3 x T

"God damn David Ware to hell?this whole fucking mess is his fault," she said bitterly.

Sabium shook her head in incomprehension; Magda had spoken Federacy Basic, getting no relief from swearing in the local language. But Sabium understood the anger, if not the words. She said, "I have tried every day to deserve the gift your folk gave me, by ruling justly and seeing that my people live as well as they may. If I have not pleased you, spare them and punish me."

Magda winced. Suddenly she began to see why, fifteen hundred years before, Ware had thought this woman worth saving. She knew that was all he had intended. But what a mess his well-intentioned interference had left in its wake! It had twisted Bilbeis IV's whole historical and religious development out of shape.

While such dark thoughts filled her head, Irfan Kawar knelt and raised Queen Sabium. "You need have no fear of us," he told her. "We have not come to judge you." Magda winced again, this time in shame. The geologist was doing a better job than she was.

From outside the chamber came an anxious call: "Goddess, is all well?"

"Yes, of course; leave us be!"

"Let them in," Magda urged. "We can talk more whenever you want. They must fear for your safety, closeted alone with two such, uh, unusual strangers."

A ghost of amusement touched Sabium's lips. "Unusual indeed. Nevertheless, you speak rightly." She swept down the aisleway and flung open the doors. Some of her attendants almost fell over her as they rushed in. She said, "I will talk further with these"?it was her turn to hesitate?"people. Quarter them in the suite nearest me, Bagadat, so I may have speech with them whenever I wish."

"It shall be done," the majordomo said. He bowed to the Terrans. "If you will come with me."

Apparently, if his goddess accepted the foreigners, Bagadat would do the same… or, Magda thought, he might try to make them quietly disappear, to preserve his own position. No, probably not; not with an immortal looking over his shoulder. She shivered. That was true in the most literal sense of the word.

The suite Sabium had assigned to them was plainly one reserved for high dignitaries. The furnishings were rich, the sofa and bed upholstered with cushions soft enough to sink into. The portrait bust of Sabium that sat on a table was very fine. Done in what Magda thought of as the classical style, it showed the goddess serenely at peace with herself and her world. She wore her hair long and straight; Magda hoped she would be able one of these days to use the style to date the piece.

At the moment, she had more urgent things to worry about. She plopped down on the couch with a groan, wishing she could hide under it instead. "Disaster!" she said. She waved her arms in a wild, all-encompassing gesture.

Irfan Kawar slowly shook his head, still stu

"Of course. But nobody knew what was going to happen, which if you ask me is a good reason for not doing anything."

As Pedroza had before, Kawar muttered, "Maybe it's coincidence."

"Oh, horseshit, Irfan; you don't believe that yourself." Magda knew her harshness hurt the geologist and was sorry, because he was a good man?but only somewhat, because she could not refuse to look facts in the face. She went on. "It was the stinking immunological amplifier, nothing else but. It just happened to work a wee bit better on Sabium than on us?a wee bit! I'm sure Atanasio will want to chop her into bloody bits to find out why."

That, unfortunately, reminded her she and Kawar had been out of touch with the J?ng Ho for several hours. She turned on the receiver part of her implant and promptly regretted it. Everyone back at the ship must have been going mad with frustration, and everyone started shouting hysterical advice at her at once.

She listened?or tried to?for only a couple of minutes, then switched off so violently, she hurt herself. "Idiots!" she snarled. "Halfway around the world from us and telling us what to do."

What with the turmoil in her own head, she had not noticed Kawar also turning on his receiver. He stood the din a few seconds longer before shutting it off again. He did hear one thing she'd missed: "They won't be halfway around the world for long?the J?ng Ho has been on the way here since the moment you recognized who the goddess was."

Magda only grunted. She liked the independence six thousand kilometers of distance gave her, but the move made sense. The action was here, with Hotofras abruptly a backwater.

Someone scratched at the door, which had a bar on the Terrans' side. Glad for the interruption, Magda raised the bar. Servants fetched in supper, bowed nervously, and left. The fare was similar to what nobles had eaten when the Leeuwenhoek was there: bread, boiled vegetables and roots, a stew of salt fish, with preserved fruit and sweet wine.

The Terrans had reached the tooth-picking stage when the scratching sound came again. Expecting more servants to fetch away the dirty dishes, Magda opened the door. Sabium stood there instead, alone.

"C-come in." Magda stepped aside, as wary as the palace servitors had been with her. She made no move to close the door, being unsure that was proper.

Sabium shut it. When she began to prostrate herself, Kawar stopped her. With an apologetic glance toward Magda, he said, "You do not need to humble yourself before us. Rather, we are in awe of you, hardly less than your own subjects. And why not? I am but forty-two years old, and my companion is?"

"Thirty-one," Magda supplied.

"I do not believe you," Sabium said. Then, studying them with that searching clarity of hers, she changed her mind. "No; I do. Say rather I do not understand."

Again Magda saw the quality in this woman that had led David Ware to find her worth saving. And he was dishonored dust these many centuries, and here she stood yet.

For a moment the anthropologist was tempted to tell Sabium everything, but she did not: she could not make herself believe one interference justified another. Instead, she said, "Queen… goddess… have you ever sent out couriers with messages they could not speak of, save to their own superiors who were to receive them?"

"Of course."

"Think of us in such a light, then. Much of what we know, we may not speak."

"You say you are messengers of the gods, then, not gods yourselves?"

"We are messengers." Magda let it go at that, relieved she had not made a full confession. However brilliant and experienced Sabium was, it was in the context of her own culture. Asking her to assimilate the idea of the Federacy all at once was too much.

"That is marvel enough for me," Sabium said firmly. "My ships scoured the western coast, my artisans founded towns there in hopes of finding folk like unto those who had rescued me. And so they did, though long years after I proposed it."

"No wonder the city's name means 'search'!" Magda burst out. "All that time you were looking for Ware and Crouzet! They said they came from the west, didn't they?"

"If those were their names; I never knew them," Sabium said. "But yes, they said they were from the west. Here in this valley, we knew nothing of the west then. But though I never found a trace of my saviors, I never forgot them, either, or let my priests do so. If ever folk of strange aspect appeared, saying they were from a country of which we were ignorant, I wanted to meet with them, the more so if they had possessions unlike any of ours." She smiled. "And so you are here."

"So we are," Magda said, doing her best to hide her chagrin. Their "simple, foolproof" story could not have done a better job of advertising them to Sabium if they had concocted it for that very purpose.

She took a deep breath, forced herself to steadiness, and said, "We are glad to be here, for in you, Queen, we have found a greater marvel than any we know ourselves." She did not care whether Sabium was examining her for the truth in that?it was there.