Jamb: (5 page)

The ninth balcony above us, erupts in soft cheers.  The stout man that had come with biscuits raises his hand when Tuco’s Cura quiets down.

“Procella of the tenth Cura,” he says.  “ I am called Lestyn. Blessings to Addo Glyn’s spirit.”

“Hyo.” An elfish
man, who reminds me of a tall Nok, points to his chest.  “Eleventh Cura, Addo Bae.”

“
My name is Sisi,” a woman with espresso-bean skin steps forward.  She moves like a rolling wave of liquid.  “I am of the twelfth Cura.  It was my privilege to answer to the beloved Addo Mutegi.”

“Miranda,” Garrett’s mother says last. 
“I am from the thirteenth Cura.  I am honored to serve Addo Larry.”

“
As we all are honored now,” Tuco says.  His eyes seem to swivel a little too far apart, but neither are rooted on the Addo.  “So how will you organize us, Addo, since you do not know the business of the twelve Curas left?”

The other Curas have been told, obviously, about how
all the Addos let us down.  Instead of the Addos gathering at their annual Indicium meetings to swap info about each Cura, they ended up leaning on technology until it made them flabby about their jobs.  The Addos ended up exchanging empty files on thumb drives.  And worse, it didn’t even matter, because none of the Addos were bothering to read them anyway.  The Indiciums, which were meant to keep the entire Ianua community connected and safe by having the Addos share info, broke down until they were nothing more than off-the-hook, drunken bashes at plush resorts.

“
You haven’t been sold the whole pie, Tuco.  The first Cura has not been dispelled, as there is one member still intact,”  The Addo says, although he takes another cookie instead of pointing Milo out.

The
quick and violent whispers are incoherent from the balconies above, but the whole courtyard buzzes like a big, angry hive.

Well,
the Addo says in the back of my head,
looks like the cat’s out of the bag and the mice are hot about it.

You
kind of did it to yourself,
I reply without looking at him.  I continue to scan the room and balconies.

True
,
he sighs. 
We might need more cookies for this.

You haven’t
had enough already?

I won’t judge me if you don’t judge you
, 
he responds.  Then to the crowd, he says, “I think we can safely say that even the Addo’s Indicium muck-up indicates that the Cusp has begun.”

There are only a few murmurs,
but many nods of agreement.  Trying to track all the movements, to be sure that none of them are happening with malicious intent to kill the Addo, is overwhelming.  My eyes flick from one person to another.  While shooting the Addo would be particularly tricky, considering all the angles and people and things in the way, I suppose nothing is ever totally impossible.  The only thing that’s really keeping the Addo safe is that if there really is a deceptive Cura or even just a traitor in the Hotel, it’s pretty much guaranteed that they’ll never make it out alive. And Garrett’s said that there’s nothing The Fury finds more repulsive than the thought of their own lives being ended.

“I want to remind you all,” the Addo says, momentarily pausing his cookie consumption, “that a Cusp is simply the time of great
change.  As human beings, we notoriously turn into a bunch of nervous nellies about any little blip in our routines, but that’s just what life does, kids.

“For any of you that may not have heard the gossip, the tabloid news is
actually true this once.  If anyone here is unfamiliar with Walter Fisher, I’d be shocked, however, we don’t have time for a Q & A panel, so I’ll give you the scoop anyway.  Walter was my most loyal Alo.  He took it upon himself to find an end to The Fury when his own son-in-law, Roger Maxwell, left our community and went to The Fury.”

I cringe
, although I refuse to let it show.  I continue to scan the courtyard, and stumble on Garrett, who meets my gaze.  His expression doesn’t change, but he winks at me, like a reminder that I’m not my father.  Even in his wink, I feel Garrett’s touch, although we’re at least five feet apart.  As the Addo continues, our eyes move away from one another, but I try to stand tall and hang onto the feeling of Garrett’s reassurance.

“
I’m here to tell you that Walter succeeded and found the answer, but before he could share the remedy for stopping The Fury, his son-in-law, Roger, returned and killed Walter. Roger stole Walter’s Memory and hid it, to stop the Ianua from overcoming his new community.  The Memory fell into the hands of the late Addo Chad, who had faked his death in our community before turning to The Fury.  However, Nalena Maxwell, Roger’s own daughter, managed to recover Walter’s Memory with Roger’s help as her Connection.  They brought Walter Fisher’s Memory to me and I have blessed it, but several game-changers have also surfaced.

“
First, Walter’s Memory did not include the easy fix we’d hoped it would.  Walter found no way to stop The Fury and his final solution happens to be the most risky. A Reset.”

A collective gasp rolls
through the floors above us.  Cookie crumbs stop falling from the balconies, mouths stop moving, eyebrows reach for hairlines.

“A Reset
could end the human race,” Heema says.

“Or
it might not.  We just don’t know,” Addo says.  He shrugs as if none of this is any big deal.  “We could always wait until The Fury ends it their own way, with all of us beating each other down or blowing each other up, trying to be that one person who’s left at the top of the heap.  That’s what The Fury wants and, unfortunately, they’re aimed in the right direction for it.  A Reset is definitely a risk, but it also seems to be the only choice we have left.

“
And that was just the first snag.  The second is that you all know what it means now that Walter’s Memory has been blessed.  The knowledge from his Memory is available universally and everybody has equal access to what Walter knew.

“So, if anyone here still hasn’t connected the dots, it
means The Fury not only knows the direction we’re heading, but they’re trying to head us off at the pass.  They’ve already put a kink in our pipeline, preying on our Alo, so we don’t have the resources we need to get all the dead’s Memories recorded.  Which means there is less knowledge available to all of us.  And by stagnating the knowledge, eventually, the human race will begin dying of things that could’ve easily been overcome with shared, common sense, or things that could’ve been cured, or could’ve been prevented if we’d been able to use one another’s knowledge to fight our problems together.  It’s one big wobbly domino that none of us want to knock over, folks.

“
Which brings us to the third knuckle in our sandwich. The Fury has, as most of you know, organized somehow.  While they’ve never been able to pull it together enough to blow down a straw house in the past, they’re going straight for the bricks now, kids.  They’ve got a leader they’re calling The Mastermind and he’s motivating his followers by offering each of them a golden apple.  And it’s working wonders.  This Master-Pain-In-The-Hump has managed to pull together the hooligans and make an army that isn’t constantly running off anymore, to pickle their brains or make babies.  While it’s lovely to see human beings with purpose, their purpose it to squash us dead, so it makes it a little harder to want to jiggle my pom-poms for them.

“
And what was that, our third problem?  Are we on the fourth now?”  Addo asks.  Dai nods and the Addo salutes the Procella a thank-you before continuing.

“
The fourth monkey wrench is that we don’t have a clue who’s playing the Master Puppeteer.  That’s a big can of beans, folks.  We really need to find the source of all this bad air.  We thought it was Addo Chad, but now we suspect one of the first Cura members is running the show.”

“
Has the remaining member from the 1
st
Cura been interrogated?” Heema narrows her eyes.

“
Thoroughly,” Addo says.  “He is just an Alo, and a young one to boot.  He had also petitioned to leave the Cura before the mass exodus happened.  He wasn’t high on the hit parade over there, and being such a fresh Alo, you can imagine, they didn’t tell him squat.”

“
It still seems foolish to think he is one of us and not one of them,” Heema says. Across the rings, I see Robin nod even as she continues to scan the room for trouble. “How can you be sure of him?”

“
Oh dear,” Addo sighs.  “Probably the same way I am sure of any of you, Heema.  I’m not.  But I have a great deal of faith that the Universe knows what it is doing, even when I don’t.”

“
You mean, God,” Tuco corrects the Addo solidly. Kaya juts her bottom lip.

“Torngasak
,” she says.

“Allah,” Imad folds his arms in front of him.

“Krishna, Jehovah, Thor…I thought we agreed to put aside the semantics?” Mr. Middleditch growls.  The Addo just shrugs, taking the opportunity to retrieve another cookie.

“
This again?” he asks his cookie.  “Yes, I suppose we can stop solving our problems and take a moment out to play another round of pin the tail on the real deity.  Why not?  I thought we’ve talked this one to pieces, but let’s hit the high notes again, shall we?”  He lays down the cookie and addresses the rest of us.

“
There is room for all your Gods, you know, since there is only one.  We’re lucky that he or she or it is big enough to encapsulate everything and every name we can come up with to call it. That’s the man behind the curtain, kids.  Or the woman, or the fog, or the being that you blabber to when you’re feeling your spiritual oats.  Here’s what I can tell you for suresies:  you are all correct.  There is one being there, fielding the whole game.

“
But if we all want to assume that our Being is better or different than someone else’s, just don’t bother to look around.  It’s easy enough not to see, if you don’t want to open your peepers.  Or we could look and argue some more over what is behind the curtain- man, woman, dog, angel…vapor.

“
Don’t you see that it doesn’t matter if it is all the things and still only one thing?  Let’s compare one hair against another and spend all day determining which is softer, longer, brighter, stronger.  Let’s pretend it doesn’t matter that it is all the same hair on the same head.  Someone needs to be
more
right than anyone else, don’t they?  Don’t they?  So which of you is the most right today?”

“The Addo is right,” Dai says.  “We all know the
true name of our God. We need to put aside everyone else’s confusion and concentrate on the matters before us.”

More than one Procella rolls their eyes, but the Addo just wipes the crumbs from his hands and starts again.

“Okay, if we’re done viewing the detour scenery...where was I? The fifth point?  I think so.  The fifth roadblock is that we’re short-handed on our side of the tug-o-war rope.  We’re twelve Addos down, so I need to meet your Moxes and introduce to you the one I’ve been training myself.  In fact—and I think this’ll make you squeal a bit—I’ve made a drastic decision.  For my own Mox, I’ve brought in one of the Simple.”

Addo sits back and retrieves another cookie as t
he collective gasp ripples through not only the Procella in the courtyard, but their Curas up in the balconies.  Then the buzz begins and people are leaning off the railings above to shout down things like,
That is not done!
and
A Simple Addo can’t lead us properly!
and
We won’t follow a substandard Addo!

Sean appears relaxed,
his hands folded passively in front of him.  Appears.  But when I study him more closely, I see the muscles jumping in his clenched jaw and the way he digs one thumb into the top of his clasped hands.

The
Addo, however, just keeps munching, scattering another ski-slope worth of crumbs down the front of him.  I can’t even project the question in my head—
What are you doing?
–because everyone in the balconies is moving and shouting and stabbing fingers in the Addo’s direction.  My entire body prickles with awareness, and I struggle to keep my field down, since I’m not in danger.  I’m just totally furious that the other Cura members are saying crap about Sean.  I want to climb up to each balcony and tell them exactly how lucky they would be to have Sean as their Addo.

But even t
he Procella in the courtyard have all taken different stances.  Tuco is pacing along the outer ring, nearest to Sasu, as he keeps a stink-eye trained right on the Addo.  Wojtek and Heema have both moved away, gripping the backs of benches, elbows locked, as they stare at the Addo.  Lestyn folds his stout arms, his gaze riveted on the Addo.  Everyone in the courtyard, whether they are pointing or pacing or sitting, is watching the Addo.

With the tension so tight, it’s like twanging the high E string on a g
uitar,  I realize it isn’t shock that is drawing the stares of the Procella to the Addo.  It is that the Contego Procella are being compelled to protect.  In such close range, along with the perceived threat from the balconies above, the Procella’s fields are probably syncing with our Addo, since all of their Addos have died.  Their Contego wiring compels them to protect the Addo, the same way it compels me.