Hand gestures told her that the word had a very different meaning here than it did in her time.
“What makes you think I come from the capital?”
“Your clothes, hands, suggest you are a digger, but your slender arms do not appear to do much digging. So I think you are a supervisor in the tunnels.”
“A good—” she sought but did not find a word for “forensics.” She settled for, “A good analysis, Lasha. Let me think about it.”
“I am sure of it,” he said. He moved his hands as though they were rising on heat but said no words. She understood that to mean it was the way she carried herself, proudly.
“I thought you might be here as a representative of the capital for the Night of Miracles,” Lasha added.
“What is that?” Caitlin asked.
The old man shook his head sadly, wriggled his fingers. “Your memory is truly vapor. It celebrates the dawn of the Galderkhaani, our rise from the fires.”
“The magma,” she said.
“Yes, the magma,” he replied. “The storm from above, the rocks exploding within the fire, life released from the heat and carried forth on the smoke. At least, that is the legend. Told by whom, though, I ask you?” he wondered aloud. “If no one was here, how could we know?”
“Perhaps by studying the rocks?” she suggested.
“The Priests would have you believe that they’ve consulted with the ascended, but—a study of the rocks?” He seemed to have just processed what she said. “What would you do, hit them against your head?”
“I don’t know,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. Science was clearly not so advanced here in some areas. The celebration concerned her, though. Symbolically, that would have been the ideal time for Vol to make his move. And if this were the time when he was to act, there was something else on Caitlin’s mind. Something so elusive she found it difficult to grasp: that conflagration was the time when she herself, at the United Nations, opened a door between her time, her world, and Galderkhaan. Could she, even in spirit, exist in two places at once?
“The capital—is that where the Source is?” she asked, hoping that knowledge of the project was common.
“The Source is there… and here,” he said, stamping his sandaled foot on the packed earth. “That’s what is heating the water—the runoff from the ice that is melting to the west. Do you have something to do with that dig? If so, I have much to say to you. Hot water is good for bathing, bad for fish.”
“I don’t know if I’m involved,” Caitlin replied, suddenly thinking it would be a good idea to go where she knew there might be tiles, where she had faced Pao and Rensat in spirit. “How far are we from there?”
“A timhut by air,” he said, throwing a hand vaguely behind him, to the south. “La-timhut on foot.”
She knew, from the memories of Bayarma, that the first measure described a journey to be taken without need of sleep. The hand gestures indicated that it was half that. Five or six hours, perhaps? The second was about ten times as long. She would have to fly.
Caitlin rose suddenly. “The woman who just left—”
“Qala? The Standor?”
“Yes. Do you think she would take me? Or perhaps someone she knows.”
“I don’t keep her schedule!” Lasha said with annoyance. He ran to the other end of the pool to chase away a trio of mensats that were trying to claw up the wall to get a drink. He swatted the noose at them then flung it under his arm as if it were a martial arts nunchaku. “You’ll have to ask someone at the tower. Her ship is one of our proudest and is almost certainly headed there for the celebration.”
Caitlin was still a little too unsteady to run after her; then she remembered the boy she had seen before. He was still staring at her from the shadows. Caitlin suddenly felt very protective of him. She smiled sweetly, sincerely, and motioned him over.
Lasha laughed. “Good idea!” he said. “Vilu needs no excuse to talk to the Standor!”
Vilu welcomed the acknowledgment. He approached tentatively, his eyes on the woman. The thyodularasi waddled over behind him, huffing eagerly through its whiskers as it sniffed the boy’s moving ankles.
“Your name is Vilu?” Caitlin said.
The boy nodded.
“Vilu, would you do me a favor?” Caitlin asked.
Lasha cut through the negotiation. “Boy, run and ask Standor Qala if she could delay a moment. This lady wishes to speak with her.”
The boy grinned and took off as she had seen Jacob run in the park so many times—bent low, head down, arms churning, legs pumping. Vilu seemed so free. Caitlin’s heart ached for her son, but also for this boy.
Soon he would most likely be dead, she thought, along with every living creature in Galderkhaan. And while she wouldn’t be the reason—Vol would—the interference of her future self with the cazh would prevent their souls from transcending, from living together as spirits. He would be an ascended soul wandering alone for eternity. She wondered if wisdom and maturity came with that state or if he would be locked in boyhood and fear for eternity.
Caitlin turned away, tears behind her eyes.
“What is it?” Lasha asked.
“I’m still uncertain of my body,” she replied, neglecting to gesture to express the kind of uncertainty she was feeling. It was sickness, deep in her belly, in her soul.
“You may sit in the hut, out of the sun,” Lasha said. “That might help.”
“Thank you.” Caitlin was about to turn in that direction when she heard a small voice behind her.
“Mom?”
Caitlin spun and stared at Vilu. The boy had stopped running after the Standor. He was standing unsteadily in the bright sun, his arms repeating a gesture that meant “birth mother” in Galderkhaani.
“Did you say something?” Caitlin asked.
“Yes, Mom,” he said, signing, not in Galderkhaani but in English. Just like the words he spoke. “I would much rather we go to the capital by Nemo’s submarine.”
And then he fell to the ground.
CHAPTER 4
Ben Moss stood in Caitlin’s living room. Anita Carter was behind him, just closing the door. She introduced Ben to the others.
Ben was looking down at Madame Langlois, who was sitting in a rattan chair that Caitlin kept by the south-facing bay window. The Haitian’s son was standing behind her, protectively. The woman was dressed in a colorful orange skirt with embroidered patterns of interlocking half-circles—like “S” shapes, but overlapping. She was wearing a wool sweater. The tall young man, Enok, wore blue jeans and a leather jacket that was still zipped to the chin. Madame Langlois held a tall glass of ice water in her hand. Ben noticed a serpent tattoo that wound from the tip of her right thumb down the back of her hand then around and around the little he could see of her forearm.
“I am very pleased to meet you both,” Ben said, though he did not immediately move forward. “Caitlin has spoken to me of you both.” His eyes were on the woman. “Madame Langlois, you said that Caitlin is—”
“The doctor—her serpent came to me in my sleep,” Madame Langlois said in a casual voice.