by Ellen Larson
“If the shield fits. . . .”
He turned on her swiftly. “You can’t resist making a joke. I suppose it’s easier than contemplating for one second that you might be wrong. Fine. But I’m telling you, behind the scenes, certain people are organizing. Agitating.”
“So they can wear shields decorated with feathers and stars?” she asked in an amused voice. “You think we care about that?”
“No I don’t. But I think you should. Because what comes next? The Oku Council can’t treat Rasakans with this sort of arrogance and expect them to put up with it much longer.”
“Put up with what? Look, this is absurd!” She gave him a look meant to shake him out of his funk. “When the Oku first crossed the straits, what you call Rasaka was a swarm of cutthroat tribes that had been battling each other with bows and arrows since fleeing the scorching of Ancient Asia. Your average life expectancy was thirty-two. Under the Oku rule of law, you’ve had peace for two centuries.”
“We’ve had peace, but lately we’ve realized we’re not actually free.”
Merit searched her bowl for a red berry of just the right size. “Is there some point to this, or are you just arguing for the sheer love of it?”
He breathed noisily, as if mustering his courage. “You’re a member of the Civil Protection Force. You’re Select. You could go to the Oku Council and insist they find out who’s behind this campaign and make them stop.”
“Top chance. It’s Rasakan Authority’s job to police Rasakan troublemakers. Rasaka is twenty times the geographic size of Okucha. The Oku Council doesn’t have the resources.”
“That is absolute—That is just not true, and you of all people should know it! The Council has the only resource anybody’d ever need: flex technology, an immense power. If they wanted to, they could gather evidence of subversive activity using long-distance Retrospection without ever leaving the Continuum.”
“We already do that.” She strung the last berry and added a tiny copper end cap.
“Yes. But you wait until after a problem has occurred.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Civilized people don’t spy on one another. It’s not an appropriate use of the Vessel.” With deft fingers, she knotted the ends of the string together. “Look, you’re worrying about nothing. There’s nothing wrong with shocking people occasionally—it’s a natural release. And you know I speak from personal experience.” She shot him a saucy grin. “The Oku Council has never had the slightest problem with the Rasakan Council. That’s what matters.”
“Never having had a problem is no guarantee that you won’t have one tomorrow, or the next day. Where do you think the bombs came from that annihilated half the Earth?”
“Dunno. Can’t flex back that far without getting a very deep tan.”
“No, you can’t flex back that far because the First Continuum was extinguished by those unknown bombs.”
“I was merely indulging in a little black Retrospector humor, dear. I have more. Why did the pianist’s attunement fail?”
“I don’t know anything about attunement. It’s not my field. But I do know that a lot of the science resources at the University that used to go toward agriculture have been moved elsewhere. And nobody’s saying where.”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re only bringing this up because you’re looking for a chance to test your theories on non-isochronous flexing, right? Right?”
Eric leaned his head back against the wall of the balcony. “You’re not taking me seriously. You never have.”
“Excuse me?” She looked at him in honest surprise. “I take you seriously! I take all Rasakans seriously. Our two peoples are alone on Earth, and we will rise or fall together. That’s the reason I came to Rasaka in the first place—to strengthen the bonds between us through education and scientific exchange.” She held up the necklace she had made. “See? Blue haws from the Rasakan cypress and red from the eucalyptus trees in the Conservatory Wood. A symbol of our shared history and aspirations. I made it for you. Take it. And when I’m gone, look at it and remember that I’m thinking of you—seriously.”
He fingered the dried berries. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“Me too.” She put the bowl aside and sighed. “But I can’t miss Selection Day. The plum trees will be in bloom in the Conservatory cloister, and the girls will feed cake to the goldfish. The Prioress will be so proud—and probably a little tipsy.”
“I wish I could see it.”
“You can apply for a transit permit again next year.”
“I’ll never get through the bureaucracy, the way it’s rigged.”
“Hey! You never know what the future holds. Anyway, I’ll be back before you know it.”
His eyes darkened with emotion. “When?”
She nestled her head against his chest. “I can get away at the end of summer. What do you think about going to Rhodes? The scans of the beaches are glorious.”
He rested his chin on her head and tightened his hold on her. “Anywhere. I don’t care. Just come back.”
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
Saturday, 15 April 3324, 1:00 p.m.
To the west of the City just beyond the Maritsa River lay the Conservatory Wood: ninety hectares of ancient forest, cedar, eucalyptus, and oak, dimpled by moist hollows where moody brooks meandered beneath weeping willows. In the last, darkest year of the Oku-Rasakan War, with the City quivering under the daily rain of the devastating plasma bombs, many of the residents had fled there, for, they had heard, the new Prioress had promised that no harm would ever come to the Wood. They said she made her way through the ancient trees each night, clothed in white, giving out food to the hungry and words of comfort to the fearful.
And indeed, when the Treaty of Byzantion was signed on 29 March, 3322, and the bombing ceased at last, the ancient trees still stood. But though the Wood was untouched, the jewel it had protected, the Oku Conservatory of Science, lay in gray ruination, destroyed early in the war on one hellish day of bombing, the ferocity of which had not been seen since the days of the Great Annihilation some eight hundred years before.
Traffic through the Wood had diminished to a trickle since the end of the more recent Oku-Rasakan war, and the once-broad boulevard had narrowed to a simple dirt road. The orderly, perched behind the wheel of the antique CPF solar-powered auto inside of which the Site Team was crammed, kept a sharp eye out for potholes and fallen branches. At length they left the shadow of the trees and found themselves on the southern edge of a broad lea covered with new grass that glistened in the warm spring sun. The main road, such as it was, made a detour around the tumbled-down archway through which it had once passed, then continued north. But the orderly turned right, onto the grassy lane heading east. The auto rattled up a long, gentle slope that gave the Site Team a good view of their surroundings.
Half a kilometer to the north was a vast expanse of gray rubble, an ugly scar that time had not yet healed. They traveled in silence past the desolation, past a dozen men and women dressed in homespun overalls and wide-brimmed hats working a strip of cultivated land. Some wielded hoes, others pushed wooden barrows filled with earth; one or two glanced up as the vehicle jounced by.
Donny pointed to a place in the ruin that had been cleared and paved in a mosaic of red stone. “That’s the Forum. Guess the pilgrims’ve leveled it off and are having a go at rebuilding. Look at the size of that crater—that’s where the Conservatory Artifice was, right Merit?”
“Yep,” said Merit. But she did not raise her gaze from her lap.
“Seems they’re setting out tomatoes. Hope we don’t get a frost.”
“Pilgrims?” asked Eric, belatedly. He twisted around to face the backseat. “Are they a religious group? I assumed they were transients who had no other home.”
Merit knew that tone so well, for it had once defined his personality: curiosity, the thirst for knowledge no matter where it led, bubbling up irrepressibly as champagne from a bottl
e at the slightest shake.
“They ain’t ezackly transients,” corrected Artie, “in the traditional meaning of y’know, bums. They live here. Grow vegetables and raise small farm animals. They’re, how would you say, uh, on a spiritual quest.”
“He means they’re a buncha loco fish,” explained Donny, “comin’ in from the sticks to take a dip in the Continuum.”
“Dip in the—” Eric’s tone was as blank as his shield. “You mean they want to see the Conservatory Artifice? They can’t. It was destroyed in the first days of the war.”
“No kiddin’,” said Donny. “But they seem to believe the Continuum is still there.”
“That’s ridiculous. And even if it were, they must know that no one can go into the Continuum unattuned without getting killed.”
Donny smirked. “I said loco.”
“So you did,” acknowledged Eric. “The correct question is therefore, what makes them think they can?”
Celia, her face canted to the window, spoke in a soft voice. “There are some people who believe the Artifice doesn’t create the Continuum; that it’s only a human-made gateway to something supra-human. Something that has always existed and always will.”
“Go on,” encouraged Eric.
Celia pushed her curls behind her left ear. “They say the Artifice only coalesces time at certain hallowed places, where the Continuum eddies and the walls between the spiraling torsions of the time-line are thin. Even on Ancient Earth, Edirne was known as a holy place. So even though the Conservatory Artifice was destroyed, they say the Continuum is still here. People come to mediate and draw upon its energy.”
“For some sort of mystical healing?” asked Eric.
“Not exactly.” Her cheek blushed. “They hope they will be granted a glimpse of the future.”
“The f—?” The silver shield did a double take. “Celia. It’s a basic tenet of chronometric physics that it’s impossible to observe a future time-frame.”
“I know. But, they say somebody did.”
“Who?” asked Eric, fairly choking over the word.
“The new Prioress,” said Celia.
“The Prioress?”
“Well, she wasn’t Prioress then, of course. She was just Lena Salim, a teacher at the Prospectives School. When Rasaka bombed the Conservatory in the first year of the war, they say she hid in the Continuum and was protected. Because she was in the Continuum when the Artifice was destroyed, she was released from the confines of time and saw eternity.”
“Eter—?” Eric put a hand on top of his head.
“They say. There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation. Everyone else was killed—all the Prospectives, the old Prioress, and all the other teachers—only Lena survived.” Her voice grew even softer. “What happened—being in the Continuum, seeing what she saw—it changed her. She went into seclusion for a long time. Sometimes she talks about what she saw, but not often—it’s too much for one person to bear.”
“Tch.” Eric resumed his seat, shield forward. “I don’t believe a word of it. She was very lucky, that’s all. Or else she was nowhere near the Conservatory. She probably got a head injury during the bombing and was hallucinating.”
Donny pointed a finger at his temple and moved it in a circular motion.
“Stop it, Donny!” said Celia. “You just don’t like her because she’s a pacifist! The new Prioress does a lot of good. She helps the poor and the sick. That’s why they have so little at the Priory, Agent Torre—because they give it all away.” She looked out the window. “Does it matter what really happened, if she gives people hope? People need to believe things can be better—in the future.”
“Well,” said Eric. “It would be an interesting experience to meet the first person to travel forward in time.”
Merit’s lips twitched. “I’m sure it would, but I doubt you’ll get the chance.”
The silver shield turned to her. “Because?”
“There’s a reason she wouldn’t see the Documentation Team,” Merit said. “And it’s not because she was ill or overcome with grief.”
“Go on.”
“Since her close call with eternity she has concluded that Vessel technology is a manifestation of destructive human arrogance and refuses to have anything to do with it or with the scientists involved with it. I’ll be surprised if she even lets us into the Priory.”
“You should check your facts more carefully, Select. The Prioress is the one who told the Steward to demand a Retrospective.”
Surprise registered on Merit’s face before she could throttle it. She covered with a laugh. “Well, I’ll be a Ratsky desert-snake.”
“There are no deserts in Rasaka.”
Merit said nothing further, and they proceeded along the lane in silence, leaving the ruins of the Conservatory behind them.
At the eastern edge of the lea, separated from the zone of destruction by a peanut-shaped knoll upon which sheep and goats grazed in bucolic serenity, stood the Priory. Its four octagonal towers stood tall, unscathed and enduring. The great silver dome in the north wing mirrored the sky above as if nothing had changed. Indeed, once the ruins of the Conservatory had disappeared behind the knoll, the only reminder of the war was the red and black flag fluttering above the portico where before had flown the green and white.
A trio of goats trotted onto the lane, stopped, and stared at them, causing the orderly to hit the brakes and swear. That hazard safely negotiated, the orderly safely navigated the final hundred meters and parked on the grass beside three flashy JCP antigrav vehicles.
The Site Team piled out.
“Stay with the bus,” said Merit to the orderly.
“Oh no! I’m s’posed to go wherever you go when you’re out!”
“I’m not having you hanging around my neck.”
“Oh yeah? Well—”
“Stay with the bus,” snapped Eric.
The orderly shoved his hands in his pockets and backed off.
Eric stepped onto a flagstone walkway and strode toward the front entrance.
Merit raised her eyebrows at this unexpected display of authority. Apparently Eric had learned a thing or two over the years. She fell in behind him.
The walkway led through a maze of flower beds, well-tended and blooming with daffodils and irises. Violets grew in the cracks between the flagstones. The Oku had always been ferocious landscapers, performing agronomic wizardry on the rocky soils and mountainous terrains that dominated their city-state. The Priory gardens had been a showcase, attracting a steady stream of visitors each summer, before the war.
As they neared the front entrance, Merit’s gaze was caught by a tall, thin man standing between the fluted columns at the back of the portico. He was dressed in black and wore an Okuchan half-shield—not the featureless Rasakan vizard, meant to conceal and affront, but a triad of interlaced triangles carved with numerous eyes; a work of high craft understood to represent unwavering allegiance to a noble master.
Eric slowed, allowing the others to catch up. “This is the second Oku I’ve seen wearing a shield,” he said in a low voice. “I thought that wasn’t allowed anymore.”
“It’s gen’rally not,” said Artie. “But they make an exception if you’re a declared pacifist like these priory folks. Or if you were, y’know, a collaborator during the war.”
Eric glanced back at the orderly, who stood by the auto, watching them. “I see.”
Artie grinned. “Now you’re gettin’ it. It’s a good-conduct prize, a whadja call it, status symbol, for bein’ a snitch. Us who fought with the Oku militia, we don’t like it.”
“What did he do?” asked Eric. “The orderly. To earn his shield.”
Artie’s rheumy brown eyes, usually mild and full of wry humor, hardened. “Gave up the names of a dozen covert agents to the Ratskies. People he knew. People he grew up with. People who trusted him. One of them was a kinda friend of mine. She’s dead now.”
Eric stood silent a moment, his reaction inv
isible behind his shield, then turned and continued on. The Site Team followed him up the broad stairs and across the tile floor of the portico. The man in black stepped forward.
Eric greeted him with a curt nod. “Agent Eric Torre. Rasakan Authority.”
But it was Merit to whom the man turned. “Felicitations, Select,” he said, and executed a deep, unhurried bow. “I am Ben Lazar, General Zane’s Steward. I will endeavor to assist you in your investigation in any way I can. With respect.”
Startled by his deferential tone as much as by his use of the formal words, she stared at what she could see of his face: sallow skin stretched tight across a long jaw and thin neck; a wide but narrow-lipped mouth that sagged as if from long years of sorrow. She sketched a reciprocal bow, not so deep and awkward from disuse.
“You honor me.”
The Steward bowed again, then led the way past a pair of russet-clad JCP sentries and through the green door at the back of the portico.
A bird’s-eye view of the Priory would have shown four massive red-granite wings enclosing a square courtyard, with the four towers rising at the corners. In their day, the eighty-odd rooms of the Priory had served not merely as the residence of the Prioress, whose job it was to manage the nonacademic side of the Conservatory, but as a gathering place for the elite among the Oku scientific community. The Great Hall had seen an endless stream of teas, awards days, and seminars, as well as art shows, inductions, poetry readings, and musical events of the highest quality. Under the Rasakan Protectorate—and given the obliteration of the Conservatory—there was no longer any such need, thus most of the rooms were kept locked. But each had a story to tell, each was a testament to five hundred years of Okuchan civilization.
In a silence broken only by the echo of their footfalls on the stone floor, the Site Team followed the Steward down a high-ceilinged hall. Red sunlight filtered through high-set windows, patterning the floor and illuminating the portraits of Prioresses gone by on the opposite wall. At the far end was a cedar door, decorated with a painted carving of a pomegranate tree. Another, lesser hall and a wooden staircase led them to a suite of rooms that showed signs of habitation. They heard the murmur of voices and caught a whiff of baking bread. But the Steward turned away from these homely signs of occupation and led them through a sitting room and up another flight of stairs into the southeast tower.