The Alejandra Variations (24 page)

He fell just as they caught sight of him.

"Over there!" Holte shouted to the group, reining his beast toward the stream where Nicholas lay.

Nick heard the hooves of the animals thunder over him, and in a moment Holte was beside him.

"He's alive!" he said.

Holte's eyes beamed as if he'd just found a long lost friend. He seemed a different man from the night before.

"I thought the Clan had gone on," Nicholas said. The somber pilot came down to the stream with a canteen. She handed it to Holte, who in turn held it to Nick's parched lips. It was laced with
gohhe.

"The Mistress fought all night with the Unit. It was only this morning that she won. The Unit wouldn't send the Clantrams back, because of the Directives. But Cesya insisted that we try to find you."

"Thanks for trying," Nick said weakly, sitting up. "But I don't think it's going to matter much."

Holte noticed Nick's shoulder. "It looks bad. We'd better get you back to Ariuzu as quickly as possible. The Unit only gave us until mid-afternoon. The Clantrams will move on without us if we dally."

"Have you ever ridden horseback?" asked Zane, gorilla- shaped Zane, with his foolish grin.

Nicholas nodded in affirmation.

Zane, he thought. His face seemed to have followed Nick throughout his lives upon the earth. The buffoon. Wherever he went, there was always the archetypal buffoon.

Zane yanked one of the beasts over and held firmly to the reins as Holte assisted Nicholas to his feet.

Nick looked closely at the creature. "What is it?" he asked.

The beast's skin glimmered like a neon sign. How it escaped predators, he did not know. But its eyes were bright with a friendly intelligence, and its legs, while shorter than those of a horse, seemed as powerful.

"
We
call them
zelles
," Zane said. "They follow the Clans from time to time. They think they're people."

There was no pommel or saddlehorn, so Nicholas had to struggle to retain his balance on the zelle. Within minutes, he could feel saddle sores coming on.

Holte turned to his contingent. "Let's get moving. We don't have much time." He then turned to Nicholas. "We're going to get you out of this, Nick. Don't worry."

Nicholas kept as close as he could to Holte and Zane as they trotted along at a moderate pace. They trailed the Clantram tracks in the virginal grass. Nicholas could now see the hoof- prints that the zelles had made earlier that morning when they had come up from the south, looking for him.

The giant man said, "We went all the way back to the meadow looking for you, but the pilot couldn't find your tracks until we turned back." The pilot, silent all this time, merely nodded when Nick looked at her.

Holte continued, "Cesya refused to believe you were dead, but the Unit showed her the probability curves. The odds were pretty devastating."

"Well," Nick said. "I appreciate the gesture. Despite the odds."

"The woman's insane," Zane interjected, beside them. He was so massive, he seemed about to crush his zelle beneath him. "No one has ever defied her and lived. If the Unit were a real person, she'd have junked it long ago."

Nicholas felt dizzy and sick to his stomach. Radiation poisoning?

They passed beneath an overhanging elm. The light that graced them from above was emerald and cathedrallike. Then Holte said something peculiar.

"Whatever happens, Nicholas, do not worry. You've been through a great deal, but we'll get you out of this. That woman is giving us a very hard time. And she gets stronger and stronger each time we test her."

Holte said nothing more, but looked about him as if the trees themselves had ears with which to hear his words. Nicholas couldn't see how they could conspire against Cesya like this—especially after a near-encounter with a Keeper. Perhaps that was why Cesya had kept him segregated from the other men of the Clan. In any case, he was too weak to ponder it for long.

They stopped for a brief repast after Nicholas announced that he could not go any further without some kind of sustenance. Holte apologized sincerely for being so inconsiderate, but reemphasized their need to return on time. Everyone else, though, was eager to rest.

Nicholas found a stream beneath some trees and dropped his swollen ankle into it. The shocking cold of the icy waters instantly revived his tired body, and he felt some of the swelling going down. Tiny fish drifted up and began nibbling harmlessly at his toes. He marveled at their bizarre armorplated skin. Though they were nevertheless swift, they seemed regressively prehistoric, like their Cenozoic counterparts.

Yes, he thought. Life's going backward to a simpler time.

A sadness, prompted by his weariness, folded about him like a cloak as he sat with Holte and his merry men, watching them pass around nuts and an artificial cheese. They seemed like children as they talked with the somber pilot, who had temporarily removed her scanner. There was no reason to tell them that their lives were less than desirable. To them, living with Keepers was like living with the common cold. You could never escape either, so why worry?

His depression, like his injury, quickly sapped his strength.

They rode hard for the rest of the afternoon, with Holte out in front. Nicholas didn't have the strength to inquire further about what Holte might have meant earlier about "testing" the golden leader. Their lunch had been hasty. They were all weary and apprehensive.

Finally they plunged into a gathering of elderly maples, the zelles following a game-trail in the brush. Holte pulled them all to a halt. The men and women of the posse then began dismounting, removing the makeshift bridles from the mouths of their loyal beasts. Nicholas slid off of his zelle, and Holte un- harnessed it. He slapped it on the rump, and the multicolored animal ran off with the others.

"The Clan is in the meadow just beyond these woods," Holte told him. "Can you walk?" The tools of their illegal mode of travel were stuffed into bags which they had brought along.

"I think I can make it," Nick told him. Nevertheless, he was shaking, and a film of sweat had broken out all over his body. His stomach churned.

When they left the trees, they saw before them, in another broad meadow, the Clantrams waiting in the afternoon sun. A few zelles were grazing in the meadow where the silver ribbon of a creek wound its leisurely way to some faraway lake or ocean. A number of the women were out on the grass, loung- ing, and a few small girls were flying kites. On seeing the rescue party, they shouted down the line, and doors began opening in the trams.

Holte supported Nicholas as the women began running toward them. "Just remember," he whispered, "we're trying our best. We're getting you out of this soon, but it's going to take time. It's a situation we didn't expect to happen."

Nicholas felt light-headed. "I don't think I've got much time left," he said weakly. His mouth was dry, and the joints in his body throbbed unmercifully.

A wave of hopelessness swept over him. Would they be able to treat radiation burns at all? What was the level of their medical technology? He'd need more than a concoction of Ariuzu's herbs to pull him out of this one.

He collapsed.

The next thing he knew, he was being ferried into a Clantram, suspended beneath one of the swivel-cranes. He kept hearing his name spoken frantically, cries for attention being shouted.

They got him into the room of his original awakening, and within minutes medication was being given him by the old physician. It brought him around somewhat.

Cesya was in tears; the physician, Ariuzu, wore a countenance of deep concern.

"Heart," Cesya cried, "please don't leave us. Please!"

He tried to give her what comfort he could. "I'm all right," he lied, waving her away from the couch. "Thanks for stopping the Clan, though. They would've never found me if they hadn't been given the time."

Cesya's demeanor shifted from grief to rage. "They would've had more time if the Unit hadn't fought with me," she said, wiping away her tears. "It's never done that before. No one defies me.
No
one!"

"Mistress," Ariuzu cautioned, trying to hold her. "Please."

"The men did a good job," Nicholas said. "The women too. You should thank them."

Cesya rose from the couch and began stalking about, clenching and unclenching her fists. The Clantram, on an unseen order, began to move. Cesya returned to Nick's side as Ariuzu prepared strips soaked in ointment for his injured shoulder.

"I don't want you to die!" she whispered close to him. "I won't have you leave me like this. I need you!"

"Mistress," Ariuzu spoke in low, tremulous tones, "he has the Sickness, I'm afraid."

"No!" Cesya shouted at her. "That can't be! No one's gotten the Sickness in memory!"

Ariuzu's eyes were compassionate, but final in their assessment. "These things are beyond our control, Mistress. We can only comfort him as best we can."

"No, no, no!"

Nicholas didn't like the sound of those words, though they confirmed what he had known all along.

"I love you, Nicholas," Cesya said.

He turned and looked at her. Her golden hair had tumbled down to her bronze shoulders; her eyes were puffed and red. He felt deeply sorry for her—more so than for himself. The world seemed unreal, but it was her world, and she would have to go on living in it.

It was like the allure of a dream just as the alarm clock breaks the silence and you wake pearled in sweat. The strings of the dream's attachment still pull at you, and they hurt.

He felt detached, distant from reality. Women came into the room. His ragged kilt had been removed. Sponges were daubing his body, and cool unguents found his cuts and bruises.

He heard bitter weeping from one corner of the regal suite, and when he looked to find the source of such unhappiness, he saw Cesya lying against a mound of white satin pillows beneath a window that opened to the Eden outside. The bronze of her skin contrasted brilliantly with the sheen of the satin pillows.

The power of her grief reached him and resurrected the memory of what he had lost over the aeons gone by. The image of Rhoanna came to him, and he felt all the bitterness Cesya was feeling. Betrayal and loss ruled the world.

Desire was the cause of all suffering, and for how long had they suffered?

Cesya, himself, even the Clans, wherever they roamed, would suffer as long as there were people alive to feel the pain of what it meant to be a human being. Perhaps the Keepers were right in their mindless adherence to the Law.

Betrayal and loss.

Rhoanna beneath a summer's moon, slipping into a darkened apartment with another man. The jingle of his keys. The dance of their laughter. Betrayal. Loss.

They were two sides of a coin, tossed like a mad Spaniard's doubloon, soiled and bent, rising like the August moon—a moon cloven in half like a broken heart.…

"No!" Cesya breathed hotly, once again by his side. Her tears fell softly on his chest. "You're mine! You belong to me!"

"Rhoanna," he whispered.

"Oh, my Heart," Cesya mourned, holding him. "Nicholas, please darling. Don't let them take you away from me. You're all I have in the world."

Gently, Ariuzu pulled her away from the couch. The servant girls stood waiting apprehensively.

"He must sleep now," Nicholas heard the physician say. "He is exhausted and has been through a terrible ordeal. We might yet be able to cleanse his body of the poison, but right now he needs sleep more than anything."

Ariuzu's voice was reassuring. The soft rocking of the Clantram cradled him. Perhaps it would be pleasant after all to accompany Cesya on her endless journeys. Nice to have a child or two. Nice to see the green world. Smell the flowers.…

He began fading into the long corridor of sleep as the cobalt wings of night collapsed about him. Ariuzu, eternal grandmother, comforted him with her final medications. He knew that he would never reawaken from this darkness.

Then he heard Cesya shout orders. "Quickly, place him into the Unit! The Unit will know what to do! Hurry!"

Poor woman, he thought. These people were no match for the curses of technology. They were children of Eden, hexed by nations and wars long, long vanished, left to travel the earth alone.

In the background, like the voice of a soul lost and wandering in the spiritless dark of purgatory, Nicholas heard weeping and fiery cries of rage. The arms of angels lifted him, but the sobbing would not go away.

He stood beside a squat evergreen tree in the August moonlight. Rhoanna and a Marine were inside the house. He had followed her. She had told him that she had wanted to stay that night with her mother. The lights in the Marine's bedroom had just gone out. Soft music. And soon, the sounds of love. He was beneath that window. From the cold avenues of space the moon's godless, cyclopean eye stared heartlessly down on him. He shouldn't have followed her. He shouldn't have risked being beneath that open window. But he had had to do it. He had to know.

And now he knew. In that bedroom the beast with two backs was doing what it did so well. On into the night.…

He'd lived out a life millennia long, and still betrayal and loss pursued him like hungry animals nipping at his heels.

"Rhoanna," he cried.

"No!" the golden lady sobbed by his side. "Nicholas, no!"

Chapter Six

D
OWNTOWN 
S
AN 
F
RANCISCO
.

It is a beautiful spring day as Nicholas looks up into a blue sky filled with the spires of many clean and imposing offices. Yes, San Francisco. He has no problem recognizing it. And when a breath of air scented with kelp drifts up to him, he feels buoyant for the first time in quite a while.

There is a speckling of seagulls wheeling above the busy city on a breeze in from the bay, and on the sidewalks are dozens of businessmen and women on their way to lunch. He feels good in his suit and tie. His shoes grate crisply upon the sidewalk. Is he awake, or is he dreaming? He must be dreaming.