And the Rock Cried Out
“I don’t think I can help you,” Lucius Keeva said. He was a large man and built with slab upon slab of muscle. It would have been easier if he were angry at me, or if he’d seemed emotional. Instead, he looked stern, controlled. In his sky-blue uniform, he gave the impression of being no more than the conveyance of the will of Olympus seacity and, at least if we believed what the locals believed, of its inhabitants.
We’d arrived to Olympus at sunrise, and identified ourselves to the questioning of the guards as we approached the Good Man’s palace. Or what had been the Good Man’s palace.
At first I’d thought that the change in Olympus, now fully in control of the Usaian movement, was the same it had been in Liberte seacity. The Good Man had proclaimed himself something else, and everything remained the same.
But it wasn’t like that. I hadn’t seen Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva since our raid on Circum Terra six months ago. Back then I was very new to Earth—had just arrived there with a party from Eden. Just the sheer size of Earth, the ability to travel anywhere, to hide, to disappear, had overwhelmed me. Earth had been a kaleidoscope of images and sounds. More people than I’d ever seen in my life; more people than I’d ever known existed anywhere had crowded around me. And yet, I’d seen areas that were forgotten, lost—places with no humans at all.
When my friends had gone back to Eden, I’d taken my opportunity to run away from home in style, to stay behind in a whole world where no one knew me, where no one would expect anything of me.
Is there such a state for anyone human?
I’d lingered with someone who was kind to me and who protected me from the strangeness of Earth and made me feel welcome. A whole world, many times larger than anything I knew—than anything I could even imagine, had proven too daunting.
Back when I’d last seen Lucius Keeva, he’d looked stern and remote and frightening. He still looked frightening. A very tall man, with long dark-blond hair, it was rumored he’d spent fourteen years in prison, in solitary confinement.
I wasn’t sure that was true. I thought no one could survive that and remain functional, let alone sane enough to be one of the leaders of the Usaian revolution. But there was something different about him now from when I’d last seen him: a confidence, perhaps, a…but no, it wasn’t swagger. A man who is six seven and built like an assault vehicle doesn’t need to swagger. It is an alien art to someone that size.
Perhaps it was that he was no longer the Good Man, though I was having trouble pinpointing exactly what he was.
When we landed in what had been the Good Man’s palace, the people had seemed puzzled as to whom I was asking for, when I asked to speak to the Good Man. At first I thought the difficulty was my pink and plastic-looking finery, or perhaps Alexis standing like a sullen statue behind me.
But when I said “Lucius Keeva,” the two—well, I thought they were guards—very young men in sky-blue uniforms looked at each other.
“The lieutenant colonel, Ichabod,” one of them—the blond one, the other one being dark-haired and olive-skinned—said. They seemed almost identical in everything else, particularly youth and very upright posture.
“Oh,” Olive-skin said. And when I’d given my name, he’d said, “I’ll be right back,” and, leaving his friend with us, had walked fast into the house. I didn’t know whether to consider that leaving us alone with one guard was a bad thing. The guard hadn’t even taken out his burner. I wondered if Olympus was really lax about its security. Then I started suspecting that there was more to it than that, that there were other levels of security between us and the Good Man. But why were they calling him lieutenant colonel?
A few moments later, Ichabod returned, and the two guards escorted us down a cool corridor, into the depths of the house. I’d been right about one thing: the place was filled with men in uniform, all of them armed, saluting each other around every corner. Mostly our escorts saluted other people. But since I didn’t know the insignia on people’s shoulders and chests, the distinctions evaded me.
Up a staircase, till we stood at the door to an office. Not a private office, but a huge room, filled with desks and activity. This one had at least fifteen desks, most of them manned by very young people. As we stood in the doorway, Lucius Keeva rose from behind one of the desks, which was piled high with paper and walked towards us. “Ms. Sienna,” he said, and to what must have been my startled expression, with a politeness that didn’t soften him in the slightest, “I beg your pardon. Am I forgetting a rank? Do you have one?”
I shook my head. I’d been Miss and Mrs, and Navigator Sienna, and I had no idea what I was now, but Ms. would do as well as anything. “Lieutenant colonel?” I said.
This brought a shadow of a smile to the man’s tired face. “Oh. That’s mostly a courtesy title. I pilot a desk. The military titles should be reserved for the people in the field, but I guess they needed to call me something.” He gave me a quick look, up and down. It wasn’t that sort of look. I happened to know Lucius Keeva’s interest in women was academic. It was an open secret and not just in Olympus that he and one of the Usaian leaders, Nathaniel Remy, were a couple. But his look clearly registered my incongruous attire, yet when he looked back up it was to say, “Call me Luce. We fought side by side; that warrants treatment of equals. And how may I help you?”
I can’t describe it. I’d expected…I wasn’t absolutely certain what I’d expected. I hadn’t got the impression that he and Simon were friends precisely. In fact, Simon had told me that he had been in the same broomer group as Lucius’s late brother, Max, but they’d never been that close. Friendly, sure, but not friends.
But Lucius had said we’d fought side-by-side. And so had he and Simon. I had been sure I could get help from him…help in rescuing Simon.
Then I found myself face to face with Keeva and couldn’t help acknowledging he was no longer the Good Man, no longer an autarch, but a man caught in the machinery of an organization he couldn’t control and I couldn’t understand. And something in his reserved, guarded expression made me feel I was up against something inflexible and hard. My heart sank.
“Simon,” I said, not expecting anything. “I need help for Simon. Simon was captured.”
Luce nodded. “We heard news…I was afraid you were both dead. It was a relief to see you here,” he said, then looking behind me. “And—”
“This is Alexis. Alexis Brisbois. He is—was the head of Simon’s security.”
“Secret police,” Alexis offered, and also offered his hand. There was a momentary but visible hesitation before Lucius shook it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “The attack on the palace was a shock, of course. Simon had invited me to the ball, but I couldn’t get away, and besides—” He frowned fleetingly. “It was considered too risky. My value to the cause might be largely ornamental, but it has value.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, the damned house is mostly taken up with the operations of the Daughters of Liberty.” And to our blank look, “The propaganda arm of my—The propaganda arm of our revolution.” And then, though I hadn’t asked, “It’s not a gender thing. The Sons of Liberty are the active troops.”
He shook his head. “I have a private area, for my use. Please come with me. You’ll want a bath.” The impersonal evaluating look raked me up and down again, and said that if it were him wearing that kind of finery, he’d want a bath.
The idea of Lucius Keeva in a plastic dress, with badly dyed hair, made me want to giggle. Perhaps it was a stress thing. When you’ve been running for your life, emotions seem to become compacted, close together and you can flip from intense grief, or intense fear, to sudden laughter, then back again. It took a great effort for me to suppress it and by the time I had it under control, he was leading us along another set of hallways. He stuck his finger in a genlock, which sprang open. What we entered could have passed for an upscale apartment in a modern building, a white carpeted area furnished with the sort of understated simplicity that screams wealth.
Lucius gestured at a hallway at the back of the living room. “At the end of that there is a bedroom, and a fresher. I’ll have clothing brought to you. Sorry, I no longer have staff. Everyone either left, or is working for the revolution. But someone should be able to unearth a comfortable outfit your size somewhere. Martha Remy, if no one else.” He punched a com button in a nearby console and spoke so quickly and so tersely that I didn’t understand much, except that he was speaking to someone with whom he was comfortable and asking for clothes, and also that that appraising glance had got my size to a nicety. There was an equally terse answer from the other end. “Will do.”
He turned to me and smiled. “There will be clothes for you in the bedroom when you’re done with the fresher.” He turned to Alexis. “You’ll have to wait your turn, Brisbois.” And, advancing towards an impressively stocked drinks table, he said, “What do you drink?”
Which, I thought, was just like men, sending me off to wash, while they drank and, doubtless, Lucius Keeva got an accurate report of the revolution and the mess in Liberte from Alexis Brisbois.
I was in the spacious, and certainly luxurious, fresher and scrubbing the outrageous makeup off my face when it occurred to me that I’d been positively itching to get out of this; that Alexis was probably better equipped to explain the military situation to Keeva, and that they were not being slighting but gallant, giving me first shot at getting out of what were clearly uncomfortable as well as awful-looking clothes.
Still, I washed as fast as I could, and rushed out, to find that indeed there were clothes waiting for me: a black pair of pants and a gray tunic in roughly my size. Lifting them, I found underwear underneath, and pulled that on first, in a hurry. Then I ran my fingers through my wet hair and rushed out, barefoot.
The men had sat down across from each other with glasses of something amber in their hands. They both rose as I came in. “Ms. Sienna,” Lucius said. “May I offer you something to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having,” I said.
He lifted his eyebrows, but I wasn’t quite up to the variety of drinks on Earth. I knew that some of them weren’t considered ladylike—whatever that might be—but I had yet to taste one I couldn’t drink. None of these people had, after all, been raised on the particularly noxious drink my countrymen made from fermented bugs.
He handed me a glass of amber liquid that smelled alcoholic and peaty. I took a short sip, determined this was a drink to take slowly, and did so. “What did Alexis tell you?” I asked.
“Everything,” Alexis said. “Everything I know.”
I wondered if that was true. I suspected Alexis Brisbois didn’t tell everything he knew, not even to himself. Not if he could help it.
“And now you may go clean up,” Lucius said. It wasn’t an order, but it was. Alexis hesitated, but he got up and said, looking at me, “I’ll be right back.”
I wondered what he feared, exactly, from Lucius. I didn’t think he intended to attack me. But Lucius waited till Alexis had vanished into the room beyond, before saying, “Ms. Sienna?”
“Zen.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“If you’re Luce, I’m Zen.”
“Very well, then, Zen. What…what is your relationship with Simon?”
“What?”
“Your…relationship. Are you…involved?”
“He—” I said. The problem with Simon is that you couldn’t help liking him. But it came to me that one always felt slightly guilty for doing so. “He has been very kind to me. He’s…he let me live in his palace and…and get acclimated to Earth. I suppose you could say we are friends.”
A short silence, then he frowned. “Yes, but…but that covers a vast array of terrain. Excuse me, but…are you emotionally involved?”
Was I emotionally involved? What did he even mean? “I owe him a debt,” I said, stubbornly. “I think he…I think he likes me very much, but—”
“But?”
“I can’t…I think he arranged for an innocent man to murder his fath—predecessor. I think he enjoys power and being the center of the seacity. He says he loves me, but I can’t tell if he means it, or is just playing at it.”
“Oh.” Lucius smiled suddenly, as though startled. It was an odd smile. Fleeting. When I’d met him before, we’d been in battle mode. I realized for the first time he’d been raised in the same world as Simon, if not in the same way; that he could probably be charming, if he wanted to, in a way that meant absolutely nothing. The smile was followed by a sigh. “Oh, likely neither can he. Simon—” He paused. “Simon’s…ancestor was created as a spy and someone who could play any role, and I don’t think Simon’s situation these last few years, knowing he was not like the other Good Men and remaining safe only by playing the fool and encouraging the idea his “father” might recover, helped whatever inherent tendencies were in his make-up.”
I nodded. I’d known about Simon’s original, the person he was cloned from; had learned it from someone who’d known the original. As for Simon playing the fool, I knew that too. I didn’t think I could explain—or wanted to explain—to Lucius the glimpses of someone more substantial beneath Simon’s playacting. Saving me at the expense of himself, even as his world quite literally crashed around his head, was not the act of a self-centered fool. I didn’t think I could explain that I felt as though someone were a prisoner, encased, in Simon’s playacting. Nor could I explain the sympathy I felt for his situation. So I said, “Yes.”
He nodded. “But that doesn’t answer my question. Are you involved? Physically or emotionally?”
“What difference does that make?” I asked.
He let air out through his nose. “It might. In how much I can help, within my limited capacity.” He raised a hand. “No, look. Our organization—not the military, but the organization that predates it—has an unbreakable policy of helping dependents: children and spouses or spouses equivalent. I can’t get you help officially, not from Olympus, that is, but you did render the Usaians a service, and though it’s stretching a point, I can take it to the council. If you’re Simon’s—If—”
I sighed. “We’re not. Not that close, and not physically. I was widowed less than a year ago. I’m not ready—”
“Understood. And emotionally?”
“I care for him,” I said. “Possibly more than I should—but I’m not sure how…” I looked up at those blue-gray eyes staring down at me like a judge from a podium. “Look, I don’t know if I have the slightest romantic interest in him, or if it’s just…just that I feel sorry for him. I always feel bad for people who are ducks out of water, because I am myself.”
This surprised a chuckle out of him. “Yes,” he said. “I do too, for the same reason. That’s why I said I’d help to the limit of my ability, but my ability is very limited. I can’t go with you and help you. I’m needed here. My superiors would skin me alive for risking myself in the hell Liberte has become. And we can’t send troops into the mess in Liberte because we don’t have troops to spare.”
The meaning of his words so far had sunk in—and I understood the sense of cold I’d got from our reception. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to help us, but that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. “But you’re the Good Man!” I said. “You can order someone like Nat Remy—”
I realized I’d gone too far. His gaze hardened. “I’m not the Good Man,” he said. “Not anymore. Unlike Simon, I didn’t declare the revolution, nor do I control it, as he thought he did. And as for Nat, he’s in enough danger without sending him on what will turn out to be a suicide mission. Even if I had the power to order him, which I don’t. I don’t remember the rank in his last letter. It seems to keep changing. But I warrant you he’s my superior.”
“Suicide?” I said.
“What do you think? You know more history than most people on Earth—So do I, for my sins. When a land, or in this case, a group of territories, takes it upon their head to make all humans equal, it always ends one way. It’s not that reality can’t be violated,” he said, and sounded suddenly very tired. “It’s that there is always a price to pay for it. Always. And the price for the fantasy of equality is always paid in blood.” He looked very sad but mostly very tired. Then his expression changed in a second, as he looked over my shoulder at someone behind me. “Ah. Brisbois. I would extend you the hospitality of my house, but as you see my quarters are reduced to a single guestroom, and I am about to offer that to Ms.—to Zenobia.”
“I can sleep anywhere,” Alexis said. I turned around to see that he had changed appearance almost as markedly as I had. He looked yet completely different from the man I’d guess I had glimpsed around the palace, in a formal and undistinguished gold and white uniform. And he looked again different than the man in cheap clothes who’d brought me here.
I didn’t know what clothes Lucius had arranged for him, and I hadn’t paid attention, but now I remembered seeing a young man in uniform walk in and down that hallway carrying clothes. The clothes Alexis Brisbois was wearing were the formal attire of the upper-crust of Earth, such as I’d seen Simon wear. Silk shirt with lace at collar and sleeves. A velvet jacket with shoulder padding that, in his case, wasn’t necessary, narrowing to make the waist look small—in his case not very convincingly because the man was a single square block of stonelike muscle—and ornamented with ruffles at the back. The pants fit like a second skin under all that, and the boots came to meet the pants just above the calf.
Lucius Keeva frowned at the boots. “I beg your pardon about those,” he said. “But I think your feet are at least a size larger than mine.” His gaze swept upwards. “The rest fits well enough.”
I realized these had to be Keeva’s clothes, and that the two men were almost exactly the same size. How had I not noticed it before? They were very different types of men. Lucius might be scarred, but the features beneath that were regular and beautiful enough. Carefully assembled, likely. As carefully as mine had been, gene by gene and protein by protein. Alexis’s had been assembled by an unkind Mother Nature. Living couldn’t improve on them. They weren’t exactly horrible to look at, but they were rough-carved and only the intelligent and attentive eyes beneath the heavy eyebrows relieved what would otherwise have been a brutal aspect.
Besides, there was posture. Lucius Keeva had been trained to command, and he looked every inch of his six feet six or seven, or perhaps more. Alexis, on the other hand, whatever he had been, wherever he’d come from—conspirator, condemned man, servant—would have been trained to hide his size and any appearance of menace. And he managed to project being much shorter and smaller than he was. But he was massive. No wonder he’d been able to drag me. And no wonder Simon trusted him to keep me safe.
“As I was saying,” Lucius said. “I can offer hospitality to Zenobia, and you can trust me to keep her safe as your…ah…Good Man commanded. But I don’t think I can accommodate you, at least not for the night. You can have dinner with us.”
Alexis looked like he was going to protest, but Lucius interrupted, “Through that door, there is a young man waiting. An ensign. I can’t for the life of me remember his name, they change so fast.” Tiredness again. “We send them out to fight much too early. But he’ll show you to the unmarried men’s quarters. You can make sure you have a place for tonight and then you can come back here, if you choose, for dinner or to verify I haven’t killed Zenobia. But I assure you, it’s not needed.”
Alexis looked like he was going to protest. There was a mutinous look in his eyes, and he looked like he wanted to give vent to it. Perhaps he would have, but I suspected the training to obey people who acted this way and gave orders this smoothly went bone deep. He didn’t exactly bow, and he didn’t exactly make a sound of acquiescence, but there was a suggestion of both in the way he headed out the door.
And I felt, unaccountably, bereft, as though I too couldn’t trust Lucius Keeva not to do something awful to me. Which was ridiculous, of course. I could at least trust him as much as I trusted Brisbois. As Luce had said, we’d fought side by side.
I returned to where I’d been before Brisbois had interrupted us. “Suicide?”
“What do you think it is, for any of us, the ones who look obviously modified, or at least…enhanced, to go to Liberte? If they’re hunting for those who stand out? We’d stand out just for being strangers—foreign. And what do you think our chances are of doing anything in time to free Simon?”
“I was hoping for armed men.” I stepped backwards, to let myself fall onto a chair. “So, when you offered help—”
He shook his head. “I could have got you help if you were…involved with Simon. Some help. Not personally,” he said. “Certainly not personally. My face is too well known the world over. And not Nat. If you saw him fighting on broomback, or really just fighting, you’d know his enhancements are as hard to hide as ours. Hereditary, sure. I don’t think his line has seen the inside of a test tube for generations.” He paused, as though a sudden thought had intruded, and chewed at the corner of his lip, as though trying to digest an unpleasant thought. “Though I wouldn’t bet on it either. But I understand they’re going after people who inherited enhancements, too. And most of my helpers, most of my circle here, is obviously enhanced. So I couldn’t ever offer you help of that kind. But…since you’re not involved with Simon, I don’t think I can even offer you that.”
I started to say that I could lie about being involved with Simon, then I thought about the implications—this would be claiming a relationship on the level of marriage. It probably meant that if we saved Simon, I’d have to stand by it. I’d been married once. I thought of Len, of what I’d had with him. Simon was a different creature. “I’d been dreading his proposal.”
“Understand,” Luce said. “I’m not trying to be unkind, but I think that to attempt to save Simon right now is nothing more than a complex way to commit suicide unless you went in with overwhelming force, and I don’t know if we can get overwhelming force.”
I bit my tongue, but I couldn’t keep it in. “We helped when you needed it. He helped with your…revolution. But now you turn your back on him.”
He let air out through his nose with a noise like a sneeze, but infused with something like repressed temper. “No. Simon helped us when it suited him. Yes, he was part of our councils and our efforts, because he’s been a friend of the Remys since they were all very young. But Simon is himself. If he’d been a true ally, an auxiliary, our group would put itself out for him, whether there was a chance of success—” He stopped. “No. Maybe not. That’s my own quixotic impulse. The Usaians always weigh their chances of success. Or at least they did when Nat was arrested—even though he’s one of their own. This is why they’ve survived so long. But I can’t even take the case to council. I don’t know how aware you are of what brought this about, but Simon was trying to manipulate things at a vulnerable moment, and he fell on his face. If someone is shot while trying to steal something, you can’t really say that others have an obligation to risk themselves to save his life.” He must have read my confusion. He shook his head. “No, I don’t propose to explain,” he said. “It would take too long and some of it I can’t tell you because I got it in confidential reports from Liberte. But let’s say that Simon was playing with fire, before he got burned.”
“Aren’t you all playing with fire, though?” I asked. “Isn’t that the definition of a revolution?”
For a moment he looked like he couldn’t believe I’d say something so incredibly stupid. Maybe it was even true. Maybe I had violated good sense. It’s impossible to know in a different world. There are different ways; different expectations. He narrowed his eyes. “Not…in the way I mean.”
“Do you mean that he failed to conform to your ideals?” I asked, as I thought I understood his hints. “But he’s not of you. He’s not a Usaian. How can you demand he conform to your ideals, before you assist him?”
I got the impression I’d upset him. “There are,” he said, “ideals of human decency of—of being human, without which we revert to the rule of the Good Men. Or worse.” He seemed about to say a lot more, but I got the impression he was holding himself back by an effort of will. “I can’t help you, in any case. I couldn’t help you even if Simon were more closely allied with our cause. The council would never permit it.” He took a deep breath. “You’re an old battle comrade. You’ve helped me and…and us…our cause, in a very tight spot. I will extend you my hospitality as long as you wish it, and will help you find more permanent accommodation.
“As for Simon, he’s become a matter for international bargaining and international maneuvering.” He held up a hand before I could speak. “It’s not that I don’t want to help, understand me. It’s that I can’t. With all the best will in the world, I can’t even plead for the council to send someone on a suicide mission to save him from the results of his own folly. He made himself head of a revolution that meant to make all men equals, knowing he could never be equal. Things were bound to leak, and things were bound to happen. He knew my identity is out in the open and that we broadcast. He helped us defeat controls on the broadcasts. Did he think the knowledge would never make it to Liberte?” He took a deep breath and seemed to draw himself into composure by an effort of will. “And now, please excuse me. I have work to do. I do not know if I’ll be able to take time to eat, but I’ll make sure you’re served dinner. You are, of course, free to go where you please, but remember the house is a military installation, and refrain from making the guards nervous.”