As if the silent repetition of her name had conjured her out of shadows Serroi came toward her and stood beside her looking down at the crowded, peaceful scene. “Plotting and planning.” She smiled at the council and Dom Hern. “Catching up on everything that’s happened since we left.”
“How bad is it going to be?” Julia felt impelled to ask though she didn’t really want to know, she didn’t want to spoil the mellow mood and the spring scent of hope that hovered about her.
“I don’t know. Bad enough, I suppose.”
“Shouldn’t you be down there with them?”
“No. I don’t belong there. Not now.”
“The land is the same,” Julia said. She drew her hand along the polished stone of the railing. “Granite is granite, it seems, wherever you find it.”
“People, too-they seem much the same everywhere, if you disregard custom.” Serroi spoke absently, frowning down at the eroding groups below-more and more of the refugees were heading for their blankets though they’d lost the greater part of the day by their jump-but Julia didn’t think she really saw them. “How long did you know?” Serroi said after a moment’s silence.
“That I would die?”
“Yes.”
“A little more than a year.” Julia paused to consider. “I knew about the cancer before that. Several months before that. But I wasn’t thinking about dying then. Mostly, I was angry at fate or whatever landed this on me. And I was furious at the circumstances that blocked me from a cure. And at the same time I was still sure I could get around or over those blocks. Ever see anyone with boils? That was me, a walking boil.” She chuckled, went silent as she remembered the night when Georgia and Anoike tracked her through the brush and brought her back to the few left alive out of all those packed into the body of the truck. Remembered her rage and despair when she discovered that the border was shut tight, would be for the next six months until the Dommers got the fence built. Once that was done, they’d relax a little and it would be possible to get across if you knew the mountains well enough. Six months. Too long for her A little crazy from anger and frustration and fear, she left the band and joined a group that called themselves the Mad Bombers. “When I lost all hope of living,” she said, “all I wanted to do was strike out at those who’d done it to me, stolen my hope, I mean.” She’d exaggerated her age and fragility, was their respectable front. No one ever connected the quietly dressed, middle-aged lady with the bombs that blew night after night. Bridges, airports, banks, police stations, introg centers when they could locate them, corporate headquarters, fuel storage tanks, a refinery, a thousand other targets, doing their best to avoid taking lives-until the time came that made her sick when she remembered it, the bomb that didn’t go off when it should, in the middle of the night when the warehouse was deserted, but twelve hours later. Noon. She was staying with an ex-client, a prostitute specializing in dominance who picked up quite a lot of information and passed it on without asking questions. The two women spent the afternoon watching the bodies being hauled away and the firemen exhausting themselves to contain the fire, even listened to the speeches of community leaders rounded up by the Dommers, all of them frothing with outrage. The only time Amalie showed the slightest animation was when she recognized one of her clients and in a detached voice listed some of his odder preferences. “Time came,” Julia said, “when I got sick of the bangs and the blood. Anoike took me up to the settlement in the mountains and I went on supply raids with them for a while, long as I was strong enough, then I worked with Dort and Jenny, writing pamphlets, running the offset, coaxing paper and ink out of Georgia and Braddock. When you can keep busy, you don’t think about much except what you’re doing. The nights were bad sometimes, but Georgia and Anoike got me morphine, so I did sleep. When I couldn’t get around anymore, well, that was a hard time, until I went back to writing, not on paper but in my head. I used to put off the shots as long as I could so I could keep the words clear. I spun essays out of air, wrote a novel in my head paragraph by paragraph, saying the words over and over until they were engraved in my mind. It never seemed important that I might not finish the book; as a matter of fact, I was determined to live until I did, sort of a measuring out of the hours, nor was it important that nobody was going to read it but me. Can you understand that? Never mind. It was my way of telling myself that my life had meaning and purpose even though my death was without either of those. What happened to me was only a throw of fate, useless, without meaning even to me. If I’d died in a fight or a raid…” She shook her head. “And even the book was spoiled when that chopper came over spitting fire at my mountain. The day you showed up, I was trying to convince myself it would be better to ask Lou to give me an overdose.” She sighed, looked down at her hands. “Good thing you did come. He’d have hated that.”
“If there was a purpose to your dying, it would have been easier?”
“I think so.” She smiled at Serroi. “Likely I’ll get a chance to test that theory in the days ahead.” She rubbed at her nose, tapped restlessly at the polished stone. “Grace under pressure,” she said. “That was a fad of writers and leeches a couple hundred years ago-watch a hunter kill, and evaluate the heart of the beast by how long he struggled and how well he died, that kind of thing. I suppose you’ve escaped that here so far. No? You’re right, then, custom aside, the beast that walks on two feet is much the same everywhere. Are you a seer as well as a healer?”
“No. Why?”
“I get the feeling it’s your death as well as mine we’re discussing.”
“Not death. Just something that terrifies me, yet I have to do it. I think I have to do it. I don’t know.” She hesitated, lifted eyes that shone like molten copper in the dim light, searched Julia’s face, then turned away and gazed at the group sitting beside the fire, deeply involved in what looked like complicated negotiations. After a while, she turned once again to Julia. “Are you too tired to stay up a while longer?”
“You know I’m not.”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got a whole night.” Julia touched the healer’s hand, drew her own back, excitement and eagerness blooming within her. She throttled them down, spoke as calmly as she could, “If I can help…”
“If you don’t mind listening to the story of my life.”
“Mind?” Julia chuckled. “Serroi, you don’t know what you’re saying. If I were two years dead, I’d crawl out of my grave to listen.”