Hidden Faults (25 page)

“Maybe. We all do different jobs. When you’re feeling a bit stronger, you’ll go on the duty roster.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m not on it. I...uh...I have other jobs to do.”

Back to the mystery. I fingered his coarse, dark hair. “Tell me about the braid thing.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Painful stupid?”

“A bit.”

I snuggled close to him. “Then I don’t need to know.”

“It’s...um...kinda like a badge. Jeyle’s a historian, remember? She used to study the Dar-sen, and she said they had this thing about long hair being like a sign of the clan. And Hermi said, oh, why don’t we use that to show that we’re all a clan. This was just after we all got sprung. They was all big on the Spiritism thing, and Hermi thought the braids would be like a badge of honour. Stupid, really.”

“Is that why you didn’t grow yours?”

“No, I grew it. Then I cut it off.”

There were hidden things in his eyes again. I was close to stepping on a mine in his unmapped field. “Okay.”

“Jodi, Dede didn’t tell you everything about me. I asked her not to. I want to tell you. I just...some of it’s hard to talk about.”

I pulled him close to me, tucked his head against my neck. “We’ve got plenty of time. You tell me what you want to and what you need to. I can wait until you’re ready. I know it’s painful.”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

We napped in each other’s arms for the rest of the afternoon, awaking thickheaded and sleepy in time for supper. We walked into the living area hand in hand, earning us some looks. Kir’s mouth tightened a little as he led me to the dining area, now full of people and lit to suggest evening, rather than the middle of the day.

A quick estimated headcount indicated this was almost the full compliment of residents, crowding around the table which had been pulled apart in the centre to make two semi-circles for ease of access. We squeezed in at the end near Dede, but before he sat down, Kir cleared his throat.

“Everyone? This is Jodi. I’ll get round to introducing you all later. Take it easy on him, okay?”

People nodded and waved at me, smiling and welcoming, apparently all friendly and happy to see me. I’d never been shy and my natural reaction would normally have been to go up and say hello. But I’d heard too much today to be relaxed. I needed to know more about the alliances here—who believed what, who could be trusted and who could not. For now, I would follow Kir’s lead.

We were very obviously the youngest people in the room. Over a dozen of the residents were quite geriatric, and two—a man and a woman—very ancient indeed, though in apparent good health and looked after solicitously by younger companions. My arrival was big news still, and people had been waiting to quiz me. If Dede hadn’t beat a few of them off, I’d never had a chance to eat some of the remarkably delicious meat pie and spiced vegetables.

No one, I noticed, asked about my time in prison. What they wanted to know most about was Vizinken, and the politics of the real world, and to gain through me a taste of what they had lost. Mentioning some of the concerts, the galleries I’d visited before my arrest, made one little old lady sigh sadly, and others nod with recognition and regret. They had been liberated, but far from free, their home as effective a prison as that I’d just left. The food was better though.

Hermi oiled the conversation and kept it smooth apparently without effort. He had to be one of the reasons such a diverse and potentially irritable group worked together so well. Everyone deferred to him as their leader, though I hadn’t been told of any formal hierarchy. Jeyle was his lieutenant, Dede their trusted aide. And Kir...what was Kir’s role? Beloved son and friend? Or more? I still had so many questions, but not for this company.

After I’d had a chance to eat a little, Hermi rose and made a short speech of welcome to me, then announced that the greeting circle would be the following night, which was when they now expected their Weadenisi friends to turn up. This was apparently nothing of any surprise to anyone. It happened too regularly to be exciting.

Kir stuck to my side throughout the meal. I got to know a few of the faces—two telepaths, sitting close to us, and one of the pyrokinetics, Ronwe. He said he would help me once my talent emerged again, explaining that PKs learned how to control their powers in childhood, but since I’d missed out on that, I’d need training. Mostly I sat and listened to the conversation, trying to assess personalities, interests, how I would fit in with this diverse group as both a newcomer and a relative youngster. One oddity I noted—Kir wasn’t just the only one without a braid, he was the only one without hand tattoos. Another mystery about my new lover.

After supper, people congregated on the long leather sofas and chairs, and, for the less elderly among us, even on the thick floor rugs, resting butts and heads on large, embroidered cushions. They made up a circle once more, something I’d rarely seen before I’d come here—the Pindoni style was to sit in lines, facing, and no house had a circular table as they used here. It had a symbolism for them, I guessed, but forbore from asking right then. After all, I’d have plenty of time to learn all I needed to about these people. Years and years, by the look of it.

Kir and I snuggled in the corner of a sofa under a soft, dull red blanket, his arm possessively around my waist. We weren’t the only same sex couple by any means. So strange to see women embracing without any fear or secrecy, other men unashamedly holding hands. Between this and the food, I believed I might eventually grow to like this rocky abode.

The curiosity about my background had not been sated, and that led to a conversation in which I learned more about my new ‘family’. Many had been professionals before the terrors. Jeyle had been an anthropologist and historian, working as an Academy lecturer, once married with two adopted children, and now divorced as most of them were, their spouses having taken the easy road of getting rid of partners damned as criminals. Hermi had been a vet. Others were teachers, artists, engineers, programmers.

Kir was unusual in having quite a working class background. He reluctantly admitted his father had been a cleaner cum handyman and his mother had worked as a waitress. He’d been one of three children. He didn’t express any regret at having no further contact with his family, but I sensed something painful there that didn’t bear poking. I hugged him closer to me and wished he’d not had to go through it. My life had been feather-bedded compared to his. Much as my parents and I mutually disappointed each other, at least I’d had a normal childhood, with many happy moments. Kir’s life had been much less happy.

Talk turned to the upcoming visit by the Weadenisis, and though I had drowsed a little, the warmth and the simple pleasure of Kir’s body against mine lulling me towards sleep, I roused myself to listen.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “If you don’t worship or pray, what exactly do you Spiritists do in these greeting circles?”

Hermi smiled. “You don’t know very much about Spiritism, do you? Not surprising, considering. It’s not an old religion, but then neither is Marranism, strictly speaking, though its roots are old. Spiritism is a conscious revival of ancient Dar-Sen tradition, a deliberate evocation of ethics and beliefs which reject the concept of an all-powerful deity and place responsibility for one’s actions and the happiness of society with the individual, and the individual acting in communion with others.”

At the Academy, I’d done a module on the history of the Dar-sen peoples and their ethical code of conduct, now held up to us as an admirable model of how physicians should conduct themselves even though the code had been written thousands of years ago. I found it hard to connect those principles with what I knew of Spiritism, and had never heard that it had anything to do with Dar-sen history.

“I was always taught it was about speaking to the dead. Which is impossible.”

“Yes, of course it is. The dead don’t speak.”

He looked at me. He wasn’t telling me something, but I felt he expected me to work out what that was.

“
You claim to
see
the dead?”

“In a way.” Kir’s grip tightened on me again as Hermi answered, but I wasn’t sure why. “We—that is, Spiritists—believe as the Dar-sen did all those many years ago, that the human spirit endures beyond the physical body. That these spirits pass from life to life, and that the connections we form between each other are both the result of our past lives, and will also affect our future lives. There are some well-documented examples of certain spirits finding and refinding each other in subsequent incarnations.”

“What?” I sat up, annoyed by such nonsense.

Hermi smiled patiently and waved at me to simmer down. “Wait, before you condemn our beliefs, perhaps consider some of the things you were brought up with and ask if they are any more provable.”

Jodi, it’s okay. Just talking. Don’t get mad.

Kir watched me with worried eyes. I kissed him and settled back. “Go on,” I said to Hermi.

“
Thank you. One of the things we believe spirits carry with them are the talents—our paranormal abilities. To us, that explains why your attempts to ‘cure’ us were doomed to fail. You can’t cure someone of their very soul.”

“Just because we hadn’t found an answer, didn’t mean there was a supernatural explanation. There’s a genetic basis to paranormality. The answer must lie in manipulating that.”

My response didn’t dim his smile at all. “And yet, were you ever able to explain why so many with the genes don’t have the power? And so many with the genes and the power, have such different talents and abilities? No. Spiritism believes the spirit finds a suitable receptacle, and it’s the spirit not the genes which determine the actual ability.”

“You can’t expect me to accept that, Hermi. I’m a scientist.”

He shook his head. “I know, I know. Too mystical. But to us it gives us hope of a continuance of our souls. And for me, as an empath, it’s a comfort, because I can see the spirits who linger, unable to pass on, and know that they will and be happy when they do.” He frowned. “My dear boy, what’s—”

I sat up and pulled away from Kir. “You’re lying.”

The room fell silent. Hermi continued to regard me with calm concern, though most of the others avoided my gaze. Kir moved behind me. “Maybe we should take this outside.”

“Why? Don’t like to hear the truth?” I twisted to look at him.

No, because I think you don’t want to look like a fucking idiot in front of new friends. Your choice.

I stood up, unable to keep the sneer off my lips. “As you wish.” I stalked out, not much caring if they followed. What the hell had I fallen into here, with people who believed this kind of drivel? I was a rational man. I would not be swayed by sentimental idiocy.

I sat on the couch and rubbed my eyes. I wasn’t up to this physically. Emotionally either, most likely.

Hermi walked in, his steps cautious as if afraid to spook me. He sat down in the armchair opposite me. Kir hovered in the doorway, but I ignored him.

“Someone died, didn’t they,” he said. “Someone close to you?”

“Why do you ask? Think you can see their ghost?”

“No. I can’t see anyone here.”

“
Hah.
Then you
are
a fake, because the man who died had more than enough reason to hang around. Your beliefs are rubbish.”

Kir came into the room.
Passing on all my secrets?
I snarled at him.

Jodi,
try not to be a prick to everyone, okay? Hermi’s trying to help. Tell him about Neim.

Why don’t you, since I don’t have any privacy
.

He sighed and walked over to another chair, some distance from me, his expression a mixture of worry and irritation. He said nothing more, keeping up a steady stare until I gave in and turned to Hermi.

“Tell me about the man who died, Jodi. Not a friend? A patient?”

“Yes, a patient. He killed himself when I tried to help him. I have no idea why. I gave him a chance to live a halfway normal life and he killed himself.”

I covered my head with my hands, that awful morning suddenly so fresh in my mind. One would think after everything that had happened since then, Neim’s death would have faded a bit. It hadn’t.

I heard Hermi move, then felt him settle next to me, his hand on my arm. Almost instantly the grief and anger faded back to bearable levels. I looked up and glared. “My feelings are my own. You don’t have the right to change them.”

His face, screwed up in pain, relaxed. He lifted his hand and moved back to his armchair. “I'm sorry. I have difficulty watching someone suffer.”

I felt better for what he’d done, so it was hard to maintain my anger. “All right. But in future, ask. I need to be able to choose.”

“Yes, you do. I apologise,” he said, with one of his little bows. “Can you talk about your patient? Why should his spirit linger?”

“It won’t because there are no such things as ghosts.”