Conflagration (16 page)

“And now you’re not so sure?”

“It’s not as bad as when I came to the Americas.”

Kennedy smiled gently, as though he could guess the details of that ordeal but was too tactful to inquire further. “The first time I crossed the ocean I was as sick as a dog.”

“Really?”

“I hated everyone and prayed for death.”

Jesamine laughed despite herself. “You know exactly how I feel.”

“Stand up straight and take a deep breath.”

“It’ll help?”

“Trust me.”

Jesamine straightened her back, and breathed as instructed. It was only as she filled her lungs that she realized that she was also showing off her figure to its best advantage, and Kennedy had removed the large Caribbean cigar from his mouth and was regarding her with an unconcealed admiration. “You are very beautiful, my dear.”

Jesamine laughed. “You say that to all the seasick women you meet?”

Kennedy’s smile broadened. “Only when it’s true, or when the lady badly needs to hear it.”

“And which category do I fall into?”

“I’d hope you’d not need to fall at all.”

Jesamine was starting to enjoy the flirtation with this man who was old enough to be her grandfather. “But am I beautiful, or just in need?”

“You know you’re beautiful, my dear. Although I do also sense some degree of need. Am I right in thinking you’re not that taken with our so-called civilization and have been spending as much time as possible with the Ohio?”

Jesamine was taken completely by surprise. “You’re very well informed, Prime Minister.”

Now Kennedy laughed. “That’s how I remain Prime Minister.” He moved so he was leaning against the rail beside her. “When I was young I lived for almost an entire summer with the Ohio. Chanchootok is a good friend of mine.”

“Really?”

“Don’t look so surprised. When I was a young man I spent a lot of time in the interior. On one trip with Charlie Bearclaw, we made it all the way to the Western Desert.”

“So you understand how I feel about the aboriginal tribes? Before I was taken by the Mamalukes, I lived in a small village.”

“I understand perfectly.”

Kennedy’s voice was soft and sympathetic, and Jesamine understood that she was perhaps being seduced for real. In the instant of realization, she experienced a brief flush of confusion as she wondered exactly how she felt about it. She had been forced to have sex with all manner of men, but the ones she had chosen for herself had always been young. Kennedy was far from young, but he was one of the most powerful men in the world, and that, at the very least, was flattering. Also he did not appear to be using his power to coerce her, and that, too, meant a lot. He seemed to sense that she was uncertain, and covered the ensuing silence by relighting his cigar with a lucifer that he struck on the side of a small silver pocket case. As he put the matchbox back in the jacket of his frock coat, he held up a spare Caribbean. “Would you like one of these? I know some ladies do.”

In the bad old days, she had stolen cheroots from the humidor of Phaall the Teuton colonel and enjoyed them greatly, but she shook her head. “Not right now. I still feel a little queasy.”

“Possibly later?”

Jesamine nodded. “Possibly. I like a good cigar.”

Kennedy puffed thoughtfully, and the smoke was whipped away by the ocean breeze. “There might be another reason why you felt so at home with the Ohio.”

“There might?”

“Your trade is now the paranormal, and the aboriginal peoples are much more comfortable with the unseen arts and crafts. They more easily accept things that make city folk nervous and uneasy.”

Jesamine looked curiously at Kennedy. “Why is that?”

“Why is what?”

“Why does what I do frighten all these smart sophisticated city people?”

Kennedy stared at Jesamine. Their eyes met. “You really don’t like city people, do you, my dear?”

“What do you expect? Albany was the first city I wasn’t brought to by force.”

“You should maybe give cities more of a chance.”

“You would say that.”

“I would?”

“You may be the Prime Minister, but you’re a city boy.”

Kennedy chuckled. “It’s been a long time since a beautiful young woman called me a boy.”

He was flirting again, but Jesamine wasn’t quite ready to let the topic go. “But you are, aren’t you?”

“A city boy? That, pretty lady, shows how little you know. My daddy, Whiskey Joe Kennedy, ran moonshine down the Taconic, and across the Catskills, and the woods were my home until I was all of fifteen and I was shipped off to Boston for my education. Even after that, the interior was where the adventures waited to be had and the fortunes to be made, and I spent more of my time under the stars than under a roof.”

Jesamine was impressed by the way the phrase about adventures and fortunes rolled from his tongue. Old Jack Kennedy was smooth. No wonder his people so willingly followed him. “You must have been something when you were young.”

Kennedy sighed. “Ah girl, you’d better believe it.”

For a while they both stared across the water, at the escort ships and the far horizon, then Jesamine put the story back on track. “You must have gone back to the city, though, when you went into politics.”

“Well, that was unavoidable. Things needed doing and people seemed to think that I was the one to do them.”

“Things?”

“Albany hasn’t always been like it is now. The old King thought he could keep all the power to himself, and it was a long hard fight to change his mind.”

“You still haven’t answered my original question.”

Kennedy frowned. “Which was?”

“I wanted to know why the powers I have … that we Four have … scare all those educated city people?”

The Prime Minister thought for a moment. “I have to suppose it’s because city people have to believe they’re right; that they know all there is to know. How would they ride their trolley cars or take their elevators up and down, or turn on their electric lights, if they had any doubts? How would they sail in metal boats.”

“But they must know that the Other Side is there. They can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist.”

Kennedy shook his head. “But they do.”

Jesamine frowned. “But why? There are ghosts in the city, just like in the forest.”

“There’s a difference.”

She leaned back against the ship’s rail, aware that by arching her spine just enough she showed off her breasts to their maximum advantage. Jesamine saw no reason why seduction and discussion should not go hand in hand. “A difference?”

Jack Kennedy nodded. He must have noticed her move, but gave no indication. “The tribes of the interior live in much closer contact with the invisible. They have the thunderbird that rules skies, the trickster coyote that is the friend to man. On the plains, the
tetonka
is revered as the provider of all things. In the north, the raven preserves the light. Among so-called primitive peoples, the mundane and the invisible frequently walk hand in hand, and preserve the equilibrium.” Kennedy paused. For a few seconds, he looked at Jesamine with unconcealed appreciation, but then went on to make his point. “Cities, on the other hand, are something else. They construct their equilibrium with the plumb line and the square. Supposedly civilized peoples are hemmed in by their own walls, and constrained by their progress and their structures. When civilized man is confronted by the invisible, or that which he doesn’t understand, he is presented with a choice. He must decide if it exists outside of the laws of the universe, or if laws of the universe are more complicated and extensive than he previously believed. Since civilization tends to make it easier to disbelieve than believe, he will attempt to dismiss the invisible and the mysterious, and pretend that they don’t really exist. Do you follow me?”

Jesamine took a deep breath. “I think so.”

“The reason, my dear Jesamine, that your knowledge and skills upset the city people is that you force them to change their beliefs and they don’t like that. Too often, the educated get the idea that their education is complete and hate to learn anything new.” Again he paused. Now he looked her up and down with deliberate candor. “You really are quite lovely. With that honey skin you will be a sensation in Oslo, among all those so very white people.”

Jesamine pouted with complete calculation. “I think I was a sensation for a while in Albany, and I didn’t like it all.”

“To be a sensation is a gift only given to a few. You must learn to enjoy it.”

“Is that what you did?”

“I was never a sensation, girl. I had to teach myself to be a force.”

Jesamine and Kennedy were suddenly in complete eye contact. Their two faces were close together, and the gulf of their ages was ceasing to matter. He was potentially a great mentor and how better could she show her appreciation of that than by giving herself to him. If the moment had held for seconds longer, he would have kissed her and she would have responded. It was not to be, however. The voice interrupted, demanding his attention. “Prime Minister?”

Kennedy half laughed and half sighed. “Observe the curse of power and the penalty of becoming a force.” He turned. “What is it, Dawson?”

Dawson was the burly civilian in the dark suit who seemed to double as the Prime Minister’s valet and bodyguard. “Cable, sir. Relayed from the NU380, and requiring your acknowledgment.”

Kennedy looked back at Jesamine. “I fear I have to go.”

Jesamine half reached towards him, intending to touch him, but not doing it. She suddenly felt so safe in the older man’s company. “That’s too bad. I would have liked to have talked some more.”

Kennedy smiled, polite but knowing. “Perhaps later. The ocean is very wide.”

Jesamine matched his smile. “Maybe I can smoke the excellent cigar you offered me.”

Kennedy nodded. “Indeed you may.” He turned and followed Dawson back to the business of nations. Jesamine sagged a little and felt quite breathless. She had made what amounted to an assignation with no less than the Prime Minister of Albany, and, if she read matters correctly, the assignation was serious. She had spent so much time and energy yearning for the simple life, and yet, the instant the chance presented itself, she plunged into the great game of the high and the mighty with more blind abandon than Cordelia. She looked up at the streamlined silver airship floating against the sky and clouds. A tiny light flashed coded signals from its gondola, and the designation NU380 was displayed clearly on its side.

CORDELIA

The upper bunk smelled of a healthy young man; tobacco, machine oil, and the slightest hint of yesterday’s gin. Cordelia lay by herself, but not sleeping. She had spent two nights with First Lieutenant Bjorn Hawkins, and through that time, privacy had been a constant problem. A destroyer on a mission, even a mission that was not overly dangerous, offered little chance for two people to be alone together. Thus it was not without a sense of irony that Cordelia found herself the sole occupant of the cabin in the small hours of the third morning, with not only Bjorn on watch, but also Frampton, the other First Lieutenant with whom he shared the cramped cabin. Had all other things been equal, she and Hawkins might have had their sex in the somewhat larger quarters that had been assigned to her and Jesamine, since she again outranked her lover, but a serious inequality had presented itself in the form of Jesamine’s chronic seasickness. Perhaps, had Cordelia not wanted to escape being cooped up in a cabin with Jesamine’s groaning and vomiting, she might not even have organized this brief maritime fling to while away the ocean crossing. Such a thing had not been her intention when she had boarded the
Ragnar
. After a fond, if somewhat insincere night of farewell to Tom Neally, who had been shot in the arm during the final charge at Newbury Vale, but was otherwise fully functional, she was on her way to London, and she knew that notorious city could not help but yield its share of assignations. She had no immediate craving for excitement, and had planned to keep herself to herself, hoping to repair the bonds with Jesamine that had somehow become so frayed since their winter training.

Cordelia had also contemplated using the ocean voyage to spend time on her own doing some unaccustomed private thinking. The side of herself—what Slide had called the factor in the equation—that she had discovered during the interrogation of the captive Zhaithan continued to distract and disturb her. The whip had felt good in her hands, as had the grip of unholy delight she had experienced as she thrashed him. Up to the moment of self-revelation with the Zhaithan, she had always believed that, when certain girlfriends had boasted about candlelit boudoir games of dominance and submission, or of visits in closed carriages to the purple confines of a few private and specially established clubs, they were merely playing charades, just extending the titillating preambles to the serious business of orgasm, but now she was uncomfortably aware that such desires might go considerably deeper, and be a possible end in themselves.

She threw back the blankets, and sat up, moving with some care, so as not to crack her head on the steel ceiling, or whatever they called a ceiling on a battleship. She eased her legs over the side of the bunk and swung down to the floor. One step took her across the narrow cabin to the small mirror that was positioned above the two men’s washbasin. She may have started off with the objective of keeping herself to herself, but, yet again, it had not worked out that way. Jesamine had become seasick and that had driven her out of the cabin. In the wardroom, she had fallen into gin and conversation with the young but personable Bjorn Hawkins, and one thing had led to another, which in turn had led to the two of them sneaking off to his cabin together. Bjorn Hawkins had proved capable, enthusiastic, and wholly normal, which, at any other time would have been quite enough to keep Cordelia amused, but she found herself dissatisfied, even irritated by him. Normality now left much to be desired.

She stared with stern concern at her own reflection. “What are you becoming, Cordelia Blakeney? Do you have any idea?”