The Gate that Locks the Tree

by Sharon Lee

  "Quiet," the girl whispered, and her head moved... ah, looking for the driver-info on the dashboard....

  "Oh, no, – Miss Vertu – not you, you’re watching good already. And Yulie sees a lot more than anyone knows, 'cept maybe Mary. But we should all pay attention, in weather like this."

  "Anna?"

  That was Mary, and clearly the question had levels within levels.

  Anna glanced over her shoulder, shrugged, made a quick hand-motion, said a word that slid past Vertu's ears, and continued.

  "Probably nothing for us. For us we have Miss Vertu, who is a very good driver. But this snow, it – the situation is unsettled."

  The girl had the right of it; the situation was unsettled. Vertu got them to the outskirts at Port Edge and then into the jumble of traffic at Grady’s Crossroads, a jumble made harder to sort by the number of pedestrians and their uniform unwillingness to give way before anything on wheels. They waited at one point for five minutes until Yulie had her pull over while he and Mary enlisted as volunteers, joining half a dozen others. They finally managed to untangle a three car confusion where one car had gotten wedged between two others.

  Vertu restarted the clock when her passengers returned to her, brushing snow off each other, and laughing.

  At last, they were through the intersection and on the Port Road itself, headed out of town, and up the hill.

  Scene Three

  In Vertu's taxicab, on the Port Road. Outside, a blizzard.

  PROGRESS WAS SLOW; Jemmie called on the radio to make sure the car was in motion, at least, and Vertu’s confirmation of a fare in progress to a known destination was welcome.

  "You call in when you get to the top, hear me? We got folks wanting a ride, but I'm thinking we're all best just staying put. This is a wallop of a storm all of a sudden; couple the old-timers say we’ll be lucky to move anything much on the road tomorrow, much less tonight. So you call me, Vertu, before you head back down. Promise."

  "I promise," Vertu said mildly, as if Jemmie wasn't younger than her youngest daughter.

  "That's all right, then. You drive careful."

  Vertu had already driven through a Surebleak winter, and seen two storms that the locals had grudgingly awarded the accolade bad 'un. This storm though, this was, in Vertu's opinion, shaping up to be something other than a mere bad 'un. This one was a worrier.

  She got them through a small intersection where two cars had been pushed to the side, quiescent. Periodically the vibration transmitted from the road to the taxi changed ... oddly.

  "Graupel," said Yulie, "in layers with some sleet and then with fling-snow. Slick as – " and here he paused, considering, perhaps, the ears of the girl, before continuing, "slick like skin ice from a rain it can be. We’re good though, our Miss Vertu’s got us on course, all good."

  About that, Miss Vertu herself was less confident – and in the next moment realized what exactly was wrong with the light approaching them.

  "Wrong side!" Yulie said sharply.

  Vertu slowed the cab to a stop while the other vehicle – a small panel truck – continued down what must have been the gravel edge of the wrong side of the road at a breathtakingly slow pace.

  "Flo’s Grocery Wagon?" Mary read the side of the truck as it passed. "They're city-based. What is it doing up here?"

  "Musta been up to Lady yo’Lanna’s place!" said Yulie. "Geez, ain’t got no sense, city or else, 'noring oncoming traffic!"

  By now dusk had edged into dark, with other traffic nonexistent. There were tracks in the road, but the snow and breeze were working together to fill them in, leaving vague ruts. Vertu wondered about the van’s driver, seeing several places where it appeared the ruts wandered off the road entirely, but there – parallel ruts – must have been other traffic going one way or another.

  Questioned, Vertu would have told anyone that she knew the Port Road well, but in the dark, with the snow blowing it wasn’t clear to her exactly where she was, and with two major turns – surely she couldn’t have negotiated those without knowing it! – she missed the Tree’s presence as a guide and found herself peering into the snow’s star field as if—

  Hah! Likely that was....

  But she heard Anna give an intake of breath and then Yulie, who’d been leaning comfortably against Mary in the back, sat up straighter.

  "Yanno," he said, "sometimes we get weather a little different on top the hill than at the bottom; I think we might not have that slick ice under us now – haven’t heard that grind! We’re not too far away from that turn at Chan’s Pond, I’m thinking. See, there’s the pointer rock for that slick twisty part – kinda looks different under snow, though, if you don’t know it."

  Vertu didn’t know it, and barely made out a lump three times the size of the car lurking just by the right edge of the road. She tried to imagine the thing dry and unshrouded by snow, sunlit on an early fall day and – failed.

  The snow and gathered darkness had her driving by instinct now. She recalled that there were more than a few twisty parts to the road, and if she remembered correctly, this part was twistier but not as steep and angled as the next, very sharp, turn.

  Rascal mumbled a complaint on the seat next to her and Anna shifted him so that his shoulder leaned more against the side window. He peered at – and possibly through – it, vague trails of smoke rising from his nostrils.

  Anna spoke then; another word again that Vertu missed hearing. Yulie didn't catch it either, and he said so.

  "Anna, not thinking I got that clear ..."

  She looked over her shoulder briefly, then at Vertu.

  "It was for Rascal. He’s got fidgets and I asked him to stay still. I think he’s been seeing the wavy tracks off on this side and he’s worried."

  "Might be. Can’t see 'em so good, myself. You watch hard, then. Tell Rascal we’re not letting a little snow get in the way of giving him his dinner!"

  The girl whispered something to the dog; his fidgets grew quieter.

  Vertu shrugged tension out of her shoulders. She’d been unconsciously using those very same tracks as a guide while avoiding them because they affected traction and also because they tended, in her estimation, to hug the edge far too closely.

  Briefly, Vertu was sure she knew exactly where they were. The slow motion exaggerated the twists, and she knew this as one of the spots she enjoyed driving a little harder into on dry days, without snow. The acceleration here could be exhilarating, the car willing to grab at the road and allow the driver to fling it this way and that.

  She smiled. That was the kind of driving she was required to deplore in her underlings, of course – officially, but there, a useful kind of training it was sometimes to know how the car might act at the edge of control.

  Vertu allowed the taxi to slow now, the tracks before her an odd jumble.

  "He’s driving scared," Anna said with the kind of forcefulness that brooked no doubt. See? He ran off the side of the road. The – "

  She stopped as if she’d caught herself being a Seer. On Liad, Vertu had twice driven those in the throes of their Sight – and the girl sounded as if she might be on that route.

  Hugging Rascal, Anna turned to speak to her.

  "Liad does not have such weather?"

  Vertu answered, wondering why this question now.

  "There are parts of Liad that have snow in some seasons, but not so much – and in any wise, no such storms as we have here."

  She might have said more, but she was startled into silence, as the scene beyond the windscreen grew momentarily bright as early dawn, the blowing snow drifting across their vision and sharing the light an eerie moment or two before thunder bounced about the cab. Rascal whined, the humans all gasped. The light lessened, came back twice, both times with the shock of nearby thunder, before the storm deepened and there was the sound of hail bouncing off the cab’s roof and windshield before their world was again the small tunnel of light they carried with them.

  "There’s a probl
em," Anna said abruptly. "She’s out of patience. They’re all scared and she’s ready!"

  Rascal whined.

  Mary asked, "Who, Anna? Where?"

  Anna shrugged, the dog pushing his head against her shoulder.

  "Where – ahead of us. I don't know who, but she is ahead of us – up!"

  ACT TWO

  Scene One

  Beset in the belly of the storm

  Enter Toragin, the blue-and-red driver, Chelada

  "UNDERSTANDING THE THEORY is not the same as understanding the fact."

  The delm had uttered those words to the nadelm. The nadelm had discoursed upon them at length several times afterwards to his mother – the delm’s sister, who had also been present – and several times more to the rest of the household, including the lesser children of his siblings, of which large group Toragin del'Pemridj was the least, in terms of both age and in the regard of the nadelm.

  Toragin had herself been present when those words were uttered and had been permitted a second drink of the morning wine on that occasion, it having been the morning when the sky grew dark, the valley echoed and rumbled, the horizon changed – and, well, everything had changed. Toragin was here, now, on Surebleak because – precisely because – of that morning when Clan Korval, and, more importantly, Clan Korval's Tree – had vanished from Liad.

  The theory, back then, was simply that a space vehicle would approach Liad’s surface and remove Korval’s house. Of the family, perhaps the delm’s sister, Toragin’s grandmother, had the best idea of what that had meant, she having spent ten Standards as an orbital mining engineer before having been ordered home to produce multiple heirs for multiple contract husbands. Her skills running to administration, once home she’d not escaped into space again, nor had she found it easy to reenter society. So, she had spent more time in the company of cats than of people, achieving a certain serenity for herself and her like-minded assistants amidst the bustle and intrigues of an ambitious clan.

  Being the closest clan house but one to Korval’s Valley had always meant that a peculiar peace informed Lazmeln's clanhouse, for the city was kept at a distance by geography and the agreements made with the first captains. Then, with the changes, those ancient agreements fell. Tourists, spies, and opportunists traveled the local roads – serenity was broken for Clan Lazmeln’s in-house overseer as well as for the delm.

  Theory now –

  But, no. This was not theory. This was reality. Toragin was hungry, colder than she’d ever been in her life, and more afraid than she would allow herself to know, much less Chelada.

  Chelada the Determined, Toragin thought, but this time, in this reality, she did not smile. Chelada's determination had brought them here.

  Chelada's determination might see them die here.

  That, too, was reality – or, rather, a possible reality, looming much too close.

  And in this reality that was not theory, Toragin considered that as afraid – terrified! – as she had been when Korval’s clanhouse and Tree were scooped up from Liad and taken away, this was the first time that her life, and Chelada’s, was actually in danger. To have come this far with so little trouble beyond that of convincing Lazmeln Herself that this journey was necessary to honor and to Lazmeln's continued peace – to have come so far, and so quickly, only to meet bleak disaster, lost in the snow within grasp of the goal!

  Who could have imagined a world this wild? A world in which anti-collision devices were turned off on vehicles during a storm because the snow and ice registered as threat; a world where vehicles might ignore the road entire, or force each other off-route despite lights and flashing markers?

  Their driver, Toragin thought, had done well to avoid the collision. Going over the event in her mind she again saw the lights loom out of the snow, saw those lights continuing to aim at them, as if they were a target. She felt the cab slide, grab, and turn away, hands breadths separating them from the small road which was their proper route, and then on. She recalled the driver saying, "Best if we keep momentum here, I think this road comes back into Port Road a little way ahead, and we got good gravel!"

  "We are going the wrong way!" she protested. "We are going away from the Tree!"

  "All roads here gotta aim up that way," the driver countered. "The side roads connect back into the Port Road."

  This sounded as if he knew his territory and Toragin was prepared to allow herself to be calmed, until he added, not quite under his breath.

  "Pretty sure so, anyhoots."

  It was too late by then, and Toragin sat in the front seat, Chelada snug in the back, her conveyance against a heat vent. They both sat, and allowed the driver to do his work, while they felt the presence of the Tree, not ahead of them anymore, but to the right of the cab's slippery route. Too far to the right.

  Still, the driver had been doing well in keeping his vehicle on the snow-covered road. As the route began to turn, slowly, back to the right, Toragin had begun to relax in truth, thinking that it could not be so far, now –

  Lightning ripped through the grey curtains of snow, startling, disorienting even before the thunder boomed.

  The driver started, jerking the wheel in his astonishment. The tires were forced off of the safe gravel onto solid ice.

  The taxi spun around, twice; the vaunted momentum giving way to a fading slide.

  The slide was slow, nearly silent, ending in a lurch, and a crunch as the road edge turned to leafed-over mud covered by ice.

  "Sleet! Crud! Graupel and sludge!"

  The driver hit the dashboard with a mittened fist.

  Using the shock webbing, Toragin dragged herself more-or-less upright, and stared into the back seat.

  "Chelada!"

  There came a huff from the blanket-covered resting place, and a touch along her inner senses, as if a pink tongue had licked her nose. Toragin relaxed. Chelada was not pleased – well, and who might blame her? – but she had not been hurt.

  "Taxis!" the driver was continuing his rant. "Easy money, she says. How tough can it be to drive around all day?"

  Toragin took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She could feel the Tree, up the hill, still too far to the right. How far, she wondered? Could she walk to it from here? More to the point, could she walk to the Tree in the teeth of a lightning-laced snowstorm, with the snow already fallen perhaps to her knees, and carrying Chelada?

  Well, no, she admitted to herself. Perhaps not.

  Definitely not.

  The driver had stopped cursing.

  "Miss?" he said.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him.

  "Yes?"

  "Will that thing live if you let it go? It has fur; I saw it. Don’t know that the car’s power packs are going to last long enough for this to stop and us to get found. If we gotta walk out, that's gonna be a long walk, and you don't wanna be carrying extra. Can you –"

  Toragin recoiled in horror.

  "Abandon Chelada! No!"

  The driver sighed, nodded.

  "I’m gonna go out and take a look at how we're in, Miss. Might be we can rock 'er out. If we can't get moving, we could all freeze, and in not too long!"

  Toragin put a hand out as he turned toward his door.

  "Comm?" she said. "Radio? Can we call for help?"

  The driver smiled – perhaps it was a smile – and shook his head.

  "Nah, no radio on this one. Cheap doin's, right? Who needs a radio?"

  "I'm going out now. You watch me, OK? If I go down, I'd take it kindly if you tried to get me back into the cab."

  The only light in the car was a vague red glow from the sparse instruments. The driver was pulling his stretch cap far down on his head, covering his ears, while he stared into the windscreen as if were a mirror in truth and not simply covered in snow.

  The wind screamed suddenly, and the cab rocked. Toragin held her breath; she thought the driver did, too.

  "Right," he said, and looked to her.

  "Miss, I want you
to use this shovel when I start to push on the door, and try to keep the snow away from the side I got to go through, so it don’t fill up the car or freeze the lock. Can you do that?"

  "Yes," Toragin said without conviction. She wasn’t used to people – other than cats, of course – depending on her strength. Still, it wasn’t as if she was weak, after all. She’d been almost strong enough to keep up with all the older children around the house, children who pushed and played secret nasty games of shoving, who risked being denounced to a half-distracted tutor because, after all, who would believe that the elders – the oh-so-well-behaved elders would torment the clan's precious youngers?

  "Pull the hood, Miss, your hood. When I open up you’ll want it. Cover that cage up good, too, if that thing needs to be warm."

  Toragin bristled.

  That thing.

  Cage.

  It.

  On Liad there would have been Balance due ... except not really, for on Liad both Toragin and the cats were – among those who knew of them at all – just another of Clan Lazmeln’s aberrations.

  Chelada was ignoring everything. She was being patient. So very patient. She had nothing to say to the driver; he was beneath her notice. Toragin, she trusted to take everything in hand. That was Toragin's function, after all. In the meanwhile, she arranged herself against the heat vent, and slipped into a dream-state. For a moment, Toragin thought wistfully of slipping into sleep, to awake when all inconveniences had been solved.

  "OK, here's how we work it," said the driver. "I'm gonna get out, like I said. Gonna clean off the windscreen, and take a walk around the cab, see where's the tires, zackly, and what's the best angle to rock 'er. You keep the snow outta the door and watch me. Right?"

  "Right," said Toragin, so faintly she didn't even convince herself.

  The shovel arrived to hand and the driver heaved against the door, fighting drifts and wind, until of a sudden, it was open, and he slipped out.