A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “… a good technician, yes, but she’s got no vision…”

  “… I never miss an exhibit, darling, but of course we’ve seen all this before, now, haven’t we…”

  Jude’s teeth clenched. There was painful truth in much of this. Show yourselves, you self-proclaimed critics! Let me answer you! Critics knew nothing of vision, at least no critic that she had ever known. Gross injustice! Seething with hurt and frustration, she began to mumble back at the voices, then thought, no, she would tell them off later. Just now she must watch where she walked, because the mist was trying to trip her up, and if she should miss so much as one step, if one tiny pebble should roll loose, like that one there, that little silvery…

  A sharp tug at her waist jerked her forward. Dazed, she glanced around in panic. What’s that?… oh, the rope! She rubbed her palm across the rough fibers of the knot to clear her head. She had come to a complete standstill, had been staring at the ground in front of her, her mind a blank.

  “What’s the matter?” Ra’an’s sharp query hit’ her like a slap.

  “Nothing,” she lied. “Just stumbled.” Chilled to the heart, she grasped at the canteen he held out to her, trying not to see him as forbidding as he loomed over her in the mist.

  Later, he doled out a meal of dried fruit and protein cake. Jude called to the mule behind her to walk beside her as she ate. She fed him crumbs to feel his whiskered muzzle on her skin, and throwing an arm across his withers, she pored over a series of names for him before settling on one he seemed to approve of. She called him Job, in sympathy for his trials in the wilderness, and her own, and made him privy to her life story, hoping to drown out the voices’ slanderous chatter with her own.

  Much later, though her exhaustion told her that night was approaching, darkness did not come. Only a subtle thickening of the fog and a hollowness that made their footsteps ring. The air was humid and oppressive. They ate supper walking, and the mist grew denser until Ra’an was no more than a slightly darker shade of gray stalking ahead of her. Jude swallowed a stimulant tablet and prayed for strength.

  Soon she could not see him at all, or the mules behind her, though she could hear their hooves clattering along the shale. The voices too had vanished. It was lonely walking in the mist with only hoof noises for company.

  When her feet disappeared, and the fog was winding itself around her waist, the first true shrillings of terror edged up her spine. Another hundred paces, and she was totally blinded, sure that the ground beneath was growing suddenly treacherous, sure that chasms yawned on either side, perhaps in front, and if she stumbled… something like a cold hand brushed her cheek. She did stumble, arms flailing, grabbing for the rope.

  Ahh!

  She felt the mule Job go down behind her, her skin prickling at his wheezing grunt and the skitter of his hooves fighting for footing on smooth rock. She waited endless seconds for what she knew must come, and moaned helplessly as his weight, falling, dragged at the rope wrapped at her waist. She grasped it where it played out in front of her, felt it go slack in her hand. Her fingers touched frayed end. As she was hauled inexorably backward toward the edge of the precipice she knew awaited, her throat contracted around screams that would not be born. Dragged to her knees, she grappled at loose stones and screamed soundlessly until she had no breath left. Panic engulfed all reason, and her mind reached out blindly.

  Ra’an! In the emptiness, a distant presence.

  Ra’an! The flung-out tendrils of her panic grazed something solid. Eyeless, she clutched at it.

  Ra’an! A vehement wordless negative shook off the contact.

  Help me! She reached again, with the iron grip of the dying, and fastened herself around the hard knot of the alien’s consciousness, clinging, screaming, pouring her entire failing self into her desperate plea for help. She forgot the fallen mule, and the pressure from the rope vanished unnoticed. The alien mind bucked and fought against her storming of his private battlements, this Terran invasion, gathering all his fear and hatred into a panic as unreasoning as her own. He lashed out in defense, driving his anger like an icicle into her mind. Stunned, crippled, she fell away. Her hold on him slipped. As she fell away, all balance fled. Up and down lost meaning in the void that rushed up to swallow her, as she twisted and tumbled until every direction was down, and she fell endlessly, keening like a damned soul.

  Ra’an felt the rope go taut at his waist, and followed it back hand over hand to where she lay, face down, clutching at the stones and screaming.

  “The rope!” she cried. “It’s broken! It’s broken!”

  He snatched at the rope, held it up. “The rope is not broken! Look!” He forced her head around to look at the knots, still securely fastening them together. Her eyes stared sightlessly.

  “The mule fell! I can’t hold on!” She wept and moaned, grasping at the ground.

  Ra’an shook her angrily. “Look! Listen to me! The mules are right here! There’s no place to fall here!” There was a drumming in his head, like a desperate hammering at a locked gate. He shut it out and grabbed at her arms to pull her up. She resisted, clinging still to the ground with bloodied fingers, knees, feet, all awareness of him submerged in the flooding of her panic. She babbled at his feet, a mindless lump of flesh and terror, and as he stared helplessly, a vision of James Andreas hit him with a sudden rush that left him horror-stricken and trembling. Guilt rose like gall in his throat, bitter choking guilt, and pain that took his breath away. No! Not again! Not another death by my negligence!

  She was innocent. She meant him no harm. Innocent but for being Terran and a woman. Innocent but for unintentional trespass on his guarded brain, whose hypocrisy was to claim longing for such a touch, then throw it off in violence. Solitude crushed in on him. His tight-stretched anger strained until it snapped like a lute string. His reflex hatred must be put aside, was put aside, was already an impostor. It had poisoned him for the touch of another mind, a mind now teetering at the abyss. Somehow he must pull it back, or lose his own in self-loathing. Not knowing how he was to do it, he gathered his brain and called to her.

  Nothing. No reply. He called again, a random, ignorant searching. Still she tore at his hands and screamed.

  Now guilt raged up again, and loneliness. Ra’an panicked, and in his panic, reached instinctively with all the power that had lain locked in his genes until desperation should cut it loose. He reached, and touched chaos, and knew he would lose her unless he could descend into the madness with her and pull her out.

  Afraid, damp with effort, he reached again, farther, deeper, swaying dizzily as her confusion swept over him like nausea, pushed deeper, fighting his panic and the agony of vertigo, reached, and found her, touched a shred of conscious mind that lay crumpled at the back of her brain.

  Jude. He reached, felt her stir under his touch.

  Ahhhhh…

  The shred was pliant. Amazed, moved beyond understanding, he held it in his mind like a rag doll, savoring its presence, insensate as it was, as balm for his solitude. But what to do with it? It wanted only to sleep, to blot out the terror and chaos it fled from. He knew he could not let it sleep, yet feared to frighten it further. How had his mother soothed his fears before the day she had left him alone? With words, gentle words. So he talked to it, spoke parental nonsense to it as if it were a child, and it responded without knowing it spoke.

  Jude’s wracked body ceased struggling. One arm about her waist, Ra’an lifted her up. The mules gathered close, lending their support. They pushed on through the mist, the alien talking to the rag thing in his mind, sparing only as much of his concentration as was needed to lay one foot in front of the other, and to listen. The mules would hear it first, he was sure, so he trusted them to lead him onward. He learned a strength he did not know he had, keeping her with him in his mind, fighting off her confusion and his own, without pause to consider the astounding thing that was happening to him. Later, there would be time for that.

  Eons further, when
he thought he could not go on, the mules pricked up their ears. Ra’an listened harder, and heard it at last, a low pulsing beating its way to him through the void. Elated, he pushed on harder, staggered under his burden, half fell. The signal beckoned louder. He steadied himself, struggling ahead until the mists swirled and cleared. He faced a towering wall of mountain rock. With a gasp of triumph, he dragged the limp body to the wall and gave over a portion of his mind from her care to a search of the rock’s pitted surface. There! His hand shook as he laid it in the palm-shaped hollow in the stone. He closed his eyes, weak with apprehension, and willed the wall to open. A cavity appeared. Crying to the mules, he sprang into it. They clattered in behind, and the opening vanished.

  Ra’an collapsed against the smooth inner wall and clutched Jude’s body in his arms. His dark hair fell over hers as he buried his head in her shoulder.

  Chapter 19

  Jude stirred sleepily in her void, moved closer to wakening.

  Ra’an?

  Here.

  I cant move. Can’t see.

  It’s the drug.

  So strange.

  Yes.

  There’s movement, sighing. Where are we?

  On the huruss, heading for Ruvala.

  Ummm.

  How do you feel?

  Nothing. Only you.

  … Yes.

  What happened?

  Later.

  She tried to conceal her next thought, to hold back the impulse, but it was impossible to lie.

  I love you.

  I know.

  Is it all right?

  He didn’t answer, and she thought the void that held her chilled a little. She asked again, dizzy with fatigue.

  Is it all right?

  An answer came as her consciousness retreated into sleep, to mingle indistinctly with the movement and the sighing.

  … I can’t… I don’t know…

  Chapter 20

  It was soothing, the motion of the train, so she rocked with it for a long dreamy time before she forced her eyes to open.

  She lay on her back. The air smelled of lemons and cinnamon. She gazed straight up. The ceiling was a gentle brown, padded in a criss-cross pattern with silver tufting buttons on the intersections. She rolled her head to one side. The wall was paneled in dark lustrous wood with a fine elaborate grain.

  She moved, tentatively. There was the firm support of a mattress beneath her, a feather pillow, and smooth sheets. Draperies hung on three sides, enclosing her in geometries of rich earth colors. She lay in a soft brown cocoon that swayed her gently back and forth.

  The huruss. She knew where she was. He had told her that, during the dim time of her confusion.

  The huruss bucked softly, reawakening her. She raised a slow arm and flexed her fingers, recalling how recently she had not been able to. Her hand was scratched and filthy, fingernails bloodied, torn away or hiding dark bruises beneath their scabs. Jude shuddered, let her hand fall back on the sheet, lay still, absorbing sensations of comfort.

  She made a leisurely study of the wall alongside her. Its oblong panels were inlaid with intricate mercurial designs. She searched for pictures, for a logic in them, an image here or there among the polished swirling of umber, fawn, and ebony, but their logic defied her. Each panel was a celebration of hue and movement, gentle contrast, asymmetry, yet somehow they conveyed a distinct sense of place, a craftsman’s memory of weather, landscape, light, time, distilled in abstract, a Rorschach for the senses.

  Sudden curiosity roused her. She was no longer content to lie still. Her back and scalp itched. A brief exploration told her she still wore her muddied trail garb, though the b(x>ts had been shed somewhere. She rubbed her nose. Dried blood flaked away.

  I would probably kill for a bath. She knew then that she was feeling better.

  She raised herself on one elbow and felt among the curtains for an opening. There. She peered through, drew one aside. The brown cocoon was windowless, softly lit from an undiscernable source. The floor was carpeted in a thick woven mat the color of bitter chocolate. Her camera pack leaned in a dusty lump against her berth. At the other end of the car, another berth lay open. Ra’an sat near it at a table unfolded from the wall, with a battered chessboard set up in front of him. He had already found his bath, for he was clean-shaven and sleek, dressed in a rust-brown silky garment that wrapped around and tied at the waist like a Terran kimono. The brown was a deeper echo of his skin; the garment draped around him with easy familiarity. Stripped of the armor of his habitual Terran black, he looked relaxed, almost vulnerable.

  Jude had no idea what she could possibly say to him.

  But Ra’an glanced up, and gave her a long look over the chessboard, and said, “I expect you would like to wash.”

  She nodded, for once grateful for his cool manner.

  “First door to your right. You’ll find everything you need.”

  Jude roused herself stiffly and padded to the door he had indicated. She traced with a finger the lettering carved on it. Never before had she been faced with an alphabet that she couldn’t read. These letters looked as if they had been invented for the sole purpose of being chiseled into gleaming surfaces with clean, efficient strokes. With a not unpleasant thrill she thought, The true point of entry into an alien land is when you can no longer read the road signs.

  “Does this say ‘Men’ or ‘Women’?” she asked lightly.

  “It says ‘Bath,’ the only distinction you’ll find here. Just learn to knock before entering.”

  “Like now?” Her eyes widened. Why did I assume we were alone on this train?

  He shook his head soberly. “It’s all yours,” he said, and turned back to his chessmen. Jude opened the door.

  The interior of the bath was a piece of jewelry, precious turquoise set in shining wood. The wood was dark, molded in smooth curves. The turquoise was porcelain, all the fixtures, the sink, the bath, the exotic streamlined toilet, all glazed in the vivid blue-green of a tropical pool, and traced with a spider web of deeper blue where the color had settled into fine cracks beneath the glaze. She found herself staring at the toilet. On second glance, it was remarkably conventional. She gave it an amused shrug. I suppose there’s no reason to expect it to be different. After all…

  The huge mirror above the sink she avoided until she had washed every part of her several times with the clear brown soap that smelled of citrus. Then she confronted the glass apprehensively. A clean but haggard face stared back at her, with eyes peering a trifle dazedly out of great dark hollows that showed even through her tan. She toweled her short hair vigorously, hoping to breathe some life into it, then brushed it back with a comb carved of something like ivory, though translucent and veined with gold. A pile of kimonos waited neatly on a shelf, of various colors and rich patterning. Ra’an had obviously chosen the severest of the lot for himself. Jude found one in sea green laced with muted silver and blue, and wrapped it around herself, sighing at the luxury of its silkiness against her abused skin. Primitive…? With a hand on the polished wooden doorlatch, she reflected that this huruss was far more sophisticated and grand than anything she had ever traveled in back home, even when on an expense account. How far astray she had been led, all Terrans had been led, by these quiet subtle aliens. She shut the door behind her, drawing a hand along the fine paneling as she wandered down the car, gathering her nerve to face him.

  Ra’an was still engrossed in his one-man chess game.

  “I’m starved,” she announced, because she was, and because food was a nice, neutral subject.

  His eyes appraised her warily. “You look a lot better than you did a few hours ago.”

  “So do you… Have we got any food left?”

  “In the galley.”

  The huruss possessed a lovely, compact kitchen, outfitted in brushed aluminum, milky glass counters, and more of the lustrous wood, the equipment she couldn’t make head or tail of, so she began rummaging through cabinets until she found utensils
and a cold chest stuffed with vegetables. Chill fruity odors filled the kitchen, odors like colors, crisp greens, tangy yellows and oranges, musky purples. She lifted out a round waxen melon, and turned it wonderingly in her hands. Ra’an came into the kitchen behind her and took it from her, gazing intently at it as if he had never seen a melon before. He held it up, and she could see the light shimmering through its misted skin.

  “It’s a peri,” he said thickly. “We grew these in Ruvala.”

  But Jude was too busy with other wonders to catch the emotion in his voice. “Look at this. And this!”

  She made him name them all, pushing one into his hands and grabbing it away to replace it with another almost before he could speak, oblivious to the bittersweet pain of his remembering, until the counter was littered with fruit and vegetables and he was demanding in cold exasperation, “Are you planning to eat them all?”

  Jude laughed, unheeding. “How do they keep all this stuff so fresh?”

  “By picking it yesterday.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The hurra are serviced each time one is summoned.” His jaw was tightening with irritation.

  “Summoned?”

  “Summoned. Called for. Did you think we sat in that cave and waited for the next regularly scheduled arrival?”

  Her smile died, and she turned away to begin putting vegetables back in their drawers. “Ra’an, I don’t remember a whole lot about that cave,” she replied quietly.

  He looked vaguely ashamed. “No. You wouldn’t.” He moved away from her, down the counter. “It’s simple, really. If you know in advance, as most Koi do, that you have a long-distance trip to make, you place a reservation at your local station. In rare emergencies, such as ours, you put in a call to the central computer, and it finds the nearest available car, or cars, if you need more than one, has it serviced, and sends it out. When it arrives, you punch in your destination, and that’s all there is to it.”