He leaned forward, fierce and dark and quiet, his arms braced on the low table as if to hold himself back. “Understand, ladykins. The Eye must seem always to walk through the fire unscathed. That is more important for those who hold faith in us than any amount of useless raging at a world seeking to kill us off. For them, Mali will live, must live.”
I saw again the scrawny Outsider arms stretching to the touch of Te-Cucularit’s fingertips, sooty lips mouthing a soundless litany.
“Latooea,” I murmured. It was suddenly so obvious. Why must a hero be one when ten could do it so much better?
“Aye, ladykins. Walking the Stations of the World, to save its life.” He touched the carved bead at my throat, grinning. “Latooea’s totem. You’ve been wearing it all along.”
“But they keep your secret, the Outsiders?”
“It’s their secret. Besides, who in the world of domes cares what an Outsider knows? Only gets sticky on Tuatua, where the two worlds interface.”
“Somebody knew enough to come after you in Harmony.”
“The Planters’ Association has tribal informants. But if they knew the full truth, they wouldn’t be trying to pick us off one by one. You see, they can’t imagine a leader that isn’t the one they’d like themselves to be, a single all-powerful individual. And then there’s the suspicion that nags even the coolest heads among them: that the Conch is magic. That is their nightmare, for if the Conch is magic, how shall they prevail? Thus we steal their hope, eat at their confidence, leave them sleepless in a cold sweat, wondering as you wondered when we danced into your life: Is it really magic? Could it really be? A knife is a fine weapon, yes, but our fists around their very hearts, that is power.” Ule glanced at the silent, brooding Mark, then peered at me as if to be sure I was listening. “We do anything to nourish the magic. Anything. Remember that, ladykins.
Hovers are slow, and ours flew a lazy, random pattern of evasion before it finally began its descent. I knew we could have been at our destination hours before were it not so important to keep its location secret. If even Cora’s hover was bugged, as Sam seemed to fear, couldn’t they find us anyway?
There was no baggage to gather. I’d come empty-handed, without even my own coverall. The Eye had brought nothing, either, except their tourist outfits and whatever they had on under, and there was no hidden baggage compartment in Cora’s elegant craft, where extra hydrogen tanks must be taking up the entire space below decks. This hover only looked like a lady’s airport shuttlecar: it was built for long distances and its galley was stocked to feed a small army. Cora Lee was a lady of power and surprises. I considered her public association with Outsider charities and wondered what other activities her philanthropy hid.
We came down in darkness, floating out of black sky to be swallowed up in blacker land. Sam was at the front hatch before the rotors cut out, leaning into the blue-lit cockpit. “Contact?”
“On the mark,” the pilot replied. “Ready and waiting.”
“Let’s make it fast.” Sam palmed a wall plate and the cabin lights dimmed. The Eye became mere shadows clustering in the close, warm darkness as the whine of the fans died into silence and the faint vibration of the floor stilled. The hatch swung open and upward. The Outside night came rushing in.
It was the sound at first. Not just the occasional night-calling bird and an insect or two, but a bewildering variety, all of them screaming at the top of their lungs. Uncontrolled populations of who-knew-what kind of mutated owl or cricket or frog.
And the smell. I shrank against Mark as we both stared into the singing, odoriferous void on the other side of the hatch, asking ourselves, Is it really safe to breathe?
“There’s the signal.” Sam moved instantly down the ramp, homing in on an invisible point in the blackness. The others filed past quickly while Mark and I waited to be felled by this air that smelled so dangerous and yet so alive, so surprisingly cool, so thick with dampness and vegetation. It smelled active, the metallic tang of ozone warring with the rich green scent of pine, as if great battles were being waged for possession of our lungs. I forced myself to breathe deeper, more slowly.
The last passing shadow paused in the hatch. “Think of your grandfather, Gwinn-Rhys. How he wanted to be where you are going.”
“I will, TeCu. Thank you.”
“Then hurry.”
The ramp retracted as soon as we cleared the bottom, stealing away the last vestige of visibility. Te-Cucularit drew us quickly out of range. The pilot kicked his fans into spin. The hover rose without running lights, a black cloud moving against the… stars!
I jerked at Mark’s sleeve. “Look!”
“Hush!” someone scolded.
“Omigod,” whispered Mark, craning his neck as I did to this new wonder. Mali had shown me the blue but not this dizzying whirl of naked fire through velvet, incomprehensible vastness.
“Domers,” muttered Pen.
“Stars later,” growled Ule, pulling us along. I stumbled after him blindly. The ground was soft underfoot, with the crisp surface crackle of dry pine needles. Overhead, the stars disappeared. I heard the sigh of wind through heavy branches, and up ahead, a woman’s voice, flat and authoritative.
“That one,” Ule said quietly. “And this one.” New hands grasped me, gentle but firm, a touch I didn’t recognize.
“Apologies, ma’am.” A boy’s voice. A blindfold was wrapped around my eyes, a gag pressed to my mouth. “Just for a time. You breathe okay?”
I nodded, doubting and suddenly terrified. The gag tasted dirty and the boy smelled of sweat and onions. Had the Eye led us this far to give us up into the hands of Outsiders? But then, where did I think I’d been every time I went to bed with Sam?
“Bit of a walk now.” The Outsider boy gripped my arm above the elbow, whispering, “A big root there to your right, ma’am,” and so on, as we climbed through the trees. Invisible things snatched at my pant legs. Wings that sounded too big and too chitinous to be healthy buzzed past my ears. Branches whipped my face. I felt like a captive enemy, and wondered how long it would be before they decided to trust me.
After a while, the tree sound was thinner, the soft rattle of leaf against leaf. There were roots, slippery ledges that crumbled underfoot. Still we climbed, up and then down. Exhausting, this walking blind. The boy was strong and bone-thin. His breathing came easily long after mine labored. I tried to guess how old he was. Nobody had ever called me ma’am before. When we stumbled down off the rocks, I was grateful for secure footing and let it calm the panic rising in my soul. We waded through thick, damp grass as tall as my thighs. The insect roar was deafening.
Among trees again, we stopped. A murmur of voices broke the quiet, and a low arrhythmic growl. The boy untied my gag and blindfold and left me blinking in two parallel shafts of light that roiled with smoke. I inhaled cautiously. Smoke and steam. And people, four or five, hurrying back and forth in front of the light. I squinted after my guide, caught only a ragged thatch of blond hair melting into the night.
The shafts lit up a strange sort of clearing. A broken road ran the length of a narrow break in thick, scrubby trees. Along one side a cluster of two-story concrete buildings grew out of riotous underbrush. A fainter golden light shone through an open doorway, which just as I noticed it, was extinguished. A door squealed on rusted hinges, thudded shut. Voices called to each other, low and urgent. The shadowy people hurrying in the light were laden with boxes and crates and holdalls.
“Some trip, huh?” Mark joined me in the odd double beams, untying his own blindfold from around his neck. His eyes were bright, worried, excited. “See where we are?”
“Do you?”
“Oh, somewhere north. Maybe Canada. I mean, over there.” He pointed at the darkened buildings. “It’s a decommissioned maintenance station for the vacuum tubes. Can you believe it? They’ve found a way to intercept tube shipments.”
“Between the domes?”
“Remember in the news, all those goods
vanishing mid-shipment?”
It made me smile. Another of Sam’s “leaks” in the closed system.
Two short, thick men trotted through the beams in front of us. They wore stained leather tunics and long beards trimmed with glittery beads, and carried a crate stamped with the Arkadie logo. I recognized one of Hickey’s prop boxes.
“From Harmony?”
Mark nodded eagerly. “Couldn’t get the uh, baggage out of town otherwise, without people noticing.”
Now I was glad for the gag and the blindfold, and Sam’s uneasy silence. I didn’t want to know the location of such a secret. I followed Mark into the beams of light, toward the growl and the billowing steam, which resolved into a square, hulking groundcar with twin headlights and oversized wheels, a narrow driver’s cab beside a glowing firebox in front of a big, boxy trailer with high window openings along the sides. It looked cobbed together out of mismatched parts, some domer child’s idea of a ground vehicle, shuddering and hissing like a living creature, coughing white steam from its funnel-shaped stack. I thought of Micah’s dragons for Marin as Mark led me around the back. Double doors spread wide. A lantern swayed from a ceiling hook, shooting flickering light and shadow across the ancient, scarred sheet metal of the walls.
The Eye’s wardrobe trunks and prop crates were stacked inside, blocking the small window between trailer and cab. Sam paced the lowered tailgate, urging the loaders to hurry. His wounded arm hung free of its sling. He’d been working it and the bandages were thick with new blood. His face shone ashen in the dim light, sweated with pain and worry. Below him, a thin, dark woman in a red turban and leather breeches leaned against the tailgate, sucking on a smoking twig.
“Weah’s yer tall un?” she demanded idly.
“He’ll be joining us,” Sam replied. “He had work to do.”
“Nevah tried movin’ tis mush tru heah befoah,” she muttered. Her weathered skin was oddly stretched across her face. Her jaw seemed overlarge, too stuttery and angular. Tales of mutant Outsiders boiled up in my brain.
“Easy, Red Momma,” growled Sam. “You never had anything this precious through here before.”
“Ay-yuh,” she agreed amiably, frowning at his bleeding shoulder. “Getsher sel’ fished up, willyuh?”
“Yeah. When we’re loaded. You get us going, ha?”
The woman helped Tua swing two heavy wicker baskets into the truck, then stalked away toward the front. I saw she moved with a faint rolling limp that slowed her down not a bit. For no reason and every reason, she made me think of Sean, and I felt a surge of panic and homesickness. What in Cora’s luxurious little hover was still an adventure scenario became in this black wilderness a terrifying reality.
Oh god, what have I done?
Sam was watching me, must have seen the panic race like bird shadow across my face. “So why did you come?”
I stared up at him as if at a stranger. None of the answers I had right at hand seemed worthy of so all-encompassing a question. “Mali’s visions.”
He frowned. “What visions?”
I scribed the arc with my arms as Mali had done. “The sky. The blue open sky.”
Sam studied me, said nothing.
“And to work where it will mean something,” I added finally.
He shook his head, then let it loll wearily against the side of the truck. “Sonofabitch is always right,” he muttered. “Well, I wouldn’t want to think it was just for me.”
The two bearded and beaded men hauled in a final crate, slid it into place, and came forward, extending grimy paws to hoist Mark and myself aboard. The rest of the Eye waited inside, clustered silently around a long crate shoved against the wall, Tua’s baskets piled casually on top. Ule nestled among them swinging his legs, looking more gnomelike than usual in the lantern’s unreliable glow. Moussa crouched with one arm thrown protectively across the box. Omea stood at its head, as if it were an egg she was hatching. I was distracted enough not to notice except they were all as nervous as cats, and I didn’t understand what was going on.
The moment the doors clanged shut, the Eye went into action, clearing the top of the crate, dragging it to the clear space by the doors. Moussa grabbed the lantern from its hook and held it close while TeCu and Omea worked at the metal latches on the sides. Up front, the throaty spit-and-growl accelerated into a chuff-chuff. The truck shuddered and began to move. I almost missed the faint hiss that escaped from the crate as the latches clicked open. The lid rose as if taking a breath, and I did not miss the quiet repetitive beep that seemed to be coming from inside. Pen and Cu grasped the edges of the lid and pulled it free.
A man-sized box full of blood-spattered green silk and Mali’s dead face lying among the folds.
Tears sprang hot to my eyes. I had thought never to see that face again. I was amazed that a dead man could look so alive, so still but serene, as if he were only sleeping. Then I noticed the thin tube snaked into Mali’s nose.
The crate was lined with a heavy mil plastic. The beeping came from a flat gray box that Omea was lifting from under the layers of fabric. I recognized it. I’d just been in a hospital. It was a life-support monitor.
“Still stable,” she announced. “Like a rock.”
Tuli began to weep. Tua’s hands flew to her face to quiet her unbelieving grin. I backed against the rusted metal doors and slid to the floor with a hard, dumbfounded thud.
Sam knelt, laid two fingers under Mali’s jaw as if the monitor wasn’t proof enough, then dropped his head to his arm in a spasm of inarticulate relief.
“Can you wake him?” Ule asked. “Can you chance it yet?”
Omea considered. “Mali’s good in trance. He may refuse the wake-up if the healing’s not gone far enough.”
“Only an hour or so to the village,” Moussa said.
“Have to convince him,” said Ule. “He’s got to walk in.”
“Or give Ideela too much explaining to do,” agreed Tua.
“Let me look him over.” Omea reached in to fold back the shimmering green of the Matta. The wounds were there as I remembered them, one just below his collarbone, the other to the far left side of his chest. They were neatly sealed with suture tape. The surrounding skin looked healthy. Well worked over by Dr. Jaeck, deep inside Omea’s trance, his heartbeat so slow and faint the monitor barely registered it. Mali was hard at work healing himself.
Healing!
Omea uncovered Mali’s arm, untaped the drip in the crook of his elbow, then unclipped a hypo from the side of the monitor, and pressed it to his bicep. She adjusted the flow from the oxygen cylinder buried under the folds at Mali’s side. “Let’s see what he wants to do.”
I looked for Mark to share this miracle. He sat beside the crate, smiling moistly, and I realized he’d known about it all along. It was only me they didn’t tell. And now no one remarked on my astonishment or paid me any heed. Only Te-Cucularit, who across the bent bow of Ule’s back offered sympathetic disapproval. Not angry with me after all, but for me, after all I’d done.
Even wept my heart out for a man who wasn’t dead.
The truck lurched across a particularly broken stretch of road, perhaps no road at all beneath its rotting tires. The crate shuddered and slid sideways. Ule and Moussa steadied it.
We watched the vital-signs monitor for the slightest quiver. Then Omea said, “Heart rate’s increasing.” She put her hand gently to Mali’s chest. “He’s engaged. He’s going to give it a try.”
Sam slapped the side of the crate. “Yes!”
Tuli let out another rapturous sob.
Omea sat back on her heels on the jolting floor. “It might take him awhile to climb back to us. He’ll be sensible about it. Not like you, Sammy, crazy to get back to the battle at any cost.”
Sam grunted. He flattened his palm across Mali’s forehead, the slightest caress, then rose and glanced around. When our eyes met, I backed away, out of the lantern light.
Sam came after me. “Rhys? You all right?”
He was taken aback. “If I’d known it, you would have had it.”
“You could have told me!”
“We didn’t know if he’d make it.” The truck lurched. Sam snatched me with his bad arm, gripping me hard though it must have been agony. “Would you have wanted to see him die twice, if he hadn’t?”
It was arrant emotional manipulation, but it stopped me cold. I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory, and the wonder of Mali alive overtook me again. “Oh, but through the vacuum tubes?”
“He was too far gone to walk out. We had to vanish him before anyone knew he was down.”
Through the fire unscathed. And now excited whispers rose from around the crate. Mali’s chest moved to a living rhythm.
Sam pivoted away. “Is he… ?”
“Coming back to us already,” Omea exclaimed.
“He wants to know, did he make it out alive?” Ule grinned.
The others laughed, the light, eager sound of heartfelt relief. It was a visible battle, Mali working his way up through the levels of trance, a diver surfacing from the deep: stroke, stroke upward, then rest to decompress, rising layer by layer, a battle played out only in the flickering of his eyelids. His body lay inert, his jaw slack. Nothing living but his lidded, tremulous eyes.
And then he opened them. Slowly. No confusion, no struggle for consciousness. It was there already. He took in the shadowed roof of the truck, the faces of his troupe leaning over him in concern, the high sides of the plastic-lined crate cutting off his peripheral vision. He didn’t stir. “Where?” he croaked.
Omea giggled happily. “On the way to Ideela’s village. Welcome back to life, oh, my brother!”
“Yah.” His eyes slid shut.
Sam dropped beside him. “No, Mal. Stay with us. This is your half-hour call.”
Mali groaned. “Sleep.”
“Not now.”
“Ah. Hurts.”
“Gotta get up. For Ideela.”
“How can you ask him to?” I burst out.
They all stared at me.
“Because he must,” said Te-Cucularit gently.
Harmony Page 51
