Downtime

by Cynthia Felice

  Calla tried to pull her hand away, but Jason held on. “Jason, it’s not for you to say. It’s not even a matter of what you and I want. There is a war about to start. I believe Mahdi is the man who will start it. There are far too many other lives at stake.”

  Jason shook his head. “You said I know everything now. If that’s true, you should value my opinion. D’Omaha could be right. You could be wrong. Let me recall Mahdi to face charges. Working together, we’ll get him to betray himself.”

  “Mahdi is still Mahdi, imperator general and pompous ass. He won’t do you the courtesy of returning. He’ll just tell you to file the charges back in the Hub, that he’ll face them there.”

  “The law says . . .”

  “I don’t care what it says. Mahdi won’t return. Even if he weren’t guilty of treason, Mahdi wouldn’t return. He’d laugh in your face. And the next thing you know you’d have orders for some planet so far downtime that it would be useless to recall you for any hearing. Even if you had a case strong enough to get into the courts, he’d simply let it get tangled in time until no one really cared what the outcome was . . . probably not even you.”

  Jason dropped her hand and sat back. “I don’t understand. You don’t believe in the system now any more than you did thirty years ago. But you’re willing to fight for it, even die for it?”

  “I won’t die doing this,” Calla said evenly. “I’m too good at what I do.”

  “Leading raider teams?”

  Calla nodded. “What did you think I would do when I got too old to sit on a horse? Raiders don’t have to walk much, Jason. We just think.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn. You said I knew everything. Now you tell me you lead the Praetorian raiders.”

  “I gave you more credit than you deserved. I didn’t think you’d believe they’d send a mere Praetorian guard to save all the known worlds.” She saw his jaw jut out stubbornly, and knew that he still did not want to believe.

  “Last time we separated it was because you wouldn’t ask me to stay. You were too proud. It has taken me a long time to realize that. I won’t let it happen again. This time it’s you who wants to leave, and I’m asking you. Calla, don’t go. I love you and I don’t want you to leave me.”

  Why now? she wanted to say. Why not thirty years ago? But it would have been she who would have had to ask him to stay, and she couldn’t because she couldn’t have borne hearing his refusal. “How can you do this to me?” she said “Why can’t you make it as painless as possible?”

  “Is that what you think you did for me?” Jason said. He shook his head.

  “But you wouldn’t have stayed. You couldn’t. I can’t.”

  “Maybe. I know what you’re thinking, what you thought then. That if I stayed just because you couldn’t go that I’d always feel cheated, that it would go sour for us. At least, when I’m being gentle with the old us, that’s what I think. But I remember all the loneliness afterwards, and sometimes when the loneliness hurt so much that I couldn’t stand it anymore I’d think that the real reason you didn’t ask me to stay was because you didn’t want me to. You always understood the palace intrigues from the whispering bath attendants to the subtleties at headquarters to, it seems now, the Council of Worlds and the Decemvirate itself. And you could deal with them all. No bath attendant ever stole the change out of your pockets, and you never ended up on report at the end of the month. And there I was. Always flat broke and picking weeds in the compound on judgment day at the first of the month. I wondered if maybe I wasn’t in your way, that maybe deep down inside you were glad to see me go. I told myself to hell with you, because it hurt too much to think of how much I love you.”

  “Are you going to tell me that you have never loved anyone these past years because you were afraid you’d get hurt again?” Calla said. “Don’t lie. You’re afraid of nothing. Never were. Never will be.”

  “No. I wasn’t going to say that. I wasn’t even going to tell you that I fell in love time after time and always managed to get hurt . . . made sure I got hurt every time. Calla, it isn’t important to me right now what you think of what I did all those years, nor even why. What’s important is that it not happen to you. You are older than me and every year shows on you and we both know it. I don’t care. But I don’t think you believe that I don’t care. If you go, I don’t ever want you to wonder, to have any doubts at all. I’m asking you to stay. I’m begging you to stay. Let the whole damn universe pay what it must, but stay here with me. I love you, and I don’t care that the Timekeeper has marked you. Stay with me.”

  “You’re only saying that because.”

  “Because I’ve already heard you say you can’t stay? No! Dammit, no.” Jason got up from his chair and came around the table. “I’m saying it because I mean it.” He took her by the shoulders and squeezed so hard that Calla winced. “Tell me if there’s anything I can say or do that would prove to you that I mean it. I don’t have any resources where you’re concerned. You’ve always been smarter. Tell me how to prove to you that I want you to stay.”

  “Be here when I get back,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “That’s the one thing I won’t do. I won’t make it easy for you to go. If you win, you’ll be the next imperator general, and I would have to be your faithful companion to be near you. You couldn’t see me in that uniform the last time we parted. I still can’t wear it.”

  “I’ll tell them no,” she said.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s something, but still not what I want to hear. If you’re the very best for the job, you won’t be able to refuse. I know you too well.”

  “Then what should I say?” Calla said, feeling tears running down her cheeks.

  “That you’ll stay,” he said.

  “But you already know that I can’t.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, his blue eyes tragic with longing. Then he pulled her to his chest and held her very tight. “I know you can’t stay,” he whispered. “I know it, and I love you because you’re going. But I wish it were not so.”

  I don’t understand anymore, she wanted to say, but her throat seemed too constricted for anything but sobs. It was the end if she left, for he said he would not wait. Yet he loved her because she had to go. And to compound her consternation, it was above all clear to her that he did not want her to leave. Then he kissed her, and she knew how much she wanted to stay. But she would leave, and they both knew it, and so the kissing paled.

  “All right,” he finally said. “I’ve said everything I can think of to make you stay. I won’t give you my blessings, but I won’t try to stop you.”

  “There’s nothing you can do to stop me,” she said.

  “I know. That’s why I won’t try. Antiqua, did it hurt you when they called you that?”

  “Sometimes, but mostly not.”

  “It was a tribute to what you have become,” he said. “Not only old, but wise.”

  “If I’m so wise, why don’t I understand what’s going on between us right now?”

  “A blind spot caused by your singularity, You always had it, wore it like a banner. Still do. You’ll wear it in your grave.”

  “But you . . . you’re perfect, right?”

  “Hell, no. I’m letting you go, and it’s going to hurt and I can’t find a way to stop it. I don’t think it’s bad luck. I’m doing it myself.” He shrugged. “If I weren’t I’d know how to stop it.” He shrugged again and sighed. “Come on. I need a bath, and I’ll bet you didn’t get your nap.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does. You’re crabby unless you nap, old woman.”

  “Don’t call me that. Call me anything you want, but never call me old.”

  “Antiqua, then. It means wise in the old language.”

  “I know what it means,” Calla said irritably. “It just doesn’t sound the same to me.”

  “Like I said . . . crabby.” He brushed the switc
h by the door and it opened.

  Jason stopped. Calla immediately saw why. Sitting on the polished sandstone floor of the corridor, hugging her thin, bare knees, was Arria Jinn. Her hair had been plaited into one long braid that fell over her right breast, but many of the fine strands had pulled loose around her face. Her gray eyes were fixed on the doorway, unseeing it seemed until she blinked.

  “The . . . door wouldn’t let me in,” she said, her voice low and uncertain.

  Calla looked up and down the corridor. There was no one in sight. Arria should not have been able to penetrate this far into Red Rocks without an escort. “Something must be wrong,” Calla said, ready to run to the tunnel-ramp entrance.

  Jason caught her by the hand. “She must have sneaked in,” he said.

  “Yes, but no one . . . “

  “Arria could.”

  “I hid,” Arria said. “I hid and waited until I was sure you were here. Daniel said I wouldn’t be afraid any more, but there was so many people, all so close. I was afraid.”

  “Where’s Daniel?”

  Arria shook her head and looked at Jason in great bewilderment. “I sang,” she said. “I sang until I was too hungry to sing any longer. They came, and one started to spin. But it wouldn’t finish. Even though I sang for days, it wouldn’t finish.”

  Jason grimaced as Calla looked at him. They both understood that Arria had sung a danae death song for Daniel, but that Daniel, like Old Blue-eyes, had died without a nymph cocoon as a shroud.

  Jason stepped over to Arria, helped her to her feet. “It doesn’t always work, Arria. Sometimes they just die,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Arria nodded. “I just never thought father would.” As Jason put his arm around her, she leaned against him. “He must have known, though, because he told me that if anything ever happened to him I should come to the ranger station, that you would help me to arrange passage to Mercury.”

  “You can’t go to Mercury just yet,” Jason said. “There’s no ship right now, and even if there were there’s a travel ban.”

  “What does that mean?” Arria said.

  Jason sighed. “I’ll explain later, Arria. Right now I think the thing to do is to arrange a shower for you, and some food.”

  Chapter 14

  Jason stood in the shower soaping down for the second time. The water was only tepid, for these little showers were intended to provide a quick rinse after lovemaking, not to rid a man of sweet-smelling danae blood. He longed for the baths he’d planned to build where he could sit among steaming rocks and percolate all the poison from deep within until it ran off his body with the sweat. Then he could soak in the clear pools of water and feel clean again. But his people had had to build the Red Rocks facility and now they were working on the connecting tunnel, and who knew how long it would be before they could go back to work on the unfinished baths.

  He waited until the last of the soap bubbles ran over his toes and down the drain, then he said, “Water off, dry on.” The spray of water halted and warm air filled the stall. This was not satisfying either. The soles of his feet never quite got dry and all the hairs on his chest and legs tickled as they recoiled. He usually kept a length of toweling for finishing off his shower, but Calla had wrapped Arria’s hair with it and there wasn’t another for him to use. And Calla had given Arria one of his khaki shirts to wear, though it went all the way to her knees. If there’d been proper baths, the three of them would have bathed together, and Calla would not have worried about what Arria would wear. These showers brought back taboos he’d almost forgotten existed. Curse the Timekeeper for making wars and not baths.

  He pulled on clean pants and shirt and realized he couldn’t smell the cleanness of them over the stink of esters. Without hesitating, he grabbed his soiled clothes and shoved them in the incinerator. They might never get replaced if Mahdi started the war, but Jason didn’t care. He would be smelling the blood of the danae in every set of khakis he owned if he didn’t destroy them.

  He stepped out of the closet and into his room. Arria was lying in his bed, damp hair spread across the pillow, cerecloth comforter tucked up around her chin, apparently already asleep. Calla sat at his desk looking out the windows to the game room, sipping from a cup.

  “Thought you’d be asleep, too,” Jason said sitting on the edge of the desk.

  “I’m not tired,” she said, putting the cup down.

  Jason picked it up, sniffed and drank. “Coffee? I didn’t know we had any on Mutare.”

  “I brought it,” Calla said .”Caffeine is one of the few drugs I can have.”

  “But you’re not tired,” Jason said, wondering if she’d smile. She didn’t. She kept staring out the window into the empty game room. “What’s on your mind, Calla?”

  “War,” she said. “Strange how it manages to affect us here on Mutare so far from the Hub. Two indigenes dead, first casualties in a war they didn’t know existed and perhaps don’t even have a concept for. A young woman who can’t travel to the one place in the universe that can help her adjust to living with a psi-sensitive mind. Two lovers who found each other after ten and thirty years only to part before they even could think of what might have been.”

  “How soon must the lovers part?” Jason asked quietly. Calla looked at him, brown eyes soft as sable. “We have some time. I can’t leave until I see the tunnel finished.”

  The tunnel was nearly finished now. Jason wondered how long he could make the work last of setting the caisson in place-a week? Perhaps two? He shook his head. Calla might not catch Mahdi among all the stars if he had a full two-weeks head start on her. “How long before the siege?” Jason asked her.

  “So you guessed that, too,” Calla said, finally smiling. “You always used to complain that you didn’t understand the machinations and underplots.”

  “I didn’t, but for a while I had a good teacher. Then I had years to realize that I’d learned a lot. You weren’t around to bail me out when I shot off my mouth. I remembered how silent you used to be, and maybe it had something to do with your . . . carriage. You’re short, but no one ever remembered you as being small. You said nothing, but people always remembered you as being wise. It was because you were listening and thinking. So I learned to shut my mouth. It’s amazing what you can hear when your mouth is closed. The difference is that on me, silence looks dumb.”

  “Dumb like a fox,” Calla said. “The siege won’t come until near the end.” She reached for the cup that was still in Jason’s hand.

  “The end of what?”

  “The war. It will end here, Jason. On Mutare. Before I leave, I will build a gallows down there in the game room. And when I return, I will hang Mahdi on it.”

  “A bit primitive, don’t you think?” Jason said.

  Calla shook her head, the brass-colored curls shining even in the dim light. “Hanging is still the punishment for treason. When Mahdi sees it, he will know that I played him across the Arm, star system by star system, planet by planet, until he walks into this very place. He will see the gallows and he will know beyond a doubt that I led him every step of the way.”

  “How will you bring him here?”

  Calla just smiled. “While I’m gone, you have a traitor to catch. How are you going to do it?”

  Jason shook his head. “You said yourself that he had only to wait. There’s no need for him to expose himself to any danger. I’ll do the obvious things, of course. Check the elixir inventory myself to make certain none is being smuggled out. Step up inspections so I can look in closets for stashed vials.”

  Calla nodded. “That’s as much as you can do. If everything goes as planned, it won’t matter if you don’t find him. He’ll never get the chance to help Mahdi.”

  “I don’t like the thought of having a traitor in my midst.”

  “I know. You like thinking that all your people are good people.”

  It was true, but he never knew it showed in him. He liked believing people were inherently
good, but he thought he often acted as if he understood the evil side, too. “Will I be in charge? Or D’ Omaha.”

  “You will, Jason. D’Omaha’s no soldier. Even as a general he was a diplomat, not military.”

  “There are plenty who would argue that ten years of outback planets doesn’t qualify me as a soldier either.”

  “You came up through the Praetorian guards. I doubt that you’ve forgotten a moment of your training.”

  “Thought I was rid of the whole mess when you took out that red jelly bean. In all my woolgathering I figured we were both pawns guarding the castle. Never dreamed you were the queen.”

  “Now you’re king.”

  “One who builds tunnels. You don’t have to stay for that, Calla. I’m a good engineer.”

  “All right, then. I leave the day after tomorrow.”

  “Stay,” he said.

  She looked at him, then got up. Standing, her face was level with his. She kissed him gently. “Goodnight,” she said.

  Jason caught her hand and pulled her back. “Where do you think you’re going.”

  “Back to Red Rocks, to bed.”

  “Stay here.”

  “You, me, and Arria?”

  He’d forgotten the child in his bed. “I’ll go back with you.”

  “She won’t know what to do when she wakes up. She doesn’t even know how to open a door. You can’t leave her alone.”

  “I’ll call someone to stay with her.”

  “I think another strange mind so close would disturb her. Let her be. We still have tomorrow.”

  But Jason knew that tomorrow would be filled with endless meetings to mark the changeover from a governorship to martial law, and Calla would not even find the time to spend the night with him. She wanted the goodbyes over now. Ten years ago she’d pulled double duty from the moment he’d told her he’d transferred to the rangers until he left. It had been a long month for him. And tomorrow would seem like forever. He kissed her again, perhaps for the very last time. And just for a moment he lost himself in her arms, and then she stepped away and the door closed behind her.