The Margarets (21 page)

“What’s relevant is that Mr. Judson has already given property to
the three children. He’s given Hanna some income property in Contrition City, and he’s given half the farm to each one of the boys. Billy Ray is eldest, he picked the land across the river with the house on it. It’s his, and the farm is big enough to support him and Mayleen.”

“When did this happen?” Bryan demanded.

“Billy Ray getting the farm? Over the past few months. Mayleen wants to marry him—no, I haven’t heard her say so, but I’ll wager Maybelle has.”

“She’s right, Daddy. It’s all Mayleen talks about.”

I nodded. “And if she’s pregnant, which I have no doubt she is, unless you’re capable of forcibly aborting her, Bryan, then locking her up in the attic for the next ten years, she’s going to manage being with Billy Ray, one way or another.”

“And you accept this?” he asked angrily.

“Accept it?” I, sighed, at a loss. As I’d accepted Rueful? As I’d accepted becoming his nurse? As I’d finally accepted that one of my children was born to misery. “What are our choices, Bryan? Tell me if we have any. I’d love to know.”

He mumbled and grumbled to himself, gradually losing steam as his kettle cooled.

I said, “There’s one good thing, Bryan. Our family here, Maybelle, and you and I, will be much, much happier with Mayleen married and living somewhere else. Ninety-nine percent of our upsets and problems are Mayleen.”

Bryan said plaintively, “God, Margaret, she’s only sixteen!”

“After the number of years we’ve lived in The Valley, you should know every man here believes if a girl is big enough, she’s old enough, and the ruing can come later!”

Bryan, deflated, rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t foresee my own daughter being considered big enough.”

“Well you can rue that come next Rueday. Maybelle and I’ll stand right beside you and rue it double.”

“No, I won’t,” whispered Maybelle. “Because you’re right, Mama. We’ll be so much happier if she’s somewhere else. She just makes our lives a misery.”

It was a mistake, of course. I had forecast Mayleen’s life, but I had
not considered Mayleen’s children, all ten of them. Yet another mistake to add to the endless chain. Still, as I often tried to console myself years later, it was quite possible, given Mayleen’s stupidity and Billy Ray’s pigheadedness, nothing could have prevented it, even if I had known where it would lead.

On B’yurngrad, my years of study had come to an end. I was congratulated by my instructors and was honored by being summoned by the High Priestess for an interview concerning my future life. I had never been to the High Priestess’s office, which was known to be high in the dome of the Temple, between the outer shell of stone and metal and the inner shell of plaster and gilded tiles. One of the novices offered to guide me up the endless stairs that spiraled through echoing spaces above the Temple vault.

“Does the High Priestess climb these stairs every day?” I asked, puffing slightly.

“Wilvia, we don’t know,” said the novice, a woman even younger than my twenty years or so. “When she summons us, we climb up, and she’s there. If she doesn’t summon us, we don’t go, and we have no idea where she is.”

We climbed farther. The stairs leveled into a ramp that curved gently upward to a wide door.

“In there,” the novice said. “Knock first.”

I knocked. A voice bade me enter, which I did, struggling with the weight of the door. The room was empty except for two chairs, one of them occupied by Lady Badness.

“Well, come in, Wilvia. Don’t stand there gawking.”

“I didn’t know you…how long have you…”

“How long have I been head of this agglomeration? A very long time. Is it rewarding? Yes. Does it take a lot of my time? Not really. Your teachers are pleased with you.”

I flushed. “They seem to be, yes. I’m surprised. The final examination was not at all as I expected it to be.”

“The judging of cases. No. It’s never as we expect it to be. That’s why we train women judges here at Temple. It is the nature of men to make rules for everything and to play complicated games with them. For them, the game is more important than justice.

“Ordinary people prefer justice. They prefer that things be taken case by case, they prefer an attempt at justice over the rules of law, for they know that pure law is often used by the clever to victimize the innocent. Sit down, child.”

I lowered myself into the other chair. In the center of the room was an open well surrounded by a railing. I could hear the shush of footsteps and the murmur of voices far below in the Temple. Above, a similar hole pierced the dome to show the sky, where white birds darted across an infinite blue.

Lady Badness spoke: “You have done what was required, learned what was necessary, and I have come to take you away.”

“Away?” The word, leaving my mouth, sounded bruised and tentative. “But…Joziré will come here to find me…”

“Joziré is waiting for you on Fajnard. His mother, the queen, has died, not at the hands of Frossian assassins as was feared, but from sorrow, an illness we do not know how to cure. Joziré must now take the throne. He wishes to do so with you at his side,
if
that will be good for his people. Will it, do you suppose?”

“He never sent me word,” I cried angrily. “Never once…”

“He could not have done so without risking his life and yours. Would you have wished him to do that?”

I bit my tongue. “Lady Badness, no. I didn’t think.”

“You will have to think if you marry Joziré, will your marrying him be good for his people?” repeated Lady Badness obdurately. “You marry them when you marry him.”

Over the past five or so years, in those few moments when I had had time for reflection, I had asked myself this question many times.

“I believe I will be good for his people,” I said firmly. “I will love them as I do him, and they will be my people.”

She nodded, looking at me with what I thought might be sadness. Not joy, at any rate.

“Then I must tell you what is forecast for the lovely lands of the Ghoss. They may soon be threatened, probably by either the Frossians or the Thongal. If that happens, you may need to leave your people, your country. You may need to leave Joziré, for his sake. You may have a long, troubled time in your life. You may know sadness, and sorrow, and loneliness. You may have to work very hard just to stay alive. Or, you can forget Joziré. You can stay here. It will be safer. You will be among friends. I think it is only fair to give you warning before you put your foot on the path…”

She stared at me, into me. I know what she saw, a kind of whirlwind, doubts and sorrows and joys all spun together like the whirlwinds on Mars. Joziré’s face, his eyes, the feel of his hands. The dragonfly ship. The woman in red. What I had left. What I had promised.

I heard myself say, “Even if all that is true, every word of it, I still choose Joziré. I still choose to be queen, to rule justly, to do what he would have me do.”

And that seemed to be answer enough. She stood up and gestured. A ship edged its way over the window in the dome and dropped a ladder down. Old as she looked, Lady Badness went up the ladder like a tree rat, and I went after her. The ship was piloted by the same woman in red who had brought me here with Joziré all those years ago. She smiled at me, indicating the older, one-eyed man with her. “Mr. Weathereye, Wilvia.” I bowed, he nodded, the ship moved away.

I was not conscious of time passing, which it must have done, before we saw an enormous highland centered upon a tall, white palace. We set down in the paved courtyard.

“These are the highlands of Fajnard,” said the one-eyed man, turning toward me. “Much work awaits you here. Do you think you’re up to it?”

I simply stared at him, my mouth open.

Lady Badness said, “I have seldom seen anyone work as hard as
Wilvia has done. I have faith in her.” She leaned forward and pointed through the open door of the ship. “See, there!”

A man was approaching. I looked, and looked again. He was taller, and stronger-looking, and even more handsome, and…

“Joziré,” I cried, and went running toward him.

Behind us, the ship left very quietly.

I found my first housing on B’yurngrad in a hostel kept by the Siblinghood of Silence. The first person I met there was a tall, dark-haired, lean-faced fellow named Fernwold, who stared at me as though I was long-lost kin. He was, so he said, the sorter-out, the questioner and annoyer who fitted awkward pegs into weird-shaped holes wherever that was possible.

“First thing,” he said, looking me over from head to toe, “is for us to learn how you came here to B’yurngrad?’

I gritted my teeth and prepared to be terse. “I was twenty-two years old, on Earth, recently identified as an over-four, being shipped out. I might have ended up on a ship that went into Mercan space if I’d told them I speak Omniont and Mercan languages, so I kept my mouth shut. I was put on an Omniont ship that was scheduled to stop here on B’yurngrad to transship its cargo to various Omniont worlds.”

He cocked his head. “You stopped at this transshipment point, and…”

“…And the ship unloaded the bondspeople onto three smaller ships that had come to pick us up. Two ships left. I was on the last one, and while it was still sitting in the port it developed something called a core resonance. Does that happen?”

He nodded. “Often killing a lot of people.”

“The repairs were going to take a long time. The shipmaster was told to get rid of his cargo, as feeding us was expensive…”

“How did you know that? Did the shipmaster tell you?”

“Of course not. I heard him talking to his superiors, whomever. They said sell us if possible, but get rid of us. I inferred that meant kill us. It seemed logical.”

“So when you said you spoke alien languages, you meant you really speak them, not just know a few words?”

“I really speak them, yes. That was to have been my lifework. Translation. Diplomacy. Understanding. And why are you staring at me, what did you say your name was?”

“Fernwold. Ferni, for short. A good friend at the academy called me that. I’m staring because you look like him.”

I discounted this as unlikely. “Fernwold. Some person or group bought us or ransomed us—at least they paid something to get us released, or hosteled, whatever. The next person I met was you.”

“The Siblinghood of Silence ransomed you,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Thus moving you from bondservice into sibling service. What’s that old saying, from the roasting spit into the fire?”

I stared at him, openmouthed. “The who?”

“The Siblinghood of Silence. You haven’t heard of them?”

“I’ve heard of something called the Third Order…”

He put his finger to his lips, eyes conveying a definite message. “No. You haven’t. No matter how well you remember it, you haven’t heard of it, but you do remember the Siblinghood.”

“A bi-or multigender fraternity of some kind?”

I thought his responsive smile rather wolfish, hearkening back to my childhood love of animal books. His eyebrows were dark and extremely mobile, two physiognomic punctuation marks that leapt about to mark each utterance, parenthetical or exclamatory. Just now they were tented, conveying amused disbelief at my ignorance.

“Rather more than that, Salvage. It is on behalf of the Siblinghood that I am here to find out what each member of the ransomed cargo may be fit for. Some of them will be easy. They’ll be kitchen help. They’ll go to the workshops of the building crew. The High-house of the Siblinghood here on B’yurngrad is always in a state of reconstruction. Its work changes minute by minute and hour by hour.

“They’ll tell us to build a dormitory for fourteen Thrackians found floating, because maybe the Thrackians can give us some information about this, or that, or something else. Or they’ll say they need a new kitchen for the Pfillians who have ritual requirements for their food. Or, as now, they’ll tell me you Earthians habitually segregate by sex, so we need two temporary dormitories, please…”

He touched my shoulder lightly. “Of course, such segregation is fully voluntary. I have very nice quarters if you’re not intent on that old Earth rule.”

“I am quite intent on obeying all such rules,” I said, resentfully intractable. “Who are they, the Siblinghood?”

“What do you care, Salvage? Fate has dropped you into kinder hands. No real bondage for you.”

“My name is not Salvage. It’s Margaret. And I love it, the way you say no real bondage?” I laughed. “I don’t know what you call building walls and laying floors, Silencer, but bondage isn’t far from it.”

“So, give me a reason to assign you somewhere else, pretty one. I’m not hard to get around. Anyone with a warm heart can do it.”

I took a moment to think. “I’ve already said I know languages, Sibling. Several. Even many. Surely among all this important work your Siblinghood is busy doing, there must be a position open for a translator.”

“Hmmm.” He stood, stretched thoughtfully, glanced at the barred windows and doors, said, “Don’t go away,” in an amused voice, and left.

I was there for several days while all those around me were assigned here and there. I sat. I borrowed a book on the language and customs of the Hrass and read it cover to cover. When he returned, it was with a different demeanor. “I have your assignment,” he said. “Eventually, your language skills will be of great use. For the time being, however, you are to be trained by a shaman who has sent word you are to be renamed. This is necessary, I am told. You are to be called M’urgi.” He wrote it down for me. “It means ‘explorer’ in a dialect spoken here about. Pronounced as I did, MAR-gee.”

“Gee as in game,” I said witlessly. Something in what he had said had rung a bell in my brain. The reverberations made me tremble. “As in gossip, gamble, garden, or even Mar-gar-et, which is what the
Mercan crewmen on the ship called me, with a giggle and a slither when they did so! Why must my name be changed?”

“Shamans on B’yurngrad always name their novices, and it’s customary to do it in advance of training so the novice can get used to it. That’s what we’ll all call you from now on…”

When I started to speak, he shook his head at me. “Don’t ask. I am as surprised as you are, and anything I might tell you could be wrong. You’re to wait here until your…ah, ‘mentor’ gets to someplace where you can safely be handed over to her. Meantime, you’re to learn your new name and report to the supplies officer to be fitted out with clothes.”

“I have clothing with me,” I said.

“Not the kind you’ll be needing,” he replied with a wry, sideways grin. “Yours don’t smell right. Not smoky enough.”

Before I could ask what he meant, he was gone.

A shaman. Shamaness. Shamana. What was the female version? Did it matter? Why did it sound so very, very familiar?

It wasn’t until that night, when I was just falling asleep, that it came me with such force that I sat up, fully aware. A shaman. Of course. That was one of my people. Margy! M’urgi? Close enough. I lay down again in the quiet darkness, mind spinning with something weirdly like hope.

The next day, he came back.

“It will be a while, M’urgi,” he said. “Your future teacher is off on the edge of nowhere, seeing what the tribes are up to…”

“Tribes?”

“Bondsmen from Mercan planets who arrived here in no mood to settle down. Wildmen. They kidnapped a few shiploads of females, and they live out in the grasses in skin-covered huts, taking their herds north and south with the seasons and practicing a strange, violent, blood-and-honor religion. They come into the towns maybe once a year to sell their wool and hair and cheese. They learn nothing, for they’re convinced they know everything that matters. They’re boring. Even hearing about them is boring, so why don’t we relieve your boredom. And mine.”

We did so, finding much to talk of, much enjoyment in the talk. When I asked him to tell me about the Siblinghood, Fernwold said:

“Since you’re to be a shaman, I can tell you this, though we don’t speak of it usually. The Siblinghood is an organization of humans and Gentherans and a very few persons of other races. Most of the humans are a different kind we call Ghoss, though some of them are ordinary people, like me. Along with the humans and Gentherans are some extraordinary members who have strange and wonderful capabilities, men and women who are…something else.”

“And what does it do, this organization?”

“It helps out here and there, when the human race itself gets into trouble. Which we inevitably seem to do. And the Third Order is trying to achieve some other grand vision…”

“And you’re a member of this group?”

“A very, very minor member, yes.”

“If there’s a Third Order, I suppose there’s a first and second one.”

“Not any longer. Both existed; both were destroyed. The only thing I know about the Orders is they’re attempting to find a unique spacial configuration, some esoteric galactic connection. What they call a ‘cluster.’ The First Order found one, the Second Order found one, and both times it promptly broke apart and killed a lot of the Siblinghood people who were exploring it.”

“Someone broke it?”

“Maybe, or it may have just happened. The configurations they’re looking for are only temporary. Finding them is like finding dew on the grass. Just because it’s there at dawn doesn’t mean it’s going to be there ten minutes later. The Second Order operated much more secretly, just in case the first configuration was purposefully destroyed. They found over fifty partial configurations, but some of them were traps and others were just blind alleys. They discovered who set the traps and removed them, but by that time, they’d been delayed too long, and the cluster was gone again. The Third Order is being extremely security conscious. No one outside the Siblinghood knows who’s part of it, or what it’s found out, or even what it’s looking for, and even we insiders know almost nothing, and if you’re smart, you’ll keep your mouth shut about the nothing you know.”

The few days turned into twenty. By the end of the twenty, Fernwold and I were closer than friends. On the twenty-first day, I was
sent away, to spend the journey time wondering who it was I had thought I loved, back on Earth, and why it was I thought I had loved him. Strangely enough, though I grieved to lose Ferni, I had gained a certain peace of mind. For Margaret, I had probably decided badly, but for M’urgi, the decision about Bryan had been the right one.