The Alejandra Variations (22 page)

Cesya turned to Holte. "This is your doing, Holte," she accused.

Holte seemed hurt, entirely innocent. "Mistress, we found it during our search for nuts and wood for the fire. It's nobody's fault."

"Except the people who put it here," Zane pointed out.

Cesya bent to examine it. "Do you know what it is?"

"No," Holte offered. "We cannot tell without disturbing the soil or disrupting the ivy. You know what the Directorates say. That is forbidden."

Though wobbly from the liquor and the climb, Nicholas understood something of what was going on. "It's part of the Blossom," he volunteered. "Big deal."

Cesya gave him a reprimanding stare. "Nothing man-made must exist on the surface of the earth in any form, great or small. Even the original Blossoms themselves. Otherwise it is the duty of a Keeper to destroy it."

Nicholas looked down at the sleeve of plastic sticking up from centuries of decay.

"That? That little thing is worthy of a Keeper's revenge?" Nick was incredulous. "It's just a piece of metal. Here, take a look."

Nicholas grabbed the tubing and began pulling on it, uprooting it slightly from the ivy.

"Don't!"
Cesya shouted, pushing him away.

Nicholas fell over and rolled down into the cool creepers.

"It is strictly forbidden!" she shouted at him.

"Mistress," Holte began. "We need to know what's underneath."

"It is not for us to delve into such things," she asserted. "Let us quit this place. We have done nothing wrong."

Zane cleared his throat as Nicholas regained his feet. "Mistress, there is something else."

"What!" she snapped. Nicholas had never seen her so ruffled.

"Did you notice the configuration of the hills around the meadow when we arrived?"

Cesya stared hard at Zane. "No, I did not. I had other things on my mind. Besides, they are only hills, part of the Blossom. If there was anything wrong, even the slightest thing, the Unit would have told us."

"The Unit," Zane laughed, "knows how to steer the Clantrams. Not much else." The man was smarter than he looked.

"Get to the point!" she ordered. Nicholas noticed that her fists were clenched. Holte kept glancing at him strangely. Nicholas didn't know what to make of these people, and he didn't understand what all the fuss was over an artifact from centuries past.

Holte carefully stepped forward and indicated the pipe with its dress of ivy. "Zane and I suspect that this isn't a Blossom, mistress."

"That's impossible," Cesya stated flatly. "The Unit confirms that we are in a—"

"I know what the Unit says," Holte responded. "But the outline of the hills does not suggest a Blossom."

Cesya staggered. "No!"

"It could be a Nest," Holte said firmly. "A Keeper's Nest."

"That's a lie!" she accused them both. "The Unit would not make a mistake like that!" She grabbed Nick by the arm as if for protection or security.

"The Unit," Zane interjected, "would not have known the difference. The earth has had more than enough time to cover the mistakes of mankind with sufficient plant growth."

"I don't believe you!" she claimed. "Nicholas!" She yanked on his arm. "Let's return at once!"

"Mistress," Zane pleaded. "We may have committed a Violation. We must do something."

"The meadow where the trams are," Holte responded, "is a blast crater, not a Blossom. We are probably standing right now on the ruins of a building of some kind. One of the old Warrens of the Judges, perhaps."

"Nicholas," Cesya ordered, "come!"

The golden lady turned her back on the men and proceeded down the hill in a halo of indignation.

Holte and Zane looked at each other, bewildered, and shrugged. Nicholas stared down the hill at the haughty queen, watching her plow her way through the ferns and ivy.

A little drunkenly, he faced Holte. "I think we'd better follow her."

Zane was digging around with his hands at the base of some leafy ferns at a slight distance from the tubing.

Holte said, "She's always refused to face facts."

Zane suddenly yanked a plant out of the black earth.

"Ah, hah!" he shouted with joy. He'd discovered a tuber of some kind.

"Let's leave," Holte said to his friend. "You know how she is when she goes into these snits of hers." Cesya was at the base of the hill—a hill that Nicholas now knew was what was left of a building of some kind.

Zane ran up to Holte. "It's a potato!" he said. "I thought it looked familiar. Here, Nick," he thrust it proudly into Nicholas's hands. Nicholas hastily thrust it back.

Cesya yelled through the trees. "I forbid you to take anything further from the earth! Return to the meadow at once! Do you hear me?"

Zane scraped the dirt and root hairs off the limpy brown vegetable. It had an odd configuration for a potato, but what was even odder was the absolute thrill Zane got in eating the thing, raw. His crunching was nearly as loud as their footsteps through the foliage.

"You want a bite?" Zane offered as he kicked through the ferns.

"God, no," Nick said.

"Go ahead," Zane insisted. "Nothing like a potato—a real potato!"

Nick moved ahead of them, feeling awkward and clumsy with these people. He reached their implacable queen. "Cesya," he entreated.

"You!" she turned on him, wagging a stem finger in his face. "I forbid you to speak with those men from now on. They will both be punished for that they have done!"

"What have they done, Cesya?" Nicholas yelled back in the darkness. "And just who the hell do you think you are to order me around, anyway?"

Cesya slapped Nicholas's face hard.

"How dare you speak to me in that tone of voice!" she screamed.

Holte and Zane came up to them. "Mistress," Holte began, beseechingly.

"You are to return to your Clantram immediately and take your.… your
pet
with you! I should tie you both to a tree so a Keeper would find you loose upon the earth. You've continually tried to subvert my authority, and now you'll pay for it!

"And stay away from my Heart!" she commanded.

Zane and Holte stood frozen and speechless, like statues forged of Corinthian copper.

Cesya dragged Nicholas away. Nicholas could hear her panicked breathing. He was almost too drunk and dizzy to walk.

"I'm sorry, Heart," Cesya cried in a low voice as they tramped through the dark meadow. "There is no one in my life but you." Then she drew in a deep breath. "But those
men
have always been a bane to me."

"But, Cesya," he began, looking over his shoulder at the two who followed, somewhat cowed, at a slight distance. "What if they're right? What if this was an old military base? What did Holte call it? A Warren."

"This is not an old Warren," she stated. "The Warrens were destroyed like all the cities when the Keepers rose to walk the earth," she said, shaking her head. "They put that tubing there. They've done things like that to me before. Those idiots."

Nicholas laughed. "Cesya, that pipe's been there for a long time. I couldn't pull it out. It's attached to something inside the hill."

They approached the bonfire. The women were singing along with the dancers. The music boxes gave forth tunes that seemed as fragile as wind-chime glass.

Cesya was visibly distracted. She clung to Nicholas's arm, although it was she who was doing the leading.

"We will have to move on," she muttered. "If we move on, we will not be bothered. Keepers travel slowly. We'll continue with the ceremony tonight, but at dawn I will have the men scatter the ashes. We'll escape harm by noon.
If
there is any due us."

Nicholas staggered through the cool, moist grasses, listening to the insects twitter away in the night. He noticed that Cesya's grasp on him was becoming warmer and more tender as they approached the group. Still, he couldn't help but feel out of place. All of what had just happened was because of his presence among them. They would have passed this particular Blossom by had he not awakened.

Ariuzu watched them draw near. Cesya kissed Nicholas softly. "But don't worry about any of this. We have time."

Her personality shifts were confusing. When he was nearby, she seemed powerful and secure. But at other moments she seemed remarkably insecure and unexpectedly volatile.

"It's only too bad you should encounter the worst so soon," came Holte's deep, resonant voice from behind them.

He had appeared out of the shadows. Cesya spun around and struck him upon the chest with both hands. "Get out of here! I told you to return to your Clantram!" Cesya leaped over a low table and stumbled out among the dancers, who fell still.

She grabbed the synthesizer and shut it off. Everyone was watching, completely surprised by her behavior.

"All the men will return to their Clantram at once!" she yelled above the roar of the fire. "I forbid any more mingling with the men from now until the moon's next rising!"

A gasp went up through the Crowd.

"Move!" she demanded.
"Now!"

Nicholas watched as the men separated themselves from the women of the Clan and marched reluctantly off to the last tram in the line.

A little boy, about eight years old, walked past Nicholas and Holte. "Way to go, Holte," the kid sneered.

The rest of the adult men—what few there were—hulked off into the dark.

Cesya, her royal feathers smoothed somewhat, walked back to the low table where the physician waited. Holte had stepped off with the men. Cesya clapped her hands at the dancers.

"Return to the music, dears! Dance!" Sweat glistened on her forehead and neck, but she tried not to appear upset. But Nicholas, close to her, could tell just how disturbed she was.

The last few days traveling with her in the Clantram had been very tranquil. But Nicholas could now see how precarious their lives were. They could not stop traveling, even for a day or two. It was too nerve-racking.

Nick took up a freshly poured goblet of wine. There was little he could do about his
gohhe
consumption tonight, and getting drunk was the most reasonable outlet for frustration.

Cesya plopped down on the pillows as if nothing had transpired. The dancers returned to their dance, trying to reestablish their lost rhythms and gyrations.

Cesya turned to Ariuzu and laughed. "I'll bet you never celebrated a wedding like this before."

The physician smiled slightly. "Not in my memory, mistress. This will be a night the Clan will remember for a long time."

The two women clinked their goblets together and turned to watching the ceremonial dances.

Marriage, Nicholas thought. Yes. That's what this is all about. The bride wanting everything to go just right, even if it means putting a shotgun to the groom's back.

He looked around through the fog of his intoxication. The incident in the woods seemed remote and unreal. It had no substance here among these beautiful women—these goddesses.

He glanced up into the night sky. The constellations of spring were rising. The Great Bear rose beyond the orange heart of Boötes, the star Arcturus, shining alone in the night.

The men had almost reached their Clantram. The lights of the vehicle had come on, looking like a constellation of its own. Nicholas thought of something, and turned back to the sky. He was drunker than he had realized. There was no Great Bear. In half a million years the earth would've gone around the galaxy at least twice. Arcturus would be long lost to the light-years. The stars to the north were a jumble. The sky swirled around him as if changing to suit Cesya's bridal wishes: Everything must be perfect.

Cesya placed his hand in her lap. His arm nestled against her breasts warmly.

"The stars are not important tonight, Heart," she smiled. The blue-green of her eyes were deep whirlpools of longing. "Only you and I are important."

She signaled another servant girl to approach. The girl handed Cesya and Nicholas glasses of a peculiar blue crystal. In the fire's light, it reminded Nicholas of Oaxacan crystal, and an image came rushing back to him of someone—Rhoanna!—setting out plates and glasses for dinner. The glasses were made of blue Mexican crystal. Rhoanna's hair as she bent over the table lighting the candies was lovely and dark, just like that of the servant girl.…

"Nicholas," Cesya commanded. "Let us drink to our love." Her words broke the image of Rhoanna into a thousand pieces, and the pieces gusted away from his fragmented mind.

He was married now. And in a way he had also been married back then. Except that with Rhoanna it had never been sanctified in a formal ceremony. They had merely lived together in southern-California chic.

Cesya drew his left hand up her exposed thigh beneath her kilt. Rhoanna vanished. Cesya drained her glass of blue crystal and threw it lustily into the raging bonfire.

Nicholas had a hard time focusing his eyes.

"Life," Cesya declared, "doesn't get any better than this!"

Suddenly the bonfire gave off a tremendous roar. The dancers tripped and fell as the flaming wood burst upward into the air. The fire grew to an impossible height. The ground heaved slowly and thunderously. as if it were suffering birth pangs.

"My God!" Ariuzu shouted, rising in a tangle of robes.

Cesya and Nicholas tumbled backward, away from their table. The dancers screamed, and the servant girls dropped their trays and ran.

The bonfire exploded. The turf beneath it rose and split itself asunder.

Something horrible was rising up out of the fire's inferno, out of the earth which had been warmed by the bonfire—and the demon bore the shape of a man.

"It's a Keeper!" Ariuzu shouted, tripping on her gown as she staggered away into the fractured darkness.

The meadow filled with the cries and screams of the Clan women as they bolted across the grass, running for the safety of the idle Clantrams.

The machine before them was incredible. Nicholas was hypnotized by its size and vast construction. Its head was monstrously bullet-shaped. It possessed no neck to speak of. Manlike in appearance with long, sturdy legs, it had arms that ended with a cluster of efficient-looking fingers. The fire soared about it as the ancient Keeper rose from its centuries-old crypt.