The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “They asked for people who knew Mercan languages,” said M’urgi. “I paid no attention to it.”

  “I paid attention,” said Mar-agern. “I offered my talents, for what they were worth. I ended up a bondslave on Fajnard.”

  “Ah,” breathed M’urgi, turning to Margaret. “And you?”

  “I said yes to Bryan,” she said flatly.

  After a moment of wide-eyed silence, M’urgi asked, “Where was it he was going? Tercis, wasn’t it?”

  “Tercis,” Margaret agreed. “A Walled-Off called Rueful. I’ve been there ever since.”

  M’urgi shifted her weight. “How about him, back there? He looks like…”

  “Naumi’s one of us,” said Mar-agern. “He got split off when Ongamar did. He had his sex changed somewhere along the line. He grew up on Thairy. We thought he should wait while we introduced ourselves since he’s a little less believable and has gaps in his memory.”

  “So there’s five of us?”

  Margaret took a deep breath. “Actually, there have to be two more, seven altogether.”

  “Seven. How interesting. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of that number. Those dreams reminded me of one I had years ago of meeting myself here, at this place.” She paused, swallowed deeply, managing a casual tone. “I see Ferni’s with you.”

  “He came to Thairy to get help finding you.”

  M’urgi glanced at the packs the others carried. “What’ve you brought?”

  Mar-agern replied. “Stuff to kill ghyrm. As many knives as we can carry. We have a prototype ghyrm eradicator, and there are bigger ones coming that they can’t fit through the way-gate. The Siblinghood should be bringing them by ship.”

  “I hope it’s enough,” said M’urgi, with a grim smile. “This morning, a friend of yours arrived to tell us the enemy has declared war.”

  “Friend?”

  “An old guy, Weathereye. He brought a member of the Siblinghood with him, Sister Ella May. She knows Margaret, and he knows Naumi, or so they say. Let’s go sit down in my tent and find out where we are.”

  M’urgi sent two young men running to pick up the packs Margaret and Mar-agern had carried as the others came forward, Falija lying across Bamber’s shoulder.

  There was a stir among the tribesmen.

  “What is that animal?” M’urgi muttered.

  “Not an animal. Gibbekot,” said Margaret.

  Mar-agern said, “Tell them it’s…it brings good luck.”

  M’urgi turned and spoke to the tribesmen. Margaret and Mar-agern identified the speech as an intelligible dialect of Earthian with certain consonants blurred or missing: final l’s that sounded like w’s. R’s that disappeared.

  “Gibb ah cot,” she said. “Come to hep us kill ghyrm.”

  I saw Mr. Weathereye standing to one side, a woman beside him. I went to meet him. “Mr. Weathereye. And you must be Ella May. You got here ahead of us.”

  “Ah, well, my boy. Difficult times almost always produce unexpected encounters.”

  “Turns out there’s more to me than meets your eye, Mr. Weathereye. Or less, perhaps. Did you know I wasn’t meant to be a man at all?”

  “You sound angry about that.”

  I hesitated. I was angry about that. Anger was sometimes useful, but might not be at the moment. “Yes,” I admitted. “Why?”

  “Camouflage,” said Mr. Weathereye. “If the human race is to survive, we needed seven of you with a broad variety of experiences. Some were enslaved, some were sovereign, some labored, some thought, some were hidden, some were put in unexpected places, some were left out in plain sight to see if anyone showed undue interest. You were camouflaged.”

  “If the human race is to survive,” I said. “All that, dependent on making a man of me?”

  “A man of you; a shaman of M’urgi; a spy of Ongamar. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it was worth it.” Weathereye sighed. “Since we and the Gentherans have another agenda for humanity, we think it was worth it, yes. We’re opposed to your being wiped out. We hope to restore humanity to itself.”

  “And how we are to do that?”

  “You know how, Naumi. The Siblinghood told you how.”

  “By finding someone who knows everything. Perhaps by walking seven roads that are one road, all at the same time.”

  “Exactly. And by doing so, regain something humanity lost a long time ago. Something the Gentherans say you once had that was stolen from you.”

  “By whom?”

  “The Gentherans believe it was done by the Quaatar, but they admit they’re extrapolating.”

  Over Mr. Weathereye’s shoulder, I saw my companions entering one of the tents. I said, “Later,” in a significant tone, and went to the tent where people were seating themselves around the barely smoldering fire with M’urgi. Our small group was surrounded and outnumbered by a silent circle of squatting tribesmen, obviously alert to every word that was being said. Mr. Weathereye and Ella May came to stand inside the tent flap.

  M’urgi dipped her hand into an open jar, threw a handful of something onto the fire, and said through the resultant fragrant smoke, “Mr. Weathereye spoke to us before you came. He says that K’Famir, Frossian, and Quaatar ships are about to attempt eradication of the human race, starting here on B’yurngrad. He says it is not a reasonable enmity but merely an old grudge the Quaatar have against humans, one so old they’ve forgotten the reason for it.”

  “What are they going to do?” asked Margaret.

  “They’re going to drop ghyrm all over the planet.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “They must not be allowed to do that. A few days from now, it might not matter, but right now, it’s absolutely necessary that they drop the whole load, whatever that amounts to, on top of us, right here!”

  “Why?” cried M’urgi, eyes wide with shock.

  Ferni answered. “We brought a prototype machine with us, M’urgi: first one out of the factory. They’re sending larger ones, but right now, this is all we’ve got. According to Flek—the armaments person—this one will cover about thirty square jorub, not much compared to the surface of a planet.”

  “No, but it’s still a considerable area,” said M’urgi. “Enormously larger than our encampment. You want them to drop the whole load here because we can destroy the whole load if they do?”

  “Exactly!”

  “How do you propose to get them to do that?”

  Stubbornly, I repeated myself. “I don’t know how, but somehow it has to happen. We’re hoping they bring along many high-ranking members of their societies to watch us being slaughtered. We have to figure out how to make them do that.”

  Silence. Furtive looks, one to another.

  “You mentioned the Quaatar?” Mar-agern murmured, staring at Margaret. “What was it we learned about the Quaatar, Margaret?”

  Margaret rubbed her forehead, thinking. “They believe themselves and their language to be sacred. They consider it blasphemy for any non-Quaatar to speak their language. Also, all other races are considered to be food sources.”

  M’urgi asked, “Who would be doing the actually ghyrm-dropping? Themselves, or would they hire someone?”

  Mr. Weathereye said, “There’s no way of knowing who they plan to do the actual task of pushing the things out of the ships, but my guess is that most high-ranking Quaatar, Frossians, and K’Famir will want to see it.”

  “Yes, my friends and I thought that likely,” I said. “Torturers like to watch; it’s no fun if they can’t see and hear what’s happening.”

  “We know where they make the ghyrm,” said Ella May. “On Cantardene. Should we ask the armorers to get one of the big machines onto Cantardene? And on Earth, just in case? And on every colony planet?”

  “The big machines are later,” I said. “I’m talking about now. Within the next few days, right, Weathereye?”

  “They have to go to Cantardene, load, and return here. Within the next three or four days, yes.”

  A si
lence fell, broken by Falija, who yawned widely, licked her fangs, and said, “If the trick is to get all the high-ups on board, you’ll need to insult them.”

  The tribesmen started, stared at Falija, then shouted, some of them half standing.

  “Sit down,” barked M’urgi. “Ah say dis is good luck. You heah? Dis is voice of good luck. You heah me!”

  “What do you mean, insult them?” asked Margaret, when the tribesmen had subsided into sulky, shoulder-humped silence.

  “Say something nasty to them in their own language,” said Falija. “Margaret is right. It’s blasphemy for another race to use the sacred Quaatar language; the K’Famir have a ritual language as well; and Mar-agern says she suffered the penalty for speaking Frossian to a Frossian. Insult them in their own languages. It will make them very, very angry.”

  “She’s right,” cried Mar-agern. “Remember, Margaret, we studied Quaatar! I—we were almost the only ones who did, but we learned to read it and speak it!”

  “I remember,” said M’urgi. “Though it seems another life ago. What do we say to them, and how? Does anyone even know where they may be found?”

  “On their home planets,” offered Ella May.

  “Too far, tactically impossible,” I said.

  No one said anything. I ground my teeth and told myself to be patient. “Think about it. We’ll come back to it very soon.”

  Mar-agern turned to M’urgi. “There’s a real mob outside.”

  M’urgi nodded, tiredly. “One tribe came, two others followed, four followed them. It turned into a horde. They’re still arriving. Every group has one or two ghyrm-eaten ones. I’ve been killing ghyrm for days, but I had only one knife…”

  “Open the packs,” Ferni said. “There are a hundred knives. Give the knives to whoever can best use them.”

  “Everyone’s getting off the subject,” Margaret complained loudly. “What blasphemous message could we impart? Falija? Weathereye?”

  Mr. Weathereye pursed his lips. “It doesn’t need to be subtle. Something along the lines of ‘The holy Quaatar people are a crock of shit’ would probably do.”

  Margaret made a face. “I don’t remember learning a word for excrement…”

  Falija said, “Umfa!, with a click at the end. That’s the Quaatar word for shit. It was in my mother-mind. Gentherans use it all the time, whenever they’re talking about the Quaatar.”

  “While you’re deciding that, I’ll distribute those knives,” said M’urgi, rising and leaving the tent. The tribesmen followed her, and Ferni followed them. I watched through the tent opening as the sheathed knives were distributed, carefully, with many warnings.

  Ella May came over to me, saying, “It’s possible the Quaatar have some kind of sensors planted here. If not them, then one of the others in the cabal. They’ve been looking for Margarets. They might have some kind of spy eye around nearby, something they would pick up an insult through…”

  I turned, alerted by this new possibility. “There’s detection gear in the red pack. Use it if you like.”

  “We two can work on the message,” said Mar-agern to Margaret.

  “Short, simple, and insulting,” said Falija.

  “I don’t know any way to be useful,” Gloriana whispered to Bamber Joy. “Do you?”

  “Sure,” he grinned. “Keep out of the way, don’t whine, and be available if anyone needs a hand. I think we might also eat something, because breakfast was skimpy this morning, and we’re growing…people.”

  Gloriana retrieved her pack from outside, and retreated with Falija and Bamber John to a back corner of the tent, where they made themselves comfortable on folded blankets while eating food they’d brought from Thairy. Nearby, Margaret and Mar-agern scribbled and crossed out and once, surprisingly, giggled.

  “The blankets smell like hay,” Gloriana said half sleepily. “Like the Howkel kitchen. It would be really nice to be finished with this and not have to worry if there’s anything you didn’t do or haven’t done right.”

  “I think we’re all going to be finished very soon,” Bamber Joy said. “It feels like everything is coming to a close. It’s a kind of sad, autumny feel, like when the last leaves come down, and you know that’s it. No more life until spring.”

  Gloriana started to say something, then caught herself. I knew she had been wondering if spring would come, this time, even though all three of them sounded quite relaxed and sleepy about the whole thing. They were young. They hadn’t had that many hard times, but I wasn’t at all sure we were ready for the storm that was coming. There were too many ifs: if the machine worked; if the Quaatar people got angry enough; if they dropped the ghyrm only here instead of all over the planet; if the Siblinghood really got the big machines to them in time…

  Margaret came over and sat down beside me. “Naumi,” she said. “I want to thank you.”

  “For what?” I sat up, astonished.

  She frowned, shook her head. “Confession, Naumi. I once let someone do something for me that was against his own best interest. I’ve spent my life since trying to atone for that. I’ve been ashamed. Rueful. All my life.” She looked up, shook her head. “There’ve been joyful moments, sure, but in the main, rueful says it.

  “And then I met Mar-agern. She’s me. She’s lived a totally different life, but she’s me. And M’urgi, and Ongamar, and you. They’re your lives, but they’re mine, too. I…isn’t it weird we all think of as ourselves as me…Well, Margaret’s identity has not been as unworthy as I always rued it being. And I have you and the others to thank for it.”

  I took her hand. It was my hand. I knew that hand.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  I Am Gretamara/on Tercis

  On Tercis, the Gardener preceded Wilvia and me, Gretamara, out of the way-gate and onto a sloping forest floor. Gardener led us slowly downward, stopping momentarily to say, “The outgoing sister to the gate we just used is up there, between those two rocks.” She pointed to her left toward another group of stones. “It goes to Fajnard.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Wilvia.

  “Down the hill to the home of Margaret Mackey.”

  The way was not long. We arrived before a small house, set among the trees, the far side of it looking out across a rocky shelf into great distances of valley and hills. The door of the house was broken.

  “Beasts,” snarled the Gardener. “Let’s see what damage they have done!”

  I thought it looked even worse than the great house in Bray had looked. Inside, belongings were strewn about, cupboards were open, doors half off their hinges, the bed ripped apart. “What were they looking for?”

  “Nothing. They didn’t find the woman they were looking for, or the Gibbekot they thought would lead them to her. They destroyed out of the spite that was built into them by their designers. It is an old viciousness not unknown to humans: ‘If you can’t prevail, destroy.’”

  “We can set it in order,” I said firmly. “Will we be staying here?”

  “Only briefly,” said the Gardener, looking through the stores in the tiny kitchen. “There is food here enough for several days. Show no light at night. Margaret’s daughter lives just down the hill, but the house is empty now, for the families who lived on outlying farms are staying in Crossroads to be safer. The hunters went through the valley like a scythe, and they badly frightened the people here.”

  Wilvia asked, “Margaret’s family? Do they know she is gone?”

  “They know she and two children went off into the woods before the happening. They are concerned, but not terribly worried. Perhaps Margaret will be back before they have time to be anxious.”

  “And we?” I asked.

  “For the moment, you stay here. Wilvia, if anyone comes near, take off your diadem. If anyone approaches, say you are Margaret’s cousin. You arrived after the damage was done, and you have your daughter staying with you to help. Meantime, I must make sure that several other people arrive here very shortly. The Genth
erans expect it of me, and of themselves.”

  I went outside with her and stood on the rocky shelf that overlooked the valley. Only peace. Far down the road, a buggy. Someone going home to a farm to feed the animals and to be sure they had water. There was no sign that the hunters were still here.

  The Gardener read my thoughts. “Likely they are assembling near B’yurngrad, where all the other Margarets are together, making an easy target. Farewell, but only briefly, Gretamara.” She walked into the woods, dissolving herself onto a shining road that led to B’yurngrad.

  I Am Naumi/on B’yurngrad

  After I, Naumi, had done everything possible to help anyone needing help, I lay down in M’urgi’s tent and closed my eyes. The world seemed to be spinning, and I could not convince myself it wasn’t, or that time wouldn’t stop, or that we all wouldn’t die…

  Falija, who had been lying between Bamber Joy and Gloriana, suddenly sat up and made a loud, spitting noise of annoyance.

  “What?” demanded Gloriana loudly.

  I opened my eyes and listened.

  “We don’t need to insult the Quaatar directly,” said Falija. “We just need to let the Quaatar think they’ve been insulted.”

  Bamber Joy yawned. “Is it any easier to do that than to actually insult them?”

  “Of course,” said Falija. “All anyone has to do is go somewhere frequented by K’Famir or Frossians—or Quaatar, though that’s harder, because they don’t usually associate with other races—and tell someone, loudly, that he or she was recently on B’yurngrad and there was a great meeting of Earthians and Gentherans who were insulting the Quaatar in Quaatarian. We can throw in the Frossians and the K’Famir at the same time. We need someone who isn’t either Earthian or Quaatarian to do it, of course…”

  “I’ll go get Grandma,” said Gloriana.

  I sat up, still tired, but interested. Margaret returned with Gloriana and Mr. Weathereye. One might have known!

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “We need only let them overhear someone saying that Gentherans and Earthians on B’yurngrad are assembled in one place insulting the Quaatar.”