Part 5 (2/2)
”Why not leave her to this opposing faction, then?”
”As well trust a work-relief prole to do your own job. Stopping the convergence must be our highest priority.” He slipped out of the chair and leaned on her desk. ”The intrusion of magic into this world would be disastrous. You cannot begin to imagine the chaos that would result. Not only governments would collapse.”
For once, Sorli was wrong; she had often imagined the chaos of a world gone magical. In fact, she had done such a good job of constructing that nightmare scenario of unbearable instability that it was costing her sleep. Magic did not belong in the world. Not in her world. Her world was a rational one; dangerous, perhaps, but predictable. She knew how to survive in it. She had built herself an island of stability in the turmoil of the world, and she had no intention of seeing her hard-won stability torn away from her.
Magic was the wildest of wild cards, capable of destroying all stability, everything she had made for herself. In a world confused by magic, the corporations would lose control; and by extension, so would she. Unacceptable! She could not-would not-let that happen. She had to take action. But what should she do? She hated herself for dithering. She'd thought she'd been long done with such indecision. Her uncertainty reminded her too much of who she'd been.
The threat of chaos reminded her of things, too. Past things, things she had walked away from or buried, things she had sworn never to let affect her life again. She'd banished chaos from her life once, she was never going back there. Never!
Sorli was still asking her to take a lot on faith, but could she afford not to believe him? What he'd shown and told her was so nebulous. Why hadn't he been able to provide her with more than hints and suggested interpretations? She wanted real, solid evidence, which Sorli had so far been unwilling or unable to supply. Without evidence, acting involved risk. She didn't like to take chances, but she had survived times when a gamble was the only answer, the only way to remain in control, and this was looking more and more like one of those times. But if she played this wrong, there'd be a scandal; a scandal could prove very hard to survive.
The fear of chaos haunted her. If there was an otherworld, and if Sorli's mystery woman was working to bring it into convergence with the world as Pamela knew it, that woman had to be stopped. Pamela had never lacked resolution in the past; she had always had enough guts to do whatever had to be done. So why was she hesitating? Was it just prudent caution, or was if more than that? Was she afraid of being embarra.s.sed if Sorli pushed her into unjustifiable actions? Or was she afraid that Sorli's fears might be all too correct, and that there might be nothing she could do to stop the advent of the chaos? She needed to know more about what was really going on.
”I want you to find out more about the woman before you take any action.”
”We may not have the luxury of discussing this at leisure.”
'I don't have the luxury of making a mistake.” She fixed him with a stare. ”Neither do you.”
”The biggest mistake would be to let this woman continue to operate.”
”Convince me.”
Scowling, Sorli said, ”If I have not yet convinced you of the danger, we are lost.” He tapped the privacy screen around her monitor. ”Your tools tell you that I do not lie. Believe them, if you will not believe me. We come to the cusp. We must act,”
”Convince me.”
Sorli drew himself up. Without further argument, he turned and departed. As the door slid shut behind him, Pamela touched the intercom.
”Get Mr. McAlister on the line.”
She needed a word with her watchdog.
Making himself presentable after his fight with Winston took time. John considered getting Kelley on the phone and calling off the date, but Faye convinced him otherwise. By the time he had cleaned himself up, he was running half an hour late. He s.n.a.t.c.hed bits and pieces of an outfit from his closet, mostly with an eye to hiding the bruises. The only way to hide his bruised and sc.r.a.ped hands was to wear gloves; he hoped Kelley would take it as a fas.h.i.+on statement.
He was pus.h.i.+ng an hour late when he arrived at her dorm. To his relief, she buzzed him in rather than just telling him to get lost. She came down to the lobby promptly, but stayed aloof all the way to the Northsider Club. They had missed the first set and Kim Murphey was well into her second set when they arrived, but the music soon mellowed Kelley and by the end of the third and final set, she was talking easily. Neither of them mentioned the afternoon's fight, encouraging John to hope that she had either missed it or not realized it had been he.
He wanted the evening to last forever, forever delaying the time when he'd have to deal with the repercussions of the afternoon's fight. He suggested they go to the Frilly Cow for a snack, and she agreed. When they were settled in a booth and had put in their order, he started on a topic that seemed safe.
”You seemed to like the concert.”
”Yeah. It was good. It's nice to hear real instruments once in a while.”
”Real instruments?”
”Yeah. You know, instead of synthesized sound. The boards are light-years ahead of what they used to be, but there's something different about a real instrument that even an individuator can't dupe.”
”Maybe it's the player.”
”Or the company.”
The company? Had she really said that?
Their order arrived, saving John from immediately saying something stupid. Once the c.o.kes and burgers were on the table, their talk took a sudden turn to other, safer things like cla.s.ses and a.s.signments and professors. Eventually, the conversation rolled around to the music again.
”Yeah. The music's fine. But the lyrics.” She rolled her eyes. ”The lyrics are always so, like, imaginative.”
”You think so? I've always been fascinated by the stories they tell. Do you ever think that there might be something more than simple imagination behind the stories in the songs?”
”Like what?”
”I don't know. Like, maybe some of the stories aren't just stories. Like, maybe they're some kind of distorted history.”
”History? With all those witches and ghosts and magic talismans and stuff?”
”Why not?” Kelley quirked an eyebrow at him, so he tried another tack. ”I mean, couldn't stuff like that be symbolism for other things?”
”I suppose.” Her agreement was hesitant.
”Suppose it was. For the sake of argument. Don't you have to wonder what might be behind those stories?”
She looked dubious. She was clearly beginning to think he was an idiot. If he shut up now, she'd know for sure. His only hope was to keep talking and bring the conversation back to a place she found more acceptable. But how? Since dropping the subject cold would just freeze ideas about his weirdness in her head, he'd have to work himself out into safer areas.
”Give me a minute, here. If you suppose that there is a real story behind the song, you have to suppose that there are real events and real people in it, right?” She nodded dubiously. ”Given that. And given that there isn't anything like magic in the real world . . .” That seemed to score points. Keep talking, boy. ”A lot of seemingly magical effects can be explained by chemistry and psychological manipulation, partic.i.p.atory hallucination, and stuff like that. You get a bunch of people believing in a thing and telling each other about it, and then they start believing that it really does exist and when they see anything that could by the furthest stretch of the imagination be that thing, it is. That's the way a crocodile becomes a dragon. It's imagination at work, but it's not making it up out of whole cloth, you see?”
”I suppose.”
”Right. It's the same sort of thing with the people in the stories. You take someone like Tam Lin. Here's a guy, a landed lord, that n.o.body has seen for a while. He's, like, disappeared. The song says he went to Faery, but who knows where he really went? Maybe the Faery riff is a cover story, to hide the fact that he was off doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing. Remember, the old-time folk believe in this Faery stuff. Who'd ask what he was really doing? Point is, he comes back and finds somebody, Fair Janet, has taken over his turf. Maybe he's been gone so long that he's been declared legally dead. His problem: he wants his turf back, but can't do it legally. Her problem: she's pregnant, and won't or can't tell who the father is. Maybe she doesn't know. Anyway, she needs protection. Maybe from the father himself, maybe from her father. This Tam Lin cooks up a scheme. By getting married, he gets back his claim on the turf, she gets to keep it too, and the kid gets a father. The Faery stuff gives it all a fancy gloss.”
”You make it sound almost possible.”
”No almost about it.”
”So who's the Queen of Faeiy?”
He wished he knew. He also wished he had an answer for her.
A shadow fell across the table between them, chilling the conversation. John looked up to see a tall man partially silhouetted against the Cow's lights. The light leaked around from behind the stranger lit enough of his long face to show his somber expression. It was an official business kind of expression. John didn't recognize the man, but he got the impression that he should know him, or at least what organization he represented.
There was no corporate affiliation pin on the lapel of the stranger's long leather coat. The coat was dark on the shoulders, as if it was wet, but it hadn't been raining. If it had been, his hair, white-blond and finely styled, would have been plastered to his head.
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