~ ~ ~
The first thing he said to her was "I thought--" And there was a pause, not very long but long enough. "I thought you were someone else."
That was a day ago. The sun was up, barely. Morning light slid past an antique shade the color of ginger ale. There was a breeze off the meadow. The main road was a kilometer north, national highway 502, and it ran north toward the Goraneg. By Val's reckoning, he, the special forces soldiers, and the Brianov doctor were within two hours of Skaja-Volz.
He woke at an abandoned farmhouse. The farm, they told him later, was far from the chain of safe houses arranged by Kinder Group intelligence. The mission objective remained his extraction but the operation team leader, a man called Zone, was following something called a "broken sword" protocol. The doctor and the soldiers were going to get him out of Volodya, then retrieve or destroy-- or destroy --the one who had found him, the one he most needed to see.
The one who was like him.
If there was any good news, it was that the way ahead was full of abandoned places. Terrorized by Federal Authority crack-downs and Holbek atrocities, much of the rural population seemed to have fled to the city.
The others told him later they thought something bad had come to the area, come and gone, leaving farmhouses, clothes, personals, even photos still in their frames, toys in toy chests, pots and pans. Sometimes, the special forces soldiers said, they found blood spatter on a wall, on the floor. Only one body did they find, out in a tool shed. It was an old man, and his head partially severed by a blow to his neck.
* * *
Siris had been told they were going to Skaja-Volz.
After Manegold woke.
Manegold waking up was both the problem and the cure.
Something had occurred that ended the hunt for Manegold's body. The last Kinder-affiliated contact she and the team dealt with was at a depot on the outskirts of the last province. He had delivered a vehicle that would pass a few checkpoints. Good for two days only, he warned. To Siris' inquiry, the contact said that police had given up looking for Manegold's body. The body, the feds were saying, had been destroyed by the terrorist cell that stole it. For the present, the government was chasing something bigger.
Siris made sure that no one, not even Holbek, saw John Manegold's body or the container in which she transported it.
But after a while the body was not a body. The body was an unconscious man. And the man had to travel in containers that allowed the flow of air.
A day ago, after a soft night curled in a musty chair at an abandoned farm, Siris woke to use the washroom and found that John Manegold had shifted on his cot.
The Kinder soldiers-- Zone, Dance, Edge, Rock --were up already. One had been on duty. The others prepared for the push east in a panel truck toward Skaja-Volz.
She was in the back of the house, listening to the soldiers in the other room, the buzz of insects outside the vented window, looking at a man who lay tangled in a sheet.
John's back was to her. He remedied that, rising as he rolled over. With one foot on the floor, he swung his face in her direction.
Said, "I thought--" with that pause. "I thought you were someone else." Nailed her to the floor with a rich baritone turning textbook Ollano.
As she was in shock, literally in awe, but not just in awe of him-- it was what he had done, who he was, what he had been ten days ago --in shock, then, she cupped the back of her head. His blue eyes were magnets. He was magnetically male, a male in his prime, dark blond hair sleek and thick. The stock photos had failed to capture enough. She recalled the video feed of his death. That footage was absolutely real, down to the application of ankle restraints, the tightening of the noose. By the gods. With a camera often it was too little or too much. Now she knew why the reporter had lost her mind, and her country, over him. Women everywhere must have fallen at his feet.
"Your hair," he said, now, "made me think you were someone else."
She drew a steadying breath, brushed her recently clipped hair with the tips of her fingers. One subject was in her tender place, and in her blood and bones, fifteen hundred years out of her league. Which meant that she would not be going weak in the knees for a twenty-something exile.
"I'm Dr. Siris Interlandi," she said. "In the other room are members of a military team sent to rescue you."
He got up. The sheet rose with him, held by his fist. He wrapped his waist. "I know who you are."
Because he was rising, she jumped. John stepped away from the bed. She averted her gaze.
"The air is sweet," he said. "Hephaestion was right. Everything feels as it did before . . . before there was no feeling at all. You must forget, then, don't you think? When there was no feeling but the"-- he searched for the word --"memory of feeling. Everything is backwards in that other place. One must forget how he came to such a state, to such a place."
I am talking to a dead man. She stared at the floor, at the wall. "He said that one never forgets."
"I am sure he is right. Where are we?" the dead man asked. "I have not been aware of our travel for some while. Two days, I think. You were headed northeast toward Skaja-Volz, I thought. How close are we to the city?"
"Very." She located her senses. "I should examine you."
"May I use the washroom first?"
She said, "Over there." Cognizant of her thrashing heart, and the pattern of sunlight on the rumpled bed sheet.
"Skaja-Volz is a mistake," he called from the other room. "It is too close to the Goraneg."
"We need an egress point. The Alinan border is over the mountains. We can't leave the country with our identification papers anymore, and we've gotten rid of everything the Volods could use to track us." She looked in the direction of the washroom, not sure he was still listening. "Satellite phones, locator beacons, everything was sacrificed. We're cut off from our base of operations, completely on our own. Can you hear me?"
"Yes, I can."
"Things have taken a turn toward the unexpected, I'm afraid. I'm told we can't fly out or purchase passage on the rail. We'll have to walk across the border, John."
The door opened, but John did not come out. "I want to bathe," he said.
"Where did you learn Ollano?" she called back.
"I heard you speaking before I woke."
She opened her eyes. Hephaestion had led her to expect a wilting, confused boy. Was there an error in judgment? Or had she simply forgotten her history? Forgotten the others?
Aremon Cuilean, for one.
Hephaestion had spoken of the Cuilean's second death, the execution by ordeal perpetrated by the titled supporters of his cousin. What about the Cuilean's return? Hephaestion had forgotten what he became to his enemies, and what he did for his people.
What of the others? Siris opened the catalog of memory. Textbook stuff. Kinder research.
There was Norah Gaunt. Look at the totality of her revenge.
Reagan Thaine, warlord of Danica.
Amorganos Parthalan, the man they called the Killer of Thousands. How many hard deaths did he die before he opened the ground beneath the battlefield of Bryn Carra?
Manona of Grete.
Menkaura, the gladiator.
Agrahavar.
Wilting and confused was not the same for the affarites as it was for her. Forget what the affarites went through, what they suffered. They were not, historically, prone to weakness. Even when they failed they were giants.
"You mean when you were dead you heard us speaking."
She heard the pipes open and the thrash of water. "Yes," he said, as he was drawing water for a bath.
* * *
"When I was a little boy-- no, thank you, I don't need that," John said to Dance, who had offered a meal bar. "When I was a little boy my nurse told me a story of the Goraneg."
Zone and Edge exchanged glances.
"You had a nurse?" Dance interrupted.
John was accommodating, albeit matter-of-fact. "Yes, we all did. We were a large family." He noted the stunned stares. "I grew up in a castle."
Siris raised a finger as though requesting an audience. "Petronille?"
"You've read a little about my family?"
"A little. Your siblings, were they ever ill?"
"We were all very healthy. Why do you ask?"
"You are aware that you do not need to eat," she told him.
"Ah." He lowered his gaze. Several hours had passed since his bath. The breeze tumbled a plain tan curtain thrown over a double window in the conversation room. Rock was on guard outside. The rest were parked on the floor or in chairs around the man they had code-named Wolf, the dead man who was no longer dead.
Siris pushed. "You are aware that you're different."
"Yes."
"Your siblings?"
"They knew I was different, too. Every one knew."
"Were they? Different?"
"They were very different from me, and from others. But they were not one of a kind, not as you mean, except to each other."
"Did Hephaestion communicate with you?"
"Yes."
"Was information provided, specifically what is happening to you now and where we are trying to take you?"
"Yes."
"Do you consent to our taking you from Volodya?"
"Do I consent to leaving my beloved Volodya, my home? Let me think about it and I will get back to you."
Siris smiled slightly at him. "You were telling a story about the Goraneg."
"The Volker invaded Volodya. Before the Volker won the Goraneg, the native population resisted for quite some time. The Volker, though, were master strategists. Why fight the hill people when the Volker could starve them out? That is the Goraneg's legacy. You should know that whenever the locals caught a Volker warrior in the mountains, they cooked and ate him. Cooked him alive. When the Volker won the Goraneg, the hill tribes were the people with whom they bred. I am Goranegi, part Volker, part Volod. My ancestors were aristo invaders, and upland Volods. There is a reason my father's fathers became strong in the Goraneg. I tell you this so that you understand. We may get past the Federal Authority checkpoints but we will never get by the Goranegi. That way out is no way at all."
Captain Skocz said, "But we have you."
John looked at him blankly. "That is not an option." He got up, cast a long, neutral look at the captain, and left the room.
* * *
"We were moving by day and sleeping at night. Now that you're awake, the soldiers think we should do the opposite." Siris stood in shin-high grass, speaking at John Manegold's back in the meadow behind the rust-colored barn. A day ago, he woke. It was time to move on.
She swatted at field flies, annoyed. Field flies mid-season were unheard of back home. Checked her wristwatch. John faced the meadow, hands at his side. She wanted to ask him about his abilities, what he understood about them, how much of them he'd recovered. She supposed that his telepathy was at one hundred percent. What else could he do? He was young, yes, but not without some faculty.
Something occurred to her. "You know where Hephaestion is, don't you?"
John pointed his chin at the innocent sky. Was there a reason that he did not face her?
She felt the heat speed up her back and arms. "Gods, is he in danger?"
John nodded. "He was in a restaurant with a government official-- ah, no." His head lowered a fraction in thought. "She was not of my government, this government. She was an international figure, an official of ITAN. But more, more--" His voice trailed.
"John." Siris placed her fingers at her throat. She felt the cords in her neck swell and vibrate as she uttered his name.
"The woman told him that she could track him with a flex. When I approached the table they were sharing, Hephaestion broke her flex so she would not find out that I was there."
"When did you approach this table? When you were discarnate?"
"I was not in my body."
"Track him. Track him?" She must think. "With a flex, track Hephaestion? He is running down the technology, then. This is bad, very bad. John, where did he go? Did he go with her?"
"She took him to Sarika Base."
The name of the base was familiar, and not in a good way. "Why there? Technology that can track Hephaestion? And he believed her. Oh, of course." She folded her arms to her chest, squeezing hard. "First you must have something to track, a code, a signature. There's a file somewhere. The file would be his signature. He'll find his file and erase it."
"He was arrested."
"He cannot be arrested." Obviously the young man was incognizant of the power of a fifteen-hundred-year-old affarite. "He is not-- I know that he has communicated with you but he has not told everything. John, it's important that we catch up to him. Can you take us to this place-- what is the name of the base?"
"Sarika. It is in Bhavaja, but, no, we can't go there."
"Why not?"
"He is telling me," John said, and he turned to look at her, "that I must wait here, and you and the others must wait here with me."
She felt the thrumming cords in her throat sink and soften. At the same time, her face compressed and filled with hot liquid. Against the heat, her eyes misted. But it was because John was crying. Of course she had known, though the knowledge lived beneath her conscious, why he faced away. The tears had no affect on his voice.
She would be silent a while. She would let him tell the trouble.
"Too much," John said in a while. "There has been too much killing. We have become a nation of killers. I do not know my country. I do not know my people."
Siris opened and closed her mouth, choosing, momentarily, silence.
"Something has happened. He is trying to explain it to me, but he does not know yet what we are dealing with."
Siris said, suddenly, "I'm sorry. He told us. About the woman, your partner-- she died too. I'm sorry."
"Maria Zakarij." He hesitated. "She's passed the gate, it's all right, you know. When she passed me in that other place, she was all right. It is harder for me than for her, now, because I know she was murdered, and I know who murdered her."
"You sound like him, you know. It's not only the way you speak but ..." She let her voice trail.
"His cover," John said, "as an engineer for a power company meant that in theory he has access to Quiranium material storage. Quiranium is banned, you are thinking. Why would an international official care about an engineer with access to Quiranium storage? XTO Sun Energies has several storage facilities abroad, about as many as any other power company. The official was looking for a quantity that entered Volodya about twenty days ago."
"And was lost?"
"It was brought into Volodya illegally. The official believed Holbek bought the Quiranium into the country through a sympathizer."
She tore her gaze from his. It was not possible to stop her eyes from leaking. "I understand wanting a strong bomb in a small transportable device but Quiranium detection is the most basic component of every security system in every major city on the planet. And a Quiranium detonation would threaten the treaty with the Holland-Tchey. What is worth pissing off the aliens?"
"Apparently, a Quiranium-powered event is needed in the detonation system of a bomb that uses Holland-Tchey technology."
Her glance snapped to his face. She realized that after about a minute she was still standing in the grass staring at John and the out-of-season field flies were eating her up. She found her voice. Her scalp was damp and her mouth dry.
"Hephaestion died."
He nodded. "Yes."
She covered her eyes. Hephaestion would have gone with the official for a chance to destroy his signature file. Once the official inflicted injury, he was vulnerable. So, Hephaestion was in transition. Out of his body. He was a traveler.
"Are you able to communicate with him?"
"He is telling me to say, Don't worry. He does not want you to worry."
She threw a hand to her mouth. "Is he all right?"
"He is still with the official but he is all right. The official has technology that prevents him from returning to his body, but he believes this security measure is temporary and he may be able to wake sooner than usual. And I should not flirt with you, he says, even though you are very pretty. He says you are his little sister and I must be respectful."
Weeping and laughing: "Hephaestion did not say that."
"He says, That is better. And that I should say he has every reason to believe you will see him again." John stepped toward her and placed his hand on her arm.
She welcomed the gesture of fellow feeling and covered his hand with hers. "Ask him what I should tell the others."
"We should brief them."
"The official he was dealing with, is she a Holland-Tchey alien?"
John paused, presumably to receive a response. In a moment, "That is not--" Then, "If I am lucky." He kept his gaze on Siris. His cheeks were damp but his eyes had cooled. Now he drew his hand away. "She is Holland-Tchey."
"Her involvement will invoke a new protocol. We cannot tell the others about her."
"If you say we should not, then we should not. I am thinking that either we must tell them everything, or I must go ahead on my own. And I do not think your soldiers are disposed to let me leave your company. Your orders are to kill me and burn my body if I cannot be extracted. Am I correct?"
"You're not asking for confirmation, only to see if I'm going to lie."
"I suppose." John sighed, presently. "Hephaestion says that you, of all those he's known in that place you call Kinder, you alone have never lied. He says your mind and your words have always been in harmony, and that is why he gave you the means to speak to him of what had gone before. He says that I should trust you."
-- Next Chapter
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