The Margarets (52 page)

“Home,” said Margaret, her voice breaking. “Gloriana, Bamber Joy, it’s home.”

I, Margaret, led the way down the hill, the others in a straggling line behind me. As we approached the house, I saw shattered fragments of my door piled to one side of the porch and a blanket hung where my door should have been. I shivered. The apple tree at the corner of the house was bare. Winter had come while I was away.

Gloriana pushed the blanket aside and called into the house. “It’s me, Gloriana.”

A glad outcry from inside startled us all. “Gloriana, is Bamber Joy with you?”

Bamber Joy cried, “Mother!” and thrust past Gloriana.

When Gloriana and I entered, we found the boy on his knees beside the couch, his head pressed to the woman’s breast. Gloriana shifted from foot to foot nearby as the woman reached a hand toward her.

“Gloriana,” she cried. “Oh, sweet, dear girl-child! Oh, poor thing, you haven’t any idea who I am, do you? And you both look so much like Joziré, and so tall!” She turned to me, tears covering her face. “Are you the one of us who cared for them?”

“I’m Margaret,” I faltered, momentarily witless with surprise. “I…I thought Gloriana was my granddaughter…adopted, that is…Bamber Joy, well, he was left with Abe Johnson…” My voice trailed off, and I simply
stared. So Wilvia was Gloriana’s mother. Which meant that I myself was Gloriana’s mother?

“I had to leave them both,” she said, tears still flowing down her face. “The Gentherans thought the children would be safer if separated, from one another and from me. The Thongal were paid by the Quaatar to wipe out the royal house, so they had to be hidden…”

“Then you’re Wilvia,” said Gloriana. “And you’re my real mother? Which means Bamber Joy is my brother, and my grandmother was my real mother, sort of. And her daughter was my foster mother, sort of…” She turned to me. “Grandma, I thought it couldn’t get any more confusing!” She stopped, seeing Gretamara for the first time. “Another Margaret?” she croaked. “That’s all seven of you, isn’t it?”

The new one introduced herself, and I saw Gloriana put on the concentrated expression she wore when she was determined to get something right. She was memorizing them, us. I did as she did, looking at each of us in turn. Gretamara was twentyish, very gentle-looking; Mar-agern and M’urgi looked to be in their early or mid thirties, both brown from the sun and very muscular.

Wilvia couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, not with that diadem, a little older yet. Naumi was about that same age, with wide shoulders and a strong jaw, and a deeply curved mouth. Then Ongamar, smaller and thinner than the others, appearing only slightly younger than I was myself. Some forty years’ apparent difference between oldest and youngest (though one really shouldn’t count Gretamara), and one of us male…

A shadow on the glass caught my eye. Through the window I saw Ferni standing in deep shadow on the porch, unseen by the others and wearing an expression I could not read. His eyes kept going from Wilvia to M’urgi and back again, like an avid cat watching two birds, unable to decide between them.

I turned to the Gardener, and demanded, “How did you do it? You are the one who did it, aren’t you?”

She patted me on the shoulder. “The Gentherans did it, Margaret. As to how? Well, I can hypothesize: Say they picked a woman who had twins in the family. Twins in both families, as a matter of fact, father and mother. Suppose they encouraged the original fertilized
egg to split, making two, and then again making four, and then again, making eight…”

“But there are only seven of her!” Gloriana said.

“One died,” I said. “My mother had twins, on Mars. I was one. The other died. What, was she supposed to be a spare?”

The Gardener shook her head at me, and I flushed. “And, I suppose you’re saying the other six were taken away, somewhere.”

Falija said, “Where they could have grown up just as you did, Grandma, in mirror worlds that reflected everything in your world, each of them thinking she was Margaret, until one was nine, until three more were twelve, until the last three were twenty-two.”

“How?” demanded Gloriana.

Gretamara answered. “It may have been in the same way I grew up, Gloriana. In a place that exists but is not real. In a world that may be observed and interacted with, but is not actual. A virtual world, as Earthians would call it, that ended for each of us when we entered a real one. In the end, there were seven real worlds: I was on Chottem; Naumi was on Thairy; Ongamar was on Cantardene; Mar-agern was on Fajnard; M’urgi was on B’yurngrad; and Margaret was on Tercis.”

“And Wilvia?” Gloriana asked.

“Here and there,” Wilvia herself said. “B’yurngrad first, then Fajnard, then other places, and finally, I was in Hell.”

“That is one of the ways it could have happened,” the Gardener said. “The how is less important than the why. It was done to save your people.”

“Because we owe them a debt,” said Falija very solemnly. “From long, long ago. Because humans don’t have racial memories, and they need them very badly. And there’s only one place in the universe where man’s history can be found, and that’s with the Keeper.”

Mr. Weathereye, who had been leaning in the doorway, said, “We are told the Keeper is an observer, not a creator. It is eternal and omniscient but generally uninvolved; one who hates being bothered but enjoys puzzles and riddles. The last people to bother it were the Pthas, who came to the Keeper with a request. The Keeper honored their request, but then it put itself in a place where no one could bother it again unless one person could walk seven roads at once. It sounds
childish in the saying, like a nursery rhyme. Just as nursery rhymes mean far more than the children who chant them know, this meant far more than it said. It was anything but childish in the doing.

“Twice before, the Siblinghood had found seven way-gates that made one road. Stars and their planets move, you know; they don’t stay in the same relative positions forever. Consider the movements of billions of stars in a galaxy. Consider how difficult to find seven of them, well in advance, mind you, that will make the one configuration. The First Order of the Siblinghood tried, and most of them died in the attempt. The Second Order tried and was forestalled. Now, this hour, the Third Order of the Siblinghood makes the attempt once more. Here are the seven walkers who are one, and before this hour passes, they must walk the roads, find the Keeper, and ask it to give humans back the racial memory the Quaatar took from them when they were barely human.”

“Now?” said Wilvia in weary but dignified disbelief.

“Now, while the vile races are preoccupied elsewhere,” said the Gardener. “Before that machine runs out of power and they start thinking again about finding and killing you. We must not take an extra moment. Come now, just you seven and Falija. We must go back up the mountain to the way-gate into Fajnard. Mr. Weathereye is no doubt needed on B’yurngrad, and the rest of you must stay here.”

We moved, though unwillingly. Wilvia and I seemed least disposed to go, I imagine for identical reasons. Each of us felt we had just returned home, to those who mattered most to us. As we went, I noticed Ferni still standing at the corner of the house behind us, staring after us as though his whole life were being torn away.

The Gardener walked among us. “I have something to tell you. Some of you may not return from this effort. If a choice were to be made among you, Margaret, how would you feel about that?”

I looked at her with disbelief. “You mean, some of us may end up dead.”

“It’s possible.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “If you had asked me that a week ago, Gardener, I’d have said fine, so long as I don’t have to go on ruing all the mistakes I’ve made.”

“And now?”

“When I saw Wilvia’s children and realized they weren’t cursed, as mine had been, when I saw the others…I don’t have to rue my life. Together, Margaret has not done badly.”

“So you’re no longer willing to die, to escape your regrets?”

“If you have to choose one to live, choose someone younger.”

“And you, Ongamar?” the Gardener asked.

Ongamar whispered. “Oh, I’ve looked forward to forgetting what I’ve seen for such a long time…don’t choose me to live, Gardener.”

“And you, Mar-agern?”

“I have no thoughts on the matter. I’ve never thought of doing away with myself, but if a choice had to be made, I wouldn’t be afraid…”

“And you, Naumi?”

He turned to stare at her. “I have wanted only a few things in my life, only one of them greatly. Since that is not to be, further life seems rather barren. There are others here who will live more happily than I.”

“And you, Wilvia?”

Wilvia smiled. “My dearest wish…one of them, at least, has been granted. My husband and children were, are far more important to me than my own life. If Joziré were still alive, he’d have returned to me! And if he is truly gone, and I can save my children by letting them go, then I will let them go.”

The Gardener whispered, “And you, my child, Gretamara?”

She looked up, far up, where the stars reached their light across the universe. “My life has always been in your hands, Gardener. I’m content to leave it there.”

“And lastly, you, M’urgi?”

She replied truculently, “Well, don’t expect me to march off to battle singing hymns of martyrdom! A few years ago, when life was smoke and dirt and desperate interventions that didn’t work a lot of the time, I’d have been more willing. But lately? I have something to live for. I saw Ferni’s face back there. He’s waiting to see what happens…” She stopped, looked up, tears glinting at the corner of her eyes. “Even so, well, even so, if my death helps the human race…the shaman taught me to die.”

We had arrived at the way-gate and the Gardener lined us up
while glancing at the horizon where the first faint light was showing. “We don’t know how the Keeper will respond. It may refuse us. It may grant your request but take your lives in payment. Nothing of the little we have learned of the Keeper tells us it will do this, but it is a possibility. It may let all of you live, which is also a possibility, and if that is so, when this is over, we will have much to rejoice over.”

I, Margaret, heard a sigh from someone, a deep breath from another, the slight shifting of our feet, but nothing more.

“Very well, one at a time: you, Margaret, go seven roads, and stop just inside the way-gate we just arrived through, up the hill, here on Tercis.” She pointed up the hill, toward the black pool hidden in the forest. “You, Wilvia: six roads, stopping on the world where we found you, just inside the gate. You, Gretamara: five roads, stopping at Chottem, and you, Ongamar: four roads to Cantardene…”

“The K’Famir…” Ongamar said between clenched teeth.

Weathereye patted her shoulder. “The Siblinghood has warriors between every pair of gates. They will not stand aside for any but you seven.”

Gardener continued. “M’urgi goes three roads to B’yurngrad; Naumi, two roads to Thairy; Mar-agern, one road to Fajnard, each of you stopping
inside
the gate. As the Third Order discovered, as Naumi’s friend Caspor discovered, when the roads among these gates are shown in a particular two-dimensional plane, they make a seven-pointed star with a seven-sided space at its center. On star maps, that space is light-years in width and empty. We have reason to believe the interaction of the way-gates around it make the space much smaller than it looks.

“When you are each in your assigned gate, the center of that space will be to your left. I have seven timepieces here, to hang around your necks. When your timepiece says zero, you turn and walk to your left, through the side of the way-gate.”

“And what will happen?” I, Gretamara, asked.

“I don’t know,” said the Gardener, extending her arms in a gesture of relinquishment. “Those of us who planned this and brought it to fruition believe someone will await you there, but this is a blind road with an unknown end.”

Voices murmured a response. The Gardener put the timepieces around our necks. Gretamara reached up to kiss the Gardener’s cheek. Ongamar pulled herself erect, and said, “I walk for an end to pain and an end to Cantardene.”

M’urgi cried, “If I don’t return, give my love to Ferni…”

Naumi murmured, “Same message, to the same recipient.”

“Enough poignancy,” said Mar-agern. “This new brain of mine is equipped with all sorts of hope. Farewell for now.”

We went into the pool, I first, since I had the farthest to go. Light and dark, light and dark, counting, being sure I went six gates. Behind me always a quivering surface, shimmering with something that was not light. It might as well have been the sound of dry leaves rubbing together, or the feel of a draft under a door, the smell of old ice, the rasp of a file on the skin of my hand, any sensation or none. At last, the exit to Tercis was ahead of me.

I turned to my left and checked the timepiece the Gardener had hung around my neck. The others would all be in place by now, all of them waiting for zero. I concentrated on breathing quietly until zero came. When it arrived, I stepped through the wall of the way-gate, then stepped again, the scintillating specks that pulsed around me fading with each step: fading, fading, gone. Ahead was nothingness, and I walked into it, wondering desperately if I would be able to keep a straight line.

After what seemed a considerable time, I heard someone calling “Margaret?” into the silence of the place. Naumi’s voice, deeper than the others’. “Ongamar?” he called.

A sound, perhaps an answering voice. I started to go toward it, then stopped. Better just go on walking. After a while, he tried again, off to my left. “Margaret?”

“Over here,” I called. “Should I come toward you?”

“No!” he said. “Not until we’re all within sight of one another.”

Calls came from left and right and we walked. The sounds came nearer. The nothing below our feet became something. A surface. I saw Gretamara emerging from a dark fog to my left, and beyond her, M’urgi. On my right, Naumi appeared, then Ongamar. Between M’urgi and Ongamar, two shadows came toward us, emerging as Mar-agern and Wilvia.

“Keep walking until we can touch one another,” Naumi called.