A Passage of Stars (26 page)

Pero regarded Bach with a look remarkably like a conspirator’s. “Can you get a message to Heredes?” he asked.

Bach winked, speaking again in Paisley’s voice. “Affirmative. It is my experience, however, that the timespan necessary to achieve contact without exposing the master’s masquerade, if one is desireth of interfacing with him directly rather than through the masking channels he and I have devised for exchange of our usual flow of information, will be of a rather longer duration than you are perhaps hoping for.” Two more lights blinked. “Given the circumstances.”

“Let him know,” said Pero. “But don’t jeopardize his cover. The information he’s sending us is too valuable.”

“Affirmative. It is my belief, if I may be allowed to express one, that my patroness will prove herself perfectly able to defuse the current situation.”

“It isn’t the current one I’m worried about.” Pero went to his desk and picked up the notes he had been scrawling before dinner. “It’s the future ones.”

Bach sang something incomprehensible, halted abruptly.

“But,” said Pero, “I have a speech to write. Can you take it?”

Bach settled into a chair with a melodic phrase that sounded remarkably like pleased anticipation. “Affirmative,” he said.

Pero stood silent for a long moment, glancing once through his notes.

“Workers of Arcadia. Our rights as citizens have been disregarded too often. Central has imposed taxes on us that are not in force in Central itself. Central has cut power to our homes. Central has drafted our young men and women into their own military expansion—against what enemy, I ask you, but the very workers who feed them? Central has spilled our blood when we have protested legally against the measures they enact to prevent us from exercising our right to vote. It is time we act directly against these measures, and all the others like them. We are two billion souls, citizens. We are strong. We are righteous—”

“—we will not let the threat of Central’s troops, let the threat of the Immortals, deter us. We will work without violence to bring Jehane’s revolution to Arcadia. To bring his reforms, his hope, to the Reft. Jehane will come. He will bring justice. But, comrades, it is up to us to prepare the ground on which he will stand. Join me, on the first day of spring. Join me, in sending a message to the Senators, to the Immortals, to the government in Central. Join me. Strike.”

Pero’s voice echoed out from the terminal, deep and passionate, touched by the barest of accents, a suggestion of a musical lilt.

Kyosti, reclined on the couch, smiled with a slight mocking glint in his eye. “That’s very good, Robbie,” he said. “Although I always preferred mine with fire and brimstone.”

“Fear is only used against your enemies, not your comrades,” said Robbie. “I will not make a mockery of the workers who risk their lives in this cause.”

“Is that coming out of the underground link at Byssina?” Lily asked quickly. “The one I ran the codes to two weeks ago?”

“It is,” said Robbie. “You did a difficult job well, Lily. I know that Security had been watching for that transfer, but you avoided them.”

“She must take after Joshua.” Kyosti turned his head to regard her. His ashen hair, cut shorter since the riots, drifted along her shoulder. “Frightening thought.”

“It could be worse, I could take after you,” retorted Lily. Kyosti smiled. “What time do we have to leave, Robbie?” she asked.

“You don’t have to come with me,” he said, for perhaps the fifth time.

“I want to.”

“I dislike seeing you miss so much time at the Academy, Lya.”

“It’s true sensei Jones has been lenient.” Lily shrugged. “Frankly, as much as I’m learning in my work there, there’s something missing, some element—I’m not sure. I
like
helping you, Robbie.”

“Of course you like it,” said Kyosti in a quiet voice. “You’re Joshua’s daughter.”

Pero frowned.

“And furthermore, Robbie,” continued Lily briskly, “you don’t make a public speech very often, Security’s got to be out looking for you. Even if they do think you’re a committee of ten writing all those broadcasts and news sheets, they still must want someone they can hang as ‘Pero.’ You
need
a bodyguard.”

“Very well,” he acceded. “Let me change.” He went into his bedroom.

“‘It is a sacred duty for all of us, soldiers of the revolution, democrats of all continents, to unite our forces, to come to an understanding and to organize.’”

“That’s very good, Kyosti. Are you helping Robbie write his speeches?”

Kyosti smiled slightly, as if he would have laughed but did not have the energy for it. He gazed obliquely at Lily, caught in thoughts she could not guess at.

“It’s funny,” she continued. “Robbie devotes his life to Jehane’s cause, but Jehane’s never been on Arcadia. He’s never spoken in front of angry crowds, with Security ready to come in at the slightest provocation, or risked getting arrested for setting up yet another underground news network. To the people on Arcadia, Pero is Jehanism. But I’d bet you that if Jehane ever succeeds, Robbie won’t get a hit of the glory. He won’t even ask for it.”

Kyosti shrugged. “A megalomaniac like Jehane succeeds on the strength of his followers’ sincerity,” he said.

“Is that another quote?” she asked.

“Maybe I’ll come with you,” he said suddenly. “Bach can guard the home front, can’t you, old boy?”

A single light winked on Bach’s surface, but the robot did not deign to turn away from the terminal or otherwise acknowledge Kyosti’s statement.

“He’s addicted to that machine,” said Lily with disgust. “He’s on it constantly. I can’t understand why our electric bill isn’t higher, except I’m afraid Bach fixes it.”

“We all have to be addicted to something.” Kyosti regarded her again with that unreadable look.

“Not me,” said Lily, standing up as Robbie came out of his room. “Let’s go.”

O
UTSIDE, A COLD WIND
hit them, and Kyosti went back to get a heavier jacket. Lily and Robbie strolled into the community park that fronted their apartment block to wait for him.

“How many do you expect to join the strike, Robbie?” she asked. “It’s hard to believe that tomorrow will be the first day of spring.” She bent to brush the grass with an open hand. That cold air alone might wither the green plants to brown she had never conceived of, nor the slow budding to life as the weather grew warmer. It was as if the air itself carried some virus, growing and dying.

“What I expect and what I hope—it’s hard to separate the two, Lya. But first of all I need transport workers to strike, because then there will be inconvenience to Central, and the Senators will take notice of us.”

“Haven’t they already?”

He smiled. Against his dark skin, his teeth seemed very white. “As a nuisance, perhaps. But Security has not yet moved against Pero—the mythical Pero, who is no one man or woman, but all men and women. That is why Pero can never die.”

Lily looked away, out over the pond. The wind had died away; the water lay like frosted glass in an unbroken surface, catching the distant reflection of treetops and apartment windows in its even surface. “I hope not,” she said. “Robbie. What deal did Heredes make with you?”

“I thought it was all understood, Lily. I really did.”

“I believe you. Of all people, I believe you, Robbie. But why am I always the last person to whom it’s all understood?”

“I assume that is a rhetorical question. I thought Heredes told you.”

“I know he got false ID, and that he wanted to work in Central to get information. And that to work in Central, and especially to gain employment in the kind of classified position he must need to get what he wants, that you also have to live in Central, and that your movements are closely watched. That’s what I know. I thought he just dropped me off at Wingtuck’s Academy until he was finished, and that you, in your vast kind-heartedness, took me in. But that’s not the case, is it?”

Robbie moved onto the pebbled scree that bordered the park’s shallow pond and leaned against the waist-high fence built there, he had said, to keep people out of the water. Why anyone might want to go into it, filthy as it was, Lily could not imagine, nor how such a low fence could restrict access. “But you and your robot form a vital link, Lily. I thought—” He shrugged.

“Bach and I?”

“For several years,” he began again, as if a random thought had struck him, “I have attempted not only to break into Central’s computer system, which is difficult but not impossible, but also to get the information I obtained
out
of Central. That had proved impossible, so far. But I was assured that your guardian is a master of such techniques. He promised to feed information on Jehane and his movements, movements tracked on Central’s classified strategy computers, out through your robot and into my hands. And he has. This information gives me an incomparable advantage in working for Jehane’s cause here on Arcadia. For instance, the last transfer included a bulletin from Unruli, where Central evidently uncovered a large Jehanist nest and carted the entire group off to the nearest prison planet.”

“Harsh. I already know someone there, the Ridani girl I met. And lost. But an entire group from Unruli! Hoy. I wonder if I knew them.”

She subsided into silence. From a distance they must have seemed parting lovers, she with her hands crammed in her coat pockets against the cold, head bent under the seriousness of his mien, but eyes lifted to catch his words; he, still leaning against the fence, but almost as if it alone supported him, dark hands resting lightly on his blue-trousered thighs.

“I hope you’re not disappointed in me, Lily,” said Robbie at last.

“In you?” She smiled, rueful. “No. Maybe a little bit in Heredes. You’d think he’d trust me with more knowledge.”

“In this line of work, Lya, knowledge can be dangerous.”

“So can ignorance. Ignorance can kill.” Across the park, she watched as the door to their block opened and Kyosti emerged. “For instance,” she said.

“This is none of my business,” said Robbie suddenly, hurriedly, “and I say it only out of concern for your well-being—” He faltered. Uncertainty was so unlikely an expression on his open face that Lily could only stare. “Do you love him?”

“Love him?” Kyosti advanced toward them, the increasing wind tugging at his pale hair; his hands were hidden in his pockets. “I don’t know. How can you love someone who has never told you the truth?”

“You love Heredes.”

She smiled. “And it seems to you he has as many secrets as Kyosti?”

“Doesn’t he?”

“But Heredes has always told me the truth—not much of it, granted.” She brought her hands up to her face and blew on them. “I trust him, Robbie. I always have.”

“Then is trust a necessary corollary for love?”

“It must be.”

He shook his head. “You’re speaking with your head. That’s your flaw—if I may presume enough to say so—”

“You will anyway,” she said with a grin.

“You don’t act enough from your heart.”

“Don’t I? Maybe you act too much from yours.”

“Perhaps. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been charged with that particular failing.”

“Which failing is that?” asked Kyosti as he came up to them. He removed a hand from his pocket and closed it around Lily’s hands, drawing them down.

“Perfection,” said Lily.

Kyosti smiled, as genuine as it was possible for him to be. “I’m sorry, Robbie,” he said. “But I’m afraid that the only cure for perfection is death.”

Robbie laughed. “Isn’t that the only cure there is? Shall we go?”

The meeting was held in Elfin District. A stage had been constructed in a warehouse. From her vantage point at the back and to one side of the makeshift construction, Lily could look out over the crowd. Robbie sat next to her, his eyes closed, in perfect stillness. On her other side, Kyosti sat elbows on knees, examining the crowd.

“I don’t like this,” he whispered. “It smells like a setup to me. Did Robbie arrange this, from the ground up? Or was he asked to speak here?”

“I don’t know.” Lily glanced at Robbie, but did not want to disturb his meditation.

“Did you see the light switches as we came in?”

“The ones just behind us?”

“Yes.” Beyond, the crowd stirred restlessly, perhaps two thousand souls, as a dark woman spoke to them from the stage. Several other speakers, finished or yet to go on, loitered backstage or sat near Lily and Kyosti and Robbie. “We’ll split up,” continued Kyosti. He spoke in an undertone, so quiet that even Robbie, were he listening, might not have heard. “One to the lights, the other as close to the microphone as possible. If anything happens, we’ll have to act fast.”

Lily leaned into him, lips brushing his ear as if she were nuzzling him affectionately. “You think Central Intelligence set this up? To bring one of Pero’s voices to light?”

“I don’t think anything,” said Kyosti. He let a hand slide up her waist, caressing her. “But I know this line of work. Haven’t you heard the Boy Scout motto, ‘Be prepared’?”

Lily giggled. “What’s a Boy Scout?”

Kyosti pushed her away. Robbie had risen, gave them each an intent nod, and, to the accompaniment of fevered and in-unison applause, walked out onto the stage.

“Comrades,” the woman proclaimed, her words merged with the crowd’s roar of approval, “I give you, the man who speaks for all of us. Pero.”

“I’ll get the lights,” said Lily, her voice almost drowned by the cheers. Kyosti nodded and rose as well.

“—Comrades! I am not Pero. All of us are Pero. All of us speak out against injustice, against—”

Lily found the lights, stood by them, listening. “—we will show Central, we will show our Senators, we will show the Reft, our disapproval. They will attempt to make us fight. This is a peaceful strike. With peace, we will win. Do not fight. Do not resist. But do not retreat!”

Over the thunderous applause and cheering that greeted this remark, the shot ricocheted like an echo of the crowd’s intensity. Robbie faltered, staggered, and fell. Lily started, shocked out of action, and only by reflex did she cut the lights.

Darkness shuttered the hall, but triggered her thoughts. In the instant while the rest were still frozen, she was already running toward the stage. She elbowed past a group whose high voices revealed panic. A scream shattered the sudden muteness of the crowd.