Sunshaker's War (9 page)

The frown became a wry smile as he shuffled the photos back into their mailer and returned them to his pocket. “Yeah, I miss 'em a lot.”

“You could call them, you know; I don't mind.”

Calvin shifted restlessly. “I know you don't, and I've tried, as a matter of fact—'bout half a dozen times in the last two weeks, tryin' to find out what's up with this blessed wedding. But all I get are those damned recordings.” He adapted a nasally computerized tone: “ ‘We're sorry, but your call cannot be completed as dialed, please check to see that you have the correct number,' or ‘We're sorry, but all circuits are out in that area, please try again.' Oh, I got through once, but Dave couldn't hear me, even though I could hear him. Something really weird's goin' on with the phones over there—apparently they're havin' some really wild weather, or something.”

Sandy's brow wrinkled thoughtfully for a moment. “There's been stuff on TV about that, something to do with alternating high and low pressure systems that seem to pop up and vanish without any warning, but just in that one place, possibly due to sun spots. A huge amount of rain more widely spread; lots of wind and lightning. I'm not surprised the phones aren't working half the time. Maybe you really should go over.”

“Maybe I will.”

“'Course you've been saying that for months…”

“I know, but—but I need to work with Uki, and when I'm not doing that, I just like to hang out and do nothing. Learnin' magic takes it out of a guy.”

“Hitchhiking to Mexico was nothing?”

“I had to find out some things, get a feeling of being in a place with some real history. I hate this idea of all time bein'
now.
Everything that
is
came from somewhere else, or some
thing
else. There's nothing original in the world. But it's when people won't see that that trouble starts. People aren't apart
from
biology and history, they're a part
of
biology and history.”

“Very sage—for a mere beardless boy.”

Calvin stroked his smooth chin. “Do you disagree?”

“I don't think so, though I'd need to meditate on it some more.”

“Well, seein' other Worlds, other planes of reality, kinda makes you doubt your own. You sorta develop a need to anchor yourself as strongly as you can.”

Sandy curled her feet under her and took another sip of wine. “So how does that jive with prophecy, then?”

“What d' you mean?”

“Well, doesn't your friend have a prophetic stone, or something? How does that work?”

“Oh, the
ulunsuti.
It's the crystal from the head of a monster that lives in Galunlati, called the uktena. I've told you about helpin' to kill one, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, well, basically you concentrate on the crystal and on what you want to know, and it just kinda shows it to you—including the future, if that's what you're askin'
about. To do anything major, you have to prime it with blood.”

“But does it show you
the
future, or simply
a
future?”

Calvin shrugged. “Can't say.”

“Arrgghhh!” Sandy grumbled. “Just when this was starting to get interesting. But seriously, I really would like to know more; any chance you could borrow it? Or maybe take me over to see it?”

Calvin frowned. “Well, it belongs to Alec—was given to him quite specifically. He's got enough sense of the rightness of things not to let it out of his hands. It's really a big responsibility, and he takes it like one. But if you'd like to go over sometime… Hey, how 'bout tomorrow? I really do need to check up on the blessed wedding plans anyway.”

She shook her head. “Gotta work on those damned end-of-the-year evaluations all day. But sometime, seriously. I think if I understood how the ulunsuti deals with time I could come closer to sorting all this out.”

“Well,” Calvin said, as he polished off his coffee, “what
I
have to figure out is how many shingles I have to split in the morning to roof the garage.”

“Thought you were going down to Georgia.”

Calvin shook his head. “Who can say?”

“I'll leave it to you,” Sandy sighed. “I've gotta go warm up the old calculator.”

She left him alone, then; and Calvin once more stared out into the evening. To the west the sky had darkened perceptibly and the sky was awash with clouds like hovering buzzards. He thought he heard distant thunder.

Chapter IV: Commencement

(Enotah, Georgia—Friday, June 13—evening)

“…and now the valedictorian of this year's senior class: David Kevin Sullivan.” And with that monotone introduction echoing tinnily around Enotah County High's Burns Memorial Auditorium, Dr. Anthony Taylor returned to his seat between the county school superintendent and the local probate judge.

David took a deep breath and stood, hearing his cheap gown rustle and feeling the burgundy nylon briefly catch on a ragged corner of the metal folding chair where he had been waiting nervously next to Barbara Ann Justus, who was second honor and head cheerleader, and Nat Berrong, the superintendent's son, who had done the invocation. His footsteps sounded impossibly loud as they slapped across the well-oiled boards. Damned Sunday shoes! He'd wanted to wear his Reeboks, but his ma wouldn't hear of it, just like he'd wanted to wear jeans and no tie, and been denied for the same non-reason. The ponytail, however, was still intact and neatly secured with a burgundy-and-silver velvet ribbon. Another deep breath
as he stepped up behind the podium and fished out his index cards. A third, as he gazed out across the expectant multitude and began.

“Friends, family, faculty…” he commenced, then had to pause to clear his throat. Someone on the front row giggled, and he felt his cheeks grow warm. “Friends, family, faculty,” he repeated. “I guess you all just heard Principal Taylor say who I am, and what I am; and I guess you all know why I'm here. I reckon, too, that you're all expectin' the same kind of speech you hear year after year: about the challenges of the future, and steppin' out into a brave new world, and all that stuff. But I'll tell you something right now: I was gonna
make
a speech like that. I
rehearsed
a speech like that all last week, even memorized it, 'cause that's the speech they gave me to say, and I may be about to get myself into a heap of trouble by sayin' something else now, but I'm going to anyway, 'cause if I used the one they gave me it'd just be one more piece of high school, one more example of doing what other people tell you to do, and not thinkin' on your own, which is what life's supposed to be about.”

He paused nervously, eyes darting everywhere, feeling Dr. Taylor's glare burning into him exactly as it had when he'd been summoned to the office in the eighth grade for pulling the fire alarm. “One thing, though,” he went on, “you don't have to worry about me tellin' you off, or cussin' you out, or anything, I'm not. I've got a speech I've worked up myself, and that's the key word:
myself.
I've got a fair store of facts floating around in my head right now, but I figure today's the first day of the rest of my life, so the first thing I gotta do is start putting 'em together
myself.

He went on, repeating the words he'd composed over the preceding week, the one he'd committed to memory along with the other he'd actually recited at rehearsal, careful to maintain his mountain drawl so folks wouldn't think he was too uppity. Somewhere around a third of the way along he sensed the whole place relaxing as the audience decided he wasn't going to say anything too incendiary in spite of his by-now-universal nickname: Mad Davy Sullivan. His basic text was simple: school was grist for the mill, you learned facts, but the things you
really
learned were things about getting along with other people: making friends, sucking up to teachers, when to tell the truth and when to lie… It was all amazingly savvy, he thought—and would have been, if he'd come up with all of it himself. But the truth was, it was mostly a synthesis of things he'd heard Uncle Dale say, or David-the-Elder say, or even Liz. Surprisingly, a little of it also came from his father; they'd had a long talk or two over Christmas. By the time he'd got to the middle, he'd gone onto automatic and was scanning the crowd, picking out faces he'd already found before: his folks—Big Billy in suit and tie for the third time David had ever seen him so, Little Billy likewise but with the tie askew, Uncle Dale in white shirt, clean khakis, the stubby ponytail of his own that had scandalized David's ma when he'd shown up in it that evening. She was there too, of course, looking absolutely smashing, as she could do when she wanted to, though the padded shoulders of her black-and-purple dress were maybe a little extreme.

A further scan yielded more familiar faces. Alec's folks: Dr. McLean and his wife, Geraldine; the one beaming, the other nursing secret grudges that his son's English grades had kept him out of either top spot. Gary's dad was there too, the former race car driver who now ran the BMW dealership in MacTyrie that somehow found enough retired rich expatriate Atlantans to stay afloat, but who found himself spinning wrenches as often as pitching sales. And there was Darrell's family: Myra the artist, and his mom, who taught business at MacTyrie J.C. and nursed on the side, while his lanky dad managed the athletic program and coached tennis.

And, wonder of wonders, there was Aikin's forest-ranger father and his mother the archaeologist, together for only the third time David had ever seen them so (their respective careers demanded they live apart, though they were madly in love with each other). There were others too: friends who had graduated previous years, younger folks watching older brothers and sisters pass out of their lives, eager for their own places in the sun.

But one face was missing. David studied the rows and aisles again, having now come to the third of the four points he had planned. No,
there
she was, way in the back, making her way as unobtrusively as she could down the aisle to squeeze in by his ma: his lady, Liz Hughes. Lord, she looked good—red hair cut so that it resembled feathers, short on top but past her shoulders on back and sides; medium-blue dress accented with lace and patterned with flowers.

He grinned in spite of himself, and continued, “Now I don't want you to think that I've
got
all the answers, or even
think
I've got all the answers or maybe even
suspect
that I've got all the answers. But I've got a heap of questions that ought to keep me busy for a while, and I hope the rest of my classmates will have, too; 'cause I've seen too many of us go out and get old in two years. I…” He paused, blinking, staring at Mike Wheeler in the fourth row, who had just shot a rubber band at him. He ignored Mike, his nemesis of the last twelve years, and looked back at Liz. She was gazing at him, too; but then he saw her start, squint up at the ceiling as if searching for something among the steel I-beams. The lights dimmed abruptly, browning out as the power station at the edge of town shunted in different lines. Suddenly he realized it was raining—raining hard. Probably it had been for a while, but the new auditorium was so well insulated, he hadn't really noticed.

But he
did
notice when the lights went out entirely and lightning flashed outside, strobing the room stark white. Normality returned before he could say anything stupid, though; and he heaved a sigh of relief, grateful he was nearly done. Behind him he could hear Dr. Taylor fidgeting nervously.

“And so in conclusion,” he went on quickly, “I'll say something that's been said many, many times before, but only 'cause it's true, and only 'cause I've decided it really is what I ought to say: Today
is
the end; but it's the beginnin' too, and no one knows what the future holds. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen; and apologies to you, Dr. Taylor, and to our class sponsors, for springin' this on you, but I guess I've got a nickname to live up to, and I wouldn't want to let anybody down. Thank you again.”

And with that he returned to his seat.

“Good job,” Barbara whispered beside him, but he scarcely noticed. The school superintendent was addressing them now, and then would come the
alma mater
and the conferring of diplomas. In the meanwhile, he sought out Liz. She was still there, but something was definitely wrong: her face had gone blank, as if she were a thousand miles away. He saw her blink, shake her head, saw his ma speaking to her, almost certain the words were “Are you okay?” The worst thing was he couldn't go to her. She was sensitive, he knew: able to take herself out of herself sometimes; able to get impressions, feelings—even images—from inanimate things.
Scrying
,
it was called, searching for something with part of that thing as a focus. Then he realized, to his horror, that she still had his ring: the ring Oisin had given him years ago, that was still a part of Faerie, though it no longer held any magic.