22)

It was due to Ro's popularity with Mishy and Manoah Ishmael that she became good friends with the owners of Eden Resort. But it was by her own recognizance, and perhaps her dramatic situation, which allowed her to dine with the Ishmael's privately the first evening. But it was the boys' inquiries after Ro the following day that firmly established Ro's place in the Ishmael home.
Their apartments were on the highest level of the manor, the fourth floor. There were six rooms: three bedrooms, a fine kitchen, living room and enormous bathroom, all providing ample space for the Ishmael family. Ro grew to know the home well, and even felt comfortable there, though she spent every night in her own second-floor suite.
The Ishmaels found an uncanny delight in Ro. She was young, smart, clever, energetic, someone who could keep up with the active children, and who even liked playing around them, making her presence known in virtual reality games as well as in their lives. By the end of her second day, Ishmael Ishmael had stopped calling her "Miss Ro" constantly, and she was now "Ro," and, less occasionally, "dear" or some foreign pet name that he often used with his boys, the proper Hebrew sound of which Ro never quite caught.
On her third morning, Ro awoke late to the pungent and sweet scent of lilies in her room. She dashed out of bed to find the bouquet of blooming white flowers in a gleaming purple and blue glass vase on the table. There was no card, no message, and Ro lingered over the flowers thoughtfully. When she asked Shirah about them later, Ro was told that they'd been delivered not long before from an anonymous friend. Ro idly wondered if they'd been sent by Zeta, but it seemed far too unlikely. He'd never do something so prosaic. And every morning afterward she awoke to a new bouquet of flowers freshly delivered, in many different varieties. Her favorite, however, were the orange tiger lilies. She felt they reflected her tangy and open personality.
Through her days of quiet rest, Ro learned to let go of things that were beyond her control, namely Zeta's disappearance and utter abandonment of her. It was nothing she could help, and she didn't try. By the dawning of the forth day, Ro even believed she understood his peculiar action. She had been sick, very unwell, and perhaps he sensed she needed to be left alone for a while in order to straighten herself out. It was wrong of Zeta to make such a massive, damaging assumption. Ro couldn't help but feel that, in a way, he had been right. The intuitiveness of the robot into her own mind only irked her further. Sometimes it just provoked her into an odd little smile. Zeta was many things, and many things he was not, but he was always surprising. He had known what would heal her. Ro had her coffee in the mornings, her tea in the afternoon with the Ishmaels, usually with Shirah, and over such reflective times in companionship as well as solitude, Ro knew she was healing.
Most of her days she spent lounging around and talking with Shirah. Ro discovered that Shirah was an immigrant who'd been sent to the states six years ago to marry Ishmael, a man she'd never met, but whose families were ancient acquaintances. This horrified and fascinated Ro at the same time. Arranged marriages hardly occurred anymore; it went against nearly everything that the world stood for in 2043 AD. Shirah, however, said that she'd been pleased with the arrangement, not particularly because she wanted to be a wife and mother, but because she was happy to reach the shores of America. She had a life of her own, a feminist in her way, taking on the world quietly, raising her children with love and peace, teaching them that justice and equality is love, that patience and understanding is the embodiment of love. Ro was fascinated by Shirah's philosophy of the world, and often listened in deep attention.
The times that she was not visiting with Shirah, or playing out of doors on fine September evenings in the company of Manoah and Mishy, Ro spent sitting in the common room of the resort's first floor. Usually, on the table beside the chair she favored, rested an iced glass of club soda filled with bright red cherries, laced by a drop of vanilla syrup. Shirah concocted the unique beverage especially for Ro, from the bar in the common dinning room. Mrs. Ishmael added a special touch to the drink, and Ro didn't know what it was, but she no longer doubted that some people in the world held a certain magic. Shirah Ishmael was one of those people. While she sipped the beverage delicately, Ro would try her best to focus on television, but it never had interested her. Most of the time her thoughts would wander, reminding her of things in the distant or more recent past, and she would grow to miss Tiff, Casey, the Dumes', but especially she would miss Zeta.
On the late afternoon of her sixth day of rest, Ro stumbled happily through the door of the main lobby, having been chased inside by ornery Manoah, who ran the opposite direction in giggles. Ro tilted over at her waist, catching her breath.
"Ishmael," she said to her friend behind the counter, "your kids wear me out!"
Ishmael snickered and smiled. "They are very fond of you."
"It's mutual. They're--sweet." It wasn't a word she said often, especially with kids, and she used it then as a sort of test, to see if it suited her. She wasn't sure.
Ishmael paused a moment as though about to say something, but he just gave her another grin and nodded. "There's a package for you, Ro. Just arrived."
"From who?"
Ishmael stepped from the counter, out the side door, carrying with him a plastic sack sunk at the bottom by weight. "The bookstore in Wilmington, I presume. One of the employees brought it over himself to complete the order." He handed the sack to Ro, and she watched him, waiting for more details. He didn't have many to offer. "I asked who bought it and he said he didn't know, or wouldn't know---" Ishmael looked away, his brow furrowed in self-conference. "It was something like that."
Ro pried apart the handles of the bag and pulled out what books were inside. Real books, too, just what she liked. No Reader discs. These were older books, used ones, printed early in the century, some forty years previous. Ro set the heavy, thick books on the counter to examine them closely. She felt like it was Christmas. She smiled when she saw to what subject the titles pertained. Celestial mechanics and science. There was even a book on Einstein's five important works, including his papers on relativity, which was what some would argue the birth of modern science. Most of it would probably go over her head, Ro thought, but she didn't care. The other three titles were introductions to astronomy, physics and astrophysics. They were probably a little out of date, but the dusty dates hardly mattered. It was better for her to read the history of astrophysics before moving on to the most recent scientific studies. Ro was pleased by the titles. It was only natural she should thus be confused by their presence.
"This is stuff you're interested in?" Ishmael asked, after he glanced over the books.
"A little, yes."
Ishmael scratched his head, struck by the thought that Ro didn't seem like she had a scientific mind. He hadn't thought much about it, and perhaps she did have a genuine interest in things like physics and astronomy. "Are these from Mr. Smith?" Although he called the girl Ro, to Ishmael Ro's friend was still Mr. Smith, a very foreboding figure who loomed in the background like a hazy alley shadow in a detective novel.
"Uh," Ro hesitated, organizing the books in front of her in a neat pile, "no. I'm sure these aren't from him. Neither are the flowers. Zee's not like that," she shook her head, her nose in a wrinkle of repugnance. "There maybe a lot of things I don't understand about Zee Smith, but I know one thing: this isn't something he'd do."
Yet, aside from Tiffany Morgan, Zee was the only one who knew she had a propensity toward studying astrophysics. And it couldn't have been Tiff who sent the books, and it wasn't Tiff who sent the flowers. Tiff didn't know where she was, for one thing, and it wasn't like Tiff, either. Ro knew it was neither Zeta nor Tiffany Morgan. She came to this conclusion firmly while reading the introduction to one of her books later that evening along the empty beach. It wasn't Zeta and it wasn't Tiff. Who did that leave?
Ro caught her own breath and looked up abruptly from the pages. She stared off into the face of the sea, edging toward her as the moon rose.
"The Savior!" she said aloud. Then she groaned. That idea, too, seemed impossible. How would it know? Why would it care? Ro closed up the book, thinking it was time she headed back to the house. It was growing dark, the waves edged at her dry bit of sand, and she was getting chilled. She refused to think that it was The Savior who was sending her the batch of fresh flowers daily, and who had bought her books to study. What else might The Savior do?
Ro checked the electronic ads on the net daily, using the Ishmael's private computer in their apartments. So far she'd seen nothing eye catching. But it was the seventh morning that she asked Shirah if an ad might be placed using the Ishmael's e-mail address. Ro explained that she hadn't an address, but that it was important that this ad be placed. Shirah asked no questions, too sure it meant the world to Ro, and consented. The ad was up by the same evening.
"Einstein is looking for a dart savior. Is the archer out there?" It was a conspicuous message to be sure, but Ro knew that The Savior would understand, if there really was such a thing.
But Ro wasn't surprised that the ad went unanswered, and by the following day, after its twenty-four hour birth cycle, the ad disappeared having yielded no lead. Reluctantly, Ro decided to let it go. Obviously The Savior wished to keep its identity perfectly shrouded, otherwise an introduction would've commenced by then.
Ro was worried that the Ishmaels would think her behavior about the ad and the use of their e-mail address as peculiar. But Shirah had been so loving about the whole thing, as if she knew what sort of madness Ro ran from, that Ro wondered how she could think they were suspicious. They might know something, but whatever they thought it didn't bother them. It was Shirah's magic again, and it would surface later in the day just how much Shirah knew but didn't tell.
During dinner Ro sat among the Ishmaels, gathered around the table in the kitchen, Mishy beside her in his booster seat. She was like one of the family. A call came up from the lobby by one of the employees that someone of authority wished to speak with Ishmael Ishmael, the owner of Eden Resort. Ishmael went down directly, and gave his wife a withering look. Shirah went on calmly as if nothing had happened. Ro was frightened at the word "authority" and begged to be excused, but didn't wait for permission from Shirah. Ro ran out of the apartment and took the back service elevator to the first floor. Carefully sneaking around corners, Ro halted when she began to hear Ishmael's voice.
". . . I'm sorry, there is no here by that name," Ishmael said, using his regal manager's tone.
"What about the description? Blonde hair, blue eyes, about five-four----"
Ro held her breath and bit her lip. The voice of the second speaker was unmistakably that of Agent West.
"You have described a few of my employees, sir," was Ishmael's distant yet provoking reply. He added on a chuckle, just to show the agent he was teasing. "I am sorry you've come all the way to Wilmington for nothing."
"I wouldn't say it was for nothing," West spat, his eyes brimming with fire. He knew he was on the right track, and that Rowen girl was in North Carolina somewhere. Bennett had sent him there to follow up on leads. Agent West was starting to doubt the competency of their tip-off covert, whoever it was. "If I find out you've been lying to me, Mr. Ishmael, I can shut this place down." His tone was fragmented with anger, but it held to an eerie, threatening serenity, like a quiet psychosis. West occasionally thought he verged on the incomprehensible edge of violent psychosis.
Ishmael was confident in the face of disaster. He didn't believe that any government agent held the single power to wipe out a business. "I am not lying. Please, sir, if you would go now I would appreciate it. Your presence frightens my guests."
Ro tucked herself closer to the deep doorframe she hid behind, fifteen feet and around the corner from the main lobby. She closed her eyes and titled her head against the frame, praying that West would take the advice, leave, and even skip town.
West did leave, and Ro followed him with her ears as he left through the front of the building, out the main double doors. She heard as they slid apart to allow him passage and came together again in a muted thud. Ro sneakily dashed between corners and doorways, finding her way to the front of the hotel. When she made it in the main portion of the lobby, she looked over to the counter for Ishmael, but he had already disappeared. The lobby was empty, and Ro fell into a chair set beside a window that looked out to the front parking lot of the resort. Some of the window pane was camouflaged by a leafy palm plant in a high brass planter. She allowed the branches to obscure her image while she espied West. He sat on the perimeter of the steps, in the dim sun of early evening, and took out his tiny short-range communication unit. With the ear piece on, the thin mouthpiece like a two millimeter gauge wire fixed by his face, and the remote for the device in his hand, he began to speak. Ro could barely hear what he said through the window pane.
"It's West," the agent began. "I'm at the Eden Resort. Look, I don't know who this tipster is, but he or she is starting to lead us on a wild chase, and I'm sick of it. There's no Ro Rowen here . . . . Well, then I wish Bennett would look into his own hunches! . . . . No, I don't care. I'm leaving here now. . . . I'll see you back at The Springs later. . . . Yeah, okay. . . . West out."
Ro gave a sigh of relief and clasped her hands tightly in front of her, under her chin, as though in a humble amen. She saw the agent slide into his nondescript dark vehicle and vanish from the lot, beyond the window pane through which she viewed the world. Ro set her hand to the frame and tapped her nails.
"If Zeta doesn't come back soon," she thought in dismay, "I'm going to have to get out of here myself."
It was too dangerous for her to stay in one spot too long, even if she had been unwell and needed a chance to recover from nervous exhaustion.
Ro returned to the Ishmaels upstairs, still welcome at the table. They ate through the meal in near silence. But when the children left, Ro remained and was able to question Ishmael directly.
"Why didn't you tell him I was here?"
Ishmael raised his dark eyes to her over the rim of his glass. "He had no business knowing."
"Business!" Ro had risen her voice unnoticeably from the shock of Ishmael's idea. She lowered her volume so the children in the next room wouldn't hear. "Ishmael, he's the--the government! You just don't tell them to--to---"
"Ro," Ishmael was serious, "I knew that when you got here you were not well. I didn't ask questions then, and I don't ask questions now. It's not my business. It's not that agent's business. Whatever you fight through, you fight through on your own." He lifted his eyebrows in a look to ask whether she comprehended his meaning.
Ro was never so fond of someone she knew so little about as she was for Ishmael Ishmael at that point. She smiled to give him her sincere thanks without words. And when she and Shirah met each other's gaze, Ro understood inexplicably how much of a hand Shirah had had in her husband's firm opinion. It was Shirah's magical touch again. The radiation of her kindness and goodness exuded far into Ro, and she felt she was a better person just by standing in Shirah's presence.
Early on the eighth morning, Ro was sound asleep in bed, only to fall out of her dreams by the prodding of something at her arm. A gentle kneading. A soft motorized noise, like a hummingbird's wings. Ro stirred but was still too asleep to lift her eyes to the new day. Minutes passed and the kneading on her forearm continued, until, all at once, it stopped. Ro lifted her eyes slowly, and having thought she heard a faint "meow," she dashed out of bed and made for the living room. At the corner of the open balcony door, Ro saw the flick of a dark brown or black furry tail wisp by and disappear. Ro flew to the opening in a couple long strides and drew away the frothy sheer panels. There was no cat in sight, and nothing stirred except for the leaves on the trees. Ro sighed and looked about the sky of another fine morning. Her tree top balcony, limbs within a skip and jump, provided the perfect escape route for any clawed feline. Ro touched her arm, still able to feel the impression of the paws where they'd pushed so softly against her.
During breakfast, Ro mentioned her furry visitor that morning. "I had a cat in my room when I woke up," she said, then sipped juice, glancing between Ishmael and Shirah. Mishy bounced cheerfully in his high seat, yelling out the words "Kitty! Kitty!" Ro touched his arm to calm him. He settled immediately.
"A cat?" Shirah asked. "That's a little unusual."
"Don't you know of any cats around here?"
"I'm sure there must be a few," Shirah provided, her voice heavy in its contemplation, "but I don't know of any, especially any that would wander into the hotel rooms."
The thought of the visiting feline preoccupied Ro's mind for the rest of the day. At least for most of the day. And then she had other things to think about.
In mid-evening, the sun waning closer to its western shell, Ro sat among the lentils and "delves" of the resort's back landscape, appropriately titled "Delve Garden." A hidden place, lined with hedges, overgrown wisteria no longer in bloom, pine ivy that covered portions of the ground beside the trunks of thick deciduous trees, and the occasional puff of a sleeping azalea bush. This mysterious Eden was a comfort to Ro.
She had spent so many moments of divine solitude in the Delve Garden in order to find structure in her mind. She had been healed here from the brutality of her past, by the haunting of her parents. Though not over their death and never expecting to be, Ro knew there was very little chance of discovering the truth, finding the things that had belonged to her parents; she would never know what their essential role had been in life, and no one she could talk to would bring her such insight. Ro had learned to let it go, the way that the trees around the garden let go of leaves, one by one. She could focus her attention away from her family, away from the widening gap between her and her brother, and see clearly what her life was. Her life was about freedom.
Ro was flipping through the pages of her astrophysics book, enjoying the introduction to something she'd contemplated the study of frequently. She was learning, and not only about her own mind, but about science.
"Not like it'll do me any good!" Ro thought to herself, in belittling fashion. She never suspected she'd have a real chance to further her mind by attending college. It seemed unlikely. She'd have to settle for being self-taught. In the present, this was no regret to her. Even Einstein had had trouble in school and getting into a university. Ro enjoyed learning. If Zeta could learn, she could learn. He was, in a way, her role model. Her lip twisted tightly as she wondered if the idea could be reversed; she wondered if she could be, somehow, Zeta's role model. It suddenly struck her as funny, and she burst a small laugh.
Manoah crept up behind her, and Ro childishly pretended she didn't hear him so the boy could have his fun. He attempted to startle her by placing his fingertips on her back and shouting out "Boo!" Ro jumped and hollered her feigned fear. Manoah was pleased. Ro set her hands over the boys arms, doused in a long-sleeved cotton shirt. The evening was getting cool, as it usually did along the southern coast of North Carolina in mid-September. Ro had on a sweater as well, a thin ivory thing she'd borrowed from Shirah. It kept the chill away during the hoisted sweep of wind.
Manoah leaned to Ro and kissed her on her cheek. He shifted on his feet, weight on one foot then on the other. "There's a message for you," he spoke delicately. "Ima said I should bring it to you."
"A message, huh?" Ro tickled the boy on the sides, and her toppled on the grass in a helpless heap of laughter. "Better tell me what it is! I won't stop until you do!"
Through his giggles and trying to push away Ro's torturous fingers, Manoah managed to deliver the message. "Ima said you should go to the beach. Someone's waiting for you."
Ro stopped suddenly, and her breath caught in her throat. "Zeta," she whispered, her stare far away, into the past and the future, but not in the present. Had Zeta finally come back?
She brought herself in order and helped Manoah to his feet. Carrying her thick science book in one hand and Manoah's in the other, together they walked through the back door of the house, out of the garden. Manoah ran off in the direction of the common room, his short attention span affixed on the sound of the television not far off. Ro set her science book in the employee's only section of the clerk counter, where she knew it would be safe, and being a good friend of the Ishmaels provided Ro with benefits unavailable to other guests. The lobby held no people, no company, and Ro figured most were in their rooms or engaged in some other activity. Ro gave the place a glance in a momentary reverie toward the week she'd spent in solitude, and that loneliness seemed as though it was about to end.
She wanted it to be Zeta. And, somehow, she knew it would be.
Once outside the front lobby doors, Ro set a hand to her chest to still her breathing and rapid heart. The attempt was in vain; there was too much excitement and hope in her that would not be easily extinguished. She tufted the over-sized sleeves of her sweater above her thin elbows and dashed for the staircase, then flew down to the beach. The sound of the waves clashing against the sand, clashing against each other, seemed to coexist with her own sense of humanness, and all those automatic mechanics that seemed to make her human were in tune with nature.
From the cliff above the beach, unusual for that portion of the seashore, the coast was cast in a dark shadow which made perceiving difficult, unless you were a synthoid or blessed by some apparatus which made seeing at night just as easy as seeing during the day. Ro squinted against the blackness, trying to find Zeta's form along the cliff.
"Zee!" she shouted, completely against all thought. She hadn't even been aware of the words or her voice.
Zeta looked over, having been perfectly perched like a statue atop one of the higher rocks of the coast. "Audio source recognized" came across his display, and for a moment the words frustrated him. He knew who it was and didn't need his processors to remind him. As Ro traipsed steadily, no jogging, no running, no horse-like canter, just a calm but light step, Zeta hopped down from the rock and landed on the sand. His equilibrium compensators kicked in so he could maintain his balance after an eight-foot drop onto a completely pliable surface. Once he was steadied, Ro was near enough to him that he could distinguish the color of her eyes: a faint blue, and the expression in them: a sort of hostile remorse. She didn't know whether to be elated at his return or hate him for it.
Ro stopped and folded her arms over her middle, a good foot in front of Zeta. She scrutinized him in an unfamiliar manner, as though she was about to engage him in a physical brawl. The idea was tempting, but her human bones and muscles were nothing to the synthoids adamantium frame, even if he was in hologram.
Zee dipped his head and a hand tapped at the side of his leg like a nervous boy. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know you're mad."
Ro growled in her throat and showed her teeth. "Mad isn't exactly the word I would choose. Try infuriated. Try embarrassed. Try scared. Try worried absolutely sick! Any of those would be better than mad!"
"I understand." Zeta knew that he'd feel awful upon returning, but the expectancy had hardly made the experience easier. "I didn't mean to cause you any grief."
"Grief!" she repeated, her fists clenched at her sides. "What do you know of my grief, huh?" Ro punched him on the chest to alleviate some of her temperamental frustration. It had to have an escape route somehow. And Zeta wouldn't feel it, no matter how hard she hit him. She was so angry that she wasn't sure she could stand to look at him. Abruptly, she growled again and turned away, as though threatening to leave him there alone.
Zeta waited patiently. It was curious to see Ro's reaction, to see the human reaction. He tried to understand what it meant, where Ro's violence and irritation stemmed from. It was a more pleasant side of the experience for him, that study into human psychology, and one he hadn't anticipated. When Ro stopped and reversed her steps back to him, a new feeling was there, and a calmer Ro was before him. "Are you better?" he asked. That was what he really cared to know.
Ro huffed, vexed by his sudden concern of her health. The softness of his voice and the gesture of his interest seeped from her mind the fires of anger. She repudiated her anger. It would no longer exist if she didn't let it. "I'm better, yes. Thank you for asking."
"I'm so glad." He smiled a little.
Ro was infected by the innocent smile, not altogether human but more so than when she'd first met the synthoid's Zee Smith persona. "What am I going to do with you? You're hopeless. You leave me for a week, and yet I'm saying you're hopeless. I'm getting soft."
"You're learning," he corrected her latter statement. "You're just learning to be soft. I wouldn't say you are just yet."
"Thanks," Ro snickered, appreciating the honestly polluted remark, especially from him. "I missed you. And your knack of always putting me in my dusty little place."
Zeta didn't quite understand the analogy, but he tried. "I missed you, too."
"Where have you been, anyway?"
The lids of the hologram blinked over navy eyes. "I went back to West Country. I went back to Gwennie's."
This erupted Ro. "You did what?"
"I went back to Oregon," he repeated.
"Yes, I caught that. But--why? And why didn't you want me to go with you?"
"I didn't want you to get sick again. I wanted you to stay here and be well. I was able to find out some information, but very little of it helpful."
"Like what?"
"There are some things missing from her house, like it'd been robbed during or just after her death, but not likely before she succumbed to the stroke." Tired of standing still, Zeta began to pace along the shore, and Ro walked beside him. He had her attention, hooked by the truth and her natural curiosity, and he was glad the initial portion of their new meeting was finished. She had forgiven him, and in that forgiveness he was able to forgive himself. Abandoning Ro was not an event he wished to repeat. But he did not pretend that it wouldn't happen again.
"What sorts of things?"
"That is one of the piece of knowledge I was unable to obtain. There were policeman everywhere around the mansion, along with her family members and plenty of Glenview residents. I wasn't able to get close enough or bother anyone for information. The townspeople seemed lacking in detailed knowledge of the robbery--if it was a robbery. I would like to investigate this further when I have the opportunity. I didn't stay long, only a few days."
"Did you see the Dumes'?"
"No. That's too dangerous, Ro."
Ro knew that, but thought she would ask anyway. She missed the Dumes', Jas and Julie especially. "You were only gone a few days? What about the rest of the week?"
"I came back here."
A numb, thunderstruck Ro squeaked out a protest.
Zeta wanted to laugh at her, but he couldn't. He could only imitate laughter, not accomplish it on his own. It was still too hard to find something amusing enough to evoke laughter from him. "I've been staying in town. Watching. Waiting."
Ro huffed and clenched her teeth. "You!--Zeta!" Ro pushed him away at the shoulder, hurt all over again by his desertion. "You knew how upset your note would make me, and you never stopped by sooner to explain?"
"What was to explain?"
"The poem," Ro stated slowly, "it was like a mad riddle. Poetry never gets to the point of things, you know. I didn't get what it was supposed to mean. And I tried not to read too much into it."
"I meant nothing by it. I just thought it was a nice poem. And it reminded me of us, always wondering around at night, under the moon. I told you: I like Byron." Zee winced as he realized, after scanning through the poem in his mind, how she could've taken it the wrong way. "I see. I didn't intend for you to think I was leaving you. But that's not true. I did leave you, though not for good."
Ro waited, unsure what to say, except that she believed him. And she was glad she hadn't thought the worst. Her optimism saved her from further scarring yet again. "You were cruel to leave at all."
"I know," he said, a touch full of the smug. A flash of robotic arrogance flooded his stale countenance. "But I was right to leave you."
Ro lowered her gaze from his. She pushed at him again, and he knew she'd thought he'd been right, too. "Sometimes I don't know what is worse," Ro said. "Being right or being cruel?"
"Sometimes you can't have one without the other," he replied somberly.
"Say, Zee," Ro began after a couple paces of silence, "you haven't by chance been sending me flowers everyday, have you?"
"Flowers?" he reiterated, for the idea puzzled him. He was familiar with the custom of giving flowers as a gift, but it was a gift that died, and therein was the loss of logic. Why give a gift that would die? "No."
"I didn't think so."
"Flowers have been sent to you?" Zee was trying to find clues to perhaps solve the mystery.
"Yes. Everyday a new bouquet. They're bought from a certain florist shop in town. Delivered every morning at eight sharp by a man who knows nothing of how they were ordered. Never a card or a message. Just the flowers. Shirah--that's Ishmael's wife--she puts them in my room when she gets them. I wake up, and there they are."
Zeta grasped his hands behind his back, the edges of his coat lifted in the light breeze. Flowers?--sent to Ro? It was a beguiling idea. "It's not me," he repeated. "Have you thought of anyone else?"
"Just The Savior."
"The Savior. A possibility."
They had both thought so frequently and so highly of their unknown hero that its uncanny but lofty title was now imagined as being written in proper capital letters, like someone's name. The name of a saint.
"Why, though? And there's the books!" Ro almost forgot about the books. She repeated quickly and fervently to Zeta the presents she had received. At the tail of the summary, she said that only two people knew she had an interest in science: himself and Tiff. "And it's not Tiff."
"Not me, either."
"I didn't think so. That only leaves The Savior. It must know. It must've been present in Hillsburg when I was telling Tiff."
"Or," Zeta gave an interlude, "at the Greek restaurant in Spring City. We were talking about it then, remember?"
"That's right. Well, then in either of those places but no where else. The Greek restaurant seems most likely, since it saved us just after we left. What do you think, Zee? Think it's The Savior?"
Zee stopped and faced Ro. He gazed at her a moment, still in thought. He finally conceded to the idea by a moderate nod of his head. "Yes. It must be."
"We need to find out who that is."
"I suppose so, but you see it's not necessary," was Zee's reluctant response. "Or it will show up to us, someday."
Someday, Ro thought, and it brought a smile to her lips. Zeta's favorite word: someday. Everything would happen someday. Immortals were lucky enough to have the chance to see every someday as it was born and lived and died. Ro would not be so lucky. The thought of her own mortality prompted her to take Zeta's hand in hers. He pressed her fingers gently, an ease to her past week of worry.
"Oh, Zee, I almost forgot. West was here yesterday!"
"Agent West? How---?"
"Ishmael lied to him. Told him I wasn't here." She elaborated in some of the story, and Zeta listened acutely. He surmised that they ought to leave tomorrow, just to be on the safe side. Ro set her head to his arm briefly, just glad he had returned. She felt safer with him close. It'd been a worrisome week for Ro, thinking at first that Zeta had turned himself in, and then the appearance of West, the deliveries from a secret party. If she'd been in danger, however, she would've found a way to escape. She wasn't entirely dependent on the synthoid, but his presence in her life as a bodyguard was a large portion of her appreciation for him, but not so large that it outweighed his advantage as a friend.
"Are you enjoying them?" he asked. "The books?"
"Of course. I don't understand half of it yet. But I will." Ro managed an unwilling grin as she looked out to the band of white sand before her. The word was at the tip of her tongue and she allowed it liberation. "Someday."
They'd traveled across the beach well past the stairs to the house. The sun had turned red far to the west, out of view, and the sky had been blanketed by peach, russet, and the forming midnight blue brushed against the horizon, bleached in dots by the crests of the ocean's waves. Sometimes the white crests in the dark blue water looked like moving stars.
Ro poked Zeta in his side. "You still owe me a story."
"I do?"
"One of the Seven Sisters. The story of Merope. You promised you'd tell me about her."
"Ah," he interjected, growing wise to the memory of the Seven Sisters and Ro's fascination with the myth. "Merope, yes. The lost Pleiad."
"I thought Electre was the lost one."
"Some think she is. Others say it is Merope. I believe in Merope. She is the dimmest star of the visible seven. It seems to fit in astronomical and mythological terms."
"Why was she lost?"
"She was ashamed. And to hide her shame she hid herself from her sisters. When they were transformed into stars, she was the dimmest, all because she felt she deserved not to be brighter than the others."
The power of suggestion, the thoughts of stars, caused Ro to lift her eyes to the expansive galaxy above. But it was too light out still to see but three twinkles in the wide firmament. Ro glanced at Zeta. "Why was she the dimmest?"
"Because her sisters made her feel ashamed."
"That was pretty stupid of them. I'm glad I don't have evil sisters like that." Ro momentarily thought of Julie Dumes, who, because of her personality and lifestyle, in turn brought Ro's thoughts to Tiff Morgan. The memory of Tiff telling Ro she was loved gave a fuzzy feeling to her heart. She wanted to tell Zeta about the unlikely incident with her sister, but it wasn't the appropriate time.
Zeta continued, always in the mood to tell a fable. He enjoyed story-telling, especially to his captive audience of one. "They looked down upon her, all of them. Even Electre, whose imperfect son was overthrown during the fall of Troy. Even Maia, the gentlest of all the sisters, thought Merope unworthy of her fixed place in the Heavens."
"But--why?" Ro began to lose her patience, and demanded she know why it was that Merope was so ill-favored by her six sisters, and why Merope was thwarted to be the dimmest star of the seven perceptible to an eye scanning the universe. Ro was starting to feel a kinship with Merope.
"Because," Zeta started, "Merope married Sisyphus. And the six sisters were ashamed of their Merope. They had all married immortals, you understand, but not Merope. She was an immortal who fell in love with a mortal."
Zeta's hand tightened on Ro's as she replied. Her words were carefully chosen, though they seemed to have a rushed, untended appearance.
"That seemed to happen a lot back then, didn't it?"
The synthoid was able to snicker as he glanced at Ro, then out to the infinite sea, up to the skies, where Merope and her six sisters were winking, somewhere, down upon the mortals and immortals of the earth. "Yes, Ro," Zee said through a smile, "it did."

The story continues in Erasure Attempt.

--

Notes

The Springs
Agent West uses this term to describe Colspring, the NSA's West Country headquarters in Colorado Springs, CO. You find out all about that in Erasure Attempt.

Ima
Hebrew. Mother. (ee-mah)

Closing A/N (26/11/03): Predestination was originally finished on 11 September 2002 at 19:55. It was 95,010 words long. Amazingly enough, through all the editing I did, the total word count now is only about thirty words higher. It was written over a period of 24 days. I think I must've been possessed or something. Can you imagine writing 95,000 words in 24 days? That's scary. This delusion continued, however, as I started writing the second story the very next day. While I don't remember much about actually writing this, I know that when I finished it, I played Geri Halliwell's "It's Raining Men" very loud, and there may have been some jigging involved. But that's between me and the past.