A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Clennan decided he wasn’t awake yet. “Assault on what?”

  “Out There, Billy, Out There!” Ramos pushed through his entourage at the door and bore down the corridor toward the dispatch room. Clennan struggled after him, pausing only to douse his face at the water cooler.

  “This room’ll be big enough,” declared Ramos, peering into Dispatch. He moved in and took immediate possession. He shoved a pile of tapes and coffee cups to one end of a long table, sent a few loungers scuttling back to their desks, and patted the cleared surface. “I’ll want detailed maps of the Native Quarter and a list of any Terrans with connections there. I want to know their comings and goings, business dealings, private lives, etc.”

  “We have most of that information, sir,” said Clennan. “But at this moment…”

  “Then while the colony police are quieting things down, my men will round up the Natives for one-on-one questioning.” He answered Clennan’s look of dismay with a wave. “Now, I know we’ve tried that before, but this time we know what we’re looking for. Won’t hurt to try. Leave no stone unturned.”

  Clennan pointed along the wall. “The maps are in alphabetical order according to sector.”

  Ramos pounded the table with his palm. “Here, Billy, here. In front of my eyes.”

  “Right.” Clennan yanked open a file drawer with a little too much pique, then caught himself. He unfolded a sheath of maps in front of his chief and stood back, waiting.

  “Ah. Thanks. And we’ll keep those Natives in detention this time,” Ramos said.

  “Isn’t the Quarter detention enough, sir?”

  “Bill.” Ramos looked disappointed. “You heard what that kid said. This goddamn Wall or whatever it is is operated from somewhere inside the Quarter!” He flattened a sweaty hand against an opened map. “We’ve got to tear it apart stone by stone.”

  “So you believe what the kid said about this telepathic stuff. How do you explain it?”

  Ramos shrugged. “No stone unturned, Billy. When you’ve got a lot of weird things happening, sometimes it takes something weird to explain them. I’ve been trying to tell that to the upstairs boys for ages. This’ll show ’em!” Ramos grew serious. “I knew those Native bastards were protecting something! Once we find that Wall mechanism, it’s over the mountains, full force. Arkoi will be ours in six months!”

  Clennan’s head was spinning. Armed assault against an invisible barrier? Could Ramos accept such a paradox calmly? “Right. Then, I guess I’ll get back down to Interrogation and drag some more details out of the kid.”

  Ramos shook his head, easing his weight into a chair. “Forgot to tell you. The kid managed to do himself in this morning.”

  “Killed himself?”

  “Don’t worry, Billy. Not your fault. Long hours like this, people got to sleep some time.”

  “Wait a minute. That kid killed himself? How? He was in isolation, drugged, plugged in, strapped down, totally monitored…”

  Ramos took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “It’s not exactly clear. The medicom tapes show a sharp pulse rise around eight a.m., then his EEG went completely nuts. Twenty seconds later, his heart stopped beating, brain death soon after. Unbelievably fast, the whole thing.”

  “Who was on duty?”

  “He was getting himself some coffee. When he came back, it was too late.”

  Clennan checked his watch desperately. “It’s nine-thirty! Why didn’t anybody wake me?”

  “They were still falling over themselves trying to figure out what happened when I arrived.” He favored Clennan with an avuncular wink. “Told them to let you sleep in a little. Don’t worry. Well get the information we need.” He turned his attention to the map pinned under his palm. “Now, what about this fellow Verde?”

  What indeed? Clennan realized he was sweating, though the air conditioning was on full blast. For a man who does not believe in premonition, it is an awful moment when he first feels it stirring. Puzzle pieces. Lacey dead, instantly, mysteriously. Just hours after he had made claims of murderous abilities on the part of the Natives. Then Verde’s Native kid, more fuel for his premonition in the just-recalled image of her, eyes clenched shut, attackers dropping around her without being touched. Then there was Verde’s own disappearance. Coincidence? Clennan’s gut told him no. If Ramos was willing to believe in telepathic barriers…

  Got to track down Verde, he decided, giving in to obsession because it was the only possible lead he could see. Verde knows. Verde is the key.

  Chapter 27

  Evening bathed Ruvala in a honeyed lavender darkness. Under the great leaf dome, the reunited family gathered for dinner on a wooden platform set within the central ring of trees. Jude decided to play the tourist, as an excuse for doing a lot of obvious listening and looking. The homecoming had not proceeded as she had expected, and she had nothing but her powers of observation and deduction to explain what was going on.

  The diners sat on woven mats and cushions embroidered with bright calligraphy at a low round table broad enough for twenty. Clusters of small luminous globes hung from the upper branches like glowing fruit. Outside the circle of light, runways of polished inlay radiated off to smaller platforms of varying heights, gathering here a shadowed mass of cabinetry and shelves full of richly bound books, there a plush rug set about with more cushions and squat tables bearing painted vases of flowers or bowls of fruit. Beyond, the thick trunks with their stairways leading upward into the leaves.

  In being introduced to the family, Jude had learned that Yron was not the surname she had supposed, but the name of the wondrous tree dwelling itself. Thus, all who lived beneath its branches were tel-Yron, no matter what their lineage.

  Gathered around the table, beside Ra’an and herself, was his mother, Rya, who had taken Jude in hand with delicate courtesy as the only family member who shared a language with her, guiding her through the afternoon until the family convened from the fields for dinner, asking few questions, showing off the house, all the while using Jude as a barrier between herself and her stranger son, inhibiting conversation beyond the level of small talk.

  Next to Rya sat her sister, Dal, younger than Rya, shorter and rounder, with blue-black hair untouched by the silver that streaked Rya’s thick dark braid. Beyond sat Elgri, now feeding berries to a large blue-and-yellow bird perched on his shoulder, and beside him wriggled Dal’s twin children, a nine-year-old boy and girl, who regarded Jude with frank but cheerful curiosity every time she said something in her outlandish language. The larger part of their attention was lavished on their grizzled, energetic grandfather, Gire’en, as he explained in detail some mysterious process that Jude could not quite catch, though she enjoyed his attempts to clarify with spoons and piles of crackers laid in patterns on the tablecloth. Completing the circle was the twins’ father, Tekhon, a stocky blond man who Jude learned was from the vast grasslands to the south. He had met Dal at a market fair one year and came to live at Yron soon thereafter. The twins were ruddy-skinned, like their mother, but had inherited their father’s flaxen hair, so that Jude, who could not void the comparison from her mind, thought that this was what angels would look like if they ever got sunburned.

  Finally, stationed at strategic corners of the platform, were three shaggy wolfish creatures, resting their giant heads on four-toed paws and casting hopeful glances on bowls of food passed from diner to diner.

  The meal, which had been spectacular, was nearly over. There had been huge bowls of wheat cooked with spices and mint, little flaky pies filled with egg and cheese, stuffed vegetables and broiled fruit to be eaten with thin crusted brown bread, more fruit and hard crackers, and a sweet-sour cheese that was eaten with a spoon. Now occupying the center of the table was a flat blue dish heaped with crystallized nectar. Laying aside the emptied rind of a peri melon, Jude concluded that Rya had laid out a feast to celebrate her son’s return, for she could not imagine such plenty inhabiting an everyday table.

  Yet it had been strang
ely unlike a celebration. Like Rya, the family had welcomed the travelers warmly but without occasion, as if they had merely wandered in for supper from next door. The adults asked politely after their particular friends who had gone to live in the colony all those years before, but they had not, they said, known these people well, and though their interest seemed genuine, it was without urgency. Even the giggling curiosity of the children was focused on how funny the strangers were rather than on exploring the oddity of whatever place they might have come from. The twins did not seem to know what the colony was.

  Jude felt out of phase. It was not just the language barrier or her own conflicting reactions to this place that played such havoc with her perceptual mechanisms, even to the point of leaving her slightly nauseous. Food and darkness had eased the nausea somewhat, as the table, the food, the people sitting around it, were definitely here and now, unmuddied by any shimmering echoes from the past. Jude was grateful to be able to enjoy her meal.

  As for the language, the closest thing to a conversation in an incomprehensible tongue that she had ever experienced was when she had once, back in school, tried to eat lunch with a clique of math students. Here she had Rya on one side and Ra’an on the other, translating when they remembered. She managed to understand most of the dinner chatter, enough to know that, clever and brilliant as it might be, it was merely that: chatter. Keyed up from their arrival and Ra’an’s expectations of a confrontation, Jude was at a loss as to how to interpret this overtly casual reception of two runaways from the supposedly dreaded Terran colony. Don’t they care where we’ve been? Don’t they mind what I am?

  There was one clue. After Rya’s first gentle probing, Jude had felt no further attempts to mindspeak her, and she could tell from the degree of Ra’an’s withdrawal that he had not managed the halm contact he waited for. Jude was not about to violate some unknown protocol by trying to halmspeak herself, but she did sense, underneath the symphonic swelling of talk and laughter, a continual murmuring, a silent conversation of which she was picking up only the static, the adults perhaps, halmspeaking among themselves. Whatever it was, it was giving her a violent headache to replace the receding nausea.

  Beside her, Ra’an fought his own inner battles. Jude wondered if his bewilderment and growing anger was as apparent to the others as they were to her. His attempts to steer the conversation toward a serious consideration of the problems in the colony were met with bland attention and an artful change of subject. No mention was made of Ra’an’s exclusion from the halmtalk. Is this to spare him pain, or is it merely that it’s awkward to admit that you’re talking behind someone’s back?

  As she listened carefully for further clues, she realized that she had not heard anyone interrupt all evening, that there were no overlapping private conversations, but a unified flow of talk in which everyone took part. Even Rya’s translations to her were worked into the whole, and though the flow was rapid and organic, there was never any confusion about who held the floor at any given moment. As she sat back and analyzed it, even when the meaning eluded her, the structure was awesome. A musical comparison was not out of place. This was a kind of performance she was witnessing, a dinnertime concert complete with theme and variations, soloists and improvisations. They were so skilled at it that they could include a Terran who could not even read the music. As well as one of their own who hadn’t played in years and didn’t seem to be sure that he wanted to.

  Now Elgri embarked on a long recitation that Rya explained involved a neighbor and her dairy herd. Jude noted how the boy’s back straightened as he began, and now she understood that the slight quaver in his voice probably meant a touch of stagefright, that he had taken center without being quite sure that his material would work. The neighbor and her animals, it seemed, were having a dispute over milking hours. Elgri took one part, then the other, and from the glee his performance evoked among the twins, it was clear that imitations were his strong point. As the story ended amid general laughter and applause, Elgri sat back flushed and grinning with an I-made-it look in his eyes. Only then did Rya turn to Jude to elaborate.

  “The, ah, the cows…” She searched her rusty Terran vocabulary between giggles. Her command of the language made quantum leaps with each hour spent renewing it in conversation. “Always they come home to milk when it is dark. Now in the summer, the night comes later, but then it is Seyanna’s dinner hour when they come, and the cows say the milk is not right if they come home earlier, and this happens every summer, and well, you see…” Rya threw up her hands in helpless merriment.

  Jude joined dutifully in the laughter, though she could see why the farmer would not find this funny. Ra’an smiled thinly and refilled his mug with the hot yeasty drink that Tekhon had brought at the end of the meal. His fingers played impatient rhythms on the leaping ceramic fish that served as a handle, but as the conversation turned, he did make a wan effort to discuss the year’s projected harvest with his uncle-in-law. Tekhon’s conversational music was unembellished and logically structured, to suit his subject matter or perhaps his own nature.

  At last Rya rose, collecting an armful of dishes. The children did likewise, while Dal and the elderly Gire’en sipped their drink comfortably and continued talking. Jude reached to gather their plates along with her own, and they looked up surprised, laughing. The static in Jude’s head buzzed a trifle louder.

  “They will bring them when they are finished,” Rya said gently. “Come. I will show you the kitchens.”

  There were three kitchens, and except in size, for they were enormous, they were to Jude’s eye exact replicas of the little galley on the huruss. The appliances bore no brand label or extraneous decoration, yet the rooms were in no way impersonal. Rya showed her how to load the big dishwashers while Ra’an trailed along moodily, reacquainting himself by poking into cabinets and cold chests.

  “Rya,” Jude asked experimentally, “would I find exactly the same kitchen anywhere in Arkoi?”

  Rya seemed puzzled. “The same kitchen? No, ah, a kitchen is designed to the needs of the house.”

  “Well, I mean the equipment.”

  “Ah, yes. That is the same, ah, standard.”

  “All from one factory? A monopoly?”

  “No, there are assembly centers in every region.”

  “But they don’t put their name on the pieces they build?”

  “Or compete with each other in price,” Ra’an put in.

  Rya’s smile was blank. “They put a number on each so that they know how many they have built. Also it is for repairs.”

  Jude pounced. “So they do break down!”

  Rya searched for the subtext in this inquiry. “Nothing is perfect, of course. You have to take care of things, and then they last a long time.” She looked around the room as if seeking out an example. “This kitchen is the new one, added when I first brought Kirial home. It has behaved very well.”

  “That would make it around thirty-five years old,” supplied Ra’an smugly.

  “But how do the factories make a living?” Jude objected.

  Rya struggled to recall that particular Terran idiom.

  “I mean, they must have calls for about one stove a year!” Jude elaborated.

  Rya took this literally. “There are about two hundred assembly centers, so each one serves around a hundred thousand households. If all equipment were replaced on a conservative cycle of one hundred years, each center would still have one thousand kitchens to assemble every year, so you see that they are kept very busy.”

  “That’s busy?”

  Ra’an chuckled mordantly as he watched Jude struggle with memories of robot assembly lines cranking out a thousand stoves a day.

  “There’s always a waiting list for new appliances back home,” she said. “You’re lucky if a stove lasts two years, never mind thirty-five.” She tried a new tack. “But don’t they get bored, building the same stove year after year?”

  Rya looked her over with mild surprise. “I raise the
same crops year after year and it does not bore me.”

  “But you have your work. I mean, Ra’an told me you were a biologist.”

  “Whatever I do is my work. The builders of stoves have other work as well. The assembly centers do research, in metallurgy perhaps, or microelectronics. As my time is divided between the laboratory and the fields, so theirs is, between the lab and the workbench.” Rya laughed. She had finally caught on to the lesson she was teaching. “Ah, you are a Terran after all, my dear. Come. I will show you the rest.”

  All the mechanical requirements of the household were neatly concealed below ground level: the kitchens, pantries, laundry, water supply, and heaters, an array of luxurious baths that were again reminiscent of the huruss but palatial in size. There was a large collection and distribution plant for the power gathered from solar and wind devices mounted at the top of the tree dome. The layout of rooms and corridors was a bit baroque, owing to the need to avoid the trees root network, but many entrances from above ground provided quick access to any area.

  Rya’s extensive laboratory wing with its attached infirmary showed an impressive but homey practicality, so that Jude didn’t really think it incongruous to find a gleaming lab in a household that ostensibly lived off the land. The infirmary was Dal’s kingdom, which she ruled, as Rya did her lab, in the evenings, on rainy days, outside the growing season, or whenever an emergency arose.

  As they climbed back upstairs, Rya laid a motherly arm around Jude’s waist. “It is only a house, after all. Someday you will see Quaire’en. Now that is truly a marvel.”

  “Quaire’en.” Ra’an’s murmur was like a sigh.

  “Quaire’en is the great seaside city,” Rya continued. “A city of glass built into the sea cliffs! It’s like living inside a crystal. When I first went there as a little girl, I thought I was dreaming!”

  A city of glass. Jude’s balance wavered briefly. I did dream of such a city, she thought, but held her tongue.