City Without End (15 page)

“You never went for a soldier.”

As she opened her mouth to argue, Bei shoved his palms in her direction.

“I am done with talk.”

“It is a wrong use of the knowledge the lord gave you. It must be
for
something. Not just a map, not a diagram in a book on a shelf no one will ever read.”

He jumped up. “No one read! You think that’s what all these scrolls are? Treatises no one will read?” He waved his hands at the tightly packed scrolls lining the walls. “I know every thesis, every scroll, every line of them! It is a lifetime of study, more precious than jewels.”

“But they are of no use.”

“Use? Use? What use is loyalty? What use is poetry? You talk of use!”

“The correlates should be used for passage, not study.”

He sank into his chair, lowering his voice. “That is as it may be. Few will read my treatise. I accept obscurity. It is a triumphant obscurity.”

She was silent, gazing at the floor. No doubt she finally saw how far she had overstepped herself.

Then her gaze flicked up. “But master, how can it truly matter, your map of the Rose universe? There are a hundred universes. Your map will never be significant among all the maps that could be drawn.”

Bei narrowed his eyes. “A hundred universes?” He waved his hands at the library. “Where does it say there are a hundred universes?”

Anzi was silent a moment. She was getting confused, over her head . . .

“The lord said so.”

“You spoke of such things with Lord Oventroe?”

“He said it. On the Nigh, when he helped Titus approach Ahnenhoon.”

“That there are a hundred?”

“He didn’t say the exact number. There are many.”

Bei’s thoughts quickly sifted through this claim. All scholars knew it was unlikely there were only two universes, yet in other primacies in the realm the veils showed little. His own primacy pierced the Rose. Every minoral in this primacy was productive of Rose correlations. All scholarship, therefore, concentrated here, in these minorals. If there were other universes . . . Bei pulled on his chin, wondering if Anzi had stumbled upon something important. Perhaps it was a minor comment of the lord, taken out of context. . . .

“Titus bandied the subject about? And the lord allowed that it might be so?”

“The lord said the various realities are like bubbles in a foaming brew. That what we know of life is on the surface of these bubbles. The Entire is such a surface. And the Rose.”

Bei stared at her. Out of her mouth had just poured a stream of either wisdom or foolishness of the highest order.

“Why would Lord Oventroe discuss such things with Titus Quinn?”

“Because Titus wanted to know why Oventroe could not just suggest to his cousins that they burn a different universe, and save him the trouble of going to Ahnenhoon to prevent the burning of the Rose.”

Bei looked at her as though she were a talking beku. “And?”

“And the lord said that, yes, there are other universes, but none of them have much in them. And so, therefore, they are not productive of burning.”

Feeling for his chair with the back of his legs, Bei lowered himself into his seat. “Bubbles, you say?”

“And they touch. Where it becomes possible to go from one to the other.”

“We are a bubble too?”

“Differently shaped. So he said.” Anzi made a gesture of probing. “We are multilobed, pushing into the other realities.”

“Bubbles,” Bei repeated.

“In foam.”

“Surely the Rose is the greatest of them,” he whispered, fingering his scrolls, his notebooks, his life’s work.

Anzi’s hand came down to gently cover his own. “Your work is still important, Master. It is a piece of the whole.”

Bei contemplated the veil in front of him for a very long time. When he looked up again, he found that Anzi had fetched him a small plate of food and a glass of spirits, frothing with bubbles.

Ghoris’s ship had fallen deep into the River Nigh, plunging quickly, making Mo Ti feel nauseated and impatient. He lay on his cot, blaming Quinn for the delay. They should have rushed to Rim City where they might have had the chance to kill Hel Ese when she debarked.

He glanced at Quinn as the man lay on the nearby bench staring out the porthole, his eyes filled with a blue fire reflection from the Nigh. In Quinn’s hand, the Paion hoop, Akay-Wat’s gift.

“We have waited too long,” Mo Ti growled. Quinn didn’t answer. They were on their way now, and they’d arrive when they arrived, all depending on Ghoris and if she truly understood the need for haste. Apparently she didn’t understand, since she’d urged Quinn to chase after Paion back at the Inyx Sway. That was what came of taking counsel from madwomen.

“Too long,” Mo Ti muttered again, when Quinn didn’t answer. The stupor of the Nigh pulled on him, but his distress was too great for sleep.

Hel Ese had the small god, the thinking machine. Too much power for such a one as her. The small god could give the Entire to the spider. But the Entire must be for Sydney. Mo Ti believed this with all his heart. Who but a woman born to no home sway, a woman who was more than one sway, could ever supplant the Tarig? This was Cixi’s logic. Cixi, the one part that he had not told Titus Quinn. The matriarch of the Great Within wished to topple the lords.

And wasn’t the man of the Rose the one with the best chance to succeed?

A Tarig lord had given Quinn the secret of passage to and from. With this knowledge, Quinn might locate the place the lords went to renew themselves. A fine trap. Still, Sydney might not approve the alliance. It was a dangerous game, to trust Titus Quinn.

Now they depended upon Jaq to reach the man who held the correlates in safe keeping. Mo Ti hoped the witless ship keeper could even
remember
the message he was to deliver.

Barely conscious, Quinn muttered, “She has a book of pin pricks, Mo Ti. It measures me.”

Mo Ti snorted in disgust. A man at the mercy of family frowns was forever weakened. Quinn had wasted two hours talking to Akay-Wat about things that could not be changed and would not matter if they could.

Sydney’s heart had been broken by the man when she was a child. She was now a woman grown, and it no longer mattered whether her father had run after her or not or eaten delicacies in the Ascendancy while Sydney ate bricks of straw. That time was past.

The portals were clotted with lightning. Still gazing at Quinn, Mo Ti saw how the light fell on the man’s face, silvering it like a mask of a dead god. He was a great personage, no doubt; but always on the brink of failure. Perhaps the correlates would transform him. A little taste of power inspired most men.

As Ghoris sailed them onward, Mo Ti relinquished consciousness at last.

They dragged themselves up from the binds, Ghoris shouting for her ship keeper and the two passengers staggering into consciousness.

Mo Ti was the first to get to the rail. Just a few miles distant, under an Early Day sky, the lower precincts of Rim City lay thin and long on the shore of the Sea of Arising. But where in all this far-flung town was the ship that carried Sydney? Many navitar vessels streaked into local harbors from points away, some of them manifesting suddenly, rocking as they birthed from the river.

Quinn met him at the rail. “Now we find her.”

Mo Ti murmured, “Hel Ese or Sydney?” It defined what the man was made of. He had to name his goal.

“Both of them,” Quinn answered.

CHAPTER NINE

C
aitlin Quinn stared at the letter. An actual paper letter, it bore the masthead of the United States Bureau of the General Standard. She hadn’t known until this moment that Lamar had been serious about altering her son’s scores, and her own.

She and Mateo had been recategorized from “forward capability in key skill sets” to “advanced capability.” From middie to savvy in one fell swoop, changing their status, not only to savvy, but to felon. Now the question was, what was she doing breaking the law? And just why did Lamar Gelde think they could get by with it?

She read the letter again, with its simple, bald statement of fact. Previously, the wrong records had been forwarded to the Quinn family. The present documents would confirm new standings for the Standard Test. Relief accompanied the guilt she felt. Now she wouldn’t have to sit down with Mateo and explain his scores and his future. Now she and Rob wouldn’t have to tell their son that being of forward capability instead of advanced was a fine and worthwhile status. The two of them would have pointed to themselves as evidence that it was possible to make a good life as a middie: the new software company, their close-knit family, their lovely home—all despite the fact that they lacked the designation of ultrasmart. They would have painted the brightest picture that they could. Lied.

They had meaningful work because Titus’s millions were on loan to them, financing their software company, complete with a dedicated mSap. True, the family was together, and perhaps Rob loved his wife. The lie was that she still loved
him
. Because though it had been a year and a half since Caitlin had last seen Titus, it was unfortunately
that
brother she loved. Next to Titus, Rob seemed ordinary, without fire. And because Rob wasn’t his brother, she had shut her heart to him. If she could have changed her heart, she would have. Titus had said,
I’m not in line if you get a divorce. I can’t be and
still live with myself.
The problem was, didn’t that imply that if he were not the brother-in-law, he
would
be in line?

She fingered the letter that might be Mateo’s passport to the best future. Nearly every day Mateo asked if the test results had come in.
Not yet
, she’d said. Little Emily didn’t help by declaring that
she
was going to be a savvy like Titus. At only eight years old, it would be awhile before Lamar would have to alter
her
scores.

Tucking the letter into her jacket pocket, she wondered how she was going to explain this to Rob. Not to worry. According to Lamar, the price for the switched scores was that Rob
not
know. But how long before the Bureau of Standard Tests figured out the mistake? How long before Mateo’s improved access to the best schools came to Rob’s attention? It couldn’t be kept secret. And Lamar didn’t care, said it wouldn’t matter. Because something he called the transform was coming.

Now that she was well and truly into this mess, she was determined to get answers from Lamar. He was going to tell her the truth, and he was going to tell her today, or she’d tear up the letter and tell the Bureau of their mistake.

She grabbed her satchel and left her office, hoping not to see Rob. As she walked down the corridor of the plush central offices of Emergent Corporation, she stranded a command into the embedded data structures in the walls calling for her car. People nodded at her from their cubicles in the refurbished warehouse, site of their by now three-hundred-strong workforce in educational software development.

Rounding a corner, Rob saw her and waved. Deep in conversation with one of the team leaders, Rob was energized, busy and happy. She pointed at the door, mouthing
Have to go out
. He dashed down the hall to kiss her goodbye, a peck on the cheek.