The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘Have you ever healed warts?’

  Marianne could not remember having done so. ‘I don’t think so,’ she replied, trying to keep her voice interested but unemotional. One never knew. Perhaps the tone of voice one used would make a difference.

  ‘Have you ever visited the Cave of Light or any similar tourist attraction?’

  ‘No. I’m sure I haven’t. Should I have?’

  The person stared at her coldly. ‘It isn’t a question of should. It’s a question of the quota being changed – definitions. Regulations. You know. The new system will make all that possible. Now. Do the following mean anything to you at all? Stop me if they do. Shamans? The onocratic dyad? The Cave of Light?’ There was an invitational pause, but it meant nothing to Marianne. ‘Banshees? Sybils? Crabbigreen? Ah, that strikes a chord, does it?’

  Marianne thought it had something to do with lawns, but she wasn’t sure. Still, the person nodded encouragingly and continued with the list. ‘Ethnography? Harvey? Lubovosk?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marianne said into the silence. ‘There’s a woman in my pensione from there.’

  ‘Tell me what you know about it,’ he said, silky-voiced, all at once very interested.

  ‘She’s from there. You’d have to ask her. I don’t know anything about it at all.’

  ‘Umm. Let’s see. That’s schedule 42-A. Ah, here it is. Now, this will be a little different. You just tell me what comes to mind when I say each word. Drat. This pen is out of ink. Wait a bit. I’ll be right back…’ The person left the room, the door shutting behind with a swish full of finality and finish, the sound a branch makes falling from the top of a tree, falling, falling, then done, not to fall anymore because it has reached the place beneath which there is no more down at all.

  ‘Swish,’ said Marianne to herself sadly. She did not expect the person to return. The little light which had come through the dirty glass was already fading. Time in the embassy was different from time on the outside. It was almost night, and outside in the hall the little old woman had set her parasol against the wall and was busy sweeping the floors.

  ‘I thought, since I was here already…’ the woman began.

  ‘We might as well go on back,’ said Marianne. ‘Perhaps we’ll come again tomorrow.’

  Macravail was waiting for her in the street, ropy arms folded across his narrow chest, mouth puckered in reproach. ‘I thought you weren’t coming here anymore.’ She stared at her feet, unable to answer him. ‘The seeds sprouted,’ he said, pointing at the end of the leash where a fuzzy, green ball clicked along on short legs, beady eyes peering at her from beneath grassy ears. The dog barked, a husky, friendly, convalescent sound.

  ‘I’m glad, Macravail. It makes him look so much more comfortable. I’m sure he feels better.’

  ‘I thought we’d take him to the fountain,’ said Macravail. ‘He needs watering. Then we could buy some fruit jellies and watch the fireworks.’

  Marianne could not help the slow tears which began to well from her eyes, the harsh lump which choked her. Under the curious eyes of the little old woman, she wept noisily. Macravail made no effort to comfort her, merely chewed the ends of his moustache and spoke soothing words to the dog.

  ‘What’s it all for?’ she cried. ‘What good is it all? We’ll eat fruit jellies and watch fireworks and tomorrow it will all be the same. The embassy will change procedures again, but they still won’t give me a visa. I’ll grow old here, and die, and then they’ll put me in the phantom zoo with the other ghosts, and I’ll be hungry all the time. Oh, Macravail, I just want out…’

  The little old woman turned pale at this and trotted away, tap-tapping with her parasol. Marianne fumbled through her coat pocket to find some tissues, a little sticky and shredded, but whole enough to dry her eyes and stop her dripping nose. When she came to herself again, the old woman was gone, and Macravail was crouched against the curbing as the grassy dog peed against the lamppost.

  ‘If you’ll stop going to the embassy,’ he whispered, ‘I can get you out. Without a visa. If you really want to get out.’

  ‘You can? Why haven’t you said anything before? You know I want out. More than anything.’

  ‘People say that,’ he went on whispering, ‘when they don’t really mean it. The little old woman who was just here, she’d say it, but she’d be terrified of it. Here is familiar, always changing, but familiar. Here is almost forever. Here is custom and endless circles turning. Here is nothing truly strange. There is nothing here but what is here, Marianne, and the only way out is out, no guarantees, no safety. Some are better off here, Marianne.’

  ‘How can you say that? Nothing ever happens here! Nothing ever changes!’

  ‘New fountains along the avenue. New carvings on the gate.’

  ‘But as soon as they’re finished, they’ll change it again. They do that. Everything is always changed, but nothing is ever different. I want it to be different. I want you to get me out.’

  ‘If you really want to,’ he said with an intensity she had not heard from him before, ‘I can’t advise it, or urge it. It has to be your decision.’

  ‘I want to,’ she said firmly, thrusting the soggy tissues back into her pocket. ‘I want to. What do I have to do?’

  ‘Just tell me where you want to go. That’s all. You tell me, and I’ll take you there.’

  ‘I want to cross the border.’

  ‘Where do you want to cross? Into where? There’s a crossing in a pasture just outside the walls. There’s a crossing under the wharf we sat on yesterday. There’s a crossing where the dwarves come in, and one where the heralds go out. Where do you want to cross?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘You have to choose and consent, Marianne. You can move, change, get from this place to another place, so long as you choose and consent. Each place has rules of its own. That’s the rule here. I can only help you if you choose and consent.’

  She chewed her lip, felt the hard lump rising in her throat once more. ‘Won’t you decide for me, Macravail?’

  He shook his head slowly, a pendulum slowly ticking, a mechanical motion as though he had been wound up. She could almost hear the slow toc-toc-toc as his head went from side to side. ‘No. I can’t do that. And if you talk to anyone about it, I can’t help you at all. You tell me where you want to cross, and I’ll take you there, but you must tell me.’

  She fumbled with the soggy tissue again, and when she looked up it was to see Macravail and the dog disappearing around the corner far down the avenue, near the new pool. Loud into the dusk came the sound of hammers, dhang, dhang, dhang, echoing from the high walls along the street. The sound grew louder as she moved toward home, and when she went beneath the arch of the gate a chip of stone fell into her collar, scratching her neck. The dwarves were at work in the flaring light of a hundred torches as the fireworks burst above them in showers of multicolored sparks. She could still hear the sounds of the hammers when she lay in her bed, trying to breathe quietly, trying not to think, trying to sleep.

  Then, in the morning, she tried not to sleep, tried to cast off an overwhelming lassitude which paralyzed her will. Below her window the children played in the dusty street in a fever of intensity. Their game seemed to revolve around a small group of slightly older children, children perhaps eleven or twelve – perhaps even a little older than that, for the loose shirt which one of them wore clung occasionally to the swell of budding breasts. That one, a cloud of dark hair and wild, black eyes, was at the center of every evolution of the game, a desperate concentration upon her face. After a time of watching them, Marianne put on her old coat and went down the stairs, through the cold hall and onto the shallow steps which fronted the pensione. There she sat, nibbling a cuticle, watching. Each turn in the game brought the central group somewhat nearer. Finally, when the sun was almost overhead, the cloud-haired girl was so close that Marianne could have touched her. Instead, moved by some urge she could not have identified, she said, ‘If someone told
you they could get out without a visa, what would you think of that?’

  The girl turned on her with a fiery look. ‘So what? Any of us can do that.’

  ‘You know where the crossing places are?’

  ‘Hah.’ It was a whispered sneer. ‘Since I was here. Since I could walk. I know them all, even the ones that haven’t been used in a hundred years. All the kids do.’

  ‘Then why don’t you – emigrate?’

  The girl stared at her insolently. For a time Marianne thought she would not answer, but at last her expression softened and she put out a hand to touch Marianne’s face. ‘You’re all misty in the head, aren’t you? Younger than I am, for all you seem older. They change, you know. A place might be a good gate for a while, then it would become a bad gate. You get through a bad gate, you might not be able to play your way out, you know? You have to work it out, play it out. That’s what we’re doing. Playing the games. Patterning them. When the right pattern comes, then I’m next. I can tell you because I’m next, and I won’t be here much longer.’ Seeing the incomprehension in Marianne’s face, she continued. ‘There aren’t any good gates for grown-ups. Only for kids. That’s why I have to get out right away, before … you know. Don’t tell!’ For a moment the voice was that of someone Marianne knew, then the voice of an anguished child, then the dark-haired girl was swung back into the frenzy of the game. Marianne returned to her room, thinking she should wash her face before lunch. Bent over the basin she heard a shout go up from the children, but when she hastened to the window there was nothing to see.

  The cloud-haired girl was gone, but she could have gone home for lunch. Marianne held that thought resolutely through the noon meal, through her afternoon nap, through the pre-dinner cocktail hour which the woman from Lubovosk insisted all the residents attend, and which she herself attended, today full of some obscure fury which Marianne made no effort to identify. After dinner the children were still hard at play, but the cloud-haired girl was not among them. Marianne went to her room to put a pack of tissues in her pocket with her comb and, after some thought, the little book of stories Macravail had given her. She had not read many of the stories nor understood those she had read. ‘Something,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Everyone should have something.’

  She went into the evening and to the river. Macravail was there. Beside him the grassy dog was digging wildly into a crevasse between two stones, whurffling as he did so. Marianne sat down beside Macravail and watched the dog until it gave up the search and lay down with a bursting sigh beside them. ‘Tell me where all the crossings are,’ she said. ‘Tell me where they all are, Macravail.’ Then, as he did so, she wrote each one down on a page of the book, each on a different page. When she had finished, the stars had come out. Taking a deep breath, she opened the book at random. The nearest lights were in the carnival ground, dim and distant. She made it out with difficulty. ‘The alley behind the bird market. Let’s go there now, Macravail.’

  They went the long way round, skirting the fruit market and the street of the metal workers. They passed the back wall of the embassy, hearing over the wall the clatter of dishes and the unmistakable sound of laughter – the woman from Lubovosk’s laughter. The alley behind the bird market was a narrow one, lit by a single gaslight. When they stood at the end of it, Marianne could see the door clearly, though she thought it had not been there when they entered the alley.

  ‘Through there,’ said Macravail. She turned to see his face drawn up in an expression part pain, part hope, part despair. ‘Through there.’

  ‘I have to go,’ she pleaded. ‘You do understand, Macravail? I can’t stay. I can’t go on forever like the little old woman, like the sons of the duchess. I have to have a difference, Macravail. Come with me.’

  ‘No,’ he said unaccountably. ‘You’re safer alone. They may not even know you’re gone for a while. But give me something – something to remember by…’

  The only thing she had was the book. The words came out piteously, unforgivably, before she thought. ‘Everyone ought to have something…’

  ‘Ahhh…’ She had not heard Macravail wail in that way before, so lost, so lonely. ‘Give me, and I’ll give you.’ She felt the dog’s leash thrust into her hands, felt the grassy beast pressing tight against her legs as the book was withdrawn from her hand. Then there was only the crossing to elsewhere, and the difference came without warning.

  Makr Avehl lay on Marianne’s bed, unmoving, eyes closed. On the table beside him a brazier burned. From time to time, Ellat dropped a pinch of fragrant resin into it to make a pungent smoke. Between such times she moved about, making no unnecessary noise but not trying to be silent. Aghrehond had been stretched out on the living room floor until a few moments before. One moment he had been there, as quiet as Makr Avehl, the next moment he was gone. Ellat had found her eyes brimming with tears. Aghrehond was like a brother, like a bumptious, loving son. As Marianne had been sent, so had Aghrehond been sent. Except, of course, that he had volunteered to go.

  She moved back and forth between the two rooms, being sure, tidying up. Makr Avehl would not be disturbed by her activities; she had begun to wonder if he could be aroused by anything at all. Outside the drawn curtains the evening bloomed violet with dusk, mild and spring-like.

  ‘Ellat?’ She heard the indrawn breath.

  ‘Here, Makr Avehl. Hold still. I’ve kept tea hot for you.’ She slipped her arm beneath his head and brought the steaming cup to his lips as he sipped and sipped again, breathing deeply as from some great exertion.

  ‘I found her.’

  ‘I knew you would, if anyone could. Was it as you thought, in some borderland world of Madame’s?’

  ‘Yes. A black world, of Black Madame. Oh, Ellat, but I will have vengeance on that one. Marianne is nothing to her, nothing at all, but she took her up like a boy picking an apple, only to throw it away after one bite. Bait. Using her to bait me. She hopes to throw me off balance. To make me commit foolishness, risk my people, risk the Cave. She plays a deep and dangerous game, that one.’

  ‘She tried our defenses once before. I do not think she is eager to try them soon again. She mocks at the Cave, but she could not break its protection.’

  ‘No. She prefers to bait me with my innocent kinswoman. Well, she was ignorant of much, was Madame. Certainly she did not think I knew Marianne well enough to follow where she had sent Marianne, to follow and let her out of Madame’s place into one of her own. Madame may learn soon that Marianne is gone from her limbo, but she will not know where. We start even, then, neither of us knowing where she is.’ He laughed harshly before sipping again at the tea, swung his feet over the side of the bed and rose. ‘I must try to make a call to Alphenlicht.’

  ‘Everything will be packed by now. We can go tonight.’

  ‘I wish we could go. I need the Cave of Light, Ellat. I need the Cave and our people. But if I am ever to find Marianne, it has to be from here.’

  ‘Aghrehond?’

  ‘I sent him after her. Poor thing. Everything is twisted where she is, names and people and places and times. All moves as in disguise, strangely warped. In this world of Madame’s the pitiable émigrés have no memory of what they were, or only fragments. All has been wiped away. Nothing could wipe her character, of course, and the courage shines through like a little star. Still, she suffers under it.’

  ‘You say Aghrehond is with her. Where?’

  He laughed, a short bark of vicious laughter, at her, at himself, at the world. ‘Lord of Light, Ellat, that’s why I need the Cave. I don’t know where she has gone. The only way out from the border worlds is into one’s own world. She went into her own place, one of her own places – I don’t know how many there may be. If she was a woman of some imagination, there might be thousands. Or perhaps only one. Whichever it may be, I must find her. I must find her.’

  ‘What will you do?’ She was hushed before his vehemence, a little awed by it, thinking she had not seen him like this before, not over
a woman.

  He sighed. ‘I will eat something, if you can find something here or bring something from that place on the boulevard. I’ll take a shower. That place made me feel slimy. I’ll call – who? Who would be best? Nalavi? Cyram? Since I can’t go to the Cave, they must do it for me. I’ll call some of our people at the embassy and set them on Harvey’s trail, and on Tabiti’s. I want to know where they are in this world, if they are here at all. And then I’ll try to think what to do next.’

  Outside Marianne’s window the pink leaves of the oak uncurled like tiny baby hands, gesturing helplessly at the world beyond. The curtains remained closed. Downstairs, Mrs Winesap turned in her half sleep, sat up suddenly to say to Mr Larken, ‘Did you hear that? What was that?’ To be answered only by a snore, a riffle of wind. Unsatisfied, she lay back down to sleep. There was the sound of a car driving away, then returning. Feet moved restlessly over their heads. Then silence, only silence. The house was still, still, as though waiting.