A Passage of Stars Page 25

  “But you do know it,” said Pinto. “You must possess the kinnas of one of my people.”

  “A long time ago, and she is, I’m afraid, dead now.”

  Pinto merely nodded his head, a gesture so respectful and meek that Lily could only stare first at him, then at Heredes. “Is it all settled?” she asked, leaning closer to Heredes. The noise of the train as it rattled along the track masked her words. “How do you know we can trust him?”

  “Kinnas is a strong force, Lily. Do not underestimate it. And in any case, never let pass an ally, if you have a moment to gather one. You never know when you may need one.”

  She sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me that you traded me for the information? To Robbie?”

  Much to her surprise, he laughed. “I never realized what I made you into,” he said, quite at variance, “not until you came running to my rescue. ‘He wore a lily on his brow—’ Well.” His nondescript gray tunic and trousers blended into the grey metal of the train bench they sat on. “And now I’m certain.”

  “Certain of what? You talk in circles a lot, Master Heredes. You’re very good at concealing information.”

  “Master Heredes? This will not do, my child. You had better call me Taliesin.”

  “That’s what La Belle called you,” said Lily. “Don’t tell me that’s your real name?”

  “The one I was born with.” The admission slipped so easily from him that at first she thought she had heard incorrectly. The train pulled into a stop. The doors slipped open and a blast of fresh air entered along with the new passengers. “Taliesin ap Branwen a Jawaharlal,” he continued. His voice took on a rolling, lilting quality that mirrored the roll of the train as it started forward again. “Or so I was baptized in the church of the Blessed Mother, in Gwynedd District, planet Terra, in the year of the New Age 209. Taliesin, son of Branwen and Jawaharlal. They were devout believers, or at least my mother was, and she rather held sway, in terms of cultural transmission at any rate, as you can see from my name.” A pause, during which Lily simply regarded him with astonishment and the train descended into a tunnel. “On the other hand,” he continued in his normal voice and without much regard to her surprise, “I suppose you can’t, having no knowledge of Cymru.” A wordless shake of her head confirmed that statement. “Perhaps I did neglect your education,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Well, Lily, regrets never lead you forward. Remember that.”

  “Of course,” she said in a breath, as if she feared too loud an expression would cause him to disperse into the air from which he almost seemed to have come back to her. If Heredes was born N.A. 209, if the Reft’s calendar was still in line with that of their ancestors’, then Heredes was more than 120 years old. “Hoy,” she said. His eyes, green as the burgeoning spring, watched her intently. “Are you really that old?” she whispered.

  He smiled.

  She realized abruptly that this was not a subject she wanted to discuss in such surroundings. “What was it like, where you were born?” she asked instead.

  “Green and low and rich.” That lilting, musical strain informed his voice again. “Not rich in credits or great vast fields of grain or outward things, rather poor in outward things, in truth, but rich in the heart, in the mountains worn down by the ages of life lived about them, and the small jewels of lakes, and the small fields of corn, and the sea, brushing the shore. And song, of course. I think I sang before I talked. Air to breathe, rain, the soft winds; the kind of beauty that never leaves you, even when you’ve left it far behind you. We moved to the city when I was fourteen.”

  “Didn’t you ever go back? Even to visit?”

  “I meant to, once. There’s a lesson there—one of the secrets of a saboteur’s life, Lily, of that life you have to lead if this life, the one you’re living now, is what you’re living for.” His smile bore equal parts bittersweet memory and that distant gleam of anticipation. “Never hesitate, once you’ve decided on a course of action. I hesitated, and I may have lost the chance to return to the place where I was born. But—” With an encompassing gesture of one hand, he dismissed the past.

  “But regrets never lead you forward,” said Lily.

  “You’re very wise, Lilyaka. You must have been well taught.”

  “Certainly not,” she replied indignantly. “I was lucky to survive my training.”

  He laughed. “You see how like me you are. By the time I was twenty years old I was in jail—I robbed and rioted and fought and hated until the law grew sick of me. But sensei came. She worked with delinquents, succeeded rather better with me than anyone expected. I got out early on good behavior and studied at her Academy for ten years, like you, although you of course avoided prison.”

  “I did run away once,” she pointed out.

  “Isn’t that why the Sar sent you to me in the first place? You were a sullen child, Lily.”

  “Was I?”

  “Yes, but full of energy.” His hands lay unmoving on his lap, like the symbol of his inner composure. “After ten years, my sensei told me she had taught me everything she could. She told me I was good, but that I would never be a true master of the art.”

  “But—”

  Heredes raised a hand, interrupting her, and smiled. “She said I was too precipitous. That’s a quality you can’t unlearn. I competed for a few years after that, in martial arts tournaments; it’s a very popular sport in the League, like three-di or bissterlas is here. Then I became an actor.” He chuckled at her expression. “No, not one of your network actors. I studied acting for six years, then joined a repertory company on Sirra—that’s one of the League planets—and after that was offered a gem of a position in the Bharentous Repertory Company. It was while I was with them that I met the old man, the Duke, and he recruited me for the rebellion, for the band of all work. That’s what I did for the next forty years, until, of course, we won.”

  “You were rebelling against the Kapellans, weren’t you?”

  “Has Hawk been talking to you? What history do you know?

  Lily considered. Beside her, Pinto dozed. Across the aisle, a man read, a woman slept, a child holding her hand. “Humans came from a few neighboring systems, explored, and found the pygmies. But the population grew too fast so they shipped out whole populations on the lowroad ships—that’s how we got here. But the coordinates back to the home worlds were lost—something. Even when the highroad fleet showed up no one could get back. A couple ships, those that Central didn’t impound, tried to. Maybe they did. But usually it’s said that they got lost on the way and just drifted forever.”

  “The highroad fleet.” The train rattled on through the tunnel, black walls like starless space. “Custer’s Luck was the flagship of that fleet.”

  “You know about it?”

  “Of course. It was legendary. The hard-luck fleet, they called it. Twenty-eight of the finest ships ever built, sent out to explore and to search for the earlier colonizations—like Reft space—three of those ships returned. The vector drive was new. I suppose they just hadn’t got the hang of it yet. Obviously some of those ships got out here, but none ever returned with news of the Reft that I know of. And the League had more pressing problems. But it’s the names I remember—they struck me so: Custer’s Luck, Swan of Tuonela, Pope Joan, Pyrrhus, Enfants Perdue, Chernobyl, Forlorn Hope—”

  “The Forlorn Hope!” Lily exclaimed. “That’s the name of the ship that old spacers say haunts the route back. Out beyond Nevermore and Jeremiad.”

  “What, like the Flying Dutchman? No, I don’t suppose you’ve heard that story. Well, it makes one wonder.”

  “What problems did the League have?”

  “The Kapellans.”

  “That’s right,” said Lily suddenly. “You and Kyosti and Sensei Jones were terrorists.”

  For a moment, when he frowned, she understood why Kyosti and Adam might refer to him as a tyrant. “Hawk has been talking. But not, I dare say, about the right things.”

  “He isn’t th
at forthcoming,” she retorted. The look she directed at Heredes, one eyebrow quirked slightly up, her mouth’s line bent with a softly sardonic pull, caused him to chuckle.

  “Like me? I’m afraid that is an accusation that is quite true. But it’s just as bad to tell too much. That’s a lesson one learns as a saboteur: Always stay one step ahead of the pursuit. Especially if that pursuit is Kapellan in origin. We ran into the Kapellans in the course of our explorations, or they into us—who knows. For a decade or two they treated us like younger siblings. Offered us their vector drive. Of course, they were merely sizing us up, and just about the same year the hard-luck fleet went out—our twenty-eight best ships—they decided it was time for the League to join their Empire. We had no choice. We were their subjects for over two hundred years. But in the last forty of those years we built the revolt. We broke down their systems from within, and when the call came for the League to take up conventional arms, the Kapellans were partly crippled. And we succeeded.

  “What did you do—besides blow up space stations and run an entire Kapellan fleet into their vectors wrong?”

  “Hawk didn’t know about—has Adam been talking to you?”

  Perceiving that Adam would hear about it someday, in no uncertain terms, Lily merely shrugged. “I don’t remember. There are so many stories, after all.”

  “Touché,” he acknowledged. “Which means, ‘your point.’ We did everything. Blew things up, yes. Killed people when we had to. Rerouted information so it never got where it was meant to go. Sent false information in its place. Sabotaged entire computer systems, mechanical systems, so they shut down when we wanted them to. It was very effective. Now the League and the Empire live with a very jittery truce, abetted on our side by a huge privateer fleet that works the neutral territories that divide us from them, and by the Kapellans’ natural aversion to violence.”

  “But if you helped bring about the League’s freedom, why is the League hunting you?”

  “Because we know too much. Because they don’t trust us—‘our kind,’ as Hawk would say. Why should they? We dealt double-sided decks for so long that we could as easily pass our loyalty to yet another side. The Duke protected as many of us as he could while he still lived, but most of us chose to go underground. That’s how I ended up on Unruli. I never expected to find the Reft—I had no real idea that it even existed, just old records of a colonization seeded this way.”

  “How did you get here, then?”

  “I knew someone who shall remain nameless, who knew someone else, who was nameless as far as I was concerned, who was willing to ferry me around until, much to my surprise, I found Arcadia and Wingtuck. How she got here she has never told me. She directed me toward Unruli.”

  There was another stop and dozers started awake, then settled back. Through the windows of the train, Lily saw the station sign, the ubiquitous Security in doubled numbers, and a pair of tattoos emptying trash. With three coughing lunges, the train lurched forward and smoothed into its clacking glide.

  “Did you like it?” she asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Being a terrorist.”

  “Did I like it?”

  “Enjoy it, I mean. You did it for forty years.”

  “I suppose I enjoyed it, as anyone enjoys work at which they excel. But I did it because it needed to be done. It was more in Hawk’s line to enjoy it.”

  With an abrupt shift, she pulled her weight back so that she was no longer leaning toward him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Lily.” Now he was stern. “That’s not meant as criticism. Your Kyosti didn’t join the ranks out of a feeling of duty.”

  “And you did?”

  “Part of me desired the adventure, I admit that. But the Duke himself chose me. I was one of the first, and in my own way I helped develop our methods of working. But you’re right—I have no grounds on which to criticize Hawk. And I don’t really think he joined because he loved wreaking havoc. That was more in Maisry or Korey’s nature. But Lily—” His hesitation was so totally unlike him that Lily’s irritation dissolved. “Please never agree to marry Hawk by the customs he would urge on you.” He raised a hand to forestall her comment. “I know I have no right to say that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t keep him as your lover. You have less choice about that than either of us imagines, I think.” He paused. “Lily. What’s wrong?”

  She put her face against his sleeve, hiding against him. Shook her head first because her throat was too tight to allow words. Gripped his arm. “He said—he said—”

  He had to lower his head to hear her. “Poor child,” he murmured.

  “He had to go to the clinic. I haven’t seen him for weeks. Then he called and said—he said he should never have slept with me. He said it would be better for me if I never saw him again.”

  “Did he now? Mother bless us.” He looked up to see that Pinto was watching them.

  “It was my fault,” said Pinto suddenly, his voice low. He glanced around the compartment as if afraid he might be overheard. “I answered the terminal when Lily was out. I don’t think he liked me. Maybe I was a little rude.”

  But Lily, at these words, lifted her head. “That’s not true, Pinto. It was nothing to do with you, not really.”

  “Mother bless us,” repeated Heredes. “What are you going to do, Lily?”

  “When we get back, I’m going down there,” she said, a bit defiantly. “I’ll make him come back.”

  “My dear child.” Heredes embraced her suddenly, held her, tilted her back so he could look at her face. “You’re very brave.”

  “Brave!” She pulled away, regarding him with so affronted an expression that he laughed. “You still haven’t told me—”

  “Why Robert Malcolm?” he finished for her. “Because I had to be sure, Lily, that you could take the burden. And what did you do?

  “What did I do? With Robbie? I helped him—I—” She began to laugh. “It was a test, wasn’t it? Did I pass?”

  “Of course you passed,” he said, as much with sorrow as with joy. “You helped him.”

  “You don’t believe in Jehane anymore than I do, do you?”

  “Jehane? Who knows what he’ll turn out to be. But I like Robbie. He’s clean; he’s genuine; he’s honest. ‘Of one growth.’ That’s the root of the word ‘sincere.’ And I needed someone to bond you. But I have to admit it was impossible to resist assisting a saint.”

  “Being so far from one yourself?” she said, chuckling.

  “It’s funny, that’s the same reason I helped him, at first. Later I got to like it.”

  “Lily, my dear child, my spirit choose wisely.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He made a gesture with his arm, small, in the constricted space, so as not to draw undue attention, but very expressive. “‘Yet all aesthetic contemplation affords only a short-lived respite from the vigilance of an ever wakeful consciousness, and true liberation can only be achieved by the saint, the moral hero, the great ascetic, whose “will to live” has vanished, who has seen through the illusion of the senses, and who practices resignation.’” He finished with a flourish fit for an audience. Pinto regarded them curiously. The man across from them looked up from his com-screen.

  “That’s all very well,” said Lily in a low voice, “for a Byssinist like my mother, who is very devout, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.” The man shrugged and returned to his reading.

  “You and I, Lilyaka Heredes, are not the stuff from which moral heroes are made. That in the end is how I recognized you as my daughter: that complete inability to practice resignation.” He smiled.

  “You know, I often wonder. The Ridanis say something like—that the pattern on their body reflects the pattern of the universe”—she paused to glance at Pinto, but his eyes were closed again—“and that gives them purpose. And Byssinists strive for annihilation, or dissolution in the Void, or, well, the illusion of the sense vanishing. But what about people like us? If we
can’t be moral heroes, then what meaning is there for us in life?”

  “That’s the real secret, isn’t it?” He stared out at the rushing mat of tunnel wall as if he could read something there that was only a blank to her, “What meaning is there for us in life?” His gaze, returning to Lily, had nothing unsure or bewildered in it, only a steady certainty. “Only what we bring to it, Lily. For our kind, that’s enough. That’s one of the reasons we’re so dangerous.”

  “Are we? Did passing the test include me in ‘our kind’? You haven’t told me what my burden is yet.”

  “Haven’t I? You are my daughter, Lily, the daughter of my spirit, my only true child. You are Taliesin’s heir. I declared you on the bridge of La Belle Dame, which makes it bound and legal, and, as any legal document, available to the public without constraint.”

  “But you have other children. Adam and his twin.”

  “Heir. From the Latin hered-, heres, akin to Greek cheros, bereaved. You are Taliesin’s heir, Lilyaka. You alone. That makes you dangerous, it makes you feared, but most of all, it makes you very valuable. Don’t ever forget that.”

  The train slowed, clacking half-time, quarter-time, stopping.

  “We get out here,” said Heredes.

  Pinto started up, looked at the station signs. “But we should stay on another six stops,” he began. “This isn’t the interchange for Zanta.”

  “I’m not going to Zanta,” said Heredes.

  Lily shook her head when Pinto began to speak again, and the Ridani had no choice but to follow her as she followed Heredes off. The station was crowded, but even so, Heredes walked very close to Lily, Pinto trailing behind. She felt a hand slip into her jacket pocket.

  Heredes was leaning on her almost as if she were supporting him. “You now have a diskette,” he whispered. “Jehane’s latest movements. He’s taken Harsh. I have finally calculated the pattern of his movements. He’s good, is Jehane. He’s encircling, slow, and in a few years he’ll cut Arcadia off. This will help Robbie no end. Don’t let anyone else see it.”

  “But—you think he’s going to win?”