Authors: Patricia A. McKillip
“I don’t.”
“How would you, Aaron?”
“I don’t know.”
“You might ask, as long as you’re up here with nothing to do but chase the
Flying Wail
. You might ask. She knew I was coming because I’m the only person she’s ever loved who is still alive. She’s my twin, my face, my heart, and until she picked up that rifle in the Desert Sector, there was no one in the world more loving to me. She was all my family, and I was hers. You might look for reasons why she killed, if you’re even curious anymore, if anyone cares after seven years. Well, I spent seven years looking for reasons, in her past life, and you know what I found? Are you listening? Aaron?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded hollow, haunted.
“Now I’m telling you the truth. Chief Klyos?”
“I’m listening.”
“Nothing. That’s what I found. She killed for nothing. For no reason. For no earthly reason. Seven years I hid, seven years I wore that face—the face of the Queen of Hearts, the cuber with the golden smile, who millions recognized but no one ever knew—because when I looked at my own face in the mirror, I saw Terra’s face, my other face, and I was afraid that what she did, somehow I might do too… But now I know that that moment seven years ago in the Desert Sector is in her past, and her past belongs to her, not me, and it will never be repeated… Aaron—”
“We haven’t touched her! She’s the one with the rifle!”
“You say my name. Say it. Say it.”
“Michele,” he whispered. “Michele Viridian.”
“All right.” Her grip tightened on the Magician’s shoulder. He felt her tremble. “You know now. What I didn’t tell you. What I would have told you when—if I got back. If you wanted to listen. But you came here.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Well, you’d know me now, Aaron. You’d recognize my face, now.” Her voice loosened; she brushed back her hair wearily. “I’m not hiding anymore. You never knew Terra so you wouldn’t believe me if I told you she was never a monster, just an ordinary, intelligent human being with a few gifts and a pretty face. She was extraordinary to me, of course, because we loved each other, but the most ordinary of people became extraordinary that way, by being loved. You wouldn’t find it significant that she would hold me at nights while I cried for our parents, that there was always supper waiting for me when I got home from the clubs at three in the morning, or that when we came to Earth and I was so terrified of the noise, the colors, she walked through that alien planet like there was nothing left in the universe for her to fear. I loved her. But since you won’t care about that, then explain to me what the Magician is doing risking his life for Terra and seeing Terra’s visions… Aaron?”
“I can’t.” His voice shook out of control, and the Magician felt his skin tighten, as at an intimation of danger.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Michele said helplessly. “You shouldn’t be here at all. I didn’t want you to know all this until it was over. If you still wanted to know me. But I just want—you gave me the rose. So I want you to know, if it matters to you at all—or if it ever will matter—that I meant what I said to you when you came to say good-bye—about you, and cubing, and the Magic-Man’s music—”
“Stop it! I don’t want to hear this! Any of it!”
She lifted her hand from the Magician’s shoulder, touched her mouth. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes were stunned, bruised. “I’m sorry—”
The Magician eased her away, slumped over the com. “Aaron.”
“What?” He sounded furious, shaken, stripped of an essential privacy.
“Please. Is Terra—”
“Magic-Man, that madwoman killed my wife!”
“Oh,” he whispered. He couldn’t find air for a moment. “God.” The com went silent; he wondered if some fragile, invisible link in the night between them had irreparably snapped. He looked up suddenly, for Michele had disappeared. She was still beside him. He couldn’t hear her breathe. Gazing at her, he couldn’t find her. There was only her face, still, waxen, expressionless: another mask. Her grey eyes seemed drained of light.
“Mr. Restak,” Klyos said.
He answered numbly, “Yes.”
“Are you ready to come in now?”
He wavered, stunned by circumstances. Then he saw the human vision the Scholar had given him, out of a time and place existing nowhere but in a language passed from millennium to millennium: the Musician, stopped in his journey, turning, disastrously turning, to look back down the long path out of the Underworld to see if he had truly rescued anything of value.
“No.”
Jase wiped sweat off his face and tried to stretch, cramped and belted to his seat. “Where are we?” he muttered. They had been pursuing the
Flying Wail
for days, it seemed, months: even before he had ever seen it, it had projected its shadow from the future across his life. The dangers and tensions within the Hub-craft were, like a juggler’s knives, becoming familiar.
Aaron read their position tonelessly. A precise and delicate balance of events had maneuvered the patroller into this aimless flight across the night, pursuing his friends, with his worst nightmare holding a rifle at his back. Jase, admiring the artistry of fate, would not have blamed Aaron for going berserk himself at this point and sending the Hub-craft into oblivion with Terra’s rifle. But Aaron, instead of exploding, only grew more glacial.
“I’m sorry,” Jase said finally, ineffectually. Aaron shook his head a little, expressionless, blinking as if his eyes were gritty. “It’s one of those things, I guess.”
“God help us all,” Jase murmured, “if this is what they mean by those things.” He touched the com. “Klyos to Maindock.”
“Maindock.”
“Have you located Sidney Halleck yet?”
“Affirmative. We played him the docking challenges off the Maindock log; he’s analyzing them now, sir.”
“Good,” Jase sighed. “I want to talk to him. And I want him to talk to the Magician. The Flying Wail has its UF open—”
“Yes, sir, we’ve heard them. They still don’t respond to us, though.”
“Arrange a com-link with Sidney Halleck when he checks back. I bet they respond to that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Out.” He sensed unspoken dissent, glanced at Aaron. “Something, Mr. Fisher?”
“Nothing. I just hate to see Sidney tangled up in this… He loved the Magician’s music. That’s why he sent Nova up here. If he ever sees the Magician alive again, he’ll be in a cell with no hair and he won’t be playing music.” His face tightened suddenly; he looked as if he wanted to put his fist through the scanner. But his hands stayed still; he added, steadily enough, “I don’t know much about music. But I know Sidney. He’ll take it hard. The waste. The utter, absolute waste…” His eyes lifted, stared, hard, at the dark. “She’s still killing people…”
People you love, Jase finished silently. He glanced behind them at the still figure sitting on the floor, the rifle angled toward the back of Aaron’s chair. Just above the belt, Jase figured, if Aaron startled her. Her eyes moved, met his; he was not what she wanted to see. He loosed her to her mysterious waiting.
He said abruptly, “You never told the Magician about your wife.”
“No,” Aaron said shortly.
“Mr. Fisher, did you ever run across an old poem about six blind men trying to define an elephant by feel?”
Aaron was silent, bleakly regarding a smear of Milky Way. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting it happened seven years ago…”
“That’s a long time for silence.”
“I’m used to being silent about it… When I get angry, I can’t talk. I bury things. Right now, I’d like to take the Hub-craft in my hands and throw it at the
Flying Wail
.”
“I know.”
“I remember that elephant poem. Third grade.”
“That’s why I’m asking questions. I’ve been defining this elephant as a snake with a tuft of hair at one end and a stink at the other. Michele Viridian talked the Magician into rescuing Terra out of the Dark Ring, and that’s all there is to it, simple. Right?”
“That’s simple,” Aaron agreed.
“Probable?”
Aaron’s eyes turned away from the stars to Jase. “Not if you know the
Flying Wail
. He could fly that craft by music. He says it’s his soul. He’d never put it into jeopardy. Also, he’s simply got too much sense. Or he did have.”
Jase nodded. “That’s what I can’t understand. What moving mountain seems to be attached to the snake…”
“I keep trying to think of a word,” Aaron said. His face stiffened again, but he continued doggedly, “She killed my wife. Now, seven years later, here we are, she and I, in the same smallcraft, when she should be locked away in the Dark Ring and I should be on Earth and this time she’s got the rifle pointed at me.”
“Irony.”
“Is that it? It seems too small a word… I keep going over it and over it. How we all got into this position.”
“What I want to know is why.”
Aaron made a dry, humorless noise. “I tried for seven years to find reasons. All I came up with was this.”
“Well,” Jase sighed, “you certainly came up with a mare’s nest.”
“Chief Klyos,” Maindock said. “Maindock.”
“Here.”
“The pursuit fleet requests latest position of the
Flying Wail
.”
Aaron transmitted the coordinates, watching for the
Flying Wail
to veer as it intercepted them. Nothing happened: the cruiser was dead silent and on a straight course for a neighboring galaxy.
“Chief Klyos,” another voice said. “Nilson.”
“Nils! Are you in the Hub?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve pretty much got it in working order, though the monitor screens are still being replaced. They’re also replacing your desk, your chair, all your equipment and most of the carpet.”
“Did you get Fiori out?”
“Yes. He and his staff are safe. But he said the Dream Machine is beyond repair. FWGBI wants to talk to you.”
“I bet they do. What did you tell them?”
“We’re on alert status, but situation is stabilizing. Nothing more.”
“Good.”
“Also, we’re getting media calls.”
“How?” he demanded explosively.
“News leaks fast. We pull the fleet off the moon, people ask why.”
“Christ. Maintain station silence except for mobile cruisers and emergency. Tell FWGBI I’ll get back to them.”
“They said—”
“Tell them to stay off channels until I have something to give them. They can fire me later.”
“Okay. Sir, we haven’t found Terra Viridian. Can you confirm she’s with the Magician?”
“No,” Jase said sourly.
“Then, she must be—”
“She’s sitting in the Hub-craft hold with a rifle pointed at us.” He touched the com.
“Nilson. Nils.”
“I’m here,” he said raggedly. “What—what—”
“Other than that, we don’t seem to be in immediate danger. Nils, if we don’t get back, I want recommendations for citations for Valor, and for Extraordinary Performance in the Line, etc., for Aaron Fisher, Suncoast, A1A.”
“Jase,” Nils pleaded. “I don’t want your job this badly. Code.”
“No code. No orders. She’s interested in the Magician, not us. Stay calm. And get me Halleck as soon as possible. Out.” He added, brooding, “I can see the headlines. ‘Underworld Immobilized by Dead Composer.’ ‘Magician Grounds Underworld Fleet; Chief in Orbit’…” He reached toward the com again, restively, then changed his mind. “No. He’ll just tell me about visions. Has he ever gone crazy before?”
Aaron shook his head, then changed his mind. “Not crazy. Just—peculiar. I mentioned it before. The night a band in Sidney’s club nearly electrocuted themselves onstage. I was on patrol at the time. There were patrollers, ambulances, broken equipment, people and robots cleaning the debris up… and he never even saw us. He sat on a stage playing music and never even heard us, never knew…”
“That’s the looniest he’s ever gotten?”
“In the five years I’ve known him.”
“Then what caused this, in God’s name?”
“She did.”
“She who? Terra? Or Michele?”
“Not Michele. I watched them together. I needed to know. What—how they were with each other. There was only the music between them.”
“Terra,” Jase said incredulously, “has been sitting in the Dark Ring for seven years without even knowing the Magician existed. He saw her for about an hour.”
“Something happened then?”
“He never even spoke to her! When I realized who the Queen of Hearts was—”
Aaron’s head turned sharply. “How?” he pleaded. “I spent seven years trying to find Michele Viridian. How did you find her that fast?”
Jase considered the matter. “You were working with her real name. I took her stage name backward to the time when it ceased to exist. Seven years ago. I was also working on a pretty strong hunch that she was somebody whose name I wanted to know.”
“So was I.”
“But you weren’t suspicious of the Queen of Hearts. I was.”
“No,” Aaron said hollowly. “I wasn’t.”
“Anyway, I asked her if she wanted to see Terra. I figured that was what she’d come for anyway…” He paused, thinking back, again struck by the odd position of the Magician among the crowd of people listening to Terra. “Michele and Terra spoke. Dr. Fiori was there, and half a dozen guards, his three assistants and the Magician. I asked him to come with Michele. We all watched the Dream Machine. It was fascinating. You could see what Terra was thinking of on a screen. Her thoughts were pretty vivid. Bizarre, some of them, others concerning Michele, their past. What I’m trying to explain, Mr. Fisher,” he said, becoming aware of the chill wafting through the air between them, “is how engrossing the computer was. We all had our eyes on it.
Dr. Fiori even forgot a couple of times that the machine itself wasn’t Terra. All of us except the Magician. We looked at the Dream Machine to see what Terra was thinking.
“The Magician only looked at Terra.”
“She’s controlling his mind?” Aaron said dubiously. They both looked at Terra; the rifle shifted nervously. “Maybe,” he conceded. “He’s read my mind any number of times.”
“He’s psychic?”
“Whatever that means. But that wouldn’t explain why he’s obsessed. Why he’s gone over the edge. He wouldn’t throw away his life, his music or the
Flying Wail
just because of some—”