The Margarets (14 page)

The most frightening part, however, came the following day. The other three students who had attended the meeting were not in class. It took me only a split second to decide it would be inappropriate to ask where they were. Later that day, the Provost sent for me, and I found her sitting at her desk, looking rather pale.

“You wanted to see me, Provost?”

“We have had a…great loss,” she said. “I wanted you, particularly, to know of it. It seems the others of your class who attended yesterday’s meeting announced to one of the participants that they intended to tell the media what had occurred there.”

I started to exclaim, and she put up her hand. “Please do not inadvertently mention anything that did occur.”

I swallowed. “I would not do so, Provost. Perhaps my classmates thought the secrecy agreement did not…apply to them.”

“No rule or standard has applied to them since birth,” she said. “Great wealth breeds great arrogance, Margaret. Some months ago, each of the three was handpicked by the Directors to take junior but very important posts at Earthgov after graduation. If I were of a suspicious nature, I might guess that those three were picked to attend yesterday’s meeting in order that their arrogance could be assessed under…controlled conditions.”

“But…surely I wasn’t picked for that reason.”

“No,” she said. “Someone else picked you, and before you ask, I am not to say who it was.”

Though I had imagined Bryan’s face if I told him what had happened, I was not about to commit suicide. I would, however, have given a great deal to have been enlightened. The thought that I, Margaret, had been picked by someone(s) to attend a meeting I couldn’t talk about, that I, Margaret, knew what was going to happen to Earth, a secret known only to a handful of other people, was terrifying, and not the least of the terror was that there was no possible, ascribable reason why I should be involved at all!

Adille, the K’Famira, had said she would not wear the necklace again, yet it hung across her throat pouch the next day, seeming rather larger than before. She wore it the day after that, also, moving restlessly about the house as though something troubled her.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she demanded. We went out into the city, and I followed Adille’s restless feet here and there, without direction, pausing wherever voices were raised or threatening gestures were made. A few days later, Adille dragged me to a public execution, which Adille had always sworn was only for rabble. I hid my face in my lap, winding my arms around my head to keep from hearing the accused screaming as his lower arms and legs were lopped off. It was not mere horror I was hiding from, it was the pain itself that I felt, no matter how I hid my eyes. The day after that we attended the baiting of a dozen traitors’ families by wild klazaks, the sand of the arena running green and a dozen or more young K’Famira ululating from quivering pouches as the klazaks tore first the traitorous parents, then the young…

“Please don’t make me go,” I begged her the following day. “It hurts me, Great Lady. It hurts me to see people killed.” I was taking a risk in saying it wasn’t mere dislike, that it was torment? “I feel it…it hurts…”

“I know, I know,” Adille said distractedly. “Of course,
yes, but I must…I must see it. Or something. Something different. Something new. I must…”

“You always said the executions were for the rabble,” I cried. “Are we not rabble if we watch?”

“I don’t know,” Adille said, her mouths set in ugly lines. “But I must. I must. And it wants you with me.”

Bargom disapproved of her wearing the necklace. He told Adille it was ruining her appearance, making her look old and tired. Several times he tried to take the necklace away, but he could not approach it. Each time he tried, he found himself headed out the door, away from it. In the end, he went out the door and simply kept going. During all this time, Adille complained that the beads grew heavier, until they achieved such a weight they could no longer be worn.

Then the sharing began. Adille explained it. She had to go out and find the things the necklace wanted to see, always in my company, then she had to return and lay hands upon the necklace to let it see the horrors through her memory. Mornings we went, and nights. Adille grew too weak to force me to go with her, but still she went alone, returning to lay hands upon the necklace, to which I was now inexorably drawn so that I, too, heard, saw, smelled everything. Years went by as Adille wandered, coming home each night to fall exhausted into bed, eating little, growing thinner with each day, while I eked out our existence by selling the ornaments of the house, then the furniture. The time came that Adille was seen watching something that should not have been watched by anyone. She had warned me that this might happen.

“It sends me places people aren’t supposed to be. It makes me hide and watch, when no one is supposed to watch. It makes me climb walls, hide outside windows. I saw what my clan leader, Draug B’lanjo, did to the Omniont Ambassador. They sent his body to the Federation, claiming it had been done by the Hrass. I heard them talking. They want to stir trouble between the Omniont and the Hrass so they can take over the Hrass shipping routes.”

“Doesn’t that disturb you, Great Lady?” I asked. “The thing that happened to the Ambassador?”

“Him. Oh. I suppose it might have disturbed me if I hadn’t been so worried about being seen.”

I had always wondered if Adille felt anything at all for the victims she saw tortured and slain. Seemingly not.

She went on, “Someday, they will see me. Someday, I won’t come home…”

And one day, she did not. Counting over the seasons I had been with Adille, I estimated it at somewhere between three and four Cantardene years. I myself was then seventeen, or eighteen.

The K’Famir who came to the house some days later told me to clean the house before Adille’s father, Progzo, arrived to dispose of Adille’s belongings. The necklace box lay on the dressing trough, and when I reached out to close the lid, the thing inside lashed out at me like a whip, wrapping itself around my arm. Frantically, I tried to pull it loose, to no avail, as it crawled across my body to plaster itself against my breast, seemingly rooted into the flesh. I could not escape the thing that had killed Adille. Because I had touched it, because I had lived in proximity to it, it had the same power over me it had had over her.

I was young and strong, however, which was lucky, for it took all my strength to bear the thing. Adille had made no provision for me, and her family did not want me. When the bondservant agency reclaimed me, the thing was wrapped against my skin, under my clothes, a bead or two showing at the throat or poking through a buttonhole. I wore a high-collared dress to hide it, and for a wonder, the bondage merchant did not require me to strip. I soon learned why. I had already been sold to House Mouselline as a seamstress, a creature to alter lingerie, a fitter who could work quietly and virtually unnoticed. I had had much experience at being unnoticed. Afterward I gained more.

The fitters, mostly Earthian, wore wigs of short gray hair that covered the lobes of their ears. The thinner of us had our bodies padded, and we were clad in sensible dark dresses, high-necked, ankle-length, and long-sleeved. Our feet were shod in shapeless shoes. We carried pincushions on our wrists and a measuring rod in one hand. It was claimed by House Mouselline that we were the heirs of an ancient Earth guild that had borne these symbols of craftsmanship through the centuries. Though rough and callused hands would have matched the rest of the image, our hands were, in fact, kept as soft as the fabrics
we touched, for House Mouselline dealt in ultrasilk and vivilon and mazatec, all produced, so the labels said, on the Isles of Delight. At 250 credits or more a span, no one, not even Ephedra Mouselline herself, could afford their being snagged by some fitter’s abraded knuckle.

Those Mercans who saw us, or more likely looked across us, saw human bolsters with lowered eyes and mouths full of pins: Miss This; Miss That; Miss Ongamar. The “Miss” was a courtesy title, a calculated oddity. Titles were not usually given to bondspeople, but in the intimacy of the fitting room, one did not want to disturb the mood of serene luxury by kicking or hitting a servant or even commanding them in the ugly lingua Mercan of the plantation. Fitters, therefore, were selected from among the few bondservants who were skilled at sewing and understood the language. They were spoken to with condescending politeness.

“Miss Ongamar, the Lady Mirabel wants three of the vivilon chemises, in violet and puce, and they need just a tuck under the lower arms.” “Oh, Miss Ongamar, Princess Delibia has ordered the gold-mesh games gown by Verdul, and it needs an underdress by tomorrow afternoon. The Princess is green-fleshed, about a number four shade, so be sure you pick fabric to match.” “Oh, Miss Ongamar, the Baron’s plaything has ordered twelve pair of vivilon pantaloons, and they must be monogrammed with the Baron’s crest over all four orifices.”

Miss Ongamar’s fingers nipped and pinned and basted. Her, my, hands darted. This to be seamed invisibly. That to be embroidered, very visibly. This to be let out just a bit, to drape a touch better over Dowager Queen Dagabon’s ever-enlarging pouch; that to be taken in to fit the young neuter the Baron was currently amusing himself with. And when the showroom was closed and the workroom silent, even then I might be there, finishing up this little task or that one before going home.

Home. I actually had one.

One of the few privileges of being employed by House Mouselline was the housing allowance, actual money, to pay rent, to buy food. House Mouselline had no interest in maintaining a bondslave dormitory and kitchen. Those who worked for the house were ex
pected to fend for themselves. The allowance was small; for the innovative, it was sufficient. So it was I went out the back service door into the Baka Narak, which I translated to myself, “Allee Sensual,” and turned left to the corner. Another left would take me into the turmoil and clutter of Bak-Zandig-g’Shadup, “Street of Many Worlds,” which was thronged with people of many races at all hours of the day and night. If I turned right, however, the way led down a short block to the service tunnel, and down the tunnel to the Crafter’s and Seamer’s Residential Compound for Bond and Free, where most of the employees lived. I, however, did not enter the compound. Instead, I went along the narrow service walk that ran beside it and into the cobbled courtyard at the rear, where the refuse bins were kept. Past their lidded bulks, next to the rear wall and the alley gate, a narrow door opened into home.

This had been space no one else wanted: unrentable, unusable, exactly the kind of space I had searched for since my bondage to House Mouselline. I had heard two fitters speaking of it, regretting that it would not do, for it had no heat, it had no light. I had made a modest offer for it, and the offer had been accepted. Within the limits imposed by my circumstances, the place was perfect. Inside were stone walls worn smooth by centuries and a stone floor old as time. Huge, ancient pillars supported the crushing weight of the upper floors. This had been the stable of a castle once, a monstrous fortification that had guarded the coast of a planet-bound people in the days of the last Regency, before the K’Famir had conquered the Welbeck people, slaughtered them (when they proved to be reluctant and untrustworthy as slaves), and taken over their world. Now the ocean had receded some distance, and the stable was almost a cellar, though it had kept a tiny window overlooking the enclosed garden. The grille allowed only an obstructed view of fruit tree branches, but the fresh, flower-scented air was welcome.

I shook my lantern to be sure there was fuel in it before lighting it. The place had at one time had water piped in for the animals. I had found the pipes, had worked away at them for a season with twists of wire, dragging out the rust and scale, making them workable again. I had found an old coal stove in an alley, had taken it apart with chisel and hammer, had carried it to my lair piece by
piece and put it together again. It sat under the round hole where the flue of one just like it had no doubt inserted itself a hundred years before. Best of all, the place had a little, low, windowless room, no more than a closet, with a door that locked. The closet room was where I left it in the evenings, when I had to go out. If I carried it all day, I could not carry it all night, and the thing seemed to realize that. This evening I went to that room first, took off my outer clothing and detached it from me, shutting my mind against the sound, half growl, half sucking whine, when I pulled it away. It writhed into the darkest corner and did not move, even when I fetched water for it, for if it grew dry, it chafed me, and the abrasions burned like acid.

I poked up the fire in the stove, filled the kettle and set it over the flame, dragged the washtub into the middle of the floor, and took off my daily disguise. The gray wig first, then the padding around my body. As soon as the water was hot, I poured a sufficiency into the tub, stepped in, and gave myself the nightly sponge bath that washed away its residue, a slight stickiness that smelled of mold. When I had emptied that tub down the floor drain, I heated the kettle again, and yet again to give me enough water to sit in, legs over one towel-padded side, head leaning against the other. It was the best time of day: the feeling that time had stopped, the warmth of the stove on my skin, the softness of the perfumed water. House Mouselline sold essences to put in bathwater; Miss Ongamar had become an expert petty thief.

Bathtime was also time to review what I had heard during the day:

A neuter talking to another as it tried on ribbon trousers, discussing its patron’s purchase, from the Omnionts, of new technology that detected ship-shields. “They’re giving him an award for inventing it?” Crow of laughter.

A sterile female speaking of the breeding wife of her consort. “The stupid plassawokit can’t do a thing but lay eggs! It’s a wonder she doesn’t drop them in the public street.”

A trader’s wife telling the delightful story about her husband completely fooling buyers and charging them triple for merchandise. “Ridiculous Gentherans in their shiny little suits. No more brains than a glabbitch.”

I remembered everything, making cryptic notes so I would not forget. The cracked mirror I had taken from a trash bin let me examine my face, running my fingers along the pain lines, noting the dark circles that surrounded my eyes. I bore no scars, but there were other signs of the burden I had carried all these years. Even now, while I sat here in the comfortable warmth of my own place, it could reach out to touch me, its touch like fire.

When I was ready to leave my lair, I appeared much thinner. My hair was now curled at the sides of my head, like a mane. I had sprayed my legs in one of the currently fashionable colors, and they peeked seductively from the slits in the long, full trousers, topped with a multicolored, sparkling jacket discarded by a humanoid patron, expertly mended by myself. My face was entirely different, the eyes wider and brighter, the green-painted lips much fuller, while across my forehead and back across the center of my skull extended the bony protrusion of the K’vasti people, a humanoid race akin to the Frossians, who frequented the pleasure quarter both as buyers and bought. House Mouselline sold clothing, but it also sold cosmetic prostheses, and I had acquired an armamentarium of parts: noses, ears, forehead and jaw growths, mouthfuls of various teeth, as well as mittens and gloves that counterfeited the hands of a dozen races. I could make myself up to be a K’vasti, a Frossian, a Hrass. I had been all of these and a dozen others. I had found it necessary to be each and every one of them to find the things it wanted.

Sometimes I became virtually invisible, a nonentity clad in gray robes, my gray skin marred by oozing eruptions caused by exposure to the charbic root used to fumigate dwellings. Sometimes I emerged as a creature anatomically unlike myself, the effects managed by prostheses and skillful dressing. Sometimes I went out as myself, or almost myself, a humanoid that got itself up to appear attractive in order to be an acceptable client in the places I sometimes had to go. Or, as tonight, a K’Vasti who would be welcome in the secret quarter, where creatures with certain tastes congregated, where tonight, as every night, something quite dreadful would likely happen within my sight and hearing.