Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (53 page)

He clenches his hands at his sides.

“If I knew … if I only knew…”

“But you don't, Martel. And you never will, not unless you accept that you are a god. Then you'll understand. Then you'll be just like us.”

“Never!
Never!
”

Martel throws himself at the brilliance of the sun-god.

“Martel! No!”

The scene dissolves around him. The white clouds flare red, fade into a backdrop of dark wood.

He is half lying, half sitting on his bed, sweat dripping off his forehead. His left hand is falling away from Rathe's forearm.

“You started talking in your sleep again, and you grabbed me. Hard. Screamed something about knowing, and never, never…” Her voice is filled with pain, as are her thoughts.

Martel sees the dampness on her cheeks and looks down at the arm she cradles, strangely crooked, resting below her bare and full breasts. The quilt is wound around her waist and legs still.

Her arm is broken.

Control, Martel. When are you going to get control over yourself?

“Let me see.” He runs his fingers over her skin, letting his awareness build, realizing the damage is worse than Rathe knows—both bones, blood vessels, ripped muscles.

With a sudden jab at her thoughts, he takes them over, lets himself flow into her, trying to put her to sleep for what he has to do. Unlike the case with Gates Devero, this time he cares, and will spare Rathe the pain, if he can.

In slow motion, as she loses consciousness, the pictures and words float past him.

Item: “Fierce” and “gentle,” coupled with a black lamb frolicking across an unfenced clearing. The lamb jumps and does not land. In its place glares a black mountain ram, black lightning for horns.

Item: A man dressed in black, standing silhouetted against the sea, wearing a cloak. The cloak whips around him, but there is no wind.

Item: Two bodies moving as one upon a bed.

Item: A man lying in a hospital bed, asleep, face contorted, one hand bending the metal railing that rings the bed.

Item … item … item … item …

Martel breaks out of Rathe's thoughts, stares down at the freckles on the tear-streaked face, at the closed eyes still tight-tensed, at the smooth skin, the light nipples, the short red-silk hair.

His own cheeks are damp, he knows. He wipes the right side of his face with his upper right arm, still holding his unconscious lover, his unconscious greeter, and perhaps his unconscious conscience.

Gently he moves, stretches her out on the bed, concentrates on the arm, straightens it, using his perceptions, and gets the bone ends aligned. Now, kneeling beside the bed, he thinks, his thoughts reaching out to repair the damage he has wrought, trying to mend nerves, to touch the right cells in the right way to heal what has brought the pain and the tears.

Time stands silent as he works.

He is done.

And done, he lets go, feels himself sink toward the hard floor, exhausted.

“Martel…”

A cool hand touches his face. Rathe's.

“The arm? How are you?” The words burst forth even as he tries to uncurl from the stiff heap he has become.

“Sore, but just a little.”

He heaves himself upward and sits on the edge of the bed next to her.

Rathe pulls the quilt over her breasts, leaving her shoulders bare, and turns to face him.

“Kiss me.”

Warm lips, salty, and her eyelashes flutter against his closed eyes like butterflies.

Butterflies, but Aurore has no butterflies, and the glittermotes are no substitutes.

The quilt drops away as two bodies meet, hold … and hold.

Rathe sobs, buries her head against his shoulder, sobs once more, then again. Harder and quicker, the sad shudders mount.

Martel finds himself aroused, hard against her softness, her sadness. Finds himself angry at his arousal.

He takes her face, takes her lips, kisses her once, long, evenly, trying to add heat to the salty chill, draws her to him more tightly still.

After a time, her shudders subside, and another motion begins, which he joins. And joins. And joins again.

After the joinings comes sleep.

He wakes first, leaves his arm around her, studies her body, from her full thighs through narrow waist to light-nippled and full breasts … smooth skin, creamy with the ubiquitous freckles of a true redhead. His eyes trace her features, the nose sharp enough for character but straight, the green eyes hidden under sleeping lids, the light eyebrows, the narrow lips that kiss so fully.

She smiles, sleeping, and the happiness lifts a corner of the darkness from him.

He thinks, finally reaches into her thoughts as narrowly as he can, makes a change, an adjustment.

After a time, she wakes. She smiles again, then frowns. Starts to pull the dark green quilt over her, then lets it drop.

“You like seeing me? You always have. Will you remember?”

“Remember?”

“Martel. Please. Be gentle. I'm not meant to sleep with gods. Not once we both know. I kept hoping you were just crazy, not divine. But you're not. It hurts too much to love you, and They'll just use me to hurt you. It's too hard…”

“I know.”

He could feel the tears well up in his eyes again.

Why? Cried more in the last day than in my whole life … going to pieces?

“I know you know. But that won't stop you. It can't. But it doesn't matter.”

“What will you do?”

“Now that I don't have to be a greeter?”

He nods.

“I don't know. Maybe I won't change. Maybe I will. It's nice to have the choice.”

He lies back, watches as she stands, still naked. Drinks in each movement as she dresses. Against the dark panels of the bedroom her skin lends her the air of a classical statue.

Her pale green tunic all in place, she comes over to the bed and sits down next to him.

“In your own way, Rathe, dear, you're a goddess.”

“Remember me that way. And don't fix my memories. Broken arms need to be fixed, but I am what I remember.”

He turns his face toward her, arms reaching to enfold her.

She plants a quick kiss on his forehead and ducks away under his arms.

“Wouldn't be the same now.”

She is gone through the portal.

Martel lies propped on the bed for a time. Then he arises and heads to the ultrashower.

He is scheduled for his usual night shift at the CastCenter, and lots of time for thought.

 

xxii

The sky outside the cottage grumbles. The room within is dark, dimmed by clouds, which are natural, and therefore rare. No artificial light, also rare on Aurore, or glittermotes, which are not, intrude. Though the corner where the vidfax is mounted gathers shadows, the man does not need light to see.

He touches the address studs, and his fingers run through the combination with the effortlessness of habit. For he knows the pattern by heart.

By
heart,
he affirms.

His hand hovers near the contact plate, ready to break the connection when she does not answer.

“Greetings,” she says automatically, her eyes widening as she recognizes the caller on the screen. “Persistent, aren't you?”

“Yes,” he admits, drinking in her green eyes and warm face. “‘Persistent,' I suppose, is as good a word as any.”

He realizes her hair is longer now, as it could be after a standard year.

“Foolish, and blind, too,” she says and he can sense the bitterness.

He waits.

“I hope this doesn't seal my death, dear one,” she continues conversationally, “but you're still acting human and refusing to face what you are. Still appearing on the nightly faxcast, as if it were common for a god to broadbeam the evening trivia. Still trying to persuade a very human woman that you are, too.”

“Your death?” His words sound lame.

“My death. Possibly. Possibly yours as well, although I doubt that for reasons I couldn't possibly explain.” She sighs. Loudly. “Don't you understand? They want you as a god. If you won't because of me, then They'll do away with me … or take all my memories. Do you want to take back everything you've given me? Do you want to become just like Them?”

By now the tears are streaming down her face.

“Let me have my memories, at least. Something. Go on and be what you are! You have all I can give. I can't be some god's plaything. And I won't! If I come back to you, then that's all I'll be. Don't you understand? Don't you?”

He waits, again.

“You could come and twist my thoughts, change me into a willing tool. But you don't. Does that make you good? Or just stubborn? Or waiting until later?

“For my sake, if not for both of us, leave me alone. If you love me, if you ever loved me, please, please, let me be. If you care at all, let me alone. Let me have a memory. Before it's too late … already there's so little. I was stupid to fall in love with you, and you were stupid to give me back myself … and that's enough stupidity…”

“All right…” His words sound unsteady to himself.

He cannot speak more. Nods, reaches toward the contact plate, looks once again, only to see her looking down, and not at the screen. He presses the plate, and the screen blanks.

His room is dark, though not so dark as previously. The storm clouds are dispersing.

He walks out onto the covered porch, then down onto the hillside, where he stares into the distance toward a peak others cannot see. A peak called Jsalm. The sacred mountain.

He shakes his head. Once. Violently.

He turns, slowly, until he faces the small cottage. With deliberate and heavy steps he mounts the three risers to the porch, crosses it, and reenters the dwelling.

A black glittermote circles the space where he had faced the distant peak before vanishing.

The dorles, tentatively, hop to the outer branches of the quince. The largest half-spreads her wings, then chitters a long note that echoes, that hangs on the hillside.

 

xxiii

The two figures could be meeting on a mountaintop, or on a sea bottom, or in a cloud of glittermotes that would drive a man mad, or in the pitch darkness of the caves deep beneath Pamyra.

Instead, they stand on a ledge over the White Cliffs.

You've bet too much on this one.

Not yet. Oaks take longer to grow.

So do the bristlepines, but they don't challenge. Just endure.

He's young.

So you doubt already?

Sometimes, but not about the potential.

A vision of black thunderbolts passes from the lighter to the darker.

Strong enough to take us on? Never.

Two words to avoid—“always” and “never.”

If you fear, why encourage?

I don't. Just watch.
The lighter one laughs, a laugh that breaks like glass against the hard rock at his back. Before the shards can reach the breakers below, he shimmers like the sun Aurore never sees and launches himself like a sunbeam into an afternoon that is not and has never seen one.

The darker one picks up a laugh crystal, studies it, ponders.

In time, he, too, departs after his own way.

Neither has noticed the white bird perched in the nearby tree, a white bird with golden eyes and dark pupils that reach back farther than any bird's should, windows into more than soul.

In turn, the bird flutters off the bristlepine branch, lands lightly next to the laugh crystal that has begun to evaporate, cocks her head as if to catch something within the frozen sound as it vaporizes.

Beneath the White Cliffs, a thousand meters below, the golden-green breakers crash, foam against sheer quartz, crash and foam, crash and foam, in even rhythm.

The white bird, larger than a dove, for there are no doves on Aurore, and smaller than a raven, takes wing, and with effortless strokes clears the cliff edge, merges with a vagrant mist that has no business so high above the waves, and disappears.

 

xxiv

Martel leaves his own screen blank, but taps out the code for hers.

He sighs, knowing there will be no answer. There never is, hasn't been for months.

Instead, this time, a message flashes across the screen.

FAXEE UNKNOWN. NO FORWARDING CODE.

Martel disconnects, taps out the numbers again. He must have used the wrong code.

How likely is that, Martel?

He does not answer his own question, but looks across the room at the open window, and through it sees the light breeze fluff the hillside grass.

Rathe moved? Impossible!

Besides, changing location wouldn't change the code. Permanent residents kept their codes, unless they decided to delist. If she had delisted, the screen would have told him that and indicated that her personal code was unavailable.

FAXEE UNKNOWN. NO FORWARDING CODE
. The same message scripted out.

“Two options,” he mutters under his breath, not liking either. Rathe has either emigrated off-planet, which is unlikely but possible, or she is dead.

How long has it been?

Martel breaks the connection and stares at the closer stretch chair, the creme one. The farther one, the black one, is where he usually sits.

Black, that's your color, not that there's much black on Aurore.

Martel picks up the faint hum of an electrobike on the coast highway, with the underlying whine that indicates it is climbing the gentle hill toward Mrs. Alderson's on its way into Sybernal.

So what do you do now? You waited too long, Martel.

He has two choices, either to see if he can track Rathe down or to finish cutting the strings right now.

Three, you can also track her down and then cut the strings.