Deep Secret (33 page)

“So what happens if they have equal loyalty to a centaur and a human?”

“The centaur always comes first,” Stan said. “Racist lot. They’ll let a human down in favour of another centaur any day. Mind you, so would we, the other way round, if you think about it.”

“OK,” I said. “What about loyalties among themselves?”

“Always family,” Stan said decidedly. “They don’t go for chiefs and kings and so forth. Don’t have them really. But they’ll do anything for a relative, and the closer the relative, the more they’ll do. The difficult bit is the way most of them don’t pair up for life, the way humans do; so they’re always hard at it watching whose son has a child by whose daughter and working out if that gives them a family obligation to the child. They call themselves cousins when they do. A lot of them waste half their time following bloodlines. Bore you stiff with it. ‘I’m his cousin but not hers.’ All that stuff.”

“What is the closest family obligation?” I asked.

“Mother to child,” said Stan. “Next to that, it’s a man-centaur to his sister’s children, then a woman-centaur to children she’s sure are her brother’s – not so easy to be certain of that, you see – and then you get sisters and brothers, and then what
we’d
call proper cousins. Father to children he knows are his comes trailing in sixth place. He’ll always look after his sister’s kids before his own.”

“Right,” I said. So far, this was fitting in perfectly. “Now I’ve always heard that centaurs never lie. Is that true?”

“Mm,” said Stan. “That’s the official truth. And you’ll never get a centaur telling you a
direct
lie, like saying black is white or anything like that. But they’re all of them quite capable of
bending
the truth, if they see the need. Like they’ll tell you two things that don’t go together and make it sound as if they do – or they’ll add in a little word you don’t specially notice, that makes what they
really
say into the exact opposite of what you
think
they say. I’ve been had by that a number of times. Smart people, centaurs. You should never forget that even a stupid centaur has more brain than most humans.”

“I won’t forget,” I said. “I’ll remember that when I talk to Rob – if he’s up to talking, that is.”

“He will be,” said Stan, “and up to bending the truth too. That’s another thing you should remember. Centaurs are tough. Stuff that would lay you and Nick here out for a fortnight, they get up and walk away from.”

“I’m beginning to wonder, after all this, why centaurs don’t rule the multiverse!” I said.

“Well, they can’t live for long in half of it,” Stan pointed out. “They need magic to survive. But mostly, they just don’t go in for ruling. It doesn’t strike them as sensible.”

“I thought that too,” I said. “But it’s odd. The next thing I want to ask you is, would a centaur ever want to be Emperor? There’s nothing in the laws of Koryfos to prevent it, as far as I can see.”

“Only if that centaur didn’t mind being on his own apart from all other centaurs anywhere,” Stan declared. “The strict ones would disapprove of him and the others would laugh and call him mad. They’d only obey him if he had their personal loyalty for family reasons.”

I thought of Knarros, who certainly seemed to be isolated from most other centaurs and who had, equally certainly, bent the truth to me, and I wondered. But Knarros was dead now. And I was fairly sure that Knarros had been loyal to the Emperor and then to the Emperor’s assassins for other reasons than the obvious human ones. One reason had to be that they all worshipped the same dreary bush-goddess. I must ask Stan about that. But the other reason was more pressing.

“Stan, can centaurs interbreed with humans at all?”

As I said this, I thought I heard a faint gasp from Nick – unless it was another murmur from Maree.

“That’s not thought terribly decent,” Stan said, “but it
can
happen. You get physical problems with it, of course. Most crossbreeds die stillborn, and you’d never get a human mother getting that far with a centaur’s child. They mostly miscarry fairly early on. If they do go to term, the foal’s too large, you see. But the other way round, human father, centaur mother: that does get to happen occasionally. I met the odd one or two. They tend to be a bit small. And the thoroughbred centaurs are
painfully
nice to them. Fall over backwards to make clear it’s not the
foal’s
fault – you know.”

That was it, I thought. We’re dealing with centaur sisters’ sons here. And their cousins, of course. “Thanks, Stan,” I said. “Nick.” Nick gave a startled, guilty movement beside me. “Nick, what’s your actual full name?”

“Nicholas,” Nick said. “Mallory.”

“Oh?” I said. “Not, for instance, Nickledes Timos something else?”

“Nichothodes,” Nick said irritably. “Actually.”

I nearly laughed. Everyone always hated you to get their name wrong. Stan did chuckle a bit as I asked, “And Maree’s?”

“She wouldn’t ever tell me properly,” Nick said sulkily, wretchedly. “But I know Maree’s short for Marina.”

Sempronia Marina Timosa, I thought, on a bloodstained handwritten scrap of a document clutched in a centaur’s hand.
I
wouldn’t have liked to admit to Sempronia either. “And what else?” I said.

“What do you mean what else?” Nick answered. “Nothing else.”

“Well for instance,” I said, “how you came to know about stripping people. You told me, quite accurately, that Maree had been stripped, but you didn’t get the word for it from me. I remember exactly what I said about cross-world transit to you, when I was trying to persuade you it was dangerous, and I know I never once used that term.”

No reply. Nick sat hunched forward, staring into the sodium gloom, to where the railings were now perceptibly growing thinner and beginning to lean outwards.

“For instance again,” I said, “I would very much like to know if you were really in the hedge, or whether you helped with the stripping.”

That galvanised him. He bounced round to face me, and his voice began booming, squeaking and blaring out of control as he shouted, “I did
not
! I
was
in the hedge! And I wouldn’t know
how
you strip someone anyway! I feel guilty as
hell
about it, damn you! But it all happened so
quickly
!” This last word, almost inevitably, came out as a high squeak. I could see Nick hear how silly he sounded and saw him try to get a grip on himself. He had my sympathy there. I hate being ridiculous too. “If you must know,” he said, in a careful monotone, “I was up on the other side of that hedge, like that soldier who came and talked to you was. We were arguing. I didn’t want to leave. It was all so
interesting
– those landcruisers, or whatever they were, and Jeffros had this assistant who showed us round, and he had
wings
. Honestly. And I wanted to know more. I was arguing with Maree about staying nearly all the time we were coming down the lane. And Maree said we’d been arrested once, and it was pretty clear we weren’t going to be able to go up the hill because something on the path stopped you. So she said we ought to go before someone told
you
we were here. And I said that Jeffros and his people had been perfectly nice to us… Anyway, I got into that vinefield and said I wasn’t coming, if you must know. And Maree said in that case I’d have to ask
you
for a lift home, and she hoped you tore lumps off me, and she stormed off down the lane to her car, waving her car keys. I sort of went along on the other side of the hedge, not saying anything and hoping she’d change her mind. But then – then Mum and Gram White suddenly came out round the car and Mum said something about ‘So you turned up at last, Maree!’ and they – they never even looked up at me. I don’t think they knew I was there. Honestly.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I believe you. Getting into a hedge is the sort of damn fool thing one does when arguing with one’s elders. But what about all the rest?”

“We were lucky about the dust,” Nick said. “We nearly broke our necks getting to the car when we saw you were going in yours and Maree said you were bound to have seen us if you hadn’t been raising a duststorm behind you. When you turned towards the carriers, we sort of peeled off down another lane.”

“But what else?” I said.

“After we tried to go up the path on the hill and couldn’t, we walked to the carriers and soldiers came out and arrested us almost at once and—”

“No,” I said. “I mean all the rest.”

“What rest? Oh, you mean the centaur—” he began. I cut him off.

“Nice tries. No, I do not mean the centaur. I mean all the rest of your young life. I mean what sort of stuff has your mother been feeding you all these years?”

“I— Not for at least two years now,” Nick said, aggrieved and defensive. “Not since I told her I didn’t believe a word of it. I mean, it was so peculiar that I used a lot of it for my Bristolia game.”

He broke off on a rising intonation and turned to look at me hopefully. Was he, I wondered, totally selfish, or simply just young? Whichever he was, bribery might help. “All right,” I said, sighing slightly. “If you tell me what you’ve been told, I’ll take a look at your Bristolia game and see if it has possibilities. That do? I can’t promise more than that.”

I could see in the orange light that Nick’s face was vividly flushed. The light made him pale indigo briefly. “I didn’t mean— It’s just that I do mind about— Oh shit. Thanks. All right, but it’s not much really. Ever since I can remember Mum’s told me Ted Mallory isn’t really my father, and about two years ago I got fed up with that idea and decided I’d adopt Dad anyway because I quite
like
him, and Mum never would tell me who my real father was. All she ever said was that he was terribly important and I’d be important too one day when I got my inheritance. That’s not a nice feeling. I mean, he could be anybody, and it makes you feel snooty, and then you turn round and think, Why am I feeling so snooty about someone who may be horrible and may be a pack of nonsense anyway? But you can’t sort of shake it off. I’d rather be you. You’ve got real secrets to be snooty about.”

Stan smothered a chuckle. I said, “She must have told you more than that.”

“Most of it was about things like stripping and that there were hundreds of other universes and lots more magic in half of them,” Nick said dismissively. “Stuff about magic gives her a buzz. She was on a high Friday night about things Gram White had been telling her and she kept wanting to tell me until I said it was all boring nonsense and went away.”

Ruthless child. I was almost tempted to feel sorry for Janine, murderess though she was. Still, I remembered being like this myself at Nick’s age. My own mother survived it. “Has she known Gram White for long?”

Nick frowned. “I – think so. It was funny – I thought I’d never seen him before when we all went to supper on Friday, but halfway through, he said something and put his head sideways, and I realised I
had
seen him, quite often, when I was small. He didn’t have a beard then. He used to come to our house a lot. But I don’t think Dad liked him, and he stopped coming.”

“Did he – Gram White – tell you the same sort of things as your mother?” I asked and then held my breath. Rather a lot of my ideas hung on Nick’s answer to this one.

Nick frowned again. “I – I don’t remember. But I do remember Mum talking like that in front of him – how I was going to be important and about magic and so on – and he never stopped her, or told her it was nonsense like most people would. I think. But I was very young then.”

“And Maree,” I asked. “How much of this did Maree—?”

Stan interrupted me. “Rupert, I’m afraid this girl’s not on the way out quite yet. She keeps moving about. And I think she’s even trying to say something.”

That lost me Nick’s attention completely. He scrambled round to kneel on his seat and stare anxiously over its back at Maree. I adjusted the rear-view mirror so that I could see her too. My stomach kicked and sank at the sight. My inspirational workings just now had definitely affected her. She was shifting about, tiny, fretful movements of her hands, head and hips. Behind the blank moon-circles of her glasses, her eyes seemed to be half open, pallid as the rest of her, and small murmurs came from her colourless lips. I watched, wretchedly wondering how much I had prolonged this semi-life of hers. A few hours? A day? More?

“Say that again,” Nick said, bending down to her.

It was unkind of me, but while his attention was elsewhere I tried him with another question that seemed important. People will answer absent-mindedly, with things they might otherwise not say, when their emotions are concentrated on something else. “Nick, did your mother ever tell you why Earth was codenamed Babylon?”

“Someone with a name like Chorus or something got stripped here. She laughs about it. She says he was trying to conquer Earth and made the Tower of Babel instead,” Nick replied. He was thinking almost purely of Maree. He leant down across her and said, slowly and clearly, “No, it’s all right. He’s not giving it until tomorrow afternoon. You haven’t missed it.”

So that was all right. The codename was nothing to do with deep secrets. It was one of the versions of the death of Koryfos. There
was
some evidence that he had tried to conquer Earth before he died. “What is she saying?” I asked Nick.

“She says she’s promised to go and listen to Dad give his Guest of Honour speech,” Nick said. He scrambled round to face me, a different boy, galvanised with hope. “She’s going to be all right, isn’t she? She’s going to grow her other half back!”

I stared at him, wondering how to say it. I was astonished at how much I hurt. Feelings I had been carefully trying not to admit to blocked my throat and tore at my chest. It was a dry, strong, physical ache, as if someone had forced me full of little broken pieces of concrete. I was not sure I could speak through it.

To my intense gratitude, Stan answered for me. “No, lad. It doesn’t work that way. The most that happens is that the strong ones, the ones with the big personality, can carry on a bit like this. Your sister’s one of the strong ones, that’s all.”