A Passage of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  “I’m sorry, Robbie,” she said, her throat tight with sadness.

  “Sorry? Never be sorry for love, Lily. That is what sustains us.”

  “My dear Robert,” said Kyosti, “if you can philosophize, then you are certainly going to live.”

  Lily turned away from both of them, disengaged her hand, and stood with her face pressed up against the wall.

  Kyosti examined Robbie’s eyes, his pulse, gave him a shot, watched him relax. Lily still had not moved. “Lily,” Kyosti said, soft.

  “I’m all right,” she said into the wall. “I’m just not used to having someone I care about almost die on me.”

  Only Robbie saw Kyosti’s face, bitterness compounded with an agony that was quickly suppressed. “I hope you never get used to it,” he replied. “Believe me. Let’s clean up here, love, and then we’ll move Robbie into one of the wards in the next building. He’ll be safe there until he’s well enough to move.”

  There was a pause. Lily turned. Her face was as pale as if she were the one brushed by death. “All right.” Her voice gained strength as she talked. “Where do I start?”

  He handed her a sponge. “Scrub. By the way, I didn’t know you’d driven on Arcadia before.”

  She gave a hiccuping laugh. “I hadn’t. I’ve never driven on a road, or in traffic. But I know how to switch gears and steer well enough to avoid avalanches.”

  “Mother bless us,” said Kyosti with some feeling. “I’m amazed we made it here alive.”

  “So am I,” said Lily.

  Robbie smiled weakly at both of them.

  17 Throwback

  “HALF OF THE TRANSPORT workers walked off the job the first day. By yesterday half of those left behind had joined them. All sorts of people stood in the picket lines at the stations, not just the transport workers. Sensei Jones called me and told me she is closing the Academy temporarily until the strike is over. Central issued their ultimatum after five days: end the strike or they’d call out the troops. And yesterday they called out the troops.”

  Robbie regarded her over a spoonful of soup. “And?”

  “Poor Robbie,” Lily answered. “Stuck in that ward seeing Kyosti once a day for five minutes, painted red and orange so you’d blend in, and never hearing a bit of news until they got you home today. You missed your triumph. I watched down at Zanta Station. Every single picketer had to be dragged away, but none of them resisted. No arrests. No injuries, except one man got his hand stepped on in Ruana, and a woman trooper got her cheek scratched. I can’t remember where that was. The whole coast, all the strikers, it was the same thing. They stood their ground until Central called out their guns, and then they didn’t fight, but they didn’t retreat.”

  Robbie sighed. “The Ridanis were unnaturally quiet, I thought.”

  “They were hiding you.”

  “They know,” he said. “I fear they are in for hard times, Lily. They know that eventually there will be violence, and that the worst will hit them.”

  She frowned. “There’s one thing I’ve always wondered about the Ridanis. If they just didn’t tattoo their children, they could break the cycle of prejudice, couldn’t they? So why do they keep tattooing?”

  Robbie laughed, surprised. “Have you ever asked a Ridani that question?”

  “No,” Lily admitted. “I’d be too embarrassed.”

  “As well you should be. The patterns they wear on their bodies—proudly, despite everything—are at the very heart and soul of their religion, their culture—the culture they brought with them when they came to the Reft with the rest of humanity. It would be like asking you to …” He hesitated.

  “To repudiate martial arts and Master Heredes? Of course I wouldn’t, and I’d cling to it more fiercely, and with more pride, the more I was pressured to give it up. I know that well enough.” She paused, thinking of how she had left Ransome House, and they sat a moment in companionable silence.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked finally.

  “Call a second strike for the first day of next month,” he said. “In commemoration of the first. Speak again on the eve of it, in public. Central must get the message we are not simply a nuisance. That we mean to change our lives.”

  “Hoy,” she said. “You’re making my life difficult. Only this time let Kyosti and me organize the speech. Please?”

  Robbie smiled. “I’ll trade with you. Three courier runs, and it’s in your hands.”

  “Throw in how I can get ahold of Heredes, and it’s a deal,” countered Lily.

  With a quick phrase, Bach rose from his place in front of the computer. Patroness, he sang. I beg of thee, do not jeopardize thy master’s masquerade. When he beeth free of encumbrance, he will with certainty summon thee.

  “Bach! How can I bargain when you’re working against me?”

  Forgive me, patroness. There is, perhaps, other currency in which thou mayest deal

  She whistled her approval, and Bach sank happily back to the terminal. “Very well, Pero,” she said. “We organize the speech, you don’t go out without me as your bodyguard, and you tell me where all the information you’re getting from Heredes is going. I haven’t seen anything to account for all the hours Bach sits at that damn machine.”

  Robbie laughed and drank the rest of his soup straight from the bowl. “Done. You don’t see anything because it doesn’t come in here,” he said. “I don’t quite understand it, but Bach and Heredes send out the information in a spiral, so it comes in at differing locations on a random cycle. Then I collect it and send it back out in bits to various repositories, where it can be transferred, by courier run or otherwise, either to cells on Arcadia or out onto the road where merchanters pass it along to those folk who otherwise wouldn’t hear any news of Jehane at all.”

  “Like Unruli,” said Lily. “We’d never heard of him. That’s why it struck me so when you said Central had arrested a bunch of Jehanists there. Although, Paisley …” She trailed off, remembering how quickly her interrogators on Remote had accused Paisley of that particular sin. “Meanwhile, you’ve collected information about how Central works. How long until you can sabotage it from within? Or is that what Heredes is planning?”

  Robbie shook his head. “You’re ahead of me, Lily. I don’t know what else Heredes is planning. But I don’t work that way. I work with people, I educate them, I tell them the truth. They join me because Jehane’s cause is just. A coup will just give us a new Central to replace the old one.”

  “What will Jehane give us?” she asked, but she took his bowl and spoon and carried it to the sink before he could answer.

  Pero dictated the second strike from his couch, although the millions who heard and heeded his voice did not know that. Lily ran courier runs for him, more than three, once had to knock out two Security officers when the secrecy of a cell was breached. She missed more days at the Academy. Kyosti organized the speech, which took place in a warehouse in Wara District; this time Pero spoke and no shot interrupted him. Ten thousand heard him in person, uncounted others heard the broadcast. On the first day of the second month of spring, the entire north coast metropolis came to a halt.

  “How did you get home?” Lily asked Kyosti when he walked in very late that night.

  He merely smiled and went straight to Robbie. “How’s my patient?” he asked, sitting on the end of the couch.

  “Walking very well,” said Robbie. “Wanting to get out again.”

  “You have your wish,” said Kyosti. “I’m giving you to the Ridanis.”

  “What!” cried Lily.

  “Call up the underground nets,” said Kyosti. “You won’t see anything but those same damn Senators preaching to their constituents on the official channels. Isaiah, Feng, and Metoessa. You’d think they’d get tired of talking.”

  “I never get tired of talking,” interposed Robbie. “Let’s be fair.”

  “I don’t believe in being fair,” said Kyosti. “I know how these people think.”

  �
��Hoy.” Lily was peering over Bach’s shoulder. “I saw troops out this afternoon, but—” A screen scrolled past. “Void help us,” she exclaimed. “Three hundred arrested in Ruana. More than five hundred arrests in Elfin and Byssina. They estimate more than ten thousand arrests over the coast. It says here a striker was beaten to death at the Wara District detention center. And—” She straightened suddenly, turned, speechless.

  “Ah, yes,” said Kyosti. “Now you see why I am giving our estimable Pero to the Ridanis,”

  “Oh,” said Robbie. “That.”

  “Yes, that,” replied Kyosti.

  “A new warrant for your arrest,” murmured Lily as if she were unsure whether or not she was dreaming. “They’re offering a reward of one hundred thousand credits for information leading to your arrest. That would make most people, especially these days, rich.”

  “Central will never find you in the ghettos,” continued Kyosti. “Not even the Immortals will find you. Maybe Joshua could. Don’t argue with me, Robbie. I hate righteous people, because they’re hypocrites. But you, by the Mother, you aren’t. So you’ll do as I say.”

  Most of Lily’s courier transactions took place now in three-di bars, because of the mix of its clientele, and because gambling could never be stopped—even with doubled Security patrols and a strictly enforced curfew. Especially when military pilots were among the most celebrated participants in the three-di tournaments.

  “But it’s been quiet all month, Kyosti,” protested Lily. “If I make this run tonight it will cut the backlog of classified information that Bach’s been sitting on; it’ll complete the entire sixth level of coverage. One more level, and we’ll—”

  “You love this business, don’t you,” said Kyosti. Watching him, Lily thought how much he had changed since she had first seen him. Most of those blatant affectations had vanished, although the seeds of them still lingered in his habitual postures and the slight drawl in his voice. At the moment, he looked—she would have said annoyed, but it was more than that.

  “My hours at the Academy have been cut back because of the curfew, Heredes long since disappeared, and now Robbie has been gone a month. What am I supposed to do? And yes, I do like it. It’s the most exciting sparring I’ve ever done.”

  Kyosti continued to stare at her. It unnerved her, as if he, the predator, having caught his prey, was now no longer sure he wanted to consume it. “Abai’is-ssa,” he breathed. The word was so alien that for a horrifying instant she thought she was not looking at Kyosti at all, but at some other creature. “Spare me her, at least.”

  “Hawk?”

  “Lily, sit here,” he demanded. He was Kyosti again, but with too much energy.

  She sat down on the couch, leaving a meter between them. She checked the placement of the chairs—out of his immediate reach. Bach, at the terminal, had changed his hummed tune midphrase: Monitoring, monitoring, he sang now, one azure light winking in her direction.

  “I had three patients in six hours, Lily. There wasn’t a soul on the street when I walked from the clinic to the station. Not even transients. Just Security and government troops, waiting for the third strike. Robbie’s sweet peace is going to shatter tomorrow, and you’re not going out tonight.”

  “All right,” she said in her most neutral tone. “I can do it later.”

  “Get out of it now, Lily, before it destroys you.”

  “Kyosti—” she began.

  He sat up abruptly, like an animal startled out of hiding, and grasped her wrists in his hands. With an effort, she did not pull away from him. “I should never have slept with you!” he cried. “I know it, I knew it, but I couldn’t help myself. You’ll hate me when you find out the truth.”

  He fell silent. She said nothing, afraid to disturb this mood.

  “You’ll hate me,” he repeated, almost relishing the sound of it.

  “Kyosti What is the truth?”

  He looked away. “I can’t tell you.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “That’s not true!” He jerked his gaze back to her. “It’s not you I can’t trust. It’s myself.”

  When she did not respond, he began to examine the room, his gaze drifting over its contents piece by piece, measuring them, or his place between them: the desk, empty without Pero; the terminal scrolling out official news headlines, half-hidden by Bach; the tiny kitchen counter; the high window that looked out over the park. “They caught me,” he said, as if to the room.

  “Who caught you?”

  “The League. I was the prodigy. I thought I was invulnerable. I didn’t believe they would arrest me.” Still he did not look at her.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “I used to think I was sixty-four.”

  “Void help us,” she gasped, losing her careful balance of equilibrium. “How old is Heredes?”

  “Do you know how long I was in prison?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Sixteen years, seven months, three days. Eleven hours and thirty-two minutes.” This close, she could see clearly the blueish strain in his hair, and she began to wonder if blue was, in fact, its natural color. “But you know, when I got out, they told me it had been twenty years, two months, seventeen days. Eleven hours and thirty-two minutes.” A mocking smile curved his lips. “A clever trick to play on me. Did they think they could deceive me? Scare me into betraying my comrades?”

  “Then what were you doing on that ship?”

  Now his gaze focused on her, an acid stare. “Getting as far from prison as possible,” he snapped. “They were fools. Didn’t they know—my sense of time is absolute. Absolute.”

  For some reason, this display of arrogance restored her shaken composure. “I see,” she said.

  His hands still held her wrists. “But afterward. I used to get sick in windows, before. They so offended my sense of time. Physically sick.”

  “You don’t anymore,” she replied, on surer ground here. “Kyosti, you moved.” It was an accusation.

  “But they don’t exist,” he said. He looked at her helplessly. “They don’t really exist. Windows. They last forever—not forever—Lily. Do you know what is inside a window?”

  “No one does.”

  “Hell,” he whispered, as if it were the greatest secret he knew. “Or heaven. Take your pick.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t.” His voice was bitter and he released her wrists. “Have you ever been put in sensory deprivation? Do you even know what it is?”

  She left her hands on her lap. His bitterness was easier to deal with than his abstraction. Behind her, Bach broke from his “monitoring” hum into a single phrase: Wir durfen niemand töten—“It is not lawful for us, to put any man to death.”

  “I was in solitary, but it didn’t work. They couldn’t break me. So they put me in sensory.” He stared toward the window, “You can’t see, you can’t hear, you can’t smell—” His voice faltered. “There’s nothing to touch.” His eyes, almost sly, almost wary, slid back to her. “Finally they took me out.” This time he took her hands gently, pulling her against him as if the memory of that time drew forth from him a need to have all these sensations in full. “Lily, my love,” he murmured. “What if I was in that prison for twenty years and two months and seventeen days? What happened to those three years, seven months, fifteen days? Where did they go? Is that what exists inside the windows—lost time?” He laughed, short and hard. “‘Sharp as Hawk’s mind,’” he said with scorn. “Mother help me, Lily. I don’t know.”

  There was a long silence. His pale head rested on her shoulder, the touch of his lips on the bare skin of her neck. He kissed her neck, the hollow of her throat, the line of her jaw, her cheeks, her mouth. Sensation began to rise in her—but he drew back suddenly, releasing her, and stood up.

  “So, Lily,” he said, the assumed weariness back in his voice, “we don’t go out tonight. We don’t go out tomorrow—” As if the entire conversation had not taken place. �
�The Mother knows I’ve created enough violence in my time to see it coming now. Poor Robbie. I’d hate to be an idealist.” He smiled.

  It was his familiar smile, but behind it, like a half-voiced suggestion, that indefinable sense that it was different, that something about him was just removed from her experience—but she could not complete the thread to find where it attached. He turned his candid blue eyes on her, eyes concealing, like some buried treasure, the truth that lay deep beneath. She was suddenly reminded of the sta who had been incarcerated in the cell next to her on Remote, but she did not know why.

  “Why did you recant?” she asked.

  He laughed. “What amuses me,” he answered, “is that no one ever suspects the real reason. Well, certainly, I did it to get out of prison. They wanted to believe me, poor souls. They wanted to believe all of us, us throwbacks, that we would repent our wicked ways. But it wasn’t the solitary. I was solitary enough as a boy. It wasn’t even the sensory, even though they thought it was. No.” He wandered to stand by the window, staring down at the budding park, the slow unfurling of green. “They gave up. They put me back in the main wards. I couldn’t stand all the people. So I recanted, and they let me out.” He measured her across the distance. “Eventually I got used to having people around me again. But I can never go back.”

  “To where?”

  “You misunderstand. To what I was before.”

  “I don’t know what you were,” she said.

  He did not reply. The light, coming through the window, highlighted part of his face, but mostly he was shadowed.

  “Or what you are now,” she added.

  “Ah, Lily, didn’t you know? I’m a shaman.”

  “All these words!” she snapped, all at once resentful. She stood up. “I don’t understand most of them. And you don’t mean me to. Why should I bother to ask anymore?”

  Silence gathered like water pooling in a sink of ground.

  “Now I see,” he said in a low voice. “You don’t trust me.”

  “What reason have you given me to trust you?”

  “I gave you myself.”