He started to get up. North’s right eye focused on him like the single sharp point of a spear. “Sit,” North said.
Rao met North’s glare without fear; but he let Ngoya guide him back into his seat.
“Eisner,” said North, “do you have any suggestions?”
Eisner, pinch-faced and cold, continued to look straight ahead of her. “Dowson is correct,” she said without affect. “The Matrix has its own logic. If we destroy Ruby, we destroy ourselves.”
She stopped speaking. Her fingers formed a perfect flat pattern in her lap and her eyes did not blink. No one else said anything.
“Rolls, then?” resumed North with the playful lethality of a cat pawing prey too frightened even to run. “Do you have something to add?”
Rolls looked at him. “I’m not afraid of you, North,” he said.
North smiled. “You’d be a fool if that were true, Rolls,” he said. “But you’re not a fool.”
Rolls swallowed. “All right,” he said. “The others are of course correct. But yes, we have to avenge Diamond.”
“Ruby isn’t responsible for anything!” Penny whined. “They just—it’s what they do. It’s what we created them to do, to be. So why are we getting so upset?”
“We aren’t talking about justice, Penny,” North said in the silky, terrifying voice he’d used from the start of the council. “Merely cause and effect, what was done and what therefore must be done. Isn’t that right—”
His head turned like a gun mount rotating. “—Fortin?”
The white android face deliberately turned away. “Whatever you say, dear father,” Fortin remarked in the direction of the doorway.
There was a tremor of fear and anticipation in his voice. “You told us that Ruby had to be destroyed, so no doubt you’re going to destroy Ruby.”
Rao got up again. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll do it. That murder was the work of Chaos, and we can’t compromise with Chaos.”
“You idiot!” Saburo cried, the insult bubbling out behind the rush of his own fear. “You’re Chaos with that attitude. You’ll doom yourself and maybe all of us if you do that!”
“There’s no need of that, Rao,” North said without apparent anger. He rose in his seat, craggy and gray and as lethal as a murderer’s worn knife. “Fortin is quite right. I’ll take care of the matter.”
He raised his hand. Black wings began to whisper toward the hall.
The others rose also, walking toward the door in emotions as various as there were individuals.
Rolls looked over his shoulder and called to the terrible man standing before the high seat, “You can’t send your Searchers, you know. They can’t enter Ruby. Only we can do that. Only a god!”
North smiled. His face was as bleak as a frozen gully.
“And if you think to open a path for your machine warriors,” Rolls added from the doorway as the others stepped past him, “you can’t without disturbing the balance of the whole Matrix. Not even you can do that!”
“Go on, Rolls,” North said. “This is mine to deal with now.”
“Ruby could defeat your machines!” Rolls cried. “Any number of them! The Matrix—”
North pointed his index finger. “Go now, Rolls,” he said.
Rolls plunged out of the crystalline brilliance of the hall. Sunlight on the meadow was warm and gorgeous, but the ice in his marrow didn’t want to melt.
The animals on which they’d ridden to the council were excited by their masters’ return. Penny looked at the hourglass muscularity of the human who guided the deer pulling her chariot and said, “If you want to know what’s really bad, I can’t find my necklace.”
Ngoya turned on her suddenly. “I can’t believe even you could be so shallow that you’d think your necklace was equivalent to, to the horror that passed to a whole world!” the dark woman snapped.
“Easy for you to say,” Penny retorted, her face hardening into something unexpectedly shrewd. “If your precious Rao came home in two pieces, would you say that was nothing—” her voice became whiny “—to a whole world?”
Ngoya flushed.
Rao heard his name and turned. “Huh?” he said. “Ngoya, what’re you waiting for, anyway?”
“I’m good at finding things, Penny,” said Fortin. He sauntered toward her. “Would you like me to try?”