Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
‘Oh, he’ll believe me,’ said Clarin. ‘He’ll believe every word I tell him.’
‘You
did
know him before,’ Tasmin said. ‘I thought so. When we met him there in Northwest.’
‘He’s … he’s an old family friend,’ she said. ‘He didn’t let on because it makes it … difficult.’
‘Enough of this,’ Don said. ‘Let’s take a few minutes to familiarize you two with this box. Then let’s be on our way. According to what Jamieson says, they’re only one day behind.’
‘Do you have any idea who they are, Donatella?’
She shook her head. ‘Forget the Explorers. They could be anyone. From Northwest or anywhere. As you say, they could even be my friends. The others? I have no idea. The only woman I’ve offended is Honeypeach Thonks, but I can’t imagine her on a mule, hunting me down in the backcountry.’ She beckoned the two acolytes to her and began a quick, detailed exposition.
Jamieson and Clarin were both quick to pick up the intricacies of the Explorer box. It was different from the Tripsinger synthesizers only in detail, and they demonstrated considerable proficiency at the end of an hour, enough, at least, that Don nodded her head in approval. ‘Good enough. We’d better move out quickly.’
Tasmin had already packed the mule saddles, and they took a few moments to hide the remnants of their fire before leaving. Not that it would do any good. If the tracker behind them could find evidence of their passage on the barren trail down the cliff, he would find evidence here as well.
They rode on southward, the hooves of the unshod mules making a musical clopping that was hypnotic. If they had traveled on some other business, if they had traveled without pursuit, Tasmin felt he could have gloried in this strange corridor that Don Furz had found amidst the towering Presences. They were on every side, seeming to look down into the valley where the group walked, violet and ochre, ruby and sapphire, emerald and ashen – a thousand gathered giants, occasionally quaking the air with their muttered colloquies.
‘What are they saying,’ he asked Don.
‘Nothing, so far as I know.’
‘Doesn’t your new translator pick up words?’
‘It
did
, at the Enigma, and in answer to what I sang! But this muttering doesn’t translate to anything. All the translator does is snore and snarl and moan.’
‘You have tried the new translator on it then? Once? More than once?’
‘I’ve tried the translator for hours at a time during every trip since the Enigma. Nothing.’
‘Then these along here aren’t sentient?’ Somehow that didn’t seem an appropriate premise.
‘I wouldn’t draw that conclusion,’ remarked Clarin. ‘Perhaps they simply aren’t talking.’
‘Or won’t,’ said Jamieson. ‘I still need proof.’
‘You were so sure they were sentient,’ Clarin objected.
‘That doesn’t mean they’ll talk to us,’ he replied. ‘If you were one of them, would you?’
They all stared up at the Presences. Cliffs of coruscating rose. Towers of glittering amber. Mighty ramparts of shimmering sapphire, lambent with refracted light. Walls of gray, shattered with silver. Barricades of scintillating flame.
‘Ahhh.’ The sound came from Clarin, the sound of someone wounded, or a sound of lovemaking, a climactic ecstasy of sound, half muffled. The expression on her face was the one she got sometimes when she was singing.
Tasmin’s hands shivered on the reins, wanting to reach for her. ‘We can’t linger,’ he said in his driest voice. ‘Come, we can’t stop.’ Donatella was looking at him strangely, and he avoided her eyes. His whole being felt stretched, pulled into gossamer, encompassing the world.
An act of self-hypnosis, his tutorial mind advised him. A so-called religious experience. Simply be quiet and it will depart.
As it did, slowly, over the following long hours in the saddle.
They came to the fork in the trail. Donatella checked the charts the others were carrying, checked their machine once more, then sat beside Tasmin as Jamieson and Clarin rode away, small figures growing smaller, dwindling down the west-pointing canyon, not looking back, going away to the cities of the Deepsoil Coast and possibly … what?
‘It’s unlikely anyone is looking for them, as individuals,’ Donatella said, trying to be comforting, trying to convince herself. ‘They’re safer without us, Tasmin. Come, let’s do what we can to wipe out their tracks.’
‘I pray so,’ he said, aching with a loss he had not thought to feel so soon again. It was like the loss of Celcy, and yet unlike. This time it was as though something of himself had gone. ‘I pray so.’
Rheme Gentry, while ostensibly much occupied with the Governor’s private business, was actually engaged in two equally demanding activities. On the one hand, he was feeding every item of available information to Thyle Vowe, for his assistance in trying to outwit ‘that bastard at BDL.’ On the other hand, he was trying desperately to figure out a way to get a vital message to Serendipity and save Maybelle Thonk’s life, or at the very least, her health and sanity, in the process.
Things were drawing to a climax on Jubal. The Honorable Wuyllum was increasingly preoccupied with getting certain items of private – and public – property shipped away to Serendipity, and this required a good deal of falsification of papers inasmuch as BDL had shut down all off-planet shipments except for the necessary flow of brou. Getting anything but brou into space took some doing, though Rheme was getting to be an expert at it. Justin hadn’t quite shut off courtesies to the Governor’s office. Not yet. Why, the young singer, Chantry, had been shipped out the week before at Honeypeach’s insistence, babbling, half conscious, and likely to remain that way. Regeneration didn’t work all that well on the nervous system.
‘My poor Chantry just collapsed,’ Honeypeach said at frequent intervals, ‘from overwork, poor baby.’
From drugs, Rheme thought. Drugs and stimulants – which any man needed if he were to get involved with Honeypeach – and too many demands on a nervous system that was, after all, merely biological and normal, not made of transistors and metal parts. Honeypeach simply wasn’t interested in normal people or normal biology or normal sex. Honeypeach liked whips and drugs and various electronic devices. Honeypeach liked sex in threes and fours and dozens. Honeypeach liked to watch while others suffered and gyrated, often people Honeypeach said she liked a lot coupled with people she didn’t like at all. Rheme knew the signs. Honeypeach had a certain look in her eye when she was choosing who was next, and Maybelle was in line for forced participation. That alone would have told him that the Governor and the Governor’s lady were counting the days until departure. Honeypeach would not have focused on Maybelle unless it no longer made any difference what she did or was seen to do.
The honorable Wuyllum had shown no signs of being either aware of this or upset by it. His daughter by his first wife was evidently not seen as a possession of particular value. Rheme Gentry was trying to change that.
‘Has the Governor considered what he might be interested in doing after retirement?’ he asked in his blandest voice.
‘Why should I have thought of any such thing?’ Wuyllum growled suspiciously.
‘An opportunity on Serendipity has come to my attention,’ Rheme answered in his most syrupy voice. ‘One which the Governor might be interested in. A very wealthy family agglomeration, which is looking for an alliance of mutual profit, and which has a marriageable son …’
‘Son?’ Wuyllum was being very slow on the load, and Rheme cursed to himself while his face went on being disinterested. ‘About Maybelle’s age,’ he said. ‘May one speak frankly?’
Wuyllum stared at him for a moment or two before grunting permission. Rheme felt sweat start along the back of his neck and under his arms.
‘It cannot escape one’s attention that your daughter and her stepmother are not sympathetic,’ he said, still in that disinterested tone that he had rehearsed over and over again at the end of the garden, beyond the ears. ‘It’s perfectly understandable, too, your wife being so very young and lovely. At your daughter’s current age and level of social experience, however, she is quite marriageable. One could recommend her to many very wealthy families seeking alliances of various kinds, many of which would be to the Governor’s advantage. Also, such a marriage would remove a present source of annoyance to the Governor’s lady.’
Wuyllum grunted again, a faint light of understanding leaking outward from his face. ‘I might consider that,’ he said at last.
‘If the Governor considers such a possibility in his own best interest, the young lady could be sent on to Serendipity in order that she become fully acquainted with the social set there. It is my understanding she left Serendipity while still too young to take part fully in social affairs.’
‘She was twenty-two,’ the Governor snorted. ‘No more sex smell to her than to a mule.’
Rheme affected not to have heard. ‘Since the families of which we are speaking are interested in reproduction, they prefer women who are … somewhat naive and unspoiled. One might say “conservatively reared.” The Governor’s daughter gives that impression … now.’
A light dawned. ‘Need to keep her that way, do we? That’s what you’re sayin’, isn’t it? Got to keep her away from Honeypeach’s party fun, heh?’ The Governor’s face twisted into a nasty sneer. ‘And I suppose you’d want to go along to ‘Dipity. Kind of a chaperon, heh?’
‘I’d prefer not, Sir, if you don’t mind.’ Rheme allowed a brief expression of distaste to cross his face, wondering if he were overdoing it. Wuyllum was no fool. Obviously not. He was as thick-skinned and slow to move as some cold-blooded primordial reptile, but where his own self-interest was concerned, he had an absolute genius for understanding the implications of everything around him. ‘We’re very busy here and I really would prefer not.’ Let Wuyllum think that Rheme had tired of the girl’s attentions. Let him think whatever he damned well liked, but let Rheme get Maybelle off Jubal and away from Honeypeach Thonks. ‘I can find the name of some appropriate woman on Serendipity….’
The Governor grunted again, suspicion allayed, then turned his attention to other items of business.
That evening voices were raised in the private quarters of his excellency. Rheme, who was huddled with Maybelle in the far corner of the garden repeating the message that he intended Maybelle to carry with her to Serendipity, heard the voices and rejoiced.
‘What’ve you been getting up to with Maybelle, heh?’ the Governor asked his wife, his voice coming clearly through the drawn curtains.
‘I don’t even like Mayzy,’ his wife confided. ‘She spent too much time with that vanilla milk woman to be interesting.’
‘If you’re talkin’ about my first wife, woman, you’d better have the sense to know who she was. She was the daughter of the Lifetime Ambassador to Gerens, and she came from one of the wealthiest families on Heron’s World.’
‘And they slashed her off with nothing when she married you, Wuyllum, don’t forget that.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Maybelle was reared by her mama. She’s prime stuff, according to people who know.’
‘Prime what? Prime settler’s brush gruel? She’s nothing, Wully. Milky, like her mama. Nothing at all. I don’t even know why Justin wants to meet her again.’
‘Now you listen to me, Honeypeach. I’m telling you once, and only once. I’m sendin’ Maybelle back to Serendipity now. Settin’ her up back there with a little place of her own, heh? Hire some snooty woman to be chaperone, get her into society. And between now and the time she leaves, and after we get there, I don’t want her touched, you understand? Heh?’
There was an uncomfortable silence, broken by a whimper of pain. Honeypeach was accustomed to inflicting pain, but she was not accustomed to feeling it. ‘Who’d want to touch her? And what would you do if I did?’
‘I’d ask Harward Justin for the loan of Spider Geroan, woman. You’ve got your uses. I don’t mind your foolin’ around to suit yourself, long as you don’t meddle with me. Meddle with me, and you’ll find yourself havin’ a date with Spider Geroan and comin’ home outside your own skin lookin’ in. You understand me?’ The voice was expressionless, without anger, but the whimpering reply told the listeners that Honeypeach had heard it.
In the garden, Maybelle shivered in Rheme’s arms. ‘God, what did you tell him?’
‘How marriageable you are, girl. What a nice, fertile mama you’ll make for some herediphilic family on Serendipity.’ Rheme was actually deeply disturbed by the overheard conversation. He had not liked the lady’s mentioning Justin, and he had not liked the Governor’s mentioning Spider Geroan. It had implications for his own life and safety that he found ominous. ‘Now pay attention, May Bee, and remember what I’m telling you. Once you’re on Serendipity, you’re to go directly to those people I’ve told you about. You’re to tell them you’re from
Basty Pardo
. Give them the message, just as I gave it to you. They’ll see the message gets sent on, and they’ll keep you safe.’
‘I can’t bear to leave you,’ she sobbed. ‘God, Rheme, there may be a war here.’
‘Oh, there will be a war here,’ he said grimly. ‘And I’ll get through it a lot easier if I know you’re all right.’
‘This vital message of yours, who’s it for?’
He was silent, wondering whether he should tell her anything at all except what she needed to know. Meeting her rebellious expression, he knew she needed to know enough to give her a sense of participation. Maybelle was very young, in her attitudes and personality. When he had spoken of her as being untouched, he had said no more than the truth. Still, she had a vivid perception of right and wrong, and it would be wrong of him to use her without her knowing why.
‘The work of the Planetary Exploitation Council’s been corrupted for years,’ he said at last. ‘There was a lot of money credit involved, credit that came from the exploiter agglomerates. The corruption didn’t involve many of the PEC members, actually, but the others were too complacent to see what was going on. However, the massacre at the Jut started some tongues wagging because one of the people killed was the son of one of the Council members. She got together some of the newer, younger members and began to agitate for an investigation. You know the PEC has an enforcement body, CHAIN, called that for no good reason. If the letters stand for anything, no one knows what. Speaking from personal knowledge, CHAIN is quite incorruptible. It’s headed up by an old fox named Pardo….’