Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (106 page)

"But it's different with things that already exist," Lewis said slowly. "Things we don't know about but that already happened."

She nodded. "It's like when a pregnant woman asks me if her baby will be a boy or a girl. It already is, darling. We don't have any way to know which, but it's already decided. It's already a boy or a girl. So that's easy." She shuffled again. "So think about a question. Don't tell me what it is. Just think about it and I'll show you how it works."

"Ok." Lewis took a deep breath. And after that there was only one question he could ask. He'd wondered. He'd begun to think. But Al hadn't said anything. She hadn't said a word. Still, he could count. She hadn't done the number with pads and belts since early September and it was after Thanksgiving. But they were awfully old. Al was forty two, and there were so many things that could go wrong. It was her place to tell him. That was a woman's prerogative. It wasn't his to know unless she told him, unless she confided the mystery. The cards flashed as Stasi shuffled. There was only one question, and he bent his whole mind to it. Was it? What would happen? Oh God, let nothing happen to Al!

Stasi's face was serene. She stopped, the cards held in front of her, her eyes closed for a moment, and then she turned the first one over and put it on the table. "The Queen of Wands," she said. A blond woman sat enthroned, a tapestry behind her showing lions and sunflowers, while a cat sat on the step before her. "A woman with power, generous and practical. A sound businesswoman who is also kind." Stasi gave him another smile. "I bet I can guess who this is, darling!" She turned the next card and laid it across it.

"Eight sticks flying through the air?" Lewis said dubiously. "I thought you said the stories were easy."

"Ok, maybe this one isn't," Stasi said. "A dangerous undertaking. A journey that has hazards. This is what crosses the queen."

"How do you get that out of sticks?"

"You just do," Stasi said firmly. She turned the next card and placed it below the other two. "There," she said. "You do this one. This is the past."

"Um," Lewis said, looking at it. "It's good I guess?"

"Go on."

"That's a dove, like the Holy Spirit, coming down from heaven and putting a cross into a goblet that's overflowing. Maybe it's like the Mass? Spirit made flesh?"

"The beginning of all things," Stasi said. "Goodness and happiness and being filled to overflowing."

Or spirit made flesh, Lewis thought. Maybe literally. He shivered. A soul had come to them, taking form and flesh inside her. The Holy Spirit bringing the cross, just like Mary's beautiful conceived baby, born to suffer for mankind, beginnings with their endings already carried within them.

But she was turning the next card, laying it to the left of the first ones. "In the present, the Two of pentacles," Stasi said. "It's a boy juggling two spheres. And that's exactly what it is. Trying to juggle, to keep all the balls in the air at once. Doing too many things and being worried that you won't do them all right."

"Ok," Lewis said.

"The near future," Stasi said. She turned the next card and put it above the others.

Lewis felt his heart falter. A woman sat up in bed in a dark room, her hands raised to her face weeping. On the wall above her nine swords hung while she buried her face in her hands. "That can't be good," he said.

"Nightmare," Stasi said. "Illness and worry."

He swallowed. "Death?"

Stasi shook her head. "This isn't one of the death cards. This is about sorrow and fear, not about death. It's a nightmare, see? She's dreamed something awful. But it's not real. It's not that an awful thing just happened. It's that she's sick and she's scared."

"Holy Mother of God," Lewis whispered.

Stasi looked at him sharply. "That doesn't mean…."

"Go on," he said. "Go on with the next card."

Stasi turned it and he saw her face relax before she put it down to the right of the others. "The final outcome," she said.

A blue eyed child in a richly embroidered doublet stood by the sea, a cup in hand from which leapt a fish, at which the child smiled in wonder.

"A passionate and emotional young person," Stasi said. "Affectionate and imaginative and filled with joy." She looked at Lewis a little too keenly. "The Page of Cups can be either a boy or a girl."

Lewis opened his mouth and shut it again. "I wasn't…."

Alma came to the dining room door. "How's it going?"

Lewis twisted around in his chair. "Hi, Al."

"Good stuff?"

"I'm learning a lot," Lewis said. She looked fine. Maybe a little tired. But fine and cheerful and why hadn't he been certain before? There was something in the way she stood, something in her face….

"Are you ok?"

"Great," Lewis said. Mitch was hovering in the doorway behind her, a worried expression on his face.

Alma sat down, smoothing out the folds of the newspaper Mitch had brought from Salt Lake, the banner across the top proclaiming 'Liberation -- Vigilance is the Best Security.' "I don't like it either," Alma said, glancing back at Mitch. "But I don't see what we can do about it. Cranks publish things all the time. There are lots of people out there who are wrong, and free speech means they get to say their piece."

"I'm not saying they shouldn't say their piece," Mitch said. He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other like an overlarge hound trying to fit under a table. "But he's stirring things up that ought not be stirred up."

"That may be," Alma said. "But until someone crosses a line from saying to doing, they get to be wrong. That's what a democracy is."

"And so you can advocate -- what?" Mitch waved his hand at the paper. "Blaming the Depression on the Jews?"

"You can blame anybody for anything," Alma said. She shoved her hair back from her face. It wasn't like Mitch to get worked up like this, Lewis thought. "I can write a book blaming the Depression on dinosaurs from Hollow Earth! We live in a democracy with free speech. That means people get to say things that are absurd or wrong." She smoothed the paper again. "There is not one word in here that crosses a line into telling anyone to hurt anyone."

"It's feeding people's fears," Mitch said.

"Yes. And I'm not saying Pelley is a nice guy. But once you start telling people what they can write and what opinions they can have, you've turned into the very thing you oppose. At that point you are Stalin or Mussolini."

Stasi shifted in her chair, lifting her coffee cup to her lips with an exaggerated gesture suited to a cabaret queen. "The problem, darling, is that when either side gets power they want to make everyone fall in line. Perfectly nice people, I assure you. And then they start punishing and reeducating. One minute they're eating little cakes and talking about justice for everyone, and the next they're shooting anyone who doesn't agree with the fourth article of the thing they just wrote. Power to the people is all very well, but what if what the people want is revenge?" She took a sip of her coffee, her pinkie extended. "Everybody hates somebody, darling. If you give them the power to act on their dark desires, everyone will."

"Almost everyone," Lewis said quietly. "That's why there is
examen
, the reflection in prayer in which you examine your own motives. You acknowledge that darkness in yourself and ask forgiveness for it. And you examine the words of those who seek to guide you or lead you. You examine your friends, not your enemies. Ceaselessly. And maybe with God's help you can avoid acting wrongly when you have the choice."

Everyone looked at him for a long moment. Then Mitch smiled. "You'll keep us straight," he said.

"I try to keep myself straight," Lewis said, his eyes meeting Mitch's. "And I fail."

Victoria had been his first wife, only for about a year, right after the war. She'd seemed like a nice girl and he wanted to get married. He wanted someone. He was lonely and so was she. Only there wasn't enough there, not enough to make either of them happy, and so she'd asked for a quick trip to Vegas and a divorce that left him forever a sinner in the eyes of the Church. He'd married Alma in a civil ceremony at the courthouse, but it wasn't real, not for either of them, not the way it should be. It was the best they could do -- a marriage in the eyes of the law, but not of God. They would never know true union, no matter what a piece of paper said. Lewis knew that.

"I don't see what we can do about Pelley," Alma said, breaking his train of thought. "We can't stop him from saying this stuff, and we shouldn't even if we could. And yes, it's alarming. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. He's telling people to vote against Hoover and to support some things that are really important. The man's for Suffrage and against Prohibition. And if we start the ball rolling on attacking anyone who messes with the occult as evil…."

"I know," Mitch said. "We shoot ourselves in the foot." He shook his head. "So what do we do?"

"We watch," Lewis said. "We watch and we wait. And if he crosses the line, then we act." A hunter has patience, and he was Diana's hunter.

"Lewis is right," she said. "We'll keep this on the back burner and see what comes."

Chapter Six

Colorado Springs,

December 4, 1932

M
itch woke with a warm and heavy weight against his chest. It took a long moment to realize what it was. Stasi. They'd gone to sleep listening to the radio. It must be after two since the radio gave off the soft hiss of static. There was no light except the faint glow from the woodstove, the bedside lamp turned off, but it was still warm.

Stasi slept curled up against his shoulder, the pillows propped up behind him against the headboard the way they'd been listening to the radio, quiet late night music that must have made him drop off. And instead of leaving she'd turned out the light and pulled up the quilts.

He shifted a little, trying to get a look at her face. She'd drooled on his shirt, which was kind of charming in a strange way, her face relaxed in sleep and for once quiet. So beautiful in the faint and flickering light, too thin and thirty five and her nose was larger than it ought to be for the rest of her face and there were fine lines at the corners of her mouth and she was utterly luminous, simply the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. That familiar ache uncoiled in the middle of his stomach. So beautiful and so utterly desirable and so overwhelming with that strange tenderness that made him want to crush her and caress her and scream at her and kiss her feet all at once, anything that would be near and close and together.

It was hard to do nothing. She slept on, lips parted in sleep, the quilt over her shoulder and her cheek against his chest. But he knew all about that familiar ache. They were old friends.

The first few years in Colorado he'd felt nothing. And that was ok. Nothing moved him, and there was nothing to move. It was easy to be reconciled to it. He had his friends and his planes and Gil made everything easy -- a nice apartment over the garage, a job he loved working for his old CO, meals with his friends at the diner -- he didn't have to worry too much. He didn't have to think too hard. And if there was a part of his life that was dead, it was best to just let it recede behind him.

But then it started, this familiar ache. It was occasional at first, the turn of a woman's head, the sight of a pair of shapely legs, the cover of a girly magazine. Just a twist, a reminder of what he'd lost. He could put it aside and move on.

Only it got worse. A smile, a pair of big dark eyes, the waitress's cleavage when she bent to pick up used dishes, the way Alma looked in slacks, the lurid details of a magazine story…. There was that slow, consuming hunger again, growing but never satisfied. It couldn't be satisfied. No matter what he did, nothing happened. He might crave it with every fiber, but his body didn't answer. Wanting was nothing but futility.

And this…this was an inferno. Her touch, her smile, the way she leaned against him, the way she felt in his arms when they danced -- everything inside screamed for more. But there wasn't any. Not even in the most provocative embrace, dancing in absolute privacy, her body against his, was there even a glimmer of physical response. He was dead. Only he'd forgotten to fall down.

It had to be her, didn't it? Infuriating, brilliant, clever, damaged Stasi, liar and trickster and medium. It had to be someone he liked. No, someone he adored. She was so quick on her feet, so smart and so funny and somewhere under there was a good heart. Somewhere under the scars. He didn't believe for a moment she was a White Russian countess. He'd put his money on a Hungarian Jew, and not from a wealthy family either. A refugee who'd lived on her wits, and he could connect all the dots about what that entailed. He had no illusions about what happened to refugee women in wartime, or about how pretty women with no money who didn't speak the language crossed international borders. Stasi would do what she had to do, and you had to respect that. He just hoped he could make sure she never had to do it again.

And that was the bottom of the matter, wasn't it? There was no way to keep her safe, whether or not she got back in the game. She'd said she was trouble, and that was ok. Keeping her safe would be like keeping him safe -- the only way he'd be safe would be to stay out of the air, and without flying life wouldn't be worth living. So safe was just a relative term.

"You're squashing me," Stasi murmured, her eyes still closed, and he realized his arm around her had been getting tighter and tighter.

"Sorry," Mitch said. "Didn't mean to."

She opened her eyes lazily and looked at him. "S'alright, darling." She stretched, her entire body along his, one knee hooked over his, one ankle twisted around his, breasts against his body warm and full, and the familiar ache in his belly let out a moan. Was it actually possible to die of frustration?

Something must have shown in his face, because her voice was serious. "Are you still mad that I didn't tell you about the job?"