In the Forest There Are No Lines

The answer came the next morning in the form of a sticky note on her office door. It was in a clear but archaic script, in a hand that Marik found both disturbing and familiar. "Please don't kill me," it said. "Holy Goatherds 43." She pulled it off the door and turned it over in her hand. The back was blank. No name, no time, no explanation whatever. She read it through again, but it made no more sense.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. "Great," she sighed. "What the hell is Holy Goatherds 43?" The phone chirped at her, and she sighed again and pushed off from the door.

"Marik," she said into the phone. It was supposed to be a professional and detached voice, but it came out a growling croak, more like an axe murderer than an assistant curator. "Wow," the phone said. "Have you killed him already?"

She stared at the phone and at the note, and said lamely, "What?"

"Oh, good. You haven't. Can I go with you when you do?"

Marik closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "Lupta?" she said finally.

"None other. You haven't got into anything stupid, have you, Kria dear?"

Marik grunted. "Just my whole life."

Analupta Mopassar's silver laugh poured from the phone and wrapped around Marik like a soft silk scarf. "Welcome to the club," she said, and laughed again.

Marik gave in to it, and smiled, and remembered the message she had sent the night before. She dropped boneless into her chair and laughed too. Then she saw the sticky note and her laughter died. "Lupta," she said, and waited for her friend's laugh to fade away. "Lupta, did you tell anyone about this?"

"What, your note yesterday? Or your homicidal tendencies?"

"The note, Lupta."

"Don't be silly, darling. I found it just too funny for words."

"You didn't answer it, then, did you?"

"Why, Kria, I'm answering it now. What is this all about, anyway?"

Marik picked up the sticky note and read through it again. There was no mistake. It couldn't be anything but an answer to her note to Analupta. "Somebody answered it, Lupta. Somebody answered my note to you. If you didn't answer it, and you didn't tell anyone about it, where did this thing come from? Who sent it, and why?"

Lupta was silent for a bit. "Oh, my," she said at last. "Oh, my. What does it say?"

Marik recited the message without looking at it. "I didn't tell anyone, Kria, honest," said Lupta. "I don't know anything about it, but it sounds like you've found your thief."

"Or my thief's found me. But what does it mean, Lupta? Holy Goatherds 43."

Marik could almost hear her shrug. "I don't know. Maybe it's like his name or something. Sounds like a gang name to me. Maybe you should go to the Guard."

Marik laughed at the shiver in her friend's voice. "Sounds more like a comic book to me," she said. "Adventures of the Holy Goatherds, Issue 43; 25 cents, cheap."

"Don't laugh at them, Kria, please."

"Don't laugh at who?"

"The gangs. They know, Kria. They know everything. They found out about your note to me, and they know where your office is. They probably know where you live, too, so please don't laugh at them."

Lupta was serious about this. Paranoid, perhaps, but serious. "All right, Lupta. I'll respect them. But why would they even care about me? I'm not doing anything remotely connected to them."

Lupta responded in a tense whisper. "You don't know that for sure, now, do you?"

Marik didn't know for sure. She didn't know at all. But then neither did Lupta.

Holy Goatherds proved disappointing. It was not a code word, not a gang name, not even a comic book. It was a street address. So claimed the UniNet, though it might have been a reference to the legend that gave the street its name. Marik thought not; what would the 43 be? There weren't 43 goatherds in the legend. She could find nothing about Number 43, Street of the Holy Goatherds, beyond the suggestion that it existed. She couldn't find agreement on where or what Number 43 was, or even where the Street of Holy Goatherds was.

Marik found this disquieting.

"You would think," she said to her screen, "that sometime in the past seven hundred or a thousand years someone might have thought it important to know where things are in this maze." It was almost beyond belief that a city of merchants and traders, with accountants as priests and navigators as ministers, would not know every street, what was on it and what it was worth, how many people lived there and what they were worth. It seemed to her the very least to expect from a post-modern civic government.

But Kuhesos had never really had a civic government. As a military outpost of the Ancient Empire, it had a military commander; then as an Imperial colony it had an Imperial Governor. There was a revolutionary tribunal for a month or so when the Empire was forced out; about all they could do was make sure that arson and murder were kept to a minimum, but that was still the closest Kuhesos had come to a true civic government.

For the most part, since the revolution the administration of Kuhesos was in the hands of business. As a result, Kuhesos had no municipal services, just commercial enterprises.

The bus companies, for instance, wanted people to know where their buses went and how to catch them, so the bus companies produced city maps. These maps differed. Each company emphasized its own routes and service areas, often falsifying or excluding those of the other companies. Companies also included in their own routes or areas bus stops or streets that did not exist; they did this to mislead the competition and to track unauthorized reproduction of their maps.

So when Marik could not find the Street of Holy Goatherds on a map, it didn't mean the street didn't exist; and when she found it on a map, it didn't mean that's where the street was. All she could do was look at a lot of maps and develop a hypothesis of probable existence and location.

Holy Goatherds appeared within the four wards of the Old City when it appeared at all. The Larnoz map placed it in the North Warrens Ward; the Gramfelarys map had it in the South Warrens Ward; Dippel put it in the Fourteen Martyrs Ward; the Puchy Mara Happy Bus Line map showed it not only in the Garden of the Moon Ward, but in the Garden of the Moon itself. The Krembak map and the map published by the Friendly Association of Independent Transport Operators didn't have the street at all. Krembak didn't operate within the walls of the City, while Dippel served only the Fourteen Martyrs Ward. Only Larnoz and Gramfelarys served more than half the Old City, and no other company would set even a wheel in the Warrens -- so Marik concluded that Holy Goatherds was probably in the Warrens.

Marik went to lunch elated to have narrowed her search down to half the City. Her elation lasted through a celebratory glass of Pérmè wine and the crisp greens that preceded a flatfish filet. Then she started thinking.

Sure, she had only half the City to search, but it was the dirty, crowded, dangerous half. Was she really going into the Warrens, to a place she didn't know where, to meet a person she didn't know who, who sent her a message she didn't know how, to find she didn't know what?

Was she crazy?

The Warrens, North and South, had always been the least known part of Kuhesos to people who didn't live there. To people who did live there, it was the only part of Kuhesos that mattered. They were close, poor, and suspicious of strangers, which meant anyone else who didn't have a good and obvious reason for being there. Marik had been through the Warrens on her way to the trendy dockside restaurants near the Strand, but had never been to the Warrens. Of the four thousand people who disappeared in Kuhesos every year, maybe three thousand were last seen in the Warrens.

She felt as flat as her filet when it finally arrived. She ate it mechanically, without tasting it and without pausing till the last hidden bone was picked from the corner of her mouth and placed on the plate near the rock-hard rice piled like skulls and bleeding a garlic sauce. She lay her napkin over the plate like a shroud and bowed her head in silence.

"Is this a private funeral, or can anyone come?"

Marik's head snapped up. She gasped. The tall slim man before her flashed a deep blue wink from beneath his sleek black hair. His face was dark with the heat of a thousand suns and lined with the wind of a thousand storms. A thin white scar slashed across his jaw from under his left ear to just below his chin, straight and clean, as if fresh from a draftsman's hand. The hint of self-mockery in his crooked smile kept him from looking too dangerous, and the hint of danger in his bright steady eyes kept him from looking innocuous. He slid out a chair with a smooth, silent swipe and flowed into it like a cat.

Marik slowly closed her mouth and blinked. "Bray," she said under her breath, and then, aloud, "Bray." She gulped down the second glass of Pérmè and set it chattering on the table. "Well, Bray Relmartyyan," she said firmly, a bit mockingly. She watched him closely from the corner of her eye. "Back from the dead again, I see."

Bray Relmartyyan threw back his head and laughed. The people around them turned and looked, and turned away smiling. Bray Relmartyyan had that effect on people. She had seen it before. She had done it before, but not for a long time.

"God damn you, Relmartyyan," she hissed. "What makes you think you can just sweep into my life any time you damn well please?" She stood up fast and sent her chair crashing to the floor five feet away. "What makes you think I even want to see you?" She glanced around at the people still smiling, but studiously not listening. "Everybody laughs with you, Relmartyyan. Everybody's happy when you're around; they'll do anything for you, and you'll damned well let them." She fumbled some bills from her jacket and threw them on the table without looking at them. "Well, let me tell you, Captain Relmartyyan, you can charm the pants off anybody, but I --" She drew herself up proudly and tossed back her long black hair. "-- I am not just anybody." She turned sharply on her heel and stalked away.

"Hey," said Captain Bray Relmartyyan to her retreating back. "I just wanted to say hello." And then he laughed.

"Damn him, damn him, damn him."

That was Marik's refrain throughout the endless afternoon, and endlessly in her head on the three buses home. She couldn't recall a thing she had done since lunch, couldn't recall that she had done anything but stare into his cold blue burning eyes and curse him for what he was.

He was a rogue. That was the word for it, a rogue. Nobody could trust him, and nobody could refuse him. He was thoughtless, and egotistical, and coarse, and dangerous -- and oh, god, she wanted him so.

She shook her head sharply to dispel such thoughts and wiped the tears angrily from her eyes. Two years without a word, and then he just appears with his pirate smile and his killer-cat eyes and she falls apart. What a damn fool stupid thing to do. She was over him; she got over him long ago. He was nothing to her. He was a rogue, and she could do without rogues.

He called as she was getting ready for bed, the tears still warm in her eyes.

"Kria?" he said, hesitantly, almost shyly, as if the possibility existed that he had called a wrong number. "I missed you," he said. "I thought about you every day."

"Oh," she said, the phone trembling in her hand. "You did not," hoping that he had.

"No?" He paused, perhaps to consider her suggestion. "No, you're right. Not every day."

"I knew it."

"Not every day, but often enough that I couldn't forget you. Oh, Kria, I missed you; please believe me. I came back to see you, Kria, and I can't go away until I do. Say you'll see me, Kria. Please say you will."

"No," she wanted to say. "Go away," she wanted to say. "You're no good, and you're no good for me, and I never want to see you again."

"Yes," she said. "All right."

The problem of the new display met her at the office door.

The Director had his hand on her doorknob, ready to go in, when she turned the corner of the hall. His eyes went wide with surprise -- it was almost nine; she had never been this late before -- and he waited for her, his hand still on the knob. "Do you have it, Kria?" he asked as soon as she was close enough. "Do you know what you're going to do? The Governors are most anxious, Kria. Most anxious, indeed."

Marik put her hand over his and turned the knob. "The Governors don't really give a shit," she said, slipping past him into her office.

He stared at her in shock for a moment, then followed her in. "No," he said. "You're right. You might have put it more elegantly, but they don't really know anything about what we do here. They don't know why we do it, and sometimes I don't think they care. Oh, Kria, this is our chance, can't you see?" He stood before her desk, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. His eyes were moist behind the sparkle of his spectacles.

She dropped into her chair and flipped on her infoterminal. "Our chance for what?"

He squeezed his hands and twitched his shoulders. "To show them what we can do. To make them sit up and take notice, and say, 'Yes, this is what a museum is. This is what makes a museum the greatest place in the world.' You see that, don't you, Kria?" He ducked his head and smiled. "When we get them on our side, there's no telling what we can do here."

She grinned. "Today the Governors, tomorrow the world?"

He laughed nervously. "You feel the same way, Kria. I know you do."

She sighed heavily and turned to her messages. "Yeah, maybe I do." She looked up at him and smiled. "I'm working on something. It might be good, but I may need help."

He nodded. "Anything I can do," he said.

"Good," she said, turning back to the terminal. "It might take a lot of help. More than you can give."

"Fine," he shrugged. "Tell me what you need, and I'll find a way to get it."

She held a hand out to him and smiled warmly. "I'll let you know in a day or two."

He took a step forward, one hand half-raised, then blushed and backed out of the room.

She dropped her hand heavily to her side and lowered her head. What was she doing? Why was she acting like this? She was playing him like a fish. She was playing him like ... like Bray Relmartyyan. She gasped. Is that what it was? Was she just another selfish, manipulative rogue? "I'm sorry," she whispered, though to the Director, or herself, or Relmartyyan, she couldn't say.

Her messages from the day before were opened, but she didn't remember a single one. They weren't that important. A man she had seen a few times and before yesterday might have seen again, Lupta wanting to "see a movie or something," four non-answers to her UniNet inquiries, two departmental memos about nothing in particular. There was a single unopened message, delivered late last night, about the time Relmartyyan had called. The From line was empty.

Twice she moved to open it, and twice her finger pulled back. Was it from him? Did he have access? Would he have sent her a message and called her, too?

Did she really want to know?

She chewed the end of her finger and stared at the screen. It couldn't be from him. He was a stranger to electronic messaging. You couldn't hear his voice on the computer, or see his seductive smile. No, it couldn't be him. It still took her two more tries before she finally opened it.

"Tonight," it said. "HG 43. I might have to kill me myself."

Holy Goatherds 43 -- the Warrens -- tonight. She didn't particularly like the idea of going into the Warrens at night even knowing where she was going. But to venture in and wander about? She shuddered. But it was her only lead to the missing file, and the file was her one clue to the secret of the artifacts. She could just find something else to make a display from, but the more she considered it, and the more she stared at the artifacts lying mute on her worktable, the more she realized she wanted to use these artifacts.

She wanted to know them. They mocked her now, the polished stone disks, the worn wood carvings, the red-mouthed pots. Somebody made them, they had some function; they challenged her to discover their secrets, and she knew it was a challenge she could not refuse.

The Director was right. This was a challenge not only to her, but to the museum itself, to the very idea of museums. If she couldn't find out what these things were, she might as well admit that the museum was nothing more than a glorified warehouse, and she no more than a clerk.

But if there was any way to avoid Holy Goatherds 43 --

She spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon following up her inquiries to the various branches of the University Library. Everybody offered suggestions, but nobody was any help. She could have spent the rest of the day, or the rest of the week, taking all the advice and learning nothing new. She reluctantly decided against that. And by the end of the day, she was left with Holy Goatherds 43.

Lupta called right after she accepted that she would have to go. Lupta was horrified.

"You can't mean it," she said. "You can't go there alone, Kria. You may never come back."

"Come with me; you said you would."

Lupta's open mouth gaped over the phone. "Oh, Kria," she said, her brain almost audibly clicking. "I'd love to go, you know I would. But I don't think I possibly can."

"Why? You have a date?"

"Well, actually, yes."

"So a casual evening with a man you may never see again is more important than possibly saving your best friend's life?"

"Kria! There's nothing casual about it."

"Oh? A formal evening, then."

"And he's not just any man. He might just be the man, and I most certainly will see him again."

"Really? This is mighty sudden, isn't it?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I didn't hear any hint of this man two days ago. I think I might have."

Lupta was silent for several breaths. "I'm sorry, Kria. I just can't go."

"All right, Lupta, don't worry about it, I'll be okay. But tell me about this man. Do I know him?"

Lupta's silence was longer this time. "Maybe," she said in a diminishing voice, as if her mouth and the phone were drifting apart. "I don't know if I should say anything until ... oh, you know."

"Until you tell him that he's caught?"

"Kria, I ..." Lupta trailed off into the longest silence yet. "Kria, can't you go some other night? Or some other day, better yet."

"Would you go with me then?"

"Of course I would. You know I would."

"Sure, Lupta. But I can't. It's tonight or never, I think. I didn't pick it; he did."

"He, who? Do you know who it is?"

"Maybe you know him, Lupta. I'll certainly be seeing him again; he might be the man."

"Please, Kria, don't make fun of me. I said I'm sorry, and I mean it."

"Of course you do, Lupta. I didn't mean to make fun. Well, I've got to go. I don't want to take all night with this, and it might take me a while to find the place."

"I wish you wouldn't go," said Lupta. "But good luck." Marik hung up. "Yeah, thanks," she said. She sighed heavily and started preparing herself for the Warrens.