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"Quite a turmoil you've created."
She turned from the window, stared at Marc in amazement. "But it's daytime."
"I am a little faded," he said, looking at his hand, and looked up again. "How are you, Bettine?"
"It's ridiculous, isn't it?" She gestured toward the courtyard and the guns."They think I'm dangerous."
"But you are."
She thought about it, how frightened they were and what was going on in London. "They keep asking me for names. Today they threatened me. I'm not sure I'm thatbrave, Marc, I'm really not."
"But you don't know any."
"No," she said. "Of course I don't. So I'll be counted as brave, won't I?"
"The other side needs a martyr, and you're it, you know that."
"How does it go out there? Do the Queen's spies tell her?"
"Oh, it's violent, quite. If I were alive I'd be out there; it's a business for soldiers. The starships are hanging off just waiting. The old Mayor was dealing under the table in favoring a particular company, and the company that supported him had its offices wrecked. . . . others just standing by waiting to move in and give support to the rebels, to out-maneuver their own rivals. The ripple goes on to stars you've never seen."
"That's amazing."
"You're not frightened."
"Of course I'm frightened."
"There was a time a day ago when you might have ended up in power; a mob headed this way to get you out, but the troops got them turned."
"We'll it's probably good they didn't get to me. I'm afraid I wouldn't know what to do with London if they gave it to me. Elizabeth was right."
"But the real leaders of the revolution have come into the light now; they use your name as a cause. It's the spark they needed so long. Your name is their weapon." She shrugged.
"They've a man inside the walls, Bettine. . . do you understand me?"
"No. I don't."
"I couldn't come before; it was still your moment. . . these last few days. None of us could interfere. It wouldn't be right. But I'm edging the mark. . . just a little. I always do. Do you understand me now, Bettine?"
"I'm going to die?"
"He's on his way. It's one of the revolutionaries. . . not the loyalists. The revolution needs a martyr; and they're afraid you couldget out. They can't have their own movement taken away from their control by some mob. You'll die, yes. And they'll claim the soldiers killed you to stop a rescue. Either way, they win."
She looked toward the door, bit her lip. She heard a door open, heard steps ascending; a moment's scuffle.
"I'm here," Marc said.
"Don't you have to go away again? Isn't this. . . something I have to do?"
"Only if you wish."
The i
"There are things I wanted to do," she protested.
"There always are."
She had not known Marc was still there; the place was undefined and strange.
"Is it over? Marc, I wasn't through. I'd just figured things out." He laughed and held out his hand. "Then you're ahead of most." He was clear and solid to her eyes; it was the world which had hazed. She looked about her. There were voices, a busy hum of accumulated ages, time so heavy the world could scarcely bear it.
"I could have done better."
The hand stayed extended, as if it were important. She reached out hers, and his was warm. "Till the sun dies," he said. "Then what?" It was the first question. He told her. 1981
ICE
( Moscow )
Beauty was all about ancient Moskva, in the vast whiteness at world's end. Moskva lived through the final ages wrapped in snows, while forests advanced and retreated, and the ships from the stars stopped coming. The City lost contact with other cities, caring little, for its struggle was its own, and peculiar to itself, a struggle of the soul, an inward and endless war which each citizen fought in his or her own way. In that struggle Moskva became as it was, a city no longer stone, not in its greater part, but wood, which it had been at its begi
But the present buildings, gaily colored, carved, embellished, the warmhearted buildings in which the people lived, were made of wood from the last and retreating forest, wood on which the people had shown their last and highest artistry. On every inch of the surfaces and columns, flowers twined, human faces stared out, vines and designs of bright colors entangled the gaze. Skins of animals adorned the floors, and bunches of dried flowers, memories of brief summer, sat on tables which were likewise carved and painted red and green and gold and blue. Hearths in every home burned bright, sending up cheery dark smoke which the winds carried away as soon as it touched the sky.
The people walked the snowy streets done up in furs edged with bright felt embroideries, reds and blues and greens, with border patterns in the most intricate stitchery, lilies and flowers and golden ears of grain; with scarves hand-stitched in convolute vine patterns, all jewel-bright, each garment a glory, a memory of color, a delight to the eye. All the soul of the people who lived in Moskva was poured into the making of this polychrome beauty, all the rich heritage of the lands and the fields and the passion of their hearts, both into the wooden buildings within Moskva's wooden walls, and into the gay colors they wore. There were dances, celebrations of life. . . dancing and singing, from which the participants fell down exhausted and full of warmth and joy, celebrations in which they danced life itself, to the bright whirling of cloth and tassels and scarves and the stamp of broidered boots, all picked out with flowers and reindeer and horses. Music of strings and music of voices rose from Moskva into the winds.
But above the city the songs changed, and the voice of the winds overpowered them, changing the brave words into wailing, and the wailing at last into a whisper of snow powdering along the rough ice of Moskva's Interior skein of rivers, which were thawed only for a few weeks a year, and most times were frozen deep and solid. . . grains hissed along icy ridges outside the walls, and whispered of the north, of ground endlessly covered with snow, pure of any foot's imprint, forever.
White. . . but seldom truly white. . . was the world outside the wooden walls. Above it, the sun died its slow eons-long death, in glorious flarings of radiations which brought nightly curtains of moving light across the skies; it brought days of strange color, apricot and lavenders and oranges and eerie minglings of subtler shades, which touched the snows and the ice and streamed across them with glories and flares that made a thousand delicate shades of light and shadowings. The snows knew many subtleties—nights when the opal moon hung frighteningly low, in a sky sometimes violet and sometimes approaching blue, and very rarely black and dusted with ancient stars. At such times the snows went bright and pale and so, so still, with the black bristling shades of pines southward and the endless stillness of snow northward. Or starker pallor, storm. . . when the clouds went gray and strange and the wind took on an eerie voice, and the snow began to fly, for days and days of white as if the world had stopped being, and there was only white and wind.