The light through the varied crystalline roofplanes was brilliant without being dazzling. Some of the score of figures seated around the walls used the rays to ornament themselves; others formed the light into shrouds and hulked as shadows within opalescent beauty that hid their features better than darkness could have done.
North sat in the high seat and glowered at his peers. His left eye didn't track with his right; there were limits to power, even North's power, and the freezing paths of the Matrix had exacted a price as he learned them.
"This latest probe by the outsiders doesn't matter," said Rolls from his place near the doorway. He was almost as tall as North and enough heavier than the man in the high seat to look soft . . . until one looked more closely. "Any of us can take care of that—"
"My pleasure," said Rao. A smile of anticipation licked over his broad, dark face.
The curtain of light beside Rao rinsed away for a moment as Ngoya reached over to stroke her husband's thick wrist and silence him. Rao wasn't interested in—wasn't capable of understanding—what Rolls and many others of the team regarded as major issues. Ngoya was often embarrassed for her husband, since she in turn failed to see that Rao's single-minded simplicity was also his greatest strength.
"What matters," said Miyoko, pointing an index finger at North to emphasize her words, "is the threat to Diamond. You can't think of sending this invader to Diamond until we at least understand—"
"We don't know there's a threat," objected Saburo, not so much in disagreement as to calm his sister. He glanced uneasily at North, trying to read meaning into the craggy patience of the man who had led both his own team and the exploration unit of which Saburo was a member ever since—
But 'since' implied duration. . . . Saburo composed his mind, then his face, and nodded apology to Rolls.
"There is a threat to Diamond," said Rolls, "whether or not we can see where it comes from."
He looked up at North, then across the hall to Eisner, and continued, "I'll admit that I can't see the source of the threat."
Eisner nodded her crisp agreement; North and North's face said nothing.
"I don't see what the problem is," Penny said. "I don't see why we're here at all."
Penny was playing with her appearance. As she spoke, she changed from a petite redhead in her early twenties to a tall, black-haired beauty whose face promised experience as well as passion . . . and back again to the redhead. A curtain of light provided a mirror, and the jewel on Penny's breast glowed with the power it gave her desires.
"On Diamond," Eisner said—in another of the attempts to inform which exasperated her fellows as much as Penny's care of her physical form bothered Eisner— "the inhabitants—"
"Yes, yes, I know," Penny snapped, briefly flirting with an older image, still redheaded. "They're having nightmares, terrible nightmares, and that's all very sad—but there can't be anything really wrong going to happen with them, because we're the only ones who can touch them or Ruby."
She looked around the room challengingly. "And if we did, the balance would fail, and we'd all—"
Penny made a moue of distaste and a dismissive gesture with fingers which for the moment were long and aristocratic. "Not that anybody would do that."
Fortin stretched and smiled. His white skin and perfect features were a legacy of his android mother, but the twisted subtlety of his mind was his own . . . if not from the genes of North his father.
"Who can fault the wisdom of our Penny?" Fortin said. His lilting sarcasm cut all the deeper because what Penny said was true, though none of them doubted the reality of the danger except Penny, who didn't care; and Rao, who couldn't imagine it; and Dowson, who saw no threat in the Matrix and who lacked the fleshly baggage of emotions from which to create a hobgoblin that the data didn't support.
"I still don't think we should chance setting an intruder down in Diamond until we have a better idea of what's going on," Rolls said calmly.
"Of course," said Eisner as much to herself as to the assembly, "if the intruder were put in Diamond, we might learn more about the threat—"
"We might learn he was the threat!" Miyoko snapped. "Put him in Ruby. They'll take care of him!"
"Or set him on the plane of the Lomeri," her brother added. "So long as he's coming from outside the Matrix, we have absolute control of his destination. It makes no sense to take a risk—" he nodded to Miyoko "—even though the risk is still speculative."
"We'll set the intruder in Diamond," said North, speaking for the first time during the assembly he had called, "because only in Diamond can we be sure that all of his weapons will be stripped from him—" he smiled "—without harm."
"What do we care about hurting him?" Rao asked. "I mean, it's all right with me, but he's just an outsider. Isn't he?"
He looked around his fellows to make sure that there wasn't some point he had missed. Ngoya patted his arm.
North nodded. "I understand your position, my friend," he said, "but I've seen far enough into the Matrix to be sure that this Hansen is no threat to Diamond."
"But still—" said Miyoko.
"And I," North continued, "have my own reasons for wanting him unharmed for the time. Surely I needn't be the one to apologize for not killing, eh?"
"Well, do what you want, then," said Penny, who had finally fixed on slight, red-haired youthfulness. "You're going to anyway. I don't see why you even bothered to call us here."
Fortin began to laugh, because Penny was again perfectly correct. . . .
Rolls waited to meet Eisner in the doorway of North's palace as they left the assembly. She smiled at him, but the expression went no deeper than her thin lips.
"He sees something in the Matrix," she said, flicking her head back to indicate their leader and late host. "Do you?"
Eisner's hair was the color of a gray-draggled mouse; a few wisps which had escaped from her tight bun wobbled abstractedly.
Rolls shrugged. "North plays games," he said. "If there were something to see, you or I would know it. But still. . . ."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Their eyes glanced over their fellows leaving the assembly; some of them concerned, some not.
Rao had hitched to his cart a pair of frilled ceratopsians from the plane where the Lomeri ruled. Most of the beasts which whim led others to ride or drive gave the dinosaurs a wide berth, but Saburo's huge hog-like dinohyid exchanged angry grunts and foot-stampings with Rao's much larger animals.
Eisner nodded. "Good day," she said and turned.
"Let me take you back," Rolls said. "You don't need to walk."
"I don't need to do anything," the woman corrected crisply. "None of us do." Eisner was thin and looked small at the moment, but only Rao and North failed to shrink when they stood next to Rolls.
"But yes," she added. "All right, I don't need to walk."
Rolls whickered to his giant stag and let it nuzzle his hand for a moment before he mounted. The beast had cast its horns and looked oddly naked. Still, it was awkward to bridle a creature whose horns spread a meter and a half to either side.
Everything was whim—for Rolls, for all of them since North had discovered the turning of the Matrix which gave them each whatever they most wanted. . . .
Rolls leaned over and lifted Eisner up ahead of him. The stag's spine was higher and sharper than a horse's, so the saddleframe had to be built out stiffly to give a comfortable seat. Horses were better adapted as riding animals, aircars were a far more efficient way to get around; but the most practical means of transportation for Rolls, for any of them, was the choice that provided the most amusement—and a practical level of aggravation.
It had been hard at first to imagine that there were any negative aspects to godlike power.
Eisner tried to straddle the spine the way Rolls did, but he turned her side-saddle and put his arm around the small of her waist to support her. She met his eyes and said coolly, "Still your games, Rolls? You might have learned by now."
Rolls shrugged. "The saddle was designed for me, so you'll find this more comfortable, Eisner," he said. "More practical, if you wish."
He clucked to the stag. It turned obediently and slid by the fourth stride into the long-legged canter that Rolls found its most comfortable pace.
Eisner sniffed, but she didn't object further to Rolls' touch. Neither did her abdominal muscles soften beneath his hand.
Rolls kept the contact well within the bounds of what was necessary for the task. His easy-going charm was effective because a real concern for others underlay it.
Rolls smiled to himself. One might almost say that concern for others ruled him.
The grassland swept by beneath the stag's measured paces. The rounded roofline of Eisner's palace appeared in the near distance.
"Do you remember," Rolls said, "when duration had meaning?"
Eisner shifted to meet his eyes; her left thigh slid over his. "Time still has meaning, Rolls," she said. "Time means everything dies. Even us. . . ."
Eisner had looked older than her years when Rolls' unit arrived on the planet it was to survey. Power had not given her youth, neither in her face nor in the mind which, more than age, had shaped the lines of that face.
Obedient to its training rather than specific command, the stag drew up before Eisner's palace, a windowless dome. Rolls held out an arm like a steel bar to support the woman as she lowered herself to the ground.
She looked up at him and said, "We created Diamond and Ruby as bubble universes, bound into the Matrix by our united minds."
Rolls nodded. "A whim," he said. "A desire to create the perfection that we—"
He swung his leg over the saddle and lowered himself beside Eisner "—fail to achieve in ourselves."
Rolls pretended to be unaware of the wariness in the woman's eyes at the implication that he intended to enter her palace.
She grimaced. "All right," she said and stepped toward the door. It opened in response to her presence. Eisner kept no human servants.
"If one of us destroys Diamond," she continued, "our minds fall out of balance with the Matrix and . . . All of us. But only we can harm Diamond."
"If that were the case," Rolls said as he ducked to follow Eisner, "then Diamond wouldn't be in any danger. As perhaps it is not."
Though the ceilings within Eisner's dwelling were full height, the woman had pointedly constructed the door transom to clear her head by a centimeter. Eisner had few visitors; and, she would have said, little need for them.
"There's Fortin," Eisner said as she turned. "Fortin is insane." The door behind Rolls remained open, a reminder and invitation to him to leave.
"Fortin is very clever," Rolls said. "And yes, he's usually destructively clever. But he doesn't want to die before his time, Eisner. All our time."
He looked at the books, racked in a jumble of varied sizes and bindings. Computers were a better way to access information, and the Matrix itself was all knowledge if one had the patience to prowl its twisted, freezing pathways. Eisner used both, constantly, because there was no end to learning . . . but books were a symbol, and symbols had a particular reality here on Northworld.
"There's something we don't see . . . ," Eisner murmured.
"We're changing, Eisner," the man said as he watched his hostess through the corners of his eyes.
"We don't change," Eisner snapped, crossing her arms over her chest as she turned her back on Rolls. Her breasts, as unremarkable as her face and hair, were hidden beneath the loose folds of the coveralls she habitually wore. "We're old and we're getting older, but we don't change. We don't have the power to change ourselves—"
Rolls touched the woman's shoulder. "You know what I mean," he said.
"—except for Penny with her necklace," Eisner continued. Her voice, never particularly attractive, cut the phrase like a hacksaw. "She can change."
"Penny got what she wanted," Rolls said. Rather than try to turn Eisner to face him, he stepped around her.
"You have—" He gestured with his left hand. "You wanted knowledge. You wouldn't trade that for Penny's necklace, would you?"
"No, no," Eisner agreed, forcing herself to lower her arms, though she met her guest's eyes only for a moment. "I have exactly what I want, of course. . . ."
"But we don't have to limit ourselves to one thing," Rolls said. "Eisner, we have all powers, we're like gods. But we're focusing down to—" his hand described an empty circle "—to caricatures, like Penny and her appearance."
"And her men, you mean!" Eisner said.
Rolls' expression softened to see the pain in the woman's eyes. "That's all part of the same thing, Eisner," he said gently. "You know that. There's no reason that we can't change things back. Become—"
He reached out slowly, his fingers curled to cup Eisner's breast.
"—complete human beings again."
Eisner slapped his hand away and turned her back again. "I don't want that!" she said.
In a voice almost too faint to hear, she added, "And you don't want me, not really."
"I do want you," Rolls said. "I want you to be—"
"Go on!" Eisner said, facing Rolls to gesture imperiously toward the door. "Get out. Your sympathy is quite unnecessary."
"Whatever you wish," the big man said as he obeyed; but he paused, hunched in the doorway, to add over his shoulder, "There's still time to change, Eisner."
As the door swung closed behind him, Rolls heard her cry, "There's nothing to change!"
There was no doubt in her voice; but Rolls thought he heard sadness.