The Vistor

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "In Bastion, one place is pretty much like another," Arnole said, his lips smiling but his eyes watchful. "I get around."

  It was true that Arnole wasn't unduly immobilized by his Chair. It was powered by demon magic, a Black. Box, which no one was allowed to touch. Not even the researchers were allowed to investigate demon magic, for it was said to be closely akin to the dark arts that had brought about the Happening.

  "Nobody asked me if I wanted to go to Caigo Faience," Dismé murmured softly, thinking of her treasured places in Apocanew.

  Arnole patted her arm. "I know, child. Our opinions are irrelevant. Once Rashel has decided on something, I doubt she could be stopped even by a Second Happening. She is very centered on her career, and her reputation continues to grow. I'm surprised Ayward goes along with this."

  "I'm not," said Dismé. "Ayward says he couldn't have married anyone with serious faults, so Rashel is simply not well-informed." Dismé had heard this as both ludicrous and infuriating, but she had seen no purpose in asserting the truth.

  "Thank heaven you didn't marry him, Dismé," said Arnole. "I'm glad your mother prevented it."

  Dismé's eyes filled. "Cora wasn't my mother. She married Father when Rashel was twelve. My real mother ... she may still be alive, Arnole. When I was about five she took me to our special place on the tower and she told me she had to go away. She said what she had to do was more important than she was, or I was, or any one person was, and she told me to remember that, to tell Father."

  Arnole seemed lost in thought. "What did she look like?"

  "She had red-gold hair and soft brown skin, like brown wood, silky. I remember her voice better than I do her face. She had a magic voice. If I hurt myself, she could make the hurt go away just by ordering it to. Or make me go to sleep, or stop the flies biting."

  "That's very mysterious," he said, in a strange voice.

  "Father thought so. His feelings were hurt when she went, because she didn't tell him herself. Then he met Corable the Horrible, and right away he began behaving as though he didn't have good sense. I think she put a spell on him."

  Arnole mused, "When you speak of your mother, it makes me wish I'd had one."

  "You had to have a mother, Arnole. Everybody does. You can't get born without one."

  He grinned at her. "What I meant was, I never knew my mother. When I was an infant, a flood came through our town, and when it was over, she was missing."

  In the evening, Dismé often sat in the oriel window of the library, half hidden behind the curtains, pretending to read.

  "Ayward," Rashel said, "I wonder if we shouldn't make some other provision for your father?"

  He looked up from his papers, suddenly alert, and Dismé's fingers, poised to turn a page, froze in place.

  He said, "What do you mean, some other provision?"

  "I don't think he'll enjoy living up at Caigo Faience. Here in Apocanew, he manages to get out, see his friends, visit the tavern. Up there, he'll have no company."

  "He has his own funds, Rashel, and if I rent a faculty toe-hold here in town, he can live with me."

  She did not answer, though Ayward continued to watch her for a time, his face pale and troubled. Dismé bit her lip anxiously. Rashel had opened the subject, then fallen silent. Dismé had known Rashel too long not to understand the convention. The snake rattled, then stopped, which did not mean the snake had gone away.

  At breakfast, Ayward announced his intention of renting a place in the city for himself and Arnole, but he had done nothing about it two days later when the agents from the Bureau of Happiness and Enlightenment came to tell Arnole his probation was about to expire. In three day's time, they said, he was to be examined anew to determine whether The Disease was chronic. If found guilty he would be put in a more restrictive Chair.

  "You're not guilty," Dismé whispered to him, reaching up from her cushion on the floor to touch his face. "You're not guilty of anything!"

  He laughed, a slightly shaky laugh. "I'm a mocker, guilty of doing what I've warned you against, Dismé, and I'm afraid they won't accept you as a character witness. The only one they would listen to is your sister Rashel, and I'd take long odds she wouldn't help."

  "I would help you if I could, Arnole!"

  "Well then. There is something you can do for me." He reached under the carapace of his Chair and brought forth a little bag, like a dozen other such he had given her over the years since Ayward's marriage. "I want you to hold this for me."

  "I'm already holding a lot of your money, Arnole."

  "Not a lot, Dismé. It doesn't total a great sum. What? A few hundred Holdmarks? Twenty or thirty Dominions? Add this to the others. If anything happens to me, if I am ... unable to be with you in future, it is yours."

  "Are you sure?" she asked, troubled. "Ayward is your son. Don't you think...?"

  "Of course I think," he snapped. "As you are capable of doing, though you consistently behave as though it were an arcane art known only to initiates! I do think, and you know very well what I think! You know what I want you to use this money for, and it has nothing to do with Ayward!"

  She flushed for she understood both his mood and his meaning. He wanted her to leave Ayward and Rashel's house and make a life for herself. Though the Regime taught self-sacrifice as a virtue, Arnole had little patience with it. He had said over and over, "Sacrifice for sacrifice's sake does no one any good!"

  Now he said in a pleading tone, "Dismé, I have known you since you were eighteen. Once you turned twenty, Rashel had no legal claim on you. I know you have the intelligence and the will to recognize good advice! I keep thinking you are ... perhaps..."

  "Perhaps what, Arnole."

  He shook his head, then smiled, more at himself than her. "I had thought... I still think there's more to you than meets the eye. But then, we all have hopeful dreams about our children, and I think of you very much as I would a daughter." He held out the sack of coins, gazing fixedly at her.

  Silenced equally by his love and his vexation, Dismé took the little bag of coins—splits and bits of Holdmarks—and hid it under the quilting scraps at the bottom of her ragbag with what was left of the others he had given her. Whenever Dismé was sent to Apocanew on an errand, she exchanged the smaller coins for Holdmarks. Then, rarely, when she actually had time to herself in Apocanew, she went to the money-changer's with ten Holdmarks and a split, the changer's fee, to buy a little gold Dominion with a Rebel Angel on the face and the words "I Spare the Righteous" on the back. These she sewed into the hem of her petticoat, for the fewer the coins, the easier they were to hide. Her underclothing was far wealthier than she.

  If Arnole had meant this additional gift to distract her from worrying over him, however, it failed. Dismé spent the night in her aerie on the ruined tower, crouching against the stones, head on her knees, body shaking as though she were having an attack of the Terrors. Arnole was her father in all ways that mattered. Whenever Rashel had been most dangerous and threatening, Arnole had been her refuge, now be was threatened and there was nothing she could do for him. Her rage was futile; intervention would be childish and useless. She had clung to him like a vine to a tree, determined to share his life, now he was being severed from her and she could not bear it!

  Nor, seemingly, could somethings else, for they were all around her before she knew they were there.

  "... search, search, search..." the ouphs wept, their salt wetness running into her mouth.

  "Pain, see, here, like, like, who?" Rocking, moaning, tormented.

  "Come. Corn-fort. Come-forth. Oh, see."

  She was deep in a smothering fog-bank of them, their voices like sleet in storm, their smell like old cellars full of mold, the feel of them like corpses, cold and empty! She buried her face in her hands and tried not to gag as she breathed them in, drowning in them, horrified at them, at herself, for Arnole. The horror was paralyzing, and she crouched upon the wall in a state that was almost coma.

  Toward dawn, she surfa
ced, cold and shivering, wet through with dew. The ouphs were gone leaving behind a natural cold and warranted despair. She climbed down from the tower, plodded back to the house and fell into sodden sleep on top of her bed, only to be wakened an hour or two later by a turmoil of shouting, cursing, and running feet.

  Arnole's Chair had been found burbling and tweeping to itself in an alley near by. Its carapace was ripped apart, and Arnole was gone.

  Aunt Gayla had hysterics; Rashel went about with a white, angry face; Ayward closed himself in his den, and shortly the agents from the Office of Chair Support showed up, accompanied by Major Mace Marchant, a thin, wiry, sharp-faced man who headed the Apocanew sub-office of the BHE Department of Inexplicable Arts. This made him Rashel's boss, responsible for oversight of the Caigo Faience as well as for investigating anything "questionable" that happened in Rashel's family.

  "I recognize the Major," Gayla whispered. "He's one of Rashel's dear, dear friends."

  She and Dismé were waiting to be given injections of Holy Truth Serum before they were questioned about Arnole's disappearance. Everyone said the Regime got the serum from the demons, along with the bottles and the chairs and certain other things the Regime couldn't make for itself. After the injection, Dismé heard herself babbling on and on about how much she would miss Arnole while Major Marchant nodded sympathetically, his triangular eyebrows jiggling up and down like bouncing balls and his mouth pursing in and out with every word she said.

  "Your sister is very upset,' he told Rachel, laying a fond hand on her shoulder.

  "My sister will get over it," Rashel replied, with a silky little laugh.

  Dismé, hearing and seeing this as she heard and saw everything, thought she would not get over it. All her memories of father, mother, and brother put together were less than her memories of Arnole. Getting over it this time would be impossible. If he had died all at once, as Roger had, she could have grieved openly. Unexplained vanishment, however, was shameful, and Arnole's departure had exposed the family to censure, which, in Rashel's estimation, was best excised by relentlessly inflicting it upon others, particularly those she lived with.

  Gayla wept almost without ceasing and had the Terrors every night. Ayward kept a frozen countenance and a jaw clenched shut, like someone with a mouth full of untamed utterance it would be dangerous to loose. Dismé was trapped on a frantic carousel of the unalterable, incessantly circling the pain of his loss, the regret that she had not really confided in him.

  Arnole had scolded her for babbling; he had advised silence. She had not taken his advice but she had never told him why! She had never said that she poured out her blather-brook to make a moat between herself and the world. Though the habit had labeled her a fool, years of being thought foolish had concealed her stubborn persistence as a separate person, one not defined by the roles Rashel assigned her. She could not give up the protection it afforded. Until now.

  Now, she felt Arnole's reproaches turn in her mind like rusty valves, shuddering open under the twist of grief. Language ran out of her like bath water, leaving a damp vacancy, a necessary vacuum that would not accept being refilled. The only monument she could offer Arnole was this empty silence. He had urged quiet, and though she had failed when he was with her, she succeeded now that he was gone.

  It was all she had to give him. She could not consider leaving, though for years she had told Arnole yes, someday, tomorrow, next season, when the summer comes. Becalmed amidst her grief, barely afloat, she knew any attempt to leave would expose her to dangers too dreadful to speak of. Once thoughts were put into words, they tended to slip out. Better let her fear be unspoken, another oozy monster like those in childhood closets, under childhood beds, out of sight. She could only keep her head beneath her blankets, hoping that so long as she did not meet evil's eyes, she was safe.

  Even as she averted her eyes from old evils, however, she had to recognize the new threat. Here in Apocanew, there were people around, nosy people, Regimic officialdom, inveterate intervenors. There, at Faience, she would be far from help, easy prey. Each time this thought occurred, she struggled to unthink it.

  9

  nell latimer's book

  It seems I'm not alone in taking precautions. My colleagues from around the country, those few who are in on the discovery, are also building shelters or making plans to take their wives and children to visit high places at the time of impact, if there is an impact. The Andes, maybe, or the Himalayas. Actually, my family is already high enough and far enough inland to avoid tidal waves. There's a huge fault line running north and south through Yellowstone, so I worry more about earthquakes. And, of course, if we're in the path of a direct hit, forget it.

  Also, I'm troubled by this purple smell that comes and goes. I'm one of those people whose senses are all linked together, synesthetes, people whose minds apply color to things like letters or numbers or smells. I do it in various ways; I sometimes taste things I hear; I sometimes hear things I see; and I smell in all the hues of the rainbow, and then some, and lately I've had spells of smelling a deep, bluish purple odor no matter where I happen to be. Not a bad smell exactly, just slightly stifling. I've never smelled it before.

  The thing keeps coming, big and black and already near the orbit of Saturn, which just happens to be in the way. We'll know the effect in a few days.

  Well, it seems Saturn wasn't enough in the way to swallow the thing, but it was close enough to swerve it around and away from Earth, into an orbit that will take it out of the system without ever coming any nearer than the back side of Jupiter.

  This has changed everything! The various observatories that had been keeping their mouths tight shut are opening them wide and the science popularizers are already having a field day. Naturally, certain senators and congressmen, the headline grabbers, are starting a witch hunt, demanding to know why they hadn't been informed. Neils says we star watchers will no doubt be summoned to appear before congressional committees. All we'll be able to say is that everyone was informed as soon as we had anything to tell them and we still don't have much. We still can't tell what it is or even how big it is, since it seems to have some kind of smoky field around it, sort of like a black comet, throwing off matter into its tail which is no longer directly behind it and is therefore slightly visible to us.

  I'm not alone in being frustrated at being unable to provide data and answer questions without saying approximately or perhaps or it seems. By this time, of course, everyone knows it had been headed directly at us. There isn't any widespread hysteria about that; on the whole the discussions are scholarly and rather self-congratulatory. Other things are grabbing the headlines just now, all of them totally foreseeable. Doomsday sects have decided this thing is the Second Coming. A nihilist bunch claims to have a lethal virus they'll release if their terrorist comrades aren't let out of prison before their god arrives on the comet. In the space of a few days, there have been half a dozen plane hijackings, people trying to go to Antarctica or Nepal.

  And of course, as Neils points out with irritating frequency, there are still fifty-six separate wars taking place on this planet, mostly between religious or ethnic or cultural tribes who have to rub shoulders with other religions, ethnicities, or cultures they don't like, can't tolerate, and feel a traditional hatred for. There is no longer anywhere on earth for refugees to go. Earth is fully populated, but people still can't get that through their heads.

  At supper last week, Michy asked what an asseroid was, and I explained.

  Jerry said to me, "That's what you were really worried about, weren't you. Well, observe the power of prayer. It moved."

  "It didn't move," I said indignantly. "Saturn moved it, as we had thought it might." I was grumpy, but then, I'd been living on nerves and black coffee for weeks. "Besides, you didn't even know it was there, so you couldn't have prayed it away."

  "We didn't pray it away. We prayed for safety and peace and good will among men, and..."

  "Jerry, who is this 'we' you
keep talking about?"

  He looked at me as though I'd just crawled out of a hole. "The International Prayer Crusade, of course. www.interpray.edu. Where've you been? We have members all over the world, millions of us by now." He looked fondly at Michy and rumpled her hair, which she hated. "Each day we're given a topic of prayer over the net, and a time on the following day that will be simultaneous for all of us, and we all pray for that thing, at that time, all joining together with one voice."

  "What do you pray for?" I asked, dumbfounded.

  "We ask that God intervene in man's affairs. We ask that peace be enforced, that wars cease. We ask that..."

  "You really mean that, Jer? You want God to reach down and solve our problems?"

  He frowned into his plate. "We pray for people who need to be converted, people who are willfully blind and intellectually arrogant."

  He turned from Michy to give me the full blast of his admonitory gaze. He meant me! The heat of that glare was enough to raise blisters, and the idea of forest fires popped into my head. All those fires in recent decades that have started from a spark, a lightning flash, a cigarette butt, and then gone on to burn everything and everyone in their paths because the forests were too thick, too heavily populated with trees and brush because we had fought the fires that had kept the forests balanced. Now here were millions of Jerries, all praying for God to reach down and take charge of an earth that was vastly overpopulated because we had fought the diseases that had kept it balanced! Did he know what he was asking for? Good Lord!

  The next morning, Saturday, he left his computer to go answer the phone, and the flashing monitor screen attracted my attention. He'd called up that day's prayer time for the IPC, in our time zone, ten A.M. The topic was another call for divine intervention.

  Saturday is my day to do the laundry. I still hang things outside when the weather is nice, because I love the smell of sun-dried sheets. So, I had the first load ready, pegging them to the lines out back, and all of a sudden the purple smell filled my nose, the same hue I'd been smelling at odd times for weeks now.