A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “And how much was your life worth in the Wards?” But he sighed, and wet a towel from the water jug, passing it to her with his best paternal air. “Girl, it’s part of my job to keep you up and swinging. Where do you think you’d be if I let you mope around drowning in self-pity?” He brushed her cheek with a finger. “No tears now. You gotta have faith. You’ll be ready for anything when I get through with you.”

  Ready for madness? “Yeah, sure.”

  He shrugged, apologetic but firm. “As for this other matter, it’s strictly personal, believe it or not. But it might be a healthy distraction, you know what I mean?”

  Jude pulled away and paced down the length of the wall. “Bill, what I need is a clearer idea of what’s Out There!”

  “Honey, I’ve given you all we’ve got.”

  “Well, then.” She collected herself. “I guess it’s time for me to face Ra’an again.”

  The alien shook his dark head in answer to her queries.

  “But you’re supposed to be my guide!” Jude’s voice echoed shrilly among the dusty tape racks of the reading room.

  “Indeed I am. But I do not make a habit of leading tourist safaris into the Guardians.”

  “All right.” Jude exhaled loudly, gathering the shreds of her self-possession. She shouldn’t throw at the alien the backlash of her frustration with Clennan. “So. How far into the mountains have you been?”

  “That would mean nothing to you unless you had been there to recognize the landmarks.”

  “Well, what’s it like out there? As far as you’ve been?”

  “Trees, mountains. The mountains are very beautiful, as you can see from here.” He gestured out the grime-specked windows toward the Guardians, towering serene in the late ruddy light.

  Jude felt her Wards-learned patience evaporating. “Ra’an, there must be something more than mountains there. What happened to all those expeditions?”

  The alien stood tall in his black Terran clothing and smiled faintly at her. “Ms. Rowe, the unseen lands, the impassable mountain ranges, will always conjure phantoms in a mind that fears to journey into them.”

  The anger that Clennan had kindled flared up unbidden. She slammed her palm down on the table. “Curse your infernal deviousness! Can’t you give me a straight answer? One? You are so bloody evasive and superior! The least you could do is meet me halfway!”

  The alien said nothing as she glared at him in wild frustration. He sat stiffly, his mouth tight with resentment, seeming to mull something over in his mind. His violet eyes pinned her to her chair until her tantrum faded into mute rage. The silence grew like distance between them. Finally, he spoke, his voice strange and slow, his eyes still watching her.

  “Do not make the mistake of dealing with this world in terms of your own. Remember that it is you who are the alien here. Here an unknown is no mere absence of information, but an infinite possibility.”

  Jude’s anger found its voice again. “That’s just what I mean! More doubletalk! It’s all you—”

  “Listen to me!” the alien hissed, rising suddenly. Jude cringed in agonized surprise as the shock force of his fury struck. Anger as tangible as heat tore through her brain like a vengeful beast. She held her head as if it would burst and moaned in terror.

  And the beast in her brain vanished. When she could move again, she raised her head and found her confusion mirrored in the alien’s eyes, together with an anguish so profound that a sob convulsed her throat.

  “What… how…?” It was all she could manage.

  He turned away, gripping the edge of the table as if it were a lifeline. For a long time neither moved, while a branch ticked at the window like an old clock.

  “I think,” he said at last, in a toneless whisper, “that I have given you a straighter answer than I intended.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I… you…” He gave her a wary, opaque look, moving away from the table, away from her. Just as he seemed about to speak again, he shook his head and left the room. His footsteps rang hollowly down the corridor.

  The only thing Jude understood was that he was running away.

  Chapter 10

  The sun was high, the whitewash blindingly new. The steep-walled courtyard was a maze of light and shadow in Verde’s eyes as he paced along its concentric pathways. Bright flowers nodded as he brushed by them. At one end of the court, an ancient gnarled tree shaded an oblong of grass. Glass wind chimes hung throughout its spreading branches, silent in the weighted air. A gentle tinkling sounded under the tree, in Luteverindorin’s hands, as the old Koi glassmaker tied the knots that strung together a new chime.

  Verde circled, frowning. The harsh sun picked out a ghost of freckles across the bridge of his nose. In concentration, Verde looked boyish, despite the gray scrawl of hair and the deep-cut worry lines, like an earnest adolescent who has recently discovered the problems of the world. His long arms with their too-big hands swung at his side as he paced.

  “Ra’an’s met with this woman again, and now he’s given us the slip.” He halted in midstep, debating over which of the narrow paved walks he should pace around next. “I just can’t get a handle on it, Lute.”

  Luteverindorin nodded from the shade. “If he wishes to help the Terrans, he has merely to tell them what he knows, yet I don’t think…”

  “No, if he’d done that, Stahl House would be overrun with police. Unless they’re holding off for some reason, which I can’t imagine. But Ra’an… what possible stake could he have in dealing with Terrans?”

  The old Koi laid down his glass and string and turned a liquid eye toward the center of the little garden. The madman James sat on the tiled edge of a shallow wading pool, with his bare feet in the water. He was feeding breadcrusts to five enormous gull-like creatures. Huge white water lilies floated on the green water. The gull-beasts waded among them restlessly, picking crumbs from the madman’s palms with furred forepaws. “The past?” Lute suggested soberly. “The memory of Daniel?”

  Verde stooped under the tree and crooked his arms over a low-slung branch. “I suppose that’s possible, though with one as insufferable as Ra’an, it’s hard to believe he might have feelings, too.”

  Lute laid one webbed hand upon the other with practiced calm. “Perhaps your psychologists could explain it. Experts at hidden motivations, are they not? We have not known the need for such a science before, but now our old methods fail us. Ra’an is closed. We cannot read him.”

  “Ummm. Well, neither can I, if that’s any consolation.” Verde resumed his pacing, moving back into the sun. “Damn. Damn!” he breathed as he passed the pool. The madman favored him with a brief disapproving glance before returning his concentration to the gulls. Lute raised a silvered palm. “Please. Sit down, friend. This garden is intended for contemplation, not exercise.”

  Shamed, Verde retreated to the shade. He hunched down on a rock by the old Koi’s knee.

  “There is actually a more serious problem at hand,” began Lute gravely. He held up a polished icicle of glass for Verde’s inspection. “The Wall is losing power.”

  Verde made a small sound of dismay.

  “We’ve known about it for a while, but didn’t believe that the loss could increase so rapidly. It’s the accelerating tourist population. Every day, it’s more of a struggle to maintain the Wall against such force.”

  Verde fisted, unfisted his hand. “But there’s that penal expedition going into the Guardians…”

  “I know.” The glassmaker traced the pattern of leafshade on his thigh. “I know.”

  Verde put his head in his hands. The garden’s verdant tranquility only made him more desperate. “Ah, Lute, it’s going bad so suddenly… Damon’s window, the hate mail, young Lacey and his crazy guerrilla ideas, Ra’an with whatever he’s up to… and now the Wall. We kept the balance for so long, so long.” He worked his temples with the heels of his hands. “The colony’s grown too big for us to handle.”

  “Des
pair does not become you, friend,” chided Lute as if to a favorite student.

  Along the entire frail length of his body, Verde winced. “By isolating the colony, we’ve created a pressure cooker in this valley. The more Terrans, the higher the pressure, with no place to let off the steam except over the mountains. You should be out there in the streets. Lute, to feel it, to see these people for yourself. The temperature is rising.”

  “I would only make them more hysterical,” said the glassmaker, turning his gossamer-laced fingers in the dappling light.

  Verde gazed up into the narrow purple leaves feathering the overhanging branch. “Twenty years ago when I finally woke up to the fact that it was too late to save Terra, I ran here to save Arkoi. Thought it would be better here, more possible. And it was, for a while.” His shoulders drooped as memories lit his mind like fireflies. A fragile boy who buried his face in the sun-warm grasses on a windy hill, trying to become part of the earth. A young man whose tears blinded him from the sight of a giant redwood bowing to the saw.

  “It still is,” said Lute. “And though the Koi do not war as the Terrans do, you will have powerful allies when the time comes to… how would you put it?… raise the standard.”

  Verde chewed a knuckle. “I’m a lousy politician,” he admitted morosely. “I’ve spent my life in politics, arid still I stand on the hills yelling, and expect people to see the light. What, out of the goodness of their hearts? If you’re going to be a prophet of doom these days, you need the voice of a nightingale and a new vocabulary. The old one’s been debased. Conservation is a dirty word.”

  In silence, they watched the madman dust crumbs from his faded uniform with meticulous care. The gull-beasts paddled among the lilies, preening and murmuring. Fine white wool floated on the water.

  “Lacey says I have a messiah complex,” Verde remarked.

  Lute dug his bare webbed toes into the close-cropped grass. “Messiah means ‘savior,’ does it not?”

  “I’m afraid it does.”

  “Have I told you of the Diamo?” The glassmaker’s expression was ambiguous. The madman cocked his head like a listening mongrel, then pulled his legs out of the pool and crawled around the flowers, across the paving stones and grass, to curl up at Luteverindorin’s feet.

  “I’ve heard Hrin talking about them.” Verde scratched his jaw. He was never sure how much of Koi mysticism he was ready to accept. “They claim to be able to read the future or something?”

  “They are an ancient sect,” Lute continued. “Undergoing a certain revival of late, perhaps because they foretell an event that offers hope to those of us in the Quarter. They promise a gathering of saviors at a time not very long from now. Perhaps you will be one of them.” Lute seemed to find this pleasantly amusing and smiled at Verde to share the joke. The madman stretched his legs and giggled secretly, as if such a thought were charming but inconceivable.

  Verde laughed, though he was left mystified. The old Koi’s humor was often beyond him. He pulled up a fat blade of grass to chew on. “The Koi could use a savior.”

  Lute’s hairless brow raised. “One savior? No, that is dangerous. A group of saviors, working together, yes.”

  “Now, Lute. Leaders are sometime a necessary galvanizing force.”

  The madman muttered softly.

  “To lead means to assert oneself over others,” the glassmaker replied. A ripple that might have been a frown passed across his face. Above his head, the wind chimes whispered in the still air. “Such behavior is not balanced. Our past is darkened with such leaders, as is yours.”

  “But there’s a difference between a leader and a dictator,” Verde argued. It disturbed him to see the Koi so suddenly serious over a philosophical issue, when the real and pending crisis of the Wall seemed barely to touch his serenity.

  “It is a difference that exists only in battle. When peace and the victory are won, what leader will willingly step down to give back the power he has taken for himself?”

  I’ve lived my whole life trying to be a leader, Verde thought. Can this be wrong? “Good leaders inspire, organize, urge the best from us, sometimes better than we know we have to give.”

  “The benevolent dictator?” Now the old Koi was stern. “This is a uniquely Terran concept. Don’t you see the illogic of it? Power is shared or it is not. There is no middle ground.”

  Verde lowered his head. “But you are a leader, Lute.”

  “No.” The glassmaker’s hands shook with denial. “I am oldest. I am experienced. I give the benefit of that experience when asked for it. I am, in this special circumstance of the Quarter, sometimes a focal point. I am not a leader.”

  “The whole Quarter looks to you. I look to you.”

  “Please, Mitchell. I fear the black past rising again each time I hear Hrin preach of the Diamo and their saviors.”

  Verde had no heart to push him further. “Lute, Lute. You were laughing at them a moment ago.”

  The Koi’s silvered face softened. He rubbed the silken fringe of hair at his temples. “I am getting old,” he said. “The past haunts me of late, and you reminded me. Forgive me.”

  The madman started. “Ah!” he cried. The gull-beasts had taken wing.

  “There goes the second-best-kept secret in the Quarter,” Verde commented admiringly as the gulls soared up into the azure sky.

  Lute’s porpoise eyes sparkled once again. “The shanevoralin are very clever. Somehow they are never here when the colonial inspectors arrive.”

  Verde relaxed momentarily, leaning against the gnarled tree trunk with a sigh of release. “I don’t know, Lute. You tell me it isn’t magic, but sometimes I wonder. It can be a hundred and fifteen out there in the godforsaken streets, but it’s always cool under your tree.”

  The old Koi smiled, mysterious, satisfied, benign. “That is to encourage your visits, my friend.”

  At his feet, the madman chuckled.

  Chapter 11

  At six o’clock. Bill Clennan wiped his face and said, “Honey, you look beat. Let’s take the night off. What do you say to a little R&R?”

  “Mostly the former, I hope,” Jude returned wanly.

  “What, no dancing? No big night on the town? I know a guy who throws big scare parties every night of the week: the special attraction, a black mass to the Dark Powers!” He chortled fiendishly. “Live it up! It may be your last chance!”

  “Very funny, Bill. Ha ha.”

  “Then how ’bout a nice quiet dinner and early to bed?”

  “Better, much better.”

  “I’m thinking of moving here permanently. What do you think?” Bill tossed the remark out lightly while studying his antipasto.

  Jude glanced around the terrace. It was crammed with diners and overlooked the lake. “You mean, train here in the restaurant?”

  “You are tired. No, really. I mean stay here in the colony.” Her mouth was full of spiced chowder. “What will Papa Ramos think of that?”

  “In three months here, I’ve nosed into enough to earn my keep. It’s a chance for me to be in on the ground floor of a big operation.”

  “I thought I was a big operation.”

  “I mean the opening up of the planet.”

  “Oh. That.”

  Her sarcasm was too private, or Clennan was too lost in his own speculations. “It’s no palace I’d be leaving at home, you know, not on what I make. I’ve got a room to myself and my own bath, but still… So headquarters said they might be able to swing me a rental in one of those new places they’re building farther along the lake. Two rooms, maybe three. And…” He pointed to the clusters of bright excursion launches bobbing along the pier. “I saw some little boats for sale the other day.” He caught her look. “Come on, now. You have to admit, there is something about the place.”

  “About Arkoi?” Oh yes. That certain something in the air. The gentle madness that stalks through your dreams, that makes you see birds that don’t exist. But she nodded unenthusiastically as they watched
a massive powerboat move out onto the lake, laying down a rainbowed oil slick in its wake.

  “Well, they’re nice, boats,” Clennan prodded, demanding more than her indifference. His defensive tone disconcerted her.

  “What’s the matter, Bill? The gulls getting to you, too?”

  “The gulls?”

  “Never mind.” She pretended to change the subject. “Do you ever wonder if there’s anything to all those rumors?”

  “The Dark Powers ones? There are so many around here.”

  “The ones about the gardens of Eden and all, beyond the mountains?” Saying it out loud, she felt foolish.

  “Come on, you’re a smart girl. You don’t believe in angels anymore.” He chuckled knowingly. “That’s just Terratransit’s publicity department working overtime.”

  “Ummh. Yeah.” Jude returned to her chowder. But in her mind’s eye, she saw the gull-beasts, winging wild and free toward the mountains.

  That night, her dream was more vivid than ever before. She was in a small cafe, unfamiliar to her, but somehow she knew it was in the colony. It was low-ceilinged and quiet, lit by hanging lanterns and fat yellow candles. A mild black man served her a mug of herb tea. Music floated out of one corner, where a tanned young man played a thick wooden flute. Occasionally someone would glance toward her, smiling, and nod approvingly. “Listen,” they would say, “do you hear?”

  Sitting next to her was the madman James. He whispered to her, an endless stream of whispering of which she did not understand a word.

  Then a woman began to sing softly. The song began without words, the woman humming to herself as she would while going about some other chore. It was a melancholy tune, full of sighs and resignation and loneliness, a sense of exile. In her dream, Jude closed her eyes and listened. The words came in a language she did not recognize, but emotion made them articulate. The singer sang of sadness and yearning, bringing tears with the pull of a note born deep in her throat and soaring up into a high, clear sob. Through the tears behind Jude’s eyelids, images swam in a mist, swirling with the rhythm of the song. As the singer moved into a long crescendo, the mists cleared to reveal a long shoreline that sparkled like a wet jewel. From white bony cliffs hung a crystalline honeycomb of translucent structures, frozen in a tumble down to the waves. Silvery figures leaped in the green water, and it was their singing that laughed and crooned while high above, the gull-beasts swooped an accompaniment in the wind. It was a vision of such heartbreaking purity that Jude woke herself sobbing.