With a Tangled Skein (28 page)

"I have come to ask you to take my place. If you do, you will meet Death only as a business associate."

"I thought he already was. I've buried more kin than I can count on my hands.'' She held up her gnarled spread fingers.

"If you take this office, you will cut the threads on the lives of a million times that number."

"Somebody's got to do it." Atropos turned the body over to Niobe.

"Then take my hand," Niobe said. "But do not think the job is always easy."

The old woman hardly blinked. "No job worth doing is." She took the hand.

Then the old Atropos was sitting in the rocker, and the new one was with Fate.

At that point a child dashed up. "Grandma! I made a score!" Then, seeing a stranger in the chair, he skidded to a halt.

Niobe gave the body to the new Atropos. "It's okay, Jimmy," she said. "She's just visiting." "Oh." Suddenly shy, the boy backed away.

"Jimmy, it's time for me to go away," the new Atropos said. "You do me a big favor, now, and show this lady to the bus stop. Tell the folks I'm gone."

"Gone where?"

"Just gone. Jimmy. They'll understand."

"Okay." The boy, given an important job to do, led the old Atropos away down the street.

Niobe took over the body again, changed to spider form, and mounted a thread. Now that's some trick! the new Atropos thought. I always squish bugs.

"Not anymore," Niobe said in her spider's voice. "You will master this trick too."

She brought them to the Abode and resumed her human form. "In fact, we had better practice the basic motions right now," she said. "Because things may get hectic soon."

Hectic? both others inquired.

Quickly Niobe explained how Satan had conspired to get three new Aspects of Fate together. "Now I am a retread," she concluded. "I had several decades experience as Clotho, ending twenty-five years ago. We hope Satan doesn't know that." She felt free to name the Prince of Evil, here in the Abode, because it was secure from uninvited intrusion. Each Incarnation was supreme within his or her home. "So we can afford to fumble about at first; that will reassure him, and he may be careless. But we have to take care that we don't do too much damage. These are human lives we are manipulating, remember."

They practiced using the mouth to speak, assuming the spider form, climbing the web, and using the travelthreads to move about rapidly, so that any of the three could get about well enough. Then Niobe explained the three jobs: how Clotho spun the threads of life, Lachesis measured them, and Atropos cut them to their lengths. "I hardly know my own job," she confessed. "So I really am learning too. I'm likely to mismeasure the lengths I need for particular parts of the Tapestry, which will result in some of what the mortals take to be odd coincidences. We won't have to pretend, to make thinks look awkward."

"But we could use a real bad blunder to start off," Atropos concluded. She seemed to have a ready grasp of the essentials; the prior Atropos had chosen well.

Clotho tried some spinning. She had no mortal experience at this, so was clumsy. She had been selected as much for availability and militant spirit as for dexterity, for the notice had been short. Niobe had to guide her carefully, and even so, the thread was somewhat loose and irregular. But she could do it, however slowly.

Now it was Atropos' turn to try some cutting. Niobe measured a thread, then turned the body over to the old woman. Atropos took the little scissors and snipped one end, then the other. "Oops," she said. "I cut it too long!" She cut a small bit off the end. "There-that's about right, now."

They prepared about twenty threads, snipping freely to trim them down to size. "When we get more experienced," Niobe said as she took them to the Tapestry for placement, "we'll do them wholesale. There are far too many lives on Earth for us to handle individually." She set the threads in-and they fell out.

That was funny. "They always seemed to grow right in place for the Lachesis I knew in the old days." She recovered a thread and set it in place again-and it fell out again. "I don't remember her having to tie them in."

"Maybe I spun them wrong," Clotho said nervously. "I don't think so. But we can try some new ones." Clotho spun some more, and Niobe measured, and Atropos snipped, still having trouble getting the lengths exactly right; more snippets fell to the floor. But the new threads also refused to stay in place.

They couldn't figure out what was wrong. The floor of the Abode was littered with snippets, but no threads had been successfully emplaced in the Tapestry.

There was a peremptory knock on the door. Niobe took the body and went to answer it.

Thanatos stood there, more forbidding in his hooded cloak and skull than she recalled him. The off-white bones of his fingers clenched spasmodically. Truly, he was Death Incarnate. "What are you up to?" he demanded.

Niobe was taken aback. "I'm just trying to do my job," she said.

Thanatos' square and bony eye-sockets stared darkly at her. "You have changed."

"We have all changed," Niobe said, and had Clotho and Atropos show their forms briefly. "But we're having some trouble-"

"Trouble!" Thanatos exclaimed, striding into the Abode. Beyond him, outside, Niobe saw his fine pale horse, the one she had ridden on, back at the outset. "Twenty-six babies needlessly dead!"

"Babies-dead?" Niobe asked. "I haven't emplaced any threads, let alone cut them short!"

"No? What do you think these are?" Thanatos demanded, stooping to pick up a handful of snippets. He was angry, and he frightened her even though she knew he was no threat to her.

"Just the trimmings-"

"Trimmings!" Thanatos roared. "You don't trim lives from the front ends!"

Niobe fell back against the silken wall, stunned. "The-the front ends?"

Thanatos held up one of the full-length threads. "Here is a Thread of Life," he said scathingly. "Here is the front, here the rear. When you cut off a segment from the rear-" he made a snipping motion with two bone-fingers-"you shorten that life by that amount. When you cut it off at the front, you shorten that life by this amount." And he dropped the whole thread to the floor.

"Leaving only this." He held up two fingers, almost touching each other.

"Oh, no!" Niobe exclaimed with horror. "We cut them off after days-or hours!"

"And twenty-six babies died, poisoned in the hospital," Thanatos continued grimly. "Because a dietician got the wrong container and put salt in their formulas instead of sugar! The mortals think that's a tragic accident, but I knew it was your handiwork. I had to take those babies!" His fury fairly shook the Abode.

Niobe burst into tears. She was middle-aged, but it made no difference. She was too appalled to react any other way.

It was Atropos who took over the body and the situation. "Don't chew her out. Death," she snapped, "I did it, and I'm mortified. I didn't know-and I sure as hell won't do it again!"

Thanatos looked at her, their situation registering. "All three-new?" he asked. "No experience?"

"Not exactly," Atropos began. Don't tell him! Niobe urged. If he knows, Satan will know!

"But all three of us have changed in the last few days," Atropos said. "And as you can plainly see, not one of us is experienced in her role."

"How could all three of you change at once?" Thanatos asked. "You lose your continuity!"

"Now he tells us," Atropos said. "This morning I was sitting in my rocker, waiting for you to come haul my soul away. Now I'm apologizing to you for messing up."

Thanatos relaxed. "I was new, too, last year, and your forerunners helped me greatly. I know how it is; I made mistakes too. I'm sorry I ranted at you. Let's see if we can work this out." He sat on the silk couch and drew back his hood. The face of a rather ordinary young man emerged.

Atropos did a double take. "You're a living man!" Thanatos smiled. "They didn't tell you? I suppose they didn't think of it, with all of you changing so rapidly. Yes, all the Incarnations are living people, frozen at the ages when they assumed their offices. We are the temporary Immortals."

"You mean I won't grow older?"

"Not until you return to mortality-which you will do only by your own choice, unlike me."

"You're different?" There was a lot Niobe had not yet told the other two, owing to the press of time. She kept quiet; this was actually convenient, as she did not have to finesse any questions about herself.

"I continue until my successor kills me. Then he will assume my office."

"But then you're not immortal!"

"Oh, I am immortal-until I grow careless. No person or creature can harm me, not even Satan himself, as long as I am careful. The only one who can kill me is my successor-and even he will fail unless I let him. My cloak is invulnerable to natural attack, and my person to supernatural menace. But I cannot step down alive, unlike you."

"That must be a horror!" Atropos exclaimed.

"No, it's all right. Much better than the suicide I contemplated as a mortal." At this Clotho perked up, mentally; she knew about that sort of thing.

"But isn't your life sterile?" Atropos asked. "No hellraising, no gambling, no women?"

He laughed. "You don't think much of young men, do you!"

"I think a lot of them! I've known a few myself, when I was young and sexy. But I know their nature. A man without a woman is hell-bent for trouble."

Thanatos smiled. "Well, I have a woman. She's mortal, but she knows my nature. Her name is Luna Kaftan. I love her and I guarantee she will not die before her time. I can't marry her, because I have no legal mortal identity; I'm listed as deceased. But I'll always be with her."

Niobe was glad she didn't have the body now; she would have given herself away. She had forgotten, in these last few hours, that Luna had taken up with Thanatos! As a mortal, she had disapproved; now, suddenly, she approved. This seemed to be a fine young man, committed to his role. He could indeed protect Luna from death itself. That portion of the prophecy had turned out to be much more positive than anticipated.

But Atropos was learning rapidly. "Suppose I-I never would, mind you-suppose I cut your girl friend's thread short?"

Thanatos' hood was away from his head, but a shadow of the skull seemed to pass across his features, and his skin took on the hue of bone. He was, indeed. Death. "You did that once before-your prior person did. Satan had forced it. I refused to take her. You do not end the lives, you merely schedule them. Only when I take their souls do they actually die. As I took the souls of those twenty-six babies. I had to do it; their bodies were ravaged and they would have suffered had they lived, so I stood aside and let them drift to Heaven. But I am the one in charge of that, and by my decree a dying person can live indefinitely, regardless of his suffering. We Incarnations have to cooperate, or it becomes untenable."

Atropos nodded. "I thought it was something like that. We won't kill any more babies, that's for sure! Let's run through it now and make sure we've got it right."

Clotho took the body and spun more thread. Then Niobe measured it, and Atropos cut it carefully, only once at each end. Then Niobe took it to the Tapestry and laid it in the place where she knew it belonged.

This time it took. The thread anchored, and extended into the fuzzy future portion of the Tapestry.

"That's the way," Thanatos agreed. He drew his hood back into place. "I must go; I have business elsewhere. If you have doubts about anything, check with me or another Incarnation, and we'll try to help. Chronos, especially, must work with you closely; he lives backward, so he knows the future, not the past."

Thanatos departed, riding into the sky on his pale horse. The three Aspects of Fate collapsed onto the couch. That had been some session!

But Clotho had a question: if Chronos knew the future, wouldn't he know about Niobe's prior experience in office?

"Not if we don't tell him-some time in the future," Niobe said. "I think we had better just forget about my past and carry on in the present. But about Chronos- there may be something else you should know, Clotho."

"What's that?"

"He-in the past-he has been very close to us. Especially to Clotho."

"Friendship is good, isn't it?" the girl asked, perplexed.

"Lovers."

Clotho was silent. Niobe was not sure what was going through her mind, for the three did not share their thoughts when they chose not to.

"The way I see it," Atropos said, "this isn't our mortal body anymore. This body must have been through a lot we don't know about."

"Yes," Niobe agreed.

"So maybe it doesn't matter too much what we do with it, as long as we do our jobs right."

Still Clotho didn't comment. Niobe remembered how difficult this particular aspect of being an Aspect had been for her, at first. Well, an accommodation would be achieved, in time. Time? Chronos!

They fixed themselves a meal from the available supplies and lay down for a rest. Then they worked out a regular schedule of operations-which Aspect would take what shift, which would be backup, and which would sleep. The body itself was indefatigable; it needed neither rest nor sleep, but the minds within it did.