13

 

Niccoluccio had been more amenable to a transmitter implant than Habidah expected. She wasn’t sure if he entirely understood what she’d asked. He kept feeling his lower neck, where she’d told him it was.

“There’s nothing to feel,” she told him, as she guided him into the shuttle’s acceleration couch. Again, she pulled the safety harness over his shoulders herself, though the shuttle could have done it for her. “It’s very small, and deep under your skin.”

“And you may remove it whenever you like?” Niccoluccio asked doubtfully.

“We certainly will before we leave your land.”

She sat in the couch beside him. Niccoluccio groaned at the weight of liftoff. Habidah had turned off all of the monitors. He didn’t need to know how fast or high they traveled.

He asked, “You’ll be able to hear whatever I say?”

“Only what you want us to. It’s just like I said – to activate it, you have to talk under your breath. You don’t even have to move your lips. Just flex the muscles.” She’d gone over the subvocal transmitter three times. At least it kept him distracted from the shaking and swaying. “There’s another device in your ear that will let you hear our answer.”

He immediately felt his ears. “Will everyone on your ‘team’ be able to hear and speak to me?”

“Your message will be received by whoever’s available. Usually that’s going to be Joao or Kacienta.”

He hesitated. “Would it be possible to ensure that I speak only to you?”

“Joao and Kacienta are trustworthy.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust them. It would be better to say I would rather speak with you.”

She looked at him, but his expression was impenetrable – mostly because his eyes were screwed shut. “All right.”

Her demiorganics kept her apprised of their progress. Flying blind shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did. Without the monitors, she couldn’t pretend she was in control.

Faster than Niccoluccio would have believed, the shuttle ripped through the skies of central Italy. The sound-dampening fields neutralized its sonic booms. Unfortunately, some of that energy occasionally reflected into the shuttle. The shuttle thundered and shook as if it crashed through a lightning bolt. Niccoluccio cried out.

The turbulence lasted only a moment before the dampeners compensated. Niccoluccio yelled, “What went wrong? Are we dead?” Habidah grabbed his hand to keep him from clawing his way out of his harness.

By the time the shuttle landed, he had just about recovered his voice. Habidah still held his hand to keep him steady. He glared at the dark bulk of the shuttle, for once unintimidated by its size. “I will never go back in that beast if I can help it.”

Habidah gave him a moment to notice where he was. She’d landed at the edge of a vineyard a bare kilometer from Florence’s walls. Dawn was still an hour away, but stars and moon shone brightly. Niccoluccio fell silent at once when he spotted the pale shadows of the city walls. He recognized that little bit of Florence at once. “Did I faint? We came so far so quickly.”

He still didn’t know how far they’d really traveled. She said, “The city gates will open before dawn.” According to the satellite records, anyway.

“I know.” He started to step forward, and was stopped by the tug of Habidah’s arm. Only then did he seem to realize that he was still holding Habidah’s hand, and that Habidah wasn’t coming with him.

She said, “This is your home, not mine. I have another assignment in Marseilles.” She should have been there weeks ago. The plague’s late arrival in Genoa had delayed her. “My superiors don’t want me to get more involved. I’ve done too much already.”

“I can’t bring myself to pass the gates alone. I would rather wander the wilderness again.”

“You won’t be alone once you find your family. I don’t want to interfere.”

“You don’t need to interfere.”

The moon shone bright enough that Habidah didn’t need infrared to take stock of the fear in his eyes. “All right.” Only then did they let each other’s hands go.

She sent the shuttle to find a secluded hideaway on the Mediterranean coast. With a breath like a whisper, it vanished into the night. Niccoluccio glanced back to make sure she was following, and gaped at the shuttle’s sudden absence. Habidah kept him moving forward.

Rows of stakes and old, dead vines constrained their path. Branches scraped at their ankles. A pulse scan found the nearest road. They stepped onto it just ahead of a horse-drawn wagon. The driver – a farmer, judging by the dirt under his chin and the calluses on his hands – glared at them as he passed, but said nothing. Niccoluccio stared after him. It took Habidah a moment to remember that this farmer was the first person, other than herself and her team, that Niccoluccio had seen since the men of his monastery had died weeks ago.

Habidah let him lead the way. The road was broad, wheel-rutted, and slick with frost. Florence was a cloudy nebula in infrared. The plague had already passed through. Even from this distance she could detect the empty houses.

As they drew closer to the gates, he gradually seemed to forget she was there. His step became surer. Infrared showed his pulse slackening. It wasn’t just the comedown from the flight. However he protested that he couldn’t come here alone, he knew this place. He was probably more comfortable here than anywhere short of Sacro Cuore. Judging from what Habidah knew of Carthusian monastic life, maybe more.

Habidah kept her head down as they entered the gates. The towers on both sides dwarfed them. Armored men stood astride the walls, but didn’t move or speak. Florence had started to come sullenly alive. The winding streets rattled with cart traffic, the morning’s grain. The sky had pinked enough to reveal the city, from the smaller houses nearby to the slender tower of the Castagna and the Cathedral of Santa Reparata.

For the past week, Niccoluccio had looked as lost as a sheep in the clouds. For as readily as he recognized this place, that impression hadn’t faded. His step wandered. More than once, Habidah had to gently take him by the elbow and lead him out of the way of cart traffic.

“It’s so noisy,” he said, lost in wonder.

“Not as noisy as it used to be, I’ll wager.” When Niccoluccio turned to her, she explained, “The pestilence has already struck. The worst is over, at least the first wave, but it’s taken a lot of lives.”

He nodded, solemn. “I may still die of the pest even after all this.”

“You’re safe.”

Niccoluccio glanced at her, nearly tripping over a wheel rut. “Beg your pardon?”

“The pestilence doesn’t seem very interested in you.” There were some things she hadn’t told him, or her team members, and that he’d never need to find out.

It had been easy enough to figure out how Niccoluccio survived. The tight, unsanitary quarters of monasteries made good homes for rats and their fleas. Mostly, he’d been lucky. But he’d mentioned spending most of his time away from the dormitory, and sleeping next to a fireplace. The smoke would have warded off plague-carrying fleas.

Back here, he would be just as vulnerable to the plague as anybody else. Habidah wasn’t prepared to let her rescue go to waste. She may not have been able to cure the plague, but she wasn’t completely helpless against it. She’d fortified Niccoluccio’s immune system. Her bugs were swimming around his veins, teaching his white blood cells new tricks.

He frowned, and pulled his hands into his sleeves for warmth. He glanced at every person they passed, searching for familiar faces. Habidah followed in silence, no longer trusting herself to speak.

Unlike Genoa, the city maintained some semblance of civil order. There were no bodies in streets and alleys. Several streets were deserted, but that was all. The plague had made its mark, certainly, but it was written underneath Florence’s surface. The Unity would be so lucky to end up like this after the onierophage ended, if it ever did end.

She would have to count on Niccoluccio to peel back Florence’s skin. Even coming this far with him was stretching things. As if stirred by that thought, her demiorganics let her know that she had an incoming call. Feliks. She swallowed her irritation.

“Straying a little far into Florence, aren’t you?” Feliks asked.

“I wish you wouldn’t watch so closely.”

“I’m worried about you and I have every professional right to be.”

“I’m accompanying him home. I don’t intend to stay longer than that.” She glanced skyward. The nearest observation satellite was high overhead. “Thank you for not piling on during the conference.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing? Piling on now that we can talk alone?”

Habidah massaged her forehead. “No, no – but if you didn’t want to make it seem like you were, you could have opened with another question.”

“How is our guest coping with the plague city?”

“It’s nowhere near as bad as Genoa. He’s doing better than I expected.”

“You said you’re going to drop our guest off. Are you planning on visiting again?”

The question caught her off guard. “If we get enough about Florence from him, I don’t need to visit again.” That would mean that she would never see him again after today. Her throat tightened looking at him.

Niccoluccio was navigating on automatic now, taking turns without looking. Once, she caught him stepping over an upraised cobble without glancing at it. Every once in a while, he looked to the Cathedral of Santa Reparata as it rose over the rooftops.

Feliks said, “Let’s make sure this stays your last visit, all right?”

“I understand,” she sent back.

“And you might want to send his reports to Kacienta.”

“He’s already asked that I keep in contact with him.”

“Are you going to keep in contact because you think it will be better for our project, or because you think it will be better for you?”

She didn’t have an answer. No. Rather, the answer was all too obvious. Niccoluccio checked to make sure she was still following. She gave him a thin smile.

Feliks said, “Don’t use him as a cushion to cope with your own problems. I don’t know much about him other than what I’ve seen through the cameras, but I can already tell you that he deserves better. These people have their own lives. Let him have his.”

The streets had gotten wider, more evenly cobbled. Fewer infrared shadows shone through the walls. It wasn’t a symptom of the plague. Niccoluccio had led her into a wealthier, less crowded neighborhood. The wide doors and windows were spaced farther apart, and barred by high loggias. The Cathedral of Santa Reparata’s dawn shadow covered seemingly half of Florence.

At the next intersection, Niccoluccio stopped and looked again to the cathedral. He lowered his hood. Habidah let him have his moment. It had been a long time since he’d seen any building like it. She closed her eyes and focused instead on calming her breathing.

Niccoluccio said, “It seems so small, after everything you’ve shown me.”

Habidah cracked an eye open. Maybe she’d misread his reason for stopping. “Our field base could fit inside those walls and still leave most of that space empty.”

“But I didn’t… I didn’t mean physically.”

“Then what did you mean?”

After a moment of searching for words, he said, “It’s difficult to articulate. I’m sorry. I can’t. You must know what I mean.”

She glanced at the cathedral. It was the tallest building in the city, but only about ninety meters. It was hard to feel much when she looked at it. It was impressive only in the context of the society. On her first field assignment, when she’d been a junior anthropologist itching to start her work, she’d seen stone towers carved into mountains so tall that she’d needed a respirator to visit the top levels. She’d felt something like awe then, certainly. But she’d left without a glance back. The awe hadn’t been for the towers. It had been for the breadth and variety of the multiverse. That had been when she’d stopped entertaining ideas of settling back home.

Now she’d brought something of that perspective to Niccoluccio. A pit opened in the center of her chest. She’d told him that she and her team had come from another part of his world, but that hadn’t kept her small enough.

“Your home is nearby?” she asked.

He nodded. “I could see the cathedral spires from my bedroom. Another half-mile, perhaps.”

“We could have taken a more direct route.”

“I had thought to visit the cathedral with you first, but I can see now that that was a mistake. It doesn’t mean as much to me as I remembered.”

This was what Feliks had warned her about. Just by telling half the truth about herself, she’d taken something away from him. She stopped walking at the edge of a quieter intersection. “I can’t keep going with you.”

“Because of the cathedral?”

“No. I just can’t go any farther.”

“Do you need rest?”

“You’ve been looking about for familiar faces. Think about that. If someone you knew spotted you returning in the company of a strange woman, the gossip could damage your reputation forever.”

“You said you would come with me.”

“The rest of my team is already calling me away.”

Niccoluccio glanced about. “From where?”

She smiled, shook her head, and tapped the side of her head. “In here. Like you’ll be able to talk with me, whenever you want.”

“I don’t know that I can go farther alone,” he said. He seemed only perplexed, but an infrared scan showed his quickened pulse. He was actually doing an admirable job of hiding his anxiety.

“Like I said, you can talk to me whenever you want. Then neither of us will be alone. But my staying here is not going to be good for either of us.”

Niccoluccio’s arms drooped at his sides. Habidah touched his hand, but couldn’t do anything more. She took a step back. “You’ll be able to handle this better without me than with me. I have faith that you can.” She was about to remind him that she would be watching, but, looking at him again, reconsidered. That just meant that he would be thinking about her again. He needed to focus on his own life rather than the shadows he’d glimpsed of hers.

That would have to be for the best.

She smiled one last time, more slightly than before, and turned. The sky was still gray enough that, if she hurried, the shuttle would be able to pick her up without arousing too much attention. She tried not to look behind her, but, when she did, Niccoluccio was still standing in the same place she’d left him.