The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Who am I when I don’t know who I am?’ She was leaning across a table, trying to post her inconspicuous notice in the corner of the coffee shop window, speaking partly to herself. Helen was behind the counter, wiping it with a moist cloth and humming around the toothpick between her teeth. She interrupted the hum to make a short, interrogative snort and put her hands on her hips. Marianne got the notice propped to her satisfaction. It said, ‘I wish to meet with those who said they would return.’

  Helen thought this over. ‘Who are you? You’re whoever you were, except you don’t remember it.’

  ‘Then I can’t be who I was. Memories are part of who a person is, and I don’t have any. Right now, I remember the library and getting out of it. That’s almost all I am. There’s no one here to tell me whether I was good, or bad, or really evil. I don’t know whether I helped people or hurt them.’

  ‘You’re pretty young to have done very much of either.’

  ‘I’m old enough to have started. I don’t know whether people loved me or hated me. Or – not really. Except that someone hated me enough to get rid of me.’

  Privately, Marianne felt that the answer to this question was not as important as some superficial and conventional attitudes made it seem. In this sunless place, with its walled horizon and enclosed universe, there was still regard among the inhabitants for a kind of wary politeness, a conventional courtesy. There was an accepted discrimination between good and evil, based largely upon the Manticore as a defining limit of the one and opposition to him as the expression of the other. In this place, Marianne was good because she opposed evil. What she might have been elsewhere, what sins she might have committed, could only be pale and irrelevant in this world, and it was only a traditional concern which made her voice the question – and of what tradition she would have been hard pressed to say.

  ‘Someone else cares enough about you to try and come after you. You told me about the fellow, the one with the books.’

  ‘And that tells me that I wasn’t completely … you know, neutral. I didn’t think I was neutral, anyhow. I don’t look like a neutral person, do I, Helen?’

  Helen shook her head, almost smiling. Since Marianne had told her about Cani Grassi and her narrow escape from the Manticore, Helen seemed a little more trusting, more personal, less shut up within herself. ‘You don’t look neutral, girl. You look exactly like some of the people in the place I come from. You could be a cousin to them.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘I lived in Alphenlicht. Ever heard of it?’

  Marianne felt a tingle, a tiny shock running from ear to ear across the top of her head, a kind of sparkling behind the eyes, which came for an instant and was gone.

  ‘It’s a tiny, old country,’ Helen went on. ‘Squeezed in at the corner of some bigger, more important countries, mountains all around. A little backward, I guess you’d say. We had a schoolteacher used to say that. “A little backward in a nice way,” she’d say. Lots of horses on the farms and little wagons in the streets. Only a few cars, and those only to take the high-ups away when they needed to fly somewhere or buy something we didn’t have. A slow little country, slow and peaceful. Never was any war in Alphenlicht as long as anyone could remember. Some said we were too little. Others said it was because of the Cave of Light.’

  ‘The Cave of Light?’ A tingle, warming, warning.

  ‘In the Holy Mountain, right in the middle of the country. See, there was this mountain, like a big sponge, all full of holes and tunnels, little ones and big ones, and all the holes lined with this shiny glass-rock, what do you call it? Eisen – what?’

  ‘Isinglass? You mean mica?’

  ‘That stuff. Yes. Well, all these holes go down into the mountain into a cave there. A big cave. Round like a melon. Flat floor. Pillars of stone and all these little holes reflecting light down into it. Well, back when the Kavi first came to Alphenlicht, they began to make carvings and drawings in the cave. After a few hundred years, the whole cave was covered with carvings, all over the inside.’

  ‘What kind of carvings? People? Gods? What?’

  ‘Everything. Trees, animals, flowers, people, books, words – everything you can imagine and a few you can’t. So, people had noticed that the light comes down through the mountain, down all those funny shiny tubes and holes, and falls on some of the carvings. Not much to that, hmm? Well, somebody had noticed that the light never seemed to fall the same way twice. Say you go in there today at sunrise, and the light falls one place on the carving of a tree and another place on an old man eating a rabbit. Then somebody else comes in midmorning, and the light falls on a picture of a boat and the word sthrandunas. And at noon something else, and midafternoon something else, and tomorrow morning something else again.’

  ‘But it would have to be the same sometimes. Say, every 14th of June at six A.M.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Helen triumphantly. ‘They kept records, and it isn’t. Never the same way twice. They finally figured out it was because of the way the trees grow on the mountain, or the deer graze, or the hunters move, or whatever. No two people ever see the light the same. No one person ever sees it the same twice. Just like fingerprints, all different…

  ‘Well, then it didn’t take long for people to decide it was like a kind of oracle. You have a problem, you go into the Cave and see where the light falls, and that makes a message for you. If you can’t figure it out, then there are Kavi there who figure it out for you. They even have a book telling what all the signs and carvings mean.’

  ‘Like an oracle,’ mused Marianne, ‘the oracle of Delphi,’ not realizing she had no idea what ‘Delphi’ meant.

  ‘Some call it that,’ said Helen. ‘Some call it the oracle cave. There are those who say that’s why we never had a war, because the Cave showed us how to keep our borders closed. There must have been something to that, too, come to think of it.’ She fell silent, thinking.

  ‘Why was that, Helen?’

  ‘Oh, it was something my husband, David, said once about people from the neighboring country trying to get in. He was a border guard, my David, when he was younger.’

  ‘Tell me about him, about you. How did you get here?’

  The large woman stared out the window, ticking the toothpick between her teeth, a little tapping, like woodbeetle or some kind of infinitesimal code transmission. For a time Marianne thought she would not answer, but at last she said, ‘Well, why not?

  ‘We lived near the Prime Minister’s house, not his town house, you know, for when the Council met, but his country house, the Residence. David kept the grounds at the place, him and two or three young fellows and a couple of women in the kitchen garden. Didn’t like the insides of places, David didn’t. Liked the sun in his face and getting his hands dirty. Well, we got along well enough. Never had any children, which was sad for us, but otherwise it was a good life. Come one spring, David was doing some cutting along the drive, and around noon I took him his lunch. I remember walking down the road. There were birds singing, and the grass was smelling the way it does, fresh. The house was shining up on its hill, walls all silver rose in the sun. Well, I saw this big, black car come down the hill from the Residence, raising up dust, and I knew it was her.’

  Silence stretched, Helen’s eyes fixed on something distant in time and place, voice fallen into a murmur. Marianne waited for a time, then nudged into the quiet. ‘Who was she, Helen?’

  ‘Ah. Who? Oh, her. Well, she was some nobility or other. From Lubovosk. It was a country over the mountain used to be part of us but separated off a long time ago. That’s the only time we ever talked war in Alphenlicht, when Lubovosk was mentioned. Our teacher called it a place of some unkindness, I remember. This woman was there, come to try and marry herself off to our Prime Minister. We called her the Black Countess because she always wore black, and she had this nephew came with her. We called him Prince Teeth because he was always behind her with his teeth showing like a dog
about to bite, pretty much of an age with her, too…

  ‘Well, this car comes down the hill and into the woods. I heard it coming, the roar of it along the road like some animal growling among the trees. Then it stopped. I came round a corner and saw David had a little tree down across the road where he’d cut it. He was bowing and tugging his hat brim and saying he’d have it out of the way in a moment, real polite. He was always polite, David…’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Marianne. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, she came out from that car, Prince Teeth right behind her, eyes glittering like a wolf in torchlight, and she pointed a finger at David, one hand pointing and the other hand up in the air twisting and twisting like somebody opening a great spigot of something, and she cries, “Who delays me, I delay. Who holds me, I hold forever. Fool, begone!” Suddenly, David’s gone, there’s nothing there, and I scream, and she turns on me with that hand still out and the other twisting and twisting, and she smiles – oh, it was a cruel smile – and says, “And you to some other place, slut?” Well, I was quiet. I fell down with my face in the dirt and I was quiet. I heard the car go on its way, out to the main road and away north. It was her saying “some other place” made me quiet. Wherever David went, that’s where I would go to find him, not some other place.’

  ‘Find him? Where? How?’

  ‘Come nightfall, I went up to the house and asked to see the Prime Minister, Archmage Makr Avehl. All the people in the house were relatives of mine. They let me in to see him.’

  ‘Macravail! I know that name. Cani Grassi told me that name!’

  ‘Ah. Well, then, maybe you’re another she’s sent here. Like my David. Not a follower, like me.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean, follower?’

  ‘I told the Archmage what had happened. Hard-faced he was, sitting there by the fire, and I knew that woman from Lubovosk had made him terribly angry. I told him what had happened, what David did and said, what she said, and the motions she made and the things she said, and he told me he couldn’t get David out without risking the land and all its people, but he could send me in after him, into the false worlds. And if I found David, I could be strong with him until the time Makr Avehl could get us all out. So I followed David in here.’

  ‘How long? How long has it been?’

  ‘How can you measure how long? Long enough for me to take over this place, long enough to find David, long enough for the two of us to know there aren’t any trees here, aren’t any mountains, to know there’s only this city and the Manticore. The damned Manticore.’

  ‘So you did find him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I found him. For all the good that was.’ She fell silent for a long time, chewing her lips, wiping the counter in an endless circle. ‘He didn’t know me, you see. Didn’t remember me. Wasn’t interested. That’s one thing about this place, you know. There’s no love here. No desire. Everything muted and put down of that kind. I’ve thought about it many a night, lying in my room, knowing he was just down the hall in another room, not caring. Not that I care either, much, but I can remember caring. He can’t even remember that.’

  Marianne was instantly uncomfortable with this line of thought. She did not want to think of caring, not in the way Helen meant it, though she knew well enough what Helen meant. Caring was like trees and mountains, something she knew of, had known of, which did not exist in this world even though she believed that somewhere such things existed. She changed the subject. ‘What does David do?’

  ‘He plots, girl. He plots and sneaks about. Ever since I told him about her, he follows her whenever she comes here. Oh, she comes here, in that same long, black car. I’ve seen her going into the library.’

  ‘Madame Delubovoska? Her?’

  Helen put a finger to her lips, shook her head in a tiny tremor, side to side, the gesture saying be still about it, silly girl, don’t say names. ‘When he isn’t following her, he’s plotting to kill the Manticore.’

  ‘Helen, will you come with me when I go to see my friend next time? The one who lives on Manticore Street?’

  Helen shuddered. ‘I’d as soon not. Better stay as far from the Manticore as possible.’

  ‘I was there. It didn’t hurt me.’

  ‘You stay here long enough, you’ll see yourself out there being chased by the Manticore. Pictures of you. Flickery things that look just like you. Like your skin peeled off you, layer on layer, your skin and your soul. I’ve seen them, big paper cut-outs of me, running and screaming and running, and ending up stuck up on the walls of the city, everywhere. After a while, every place you look, there you are, stuck to the walls, bits and shreds of you peeled away to hold up the walls as though the walls are made of people. I can feel it at night, feel the skin coming off me in the dark, tiny bit by tiny bit, around me like a shroud, then floating off to hang in the shadows until the Manticore walks. And we see ourselves running and screaming, and that reminds us to be afraid again.’

  Marianne did not reply, but she carried the thought with her through the day. ‘Is that all any of us are?’ she wondered. ‘Part of the fabric of whatever place we are in, whatever time we are in, a brick, a stone, a carved piece at the top of some pedestal? Is it we or the place which has urgency and importance? And if it is the place which has importance, why do we resist it so? Running and screaming and hating the bits of us which are blown about and lost upon the walls of the world? Are we dwindled thereby?’ Helen did not look dwindled, but she had an air of having retreated to some last redoubt within herself from which she peered out upon the world, weary but indomitable.

  At noon, which was simply midway through the lighted period in this sunless place, Marianne felt someone watching her, turned from her pan washing to find a dark, bulky man staring from a corner table through the kitchen hatch at her and knew at once that this was one of the peerers who had made her life so miserable when she had been in the library. She went back to her work with the uneasy feeling that his eyes remained fixed upon her.

  Helen whispered, ‘Marianne, that man watching you is my David. It must be because of that note in the window.’ Then she went back to ladling stew and buttering bread, watching the man with such ill-concealed longing that Marianne felt guilt for having brought him there. He was a big man, with a strong face and gray-streaked moustache, and his face was full of angry purpose.

  When he had finished his meal, he came by the hatch and dropped a folded piece of paper through it. Marianne put the paper to one side and kept on with the washing. She had wanted this contact, had planned for it, and yet was now uncertain that she could deal with this man’s needs and purposes, possibly very different from her own. It was only after the customers had gone and the two of them had the place to themselves that she dried her hands and unfolded the paper, reading it before she handed it to Helen, who had not tried to disguise her interest.

  If you want to join us, come to the church tonight, when the bells ring.

  Marianne regarded this thoughtfully. The dolorous ringing of the bells did not normally begin until late, after most customers had left the restaurant, sometimes not until after Helen herself had gone, after the evening rain had fallen, at the time the Greasy Girls were parading and others avoided the walks.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ she said. ‘I really want to find out…’

  Helen shrugged. ‘I’ll come with you. We’ll both find out.’

  They closed the restaurant and went down the busy street while there was still light in the sky, guiding themselves by the signal tower. There was in the center of the town a tower, tall only in relationship to the squatty buildings which surrounded it, for it had no graceful height to commend it as a building of interest or aesthetic value. It was simply slightly taller than other buildings, and if one scanned the circumference of the city, one might become aware that it was the highest point within that place, not by much, but by the smallest increment which would allow it to surmount all other roofs. The conical roof of this tower was tiled
in red so that it appeared as an inflamed carbuncle upon the horizon of the city. The place was called by everyone throughout the city the signal tower. Who signaled from it, or when, or for what purpose was never mentioned. The church crouched near it, half in its shadow.

  They hid themselves behind the thick pillars of the church porch to await the coming of darkness. While it was still dusk, the Greasy Girls began to come out of their houses, heads shaved clean, bodies almost naked, all skin surfaces anointed with some ointment which made them shine in the shadows like slime-wet frogs. A few started walking down the street, were joined by others, then still others, no sound accompanying them but the shuffle of their feet. When some fifty of them had assembled, they marched up the church steps and into the building. Helen and Marianne slipped around the corner of the porch to avoid them, and entered the church from an unlit side door. They were oppressed by an unfamiliar smell which aroused a kind of quasi-memory which both of them felt they should be able to identify. The music oozing from the place was deadly solemn, almost lugubrious, and the congregation bathed in this watery sound with expressions of drowned lassitude. Other than the Greasy Girls there were only a dozen or so people scattered individually among the massive stone benches. David gestured to them from behind a pillar, and they came to sit in front of him while the sad music went on and on and the hierarch sat drowsing in his high chair on the podium. David leaned forward as though to say something just as the music trailed away into inconsequent stillness and the hierarch began to speak.

  ‘Tomorrow we will walk with the Manticore once more. Rejoice to walk with the Manticore, for it is the Manticore who saves us from the horrible librarians. In that dread library our books are kept, and we know that others may read our lives, take us into their power… If it were not for the Manticore, we would have no future except to live upon those shelves forever. But the Manticore peels us away, layer by layer, places us upon the walls of the city where we may become part of the city itself, strong as its walls, eternal as its stones. As we are peeled away by the Manticore, our books dim and fade, and we pass out of the power of the librarians and into the light. Oh, rejoice to walk with the Manticore – rejoice and sing.’