Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (20 page)

“Well, Granny Hazelbide, I don’t know that I care for your tone!” he protested. “We were fully cognizant of the political facts.
Fully
cognizant!”

The Granny snorted and went back to her eating, talking through the mouthfuls.

“Would of done you a sight more good to be just a tad cognizant-cognizant!-of the practical common-sense facts,” she said. “I’m with Responsible; it never would of entered
my
head that you men all assumed the Kingdoms could pull out of the Confederation and put crowns on all their pointy little heads and still count on all the services to go on just like they always had. And no reason it should of entered Responsible’s head, either-it was obvious to a plain fool. You men made your decision; now you can live with it.”

“You can be certain,” put in Responsible, “that Castle Traveller had thought of every one of the practical consequences. And were mighty careful not to point them out to any of the rest of the baa-goats in the room,
who
-I might add-it is not my place to lead by the hand and pick up after. Why didn’t you
think?
”

“Responsible, you can’t talk to Jubal like that,” said Emmalyn, and then jumped as Patience pinched her under the table.

“I beg your pardon, Emmalyn,” said Responsible, “but I suggest you consider carefully what your Jubal, and the rest of the Brightwater men present at the Hall-not to mention our so-called friends and allies-allowed to happen. Then, you care to speak sharp to me on their behalf, I’ll listen to you.”

“Responsible-”

“If,” she went on, “
if
procedure’d been held to, as Donald Patrick had full authority to insist that it should be-he was Chair, remember?-if there’d been the rest of the speeches for and against, and the rebuttals, as the law calls for, then there’d of been time for these matters to be raised. One of the Lewis delegates, someone from Castle McDaniels or Castle Motley,
some
one among you distinguished gentlemen, would no doubt have asked the necessary questions. Such as: how did the others plan to get along without the comset system, that’s been broadcast from Brightwater these many hundred years? Such as: what happens to supply deliveries, that have been worked out and run by the computers at Castle Brightwater since the day they were hooked upand the only Kingdoms with ships large enough to serve as supply transport are Brightwater and Guthrie?”

“I do believe this is going to be interesting,” said Thorn of Guthrie crisply. “And Responsible is quite right, Donald Patrick. If you’d not just stood there like a gawk-pardon me,
sat
there like a gawk!-and let that vote go by you, those questions would have been raised.”

“And we would, I expect, have a Confederation this minute,” added Ruth of Motley. “Not a happy Confederation, I daresaybut a Confederation. Jacob Jeremiah Traveller would of found it a good deal harder to get his point across if there’d been ample time to talk about just what it might
mean
to be boones.”

“Castle Traveller,” said Granny Hazelbide, “doesn’t especially care about the comsets. Anything they want to tell, they just walk round the one town they’ve got and tell it. Not to mention that from their point of view the end of the broadcasts just means one less source of corruption for their tadlings. And I reckon they’ve been laying in supplies now for a good long time. Right, amn’t I, Responsible? Yes, I thought I was!”

And she threw in something extra about lying in beds after people made them.

“The
Smiths
are to blame,” Donald Patrick sputtered. “Youall make it seem to have been me-”

“Nope,” said Responsible. “Not you by your own self, you can spread that blame around for a considerable distance. But you
were
Chair, mind-and you could have ordered the Smiths to sit down and shut up, as was proper, and gone on to conduct that meeting as it should of been conducted.”

Donald Patrick Brightwater’s face was a ghastly white, and sweat stood out on his forehead.

“I was taken completely by surprise,” he said, almost whispering. “I was expecting everything to go in order, and then all of a sudden there stood Delldon Mallard in his purple velvet and his crown, and all those Attendants kneeling all around the room, and his wife up in the balcony being crowned a Queen . . . I swear I didn’t know what was happening till it was over, and too late!”

It had gone far enough, and Ruth of Motley slid smoothly into the breach.

“Son,” she said, “anybody would of done the same in your place. I recall you weren’t feeling yourself that day anyway, and you shouldn’t of
tried
to force yourself to go on with the chairing of that meeting.”

“You know how Donald Patrick is, Ruth,” added Patience of Clark. “There’s no way a person can get him to think of himself, not if he’s convinced there’s a duty to be done and his name on it.

“Responsible had no intention to criticize you, Donald Patrick.” That was Thorn of Guthrie, adding her careful bit to the orchestration. “She’s just upset that things went like they did.”

They went on, soothing the men as automatically as they braided their hair in the mornings; and Responsible let them handle it. For one thing, she had no intention of pointing out to them that her purpose in cutting off the comsets so quickly was not revenge-it was just the most effective leverage she had for forcing the other eleven Kingdoms to fall to at once and get their affairs in order. They had to be weaned, and she knew no swifter means of doing it. If this pack of her relatives couldn’t see that on their own, so be it; she had other things on her mind.

For example, she had a trip to make down to the stables-to see a Mule.

Responsible began by making it very clear to the Mule what she was prepared to tolerate.

“Sterling,” she said, leaning over the front gate of the stall, “you give me one of those headaches you’re so good at passing around, I’ll give you one with a two-by-four. I hope that’s clear?”

The Mule rolled her eyes and flattened her ears, but it was no more than a ritual response, the same way the two-by-four was a ritual challenge. Sterling was breathing as easy as stirring thin soup-an angry Mule huffed and went on till you could hear it a hundred feet off.

“I
won’t
have it,” Responsible warned. “I
mean
that. I’ll potion your oats and do an Insertion Transformation that’ll mean things you never dreamed of in your tail; you hear me?”

The ears came up, and Sterling made a gentle whuffing noise

 
“All right, then,” said Responsible, and unlatched the stall. She went inside and went over to the Mule, and laid her face for a second-all any Mule would tolerate of such stuff-against its neck. And then she leaned back against the stable wall, noting it needed a new coat of whitewash, and waited.

THE OUT-CABAL CALLS YOU.

“
Drat
you, Sterling!” Responsible clapped her hands to her head. “What did I tell you? Gently, you ornery creature, gentlyl Human minds are not suited for that blasting away you do--
mindspeech,
we use!
Not
mindbraying!”

The Mule whuffled again, and thrashed its tail.

MY APOLOGIES, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER.

That was better, though not yet exactly pleasant. Responsible nodded her approval, and dropped her hands.

“Go on, then,” she said. “And mind you don’t forget.”

THE OUT-CABAL HAS ASKED ME TO PASS ALONG A MESSAGE TO YOU, AND WHILE I DON’T LIKE THEM, NEVER HAVE AND NEVER WILL, I HAVE A CERTAIN REGARD FOR
YOU,
DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER. THEREFORE I WILL TELL YOU WHAT THEY SAY.

“And tell them what I say in return,” Responsible reminded her.

IT WOULD BE A WASTE OF MY TIME, OTHERWISE.

“All right, then . . . What do they want this time?”

The first time, she had been only ten years old, and she’d been scared half out of her wits. Like the Grannys and the Magicians, she had known the Mules were telepathic, but along with that knowledge went a stomach-twisting familiarity with the stories of what had happened to various foolish humans that had tried to take advantage of that fact. The Mules out-Ozarked the Ozarkers; they kept themselves to themselves, and they intended that everybody else should do likewise. When Sterling first mindspoke her, Responsible had waited, holding her breath, for her brain to be battered at and bounced around her bead like a child’s play ball. It hadn’t been that bad, but it hadn’t been any fun, either; the only good thing about that first time had been that it hadn’t taken very long.

They were the Out-Cabal, they wanted her to know; they represented a group of planets called the Garnet Ring; their resources of magic were sufficient to simply remove Ozark from the sky like blowing out a candle, if they so chose-under certain conditions established by their laws, which it happened had not yet been met, lucky Ozark-and they were merely setting up relations.

The second time, three years ago, they’d directed her to call all the Magicians of Rank together at the Castle and put them through their paces. They’d wanted an idea of what, precisely, the abilities of “the current crop” were. And Responsible had gone outraged to Granny Hazelbide, and been told in no uncertain terms how to proceed. “You get those men here,” the Granny’d said, “and you lose no time.
No
time!” She’d done it; and she’d lain near dying for eleven days afterward from the effects of their hatred. The Magicians of Rank didn’t take kindly to a twelveyear-old girl in pigtails being able to call them in and set them to doing Formalisms & Transformations like you’d show off a fancy Mule team at a fair-and they took even less kindly to not knowing why they were unable to refuse her, or why they were unable to speak of it afterward. Nine Magicians of Rank, all concentrating their hatred on her over the course of the long day the OutCabal had requested . . . Remembering, Responsible shivered. She wanted no repetition of that pain, beside which the pain of deathdance fever was no more than a needleprick to a careless finger.

THEY PUT YOU ON NOTICE, said Sterling, THAT THIS PLANET IS NOW UNDER THEIR FULL SURVEILLANCE.

“It has
always
been under their surveillance, so far as I know.”

FROM TIME TO TIME, SINCE YOUR PEOPLE CAME TO THIS LAND, THEY HAVE CHOSEN TO WATCH YOUR BEHAVIOR AND YOUR DEVELOPMENT. NOW, IT WILL NOT BE FROM TIME TO
TIME. IT
WILL BE AT
ALL
TIMES.

“Why? What makes us so much more interesting all of a sudden?”

YOU ARE A PLANET RULED BY THE LAWS OF MAGIC, NOT THE LAWS OF SCIENCE; THUS, YOU FALL WITHIN THEIR INFLUENCE.

“That has always been so,” said Responsible stubbornly.

BUT OTHER THINGS HAVE CHANGED. UNDER ONLY TWO CONDITIONS DO THE LAWS OF THE GARNET RING ALLOW THE OUT-CABAL TO INTERFERE IN THE AFFAIRS OF A MAGIC-BOUND PLANET: WHEN THERE IS A PLANETARY CATASTROPHE, SUCH AS FAMINE OR PLAGUE OR WAR, THAT THREATENS TO DESTROY ALL THE POPULATION

“I know the laws!”

DO NOT INTERRUPT ME, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER!

Stars danced before her eyes, but she knew she deserved it. “Sorry,” she said. “Beg your pardon, Sterling.”

AND THE OTHER IS: WHEN THE PLANET IS IN A STATE OF ANARCHY. THAT IS TO SAY, WHEN HUMANS HAVE THE GOOD SENSE TO RUN THEIR AFFAIRS AS MULES DO. I FIND THIS SECOND CONDITION FOOLISH. Responsible didn’t doubt that for a moment.

“There are differences between humans and Mules,” she said.

Sterling’s silence was both eloquent and insolent, and Responsible longed to pull her braided tail.

PLEASE TELL THEM, she said instead, switching to mindspeech herself for discretion’s sake, though she’d set wards before she came in, PLEASE TELL THEM THAT WE FACE NO PLANETARY CATASTROPHE. WE ARE WELL FED, WE ARE IN FULL HEALTH, AND WE ARE NOT AT WAR NOR HAVE WE EVER BEEN.

There was a moment’s silence; then, I HAVE TOLD THEM, said Sterling.

AND TELL THEM, STERLING, ESTIMABLE MULE, THAT WE ARE NOT IN A STATE OF ANARCHY.

After the pause, the Mule stamped a front foot for emphasis.

THEY SAY THAT DOES NOT APPEAR TO THEM TO BE FULLY ACCURATE.

IT IS, said Responsible, A MATTER OF DEFINITION.

THEY DEFINE ANARCHY, the Mule responded, AS AN ABSENCE OF GOVERNMENT. YOUR GOVERNMENT WAS THE CONFEDERATION OF CONTINENTS, WHICH HAS NOW FALLEN. THEREFORE, THEY SAY, YOU ARE WITHOUT A GOVERNMENT.

THEY ARE IN ERROR, said Responsible. WE ARE NOT WITHOUT GOVERNMENT ... UNFORTUNATELY, WE HAVE AN
EXCESS OF
GOVERNMENT.

The pause was longer than usual.

THEY WOULD LIKE AN EXPLANATION, said the Mule finally.

PLEASE TELL THEM: WE HAD ONE GOVERNMENT, THE CONFEDERATION OF CONTINENTS. THAT HAS BEEN DISSOLVED, LEGALLY AND BY DUE PROCESS. AND NOW THAT IT NO LONGER EXISTS, WE HAVE
TWELVE
GOVERNMENTS, EACH SEPARATE AND SOVEREIGN. WE ARE TWELVE TIMES AS GOVERNED A5 WE WERE BEFORE THE CONFEDERATION FELL. PLEASE TELL THEM THAT, STERLING, EXACTLY AS I HAVE STATED IT.

She waited, then. A Mule in the next stall brayed in what she would have taken for sympathy in any creature except a Mule. Mules did not sympathize.

THE OUT-CABAL SAYS THAT THAT IS ONE POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION OF THE PRESENT SITUATION.