Jaguar held a hand up for quiet. "Why not, Steven?"
"Because," he said, "it's not fair. The people who work for A's should get A's."
"And how do you work for an A in a class that's about matters of the spirit?"
"By learning the material and doing good on the tests."
More groans ensued. Jaguar couldn't quite hold back her grin, and he noticed. His face furrowed into sullenness.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"I was just thinking about what it might mean to pass a spiritual test."
"Oh man," the black woman said, "you gonna make us walk on hot coals or—or whatever you did on them Planetoids?"
"Be quiet, Selica," someone hissed at her.
So, Jaguar thought. They knew. She wondered what stories they'd heard about the Planetoids. What stories they told themselves to get a delightful shiver of fear on dark and stormy nights. She was about to respond when Steven spoke again.
"This is a class about world religions. Not spirituality. To try and teach spiritual matters in class would be ..." He paused.
"Inappropriate?" Jaguar suggested.
"I was going to say dangerous."
"I see," Jaguar said, and she did. She saw that she could spend the rest of the class, and probably the rest of the semester, engaged in argument with him, or she could try to teach everyone else. She decided she was tired of argument. She'd rather teach. She smiled at him.
"Well, I try to avoid danger at all costs, so let's start with a religion. Everybody stand up."
They murmured. Frowned. Laughed nervously.
"What're you waiting for?" she asked in response to their immobility. "We're starting in China, with the concept of Chi. Can't learn about that without moving around."
When they began tentatively to shuffle out of their desks, she laughed and held her arms out wide. They were no different from her prisoners. Terrified of seeing who they were, and being it. And it was her job to make sure they faced that particular fear, and overcame it, so they'd have room to learn what the rest of the world was like.
"Up," she said, at full voice. "On your feet and let's get started."
When class was done and the students filed out—some stopping to ask questions about the assignment and some stopping to ask more questions about the concept of Chi—Jaguar made her way down the halls to the Campus Center.
She had to pick up a few essentials at the campus store. Bath salts would be in order, since the best part of her rooms was a large antique claw-foot tub, and plentiful hot water from the University's very efficient solar heating system. And she wanted a sketch pad for class so that she could draw some of the concepts that eluded words.
She took her time, getting acquainted with the tunnels between class and Campus Center, letting her energy levels settle back to normal after fielding the many energies directed at her in class. Steven's truculence. Katia—whom she took to be Steven's girlfriend—and her serious eyes and quiet face. Selica's outspokenness. Taquara's hair. Joey and Jesse's whispers to each other. And great hulking Glen, who spoke gruffly but giggled when he tore up his syllabus. They seemed like an interesting group so far.
She stopped and read notices on the bulletin board. Notices of meetings for student groups. Gone Girls Memorial Fund Dance. Gone Girls—that was the popular name for the disappeared sorority women, her files said. Rooms for Rent: Conveniently located near all bars. Some things, she thought, never change. Gay and Lesbian Campus Coalition meeting on Wednesday. She thought of getting in touch with them to see if they were any friendlier toward empaths than the majority heterosexuals. They should be, she thought, given the similarities in the ways each group was seen and treated.
Like gays, you couldn't tell if someone was an empath by looking, but you could make a guess based on certain gestures, habits of dress, speech, and manner. A sage-green item of clothing. The earring in the left ear, the kind of stone indicating the kind of empath. A tendency to either avoid or maintain heavy eye contact. Certain catchphrases. Any of these might tag you as an empath, whether you were or not.
But empaths, who were inclined to keep under cover, didn't have coalitions. They didn't identify their talents except in very specific situations and for very limited circles with other empaths, who were also busy keeping quiet. There was some safety on the Planetoids, and within certain groups like Jake and One Bird's village, where what Jaguar did was considered normal. But in mainstream society, empaths were still seen as objects for either derision or fear or, oddly enough, both, though Jaguar never understood how you could ridicule something and at the same time take it seriously enough to be afraid of it.
She made her way to the ladies' room and found a stall, entered it. As she did so, she heard voices, heels tapping, laughter.
Bits of conversation floated to her.
"I think it's neat," one voice said enthusiastically. "I mean, at least we'll be doing more than just sitting there and falling asleep."
"Yeah. We'll be busy making sure she doesn't mind-fuck us," came the response.
"Come on," a voice protested. "You don't know that about her."
"Get a light on. She can wear the suit, but it doesn't hide the earring. Obsidian. Left ear."
She felt at her earlobe. Great, she thought. Every teacher's nightmare. Stuck in the stall while her students talked about her.
"So drop the course," the first voice chimed in. "You got your diversity requirement covered, don't you?"
"I'm gonna drop it. I just thought you should know. Be careful of her. The president's probably got plants around campus for the course."
"You are so paranoid, Celie."
"Maybe. But I sat in a few Private Sanction meetings, and they know about her. They got her Planetoid records."
Voices paused, and Jaguar could almost see the young woman pointing upward. Toward the Planetoids they couldn't see, but could and did imagine.
"What're you talking about, Celie?"
"Ask anyone. They're all over the Planetoids. I read about it. Don't you ever read anything?"
Giggles. "Is it required?"
"Only if you want to protect yourself," the voice said, and retreated from the room.
Jaguar heard the door creak open and click close, then counted a minute of silence before she emerged from her stall.
She stopped at the mirror, considered her face. It was tight, holding anger and some fear.
Then she shook her head at herself. "Maybe your students are afraid to be who they are for a reason," she said to her reflection. "Maybe they know it just isn't safe."
Planetoid Three, Toronto Replica
Rich Forrest put his briefcase down on his desk and slid a hand across the surface. Nice, he thought. Built-in computer and telecom. Everything at his fingertips, and the rest of it a sleek and shiny mirror in which he could see his face. Which looked a little disgruntled.
He hadn't wanted this assignment and told Lieutenant General Durk it was a bad idea. First of all, Alex knew him. They were on the same cleanup unit in Manhattan during the Serials.
Durk said that wasn't a problem. Forrest was ten years out of regular army work and into research on the academic circuit. Alex couldn't possibly find any remaining association because it was all under Blackout Code. Besides, Durk wanted someone who knew Dzarny, might be able to call his moves before he made them.
But Rich didn't like it. Durk didn't have to hang out feeling trapped on this sky island. And he hadn't worked with Dzarny ever. Rich had seen Alex in tight spots, and saw how he could get out of them.
There was the time they were checking on some kids who had a camp set up in a Dumpster. They were in the alley, and the kids scattered, but a man crawled out from behind the Dumpster and pulled a rapid-fire on them. Alex hadn't skipped a beat. He walked right into the barrel of his gun with those strange eyes of his blazing.
The guy didn't fire.
Another time a woman jumped them from behind. She had a meat cleaver in her hand. Alex c
aught it by the blade in the palm of his hand and flipped her on her back. Forrest remembered the sound of her skull cracking against the cement. He remembered thinking that Dzarny seemed like such a quiet kind of guy. He liked having Dzarny on his unit, but he wouldn't want to have him on the other side, as he was in this operation.
He opened his briefcase and pulled out the disk with Alex's file, popped it into his personal computer, and read through it one more time before erasing it entirely. He took another look at Alex's photo. It was almost twenty years since Manhattan, but Rich would recognize that bony face, those slightly slanted deep-set eyes, that set of chin, even if Alex had changed enormously. And he hadn't. He was in good shape, not carrying any spare flesh on his large frame. His hair had more silver in it, but it was still thick and inclined to be riotous, and he still wore the earring that signified the artist. Practitioner of the empathic arts.
He'd heard some stories about Alex since he started working the Planetoid, and especially since he buddied up with that Addams woman. They'd developed a reputation as a formidable team ever since they'd taken down the Division for Intelligence Enforcement. And the last job they did—Rich had to admit it was pretty spectacular work. Dzarny was good, and he heard she was holy hell, and born damn lucky with it.
Empaths, he thought, were a pain in the ass. They could do good work, but they didn't take to the chain of command at all. After a certain point they were simply unmanageable. Like their specialist on campus, which is why he was here in the first place. To do a job for the specialist on campus. He didn't know who the specialist was, except that he worked takeouts and communications. Very valuable. He could get into coded net rings and play them like a piano without a trace. The Pentagon would do just about anything rather than risk losing the special services of the specialist on campus.
So here he was, stuck with a lot of Ivy League types who thought they were here to profile exiting prisoners and study treatment efficiency data, waiting for whatever Durk would tell him to do next. It could be anything. Durk was known for setting private agendas. He was a heavy, clumsy man with a wooden hand, but his mind danced more delicately than a ballerina en pointe.
He hoped somebody knew what they were doing on this one.
He read through the rest of Alex's file, hit the delete code, and watched it disappear. Then he closed up his briefcase and slid it across his desk. The others would be arriving soon, and the job would begin.
4
"BYTELOCK," JAGUAR SAID POINTEDLY. "DAMMIT."
She sat at a row of computers reserved for student use, trying to get a message through for Rachel to remind her to repot the mint before it got root-bound. But her message kept bouncing back to her, and she was advised, in computer terms, to stay in line and wait her turn. There was a bytelock and it would take time to clear.
She supposed the lines got pretty crowded at the University. Every seat there was occupied and students hovered at the door, waiting their turns. She would use the computer in her office, but something was wrong with it. Every time she touched it, it turned itself off. That sort of thing often happened to her when she interacted with electronic technology, and she couldn't always tell if it was mechanical trouble or the machine responding to her particular charge, which was an unfixable problem. She'd have to get it checked, but in the meantime she had work to do.
She was finding it impossible to get work done in her office, anyway. Yesterday she'd had visits from George Norton and Emily Rainer, just asking if she needed anything, but George leaned his butt on her desk and talked for an hour about whose promotion was likely and whose wasn't, who was sleeping with whom, whose theory ruled department politics, and how long that would last. Emily Rainer came, jangling her bracelets and making deliberately tolerant observations about the value of nonacademic work such as Jaguar's, while she put as cold an assessing eye on Jaguar as Jaguar had ever known. Rainer stayed for a long time, and left Jaguar believing that she was the only faculty member who had work to do.
Then Katia came by with a question about the homework, which was an obvious cover for what she really wanted, which was apparently to apologize for Steve's argumentative nature. He meant nothing by it, she said. He was just passionate in his opinions. Jaguar liked Katia well enough, but she thought it was a bad sign when a woman carried the burden of apology for the man in her life.
"Don't worry about it," Jaguar advised. "I can take him."
Katia looked a little shocked. "Oh. I don't mean he's dangerous or anything," she had amended.
Jaguar had to explain that it was a joke. She'd forgotten how seriously undergraduates took themselves. "It's okay," she reassured her again, "You're supposed to argue in class. You can argue with me, too."
But that notion seemed too far out of Katia's realm. She said something about having no arguments and left for her next class.
Then Ethan tapped on her door to ask if she was free for dinner next week, Wednesday. He'd managed to make arrangements after all. He stayed to chat about the difference between materialist and nonmaterial feminist theory, neither of which meant much to Jaguar on a daily basis, though she had to admit she enjoyed his banter and the appreciation his eyes showered on her. His words were all about gender egalitarianism, but his eyes were all about bed. She didn't hold that against him, though. She just hadn't made up her mind if she'd take him up on it. But now she was behind in her work, and hoping for a chance to catch up.
No such luck.
She tapped impatiently against the side of the computer, sitting with her chin in one hand. It was just a little message, and she had a lot of other shit to do. Too much to sit here waiting.
"Damn," a voice behind her said. "Bytelock."
She lifted her head and turned around.
The man standing at her back was tall and broad as a mountain, with a face like the crags in the side of a mountain and a ponytail of dark hair that went all the way down his back. He wore a plaid flannel shirt under his sweater and jeans over his boots. One hundred percent Skin, she thought. Native all the way.
He stuck his hand out to her and she took it, the spreading warmth of it encompassing hers. Bear hands. He had big bear hands.
"Dr. Addams," she said, "Cultural studies department."
"I know. I'm Leonard Peltier. "Sioux culture and history. You got bytelocked, huh?"
"Looks like I'll be here awhile. Did you say Leonard Peltier?"
"Yup."
"Any relation?" she asked.
He grinned. "Great-grandson from my mother's clan. You're the first person here to ask that."
She wasn't surprised at that. It was the kind of story everyone wanted to forget. The first Leonard Peltier was a leader of the American Indian movement who was arrested for the murder of two FBI agents in a shooting at Pine Ridge Reservation. He didn't do it, but somebody had to pay and it ended up being him. He served over twenty years in prison for a crime everyone knew he didn't commit. Jaguar had a vague memory of seeing her grandfather raise his own large hand and make a fist to shake at a world that imprisoned men like Peltier. Though she was very young at the time and didn't understand what it was about, the force of his gesture impressed the name in her mind.
Peltier had been a political prisoner in a country that supposedly was free, whatever that meant. But certain key officials in the Justice Department took a dislike to him, and had the power to make their feeling into his continued imprisonment. Or so the inside rumors said. It took thousands of people and the retirement of certain key officials before he was granted executive clemency, but if Jaguar was remembering right, he was sprung in time for the millennium. His name became synonymous with endurance, with Native rights.
"Good blood," she said. "I don't think I would've lasted a week in prison. I can't even stand five minutes of bytelock."
"Yeah, well, my grandmother told me old Leonard cursed like crazy if he got stuck in traffic."
Jaguar grinned. Sure he would. "How'd you get his name?"
He
held up one of his meaty paws. "My family name's Tom Bear Hand, but ever since I was a kid the old people called me Leonard Peltier. After a while nobody called me anything else. They said I had his face.
Later on they said I had his elk medicine."
Jaguar wasn't sure how to take that. Elk medicine meant good with women. Very good. He seemed to be joking more than he was bragging, though, and he didn't seem the type to engage in the sort of smooth seduction Ethan would attempt if she gave him half a chance. Something about his presence was warmer, more about listening and less about talking. But then, she thought, listening can be the most seductive art of all.
"We have a few students in common," he said.
"Which ones?"
"Steve Haigue and Jesse Goodman. Peter Pesetto and Katia Stone."
"Quite a few students, then."
"Small department. Sooner or later we share everything. Colds. Gossip. Bad jokes."
"And even so, nobody knows who you are?"
"Same to you," he said, and pointed to her name, written out at the top of a student paper she had in front of her. "That's the name of someone who's supposed to meet with trouble."
She startled and tried to cover it. What did he know about that?
"I met your grandfather," he said in answer to her unasked question.
That was a sweet and sharp surprise. "You—how?"
"He came to ceremony with us a few times when I was a kid. He talked about ways of keeping our people safe during the Killing Times. He saw it coming. You knew that?"
She knew. He met her in the lobby of their apartment building. The walls were gray and white. Disinfectant mingled with the smell of death, which she already recognized as a distinct scent, burning the nostrils. He bent down and put his large hands on her shoulders.
It's not safe, he said. Not safe to be here alone.
But when they returned to the apartment, the killer was already there, waiting for someone—just anyone— to kill. His vision had failed them, abandoned them both.
"Yes," she said, shaking off the memory, "Jake told me. Jake Silver and One Bird at Thirteen Streams. I lived there when I was little, and I went back after my grandparents were killed."
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