Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Carolyn gargled hoarsely, astonished at the pain in her throat, as though she had gasped her way across a desert. “Ophy. My family’s in the study. I think Hal’s hurt.” She looked at her watch, feeling guilty for the time that had passed, then confused that no time had passed. No time at all.

  Ophy and Jessamine hurried off down the hall, followed by Faye. Aggie and Bettiann helped Lolly get up, then walked her into the adjacent dining room. Carolyn and Josh were left alone.

  Carolyn asked, “You want some coffee, Josh?”

  “I could sure use a drink.”

  “Better avoid that. We don’t want an accident on your way down south.”

  “Right. Coffee, then. I’ll have the drink later.”

  Ophy put her head in the door. “Stace and Luce had already called for an ambulance,” she told Carolyn. “They say Hal was hit on the head. I don’t think his condition is serious, but let’s not take the chance. There’s a wound on Stace’s head that needs some stitches, too. I’ll go with them to the hospital when the ambulance gets here.”

  She went back to the den. Carolyn thought of going with her, discarded the idea. Ophy would care for Hal better than Carolyn could. Ophy would look after Stace’s cuts and bruises. She, Carolyn, had to stay there, see that all went as planned. She put the coffee on to brew, asking, “What do their pods say, Josh?”

  “Fifty years, murder of a police officer. FAT.”

  “That isn’t what Teo was in for.”

  “I faked up some New Mexico conviction forms, then some add-on-sentence forms from Montana and Florida and Kansas and Illinois. They’re all in the files, out at the jail. I didn’t do the FUD forms, though. With no federal forms, there can’t be any federal audits, like.” He seemed almost euphoric, totally relaxed.

  “How do you feel?” she asked curiously.

  “I feel … like I could fly. First time I’ve really felt good about those pods, you know.”

  “And where do they go now?”

  “Down to the Waste Impoundment Pilot Program.” He savored each syllable lovingly. “Down to WIPP. Underground. Way back in the salt caves. With the rest of the waste.”

  She dug out a thermos, poured the freshly brewed coffee, added milk and sugar. “I suppose the pods could stay there forever.”

  “No reason why not.”

  If Webster’s body was immortal, if he couldn’t leave it so long as it was alive, certainly no reason why not.

  “Long trip, Josh. Thank you.”

  “Thank you.” He grinned. “First time I’ve felt useful in ages.”

  The truck pulled out of the drive only a few minutes before the ambulance arrived. When it left, Ophy and Jessamine followed it, Ophy in her own rental car, followed by Jessamine, returning the one they’d picked up at the hotel.

  Stace came into the kitchen, Luce’s arm around her.

  “What did you do with those men?”

  Carolyn equivocated. “They’ve gone. They realized we didn’t know anything about anything. Really stupid.”

  “I know Jagger, but who were the others?”

  Carolyn bit her lip. “Remember, I told you about cousin Albert? They were some of his FBI cronies.”

  “I don’t believe this! Mom, they were awful. That Jagger! He put some kind of stranglehold on Daddy, and Daddy just fell down like he’d been shot. And they hit me!”

  “Some men do things like that, don’t they? Especially men with a little power. Be thankful you’ve got a nice one like Luce.” Luce, who was giving her a very percipient look. Luce, who didn’t believe the men had gone peacefully away. Luce, who might have to be encouraged to forget about the whole thing. Cross that bridge when she came to it. “Luce, would you take Stace to the hospital to get stitched up, and so she can be there with her dad? I’ll get there as quickly as I can.”

  From the dining room came Lolly’s fretful voice. “I fell down,” she whined. “Why did I fall down?”

  Aggie and Bettiann murmured wordlessly, soothingly.

  Stace and Luce departed, Stace still muttering. Carolyn went into the dining room.

  “Aggie, maybe Lolly would like to lie down or clean up. She can go back to the big bedroom. There are fresh towels in the bathroom cabinet.”

  “I’ll take care of Lolly.” Aggie pulled the girl to her feet and led her away. A silence fell. A hole in the fabric of happening; a momentary emptiness.

  Carolyn went to wash her face. The first touch of water on her cheeks brought a flood of tears. Sophy had been there. Sophy herself. Whatever she was, she wasn’t dead. She’d been with them all the time. She’d protected them, taken care of them. Somehow, if Padre Josephus was to be believed, she had protected Helen, too, and cared for her. Then she’d gone back into … into that personage, that great assemblage, the Goddess. They had all seen Sophy. They had all seen the Goddess, too. No doubt. No question. No gates in the way. No guide, no conveyance. No rites needed. Just her, there, disclosing herself.

  The hasty plan she and Josh had devised … well, it had worked out all right against Jagger, Keepe, and Martin. Nothing she or Josh could have devised would have worked on Webster. She’d known that, at some level, ever since the beginning. Once Webster got a foothold, no placating word would help. No amount of subservience. No exaggerated obedience. No tactic for female survival would ever have worked with Webster. Nothing could have defeated him except the one who had defeated him.

  What was it Sovawanea had said? One must announce the battle. One must find the bane, then summon bane and beast onto holy ground. Her own homely kitchen? Which Sophy had made holy ground seven years ago in that ceremony they had so enjoyed, with the feathers, and the drums, and the planting of the herbs. In that more innocent time.

  And why was she crying?

  She told herself to stop it. There was something that had to be taken care of, quickly, before she forgot it. She found a small box, got out the tape, dug out some tissues for padding. She fished the vials out of her jacket pocket—red, yellow, green, blue, violet—and packed them safely away.

  She hadn’t figured out the allusion to Sophia’s chalice yet. The Goddess Sophia and her flaming cup had probably gone away with Sovawanea and Tess and all the aunts and grandmas and great-grandmas. Still, the answer would no doubt become obvious, once she had a little time to think. Did she remember which vial was which? She told them over in her head. Mated pairs. Women and daughters. Individual decision. Long youth. Or things as they had always been. Yes. She remembered. She jotted them down on a card and put the card in with the vials, sealing the packet with tape.

  Who would make the choice?

  No one, just now. There was no strength left to do anything just now. Carefully, she put the sealed box at the very back of a drawer in her medicine cabinet.

  She heard Faye’s voice outside, dried her face, and went out to the kitchen, where Faye and Bettiann and Aggie had assembled.

  Faye was shaking her head. “Did I really see Sophy …?”

  “We all did,” said Aggie in a wondering voice. “We all did.” She sounded stronger, suddenly resolute. “We really did! I feel such a fool. Why on earth have I been behaving like this? I’ve acted like—”

  “You’ve been you, Aggie.” Bettiann hugged her.

  “Well, I’m tired of being me if being me actually let me forget … forget that Sophy was my friend. All those years that I knew her, knew what she was like, and I actually believed she might have been evil. What kind of a life am I living that would let me believe that?”

  She went away, biting her lip, tears in her eyes, with Bettiann close behind.

  Stace phoned from the hospital. She had been stitched up. Hal was all right, sleeping comfortably. They’d keep him at the hospital until after they’d done some tests tomorrow. No need for Carolyn to come in.

  What next?

  Set out some leftovers for whoever might be hungry, including Lolly, of course, who was only Lolly again, very pale and stretched looking, yet with a shado
w of beauty on her face she had not had before. She poured Faye and Aggie and Bettiann each a small drink, delivered them, then poured one for herself. There was no sign of Carlos, so she went down the hill to feed the sheep, to put the ewes and half-grown lambs in the barn. To stand in the starlit darkness, thanking the presence that brooded there that all Carolyn’s loved ones were still alive and would also be able to stand in the starlight.

  The black-and-white lamb nudged her, begging grain. She knelt, offering a handful. The lamb wandered away, but the touch of soft lips in her palm went on. She found herself crying again. That’s all right, she murmured, half to herself, half to the invisible, the ineluctable, the immanent. That’s all right, dear. I know you’re here.

  HIGH ON THE TOWERING WAVE the figure of Fecundity soared, arms raised, reaching for the heights of ecstasy. Down from her fertile loins the children plunged, like dolphins, like fish, into the quieter pool and from there onto the sculptured shore.

  Watching from the left was Hal–Noah–Dionysus–St. Francis–Silenus, with the fox in his arms and the eagle on his shoulder. At his feet a bear caught a fish, geese flapped in the pool; from behind him a great cat watched from a cave. Across the pool stood a gardener with a sheaf of grain, knelt a shepherdess with a lamb in her lap, crouched a dryad crowned in oak leaves.

  The fountain held the hurry and rush of rivers, the placidity of pools, the slow seep of hidden springs—perhaps, so the speech makers had hinted, the very waters of life itself. Center front stood Sophy, Sophia, the figure of Wisdom, her figure now chastely robed, but her beautiful face looking out over the multitude, her hand extended to carry the awful weight of a goblet of clear glass from which water dripped slowly onto the outstretched hands of the children below.

  The hoopla was over. The fountain had been dedicated, the speeches had been made. “In this time of great uncertainty … to express our hope for the future … to beg wisdom for our leaders … waters of life …” And so on.

  Faye had been honored as the sculptress. It was she who had named the work: A Tribute to Sophia. The consortium had accepted it, and even Herr Straub, recently a much less opinionated Herr Straub, had signified himself satisfied. Now Faye was with the others, having a quiet lunch at the hotel, and only Carolyn remained in the plaza, among the passersby and lookers-on, sitting on the granite rim of the circling pool with one hand trailing into the chill water, the other clutching one of Sophy’s vials, now empty, wrapped in a wadded tissue in her pocket.

  “We want you to do it,” Jessamine had told her months before, during a brief and unique “special meeting” of the DFC. “The five of us voted on it. We’ve all written briefs for you, what we think about it. But we don’t think a committee decision is a good idea. It has to be someone who’s been happily married, someone who’s had children. Someone who’s seen … both sides.”

  “Though not all sides,” Faye had commented with a snort.

  “But don’t you want to know …?”

  “We don’t want to know,” said Ophy.

  “We trust you,” said Aggie.

  Bettiann had giggled, her eyes wet, “Let it come as a surprise.” When Bettiann showed up at the dedication, William had been with her. That had come as a surprise.

  And so Carolyn had risen this morning very early, slipping out of the bed without disturbing Hal and dressing quietly before coming down into the street, past the polyglot scatter of cleaners and sweepers who were readying the avenues for the coming day, then down the broad stairs that brought her into the echoing vacancy of the plaza, where her footsteps clacked intrusively on the patterned stones. All had been silence here. She had located the fountain by its dark silhouette against the eastern sky. She had stepped out of her shoes, leaving them beside the granite curb while she waded ankle deep through chill water, across the encircling pool. Sophia’s crystal chalice was held out almost level with Carolyn’s eyes. She’d thought a prayer might be appropriate, but after considering a few half-forgotten phrases learned in childhood, she rejected them in favor of something both simpler and more heartfelt:

  Please, let this be right.

  The contents of the vial made only a small puddle in the chalice. She had brought only the one vial with her, afraid that if she allowed herself a choice, last-minute worries would confuse the decision made with so much thought, so much troubled concentration.

  Oh, please, Sophia. Let this be right.

  Later in the morning, properly dressed and combed, she had returned with the others to witness the dedication. By then the plaza was alive with motion and sound, with the flap of banners and flutter of wings as hundreds of white doves were released into the soft airs. Through a tube hidden in Sophia’s bronze sleeve, water flowed into the chalice, filling it until it overflowed. The first drops sounded clearly in the silence; then the pumps started and the huge wave flowed and the plaza was filled with water sounds as all the surfaces sparkled wetly under the morning sun. At the back of the fountain the pool emptied into a long, lovely water stair that tumbled from lily pool to lily pool between sloping paths, down the long hill to a park below, and thence under bridges and around gardens into some hidden course that led to a river, and thence to the sea. By the time all the speeches were over, it was too late to wonder if she had been right. Sophia’s chalice had been emptied into the pool, and the pool into the river many times over. Too much water under the bridges for second thoughts, she told herself solemnly. Right or not, it was done.

  Still, she had stayed behind, as though waiting for a sign, while Hal and the others went off to lunch, seemingly untroubled by whatever choice had been made. Of course, they hadn’t known she was going to do it here, this morning. Maybe they thought she would do it some other time. Or had done it, long ago, while the fountain was being tested, before it was installed.

  She didn’t feel like joining the others, not just yet. She was weary of happening! So much, so terribly much had happened. The terrors of that journey from Lizard Rock. The windup of Lolly’s trial, which had turned out to be a complete anticlimax. Jagger was replaced by a novice prosecutor, and Rombauer was replaced by Judge Frieze. The perjured jurors were named as alternates and then removed from the jury: a jury, which, in due time, had brought in a verdict of not guilty with recommendations for counseling, that all-purpose—though often quite useless—contemporary ameliorative. Today’s snake oil.

  Lolly was in the care of Agnes McGann, who was still Reverend Mother. She had carried Lolly off to be rebuilt, retrained, refurbished. Not as a demonstration project. More as the tail end of the former order of things. Aggie had decided she was tired of gates but was darned if she was going to give up a life that meant a lot to so many women.

  Faye had seemingly had a remission, though she told Carolyn she thought it had been something mightily curative in Tess’s tea. And Jessamine had a new companion, her coworker, Val. Ophy and Simon had not changed, no more than Carolyn and Hal or Stace and Luce.

  Helen was home, and she had her children with her. Her daughter Emily was like a three-year-old: infantile, uneducated, illiterate. Her son had been taught what all the boys at the Redoubt had been taught. It would take all Helen’s strength to undo what the Alliance had done to them, had taught them, but without reinforcement of those teachings, in time they would forget. One prayed.

  As for the Alliance, according to Mike Winter, it had melted away. There were stories and even film clips of a vast marching in the cities, a great demonstration building for days, getting larger and larger, like some huge storm gathering. And then, at the end, it had come apart, tattered like a wind-torn cloud into tiny rags and shreds. The driving force that had welded it and wielded it had vanished. The misogyny that had driven it had ended. The men who had taken part in it could answer no questions about it. They disliked being reminded of it and could not even remember why they had been there.

  And now, now it was done.

  And what would she say if they asked her?

  Perhaps she
would say, as Sovawanea might have said: Perhaps I chose, or perhaps Sophia chose for me.

  If Sophia had done so, she wasn’t telling. There was no sign, no omen, no nothing. With one last look into Sophy’s well-remembered face, she rose and walked off across the plaza toward the stairs. A waste receptacle stood beside the steps. She stopped beside it, gathering the contents of her pocket into a single wad, which she dropped into the basket, vial and all. Now all evidence of her act was gone. There was a finality in the gesture that had been missing this morning.

  She stopped, motionless, listening. There was a sound, as of a door opening, far off. A vast silence. Then the door closed, leaving an echo from childhood, as of a child’s voice calling in the summer dusk …

  “… ninety-nine, one hundred. Ready or not, here it comes.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SHERI S. TEPPER is the award-winning author of A Plague of Angels, Sideshow, Beauty, Raising the Stones, Grass, The Gate to Women’s Country, After Long Silence, and Shadow’s End. Grass was a New York Times Notable Book and Hugo Award nominee, and Beauty was voted Best Fantasy Novel by the readers of Locus magazine. Ms. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.