The Vistor

by Sheri S. Tepper

  With an effort the doctor managed to say in an indifferent voice, "No reason. Just that it's an odd name."

  The general waved the matter away. "Leif, where did this nexus allegation come from?"

  The bishop poured himself more wine. "We have a Special Agent at Faience, woman named Leek. She works there, her daughter attends the school and keeps an eye on the teacher, the monitor and the other children."

  "Special Agents from the Office of Investigation?" inquired the major, suddenly pale. "Why wasn't I told?"

  The bishop nodded. "I'm not stepping on your toes, Major. No one is overriding your authority at Faience, but it's necessary to keep an eye on the place. It's off to hell and gone. Anyone could be up to mischief, without anyone in authority knowing anything about it."

  Indeed, thought the doctor to himself. Indeed they could be up to mischief including the hiding away of a woman named Dismé Latimer whom he had been trying to locate for a very, very long time.

  28

  the seeress

  Some distance west and over the mountains from Bastion, a single traveler made his way along a dusty road, little more than a wagon track leading over a ridge and then down again by long, winding traverses to a wide and fertile valley. He had made this trip several times during his life, whenever he could arrange it. Except that he seemed very strong and fit for a man of his obvious age, there was nothing remarkable about him.

  As he neared the summit, he searched the verges of the trail, letting his eyes come to rest on a cairn of stones that marked a turn to the right and a scarcely visible path to a sheer rock wall. In an inconspicuous cleft was a metal panel with a translucent window set into it. Behind the window, a red light glowed softly. He laid his palm upon this window and sat down on a nearby rock to wait. The way might not open at all. If it did, it would not do so immediately.

  After some time, a voice spoke from the rock. "You wish to confer with Allipto Gomator?"

  He rose, speaking in a firm voice. "I do."

  "What do you want with her?"

  "I have news of this and that."

  After a lengthy silence, the voice said, "Enter."

  The rock moved aside, and he went through the cleft, down a short corridor of stone, and into a domed cavern, mostly natural, though he could detect places in which the stone had been cut or perhaps melted away to provide for the transparent chamber before him. Inside it sat an old woman wearing a wimple of gold beneath a robe and hood of green. Though spotted with age, her hands were lovely, with long and graceful fingers.

  "Welcome, my friend," she said. "I have not seen you for years."

  "I was in Bastion for some time," he grumbled. "They have ways of hampering movement." He sat silent for a moment, then said, "You're looking well."

  "I'm looking old."

  "You've changed little, Ma'am, since I first saw you."

  "Be seated. May I offer you something to drink?"

  They decided on tea, which came out of a dispenser next to the table on which the seeress kept her crystal ball and was passed to the man through a slot in the chamber. When they had sipped and spoken of nothing much for a few moments, she said, "What do you have for me."

  The man twisted himself into a more comfortable position and crossed one leg over the other. "To the west of here, a new place has built up. It is called Goodland, Gladland, or Goldland, depending on who's telling. An explorer who went there said it looks like an unassailable fortress, with only one huge gate."

  "Did he talk to the people who live there?"

  "He didn't see any people. Just a very forbidding wall and a closed gate. Also, I have heard that the being which used to lie far in the north has come south, toward this same place."

  The seeress sat as though carved in stone for a long moment. "Do you know anything else about it?"

  "Nothing. The wagoneers who come by there say the place is set on the dry plain. They are amazed at this, wondering who would build such a place in the desert."

  "Anything else?"

  "In Bastion, beneath the Fortress, they have discovered a device. It is only partially uncovered as yet. It seems to be made of stone, but such stone has not been seen before."

  The seeress took some time to think about that, as well. "And what will they do with it?"

  "They have already appointed people from Inexplicable Arts to examine it. My son's wife is one of them."

  "If I recall correctly, he is not your son."

  "Only you and I know that, Lady. He believes he is. Certainly he was born some spans after I married his mother."

  "Don't I recall that you married her out of kindness, to save her from shame and bottling."

  "Kindness, yes. Or perhaps out of lust. She was very beautiful."

  The old woman laughed. "I have always respected your candor. Do you think this device is important?"

  "I believe, Madam, that this device is only one of several, or even many. It is my intention to find the others. I've already found a clue to their whereabouts."

  "And you base all this conjecture on what?"

  "My reading, Madam, done in my youth, in the archives of the Fortress itself, beginning with an account we have discussed before, concerning the discoveries of Hal P'Jardas."

  "You give credence to his flaming woman, then? What was her name? Tamlar?"

  "I believe in Tamlar more now than ever. We are beginning to hear much about the Council of Guardians, Seeress. Their names and attributes are known. Prayer is uttered in their names. They are too often identified with the Rebel Angels for my taste, but if one presumes the mythical nature of such angels, the misidentification does no harm."

  She regarded him narrowly. "You think this device has something to do with the Council? You think it's magical? Or perhaps merely powerful."

  He thought for a moment before replying, "From a certain point of view, the two are indistinguishable. Sufficient power would always look like magic to one who lacked knowledge of it. And, yes. I think this device will turn out to be very powerful indeed."

  "Ah," she murmured. "Will that affect me, at all?"

  He regarded her with a slight smile for a long moment, sipping his tea. She did not hurry him. Eventually, he set down the cup and said, "According to P'Jardas, Tamlar said this is the land of Elnith of the Silences, who sleeps beneath these lands and will emerge in time. Think on those words, Lady. If these are the lands of Elnith, then she is here. If she will emerge, in time, then she is hidden now. P'Jardas lived some centuries ago, so she has remained hidden for a long time. You are the seeress. Perhaps you can tell me who or what has slept here all that time. Who, or what will emerge."

  She answered from a throat suddenly dry and rasping. "As I have said, though only to you, I am not a believer in magic."

  "But you are a believer in power," he said, smiling.

  She nodded. "Yes. I am a believer in that."

  "In Bastion, a great deal is heard about the Council of Guardians. It begins always with Tamlar, with fire. Next are mentioned the names of Aarond of the Anvil and Ialond of the Hammer. Is this a systematic seraphium do you think? First fire, then those who shape matter. Then, who next? Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun, who are said to be caretakers of souls, and after them the tutelary deities of earth, air, and water, Hussara, Volian, and Wogalkish, along with one called Jiralk the Joyous, bringer of life. Oh, yes, definitely it is systematic. Or metaphorical."

  He finished his tea and set the cup back in the slot through which it had come. "This assembly may be, of course, both metaphorical and real. There are said to be a score or more of these Guardians." He rose and bowed to her. "I will come again when I have discovered more. Have you anything to tell me in return?"

  "Very little, my friend. Things are quiet here."

  She said it with some bitterness, and as though in acknowledgment, he bowed again, very low, before leaving. When he had gone, the green-robed woman bent her head onto her hands, feeling both weariness and confusion. Before her, the cryst
al ball came alive with fire, and she raised her eyes to confront a globe of blinding light that faded, almost at once, into a fleeting image. She thought the image was herself, but it faded too quickly to be sure.

  "Elnith," she said to herself. "Elnith of the Silences. Sleeping below these lands. And what does that have to do with me?"

  The cavern of Allipto Gomator had been built by several successive Omega Station awake teams when the darkness of the Happening was beginning to wane and time lay heavy on their hands. At first, Nell had considered it the height of hubris to build such a place. It would be dependent for custom upon casual wanderers at a time when there were unlikely to be enough human beings left to wander anywhere! She had, however, underestimated the antsiness of mankind. The Darkness was only half lifted before people began trickling by in ones and twos and dozens, most of them eager to trade a little information about the outside world for a trifle of food or medicine. Nell had been amazed at the number of animals the wanderers had managed to keep alive: horses, cows, llamas, sheep and goats, dogs and cats, various sorts of chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and pigeons, as well as the occasional example of native fauna: deer, squirrel, ferret, bear.

  During her last two wakes, Arnole Gazane had been one of her most faithful informants. The various wakers who played "Allipto" had seen him several times, Nell herself had seen him first as a youth, then as a middle-aged man, now as one approaching age. Rising from her chair, she divested herself of her costume and went down the winding stairs into the station itself where she found Raymond, Janet, and Jackson engaged in their continuing argument about the limitations of Omega Station.

  Jackson was saying, "The nuclear plants they had time to install couldn't maintain power for the habitat plus 200 coffins, but now there aren't 200 coffins."

  "Strictly speaking, there are," murmured Janet. "I mean, they're all occupied. The freeze units are still on."

  "But they don't have to be," Nell said as she approached.

  Janet gave her an angry look. "What would we do with...?"

  "Take the sleepers with us when we go outside," Nell remarked.

  Silence.

  "We always planned to go out eventually," she said firmly. "Listen. It's time, isn't it? Some of the sleepers are still alive, they just won't wake up. Why don't we take them out into the sunlight! Does it matter whether we die out there or down here?"

  Raymond heaved a huge sigh. "We've always known Emergence might be necessary; let's just grit our teeth and do it."

  "We've maintained a presence," said Janet. "That's what we were supposed to do. We've got the old lady up there spreading useful information."

  "I'm the old lady on this shift," Nell said, "and we need to get past providing information. The population is edging up toward a million. The people in Chasm probably have all the technology we had in the 21st, and the other people are relearning it. We don't have many years left, and we can best help if we're outside. Besides, things are happening. My informant just told me the Bitch thing is oozing itself toward a new construction that's sprung up on the plains southwest of us, toward Henceforth. Doesn't that entice you at all?"

  "We can send some pings," murmured Janet.

  Nell cried, "Pings can't get anything out of the Bitch, we've known that for centuries! They can ping at her interminably, and she just ignores them! Let us for the love of God get out of here and leant something..."

  "I'd like to know something about the Bitch before we go out there," said Janet in a reproving tone.

  "You're not going to learn anything in here," Nell snarled at her.

  Janet frowned. "You're so hasty, Nell. Far too hasty. Did any of the other crews find out if it's alive?"

  "How would they know, Janet? Everything we've learned about it came from the moon base. They're the ones who mapped the world for us, including the area of the Arctic covered by that critter. What difference does it make whether it's alive or not?"

  "Because it barely moved at all until recently," said Jackson, putting his hand on Janet's shoulder.

  She shook him off. "Something made it move. We ought to find out what before we leave the safety of the redoubt."

  Nell threw up her hands and went to the dispenser for tea.

  Looking after her, Raymond said, "If something made it move, it had to be the increasing population. That's the only real change, that and the improvement in natural environment over what we had in the 21st century. Benign changes in general climate. Slight lowering in sea level since the high after the Happening. More ozone. The changes from season to season are much milder now, but you knew that. No change in..."

  "All right!" Nell cried from across the room. "Why do we keep repeating what we all know?"

  Raymond raised his voice and went on, "... anything else except the number of people. Which has doubled in the last century."

  Janet laughed. "From a half million to a million? There were over four hundred million of us in this country alone!"

  Nell said impatiently, "A number we now know to have been excessive for one continent. Presumably, something under one million was about right, or at least, not wrong, because we're reaching that figure without anything else happening. That is, if anything that's happening has anything to do with humanity at all, which it may not! Let's at least postulate that more than a million is, if not wrong, at least on its way to becoming wrong."

  Janet snarled, "Nell, who made you the arbiter of what's right or wrong?"

  Nell thumped the table. "I'm not making a moral judgement, I'm making a pragmatic one! Before the Happening, the world was full of people, and we were using up the Earth's resources at a fantastic rate. Somehow we felt we'd find some other world before we used up this one, and going to space was a spectator sport. That game's over. We're not going anywhere! Therefore, all the attitudes that led to use-up-the-world-and-leave-it-behind are wrong for us, and whatever attitudes keep the Earth fit for what people and animals are left is right for us, and I defy you to come up with any better definition."

  "So what else is new?" Jackson asked, flippantly, then, seeing the expression on her face, "Sorry, Nell. It's just... last time I fell asleep with those words ringing in my ears. I had hoped we'd have something else to discuss by now."

  Nell snorted. "You don't seem to be listening! You want something else to discuss? How about the vast being that's crawling toward the new place out there on the plains? How about Raymond's weird sensor readings on the fog that's haunting Bastion. How about the really weird artifact that's been found under the Fortress in Bastion, or the fact that we are beginning to hear a good deal about the Council of Guardians..."

  "Hear about the Council?" cried Janet. "Hear about it?"

  Nell repeated, "Hear, yes. As in sound waves generated by friction, propagated through some medium such as air or water, that causes the ear drum to vibrate."

  Jackson persisted. "You mean hear from outside?"

  Raymond said, "According to the monitors, and the journals, members of the Council have been seen. Last awake team learned of a man in Ever-day who showed up with a glowing sign on his forehead."

  "What sign?" demanded Janet, turning red.

  "The sign of the Council."

  Janet cried, "Hell, Raymond, we invented the Council! We didn't think up a sign for it!"

  Raymond snapped, "I am not deaf, Janet. I know we had no sign for it."

  Janet growled. "We created the Guardian Council. We spread the word about it through Allipto."

  Nell snorted, "Yes we did, Janet. We did it to lay the groundwork for our eventual emergence!"

  "Maybe you did!"

  Nell said, "The old guy that came into Allipto's cavern just a little while ago mentioned Elnith of the Silences. He says she's been sleeping under Bastion for a long time."

  "Oh, come now," said Janet. "Surely none of our people who played seeresses talked to outsiders about sleepers down here. That would have been stupid."

  Nell said, "I'm sure none of them did. I certain
ly didn't."

  "You must have misunderstood him," Janet sniffed.

  "The interview was recorded. They always are! Look at it if you don't believe me."

  Raymond plowed on. "Janet, stop picking! Nell is right. The pings have picked up many references to a mythology about the Council of Guardians."

  "My informant mentioned Tamlar, then Ialond of the hammer and Aarond of the anvil, and then Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun." Nell rubbed her forehead. "Who was it comes after them?"

  Raymond shook his head. "I think it's the four who cradle life. Hussara of Earth. Wogalkish ... or is it Wolagshik ... I don't remember of the waters. Somebody of the sky..."

  "Volian!" grated Nell.

  "... and then a lifebringer named ... ah, Jiralk, I think. Jiralk the Joyous. Those are the only names I've heard, but there are said to be a score or more of them altogether."

  Jackson said, "We invented a council of a dozen members, and we didn't make up any titles! It was a mystical concept! What Alan called a faith-anchor. Something for the survivors to believe in, something to give hope..."

  Nell growled, "Well, now our faith-anchor has grown itself a hull, a mast, a set of sails, and maybe even an engine! Our mystical concept is crewed by mystical titles: Tamlar, Ialond, Aarond, et-bloody-al-onds, and Elnith is coming."

  "Elnith coming? Coming where?" demanded Janet.

  "How should I know." Nell grimaced impatiently. She was burning to get something done and they were so slow. "If you're wondering how a specific name became associated with a fictional group that we invented some hundreds of years ago, then by all means, waste your time."

  She gestured widely on the "we," meaning all of them in the chamber including those in the ranked coffins, silent or humming. Eighty lights, including all those who wouldn't wake up, plus the four of them sitting there arguing. A hundred sixteen dead. Slept into silence.

  Janet said, "They've simply embroidered the idea over the years. They took the notion of a Guardian Council and just ... made up the members of it."

  Raymond nodded. "That's possible. It doesn't explain everything, however."