The Alleluia Files (65 page)

In a very few moments Christian himself came striding through the milling throng, intense, focused, in control.
And if we have just changed governments, here is the man we have no doubt elected
, Jared found himself thinking as his friend shouldered his way past the cornered Jansai and came directly over to the truck.

“I see you were serious when you told Mercy she must contact me instantly,” were Christian’s first words.

Jared could not help smiling. “A few minutes sooner would have been fine with me.”

“You have news? You have found the Alleluia Files?”

“We have. Although we have not yet found a way to travel to the ship, we believe those instructions are elsewhere.”

“But you have proof? Where did you find it?”

“Proof. In Chahiela. Where, I believe, Bael also found the same proof five years ago.”

“Bael … Ah,” Christian said on a soft, evil sigh. “Then all his fanatic behavior in the past few years …”

“Exactly. We must ask him, of course,” Jared added dryly. “For he has been scrupulous with the truth so far.”

“There are many things we must ask the Archangel,” Christian began, but before he could enumerate, a voice rang out that silenced every buzz of conversation on the plain.

“People of Samaria,” the voice cried, and every eye turned upward to stare at Lucinda. Even the angels who clustered in the air a few meters below her twisted their heads and batted their wings to achieve a better view. “I have come to you directly from Jovah. I have been flung here by the god’s hands. And I tell you—your god is not who you think. People of Samaria, open your minds and prepare to hear the truth.”

T
hey held the first of what Con-ran referred to as the “postapocalyptic conferences” right there on the Plain of Sharon in one of the hotels that the wealthy used during the Gloria. Tamar thought Conran’s mocking title was very apt, for indeed, the Samarians she encountered at the hotel looked shell-shocked, dumbfounded, heads knocked askew with wonder. No surprise; she and the Jacobites might have looked just as stupefied and foundering if all their questing had resulted in just the opposite revelation, that the god existed after all. She blamed no one for being bewildered.

There was not much decided at this first conference, anyway, except that a second, more comprehensive gathering must be set up to discuss the implications of their discoveries and to determine how to proceed. In point of fact, people had only a handful of questions, but these they desperately wanted answered. Among them were: How did the angel Lucinda manage to appear so dramatically overhead, materializing out of nowhere at the most crucial moment? and what was the song that froze Bael’s prayer in his throat, that caused the spaceship to reconsider its thunderbolt and saved the Jacobites from destruction?

Tamar could have answered the second one but she did not bother, because the person whom everyone wanted to ask was Lucinda. She watched with an odd, completely unenvious pride as her sister patiently and lucidly explained the same events over and over again. Lucinda did not grow flustered or sullen, as Tamar would have; she did not become angry at the constant expressions of incredulity and denial. She was poised, serene, gracious, and absolutely sure of herself, and everyone who heard her walked away a believer.

Jared, who had listened politely to Lucinda’s tale, later pressed Reuben for more details. “So you were aboard the spaceship, exploring, and you just happened to ask
Jehovah
to let you overhear whatever was occurring down on the Plain of Sharon—”

“Strange but true,” the Edori replied with a smile. He, Jared, and Tamar had found a quiet spot on an outdoor patio in the rear of the hotel, and they were drinking some wine Jared had fetched. Tamar sipped hers. It was very potent.

“And you heard Bael threatening us, and he started singing—and then what? Lucinda burst into song herself? Did you think she’d gone mad?”

Reuben laughed comfortably. “Well, the thought did take a moment to meander across my mind, for she was distraught enough to be making little sense. But I was the one who had taught her how the same melody, sung in reverse, can undo the effects of the original song. I quickly decided that she was singing the Archangel’s song backward, negating his prayer. As it happened, I was right.”

“And
Jehovah
could hear her? Her voice was that much stronger because she was right there on the ship?”

Reuben shook his head. “I don’t believe so. As I understand the technology, his cues must come from Samaria. She could have sung her heart out, and he would not have heeded her.”

Jared glanced at Tamar, but she had already decided she was not taking part in this conversation. She was going to drink her wine, and she was going to keep on drinking it until she got pleasantly intoxicated. It had been longer than she remembered since she had felt safe enough to entrust herself to liquor.

“So until Tamar and I began singing …”

“Exactly.”

“And because harmony is more powerful than a solo voice …”

“As I understand it.”

Jared returned his gaze to Tamar. “Did you know when you started singing what you were trying to accomplish?”

She shook her head, then nodded, then sighed. She must explain after all. “No. Well, in a way. Lucinda had explained the concept to me before we left Ysral, but it didn’t really make sense. But when I heard her singing—”

“
Heard
her singing?” Reuben interrupted.

Jared nodded. “She hears Lucinda’s voice in her head. So she says.”

Tamar gave him a minatory glance before addressing the Edori again. “When I heard her, I guessed what she was doing. So I started singing, too.” She shrugged.
Simple, really
. Though she had not thought it would work. They had been so close to death right then; she had been able to smell the acrid, sulfurous buildup in the air. She had sung more from defiance than from hope, as she had done most things in her life. And won, this time. She took another sip of wine.

“So our song stopped the thunderbolt,” Jared said slowly. “That part I almost understand. But then—from nowhere—Lucinda came exploding through the heavens in this sort of golden mist—”

Reuben nodded wisely. “She teleported,” he said.

“She
what
?”

“Teleported. It’s the word
Jehovah
uses to describe the way he instantly transports someone from one location to another. It’s how we were brought aboard the spaceship from Mount Sinai. It occurred to me to ask him, while Lucinda was singing, if he could transport her to someplace other than Sinai. He said he could. And so we attempted it.”

Jared was shaking his head. “But—sweet Jovah singing!— the risk! She could have plummeted to her death, you know. To suddenly find herself in midair, with no momentum or wingbeat to sustain her—she could have dropped like a stone.”

“Yes, I did think of that, and I tried to explain it all to her while she continued to sing and continued to listen to all the clamor on the plain. Believe me, I was far from certain she would survive the transfer. But here we all are, safe and happy, so the story has a bright ending after all.”

Jared waggled his head from side to side, as if he was not sure about that. “I think the turmoil is just beginning. We are about to tell millions of people that the god they have believed in all their lives does not exist. We have just shoved angels from the seat of power they have occupied for seven centuries. What do we do with Bael? What about Omar? What about the Jansai? How will we deal with them?

“We are about to create a new government and a new religion all at once—and you have a more blithe picture of human nature than I do if you think all that will be accomplished without
heartache,” Jared summed up. “We have survived the crisis, yes, but that is all we have done. There is far more trouble ahead.”

“Well, you are alive to confront it,” Reuben said cheerfully. “Which you wouldn’t have gambled on a day ago. Pass the wine, that’s what I say. Pass the wine and your troubles will miraculously melt away.”

Tamar laughed out loud. Reuben filled his glass again and raised it to her in a toast of admiration. Jared was still shaking his head, but Tamar and Reuben clinked their glasses together and swallowed every last drop.

Two days before the second, more decisive conference was held at Christian Avalone’s mansion on the River Walk, Lucinda’s aunt Gretchen arrived in Semorrah.
My aunt Gretchen, too
, Tamar had to remind herself; but she had had nobody, no blood relatives, for so much of her life that even now she could scarcely credit the existence of a sister, let alone a more distant connection. And this Gretchen (as described kindly by Lucinda and humorously by Reuben) sounded like such a difficult, contrary, domineering woman that Tamar viewed her arrival with a mixture of reluctance and dread.

She was alone in the lovely, airy bedroom Christian had assigned to her and Jared when she heard voices in the hall. “Where is she? Where is that child? Is this the room?”

“Here, let me knock and see if—”

But Lucinda had no time to put her knuckles to the door before it was swept open and a hurricane swirled in. Tamar jumped to her feet, fingers automatically closing around her mother’s locket, feeling an absurd leap of panic in her chest. The woman who entered was thin, graying, sharp-faced, and crammed with so much restless vitality that it snapped around her as visibly as an aura. Nonetheless, she came to a dead halt just across the threshold, and stared at Tamar as though at an apparition.

“Dearest, sweetest god, it is indeed you,” she whispered. “And you did not die, after all. He could not kill you. Oh, child, if I had known you were alive, I would have searched the earth and heavens for you. I would have taken you with me to safety. Tell me you believe that, for it is the god’s own truth.”

Tamar smiled with some difficulty. “I believe you. From the
story I was told, you could never have thought I was alive.”

Gretchen came closer, still staring, still marveling. “And the life you have led. It makes my blood go cold. I will curse that devil Conran till the day he dies for not telling me the truth, when for twenty-eight years he knew it—”

“Don’t curse Conran,” Tamar said, smiling a little more naturally now. “He did very well by me. He kept me alive, and you must thank him for that at least.”

Another step closer, the faded eyes still searching every plane and angle of Tamar’s face. “Well, the face is well enough, and of course you’ve got fine eyes just like your sister, but your hair! Child, couldn’t you have found a better cut? And you may have thought that dye was attractive once, but it’s nowhere near as pretty as your natural color. I think it’s time to put a little more thought into your appearance, especially with everyone arriving for this big important meeting.”

Lucinda burst into uncontainable laughter, sagging against the door frame and cramming a hand across her mouth. Tamar felt her own laughter bubble up, more and more uncontrollably as Gretchen’s face began to simmer with irritation.

“Well, I don’t think I said anything so funny, and you’ve got just as much work to do with
your
hair and clothing.” Gretchen fumed, rounding on Lucinda and shaking her finger. “Running wild the way you have! I would never have sent you to Ysral if I thought you would forget everything I’d taught you about manners and decorum, every single thing—”

“Aunt Gretchen, I adore you,” Lucinda said, stopping the older woman’s diatribe by enclosing her in a comprehensive embrace. “Don’t you ever change. Come. Let’s sit down and get to know Tamar.”

So that had been much less alarming than Tamar had feared, though she thought it would take her years to grow accustomed to Gretchen’s close, personal attention and forthright criticism. Nonetheless, in an instant she had been added to Gretchen’s short list of people for whom she would fight till the death. It was strange, oppressive, and wonderful to mean so much to another human being. Something else it would take years to grow used to.

Gretchen liked Jared, though. She fussed over him as she would a wealthy guest come to spend the summer at the Manor,
or at least so Lucinda said. She looked after his comfort, deferred to his opinion, and never lost an opportunity to tell her nieces how handsome he was (“in looks
and
behavior, because one means nothing without the other”). Jared accepted her homage with his usual flawless courtesy, and laughed about it privately but never unkindly.

Gretchen was less pleased with Reuben, and Lucinda’s news that she planned to marry the Edori. “Except that Edori don’t marry, so perhaps I just mean that I will be spending the rest of my life with him. Or at least, what portion of his life he isn’t away at sea. I don’t have the details worked out yet. But he’s the man I love.”

“He’s well enough for an Edori, but you’d be wasting your life to be throwing it away on such a man,” was Gretchen’s reply, and the two of them argued about it obliquely for the next several days. Lucinda remained completely unruffled about her aunt’s disapproval, and confided her suspicions to Tamar later.

“I think she was in love with Conran once, but he wasn’t faithful,” she said sunnily. “You can see it even now when she looks at him, that she remembers this sort of bone-deep despair. It’s turned her against all Edori forever, I think.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s turned her against Conran, because I saw them holding hands on the rooftop garden the other day,” Tamar replied.

Lucinda bubbled over with laughter. “Did you really? I can’t imagine—but you know him better that I do. Can you
picture
him with Aunt Gretchen?”

Tamar thought. “Well, all the Jacobite women are strong-willed, as a rule, but he always seemed to be involved with the most hardheaded ones of the group. If you’d ever met Elinor … Actually, Gretchen reminds me a little of Elinor, and she was the love of Conran’s life.”

“What happened to her?”

“Died at the Jansai’s hands, six or seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”