Part 17 (1/2)

s.h.i.+t. Missing again. Trash cans, telephone directories, and chairs were valuable commodities in the newsroom, and one or the other was likely to vanish at any time. Jessica wasn't in the mood to search for it. Instead, she slid the unopened envelope into the overcrowded mess of her bottom desk drawer.

Soon, it would all be trash to her anyway. Just papers. Very soon, Jessica realized, she might be cleaning out her desk in Miami for good.

24.

The music arrested Dawit's attention, making him pause his fingers above the keys of his computer and crane his neck toward the stairway. He heard the mystical, soothing sound of the tambura and flute playing from the tape in the bedroom, casting a spell. Neither he nor Jessica had touched that tape in days. Dawit stood, forcing the cat to leap from its resting place on his lap. Someone was there.

Dawit was not afraid. After all the waiting, it was a relief.

Dawit found him lying in the precise center of the bed, propped up on a bank of pillows, his arms folded behind his head, and his bare feet crossed before him. He wore only white drawstring pants and a skullcap, and his eyes were closed as though he were in deep concentration. He wore a closely trimmed beard, new for him.

Was it a happy irony, or a cruel one, that he should be the one?

”Mahmoud,” Dawit said, grinning. The grin was sincere. He did not move from the doorway, but he wished to hug his dear friend close to him. The sight of Mahmoud, more than anything, always reminded him of his real life, the other life, life in innocence, before the Living Blood.

Languidly, Mahmoud opened his eyes. His mouth, too, gave way to a warm smile on his bearded face. ”At last, my brother,” he said in Arabic. He sat up, dangling his legs one by one over the edge of the ma.s.sive bed.

They did not speak, the two of them, for many seconds. There was much love between them, innumerable shared experiences. Yet, they stood before each other now as adversaries. To Dawit, Mahmoud's eyes looked sad as he studied him. The tambura player's sure fingers glided along the strings, filling the room's silence.

”You're very fit,” Dawit said, noticing the ridges of the tight muscles in Mahmoud's forearms as he lowered his palms to the mattress. He knew the Searchers had rigorous routines of fasting and exercise to give them a mental and physical advantage in their work.

Mahmoud nodded, accepting the compliment with a gracious smile.

”How did you find me?” Dawit asked.

”You are predictable, my friend. And your name is known here. I enjoyed Body and Soul. This music, jazz, sounds like a cruder cousin of what you and I improvised three centuries ago in the House of Music. Do you remember?”

”Of course,” Dawit said. Their music had a stronger North African influence, but the rhythms and chord patterns were strikingly similar. ”I wish I could have written of it too.”

Mahmoud's smile, that quickly, was gone. ”Our music is not for them,” he said curtly. ”You insult me with the thought, Dawit.”

Dawit knew he should have expected no other response. Mahmoud had always been conscientious about any undertaking, so he was certain to be as rigid as any other Searcher. They treated their work as a religion, with strict adherence to Khaldun's words: As immortals, we are this planet's only true inhabitants. The others are only visitors, and our place is not with them. Their concerns are not our concerns. As the sun shuns the night, so too shall we be separate.

”I would never write about what belongs to us,” Dawit said, hoping to ease the silence that now separated them. ”You know that much about me, I hope.”

Mahmoud's face didn't soften. ”Well, perhaps you've already written too much for your own good, Dawit. Your book jacket listed Miami as your home-I found this house the first day I set out.”

Dawit nodded regretfully. ”I was not hiding,” he said, but he knew he had not been careful. He'd attempted to learn from the mistakes of his reckless days in Chicago by living in anonymity, or close to it; but his expertise still brought attention to him, even when he did not seek it. Foolishly, he had led the Searchers to his family's doorstep.

Long ago, Khaldun had even asked Dawit to join the Searchers. Despite being honored at the invitation-and although he'd never then imagined he might one day make a home with a mortal- Dawit knew he had too much fondness for the mortal's way of life. He would be too sympathetic to those, like himself, who could not live long away from it. How could he agree to restrict others who shared his own taste for exploration?

Dawit's refusal had visibly disappointed Khaldun: Dawit, I fear the knowledge you value most is experience. You must learn that, to an immortal, worldly experience spells lasting emotional ruin.

Learn to relish the clouds, to marvel at the sunrise. The clouds and the sunrise are constant, like yourself, and will never cause you grief. Do not underestimate the tyranny of grief. Humans were not meant to bear the grief of hundreds of years, and mortals do not. But living among them you will, Dawit. And then you will know h.e.l.l.

How could he have told his beloved teacher the truth, that he had already been tainted?

He'd once shared his Life brothers' pleasure in life for life's sake, but he needed external stimulation; his heart, his hungry loins, all of his being. He could not unlearn it, no matter how much Khaldun entreated him and how hard he tried.

Up to twenty of his brothers took periodic breaks to live in the larger mortal world, at least for a short time, usually traveling in groups. The fortunes their colony had received over time from the sale of crafts and artifacts, useless to most of the Life brothers, were used liberally by those who traveled. Two or three others, like Dawit, had even taken wives for a time. How had they not been changed by it?

Dawit was embarra.s.sed to realize that his concept of time was now so altered, so much like a mortal's, that even a mere year or two pa.s.sed slowly for him. He could no longer enjoy four months' debate on a single pa.s.sage from Spinoza the way his brothers could. And several years' silent meditation-commonly practiced in the House of Meditation, where Life brothers refused meals and instead breathed nutrients from vapors in the air-was out of the question. For as much as Dawit loved his home and his own kind, Lalibela had become tiresome to him.

And Mahmoud, whether or not he would admit it today, had once shared his mind. Had he also shared his weakness? What of the child he'd abducted from India, his son who had traveled with him? What had the boy's name been? He couldn't remember. But he remembered one thing well: Mahmoud had abandoned the boy, left him penniless, most likely to starve.

Dawit did not even think of the incident until two hundred years later, when he was summoned from his Chicago family's side and escorted back to Lalibela. How, Dawit wondered, could Mahmoud have been so unfeeling? Of course, he had a scattering of his own children through the years, but at least they'd always had their mothers to care for them. Hadn't Mahmoud worried for his child at all?

When Dawit had asked Mahmoud about it those many years later, he thought he'd detected sorrow, but then the expression melted into Mahmoud's matter-of-fact gaze. ”Why do you think we left him?” Mahmoud asked. ”That boy you speak of has been dead nearly two hundred years. It's an absurdity he was ever born.”

That boy, Dawit realized, might have awakened something in Mahmoud that frightened him. Could that explain why, in time, he had joined the Searchers? And why he was so changed now, his demeanor toward Dawit so different? Which of them, Dawit wondered, had changed more?

As if he knew his thoughts, Mahmoud sighed, looking away from Dawit to study the interwoven figures carved into the bedpost. ”This visit grieves me, Dawit.”

”And me.” Dawit tried to salvage a smile.

”We were brothers, you and I, before the rest. Your love for Rana made us that.”

”Yes,” Dawit said, remembering Mahmoud's sister, a smooth-skinned, brown-eyed girl of thirteen with black hair that shone like silk. She'd held his face in her tiny hands like a wonder. His first wife. His first love. Oh, to go back there and start again!

”We have shared much,” Mahmoud went on.

”And many,” Dawit added, thinking of the brothels they frequented, delighting in prost.i.tutes who could make their female parts squeeze like fists and fling coins into the air.

”That was all long ago,” Mahmoud said, still not looking at him. ”I am happily celibate now. My head is more clear.”

”Ah, yes. I forgot about that. Forgive me if it's hard for me to imagine that you are a Searcher. You out of everyone else, Mahmoud.”

”Oh?” Mahmoud asked, his head snapping back so that their eyes were level. ”It is not so hard to believe. First we are children, clinging to toys. And then we become men.”

Dawit did not answer the remark, though it stung and made him angry. The time for reminiscences had pa.s.sed, he realized.

”Tell me why you have come,” Dawit said.

”You know why, my brother.”

There. It was said. Dawit's jaw trembled slightly. ”Then I have a message for Khaldun-I have not broken the Covenant and I am not ready to leave. With his permission, I would like to remain several more years with my wife and child.”

”That I cannot grant,” Mahmoud said evenly.

”How long, then?”

”One month. Two, if I choose to be generous.”

”When did you become so pompous? You speak for Khaldun?”