Starlight's Edge (7 page)

It was fun, playing bridezilla. No wonder girls got into it. Exhilarated, Zee continued. “There are brides waiting for this woman's work all over London. Brides with important fathers. Brides with a lot of money. Do you
really
want them mad at you? Because if you harm her in any way, you're likely to find yourselves in a new time zone. Do you understand me?”

This time the gang scattered for good. Zee and Meli sat on a bench, laughing with relief.

“Three thousand Emus a meter?” Meli asked, her eyes suddenly bright.

“I have no idea how much that is,” Zee said. “I was making it up as I went along.”

Zee touched the cord around her neck and drew out the silken pouch. This was the right time, she was sure of it. Carefully, she shook a single large stone into her palm. “Do you know what this is, Meli?”

“It's sparkling. And clear. Some kind of nano gem?”

“No, it's a diamond. A real one.”

Meli stared at her. “It can't be. There are hardly any diamonds that size left.”

“But it is,” Zee said.

“Then you're rich,” Meli said.

“No, you are.” Zee dropped the stone into Meli's palm and closed her fingers. “Take the diamond. Buy the things you need and start over with Henri.”

“I can't take it. It's too much.”

“But this diamond was meant for you. I know it was. There's just one thing. You must promise never to tell anyone where you got it. Say it was sewn into the hem of your dress, make up a story. No one will be able to prove otherwise.”

“But I don't know that I'll ever be able to repay you.”

“I don't want you to repay me. These diamonds were given to me as a gift to be shared.”

Meli stared at her. “Your kindness is as much a gift as this diamond.” She smiled suddenly. “There's a meeting on Wednesday afternoons many of us go to. Time immigrants from all over the centuries. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes we cry on each other's shoulders. But always—
always—
we have real food. One of our group is a chef, and he misses cooking as much as we miss tasting, so we give what we can and he searches the markets for whatever we can afford. There
is
real food on New Earth, but it's hard to find and expensive. Yet even if all we have is parsnips, Marc always makes something delicious from it. And sometimes he finds things like fresh strawberries and cream.”

Zee's mouth began to water. “I'll be there,” she said, and tapped the information Meli gave her into her cube.

“See you then.”

Zee stayed alone on the bench watching her go. She tilted her head back and looked up through the canopy of pale new leaves on the trees.

“Well, Mrs. Hart, is this what you had in mind?” she asked, and felt her body fill with warmth and light.

*   *   *

Ellie Hart had been Zee's favorite patient from the moment they met. Despite her involvement with the tragic Neptune's Tears diamonds, there was nothing remotely tragic about Mrs. Hart. The misadventure with the diamonds had cost her dearly and changed the direction of her life, yet Mrs. Hart never seemed to regret it. In fact, she wore the jewelry she'd designed, made of false diamonds, as if they were her most treasured possession. When Mrs. Hart learned she was dying, she'd asked for Zee to continue as her empath, helping her through the pain. Zee felt the same way about the afternoons they had spent together as Mrs. Hart felt about the diamonds—they represented loss, but also something special and irreplaceable.

Months after Mrs. Hart died, when Zee was going through deep uncertainty, wondering whether or not she would be able to accompany David to New Earth, there had been a night when Zee fell asleep alone in her room at the empaths' quarters. She had a dream, and in it, thought she heard the repeated thump of the cane Mrs. Hart had used when she'd became too weak to walk. But when Zee woke, she realized it was someone at her door and she'd mistaken the persistent knocking for the sound of the cane.

The man introduced himself as Mrs. Hart's lawyer, delivering the mementos she'd left her friends. He handed Zee a small box and left. Inside the box was a folded letter and the silk pouch Zee now wore around her neck, filled to bursting, hard and rather lumpy. Zee unfolded the note and read.

You will do me a great favor if you accept these, Zee. I never lied to you. The diamonds I wore were indeed false. But there were also real diamonds, genuine Neptune's Tears, that Tiffany's gave to me as compensation for all that happened. To tell you the truth, I didn't want them, but refusing them would only have created more bad feelings and more sadness, so I accepted. I couldn't imagine using them or selling them—it would have seemed like blood money—and thank goodness I never had real need of them.

But now that I am about to rejoin the great dance of souls, I must find a place for them, and a purpose. They would only be a burden to my daughter, as they have been to me, so I have decided to pass them along to you. Although we didn't have much time to be friends, I think we are of like mind. I know you will use them wisely and find a way to return them to the universe, where they belong.

Zee reread the letter twice. It was almost as if Mrs. Hart knew, in some way, what she had had no way of knowing—that Zee would end up on New Earth.

When Zee finally got permission to accompany David, she'd made one last visit home and left half of the diamonds in her sister's underwear drawer, hoping they would somehow help her family through the dark years ahead. The rest she had worn here to New Earth. Like Mrs. Hart, she could not imagine spending them on herself, and now that she had found a purpose for one of them, she felt as light as the air around her.

 

CHAPTER SIX

MEET THE PARENTS — AGAIN

The feeling of lightness Zee had after giving Meli the diamond stayed with her. She began to meditate again, to divest herself of her own ego so healing energy could flow through her—all the things she had done every day as an empath. She imagined building healing bridges made of color and light. It felt good just to move through the exercises, to feel again her purpose and her calling, even here on New Earth, even though there was no opportunity to use it.

And Meli, whether she knew it or not, had been the start of it. Zee went to one of the time immigrants' meetings to thank her, and almost left when she saw that Meli wasn't there. Quickly, a woman from the eighteenth century took her hand and drew her into the group. Zee ended up staying and listening to their stories. There were none exactly like hers, and the person closest to her home zone, as they called the centuries they'd come from, was born two hundred years before her, but that didn't seem to matter. She felt connected to anyone who was part of the history she'd learned in school.

Work and lack of money were the problems that people mentioned the most. That and the general feeling of being a perpetual outsider.

“I don't get the jokes,” one man complained.

“I miss paper,” a twentieth-century woman said. “I miss the books and the magazines and even the newspapers. I miss letters!”

Abrupt silence fell. Letters were a painful subject. Everyone had left family and friends behind, telling them a plausible story about traveling to a distant land to live happily ever after. But there communication ended. Messages from home, New Earth authorities had discovered, only prolonged homesickness and made it harder to adjust. Professional writers were hired to study endless samples of each immigrant's syntax and expressive style, and take over communications. They crafted descriptions of new lives, wove in details like marriage and children, and created stories that kept the family happily expecting a reunion but never really having one. The messages were translated and delivered in whatever form was common to the era—messenger, letter, email, hologram. For the immigrant, these partings were so painful they were seldom spoken of.

The room was rescued from its silence by a woman who said she'd lived on New Earth for three years, and though she loved her husband, she'd almost given up on feeling she belonged here. Then she had a baby, and the birth of her daughter changed everything. Each day as her child grew, so did her sense of belonging.

“You're saying I should have a baby to feel better?” a younger woman asked.

“No. I'm saying not to give up. It's never too late for things to change, just when you least expect it.”

The meeting ended with Marc, the chef Meli had told her about, unpacking a basket laden with food whose ingredients he'd traded and bartered for with a small group of old-schoolers. A real roasted chicken. Salad greens he'd grown himself. Sable cookies flavored with almonds and orange. Zee hadn't tasted such food since she arrived and held each mouthful on her tongue as long as possible to savor the taste. She told Marc that his food made her feel more at home than anything else on New Earth had.

“Me too,” he confided. “Before, I was
chef de cuisine
to the Count of Anjou. I commanded a kitchen of more than a hundred. Cooks, junior cooks, the boy who scaled the fish, and the girl who scrubbed the pots and pans. Only for my loved one would I have given it up. And still, how I miss it all!”

Later that night, Zee made sure to transfer some Emus to Marc's account so his cooking could continue.

The problem with retuning her empath skills, Zee realized, was that it made her want to use them. It wasn't enough just to be ready, or watchful. She wanted to be useful. It was impossible for her to imagine ever being completely happy without that. Yet it was impossible to be an empath without patients to heal. She felt the same frustration she'd heard from Meli and from people at the group meeting, a sense of purposelessness and not belonging.

Sometimes, bigger is better. And necessary.

The no-nonsense phrasing was pure Ellie Hart. Zee knew at once what the meaning was. Carefully, she spilled the diamonds out of the silk pouch and stretched her fingers down into the bag until she touched what she'd hidden at the very bottom—a memory stick.

She'd already asked David if there was a way to access the data on such an ancient device, telling him it held the diary she'd kept since she was thirteen and some holos of her family, and he'd shown her how to use a universal converter. She didn't tell him that she'd also loaded the stick with all the information she'd been able to find on divining.

Divining, the art of stilling the mind and ego so perfectly you became a receptor for vibrations and events in the larger world, was still new to Zee. She had discovered her potential by accident and at first had rejected it. There were so few diviners in the world that she'd never encountered one, and those she had read about seemed remote and intimidating, their lives scrubbed free of ordinary concerns like love and family. She was sure it wasn't for her. Then Major Dawson had shown her it did not have to be that way and convinced her that she could use her skills to help people without surrendering her own life.

Zee's training had barely begun when she was cleared to immigrate. Loading the memory stick with study guides and case histories had been more a wish than anything else. She had no idea if it would even be possible to continue training on her own. But every time she tried, she felt it was more possible. Each session began with meditation and divesting. She emptied her mind of her thoughts, of her concerns and her ego. Then she would bury herself in an inner isolation that opened her to the vibrations of the world. In her old life, this had come naturally to her. But on New Earth, things were different. What had once come easily no longer did. Either she was too unsettled to open herself fully or New Earth spoke in a way she did not perceive. Often she sat patiently for hours and received, and sometimes there were flashes and whisperings. They had no words, but occasionally, when she scanned the next day's news, there were stories that struck a familiar chord, like the echo of a dream she couldn't quite remember. The next step would be to get those whisperings to resolve into words and images.

“Zee? Zee, are you here?”

She surged to the surface, realizing she'd been so focused she hadn't even heard David come home.

“I'm in here.”

He ducked his head in the room. “I'm going to take a quick shower. You haven't forgotten we're due at Mom and Dad's for dinner, have you? And Paul says he's bringing his new girlfriend.”

Zee felt a flicker of hope. She had been tired and more than a little overwhelmed that first night. Maybe she'd discover she had just misread Paul. Still, she wasn't looking forward to the meal. A few days earlier, when she was home on her own, Mr. Sutton had stopped by to see how she was doing. Smiling, he'd handed her a basket of impeccably beautiful and flavorless fruit. But from the minute he stepped into the apartment, Zee was struck by the critical way he glanced at the surroundings, barely noticing how hard she and David had worked to make it look like a home.

“I'm sorry David's not here,” she had said, pouring Mr. Sutton a cup of tea. “He's been going to the base every day to work on cataloging the data he brought back.”

She was sure Mr. Sutton already knew this and wondered why he was sitting here in her tiny living room.

“No problem,” Mr. Sutton said breezily. “David's always been a hard worker. We have big plans for him, his mother and I. He made an excellent impression on Owen Nash in New York a few weeks ago. A few more years in the Time Fleet, and David will be able to write his own ticket. Politics, business, finance.”

Zee almost laughed. None of those fields sounded like anything David would be interested in. “I can't imagine—”

“The thing is, Zee, none of that will happen if David starts asking for short hops. The way to rack up the glory points is the long hauls, getting deeply into a culture and coming home with a load of data. Or doing what Paul's doing, going starlight's edge.”