The Alejandra Variations (21 page)

"But how do you
know
?" he demanded, ignoring her admonition. The wine was going down more smoothly, and quicker. "How the holy hell do you know that a Keeper's out there? What does the Unit use? Radar? Laser detection? Infrared, or what? You know, the Unit isn't the sharpest computer I've seen." He waved a sliver of fruit in the air. "But that's not the point. The point is, you haven't even
seen
them."

Some of the very young servant girls turned away with embarrassment. Nicholas's voice had gotten a bit too loud, and even the older women were bearing his tirade with difficulty. But he didn't care. It was the age-old American in him speaking out. He believed in freedom and volition. Slavery between men and women, or between some bugaboo out of the past and the Clans, was incomprehensible to him. And indefensible.

"It is the fire," Ariuzu said solemnly. "The fire in the sky."

Cesya lowered her head. She glanced up at Nicholas as the rest of the women returned to their private conversations.

"Heart," she said gently. "Your ways do not belong here, but that is not your fault. They are millennia old and can only bring grief in the long run." She sighed. "We
have
one direct Clan experience with the Keepers. The Gods bless us every day that we have not lived through another such experience. It belongs to Ariuzu to tell the story."

Ariuzu, shadowed by the orange light of the fire, looked at him as she began. "I was only a young girl, and the Tejadas were hundreds of miles north of here, near the great ice sheets. There were more Clans then than there are now, and the Keepers are the reason for our decrease. We knew the Waine Clan was going to attempt to ford the Perseus Glacier. You see, the whole world is linked by the great northern ice sheets, and the Waine Clan thought they could move to a different continent, away from the Keepers. One night I was walking with my father beside a river. Our Clantram was waiting."

She paused, as if remembering the waters of that wooded creek. Then she resumed. "Suddenly the sky to the north was filled with a terrible light, stronger than the borealis. A day later, our Clan was nearly wiped off of the earth by the floods of melted ice which followed. We have never forgotten that spring. The rains changed our wanderings, but the Keepers were always there to see that we obeyed the Law. No one has ever reported the Waine Clan at any of the mating rituals. We believe that they are gone from the earth."

He got the picture. This was definitely no Eden.

"Christ," Nicholas whispered. "You people are in bad shape."

Cesya suddenly laughed. "Heart, you are the funny one. Don't let Ariuzu's stories scare you like a little child. We are taken care of wonderfully, and we do obey the Law. Had we not obeyed the Law, we would not now have you among us."

Nicholas stared at her. "I don't understand. What do I have to do with it?"

"You are the Heart of our Clan," Cesya said. "All of the Hearts taken from the original Blossom have long since awakened, lived out their fruitful lives, and passed on. You were the last. No one knows why you slept so long, or why you awakened now, but those of us alive today are thankful that we were ordained to see your awakening. It bodes well for us."

Somewhat fuzzed out on the wine, Nicholas was still able to get a clear vision of what she was talking about: the stasis couches.

If he had survived, so had the others at Hill Air Force Base.

The pilot, only moments ago, had mentioned two other Clans nearby. Zaffina. Mitsios. And the Seiberts were the ones who'd passed them in the night several days ago. Back in the underground facility, he had been too rushed to escape from the shark—and Lexie—to read the names of his sleeping comrades. But who were they originally?
Zaffina. Mitsios. Seibert.
And many, many others.

Sleeping beauties, he thought. Because of them, each Clan had been kept alive.

He could almost see a couch labeled: "Martin." Rhoanna Martin.

Cesya spoke quickly, as if she had seen his mind drift away from her words. She put a warm hand to his thigh, close to the hem of his kilt. Underneath it, he wore nothing.

She said, "All of the Clans take after their Hearts. The Blossom to the far west where we found you is now one of our most sacred mating places. We will journey back there in a few years."

Nicholas's heart crashed in his chest as he fought the wine—and the painful memories. His anxieties seemed so trenchant that he wondered if he'd ever recover from the shock of his situation.

His goblet was filled again by a shy servant on the command of their leader.

"Why do you call them Blossoms?" He gestured about the meadow and the majestic bonfire.

Cesya, for a change, seemed happy and proud to provide him with concrete information. "It was the great wisdom of the long-dead ones to give the earth another chance at life. When the last wars ended and the death fires cooled, Blossoms planted with foresight and hope all over the earth sprouted! And this is the site of one of them. They are very sacred places for us, for here all life was given another chance."

Nicholas understood, only too well. The statement carried all the hidden meaning of a double metaphor: He was in their society to stay—but only on their terms. He was Cesya's Heart. This place of Blossoming had become, upon his awakening, a place for Cesya's own emotional and spiritual survival, a place of redemption, not only for the race, but for her as well.

An odd memory was triggered just then by the association of the word "Blossom" with all its metaphorical luggage. When he was a boy growing up in Los Angeles, he had befriended a retired aerospace engineer who lived down the street. Sometimes Mr. Simic took Nick up into the mountains northwest of the San Fernando Valley on summer evenings when the air was cool and distracting. Nicholas loved it.

It was in those mountains that the Rocketdyne Corporation test-fired rocket engines. Their pink and crimson plumes could be seen for thirty miles or more across the valley in the sunset. Those engines, terrifying to a ten-year-old, were the products of a sinister intelligence that seemed to be more in the business of scaring young children than protecting America from the nasty Russians.

One August night they drove far into those eucalyptus-covered mountains, hoping to sneak a closer look at the tests. Mr. Simic, well into his seventies, confessed to Nicholas that there had been a project he had worked on called Phoenix. It was a missile system so nefarious that the government eventually decided against ever putting it into use. But it was still to be kept a deep, dark secret.

The Phoenix missile was designed to be installed deep within heavily protected silos within cities like Los Angeles and New York—not out on the plains of Montana and Wyoming. When the ashes of a nuclear war subsided, days or weeks later, these missiles, like their ancient mythical counterpart, would suddenly rise from the debris and soar toward an unsuspecting enemy.

Old Mr. Simic had told Nicholas this with all the solemnity of a blood brother. As far as Nicholas could see, there would be no one left in America to appreciate such a brilliant tactic. What few Russians there would be left would be caught by surprise. But, so what?

Whether such missiles were ever built and placed in secret in the centers of America's major cities, Nicholas never found out. But the ironic slant was all too clear. Perhaps—instead of Phoenix missiles being buried to later seek revenge after the hot clouds had dissipated—someone had built giant "pods" which contained seeds and spores of every plant that existed. Perhaps some of the Blossoms might also hold animal life in stasis, so that when the radiation levels finally subsided and the Blossoms popped open, life could go on. It was a far happier concept than the Phoenix.

Nicholas couldn't see much in the darkness beyond the light of the bonfire, but he was aware of the generally circular nature of the meadow. The loam upon which they sat was thick and encrusted with meadow-life. It was indeed a sacred place. Life was abundant. Moths flickered in and out of the bonfire's halo, and a bird of the night cried far off in the hills. The world was once again teeming.

He tried to stop drinking the wine, but found that his goblet was constantly refilled. The women surrounding him were lavishing him with affection. He let Cesya and Ariuzu orchestrate the proceedings. The wine kept him at peace, despite his ramblings.

A few dancers had appeared, dressed in elaborate costumes and ornaments, and paraded about to the melodies unleashed by a small synthesizer placed before the fire. Though Cesya's thigh was pressed against Nicholas's leg, he found that one of the dancers was able to divert him.

The girl, who seemed in her early twenties, had dark hair and light brown skin. Her swaying mesmerized him.

She looked almost exactly like Rhoanna had at her age. Her hips gyrated beneath the wings of her costume, and her eyes were half-closed in rapturous ecstasy. When they opened, they glared hotly, electrifying him.

Noticing that his attention was elsewhere, Cesya elbowed him in the ribs.

"Nicholas, Heart," she smiled. "Is tonight's celebration to your liking?"

"Oh, yes," he stammered, taken off-guard. "Yes."

When he looked back at the row of dancers, the one that had reminded him so much of Rhoanna had disappeared from the line.

He looked around for her, but incredible as it seemed, she was nowhere to be seen.

Had he imagined her?

He glanced down into the goblet of wine, looking for clues. He noticed that his fingers were numb—but not from the cold.

He nudged Cesya. "Where did that girl—" he began, but the golden woman beside him interrupted.

"It is the wine, Heart," Cesya smiled. "It plays tricks from time to time." In the bonfire's light, Cesya's hair looked like finely spun gold, the hair of angels.

Cesya brought him back to her. Their warm thighs were touching, and her perfume—possibly laced with
gohhe
—haunted him. With her nearby, it was easy to forget—to forget the girl, Rhoanna, the past.

Then, from behind them in the buzzing, animated darkness, Nicholas heard a voice.

"Mistress," it came, strong and husky.

Nicholas turned and saw Holte, standing like a dark-world god, with his close companion, Zane, beside him.

Cesya turned, munching on a segment of fruit. "Yes, Holte."

"We have found something I think you should know about," he said.

"What did your men find, Holte?" Her bearing toward the man was deferential. Perhaps the occasion allowed Cesya to treat her subjects magnanimously.

Holte stepped up to her. He spoke so as to include Nicholas in the conversation. Nicholas hadn't seen either man around the bonfire earlier. Now, in the fire's autumnal light, they almost had the appearance of characters in a play.

Cesya seemed annoyed.

"Zane has found what appears to be tubing of some kind," Holte announced with a serious, but contrite expression. "It looks like it might be made of metal."

Cesya gave Zane a long hard glare of disapproval. Zane held his ground, waiting.

"Tubing?" Cesya looked back up at Holte.

"It's a pipe or small conduit coming out of the hillside, Mistress. It's quite obvious." He indicated Zane over his massive shoulder. "Look, if Zane could find it, anybody could."

The dancers took no notice of what was going on at their leader's table. The air was filled with the chatter of the Clan, music from the peculiar synthesizer, and the jump and crackle of the bonfire.

Cesya's face went a little sour. "Then, shall we take a look?"

Immediately Holte and Zane shuffled backward in the moist grass, letting their golden leader rise from her cushions. Holte turned to Nicholas. "Would you like to accompany us?"

Cesya stepped between them. "I think not. This is none of our Heart's concern."

Ariuzu waved a hand in protest. "Cesya, it wouldn't hurt the boy. Give him a chance. It's his night to learn."

"Right," Holte grinned in victory. He winked at Nick.

Nicholas couldn't tell if Cesya imagined intrigues among the men, but her personality seemed to change at the slightest twist of events. Was Holte up to something?

Cesya seemed uncomfortable, but she gave in. "Come," she said.

Nicholas swilled down the
gohhe
-wine left in his goblet and followed them across the meadow. He couldn't understand why a piece of metal tubing should be of such importance, but the expression on Holte's face urged him to find out.

No one seemed to mind their leave-taking. In fact, as Nick walked away from the bonfire, he noticed for the first time that the meadow was spotted with men and women going to and coming from the Clantrams. Everything about their manner was relaxed. He even heard children playing somewhere.

The four of them strode over the cool grasses, moving in the direction Zane indicated. Cesya seemed preoccupied and didn't notice when Holte stepped beside Nicholas. The large man walked with the confidence and power of a jungle cat.

"How much gohhe have they given you?" he asked.

"Quite a lot, I imagine," Nicholas said. "That's all there is to drink. Why?"

"Stop drinking it," Holte said. "Ask for water. They'll bring it to you."

He then walked on ahead of Nicholas, easily out-distancing him with his long bronze legs.

Zane stopped at the edge of the woods. When Cesya caught up with the gorilla-shaped man, he switched on a small cylindrical lantern attached to his waist belt.

"Mistress," Zane said, "it is around this cluster of hills."

Cesya seemed impatient. "Then, lead us on, Zane." She also seemed bored, as if she felt she was wasting her time, chasing around in the dark.

They skirted the low hills that ringed the meadow and left the fire's comforting presence. It became quite dark. The sounds of revelry could still be heard, though.

"It's up here, mistress," Zane announced, eagerly running into the woods. They slogged their way through leafy green ferns, following him.

Zane stopped and bent down in the ivy. He parted the leaves where the ivy had grown over something that was warped with age. It looked for a moment like the upthrust root of an aspen tree, except that in the lantern's light it could be seen it was definitely a pipe or tube encased in a plastic sheath. It had faded and cracked with the passage of the centuries.