“Then I don’t.”
“It’s a nice ceremony, very impressive ritual.”
“I don’t like ceremony. I don’t like ritual.” She avoided either, whenever she could. They reminded her unpleasantly of other things, other times.
He shrugged. “Well, take your ceremonials anyhow. Boarmus will probably want to see you. He does that with all the Council people.” He rummaged in a pocket and drew out a travel disc that he dropped on the table by the machine. “Here’s your authorization. There’ll be a CE flier at the northeast flight center, first watch, day after tomorrow.”
She nodded, silently.
“You’ll need help with your machine.”
“I’m competent,” she muttered. “I can manage.”
“I was only offering….”
“Not needed,” she said, dismissing him, standing where she was until he had gone, until the door was shut behind him, until she could catch her breath.
“No,” she said to no one in particular. “Absolutely not needed.”
She did need help with the machine, but she got it from Ahl Dibai Bloom, who brought two craftsmen over and stayed most of the day. They came to help her finish the construction and build a traveling case, but they got so involved in playing with the gadget it was hours before they accomplished what they’d come for. When they were finished, the device was larger and vastly more complicated than the one Danivon had seen. Also Fringe had done what she could to make the machine look old and mysterious, with capsules that seemed truly oracular by virtue of their odd spellings and dim archaic lettering.
“I want one, Fringe!” Bloom demanded, chortling over his fortune—his eleventh or twelfth, all different. “I want a machine like this, a bigger one, for my place in the Swale.”
“So, we’ll build another one, Bloom,” she said, dropping some newly lettered capsules into the supply box.
“When?”
“When I get back.”
“And when will that be?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I was afraid of that. Will you take care, lady love?”
“Always, Bloom. If you’ll say good-bye to Zasper for me.”
“I think he plans to do that for himself.”
Zasper did plan to do that for himself, arriving at the flight center as the Destiny Machine was being loaded. He didn’t come directly to the place Fringe was standing, but went off across the field to where Danivon was packing himself into another flier. Fringe noticed, to her amazement, that Zasper hugged him like kin. When he came back across the field, he greeted Curvis like an old friend before taking Fringe’s hand and presenting a tiny box.
“What’s this?” she asked suspiciously.
“A present,” he said. “A nothing, Fringe. A keepsake.”
She choked, felt herself getting red.
“No,” he said firmly. “You’re not to get angry and flustered at me. I want you to take it and wear it to remember me by. When you see it, you say, ‘Zasper thought I was all right whatever I wanted to be. I didn’t need to be anyone else for Zasper.’”
She felt tears.
“Promise you will?”
“Promise,” she said softly.
“Fringe,” he said as softly. “You know, a long time ago I told you about that boy I saved. It might be wise not to mention that on your way to … to wherever.” His eyes flicked sideways, to the place Danivon’s flier had been.
“Hell, Zasper. What do you take me for. Of course not.” She said it, but her mind was elsewhere, putting together the hug, the glance, his obvious discomfort. So Danivon had been the little boy Zasper’d rescued. Well!
“Well then. Good luck, girl. Attend the Situation!” He saluted, turned himself about, and stalked away, back rigid, shoulders straight.
When she was in her cubicle aboard the flier, she opened the box. A circlet of gold and a chain. The circlet made up of the words “Just as she is.”
It hurt. It hurt like that time Char had offered to sell the house. What she felt was something grabbing at her, something holding on to her. She knew it as pain, a pain she’d learned to avoid. She hung the circlet around her neck, buttoned her shirt over it, felt it burning against her skin, and tried to forget it was there.
Why couldn’t he just have said good-bye?
The people of Tolerance were charming and hospitable and so mannered that Fringe felt they stuck to her like swamp slime. The place itched her. It dripped into her boots. Being here made her want to bathe, over and over, and she could not tell why. There was something severely amiss in Tolerance, though no one seemed to notice but her.
“Relax! We’re only here for a day or so,” said Curvis, giving her a curious look. “Are you always this jumpy?” They were returning from the Rotunda balcony where Fringe had moved the components of an excellent dinner around on her plate without eating any of them.
She twitched, flushing. “No. I’m not. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. If I were Danivon, I’d say I was smelling something very wrong.”
Tolerance seemed no different to Curvis than it had always been. There was always a good deal of tension in the place. And then recently there’d been that case of dismemberment and disappearance, but that mystery would no doubt soon be solved. Some visitor gone mad, no doubt. It happened sometimes. Curvis had never been alert to nuance, so he had no inkling of what was bothering Fringe.
Nonetheless, he attempted reassurance. “Tolerance always has a kind of agitation about it, too many people in too small a space, monitoring, fussing, like that.”
“Agitation alone wouldn’t make me feel like this.”
“Do the twins make you uncomfortable?”
She shook her head. It wasn’t the twins. She had at first been in an agony of embarrassment over the twins, but it wasn’t them. “They speak Lingua very well,” she said lamely. Though learning to talk with such strange beings, even in Lingua, was a problem she had struggled with. “Though it’s a little hard for me to figure them out.”
Bertran and Nela had noted her discomfort. She had been obviously anxious to say the right thing or, at the least, to avoid saying the wrong one, and their first interchange had been marked by long silences and inconsequential mutters. After a time, however, she had devised a solution that suited her, for she began to act toward them as she might have done toward two totally independent persons. She stopped trying to make sense of their condition, stopped saying “you” to include them both, and began to address them as Nela and Bertran, speaking to them separately, as distinct people.
“As I was saying to Nela just a while ago,” she would say to Bertran, ignoring that he must have heard. Or to Nela, “As I remarked to Bertran …” She had decided to pretend that only one of them was present at a time, though the time might be only momentary. After an hour or so of being amused at her, they adapted to her pretense, finding it novel if not entirely convincing.
Fringe, to her own amazement, became quite comfortable with them, more than she was with most people. When in company, she usually felt herself to be the anomaly. Compared to Bertran and Nela, she was ordinary. By the second day, she was becoming confidential with them, almost voluble.
“She belongs in a sideshow,” Nela remarked to her twin. “Just as we did. You see how easy she is getting to be with us? Yet, see how she behaves with others, all flushes and starts, or silent as a rock. Gauche, Aunt Sizzy would have said. No poise, except when she is being professional.”
“I don’t understand,” said Bertran, who had been thinking of something else.
“She thinks she’s a freak,” explained Nela softly. “Don’t you see? No matter what person she is being, she feels others will judge it to be inadequate. So, she’s constantly on the defensive. And so are we, in a way, all of which makes us colleagues, friends. Now that she is used to me, when she sees something amusing, she gives me a girlish glance, making me her coconspirator. She’s never had any friends, but she’s becoming our … my friend.”
>
“Why would she not have friends?” he asked, amazed. “She’s a beautiful woman!”
Nela nodded thoughtfully. “The beauty has come upon her recently, I think, and she doesn’t acknowledge it. And who knows exactly why? Something to do with the way she was reared, perhaps. Rejected by this one or that one, perhaps. For whatever reason, she thinks she’s a freak.” She shook her head. Something about Fringe troubled her, some mystery hiding behind those stone-green eyes.
“Well, so does Danivon think he’s a freak,” her twin said. “That’s obvious.”
“Oh, no, not Danivon,” said Nela. “Though he really is an oddity, he takes himself for the paradigm of Adam-the-man with bells on. Danivon was reared in an atmosphere of general approbation. Like a pet puppy. He is very pleased with himself. You can tell. Danivon is the very opposite of Fringe Owldark.”
“If he really is odd, Fringe ought to get along with him at least as well as she does with us,” Bertran persevered.
“No. I think she will not,” Nela said soberly. “But it won’t be for lack of collegiality, love. I’d wager that’ll be sex.”
Fringe took the oath as Council Enforcer in the Grand Master’s private office, without ceremony, accepting with reasonable grace the purple coat they gave her to replace her Enarae Post blue one. They also attached a jeweled fatal-hands dangle on the bottom of her Enforcer’s badge, the one Zasper had had made for her with the warrior and the gylph on it. Enforcers could have any device they liked on their badges, but the dangles were all alike and so were the words around the edge: I Attend the Situation.
She was headed back to her room after the ceremony when a Frickian flunky came to say the Provost wanted to see her.
The Provost! That would be Boarmus. Well, she thought, as she followed the Frickian up endless stairs and down lengthy corridors, this was the last bit of business in Tolerance she had to get through. She cast a sidelong look at herself in a long series of mirrors and was satisfied to find herself quite correct. Leather belt and boots polished. Purple coat swinging absolutely straight from shoulder to ankle. Purple bonnet tilted to one side, hiding the helm beneath, plumes bushed up like a cock’s tail on the other side. Red silk shirt and trousers flowing and snapping, full everywhere except neck and wrists, and there tight as her skin. She faced dead ahead and clamped her teeth together, being resolute.
Boarmus was a jowly man with fuzzy eyebrows and an unhealthy pouchiness around his eyes, like a man who has not slept well in some time. The corners of his mouth lost themselves in pinch wrinkles, as though he clamped his lips tight often, to shut in words, perhaps.
“I’m Boarmus,” he told her, giving her a long, measuring look. She was impeccable, leather gleaming, coat falling in immaculate folds. Her Enforcer’s badge shone on her shoulder, the two gold fatal-hands dangles attesting to her years of experience, the gemmed one to her new status. He continued, “I am Provost, thus head of the Council.”
“Sir!” she said, standing easy. Bridling at his look would only gratify him. Besides, it would do no good. The best defense against that look, so Zasper had always said, was not to notice it. She stared straight ahead.
“You took an oath tonight,” he reminded her.
She had scarcely had time to forget. She lowered her eyes to meet his and found them veiled, unreadable.
“It was an oath of loyalty to the Council,” he said.
“Sir!” Did he think she hadn’t noticed what she was swearing to?
“And, therefore, to me, as head of the Council,” he went on.
She wasn’t at all certain of that. She had an idea that loyalty to the Council meant to the whole body of it, not just to one person, even if that one was Provost. She waited to hear what he would say next.
“You are going into an unknown territory. We need to learn everything we can about it.” He put out his hand, and she took the small cube he gave her. “You will carry this transmitter with you, and you will let me know if anything unusual happens.”
“Sir! I was told Danivon Luze was head of this expedition.” Without expression.
Boarmus smiled a lizard smile. “All Council Enforcers are under my command. You will be loyal, as you swore to be, or you will be forsworn.” His tone threatened she would not survive long in that event. “You will not even mention this matter to Danivon Luze.”
She did not reply, merely uttered the all-purpose word again. “Sir!” She much wanted to ask, why me, but it was better to ask nothing, say nothing. Best not to object. Not to inquire. Not to argue. So Zasper had said, on more than one occasion. “Try never to ask a question of a superior unless you already know the answer and are doing it for form’s sake. Always be sure where you are standing before you draw a line and dare another to cross it.”
Boarmus nodded dismissively. She bowed, only the requisite bow, and left the Council Provost staring balefully after her. She could feel his eyes and believed she had given him no satisfaction, but neither any justification for anger. Zasper had been clear about that too. “Don’t let commanders play games with your head,” he had said. “If you are absolutely correct in your manner, they can’t fool with you. That means no expression at all. No insolence. No dismay. No annoyance. Nothing. Your face should be blank as a chaffer shell. You should show no feelings. Better yet, you should have no feelings.” It helped to be wearing ceremonials. The silks and leathers and flapping coattails always made her feel depersonalized anyhow.
Fringe was wrong about Boarmus. In his opinion she could not have been more perfect. Totally poised. The true and perfect Enforcer, down to her bright little boots, and very nice they were too. A provincial Enforcer just up from the provinces might have been excused for being a bit awed and stuttery at being brought before the Provost, but this one had given no sign of it. Boarmus had counted on that, on the fact she was from Enarae and that Zasper Ertigon had been her sponsor. Enarae being the kind of province it was, Enforcers from there received experience early and often. Zasper being what he was, she was as advertised. Owldark would serve his need.
“Dead men, sleep,” he muttered to himself. Perhaps he would be lucky. Perhaps they would do nothing more, nothing worse than they had done, and he, Boarmus, would need to do nothing. But if they did something, at least he would have let Danivon know.
Back in her quarters, the subject of Boarmus’s consideration stripped off her ceremonials and put them in their case. The purple coat was too fine a fabric for daily wear. She would have a heavier one made when she returned. If she returned. Since they were not going on this expedition as Enforcers, she might not need Enforcer dress—except for her badge, to identify herself if need be. She pinned it to her undertunic. “I Attend the Situation.” And so she would, whatever it might turn out to be.
Whatever old Boarmus decided it would be. She didn’t much like this business with Boarmus. It smacked of sneakiness, ordering her not to tell Danivon. A team could have only one leader; how many times had she been told that? And what did Boarmus want to hear from her he would not hear from Danivon Luze?
The transmitter cube lay on her bed, beside the bonnet, featureless, seemingly inert. She picked it up and turned it in her fingers, eyes suddenly riveted as words appeared on all faces of it at once, words brought into view, presumably, by the warmth of her hands.
“Give this secretly to Danivon Luze. Silence!”
Even as she read them, they faded, and the cube was blank once more. Her fist closed around the cube as she pushed it deep into the pack she would be carrying. Well! Boarmus, saying one thing, had done another, had engaged in misdirection, as though someone was watching him! He didn’t want anyone knowing he was sending a message to Danivon Luze. Clever fat old man. No one could have seen the words on the little cube. It had gone from his hand to hers. No one could see it where it lay now.
And, come to think of it, it had been Boarmus who had ordered Danivon not to return to Tolerance. Was Danivon in some danger? Or was it the Provost himself who was in d
anger?
Who? she asked herself quietly, moving slowly and deliberately, showing no outward evidence of the sudden anxiety that she felt. Who could be watching Boarmus? There was no one above the Provost, no one superior to him! Provost was as high an office as one could achieve on Elsewhere.
Inescapably, however, one had to consider that if Boarmus was being watched, perhaps those he met and talked with were also being watched, including Fringe herself.
Zasper’s tutelage had covered such possibilities. Enforcers routinely went into category-nine and-ten places where they might be watched, overheard, spied upon. She pretended unconcern. It wasn’t necessary for her to feign weariness. She got into bed fully intending to sleep at once. “Sleep when you can, pee when you can, eat when you can” was the common wisdom among Enforcers. She didn’t sleep. Instead she lay long-time wakeful in the dark, going over the stories she had heard about the girl who had been found dead, the boy who had disappeared, considering the tension in the place, wondering until the mid-hours of the morning what in the name of holy diversity was going on.
Curvis, Fringe, and the twins flew to the Curward Isles on the following morning. Danivon awaited them there, and Fringe put the transmitter cube into her pocket, ready to pass on to him. Though she approached him at various times during the day, Fringe had no opportunity to speak to him alone. Curvis always hovered at his shoulder, or one of the sailors was there, or some official concerned with loading their baggage. By midafternoon, when the five of them embarked on the Curward Industrious—a cargo ship of the Curward fleet—no appropriate occasion had presented itself.
To her dismay, no proper occasion arose at any time on the ship, a crowded vessel upon which privacy was nonexistent. The message to her had said “Secretly” not “Urgently,” therefore (she assured herself) Boarmus had considered confidentiality more important than immediacy. During each of the ensuing days, she looked for a time or place to pass the cube along without anyone noticing, but there were no opportunities. Who knew what eyes and ears might exist on the ship? Who knew which of the sailors might be a spy? If the message was to be passed in complete secrecy, she would have to await an appropriate and natural occasion.
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