Streaking (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Would you say, Lord Credesdale,” Lo Chen said, calmly, “that you and your ancestors have been happier than the human average?”

“I've no idea, and no way of guessing,” he answered, although he remembered the answer he had given when Lissa had interrogated him about the portraits on the stair at Credesdale, as well as his labored ruminations in the library on that very subject. “I know that very few of them have died young, or lived in poverty—but wasn't it one of the founders of Western philosophy who said that the best thing of all was not to be born at all, and after that to die young? I'll admit that my forefathers don't always seem to have used their luck as wisely as I or they could have wished...but you know as well as I do what extremes of misfortune our fellow men sometimes suffer, and my ancestors always contrived to avoid those. If they weren't happy, I suspect that the fault was in them, not in their stars; it's a fate I've so far avoided, and hope to avoid in future, no matter what offence it may cause to the cosmic balance.”

“And you think that sleeping with my daughter will help secure your future happiness?”

“In the short term, certainly. In the long term...well, if I have to lose her, I suppose I must cling to the hope that the poet was right who said that it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. What do you want from me, Madame? Do you really believe that you can talk me out of taking part in Lissa's scheme? Or that you can prevent me by force without the risk of disrupting your own reality far more direly than that twinge we both felt when I realized that I'd been duped?”

“I mean you no harm, Lord Credesdale,” Lo Chen stated, reminding him that he had openly insulted her by suggesting that she might. “My forebears have never scrupled to hire assassins, but not for such a purpose as this. It is not for your benefit that I brought you here, but that does not mean that you cannot benefit from what I have to say to you. My fears are for Lissa, and for others associated with our family by habit and circumstance—not because I dread that she might fail in what she is trying to achieve, but because I wonder what might happen if she succeeds.”

“I've been wondering about that myself,” Canny confessed.

“So you should. It is, I suppose, inevitable that you should think of your ability to cheat the odds as a gift rather than a curse, as power rather than responsibility, but I had hoped for better from my daughter. You think that you are the one who has been seduced, but it is her—not by you, not even by your own curse, but by the world you represent. You believe, I suppose, that you have not the power to stand in her way—that you are helpless to resist her seduction, because you are incapable of wanting to resist. Perhaps that is so, but I will say this: you have the responsibility to act like a man, and not a slave of passion.”

The old woman paused momentarily as if to assess the impact this statement had on Canny—but Canny had no difficulty remaining impassive in the face of such a silly cliché.

“I know that you will do nothing because I ask you to,” Lo Chen went on, “and will not readily put your trust in anything I might tell you. That is as it should be. Even so, you know that you must think for yourself as wisely as you can, and weigh scrupulously in your mind possibilities of which you have so far been careless. Because my daughter thinks, as you do, in terms of power, she believes that she can add your power to hers, and thus acquire the one ability that you seem to have and she does not: the ability to renew herself so prodigiously that she need not suffer the same fate as her mother. You have, I suppose, deduced that for yourself?”

Canny nodded.

Lo Chen continued. “She believes, as you presumably do, that the dangers inherent in your meeting are those which might stem from conflict—from your simultaneous striving to make events come out the way you want them to, when your interests inevitably diverge. She also believes, as you presumably do, that no such conflict will arise between you until she attempts to exclude you from the life and luck of the child she intends to conceive. Perhaps you are both right—and perhaps one or other of you will be able to contrive a result of that eventual conflict other than your both sustaining injury—but you must consider the possibility that you are both wrong.”

“I've tried,” Canny assured her. “What are you getting at?”

“What I believe, and suggest to you in all honesty,” the old woman said, “is that the greatest danger lies not in conflict but in collaboration. What I believe is that desire unchecked is hazardous in one mind, let alone in two, and that when two desires are joined in a simultaneous subversion of the consensus of observation, there can be no outcome but catastrophe.”

“Black lightning,” Canny said, to show that he could at least understand what she was saying. “Things fall apart. Lissa said something about the illusion of Maya....”

“She didn't mean it,” Lo Chen said, sadly. “I do. The world is indeed more dream than its solidity implies, and....”

At that moment, the drawing-room door opened, and the chauffeur reappeared.

“Madame...,” he began—but Madame had already guessed. Canny felt her alarm and frustration in his head and in his stomach, and once again he saw the world blur, darkly. He still had no idea why.

But it's still power
, he thought, stubbornly.
The power of premonition, the gift of warning. It's still a kind of power, no matter what Cassandra thought. The terror part is purely subjective and unreasoning—something to be mastered, not indulged
.

“She's coming, isn't she?” he said. “She's found out what you've done, and she's not pleased. But it's
you
she's in conflict with, not me. It's the two of you who are tempting the black lightning with your mutual hostility.” He was trying to reassure himself, but the rising nausea forbade him to do it. Even if it were the conflict between Lo Chen and Lissa that was threatening to upset the world, there could be no guarantee that he would not be the one hurt by the strike. In any case, if Lo Chen's judgment could be trusted, collaboration might be just as dangerous as conflict. The only thing that was certain was that he wasn't in control. He felt certain now that his own streak really was dormant, narcotized by the lack of an appropriate sharer.

Even as Canny felt the unreasoning disturbance growing in magnitude within him, though, he found a space in which to think:
Is this the same sickness I've felt before, or something different, something new? Do the old rules still apply, or have I crossed the line into a whole new dimension of chance? How urgent is this warning?

He could already hear the sound of a car's engine, louder and more distinct than the only competing exterior sound: the purr of a 747 beginning its final descent towards Heathrow.

Although Canny had told himself, as sternly as he could, that the terror was purely subjective, it was still perversely tangible. There was nothing obvious to be afraid of, and yet there was fear in the air.

“Go now,” said the old woman, who must have felt it at least as keenly. “There are matters to be settled here that don't concern you.”

Canny didn't want to go. He wanted to make a sarcastic remark about the fact that she seemed fearful enough of conflict
now
—but the anxiety in the air was still pressing upon his receptive mind. He felt his own superstitious fears breaking through the bonds of discipline to which he had tried so hard to subject them. He actually had to fight to stay where he was, and force his legs to be still.

He fought as the car door slammed, and continued the struggle as the door to the house opened—and then he realized that it didn't matter whether he won the fight or not, because the confrontation was now inevitable. He couldn't relax, although the agitation no longer seemed like terror; the whole room seemed slightly dark now, as if smoke were seeping into it from some invisible fire.

Then the door to the room flew open, and Lissa came in. She looked at Canny, and she looked at her mother—and her own anger must have begun to abate then, as she saw that no one was hurt or under any immediate threat of harm. She too had been uncertain how to read her premonition.

It's just confusion
, Canny thought.
It's the effect of the three of us being so close together that our anxieties can overlap. It's feedback
.

The disturbance began to ebb away as he realized that it was just a freak of circumstance, a collision of uncertainties. Canny felt it shrink, and become controllable. He felt that he had won his fight, even though he knew that he had merely brought it to a stalemate.

“Mother,” Lissa said, calmly, “I do understand that you have my best interests at heart, but I doubt that you are the best judge of what they are, at present.”

“I meant no harm,” Lo Chen said, stiffly. “I am merely attempting to assist Lord Credesdale to make a better judgment as to how his own interests might best be served.”

“He can do that himself, Mother,” Lissa stated, flatly. Then she turned to Canny. “I'm sorry about the warning signals,” she said. “I think I may have been unreasonably anxious, and that the echoes of my anxiety were amplified—but I assure you that you were never in the slightest danger. Your own good fortune may be at a low ebb, but you have mine to protect you now. No harm will come to you while I have the power to prevent it—that I promise you. Even if Mother wanted to defy me, she could not.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Canny said, trying to sound calm although the contents of her speech seemed to him a trifle bizarre.

“I think my mother and I need to talk in private now, Canny,” Lissa said. “It's best that you don't stay any longer—and I think it would be best for all three of us if you didn't talk to my mother again. We have what the Americans call
issues
...but that's a private matter. I'm sorry you were dragged all the way out here for no good reason. Would you like Mother's chauffeur to drive you back to town, or would you prefer to take the train? We're only a short walk from Frimley station.”

“The train will be fine,” Canny assured her. Oddly enough, now that the moment of false panic had passed, his determination to remain had ebbed away. He didn't think that it would be dangerous, any longer, to be in the company of the two women—but now that Lissa had asked him to go, he couldn't see any reason to take sides with her mother. He hadn't wanted to come here in the first place, and he didn't think that Lo Chen could tell him anything that he couldn't work out for himself. He had given the matter at least as much thought as she had.

“I'll be in touch as soon as I can,” Lissa promised. “At the very least, I'll call. If you're in London for long, I might be able to drop in.”

“I'm due back in Yorkshire tomorrow,” Canny said, regretfully. “I can come back again next week, if you want to fix a date.”

“I can't. Don't change your plans—not yet. I still have to rearrange things, sort things out. All this has come up rather suddenly. It's complicated—but I'll do everything possible to move things on. Be patient, please.”

“I will,” Canny promised. “Let me know when you can.” He got up, feeling only a little unsteady on his feet, and maintained his dignity with the utmost care as he made to leave the room.

“It's not the contest that you have to fear, Lord Credesdale,” Lo Chen said. “It's the sum of your efforts—the combination of your destructive potential. You have no power to create, only to blur and obliterate. Think about that.”

“Canny thinks about little else, Mother,” Lissa Lo said. “He knows all about the politics of risk—but he's not a coward. If he and I were really to combine our forces, really to work
together
...what might we not accomplish? Did she tell you that I would steal your heart and steal your child, Canny? Did she tell you that I would use and discard you, and have you killed if you became troublesome?”

“Actually, no,” Canny said, waiting by the door. “Nothing nearly so lurid.”

“Lissa...,” Lo Chen began—but Lissa cut her off.

“Good,” the model said. “We're still within the bounds of sanity, then. I won't, Canny. I won't steal your child. I won't discard you. I want to work together—to see what we might really
do
, if we can only put all this stupid superstition aside. That's what you want, isn't it? That's what we both want. Am I lying, Mother? Am I?”

“Think about the consequences, Lord Credesdale,” Lo Chen said, stubbornly. “Just think—that's all I ask.”

“Me too,” Lissa said. “That's all
I
ask—but I know that you can see the opportunities as well as the dangers, the possibilities as well as the threats. Go on, Canny—it's getting dark, and I haven't seen my mother for quite some time. There are things we need to settle.”

Canny nodded to both of them before he went through the open doorway and closed the door behind him, He made his way to the main door of the house, keenly aware of the insistent beating of his heart. He cursed when the catch proved difficult, but there was no one to see the evidence of his tremulousness.

The car in which Lissa had arrived was skewed awkwardly across the drive. The headlights were still on, although the motor had been turned off, and the driver's door was wide open. Canny marched past it, not pausing until the reached the gatepost at the entrance to the driveway. Then he paused to draw breath and look back.

He still felt a slight constriction in his belly but he wasn't sure whether it was the echo of the streak or a common-or-garden stitch. His head was aching, but that too might have been entirely natural—and the gathering night was moonless, too dark to permit the perception of any inglorious blur.