The Margarets (11 page)

On Thairy, during dry-time’s height, I spent a lot of time at the swimming hole by the river. Every year the wet-time runoff dug the hole anew; each year a deep spring welled a fresh coolness from beneath it; each year it stayed icily fresh, even when the sun-scorched riverbed mummified under its wandering wrappings of sand. I swam by myself sometimes, and sometimes Mr. Weathereye or Lady Badness went with me. Mr. Weathereye was forty at least, maybe older, and Lady Badness was variable, depending on how she felt: sixty-two on a good day and a hundred-two on a bad one. I called her Lady Badness because Mr. Weathereye called her that, and because whenever she talked about her life, she always said, “Ah, but there was so much badness then.”

A school of tiny snout fish lived in the pool, along with a tangle of slimy green noomis and every wet-time a silver-scaled gammerfree spawned a litter of pups in a hollow at the bottom of the tree. The mother gammerfree sat on a protruding root and talked to me, or so I thought, at least, and it occurred to me that since I knew several languages, I should be able to decipher what the gammerfree was telling me.

She greeted me with a lilting whistle. Pursing my lips, I did my best to copy the sound. “Pheeeew,” said the mother gammerfree before repeating the whistle again.

This time I did it better. “Pheeet,” said the gammerfree, going on to another whistle. By the time the gammerfree was tired, I had several words I was sure of.
Pheeew
meant no good.
Pheeet
meant all right, or passable. Another whistle meant something to do with food, and that first whistley bit meant “Good day.” Or maybe “Hello.”

Lady Badness and Mr. Weathereye wandered by, she to soak her shins from the diving rock and Mr. Weathereye to study the botany of the area. Not long after, looking for trouble, here came wandering an ineradicable lout—which is what Mr. Weathereye called the type. He saw me sharing my sandwich with the gammerfree pups and promptly shied a stone at them while demanding I get out of the way so he could kill them. I jumped up when I first saw the lout, putting myself between stone and gammerfree pups and receiving a nasty cut on my chest for my efforts. When I said the lout should go away, he threatened to beat me flat. I braced himself for battle, but just then Mr. Weathereye came tripping up behind the lout and hit him across the butt with his walking staff. It was a long walking staff, and the far end of it achieved a considerable velocity during the swing.

“Why’d you do that?” screamed the lout.

“Why’d you threaten to beat my friend?” asked Mr. Weathereye. “Why’d you throw a stone at those little creatures?”

“They’re vermin, stonin’s all they’re good for,” cried the lout. “And he wouldn’t get out of my way.”

“What if I think you’re vermin, and beating’s all you’re good for and you’re in my way?” asked Mr. Weathereye, advancing as the lout withdrew in some confusion.

I settled back on the stone, and shared out what was left of my lunch with the frightened pups, all huddled together in fear. The mother gammerfree nuzzled me and gave me a quick lick with her rough tongue while I stroked her from her scaly nose to the tip of her scaly tail.

“Will the lout change his ways?” I asked around a mouthful of egg salad.

“They seldom do,” said Mr. Weathereye, adjusting the patch over his bad eye, caused by an accident in the long, long ago when he was
a mere youth. “By the way, Naumi, the schoolmaster’s looking for you. I meant to tell you earlier.”

School was out for the dry season, and since I had concluded the term satisfactorily, the schoolmaster had to be looking for me for some other reason than schoolwork. I put my clothes on and set out to find the schoolmaster, Mr. Wyncamp, knowing he kept office hours even during summer when school was out.

“Naumi Rastarong,” he said by way of greeting when I entered his office, staring at nothing and pushing the papers on his desk around. Looking uncomfortable, he pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I have here a communication from the Dominion. It says that you have been selected to provide life-duty to the Dominion, and your escort will arrive on Valstat’s Day with all the paperwork your pa will have to sign.” Mr. Wyncamp chewed his lower lip and put the paper down as though it had burned him.

I didn’t notice, for my brain had gone dead at the words
life-duty.
No one from the town of Bright had ever been selected for life-duty, at least not in the lifetime of anyone still living there. I knew about duty, of course. In school, everyone learned that submission to the Dominion brought with it the onus of taxes paid by everyone, and short service paid by some. Being picked for short service wouldn’t have surprised me at all, for lots of young people were chosen to spend two years as child minders, cooks, builders, or crop harvesters. When somebody got selected for short service, well-wishers always said, “Two years is short stay for no more tax pay!” Two years of service did bring a ten-year exemption from taxes and interest-free loans for education, so it wasn’t that rare or fearsome.

But life-duty, that was another thing altogether. It meant forty years in the service of the Dominion itself. The things people said when they heard about life-duty were usually of the very small comfort variety: “Well, look at it this way. It’s better than dying from the pergal pox.” Which was true, but so what? Though I had no way of knowing it, most youngsters, when advised they had been chosen for life-service, did exactly as I was doing: They sat with their mouths open, too stunned to object even if there’d been anyone to object to. The notice came from Dominion Central Authority; there was no mechanism for appeal.

After a while I looked up to see Mr. Weathereye standing in the hallway, leaning on his cane. When he saw me looking at him, he beckoned. I took the letter that Mr. Wyncamp had given me and trudged out into the hall.

“Life-service?” whispered Mr. Weathereye.

I could only nod. I was trying to recite the words of the Thankfulness Pledge that we said every morning at school, the one that went, “We thank those in the service of the Dominion at the sacrifice of their own ambitions…”

“I didn’t even have any ambitions yet,” I confessed.

“I think they try to catch candidates before they have many,” opined Mr. Weathereye. “But I thought you wanted to be a warrior?”

“Well, I did, do. Mr. Wyncamp said I’m so good at battle games, it was likely I’d become a warrior. But, you know, I thought Thairy Guard is where I’d serve, at the very most.” Thairy Guard was what Mr. Weathereye called Men Minus Mission. There wasn’t much use for warriors on Thairy.

“Do you want me to help tell your pa?” asked Mr. Weathereye.

I said, “Y’know he’s not really my pa.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“…’F I go alone, he’ll think I’m making it up,” said I. “He usually does, if it’s anything out of the ordinary.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Mr. Weathereye.

Outside, we met Lady Badness, who fell in beside us without even asking what had happened, so I figured she and Mr. Weathereye had had their suspicions all along.

Pa Rastarong’s house was outside the town of Bright, a smallish place, set at the eastern feet of the Lowering Hills.

“Why’d they choose me?” I mumbled to himself.

Lady Badness said, “Some professorial type did a study, long time gone, trying to determine similarities of character among those chosen for life-service. Only thing similar among ’em all was nobody wanted to go.”

“That’s me, right enough,” said I. What was I good at? Nothing much except school and battle games. Didn’t much like team sports, though I was very quick on my feet and agile in getting up perpen
dicular sides of things when pursued by one or more ineradicable louts.

Mr. Weathereye had always advised that getting away from a lout was in most cases preferable to killing the lout, which I was perfectly capable of doing, because I was really
very
good at battle games, including the art of unarmed combat, though none of the louts knew it.

“They don’t even know I could hurt them,” I’d said.

“How would they know?” asked Mr. Weathereye. “Louts don’t study battle games, and your teachers don’t make a habit of talking about it.”

“My name has been on the battle game roll of honor in the hallway at school,” said I. “Four years running.”

“The only thing rarer than louts who think is louts who read,” said Mr. Weathereye.

“I’ll miss people,” said I. I’d always thought the people in Bright compensated for the fact my foster pa was kind of strange. The citizens of Bright considered friendliness toward children a duty, even when it wasn’t a pleasure. Amiability was part of the effort good citizens put forth to get all seven-year-olds through their dozen-years, that period beginning at literacy and culminating (when it did at all) in passing the adulthood examination and receiving a citizen’s ID. It took about twelve years to get there, starting between age five and seven, though some took more or less, and a few never reached it at all.

On entering the dozen-years, people gave up baby clothes and baby behavior. They put on the bright red tunic of students, which I had just set aside, and they behaved appropriately, or at least tried to give that appearance. It was appropriate to be willing to learn and to be respectful of elders; but whether one did or not, one had to achieve mastery of the essentials. Once that was done, and the adulthood examination was passed—I had passed—one took the oath of citizenship and became a member of society. One could then wear adult clothing and engage in adult behavior: One could marry, beget children, drive a flier, operate heavy machinery, or conduct business. One could even stay out all night and engage in lechery and sottishness, with no one to forbid it.

No one knew anyone who had failed the adulthood exam, though
everyone remembered certain people who hadn’t taken it but had been called to life-service and were not heard from thereafter. Their fate, whatever it may have been, was Dominion business and nobody else’s, though family members had been known to kick up a fuss when Sonny or Honey disappeared, at least right at first. Fuss always resulted in a visit from a Dominion agent, who came to remind the family of their own oaths of citizenship, and after that, the families always settled down or pretended to. It was rumored that certain people might have been transported to Tercis, but no one knew for sure.

All this was on my mind as we turned from the cobblestone thoroughfare onto the graveled stretch of road that led to Pa Rastarong’s house, an overgrown and ramshackle dwelling standing amid a clutter of what Lady Badness called lost opportunities and ill-starred innovations: the rusted model of a grebble thresher that had worked quite well until actually tried on grebble; the remnants of an all-sense information grabber with the unfortunate penchant for grabbing everything except the item desired; and the automatic power legs for fruit pickers that had on at least two occasions lifted their wearers into near-Thairy orbits.

“Pa’s got a new invention,” I offered.

“Ah,” said Mr. Weathereye unencouragingly.

Undaunted, I continued. “He says it’ll make our fortunes, mine’n his both. It’s a kind of all-round rain deflector. If somebody wants to play ball at night, for example, or if somebody’s having a wedding or a parade…”

“They rent a rain deflector,” said Mr. Weathereye tonelessly. “Before I buy shares in it, I’d like to have one question answered. Where does the deflected rain go?”

“Pa’s working on that,” said I. “What he wants to do is just send it back up and back up, bouncing around up there, until people are finished with their party, then it can come down.”

“The result could be a deluge,” said Mr. Weathereye. “Perhaps an inundation.”

“There’s that,” admitted I, kicking the front door, which opened with a protest of moisture-swollen wood and the crack of an already split frame.

Pa Rastarong was fast asleep on the living room window seat, the only place in the room sufficiently upholstered with pillows and padding to make a comfortable resting place. Mr. Weathereye sat down on the nearest stool and waited patiently while I shook Pa awake. When he was sitting upright, bleary eyes fastened on his unexpected guest, Mr. Weathereye told him about the letter.

“They can’t do that!” spluttered Pa. “He’s the only one I’ve got here at home!”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Weathereye. “Think about it. You learned the rules in school, just as we all did, now think about it.”

Pa probably had learned the rules, but I doubt he’d thought about them since. He screwed up his face, trying to think. “Three categories of service,” he said finally. “That’s all I remember. And nothin’ was said about life-duty when I took him on!”

He glared at Mr. Weathereye, who cocked his head and said soothingly, “You’re right, of course. That’s why I came along to tell you about the letter, because it sounds so unbelievable that Naumi could have been selected. It is true, though, and if you have questions about it, you can talk to Mr. Wyncamp.”

“The teacher,” said Pa in disgust.

“He sometimes is, yes,” agreed Mr. Weathereye. “The Escort will be here on Valstat’s Day with the papers for you to sign.”

“’Nif I don’t?” Pa said, working up a semblance of mule-headedness, as he sometimes did.

“I suppose they’ll disappear you,” said Mr. Weathereye without emotion. “That’s what usually happens to people who forget the oath of citizenship.” He stood up, bowed briefly over his cane, then stumped to the front door, where I let him out.

“What do I need to do?” I asked, as I followed him down the path. “Like, pack things up? Or not?”

“Not,” said Mr. Weathereye, examining the far horizon as though something very important might happen there at any minute. “Everything you need will be provided. You may take memorabilia that will fit into a box no longer, wider, or taller than the length of your hand from tip of middle finger to wrist, not counting fingernail if it protrudes.”

The days went by all in a rush. The Escort came to the house.
Mr. Weathereye and Mr. Wyncamp attended as witnesses. The Escort paid over a lump sum to Pa, to compensate for the loss of my company, and Pa signed the papers saying he’d been properly informed of the legality of the selection. He even wept a bit, surprising himself almost as much as it surprised me and Mr. Weathereye. Crying wasn’t Pa’s kind of thing at all.