Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (5 page)

“You might just as well stop glaring at me like that, my dear Granny Gableframe,” he’d told her. From the very beginning. “I’m not impressed,” he’d said, “not in any way, not to any degree. You may glare at me all day and all night-all you are going to get from it is a headache.” It hadn’t discouraged her any.

Lincoln Parradyne didn’t mind, though he didn’t look forward to the moment when he would have to turn her loose and put up with her tongue-lashing.

“How long can you keep her like that?”

Lincoln Parradyne glanced at the man that stood beside him, wondering if he could be serious, and sure enough he appeared to be, and so he shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows and said, “Till she dies, if I like.”

“Well, I don’t want her dying,” objected Delldon Mallard Smith the 2nd, “whether you like or not!” And all three of his brothers, standing round the Granny’s bed, indicated that they strongly agreed with that sentiment.

The Magician of Rank asked himself, from time to time, which one of the four Smith brothers was the stupidest. Delldon Mallardthe 2nd was the biggest; Whitney Crawford the 14th was the handsomest; Leroy Fortnight the 23rd was the fattest; and it appeared that the most cowardly of the set was Hazeltine Everett the 11th. But for stupidity, it was hard to choose among them, and the fact that they were his blood kin was a heavy burden to him.

“You hear me, now?” demanded Delldon Mallard. “I want no misunderstanding. That’s our Granny and we love her, and if it just happens that she can’t quite be brought to go along with what’s needful without a certain amount of pressure being applied, all right; but she’s just an old lady and she’s frail, and I don’t want-”

Lincoln Parradyne was completely out of patience. The man would ramble on for half an hour if he wasn’t stopped, and all of it nonsense.

“I don’t want to hear what you don’t want,” he said tiredly. “I have no
interest
in what you don’t want! Your requirements were quite clearly specified, Delldon Mallard-you wanted Granny Gableframe in a state where she could not interfere with your plans, and I’ve provided you that. If she were one of the servingmaids, I could also have seen to it that her condition wasn’t marred by . . . irritation. But this is a
Granny,
cousin, not a dithering girlchild.”

Leroy Fortnight snorted from the foot of the bed, where he was alternately kicking the bedpost with his boot and punching it with his fist.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, snickering. “Isn’t your magic good enough to keep her down? One little old scrawny woman?”

“I don’t believe I’d talk to Lincoln Parradyne like that,” hazarded one of the others. “Not unless you fancy him laying you out the same way as the Granny. You think you’d like that, Leroy Fortnight?”

Delldon Mallard cleared his throat. “That,” he said firmly, “would . . . uh . . . be illegal.
Il
legal.”

“Do you suppose,” marveled the Magician of Rank, staring at the big man with true astonishment, “that what I’ve done to Granny Gableframe
isn’t
illegal?”

“Well . . .”

“Well?
Well?
”

“I don’t really think so,” said Delldon Mallard. He was the oldest, and Master of this Castle; he felt a sense of responsibility and wanted his position made unambiguous. “I don’t really think that legality enters in here, you know. I . . . uh . . . gave the matter a good deal of thought before I asked the Magician of Rank to do this. And I’m satisfied in my own mind that what this represents is a kind of . . . uh . . . contest. That is, if the Magician of Rank was to perform a Transformation like this and paralyze just
any
old lady, say, just any old lady at all, why, that would . . . uh . . . be a different kind of thing.
That
would be illegal, I’d be obliged to agree. But not with the Granny here . . . She, uh, has her own magic, and as I said-”

“Sit down!” said the Magician of Rank. “Delldon Mallard Smith the Second-shut
up
and sit
down.”

“Now I don’t see that there’s any call for you to speak to me like that,” began Delldon Mallard. And then he saw Lincoln Parradyne set one hand on the bedstead and stretch out the other toward him, and he sat down instantly and closed his mouth.

“I believe,” said Lincoln Parradyne through clenched teeth, “that I had better explain this to you gentlemen just one more time before we leave for Castle Brightwater. You do not appear to me to have it straight in your minds. Not at all.”

“Now, Linc-”

“Be still!” thundered the Magician of Rank. “You listen to what I say, you listen with both ears for once! Do I have your attention?”

The silence indicated that he did, and he went on.

“It is true that the Granny has magic of her own, surely; you’d be in sorry shape if she didn’t. Your girls would be born and given names at hazard, the way it was done on Old Earth, if the Granny weren’t at hand to choose a Proper Name. Your crops would fail and your goats would go dry. There would be rot and mildew and dirt and vermin inside the Castle, and there’d be blight and ignorance and dirt and vermin outside it. There’d be nobody to heal your sick-I give you my word neither the Magicians nor the Magicians of Rank have time these days to see to your sniffles and your bellyaches. But as for there being a contest between us, between myself and Granny Gableframe . . . think of a contest between twelve grown men and one four-year-old boy, and you’ll have something to compare! The odds are about the same.”

“Well,” said Delldon Mallard, tugging at his bottom lip, “I think we’d need an interpretation on that. I wouldn’t want anybody saying as how I wasn’t fair. It might could be that you know a few tricks the Grannys don’t, Lincoln, I’m willing to grant you that. But I do believe your ego has a tendency to run away with you.” He chuckled softly, all tolerance and indulgence, and his brothers echoed him; and the Granny lying helpless under the counterpane closed her eyes as if she could bear no more.

Lincoln Parradyne stared at the man, oldest of the Smith boys, Master of Castle Smith, and wondered whether he could control himself. I keep your Mules flying, he thought. Without my help a Mule could no more fly than it could knit. I see to your weather, so that no rain falls except where it’s needed, and I control the snow and the wind and all things that have to do with the heat and the cold, with wet and with dry . . . Because of the Magicians of Rank you have never known a blizzard or a drought or an earthquake. Or a disease that lasts more than a week, and even those we could shorten to minutes if we didn’t feel that the week was good for your coddled little characters. We see to

He stopped, suddenly, in the middle of his silent recital, feeling foolish. There was some question as to just who it was he was trying to convince, since nobody could hear him. And if anyone could have, he’d of been guilty of spreading knowledge allowed only to the other Magicians of Rank and that accursed girl at Brightwater.

“No point in arguing with him,” said the handsome brother. “No point atall. Delldon sets his mind to a thing, there’s no changing it. And his mind is for sure set on this.”

“You’re quite right,” said Lincoln Parradyne grimly. “If Delldon Mallard has his mind set to do something he knows is wrong, there’s no hope of swaying him from whatever excuse he comes up with to justify that wrongdoing.”

“You think we’re doing something wrong?” Leroy Fortnight turned on his oldest brother. “Think he’s right? If he’s right, I’m here to tell you, I’m not going to go through with this, Delldon Mallard.”

Lincoln Parradyne walked out of the room and left them listening attentively to their brother’s endless explanation of why what might be wrong at some other time, if somebody else were doing it, in some other situation,
was perfectly
justified at this time, in this situation, with the brothers Smith doing it. He had no doubt that Delldon Mallard would be able to convince them; their consciences were no more tender than their manners, and they were accustomed to giving in to Delldon’s arguments. They had spent their
lives
giving in to Delldon’s arguments. He himself had no stomach for listening to it again, however, and he felt a certain twinge of his own conscience at the thought that the Granny had no choice but to endure it in silence.

If she had known what a mire of ignorance and ineptitude she would spend her time dealing with, would she have chosen this Castle as her residence, he wondered? Though someone had to, and Gableframe was a good deal tougher and better fit to manage it than most. For himself, if it were not that to leave would have meant abandoning his own kin . . .

Outside the door, he nearly fell over a cluster of the Smith women, all hovering there wringing their hands-always excepting Dorothy, who was convinced that her father’s plan was a brilliant stroke. She smiled at Lincoln Parradyne, and then curtsied slowly, a deep court curtsy ending in a wobble that turned her face a dusky red.

“Better practice that some more,” he said. As if he didn’t know how many hours she had spent practicing it, standing in front of the tall mirror in her bedroom. The flush on her cheeks deepened, and he thought for a moment that she would cry. She cried easily, fat tears always right at the surface and trembling in her eyes. It was a curious characteristic in a female like Dorothy, who was just plain
mean,
right down to the core; no doubt she’d outgrow it.

“How is Granny Gableframe?” asked one of the women, her voice tight as a banjo string in dry weather. “How does she feel?”

“She feels thoroughly miserable right now,” said the Magician of Rank, “as would you, if you were in a similar condition.”

“But she’s all right.”

Lincoln Parradyne sighed. They were so determined, these Smiths, to have all their cake, frosted and frilled on the shelf, while they savored it to the last bite.

“She is not `all right,”‘ he said crossly. “Of course not. There are perhaps a dozen different ways to cause a person to suffer
from motor paralysis, some of them more unpleasant than others, but none of them could be said to be precisely desirable. However, she’s in no danger, if that’s what you mean.”

“It must be terrible-not being able to move anything but her eyes.”

“No,” he said, making his way through them and answering her over his shoulder as he headed down the corridor. “On the contrary, it’s very restful. Good for the Granny to have a little holiday from tearing round the Castle tongue-lashing and nagging and fretting, in my opinion. Her major problem is that she refuses to relax and enjoy it.”

Her major problem, if he’d been able to explain it to them, was of course that she knew what he’d done and why, and was in a flaming rage because her own magic skills weren’t adequate to reverse such a simple process.

He could feel them staring after him, and he kept his back to them till he reached a corner he could turn. The Smith women, all but Dorothy, disapproved of what was going on, which showed considerable good sense on their part. Too bad they hadn’t exerted that good sense in marrying elsewhere, and left the four brothers to bachelor splendor and an end of the marred line.

They would be easier to manage once the whole group had left the Castle and was headed for the Jubilee-they’d take no chances of embarrassing their men in front of other people, whatever their personal opinions might be. He’d even considered letting the Granny go along, and manipulating her through the remaining days of the Jubilee; there were Formalisms & Transformations that would have made it possible for him to do that, and her absence was sure to create suspicion. But although her behavior would of passed well enough with the ordinary citizen, he was by no means sure that his control would not have been spotted by the other Grannys-or by Responsible of Brightwater. He had decided, finally, not to risk it, and to accept the consequences of the alternatives open to him.

In the corridor a Senior Attendant stopped him, to report that everything was ready for the Smith delegation’s journey to the Jubilee.

“You’re sure of that, now?” he asked the Attendant sharply. “If anything has been forgotten, it won’t be amusing-for us or for you.

“Twenty-seven trunks they loaded on the ship,” said the Attendant, stolid as always. You didn’t get to be a Senior Attendant in this Castle unless you learned to hide your emotions. “Checked the count myself to make certain sure of it. And I was most particular that the one you marked with the
x
, it got put on board early this morning, and well at the back. The lizzies are out front to take you all down to the dock, and in perfect order-I had the airjets seen to not ten minutes ago, and the batteries as well, in case the cloud cover doesn’t lift. Nary a thing on your list, sir, that
I haven’t
seen to.”

“Good man,” said Lincoln Parradyne. “I appreciate good service, and I remember it.”

“That’s known,” said the man. “And the drape of your cloak needs attention, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

The Magician of Rank glanced at his shoulder and murmured agreement: what was supposed to be seven neat folds in an orderly cascade was more like the casual pleating of a little girl’s skirt, and that would tell him something about allowing himself to be provoked by his cousins into flailing his arms around and shaking his fists at the ceiling. He adjusted the cape’s arrangement with swift fingers, and refastened the silver bar that drew the falls together and held them back out of the way of his right arm.