Mary Rosenblum - The Eye of God

“I’m laughing at me, not you.” Etienne held out her hand, didn’t let herself flinch as Zynth took it. “Don’t mind me. I’m old and bitter, and I see ghosts. I really do wish you… love. And children.”

“Thank you.” Zynth’s smile was beautiful, but still tinged with sadness. He paused with his hand on the door, looked back over his shoulder. “I love you, too,” he said. “For all that it is wrong.”

Then the door closed behind him and he was gone. Etienne sat down on a floor cushion and listened to the reeds whisper their contentment to the summer heat. Love was another universal. Like pain, and fear. And grief. She rested her forehead on her knees and didn’t cry. After a time—when the Rethe had had plenty of time to leave—she got up. Her joints still ached from her climb, and she felt suddenly old—as old as she really was.

Outside, the sun was high. The reeds brushed her thighs as she waded through them, touching her like a lover’s fingers. The girl wasn’t at the plaza today. Etienne strode across the open space and stepped onto the unmarked patch of ground that should be a Gate.

Her foot landed on gray stone, and the Eye stared dispassionately down. Slowly, Etienne walked over the broken remains of the habitat’s anchor, and stopped on the lip of the chasm. Far below, blue-white mountains reflected in still water like purple ink. Duran had heard the soul of a people in the song of this world. Is that what you loved about him, Vilya? Braced against the gusts, Etienne lifted her face to the Eye. Duran’s ability to hear —like her empathic sense, but different? Safer?

Truth only, beneath the Eye of God. She bent her head and the first tears spotted the cracked stone where her anchor had pulled loose. Tears for Vilya, because she had never cried for her—no—she had never let herself cry. And for herself, because Terane could have been her daughter, as well as Duran’s and Vilya’s.

And for Zynth who would find someone to love who was as fertile as she… he… was. Because he had to.

Etienne wondered if Terane had inherited Duran’s ability to image a soul in light and music. She turned her back on the cliff and the Eye, trudged slowly back across the gray stone. At the edge of the Gateway, she paused, her fingers curling around the sphere that was the key to this technology. “You want truth?” Etienne looked up at the Eye. “Our awe is wearing thin. It’s time for us to look you in the eye.” Courtesy of Duran. “We’re good at unraveling tech.” As she stepped forward, she wondered if her old boss Anton would be surprised to hear from her. Maybe not.

Her foot landed in sun and dust, and her ears filled with the whisper of reeds. She didn’t turn toward home. Instead, she began to trudge past the squatters’ shacks toward the clinic. She didn’t want to know how much Duran might have loved Vilya, but she needed to talk to him. She needed to ask about… their daughter. She needed an address. Too late to be a mother, maybe she could be a friend, offer another version of Vilya. Maybe not, but she could try.

The reeds sang contentment, and the dust puffed up from beneath her feet to blow away on the wind.