Gypsies

Cardinal Palestrina stepped reluctantly forward.

He felt like a voyeur, a Peeping Tom. There was no visible barrier, no reassuring glass, only empty air between himself and these three people. And magic. But magic was so intangible. They were asleep.

There were reed mats on the floor for them and blankets to help fend off the subterranean chill, for this was one of the Institute’s lowest levels. The two middle-aged women and the teenaged boy slept with troubled expressions. Understandably, Cardinal Palestrina thought. They had been through so much. Kidnapped, held against their will…

He said, “Have you spoken with them?”

Neuma

“Ah, the brother. They talk to him?”

“Grudgingly. He’s their only contact.”

“The child,” Cardinal Palestrina said.

“Yes. He’s the important one.”

“He doesn’t look like much.”

“It doesn’t show,” Neuma

An ordinary boy, oddly dressed. Hard to imagine him stepping across worlds. Cardinal Palestrina, who had considered himself credulous—and a model of faith—had discovered since his journey to America that his pedestrian mind balked at miracles.

Harder still to imagine this child as an effective weapon against the Islamic armies. He told Neuma

Neuma

3

“Soon,” Tim said, “they’ll be moving you out of here.”

It should have been good news. Karen hated this room, its narrowness, the unsheltered corner toilet—and the pervasive numbness she felt here, the prison magic. But surely, she thought, they would not be moved to a better place. Not unless it was equally imprisoning, or they had been rendered somehow harmless. She did not relish the future. The magic worked on her like a sedative or a powerful tranquilizer; otherwise she might have been too frightened even to think.

Tim said, “It won’t be so bad.”

He was dressed in clean clothes, a little old-fashioned-looking, an odd cut, tweedy and Victorian. Probably that was what people here wore. There was something maddening about the way he looked—his cocked head and carefully inexpressive eyes, this attitude of patience. As if he were the one enduring some hardship.

Simple and potent. He can transport himself into the Arabic heartlands. Or carry our armies there.” “Surely not willingly?”

“When we’re done with him,” Neuma

The surgery. Cardinal Palestrina thought, The cauterization of his soul. The subtle cutting.

He said, “And the one who’s collaborating—the brother—did you do that to him? Cut him in that way?”

“No,” Neuma

Laura, across the room, stood up in the clothes she had been wearing for three days and said, “What did^ they offer you? That’s what I keep asking myself. Why would you do a thing like this?”

Tim looked offended. Offended but patient. He said, “Why does anybody do anything? Maybe I didn’t have a choice. Think about it. Maybe the reasons are obvious. I was serious, you know, what I said about this place. It is home. For me, anyway. And it could be home for you, if you would give it a chance. Home,” he said earnestly, “is an important thing.”

“The kingdoms of the Earth,” Karen said, surprising herself.

He turned to face her, startled.

“A paperweight,” she said. “I remember.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But you do. That’s what they offered you.” Sedated, distant even from herself, she was able to say this. It had been on her mind. “That’s what they offered you. A place to rule. A kingdom. You relished that.” She shook her head. “Bigger than Daddy. Oh, Timmy, you were always so literal-minded. You took everything so seriously.”

Incredibly, he was blushing. He drew himself up and said, “You make it sound like a fairy tale. But hey, it is a fairy tale. We’re leading fairy tale lives. That should be obvious by now.”

Laura said, “You believed them? These people— the people who put us here—you think they care about what happens to you?”

“They do. They have to.” It was his vanity at stake now. “You’ll see. You just don’t know them. You—”

“I know they’re capable of this.” This room, she meant; their imprisonment. “They don’t care about you!” Scornful now. Chiding him. “It was only Michael they ever wanted.”

“You pretend to know,” Tim said. “You don’t know a fucking thing.”

He was not patient anymore.

“And now they have him,” Laura pressed, “and what do you matter? You’re nothing. Last year’s | model.”

“All of us,” Tim said hotly, “they want all of us. He’s no different. Why is he special? He’s just like the rest of us.”

He waved dismissively at Michael, who was sitting in a chair, impassive, watching. Michael had been impassive for most of the last three days. The spell, Karen thought. It had this effect on all of them.

But now he stood up. He looked at Tim across the room and Karen noticed for the first time that they were approximately the same size: Michael was as tall as his uncle. For a moment he seemed somehow taller.

Tim—startled for the second time today—fixed his gaze on his nephew.

Michael glared back.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “I am different.” And what was that flashing on Tim’s face now? Karen wondered. Was it fear? Was that possible? The air filled with sudden electricity.

4

Cardinal Palestrina was with Neuma

Cardinal Palestrina had been finalizing the report he would present to the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. He had decided—reluctantly—that his finding would be positive; that he would suggest a joint European-American research effort involving the otherworldly child; that the strategic possibilities outweighed the ethical considerations. He would present his report to the consulate tomorrow and it would be forwarded by Marconi to the Vatican. Everything else would follow. Neuma

But Carl Neuma

“Something unforeseen,” Neuma

Chapter Twenty-three

Tim was wrong, Michael thought. It is me they want. He had thought about this over the last few days— tentatively, ploddingly, under the blanketing influence of the prison magic. And he had come to some conclusions.

If they want me, he thought, it’s because I’m different.

Laura had said as much, standing on the windy bluffs above Turquoise Beach. It’s more than I could lever do, she had said.

And he remembered the way he used to feel, the electricity raging up out of the earth, the vortex of time and place and possibility, and the way he had held it in his hands.

They want that, he thought.

But it was a new thing—this power. They had anticipated it, but maybe they didn’t understand it.

And he let that idea lie fallow for a time.