The Margarets (34 page)

He touched the marks gently with a fingertip, erasing them and the soreness that had accompanied them. “I’ll never understand northerners. It’s carried in a basket woven out of reeds or straw. Any latched closet would hold the crippled ones we carry, but they build a lockroom thick enough to hold the devil.”

“They’ve never seen one, Fernwold. I have seldom seen one. We take some pains not to look at them until we have to, don’t we? Fear and superstition always follow the unseen, the unknown, the whispered of.” I sighed, wiggling my fingers, now free of pain. “I would have healed me after I’d eaten, when I felt warmer, but thank you.” They taught us this healing of the ghyrm wounds. It took only concentration and a little strength. A little more than I had had when I came in.

“I know,” he said, returning to his supper. The chitterlain moved over near his plate and regarded him with beady eyes, then began preening its feathers as though it had decided he was harmless. He smiled. “They talk, did you know that? The chitterlain?”

“I did not,” I said. “You mean like a…what was it, a parrot? A mimic?”

“No, no. They talk. There’s a one-eyed old fellow, a member of the Siblinghood, I think, hangs about from time to time. He says they’re the last remaining of a race of creatures that once were starfarers, city builders.”

“This little one?”

“Yes.” He leaned down close. “You understand what I’m saying?”

“Sooor,” it trilled. “Loor ti ellld.”

“Which means?” I asked.

“Which means, ‘Yes, I speak of old times.’ They live in colonies, the chitterlain. They spend the winters in the south, getting fat and telling stories to their children. In the spring, they fly back to the northland.”

His voice was weighted with sadness, and he turned back to his meal. When the soup and cider had warmed him somewhat, he turned
to the more substantial and savory stuff. “Are you here on retrieval?” he asked between bites.

“I thought you were told where I was.”

“I was. I didn’t ask why, for my errand had reason enough.”

“And what was that?”

“First to find you, then warn you, then to protect you. There’s a threat against your life.”

I shrugged. “That’s been the case since I left Earth.”

“This is specific, but I don’t think anyone’s followed you here. What’s the situation?”

“The Siblinghood tells me they have a ghyrm here.”

“Recent enough that nobody has…?”

“We’re never quick enough to prevent somebody from playing the fool!” I snapped. “Otherwise, this retrieval could have waited until the thaw.”

“When are you going to find it?”

I shook my head, looked around the room, where this chair and that had been emptied since his arrival. “Not here. This isn’t the place to discuss any such thing. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Very well. Have I told you it’s a good thing you stayed out of Mercan space. I’ve been on a few of those worlds recently. Rinwall. Bonxar. Fajnard.” He dropped his voice, almost to a whisper. “I’ve gone into the mountain fastnesses of Perepume a few times, visiting the Gibbekot, who say revolution’s brewing on Fajnard: Gibbekot, Ghoss, and umoxen on one side, Frossian overlords on the other.”

“You go spying for the Siblinghood?”

“The Siblinghood is merely keeping an eye on what’s happening. They haven’t offered the Gibbekot any help as yet. You’d have known if they had.”

“I’ve been away from the news for some while,” I said. “Are the Frossians involved in this supposed threat to me?”

“It’s possible. Their nature is to be loyal supporters of whatever demagogue has the most power, and though there are no Frossians on B’yurngrad, the threat could come through them to someone local.” He frowned. “You’re thinner, M’urgi. You look well, but thin. It’s strange, when I see you I think how well you’ve taken to the discipline of our calling. Most women don’t like the solitude.”

I considered this. “Most
people
don’t, male or female, but people who grow up as solitary children already know the eremitic life. We find it more comforting than onerous. The work is easy enough, except when we’re carrying, and that isn’t often.”

“True. This one you’re hunting, any idea where it came from?”

“The wild tribes have been using them as weapons for as long as I can remember.”

“None reported on Chottem,” he murmured. “None on Thairy. Fajnard is suspect, of course. Frossian society would be meat and drink for the ghyrm-things.”

“Except among the tribes, we’ve heard of few on B’yurngrad. Not here, not yet.”

“Except for the ones in our keeping, no?”

I made a face. “Let’s not talk about them. I have far more than enough of them. What’s the news?”

So we talked: of the legal maneuvers in the city of Bray, on Chottem, to have the heiress of Bray declared dead so the ancillary branches of the family could claim the fortune; how the sudden arrival of the heiress had thrown all that into a heap; of the most recent results of the Great Walling-Off, Dominion’s social experiment on Tercis; of rumors that the Queen of the Ghoss, Wilvia the Wise, who had disappeared from Fajnard long ago, had been seen on Tercis some years before; of the Reunion of Academy Alumni that was to take place at Point Zibit on Thairy and of Ferni’s friends who would be there. Inconsequential talk, as the chitterlain ate and drank its fill; casual talk as the chitterlain flew to my collar and burrowed into the warmth of the scarf about my throat. All the time, Ferni’s eyes never left my face.

When we had finished our meal, he asked, “Have you a room here?”

I slanted a sideways look at him, deciding whether to admit it or not, deciding I really had no choice.

“May I share it?” he whispered.

“Ah, Ferni,” I murmured, half to myself. “After all this time. Over ten years! Sometimes I thought I’d only dreamed you, now here you are. Why now?”

“Couldn’t help myself.” He smiled as he started to reach for my hand but stopped, aware of the eyes and the ears still in the room. He stood and went to the counter where B’Oag stood. “We’d like another pitcher of cider, Oastkeeper. Is there a heating coil in the envoy’s room? If so, we’ll talk out our business there, rather than ruin your trade for the whole evening.”

“I thank you for your consideration,” said B’Oag, glancing around his nearly empty oasthall. He turned to his son. “Ojlin, be sure the steam coil is turned on full in the envoy’s room, and take up a pitcher of cider.”

“That’s all right, Oastkeeper,” Fernwold murmured. “Here’s your pay for our dinner tonight and for the room. I’ll carry the cider and set the coil myself.”

B’Oag, bewildered at the largess on the counter before him, made no objection to this at all.

On Cantardene, years had passed since I, that is, Miss Ongamar, had witnessed the sacrifice on the funeral hill. I had fed the thing with parts of that happening, fed it to such satiety that it hadn’t bothered me for several days. Then came rumors of the population crest on Earth and the accompanying restoration of the planet, fed day after day by statistics showing that Earth’s population was actually and consistently falling. Within a century, so it was whispered, the population would be reduced from eighteen billion to the tenth of that advised by Dominion as a sensible maximum human population for the foreseeable future. On hearing of this, the K’Famir threatened to sue for damages in the Interstellar Trade Organization. If Earth’s population fell, there would not be enough surplus humans to provide slave labor, and the K’Famir had contracted for slave labor!

Responding to the suit, the Dominion announced that humans would continue to be shipped as bondslaves into both Omniont and Mercan areas of influence for the term of the contract, which was fifty Earth years. The Mercan Combine, and its K’Famir representatives, immediately accused the Dominion of restraint of trade and threatened various unpleasant consequences, such as tariffs, raids on colony worlds, and the like if the downward trend were not immediately reversed. To all of these the
Dominion replied that Dominion business was Dominion business, not subject to Combine or Federation demands.

The matter had then been appealed to the ISTO, who referred it to the IG Court of Justice, where the Dominion view had recently been unanimously sustained, the court holding that habitable planets, being few and extremely valuable, were more in need of protection than was the provision of cheap labor on planets with an enormous population of an idle elite, and further, that the welfare of the planet must always take precedence over the greediness of its inhabitants or, in this case, their purchasers; and, yet further, that a decline in the population of a previously highly proliferative species, if indeed this had happened, was more a matter for celebration than harassment.

The most recently circulated rumor was that Dominion Central Authority had recently disappeared from its usual seat on Mars and left no word as to its whereabouts, thus forestalling forcible retaliation by the Combine. Dominion had, at least for the time being, vanished in the smoke.

“What will we do for fitters?” Lady Ephedra demanded. “All our fitters are Earthian slaves. Tell me, Miss Ongamar! You are Earthian! What will we do for fitters?”

“I suppose you will have to pay them, madam,” I said, through a mouth full of pins. “There are always Earthians willing to work if the pay is good.”

“Pay fitters?” Lady Ephedra was shocked into silence. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Pay workers? Not for the next few lifetimes, at any rate,” I heard a K’Famir crew boss telling his friend. “They’re still bringing shiploads of them out from Earth. By the time we’ve used them all up, the Earth colonies will be overpopulating, just as Earthians always do, and we’ll buy up the excess. Just wait and see!”

I acknowledged to myself that it was selfish to feel so, but I was grateful that Earth had been struck by salvation, despite itself! Not that Earthians appreciated that fact, according to the K’Famir, though that may have been wishful thinking. All this babble continued to feed
it
, day after day, and thankful as I was, I detected something worrisome in the thing’s appetite, a nervous undercurrent that reminded me of a childhood time when I had stuffed myself with
candy, each mouthful creating a need for another mouthful, so that no amount of the sweetness satisfied me. I had been very sick, very sorry, and so the thing in its stone closet seemed almost to sicken as it gorged on the talk about Earth.

Could one imagine that
it
felt anxiety? Or, more likely, that the creature or organism that directed the ghyrm and its appetites was feeling anxiety. Something I might turn to my advantage? Now that my contract as a fitter was drawing to a close, was there a way I could escape from
it
? Though the years on Cantardene were longer than Earth-years, I believed that less than half a year remained before my official enslavement would be over. I could look forward to being taken to one of the colony planets, and I had applied to go to Chottem, with B’yurngrad as a second choice. Even Thairy or Tercis would be acceptable. I had been twelve when I arrived on Cantardene, twenty-two when Adille had died, I was almost thirty-seven now, actually older than that, if one figured in the relative length of the years. If I could leave the planet without the thing, distance would surely attenuate its influence on me, or so I prayed. If I could not escape
it
, would
it
expect transport to an Earthian colony? I had not, myself, committed any evil yet, and was determined to avoid doing so.

I tried not to think of the possibility that I would not be allowed to go at all. My hands busied themselves with a vivilon chemise, setting in a gusset without a moment’s thought while my mind remained caught in its web of anxieties. I knew things about the K’Famir that I should not know. I knew things about the Mercan Combine that I should not know. Creatures of various kinds had talked back and forth over my stooped body, giggling over pillow talk, telling secrets. I knew that the Mercan Combine planned to take over Chottem, that the Omnionts intended to annex Thairy and Tercis. Oh, not right away. Not until all the servants on Earth had been pumped into the system. The thing had sucked up this information with groans of pleasure, but still I had felt its underlying dissatisfaction, its barely sensed agitation.

This morning I had told
it
I would not return until late, for I intended to go into the pleasure quarter to hear what other races thought of the news from Earth. It had hissed at me, as it always did, a threat, a certainty of death if I did not return timely. How
it
would accomplish this, I didn’t know. Adille had simply died of weakness, for
it
had drained her dry. I felt no weakening as yet. My mirror showed no dissipation of strength or premature aging. The thing didn’t want to weaken me. It wanted to go on using me.

I bent over to pick up a few spilled pins and once again heard conversation from the neighboring fitting room.

“I’ll have Miss Ongamar take care of it. I never have any complaints about her work.” It was Lady Ephedra’s voice.

“She’s been with you quite a while,” said a languorous, uncaring voice. “Not cheating the decree, are we, dear?”

Shrill squeals of laughter. “Aren’t you dreadful to say such a thing! She’s been with me for a long time because she’s very good. Quite the best I’ve had. A decree is a decree, but I confess I shall hate to turn her over to the males up there on the Hill of Beelshi.”

I stopped breathing. Lady Ephedra’s voice went on. “I don’t know why they always want humans. They don’t use any of the other slaves as sacrifices, only humans.”

I gritted my teeth and breathed lightly, lightly, they mustn’t know I was listening. In case someone peeked in, I had to keep my fingers busy, but that voice could only belong to one of the baron’s neuters. Of all the K’Famir, I hated the neuters the worst. At least the others seemed to know they were being cruel, the neuters did not even realize it. They had no minds at all.

“How much longer does she have?” asked the languorous one.

“I may be able to stretch it to a year,” said Lady Ephedra. “For some reason, they wanted her dead several years ago. Someone, somewhere ordered it. I misled them then, telling them she had died, and I have lied to them several times since, extending her term of bondage. Very soon, I shall not be able to lie to them anymore.”

“Do you always obey the decree and let the males kill your fitters?” the neuter asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the Lady Ephedra. “Stretch it out as one may, one must obey, eventually. One doesn’t know what they may have picked up in the fitting rooms. They always die on the hill, shortly before their terms expire.”

In the neighboring room, I straightened, my hands still working as I finished the chemise and set it aside, momentarily amazed at how
easily I had done the task, created a piece of clothing for a creature more like a spider than a human, a creature with eight extremities, with two mouths, four eyes, no visible ears, and several sets of copulatory organs, some of them used only for pleasure.

So they did not intend to let me go. Though it was likely Lady Ephedra didn’t know precisely how her fitter was to be killed, she knew it would happen. I was suddenly very warm, almost hot, the fury rising in me like a wave. I would kill them all, I would burn down House Mouselline. I would…

I would do nothing precipitant, I warned myself. I had been fortunate to overhear. It gave me time to make a plan. Time perhaps to get away. Time certainly to arrange that someone in Dominion would learn of all the things I knew.

“Are you finished, Miss Ongamar?” asked the Lady Ephedra from the doorway of the little room. “Everything completed.”

“Oh, yes, Lady Ephedra,” I said, bowing humbly. “Just straightening up before I leave.”