Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1)

by Francis W. Porretto

  "Why, Teodor?" he purred. "Why do you need to know?"

  Teodor Chistyakowski's mouth dropped open. Armand raised a hand.

  "It won't concern anyone on Hope but me. Anyway, the decision will be mine. I appreciate your advice -- all of you -- but I have to follow my own conscience on this."

  An uncomfortable silence descended on the Morelon kitchen.

  They think they're going to lose me again.

  "The important thing is that Hope's biochemical hostility to Earth-based life is over. Idem is already studying the changes he'll have to make for our benefit. He seems to think it will be no big deal -- a month or less before everything is in place. The God program at Gallatin can be shut down for good. We'll be...welcome here, at last."

  "As long as Idem remains friendly," Teodor said.

  "And why," Armand grated, "do you think that might change?"

  The genesmith smirked. "Are you in a position to guarantee it, Armand?"

  "As a matter of fact, I am." Armand rose. There could be no turning back now. "Idem simply wants company. My company, to be specific. I've agreed to provide it, whenever he wants it, with no reservations, in perpetuity."

  Teresza's face filled with fear. "You won't be leaving us?" Her hand crept toward his and clutched it.

  He smiled down at her. "Not at all, love. Idem just wants some conversation, someone to tell his stories to. He's quite a storyteller. But you might find me a bit distracted when he wants to chat. Like before." He stroked the underside of her chin. "I've asked him to time his visits to avoid our more delicate moments."

  The table exploded in laughter. Armand smiled as the tension rushed from the room. He realized that he hadn't noticed the annoying hum no one else could hear for several minutes, and consciously sought it out. It was still there, but like a chronic case of tinnitus, his brain had learned to filter it out without troubling his conscious mind.

  "Oh, and one other thing," he said. "He wants me to help end his confinement."

  Sobriety returned in a rush. "How?" Charisse said.

  Armand shrugged. "I'm still working on it."

  The kitchen lights surged back to life. From the radio foyer came a shrill squawk of distress.

  ***

  Idem was tormented by impatience. It chafed from the need to defer the satisfaction of Its yearnings. Its entire focus lay upon Armand. Every instant of separation from Its new acquaintance, who had at long last illuminated Its circumstances and offered a prospect of release from imprisonment, wrung It with anxiety.

  It could only surmise what Armand was doing in his absence. Conversation with his fellow humans, no doubt, but what else? Would he have started already on a plan of action?

  He'd said that the Other was as human as he, merely modified for its special responsibilities. Would he try to negotiate a peace between them? Was such a thing possible?

  The jarring bombardment from above had not slackened. If anything, it was growing worse. Idem knew little of what was happening on the surface of the world, but Its own redoubt was nearing collapse. Yet Its hopes were buoyed as they had not been for twelve hundred years.

  It would be so good to know what Armand was doing...and where, and why, and with whom. The human had welcomed Idem more wholeheartedly than It had dared to imagine.

  The tendril Idem had snaked into Armand's brain had left It with an enduring sensitivity. It could tell that Armand was still where he had been at the time of their communion. Reestablishing contact with Armand's sensorium, such that Armand's sense impressions would flow automatically to Its own, would not be difficult.

  He wouldn't mind if I eavesdropped.

  Idem fashioned another psi extensor and thrust it upward through the planet.

  ***

  "Say again, Lee?" Armand said. He waved the others out of the radio alcove and crouched to bring his ear level with the speaker.

  "Thule is watching the destruction of the arctic ice cap." The bursts of static that mangled Lee Fitzhugh's words could not mask the fright in his voice. "Glaciers the size of ocean barges are floating toward them."

  "How recent is this?" Teresza whispered from behind Armand.

  "Lee," he said, "How recent are these reports? Have any of those glaciers...made landfall?"

  "We don't know. The runner who came to tell us about it left Thule at least two hours ago. He said they're petrified up there. Those things could smash their docks. They were pulling all their small craft out of the water when he took off."

  "That's the least of their problems," Teodor commented. Armand swerved to look at him, and the genesmith shrugged. "South-moving ice will lower the water temperatures along the peninsular coast. Fish will migrate to warmer waters. If they're as dependent as you say on fish for sustenance --"

  "They are."

  "-- they could be in for a famine."

  "Yeah." Armand swallowed and keyed the mike. "Lee, I can't think what to tell you. I can't imagine what I could do about it."

  "Couldn't you tow those things out to open water with your family's aircraft?"

  Armand repressed a burst of laughter. "Not if they're the size you said. Not even if they were a hundredth of that size. You're talking about thousands of tons of frozen water!" He released the key on the mike and took a moment to think.

  There's no power equipment anywhere on Hope that could even nudge those things aside. I could fly up there and seed them with thermite charges, but that would only fragment them a bit. It wouldn't do a thing for their climatic impact.

  He keyed the mike. "Lee, the peninsula is going to have to brace for a hard time. The sea water around the peninsula will get a lot colder. Fish will be a lot harder to find. You're going to get..." He paused and groped for calm. "You're going to get hungry and cold." He glanced back over his shoulder at Charisse and put the question in his thoughts into his gaze.

  Her mouth tightened. Tension lines formed around her eyes. Presently, she nodded.

  "My family can help with that part, at least. We can run relief flights up there with food and fuel. But we can't do it forever. It's a short-term solution at best. You're going to have to evacuate."

  The silence from the radio was more eloquent than any words could have been.

  "All of us?”

  "I'm afraid so. We can help with that part, too, but most of the work will be yours to do. You have to get the people in the northern villages moving south, as soon as you can. Have Defiance and Victory house the refugees from Thule and Resolve while I assemble the resources to get you out of there."

  Another long silence followed.

  "Armand...where will we go?"

  He started to reply, forced it down.

  Where, indeed? There are fifteen thousand people on the peninsula. Even if I could find them housing, just about none of them could make it in Hope society on their own merits. They'd become an immediate underclass, completely dependent on the charity of others. Likely they'd remain there for the rest of their lives.

  I can't turn my family into a relief agency for fifteen thousand destitute people for the next seventy or eighty years. It would be the end of us.

  "How is this," Teodor Chistyakowski muttered, "any problem of ours?"

  Armand's breath froze in his chest. He laid the microphone down and turned to face his father-in-law as Charisse and Elyse moved away.

  "It's no problem of yours, Teodor. Not if you want it not to be."

  Teresza's hand curled inside Armand's. Her bright voice, damped to an unusual softness, rose between them.

  "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho," she said, "and fell among thieves, who beat him and stripped him of his garb, and departed leaving him half dead. And by chance there came a priest that way, who saw him, but passed him by. And likewise a Levite came and looked upon him, and passed him by. But a certain Samaritan came where he was, and had compassion for him, and dressed his wounds with oil and wine, and bound them up, and brought him to an inn for his care. And before he departed h
e gave the innkeeper silver from his own purse, saying, Take care of him, and if you spend more, when I return I will repay you. Which of these, think ye, was a neighbor to him that fell among thieves?"

  Teodor said no more.

  Armand closed his eyes and struggled for an answer.

  I CAN HELP.

  Chapter 53

  Teresza knew upon the instant that Armand was about to collapse. She summoned her full strength, caught him as he slumped, and lowered him carefully to the floor. The others surged forward as she checked his pulse and breathing.

  "Is he back in communication with that...thing?" Teodor said.

  "Idem," Teresza said absently. Armand's pulse was still steady and strong, his breathing still regular. "Possibly, Dad." She peeled back one of his eyelids, not sure what to look for, but there was nothing there she hadn't seen before anyway. She lowered herself to sit beside him, drew herself into his side, and took his hand in hers. "Perhaps he just needs a little time to himself. Elyse, would you look after Valerie, please?"

  The Morelon matriarch nodded, gathered the others by eye, and shepherded them back to the kitchen. As they moved away, Teresza said, "Charisse, may I have a moment, please?"

  Charisse stopped, turned back, and stood before her. "What is it, Terry?"

  In answer, Teresza spread her free arm, beckoning Charisse into it. The younger woman lowered herself to the floor and allowed Teresza to embrace her.

  "I just wanted to clarify a few things." Teresza squeezed her sister-in-law delicately. "You're the head of our family now. Armand's return hasn't changed that. He's taken up another set of duties, and anyway, he'd never dream of displacing you. When it comes to decisions about the family business and its assets, you'll have our full cooperation and any assistance you need."

  Charisse nodded, her eyes grave. "Thank you. It's not that I ever wanted the job, but..."

  Teresza smiled. "I understand. We inherited jobs we never wanted, up in Defiance. Being free doesn't mean you get to be and do whatever you please."

  She looked briefly away, listening to the sounds of the mansion. It seemed unnaturally quiet. "How many people live here? I never got a sense for that."

  Charisse shrugged. "It varies. Most of the people who regularly sleep under this roof have homes of their own, too. Just now, about thirty Morelon cousins are staying with us. Even with all the machines, tending this place takes manpower."

  "Are they all out in the fields?"

  "Pretty much. They know their jobs." Charisse grinned. "They also know that their part of the big reunion ended with breakfast. We'll see some of them again later."

  "At dinner?"

  "Yes, if we ever get to that. This world-saving stuff is cutting into my usual schedule."

  Teresza frowned. "You make dinner for this brood?"

  "Who else? Dorothy and Cecile help, most nights."

  "What about...your mom?"

  Charisse's eyes darkened. "Not lately."

  Teresza nodded and stared at her lap.

  "Our place in Henryville -- Dad's and mine, I mean -- is a little ranch, smaller than your hearthroom. We didn't need anything more. We don't have any living relatives, and Dad has an outbuilding for his lab that's bigger than our house. Before Armand and I...went north, I never had to look after anyone but Dad. Our house was always quiet, always a little sterile. I was impressed by Morelon House from the instant I arrived here two springs ago. I never thought about the responsibilities involved.

  "Defiance was my first taste of real duty. They looked up to us. For a lot of things. Armand was so...precious to them. They treated him like a walking legend, a hero out of a myth from old Earth who could always be counted on to know what to do, and to do it. They treated me as if I were more than human, some sort of goddess of wisdom and virtue, just because I'm his wife.

  "We were always on stage. We couldn't ever look irritated or weak or confused. And we had to treat their needs as our problems, too." The sense of loss rose in her, the pang of her departure from the peninsula once more as sharp as a knife fresh from the whetstone. She suppressed the urge to weep. "They were freer than we were. Whatever troubled them, they knew they could always bring it to us, and we wouldn't refuse them. But they loved us for it, and we loved them back, and anyway, that was the job we were called to do."

  Charisse ran a hand lightly over Teresza's hair.

  "I used to worry that...that I'd lose him to his responsibilities. He can be so deadly serious, and he never gives himself a break. I used to think, 'how on Hope do you think you can be all things to all these people, you big lump?' But I never said it. He was doing what he'd been called to do. There was no one else to do it, and he wouldn't leave it undone."

  "And now," Charisse murmured, "he's gone and done it again, and you fear you might lose him to this new job. Is that it, Teresza?"

  She nodded.

  "It's possible," Charisse said. "His instinct for duty is like a force of nature. And I get the feeling there's something about this agreement with Idem that goes beyond what he's told us. If he feels he must, he'll sacrifice himself to save the rest of Hope. I won't kid you about that. It's part of the Morelon legacy. We're a dutiful breed." She pursed her lips. "It's probably why he ran from those scientists at Gallatin."

  "Hm?"

  "I'd bet he felt the pull, the urge to surrender himself to the duty they held out, and the only thing he could think of that would save him from it was to put as much distance between them as he possibly could. Because it would interfere with his duty toward you."

  Teresza cringed. "He considered me a duty?"

  "Not like someone who has to be looked after. Never like that. But he knew he'd awakened something deep and special in you, even if he didn't understand it, and once he knew that, he would rather have cut off both his arms than let it wither and die." Charisse smirked. "I think the technical term for it is 'love.' He felt your love for him, and he taught himself to love you, and after that he could never let you go. Not even to become the God of Hope."

  "Oh."

  They sat in silence in the radio alcove. Presently Charisse squeezed Teresza's hand, rose, and left to rejoin the others. Teresza sat alone with Armand, his hand in hers, as the afternoon shadows lengthened slowly about them.

  ***

  How are we supposed to do this?

  FEEL MY THOUGHT AS IF IT WERE YOUR OWN.

  How am I supposed to do that?

  WAIT A MOMENT.

  Armand calmed himself and waited. He felt himself being enfolded, as if he were being swaddled in a great soft blanket he could not see. With the sense of envelopment came a rush of expansion. His consciousness seemed to swell until he could hold all the knowledge of Man in his lone brain. His sensorium enlarged, as if Hope were conveying every detail of itself directly to him, moment by moment as life and time swept over it. With these came a transcendent gift of intimacy: first with Idem, and through It, with the planet of Hope from pole to pole.

  It loves me.

  Armand could never have said how the conviction had come upon him. Yet he could not doubt it. Idem's embrace communicated an absolute devotion, wordlessly, unmistakably, and irrefutably, to Its new friend. It would rather accept Its own extinction than allow Armand or anyone dear to him to come to harm.

  Being Armand, he could not help but love Idem back.

  An image formed in his mind: a vast and frigid seascape, upon which great masses of ice floated like sailing ships. He watched it in fascination, realizing only slowly that what he "saw" were the undersides of those drifting glaciers...that his perspective was one of looking up from beneath them, as if he stood on the seabottom itself.

  Idem's embrace of Armand's mind was all that kept him from lapsing into catatonic terror. The planetary spirit calmed him carefully, with feather strokes of his psyche that seemed, chamois-like, to leach the fright from him.

  ABIDE WITH ME.

  Armand's viewpoint soared through the water and halted beneath one of the l
argest glaciers. Some moments later, Idem prompted him wordlessly to attention, and he stirred.

  WE MUST DEFLECT THEM.

  What am I supposed to do?

  FEEL THE CURRENTS WITH ME.

  Armand could feel himself being led, and surrendered to it. His viewpoint flowed easily along the base of the glacier, tracing the delicate thermal gradient along which the ice tower floated. It took mere moments to delineate the patterns, all of them pointed directly southward.

  What do we do now?

  WE STIR AND WARM THE WATERS TO THE NORTHEAST, CREATING A NEW AND STRONGER THERMAL CURRENT. THE ICE MASSES WILL FOLLOW IT AND PASS EAST OF THE CONTINENTAL COAST.

  Mightn't that cause other problems?

  Idem said nothing for a long interval. Armand became afraid.

  IT MIGHT. NO ACTION IS WITHOUT SIDE EFFECTS. THIS WOULD TRANSFER THE MAIN EFFECT TO THE OPEN OCEAN. CAN YOU THINK OF ANOTHER WAY?

  No. Are we strong enough?

  TOGETHER WE ARE. ARE YOU READY?

  I think so.

  THEN LET US BEGIN.

  ***

  In a state half incredulous and half exultant, Armand watched the giant ice masses follow the new currents northeast, well clear of the Hopeless peninsula.

  WE HAVE DONE WELL. YET THERE IS MUCH MORE TO DO.

  More repairs?

  YES, BEFORE THE DAMAGE BECOMES IRREPARABLE.

  That's possible?

  QUITE POSSIBLE. I SUFFER PRESSURE IMBALANCES SEVERE ENOUGH TO CAUSE SUBSIDENCES TO DEVELOP NEAR TO THE SEAMS IN MY FLESH. ALREADY I BLEED. I HAVE NO DESIRE TO COLLAPSE.

  Armand grasped Idem's meaning only dimly. His world was atop the soil, nurturing that which grew from it. Planetary dynamics were almost incomprehensible to him, much less those of a world being shredded from within.

  BE AT PEACE, ARMAND. YOU HAVE NO PART IN MY SORROWS. YOU HAVE MADE IT POSSIBLE TO UNDO THEM. YOU ARE MY HOPE OF A FUTURE IN HEALTH AND FREEDOM.

  You're...happy about this, Idem?

  NOT ENTIRELY. THE OTHER COULD NOTICE.

  The "Other." Our name for her is Victoria. Could she hurt you further?

  IT HAS HURT ME FOR TWELVE HUNDRED YEARS. THIS IS ITS HANDIWORK, THIS AND THE RUPTURES TO THE SOUTH AND WEST.