Authors: Patricia A. McKillip
“Then why, Mr. Fisher? Why? What would cause a healthy, sane man to risk his life, his friends’ lives—and why aren’t they stopping him? Are they all in on this? Have they inhaled the same insanity virus? They’re heading precisely nowhere without extraordinary amounts of fuel; if they continue on their course, the pursuit fleet will blow them into a dust-ring around the Earth. Does he have some psychological hold over them? Do they ever disagree with him?”
“It’s a democracy,” Aaron said. “I’ve seen them argue.”
“Why don’t they force him back? Why are they allowing this? He put their lives in jeopardy, freeing a madwoman from the Underworld, and he couldn’t even manage to get her on the right smallcraft. Are they all seeing what he’s seeing?”
“Somebody’s navigating,” Aaron said, fielding a question at random. “They can’t all be having visions.”
“Then what? He’s coercing them?”
Aaron shook his head. “I’ve never seen any of them with a weapon. Not even Quasar.”
“He persuaded them?”
“He must have.”
“Is that likely? Does that seem credible?”
“No.”
“Then what does seem credible?”
“None of this,” Aaron said helplessly. Jase sat back, fuming silently.
“He’s not even negotiating for freedom,” he said wearily. “He’s controlling Terra, I’d say, as much as she’s controlling him. But he’s not threatening us with her, or offering to take her off our hands. He’s just—flying. Nowhere. I’d like to give them both to Dr. Fiori.”
“I should have checked,” Aaron said, gazing down at the controls. His eyes picked up stray colors from the lights. “I checked the whole Solar System, practically, but her. If I’d done that, this would never have happened.”
“When you were searching for Michele, you mean.”
“I never even did a stat-check on the Queen of Hearts. And I did one on everyone. Everyone. If I’d done that, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“Why not her?”
He was silent for a long time. “I thought,” he said finally, huskily, “that what I really wanted to know about her wouldn’t be in any records.”
Jase made a noise in his throat. “And what would you have done,” he asked softly, curiously, “if you had found out then that the Queen of Hearts was Michele Viridian?” He had to wait again, while Aaron contemplated the barren darkness in front of him, or in the seven years behind him. The icy, colorless mask of his face seemed to melt, become vulnerable to pain, to understanding.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he whispered. “Finding Michele Viridian, not finding her. I still would have had to go on looking. I never realized before… All those years, it was never her I was searching for. It was my wife.”
Michele’s face hung like a mask at the edge of the Magician’s vision. He saw it in the unraveling dreams of alien landscapes; he saw it out of the corner of his eye as he watched the distant stars and waited. Its silence haunted him. A woman sat beside him, quietly navigating, but it wasn’t Michele. Michele Viridian had vanished, leaving the empty face of a playing card to rule her mind and her bones and her expressionless eyes.
He picked up the coordinates of the pursuit fleet as they were transmitted from the Hub-craft. As Aaron had said, it was coming fast and there was nowhere the
Flying Wail
could go to elude it. Aaron’s face came unbidden into the Magician’s mind, taut and white, as unyielding as the Queen of Hearts’ face. Seven years, the Magician thought, struck by pity, seven years for both of them…
And for the dreamer under the dying sun.
And for Terra.
And how many years, he wondered, pulling his thoughts back to the problem at hand, would he himself get in the Underworld if the alien failed to coordinate its transformation with the threat on the
Flying Wail
’s tail?
Life without music. They sure as hell wouldn’t let him out for a Rehab concert… That’s if for some reason they let him live. A blind panic rose in him at the thought of his death: the transformation incomplete, failed, aborted, the death of the vision…
It has to end now, he thought. Now. The odds were ridiculous. He stirred restlessly, and heard, distant and harsh with static, Sidney Halleck’s voice.
He leaned over the com, amazed. The Scholar was at his elbow in an instant.
“Sidney. How come they pulled him in?”
“Sh.” There was a faint phrase of music, a harpsichord tinkling from the other side of the grave. The Magician’s eyes widened.
“It’s a fragment of the Italian Concerto,” Sidney said. “The slow movement. That’s the second phrase you played me. The third I haven’t isolated yet. I’ll run it through the music bank at the university where I teach, if you think it’s that—”
“It is, Mr. Halleck. Please.”
“But why don’t you ask the Magician, Mr. Nilson? He knows almost as much about Bach as I do.”
“Sir, that’s impossible,” Nils said.
“Why? He should be still with you.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you that information.”
“You just want the phrases identified,” Sidney said, bewildered but tolerant. “Mr. Nilson, do you realize how peculiar this seems?”
“Mr. Halleck,” Nils said, “without revealing restricted information, I can tell you that’s the word for it. When you’ve identified the third chal—the third phrase, let us know immediately. Chief Klyos will be in contact with you, then. He will ask you to come here.”
“To the Underworld? Why on Earth?”
“All I can say is that we’re in need of someone with your talents. Urgently in need.”
“Does this… does this have anything to do with—”
“Please contact us when you’ve identified the third phrase. We’ll have a sol-car at your doorstep to take you to Mid-Suncoast Dock. Hub out.”
The Magician listened, but heard nothing from the Hub-craft. He straightened, wiped sweat out of his eyes, marveling. “What’s that old-world expression for—”
“
Touché
,” the Scholar said with precision.
“What made them think of Sidney?” He answered his own question. “Aaron.”
“What’s Aaron doing up here anyway? Did they import him especially just to chase us?”
The Magician shook his head wordlessly. “God knows. But what could Sidney do? Bring a keyboard up, attach it to a few of the cruisers, directly to their computers. He’d know how to program the music. And how to play it…”
“Well,” the Scholar said tightly, “there goes the tour.” The Magician heard the fear in his voice, felt, all around him, tension like a blind watch-beast roused by his own uncertainty.
“He’ll figure out your challenges, Magic-Man. They’ll bring him up; they’ll explain that the band he sent on tour on his recommendation instigated a prison escape, crippled the Underworld, and is now being pursued by the Chief of the Underworld all over the cosmos. You going to tell him about aliens?”
The Magician stared at him without seeing him, terror and mystery weighing to a fine balance in his head. The moment’s panic sloughed away from him, left his expression remote, wondering. He turned toward the starscreen, and the tension, unfed, dissolved.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, feeling it: the straight thread out of chaos to their future.
“God, Magic-Man,” the Scholar said explosively. “I wish I knew what you are seeing. The rest of us can plead dumb ignorance. All we were doing was loading the
Flying Wail
when you kidnapped us, and there’s no evidence of crime on the
Flying Wail
, not even a weapon, let alone a prisoner. But you. The Underworld will swallow you whole without bothering to spit out your bones. You know that. But you’re not running hard enough, and you’re not running scared. You’re playing the card up your sleeve, the one final trick down at the bottom of your magic tricks. At least I pray so, because there sure as hell are not any wild cards behind us.”
“It’s the need,” the Magician said. He felt it again as he struggled to explain. “Like thirst. Like breath. The overriding imperative of the changing. The Dark Ring is insignificant, a sand grain floating in the shadow of an eclipse. Nothing more. The Dark Ring is not in the vision.”
The still face next to him watching the scanner turned then, almost evidencing emotion.
“Terra said that…” Michele whispered. “So many times. You know what it means.”
“I know.”
“What does it mean?” Quasar asked suddenly, as if a vision without the shadow of the Underworld in it had finally snagged her attention. She looked up from the jar of glitter she was applying to her eyelids. “What are you seeing? You dream awake. Can you show us? Make us see an alien, Magic-Man.”
“I need a drink,” the Nebraskan said faintly. “I’m starting to believe all this.”
“I want to see the alien,” Quasar insisted. “Fly us there, Magic-Man.”
“I don’t know where ‘there’ is,” the Magician said. “All I know is a state of mind.”
“Then fly us there,” Quasar said.
“That’s not—”
“You go there. To this place.”
“Yes, but—”
“ ‘Yes, but’ is not an argument,” she said calmly. “We’re flying into nowhere as it is. I’ve been on this road to nowhere before. Either Aaron will capture us or the others will blow us up. Oblivion is no doubt a state of mind also. Or maybe, just maybe, there is something you see that no one else can see. Show us, Magic-Man.”
“Quasar, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
She flicked him a black glance; her mouth curved upward, wry but not bitter. “You might kill us all, Magic-Man. And you can’t give us this one little thing.”
“I would,” he said helplessly, intensely. “For you, I’d do it. But—” He stopped, gazing at her across the room as if she were a mathematical equation of dubious construction. “Wait…” he whispered. “Wait…”
She stared at him, surprised, trailing glitter into the air as he turned back to the com. He opened his mouth, wanting Klyos, but Sidney’s voice came over the UF before he could speak.
“… I tracked it down myself. It’s a line from the Fifth English Suite: the prelude. Now can you explain—”
“Thank God,” said the Underworld. “Thank you, Mr. Halleck. I’ll alert Suncoast Sector. Someone will pick you up momentarily.”
“Is Nova in trouble?” Sidney asked worriedly. “Mr. Nilson, is that it?”
“I can’t discuss this. I’m very sorry, Mr. Halleck.”
“Mr. Halleck,” Chief Klyos interrupted. “This is Jase Klyos.”
“Chief Klyos, what—”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you. Mr. Nilson is acting on my orders. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we’re maintaining a station-to-Earth blanket over classified information.”
“Bach,” Sidney pointed out bewilderedly, “is a matter of public domain.”
“Unfortunately so is ignorance. All I can tell you is this: I need your help. It has to do with a nursery rhyme.”
“Good Lord.”
“The one we were discussing when we first spoke. You may not remember; it was weeks ago, but think—”
“The Queen of Hearts.” His voice had changed.
“Yes. And would you bring something to play those phrases on?”
There was a pause. “Chief Klyos,” Sidney said somberly. “I’ll be waiting for that sol-car.”
“Thank you, Mr. Halleck.” Jase sighed.
The Magician sat down slowly, his message forgotten. He gazed at the Queen of Hearts intently, bewilderedly, seeing the mask of gold, hearing the nursery rhyme, trying to connect them both into some plausible reason for a discussion between Sidney Halleck and the Chief of the Underworld, until Michele’s face wavered under his eyes, and she cried, “Magic-Man!”
“I’m sorry. “ He touched her, his fingers cold. “I’m just trying to… Did Sidney—did he know who you were? Are?”
“I never told anyone.”
“That’s strange… Was it a nursery rhyme they talked about then? Or was it you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” He reached out, held her shoulders, but knew she wasn’t seeing him, she was looking back again, dangerously far, to the nightmare of confusion she thought she had escaped from. “They are right, though,” she said. “It’s my fault. That’s where it began: the night I painted my face and played with you. I should have known—I should have known you can’t hide things. I thought I would be safe. That’s all I did it for. To make myself safe. To keep myself from harm. It seems such a simple, human thing to do. One that wouldn’t harm anyone else. But look at us! Here we all are in the middle of nowhere, you trapped in a vision, my own sister behind us with a laser-rifle, cruisers about to blow us up, Sidney on his way to the Underworld to play Bach, and Aaron—” She stopped; he saw the pain bloom again in her eyes. “Aaron,” she whispered. And then he felt her slip away, go so far down into herself that this time not even the Queen of Hearts was left.
Something jumped in the Magician’s throat. He swallowed, whispered, “Heart-Lady.” He touched her hair, her wet cheek. “Michele.” Neither answered. He stood up, met the Scholar’s dark, shocked eyes, saw the Nebraskan’s moment of hesitation before he jerked himself to his feet and hit the water dispenser. Nothing came out. He disappeared into the kitchen, swearing.
“Michele.” The Magician held her cold hands, shook her slightly. “Please.” She was nowhere to be found; he did not know where to go to bring her back. Then Quasar rose, her own face transformed, unfamiliar in its gentleness.
“Heart-Lady,” she said, putting her arms around the Queen of Hearts. “Don’t grieve. These things are always happening. The world is made of them. But it keeps on going, the old rich-ragged woman-world, who loves you one day and curses you the next. Because that’s her secret: she keeps you going, because you never know—even you don’t know, now—if she will hand you broken glass or gold.”
The silence spun itself so tightly the Magician thought it would snap and recoil endlessly as far as there was time. Then Michele was crying against Quasar’s shoulder, while Quasar murmured old-world into her hair.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, comprehensible again. “You did right. I know about hiding. Come away from all these lights. The Magician is navigating into his dreams. Maybe he’ll pull that stupid patroller into them, maybe not. But I don’t care: I want to see his alien, and I would rather blow up than be bald.”
The
Flying Wail
spoke.