Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
‘Thou and I,’ he mused, looking back into Government House through the door they had left open behind them. Honeypeach Thonks was standing in that doorway, staring at her stepdaughter with the look that a hungry gyre-bird might fasten on some bit of tasty carrion. Rheme bowed in her direction, a bit more deeply than custom required. When he got his head up again, she was gone. ‘Yes,’ he mused softly, so that only Maybelle could hear. ‘We’re going to have to do something.’
On the roof of the Crystallite Temple in Splash One, just to one side of the high mud brick, plastic gilded dome, there was a comfortable apartment reached by a twisting stair hidden in one of the massive pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling. It was accessible only to a few servants and the three residents: Chantiforth H. Bins, Myrony Clospocket, and Aphrodite Sells, these three being both the heart and soul of the Crystallite religion on Jubal. It was the place they spent most of their time between services, except for infrequent and well-disguised forays into the less savory night life of Splash One.
‘Jeshel’s stirrin’ up the fuckin’ rabble again,’ remarked Myrony, his bald pate gleaming in the light of the late afternoon sun as he put down the com-control and moved toward the glass doors that opened on a spacious roof terrace. ‘Our man over in BDL reports he assaulted some fuckin’ Tripsinger a few days ago. I wish you’d sit on him, Bins. You’re the High Pontiff, and that’s the only one he listens to. He’s goin’ to provoke Thonks to do somethin’ foolish before we’re ready.’
The multitudes would have been surprised to see their High Priest at home, Myrony’s shiny pate unwigged, his sonorous voice fallen into the vulgar accents of his youth. Myrony had been born and reared in a scum-pocket on Zenith, an entertainment world known more for its depravity than for its devotion to theology. That he had risen so far into godliness from this beggarly beginning spoke volumes for his tenacity and ruthlessness, if not for his conscience.
‘Old Sweet Wuyllum won’t do anything until we’re ready,’ murmured Aphrodite through perfect teeth and lips, which pursed into a kiss as she peered into the mirror and preened over the glitter of the new firestone necklace. She had been Myrony’s associate on a dozen worlds, and she knew him better than anyone still living. ‘Thonks knows whose hand stuffs his pocket.’
‘Not necessarily so, Affy,’ Chantiforth Bins corrected her in comfortably avuncular tones. Though his association with the other two was more recent than theirs with one another, he had long ago adopted a familiar and confidential tone with them both. The Governor could be forced to move. Myrony’s right. We need to sit on Jeshel unless Wuyllum tells us he needs an incident. And then we need to do a quick sunder and be off-planet by the time it happens.’
‘Harward Justin’s not going to let anything happen to us,’ the woman remarked, stretching luxuriously while stroking the gemstones. The necklace was a gift from Justin, and Aphrodite had her own reasons for believing the BDL boss would take care of them. Her ego was so strong that she had never considered any other outcome of their relationship. Though she didn’t realize it, her complaisance was a personality trait that Justin much appreciated, since he felt it made her totally predictable. He would have been reinforced in this opinion by her remarks. ‘Justin likes the good job we’ve done for him,’ she said, smiling at her own reflection and giving the gem one last pat. She did not enjoy remembering the earning of the gift, but having it made up for that. ‘It’s the first time we’ve ever hired out to start a religion, you know that? It’s been what you might call interesting.’
‘Given the free hand we had, it wasn’t bad,’ Chantiforth admitted.
‘It wasn’t workin’ worth shit until Justin brought in those shiploads of trash from Serendipity,’ Myrony remarked. ‘Didn’t have two converts to rub together until then. You have to hand it to Justin. He knew the kind of people would go for it. Jeshel and his bunch are just right.’
‘Jeshel and his bunch are going to scream contra-tenor when they get interned with all the rest,’ Chantiforth objected. ‘Justin may be sorry he’s got them on his hands then.’
‘Let Jeshel scream. Let him say anything he likes. He has no idea who we really are, and less than no idea where we’re going to be. The army’ll take care of Jeshel.’ Chantiforth Bins rose and crossed to the high windows that looked out over the city. ‘I’m going to miss this place.’
‘Not me,’ Aphrodite said. ‘The food’s lousy, the noise never lets up, and the only music they have is that damn Tripsinger howling. Me for the Spice Coast on ’Dipity.’
‘I think we all agree it was worth it though.’ Bins turned from the window with a smile, rubbing his fingers together suggestively. ‘Biggest one we’ve done together. Didn’t all those pilgrims bleed money?’
Aphrodite puckered her forehead. ‘Pity there won’t be any more pilgrims when BDL crashes everything. And you’re right, Chants. We need to do a sunder well ahead of the shutdown. No telling what some PEC flunky might end up doing. There might be some kind of a last-minute shift that could leave us where we’re not supposed to be. Whenever that CHASE Commission gets here, we need to start moving. Couple of months? Or maybe sooner, from what I hear. And we need to watch our money, too. Even though it’s on Serendipity, something could go wrong. There’s about six million now. Split three ways, Chants-love, that’s two million for each of us. Which is not too utterly threadbare for three years’ part-time work.’
‘More than three fuckin’ years total,’ growled Myrony. ‘Chanty and me had to set up the Jut Massacre, remember? That was a little iffy. I didn’t like bein’ that close to those fuckin’ Presences. And there was some rumor-mongerin’ even before that.’
Aphrodite shrugged. ‘It didn’t exactly take your full time, My. You and Chanty managed to get in on that Heron’s World slash-up in between. You guys made me real mad on that one, you know! I’m some kind of shredded settler’s brush, you couldn’t cut me in on that?’ She stood up and drifted lazily to the window, looking out over the low parapet to the snarling hubbub of the city.
‘You weren’t around,’ Myrony snarled, giving her a nasty look. ‘You were busy. Seems to me there was something I heard about some diplomatic papers that disappeared.’
‘Never mind,’ she said, turning to wave her hands at him, shushing him. ‘I don’t want to be reminded.’
Below them in the vaulted sanctuary, a bell rang repeatedly, the measured dong, dong, dong seeming to tighten the very atmosphere around them.
‘Evening services,’ said Chantiforth, rising and moving toward the rack where his robe and crown were hung. ‘Damn. I’m getting tired of this. It was kind of fun at first, but I’ve had it to my back teeth.’
‘All you have to do is look impressive,’ Myrony objected. ‘It’s my night for the sermon.’
‘Mine for dispensing revelations,’ Aphrodite remarked. ‘I think I’ll wear that new mantle with the blue feathers. What’ll the message from the Presences be tonight?’
‘Work for the fuckin’ hour cometh,’ Myrony suggested with an unpriestly sneer as he reached for the full white wig that stood on a stand by the door.
‘Repent for the day is at hand,’ sniggered Chantiforth.
‘What d’you think they really say?’ she asked, stretching. ‘The Presences? Y’ever thought about that?’
The two men, tall, white haired, benevolent looking as saints, gave her equally empty stares, as though wondering if she had gone mad.
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I guess you guys never thought about that.’
Don Furz looked down on the Redfang valley from a high pass, her head barely lifted above the line of crystal prominences, swiveling slowly as she examined the lowlands with a pair of excellent glasses. She stopped several times and stared intently, adjusting the glasses for focus, then moved on. When she had scanned the entire valley, she wriggled back down the pass to join Tasmin and his acolytes, who were lying beside the trail playing with Clarin’s crystal mouse.
‘They’re there,’ she said crisply. ‘At least two bunches of them.’
‘The same ones as last night?’ Tasmin asked, handing the mouse to Clarin and getting to his feet.
‘They look the same. Who knows? One group is right down at the bottom of the trail, as though they were waiting for us. The other one is moving along down the center of the valley, as though they don’t even know the other one is here.’
‘Did you see robes? Tripsinger robes?’
‘In the group moving down the valley, yes. Two of them. But no robes at the bottom of the trail.’
‘Which way is the ’Singer group headed?’
‘There’s a passworded trail east of them. It’ll take them in behind the Redfang range, about five miles south and east of us.’
Tasmin frowned. ‘We can wait until the ’Singer group goes on into the range, then we can cross their trail behind them and out of sight of the ones below us.’
‘There’s a route I know.’ She nodded. ‘If we can get behind the ’Singer group, I can get us into a fast north-south corridor.’
Tasmin nodded approval. ‘Then once we’re far enough south to avoid immediate trouble, we can split up. Some of us need to get to Thyle Vowe. I wish his message had been just slightly less enigmatic, that he’d told us just what it is he’s aware of, but we have to operate on the assumption he knows or at least suspects what’s going on. Whether he does or not, we need help and there’s nowhere else to get it.’
‘I never intended to involve others,’ Donatella complained. ‘It makes me feel hideously responsible.’
‘You didn’t involve us, not purposely. The acolytes and I have talked this over, Explorer.’ He rose and stretched, the full sleeves of his robe dropping back to his shoulders as he reached for the sky. Then he turned to her, shaking his robes down around him. ‘We … or I should say, I started this journey to solve a couple of personal mysteries – things I needed to know about Lim, about my wife. I still want answers to those, but right now there are more urgent things.’ He turned away. It seemed a desecration to stop his search for the cause of Celcy’s death, and yet he could do nothing else.
‘First things first,’ Clarin said encouragingly, filling the silence and giving him time to recover. She had pocketed the mouse and was now assembling her gear.
‘Right,’ Tasmin agreed, attempting a rather weary smile. ‘We’ve talked it over, and we want to help you do precisely what you were trying to do. On the face of it, telling all Jubal that the Presences are sentient is the most important thing we could do just now.’
Clarin nodded, running her fingers through her short, curly mop. ‘We agree about that. However, Tasmin and Jamieson and I – we all feel the need to be prudent. Once the CHASE Commission meets and reports, there will be no time for other efforts. The case has to be airtight. We have to be able to prove everything we allege. And so far, as Jamieson mentioned, we have only your word for everything. There could be another explanation for the attack on you, and that’s the only thing we’ve seen with our own eyes.’ She shouldered her pack and went off to load it on the waiting mule.
‘But I told you …’ Donatella interrupted.
Jamieson said firmly, ‘You’ve told us about your arrangement with Lim Terree, but there could be other explanations for that as well.’ He went up the trail to load his own mule.
‘I’ve played you the Enigma cube!’ she protested to Tasmin.
‘You have no witnesses to making that cube, and it could have been faked,’ Tasmin replied in a sympathetic tone. ‘And quite frankly, it is … well, enigmatic.’ Seeing her expression he added hastily, ‘We don’t disbelieve you! You’re right, they are words, and they are sequential words. They just don’t seem to be substantially responsive to what you were saying. Or thought you were saying.’
‘I was scared to death,’ she admitted. ‘I hurried more than I should have. There were these constant tremors. And the Enigma’s words sounded … well, they sounded a little hostile.’
Tasmin nodded. ‘We thought so, too, which is actually one of the best arguments there could be that the thing isn’t faked. Presumably, a fake would have made better sense and have been more ingratiating. For the record, we believe you. Others won’t, not necessarily. There has to be proof. It has to be as obvious to the people we will give it to as it is to you.’ He walked over to the mules where Clarin and Jamieson waited, listening attentively. ‘We have to have more than your word. There need to be witnesses.’
Donatella Furz looked from one expectant face to the other, uncertain and angry. ‘How do you expect me to …’
‘Oh, very simple,’ said Jamieson with a radiant smile. ‘We’re going to talk to the Enigma, too.’
Harward Justin made his home in a luxurious apartment on the top floor of the BDL building. At one time he had considered living elsewhere, but he had rejected the idea. It was convenient to be able to call upon BDL service employees when one needed a cook or housekeeper or cleaning crew. With BDL people, he need not concern himself with maintenance, discipline, or remuneration, though he occasionally intervened in such matters. Justin was a believer in the stick, rather than the carrot, and the personnel department’s idiot insistence upon paying people more than they were worth often stuck in his craw.
Still, using BDL services people worked well enough for his day-to-day needs. Since they did not live in, he was not required to feed them. When they were gone, he had a great deal of privacy. And it was in privacy that he indulged the needs that required other and very special servants.
A neighboring windowless space had been walled off and cut up into two corridors of apartments and cubicles. This warren was connected to his own rooms with a locked and guarded door. Justin’s personal servants lived there – the ones provided for him by Spider Geroan.
Most people feared and hated Spider Geroan. Justin found him both interesting and admirable. He detected in Geroan’s manner a kind of kinship. Even Geroan’s face, which Justin had always felt resembled the face of a recent corpse, devoid of all life though not yet noticeably decayed, pleased Justin. He saw in that face a reflection of himself as he willed himself to be, remote and implacable. He found in Geroan a depth of silent understanding he had never received from any other human being. Justin suspected that others – ‘them,’ the world at large – would consider his amusements childish, on a level with cutting up live animals or terrorizing smaller children, the things boys did and then grew out of. However, Geroan did not seem to think him immature in his pleasures. Geroan knew all about the servants’ quarters. Geroan had recruited most of the inhabitants. Geroan knew exactly why Justin wanted them. Or one of them, from time to time.