“It’s fine,” she said absently. “I built up the fire.”
He showed her the flowers. “For you,” he said.
He had never seen anyone show such a look of complete bewilderment. She stood absolutely still, hands at her sides, eyes fixed on his face, as if she had forgotten the rudiments of speech and motion. He could not keep himself from smiling. It was ludicrous, actually: an angel offering wildflowers to a Jacobite at an abandoned Edori sanctuary that had recently been overrun by murderous Jansai. He urged the flowers on her again.
“I thought they were pretty,” he said. “You’ve had a tough couple of days. Can we put them in a cup of water?”
Still without speaking, she nodded twice, and gingerly took the blossoms from his hand. In a few minutes she had found a suitable container, filled it with water, and carefully arranged the stems. The whole time she moved as if she were made of glass that had already fractured at some unimagined trauma, which would fly apart into a million pieces if someone laid even a whisper of breath against it.
“Do you want to cook, or shall I?” Jared asked.
“You can,” she said in a faint voice. “I’ll find another set of dishes.”
So they enjoyed a curiously domestic evening around the fire in the sick man’s cabin. Jared fried the fish while Tamar laid out a cloth on the floor, setting it with two places and positioning the makeshift vase in the exact center of the fabric. She had already stewed some sort of gruel for the sick man, and while Jared cooked she coaxed a few mouthfuls down his throat.
“Is he any better? Can you tell?” Jared asked.
“His fever seems to have gone down,” she said. “But he doesn’t seem much more coherent.”
As if to belie her words, Peter suddenly spoke a few sharp, lucid phrases. “Jansai,” he said. “Killed them all.”
She laid him back on the floor. “I know,” she said. “Dawn and Daniel and Kate and all of them. But you’ll be fine.”
“My head hurts,” he said.
“Are you hungry? Will you take more food?”
He shook his head fretfully. “Where’s Conran?”
“Not here. I don’t think he ever showed up.”
There was a moment’s silence while the girl waited to see if he would say anything else. Jared thought Peter had fallen asleep again, but suddenly he spoke again.
“Tamar.”
“Yes?”
“Tamar?”
“I’m here. Peter? Peter?”
But that was all. The hurt man stirred uncomfortably on his bed, sighed heavily, and drifted off. She waited a few more minutes, then moved over to sit before one of the plates she had arranged on the floor.
Jared brought over the pan of steaming fish and served them. She had already cut up some of the dried apples and what looked like shriveled, sorry carrots. The fish smelled better than he would have expected. Maybe he was just hungrier than he’d realized. He lay the pan aside and sat across from her.
“Tamar,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s a pretty name.”
“I’m so pleased that you like it.”
“There was a famous Tamar, oh, a couple hundred years ago. You’ve heard of the Archangel Gabriel, of course? She was his niece.”
“I don’t think I was named after any angel.”
“She was mortal, though both her parents were angels. They say she was very troublesome.”
For the first time he saw her smile. He was more pleased than he could have believed possible. “Then perhaps I was named for her after all.”
“Would you be willing to tell me,” he asked cautiously, “a little of your story? How you came to be a Jacobite, for instance?”
“Born to Jacobites and raised among them.”
He felt a surge of alarm. “Your parents weren’t among those you found murdered here, were they?”
She shook her head. “They died when I was a baby. Alongside Jacob Fairman. I was raised by their friends.”
A stark story there; he could guess at its incredible bleakness and solitude. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “No wonder you are such a staunch believer in your rebel doctrine.”
“I am a believer because it makes sense,” she replied instantly. “Not because I have been misled by fanatics. As you have been.”
“I have been taught something that seems to me to be absolute truth. As you have,” he said mildly. “I think you have been shamefully lied to, but that doesn’t lead me to think you should be executed. It leads me to think you should be educated, perhaps.”
“You’re the one who needs the education,” she said.
“All right, then,” he said. “Educate me.”
She was quiet so long that he was sure he had pushed her too far. When she started speaking, her voice was quiet and precise, a teacher’s voice, not a madwoman’s. Not a fanatic’s.
“We believe the original settlers were brought to Samaria on board an incredibly complex vehicle called a spaceship, designed to travel billions of miles across the landscape of the stars. This spaceship was called the Jehovah, and it was a marvel of engineering. Not only could the settlers live on it in comfort during the years it took them to complete its voyage, but it could be programmed to orbit above the planet they chose to inhabit for hundreds or thousands of years.
“So Uriel and Hagar and the rest chose Samaria. And Jehovah orbited overhead. In its storage compartments, it held medicines and seeds and chemicals, and it could release these items when people on Samaria had need of them. It was fitted with strange, amazing devices that could focus power on the atmosphere of the planet and make clouds dissolve or draw together. And it was armed with powerful weapons, aimed always at this planet, which could be unleashed whenever certain conditions were met. When an angel sang a prayer asking for a thunderbolt. Or when the people of Samaria failed to gather for the annual Gloria, singing their songs of universal harmony.
“And over time, as the settlers deliberately abandoned their technology, and their sons and daughters grew up ignorant of the most basic tenets of science, they forgot that Jehovah was a spaceship. And they began to believe he was a god. And they called the songs they sang prayers. And they worshiped him for the good he could bring them, and forgot that they themselves had created him. That he was their tool, not their creator. That he was their servant, and not their master.”
“But why would a spaceship care about the Gloria?” Jared asked, as he had asked Christian. “Why would it care if the people of Samaria live in harmony or kill each other one by one in the most excruciating manner possible?”
She had been contemplating the fire; now she raised her eyes to his face. “Of course none of this matters to a machine,” she said. “But the settlers who programmed the ship cared a great deal. They had come from a world so filled with hatred and violence that, so we were told, the planet destroyed itself shortly after the colonists managed to flee. They did not want to see that violence repeated on their new world. They thought if they decreed that everyone came together once a year in peace, they could ensure that they would never descend into the mindless brutality of the world they had left behind.
“And so they fashioned small, electronic devices which would be fitted to every man and woman on the planet,” she continued, for a moment fingering the Kiss in her arm. “And impulses from these devices were fed to a computer on the spaceship so it could track how many people lived on Samaria every year. And it could count how many attended the Gloria. And it would calculate by that if there was indeed harmony in the world. And if there were not enough souls gathered together on the Plain of Sharon to meet the computer’s requirements, it would send down thunderbolts to threaten destruction.”
“And if this story is true?” he asked. “What then? If what controls our lives is a spaceship, and not a god, if we pray for rain or drugs or succor and what responds is a machine, what then? Can we stop our prayers? Can we ignore the Gloria? Won’t we all perish in a rain of lightning if we cease to adhere to Jo
vah’s commands?”
She flung her head back; perhaps she had never considered what would happen if the veil were ever successfully ripped from the god’s face. “Once the truth is known,” she said, “we can decide how to act.”
“God or no god,” Jared said, “I see no other way to behave.”
“You would worship a machine?” she said scornfully.
“Well, if it had the power to destroy my world, I would certainly treat it with respect,” he said.
“But don’t you want to know?” she demanded. “If what you have followed all these years has been a piece of man-made equipment—not a god at all!—wouldn’t you want to know the truth?”
Jared spread his hands, and the emeralds in his bracelets glinted coolly in the firelight. “I’m not so sure,” he said, giving her an easy grin. “Wouldn’t I feel sort of foolish? I think I’m happy with things as they are.”
“Well, I’m not. We’re not,” she said decisively. “And it’s time to discover the truth.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” he asked softly. “Or have you and your friends actually located the Alleluia Files?”
“What do you know about them?” she asked suspiciously.
“That they are the memoirs of the Archangel Alleluia, who is supposed to have actually visited this spaceship. And that she considered the news so incendiary that she hid them somewhere that no one has been able to discover in a hundred years.”
“But she knew we would find them,” Tamar said confidently, “when the time was right. And that time is now.”
“Well, then,” Jared said. “Where do we begin?”
She frowned at him. “You have no part of this search. You are not one of our allies.”
“I am not your enemy,” he said again. “As you say, it is better to know the truth. I will help you with your search.”
“You said the truth would make you feel stupid. You only want to help us so you can destroy whatever evidence we find.”
“I will destroy nothing. I want to help you.”
“We do not want an angel’s help,” she said positively.
“Are you certain? Think of the places I can get to that you cannot. Inaccessible mountain peaks. The most intimate interiors of angel holds. The homes of the very wealthy and the very devout. What makes you think this Alleluia wouldn’t have hidden her files in one of those places? And the Jacobites will never find them if she has. Maybe we should make a list of places to search, and then begin visiting them.”
She was silent a long time, toying with the last remnants of food on her plate. “Why?” she said at last. “Why are you interested? It’s not because you want to help us. You’d just as soon all the Jacobites disappeared off the face of Samaria.”
“Or emigrated to Ysral. True,” he acknowledged. “But there are political factions besides the Jacobites in Samaria—parties with far more clout than you’ll ever have, I’m afraid—and some of them have recently decided it’s fashionable to embrace the Jacobite theories. They can create a lot of trouble if they aren’t contained or—oh, let’s say redirected. My guess is some of them will be searching for these files of yours. And I’d just as soon have my hands on them first.”
“So you can destroy them,” she said again.
Jared shook his head. He hadn’t, in fact, thought the whole thing through this far (he didn’t actually think he’d find these Alleluia Files), but as he spoke he knew he told her the truth. “No, if we find evidence that the Archangel Alleluia discovered a way to walk to the god’s chamber and found herself instead in the heart of a huge machine, I think we cannot suppress it. There have been thirty years of speculation on this exact topic, and the rumor is tearing Samaria apart. It’s risking our fundamental harmony. We need to know. And we need to know soon.”
She watched him a long time without speaking. She had a gift for silence, he decided; she could fashion it into a weapon or a luxury.
“How can I make you trust me?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know that you can,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
He rose to his feet. “Good enough for now. Will you stay the night in the cabin with him?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.”
She nodded and made no effort to detain him. He hadn’t thought she would. He wandered out into Ileah, letting his eyes adjust to the night that had fallen while they were inside. Not much to choose from here, and he was used to his comforts. But he could make do. He picked one of the smaller huts that appeared to be in passable repair and stepped inside to see what he could make of its interior.
To his surprise, Tamar spoke from the door. She had followed him. “There’s an assortment of blankets and bedrolls in the storage cabin. Things that my friends brought with them. You can go through them and take what you need.”
He turned to face her, though he could scarcely see her in the dark. “Thank you. And I assume it’s all right to build a fire in here?”
“There’s wood and kindling behind Peter’s cabin. And you can take a light from my fire.”
“Thank you again. I will.”
So within half an hour he was more or less settled for the night. Once she had helped him start a little blaze in his own hut, she had disappeared, and he didn’t expect to see her again till morning. It was full dark but not particularly late, and he did not feel especially tired. But there wasn’t much to do in Ileah for entertainment. He sat for a while on the hard ground outside his new home and watched the stars make their slow wheel overhead. Eventually he just gave up, went inside to his hard bed, and coaxed himself to sleep.
Several hours later he woke up from sheer discomfort. His fire had almost died, though a few charred branches still glowed with a malevolent orange light. Jared rose and built up the blaze again, piling on twigs and small limbs and finally two logs. Then he sat back on his heels a moment and watched the leap and twist of the brilliant flames, holding his hands as close as he dared to the source of light and heat.
It was at that moment he noticed the colors of the fire reflected in his Kiss, for the glass seemed to ripple and dance with a pale, undomesticated illumination of its own. He had never seen his Kiss by firelight before—or never paid attention—and he admired its shifting opal patterns.
He wondered what time it was; he was wide-awake. It wouldn’t hurt to walk by Peter’s hut and see if the injured man, or the whole woman, needed anything he could supply. So, quietly, in case they were both peacefully asleep, he exited from his cabin and crept across the village.
He was not fifty feet from the other hut when he realized that he was not the only one astir. Soft, disembodied music floated to him on the still night air; it had the gentle unreality of starlight, intangible but beautiful. He closed his eyes to listen more attentively. The singer was performing some simple, repetitive melody that must be a lullaby of some kind, but her voice was so clear and so faithful that the music took on an unexpected dignity. Even the childish words became solemn and wise when pronounced by that pure voice; all the secrets to the universe were contained in a single uncomplicated measure of that song.
She sang for another ten minutes or so while Jared stood motionless, clothed in shadow, a shadow himself. When she eventually stopped singing, he heard her speak in a normal tone of voice, a few last soothing words, and then there was silence from the cabin. He waited patiently another fifteen or twenty minutes, in case the sick man should stir again, and the nurse would need to comfort him. But there was no more sound issuing from the cabin; both its inhabitants appeared to be asleep. Regretfully, Jared turned back toward his own bed.
And then caught sight of the Kiss in his arm, still coruscating with sheets of cold fire, crimson and aquamarine and saffron. Automatically, he covered it with its hand, but it held no heat and shot no arrows of pain into his arm. Merely it reveled with a soundless celebration of light, and the debauch looked likely to continue on through till morning.
>
Peter was worse the next day—or, at least, no better. “I do think the pills are helping, actually,” Tamar told the angel, “because every time I give him one, he grows calmer and sleeps. But he should be much better by now, and you see he’s not. He’s not lucid for more than three minutes at a time.”
“I think he needs a doctor’s help,” Jared said.
He had expected her to protest, but she nodded. “Yes, but the nearest one must be Stockton, and since I have no carts or horses—”
“Do you expect any more of your friends to come here? Or is this the sum total that was supposed to gather in Ileah?”
She shot him a wary glance, so he realized she still did not trust him and might not tell him the truth. “Others might still be coming,” she said cautiously. “But they might have been warned away, if someone escaped the Jansai attack. In any case, they are not here now, and soon it will be too late for Peter.”
“I’ll take him to Stockton,” Jared offered.
“You? How?”
He couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll carry him, of course, and I’ll fly there. It won’t take me more than an hour.”
“You can’t carry him all that way! It’s forty miles or more!”
“Angels have great strength,” he told her. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you that? Much greater strength than mere mortals. I could carry a big man across Samaria and only have to rest once or twice.”
“But—you’re not—he’s not—he’s my friend and he’s my responsibility,” she stammered. “Why would you help him?”
“Because I’m a kind man,” he said gently. “Because, little though you may believe it, most angels spend their lives helping mortals—answering petitions, solving problems, interceding for them with Jovah. It was why we were put on this world. It is why I prayed for the medicine. I will be happy to take him to Stockton. And,” he added, seeing more trouble gather in her face, “not mention to anyone that he’s a Jacobite.”
“I don’t have any money,” was her next protest.
“The doctor will consider it a favor to Monteverde and be happy to do it. Everyone wants to leave an angel in his debt.”