by M. K. Wren
“I’m well, Alex. Very well.”
“And . . . are you still enjoying your work in Leda?”
Rich’s response was guarded, as all their communications had been, but there was no hesitancy in it, no doubt or equivocation, and it told Alexand everything he needed to know.
“Yes, I’m enjoying it, Alex. It’s all I expected and hoped it would be.”
“Thank the God.” And tonight that prayer of thanks wasn’t only for Rich’s sake.
“We’ll talk about it later.” He paused, his luminous eyes shadowed. “Alex, I’m sorry about Alber.”
“I know.” And he did know. Now. He had thought he understood what Rich suffered in the Selasid uprising, but now he knew he hadn’t grasped more than a fraction of it. Now he understood.
“I’ll have to face up to Father soon, Rich. Have you any idea what he’s been told?”
“The gossip has it that you panicked under fire—”
“Under fire?” He laughed bitterly. “Karlis has been busy.”
Rich nodded, taking a moment to taste his brandy. “O course, but he isn’t generally considered a credible witness. Certainly not by father. He got his information directly from Commander Evret.”
“Then he was probably given a fairly accurate account. Evret is honest, if nothing else. He said he wasn’t any happier about having me in Confleet than I was in being there; he only hoped both of us survived the experience.”
Rich laughed. “An honest man, indeed.”
“Yes. Well, I wasn’t looking forward to this evening to begin with, but this should make it doubly unbearable. I suppose Julia is mortified.”
“We’ve had no communication from the Fallor.”
“I see. That means she’s definitely mortified, which almost makes it worthwhile.”
Rich made no response, but there was a question implicit in his silence. Alexand looked across to the windowall, listening to the music on the room speakers: a Simonetta Chanson; a slow minor melody against a shimmering fugue, graced by an unexpected dolchetta solo in the coda.
Art demands form; the elusive light of creative impulse captured, confined in universally comprehensible order. Yet order is a fragile thing, far more fragile than the unquenchable impulses of creativity.
His eyes moved to his brother, who waited with fathomless patience.
“It wasn’t worth it,” Alexand said finally. “I had time enough on the flight home to think it out.” The smell of smoke was still with him; he took a swallow of brandy. “At the time my gesture seemed right; morally right. But I failed to recognize something, and there was also an element of cowardice in it because I made my great protest from a position of safety, flanked by thousands of ’Fleeters with a line of X4s in front of me.” He paused to bring his trembling under control. “Rich, that mob—there was a moment when I was mortally afraid; afraid I might die. But when the guns opened fire, my life was no longer in danger.”
“You weren’t protesting the necessity of self-defense.”
“No, but my point is, I failed to recognize it. Or the necessity of the defense of order; social order. What I was protesting—other than the sheer magnitude of the carnage—was that the uprising should never have happened, and that protest is valid.”
Rich sagged back into his chair. “Yes, it is.”
“You know what caused the uprising?”
“Yes.”
He knew through the Phoenix. Alexand nodded absently. Under other circumstances, he’d have been impressed by the efficiency of their communication system, but it didn’t seem important now.
“It was a futile and feckless protest, Rich. Still, I learned something from it—that when violence reaches that point, justice becomes meaningless. It doesn’t matter then what triggered the violence. The protest, if it’s to be valid or effective, must come before the triggering act. Afterward, you’re dealing with an entirely different set of factors.”
Rich shook his head through a long sigh. “Alex, I find you incomprehensible sometimes.”
“You don’t agree?”
“I agree entirely. That’s not what I mean. I’m not deceived by your calm or your objectivity. I’m only amazed that you’re capable of either right now.”
Alexand closed his eyes. “Don’t . . . burden me too much with your amazement.” Then he pulled himself to his feet, thinking that a drenaline tablet might be advisable to see him through the evening. “At least I can honestly assure Father that I won’t repeat my one-man revolt. . . .” His eye was drawn to the leather-bound tape-spool case lying on the desk. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before, noticed the initials on it.
Another world. Wherever he was on this endless day, that world seemed unreal and spiked with reminders of yet other worlds.
The initials were embossed in gold script: A.C.E.
Adrien Camine Eliseer.
Rich said, “Adrien sent me some tapes today. She’s studying with Layn Powers at the University in Helen, and she taped some of his lectures for me.”
Alexand only asked absently, “The Eliseer are in Concordia now?”
“Yes. They’re guests of the Robek for the holiday. Alton is her escort tonight.”
Alexand made no response; he couldn’t deal with that now. “Rich, I must go talk to Father.”
“I know. Alex, I’ll be awake tonight when you return.”
He looked at Rich and finally nodded. “Thank you.”
He found his parents sitting in one of the window alcoves in Woolf’s private salon, a room that was typical of the man himself in its spare, elegantly restrained décor. They were both dressed for the Plaza ceremonies, Elise in pale blue satinet, Woolf in rich brown velveen, and whatever the subject of their conversation, they were deeply engrossed in it when Alexand entered the salon. Elise was the first to look up, and it seemed to take a moment for her to recognize him. Then she rose and hurried across the room to embrace him.
“Alex, you’re home—thank the God.”
He smiled and said lightly, “You look lovely, Mother. How are you?”
She smiled, too, but a little unsteadily. She wouldn’t be unaware of the repercussions of his choice today at Alber, but the concern in her eyes was for him.
“I’m fine, Alex, but you must be exhausted. I wish you could just rest tonight.”
“I’ll rest tomorrow.” He looked past her. Phillip Woolf hadn’t left his chair. “Hello. Father.”
Woolf called up a smile, but it was remote and cool, and Alexand felt an irrational urge to laugh. The Lord Woolf was displeased. But then he had every right to be.
“I’m glad your leave was only slightly delayed, Alex.”
“Did you expect it to be canceled? It only takes a few hours to put down an uprising.” He walked with his mother to the alcove, then pulled up a chair and sat down facing his father. Woolf made no reply to his comment; instead, after a brief pause, he looked at his wife.
“Darling, we’ll have to leave for the Plaza soon.”
It was a cue, and she took it unhesitatingly, but there was a cast of anxiety behind her smile.
“Yes, of course. I must put on the finishing touches.” She paused to kiss Alexand’s cheek. “I’ll see you later, dear.”
He pressed her hand to his lips, smiling because she was smiling, and watched her go, wondering at the straightness of her back, the quickness of her step. The door closed on a silence. Woolf rose and turned to stare out the window, and Alexand leaned back, stretching his legs out in front of him, studying the tense lines of his father’s shoulders.
“I gather Karlis has already spread the news about my insubordination.”
Woolf turned, his aquiline features closed. “Of course. It’s all over Concordia by now.”
“And you’re embarrassed by it.”
“ ‘Embarrassed’ is hardly the word.”
“What is the word, then—‘shamed’?”
Woolf met his gaze directly, his eyes cold, but behind the coldness, Alexand recognized the pain of betrayal, and that disturbed him more than the coldness.
“Yes,” Woolf said, “shamed would be more apt.”
“I’m sorry for that.”
“Sorry for what? The act itself, or its effect on me?”
Alexand felt a numbness growing within him, as if the protective mechanisms of his mind were finally, too late beginning to function.
“I’m particularly sorry for the effect on you. I regret the act itself only in that it was ill advised. It wasn’t the proper context in which to take a stand.”
Woolf went white. “A stand! Alex, you’re remarkably cool about this. Ill advised . . . proper context—Holy God, you’re talking about an act of insubordination. Mutiny. Commander Evret would have every right to bring charges against you, and that would be a historic first: the first time a Lord of DeKoven Woolf has ever been brought before a martial court.”
“He won’t bring charges against me.”
Woolf turned away abruptly. “If Evret knew me better, you might not feel so damned self-confident about that. I’m not sure I’d object if he did bring charges.”
“I’m not sure I’d object, either, but no charges will be brought. It will stir up some gossip, but that will settle in time. And I’ll be a good little soldier from now on; a good, unthinking, unquestioning soldier.”
Woolf turned and took a step toward him, his anger fading into uncertainty.
“Alex, I . . . I suppose you’ve spoiled me. You’ve never done anything I couldn’t take pride in. Sometimes I forget you’re still so young. Perhaps I expect too much.”
Alexand knew that if he let himself think about this conversation, he couldn’t control the urge to weep. He held on to his blanket of numbness.
“Perhaps you do expect too much, Father.”
Woolf looked down at his son, and his frown reflected bewilderment and a vague, nameless regret.
“Well,” he said finally, glancing at his watch, “we’re due at the Plaza in a short while.”
Alexand nodded, then rose and started for the door.
“Alex . . .”
He turned when he reached the door and looked back at his father, aware of the span of space between them.
“Yes, Father?”
“Alex, we’ll talk about this again. Later, when there’s more time.”
“Will we?” The protective blanket was slipping. “What will we talk about? Will we talk about the cause of that uprising? Will you bother to ask me why I chose not to fire into a panic-stricken, unarmed mob, half of them women and children? Will you ask me why?” He touched the doorcon and the panels slid open. “No, Father, we won’t talk about it again.”
He stepped out into the anteroom, and the doors snapped shut behind him.
4.
He had shown inexcusably poor judgment.
Alexand raised the plasex goblet to his lips and closed his eyes. He had turned up the volume on his earspeaker, as if the compelling beat and grating dissonances of the music could drown out the raucous voices, the peals of drunken, drugged laughter. At times, he had the irrational conviction that if he could find the right switch, he could turn off those sounds, too.
Poor judgment and a childish desire to wipe that expression of haughty superiority from Julia Fallor’s face.
Julia, with her flaxen hair glittering metallically; a thin face, but with strong bone structure, a face that might have been beautiful, and he supposed she was considered beautiful. But he always had the feeling that a flame wouldn’t burn her, it would melt her. Like wax.
And tonight Julia’s usual hauteur, the pride she took in being the accepted Promised of the Lord Alexand, was mixed with embarrassment. She was embarrassed about Alber. She had even gone so far as to suggest to him, at the Galinin ball, that he shouldn’t have worn the Confleet uniform. His response to that had silenced her on the subject for the rest of the evening, but his disgust for her, for the stultifying ceremonies and niceties, the cloying atmosphere of avaricious curiosity sugared with mannered courtesies, had overwhelmed his judgment.
Elianne Robek. The eternal child.
Elianne had approached him at the Delai Omer ball, greeting him with a familiar exuberance that made Julia redden and lift her chin in contempt that said silently, second-class Elite. Elianne cut her down with a few swift verbal thrusts, smiling sweetly all the while, but Alexand had had enough of Julia’s arrogance, and when Elianne suggested the float, he acquiesced without a second thought.
Alton’s found this swervy float, love. About six levels down in the Outside, I guess. . . .
Elianne reveled in anything with a flavor of danger as long as it wasn’t truly dangerous. She delighted in forays into the Outsiders district as she did in the milder psychomaxic drugs. Even at the ball it was obvious she’d already indulged in maricaine.
Anyway, Jamie and I—Jamis-Cadmon, you know; the lucky boy’s my escort—we’re exing this high-collar fest. Alton knows how to find the float. Come along, love. . . .
Perhaps if Julia hadn’t objected then that it would be unseemly for her to be seen in a float, and in the Outside at that . . .
Poor judgment.
Elianne had mentioned her cousin Alton Robek more than once, but it hadn’t registered. And Rich had told him.
Tonight Alton Robek was escorting the Lady Adrien Eliseer.
It hadn’t registered until after he landed the sleek Cariol twin-seater on the roof of the float in the heart of Concordia’s trade district on Phillip Bay where the city’s “Outside” flourished.
Elianne and Jamis Cadmon were waiting, Elianne’s laughter bubbling over the music blaring from the surrounding casinos, stimutheaters, psygame houses, and maxobooths. Elianne, elated, cheeks flushed; Cadmon, blearily grinning. The attendant who took the ’car wore an ornately sheathed knife at his waist, and that unnerved Julia, but Alexand knew it to be simply a badge of manhood here. On this level of the Outside, at least, its denizens lived by providing forbidden fruits to the Elite and even Fesh who could afford them, and no one was likely to jeopardize their high profits by threatening the clientele with bodily harm.
Even then the significance of Alton Robek’s name hadn’t registered; not until they were hurrying across the roof to the entrance, until Alexand saw the Bond standing by a ’car marked with the Robek crest. A giant of a man, waiting with practiced paticnce; he wore the blue-and-silver tabard of the House of Eliseer.
Lectris. Adrien’s personal guard.
Alexand knew he should have turned back then, but the time for the decision passed in his confusion and self-disgust. They were given earspeakers at the entrance, and he moved mechanically through the process of handing cloaks to the attendants and paying the exorbitant door charges. He was only vaguely aware that Julia was still making self-righteous noises as they moved down the nulgrav shaft into the cavernous heart of the float.
The dimensions of the place were impossible to determine; the darkness was total and seemed infinite. Varicolored shimmeras drifted among the glowing strands crossing the void, a trimensional spider web, jeweled with lights like droplets of dew. Shadowy figures moved along the strands, literally floating in the .1 g weightlessness, and far below, a shimmering, multihued disk was dotted with figures moving in frenetic rhythms incomprehensible until the earspeakers were activated. But Alexand hadn’t turned on his ’speaker then; not until later when the distraction seemed imperative.
Elianne launched herself into the void, golden hair floating around her head; she spun languidly, laughing with the abandon of an infant, or of the insane, caught a passing shimmera and tossed the glowing globe to
Cadmon before her hand closed on a lighted strand to stop her descent.
Transparent spheres floated in the darkness, some only large enough to seat two people, others ranging in size to a capacity of ten or twelve. A shout, loud enough to carry over the music Alexand wasn’t hearing: Alton Robek standing at the opening in one of the pods.
“Elianne! Over here!”
And the airborne passage through the emptiness, one hand guiding him along the strands, the other clasping Julia’s. And if he’d cared, he might have seen that the smugness was gone and a nervous giggling had set in.
The gravity level within the pod was still slightly lower than normal, and he put his empty glass down carefully. He stared at it fixedly for some time, then finally looked up and across the table.
Adrien Eliseer was watching him, and as their eyes met she smiled, a faint, wistful smile that said she knew his thoughts. No doubt she did.
The waiter appeared with more drinks, and Alexand welcomed the diversion. But even when he wasn’t looking at her, Adrien’s image was in the eye of his mind.
A swan . . .
The patterns of passage fanned out across still waters, an endless interweaving.
The fair cygnet had become a swan.
She wore a gown of simple lines threaded with pearls; pearls woven in intricate designs on the bodice and sleeves, falling in dense strands from the waist to the floor; pearls starring her raven-silk hair. And in the dim light, she seemed luminescent.
Alexand felt the two of them locked in a void of silence. The voices, the laughter, even the existence of four other people in this confined space, were only peripheral awarenesses and totally unreal. He wasn’t even sure of his own reality. The images of Alber hovered at the edges of consciousness, but even they seemed unreal, like the memory of a vivid nightmare.
If there was reality within his grasp, it rested in the quiet, watching eyes of the young woman across the table from him, wrapped in soft light and calm; in the soul bond that existed between them, impervious to time or separation, the bond that he could not in her presence deny.
