Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls Part 8

"How do you feel, Sarah?" Professor Isabella asks gently.

"I cannot sing the songs I sang long years ago," I try. "For heart and voice would fail me, and foolish tears would flow."

"Sad and foolish?" She smiles. "I've been there. It isn't fatal, my dear. Feeling foolish is like having a head cold: you don't die from it, you only wish you could."

I smile and suddenly hug her, not caring who sees. Then I link my arm through hers and we go this way back home.

Abalone is awake and greets us with a warm smile.

"Where you been?" she says around a bite from a sandwich.

"Sarah wanted out and we walked over to the museum."

"Flash. How'd it go? Did she like it?"

"I think so." Professor Isabella hangs up her coat. "She had one of her spells while we were looking at the Christmas tree. Started singing in Italian."

"Italian? Where'd she learn that? I thought that she didn't speak anything at all until you started teaching her."

"As far as I know, she didn't," Professor Isabella pauses, "but I think a common error we make with the mute is thinking that those who cannot talk also cannot hear."

I grin. "More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang'd to hoa.r.s.e or mute, though fall'n on evil days."

Professor Isabella groans and Abalone laughs, though I suspect more at my teacher's expression than at my joke.

Several days later, when I indicate that I want to go to the museum again, Professor Isabella is clearly reluctant, but when she learns that Abalone is planning on incorporating me into another vehicle heist, she is swayed by this, rather than by my borrowed eloquence.

"We'll go again," she agrees, wagging her finger at me, "but for my reasons and those alone. I'd better do what I can to get you at ease in a crowd. You are still too p.r.o.ne to your spells. And, if Abalone is going to make a thief of you, then I had better get in my lessons while I can."

I giggle. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal."

"Something like that," she replies. "Abalone will teach you well how to build up the treasure we all need to survive in this sorry world-and she'll do it far better than I ever could. But"-again the finger wags-"man does not live by bread alone. Sometimes, once those physical cravings are satisfied, the real hunger for 'why' rather than 'what' and 'how' awakens and that's a much harder hunger to satisfy."

We hurry across a Park to which cold has returned. Professor Isabella has a roll of charge slips ready in her pocket and whenever we pa.s.s a person sheltering under a roadway or in a door, she drops one. I can see the guilt on her face and know that she wonders why she, rather than one of them, is comfortable in an apartment with heat and plenty to eat.

Today, the Christmas tree and its soaring angels are gone and we concentrate on the medieval Christian art that is displayed in the gallery. Professor Isabella quietly tells me tales about saints, apostles, and martyrs.

I soak up the stories and look at the figures: Peter, well-meaning but humanly flawed; bald Paul, with the fanatic's light in his eyes; beloved John, younger than the rest; Mary Magdalene, the Tail Wolf who loved Jesus. The novelty of face and form given to figures I know from the vast amount of Biblical lore in my memory fascinates me. My delight is so great that I can nearly ignore the voices that whisper to me from the gilded statues and the flat faces in the large-eyed paintings.

Wisps of prayers come to my ears, offered by the devout to the G.o.d and saints they could not help but believe stood before them embodied in stone or painted wood. Processional statues mourn the loss of garlands and finery and the pomp that attended them on their special days. Censers breathe out memories of the pungent scents that once seeped in heavy white clouds from the red/white charcoal within them to perfume cathedrals and small wood and thatch churches alike.

I shake my head and grab Betwixt and Between, letting their spikes dent my hand, the dull pain helping to clear my head. I concentrate on the pictures of the four evangelists on the corners of an altarpiece. The words attributed to them are engraved in my memory and I love these men for giving me tongue. Each is shown as a symbol: ox, man, eagle, and lion.

Professor Isabella comes up beside me, slipping easily into her role as lecturer.

"These symbols are probably adapted from the a.s.syrians, an ancient people from one of the regions through which the Hebrews journeyed. Archaeologists, that is people who study a culture by trying to guess what it was like from the ruins, have found these same emblems in the a.s.syrian ruins. They have painfully pieced together what we believe they represented for the people who made them: G.o.ds, heroes, sacred guardians. If only the stone and clay could speak!"

I wrinkle my brow. "The very stones prate of my whereabouts?"

She misunderstands my question. "Yes, exactly-the archaeologists study the stones to make them 'prate' of the people who once built with them. Come along, Sarah, I'm tired, and a cup of tea would ready me for our walk home."

Still reflecting, I trail after her. As we sip tea and hot chocolate in the museum cafe, I am silent, busy making plans. I don't believe that Professor Isabella, tired as she is, even notices.

The museum gives faces and personality to many of the people whose words live in my brain. Portraits show me faces of people famous and not. Some of these are only remembered because they were the subject of a famous artist. These continually mutter indignantly of their lives: the rooms in which they hung, the history of those they glorify. Over the course of many trips, I am learning to listen without becoming lost in the chatter of the inanimate spirits.

Sometimes I come out of listening to what a painting or sculpture has been telling me and find Professor Isabella quizzically watching me. I wonder what she makes of the questions that I whisper sotto voce to the art treasures. Does she hear reason in them or are they hopeless ravings of one walking the borderline of insanity?

During many visits Professor Isabella teaches me, often reading to me both before and after a visit to a certain gallery to give me reference points.

Abalone begins to partic.i.p.ate in these lessons, first sitting with her own work on the fringes of our discussion and listening covertly, later giving up even the pretense of not attending. Sometimes she comes along to the museum, but more often she continues to live the schedule ordained by the Jungle Law of dusk to dawn.

As I grow more confident in my strange ability, I notice that Betwixt and Between are very cautious with me. They still tease me, but there is a gentleness in their words. And, even when I ask directly, they refuse to tell me about the Ivy Green Inst.i.tute.

This annoys me some, for Abalone is having trouble finding records of the place. When she has time away from forgery and code-breaking, she has been searching record-bank after record-bank for some mention of the place. Occasional references have convinced her that the place did once exist, but equally, she is certain that someone or someones wish it to be forgotten.

I do not argue with my dragons except when we are alone, for I have learned that these conversations-heated as they can become-trouble Professor Isabella and Abalone more quickly than anything else that I do.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," I am arguing for the hundredth time one afternoon.

"Let the dead past bury its dead," Betwixt stonewalls.

The door unlocking interrupts us as Professor Isabella returns from the grocery store. I go to help her and when we make dinner I consider with bad temper refusing to feed Betwixt and Between.

I give in to their pleading, though. First and foremost, we are friends, and I cannot believe that they refuse me from a desire to bring me harm.

My lessons are not only in arts and literature. Abalone has succeeded, to her surprise as well as mine, in teaching me to recognize certain of the code symbols used in programming. The idea came to her when she realized that although reading words and numbers of more than two digits still defeats me, I can memorize the pictographs used for illiterates.

After teaching me those for simple traffic commands and warnings, she decided to try and teach me programming icons. Admittedly, the process freaked me out-I had years of resistance against looking at characters that swarmed on the page or screen like guppies in my eye sockets-but slowly I caught on.

In early February, Abalone is ready to take me on another theft.

Excited, I view myself in the bathroom mirror, unable to believe that the reflection does not show how I have changed. Eyes, hair, skin-all are the same. Perhaps brighter, s.h.i.+nier, rosier, but nothing shows of the knowledge of people and places, nothing shows, nothing at all, of the happier, more confident Sarah.

This time, we alter our appearances in a public rest room in a near-empty office complex. Abalone is neutral in dark blue coveralls and boots, her hair under a matching billed cap. Her computer is easy to hand in a tool kit. I am dressed as a junior executive-tailored trousers and blazer of grey-blue linen. Then we go our ways.

I am not certain when things begin to go wrong. My first hint is when I see behind me lights flas.h.i.+ng gold and orange. From my lessons, I recall that these are police lights. Even if I did not, Betwixt and Between would have been enough to remind me.

"Cops, Sarah! Step on it!" Betwixt yells.

"No," Between counters. "Pull over, everything will be fine. Abalone's got it under control."

Ignoring the muttered "I hope" that follows this declaration, I steer the vehicle to the curb. Although there are few pa.s.sersby, I realize that my first reaction isn't fear-it's embarra.s.sment. Trying to calm my frantically beating heart, I open the window as the officer walks over.

"May I have your license and vehicle registration?" he asks with a faint Spanish accent. "Wait here."

He carries them back to his partner in the police car and while she runs them through the computer, he idly drums on the front bubble pane. When his partner says something, the drumming stops and his att.i.tude becomes tense and listening. His partner gets out to a.s.sist him as he's already walking forward.

"Ma'am, please get out of the car, slowly, so that I can see you..."

He continues to direct me in wooden tones through a simple body search. Mechanically, I obey. Somehow, as he is patting me down, I realize that he is nearly as nervous as I am. This does not comfort me.

In a short time, I am arrested for vehicle theft. "My" car is taken in tow and I am stashed with my belongings in the back of the patrol car.

As the patrol car pulls away from the curb, the flas.h.i.+ng orange-and-gold lights fall on Abalone standing in an alleyway, leaning against a wall. Her expression is neutral and indifferent.

The police station that officers Martinez and Chen take me to is quiet enough that my appearance makes a stir.

"We've got ourselves an MV thief," Martinez brags. "I think it's one of the ring that's been working this area."

In the brighter light I can see that his skin is dotted with acne. He's young, a rookie.

"Hus.h.!.+" Chen reminds her partner. She's an Eurasian with grey streaks in her close-cropped hair and rank stripes on her uniform shoulders.

Martinez looks chastened for all of five seconds, but he listens when Chen directs him to take my shoulder bag and inventory the contents. Then he is told to run an ID check on me, first through police records and then farther.

"Is there a secretary available? I want to get a statement," Chen asks the desk officer.

"'A,' okay?" When she nods, he slides a code flimsy to her. "Here's the key."

Chen takes me into a small room with white stuccoed walls. In the center is an oval table surrounded by several chairs. She seats me in one.

"Put your hand on those grey outlines and look at the s.h.i.+eld projected on the wall."

I do this, recognizing the devices as similar to ones recently installed at the Home. A light flashes and I am holo-graphed and printed.

Chen's attention is for a screen set in the table surface as she calls up the correct program from the secretary's memory. Watching, I think that I am seeing afterimages from the retina printing, for over the data streaming by in a sickening stream a single pictograph superimposes itself: a line drawing of a face, fingers held to lips: the universal illiterate symbol for silence.

Pausing, her fingers on a tab, Chen asks, "Can you read?"

I shake my head "No."

"Okay, I've set this for audio, then. Listen carefully and answer all the questions. Be sure to follow the directions. I'll be back in a few minutes."

I can feel her desire for a hot cup of coffee as she leaves. Then I watch as the door slides and merges into the wall. We had rooms like this in the Home. No windows, no door once it was closed, nothing so crude as ventilation ducts. Escapeproof.

I tug at my hair and try to listen to the computer secretary's directions.

"First, be informed before you answer any questions that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?"

Forgetting the pictograph's warning, I whisper, "Yes."

The computer begins its interrogation, starting with name and moving into the details of the arrest. This time, I remember to stay silent. Patiently, after each question that I refuse to answer, the computer asks "Are you invoking your right to remain silent?"

I do not even answer this and after a pause it states, "For the record, subject chooses to remain silent."

The neuter voice eventually falls dumb, and I study the room. I miss Betwixt and Between intensely and hope that they are being treated well. As I think of them, I become aware of a little voice. I listen carefully and soon I hear that it is reciting the same phrase over and over in a sing-song voice.

"I've got a secret! I've got a secret!"

Standing, I search and find that the voice seems to be coming from near where the police s.h.i.+eld is projected on the wall. I touch, but find no pattern in the rough stucco. The voice continues even as I search, perhaps more gleefully. I do not believe that it knows I can hear it.

"I've got a secret! I've got a see-cret!"

Finally, my voice low, I say, "No one ever keeps a secret as well as a child."

The chant stops, startled, then begins again more hesitantly, "I've got...a secret. I've...got a secret."

"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses," I taunt.

"My secret!" the voice insists. "I've got a secret!"

"He's a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue," I suggest.

"I've got a secret! I do! I do!"

I turn away, yawning. "The secret of being a bore is to tell everything."

"Believe me! I've got a secret! You'd love to have my secret. Would! I've got a secret!"

I do not turn from studying the ceiling, apparently enraptured by vague patterns in the stucco. The voice from the wall cannot bear my indifference.

"Here. I'll share," it teases. "Press the blue diamonds on the center of the s.h.i.+eld."

I hasten over and press. The wall starts to slide.

"I told you. I've got a secret!" the smug voice says.

I pat the wall as I step through the revealed door and hear the voice resume happily, "I've got a secret!"

The corridor is comfortably wide and dimly lit, even after the door slides shut behind me, from recessed panels. I follow it until it ends in another door. Through a one-way panel, I see that I am at the edge of the reception area. An officer has just brought in a group of vandals.

Heart leaping, I recognize Abalone, Peep, and Chocolate. My Pack!

As I watch, Peep and Chocolate start an argument, shoving and pus.h.i.+ng each other. A few officers move to break them apart and are drawn into the scuffle. Under the cover of the distraction, Abalone reaches and touches a few icons on a desktop computer. Bells begin to chime from various workstations. A few more taps and drawers begin to fly open and shut. Suddenly, it begins to rain.

As chaos reigns, Abalone begins to slip off down the corridor toward the secretaries. I choose that moment to step out in front of her.

Her face shows her astonishment, but she merely indicates a side exit. I run, stopping only to scoop up my dragons from a desktop. As my hand touches them, the lights go out and a horrid cackling surges from the speakers. The rain falls harder. We vanish into the kind streets.

When we have run far enough, we stop and change our appearances some. Then Abalone takes us to a computerized restaurant, where she thrills the little wolves by making the vending machines spit out food on command.

"Wizard!" Peep laughs around a pink coconut s...o...b..ll. "Really flipping!"

Abalone bows with an ironic grin, but I can tell she is pleased. For her own reasons, she rarely displayed her talents before the Pack and this homage thrills her. After eating, we send them off to the Jungle with promises to meet again.

Happy as I am with Abalone's rescue, I am still puzzled as to what went wrong. My initial unworthy thought that she set me up is gone. Once they are well fed and we are on our way home, Betwixt and Between are able to offer me some answers.

"There we were, no s.h.i.+t," Betwixt says, "in the interrogation room, tossed on a ledge with the junk from your bag, a red tag hung around the base of our necks. They'd finished with the ID cards and the other stuff and Martinez lifted us in his heavy hands. 'Wonder why a pretty dish like that is hauling a bit of junk like this around?' says he."