A Passage of Stars (32 page)

“How did you get here, then?”

“I knew someone who shall remain nameless, who knew someone else, who
was
nameless as far as I was concerned, who was willing to ferry me around until, much to my surprise, I found Arcadia and Wingtuck. How she got here she has never told me. She directed me toward Unruli.”

There was another stop and dozers started awake, then settled back. Through the windows of the train, Lily saw the station sign, the ubiquitous Security in doubled numbers, and a pair of tattoos emptying trash. With three coughing lunges, the train lurched forward and smoothed into its clacking glide.

“Did you like it?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Being a terrorist.”

“Did I
like
it?”

“Enjoy it, I mean. You did it for forty years.”

“I suppose I enjoyed it, as anyone enjoys work at which they excel. But I did it because it needed to be done. It was more in Hawk’s line to enjoy it.”

With an abrupt shift, she pulled her weight back so that she was no longer leaning toward him. “What do you mean by that?”

“Lily.” Now he was stern. “That’s not meant as criticism. Your Kyosti didn’t join the ranks out of a feeling of duty.”

“And you did?”

“Part of me desired the adventure, I admit that. But the Duke himself chose me. I was one of the first, and in my own way I helped develop our methods of working. But you’re right—I have no grounds on which to criticize Hawk. And I don’t really think he joined because he loved wreaking havoc. That was more in Maisry or Korey’s nature. But Lily—” His hesitation was so totally unlike him that Lily’s irritation dissolved. “Please never agree to marry Hawk by the customs he would urge on you.” He raised a hand to forestall her comment. “I know I have no right to say that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t keep him as your lover. You have less choice about that than either of us imagines, I think.” He paused. “Lily. What’s wrong?”

She put her face against his sleeve, hiding against him. Shook her head first because her throat was too tight to allow words. Gripped his arm. “He said—he said—”

He had to lower his head to hear her. “Poor child,” he murmured.

“He had to go to the clinic. I haven’t seen him for weeks. Then he called and said—he said he should never have slept with me. He said it would be better for me if I never saw him again.”

“Did he now? Mother bless us.” He looked up to see that Pinto was watching them.

“It was my fault,” said Pinto suddenly, his voice low. He glanced around the compartment as if afraid he might be overheard. “I answered the terminal when Lily was out. I don’t think he liked me. Maybe I was a little rude.”

But Lily, at these words, lifted her head. “That’s not true, Pinto. It was nothing to do with you, not really.”

“Mother bless us,” repeated Heredes. “What are you going to do, Lily?”

“When we get back, I’m going down there,” she said, a bit defiantly. “I’ll make him come back.”

“My dear child.” Heredes embraced her suddenly, held her, tilted her back so he could look at her face. “You’re very brave.”

“Brave!” She pulled away, regarding him with so affronted an expression that he laughed. “You still haven’t told me—”

“Why Robert Malcolm?” he finished for her. “Because I had to be sure, Lily, that you could take the burden. And what did you do?

“What did I do? With Robbie? I helped him—I—” She began to laugh. “It was a test, wasn’t it? Did I pass?”

“Of course you passed,” he said, as much with sorrow as with joy. “You helped him.”

“You don’t believe in Jehane anymore than I do, do you?”

“Jehane? Who knows what he’ll turn out to be. But I like Robbie. He’s clean; he’s genuine; he’s honest. ‘Of one growth.’ That’s the root of the word ‘sincere.’ And I needed someone to bond you. But I have to admit it was impossible to resist assisting a saint.”

“Being so far from one yourself?” she said, chuckling.

“It’s funny, that’s the same reason I helped him, at first. Later I got to like it.”

“Lily, my dear child, my spirit choose wisely.”

“What do you mean?”

He made a gesture with his arm, small, in the constricted space, so as not to draw undue attention, but very expressive. “‘Yet all aesthetic contemplation affords only a short-lived respite from the vigilance of an ever wakeful consciousness, and true liberation can only be achieved by the saint, the moral hero, the great ascetic, whose “will to live” has vanished, who has seen through the illusion of the senses, and who practices resignation.’” He finished with a flourish fit for an audience. Pinto regarded them curiously. The man across from them looked up from his com-screen.

“That’s all very well,” said Lily in a low voice, “for a Byssinist like my mother, who is very devout, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.” The man shrugged and returned to his reading.

“You and I, Lilyaka Heredes, are not the stuff from which moral heroes are made. That in the end is how I recognized you as my daughter: that complete inability to practice resignation.” He smiled.

“You know, I often wonder. The Ridanis say something like—that the pattern on their body reflects the pattern of the universe”—she paused to glance at Pinto, but his eyes were closed again—“and that gives them purpose. And Byssinists strive for annihilation, or dissolution in the Void, or, well, the illusion of the sense vanishing. But what about people like us? If we can’t be moral heroes, then what meaning is there for us in life?”

“That’s the real secret, isn’t it?” He stared out at the rushing mat of tunnel wall as if he could read something there that was only a blank to her, “What meaning is there for us in life?” His gaze, returning to Lily, had nothing unsure or bewildered in it, only a steady certainty. “Only what we bring to it, Lily. For our kind, that’s enough. That’s one of the reasons we’re so dangerous.”

“Are we? Did passing the test include me in ‘our kind’? You haven’t told me what my burden is yet.”

“Haven’t I? You are my daughter, Lily, the daughter of my spirit, my only true child. You are Taliesin’s heir. I declared you on the bridge of
La Belle Dame
, which makes it bound and legal, and, as any legal document, available to the public without constraint.”

“But you have other children. Adam and his twin.”

“Heir. From the Latin
hered-
,
heres
, akin to Greek
cheros
, bereaved. You are Taliesin’s heir, Lilyaka. You alone. That makes you dangerous, it makes you feared, but most of all, it makes you very valuable. Don’t ever forget that.”

The train slowed, clacking half-time, quarter-time, stopping.

“We get out here,” said Heredes.

Pinto started up, looked at the station signs. “But we should stay on another six stops,” he began. “This isn’t the interchange for Zanta.”

“I’m not going to Zanta,” said Heredes.

Lily shook her head when Pinto began to speak again, and the Ridani had no choice but to follow her as she followed Heredes off. The station was crowded, but even so, Heredes walked very close to Lily, Pinto trailing behind. She felt a hand slip into her jacket pocket.

Heredes was leaning on her almost as if she were supporting him. “You now have a diskette,” he whispered. “Jehane’s latest movements. He’s taken Harsh. I have finally calculated the pattern of his movements. He’s good, is Jehane. He’s encircling, slow, and in a few years he’ll cut Arcadia off. This will help Robbie no end. Don’t let anyone else see it.”

“But—you think he’s going to win?”

He shrugged, drawing slightly back from her now. “Times come when change is necessary. It’s a natural process.”

“Things are born, grow, and die,” said Lily, thinking of the animate disorder of the park. “And make way for new things. Is that what you mean?”

He stopped her, in the midst of that crowd. Pinto halted as well. “Words can mean anything, Lilyaka. It is the gesture that will tell you the truth.”

He embraced her, and she felt his warmth envelop her as completely as the sun embraces the day in cloudless summer weather. But when he thrust her back, she saw tears glistening in his eyes. “I love you, Lily,” he said. “Never forget that.”

“You’re leaving me again,” she whispered. A terrible sadness ripped through her, and she was afraid. She tightened her grip on his arms.

As she watched, his face lost its emotion, lost its tenderness, and he made her release him.

“No matter what happens,” he said. “You do not know me. That’s a command, Lilyaka.” An instant more he studied her. With a brief smile he slipped away into the crowd.

She stared after him.

“Who is he?” asked Pinto, moving closer to her.

“Damn it,” she said. “No.” And she followed, trailing Heredes, Pinto at her heels.

“Ah, Lily,” he said, “he did say—” She ignored him.

They were halfway across the station, Heredes a good hundred meters in front of them, when the white uniforms burst through the crowd in a tight phalanx,

“Citizens! Stand where you are.” The announcement crackled out over loudspeakers. “Do not move. All entrances have been sealed by order of Central Security. You are in no danger if you stay where you are.”

Movement came to a halt so quickly that Lily and Pinto, still going forward, barely avoided running into several people before Pinto grasped Lily’s arm and dragged her to a stop.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he hissed in her ear. “Those are the Immortals.”

White scattered out into the crowd, precise lines expanding in a spiral. The Immortals. White uniforms, faces as clean of emotion as their uniforms were of color. Deathly efficient in their search.

A sudden flash of movement caught at her eye, a flurry of running. White spun and rolled inward, pressing civilians back, broadening an empty space in the center of the station.

“Encircle!” The command cracked out above the shocked silence of the crowd.

Against the people shifting back, Lily pulled forward until she came to the edge of crowd. The Immortals had cornered him—not cornered, but exposed him by driving him out into the opening they had created. One woman in a white uniform staggered backward, clutching her abdomen. Heredes stood in fighting stance. The Immortals fell back slightly, but their circle filled in until only the spaces the crowd might look through onto the scene were left.

Heredes faced them, twenty of them at least, but he was so utterly alert, so poised for attack that no one moved toward him, none spoke.

“Comrades!” he called into the unnatural silence. His voice filled the air, a ringing call that caught at the attention more like a spell than like simple volume. “‘I see this system,’” he cried, “‘and on the surface it has long been familiar to me, but not in its inner meaning! Some, a few, sit up above and many down below and the ones on top shout down: “come on up, then we’ll all be on top,” but if you look closely you’ll see something hidden between the ones on top and the ones below that looks like a path but is not a path—’” His voice held them, commanded them to listen, even the Immortals. He had grown like a trick or an illusion until he held the entire station silent to listen to him, as if he was an actor quoting from some long-forgotten play. “‘It’s a plank and now you can see it quite clearly, it is a seesaw, this whole system is a seesaw, with two ends that depend on one another, and those on top sit up there only because the others sit below, and only as long as they sit below; they’d no longer be on top if the others came up, leaving their place, so that of course they want the others to sit down there for all eternity and never come up—’”

A black-and gray-uniform shouldered through, appeared on the edge of the circle. “Surrender to our custody and you will not be hurt!” the officer shouted.

“Surrender?” cried Heredes. But his eyes now swept beyond the Immortals, beyond the man commanding them, to rake the crowd. “You are my hope,” he shouted, and his words, his gaze, seemed to pinpoint, to touch, each face, each individual—touched Lily. “‘Whatever happens, do not break ranks! Only if you stand together can you help each other—’”

The Immortals surged forward. He may have taken a couple out first; it was hard to tell. Pinto kept tugging her back; she kept pulling forward.

“He said—he said—” cried Pinto above the crowd’s sudden noise, and she fell back against him, remembering what Heredes had said. More uniforms, black-and-gray Security now, pushed forward. She did not see them take Heredes out, did not see him at all after the Immortals converged on him. She did see four Immortals being supported or carried toward the exits.

“Citizens!” The crackle of the loudspeaker sounded again, hushing the crowd into a frightened silence. “This station is now under Security’s jurisdiction. To those who are innocent of any treason against Central, we apologize in advance for the inconvenience.” A few groans greeted this statement. “You will all be conducted for questioning to Security precinct office. There will be no exceptions. Remain orderly, and our task will run smoothly. Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to evade this sweep. All exits are secured.”

“Bless the Void,” said a woman next to Lily. “Was that the agitator Pero?”

Her simple comment was taken up and spread like fire through the crowd until it ranged out of Lily’s hearing.

Pinto pulled Lily around to face him. “Was that Pero?” he asked, urgent now as the black-and-gray uniforms of Security filtered through the crowd and began to line up the masses of stranded travelers.

Lily stared at him. His bruises still showed under the pattern of his face, showed along his arms. For an instant she marveled at how handsome he was. “It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, aware now how true that was. Heredes had known it was coming. Had he even set it up himself, to assist his saint, to give Robbie time to move again, to mount the next campaign? But she could not imagine why he should do so.

A woman in black-and-gray shouldered past a pair of clear-skinned men to come up to Lily and Pinto. “What’s a damned tattoo doing wandering loose in this district?” She beckoned to a comrade.

“He’s my servant,” said Lily quickly, but at the same moment felt Pinto squeeze her arm slightly, a warning.