The Song of the Orphans
Page 57
Peter looked around in mild confusion. “Huh. Thought I felt something back here. Guess not.”
Semerjean cursed himself. He was usually much better about masking his power signatures. Peter shouldn’t have been able to sense his portals at all.
“What are you doing up at this hour?” he asked David.
Semerjean scrambled to get back into character. His expression softened. His vocal cords tightened. He replied through a twenty-first-century Australian accent that by now had become second nature.
“Couldn’t sleep. Figured I might as well go for a walk.”
“Back here?” Peter shook a finger at him, chuckling. “I know what you’re doing. You’re snooping around through local history.”
Semerjean shrugged with false admission. “Just trying to understand these people.”
“I get that,” Peter said. “And you have every reason to be nervous after what Gemma did. But listen to me . . .”
While Peter continued to drown him in assurances, Semerjean activated a silver ring in the front of his brain, a ten-gram device whose name had no translation in English. His thoughts traveled through the God’s Eye, emerging twenty-two hundred miles to the southwest.
Sehcoeur? Sehgee?
Still nothing from Azral or Esis. The two of them had been offline for hours, tucked away in the Guadalajara facility while the Pearls gave birth to their hybrids. Semerjean prayed that at least one of the infants proved suitable for their purposes. Otherwise Esis would be in a foul mood for days.
“—so stay alert but don’t let paranoia get the better of you,” Peter said.
David nodded uncomfortably. “Good advice.”
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing up at this hour.”
He was, but a hindsight scan quickly answered that question. Peter was just coming back from the vivery, which meant that someone got hurt last night. Semerjean had to scroll back six hours to see who it was.
Journey . . .
“I was seeing Journey Tam,” Peter said. “Poor girl tried to hang herself.”
That was unsettling news to Semerjean, but David had no cause to know her. “I’m sorry. Who . . . ?”
“Augur,” Peter explained. “One of the better ones. Something’s been spooking her these past few days, and she’s not alone. Boomer MacDougal’s been saucing up again. Lori Orlowski’s gone on a sudden vacation. And no one’s seen Rebel in days.”
Semerjean grumbled in his thoughts. He didn’t need this problem. Not today. “Did Journey say anything specific? A warning or—”
Peter shook his head. “She won’t talk about it. Neither will Boomer. I don’t know what these folks are seeing, but it sure as hell can’t be good.”
Semerjean knew exactly what was stressing the augurs, and they were making far too much noise for his comfort.
“Strange,” said David. “Theo seemed just fine last night.”
“Yeah, that worries me more. If he can’t see what’s coming, that usually means one thing.”
David nodded grimly. “Pelletiers.”
“Afraid so.”
That was sound reasoning for a man of Peter’s limits. But as always, he was missing a crucial piece of the story. Semerjean hoped to keep it that way.
“So what now?” David asked. “You going to visit Prudent Lee?”
Peter smiled. “Smart boy you are.”
Semerjean bristled at his patronizing tone, a perpetual annoyance over the last eight months. When the fool wasn’t calling him “boy,” “lad,” or “son,” he was dismissing David’s counsel as the prattlings of a child. It was Peter more than anyone who tested the limits of Semerjean’s patience. He longed for the day he could drive a spike through the man’s skull, along with Rebel’s heart, Melissa’s eye, and Evan Rander’s scrawny neck.
But Azral and Esis had looked at the strings and found all these people to be more useful alive. They held Peter in particularly high regard, especially now that he was copulating with Amanda.
Peter gulped the last of his coffee, then chucked the cup into a portal. “Well, I better get on with it. You doing all right?”
Semerjean blinked at him. “What?”
“Saw you and Yvonne had a tiff last night. She didn’t look happy.”
“Oh.” Semerjean was such an old hand at playing David that his cues came reflexively. A hint of regret. A reticent pause. An awkward stammer, as the boy wasn’t accustomed to talking about his feelings.
“I’m not entirely sure what happened, to be honest. You might have noticed I’m not very good at reading people.”
Peter patted his back. “Not your fault. You had an unusual upbringing.”
That was true. Everything David had shared about his past had been plucked straight from Semerjean’s history: his early years in Perth, his mother’s slow death, his brilliant father and their travels around the globe. He’d conveniently failed to mention that it had all occurred in a parallel timeline, more than two and a half millennia from now.
“You’ll be all right,” Peter said. “Love’s a volatile thing, especially among the young. The fights come quick, but they go away quicker.”
He started toward the elevator, then turned around.
“Just make sure you fix it, son. These are dire times, and life’s too short for squabbling.”
At long last, he and Semerjean agreed on something, though only one of them had hope that this world could be saved. That was the most annoying thing about Peter. He was wrong. He was always so wrong about everything.
—
Prudent hobbled across her kitchen on swollen red feet—a torturous journey, like walking on needles. Her over-reliance on sedatives had thickened her blood, leaving sporadic clots in her extremities. Her doctor warned her that she’d never reach sixty if she kept abusing the apasticine. He had no idea why that made her laugh.
She opened her juve with a fumbling hand and threw in a SmartFeast breakfast platter. Once the machine read the time code on the lip of the plate, it knew the food had to be reversed eight days, five hours, four minutes, and fifteen seconds to reach a state of piping hot freshness. Prudent adjusted the timer for a tiny bit of undercooking, then pressed the start button.
Her husband sat at the dinette table, as dull and moony as ever. His glazed eyes turned to the far wall of the kitchen, then sprang open in horror. He raised a trembling finger at Prudent.
“Aah. Aaaaah . . .”
“Patience,” she told him. “It’s cooking.”
He pushed his chair back, panicked. Prudent looked to him. “Jun, what in the world—”
“I believe he’s referring to me,” said a voice behind her.
Prudent turned around and jumped at the sudden presence of Semerjean. He smiled at her charmingly, as if he was just a friendly neighbor stopping by on a whim.
“Prudent Lee! My favorite adverb. You’re looking radiant this morning.” He tossed a cordial nod at her husband. “Jun.”
Semerjean loved visiting the elder Lees, the only two Gothams who knew his secret. He never had to play David around them and he never had to worry about them blowing his cover. They had enough foresight left in their drug-addled brains to know the consequences of crossing him.
Prudent stumbled backward, tripping over her heel. Semerjean caught her with a quick tempic hand before she could fall.
“Whoa. Easy. This is just a social call. I’ll be gone before your, uh . . .”
He peeked through the juve window and winced at Jun’s breakfast: four strips of hog flesh, two chicken ovulations, a chemical-laden biscuit, and a gelatinous fruit treat that looked like a child’s failed science experiment.
Semerjean turned to the Lees in gawking revulsion. “How do any of you people live past forty?”
Prudent moved behind Jun, her fingers hooked into his shoulders
. “Please. I’ve done everything you asked.”
Technically, that was true. She’d done a bang-up job bringing Zack and Mercy together, and had kept an airtight lid on the augurs’ guild. None of them shared a single prophecy without her permission, certainly nothing that would jeopardize Pelletier plans.
Unfortunately, Zack and Mercy had suffered a parting of the ways last night, a break that would almost surely become permanent if something wasn’t done. As for the augurs . . .
“We have a problem, Prudently.”
The security console on the wall beeped three times. Its lumic screen showed Peter standing just outside the base of the elevator. He waved up at the camera, his expression grave and somber.
Prudent looked at Semerjean quizzically. He flicked a curt hand. “Go on.”
She hurried to the console and unlocked the lift for Peter. “I . . . I don’t know why he’s visiting.”
“Really? Because I do.”
“My people have been quiet,” she insisted. “He must have heard something from Rebel or—”
Semerjean shook his head. Rebel and Theo were the only two augurs outside Prudent’s purview. The Pelletiers managed them personally.
“Your people have been hanging themselves,” Semerjean said. “Fleeing the village under mysterious circumstances. Even a clod like Peter is starting to ask questions. Do you see my concern?”
“Please. They’re just scared.”
They had good reason to be. Sometime in the next seventy-two hours, Integrity would burrow its way into the underland—more than two hundred soldiers, armed to the teeth with state-of-the-art weaponry. They’d have countermeasures ready for nearly every type of temporal power, and they wouldn’t be shy about killing people. The prescient glimpses of the siege were horrific. Only the Pelletiers saw the long-term benefits.
“The invasion will change things,” Semerjean admitted. “But when the dust settles, your people and mine will be in a stronger position than ever. You’ll just have to trust me on that.”
Prudent looked away, her voice barely a mutter. “People will die.”
“People always die. The trick is keeping the right ones alive.”
He summoned the life-size image of a tall, shaggy teenager. Sage Lee slouched in a leather recliner, watching European lumivision with a hopelessly bored expression.
Jun wept at the sight of him. Prudent covered her trembling mouth. Semerjean hadn’t showed them a live image of their son in days. They were due for a carrot.
“P-please,” Prudent begged. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Just a few more weeks and my work here will be done. After that, we’ll have no reason to keep him. You’ll get him back, alive and well.”
“A-and the others?”
“I’ll bring them all back.” Semerjean leaned in closer, his voice low and severe. “But if you or any of your augurs breathe one word about Integrity—”
“No!” Prudent cried. “We won’t! I promise!”
“So when Peter gets here, how will you handle him?”
The primarch bowed her head, sniffling. “Prudently.”
“That’s my girl.”
His handphone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket and groaned at the message on-screen.
Are you awake?
Semerjean fumbled with the phone’s archaic keyboard. Just woke up.
We need to talk, Yvonne texted. Someplace private, away from your friends.
He told her to meet him in the village theater, then closed the phone with a sigh. He had at least four assets to manage over the course of the next hour, and two Golds to kill. Events were moving faster, more erratically, but he was still in control.
Am I?
He could feel the growing anguish of his other selves, billions of Semerjeans in parallel timelines, all experiencing a slightly different version of the morning he was having. Some of them were getting flustered. Some were downright furious.
“You’re tired,” Prudent said.
He spun around to face her. “Excuse me?”
She balked at the sudden change in his eyes—lighter, bluer, fiercer. They were the same eyes his victims saw behind his tempic mask, the ones that had chilled Zack and Mia to the bone.
Prudent shrank from his glare. “I-I’m sorry. I know how hard you’ve been working. I was just—”
“—playing me,” Semerjean said. “You were hoping to win me over with false sympathy. Do you think I’m naïve?”
“No!”
“Do you think I’m a child?”
“Please! I’m sorry!”
He looked at an image of Prudent’s son, then defused himself with a sigh. “I suppose I can’t fault you. You have your goals and I have mine. But if you paid more attention, you’d know that there are only a handful of people on this world who matter to me. The rest of you—”
He popped Sage’s image with a snap of his fingers.
“—are just ghosts.”
Peter’s elevator arrived with a loud, hollow ping. The rejuvenator came to a beeping stop. The foul stench of bacon filled Semerjean’s nostrils. If there was ever a cue to leave . . .
He waved a portal into the air, then shot a final look at Prudent. “Control your people. I won’t warn you again.”
—
He waited impatiently at the front of the amphitheater, yet another stage for him to pace. For all their flaws, the Gothams had built a surprisingly nice venue for themselves. Good design. Great acoustics. All they had to do was shut off that hideous undersky and this place would be ready for Shakespeare.
Semerjean tried to hail Esis again, then cursed out loud when she didn’t respond. It was pathetic that he needed her help anyway. There was once a time, many years ago, when he saw the future as well as she did. Sadly, the neural degradation that inevitably afflicted all his people was starting to take its toll on him. He was getting old in a way that temporis couldn’t fix.
Don’t blame the age, his inner critic chided. Prudent was right. You’re tired. You’ve been playing this role for far too long, and now you’re making mistakes.
Semerjean walked faster, his lips pursed in a scowl.
You nearly died at the hands of a mentally ill child, the hard voice reminded him. You’ve mismanaged your friends—
Not my friends, Semerjean insisted.
You’ve mismanaged your assets. Only two of the five Silvers are entwined with the right people.
I’ll fix it, he assured himself. I just need more—
“David!”
Semerjean looked up and saw Yvonne at the far end of the stage, her head tilted, her arms raised in confusion.
“I called your name three times,” she said. “What are you doing?”
As always, the child had primped herself up like a runway model: teased hair, elegant makeup, a hint of perfume, a demurely enticing summer dress. She must have woken up at the crack of dawn to prepare for this encounter, not that Semerjean was surprised. Life had taught her from a very early age that appearances were everything, that society offered no prizes to the meek and unpoised. In some ways, Yvonne was just as much of an actor as he was. Maybe that was why he liked her.
He fell back into character. “I’m sorry. I’ve been out of sorts all morning.”
“All morning?”
“And last night,” he admitted. “I should have never snapped at you. I apologize.”
His relationship with Yvonne had been nothing more than strategy, a way to goad the Silvers into finding their own Gotham love interests. Unfortunately, Yvonne was beginning to sense the limits of David’s affection. The frustration was making her combative, and her combativeness was making him edgy. Sometime near the end of Theo’s party, she’d asked him if she was just a fling to him. He’d told her to stop being so needy, yet another grave mistake in hindsight.
<
br /> Yvonne sat down on the edge of the elders’ stone table. Her high-heeled shoes dangled inches off the stage.
“I barely slept a minute,” she said. “I was just so angry at you. Not just angry. Confused. I thought we had something good, David. I mean . . .”
While Yvonne spoke, a familiar voice flittered onto the neural link.
Semerjean clenched his jaw, struggling to look attentive while he mentally responded.
Semerjean closed his eyes. The Pelletiers had put great hopes in the Pearls, only to be let down again. All this work, all this trouble, just for an elusive genetic mutation. If Semerjean had believed in anthropomorphic forces, he might start to think that nature was teasing them.
Semerjean’s stomach dropped. He closed his eyes and checked the telemetry map of Freak Street. Much had changed in the last few minutes. The orphans had gathered in Jonathan’s living room, their eyes filled with tears as Zack and Mia addressed them. Theo leapt to his feet and overturned the coffee table. Amanda’s body broke out in razor-sharp spikes of tempis.
Yvonne noticed his twitchy distraction. “David, are you even listening to m—”
He flicked his hand, enveloping her in a redshift field. The girl stood as still as a mannequin, her body suspended in a single moment of time.
Esis joined the neural conference. Her anger raked through Semerjean’s thoughts like barbed wire.
Though Semerjean wanted to deny it, a thorough revisiting of last night’s conversation quickly proved her right.