Harmony (47 page)

“Being scared doesn’t mean you hate it. Like stage fright. Some actors never get over it, but they keep acting.”

“That’s actors.” He brushed damp hair from his eyes. “I remind myself of my father when I’m like this.”

“Can’t be so bad, then.”

“Dangerous. He liked power, my father. Liked it too much. Let’s go home.”

“Where’s that?” grumbled Songh cheerfully, catching up at the bottom of the stairs. “You know, it’s gonna be something when you’re all winning your citizenships and I’m still locked out of my own damn house!”

“You can sleep in my guest room,” said Jane.

“Your guest room?” we laughed.

The crowd was breaking up, spilling onto the paths leading radially into the encircling park. A citizen walking on my right smiled and congratulated me. When I realized it was Omea, I hugged her. “You
were
here!”

“Of course, child. Did you think we wouldn’t be?”

“Somebody had to show that ignorant crowd how to behave,” said Ule from my left. He’d piled on more clothing than I’d ever seen him in, and none of it looked good. As I fought off the giggles, he loosened his high neon-pink collar, slipped off his pointed white shoes. Ahead of us, Moussa draped a dashiki-clad arm across Mark’s back. Further along, Mali and Te-Cucularit strolled at ease and elegant in gallery-owner tweeds. Cu was turning admiring heads among the crowd moving homeward with us as we entered Founders’ Park. So much for low profile. Behind us, sporadic cheering echoed from the plaza. The irony of it piqued me. Our SecondGen supporters could party on the steps of Town Hall until dawn if they wanted.

“Well, you did it.” Sam had replaced Omea at my side.

I snorted. “I didn’t do anything but show up.”

“Aw, shucks, ‘twarn’t nuthin…”

“I mean, my head’s been completely in the show. It was Mark and the others… and you guys.”

Sam chuckled softly. “For a woman who looks like she spends a lot of time thinking, you aren’t real big on self-aware.”

It was dark under the big trees. The wrought-iron post lights were dim and widely spaced. The homeward stream thinned, veering off to different paths or hurrying ahead. Our group sauntered, splitting into twos and threes as the path narrowed. Talking with Mark, Mali trailed his fingers through the overhanging leaves as if petting a favorite animal.

When I said nothing, Sam continued, “You don’t see your place in the scheme of things—for instance, how much people rely on you. Micah, Mark, Jane, and Songh, even that asshole boyfriend of yours.”

“Cris certainly doesn’t rely on me, and I do wish you’d stop calling him that.”

“Asshole or your boyfriend?”

“Either… uh, both.” A breeze whispered in the branches. Ahead, Tuli and Lucienne moved through a pool of shifting pathlight side by side, black and white mirror images of the same willowy long-skirted girl.

“Well, that’s progress. Does that mean you’re free this evening?”

I shook my head. “Micah’s expecting us back at the Arkadie.”

“See what I mean? Reliable. I answer to that, too, and I’m proud of it. Why aren’t you?”

“I am. It’s just—”

“You think it’s not enough, but at the right moment it can be everything.” He said it lightly, but his face was sober under the post light. He looked away from me, whipping his arm back and forth boyishly as if tossing stones. “Well, I’ll walk you to the theatre.”

“Thank you.”

“She thanks me. Ohh, I am making progress.”

“Jeez, Sam, couldn’t you just talk to me? About ordinary things?”

Again the invisible stone toss, low and flat. “Yes, ma’am, I could. What kind of things?”

“About your life, about the Eye, no, not even. That’s not ordinary. I don’t know. Anything.”

“Still after that what-is-he?”

I shrugged. “Of course.”

“You got your three sentences yet?”

“No,” I replied quietly.

“Ah, you’ll get it all wrong anyway.” A dark nutlike object appeared in his right hand. He rolled it deftly across his palm, under and over his fingers, making it appear and disappear. I was sure if I got a close look at it, I’d find twelve little carved totems. Somewhere away among the trees, cheering broke out again. The dark nut hung frozen between his fingers as Sam stilled, listening. He shrugged, and the nut rolled again, up and around, too fast to be possible. “You’re from Chicago, right?”

I was surprised. “Yes.”

“Terrible town. Can’t have been easy getting out of there.”

“I guess.” I was wondering how he knew.

“And you obviously couldn’t buy your way into Harmony like so many do.”

My turn this time to correct a misconception. “That’s not how it’s done. The computer—”

“Yeah, yeah. About the first quarter are chosen on merit. The rest, well, the world is full of talented youngsters. Why not lean toward those who also happen to be rich?”

“How could you know what goes on in Harmony?”

“I make it my business to know anything useful.”

“What about Jane?” Surely she was proof for my side.

“Must have been a slow year.”

“You’re horrible.”

“Hey, love, doesn’t it make you feel better to know you’re the real thing?”

“I guess.” Of course it did, if I could believe him.

He looked at me sideways. “Aw, shucks, ‘twarn’t nuthin’—”

“Sam, Art is illegal in Chicago. I got out ’cause I had to. Don’t make more out of it than it was.”

He raised an eyebrow in reply, rolling the nut across his knuckles and shaking his head.

I caved in to the silence first. “Did you always live on Tuatua?”

“Nope.” He was listening again, more intently. The cheers in the distance sounded more like yelling. “Ule, hear that?”

“I hear,” Ule replied from the shadows ahead.

“Moussa?”

“Yah.”

“TeCu?”

“Here.”

The Eye closed rank. Mali and Cu pulled up short of the next circle of path light. Cris and Tua halted with them. Omea and Pen caught up behind, shepherding Songh and Jane.

“What is it?” asked Songh. Omea hushed him. We stood in the whispering dark, listening. A woman screamed shrilly off to one side. Angry shouting rose and died away, then erupted anew in three different locations.

Sam interlaced his left hand firmly with mine. “Truce for the moment and do exactly what I tell you.”

Mali’s nostrils twitched. He slid out of his fancy jacket. “I’d call it a bit too quiet in our immediate neighborhood.”

Te-Cucularit slipped off his shoes, bundled them with his jacket and Mali’s, and stashed them in the crook of a tree. He rolled up his sleeves.

“Up ahead, I’m guessing,” said Ule, “at the turn.”

Lucienne and Tuli eased to either side of him. Mali drew Mark into Moussa’s shadow. The three dancers moved to the front. We rounded the turn.

Where the path kinked around three massive spreading oaks, a clot of young men waited in red and white uniforms, armed with SecondGen insolence and branches torn from the trees.

“My old friends, the soccer team,” muttered Mark.

“And several dozen of their friends,” said Ule.

“We’ll match them play for play,” Moussa promised.

Sam considered us quickly. “In addition to the usual, it’s Cu on Mark, Omea on Jane, Pen on Songh, Tua on Cris. Moussa?”

“I’ll cover.” Moussa shifted to group with Cu and Mali. I suddenly understood their constant athletics in the rehearsal hall as another kind of rehearsing, defense and offense, precise coordination and deployment of strength. I got an inkling of why Mali had survived Sam’s beating without a scratch.

“I’ll take care of myself,” declared Cris recklessly.

“Stick tight, pretty boy,” Sam growled. “We’re safer without heroics.”

Cris grinned at him. “Who’s gonna protect you?”

“Shut up and listen,” said Tua. Startled, Cris subsided.

“Down their throats and scatter,” said Sam. “There’s too many of them.”

Ule and his girls nodded. Pen looked eager.

“Okay. What we need now”—Sam flicked back his throwing arm, covered my eyes with his other hand—“is a little light around here.”

I saw the flash through the cracks between his fingers. Immediately he grabbed my wrist and we were moving, all of us, fast and tight together. The soccer boys were blinking and disoriented. The flare burned white-gold on the path like a tiny hungry sun. One boy tried to stomp it out. The odor of burning athletic shoe hit me as we raced toward them. They didn’t see us coming until we were on top of them.

Ule and the girls plowed into them, shrieking like Berserkers, ducking under and around, grabbing arms and clothing and more delicate parts, tearing branches out of astonished hands. Moussa and Cu were close behind, snatching the flying branches out of the air, swinging hard and at random, bare feet kicking sidelong while Mali and Mark ran between them.

The boys recovered quickly, but we were halfway through by then. Cu sprinted ahead with Mali and Mark. Ule and the girls doubled back to pull three red-jersied toughs off Crispin’s back. Tua kneed a young one in the groin, but his older, bigger buddy grabbed her around the neck, lifting her off the ground with a roar. She arched her back and flipped out of his grasp, landing on one knee in front of me. I grasped her arm. Sam’s driving momentum hauled her up.

“Go!” he shouted. Tua sprang free and forward.

Moussa cleared a path for Omea, who had her hands full keeping Jane from turning back in panic. I slowed to help her.

“No!” Sam dragged me onward. I glanced back. Pen and Songh pulled Jane along with them.

Ahead, Ule held off several branch wielders with his knife. He danced at them in a fury, legs spread, jabbing his eight inches of lethal metal as if it were something more organic. “Come on, you mothers!” he screeched. “I’ll slice your domer balls off!”

Tuli and Lucienne marked time in the path, their long skirts hiked up into their waistbands. They closed protectively around Omea and Jane. A soccer boy snatched at Omea’s hair. Tuli lunged. Another smaller blade caught the dying light of the flare. The boy yowled and jerked away bloodied fingers. He stared at his hand in shock and backed away as the fight surged around him.

“Go!” yelled Sam again. Tuli and Lucienne leaped ahead. Omea doubled her speed. We were almost past them. A red shirt loomed up beside us, large and angry, clumsily swinging a branch. Sam yanked me, swerved aside. Behind us, Pen caught the blow in the stomach, caved and went down. The red-shirt laughed. It was the big one who’d grabbed Tua. He didn’t look much like a teenager to me and I began to wonder about this soccer team. He hauled back his branch for another blow at Pen but Songh flew at him like a wildcat, fingers grabbing, nails clawing. Pen staggered coughing and bleeding to his feet just as the red-shirt flung Songh to the ground. Moussa fell back and picked the boy out of the path as if he were an empty sack. Still another blade flashed in Pen’s hand, opening up a long gash in his attacker’s chest. Pen ducked back, then plunged in for a second cut.

“Go!” ordered Sam.

“Gonna write my fucking name!” Pen screamed.

“
Pen!
Go!”

Pen backed off, scowling at Sam. The red-shirt bent and fumbled at his sock. His torn shirt front was shiny with his blood. His hands shook. I thought he would topple over but he came up sharp with a knife of his own.

I screamed with what breath I had left.
“Pen!!”

Pen leaped aside. The knife grazed his shoulder blade, slicing his sleeve. He turned in midair and crouched. “Blade!” he warned as he was grabbed hard from behind.

The red-shirt was no longer roaring or clumsy. Two of his fellows held Pen fast. He shifted his knife in his hand and moved in. “Little Outsider piece of shit…”

Sam’s blade was in his hand and out of it so fast I didn’t see it until it was sunk to the hilt in the red-shirt’s back. The man staggered, his teammates gaped in disbelief and Pen twisted out of their grasp. He ran straight for the red-shirt, knocked him down and yanked the knife clear in one smooth movement.

“Go!” he yelled to Sam.

I stared at the man writhing on the ground, at the dampness spreading across his back.

Sam jerked me forward. We ran.

There was no one ahead of us, no way to know if the others had made it out. The path lamps had been extinguished. Terror propelled me through the first several hundred meters of darkness, until I was winded and my legs ached.

“I need to stop,” I panted.

“Forget it.” Sam grabbed my arm. “Look behind you.”

They pounded after us through the trees—eight, ten of them at least. Pen pulled up alongside, running easily though his face and arm were smeared with blood. “Fuckin’ assholes!”

“All right?” Sam asked.

“Flesh wound. I’ll split off when we get out of the trees.”

Sam nodded. “See you at Cora’s.”

I knew I couldn’t make it that far. “Isn’t there someplace closer?”

“You name it,” returned Sam grimly.

I couldn’t. Who would take us in, an apprentice out past curfew and a man who could and would bury his knife in a guy’s back from fifteen meters? I told myself, just keep running, the boys behind will tire or give up. But they were young and athletic, used to running. And they were angry. As we broke out of the park, Pen’s swerve off to the right drew three of them after him. I glanced back. Seven still in pursuit, gaining slowly.

Trash littered the dark streets, broken glass crunching underfoot and a strange slickness here or there. We weren’t the only ones the soccer boys had gone after. I slipped in a patch of wet. Sam caught me roughly. “Stick with me for a while, love. We’re gonna try and lose ’em.”

“Don’t know… how much longer…!” A needle of pain inched up my side.

“Long as you have to, you want to be alive tomorrow.” He spoke in the easy rhythm of his stride. “Told you you needed exercise. And don’t talk. It makes you tense. Breathe deep and slow. Come on, this way.”

We pounded around a corner. Sam turned hard left into a narrow alley behind a row of houses, then veered right after the second house. We ran in silence across the soft velvet grass of well-tended lawns.

Sam slowed behind a hedge and looked back. “Good. They split up at the turn. Gets it down to four.”