The Diamond Moon by Paul Preuss Page B

carrying out her parents’ wishes.
Iron gates loomed before them. The car slowed only slightly as the gates slid open on well-oiled tracks.
     
“I will say only this much more; if she wants to be released, you must let her go freely. It is not so much from her destiny as from your will that she must declare her independence.”
     
“That I will not accept, Jozsef,” Ari said sternly. “I can never accept that.”
     
Jozsef sighed. Once his wife had been one of the world’s most acclaimed psychologists, yet she was blind to what drove her love for the people she loved the most.
     
* * *
    An unmarked white helicopter waited on the roof of the Council of Worlds building, its turbines keening. Seconds after Sparta and the commander climbed aboard, the sleek craft lifted into the sky and banked northward, heading up the valley of the broad Hudson River, leaving behind the glistening towers and marble boulevards of Manhattan.
    Sparta made no conversation with the commander, but peered fixedly out of the canopy. Soon the Palisades of the Hudson were passing beneath them. Below her spread soft waves of green, flowing northward with the lengthening days; the forests of the Hendrik Hudson nature preserve were hurrying toward springtime.
    The white helicopter turned and swiftly crossed the broad river, swooping low over the trees that guarded the cliff tops. A broad lawn opened before it, and there on the lawn a mas-sive stone house. The silent craft settled to a landing in front of it. Sparta and the commander stepped out, not having exchanged a single word, and the helicopter lifted off behind them. No record of their visit to the house on the Hudson would appear in any data bank.
    As they walked across the springy grass, she thought of the months she’d spent in this place, Granite Lodge. Not a Space Board facility, the lodge belonged to Salamander, the association of those who had once been among the prophe-tae of the Free Spirit and were now their sworn enemies. Salamander objected to the authoritarian, secretive leadership of the Free Spirit and to its bizarre practices, but not to its underlying beliefs—not to the Knowledge. By neces-sity, Salamander too was a secret society, for the Free Spirit regarded its members as apostates and had sworn to kill them.
    The two organizations had struck many murderous blows at each other. Not even knowing the identities of the combatants, Sparta had been in the front lines; her wounds were deep. But for the past year, she had been safe from all that.
    “I wanted you to believe we were dead. Then nothing could come between you and your purpose.” Ari sat placidly in her armchair as if enthroned, her clasped hands resting on top of her lap robe. She glanced sidelong at Jozsef, who sat stiffly on a straightback chair nearby. “I was right to do so.”
“After everything that’s happened . . .” Sparta broke off, moved fitfully around the room, stopped to stare aimlessly at the spines of the library’s old books, avoiding her parents’ eyes.
    “You should have seen yourself as I saw you,” said Ari. “You burned with vengeance. You bent all your extraordi-nary powers to seeking out and destroying the enemy. You thought you were doing it on our account, but in the process you were able to recover your real purpose.” She was stirred by her own words. “You were magnificent, Linda. I was immensely proud of you.”
Sparta stood motionless, fighting back anger. “I almost died, an addict of Striaphan. I would have died, having ac-complished nothing—except several murders, of course—if Blake hadn’t come after me.”
     
“We should not have let things go so far,” Jozsef said softly.
     
But Ari contradicted him. “You would not have died. In the end, nothing would have been different— except that you would not have lost your will to go on.”
     
Sparta looked at Jozsef. “The night you came to us, Fa-ther, you said Mother was sorry. I believed you.”
     
“He