Redworld, page 6
I thought of the murder of Jehanne-Mar, and I sighed. But at least maybe I could stay awake.
“How can you detect a lamia?” cried Gard.
“There are several ways. A lamia can never hide from the holy hand of Siris. If a woman shall blaspheme, or declare a heresy, she is a lamia. She shall be condemned and electroburned. Ah, you say, suppose she is silent? Suppose she cannot be convicted out of her own mouth? What then? Well, look to her body. Normal human blood is black. But not hers. Hers is red. You and I have one lung. She has two. We have a double heart; she has but one. Her body may show scars, where siriS has clawed her, to mark her as his property. Also, she may have not six, but only five fingers. And consider her speech. She may have a slight accent, and indeed, in an unguarded moment she may chant to siriS in a foreign tongue, known but to her evil master.”
He paused, grabbed the lectern with both hands, and looked out at us balefully, as though to search out any possible lamiae and sorcerers among us. “But the main thing, the thing most impossible for her to hide, is this: she never ages. She stays forever young. She was a beautiful young woman when your fathers saw her, and so she still is, today, tomorrow, and forever, until she is caught and burned!”
(Now that was absolutely crazy. Jehanne-Mar was old and wrinkled. Oh well, maybe there were different varieties of lamiae … old … young. I didn’t really care.)
And on and on.…
It was beautifully done. A sermon built and delivered by a master of sermon architecture. I was sadly aware of my own lack of skill. Gard was a generation ahead of me in experience, of course. But his excellence was more than a matter of simple experience. It was a blend of confidence, talent, and deliberate searching insight into the mass mind that confronted him every Sextday. Compare that, I thought, to the great chasm that exists between me and people generally, especially the good people in this temple.
The collection plates overflowed. Here and there was even a flash of red. The flock was grateful. Once again the good Dean had convinced them that they were fine, worthy people, the salt of the province. They showed their appreciation in the only way that really counted.
At the temple door Mother told her priest that it was the best memorial sermon he had given yet. He was humble. “It’s all the work of Siris.” I stood aloof, in the background, reluctant to catch the great man’s eye. But he sought me out anyhow.
“See you in class, Pol.”
“Yes, sir.”
Now THAT GARD was in complete authority over me, and had (as we both well knew) the absolute and arbitrary power to decide whether I could receive an education, I disliked him intensely. Perhaps I was just too immature to grasp the greatness of the Gardian mind and character.
Meanwhile, I’d better find a good sermon topic for my term paper, or my like or dislike of the Dean would become totally irrelevant.
In the last few days I had turned my mind inside out in an attempt to come up with something. I discussed it with Mother. But she had been thoroughly imprinted by Gard. The ideas that she proposed were pure Gard. And Gard was sure to recognize himself. Mother suggested something general. The Power of Prayer. By the dark hole! I never prayed! Spreading the word in foreign lands. What did I know about foreign lands? I had never been outside Damaskis!
I pondered the problem as I walked to and from work. And especially as I walked home from class, through the park, where the world was dark, and the trees were sighing.
But no ideas came.
Time was drawing to an end. The situation was growing desperate.
O dear Siris how I hate the collegia. I hate the scriptures. I hate the Revenant … the Sacred Arrow … the Madonna … the Starship … the Walk into Death and out again.
Do I believe that the Revenant impregnated the Madonna? Do I believe that Siris exists?
Hah!
Small wonder I can’t write a simple little paper like a noncommittal irrelevant stupid Gard-suitable sermon.
I WALK, AND I THINK. But no matter what I start to think about, it all eventually comes back to Josi. I imagined that she—not Jeil—was standing there in the street, gaping at my sweating muscles.
Ah Josi, Josi.
I saw Josi the very next day.
I walked into the Main Room of the Tower to get my lunch and Gearing’s bread and brew, and there she was, standing by Squire Vys’s serving counter.
Something is awry.
A young light-haired fellow, very good-looking, is standing beside her. He is saying something to her in a low, insistent voice. He puts his hand on her arm. She looks at him coldly and tries to pull away. His voice is louder. It is only noon, but he is already fairly drunk. He puts his arm around her waist. He bends over her and forces her to bend backward. Her curls hang askew behind her. Her neck muscles tense as she tries to regain her balance. Her mouth knots in surprise and anger. She tries to kick him in the crotch, but she can’t get in position.
I finally come to. I start—
There is a blur of movement. Not me. Not Josi. Not him.
He yelps, and jerks away from her.
Something has happened to him, and it happened very fast. For a moment, I stand there, stupefied. I am not exactly what did happen.
I notice that Boogi has materialized near Josi and Light-hair. Boogi’s swart face is hard, impassive. He weaves back and forth on the balls of his feet. His chop-knife jumps from one hand to the other.
A black streak appears alongside the stranger’s right cheek. It spreads and begins to drip, in slow, thick driblets. The man puts his hand to his cheek, looks at the wet stain on his fingers, then at Boogi, then at the winged blade.
The puzzled look on his face begans to clear. He is on the painful road to sobriety. He backs away, stumbles into Captain Kertor, who catches him and keeps him on his feet.
He turns and looks at Kertor. He thinks he sees a rescuer. This is a mistake. “Did you see that?” he gasps. “He tried to kill me!”
“No, he didn’t, sonny,” soothes the militiaman. “You got it all wrong. He was trying to save your life. I was going to kill you, but he got to you first.” The retired officer smiles at the blood-dripper. “Nobody messes with Miss Josi. Nobody.” He turns the stranger around and points him toward the door. “You were just leaving, weren’t you? Come on, I’ll walk you to the door.”
The visitor shook himself free and scurried toward the front door.
But it wasn’t over. There is a flash over his head, and a thud. Boogi’s knife is stuck in the door jamb exactly over the stranger’s head. The blunt-nose point is buried in the wood.
The victim screams, clasps his fingers over his head, and crashes through the screen door.
And so the little incident is over.
Kertor sighed, walked over to the door, reached up, and pulled the weapon down. He looked at the grinning little villain. “Boogi, you are a hopeless show-off. You keep this up and you’re going to chop down the whole damned house. And look at that screen. She’s going to take that out of your hide.” He tossed the blade back to the cook, who was stamping in gleeful circles at this show of appreciation.
I looked at the hole where the blade had struck. To the right and left were other deep notches. Evidently this was not the first time Boogi’s knife had bid farewell to a departing guest. He had exquisite control.
I stole a look toward the back of the room. Josi had gone. I wondered what it would be like to have that thing buried in my skull. Actually, I probably wouldn’t feel a thing. Death would be instantaneous. I rubbed the back of my head thoughtfully. Then I wrapped my lunch, got Gearing’s bread and brew, and walked out, shivering.
LATER I HEARD the story that Boogi had killed a man for calling Josi a bad name but had somehow escaped and had never been identified as the killer. Could the rumor be true? I did not propose to find out.
9
A Long Walk
IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the night.
I lay on my cot, wide awake, and thought about my future. Or rather about the lack of it. No sermon theme. No sermon. Fail Gard’s course. Scholarship withdrawn. Thrown out of the collegia. Mother would be crushed.
I wanted to die, but I wanted to do it in a way that wouldn’t hurt Mother. I wanted siriS to exist briefly, and just for the express, sole, and specific purpose of retroactively ordering a universe in which I had never been born, an alternate space-time continuum that bumped along without me.
Unrealistic.
There were other ways. There was always the Death Hut. Think about that.
The simplest way, and the most impossible, would be to go to sleep and never wake up. But I didn’t know how to do it. Had Mother ever wanted to do that when Father and Gil died? And perhaps even now? Did she ever say in her nightly prayers, dear Siris, please don’t let me wake up? Well, maybe she had. She had earned peace.
So just who in the dark hole did I think I was? I was no special case. She and I were both helpless pawns in some cosmic jaq game. Free will was a bunch of borch-lumps. We had free will in the sense that floating dust specks had free will.
Oh siriS. I turned over and buried my face in the pillow. Tomorrow was Cinqueday. I’d take a long walk in the afternoon. Maybe I’d think of something.
I wish I could spend a bare douzaine breaths with Josi. Just holding hands across the table.
But tomorrow I won’t think of Josi. Just sermon themes.
AS THOUGH WALKING to work and to the collegia were not enough, I also walked a lot on weekends. There was no money to do anything else. I liked to walk. This mergence with street and road lulled my loneliness and lifted my spirits. The ceaseless easy stride ate away the stadia and the bars that bound me. Burnie generally trotted along in front.
This Cinqueday afternoon walk was going to be something special. I was going to find a sermon theme.
In my mind I was organizing the coming hours even as I walked home from work. I didn’t stop by the Library, but came straight home, where I fixed a meager lunch from bread and spread, left-over black glees, and a slice of boiled zork.
Mother was spending the night with Aunt Su, and there was no need to explain to her why I was going to be late getting in tonight. Mother would not understand. She couldn’t. And I was thankful for it.
I was troubled, and I needed to think. I certainly couldn’t blame Mother for getting me a religious scholarship, or for getting me in a jam with a sermon that had to be written in a way that would please Gard. Nevertheless, I sank deeper and deeper into gloom. Sometimes, when I was able to get the whole thing in focus, I was stunned. It was not fair. It was too much to ask of me. The mental and moral commitments inherent in the arrangement, with the temple waiting at the end, were beyond me.
At the third bell of the afternoon I called Burnie, and we started out.
As always, the yed was delighted. He ran circles around me. He sniffed trees a d-douzaine steps ahead. He explored the rear. He dashed up and down the sidewalks and the front yards. I smiled grimly. Save it, you dumb yed. Along about midnight you’ll be needing it.
Midnight? Was I really planning to be out that late? The thought did not startle me. Rather, it intrigued me. To measure my muscles against the stadia. What was my limit? I was headed for the Bridge, three and douzaine stadia distant. We shall see what we shall see.
We crossed Boros Street, Saint Aud Road, Trok Avenue, Saint Bo Boulevard. Everything alternated between scientists and holy men, exactly as laid down in the Treaty. What were the names of these lanes and alleys before the War? Nobody remembered anymore.
We moved rapidly. Yeds along the way could do no more than briefly challenge us before we were in the next block.
Along the cobbled streets, where there were continuous sidewalks, and the houses walked by in bobbling sequence, with no vacant lots in between, the constant background odor was that of the multihued leaves of myc trees.
These trees have survived. True, a few scrub quercs, dwarf fruits, and vada-wands will be found along creek banks, or even in optimistic front yards. These but await a three-year drought, or a trisextile of alternating days of tunic sleeves and subzero readings on the thermometers. Then they are gone; but the mycs are still there—undismayed, unruffled.
The myc endures, and invites respect. A wise Damaskene citizenry has recognized this. And accordingly the trees that line our streets are mostly mycs. Mycs shade our scholia and stuff our parks.
This fall, the dying leaves were yielding a distinct odor: subtle, yet heady. With but the slightest encouragement, it becomes exhilarating. Not all are able to detect it. The body must be warmed by steady exercise, the expectant senses tuned. The odor and red coloration came together.
I knew why the leaves turned from black to red. The decaying carbovadates in the connective capillaries of the leaves made the dazzling red colors.
The mycs up and down the streets were now mostly a scalding crimson. They had already passed through gray-red and maroon.
I kicked a drift of leaves on the sidewalk and turned south, toward Koray Avenue, so that I could walk past the house where we used to live, when we were all still together. Before the plague killed Father and before the brain growths killed Gil. Dean Gard (who held our mortgage) had let us stay until Gil had finished dying. Then we had to go. And that was the end of this beautiful place, with Mother’s ciela garden in the enclosed atrium and the mycs lining the front sidewalk.
I stopped and studied the house in grave silence.
The lawn was dying. The once-lively black turf had turned gray. It needed vada. All this time, and still no one had moved in.
From the sidewalk I visualized my little room in the back, and Gil’s bigger room on the south side. They both opened on the interior courtyard, where a tinkling fountain in the center sang us all to sleep at night.
Gil had died in his room. As he lay dying, Mother’s breath had synchronized with his, as though giving him some sort of empathic respiration, but she had not been able to stay his going.
The dining room was opposite. Gil and I had played jaq on the big dining room table.
I went on a few steps, and stood at the intersection of sidewalk and borch way. At the corner wall you could still see the nicks and chips where a platoon of soldier-priests had lined up a patrol of captured soldier-scientists and shot them down with arrows. The tips of sky-metal passed through flesh and bone and pinged into our wall. That was during the closing days of the War when all sorts of nasty things were happening. It was known that Grandfather was a science-sympathizer, so the soldier sergeant knocked at the door and apologized for the disturbance. He also “borrowed” Grandfather’s borch and wagon to haul the corpses away. Neither borch, wagon, nor sergeant were ever seen again. We were lucky. In the next square three houses and a livery stable were burned. My father (then a boy) said he awoke that night and heard the screams of the animals. Nothing could be done. If you left the atrium to help, you invited a spear in the gut or an arrow in the back.
Earlier in the War (or was it later?), roving brigands robbed and killed travelers on this very road, in full sight of woodcutters in the nearby copse. Small wonder the Treaty was welcomed.
Mother and Father had the big bedroom, next to mine.
I now shifted my eyes to the front of the house. Parlor windows faced the inner courtyard. In that room, Mother’s lyrichord had stood. She had played it, not perfectly (for she had never had lessons), but with a will, and with rhythm. The movers had grumbled, but had accepted the instrument in trade for the move to our overs table rooms. Which was well, because there was no room for it in the little place where we now lived, and no money to store it, nor for that matter, any money to pay the movers. It’s also just as well the movers didn’t know what happened to the lyrichord on that last night. For on that night (in the very early morning, actually) the instrument played by itself. Pink-pank, pinkety pank.… I remember Mother in her nightdress, standing across the courtyard, holding the little night lamp, and looking toward the parlor. The tune was Father’s favorite, which he picked out with his four index fingers: the opening measures of the current bittersweet ballad, “I Have Seen the Revenant,” based on Tern’s epic. The words made no sense at all.
Life is but a whimsey thing.
Death is less, you may believe.
Neither can the Answer bring.
What shall the Mary Dyer achieve?
Father loved mysteries! What did it all mean? Who or what was the Mary Dyer? Nobody knew, perhaps not even the long-dead poet. The music ended. Mother withdrew her lamp. We never mentioned the incident to each other.
Moving from a douzaine-room house to two rooms over a borch-stable meant some hard decisions had to be made. There just wasn’t room. Even most of Gil’s things had to go.
But in retrospect, it didn’t matter. The big battle had been fought and won even before moving. In comparison, moving was irrelevant, anticlimactic. Mother’s immense victory was this—that she kept us together in the big house until Gil died. Gil never had to know that all the money was gone.
I looked down the borchway. The deliveries went down the drive and to the back door. In the rear of the atrium was a semi-open shed porch. Strange activities took place there. In winter, Burine slept there in a tumble of old blankets. In summer, Gil turned out homemade ices by the tun. Mother cooked up the sweet jelly sauce, so rich and thick it would barely pour into the alumen freezer container, and then Gil would pack the canister into the wooden bucket with measured amounts of marine salt and cracked monia ice. And then he would sit there on the back porch and crank away. For me, sitting there and watching, this was the longest half hori in the universe of time. But for Gil it held no terrors. He was prepared with the new leaflet of Theoscience or perhaps The Pious Chymist, and he propped the brochures up on a specially designed holder made out of alumen wire, and read and cranked and turned an occasional page.
Mother was vaguely suspicious of Gil’s intense interest in science. Especially when he talked about evolution. This was heresy. Against the scriptures. And she would not listen to it.
