Ammonite

by Nicola Griffith

  This time Marghe’s smile was genuine. “You do sound better than you look.”

  Letitia grinned. Her face was terribly thin. “I hear I missed a good storm.”

  “The first one was better.”

  “Yes.” She smiled at Marghe, that thin, stretched smile. “The way Twissel tells it, I’m some kind of hero.” But Marghe saw Letitia’s knuckles whiten as she squeezed Lu Wai’s hand, and realized the technician was not really talking to her. Marghe felt as though she was intruding on something private.

  “Well, I’d better go find Hiam.”

  “No, wait.” Letitia reached out a hand to Marghe. “I haven’t thanked you. You and Thenike. Hiam says you saved my life.”

  Marghe did not know what to say. Thenike deserved most of the credit, but Thenike was not here to accept the thanks that Letitia needed to give. “Anytime.”

  They were quiet. A machine bleeped softly.

  “So, rumor has it you’re pregnant.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t look pregnant.” The machine bleeped again. “When’s it due?”

  A green light blinked, and Letitia’s eyes rolled. Marghe looked anxiously at Lu Wai. The Mirror held a finger to her lips. Letitia closed her eyes and fell asleep with a faint smile on her lips.

  Lu Wai motioned Marghe outside. “She’ll be asleep for about four hours. It’s the only way we can get her to have enough rest. You know what she’s like.”

  In the natural light Marghe could see how drawn and tired the Mirror looked. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. It’s just…” She dug her boot toe into the turf, ground out a hole. “I look at her, lying there, and I wonder how it would be if she’d died. I don’t think I could… I don’t think…”

  Marghe touched her shoulder. “I know.”

  “But she’s healing. She’s tough.” Now Lu Wai smiled, a private, proud smile, and lifted her head. “She’ll wake up still wanting to know when your child is due.”

  “Tell her the Moon of New Grass. Next spring. And tell her that if you would both like to come for the birth, for the births, Thenike and I will send a message.”

  “I’d like that,” Lu Wai said softly. “I’d like that very much.”

  Aoife and Marac, along with the Briogannon, Ojo, stayed a little longer. They wanted to study the ways of the Holme Valley community, Marac said; how they shaped the skelter trees, plowed their fields, used the river. For three days Marghe watched them as they went out and about–the hard, lean Levarch and the younger, softer daughter–fingering an olla bowl, thumping the tendons of a breeding taar, or asking short hard questions on the length of the seasons this far south. Once, she saw them both lift their hands and rub at their chins thoughtfully while Cassil explained a harvest technique. Ojo drifted behind them, a dark‑eyed shadow.

  But summer was short on Tehuantepec, and Aoife and Marac had to get back north to join their people. “There’s not much time to bring our herds south before the snows. Winter comes early this year,” Aoife said from her horse.

  “That’s what Holle said.” The sun was bright, and Marghe had to shade her eyes with her hand to look up at Aoife. Marac and Ojo waited on their small, shaggy ponies some distance away.

  Aoife looked diminished, Marghe realized. She wondered how it must feel, to kill a soestre.

  “You did the right thing,” she said suddenly. “It’s best for your people.”

  “I am Levarch. I always do what is best for the Echraidhe.” Her eyes were bleak. “Sometimes it is not easy. For me or others.”

  An apology?

  “You were right when you said the Echraidhe must change. I listen to truth and those who speak it. But I’ll never forget that it was you who made me kill my soestre. You will never be welcome in my tent.”

  Aoife looked at her without expression, then wheeled her horse and was gone, Marac and Ojo thundering along beside her.

  You will never be welcome in my tent. There was an Echraidhe curse: You will never be welcome on our grazing grounds or in our tents, neither you nor your daughters nor the daughters of your daughters. May your taars lose their fur and your horses their teeth, and may your land be frozen for a thousand years, But Aoife had restrained herself. My tent, she had said, not our grazing groundsor our tents. Even now, the Levarch was keeping the tribe’s best interests over her own: the Echraidhe would need all the help they could get in the next few years, and it would be foolish to declare a powerful viajera and her even‑more‑powerful friends anathema. Instead, Aoife had declared a personal animosity.

  Marghe watched the three galloping horses dwindle into the distance. It would not be long before their strange tribal code eased as the harsh winters of Tehuantepec that had made it a necessity for survival became a thing of the past. She was surprised to find she would mourn the passing of that fierce Echraidhe insularity.

  Marghe wished Thenike would come back. She needed to feel strong arms around her; she wanted to lay her head against Thenike’s belly and listen to see if she could hear the child that would grow up as soestre to the one living inside her own body. She wanted to talk and think about something other than Aoife’s unforgiving words, something other than change and death.

  That night, Marghe found Sara Hiam sitting on the dry, dusty‑smelling grass outside the hospital. She joined her.

  “It smells good out here,” Hiam said.

  Marghe nodded, then realized Hiam would not see that. “Yes.”

  They sat quietly. The breeze blew warm, then cool; autumn was coming. In the distance a horse snorted.

  “I like the nights,” Hiam said. “After six years on Estrade, the days down here seem too big, too intimidating. All that sky, and air. Sometimes I get nervous when a breeze swirls. I’m so used to air coming from one direction at a time, and always the same temperature.”

  “The storms must have been hard for you.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence.

  “Marghe, this world… You seem at home here. But it scares me. The wind scares me, the people. The virus. You scare me.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve changed.”

  Marghe did not know what to say. “Yes.”

  Hiam moved restlessly. “There’s so much I don’t understand. Like your friend, Thenike. I’m sorry I called her a savage. I don’t know what she did, or how, but whatever it was, she saved Letitia’s life. How did she do that? She was right about the adjuvants, too.” A tiny silence. They understood each other: apologies given and accepted on both sides. “And you’re pregnant. And I don’t understand any of it. I want to know. I want you to tell me.”

  Marghe wondered where to begin. She picked a long stem of grass and sniffed it, smelling the familiar spice of Jeep. “It’s the virus. It changes everything, It’s… Well, I have a theory about Thenike’s healing. I felt something, when she was running her hands over Letitia. Over the air around Letitia, really. I was trained to be sensitive to my own body; I think I’m more sensitive than most. Then when the virus became part of me, it was like that sensitivity increased a thousandfold. More. So when Thenike did what she did, I could feel it.” She stripped away the brownish outer layer of the stalk of grass. “I wonder if I might not, in time, learn to do it myself.”

  “You’re not making much sense.”

  Under the outer covering, the stem was green and juicy. Marghe put it in her mouth, chewed awhile. “I’ve been doing some reading lately. It turns out that every cell in the human body–in every other body, too, plant and animal–and every molecule and atom in that cell, is in a constant state of vibration. All this cell‑by‑cell excitation adds up to produce enough energy to change the electrical and magnetic properties of the space they occupy.”

  “That’s nothing new.”

  “No. Anyway, we all resonate on a particular, unique frequency, but because all humans radiate within a narrow wave band we all receive and transmit those signals. All the time. We’re in constant communication with e
ach other and with the outside world. Patterns of these waves explore everything close‑by, so all the time we’re with other people we’re unconsciously probing them. And being probed.” She picked a shred of grass from her teeth. “I imagine if a person was sensitive enough, it would just be a matter of training to bring that kind of probing under conscious control.” She stared out at the dark, heaving sky. Thenike could probably explain this better. “Sara, how would you define healing?”

  “Making someone better. Or, rather, helping–tricking, persuading–a body to heal itself.”

  “Right. Modern medicine does it mechanically, like stitching, and chemically–antibiotics and things. But what about electrically? Magnetically? Electrochemically?”

  “We do that already,” Sara said thoughtfully. “Strap a power pack around a break and it heals anywhere up to six times as fast.”

  Marghe nodded. “According to what I’ve been reading, injury, like Letitia’s, produces a disorganization of the normal, healthy electrical pattern. Are you with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now what if, what if a person has enough control over her magnetic field, her transmissions, to affect another’s? What if the healthy person’s patterns could interact with the sick person’s?”

  Hiam looked dubious.

  “Sara, when Thenike ran her hands around Letitia, my body could feel it! It was like her pattern was talking to mine, to all the eddies and flows of my cells, saying: See? See how you should be? Like this, this is how you’re supposed to go.”

  “But how? I don’t understand how she can do it!”

  “The virus, that’s how. Oh, Sara, the things I’ve seen! When I woke up after being sick, it was like becoming conscious for the first time, Like a blind person seeing color… No, that’s not right. It was just more. Like I could see better and hear better and smell better, like my kinesthetic sense was more highly developed. There’s so much out there to notice, to feel. It’s almost as if the virus is part of this world, so that when the virus became part of me, I could see the world and feel it more clearly…”

  Sara Hiam sat in obstinate silence.

  “It’s the virus,” Marghe repeated more quietly. “It gets all tangled up in the DNA somehow, and changes things. Maybe it intensifies the semiconducting properties of our nervous systems. I don’t know. That’s something you’ll have to find out. Viruses are what you know. I can only tell you that it’s my belief that the virus allows us greater control–much, much greater control–over the autonomic nervous system, and other things.”

  Sara was still silent. Marghe decided to change tactics.

  “I’ve been thinking about Letitia Dogias. You’ve heard about her behavior during storms?”

  “Yes,” Sara said unwillingly.

  “Have you had the opportunity to find out why?”

  “I’ve run some tests.”

  “And?”

  “And I can’t find anything wrong with her. Nothing.”

  “I think I know what’s wrong with her: she’s very sensitive to the buildup of energy around storms, but doesn’t know what it is she feels, or how to deal with it. She’s got no biofeedback training at all. She overloads.”

  “It could be a psychiatric condition.”

  “It could. But it isn’t.”

  The sky lit up in a long, vivid flash, then died back to inky black.

  “What was that?” Sara asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  They listened, but there was no noise except the wind in the grass and, from a long way off down the valley, a trail of laughter.

  “I’m afraid,” Sara said from the dark. “Everything’s so different. You’re so different. I remember you up on Estrade. You were so… ordinary.”

  “I’m different, yes.”

  There was no way to explain how it felt. How it was to be able to remember in a way she would have thought impossible a year ago; how it felt to only have three fingers on her left hand, to have nearly died. How it felt to have another life growing inside her, to have a partner. A home.

  “Change is just change, Sara. Not all good, not all bad. Just different.” They were quiet a long time, listening to the wind in the grass.

  “I’m still afraid. Soon the virus will come for me, for Nyo and Sigrid. And I can do nothing to stop it. Nothing. I’m a doctor and I can’t stop it.”

  “You can’t stop the common cold, either.”

  “But that won’t kill me.”

  “No.”

  “Hiam!” The call came clear through the dark.

  Hiam started, then stood up. “Over here! Who is it?”

  They heard the running footsteps, surprisingly close. “Me. Danner.”

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Out of breath. A moment.” Danner bent over, straightened, sucked air into her lungs. Marghe could not see her face, but something was very wrong. They waited. “Sigrid just called. Estrade’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “They blew it up.”

  “That flash…”

  “Yes.”

  “The people on board?”

  “They didn’t take them off first.”

  Marghe imagined a corona of plasma floating and frozen, orbiting the planet forever. “The Kurst?”

  Danner seemed to notice Marghe for the first time. “Gone. Peeled out of orbit just before detonating the platform.”

  “Sweet god,” Sara said.

  “At least they didn’t kill us.”

  “Not yet.”

  Marghe stared at her. They were gone, weren’t they? “What about the gig?”

  “Also gone. We’re cut off now. Completely on our own.”

  “Not for long,” Hiam said. Now they both stared at her. “Don’t you understand yet? There’s a whole world here, and Company won’t forget it. They might be gone for now, but they haven’t given up. Company never gives up. They’ll keep at it, on and on, until they find a vaccine, or a cure, and then they’ll be back. It might be five years, or it might not be until that daughter of yours is grown, Marghe. But they’ll be back. And when they do, they’ll be holding our destruction, the destruction of all the communities of this world, in their syringes or their sprays. Without the virus, the people of this world don’t have children. No children and we die.”

  We die. While they were standing there, looking at each other, wondering how they could ever be ready against that day, Thenike came back.

  Dawn was cool and the sky ragged with cloud. Danner and Hiam had walked through the trees with Marghe and Thenike as far as the river.

  “Come north when you can,” Marghe said to Sara. “The goth are there, somewhere. You more than anyone would know what to do, how to find out more. The virus has something to do with them, I think. And I need help with those records. Letitia and Lu Wai are going to come for the births; Letitia’s promised to do what she can with the disk I found. You could travel together. The more we can learn, the better. The goth, the virus, the records… they all tie in somehow, and we need to find out what we can before Company returns. Will you come?”

  “I… Perhaps.”

  “It gets better, Sara. Believe me.” In time, Sara would learn that the world was not hostile, that one only had to take the proper care and give the weather proper respect, and travel did not have to be fatal. “And you, Hannah?”

  “I’d like to. But I don’t know. Whatever we become, tribe or community or kith or kindred or a howling mob, it’s my job to steer us onto the right track. Worrying about breeding herds and seed crop and irrigation isn’t that different from worrying about surgical supplies and duty rosters. I’m good at that.”

  “Too good, maybe.” Danner was scared, too. Scared of losing her authority and finding there was nothing else. “Perhaps you should leave the burden in someone else’s hands.”

  “One of these days they’ll get someone else to do it, but not for a year or two. Until then, travel’s a
luxury I won’t be able to afford.”

  “In a year or two, then.” They both knew it would be longer than that. Or maybe not. Marghe looked from Danner to Hiam. Maybe they would be good for each other.

  Danner held out her hand. “Good luck, Marghe Amun. And when you come south again, viajering, swing by Dentro de un Rato and tell us the news.”

  Marghe hugged her, hugged Sara, and then stepped away from them. The wind that blew from the river was cold. Thenike picked up her pack and slung the strap of her leather drumcase over her shoulder. Marghe picked up hers, then hesitated.

  “No more goodbyes,” Sara said. “It’s cold enough to freeze a bird out of the sky. Get walking. And when you brew up your next cup of dap, think of us. Come on, Hannah.” She took the Mirror’s arm and led her away, back toward the trees.

  Marghe hefted her pack and looked at Thenike. They started walking.

  By midday the sun had burned the clouds away; they walked at a good pace, and by the time the grass became striped with streaks and patches of burn they were sweating. They detoured around the field of nodding olla flowers, but the thick, sweet scent made breathing difficult. They tied scarves around their noses and mouths and slowed their pace a little. They were in no rush.

  Evening. The grave was visible from a good distance: a brown mound rising from black. Their footsteps were loud as they crunched over the plain of cinder.

  In the eight days since the grave had been dug, there had been winds from the southwest, and the base of the mound was lightly dusted with pinkish yellow pollen. Marghe knelt, pulled down her scarf, laid a hand on the mound; under the powdery burned smell lurked the scent of sun‑dried dirt, a light, end‑of‑summer scent.

  The end of many things.

  There was something sharp under her palm. She poked at the dirt with an index finger, then picked up several tiny white shards. Broken shells.

  Thenike knelt and wrapped her arms around Marghe from behind. “This used to be a lake, an inland sea. Long, long ago.”

  They listened to the warm soughing of their breath, reeling muscles warm and alive over strong bones. After a while, Marghe put the shells back; the grave did not seem complete without them.