The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘Of course it does, darling,’ she said.

  MARIANNE, THE MATCHBOX, AND THE MALACHITE MOUSE

  Sheri S. Tepper

  www.sfgateway.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  CHAPTER ONE

  Marianne, well ensconced in the Prime Minister’s Residence in Alphenlicht, half a world away from the state of Virginia, had no idea that her Great-aunt Dagma was dying until she received a letter from her saying so. ‘Not long to go,’ it said. ‘Possibly two or three months, and don’t upset yourself about it, my dear, because I’m not in any pain at all…’

  Marianne’s first reaction was not to believe it. Aunt Dagma was immortal! She had been living with Marianne’s parents for as long as Marianne could remember, as long as her father could remember – small, slender, dark-haired, with eyes that snapped. In recent years the hair had not been as black as formerly, true. And the eyes were possibly, though only slightly, less hawklike. But Dagma dying? Surely not!

  ‘I need your help, my dear,’ Dagma’s letter went on. ‘A little matter that I think should be taken care of and one that neither of your dear parents would have adequate skills to cope with. It is a matter requiring someone with your rather – shall we say – individual abilities.’

  Which was as close as Aunt Dagma would care to come to guessing at Marianne’s abilities, though there were other words which might have described them better. Peculiar? Odd? Weird? Supernatural? Uncanny? Eldritch? Or perhaps merely bizarre?

  ‘Makr Avehl,’ Marianne said to her husband, the Prime Minister of Alphenlicht, ‘I’ve had this sad, strange letter from Great-aunt Dagma.’

  Makr Avehl, who was trying to eat his breakfast egg while going through a pile of documents, merely grunted at her.

  ‘Prime Minister,’ Marianne tried again. ‘I have this matter of state…’

  He looked up at her, focusing vaguely. ‘Ah. Sorry, love. What was it you said?’

  She handed him the letter and watched him read it while the egg was eaten, while the coffee was drained, while the last bite of toast was munched. Though Makr Avehl was Alphenlichtian to his fingernails, he did prefer an American-style breakfast to broiled lamb, flat bread, and yoghurt of the peculiarly sour variety which suited most Alphenlichtians. ‘I’m fond of Dagma,’ he said at last. ‘There are other people I would be less sorry to hear this news from.’

  Marianne got up and went around the table to give him a hug, a difficult matter to manage as her melon-shaped self kept getting in the way. ‘I’ll be very glad when this child is born,’ she said. ‘She keeps coming between us. What do you think, Makr Avehl? Should I go?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. If you want to. The daughter and heir isn’t due for almost two months. Virginia is lovely this time of year. It would give you a chance to visit with your parents.’

  ‘But … what if the baby decides to be born while I’m in the States? Would that upset you?’

  He shook her gently. ‘You were born there, Marianne. If our first girlchild gets born there, too, I’m sure all Alphenlicht will be able to accept that fact.’

  Marianne, who had spent the last year getting to know the country and people of Alphenlicht, wasn’t that sure. She walked to the wall of French doors which opened from the small breakfast room onto the area of the Residence known as the ‘summer terrace.’ The other, larger, breakfast room opened onto the knot garden; the various dining rooms, of assorted sizes and degrees of formality, opened onto the rose garden, the water garden, and the sculpture terrace. This, the summer terrace, was much the nicest of the lot, she thought, with its own small fountain and reflecting pool, surrounded by shade-loving flowers and sheltered from the summer sun by the branches of an enormous oak.

  A low balustrade separated the terrace from the sloping grounds of the Residence. The orchard bloomed at the bottom of the slope, where the road ran off through fields and woods to what passed, in Alphenlicht, for a city. It was there that the House of Delegates met, there that Makr Avehl served as Hereditary Prime Minister for the Council of Kavi, made up of largely hereditary religious dignitaries. Makr Avehl called the form of government a democratic parliamentary theocracy. Or a theocratic parliamentary democracy, or, sometimes, ‘that stubborn bunch of reactionaries,’ depending upon how he was feeling about it at the time.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to leave right now,’ Marianne said.

  He came up behind her and put his arms around her. ‘You’ll get no argument from me, love. The only real question is whether you want to write to your great-aunt and tell her that.’

  ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I really can’t do that.’

  ‘I didn’t think you could.’

  ‘She wants me to do something weird, you know. Otherwise she’d ask Father.’

  ‘I rather guessed that from the letter.’

  ‘Perhaps it will be something I’d rather not do while I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Then you’ll do it later, when you’re not pregnant. The point is that Great-aunt Dagma won’t be around later to tell you whatever it is she wants done. She has to do that now, while she has time.’

  ‘You’re so sensible,’ she told him, burrowing into his chest. ‘Such a sensible, practical man.’

  He, remembering certain wildly impractical and totally unsensible things from their separate and collective pasts, chose to say nothing at all about that. ‘Remember,’ he whispered. ‘If there’s anything troublesome, you’re to let me know at once. And there’s always the Cave of Light.’

  There was indeed the Cave of Light, the heartstone of the Alphenlicht theocratic system, a kind of national soothsaying machine, a natural source of augury. ‘Do you think I should go there before I make the trip?’ she asked. ‘Would it be a good idea?’

  ‘It’s always a good idea. Call up whats-her-name…’

  ‘You know perfectly well what her name is. Her name is Therat. Why don’t you ever call her by her name, Makr Avehl?’

  ‘The name doesn’t suit her.’

  ‘It’s a little wildflower, isn’t it? A therat?’

  ‘There’s nothing flowery about her. The woman galls me. She’s never surprised at anything. Just once I’d like to take her totally unaware.’

  ‘You should be glad she foresees things.’

  ‘I suppose I should. Well, call Therat. Ask her to arrange a reading for you.’

  ‘I’ll do that if someone in your office will make plane reservations for me. Through Turkey, I suppose.’ Alphenlicht lay in a hidden twist of mountains at a place where the border of Turkey, Iran, and the USSR approached one another to the point of virtual overlap.

  ‘Not through Iran,’ he said. ‘It’s regimes like that that give theocracy a bad name.’ He rose, stretching, putting his papers together. It was difficult at the best of times for a small country – no, a tiny country – to maintain its neutrality or even its existence when surrounded by larger and far less sensible nations. However, Alphenlicht had been doing it for something over 1700 years, and Makr Avehl swore that with the help of the Cave, they would do it for 1700 more. Luckily, the mountainous little nation did not lie on any direct invasion route from any one of its neighbors to any other one. Isolated and serene – more or less – it continued in its own timeless
fashion while turmoil boiled around it.

  ‘I’ll have one of the choppers readied. You’ll want Aghrehond as pilot, won’t you?’

  ‘Amazing,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t think he’d really ever learn to fly those things.’

  ‘Took to it like a bird,’ he murmured. ‘He can fly you down to the airport at Van whenever you’re ready. And I want him to go with you, Marianne. No! Not a word. I can’t go just now, as you well know, but I’d rather you weren’t alone. Aghrehond will go, and that’s that. Besides, he’d be hurt if you didn’t ask him.

  ‘Now! I really must get myself to work…’

  ‘What are you working on?’

  ‘Well, the thing this morning is a meeting concerning disappearances!’

  ‘Disappearances? Who?’

  ‘People,’ he said vaguely. ‘They do, you know. Disappear. All the time. Young people run away from home, and older people get disgusted with life and go off to start over. It’s a well-known phenomenon, and no one in authority gets overly concerned about it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So this: lately a great many people seem to have been disappearing in ways no one can seem to explain! Threes and fours of them at a time. The disappearance rate has almost doubled.’

  ‘Here? In Alphenlicht?’

  ‘No. Not here. Not that I know of, at least. But in quite a lot of places. In the eastern part of the United States, particularly. And in England. And, funnily enough, in Japan. Some other places, too. None of the underdeveloped countries, however, which is rather interesting. At any rate, it’s become worrying enough that the United Nations is attempting to gather some data. I have a great, complicated questionnaire which a group of the Kavi are going to fill out this morning, and afternoon, from the look of the thing. Then, when that’s finished, we have a religious holiday to plan for.’

  ‘You always have at least one of those.’

  ‘Quite right. Every good theocracy should have at least one religious holiday looming on every horizon, and I’d better get to it or I’ll find myself supplanted by someone else…’

  He kissed her and bustled out, and a moment later Marianne saw the long, silver car slide effortlessly down the drive and away behind the apple trees of the distant orchard.

  ‘Would you care for anything else, ma’am?’ The serving maid was standing politely by the buffet, her hand on the silver coffeepot.

  ‘Thank you, Bella, no. You can clear. And would you find Aghrehond for me. And my secretary.’

  ‘My secretary.’ The words sounded slightly pretentious. It would have been better to say, ‘Janice,’ or ‘Thomas,’ or some other name. Except that she didn’t know what her secretary’s name was today. It would be one of the Kavi, one of the ruling class of Alphenlicht, probably a young one, though, on occasion, it had been someone old enough to be her grandparent. It was their way of getting to know her; their way of influencing her, giving her Alphenlichtian values.

  ‘You asked for me?’ said Therat, her slender young form poised gracefully in the doorway.

  ‘Therat! Don’t tell me you’re playing amanuensis!’

  ‘Um, well, I had a premonition.’

  ‘I wasn’t counting on a premonition.’ Marianne smiled warily at her, feeling more than slightly uncomfortable. Even though she had teased Makr Avehl about his attitude toward Therat, Marianne knew just how he felt. Therat might well have had a premonition; she was that kind of person. ‘But since you had one, what did it say?’

  ‘That you’d be taking a trip, that you’d want to visit the Cave first, and that you’d be somewhat troubled about it.’

  Wordlessly Marianne picked Great-aunt Dagma’s letter from the table and held it out. Therat took it, turning her piercing eyes upon it and letting Marianne off the hook of scrutiny she had felt herself hanging on ever since Therat came into the room. No, Therat was not surprised. Makr Avehl was quite right: Therat was never surprised at anything. Just once, Marianne would like to surprise her. Somehow Marianne could not imagine Therat being astonished. She couldn’t imagine Therat in love, or Therat pregnant, or Therat shaving her legs, or Therat taking a bath. She had tried, without success, to imagine Therat doing anything personal and intimate. One only saw the eyes, felt the mind, and was vaguely aware of the body that carried these around, like a kind of vehicle.

  ‘Do you care greatly for her?’ Therat asked. It was typical of her that her voice contained no sympathetic tones whatsoever.

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘Then I grieve for you.’ And it was equally typical that one knew she did, in her own way. ‘You’re going? When? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Whenever my “secretary” can call the Prime Minister’s office and check on the travel arrangements.’ Marianne smiled.

  ‘I’ll take care of it. However – Marianne…’

  ‘Yes, Therat.’

  ‘This tone in your great-aunt’s letter. Is she possibly involving you in something tha … in your present condition…’

  ‘Makr Avehl says to find out what she needs. I can always take care of it later, after I’m not in my present condition.’

  ‘Ah.’ Therat didn’t sound convinced. ‘Well, we’ll see what the Cave has to say.’

  ‘Will you ask someone to send a message, please, telling my great-aunt that I am coming.’

  And after that she took the time to speak to her maid Renee about packing. She did not want to make a major production of it. It was not to be a very social visit, after all. She would need something flowing and pretty for dinners. She would need several practical things – equally flowing, considering her shape – for daytime. Despite Renee’s expostulations, Marianne insisted that she keep the luggage to a minimum: one case and a makeup kit.

  In mid-afternoon, Marianne went with Therat to the Cave, driven by Aghrehond the first part of the way, walking up the last bit of winding path to the tunnel mouth. As she always did when she came here, Marianne stood for a moment on the doorstep of the mountain, looking up and around her at the prominence beneath which the Cave lay. A hill, large and pleasantly wooded, full of little valleys and gullies, decked with clearings and copses, wandered over by deer and goats and occasional hunters. Beneath the hill, far beneath, was a cavern, and winding down to that cavern were hundreds of twisting worm holes lined with mica which reflected the surface light deep into the cave that lay at the center of the mountain. Holes that reflected light, here and there. Now and then. On this spot and on that.

  And there, far underground, every square inch of the cavern was carved and painted with symbols and pictures and words and numbers, so that the light fell, inevitably, on some sign or omen. Never twice the same, so said the canon of the Kavi.

  And certainly Marianne had never seen it twice the same. She shook her head at the sunlit foliage and followed Therat into the lamplit tunnel and down it into the lantern-spotted darkness.

  ‘Ah, pretty lady,’ said Aghrehond, ‘it makes a spookiness, does it not, a kind of ghosty feeling to come into this darkness.’

  ‘Reverence,’ said Therat in a no-nonsense-now kind of voice. ‘That would be a more proper emotion.’

  ‘Perhaps proper, for members of the priesthood, for those worshipful ones who guide and protect us, but for me, a driver of vehicles, a mere carrier from place to place, for me it makes a genuine shiver, Therat.’ His large form quivered beside Marianne and he grinned at her as he put one great hand beneath her elbow, guiding her. To hear Aghrehond, he was the worst coward in the country. To recall what he actually did – that was another matter.

  A simple stone altar stood at the center of the cave. They set their lanterns upon it and turned them off. Marianne, with only partial success, tried to assume the vacant, waiting frame of mind which the Kavi asserted was appropriate for visits to the Cave. Aghrehond, beside her, seemed under no such stricture. He was humming, very softly, under his breath. From Therat, not a sound. The darkness was full of darting spots of light, false impressions of light left when the lantern
was turned off. Gradually the darkness took their place.

  Marianne breathed deeply, folded her hands, and went through the formula silently. ‘I seek guidance. I seek knowledge. I seek that which will avoid harm to living things. I seek not for selfish purposes but for the good of all…’

  ‘A roadway,’ said Therat in her emotionless voice. Marianne searched through the darkness, finding the beam of light at last where it swam with dust motes. The cave wall where it made a tiny, irregular circle was carved with something. Marianne would have said it was a snake, but Therat knew every symbol. If she said it was a road, it was a road!

  Marianne breathed deeply again. A usual reading was considered to be three or four signs.

  ‘A leopard,’ said Therat, sounding puzzled. ‘No, a demon, no, a leopard.’ There was something in her voice that made Marianne think Therat would have used an obscenity if they were somewhere else. Then she said, ‘I don’t understand this one at all…’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘And finally a rope,’ said Therat finally, leaning forward to turn on the lantern once more.

  ‘Was it a cat thing or a demon thing, Highmost Kavi,’ asked Aghrehond in his bantering tone. ‘You seemed unable to make up your mind.’

  ‘Look for yourself,’ said Therat. ‘Here,’ she pointed to a place on the wall where a carved leopard – one assumed it was a leopard, as it had a spotted coat – was surrounded on three sides by devil faces. ‘The light overlapped. First on the cat, then on the face, then back again, wavering. Most unusual. Not the most unusual thing about this particular reading, however. Look over here. The light lit this place.’ She pointed.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ said Marianne in surprise.

  ‘Exactly. There’s nothing there. There was something there until last week. There was a carving of a flowerpot there. But the man who came in to clean the floors knocked over his little cart, and it bumped just there, knocking the carving to bits. So! Does this reading mean that the flowerpot was supposed to be there? Or that nothing was supposed to be there? And if nothing, then what does that mean?’ Therat sounded excessively annoyed.