The Alleluia Files

  “I’m not going to hurt you, damn it!” he shouted. “Just stop! You can’t outrun me! Just stop and talk to me!”

  Once more she fell to the ground, fighting for breath, shuddering with exhaustion or terror. Once again, Jared landed a few feet away, and this time he made no move to come closer.

  “Please don’t be afraid of me,” he said in as coaxing a voice as he could manage. “My name is Jared. I’m from the angel hold of Monteverde. I have no reason to hurt you.”

  From her hands and knees she stared over at him, and he noted that despite everything, she did not look a bit defeated. He had never seen such naked hostility on any face before. Certainly, he had never done anything to earn such a look in his life.

  “Can you stand?” he asked, because he was tired of telling her not to be afraid. “Do you need help?”

  “I can stand,” she said in a voice full of loathing, and pushed herself upright. She continued to glare at him, completely unrepentant.

  “I’m Jared,” he tried again. “What’s your name?”

  She merely scowled and did not reply.

  He gestured behind him. “And this place is Ileah, is it not?”

  Again, silence.

  It appeared he had nothing to lose by full disclosure. “I was told I might find an encampment of Jacobites here,” he said, watching her closely to see if that startled her. “Is that true?”

  “You’re too late,” she said flatly. He noted idly that—despite her distress, despite her hatred—her voice was musical and sweet. Probably a singer of some sort. You could always tell. “They’re all dead.”

  The harsh words landed against his ears like three separate blows. From his automatic assessment of this new person, he was knocked into a state of grave disquiet. “All dead?” he repeated stupidly. “Are you sure?”

  “I buried them myself,” she said. “Do you want to dig up the grave?”

  “No, I—how many? When were they killed?”

  “Twelve dead. Maybe three days ago. It happened before I arrived.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  For the first time her expression changed. Her brows arched over her eyes with mocking dislike. “Angels?” she suggested.

  Again, he had the sense of having been punched, this time in the stomach. “No,” he said sharply. “Not possible.”

  She shrugged. “Then Jansai, I suppose.”

  “Do you have any guess as to why?”

  “You’re the one who named us Jacobites,” she said. “Wouldn’t you consider that reason enough?”

  “No,” he said again, just as quickly. “Even if you were.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here,” she asked, “looking for Jacobites?”

  He passed a hand over his face. Suddenly he felt old, betrayed, inadequate, and unprepared. Was it really true? Had Jansai really murdered twelve Jacobites at this camp—and if so, had they acted on their own or at the Archangel’s behest? Jansai, yes, he could believe them murderers, but not Bael, surely not the Archangel…. “In a manner of speaking,” he said at last. “I came looking for information. I guess you’ve supplied it.”

  “Then you’ll be going,” she said. “Good-bye.”

  Now he was the one to feel a wave of hostility, and he glared right back at her. He couldn’t help noticing a few physical details. Such as despite the fact that she had clearly lived a hard life, her features were as delicate and porcelain white as a Manadavvi’s. And that the short, tousled hair was several shades darker than the pale blond brows, still raised questioningly over her green eyes. And that she had a Kiss in her right arm. And that she looked familiar to him, in the strangest way—not as if he had seen her before, but as if he would see her again, so often and so intimately that he would not be able to remember a time when she had been a stranger.

  “Why do you have a Kiss?” he asked, the superfluous question edging out all the other more important ones. “I thought Jacobites didn’t believe in Jovah.”

  She glanced down at her arm as if surprised to find what she was wearing there. “It was part of my disguise,” she said, looking back up at him. “I thought it would make me pass for one of you.”

  “An angel?” he asked incredulously.

  “No, a believer. I thought it would save me from persecution. But apparently I was wrong.”

  “I’m not going to persecute you,” he said automatically. “But I wouldn’t be counting on that disguise, if I were you. It appears as if someone has betrayed you.”

  She nodded. “And I know who, I think. A man in Breven to whom I went for help.”

  Jared frowned. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “I think it was one of your own. Someone who got arrested in Breven trying to escape to Ysral.”

  She sucked her breath in on a gasp of pain. She whispered something—it may have been a name—but said nothing else. “In any case,” Jared went on, “if someone is looking for you, he’ll be looking for the Kiss, too.”

  She looked down at it again, this time with the same loathing she had directed at the angel earlier. “Too late to try to get rid of it now,” she said. “I understand that once it’s installed, it’s with you for life. But no one told me how sick it would make me.”

  “Sick?” he repeated.

  “Dizzy,” she said. “Ever since I got it. Sometimes I feel like I’m floating or falling. No one ever told me that would happen.”

  “Well, it doesn’t, to most people,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t have a fever? You look very pale.”

  He had come a step closer but she stopped him with her eyes. “I’m not sick,” she said clearly. “I don’t have time for it.”

  “Well, maybe we can talk somewhere else,” he Mid. “Can we go back to Ileah?”

  “What else did you want to talk about?” she asked. “The Jacobites were here. The Jansai killed them—either for sport or because someone told them to. Doesn’t that about cover it?”

  “But—are they all dead? All the Jacobites?”

  Now her face showed scorn. “No, of course not! Do you think there are only twelve Jacobites in the whole country? They will find each other again, don’t you worry, and they will once more strive to bring the message of truth to all men and women of Samaria.”

  “I would think the message of truth is looking a little sorrier these days,” he said grimly. “I might rethink my proselytizing if I were you.”

  “If we were weaker men and women, we might,” she conceded. “But only cowards allow themselves to be defeated by violence and fear. If Bael is afraid of us, we must be making some progress. Now is not the time to lay down our arms.”

  “So you’d rather be a dead martyr than a live plotter?” he demanded. Fanatics made him furious. “Seems pretty shortsighted to me.”

  “That’s because there’s nothing you believe in enough to die for,” she shot back.

  He froze where he stood, anger battling with dismay—that it was true, that she had thought to say it. Well, no, there was nothing he could think of offhand for which he would lay down his life, but he had always thought that made him sane, not pitiful. “You could at least expend some effort guarding your life while you can,” he said at last. “If the Jansai are patrolling this area looking for Jacobites, why don’t you get as far away as possible?”

  “I will, once Peter is well enough to travel.”

  “Peter?” he repeated quickly. He could see she instantly regretted the careless slip. “Who’s Peter?” When she didn’t answer, he began guessing. “Someone who survived the Jansai attack? Where is he—back at the camp? How badly is he hurt?”

  “Why are you asking?” she flung at him. “Why do you care?”

  He turned on his heel, back toward the cluster of huts that was Ileah. He didn’t want to leave her here a few hundred yards down the road to Stockton, but something told him she wouldn’t abandon her friend to an angel’s questionable mercies. “Maybe I can help him,” he said. “Let’s go have a look.”
r />   He risked it; he took wing and returned to Ileah, hoping she would follow. He didn’t even look back to make sure. Within a few minutes he had landed in the little village and stepped inside the only cabin with smoke coming from the roof. Yes, there was a sick man lying on a rough bed. Jared waited till his eyes adjusted, then knelt by the patient and did a quick examination.

  His skin was hot, his color was high, and the bright eyes that crossed and reerossed the angel’s face showed no signs of either fear or recognition. Jared inspected the bandage across the man’s chest but didn’t disturb it. This woman seemed competent and levelheaded enough to clean a wound and bind it properly. But the man definitely had a fever, and if he had had it for three days or more…

  Running footsteps and then someone plunged through the door behind him. “Don’t touch him,” the girl panted. “He’s sleeping.”

  Jared turned to face her. “He’s got a high fever,” he said bluntly. “Have you been able to feed him? Give him water?”

  “A little. He doesn’t have much appetite, but whatever he swallows he keeps down. He’s getting better.”

  “Maybe,” Jared said ominously. “But I don’t think he’ll make it without my help.”

  Again, she gave him that fixed scowl, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say she would sacrifice her friend to avoid accepting the angel’s assistance. “How can you help him?” she asked at last.

  “I can pray to the god for medicines that will heal him.”

  She surprised him with a harsh, forced laugh. “The god! The god that does not exist? Why would I want to accept any medicines from his imaginary hand?”

  Again, he had to throttle his own anger. “Have you ever seen an angel pray to Jovah?” he asked quietly. “Have you ever seen an angel ask for sun—and seen the sun emerge from behind a veil of clouds? Whatever you believe about the god, whatever you believe about prayer, do not disparage it until you have seen it work.”

  “I do not believe in the god, and I have no faith in angels, either,” she fired back at him. “Why should I trust anything you give me? It could be poison, for all I know.”

  “It will not be poison,” he said. “It could save your friend’s life. Now. Come outside and watch me pray to the god. Perhaps what you see and hear will convince you.”

  She did not want to, but he could tell she saw no easy way to refuse. She could not continue to mock him if she did not witness his failures—and maybe she was curious, too. Obviously, she had never had a chance to see an angel at his prayers; perhaps she wondered what such an act of blind devotion entailed. She followed him outside.

  He took three running steps and threw himself aloft, climbing to cruising level. Normally, when he prayed, he flew as close to the ceiling of heaven as he could, to be near enough, to Jovah to pour his song directly into the god’s ear. But he wanted this Jacobite rebel to hear him, perhaps to be moved or even converted by the power of prayer.

  When he started to sing, he felt like the whole world was listening, and he responded to the challenge. Maybe it was just that he had never had a skeptical audience before, and so he felt like he had something to prove; or maybe it was simply a peculiar combination of low altitude, high humidity, and the valley of central Jordana that created a setting of breathless acoustics. His own voice sounded new to him, welling up from some unfamiliar place in his chest; the words that he had sung countless times at hundreds of forgotten sites sounded fresh and powerful. He sang as if he offered Jovah the first prayer on the first Samarian morning, and he felt each note register separately on the god’s merciful heart.

  He was pleased with himself when, half an hour later, he touched down on the ground outside the wounded man’s cabin. The girl, whom he had half expected to be inside, ignoring her angelic visitor, was standing outside waiting for him. She looked oddly disturbed, though she was making every effort to hide it.

  “So?” she said when he came within earshot. “Where is this medicine the god is supposed to send?”

  “It will arrive. It may take an hour or two—no longer. Be patient.”

  “And what does it look like? How will we know it?”

  “It arrives in the form of small pellets. Jovah sends different drugs for different diseases. There are the pills that ward off plague and the pills that scare away fever. All kinds of medicines.”

  “How does he send it?”

  “It falls from the sky.”

  She nodded in satisfaction. “Dropped from the storage hold of the spaceship. I see.

  “It is not!” he denied, startled. “It is formed by Jovah’s own hand, fashioned for the individual emergency—”

  “If he sent blue pills when I was sick and yellow ones when you were sick and pink ones when Peter was sick, then I might think Jovah designed them for each separate crisis. But if he only has five or six different kinds of drugs, and that’s what you get every time you pray, then I think this Jovah of yours has a limited stock, such as a machine might store, and he is not a god at all.”

  He was so angry he could hardly stand still; but in the back of his mind, he was hearing Christian’s voice. Say the machine has been programmed to respond one way when it hears one combination of notes, and another way when it hears a different combination. Jared thought of them as prayers; Christian called them aural cues. Could they be the same thing?

  “I am sorry to learn you were unmoved by my prayer,” he said stiffly to the girl, because he would not give her the satisfaction of knowing she had shaken him. “Perhaps you will be more impressed by the results.”

  “I heard you sing before,” she said abruptly.

  He focused on her. “I can’t imagine when.”

  “At your Gloria. Over some piece of equipment in a shop in Breven.”

  “There were a hundred singers performing that day. You could scarcely pick my voice out from all those other strangers.”

  She gazed at him steadily a moment, and without another word began softly humming the closing bars of the Margallet duet. His part, not Mercy’s. Usually a woman would hear and remember the soprano and alto lines, while a man would retain the music sung by the bass and tenor. Jared felt the skin on the nape of his neck dance with chill, and a frisson of excitement skittered over his Kiss.

  “That’s the piece,” he admitted. “How do you know it?”

  “I don’t know it. I just heard it that one time.”

  “You must have liked it.”

  She turned away. “I have an ear for music. I can’t help it.”

  And she ducked inside the cabin without looking at him again. Jared shook off his strange sense of premonition and settled himself outside to await the god’s bounty.

  It was not long in coming. Half an hour later the ground at his feet was pelted with a handful of hard cinnamon-colored tablets. He wished the girl had been outside to see them fall, but he knew even this miracle would not impress her. From a fabricated god, all gifts were suspect. Nonetheless, he gathered them up and carried them inside.

  She was attempting to raise Peter to a half-seated position so she could pour a little water down his throat. Jared hastened forward to assist her, crouching on the floor and taking the injured man’s weight against his own shoulder. She did not bother to thank him, but held the cup again to Peter’s mouth and watched him drink. Silently, Jared handed her one of the pills. She slipped it into Peter’s mouth and made him sip again. The sick man swallowed but twisted against their hold in protest. The girl signaled to Jared, and he lay Peter back against the pallet.

  “How long before the drug takes effect?” she wanted to know.

  “Maybe an hour. We can give him one every eight hours until they run out.”

  She held her hand out and he poured the rest of the red tablets into her palm. She inspected them without comment, then dropped them into an empty cup at the side of the bed.

  “Well,” she said, in the voice one would use to close a conversation, “thank you. I guess you’ll be going now.”
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  He sat back on his heels, steadying himself with his wings spread against the floor. “Why would you think that?” he said. “I wouldn’t abandon you while your friend was still sick.”

  “And of course I appreciate that,” she said dryly. “But I don’t think there’s much more you can do for us.”

  “But I want to stay.”

  “But I don’t want you to.”

  “I wish you’d tell me your name,” he said abruptly.

  She looked at him coldly. “I see no reason you need to know it.”

  “So I don’t have to think of you as ‘that Jacobite girl.’”

  “The description suits me.”

  “I am not your enemy,” he said, suddenly intense.

  “And I am not your friend,” she replied.

  He balanced there another moment, watching her, wondering what he could possibly say to win her over, then he rose to his feet. “I’ll scare up something for dinner,” he said. “Do you have anything or should I go hunting?”

  Briefly, she looked ready to protest, and then she shrugged. “I have dried meat. A few dried apples. Not much else.”

  “There’s a stream nearby. Do you have a fishing rod?”

  “There may be one in the storage cabin.”

  He headed for the door. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  He located no rod or reel among the Jacobites’ possessions, but a long-handled net had been packed in with some traveler’s clothes. He carried this with him to the stream, and there he caught four trout in half an hour. Afterward he scanned the riverbank for anything that looked promising. There were three varieties of purple flowers rioting along the muddy shorelines. On impulse, he picked a handful.

  When he arrived back at Ileah, the girl appeared to be hanging out wash. She had strung a line between one cabin and a pole she had stuck in the earth, and to this she was attaching half a dozen dripping shirts. In the light wind of early evening, the wet clothing made a pleasant snapping sound.

  “Do you like fish?” he asked, and she swung around to face him, drying her hands on the front of her blouse.