Blightcross: A Novel (11 page)

Perhaps the archon would gain satisfaction soon.

Capra supposed that her new friend was staring at the old, gaudy heirloom because it was the kind of thing that looked more expensive than it was. If the amulet weren't the only thing she had left of her life back home, she would have just given it to the poor Ehzeri.

“I just need to know where these paintings are, Vasi. If, that is, they actually exist.”

“Then you are in luck.” Vasi appeared to strain for something, probably a word. Neither of them spoke Tamarck very well. “I... I will lead you right to them.”

“Good. Where will we be going?”

Vasi pointed west, to a gold and ivory dome that was overshadowed and buried by the industrial fever surrounding it. “The palace.”

“The palace...” Nobody had mentioned this palace. But, she reminded herself, intellectuals like Irea and Helverliss often were too self-absorbed to notice these kinds of things. If they had just done a bit of basic research, they could have saved her a day's worth of fruitless conversations with shady characters. “Well, I would gladly pay you for your trouble. My university has given me an expense account for just this kind of thing.”

“You are too kind, Professor.” Vasi took a deep breath. “Meet me at the western end of the Palms tomorrow at noon. I will accompany you to view these exhibits.”

Capra thought for a moment. Vasi looked familiar, but then most of her people reminded Capra of that one family—

It's a compound, it's a compound. It's one of their training camps. If we destroy this one, their ability to attack will suffer.

It's so damned hot. Just want to get it over with and get back to the base for some water...

When Vasi turned to leave, Capra reached out and said, “Wait. I don't want you to come with us. Just tell me where the damned things are.”

“Why?”

“Because. There are things you would do best to avoid. This... art business is one of them.”

Vasi's posture stiffened. “I must personally escort you.”

Great. Now they had to deal with an outsider. There was no way they could show up with their gear and not look suspicious. “All right. Here's the thing, my friend. My colleague and I need to break into the place. That would be why I want you to stay behind.”

“I suspected as much. You hardly look like a professor. You are hardly older than I am.”

Capra sighed. “Good. Now that we have that over with...”

“Yes. I want to help. Like I said, meet me here tomorrow and I will lead you straight to the collection. It is hidden. And without detailed instructions, you will never find your way through the palace.”

Capra grinned. “Perfect.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“A woman bumped into you in the market after you ran from a guardsman, and you hired her to help us?”

Another one of Dannac's scathing glances raked Capra from across the loft. Had they not worked together long enough for him to trust her judgement?

She eased back in the soft leather chair. “That's right. We'll raid the palace tomorrow, map out our escape from this awful island, and be out of here in two days.”

She held out her hand and snapped her fingers. A second later, there was a plug of cavo careening for her head, and she caught it without raising her gaze from the paper in her lap. “Thank you.”

The familiar cavo-tingle filled her mouth, and she parked it in her cheek. The article she was reading concerned her people's struggle against the Ehzeri attacks. Part of it was an alleged firsthand account of one of the guerrilla raids. In particular, one of the occasions where the attackers had employed
vihs
with devastating results.

Devastating results she remembered with a depressing clarity. She heard the sounds, the booms and cracks, the roaring jets of fire, all pounding her parents' settlement while they huddled in the shelter underground. She heard the chilling crooning of Ehzeri fighters ready to overload their own bodies with
vihs
in order to cause maximum damage.

But then this account veered into tales of cannibalism and sexual deviancy. Things nobody could possibly believe. And it concluded with a note praising Blightcross' own Ehzeri population for their denial of such horrible ways. That answered Capra's question of why anyone would publish such a scathing report in a town full of the very people it decried.

Oh, it was not you we think are monsters; only the ones who are stuck back in your homeland. Keep doing what you are doing! We love you!

“Why are you wasting your time with that trash?”

She set it on the table, next to her lukewarm shalep. The front page showed a headline lauding the tireless bureaucrats of the Blightcross Fuel Corporation for improving working conditions, as well as a short note of congratulations to the Publications Commission for becoming the most widely read stable of periodicals. “Because there's nothing to do until tomorrow.”

“You really trust this person?”

“She was one of your own.”

“That means nothing, especially here. I would not trust most of them to brew my shalep. They have been bought, and the few here who still have their power are only going to permanently deplete their families back home.”

She began to wander around Helverliss' loft. There were uncleaned paintbrushes, lying stiff in strange places, and she accidentally stepped on an incomplete sketch lying on the floor. “I still don't get that, Dan. It just makes no sense. I can understand that certain groups have more capability, and of course that the war wiped most of them out. But this family link thing your people have sounds rather silly.”

“The strict code and familial binding was supposed to keep us strong. And it did, until people started to come here and use their power individually. I do not claim to understand how it works. Nobody knows a damned thing about
vihs
, and anyone who claims to is a liar. Our system also ensured that catastrophes like what happened during the war are impossible. We would all have to agree to wipe out an entire race.”

“Have your people not agreed unanimously to wipe out the Valoii? I have heard of strange tactics. Ingenious ones. Raising your young, gifted countrymen from birth to become fighters, to transform them into weapons. It really shows what can happen in times of desperation.”

Dannac said nothing.

Best let the man brood as he always did. She went downstairs and decided to peruse the mess of books. There had to be something interesting amid all the junk.

She traced her finger along each shelf and examined the titles. Most of them left her baffled—
The Pyramid Of Iathecan Analysis, On Folklore And Nationalist Revivals, Vihs: The Joke Of Reality And Why We Cannot Laugh
, and one that made her chuckle,
Magic As Phallic Desire
.

After pacing through a few shelves, she stopped and accepted that she would find no romances or retellings of old legends. There were stacks of outdated journals, going back fifteen years at least, and all of them concerning art, science, and literature. There were university publications, and a small section of brightly-coloured books with the same mark she had seen on the weekly she had just read.

Definitely nothing she would want while relaxing on the rocky shores of Prasdim. Then again, if she were actually able to get back to Prasdim to lie on a towel, she would read the most boring academic text and feel damned great about it.

On one of the walls, her eyes fixated on another painting. This one showed at least something resembling a person, though it was too vague to call it a man or a woman. But the ghostly form stood amid a backdrop of grey-blue tendrils. It was like a fire made of deep blue storm clouds, and her lips parted as she shuffled towards the painting.

This painting's impressions leaped into her mind with a kind of sophistication that the one before lacked. Now she understood why Helverliss decried the other one as crude. She began to feel as though the stylized figure were dancing in her own mind, and she began to cycle through happiness to sadness and curiosity and horror...

The image overtook her vision so that she lived inside it, or it inside her. The blue fire began to take on shapes— people she vaguely recognized, and voices whispered to her.

Dad? Who are those men?

Her parents' old place near the demilitarized zone in the foothills, where derelict Yahreinian equipment rusted in their buckwheat fields. A broken wall, and a group of men in sagging caps like her dad's, sleeves rolled up to their elbows and who was that man they had pinned against the crumbling wall...?

Traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor

The voices of her grandfathers and their grandfathers, whirling blue figures, spirits, flying in formation over the mountains that had been their ancestral home, and all at once she felt her throat spasm and her eyes flood but she did not understand why...

He wanted to hurt us, honey. He can't hurt you now. It's okay. Stop crying.

But she shouldn't have seen it—how had it happened? Nobody that young could have understood it. There were men, there was a broken wall, and there was a thump, and there was blood.

You think this excuses you? Shall we all just walk away because we saw something horrific? Everyone has seen something horrific. It is simply the times in which we live
.

And she called aloud, “Who the hell are you to judge?”

She hardly expected the answer, and even less expected to be yanked out of the painting's strange world, to stand once again in a musty shop surrounded by academic drivel. “I did not mean to judge, Capra.”

She wiped her eyes and once they focused, she saw Helverliss standing under the painting. For a second, she saw the two flow into each other, as if both were ink being swallowed in a whirlpool. “Sorry... I...”

“No apologies, young lady. It is what I had intended my art to do.”

“What?”

“This painting. I neither wanted a fully subjective piece, nor a static objective work. This was one of my first pieces that could place abstract concepts directly into the viewer's personal experience. My work exists both inside and outside—it is neither solely dependent upon the viewer, nor is it meant to be viewed with cold distance in isolation. It is a fine line, I know, and many have said I have failed to do what I have claimed, but I of course disagree.”

She stared at him for a moment, tried to think of what any of that might have meant. “I... felt...”

“Why do you run?”

“What?”

“Why do you run? And why would you trust your friend with your life?” He began to pace and glanced at the painting.

“Mr. Helverliss, I—”

“Not my place, I know. But that particular painting explores concepts relating to compassion, although what actually occurs when the viewer experiences this work is hardly reflected by such an inadequate word. Most people do have similar reactions, but rarely as strong as you.”

“But I was inside the picture. There were these things... and I saw my dad and these other men...”

He grinned. “Yes. I cannot tell you what it meant, but I have wondered since meeting you what event could be so moving that you would take off across the world with your sworn blood enemy. I know why he trusts you—because he is truly insecure and lonely, and is extremely flattered that you have not stabbed him in the heart like any good Valoii would do. But you are more complicated.”

She tried to meet his eyes, but afterimages of the painting's illusions crept into her mind. Was it a buried memory? No—it seemed familiar now. It could be her mind playing with her, or the painting manipulating her, but she had the strange idea that memory was an integral cog in the machinery of her mind. It had always been there...

What are you doing, Dad?

Around the man's neck was a golden, knot-like emblem. Knot—that was all she could remember, and that she thought it was pretty because there were stones in it and she liked shiny stones...

“Oh, shit.” She brought her hand to her mouth, and with her other hand, grasped the amulet around her neck.
Heirloom my foot
.

“I do not mean to pry, Capra. I am sorry.”

She composed herself. “No, I appreciate it. I think your works are brilliant, though I don't understand most of them. I mean, my favourite works are just the old masters... this is so new to me. Your work is not all handsome nudes and pictures of fire giants leering at maidens.” She flashed him a nervous smile.

“Well, it is not meant as a tool for psychoanalysis, but sometimes it does end up contributing to some insight. I hope you at least have enjoyed the experience.”

“Psychowhat?”

Helverliss sighed and guided her away from the painting. “A new science of the mind.”

More new sciences, and all for what? To replace the
vihs
? To feign understanding and build machines?

She had to give Helverliss credit for his observations. The only odd thing was that the painting's vision had not been a remembrance of the day she had decided to desert the army, as she would have thought would happen based on Helverliss' explanation of the painting. In the vision she had been a child, and with each trudging step up to the loft, she wondered more if she had been destined to become a traitor from the very beginning.

She flopped onto a couch, and Dannac gazed at her. What was he thinking? The stupid jewel in his head just sat there and glistened the same whether he was angry or sad or randy or whatever.

“So what was your answer?”

“What?”

“Helverliss asked you why you decided to stay with me. I disagree with his assumptions about myself, but I am curious about your answer.”

With a swift jerk, she shot upright. “You were listening?”

“Small shop.”

“It's a stupid question. You're my friend, and that's it.”

“If you say so. I thought it might be atonement for the Valoii phosphorus grenades that stole my sight, but maybe that was too obvious and simplistic for someone like you.”