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While they talked, Madeleine watched Fisher sleep. The mouth she had kissed, the hands which hadtouched her. Beneath the jacket andshirt, comets. She squeezed shut her eyes,and when she opened them again he was looking back, and did not shiftaway. Half the room between them, andidentical unhappy expressions.
Haron finished, and Noi grimlychecked the time on the television. "Ready to do the history, Fisher?"
He nodded and sat up, pausing to run his fingers through hishair, trying to tame sleep-born excesses.
"You want me to hunt you out a comb?" Pan asked,still determinedly upbeat in defiance of the subdued focus which had settled oneveryone else. "A mirror? How about some cucumber slices for thecircles under your eyes?"
"Maybe later." Fisher's gaze was level. "You'll want to save your primping for yourself – you'll be doing aclosing recording."
"Me? Why?"
"If we bring down the Spires, the Moths will be furious,desperate. Worse, if we fail, and theMoths are alertly on guard, holding the threat of dust over their cities, anyfree Blues are going to be facing tremendous hurdles. We've had the advantage of surprise. Picture trying to work out how to spiritpunch, then heading into Moth territory hoping to free a possessed Blue, withthe knowledge that the response might be the deaths of thousands ofuninfected. We need an Agincourtspeech."
"And you expect one from me?" Pan held the camera before him inprotest. "You write me somethingand I'll perform it, but I'm no good with my own words."
"You always did want to play Henry Fifth," Nashsaid, clearly entertained.
"Yeah, I'll tell the world it's Saint Crispian's Day, that'll help. Or yell fuck a few million times, which isabout my level of improv. Or–" His gaze settled on Tyler, sitting quietly at the end of Madeleine'scouch. "Or, hey, world famousactor! That would make much moresense."
"But very poor casting." Tyler crossed one leg elegantly over theother, and said, in a smoky, musing voice: "'From this day to theending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered '. You'd pass that up? You don't want to make that moment yourown? To have aspirant actors, centuriesfrom now, vying to play you?"
Pan was clearly much struck, but shook his head. "Now I really can't think of anything good enough to say."
"Don't try for good enough." Noi crossed to take the camera off him. "It's not the words that matter. It's the emotion. I'll film Fisher's intro, and you can thinkabout how you feel about the Moths."
Pan wavered, then mischief crept into his expression. "I'll give it a shot for a thimble,"he said, presenting his cheek.
"You and your thimbles." Noi leaned forward, but Pan, eyes wide,turned his head so that their lips met, the briefest touch before she startedback. Looking close to angry, she shookher head. "You better come up withsomething good for that."
"I'm sure as hell feeling inspired."
It was the complete lack of imp, of any hint of joking, whichbrought the blush to her face. Visiblyat a loss, but suddenly much more like her normal self, Noi looked down at thecamera, then raised it as a shield. "Ready when you are, Fisher."
Fisher, hair almost tame, moved a few steps, waited for Noi's nod, then spoke.
"We are here because of a Moth." The words were crisp, clear. "The name he chose to use was Théoden,and he died so we could be free."
Fisher had gained the total attention of the dozen people inthe suite, but he didn't react to their surprise, gazing past the camera toMadeleine.
"It is true enough that the En-Mott will leave in twoyears. A timeframe is useful, the firsttime they visit a planet, to minimise attacks. It is equally true that they will return. Their driving reason is not their rulingorder, but their own survival.
"The En-Mott were once the Mottash,a tired race on a tired world. Not toodifferent from us – warm-blooded, oxygen breathing – facing a depletedfuture. They were searching for ways toleave their world, and instead they left themselves. The Conversion – a two-step process, thefirst part of which we have experienced – was considered a triumph. Lack of water, failing crops: what did itmatter if the world turned to dust if you could live on light? And the newly created En-Mott would survivecenturies.
"Still, they could die, and did. A slow attrition of numbers. Reproduction of a sort was possible, a slowand deliberate division which weakened the parent, hastened death. The En-Mott had set themselves on a path toextinction.
"They turned to the Spires for a solution. One of the planetary travel methods underdevelopment before the Conversion, it had matured to the point where it couldbe used to look for and reach inhabited worlds. A partial conversion of a warm-blooded host gave the En-Mott access toenergy reserves, enough to increase in strength, to breed without death. For the first time in centuries their numbersrose."
Fisher glanced toward the master bedroom, where the corpsesof a half-dozen Moths had been chivvied out of the way.
"Their solution had trapped them in flesh, since leavingthe host was dangerous, often fatal even when energy levels were high. But then a handful discovered a use forfaulty conversions – the leech Blues – and the Reborn came to be. Leech Blues lack the ability to produce someof the energies which form the substance of the En-Mott, and ca
Madeleine sat up, and slid along the couch so she could sitshoulder to shoulder with Tyler. Hercousin, as usual, looked no more than coolly interested in proceedings, but ifhe had had a fortnight of assaults like the one Madeleine had experienced, whathe was demonstrating was his self-control. Nash, Claire and Quan's expressions were allvariations of suppressed revulsion.
"In each clan there are five Reborn. Most of the rest are the offspring of thelast cycle of primacy. When the cycleends, they are ordered to leave their hosts, and, because the Reborn do notgive them time to recover strength, with a tiny number of exceptions who arestrong enough, they die."
"Why?" Theredhead, Claire, was staring in disbelief. "You mean they kill themselves? Why would they not just stay?"
Noi made a query signal whether they should start over, butFisher shook his head and went on.
"They're not given a choice. The Moths' reproduction, the splitting off ofpart of their self, leaves their offspring bound to them – and to theirprogenitors. Every single Moth is in adirect line of descent from the Cores of the thirty most powerful clans, andsubject to their commands. Even theCores of lesser clans can only partially mitigate the orders of thoseoriginals, and some edicts – such as the ban against reviving discarded Blues –are absolute. Every cycle the overallnumber of En-Mott increases, but the cycle's pace is dictated by the needs ofthe Reborn, who sacrifice each generation in turn to increase their own strength.
"The only hope for a member of a new generation is togrow strong enough to survive separation, and the Reborn facilitate this byrewarding the most loyal with exemptions from reproduction, which greatlyincreases their chances – and can even lead to joining the Reborn. To describe what this does to the En-Mott –born with a potential life-span of centuries, and told to kill themselveswithin one or two decades, with a vicious competition to gain an exemption, tobecome one of this privileged class... A whole race driven by a combination of hate and hope. Hatred for the Reborn. Hope that they might join their ranks."