The Alejandra Variations (27 page)

Nemosten pondered Elena in the water, then glanced at Qui. He shrugged philosophically, awaiting Elena's next move.

Lifted by a few million of her allies, Elena was borne from the sea. They surrounded her with a glow of queenly hauteur. "I shall report you immediately to the Elders," she announced. She acted as if sentence had already been passed. To Nemosten, she said, "You shall not participate in the Great Migration."

"Is that so?" Nemosten asked, bemused.

"Yes, it is true. Physical assault is strictly forbidden."

"This is great," Nemosten said to Qui. "No wonder they've refused to let me play with her before. I'll bet that deep down inside she's a real nice person. It's hard to tell, though."

"What are you babbling about?" Qui asked. Had the Elders turned loose a madman from one of the Shields?

"This woman here," Nemosten pointed suddenly. "It is she who commits all the crimes. I've done nothing but throw her into the water. Poor sad one."

Nemosten had been looking at Qui just then. Poor sad one. He felt threatened. His allies closed in about him.

Elena stepped out of her halo of allies onto the marble landing. She took several deep breaths and closed her eyes in a kind of meditative exercise, as if to clear her mind of troublesome individuals. But when she opened them, troublesome Nemosten was still there. He smiled and waved from his gargoyle's crouch.

"Yoohoo!"

She stared at him. "I've commanded you to be gone. You have no business here," she said in a collected voice.

"Nor, I might add," replied Nemosten, "do you."

"I have come for my loved one," she told him. Her allies were assembled to one side. "And I will not leave without him."

Nemosten tapped a gnarled finger to his chest. "You enslave a heart that wishes not to be enslaved. That right, Heart?" He smothered his mouth with his withered hands, and giggled hugely. Spittle formed at his chin. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Heart?
Qui stared at the man. Nickie?

Qui stood uncomprehendingly. The words of the creature were beginning to alarm him. His allies circled him with another protective layer.
Heart!
A jab of electricity shimmered through his body as he tried to recall what associations that word had for him.

"Stop that!" Elena yelled. "I love him! You do
not
have the right to be here!"

"I think we've already established that," Nemosten said, bouncing up and down.

Elena turned quickly to Qui. "Let us fly off to another place. There is nothing for you here."

A wave of electricity shot through his allies. Qui didn't feel it, but it was so intense that the allies flashed a single reddish glow.

"Allies?" Qui queried. Could something be wrong?

"No!" Elena shouted in alarm, rushing over to him.

His allies brightened back to normal, but they would not let her touch him.

"You see?" Nemosten laughed. "You repulse him. Facts are facts, sweetie. Why don't you just leave the boy alone?"

Elena stepped away from Qui, turning to Nemosten. She raised her arms. Nemosten was instantly struck with the full force of her allies as they burst out in a massive explosion. Qui was knocked back by the aftershock of the explosion.

But the object of her violence was lifted above the ruins, and only his own allies saved him from injury. Qui watched as the little man tumbled out of sight, gyrating into the darkness that had begun growing in the east since the huge sun had set. Nenosten screamed and vanished from sight.

"I will not be defied!" Elena exclaimed. Qui stood beside a protective pillar. Elena was catching her breath. Her chest heaved as her allies withdrew into her bracelet. Qui had never in his brief life known such violence.

The woman was determined.

But Qui knew that she would not harm him, although his allies, with all their cumulative experience of millions of incarnations, suspected differently. Qui stepped from behind the pillar. Elena faced him with a warm smile, her anger gone.

"We are alone at last," she said passionately.

He walked up to her, withdrawing his own allies—much to their alarm. But he had to know what was transpiring here. He had to force her hand.

"You love me," he said.

"Yes," she responded." I always have."

"Then, prove it to me."

"Gladly, darling one," she said. She acted as if Nemosten and his cryptic words were part of a distant past.

Qui held out his hand. "Give me your ally bracelet."

Elena gasped.

The bracelet was life itself. It was as if he had asked for her entire blood supply. Without her allies to protect her from the elements, provide her with nourishment, and carry her over the earth, she would be lost instantly, and dead within days. The allies endowed their bearers with the power of gods. The combined knowledge of the past was at one's instant disposal. The allies could do almost anything.

The sky was darkening, but the two human beings at the far end of time could still make out each other's eyes.

Elena lowered her head. "That is too much to ask."

Qui could almost hear her heart beating. His allies twittered, once again flashing red for a brief instant.

Qui said, "Look, you relentlessly pursue me, coming and going as you please. You don't care what I might be involved with at any given moment. Your words are hollow to me. Prove to me just how much you're willing to sacrifice for your love."

Elena stood before him, her shoulders erect, proud of her image. She had come to a decision.

She ripped the bracelet from her wrist and tossed it to him.

Startled by her boldness, he caught it before it hit the ground. The lights within the jewel fluctuated with a different, almost alien, energy. It was peculiar to hold so many incarnations of another human being in his hand.

She was calling his bluff.

"You have my soul. I can't tell you how much you mean to me," she said softly. "My entire world is made up of you, and you only."

He didn't doubt the sincerity of her words, as everything in nature acted in accord with her confession. The stars to the cast glowed in a beatific fight. Migrating veltanes over the dark ocean cried their loneliness—Elena's loneliness. Everything seemed in harmony with her gesture.

"Without my allies I am dead," she informed him, holding up her chin, waiting for his judgment.

The electric pulses that had earlier prodded his flesh were returning. Red lights danced in his spine, then disappeared.

He could understand Elena appearing this particular afternoon to petition for his affections. The Final Day could occur at any moment. She had good reason for being in his life. But Nemosten? Qui knew of no one by that name in the handful of humans left upon the earth.

And what were these surges of energy?

"Allies," he commanded. "Out!"

Elena jumped in surprise. "What? What are you doing, dear one? Come back!"

Qui's multicolored allies swiftly surrounded him in all their majesty. "Up!"

His allies lifted him over the ruins. He continued to grasp Elena's precious ally bracelet.

"Qui!" she screamed. "Please don't do this!"

"Listen to me, Elena," Qui spoke from the haven of his allies. "More has happened to me in these last few minutes than in my entire lifetime. I am not your consort, nor am I your toy. I don't care what the Elders say. You will not deter me from my quest."

Elena followed the steps up from the water, looking upward at the glowing craft that Qui's allies had become.

"Dearest!" she pleaded. "Not the bracelet!"

It was a crime, he knew. The Crime of Crimes. But he knew that in this case the Elders would not fault him for temporarily putting a stop to Elena.

He circled her once, then soared inland above the desolate city. Her cries of outrage echoed through the ruins behind him.

He flew suspended by the magic of his allies.

His allies brightened with power as he flew above the city's mausoleumlike streets. He kept well within sight of the shoreline where Elena now ran after him over the sunken marble flagstones. He flew up the long curve of a hill and found a tall slender pillar that had managed to endure all the vagaries of time and decay. He descended gently and placed the ally bracelet atop it, knowing that Elena could see his gesture. After a night's walk and a morning's struggle to topple the marble column, she'd have her magic bracelet back.

But he knew she would pursue him even with the Final Day imminent. No matter how much he wanted to be alone, she'd be there. In life and in death, there would always be Elena. His theft of the bracelet was only a temporary measure. But during the time it left him free, he would be able to continue his musings, his search.

He had new questions, thanks to Nemosten. The Final Day had been carefully planned by the Elders on the Migration Shields. Yet Qui knew that the funny old man, Nemosten, was not part of those plans. What plan was he part of?

As Qui flew northeast into the darkness, he found no trace of Nemosten. Had Elena's allies destroyed him totally? Murder had not been known to happen on the earth in thousands of years. It was unthinkable.

Periodic blasts from one's allies was also unheard of. There was something else he had to consider—possible ally dysfunction. He'd have to get to the Engineers up on the Migration Shields to have it analyzed properly, but there would be time for that later.

Or would there?

How much time did anyone have?

Chapter Two

FOR MOST OF the night he flew inland, abandoning the coastline and its ragged remnants of cities. Elena could track him easily through the ruins.

Nowhere in his flight did he ever come across Nemosten.

The peculiar crimson flashes of power from his ally bracelet had ceased, perhaps because that power had to be used for flight. In any case, his escape was complete. He was alone. The night sky itself provided the light that the moon had once given, and the land beneath him was entirely illuminated by the stars of the galactic core.

The sky was nearly solid with stars. The galactic center was only a few thousand light-years away now. The Migration Shields, composed of reassembled matter from the moon and the inner planets, appeared like black holes punched out in the patina of the cosmos. The flat disks, lined with the glowing allies of eager earthlings, were waiting for the death throes of their sun. When the Final Day burst on them all, the Migration Shields would be propelled outward like seeds from a dandelion blossom—space kites sailing in every direction into the universe.

There was a beauty, a poetry in that thought. Men had long ago gone to the stars, but Qui knew that his life was with the earth. As one of his allies was so fond of saying, "Earth is the place for love.…"

Yet the word "Blossom" tugged at the back of his mind. It was as if there was a drama unfolding around him that had begun long ago.
Sanskaras,
his allies had told him, were impressions of former lives. They moved with their boatload of karma from one incarnation to the next, and allies were nothing but the accumulated power of the impressions of those former lives.

But this was happening now.

In the starry light, he followed one of the peculiar iron trails that snaked its way across the land and dipped into the earth at intervals like a deep-sea dragon. Usually, at one end of such trails, ruins could be found. Perhaps in the ruins at the end of this trail he could find some peace, even though his allies were urging him onward. They kept after him with whisperings of, "Final Day! Final Day!"

Finding some rare northern ruins, he felt disappointed. The buildings of stone and metal had been worn away significantly, and moss hung here and there like the drapes of a funeral shroud. Time had so changed the complexion of the land that nothing remained to tell its identity, although he felt sure that somewhere among his allies would be a former inhabitant of this city.

But the instant he set foot on the earth, the crimson flash occurred again. He stumbled, carried by his forward momentum; but it quickly disappeared.

"Allies!"

"Yes?"

"What was that? What's wrong?"

They didn't respond. A few sentinel allies had seeped outside the talismanic jewel and hovered about him now like tiny iridescent insects.

"Allies?"

"Yes," they said in ghostly unison. "We are here."

"Well?"

"We don't know what you're talking about. We noticed nothing."

"What do you mean, you noticed nothing? It was a flash of the red-and-purple allies—the warrior class of incarnations. Surely, you—"

"Sorry, Qui," they said.

He considered just then the possibility of contacting an Engineer. One of them would know. Still, his allies had brought him here with no problem, and the sentinel allies, no bigger than ancient gnats, corroborated their lack of awareness of the flash.

He tapped his bracelet, but got no physical response. Odd, he thought. But no odder than what had happened earlier that night.

Suddenly the crimson flash occurred again, scattering the sentinel allies around him.

"Hey!" he shouted. There was no pain, though. The crimson allies seemed to rush out and rush back in. Some danced up and down his spine.

All was done in a single burst.

"Now tell me you didn't notice that!" he shouted.

"We didn't," they said. "Truthfully."

He found a comfortable spot against a crumbling wall. The light of the galactic core shone down upon him. The huge Migration Shields eclipsed whole portions of the sky. What if the bracelet shorted out? What if its bio-circuits had mysteriously fused?

Or worse: What if Elena had contacted the Elders, and they were stripping him of his allies' power?

Then he realized that Elena couldn't have recovered her jewel that quickly.

The Migration Shields. There was safety. There awaited the next step in man's cosmic evolution:
Homo interstellaris.
Had he gone up there as Elena wished, then the bracelet would not be in danger. Everything would be safe, secure, far from the dangerous earth. The place for love.