Revolution's Shore (41 page)

Lily strolled back to stop behind Robbie. At first, consumed in his work, he did not notice her, but eventually he paused and glanced up at her, questioning. Vanov had stationed himself about eight paces away.

“Robbie,” she said in an undertone. “Do me a favor. Let Bach know where we are. But don't do it overtly. Just let a few of the old codes we used to use to run the underground nets creep in. Bach will trace us.”

“Lya,” he began, and stopped, glancing first at Vanov and then up.

Looking up, she saw that Kuan-yin had ascended the stairs to the balcony and now stood staring directly down at them. “Just do it, Robbie,” Lily said quietly. “While you're at it, see that Bach gets a complete transcript of whatever it is you're writing, and set the transmission codes to activate automatically at a preset time as soon as you're finished.”

“You're wrong, Lya,” he replied. “But I will do as you say because I have too much respect for you to refuse you.”

“I hope so,” she murmured, and she touched his shoulder, a brief contact. She eased away from him and repeated her circuit of the room. This time she went toward each door and was neatly circumvented by Vanov before she could reach the exit. Not threatened, really; but he clearly relished this game. He finally told her that he had received orders to let no one enter or leave until the operation was over. Kuan-yin no longer stood on the balcony. One possible, final exit. Lily turned away from Vanov and climbed the stairs. This time, to her surprise, he did not follow her.

The control booth at the top of the stairs held five large consoles and five technicians, each strapped into a chair much like Pinto strapped into his pilot's seat. They were too intent on whatever processing they were involved in to be aware of her. She walked past them and found, around a corner, another door. It was unguarded. And it opened to her touch.

She came out onto twilight.

The sun set into a rippling flow of land that trembled under each lance of light. Wind whipped her hair back, tugged at her clothes. She stood on a balcony, wrist-thick metal rods fencing in a rectangle of balcony some three meters wide and twenty long. The building rose about twenty meters above her, sheer and pocked with light-reflecting windows that gave back the sun's red glow, and at least twenty meters below, she estimated, running into a barren sheet of land that extended to the horizon where the sun melted down into it, seeming to dissolve in its undulations.

Immediately she knew: get Robbie, get some kind of rope, divert Vanov, and they could escape.

Then she walked to the waist-high fence and gripped it with both hands, staring down.

It was not land. It was water.

She tightened her grip on the rod and fought a searing swell of dizziness. Waves shattered and dissolved against the walls of the building below her. The building itself thrust out far into this—sea.

For that was what it was. She had thought the pond in Zanta District park immense; she recalled the vast, terrifying depths of the irrigation lake that she and Master Heredes and Kyosti had entered into—a foreign, dark substance.

But from space, one saw the unimaginably vast stretches of blue surrounding the lands of Arcadia: this was the ocean, and it surrounded her now on three sides.

What need for the white-clad soldiers who guarded the other doors now? What need for comrade Vanov?

Sun rippled in water. Endless kilometers of water stretched out before her, an infinite expanse of depthless sea. Awe and terror poised like equally matched opponents on the edge of her thoughts.

She unfastened her hands from the railing and walked to one end of the balcony. The building stretched out on either side, at least twenty meters on each side, if not more, and only far away could she see the dark, solid bulk of land, lapped by the white foam of water spilling onto the shore.

“Where is my son?”

The quiet voice surprised her. She whirled, cursing herself for letting anyone come so close without her knowing. Whatever she meant to say died on her lips.

Senator Isaiah faced her. The last rays of the sun bleached his hair and skin so that he looked quite old. His hands trembled as he set them with deliberate effort on the railing.

“Where is my son?” he repeated. “Or is he dead?”

“I didn't think you recognized me,” she said.

He shook his head, still imperious and impatient although he had so recently betrayed everything that was his. “But Jonathan—”

“He's alive. He's a pilot in Jehane's fleet. He's found friends, or at least people who think of him as a friend when he's willing to let them.”

His hand steadied on the railing. “But he's alive. Does he still owe you his life?”

“Owe me his life?”

“The Ridani debt of honor: kinnas. He told me when—when I last saw him. I'm sure you remember it.” His voice cracked with bitterness. “He never would accept that his mother marked him irretrievably. I tried to stop her, but those damned tattoos are fanatic about their markings. Once he understood that he could not be my legitimate child he threw it in my face—forced me at every opportunity to confront that fact publicly. What was I to do?”

“Are you asking me for absolution?” Lily asked quietly.

“No.” The wind seamed up the deep creases etched into his face. “I neither want nor would accept anyone's pardon. But if he is still bound to you, by that debt, I ask that you take care of him.”

The sun melded at last with the sea. Stars began to show one by one in the dark dome above. In the distance, light flashed on the black ridge of land, and a moment later they heard an explosion, echoed by more distant ones.

“It's started,” said Senator Isaiah. “Central is falling.” He turned and walked back into the building, his step as soundless on the smooth surface of the balcony as the passing of the mantle of power from his shoulders to Jehane's.

Lily stood alone on the balcony and watched the distant play of light and sound. Stars bloomed above her, each appearing brighter than the last as the dusk shadowed into night. On the horizon, where the last dim remains of the sun's light edged the far line of the sea, a single blazing star came to life like an echo of the fire and explosion illuminating the land. The wind brought the muted sounds of the assault to her and, occasionally, as it shifted, stripped them away.

She felt a peculiar detachment, gazing at this tumult that touched her so deeply and yet did not touch her at all. The storms of Unruli could never be experienced abstractly. Every action on Unruli stemmed from an awareness of their danger; each foray into the outside sprang only from dire necessity or a reckless urge for adventure.

If Jehane had not decided, years ago, to foment his revolution, would the natural course of events have driven her to this ocean, this shore, anyway? Or was this his storm, artificially constructed and set into action by his desires and his hand?

Movement at the door. She shrank back into the corner, back pressed against the cold railing.

“—that Formula is too valuable to us to waste by letting it be uselessly dispersed to every worthless smuggler and poor, ignorant Ridani when instead it can be a tool. An invaluable tool.” He paused. Because it was Jehane, the pause itself was redolent with unspoken communication. “But I know of no way to convince Robert Malcolm of this, while he prepares even as we speak to broadcast this discovery to the entire Reft.”

“I do,” said Kuan-yin.

“Do you,” replied Jehane without any intonation at all.

Kuan-yin turned and left the balcony. Lily held her breath. She could see Jehane's outline silhouetted against the lighter backdrop of sea and sky, his golden hair showing as a pale reflection of the lost sun. He moved along the balcony, face turned to the ocean. Lily wondered if Halfway, the planet Mendi Mun had grown up on, had oceans as broad as these, and if it was such oceans he was remembering now in his seemingly aimless stroll down the length of the railing.

Except that he was Mendi Mun no longer. He shifted abruptly and with the decisive bolt of a trained fighter obliterated the distance between him and the corner in which she hid.

For an instant, she thought of breaking for free ground. But there was no free ground here—she had seen to that—and in that instant's hesitation he had her.

With both arms pulled uncomfortably up behind her, she could not move without giving him greater purchase to hurt her. He held her as close as any lover might, his face a hand's breadth away. So close that his body pressed the medallion—the one Master Heredes had given her—into the skin below her throat. She had lost her breathing when he had grabbed her; now she struggled to calm herself, to center and relax. But even as she relaxed, he kept his grip perfectly balanced to counter any move, any break, she might make.

“Never let an Immortal get the jump on you,” she said, not a little disgusted with herself.

Jehane smiled. “Now. Give me the Hierakis Formula.” His voice was soft as a caress.

“I don't know it.”

His expression did not change. “Not good enough, Lily Ransome. I know where to get it. I've already put in a call to the
Forlorn Hope
, ordering Captain Machiko to use his contingent of marines to keep order on his ship and to detain one comrade Hawk under absolute top security. Well?”

Lily sighed. Even the breath seemed something she shared with Jehane, they stood so close, so intimately intertwined in this dance. “I ought to sleep with you,” she said finally, because she could not help but wonder what it might be like, caught under the ardent intensity of his gaze. “It would serve you right. I really don't have the Formula, and I don't know what its components are.
And
I don't understand why you aren't going to do as Robbie says: give it to everyone. Now. Unless you really are planning to use it to buy people's loyalty, and to reward their service. But that would make you no better than—”

She broke off, gasping, as he tightened his grip on her arms. “No, you don't understand. Sometimes difficult choices have to be made in order to bring about necessary changes.”

“Duty exacts a harsh price,” she muttered, echoing his words to Jenny those weeks ago.

“Yes. Believe me, I would far rather give the Formula to all, but it is naive to think that such a radical change won't alter every facet, the entire fabric, of our society—”

But she thought she was beginning to understand, finally, and far too late. “I thought that was what this entire revolution was supposed to be about.”

He examined her with minute thoroughness, like a lover studies his beloved. The beauty of his face was not, she saw now, so much in the perfection of its features as in the single-minded desire he had focused and honed to such a fine point that it now engulfed his entire being. And woe betide, she thought, whatever—or whoever—came between him and his goal.

“Change takes time,” he murmured. “It can't be hurried.” He stopped, shifting his head slightly as three figures came out on the balcony, bringing with them a brilliant stream of light through the door from inside. Lily recognized them immediately: Robbie, with Kuan-yin and Vanov two steps behind him.

Robbie, who would not have come here if she had not told him about the Hierakis Formula.

“—and it will give all people the chance,” Robbie was saying as he came out and laid his hands on the railing, lifting his head to take in the cool slap of the air and the dark blanket of stars above, “to sit back at some point and simply be with the world, and the stars, and see their beauty as an end in itself—”

Kuan-yin, still behind him, reached for the pistol at her waist.

If
she
hadn't told him.

“Robbie!” Lily screamed.

She wrenched herself free for an instant from Jehane's grip.

Robbie turned his head, surprised, at her voice. The open lines of his face gleamed briefly in the last light of the closing door.

Jehane tackled her. They fell to the ground, grappling. She arched her back, to throw him off, and watching in that split second as Kuan-yin grabbed Robbie by the shoulder and shot him in the back of the head.

Jehane slammed Lily's head against the floor of the balcony. She lay, stunned but still conscious, staring. Kuan-yin stepped back, and Vanov hoisted Robbie's legs and tipped him over the railing.

Lily heard her own breathing like a storm raging around her. She felt Jehane's pulse where his throat lay pressed on one arm. Faint and far down, a splash shuddered the quiet. Even the distant sounds of the assault on Central seemed to have ceased for the moment, in deference to his passing. Only a soft drone drifted across the cool air, pitched low and steady.

“Just remember one thing,” said Lily in a hoarse whisper. Jehane shifted his head so that she could see the pale luminosity of his face suspended above her like one of the stars. “The Hierakis Formula has a side effect. For ten to thirty days you are sick. Delirious.” She bent her neck enough so that the gesture was clearly seen to include the silent, white-clad form of Kuan-yin, flanked by Vanov, standing at the railing, looking down at the gift she had given to the sea. “Who do you trust to watch over you?”

A bar of bright light splintered the darkness, began to close back in on itself as a new figure came out onto the balcony.

“I'm sorry,” said Senator Isaiah to Kuan-yin, obviously not yet seeing Jehane and Lily tangled on the ground at the other end of the balcony. “I thought I heard someone shouting out here.”

The fighting for Central had started up again. Lily could hear the muted sound of laser cannons, but over it all, beginning to drown it out, the high rumbling drone increased in volume. Even the night on the balcony seemed to lift slightly, as if the moon was rising. A wind rose off the sea, swirling Lily's hair where it lay spread out on the hard, cold surface of the balcony.

“Tupping Hells,” swore Kuan-yin. “Whose tupping ship is
that
? Vanov, get back inside.” Into her com: “I want a ten up here at once!”