Текст книги "Hollow World"

Автор книги: Michael J. Sullivan

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

 

Chapter Six

Timing Is Everything

Technically this was Ellis’s second trip through a portal, but the first he was fully aware of. He asked to go with Pax, pretending it was because he was bored, and that he didn’t want to be left alone in the house with Vin. He also told himself he was interested in seeing more of the world and was curious about the message. All of that might have contributed—did contribute—and those were the answers Ellis would have given if anyone asked. But the real reason was strange, unlike him, and hard to imagine, especially given the circumstances. The fact was the trip sounded dangerous, and Pax didn’t strike him as a superhero. Ellis wasn’t a hero, either, but he had a pistol and the Y chromosome to use it.

Pax hesitated only a moment before nodding and taking out a small device. Ellis thought it might be a pocket watch, because it was gold and linked to a chain. Pax fussed with it for a few seconds; then a shimmering hole appeared.

Alva said, “ Pax, be careful!”

The trip was instantaneous, no different from passing through a normal door separating two rooms. Looking back the way they had come, Ellis could see the Big Sky country and the picnic table, empty except for their abandoned plates. The portal closed, winking out like televisions used to when they had vacuum tubes.

Ellis and Pax stood in the center of a Zen-garden living room. A perfect square, the room contained two equal-length white couches on a white carpet. A square white coffee table stood in the exact middle, and on it were three stones of different types cut to form a pyramid. A narrow strip along the baseboards and one near the ceiling illuminated the room, but most of the light entered through glass doors of square latticework, beyond which lay a real Oriental garden. Only the bonsai tree gracing the little table provided the room with color. The temperature was cooler than Pax’s dining room, and Ellis felt a cough coming on.

“Excuse me! What are you doing barging into my home? Who are you, and how did you get in here?” The speaker entered from an archway at the far side of the room near the terrace doors. This one, like the first two he had seen, was naked except for a delicate necklace and looked identical to everyone else except for a scar on the left shoulder and two missing fingers on the right hand.

“I’m Pax-43246018, an arbitrator of the Tringent Sector. Who are you?”

Pax hadn’t moved since they stepped through the portal, so neither did Ellis. There wasn’t much space anyway. The living room was tiny compared to Pax’s social room. Geomancers apparently didn’t live as large as arbitrators and artists.

“Who am I? I’m Geo-24. Who else would I be? This is my home!”

“He’s the killer,” Ellis told Pax, staring at the missing fingers. “This is the one I saw in Greenfield Village.” His chest tightened. Breathing was harder.

Pax looked worried.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who—or what—is this with you?” Three-fingers asked Pax.

“This is Ellis Rogers,” Pax said without looking away. “Who is helping me investigate a murder that took place yesterday on the North American Plate. Now please, once again, I know you are not Geo-24, so who are you really?”

“I amGeo-24! How dare you!”

“Look at the right hand,” Ellis said, breathing slowly through his nose and trying to suppress the growing urge to cough. “This is the same three-fingered butcher who was cutting into the murder victim’s shoulder when I arrived.”

“Geo-24’s vox, can you hear me?” Pax asked.

“I can indeed.”The reply came from a decidedly male-sounding voice, a deep baritone with enough of a British accent to sound like Christopher Lee, and just as in Pax’s home the sound came from everywhere.

“Can you identify this person in front of me?”

“No, which is why I contacted you. Geo-24 left instructions that I was to ignore the identification chip and ask three questions of my own choosing that only Geo-24 could answer. When this person arrived bearing Geo-24’s identification, I asked the three questions. Incorrect answers were provided. Following the rest of my instructions, I forwarded the prerecorded message to you.”

“This is ridiculous,” the impostor said. “I have a malfunctioning vox. Have you declared me to be a fake to the whole of Hollow World, vox?”

“Please note, Pax-43246018, that Geo-24 had all the expected digits on both hands and that this impostor doesn’t even know my name.”

Off to the left, Ellis noticed another square table in the corner with something round on it. He might have ignored it in any other home, but this place was as spartan as a desert. A peanut on the floor would have screamed for attention. On the table was something much bigger and far more attention getting—a construction hard hat.

“I don’t wish to call you by name. You’ve upset me,” the three-fingered suspect defended. “Now answer my question.”

“Given that you are not Geo-24, I need not comply with your demands, but, nevertheless, I have only informed Pax-43246018 as per previous instructions.”

“I see,” the impostor growled. “Well, that’s something at least.”

Holding a hand over his mouth, breathing through his fingers, Ellis took the three steps needed to pick up the hat. Inside he found safety glasses and gloves. “Pax,” he managed to say. “Look at this.” He held up the glasses.

Pax nodded and looked about to cry.

“You killed Geo-24?” Pax said just above a whisper; a wavering tone of disbelief filled the accusation with a haunting quality. Pax’s expression was disturbingly familiar, as Ellis had lived with it for almost two decades. It was the look Peggy had worn each day after Isley’s death. “Are you going to tell me who you really are?”

“I don’t have—”

Pax lunged forward at that moment and tore the necklace from around the impostor’s neck. “I can’t let you leave just yet,” Pax said, quickly stepping back.

With barely checked anger, the impostor stared for a long moment, then, after a controlled breath, walked out of the room into the adjacent hall. Ellis took a step to pursue.

“Don’t!” Pax almost gasped.

“Isn’t there a door Three-fingers can escape out of or another one of those iPortal things in this house?”

The baseboard and ceiling illumination died. Only the falselight spilling through the glass wall allowed them to see.

“Pax? Pax? What’s going on?”

“We’re in trouble,” Pax managed. “I don’t think—”

The muffled sound of bare feet on carpeting grew louder as the killer returned, all three fingers wrapped around what looked to be a butcher knife.

At the same time, Ellis began to cough. The chest-ripping whoop felt as if it were scraping his insides from his stomach to his tongue. He bent over as one cough became a cascade of harsh body-shaking eruptions.

No one else in the room noticed.

“No—don’t!” Pax cried as Three-fingers advanced. “Here! Here! Take it!” Pax took a step back and threw the little iPortal device so that it bounced off Three-fingers’ chest.

“Too late for that,” Three-fingers said.

Ellis was trying to grit his teeth, demanding that his body obey, even as it drove him to his knees as if a demon were trapped in his chest and determined to get out. He could only watch through blurry eyes as Three-fingers closed on Pax.

Their faces might have been created from the same sequence of genes, but looking at them, Ellis saw two distinctly different people. Three-fingers grinned with an eager malevolence, closing the distance between the two like a shark after a drowning swimmer.

No aggression my ass.

Like a caricature in a horror film trying to find the key to a car, Pax retreated around the table, struggling to pull out the pocket-watch-style portal device. Catching the edge of the table, Pax fell backward.

Three-fingers skirted the coffee table to where Pax lay.

The coughing fit reduced to a sputter. Ellis drew his pistol. “Stop!” he managed to croak. He had both hands holding the gun, his thumbs lining up like puzzle pieces, arms extended but not locked, just as he was taught. “Don’t you fucking move!”

A portal appeared to Ellis’s left. “Go, Ellis Rogers! Get away!”

Three-fingers only hesitated a second, quickly dismissing Ellis.

Guns. They don’t understand guns!

Ellis didn’t have time to explain. He held his breath just as they had told him at the gun range—he had to stop coughing—and squeezed the trigger gently.

Shit!The safety was on.

Pax screamed, warding off the attack with raised palms as the knife came down.

Ellis flicked the lever and pulled the trigger. At such a short distance it was impossible to miss.

The gun was a lot louder without the earmuffs. In the seconds afterward, he couldn’t hear a thing. He smelled smoke and gunpowder, which made him cough again. His ears rang, hands vibrating from the aftershock. The barrel went up, shoving his arms with it. He hacked, eyes closed. Blood was in his mouth again, he could taste it, and when he opened his eyes he could see it.

The white wall and part of the glass door were splattered red.

Pax was on the floor, crying in a ball. Three-fingers had come within inches, but lay still. A dark puddle of blood grew, spreading out, seeping through the white carpeting that acted like a giant sponge. Three-fingers wasn’t moving.

Ellis crawled to Pax. “Are you stabbed? Are you okay?”

Pax reverted to a series of hitching breaths, unable to speak. Pax’s head shook. Ellis wasn’t certain which question was being answered, then realized it was probably both. The gun was still in his hand. Another look at Three-fingers confirmed the threat was gone, but it took three tries for Ellis to put the pistol back into the holster. Once there, he remembered the safety was still off. Glancing at the wall, at the tracks of blood-tears, he pulled it out and gently engaged the safety before putting it away again.

“That’s a gun, isn’t it?” Pax asked, staring at his hip.

“A pistol—yes.”

Pax didn’t say anything else, just stared as if the metal at Ellis’s hip was alive.

“You aren’t hurt?” Ellis asked again.

Pax’s cheeks were slick, hands shaking. “I almost died.”

Pax looked over at the body and the spray of blood. There were splatters even on the ceiling. They dripped, leaving little dots on the white coffee table and the stone pyramid. The once perfect room of Zen-like serenity traded for the violent confusion of a Jackson Pollock painting.

With a gasp, Pax seized Ellis, hugging him tight. Fingers clutched him around his waist like talons, as Pax sobbed into his chest. Ellis reached out with his own arms, returning the squeeze, and the two shook together.

Ellis wasn’t one for shows of emotion. He wasn’t raised that way. They were good old-fashioned Protestants. By the age of nine, hugging his mother had already become awkward, and if they’d had fist-bumps back then, the two would have been early adopters. He hadn’t shown much more affection toward his own wife, even early on, and later…It always felt more like work, when it should have come naturally.

But Ellis had never killed anyone before.

He told himself that if it hadn’t been Pax, he would have hugged the couch. He just wanted to hang on to something. Pax was bawling into his shirt. He could feel the wetness and knew he wasn’t too far away from a good cry himself. Hanging on helped. Feeling that he was taking care of Pax made it better. He just wasn’t sure who was really helping whom.

Pax stopped crying and pulled away, still shaking a bit. “Sorry, I think I soaked your shirt.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t pass out from the smell,” he offered, trying to sound tough and not sure why.

Getting up, Pax retreated from the room, and Ellis followed. They slipped around the corner into the corridor, which was just as empty of color as the living room. Pax stopped, flopped to the floor, and backed up against the wall.

“We need to call someone?” Ellis asked.

“In a minute,” Pax said, struggling to speak clearly, blurting words out in a rush. “No hurry at this point…I’m still trying to…remember how to breathe right. I really am sorry…I suppose that wasn’t very professional of me. Homicide copsin your day didn’t run away from blood and cry like that, did they?”

“I don’t know.” Ellis sat beside Pax. “Maybe some did.”

Pax’s expression was dominated by a force of will illustrated by a gritted jaw. “ Youdidn’t.”

Ellis offered a forced smile. “I watched a lot of westerns as a boy. John Wayne never cried.”

Pax nodded as if understanding, but Ellis doubted it.

It took several minutes, but eventually Pax said, “I wonder who it was. That’s the trouble with the master sequence pattern.”

Out in the garden, the light was starting to fade. Ellis wondered if the falselight was synchronized with the light on the surface. Maybe they wereon the surface; he really didn’t know where they had ported to, and he had already determined he couldn’t tell the difference between real and falselight.

“So we found the killer,” Ellis said. “What do we do now? What’s the procedure?”

Ellis found himself in a hurry to leave. He wasn’t showing it, but he felt sick. Not like he had the day before—a different kind. He could smell the blood, or thought so, and the odor of gunpowder lingered large in the small home. He’d just killed someone. The idea—the recognition of his actions—had flashed across his mind several times like a random strobe light, but all the sitting had started settling it into his consciousness, coalescing into a real thought. He’d prevented Pax from being murdered, which was a good thing, but at the same time, Three-fingers looked just like Pax. The whole scene was surreal enough to be drug induced.

His hands were shaking. Were they shaking when I pulled the trigger?He didn’t think so. He couldn’t even remember the exact moment of the gunshot, couldn’t recall what he had aimed at or if he’d aimed at all. Adrenaline—that’s why he was shaking. Maybe that was why he wanted to leave. Fight or flight was kicking in, and he wanted to be gone, away from the blood, the body, and the reminder of what he’d done.

“I don’t really know.” Pax wiped the tears away. “You understand we’re breaking new ground here. There’s no procedure.” Standing up, Pax adjusted the frock coat and vest, then paused. “Vox?”

No answer.

Pax walked down the hall, opened a door, and went inside.

Ellis stood up and was about to follow Pax when he heard a shuffle, then a click.

“Vox?” Pax called returning to Ellis in the hall.

The baseboard lighting flickered on once more, brighter now to compensate for the fading falselight.

“Vox?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, what is your name?”

“Abernathy. I—Oh my! What happened?”

“You were switched off, then I was attacked. Ellis Rogers saved my life by…by killing Geo-24’s murderer.”

“Either of you injured?”

“No.” Pax’s head shook, and again Ellis wondered at the visual capability of voxes or if that was just habitual body language. “Abernathy, why were you required to ask questions when Geo-24 returned?”

“I was not informed.”

“Did Geo-24 ask you to send that message to me—to me personally, or just to any arbitrator?”

“To you specifically.”

“You and Geo-24 weren’t friends?” Ellis asked Pax.

“Of course not.” Pax looked stunned. “Despite your impression of me, I’m not fortunate enough to socialize with geomancers. Abernathy, do you know where Geo-24 went?”

“My records show Geo-24 went to the grass on the North American Plate.”

“Had Geo-24 been doing anything odd recently?”

“Define odd.”

“Different, unusual, inconsistent with normal activities?”

“Geo-24 suspended working on the garden, but that, of course, is not doing, rather than doing something odd. There was also the research on Pol-789.”

“Research?”

“Geo-24 was scanning datagrams on Pol-789, which I define as unusual, because Geo-24’s pursuits were always rocks and never people. Well, almost never. Geo-24 once conducted a similar investigation on you.”

“Me? When?”

“About a year ago.”

Pax paused, thinking.

“Who’s Pol?” Ellis asked.

“Pol-789 is the present chief of the Grand Council.”

“How important is that?” he asked, looking at Pax. Ellis wasn’t certain how voxes worked, but they must be able to “see” somehow and able to read body language to some degree, because Abernathy was silent.

“In your day Pol would be like a prime minister or president,” Pax explained. “Only government is nothing like what you’re familiar with. It really only consists of fifty-two people.”

“And they control everything?” Ellis asked, but it wasn’t really a question. Dystopias in books and movies were always set up with a handful of men consolidating power through the control of technology.

“They make decisions on our behalf. People don’t want to take the time to study every issue needed to make the right choices, so the Council serves as a dedicated group to do just that. It’s a terrible imposition, which is why every two years there’s a draft.”

“A draft? To be in charge?”

Pax nodded with a miserable look. “Everyone has to submit their bio and fill out a questionnaire. Why the interest in Pol-789?” Pax looked up before asking the question, and Ellis realized this was always done when speaking to voxes, as if they inhabited the ceilings of homes.

“Pol-789 contacted Geo-24 a month ago, and the two have had several communications. I’ve actually gotten on quite well with Balmore, Pol-789’s vox, as a result of arranging meetings.”

“But you don’t know what they spoke about?”

“No.”

“All right. I guess that’s it then.” Pax took a breath and shrugged. “Abernathy, please contact the Dexworth office at the ISP. Tell them what happened. They’ll send some people to remove the body. They should be getting pretty good at it by now.”

“Will they clean the carpet?”

“You can ask.”

Is there any way to get that much blood out of a white carpet? Ellis wondered. “Do you need to report this to your boss?”

“ Boss? That’s another one of your old-fashioned words, isn’t it?”

“It means your supervisor,” Ellis explained. “The person at your job who tells you what to do. The one in charge of hiring the employees.”

Pax stared at him intently, head slowly shaking. “No one tells me what to do.”

“How did you become an arbitrator?”

“I started speaking to people and realized I could help them, so I do—but okay, that’s just me. Most people do take the aptitude test to help them.”

“You don’t work for a business or organization—the government?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by work, Ellis Rogers. Nowadays that term means to do something hard, or to do something you don’t really like but have to.”

“Yeah—that’s pretty much it.”

Pax looked puzzled. “But you talk as if it’s something a person would do a lot of.”

Ellis nodded. “Most people—most adults—worked eight or more hours a day—five, six, and sometimes even seven days a week. So yeah, you worka lot. Usually you have a boss who tells you what to do, and you get paid in return.”

Pax had a sad look, as if just learning that Ellis had been the victim of some terrible crime. “No one here tells anyone else what to do. People do what they like for as long as it pleases them. When it doesn’t, they do something else.”

“You’re not making sense. How do things get done—how do you get food to eat and furniture for the houses? Who makes the portal things?”

“Oh.” Pax waved a hand at him. “The Maker takes care of everything.”

The Maker?Ellis didn’t like the sound of that. He imagined a world where everything was provided by some being who demanded human sacrifices. “Who is the Maker?”

Pax smiled, and Ellis thought there might have been a laugh if they were somewhere else at some other time. “The Maker isn’t a person. It’s a device, one of the Three Miracles. I’ll show you when we get back home. I’ve got five of them, though technically three are Vin’s.”

“Dexworth has people coming,”Abernathy announced.

Pax wandered back down the hallway and reentered the bloodstained room. The body lay faceup, eyes looking at the ceiling. Only a small hole was visible in the chest. A larger exit wound must have been on the other side and the source of the blood spray, but Ellis couldn’t see it and didn’t care to.

Pax stooped and picked up the necklace that had been thrown. On it was a small device like an iPod shuffle. “It’s Geo-24’s. Why would anyone want to kill a geomancer of all people?”

“To impersonate him,” Ellis offered.

“Him?” Pax smiled.

“Whatever.” Ellis was flustered, standing in the room with the person he’d killed. Pax, who earlier had been far more upset, now appeared more at ease. “I’m just saying impersonation appears to have been the point of this.”

Pax stared at the little portal device. “Okay, but why?”

“Well, what are geomancers? They don’t appear to live very lavishly, but you talk as if they’re rock stars.”

“Rock stars?”

“Forget it—they’re someone to be envied, right?”

“Geomancers are beloved and respected. Highly educated—they spend centuries studying, and they work selflessly in terrible conditions to protect Hollow World.”

Ellis was working his way nearer to the garden window, away from the bloodstains. The last of the day’s light was fading; night was on its way. “Protect it from what? What do they do?”

“In your day didn’t you have something called meteorologists?”

“Weathermen, yeah.”

Pax looked puzzled. “Only men could be meteorologists?”

“Huh? No—oh! Skip it, what’s your point?”

Pax shrugged. “Just as I assume weathermenin your day were revered above all others, so are geomancers today.”

“Weathermen weren’t revered,” Ellis said.

“I thought meteorologists were all that stood between survival and destruction back then.”

“Destruction from what?”

“The weather. You lived during the Great Tempest, didn’t you?”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

Pax looked embarrassed. “Oh no—I suppose that didn’t happen until the twenty-three hundreds, but wait…” Pax paused. “I thought the climate was changing as early as the twentieth century.”

“There was some debate about global warming, if that’s what you mean.”

“So you were at the very beginning, then.”

“Beginning of what?”

“The storms.”

“What does this have to do with geomancers?”

“I guess you could consider them modern-day meteorologists, only instead of forecasting atmospheric weather, they forecast geologic storms. It doesn’t rain or snow down here and we don’t have tornadoes or hurricanes, but when the asthenosphere acts up, it can really ruin your life.”

With a soft pop, a portal appeared in the living room between the bloody couch and the table with the hard hat. Five people stepped out, all twins of Pax except they wore matching white jumpsuits and gloves.

“Another one, Pax?” one of the five asked.

“I don’t know who this is, other than Geo-24’s murderer. That’s who the last victim was, for what it’s worth.”

“A geomancer?” The tone was one of surprise.

“I know.”

“Any idea who killed this one?”

“Ellis Rogers,” Pax said, gesturing at him.

All five looked over.

“Am I going to be arrested?” Ellis asked.

“Arrested?” Pax looked at him, confused. “That’s another of your old terms, isn’t it?”

“Are they”—he nodded at the five—“going to take me and lock me in a room somewhere? Punish me for killing?”

“No, Ellis Rogers. No one is going to punishyou.” Pax said the word punishas if it, too, was unusual. “Things really were very different in your day, weren’t they?”

Ellis was too relieved by the answer to question further, and he watched them move the furniture, clearing a path to haul the bag-wrapped body through the portal.

On the way out one turned to Pax and said, “So, this will be the last one, then?”

Pax nodded. “We can hope.”

The dining room was a Gothic cathedral again by the time Pax and Ellis returned. The home was mostly dark except for the candles on the table and a dim mood lighting created by a faintly illuminated ceiling. Ellis noticed that the portal they returned through had opened to the exact place they had left, leading him to suspect that the placement of openings wasn’t random. This got him wondering about what might happen if a portal appeared in the middle of a sofa. Perhaps it would appear and disappear without a trace, but what if it bisected a person? Pax had mentioned that accidents were few, so he had to assume something prevented such things from happening.

Loud music was playing, startling Ellis as the bass boomed through the walls and reverberated against his chest, thumping as if someone were patting him. The rhythm was strong and the melody catchy enough for a pop song, but the instant they stepped through, the sound died.

“You’re safe!”Alva shouted, her voice booming as loud as the music had before.

Floor lighting appeared, and a new style of music played in the background. Ellis thought it might be something classical—it sounded like an orchestra.

“Is Vin gone?” Pax asked.

“Vin has a meeting, remember?”

“That’s right.” Pax turned to Ellis. “They hold a sector artists’ meeting once a month. It’s necessary to make sure they are all working in harmony.

“I think it’s really just an excuse to brag, as that’s all any of them did the times they held it here,”Alva said with a tone of exasperation.

“Alva, you know you don’t have to stop your music when I come home. Just turning it down is fine.”

“Vin hates it.”

“Well, I like it.”

The classical changed back to the pop song.

Returning to the social room, Ellis was greeted by the breathtaking view again. This time he looked out on a night that was a beautiful image of lights. It might have been the New York skyline or the real Paris. He could see all the neighboring homes’ windows as well as outdoor lights that strategically illuminated sections of the cliffs or the gardens below. Above, he saw stars and a half-moon rising. Looking out at the beautiful immensity, he understood the concept of Hollow World better. He was living in a work of art, every aspect taken into consideration for aesthetic appeal. Artificial. The word used to mean something inferior. Ellis wasn’t certain that applied anymore.

Seeing the twinkling night, hearing the sounds of nature bleeding through, Ellis felt like James Bond on assignment in some exotic paradise.

“Can you go down there?” Ellis pointed toward the commons.

Pax chuckled, looking at him as if he were a precocious child. “Of course. That’s the common garden. We hold tea parties every third morning, treasure hunts once a quarter, and you should see it on Miracles Day. Bag races, skib competitions, and the boat contest. Everyone gets the same materials, and we all have one month to create a boat that will win a race across the pond—no Makers allowed. It has to be completely built by hand. Some are just amazing. People can be so creative, and they long for a venue to express it.”

Pax stood silent for a time, just looking out at the view. They both did.

“We aren’t as fortunate as you,” Pax then said.

“How so?”

Pax looked surprised. Hands came up, then fell in exasperated disbelief. Eventually Pax just laughed. “You’re unique.”

“I suppose,” he said dismissively, not seeing any significance in being him.

“Don’t you understand what a gift that is?”

“Not really.”

Most people Ellis had known had gone to great efforts to be like everyone else. Blending in with the crowd was a survival skill just as important for humans as zebras. The odd man out was usually picked on. High schools were hotbeds of assimilation. That was where people were trained to disappear, to melt and conform so that they could continue doing so in the workplace. Only the nuts wanted to be noticed, the artists and madmen. The entire gist of the traditional father-son talk Ellis had with his dad had consisted of his father telling him the most important lesson he’d learned—never volunteer. His father had discovered that while serving under Patton in the Fourth Armored in France. The ones who volunteered never came home.

“Everyone here would love to be you. I suspect it’s why Vin was so curt. Vin is a genius, but can also be very vain and jealous. I suppose we all are in our own way. We each struggle to establish a difference.” Pax rubbed the material of the frock coat. “We all try to define ourselves by something to make us identifiable, to make us different, but…” Pax took off the bowler hat, revealing a bald head. “Underneath we’re still the same.”

Pax held the hat in both hands and leaned out over the rail, looking down at the lights below with a sad reflection, a sort of hopelessness that surprised Ellis.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Ellis replied. “ You’revery different.”

Pax glared at him. The look was almost angry. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because it’s true. I’ve only met a handful of people here, but you aren’t like any of them. You’re—I don’t know—nicer, I guess. More empathetic—and a lotbraver.”

Pax continued to stare, and Ellis saw disbelief.

“When you first met me, Cha was terrified—everyone was—but you walked right up. You took me into your home. Didn’t know who I was. Didn’t know a thing about me—didn’t even ask permission,apparently. And…and at Geo’s place just now—you made that portal for meto escape, not for you.” Ellis shook his head. “I don’t think you’re at all like anyone else. Not like anyone I’ve met here. Not anyone I knew before either. If anyone is unique, it’s you.”

Pax’s lips were quivering. “Why are you saying all these wonderful things?”

Ellis shrugged. “I told you—they’re true. Why would I lie?”

Pax blinked back tears.

“I like the hat too.” Ellis smiled, trying to make light of the situation. He had no idea why Pax was crying. “Very dapper.”

“Thanks. It’s not original. I got a pattern from a museum—I’m not an artist like Vin. I can’t invent new things.” Pax spoke quickly, self-consciously, using words to fend off embarrassment. “This whole outfit is just a mishmash of stuff from the past. A few others wear these—they used to call them bowler hats or derbies. I wore a top hat for a while—that’s another old hat—but I like this better. It stays on in high wind, and I’ve been logging a lot of grass time recently.”

Pax turned back to the view and wiped the tears away—more promptly followed.

Ellis did the noble thing and looked away, pretending not to notice. Maybe if Pax were a woman he might have offered a hug or something, but Pax wasn’t a woman. The best a man could do for another man was pretend not to see. Only Pax wasn’t a man either.