Ashes of the Earth (18 page)

Hadrian
wandered through the apartment again. The only changes since his
first visit were subtle. The carved deer that had belonged to the
dead scout was gone, as were the boxes of spices. Traces of powder
were on the kitchen table, beside a knife. The remains of three
cigarettes were in an ashtray, the cheap, farm-made variety favored
by laborers. He sat across from the murdered policeman, holding the
whiskey bottle in his hand and gazing apologetically at him. The
unspoken question on Jansen's face seemed directed at Hadrian.

He
remembered Jansen now. There had been a terrified teenage boy with
the Norwegian birdwatchers who had descended out of the mountains.
This was not the life, or the death, the blond boy had expected when
he had packed his binoculars in Oslo all those years ago.

Hadrian
lifted the bottle to his mouth, but stopped, gazing at the amber
liquor, then lowered it. "I'm sorry about yesterday,"
Hadrian whispered to the dead man. "Nothing personal." He
rose, drained the bottle into the sink, then unbuttoned his borrowed
tunic. As he bent over Jansen he paused, noticing now the white
patches on the dead man's fingertips. He leaned closer. Powder, like
that on the kitchen table. Looking into the questioning face one last
time, he draped the tunic over the policeman's head, then opened the
window. A stench of death was rising in the room.

A
cool anger had settled over Emily's face by the time she reached the
apartment with Sergeant Waller. She did not take well to an
unexplained summons, doubly so if, as Hadrian expected, she was on
one of her rare off-duty nights. She seemed about to erupt with anger
at him.

"My
God, Hadrian!" She began, then dropped to her knees by the body.
"What have you done?"

"Hadrian,"
Waller interjected, "was in a cell when this happened. Officer
Jansen was here on assignment."

Emily
cast a worried glance at the sergeant, then pulled off the covering
tunic.

"I
don't believe," Hadrian said to her back, "that Carthage
has ever before lost an officer in the line of duty."

Emily
bent low over Jansen's eyes, studied his hands, then opened his
shirt. She muttered a low curse as she saw the wounds. "What
exactly were those duties?"

Jori
Waller stared at the dead man's face. "Confidential."

"This
is the apartment where Reese lived," Hadrian stated.

Emily
looked up with a worried glance, then lifted the hand with the traces
of powder. "He'll have to be brought to the hospital. The
governor will have to be told first. There will need to be some sort
of announcement." She rubbed a little of the powder on her own
finger and touched it to her tongue, wincing as if it were bitter.

"He
was stabbed by smugglers," Sergeant Waller hastened to say. "Who
no doubt are deep in hiding by now."

"I
don't think you understand, Sergeant," Hadrian corrected her.
"Those aren't stab wounds. Officer Jansen was shot."

Waller
went very still. "Ridiculous. People don't have guns."

Emily
extracted a pair of long forceps from her leather medical bag and
probed the topmost wound, pushing into the red, still-oozing tissue.
A moment later she pulled out a small, bloody bullet, extending it
toward them. The sergeant leapt to the open window and vomited over
the sill.

People
don't have
guns.
The words echoed in his
mind as he watched the thin silver fingers reach out over the water,
the first hint of dawn. There had been a strange anguish in the
sergeant's voice, but when she had turned back from the window,
looking at Hadrian and Emily, condemnation was in her eyes. Not only
guns and bullets had crossed over from their old world, now also
there was murder.

The
words Hadrian had spoken to Jonah days earlier came back, like bile
on his tongue. Nothing he had done in all the years of the colony
mattered. The time between ends of the world just kept getting
shorter.

He
was not sure why he'd come to the clearing where he had been
attacked, had known only he needed to leave the apartment before more
police arrived. For long painful moments he considered ways to
provoke Buchanan into exiling him immediately so he could leave the
colony and its woes behind. But he could not turn his back on Nelly.
He had taken slim comfort in the fact that the two had been locked in
their cell at the time of the murder. But then just as she was
leaving the apartment Emily had turned to reassure the sergeant.

"There
are patrols out already, Jori. Word came to the hospital to watch for
them, in case they sought medical attention. They won't get far."

"I'm
sorry?" Waller had replied.

"The
exiles you were holding. Their cell was found empty. Lieutenant
Kenton has ordered all police on duty to be armed, and all paths
leading toward the camps to be blocked."

Hadrian
had stared at her in confusion. He had been in the adjacent cell and
had heard no forcing of the door. Had they escaped while he slept?
"They didn't kill Jansen, Emily," he had insisted.

She
was silent a long time. "I went to see them yesterday," she
finally replied. Hadrian reminded himself that once Nelly and Emily
had been good friends. "She's changed. She has a new fierceness,
a deep anger. Her husband died of malnutrition as much as anything
else. The exiles have been backed into a corner and have nowhere to
go," the doctor warned. "I'm sorry, Hadrian. But don't be
misled by who they were twenty years ago. She is capable of anything
now. The time for the camps is running out and she knows it."

Nelly
had indeed changed. But perhaps, Hadrian told himself as he watched
the dawn's rays touch the water, it was only the ones who hadn't
changed who couldn't be trusted.
What
is the truth you wish to find?
Jonah
had asked him more than once when he had found Hadrian in one of his
despairing moods. Now the better question was, why did he want the
truth? For Buchanan? For Nelly? For the colony that had turned its
back on him?

He
settled onto a log worn smooth from use as a seat and watched the
world come to life as the sun edged its way over the rim of the
planet. A huge raft of geese rose from the cove below to continue its
migration. A solitary trawler left the fishery and steamed toward
deep water. In the distance a chorus of cows lowed as they waited to
be milked.

Sitting
there, Hadrian considered again how the smugglers had signaled from
the clearing in front of him, and glanced back at the path that ran
from the hill to the apartment. A signal from the ridge could be seen
by a boat far out on the water, far enough to be invisible to those
in town. A lantern might call in a waiting ship to unload in the cove
below, out of sight of town, then the cargo could be carried over the
ridge down the path. But why go to the trouble? Waller had confirmed
that the smugglers were not shy about taking their goods to the
fishery docks. It was as if there was another layer of smuggling
within the smuggling ring, a crime within a crime.

He
closed his eyes as fatigue overtook him. When he stirred a few
minutes later, a small figure in a red shirt sat cross-legged in the
grass ten feet away, at the very edge of the cliff, facing the water.
At first he could not understand why the boy would seek him out, then
realized he wasn't there because of Hadrian. The cliff provided a
unique unobstructed view of town and sea, a sweeping perspective of
many miles.

"I
didn't mean to take your seat, Dax," he said.

The
boy shrugged without turning. Hadrian realized the boy must have seen
him already and had chosen to stay. He rose and sat beside him on the
grass.

"The
old professor and I," Dax said after a moment, "we would
come up here. He told me the names of birds and trees and stars, said
you could never unlock the mystery of anything unless you knew its
name. He told me the names of some of the mountains on the moon.
Sometimes when it was full we would howl at it like wolves. Once I
asked him why and he said because we were alive and needed the world
to know it." He pointed to another, smaller group of white birds
beginning to move in the water for takeoff. "Snow geese, getting
fat for their migration. When they finally move they will fly
thousands of miles, Professor Beck said. He said they see things that
no man in Carthage ever will," Dax added in an awed whisper.

After
a moment Hadrian gestured over the water. "They used to be
called the Great Lakes. There were five of them. This was one of the
smaller ones."

The
boy cast him an uncertain look. "I don't see how," he said
in an earnest tone. "If that were true there wouldn't be any
room left for the land."

Neither
spoke for several minutes.

"Men
come here at night sometimes, Dax. Just before dawn. With a signal
lantern. Did Jonah know about them?"

The
boy slowly nodded. "He knew most everything."

"You
told him?"

"He
saw them in his telescope."

Dax
pointed to an osprey diving for a fish. They watched it carry the
breakfast back to its nest.

Jonah
knew about the smugglers. Did it mean he knew about the arsenal
secretly being assembled in Carthage? Hadrian reminded himself that
Jonah had started referring to the exiles as rebels. "There was
a killing in town, Dax," he finally said. "A policeman.
They will be furious. Stay away from Kenton."

"Kenton
don't know as much as he thinks," the boy shot back, then grew
more contemplative. "A policeman?"

"At
a smugglers' roost."

"There'll
be a price to pay for that," he rejoined. Not for the first time
Dax sounded wise beyond his years.

"What
is it, Dax, what is the name of that thing that hangs over us?"

When
his companion hesitated, Hadrian saw the worry on his face. "I
think it's an old world name," the boy said heavily.

His
words tore at Hadrian's heart.

"Then
tell me this, what was it you were doing for Jonah?"

"Some
days his legs were bad."

Hadrian
looked over the water, watching a small, fast flight of terns. "You
mean you were his runner. Carrying messages in town, like you do for
the jackals." The boy, he realized, was the perfect secret
messenger. He certainly knew every alley and shortcut in town, as
well as many hiding places, and townspeople were accustomed to seeing
the orphan boy turning up unexpectedly, alighting nowhere for long.

"With
him it was different. He wanted to pay me but I said there was no
need. Learning from him was different than learning in school."

"Running
to where?"

"Wherever.
The hospital. People with books. The tin smith and glass maker, that
one made him things by blowing in a tube," he added, as if to
impress Hadrian. "Sometimes he would have me meet him with the
reply at the Norger bakery, because he knew how much I like the maple
sugar pastries."

Hadrian
recalled quizzing the boy about the telephone in the grave, what he
would ask if Jonah called on the phone.
About
who's got the words now,
he
had said. As if Dax sensed something vital, something urgent in the
messages. As if he sensed something undone.

"Once
he had me leave a message at a birch tree a couple miles up the
coast."

Hadrian
considered the words carefully. "You mean a tree beside a steep
trail into the mountains?"

The
boy nodded. "A week later he sent me there again. There was a
flour sack, all sewn up, for me to take back. But not as heavy as
flour."

That,
Hadrian told himself, had been a reckless thing for Jonah to do,
something he never would have done lightly. It had been many years
since they helped their friends Morgan and Helen escape the second
expulsion and secretly taken supplies to the couple as they built
their remote, hidden home. Morgan knew the forest, and those who
traversed it, better than any man Hadrian knew.

"On
a day like this, without wind, it's like they're running in wet
sand," Dax said abruptly. "Can't hide. Anyone could see,"
he added pointedly, as if to say he was betraying no confidence.

"I'm
sorry?" Hadrian followed the boy's gaze toward the water, not
understanding.

"The
fishing shoals are there," Dax said, gesturing to the north.