"Cool," Bron said.
"Why is it cool?"
Bron struggled for words. "I guess, everyone wants to be an oppressed minority."
Olivia grinned. "Everyone wants to feel special. I'm not sure that they want to be oppressed." She tried to sound casual. "I told you that I'm not supposed to answer your questions. Someone else wilclass="underline" the Weigher of Lost Souls. She'll tell you everything that you need to know."
Bron grew quiet. At last he said, "I don't know. Would she have to ... touch me? I mean, isn't it kind of dangerous, what she does?"
Olivia suggested, "She doesn't have to 'teach' you. She can just show you some things. It would be like watching a movie, except that you would smell and touch things, and you'd feel the world, and think remembered thoughts. It's better than 3D."
There was something that she wasn't telling him, Bron knew.
"All right," Bron said, "as long as she doesn't do anything wonky to me."
"She won't," Olivia assured him. "This woman and I, we're more than just friends. We're more like ... allies. There are a lot of muses like us—math, science, athletics. You'd be surprised at what you could learn."
Bron cast a sideways glance. "Allies against what?"
She smiled nervously, kept her eyes fixed to the road. He was fishing for information that she wasn't supposed to reveal. They were coming past some scenery now, three volcanoes up ahead. With the thunderheads coming in from the south, the black volcanoes looked as if they were lowering beneath clouds of ash. Her answer seemed evasive. "Against the rising tide of ignorance."
Olivia shifted her hands on the steering wheel. She had been clutching it so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.
"I've been thinking," Bron said, "about what kind of damage a memory merchant might do. I mean, they could steal secrets from corporate executives, or government leaders! Right?"
"Yes," Olivia admitted. "I would even go so far as to admit that such things have been done—though not by me."
"They could, like, wipe out memories from their enemies. They might make great spies—sort of like James Bond, except with super powers."
"Yes, they could be like that," Olivia said. "So if we're on the good side, who's on the bad?"
"You're not ready for the whole truth," Olivia said. "And I'm not the one to tell you, even though I really want you to know."
Chapter 15
Healer
"Nearly all masaaks are left-handed. Anciently, being left-handed, being sinister, as the Romans called it, could be counted as proof that a person practiced sorcery, was in league with the devil. Today such things are considered foolish, but modern men don't understand how close to being right the ancients were."
Bron waited for Olivia to answer his question, but she never did. That's all right, he told himself. I can be more patient than you.
Yet he worried about the consequences of her silence. They'd been attacked once already, and it was obvious that their enemies terrified Olivia. Couldn't she see that he needed to know more?
She drove them in silence as they passed the trailhead at White Rock. Olivia nodded off to the side. "That's where I go to practice the guitar sometimes," she said casually, jutting her chin toward some cliffs the color of eggshell. The valley between was spotted with sagebrush, yucca plants, and juniper trees, with a ridge from an old lava flow running down the valley.
She indicated a small warning sign. "All of this land is on the desert tortoise refuge. If you see one by the side of the road, don't pick them up. You'll get a fine."
"Have you ever seen one?"
"Oh, they're all over the place," she said. "They hibernate in the winter. Otherwise they come out to eat in the morning, before the heat of the day."
At that, Bron smiled. It meant that he'd have a good chance of spotting a tortoise.
"But if you pick one up," Olivia warned, "it will get scared and pee, and if it loses too much moisture... well, we live in the desert. Life here is fragile."
She fixed him a warning glance, and he fell silent. He knew that she was talking about more than tortoises.
Soon they reached the Intermountain Medical Facility. The hospital in Saint George was a new affair, backed by cliffs on the east side of the city. It was made of sand-colored rock to blend in with its background.
Galadriel was in Room 411, and when Bron and Olivia reached the room, Bron felt astonished to see how poorly the girl was doing.
She was strapped to her bed, her face contorted and staring blankly at the wall. A heart monitor beeped steadily, while a pair of catheters dripped fluids into her wrist. Her face was pale with shock, and her blue eyes seemed empty of life.
Galadriel's mother sat in a chair at her side. Mascara tracks showed that she'd been crying. She sobbed when she spotted Bron, then broke into fresh tears at the sight of Bron's white rose.
"You shouldn't have come," Marie Mercer said. There was just a hint of blame in her tone, as if this was Bron's fault.
Olivia gave her a hug. "We had to come, sweetie. We had to give you a break." She squeezed hard and asked, "How has Galadriel been?"
Bron held his white rose. He didn't see a vase to put it in.
Galadriel just stared at the wall, completely unblinking. Her chest didn't even move when she breathed. She looked like someone who has witnessed a tragic accident, and then given up on life.
Marie broke into tears. "There's no change. I don't know what could have done this to her. The hospital checked her with a rape kit. She came back clean. There are no marks, no bruises. It's like, like she's looking into the depths of hell. She quit babbling once we got here."
"So do you have any idea what could have caused this?" Olivia asked. Of course she wouldn't have a clue.
Marie pointedly looked away from Bron. Obviously, she suspected that he had something to do with it. In a momentary silence, the beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor seemed unnaturally loud. The smell of antiseptics couldn't hide a peculiar musty odor in the room, as if Galadriel had been lying here, rotting away for days. Bron suspected that the scent came from the muck at the pond.
"We don't know what's wrong exactly yet. The doctors think she's had some sort of psychic break, one that has thrown her into deep depression. She won't eat, won't drink. They've got her on fluids, and they've started her on painkillers and some other pills, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, but it might take days before they begin to have any effect."
Olivia smiled sympathetically, offered some comforting platitudes.
Marie had no idea what she was up against, Bron realized. If Olivia was right, modern medicine was powerless to help the girl.
For a moment, Olivia held Marie's hand reassuringly.
Marie nodded to Bron. "White," she said, nodding toward the rose. "It's the symbol of pure love, wholesome and unselfish."
Bron nodded, but he hadn't known that. Obviously Marie thought that he was being gallant, and he wondered what she would have thought if he'd brought another color—say the peach-colored roses by the back door. What meaning was attached to those? Would they say something crude, like "I want to hook up?"
"Thank you for bringing it," Marie said, as if she might burst into tears. "It's nice to know that she's loved—I mean, that someone else loves her besides me. I don't think she has gotten that through her thick head—just how much she's loved."
Bron smiled sheepishly just as a nurse came in, making her rounds. She checked the fluid levels in the I.V.s, and then jotted some notes on the chart at the foot of Galadriel's bed.