Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1)

by Francis W. Porretto

  From the onlookers came a cheer such as no one in Defiance had ever heard, a sound of pure, wondrous joy. It pulled Hopeless from hundreds of surrounding hovels to gape at the little geyser Armand had contrived. The cheer went on and on, growing louder as it went.

  Armand waited. When the noise had begun to die, he pulled out the throttle, cleared his throat, and brought his hands together smartly. The crack of impact pulled every eye to him, and the cheering ceased.

  "That's how it's done," he shouted. "One man builds something that others want. Then he offers it to them, for a price." He released the pinches that sealed the capillaries in his hand, waited a moment for the blood flow to resume, and held it up to drip before them. "Who wants fresh running water piped to his home?"

  The crowd responded with an inarticulate roar.

  "I see. Then bring me pipe, and lead to weld it with. Bring me grease for the fittings, and fuel for the pump engine. I'll keep it running, if you'll keep it fueled. Apart from that, the water is my gift to you." He paused to pull Teresza close against him and savor the incredulous silence. "It's free."

  And their neighbors converged upon them and hoisted them onto their shoulders for the first public celebration the village of Defiance had ever known.

  Chapter 24

  Victoria leaned against the bed that was to be hers as Magnusson and Mandeville hauled a large, ornate, heavily padded chair down the hall from the vault door.

  "What's that?"

  Ianushkevich stepped through the vault door behind them. "Your throne. Ceremonial, of course."

  "Where's it been?"

  "Out of the way, in storage. After Tellus began to...lose control, we stripped his chambers to minimize the number of ways he might hurt himself."

  And fifty or so years from now, you'll be doing it again.

  "Will you leave it here after the ceremony?"

  The chair settled to the thickly carpeted floor with a muffled thump. Magnusson grunted. Mandeville straightened and rubbed his lower back.

  "That's at your option," Ianushkevich said. "As long as we have the funds, we'll furnish this apartment to your liking no matter what that might be. It's scarcely recompense for what you'll be doing for the rest of Hope."

  And what the rest of Hope will never know.

  She stepped over to the throne and peered closely at it. Mandeville moved away as if he dared not touch her. He looked around the chamber with a comically false show of indifference. She wondered what the others had said about their liaison.

  She ran one hand along the throne's contours. It was an impressive chair, built to support any imaginable human weight. Its back and arms were elaborately painted and carved. Its seat was upholstered with a richness she'd never before seen in a piece of furniture. But the erectness of the back and the length of the seat suggested that it wouldn't do to sit on it for long, even for a God.

  The thought of her impending encystment and anonymity rose to bedevil her. Even as a student, she'd had prestige, influence, and the attention of anyone whose attention she wanted. She'd looked forward to joining the most exalted family in the world, eventually becoming its clan matriarch, whose sayings, doings and tastes would be gossip fodder over the whole of Alta. But that was a senescent fantasy, something that would never be. Instead, she would be the most powerful and important person in existence, and only four persons would even know her by name. The rest of the Cabal, laboring in various ways to preserve and nurture her, would know her only as Terra, she who protected the life of Earth on Hope.

  Charles Petrus stepped through the vault door with a thick leather folio under his arm. He glanced around the chamber, took silent note of the throne and other furniture his colleagues had replaced, and nodded to no one in particular. He laid the folio on the large bed and spread it open. It contained a brace of vials, six hypodermics, a small silver globe on which Alta and Sulla were outlined in gold filigree, and a silver tiara whose points were picked out in sapphires and diamonds.

  My crown. Well, why not?

  "Did my predecessor wear that?"

  Petrus looked over his shoulder and grinned faintly. "He had one made for him. This one was made for you."

  "But did he wear it?"

  "Not often." Petrus commenced to fill the hypodermics from the vials.

  All of that stuff is about to go into me.

  A current of fear worked its way out of her hindbrain, where she'd kept it sealed away for weeks. It leaked down her spine and through her extremities. She forced herself to stand very still.

  "I thought you were an agronomist."

  "I am," Petrus said. "But I also have an unusually steady hand."

  She turned away.

  A moment later she felt Mandeville move up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. The touch was meant to be comforting, yet she could draw no comfort from it.

  "Vicki," he whispered, "don't be afraid. I'll be with you. Now and always."

  And that's about all I have to look forward to. One lover for the rest of my life. A lover who'll be at my beck and call, but who's not particularly skilled. Who'll never range afield to learn any new tricks, because that's the way I want it, and he knows it.

  The irony of it was that he loved her. At the least, he was infatuated with her. She knew the pattern. She could smell it.

  I'll make do. I'll live...for a while, at least. And it won't be a bad life.

  "Victoria," Ianushkevich said, "would you stand before your throne, please?"

  She turned and smiled into Mandeville's face, then slid around him to where the parapsychologist motioned her.

  Ianushkevich, Magnusson, Petrus, and Mandeville formed an arc before her. The tiara dangled from Magnusson's hand. Ianushkevich cupped the little globe before him. Petrus clutched the brace of loaded hypodermics. For several heartbeats an unusual silence reigned.

  "We are exiles," Ianushkevich said, his tone formal and grave. "Our ancestral home, the womb that nurtured and sheltered Man to his maturity, is far away. This world of Hope, where we made landfall after our Hegira through the dark, does not love us. Perhaps it never will.

  "You have been Victoria Peterson, a free human woman of Hope. You have lived among us, sharing our common lot, while unknown to you another man gave his life -- not his death, but his life -- to sustain us all. In token of his sacrifice, he renounced his name and was forever after called Tellus: he who guards the life of Earth in exile. He renounced life as a man, to become one who holds a world filled with men in his hands: a God.

  "Tellus, the twenty-fourth of that office, is gone. You have been found worthy to take his place. But it is the one and only law of Hope that no man may be burdened without his free consent...not even for the life of the world and everything in it." The parapsychologist's voice shook with undisguised passion. "We know you are able. We have contrived to make you ready. But are you willing?"

  The question was not rhetorical. She knew them. They would stand aside, sacrifice all they and their predecessors had held in their keeping for twelve hundred years, rather than coerce her.

  "I am."

  "Then receive the symbol of your office."

  Magnusson started forward with the tiara in both hands, obviously intending to place it on her head. She held up a hand, and he stopped.

  "No. Let Ethan do it."

  The biophysicist's face clouded, but he handed the tiara to Mandeville. Her lover stepped forward, placed the gem-studded confection lightly on the crown of her head, and stepped back at once.

  "You have been Victoria Peterson," Ianushkevich said. "We ask that you become Terra, she who guards the life of Earth in exile, twenty-fifth of that office. You will be above all men, yet below them. They will live at your sufferance, but you will serve them with every instant of your life to come. Though they will never know of you, not the barest hint of your existence, yet every cell of their bodies will owe the life that pulses in it to you. We ask a second time: are you willing?"

  "I am."
r />   "Then receive the world into your hands."

  Ianushkevich presented her with the globe. She took it and cradled it in her cupped hands, as he had done. The parapsychologist stepped back and swiped at crimson-rimmed eyes. Mandeville was visibly shaking.

  "To complete your transition, we must administer six powerful drugs. They must be injected directly into your brain, where they will work changes both profound and permanent. They will make you capable of suppressing that which threatens the Earth life that guests here. But the process cannot be reversed. You have been told of its effects. In the name of Man in Exile, we ask for the third and final time: are you willing?"

  "I am."

  The four men bowed as one.

  "Then be seated, Terra, Goddess of Hope, and receive the instruments of communion with the world that will lie in your keeping."

  She settled onto the throne and sat perfectly straight and still.

  Petrus moved forward with his hypodermics.

  ***

  With less than a thousandth of Hope's diameter to go, with the first trickle of the Sun's warmth already warming Idem's outstretched limbs, It felt the outrider waves from the psi explosion above.

  It was happening again.

  Psi blasts converged on it from all directions. They lashed It, blinded It, lanced through Its being to shred and poison Its core. They dazzled and seared with an intensity that surpassed every torment of Its twelve centuries of confinement. It could not avert them. It could not shield against them. It could not abide them.

  It fled.

  It retracted its consciousness through the matter of Its usurped body barely fast enough to outrun the scourging from above. Down, through the crust, swiftly past the magma layers, and through the great deep walls of iron and nickel that the Other's whips had never yet penetrated. Even after the nickel-iron ramparts stood between Idem and the Other's inexplicable rage, It continued to flee.

  Presently It passed into the innermost core, the superhot, superdense sphere of iron and cobalt that didn't even have enough room to liquefy, the refuge where It had nursed its wounds down the long centuries, and hid there once again. It sucked greedily at the veins of antimony and copper that dangled through the magma layers, rebuilding Its nervous fibers as quickly as It could.

  Why?

  There was no other question. There could never be another, until that one was answered. It appeared that for half a century more, no answer would be forthcoming.

  Chapter 25

  Armand peered into the throat of the little carburetor for verisimilitude while his detached viewpoint quested within for the obstruction that had choked it. It was hardly a moment before he'd found the problem: a clot of carbonaceous lint, left unconsumed by the low-temperature distillation technique the Hopeless used to make alcohol from their composted wastes, was lodged firmly in the jet. He stuck a thin strip of stiff plastic into the device and swished it around as he closed a telekinetic grip on the clot, carefully teased it free, and anchored it to the end of his probe. He pulled the probe gently out of the carburetor's throat and showed the clot to Nigel Simpson.

  "See why I've been telling you to filter your alcohol before you use it?"

  Simpson snorted and reached for the carburetor. Armand pulled it out of his reach.

  "Did you forget my fee, Nigel?"

  The forger's face reddened. "Don't I have credit with you?"

  Armand stared him full in the eyes. "I have a wife to feed." At the far end of their hut, Teresza looked up from her sewing. Armand turned and grinned to indicate that the situation was non-threatening, and she returned to her labors. "No one has credit here. Particularly not a man as well known for his selective memory as you."

  Simpson sprouted angry lines around his mouth and eyes. He was twice Armand's age and half his size, a venal little toad of a man who'd steal the eyes out of Armand's head if he thought he could make a clean getaway. He was smart enough to know that he'd only get his property back if Armand could be persuaded to release it to him, but not smart enough to accept the fact with good grace.

  Over the six months since they'd crossed the land bridge, the Hopeless of Defiance had come to treasure Armand for his unparalleled knack with their ancient machinery. They revered him for his gift of the fresh-water well. In any contretemps he could count on the backing of nearly all his neighbors and other customers, some out of sincere gratitude, the rest for more practical reasons. Simpson could count on nothing at all.

  "All right." The forger shrugged off his backpack, rummaged around in it and produced a pint flask of clear liquid. He thrust it at Armand with a contemptuous gesture.

  Armand took it, eased out the fibrous stopper, and sniffed. "Vodka?"

  Simpson nodded. "Ninety proof."

  From you, that means probably no better than fifty proof, but I can still get what we need with it. He re-stopped the flask, shoved it to the other end of the rude table at which he sat, and tossed the carburetor to Simpson, who stuffed it into his pack. He looked up at Simpson with a why-aren't-you-gone-yet expression. Simpson stood there, the muscles in his face working.

  "Something else I can do for you, Nigel?"

  The forger looked away.

  "If you'd like me to take another look at your compost fermenter --"

  "It's not that." Simpson's face was redder than ever. "What the deuce are you doing here, Morrison? Did you rape some hot little piece at high noon in the middle of the Svobodna market?"

  Armand shook his head.

  "Nigel, before Terry and I rode over the land bridge, we sorted through our memories, chose some to keep and left the rest behind. That was one of the left-behinds. I haven't asked what your reason was to flee here. What makes you so curious about mine? Not enough to keep you occupied, or are you looking for something you can use?"

  Simpson glowered. "I don't like doing business with people I don't know anything about."

  "You know all you need to know." Armand leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his belly and splayed his legs out before him. "When your grinder breaks, you bring it to me, and I fix it. When your wife can't manage the still, she comes over and asks if I could help, and I help her. When your son gets into a snarl he can't fast-talk his way out of, you come looking for Terry, and she threshes it out for you. We do what you need done, we collect our fees, and we go back to our exceedingly private lives." Armand rose. "If you want to know more than that, send your son over here to apprentice with me, and quiz him when he comes home at night. It's not guaranteed, but it has a better chance than your sort of inquiry. Plus, it might keep him out of trouble. Now, was there anything else?"

  Simpson growled and exited, slamming the bamboo door behind him. Armand sighed and resumed his seat.

  Teresza put down her sewing and came to stand behind him. She put her palms to the sides of his face in a familiar gesture of affection. He reached up, took her hands in his own, and gently stroked the pads of callus her labors had built there.

  "This is a terrible place," she murmured.

  "It is. But our corner of it is a little less terrible than the rest."

  "Isn't there anywhere else we could go? Sulla? The archipelago?"

  He looked up at her and shook his head.

  "This is forever, isn't it?"

  He shook his head again. "No."

  Her eyes sharpened. "Till when, then?"

  "Just until we die."

  ***

  The harvest was record-breaking. No growing season in Alain's experience had produced such a wealth of corn. It seemed to leap from the ground as if rocket-propelled, and it ate as sweetly as any the Morelon farm had ever grown. It evoked the legends of the lost Silver Queen strain that no one had tasted since the Hegira, so sweet and tender that one could hardly forbear to eat it raw in the field. He'd been able to reduce prices by nearly thirty percent, yet make all his contractual commitments and bring in several major new customers as well. Given the failures to ripen of the two previous seasons, it
was uncanny.

  He strode through the chaff-littered anterior fields in something like a daze. All over the farm's ten square miles, the soil titers were at optimum-nominal. The abundance and superb quality of the crop appeared not to have drained anything at all from the land. He'd have a hard time choosing the fields to be rested for the coming year.

  But autumn had arrived, and the time for clearing, combing, and partitioning the fields was upon him. He had to project the next year's business, and the next year's yields, to set aside seed stock and order agrochemicals for the year to come. The local dairymen would expect silage culled from the corn chaff to be available for pickup in a few days. Reserve percentages had to be calculated and provided for. And Armand wasn't there to help.

  As the weeks had flown past, the expectation of his heir's return had dwindled and failed. Charisse no longer talked of him. Elyse had become wan, speaking only when spoken to and never of any of the things that had once lifted her heart. The clan had absorbed the loss in a sort of collective silence, but a silence that leaked tears in random places and at unexpected times. All of Jacksonville had grown somber, in that oceanic way by which a community closes and cleanses a wound too painful to discuss. The breach is sealed and the pain is diffused as thinly as possible, that it might be more easily detoxified and dispelled, but that does not diminish the magnitude of the loss.

  It's clear that a new God is on duty. But I'd have sworn Dmitri would tell me if they'd had to choose Armand. I can't believe he'd have betrayed his promise to me without one word of explanation or apology.

  But if the Cabal had picked the other candidate, where was Armand? And where was Teresza, who loved and was loved by him with an intensity so great that one could feel the echoes of it merely by opening the door to their empty bedroom?

  Something out of the usual channels had happened. Something about which Alain was unsure it would be wise to inquire.

  I have lost my heir, and I can't be certain why. Perhaps I should just accept it, for the good of Hope.