A Passage of Stars (22 page)

“The wheel of the night.” His voice was so low it seemed not to come from him at all. “They call it the honor that patterns you. But also,” he kissed her throat, and she sighed and slipped her hand up to cradle the back of his neck, “the promise of love.”

For the next two days they hiked across fields empty of human life, except the occasional shuttle high overhead and, once, bulky, slow-moving machines that appeared briefly, a choreographed line, on a distant ridge. Half-ripe crops waved in soft breezes, so alive, under the wind’s hand, that she wondered at first that these were not animals. But some of them Kyosti and Heredes could name for her, kilometers of wheat, vast rustling patches of corn, convincing her of their vegetability. And animals were everywhere: creatures of the air, creatures burrowed down into the dirt or scurrying away through the green. Part of the time she was fascinated by this riot of free, uncontained life; other times, the unsterility of it all revolted her. Kyosti rigged a hood for her, to protect her face from the sun. His bronzed skin deepened in color; in Heredes’s dusky complexion she could see no change at all.

On the third day they came to an irrigation pond. Reeds choked the shore except for one bank that smoothed from wild grass to pebbles lapped by water. Fields paled into the horizon around them. Under the sun their backs had broken into a sweat unrelieved by three day’s march. Kyosti and Heredes looked at the water, looked at each other and, with whoops and cheers so foreign to their characters that Lily stopped in her tracks to stare, they rushed down to the bank. By the time she realized that this blue hollow whose length and breadth each would hold fifty of her, end to end, was all and entirely water, the two men had stripped and plunged in. The sound of their bodies striking was like a slap, startling her out of her amazement. Water drops sprayed off from them as they laughed. Heredes, as if he were walking on the hidden bottom, struck out for the far shore, gliding like a gear through oil, arms working about his head as if he were constantly pitching some object in front of him.

“Lily.” Kyosti stood several meters from the bank. Water slipped off his chest and shoulders to dissolve back into itself around him; it covered him just up to his hipbones, leaving the hard line of his abdomen bare. He smiled and beckoned her closer. She walked down to the bank. “Are you coming in?” he asked. “The water’s fine.”

“You must be joking,” said Lily. Heredes had vanished around a curve in the pond. Behind her, Bach sank down to rest half-hidden in the grass.

“At least take off your boots,” Kyosti said persuasively. “Feel how good it is on your toes.”

She did. Her feet were hot. The water felt deliriously cool.

“You must be terribly hot,” he said.

She was. Fine sweat eased itself down the back of her neck, sloping on down her back. Her tunic and trousers were too heavy for this climate, but Heredes had insisted she keep them on to prevent sunburn—whatever that was. “I refuse,” she said with dignity, “to get in that water. It must be filthy.”

Kyosti laughed, but he inched closer to her. “My darling,” he said. “I can run faster than you.”

“I suppose,” Lily conceded, admiring him as he waded another meter toward her. The water level fell noticeably; she forced herself to look away. He ran out of the water and grabbed her. Water speckled her clothing.

“Now, Lily.” His eye was merciless. “Either you take those clothes off, or I’ll throw you in with them still on.”

She took them off, but before she had a chance to move he picked her up, charged into the water, and dropped her.

It was terrifying. The water closed around her, gave around her, like thick air, like nothing she had ever felt before. It splashed into her face, into her mouth and nose, but a strong arm pulled her up to stand. She gasped. Water lapped at her hips, yielding fingers. Before she got used to it, Kyosti propelled her further in. She gasped again at its touch on her belly, her breasts—he stopped and moved her around to face him.

“Well?” he asked.

She was speechless.

“If it’s awful,” he said, “you can get out.”

She shook her head. “It isn’t awful,” she said, “it’s … it’s …” Words failed her.

He laughed. With a sudden twist and plunge he disappeared beneath the surface. The water rippled, and he erupted from it several body lengths away from her. “Come over to me.”

She wanted to shake her head. Part of her was paralyzed with fright at this liquid that moved as if it were alive around her, some being whose intelligence she could not fathom—yet another part felt intensely the seduction of such smooth fluidity caressing her skin. In the end, her training got the better of her. “It is our limitations that train us,” Heredes would say—she began to walk. The water tugged at her. Each step pulled against her chest as if
G
forces were being expended to halt-her progress. But she kept going, a little grim-faced, until Kyosti’s arms caught her in a slippery embrace.

“That’s my warrior,” he said with admiration. He honored her with an intensive kiss made more fervent by the brush of water against their bodies and the quiet rustle of wind through the reeds,

“Hawk!” The shout from Heredes broke them apart. “Damn you to hell, Hawk!”

Lily sank lower until the water covered her to her shoulders, lapping at her neck.

“I’ve already been there,” Kyosti replied cheerfully. “Anywhere else you’d like me to go?”

Heredes did not reply. Instead he swam past them, looking as if all his pleasure in this outing had been destroyed. Kyosti smiled.

“He doesn’t want us to be lovers,” Lily said. “Why not, Kyosti?”

He bent to kiss her. “Typical father. He’s shocked by your sexuality, my love.” She pushed away from him, but he only laughed. “We’d better get you out of the sun. You’ve gone quite pink.”

That evening, they came on a work crew.

“Wait here.” Heredes motioned them to lie just below a bluff that looked over the field on which the workers, perhaps one hundred spread far across its green-leafed and yellow-flowered expanse, were engaged in an arcane activity Lily could not decipher. He left.

“What’s he going to do?” Lily whispered. Kyosti shrugged. “What are these people doing?”

“Picking strawberries?”

“
What
is a strawberry?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It could be aris.” Lily rubbed her lower lip ruminatively.

“What is aris?”

“Got you at last. I don’t think it could be, anyway. Not from what Jenny told me.”

“Don’t you know what it looks like?”

It was her turn to shrug. “I only see it processed.”

Kyosti stiffened suddenly. “Your hood,” he said. As she handed it to him, she heard voices. He tied the hood on, covering his hair, just as Heredes appeared with a dusky-skinned woman.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Heredes said. “I’ve found a Jehanist nest. This is Carmelita. They’re going to help us get to the city.”

She was middle-aged, with a weathered face and calloused, dirty hands. The look she turned on Lily was rapt. “You’ve met him?” she breathed. Lily nodded, but did not feel it politic to mention that she had also shot him. “It is an honor to help you, in your mission for Jehane.”

“Ah, yes,” muttered Kyosti under his breath. “Our mission.”

Heredes had done his job well. For the next two days they worked out in the fields, getting a crash course from the workers on weeding supirina bushes, a delicate and time-consuming task whose fruits, in both senses of the word, would be received only by those well-to-do enough to afford the wine the supirina blossoms produced. At some point Kyosti managed to turn his hair color from blue to a faintly blue-tinged blond. He refused, despite Heredes’s entreaties, to cut it.

On the third day the shift changed, and it was as easy as that. At Carmelita’s suggestion, Lily had concealed Bach in a lean-to where old equipment rusted. With Heredes, she programmed the robot to wait for his return, when a method could be devised to get Bach into the city without attracting Security’s attention. Then, surrounded by their quiet allies, they boarded the workers’ rail and were raced across a blur of countryside into the city. Lily caught a glimpse of it—brown haze and a wall of buildings—before the rail went underground. It roared along, echoes dark around them. Kyosti seemed nervous. She put her arm around him, and he calmed. Heredes consulted with Carmelita over directions.

The workers dispersed at a large station. With a final exchange of words and a com-screen for Heredes, they left their benefactress and rode a series of trains into a labyrinth from which Lily doubted she could ever find her way out. Heredes eventually led them off a train and up, past turn gates, past incessantly chattering screens with news and weather and inexplicable dramas, past individuals lounging in all their dirt along the unscrubbed concrete tunnels, past uniformed Security, up escalators, into the sun again.

It was the same sun, but the view—so changed. There were buildings, a street clogged with traffic: pedestrians, bicycles, and motopeds, and a few trucks bearing cargo. Lily had thought Station on Unruli’s moon was crowded; it was nothing compared to this crush of humanity. It stank here, too, but it had a more fetid flavor, torn now and then with a gust of freshening wind. The buildings, towering around her, had thousands upon thousands of windows that doubled the activity. Vehicles and people and unseen machinery roared about her ears. Security personnel patrolled in marked vehicles, on motorized two-wheelers, and on foot in pairs.

“Lily!” Heredes took her by the arm.

She looked at him. “I see now,” she said. “And to think there’s so much land out there.”

“Where’s Hawk?”

Kyosti stood three meters behind her. He seemed to be staring at an invisible figure directly in front of him. Lily pushed past a clump of people, grabbed his arm.

“Kyosti?” His eyes shifted to her and his hands clamped onto her arm. His mouth opened—no words. “Here,” said Lily briskly. “Put your arm around me. That’s right. Now let’s go.”

Heredes came up beside her, took Kyosti’s other elbow. “This way,” he said. “Turn here.”

They turned off the main street. Kyosti’s face lost some of its blank-eyed stare, and he abruptly disengaged his elbow from Heredes’s grasp.

“Well, Hawk,” said Heredes, but he confined further comment to an exchange of glances with Lily. “Turn here again. And—ah, yes—Abagail Street. Twelve oh one. Twelve oh seven. Here we are.” They went in. As the doors shut behind them, the noise from the street faded and cut off. Heredes examined the directory. Kyosti withdrew his arm from Lily.

“Floor twenty-one. We’ll take the lift.”

They came out on floor twenty-one into a small hallway flanked with two doors. One was blank. The other bore the letters Abagail Street Academy. Jones. Haji. Ramirez. In the anteroom a young man sat behind a counter typing into a terminal. He looked up. “May I help you?”

Heredes presented an amiable smile. “We’re here to see sensei Jones. She
is
expecting us.”

“Of course,” said the young man uncertainly. “She should be in gym one.”

“Thank you.” Heredes led them into a hallway. “Gym Four. Three. Locker room. Locker room. Quite an establishment. Puts mine to shame.” He winked at Lily. “Two. Here we are.” He pushed open double doors, Lily and Kyosti following.

The floors were of wood. Lily noticed that first. Then the rank of mirrors along one wall. The other walls were a pale peach. Mats lay rolled up against the far wall. In the middle of the room sat a woman, cross-legged, meditating. Her head lifted at the sound of their entrance, turned. The woman’s entire body tensed as she stared. She jumped to her feet.

“Joshua! What the devil are you doing here?”

“Wingtuck. My dearest—sister.” He motioned Lily and Kyosti to halt, came forward with his arms open. “How kind of you to receive us.”

She spun away from him and placed a smart kick directly into his abdomen. He gasped, hard, but he did not go down.

“Are you trying to get me killed?” she hissed. “Are you insane? I told you never to come back here.” Her stance, her voice, as she faced Heredes, who was still struggling to regain his breathing, was implacable. “I’ll give you one minute to explain. And one minute after that to get the hell out of here.”

F
OR A MOMENT THERE
was silence torn only by Heredes’s ragged breathing. Wingtuck Honor Jones looked suddenly past Heredes and caught sight of Kyosti.

“Jesus and Mary,” she said. “Hawk?”

“Still Catholic, I see,” he replied.

“One is always Catholic Hawk,” she snapped, but the fear on her face subsided as she examined him. “Good Lord, boy, you have changed. What happened to you?”

“That,” said Heredes on an in-drawn breath, “is a long story. Is there somewhere more private we can talk?”

“Very well.” She appeared, now, resigned to her fate. “My office. But who is this?”

“This is my daughter, Lily.”

This explanation had, at least, the advantage of keeping Wingtuck in stunned silence through the entire walk to her office, just down the hall.

“Now,” Wingtuck said as she settled into her chair. Her gaze kept straying to Kyosti as if she expected to see him sprout blue hair. “I directed you to a quiet place where you could lie low in return for you not bothering me. I don’t want your trouble, Joshua.”

“My trouble, as you so conveniently phrase it, having found me, is most certainly looking for you as well, Wingtuck.”

“Most certainly,” echoed Kyosti, with a sly look that Heredes, signing at him, banished.

“And the peace lasted much longer than I expected,” added Heredes. “But all I am here for is to ask that you take Lily on as an instructor, to apprentice her, for the period we are here on Arcadia.”

“Just like that?” said Wingtuck. “You walk in here, jeopardizing my cover and my Academy, and expect me to apprentice her? Is she qualified? Does she have ID? A visa? An extension for employment? Is she even a citizen of the Reft? Come now, Joshua. Let’s be reasonable.”

“My dear Wingtuck,” said Heredes soothingly. “Getting an ID and a visa is the least of our problems—as you know perfectly well.”