Bella was an orphan; her parents must have died—when? When she was young, left with memories of the koiyl smell her mother gave off. And her mother had died of what—bludrut, leukemia? Should he ask? Did he really need more proof? Was he starting to doubt the link? He sat down on the bed with the leaves scattered around him. Even though the windows were open, it was unbearably hot in here. A rich, soapy, sweet-sharp smell was rising from the leaves. He gazed at them, thinking of the cold gray of the Northern Mountains, the shimmer of the flowers, Hettie pressing ahead, Laurie beside him. He peeled off his gloves to touch them, and a chilly, ill-smelling wave rose off his skin. Bella stepped back into the doorway. He’d showered only a few hours ago at Laurie’s bungalow, yet already he felt soiled.
“Fatoo want anything else?”
“Yes, can you run me a bath?”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded and went away. A few minutes later, the pipes that threaded the house began to clang and rattle.
The hiss of the tank. The smell of dysol and damp wood. John inhaled deeply and pushed his head back under the water. His ears boomed. He could feel the rough, age-corroded enamel of the bath, but otherwise he could have been anywhere now, anyone…
He sat up, feeling the slide of water and the Magulf wind that came in through the window. The wind pushed away the steam, threw a film of silken dust over the tall mirror and the cracked marble washstand, which Bella had doubtless just wiped, and popped the bubbles on the water. He heard the cry of voices, pumps hammering, vanes creaking, and the tapping of the pipes. Louder than ever. Thump, pause, thump. Not the pipes at all, but Felipe’s footsteps.
“There you are.” The door swung open. “You’re never where I expect you to be these days.” Felipe hobbled to the middle of the room, glanced around, then reached to drag out the wicker chair that had been pushed beneath the wash-stand. “You’re back, anyway. You had a good night in the Zone?”
“Yes.” John sat up. “Let me—”
“No, no. You think I can’t manage? After all the practice I’ve had?” With a cripple’s way of making simple tasks appear alien, Felipe dragged the chair over to the window and slumped down. With the aid of his walking stick he pulled his feet up to rest on the ledge.
“There…” He sighed.
The tap dripped. Down Gran Vía in the west, shrouded by clouds yet shining crimson on Felipe’s face, the Magulf sun was setting.
“This is always an odd time of year,” the old priest said, gazing out. “And a little sad to me. I mean now, before the weather breaks…By autumn, it’s always too late, isn’t it?” He looked over at John, his face glowing. “But then, you and I, we’re victims of the term-culture, aren’t we? The academic and ecclesiastical year…”
John nodded. Felipe hadn’t made the effort to come up these stairs to talk about the time of year. But he knew it was best to keep quiet and wait.
“Do you remember,” Felipe was saying, chuckling, his stained teeth glinting between the red folds of his lips, “the orders and the rituals of spring?”
As the water cooled, the room darkened, and the hissing of the tank and the pipes finally stilled. Felipe spoke of the passing of the night vigil, the forty-hours’ devotion, white smocks and candlelight, the sun coming up over the hills and the sharing of warm new bread, the greening land reborn…
“It all seems so distant now,” he said, “and clearer with the distance.”
“Do you think you’ll ever leave the Endless City?” John asked.
“No, my son.” By now, Felipe was just a shape against a window. “I imagine, anyway, that there would be problems with all these fancy wires inside me. I’m too old—and I’ve stayed too long. You can’t just chop and change. Besides, I love to sit at these windows and look out. To listen. My eyes, I think, are failing me. But these ears…I wouldn’t be without these ears. Listen, what do you hear?”
John shrugged. The chill water lapped. The wind, of course. The creak of a cart. The hiccuping generator that served the flats opposite and always sounded as if it was about to fail.
“Somewhere over there, across the street and down that way…” Felipe pointed his stick out at the dusk. “…towards Alcala, a woman is cooing to her child. And closer, an old man sits talking, ignored by his family as they chatter and eat dinner. And music is playing, of course. Music is always playing. And I can hear the bats now, wheeling and clicking. I can hear the crunch as their jaws meet their prey. I can hear the creak of bedsprings, John, and the sounds of love…The marvelous thing about these ears is that they filter, they analyze, they separate, yet for all that, they never judge. I love them for that, John. They take life as it is, they do not judge.” He slowly shifted his legs off the window ledge. “You must be cold in there by now, my son. Bella tells me that you’ve been collecting leaves.”
“The koiyl.”
“Ah, yes. I remember now.” Felipe lifted himself up from the chair. His breath became ragged for a moment. “The reason you went up to the mountains with that girl.”
“Laurie.”
“Laurie. You know,” Felipe said, hobbling across the room, standing before him, “I almost forgot why I came up here.” Leaning with one hand on his walking stick, he began to pat and feel his pockets with the other. Blisterpacks crackled. A flask clinked. “This arrived…Oh, when you were out this afternoon. Came through on the airwave, from Paris.”
John took the card, his fingers dribbling. “From Paris,” it whispered in confirmation. It was embossed with the bishop’s gold seal, which already seemed to tell him all that he needed to know. But he touched the seal anyway and watched as it dissolved into the bishop’s gray and kindly features.
“John,” the bishop said, looking out at him from beneath a tree in a garden with the sigh of traffic in the distance, “I’d like you to come back here for a few days. Just for a word, you understand…”
LAURIE CAME TO THE presbytery in her van to take John to catch the morning shuttle, and Felipe managed—as he always did when he actually wanted to—to get himself down the final flight of stairs unaided. He smiled and nodded, asking her what part of the city she was from, if she knew so-and-so, who used to work the net. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her. Standing in the hallway, dressed in boots and a smock, with a silver bracelet jingling at her wrist as she played with the vancard, Laurie smiled at Felipe and tilted her head and said yes, no, she might have heard…They would probably have stood around and talked for longer, but John already had his bag in his hand and was in too much of a hurry. He sat beside Laurie as she drove him towards the Zone through the morning-crowded streets, unsuccessfully willing himself and everything else to slow down.
They passed through the shockwire and on to the great gray buildings along the shore, where the van was taken over by the net and guided towards the concourse along with all the rest. He realized, when they were walking inside, that he’d be unable to kiss her good-bye in this public place.
She asked, “You will come back?”
“Yes—of course I’ll come back. The bishop’s not…” The air at the Bab Mensor shuttleport hummed with music and announcements. This was suddenly too much like a rehearsal for a more permanent parting. “I don’t even know…”
“No.”
A couple beside them were embracing, arms and bodies entwined, mouths crushed together. John looked away, down at the shining tiles of the concourse, then up again at Laurie. The wind had got to her hair when they crossed from the carpark, and a strand of it still clung to the corner of her mouth. He wanted to reach and brush it away.
“I’ll call,” he said.
“No, don’t call. Just think.”
“Anyway. I’ll be back soon enough. A few days.”
“Yes.”
She stood watching him as he walked off amid the steel walkways and scurrying trolleys, holding up her hand to wave as he looked back a last time.
Just think. There was a party atmosphere on board the shuttle; most of the o
ther passengers were expat workers leaving the Magulf for good. Cheers filled the long wide cabin as soon as the Halcycon Phoenix lifted from the Breathless Ocean. Hipflasks and tubes were passed along the aisles.
The shuttle climbed. Even the clouds faded. The sky deepened, and the moon and stars came out. For a timeless moment the cabin quieted as a marbled curve of sea and land and sky rolled far beneath them, then the Halcycon Phoenix began to dip. The thin air outside brightened. Glasses clinked, smoke drifted; you could get high just by breathing. The screen in front of John said the weather was good in Paris. By noon, the temperature was expected to rise to 27°, but with a refreshing easterly breeze. Just touch the middle cursor to get a fuller flavor…
“Going home, Father?”
John smiled at his neighbor and shook his head.
The Seine shuttleport was much like all European shuttleports. The foline tugs were automated, the moving walkways were covered over with views of the wide river, and the rolling countryside was dimmed behind layers of glass. It was only when he was outside, climbing into a taxi waiting under plane trees in the bright air, that the overwhelming strangeness of being back in Europe began to hit home. It was eleven o’clock, and his appointment with the bishop at St. Georges wasn’t until two. He told the taxi to take him north along the river.
With the windows down, the breeze in his face was moist, smelling of clean wet soil, the river, vegetation. This close to the city, most of the countryside was semirecreational, with ornamentally small fields, brownstone farmhouses that had scattered hencoops and white geese, patches of woodland, gray-green rows of asparagus, market-garden strawberries, and dwarfish sheep and cattle.
The taxi crossed the Seine and passed into the ruined outer suburbs. The vehicles on this new road scurried along between acres of fallen roofs and gables teetering under vine. The air smelled green. After the uncontrolled ravages of the weather, it had been easier to start anew rather than attempt to make the old roads and buildings fit the new demands of life. Many towns and cities were left to crumble back into the arms of nature; most Europeans now lived in the new villages such as Hemhill, servicing the various green industries that had replaced the gray ones. But London and Brussels and Paris—their centers, anyway—had been restored and saved.
A huge circle of parkland had been cleared around the inner-city area. There were gravel paths, bridges and streams, distant green hills. The lawns gave way to streets, tall elegant houses with dormer windows raised like questioning eyebrows. Rejoining the course of the Seine, passing fruitmarkets and hotels, John reached the Left Bank. In the absence of any further instructions, the taxi stopped on the wide avenue of the Boulevard St. Michel. He made to get out, but the door stayed shut and the taxi bleeped at him for the fare. He remembered to produce his personal card instead of cash, then searched his pockets for a dysol cloth to wipe it with.
As John sat and drank coffee at a pavement café, breathing the warm fresh air, time seemed to hang on one moment, then jump forward by an hour. He drummed his fingers on the tin table, still hardly able to believe he was here. Checking his watch again, he paid the European waitress the huge sum she’d asked for the coffee, quickly jerking back his hand as the tips of her fingers brushed his palm. Then he wandered amid the strutting pigeons, past the buildings, the striped awnings, the wrought-iron balconies adorned with potted plants and draped with washing. The silver-eyed people here were busy, happy, chatting, making the most of this predictably glorious summer day. Hurrying elbows brushed his own. It was strange, the way no one made way for him.
In the Luxembourg Gardens children played amid statues and fountains, and couples wandered hand in hand, flaunting their togetherness. Many nodded and smiled at John; showing the respect due to that familiar figure, the priest. From across the Rue de Vaugirard, church bells began to shiver the air. There were other spires and domes in the farther distance, rising over the trees at the soft edge of the sky.
Don’t call—just think.
John sat down on a bench and covered his eyes.
St. Georges was a large seminary on the northern outskirts of Paris, built of brown brick in the heavy Gothic style that characterized the Second Empire. Climbing the tiled steps from the road at precisely ten to two, he was instantly struck by the smell of polish and incense, and by the same undertow of priestly aromas that even the Pandera presbytery harbored. Stone figures of saints and industrialists stared down from the echoing walls of the vestibule. He’d never been here before—his previous meetings with the bishop had always taken place in Rome or at the Millbrooke Seminary—but crossing the wide half-lit space towards the nun seated by the stairway, and despite everything, he found that he felt at home.
The nun smiled and slid across the counter a finger-smeared screen to show him the way to the bishop’s office. He nodded thanks. Left down the gleaming corridor, past the refectory door, the clatter of cutlery, the rumble of voices, the floury smell of communal food. The bishop’s door was half open, and she looked up from her desk before John had a chance to knock, was instantly up and taking his bag, urging him to sit down. She was dressed in a formal white gown, with a gold cross over her heart and a gold band in her graying hair.
“You look well, John. A little tired, if I may say so. But well.”
“I’m fine.”
“And Felipe?”
“He’s bearing up.”
She smiled. “Bearing up. I think that’s how he likes it…” She was still standing beside her desk. Her hands clasped, unclasped. The white robe sighed and shifted. “Would you like something to drink? Tea, coffee?” She nodded towards the crystal decanter and glasses on the sidetable by the fireplace. “Anything weaker, stronger?”
“Thanks. I’m fine.”
“Well…”
She drew in a breath. They looked at each other. John realized how little thought he’d given to this meeting.
“I read something this morning, John, and it set me thinking, knowing that you were coming. About the religious impulse being tied to the sky. The stars, the sun, the moon. Had we remained cavedwellers, we might never have found God.”
John nodded, remembering the silence that had filled the shuttle as it rose into the troposphere. A breeze blew through the mullioned window into the bishop’s office, lifting the edges of the cards and papers that were weighted by a sea-smoothed granite rock on her desk. He said, “I miss the stars.”
“And I still miss the clouds,” she said, alluding to her own missionary years in the Endless City, far east from the Magulf, in Mizraim, at the rim of the black mires where the Nile once flowed. “In my dreams, John, I’m always back in those tight, winding streets.” The bishop clasped her hands again and shivered slightly. “But look outside, John. It’s a lovely day. Even here, the sun is precious, something we should never take for granted.” She held out a hand. He took hold of it. It felt light and hot, like a bird’s. “Come. Let’s walk in the gardens.”
They went out and along the corridor, through a doorway into the rose-scented cloisters, where sunlight poured through the archways and the shadows between were deep and intense.
“And how are things at the clinic?”
“I manage well enough, Mother. I have the usual problems. An out-of-date doctor. Lack of supplies. Fortunately, I get some help from the Zone’s CMO. He bends the rules a little, gives me advice and the few medicines he can slip through the system.”
“I see.” The bishop nodded, her hands now behind her, bony shoulders arched, fingers twining, untwining. She asked John about Bella; about the state, physical and spiritual, of the church. He walked beside her, answering each question, giving out nothing more. He admired this woman. He felt that she deserved his honesty. Still, he knew he was involved in some kind of negotiation—and as yet he wasn’t sure of the terms. Was this summons really about Laurie? Perhaps he’d got it all wrong. Was it about the koiyl? She’d read, it seemed, his reports on the net…
“John, do you know how t
he leaf is dried once it reaches the Magulf?”
“There’s talk of a place a few kilometers down Gran Vía, but the people are very secretive. The koiyl seems to disappear at the end of the growing season after it’s taken from Tiir. Then it reappears on the streets. I suppose that’s a way of controlling availability.”
“A leaf probably won’t keep unless it’s properly cured, John. And that’s not likely to be an easy process. More than just a question of hanging the things in the sun—if there were any sun. It will probably need moist conditions, or else it will powder and crack…”
“Was koiyl grown in Mizraim, so far east?”
“Not exactly, but there were parallels. The growing and smoking of the leaf of the tobacco plant—you’ve heard of tobacco? A venerable tradition. It was a habit, in fact, that I acquired while I was in Mizraim and then found hard to shake off. Like koiyl, it can be chewed as well as smoked. Do people smoke the koiyl leaf?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Tobacco is also a dangerous substance, like koiyl. Cancer-causing, in fact, although for different reasons.”
John nodded. He knew that tobacco was a kind of low-tech predecessor to the tubes that Laurie used. Though it was only mildly addictive, it had remained popular long after the harm it caused was established.
From the cloisters they passed into the gardens of stately trees and wide lawns. Walled in from the streets around it, St. Georges was much bigger than the map John had called up in the taxi suggested. There was a small lake with tame carp nosing the surface as they walked by. The bishop stooped to stroke a scaled golden head. The fish’s wise, unblinking eyes gazed at them.
“I could walk around these gardens all day,” she said. “I keep them as my direct responsibility. This green loveliness—I admit it’s become an obsession. New flowerbeds, new arrangements, little changes I’ve made. But, then, I suppose I need the escape. I have to spend hours, days pleading at meetings and on the net to raise money and awareness for projects in the Endless City. What to you, John, seems so sparse and grudging out there in the Magulf becomes a huge effort here. A rock that I must continually roll uphill if the work of places like your church and clinic are to continue.”
The Great Wheel Page 20
