Alyzon Whitestarr (38 page)

I told myself I was going too far. After all, the explosion had closed the school down. The sickness could not have wanted that.

Suddenly Mirandah hammered on the door, saying that dinner was nearly ready. I got out and scurried to the bedroom to dress. Serenity was laid out on her bed, but she didn’t look at me or in any way acknowledge that I was in the room. I wanted badly to tell her what I suspected the poetry group intended for her. But what could I say that would not make me sound like a nutcase?

I went downstairs, thinking that I could do nothing until I had proof of some kind.

Mirandah and I were serving the spinach quiche Jesse had made when the phone rang. It was one of the members of Mirandah’s jazz group. Jesse took over serving and passed me Luke’s bowl of mush. I spooned it to him absently, making faces to distract him when he looked to be getting bored with the concept of dinner. I had just finished feeding him when Da came in the back door, shaking his head a little. I thought he looked tired.

“Bad pupil?” Jesse asked.

Da laughed. “Brilliant pupil. No talent.” He sighed. “It ought to be that when a person works hard and is dedicated, he receives his just reward. But talent is capricious, and it
can appear in the lazy as well as the dedicated. How do you tell someone prepared to give his soul that it won’t be enough?”

There was a knock at the back door, and before Da could turn back to open it, Rhona Wojcek burst in, clad in painfully bright fluorescent orange and green stripes, complaining bitterly about the wet path, as if we had watered it just to spoil her lime suede boots. Da sent Mirandah up to get Mum and poured Rhona a glass of red wine. She grimaced after tasting it, but still drank it pretty fast.

I retreated upstairs, feeling only slightly guilty because Rhona really was bad for digestion. I was lying back drowsing when I heard her leave, but I was too warm and lazy to go down. I roused myself enough to peel off my jeans and slide under the covers.

* * *

I dreamed of Davey the mechanic, riding on the back of a dog the size of a small elephant. As in the previous dream, the slow gentleness of his expression had given way to an alertness that made him look like a different person, despite the fact that in all other ways he looked like Davey. He called to me to climb up behind, saying that I could travel with him, but I told him rather sharply that I couldn’t. He quirked his brow sardonically and said I could do more than I knew, and then he laughed.

By the time I got downstairs the next morning, Serenity had left and Mirandah was feeding Luke. Da came in from his run, saying that it was wet as hell everywhere, but at least the rain
had stopped. Mirandah lifted Luke from his chair and put him into Da’s arms, and Da put him right back in the chair.

The physical handover of Luke was a tradition dating back to a time when he had been left on the grass in his bouncy chair for over two hours, with each of us thinking that someone else was taking care of him. Luckily he had been in the shade, but we were all horrified when Da came in with him crying his eyes out. These days, the rule was that you physically handed Luke to the person who was to be in charge of him next. That way you could never be in doubt about who was supposed to be watching over him.

Mirandah dashed out in a flurry. I was about to leave, too, when I remembered to tell Da I was going to dinner at Raoul’s that night. “Can I get a lift home after?”

“I’ve got a late rehearsal tonight for a gig, but maybe Jesse can do it.” Da looked at Jesse, who had just come downstairs, and he nodded.

“A gig with Losing the Rope?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It’s with those two guys I met at that last gig. Neo Tokyo. They’ve asked me to guest with them in a show called the Big Sleep. Funny name for a gig, but it’s supposed to be quite big.”

“Jeez, Da,” Jesse said. “Even I’ve heard of the Big Sleep. It’s going to be huge. More than two thousand people in a field with a gigantic stage that will be especially built for it.”

“Two thousand. Can that be right?” Da asked.

Jesse shrugged. “The same crew did a similar thing last year called the Big Eat. Two thousand expected, but three
thousand turned up. There’s more than one band, and it’s for charity, right?”

Da nodded. “Aaron Rayc said there would be a number of bands. We’ll play one of the last slots before the night winds up. I didn’t realize it would be so big an audience, though. Well, it doesn’t make any difference really.”

“Neo Tokyo are rap, you said,” Jesse commented, reaching out to take Luke from Da. “I didn’t think that was your thing.”

“Rap’s not as attractive as some other music is to me,” Da admitted. “But these Neo Tokyo guys have an interesting approach, and they’re superb musicians.”

I had to ask. “Da, how come Aaron Rayc keeps organizing things for you? I mean, what does he get out of it?”

Da studied my face. “Alyzon, I’m afraid I’ve given you the wrong impression of Aaron Rayc. I had a good talk with him and I realized that he only suggested working with other bands so that I could stretch myself as a musician. He doesn’t get anything out of helping me or anyone else, except that he likes doing it. And that’s a good thing in a world where just about everything is for sale. You know how rare it is that someone like this comes along in the life of a musician? Someone who can really make a difference?”

Make a difference how?
I wanted to ask darkly, but didn’t. “I think he likes manipulating people,” I said rather primly.

Da smiled. “And you think he’s playing chess with me? To what end?”

“Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” I said, thinking of
what Harrison had once said. “Maybe he just likes the power.”

Da shook his head. “Oh, Alyzon, that might be the motivation of a character in a book or in some Hollywood movie, but real people’s motives are far more complex. There are always layers to our decisions and actions that even we can’t read. And think about this: There were artists of all kinds I met during the three days I’ve just done, and none of them had a bad word to say about Aaron. They all talked about how helpful he had been. Many of them only got a break because of him using his influence on their behalf.”

“It sounds too good to be true,” Jesse said.

Da grinned. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides, it wasn’t Aaron’s idea that I do this job. The Neo Tokyo guys asked me off their own bat. Aaron doesn’t really have a lot to do with the Big Sleep. His focus will be on a private invitation-only parallel event. The great thing is that we’ll get paid that night, and the fee will cover Zambia’s gallery opening and leave enough for me to finally get some emergency money socked away.”

“I thought that was what the last gig was for,” I said.

“That money won’t come in for a bit.”

* * *

I barely managed to get to the bus stop in time, and dropped into a seat clutching my side and puffing hard. Serenity had got on, too. I wondered how Mirandah had made the earlier bus, when Serenity had missed it. Maybe she had gone for a
walk. Of course, I couldn’t ask; anyway, she had taken a seat at the very back of the bus. I felt her eyes on me and wished I could just go back and speak with her. But the gulf between us was a great deal more than could be bridged by a walk from one end of the bus to the other.

The school day dragged as if every minute was shaped out of treacle. What made it worse was that Gilly had not come to school again. I wanted to call her at lunchtime, but the class before ended up with a long detention and when I raced to the public phone in the few minutes remaining after ward, I found someone had cut the cord. Then when I got back to school, the hall monitor spotted me, wrote me up for going offgrounds, and gave me a detention. It was that kind of day.

The only good thing was that I managed again to successfully avoid Harlen by hiding shamelessly in classrooms, avoiding the lockers, and taking cover in detention.

* * *

“You’re late,” Harrison said when I arrived at Raoul’s place.

“Detention,” I said wearily. “Is Gilly here?”

“She was here when I got here,” Harrison said, and ushered me to the kitchen, where Gilly and Raoul were sitting with their hands wrapped around mugs of hot chocolate. Gilly looked pale, and her eyes were red.

“Gilly, what’s wrong?” I asked. She got to her feet, and her lovely sea scent enveloped me as she hugged me.

“I couldn’t go today,” she said. “Harrison told me what you think about Harlen and the fire.”

“I felt like she ought tae know,” Harrison said to me apologetically.

“I’m so sorry,” I told Gilly, feeling my eyes prick with tears.

“No!” she said, sniffing hard. “You are not to be sorry, because how could this be your fault? In a way it’s not even Harlen’s fault. It’s this thing inside him. This sickness. That’s the enemy.”

Raoul set his mug down firmly and said, “There is something I need to show you, Alyzon.”

He turned his chair and wheeled out of the kitchen, leaving us to follow him. Gilly and Harrison exchanged puzzled looks that told me they had no idea what we were to see either. Instead of going right to the back of the house, Raoul wheeled through the last door before the end of the hall, into an enormous living room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The only furnishings on the cream-colored tile were two long, pale curves of modular sofa and a big square coffee table made of white wood. On the few bits of wall without books, there were black-and-white photographs of winter-bare trees framed in the same wood as the coffee table. The books and blue cushions set at regular intervals along a deeply recessed windowsill provided the only color in the room. Through the window I could see a Japanese maple growing out of an intricate swirl of bricks.

Raoul had wheeled to a desk set up in the midst of the bookshelves, where there were another computer and a few other pieces of equipment. I went over to stand behind him with the others as he booted up the computer, then turned his chair to look at us. “I received a message from Rayc Inc. this morning, inviting me to an ORBA fund-raising event at the Castledean Estate. I responded by e-mail. Confirmation came back almost at once, with the same logo as on the invitation, and I don’t know why, but I started fiddling to see if I could decode the image.”

He turned back to the screen and opened a file on the desktop, and then we were looking at the digitized logo I had first seen on Aaron Rayc’s card. “Now watch,” Raoul said, and he tapped at the keyboard. “This is a simulation of what I did with the image, without all the dead ends.”

The logo began to shimmer and shiver, the dots moving closer together in tiny rigid jerks, subtly rearranging themselves and overlapping until an image came into focus.

“What is it?” Gilly asked with a grimace of distaste.

“It’s a swastika with yellow snakes,” Harrison said in a stunned voice, and I felt his eyes on my face. “It’s the symbol that was at the back of Serenity’s book, isnae it?”

I nodded. “And supposedly it’s the emblem of a gang in Shaletown. But what does it mean?” I stared at the image on the screen again, feeling stupid with astonishment.

“It’s the sickness,” Gilly said. “It has to be.”

“But Aaron Rayc doesn’t smell of the sickness,” I protested.

“Neither does Sarry,” Raoul reminded me.

“You think Aaron Rayc is infected but fighting it?” I demanded.

Raoul shook his head and said, almost dreamily, “Actually I’ve been thinking in a different direction completely. What would ultimately happen to a person who was infected and didn’t resist? Maybe it’s like when an animal dies and rots. Bacteria begin to break the organism down, and there is an awful stink while that’s happening. But once the process has run its course, there is no smell. In Aaron Rayc’s case he might smell of nothing because there is nothing left to be corrupted. Of course, it’s not a physical sickness, so he doesn’t die. His body and mind go on, but what was essentially him is gone.”

His soul
, I thought.

“And you think he’s trying tae infect her da?” Harrison asked.

Raoul shook his head. “I’d say he’s gone beyond the capacity to infect.”

“Then why is he always coming around?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Alyzon, but try this for a theory. He can’t infect anyone, but he still has the same voracious drive to perpetuate the virus, so his desire to infect evolves or mutates into a desire to enable infection.” He pointed to the logo still glowing on the computer screen. “I decided to check out a hunch once I saw that, and it wasn’t hard to find out that Rayc Inc. owns a printing press in Shaletown.”

“You think he’s printing those books?” Gilly whispered.

“I’d bet my life on it,” Raoul said calmly. “I bet he’s behind them, and the poetry group, which lures in discontented
and spiritually wounded people who might be made vulnerable, somehow, to infection.”

“But how could Aaron Rayc do all that and not know he’s infected?” I asked.

“I think he would know he was infected by this stage, because in a way all that would remain would be the virus in a human receptacle,” Raoul said.