Phoenix Café (25 page)

Catherine stepped once more into the Phoenix Café, and heard the
musique naturelle.
Morning in West Africa, the smell of that air, the breakfast chatter of a roadside foodstall. And all that had come after, the grief and longing. She was Catherine, she was Clavel. The memories were her own: and tonight more sweet than bitter, as if Misha Connelly had exorcised her past, leaving it clean of shame. She would never see Johnny Guglioli again. But to have seen the Renaissance of his world, the Earth restored, if only in the flickering light of these last days, was a blessed consolation. She looked up and saw that Maitri’s eyes were full of tears, Aleutian tears that brim and shine but never fall.

“I’m very glad you gave me this life. Very glad.”

“Do you remember?” his guardian murmured:
“We are the pilgrims master. We shall go always a little farther.”
And then: “I’m so afraid of what will happen to you when I’m gone.”

“I’ll live in a cottage, an eccentric old lady. No one will bother me.”

“I hope so.” Maitri brightened. “But it
is
only one life.” He patted the seat beside the orchids. “Shall we have a nap? There’s going to be music later, and I find these days I need to be thoroughly
rested
if I am to enjoy a concert.”

So they slept for a while, at the end of the adventure, in each other’s arms.

II
Name of the Father

7
L’Airial

i

The railhead reminded her of Avebury. There were traces of a different history but the atmosphere was the same: a comfortless state of transition. Catherine had traveled to the border of the Wilderness in a private lev-train car supplied by the Warden. She stood alone outside the station, looking at some miserable allotments and a collection of pressed-shit shacks. The new encroachment jostled with the ruins of a town that had been here before the War; or at least before the post-war clearances. She went to investigate a gloomy, brawling sound and discovered a jet of water gushing from a lump of masonry, in the basement of some pre-war building. She climbed down.

The water was scalding hot. She licked her finger: the taste was foul.

“Mademoiselle?” A face was peering at her. Catherine scrambled out of the hole. The owner of the face looked at her curiously.

“It’s a long time since anyone has taken those waters.”

“Is the spring poisoned? I mean, preserved?”

“No. It is astringent, but they say it will do you good. I am your driver. Please come with me.”

Her spirits rose when she saw a beautifully maintained mechanical jeep. To her disappointment the back compartment had been modernized, screened and closed, but the plush little room had a remembered smell. She touched the upholstery, her fingertips recalling the texture of tenderly polished synthetic hide. Falling through flames, in becomes down. Stretch limos and motorcycle escorts. The buccaneers giggling in excitement:
What’s inside here? Hey! It’s a bar full of drink! Do you think it’s meant for us? Let’s drink it anyway. If anyone complains we can pretend we don’t understand.
We were happy then, she thought.

“We will reach Arden in about one hour.”

“Arden? I thought the house was called l’Airial.”

“L’Airial is the name of the place, a clearing in the forest. Mr. Connelly, this present Mr. Connelly, named the house Arden when he became Warden.”

Her invitation had caused some despondency at the Giratoire. It was for Catherine alone, which the Aleutians thought rude and odd. But they had rallied quickly in the excitement of making sure she was properly equipped. It was so long since anyone had privately visited a human home. She must take no commensals, in case the Warden’s people found living appliances offensive. She must take quarantine jelly, in case she had to isolate herself. She must take plenty of appropriate gifts. They had racked the collective memory and decided that specialty foods were the safest. As Atha wisely explained, they could always be reprocessed into something useful.

Catherine had been sent to say goodbye to Leonie, a ceremony she would rather have missed. She’d found her foster mother hard at work trying to transpose Atha’s “specialty foods” into human terms—and realized that the last time she’d visited the kitchen had been the morning when she came home from the police station. She was assaulted by that image, imprinted in her foster mother’s hard reserve: Catherine filthy, raving, spattered with human blood.

“You know I’m going to visit Misha Connelly’s family?”

Leonie raised her eyebrows. “Yes, Miss.”

“I’ve come to say goodbye.”

“Yes, Miss.” Catherine heard the dismissal, given words by her Aleutian mind:

She was supposed to go away, but she couldn’t. She suddenly felt an irrational longing to tell Leonie what Misha had done to her; to burst into tears.

Mummy, mummy, he hurt me—

“What do
you
think about the Renaissance? Have you heard Lalith speak? Misha’s friends are very committed. They believe they’re building a new and better human future, free of Aleutian influence. How do you feel about that?”

Leonie gave her a glance almost of contempt, and turned back to her cooking. “I think talk like that opens old wounds, Miss. Things are the way they are, history doesn’t stop and start again. We never get to start fair.”

Then Catherine had broken down. “Do you have to call me
Miss,
the whole time?” she cried. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

“It’s necessary for my peace of mind.” said Leonie.

But she moved her pans from the heat, left the stove, and came over holding something in her hand, giving Catherine a look: a reserved, retracted, compressed glance that her lost daughter remembered from very long ago. No emotion escaped, only that refusal of emotion: Leonie would not open old wounds. “Sit down in front of me. It’s too late to get your hair set, and you can’t take
their
creatures with you. I’d better show you how to use a brush on that mess, the old-fashioned way.”

No sense of motion, but images had begun to flow on the jeep’s false windows. She settled back, thinking of her human mother, and of Maitri, who was getting so old, so small and withered, peering out from his embroidered robe.
I thought you could change things,
he sighed, as if in farewell. Old people are like little children. They know how to get what they need. Intuitively, instinctively, they make us protect them…. Now where had that wisdom come from? She’d never known many really old people, in all her lives. But Maitri wasn’t alone. Agathe, Lalith, Lydie, Mâtho, Thérèse. She saw them diminishing in the distance, gazing at her with reproach, hoping for so much more.

She could have done something positive for the Renaissance movement: she had enough nuisance-power for that. She’d preferred to be led astray by the glamorous, worthless Misha Connelly. Sometimes I really wonder, she mused, how I managed to acquire the reputation that has dogged me. When was I ever pure? When was I ever
good?
The screens recounted autumn woodland, where crowds of half-naked branches scratched the air. The dozed remains of villages cleared when the park was formed; slow icy streams that crept between beds of bulrushes; finally a vast hypnotic tract of conifers. Did the scenes reflect what was really out there, or were they generic, randomly generated? Lift music landscape. She wondered idly, would Mâtho recognize the term
lift music?
Suddenly a passing image leapt into sharp focus.

“Did you say something Mademoiselle?”

A complex of sleek buildings, a landing pad. The brilliant daytime warning lights of heavy security. It had gone already.

“Why was that place, that fenced place, on my screens?”

“What, just now?” came the driver’s voice, unhurried. “It was the approach to the Buonarotti research lab.”

“But why was it on my screens?”

A short, puzzled silence. “Because it’s here, Mademoiselle. It’s visible because you have clearance, as the Lord Maitri’s ward, I suppose. Your screens are fed by the jeep’s external cameras. You are seeing the park as it is.”

“Of course,” said Catherine politely. “I never doubted it. But I didn’t know the Buonarotti lab was here.”

“I should have thought you would know everything about it, since you are one of them. Yes, it’s here, up there above our forest. We Europeans, (he pronounced the word in the old, Pre-Contact way) had to accept it, since everyone agreed it must be on Earth but no other government wanted the responsibility. Of course it had to be in a wilderness, away from population. It’s a nuisance, it attracts the wrong sort of attention, you may imagine! At least they haven’t killed anybody for a while. They kill anyone who tries to break in,” he added, helpfully.

“I knew that.”

“It’s necessary, I suppose. But it’s not what one wants in the park. It makes a bad impression on the visitors. Though in the end,” he added dutifully, “the benefits of the research will be enormous.”

“At least you’ll be rid of us,” said Catherine. “That’s something.”

“It’s a good deal,” agreed the driver cheerfully. “Though Mademoiselle doesn’t look much like an alien to me. By the way, any time you want a driver while you are staying, I’ll be glad to show you around. We don’t have to go near the Buonarotti place.”

She wondered if he would rape her.

“But perhaps you’d prefer to be on foot,” he corrected himself, with dignity, having read her mind (that disconcerting human trait). “Otherwise you might as well have stayed in the city. You’ll be quite safe and undisturbed. Our visitors can’t bother you!”

Conversation waned. Catherine sat back, digesting what she’d just learned. The Buonarotti lab. She had known it was in Youro, she had known it was in wilderness, and she had known Misha’s father was the wilderness keeper. She hadn’t made the connection. At their last meeting, Misha had invoked the ghost of Johnny Guglioli, and she had felt he was insincere (well, of course. Misha Connelly
dripped
insincerity, every moment). But
the Buonarotti
lab. It must mean something, it was a genuine message. But what about…?

There was no further incident on the screens until a stretch of Pre-Contact highway briefly appeared: maintained (a burst of text informed her) as a historic monument and versatile leisure resource. Soon afterwards the jeep came to a halt. The driver opened her door and she stepped out onto beaten earth. The jeep track had faded away, like a stream vanishing into sand. There were sheds and barns, built in squared courses of Pre-Contact stone; hooks and chains hinting at bygone human harvests. Big pieces of well-preserved antique machinery gave the clearing the air of an outdoor museum on a quiet day.

The house itself stood in the center, its red tiled roof stooped low over fretwork eaves. The lower floor was solidly blank, wartime style, but a generous modern porch had been added recently (probably when the fortifications were removed). Small, thick-paned windows in the upper story peered from a mass of red creeper. She stepped out of the car, when her driver opened the door, and stood entranced. What a perfect place…. She’d been warned that it would be cold outdoors, but she felt a captured warmth, as if the house were alive and filling the clearing with its mild body heat.

A small army of people in spruce dark green overalls—neatly marked as to sex in the shape of waist and hips, crotch and breast—trooped out from the main doorway, breaking the spell with dour efficiency. They lined up on either side of the porch steps, and bowed in unison. Those who were clearly the ranking officers even “showed throat.” Army was the right word, she thought. She hadn’t seen a local household that behaved like this for over a hundred years: she was visiting the military, and why had nobody warned her? If only she had listened to Agathe, become a friend of that homely Settlement, instead of abandoning the people in the hives and taking up with the Michael Connellys. She turned to her driver imploringly—

“I’ll see that your bags are sent to your room, Mademoiselle.”

Catherine was left to her fate, as Misha’s father stalked out between the ranks. He was, naturally enough, the living image of Misha, except that his vigorous hair was white instead of russet-dark, his body larger and heavier, and his features deeply lined. He wore the park uniform, but in his case the overalls were impeccably custom-grown; under a deep brown robe.

“Miss Catherine. We have met before. Welcome to Arden.”

The aspiration to Aleutian manners was the truth in this case. They had met, when Clavel was last alive: or at least been in the same room. But she did not remember. He shook her hands; his grip was firm and brief. He ushered her into a hall furnished in dark polished wood. A double stairway led to an open gallery above: she glimpsed shadowy passageways up there, closed doors.

“You’ll have to give me news of my rival.”

“Your rival?”

Topaz eyes twinkled above the furrowed cheeks. “Lord Maitri, of course. Isn’t he attempting the Aleutian record in unassisted neoteny?”

The troops had dispersed, but one of the officers was hovering.

“You’ll want to see your room and freshen up. Excuse Misha for not being here to greet you: or excuse
me,
rather. I’m ashamed to say I have no control over my son. This is my housekeeper, Mrs. Hunt. She’ll take care of you.”

The housekeeper looked like another version of Catherine’s driver. She had the same smooth round face and short-torsoed stocky build, but her brown hair was bound in braids around her head and her overalls were molded, modestly but emphatically, for a female body. She showed Catherine upstairs. When she moved the uniform took on a life of its own, the formal curves surging ahead, and lagging behind, the humble, barely marked human shape within. Her manner, from the first moment, was distinctly hostile.

“Here you are, Miss. You have your own bathroom, you see, if you should need it while you’re here.” Her tone made it clear that needing the bathroom was a serious crime. The room was plain and pleasant, decorated in a style that had been old-fashioned before the aliens came. A younger servant, also labeled female, with somewhat more justification, was unpacking Catherine’s bags. She looked up with a rosy smile but didn’t speak. The bed “with legs” was made up with linen and a puffy down quilt. Pictures hung on the walls, windows were draped in heavy folds of fabric. Everything was antique without being precious, ancient without oppression. The floor was worn dark wooden boards, partly covered by a machine-made woolen rug. The sole concession to relative modernity was a bulky multi-media rack, gathering dust in a corner.