Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
‘Shit,’ she said feelingly, finding her way through the bruising crowds to the door of the BDL building, ignoring the looks that followed her. People had been looking at Gretl since she was five, men particularly. Perhaps it was her skin, like dark, tawny ivory. Perhaps it was her hair, a mahogany wealth that seemed to have a life of its own. Perhaps it was figure, or face, or merely some expression of lively unquenchable interest in those wide, dark eyes. But men always looked. Gretl didn’t look back, however. Her heart was with a certain man back on Heron’s World, where she’d be, too, as soon as this contract was over.
‘What was that name again?’ the credit office clerk asked, mystified. ‘Here, let me see your code book.’
Gretl handed it over. One got used to this on Jubal. It cost so much to bring in manufactured materials that everything on Jubal was used past the point of no return. Nothing ever worked quite right….
‘It’s been paid,’ the clerk said with a look of knowing complicity.
‘Paid?’ she blurted in astonishment, only half hearing the clerk. ‘What do you mean, paid?’
‘Your loan has been paid in full,’ the clerk said, glancing suspiciously from under her eyelashes. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘I sure as hell didn’t. Who paid it?’
The clerk fumbled with the keys, frowning, then shaking her head.
‘Well?’
‘Justin,’ the clerk whispered.
‘Who?’
‘Oh, come on, lady.’ The whisper was angry.
‘I asked who that was. For God’s sake, girl, tell me. I’ve only been on this planet for a few months, and I haven’t any idea …’
The clerk nodded, a tiny nod, upward and to the right. Gretl looked up. Nothing there but the glass-enclosed offices of the Brou Distribution Ltd., or BDL, hierarchy. In one of them, a curtain quivered. ‘Him,’ whispered the clerk, suddenly quite pale. ‘Harward Justin.’
‘The Planetary Manager?’ Gretl fell silent, full of a sick uneasiness. She had met him. When she was here to arrange the loan, and only for a moment in passing. He had stopped at the desk where she was waiting, introduced himself, asked her to have lunch with him. She had refused.
A man with no neck, she recalled. Greasy rolls of fat from his jaw to his shoulders. Eyes that looked like half frozen slush, peering at her between puffy lids. A drooping, sensual mouth. Wet, she remembered. He had licked his lips continually.
Abruptly she asked, ‘Do you have an envelope?’
The clerk gave her a curious glance as she passed one over. Gretl inserted the payment she had been about to make, scribbled a few words on the outside, then handed it to the clerk.
‘I am not interested in other people paying my debts,’ she said. ‘I’ll repay my loan on the terms I specified. See that Mr. Justin gets this.’
She turned and strode away, the inner queasiness giving way to amazement and then anger. Wait until Don Furz heard about this! Unbelievable! The gall of the man!
She had almost reached the door when the hand fell on her shoulder.
He was a tall man, an expressionless man, an uninterested man. He did not look at her as other men usually looked at her. It was almost as though he did not see her as a person at all. He said very little, but he did not release her as he said it.
‘My name is Spider Geroan. I work for Harward Justin, and he’d like to see you. Now.’
During Tasmin’s orchestral effects class, it turned out that the air pump had been rigged to make farting noises, always good for a laugh. Practice for the neophytes shuddered to a halt while Tasmin dismantled the instrument.
‘That particular sound is used, so far as I’m aware, only in the run through the Blind Gut,’ he remarked to the class. ‘The only instructive thing about this incident is that there are sounds that work better when produced instrumentally rather than by synthesizer, which is why we have drums, bells, pumps, and other paraphernalia …’
‘You’re running perilously close to expulsion, Jamieson,’ he growled when the class was over. ‘That equipment is your responsibility.’
‘Some of the pre-trippers are kind of uptight,’ the boy remarked, not at all disturbed at the threat. ‘I thought a laugh might help.’
There was something in that, enough that Tasmin wasn’t inclined to press the matter. As was often true, Jamieson had broken the rules to good effect. This close to robing and first trip, many of the neophytes did get nervous and found it hard to concentrate. ‘Sabotaging equipment just isn’t a good idea,’ Tasmin admonished in a fairly mild tone. ‘Some idiot kid fooled around with a Jammer drum once, seeing if he could sound like some ’Soilcoast singer, and it got put into a trip wagon just as it was. Do you need me to tell you what happened?’
‘No, sir.’ Slightly flushed, but so far as Tasmin was able to discern, unrepentant, Jamieson agreed. ‘I remember.’
‘Well, double check that air pump. Be damn sure it does what it’s supposed to do before you leave it.’
Jamieson moved to change the subject. ‘Are we taking any of the first trippers out, Master?’
‘On first New Moon, yes. There are only three I’m a neutral preceptor for, three I haven’t had in my own classes – let’s see, James, Refnic, and that Clarin girl with the astonishing voice….’
‘Renna. Renna Clarin.’ Jamieson cocked his head, considering.
‘Right. Anything I should know?’
‘James will fade, definitely if there’s a clinch, and probably anyhow. He spends half his life wetting his pants and the other half drying himself off and asking if anybody noticed. Refnic’s reliable. The tougher things are, the more he settles. I don’t know that much about Renna Clarin except she looks funny bald. She transferred in.’
Tasmin ignored the impudence, as Jamieson had known he would. ‘Evidently female neophytes don’t have their heads shaved at Northwest, and it came as a shock to her when she got shaved down here. She had excellent personal references. Her records from Deepsoil Seven choir school were good.’
Jamieson shrugged eloquently, a balletic gesture starting at his shoulders and ending at his fingertips, which twitched a little, showing their contempt for good records. Excellent choir school recommendations might mean little except that a candidate had an acceptable voice or got along well with the Choir Master. Jamieson himself had had terrible choir school grades and had set a new school record for demerits, a fact that Jamieson knew Tasmin was well aware of. Again he changed the subject. ‘What’s the route?’
‘Oh, I think we’ll do my usual first trip loop. Past the Watchers on the easy side, down through the False Eagers, along Riddance Ridge to the Startles. Then down the deepsoil pass to Harmony, stay overnight there, give them a good scary look at the Tower while you and I sing them past, then back through the Far Watchlings.’
‘If it was me,’ Jamieson said, greatly daring, ‘I’d use James on the Startles. He likes that score and he can’t do much wrong there.’
‘Rig him to pass, that it? Then what happens the first time some caravan depends on him?’
‘Oh, I just thought a little more experience maybe …’ Jamieson’s voice trailed off, embarrassed. He obviously hadn’t thought at all. Now he flushed and ducked his head in a hinted apology, a courtesy he accorded Tasmin but very few others.
‘Think about it,’ Tasmin recommended, testing the final adjustment of the air pump. He sat back then, musing. ‘Jamieson.’
‘Sir?’
‘You’re of an age to pay attention to the ’Soilcoast singers. What do you know about Lim Terree?’
‘Oh, hey, apogee. Way up in the ranking. Best-seller cubes, last three out. The girls are brou-dizzy over him.’
‘What’s his music like?’
Jamieson gave this some thought. ‘Kind of hard to describe. There’s a lot of Tripsinger stuff in it, but he takes way off from that. Of course, all the ’Soilcoast singers bill their stuff as being real Passwords, but you couldn’t get anywhere with it. I don’t think you could, anyhow.’
‘What do you mean?’ Tasmin was really curious. He had so deeply resented Lim’s misuses of Password material that he had not kept up with the ’Soilcoast singer cult, although he knew it was extensive and bled money at every pore. ‘What do you mean, you couldn’t get anywhere with it?’
Jamieson pursed his lips, gestured toward a chair, and Tasmin nodded permission to sit. ‘You know the score for the Watchers? Minor key intro, two horns, and a tuned drum. Diddle, diddle, diddle in the strings in that rhythmic pattern, then the solo voice comes in with the PJ, ah the Petition and Justification, right? Kind of a simple melody line there, pretty straightforward, not like those key and tempo shifts in the Jammer sequences? Well, Lim Terree does a kind of takeoff on that. He uses the melody of the P, ah the Petition and Justification, but he kind of – oh, embroiders it. Trills and little quavers and runs and grace notes. Where you sing “Arndaff duh-roomavah,” it comes out “Arn-daffa-daffa-daffa-duh-uh-uh-uh-duhroo-duhrooma-vah-ah-ah.” ’ It was a marvelous, tumbling cataract of sound.
Jamieson had a good voice. Tasmin tried briefly and without success to convince himself he was listening to an obscenity. The phrase had been hypnotic.
‘And it goes on like that?’
The phrase “sindir dassalam awoh” takes about three minutes with all the cadenzas and rhythmic repetitions and stuff. If you tried that out on the Watchers … well, I just don’t think it would get you very far. They’d blow and you’d be gone.’
‘I see what you mean. What’s the attraction then?’
‘Well, it’s great music. Really. Lots of noise and what they do on stage is pretty erotic. He wears something that looks sort of like a Tripsinger robe, only fancier, open down the front practically to his downspout.’ Jamieson leapt up, gestured as though unzipping himself from a spraddled stance, at once potent and aggressive, making Tasmin see what he was talking about. ‘The orchestral stuff is wild, too. Loads of percussion and heavy power assists.’ He collapsed into the chair again, legs over the arm.
‘Which couldn’t be used on a real trip.’
‘Not unless you had a trip wagon the size of a coastal broubarge to hold the power source.’
‘So, how’s he going to do a concert here? He’d never get that power by the Presences. And even if the Presences would let it past, which they won’t, the widest trail on Riddance Ridge barely passes a standard brou wagon.’
‘Most of it’ll probably be holo. He’ll be live against his own recorded setup with maybe one or two live backup musicians along.’
‘Why would he bother? If things are so great in the Deepsoil Coast, why come inland?’
The acolyte shrugged, a minimal shoulder twitch. ‘I can’t figure it. Too much exposure, maybe? I read the fanstats sometimes. There’s a lot of competition among what they call the Big Six. Terree’s oh, about number three, down from one or two a year ago. This new kid Chantry is a favourite with the Governor’s crowd, and he’s gone up like a balloon. Maybe Terree figures he’ll be more of a novelty after he comes back from an inland trip.’
‘Tripsinger Lim Terree,’ Tasmin quoted from an imaginary poster. ‘Back from a six-month tour of duty leading desperate caravans in the interior….’
Jamieson grinned. ‘Something like that, yeah. Why all the interest, Master Ferrence?’
‘Oh,’ Tasmin fell silent. ‘I knew him once, years ago. He came from around here.’
‘No joke! Really? Well, I guess it’ll be old friends at the bar then.’
‘Not really. I didn’t know him that well.’
‘I wonder why he didn’t let me know he was coming?’ Tasmin’s mother stared toward him in wonder, though for years Thalia Ferrence had seen nothing but blurred outlines through those wide eyes. ‘It seems odd he wouldn’t let me know.’ Her voice was aching and lost, with an agonizing resurgence of familiar pain, made strange only by renewed intensity.
He probably didn’t know you were still alive, Tasmin thought, not saying it. ‘Lim was probably too embarrassed, Mother. Or, maybe he didn’t know Dad was gone and thought he might not be welcome.’
‘His father would have forgiven him. Miles knew it was nothing that serious.’ She shook her head, smiling. She seemed determined to reform Miles Ferrence in memory, determined to create a loving and forgiving father where Tasmin could remember only hostility and harsh judgment.
Not only her eyes that can’t see, Tasmin reflected. Her heart can’t see either. Maybe that’s part of being a wife and mother, having a blind heart. If she’s blind to Lim’s faults, well, she’s blind to mine as well. He tried to feel generous about her warmth to Lim but couldn’t. Something about it sickened him. Sibling rivalry? That would be Celcy’s easy answer to everything. No, it was the senseless expenditure of emotion on someone unworthy of it that offended him.
Or jealousy. It could be that. He could be jealous of Lim. It would be nice to have only oneself to worry about instead of juggling three or four sets of responsibilities. Celcy. Work. His mother, whose blindness could be helped at one of the ’Soilcoast medical centers if he could only get her there and pay the bills. Since Miles Ferrence had died, BDL provided no more medical care for her.
Not that she ever reproached him. ‘Your wife has to come first, Tas. Just come see me when you can. I love it when you do.’
Now she leaned forward to take his hand and stroke it. ‘Are you going out on a trip soon?’
‘First New Moon, Mom. First trip for some recently robed singers. Be gone two days is all. I don’t like to leave Celcy alone very long, not in her condition.’
‘She’s not still pregnant, is she?’
‘Why –’ He had started to say ‘of course, she is’ and found the words sticking in his throat. ‘Why did you think she wasn’t?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ That perceptive stare again, as though the mind saw what the eyes could not. ‘It just seemed sort of unlikely. Tell her she’s welcome to stay with me while you’re away.’
He patted his mother’s hand, knowing that she knew he would tell Celcy and Celcy wouldn’t care. Sibling rivalry wasn’t the only kind of rivalry she knew about.
On the first of New Moon he led a small caravan out of the ceremonial gate of the citadel, itchily anticipating the transition from reality to marvel. Deepsoil Five was reality. Celcy, who had been entirely marvelous at one time, was mostly reality these days. Work was entirely reality. Though the citadel tried to evoke a sense of exaltation and mystery, its ornamented ritualism had become increasingly matter-of-fact over the years. Chad Jaconi called the constant ceremonies ‘painfully baroque’ compared to the sense of the marvelous that had permeated Tripsinging when he was young. Maybe it was something you could feel only when you were young. Tasmin didn’t feel it at all when he was in the citadel.