A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “And the sooner he can be forced to reveal…” Meron’s urgent whispering died in confusion. “Oh, what are we to do?”

  Verde sighed raggedly. “Better talk it over. It’s your decision, of course.”

  Meron relapsed into silence, her eyes closing again as she continued her conference with the old Koi sitting in his garden half-way across the Quarter.

  Damon hurried over from the bar. “That was Mike, from the, guard booth at the gate. The police have been searching the Quarter and they just found a cache of plastic explosives in a trash bin…” He stiffened, realizing he had been talking too loudly. Clennan had risen and was moving toward them. “Near Stahl House,” Damon finished in an appalled murmur.

  Verde groaned hopelessly. “Of all places! How could he?”

  “Plastic explosive, eh? How quaint.” Grasping for command of the situation, Clennan yanked back a chair and sat. “What are you up to, Verde?”

  Verde’s fingers did a nervous little dance. “Just trying to restore a little order,” he answered more steadily than he felt.

  “Just trying to help your Native pals hide the rest of their arsenal?” demanded the Intelligence man with the air of one who thinks he has it all figured out.

  Verde’s jaw set like a bulldog’s. “We don’t use that word around here, Clennan.”

  Clennan had expected a different reaction. “Word?”

  “ ‘Native.’ ”

  The room was suddenly very quiet. Bill Clennan looked around him, saw for the first time the dark face of the costumed player glaring at him through a veil of bandages, saw Meron’s orange tunic showing inside her bright Terran jacket. He remembered where he was. Once again, his hand dropped to his weaponless hip. “You better tell me what’s going on/’ he growled as Damon moved around behind him.

  “We don’t need to tell you anything!” Verde returned hotly.

  Meron’s eyes fluttered open. “Lute’s heard about the explosives. He’s calling a Gathering.”

  Verde nodded as Meron rose and went to the back to sit with Hrin and the other Koi by the bar. Relaxed and still, they sat as if waiting, listening for something in the distance.

  Damon produced a bottle and glasses. He filled three of them to the top and drained his in a gulp. Verde followed suit. Clennan frowned, bewildered by the shift of mood in the room. His eyes darted back and forth from the Koi at the bar to the men he now realized were his captors. Verde shoved a glass in front of him.

  “Have a drink, Clennan,” he said mordantly. “This may take a while.”

  “What may take a while?” The drink looked very good to him right then. He dabbed at his bleeding cheek, which was beginning to ache.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Verde continued, jabbing an angry finger at him. “That stuff they found in the Quarter wasn’t put there by any of these good people, the people who have just taken you in and saved your goddamn ungrateful skin, Mr. Clennan. So you can take that back to your fucking bureau. And the next time Intelligence wants advice from me… oh, yeah, we know who you are… they can ask for it without any of your bullshit charades! Pete Tappas!” he spat. “That crap artist!”

  Damon laid a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “Okay, okay,” Clennan backtracked still fumbling with the implications of “Natives” like little Meron running around masquerading as Terrans. “If you leveled with me now, it could save you some trouble with the authority.”

  Verde fumed. “I don’t make deals, Clennan. I know they’ve been looking for something to pin on me for a long time, but riots in the streets are more their doing than mine. You don’t hear me pushing the Dark Powers routine. That mess out there is just the sort of thing I’ve been working to prevent since I came here! As long as you guys and the Colonial Authority encourage fear and hatred of the Koi, you’re setting them up for genocide!” He fell silent, turning his empty glass in his hands.

  “You ought to take care of that cheek, Mr. Clennan,” advised Damon impassively. He wet a bar rag with whiskey and passed it over.

  “Jesus, Damon, let him bleed to death, for crissakes!” Verde’s attention strayed toward the bar, where the Koi now sat with their heads bowed. He played with his glass and chewed his lip.

  Bill Clennan watched him for a moment, then commenced bandaging his cheek with dazed deliberation. “Here I am, having a nice quiet drink in the middle of a riot,” he grumbled, “and over there is a goddam seance going on. Nothing makes sense in this damn place.” He tore off a strip of tape. “I never used to make mistakes like this.”

  “Don’t worry,” the black man offered. “It stops bothering you after you’ve been here long enough.”

  “The no sense or the mistakes? What’s long enough?”

  “That depends on the individual.”

  “Is that supposed to make it all clear to me?”

  Damon chuckled, his big head bobbing a gentle negative. “I doubt if I could do that, Mr. Clennan. Clarity has a way of sneaking up on you here.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m ready.”

  “Are you?” countered Damon slyly.

  Behind them, the person who had been hidden in one of the booths emerged. Clennan had forgotten he was there. When his bare feet hit the floor and he pulled himself erect, Clennan realized it was one of the loonies, one he’d seen before. The loony came over to them and hunkered down between Clennan and the black proprietor, arms and elbows resting on the table. He reached one long thin arm out to diddle with his fingers in the water rings left by the glasses. He began to draw, filling the entire table with damp line fantasies, except for a circular area directly in front of Clennan. Damon and Verde had withdrawn into their own thoughts, waiting the decision of the Koi. Clennan’s eyes were riveted to the tabletop. The dry empty spot in front of him was an invitation, it cried out to be filled, and he watched with dreamy fascination as the madman’s hand swerved across the table toward him. The loony looked up at him briefly from his crouch beside Clennan’s chair, as if to be sure he had Clennan’s attention. Then he moved his hand to the center of the dry spot and began to draw. He drew letters, big curving script letters in a line of moisture on the scrubbed wooden surface. Clennan read the letters to himself, and then out loud.

  “L-A-C-E-Y. Lacey. What’s lacey?”

  Verde’s head swiveled, his expression very close to dread. He stared at Clennan, then at the madman’s hand retracing the letters as they dried. “My God,” he whispered.

  At the end of the room, the Koi stirred. Meron walked solemnly through the candlelight to the table where the Terrans sat. She had never looked more like a small child as she stood before them, frightened, at a loss.

  “Do what you must,” she said.

  But Verde, his eyes fixed on the letters reappearing on the tabletop, could only mutter hoarsely, “James has already done it for me…”

  “Lacey?” Clennan was repeating to himself. Suddenly the syllables clicked in his head and became a name, one he knew. “Lacey! That kid who hangs around with you, Verde. Look, this loony is writing his name on the table.”

  Verde winced and let out a despondent breath. “I see that.” He looked to Meron and received her despairing nod. He turned back to Clennan, his eyes tired. “Lacey’s the guy you’re after, Clennan… Mark Lacey. Check Terran records of juvenile offenders, you’ll find all you need. Lacey is your saboteur, and he’ll keep at it until he’s stopped. Get your men on it, Clennan. Find him before the whole colony blows up under us.”

  Bill Clennan held himself in check for a drawn-out second, wondering why he believed this information. It could as easily be a decoy to cover the real culprits’ escape, but the tension in the room told him otherwise. The revelation of Lacey’s name had cost these people something valuable.

  A siren screamed by outside and the Intelligence man stood shakily. “If I need you, Verde, where can I find you?”

  “Here or my office next door, if either of them is still standing.”

&
nbsp; Damon unbolted the door and pointed Clennan in the direction of the Quarter gate. After he had gone, the madman moved into the chair he had vacated, the anticipatory light in his clear gray eyes foiling the innocent expression he turned to the others at the table. Verde was studying him with a puzzled frown, but Meron’s concern was elsewhere.

  “Lute wants you to understand, Mitchell,” she began soberly, “that the major reason for our decision is that we are having serious difficulties with the Wall. We cannot maintain it with any strength in the atmosphere of psychic chaos generated by this riot. A guardian cannot do a full shift without becoming exhausted.”

  Verde smoothed back her flax-blond hair, then eased an arm around her. “Time to do some planning,” he said.

  “How long have we got?” asked Damon, while beside him the madman began to chuckle softly to himself.

  “I’d guess twelve hours, maybe only ten, before they find Lacey, if they really pour the heat on.” Verde drummed his fingers, then ran them through his own hair in a gesture that ended with a frantic shrug. “Once they’ve got him, it’ll take the interrogators another couple of hours to work their way through to anything critical—as far as they know now, he’s just another terrorist. Once they come up with the information they haven’t asked for, they’ll be all over the Quarter like a pack of army ants. He doesn’t know much, but he does know that the Wall exists and that there are Others out there. That’s enough to blow the whole game right there.” He shook his head and looked around at solemn faces. “Thirty years of secrets down the drain. We’re all in for some heavy questioning.”

  Meron smiled bleakly. “Electronics and drugs are no match for halm, or our secrets would have been torn from us long ago, but…”

  “Yes, I know. The Terrans among you are not so fortunate. Lacey knew that Stahl House was a focal point, but I don’t think he ever learned what it conceals. So, Damon, it’s the cellars for us, I’m afraid.”

  The black man roused himself, gazing around his cafe wistfully. “A price worth paying,” he acquiesced. “I’ll get Jeffries and the others on the phone.”

  “Nuuh, don’t use the phone. Mine’s tapped; yours probably is too. Meron can take care of getting in touch with everybody. We’d better see to the provisioning. This could be a long siege.” He called back to the bar. “Hrin, can you make it home alone?”

  The Koi in bandages waved his assent.

  “That’s it then. To the cellars.” Verde took Meron’s hand. “Keep an eye on James, will you? He couldn’t stand it cooped up down there, and they’ll never think to haul him in.”

  The madman had laid his head down on his arm and gone to sleep. Pale long hair spilled over his bony elbows. Meron regarded him with fond bemusement. “I’ll do my best,” she said, and her brief loving smile was like a flash of sun through gathering storm clouds.

  Chapter 17

  A chill mountain rain stung at their backs as they clambered along the bottom of a ravine. Water ran between the rocks beneath their feet and in trickles down the backs of their necks. Ahead, the ravine opened into a stony depression between two ridges, the one they must climb rising steeply in a vast barren pile cut across with crevasses like knife wounds gouging the mountainside. They picked their way across the bouldered flatland and rested in the shelter of an overhang. The alien nosed about restlessly, not searching so much as absorbing every detail, every stone or patch or lichen.

  Jude wiped the rain from her face with the corner of her jacket. Her skin was raw from wind and sunburn, and now she was wishing for another layer of clothing to ward off the cold of the higher altitudes. Ra’an seemed comfortable at any temperature, used to the heat and uncomplaining in the cold, warmed perhaps by his burning drive to attain the other side of the mountains. In the five days since they had first passed the tree line, their route had taken them down into the forests and back up again. Now the snowfields loomed above them, shrouded in icy mist. Jude no longer questioned how, so ill prepared and ill equipped, they were going to make it over the Guardians. The alien led the way and she merely followed, and in this acceptance, a truce between them had been formed. His pace never slackened, and often he would pull ahead and be out of her sight for hours, leaving her to trust to the mules, who always seemed to know which path he’d taken through the tortuous landscape. And their patience with her slower pace was unflagging.

  She straightened from relacing her boots and leaned against the cold rough rock. “Where did I ever get the idea that the expression ‘natural order’ indicated some sort of organized pattern? These mountains look like some titan just threw them in a heap and left.”

  Ra’an came in under the overhang, pushing his damp hair away from his face with both hands as if wiping away thoughts that were pressing on his mind. “Daniel once said the basin looked like the biggest and most recent impact crater he’d ever seen. I hope he got far enough to see it all from this vantage point, because that’s exactly what it is.”

  “One of those things from the sky?”

  He shook his head, half admiring, half grim. “Battle scar. From the ancient days, when the Koi played around with the big weapons as the Terrans do.”

  She glanced around apprehensively. “How long ago was that?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not hot. It never was. Even clean weapons can topple a civilization.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Several times. Or so history tells us. Until finally the weapons were put aside.”

  Jude sighed. A history lesson would be interesting, but she did not relish another anti-Terran lecture. She chewed neutrally on a cold protein cake and changed the subject. “Ra’an, I know this will sound absurd, but you know how there are times when you’re sure you see something out of the corner of your eye, but when you look, there’s nothing there?”

  “That,” he said too quickly, “is an easily explained optical phenomenon, especially when you’re tired.”

  “I know that, but it usually doesn’t happen as consistently as it has been to me this morning. Are you sure there’s no one living up here?”

  “Yes. Ignore it. Just ignore it. I told you, you must control your imagination in the Guardians.”

  She found the extra sharpness in his tone suspect. “Is it happening to you, too?”

  “No,” he replied abruptly, then waved to the mules to follow and moved on up the slope.

  They spent the afternoon toiling up the ridge. Toward evening, the rain became a downpour. Soaked to the skin, they found a shallow cave to cut the main force of the wind. Ra’an pounded metal spikes into the rock and stretched out a tarp to form a slanted roof. The sheltered area was very small and crowded with mule packs and sleeping bags. He dug out an ancient solid-fuel stove for the first time, to provide the only warmth they had felt all day, and to prepare a cramped meal. He moved about under the tarp with care, as one will when forced to share an intimate space with a stranger. Rain blew around the edges of the shelter and made the blue flame of the little burner hiss and spit. The alien ate quickly, unusual for him, sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, the damp tarp inches above his head. Jude sipped her soup, covering its warmth.

  “Will you tell me more about halm?” she asked finally.

  “Must I?” he said into his plate.

  “Not if you don’t want to, of course.”

  “I don’t.” He finished eating and turned off the stove, collecting tin pots and plates into a pile. Then he said, “Understand that for you, it is just information. For me, it is… somewhat more.” He lay down and turned his back to her.

  Jude’s mouth tightened. “That’s not quite fair, Ra’an,” she said into the darkness. “You can’t just tell me I’m telepathic and let it go at that. How am I ever going to understand? I mean, what if we can, I mean, you know…”

  “If you’re going to learn halm, I’m not the one to teach you. Too dangerous.”

  “But what if you tried halmspeaking when you’re not angry?”

 
“No!” he snarled, and as his anger sizzled in the air, she understood its defensiveness. He didn’t want to know if he could halmspeak her. The possibility was more than an outrage to his sense of proper justice; it was a personal threat, an encroachment on his carefully guarded privacy.

  She leaned back against the wet rock wall. Under the meager shelter, he lay so close to her that she could hear his tight breathing over the drumming of the rain. She was sharply aware of his physical presence, an arm’s length away, and realized that however vocal she had been about accepting, even insisting on, his humanity, the concept had remained intellectual until this moment. Now he lay next to her and she could not block the thought of him, remembering his lean body moving ahead of her in the rain, aware of his strength at rest, his breathing slowing into sleep, chilled under damp blankets, muscles perhaps aching as hers did. The night admitted no differences of color or culture. The alien was a man asleep.

  Seeing him so, with such sudden clarity, she was moved. Vague maternal urges stirred, and other urges she had denied until now while forcing his hard beauty to a distance in her mind. Here, in the darkness, where her expression could not be read and rebuffed, she raised a hand above him in musing benediction. Child of sorrow, do you dare to hope that all grief will be ended by the return to a childhood memory? That all would be well if only you could bring back a dead old man?

  He roused, and half turned toward her. “What?” he muttered sleepily.

  Her mind retreated, stunned. “Nothing,” she answered, and lay down in wonder.

  Her groggy head and the faded essence of dreams told her she had slept badly. The rain had stopped and the morning sky was a luminous gray the color of the rock, giving the various impressions that either she was enclosed entirely within a sphere of rock, or the stony ground itself was cloudlike, insubstantial.

  Ra’an was awake and had already packed and loaded everything but the little burner, which sat on a flat stone, warming the nutritious mush that passed for breakfast each morning.

  As they started out, the sky was threatening, rolling up dark banks of cloud across the paler gray. But the weather held. By midday, they gained the crest of the ridge and stood panting to survey the desolation of rock that stretched before them as far as they could see. Long rugged ranges, gray and black and brown and white, with deep barren valleys between, banded by a smoky cloud layer that isolated the upper crags in visions of ruined fortresses floating in a misted lake of sky. Jude felt her strength draining away like water through a sieve.