Troubled Waters

by C. J. Cherryh

  "I'm no Revenantist, to know how bad it is. You decide." Begun, he rushed on: "Cassie's doing deathangel every night, trying to remember a previous life. It's—"

  "A what?" Rita Nikolaev's head came up. Her eyes narrowed as she fought to keep a straight face.

  "You don't understand," he said. For she didn't. She was still holding his hand, and tugging on it. He let her pull him closer and then he was looking down at the part in her hair. To it, he said, "Cardinal Ito gave me a deathangel-induced regression, and I told Cassie. Ever since then, she's been trying to do the same thing. I—"

  "The same thing? Who were you, Captain Chamoun, in your previous life?"

  "Oh, no. I'm under sentence of death for that as it is, according to the College."

  She chuckled. She thought he was joking. Somehow, it seemed funny, telling it to her. The whole thing seemed funny; ludicrous, even.

  He found himself wanting to sit beside her on the rail. He dared it, and their thighs touched. But that beat looking her in the eye, with her sitting there, legs spread in her pants, so close he could have moved in between them, put both arms around her, and . . . "Anyway, she wants to find out she was a hero of the battle with the sharrh. And she won't stop. I need you to help me make her quit it. How much deathangel can you eat, before something goes wrong?"

  "Lots," said Rita authoritatively. "More than you'd imagine. But every so often, somebody decides he can fly, or swim to the Rim . . . You were right to come to me, 'Captain.' "

  "Mike's fine. Everybody's so formal here. My friends at home call me Mike."

  "Mike, then." She wasn't one of his friends at home. The single syllable sounded very un-Rita-ish, too harsh in her fine mouth.

  He looked at her and she was staring at him. "Will you come back with me to Boregy House, Rita? Tonight? Talk to Cassie with me?"

  "Why did you come to me, Mike? Not to someone else, or some member of the family?"

  "I hadn't seen you since you were at the house with Mondragon." The memory still bothered him. "Maybe I wanted to find out why you were keeping such bad company." He didn't know where that had come from; it just slipped out.

  "Thomas? Thomas has problems, that's all. You must have gathered that. I can't even remember how we happened to be together that night—ah, yes I do. I'd come on my own, and Thomas was there, so as a gentleman, after the card game, he offered to escort me home. Considering that the Sword of God murdered my sister, it was a natural thing for him to offer. He's a swordsman, after all."

  "He's a duelist," Michael corrected. He's Sword himself, or close enough. "I wouldn't let him escort Cassie from the parlor to the dining hall."

  "Ah, I'd heard Adventists from Nev Hettek were old fashioned."

  "Protective of our womenfolk, yes."

  "Womenfolk? Protectiveness is charming; provincialism is offensive." She pulled away from him enough to end the contact between his right thigh and her left.

  It was easier, then, for him to remember why he'd come here. "Will you come with me to see Cassie? Now?"

  She looked at him boldly, and there was a measuring aspect to her glance. "Yes, now," she said, as if slightly disappointed. "Since you insist."

  And then he realized he'd just missed his chance, perhaps the chance of a lifetime, as Rita Nikolaev slid off the railing and faced him, hands on her hips, saying. "Well, Mike, what are you waiting for?"

  There was no recapturing the lost opportunity—not now. But as he left the rail to follow her, he said, "Considering what happened to your sister, and that I'm taking you out so late, you'll have to let me bring you back here, afterward."

  "Perhaps," she said haughtily, though he thought he heard a promise there. "If you're good."

  Cassie was floating somewhere, between death and a new life. She liked the place where she was, all brown and soft and womby. It was a place where there were many lives, and no pain. A place where God was all around, and human affairs no more important than the affairs of ants.

  So when a voice, and then another, started calling her stridently, she resisted.

  She didn't have to listen to those voices. She had only to listen to her own voice. Hers was the single voice of reason in the universe she inhabited. Hers was the only voice that could command her. And her own voice was telling her she didn't have to leave here, no matter what anyone said.

  There was no strife here, no jealousy, madness, or grief. There was no misery, no poverty, no disappointment. There was no failure, no treachery, no deceit.

  But there was love, of a sort. There was the love of nature, the love of the process called life itself, though she wasn't sure such love was worth the price. She kept hearing the voices of other entities, but she knew those entities were imprisoned in their bodies. What did they know of the fullness of life? Of the expanse of a point? Of the width of a straight line? Of the event called being?

  She had lost a body, a life, an unborn child. She wasn't ready to go back to that world of flame and pain and horrors inflicted upon her by her fellow man. She wasn't ready to be born again, to suffer again, and to die again, just to get to . . . here. Again.

  Where was here? Where was she? Was she dead? Discomfort began to invade her peace. Distress prickled her person. Uneasiness disturbed the sea of endless, velvety dark around her. Was she dead?

  Death was frightening. She remembered it. If she'd died, then she must be dead, since she wasn't alive. At least, she wasn't alive in the sense of a life full of incidents that one could remember.

  The voices kept intruding, calling her name. '

  One voice would call, then another. One voice she heard was male; the other, female. This differentiation disturbed her rest further. Where she had been, there was no real difference between male and female . . .

  And yet there was. Male was aggression, bright transformation, artifactually creative and destructive because of that. Female was diplomacy, dark receptivity, transmutationally creative, and modifying because of that. She saw herself as a female, the femininity deep in her being. She was like a great pink/red/ orange/purple flower, then a flower of the sea: a jellyfish of gorgeous hue, trailing long tendrils in the water, while her middle expanded to accept the nourishment her tendrils found . . .

  "No!" she said, and sat up. "No!" she yelled, and put her arm across her eyes.

  She was being pummeled by ice-cold water. She coughed amid the spray, and struggled against whatever was holding her. She was freezing cold, fully dressed, and being held in the shower against her will by her husband and Rita Nikolaev.

  She shouted and cursed. She struck out and hit Michael across the mouth.

  His blood mixed with the shower's spray and dribbled down his cheek, pink and dilute.

  Rita was telling Michael loudly to "... get her out now. We've got to walk her around. Walk her! Don't let her go back to sleep."

  She fought them like a wet cat, but it was no use.

  She was back in the world, stuck in her body, which walked between her torturers like an automaton.

  She wanted to vomit, so she did, all over all three of them. They wouldn't let her stop walking even then.

  And Michael kept saying to her through his cut and blue lips, "You gotta promise me, Cassie, you won't ever do that again!"

  And Rita was telling her how foolish she'd been, to try such a thing on her own.

  Cassie ignored them both. They could walk her freezing body; they could souse her with water and hold her under the shower again, to get the vomit off. But they couldn't take away what she'd learned. She'd died by a mob's hand in the wake of the sharrh's invasion. She hated those who'd murdered her and her unborn baby.

  When they walked her past her window, she looked out onto Merovingen, across the high towers, to the city of tiers spread out like a maze in the night. She hated them back, now. All the superstitious and the foolish, the uneducated and the poor. They were her enemies, everyone in Merovingen-below. These were the descendants of the mob that had burned her alive, and they
could not be trusted.

  Neither could the Nev Hetteker she'd married, or the woman who'd come here in the dead of night to shake her from her sleep. They were all her enemies. They'd turn on her in a moment—the moment that the sharrh came again.

  Michael caught her eye and said, "What's the matter, Cassie? What did you see?"

  "Nothing," she lied. "Nothing at all."

  "Then you'll promise," her husband pressed, "that you'll stay away from that deathangel. This is too dangerous. We almost lost you, and for what?"

  And Rita said, "She'll be all right now, Mike."

  The other woman had been her friend. But friends didn't take that proprietary tone with one's husband. Not that it mattered. No one could be trusted. Cassie knew, now, what she must do. She must make herself impregnable; she must find ways to protect herself from the inevitable burning to come.

  The sharrh were here again and in their wake, once they'd made themselves known, would come the mobs with their torches. It was just a question of time.

  When the time came, Cassie must be ready. Boregy House must be ready. And the mob, the subhuman inhabitants of Merovingen-below, must be discouraged. They must learn fear, before they were too powerful to control.

  "I want to see my father," she said, shaking off Michael's grip. "Now. You've done enough. You too, Rita. Thank you, but I'm fine now. I must change."

  Her tone stopped her husband and her friend in their tracks. They exchanged glances.

  Then Michael said, "Whatever you say, Cassie. I'll wait until you've cleaned up. Then I'll take Rita home."

  "Now, I said," she repeated. "Leave me." It was a command, to ignore it would be to create an incident.

  The possibility hung between the three of them almost too long. Then Rita smiled smoothly, "Whatever you wish, Cassie. Perhaps you'll join me for lunch tomorrow?"

  "Perhaps," said Cassie brusquely. "But now, you'll have to excuse me. ..."

  When they were gone, whispering together as they went, she stared after them through her door's crack. Then, slowly, she began with numb fingers to unbutton her blouse.

  She was going to see her father, to offer herself wholeheartedly as a serious adherent. Boregy House had to be impregnable, before the inevitable riots began.

  Rita Nikolaev's mouth tasted sweet and cool in the night air. Her fancyboat rocked under them softly, tied up at Nikolaev pier. His hands seemed clumsy, numb from the cold, as they fumbled with the buttons on her blouse. He was certain that if he ceased kissing her, those lips would tell him to stop.

  So he didn't, even though it was she who'd initiated the kiss.

  If he'd thought about it, he'd have realized that it was she who'd begun the conversation that had kept him here, in her boat, when he should have been decorously walking her to her door.

  "Poor Michael," she'd said, and touched his cheek with the back of her hand. He'd shifted and his lips had found her palm, and her fingers his own eager mouth . . .

  "Poor Michael," she'd repeated. "You don't understand what's going on, do you? Don't fight it, it's karma. It's all karma. Our lives are fated, fixed . . ." her voice had gone dreamy.

  It was Chamoun who was dreaming, he was sure, as the woman of his fantasies let him put his hands on her breasts, then guided his fingers downward.

  If this was karma, then he did understand it—at least, his body did.

  She kept her eyes closed, all the time. He didn't. He wanted to watch her, to make sure he wasn't dreaming. And he was afraid someone would come along and find them. Why hadn't they gone inside?

  The boat rocked gently under them as he lay her down on the deck. Her heart was beating nearly as fast as his. He said in her ear as he lowered himself onto her, "We should go inside to do this."

  She pulled his head down to her. "Hush, this is better."

  She liked the risk, he realized. His body liked it too—the desperation of his desire, its match in hers.

  When the length of his bare body touched hers, he gasped with the pure pleasure of it. His pants were down around his ankles; hers, caught around her knees. Somehow, that wasn't an insurmountable problem.

  At that moment, nothing was.

  He found he needed the difficulty to keep himself from ending this moment too fast. He was halfway out of control, and she was a sex goddess, moving under him with a skill he'd never encountered before.

  He couldn't help but lose the initiative to her—and everything else. He warned her, as best he could, and then gave in to his body's need for climax.

  When he could see anything at all, and think anything at all, he saw her wide eyes and her open mouth, and heard her call his name.

  Then they were both still in the bottom of her boat, fouled in their clothes, breathing hard.

  Karma, she'd called it. Regret was what he felt. And guilt. And his backside was getting cold. His knees felt bruised and every muscle in his body was limp. He was drained and shaking. He knew he was heavy, on top of her.

  He wanted to roll off her, but dared not offend. He tried to put his weight on his elbows. He reared up to look her in the face. "Did you . . . are you—"

  "Yes, yes. Get up now." A swat on his backside punctuated her words.

  He was suddenly embarrassed as she warned him to be careful not to soil her clothes. His neck was flushed; his hands shook as he dressed. He could hardly meet her eyes. It hadn't been more than a few minutes, yet now everything had changed. Was she satisfied? Had he impressed her the way she'd impressed him? He doubted it. He couldn't meet her eyes. His head was full of repercussions: he hadn't used any protection; had she? What about communicables, here where disease was rampant? And, most of all, had she liked it with him? Would she want him again?

  He shot a look at her out of the corner of one eye. Everything was different now, all right. She was buttoning her blouse and watching him, and when she met his eyes, she said, "Next time, we'll make sure we have a bed under us."

  Next time.

  The very thought sent his mind reeling. Relief flooded him; his guilt trebled and a world of cares crashed down upon him. While his wife needed him, here he was, with . . . her.

  She was telling him he needn't walk her to her door. She was telling him she'd call on him. And he was realizing that whatever merger-related contracts Vega Boregy and Chance Magruder were trying to negotiate with Nikolaev House had just been undermined.

  He'd done it again. Chance's maneuvering was like spit in the wind, now. Rita Nikolaev had just cut her own deal with Chamoun Shipping, a deal he wasn't smart enough to anticipate, or even avoid.

  The woman with whom he now shared a terrible secret hoisted herself lithely out of her boat and strode toward the mansion of her family without more than a casual wave.

  Left alone, Chamoun felt as if he'd been caught red-handed in the act. He scrambled out of her boat and into his own. His wife was waiting. His life was waiting. Whatever he'd just done, that life and that wife had to be his utmost concern. But something in him knew very well that Rita Nikolaev's favors weren't the sort a man used once and then threw away.

  As fast as he motored away from Nikolaev House, Chamoun couldn't outrun the knowledge that, whenever Rita called him, he'd come running right back again. If not her body, then his own guilty fear of exposure would see to that.

  * * *

  Cassie was in Vega's study, waiting with her father for Uncle Ito to arrive. Vega had been solicitous at first, full of fear that she'd been hurt.

  Now her father was simply angry, and Vega Boregy's anger was something Cassie tried to avoid at all costs.

  But what had happened to her this evening wasn't something one could pretend had never happened. So she kept trying to convince her father that the sharrh were a real threat, against which Boregy House must prepare to defend itself. And that the people of Merovingen-below were a part of that threat. And that Cassie had seen the future, as well as her own past.

  Vega's skin was always pale; tonight you could see the engorged veins
right through it. "I'm going to get that fool husband of yours, for this," he said as he paced. And more.

  Cassie wouldn't hear of such trivialities. "If it weren't for Michael, I'd never have found out. Wait until Uncle Ito comes, father. Then you'll understand. Boregy House must become a fortress. We cannot count on the Kalugins to protect us, or on anyone else. We must have our own defenses, our own defense force. And we must be ready, when chaos reigns on the canals." She could see that scene again, even with her eyes open. And she could see another scene, one of her own future. The deathangel was still in her system, and her mind was full of truths yet to come.

  By the time Tremaine Ito Boregy, the long-nosed Cardinal who was her uncle, arrived, Cassie was finished arguing with her father.

  She sat, bedraggled and bemused, low on a brocade settee, her legs outstretched straight before her, watching her wiggling toes. When Ito came in, she spoke over her father's formal greeting and the cardinal's response. "Cardinal, hear me. I have seen the future and the danger that hangs like a sword over us all. You must heed me now, and in the future, or all we hold dear is doomed."

  She didn't know from where such eloquence had come to her. But eloquent she was, as she warned Ito of the blood and fire to come, of treachery within and without, and lectured him on what steps Boregy House must take to withstand the fall of the Kalugins, which she foretold that night.

  Ito pulled on his long nose and rustled across the room, hands hidden in his maroon robes. He knelt down before her and looked her squarely in the eye. He asked her one senseless question, and then another.

  The answer to both of those came to her: "Treachery," she told him. "Treachery within and without. Trust no one but your own blood; look nowhere but to your own self. And prepare, Cardinal. Prepare!" She came up in her chair, a creature filled with fervor and revelation, and then slumped back suddenly, drained, and exhausted.

  Ito straightened up and went to her father. "Vega," he said softly, "I don't understand what's happened here, but I can guess."

  "It's Chamoun's influence," Vega Boregy grated. "I'm going to hang that boy out to dry—"