Captives of the Flame Part 31

Rara bent down and kissed him on the cheek. "For Alter," she said. Then she asked, "Tel?"

"What?"

"That woman you brushed by in the street when I saw you running up the block...."

"Yes?"

"Did you ever see her before?"

"I didn't look at her very carefully. I'm not sure. Why?"

"Never mind," Rara said. "You just get on out of here before.... Well, just get."

"So long, Rara." He got.

Not so high as the towers of the Royal Palace of Toron, the green tile balcony outside Clea's window caught the breeze like the hem of an emerald woman pa.s.sing the sea. There was water beyond the other houses, deeper blue than the sky, and still. She leaned over the balcony railing. On the white marble table were her notebook, a book on matter transmission, and her slide rule.

"Clea."

She whirled at the voice, her black hair leaping across her shoulder in the low sun.

"Thanks for getting my message through."

"This is you," she said slowly. "In person now."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm not quite sure what to say," she said, blinking. "Except I'm glad."

"I've got some bad news," he said.

"How do you mean?"

"Very bad news. It'll hurt you."

She looked puzzled, her head going to the side.

"Tomar's dead."

The head straightened, the black eyebrows pulled together, and her lower lip tautened across her teeth until her jaw muscles quivered. She nodded once, quickly, and said, "Yes." Then, as quickly, she looked down and up at him. Her eyes were closed. "That ... that hurts so much."

He waited a few moments, and then said, "Here, let me show you something."

"What?"

"Come over to the table. Here." He took a handful of copper centiunit pieces from his pocket, moved her books and slide rule over, and arranged the coins in a square, four by four, only with one corner missing. Now he took a smaller, silver deciunit and put it on the table about a foot from the missing corner. "Shoot it into the gap there," he said.

She put her forefinger on the silver disk, was still, and then snapped her finger. The silver circle shot across the foot of white marble, hit the corner, and two pieces of copper bounced away from the other side of the square. She looked at him, questioningly.

"It's a gambling game, called Randomax. It's getting sort of popular in the army."

"Random for random numbers, max for matrix?"

"You've heard of it?"

"Just guessing."

"Tomar wanted you to know about it. He said you might be interested in some of its aspects."

"Tomar?"

"Just like I monitored your phone calls, I overheard him talking to another soldier about it before he--before the crash. He just thought you'd be interested."

"Oh," she said. She moved the silver circle away from the others, put the dislocated copper coins back in the square again, and flipped the smaller coin once more. Two different coins jumped away. "d.a.m.n," Clea said, softly.

"Huh?" He looked up. Tears were running down her face.

"d.a.m.n," she said. "It hurts." She blinked and looked up again. "What about you? You still haven't told me all that's happened to you. Wait a moment." She reached for her notebook, took a pencil up, and made a note.

"An idea?" he asked.

"From the game," she told him. "Something I hadn't thought of before."

He smiled. "Does that solve all your problems on--what were they--sub-trigonometric functions?"

"Inverse sub-trigonometric functions," she said. "No. It doesn't go that simply. Did you stop your war?"

"I tried," he said. "It doesn't go that simply."

"Are you free?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad. How did it come about?"

"I used to be a very hardheaded, head-strong, sort of stupid kid, who was always doing things to get me into more trouble than it would get the people I did it to. That was about my only criterion for doing anything. Unfortunately I didn't do it very well. So now, still head-strong, maybe not quite so stupid, I've at least picked up a little skill. I had to do something where the main point wasn't whether it hurt me or not. They just had to be done. I had to go a long way, see a lot of things, and I guess it sort of widened my horizons, gave me some room to move around-some more freedom."

"Childhood and a prison mine doesn't give you very much, does it?"

"No."

"What about the war, Jon?"

"Let's put it this way. As far as what's on the other side of the radiation barrier, which is pretty much out of commission now, there's no need for a war. None whatsoever. If that gets seen and understood by the people who have to see and understand it, then fine. If not, well then, it isn't that simple. Look, Clea, I just came by for a few minutes. I want to get out of the house before Dad sees me. Keep on talking to him. I'll be disappearing for a while, so you'll have to do it. Just don't bother to tell him I'm alive."

"Jon...."