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more worldly and less enshrouded by the Hypateion gymnasion's code of
behavior, one of those boys might have been her first lover. The Great Mother
knows she had had enough caresses and kisses stolen from her
She still remembered their jokes, born out of centuries of struggle and
desperation, not at all tempered by the tolerance and clime of Rhodos.
There were cruel, wild jokes about ill-timed death spoiling great plans,
raucous fables about separated families and lost relatives, about herd animals
never seen on Rhodos.
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ETERNITY · 81~
Once, she had sat talking with a boy perhaps a year younger than she.
He had told her his family's story, unnumbered centuries tangled up with the
lives of other families, other tribes, perhaps even other nations; and she had
tried to fit that in to what she knew about the old Rhus-Oikoumen~Parsa
alliances and the extinguishing of the Steppes tribes. In return, he had
listened to her formal history with unusual politeness and attention, and then
had told her, "That's what you winners say." Leaping up, he had brayed at her
like an ass, and run across the beach, his bare feet unerringly picking a path
on flat sun-heated stones.
With a sigh, Rhita opened her eyes, losing that hot pale noon sky and distant
running boy. She picked up the electronic teukhos that had belonged to her
grandmother, switched it on, selected a memory block and began to search
through the volumes listed. Then, realizing she might be taking a risk, she
turned the machine's lighted screen off. Examining the frail door, she decided
the least she could do was block it with the room's single cane chair. She
hadn't dared listen to any of the music cubes since her arrival; discovery
would be at best embarrassing, and at worst, disastrous.
The Mouseion might confiscate the Objects. They might accuse her of all sorts
of ridiculous crimes; how could she know?
Rhita hated this strange, difficult, clannish Mouseion, with its ancient, mazy
gounds . .
She felt out of place among the city-wise students, drawn from all around
Gaia. To her surprise, she had seen young men dressed in the peculiar fringed
leather clothes sported by Nea Karkh~donians, in imitation of the indigenous
peoples they had subjugated a century ago. These were the children of the
sworn enemies of the Oikoumen. What perversion of diplomacy allowed them into
Alexandreia? She had even seen students dressed in the shifts and leather
skirts of Latin tribes. Not that she disliked any of them personally; Rhodos
seemed so remote from all that, though having studied her history, she knew
nobody was truly isolated from such conflicts.
Rhita drew the gap i.n the curtains tighter, old nut-shell curtain rings
rattling against the cane rod, and returned to her bed, feeling without reason
a little more secure. Switching the screen back on, she surveyed the list. She
had read or'looked through virtually all of the two hundred and seven books
listed.
This time, however, her eyes alighted on a title she had not read. She could
have sworn it was newly added. It said simply, "READ ME
NOW." She called it up on the screen.
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The index card preceding the display of the first page told her the volume was
three hundred pages in lengthmabout a hundred thousand
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85
· GREG BEAR
words--and it was in Hellenic, not English, as all the other books in the
cubes were. She halted the display of the index as she saw a flashing cursor
next to a description she had not seen before. "Contents and catalog display
suppressed until 4/25/49."
That had been two days before.
Rhita pressed the keypad to read the first page.
Dear Granddaughter, You have the name of my mother. Is it all my fancy someday
you will meet her? When you were younger you must have thought I was a crazy
old woman though I think you loved me.
Now you have this, and I can talk to you though I have never gone home, not
really. Some say even here that dying is going home.
Imagine that world I have torn you about, and you have read these books, if
you are my granddaughter, and I know you are.
You have read these books and they must tell you I made nothing up. AH is
true. There was a place called Earth. I did not come out of a whirlwind.
I clung to this slate and the few blocks brought with me all by accident, by
chancelmfor years when it seemed even to me I
must be crazy. Now you are burdened by my quest. But all things are connected,
even such faraway things as my world
Earth and yours Gaic~ My fancy could be important to you and all on Gaic~ If
there is a gate. And there will be again. They have come and gone on the
clavicle like dust-devil& Who would taunt an old woman so?
On certain days, I will leave you something here to read, like the unrolling
of a scroll, to be revealed only that day and after.
She could not get the machine to display any more of the large file's
contents. The machine had apparently been set to portion it out to her a bit
at a time. Rhita turned off the slate and screwed her knuckles into her eyes.
She could not get away from Patrikia. She had no life of her own.
But if there was such a thing as a gate
And there was! Who could deny machines that spoke to her mind, or hundreds of
books her grandmother could not possibly have imagined, much less written?
If the gate was real, then there was more of a burden on her shoulders
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ETERNITY · 87
now than just responsibility to her grandmother. All the people on Gala
weighed her down.
Rhita was beginning to imagine what such a thing as a gate would mean to this
world. Not all that she imagined was pleasant. It would bring change, perhaps
immense change . .
FIFTEEN
Thistledown City
The tracer transferred itself to Olmy's library terminal and signaled with the
black and white pict of a grinning terrier that it had completed its search.
Olmy switched on blowers to collect the remnants of a meager cloud of
pseudo-Talsit, pushed himself off the couch and stood before the teardrop
terminal, concentrating on the tracer's picted condensation of its findings.
No relevant file sources in Axis Euclid or Thoreau or copies of library
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records of Nader and Central City. AH file sources classified in Thistledown
libraries; classification limit has expired, but no records of access to files
since the Sundering. Last access-52 years remote from Axis City, no
identification, but likely from noncorporeal in city memory. Thirty-two files
containing references to Fifth Chamber Repository.
By law, all security classifications in libraries and city memory storage were
voided after one hundred years without application and approval for renewal.
Olmy inquired of the tracer how many applications for extension had been made
on the files. The tracer replied Four. The files were all' older than four
hundred years.
"Records of file authors," he requested. AH author records deleted.
That was highly unusual. Only a president or presiding minister could approve
of deletion of authors or originators from file records in libraries or city
memory storage; and even then, only for the most pressing reasons.
Anonymity was not an approved concept in Hexamon history; too many of the
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