A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  She said, “I’d like to know what countries are where! What’s south of Artemisia? What lies east and west?”

  “As to that,” said Coyote, “High Mesiko lies south of Artemisia, and south of that Low Mesiko, both populated by small busy brown people in temple towns. East begins a wilderness of forests, going on forever, where the Black clans and the White clans make their clearings and plant their crops. West of here is the Place of Power, and beyond that is the country of the Sisters and the Guardians, who live among the high mountains, and beyond that the dry desert and then more mountains and the seashore, where the yellow people live in boat-bottomed towns.”

  “I know of that place beside the Faulty Sea. Oracle came from there, though she’s more sort of tan than yellow. And hearing about it is interesting, but it doesn’t take the place of a map.”

  Coyote said, “My hermit said no one is allowed to make maps now. Those who burn the books also destroy maps. If people do not have maps, they are less likely to travel. If they travel seldom, they stay on the roads. The Guardians do not like them going off the roads. Or the Sisters to Trees, either.”

  “Besides,” said Abasio, “people are safer from monsters on the roads.”

  “That’s true,” said a familiar voice from among the trees. To a jingle of bells, Black Owl stepped out of their shade. “Monsters generally avoid the roads.”

  Coyote ducked beneath the wagon and curled up behind a wheel.

  Olly cried, “It’s like a puzzle! No maps, so nobody leaves the roads! No old books, so nobody wonders what happened or what used to be! Why would that be?”

  “You won’t solve the puzzle by shouting,” said Abasio, looking around with a slightly furtive air.

  “True,” remarked Black Owl, with a laugh.

  “It’s very nice to see you again,” said Olly, remembering her manners. “We didn’t expect you.”

  “I’ve come to show the young man the wonders and delights of Artemisia!”

  Abasio mumbled, “I should—stay with her.”

  “Oh, no. Arakny is coming to talk with her, woman talk, probably. We would only be in the way.”

  Coyote moved restlessly, glaring at Olly. She ignored him.

  “Go on, Abasio,” Olly said. “I’ll wait here for what’s-her-name.”

  “Arakny,” said a voice from among the nearby trees. “Arakny, the librarian.”

  She came from the wind-flickered shade to join them, a slender woman, no longer quite young, her dress and boots of fringed sheepskin, her graying hair in braids, one of Olly’s scarves loosely knotted around her neck.

  She gave them both a long looking-over before waving Abasio and Black Owl away, like a mother shooing out the children. “Go, now. Olly and I have much to talk about.”

  They went off, Abasio turning to look over his shoulder at them. Coyote peered through the wheel spokes, his eyes alert. Olly saw Arakny watching Coyote, a strange expression on her face. Amusement, perhaps?

  If so, Arakny said nothing about it as she turned and looked over the horse and the wagon, the wood basket and grill on its side.

  “Why don’t you build a fire and we’ll have tea?” she suggested. “Do you have chairs?”

  “Folding ones, up top,” Olly remarked as she went obediently to the wood basket. “I have woodmint, or raspberry, or chamomile.”

  “Woodmint. It’s soothing to the nerves.” Without ado, Arakny climbed atop the wagon and lowered two of the folding chairs old Cermit had made, bent wood and laced rawhide. She hefted them approvingly, judging them to be both comfortable and light.

  “You’ve come to ask about the thrones,” she said when Olly had set the kettle to boil and the pot ready beside it. “It isn’t but once in a coon’s age someone comes to ask about the thrones. Those who do, so it is said, have reason to ask, for they are of a thronish kindred.”

  Olly turned to her in astonishment. “Others? Besides me?”

  “So our library records. Every now and then. From here, from there. A woman or a man will show up, asking about the thrones, for they’ve had a prophecy or a dream or a vision of one kind or another. What was it with you?”

  Olly paused only momentarily before deciding upon the truth. “A prophecy. Told by an Oracle, in an archetypal village. I was the Orphan there.”

  “And this old aunty whom your friend mentioned to Mother?”

  “Was the Oracle. The only aunty I ever had.”

  “Ah.” Arakny leaned back and looked up at the sky through the glittering leaves. “It is said the thrones are at the Place of Power, but I’ve never seen them there. Or heard of anyone who has.”

  “ ‘it is said, it is said,’ ” muttered Olly in an annoyed voice. “By whom is it said?”

  “By our library,” said Arakny, shifting the kettle a finger’s width on the grill and whistling tunelessly between her teeth.

  “Look,” said Olly with some irritation, “either you tell me what you know or you don’t. I didn’t have a lot of sleep last night, and there’s no point in my struggling to stay awake when I’m learning absolutely nothing!”

  “I’m not holding back. I’m just deciding where to begin. I guess I begin when man went to the stars.”

  “That seems to be where everything begins,” snarled Olly. “I’m really sick of hearing about when men went to the stars. We seem to date everything from that, as though it were the single important event in history, and it isn’t even our history. It’s theirs, the ones who went!”

  “That event happens to be central to our current thinking, nonetheless,” Arakny said crisply. “Central, because it both relieves us and tantalizes us.”

  Olly cocked her head. “Relieves us?”

  “We who remain behind. The fact that man has already gone to the stars relieves the rest of us of the responsibility for being intrepid and marvelous. Of becoming something wonderful Of seeding the universe with intelligence.”

  “I didn’t know we were responsible for that.”

  “Many philosophers thought so, for generations. They wrote so. They claimed that that was the purpose of man, why he had license to use up the world as a chick uses up its egg: so we could hatch from it. So we could leave it behind, like a broken shell.”

  Olly sighed. “I can see people believing that. But once it’s been done, the rest of us can just live. Even though we have only the eggshell to live on.”

  “The rest of us can just live. We in Artemisia do just live, making the most of our eggshell and being quite sure that other living things are allowed to live also. Our country is based upon that principle. But still we’re tantalized by questions our library doesn’t answer. Like: Why didn’t everyone go?”

  “You wonder how they chose who went and who stayed?”

  “Yes, we wonder that. What gave them the right to leave some of us here?” She stirred the fire, pushing an unburned branch farther into the flame. “Also, why haven’t some of them come back to fetch the rest of us? Or why haven’t they sent us word where they ended up?”

  “Maybe they’re still on their way,” murmured Olly, remembering things Burned Man had told her. “I had a friend, an ex-Edger, who said it would take men generations to reach even the nearest stars.”

  Arakny sighed. “Perhaps that’s it. Whatever the reasons, our library speaks of the chaos of that time, nations falling apart, holes opening up in the sky-blanket, all the forests being destroyed. And it goes on to say that in a place of power, there rose up three great thrones.”

  “A place of power. Are there more than one? Is it a different place of power from the one you know?”

  “I don’t know. Now, some versions mention only the thrones. Others say that upon them sat three great and ancient rulers who would bring order and hope to the world. As a librarian, I find no dichotomy between the versions, for in olden books thrones has more than one meaning. In some cases, thrones meant beings, not chairs.”

  “Beings?”

  “An order of angels.”

>   “Surely angels are mythical!”

  Arakny laughed shortly. “At one time ogres were thought to be mythical, and trolls, and dragons. At any rate, in some old books, thrones were a very high order of angels, just below the cherubim and seraphim.”

  “What did the thrones do?”

  Arakny shrugged. “They came to restore the balance, so the old stories say. The world was out of balance, so the thrones rose up to restore it.”

  “How?”

  Arakny shrugged again. “I’ve sought the answer to that in the library, without success.”

  “If they arose to restore balance,” Olly said in her most reasonable voice, “then they must have made some changes. So what changed at that time?”

  Arakny stretched widely. “So many things. Archetypal villages were set up. Monsters returned. The eastern cities died, and those on the western sea.” She rose to take up the steaming kettle and rinse out the pot before adding the tea leaves and pouring the boiling water over them. “The fifty-year rule happened then, and the name changes.”

  “I know about the fifty-year rule, but name changes?”

  “Teams of people changed the names of things, or places. Sometimes they took away the names of cities, or streets, or even whole territories.”

  “What do you mean? How can you—”

  “Well, let’s say a clan has always lived in a place they call. Sacred-home-of-our-fathers, but the clan moves away because there’s a drought. Somebody else moves into that same place, and they call it. New-home-of-our-people’s-gods. Then the first clan comes back Both groups say that place belongs to them. Both claim a holy right to the same territory, and they’re killing each other over it. Then one morning, a team shows up and tells them they can’t call it either one of those names anymore. They have to call it. This - quite - ordinary - and - not - very - attractive - place -that - is - disputed - because - of - intermittent - habitation -patterns - due - to - conflict - and - climatic - changes.”

  “Which makes oratory somewhat difficult,” Olly said with an appreciative grin.

  “Well, it certainly doesn’t make a good war cry! If they persist in fighting, then the teams come back and take other names and words away. Words like invaders and enemy and terrorist and retaliation. Anyone who says those words falls asleep for days and days.”

  “How do they do that?”

  “I haven’t any idea, even though it once happened to us. We didn’t used to be Artemisians. We used to be Dine, and Zuni, and Hopi, and Apache, and Ute. Some of us were Tewa or Tiwa or Anglo or Hispanic. We all had separate languages and separate histories and rituals. Some of us had books, and some of us had oral traditions, some of us had sandpaintings and some of us had dances; and we were all fighting over who had which bit of land or how much water we could use from the river. So the name-change team took all our fighting words away, and when we couldn’t say the words anymore, we couldn’t fight over it.”

  “But you can say the words now!”

  “Nobody gets mad about them now. People only fell asleep over words that made them angry. Angry enough to kill people over.”

  Olly shook her head in bewilderment. “Then why didn’t they do it with the gangs in the cities of manland, where everybody’s always fighting and killing one another?”

  Arakny furrowed her brow and made a rocking motion with one hand, maybe this, maybe that. “Wide Mountain Mother says the name-change teams were only interested in certain places. Places along the western sea, and Artemisia, and in the Mesikos. It’s like when we bring certain animals back. We don’t put them everywhere. Just certain places, appropriate places.…”

  Her voice trailed off into quiet, and she stared musingly into the smoke. “We don’t put mountain goats on the prairies or bison on the peaks. Each thing to its proper place. It’s probable that there are proper places for man and places man should stay out of.” She sighed. “Anyhow, the name-change teams came from the Place of Power. I’ve been to the Place of Power—well, to the marketplace outside—but I’ve never seen or heard of any thrones there.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  Arakny measured tea into the pot and poured boiling water over it. She shrugged. “I don’t know that, as an absolute. I’m only quoting what our library says.”

  “Is that all it says?”

  “No. That’s merely all it says to me. It may say something else to you.”

  Olly gave her a puzzled look. “Well then, I’d like to—go there, see what more there is,” Olly said.

  “You don’t need to go there. It has already come to you.”

  “I don’t understand,” she gaped.

  “It has come to you. I bring the library.” Arakny reached into her pocket and brought out a small packet, the size and shape of a not-very-thick book. Attached to it was a silvery mass, like a number of linked chains. Arakny flipped them open with one hand, and they locked into the semblance of a lacy cap. “It is here.”

  “A library!”

  “More than one. All the libraries we’ve collected since men went to the stars. And not only books but songs and stories and paintings and dances, all the tales and histories, however told, however remembered.”

  “So when the book-burning teams come—”

  “They burn books. They do not look in librarians’ pockets. They do not burn this.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “We get them from an Edge. They make marvelous things in the Edges. This library can record words or sights or smells. Anything I can sense, the library can pick up. It can read books. There’s an attachment to turn pages. It can read tapes and discs and cubes. It’s a marvelous thing!”

  “You have more than one of these?”

  “Every librarian has one, plus there are a few extras. They can all be linked, too, so that information that one has can be shared among all of them.”

  “May I?” Olly asked, pointing to the silvery cap.

  “Oh, indeed,” said Arakny. “You may make your way through the library while I have tea. And when you have finished, we will join your friend at the men’s houses on the height.”

  Arakny helped her put on the cap and showed her the controls on the side of the packet. “It’s just an on-off switch. When you turn it on, you think your question. The library gives you what information it has on your question, which leads you to another question, and so on. Some people spend days hooked up to it.”

  “Days,” breathed Olly.

  Arakny patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m here. I’ll take care of you I won’t let you starve.”

  In the marketplace outside the Place of Power, Tom Fuelry and Qualary Finch wandered among the booths, buying a bit of this and a bit of that. Though they met often by appointment and had become close friends—which is what Qualary insisted they were, no more than that—Tom had formed the habit of showing up in this neutral territory to meet her as though by accident. This was for her protection, in case she should ever need to say how she had met him or come to know him. At least, so Tom believed, ignoring the pleasure he took in her public person, which was quite distinct from her private one. In private she had become wanton, luxurious, instinctive, ignoring everything around her as she focused completely on appetites she had never known she had. In public she was as alert as a little squirrel, noticing everything that went on around her and commenting humorously on it under her breath, a running monologue that delighted him. As he had commented to Nimwes, it was like being in love with two different women without the complications of infidelity.

  Today she was commenting on the weather, the shoppers, and the goods offered for sale, and he was trundling along behind her, listening with enjoyment, when she stopped so suddenly that he almost ran into her.

  “What?” he said, following her gaze.

  “Something,” she muttered. “Oh, Tom.”

  She was staring fixedly into the sheltered space made by two vehicles parked at right angles where half a dozen childre
n, Domer children and outsiders, had drawn a circle in the dirt and were playing marbles. So much Tom saw at once, though it took him a moment more to see what had attracted Qualary’s attention.

  Near the vehicles, almost hidden by them, stood a black-helmed walker. There were other walkers scattered throughout the market, but for the most part they were behaving as walkers did, either standing totally immobile or striding about on their incomprehensible business. The one Qualary was watching, however, was acting as no walker had ever acted. It was twitching. It bent its head jerkily forward, then back. Its arms flicked forward, then back. The children, who were only a few feet away, did not seem to notice it. They went on playing, moving around their circle, their voices rising in derision or complaint, while the walker grew more and more agitated.

  One of the players made a good shot, jumped to his feet, and waved his arms in self-congratulation as he gave a victory yell.

  “You will surrender!” the walker shouted suddenly, darting forward to grasp the waving child by the shoulder. “You will surrender!”

  The child screamed as he went up into the air, suspended by the shoulder. He screamed again. There was a noise, a cracking, as of a dry stick broken, then the child went flying even as the walker moved forward again. Another child flew screaming through the air to strike the pillar of stone where the first one lay unmoving. Several onlookers howled with rage as the walker teetered and jittered, shouting at the remaining cowering children, “You will surrender, render, render, render!”

  A flung stone caught the walker on the head. It turned and began to stalk the thrower, only to be overwhelmed from behind by three large men who bore the walker onto the stony ground and began bashing it with whatever stones or tools had been closest to hand.

  Qualary ran to the place the children lay, joining a mixed group already there, Domers, Gaddirs, and outsiders, women weeping, other children screaming in dismay.

  An Artemisian woman still holding the skeins of wool she had come to sell stood up from the crumpled bodies and said in an expressionless voice, “Both. Gone.”