The Vistor

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Like what?" asked Janet.

  "In Everday a miraculous device identified Camwar of the Cask as a member of the Council. When they are all identified, the story goes, they'll usher in the new age."

  "Whoopee?" challenged Nell. "Are we going to be part of it, or are we going to stay in this hellhole until we're all dead and already buried?"

  "Let's emerge," said Raymond.

  "No," said Janet.

  "I'm not sure that the others..." said Jackson.

  "For the love of heaven!" Nell cried. "Wake them and let them make up their own minds! We won't force you and Janet to do anything. You can stay down here until you rot, if that's what you want! We must wake the wakeable because they have the right of decision."

  "I think you're being precipitous. But then, you always have been," sneered Janet.

  "There's time," soothed Jackson.

  Raymond raised his eyebrows at Nell, who felt herself smothering in fury. She could not listen to them any longer. Instead, she went into the ping room, locked the door behind her, and spent the rest of her day's waking hours reviewing all that the pings had reported concerning the lands east of Henceforth where a fortress called Goodland or Goldland or Gladland had been built.

  29

  the spelunker

  Owen's story as told to the investigators was a simple one. "I was about to inject his evening pain medicine when Ayward dropped the books he had piled on the Chair. I laid the vial down on the Chair panel in order to gather them up, which, I admit, was foolish of me. He stuck the needle into my shoulder and I passed out. That's all I know about it."

  Owen's story as told to Dismé was, "It doesn't matter what happened; they're going to blame me, so I'm going to run away." Dismé heard this with some relief, for Owen's ignorance of what had really happened freed her to take whatever action she considered proper. She had heard voices in the hole. The people who owned those voices got there somehow, through a tunnel or a cavern! She knew caverns were occupied by bats, for Arnole had often pointed out clouds of flutterers rising into the evening sky. To find caverns, therefore, she would look for bats.

  When supper was over that night, Rashel returned to the museum, as she often did; Gayla went to her room; Dismé packed odds and ends into a canvas sack and waited for dusk. When it came, she left the house, counting on the grief and distraction of the day to keep Gayla from noticing she was gone.

  At the museum she climbed the fire escape to the roof, went across the roof to the tower and through an open arch to the winding stairs. At the top was a small, hexagonal platform surrounded by lacy iron railings and surmounted by a domed roof and spire. It was from here the signal flags were flown to say "Holiday, open to the public," or, as they had this morning, "Send Medical Help."

  The light leeched from the sky above the jagged rim of the world, and within moments she saw dim clouds swirling from the canyon's rim. Dismé dismissed these. She was looking for something closer. She turned, making a slow survey of the sky. Northwest, past the stumpy black fist of the barn roof, a triangle of protruding gable pointed like a black knuckle at a whirling swarm, and unlike the amorphous shapes at the canyon rim, this cloud was clearly made up of individual flutterers.

  She went down the tower and the fire escape more quickly than she had climbed it, hurrying to get to the barn before the swarm dispersed. Once there, she climbed to the familiar refuge of the loft, where the weathered and splintery loft door made a precarious support as she leaned outward beneath the beam and rusted pulley that still carried a tail of rotted rope. Though the loft seemed empty except for dust and cobwebs, a skittering sound above her presaged a score of ragged shapes diving before her startled face to fan outward in the dark.

  The flight she had seen earlier was still rising, though it was difficult to see the upward spiral between the two largest trees in the area. When Dismé reached the ground, she could still see the tree tops over the intervening growth, black puffs against the lighter sky. The moon was close to full and would be rising at any moment. She had traversed the cleared area, and come into the woods beyond, mixed pines and hardwoods, traveling in as straight a line as she could manage to the trunk of what she thought was the nearer of the two huge trees. It was too dark to see farther, so she crouched at the base of the tree and waited silently while the woods came alive with rustling and chittering. As the moon rose, her eyes adjusted to the light, and she sought the other huge tree, using moon shadows to keep her direction. In the end, it was a shrill squeaking that drew her into a small clearing just in time to see a wave of bats plunging downward into an old well with a ruptured roof and half fallen stone coping.

  Dismé leaned over the stones as other bats dodged past her head and dropped into darkness. It was too dark to see anything.

  "Now, the lantern," she said, taking it from her pack. The flint striker was as strikers always were, uncooperative, but she managed to get it lighted at last. She fished a length of line from the pack and lowered the lantern into the well, catching it momentarily on a rusty spike jutting into the opening. Another flight of bats skimmed down the well and into a hole in its wall.

  "That hole is big enough to get into," Dismé told herself. "If it were a natural cave, I would have no idea where it led, but this isn't a natural cave. This well was built by someone; someone put those spikes into the wall. That hole was hidden by someone, which means it was probably used by someone. And I tan get down there."

  She dropped the lantern farther, swinging it a little, until it actually entered the hole at the end of a swing, then she measured the armspans necessary to retrieve it. "About three meters," she said, nodding to herself.

  On the way back through the woods, heading for the glass tower that could be seen high above the trees, Dismé took note of landmarks. An outcropping of stone like a howling dog; a tree with a huge branch hanging by a shred of bark; at the edge of the wood an apple tree in full bloom, white against the darkness of the nearby pines. At home, she lay on her bed as she made a mental list of the things she would need before searching for Ayward. Rope ladder. Lantern. Spare fuel, water, and food, warm coat. Underground places were used as wine cellars and root cellars because they were cool, even cold. Ayward had a compass; it was probably still in his rooms.

  Shortly after dawn, she rose. Though no one would have expected her to monitor the class today, she went to school at the usual hour. Doing the usual thing would keep people from thinking about her, and she didn't want their attention while she got her supplies together. Everything depended on her being completely ordinary until the moment she disappeared. Rashel would report the disappearance. The BHE would make a search. They had scent hounds, or so everyone said. She mustn't leave a trail...

  Which she had already done! She'd left a trail when she had followed the bats!

  She stopped in the washroom to think about this while she cleaned her hands, hoping Lettyne Leek would be busy when she went into the classroom. Forlorn hope. Lettyne strolled over to give her the insolent up and down look that started each day.

  "What happened to you?" Lettyne asked, with a leer.

  "I climbed a tree to look at a bird nest, and the birds came at me," she said, as offhandedly as she could.

  "You definitely look ... damaged," Lettyne said over her shoulder as she moved back to her desk.

  "Damaged" was Regimic for a family with a missing member, someone who had presumably been chaired or died all at once. Trust the brat to find the worst possible time to stir all Dismé's feelings of guilt. The Dicta required family members to rescue one another and Ay-ward's only "family" was Rashel, who would do nothing to help him unless BHE was watching. Besides, if anyone but Dismé found Ayward alive, they would drag him back to Bastion. Un-Regimic or not, Dismé had to do it alone.

  It took all her free time that day to prepare and to lay several false trails, one of them ending at the riverside, complete with shreds of her nightgown. She walked this one several times, to leave a good strong smell. Th
ough it distressed her to think of Ayward waiting, in pain, she had not had much sleep since Ayward went and delayed leaving until dawn. At first light, she had only to dress and pick up the pack that was ready by the door.

  With her room door locked, her final task inside the house was to go onto the roof, cushion the window to her room with a blanket and break it from the outside, the tiny panes of salvage glass crumpling in the light wooden filigree that held them. She dropped the blanket inside and locked the window. This would suggest an abduction. Her trail this time would be covered by a kind of salve that Gayla swore by, a particularly stinky mixture that she rubbed on her shoes as she went into the forest.

  It was growing light as she hung her pack on a line and swung it into the opening down the shaft, put the rope ladder she had stolen from an upper room at the museum over the spikes in the wall, and then crept over the coping and down. Only two steps down, Dismé decided that it would have been far easier and safer had the ladder hung slightly away from the wall instead of tight against it. As it was, she bruised her knuckles against the stones when she pushed her fingers around the side ropes, and each time she felt for the next step below, her foot was pushed off the rungs by the wall itself. There were fifteen rungs between the well coping and the bottom of the hole, each of them a struggle.

  Once at the bottom, however, getting into the hole was easy enough, though the inside was deep in dried bat droppings. She flipped the ladder several times before dislodging it from the spikes, realizing as she did so that she would be unable to return that way. There had to be some other way out. Her continued existence rather depended on it.

  She had expected the tunnel to slope downward, as it did in fact, and after the first fifty feet or so, signs of human travel became obvious. The path had been cleared, the footway was smooth, although there were still many bat-caverns leading off to either side. Light fell into this tunnel through crevices in the stones above it, and mirrors had been affixed to the walls to scatter whatever light sneaked through, though only bats and spiders had been here recently.

  According to Dismé's reckoning, the Great Maze was almost directly south of the well she had entered, and by referring to Ayward's compass she reassured herself she was moving in that direction, though her elation gave way to a feeling of dismay when she passed the last of the mirrors. The lantern did well enough for emergency light at home, but it wasn't well-suited for exploration. It had been easy to follow the little puddles of mirror-reflected light, and she had gone quite swiftly from one to the next. Now, however, she stood in a small globe of visibility and could go only where she carried it. She held the light high; a flight of bats went by, startling her. The lantern fell, rolled, and was gone down a deep crevice in the stone, leaving her in darkness.

  She had a moment of total panic, crouching as though fearing a blow. Inside her a voice spoke, "there there, settle down." She pulled herself inward, held out her hand and said, "Tamlar, I need light." The flame bloomed on her palm, growing as she watched it, until it lit the way before her. Her hand outstretched, she continued downward and southward, making minor detours to either side. The bats were behind her; the dust lessened and she eventually was able to make out the trail itself, stone worn so smooth that it gleamed in the light, as did rock-edges of the walls that had been slicked and glossed by passing hands. The air, which had been full of motes near the surface, was clearer here, making it easier to see. She heard running water, and soon after, a few trickles came out of the wall at her left and ran along beside the path, the rivulet gaining in size as she went.

  Dismé considered the water a good sign, since there had been a pool below the hole in the maze. Though the water made her hopeful, it was the appearance of light that relieved her anxiety. She blew out her flame and hurried toward the light ahead, stumbling, almost falling, coming out into a vaulted space with rays of sun filtering through a tangle of roots and twigs onto a still pool. The Chair stood beside it, set upright, its wheels bent, the carapace jagged and torn. It was empty and covered with mud.

  Dismé ran to the Chair and fell to her knees beside it, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. If he had been freed from the chair ... If he had been freed. She stood up, looked around, finding a level spot beside the pool where a blanket was spread, bearing the imprint of a body.

  "So he did get out of the Chair," Dismé cried.

  "Which was appropriate," growled a voice from the darkness.

  She spun around, searching for the voice.

  "If you want to talk with us," the voice commanded, "sit down on the blanket, facing the water."

  After a doubtful moment, Dismé sat.

  She heard someone approach from behind her and started to turn.

  "No. Keep your eyes front. I'm going to blindfold you so you can't see me. I don't want my face known. I won't hurt you, and we can talk, but only with the blindfold."

  Dismé said angrily, "Do it then! Tell me about Ayward!"

  Dark cloth descended over her eyes and was knotted tight.

  "Now," said the voice from before them. "What do you want to know about your friend?" It was a youngish male voice, a medium baritone.

  "You said he was alive when you found him. Is he still alive?" Dismé demanded.

  A woman laughed, the sound coming from across the pool. "Though he was irritated about that fact, yes. He planned that the fall would kill him, which it would have if he hadn't hit the water. It's deeper than it looks. The Chair floated, of course, as it's designed to do. Still, he broke one arm and several ribs, so he's been taken away to be seen to."

  "Then I needn't have come at all," cried Dismé. "It was all a waste!"

  "On several counts," agreed the woman. "Why did you come?"

  "I came because I heard his voice..."

  "Then you must be Dismé," the voice said, with another unamused laugh, like a snort. "Ayward said you'd show up. His faithful friend Dismé."

  "He couldn't have known..."

  "He did know. He said if you could find a way, you'd come. After he'd fallen, he saw you up there, against the moonlight."

  "You took him out of the Chair," Dismé accused.

  The man's voice said, "Of course we did. And we gave him painkillers that'll keep him unconscious for several days. He's been strapped into that Chair so long that his muscles and tendons are in revolt. He hasn't been able to straighten from that cramped position for years. Also, it'll be a while before his chair-sores heal, and before he can eat solid food. There are people moving his limbs for him, turning him and massaging him. We'll let him sleep until the worst of it is over."

  Dismé murmured, "I didn't know you could take someone out of a Chair. With so much of their bodies missing, the Regime says only the Chairs keep them living."

  After a short silence, came another of those cheerless snorts, rather like a bull or horse. "Well, the Regime says a lot of things, nine-tenths of it lies and the other tenth wishful thinking. Ayward is entirely whole, though rather bent at the moment. He'll recover."

  "But the chaired ones give their flesh to people who need it," Dismé said, desperately trying to understand. "We don't take parts from the dead, that's what brought on the Happening, but we can take parts from the living! They took Arnole's legs to give to someone else, someone who didn't have the Disease, someone who needed them..."

  "That's what they tell you," he said.

  "But he couldn't raise his head," she cried. "They took tissue from his back..."

  The person sounded exasperated. "Listen, woman! We're the ones who build the Chairs and we're the ones who put people into them. Unlike the Spared, we're not torturers. It was after Ayward was installed in the Chair that the Regime put metal plates over his arm and jammed a hook into the muscles of his shoulders. Every time he tried to straighten up, it dug into his flesh!"

  "Why?" She shook her head. "I don't understand."

  "You needn't understand. Enlightening you isn't my job."

  Dismé cried, "If you were here, w
hy did you let him suffer? I heard him from up there. He screamed out, asking someone to turn it off. He was in pain!"

  The woman said, with more calm but no less annoyance, "We were here the day before, yes, but we'd left before Ayward ... dropped in. There's an alarm system, however, and we returned as quickly as possible. I quite agree that any time is too long for a person who's suffering, but it wasn't actually very long by other standards. He terrified himself with the idea the Regime might move on him suddenly, and instead of doing what was logical, he took the sudden appearance of that hole as a portent."

  "At which point," the male voice jeered, "He did a totally uncharacteristic thing! He acted!"

  "You think all this is funny?" cried Dismé.

  The female voice answered soothingly. "Pain isn't funny, but it is humorous that the only decisive thing Ayward Gazane ever did was try to end it all."

  "It was panic," said the male voice, dismissively. "The idea of losing brain tissue horrified him. And he may have feared his link with us would be discovered..."

  "His link with you?" she demanded. "Ayward? What link?"

  "The same one we had with Arnole. If Ayward had kept his wits and asked for help, we would have come for him before anything happened, just as we did with Arnole."

  Dismé put her face into her hands, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "Arnole? You came for him? Where is he?"

  The woman said, "A long way from here, I'm sure."

  "Alive! And he never let me know?"

  "Well he couldn't very well, could he? He said you were a chatterer, always busy telling anyone and everyone everything that occurred to you."

  "I never saw Ayward talk to anyone!" Dismé cried.

  "You wouldn't have known. We saw what he saw, heard what he heard, not that we bothered to listen or watch after the first few days. Ayward used nine-tenths of his waking time explaining himself and Rashel to himself. We grew weary of the monologue."