A Rumor of Angels
Page 32
“James!”
The call was dreamy with distance. Jude was not sure she had heard it at all.
“James!”
It neared, a panting cry. It settled through the submerged layers of the Gathering’s awareness like a pebble sinking through water. The beast halted in mid-spiral with an answering roar of triumph.
Jude struggled within the turbulence of the web. She reached for her physical senses, remembered where her feet were, and dug them hard into the reality of burning sand. She slitted open her eyes to the glare of the noon sun. Andreas had risen and stood staring to the south.
A form distilled out of the heat mirage. A dark apparition raced toward them along the wet sand at the water’s edge. Long black hair whipped in the wind.
Ra’an.
Jude’s halmvoice rose in instinctive warning. RA’AN! He did not answer.
RA’AN!
The sagging of the madman’s shoulders was unmistakably relief. With strength born of new hope, James Andreas grabbed control of his destroyer beast and brought it to a halt while the web seethed in passion and confusion.
Shivering in the hot sun, the madman waited for his brother to come to him.
Clennan knocked at the upstairs entrance to the radio station. He glanced down the grimy hallway and called out softly, “Liberator!” He was rewarded with the sound of heavy objects being dragged aside behind the door. A crack opened to reveal Damon Montserrat aiming a huge stunner. When Damon saw Luteverindorin at Clennan’s shoulder, he threw the door wide.
Clennan hurried in. “One thirty-eight. I’m late. More of Ramos’ damn roadblocks.” He inspected the temporary command headquarters that he had never laid eyes on until that moment. The janitors had done their work. The layout was exactly as planned, totally familiar. Clennan strode straight to the little computer terminal, scanned the monitor array. Hand-printed labels read: network, corridor, aux. He studied the maps pinned to the wall above the screens. So far, no surprises.
He counted chairs, ushered Lute to the one nearest the head seat at the console. Verde came in from the broadcast studio with a sheet of paper. Clennan read through the scribbles and crossings, nodding.
“A great spiel, Mitch… and you claim you’re no good at public relations! Start broadcasting as soon as the explosions die down, all frequencies, and keep it up until you drop.” He passed the paper back. “The tourists’ll panic anyway, those left behind, but it might calm them some to know what’s going on.” He offered Verde a knowing look. “No more Dark Powers stuff, eh?”
Verde called up a meager grin and retreated into the studio. Damon replaced the desks and tape racks across the front door and followed.
Clennan seated himself at the console, flexing his hands like a concert artist. The terminal hummed comfortingly. Less comfortingly, the chronometer flicked seconds away with clicks that punctuated the silence with hammer blows. Clennan hunched, willed his shoulders to relax. “Review battle stations. Lute.”
Lute activated the colony halmweb. The Koi assigned to each demolition or assault team relayed back their position and readiness. Clennan eyed the maps. He pointed to the central monitor. “When the kid plugs me in, it’ll show up on this screen. You give the signal to the cellars, them let me know when the Wall is down.”
The glassmaker smiled his assent. He looked undersized, out of place against the plastic-and-metal chairback. He did not look nervous.
Clennan smiled back. The old Koi’s presence was steadying. With his hands at forced rest to either side of the keyboard, Clennan watched the center screen, waiting for it to spring to life.
Ra’an reached the outer edge of the multitude. Barely slowing, he shoved his way through roughly. The crowd bent around him like wheat before a wind. Damp and breathless, he pushed into the open in the precise spot on the sand that Andreas had predicted for him. Jude groaned aloud.
Andreas trembled. His eyes devoured Ra’an with unholy welcome. “At last,” he murmured. “We are complete.”
Ra’an brushed sweat from his eyes, a nervous straining gesture. He looked haunted, worn, leaner and taller than Jude remembered. He had resumed his Terran clothing. The black pants and black shirt cut a knife-edge silhouette against the hot white sand and the paler garments of the Gathering.
A Koi alien among Koi. Jude ached for him, for herself. He’s accepted the challenge. James did not misjudge him after all. But she was no longer sure she understood the role James intended him to play. With Ra’an’s coming, the focus shifted radically. Jude conserved her newfound strength and waited.
Andreas let a kind of smile light his face. “I knew you would come.”
Breathing hard, Ra’an nodded. His opening gambit was dry mockery. “In answer to your summons.”
“For our father’s sake,” Andreas urged.
Ra’an squinted, a fine twitching around his eyes, against the sun and the whiteness of the madman’s face. His chest heaved in a brusque sigh, acceptance of the melodrama inevitable in such a confrontation. “For our father’s sake,” he echoed ritualistically. He made it sound like a concession, like playing along with a child’s game, and as he spoke, he moved in closer. “But mostly for yours.” His voice softened. “James. Leave this. Come home with me.”
Andreas dipped his pale head, a coltlike shying. Tiny tremors shot through his thighs, up his back. His fingers pointed stiffly toward the sand. “Home, brother?” he asked, as if amazed. “To Terra? To Daniel’s house in the Quarter? We have no home, you and I.”
Ra’an advanced another cautious step, soothing, new dampness beading his skin. “Then we will make one.”
The madman’s spasms quickened. “Yes!” he hissed. “You will make it. Not for me, but for all the others. For that I brought you here.”
Ra’an hesitated, shook his head. “I came on my own, James.”
“You came because I summoned you!”
A final step brought them face to face. “I came because you need me.” Ra’an reached, lightly touched the madman’s shoulder as if brushing an insect. “Accept that, James, and know it means more than any futures you may intend to bring about.”
“They need you!” Andreas cried, and stepped back to sweep an arm across the arc of waiting thousands. But the gesture was wild, and he fought to restrain his body from following its furious spiral. His gray eyes went wide with effort. He hugged his thin chest as if holding himself together and whispered, barely audible, “Brother, I am finished… nearly finished here… now it’s up to you, from here on.”
“What’s up to me?” Ra’an frowned, then matched the whisper, pleading. “James, wait. This vision of revenge is your madness. Leave it. You can, right now, while you listen to me. Leave it behind and come with me. Let Arkoi determine its own future, as we will determine ours, together.”
Andreas backed from the proffered hand, his eyes glaring. “Don’t pretend you don’t understand!”
Frustrated, Ra’an roared back, “I don’t understand!”
Andreas’ body jerked like a broken machine. “Then I must make it clearer,” he snarled, the glaze hardening into a white glare. He fixed Ra’an with a taunting grin. “Come join our Gathering, brother, and you will learn what I have planned for you!”
Ra’an stiffened as if slapped. The rebuff was a cutting anguish, and he doused his pain with an instinctive surge of anger that radiated from him like waves on a lake. The throng murmured. Across the sand, Jude winced and readied her defenses. But Ra’an mastered himself. For a moment, he was an utterly neutral presence, suspended in time, and all gathered there on the beach were suspended with him, for the next move could only be his. He looked away, out over the azure water. Jude thought he sighed like a man preparing to take a matter in hand though it meant meeting death head-on. At last he turned and met the madman’s glare. “You will take no further part in this Gathering, James.”
The glare grew eager, hungry. “You cannot stop me. My mind is not yours to control… any longer.”
He looked up again and around the gathering, a flick of amazement at his own rush to confession in a public arena. His eyes skated past Jude blindly and returned to Andreas, intent, demanding. “I have forgiven Daniel, now that I have realized how much of my love for him had soured into resentment. You must forgive him also, James, and then you will lose heart for this massacre of Terrans, as I have.” He offered his hand to the madman once more. “James. Please. Will you walk away down this beach with me and let the Koi decide for themselves how much blood they will spill?”
“No.” Andreas tossed his head once, then again and again, until his fine white hair whipped about his face. “It’s too late for that now, no, too late! What is set in motion must be completed!”
Ra’an’s tongue moved across his lower lip as if finding the words distasteful before he said them. “I will try to prevent this, James.” His voice slowed with deadly purpose. “I am not so harmless as you think.”
Andreas jeered, but above the snarl, pride flickered briefly in his eyes. “I know what you are, brother,” he urged softly. “Come, show me.”
“I was always the stronger, James, do you remember that?”
The madman’s body danced puppetlike. He turned to the throng and spread his arms wide. “The Koi without halm threatens me!” he cried tauntingly. He whirled back to Ra’an. “What will you do, brother? Break my arm? Pin me to the sand? Come, brother, we deal in greater powers here! Show me yours!”
Jude had a sudden insight. He’s goading him. He wants him to attack.
Ra’an waited, impassive.
Do it! she called to him, but felt no reception, no reply. Andreas was behind her suddenly, looking down at her as she sat frozen on her driftwood log. His knees grazed her rigid back.
“You understand,” he murmured, touching her hair with infinite gentleness. “We do what must be done to preserve the future.” He raised both hands, and she could feel them hovering on either side of her neck like a chill breeze. She was lost in his tall shadow, mesmerized by the sure knowledge that at the other end of this moment of stillness lay death and destruction. Her eyes met Ra’an’s briefly, tried to hold, but he pulled away.
Ra’an! You cannot prevent my involvement in this! James decided that for us, long ago!
“Well, brother?” chided Andreas. “I am waiting. Have you come all this way to do nothing? I will, we all will think you a coward… Come, show me how you will stop me!” He laid his fingers against Jude’s skin, so lightly that she felt no pressure, only their deathly cold. Fingertips caressed, searched out the vein, the nerve points.
The halm stillness was shattered. Raw power exploded through the web. Jude’s brain rocked, recoiled, as the Destroyer raised his battle cry once more. The pent-up fervor of his forces boiled around him as he gathered them in readiness to strike.
But Ra’an still waited, unaware, watching Andreas, who seemed to stand before him calmly, hands resting on Jude’s shoulders.
Jude started, tried to stand. Andreas held her down with iron strength. He cannot hear the call! It will be done before he can lift a finger!
—He will hear if you help him.
She opened her mouth, but his hand locked around her jaw. She struggled, wrenched her head aside, for an instant broke free.
“RA’AN!” she screamed. “RA…!”
The madman’s hands circled her throat and tightened.
The center screen glowed green. Data rolled across, transport schedules, arrivals, departures. Desperately, Clennan scanned the figures, locked in on the item he’d been searching for: departure pending, 1:45.
“That’s it,” he breathed.
The chronometer read 1:44:48.
“Do it, Lute.” Clennan’s fingers worked the keys and waited.
1:44:52.
Lute sent out the halm signal to the cellars.
The corridor monitor flickered, ready, it read.
“Good man, Jeffries,” Clennan muttered. He watched the departure layout like a hawk.
1:44:59. The center screen blanked and began to rebuild the schedule information. Clennan sucked his cheek.
1:45. Outgoing: on-schedule departure.
Clennan nodded and looked to Lute for the signal.
Jude did not struggle. Her role was clear to her at last. As the pressure on her throat twisted into pain and her lungs ached for air, she reached out with her mind to hammer a warning into Ra’an’s unyielding brain. She circled. She beat at the walls he hid behind. It was like beating bare fists against a rock. Her brain hurt. Her body was in agony.
He won’t… I can’t…! She feared that she would die before she could get through to him.
Do it yourself! she pleaded with Andreas. I cannot!
—You can, he replied, even as his grip tightened. You must. You are my only link. Would I put you through this if I could do it myself?
Her lungs were empty. Her body spasmed. She could not hold it limp against its struggle for life. The pain blinded her and yet she did not pass out and so the pain went on and on and she could not scream. Through a halo of blood haze, she could see Ra’an watching her death throes as if paralyzed with horror and indecision. The roar of the Destroyer’s army mixed with the roaring of her pulse in her ears. She thought of Anaharimel’s calm in the face of death and subdued her panic for a final summing of all she knew by instinct and all she had learned during her days in Arkoi. She focused her halmvoice, fine-tuned it, for it was growing weak. She reached securely, without forced demand. She found him, touched him, wrapped her halmpresence around him. Her power was not in brute strength like the Destroyer’s but in breadth, in resilience, and finally, in persistence. She overwhelmed him with her need, and as she had when she was dying once before, he opened his mind to her and listened.
She relayed to him the lethal passion spiraling through the web in answer to the Destroyer’s call. She showed him the Gathering swiveling its sights toward the colony, preparing for genocide. She felt his shock, the sudden surge of his outrage. Now there was no hesitation left in him. He reached for her instinctively and hung on as if hauling himself out of a blind pit. His voice in her head sounded like her own.
Find him for me… be my eyes and ears to the web… find him, isolate him. You must aim the weapon for me.
The madman’s hands crushed into her throat. She no longer felt the pain, only a great weakness and a fading of the light. Dizzily she sought Andreas in the web, followed the searing trail marked by the Destroyer beast on the rampage, found and focused on it as it whirled to devour its pursuer. She locked in on it with her last seconds of consciousness.
Ra’an! Now!
Ra’an struck with such awesome power that the beast reared back with a scream. Andreas’ body staggered. His hands flung themselves violently from Jude’s throat as if her skin was fire. The beast’s mad shriek of pain in the web was echoed along the beach as Andreas doubled over and fell to his knees. Aides, rushing to defend their leader, searched the web frantically for the source of the attack. The beast screeched and lashed out blindly in its rage and pain. Its own supporters retreated from its charge. Its troops milled in confusion. Ra’an was invisible in the web, tied to it by a link which became also invisible as Jude, gasping for new breath, recalled the lesson of the ocean and obscured herself in the chaos. She lined h
erself up so that Ra’an could strike again.
—WAIT!
—LISTEN!
The Gathering held its breath. Even the Destroyer beast froze mid-yowl and raised its muzzle to sniff out this new threat. Andreas raised his head from the sand, eyes wide with wonder and pain. Above, the shanevoralin flew loops and cartwheels in the air.
—WAIT! A faint new voice reached for their attention, many voices, growing stronger with each repeat of their message.
—LISTEN!
Those whom the Destroyer had driven from the web rejoined it cautiously.
—What…?
—Who…?
Andreas rolled in anguish on the sand.
—The Wall is down!
—THE WALL IS DOWN!
The beast screeched its frustration and denial as its troops slipped away from its control. The army raised to strike across the mountains sank back, distracted by the miracle.
—The Wall is down!
Long-lost friends and relatives flooded the web. They wasted no time on explanations or greetings but called for immediate attention.
1:45:05.
Clennan swallowed hard and leaned into the keyboard, he typed “GO LIBERATOR!”
Poised millimeters above three red buttons, Ron Jeffries’ fingers dropped like stones.
The world shuddered. Every living thing in Arkoi felt the blow, as if the very air of the planet were being sucked away. Just as suddenly, the world was whole again, and the colony yielded up its predawn lassitude to chaos.
Split seconds after the corridor devoured itself in a flash of light and gouts of dirty flame and smoke, the armories followed.
From the deep-cellars and from hiding places in the city streets, on the run from the panicked Terran army, giddy with fear and joy, the exiles relayed a moment-by-moment account to the Gathering on the beach in Quaire’en: laser fire lighting up the still-dark streets, shadows running, swerving into alleys and doorways, barracks domes erupting into orange bursts of flame, and other images, quieter ones, that brought a wondering hope to the Gathering as it saw the eager glee of six colonial police officers accepting the surrender of a unit of confused Terran army recruits, or the renewed fire of determination in the eyes of Mitchell Verde as he sat by a microphone with Luteverindorin to broadcast his repeated message of peace.