The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Fifty-five

The best ways between the stars were not always the direct ways; and the fastest route for Hal to the Dorsai turned out to be to accompany Rukh to Kultis, transship and proceed from there to his own destination.

So it was that he landed once again at Omalu. There, in the terminal after the long trudge across the landing pad, through cool air and the blinding sunlight from the white-hot dot in the sky that was Fomalhaut, he found someone waiting for him. It was Amanda; and he felt a sudden, great, rush of relief and love as without planning, thought or warning, his arms went around her.

Her body was slim and strong and real against him. In almost the same second, her own arms wrapped his body and she held him, strongly. They pressed together wordlessly, ignoring the rest of the universe. He had not realized until this moment how transient and uncertain by comparison were almost all the other things of his life. He did not want to let her go. But he could not, after all, stand in the middle of a busy terminal forever, holding on to her. After a long moment, he released her. She released him, and stepped back.

"How'd you know I was coming?" he asked, incredulously.

"The captain of your ship sent word you were aboard when he called in from solar orbit," she told him. "You're a passenger who's noticed, nowadays."

"I am?" he said. He had not been aware of the Exotics aboard the ship affording him any special notice. But then Exotics were hardly likely to fuss over anyone.

"Yes," she told him. She turned and they moved off through the terminal together. She was wearing a knitted dress of brilliantly white wool that clung to the narrowness of her waist. At her throat was a necklace, small, coiled with seashells, also a clean white outside, but with a delicate pink rimming the inner lips of each shell opening.

"You're dressed up," he said, with his eyes on her.

She smiled, looking straight ahead.

"I had some business in Omalu today, to get dressed up for," she answered. "You brought luggage, this time?"

"A travel case, that's all."

She walked with him toward the baggage delivery section; and they did not quite touch as they went, but he was conscious of the living warmth of her body beside him.

"I wrote to Simon Khan Graeme - the senior living Graeme - about you," she said. "He's still on New Earth doing police organizational work; and his estimate was that he hasn't more than another few months before the influence of the Others squeezes him out of a job, even there. But he'll be staying as long as he can earn interstellar credits. Of the other two left in the family, the younger brother - Alistair - is consulting on Kultis, and their sister, Mary, is on Ste. Marie for some border dispute, so the place is still empty. But Simon said you're welcome to stay there anytime you're on Dorsai."

"That's good of him," said Hal.

She opened the small hand-case she was carrying and passed him a thumb-stall with a fingerprint reproed on the end.

"You can use my print to unlock the front door," she said. "But you'd better register your own when you get there, so you won't need to carry a copy of mine. You'll find the lock-memory just inside the front door to the left - look under the sweaters and jackets hanging up there, if you don't see it at first."

He smiled at her and took the stall, putting it in a breast pocket of his gray jacket. She moved along beside him, appraising him gravely as she went.

"You've come into your full size," she said. "The house will feel right, having you there."

There was a moment of silence between them.

"Yes…" he said. "Will you thank Simon Khan Graeme for me?"

"Of course. But it's nothing unusual, his inviting you to stay," she smiled again, an almost secret smile. Her white-blonde hair was longer now; and she shook it back over her shoulders as she walked. "Hospitality's a neighborly duty, after all. Besides, as I say, I told him about you. There's hardly a Dorsai home that wouldn't put you up."

"With its people not there?"

"Well… maybe not with their people not there," she said; and smiled back at him.

"I appreciate your thinking of my staying there," he said slowly. "I may not get another chance."

She sobered, looking away from him, toward the baggage area.

"I thought you'd want to," she told him. "Have the flyer you hire take you right to the house. There's no need to go in through Foralie Town unless you want to; and people there are busy. Everyone's busy, right now."

They walked on in silence. When they reached the baggage area, luggage from the ship Hal had come in on had not yet been delivered.

"When you're done in Omalu, today, you'll come by and visit me?" he said.

"Oh, yes." She met his eyes squarely for a moment. "Here comes your luggage, now."

The wall had dilated an iris in itself, to give entrance to an automated luggage carrier. It drove up to the distribution circle before them and the baggage began to feed off from it into the chutes that would sort their contents into the stalls where the passengers waited. Hal slid his passage voucher into the sensor slot of the stall in which he and Amanda were standing. Seconds later, the check stub attached to his case having shown that its torn edge matched the torn edge of Hal's voucher, the case slid up through a trapdoor before them, onto the floor of the stall.

Hal picked it up and moved away toward the local transportation desk. Amanda went with him. They did not talk as they walked. Hal felt himself full of words that would not sound right, said here and now.

But at the local transportation desk it developed that all the long-haul jitneys based at the spaceport had already been put under hire for the day. He would have to take ground transportation to Omalu and pick up one at the Transportation Center, there.

"We can go to town together, then," he said to Amanda, feeling suddenly as light as a reprieved prisoner. She frowned.

"I hitched a ride out," she answered. "I shouldn't - on the other hand it's your interstellar credit, if you want to buy me a seat on the bus."

"Of course I want to," he said firmly.

They rode in together, sitting in adjoining seats three rows back in an otherwise empty surface bus. He put his hand on hers, and she squeezed his fingers briefly, then slid her arm through his and brought their hands together again, so that they sat with forearms on the armrest between them, arms intertwined and hands clasped. Their forearms pressed against each other, he thought, like those of two people about to take a blood oath, mingling the fluid in both their veins with the single cut of a knife.

But the knife and oath were unnecessary, here. It seemed to Hal, as they sat holding to each other in this unremarkable way, as if the life-sustaining conduits of their flesh had long since been joined into one system; so that each beat of his heart sent his blood through her arteries as well as his; and that each of hers must direct that of both of them back through his own body.

There was still a great deal to say but no hurry to say it now. The silence of the moment was itself infinitely valuable. He watched her clean profile etched against the windowed view of the countryside through which their vehicle was passing. There was a glow of a quiet peace and happiness in her that had not been present when he had been here before, a warmth independent of and at odds with the season of his coming. His last visit had been at the crisp end of summer. The second time, a year and a half later, he was arriving early in the spring. Beyond the windows of the bus it was cold, clear and bright. The unsparing illumination of Fomalhaut lit all the landscape like a late and final dawn.

Under that light there was a northern look to what he could see outside the windows of the bus, that had not been there on his earlier visit. Now, in the nakedness of spring, it was clear that the land had just emerged from an icy winter and was hurrying to adapt to the march of seasons. In the earth and the growing things he read a race to survive under the sword of time. The few homesteads they passed were as neat as those he had seen before; but fields that had obviously been under cultivation the previous year had not been prepared this spring for sowing. Flower beds before the houses they passed were bare and empty.

Even in the wild fields the light green of the grass stems laid over toward the ground under the breeze, showing the brown tint of the earth through their own color. Against the dark branches and twigs of the trees, the young leaves were a darker green than the grass; but tiny and stiff, as if they huddled on the stems that held them. Above, the upper wind sent scattered clouds scudding forward visibly, harrying them toward the close, jagged horizon of the mountains surrounding. The little creeks that the bus occasionally crossed were gray-blue of surface and sharp-edged where their brown banks met the blue water, the earth not yet with new vegetation to soften the sharp line where their earth ended at streamside.

At the Transportation Center in Omalu, he arranged for a jitney and Amanda parted from him. He wanted to remind her of her promise to see him after her business here was done, but he was half-ashamed to make such a point of it. The jitney he had hired lifted him high above the surface of the world, into the blue-black of near space, and dropped him down again in the front yard of Graemehouse.

He let himself in, as the jitney took off again into the upper skies. Within, the house was as ready for habitation as ever; but the stillness of the air there shut out the strange winteriness he had seen everywhere on the way here and wrapped him with a feeling of suspended time. He reached, without looking, brushed aside jacket and put his hand on the plate of the lock-memory, his fingers coding it to remember his thumbprint. He walked through the house, dropped his luggage case on the white coverlet of the bed that had been Donal's and left it there, coming back to the living room.

He opened the door that led from the living room to the library and stepped into the opening. His head brushed the top bar of the frame, his shoulders brushed against the uprights on both sides of him. Amanda had been right - he had come into his full size. He was conscious of what was himself, small, silent, and alone, inside the big body.

"An odd boy…"

He went into the kitchen, opened the storage units there and made himself a meal of bread, goat cheese and barleylike soup, which he ate seated at the kitchen table and looking out on the same steep hillside that was visible from the window of Donal's bedroom. Afterwards, he cleaned up the debris of his eating and went back to browse through the bookshelves of the library. They were old, familiar books, and he lost himself in reading.

He woke from the pages before him to see that the sun was low on the mountains and afternoon had grown long shadows. Loneliness stirred in him; and to put it away from him he got up, returned his book to its place, and went out through the front door of the house.

It would be sunset shortly and Amanda had not come. He turned away from the house and wandered toward the outbuildings. As he came close, a horse neighed from the stable. He went in and found two of them in the stalls there. Their long noses and brown eyes looked around at him as he came up behind them.

One was Barney, the gray Amanda had been riding when he had first seen her, and during their rides together afterwards during his first visit. The other was a tall bay gelding, large enough to carry someone of his size and weight comfortably. Saddles, bridles and blankets were hung on the wall of an adjacent stall.

He smiled. Both horses whickered and moved impatiently, watching him over their shoulders for some sign that he would take one of them out for a ride. But he turned away and went back out again.

He moved about the grounds, stepping into each of the outbuildings in turn, standing and listening to the walled quiet inside them. As the sun was setting he went back to the house. It was time for the end-of-day news on any technologized world; and he sat watching that news on the communications screen in the living room. For the first few minutes, as on any unfamiliar world, what he saw and heard of people and their actions made little sense. Then, gradually, the forces behind what he watched became more apparent. The Dorsai world was mobilizing - it was as he had expected when he had decided it was time to come here once more.

He became engrossed in what he watched and followed, as the sunset moved on around the planet and the source of the broadcast moved with it. There was a uniqueness, an attention compelling magic in the interior life of a people - any people. Waking at last from this, he suddenly realized it was almost ten p.m. and Amanda had neither come nor called. Outside, it had been dark for several hours.

He sat, recalled once more to the emptiness and silence of the house about him. He stood up and stretched. A fatigue he had not noticed until this moment sat between his shoulder blades. He dimmed the light in the living room to a nightglow and went to the room where his travel case waited.

Lying in bed, he thought at first that in spite of the fatigue he would not sleep. But he put disappointment from him and slumber came. It was at some unknown time later that he was roused by the faintest whisper of movement and opened his eyes on the darkened space around him.

He had swung wide the windows and left the drapes drawn back so that outside breeze could come freely through. In that moving air, the bottom ends of the glass curtains now flowed inward, moving between the dark pillars of the pulled drapes. In the time he had been asleep the moon had risen and moved into position to shine strongly into the middle part of the room, away from his bed. The air was cool - he could feel it on face and hands, only, the rest of him warm under the thick coverlet; and in the center of the room stood Amanda, half-turned from him, undressing.

He lay, watching her. She would be too good at moving silently not to have deliberately made the slight sound that she knew would waken him. But she went on now with what she was doing as if unaware his eyes were on her. He lay watching; and the last piece of clothing dropped to her ankles and lay still. She straightened, and stood for a second like some warm and living sculpture of ivory, bathed in moonlight, drowned in moonlight. The light turned the curve of hip and buttock, outlining them against the further darkness of the room and her breasts shone full in the moonbeams. Her hair was like a cloud with its own interior illumination, haloing her head. Beneath its light, her calm face was like the profile on some old coin; and from shoulder to feet the length of her body reflected the moonlight. Balanced there like a wild thing that was just raised its head from drinking at something heard far off, she turned and he saw the flare of her hips widen below the narrow waist as she came toward him. Lifting the coverlet, she slid beneath it, turning to face him.

A harsh, ragged sigh of relief tore itself past the gates of his throat and his arms went around her, one hand closing about the soft turn of hip, one sliding beneath her to cradle her upper body, his forearm beneath her shoulder and his fingers in the softness of her hair. With one simple effort, he lifted her to him.

"You came…" he said, just before their lips met, and their bodies pressed strongly together.

He returned, after a while, to the rest of the universe - he came back gradually, drifting back. They were lying side by side now on the bed, with no cover over them; and the moon had moved some distance in the sky, so that its light had abandoned the center of the room, and now shone full upon them.

"Now everything is different," he said.

He lay on his back; and she lay half-turned toward him, her head on the pillow, so that he could feel her eyes watching him even though he stared at the ceiling and the moonlight.

"Is it?" she said, softly. Her right arm lay above her head and the fingers of that hand wandered caressingly, through his own black, coarse hair. Her other arm lay across his chest, white against the darkness of the matted hair there. She moved closer to him, fitting her head into the hollow of his shoulder; and he turned toward her, laying his left arm over her. He saw his own thick wrist and massive hand lying relaxed upon the gentle rises of her breasts and felt a wonder that she should be here, like this; that out of all times and places they should find each other in this moment when the worlds were beginning to burn about them.

The wonder grew in him. How was it that at a time like this he could feel so close to someone else and happy; when only a handful of days past on Harmony -

He shuddered suddenly; and her arms tightened swiftly about him.

"What is it?" she said.

"Nothing…" he said. "Nothing. An old ghost walking over my grave."

"What old ghost?"

"A very old one," he said. "Hundreds of years old."

"It's not gone," she said, "it's still with you."

"Yes," he said, giving up. The core of him was still cold, even though she warmed him with her arms; and the words came from him almost in spite of himself.

"I've just come from the Friendlies," he said. "I'd gone there to get a Harmonyite named Rukh Tamani - did I tell you about her when I was here before? There's a work she's needed for on Earth, for all the worlds. But when I got there the Militia at Ahruma had her in prison."

He stopped, feeling the coldness grow within him.

"I know about the Militia on the Friendlies," Amanda said.

"I got the local resistance people to get her out. We went into the Militia Headquarters after her. When I found her, she'd been left in a cell…"

The memory grew back into a living thing, about him. He talked on. The coldness began once more to grow in him, as it had then, spreading out through his body. The bedroom and Amanda seemed to move away from him, to become remote and unimportant. He felt himself reentering the memory; and he grew ever more icy and remote…

"No!" It was Amanda's voice, sharply. "Hal! Come back! Now!"

For a moment he teetered, as on a sharp-crested rock, high above a dark depth. Then slowly, clinging to her presence, he began to retreat from the place into which he had almost gone a second time. He returned, farther and farther… until finally he was back and fully alive again. The coldness had melted from him. He lay on his back on the bed and Amanda had him in her arms.

He breathed out once, heavily; a sound too great to be called a sigh; and turned his head to look at her.

"You know about it?" he said. "How do you know?"

"It's not uncommon here," she said, grimly. "The Graemes had their share of it. It's called a cold rage."

"A cold rage…" He looked back up at the shadowy ceiling overhead. The phrase rang with familiarity in his ears. His mind took what she had just told him and ran far into the interior of his own thoughts, fitting it like a key to many things in himself he had not yet completely understood. He felt Amanda releasing the fierce grip she had maintained on him until now. She let go the tension of her arms and lay back a little from him. He felt her watching him.

"I'm sorry." The words came from him in a weary gust of air. He was still not looking at her. "I didn't mean to put it off on you, that way."

"I just told you," she answered - but her tone was more gentle than her words, "it's not uncommon here. I said the Graemes had their share of it. How many nights out of the past three hundred years, do you think, has one of them, man or woman, laid talking to whoever was close enough to tell, as you did now?"

He could think of nothing to say. He felt ashamed… but released. After a little while, she spoke again.

"Who are you?" she asked softly.

He closed his eyes. Her question struck heavily upon him at his recognition of a knowledge he had not expected her to have. There was nowhere he could turn to hide the rest of things from her - now that he had just tried to go as far as human mind could take him from her and she had brought him back in spite of himself.

"Donal." He heard his voice say it, out loud in the night silence. "I was Donal."

His eyes were still closed. He could not look at her. After a long moment he asked her: "How did you know?"

"Knowing runs in the Morgan line," she answered. "And the Amandas have always been gifted with it, even more than the others in the family. Also, I grew up with Ian around. How could I not know?"

He said nothing for a little while.

"It's Ian you look like," she said. "But you know that."

He smiled painfully, opening his eyes at last and gazing up at the ceiling. The relief in having it out in the open was so great that adjustment to it came hard.

"It was always Ian and Kensie I wanted to be like - when I was growing up - as Donal," he said; "and I never could."

"It wasn't Eachan Graeme? Your own father?"

He laughed a little at the thought.

"No one could be like Eachan Graeme, as I saw it then," he said. "That was too much to expect. But the twins - that seemed just barely possible."

"Why do you say you never were?" she said.

"Because I wasn't," he said. "As the Graemes go, I was a little man. Even my brother Mor was half a head taller than I was."

"Two lifetimes…" she said. "Two lifetimes bothering over the fact that you were shorter than the other men in your family?"

"Three lifetimes," he corrected her, "and if you're male, it sometimes matters."

"Three?"

He lay silent again for a moment, sorting out the words to say.

"I was also a dead man for a time," he said at last. "That is, I used the body and name of a man who'd died. I had to go back in time; and there was no other way to do it."

It was the last thing he had meant to do, but he heard the tone of his own voice putting up a wall against further questions from her about that second lifetime.

"How long have you known who you were… this last time?" she asked.

He had been speaking without looking at her. But now he opened his eyes and turned toward her; and, her own eyes, pure blue now in the moonlight, drew him down to her. He kissed her, as someone might reach out to hold a talisman.

"Not until these last two years - for certain," he said. "I grew up until I was nearly seventeen years old on Old Earth, not knowing. Then later, when I was in the mines on Coby, I began to feel the differences in me. Later, on Harmony, there began to be moments when I did things better than I should have known how to do. But it wasn't until I got here to Graemehouse on my first trip - when I was in the dining room there - "

He broke off, looking down into those eyes of hers.

"You must have known, then," he said, "or suspected, when you found me there when you came back, and saw how I was."

"No," she said. "It was the night before, that I felt it. I knew then, not who you were, but what you were."

He shook slightly, remembering.

"But I wasn't really sure then, myself. I didn't even understand how it could be," he said, "until this last year at the Final Encyclopedia. Then, when I began to use the Encyclopedia for the first time as a creative tool, the way Mark Torre had hoped and planned it would be used, I put it to work to hunt back and help me find out where I'd come from."

"And it showed you," she said, "that you'd come from the Dorsai?"

A coolness - different from the coldness she had rescued him from before, but equally awesome, blew through him.

"Yes," he said, "but also much more than that, very much, much farther back than that."

She watched him.

"I don't understand," she said.

"I'm Time's soldier," he said softly. "I always have been. And it's been a long, long campaign. Now we're on the eve of the last battle."

"Now?" she asked. "Or can it still be sidestepped?"

"No," he said, bleakly. "It can't be. That's why everyone's in it who's alive today, whether they want to be or not. I'll take you to the Encyclopedia one day and show you the whole story as it's developed, down the centuries - as I've got to show it to Tam Olyn and Ajela as soon as I get back."

"Ajela?"

"Ajela's an Exotic - only about my age." He smiled. "But at the same time she's Tam's foster-mother. She's in her twenties now, and she's been taking care of him since she was sixteen. In his name she does most of the administrating of the Encyclopedia."