A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  The little Koi unfolded and refolded her hands. “I know. The Koi do not well understand the effects of isolation on the mind. I can’t help thinking that if Daniel were still alive…”

  Verde nodded, and both of them glanced at the door where the madman waited, listening, eyes to the ground. “A lot would be different if Daniel were still alive.”

  Chapter 15

  Jude woke in pain with the night silence licking around her like water. She lay still, and the pain ebbed slightly. The fiery inexplicable assault from within had passed, leaving in its wake the deep ache of bruised nerve and muscle. Something underneath her pricked at her sore limbs. Slowly, she felt with her fingers and found the edge of a blanket. She tried to move, could barely raise her head to look around. A tiny campfire hissed gently a few feet away. She was alone.

  She lay back with a moan, fighting through her dizziness and nausea to concentrate, to understand what had happened. Clarity would not come. Her wounded mind stumbled like a cripple when she tried to think. Around her and the meager coals, the night was an impenetrable void. It offered no answers, only its silence, her solitude and the little fire, hissing secretively to itself like an idiot. Dimly, she thought of Ra’an, out there somewhere in the darkness perhaps, watching, perhaps returning. Sick and despairing, she wept, and with her weeping came dreams and drifting and more dreams and dizziness, then more drifting. Much later, she dreamed that someone came with gentle hands and lifted her up to put a shining cup to her lips. The liquid ran down her throat, sweet and warming. She was laid down again and slept, dreamless at last.

  A mule woke her next, in the daylight, wuffling at her cheek like a dog. Jude stared up at it and raised a finger to its velvet nose. It regarded her sympathetically, as if assessing her well-being, then moved off.

  She sat up into a soft golden morning. The mist still clung to the trees like cotton wool. Her pain had vanished. She surveyed the clearing apprehensively. If only the sun could chase away the nightmares in her brain. The mules were gathered at the far end, heads together as if in conference. At the other end, a still figure sat hunched up on a rock, staring out over the valley.

  Ra’an. Oh God. She flattened herself to the ground, but the alien turned and watched her for a while across the brittle grass, then rose and came toward her. Swiftly, she gathered herself to run, knowing it was useless. Nothing Bill Clennan had taught her had saved her last night. Too late. The alien was there. She recoiled, awaiting his attack.

  None came. Instead, he threw something down in front of her. It bounced onto the blanket. The stunner.

  “There were to be no weapons,” he accused.

  She could not collect herself enough to point out that it was he who had been the aggressor. “For protection,” she murmured. “It’s only a stunner.”

  “I know what it is,” he spat in disgust. “Did you think I wouldn’t know what else it is?”

  “What else…?”

  “Because I am Koi, do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “No, Ra’an, I… what do you mean?”

  He held up a small disc between thumb and forefinger. “This.” Still she looked bewildered. A shade of doubt crossed his taut face. “Where did you get the stunner?”

  “Bill Clennan gave it to me just before he dropped me off.”

  “And he didn’t tell you of certain… improvements he’d made on it?”

  Jude shook her head. “He just told me to hide it.”

  Ra’an let out a long breath. He held out his hand for the stunner, which she had picked up from the ground. “Give it to me.”

  She hesitated briefly, feeling its weight in her palm, so comforting. Then she surrendered it. He held it out where she could watch and pressed an innocuous stud at the base of the handle. The handle clicked and popped open. He fit the metal disc into the cavity. “It’s a bug,” he said nastily. “Didn’t your wardmates teach you about bugs? Clennan’s been listening to every word we’ve said.”

  Oddly, she felt betrayed. Pretending to do her a favor, Clennan had planted a bug on her.

  “There hasn’t been much for him to listen to,” she said quietly. Why did I ever think I could trust him?

  Ra’an glanced toward the mountains. “Enough, perhaps.”

  From the depths of her defeat, she wanted to scream, damn the hug, you nearly killed me. Why? And how? Instead, she said, “Will you believe that I knew nothing about this?”

  “I don’t know.” He removed the disc from the gun and crushed it under his heel. Then he handed the stunner back to her and said with deadly irony, “Keep it if it makes you feel safer.”

  She thought of the very potent weapon he seemed to carry within himself. “I don’t want it.”

  “All right.” He pulled back his arm and sent the gun hurtling into the trees, then called one of the mules over. “Ride today,” he ordered. “It will be easier.”

  But it was not easier. Riding is hard work for a novice, but it afforded her a welcome distraction. With great concentration on her part and greater patience on the part of the mule, she learned something of the horseman’s art of grip and balance, clinging for her life as the agile creature trundled up the switchbacking route that Ra’an chose to take them up the rocky slopes. On ledges Jude would not have attempted on foot, the mule found hold for his tiny hooves, scrambling precariously as the shale crumbled beneath him.

  The tree line was passed as abruptly as walking through a door. The terrain assumed a desolate, stubborn attitude, littered with weatherbeaten boulders that blocked their ascent. Every crevass was choked with bristly gorse that snagged in her pantlegs and clawed at the mule’s shaggy coat as he pushed his way through. The wind quickened and grew cold. Jude wrapped herself in a blanket. Ra’an stalked ahead in moody silence.

  At dusk, there were no trees for shelter, only a low hollow in the rock. The sun took all warmth with it when it set, and the mountains were a barren, storm-tossed ocean around them. Ra’an scraped together a fire out of dried moss and a few meager twigs. The mules stood close, heads inward, forming a windbreak. They didn’t seem to mind that the gusts ruffled their long fur backward and whipped their tails into their eyes. Jude made them her anchor on that windswept mountain, her one unshakable reality, as the reality that had been her life floated away in gauzy layers. Up here, there were no names, no places, just infinite emptiness. Cold moonlight on the beaten granite, the wind that bit into her with icy teeth—these were sensations beyond human scale. But the mules were warm. They muttered among themselves like old men and munched their grain without panic. And they acknowledged her presence, in their animal way, and she loved them for it.

  For the alien, she had not existed all that day. He was shut away in the mood that had occupied him since the morning, brooding deeper than his usual silence. Jude huddled in her blanket and fumbled with numb fingers at the camera in her lap. It stared at her like some foreign device, a plastic puzzle box that had once been as familiar as her own hands, a part of her identity. That old identity could find no place up here, and the purpose that had brought her had been so superficially imposed by Ramos and Clennan that she could not prevent its drifting away into the wind. Clumsily brushing and repacking a lens, she decided that her only purpose now could be survival.

  But her survival depended upon Ra’an, not only on his knowledge of the wilderness, but on his willingness to help her survive.

  She vowed to be more careful, more alert for the danger signs, even though each time his anger had turned on her, it had come without warning. She must learn the source of that anger, and avoid arousing it. But that required fitting the pieces of him together into a coherent picture, and each time she tried to do that, she failed. She thought of the Koi back in the colony, wishing she had met some of them, not understanding how a people made up of such as Ra’an could be kept so easily under the Colonial Authority’s thumb.

  Covertly, across the sputtering fire, she watched him. He was still eating, always slower than she. H
is shoulders sagged. He looked tired, older, very much as she felt. As he ate, she coveted every mouthful, still hungry but afraid to ask for more. She stowed the camera in its case and resigned herself to sleeping until breakfast. She brushed away the dry grass and dirt that the wind had blown over her sleeping bag, and pulled it closer to the fire.

  Ra’an stirred, startling her. He pushed some more twigs into the tiny blaze. The gesture was fitful, like the shrugging of a burden from one arm to the other. “You know what they will think, at the other end of your little eavesdropper?” he murmured. “They will think I have murdered you.”

  “Probably,” she answered faintly, thinking how close it had come to that. “I’m not sure they’ll care much, except for the effort they’ve wasted on me. They can find other photographers. It was you who were crucial to this operation.”

  “Did you really think they wanted you up here just to take pictures of the mountains? They were hoping I’d show you a way over.”

  His tone was flat and tired. It contained no threat.

  Jude nodded. What does it matter anymore if he knows? “You must have suspected that.”

  “Yes. Because of my reputation as an outcast, they assumed I’d be easily bought.”

  “Then if it wasn’t the money, why did you agree to bring me up here?”

  “The pass.”

  She could barely hear him over the wind. “What?”

  “The border pass. It was the only way I could get out of the colony.”

  “And what were you planning to do with me?” she pursued cautiously.

  His face was tight with self-disgust. “Leave you out here somewhere.”

  “But you haven’t, yet.”

  “And won’t. Not now.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve enough guilt already,” he replied obscurely.

  “Where will you go now?”

  “Home.”

  “Home?” she echoed blankly. “Back to the colony?”

  “The colony is not home.” He gestured toward the dark mountains to the north. “Home is Ruvala, where I was born. Yes, you guessed right. There are others, an entire population, outside of this ring of mountains that have only been called the Guardians since the Terrans came.”

  “Then there is a way over.”

  “Many. The actual route has never been the problem. The dangers are more than geographical.”

  “Yes. I had guessed that also.”

  “But I will find a way through. I have to get home, to see it again, before it’s too late, before the Terrans gobble it up as they have the colony.”

  “Ra’an, they haven’t gotten past the Guardians yet.”

  “We can’t hold them back much longer. When the dam bursts, all Arkoi will be inundated with Terrans, and our way of life will perish in the flood.” A bit of his spark returned, then died. “I will not spend these last years suffocating in the colony. When the end comes, at least I’ll be home.”

  “And me?”

  “Do you want to go back to the colony?”

  “No.”

  He seemed relieved. “I couldn’t let you, anyway. If you told them what you know, it would only speed up the end. Believe me, Ruvala will be a great improvement on where you’ve been.” He leaned forward to put the fire out.

  “Wait, Ra’an.” Jude dared to put a hand out in protest. “Please. If we’re going to do this journey together, I need to understand a little better, about you, about this place.”

  He balked, flared briefly like the dying fire, then slumped back. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said bleakly.

  She scraped together every last dreg of courage that his reasonable mood had inspired and ventured. “Why not begin with Daniel Andreas?”

  To her surprise, he did not rear back in rage. He gave a soft, rueful laugh, and shook his head, and she knew that, for the time, the fight had gone out of him. “Daniel… he was a stubborn one, too.” He smiled to himself, and Jude read gentleness in him for the first time. Shaking his head again, he looked up. “But that’s not the place to begin.”

  He busied himself with the fire for a bit, buying time, then addressed the young flames that rose to light his troubled face. “There are certain things I must explain, if I can—I owe you that much for being able to face me after… well, it will not be easy for me, partly because I don’t understand it all myself, mostly because what I do understand, I… haven’t wanted to accept.”

  He dragged a hand across his lidded eyes. “Mea’ara! I’m so tired of it all. It was a reflex in the colony to hate you. You were Terran, a means to an end, I looked no further. Then you gave me further reason, reason to envy, which I repressed and denied until it was no longer deniable, and then, there you were, lying at my feet like a broken thing.” His hand stopped and tightened on his temples. “Hatred was eating me alive in the colony, making a lethal weapon out of me.” He dropped his hand and glared at her helplessly. “You must understand that. What did you do with your anger in the Wards? Didn’t it twist in your gut when you lay down at night?”

  She met his glare squarely. “In the Wards, they tranquilize you, Ra’an. They leave you nothing but indifference. I went dormant for six years.”

  In the silence, the icy wind screamed through the rocks. Then Ra’an remarked, more subdued, “You know, we have no camels here.”

  “Unh?”

  His wide mouth angled into a half-smile that was more of an ironic grimace. “Daniel had an expression about the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

  “Ah. Yes?”

  “That was you. The straw.” He tossed another twig onto the fire. “Have you ever,” he continued reluctantly, “had reason to suspect you were telepathic?”

  She shrugged lightly, figuring this was another obscure reference. “No. Why?”

  Bitterness edged his words. “Are you always in the habit of picking names out of strangers’ heads?”

  “Names…?” She realized he was serious. Wait. Telepathic? “Oh, Lord… it can’t be.”

  “Oh, yes it can be, here. If you’d never heard of Daniel Andreas before, didn’t you wonder where his name came from?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Where else but out of my head?” he growled.

  “But how… me?” Telepathic?

  “I wish I knew!” he answered fervently. “From that first encounter, I suspected something of this, but it was too… bitter a possibility, easier to deny than to face. But when you stole that name from me, I had no denials left. Only blind outrage.” His voice dropped. “I did you more damage than I intended. I hope you’ll believe that. I may be a lot of things, but I am not a murderer.”

  Jude’s reality was growing shakier than ever. “But if it is telepathy, how can I now when I never could before?”

  “You’ve probably never found yourself with another telepath before.”

  “Ahhh?” Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

  “No,” he cautioned. “Before I misrepresent myself further. I’m not, at least not completely. But I should be, and you… shouldn’t.” He stood and paced to the edge of the darkness, the wind whipping at his black canvas jacket. “I’m not saying this the way I meant to… it’s not a subject I can be easily rational about, but I owe you some objectivity, if I can manage any.” His hands worked through his long hair as if it were the source of his frustration. He began again, off into the cold night. “What would you say was the most basic skill you were taught as a child? The one which you absolutely required to function normally in adult society?”

  Jude pondered in silence, shivering by the fire.

  “Language,” he supplied impatiently. “Language is the basic social tool for a Terran, is it not? For the Koi, it is halm. Literally, it means ‘the brain’s tongue.’ Very anatomical. You call it telepathy.”

  “A race of telepaths? That’s incredible!”

  “Is language incredible? Yes, I suppose it is, if you take the time to consider it deeply. What I mean
to say is that there is nothing magical about halm, except at those highly sophisticated levels where language also approaches the mystical. In a way, halm is less mystical, as it is less fraught with ambiguity. Halm cannot lie, as language nearly always must, due to the inadequacy of words. You may think a wrong thing, but not intentionally, if you know what is correct. And like language, halm is a skill—you must learn to hear with the mind’s ear what the mind’s voice is saying.”

  “You can hear what I’m thinking?”

  He gestured restively. “I told you, I haven’t the skill. But even if I did, halm is not for eavesdropping.” His tone was a reference to the bugging disc. “Only if you spoke to me, with your mind, would I hear you, if I could.” His hands worked at his hair again. “Yet there are echoes,” he said softly. “Indistinct, but… and I have been deaf for so long.” He fell silent a moment, looking down, then said with strained indifference, “Why you, I don’t understand. Halm normally requires a greater degree of empathy than I would expect you to have for… such as I.”

  Jude considered the implications of that statement. Doesn’t he know how beautiful he is? She decided to remain clinical. “It’s not words mostly, except for the name. It’s not as if you were speaking to me. Emotions, like anger.” The pain of his attack lingered sharply in her memory.

  “The talent is unrefined in you, untuned to the subtleties. Or perhaps when you meet other Koi, you will find that it is my own blockage that gets in the way, as it does with them. Perhaps you have full halm capacities and don’t even know it.” He laughed mirthlessly. “You missed your schooling, too. What were you doing instead? I was too busy learning Terran from Daniel Andreas.”

  His irony was still obscure, and she didn’t answer. After a pause, he came back to the fire. “I’ll tell you the story, since there’s no longer any reason not to, and if understanding brings tolerance, as they say, it will be safer for both of us.” He knelt by a pack and extricated a leather-bound flask from a hidden pocket. In the firelight, the cap shone richly of hand-wrought silver. On the case Jude could make out tooled letters, worn from years of handling: D.K.A.