Cora Lee’s fairy castle was set in a wooded glade cleverly shared with several other mansions in a way that made it appear to be all her own. It was dark under the trees, though the path was studded with ground lights. Cora’s entrance was a trefoil Gothic arch set in a pale stone wall, grilled with frothy metalwork from the same workshop as Harmony’s own Gates. Beyond, a miniature drawbridge spanned a moat of black water dotted with water lilies.
Mali stopped within the soft light from a round filigree lantern hung in the arch. He dug in his jeans pockets for the key, then noticed the gate was ajar. “Didn’t Moussa close this when we left this morning? Cora must be home early.”
Sam did an odd thing. He lunged forward and caught Mali’s wrist as he reached for the iron grille. He stepped between Mali and the gate and herded us back to the path among the trees. His easy jocularity had vanished. “Sit tight and don’t move.”
“Sam, it can’t be,” Mali said. “Not here.”
“You think trouble doesn’t travel? You want to take the chance?” Sam hunkered down and studied the gate. “Wish I had my damn bag of tricks.”
“Thought you never got caught without it,” muttered Pen, looking sober for the first time since he’d walked into the Brim.
“That’s only what it says on my resumé.”
“What is it?” demanded Cris. “What’s the matter?”
“He thinks the gate’s been wired,” Mark whispered.
“Wired?” I asked.
“Wow,” Cris murmured.
Mark joined Sam in his crouch. “This is, um, a smart-gate. There’s a telltale on it, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. Where?”
“You usually hide them behind a bush somewhere.” Mark moved forward and searched carefully among the thick vines climbing the wall. “Here it is—looks brand-new. It says the gate’s clean.”
Sam went to see for himself. A tiny box the color of the surrounding stone housed a panel of LEDs. “I’ll be damned.” He brushed the ivy back in place. “A little easy to find, though.”
“Only if you know what to look for,” said Mark. “Don’t want the consumer losing his own marker. It’s a popular brand, ’cause you can have the gate material shaped to your own design, so it doesn’t look smart. You can get remotes if you don’t want to get too close.”
Sam studied him. “Where’d you get to be such an expert?”
Mark shrugged diffidently. “A man I knew at home had one.”
“Just some guy?” Mali urged. When he turned those grave, trust-me eyes on you, it was hard to resist.
“My, um, my father.”
Mali laughed mirthlessly. “A rich man’s son!”
I was amazed that after three years I still hadn’t known this. With Crispin you could tell right away, and if you missed it, he’d let you know.
“Get to know this kid,” Sam advised. “He could prove useful.”
“He already has.”
“Let’s find out.” Sam was at the gate and through it before anyone could stop him. Several steps onto the drawbridge, he halted in a stage magician’s presentation twirl. I pictured the long black satin cape swirling behind him. “So far, so good,” he called.
Mark paced Mali step for step. “Did you guys get to be this careful on Tuatua?”
“There’s a war on,” snapped Pen. “Maybe you heard.”
Mali draped an arm across Mark’s shoulder. “The planters never mind there being one or two less Station Clansmen around.”
“Our news services still call it a ‘domestic conflict,’ ” said Cris. “They don’t say anything about killing.”
“Would you let them if you controlled the media?” said Pen.
“Then forget the media. I’m the best source of real news about Tuatua around here.”
“That so?” Pen had dismissed him already.
“If I can’t coax it out of the files, nobody can.”
Tua caught up with him. “Programmer?”
“Among other things.”
She slipped her arm through his. “Me, too. What hardware?”
Cris reeled off numbers and letters.
“Can I come play on it sometime?”
“I’m glad there are no wars in Harmony,” I murmured, mostly to myself, figuring no one was listening.
But Mali was listening. “There are always wars. Some just lie quiet longer than others.”
At the far end of the drawbridge, a long, barrel-vaulted passage hung with tapestries mounted a shallow flight of stone stairs. Sam moved ahead, signaling us to stay back. On the top step, he stopped abruptly. “Damn!”
We rushed the steps two at a time. Sam held us at the doorway, then eased into the room.
Cora Lee’s beautiful great hall had been trashed. Her fine leather furniture was overturned, cushions tossed aside. The precious tapestries woven from her own designs had been torn off the walls. The giant vases of flowers, Cora’s pride and joy, were tipped and scattered across the priceless Oriental rugs. A huge oil mural, her own work, hung askew over the great stone fireplace.
“Cora?” Sam opened the door to the music room, shut it, and continued his circuit of the room. “Everything’s all right in there. Cora? You here? I hope she didn’t surprise them at it.”
“They wouldn’t…” worried Tua.
Mali called louder. “Cora?”
Pen said, “I think she had an OutCare meeting tonight.”
Cris waded though the confusion to the fireplace. A sheet of paper was pinned to the wooden slab of mantel with a nondescript pocket knife.
“Don’t…” called Sam from across the room.
“… touch it. I know.” Cris leaned in to read the scrawled writing. “Just more stuff about subversives and dangerous radicals. ‘Anarchy stalks the streets of Harmony.’ Wait, listen to this… ‘How long will we allow it? We have eyes enough of our own!’ ”
The Tuatuans converged on him as a group.
“There’s more… wow!”
I shoved a chair out of the way to get to him.
Cris read: “ ‘The fugitive felon hides among his sympathizers! Close the Door on the Conch!’ ”
Mark’s gasp beside me was as quick and silent as my own.
Cris straightened. He gazed at the actors breathlessly. “Are you guys hiding the Conch?”
Mali reached languidly for the paper and jerked it free of the knife blade. He scanned it, passed it aside to Sam. “Do you believe everything you read, young brother?”
“No, I—”
“If he does,” said Sam, “imagine how readily the rest of Harmony will believe it.”
Tua took the paper from Sam. “The next e-mail widecast.”
“The truth won’t matter one way or the other,” said Mark.
“It rarely does,” Mali replied. “Well, my bros, let’s think. Is the purpose of all this to scare us into leaving or Cora Lee into evicting us? Should we clean it up or make it public?”
“Clean it up, of course,” said Cora Lee from the entry stairs.
“Cora, thank the good powers!” Mali spread his arms in welcome.
“Were you worried, my Mali? I’m flattered.” Cora bustled in, a plump, immaculate Asian woman in close-cut green silk. A diamond-studded comb sparkled in her tightly bound black hair. “Of course we should clean it up. What earthly good would it do to show the world we’re vulnerable?”
“The sympathy vote,” suggested Tua.
“Phooie,” said Cora. She tossed her jeweled purse down on the back of an overturned armchair and looked around. “What a mess! I may have to start using that fancy alarm system Cam sold me to go with the gate.”
“I’d say you’d better.” Sam surveyed the wreckage with what seemed to me a very practiced eye. “I don’t think they’ve actually damaged anything. Somebody’s been rather careful.”
“Of course. They want you out, not me. I pay taxes.” Cora stalked a little circle in her green silk pumps. “Damn, I hate being muscled! I came here to
get away from that!”
“And therefore you wish to clean it up and ignore it?” chided Mali softly.
Cora planted her feet. “If you can ignore people shooting at you, I can ignore this! Besides, who said I’m going to ignore it?”
Mali captured her tiny, well-ringed hands and smiled at her. Her nose came barely to his breastbone.
“I’ve stayed away from the struggle long enough.” She tore her hands away to gesture impassionedly. “Tried to pretend I was free from it when it’s been here brewing all along. Now, before we put this room back to rights, is anyone hungry besides me? A three-hour meeting about how to feed the starving and they can’t even provide us with a little snack!”
Cora sailed off to the kitchen with the Eye in tow. Mark and Cris and I stood in the middle of the ravaged hall, staring at each other. Mark was pensive, I was struggling to put it all together, but Cris had one thing only on his mind.
“Is it possible?” he whispered, “Could they actually be hiding the Conch?”
CRISPIN’S RESEARCH: ANOTHER CONCH STORY
Indy/NetEntertainment 5
It’s… the big world of Julian Cover, between the Domes. 06/14/46: Today, TUAMATUTETUAMATU!
Hullo, Julian here… moving on from death-defying anniversary leaps in Bangkok to bravery and magic on the little isle of Tuatua… this week’s story will really make you wonder.
We got word of a sighting, but worried that our source had alerted us too late. The fire was well out of control when we arrived with our crew. The field bosses shouted futile orders while the pickers and sorters raced back and forth with buckets. None would venture into the blazing warehouse to answer the screams of those still trapped behind doors mysteriously jammed or locked from the inside.
Suddenly the big metal doors at the front broke open. A tall man appeared through the wall of black smoke and flame, carrying another on his shoulder. He beckoned to the field hands, then dropped his burden outside, and charged back into the fire.
The workers yelled at him to come back, save himself. Almost before they’d hauled the rescued man to safety, the tall man was back at the burning doorway with two more lucky ones and a girl staggering behind, dragging a young boy by his waistband.
I ducked in close with the cameras, but the choking smoke and intense heat threatened to melt our lenses. Even our telephoto couldn’t make out the man’s face, almost as if he hadn’t any. One moment, a tall shadow against the blaze, the next, swallowed up in it again. I was amazed he could move in and out so fast, and that his clothing was not in flames, like those he’d rescued. This is the real thing, I told my crew, or that guy’s a fucking hero.
Next, a cry went up at a side door, and workers rushed to grab the limp body of an old man from, no, not our fireproof man but a strong young woman who grinned and saluted our cameras as she whirled back into the roaring blaze. “Where’d she come from?” demanded my astonished audio. We’d seen no one else go into the building. Then other locked doors were bursting open and other flaming bodies staggering free. The workers rushed up with water and buckets to put them out while the older men and women who had gathered chanted encouragement in eerie, wailing tones. Incredibly, not one of the rescued was badly burnt, though four died when the roof finally collapsed. None of the bodies found in the wreckage fit the tall man or the laughing girl.
Twenty-nine were rescued before the roof collapsed. Each gave the same name to his rescuer: Latooea, THE CONCH.
Until our next meeting with the Incredible and the Inexplicable, this is Julian Cover, between the Domes.
SPECULATION:
Crispin didn’t press the issue that night. After the rest of the Eye came home and we’d restored Cora Lee’s great hall to its former magnificence, he celebrated with the rest of us. But later he could talk of nothing else, convincing himself gradually that the Eye was indeed sheltering his hero, the Conch.
In the morning, he visited my new paint shop, actually Theatre Two’s chorus dressing room, commandeered by Hickey the minute Double-Take closed.
“Gotta go send out Marin for the rebid.” But he prowled about as we worked and picked up a brush anyway. Props and paint paraphernalia sprawled across the plastic drop cloths protecting the white counters lining both sides of the narrow room. Since there were no actors in residence, the air was off. We’d suffocate if we didn’t leave the door open. The whine and buzz of the Double-Take strike wafted in from down the hall and we kept our voices low.
“I bet he came in as a tourist and never left.”
“And they’re hiding him at Cora Lee’s house?” whispered Jane.
I had a private image of the Conch now, tall and dark-skinned and laughing. He wore bright colors and an aura of power. But I couldn’t make out his face, or rather, it was changeable. Brash, wise, male, female, human and more than, shifting with each new tale I heard.
“If sneaking into Harmony was that easy, everybody’d be doing it.” But I recalled my jewelry peddler’s entry on an innocent apprentice’s arm. Cora’s castle would make a perfect hideout. “You think Cora knows?”
“Oh yes.” Cris laughed excitedly. “Can you see it on HarmoNet? ‘Town Council Rep Hides Fugitive Revolutionary!’ I love it!”
I mused over the section of cross-hatching I’d just completed, cool white against a rich sienna background. I’d chosen to paint the Gorrehma because I liked its sensuous shape, but the application of millions of tiny parallel lines on its curved surfaces was painstaking in the extreme. It required a steady, patient hand and what we liked to call a two-hair brush. The muscles between my shoulder blades were knotting up in protest.
“He doesn’t have to be hiding. He could be one of them.” Jane was painting perfect concentric circles of yellow and red on the smooth side of the Burinda. Her voice was flat and scared. I was glad she hadn’t been at Cora’s the night before.
Cris snapped his fingers. “Damn! Wish I’d thought of that!”
“The Eye spends half their life on tour,” I countered. “You can’t manage a revolution long-distance!”
“So he wasn’t always with them. New to the company, like Tua. Their publicity’s never mentioned individuals since that guy who died—you wouldn’t notice a switch. Things got too hot for him at home, the Eye passed through Tuatua on their way here, dropped somebody off and picked up”—he beat a drum roll on the counter with his fists—“the Conch!”
“Shhh!” said Jane, glancing at the open door.
“Cris, you can’t just stick an untrained somebody into a company of professional actors and expect him to blend right in.”
“Any old somebody, yeah, but we’re talking about the Conch! The elusive Latooea, master of illusion and disguise!” He tossed away the brush he’d been dawdling with. “You guys just don’t want him to be here! She’s too scared and you can’t imagine it!” He began to pace up and down the narrow room. “Now, which one? Mali talks politics, so that’s too obvious. The Mule’s too wacko. Moussa?”
“I notice you don’t even consider the women.”
“Sam!” Cris did his little victory dance. “It’s gotta be. He’s so, you know, cool. Staying in the background, playing the supporting roles, but you saw how he took right over in a crisis?” He crowed delightedly. “A magician! The perfect cover!”
Jane began to look interested. “Well, it certainly isn’t that Pen person.”
“Or Te-Cucularit,” I added disgustedly, leafing through the archivist’s many pages in search of something new and different among the officially sanctioned motifs. “Too anal.”
“I wouldn’t rule him out,” mused Crispin. “That could be an act.”
“So could Pen’s drunken bully be an act.”
“Draws too much attention.”
“What about the women?” I insisted. “Maybe the Conch isn’t some great romantic hero. Maybe he is magic. Maybe he’s your friend Tua.”
Cris scoffed. “Sam’s the best bet so far.”
I wasn’t sure.
If it had to be one of them, I’d have said only Mali had the required charisma. But I couldn’t imagine Mali ever being inconspicuous enough to suit the Conch’s elusive habit. I preferred the notion of an eleventh, perhaps truly magical Tuatuan living invisibly in the towers of Cora Lee’s fairy castle.
“It’s not right.” Jane’s head bent low over her work. “Bringing someone like that into Harmony. I mean, if they did.”
“Someone like what?” Cris challenged.
Jane turned on him. “You and your stupid kiddie games! Revolutionaries kill people! You think your precious Conch wouldn’t walk right over you if you got in his way?”
Cris smiled smugly. “But I wouldn’t.”
“How would you know ahead of time?”
“No one’s accused the Conch of killing anyone,” I reminded her.
“He’s a convicted criminal!”
“Political crimes!” Cris shouted. “Crimes of expression! He was tried and convicted in absentia!”
“Time for a coffee break.” I lanced my long-handled brush into the water bucket and looked at Cris. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to the studio?”
* * *
I crossed through Theatre Two on my way to the crew room. The stage was nearly cleared. A few stacks of platforming waiting on dollies, a few piles of scrap left about, a few crewmen pulling stray fasteners out of the floor, and a new load of pipe and lumber sitting in the open loading door. Was Sean finally going to start building The Gift?
Raised voices drifted in from the shop, Howie’s voice, very loud, and somebody whose responses I couldn’t distinguish. Cris joined me as I sidled up to the doorway.
Howie had cornered Sean by the water cooler, explaining with great animation something Sean apparently didn’t want to hear. Howie’s big hands scythed the air in parallel blades. Sean shook his head and slapped his hard hat against the side of his thigh. The shop crew was giving them room.
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