The room's eight windows were so clear, and the scenes they displayed were so diverse, that Sparrow doubted for a moment that he was inside a building after all. He reached out toward the image of courtiers and petitioners gathered in King Venkatna's audience hall to see if he could—
Saburo's nostrils pinched. Seven of the windows, including that displaying the Open Lands, went a gray as solid as stone and featureless as vacuum.
In the remaining window, a black geodesic dome squatted on a mud island in a swamp. Around the stagnant lake, tree-ferns reached through the mists to spread the feathery fronds which sprouted from the sides of their trunks.
"Who made this place, milord?" Sparrow asked. He looked around with undisguised interest.
The windows met, edge to edge, in a complete circuit, but the room had no door. It was only accessible in the fashion by which Saburo had brought his servant here: through the Matrix.
"Why do you say 'made'?" Saburo asked. There was a touch of asperity in his voice. "Discontinuities between planes exist throughout the eight worlds. North as our leader could of course choose to place his dwelling around the best of those natural sports."
Saburo knew that his own palace—perfectly sited and balanced with its surroundings though it was—had not impressed Sparrow. The opinion of an artisan, scarcely better than a savage, was of course of no importance; but still. . . .
Sparrow snorted. "I've seen nature," he said. "Don't tell me I can't recognize craftsmanship."
He ran his index and middle fingers down the edge of the unclouded window, where the frame would be if it had a physical frame. The material was without temperature, neither hot nor cold. The only property it imparted to Sparrow's touch was the feeling of adamantine solidity.
"North built this himself, did he?" the smith said in marvel.
"I believe that is the case, yes," his guide and master replied. Saburo's voice was as colorless as the seven windows he had closed.
"I give him best, then," Sparrow said softly. His hand worked slowly up and down the gray, as though polishing a surface already smoother than matter could be. "I couldn't have built this, and I never thought I'd say that of a thing I could see."
"Master Sparrow—"
"I wonder what it cost him," the smith said. He wasn't interrupting Saburo; he was simply oblivious to everything except wonder at the construct in which he stood. "I know what it costs to turn the Matrix on itself, and to do it on this scale—"
"Master Sparrow," Saburo hissed in a towering fury.
The smith blinked, then immediately knelt—in contrition rather than fear. "Milord," he said, "Lord Saburo—I was inattentive when my duty was to you. It will not happen again."
"I—" Saburo said. He was startled to receive a sincere apology from this man. The smith's stiff-necked honor and controlled violence were as much a part of him as his cinnamon beard and hair. "I should have realized that this room would be of interest to someone of your—talents. But rise, please rise."
Sparrow stood and turned again to the window. This time he examined the scene rather than the structure which displayed it.
The water which surrounded the dome looked silver where sunlight glanced from it, deep black with dissolved tannin outside the angle of reflection. Meter-tall horsetails grew at the margins of the pool, wearing their branches like successive crowns sprouting at each joint of their stems.
Trees rose from the humps and ridges of higher ground nearby. The soil even of the hillocks was almost liquid, so that roots had to spread broadly across the surface in order to support modest thirty-meter trunks.
"Not battlesuits," Sparrow muttered, smug to see his off-hand assessment borne out by further evidence. "Not unless they're on stilts. Which I suppose I could . . ."
Saburo brought the image in the window nearer without giving an audible command. A wall of the same black plastic as the dome encircled the small island. The vertical corrugations every few meters looked at first to be structural stiffeners, but closer observation showed that each rib had a narrow shutter. The posts supporting the wall's single gate were thicker than the remaining ribs.
Because of the swamp's flat terrain, the ports the shutters masked could sweep for almost a kilometer in every direction. That judgment assumed the wall's defensive weapons were sufficiently powerful, of course; but the smith had a high opinion of the products of the androids' craft.
"The place could be captured . . . ," Sparrow murmured; considering ways and means, considering the tools he would build for the task.
He turned to his master again. "I don't know how long it could be held, though," he added.
"It wouldn't have to be held," said Saburo. "However . . ."
The image closed nearer yet and slid through the faceted dome of the structure. In the center of an open room knelt a woman—
An android, this was Plane Three—
A girl with perfect features. Her hair was in a tight bun, and she had painted her face chalk white over the naturally pallid android complexion. Black makeup emphasized her eyes, and her lips and spots high on either cheek were brilliant carmine.
She was arranging a spray of ferns and seed pods on the low table before her.
"She is . . . ," Saburo whispered.
Sparrow expected his master to continue with 'perfect,' because that was the word which glowed from Saburo's eyes as he spoke.
Instead, Saburo said, ". . . Mala. She is the daughter of King Nainfari. She is—"
Saburo's voice strengthened as he spoke, until it crashed out with godlike force, "—the woman whom I have wanted for my wife ever since I amused myself here in North's vantage point."
His face tightened. The image drew back with the suddenness of a crossbow releasing. Mud, black plastic, and dozing armaments filled the window.
"Amused myself like a fool," Saburo continued harshly. "And saw her by chance, whom I could never have. Because for me to enter Plane Three with the necessary force would mean . . ."
The slim god's eyes stared at a day, a Day, that he had been unable to prevent himself from seeing. The Final Day, seen once in the Matrix and forever after in memory.
Sparrow smiled coldly. "You swim in the Matrix, my lord," he said mildly, "and you still believe in Chance?"
The smith had memories too. . . .
Sparrow shook himself like a bear dragging itself onto an ice floe. "So . . . ," he said, rotating the dome and its defenses in his mind. "You want the girl."
He focused again on his master. "All right," he said. "I'll bring her to you."
For a moment, Saburo's face looked beatific. Then he frowned and said colorlessly, "Master Sparrow, I have the greatest respect for your abilities, as an artisan and as a . . ."
His voice trailed off. Perhaps he would have said 'man,' had he continued in that vein. Instead, Saburo resumed with, "The terrain is swamp, and the temperatures there are very high. Not the sort of climate to which you are accustomed. Also—"
Saburo's voice returned by imperceptible stages to that of the technical expert he had been in an exploration unit. "—the defenses are strong, extremely strong. I've examined them at length. I don't believe one man, however equipped . . ."
He broke off when he realized that the smith was smiling at him. The expression had humor in it, but the underlying emotion was quite different.
"Lord Saburo," Sparrow said to the smaller man, "we both know that I serve you—"
"Serve me very well," Saburo broke in, afraid of what the smith might say next.
"—on my own terms," Sparrow continued without deigning to notice the interruption. "Which is all right, so long as neither of us makes a point of it . . . very often."
He paused.
"Go on," Saburo said. His voice was like the blue heart of a glacier.
"My terms are, milord . . . ," Sparrow continued softly, ". . . that I will serve your need to the best of my ability, and that you will permit me to do so. I will do this thing for you, Lord Saburo."
"Then do so," Saburo said. His eyes were focused on the memory of the slim figure to whom his heart belonged. "And if you succeed . . . your will shall be my will, Master Smith."