Jaguar (27 page)

“Better than that,” he said. “The
Herald
took my article on carpenter ants, did you see it?”

“That was yours?” Her pleasure was genuine, as was her surprise. “But you didn’t use your own name on it. Why not?”

Then she cleared her throat and recovered as only Sara could.

“Right,” she said. “Dummy up, Sara. This
is
the classic small town, after all. I hope you got paid, anyway.”

He liked that about Sara, her frankness. It’s what he liked most about Maryellen, too, though Maryellen was a lot less talkative. Of course, with Maryellen communication went much deeper than words.

“Twenty-five dollars,” he said. “My first sale. The hospital cashed my check even though it wasn’t my name—Dr. Mark vouched for me.”

Dr. Mark made coffee for the three of them. When Sara asked about his plans, he knew she was hinting at college. He took this perfect opportunity to set up their story, and he could barely keep from squirming like a four-year-old in his seat.

“I’ll go to college eventually, I guess,” he said. He hesitated. “But first, I want to go to Disneyland. I’ve always wanted to go to Disneyland.”

Dr. Mark laughed, which surprised Eddie. It was a good-natured laugh.

“Fantasyland, right?”

Eddie was uneasy, but Dr. Mark was having a good time, and he liked seeing that.

“Of course. And it’s what normal kids do. We . . . I’d like to do
something
that’s normal.”

Sara sang a few bars of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” and told him about a photo job she’d had there years ago for a plywood company.

“You wouldn’t believe the amount of plywood they use at that place,” she said. “One of the little backstage wonders you learn about in the photojournalist business.”

Eddie made it through the evening without making Mark suspicious, and managed to joke about Fantasyland a couple of times.

After work, while waiting in the orderly’s room, the hours until morning snailed painfully by. Eddie kept himself awake by writing down as much about his dreams as he could remember, especially the parts that related to the Jaguar. He wrote in a fever and it came to ninety-two pages in his notebook. He set it aside for Mark.

Eddie stifled a recurring fear that he would slip into the dreamways and be sick when Maryellen came to get him, and they would miss their chance together.

Eddie felt like he was holding a big dream off, and that meant it would be there when he needed it. People of the Roam were suffering and dying, the fabric of the universe threatened to burst, the Jaguar’s sour breath warmed his neck. But he knew long ago that he was hopelessly in love with Maryellen Thompkins, and right now their time together became his number-one priority.

One is surprised that a construct of one’s own mind
can actually be realized in the honest-to-goodness
world out there. A great shock, and a great, great joy.

—Leo Kadanoff, via James Gleik in
Chaos

Afriqua Lee translated for the Romni Bari outside the gates to the City of Eternal Spring, the fifth city to refuse them entry in as many weeks.

“Because you are unreasonable, they have taken the hands of our children,” the Councilmaster told her. “Because of you the Jaguar steals dreams and leaves behind madness. That was not in the accords.”

“That is their crime, not ours,” Afriqua Lee blurted, not waiting for the Romni’s formal reply. True to tradition, the Councilmaster ignored her outburst and awaited word from Old Cristina.

“What my impetuous daughter says is true,” the Romni said, magnificent in her power-blouse and family braid. She repeated Afriqua Lee’s indiscretion for the record. “That is their crime, not ours. They should be punished, not you, not us. We, like yourselves, are law-abiding people.”

Afriqua Lee translated, forcing the anger out of her tone. The fatigue, the frustration discolored her reason.

“What they want of you is a crime, it’s true,” the Councilmaster said. “But if what they want is two people, three people, ten people of yours, is it right that dozens of our children should be maimed to protect them?”

His colorful headwrap, piled high, gave him a stature that his biology withheld. The tassels hanging from his headdress attested to political successes before the accords, successes punctuated by the sacrificial slaughter of his opponents in the ritual ballgame.

“If we do not know who they want, we cannot hand them over,” Cristina said.

“And if they told you . . . ?”

“We would refuse.”

The old woman’s jaw jutted at the indignity, at even the implication of such dishonor.

“Are we to believe the mad dreams of a pack of ignorant spleef-whiffers?” she said. “You would not be such a fool. You would know that next week, next month, next year they will come back with more accusations, another list of names, but this time one of them might be yours. . . .”

Afriqua Lee translated this as rapidly as Old Cristina wheezed it out. She had to ask the Councilmaster to repeat his reply, however, because she had been distracted by a fluttering of the Romni’s eyelids and an increase in the heaviness of the old woman’s hand on her shoulder, the first betrayal of the Romni’s own exhaustion.

Like a pack of dogs,
Afriqua Lee thought.
They run us to death, snapping up the stragglers. . . .

She attended to her job at hand. The Romni sought protection for her people inside the walls of a city, and Afriqua Lee spoke the languages of every city within the Roam. Afriqua Lee did not agree with this notion of sanctuary.

Then they would have us treed,
she reasoned.
The walls would become a corral and we would be slaughtered.

The jaguar priesthood had its underground within every city, and that is how the branded children of The City of Eternal Spring had come to be so easily captured and mutilated. The deed had been done by a handful of their own uncles and cousins, themselves cattle of the Jaguar’s fold.

Thanks to Rafferty, the Roam could now repair these mutilations, even though they could not yet prevent them. Afriqua Lee was relieved that the Romni spoke of this quickly.

“We have a device,” Old Cristina said, “a development of our Master Tinker. It teaches a limb to replace itself. . . .”

“You would
bribe
us?” the Councilmaster sputtered in a rage. Afriqua Lee judged it to be a theatrical rage. “You would bring misfortune upon our children and then
bribe
us for entry. . . . ?”

The Romni Bari raised a palm in protest. Afriqua Lee caught up with the translation and the old woman spoke.

“Not a bribe,” she said. “A gift. A permanent gift for your city, and any others who need it. Such a marvel cannot become property. Should you attempt to make gain from it yourself, its mechanism will be deactivated. We can do that from a distance, we do not need to enter your walls.”

“A gift.”

The Councilmaster’s eyes registered suspicion, not gratitude. Excessive suspicion in such a one had been a survival trait.

Careful,
Afriqua Lee thought.
Careful, Old Cristina.

“Yes,” the old woman said, “a gift. Such things are given freely, no? One should not expect anything from the giving of a gift except the pleasure of giving. Bring forth the device.”

Rafferty stepped forward in his finery, dusty now from their forced migration and lack of rest. He presented the box-like contraption to the Medical Control Officer of the City of Eternal Spring, along with a tablet etched with instruction in their own dialect. The tablet itself was a thing of beauty, etched by light-pen and written by Afriqua Lee.

The Councilmaster seemed more ill at ease, and beckoned the Medical Control to his side. The two of them conferred with two portly advisors while another read through the instruction.

“How do we know it performs as you say?” he asked. “The tablet says it takes treatment every day for three months. We can witness no proof of it today. How do we know it’s not a weapon to bring down our people or our walls once we bring it inside?”

The hot breeze brought a whiff of the City of Eternal Spring to Afriqua Lee’s nostrils, and she nearly reeled from the stench.

Admission to these walls at any price is less than a bargain,
she thought. She much preferred the open spaces and the fastidiousness of the Roam to the stink that clung to the cleanest city.

“We have among us three outlander children,” Rafferty was saying, and Afriqua hurried to catch up. “Their amputations were one, three and six months past. Medical Control can witness the stages of regeneration.”

He motioned the children forward for inspection.

“The device is yours,” the Romni said. “Test it as you will. We neither beg nor bribe admittance. If you know nothing of us you know that we would rather die in honor than cower in shame.”

The Councilmaster pulled himself up to full height and declared, “And if you know nothing of us, you know that for lack of your technicians, our pendulum comes to rest, our water ceases to flow, our light-pockets. . . .”

Afriqua Lee translated the rest without listening. It was true. Without the Roam the mechanisms of the city would falter. When mechanisms faltered, people faltered, laws failed. When laws failed, the order of a city became indistinguishable from the anarchy outside.

The afternoon had begun a familiar blue shimmer and Afriqua Lee concentrated on shoving it as far back into her mind as possible. Exhaustion drove her to dream, and she could ill afford the exhaustion, much less a slide down the dreamways.

They are suffering this for me,
she reminded herself.
Do what you can for them but do not pile stone on their burden.

She watched Rafferty watch the skyline to the south. If the City of Eternal Spring turned them away, the elders agreed that he should lead them into the ancient stoneworks of the wild highlands. The decision was simple; they had nothing to lose.

Only Afriqua Lee knew how close Rafferty was to collapse. In two short years he had innovated devices the likes of which the world had never seen. Any other Master Tinker would be celebrated aloft on the shoulders of the Roam, but Rafferty’s successes and his strange sleeping illness further distanced him from everyone except Old Cristina and Afriqua Lee.

Suddenly, from high overhead, Ruckus sounded an alarm call. At the same moment, a shrill whistle sounded from atop the city’s walls. The Councilmaster’s formal carriage leapt backwards and through the gate with his entire entourage aboard. The gates hissed shut, and their locks snicked tight.

“Raiders!” Rafferty shouted, and Afriqua Lee half-pushed, half-carried Old Cristina to her van.

Rafferty barked orders into his handset. “We’ve been set up. Camouflage and scatter, we’ll rendezvous in the highlands. Battle vans, camouflage and take positions. We’ll give them a taste of the old Roam yet.”

Afriqua Lee activated the camouflage on the Romni Bari’s van and pulled into position beside Rafferty before he could activate his scrambler. Their camouflage absorbed their visibility, and the scrambler turned any electronic sweeps of the area into white noise.

The clumsy vehicles of the raiders trailed dust plumes and noise as they bore down on the Roam’s battlewagons outside the city’s gates.

Gods,
Afriqua Lee thought,
they are so many. . . .

She activated the magneto blossom that Rafferty had installed atop the van and aimed at the lead vehicle dead ahead. At one hundred meters she toggled the switch and her target stopped dead, all of its circuitry wiped clean. She held the burst for five seconds, enough to thoroughly charge the metal of the vehicle and clump four more vehicles to it in a helpless mass of metal.

Rafferty and his men concussed the enemy with sonic bursts and forced the first wave to withdraw.

Afriqua Lee listened to his orders over her headset, repositioned accordingly, and had time for one regret before the next wave swept in. Their wedding was scheduled for the proper time, when they staked down in the highlands.

Damn tradition!
she cursed.
Now I’ll probably die a virgin.

She yanked the proper levers, recharged the blossom and fired again.

What course after nightfall has destiny written that we must run to the end?

—Pindar

Maryellen knew that their time together would be more than a Jaguar hunt. She knew it would be more because she
wanted
more. She wanted Eddie, and she wanted him before the Jaguar crisped them down to char.

It seemed like giving herself to Eddie should be easy, but nothing about sex was easy.

This isn’t just sex,
she thought.
It’s better than that.

They shared an intimacy, through the dreamways, that surpassed anything sex had to offer. Still, they had been flirting with the notion without talking about it, and something had to be done.

Besides,
she thought,
it’s about time. And I can’t imagine anybody but Eddie.

Maryellen’s friend, Jane Heynen, told her that boys didn’t want anything to do with virgins because they were always crying and falling in love. But Maryellen was already in love, and so was Eddie. She didn’t think it was likely that she would cry, but if she did, she figured Eddie could handle it. They’d been through a lot worse.

Should I tell him I’m a virgin?

She knew that he knew. They had talked around sex, but not about it. Had there been a clue in the dreams? The dreamways gifted them with a common history, but for the most part they kept their daily dreams private. They’d learned the hard way that mucking around in brains caused psychoses, and they didn’t need any more trouble than they already had. All she knew of Eddie’s personal fantasies was what he’d told her, which was mostly about a quiet cabin in the woods and a lot of fishing.

What if all he wants is to go away for a couple of days?

Maryellen shrugged to herself, and smiled. She thought she could drum up some interest.

Maryellen had thought that sex was something that would just
happen.
She had never had a date, which Eddie well knew, but she wasn’t so sure about Eddie, though he’d never said anything about it. Since he never had come on to her that way, she assumed he must not be interested.