“Compromises?” It was easy enough to prod most people into talking about themselves, about their ideas: so it was with Campas.

  “Their society is very rigid, you see,” Campas said. “It doesn’t take easily to compromises — Brodaini consider tradition and honor more important than life, and in one sense it would have been easier for Tegestu’s people to hold their ground and be killed by the conqueror, rather than alter their way of life to take service with us. But Tegestu saw a chance to survive, and to do it with a minimum of change, and that change slowly.

  “It took him time, you see. Years. He had to hold off the Clattern i Clatterni for the first of those years, while he made his deal with Necias; and then he had to make his deal with the conqueror. He would evacuate his country over a period of ten years, taking as many of his dependents as wished to go, and in the end the conqueror would have the territory without having to fight for it — with its castles intact, its fields unscorched by war. The treaty was very complex — I’ve seen it — but it was eventually hammered out, and both sides abided by it. Tegestu evacuated his people; the Abessu-Denorru found land for his peasants and wars for his warriors; and that created a demand among the other cities for other Brodaini.

  “Tegestu was cunning in all this negotiation,” Campas said; then he smiled. “Subtlety isn’t supposed to be a Brodaini trait; but I think it’s that they have different ways of being subtle. Tegestu would make a good deissu, crafty as he is.”

  “Do you like him?” Fiona asked. She found herself genuinely curious: Campas, she thought, was a likable man. A good observer, she thought — had he been born on Igara he could have had her job, had he wanted it.

  Campas thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t. I admire him, but the Brodaini are not for liking. There’s something strange about them, so fierce and so — alien.” He looked as if he were repressing a shudder. He looked up at her, speaking candidly. “Even to someone who has lived among them, like myself, they’re unpredictable. We don’t know what sets them off. And now Tastis has gone mad and seized an entire city.” He leaned back in his chair, frowning in thought. “But that will be an end to him. The change will come too fast.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Campas looked up at her quickly. “Don’t you?” he asked softly. His lips twitched in a little, cynical smile, his eyes holding steadily on hers. “It’s obvious,” he said. “Tegestu was given the Old City here, walled off for his people; and he settled his peasants in little communities of their own guarded by Brodaini soldiers. It was to lower the incidence of contact, obviously, to minimize the shocking contrast between one people and another. But the contacts were there, unavoidable, and all Tegestu’s care wouldn’t keep them from happening, and once that happened his way of life was doomed. They’re brave, but they don’t fit in here; their way of life is too different, and our numbers are overwhelming. Whether he realized it or not — and I think he did realize it; he’s a canny man — he was trying to keep the changes from happening so quickly that his people would be overwhelmed by them, perceive them as threats, and react violently, as Tastis has done. So that the changes would come slowly, and so that some of his way of life might be preserved — changed but not destroyed, as it will be destroyed with Tastis.”

  Campas leaned back in his chair, sipping his tea, his blue eyes watching Fiona intently. “You’ve been asking me a lot of questions, Ambassador,” he said. “Most people in your situation wouldn’t bother to inquire after the opinions of a mere messenger. I wonder at your interest.’’

  “Your question isn’t very diplomatic,” Fiona said.

  “Neither were yours,” Campas said, his face hard. “You’re studying us, and for that reason you’re interested in what we think; but you’ve drawn your own conclusions well ahead of time. I don’t think you like us very much, but you try to be polite. I recognize what you’re doing, you see.” His lips twitched in a bitter smile. “I lived among the Brodaini and studied them, and I didn’t like them, either.” He put down his tea, then looked up, his gaze frank, and frankly hostile. “Your people are after something, and I’m not sure what it is. Not conquest — I believe you there — but it’s not trade, either. You’re not as disinterested as all that.” He stood, looking down at Fiona with an odd mixture of puzzlement and stubbornness on his face, as if he were still trying to sort out his impressions, his conclusions. “I haven’t forgotten what you said to the Abessu-Denorru, when he asked you what you wanted in return for your suggestion about the sail. We ask nothing from you, you said; I noticed the emphasis even if Necias didn’t. But you do want something in the end, if not from Necias. And I wonder what that is.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, Ambassador. I’ll remove myself.” He gave an exaggerated bow. “Your servant,” he said, and walked toward the door.

  “Sit down,” said Fiona, and when he only hesitated she repeated herself, with emphasis. “Sit. Down.” Campas stopped, then turned and faced her, an expression of anger on his face — but then he shrugged again, smiled his cynical smile, and in the end obeyed.

  Fiona looked down at her hands grasping the arms of her chair; their knuckles were white. Deliberately she relaxed her grip, relaxing as well the jaw muscles that had clenched her teeth together.

  Campas looked at her expectantly.

  “That was a remarkable performance, Campas,” she said. “You’re quite an actor, aren’t you? And now I’m compelled, like you, to wonder why. What offends you, Campas? My private judgments? Why should you care at all what I think?”

  “Your thoughts are of no concern,” he said. “Your attitudes are. Do you think you can fool us so easily? Necias may be satisfied for the moment, but once he has a little time to think he’ll begin to try to reason out what you’re doing here, and he’ll begin to wonder the same things I’ve been wondering.”

  “So you simply think me dishonest?” Fiona asked, frankly disbelieving. “You consider that we Igaralla have concealed motives of our own, and for that reason you choose to despise me?” She barked a short, contemptuous laugh. “Give me something better, Campas,” she chided. “Someone demanding candor should be candid himself.”

  Campas sat silent for long seconds, his eyes burning into her. “Brito thinks you’re a witch,” he said. “They haven’t executed witches here for a hundred years, but I think she’d see you chopped up in the public square if she could. You frighten her.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” Fiona said. “But you’re not arguing for the revival of the laws against witchcraft, I take it?”

  Campas shook his head; but his fierce eyes never left her. “But you are a witch, you see,” he said. “I’m not saying you have cast a spell over us all — it would have been better if you had: spells wear off. You’ve done something far worse. You’ve changed the world.”

  Fiona became aware of the silence from the other chamber, the absence of Tibro’s flute. Well, she thought fiercely, let the girl listen.

  “Worlds change every day,” she said.

  “Not like this, they don’t,” Campas said. “The people are intoxicated with you. See the star woman. Hear of her wonders. They think of you as this benevolent force, come to improve their lives. They haven’t yet realized what you really mean.

  “Now we know there are other worlds,” he said. “Other peoples, peoples who can work wonders. And before long we will begin to measure ourselves against you. What will happen then? We do not build ships that sail between the stars; we cannot fly above the clouds; we are unable to communicate between cities in the blink of an eye. A lady walks among us, offering in her whimsical condescension ‘suggestions,’ little driblets of knowledge from heaven, that can turn us upside-down. Our triumphs are insignificant; our knowledge pointless. It’s all been done before.

  “Your spells have taken our souls, witch,” Campas said, his bitterness etched on his words like acid. “You’ve shown us our insignificance. Our dreams have been dreamed before, and better. You’ve shattered us, Ambassador. We were better off before you showed us the stars.”

  “I don’t think you’re so fragile as all that, Campas,” Fiona said. “I don’t enjoy being a part of this poetic conceit of yours.” He turned his eyes away as her shaft struck home; and then she stood up, walked briskly to the door, and caught a glimpse of Tibro, flute in hand, perched on a settee, her eyes wide with shock. The maidservant flushed. “Beg pardon, Ambassador,” she stammered.

  “Play,” Fiona said, and then expressionlessly closed the door, putting her back against it. Let them think what they damn well please, she thought fiercely, and then, feeling the firmness of the door against her shoulders, she spoke.

  “What I’m going to say is not meant to go beyond these walls,” she said. “Can I trust you not to go running off to Necias with this, like that girl out there, who is certainly going to dash off downstairs with the news that I’m a witch after all?”

  “I can keep a confidence.” Grudgingly. No woman had ever talked to him like this, Fiona thought. Too bad it hadn’t happened before.

  She walked across the room and returned to her seat. “Do you think you’re the first people to have your world turned around?” she asked. “It’s happened before, and it’s happened worse. I’ve seen the history you teach your children. Five hundred years ago the Abessla were conquerors, coming over the passes from the south, weren’t they? They toppled the weak Captilla kingdoms, and then the Sanniscu Empire, and the result has been five hundred years of anarchy as the successors, the barons and the cities, warred among themselves. Do you think the Captilla and Sannisla didn’t have their world changed?”

  “They were destroyed,” Campas said. “Wiped out. You serve only to illustrate my point.”

  “Hardly destroyed. They still live, Campas,” Fiona said. “Their kingdoms were destroyed, but the people lived under new rulers. And they learned, Campas. They learned from their conquerors, and their conquerors learned from them. And eventually they became a single people. Ideas may shatter, Campas, but the people survive them, if they’re wise. You can’t be afraid of putting aside the ideas of your youth, when you grow older — or can you?”

  Campas looked at her balefully. “If these youthful ideas are all I’ve got,” he said. “If these quaint, eccentric little concepts are all that’s holding me together, I damned well resent their supercession.”

  “Dramatics.”

  He glared up at her sharply, resentful. Fiona settled into her seat, plumping up the pillow behind her, pulling her legs into the chair. “I’m going to tell you a story, Campas,” she said. “Believe it a true one or not, as you please. I’m not an artist such as yourself, so forgive my crudities of phrase.”

  Sardonic humor entered Campas’ eyes. “Now who’s being dramatic?”

  Fiona grinned. “Conceded,” she said. She sipped her tea — by now it was cold, but it still refreshed.

  “I’ll have to ask you to imagine a planet much like your own,” she said. “Its name was Terra, and humans lived there from earliest times — they lived, and boon-re blessed them, such that they learned to travel among the stars. Not slowly, such as my people do it, but swiftly, in an instant. So they traveled among the stars in their fast ships, and they found many planets on which the Terralla could live. Their people came to these planets in great numbers; and they settled there and prospered. They came to my planet, Igara, and they came to yours, Campas; and they settled in both.”

  Campas sat up, his eyebrows raised. “You’re making a case for these people as our ancestors?” he asked.

  “You’re quick,” Fiona said. “But I’m just telling a story, remember. I don’t want to turn your fragile world upside-down again.”

  Campas smiled, his smile this time self-mocking, conscious of Fiona’s elaborate irony. “Very well,” he said, gesturing grandly. “Please go on.”

  “Thank you.” The muffled sound of Tibro’s flute sounded through the door. Fiona settled again into her chair, and went on. “But there was a flaw in the knowledge of the Terralla,” she said. “Their method of traveling among the stars was dangerous, and they did not know it.” She paused, trying to choose her words. How could she explain to this man, bright as he was, that the Terran faster-than-light ships, using their vast power to warp the fabric of space-time, had created a monumental instability in the balance of space, matter, time, reality? And that when the balance was at last overturned, the catastrophe had been sudden and swift, destroying entire planets, sending others backward and forward in time, destroying human civilization?

  “Imagine that the Arrandalla build a new type of ship to sail upon the sea,” Fiona said. “And that this new type of ship is very fast and successful, so that the Arrandalla expand throughout the world and become very rich, and that their knowledge increases and they become very wise. But that the means by which this ship is driven through the waves injures the ocean, so that ocean is forced to attack the ships in self-defense.” She saw incomprehension in Campas’ eyes and paused. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this is difficult.”

  He waved a hand by his head, mimicking his own confusion. “This ship is injuring the ocean?” he asked. “Is the ocean alive, then, in this story?” Then a light of understanding entered his eyes, and he leaned forward. “Or am I not to take this literally? Is this a metaphor?”

  “A metaphor,” Fiona said gratefully, thankful that Campas had made that leap of understanding.

  “Very well. Go on.” He leaned back in his chair, his legs still thrust out before him.

  “The Terralla did not entirely understand the means by which they traveled among the stars, just as your alchemists do not entirely understand why their compounds work, or do not work,” she said. “Just as the alchemists might accidentally make a compound that is dangerous — that might be poison, or that might cause a fire — the Terralla did not understand that there was great danger created by their ships. They caused a great disaster, and most of the Terralla died. More than ninety-nine in a hundred were killed instantly; all their ships were destroyed: their cities were turned to ruins. Many of the survivors were driven mad by the catastrophe.”

  She paused, seeing an intent, intelligent comprehension on Campas’ face, knowing she had him intrigued. “You may be interested to know that my people have a large literature concerning the Terralla,” she said. “Tragedies, many of them — they show the Terralla as wise beings descending, through fatal curiosity, to disaster. The catastrophe is presented as the inevitable result of their meddling with things they should have left alone.

  “Other interpretations show the Terralla as decadent, self-indulgent sensation seekers, playing among their palaces, tempting fate for the pleasure of it. Yet others show them as immeasurably wise ancestors from whose standards of perfection we have fallen. Others just use the time of the Terralla as a background for tales of fantastic romance and adventure.” Fiona smiled, seeing Campas nod, understanding well the matter of literary interpretation. “Personally,” she said, “I think all these approaches make fine literature, but all are off the mark as far as the truth about Terra is concerned. I suspect the Terralla were much as we, that their fall was not a measure of arrogant curiosity, or of their decadence, but a measure only of their human fallibility. They fell because even though they were wise they were still human, and did not understand enough about their universe. They fell from lack of knowledge, not from too much.”

  Campas nodded. “I compliment you, Ambassador,” he said, his tone serious. “I didn’t realize you had this gift, truly I didn’t. You point your morals very elegantly. I shall have to look upon you as a rival, in future.”

  Fiona looked down at her lap, strangely embarrassed by the compliment, and then shook her head. “Your gift is poetry,” she said. “Mine is storytelling. Yours is the greater.’’

  “My compliment was sincere,” Campas said. “I don’t flatter in these matters.” Then he grinned. “I can write my poetry for a hundred years, and it won’t alter the world a bit — it’s still valueless, as far as my masters are concerned. My chief uses are secretarial, and my poetry is useful to Necias chiefly as a demonstration of his anildas. It enhances his esteem to have a court poet, and so he does.

  “But your little stories, Ambassador —” His smile faded, replaced by sadness. He waved a gentle, admonishing finger at her. “You told one tale eight nights ago, and this old world hasn’t been the same since. And I’ve been angry at you for it.” He bowed. “Jealousy, I’m sorry to say. I apologize.”

  So that’s what set him off, Fiona thought. He’s been trying to get his poetry through their dim minds for years, and now a little foreign woman has done in a night all he’s ever wanted to do.

  “I haven’t invalidated your verse,” she said. “It’s still as accomplished as ever it was.”

  “Just far less relevant.” Lightly, but still with bitterness. His eyes rose to hers. “But you were telling me about the Terralla. What’s become of them?”

  “Gone, we think,” Fiona said. “Terra itself disappeared in the catastrophe. And the survivors, here and there on other planets, having lost everything — well, they started over. Much of their land would not support life, at least not at first. It was a terrible existence, and only gradually did it improve. They forgot Terra and all they had been, except perhaps as a land in a legend. Their own worlds were all they knew.

  “Some recovered earlier,” she continued. “Their worlds had not been scarred as badly, and, when they had progressed enough to understand them, they had Terralla artifacts to help them. It was these who began to first move among the stars again, moving much more slowly this time, so as not to risk the holocaust caused by the Terralla.”

  “Your people,” Campas said. “The Igaralla.”