Codex - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by HF
Last updated: 09/18/2008 08:14:22 PM

Chapter 4

Light filtered through the old thick-paned window, and the odd softness and indirectness of it hinted at late afternoon. The light gave no heat, but fell almost pointlessly on the thick pile of blankets in which Remy had wrapped himself. It also tangled in the long red-streaked brown hair of the woman who watched him soundlessly as she set out clean clothes and a hairbrush on a bureau set against the wall.

"How long’ve I been asleep?" Remy asked, just to say something.

"It’s almost two in the afternoon," the woman answered gravely, her voice tinged by an indefinable accent. She was young, although she seemed older, and there was age in her dark eyes. "Are you feeling better?"

"Like I just came back from the dead," Remy said, frowning to himself. He could feel the residue of yesterday’s exhaustion like a skim of fog across his brain, something to which he was unaccustomed. Whenever he was tired beyond even his considerable endurance-which did not happen often-he usually found a place where no one was likely to find him and hibernated (his term) until he felt he could function again. He did not do this, ’this’ meaning lie in bed, watching a woman watch him try not to fall asleep again. He probably looked terrible.

"You probably should have spent the night in Haight’s Pond," the woman said. "It would have been the smarter thing to do, but instead, you came out here. Why?" She sounded genuinely curious behind the mask of dispassion.

"Had t’ get here fast as I could," Remy said, shifting underneath the covers. "Ain’t every day I get an invitation t’ run somet’in’ valuable ’cross de big pond."

"The ’big pond?’"

"De Atlantic, cherie."

"Oh." The woman looked away nervously and her fingers fidgeted with the folds of clothing. Remy could see that her left hand was mangled, knotty scar tissue twisting across its surface, two fingers missing, the remaining ones deformed as if someone had cruelly yanked them out of joint and put them back again. There were places where it seemed the knucklebones threatened to pierce the skin, an unexpected deformation, and all the more horrible for it. He tried not to stare at the hand, at the way it moved thoughtlessly, almost as if flaunting its deformity, but it was difficult.

"I remember... a lil’ girl wit’ bones stickin’ out her skin, every which way, an’ de way de blood had clotted ’round where de bones stuck up. An’ I remember all de others, like someone just put dem together from puzzle pieces dey picked up from a butcher’s floor, dey was dat ugly."

He saw that the woman was looking at him looking at her hand, and he looked away, ashamed.

What she thought, it was impossible to tell. "I was hurt in the same explosion that killed my best friend," she said, her tone absolutely neutral and devoid of sentiment. "It was a landmine that had been planted in my father’s field... by his own people." She left off her absentminded caress of the cotton shirt and corduroys and strode almost soundlessly to the door, pausing by it only to say, "Dr. Marcus will see you after lunch. We’ll be eating in the refectory, if you think you’re well enough to join us", and then stepped out.

The door had been shut a good five minutes by the time Remy forced himself out of bed. To his surprise, the air was comfortably warm, not overpoweringly so, but just enough to make getting himself out from under the covers easier than he thought. He got dressed and washed his face from the small basin of water, tried as best he could to ignore the stale taste of morning (early afternoon?) mouth, and ran the brush through his hair.

Setting down the brush, he was briefly surprised by his own reflection in the mirror, the pure exhaustion that rimmed his red-on-black eyes. Maybe there was something in the eyes themselves that made him look even more worn out than he was. He still didn’t have his color-surely, surely even a few weeks in New York City wouldn’t wash him out that completely-and the pallor in his cheeks made him a little nervous. Even his hair, normally a thick and glossy auburn, hung limp and dispirited. The corduroys, which were the size he normally wore, hung a bit more loosely from his hips than he would have liked. Was he coming down with something? As far back as he could remember, he’d never been sick, not even once with the typical cold or strep throat every kid got. Tante Mattie had once told him that the only time he ever threw up was when, as an eleven-year-old, he’d snuck into his father’s liquor cabinet and drunk an entire bottle of Cuban rum-and, she had been sure to tell him, he’d *deserved* that.

Despairing, Remy shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. The habitual gesture was soothing and restored him somewhat. Offering his reflection a ghost of his trademark, cocky grin, he left the room and went out to wander the halls of St. Nathan’s.

The first thing he noticed was the utter silence, the way his footsteps intruded into it and were then swallowed up. Loudly they sounded at first, but then they simply vanished, deprived of any echoes-odd, considering the vaulted hallway had been designed to carry sound efficiently, bouncing voices from arch to arch. Doors lined the hallway, all of them closed, and their solid construction hinted at a wish for privacy despite the primitive locks that almost begged to be picked. Despite Remy’s knowledge that there were at least two other people in residence beside himself, St. Nathan’s possessed an air of utter desolation.

No... no, not desolation, he amended privately, unless he were going totally and utterly paranoid. He thought he could feel invisible eyes tracking him, their weightless gaze heavy and knowing between his shoulder blades. A presence, one he could not fully detect or explain, seemed to hover somewhere just over his shoulder. The air around him took on a living quality, as if it were breathing slowly, carefully exhaled from the lungs of a warm, sentient being.

He shivered and remembered times in Essex’s lab, when he had been utterly alone, deprived even of the company of a madman. No-that was wrong. He *had* had the company of a madman, only the madman was himself... Himself and the increasingly shrill voices he used to break the silence, the voices that produced the best echoes to make it sound like there was another living being besides himself in that cell that had no seam, no door, no vent or opening of any kind, the cell that was utter *sameness* in its stark white uniformity.

Remy’s mind teetered on the brink of shutdown. He forced himself to examine the architecture, to not think about the close warmth of the air around him, or of cells.

As he walked, though, that air became thinner and thinner, and he began to pick up voices, scattered and disembodied and ghostly, but definitely real. Several different accents chased each other back and forth, male and female voices, high-pitched and rumbling basso, some laughing and good-natured and some annoyed, some indifferent, some impatient. He could hear rustling and footsteps and, unexpectedly, the sound of a woman singing a contemporary song about how someone was going to sex someone up, and someone telling her to stop it.

"What de hell kinda monastery *is* dis?" he wondered as he turned a corner. He remembered the woman, who certainly hadn’t seemed to be a nun. "Where all de monks hangin’ out?"

No one in the large, high-ceilinged room seemed to be a monk, either. Some of them didn’t even seem to be human.

A very, very tall man loomed over the rest of the gathering, towering above what appeared to be twenty other heads. He was slender, almost painfully so, and looked a skeleton compared to the wide, blue-haired woman who sat next to him. The dark-haired woman from his bedroom was sitting atop a table, a soft smile on her face growing as the giant next to her spoke animatedly and with many gestures. A small cluster of women sat over to the side, intent on some discussion, and nearby two men spoke quietly. Younger children, some little more than thirteen, raced around, and in the middle of that maelstrom was the tall, gaunt figure of the black man who had greeted Remy last night. Troy Marcus.

"Mr. leBeau!" Dr. Marcus extracted himself from the storm of teenagers and made his way over to where Remy stood frozen in utter bewilderment. "It surely is good t’ be seein’ ya, surely is," Marcus said effusively, shaking the hand Remy hadn’t even realized he’ offered. "Joyeuse didn’ expect we’d be gettin’ t’ see ya before three, so we were just gettin’ ready to eat. Y’ hungry?"

Starving, Remy realized, listening to his stomach rumble unhappily. He nodded, which made Dr. Marcus grin, and followed the man over to a table where food was being set out. He fell into line with the doctor on one side and the giant man on the other and Remy, who was used to being taller than most people, was briefly uncomfortable. He collected his plate quickly and followed Marcus over to a corner table, feeling the collective stare of the rest of the group focusing on him alone.

If Marcus noticed the sudden shift in his group’s behavior, he didn’t indicate it. Instead, he waited politely for Remy to seat himself before sitting down and watched, seemingly enraptured, as Remy ate a few bites.

"Thank you very much for bringin’ the codex back here," Marcus said after a moment. "It means a lot to us, surely does. It’s been exactly 391 years since we had it here, y’ know. It got taken over to th’ new world with some immigrants who’d left..." He trailed off and shrugged, took a bite of salad. "Sorry for ramblin’ on. ’S just... we *do* thank you. Very much. Robert-Father Clay, to you-called this mornin’ to see if you’d gotten in safe an’ sound. Was very happy to tell him that you were."

Father Clay, thousands of miles away back in the States. Meeting him in St. Patrick’s had seemed like a dream. The United States was like remembering a nightmare, disjointed but still potent in its terror. "Glad to make him happy," Remy said around a mouthful of salad. "Any reason why he wanted t’ send me in particular?"

"Oh, a very good reason," Marcus assured him. Remy noticed uneasily that the man hadn’t touched his food. Had it been poisoned? But the rest of the people in the refectory had begun to eat; surely Marcus wouldn’t poison his own people. "Robert knew what you were the second he saw ya," Marcus continued, dark eyes watching Remy intently. "An’ I don’ mean Robert knew ya were a thief, or a lapsed Catholic."

"I... I don’ know what ya mean..."

"’Course ya do. You can take those sunglasses off, boy."

Remy’s hand involuntarily drew up to brush the frames of the glasses he put on out of sheer force of habit. His fingers curled around them, dragged them off his nose.

"That’s better," Marcus said, allowing himself a bite of food. Mostly, though, he stirred his fork through his potatoes, as if it were a nervous gesture.

"How he know dat?"

"Easy," Marcus said, appearing genuinely surprised that Remy hadn’t figured it out on his own. "Robert’s a mutant, jus’ like you... jus’ like me, jus’ like every other person in this room. He ain’t what you’d call one of them superhero-type mutants; all’s he can do, from what I understand, is detect the unique biogenic presence of an individual possessing a derivative or mutative genetic structure. I’m sorry I ain’t much clearer than that... I haven’t gotten through all the literature yet. Runnin’ this place keeps me pretty busy."

Mutants? Everyone here... a mutant?

"Well, not all of them," Marcus said, as if reading Remy’s mind, or anticipating the natural question. "Most of us are what you’d call 100% bona-fide homo superior, whatever y’all think that means. Some are jus’ unfortunate recipients of some kinda recessive gene... and a whole lotta superstition, hatred, an’ fear." Marcus’s voice darkened slightly. "Hell, all of us are *that*," he said at last. "Includin’ me, an’ I’m pretty normal-lookin’, ain’t I?"

"What’re you?" Remy asked faintly.

"Eidetic memory," Marcus said. "Perfect retention goin’ back to, oh, far back as I can remember-which is very, very far. I always did well on tests in school until teachers started wonderin’ if I was cheatin’... It didn’ take me long t’ figure out I should start messin’ up on purpose, an’ soon I was just a regular kid in gifted classes who got upset when he got a B on his science project. An’ that’s how I got by. Like you get by with y’all’s sunglasses, but it ain’t nothin’ more than a patch, is it? Somethin’ that, whoops, it fall off, now *everythin’* come spillin’ out. But at least we got that, right? More than Christof and Margarita can say."

Christof, Remy was given to understand, was the giant. "I found him lyin’ unconscious outside some town’s gates in Switzerland," Marcus explained quietly, his voice pitched low. "He’d been an attraction in the circus for a time, but the circus went broke an’ left him high an’ dry in the Alps. Some people in the town he visited decided the only good freak is a dead freak or a freak behind bars, an’ they did their best to make sure he was one of the first kind of freak. Y’ understand?"

Remy nodded. He did, from bitter experience. He could hear the taunting, fearful catcalls and hoots of childhood tormentors as if the boys themselves stood before him in the flesh. He could hear Thierry du Mont-faucon’s whiny, half-wailed Ave Marias every time the old man came to the leBeau manse for some Guild function. Sometimes, if he let them, the memories would get out of hand and swallow him in a rush of howled, bloothirsty invective.

"Margarita now, she jus’ a girl born with the wrong kind a’ gene-the gene that gives you an excess of body hair where there ain’t supposed to be much, or none at all. It’s a well-documented recessive trait, though it ain’t common." Marcus paused and took a deep draught of his water. He swallowed thickly and shook his head. "She was a sideshow act, too, from the time she was five."

"Where’d you find her?"

"Next to Christof, tryin’ to patch up some a’ his scrapes."

The young man slid a careful, circumspect glance over at Margarita, whose furry face stood out beside the pale, almost albino-like slenderness of Christof. He could see the protectiveness she exuded, although she must have been six or seven years his junior and three feet shorter. The giant caught Remy’s inspection and stiffened; some of his unease was communicated to Margarita, whose gaze zeroed in on Remy and flickered on the edges of hostility. Remy quickly looked away.

"You a one-man mutant search and rescue service?" Remy asked.

Marcus laughed, a good-natured, honest, booming laugh that reminded Remy, suddenly and painfully, of his adoptive father. "Well, I used t’ be, before the ol’ prior of this place passed on. ’Mutant search and rescue service’," he reflected, smiling to himself as he rolled the words over his tongue. "My, that sounds flashy! Can’t think of a better way to say it... But it’s not a one-man thing by any means-this whole thing, St. Nathan’s, is devoted to makin’ sure people got a safe place to live. It’s been that way ever since it was founded, really."

His salad long forgotten, Remy leaned back and studied Troy Marcus-*really* studied him. The man certainly seemed to be honest and forthcoming-Remy did not pick up any sign of deception or malice in him-and he had the sense suddenly that this codex and his ’errand’ were only parts of something much, much larger, pieces of a picture whose scope he could only sense but not fully comprehend at the moment. It was not a welcome feeling: he had been in this kind of situations too many times to count already, and even the benevolence of Troy Marcus was suspect.

As he thought this, the dark-haired woman slipped soundlessly onto the bench next to Marcus, who smiled and greeted her affectionately. "Joyeuse," he said, voice a paternal rumble.

"Dr. Marcus," she said quietly, glancing at Remy, who watched her with some curiosity.

"This is Joyeuse-you met her earlier," Marcus said by way of formal introduction. "Joyeuse, this is Remy." After an uncomfortable silence, during which neither party acknowledged the introduction, he asked, "Did you need to talk to me?"

"I..." Joyeuse seemed to flouder for a moment, caught between saying yes and no, but knowing she had interrupted a private conversation either way. "Catherine and Juliana went along with Dominic and Valentino to get some supplies from town... it’s for Mathilde. She needs more stones for the masonry, or something. I’m not sure what, exactly, but they went, and took the truck. They’ll be back before nightfall."

Marcus nodded. "Thanks for tellin’ me, Joy," he said gratefully. "There’s no keepin’ those kids still, I suppose." There was faint regret in the words, something that surprised Remy.

Sadness flickered across Joyeuse’s face, but she said nothing. Instead, she got back up and turned away, leaving in the same silence with which she entered. Remy watched her go, briefly fascinated by the clear, aching regret that pulsed from her like a second heartbeat. It was strong, strong enough to drown out the current of unease and muted melancholy that filled the refectory, a conversation of gloomy voices swirling underneath the deceptively happy ones.

"She’s only a year or so older than the others," Marcus said in a low voice. "I’m not sure exactly how old, ’cause her family went by a very old calendar, but I figure that she’s about twenty-two. Dominic, Cathy, and the rest are twenty or so, give or take. But she..." Marcus sighed heavily. "Father Clay found her when he was on a mission in Ankara," he said at last. "It was just after some big revolt against the government. Robert was with UNICEF at the time, and he found her outside this hovel..." He trailed off and shook his head. "We try to help people here," he murmured, sounding as if he were talking to himself and not to Remy at all, that Remy did not exist. "But there are some we just can’t."

Remy waited in suspended animation, motionless, but his mind was whirling. What kind of place was this?

Once more, Marcus’s dark gaze riveted on him, clear and piercing despite the man’s seamed face. "Remy, most of the people here... they ain’t what you’d call the super-hero types. None of them are gonna save the world or destroy it-hell, most of ’em have had *their* worlds destroyed when their abilities manifested, or when their genes started misbehavin’. All these people want is to live in peace an’ not be bothered, but sometimes that ain’t enough... People need friends, ’cause there ain’t no peace without friendship. Some people can’t even find that here... Too many scars, I guess."

An image of Joyeuse’s scarred, ravaged hand danced before Remy’s eyes. He glanced involuntarily down at his left arm, wondered if the track marks from all those IV’s had disappeared yet. Then he noticed Marcus had followed the change in his line of sight and quickly looked back up at the older man.

"St. Nathan’s has been here for over a thousand years," Marcus told him in a low, almost confidential voice. "We aim t’ find mutants or people who just need t’ be left alone an’ bring them here, if they want t’ come. We’re simple here-life ain’t fancy, but it ain’t hard-and no one bothers us. The townsfolk know somethin’, that we’re an asylum for people with all sorts a’ problems, but no more than that."

There was now a definite drift to the conversation, and in the short pause, Remy devoted himself to analyzing it. He could detect no duplicity from the man, either on an empathic level or with the basic gut instinct of a trained thief: the man fairly radiated innocence and sincerity, and over it all, a genuine desire to help the pitiful collection of humanity gathered around him. He also seemed quite intent on recruiting Remy-why else would he be so forthcoming with information? Or let Remy wander around unescorted when he could run into people who were so obviously mutants? Either that, or this was yet another instance of trust being placed in Remy without his approval, and he found he was still uncomfortable with the feeling.

"Why you tellin’ me dis, mon ami?" he asked in a tone to match Marcus’, making sure to keep it neutral. There might have been pain in the question otherwise-pain at being put in a position to learn secrets, maybe damning secrets, and this man did not deserve what would happen to him should information of this sort come into Remy’s hands.

Marcus blinked and made no attempt to disguise his shock. "Well, I was going to extend an invitation to you, of course-an invitation to stay here, as long as you like."

Remy could only stare, completely floored. Troy Marcus’ words danced around him, undulating as if they were true, physical beings, alternately making no sense at all and then skewering him with their meaning. "Well, I was going to extend an invitation to you..." An invitation to this place? Incredulity was not something Remy was not used to feeling. Why? What on earth could possibly make Troy Marcus and Robert Clay think that *he*, Remy leBeau, was worth an invitation to a place like this?

Troy Marcus himself remained silent, his dark face blank of anything except compassion, and Remy knew his internal struggle was painfully visible. Him! Here! Once more he was aware of that disembodied gaze, watch eyes peering over his shoulder. Around him, the building itself seemed to exude an air of contentment, wafted like a perfume along the warm air that filled the room. Him! Here! The soft laughter of the room’s other inhabitants drifted over him, and he could sense, if not perfect happiness, a gloss of it that made life suddenly worth living.

He thought of the track marks on his left arm, the more or less permanent marking made by a perpetual tourniquet, the cell of flawless adamantium and the hell he went through there. He thought of the lurid lights of Essex’s laboratory, the obscenity of life made by attaching wires and plastic tubes to a living body, the desecration of screams ripping across the recycled, chilly air in the operating rooms. He could remember Essex laughing softly at a passing remark-how Remy’s empathy, something nurtured carefully by dozens of medications and experiments, was a most effective whip and chain. The lights in the lab became the garish streets of New York City, Los Angeles, even the streets of New Orleans, and he found himself repulsed by them.

The only light here was the light of a late winter afternoon, pooling gently on the floor. And, aside from the laughter, there was quiet, and Troy Marcus watching him silently.

"Robert found out ’bout you through the New York City Guild," Marcus said very quietly, so quietly Remy almost didn’t catch the words. "He only had a hunch to go on, but he knew what you were the moment you stepped foot in that cathedral."

"What, that I was a mutant?" Remy said past a thick knot in his throat.

"Yes," Marcus answered, "but he also knew that you had had a very... difficult time lately-it’s not a mutant power, y’ understand, but jus’ somethin’ all priests cultivate eventually, I suppose. He called me right after you said you’d meet him t’ pick up the package, very happy, an’ damn but he only got happier after you agreed to courier it over here. Can’t say I blame him." Marcus paused. "It’s hard helpin’ people in this day an’ age, ’specially if they’re mutants. Some it’s just hard to get them here, or to get them to understand St. Nathan’s a refuge, not some kinda prison. Robert guessed you’d never come here if we just handed you a plane ticket an’ an invitation, so he decided this year’d be a good year t’ send the codex back to its original home.

"The invitation’s always open," Marcus continued when it became apparent Remy wasn’t going to say anything. "All we ask is that, if you leave, you just exercise some discretion an’ not tell anyone ’bout us. I hate the secrecy, but there it is."

"Why tell me all dis?"

"You’d learn it all sooner ’r later," Marcus said dismissively, as if the point were completely obvious. "We ain’t got the surveillance here t’ keep anyone from our secrets, so we just make sure whenever we let someone come here they’re a safe bet."

Remy stared at the man. "’Safe bet’?" he echoed, unable to keep bitter astonishment from his voice. What was it with these people? Didn’t they *understand* he was not nice? Not to be trusted? "Dr. Marcus, I’m a damned *t’ief*, for de love of God. Since when is a t’ief a safe bet?"

"Let’s call it a gut reaction," Marcus replied, not taken aback by Remy’s sudden outburst in the least. "No one’s 100% safe, of course-that’d be absurd. But you came here with the codex, didn’ ya? Hell, you coulda been halfway ’cross the world right now in Timbuktu or Sumatra or wherever, but y’ ain’t-you’re here, an’ the codex is in my office, right where you told Robert you’d take it. Now, call me an idiot-an’ seein’ as I’ve got a memory that ain’t forgotten a thing since God was a kindergartner, that ain’t a safe thing t’ call me-but I think that’s a bet I won, right?"

Sighing, Remy shook his head, fenced into an agreement with the man, and said, with probably the best kind of helplessness he’d ever felt, "Sure thing... Aw, what de hell, I’ll stay."

"Badabing!" Marcus leaned back and clasped his hands over the soft rise of his belly, thoughtfully rubbing his thumbs over his woolen sweater. He radiated contentment like a furnace, and Remy was surprised yet again when he found himself responding to the older man’s unabashed satisfaction, smiling a true, honest smile for the first time in a long time. "You ain’t got no idea how happy I am t’ hear that, Remy leBeau," Marcus said effusively. "No idea at all."