A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Elgri sobered, measured Ra’an briefly, glanced back at Jude. Then his grin blossomed again, and his shoulders heaved with an insouciant shrug as he let forth a stream of chatter so voluble that even Ra’an eased his guard a little and shook his head, more a tremor than a negative. “He says… he says you laugh too much to be a real Terran. What other kind of Terran does he think there is? And he also says that I am too much like my… our mother, to be as bad as they say I am.”

  “They?”

  “The shanevoralin, I have no doubt.”

  Elgri caught the word. “Shanevoralin m’e anahir peo,” he remarked with a gesture of youthful dismissal.

  Ra’an looked at him oddly, asked a question. Elgri laughed and shrugged again.

  “He says,” Ra’an translated slowly, “that the shanevoralin don’t tell the truth anymore. That they come from the colony filled with images that can’t be true.” His tone sharpened. “What, does he think they make it up, the shanē who have no thoughts of their own?”

  “Ra’an, be patient. Perhaps he’s too young to understand about the colony.”

  “No Koi in the colony can tell the shanē what to record, or where to deliver it. It’s totally arbitrary. How can he think the shanē would lie?” He rubbed a fist against his jaw, staring at Elgri fixedly.

  Elgri looked uncomfortable, and warbled off another paragraph of melody. Even to Jude, it was obvious that he was changing the subject.

  Grudgingly, Ra’an translated. “He greets me from my parents. My father, Kirial, has been called to Council in the Ring, but my mother awaits me. He says he is thirteen, born after my parents returned from Menissa, and that…” Ra’an continued with difficulty. “He is sorry that he and I cannot mindspeak as brothers should, but he is still learning his halm.”

  Either the boy has an instinct for the generous lie, Jude decided, or Ra’an should not give up hope. Now she watched as Elgri reached inside the marvelous garment that wrapped his slim torso like supple bark, all layers and drapes and hidden pockets. Beneath a flap of green at his hip was a flash of red, like a bird’s bright underwing, and his hand brought out a small wrapping of leather. He picked it open delicately to reveal a pile of amber crystals that glittered moistly in the sun. Ra’an caught his breath and without hesitation took one and held it up to the light. Elgri sang a brief phrase of encouragement.

  “What is it?” Jude asked.

  “A Terran might call it honey.” Ra’an turned the crystal in his fingers, then put it to his lips with the reverence of a communicant.

  “I thought honey was liquid. It’s a black-market item on Terra, you know. There’s pollution in it, but people pay lots for it anyway.” God, I’m just babbling. She shut up and took a small chunk when Elgri offered. She tasted it gingerly. Nectar and ambrosia. From the musty depths, the phrase came swimming up. The crystal tasted as she imagined a field of wild flowers would smell. She held its sweetness on her tongue, reluctant to let it dissolve too quickly.

  Ra’an picked up a large one and held it on his palm like a solitaire diamond, remembering. “Daniel brought some books back from Terra once. The bindings were stiff and cracked, the pages fragile. At night, we would leaf through them carefully and he would tell stories of Terra and point out pictures of plants and animals now extinct. I often think he was hoping I would say, ‘Oh yes, we have those here,’ but I was only twelve or so at the time and had not told him of Ruvala and the others.

  “But once, I found a picture that did look familiar. Those are hummingbirds,’ he said, waiting for me to explain why this drawing of tiny extinct Terran birds should rivet me so. I never told him…

  “We have such birds here, you see. Long ago the Koi taught them to gather the flower nectar that they live on so it could be collected and processed like this.” He studied the sugar jewel on his palm soberly. “Many households in Ruvala have a flock of lai, as the birds are called, that have been with them through many generations.”

  “But how do you teach a bird to do such a thing?”

  “Halm.” Abruptly, he shoved the crystal in his pocket. “It has many uses, you see.”

  “The gulls and now the… the lai? Are ail of Arkoi’s animals halm-gifted?”

  “With varying degrees of sophistication, yes. You can’t transmit rational thought where the brain is not developed enough, of course, but emotions, intentions, desires, images, yes, enough for some degree of communication.”

  Jude glanced at the mules, peacefully cropping the grasses of the clearing. “No wonder the Koi are vegetarians.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the Wall that drives the animals out of the colony, isn’t it?”

  Ra’an nodded. “Except Terran animals without halm, and those like the mules with enough brain to cope with the Wall as the Koi can. And the shanevoralin, who, being creatures of halm, thrive on all its aspects.”

  Now Elgri was tiring of all this incomprehensible conversing, and fidgeted from one foot to the other. The little forest animals caught his mood and began their leaping and squealing again. Ra’an took a long look around the clearing. He nudged Jude’s camera pack with a booted foot. “Still carrying these around?”

  She reached for the strap. She could not yet leave this part of her to languish in an alien clearing, though the cameras felt like dead weight as she hefted the pack.

  Ra’an shouldered his own pack. “Well,” he announced, “I guess it’s time to face my mother.”

  They followed Elgri into the great woods, the mules behind and the forest creatures gamboling up ahead in ecstatic escort. Jude saw many paths shimmering in the freckled light, but the one that Elgri led them along was solid and pine-soft beneath their feet, the way for most recent comings and goings. The air was mossy and cool, pocketed with warmth and the tang of evergreen. A fugue of birdsong caroled their passing, and every so often, Elgri would sing out, a string of notes without words, and from a nearby branch or thicket would come a signal of bright feathers and a chirruped answer.

  Elgri’s cheerful acceptance of his arrival had hardly eased Ra’an’s mood. Jude tried distracting him with chatter.

  “Too bad your father is away. What’s the Council in the Ring?”

  “The Ring is where the council meets,” he replied halfheartedly. “The Council is a governing body of sorts, actually the hub of the halm web that ties the scattered populations together, at least that’s what I gather. In the colony, the Ring is not spoken of out loud unless one is very sure a Terran is not around to hear, and that limited my knowledge also.”

  “I thought you said your father was like a sociologist? Some kind of government consulting work, then?”

  Ra’an gave his short laugh. “Put away your ideas of bureaucrats and civil servants. Every adult Koi serves in Council, for some months at a time, on a rotating basis.”

  Jude considered this. “Sounds unmanageable. How do they maintain any consistent policy or authority?”

  “I don’t think you have yet managed to grasp the real significance of a society of telepaths,” he retorted, annoyed. “Halm is a technique, yes, and it has specific uses. It is also, however, a way of life. Think how different your life would have been on Terra without electronic communications.”

  “Slower. Less complicated. I’m not sure that would be so bad.”

  “Communication is the only weapon against ignorance,” he insisted pompously.

  “Only if what you communicate means something.”

  “With halm,” he went on, oblivious, “you have the possibility of the simultaneous melding of every Koi mind. Cultural and geographical barriers mean nothing anymore. No need for elections or party politics. A single will can be forged in an instant, yet no individual go unheard.”

  “The ultimate democracy,” Jude said with more than a hint of skepticism, for her lessons in democracy had convinced her that it was not possible, not in the real world, where people could only agree to disagree. “I’m still surprised that anything gets done.
Who administers this will of the people, and what assures that he or she will abide by it?”

  “Administering is done on the local level, completely decentralized, one of the advantages of maintaining a low level of population growth. When they needed something done in the Quarter, they all got together and it got done.”

  “But the Quarter is one isolated community with a strong common interest. What if community interests come into conflict with each other?”

  “The interest of the whole is the interest of the community!” His tone grew so sharp that Elgri threw a worried glance over his shoulder. “With halm, all such differences can be resolved! Did you think it was a toy, a mere convenience? That all I am shut away from is the luxury of a private conversation? If that’s as deep as your understanding goes, you don’t deserve the gift!”

  He can’t help it, that this bitterness consumes him like a cancer. Can you ask an amputee to be grateful for the rest of his body? Can you ask him not to be preoccupied with his handicap to the exclusion of all else? “I’m trying to learn to deserve it, Ra’an,” she answered quietly. “Perhaps I must fully develop it before it can be fully comprehended.”

  He left her with a sound of disgust and moved ahead to walk alone.

  He expected a miracle. Perhaps he still does. Like a pilgrim approaching the shrine for a cure. Like Langdon, like Daniel Andreas, looking for angels. Like Ramos and Clennan, even. All searching for their private angels. And me? I am finding miracles I never asked for.

  They came out of the groaning pines into orderly fields checkerboarding the rolling hills of Ruvala, neat squares of yellow hay and red-silked corn, divided by lush green hedge rows. Far ahead, a mule-drawn wagon trundled down a dusty gravel road, balancing a tall stack of hay bales. The heady pungence of cut grass thickened the air. The distant hills were blue with evergreens.

  The road led over a rise beyond which lay another stand of trees, basking in the open fields. It was a massive dome of leaves thirty, forty meters tall, curving in a smooth hemisphere down to the waving grass. As they neared, Jude saw that the branches left a space just higher than a tall man’s head, all around the bottom of the dome.

  As they passed under the canopy of branches, Elgri stopped to turn an expectant eye on his stranger-brother. Ra’an stood like a man in a trance. Jude looked around in wonder.

  The house was the trees and the trees were the house. It was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Several thick trunks formed a ring under the center of the dome. Around each trunk curled a stair shaped either from the living tree or by the ultimate in subtle artistry. Woody vines spiraled up to form handrails, following the steps around to where they opened onto wide low-slung branches, then up again to the next branch, and up and up until the leaves obscured them. Each branch supported a collage of slatted blinds and glass and panels of woven reed that refused to differentiate inside from outside, but Jude sensed that these were the living quarters and that she would find that there was an inside when she got into one. She counted these areas, at least two dozen, with a few that shimmered insubstantially, ghosts from the past. The house was more populous once, she decided, and just then felt a featherweight tingle inside her head. A halm touch. Not like Ra’an’s hard unpracticed presence, but polite, like a soft knock, a request for entry. Uncertain how to answer it, Jude turned around, searching. At the foot of a staircase stood a woman, graying but strong, who was holding out a hand in welcome to the tall grim stranger who could only be her son.

  Chapter 24

  A hollow-eyed Bill Clennan shoved through the swinging doors of the Interrogation Wing, trailing startled aides and hurling orders like so much garbage. The latest dispatches from Ramos were crumpled in his fist. Stalking into the control room, he settled himself at the console with a curt nod to the technician in the next seat. In front of him was an opaque glass panel, a microphone, and a keyboard. The technician’s fingers twitched, the booth lights dimmed, and on the other side of the glass, hard whiteness flooded the isolation chamber.

  Mark Lacey, naked and bruised, lay strapped into a metal recliner. Biotelemetry leads were taped to skull, chest, and groin. IV tubes ran to each arm. As the lights came on, his eyes snapped open, rolled wildly, and clenched against the glare.

  “You could have cleaned him up a little,” Clennan muttered. “How long’s he been awake?”

  “Forty-five minutes, and terrified the whole time.” The technician indicated the vital-signs monitor, where the heart line was running like a scared rabbit.

  “All the better for us. Maybe this won’t take too long.” Staring through the glass at the boy, for a moment Clennan could not will his voice to ask for audio. The cruel wires pinning the genital area transfixed him. His own groin tightened in sympathy. He had watched these procedures back on Terra, but had never been forced by rank into the lead seat before. Beneath the technician’s ready fingers spread two rows of luminous keys, whose labels proclaimed the intimate little agonies and delights that he, Bill Clennan, could invoke to persuade Mark Lacey to, as they still said in the locker room, spill his guts. An unfortunate turn of phrase, Clennan decided. No scars would remain from this surgery, except in the various pleasure and pain centers of Lacey’s being. Again in the locker room, it was said that this method had been used to debrief the returned expeditionaries, when verbal interrogation had failed to produce what Intelligence considered to be proper information. Clennan rubbed at the bloodstains on his sleeve. He had not had time to change. Had that poor loony been put through this? James? Had the Native woman called him James? That would be James Andreas, then. Momentarily, the face of Mark Lacey became the keening, bloodied face of James Andreas, strapped to a metal chair. Clennan realized he was having another failure of nerve and worried about his career. He checked his watch. It was 10:00 p.m.

  “You,” he growled to the aide waiting at his back. “Get me some coffee and whatever you can find that passes for food around here.” He signaled the technician. “Audio when you’re ready. Let’s start slow.” He leaned over the mike and made his voice as paternal as he knew how. “Okay, son. Just relax. We’ve just got a few questions to ask you.”

  Thirty minutes later, having found out nothing more than they knew already from the kid’s record, Clennan asked for an increased drug dose. Invisible persuasion crept through the tubes into Lacey’s veins.

  Clennan eyed the luminous keys. “Disorient him.”

  Nodding, the tech touched a key, Immediately, Lacey’s hands groped at the arms of the recliner. A moan, of fear more than pain, broke from him.

  “A few straight answers will make the world right again,” urged Clennan into the mike.

  By 11:00 p.m., they had Lacey’s admission that he was responsible for all the sabotage, no great surprise to anyone present, but a relief, as it meant the search teams could get some sleep. Lacey explained in vivid detail, as if once forced he enjoyed bragging about it, how and where he had stolen the explosive, how he had put it to use, his entire strategy and his motive: to scare away enough of the tourist business to collapse the colony’s economy. Why? Arkoi did not belong to the Terrans. Clennan thought this smacked of Mitchell Verde, but though he used the technician’s every nasty suggestion, hurting the boy to the point of incoherence, he could not get him to implicate anyone else in his plot, not the Natives, and not Verde, the one name Clennan was hoping to hear.

  They took a break, and Clennan sent a tape of the first session by hand messenger across the Transport Corridor to Ramos, who waited on Terra for a blow-by-blow. He almost wished Ramos were present. The boss would enjoy this process a lot more than he was.

  Back at the console, he took a long swallow of cold coffee and settled in to find out what he really wanted to know.

  “Now, I want to try another tack. I think he’s weak enough by now. What can you do there to make him feel angry and real paranoid?”

  The tech hesitated, then went to work. Lacey’s battered face rewarded his efforts
with furtive scowls. When he saw the mouth draw tight and harden, Clennan said, “Now, Mark, how come your good friends are letting you take the rap?”

  Lacey growled. “Don’t have any friends.”

  “What about Verde? You worked for him for free—you must have admired him.”

  The next was lost in a jumble of rage. Then: “Verde. Always playing God.”

  “Is that so? Not very nice. How does he play God?”

  More jumble. “Stahl House.” Low giggles.

  Clennan turned to his aide. “Check the map.”

  The aide studied and shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Clennan dredged his memory. “Did you look in the Quarter?”

  “Nothing on this map.”

  “Get in someone from the Alien Division.”

  “They don’t work at night, Mr. Clennan. It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Then fuckin’ well wake one of them up!” Clennan sent the aide scuttling. He returned his attention to the boy. “Tell me about Stahl House, Mark.”

  “They could kill us if they wanted to.”

  “What’s that? I don’t quite get that, Mark.”

  “They could, you know.”

  Clennan leaned over the technician. “What’re you feeding him? I want him coherent.” To Lacey he said, “They?”

  Lacey laughed, deep and on the edge.

  Clennan frowned, “Throw in a little bravado,” he whispered to his right. “Make him feel important.” The tech’s fingers busied themselves.

  “Are they friends of yours?” Clennan insinuated into the mike.

  “Sure!” the boy replied loudly. “What’d you think, I’d go around blowing up the world for nothing?”

  “You were doing it for them?”

  “They need help.”

  “Why do they need your help if they can kill us themselves?”

  “Ehh,” Lacy sneered. “They don’t like killing much.”

  “All right. But how would they kill us if they decided they wanted to?”