Harmony (54 page)

“You want to let it blow?” Cris whispered.

Sam ignored him. “All that with one perfectly timed coup.”

Mali wagged his head slowly from side to side.

“It’s beautiful, Mal—”

“Does this theatre really deserve it?”

Sam jerked his thumb at me. “No one but these kids and Micah are pulling in our direction around here! We do our play as brilliantly as we know how, this town still won’t give a damn. But this would get their attention!”

“This is an artists’ town, Sam. Better to reach them as artists.”

“Was an artists’ town.”

“You’d really let it blow?” Cris was grinning. “Wow.”

I was horrified. “They can’t do that!”

“Make it look like, he means. That is dynamic! That is great!” Cris did his little warrior dance among the pipe legs and cable loops. “That’s what the Conch would do! It’ll be tomorrow, won’t it? There’s an audience for the open dress and—”

“Get him out of here,” Sam snarled at me.

“Don’t blame the boy.” Mali shut his eyes resignedly. “Where has he had a chance to learn any better?”

“When has he shown any sign of wanting to?”

“We put it to the others,” Mali said firmly, “before we do anything.”

Sam nodded, reluctant, but Mali was his final authority, however vehemently he argued. “Either way, we can’t leave it like it is.”

A dip into some dark recess of his jumpsuit produced a small screwdriver and a pair of wire cutters. Peter’s tool belt jangled in my mind. I marveled that Sam could move so silently with all the equipment he carried, or at least could produce on a moment’s notice. He scissored the cutters like jaws. “Our pal Reilly might stumble into it in the morning and get himself squashed like a bug. Unless of course he knows what to avoid.”

“No,” I said, even though I had to consider the possibility, after that scene in Sean’s office.

“Not impossible,” he countered. “In fact, it’s very likely.”

“No,” I repeated. Not Sean. Not like this.

“Well,” said Sam, “we’ll see, won’t we?”

JANE:

Walking back to Cora’s, I lagged behind. I studied the dark trees. I read a poster, hastily printed, hastily tacked to some citizen’s bamboo fence. It read: Do W
E
O
WE
T
HEM THE
F
UTURE
O
UR
O
WN
C
HILDREN
D
ESERVE
? I didn’t bother with the small print.

Finally Sam slowed to walk beside me, hands clasped behind his back. “There’s a chill in the air. Disapproval, is it?”

“It’s horrifying, what you’re suggesting.”

“More horrifying than Mali in pieces all over the theatre?”

I moaned and he put his arm around me. “Think of it as just another magic trick—the stuff I do so well.”

“But, Sam, with all those people watching? They’ll think—”

“Right. Maybe they
will
think for a change. Like, if this is the sort of thing the CDL will do, endangering innocent lives to get at somebody, maybe they don’t want to support ’em after all. Rhys, we have to take the offensive now and then, when the opportunity presents itself. Retreat is pointless. We had hoped for a bit of a break here but…” He shook his head, rueful and determined. “There’s no safe haven when you wear your politics on your sleeve.”

“Not even on Tuatua?”

“Especially not on Tuatua. Why do you think we tour so much?”

“What about Outside?” I challenged.

Sam laughed. “Outside, yes. Here or there amidst the chaos, a place of refuge.” He grasped the back of my neck and rocked me gently. “You do want to hear about it after all.”

I leaned into his side, missing him already.

“There’s one spot I’d take you to.” He let his head loll back as we walked. His voice eased softened. He was somewhere else. “A bit of gardener’s sun in the deep north woods, warm tight homes dug into the ground. We’d wake at dawn and make love beneath a waterfall still pure enough to drink.”

“How romantic,” I grumbled, while my heart cried out for such a place, as I had once cried out for Harmony.

Sam pushed me away. “You see? You’re just like the Planter. I offer my most precious secrets and you won’t for one minute consider that they might be true.”

“You understand why, or you wouldn’t be able to play him so well.”

“I understand him better, watching you. You’d never walk out there willingly, no matter what secrets are revealed to you.”

I thought: I might, if you asked me. “Sam, each time I decide to believe you, the tale gets wilder. Gardens and waterfalls?”

He gathered up my hand, pulled me back to him. “And I’ve only just begun. Imagine that.”

* * *

My next lesson in real-world politics came when the debate over how to respond to the sabotage in the trap barely touched on the morality of terrifying a theatre full of innocent people. Discussion concentrated on the potential advantage to the Station Clans’ cause and whether the coup could be pulled off without risk to Mali.

Omea, like Mali, preferred the persuasive potential of the play itself. Te-Cucularit agreed decisively, then left the room.

“We can have both,” Tua pointed out. “We do the thing, make a splash, then play our run. What’s the problem?”

“It’s good, clean work,” Sam allowed. “Once I hook our deal to his wire, we can trust it not to blow until he triggers it.”

“With the remote,” I murmured.

He nodded. “I’ve disconnected the explosive. Left everything else in place. I’ll rig some lively fireworks to work off his signal. The rest is just good acting.”

I was worried about Mali. “What if he comes back and fixes it?”

“We keep an eye out for that,” Sam returned irritably.

“It could be,” said Moussa, “sublimely spectacular.”

“It’s cruel to make people think someone’s dead when they’re not!” Songh protested.

Tua stretched her bare legs languidly. “Isn’t that what we hope we’ve done when the lights come up anyway?”

“That’s different! That’s a play!”

Sam said, “And this is its new third act.”

I kept out of it until the decision had been made. “Can I tell Micah? He’d die if he ever thought…”

“Let me,” said Mali gently. “Micah will understand.”

* * *

The gate alarm woke us at four. The insistent trilling rushed around me like a cold torrent. In my sleep-logged state, I thought the house itself was screaming at me.

The alarm stopped. I reached, felt empty bed. “Sam? Sam!”

“Hush! Here.” He moved away from the windows, a lithe shadow against the lighted trees in the courtyard. He tossed a robe that settled on me like a deeper night. I struggled with it in momentary panic, then threw it on, and met him at the bedroom door.

“Did you see anything?”

“No. Come on.”

We met Ule and Lucienne in the dark hallway, gliding silently toward the staircase. Tua joined us at the top step. Eyes and hands and heads did all the talking. At the bottom of the stairs Ule slipped off toward the kitchen, Tua to the music room, Lucienne to the dining room. Sam and I moved into the vast darkness of the great-hall just as Moussa and Mali padded down the stairs behind us.

Moussa slid open the tapestry drapes to let in light from the courtyard. The heavy brass rings made a sound like a cello along the rod. Nothing seemed out of order. Cushions littered the stones in front of the fireplace just as Tuli and Lucienne had left them. Pen snored obliviously on the sofa, covered with one of Cora’s handwoven pictorial throws. Sam signaled Moussa to the front entry. Much too soon Moussa was back, waving us to him.

We followed quickly down the stone steps to peer through the single diamond of glass set in the thick wooden door. The drawbridge was serene in the soft light from the wrought-iron lantern. A big pile of blue rags had been tossed against the gate.

“That set it off.” Moussa put his hand to the door, hesitating.

“Easy target out there,” said Sam.

“Got to chance it.” Moussa eased the door open and ventured onto the drawbridge.

“Stay here,” Sam told me.

“No.”

I shadowed him across the wooden planking. The black water in the moat was a perfect mirror. The grove beyond the gate was still and dark. Moussa unlatched the gate and let it swing toward him. The bundle of cloth fell inward to the ground. The bundle was a woman, lying on her face, limp and mud-stained. I recognized the curly hair.

“Jane! It’s Jane!”

Sam pushed me back. Mali grabbed my shoulder.

Moussa knelt and turned her over gently. Her eyes were open, staring oddly.

Mali called behind him, “Get Omea. Hurry.”

Moussa put a hand to Jane’s neck, then shook his head. Sam made a soft sound of dismay and crouched beside him.

My step backward brought me hard against the rocky cliff of Mali’s chest. “Call Security! Get the ambulance!” I turned to race into the house but his arms closed around me.

“Too late. Rest easy now.”

Sam looked to Mali. “Omea?”

“Sent for.”

Sam drew his fingers across Jane’s face. With her eyes closed, she looked asleep and I thought they must all be wrong.

“Think there’s a chance?” Moussa asked.

“No.” Sam studied the darkness between the trees. “But cause and time might tell us what we’re up against.”

“Pretty badly roughed up.”

“Yeah.”

Moussa rose, for once moving heavily like the big man he was. On his way into the house he stopped to touch his palm to my cheek. He had tears in his eyes.

“She’s really… dead?”

“I’m sorry,” he replied, moving away.

Sam joined us in the middle of the drawbridge. He did not look at me. Mali did not relax the tight circle of his arms. I felt like a child among adults.

“A death like this should not go wasted,” said Mali.

“It won’t,” said Sam.

Omea came down, in a silent flurry of filmy cotton. She bunched the full sleeves of her robe around her shoulders and sank to her knees beside Jane. She laid her cheek against the pallid face, her hands upon the still chest. Doubled up over the body, she stayed that way for long minutes. Then she sat up and drew away. “Dead too long and died too hard. I can do nothing here.”

Sam walked me back to the house. Mark stood at the top of the entry stairs. “Is it true?”

“Yes,” said Sam curtly. He pushed me at Mark and went upstairs.

He came down shortly with Moussa, Cu, and Tua. All of them had changed into loose, dark clothing. They left without saying a word. Mark and I huddled together on the sofa in front of the fireplace, our arms around each other.

Omea came in. “I think you should wake the others.”

When Cris and Songh had joined us, dazed from broken sleep and shock, Omea began to talk. She told us about her husband, Seluk, founding member of the Eye and Mali’s older brother. She told us every detail of his murder by a plantation owner for unionizing the field hands. She told us of Tua’s father, Bez, a rare Station Clans representative in the Tuatuan parliament, recently the victim of a convenient farming accident, and how Tua had joined the Eye in her brother’s place when he was elected to his father’s vacated seat. She spoke about death and the need to give it a healing purpose, until our numbness had eased and we could speak to each other. As Mark began to talk about Bela, Omea slipped off into the kitchen and came back with steaming mugs of one of her soothing teas.

“Drink up and no refusals,” she smiled sadly.

“I’m going to get the people who did this,” declared Songh, “if it takes my whole life.”

Nobody mocked him, not even Cris.

Exhausted, lulled by Omea’s infusion, I laid my head on Mark’s shoulder and fell asleep.

* * *

Sam woke me later and led me upstairs to bed. He was cold and damp. I pressed myself against him to warm him.

“You’ve been running.”

“Just for the exercise.”

The chill of his skin made me think of Jane, and I shivered beneath the quilt, even though I was warm and dry. “I’m scared, Sam, really scared.”

“More than when the soccer boys were after you?”

“That was scared for the moment. This is scared about forever. What’s going to become of me?”

“Right now I’m going to make sweet, sweet love to you.”

“What do I do tomorrow, or the next day, or next year… even if they do vote in our favor? How can I go on as if nothing happened? I can’t trust this place ever again.”

Sam warmed his hands against the small of my back, smoothed them along my thigh. “Not an unusual lesson to learn in this world.”

“Why Jane?” I couldn’t bear the thought of how bad her last hours must have been. “Who would have done… such a thing?”

“I have my list of candidates.” He bent his lips to my throat, kissed my breasts, but I was restless, wound like a spring.

“What did you do with her?”

“Don’t talk about it now.”

“But I have to!” At last the tears came, for Jane, for myself and my uncertain future, for the day Sam would be gone, even a little for my mismatch with Crispin, and for all the losses we’d talked about that evening: Seluk, Bez, our friend and colleague Bela. My belief in Harmony. My innocence. All the weeping I hadn’t done, rushing me in waves like the tide.

“Ah, Rhys, don’t…” Sam left off his lovemaking and gathered me up as tenderly as a parent. “You’re safe, no matter what. I promise.”

HARMONET/NEWS