The Far Shores (The Central Series) (38 page)

“Hazard of the trade.”

“Indeed.” Karim returned
to the table with the empty cups and the kettle, and sat opposite to Alice.
With long, restless fingers he took an envelope of tobacco from his breast
pocket, along with a packet of rolling papers and a wax paper–wrapped nugget of
fragrant hashish. “Do you smoke?”

“That’s up for debate.”

He laughed again.

“I see. And which way do
you lean at the moment?”

“I’ll pass.”

“Do you mind if I do?”

“Oh, it’s your house,”
Alice said, folding her hands behind her head and leaning back on the rear legs
of the chair. “Just act like I’m not here.”

“I find that impossible,”
he said, adding a generous pinch of dried tobacco to a folded paper. “As I
would assume most would.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Surely. Tell me – how
has Central fared since my exile?”

“We’ve held things
together somehow. Never seem to lack for excitement, I’ll say that much. When
the cartels aren’t at each other’s throats, we have Witches and Anathema to
cope with. Keeps life interesting.”

“All the more so,” Karim
observed, heating a piece of hashish with a disposable lighter and then
breaking it into a number of small pieces by crushing it between his thumb and
forefinger, carefully sprinkling the fragments onto the tobacco, “from the
perspective of an Auditor. I have heard of your promotion, by the way.
Congratulations.”

“Thanks. That dovetails
rather nicely into what I intended to discuss with you, as a matter of fact – a
change in perspective. Tired of watching things from the outside?”

Karim laughed, but the
humor was gone. He licked one side of the paper, then deftly tucked the other
edge of the paper beneath and completed the rolling of the cigarette with one
quick movement. Then he set it aside and poured tea into both of the cups,
pushing one across the table to Alice. He lit the cigarette, sipped his tea,
and gave Alice a rather lingering look up and down. She let it slide. From
Karim, it didn’t bother her one bit. If it hadn’t been for Mikey’s easily hurt
feelings...ah, but better not to think about it. They had been down that road
before, and it ended in heartbreak.

“Tired of living in a
desert, shooting bandits and jihadists for pitiful bounties? Tired of living
amongst Muslims, tired of the heat? How could one ever grow tired of such
things?”

“Ouch. C’mon, Karim,
that’s no way to talk about your country. Besides, aren’t you Muslim yourself?”

“Your diaries are not as
thorough as I imagined, or you did not know me as well as I had hoped,” Karim
said, with a sly grin and a mouthful of smoke. “My parents were Yazidi, before
they died, and I am grateful to be nothing at all, thanks to a secular
education and the corrupting influences of television and Western music. And
this is hardly my country. We moved to Germany when I was a child. But to
answer your question,” he said, pausing to sip at the weak black tea, “I miss
Central profoundly. Every single day. I have often contemplated whether it
might have been kinder to simply kill me, rather than restricting my protocol
and exiling me to wander this mundane world. I feel as though I am a blind man
with distant memories of sight, living amongst those blind from birth.”

“Then I think you will
be very pleased to hear what I’ve come to say.”

“Either you have come to
kill me, or to tell me that my punishment has been remitted, and I am allowed
to return. Either would please me, Alice.”

“Oh, I can do better
than that, Karim.” Alice said, leaning forward to pick up her tea with a grin. “How’d
you like to try being The Man?”

***

Eerie proved adept at seizing his
hand when no one was looking, while always managing to let go before Dr. Graaf or
Rebecca Levy noticed. After the first few times, he stopped worrying, wrote it
off as another oddity of dating a Changeling, and focused on the way her small
hand felt entangled in his own.

Katya noticed, of course
– he got the feeling that she never really stopped watching him – but she
didn’t do anything besides making faces and the occasional discreet gagging
noise.

The tour was dull and
circumspect, but for Alex it passed in a blur of sensation and contact,
punctuated with meaningful glances into the twin reflective moons that served
Eerie as eyes, wondering if there were golden motes swirling invisibly
somewhere in that darkness. Watching Eerie walk carefully, each step deliberate
and measured to combat her internal turmoil, Alex wondered when she would
become the woman he had met briefly at the tail end of their recent date, if
she would still like him when that happened, if she would still evoke this
elation in him with something as subtle as a look or a gesture. He felt dazed
and enchanted, as if his feet weren’t quite touching the ground, embarrassingly
sweaty, giddy with a defocused sort of excitement.

Residential buildings,
laboratories, research facilities, and vast analog libraries passed him by
without notice or context. Occasionally he caught Rebecca glaring at him from
behind her perpetual cigarette, but he decided not to let that worry him. Alex
felt that he achieved a sort of détente with Rebecca during their recent
sessions, and as long as she was content to allow him a reasonable amount of
discretion, then he was comfortable with an equally reasonable amount of
cautious observation. He wouldn’t have trusted himself in her shoes, after all.

Dr. Graaf had a rapt
audience in Vivik, who peppered him with questions about matters either too
arcane or mundane to interest Alex in the slightest. He felt – not for the
first time – that perhaps they should have switched places – his Sikh friend
was far better suited to take advantage of the academic and philosophical
resources available at the Far Shores, and Alex was pretty sure that he could
have gotten with Eerie by now if he was at the Academy more often. As usual,
however, no one seemed interested in soliciting his opinion.

Eerie seemed equally
disinterested in the facilities of the Far Shores, though it was always a
little hard to tell with her. She would brush blue hair from her eyes and stare
at what Dr. Graaf pointed at with the same blank expression that she offered to
virtually everything, blinking with such rarity that Alex’s eyes ached in sympathy.
After the first half hour of agreeable follow-the-leader across the campus of
the Far Shores, Alex started to suspect that Dr. Graaf – while perfectly ready
to engage with Vivik’s enthusiasm – was primarily curious as to the
Changeling’s reactions. Alex moved closer to her by reflex, an action Eerie
interpreted as affectionate, rather than defensive. He wasn’t exactly creeped
out by the attention Dr. Graaf paid to Eerie, but Alex felt a vague sense of
unease when the Belgian doctor’s gaze rested on her a moment too long.

Her indifference was
universal, until Dr. Graaf led them out a back door from the Meteorology
building and onto the beach, not far from the spot where Katya and Alex had
disturbed the arcane night experiments conducted at the Far Shores. Alex didn’t
notice the change immediately, as his attention was turned to the welfare of
his relatively new Adidas, which sank in the gritty, wet sand that threatened
to mar the perfection of their suede exterior. He winced and tried to figure
out a way to walk that would spare his sneakers any possible disfigurement,
taking several steps before he noticed that Eerie had stopped directly outside
the door and stood stock still, trapping Rebecca and Katya in the building. Her
eyes dilated to the point that only millimeters of white showed around the
edges, and her posture went rigid, her mouth forming words but emitting no
sound. Alex hurried back to her, ignoring the puzzled women behind her and the
equally baffled stares from Vivik and Dr. Graaf, and took one of her stiff
hands in his own.

“Eerie, are you okay? Is
something wrong?”

Her head made the most
minimal possible gesture of negation.

“Wrong? No.
It’s…beautiful.”

Alex glanced out at the
beach and the sea of Ether beyond it, wondering if something had changed since
the last time he had been here. It was the same as he remembered – grey sand
beneath a dull sky, matching the null color of the Ether so closely that it was
difficult to pick out the horizon line. He turned back to Eerie, struck by the
contrast between the landscape and her own colorful knitted sweater, blue hair,
and striped blue-and-green knee socks, and wondered what appeal she found in
such a monochrome vista.

Dr. Graaf approached
quietly, hovering a meter back from Alex, as he slowly coaxed Eerie away from
the door, allowing a concerned Rebecca and miffed Katya to follow them out.

“Is this the first time
you have seen it, Miss…?” Dr. Graaf’s voice was gently interrogative.

“Eerie,” she replied
softly. “Not Miss. Just Eerie.”

“As you wish,” Dr. Graaf
agreed, gesturing at the grey panorama behind him. “Is this your first time
seeing the sea of Ether?”

Eerie’s eyes never
wavered from the horizon, and if Alex hadn’t been there to hold her hand and
aid her progress, he got the feeling that she might have fallen to the sand.

“I am not sure.” Her
reply was a musical whisper, barely audible above the renewed fury of the wind.
“I do not think so.”

“Ah, is that so?” Dr.
Graaf seemed to find nothing unusual in her response. “It’s vastness is startling,
though, is it not? Today it appears rather still, though our research confirms
that the currents beneath the surface remain more or less constant. The Ether’s
appearance seems to fluctuate, though on what basis we remain uncertain.”

Eerie took one hesitant
step toward the shoreline, then another. Alex was startled to notice that she
left behind no visible imprint on the sand, in stark contrast to the indentions
he left behind, centimeters deep and already filling with water that welled up
from beneath the sand.

“I feel it.” Eerie spoke
so quietly that Alex wasn’t sure any of the others heard, though Dr. Graaf
hovered close enough to make it a possibility. “Can’t you? It’s almost as if…as
if it recognizes me.”

“Eerie…”

“You are not the first
to make that observation,” Dr. Graaf interjected in a hushed voice, as if he
feared waking the Changeling from sleep. “Though not in those words. There are
empaths at the Far Shores that insist that the Ether is, in some sense, alive.”

“I don’t get that at
all,” Rebecca Levy frowned, coming to stand just behind Eerie. “I don’t sense
any emotion whatsoever.”

“That isn’t it,” Eerie
said, continuing her slow progress toward the Ether. “That isn’t it at all. It
is so much
more
than that.”

“Fascinating,” Dr. Graaf
murmured. “Can you explain, child?”

“We are all children
beside it,” Eerie hummed, turning her attention briefly to Alex, who did his
best to smile. “Can you hear it, Alex?”

He paused and strained
to hear anything besides the wind, but there was nothing. He shook his head
reluctantly.

“No,” Alex admitted. “I
can’t hear anything.”

“But you believe me?”

“Of course,” Alex said,
shrugging. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Eerie smiled and touched
his cheek with her fingertips.

“You’re so good. No one
ever believes me.”

Alex blushed and mumbled
something inarticulate, while Eerie’s gaze returned to the horizon.

“Oh, spare me,” Katya
muttered.

“Shut up,” Rebecca
commanded. “Something is…”

The wind gusted with a
sudden force that sprayed them with grit and tore at their coats. Eerie wobbled
unsteadily, and Alex grabbed her arm with both hands to keep her from falling.
His hat was already tumbling across the sand before he realized that it had
been blown from his head. The whole group watched as the wind tugged it rapidly
toward the Ether.

“Oh, fuck,” Alex moaned.
“That sucks.”

He grabbed the top of
his head with one hand by belated reflex. He could only watch in dismay as the
knit cap sailed above the placid surface of the Ether, hovering a few meters
out from where the sand ended. Alex turned to apologize to Eerie, but she
brushed his hands away.

“One second.”

She was gone, running
clumsily across the sand before he could lunge for her.

Alex stumbled after her,
the wet sand slowing him, but Dr. Graaf seized him by the shoulders with surprising
strength and brought him to a halt.

“Careful,” he
admonished. “Contact with Ether is inadvisable at best.”

“Eerie!” Rebecca yelled,
cupping her hand around her mouth. “Get back here right now! Don’t you dare…”

“Don’t, Eerie!” Vivik
called after her. “It’s dangerous!”

Eerie paid them no mind,
charging after the lost hat with one hand extended, as if she could recall it
by gesture. Alex tried to shake free of Dr. Graaf, but his grip remained
stubborn.

They all fell silent as
Eerie bounded from the edge of the sand, one red sneaker resting on the shore,
the other hovering over the still surface of the Ether.