Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 17 / Chapter 19 –>

On Thursday or whatever the locals call it, Ray rises late, having slept for hours. Too many hours, really, paying back the checks against he has written against his body in recent days. He wakes in the early afternoon with the heat of the sun on his face and sweat in his hair, in his eyes, coating his limbs like oil. And he remembers what it used to be like, before boot camp, before the desert, when he was still in high school. Late summer, when the whole world smelled of sweet corn and sycamore leaves and stuck in his nose because of the humidity. When the only thing on his mind was finding a way to get laid. In those days, he’d lie in bed for half an hour or more, slowly circling toward wakefulness, maybe spend a few minutes imagining plausible scenarios in which the lovely and libidinous Sarah Ferguson would burst into his room now. Or now. Or now. (It never seemed to work.) Burst in and confess not so much her undying love as her immodest demand for instant sexual gratification. Sarah Ferguson still remains his all time jerk off queen if judged by quantity.

Time changes everything. Time and age. Today when he wakes late, all he can think about is the lost hours, wasted productivity, murderers, and shed and all the things he learned. Everything he has yet to do.

These are the things that get grown men out of bed, and he hates it. Hates it, but throws off the blankets, groans past his assorted aches and stitches and bullet tracks, jumps into the shower. Even when he emerges, dripping fat diamonds of cool and pungent New Holyoke water, he still feels muzzy, dense, exhausted. He locates fresh clothes in one of the dressers, heavy khaki pants and a linen shirt that looks like something only the most jingoistic of tourists would consider fashionable. He makes a mental note to have Emma take away Jagiri’s cred chip, if they even use cred chips around here. Jagiri is abusing his power. Jagiri’s fashion sense has decided to use his talents for evil. This much is clear.

Downstairs, he makes a lunch of cold cereal, a can of peanuts, a pot of coffee, and finds a note on the table from Emma inviting him up to the manor house whenever he decided to drag his lazy carcass out of bed. He wonders why she didn’t just wake him when she was here, and why it does not freak him out that someone had been rattling around the guest cottage while he was upstairs, unconscious, without having locked the door to his room. Wonders if he would be any more freaked out if that person had not been Emma, and why a distinction would exist in the first place.

These are things he should have thought about before, that he hasn’t allowed himself to consider adequately. Because on Paraclete, he was too busy trying to implicate her brother in a murder, too busy just experiencing her, fascinating himself with the curious and unique patterns of her newness. Exploring her with a bizarre sense of déjà vu that he still does not properly understand.

And now, his head is too full of other thoughts supplied by Thomas Malcolm and Townshend Wright and Colonel Ritchie. Concepts that struggle mightily to shake the foundations of everything he has thought he knew.

Last night, after he’d come home, he burned a couple of hours around midnight scaling the Port Authority net for updates on the salvage operation. There was nothing new. EED hadn’t recovered the data core yet, or if they had, they hadn’t dumped it anywhere on the network for detailed analysis. He doubts that they will. Amah wouldn’t have promised him there would be no proof of Frederick’s savagery if she couldn’t make good on it. It wouldn’t even do him any good to raise hell with Colonel Ritchie about it, because the data belongs to PA, even if the hardware is EED. Ritchie had taken the time to send him an encrypted personal message explaining as much. That he’d do what he could, pull some strings, but he was really as much at the mercy of the Port Authority’s political apparatus as Ray was. It’s one of those ancient and hoary cooperative treaty deals, something that must have made perfect sense at the time it was signed, when powers and responsibilities were being divided in such a way as to give all sides the illusion that they had a thumb in all possible pies without trying to look like anyone was keeping any pies all to themselves.

And Ray got the distinct impression that he wasn’t interested in trying very hard, that he would prefer to save the egregious throwing of his weight around for opportunities that more directly benefited the EED.

Ray doesn’t care. The lost case file he and Rodriguez and Kilgore had constructed would have been nice, but he doesn’t need it anymore. No one is going to prosecute Frederick Whiston. Amah was right about that, too.

And murdering Micah Uytedehaage was the least of his sins.

Just one of thousands, tens of thousands.

Certainly, the other crimes weren’t as intimate, as personal as troweling out the viscera of the victim with your own two hands, but Frederick was just as responsible for the many as for the one. Collusion made him responsible, even if he hadn’t necessarily been the one to pull the trigger.

Those assumptions were predicated on the belief that Frederick Whiston was a Lilaiken agent, or at the very least, a facilitator for the activities of other Lilaiken agents.

That was what he thought he had learned at Bass-Ingersoll TransGalactic Shipping, scrolling through accounts, through a digital ledger: that a packing crate of the size and dimension specified by Jack Holcomb as containing a stolen Solomonic ring and its slumbering shed, had been delivered to Whelemat shortly after the destruction of the vessel Fortitude.

Which should have meant the following:

1. Link: Frederick Whiston to Lilaiken separatists.

2. Lilaiken separatists to the theft of the ring, to the attacks on Fortitude, Gorgon, Asp, Hegemony.

3. The method from those ships to Paraclete.

4. From Paraclete to Micah Uytedehaage.

5. Micah to Frederick.

A nice and perfect circle of reasoning, and in the center, Frederick Whiston, always Frederick, radiating harm like the spokes of a wheel. Neat and tidily packaged.

Except it was only window dressings over shoddy constructions, fabrications based on faulty assumptions. Townshend Wright told him as much, and as deeply and desperately as Ray would like to punch Wright’s smugness all the way into the back of his skull, he was too credible to be discounted, and the things he said were too easily verified for him to have lied outright.

But what he asked Ray to do was unthinkable. It was worse than going back to the beginning and starting all over again, because it pulled the heart right out of Ray and Jack Holcomb’s operating hypothesis. Remove the Lilaiken element from the chain of events, and everything that had happened since the theft of the artifact ceased to cohere. The pattern vanished, left him with nothing to explain the why of it all.

Except, as Townshend Wright would have it, the Dag Maoudi.

The Dag Maoudi and the Dao.

Which meant that there was either more going on than he was aware of…or that there were lies embedded in his fact set. He could have picked at that thorn all night long and never come any closer to extracting it from his side.

So unless he chooses to just ignore the assessments of everyone he has known on New Holyoke, everyone in a position to have access to reliable knowledge, he must conclude that he knows nothing about why any of this has happened. He has no concept of motive, and no suspect pool except Frederick Whiston and the Dag Maoudi, who have taken possession of the ring and the shed contained within it.

And in the middle of it is Emma, vessel of the mhuruk-a, core of this impenetrable mystery that is the Dao Maed Vitouri.

None of which he can prove.

All of which leaves him in a position in which his only option is to go forward, to play this game, to see what might be learned, and…

Just and. Just the open-ended future.

Ray rises from the dining room table, drops his dirty dishes in the sink and makes his way out of the guest cottage, up the slope to the Grange. He gets lost in the art galleries as he tries to pick his way along the route he and Jagiri traced the night of the dinner party, but eventually finds his way to a heavy set of doors that lead to the piazza in the center. He emerges again beneath the early autumn sky, draws himself across the flagstone paths and withering grass, naked to the blind and vacant eyes of the manor house’s many windows. He stops at the base of Emma’s tower, tries the door, but finds it locked. Beside it is an ancient comm interface, just a speaker and manual command buttons. He presses the transmit toggle and speaks Emma’s name.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she answers almost at once, the poor speaker system translating her voice as a tinny monotone. “I’m on my way down.”

He shrugs, waits, digs his hands in his pockets. A few moments later, Emma unlocks the door and steps outside. She is fresh, fragrant, smiling. Her eyes are so clear, they are almost translucent. She takes his hand, lets him kiss her softly in greeting. Only when he pulls away does he realize that she is pale, trembling, that there are the beginnings of bruises beneath her eyes, as though she’s been up all night.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing now. I missed you all morning.”

“Are you feeling okay?” How do you say it without making it sound like an insult. “You look tired.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well. Readjusting to New Holyoke’s schedule, I suppose.”

“Shipping lag,” Ray says, nodding. “I worry about you.”

“Part of it is the Dao, yes,” she says, as if she knows what he’s thinking. “It takes some of my energy to prepare for the mhuruk-a. And I have so many things to do. Boring and tedious things I won’t bother you with, but I’m afraid I won’t be very good company today.”

“I should let you rest.”

Emma shakes her head. “No. I want to be with you. I thought we might make a visit to the mining headquarters today.”

Ray isn’t particularly interested in spending any more time around Townshend Wright, so he says, “How about we just stay in? There will be plenty of time for me to acquaint myself with Blackheath Grange. What I’d really like to see is the Trust operation, since I’ve heard so much about it.”

Emma laughs. “Of course. I should have thought of that yesterday.”

“Yesterday, I wanted you all to myself. Today I’m willing to share you with the other members of your household.”

She checks her watch. “Now is as good a time as any. The children should be getting ready for their afternoon hour of free time, so we won’t be interrupting their studies.”

“Lead the way, darling.”

“I’d rather take your arm, thank you. If I lead, you’ll probably follow behind leering at my backside, which is certainly not an example we want to be setting.”

She knows him entirely too well already.

***

The Trust wing is much less confusing than the manor house, seemingly constructed along a theme of linearity. The ground floor is classrooms, playrooms, computing centers. The second floor and above are dormitories segregated by age and gender. Ray had expected something akin to the facilities he encountered in basic training: drab, utilitarian, vaguely crumbling and reeking of industrial cleaning agents. Instead, what he encounters is a succession of gaily lit spaces, bright and vibrant and merrily pastel. The teachers and administrative staff he meets are young Dag Maoudi with brilliant smiles, cheery demeanors. Living incarnations of elementary school archetypes.

At liberty, the children of the Trust bustle through the halls like storm cells, heavy wall clouds spawning tornadoes of laughter, of activity, of casual tumbles and feckless destruction. Their shouts and giggles tumble out of doorways with a summer camp liveliness.

It’s not like any summer camp Ray has known, though. Their entertainment isn’t pine cone crafts and construction paper, and their instruction is a bit more heady than First Aid for Beginners. In the intermediate classrooms, the interactive wall screen still reflects the complex and imponderable Tchin-Yoo Proof Ray didn’t encounter until third-year calculus in college. The kids in the computing center aren’t playing video games, but designing transportation node simulators and surface-launch low orbital satellite tracking complexes.

Back on the first level, they stop in the center of the main corridor, and Ray says: “I don’t know what to say, Emma. If this is what your intermediate kids are doing, what are the advanced student projects? Do they get to pick between solving world hunger and developing plans for peace in the Middle East?”

She pats him gently on the shoulder. “It isn’t so bad, Ray. These are exceptional children. We don’t give them anything they can’t handle.”

“Yes, but where are the older kids? I haven’t seen anyone over the age of twelve or thirteen.”

“They’re all out in the community. After we’ve provided them with sufficient instruction, we place them with various corporate holdings either here in the city or out in the habs where they can work with experts in their chosen fields of study. Internships, I guess you’d call them. The more responsible ones actually live away from the manor, manage their own affairs to the extent to which they’re capable–with our financial support, of course. When they’re ready, we set up long term employment prospects for them, and they leave the Trust behind for good.”

“Do they ever leave New Holyoke, too?”

Emma turns to him, frowning. “They could, I suppose. I’m not aware of such a thing happening, at least not in my lifetime. We don’t really track the Trust children, though.”

“But they could leave if they wanted to. I mean, you don’t have them sign some sort of lifetime agreement to serve the colony in return for all the time and money you’ve invested in their education.”

“Of course not. They remain because they like it here, Ray. For many of them, the Trust is the only family they’ve known and New Holyoke is the only home they’ve ever embraced.” She continues to look at him, her brown furrowed. “Why would you think anything else?”

“It’s just curiosity. These kids could go anywhere in the universe and make a decent living with the skills you’re teaching them. I find it odd that they stay.”

“In such a backwater, you mean?”

“Well, yes.”

“It isn’t ‘staying’. It’s building. And yes, that’s something we teach them. It’s a value that we inculcate from the very start, that there is something glorious and worthwhile in taking the raw materials of a new world and making them fit for human habitation. We like it here, Ray. The children like it. There’s a freedom and scope of possibility–a hope for the future–inherent in the frontier that can’t be acquired on the core worlds. There, everything is rigid, social roles are defined, progress is linear because there is a weight of history bearing down on innovation and creativity. Here, we’re all free to make our own ways, to travel different roads than the ones traveled by those who have gone before us. That means we’ll make our share of mistakes, and some of them will be disastrous, but the things that work will be new in human experience. The legacy each of us leaves the New Holyoke that will come is unique, special, wondrous. Most people can only dream of the opportunities available to every citizen of this world.”

He has a response to that, to her glowing idealism. Something about self-determinism that seems to apply to everyone except the Whistons themselves. Something about the curious dissonance between theory and practice. But as he’s about to embark on it, he is caught up in a maelstrom of midget limbs and pre-pubescent shouts. A football spirals a few centimeters above his head. He dodges, ducks, crashes into a dozen small bodies would have otherwise streamed around him like an army of ants. One of the children sprawls at his feet as the whooping congregation scurries past.

Ray offers the boy a hand up, apologizing. Then, “Hey, hey! Mr. John Robert Rose!”

The kid from Paraclete, expert in all things Captain Shadow. He stares at Ray from the ground, spread-eagled, looking dazed. “Why did you have to get in my way?”

“Sorry, buddy. I didn’t see you.”

John Robert levers himself into a sitting position, crosses his legs, begins a detailed survey of his extremities. He jabs his elbow at Ray. He’s got a serious case of carpet rash, just beginning to bleed. “You hurt me.”

“Ouch!” Just rub some dirt on it.

He doesn’t say it, doesn’t tell the kid to buck up and deal with it, because John Robert is staring at him with that eight year old mix of fascination and accusation, that you-broke-it-you-bought-it intensity that will very shortly turn to tears.

Ray hunkers down beside him, examining the elbow with the solemn attention it deserves. “Well, that’s a pretty serious scuff, isn’t it? Maybe we should get you to the nurse’s station or something. What do you say?”

“I just need to put some water on it. Can you take me to the bathroom?”

“Sure.”

Ray scoops him up, holding body and violated elbow against his chest, thinking this is probably more of a spectacle than this particular medical emergency deserves, but more than a small part of it is for Emma, because this is the type of behavior women expect nice men to exhibit around children they’ve just knocked down. He grins at her, shrugs.

“We’re going to wander down to the end of the hall for a bit. I’ll be right back.”

Emma points the opposite direction. “There’s a first aid station down there.”

“It’s okay. This isn’t anything we can’t handle. No reason to get the medical staff all excited.”

Ray and John Robert swing away, bouncing down the corridor. Ray is doing everything he can to keep the boy from bursting into tears, because even this pseudo-parental action is severely taxing his mental database of appropriate treatment of strange children. They push through the bathroom door and Ray sets John Robert on the counter next to the sink. He turns on the water, playing with the temperature until it’s comfortable to the touch, then assembles a paper towel compress.

John Robert holds the towels in place, not speaking, just watching Ray.

“So how are they treating you, guy?” Ray says.

“It’s okay.”

“Feeding you well enough?”

“Yes.”

“Making friends?”

“Some.”

Ray puffs out his cheeks, scrambling for more topics. He comes up blank. “That’s good. Hey, let’s take a look at that elbow, okay?”

But John Robert pulls away from him. “I think it’s still bleeding.”

“It wasn’t really bleeding in the first place.”

The boy just nods, watching him with those big, dark eyes. He says, “Are you a policeman, Mr. Marlowe?”

Ray lifts his head, stunned and questioning. Then he remembers that the last time John Robert saw him was on Paraclete in full Marine mode. Toting a rifle and rescuing the Whiston household. Shooting it out with Ziggy in the corridor. It’s a logical enough assumption for a child to make.

“I guess I’m sort of a policeman, yeah.”

“A soldier,” the boy says, serious and probing.

“That’s closer to the truth. I’m one of the good guys.”

“Soldiers always think they’re one of the good guys. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any wars.”

“You’re a pretty smart kid.” He resists the urge to tousle Mr. John Robert Rose’s hair. It occurs to him that this would be considered some breach of childhood etiquette.

John Robert looks away, toward the bathroom door. “You didn’t hurt my arm. I did it this morning, wrestling with Pete Sklenicka in our room. He’s ten.”

Ray just nods. “You’re wondering what happened on the ship, aren’t you? I imagine nobody has taken the time to explain things to you. It’s okay. Most of us are still trying to figure it out, too.”

But the boy wrinkles his nose, angry. “I don’t like it here, Mr. Marlowe.”

“I know, J.R. It’s a strange place. Strange people. It’s going to take some time, but you’ll get used to it.”

“I’m not homesick. The orphanage on Orduvai sucked. They fed us protein paste for every meal. There were rats in the bathrooms. I mean it sucked. I’d never want to go back there.”

“Okay.”

John Robert faces him. He is solemn, peering at Ray through eyelids pinched almost closed. There’s something furtive about the expression. Suspicious and intense and terrified. “I hate it here. They seem nice. They treat us well. Sometimes, I even think they care about us, but they aren’t what they seem to be, Mr. Marlowe. Our teachers and watchers and guardians. We talk about these things when they think we’re asleep, after they’ve locked the doors and turned on the security system. The other kids, the ones who have been here for months or years, they say that the alarms aren’t to keep strangers out, but to make sure that none of us escape.”

“I’m sure they’re just teasing you. Because you’re the new guy, you know? They always give the new kid some grief.”

Except Ray can’t help but remember how safe the Trust kept Micah Uytedehaage.

And what was it that Thomas Malcolm had said? I think the Trust and the Whistons have an alarming tendency to lose kids to accidents.

“I thought so at first, too. This isn’t the first time I’ve been the new kid. I know what it’s like. But I don’t sleep very well in strange places. I have bad dreams sometimes, so I stay up late, long after the others have gone to bed. And at night, the teachers rise. About an hour, I think, after the last of the lights have gone out in the main house. They rise, and you can hear them padding down the halls, opening doors. They take kids with them, the others say. Sometimes you can hear a sound, like a kid makes when he’s awakened from sleep. A small cry, and then they go away. And in the morning, someone is always missing. Usually the slower kids, the ones who aren’t keeping up with their studies, who aren’t as smart as the rest of us. They’re just gone, and the older boys have told us never to ask where they went, that if we do ask, we’ll just be told that they’ve been placed in a remedial school until they can catch up, but they never do. They never come back.

“And the older boys say that those who do ask end up being the next to go missing.”

I think the Trust and the Whistons have an alarming tendency to lose kids to accidents.

Ray takes a breath, an inhalation that sounds to him like a gasp. “Are you sure?”

“They say it only gets bad, it’s only every night during this time of the year, when the teachers are preparing for the festival. The rest of the time, we’re safe. Mostly safe. That’s why they brought us here. The Trust brings in new students just before the festival, to replace the ones they’re going to take away. The older kids say we don’t have much to worry about if we keep up with our studies. They prefer to take the old ones, the teens who aren’t here any longer, who they say have gone off to work for other people and learn trades that will help the colony. It’s easier to hide when they go missing.” John Robert is quiet for a time, chews his lip. “Get me out of here, Mr. Marlowe. Please. I don’t like it. I think they kill kids here just like what happened to Micah. I don’t want to be the next one.”

The bathroom door springs open then, and a Dag Maoudi teacher enters. A young man, burly and strong, all smiles and sympathy. Emma is behind him, framed in the doorway.

“I hear we had a tumble,” the teacher exclaims. “All bandaged up now, eh?”

Ray exchanges a final look with John Robert, but any expression of fear the boy might have shown is hidden behind a mask of childhood suffering, pouting lips, imminent tears.

“Just a scuff,” Ray says. “I think we’ve just about taken care of it.”

“Good, good. Let’s get you off to class then, John Robert.”

The Dag Maoudi takes John Robert’s hand and helps him hop down from the counter. Without a wave, even a glance, the boy and teacher make their exit.

***

This is the worst part: the lying awake, the staring at the ceiling in the dark as he tests scenarios, plugs oddly shaped pieces together to see what might fit where, the surreptitious peeking out of windows and stillness and lights winking out one at a time until he feels like the only man left awake on the planet. All of this compounded by fatigue, because even though he slept late this morning, his body is still whining about the sleep deficit he’s racked up over the last four or five days. It’s hard to muster the energy to think about things, let alone consider doing things. He feels heavy and dense and stupid, like his skin has been stuffed with sawdust.

He watches the last window at the Grange go dark, a nondescript third floor window. He checks his watch, twiddles his thumbs for the hour John Robert advised him to wait. It is an interminable period, and he has to put himself through a battery of calisthenics just to keep himself awake.

At the end, he slips out the door, down the stairs, away from the cottage. He winds his way up the slope from cottage to Grange, keeping clear of the path and its lighted walkways. He creeps to the back door, pauses to investigate the lintel and jambs. John Robert mentioned the security system for the Trust wing, how he suspected that it was designed to keep the children in rather than predators out. There might be something to that, because Ray finds no security on this door. Not cameras, not proximity sensors, not anything. Even the aged lock shows no sign of recent use, and it most certainly is not locked now.

Inside, the house is silent except for the quiet thrum of the environmental controls. Cool air wafts from vents he can’t see. There is a faint odor of must, of age, of wood polish. He has no sure idea of where to begin, but he took care this afternoon following the visit to the Trust wing, to note the main staircases, to pay close attention to those that seemed to descend from the ground floor. Ones that might lead to cellars or sub-basements. There was one that Emma pointed out specifically, back toward the kitchen, a disused passage that she said led to the Whiston comm hub. She thought he should be aware of it in case he found it necessary to check in with his Terran superiors.

He finds it with little trouble, using the dim lights in the halls for guidance, sticking to the middle of the corridors so his footfalls are muffled by the carpet runners. He pauses every few meters to listen for sounds that would indicate someone following him, or someone ahead around the next corner, but the house is devoid of human sound. It would be easy to mistake it for abandoned space. He doesn’t like that thought, the idea of being alone in the Grange.

He goes past the kitchen entrance, peers in on industrial refrigeration units, yawning pantries, ovens large enough for Gretel to bake a dozen witches at once. At the end of this hall is a staircase, narrow and creaking, a servants’ passage. Below the steps, crammed into a shadowed nook, is a door hanging slightly ajar. He opens it, sticks his head inside and finds another flight of stairs. They are steep, pitched at a neck-breaking angle, crowded in by bare plaster walls. He takes the steps one at a time, walking on the tips of his toes, keeping to the edges in case they creak. At the bottom is another passage, a dogleg landing and another flight of stairs just like the one he has descended. Ray follows the passage a short way to the first door, peeks inside the crowded comm hub, then ducks out again.

Stairs again, carefully, quietly. At the next landing, the plaster walls give way to bare stone and mortar. A pair of lanterns cast an unsteady yellow glow. It’s damp here, punching into bedrock, down below the water table. In places, water has eaten through the mortar and greenish, algae-ridden rivulets stream down the surface of the rock. The air is chilled, tastes of rot and age, oily like a miasma of tuberculosis. Down and down, wooden stairs become carved stone steps that sag in the center from the passage of countless feet.

And then there are no more steps, just a long corridor of flat, meticulously joined stones and evenly spaced lanterns. He waits for a moment, catching his breath, letting the muscles in his legs unclench from so much creeping. Above the sound of his own breathing, he can hear a murmur of voices. Just noise, a grumble of consonants and undifferentiated syllables. A great host of voices.

Ray realizes that he doesn’t have his gun. He left it in its harness, in the wardrobe. It’s too late to go back for it.

So he moves forward, still stealthy, balancing on the balls of his feet to minimize the slap and echo of his approach against the naked stone. At the end of the hall is another passage to the right, a brief chute to a rounded doorway like the vault of a subterranean lava flume. He becomes aware that the voices he has heard, but not understood, are speaking in a strange tongue. A guttural language, harsh and terse and taciturn in its pronunciation. He edges nearer, crouches low and presses his body against the wall.

At the lip of the chamber, he stops. He watches. He does not dare to breathe.

Here are the Dag Maoudi, dozens of them, young and old, teachers and servants, more than Ray had ever imagined. The room is small, unevenly cut to give the illusion of craggy walls and tormented stone, like an evacuated lava dome. The rock is black, volcanic, faintly shimmering like polished ebony. Around the edges are pits of fire that smoke and spit hot red sparks as though the wood was damp. The scent of their burning is pungent, exotic, aromatic in a way that reminds Ray of the Thai jungle. An equatorial smell.

In the center of the room is a square platform of hewn rock, rectangular slabs laid side by side. At the corners are four pillars pitted and scoured by age and weather, and in the center is another stone, dark and brooding, ancient in appearance. The firelight flickers against it, illuminating strange glyphs, hints of writing, loops and swirls gouged into the surface. Ray has seen these before, imperfect reproductions scrawled into the living flesh of the Dag Maoudi. The stele itself is ringed about with circles, concentric patterns, wheels within wheels.

The Dag Maoudi gather at the fringes of the platform, their backs to the chamber’s entrance, hunkered down. The men wear merkins of tanned animal skin, the women loincloths of the same material. Their flesh glistens with sweat from the heat of the flames, and they seem to lean forward, focused on the platform, lost in ritual or reverie.

Because on the stage before them are three young men, pale and languorous, their heads sagging to the side, their eyes drooping. Two of them lounge against the corner pillars, all but asleep. The third stands in the foreground, leaning heavily against the shaft of a wooden spear. They are naked except for the merkins.

Amah rises from the front of the row of the gathering. She takes a place off to the side, straightens her broad and powerful shoulders, her pendulous breasts hanging against her belly. She lifts her face toward the apex of the vault, and cries out in a loud voice.

“En ditoshe garat hui?”

The boys on the platform, clutching their spears, jump at the sudden noise, momentarily shocked from their stupor.

The Dag Maoudi respond with one voice: “En ditoshe garat hui?”

Amah nods at them, speaks again: “Who needs to be chieftain?”

“Cho-yu! Cho-yu!”

“Blessed are we, the Dag Maoudi, the children of gods, the bearers of life, the seed of mighty Goru Da.”

“Blessed.”

“Blessed are we at this time, the fortunate and faithful, the keepers of the Dao Maed Vitouri.”

“Blessed.”

“Blessed is the sacrifice. Blessed is the blood.”

“Blessed is. Blessed is.”

“Blessed is the mhuruk-a who makes our enemies tremble.”

“Blessed is the mhuruk-a.”

“And Blessed are the ones who serve. Blessed is the vessel.”

“Blessed are the ones who rise.”

“Who needs to be chieftain?”

“En ditoshe garat hui?”

Amah presses her hands together, bows her head before them. From the back of the chamber, a lone figure rises. Dark, familiar. Ray clamps his mouth shut so he will not make a sound.

Jagiri Oh-Kar.

He makes his way toward the platform, and the Dag Maoudi part like a sea wave broken by the prow of a mighty ship. Jagiri bears no expression but concentration, a ritualized intensity that is fierce and savage and withering.

He approaches the young man at the front of the platform, and stops. In his hands are a clutch of strange weeks, stalks like dragon grass, and a narrow clay pot like a wine flagon.

“Cho-yu! Cho-yu! Hsst,” he says.

The Trust orphan blinks at him, bewildered. He sways on his feet as though he’s on the verge of falling over.

“Hotu ome kakisoma tot chichode.”

Jagiri speaks and grins, showing wide white teeth. He kneels before the young man and places the pot and weeds at his feet like an offering.

“En ditoshe garat hui?” Then, disturbed, he says. “Getocka mui. Dodope.”

The Dag Maoudi hear and laugh, a bitter and spiteful echo.

But it is Jagiri who smiles. From the hands of the young man, he takes the spear, turns to the side, strikes a pose as if he’s about to hurl it across the length of the chamber.

Instead, with a spring and a roar, he lunges with the spear, drives it through the young man’s torso. In the near silence, Ray hears the boy gasp, a howling intake of breath, a grunt of dimly perceived agony. His eyes bulge, his mouth drops open. Jagiri bares his teeth and wrenches the spear free, lets him fall.

Jagiri leaps free, brandishes the spear like a bayonet, plunges across the platform to another of the young men, and impales him against pillar where he leans. Then the third. None of them cry out, none of them move to fight back or flee. They stare and wait and ponder the doom the Dag Maoudi have staged for them.

And at the end, Jagiri Oh-Kar throws his arms above his head, grips the spear and cries out: “Kapikome tabu hatudime sharundae!”

The Dag Maoudi rise and answer his call with a thunderous shout. “Kapikome tabu hatudime sharundae!”

They leap and clap their hands, surge toward the platform and the bodies of the young men they have just murdered. Ray can’t see what it is that they’re doing because of the press of bodies, but there are flashes like knives, and there are great clay bowls passed from hand to hand, a fire brigade of crimson stained buckets. The bowls slowly gravitate from the center of activity, from the dazzling knives, to the edge, to the platform’s focus, where Amah stands in great dignity beside the ancient stele. She receives the offerings of blood, lifts them high and pours the contents of the bowl over the stone. The crimson stain streaks the sides, traces curious patterns around circles and rings, glyphs and characters.

And with each bowl, the Dag Maoudi raise up a ragged and celebratory cheer.

And with each bowl, Amah says, “We bid thee rise, mighty mother. Blessed is the mhuruk-a. We welcome the coming of the Dao Maed Vitouri. We invite you to share the glorious vessel. Whisper to us words of Wisdom as you have always done. Teach us to rise, to beat our enemies to dust, for our sacrifices are worthy.”

The blood runs from stele to shallow pools culled in the rock. One by one, the Dag Maoudi kneel and press their hands into the pools. They touch their faces and arms, their chests and thighs; they cover themselves with the blood of their victims.

“Teach us to rise, to beat our enemies to dust. Blessed is the mhuruk-a! Welcome is the coming of the Dao!”

Their voices are a din and clamor, a savagery of ecstatic voices. It isn’t human voices that Ray hears, that pierce his consciousness like lancets, but a roar and a howl that he knows. A frenetic and blistering concussion of sound that spans eons, that bridges impossible distances of hidden space.

Shed, he thinks. Mhuruk-a.

It emerges from the stone, a flickering and insubstantial shadow of being, more suggestion than form, a wisp of power like dissipating smoke.

The Dag Maoudi clamor ceases. They drop to their knees, heads bowed. All but Amah, who lifts her face to the mhuruk-a as a priestess in her own temple.

“We bid you rise,” she says. “Rise and take the vessel. Welcome is the coming of the Dao.”

The shed contemplates her, grave and weary. I am weak, and I hunger.

“Bless us, and you will be filled. The way has been made, but for now, you must abide. You must celebrate the blood and the perfection of the vessel.”

I will abide. And in time, I will be filled.

“Blessed is the mhuruk-a.”

Amah lowers her head, and the shed vanishes.

Does not vanish, Ray knows, but trades the stele for the vessel. For Emma. And he realizes that the chamber itself, the distance he has traveled, has wound back beneath the Grange. If he imagined the route in cross section, he would find this vault to be directly below Emma’s tower. Her circular Faery Turret, a metaphorical stele in which the mhuruk-a might be contained, might reside.

Finally, Ray recoils, unable to bear any more. He withdraws shuddering and nauseous, ready to vomit. Needing to expel this darkness. Desperate to escape the things he has seen.

In horror, with the echo of the Dag Maoudi still in his ears, he flees back the way he came. Down the corridor, up the flight of stone steps, taking them two at a time. He’s less concerned about not being heard than about just putting space between himself and chamber. Ascending to wooden stairs and plaster walls, banging into the passage with the comm hub. Up and up, to the kitchen, the house itself, slicing through passages and corridors he hardly recognizes.

And eventually he finds himself in the main hall, completely disoriented, nearer the front doors than the back. A sweeping marble staircase arches toward the second floor to his left. To his right is the entry foyer, shimmering with light.

He stops, gathers himself. Tries to steady his jangled nerves.

From the corner of his eye, he detects movement on the second floor landing. Ray jerks aside, ready to dash, ready to break someone’s spine. Ready to do something other than experience his own helplessness.

Frederick Whiston, dark and sour, rumpled in his evening jacket, frowns down at him. “Have you seen enough then, Mr. Marlowe? Have you had your fill of surprise?”

“Get the fuck away from me,” Ray says, snarling. Killing Frederick would go a long way toward satisfying his rage at this moment. It’s not a temptation he could endure for long. “You’re no better than they are, and we both know it.”

“Well, I’d hardly argue with you over that point. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to get Emma out of this place, and then I’m going to make you pay. Every fucking one of you.”

Frederick answers his contempt with a mournful shake of his head. “That fascinates me. Here you have just observed the faithful servants of this household and this family murdering three innocents…it was three, wasn’t it? They like to re-enact that escape of Goru Da the night before the Dao. No matter! My point being that you have just witnessed this terrible crime, and your first impulse is to rescue my lovely sister rather than leap about seeking justice for the victims.” Frederick holds up a hand to keep Ray from responding. “I know, who would believe such a thing? To whom would you appeal? You don’t need to defend yourself to me. I know perfectly well what you’re thinking. It’s just curious, that’s all. A bookend reaction to the one aboard Paraclete. How many people would you be willing to sacrifice to have Emma all to yourself, Marlowe? Ask yourself that question, and the number had better start pretty high, because by my count, you’re already well over twelve thousand. I don’t believe even Paris loved Helen so much as to make that grave a sacrifice.”

Ray has no answer for him. He can’t explain lunacy to a madman. He tosses a final curse at Frederick Whiston, then turns away. Through the foyer, out the front door, around the house to the cottage where he began.

He’s done. He’s angry and impotent and exhausted. The galaxy is not big enough to contain his outrage at the things he has seen, or at the things he has been made to understand. He strips off his clothes and falls into bed, glaring into the night, glaring into himself.

Somewhere in there, between staring into the physical darkness and the muddled darkness of his experiences, Ray tumbles down the slope of sleep.

***

And it’s still dark. Warm dark, not New Holyoke autumn, but oily, sweaty, tropical darkness. He smells trees and damp soil, fruit rot and sharp ocean tang. The odor of malaria, pungent. The night is filled with sound. The scuttling of small feet through the underbrush, the whir of insects whose wings are the size of his palm, whose thick bodies are pulpy, liquid. Distant, the sound of surf crashing against cliffs, burbling up soft sanded beaches. A crash of thunder, scent of monsoon rain. Nearer, voices mutter, fire flickers. Shouting.

Who is he?

He is cartilage and teeth, dorsal finned, shark-toothed. He is black, moonlit eyes and sealskin flesh. He is tamping heart and suckling, ravenous maw. He is, and he is, and he is…none of that and all of it. Form and verisimilitude. And motionlessness. He is Watcher, Keeper, Vision, One. Fascinated by stone.

Stone.

Tall, as tall as a man, a plinth, black as the night, volcanic rock polished and formed, rounded and chiseled, ringed in circles. Concentric circles. Ring within ring, and characters. Slashes etched in rock, messages, hieroglyphs both delicate and savage at once. Carved with violence, point and angle and line.

But mostly circle and ring, circle and ring, spinning like a gyre. He looks away.

Hush. This is a secret most grave, that he can look away. To teach is to learn; to observe is to learn; to commune is to learn. And to teach, to urge.

The rest is waiting.

Waiting, waiting, waiting, which is a little thing until the last, when moments stretch into eons, and the light of stars ages between heartbeats.

Cho-yu! Cho-yu! Hsst. Whisper and stealth. The young men, flint spears leaning against shoulders, sleepy, worn, muzzied by kesh root, chewed and spat. Three of them. They hear the call, the pad of bare feet on mud, dark form emerging from the shadows between thatched huts. Not spindly, not root ravaged and belly starved, but strong, whole, hale.

Goru Da, prince, chief in waiting. Except, except…cowardice. Rejected by the father. Weak willed. Does not hunt, does not fight, does not raise his hand except to stroke the flesh of women. But stealthy, clever.

Listen:

He is all smiles, teeth as wide as gates, reflected in the light from the fire pits beside where the young men sit. He hails them again, cho-yu! And he has jugs and kesh, and what is this? Disgrace does not mean enmity. Hotu ome kakisoma tot chichode. I have known you since we were this tall. We are one.

En ditoshe garat hui? Who needs to be chieftain? What threat can the Ma’huru bring now that these others, these pale men have come from across the water? The Ma’huru are gone, washed away like sand in the tide, scattered like trees before the wind. We should celebrate; we should drink. There is nothing more to fear.

And they relax, sit back down, drink. And drink. And Goru Da does not drink, but laughs, quietly, stealthily. And says to them: My father says that I am weak, that Totu Chicho will be a better chief, but what does he know? I use my mind. I think. But I still am strong armed. I have skill with a spear! Better than any other man in the village. Give me your spear and I will demonstrate. It is a reasonable request. Give me your spear.

One does; one so drunk he should keep his spear, just to lean on, just to keep from falling over. Goru Da, prince, takes the spear. Long shaft and flint blade, glimmering in the light.

Look, the three of you, look. See that tree? None of you can hit that tree from here. It is too far, and too small, but I can hit it.

They laugh at him. The tree is wide and fat, only a few dozen paces away.

You are drunk, they tell him. The youngest warrior, a mere child, could hit that mark. That is no feat.

Goru Da frowns, becomes angry. Getocka mui. Dodope. You shame me. Liars.

Show me you can strike it first, and when you miss, I will shame you with my skill.

They laugh at him again, but he goads them, and the two who still have their spears rise. They stand beside him, wobbling, peering into the night. Arms back, bodies coiled, surge and release. The spears fly straight and true, bury their points into the trunk.

They look to Goru Da. Cha? See?

But it is they who see. Goru Da, grinning, jerking the shaft of his spear from the body of their brother. Grinning, turning, lunge and punch, lunge and punch. Blood. Only Goru Da remains.

Kapikome tabu hatudime sharundae.

Let us go to a new world, you and I.

Yes, yes.

And Goru Da whistles, a sound like a bird. Shuttered lanterns, tall men. He kicks the gourds, still heavy with wine, into the fire pits. The flames hiss, and there is smoke, and the scent of burning.

***

And still the smoke, the scent of burning, the flicker of firelight. And heat. Roar.

He opens his eyes, reorients to a body that seems shrunken, dense, somehow not his own.

A tongue of flame laps up the drapery covering his window. He can feel its warmth, dry and scorching. He can taste charred wood on his tongue. For some time, seconds, he’s bewildered, staring at a mirage, at some bizarre dreamscape, then he blinks to clear his vision. But there is no clearing. It is darkness and smoke, rippling orange disaster chasing itself up the walls. Where there is no flame, there is only a roil of black perception, the warped substance of reality.

Ray breathes, chokes. Time to move.

He thinks like a soldier, old patterns that feel rusty. Someone is trying to kill him. What does he need? Clothes, and the ones from yesterday are in a pile on the floor beside the bed. He finds them by touch where he left them. Ray kicks his legs into his trousers, grabs his boots, just as the bedroom door–what he assumes to be the door given his sense of the room’s geography–explodes in a shower of wood and flaming splinters. The fire from the hall races into his bedroom, red at the tip, blue and green iridescence at the base. It darts along the carpet as though it’s chasing him, seeking him out. Chasing a trail of accelerant.

Ray springs out of bed. More smoke boiling in from the hall; it occludes even the flame tattering the curtains. He sucks in a breath that is mostly smoke, that tastes like brimstone on his tongue. His body tells him to gasp, to gag, to clear his lungs. Get out.

In a minute. Just give it a minute!

Step, step. Head down and eyes squeezed to slits, but the smoke and heat are invasive. They sting his pupils; his eyes water, so that he feels like he’s crying, mourning a loss he doesn’t understand. Arms out in front, reaching, reaching. His fingers touch the smooth side of the wardrobe. It radiates heat. The lacquered veneer has begun to crack and bubble, curling up from the frame like desiccated skin. Inside, on the floor, his load harness, cool straps and comforting weight. He feels that, even if his other senses have been taken away; the comforting weight of his pistol swinging in its holster at the bottom of the loop, as irrevocable as a pendulum. But there’s more, and he has to scrounge for it, back in the recesses of the cabinet, where he hid it from anyone who might come looking for such a thing, the enclosed cube of Nomar’s secure storage compartment containing ring and shed, sprouting sensor wires from the top like snakes from the head of Medusa.

Then it’s just following the burning tendril to the window, trying not to boil, imagining that the fire has had a good head start downstairs. Everything below him is a shimmering ember, living and breathing flame. That would be his luck, to dick around, make it to the window just in time for the floor to give way and plunge him into a pit of perfect grilling charcoal.

Still, he’s careful. He doesn’t throw himself through the glass on the prayer that he won’t plunge badly, land wrong, break his arms or legs or neck. He expects someone to be out there, waiting for him. Daring him to survive this.

He lifts the window casement open. Bits of flaming cloth from the drapes drift down on him, extinguish on his shoulders. But the window is open, and for just an instant, he feels the cool night air on his skin, takes half a breath, sites and measures his surroundings. But smoke likes fresh air, too. The cloud of darkness shrieks behind him, surges forward and around, shoves through the opening.

Harness over his shoulder, boots clenched between his teeth, Ray lea.s out and takes hold of the tree branch nearest to him from the great oak that scratches at the walls like rats all night long. It’s thick, as wide around as his thigh. He scrambles out the window and into the screen of foliage, then deeper in until he’s got his arms wrapped around the trunk. Where he can breathe again, where he can squeeze his eyes together until his tears wash the sting and smoke away.

Then it’s down and down, plodding through a dense array of limbs and branches, climbing in the dark, or unclimbing, he supposes. Something he hasn’t done since he was a kid, and even then he never unclimbed a tree unless there was a full moon to light his way.

But eventually, after an eternity of false starts and testing limbs that don’t quite bear his weight, after the tree has succumbed in its upper regions to the temptation of fire, he drops the final three meters to the ground. Crouch, duck, scan, sprint. In case whoever it was that decided to burn him out had the foresight to set up on the hill with a rifle and a decent sniper’s scope.

Doesn’t happen, of course. There’s no kick of dirt, no puff of supersonic metal furrowing into the ground at his feet. Because this was an amateur attempt, a bumbling stab at assassination. Any kid with a can of primer and a match can torch somebody’s house while they’re sleeping. That pisses him off more than anything else. It was such a poor effort.

Ray drifts away from the cottage, glances back over his shoulder to see it completely engulfed in flame now. He puts a hundred meters between them, then stops, sits on the ground and puts on his boots. It’s only a few moments later that the lights at the manor house begin to flick on, one by one. Shouts out the window, then a low, wailing alarm.

Fire! Fire!

And he watches them come, Dag Maoudi domestics, pale faced Trust children, spilling out of the manor house like anxious ants, dashing toward him, morbid with curiosity. High up on the third floor, there is a balcony, and a pair of french doors. In the doorway is a light, and illuminated there is Juliet Whiston, bound to her chair, lace shawl across her shoulders. She peers at the scene, sees him seated in the grass, waves at him a frail, translucent hand.

Ray waves back.

Behind him, knowing, though he can’t see it, the shooting flame and black smoke climb, climb…into the form and figure of an immense being; the image of a shed whose trunk is darkness, whose limbs are flame, who lifts his head to the immeasurable sky and howls with laughter, with glee that sounds like devoured lumber, falling stones and the shatter of dreams.

***

Within minutes, there are firefighting tankers plowing through the gates, flattening the lawn beneath their heavy tire treads and crunching down the pebble paths. Water cannons blast the skeletal remains of the guest cottage, their operators concerned more with containment than salvaging the structure. The open gates beckon the press to follow, and then there are Eyelenses fluttering over the scene, colliding with one another like drunken butterflies. Wide angle shots of the blaze; zooms on Ray, on individual firemen. When they come within reach, Ray snaps out his hand, plucks them out of the air like dandelions from a summer lawn, and grinds them beneath his heel. And like dandelions, no matter how many he crushes, there are always more.

The camera operators, at least, are keen enough to steer clear of him. They keep their compads and recording devices out of his face.

Floodlights directed from the house wash the lawn in a sterile, white glare. Long shadows, thin and angular, pace the grass. The residents of the Whiston household stand in clumps, milling about, shaking their heads. It’s mostly just gawking now–a carnival of activity and shouts and humming machinery.

Ray just watches, standing apart, lips drawn into a tight, pale line. In the shadows cast by a grand oak, well off the trodden path, Emma clings to him, still in her satin nightgown, standing in bare feet. She shivers and presses her head against his chest despite the fact that he is covered in sweat and black ash and grime. He places an arm around her shoulder.

“You could have been killed,” she says. Not scared for him, but angry.

“I wasn’t,” he responds. But only because it was a poor attempt. Because whoever wanted him dead was a coward.

A coward who wanted to kill him for the things he has seen.

But Emma doesn’t need to hear that; she needs only the reminder that he escaped. A few scant minutes ago, before the circus began, she had come running down the path, the crest of the Whiston extended family wave, her mouth open as if she would scream, hands splayed, panic in her eyes. She stopped near him, but he was invisible in the dark where he stood, well off the path and its sniper friendly marker lights. He spoke her name over the clamor of voices, of shouts charging in behind her, and somehow she heard him. Leapt at him, smothered him, hasn’t released him since.

“What happened?” she asks.

“That’s what I would like to know.”

Ray recognizes the voice at once, so he doesn’t bother to turn around.

“I assume you’re going to ask me to write my equipment loan off to you as a loss, Commander.” Colonel Ritchie stands at his shoulder, watching the flames gutter. He looks as though he dressed almost as hastily as Ray did. Out of uniform, shirt untucked, hair bristling.

“News travels fast,” Ray answers.

“Just being conscientious in my duty to serve the citizens of New Holyoke.” Ritchie sounds grim, almost as angry as Emma. “But you haven’t answered the lady’s question.”

“Someone tried to kill me.”

“Someone.”

“It certainly wasn’t an accident. Whoever it was used a powerful accelerant to get things moving quickly. Just before I made it out, I could see from the color of the flame that it was tracking some chemical trail as it spread. I’d guess dotopylene.”

Clumsy, yet anonymous. Not a traditional fire-bombing caliber accelerant, because it is older, slower burning than cutting edge terrorist materials. Dotopylene is also ubiquitous on colony worlds, a diesel fuel surrogate that can be manufactured at small cost in standard laboratories in far flung places where shipping fuel becomes cost-prohibitive and the raw materials for traditional fossil fuels don’t exist.

“You’re thinking Lilaikens? Seems somewhat low-tech for intergalactic terrorists.”

They’ve had this conversation, and Ritchie is mocking him, though he has the good graces not to grin and roll his eyes.

“No.”

Ritchie lifts his eyebrows, surprised. “No?”

“It was Frederick Whiston.” He doesn’t elaborate. Nothing he could say to the EED Colonel would be believed, and if it was believed, nothing could be proved. Best to just let the accusation stand.

Ritchie is silent for a long time, like he’s been punched in the gut, been left as breathless as a corpse. But he recovers quickly enough, grins in that sour and aggravated way the military teaches lieutenants to do it in Officer Candidate School. The grin of a man who suspects he has just become the pivot man in a circle jerk and is going to have to make the best of his promotion.

He says: “Well, at least you’re keeping an open mind about it.”

“Ray?” Emma, stunned, imagining she has heard him wrong. If he was wearing a shirt, she’d probably have balled her fists in it.

He ignores her for now. “Are you going to be investigating this case, Colonel?”

“Arson? God, no. There are local authorities in place for that sort of thing.”

“What about the attempted murder?”

“When the fire investigator determines whether or not it was, in fact, arson, it’ll be turned over to Security.”

Ray shrugs. It was what he expected. “Then it really doesn’t matter who did it.”

An Eyelens flutters near, pauses for a shot of Ritchie and Ray standing together, telescopes on Emma looking tragic and demure in her nightgown. Ritchie waits for it to pass on.

“Would you care to explain that indictment of our legal apparatus, Commander, for my personal illumination if for nothing else?”

“Frederick Whiston tried to kill me. No one on New Holyoke associated with the colonial government is going to do anything about it. I consider the fact that you even ask me to explain it insulting, Colonel.”

“Ray?” Emma again, plaintive.

“I don’t mean to be insulting, but it should be sufficiently clear to you in this environment and this political situation that no one is going to jump on your bandwagon just because you make the claim that he tried to whack you. Not without some sort of proof,” Ritchie says.

“That’s why I want you to arrest him.”

“Me?”

“You. EED. On charges of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit terrorism and mass death. Something to lock him down for a while until I can get some work done.”

Ritchie stiffens, sputtering and livid. “Now hold on–”

Outrage is to be expected. Ray hasn’t given him any more reason to believe these things than he did the first time. “You can detain him on those charges, or you can take him into protective custody to keep me from killing him. I don’t care what you call it, Colonel, but I want him locked up.”

“Ray, no!”

He can’t avoid her any longer. Emma tries to wriggle away from him, protesting, but he keeps his arm around her shoulder, a firm grip so she can’t escape. This is his fault, an explanation that is long overdue and a less than optimal situation in which to offer it to her. Still, he’s feeling more murderous than guilty at the moment. It makes him harsh in a way he can’t mitigate, though she is the last person who deserves such things from him.

“Yes, Emma. He murdered Micah. He tried to kill me tonight because I know he did it. And I’m convinced he was involved in the attack on Paraclete. I know this, Emma. I investigated him before the attack, remember? We had all the data we needed, and we were going to arrest him the next morning. That may have been why Paraclete was destroyed. It’s why he tried to kill me again tonight. As long as I don’t have any proof, he knows that no one will touch him.”

“Bloody hell,” Ritchie mutters. It sounds like a groan.

Or was it for another reason entirely? Had Frederick Whiston tried to kill him to protect the Dag Maoudi, the summoning of the mhuruk-a, all of the secret things happening in that chamber beneath the manor? Because he knew about them, had told Ray as much. The Dag Maoudi had taught him all about killing children to harness the shed. But if that was true, why had he spoken with such clear disdain of the whole process? And what was he doing drunk in the house rather than participating in the ritual in the first place?

Because he was weak. He lacked some critical, essential element that the Dag Maoudi and the Whistons deemed essential. How many times had Ray been told that?

He says, “I’m sorry, Em. I am. I should have told you earlier, before things got this far out of hand. But I had to see, you know? I had to come up with something more concrete than just speculation.”

But Emma shakes her head, says nothing. Her entire body tenses, trembles. She’s still trying to get away from him. Ray clutches her with both arms, not letting her squirt away, and she batters at him with her small fists. All he can do is let her. Then she sobs, and collapses, and he’s no longer holding her from fleeing, but just holding her.

“I’m sorry,” he says, quiet, speaking into her hair because she won’t look at him.

Beside him, Ritchie curses, then begins digging through pockets. Ray hears him only peripherally as he speaks into his portable comm. Yes, patch me through to the duty officer. Who is this? Yes, this is Colonel Ritchie, Lieutenant. I need you to contact Sergeant Whitted. Have him gather a detent and transport team and report to the Whiston estate immediately. I know what I just said! Whiston estate, on the double. Tell him to drive the Rhino. I’ve got media all over the place and would really like to avoid a mob scene if at all possible.

Ritchie breaks the connection, jams the comm back into his trousers.

“You had better be right about this, Marlowe. There’s not enough duct tape and bailing wire in the whole universe to fix the damage between EED and New Holyoke if you’re not.”

Ray doesn’t answer, but he hears, and he feels gratitude. Ritchie is taking an impressive risk.

Emma says, “You should have told me.”

Amah told me not to. “It was pointless when I couldn’t prove it. But now he’s changed the rules of the game. He couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

“Of course, you can’t prove it now, either, I imagine,” Ritchie says wearily, like a man who is watching his career collapse. “I can hold him for three days, Marlowe. Three days on your accusation, and purely as a courtesy to your rank. That much is legal, and you’ve obviously pissed somebody off with the progress you’re making in your investigation. That’s all I need to hold him on suspicion, though I can tell you now that we’re going to pay out the ass for it. My pardon to present company, but the Whiston lawyers are going to eat me alive.”

Ray casts a long look at the remains of the cottage, mostly extinguished now. Just a smoking ruin. “When the Port Authority obtains the data core from Paraclete, you’ll have all the documentation you want.”

“And, as I just said, right now I’m just going on your word.” His tone, slightly falsetto, suggests that this is the worst possible scenario he can envision.

“Sounds like a good reason for you to make sure PA shares the complete data core structure with you. It could be embarrassing otherwise.”

“Do not fuck me on this, Marlowe.”

Ritchie can brood and rant all he wants. The point is moot, proven in Ray’s mind if not on paper. So he is not surprised when Sergeant Whitted reports within the half hour that Frederick Whiston has apparently fled the scene.

***

Friday morning. The first day of the Dao Maed Vitouri.

Sunlight seeps through the blinds in the room Ray has been given inside the manor house. A room on the ground floor, buried in the warren of switchbacks and odd hallways, away from the bustle and activity of the household. A quiet place, he has been told, where he can recover from the terrors of the night. More likely, an out of the way place, where he can get lost just trying to find the bathroom and wander the empty corridors and silent rooms until he dies of starvation.

He doesn’t lie in bed, despite the fact that he really hasn’t slept. He finds fresh clothes outside his door, neatly folded and stacked on top of an otherwise pointless baroque style table. His size, but the style is a bit more flamboyant than he would normally prefer. Shiny, and not enough pockets. In his mind, he can hear Jagiri laughing as the takes them back inside and changes. The thought itself makes him feel ill. Fresh from a night of murdering Trust children in some bizarre Passion Play recreation, Jagiri Oh-Kar still has time and mental clarity to think about procuring a suitable outfit for the Whiston guest. Despite his shower before going to bed and the fresh clothing against his skin, he still smells of smoke. His nostrils are filled with the scent of burning, the way he remembers smelling after weekender Boy Scout camping trips in early summer after two days spent crowded around hissing campfires.

Instead of wandering hallways that all look alike, Ray climbs out the window, circles around the house and enters again through the front door. He makes his way down to the comm hub and calls EED. He isn’t surprised to reach Colonel Ritchie, who sounds weary and depressed, and is even less surprised that EED has so far had no luck apprehending Frederick Whiston. A man with Freddy’s connections and financial backing on a world as thinly populated as New H would be difficult to track down. Maybe even impossible, though Ritchie has his people scouring the city all the transportation routes. At least as much as the planetside skeleton crew can be said to scour anything.

These failures disturb Ritchie deeply, like personal indictments. But Ray isn’t worried. EED has locked down all the shuttles to the Port Authority station and is rigorously scanning all high altitude flights. No one is going to get off planet without a great deal of trouble or a fortunate series of bribes. Which means that Freddy is confined to New Holyoke, and Ray is almost certain he will be back in the city before too long, maybe a matter of days. Freddy is too stupid to believe in anything other than his personal and familial invulnerability, and too self-absorbed and sycophant oriented to survive outside of society for very long.

Ray is content with the inevitability of this scenario. Whether by exile or detention, Freddy is out of his hair, which was all Ray wanted in the first place. He has other demands on his attention at this moment in time.

Afterward, he wanders down to the wreckage of the cottage to poke through the ashes and water sodden remains for anything he might be able to salvage. It’s a pointless exercise. The heap of superheated stones and charred timbers still radiates en/ugh heat to hold search attempts at bay, and convince him that nothing of value, none of the EED equipment, remains intact.

And he can’t even talk to Emma. He tries. He needs to assure himself that she’s okay after the long night, and that she’ll be okay as the Dao nears. He stomps back up to the house, through the main hall to the entrance to the central piazza, but the tower door is locked. No one answers the buzz of the comm that is affixed to the wall outside the door, so he bangs on it until a Dag Maoudi girl answers and informs him that Emma is sleeping late. She’s gathering strength for the ordeal of the Dao, a rite spoken of with such reverence and downcast eyeballing that Ray can’t avoid the suspicion he’s supposed to care about such things. All he wants is to see that she’s well.

Because last night he dreamed, and in dreaming, comprehended. Last night he saw, and in seeing, he learned the secret of the Dao. He has all the pieces of the puzzle set out on a table before him. It’s just a matter of putting them together in interlocking and coherent patterns–just a matter of time before the complete picture emerges.

Briefly, he considers just knocking this girl over and barging up the stairs anyway, but he doesn’t. He just nods and grins like a monkey as she closes the door in his face, locks it again. He hasn’t been a real Marine in so long, he’s forgotten how to rationalize such things, to simply act in the pursuit of an objective without adequately considering the consequences. He’s too much of a spook these days, used to doing everything obliquely. Never ask a direct question when a dozen sidelong queries will get you the same answer without revealing anything about your true objective. It’s all so freaking complicated.

Ray is exhausted with complications. Posing as a systems vet on a starship so he can search for Lilaiken infiltrations, only to have them destroy the ship anyway. Chasing after a murder suspect, taking weeks to gather data in widdershins fashion, under deep cover, only to have the suspect escape arrest once, twice, God knows how many times in the future. Convincing Colonel Ritchie that Kilgore and Rodriguez were Lilaiken spies because he’s not supposed to talk about the shed, only to discover that the stolen Solomonic ring is here, in Frederick’s possession. So much of it, maybe all of it, could have been resolved earlier with a little application of old fashioned Marine bluntness. He is not just exhausted by complications, he’s been destroyed by them.

It’s the old joke. A spook can’t even order a decent breakfast after a while, so it goes. The waiter approaches the table and asks something like, What can I get for you, sir? A Smith or Jones can’t just admit that he wants coffee, because to ask straight out for coffee is to hint that he lacks adequate access to coffee related products at this moment in time. It’s an admission of weakness that an entrepreneurial minded waiter could exploit. So he must say something like: I’ve heard that the recent mudslides in Columbia have decimated many of the supracorp industrial farms. That must wreak havoc with your supply chain. To which the astute waiter will respond: I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t do the ordering. That would be management’s job. Ah! So we’ve established that the waiter, the field agent under the direction of the restauranteuring junta, is effectively out of the intelligence loop when it comes to fluctuations in global geo-meteorological or possibly even geo-political status. But certainly you’d be aware if this type of incident resulted in pricing adjustments? You might notice, say, that your other customer contacts seemed to be less likely to order premium Colombian beverages than they typically might, correct? Waiter: Um. If people want coffee, they drink coffee. Thus, the target to be acquired has actually entered the negotiation. But has the waiter dropped the c-bomb as a form of manipulation, i.e. does he want the agent to order coffee because he is aware that the price has changed, or because he has been instructed to suggest the high desirability and reliability of coffee to his contacts. That the waiter is the one who brought up coffee in the first place suggests that he has acquired an understanding of certain dining and diner profiles. He is savvy. Some bioscientists have advanced the argument that coffee is bad for the prostate. In other words, what you’re offering is not without risk. I can live without it. It is not a lack per se, so much as a preference. I might just as likely prefer water or juice, so you don’t have me at a disadvantage where all I require is coffee and that is a desire you can exploit. Waiter: Well, yeah. Maybe after years and years. One cup probably is not going to hurt you. So he wants you to order the coffee, which means he must get something out of the exchange. Maybe just a bigger tip, maybe some arcane sense of satisfaction. But he’ll also tag you as a coffee drinker, which means the next time you come in, he won’t even have to ask. He’ll just bring you coffee. He’ll bring it, you’ll pay for it, whether you actually felt like coffee or not. You’ll be obligated to take it because most of the time you actually do want coffee. It gives him a hold on you.

Complicated means that sometimes you order prune juice when all you want is a cup of joe.

Your lies, their lies, building an edifice of perception, a structure of truth that may have no relation to the reality which it purports to represent. The problem with the oblique approach is that you never know if your data is answers to the questions you asked, or the question they thought you were asking. Meaning devoid of context.

Thomas Malcolm said to him: If you want to know about Juliet Whiston, ask her. She’s the only one who knows the truth, and I think she’s been waiting a long time to find someone who she can trust with her secrets.

If he wants to understand New H, the Whiston family, whatever mad fear it was that caused Emma to flee in the first place, Juliet Whiston is the one with the answers. He has seen the mhuruk-a peering at him through Emma’s eyes, just as it once looked out from Juliet Whiston’s.

He understands in part; the rest is fear, stark and vicious.

He’s not about to let complications stand in his way.

***

Ray climbs up the curved staircase from the main hall, scuffing his feet against white marble stairs that shine in sunlight reflected from the windows of a second floor verandah. There is no sound in the house, it seems, just the echo of his steps, his plodding progress. On the third level, he arrives at a landing which branches off left and right into two separate corridors. He pauses, imagines himself in the night, ash grimed and dirty as Juliet Whiston waves at him from the balcony, then turns to the right. The hall narrows until it’s hardly two meters across, with rosewood panels on the walls, an opulent blue runner of plush carpet down the center over glowing hardwood floors. No artwork up here, just regularly spaced wall fixtures: brass lamps with petite jade colored shades. The effect is one of coziness, a denseness of space verging on suffocation.

He locates Dame Whiston’s room, knocks at the pair of double doors which approximate the location of the window he viewed her in last night. It’s answered by a slight Dag Maoudi girl, reedy and pleasant. She looks up at him with wide, dark eyes, as if his appearance is cause for wonder.

“I know you,” Ray says, before she can speak. “You were on the ship.”

And last night, you were in a chamber underground murdering some of the students you claim to care for. But he shoves those thoughts away. Nothing is gained by revealing what he has seen.

The girl nods. “Yes. Leela. We met in the classroom. The children were very taken with your understanding of Captain Shadow. I’m glad to see you well and whole this morning.”

“Well, it was an exciting evening, that’s for sure, but I managed to come out of it without any significant damage.” He smiles at her, disarming and casual, stifling his urge to hiss, playing the role she expects from him. “I had assumed you’d be working with the Trust, that you’d have additional teaching duties.”

“Oh, I do, Mr. Marlowe, but this is a special day. We don’t teach on the first day of the Dao.”

“But you don’t get the day off, I see.”

A good natured frown. “There are things Amah attends to in preparation for the public events. When she has responsibilities that call her away, I like to sit with Juliet. It’s good for her to see a fresh face every once in a while. She hasn’t received visitors in a great number of years. She gets lonely, I think.”

“I’d like to see her,” Ray says.

Something that strikingly resembles suspicion enters Leela’s expression, a narrowing of the eyes. “Now is perhaps not a good time. Dame Whiston has not been well lately, Mr. Marlowe.”

He remains smiling, feckless, charming. “I noticed that at dinner the other evening.”

“She has not improved since that time. Her mind is not strong these days, almost as weak as her body has become.”

“Really, I won’t trouble her. I just have a few questions I’d like to ask.”

Wary. “About last night, you mean?”

Ray swallows hard, tries to divine her meaning, assumes she must mean the fire. “Last night, yes.”

“I am fairly certain that she doesn’t know where her son has run off to, sir. It would only distress her if you ask.”

“Wow. Not many secrets around this place, are there?”

“No. It was a most terrible thing Mr. Whiston tried to do, but perhaps not surprising. He is a jealous, demanding, cruel man. He does not share his sister’s love for you.”

“Not exactly leaping to his defense, are you?”

Leela casts her eyes at the floor. “Perhaps I’ve spoken out of line, Mr. Marlowe. Forgive me.”

“Hey, there’s nothing to forgive. I don’t disagree with you that he’s a scumbag. I am a little surprised that you’d be so quick to say so.”

Leela peers side to side down the hall, as if to assure herself that they’re alone. She lowers her voice to a whisper, but there’s still a ferocity in it, emotion as sharp and bitter as a shout. “You would not be surprised if you lived in this house, among these people. You haven’t seen the things that I have seen. You don’t know the extent of his corruption.” She stops, reins herself in, makes an effort to smile at him. “But things will be better now, yes? You have come to New Holyoke and to the Grange. You will cast your arms around Miss Whiston and protect her from harm. You will return to this family the glory that has been lost. You are the one that she has been waiting for.”

“That’s what people keep telling me.” This is how they’re going to spin it, then. They’re more than happy to let him remove the shame that is Frederick Whiston. “But I really do need to talk with Juliet, even for just a few minutes. I promise not to wear her out.”

“Just a few minutes?”

“I’ll be gone before you know it.”

A sudden smile, toothy with realization. “You wish to speak with her about Miss Whiston! About Emma.”

Ray winks at her. “Exactly.”

“Then yes, you must come in. It will bring her great joy.”

“I’m a big fan of joy, Leela. But could I speak to her alone, just the two of us?”

“I understand, yes.” Bright eyes, nearly giggling, Leela opens the door for him. “Come in, Mr. Marlowe. I’ll let her know you have arrived, then make my way out.”

He steps inside before she can change her mind, before she can question the assumptions that have gotten him this far. “Thank you.”

She leaves him in the front room, disappearing through a side door. It’s a different sort of space than the others Ray has encountered in the house. Large windows and the french doors leading out to the balcony flood the room with light. The walls are painted in gay and vibrant pastels. Fresh flowers on the tables in delicate, fashionable vases. Photographs on the walls rather than the dour paintings he has come to expect. There are comfortable looking chairs and a sofa in the center of the room, but Ray doesn’t move that way. He looks at the pictures, moving from frame to frame. A very young Juliet Whiston here, smiling and coltish, stunning in her youth. She looks very much like her daughter. More, candid images of Juliet and children, a boy and a girl, Frederick and Emma. The three of them holding hands, bouncing through the gardens, gamboling about the town. Portrait pictures of Emma, then of Frederick, ranging from cutesy infant to gawky teen. Emma in orthodontic apparatus, which Ray finds endlessly amusing. Family images, tableaus of a distant past.

There are no pictures of Charles Whiston.

He has returned to the one of Emma in braces again when the side door opens. Leela wheels Juliet out in her ancient chair. She’s dressed in white linen, with a pink shawl draped over her shoulders and heavy woolen blanket over her legs.

“Now Mr. Marlowe,” she says at once, “you’re going to have to swear to me that you will make no mention of having viewed that image. Emma would be destroyed if she thought you knew. It is in the nature of women to have others believe that they possess their beauty naturally.”

Ray smiles, still playing the affable guest. “Swear on my honor, ma’am. She won’t hear it from me.”

“Come sit with me by the window, young man. Leela says you wish to speak with me.”

He follows them across the room. Leela positions Juliet in the corner beside a table where she can look out over the back lawn and the late blue sky morning. Ray draws up a chair and sits opposite her so they share the same view. Leela places her hand on his shoulder, whispers that she will return in half an hour, but that she will be in the kitchen preparing Juliet’s lunch should he need her. Ray nods, but doesn’t bother to tell her that it would probably take him half an hour just to find the kitchen. Then she’s gone, closing the door behind her, and Ray and Juliet Whiston are alone.

“You had quite an interesting night,” Juliet says. “I will tell you that I was very distressed for some time. I thought you might not make it out at all, which would have been a pity.”

“I’m sorry about the cottage,” Ray replies.

“No one is asking you to apologize. It was a useless old house. You’re the first guest we’ve entertained there in at least a dozen years. Someone will build another one eventually. It’s what the Whistons do. We build structures, large and small, needed or not. Competition, you understand. Every Whiston has in mind the grand line of his forbearers, all leaving a legacy of construction. Building because they have always failed at making.”

Juliet folds her hands in her lap, takes her eyes from the window and fixes them on Ray. “Leela believes you have come to ask me for permission to court my daughter, Mr. Marlowe. But that isn’t why you’re here, is it?”

“I like Emma very much, but no, that isn’t what I want to talk to you about.”

“So coy. You love her. What is this like? I am a batty old woman, but I’m not blind. You love her; she loves you. The rest is just details and complications and social fuddy-duddies looking for an excuse to stick their noses into business that is not theirs.”

She speaks with a pleasant, beaming bitterness. Pain so old it no longer stings, so that only the form of it remains.

“I’m not fooling you at all, am I?”

“I’ve had much more experience at being coy than you have. If you were less clumsy at it, I doubt that I would like you at all. You don’t particularly care if I like you, Mr. Marlowe. I understand that. You don’t care if anyone really likes you. You’re going to do what your heart or your mind tells you is right. You’re not going to allow yourself to be distracted by the wishes and intentions of others. It’s a very honest philosophy. What is the phrase? Down to earth. You and my Frederick are much alike in that way. He recognizes it, I think. That’s probably why he tried to kill you last night.”

She could not have stunned him more if she’d struck him. “You saw him?”

“Of course I saw him–just as I saw you. You entered the house, then you departed. A short time later, he followed. How could I not have seen it? What else do I do but sit and watch?”

“But you didn’t tell anyone?”

“Frederick does what he believes is right. He thought it would be best if you were dead, I suppose. But he’s also not very accomplished at committing crimes of violence. I had faith both in his ineptitude and in your competency, so I thought it best to let events play out as they would. I will admit that I had grave doubts for awhile, when you continually refused to emerge. You must sleep soundly.” Juliet laughs, sounding oddly unaffected. She laughs like a little girl. “But that’s enough about Frederick. You don’t want to talk about him. You want to talk about the Dao.”

Ray sits back, tries to collect his thoughts. “I do, but–”

“But nothing. You knew it was Frederick. I’ve confirmed it for you. Ask something else.”

She’s right. He doesn’t have time to talk about Frederick. “Tell me about Martin Schmidt.”

“Oh, you have been digging, haven’t you? That isn’t a name that’s been spoken in this house in years.”

“Not out loud, at least,” Ray says gently.

Juliet reclines her head against the back of her chair, a deeply private and satisfied smile on her lips. “He was so lovely, my Martin. Of course, we were young. Dreadfully young, really. Who knows what sort of man he would have become? But in his youth, he was splendid and strong. He had a mind that could encompass half the galaxy, always picking at problems, at flaws, at things that didn’t make sense to him. And he was tireless in his pursuit of explanations, of truth behind the facades. I think that’s why Charles hated him so. Martin was everything Charles wanted to be, but was not. And Charles had everything Martin wanted, but couldn’t have.”

“Including you,” Ray says. Just a nudge.

But Juliet snaps her head up, glares at him. “Charles did not have me, not in the way Martin did. Martin I loved. Charles had only his obsession, his desire until afterward.”

“After Martin was murdered.”

“Yes!”

“But you married Charles anyway, even though you knew.”

A look enters Juliet’s eyes, languid and distant. She hunches her shoulders. “Hush now. Shhhh. Hush, Juliet. Some things we do not speak.”

Ray persists, disturbed. “Charles courted you while you were in mourning.”

“Yes, courted.” A dry chuckle, like he has brushed over a secret. “Charles was very vigorous in his courting, though only he would recognize it as such.”

“Tell me.”

“Hush, Juliet.” She shakes her head. With rasping significance, she hisses, “He changed my mind.”

“He thought you were the one, didn’t he? Charles believed it.”

A sudden scowl. “I was not the one. He should have known! But he believed he could make me the one. But they do not make; they only construct. They build in order to hide what they are not.”

“And what it is it that they aren’t, Juliet? What are they hiding?”

“That they aren’t the one. Not in years, decades. Their glory has departed.”

Ray clenches his teeth. “The one what?”

“Hush, hush.”

“Juliet, the one what?”

“Shhhh.” Finger to her lips, face clouded, amused and horrified at once. “Hush.”

Ray backs up, tries to find another way, but aware that he’s losing her. Juliet is wandering down dusty and forgotten tracks he has not imagined. “So you weren’t the one, though Charles believed you were. And after he believed, after he courted you, you became the vessel for the Dao. The vessel, but not the one.” He changed my mind. Sharply, Ray asks, “Is Emma the one?”

“You are the one. Emma is the vessel.”

“Emma has always been the vessel? Since she was born.”

“Yes! She was not constructed. Like you.”

“Like me?”

“You hear, you see, you dream. The mhuruk-a.”

He’s moving in circles, getting no closer, but he’s near enough that he can feel it, a subtext that makes him tremble. “Do you know what the mhuruk-a is, Juliet?”

Juliet claps her hands together, gleeful. “You are a boy full of tricks, aren’t you? Asking questions for which you already know the answer. You’ve spoken to her. I could see that from the moment I met you. You have the mark of one whom she has touched. You are recognized because she knows you. She knows and sees and tastes. She whispers that you are the one so that we know also. She is, and you are, and together you are one.”

“And the Dao,” he demands. “What is the significance of the Dao?”

Juliet cackles at him. “To find the one, of course. To make where one cannot be constructed. But we’ve lost the old ways. Even the Dag Maoudi have forgotten. They taught us to meet the mhuruk-a; they instructed us in the ways of the vessel, but we have lost the essence. We communicate, but do not commune.”

For an instant, Ray remembers. Binary code, a subtle shift in ones and zeroes, an attempt to comprehend the shed.

“He changed your mind,” Ray says.

“They construct what they cannot make. Because they are impatient.”

“What did they do to you, Juliet?”

A whisper, a lowering of the eyes. Juliet Whiston puts her head back. “I was not always so frail, so mad, so broken. But I am not a Whiston by blood, and all of their construction could not make me so. But in many ways, more Whiston than Charles. Ha!”

Male and female vessels. “Charles was weak. Like Frederick.”

“And in trying to make himself strong, he was destroyed.”

“But Emma…Emma is strong.”

“Don’t be afraid for Emma. She is of the blood. She rises.”

Ray hears, swallows hard. “But not like Frederick.”

A devastating, savage smile curls her lips. “Hush.”

Though he prods her, begs her, Juliet Whiston will say no more. By the time Leela returns, she is asleep in her chair.

<– Chapter 17 / Chapter 19 –>

Filed under: A Vessel for Offering Tagged: | A Vessel for Offering, blook, Darren Hawkins, science fiction