‘They won’t find anything.’
‘I don’t suppose they will. She did go there with Lim, didn’t she?’
He nodded, awash in the wave of pain that tiny motion brought.
‘I can’t understand it. It isn’t anything I would have thought either of them would do! Celcy? The way she felt about the Presences? And Lim! He wasn’t brave, you know, Tas. He always ran away rather than fight. You know, when he was a little fellow, he was so sweet. Gentle natured, and handsome! Everyone thought he was the nicest boy. You adored him. The two of you were inseparable. It was when he got to be about twelve, about the time he entered choir school, he just turned rotten somehow. I’ve never known why. Something happened to him, or maybe it was just in him, waiting to happen.’
‘You were right about Celcy’s not wanting to have a baby,’ he murmured, newly sickened as he remembered. It wasn’t only Celcy who had died. ‘I thought she’d become excited about it, but she really didn’t want it.’
‘Oh, well, love, I knew that,’ she said sympathetically. ‘You knew it, too. A girl like that doesn’t really want babies. She was only a little baby herself. All pretty and full of herself; full of terrible fears and horrors, too. Afraid you’d leave her as her parents did. Hanging on to you. Not willing to share you with anything or anybody. Not willing to share you with a child. She needed you all for herself. When I read her note, I wondered if she would have been able to go through with it after all. I’m sorry, Tas, but it’s true.’
It rang true. Everything she said was true, which simply made Celcy’s scribbled confession more valiant. ‘She was going to have the baby because I wanted it. She did things for me that no one … no one ever knew about.’ He breathed, letting the pain wash over and away. ‘When she wasn’t afraid – she wasn’t at all like the Celcy you always saw. I wanted her not to have to be so … so clinging. But I loved her. I got impatient sometimes, but so much of it was my fault. I never took the time with her I should have, the time to make her change. I just loved her!’
It came out as a strangled plea for understanding, and his mother answered it in the only way she could to let him know she knew exactly what he meant, her voice filled with such an access of pain that his own agony was silenced before it.
‘I know, Tasmin. I loved Lim, too.’
Under the circumstances, the Master General was inclined to waive discipline.
‘I don’t want any more unauthorized removal of manuscripts, Tasmin. I know it’s often done, but the rule against it stands. The fault wasn’t proximately yours, but the responsibility was. You have been punished by the tragedy already. Anything further would be gratuitously cruel.’
Tasmin was silent for an appropriate time. He was not yet at the point where he could feel anything. He was sure a time would come that would demonstrate the truth of what the Master General had said about responsibility.
‘Master.’
‘Yes, Tasmin.’
‘I was actually on the Enigma when it blew.’
‘So I’ve been told. You have the devil’s own luck, Tasmin.’
‘Yes, sir. The fact is, sir, my bro … Lim Terree was singing the Furz score. He had a portable synthesizer, I’d swear it was an Explorer model, and he was good, sir. He really was good. I haven’t heard any better….’
‘If you’re trying to justify …’
‘No, sir, you misunderstand. The score was effective. It wasn’t until he forgot himself and started improvising that the Enigma blew.’
‘Effective!’
‘Yes, sir. There wasn’t a quiver. He got through the first variation and well into the second before he deviated from the score. If they’d been able to go on down the far side, they’d have been well away.’ He choked, remembering Celcy’s face as she had looked joyously at the singer. ‘Well away, sir. Well away.’
There was a long silence. ‘I’m fascinated, Tasmin. And quite frankly, I’m surprised and puzzled. I remember Lim when he was here. I wouldn’t have said this was in character at all. Your wife was a very attractive girl. Could she have – oh, egged him on, so to speak?’
Tasmin shook his head, ‘No, sir. She was terrified of the Presences. She wouldn’t even look at them through a ‘scope.’
‘How do you explain it?’
‘I can’t, sir. I really can’t.’
‘But the score was effective, a real Password.’
‘Yes, sir. I think so, sir.’
‘Well. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Tasmin. I’m sincerely sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
And then home again. Sick leave. Dizziness and nausea and a constant gray feeling. Jamieson dropping in each evening to fill him in on what was going on. A Jamieson oddly tentative and uncharacteristically kind.
‘James dropped out of Tripsinging. He’s going to specialize in orchestrals.’
‘Good.’
‘Refnic’s moving to the Jut. They’ve still got a shortage of Tripsingers there, even after – what is it now, six years? I guess most singers are still afraid of the Crystallite fanatics. Anyhow, Refnic’s going.’
‘Good for him.’
‘Clarin’s staying in Deepsoil Five. When I finish my acolyte’s year, I thought you might like to have her. She’d like to work with you. You know, Master Ferrence, there’s a lot to her.’
It was as though Jamieson was offering him something he could not quite see. Tasmin tried to respond but couldn’t. Jamieson left it at that.
The synthesizer lay on the table in his study where the medical team had dropped it off. There were prints of the satellite pictures, too. The Master General had known he would want to see them even though they showed nothing at all except tumbled crystal.
The synthesizer was the best one Tasmin had ever seen, if not an Explorer model, something close. It had some kind of transposition circuits in it that
