LATE THAT EVENING, CHARLES TOOK GLORIA BY the hand and led her out onto the greensward in front of the main building of the Brockinbrough estate. “There’s something I want you to see,” he told her.

He moved stiffly, painfully, like an old man. His spasms had strained every muscle in his body, and Gloria was gingerly in her own movements.

After the neutralizer had taken effect, they had lain there on the floor of the null-room for what seemed a long time, gradually collecting themselves, slowly coming back from the brink of death. Then they got to their feet, with Gloria supporting Charles and helping him to walk.

Larry was in the main drawing room, standing by a mantel, next to his son. He was holding forth on some trivial topic for a crowd of sycophants when he saw them; his eyes bulged out and his lips moved wordlessly. Charles looked at a black-clad Imperial Security agent, pointed toward Larry and Gareth, and said, “Arrest them.” Then he collapsed.

They had hustled Charles into a bedroom, where Gloria told the Security men and the Imperial Physician what had happened. Then she, too, collapsed, more from relief than from the trauma she had endured. A few hours later, both of them were on their feet again.

Together, they went into a guarded room and confronted their would-be assassins. Neither Larry nor his son had anything to say, and even Charles didn’t say much.

“We don’t want a public scandal,” Charles had told them. “It will be simple exile for both of you. You’ll take your yacht directly to your lodge on Vymar Three. That’s eight hundred light-years from Earth and safely out of the way. You’ll have no visitors, and your communications will be monitored. You’ll spend the rest of your lives there.” He had stared at them for another moment, then turned and walked away from them.

Now, he and Gloria slowly made their way to the fence at the edge of the cliff. Charles pointed to the south, toward the glow of Central. “Any moment, now,” he said.

Gloria watched and saw a point of light rising from the city, climbing toward the blackness of space above. It rose steadily for a few moments, then flared into sudden brilliance. A dim spray of sparks trailed slowly downward to the sea.

“It seemed the easiest way,” Charles said to her.

Gloria nodded silently.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Charles said. “It seems to me that you did something similar on Sylvania, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t say anything,” she replied. They stood together at the fence and looked out on the darkened strait.

Finally, Gloria said, “I won’t be your Empress, Charles. Not now, not ever.”

Charles slowly nodded his head. “I figured as much,” he said. “I just hope you can try to understand. I wanted to be Emperor, and I thought I could have it without paying a price.”

“There’s always a price,” Gloria said. She thought of Norman Mingus. She thought of Ed Smith.

“Yes,” said Charles. “There always is, isn’t there?”

 

GLORIA SPENT THE NIGHT ALONE IN A BEDROOM at the Brockinbrough estate, then returned to Central the following morning without saying good-bye to Charles. She went up to her suite at the Imperial Cantabragian and found Petra and Jill waiting for her. From their drawn faces and grim expressions, she wondered if they had somehow heard what had happened. No, that was impossible. Then what…?

“Gloria,” Petra said softly, “I have some bad news. It’s Elaine…she’s dead.”

Gloria stared at her. The words didn’t make sense, didn’t register.

“It happened last night,” Jill said. “She was at a club, a null-room. Apparently she crunched down on some Orgastria-48. They administered a neutralizer, but somehow, it just didn’t work. They couldn’t revive her.”

“Spirit!” Gloria breathed. Her head spun, her knees felt weak. For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick.

“We’ve taken care of…of the details,” Petra said. “Her family will be notified, and she’ll be sent home.”

“Eli Opatnu was with her when it happened,” Jill said in a flat tone of voice. “In case you want to ask him about it.” Gloria looked at Jill and couldn’t read the emotions on her face.

“And that brings up something else,” Jill said. “I’m sorry to have to spring this on you at a time like this, but I think it’s best if I just tell you now. Gloria, I’m leaving Dexta.”

“What? But why? Jill…”

“I think I know why you shut down my investigation,” she said. “I can add two and two, and I can spell. Eli’s strange interest in the case. The way your Erik Manko problem suddenly disappeared. The way Eli kept me from getting a court order immediately, then failed to back me up when I tried to overturn the restraining order. And your sudden turnaround. It all adds up to one thing, Gloria, and you spell it with a Z.”

“Jill—”

“Don’t try to explain it,” Jill said. “I don’t want to hear you justifications and rationalizations. I just don’t want to hear it. You can’t be a little bit corrupt, Gloria, any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. You made your choice, now I’ve made mine.”

“But, Jill—”

“I told you, I don’t want to hear it!”

“Dammit, Jill! You’re being foolish. Is it worth giving up your Dexta career because of…a minor impropriety? Jill, this is trivial!”

Jill pursed her lips. “Is that how you view it?” she asked. “Is that how you justify it?”

“For Spirit’s sake, Jill, what are we talking about here? It’s just a low-level scam, a little harmless graft. A few shipments evade taxes, a few Dexta people get paid off. Yes, I know it’s wrong, but it’s the way things work. Where’s the harm?”

“How can you say that after what happened to Elaine?” Jill demanded.

“What? What are you talking about?”

Jill fixed her gaze on Gloria. “Harmless? Gloria, what do you think is in those shipments?”

Gloria opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything. She stared at Jill and saw the anger and determination on her features. After a long moment, her face softened slightly. “Gloria, Petra,” she said, “I’m sorry, but it’s over. Good-bye.” Jill turned quickly and stalked out of the room.

Gloria watched the door close behind Jill, then slumped down onto a sofa. She put a hand to her head, as if checking to see if it was still properly attached to the rest of her. She saw Petra standing next to her.

“I’m sorry,” Gloria said, “but I’m afraid I have more bad news. You’re not going to be Lady Petra.”

Petra didn’t react for a moment, then slowly nodded and managed a wan smile. “Easy come, easy go,” she said. She sat down next to Gloria.

“I can’t believe Elaine is gone,” Gloria said. “If only I hadn’t—”

“You can’t blame yourself, Gloria,” Petra insisted. “Elaine knew what she was doing.”

“Yeah,” Gloria said. “We all did.”

 

THEY PACKED THEIR BAGS AND TOOK A TRANSIT up to the New Cambridge Orbital Station. Once there, they discovered that no Flyer or Cruiser was available. The departing Dexta bigwigs had taken them all, and Gloria and Petra were forced to book passage home on a commercial liner. The voyage took a week.

It was a mostly silent week. They shared a small stateroom and couldn’t avoid each other, but spent most of their time reading or sleeping, or simply staring silently at the walls. Finally, on the fifth day, they began to talk, hesitantly at first, but then more openly, and finally, they told each other everything.

Petra went first, sharing her pain over what had happened with Pug and his family, and then her guilt and self-doubt over her attraction to and involvement with Whit Bartholemew. She felt cheap and weak and stupid, and yet, even now, she still felt a sense of loss and regret about Whit. She wondered what it said about her that she could fall for such a man.

“I did, too,” Gloria said. And then she told Petra about Charles, and the rest of it. She recounted her approach to Ed Smith and explained her debt to the zamitat. Once she had started talking, she found that she couldn’t stop, and went on to tell the story of Norman Mingus and his family. And Savoy. And finally, the story of Charles and how he became Emperor. For good measure, she added what Charles had done to the Brockinbroughs and what she had done a year earlier on Sylvania.

“Maybe you want out now, too,” Gloria said when she had finished her story. “Maybe Jill had the right idea.”

Petra shook her head. “No,” she said, “I think I’ll stay. OSI has already lost Pug and Jill and Elaine. If OSI is going to be the Fifth Quadrant, you’ll need me.”

“More than ever,” Gloria affirmed.

“Gloria? You realize, don’t you, that if you hadn’t made your deal with this Ed Smith guy, we would never have known that the Savoy shipment was broken down into three loads? And without knowing that, I would never have been able to figure out where the weapons went. And if I hadn’t figured that out, maybe I wouldn’t have realized the truth about Whit. So your deal with the zamies probably saved a hundred million lives.”

Gloria gave her friend a crooked smile. “You’re just determined to see the bright side of everything, aren’t you?”

“Oh, you know me—Little Petra Sunshine.”

“Well, then, allow me to point out that you are much better off without Pug. He was a nice boy, but a boy is what he’ll always be. His family will never let him grow up, or grow out of what they want him to be. And as for Whit—Spirit, Petra, the man spent twenty years fooling everyone! Even his mother. In the end, you were smarter than everyone else, and if anyone saved those hundred million lives, it was you.”

Petra shook her head emphatically. “No,” she said. “He was going to press that button, Gloria. He really was. It was his mother who stopped him, not me.”

Gloria thought about that, then said, “I should tell Norman. Maybe Saffron’s hundred million somehow balances out Norman’s on the family ledger. Maybe they can both find some peace now.”

“Maybe we all can,” Petra said.

 

THEY RETURNED TO EARTH AND TRANSITED down to Dexta Headquarters in Manhattan. But instead of heading for the street to walk back to their building, Gloria paused at the turnoff to the Transits to Brooklyn. “I’m going to spend a few days at my place on Long Island,” she explained.

“Good idea,” Petra said.

“Say hi to your mom for me. Tell her for me that she ought to be very proud of her daughter.”

Petra grinned at Gloria. “Even if I’m not Lady Petra of Weehawken?”

“Hey, kiddo, you’re a Dexta Twelve now! What more could anyone want from life?”

 

GLORIA QUICKLY MADE THE HOP TO BROOKLYN, picked up her Ferrari skimmer in the Dexta lot, and made her way home. Along the way, Billie Holiday kept her company, singing “God Bless the Child.” She pulled into the carport of her house in the dunes, wandered aimlessly through the empty house, then went out to the pool and found, to her surprise, that she had a new tree growing in her yard. An exceptionally ugly tree. A note was pinned to it.

She opened the note. “The Imperial Gardener informed me that a simple cutting wouldn’t work, so we brought in a whole tree from Belonna Five,” it read, in Charles’s flowing handwriting. “I hope it does you some good.”

Gloria smiled and looked up at the gnarled, bony limbs, the ungainly proportions, and the bare branches. There were no leaves yet, but the roots looked strong and tenacious.

She walked over the dunes and down to the beach. The tide was low, and she had to walk a long way to reach the water’s edge. She stared out to the gray, indeterminate horizon for a long, silent time, thinking no particular thoughts. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of purple lozenges. She stared at them for a moment, then threw them as far as she could, into the cold ocean waters. Then she turned and walked back across the dunes and sat down to think and remember, in the comforting shadow of her glashpadoza tree.