The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  ‘But it doesn’t make any difference,’ she murmured to herself. Lim’s mother was blind. She couldn’t see. It didn’t matter.

  ‘All down. Mules to water,’ cried the Tripmaster.

  ‘Mools a wattah,’ echoed Miles. ’Awl down.’

  ‘All right, love. We’ll get down.’ She fumbled for her shoes and Miles’s, finding them between two crates, and she was busy fastening straps when the Tripmaster arrived at the rear of the wagon.

  ‘Everything all right, Mrs. Ferrence?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Tripmaster.’

  ‘Brunny says to bring the baby on over for his evening treat.’ He regarded her curiously from pale, almost colorless eyes. He had known Lim Ferrence, he had told her, long ago, in school in Deepsoil Five. Without waiting for curious questions, she had told him what had happened to Lim when Lim was only a child. It was a kind of catharsis, telling it. The Tripmaster had said nothing more, nothing since, not about Lim, but he had been uniformly solicitous of her and the baby. ‘Only a couple days more, and we’ll arrive. You lookin’ forward to gettin’ there?’

  ‘I am, yes,’ she half lied. ‘I’ve never met Lim’s mother.’

  ‘She’s blind, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Tasmin told me.’

  ‘Pity. I remember her, too, before she was blind, that is. One of the prettiest women I’d ever seen. Lim always bragged on her. You look like her, you know. Like she did then.’

  She was shocked. ‘I didn’t know!’

  ‘Oh, yes. Same shape face. Same eyes and mouth. Same hair. You could be her daughter.’ He stumped off, leaving her behind with her mouth open.

  ‘Cookies,’ demanded Miles.

  She got down from the wagon and walked toward the cook wagon, Miles’s sturdy legs bringing him steadily along at her heels. When he had received his cookies, she stood with him while he ate them, staring up at the long, dun-colored slopes around them. Open country. Groves of Jubal trees, turned to face the setting sun, plumes fanned wide. Far off, at the top of the western slope, she saw something moving, a speck on the horizon, miles and miles away against low clouds lit by sunset glow. ‘Riders,’ she pointed.

  The cook followed her pointing finger, frowning. ‘I don’t see nothin’.’

  ‘They were there,’ she insisted. ‘Riders.’

  ‘Better tell Tripmaster,’ Brun advised. ‘There’s not supposed to be anyone out here right now but us.’

  The Tripmaster grunted when she told him, looking a little worried. ‘Trouble?’ she asked, apprehensively. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘Oh, no. No. I should think not. It’s just that there’s been a good deal of … oh, call it unrest. Over this CHASE Commission thing, most of it. People taking sides, and the Crystallites gettin’ worse and worse.’

  She shuddered. ‘Sometimes I have bad dreams about Crystallites.’

  ‘Don’t we all. Well, I don’t like people movin’ around unless I know who they are.’

  The man moved away and she and the boy returned to their wagon. She could sleep either in the wagon where they had traveled or under it or in a tent, if she preferred. There was little rainfall on this part of Jubal. What moisture there was came from the coast in vast, cottony fogs that rolled in at evening and burned away with the first light of morning, leaving the Jubal trees sodden with accumulated dew. When light came, every frond lifted, funneling the precious moisture down the trough-shaped veins and into hollow reservoirs below ground. More than one traveler had saved his life by drinking the bitter liquid when no other moisture was available, though no one would drink it by choice. If there was fog, it would be better to sleep in a tent, but there was no sign of fog tonight.

  ‘Tent up?’ asked Miles.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she told him. ‘I think we’ll take our mattresses over in that big grove of Jubal trees, little boy. Jubal trees smell so nice.’ There would be a little privacy there, as well. She felt the need of a good, all-over wash, and her hair needed braiding.

  ‘Smell nice,’ he agreed. ‘Yubal trees smell so nice.’

  She gathered up their scattered belongings. They had so little that it would fit into one shoulder sack. Their few extra clothes and her books were in a crate at the bottom of the wagon. The sack and the mattress were not even a heavy load as she dragged them to the grove, some distance east of the wagons.

  Miles helped her by dragging his own half-sized mattress after her, plopping it down beside hers within the grove. When it was dark, the trees would change from fan shape to a fountain shape, more efficient for fog catching, Vivian assumed, just as the fan shapes were more efficient for gathering sunlight. The result would make a shadowy grove that looked quite unlike the daytime one.

  ‘Smell it, Mama,’ Miles said now, bouncing on his bed and waiting for the trees to shift.

  The sun was a ball, then a half drop, then merely a thin arc upon the horizon. Then nothing, and the trees let go with a rustling sigh, a long shushing. The fronds fell outward from the middle, and what had been two-dimensional shapes became plumy clouds gathering darkness beneath them.

  ‘Supper,’ she told Miles. ‘Let’s get supper quick, then we can come back here and watch the stars come out.’

  There were viggies singing as they finished their meal and helped Brunny put away the disarranged implements and supplies.

  ‘Where you stretched out for the night?’ the Tripmaster asked. ‘Over in that Jubal grove? Looks like a nice place if there’s no fog. Not much danger tonight.’ He looked up at the clear sky, hands busy with his trip log. ‘Sleep well.’

  By the time they returned to the mattresses under the Jubal trees, the first stars were trembling in the high eastern sky.

  ‘You need to go behind a bush?’ she asked.

  ‘I went,’ Miles said. ‘All by myself.’

  ‘Fine. Then you’re going to sleep all night, without waking up, aren’t you?’

  ‘All night,’ he agreed, snuggling onto the mattress. ‘Tell Miles a story.’

  She told a story until his eyes closed and his breathing became slow and quiet. Then she told a story to herself, as she gave herself a slow, cool sponge bath, as she brushed and rebraided her hair, as the stars came out to make a glittering diagonal band across the heavens, a story about tomorrow, about the future. She snuggled into her mattress, head pillowed on an arm, to drift in and out of sleep.

  The sudden light and shout from the direction of the wagons was an intrusion.

  ‘Tripmaster!’ A bellow. A well-schooled bellow, in a modulated voice. She had heard that voice before. Miles stirred in his sleep, and she put out a hand, ready to muffle him if he woke. Why? Because the Tripmaster had said he didn’t like people moving around when he didn’t know what they were doing. Because he had said something about Crystallites, and that voice had something to do with Crystallites!

  A sleepy mumbling Brunny’s voice, then the Tripmaster himself, drawling sleepily.

  ‘Well, well, ain’t it that big mucky-muck Crystallite Chantiforth Bins? High Pontiff or some such, ain’t it? What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing out here in Presence country? I thought you Crystallites believed in keeping your distance.’

  ‘Well, we do,’ said the voice. ‘Except when one of our own is in trouble, Tripmaster. Which I have reason to believe is the case.’

  ‘Is that the truth? Now who would that be?’

  ‘Member of our congregation. Had a baby under unsanctified conditions, fell on hard times, sold herself into bondage to the blasted BDLers. I’ve come to buy her bond and take her home.’

  There was silence. Vivian lay in baffled silence. The story made no sense. There was no woman on this trip who had sold herself into service.

  ‘Don’t think I know the party you’re speakin’ of,’ said the Tripmaster. ‘No passengers this trip.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Tripmaster, I know BDL pays your salary, but I’m prepared to be more generous than you can imagine. The woman’s name is Vivi
an. Vivian Ferrence? And she has a little boy.’

  Vivian was screaming silently into her hand, fighting to keep herself silent and unmoving in the grove. The Tripmaster had said no passengers. Why had he said that?

  ‘Well, you’re weeks too late, Bins. We had that lady with us for a time with her child, but she left us at the Deepsoil Twelve cutoff. There was a caravan there goin’ by the northern route, one with women and children on it, and she chose to go with them. Kind of lonesome lady, lost her husband recently. Wanted some other women around, and I can’t say’s I blame her….

  ‘By the way, that fella with you has that stun rifle pointed kind of in this direction. He plannin’ to shoot some of us, or what?’ The Tripmaster had been talking very loudly, loudly enough so that no one in the camp could have missed a word.

  Hearty laughter. ‘He’s just mistrustful, Tripmaster. He wouldn’t put it past you to lie to us.’

  ‘Well, easy enough to prove,’ the Tripmaster bellowed. ‘There’s me and my backup ’Singer. There’s six drivers here, includin’ the cook, and there’s six wagons. You can look in all six of ’em.’

  Vivian kept silent, thinking frantically. Had she left anything behind. Any toy? Any little shoe? Any blanket or bit of clothing?

  ‘He covered himself,’ she explained silently. ‘The Tripmaster said we were with the caravan for a while. If you left anything, it was from then. Be still, Vivian. Be very still.’

  So she was still, though she could not even identify the threat. She had had nothing to do with the Crystallites. She had heard Chantiforth Bins in the temple. Everyone went to the temple. It was a major attraction. What was he doing here? Why was he looking for her, for the baby? Why was she shaking in fear he would find her?’

  ‘Be still,’ she ordered herself. ‘Trust the Tripmaster. Be very still.’

  Chantiforth Bins was speaking again, over the sound of rummaging, over the muttering between him and his man … men? More than one. Two, maybe three. ‘I don’t find her, that’s for sure, Tripmaster. Well, since she left you so long ago, you won’t mind our going along with you into Deepsoil Five, will you? We can wait for her there.’

  ‘Suit yourself, Bins. But suit yourself with those rifles in their scabbards. We’ll have enough trouble gettin’ by the Black Tower without your making us nervous.’

  There were multiple clicks and snaps as the rifles were put away. The men were staying. Staying. And when morning came, when light came, the Jubal trees would make fans of themselves, facing east. And Miles might jabber, she couldn’t stop him. Then they would find her.

  The Tripmaster was leaving the vicinity of the wagons.

  Bin’s voice called, ‘Where are you going, Tripmaster?’

  ‘I’m goin’ to do what I need to do, Bins. You want to come along?’

  Bins motioned to one of the men with him, who sauntered after the Tripmaster into a small grove well to the north of the one Vivian occupied. The Tripmaster had carried a latrine spade. After a time, they returned to the wagons. There was desultory talk. The firelight dimmed. Silence came. Perhaps someone was on watch, perhaps not. She could not tell. Several of the drivers went to the grove also. The last time a driver went, no one went with him.

  Before she had married Lim, Vivian had worked for the Exploration Division, a lowly job to be sure, though a registered one, requiring concentration and accuracy as she fed the reports of the Tripsingers and Explorers into the master library of BDL. Some of her co-workers did not even read what they transmitted, their fingers doing the job all by themselves. Vivian, however, had read a lot of it and lived every word. She had inside her head the experiences of half the Tripsingers and Explorers on Jubal. She knew what mistakes they had made, what errors of judgment. She knew when they had been clever, too.

  Now she asked herself what one of the clever ones would have done, sitting with her head bowed on her clenched hands as she thought. After a time her face cleared and she released the valve on her mattress and allowed the air to bleed away, so slowly it seemed to take forever, not making a hiss. Then Miles’s mattress, slowly, so slowly. He slept on. Miles was a good sleeper. She picked him up, cradling him in her arms, his limp mattress under him, then crept through the grove to the side away from the wagons. She needed a declivity, even the smallest trough would do, and she needed distance, to the east.

  Behind her someone coughed, and she stopped, agonized. Silence fell again and she went on, up the long rise of ground to the east. She went slowly, keeping her feet from crunching, yard after slow yard.

  When she looked back, the fire among the wagons was only a dim star. Beside her were two Jubal trees, the out-lyers of a considerable grove, and behind them the ground fell away in a gentle bowl. At the bottom of the bowl, she laid Miles down and slowly, very slowly, reinflated his mattress.

  She tucked the blanket loosely around him, then went back the way she had come, measuring the distance with frequent turns to look over her shoulder. When she returned, she carried her shoulder bag and dragged her own mattress behind her to wipe out the footprints she knew she had made.

  When she settled into the hollow beside the baby, he murmured in his sleep. Exhausted, she lay beside him with her open eyes fixed on the eastern horizon.

  Light came at last, waking her suddenly. Despite her apprehension, she had dozed off. She could not see the camp from where they were. Leaving Miles still deeply asleep, she crawled up the slope, poking her head up behind the lower fronds of a Jubal tree. The wagons were there, much farther away than she would have believed. People were moving around. Chantiforth Bins was stalking here and there, poking into things, searching every nearby grove. Within moments of sunrise, he was in the grove she had been sleeping in, marching through it and out the side nearest her to peer up the slope.

  ‘Any sign?’ he called to someone.

  ‘Viggies’ve been in here,’ someone answered. ‘Foot-prints all over everything. Nothin’ else.’

  Viggies! She gasped with relief. Her own tracks had been hidden then. Brunny was moving around the cook wagon, his loose coat wagging around him. After a time, clutching his coat, he went off to the same grove the Tripmaster had used the night before, also carrying a latrine shovel. No one offered to go with him.

  Miles moved. Vivian crouched beside him, ready to silence him if necessary. It might not be necessary. Sometimes Miles slept well into the morning….

  As he did this time. The wagons were some distance away before he woke.

  When she could no longer see the wagons, Vivian assumed the wagons could no longer see her and went down to the campground, hoping that someone would have found some way to leave food and water. The place was as clean as any campsite the Tripmaster had ever left.

  ‘No cooky?’ asked Miles hungrily. ‘Where’s Brunny?’

  Her eyes filled with tears. What had the Tripmaster hoped to do? Had he hoped to take the interlopers into Deepsoil Five and then return for her? Or send someone from Harmony? What would it be, minimum? Three days? Five? Surely he must have….

  She put Miles down with an exclamation and ran toward the grove where both the Tripmaster and Brunny had gone. She found it almost at once, a little mound. Tentatively, she dug into it with a dried frond.

  Shit.

  She wrinkled her nose, disgusted. Well, of course. She shoved the half dried feces aside and kept on digging.

  Deep in the hole she found a water bottle, a small carton of rations, and a little plastic sack. In the sack was a note for her and something for Miles.

  ‘We’ll be back for you,’ Brunny had written. ‘Stay put.’

  ‘Cookies,’ said Miles with satisfaction.

  Staying put for the morning was no problem. The afternoon became less pleasant, with a strong, grit-bearing wind from the south. Vivian left Miles huddled beneath a sheltering Jubal tree while she searched the surrounding area for cover. To the northwest were ramparts of Presences, pale yellow and gray-blue with forests of ’lings gathered at their bas
es, dwindling southward almost to the trail. Directly north was the pass to Harmony, a long, ’ling-littered slope, almost barren of growth. Nearby, groves of Jubal trees and meadows of knee-high grass lined the trail on both sides. Farther east, another escarpment was first amber, then orange, then vivid red, peaking at its point of ultimate scarlet into the sheer facades of the Enigma. So much she either knew, had seen herself, or had learned from her over-the-shoulder observations of the charts.

  To the south, the groves of the trees dwindled to nothing, and the sedimentary rock of a coastal desert took over, only an occasional pillarlike Presence breaking the flat monotony, the ruled-line of the horizon.

  The rock was broken by potholes. Within minutes of beginning her search, Vivian found half a dozen of them, none of them much larger than her head. A bit deeper into the rock desert, the holes became larger, and about a quarter of a mile from the trail, in the middle of a patch of fine sand, she found a hole with nicely stepped sides, a sandy bottom, and an overhang on the south edge – a perfect shelter from the strong south wind.

  It was warm in the hole, also. The stone walls gathered the rays of the sun and held the warmth. They would give it up slowly, even in the chill of the night. All day they sat in the sand at the bottom of the hole, Vivian manufacturing trucks for Miles out of ration cartons and bits of string, Miles building roads in the sand, both of them retreating under the ledge when the wind blew chill. It was a better hiding place than the grove of trees had been, and from the lip of the hole she could see anyone or anything approaching while it was still miles away. She did not consider that anyone might approach in the dark or in the fog. She had not even seen one of the notorious fogs of the southern coast.

  When it came, it was not much to see. The first hint of it was the clamminess of the blankets that wakened her, blankets suddenly soggy and cold in the darkness. She had gathered dried tree fronds for fire, if it became necessary to have fire, and she lit a small pile of them with the firestarter from the rations kit. They smoldered with a dense, eye-burning smoke that would not rise above the lip of the hole, and she threw sand over the charred branches, cursing at them. Better to be cold than half asphyxiated, she thought, not realizing quite how cold it would get. Once that realization struck home, she pulled Miles onto her larger mattress and half deflated the smaller one to make a tent over them, thriftily setting the water jug beneath one folded corner and listening to the plop, plop, plop as condensation from the fog ran into it. A Tripsinger had done that once. She had read about it in his report. She sat cross-legged, with Miles in her lap, making a tent pole of her body and head, both blankets wrapped around them. After an endless time, she even dozed.