Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Brooding silence, the surface of their awareness quivering in little wavelets of consciousness. Everything had been said except the thing they most wanted to know, and no one knew the answer to that question. After a long time of quiet, Sovawanea rose and came to each of them, hugging, laying her hands on them.

  “We must part now. We must return to our own lives. I wish I knew about Sophy, but I don’t. We must move on without her.”

  “But we won’t just let you go,” cried Jessamine, taking Sovawanea’s hand. “We’ll come back to hammer on your gates, Sovawanea. We’ll walk around yelling.”

  “Come all you like.” She smiled sadly. “We won’t be here. Whenever we disclose ourselves, as rarely we have done, we assume that discovery will follow. Our mutual enemy does not know about us, but perhaps you will be forced to tell him. We would be anathema to him, and we do not intend to be here if and when he comes looking.”

  “You couldn’t fight him?” asked Faye.

  “We don’t know. Long ago, past memory or record, there may have been times that we did, but we have only old tales and tags, out of ancient times. Every brute has a bane, so our saying goes. In your language, we would say:

  “To every brute a bane.

  If both brute and bane are found,

  And summoned onto holy ground,

  brute may be slain.

  “So it is said in legend. You have similar stories about vampires. Well, he is a kind of interstellar vampire.”

  “What is the bane for this brute?” interrupted Faye.

  “I don’t know. I know only that Sophy asked Sovanuan to help you find it.”

  “And will she help us?”

  “Wisdom’s face is always veiled. Who knows?”

  She kissed them once more, putting her finely scaled lips to their cheeks, then departed, going out and away, leaving the DFC to sit silently staring after her.

  “It is early morning out there,” said Padre Josephus, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “As soon as you are ready, I will take you back to your car.”

  He turned and trudged away. Carolyn went after him, out into the road.

  “That creature out there. He will find us,” said Carolyn. It was something she couldn’t say to the others, scarcely dared admit to herself.

  Padre Josephus nodded. “True. But his kingdom is falling apart. He has fed well on the pain he causes women, but he depends for that pain on the hatred felt by his followers; and they do not hate as strongly now as they did a few months or even a few days ago. Still, you’re right. He will find you, Carolyn. Sooner or later he will find you all.”

  “It sounds fairly hopeless,” she murmured, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

  He patted her arm. “I raised her from a baby, the one you call Sophy. I know her, better even than they do.” He gestured toward the village. “Better even than her sister. Sophy is like the metal you heat and quench and heat and quench. She is strong. Out there, in the desert, she learned things even these don’t know. In the pain of battle, you remember her. You call upon her.” He raised the patting hand to her cheek, as though to comfort a child. “You call upon her.”

  She turned toward the others, who were just now coming out of the house. There was already someone standing by the door of the bus, and for a moment Carolyn couldn’t think who it was. Then she remembered. Lolly. Of course. She’d completely forgotten about Lolly.

  At the airport, Webster had given Keepe, Martin, and Jagger their instructions and had then left them, to attend, so he said, to important business elsewhere.

  A few miles south of Albuquerque, the three men had picked up the signal from Carolyn’s borrowed vehicle and had followed it, not too closely, until the signal had stopped moving. It was dusk by then. They had circled under the darkening sky, using the light and looking for any sign of the women without seeing anything at all. When it was obvious that searching would do no good, they had landed and all three of them had simply sat in the machine, quite sleepless, motionless, waiting. Keepe was no less silent than Martin, and they both no less silent than Jagger, who might as well have been dead except for his shallow breathing and his restlessly twitching eyes.

  When first light came, they rose as one organism might have done, summoned up like so many extra arms or legs, returned to life by the will of the one they followed. They took off into the pale dawn, and soon Martin located the area where Ophy had thrown the transmitter. He brought the chopper down, found the transmitter, picked it up, turned it off, and then joined Keepe in exploring the area around it. Jagger prowled like an automaton, but he perceived no more than the others. He was only a shell of a man, stretched around some small core of being in which ambition still burned sullenly, like a damped fire, the coals of himself flaring now and again into flames of denial: It couldn’t be over. There had to be some way of retrieving the situation. If he found the women. If only he could find the women …

  “There’s nothing down here,” murmured Keepe. He was still capable of feeling fear, and he felt it now. Webster wanted there to be something, and Webster should, at all costs, have what he wanted. “Nothing at all here, Martin.”

  “Martin, can you track them?” Jagger asked in a toneless voice.

  Martin hid his surprise. This was the first thing Jagger had said since yesterday, and Martin had thought it unlikely he would ever speak again. He shook his head, avoiding Jagger’s eyes. “I’m no tracker, Mr. Jagger. Sorry. I see only what you do. There was gusty wind last night and this morning. If they went up out of this gully into the wind, it probably wiped out their tracks. They took their stuff, so they plan to be away for a while.”

  “There’s no town within walking distance? No resort, ranch, anything?”

  “A ranch back east some miles. Nothing else I know of. Nothing on the maps and nothing we’ve seen from the air.”

  “Could they have gone underground? Caverns around here, aren’t there?”

  “Not that I know of, but I suppose it could be possible. This area isn’t all that different from the Carlsbad area, and there are all kinds of caverns there.”

  These questions had been all Jagger was capable of. They had exhausted him. He had no sense of the presence of the women the way he had sometimes sensed the presence of people, his mother, his wife. Still, seven women could not just disappear into nothing. Eventually, they would emerge from whatever hole they had crawled into.

  He approached the chopper, summoning the will to mumble, “Martin? Did they say when they were getting back?”

  “She told her husband they’d be back today or call him today. She told him if they didn’t get back or call today, he’s to send somebody looking for them.”

  “Well, then,” said Jagger, forcing his mind to work, his tongue to obey. “We’ll go back there. They’ll get back there today, or tonight, or they’ll call and say where they are. And the three of us will be waiting for them. They can be questioned there as well as here.”

  Keepe whined, “Shouldn’t we wait here? What if they come back past here with the other one? Or what if they come back past here without her, but they know where she is?”

  “Besides, there’ll be people at the woman’s farm,” said Martin, staring at Jagger’s unblinking form, nothing of him moving except one tiny muscle near his left eye, which twitched again and again, like something trying desperately to get loose. “Three or four others besides the women.”

  Jake shrugged. So there would be others besides the women. Even if there were many, it wouldn’t matter. Did anything matter?

  He said, “They may not be back this way. We could sit here all day while they may be long gone. But we know they’ll go back to Santa Fe. If they know where she is, we’ll make them tell us.”

  “Are you going to let Webster know?” asked Keepe. It was totally essential that Webster know everything—every thought, every intention.

  “Of course,” said Jake. “Of course I’ll let him know.” After Jake had made Carolyn Crespin t
ell him everything he needed to know, and after Jake had found the other woman, and after … and Webster would congratulate Jake on a job well done. And Webster would reinstate him as a candidate. And today would be a bad dream, forgotten, and everything would be as it had been before.…

  Wordlessly, the three men got into the machine and lifted away to the north.

  THE BUS ARRIVED AT THE Land Rover quite early on what Padre Josephus assured them was only Thursday morning, seemingly too short a time for so much to have happened. As Carolyn was about to leave the bus, she turned to Padre Josephus and asked:

  “Helen. My friend. Where is she?”

  “Better you don’t know where she is. She is safe.”

  “Safe? Forever?”

  He shook his head. “Safe for now. Who knows about forever?”

  He lifted his hand in farewell, then drove away, the bus becoming a dwindling yellow dot upon the desert. Carolyn had half expected an ambush at the car, but no one was there. They loaded themselves and their belongings rather wearily. Carolyn made a wide loop into the desert and headed back the way they had come. Most of them slept, including Lolly, and Carolyn woke Jessamine to take over the driving when she felt herself dozing behind the wheel.

  They reached Animas at about nine. Carolyn stopped to call Hal and tell him they would be home around six.

  “What did you find, sweetheart?”

  “Hal, you won’t believe me when I tell you. I’m not even sure I do, and it’s way too much to try to tell now.”

  “I’ll have supper waiting. You sound tired, so you all drive carefully, now.”

  They did drive carefully, trading off, one napping while another drove. They stopped in Deming to buy gas and use the rest room.

  “What are we going to say about what happened?” Ophy wanted to know as they climbed back into the car. “Are we going to tell?”

  “I suppose we could tell some people,” said Faye. “Sovawanea told us they’re leaving.”

  “Tell only those we trust,” muttered Carolyn. “But no one else. Or they’ll lock us all up in the loony bin.”

  “And what do we do about Webster?” Bettiann asked.

  Silence. None of them had the least idea.

  When they stopped in Albuquerque, Carolyn phoned home once more, telling herself that something might be needed for supper: milk, perhaps, or vegetables. No one answered her bedroom phone. She tried the other number, and Stace answered, a Stace who sounded most unlike herself.

  “I’m in Albuquerque, Stace. Should we pick up anything as we come through Santa Fe?” Carolyn asked, concentrating on Stace’s voice, afraid to know what that voice wasn’t saying.

  “No, I can’t think of anything.” The words were mechanical, impersonal, and false. Totally false. Like a computer voice.

  “Stace …?”

  “Yes.” The word was laden with weariness and hopelessness.

  Comprehension flooded up around Carolyn, an absolute cold-blooded certainty. “Didn’t you want me to pick up some hairpins like Grandma’s? You said you wanted some.”

  “That would be nice.”

  Carolyn swallowed deeply. All she could think of was the look Jagger had given her during the trial. That look of obdurate enmity and utter resolution. She swallowed painfully and made herself ask, “How’s Luce’s bionics project coming?”

  “It’s coming fine.”

  Carolyn went back to the car where all but Lolly were walking out the kinks. “Someone’s at the farm. In the house, with Stace and Hal. Jagger, I imagine.” The words hurt her throat.

  “Stace said so?” Faye demanded.

  “I offered to stop on the way and get her some hairpins like mine.”

  “So?”

  “Mine are my grandmother’s. Tortoiseshell. She knows what they are. She’s quite critical of my using them, but she said fine, get her some.”

  “Is that all?” asked Ophy.

  “That and saying Luce’s bionics project was coming along fine. He doesn’t have a bionics project.”

  “My God,” breathed Jessamine.

  “Bettiann, can you call your husband and have him send the plane to the airport here in Santa Fe—”

  “It’s already there, Carolyn.”

  “Then all of you get on it, including Lolly.”

  “Not me,” said Faye. “My maquette is in the back of my van, and I’ve got a deadline.”

  “Not me,” said Ophy, staring at Faye. “Unfinished business.”

  Carolyn cried frantically, “If you won’t go home, you must stay away from the farm! It’s important that you not be where you can be got at, don’t you understand? It’s important we limit the number of people who might be taken as hostages.”

  “Us?” Agnes laughed without humor. “Hostages? For what?”

  “So they can find out what we know! We’ll have to agree on a story, but the fewer people who tell it, the less likely we are to get tripped up.”

  Bettiann said, “We’re not going to leave you alone, Carolyn.”

  “It’s all right,” said Carolyn.

  “It’s not all right,” said Faye. “It’s dangerous. We need to do something to guarantee they don’t hurt you or take you away from there!”

  “I’d been thinking about that,” she said. “I’ve got an old friend I thought I’d call.”

  “Carolyn. An old friend. One person?”

  “He … he knows other people.”

  “William could—”

  “We don’t have time for William to do anything! I don’t want anyone else to know anything about this, can’t you all understand that? We don’t want other people brought into it. It isn’t just me and Stace and Luce and Hal and you. It’s the world! It’s hundreds of thousands of young women sleeping their lives away in pods and all other women dead, gone, vanished! It’s whatever Sophy managed to do to prevent that.”

  “You’re sure she’s prevented it?” Aggie asked almost angrily. “You’re positive?”

  “Of course I’m sure! Aren’t you, Aggie? In your heart, don’t you know that she has done something wonderful and miraculous? Nothing must interfere with whatever she’s done, can’t you see? He mustn’t find out!”

  They stared, white-faced, Aggie still angry, her eyes slitted.

  “You don’t still think she’s a devil or something, do you?” Ophy asked. “Aggie, you don’t.”

  “No,” said Aggie grudgingly. “But I don’t think she’s an angel, either.”

  “Nobody ever said—”

  “All right,” cried Carolyn. “Now isn’t the time.”

  Bettiann said, “All right, Carolyn. I just don’t think you ought to have to carry this alone.”

  She said tiredly, “I won’t carry it alone. Faye will carry her part, and so will Ophy and the rest of you. Even Aggie will snap out of it here in a little while and figure out that she’s going to carry a part, no matter what Sophy was. We saw the place ourselves. We saw what Webster plans. Whatever Sophy was or wasn’t, we know what he is!”

  She went back to the phone to make a call, which turned into several calls. Bettiann and Faye took the opportunity to make a quick trip across the street to a convenient car-rental agency.

  “She can go it alone all she likes,” Faye muttered, “but I’m not going to leave it that way! There’ll be a car waiting for us at the Eldorado Hotel in Santa Fe.”

  When Carolyn returned from the phone, they piled back into the car.

  “Listen,” she said. “We’ve got to have a story we can agree on.”

  “Story?” asked Aggie. “You mean a lie.”

  “I prefer to call it a cover story, Aggie. You don’t have to tell it, of course. You can choose to remain silent. Or you can sic Webster on Sova’s people. The rest of us may not be either that resolute or that … ungrateful.”

  “What story?” Ophy asked, putting her hand on Carolyn’s shoulder.

  Carolyn chewed her lip. “Okay. If someone asks. We didn’t find Sophy. We did find an ol
d man who knew her family, and he told us she died.”

  “What about the … you know?” asked Jessamine.

  “There was no you know. Aggie misinterpreted what she saw in San Francisco. Sophy was really just … miming her comment on the whole business of genetic engineering. When you took that vial back to the lab, Jessamine, it was still sealed.”

  Jessamine demanded, “So what took us overnight? We were gone overnight.”

  “Damn.”

  Faye nodded. “We obviously don’t want to tell Jagger or whomever about Tess and her people. So where were we?”

  Carolyn scowled. “Right. Ah. The old man offered to take us to Sophy’s grave. It wasn’t far. So we hiked there and had a kind of vigil in her memory. Aggie said a prayer. We talked about our memories of her.”

  The rest nodded. Aggie asked, “What if he wants you to tell him where it is?”

  Carolyn shook her head. “I don’t know. The old man took us right around sundown. We just followed him up into the hills. We walked for over an hour. He showed us the grave. There was a boulder there, unshaped stone, with her name carved on it, spelled out. The stone was gray with lichens on it. We picked some wildflowers to put on her grave—let’s see … some yellow ones—and by then it was too dark to come back, so we spent the night, then he led us back to the car early this morning.”

  They glanced at one another, then agreed.

  “Let’s get on the way,” said Carolyn. “The timing should work out about right.”

  “Timing?”

  “My helpers need some time to make arrangements and then get to the farm. They’ll have to go from across town.”

  The others said nothing, merely stared at one another grimly. Lolly raised her head from her nest of coats and peered around herself, rather blearily. Carolyn realized for the first time that Lolly was a loose cannon. They couldn’t depend on her. On the other hand, she hadn’t really seen anything.…

  “Are you feeling all right?” Ophy asked her.

  “Sure,” the girl said in a distant voice. “Sure. Why not?”