A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “With their minds. They can do anything with their minds.”

  In the booth, the technician caught Clennan’s eye and twirled one finger at the side of his head.

  “Regress him,” Clennan said quickly. The tech shook his head, but reached for a lighted dial.

  “Uh, Mark, I have some friends like that. Do we have the same friends, do you think?”

  This time the laugh was a sly hoot. “Guess.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a lot of friends? Before you said you didn’t have any.”

  “More than you could count! C’mon, you’re not guessing.”

  “You have to give me at least one hint. Like, who would they kill if they wanted to?”

  “Well, not me. You. All of you.”

  “All of me?”

  “Terrans, stupid. All the Terrans!”

  Clennan clicked off the mike and sat back. Oh brother, Ramos is going to eat this up! “They” can only mean the Natives. Lots of them, eh? He leaned forward.

  “Mark, how well can you count?”

  In a mere twenty minutes, Bill Clennan’s wheedling and gamesmanship informed him that Ramos’ dream had come true: There were Others out there beyond those infernal mountains. Lacey hadn’t exactly said so, and in his present state, he had no real grasp on numbers. The technician thought the whole line of questioning was a preposterous waste of time, especially at that hour, but Bill Clennan knew.

  “Do a little Skinner on him,” he said. “I’m going to send this tape off to Big Julie. Get him reward-conditioned—we’ll see how that works.”

  It didn’t. Somehow Lacey had pulled a little of his remaining self together and was a paradigm of evasion. Clennan gave up and went back to anger/paranoia at much increased levels.

  Into the mike he snarled, “Those Native friends of yours ain’t worth shit!”

  Lacey’s whole body jerked in rage. “Oh, yeah?”

  Six in the morning. Clennan was back in his office cubicle. The session had ended when Lacey fainted for the third time. Clennan couldn’t stomach it any more, not without some sleep, at least. Six days straight he’d been running on uppers and naps.

  The full report had been sent out to Terra. While he waited for a reply and new orders from Ramos, he drank more coffee, popped a few pills, and replayed the tapes.

  That there were other Koi beyond the mountains, he was sure. That the loss of the expeditions could be laid to the Koi, he was also sure, but not of how. The how was where understanding clouded. The kid had babbled about mind weapons. Telepathy, for God’s sake, and some kind of psychic wall. How to approach such nonsense? Was it code of some sort? The half-awake straggler dragged in from the Alien Division had been so little help with the concrete information Lacey had provided that Clennan hesitated to approach him with this. Besides, Ramos would want it kept quiet for now.

  The Jewel will love this, he assured himself, and in the midst of stuporous fatigue, permitted himself some optimism. When I get some sleep, this’ll all make sense. I can count on a promotion. I can start looking for that boat I’ve been meaning to buy. Everything’s finally falling into place. Once the Natives know we know, they’ll have to cooperate. I’ll get this place quieted down and it’ll be a real nice place to live. Yup, Julie’s going to owe me for this.

  He clicked off the tape relay, dropped his head to his desk, and fell asleep.

  Chapter 25

  “We are the cleansing flame!” James Andreas leaped up on the bier and paused to let the echoes of his voice chase around the cavern, commentary on the shocked silence of his audience. The yellow linen still bound his forehead. He stretched his pale thin arms in exultation. “We have been passive long enough! While we suffer in Menissa, the Others dream in ignorance! How many deaths such as this will it take to waken them? We cannot wait to find out! The cry must be raised, the armies gathered!” Andreas let the murmurs surge around him. Along the surrounding ledges the gull-beasts stirred to his rhetoric, and his huge emaciated shadow seemed to crucify itself upon the rock wall as he once more raised his arms, incandescent with his vision.

  From a darkened corner, Mitchel Verde watched in disbelief. “Meron would not have wanted her death to be the cause of such as this. James’ timing is brilliant, of course. Hit them right after the funeral.”

  “Our Wall made him what he is,” mourned Luteverindorin. “He is our own weapon turned against us.”

  “Six years of abuse from Terran tourists haven’t helped much either,” Damon reminded him gently.

  “We must reason with him,” urged the old Koi.

  “Reason? What makes you think he’s any more open to reason now than he was before? The shock has articulated his insanity, not cured it.”

  “Mitchell, we must try.”

  “Lute, Lute.” Verde laid a comforting hand on his friend’s knee. “Let him rave. It’ll pass. Surely you don’t think anyone here will support this lunacy he’s proposing?”

  “Look around you. Look in faces for what I can hear with my mind. Look at the eyes of the young, whose only knowledge of the Interior and the Others is a romanticized memory, those who were not consulted when their exile was decided. Look at the eyes of Hrin.”

  Verde looked, picked out Hrin across the multitude of listeners. The tall young Koi was poised tensely against a wall, long years of resentment expressing themselves in the rapt attention he gave to the madman’s exhortations. Looking closer, Verde found many whom he had known, considered friends, now listening with willing faces.

  “You remember I told you of the Diamo and their prophecy that saviors are due among us. They also believe that insanity is a truer vision.” Lute turned his gaze across the gathering. “Hrin has only heard of these beliefs through his elders, yet he preaches them now and has won followers, especially of late.”

  “But…”

  “Madmen are sacred to the Diamo. Yes, Mitchell, even among the Koi there are occasional madmen.”

  Verde was unaccepting. “Lute, these are our friends, people we know and respect. They’re polite, they listen, but they are not going to throw away the most basic tenet of Koi society to run after a madman! Will they forsake the ideal of Balance because some young lunatic tells them they deserve justice?”

  “Not justice, my friend. Vengeance. Don’t you hear it? That’s what young James is preaching!” Lute stood as tall as his small stature would permit. “Sit down and listen, Mitchell, for this is important. There is a belief that you must forsake, now, if you are to help us. For as long as you have known us, we of the Quarter have been a closely knit, highly motivated community, and we have managed to perform well so far. But we are fallible, too. All men are fallible, Terran or Koi!”

  “I know that. Lute…”

  “I don’t think you do, or you would understand that James Andreas will find a following. He will call vengeance by another name, as the Diamo say that only through Imbalance can the righteousness of Balance assert itself. Or perhaps he will be bold enough to call it what it is, but hear me, he will find his following. Our task will be to keep it to a minimum, as best we can.”

  “Gods,” Verde breathed.

  Across the cavern, Andreas jumped from the bier and began to move among his listeners. “We will leave this infested city! We owe it nothing! We will find ourselves a purer battleground! Our passage through the mountains will strengthen us! We will awaken the Others and our army will be forged!”

  Shaken, Verde reconsidered and wracked his brain for the proper argument to counter Andreas’ emotional manipulations. Andreas circled, exhorting with broad sweeps of his arms. With his unerring gift for finding the crisis in every moment, he chose a path that would lead him eventually to Hrin. Verde rose stiffly to his feet and stepped out of the shadow to intercept him.

  “James.” He had done some rabble-rousing himself and knew how to make himself heard without seeming to shout. He cast himself as the voice of wisdom, the patient
father confessor. “A holy war, James? Has your poor mad brain been nursing apocalyptic visions all these years?”

  Andreas eyed his old protector with compassion and tolerance. “Ah, Mitchell. You rebuke me, when you of all people should understand the necessity of what I do.”

  “I? Why me? My holy wars have never been fought with violence.”

  “And they have always failed. Do you fear for your life, Mitchell? But you’ve already given all you have for the Koi. Why withhold this final sacrifice?”

  “I fear for the lives of the hundred million Koi you would send weaponless against the Terran war machine! Yes, the Koi outnumber the Terrans in the colony, but there’s a whole world of Terrans on the other side of the Transport Corridor, and the Koi are not a fighting people, James. You who presume to speak for them must recognize that!”

  A sly smile spread across Andreas’ haggard face. He stepped back and spread his hands in a show of innocence, addressing the crowd at large. “Weaponless? The Koi are not weaponless. Every people are a fighting people when their existence is finally at stake, and the Koi possess a weapon far deadlier than any yet conceived by Terrans! Deadly enough to level each and every Terran with a single blow!”

  The silence in the cavern awaited the madman’s revelation. But Andreas seemed to drift off momentarily, and the silence became discomfort, the anguish of anticipation. When Verde shifted and cleared his throat to break the silence, Andreas raised his head and interrupted him with a growling whisper.

  “Halm.”

  Verde recoiled. “What?”

  Luteverindorin spoke up, his words charged with subtle outrage. “Since when is halm a means for killing?”

  Andreas faced him evenly. “I know of the ancient past as well as you, since it was from your mind that I learned of it.”

  “Then you should also have learned that only by the forbidding of such practices have we climbed up from the wreckage of those ancient days!”

  Verde’s head swiveled back and forth. “Lute, what is he saying—that halm can kill?” The old Koi lowered his eyes.

  “Can and will!” Andreas hissed.

  “How dare you!” Verde exploded, though Luteverindorin reached to restrain him. “How dare you suggest such a thing! Since when do you speak for the Koi!”

  The madman turned visionary did not hesitate, though a fleeting sadness haunted his clear gray eyes. “For this while, I must,” he replied gently, as if explaining a punishment beforehand to an errant child. “Only a Terran may bring to Terrans this terrible destruction. The Koi must not bear the guilt.”

  “It is a lost skill,” Lute admonished. “You will find no one who knows how to do this thing.”

  Andreas’ smile managed to be both saintly and knowing. “It is not in the skill, my honored teacher, but in the intention. The readiness, as the poet says, is all.” He paused, and the smile vanished like a snuffed flame as he advanced on them step by step. “I can do this thing. Have done this thing. Will do this thing.”

  Lute’s body trembled, with rage or pain, Verde could not tell, but he stepped between them quickly. “James, there are other solutions. We could give them an ultimatum. By now, Lacey has probably told them everything he knows, and they’d believe a threat. We could force a total evacuation.”

  Andreas raised a mocking eyebrow. “Lacey will give no more information,” he stated. Lute watched him with dawning horror.

  “James, James,” Verde insisted. “Anything is better than massacring five million innocent tourists!”

  “Innocent?” Andreas countered, beginning to move again, to circle. “Innocent? Would they spare the Koi if the choice were theirs?” He whipped the yellow linen from his head and held it aloft to the gathering. “Did they spare our Meron, those innocent tourists?” He wrapped the linen around one wrist so that it waved in echo to his movement. “Evacuate them? They wouldn’t leave. They couldn’t leave. They are Terra’s occupying army, whether they know it or not. Those who sent them here will put weapons in their hands when the time comes, and that time will be soon. I have seen it!” He laid both hands across his eyes. Verde could not repress the image of an actor playing a tragic role. “I have seen it here!” cried James Andreas. “And I know that our answer to the Terrans must be a weapon of our own!” He bent and snatched up an unlit torch from the floor. He raised it above his head, a blinded beacon.

  “Who will light it for me?” he called, and the listeners fell back before the blatant symbolism of his dare. Again he began the circuit of the cavern, moving in ever-widening circles, wooing his audience, taunting, mesmerizing, stalking their support like a starved predator.

  “Mitchell,” Lute whispered faintly. “I worry for young Lacey.”

  “I’ve lost him,” Verde murmured, one hand trailing out after the defiant madman.

  “This is my vision!” Andreas cried out. “See it! On the white shoreline we will gather! Who will light the torch to carry us there? Our minds shall number in the millions! Come, light the flame!” He stretched his arm and his whole body upward until the blackened torch towered above them. “Our deepest energies will combine in a lightning bolt of halm!” The torch hissed and seemed to flare. All eyes were riveted to it. “We will raise a righteous flame of halm to scour our land of the invaders!” The torch swooped downward as he wrenched it in a terrible arc, and the air was full of fire. The shanevoralin rose screaming from their perches. The listening Koi gasped as one.

  “His halm is very strong,” Lute rasped at Verde’s ear. “Do you see the flames dancing around him? Such power alone could draw the people to him!”

  Verde could not see the halm fire, but he sensed the surge of power through the cavern, felt the lust for vengeance erupt within his own brain. “No. No!” he howled into the clamor.

  “Now! Come with me now! Light the flame!” Andreas circled faster, white hair, white skin, radiant heat in the form of a man, dead-black torch held out in a sphere of fire. From out of the moaning crowd stepped Hrin. The gull-beasts shrieked. Andreas stopped, held up a hand for silence. With the other he held the torch out in offering. The two faced each other, Andreas aflame, Hrin dark with conflict. Unable to move, Verde watched the balance slipping as Hrin felt blindly in a pocket, his eyes fixed on the madman, and brought out a Terran pocket lighter. Verde squinted against the garish plastic glare. The lighter seemed to glow with its own rabid fire on the Koi’s ruddy palm, and as Hrin readied the lighter to strike, Verde saw in him a reflection of Ra’an and understood how much more than Terran lives was at stake, that the frail and precious goal of Balance, integral to all that was best and special in the Koi nature, had found its ultimate denial in the person of James Andreas.

  Hrin lifted his burning lighter to the torch. The flame caught and rose. Still Andreas held it out, his gray eyes mirroring the blaze. “Will you come, brother? While the Terrans hatch their plots above, we will open a way through the tunnels of your ancestors. Will you carry the fire?”

  “The torch is yours to carry,” Hrin challenged doubtfully.

  Andreas tossed his head with a luminous smile. “Ah, but I have no need of it. My vision lights my way.”

  Hrin raised a hand to the torch. Andreas kept his hold. “Come! Carry it for me!” He removed his hand. The torch shivered with the agony of Hrin’s indecision.

  “N’e carel atha, veruth de’ir na celeratha,” Andreas quoted softly as a lover’s caress.

  Hrin’s arm snapped up. “To the tunnels!” The torch blazed above his head in affirmation. Of the three hundred Koi who filled the cavern, half joined their voices in a single shout.

  Andreas whirled and leaped to the cavern entrance. Verde felt the shock of one final halmic exhortation pass through his body, and Andreas was gone, running down the passageway on bare, silent feet, sure and fleet and ravenous.

  Hrin hesitated but a moment, then charged after him. Others followed, and when movement ceased and the only sound was of feet slapping along distant rock, little more than a
hundred remained. The shanevoralin had vanished.

  “Through the huruss tunnels?” Verde demanded. “He can’t make it through that way, can he? Without food or water?”

  “Or fresh air,” added Damon. “Who knows? We won’t know unless he does make it, and then…”

  “And then…” Verde looked around weakly at faces as stunned as his own. He returned the grasp of comfort from Damon’s strong hand and let out a groaning sigh. “Lute, correct me if I’m wrong, but this halm weapon of James’ will not be selective, will it? When he says he’s going to kill all Terrans, he means all Terrans, ourselves included?”

  Slowly, sadly, the old Koi nodded.

  Chapter 26

  A rough hand shook Clennan awake. Julio Ramos stood over him, his bulk decked out in full uniform so that the tiny cubicle seemed full of polished brass and creased trousers. A small army of subalterns waited in the corridor, eyes and ears averted. Clennan staggered to his feet, brushing hair out of his eyes.

  Ramos was literally rubbing his hands with excitement. “Had to come, Billy, had to be in on this myself! This is the big one, boy!”

  “I’m… ah… glad you’re pleased, sir. Glad to be working with you, sir, I mean, directly.”

  “Well, you’ll just carry on with your little investigation. You’re doing a fine job, Billy, fine job.” His eyes narrowed as he jostled around restlessly in the cramped space. He automatically lifted papers from the littered desk and put them down again. “I’m here to oversee the mobilization.”

  “Mobilization?” Clennan echoed groggily, not sure he had heard right.

  “Going to restore some order in this town,” Ramos asserted. “Start throwing tourists in jail if we have to.”

  “I tried to persuade them to declare martial law,” Clennan began.

  “So we’ll be bringing in troops and equipment.” An aide came to the door with a clipboard full of papers. Ramos glanced through them and nodded. The aide scurried away. “I’m planning a full-scale assault this time, no more of these pansy expeditions. No halfway measures, you know?”