Harmony (55 page)

JANE’S LEGACY:

It no longer seemed so foolish to be circling with a nearly naked grinning little black man on the golden waxed parquet of the music room, a knife poised in my hand. Mark joined us that morning at Mali’s insistence, though he had no knife and refused the loan of Ule’s, even when it was safely shrouded in its plaited grass sheath.

“I don’t, um, trust my hand with a weapon in it.” Mark stroked his palm across his chest. “Too much rage in there.”

“Me too.” Mali spread his own weaponless hands. He gave Mark a cryptic smile. “I knew I’d chosen well.”

“Mali never carries,” Sam explained.

“Two toothless babes!” Ule’s grin turned wolfish with disgust.

Fleetingly I regretted having caved in so easily to wearing a knife. Sam’s fault, my weakness. But I’d grown to like having it there, and that was more disturbing than the little blade itself.

Mark flicked his hair back. “I do have some hand-to-hand training.”

“You do?” I glanced up from my warm-up exercises. Mark was forever proving himself to be other than his surface indicated.

“My, um, father insisted.” He traced the pattern of the parquet with his foot. “Leningrad isn’t quite as orderly as Chicago, G. There was this rash of ransom kidnappings for a while.”

Mali laughed delightedly. “Then this um-father of yours is a very rich man. Very rich or very powerful.” He strutted a little, exactly like Pen. “Mine was Headman of the First Station.”

“Was?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Sorry. Mine too. Was, I mean. He was assassinated by his political enemies. I… was there.”

“So was mine. So was I.” Mali offered his Pied Piper smile. “The pressure they exert, these fathers, ha? Even from the grave.”

Mark’s composure faltered. He dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Enough of this lazing about!” Ule clapped his hands like a ballet master. “To work, ladies, to work!”

Mark’s awkwardness fell away like a discarded garment. He was trained, all right. He was fast and agile, and though he was two years out of practice, he made Ule work to get past his defenses. I was proud of him and glad for another target to share Ule’s banter and screeches and dismay.

“You’re concentrating better,” nodded Sam from the window seat. I leaned against him, panting for breath, as Mark stepped deftly aside of Ule’s howling advance. “Intimidation,” Sam noted, “can be very effective if you’re really convincing. Watch.”

As he said it, Ule sprang up, twisted mid-air in an extraordinary stiff-legged leap, and landed behind Mark, who whirled off balance to meet this attack. Ule stared at him coldly and bared his knife, flipping the sheath away. Mark’s eye instinctively followed the sheath. Ule’s foot shot out. Mark stumbled backward and was on the floor in seconds with Ule’s blade at his throat.

“Ha!” Ule roared.

“See what I mean?” approved Sam.

“I remember.” Ule had humiliated me likewise the morning before, with a lot less effort.

Ule bounced to his feet, hauling Mark up by his elbow. “These puppies think it’s gonna be easy with an old man like me!”

Mark jerked free of him and brushed at his coveralls, though Cora’s floors were never dirty. He combed his hair back brusquely with both hands. “Next time it might be!”

Mali laughed and sidearmed the discarded sheath at his chest. Mark caught it angrily. Then he looked at Mali and his shoulders relaxed. He went over to present the sheath to Ule with a courtly little bow.

“Good lad,” said Ule, and slapped him on the butt with it.

Cris and Tua came in with handfuls of printout from the local public newsbox. “It’s raining like piss out there,” Tua announced.

Ule chuckled. “Must be the Preacher’s stormsongs again.”

I heard the antique doorbell chime in the great-hall. Cora called out casually, “I’m getting it,” as if seven
A
.
M
. were a normal hour for visitors. Mali and Sam lunged out the door after her. “Cora! Be careful!”

Cris spread the damp newsfax across the silky ebony of the grand piano. There in full-color pictures was our Jane crumpled on the marble steps of the South Tower of Town Hall, exactly where we had stood to present the mayor our petition.

“Look at this: the Chat runs a special bold-print headline, ‘Murder in Harmony!’, then gives us all the gory details of the seven other murders committed in town over the past ten years, all crimes of passion.” He grinned at me crookedly. “Jane would be scandalized to know the company she’s keeping.”

I reached for the more sedate and reliable HarmoNet release.

“A new message in the public e-mail,” Mark noted. “V
OTE
N
O TO THE
OAP
OR
W
E
’
LL
P
ICK
T
HEM OFF
O
NE BY
O
NE
.”

“Brilliant,” said Cris. “Sounds just like ’em.”

“Yours?” I asked Tua.

She shrugged amiably.

At the door, Cora said, “Could you all come in here, please?”

Micah was in the great-hall, sitting alone in the middle of the big couch facing the fireplace. His clothes were rain-damp, his shoulders hunched, his hands pressed tightly between his knees. I’d never seen him look so vulnerable and disconsolate. Omea perched on one arm of the sofa while Mali paced, explaining a thing or two.

We slipped in quietly, greeting Micah with our eyes. Songh sat in a corner, looking like he’d cried until morning. Mali moved about with rare unease. I listened carefully for what he was leaving out, which was everything about where Jane had been first deposited and what the Eye had done about it.

“… but she persisted in her delusion,” he was saying, “that one of our company was Latooea, the Conch.”

“Yes.” Micah glanced at me, so weary, so infinitely sad, so old. “I’d heard something of that.”

“It’s possible someone believed her and thought she had information.”

“More likely someone intended her as an object lesson,” Omea put in. “Unstable as she was, poor dear, Jane was easy prey.”

“Yes.” Micah released his hands and sat back limply. “I called the mayor. She’s very upset—asked if Jane had any enemies. I said: yes, the Town of Harmony. I don’t think she understood.” He raised his copy of the morning’s e-mail from the cushion beside him. “ ‘
Pick them off one by one?
’ What kind of monsters are we dealing with?”

“That one’s unsigned,” said Sam. “They’ll deny it.”

“Might be traceable to them,” Tua suggested blandly. “Like all the others.”

Micah straightened. “Traceable?”

Mali explained and my heart went out to Micah. Even he walked innocently into the Eye’s manipulations.

“Cam Brigham?” Micah looked to Cora. When she nodded, his jaw clenched. “Doesn’t he know his damn gallery shows only ex-apprentices?”

“He’s moved a lot of his money into the tourist industry lately. Voting out the Apprenticeship Program would leave him more room for paying customers.” Cora smoothed the pine-dark green of her housedress. “I’d been saving the e-mail connection to use against him in case things get sticky at Town Meeting tonight. It never occurred to me he’d stoop to actual murder.”

“No. Who’d have thought the danger was so… immediate? I’ve been so preoccupied with the show.”

“We share the burden,” Mali said.

“There must be evidence enough to turn him in… ?”

“For sending e-mails? Would you ask the law to curb free speech?”

“Nothing ties him directly to Jane’s murder,” said Mark, the lawyer’s son.

“We can’t let him—”

“Micah.” Mali stopped pacing. “We won’t.”

Micah heaved himself to his feet as if the comforts of Cora’s furniture insulted his agitated state of mind. “To be caught so by surprise, after forty years of actual… well,
harmony
, to lull us into trusting the basic decency of our fellow citizens!”

“Decency!” spat Sam.

“Don’t,” I begged.

Mali was pacing again. “When you raise an entire generation to be sick with fear of the Outside and sanctify in the name of artistic purity the expulsion of all adoptees who don’t perform to standard, you have to expect some perverse definitions of decency!”

Micah regarded him evenly. “Jane’s death will be propaganda for both sides, I see.”

“Better than an anonymous ‘termination,’ ” said Sam.

Micah sighed. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He sighed again, deeply, and dropped his head into his hands.

Omea eased off her perch and settled beside him. “What, Micah?”

“I fear this opening up you will bring us,” he replied hoarsely. “Oh, be careful. It must be a gradual process, or there’ll be chaos at the door once more.”

“There are worse things,” said Mali.

Micah looked up. “Are there?”

“There is the death of the world.” Mali dropped cross-legged to the floor in front of him. “This quarrel is not between us, Micah Cervantes. I am only the messenger and you are a man who listens in spite of himself. I bring the tale of truth and fling it here and there until it falls on fertile ground, someone like you or these children, who will take that truth and act upon it, while I move on to scatter it on other gardens. Micah, I deal in the
what
. The
how
, even the
when
, is up to you.”

FIRST DRESS:

Micah brooded as I paced with him through the rain to the theatre. “He doesn’t know what you did for Jane, keeping her on and all.”

“Ah, Mali’s not short on compassion,” he allowed. “He’s just abnormally long on perspective.”

I picked up the latest Chat from a handy newsbox. It went limp and soggy in my hands. “Here’s the CDL’s denial. Didn’t take them long.” Would Micah feel better or worse knowing how fully the Eye had exploited Jane’s murder, he who so appreciated their manipulations of reality?

The corridors of the Arkadie filled with condolences as we passed through. Fifty-four versions of how-awful-I’m-so-sorry, some of them sincere, most of them only horrified at such a turn of events in their own backyard. We found Howie in the theatre, yelling at Rachel Lamb.

“… I don’t care who he is, he’s using this horror as an excuse to grind his own personal ax! I won’t have him shooting off his mouth in the name of the Arkadie without consulting me!”

Rachel murmured something unintelligible about trustees, hotels, and single ticket sales.

“Fuck him and fuck his goddamn hotels! We’re better off without him!” Howie stopped when he saw us, and Rachel escaped across the stage. “Ah, Christ, Mi, what a thing, eh? Poor little Janie. Still can’t believe it.” He flapped his arms uselessly. “I was telling Gwinny before, it’s time we did a piece about the apprentices. Never thought we’d have something so dramatic to build it on! Just so’s you know, we’re announcing a special apprentice dress this afternoon—over my head trustee’s objections—to make the point that the curfew keeps them from attending evening performances. And we’re rushing out a memorial insert for the program. Betcha we have a full house
this
afternoon.” He raised a clenched fist as he headed up the aisle. “See you at noon. Talk to Kim if you want to add anything to the insert.”

Micah and I traded helpless glances.

“Best way to survive this day is to get on with business,” I declared. I worried about this sudden audience in the afternoon and cursed Cora Lee for refusing a communications hookup. What if Peter triggered the trap before the Eye was ready? I sent Songh off to Lorien with a warning about the apprentice dress, then went about taking care of my notes as if nothing were out of order. When Songh returned, he told me his mother had been at the theatre looking for him. He watched for my reaction.

“She’s worried, of course. She’s thinking it could have been you sprawled on the steps of Town Hall.”