Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  “I won’t pry,” she said, “but you could at least tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “Like I’ve been pummeled and battered, every day, every night.”

  “Well, then!” she exclaimed. “Go back in-country—make up with her—I’m sure she’ll listen to your excuses.”

  Nolan shook his head. “Can’t,” he said. “It feels like the wrong thing to have done, but I know it was the right one.”

  “Maybe in a few weeks you’ll feel differently,” she suggested.

  He shook his head again and declined to answer, merely taking another bite of his casserole. Melina sighed loudly and turned her attention to the hard copy she’d purchased on their way in. She had said she was looking for news about the grain export levels, but she appeared to be reading even the most obscure items with equal interest.

  Suddenly, she let loose an indistinct exclamation of surprise. “I can’t believe it! They’ve released Jex Zanlan!”

  Nolan’s food turned to rubble in his mouth. He swallowed carefully and said, “What did you say?”

  She pointed at the paper. “Jex Zanlan. They’ve let him out of prison. Yesterday morning, apparently.”

  “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  “Well, it says so right here. But isn’t that strange? I mean, everybody assumes he’s the one behind the bombing of the Centrifuge, not to mention the troubles at the Carbonnier Extension and the medical building, so why would they—Nolan? Where are you going? Nolan?”

  For he had jumped to his feet, flung money on the table, and headed toward the door. If Ariana Bayless had released Jex Zanlan, that could only mean one thing.

  * * *

  * * *

  He waited till nightfall, and then he took the cross-town trolley to West One. This time, the colorful houses along Elmtree looked less strange to him, more inviting. He imagined the daily routines inside, the fathers and sons going off to work every day, the mothers and the daughters preparing the food and working in the gardens, each member of the household knowing his place, oiling one component of the domestic machine. Not the life Nolan wanted, no, but with its own symmetry and peace. Sometimes, lately, he knew he would be happier living a life in which his role was defined, his every movement forecast and expected.

  Well, he had had such a life, and he had given it up. Now, till the end of his days, he would be guessing.

  The men on the bus glanced at him and glanced away, but Nolan didn’t care. They would not challenge him without a reason, as long as he did not disrupt their ancient patterns. He remembered the street much better than he had thought. He rose for his stop the block before it arrived and swung easily off the bus. Yes, this little cluster of gaily decorated shops was exactly as he had recalled. And here was Cloverton, and he would walk until he arrived at 1811.

  At the striped house with the slanted copper roof, he paused a moment before summoning the courage to knock. It was certainly possible Colt was not here, or would disbelieve him. Nolan had no idea what he would do next if that were so.

  The door was answered by the same gorgeous, terrified young woman who had opened it to Nolan when he was here with Melina. “Colt,” Nolan said, firmly and slowly, and then remembered a few of the words Kit had taught him. “See Colt. I see Colt.”

  The woman responded with a rapid flood of interrogative phrases, but Nolan just shook his head. “I see Colt,” he repeated. It crossed his mind, a wild thought, that Colt was dead and the woman thought Nolan must be hallucinating, but he had no other language with which to make his request known. Kit had not even taught him the word “please.” He had asked for it, and she had laughed. “Guldmen never use it, so you have no need to learn it,” she had replied.

  The guldwoman before him answered again in a spate of unintelligible words, then suddenly ducked behind the door and disappeared. Nolan just waited. Perhaps she would fetch the young interpreter; perhaps he would be standing here the rest of his life. But no. Those were footsteps, and then the door was flung open, and Nolan was suddenly confronting the large blond man he had not seen in more than a month.

  There was a moment’s dead silence. Nolan found himself wishing he had remembered how big Colt was, how deadly looking. Weeks of outlawry had intensified the underlying ferocity of his features, honed his reckless edge. He had always appeared dangerous, at least to Nolan; now he appeared lethal.

  Colt spoke first. “You,” he said in that familiar mocking voice, “are the very last person in the city I expected to find at my door.”

  “I was here once before,” Nolan said. “We left you messages.”

  “Anyone could have guessed that that particular visit was Melina’s idea, and not yours,” Colt said. “But here you are, all on your own. I guess I have to ask you why.”

  There were considerations of honor here, and Nolan did not want to make false accusations. But he had not mastered the indirect complexities of the gulden tongue, and so he plunged right in. “Cerisa fired you,” he said bluntly, “because she thought you had associations with Jex Zanlan. And I’m here because I hope you do.”

  Colt did not look angry; he looked incredibly amused. “And if I do? You expect me to admit this to you and tell you all about our rebel meetings?”

  Nolan shook his head. “I want to tell you something, and give you something, and I want you to pass them both along to Jex.”

  “And I’m sure the son of the chief of Geldricht would be interested in any message you have for him,” Colt said in a silky voice.

  “Jex is dying,” Nolan said flatly.

  Colt raised his eyebrows and leaned against the doorframe. “And how would you know this? Have you even laid eyes on the man?”

  “First he had a cough, nothing too bad. Then a severe cough. Now he’s exhausted, and growing weaker every day, but the cough is gone. Have you read the papers? Have you heard about the new gulden virus that’s spreading in from Geldricht? The hospitals are aware of it. Has he seen a doctor?”

  “The doctor said his symptoms were not those of this mysterious virus.”

  Nolan nodded impatiently. “That’s because he’s gone through the first three or four phases. He’s in the final phase now—it doesn’t look anything like the first few. It doesn’t matter. It’s a disease that can only be treated up to a certain point, and he’s crossed it. They wouldn’t have released him unless they were sure he was beyond the power of the drugs to cure.”

  “How do you know this?” Colt demanded.

  “Because I have studied the disease and the drug.”

  “It’s new—a few weeks old. You cannot have learned much.”

  Nolan smiled grimly. “I learned it all in a day. There’s not much to know about it, except it is fatal to gulden, if untreated, and it was created by Cerisa Daylen.”

  Now shock made all Colt’s features go slack. “Created by—”

  Nolan nodded. “Manufactured. Specifically. To kill. The gulden.”

  In the space of seconds, Colt had assimilated the information, recovered from stupefaction, and grown calculating and cold. “You can’t prove this,” he said.

  Nolan shook his head. “I can’t. But you know Cerisa, and you know me, and I think you will believe me.”

  “Oh, I do. I am determining now how to kill her.”

  Nolan shook his head. “Let her live until I see her,” he said. “For, trust me, her life is about to become worthless.”

  Now Colt looked amazed and stared down at Nolan as if he had never seen this particular indigo before. “You? What would you do to her?”

  Nolan handed Colt a sheaf of papers he had fished from his pocket. “I’m giving you the tools to strike back. You’re the only guldman I know who will be able to read them, understand them, and use them. And I will tell her what I have done, and why.”

  Colt opened the folded papers and scanned them, then gazed
back at Nolan with a marveling eye. But all he said was, “Tested?”

  Nolan shook his head. “Lab work.”

  “Antidote?”

  “Still working on it.”

  Colt laughed suddenly, a harsh, brutal sound. “Shall I let Jex make the decision?”

  “That is what I assumed.”

  A moment more of silence, and then Colt suddenly thrust his hand out to shake hands with Nolan. It was the first time Colt had made such a gesture in the five years they had known each other. Nolan felt his bones protest under Colt’s hard grip.

  “You’re a man of honor, Nolan Adelpho,” Colt said. “And so I will tell anyone who asks.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The long trip back into the city by bus and trolley, by starlight and streetlight. Nolan was still numb, both physically and mentally. He moved as if propelled by unseen and insistent hands, surprised at himself but not surprised enough to resist. He had not even taken a moment to plot his strategy. He had known, apparently for weeks, what he must do. And now he was merely doing it.

  It was a couple of hours before midnight when he walked into the offices of the gulden news media. There were about fifteen people working there, most of them men, but one or two, unexpectedly, were women. The place appeared to be one big, stark, brightly lit room filled with a jumble of desks, people, monitors, and electronic equipment. Nolan stood there for a moment, getting his bearings. He was not sure whom to approach or how to get anyone’s attention.

  However, within three minutes, one of the workers came up and civilly asked what he needed. The reporter was a gulden male about Nolan’s age, with long curly hair and intelligent eyes. His bluetongue was perfectly unaccented.

  “I want to get a story into the gulden press,” Nolan said.

  The reporter nodded, his eyes fixed on Nolan’s face. “And why?”

  “Because it’s a story that affects the gulden. And the indigo media wouldn’t carry it.”

  “What makes you think we will?”

  “If you believe me, you will.”

  “Do you have anything that will make us believe you?”

  “I think so,” Nolan said. “You have to. Because it’s true.”

  * * *

  * * *

  He spent three hours at the media office, going over facts, dates, chemical formulas, and medical information. He waited while the reporter—now augmented by half a dozen coworkers, editors, and lawyers—called two of the gulden hospitals to confirm facts. Chay had deliberately kept news of the virus at a very low-key level, so that the medical community knew of the disease but not its origin and not its ramifications. As the magnitude of the event began to sink in, the members of the gulden press grew more and more grim.

  “This will dissolve the city,” said one of the lawyers who had been called in for consultation. “This is civil war.”

  “Then should we rethink?” asked a reporter. “Not run it?”

  “Have to run it,” was the brief response of the man Nolan assumed was the managing editor. He seemed to be in charge of the whole group. “We would be just as guilty as Cerisa Daylen if we didn’t. People will live or die because of this story.”

  “The city will go up in flames,” the lawyer said, shaking his head.

  “There’s more,” Nolan said. “Maybe worse.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” the managing editor said.

  “Jex Zanlan has found a weapon with which to fight back.”

  “What kind of weapon?” the lawyer asked. In a slow, clear monologue, Nolan told them. There was a long blank silence once he had finished speaking.

  “You’re right, it’s worse,” the managing editor said faintly. “It’s not a war, it’s a complete meltdown. We could have a ghost city in three days.”

  “That’s why I thought somebody ought to know,” Nolan said.

  The lawyer was staring at Nolan strangely. He was slight of build, for a gulden, with pasty skin that bespoke too much time spent indoors, snatching food at random. “But why tell us?” he demanded. “Why tell anyone?”

  Nolan rose to his feet. He was weary beyond telling, and he still had one more stop to make this night. “Because it was the right thing to do,” he said.

  “I don’t know that I would have done it in your place,” the lawyer said.

  Nolan turned to go. “Then Cerisa Daylen and Ariana Bayless have already won.”

  Out into the cool dark of the deserted city. He was in the central district, not six blocks from the Complex, and limos for hire were cruising the streets, looking for passengers. It would be a tidy sum to ride from here into the residential neighborhoods on the southern edge of town, but Nolan flagged one down anyway. All he could think about was sleeping, going to bed and forgetting everything about this evening, everything about his life. He would dream, insignificant and anonymous, and if he was lucky, he would wake without remembering who he was.

  He had never been that lucky.

  The limo moved quickly through the empty streets and was so comfortable that Nolan almost did fall asleep. He jolted to full alertness as the driver stopped before a large, shuttered house that showed no gleam of light at any door or window.

  “Looks like they’re all asleep in there,” the driver remarked.

  Nolan counted out a few bills and handed them over. “Not for long,” he said with dry humor. “Be the last time anyone in that house sleeps for a good long while.”

  On the porch, he sounded the door gong repeatedly to send the sense of urgency through the house. Even so, the limo had disappeared before lights came on in the front rooms, and a tousled male servant opened the door.

  “The hela is sleeping,” the servant said. “What message may I convey to her in the morning?”

  “No message,” Nolan said, brushing by him to step into the hallway. He had never been inside this house, but its opulence for a moment stopped him—black-and-white marble in the foyer, a curved stairway sweeping up to the second floor, glimpses of rooms off to either side filled with massive antique furniture. “Tell her I must see her tonight.”

  “I do not wish to disturb the hela,” the servant said a little more forcefully.

  A voice spoke from the top of the stairs. “It’s all right, Coto, I’ve already been disturbed.” It was Cerisa, speaking with her usual acerbic aplomb. “Well, Nolan, your behavior has been increasingly erratic of late, but this may be your most outrageous episode yet. Coming to my house in the middle of the night.”

  Nolan gazed up at her. She had never been a beautiful woman, but her patrician features and haughty bearing always made her arresting. Even now, startled from sleep and in no good humor, the colors and contours of her face spoke a strength of will that was almost unopposable. He had been afraid of her since he had met her—they all were, even Pakt. But tonight, she inspired in Nolan not the slightest tendril of panic or alarm. Her hold on him had been broken irrevocably.

  “It’s the last time I’ll trouble you,” he said. “But I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

  “If it’s to tell me you’re resigning, you could have left me a note,” she said. “I prefer my histrionics at one remove.”

  “I’m resigning,” he said, “but you are, too.”

  The dark brows arched over the black eyes. “You are mad,” she said calmly. “Shall I call the servants?”

  “Call them if you want,” he said. “But I think you’d prefer to hear me out first.”

  “There is nothing you could say to me at this hour that I would be interested in hearing.”

  “Nothing?” he said softly, still staring up at her. “Can you think of nothing you might have done that I could have discovered and would be willing to tell the world?”

  “Coto,” she snapped. “Show this man to the study and bring a tray of refreshments. No one
is to disturb us. I’ll be down in five minutes,” she added to Nolan, and disappeared.

  It was more like fifteen minutes before Cerisa joined Nolan in the small, plush sitting room whose walls were filled, floor to ceiling, with shelves of medical texts and journals. Nolan had already helped himself to the food and wine Coto had brought in. He was starving. A stress reaction, he supposed, the body using up all its reserves as it launched itself into combat. The food was delicious. He took another bite and watched Cerisa shut the door behind her.

  “Now, Nolan,” she said in a smooth, dangerous voice. “Why don’t you tell me what you think you know?”

  No need for games and subterfuge. Nolan swallowed his last mouthful. “On Ariana Bayless’s orders, you developed a virus fatal to the gulden. You exposed Chay Zanlan to it when he was in the city visiting his son. Apparently, you also administered it to Jex Zanlan, because he’s been released from prison to die in the arms of his cohorts and infect the lot of them. And your purpose was to destroy the gulden completely. Plague. Genocide.”

  She didn’t deny it; she didn’t even look concerned. It occurred to Nolan that she was planning to have him kidnapped from her home, taken away somewhere and quietly disposed of. It was probably within her means and definitely in character. “Even if that were true,” she said, “I don’t see what you could do about it.”

  Nolan actually laughed. “I can do a lot!” he exclaimed. “In fact, I’ve done it.”

  “Really? And what exactly have you done?”

  He counted off the items on his fingers. “I worked late to modify some of my general gulden formulas to counteract the virus. Same with existing vaccines. I traveled into Geldricht to share the drugs with Chay Zanlan. Who was pretty sick when I left, by the way, but stabilized. He may recover. At any rate, we’ve heard no news of his death, which I consider a good sign.”