Harmony (63 page)

Beside me, Moussa shook with deep private laughter. The soft whoosh across the carpet was Sam pacing, ranging the edges of the room as Mali would have done.

“Now, at twenty seconds to nine o’clock, the silence out there is deafening… fifteen… ten…”

In the plaza, the gusting winds beat up to a sudden gale. Rain-swept foliage heaved and swayed along the edge of Founders’ Park, waves of green lashing the wet shore of pavement. Umbrellas and jackets tore free and rose like a flock of frightened birds, red and yellow and orange, fleeing toward the zenith.

“Five seconds, citizens, and are we ever glad we’re inside!”

Exactly at nine, the wind died and all the artificials blinked out. Umbrellas and jackets and hats spiraled gently through the slackening rain onto the heads of the crowd. Under the gathering of cloud at its apex, the vast curve of the dome was as transparent as fine crystal, as if it weren’t there at all. The hard line between In and Out melted into clear, bright air. Rays of amber and pink shot lengthwise across the white plaza as Outside, the sun slid along the dark edge of mountains.

“They could have it that way all the time,” Omea sighed.

A rainbow misted into view above the twin towers of Town Hall.

Ule cheered and whalloped Tua on the back. “What finesse!” Tua coughed, then nodded graciously.

The rainbow faded as the rain stopped and the cloud dispersed. The plaza shimmered gold and pink. The dying sun picked out damp jewels in the flowerboxes and etched the faces of the citizenry, who lowered their umbrellas and gazed about, taking great breaths of relief and bewilderment.

“A whiff of jasmine, a tang of orange and ginger,” offered Tua.

“Like home,” Omea smiled. “Well done.”

“Home!” Pen echoed fervently.

“Hullo! What now?”
demanded the commentator. Cries rang out from the plaza. Pointing arms surged skyward like a legion of bayonets. The vidcam panned up sharply. In the furthest heights of the dome, a cloud of darkness circled, now sinking like smoke through the misty golden air. Moussa leaned forward eagerly as the darkness resolved into separate inky specks, wheeling in formation.

Birds. Thousands of birds. Different kinds but all black, flying together, the loon side by side with the raven, the toucan with the crow. They circled above the marble steps, around and around in an edgy symphony of wings, until the crowd backed away and left them room. On the spot where we’d presented our petition, the spot where Jane had lain, the flock landed, turning the white marble to mobile ebony.

I turned to Sam. “How did you… ?”

“Not me. That’s Moussa’s crowd.”

I leaned away from the big African beside me, eyes wide.

“Akeua,” he nodded.

Ule cackled. “And a shitload of bird food.”

The vid commentator’s vocabulary was being sorely tried.
“What a sight! This is unbelievable! This is the most extraordinary…!”

The screen blanked abruptly, then flashed bright blue. The message built letter by letter: H
ARMONY
N
EEDS
D
ISCORD
, white like clouds in…

…
sky!
Yes! The blueness seized me, filled me with the joy of Mali’s gift: the courage to embrace freedom. His gift to me.

Sam mistook my intake of breath. “I know. Mali would have written it better.”

Cora’s hover lifted of at nine-fifteen, joining the end of the caravan gliding toward the Albany-Springfield airport. I stood with Sam at the observation port as the geometric glitter of the landing lights and the red safety beacons atop the Gates and finally the fitful glimmer of the dome itself shrank into darkness.

Leaving Harmony.

“Where are we going?”

“I can’t tell you that. Later, everything.”

“Is this a test?” I asked lightly.

He shifted, eyeing the green-draped walls.

“Even here?” I whispered.

Sam only shrugged.

Leaving Harmony
. But not the Harmony of my childhood dreams. That had been taken from me before I left.

My only regret was not saying good-bye to Micah. I hoped he’d understand as he always seemed to, that Cris and Songh could keep the studio running properly without me, without Jane, with the SecondGens who were to be Micah’s new help. That was the agenda, after all. Train the home folk, see if they can do the job. See if all that foreign talent can be done without.

They’d manage. Competently, earnestly, mostly without inspiration but always adequately enough to satisfy those to whom Art was a foolish luxury. No matter what Sean said about reviewing the OAP, I knew my generation of apprentices was Harmony’s last. Oh, Crispin would be famous very soon, I was sure of that, but from now on, Harmony’s younger artists would know nothing but Harmony. At least the adoptees knew their birth-domes. We had all been, at least once, Outside. In time, the work coming out of Harmony would have reference only to itself. It would be rarefied and insular. I did not weep for three years wasted as the lights of the dome were swallowed by the night. I was grateful to get out with my creativity intact.

Ahead of us, the slow-moving curl of red and blue running lights banked toward the south. When our craft slowed and quietly dropped off the end of the caravan, I realized we weren’t going to the airport. We veered off into the void without beacons to guide us. I glanced at Sam but held my tongue. He was absorbed in the darkness beyond the port. Now that I was there beside him, he’d put me from his mind entirely.

He wouldn’t sit. Between long vigils at the port, he paced the little lounge as if struggling with a particularly thorny problem, which I interpreted as how he should negotiate the chasm of grief that confronted him no matter how hard he tried to avoid it through withdrawal or outrun it by endless circling of the room. Finally Omea wheeled in the onboard first-aid module and made him sit long enough to have his bandages changed.

The shoulder wound was a nasty laser tear-and-burn. Omea probed and swabbed, and it hurt to watch Sam lean eagerly into the pain, welcoming the distraction of a bodily agony. He seemed disappointed when she finished quickly, and refused the painkiller she offered.

“You’re worrying too hard,” she soothed.

Sam grunted.

“Should have given Jaeck time to work you over more thoroughly.”

“I was busy.”

“Moussa’s putting food together in the galley,” she said as she repacked the module. I doubted Sam could be convinced to eat, but I’d had only a meager hospital meal since the night before. I thought of Jane and her pragmatic refusal ever to miss a meal, just in case. I took Omea’s hint and went forward.

The galley was tiny, silvery, and compact. Moussa filled it entirely. He had every cabinet open and all four cookers going. With severely limited counter space, he was creating an elaborate casserole of eggplant, tomatoes, cheese, and spices. He laid out each vegetable as if preparing it for ritual sacrifice, slicing and dicing and setting the pieces aside with slow, frowning concentration. Filling the unfillable emptiness, I thought as I watched from the doorway.

“How is he?” Moussa asked after a while.

“Oh, very bad, I think. How’s everyone else?”

He laid out a fat, ripe tomato and quartered it precisely. “This is… is…”

“Difficult.” Ule squeezed in to snatch away a whole tomato, biting into it as if it were an apple. “You going to cook up everything in the kitchen?”

Moussa shrugged.

“You think that’s what he’d want?” Ule growled in disgust. “Us moping about meanwhile?” He hooked my elbow and hauled me into the main cabin, where the deep-cushioned seats were arrayed in neat rectangles around low teak tables, more like a fancy waiting room than an aircraft. The seats reclined into beds. Pen was stretched out flat, Tuli cradled in his arms. Tua dozed, curled into a feline ball. Lucienne and Te-Cucularit talked quietly in a corner. Cu looked up, frowned, and looked away. Maybe it was me he was angry with. For coming? For being here when Mali wasn’t?

Ule shook me gruffly. “Proud of you, ladykins. You used it when you had to.”

Mark was sitting by himself, staring into space. Mark, the tenth. Mali’s chosen heir. I dropped into the chair next to him. “Yeah, great. I lasted about six seconds.”

“Long enough. Would’ve been two down, otherwise.”

Ah. Could I have saved Mali, then, if I’d moved faster, if I’d seen Peter sooner? If? If? I glanced toward the curtained doorway with new understanding of at least one of the tortures Sam was putting himself through in there.

“What happened after I… went out?”

Ule perched on the edge of the chair opposite me, his bony knees up around his ears. “Well, you slowed the kid down real well but you didn’t exactly stop him, and we already had enough cleanup to do and Sam was moving a little slow, so Cu finished the job with those good hands of his, then dumped him while Sam and I made Mali invisible and wiped up the gore.”

“I used you to distract the stage crew,” murmured Mark.

“And then took Mali’s call with the rest of us.” Ule clicked his teeth appreciatively. “Mali was right under their noses all the while they were fussing over you.”

And the elephant vanishes
. I rubbed my eyes. “Dumped him?”

A malicious mischief glimmered in Ule’s dark eyes. “The protein tanks out at the recycling station may smell a little peculiar for a few days.”

My stomach knotted, turned over. The hover shivered in a gust, dropped, and settled. “And Mali?” I whispered hoarsely.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

I didn’t understand. “But why, Ule? Why the cover-up? Why not tell the world what happened? They suspect it anyway.” I pulled the damp and crumpled newsfax from my pocket and pushed it at him miserably. “Why not wipe their noses in it? Jane’s murder was useful but Mali’s isn’t?”

They were both staring at me, Ule’s eyes narrowing as if I’d confirmed some suspicion. He took the fax and spread it out on the table top. The polished teak was inlaid with colored woods in an elaborate pattern of leaves and flowers.

“Is he or isn’t he?” A cold grin curled Ule’s lips. “A very excellent question.”

Mark glanced away. “Ule—”

“Hush, boy. He’ll have his reasons.” Ule turned back, crushing the fax under my nose. “You see how the media can tame a man? Dead or even wounded, he’s mortal, measurable, a mere witty headline, his cause made trivial by gossip and the gory details. But alive, alive despite all, he’s a mystery and a miracle.”

He leaned forward, fierce and dark and quiet, his arms braced on the low table as if to hold himself back. “Understand, ladykins. The Eye must seem always to walk through the fire unscathed. That is more important for those who hold faith in us than any amount of useless raging at a world seeking to kill us off. For them, Mali will live, must live.”

I saw again the scrawny Outsider arms stretching to the touch of Te-Cucularit’s fingertips, sooty lips mouthing a soundless litany.

“Latooea,” I murmured. It was suddenly so obvious. Why must a hero be one when ten could do it so much better?

“Aye, ladykins. Walking the Stations of the World, to save its life.” He touched the carved bead at my throat, grinning. “Latooea’s totem. You’ve been wearing it all along.”

“But they keep your secret, the Outsiders?”

“It’s their secret. Besides, who in the world of domes cares what an Outsider knows? Only gets sticky on Tuatua, where the two worlds interface.”

“Somebody knew enough to come after you in Harmony.”

“The Planters’ Association has tribal informants. But if they knew the full truth, they wouldn’t be trying to pick us off one by one. You see, they can’t imagine a leader that isn’t the one they’d like themselves to be, a single all-powerful individual. And then there’s the suspicion that nags even the coolest heads among them: that the Conch
is
magic. That is their nightmare, for if the Conch is magic, how shall they prevail? Thus we steal their hope, eat at their confidence, leave them sleepless in a cold sweat, wondering as you wondered when we danced into your life:
Is it really magic? Could it really be?
A knife is a fine weapon, yes, but our fists around their very hearts, that is power.” Ule glanced at the silent, brooding Mark, then peered at me as if to be sure I was listening. “We do anything to nourish the magic.
Anything
. Remember that, ladykins.

Hovers are slow, and ours flew a lazy, random pattern of evasion before it finally began its descent. I knew we could have been at our destination hours before were it not so important to keep its location secret. If even Cora’s hover was bugged, as Sam seemed to fear, couldn’t they find us anyway?

There was no baggage to gather. I’d come empty-handed, without even my own coverall. The Eye had brought nothing, either, except their tourist outfits and whatever they had on under, and there was no hidden baggage compartment in Cora’s elegant craft, where extra hydrogen tanks must be taking up the entire space below decks. This hover only looked like a lady’s airport shuttlecar: it was built for long distances and its galley was stocked to feed a small army. Cora Lee was a lady of power and surprises. I considered her public association with Outsider charities and wondered what other activities her philanthropy hid.

We came down in darkness, floating out of black sky to be swallowed up in blacker land. Sam was at the front hatch before the rotors cut out, leaning into the blue-lit cockpit. “Contact?”

“On the mark,” the pilot replied. “Ready and waiting.”

“Let’s make it fast.” Sam palmed a wall plate and the cabin lights dimmed. The Eye became mere shadows clustering in the close, warm darkness as the whine of the fans died into silence and the faint vibration of the floor stilled. The hatch swung open and upward. The Outside night came rushing in.

It was the sound at first. Not just the occasional night-calling bird and an insect or two, but a bewildering variety, all of them screaming at the top of their lungs. Uncontrolled populations of who-knew-what kind of mutated owl or cricket or frog.

And the smell. I shrank against Mark as we both stared into the singing, odoriferous void on the other side of the hatch, asking ourselves,
Is it really safe to breathe
?