“Mr. Restak. What did you say?”
“We haven’t got her.”
“Jesus,” Aaron breathed. He sounded suddenly, amazingly close to tears. “Magic-Man, what have you done?”
“Aaron, listen—”
“That pursuit fleet is coming fast and they’re armed. You can’t evade them; there’s no place you can reach safely without refueling, and there’s no place off-Earth you can land to fuel where they won’t be looking for you. The pursuit fleet will give you one choice: live or die, that’s it, Magic-Man, and I don’t want to watch you die—”
“Aaron,” the Magician said, still patient, though for the first time Jase heard an overtone of strain in his voice. “I know. But this is all beside the point—”
“It is the point!” Aaron shouted. “You’re going to die!” He touched his eyes with his fingers; his voice sank, hoarse, dogged. “Please. Just turn back. Think.”
“I have been thinking,” the Magician said steadily. “Aaron, I think you might have a problem. Because I don’t have Terra, and the Hub, which is the last place I saw her, can’t find her, and you said you flew out of the Hub, so is it possible that—”
His voice seemed to fade; Jase heard only a silence that was the abrupt cessation of all his thoughts. Then he heard the static again: the Magician, waiting for an answer. His skin felt too small for him, and cold; he wondered if even his brain had constricted. He moved his head cautiously, met Aaron’s eyes.
In the tiny, shadowy hold behind them, where no movement should have been, there was movement.
THREE
Aaron turned. It was a slow turning: again he felt time elongate itself, stretch so that his perceptions sharpened to an intense, dreamlike accuracy. Death does this, he thought, knowing that the completion of his movement, the turning away from the glittering control panel, his arm lifted, swinging back so that he could see over his shoulder, might end in his final vision: a beam of light entering his eyes.
She was there. Crouched in the hold, barely more than a blur of white face in the weak backwash of cabin light. Light trickled down the rifle pointed at them.
“Mr. Restak,” Jase said very softly into the com. “Mr. Restak.” There was no response.
“Mr. Restak.”
She hadn’t spoken yet; she had barely moved. Aaron was staring at her, his own face still, his body so still she might have drawn the life out of him with her flat, dreaming eyes.
“Mr. Restak.” Still no response. Jase cursed silently, watching Aaron out of the corner of his eye. He was reminded of cobras, fixed in each other’s gaze, and he breathed, “Mr. Fisher, be careful…”
She moved then, stood up very slowly. Jase heard the Magician’s voice, heavy, drained.
“Chief Klyos?”
“She’s here.”
“Be careful. Don’t hurt her.”
“Mr. Restak,” Jase said tautly, resisting an urge to bellow, “she’s the one with the rifle.”
She stepped out of the hold, soundless, bloodless as a moth, her eyes on the light that contained the Magician’s voice. She was alert, no longer dreaming. Aaron’s hatred, emanating like a charged field out of his stillness, spoke to her, warned her. Her eyes moved to his face; at the sudden, grey drench of her attention he swallowed. He saw Michele’s eyes.
She frowned slightly, confused, and shifted the rifle, pointing at neither of them, far enough from them to swing it easily from one to the other. She saw Aaron’s eyes flick to it, calculating distance: if he could move fast enough, if he could reach far enough… It was staring straight at him, one-eyed death, seeing his thoughts.
“The vision,” she said, explaining to them why they should not stop her yet. “The vision needs to be complete.”
“Terra?” the Magician said, and her eyes flicked to the light.
Aaron lunged. He felt his fingers touch metal; it jerked away from him. Then he was off balance, falling; he heard the snap of Jase’s voice, the Magician’s voice, rising. His hands and knees hit the floor. He waited, his mind blank but for a brief memory.
She kissed me good-bye and turned…
He heard his own breathing. He lifted his head slowly after a moment. Terra had retreated back into the hold.
She hadn’t shot him. He was still alive. He gathered himself bone by bone, like a weary ghost out of its grave, and pulled himself back into his chair. His backbone, the back of his head still waited for fire.
“Aaron?”
“Mr. Fisher,” Jase said tightly. “Don’t do that again.”
“She didn’t shoot me,” he breathed. “Why didn’t she shoot? I would have killed her. She knew that.”
“God,” the com said. “Aaron—”
“Magician,” Terra said. Her voice, thin, distant, carried clearly from the hold.
“Terra.” The Magician’s voice shook, steadied again. “Don’t hurt them. If you shoot them, if you damage anything in the craft, you’ll drift in space and die.”
“It’s not—” She gathered breath wearily, loosed it. “The vision. The vision is ending.”
“I know. I see.”
“You know,” she whispered. Jase saw something almost human touch her face. “You know…” She added, indifferent again, “The one who wanted to kill me has Michele in his mind. Magician, the vision is all. The vision. Tell them.”
Aaron closed his eyes. He heard the Magician’s voice as out of a dream. “I’ll try.” Then, for a long moment, he heard only the static of the stars.
The cliff face black as deep space… It wavered, rippled, spilled like black cloth over the amethyst sand. The dim light of the rising sun touched it.
Delicate, colorless forms, like the skeletons of tiny sea animals… there was no horizon to judge their size against; they might be big as a hand, big as a world. They fell, absorbed by something pulsing.
Strands of luminescence, saliva or living wind, blowing in horizontal streaks…
The need… the need for integrity… the need to complete…
The vision frayed around him. He sat at the controls of the Flying Wail, still feeling the need like an unquenchable thirst, a desire to redesign the structure of his eye, or the way knowledge passed into his head… He made a sound, a protest against his inability to respond. Michele looked up from the scanner.
Her face still looked unfamiliar to him; pale, still controlled, it revealed all its trouble and its amazement. “Magic-Man,” she said gently. “Are you back?”
“Yes.”
“What—what do you see? You and Terra? Magic-Man—” Her voice caught. He shook his head slightly, reading her eyes.
“It’s not her. She’s not doing it.”
“She killed all those people. She did that. For what? What do you see that made her do that? And what could—how could—no matter what you see, how can I forgive her for that? How can anyone? It’s still there, that fact, no matter what dreams you both dream.”
“It’s not a dream. At least not in the sense that we dream and then wake, and know we’ve dreamed. This is… a vision,” he said helplessly and she smiled, familiar to him for a moment.
“A vision,” she repeated softly. “You both even use the same word?
“They don’t mean much, in this context. But it’s the only language I’ve got.”
Her eyes filled with tears suddenly; she stared down at the lights. He touched her shoulder lightly. “Why,” she whispered, “couldn’t she have had a vision sitting safe at home at the breakfast table instead of in the middle of the goddamn desert with a rifle in her hands? You haven’t killed anybody yet, Magic-Man. Are you going to?” She looked up at his silence.
“That’s the difference between you, so far. And she’s still got a rifle.”
He reached out, touched the com-light, chilled. “It’s that compelling,” he admitted, and spoke to the com. “Chief Klyos?” He waited, gazing at the scattered, fiery points of light in the starscreen. They seemed too distant, impossibly remote, as if huma
n heritage could only be the longing for them, and the endless darkness between suns. The silence from the Hub-craft began to alarm him. “Terra?”
“Yes,” she said, and he sighed noiselessly.
“Are you all alive?”
“I am so tired…”
He knew which “I” she meant. The “I” seeing visions, translating messages beside the slow, dark sea, felt only its need. He knew the same weariness: the constant drain on his attention by danger, circumstance, when all he wanted was to be absorbed in imagery.
“Are they all right? Aaron and Chief Klyos?”
“They don’t speak.”
He felt the blood leave his face. “Are they alive?”
“Yes,” she said indifferently. She added, appalling him, “There are times when I don’t see them.”
“Mr. Restak,” Chief Klyos said cautiously.
“Are you all right?”
“What does she mean by that? That she can’t see us?”
The Magician cursed silently. “I wouldn’t count on it,” he said at last, trying to keep his voice calm.
“The visions. Is that it? When she has one, she’s not aware of her surroundings? Mr. Restak?”
“I’m not aware of my surroundings,” the Magician said finally. “I can’t answer for her.”
“She just told you.”
He felt the sweat prick at his hairline. “Are you listening at all?” he asked abruptly. “She reads my mind. She read Aaron’s mind. She doesn’t mean you harm. She and I are picking up an alien’s thoughts. Doesn’t that surprise you? Or is this routine to you?”
“Mr. Restak, I haven’t had a routine moment since I set eyes on you. Right now, I feel like I’ve got a time bomb at my back. You want to discuss aliens, turn around and get yourself back to the Underworld. I’ll listen then.”
“Chief Klyos, her intent isn’t to harm—”
“You saw what she did in the Underworld! She’s a murderer.”
The Magician closed his eyes. “She killed. Yes. But don’t try to kill her while she’s in the alien visions. She’s still too dangerous.”
“What alien? What are you talking about? You’re not even on the same vessel, how do you know what she’s thinking?”
“I know,” the Magician said, his voice rising in spite of himself, “because I’m caught in the same bloody vision! I’ve been trying to tell you—”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
The Magician took a breath and held it, searching for patience. He saw his band around him, in various positions on the furniture, absorbed into his need, unafraid because as yet he had been too engrossed in wonder to have room for fear.
His silence lengthened, misted…
Oh, God, no, he thought, terrified for Terra, for Aaron. Not now.
“Mr. Restak,” he heard dimly. “Mr. Restak.”
Terra…
A milk-white web, pulsing within its strands… It was building itself angle by angle, its sections irregular, its joints bulky, like delicate, elongated bones. Its patterns seemed random, but they were exact, the Magician sensed, complex as mathematics, and the choosing of each length of strand, each position, was as powerful and absorbing as the choice of one note after another of music under his hands. He felt himself seduced by subtleties, drawn into the pattern…
The lights of the control panel swarmed across his vision. His body felt stiff, older, by an uncertain measure of time. The silence around him had changed, like an angle of light; words had been spoken he had not heard.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and the silence that was itself part of the vision frayed away. Michele stood beside him, drawing her other hand through her hair. The last of her heart-pins fell at the Magician’s feet. Her eyes were swollen; her voice, fierce, precise, husky with pain, mesmerized the Magician.
“Aaron?”
“Yes.”
“Chief Klyos? Are you listening? I want to hear your voice.”
“I’m listening,” he snapped.
“If you touch her, the Magician will know it, and I’ll scream so loud over this com they’ll hear me in the Horsehead Nebula, and Terra Viridian with a rifle in her hands is the stuff that horror videos are made of. Are you listening? Say your names. Say them.”
“Klyos.”
“Aaron?”
“I’m listening.”
“You might think she wouldn’t care about me after all these years, seven years in a cell in the Dark Ring, seeing nothing but visions. But she knows me. You saw that, Chief Klyos, in the Infirmary. She knows me. She knew I was coming to the Underworld before I got there. How do you explain that, Chief Klyos?”
“I don’t.”
“How would you, Aaron?”
“I don’t know.”
“You might ask, as long as you’re up here with nothing to do but chase the Flying Wail. You might ask. She knew I was coming because I’m the only person she’s ever loved who is still alive. She’s my twin, my face, my heart, and until she picked up that rifle in the Desert Sector, there was no one in the world more loving to me. She was all my family, and I was hers. You might look for reasons why she killed, if you’re even curious anymore, if anyone cares after seven years. Well, I spent seven years looking for reasons, in her past life, and you know what I found? Are you listening? Aaron?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded hollow, haunted.
“Now I’m telling you the truth. Chief Klyos?”
“I’m listening.”
“Nothing. That’s what I found. She killed for nothing. For no reason. For no earthly reason. Seven years I hid, seven years I wore that face—the face of the Queen of Hearts, the cuber with the golden smile, who millions recognized but no one ever knew—because when I looked at my own face in the mirror, I saw Terra’s face, my other face, and I was afraid that what she did, somehow I might do too… But now I know that that moment seven years ago in the Desert Sector is in her past, and her past belongs to her, not me, and it will never be repeated… Aaron—”
“We haven’t touched her! She’s the one with the rifle!”
“You say my name. Say it. Say it.”
“Michele,” he whispered. “Michele Viridian.”
“All right.” Her grip tightened on the Magician’s shoulder. He felt her tremble. “You know now. What I didn’t tell you. What I would have told you when—if I got back. If you wanted to listen. But you came here.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Well, you’d know me now, Aaron. You’d recognize my face, now.” Her voice loosened; she brushed back her hair wearily. “I’m not hiding anymore. You never knew Terra so you wouldn’t believe me if I told you she was never a monster, just an ordinary, intelligent human being with a few gifts and a pretty face. She was extraordinary to me, of course, because we loved each other, but the most ordinary of people became extraordinary that way, by being loved. You wouldn’t find it significant that she would hold me at nights while I cried for our parents, that there was always supper waiting for me when I got home from the clubs at three in the morning, or that when we came to Earth and I was so terrified of the noise, the colors, she walked through that alien planet like there was nothing left in the universe for her to fear. I loved her. But since you won’t care about that, then explain to me what the Magician is doing risking his life for Terra and seeing Terra’s visions… Aaron?”
“I can’t.” His voice shook out of control, and the Magician felt his skin tighten, as at an intimation of danger.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Michele said helplessly. “You shouldn’t be here at all. I didn’t want you to know all this until it was over. If you still wanted to know me. But I just want—you gave me the rose. So I want you to know, if it matters to you at all—or if it ever will matter—that I meant what I said to you when you came to say good-bye—about you, and cubing, and the Magic-Man’s music—”
“Stop it! I don’t want to hear this! Any of it!”
She lift
ed her hand from the Magician’s shoulder, touched her mouth. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes were stunned, bruised. “I’m sorry—”
The Magician eased her away, slumped over the com. “Aaron.”
“What?” He sounded furious, shaken, stripped of an essential privacy.
“Please. Is Terra—”
“Magic-Man, that madwoman killed my wife!”
“Oh,” he whispered. He couldn’t find air for a moment. “God.” The com went silent; he wondered if some fragile, invisible link in the night between them had irreparably snapped. He looked up suddenly, for Michele had disappeared. She was still beside him. He couldn’t hear her breathe. Gazing at her, he couldn’t find her. There was only her face, still, waxen, expressionless: another mask. Her grey eyes seemed drained of light.
“Mr. Restak,” Klyos said.
He answered numbly, “Yes.”
“Are you ready to come in now?”
He wavered, stunned by circumstances. Then he saw the human vision the Scholar had given him, out of a time and place existing nowhere but in a language passed from millennium to millennium: the Musician, stopped in his journey, turning, disastrously turning, to look back down the long path out of the Underworld to see if he had truly rescued anything of value.
“No.”
FOUR
Jase wiped sweat off his face and tried to stretch, cramped and belted to his seat. “Where are we?” he muttered. They had been pursuing the Flying Wail for days, it seemed, months: even before he had ever seen it, it had projected its shadow from the future across his life. The dangers and tensions within the Hub-craft were, like a juggler’s knives, becoming familiar.
Aaron read their position tonelessly. A precise and delicate balance of events had maneuvered the patroller into this aimless flight across the night, pursuing his friends, with his worst nightmare holding a rifle at his back. Jase, admiring the artistry of fate, would not have blamed Aaron for going berserk himself at this point and sending the Hub-craft into oblivion with Terra’s rifle. But Aaron, instead of exploding, only grew more glacial.
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