And Eternity Part 17

Chronos glanced at his ring, which had been hers, and she knew he was asking Sning and being answered by yes-no squeezes. "Yes, Sning can direct us there; he was present throughout. I will follow his guidance and show you your life from the outset. Take my hand."

She took his hand, feeling strange. They had been lovers, and now she was dead and he was an immortal of a sort, but still there was that love between them. What memories lay in that simple contact of hands!

He lifted his great Hourgla.s.s. The fine flowing sand within it changed color, becoming an intense blue. Then he tilted it slightly-and the mansion misted out. There was a flickering, almost too rapid to detect, which she realized was the cycle of days and nights, going backwards, hundreds of them, thousands of them.

Then they were floating across an unfamiliar landscape. Chronos questioned Sning, using a "twenty questions" technique he had evidently refined with practice. "India," he announced. "A traveling circus, or something similar."

"A circus in India?" Orlene asked. "I originated there?"

"So it seems."

Now they came to a caravan of wagons drawn by dragons. Indeed, it was a traveling show! One wagon held a mermaid in a tank, and another a giant serpent, and there were a.s.sorted other animals and freaks and performers.

They entered one of the better wagons, which was closed in like a house. There a man and woman lay together, evidently lovers.

"War! Nature!" Chronos exclaimed, astonished.

"What?"

"I recognize these two! He is the Incarnation of War, called Ares or Mars. She is the Incarnation of Nature, called Gaea, when she a.s.sumes her natural likeness."

He's right, of course, Jolie thought. They are your natural parents, Orlene.

Orlene stared at the two figures, her emotions churning. These shocks of discovery were coming at her with cruel suddenness! But in a moment she rallied, showing more courage and control than Jolie had seen in her before. She was definitely learning to cope.

"Yes, I learned of this after my death," Orlene said, omitting the crucial detail of the timing of her learning. "But this must be before they became Incarnations."

"I think so, for certainly they are not together now."

"Oh, why did they separate and give me away?" Orlene cried, feeling the pain of it in a way she had not before.

There was a sound of horses, and a commotion outside. The to-be Incarnation of War got up to see what it was-and was met outside by an elaborately garbed officer. "Prince, we have come for you!" the officer called. "The Prince, your brother, is dead."

"He was a prince?" Orlene asked, amazed.

Indeed it turned out to be so. Not only that, he stuttered, avoiding it only by going into a singsong mode of expression. The officer had come to fetch him back, and would not be denied, though the Prince even threatened to behead him. They gave the to-be Incarnation of Nature a bag of precious gems and told her never to seek the Prince again, for the Prince would marry a Princess of his father's choosing.

But before he left, the Prince gave her the ring: Sning. Then he departed-and she fainted.

They carried her into her wagon, and a snake charmer tended to her. When she woke, the snake charmer said, "My dear, you are with child."

"She hadn't known!" Orlene exclaimed. "None of them knew!"

"None of them knew," Chronos agreed, verifying it with the ring. "That child was you."

Guided by Sning, they skipped ahead. The woman, then known as...o...b.. left the traveling show and went to France, where she settled and hired the service of a blind, maimed, yet beautiful Gypsy girl as a maid. The girl was Tinka, and Orb had known her before; indeed, she had taught Orb the Gypsy language of Calo, and Orb had helped the girl to find a husband, so they were fast friends. They sang together, for Tinka had similar magic, making the music wonderful, and practiced the wicked Gypsy dance the tanana.

Will you look at that! Vita thought. I thought I'd seen some s.e.xy dancing, but that is the granddaddy of s.e.x! G.o.d, I wish Roque was here!

Even Jolie herself was impressed. I knew that Satan helped save the Gypsies; now maybe I know why! I never saw a more expressively erotic dance!

The two women visited Tinka's father, the old Gypsy Nicolai, a man of distinction in the town. It seemed that Orb had done his daughter a favor by teaching her how to use her power of music and by making her beautiful despite her truncated fingers and club feet. Nicolai did not forget favors, and now Orb was treated with respect by the villagers. No word of her pregnancy escaped; the Gypsies protected their own from scandal.

Nicolai danced the tanana with his blind daughter, and the impact of the dance was doubled. He was a master, and it showed in his every glance and gesture. I'd give anything to learn that dance! Vita thought. What a man!

Jolie had to agree. There could be an to eroticism, and the tanana was that art, and Nicolai was the master of the dance. He looked to be about sixty years old, but it didn't matter; he was ageless when he danced. He also played the fiddle, beautifully; Orb brought out her little harp and they played together, and it was awe-inspiring.

Chronos skipped ahead again, and the baby was born. Orb was unable to use medication to alleviate the pain, because she had a protective amulet that fought the medicine, but a Gypsy midwife helped her instead with a Spell of a.n.a.logy. She gave birth and named the baby as a variant of herself: not Orb, but Orlene.

Soon, advised by the ring. Orb had to leave. Her father was dying, and she had little time to see him. She left the baby with Tinka, with instructions to give her for adoption to a well-to-do tourist family. She removed Sning. "When you find the right family, put this ring on Orlene's finger." She also gave the Gypsy girl a great ruby, from the bag the Prince's people had given her, so that she would never be poor again. Then she left, tearfully.

Tinka took perfect care of the baby. She was married, but her husband spent much time away, so she rejoined her father. Nicolai, evidently remembering Tinka's babyhood, was good with Orlene; he held her and talked with her and sang to her and danced with her, holding her aloft while his feet moved cleverly. The baby loved it; she seldom cried when Nicolai was near.

"This child has magic," he said. "A rare and good talent, fit for a Romani soul! She can see and judge auras.''

"He knew!" Chronos exclaimed, astonished. "The glow you can see-he knew, even then!"

Orlene, grown now, watched, the tears streaming down her face. "I always liked dance and music," she said. "Now I know why. I almost remember-that marvelous man-that wonderful, blind Gypsy girl! Surely I saw them glowing brightly and was rea.s.sured."

Then the ring guided Tinka to intercept a pa.s.sing tourist couple. She was blind, but she could get around, especially with Sning's help. She spoke only Calo, while the tourists spoke English, but it didn't matter. She showed them the baby, and they were smitten, and it was done. She put Sning on the baby's finger, where it fit magically well, and departed, trying to hide her tears.

"Oh, Tinka, I didn't know!" Orlene said, watching. "You wanted to keep me and could not!"

Orb returned, as Gaea, and cured her blindness, Jolie thought. And made it possible for her to bear children.

"I'm glad! My life was good; my adoptive parents treated me very well, and I was never in want. But this discovery of the people in my past-how it joys and hurts!"

"I wish I had known this about you," Chronos said. "You were so much more than I guessed. But I loved you regardless, and had I known what was to happen-"

"I acted foolishly," she said. "Orb could not keep me, so she did what she had to and went on. Tinka could not keep me, so she, too, did what was right. But I-when I could not keep my own baby-oh, I failed you, and myself, and all of those who sacrificed so much to give me my good life! I am ashamed!"

"Oriene, you may lack the power to undo the past, but this is a power I now possess. Come with me." He put out his elbow.

Bewildered, excited, she took his arm. With his free hand he lifted the great Hourgla.s.s that suddenly appeared. The flowing sand in it turned bright red as he tilted it.

Then they slid through the wall of the room and out of the village, much the way Mortis moved through substance. The flickering came again.

They approached a megabuilding Oriene recognized: it was the one containing Gawain's apartment-the one she had occupied in life, as the wife of the ghost. It had not been long in objective time since she had left it, by dying, but it had been an eternity subjectively.

They came to rest immediately ^outside her door. "We are in that period when you were gravid," Norton said. "But before Gawain obtained Gaea's gift. You must approach your prior self and warn her of the danger. She will then warn my prior self, who will warn the ghost. That should do it."

"And the malaise will never come upon Gaw-Two!" she exclaimed, suddenly seeing it. "He will not sicken and die, and I will not suicide, and we will be together in life!"

He merely waited.

"Yet I hesitate," she said. "I made such a bad mistake before, I don't want to make another. I must not be hasty. If I do this, and Gaw-Two is saved, and we are happy, what happens to Jolie?"

"Jolie? She merely returns to Satan; she has no problem here."

True, Jolie thought. I would much prefer to see you alive and happy, Oriene! It would relieve me of enormous guilt, and I would not have to tell Gaea how her daughter was lost.

"And Vita-that's the mortal girl, my host-what of her?"

"Why she would return to whatever her life was before you joined her. Probably the two of you would never interact, since you encountered her after you died."

"But Vita was on the street! A-She was subject to the s.e.xual appet.i.tes of strange men, and getting hooked on a bad drug. She would most likely have proceeded in a descending spiral to depravity and death if Jolie and I hadn't come to pull her out of it!"

"I am afraid that would be the case."

Roque! Vita thought. You mean I wouldn't meet Roque?

"Oh, Norton, I don't think I can do this!" Oriene said. "I couldn't let that other baby die, when Thanatos took me there, and I can't do this to Vita, who is my friend. There has to be some other way!"

"If you live, what you did in death will not occur," he said. "That cannot be altered. You must live or die, not both."

But you could leave yourself a message! Jolie thought. Vita's address, so you could go and. . . But she lost it, the ramifications and complications becoming an impenetrable thicket. How could a white stranger with a baby go and rescue a black prost.i.tute in a stupor from H? How could Vita be introduced to Judge Scott and go to live with him? What had been feasible from within hardly seemed so from without!

"And if I live, then what of you?" Oriene continued. "Will you go on to become the Incarnation of Time?"

"And there you have it, Oriene: paradox. I cannot do a thing that changes my own past, in that fashion, for if I did, I would not obtain the Office and therefore could not do that thing. In all other matters I am immune from paradox, but in this one I am not."

"So it is impossible, after all!"

"It is impossible. But I wanted you to understand in your own fashion, so you would not think I was being argumentative or callous. Our relationship is finished, because you must go forward, even as a ghost, and I must live backwards as an Incarnation. Now let me judge your plea on its merits." He lifted the Hourgla.s.s again, angling it as the sand turned pink.

They sailed up through the building, ghostlike, and into the sky. Chronos needed no magic elevator for his conversions! Soon they were back in his mansion.

"How did you come to a.s.sume this Office?" Oriene asked, partly from curiosity, partly because she wasn't quite ready to discuss the merits of her case.

"After you died, Gawain felt guilty, and he tried to find some better setup for me. He remarried and invited me to impregnate his new wife, but I thought of you and would not. Later he learned of the coming vacancy of this Office and persuaded me to a.s.sume it. I admit I was moved by the notion that this might provide me the power to do what we have seen I could not do: change your past and mine so that you would survive. I discovered better, but by that time I was committed. And I admit this is no ill existence. And, lest you feel guilt for depriving me of love life, I am accommodated there too."

"You have a lover?" Oriene asked, relieved but not completely pleased. "Then why did you suggest that I remain here with you?"

"I would prefer your company. I don't love the other woman. She merely accommodates a particular need."

Oriene remembered her experience with the urgency of the need of the male, and could not condemn him. ' 'Who is she?"

"Another Incarnation. Only Incarnations understand."

"An Incarnation? Which one?"

"Fate."

"But Fate's my grandmother!"

"What?"

He doesn't know your ancestry, Jolie reminded her. He just learned of your immediate parentage, as you did, and has not yet made the connection to Lachesis.

"I'm the daughter of Nature and the granddaughter of Fate," Oriene continued. "That's why they sent Jolie to watch me. I didn't know while I lived, but now I do."

Disgruntled, he gazed at her. "Which Aspect?" he asked after a moment.

"Aspect?"

"Fate has three Aspects: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, of ascending generations. I believe each originates with a different mortal woman. They share the body, but they are three distinct personalities. Which one is your grandmother-Atropos?''

Lachesis, Jolie prompted.

"Lachesis," Oriene said numbly. She hadn't realized that Fate was so complicated!

"I indulge with Clotho, the youngest," he said, relieved. "Voluptuous, bouncy, midnight-black hair-of course, she can change her form, they all can, but I think that's her rest state."

"What does Lachesis look like?"

"Somewhat like an older edition of Gaea, actually, with light hair-sometimes she buns it up and makes it brown, but, well, it's not far from the shade of yours, really."

"That would be my grandmother," Oriene said, relaxing. She understood how three separate women could share a single body, even when one indulged in s.e.xual relations with a man not of the others' choosing. "It really isn't my business."

He seemed glad enough to let the subject change. "Now, how did you come to encounter Nox?"

"She has Gaw-Two. She took him when he came to Purgatory, and says she will give him to me if I can obtain the items I need to cure his malaise, which remains with him in death because it is of the soul, not the body. From Chronos, one grain of sand, apparently because one soul cannot be transcribed to another without a hitch in time, or something-I don't quite understand it, but am sure that it is so."

"It is so," he agreed. "But you would not be able to use such a grain that way. Time is a tool that only the Incarnation of time can wield. What the sand would actually do is summon me to itself-that is, to its possessor, you-at need, and I would then manage the hitch in time and take back the grain. But this, too, has a complication, At what time do you antic.i.p.ate this operation?"

Years! Jolie thought, knowing that it well might not be done at all.

"Years hence, I fear."

"Then likely before my tenure. That would explain why the sand is necessary, because I cannot go tangibly beyond my own term of Office. I can go intangibly, and observe certain aspects of reality, but I cannot affect them. If, however, you carry such a grain with you to that time, I will be able to go to it and act in the limited way that relates to its purpose." He paced the floor, considering. "Since I may not commit my predecessor-you would think of him as my successor-to such an action, I think I must give you the grain of sand. I think I would have agreed to do this were you not my lover in life, and the baby not mine, so I can justify it now."

"Thank you, Norton," she said. Again she remembered her brief, horrible experience as a male. Did he expect her to ... surely she did owe him that, considering. "Do you wish-"

"Here is the grain," he said abruptly, cutting her off. He touched the Hourgla.s.s and the grain appeared on his finger. "Do not lose it. I regret that I have other business now and must ask you to leave."

She took the grain, holding it tightly between thumb and forefinger. It tingled. "I ... thank you, Norton."

"Welcome." He ushered her out.

Moments later she stood at the front door, alone, bemused by the suddenness of the conclusion. There is a generous man, Jolie thought.

Yeah, he was really hot for you, but he wouldn't let on, Vita agreed. He just hustled you out before he could give in to it.

"But I would have-if he had let me ask-I owed him so much-"

He didn't want you to buy that grain of sand, or pay for it, Jolie thought. He wanted to give it to you. He did.

"After what I did to him!" she said. "I had no business dying like that! I should have stayed with him and had another baby, but I just-" She choked herself off.