The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  So the fish told him to go down a certain forest road, and up a certain steep hill, and through a long thicket, and out onto a precipice where a little temple stood all by itself, and inside the temple was an altar, and on the altar was an image. “That little image has all the information in the universe,” it said. “There’s nothing it doesn’t know.”

  So the man of Dabberding set off down the forest road. As he went, he thought about his encounter with the fish, and as he thought about that it gradually came to him that the little temple the fish spoke of might possibly belong to King Frum the Furious, and a bad-tempered, ill-natured king he was, too.

  Still, the fish hadn’t said anything about it, so the man from Dabberding went on until he came to the steep hill, which he climbed, and into the thicket, which he fought his way through, then out onto the precipice where the temple stood. Sure enough, inside was an altar stone, and on the stone was an image, a statue of a little old man with a long beard and a wrinkled face and squinched-up eyes, sitting cross-legged and peering at a golden book in his lap, a book with writing that flowed across the page like water.

  Well, the man from Dabberding didn’t even pause for thought. He took the image, wrapped it in his jacket, and went across the temple to look over the cliff edge to see where he was in relation to the river and the places he knew. He had just located the river when he heard loud voices coming from below. He looked around, and there was a path coming up the cliff from one side with men on it, and there was another path leading along the cliff with more men on it, both headed in his direction. He couldn’t get back to the thicket without being seen. He couldn’t even get into the temple without being seen. If they found him with the little image in his shirt, they would kill him for sure.

  So the man sobbed silently, threw the image far out into the air, watched it fall partway, then he sat down on the precipice and waited.

  The men arrived, among them King Frum the Furious, and they found the image missing at once. They surrounded the man of Dabberding and asked him where the little man with the golden book was. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully, for he hadn’t seen it land. “Who was it an image of?” he asked, because he didn’t know that either.

  They knocked him down and searched him, but he had no statue. They searched the edges of the thicket, but there was no statue. And all the while the king lamented and lamented that his luck was gone, the pride of his lineage was gone, the image of the keeper was gone.

  “Keeper?” asked the man from Dabberding. “What’s a keeper?”

  “It’s a thing that knew all the king’s secrets,” whispered one of the men-at-arms. “That little statue knows everything that has ever happened in the whole world.”

  “In the whole universe,” whispered another man-at-arms. “Where could it have gone?”

  “An eagle, perhaps,” said the man from Dabberding. “Or a large raven. Ravens like sparkly things.”

  “That’s true,” said the first man-at-arms, and he went to tell the king, who was still lamenting. After a time, the man-at-arms came back and told the man from Dabberding to get himself gone before the king remembered he was there, which the man did very quickly, fading himself into the thicket like a rabbit into a burrow.

  The man got himself through the thicket, down the hill, back down the road, and again to the riverbank where he’d met the fish. “Fish, fish,” he called. “I’m very angry. I barely escaped with my skin.”

  The fish came up to the bank, and when the man told him what had happened, the fish asked, “Is there anything making you angry that can’t be solved with the right information?”

  “Probably not,” said the man.

  “Well then, go get the information,” said the fish. “It must be lying along one of the seven roads that lead to the bottom of the cliff.”

  “Seven roads,” cried the man. “It’s already getting along toward evening.”

  “Then you’d better hurry,” said the fish.

  Since the man had seen the riverbank from the top of the hill, he figured the roads must come from the river, so he walked along the bank in the proper direction until he came to a road that turned toward the cliff he could see through the trees. He ran very quickly along that road, stopping only once when the sun caught something shining in the undergrowth that turned out to be one of the legs of the image he had tossed from the top of the cliff. Well, one leg was one leg, but a leg wouldn’t help him, so the man went on down the road until it came right to the foot of the cliff and turned back toward the river at an angle.

  So he ran and ran along this road, stopping only once when he saw something lying on the path, which turned out to be the other leg of the image he had thrown from the cliff top. Well, two legs was two legs, but the whole statue was better, so he went on running toward the river, where the road suddenly turned back toward the cliff again. On that road he found an arm, and on the next turn, another arm. And on the next turn, which was number five, he found the body, and on the next turn toward the river again, he found the head, which was all very well, but the book with the letters running across it was still missing.

  It was almost dark when the man started on the seventh road, going toward the cliffs for the fourth time, and he was actually at the cliffs when he saw it, shining at him in the last of the sunlight. So he sat down and put the statue together, and when he put the book into his lap, he saw words there.

  “How to cure your wife’s illness,” he read. And this was followed by a recipe for a medicine made out of very common plants that the man found on his way home.

  That night, after he had given his wife the medicine, he looked at the book again. This time it said, “How to cure lameness in a donkey,” followed by a recipe for a poultice made out of very common things he happened to have around the house. And when he had done that, he looked at the book again, and saw the words “How to make ruined shoes like new again,” followed by a simple procedure the man was able to manage before he went to bed.

  In the morning, the book told him of a widow living just down the road who had a pup she was giving away and who also had a bull she would let him use in return for the resultant calf. Then the book told him where he could find some discarded fence to mend his chicken coop. And last of all, the book told him what to do in order to be rid of his neighbor, a few very simple words having to do with misdeeds discovered and forces of law on the way, whispered in the neighbor’s ear.

  The neighbor packed his cart and moved out before lunchtime. The man from Dabberding watched the cart go off down the road, the useless bull hitched to the back. Then the man from Dabberding remembered what the man-at-arms had said about the Keeper knowing everything in the whole world, so he knelt before the image and said,

  “Keeper, you have been very kind to me, and I’m not angry anymore, and I want to do for you whatever you most desire. Please tell me what that is.”

  Then he looked at the book, and the words ran across it, saying, “Roads out, roads back, seven roads was one road. Cow, donkey, dog, wife, shoes, fox, neighbor, seven cures was one cure. Two arms, two legs, body, head, book, seven parts was one Keeper. Let one person walk seven roads at once, go where they meet and find me there.” And with that, the Keeper vanished, leaving only the story behind.

  “That’s the story,” I concluded.

  “Sorry, Naumi, but it doesn’t tell me much.”

  “It didn’t me, either,” I replied.

  “When did you say the others are getting to Thairy?” he asked after a few moments.

  “They’ll ostensibly come for the class reunion, but they’ll arrive several days early.”

  “Well then.” Ferni dried his legs, saying thoughtfully, “I wish M’urgi were here. She had a very good head on her shoulders.”

  I frowned, for the name teased at me. “M’urgi. Interesting name. Why don’t you go find her, Ferni?” I took a deep breath, managing a casual tone. “We have quite a bit of time before the reunion. Bring her along.”
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  Fernwold, wrapped in the towel, sat down on the stone bench beside the pool and fixed me with his “This is important” stare. “I was going to locate her anyhow, because of this other thing I wanted to tell you about. It happened a day or two ago. I was sitting in a tranship-tavern waiting for departure time, the way one does, not thinking about anything much, when I overheard someone saying, ‘The word came down all the way from the top.’ Someone else replied, ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ The first voice said, ‘Sometimes it doesn’t make sense, but the orders are, she’s got to be killed, and it has to be done soon.’

  “That got my full attention. The second voice said, ‘Why her? Why some smoke-flavored old shaman’s hag from the steppes of B’yurngrad.’ The first one said, ‘No hag, she’s young yet.’”

  I frowned at him. “So, you put shaman, smoke-flavored, B’yurngrad, and suchlike together, assuming they meant your friend?”

  “Exactly. I casually looked at the people around me. A dozen races at least, most of them speaking interlingua…”

  “Any accent?”

  “No lisping, so not K’Famir. They didn’t curse one another, so probably not Frossian. There was no discernible stink, probably not Hrass.” He paused. “There were a few elder races there, too, very strange old ones, the kind that make you go elsewhere when you see them coming, you know…”

  “Quaatar? Baswoidin?”

  “Quaatar? Yes, now you mention it. There were a couple of them.”

  He sighed. “You’re at least taking me seriously.”

  “It could be serious. Why, precisely, do you believe so?”

  “Some time ago, the word filtered down through the Siblinghood that the leaders wanted to be informed if any of us caught wind of ‘Top-down threats to specific and seemingly harmless humans…’”

  “If you’ve quoted the conversation correctly, the threat was definitely top down. It may be be smart to check on her, my friend.”

  “She probably won’t even remember me.”

  Oh, she’d remember him! “Come now. Unforgettable Ferni?”

  My friend laughed ruefully. “Meantime, I’ll keep your puzzle in mind. Will the others be with you for a while?” As he dressed himself, he seemed to forget whatever the strangeness had been. He looked more like himself.

  I said, “All during reunion. I’ll be there for even longer, because I’ve agreed to teach a course at Point Zibit.”

  “Professor Noomi,” drawled Ferni. “Why, I knew him when he was only a worm.”

  I Am Mar-agern/on Fajnard

  As the end of my years of bondage approached, the enmity of the Frossian overseer increased, and its verbal hostility toward me became more frequent. It had not forgotten I could speak and understand Frossian, so I knew these open threats were part of its general plan of harassment.

  “We agree,” said Deen-agern, the Ghoss, when I mentioned it to him. “Frossians do not forget much. They are completely ignorant of enormous areas of knowledge, but they don’t forget things that happen to them. It’s time we got you out of here, Mar-Mar.”

  “I have less than a year of bondage left!”

  The Ghoss raised a nostril. “You have only as long as they want you to have. Fifteen years is enough for most slaves: the bones are weakened, the back is bent, the strength is exhausted, and the Frossians are willing to let them go. Only draining the last of a slave’s strength at the end of its bondage proves they have gained their money’s worth: a full fifteen years of labor, with the least possible strength left over to go elsewhere, often just enough for the ex-slave to totter across the landing field to the colony ship. This is so well known that we counsel bondspeople to pretend greater and greater weakness during their last several years.”

  “You’ve never told me that!”

  “We had no reason to, even though you’ve stayed strong, and the Frossians have felt they weren’t getting full value for their money. Now, however, something new has happened. We’ve heard the Frossians talking. Some very important breeding male has communicated with the planetary leader here on Fajnard. It, in turn, has informed the least overlord that a bondswoman who speaks Frossian is to be killed, quickly and without delay. The least overlord has told the overseer, the one who keeps threatening you.”

  “Why?” I cried. “The only Frossians I’ve ever seen are here, here on Fajnard. Why would some overlord care about me?”

  “You don’t know; we don’t know. Certainly the least overlord doesn’t know or care, and the overseer doesn’t care because it was going to kill you anyhow. You’d be dead by now except for the umoxen. We know they warm you in winter, protect you at all times. They prevent the Frossians from stealing your clothes and food and from fouling your water. Is this not so?”

  “You know it is.”

  “Well, depend upon it, the overseer also knows it’s so. Very soon now, some Frossian or other will separate you from the umoxen, take you elsewhere, and you will not return.”

  “The overseer hasn’t said this.”

  “Of course not. The overseer knows you understand what it says. It says only what it means you to hear. To make you look in the wrong direction.”

  I frowned, saying hesitantly, “Where am I to go? This is the only place on Fajnard that I know.”

  “There’s a better place, and we’ll take you there. It’s the place we Ghoss go, when we are weary of serving the creatures.”

  “Why you serve them at all is more than I can understand!”

  “True. It is more than you can understand, at least for now. After a time in the hills, you may understand it.”

  The next evening, when a plether of umoxen were pastured in the fields with only me to watch them, several of the huge creatures wandered over and began to hum at me. “Mar-Mar, time to go away.”

  “You’ve been talking to the Ghoss,” I said.

  “Ghoss been talking to us,” they remarked. “Time. You stay until tomorrow, something bad will happen, so, we go tonight. Get on up.” It knelt on its front legs, giving me a foreleg to step up on.

  It was the first time one of them had offered to carry me, but I did not hesitate. The small group of them started for the fence between the pasture and the river bottom, all the rest of the plether following along. At the fence they simply leaned against the posts until they broke off, then amused themselves by trampling vast lengths of fence into the ground and crossing them with trodden umox-paths, back and forth, humming as they went, finally splitting in a dozen different ways, one of which led through the riparian woods and into the wide but shallow stream of late summer. Here the umox knelt again as I splashed into the water. I saw the umoxen distributing themselves widely among the stream-side woods. The umox I had ridden touched my cheek with its tongue and went to join them.

  “Mar,” said a familiar voice. “Over here.”

  Rei was standing in the stream, a pack on his back.

  I went to join him. “I didn’t bring anything with me.”

  “You didn’t have anything you’ll need,” he said. “Come, we go upstream. Stay in the water.”

  The water was cool but not icy, coming only to our ankles. I put my head down and waded, occasionally turning aside from a large stone or dead tree that had been washed down during flood. The journey was hypnotic, the water gurgling around my feet, the plethers humming in the pastures we passed, the small creatures cheeping and chirping in scattered reed beds. I lost track of time and did not think of it again until I looked up through the branches of a shutter-leaf tree to see the sky growing light. The branches creaked, the leaves turned to face the sun, an eye at the end of a branch winked at me.

  We had entered a low-walled canyon. Rei said, “Far enough! We will sleep through the daylight.”

  “Where?” I asked wearily.

  “My customary wayhalt. Up there.” He turned between two massive tree boles onto an almost invisible trail that led up the canyon wall to a small cave, well hidden behind a protruding outcropping of stone. We sat
, Rei took food from his pack and handed it to me. We ate without speaking, and I fell into sleep the moment I lay down.

  Rei’s hand over my mouth wakened me. “Shhh,” he whispered. “We have searchers down in the stream.”

  Together we crawled to the mouth of the cave and peeked around the outcropping that hid the entrance from below. I saw torches and smelled their smoke. I heard the angry jabber of irritated Frossians.

  “There’s no trail.”

  “If there was a trail, we couldn’t see it in torchlight.”

  “Better go back, get some provisions, come back and try again in the light.”

  “The least overlord will kill us!”

  The voices continued their jabber, becoming softer as they retreated, back the way we had come. Rei stood at the opening of the cave, reading the air as the Ghoss often did, for it was full of messages from their kinfolk, who might be anywhere on the planet at all.

  “Deen says the Frossians are angry,” he reported, with an air of satisfaction. “They had a great deal of trouble rounding up the umoxen. Some of them think you were probably killed in the stampede. The least overlord, however, insists that they find your body. He has to tell his overlord that he has seen you dead with his own eyes. Your enemy, the herd overseer, thinks you have slipped away in the confusion. He has sworn to hunt you down. We must hurry to reach the falunassa.”