What would Grandpere Alain have said? Or done? Would he have backed off and returned another day? Would he have rummaged among Armand's other instructors and friends? Or would he have confronted this innocently ignorant woman with the impending death of the world?
"Is there nothing I could say that would convince you that this is important enough to dent Dr. Ianushkevich's privacy? Just to the extent of a message?"
The secretary shook her head. "I really am sorry, dear."
The meaningless politeness made the muscles in Charisse's neck and shoulders spasm. She held down her need to scream and produced a departure smile.
"Well, thank you anyway." She pulled her cloak about her and made for the stairs.
She saw no one else on the third floor, and precious few persons moving about on the second or first. Apparently it was a break period, whether for the Social Sciences department or the university as a whole. Perhaps her quarry was nowhere nearby anyway. Perhaps she should have planned her approach better. Perhaps it was all a fool's errand.
She stepped through the tall glass doors that opened onto the university's main quadrangle, stopped, and tried to think what she should do next as a trickle of students passed on either side and the late fall wind fluttered the edges of her cloak around her.
I'm the heir to the most respected family on Hope. I control over eighty million dekas in capital, one of the largest businesses on Alta. I have the key to the survival of the world...well, half of it, maybe. And I can't get to see one bleeding academic who just might be able to help me complete the puzzle.
A hand descended lightly on her shoulder, and she started.
"Excuse me. Don't I know you?"
She looked up and saw a tall young man with broad shoulders and a pleasant, serious face, who was toting a hefty load of books.
"Uh, no, probably not. I'm not a student here." She started to move away, but a look of recognition lit his eyes, and she stopped.
"I'd imagine not," he said. "That cloak is probably worth more than this building. You're Charisse Morelon, aren't you?"
She looked at him closely. "Yes, I am. Should I know you?"
He grinned. "Well, it would have been nice." He shifted the pile of books from his right arm to his left and offered her his hand. "But then, we only met once, and very briefly at that. I'm Chuck Feigner."
She took his hand tentatively, held it without shaking it. "Armand's roommate?"
He nodded. "From back when I was a sophomore. How's he getting along? A lot of people have asked."
She became lightheaded. It must have shown in her stance or her face, for his expression was tinged with sudden concern.
"Are you all right, Miss? Would you like to sit down?"
"Yes, thank you." She let him escort her to a stone bench that flanked the building's entrance apron, sat, and beckoned him to sit beside her.
"Is that better, Miss?" he asked. "Can I get you something?"
She started to speak, checked herself, and thought furiously.
"Please call me Charisse, Chuck." She smiled as winningly as she could. "Do you have a few minutes to chat with me? I'd appreciate it greatly."
He peered down at her, brow furrowed, and cracked a smile.
"Do I have a few minutes to sit and chat with my fabulously rich ex-roomie's gorgeous younger sister?" She blushed, and he laughed. "I think I can manage that."
***
"How long do you think we'll be on the road?" Teresza asked.
Armand wove two strands of braided flax around the width of his makeshift backpack, drew them tight and tied them off, and repeated the process around the length with two more strands. He swiftly looked about the hovel in a nervous check that nothing they'd planned to bring was being left behind.
The hut contained little enough. The coarse, straw-filled mattress on which they'd slept for a year and a half sat naked against the far wall. It would keep company with the woven-bamboo table at which they'd eaten and worked, the crude, short-backed chairs on which they'd sat, and the shallow steel bowl in which they'd washed their wooden dishes, their clothes, and themselves.
The engine and radio Charisse had brought them gathered dust in the corner.
Our neighbors will fight over those when we've gone. I should have given them to someone in particular, but there was no time.
Teresza stood close behind him, her pack already on her shoulders and Valerie bundled against her breast. Beneath her coat she was wearing an absurd amalgam of clothing, everything she had left from their arrival and almost everything she'd made or acquired since. It limited the motion of her arms considerably and made her look like a life-size stuffed doll, but it was preferable to catching pneumonia along the way.
"The land bridge is about eight miles long," he said. "From the other end, it's about a twenty-mile walk to the Norsland train station. We'll probably have to spend one night out in the open, but it can't be helped. There's nothing between Midgard and Norsland but the power cable. Anyway, we have our blankets, and the weather isn't that bad yet."
Her face tightened briefly. She glanced down at the infant asleep in her arms.
"She'll be all right, love. I promise."
She nodded and pulled Valerie more closely against her.
He stood in silence for a moment, then donned his coat, thrust his arm through the strap of his pack and slung it over his shoulder. He started for the door, stopped, and scanned the hovel yet again.
"Something wrong?" Teresza asked.
"No...no." But he couldn't quite bring himself to depart.
This was our first home. The first home that was ours from the first, not passed down to us by our parents. It's a thatch-roofed riverstone shack at the edge of a marginal wasteland, but it was ours. I kept it in repair. I made its furnishings and met its needs. Terry kept it clean and kept us fed. Our neighbors were our friends.
I'm going to miss this place.
"I'll miss it, too."
He started, found Teresza at his elbow, her eyes full of wistful wisdom.
"Did I say that aloud?"
She smiled sadly. "You didn't have to."
He put his arm around her and pulled her against him. They stood that way for a long time.
Presently she said, "What's that noise?"
"Hm?" He cocked his head. A low, rapid buzzing was drawing near. "Sounds like a piston engine. Maybe Maria --"
Teresza shook her head. "She hasn't. It was on the floor of her hovel the day before yesterday, and I saw her again just yesterday evening. If she'd traded it away, I'm sure she would have said something."
"Then..." He released her, threw open the door, and stepped out into the chilly fall morning. The buzzing grew steadily louder. "Are we about to have more visitors from the south?" He scanned the flat that lay between their hovel and the land bridge, but saw nothing.
"Armand," she said in a tight voice, "I think it's coming from the other direction."
He wheeled, and saw a clump of his neighbors approaching six abreast at a rapid stride. There was no sign of whatever was making the noise, now unmistakably the beat of a low-power piston engine, but it continued to swell as the villagers approached.
There were many of them, a marching column, and they were nearly on top of him before the front broke to reveal the source of the piston sound.
It was a motorcycle with a sidecar. Maria Simpson was driving it.
It was the crudest contraption imaginable, but it was plainly self-powered. The body was a hodgepodge of ironwork. Much of it appeared to have come from the motorcycle on which he and Teresza had arrived, but quite a bit had been jury-rigged from scrap metal to compensate for missing parts. It jounced and lurched as if it were trying to hurl Maria from her seat, but she clung to the bars, leaning forward and grinning as madly as if she were hurtling down the home stretch of a power-cable motocross. She slewed it to a stop before Armand, dismounted awkwardly, and stood beside it as what looked like two hundred of his neighbors formed a ring a
round them, all applauding vigorously.
When the tumult had subsided somewhat, Armand said, "Whose new toy is that?"
Lee Fitzhugh stepped forward. He and Maria Simpson said in practiced unison, "Yours!"
Teresza's mouth fell open.
Armand crouched before the vehicle and inspected it closely. It was a hodgepodge, no doubt, but it appeared sturdy. The sidecar had been built with particular care. More than adequately large for Teresza and Valerie, it would ride rough on its unitary solid axle, but it looked tough enough to survive a direct hit from a Spacehawk laser cannon. The engine was indeed the one he'd given to Maria Simpson after Charisse returned south.
"What does it burn?"
"Kerosene," Fitzhugh said. "There's a four-gallon tank under the driver's perch. It's as full as we could get it.
On gas, that engine would develop about nine horsepower. On kerosene, about three. Four gallons of kero might get us to the Norsland station. If I'm careful. Maybe.
"Top speed? Top load?"
"Hey, man," Fitzhugh said, spreading his hands in a shrug of innocence, "who are we to go testing your new buggy? You'll tell us when you come back." He looked off toward the northern mouth of the land bridge. "You are coming back, aren't you?"
Armand winced as tears rushed to his eyes. For a moment he crouched beside the motorcycle, ashamed to show his face. When he stood, two hundred pairs of eyes were upon him.
"I don't think so," he said, his voice thick. "Please don't misunderstand. I want to. I hope you believe me. But I...don't think I'll be allowed."
Fitzhugh paled. No one spoke.
"There's a radio and another small engine in our hut," Armand said. "It's already set to run on kerosene. Find a chunk of lodestone and cut it in half. Fashion a loop of wire and use the engine to spin it between the two halves. Presto, instant generator. It'll produce more than enough juice to power the radio. My frequency..." He paused and gathered himself. "The Morelon family frequency is 122.8 Megahertz. Promise you'll call me."
Fitzhugh nodded. Pete DiNapoli moved up beside him and said, "We will, Armand. We promise."
It was Teresza who broke the tableau. Without a word, she thrust Valerie at Armand and rushed forward to embrace Maria Simpson. The two women clutched each other and wept as the rest of Defiance closed on Armand to shake his hand, clap him on the back, sob and wish him the best of luck on his journey.
***
One of the Others was in motion again.
When they had separated over a sufficient arc, Idem had become able to study them as individuals. The first one, which had remained stationary, exuded a harsh power that blanketed all the world. The second, which had once been quite close to the first but had moved sharply away and was now slowly creeping back, disturbed the psi currents far less, exhibiting a delicacy of touch and a sinuous flexibility.
Surely the first of these was Its principal jailer. The second might not even know of Its existence.
Idem speculated upon what relation there might be between them. The effort required was extraordinary. It had not yet come completely to terms with their multiplicity; to imagine them as independent of one another tested Its entire conception of existence.
Nevertheless, It strove to imagine them autonomous, as no other creatures It had known.
If they were truly separate and independent of one another, their intentions might diverge. They might not know of one another. If they did, how would they see one another?
Idem grappled with two more ideas that tested the limits of Its experience: the concepts of allies and enemies.
"Enemies" It could grasp. The first of the Others might not know of Its existence, but even so had stripped It of the rightful mastery of Its body. Their aims were not merely independent, but opposed. The implications were obvious.
"Allies" compelled Idem to leap into a realm of thought It had not even conceived before. Could two independent beings, their consciousnesses separate from the beginning of their days, possibly come to see one another as collaborators? What sort of coincidences would that require? Would there be a test of wills, to determine which would be hegemon and which would submit?
Would they...negotiate?
Idem's energies mounted within It. The tendrils of antimony and copper that carried Its thoughts hummed with possibility. It resolved to attempt some sort of contact. Perhaps information could pass between them. Perhaps they could find a basis for cooperation, a division of the world into autonomies comparable to the autonomies of their essences. It would probe whether this notion of "allies" was anything but an idle fantasy.
The second of the Others, the weaker, more discriminating one, would be Idem's target.
Chapter 41
Ianushkevich peered down into Ethan Mandeville's vacant brown eyes. There was no spark of life there. Yet the breath hissed audibly from his nostrils. The parapsychologist lifted the inert young man's wrist in his hand and felt for a pulse. It was definite and regular. Mandeville still lived and breathed, but his eyes could as easily have belonged to a corpse.
Victoria paced regular semicircles around the bed on which Mandeville lay, her eyes never straying from Ianushkevich's face. It put him in mind of an Earth vulture circling over a corpse.
A species we didn't contrive to bring to Hope, yet it survives in our literature and our racial memories. Perhaps we were wrong to leave them behind.
"Terra," he murmured, "if there's anything in particular wrong with him, I'm unable to find it. Of course, I'm not a medical man, so you should take my opinions in that light. How long has he been in this state?"
"About a day." Though Victoria's voice was toneless, the words sang with tension.
"No actions or speech over that period? He just laid himself down here and ceased to move or speak?"
She nodded, still pacing her back-and-forth orbit around their large bed.
Mandeville's color was approximately normal. His flesh was no colder nor warmer than Ianushkevich's own. His easily observed vital signs were unexceptional. If the boy was sick, it was with a disease outside of Ianushkevich's acquaintance.
Presently the parapsychologist rose, straightened, and faced the Goddess. He didn't know what he could safely say to her, but he knew what he could not say.
"I can't tell you what his trouble is. I'm no doctor, and neither is Charles. There's a doctor in the Outer Cabal, if it should become absolutely necessary that he see one, but I have to say that he seems perfectly healthy."
He paused and pondered the question he wanted to ask.
It might set her off, but there's no way around it.
"Did you give him a shock of some kind? A massive surprise he wasn't prepared for?"
Victoria's puzzled frown and shrug were a study in dissimulation. Ianushkevich, who had spent six centuries observing and cataloguing human behavior of every kind, knew at once that the answer had to be yes.
He asked for a pregnancy test strip. He had an inkling there was something amiss. With her.
"I am not," he said deliberately, "the man to...diagnose Ethan's condition. I think it would be best if we were to bring in a professional. But that would compel me to enlarge the
Inner Circle, by revealing your existence and import to someone who isn't currently aware of either. At present, Charles and I have no candidates for that honor. The risks being as great as they are, we prefer to screen very carefully before admitting an outsider to that status. Ethan was...the first in a very long time." He fixed his eyes upon hers and bore down on his words with all the force his six centuries of duty had lent him. "Terra, are you certain that nothing you said or did might have catapulted him into this state?" Her lips parted. He half-expected her to say something of substance, some admission that would explain why the young man who had willingly and with full foreknowledge dedicated his entire life to her happiness had, with no warning, retreated into an acute catatonic coma.
She closed her mouth without speaking. A tiny shake of the head was all the answer
he received.
"Then perhaps --"
She raised a hand, and he fell silent. She moved toward her silent lover, squatted by his side, and passed a hand gently along his thick brown hair. He did not stir.
"It's only been a day," she murmured. "Let's give him some time. He might snap out of it." Her eyes rose to confront him. "Isn't that so, Dmitri?"
He stared down at her in silence for a long time.
"Perhaps," he said. Without further ado he strode to the door, ciphered it open, and removed himself to the world of men.
***
Liberty Cafe was dark and thinly populated. A mere dozen students mused over books and coffee. A lone waitress circulated among them with a pad and a tray. No one looked up as Charisse and Chuck entered, found an unoccupied corner table, and settled themselves in the darkness.
"So," Chuck said, "what news of my errant roomie? Or are you not quite finished being mysterious yet?"
Charisse winced. "Have I been difficult? I'm not a naturally taciturn type, Chuck. It's just that...well, I didn't want to dump my whole load on you while we were in the open."
He twitched an eyebrow at her. "Afraid I'd run away?"
"Maybe just a little," she said. "Things are bad."
Without moving a muscle in his face, Feigner's expression went from mildly roguish flirtatiousness to maximally serious concentration. The shift was so quick and dramatic that Charisse had to fight down the urge to hide.
Now I have to work around the things I can't tell him.
"Is Armand in trouble?" he asked.
She grimaced, started to speak, and stopped herself. To her considerable surprise, he reached out and ran his fingertips down her cheek. Her heart surged to rocket speed.
"Why did --"
"Don't do that, Charisse," he said softly. "It's like dragging a crayon across a great work of art."
"Uh, okay." She looked away, took a deep breath, and summoned her will. "Did you and Armand get along well? Were you close?"
The waitress, a slight blonde girl who appeared even younger than Charisse, chose that moment to ask them what they wanted. Chuck awarded her a dazzling smile and asked for a few minutes more to think about it. The waitress giggled and skipped away.
Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1) Page 28
