A Passage of Stars Page 28

  “I’ve got to get to him,” said Lily,

  Her movement came up against Pinto. “It’s no use,” he hissed, trying to contain her. “He’s dead, Lily.” He pushed her back up against the wall.

  She dropped abruptly to her knees. She could not speak. It was as if all her expression had fled her, as if out there on the plaza she spoke, she cried, she reacted to those four shots.

  The great guns shifted, yawed down and to one side, aiming into the midst of the crowd. Five men shoved through the crowd, running for the side streets.

  The guns shuddered to life, bursts, like muffled coughing, like sobs, shaking the plastic wall so slightly. But this time, they did not fire smoke.

  The square erupted into turmoil. She stared, as at herself.

  “Murderers,” Pinto breathed. “Mother bless us, they’re trampling each other.”

  “Come on,” growled one of the guards. “Do we got to stand and watch this? Let’s get rid of these two and go home.”

  “He’s right,” said another. “It ain’t even a fair fight.”

  Chaos, that was what she saw. Smoke ringed the plaza. The sobbing of the guns echoed as if far distant from her. People fled every direction. At the three avenues it was as if the crowd were recoiling back into itself, but into a space that no longer had room. All across the square bodies lay in tangled wrecks, stained with the force of their deaths: shot or trampled, who could tell the difference now? She heard nothing; it was a horrific pantomime played out to her, except for the muffled reports from the great guns above.

  They had to drag her out of the room. Once in the hall she could walk. Pinto limped beside her; she noticed that first, then the six guards, then the walls around her, the walls of Central which were, she now knew, no better than a fortress.

  And Pero still lived. She still lived.

  “That was your mistake,” she said. No one heard her. She would avenge him, that became clear to her. No matter what she had to do; wait fifty years, or join Jehane, or blow Central into oblivion. “So be it,” she said.

  Auxiliary Gate Five was barred and triple locked. She was aware of things like that by then. The guards, pushing them through the first set of bars, did not even escort them to the outer gate itself, merely opened a series of barriers by remote control. But the final set of bars slid away to reveal a deserted, minuscule plaza shaded by trees and by the lowering of evening. Far away, more a suggestion than a definite sound, the frantic noise from distant JooAnn Gate rose and fell in waves.

  A sudden report cut through the lull, splitting off into a ricocheting echo around them.

  “Run for the street,” shouted Pinto.

  They ran, but heard no further shots. Pausing in the lee of a row of lush trees, she saw that Pinto was laboring. She draped his good arm across her shoulders so he could get weight off his bad ankle. His hard, gasping breaths came at least as much from pain as from being winded.

  “Where did that come from?” she asked. “The wall?”

  “I don’t know. It might have been, but maybe from one of the houses out here. Let’s get out of here.”

  “I hope you know where we are.” She surveyed the narrow avenue that stretched out before them, four-story buildings suspiciously silent and empty bordering it. Even with the growing dusk the windows stayed unlit. “Because I don’t.”

  “This should be Shiang. If we can find a delivery depot, if the cargoes are still running, we’re only about four hours from Zanta.”

  “If,” echoed Lily.

  Pinto’s smile, shaded by the overhang of trees, was mocking and bitter. “Didn’t I tell you about my luck? It extends just as far as my literal survival. Sometimes I make the mistake of expecting too much of it.”

  She stared at him. Stared at him so long that he removed his arm from her shoulders and drew back from her. Then she realized what he was referring to. “I’m sorry about your father, Pinto,” she said in a soft voice.

  “Mother’s wounds,” he muttered. “Lily—” He faltered. “Was he really—was he really—your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice shook. “I’m sorry.” He began to limp away from her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked as she came up beside him.

  He shrugged. “My ankle hurts.”

  “Isn’t pain the price of life?” she asked with deep bitterness.

  Pinto cast her a sharp, doubting glance that dissolved abruptly, surprisingly, into a smile. He lifted a hand, tattoos swirling in a maze about his palm and fingers, a maze that seemed to extend into infinity. “The price of a soul,” he answered.

  Pinto’s luck held true. They found Shiang Depot just as twilight passed into night. The cargoes, controlled by some untroubled computer system, were still running on their blind, predetermined paths.

  They switched lines once, had to wait an hour because a unit of government troops had stopped to rest on the platform dividing the depot. Cargoes roared past at intervals, shaking Lily and Pinto where they huddled in the dense shadow of old construction. Finally the troopers moved on. The new line took them to Zanta C Depot, five kilometers from the apartment. Clouds covered the wheel of the night. It began to rain.

  The dull misting hid them as they trudged along the edge of streets. Even the streetlights were unlit here, except at the intersections where the bulbs cast perhaps a third of their normal illumination. It was eerily silent. Pinto’s uneven footsteps and her smooth ones blended into the hush. Her hair soon stuck to her face and neck in scattered, lanky strips. Light caught now and again on the bright surface of beads woven into Pinto’s braids, but it was just a momentary glamour.

  They came, at last, to the park. Around them the darkness eased away, as if dissolving into the steady mist of fine rain. Lines of vegetation, treetops etched against the lightening sky, hedges bulking with opaque thickness lower down, came into being by slow degrees around them as they crossed the park, following the path that circled the pond. The water lay like a sheet of void beyond them. Farther, where the path curved, a solitary form leaned against the railing that divided path from shore. Lily put a staying hand on Pinto’s chest. He halted.

  But something about that form, about the way it leaned, the angle of its arms along its side, was familiar to her. It shifted, head turned, and she knew he had seen them.

  “Come up behind me,” she whispered to Pinto. As they neared the form, he neither stood nor tensed. Slender, short-haired, about Pinto’s height. Ten paces away he spoke.

  “Is that you, Maud?”

  “Robbie!” It all came out in an undertone. Lily closed the gap between them with accelerating speed, obliterated in a hug. He thrust her away almost at once.

  “Is Maud with you?” He glanced behind her, measured and dismissed Pinto’s form.

  “Maud?”

  “My sister Mathilda. I sent her up, to the apartment, to bring you down. I couldn’t chance the apartment being under surveillance.”

  “But you’re dead, Robbie,” she said, suddenly and bitterly angry with him. “No one’s hunting you anymore.”

  “Robbie?” A new voice, soft, uncertain.

  “Ah, Maud.” He turned, and a young woman, his height but heavyset, came up beside him. Her gaze took in Lily and Pinto. She shrank away, but Robbie’s grasp pulled her back. “You remember Lily,” he said.

  “But she wasn’t up there. No one answered, but the terminal must of been left on, because I heard singing.”

  “Good,” said Robbie and Lily at the same time.

  “Who are they?” hissed Pinto, rain damping his voice so it only reached Lily.

  “It’s Pero, of course,” said Lily. “The real Pero.” Her voice shook. “The living Pero.”

  “Let’s get inside,” said Robbie. “I need your help, Lya.” He began to walk at a quick pace toward the block. Lily came up beside him, Mathilda and Pinto behind. Dawn crept, a slow seeping of color, into their surroundings.

  “Where am I going n
ow?” Lily asked.

  “Off Arcadia,” he replied, as if such a course were so self-evident that her question was superfluous. “To Jehane.”

  22 To Jehane

  THEY DRIED AND CHANGED their clothes first, careful with power because their block was suffering a brownout. Bach, ecstatic at Lily’s return, sang a hymn of thanksgiving and afterward plugged himself back into the terminal and began to search the banks for out-going ships.

  “Why do I have to leave Arcadia?” Lily asked. She sat on Pero’s desk, legs dangling, while Robbie rummaged in its drawers.

  “Because they’ll be looking for you.” He did not look up from his task. “Not you in particular, but Pero’s wife, Pero’s family, Pero’s roommates. They’ll want to tie up all the loose ends. I don’t doubt your capacity to protect yourself, Lya, but your skills are more valuable elsewhere. I’d send Maud too, but she won’t go.”

  “Damn right I won’t,” said Maud from the other room. “Now you really need someone to look after you.”

  “Do you know where we were?” Lily asked. “We were in Central, talking to Senator Isaiah.” Still he did not pause. “Robbie. I could have turned you in. I could have saved Heredes’s life by giving you to them in exchange.”

  His hands paused, half in a drawer, and his face, that face of complete conviction to its purpose, lifted up to gaze at her. “I know.”

  She thrust herself off the desk, spun, took short steps around to him, shorter steps back around the desk to come up behind him.

  “How could you let him die?” she cried.

  “I never suspected he meant to do what he did,” he said. “But Lya,” and that deep musicality informed his voice as he straightened, head and shoulders lifting, to gaze with rapt intensity at Lily. “He died the glorious death. He has allowed the movement to grow. His death gives new meaning to Pero, who will be born again. We didn’t win this battle. We won’t win the next one. But this is the long struggle. Some of us will be privileged to offer our lives as the stepping-stones on which it builds. And as we are killed, so the people will come to understand the necessity of the revolution. So the government will divide, will disagree on the methods used to humble us. Even now there is dissent on Pero’s murder. Already we force them into crisis. They have declared martial law, no gatherings over three souls in a private dwelling, no movement at all without escort in public. You could be shot in the street, without cause, just for exercising your right to stroll with your children on a fine summer’s day. And as each crisis casts Central into disorder, as each crisis disrupts the corruption of their bureaucracy further, so we prepare the ground for Jehane. Until the day he can come and sweep all before him. This is just the first step.”

  Maud stood in a bedroom door, gazing at her brother. Pinto had ceased working in the kitchen to turn and stare. But Lily smiled, sad, touched with irony, perhaps with bitterness still, and shook her head at the futility of being angry with him.

  “I’ve got something for you,” she said instead of everything else she might have said. “Heredes’s last gift.” She put the diskette on the desk.

  Robbie regarded it and her for a moment, nodded, and returned to his task, sorting through the accumulation—little enough—of items in his desk. At the terminal, Bach sang out.

  “What have you found?” She crossed to stand by him. Pinto and Maud went into the bedrooms to pack.

  Schedules scrolled up on the screen:

  outbound ships, canceled, canceled, security clearance only, canceled.

  Protests had been logged by captains and company managers.

  “There’s got to be underground traffic,” said Lily. “Or better yet, see if you can find some dog-tagger that’s desperate for a pilot. Robbie, what’s the name of that port that borders Roanoak district? It’s that really old one, rundown.”

  “Isn’t it Kippers? Why do you ask?”

  “Because we’re picking up Kyosti on the way. Look at what’s routing through Kippers, Bach-o.”

  Bach found her seven notices on an unranked channel. Shunting him to one side, she sat in the chair. The first three did not even respond to her call. On the fourth she got voice clearance only. A thick male voice greeted her, so obviously filled to the ears on ambergloss that she cut the connection. The fifth, hailing her call with a spirited, “Panda’s Box, I’ve got your frequency,” was cautious but interested. But when, after a period of circumspect negotiation, it transpired that the Panda’s Box shuttle was not at Kippers at all but at the farthest west port on the coast, more than thirty hours away, Lily excused herself. Six did not respond. Seven quickly established it wanted no tattoo near its controls.

  She went back to the first: no response. Second.

  “Frequency acknowledged,” said a soft, high voice, almost drowned in static. “Voice clearance only. We are looking for a pilot.”

  “Voice clearance only,” Lily acknowledged. “I have a pilot in exchange for transportation out of system. My name is Ransome. What ship is this?”

  Static arced and spit behind the blank screen. For a long moment Lily feared the connection had been cut.

  “Lily Hae Ransome?” The voice almost faded into nothing.

  “I’m coming on visual,” said Lily suddenly, and punched in the codes. An instant later the screen blossomed into life. “Aliasing!”

  “Oh, Lily!” The delicate face was drawn into the thinness of exhaustion and fear. “Do you really have a pilot? We’re desperate. We came into system on a run almost a month ago and Milhaviru went on a binge and almost killed us going out, so Captain Bolyai threw her off, but we couldn’t risk looking for a pilot through official channels so Jenny and I came down on the shuttle—days and days ago but we still haven’t found—” She broke off. Even in her rush of words, her voice never lifted above a whisper. “Do you really have a pilot?”

  “Yes. Are you at Kippers?”

  “It’s a terrible place.” Her eyes glanced to either side as if she feared observation. “But Jenny said they’d never search here. But I’m afraid. There’s riots all over down here—it’s all tattoo districts.” Her voice faltered and gave out.

  “Why did Jenny bring you down? Aren’t you safer up on the ship?”

  Frail lips trembled. “We thought—I thought—maybe one of my old friends—but I called, just one, and now”—emotions filled and fled her face in a dizzying shift of expression—“now I’m afraid they’re looking for us. We have to get out fast.”

  “Where is Jenny?”

  “Out looking. How can we reach you? I don’t know how to tell you to get here. She’ll call you.”

  Lily soothed her, gave her a code, and signed off. At his desk Pero had finally decided on what to keep and what to dispose of.

  “Maud,” he called. His sister appeared with two duffel bags. “We have to wipe off every surface that might take prints, and incinerate any leftover items.” She set down the bags and went into the washing cubicle.

  “Robbie,” said Lily. “I’ve got us a ship. Now how do we get to Kippers?”

  “That’s settled.” She watched as he copied the diskette into Bach’s memory, followed him after to the washroom where he collected several damp, soapy cloths from his sister and, handing one to Lily, returned to wipe his desk. “Three streets from here there’s a Security vehicle with four troopers whose allegiance is to Jehane.”

  “Can we really trust them not to turn us over to Central?”

  His dark eyes lifted and a brief smile marked his face. “I have an instinct for Jehanists. They will deliver you to your ship.”

  “I wonder why I trust you so much,” she replied. He merely looked at her, but he did not answer. “They’ll catch you eventually. Someday the government is going to kill you.”

  “Of course,” said Pero, and he went back to his washing.

  They ate, finished their cursory cleaning, waited until a sudden signal brought Lily to the terminal. Gray dissolved into the face of Jenny Seria.

  “Lily-hae
!” Grimness underlay that assured nonchalance. “Are you coming aboard?”

  “If you’ll take us.”

  “How many?”

  “Three and the ’bot.”

  “One’s a pilot?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  A grin cracked Jenny’s face. “So what’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing. Of course, he’s Ridani.”

  “A damned tattoo!”

  “Jenny. He’ll do the job.”

  The grin, banished by surprise, returned. “Beggars can’t choose. He’s on. What about you, Lily-hae?”

  “I’m a fugitive now—but it’s a long story.”

  “Come aboard, by all means. Fugitives are welcome on the Easy Virtue. But get here fast.”

  “Just tell me where you are.”

  They said good-bye to Pero in the apartment. Maud wept a little; Pinto shook his hand; Bach wished him well in his own voice.

  “How will you live?” Lily asked him.

  “I will live on the goodwill of the people,” said Pero. “I will live on the work of those who have already sacrificed themselves or their loved ones. I will live on the promise of Jehane.”

  He led them to the Security vehicle. They climbed into the back of the truck, and the doors cut them off from him.

  A young trooper, nervous but exhilarated, talked incessantly about the growing, but still-secret, support for Jehane within the Security forces, especially after the execution and subsequent rioting. He regaled them at some length with examples of conversion. Finally, he lapsed into silence. They passed through several checkpoints: the truck stopped; voices conversed; the truck went on. At one point the truck came to an abrupt halt. A hail of shooting sounded around them. A sudden blow shuddered the entire vehicle. Lily flung herself half-across Pinto to prevent him from falling. The trooper fingered his gun and directed it at the back doors. From the cab, a voice called back.

  “Coming into Kippers. It’s wild as pitch out here.” The truck lurched forward—shouts were exchanged. Some barrier seemed to be passed and they drove on smoothly. Lily pushed away from Pinto and went forward to call into the cab.