He altered position again, gaining a few hundred feet of altitude so he could command a better view of the sea. The sudden shift in pressure seemed to register on Tamar’s consciousness, for she tossed her head and drew her hands against her chest.
“Tamar!” Jared exclaimed in great excitement. “Tamar, can you hear me?”
“What?” she asked groggily. “My head hurts. Where are we?”
“Over the ocean. I’m looking for a ship.”
“My head hurts,” she repeated. “I just want to go to sleep.”
“No, talk to me. Stay awake. Talk tome.”
“I don’t feel like talking,” she said pettishly. “Why won’t you let me lie down? Why are you hurting me?”
“Hurting you? What’s hurting you?”
“My head,” she said, and then she began to cry. Sweet Jovah singing, she broke his heart. He could not even pause to comfort her; he could not squeeze her hand or brush away her tears.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, pushing his wings harder, trying to go faster, feeling the strain from the joint at his back to the very feather edge of the tip. “Tell me what you were dreaming.”
“I wasn’t dreaming,” she said, but then she began to recount for him a series of disconnected, fragmented tales and images. Jared did not bother listening closely. Was that a shadow on the horizon, a patch of cobalt blue against the ultramarine of the sea around it, or was it the outline of a ship a dozen miles away? He veered in that direction, silently praying.
It was a ship. And merciful Jovah, it flew the white falcon flag of the Edori. It was headed away from Ysral, not toward it, but that didn’t matter now. Jared’s arms tightened convulsively on the girl.
“And then the room changed colors, and somebody else was in the room with me and it was an angel but it wasn’t you—”
They were above the ship now and Jared circled once to make sure any lookout would have time to spot them. Yes, there were two men—no, three—on the deck, shading their eyes and gazing upward. One of them was waving his hand in a gesture of welcome, while another one headed toward the narrow doorway that led to the lower reaches of the ship, presumably to tell the news. Angel overhead; company for dinner.
Jared landed on the pitching ship as gently as he could, coming to his knees. Almost without his volition, Tamar slipped from his hold to lie half on the deck, half in his arms. Her eyes were open but she gazed around unseeingly, and she seemed both bewildered and afraid.
“Where are we?” she whispered to Jared. “This isn’t Ysral.”
Most of the crew hung back from the new arrivals, but one, a dark good-looking young Edori, came over and gazed down at them gravely. “Your friend looks ill. What can we do to aid her?” he asked.
Jared was immensely grateful for the instant offer of help. “I think all she needs is a place to lie down. She suffered a head injury four days ago, but yesterday she seemed perfectly fine. I’m sorry to trouble you—”
“No trouble,” the Edori said. “I take it you were on your way to Ysral?”
“Yes, but I realize you were sailing west. Please don’t alter your route for us. All I want is a bed for the night.”
The Edori gave a brief, private smile and tossed his waist-length braid back over his shoulder. “I was not so eager to leave Ysral. I would not mind a quick return,” he said. “But we will see what the captain says. Where in Ysral are you headed?”
Jared laughed weakly. “I’m not sure where. I would like to return this one to her friends.” He hesitated, but the Edori were notorious sympathizers. He added, “Who are Jacobites.”
The Edori lifted his eyebrows, glanced at the angel’s wings which so obviously proclaimed him anything but a friend to the Jacobites, and nodded neutrally. “Many Jacobites have settled in Ysral,” was all he said. “I’m sure you would not find it hard to locate them.”
“I swear you can trust me,” Jared said. He had never been around so many people who regarded him with suspicion; as a rule, an angel had the entrée anywhere. “She will tell you so herself.”
“When she can speak,” the Edori said, sinking to his knees in one graceful motion. Tamar had turned on her side, facing toward Jared, and she seemed to be crying softly. “I have a little skill in healing,” the Edori said. “What is her name?”
“Tamar.”
“Tamar,” the Edori said in a firm, insistent voice impossible to ignore. “Tamar. I am Reuben. I will help you. Tamar. Turn and look at me, and say my name.”
To Jared’s surprise, Tamar straightened a little, seemed to pull all her bones and muscles back into their accustomed places, and shifted position to face her questioner. “Reuben,” she said obediently.
But now he was staring down at her as if an apparition had unrolled itself here on this ship in the middle of the ocean. “Yes, I can see you belong with the Jacobites,” he said softly. “And there is someone with them that you will very much want to meet.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Life in Ysral was not, Lucinda had found, much different from life on Angel Rock. For one thing, the accommodations in both cases were comfortable but hardly grand; in the small town of Sahala, she lived in a modest six-room, two-story house that she shared with five other people. For another, the communities were both small and self-contained. Sahala was bigger, of course—about a thousand souls to Angel Rock’s twenty-four—but it had no greater level of activity or commerce. A few traders arrived every day, a few left, but the town’s core community of Edori and Jacobites remained basically unchanged.
Lucinda’s arrival had created an uproar.
The resident Edori had been the first to greet her with that unselfconscious warmth and directness that, in anyone else, would have seemed rude or overwhelming. “Look, Martha, it’s an angel!” “Well, look at you, child. Have you come to live in Sahala with us? I’ve never spoken to an angel before. I’ve never been this close to one.” “Jonathon, have you said hello to the angel? What’s your name, young lady, I didn’t catch it.”
So that had been odd enough, though Lucinda had answered as pleasantly and openly as she could, but then there had been the cold, strange greeting of the Jacobites. They had not come immediately out from their stone houses, but gazed at her from behind shuttered windows and half-opened doors. She could not blame them for feeling a profound hostility toward an unknown angel visitor, but still it made her feel awkward, humble, and lonely as she stood in the center of the small town, stared at by everyone.
But Reuben was still at her side. He motioned to one of the young Edori boys who had crept close enough to touch Luanda’s wing. She flicked it nervously from his curious fingers. “Go tell Conran I’m here,” he said. “Tell him I’ve brought a friend who needs shelter. Tell him she is to be trusted.”
The boy nodded and darted off. Lucinda managed to slant a smile at her escort. “I didn’t know you were well enough acquainted with the Jacobites to call them by name and have them trust you,” she said.
He grinned back. He seemed completely at ease, not worried in the slightest that he and his companion might be repulsed. “Didn’t you say your aunt wanted you to seek out Conran?” he answered.
“Yes, but you spoke just now as if you know him.”
“Everyone knows Conran. He’s that kind of man.”
“I’m afraid,” she said suddenly.
Reuben reached out and took her hand in a warm, unbelievably comforting clasp. “If they won’t take you in, we’ll put you with the Edori,” he said. “My family’s tribe is traveling just now, but they’d gladly take you in. Neither Bael nor Omar would be able to find you if you were with them.”
In a few minutes the little boy returned, scampering in front of a small delegation. These must be the Jacobites, Lucinda thought, for they certainly were not Edori. They did not have the Edori’s unvaried dark coloring and smiling faces; this group, three men and two women, were mostly fair and uniformly suspicious. The leader appeared to be a stocky older man with g
rizzled hair and a look of lively intelligence. At any rate, the others let him precede them, and the Edori fell back to admit him through their ranks. Lucinda could not help herself. She edged behind Reuben and peered out at the Jacobites from behind his shoulder.
“Well, Reuben, this had better be good,” the leader said, coming to a halt a few paces from the new arrivals. His voice was clear and ringing, but he did not sound angry. Astonished, maybe, but not at all unprepared. He seemed like the sort of man who was never caught unprepared. “Bringing an angel to Sahala is much like setting a hawk among the rabbits.”
“Ah, Conran, you were never a frightened rabbit running for your life,” Reuben drawled in his usual lilting tones, and Conran’s face relaxed slightly into a grin. “Besides, I have a message from a lady who advised me to bring this angel to your very doorstep. And I’ve never yet known you to scoff at any news that came from a woman’s mouth.”
“A lady?” Conran repeated, but his whole face had sharpened into anticipation. He tried to peer at Lucinda’s face, but she drew farther back behind her human shield. “And where have you just sailed from, my friend?”
“You’ve heard of the place, I’m sure,” the Edori said.
“Angel Rock,” Conran said. “And this particular package came from a lady named Gretchen.”
“You’ve guessed it,” Reuben said. “So now will you be willing to take her in? For that’s the request I’ll be making.”
Conran reached out a hand to draw Reuben to one side. Reuben was tall and well muscled, but the Jacobite had considerable strength, for his push dislodged the Edori. “And you must be Lucinda,” Conran said as the angel came into view. “I have wanted to meet you for a long time. Twenty-eight years, to be exact.”
He was strange and intimidating, but he exuded a powerful charisma for all that. Still nervous, but much more hopeful, Lucinda extended her hand. The Jacobite took it in a crushing grip. He studied her face with an unnerving intentness that slowly gave way to a sort of incredulous wonder.
“Yes,” he said at last. “You look very like her. There would be no mistaking you.”
Lucinda remembered suddenly that this man had known Rinalda in her age of wild passion. “My mother?” she said shyly. “I look like my mother?”
For a split second she thought he looked surprised. Well, who else could he have thought she resembled? “Yes, that you do,” he said.
“Did you know her well?”
“I did. A long time ago. I had heard that she bore two daughters, and I am pleased to meet this one at last.”
Lucinda sighed, inexplicably saddened. “Yes, two daughters, but my twin sister died.”
“She did?” Conran asked sharply. “I did not know that.”
“Oh, yes. As an infant. The story is very tragic.”
“Ah.” Conran looked briefly hopeful, then his face clouded over again. “Yes, I suppose she is dead, at that. A tragedy, indeed. But to have saved one of Rinalda’s girls—that is a triumph in any case. Have you come to join the Jacobites, young lady? Or why are you here?”
“She is here because her aunt fears for her safety,” Reuben interposed. “Gretchen is afraid that Lucinda has drawn the attention of Bael and his son Omar. She wanted Lucinda away from Angel Rock.”
“Well, she can stay here as long as she likes,” Conran said. “We are not likely to deny refuge to anyone hunted by the Archangel.”
“And I want you to tell me everything,” Lucinda said. “Everything you know about my mother. Everything you know about the Alleluia Files. I want to understand it all.”
“I will tell you,” he said. “And if you become a believer, like your mother, I will count myself a fortunate man.”
He turned away to shout to four others who had followed him, waving them forward to meet the angel. Reuben added in a voice only Lucinda could hear, “He is fortunate anyway, merely to have you near him. That much I could tell him for myself.”
But once she had settled in to Sahala—and once Reuben was gone—her life did not materially change. There was no mysterious initiation into the Jacobite fraternity. She felt no sudden access of belief, no zealous devotion to the cause. Conran explained what she did not already know about the Jacobites, and the information intrigued her, but did not wholly win her over.
The most interesting piece of news was what Conran considered verification. Jacob Fairman, according to Conran, had long believed Jehovah to be a spaceship, not a god, and he claimed that the oracle Deborah had once assured him he was correct.
Lucinda frowned at this revelation. “An oracle also knew that the god was really a spaceship? That seems very unlikely.”
“Jacob said that Deborah had been charged by Alleluia to guard this secret with her very life and not to impart it until she, too, was on her deathbed. Because it was imperative that someone know the truth about Jehovah, but that the knowledge was too inflammatory for the whole world to learn. So Alleluia told Deborah, and one presumes that Deborah told Jecoliah—although, if that were so, I would have expected Jecoliah to have spoken up before now. Although perhaps she does not see the slaughter of a few hundred Jacobites as significant enough to break a silence of a hundred years.”
“Why was it imperative that someone know the truth? If Alleluia found the truth so shocking, why not let it die with her?”
“Jehovah is a man-made piece of equipment. I don’t know how much experience you have with technology, but it always breaks down. I will grant that Jehovah must be more sophisticated than the trucks and radio transmitters our engineers have cobbled together, but no doubt it, too, needs periodic maintenance. So someone needs to know what it is so that someone can make sure the machine gets fixed.”
Lucinda was still frowning. “If I was an oracle who had guarded such a secret for most of my life, I don’t know that I would be sharing that information with any wild-eyed radical who showed up at my door. And then watch him stir the whole country into bloody controversy and not say a word to anyone else.”
“As to why she would have told him—well, Jacob Fairman was a very persuasive man. If anyone could have charmed confidences from an old spinster, it would have been Jacob. If you were to meet him today, I venture to guess you would be telling him your most cherished secrets within ten minutes. It was the effect he had. As to why she told no one else—she died shortly after this conversation took place. She was not in a position to tell anyone anything.”
“What made him think to ask her in the first place? Why did he even begin to wonder about the god?”
“There had been speculation in the scientific community for years about the true nature of Jehovah. Thirty years before Jacob Fairman began proselytizing, there were two young graduates of the Augustine school who postulated the idea that ‘Jovah’ was really a machine, based on their largely unproven theories of flight mechanics and weapons systems. Their ideas created quite a stir among the scientists and intellectuals of the time and were violently opposed by the angels. Nothing really came of their speculations, but from time to time, students would come across their papers and start the debate all over again. Jacob Fairman had been a student at the Augustine school, of course, so he’d heard all the theories. He just came to believe in them more devoutly than most.”
“And how did you come to believe?” Lucinda asked.
“I went to the Augustine school. I heard the whispers. And I had not been a particularly faithful man to begin with. Engineers, as a rule, are not. They look for the logical explanation behind the mystical event. For instance, we have spent some energy trying to determine why angels can fly.”
“We have wings,” Lucinda said with dignity.
“Ah, but in so many other ways you are completely human. In fact, current biological thinking says you’re mutants, but not naturally occurring ones. Someone tampered with your physical makeup some seven hundred and fifty years ago, and you’ve bred true ever since.”
“No one tampered with us,” Lucinda said coldly. “Jova
h selected a few trusted men and women, and fitted them with wings. Back when the colonists first settled Samaria.”
“That’s what the Librera says,” Conran agreed. “But there are very old texts, written in the ancient language, that say otherwise. That talk about how the original angels were created by the scientists and biologists among the settlers. That even describe how clumsy the first angels were as they learned to fly.”
“How could you read such texts, even if they exist?” Lucinda demanded. “Only oracles know the old language.”
Conran grinned again. He radiated energy and confidence, and did not seem at all annoyed by her questions. Rather, he enjoyed knocking aside her skepticism with feasible answers of his own. “Ah, but one of the courses taught at the Augustine school is linguistics,” he said. “Some of the ancient engineering manuals that can be found even today in the archives of the angel holds are written in that tongue. And old Caleb Augustus, he got his hands on these books, and it just killed him that he couldn’t read them. So he had his wife the oracle teach him the words. And he set up a class to teach them to others.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” Lucinda said. “That’s holy knowledge.”
“All knowledge is holy,” Conran replied. “And all knowledge should be shared, or it becomes profane.”
Lucinda rubbed her temples. She was not entirely convinced, of course. As an angel, she had some responsibility to her god and to her people; she could not rashly abandon them for a few facile theorems. And yet Conran was even more plausible than Reuben, although he had not, she realized, given her any more concrete evidence. He just had such a compelling voice that everything he said sounded true. It was hard not to leap to her feet and cry out, “Yes, I believe!”
“It’s all interesting,” she said at last. “And some of it makes a great deal of sense. But I would need more proof than this before I became a convert.”
“Fair enough,” he said amiably. “But it is good of you to ask—and to listen.”
She had not asked her questions of the other Jacobites. She was rather shy of them, for they were a strange, passionate, suspicious, and ill-kept lot. They looked like they had lived hard, lean lives, managing to survive by the scarcest combination of wits and luck. Despite Conran’s welcome, they all mistrusted her; and they had a peculiar habit of staring at her face as if they could not believe the precise arrangement of her features.