EarthChild
Page 19
"We're going to have to join the game then," said Mensch. "We don't really have a choice."
"A show of solidarity?" Prentice Reece raised a delicate eyebrow.
"Why not?" Cripps eyed the others. "Resistance now won't do any good, and it might harm our interests later."
"I agree," Mensch said. "The various peoples of Earth are sending gifts to Renascence-some of the treasures of the world are already there. I think we need to do likewise."
Bondurant glared over the rim of his glass. His silence was eloquent.
"Personal gifts for the children then," Mensch said easily. "Surely you can't object to that."
Bondurant drained his glass. "I don't think much of your idea." His tone indicated that he didn't think too much of Mensch's face or ancestry either.
"Do you have a better idea?" Mensch asked sharply.
The discussion degenerated rapidly into a personality conflict between Mensch and Bondurant. Cripps, ideologically more aligned with Mensch, but personally disapproving of him, hung at the sidelines and sniped at both, while Prentice Reece stared at all three in silence. Finally, she leaned forward and said in a low voice, "You can give up your dreams of autonomy. None of us are fit for it."
They stared at her in shocked silence as she looked each of them up and down. "None of us… If we can't even show some sort of unity among ourselves, how can we expect to break free of WorldCo one day?" She turned to Bondurant, "The proposal before us is whether or not we respond to Renascence with a show of solidarity. I call for the question."
The vote was three to one. Bondurant lowered his brows. "I don't approve of this."
"Neither do I," Prentice Reece said evenly, "but it is expedient."
"Expediency be damned," he roared. "I'll agree to withdraw my objections to WorldCo, but I will not endorse Renascence with official gifts."
A speculative look came over Cripps's face. "What about unofficial gifts? Something from our children, perhaps…"
Silvio smiled to himself as he listened to the four small figures bicker among themselves. He knew from experience that Bondurant would acquiesce to pressure and accept Cripps's face-saving suggestion.
Within minutes, they had agreed on "personal gifts only." Balking at Mensch's suggestion of bracelets, Bondurant rejoined with "Necklaces… with Vestanite crystals… but only if the crystals are collected by the children…"
And so, with a signal to the Vesta Central control room, the meeting was adjourned. Silvio touched a code and the blue privacy lights turned off. A moment later, the life-sized holograms in each conference room winked out, leaving each of them alone.
Silvio stared down at the four figures left on the circular grid. Smiling, he touched another code. The grid vanished, and for a moment the little holos stood in the palm of a three-dimensional hand until, slowly, its giant fingers began to close.
* * *
In his quarters ten days later, Silvio leaned intently over a small tank and watched as silver began to coat the submerged metal. In a few minutes, he fished it out and examined it closely.
He nodded, satisfied. No one would notice the addition, he was sure. He turned again to the box next to him-the box that had been so easy to intercept-and reached inside.
He worked quickly, with a deftness born of many years' work with tiny communications components. In a few minutes, he was finished. He scrutinized his work carefully. The little silver-plated compartment was barely visible. It blended quite nicely with the silver setting that held the blue Vestanite crystal. It would do. It would do quite well.
Humming to himself, Silvio reached into the box marked RENASCENCE and drew out the next necklace.
Chapter 5
The trip to Tambay was hurried. The message had come in the middle of the night: Your brother Eric is very ill. It was still dark as Kurt strode to the hospital desk and inserted his Ministry card into the console.
The console replied at once: "Greetings, Mr. Kraus. What is it we can do for you?"
"Eric Kraus. A patient here. I've come to see him."
"Programmed," said the console. The sublif bay next to it slid open. He stepped inside. The bay closed, and the car dropped a short way then engaged a horizontal track. A moment later, the door opened, and he stepped out.
A man came up to him and extended a hand. "I'm Dr. Perez."
"I've come to see my father… uh…" Kurt paused for a moment, then blinked. "My brother. Eric… my brother… How is he?"
Lines of concern traced across the doctor's face. "Mr. Kraus, we're very sorry… It was a C.V.A.-a stroke. Your brother died twenty minutes ago."
He stared at the man. "I want to see him."
A slight pause. Then, "Of course. Come with me."
He followed the doctor down a hall and into a dimly lighted room. Kurt stopped at the door and looked across the room at the still form on the narrow bed.
"Would you like to be alone with him?" Perez asked.
"Yes. Please."
Alone in the room, he moved closer to the bed arid stared down at his brother. He stood like this for some time and then he said, "Well, Eric…" His voice broke and it was a minute before he tried it again, this time in a whisper, "We didn't say goodbye, did we?" He reached out and touched the old man's hand. "Well… I never was much good at goodbyes anyway. Always seemed to say the wrong thing."
But they should have said something. Something. Kurt stood, touching Eric's hand. The last of his family. No one was left now. No one. He felt a hollowness grow inside, as if the core of him were crumbling, falling away to nothing. There were so many things they should have said. So many.
He stood for a long time, touching Eric's hand, feeling the bones beneath the fragile, cooling skin. Finally, he turned and walked out of the room.
* * *
He spent the rest of the night traveling Tambay, searching the old parts of the city for fragments of himself-his past. But it was all so changed now. Nothing was the same.
He stopped by the edge of Tampa Bay and stared at the black waters until they began to pale with first light. He looked across the gray expanse and felt a soft wind blow across his face, a wind that brought the smell of salt to his nostrils. It was as if nothing else were left now except the gray flatness-and the wind. It had blown across this land, across this bay, for thousands of years… tens of thousands. It would blow for thousands more across other cities in its wake-cities that would rise and fall again with no more permanence than ripples across the face of a sand dune.
He sat by the edge of the bay until the sky grew pink and the sun glittered on the water. He remembered something then. Standing, shaking off fatigue, he turned toward the heart of the old city again.
* * *
The Ever-Vaults were sealed against the creeping dampness of the bay air. He sat star
ing at the little door to the vault that bore his name. It was less than half a meter square. He dialed the code to open it. Pressurized air replaced the vacuum inside, and the door swung open.
As it did, Eric's voice suddenly said, "Hello, Kurt." He started at the sound-Eric's voice, but the way it was when they were scarcely more than boys. A soft light came on, and Kurt looked inside at a row of pictures. The first showed two small boys perched on an oak tree limb. He couldn't have been more than six then and Eric, seven. The next was later-a formal pose-the two boys with Richard and Carmen Kraus. Then-Grandma.
Eric's voice began again. "Do you remember what you said about Grandma? You said I ought to imbed a teabag in Lucite for you to remember her by. I didn't do that, but I did something else. Take a deep breath…"
Puzzled, Kurt did. There was a faint hissing sound and then the odor of tea and ginger cookies struck his nostrils. He heard Eric's soft laugh. "Great, huh?"
He sat for a long time and listened to his brother's voice and to the unseen tapes that played old music: His mother on the piano; Grandma playing the violin-her bowing tremulous with advancing age; Eric's senior recital. There was something else: Eric was saying, "I guess I'm asking you not to forget us. But there's something else you shouldn't forget either." Suddenly, he heard the sound of an oboe-his own- playing the opening bars of Rebirth. Cellos and string basses joined in, erasing a hundred years of his life until, for a time, he was back in the old Wilson Consortium, playing again, eyes locked on Mr. Hernandez, the conductor.
He listened to the swelling sound of the orchestra. As it finally faded and died away, he heard Eric's voice one last time: "Goodbye, Kurt."
"Goodbye, Eric," he whispered back. With a quick hand, he wiped at his eyes, then reached for the door to the Ever-Vault. It felt cool under his damp fingers as he closed it gently and walked away.
Chapter 6
A pink sun peeped over the mountains at the first morning of April. Mist rose from the lake. Three brown ducks swam through the smoky plumes of fog and broke the still surface of the water with their wake.
Kurt stood at the lake's edge until the chill of a sudden breeze caused him to move again. He walked under the bare-limbed trees, past patches of ground fog captured among roots and hollows. The Common Hall was just ahead. He caught the smell of the oak and hickory fire that puffed its smoke from the stone chimney. A patch of jonquils, butter-pale ghosts, bloomed from a pocket of mist by the steps.
He opened the door. Inside, a woman standing by the fire looked up and smiled at him. "Something to eat, Mr. Kraus?"
"Yes, please." He had spent the night in a cabin tucked in a wedge of hemlock trees. Wrapped in his warm bed, he had listened through a partly opened window as cold gusts prowled through the needles of the trees. He had heard a solitary owl mourn above the dying wind and then sleep came-the best he had had in more years than he cared to think about. Now, he was ravenous.
"May we serve you here by the fire?" the woman asked.
"Certainly." No reason to use the dining hall until that afternoon when the children arrived. He took a seat by the fire and stared at the flames. He was so lost in thought that he heard nothing until a voice said, "May we join you?"
He looked up. Dr. Nesheim stood at his elbow, and with him was a child-the girl who had played the peleforté at Eric's birthday party.
"Have you met Tanya?"
"No. No, I haven't." Kurt extended his hand to the little girl who took it gravely.
"Tanya and I arrived the same day last week," said Nesheim. "We've gotten to be buddies."
"I didn't know any of the children were here yet."
"I am the only one," said the girl. "My dormitory mates were moving to a new building. The dormitory parents thought it would be better for me to come to Renascence early than to move twice."
He looked at her solemn face. "You must be lonely. But don't worry. You'll have company soon."
"Oh, I am not lonely at all." She seemed surprised that he would think it. "I have been reading and practicing. And I have explored. In my spare time, I help Dr. Nesheim."
The doctor sat down on the couch adjacent to Kurt and pulled the child to a seat next to him. "I'm going to make Tanya my official assistant. She's been helping me organize the dispensary."
The dispensary. The suspension of the Mouat-Gari process from the world's children had allowed disease to attack again after a truce of many years. As their mortal patients dwindled, doctors had forgotten many of the old skills. Their practice had turned more and more to trauma cases until eleven years ago when they had to return to old techniques that had been abandoned by all but veterinary practitioners.
Tanya looked at Kurt and said seriously, "Did you know that there are sicknesses children can get that grownups cannot?"
Kurt stared at the child with a pang at the vulnerability he saw there.
"I think medicine is fascinating. I think I like it next to music. Oh, look-"
A man came up bearing a tray of food. He placed it on the low table and pressed a small hidden switch. The table rose smoothly to dining height.
Tanya lifted the lid of a steaming pot and sniffed deeply. "Sassafras tea," she said with satisfaction. "It is my favorite." She poured cups for all of them. "It is good plain, but best with sourwood honey." She offered Kurt some.
"In that case, how can I refuse?" Sassafras tea and sourwood honey-he had stepped into a time machine of his own devising. He smiled at Tanya. "After breakfast, maybe you can show me some of the places you've explored."
She smiled back over the rim of her cup. "I would like that… but first I must practice."
* * *
"Look," said Tanya. "No. Not here. There." She pointed to the far side of a massive log that bridged a tiny stream. "Do you see?" She ran across the log, balancing easily.
Kurt followed. She knelt by a clump of wild ground orchids. "They are beautiful, are they not?"
He grinned and nodded at the little girl. She had been born to city life, had lived in an urban dormitory, and each new wild thing she saw was an object of wonder and discovery. She leaned over and cupped a flower in her hands. Her hair fell free in a dark cloud around her face as she tipped her head. She seemed to be listening to something.
He watched her curiously until the moment passed and she raised her eyes to his. "They are waiting."
"Waiting?"
"Waiting to be music. I can hear some of it." She hummed a snatch of melody. "That is a part of it. I think I will hear the rest soon… in my head. Sometimes I dream it."
"You like it here then." Somehow it was very important for her to say "yes." Instead, she took his hand and said, "There is something else I found."
He followed her along the edge of the little stream until it emptied into the lake. They walked uphill then, and he struggled to keep his footing on the
damp, dead leaves that slid away beneath him.
"It is here." She was on her knees next to a small depression in the ground. She brushed the leaves from it until they made a spongy pile.
He knelt beside her. A heavy piece of bronze lay partly buried under the leaves.
"It has writing on it, but I cannot read what it says."
He brushed away the dirt that clung to the plaque. Of course she couldn't read it. It was in English. "I'll translate. It says-"
Her muddy fingers touched his lips. "Sh-sh," she whispered urgently. "I may not want to know."
He stared at the puzzling child kneeling beside him. "Why?"
"Because it ought to be important. I found it and I want it to be important, but maybe it is not."
He sat back on his heels and looked at her for a moment, then back to the plaque. He sat staring at it for a full minute without seeming to see it, and then he pointed to the top. "It says 'Georgia' here. And here it says 'Blood Mountain. Elevation 4458 ft. Chattahoochee National Forest.' " He paused, looked at her closely, and began to read aloud:
" 'In Cherokee mythology, the mountain was one of the homes of the Nunnehi or Immortals, the "People Who Live Anywhere," a race of Spirit People who lived in great town-houses in the highlands of the old Cherokee Country…’ “
Tanya looked at him intently as he read. When he finished, her eyes glowed. "Yes," she said and cocked her head again.
And he watched her with something close to envy as he realized she could hear the distant sound of music in this place-and he could not.
* * *