The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  I stepped out onto the meadow, adjusting my pack and keeping a pleasantly neutral expression on my face as I approached. “Hello. Yes. I seem to have lost my way.” It was a young woman in a smock, hair drawn back in a sensible braid. Something about her reminded me of Silkhands.

  I said, “My name is Jinian.”

  “Jinny. Do come in. I was just about to put the kettles on for the children’s wash-up, and for our tea, of course. Come into the kitchen.” She bustled off ahead of me, down a stone-floored corridor. The ceilings of the place were low, no more than a foot or so over her head. A tall man would have had to stoop. Perhaps there were no tall men here. The place looked clean enough, and yet there was a smell . . . like a latrine. A urine smell. I twitched my nose and tried to ignore it.

  She opened a heavy door, closed it behind me, and gestured me to a chair as she began filling heavy kettles with water and hanging them on hooks above the fire. There were dozens of them, great iron things that looked heavy. She grunted when she heaved them, and I went to help her, curious. “Are you doing this all alone?”

  She smiled at me, a tired smile. “Well, it’s all part of the dedication, isn’t it. Part of the saintly work. Thank you for your help, though. Since I’ve had this flux, it’s been hard to lift them.” Her hands on the kettle handle were raw, with chapped, bleeding places.

  There was a smaller kettle hung closer to the flames. I laid more wood upon the fire as she filled it, wondering who it was who cut all that wood. If she heated so much water every morning, it would take a forest full of trees to provide the heat. Before long the small kettle began to steam, and she poured water into a teapot, setting a cup before me. “We’ve time for a cup before wash-up.” She sighed. “Now, what brings you to the Sanctuary?”

  “That’s what this place is called? The Sanctuary?”

  “Oh, yes. The Sanctuary and Church of St. Phallus. The monastery of those in service to the Sacred Seed.” She smiled as though these words had some particular meaning to her, face glowing briefly as in firelight. “I’m Sister Servant Rejoice.”

  “Rejoice,” I murmured.

  “Just call me Sister Servant,” she corrected me. “We don’t use individual designations much. Father says we don’t need them.”

  “Father says that, does he,” I murmured again, sipping at my tea. I was all adrift. I understood the words she had said, but the sense of them escaped me. “Ah, Sister Servant, can you tell me how long the . . . Sanctuary and church have been here? Historically speaking?”

  She was confused by this. “Always, Jinny. Always, since arrival. Since our Holy Founders broke with the evil under the mountain and brought away St. Phallus.”

  “Evil under the mountain?”

  “The monster makers. The triflers with the holy fruit. Some called them . . .” She looked at the closed door before whispering, “Magicians.”

  Well. That placed it somewhat. This was evidently some offshoot from early times. “How long ago was that, do you know?”

  She shook her head. The count of years evidently didn’t concern her, though the kettles did. She was watching them intently, waiting for steam to emerge from each one. As soon as the first was hot, she took it down from its hook and substituted another before tugging on a bell rope beside the door. Far off I could hear the jangle, insistent in the silence. Then voices. Approaching footsteps.

  Those who came in were much like Sister Servant—were Sister Servants. Smocks, braids, tired-looking faces, chapped and bleeding hands. They took the steaming kettles and went out, leaving the last to boil for Rejoice. “You can come with me,” she whispered. “To see the work.”

  I was too curious not to. We went down the echoing hallway to one of the rooms. In the room were half a dozen beds. On the beds were children.

  So I thought. Well. An orphanage. A foundling home. I had seen such before. There was one in Xammer. We students of Vorbold’s House had borrowed babies from it from time to time in order to learn child care. I knew about babies, and my heart cheered. “I’ll help you,” I said, turning to the first bed. “I’ve bathed babies before.”

  I started by trying to tickle it awake. It lay there, drool streaming in a gelatinous rope from the corner of its mouth, eyes open. It did not seem to see me. I turned its head toward me, and the body rolled, stiffly. This wasn’t a baby. It was a child, seven or eight years old, perhaps.

  I smelled it then. Dirty diapers. Making a face, I drew the covers back. “What’s the matter with . . . her, Is she sick?”

  Rejoice shook her head, an expression of disapproval on her face. “Of course not. She’s perfectly all right.”

  “If she isn’t sick, she seems a little old to be dirtying her pants.”

  “A little slow to be toilet-trained. That’s all. Otherwise, perfectly fine. See, she’s smiling at you.”I looked at the child. Its mouth was twisted in a grimace of pain. I started to say something, then stopped. The source of the pain was all too evident. Sores. Sores on its buttocks and between its legs. “It has sores,” I said, carefully neutral. “Do you have medicine or a Healer for those?”

  She shuddered, whispered, “Do not say ‘Healer.’ Father would not have a Healer here. As bad as midwives, Healers. There’s powder on the shelf. Clean linen on the shelf. Washcloths on the shelf.” She herself was busy with another, even older. It seemed to be a boy—man, really a man, with hair on his face. Lying in his own excrement, on a soaked bed, his face turned upward without expression.

  I went back to my work. I had done worse. Not often, but on occasion. Burying was cleaner. Corpses were cleaner, even those half-decayed. When we were through, the six bodies in the beds were clean, too, and the filthy linens were piled high in a basket by the door. I leaned against a sill and thrust a window wide.

  “What are you doing!”

  “Airing out, Sister Servant. Getting rid of a little of the smell.”

  “It’s the smell of service. Nothing to repudiate. Revel in it, Jinny, for it is a holy smell.”

  Holy shit, I thought to myself, wondering what madhouse Ganver had brought me to. Holy pee!

  “How old is he?” I asked, pointing at the man she had worked on first.

  “Bobby? Why, Bobby’s just a wee baby.”

  “He’s large for a baby.”

  “Oh, in years perhaps he is. Thirty or forty, I suppose. But he’s just a wee baby nonetheless. Slow. A tiny bit slow.”

  “When will he grow up, this Bobby?”

  “Oh, every day and every day. The therapist says he’s growing up all the time.”

  “The therapist says that?”

  “Oh, yes. You’ll have to meet Sister Servant Therapist. We’ll see her over breakfast. Now that the babies are all clean, we’ll feed them, then we can have our own breakfast.”

  We could have our breakfast. When we had carried out the dirty linens, rinsed them in a stream, put them in kettles to be boiled over the fire, and spent an endless time spooning gruel into mouths or into gaping tubes that led into stomachs, we could have our breakfast. We assembled in the kitchen, all the Sister Servants and me. The smell of the dirty linens in the kettles was overwhelming. I could not eat. They did. I was introduced. I nodded at them over my teacup, pretending I had eaten earlier. Well, I had, sometime earlier.

  “Sister Servant says you’re interested in Bobby.” This Sister was a little older, deep lines graven from nose to the corners of her lips, lips curved in a constant, meaningless smile. Habit held her face in that expression. She did not know how her face looked.

  I nodded, noncommittal. She took it for assent. “He’s making such progress.” She made enthusiastic noises. “We’re working on toilet training.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Teaching him to make a noise when he needs to. I sit by him, and then when he does, I make a noise. Eventually, he will learn to mimic the noise, then he’ll associate it with doing it, don’t you know, and that will be a help. If we have a little warning, we can get a pan under h
im.”

  “How long have you been working at this?”

  “On, only about ten years—isn’t it about ten, Sister Servant Rejoice? Ten years. Bobby hasn’t quite got the hang of it, but he will.”

  “Do you really feel there is sufficient intelligence there? To . . . ah, get the hang of it?” I had seen only a shell, a body without a mind. I wondered if my eyes had tricked me.

  “He makes progress,” she said stiffly. “Every day. It doesn’t matter that he’s a little slow. He’s a unique, valuable fruit of St. Phallus. Father says it doesn’t matter whether it takes one year or a hundred. Every fruit of St. Phallus is sacred.”

  I smiled, nodded. They were all looking at me intently, too intently. Sister Servant Rejoice was holding a bread knife, turning it and turning it in her hands as she looked at me, something deep and violent in her eyes. “Of course,” I said. “That’s very true.” Sister Servant Rejoice laid down the knife. I breathed a silent sigh. “I’d love to hear Father talk. He sounds very eloquent.”

  This was the right thing to have said. They told me about Father, about the several Fathers. A few of whom were present in the priory. The rest of whom were out in the world, seeking out special fruits of St. Phallus to bring them to the Sanctuary. “And more Sister Servants,” sighed Rejoice. “We need more of us.”

  “Don’t presume,” said Sister Therapist. “Father says don’t presume. We don’t need any more of us than there are, Father says. ‘Sufficient unto the duty are the Sisters thereof.’ That’s what Father says.”

  “I suppose the Fathers could always help,” I said innocently.

  “That would not be fitting,” said Sister Therapist. “They have higher duties than ours.”

  I went again with Sister Rejoice, from room to room, place to place. I talked with Sister Therapist.

  “It is my duty to structure the children’s day,” she said, her voice wavering between pride and exhaustion. “Each of the holy fruits of St. Phallus has his own program. The children in this building are being toilet-trained.”

  “Can any of them walk? Crawl?”

  She shook her head, making a sour mouth at me. “Each thing in its time. After they learn one thing, then we will teach another. Those in the next building are learning to crawl.”

  “Ah. And when they have learned to crawl, what then?”

  She seemed doubtful. “We have one or two in the building by the stream. They learned to crawl long ago and now are learning to feed themselves with their hands. It would be easier if they were not so frail.”

  “Frail?”

  “Well . . .” She looked around herself, whispering, “There are only two. And one of them is over eighty years old. She has forgotten her toilet training now, but I have refused to bring her back here.” One evidently did not discuss the age of their charges; to do so required a whisper.

  I said nothing. I could say nothing. Back in Stoneflight Demesne I had had a neutered fustigar named Grompozzle. Grommy for short. It had taken me exactly six days to house-train him. He had known how to feed himself from birth. I looked at the beds around me, stinking again, the odor permeating the very stones of the place. I thought I very much wished to meet Father.

  The day went on. It went on in the same way. Sister Therapist sat by Bobby, grunting whenever she smelled him. Sister Rejoice cleaned shit and pee out of endless bedsheets. Sister Someone Else spooned gruel into mouths that would not open or would not shut, down throats that would not swallow. I watched as long as I could, then went out into the forest to hit trees. I waited for Ganver, but Ganver didn’t come.

  Nighttime did. Along toward dusk, a bell rang, and the Sisters left the buildings in procession, single file, winding through the woods toward a tall lamplit building with an arrangement of bell tower and chapel to one side. I followed them and filed in behind them, me being invisible as taught by the seven. To no avail, for one of the hawk-eyed men who sat in the tall chair at the front of the place saw me in the instant. His face was lean, very handsome, very stern. His eyes gleamed like a wereowl’s sighting prey when he sighted me.

  The Sisters sang, not very tunefully. I couldn’t blame them. They were tired, dispirited, and they smelled. No matter how clean they tried to be, the poor things couldn’t help it. They did smell.

  The tallest Father preached. He stood before us in robes of gleaming white, surrounded by the smoke of sweet incense, fondling his groin from time to time as he talked of St. Phallus. St. Phallus loomed behind the altar, erect, massive, as though ready to rape the world. It was not the first such monument I had seen. Wherever men were ignorant and hungry for power, I had seen these things, though never one as large as this. Father fondled his groin and preached.

  “Holy fruit of St. Phallus,” he said.

  “Clean seed planted in filthy ground,” he said.

  “Corrupted by dirty woman-wombs,” he said.

  “Sisters atone for being women by being Servants,” he said. The Sisters nodded, a few of them weeping. I wondered how old they had been when they were brought here. After the service, I asked Sister Servant Rejoice. She thought she had been around eight years old.

  “Why did you decide to come to the Sanctuary?” I asked, wondering why anyone would.

  “I didn’t decide,” she said, astonished. “Oh, no, I was only a filthy woman-child. Father decided. He took me from my people; he brought me here. He saved me. Oh, I fought him, too. Threatened to run away. Father had to tie me up for a long, long time. He had to whip me before I would settle to my duty. Bless Father.”

  “Oh, yes,” I agreed. “Bless Father indeed.”

  From behind us in the clean, sweet-smelling place, Father watched me walk away, his intention clear in his face. I went in the front door of the other building, down to the kitchen to get my pack, and out the back door. Jinian was young and strong. Jinian could be tied up and whipped until she, too, settled to her duty. Jinian had no intention of allowing that to happen.

  In the woods, from a high ridge of stone behind some bushes, I watched the place. Sure enough, it was not long before Father and two or three of his ilk came along, one of them carrying what looked very much like shackles. What was it Ganver had said, “Watch and learn”?

  Learn what? What question had I asked? Ah, yes. I had asked what the star-eye means.

  So I settled there upon the ridge, listening with some curiosity to the shouting going on below, the running about, the muffled scream of some Sister as she was slapped for letting me get away. I sat staring at the star pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me. A star. With an eve in the center.

  An eye. Looking out.

  A star shape. With an eye, looking out. Looking away.

  Away from its own shape. Toward . . . ?

  For a moment I thought I had it, but then it eluded me. I knew it was there, in the shape, in the lesson, but I couldn’t quite reach it. I struggled for a long time, chasing the thought as I might a fish in shallows, but each time it slipped through my fingers.

  Then, because I felt great sorrow for the Sister Servants and pity for the flesh they tended, which mercy would not have kept alive, I did Inward Is Quiet upon all the mindless creatures that lay in the beds in those buildings below. Inward Is Quiet in the imperative mode. Forever. They would not need to be cleaned or fed again. I wondered how the Fathers would react to that. Almost I wanted to stay to find out, but Ganver returned about that time. I looked up from my work to find the Eesty watching me.

  “Have you seen?” asked Ganver.

  “I’ve seen what’s down there, yes. I’m afraid it doesn’t explain the star-eye to me, Ganver. And I can tell you, I hate this memory.”

  “Oh,” said Ganver. “This place is not part of the Maze. This place is real. It has been thus for a thousand years. These genital worshipers live well, and they are not encumbered by too much work. They have their Servants.”

  “It need not be thus much longer,” I told the Eesty. “I can set a few spells upon it to try t
he philosophy of those who enslave these women.” Ganver looked at me very keenly. “You may punish these men, surely, for what it is they do, but they will not profit from it. Think what you do!”

  Without answering, I opened my pack, took out certain things I needed. I was not truly listening to Ganver. The evil of the place was too much with me. I could not bear it.

  I made a little image with a little phallus, dressed it in a bit of white fabric from my shirt, incensed it with sweet gum and resin. I named it. “Father,” I called it, bathing it in the sweet smoke. Then I melted its little phallus away in the fire. I did Dream Chains to Bind It to include all the Fathers, no matter where they were. “You must find another saint to worship, Fathers. You no longer have the symbol of St. Phallus to comfort you.” I wondered how they would handle that.

  I put things away in my pack, suddenly uncomfortably aware that Ganver still stood there, staring at me, saying nothing. It made me self-conscious, embarrassed, and for the first time I began to consider what I had done, casting about for an explanation.

  “Think, Jinian,” Ganver murmured at me. The voice was hypnotic, compelling. “Think what you do, how you feel, what you have just done. You have been angry. You sought something which was not there. Because it was not there, you punished certain creatures for its lack. Why, Jinian? Will you punish a gnat because it cannot sing? You will not have the power of the star-eye until you understand these things.”

  It came back to me then, all in a flash, standing there in that dark forest with the scent of the resins still in my nostrils. I remembered where I had heard the star-eye mentioned recently before. By the Oracle. In the cave of the giants. The Seer had looked at the star-eye on my chest and had suggested the Oracle take it from me. The Oracle had refused, saying it was only a symbol, that it had no real power. I mumbled something about this, trying to put that notion together with what had just happened. Ganver, hearing me, gave a high, keening sound, like weeping—or terrible laughter.

  I tried to comfort it. “Ganver, Ganver, do not grieve so. The Oracle is only a foolish thing. . . .” Which seemed only to make the matter worse. I could not tell what it was that grieved Ganver so. It was all part of that star-eye puzzle which it kept trying to teach me without telling me anything helpful at all.