by Sharon Webb
An obscenity burst from Kurt.
Chao stood in silence for a moment. Then he turned and walked to the window.
"And you are concurring with this… consensus, I suppose," said Kurt sarcastically.
Chao turned slowly and looked at him. "There are vast distances between us and the outlying colonies. Distances in kilometers and in outlook. They add complications. The necklaces came as a gift from the Outland children. To raise accusations now would be to risk open hostility from the colonies-a breach that might be impossible to mend."
"And so you're suggesting that we drop the matter? I can't believe this."
"The other side must be considered," said Chao slowly. "The colonies would never accept these charges. They would choose to believe the Coalition had manufactured the charge of poisoning as a ploy against them."
Kurt stared at Chao. "There's something more to this- something you're not telling me."
Chao looked away for a moment, then back. "The Outlands squabble among themselves, but if it were to come to revolution, they would unite. The only effective deterrent we have is economic. It may not be enough."
"What are you saying?" Kurt demanded. "Where could a threat from the Outlands lie?"
"From the Guardian Force."
Kurt sat stunned for a moment. The Guardian Force of L-5-the high ground. The Guardian Force controlled WorldCo's arsenal-warheads that had enforced the peace for over a century.
"We cannot allow dissension in this area," said Chao. "With a takeover of the Force, the Coalition would fall."
Kurt stretched out his hands on the table. He stared at them for nearly a minute, then raised his eyes slowly toward Chao. "I see," he said at last. "And so what do you recommend?"
"Careful monitoring of all things coming into Renascence," he said. "And quiet surveillance of the colonies. Communication and Education will redouble their efforts to… persuade the Outlanders of our good intentions."
Through subliminals, thought Kurt. "And turnabout's fair-play?"
"It would seem to be the only move we have," said Chao. "We-"
A chime from the console interrupted him. A voice said, "Mr. Kraus, Dr. Nesheim wants to see you in the Common Room."
* * *
Lines of fatigue traced Nesheim's face. He leaned back against a couch and sipped a cup of coffee from a thin porcelain cup emblazoned with WorldCo insignia.
Kurt walked briskly into the room. At his footsteps, Nesheim looked up. "The children are out of danger," he said. "Except one."
Tanya?"
"Still very sick."
Kurt sat heavily on the couch next to Nesheim.
"We might lose her," said the doctor. "We would have lost them all without the antidote." He shook his head. "It was only because of an afterthought that we had any at all. A lot of wild plants that grow here have amygdalin in them-wild cherries, elderberry-things children might sample. When amygdalin is digested, it releases cyanide. We stocked the medications as a precaution."
"But, Tanya-"
Nesheim shook his head. "We wait." He rose and set down his empty cup with a sharp rattle that echoed through the stillness. "I have to go now."
"I want to know of any change," Kurt said. "At once."
With a quick nod, Nesheim left the room.
* * *
While Chao closeted himself away with the electronics experts, Kurt paced the confines of the Director's office and paused to stare through the window at the darkness beyond. Then turning, he walked out of the office and through the vaulting Common Hall.
Balfour rose from her chair as he entered, but perhaps something in his face kept her from speaking. Without a word, he walked past her and stepped out onto the shadowy deck that projected over the black lake.
He stood, leaning against the railing, staring into the inky waters as a night wind stole through the bare trees and rustled against the leaves of mountain laurel and rhododendron. The wind was from the north, and chill, but he seemed not to feel it. He stared down into the black water at a pale shimmer of reflected moonlight.
As clouds traced over the face of the moon, the patch of reflected light rippled with the wind and seemed to change and take on features until he imagined he could see a child's face there, a face framed with a cloud of black hair that vanished into the night.
Would she die? That child who had taken his hand that morning and led him to a buried plaque of bronze? He thought he heard a voice then; he turned his face toward it, but it was only the wind burrowing under the wide deck, chattering through a stand of reeds at the lake's shallows, whispering against the resistant branches of the hemlocks. He imagined for a moment that he could hear their voices- the voices of the Nunnehi, the shadowy immortals, the spirit people whose home he had invaded here in these mountains. He imagined he could hear their ancient whisperings, their spectral whisperings of immortality. But it was only the wind blowing in the darkness-only the empty promise of the wind.
And would she die? This child of his? His child? The bitter thought came: His to play God with.
He had seen himself as a sort of idealized father-standing apart, not touching-and yet directing his children, dabbling in their destiny, giving their lives an impetus that had been in his own best interests.
He felt sickened as he saw his own motivations standing flimsy in the cold wind, bare of rationalizations. Kurt the father-a better one than his own. One so noble that he railed against the idea of anyone influencing his children's minds-anyone except himself.
He looked around at the place that he had wrought. Renascence… Rebirth… The new world he had vowed to build. And every stick and stone of it a suggestion-a subtle seduction-a subliminal invitation to give up a real immortality for the shadow of one.
And then he knew that he was empty… like the wind- blowing forever, never changing-but with the power to destroy, to crumble away the impermanent clay across which it blew.
Chapter 9
New buds masked the scars of winter with pale greens and muted purples. Poplars thrust four-fingered leaves toward the sky, and spring crept up the mountains.
Standing ankle-deep in a narrow stream, a boy scooped gray-blue chunks of clay from the bank and swirling the wet color across his palm, compared it-with much squinting of his eyes-to the grayer, bluer shadows from Slaughter Mountain.
Kurt stood on a tiny island shaded by a wide hemlock. Across the lake, the duck-squawk of a bassoon rode the soft wind. Half-hidden by the low branches of the tree, he watched as a black-haired girl stepped onto the arched wooden bridge that linked the little island to the land. She carried a basket in her hand, this pale, serious little girl. She looked around, searching the bit of land, until she saw him and smiled. "You remembered."
&n
bsp; Smiling back, he caught her outstretched hand. "Of course I did-the first Sunday after you were well. And how are you, Tanya?"
"Oh, much better now." She laid her basket on the ground at the edge of the lake and sat down beside it. "I hoped you would remember. I had the kitchen pack the things you like." Tanya reached into the basket and brought out picnic cups. Turning the lid, she opened one and handed it to him.
"Sassafras?" He sniffed at the rising steam and nodded at the spicy odor.
She opened hers and sipped it, looking over the rim at Kurt with solemn dark eyes. "I have something to show you. I worked on it all week."
"A piece of music?"
She shook her head. "No. Something else." She reached into the basket and drew out a small bundle wrapped in layers of dried moss. She held it in her hand and made no move to give it to him. "It is not the real thing. It is more of a pattern to make them from," she said. Then she placed the little packet of moss in his hand.
As he moved to open it, she caught his hand. "It may break. It will break very easily."
Gently, he lifted the light layers of moss until he uncovered what she had made, until a thin clay ring lay in his palm.
"I thought we should have something like that to wear- the people here at Renascence. Something that was just for us."
He looked at the red clay ring in his palm. It looked as if it might crumble in his breath.
"It has a design," said Tanya. "See." She pointed to one side.
He raised his palm to eye-level and looked at it. Traced on its face was a lazy-eight design-the symbol of infinity- interrupted by a break in its curving, continuous line. Underneath, in careful letters, the words: For Art.
He blinked; he heard her say: "It took such a long time. They kept breaking. I made rows of them," she said. "Stacks. I made them on a big flat stone in the middle of the creek by the clay bank. And then they were so wet, I had to let them dry in the sun for hours."
He sat looking at the little ring in his palm while the wind riffled over the island.
"I think they should be gold. Don't you?" she asked.
"What?"
"Gold. The rings. They should be gold. I thought of how they should be when I was sick. It came to me just how they should look," she said. The design and the letters should be gold, and behind them, it should be black."
He looked at the curving, broken symbol of infinity. "Why not another color, Tanya? Blue, maybe. Gold against light blue."
Her eyes grew very round, very solemn. "Oh, no. It must be black." "Why?"
"Because that is the way it is. I saw it." She laughed. "Dr. Nesheim said I was out of my head, but I remember how it was exactly. I was flying inside it. There was bright gold dust all around me. I was in it, but I could see all of it too. It was like I was there, and watching me be there-all at the same time." She pointed to the symbol on the ring. "I was moving very fast. Then I could see the broken part ahead-and it was black. It would never be right to make it blue."
"What else did you see, Tanya?"
She wrapped her arms around her knees and looked across the lake. "I do not think I saw anything else. But, I heard things. Things I hear every day. You know… music in things. Like that-" She flung an arm in front of her, pointing toward the surface of the water. The sunlight sparkled on the wind-chopped surface. She cocked her head. "Can you hear it? Inside your head?"
He stared at the sunlight glittering on the water. For a flashing moment, he thought that he could hear it too-inside his mind-but, it was only the echo of laughter from a group of children near the lake.
She looked at him and said softly, "I will make it into music and play it for you. Then you will hear."
He looked into her dark eyes and thought he saw his own reflected there. "You want that chance, don't you, Tanya? That choice."
She seemed surprised that he would ask. "Oh, yes," she said. Then she leaned forward and searched his face. "My ring. Do you think it is right?"
He held the clay ring gently between finger and thumb and felt the coolness of it. It was a fragile thing, this little ring, made from the earth and water of Renascence, dried in the sun. He could crush it to dust in a moment.
And yet, somehow its fragileness made it precious to him; somehow its very impermanence spoke to him of something more. It spoke to him of ancient winds blowing over plains that once were hills and scarps; of mountains turned to dust, and dust become once more the mountain stone that struggled toward the sun.
There were things that changed and things that never changed. And maybe there wasn't any real difference. He took her hand in his and placed the little ring in her open palm. "It's beautiful, Tanya," he said at last. "It is exactly right."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharon Webb is a registered nurse, which, she says, gives her an understanding of how the forces of stress affect people and develop character, for better or worse. She is the author of a non-fiction book about nursing school and created the character of Terra Tarkington, R.N. in her Bull Run humor series for Isaac Astmov's Science Fiction Magazine. In addition, she has written many serious stories for Asimov's and has been published in Chrysalis, Other Worlds and Quest Star. Her work has been reprinted in several anthologies including 1981 Annual Worlds Best SF.
Earthchild, her first novel, begins in Tampa, Florida, where Ms. Webb was born. Much of the later action is set in the Atlanta and Chattanooga areas and in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which she now calls home.
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4/22/2008