by Ellen Larson
Merit looked at her doubtfully. The Prioress’s description of a Retrospector didn’t sound much like her. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes.” The Prioress sat on a stool. She removed her shield and pulled off her white cowl, revealing a pair of twinkling brown eyes and masses of silver hair. She leaned toward Merit, her voice wonderfully mysterious. “Haven’t you heard? The Prioress can see into the future.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
Saturday, 15 April 3324, 2:30 p.m.
A silver Authority shield materialized on the window pane.
Merit started and turned. Artie and Donny were just visible at the mouth of the east bay. Celia and the Steward were gone. “Are we done?”
“Hardly,” said Eric dryly. “We have a problem.”
“I’m sure you can solve it.”
“This new Prioress has refused to see Celia.”
Merit let a slow grin spread over her face. The pill had stabilized her, given her the energy she needed to keep going. “That’s our Lena.”
“Do you know her personally?”
“We were schoolmates. Though I haven’t seen her since my selection.”
The silver shield jerked down. “She was a Prospective?”
Merit nodded and turned back to the window, pretending to watch the goats.
“Isn’t a Prioress usually chosen from the humanistic disciplines?” asked Eric.
“Lena never graduated from the Prospectives School. She became a biology teacher. But your question is meaningless. It’s not like she had any competition for the post. Since there was no Conservatory and everybody else was dead.”
“True.”
Her eyes were drawn to the reflection of the silver shield in the glass. “So where’s Celia?”
“I sent her to interview the live-in staff.”
“She can handle that.”
“Yes. It may be for the best that the Prioress refused to see her. I think she half believes that business about her being a mystic. I told her we’d do the interview.”
Merit waved a hand. “Let’s just skip it.”
“What?!”
She shrugged. “Why bother? We’re short staffed and there’s nothing Lena can say that will make a diff—”
“But she found the body! She—” The reflected shield tilted to one side. “You don’t want to see her, do you. That’s why you didn’t want to do the tour. You resent her because you think a pacifist like her had no right to take the place of the old Prioress you were so close to.”
“I already have a psychotherapist, thank you.”
“Then what’s your problem?”
“I have no problems. Look. You think you’ll get a straight answer from somebody who runs around saying she flexes without benefit of Vessel or attunement? You said yourself she’s hallucinating.”
“I’ve had time to think about that, and it occurs to me it’s possible she’s perfectly sane and participating in some sort of elaborate charade.” He could barely contain his eagerness to put forth his theory. “What if she’s claiming to know the future as a way to gain influence over the unsuspecting?”
It was so strange to be arguing with him again, once again feeling the force of his intellect. Just like old times, yes, but old times seen in a cracked mirror that interspersed frightening reflections of silver shields with her present, diminished self.
She blocked out such thoughts. “Sorry, but there’s another explanation. We had an inside joke at the Prospectives School. The old Prioress pretended to see into the future—her way of reassuring the girls that everything would be all right when they were worried or in trouble. It was sweet and a little mysterious. Lena has just bastardized the idea to bolster her image as the all-knowing angel of pacifist mercy.”
“But why would she do that? She must realize that no one with half a brain will believe she’s been to the future.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Merit pointedly. “Some people believe lots of weird things are possible with flex technology. I seem to remember a discussion about changing history?”
“This is completely different. It’s axiomatic that the Continuum only exists in time-frames in which the Artifice has previously existed, because the Artifice creates the Continuum. You can’t move backward to a time before the Artifice was kindled, and you can’t move forward at all, because the Artifice hasn’t yet created the Continuum in the future. It’s absurd!”
In this he had not changed. He would argue passionately over the slightest point, without reference to importance or context. It struck her that if he and Lena ever did cross paths, the meeting would be explosive, and she would not bet on him to emerge the victor.
“You know what?” she said, “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s you and me go interview Lena. Better yet, you do the talking. You tell her just what you told me. You tell her she’s absurd.” She started for the door. “I’ll back you up.”
They made their way down the stairs to the octagonal landing and from there onto the walkway that crossed the top of the east wing. The view was less expansive than from the tower window, but it was still impressive.
An alien landscape sprawled on either side: angular green roofs, black photovoltaic panels, and red chimney pots. Perched atop a cupola, a green weather vane cut in the shape of a beckoning hand wavered in the breeze. Merit caught the familiar scent of plum blossoms. Looking down, her eyes fell upon a small cloister protecting a herb garden, a little pool, and fruit trees in full bloom.
There were no guards to bar their entry to the northeast tower. They made their way up a curved staircase identical to the one they had just descended, and so to the door of the Prioress’s study.
Eric knocked, but opened the door without waiting for a reply.
Inside they found the Steward, seated in a chair. He was alone.
“You’ve come to interview the Prioress,” he stated.
“Yes,” said Eric.
The Steward rose and ran his hands down the front of his black vest. “Regretfully, she is ill, and in extreme distress. She suffers from poor health at the best of times, and the General’s death has brought her very low. She desires to spend the day in seclusion, meditating. She will speak only to me, and even to me her door is locked. But, she has asked me to express her sincere regret and to give you her assurance that she will most certainly meet with you tomorrow, at noon.”
Eric crossed his arms over his chest, a motion that better showed the silver Authority patch on his upper arm. “I’m afraid I must insist.”
The Steward remained unperturbed by this manly display. “The Prioress instructed me to add that, no matter how much you insist, no matter what attempts you make to see her, you will fail, because it is an established fact that this is not the day you are destined to meet, and that is something you cannot change.”
Merit kept her face blank, but her interest was aroused. The Eric she had known, however academically argumentative, had never been able to impose his will on anyone. This older Eric had shown signs of familiarity with command. But it was one thing to intimidate orderlies and sentries. She would have bet real money that he would back down before the cool sarcasm of the older man, more accustomed to the company of the mighty.
“This is a murder investigation,” said Eric. “The welfare of Oku City is at stake. Tell her that if she will not come to me, I will go to her, and if she will not unlock her door, I will break it down.”
The Steward bowed meekly. “As you wish.”
He turned and left, and Merit realized she would have lost her bet.
“I don’t understand why she called us here and now refuses to see us,” muttered Eric.
Having no desire to help him out, Merit instead focused on an inventory of her surroundings. The simplicity of the furnishings stood in stark contrast to the opulence of the General’s study. Bare white walls and mismatched lamps. A simple wooden desk that someone had painted brown. An old trunk with a cracked lid. Spindly tables and str
aight-backed chairs. A meditation mat rolled up and standing on end in the corner. Lena had always been an ascetic, but this was an impressive display of unworldliness, even for her. The only incongruous item was a red half-shield propped up in the center of the otherwise-bare mantelpiece.
Eric stood in the north bay before a hutch piled with books, painted tin boxes, and writing supplies. Merit’s gaze settled on the back of his head, and on the gold band, almost invisible in his corn-colored hair, that held his shield in place. Her glance drifted downward. Despite the loose black jacket, she could see that he’d filled out over the years, broadened across the shoulders, developed some muscle in his thighs.
She snatched her gaze away and walked to Lena’s desk.
The brown paint was worn thin, revealing the grain of the underlying pine. The edges of the paper blotter were ragged. A little toy soldier, molded from lead with its uniform painted white and green, lay on a piece of paper. Setting the toy aside, she picked the paper up.
It was covered with a small, letter-perfect script, the script of a woman who revered order and exactitude, a controlling woman. She read silently:
“To be inside the Continuum is an attainment that can’t be bought. It can’t be stumbled upon by mere chance, can’t be awarded as a prize for rejecting nature’s message and preferring the clumsy machines of humankind. It can only be earned. But how to earn it? The first step is extreme and intense introspection and meditation. The warmongers say it was the ancient scientists in the days of glory a thousand years before the Annihilation that created a thing called the Continuum, but I tell you it is not so. The Continuum has always been here and it will always be here, beyond the powers of mere men and women to define it, let alone create it. Human science can capture and jail only a scintilla of its wonders, and even then those wonders are marred by cumbersome engines and arbitrary restrictions. ‘The Artifice,’ they call it. Is it even necessary to wonder why they chose that name?
“Science’s Continuum can be broken, destroyed, and misused. The Elemental Continuum, into which I will lead you, knows no boundaries but infinity, and infinity knows no boundaries.”
Below that was printed in block letters: “To know your future, walk in my footsteps, see with my eyes.”
Merit tightened her lips in disgust, then started when she heard Eric’s voice:
“I suppose it’s understandable that she wants to be alone to grieve. I’ve heard they were devoted to each other.”
She was suddenly, acutely aware that they were alone together. A wave of something like fear made her sway where she stood, made her want to run away. She kept her back to him, lest he see her face.
“Yep,” she said. Keeping her tone as light as she could, she let her tongue run. “It was quite the romance. Two heroes of Okucha; a fateful meeting at Byzantion. The exchange of meaningful glances across a crowded peace table followed lickety-split by a joint plea for the Oku people to roll over and play dead. The masses, tired of misery and yearning for a happy ending, complied. Starvation and disease ensued. Theirs was an eternal love.”
“By which I take it you mean they were very popular,” he said. “So tell me why the notion that Zane didn’t have any enemies was so funny.”
She picked up a string of meditation beads, polished to high gloss by long and fervent use. If Lena’s devotion to the contemplative life was an act, it was a good one. “It’s no secret.”
“I’m new in town.”
“So you are. And you finally made it to the Conservatory! Too bad there’s nothing left of it for you to see.” She tossed the beads aside, and with them her fear. He was only a Rasakan, an agent of Authority, one of those who had blasted all she held dear into dust. There was nothing more they could do to her.
“Let me explain,” she said. “Some folks, who shall remain nameless, think Omari Zane made the wrong decision when he surrendered. Some folks—maybe not the majority, but let’s say a discriminating minority—think he sold out his people. That his dalliance with a self-appointed Prioress half his age was a mighty convenient alliance for them both. And, since it’s you, I don’t mind saying that there are still one or two ex-Resistance commandos running around who’d gladly wring his neck. Would have. If he were still alive, I mean.”
“Commandos like you?”
“Ha ha. No. Not like me. I’m rehabilitated. I’m a good girl, now. Well, when I say good. . . .” She turned to him, wanting to increase the sting of her impending jab.
But the words evaporated in her throat.
He had taken off the shield. His blue eyes were just as she remembered: like cornflowers shining in a field of freckles. His nose was as ridiculously perpendicular as ever, his forehead as high. But it was his expression that pinned her, motionless, in mid-sentence.
“We don’t have much time.” He took a step forward, then stopped and spoke in defiance of his own words. “I’ve dreamed of this.”
Her murky panic blotted out all reason. She only knew she had to shut him up, fast. “Me too. Except for me it was more like a nightmare.”
Pain flooded those unprotected eyes—pain and confusion. She felt a stab of guilt, swiftly obliterated by a rush of blood and a tingling of her skin. She had landed a blow on her enemy. The feeling was exhilarating; it made her feel alive for the first time in months. It made her want to hurt him again.
“Frankly I’m glad to have this time alone to tell you how much it revolts me to be in the same room with you.”
The freckled cheeks flamed, the angular jaw sagged.
The sight made her turn away, but it did not make her stop. “I thought I was gonna puke when the Marshall said your name this morning. I couldn’t believe it.”
He found his voice, as if given impetus by the old desire to argue a flawed point. “That’s not true. I saw you start the moment I spoke. I know you recognized—Look at me!”
“I don’t look at people who hide behind—”
“Well, I’m not hiding behind it now. Look at me, damn it!”
She half turned to him.
“Do you think I like it?” He gestured with the shield. “Having to wear this thing?”
“So don’t wear it.”
“I have to. You know I do. It’s part of the uniform.”
“Really? I thought it was a symbol of privilege and domination. A form of intimidation. Isn’t that why you Rasakans wear it?”
The confusion was clear on his face. “Why are you talking like this? There’s no one here but us. I know this isn’t you.”
The surge of anger raised by his words made her whirl and face him with a vengeance. “Then you know wrong. You have no idea who I am; who I’ve become. What it’s like to watch everyone you care about die in agony or—” What was she saying? She never talked like this, let alone to a Rasakan.
“Or what?”
She hardened her face and her voice. “Or betray everything they said they believed in. Like you did.”
“I didn’t—” He tightened his lips, visibly stifling his anger. “You know that’s not true. You know how I felt about the revolt.” His voice cracked. “About you.”
“Oh, save us,” she smirked. “He’s not gonna make an awkwardness, is he?”
“Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten.”
“He is. How wonderfully . . . provincial of you. Though I think the evidence is clear that you are the one who has forgotten how you felt.”
“I have to be careful.” He halved the distance between with a stride. “But not with you.”
“No dice, huh?” It was an effort not to back away, to run from the room. “You never could take a hint. So let me put it this way: I wish I’d never met you; I wish I’d never gone to Rasaka to help you vicious, uneducated, backstabbing devils try to better your cowardly murderous lives.”
His face was ashen, his body stiff with anger, but the blast of recrimination she expected did not come.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said in a low, controlled voice. “I
thought I could trust you, but I guess I was wrong.”
She stared at him, stupefied. “You, trust me? Are you insane? Why on residuum Earth would I ever trust you? You destroyed my world!”
His eyes widened. “I did?”
“You, you Rasakans!”
“You know damned well that wasn’t anything I ever wanted! Saints above, Merit, I tried to warn you! To get you to warn the Oku Council, but you wouldn’t listen!”
“You told me there were people agitating for travel permits! You didn’t mention that Authority was stockpiling weapons and planning to invade!”
“Because I didn’t know!”
“Didn’t you?”
“Of course not! You know perfectly well I was against what I saw happening!”
“But it didn’t take you long to change your tune after I left, did it.”
An uneasy doubt appeared in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you. You!” The need to prove him wrong overwhelmed her. “You say you didn’t know? Liar. Within three weeks after I left—three weeks—you had joined the Rasakan army.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I went back!” She stopped, stunned by her own words. She had never intended to tell him that—to tell anyone that—to admit that she had ever cared that much about a Rasakan. But now the words held in so long poured out. “Saints help me, I went back to try to find you. The hard way, on my own feet. Right after Authority kicked out the Oku Council on the eve of the invasion. But you were gone. You were already one of them. Spilling your guts about everything you knew about the Conservatory Artifice and—”
“Merit, I would never—”
“I figured you were the one who told them where to aim their bombs. I bet you enjoyed that—destroying what you couldn’t have.”
“Stop it! I would never do that and you know it!”
“Save your breath. I don’t want to hear it!”