Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1)

by Francis W. Porretto

  Armand felt as if he were caught in the jaws of a giant vise.

  "What makes you think I'd want to?"

  Teodor shrugged. "Maybe you won't. Maybe my daughter won't either. But you should have the option." He waved at the pile of silk. "There's the bounty we promised your subjects. Get what you can for it. Terry, my frequency is the same as it's always been."

  "So is ours," Charisse said. She turned to go, with Teodor close behind her.

  "Wait!" Armand said as his sister put her hand to the door. He approached them uncertainly, wobbly from the sense of connections about to be irreparably broken.

  Teodor's sneer was pure mockery: You got what you thought you wanted. Happy now? Charisse's eyes, almost totally alien in their hardness, were unreadable.

  Armand found himself fighting the urge to wrap his arms around the two of them and keep them there by main force.

  "You won't be back, then?" he said.

  Teodor shrugged. "What would the point be? You've condemned us all to death, Your Majesty. Do you think we'd enjoy a last meal with you after that? Or were you hoping we'd come back to kneel before your throne and beg for a reprieve?"

  Armand's anger surged back. "If you were in my place, you'd --"

  "Oh, maybe. After all, you don't owe us a life entombed for our benefit. But maybe not. Just because those two meddlers always did the job one particular way doesn't mean there are no other ways. But no doubt a man smart enough to make himself a king would have thought of that already." Teodor's eyes flicked to his daughter. "Bye, sweetie. Make sure he treats you right."

  "Dad --" Teresza faltered. Teodor waved her to silence, pushed past Charisse and strode out. Armand's hand flashed out and took his sister by the arm before she could follow. She frowned but did not resist.

  "Why did you bring him here, Chary?"

  "You already know. What more is there to talk about?"

  "Then this has nothing to do with...the other two?"

  She shook her head. "Not a thing." Armand released her. "Bye, big guy. Give us a call now and then, would you?" She pulled the door open.

  "Chary..." Armand's eyes flicked to the radio. "You ripped that out of the plane, didn't you?"

  She nodded.

  "Why did you let him do it?"

  Charisse's eyebrows rose. "'Let him?' He had nothing to do with it, Armand. It was my idea. Take care."

  Armand watched his sister walk away, past two score of his fellow Hopeless, down to the wash where the cargo plane sat. Her stride was straight and firm. She did not look back.

  A few minutes later, there came the sound of powerful engines. They swelled, came to a peak, then trailed away into the peninsula's accustomed silence.

  ***

  Teresza had no trace of psi talent, but she needed none to sense the storm that churned in her husband's skull. Long after the plane's engine roar had faded to nothing, Armand stood stiffly erect at the open door of their hovel, arms at his sides, fists so tightly clenched that it was a wonder his fingers didn't disintegrate. At intervals, a concerned face would appear in the doorway. None spoke a word she could hear. Armand seemed not to notice.

  The four visitors from the larger world were unprecedented, as were the demands they'd made. Likely there would be no more until the calamity Dmitri Ianushkevich foretold had come to pass.

  The four were sufficient. Defiance had been badly unsettled. It would remain so for a long time to come.

  For all his bluster about the Hopeless community and his significance to it, Armand had proved as susceptible as the rest. Her father and his sister had found just the right parting gesture to make him doubt himself.

  But how much doubt can he really have? He knows what going back would mean. For him and me both. How could anyone expect him to sacrifice us both for a world whose guardians intend to seal him into a prison he could never leave?

  Valerie's soft wail drew her eyes downward. The baby was waving her fat fists up and down. She looked like a diminutive orator in the peroration of a fiery speech. Teresza poked one infant fist with a finger. Valerie smiled a toothless smile and clutched at the finger with a simian grip.

  Her, too.

  In the weeks since her gang rape, Teresza had learned a great deal about love. More than she'd thought there was to know.

  He loves her as much as I do. He loved her before I ever did. How? How did he just open his heart to a stranger's baby?

  Rothbard, Rand, and Ringer, I still don't know how I did it.

  She'd have given anything to be conscious when he first brought Valerie into their hut and laid her to the breast of her mother-to-be. Still, it hadn't mattered. Within fifteen minutes of first setting her eyes on Valerie, bonds had formed among the three of them that no worldly power could break.

  But it's my body that's nourished her. She's practically lived in my arms. She's as much the flesh of my flesh as if I'd borne her myself. What's his excuse?

  It wasn't the first time Armand had baffled her. She'd thrown herself at him with a harlot's abandon, yet he'd touched her very little before they affianced, and always in perfect propriety. He'd never even hinted that they should sleep together until that night, when she all but pleaded with him to take her into his bed.

  But he loved me. I knew it. That night he left no doubt.

  She had never puzzled out why. Her love for him had been mated to a hunger that overpowered her self-command. Her gift for detecting integrity had set the direction of her desire. Its magnitude had left her without a choice.

  He had no social problems. I pursued him. He could have had any girl he wanted.

  Where was his hunger? What powered his bonding to me?

  Was his choice of me...free?

  The idea unsettled her in a way she could not define. She pressed upon it, cloudily aware that it veiled a secret of great import.

  I'm not the only one, not even discounting Valerie.

  Armand finally turned away from the open door. He pushed it closed with a feather touch, went to their table and slumped into his accustomed seat. His face was still, untouched by any trace of feeling but fatigue. He did not look at her.

  He would not lightly revisit his choices, even when the deaths of millions, including persons as dear to him as she was, might be averted by a change of verdict. She knew his stubbornness to be the equal of his love. The battle between them would be at his expense.

  Could there be a middle way? Something he hasn't yet considered, and won't consider until his anger at Dad and those other two has faded?

  She swallowed. "Armand?"

  He did not turn. "Not now, love." The words floated on a current of pain.

  She bit her lip. "Okay."

  Maybe I still don't understand love.

  Chapter 36

  Not for the first time, Victoria found herself envying Armand's telepathic gifts. Ianushkevich sat as stolidly as a stone before her. No twitch, tic, or fidget transmitted a hint of his inner state.

  "Do you have any idea?" she said.

  The pause before his reply was unendurable.

  "I can tell you this much," he said. "Your overall health is superb. By all the indicators, your metabolism is optimum-normal. Your endocrine balance is perfect, and the Hallanson-Albermayer series will keep it that way for...many years to come. I have no reason to believe that your reproductive functions were affected by your apotheosis."

  She gritted her teeth. "Am I a freemartin?"

  He shrugged. "It's possible, but it's quite rare. The last documented case was more than a century ago. But are you certain you --"

  "Yes, I'm certain," she grated. "How would you test me further?"

  He grimaced, the first sign of emotion he'd allowed himself.

  "I'd advise against it. It's quite invasive. In fact, the test itself can bring on sterility. You know, there's a very good chance that the problem isn't you, but rather the combination of the two of you."

  It was the opening she'd waited for. "What are the odds that he's
infertile?

  "If Ethan is infertile, he's said nothing about it. Then again, he might not know."

  "Dmitri," she growled, "I'd like a straight answer. What are the odds? Have you had him tested?"

  His black orbs fixed on hers. His glare was a powerful reproof of her invasion of her lover's paltry remaining privacy. For a moment she was afraid.

  I don't need to be afraid of him. Least of all him, in the whole of Hope.

  "Dmitri," she said, "do I have to remind you of what I can do? Again?"

  His glare did not flicker. "I know your powers quite well, Terra. I was present when --"

  "Don't you call me that!"

  "BE STILL!"

  She fell silent from surprise. He rose and stood with arms akimbo.

  "You self-absorbed bitch," he hissed. "Do you think I could forget that you killed two men as I watched? I know what you can do to me, Terra. If you have a mind to do it, I can't stop you. But if you think you'll gain anything by it, you're as stupid as you are spoiled. I've made all the allowances for your self-pity that I'm going to make. Go ahead with your power play. Kill me as you did Einar Magnusson. Kill me as you killed Alain Morelon. Kill me, and then start counting. Count the days as you starve to death here in the dark, with no one to answer your call and no one to hold your hand."

  She did not think to reach for her psi. Ianushkevich's unbridled fury could mean only one thing. It disarmed her completely.

  "Where's Ethan?" she croaked.

  He sneered. "Goddess of Hope who holds all the world in her loving arms, why must you ask? Don't you know? He's taken his leave. As I entered your apartment, he left it. Charles took him well away from here, to a place where he can make his own decisions. He'll be back only if the three of us decide that it's wise, which is very much contingent on how this conversation ends. So tell me, please: what would you like to discuss now?"

  Victoria did not often strive to focus or steer the omnidirectional psi sense her apotheosis had given her. She tried it then. She swept it in an expanding spiral through the sunlit world, pressing ever farther from the place of her confinement. A mile, two miles, five, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred. She could detect no trace of her lover. Yet he could not have been moved out of her reach in the fifteen minutes since she'd last seen him. No means existed.

  "You kidnapped him," she whispered.

  He nodded. "Just so."

  "And you took him to a place like...like..."

  Another nod. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched her steadily.

  They've built another refuge like this one. They've found another suitable talent. They're prepared to replace me.

  The three of them are all that know I exist. They could seal me up in here and leave me to die.

  "What do you want, then?"

  Ianushkevich stared at her for a long moment. He allowed his arms to drop to his sides.

  "Good behavior," he said. "Nothing more. We know the magnitude of your sacrifice. We couldn't help but know it. But that doesn't justify your excesses. From now on, you'll behave properly toward Charles and me. You'll behave more than properly toward Ethan. That boy didn't have to give up his life for you. He did it out of love, a concept with which you're apparently unfamiliar. If you can't love him in return, at the least try not to use him as the outlet for your juvenile frustrations."

  He pivoted and strode toward the vestibule. Just as he passed out of her sight, she croaked, "Dmitri?"

  "Yes?"

  "When will you let me have Ethan back?"

  Ianushkevich was slow to answer. The wait was excruciating.

  "Ask me again in a week," he said, and strode away.

  She heard the clicking of the cipher lock toggles and the sigh of the vaultlike door as it swung open, the muffled thud as it closed behind him, and then only silence.

  ***

  The life of Defiance returned to apparent normality with an elastic snap that belied the disturbances the Hopeless had suffered. The men plied their several trades. The women tended the gardens and looked after their hovels. The stream of requests for Armand's administration and Teresza's guidance resumed as if nothing unusual had occurred. Now and then, a visitor from Victory or Resolve would present himself with a proposition about trade. But no one ever spoke of the visitors from the larger world to the south, or the import of their visit.

  Teresza divided the silk into blankets six feet square and distributed them among Defiance's neediest households. The effusion of gratitude was next to unendurable. She beheld more tears than she had seen in all her life to date. Even during their earliest time there, she and Armand had not lacked for warmth. The goods they'd brought from the larger world had sufficed to buy blankets and fuel in plenty. The thought of what those squares of silk would alleviate had not occurred to her.

  Armand gave one of the engines to Maria Simpson and told her it was hers to do with as she liked. The widow's eyes had turned dark at the gift. She nodded and sat with eyes downcast, the priceless device in the dust at her feet, until Armand turned to leave.

  The other engine remained with Armand and Teresza. They could think of no use to put it to. Yet in the economy of Defiance it was a white elephant, too costly for anyone to buy it from them. It sat in the corner of their hovel next to the radio, unused and undiscussed.

  Evenings in their household were marked by silence. Theirs had never been a chatty marriage; indeed, it had often seemed that they had no need to speak to one another, that all that must pass between them flowed through a conduit of love that ran beneath their worldly senses. But the silence had taken on an anxious tone. Superficially, all remained as it was. Armand labored over broken devices and considered the requests made of him by their neighbors. Teresza sewed, nursed Valerie, and pondered the matters her townswomen had submitted for her counsel. Now and then their eyes would meet, a current of tension would roil the space between them, and they would return to their separate pursuits.

  The days passed one by one, rolled up into a week and then a second week, and a third, and nothing of substance changed. No one spoke of the unprecedented visitors from the south. No one inquired into what matter could have been urgent enough to draw them thence. No one asked whether Armand and Teresza, the uncrowned royalty beloved of all Defiance, might someday be moved to return to them.

  ***

  Even thousands of miles deep in the core, Idem could sense the tumult in the psi streams on the surface.

  It could no longer doubt the multiplicity of Others. It had once been astounded that there might be two. Now it wondered how It could ever have thought there was only one. All the episodes of roiling, straining power -- power wielded not to create or nurture, but to weaken and destroy -- it had perceived during Its eon of bondage finally stood explained.

  The Others were not only multiple; they were also mobile. They moved across Its surface as nothing ever had but wind, sun, and the blown spores of Its lesser children.

  Why move? What was there in any one place that they could not find where they were?

  There was more. Movement implied purpose. That opened the question of whether all the Others shared a common purpose. If not, then...what?

  What if their purposes were at odds?

  Would they clash? Might they seek to damage one another? Or confine one another, as they had confined It?

  Was that their eternal mode of life? To strive against one another? What if there were many of them, all their purposes divergent and discordant? How could they stand it?

  Idem tried to imagine such a state, but achieved only a hazy glimpse. The glimpse alone was enough to shake its reason. It thrust the concept away and strained to return to calm.

  It was profoundly glad It had never created mobiles.

  Chapter 37

  Mandeville stared at the object that gleamed in Ianushkevich's hands.

  "You really mean for me to wear that?"

  Ianushkevich nodded.

  "Why does it have to go on my neck?"
/>   The parapsychologist's expression was the quintessence of resignation.

  "Do you really need to be told that, Ethan?"

  Mandeville nodded.

  "A bracelet wouldn't hold enough explosive to guarantee a...satisfactory result. Besides, Terra could probably get a bracelet off you without harming you greatly. And if she didn't, and it were to trigger, you might survive. You'd still be...useful to her. Is that what you would want?"

  Mandeville's eyes swept about the little chamber where he'd been confined for seven weeks. The Cabal's laborers hadn't reproduced the finery of Terra's apartments. Indeed, they hadn't even bothered to erect walls. The raw rock of the cavern had merely been sprayed with a thick, fast-drying suspension of silver and iron in epoxy. His cot rattled against the uneven stone of the floor whenever he tossed in the night. Most disturbing, the cipher lock on the vault door could only be opened from the outside.

  Why did I agree to this? They mean to kill my love and replace her with someone who means nothing to me. Someone I hardly know!

  He held out his hand. Ianushkevich laid the collar in it.

  It was a smooth, seamless contrivance, a gleaming one-piece extrusion. It looked and felt like a flexible torus of pure silver. It was about an inch and a half in cross-section along all of its length except at the ends, where it tapered to accommodate the mating jaws. Those jaws, formed of tempered molybdenum steel, had been polished to a mirror smoothness. They gleamed as brightly as the rest. It was almost beautiful.

  "What would trigger it?" he said.

  "Basically, any determined attempt to remove it without the key." Ianushkevich's tone was impersonal. "Any attempt to cut into the metal. Any stress on the hasp of more than ten pounds, for a duration of more than three seconds."

  "And?" Mandeville glared into the parapsychologist's eyes.