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«Jesus, kid,» the man exclaimed, stepping back, «okay!» Once out of range of the knife he permitted himself to amble away insouciantly, and he called back over his shoulder, «But you could have had a friend!»
I like the way, thought Rivas in almost honest puzzlement as he settled the knife back in its sleeve sheath and walked on, that every person in the world thinks his or her friendship is worth something. My God, if I really was a broke, hungry kid, I'd be a lot more chagrined at the loss of that breakfast.
Earlier Rivas had noticed a gang of young people crouched around a fire under a canted stone arch beside the Relic Exchange, and when he glanced in that direction now he saw that one of the girls was walking toward him, smiling, her hands in the pockets of her long, pavement-sweeping dress.
«Lost a friend, huh?» she asked when she was close enough to speak quietly and be heard.
«Oh.» Rivas waved vaguely. «I didn't know him. He just came over and started talking to me.»
«Are you hungry? Come and share our breakfast.»
Rivas's heart was thumping, for he suspected this might be the baited hook he'd been looking for, but he made himself look wistful as he said, «Well, I don't have any money . . . .»
The girl put her hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. «Money is just the checkers in a game played by unhappy children,» she told him earnestly, and he turned away in case his sudden burst of feral satisfaction might show in his face—for he recognized her statement as one of the standard Jaybird come-along lines, unchanged since he'd first heard it on that lonely morning thirteen years ago. He'd later used it himself when out on recruiting expeditions.
«That may be true,» he said, reciting a response to it that he remembered as being easy to counter, «but you need money to live.»
«No,» she said gently, pulling him toward the leaning arch, «you're exactly wrong. You need money to die. It's love you need to live.»
He laughed with sophomoric bitterness. «That's even harder to find.»
«Anything's hard to find,» she told him, «if you don't know where to look for it or what it is.»
This girl's smooth, Rivas thought as he allowed himself to be led toward the group of Jaybirds, who were all looking up now and smiling at him; the grime around her neck and wrists has been there a while, and the dress has been slept in, but the figure's adequate, she delivers her lines with fair sincerity, and, despite her teeth, that smile is as bright as a lamp in a window on a stormy night, and it's the only thing a hungry stray would notice anyway.
The Jaybirds in the circle shifted to make room for Rivas, and he looked around sharply as he sat down on the damp dirt, but Urania wasn't one of them. It seemed to be a typical band—mostly young people, their faces ranging in expression from the timid optimism of the new recruit through the su
«This is a new friend of ours,» his guide told the group as she sat down next to him, «who's been kind enough to accept our invitation to breakfast.»
There were quietly delighted exclamations, and from all sides Rivas was warmly assured that his arrival had brightened their day enormously. Rivas set about the task of responding as they would expect him to.
Abruptly he realized that he was shaking hands and gri
«What's the matter, brother?» A ski
Rivas looked around at them all and decided it was time to find out which one was the boss here. «I, uh, was just thinking,» he stammered, «I really should be trying to find a way to get back home; to my family.»
He knew this called for a strong block, and that he'd learn now who their leader was; and as he'd guessed, it was Sister Sue, the girl who'd found him, that now knelt in front of him and took his hands and, leaning almost close enough to kiss, stared hard into his eyes.
«Trust yourself,» she said to him in a low vibrant voice that seemed to resonate in his teeth. «You realized that they weren't your real family, didn't you, saw that there are qualities and depths in yourself that they can't share or recognize? Questions they not only can't answer, but can't even understand? That is why you left them—no, don't interrupt—think about it, and you'll realize I'm right. I knew the moment I saw you that you had a real soul and that you were seeking the family that you can join totally. I don't say trust me, or them, or anyone; I tell you that the only person you dare trust is yourself. And where did your need to find love lead you? To me. To us.»
Her eyes were glistening with tears, and the other Jaybirds, even the deteriorated ones, were nodding at him and humming deep in their throats, half of them on a very low note and half on a very high one, and the insidious two-toned buzz seemed to get right in behind his eyes and set all the contents of his brain vibrating into softened blurs.
It was hard to remember anything . . . nearly impossible to hold onto a thought for more than a few seconds . . . but he knew he didn't need to anymore. The self-consciousness, the anxious policing of his personal boundaries, could at last be relaxed.
He felt tired—his knees didn't seem to have their usual spring—but of course he hadn't gotten much rest last night, and he didn't have any reason to stand up anyway. He was among people he could trust.
He was aware of some inconsistencies between his memory and his perceptions—he remembered this Jaybird band as consisting of different people, and he thought he'd been sitting with them at a different corner, and the gray overcast he remembered seemed to be gone, and his clothes were somehow clean and pressed again, no longer caked with dust and dried blood—but his own personal memories and perceptions no longer seemed crucially important.
He smiled into the pair of eyes that seemed to fill the whole world, and he realized that he felt better already. The loss of Urania might have happened years ago for all the pain it caused him now, and even the aches and stiffnesses from the beating Barrows and his men had given him last night, after Urania's birthday party, were gone.
«You've found your real family now, haven't you?» Sister Sue asked softly.
If there was a part of his mind screaming in horrified denial, it was well buried. Rivas, totally at peace for the first time in many years, happily breathed the single word, «Yes.»
When the Jaybird band left the city at noon they took Rivas with them. One of the guards at the South Gate, a grayed veteran who had seen this sort of thing many times over the years, wearily walked out of the guard shack and extended his staff across their way to stop them.