The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Not that long,” I said. “It was only a century or so.”

  “No.” Falija’s eyes glowed in the light of the stove. “You mustn’t interrupt the story. The first time Gentherans decided to visit Earth thousands and thousands of years ago, they discovered your people living in caves and making crafty things with their hands and thinking crafty thoughts. Your people fought with each other quite a lot. The Gentherans are a curious people, very interested in other beings, and they thought your people were intriguing, so they took some of them to Fajnard, near where a lot of my people, the Gibbekot, live. They gave the humans a place with caves to live in, near good soil where they could plant crops. After that it seemed like no time at all, they were overcrowded and began to fight with one another.

  “So, the Gentherans decided to change the humans a little, not so much as would make them unhuman, but enough to make them less likely to overcrowd and fight. Sometimes a Gibbekot baby dies before the mother-mind leaves the mother’s head, and when that happens, our doctors can take the partial mind and give it to other creatures. So the Gentherans obtained an unfinished mother-mind from my people, one that had our language in it and some of our other talents, and the Gentherans cloned enough of these mother-minds to give them to all the humans.

  “In the humans, it had an unforeseen side effect. Some Gibbekot are almost telepathic, and the partial mind that they cloned for humans had that quality, and in the humans it was stronger! Suddenly, the humans understood one another better, they stopped lying and cheating and fighting each other, their lives became much more contented, and remarkably, they passed the mother-mind on to their children! They named themselves the vabil ghoss, which is to say those having insight, in my language. ‘Enlightened ones,’ I guess you’d say.

  “Both the Gibbekot and the vabil ghoss still share the highlands of Fajnard very happily. In time, they dropped the vabil part of their name and were known just as the Ghoss. Ghoss do some things better than we do, and we do some things better than they do, and Ghoss went with my people when colonies were established on Thairy and Chottem.”

  I frowned in concentration. “Your people must have liked us a good deal!”

  “The Gentherans had a special reason to be interested in humans. That’s why they’re so set on helping you. Gloriana, you know your cousin Trish? You’ve told me about her, and I’ve seen her because I was curious. She’s not quite complete, and I’ve even heard you, Grandma, feeling sorry for her.”

  “So?” said Gloriana.

  “In time long past, an armada of Gentheran ships was traveling near a variable star, and the radiation caused a mutation in all the unborn babies. They were born physically deformed and mentally limited. Their fingers never developed, they couldn’t stand erect or learn to speak, and because of that they couldn’t access their mother-minds and were forever trapped in babyhood. Even though they couldn’t mature into true Gentherans, they did mature sexually and were able to have children. Because they were mute and crippled, our people called them, ‘the afflicted.’ Our people grieved over them just as you do over Trish, Grandma.

  “When the Gentherans found your race, oh, many thousands of years ago, they had some of the afflicted ones with them. Your people were…silly about them. They just loved them. Your people, especially your children, were just delighted with these poor, handicapped Gentherans, and the poor, handicapped Gentherans liked them just as much.

  “As soon as this was known, Gentherans began bringing their handicapped ones to Earth. Your people adopted them. Some of them lived with you, some moved out into the wild, some even evolved into other types, but they were all…happy, as they could never have been among Gentherans…”

  Into the silence, I said, “She’s talking about cats, Gloriana.” I stared at Falija, trying to figure something out. “Falija, your people are the Gibbekot, right? Then who are the Gentherans?”

  “The spacefaring moiety of us,” she said. “Half of us are spacefarers, the other half are settlers, but we’re all one people.” She sighed. “The afflicted were no longer such a great sorrow to our people because they were happy. Everywhere there are humans, they’re still happy, and we owe their happiness to you.”

  “Anyone would have loved them!” cried Gloriana.

  Falija replied, “Not as you do. Gibbekot are not perfect. No creature is perfect. Gentherans expect their children to be like themselves, and they grieve when that is not so. Seeing the unfortunates still makes us uncomfortable. Ever since then, the Gentherans have felt a debt to humans, and they’ve kept in touch with Earthian people, even though they’re not happy about the way humans behave.

  “Up until meeting humans, our race believed that each intelligent race was either ethical or vile; either it had evolved a moral and ethical system or it hadn’t. The K’Famir and the Frossians are vile races. They take what they want, they kill when they feel like it, they’re amused by torture, and they never identify with their victims. Some humans are exactly like them.

  “The Gentherans and the Gibbekot have an ethical system, along with rules of morality. They try to be fair to all thinking beings as well as some or all living beings that don’t think. Some humans are exactly like them, too.

  “Before that time, we thought every species had one kind of mind or the other, but not both. Except for you humans. Human politicians brag about the good they’re pretending to do while they take bribes not to do it. Human commercial interests talked about helping people while they destroyed all the fish, trees, and clean water on Earth. The Gentherans know a lot of evil races and a lot of good races, but the human race is the only hypocritical race we’ve ever encountered.

  “The only race that espouses virtue and can’t practice it?” I murmured.

  “Exactly, and our people wanted to know why. When they investigated, they found there was a physiological difference. They learned that every ethical race has a racial memory, and every vile race has none. Ethical races are fully aware of their own history. We Gibbekot have millions of years of increasingly intelligent, purposeful being in our minds along with all the happenings and all the consequences of those happenings along the way.

  “But humans don’t have a racial memory, and neither do the K’Famir or the Frossians, or the Quaatar, or the…well, a good many others.”

  I was dumbfounded. “You can remember everything?”

  “Yes. We really can, though it’s not so much remembering as it is just knowing. You don’t have to remember which way is up or what green is, you just need to learn the word for it. Even though my people were very fond of the strange humans, they were upset that every generation of them made the same mistakes. Instead of knowing what war was by remembering their own children screaming as their entrails spilled out and their skins burned off, your people talk about patriotism and bravery. Which is more real to you? If it’s been twenty years since your last war, humans don’t recall the reality, so if some not very bright leader yells, ‘If you’re brave and patriotic, you must defend our cause,’ off you march.

  “Imagine that you remembered being the very first premammal, and remembered being various primates, and remembered being every kind of prehuman. My people thought humans needed that, in order to stop making the same mistakes over and over.”

  “Real do-gooders, the Gentherans,” I muttered. “We have written histories, after all!”

  “Oh, yes,” said Falija, twitching her ears. “The smarter ones of you can read about the past, and you can record what you see, and you have retained enough information between generations for science to develop, but few people pay attention to history. If some powerful person wants to do something history says is foolish, he just claims what is written isn’t true, or doesn’t apply to the present, and since most of you haven’t read it, you believe him. You have improved, that’s true. You finally learned that human sacrifice didn’t do any good. You finally learned that slavery was evil; that is, most of you did, for a while, but not all of you forever. Some
races would have tried selective breeding at some point, but you cared more about being unique than you did about being good. My people think you’ll go extinct soon if you don’t have a racial memory. I guess that makes us do-gooders.”

  I stared at her a long time. “Perhaps your people were thinking of giving us the kind of minds you have.”

  Falija said slowly, “It would be logical, wouldn’t it, but there’s nothing about that in my mind, and I can’t imagine how it would be done. Where would they get one? You don’t remember your first ancestors. You have no memory of ninety-nine percent of what makes you what you are! Instead you have comfy baby-stories you tell yourselves to explain why you’re not good people. What sin you committed or how you didn’t do what this god or that god told you. Instead of learning how not to be bad, you learn how to be forgiven and carried off to heaven. Most of you find it easier to believe the baby-stories than to learn from history and science, because it takes brains and hard study to understand history and science, but the stories are simple and comfy. People who want things easy and comfy resent people who study things. They teach their children the comfy stories and tell them not to worry about studying, just buy a ticket to go to heaven, and gradually, everyone becomes as ignorant as everyone else. It’s happened time after time on Earth.”

  From what I knew of Earth’s history, she was right. “Yes, Falija, I know how that works. And I have never until this moment been envious of cats.” I picked up my teacup, found it empty, and poured a bit more. “What else do you remember?”

  Falija nodded. “There’s another group, the Siblinghood…”

  I snorted. “Even I know about that! You remember Ella May, don’t you, Glory? Mayleen’s second eldest, Janine Ruth’s sister? She was accepted by the Siblinghood, and more power to her!”

  Falija went on, “The Siblinghood helped the royal family when Thongals attacked on Fanjard.”

  I said, “If I remember my studies, Fajnard was overrun by the Frossians.”

  “That was later. The royal family was attacked by Thongals twice. The first time was thirty-six or -seven years ago when they killed King Joziré the First. His wife fled into hiding with the crown prince, who was only a baby. The Siblinghood helped hide Prince Joziré, while he grew up and was educated.

  “Meantime, the Frossians stayed in the lowlands of Fajnard while the Gibbekot and most of the Ghoss fortified the highlands. A few of the Ghoss always pretend to be slaves on the lowlands in order to keep an eye on the Frossians. Peace was maintained, and after a number of years, the Gibbekot and Ghoss thought it would be safe for Prince Joziré to return to Fajnard.

  “He was about twenty then. He married his childhood companion, and they were crowned as King Joziré the Just and Queen Wilvia the Wise…”

  “Wilvia?” I faltered. “Queen Wilvia?”

  “Why?” asked Glory. “Is there something wrong with that name?”

  I shook my head. “No, child, it’s just a case of imagination meeting reality head-on. I used to play dress-up as a child. Most children do, I suppose. I often played I was a queen, and that was her name, Queen Wilvia. I can’t believe it.”

  “The young queen became pregnant,” Falija said. “And then, suddenly, with almost no warning, a group of dissident Thongals invaded the highlands, and again tried to capture the king and queen. Well, the queen was taken into hiding at the first sign of trouble, and the king was smuggled off Fajnard in another direction.”

  “Does this have something to do with the great task your parents said you were to perform?” asked Glory.

  “I believe so,” said Falija, ears forward and eyes slitted. “I have a story in my head, about the man who talked to the fish. I remember a saying. ‘Who knows? The Keeper knows. Well then, ask the Keeper. Where do I find it? All alone, walk seven roads at once to find the Keeper.’ If my mother memorized all that and put it in my mother-mind, it had to be important, didn’t it? And all that about young King Joziré and Queen Wilvia. The threat against them hasn’t stopped! Some race or group is trying to kill them!”

  I asked, “Do you have any other languages in your head?”

  “P’shagluk khoseghu bahgh,” said Falija. “Ephais durronola.”

  I gasped. “Quaatariis. Pr’thas!”

  “What?” cried Gloriana.

  “She speaks Quaatar,” I cried. “And Pthas! Oh my blessed soul. We only studied Quaatar because it was a precursor to an obscure Mercan tongue. It’s a foul language, full of nasty words, and only the Quaatar could consider it holy. As for Pthas, well, they were the ancient and revered ones, the only people, it is said, who knew the name of the Great Experimenter…don’t ask. That’s just what was said. We have much of their language preserved, but of course it’s not spoken anymore. Oh, I wish I’d known about this earlier.”

  Glory’s face went red, all the way back to her ears. “If I’d told you, you’d have accused me of making it up!”

  I stared at my shoes, ashamed. “You’re right. I would have. I humbly beg your pardon. You’ll have to forgive me without holding a grudge, Gloriana, because you and I must share this secret cooperatively, to keep Falija safe.”

  I Am M’urgi/on B’yurngrad

  I entered the oasthouse through the summer door, which would have been enough to make those inside dislike me even had I not brought sleet gusting in to make a brief fog above the hearthstones. Their thoughts were on their faces: icetime was hard enough on the men, offering few and seldom comforts, without having them sullied by some fool southlander woman who couldn’t tell a summer door from an icelock.

  High-booted and wrapped in heavy furs, burdened with a high basket securely strapped to my shoulder, I stood for a moment in seeming ignorance of their hostility, though the lack of any greeting confirmed I had set myself wrong with them. B’Oag, the oastkeeper, made the matter clear, snarling, “Dja ne’er see an icelock where’er in devil’s keep yah come from?”

  The chill voice that came from behind my thick scarf was well practiced to have all the power it needed. “The summer door was nearest, Oastkeeper, and I have come too far to consider niceties.” I unwound the scarf from my mouth, then from my neck and shoulders, and finally from around my head to display the golden diadem banding my forehead. At once the oasthall was murmurous with contrived conversation, all the men staring intently into one another’s faces, talking of the season, the temperature, the monotony of the winter diet, anything except me. Even B’Oag’s eyes darted toward his other guests, as though to anchor his intention elsewhere, before reminding himself that he was, after all, on home ground, his name on the oasthouse sign, and not, therefore, required to give way.

  “I’ll be needing a room,” I said. “Supper, also. Wine if you have it, or cider, or tea, if that’s all there is.”

  The oastkeeper’s eyes roved quickly over the company in the room. That meant his rooms were all filled. I saw his assistant, perhaps his son (they resembled one another), nod covertly from his chair in the corner, indicating he would take care of it, and B’Oag nodded shortly in return. “M’boy Ojlin’ll have a room made up, mistress.”

  “Envoy, Oastkeeper. My title is envoy. One who wears the circlet has that name and no other outside the Siblinghood. I am come for a reason you already know. Let us not fence with one another. The night is too long and cold for that.”

  He flushed and fumbled while I regarded him with level, amber eyes. He, like many others, was fascinated by my eyes. He considered them catlike. These people told stories of us. They said it was something we ate off there in the badlands that made our eyes glow. Or if not something we ate, some dreadful thing we did. They were only lenses of a particular kind, which anyone should have been able to figure out. Human worlds are always awash in superstition, only a stubborn elite proof against it.

  “I’ll also need a lockroom,” I murmured, easing the straps over my shoulders and putting an end to his speculation.

  At this he paled, his nostrils pinched shut, as though to shu
t the very smell of me out. “Ask Ogric there.” He nodded toward a dwarfish man near the stair. “Ogric keeps the key. I’ll be putting your supper on the table by the copper.”

  Ogric did indeed have the key, though we had to go out into the storm to use it, for the lockroom opened onto the oasthouse courtyard. Still, it was in a sheltered corner, so I did not bother rewrapping myself before opening the door and peering into the closetlike space, floored and walled with square stones, a handspan to a side. “Is it sound?” I asked, holding out my lantern to survey it.

  “D’rocks tall as me, everone in wall, everone in floor. Top slab, d’tooken ten umoxes lif ’ it.”

  I nodded, half smiling to myself as I calculated mentally: each rock a handspan square, each one a man’s height long, laid so that the walls were a man’s height thick, the interior space two man’s heights high, one wide, one long, the slab on top a veritable mountain. It had taken only fear to move these northerners to this prodigious labor and only stupidity to go to all that trouble, then put a wooden door on the place.

  “Ah,” I murmured. “So it’s tight, is it?”

  “Aye…ma’am, dad’is. Comes ere ragin’ crazies mid ice, we drow’m in dere. Dey stay. Dairn’d nodin geddin ou’vit.”

  “I’ll take the key,” which I did, from a hand that trembled slightly before Ogric turned and fled back to warmth, leaving me alone in the dim light of the lantern. I stepped inside with my basket, shutting the door behind me. A short time later I stepped out without the basket, shut the door firmly, and locked it behind me, then put my ear to the heavy, ironbound planks to listen for what sound might come from within. Hearing none, I took a deep breath, and another, pushing all the stench of it from my lungs, gasping as I replaced foul air with clean. Finally, I picked up the lantern and made my way back to the oasthall, now bereft of the greater number of its former occupants.

  “Ruinous on business, envoys,” B’Oag was saying to his son when I entered. He looked up and flushed. “Meaning no disrespect, ma’…that is, Envoy.”