Chapter Twelve

The Weissfrau Valkyrie, Zeb decided, was a lot like the modern turboprops he'd flown in. It was smaller than standard passenger jets, far more subject to turbulence . . . and loud. Even when he shut his eyes and could no longer see the propellers through the small windows right and left, he could hear the engines—feel them, vibrating in his skin, in his bones.

He sighed and twisted so that he was lying half on his side in the reclining seat. It was a broad, comfortable seat, another sign that this was a private plane, not a commercial vehicle, and he was certain that he could sleep through this. If he could force himself to stop thinking about what happened in Neckerdam, he could make himself sleep . . .

Someone settled into the seat beside him, and he heard Ish ask, "Are you awake?"

He opened his eyes. "Reluctantly." He looked at her. She was, as usual, dressed in her safari chic, but was unusually pale, testimony to her recent collapse. Yet when the Sidhe Foundation had assembled for transportation out to the airfield, she'd joined them. Her tale of a miraculous cessation of pain coincided, timewise, with the moment Doc had removed the needle from the doll's back. She had ignored Alastair's protests that it was too soon for her to travel. A stubborn lady, Zeb decided.

"You like her." Ish's voice was decisive.

"Who?"

"You know who. Noriko."

"Sure."

"What do you intend to do about it?"

Zeb gave her his best none-of-your-business scowl, but she seemed undeterred by it. "Nothing. I intend to do nothing about it."

"Why?"

"Several reasons. The first one is she's put off by me."

"No. I think she was alarmed by your performance at the Fairwings plant. It doesn't mean she has closed the book on you."

"And second, once all this is done, I intend to return home. To the grim world. I mean, let's say she and I did get close. The fair world still isn't home to me; my life isn't here. And I couldn't exactly ask her to come back to the grim world with me; it's poison to her."

She gave him a disgusted look, one he suspected she'd practiced until she'd perfected it. "Logic like that has no place in considerations like these. If my father had been like you, I would never have been born."

"How so?"

"He was an explorer, a treasure hunter. He went everywhere in the world and brought back wealth to his family in Castilia. But then he came to the valley of the Hu'unal, my mother's people. They had little wealth, but they did have a treasure: my mother. So he did as he always did, and took the treasure he found back to his family."

"And?"

"And she almost died. The outer world, with its liftships and talk-boxes and machines and noise, was poison to her. So she went home, and he followed her."

"True love conquers all, et cetera, et cetera. Was he ever happy there?"

"You are a cynic. But that is a fair question. My mother said he was not happy, at first. He longed for the life he had left behind. But the Hu'unal changed him, and he changed the Hu'unal. He taught sanitation and literature and the fighting arts of his homeland. He taught the Hu'unal to send its smartest sons and daughters into the outer world to learn about it, so the people might join it some day. And he learned that happiness was not found in gold and silver, nor even in the smiles of worthless relatives who lived off treasures brought back from distant places."

"That's a nice bedtime story, Ish. I think I'll sleep now."

"So what awaits you in the grim world that will make you happy when you return there? What is so bad about the fair world that you have been unhappy all the time you have been here?"

"I have now seen three unfortunate points in common between your world and mine: crooks, guns, and matchmakers. Night-night." He closed his eyes and settled again, trying to make himself more comfortable. He heard Ish sigh in exasperation, then rise.

Leaving him alone. And even less likely to sleep than before.

What was waiting for him in the grim world? He had his business, a string of fighters he and his partner managed. He had his apartment. He had his family in Atlanta. That brought a laugh, a derisive one. His family would only accept him on his father's terms, terms that required him to acknowledge that his professional life so far was a waste of time, to acknowledge that he'd failed the family by refusing to join the family business. These were terms he was unwilling to meet.

What else? There was a succession of ex-girlfriends, all of whom he had disappointed in some vague and indefinable way, all of whom had broken off the relationships with conciliatory comments and best wishes. He had let each of them down somehow. Somehow he'd never quite understood.

What was it Karen had said, during their last dinner together? "You care so much," she'd said. "Maybe I just can't compete with that." But when he'd pressed her to clarify those words, she'd begged off, said she didn't know how. He'd gone home and, in frustration, had smashed half the furniture in his apartment—chairs, his dining table, one of his bookcases. He would have smashed the other half, too, if the police hadn't shown up and suggested that he'd better calm down. He felt his anger rise as he recalled the scene, his resentment at the way the officers apparently felt they had a right to interfere in his life, when he wasn't hurting anyone. Anyone but himself.

"Care so much." It occurred to him now, years after the breakup, that she couldn't have meant that he cared about her more than she did about him. She had to have meant that he cared about something else. Perhaps to the exclusion of caring about her? He shook his head. That didn't make sense.

He wasn't given to elaborate expressions of affection. That's not the way it was done in his family. He'd had to learn to compensate for the way he was raised. He kept birthdays and anniversaries on a calendar, with reminders two or three days ahead of each event so he'd have a present or a celebratory dinner ready on time. So other than these displays of affection, the affection genuine but the displays orchestrated carefully so they seemed spontaneous, what had Karen and the others been seeing? Been threatened by?

His anger. He tensed as his attention stopped circling around that answer and finally settled upon it.

He'd never been shy about showing when he was mad. But he'd never hit a girlfriend, never threatened to, never suggested they needed to fear him. And he was certain they didn't. He couldn't recall one hesitating to confront him, to tell him to go out and take a walk to calm down.

"Care so much." That had to be it, though. He felt things deeply, he blew up, his lovers could neither share in the emotion nor persuade him to get past it. It had to have been a wall between him and them, a wall none of them could ever put a hole in.

Someone knocked on his forehead.

"Hey." He turned and glared. It was Harris, slipping into the seat Ish had recently vacated. "What?"

"Just putting some information together." Harris sat beside him. "You interested in competing?"

"In those games?"

"That's right."

Exasperated, Zeb brought his seat back upright. "Hadn't thought about it. Isn't it way too late to be getting in on the competition? Isn't this like the Olympics?"

Harris shook his head. "Not really. The Sonneheim Games organizers basically recognize a specific set of nations. Those nations can send representative athletes to compete. Most of the team selections are announced in advance for reasons of publicity or whatever. But they don't have to be. Novimagos, the nation that Neckerdam belongs to, already has athletes there, but Doc's in tight with the king and queen, so we're going to join its competitors and coaching staff. So we really ought to choose some events, other than the ones where Novimagos already has the maximum number allowed. Wouldn't do to be `generic athletes.' "

"I guess not." Zeb rubbed his eyes. "Why are we going in as athletes? Is that going to fool anybody?"

"Nobody associated with the people we're looking for, no." Harris hesitated. "We're going in as athletes and coaches for a couple of reasons. First, because it will give us free run of the Sonneheim athletes' village. And second, because we'd like you to compete. You specifically."

Zeb looked at him. "Why me?"

"Because you'd be a lightning rod. This is different from the Olympics, even the Olympics of the Thirties, in a number of ways. None of the countries of the Dark Continent is a member of the Games. And you've doubtless noted that there are fewer African-type blacks in the fair New World than the grim New World. Lots fewer."

"I've noticed. You're saying I'd be one of the few black athletes to compete."

"If not the only one at these games."

"Meaning . . ." Zeb considered. "Meaning, considering the racist habits of the people we're looking for, I'd attract all the scumbags in a hundred-mile radius to root against me."

"Probably more like five hundred miles. You'd also attract a few people to root for you. In fact, if you could manage to win, at anything, it would do a lot to stand King Aevar's racial purification theories on their ear."

"Right." Then Zeb felt a chill. "Wrong. Count me out."

"What? Why?"

"You want me to be Jesse Owens."

"Something like that."

"Get a grip, Harris. Jesse Owens was one of my heroes. He went to the 1936 Olympics, won four gold medals—took gold in every event he entered. And he showed the whole world that the Nazis' idea of white racial superiority was so much crap."

"Right."

"Harris, Owens was a champion athlete. I'm a broken-down ex-fighter."

"I'm not broken-down and I'm not an ex-fighter, but you said the other day you could whip me. Which is it?"

"That was sheer cussedness talking."

"No, it wasn't." Harris leaned closer. "Zeb, if you're in the same kind of shape you were just a few months ago when we were still sparring, you're competitive with these people. Plus, your whole training regimen is based on modern methods and scientific knowledge. You're decades ahead of them in conditioning, in training efficiency. And, like me, you're one of the rare ones who knows something about both Eastern and Western fighting styles. You've studied boxing and muay Thai and escrima and God knows what."

"Mostly as a dilettante."

"But the big problem here is that you're just scared."

Zeb glared. "The hell I am."

"I know you're not scared of any beating. You're scared that you'll get out there and not win, and let down everyone who might be rooting for you, and that you won't change anyone's mind."

"Screw you."

"Thanks for the offer, Zeb, but I'm a married man."

Despite himself, Zeb snorted. "What are you going to compete in?"

"Nothing. To do what I need to for Doc, I can't lock up that much of my schedule with events. I'll join one team and fail in the first round."

"Harris Greene throws his first fight."

"Something like that."

Zeb settled back and closed his eyes. The engine vibration cut through him, cut through the fear he'd denied feeling, the fear Harris had so easily identified.

When he'd fought in the real world—the grim world, he reminded himself—the people rooting for him had risked nothing more than pride in their regiment. Later, when he'd turned pro, they'd risked only a little money, a momentary disappointment. Here, more was at stake.

What had Harris said? Lightning rod. That's what they needed him for. It was more important to be a lightning rod than it was to win. And even if he didn't win, he wouldn't embarrass himself. He could do this.

He opened his eyes again. "Tell me about their fighting sports."

Harris looked thoughtful. "Well, their boxing looks kind of archaic compared to what you're used to; there's a lot of competition in the sport, but I figure you'll clean up anyway. There's also swordsmanship, a sort of rough-and-tumble fencing. There's Isperian fighting; you'd call it gladiatorial combat. With wooden weapons. Hardly anyone gets killed. There's wrestling. Sword of Wo—that's kind of like kenjutsu. Noriko plans to watch it. It's not normally at these games, but there's a sizeable contingent of Wo spectators and athletes visiting this time, so it's been put in to please them. And there's All-Out, the worst of them."

"Tell me about it."

Harris shuddered. "Nasty stuff. Two guys go into a ring and only one usually comes out conscious. They wrestle, they box, they break bones. It's an ancient Panhellene sport. Almost no rules to talk about."

"That's what I'll do, then."

"Whoa there, tiger. All-Out is likely to cause you some serious hurt."

"It seems to be the event best suited to my own style. And it won't be bad for what we're trying to accomplish to have me pounding the hell out of some of their Aryan supermen, right?"

"Right . . ." Harris sounded dubious.

Zeb gave him a smile, a hard one. "I'm likely to cause them more pain than they cause me. Sign me up, Harris." He settled back in his seat and closed his eyes.

The plane's course took it roughly north, to what would have been Nova Scotia on Earth but which the fair folk called Acadia. Zeb remembered that this was the region where Noriko held her soon-to-be-eliminated royal title. She remained in the cockpit all the while they were on the ground, not emerging to face her passengers.

Before, Zeb would have presumed it was aloofness on her part. Now, he supposed it was a wish not to face people while she was hurting. He stood, debating whether he should go forward to see how she was doing, but heard a snatch of conversation from the rear of the plane.

Doc was saying, " . . . knew it would affect her mind. She was aware that she was becoming less and less rational, and it terrified her. So why did she do it at that accelerated rate?"

Doc had to be talking about Teleri. Zeb, curious, headed back.

At the rear of the passenger compartment, chairs had been replaced by a circular table, bolted to the deck, with two semicircular benches around it serving as seating. Doc and Ish were there, poring over papers.

"Obviously, she wanted to be pure light," Ish said. "Grace, Zeb. Did you get some sleep?"

"After my stream of visitors finally went away, yes." Zeb sat beside her. "Who was going mad? Teleri?"

Doc gestured down at the papers. "Her journal and notes suggest that she'd been losing her grip on reality for some time. It's hard to tell, though, because these papers are rather difficult to decipher. Everywhere, she substituted vague references for names. For example, `Fab' is probably the fabricator who built the bleaching cabinet, and he seems to have been important to her, but his identity and their relationship aren't evident." He shrugged. "Perhaps that's her father, whom she was so determined to protect."

"We know why she did it, even risking madness," Ish said. Her Castilian accent was almost gone again. "She wanted to be a pure light, like a Daoine Sidhe, and she wanted it for someone else. It's clear she wouldn't have risked it just for herself. So the question is not why, but who? Much as she was interested in you, Doc, it wasn't for your sake."

"How do you know that?" Zeb asked.

"All she needed to be was lighter—`better,' to her way of thinking—than any of her romantic rivals in order to be in a superior position. I was her only romantic rival, and she already was paler and weedier than I am. So it wasn't to compete with me."

"It had to be wrapped up in her desire to please her employers, then," Doc said.

Zeb shook his head. "More than just to please them. If she knew going mad was a possibility, she had to be even more frightened of the alternative. Which suggests that it was death. Maybe not just for her. Was the bleaching cabinet a production model, or a one-of-a-kind?"

Doc smiled. "A very good question. And the answer is `neither.' It was somewhere in between. Many of the parts appeared to come off a fabrication line—the main body of the cabinet, for instance. Others were hand-lathed or otherwise hand-tooled. This suggests a short production run, with the design incorporating standardized components for the sake of speed or simplicity."

"But it means there could be more than just a few of them out there," Zeb said. "Several dozen, maybe several hundred."

"Correct."

Ish frowned. "Not that I wanted her to, particularly, but she could have told Doc the truth, enlisted his protection."

"Yeah," Zeb said. "The fact that she didn't suggests that either she thought her employers were more powerful than Doc, or that it wasn't just her own death in question."

"We need," Doc said, "hard information about her family. But it appears that her identity was a fabrication. We can't find anyone with the Obeldon name who admits knowledge of her. We'll need to do some research." He turned toward the plane's bow. "Harris?"

Harris's head popped up from one of the forward seats. "Yes, boss?"

"What resources do we have on station in Weseria?"

"None. But the Novimagos crown apparently has a royal agent at the Games—he was actually just there to compete, but he's been put on duty and assigned to us. I made a talk-box call to ask him to get rooms for us, spending you into the poorhouse if necessary."

"Thank you. I look forward to poverty in Weseria."

"His name is Ruadan Crandunum. I don't know him."

"Nor do I, but I've heard of him. They say he's capable. What is he to compete in?"

"Officer."

"Thank you." Doc returned his attention to his papers.

Zeb said, "I wasn't aware that `officer' was an athletic competition."

"One of the taxing ones," Doc said. "Three events in one. Riding, swordsmanship, and marksmanship, three classic benchmarks of the field officer."

"Ah."

"Did you choose an event?"

"All-Out."

Doc and Ish both looked at him. Neither spoke for a moment. Finally Doc said, "And until now I was wondering whether you were as insane as Harris."

"He'll have to catch up some before he gets to my level."

"Doc?"

Doc turned back toward Harris. "Yes?"

"One last thing, I just noticed in the newspaper: Prince Casnar is going to be there."

"Thank you." Doc noticed Zeb's curious look. "One of my half brothers, son of my father and Maeve, the Queen of Cretanis. He is the crown prince there. Always somewhat more fond of me than the rest of the family was, and another Daoine Sidhe who has some affection for the other tribes. Depending on his whim, he may be able to offer us some resources, too."

"So you're royalty, too?"

"I am an unrecognized bastard." Doc's neutral tone stripped the word of its usual negative connotations. "Royal blood doesn't always lead to royal acceptance."