"Well of course. Nothing under gametes, wombs, embryos, ova, sperm; nothing under the storage bay number or the monitor number; nothing under any other remotely pertinent designator I could come up with. I've done everything but a line-by-line read through of the last century, because if it was logged at all, which it might not have been, whoever logged it managed to do it without using any pertinent vocabulary whatsoever!"
"So what else has happened out there?" She gestured, her fingers encompassing the world outside.
"Were the Spared Ones sending out missionaries-cum-spies-cum-bottling teams when we were awake last?"
"No! They were staying at home, minding their own business, and keeping their covenants with the demons."
"Well, they've got some new bone in their craw. They've got teams fanning out putting in time as missionary-spy-bottlers. From the conversation we've picked up, it seems that General Gowl recently received a visitation from a Rebel Angel who told the general to add as many to the Spared as possible by forcibly converting anyone convertible. They've got muggers out there, knocking passers-by on the heads, sneaking into rooms where people are sick or dying and making off with bits and pieces of them."
"That's against their religion! Their Dicta said that everyone who's Spared is already in Bastion!"
Raymond sat down opposite her, swirling tea in his half-empty cup, "That's what they used to believe. Their belief now includes conquest and ruling the world. It also includes bottling a lot of their own people for no particular reason except that they're considered supernumerary."
"Are they still searching for magic?"
"I hate to tell you, Nell, but they've probably found it, or something like it. God knows how long they've had it, but what's going on is serious stuff. Raising the dead. Making zombie workers. No more sweet little fire-starting spells, now they're casting curses on people."
She gaped at him. "You're not saying it works? How?"
"Wouldn't we love to know. Crazy part is, along with the ... well, what would you call it? Black magic? Along with that, there's a good deal of innocent stuff. Real levitators. Real firestarters. Some pretty good clairvoyants. Plus a guy who evokes animals out of thin air."
"You're joking!"
"Why would I joke about it? It's real enough. Guy they call Befun the Lonely. He conjures up creatures that look like animals, act like animals, eat and excrete like animals. When was the last time you saw a tiger? Or an elephant? We now have tigers and elephants, small ones, because the tropical rain forest they live in is where part of Texas used to be, and it isn't all that big. Whether it's hypnotism, telekinesis, manifestation or translocation, we don't know. And we didn't do it. Hell, we couldn't do it."
"We had animal embryos. Including wild animals."
"I know, but everything spoiled, I just told you."
"Then who ... how...?"
"For all we know, he draws them from some trans-dimensional world. Quien sabe. Oh, one more thing. The visitor on top of the world has become a traveler."
"It's what?" she cried, disbelieving. "The Bitch part moved? And that wasn't at the top of your list?"
"Well, who knows." He tipped his hand: mebbe, mebbe not. "It's moved a hell of a way from the Arctic Circle. Right now it's oozing ashore about where Arizona used to be. South of Henceforth."
"Henceforth is still there?"
"The same cities as when you went to sleep last. Four along the New West Coast, north to south, Mungria, Secours, New Salt Lake, and Henceforth. Several dozen small communities in the Sierra Madre Islands. North of the Yellowstone Sea, a kingdom called Everday, quite civilized."
"And east of us, New Kansas and New Chicago."
"Both still dictatorships, but not particularly repressive as we would understand repression from our own time. More on the Singapore model. Traffic back and forth is fairly constant. Around Bastion the farms and ranches are getting more numerous, people who've moved over the hills. And there's a survivor group we didn't know about, a technological enclave, maybe scientific as well, a good way south of Bastion. Place called Chasm. They're hidden and secretive, but during the last decade the pings have spotted a couple of gateway trading communities out in the open. Evidently they've been there all along, but we didn't have any pings in that area, never thought to send any until we overheard talk about the place."
"Anything else?"
"Travelers have spotted a kind of fortress about midway between here and Henceforth, out on the plains. We can't get a ping near it, and all we know about it is that it wasn't there ten years ago. For some reason, the wagoneers call it Goldland."
"Could it be another religious bunch, like Bastion?"
"We don't know. Goldland is just what the passing wagoneers call it. It could be called something else."
She mused for a moment. "I guess the place you call Chasm answers the question about where the demons get their trade technology."
He smiled. "Probably."
"They still wearing those crazy horns?"
"They are, and we still don't know why. And we're picking up that eerie fog in other places than Bastion, now. Last team said it's moved into the countryside, and now it's beginning to show up in the nearer towns. Nobody has a clue as to what it is. It almost acts like something living, but when a ping gets close, nothing!"
"Couldn't it be some function of the monster on top of the world? Excuse me, monster who used to be on top of the world?"
He took his cup and her bowl to the sterilizer, staring into the screen that substituted for a window. A view of trees, mountains, piled white clouds with stormy bottoms. "Anything could be some function of that. We know nothing, less than nothing about it."
She sighed and rubbed her neck. "Anything from the Mars colony?"
"Moon base is still in touch with them, and they have a very slightly increasing population. Moon base itself is still teetering. And that's it." His tone of voice spoke of finality.
"Which means the human race has at least two chances to survive, maybe three, so what are we still in here for?"
He shrugged again. "We've pretty much done what we were supposed to do. Thanks to the stuff sent back by the moon team, before they left for Mars, we've been able to make accurate maps of the current surface of the earth. Three or four teams back, we printed the maps, showing the terrain, rivers, mountains and so forth. What survived seems to be anything that was a thousand feet above sea level pre-Happening. That means scattered islands where Australia and New Zealand, Indonesia and the Philippines used to be. Anyhow, we've made thousands of map copies available to peddlers and merchants and caravan leaders."
"What cover did you use?"
"As we agreed, we've printed 'Council of Guardians' at the bottom, to explain who made them."
"Right," she said, distractedly "I'd forgotten about the 'Council of Guardians.' "
That's our role, Nell. Can't forget our role. We haven't had anyone willing to play Allipto Gomator for eight years! Time you got back into your seeress's garb."
"Time we got out of this tomb into the fresh air," she said.
"You still want to emerge," he said in a defeated tone. "Don't you?"
"I've argued for it the past two wakings," she snarled, angrily. "I would like to meet my many-greats grandchildren."
He sighed and patted her shoulder. "Why don't we put off talking about that until the others are awake?"
"How many others, Raymond?"
"Two in this shift."
"I didn't mean just this shift, Ray. Why not wake everyone? Why go on with this."
He stared at her, his face pale. "If we wake everyone, there'll be twelve of us, Nell. Just twelve."
She gasped. That was half as many as there had been last time she'd been awake. "My friend? Alan Block."
"He's still alive and waking."
"We didn't last as long as they thought we would, did we?"
"Long enough," he said, patting her shoulder. "We lasted long enough.
25
<
br /> the fate of an inclusionist
When Rashel first took over the Faience it had been piled high with Inclusionist artifacts, which she had immediately started weeding out, including many things that Ayward had been responsible for collecting. Whenever Ayward and Rashel were together, they argued furiously about her actions.
"The painting you're talking about shows a sorcerer with his magical staff, summoning the power of the light," Ayward cried dramatically.
Rashel retorted, "It's what they used to call art, yes, but it's not part of The Inexplicable Arts. This painting is simply a piece of Durable Art! It portrays a man leaning on a rake or hoe, staring into the sunset. It's actually included in an encyclopedia of artworks dating before the Happening. You'll find it in the C of S library."
"The College of Sorcery had already declared it part of the Canon of Arcana, Rashel. It was on my Master List."
"No one refers to your old master list anymore, and I'm certainly not going to call it to their attention."
Ayward turned white. "Once something is declared part of the Canon, your job should be to find out its meaning."
"Once something is mistakenly declared part of the Canon of Arcana, it is my job to exclude it. Calling this simple old painting a part of the Canon destroys the integrity of The Art. Can't you see that?"
"Better a false inclusion than a false exclusion!" he cried.
"Dicta before personality! That's what the Bureau says!"
"Frash what the Bureau says."
"Hush," she sneered. "Someone might be listening."
Someone was usually listening, at the time and afterward, when Ayward complained to her.
"Everything from the time of the great mages is magical, Dis. People moved without labor, brought forth food without toil, built great structures with The Art. Ah, Dismé, I long for that time."
His longing did not impress her as once it might have done. Whatever Ayward longed for was no longer Dismé's concern, still less his marital dispute about the painting. There was nothing unusual about Ayward quarreling with Rashel, except that this was the last quarrel they would have.
A day later, three men from the Bureau of Happiness and Enlightenment came to arrest Ayward Gazane on suspicion of having The Disease. A few days later Rashel called Dismé and Gayla into the study and told them that Ayward had been found guilty and had been sentenced to body-part donation and chairing.
"He's in a Chair?" breathed Gayla.
"He's been sent to the donor center and they've taken some parts and put him in a Chair, yes. But he's quite mobile, really." She turned hot eyes on Dismé. "Stop that crying, Dismé! Ayward is my husband, not yours. Save your tears for your own family, if you're ever lucky enough to have one!"
Dismé's tears came from her revulsion at the gloating pleasure she had heard in Rashel's voice. Revulsion was also what she felt when she first visited Ayward. He was crouched in the Chair, only visible from the waist up, his head bent over so that he peered into his lap, his left arm and hand buried inside the Chair. She spoke to him, but he did not answer, though she bent near to listen, for it was hard to be heard or to hear over the constant noises the Chair made, bubbling and wheeping and an occasional shrill keening, like wind through stiff grass. Arnole's Chair had been almost silent, and Dismé found the noise of this one irritating past endurance, as though it had been designed to drive Ayward to despair.
She went to the barn and sat looking at the trees. Ouphs came out of the forest to settle on the glass towers, but she did not even glance in their direction. Oh, if she had only gone away when Arnole said to go. Now she was trapped! Rashel despised Ayward, and Gayla only irritated him. There was no one else here who was in the least sympathetic, and she could not in good conscience abandon him!
Arrangements for Ayward had been made by Rashel. A suite of rooms in the unused north wing of the Conservator's house was opened up and furnished for Ayward and his young attendant, Owen Toadlast, assigned here to expiate some minor crime through service to the Office of Chair Support. Though Dismé steeled herself to visit Ayward often, not just at the required Cheerful and Supportive visits of the whole family, he did not speak to her or to anyone. Dismé herself had become so laconic since Arnole's disappearance that she had to make a conscious effort to talk if not with Ayward, at least at him. Each day she made a mental list of ordinary topics, but even this superficial chit-chat fell into an abyss of silence, leaving her virtually mute at all other times.
Rashel noticed, of course. "Cat got your tongue, Dismé?" she asked, in her usual badgering manner. "What's the matter with you. Not feeling well?"
"I'm fine, Rashel. Just thinking about..." Dismé went down the list of unexceptionable things she could be thinking about. Schoolwork. The weather. What they were having for dinner, or "... things I have to do for school."
Recently added to the students in Dismé's class was a pre-adolescent girl student whose mother worked at Faience. The girl's record was much decorated with gold stars for, among other things, "Correcting other students' false ideas." Her name was Lettyne Leek, and she seemed determined to catch Dismé dispensing "false ideas" or die trying. One day in class dear Gustaf rose to his feet with an expression of wonder, gestured broadly with one hand, cried Hail Tamlar, let there be fire, and set his desk ablaze. Dismé' bit her lip to keep from crying out, and her eyes went at once to Lettyne. Oh, if only Gustaf had not done it in public, where people could see him! The teacher was already bearing down on him, and Lettyne, her face screwed into righteous hauteur, was busy making a note of the time and the place and the names of all those who had been witnesses. Oh, poor boy! Now he was in for it!
Though Gustaf had always behaved in exemplary fashion, and though the spell had been mentioned the day previously in enchantments class, nonetheless, the BHE was summoned to take him away to Apocanew, keeping him overnight for interrogation. When he returned to school the next day, he was no longer able to start a fire with a gesture.
"They didn't ask me to explain how I did it," he whispered to Dismé. "They just asked about the Dicta, over and over, and did I believe in the Dicta, and didn't I know I was supposed to have a permit. Then they asked about enchantments, didn't I know what the necessary elements of enchantments were, and then they said set fire to something, and I was thinking about needing the permit and the necessary elements and I couldn't remember how I did it."
"You didn't think about it the first time," she said.
"No," he replied in a puzzled voice. "It just chimed in my head like a bell, and I did it without thinking."
She gave him a long and measuring look and dropped her voice to a whisper. "Gustaf, if you will go into quiet places, by yourself, it may be you will hear that chime again. But if you hear it when others are around, you must ask it to wait until you are alone."
He looked at her for a moment in puzzlement, then suddenly nodded in understanding. "It doesn't come from what we learn here, does it?"
She shook her head.
He smiled a secret smile. "It comes from somewhere else. Somewhere better."
During her visit to Ayward that night, Dismé spoke of Gustaf's fire-starting, and Lettyne's continual effrontery. "The girl is trying to catch me doing or saying something wrong," she concluded. "She's ready to pounce."
To her amazement, she heard Ayward's gravelly whisper, "Anything reflecting on you would reflect on Rashel. You might be wise to mention all this to Rashel if the opportunity presents itself."
She put her hand on his cheek and cried, "Oh, Ayward, I'm so glad you're talking! I've been so concerned about you..."
"Shh, Dis. Talking got me into this..." he pounded the arm of the Chair with his right hand, though softly. "I won't talk to anyone but you and Owen." He laughed, a painful, rasping laugh that hurt her ears. "I wish this damned rain would stop. Day after day."
The rain was becoming a trial for them all. The children were depressed and moody, each day's lessons were like all those before, the hours pas
sed like endless plockutta. At the Caigo Faience, Rashel worked even longer hours than usual, and when she made the required Cheerful and Supportive visits to Ayward's quarters, she expounded to him in a exalted, mysterious voice about the device that had been discovered under the fortress at Strong Hold.
"A momentous discovery," she said. "Perhaps the very fountainhead of the dark canon!"
Rashel was deeply involved in the project, but Ayward was against it, or against her doing it, as he wrote to her in dozens of scribbled notes.
"What is this mysterious thing?" Dismé asked him. "Rashel seems very involved in it."
"Mysterious," he snorted. "I suppose it is. The Regime decided to add a dungeon or some fool thing under the Fortress, and they've dug up a device. Rashel has been given a look at it. She's shown me a drawing, and the thing is obviously sorcerous, I told her to check the Archives for the P'Jardas account. You wouldn't know about that..."
She was offended by this offhand assumption. "As a matter of fact, Arnole told me about Hal P'Jardas and his fiery woman. What has that to do with this thing they've found?"
"It has to do with a letter P'Jardas sent to the Regime not long before he was bottled. He said he'd been going through his old notes, and he believed the mound where the Fortress was built was the same one the fiery spirit emerged from."
"So anything in that mound..."
"Anything in or on the mound would be contaminated by sorcery even if not itself magical. They've found this pillar thing inside the mound. According to P'Jardas's account, there were pillars all over the mound. Arnole told me those were taken away when the fortress was first built; the archives have records of the move. Someone should try to find them."
"But if the thing is sorcerous, shouldn't it be examined?"
"It's dangerous," he cried. "But when I tell Rashel so, she doesn't listen. If someone else had told her about the P'Jardas account, she might have paid attention."
The Vistor Page 19
