Next: Cities of the Mystic East
The sun hung low in the sky, trapped between steel-gray lake and great flat sheets of slate-dark cloud. Waves rolled slowly toward the shore, choppy swells that captured the glint of sunlight and flung it skyward in painfully brilliant diamond sparkles. Pickering stood half-way down his sand dune, the distant whisper of the waters ensorcelling his thoughts.
A gleam of light, lower than the sun above the horizon, caught his attention. The gleam moved across the sky, brighter by the moment, taking the form of a polychrome ball with sparkling tail. Odd, thought Pickering. Odder and odder. What am I looking at? Like a meteor, with discrete head and trail, but too slow, too complex in the trail structure. That trail is a braid of light, not flames, so not a rocket or missile. What is it?
Now the meteor, far closer, was slowing rapidly. The pastel sparks, looking like nothing so much as a small child's crayon sketch of a comet's tail, suddenly vanished. At the core had been dark specks; now the specks fell freely. People, recognized Pickering, those falling specks are people. Four splashed into the lake. A fifth skittered above its surface and landed at water's edge in a shower of sand.
A momentary blur spread over the lake, a shimmer like a mirage -- except that heat mirages were clearly impossible above cold, rain-soaked sand. From beneath the waves came the feeblest of lights, beryl and pink and orange. Four people body-surfed across the water and shot onto the beach.
How? Pickering asked himself. There had been no parachutes, no ultralights, no hang gliders, no mechanical devices whatsoever. Just people, deposited on the shore as if descended from Heaven.
Pickering ran down the dune, raincoat billowing behind him. The parachutes might have been unconventional, but parachutists in what was obviously not a routine sports-parachute drop could need medical assistance. As he closed, he saw that the newcomers were a group of children. Fallen, he asked himself, into a glacier-fed lake on a chill Second of April? The air temperature was in the fifties, but the water must be near to freezing.
Three of the arrivals stood facing him. A fourth lay on her stomach, gasping for breath, the fifth holding the fourth's shoulders. The fourth was clearly not choking, just being allowed to recover on her ...his? own. The oldest was eleven or scarcely twelve; the others were a year or two younger. Four wore tailored jumpsuits, brightly colored -- no two the same -- with obvious pockets, fine trim work, and piping on collars and cuffs. Someone had put taste into the colors and trim, not at all like the usual run of modern children's clothing, which to Pickering looked like the outcome of an explosion in a day-glo pastel factory. The fifth, tallest, wore a simpler gray jogging suit and long hooded cloak; a large duffel bag was slung across her back. Modern children's clothing was sometimes obscure; still, two boys, three girls. There was a range of hair color, from straw white -- the girl in grey -- through black with a patch of white at the forelock -- the kneeling girl.
Pickering stopped and smiled. After a long moment's hesitation, the children smiled back. ``I,'' he announced, ``am Alexander Humboldt von Pickering. But if you're friends of Victoria, Alex will do.''
``Victoria?'' the younger of the two boys answered quizzically, brushing with one hand his sand-dusted orange and yellow jumpsuit. ``Oh. Hi! I'm Star. This is my sister Aurora.'' He gestured at the kneeling girl. When she stood, she was of a height with Star; they shared high cheekbones, a long, narrow face, and wiry build. Aurora's clothing was black, intricately laced with silver thread. Pickering recognized the pattern running from neck to waist: a slight modification of the dollar's pyramid, eye, and radiants.
``Star. Aurora.'' He reached forward to meet tentative handclasps. Star was shivering, ever so slightly; his twin sister showed no sign of discomfort.
``This is Cloud.'' Star introduced the older boy. For someone Cloud's age, the handshake was remarkably firm. Cloud's waterlogged jumpsuit was sky blue. A soggy feather draped over a bright-blue beret. Given the name, Pickering realized that the white trim on arms, legs, and cuffs could be cirrus, while the chest emblem was a well-delineated cumulonimbus. Pickering tugged at his memories, not finding a manufacturer's logo to match the foot-tall thunderhead. His lack of recognition proved little. He had spent the past decade trying to deduce the nature of one product, heavily advertised in the Sunday Magazine, never progressing beyond the conclusion that the Times would not countenance the illicit purveyance of underdressed young persons of indeterminate gender.
``And this is my older sister Comet.'' Star gestured at the girl on the ground.
Comet forced herself to rise, Aurora steadying her, slowly to hands and knees and then to her feet. She cleared copper-blonde curls from hazel- green eyes. Her face was white, almost gray. The front of her dark-green coverall was caked with sand, through which peeked the gold-embroidered comet of her asserted name, the comet's head almost at her neckline, while the tail swept down across ribcage and waist. ``Charmed, I'm sure,'' Pickering beamed. Comet might or might not be the oldest of the lot; she was certainly the shyest. Only after a pause did a smile cross her lips to wrinkle her eyes.
There were moments of silence. The girl in gray finally spoke for herself. ``Mr. von Pickering? I'm Eclipse.'' Her voice was soft. Large eyes evaluated Pickering; she offered him her hand. Tooled on the back of her glove was the motif repeated on collar tabs, tunic, and ankle-high boots: the outline of a sun and corona, superposed across much of which was an off-center disc.
``Charmed also, I'm sure,'' answered Pickering. Eclipse's grip was as firm as Cloud's. The first four children had drifted into a cluster, a cluster pointedly excluding Eclipse from their midst. ``You know, it's early in the season for swimming,'' he said.
``We didn't go swimming. Not on purpose,'' Star answered.
``Not by plan, though seemingly from a considerable height,'' responded Pickering.
The children glanced at each other, recoiling a half step. ``He saw us,'' blurted Star, ``He saw us fly.'' His further comments were stifled by Aurora's sisterly hand across his mouth.
``Your arrival was a trifle conspicuous, at least to someone not totally blind. Given our delightful weather, I'm likely your total audience.'' Pickering smiled wryly. ``Perhaps I could get you home? You risk catching your death of cold, being soaked to the skin like that.''
``We'd better go,'' announced Cloud. ``Thanks anyway.'' The twins huddled protectively around their sister. Eclipse, frowning, set her hands to her hips, fists balled, but made no move towards Cloud and compatriots. ``Comet?'' Cloud asked, almost commandingly.
``I, N-no. We don't have to go, do we?'' Comet shivered uncontrollably. ``If I don't g-get warm, I th-think I'm g-going to die!''
``Trisha? We must leave!'' Cloud pleaded. Pickering noted the change in names, not remarking on it yet.
``Not now. Please. I don't think I can. Mayhaps if it's life and death. It's not, is it? Please?'' she begged.
``Ease off, Cloud,'' suggested Eclipse. ``Let her get her breath.'' She won thankful looks from Aurora, Cloud's glare, and a contemptuous upwards roll of the eyes from Star.
``Perhaps,'' offered Pickering, ``perhaps you could step inside my home? Just for a few moments? Just to warm up. No one else knows you're here. My house is at the top of the ridge. You can use my phone, and I have a datalink, though you might all find a cup of hot chocolate more to the point.''
Not, thought Pickering, that I expect you to phone your parents. Those are surely not your real names, so you're afraid to give real names, which has an obvious implication. If you all ran away together, as appears to be the case, such fear is understandable. Though why you ran away in those clothes, rather than something less conspicuous -- surely I've never seen Victoria's friends in so much lycra at one time? -- I don't know. Could those be the names your parents chose for you? `Comet' might have been born soon after Halley's last appeared, and `Cloud' is almost a good American Indian -- no, back then it would have been Native American -- name, but who on God's fair earth would name their daughter for an obscuration of the Sun? There is a game here, which can perhaps with patience be penetrated. Besides, how did they arrange the flight illusion? And why?
``Hot chocolate?'' asked a surprised Aurora. ``Hot real chocolate? For us?''
``And something more solid to eat?'' asked Pickering. ``Say, fresh-made bread and Senate bean soup and cold chicken?''
``Yes!'' The chorus was near-unanimous. The children surged toward the stairs.
Eclipse hung back, a half-wondering look in steel eyes. ``We really shouldn't,'' she whispered to Pickering. ``You're being much too kind, especially to include me. You need not take that risk for me. You don't even know who they are, do you?''
``Them?'' Pickering shrugged. ``I don't believe we've met either, young lady, have we?''
Aurora stared intently at Pickering. The hairs on his neck prickled. ``It's okay,'' she announced. ``He's really a chill guy. I can tell. Let's go! I'm starving!''
Ten feet up the dune brought them to the lowest of Pickering's stairs. A full stairway anchored to bedrock ran down most of the slope, but Pickering refused to put a structure where winter lake ice could sweep it away. He looked back to check for stragglers and managed not to goggle excessively. His footsteps, sunk deep in rain-smoothed sand, were all too visible. Star, Aurora, and Eclipse left child-size prints. But Cloud, who half- carried Comet, made only the shallowest hints of footprints, ghostly traceries that might have been produced by a small cat rather than eighty pounds of human being.
``Race to the top?'' Star grinned at Aurora.
``Is it GR?'' Aurora asked Pickering. He nodded cautiously. What had she just said? The twins charged up the stairs, still-wet clothing showering water in every direction. Pickering led Cloud and Comet at the far gentler pace that Comet could sustain. Eclipse kept well to the rear, apparently able to climb more swiftly, but unwilling to approach the other children.
The stairs were not new. Pickering hadn't memorized every squeak and groan, but some boards were considerably more noisy than others. His ears tingled. Behind him came near silence, as though neither Comet nor Cloud really put foot to earth. Only once was there sound. Comet tripped, moving away from Cloud's supporting shoulder; until they touched again, her footsteps were quite appropriately audible. The clatter of Aurora and Star running back down the stairs drowned out Pickering's further inquiries.
``We reached the top,'' announced Aurora, her face rosy-pink.
``We wanted to be sure you knew,'' added Star, puffing for breath.
``That's a chill garden. It's blooming already,'' observed Aurora.
``I have friends,'' answered Pickering.
``Race to the top again?'' Aurora challenged her brother.
``Hey, I won last time.'' Star sprinted up the stairs.
``Did not. Did not! Besides, you cheated.'' Aurora dashed after him. Pickering shook his head amusedly. Those two seemed normal enough.
They gathered at the rear of Pickering's home. Dragon House was a Neovictorian Gothic gingerbread structure plastered with turrets, multi-floor walls of glass, and a two-deck widow's walk corsetted with ornately railed balconies. Pickering surveyed his charges, none of whom was precisely clean, and all but one of whom had been soaked in frigid storm-churned water. ``The mud entrance has showers; I think ladies first, given Comet's condition. The drains will handle sand. I have towels but not clothing likely to fit any of you. It's not ...I don't have children of my own. I can try to find bathrobes,'' he explained.
``We have extra clothes,'' said Aurora.
``Backpacks are waterproof,'' explained Star.
``There's a washing machine and drier beyond the door. You five are old enough to handle things, aren't you?'' Pickering received grateful nods. ``I'll heat the bread.'' He paced briskly up stairs, stepped through the kitchen and dining room to his library, and confirmed that its doors had shut firmly behind him. ``Guten abend, Telzey,'' he spoke.
``Guten abend, Herr Doktor Professor Pickering.'' The soprano voice had no apparent direction or source.
``Telzey, condition Yellow Two. Full sensor suite, full sensitivity, full record and backup.''
``Jawohl, gelb-zwei. Security, all on. Recording, all channels.''
``Telzey, we have five visitors downstairs,'' noted Pickering.
``Tracking.''
``Telzey, visitors have datalink access at public/fee level, origin `Anon'.''
``PubNET access at ANON level granted,'' responded the voice.
``Telzey, download from PubNET missing person reports, this year, Caucasian and Black children under age 18, male or female, also escaped mental patients and prisoners, same race and age groups,'' directed Pickering.
``This shall be done.''
``Telzey, there was an anomaly westward over the past 30 minutes. Transfer the most recent hour's external sensor records to permanent encoded storage.''
``This shall be done.''
``Gut' nacht, liebchen,'' said Pickering.
``Gut' nacht, Alex,'' came the answer.
* * * *
Pickering, arranging silverware, drifted into thoughts concerning his current research topic. A rap at the door brought his attention to the present. Eclipse stood at the top of the stairs, hesitating as though she wanted permission before she dared to enter his kitchen. Her tunic and cowled cape were gone. In their place were silver-gray trousers, gray-white silk blouse and quilted vest fringed in silver, broad silver-lace belt, blue- green-grey patterned scarf shot with silver threads, coordinated earrings, and pendant necklace. Pendant, earrings, blouse, and trouser pockets all featured the same device -- a sun in glory passing behind the new moon -- seen previously on her jumpsuit.
``Do I intrude?'' she asked.
``No! Not at all. Very nice! And to think that I offered to find you a bathrobe.'' He stared for an instant at her matching bracelets, inch-wide bands of glittering wire and sea-blue stones. Those aren't real sapphires, he thought, or the kid's wearing a fortune on her wrists. And in ten years time I'll feel very sorry for the young men on whom she turns her charm.
``It was very kind of you to invite me. Ask and I'll leave. I'm packed to go. May I help set the table? You're really being so wonderfully good to do this. A lot of people would have turned us away. Or taken them in, and suggested that I go away. Far away. As soon as possible. Preferably yesterday. Oh, I started the washing machine. I rinsed the mud and sand off their clothes in the shower first. Well, maybe almost all. I'll make sure the machine's clean before I leave. I don't believe how much sand Comet picked up.''
``As I said, the mud room was planned for this contingency (glasses are to the right), back when I hoped I'd have children here...all the time. However (plates are in the left cabinet), I am not prescient. What came to pass, came to pass, and has passed beyond undoing...Did Comet recover?''
``Her?'' asked the girl. ``She perked up when we held her under hot water. She flew us here, wouldn't let me spell her, and spaced out. Bad luck it was so close to the ground.'' Pickering's ears twitched at the assertion that all five had indeed been airborne. ``I couldn't grab them,'' she continued. ``Not quite. I broke their falls. Aurora needed that. If Comet crashes during dinner, it's not she's normally rude. She's really very polite. Lots nicer than her brother or Cloud. But she's at the absolute edge with her gifts, never was there before, doesn't know that's where she is.''
* * * *
Dinner was as successful as Pickering had hoped. In his experience, hungry children were the biological equivalent of black holes, able to make arbitrary quantities of food disappear. His guests were more polite than most children, but also far more hungry. Comet soon fell into a doze, just as Eclipse had predicted. Cloud and Comet's siblings followed. Pickering maneuvered them to window seats, covered each with quilt or afghan, and let them drift into deep sleep. He and Eclipse remained awake. To his eyes, she looked haggard, straining to stay conscious when she would rather set sail to slumberland. ``There's another window seat if you'd prefer to drowse away yourself,'' noted Pickering.
``Don't tempt me. Please? It's been a day and a half. A long day and a half. I promised I'd watch them. So I have to stay awake. I know I don't need to, not with you,'' she smiled, more knowingly than Pickering thought reasonable, ``but I keep promises.''
``If you'd like to watch TV, there's a headset. I'm afraid it's all Lemuria news. The vultures have gathered.'' Pickering gestured at a wall-screen unit.
``What Lemuria coverage?'' She stared in puzzlement at the television. ``Another video docudrama? Half of Tempe is lucky they can spell `Lemuria'''
``No, the current...oh, maybe you hadn't heard. They're trying to put together a rescue effort.'' commented Pickering.
``Rescue? Lemurians!'' Eclipse was instantly sharply awake. Her cheeks flushed. ``Why does someone want to rescue a Lemurian?''
``Properly, astronauts, not Lemurians.'' Where, wondered Pickering, has she been for the past two weeks? And where is there a school so benighted that its students call Shuttle Lemuria passengers `Lemurians'? ``The space shuttle Lemuria -- the Atlantis replacement, after the Atlantis was wrecked by the Save Our Stratosphere terrorists -- damaged its heat shield. They can't get down from orbit. Not without burning up. NASA is trying to get another shuttle ready. The Russians are lining up Zenit launches with supplies. It's all problematic.''
Eclipse's looks became increasing bemused. ``I'm being slow. Sleepy. These people are in orbit? Around the Earth?'' Pickering nodded. Where else could they be? ``They can't get down because they lost shields? Why do they need shields?''
``Well,'' said Pickering, ``to stay in orbit, you go very fast. To get out of orbit, you fire retrorockets. The rockets slow you down, so you hit the atmosphere. Then the atmosphere slows the shuttle more. An atmosphere slowing things down is friction. Friction makes things get hot enough to melt. You don't want a shuttle to melt, so the shuttle has shields. The shields get hot, but protect the Shuttle, so it can land safely.''
``Shields that get hot,'' mused Eclipse. ``That's ... different. Why bother to shield if the shield gets hot? Oh, I see. The shield is hot, but doesn't leak heat fast?''
``Precisely,'' beamed Pickering. Some adults couldn't understand the distinction between temperature and heat flow. Perhaps the girl wasn't stupid, just ignorant.
``Can't someone fly up and carry them down?'' she asked.
``That's easy to say, hard to do. It takes weeks and weeks to launch another Shuttle.''
Eclipse looked very thoughtful, as though there was some subtlety she had not understood. ``Why not fly the people down and leave this shuttle up there? I must be really sleepy to miss the obvious.''
``The Russian capsules don't carry enough people. The English rocket plane isn't ready. They have to wait for another shuttle.'' Pickering saw his chance to satisfy his curiosity. ``After all, people can't fly by themselves. You need a spacecraft to get the astronauts down. No matter the conjuring illusion you used on the beach, people can't fly. I don't suppose you'd care to explain, would you?''
Eclipse stared at him. Pickering again felt the hairs on his neck prickle. ``You really don't believe in people who fly, do you,'' she observed. ``You've never heard of such a thing. That's ... interesting.''
``Of course people can't fly, not without an airplane. No matter what you said earlier `so close to the ground.' Such deeds appear only in fairy tales,'' announced Pickering.
``Right. Of course. Everyone knows that.'' She looked at the floor, a fey smile passing her lips.
``You dodged my question. Your privilege. Just as it's your privilege not to tell me what your real names are, for all that Cloud identified Comet as Tricia. But if I promise not to call parents, even to say five runaway children are safe, is the rest still secret?'' asked Pickering.
Eclipse started, hands clenched, face a sharpened mask. A few seconds silence restored her calm. She looked more bemused than ever. ``I'm sorry. You've really been incredibly kind. You could have said we should go away. That wouldn't have been pleasant, them all being soaked to the skin. Still, it's your property. If you say go, we go. But they're not runaways. And my mom? Six months ago my mom showed me the front door and told me never to come back. I haven't. But they don't wish to uncloak private personae, GR?''
``Fair enough,'' responded Pickering affably, hiding his puzzlement at his guest's vocabulary. After all, he noted, the five were considerably too young to be escaped prisoners, former detainees at mental wards for mass murderers, or the like. What sort of parents could raise a child as gracious and well-mannered as Eclipse, and then eject her from their house like a grown-too-large puppy?
``Alex, you really don't believe people fly. Do you?'' asked Eclipse. Long fingers brushed silver-white falls of hair back from her ears.
``Of course not, however much I love reading fairy tales. Are you offering to show me?'' The jovial grin was a challenge. The events over the lake, he told himself, were some trick with metallic aerosols and optical back projection. Flying inside his home would require props she couldn't possibly have hidden in advance. How would she dodge his challenge?
Eclipse hesitated. ``Why not? I'm not uncloaking my public persona. You saw my garb, know my seal, know who I am. But the ceiling is a bit low. It's bad manners to leave footprints on a ceiling.''
``You may use my den.'' He pivoted, one finger beckoning.
* * * *
The den rose cathedral-like from ground floor through two mezzanines to a great arching roof. Pickering marched nonchalantly to the room's center. Eclipse stopped at the entrance, lips moving from gap to slight purse to enchanted smile.
``One observes,'' opened Pickering, pointing as he spoke, ``that the central roof beam meets diagonal risers at the window surface, say thirty-five feet in the air. Perhaps three feet below is a horizontal joiner.'' Eclipse nodded. ``And there, at the right end of the joiner, sticking out where every single guest sees it, is a pencil, abandoned by window cleaners. I'm not paying a day fee to remove one pencil. Its presence yet annoys. If I knew someone who could fly, it would be a trivial matter to remove it, but ...'' He shrugged.
``I'll fetch it for you.'' She was standing behind Pickering. He realized that the position of her voice was rising, from significantly below his own ears to well above. A glance over his shoulder revealed Eclipse, already seven feet in the air, toes dangling slightly. A faint blue glow flickered near her shoulders.
Pickering swallowed. ``Young lady, the New Yorker cartoon runs `That's impossible. Stop it right now.' The instruction is not literal. I'd rather you land first. You'd find it a bit of a drop elsewise.'' Eclipse, having reached the pencil, obliging headed groundward, not quite pausing in her descent to perform a majestically graceful triple-and-a-half somersault, at last coming eye-to-eye with Pickering. He, however, stood firmly on oak parquetry, while she hovered upside-down, hair streaming toward the carpet, shoes a good nine feet removed from the nearest solid surface. Gravely, an impish smile not quite suppressed, she handed Pickering his pencil. He accepted, then impulsively tugged at her wrist. She resisted; Pickering recognized a gymnast's strength in her fingers. If she had stood on a solid surface, she could have held her position no more firmly. He released; her landing was a reverse pike half-somersault with half twist, ending on the floor facing him.
``You were flying,'' observed Pickering. ``You really were. Remarkable. And not on wires; you didn't sway when I pushed.''
``I said I'd show you flying. So I flew. Right?'' She stared in fascination at his collection of globes, maps of the world covering the last half- millenium.
``Can I complain of a guest who grants my wishes?'' he asked.
``Now do you believe in flying? May I use your library?'' she asked.
``Of course. You're my guest.'' Pickering took the spiral staircase to his second-floor desk, watching the girl from the corner of his eyes. So long as she thought he was watching, she carried herself erect and moved briskly from one shelf to the next. When she thought he was focused on his own reading, she sagged into herself. To Pickering, her pose showed exhaustion laced with an occasional twinge of pain. He nudged at his conscience, asking if he should demand her true name so he could telephone her parents. He decided against. Given yesterday's date, this had to be a practical joke, supported by superb acting and remarkable technical effects. He would not spoil the expensive fun of nameless friends by failing to play along.
* * * *
Far later in the evening, Comet awoke. Half-drugged with exhaustion, she looked around the breakfast room, wishing she had remained asleep. Cloud, Star, and Aurora lay peacefully under various blankets, none close to awareness. A single reading lamp set mellow shadows across the room. Eclipse sat in a winged armchair, seemingly deep in a book, yet fully alert the moment Comet stirred.
Eclipse leaned over. ``We've got to talk,'' she whispered. ``Something's terribly wrong.''
``Outside?'' Comet whispered back. Catching the nod, she continued out loud, ``I really need some fresh air.''
The girls slipped out to a curved deck. At its far end perched an isolated gazebo. The sun had set; lights from the house gave a soft glow. The distant rush of wind through budding branches hid other sounds. Sheltered by rose trellises from an early spring breeze, they leaned back on the rails.
``Something happened while we were away. Something decidedly odd. I think time was reset,'' announced Eclipse.
``Start at the beginning? You know how mad you get when I start in midstream, which I should really know better than to do, it being like starting a plane geometry proof in the middle? Well, I can be there, too. What's resetting time?'' asked a still-sleepy Comet.
``I know. I should know better. I think a beginning is Pickering. He doesn't have the least idea who we are,'' answered Eclipse.
``Hey, great! You call that a problem? I mean, he caught us without our dominos, which could be a real loss, at least for us if he connects our faces to our private personas. I suppose that's not so much trouble for you, everyone in the whole world already knowing exactly who you are.''
``You don't understand. No. My fault! I'm not clear,'' Eclipse apologized. ``He didn't recognize you? Fine. He doesn't recognize me! And I'm a bit more notorious. After all, I'm wanted by the League of Nations, not to mention more countries than I care to count. I don't mean he doesn't know who you are. He doesn't know what you are.''
``Huh?'' asked a brain-fogged Comet.
``He even asked for our private persona names. He knows half of yours, Comet, thanks to the Lord High Airhead!'' Comet's interruption was a word Eclipse would not have guessed Comet to have in her use vocabulary, even under the most extreme of provocations. ``It's all right,'' promised Eclipse.
``That's literally absolutely completely totally positively impossible; how can it conceivably be all right if Pickering knows my name when it's not awful common to start with, and bunches of people already link you and my Comet persona? How can he ask that question and not have an idea it's rude?'' Comet declared.
``I read his mind. After all, he was obviously lying. So I figured this was a trap. He's never heard of personae. He doesn't have the persona concept. He knows that personae don't exist. He's convinced people can't fly, except in edisons using strings and photo tricks. He didn't believe in flying after I showed him flying, right here in his (incredibly chill, you should take a look) library. He thinks we're runaway schoolkids...''
``Well, we are schoolkids, and you -- well, you never say you ran away, but you're always studying and say you make yourself do it because no one else cares, and I know you can't ever risk going back to see your parents which must be awfully rotten, and I hate how much my stupid slink of a younger brother keeps saying you deserve not having a home and everything else rotten that happens to you, because I don't care whether we argued once or twice about what you did, you're still my friend,'' said Comet breathlessly. ``He's never heard of personas?''
``...wearing overcolored track clothes,'' continued Eclipse. ``He's got his computer scanning trademark records for our seals: Cloud's Thunderhead, my Dying Sun. He thinks they're manufacturer's logos, like the hippo.''
``What?'' squeaked Comet. ``Does he have his jackstraws? Is he, like, sane? How can he not know what garb is?''
``I don't know.'' Eclipse didn't quite believe her own words. ``After I flew, he mumbled something I didn't understand about `comic book rolegames'. But he is sane.''
``He's okay, then? I mean, for all that one of them is a total and absolute dodo, even dumber than the one Cloud plucked to decorate his beret, my brother and sister are both sound asleep under his roof where he could cut their throats,'' said Comet.
``Are they safe from Pickering? Completely. He's a little afraid of us; afraid we might be crooks. He thinks we're too young to be dangerous. But this house is wired to the gills. Security everywhere. I tried to get more details from his mind, but I couldn't. He thinks too fast for me.'' Eclipse shook her head in frustration, then pushed frost-white hair back from her brow.
``Too young to be dangerous? Us? Well... But you? The Lady of the Namestone? Herself? Not dangerous? I guess if he didn't know us four it's sort of reasonable, because all of us even you really are awful young to be doing public personas for long, but (and I hate to sound like my slink brother, but I can't avoid it) you're very well known, even if you're not popular with a few people. Plus you did some pretty impressive things. I mean, you took the Maze by yourself, which the whole of FedCorps was afraid to try, and you weren't even breathing hard when you walked out,'' reminded Comet.
Eclipse giggled. ``Not breathing hard? Not breathing at all. Broken ribs do that. The Maze was tough. I didn't let it show. It was very tough. I try not to complain if I'm a little tired yet. After the Maze, I was about to drop. I looked through his library. I looked hard. There wasn't a mention of me. No Maze. No hundred tons of Manjukuoan gold for my head. He's never heard of Eclipse. Never linked my name with crimes against the future. He's never even heard of the Namestone.''
``Do you trust him? Are you sure?'' asked Comet.
``His mind is a limpid pond, clear as Lake Tahoe when you look up from the bottom. He thinks he should protect us. After all, we're just calves. He's as trustworthy a person as I've ever met. He's so smart I can't follow his his thoughts out to their ends all at once. But he's honest. He's..., ummh, do you absolutely positively promise not to tell your brother this? He already has plenty of reasons to kill me. If I keep giving him more, he might finally do it.'' Eclipse's description of Star remained blandly matter-of-fact.
``He's just being a silly boy. We were a bit tiffed about the Namestone. We knew people who died trying for it, us watching the video and cheering for them until they literally died. Then you did -- what you did. But I promise, and if my jerk brother or that slink Cloud tries anything they get one on the chin.'' Comet made a solid fist.
``Once upon a time, a group of terrorists took a hostage,'' said Eclipse. ``Rescuing the hostage was easy. I read a few minds to be sure who to rescue. Be a real embarassment to grab the wrong man and get shot in the face for a fare-thee-well. I read the mind of this wonderful -- good enough that I'd feel safe sleeping under his roof -- organic chemist. His only fear ...whose only fear,'' she stammered, memories suddenly overwhelming her inner calm, ``was that he'd never again see his wife and his three children, who he loves so completely: Trisha and Jane and ...'' Eclipse pulled a handkerchief from her vest, stopping to dry her eyes.
``Organic... Trisha? Me?'' Comet was slackjawed in astonishment. The rescue had been months ago. Eclipse had never breathed a hint she'd been involved. ``That was you! You saved Daddy!''
``I didn't know he was your father. Not when I rescued him. You guys really are pretty careful. I hung around because the terrorists kept trying to get him, when I fried the first lot of them. Of course, they didn't know it was me; perhaps I should have told them. I kept running into you guys, always in public persona. Finally I caught on: I rescued him half-a-dozen times, and never needed to rescue his children. I didn't mean to break your private personae. For sure!'' exclaimed Eclipse.
``You rescued Daddy? You never said a word, even after you knew all of us. Even when you wanted us to trust you, you never said. You left Daddy safe in our living room and never said you did it, even when people were saying you never did a good thing in your whole life. Even when the Institute posted the reward for rescuing him and you could have collected. You never said. You just did it, and you never let on what he thinks of me, or told him about us, which half the grownups I know would do on general principle that Star and Aurora and I can't do public personas rightly yet. That's, that's silly. Or wonderful. Or both.'' Comet hugged the taller girl tightly. ``Why didn't you tell me sooner?''
``If I said afterwards what I did, it would just be bragging myself up,'' answered Eclipse, returning the hug, ``Like I was a boy, always trying to prove how great I am.''
``But you're right, Eclipse. My slink brother never credits you with anything,'' said Comet.
``Pickering's mind is just like your dad's. You're safe.'' Eclipse sounded firmly confident.
``What was that about time reset? You still didn't say!'' said Comet.
``There are no public personae any more. None at all,'' explained Eclipse.
``Huh?'' Comet gaped, open-mouthed.
``Alex has never heard of personae,'' Eclipse explained. ``He's a real scientist with patents and secrecy passes. There's video coverage of a stranded spaceship. It's pretty feeble. It can barely go into orbit. It's the only one they have. There's no hint you could fly and carry it down. His library, histories, encyclopedia articles all agree. We never existed, personae never existed, historians never heard of Solara or the Screaming Skull. Look at his globes! Europe and Asia have countries missing. The borders are all squeezed together. According to his maps, east Asia is one country! Austria-Hungary is split in a dozen pieces.''
``He's perhaps a bit scrambled? He may be crazy enough to have fake encyclopedias printed, but he's nice to us; he fed us let the guys sleep on his window seats, and let me wash my garb which I thought was a hopeless mess. You looked at his mind. Could Aurora fix him? We owe him an incredible set of favors,'' said Comet.
``Ummh, the problem's a little bigger than him. He took a nap, so I looked farther away: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. I didn't have the nerve for the Federal District. I don't want to meet FedCorps me-on-them. Not me half-dead and them seriously motivated to make sure I resist arrest so they can kill me. Slowly. Cities that big, you have decent numbers of people whose screens block omega scans, yes? There wasn't one. No one was flying except in airplanes. We don't exist now. Public personae don't exist,'' explained Eclipse.
``We don't exist?'' asked Comet.
``I tried my home. The foundations were gone.'' Eclipse looked momentarily forlorn. ``Someone reached back in time and changed history, like Einstein's time-travel theory says. You go to the past and change it. When you return to the present you remember the past before you changed it. Everyone else remembers the past with your changes.''
Comet felt deeply confused. ``Reached back in time? Not even Solara...well, I didn't think anyone could do that. Can they? Wait? How'd you get to those places? Who did the omega scans?''
``I, ummh, oh, you're bound to figure it out,'' said Eclipse. ``I teleported. I did the omega scans, too. They leave a headache, like I got hit on the head with a sledge. When I scan, it hurts so much I almost see double. I read minds here and there, random people on the street. I didn't find a hint of personae.''
``You teleport? You never said. Is that how you escaped the Geneva Peace Palace? What else...no, don't answer that, you'd give my twerp brother something more to whine about, one more reason he wants me not to like you, and he's got too many wrong reasons now. But no one's heard of a persona? That's impossible!'' Comet said emphatically.
``That's why Aurora might have problems fixing things. Sure. She could heal Pickering's mind, if she could spot what to fix. I couldn't see anything broken. But fix a whole city, even if she tried very hard? Mayhaps when she grows up. She's got a wicked lot of potential. But how do you telehypnotize a Goddess-have-mercy-on-us-all planet so it grows extra countries? Oh, I'm tired.'' Eclipse slumped back against the gazebo wall. ``I'm so tired I can't sleep; it hurts too much. A cross-country jaunt? Scanning and reading minds? I want to sleep forever.''
``I remember how I felt when I landed; it must be the same, mustn't it, except I didn't really hurt, I just fogged out; I've never done flight like that before, pushed so hard for so long. I had to make myself eat; I just wanted to fall over, too tired to remember to even to lie down. That was you, wasn't it, scooping me up and dropping me on a window seat while Cloud was filling his face?'' Comet asked, knowing Eclipse didn't want to confess to doing even that small a favor. ``I figured. But if you feel safe, we're incredibly safe. Go lie down. I have to see what's happened.''
``I didn't try your home. Someone might connect me with your private persona and have a reception waiting. You know, 21-gun-salutes? Just like for the Speaker of the House? Except she gets blanks, and I rate armor-piercing shells?'' Eclipse managed a mordant smile.
Comet looked momentarily thoughtful. ``I'll be back!'' she announced. Her figure faded into a glowing veil of delicately-shaded pastel draperies. Without the least apparent effort, she did a back-flip off the gazebo rail and accelerated skywards, swiftly vanishing from sight.
* * * *
Eclipse found Pickering in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. ``I'd have done that,'' she said. ``I should have done it earlier.''
``No matter,'' answered Pickering. ``You've done lots of work tonight. More than your share. And they,'' he gestured at her three companions, all sound asleep, ``are far too tired to help. Now, I have guest bedrooms, rarely used. Your friends -- so to speak -- will be better for sleeping in real beds. So will you. I can carry Star or Aurora, but Cloud's a mite too heavy for me. Did Comet go for a walk? I thought I heard her talking.''
``Comet? Walk? Sort of. She'll be back,'' announced Eclipse.
``The property is safe,'' said Pickering. ``The security systems would warn me of trespassers. She's safe, if she doesn't go too far. If I were going into town, I'd take precautions.'' Not enough precautions, he thought; it's safer here. Table Rock is a very pleasant well-to-do town, with hardly any crime, but what's happening elsewhere is unbelievable. Worse than the antiwar terrorists back in the sixties, except there is no cause now, no explanation for what is happening.
``Don't worry. She's safe. Even by herself. I'll carry Cloud upstairs,'' she announced. ``I promise not to drop him on his head. Not that there's anything there to damage.''
``For a group of travelers, you don't like each other much,'' he observed. ``You could go home.''
``Cloud half-hates me. We disagreed about something. Something important.'' Something, she added to herself, something you should know about. And you don't. ``It was a moral question. I can't take it back. Not won't, can't. He's mad about it. You're right. He should be home with his mom and dad.'' If you can find his home, she added to herself. It has to be here someplace, doesn't it? Your navigation checked with Comet's; this must be home.
``Sometimes, if you really want to apologize, pride can be overcome.'' Pickering nodded sagely, not at all sure what Eclipse meant.
``Not something I said. Something I did. Something I can't undo. Something I had to do. No matter how many people got mad at me. Oh, wait til Cloud wakes up. He'll tell you all about it. Probably several times.'' Do I dare, she wondered, sleep under the same roof with Cloud and Star? She put her carry-all across her back, squared her stance, and carefully lifted Cloud. Her knees protested silently. Pickering estimated the load. Eclipse probably outweighed Cloud, but not much. From its heft when he'd moved it, her carryall held considerably more than a change of clothing.
Cloud stirred groggily to awareness. ``Comet?'' he asked, not recognizing that it was Eclipse who held him in her arms.
``She went for a walk,'' answered Pickering.
``She should wake us up. When she's back. We really have to get home.'' Cloud, his eyes closed, blissfully unaware of who was carrying him, lapsed into profound sleep.
``I would guess,'' said Pickering, ``I can give Cloud and Star the one bedroom, Aurora and Comet (when she returns) the other, and night lights so you don't trip in the dark. Or should I know something else about sleeping arrangements?'' Eclipse shook her head. ``There's a bedroom on the third floor. I could move a cot to the second floor for you, but perhaps you'd rather not?'' Her smile was swift and brilliant. ``In that case you have the tower room.''
A final rise of stairs brought the two of them to an octagonal bedroom suite, six walls being extensively glassed, while a seventh hid bath and walk-in closet. The room was decorated in shades of yellow: auburn curtains with patterned wheat sheaves, wall paper in cream with gold and sun-orange marigolds, flame-yellow circular pillows on a vanilla-white solar-disc pattern bedspread, and a giant sunburst dominating a flat-white circular throw rug. Eclipse gave a gentle gasp of surprise. ``It's lovely! For me? Tonight? It's wonderful. Thank you! Is that a porch?'' She stepped to the farther wall, looking to the north along the lake. ``This is beautiful! I don't deserve this. I'll carry Aurora upstairs.''
``That's certainly not necessary. You hauled Cloud, which I could not have done. I'll take care of Aurora and the laundry. You go to sleep,'' he ordered. Eclipse gratefully nodded and closed the door firmly behind him.
* * * *
Pickering finally returned to his library. The drier was emptied, clothes folded and stacked on appropriate dressers. Eclipse, now in a long-sleeved nightgown, hair slightly moist from another shower, had gratefully accepted her jumpsuit and cloak. His careful search of pockets and labels had uncovered no evidence as to the children's identities. Fancy clothing bore hand-sewn maker's signatures. Underclothes came from unfamiliar manufacturers, but were free of laundry marks. Pickering decided that it couldn't be every child who went off to summer camp and had parents insert name tags. Sizes differed sufficiently that everything was straightforward to sort. Cloud's T-shirt might say Marcus Garvey Linguistic Middle School, City of Roxbury, but Telzey's search confirmed that no school or city of that name existed.
Star and Cloud both had change in their pockets: pennies, dimes, quarters. The country name was right, denominations were right, but patterns were wrong. The Roman fasces had been removed from the dime seventy years ago, yet Cloud carried a 1991 dime on the pre-Roosevelt pattern. The 1776-1976 quarter showed a Revolutionary War musician playing bagpipes.
``Guten abend, Telzey,'' said Pickering.
``Guten abend, Herr Doctor Professor Pickering.'' The voice remained sourceless. A computer monitor showed the face of a gold-blonde, blue-eyed young lady, whom Pickering happily described as the most beautiful woman he could possibly meet in his life.
``Telzey, I believe four of our guests are in their bedrooms. Am I correct? Where is the fifth?'' he asked.
``I confirm motion and infrared detectors showing four guests in bedrooms three, four, and tower. The fifth of our guests ceased to be present on the property at 2347 hours local time.''
``Telzey, in which direction did the last visitor leave the property?'' asked Pickering.
``I have no data on that question.''
Pickering hesitated. Despite her conversational mode, Telzey was not a rational being, merely a well-supported AI program. Her conversation was reasonably coherent within limited scripts, but her understanding the world was different from a human's.
``Telzey, the last - the fifth - visitor: generate a time series: her locations while on the property,'' he directed.
``Displaying.'' Telzey's monitor showed a schematic of the house, a scarlet line winding from the beach through the basement to the kitchen and finally out to the West gazebo.
``Telzey, where was the visitor at 2046 hours?'' The monitor put crosshairs on the gazebo. Pickering increased the magnification. Comet's trail simply came to an end at the gazebo and 2047 hours.
``Telzey, external visual for the West gazebo. Commence at 2045 hours.'' The monitor showed Comet and Eclipse, ill-seen in the dim light, apparently talking. At 2047 Comet flared into brilliant pastels. ``Telzey, step back in time slowly. Stop. Screen contrast to high. Slow forward.'' Pickering watched as Comet burst into light and did a humanly-impossible acrobatic maneuver over the railing, followed by skyward flight.
``Telzey, consult proximity radar tracking data. Search for a target starting near the West Gazebo at approximately 2047, and accelerating upwards. Correlate with external visual for West gazebo.'' The screen split. The radar track showed an object leave the house and head south. The visual track gained a superposed line with error ellipsoids. The radar/visual line began where the Comet line stopped. Pickering scratched his head. Why didn't Telzey identify the radar track with Comet? Oh, right! One of the inferential rules was that people could not fly. A brief search of Telzey's memory confirmed that Telzey had applied the rule, infering that the radar and visual tracks of the flying object were not Comet, who was presumed to have left the property without crossing a boundary. Oh, wonderful! he thought. I think there are people who fly, and my computer accepts that people teleport! Radar track numericals supplied velocity and acceleration for the take-off. Twenty gees? wondered Pickering. That was unreasonable, even allowing that she was female and a child.
``Telzey, did you recover the PUBnet files I requested earlier this evening?''
``Yes, Alex.''
``May I see a sample, the most recently posted?'' he asked. The monitor filled with text, a child kidnapped by a parent over divorce custody. ``Very good. Sort these by date of disappearance or escape, by age, by state.'' Pickering began working through the files, giving Telzey additional instructions to kill further classes of file. An hour's search, with occasional pauses to examine video images, took him through the data Telzey had downloaded. He looked carefully at runaways, escaped criminals, lunatics, and residents of juvenile homes, finding none who resembled his five guests. Telzey did an image scan, matching guest's faces against photographs with equal lack of success. Pickering had convinced himself that his guests had not run away recently.
Pickering had a probable name for Comet; a search on its variants found nothing promising. In desperation, he ran a soundex grep against the state's electronic news service. A modest charge for scanning records found Patricia the performing horse, various Patricias members of state and local government, a list of entertainment references, but no one who resembled Comet. The service had no interesting leads to missing children. Some children, of course, might drop through the cracks in society's structure, or disappear during a guardianship dispute. His five guests were healthy and well-brought-up; their table manners were definitive proof. Surely their parents were the sort to raise a fuss if their children were late to dinner? He turned to Internet, scanning sci.astro, alt.ufology, and other odd places, obtaining no recent-past references.
Pickering leaned back, pulled a soda from the refrigerator hidden under his desk, and thought more deeply. His guests did not appear to be missing, not from this earth. The talent that Eclipse and Comet had displayed was unearthly. The coins were a mystery. According to hishighly reliable confidential source, parallel worlds were very different from this one, not near-replicas; a parallel-world origin could be excluded. Telzey stored his study of missing-person files. He had certainly made a diligent search. Given the flight demonstrations, which Telzey carefully recorded in multiple places, he could claim to future interrogators that the children were provably an elaborate practical joke. He had simply played along. After all, everyone knows that people cannot fly, so an event involving flying comic strip characters had to be a practical joke, albeit a day late. The hologram projectors on the lake, giving the illusion of the fivesome in flight, were a technical tour de force.