Redworld, page 3
Squire Gearing was always there in the mornings when I walked in, and he was the last to leave at night. Gearing schemed, plotted, and campaigned. Selling paper was a deadly game. At night he went over each sales ticket, trying to figure how to increase it on the next order. He reviewed the accounts. He knew exactly when a customer ought to be needing a new roll of wrapping paper … a new bundle of paper bags. He made sure a salesman was there to get the order before the customer could think about visiting the competition. He mapped out his strategy in the evening. In the morning he called me in and dictated memoranda to the individual salesmen. On Cinqueday afternoons, after the boisterous sales meetings broke up, he stayed late to put his thoughts in order. Sometimes he came in on Sextday mornings. He was an example for all the rest, without intending to be. “Take care of your job,” he exhorted the salesmen, “and it will take care of you.”
Gearing was wedded, but not to Lady Gearing, or to his family. He was wedded to his paper mill.
3
Memories of Women
FOURTHNIGHT. The sextile was almost over. Half a day remained. And I had finally stopped aching.
I lay on my cot thinking of the stories the men at the mill told about Josi. “She calls herself Dama Vys, but they’re not married. And he’s impotent.” “She has no lover.” “You can’t get within a day’s run of her.” “Actually, she’s a virgin.” “She’ll lose it when Revenant rings.” “She’s saving herself for: The Great Archon … The Chief Scientist … Dean Gard … The Guild Heads …” “No, none of those …. She’s waiting for a male virgin.…”
(I qualified.)
I groaned and twisted over for a look at the tick. Only the third hori. I had to get back to sleep. Cinqueday and payday. A big, big day. Would there be enough money to have a date with a girl?
Girls.
I checked off a mental list of certain girls I had known in scholium. They had long ago gone their separate ways. They would have to think hard even to remember my name. Well, perhaps not Jeil Gard. (Truly, the Dean’s daughter!) She and I had memorized together our required verse from Tern’s Madonna of the Clouds. Practically the entire class had picked the first verse, because it was the best-known and the easiest (though totally incomprehensible):
The arrow strikes,
So dies the Revenant,
But lives again
And carries her
Into the Tower elegant.
The sacred legend is of course well-known. The Revenant is killed, comes back to life, saves his lady love, and sends her off in a remarkable (sailless!) ship to the stars while he deals with the killer mob. Ho hum.
Jeil and I had jumped into the middle of the epic, and we had searched out what we thought was even better:
Her hair was black, with sparks of red.
He looked up and gray eyes cast
A glamoring net on him …
We studied together on her porch glider, under the dim oxien torch. One night, when our recitals were done, we put our books down on the floor and just sat there in silence. It was dark, except for the little torch. Lights were coming on in the houses across the street. Once in a while we could hear voices. Mostly parents calling to children. Get in here. It’s your bedtime.
Jeil’s hand lay loosely on her knee. I put my hand on hers. Our fingers interlaced. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do next, but I knew I’d have to work out the details as I went along. I got up and pulled the hood on the lamp. I sat down close beside her in the darkness, held her face with my hands, and kissed her on the lips. It was not expertly done. It was the first time I had kissed a girl, and perhaps I had missed some of the finer points. No matter. It felt wonderful.
Her long red hair was coiled in two flat braids along the sides of her head. I ran my hand over one of the coils, and wondered what she would look like with her hair let down, and lying naked beneath me.
Jeil sighed. She put her hand behind my head and pressed me gently to her. I shifted my lips to her cheeks, her throat. Her skin was amazingly soft. I began caressing her body. My palm moved slowly up and down her robed side, lingering a little over her hip. Then I brought it back over her stomach, and up to her breasts. They seemed large, even for a girl her size. She brought a hand down to cover mine, and our fingers interlocked once more. Under my palm, I felt a little knob begin to form. It was the nipple of her breast. Interesting. I didn’t know they did that. We kissed again. Our lips opened a little, and my tongue went into her mouth. In and out, flicking, darting, probing. I got my hand under her robe. It was a long garment, with ruffles and flounces, and I had to fight to overcome an adverse geometry of fabric. I moved up the bare flesh of her leg and hip. My fingers encountered her short clothes. I moved under these and rested my hand for a moment on her stomach. She was barely breathing. Our mouths broke apart as I concentrated. My hand moved down, slowly, tentatively, exploring. She moved her legs apart a little, and I lay upon her, between her legs. Her right leg was slightly flexed, and pressed against the back of the glider. Her left leg was mostly off the glider. Her foot may have rested on the porch floor. I didn’t take much notice.
She began to moan softly. Our mouths came together and locked. Her hands were all over my back, digging, pressing. Her lips broke away. She gasped. A series of harsh gutturals. Her body convulsed upward and I was almost thrown off the glider. Finally she sank down. She was breathing hard, but otherwise she was quiet. It was too dark to see her eyes clearly. I struggled up to a semi-sitting position. I was amazed I hadn’t climaxed along with her.
“How about you?” she whispered. She fumbled with my belt buckle. I helped her. Just then a gig came clattering up the street. As we watched and listened with growing foreboding, it turned into her driveway. The borch filly knew her way despite the darkness.
By the evil wings of siriS: it was indeed the Dean. Probably returning from his night lecture at the collegia.
The carriage went on back to the stable. He would be coming out here very soon.
We sat up. I got my pants together. She straightened her robe and pulled her shoes on. I gathered up my books, we kissed goodnight, and I left.
Next time …
But there was no next time.
Not long after this, Father died. Then Gil. Everything fell apart. Jeil and I stopped studying together. We graduated from the scholium. She went on to the collegia. I began my long search for a job.
And now it was all different. Things had happened to me (and to her, too, for that matter). She dated boys at the collegia. That was fine. She certainly wasn’t tied to me. She probably never gave another thought to the black-haired Madonna. We were all different people now. But more had happened to me than to Jeil and any of the other girls I once had known. They had not had deaths. They had not been evicted from their homes. They had not looked for a job for over a year. And I doubted that any of them had ever gone to bed hungry.
The girl that I want now will have a special look; I will wait for her. Her face conceals a vague hurt and sadness. Things have happened to her: yet her life goes on. She hides her disappointments. And perhaps she is waiting for someone like me, though Siris knows what I will have to offer her. We might be rather like negative numbers getting together. We won’t add up. We won’t cancel out. We’ll just make each other worse. Maybe that is the way it will be with me and this girl. And she will probably wake up to this reality, and she will leave me. If we ever get together in the first place.
I have seen this face twice. The first time, it was the picture of a nurse, in the middle of a group of the Chief Scientist’s boy soldiers. The engraving was in an illustrated scroll of the Damaskis News, in the Public Library. Here was my dream woman, probably in her twenties, though she looked older; a stalwart among innocents. She smiled a crooked smile, totally without humor. Her face said, I have seen terrible things, and terrible things are in store for these kids, but we are going to pull through. We are going to be lucky.
I think I could talk to that woman, long gone, vanished into the mists of history.
Josi also has this face.
I think of Josi, and I know that bad things have happened to her. Not the same things that happened to me, of course. Other things. But I have looked at her face, and I believe that she and I could talk to each other. Besides which, she is a very beautiful woman. Older than I, but that doesn’t matter. Not to me, anyhow.
(I don’t care how many fingers you have, Josi. On the other hand, next time I see you, I think I’ll count them.)
4
S–144
CINQUEDAY. A very special day. Pay Day. D-douzaine solati.
At the seventh bell of the morning I stood on our little landing, looking out toward the carmine skies in the east. Another scorcher coming up. I didn’t care. Forget the heat. An incredibly marvelous day was borning. Preparations would have to be made. I still had plenty of time.
I hurried trippety-trap down the stairs to the garden.
Burnie followed me down. Burnie had barely discernible snaffer ancestry. The priests once used snaffers to sniff out heretics. That was before the Treaty, of course. When a snaffer found a heretic he would deliver a combined bawl-bark that sounded very much like “Burn! Burn!” The breed fell on evil times after the Treaty, and pretty much faded away except for an occasional mixed blood like Burnie. Anyhow, this nondescript insect-ridden cub had followed Gil home from the collegia one day, shouting, Burn, Burn at every step. Gil was enchanted. He cleaned him up and persuaded his acceptance into the household. Every day thereafter, on first encounter the animal would declare Gil’s heretical status. He would do this only for Gil. Gil loved it. Mother was scandalized. Father was fascinated. I was jealous.
At present Burnie sleeps on the stair landing, right outside the kitchen door, at least in mild weather. On cool nights we bring him inside.
Dama Schmol let us have the strip of ground next to the stable, under the steps, to use as our garden. I spaded it up in the spring. No fertilizer. No borch-manure. No money for that. It did pretty well anyhow. We had fabas, quinch, gaglia, and especially totoes.
“Plink.” A drop of vada on the splash rock. Musical. Good to heal. I looked up. The vada came from our ice-box. The vada from the melting monia ice dripped down out of a drain tube in the alumen bottom of the ice-box and into a funnel, which was stuck in a drain pipe. That pipe thrust out of our kitchen wall and fed a slow drip down on a rock in the garden below. The arrangement worked pretty well, except that from time to time the drain would plug. The thing that plugged it was algae. Then I’d have to borrow Dama Schmol’s stepladder, climb up to face the reluctant drain, and blow it out with lung power. Messy.
I saw ads for electric refrigerators in the news-sheets. Beautiful machines cooled by circulating vada with a battery-driven pump. The vada vaporized, thereby cooling, and the vapor was repressurized and the vada recycled. Ingenious. No ice. No drip. No nothing. Rich people had them. I did not think we would ever have one. I didn’t mind.
On Seconday and Cinqueday Mother puts the ice card in the front window. It’s a square piece of cardboard, with big black numbers on the four sides: 24, 48, 72, and 96. She generally stands it up to read 24 barons, except for special occasions. The iceman rides by in his borch-drawn van, looks up at the card, picks up a 24-baron cake of ice with those lethal-looking tongs, slings it expertly onto the thick leather cape on his back, and up he comes.
I study the vines again. Whoa there. A big fat crawler. One day soon you’ll make a beautiful winger—if you can stay out of our garden. Relax, you stupid little squirmer, we’ll settle you down in a jiffy. Here’s a diddle-weed for you. Grab hold, there. Now, let’s see about those totoes. Aha, two, maybe three, ready and red-ripe. I pull two, one for me, one for Mother. I hurry up the stairs with them. She is waiting, just inside the door. I hand the things to her. “Gotta run!” She simply smiles.
No, Burnie, you stay here. Stay.
THE MORNING YAWNS, stretches, and creeps by. The noon bell finally booms out. Count the peals! One … two … three. … Twelve hori! It’s all very simple. You walk in to Gearing’s table, sign the pay log, he hands you an envelope with your name on it, you count your money, then you walk out.
For the others, maybe it was indeed simple. But not for me. My first pay day. My first wages. Would I really get a full d-douzaine solati?
Gearing handed me the little envelope with a careless gesture and pointed to the log. I signed with a shaking hand and turned to go. But he looked up and grinned, as though he knew what was going on in my head. “You’re supposed to count it,” he said mildly. I did. Twenty-four handies. Yes, sir! I put the bills in my tunic pocket and buttoned it up securely.
The work day was over. I found myself out on the dock. Ban Bonnar and Marti Malo, one of the salesmen, were there waiting.
“Got your money?” said Marti.
“Yes.”
“We’re going over to the Tower for an aele,” said Ben. “Care to join us?”
“I got to get home,” I said. “But I’ll walk that far with you.”
AND SO HOME.
I took our steps two at a time up to the kitchen landing. Then I slowed down. I became deliberately and elaborately casual. I opened the kitchen door. I walked in and closed the door behind me. Mother was there, seated at the built-in eating bench, pretending to read Dama Schmol’s news-sheet. She had probably been waiting for me for the last hori.
“Hi,” I said.
She was watching my face. “Hi,” she said. She grinned. She knew I had the money.
I pulled the bills from my pocket and fanned them out on the table in front of her. Then I sat down opposite her, and we both looked at the money in silence.
“We will thank Siris,” Mother said simply.
I doubted that Siris had much to do with it, but I wasn’t inclined to argue. SiriS—with two capital S’s, had promptly (following his self-creation) split out his evil moiety—siriS, leaving Siris the good and siriS the evil. You were supposed to thank Siris for all things good and blame the rest on siriS.
Mother took my hand, and we closed our eyes. She whispered something. Then she let go my hand, and we both studied the money again.
With our eyes we counted and recounted it. I wondered, how would it look, all in one-solati bills, or all in big alumen coins?
“We must celebrate,” said Mother. “What do you suggest?”
I thought a moment. We owed the Dama eight sextiles back rent. We could give her seventy-two solati. And Mother would certainly want to give a couple of handies to the temple—another twelve. By siriS! What did that leave? Sixty. Of course, next Cinqueday would be a lot better, and the one after that better still, because we would be catching up on our debts. But … S-60 …? On well, let siriS chase his tail. I said cautiously, “A baron o’ black glees, a loaf of fresh-baked grain bread. Maybe a little burre. What do you think?”
“We can certainly manage that.”
I got up. “I’ll go out.”
She gave me two handies. “And buy a bone for Burnie. Something with meat on it. And get some sweets. You can get a bagful of broken platties at the bakers for a fractal. Probably left over from the Procession, but just as good as the whole ones.”
“I know.”
“I have some gaglia leaves, and some spread. But get a pips. We’ll have a fine salad with your totoes.”
I took out two bills and hurried out.
There was something immoral in these orgiastic visions of food. A saturnalia was shaping up. People were going hungry all over the province, but we were going to eat. I thought about Treaty-day last year, just after Gil died. We had had dry bread, and we were lucky at that. Well, all that was over.
FOOD!
I began to whistle the lilting tune of the serail.
THAT NIGHT I went to bed on a full stomach.
During the dream I kept telling myself, “This isn’t a dream. This is real.”
I am in the Tower. Everything, everybody, moves in slow motion. The colors are strange, grayish. Except the stair carpet. It is glowing scarlet. I am not supposed to go up those stairs. I will be killed. Dean Gard stands at the bottom of the staircase. He warns, “You know what will happen if you go up there.” “To siriS with you,” I say. I brush him aside. I look up to the landing. Josi stands there, looking down at us. Except for skin-colored gloves, she is naked. I notice now that I too am naked.
I smile up at her, and start up the stairs. She waits. I take her by the hand and lead her slowly toward her room. In the half light of the hall window I see that she is very beautiful, and very deadly.
Something metallic floats languidly past my ear and chops into the wall beyond us. It is a heavy thing. Some sort of knife?
I am perspiring. I grab Josi and hold her close to my body. I feel her breasts against my chest. She puts her arms around my neck. Our mouths come together. I …
Awaken. Gasping. Hugging my pillow. Not real. Josi. Vanished. But oh Siris it was good. I lie there quietly for a long time, thinking. No sounds anywhere. Josi, Madonna of the Clouds, you are my woman.
And, certain of this, I fell asleep again.
5
The Main Room
AT NOON BAN and I generally went up to the Tower for bread and spread.
I had to eat, of course, and the Tower was the logical place. But that wasn’t my main reason for the noontime visit. I wanted to see Josi. I wanted to see her face and her body. I wanted to watch her as she walked. I wanted to lock into memory the swing of her hips. And maybe, and just incidentally, I wanted to see her hands. I wanted to lay to rest all doubts. Or did I?
I always looked for her when I entered the Main Room. My eyes would make the entire circuit. I’d note everybody. And the odd thing was, she was generally there, and she was already looking at me. From behind the squire’s food counter. Or beside the lyrichord. Or upstairs, on the landing. Her eyes always seemed to find me before mine found hers. And then our eyes would meet, and then she’d back off, return to whatever she had been doing. Meanwhile she walked. She talked. She laughed. I watched her red lips, and her eyes, and the way her breasts and hips swayed and undulated, as though she drifted through a dream of time.
