel before the High."

When her bourgeois parents had begun preparing Oralie for marriage into the Gentes, they had always taught her not to fidget. It was unsightly and betrayed a lack of self-control. Still, it simply wasn't possible for any woman, except perhaps Rosabella, to stand in one position for extended lengths of time. The body demanded motion, and even the Symbiont could not tamp down this urge entirely. Oralie shifted slightly on her feet. All eyes turned to her-- or rather, all masks did. She resisted the urge to freeze under their black-socketed stares.

"Maga Uxor Principis Oralie Generosus Nethress Ortus La Table d'Or," the High of the broken triangle said.

"Highness. You have summoned me."

"Tell us, Era. Are the words of the Ambassatrix true?"

What words? "She has always been a true friend to me," Oralie said at last.

The unblinking sockets stared at her Oralie for so long that she was certain she had made an enormous error. Finally, however, the High of the broken triangle spoke again. "What did you dream last night?"

This was unexpected. "I do not remember any dreams last night, Highness."

"Ambassatrix." At the sound of her title, Rosabella stiffened but remained kneeling. "What did you dream last night?"

"A girl I loved when I was much younger."

"This one?"

"No. My love for this one did not cease in my youth."

"She bears a bitter bouquet," said a hunched (female?) figure on the edge of a throne marked by a double-helix Mobius loop. "Bright brown, body bitten by unknown bacteria."

"It is her Wisdom," four-arrowheads responded.

"No, it is not! Never have I known this nature that she nurtures beneath her outer nacre. Strange synapses sleep within. A precious pearl, the present of Apotheosis: I perceive its parentage." Double-Helix turned its (her?) head toward Rosabella. "You told the truth, traitor."

Traitor?

Silence settled again on the chamber. Oralie suddenly realized the reason for the long stretches of quiet. The thrones had to be Synaptic mechanisms. The High were conferring among themselves.

One by one, the High stood. As they did so, the chandelier's glow dimmed, and with it the luminosity released by the organisms in the room, until Oralie and Rosabella were waiting in darkness.

A sliver of light then appeared as an iris in the wall before them dilated and widened until it was fully open. Lumins beyond gave off a gentle glow.

The High were inviting them deeper into the manse. Oralie glanced behind her. The direction from which they had come was just as dark as ever.

Rosabella rose wordlessly, and the two women walked hand-in-hand toward the portal. A spiraling staircase of enormous teeth wound down the outside of a wide, damp-smelling esophagus. Rosabella and Oralie descended with trepidation.