The Margarets (10 page)

“Can you go to her?” I asked.

“I can do nothing out there. Only in here, which is why those in need come to the gate.”

“I could go for you,” I suggested.

She shook her head sadly, and I knew I could not do anything out there either.

Not long after, on a dismal morning with rain beating from a sullen sky, the baby announced its desire to be born weeks early, long before the doctor was expected to be there. The midwife was fetched. The labor went on. The midwife, in some agitation, suggested that someone go to the Gardener for Mariah, who was having a very difficult time. Benjamin Finesilver, who knew no more about childbirth than he did about Perepume, said nonsense, send for the village healer. This was done without improving the situation. The midwife again said someone should go to the Gardener, and this time Mariah screamed from her bed, yes, yes, go get someone, someone to help me…

Benjamin came himself, feeling a fool. Few men ever presented themselves at the gate, but he vaguely remembered having been taken there a time or two as a child, so it held no fears for him. He rang the bell, as the Gardener had said he would, and we went down to the gate. Benjamin begged something to ease his wife’s pain. The Gardener asked him to put his hand over the gate, which he did, and she took it in her own while looking into his eyes. With a gesture, she summoned me to look at him also, and I saw what she had told me I would see.

After a long moment, she nodded and told him to wait. We went back into the house, and shortly she sent me to the gate. I told him, “Make a tea of this and have her drink a cup every hour. It will ease her pain.”

“Will the child…will the child be all right?” he begged.

“You must bring your daughter here,” I said, as I had been told to say. “To receive the Gardener’s honey on her lips.”

Thus somewhat comforted, he went back the way he had come, to brew the tea and make Mariah drink it and to see the pain leave her eyes, though the labor went on. After several more cups of tea and as
many hours had passed, the baby girl was born.

“All’s well, then,” cried Benjamin.

“All’s well with your daughter,” said the village healer, turning back to the room where Mariah lay amid the crimson flood neither he nor the midwife had any way of stanching. “And your wife is in no pain.”

All night Benjamin sat at the bedside holding Mariah’s body in his arms. He would not look at the child the midwife brought to him, not until dawn came—clear, cloudless, hymned by birds—when he took the sleeping baby wrapped in its blankets and came down the street to the Gardener’s gate. He rang the bell and waited, the tears still flowing down his face. By the time we reached the gate, Grandma Bergamot had come up from her house, for she had heard the bell.

“I’ve brought you the child,” Benjamin cried, tears flowing down his face again. “Her mother is dead. You did not save her!”

“You did not ask me to save her,” said the Gardener in a stern voice that cut through the fog of grief he was in. “You asked me to ease her pain. I did so. Grandma Bergamot asked me to save her some months ago, and I sent a medicine for her then.”

Grandma Bergamot called, “Oh, she’s right, Benjamin, she did, indeed. I sent her home with the tea myself. We tried to get Mariah to come here herself, but she wouldn’t hear of talking with the Gardener…”

Benjamin gasped, recalling how Mariah had laughed about the Gardener. And he, he himself had not asked the Gardener to save her. Why? Why had he not? Sobbing, he thrust the child across the gate and into the Gardener’s arms. “She’s yours. Take her. I must take Mariah’s body back to her people. I do not know how I will face them, and it is likely I will never in this life return to Swylet.” He turned away, stumbling off toward his home, and by nightfall he was gone. The people of Swylet never saw him again.

Grandma Bergamot came to the gate, whispering, “Do you want me to take her, Gardener? I’ve raised five and helped with as many more.” She peered at the baby, crying out a little. “Oh, but the wee thing, born far too soon!”

The Gardener shook her head, the silken folds of the wimple moving like grass in a wind, reflecting glimmers of light to play
across her face. “Her father was one who looked so far he could not see a treasure lying at his feet. Her mother was one who looked so close, she could not see anything outside herself. The child was given to me. I will keep her and teach her how to see.”

“But she’s so tiny, so frail. Have you…I mean, do you know…”

The Gardener turned her eyes on the old woman and smiled until Grandma Bergamot flushed in confusion. “Do I know how to raise up a child, even one born too soon? Why, Grandma Bergamot, I knew you when you were Dora Shingle, a red, wrinkled squaller. I put honey on your lips. I gave your mother a galenical to cure your diaper rash. I fed you herbs for the summer fever and strong tea for the winter chills. I cured your earache and your sore throats and your belly cramps when the womanlies came upon you. Why would I not know how to raise one small babe who cannot be as troublesome as you were? Come in a moment and see for yourself.”

Grandma looked around. No one else was about except two small red dogs chasing one another down the street. The gate was opened, and Grandma walked in, following us down the path, around the corner, through the shrubs, across the little lawn kept grazed short by fat ewe sheep, and through the door of the Gardener’s House. The kettle was already hanging over the fire, and the cradle had been set beside it to warm, for we had known what was to happen. There was honeycomb on a plate, some of which went on the child’s lips and some on Grandma Bergamot’s and some of which was given to me.

“What will you name the baby?’ Grandma asked, licking the sweetness from her mouth and wishing she were a child again, with no manners to keep her from begging more.

The Gardener smiled. “There’s much thinking to do about that. Too small a name makes a person smaller than need be. Too large a name makes life a struggle to live up to. A name should fit, you know. It should be the size of the life it will signify.”

Grandma wondered briefly how large a name Dora Shingle had been, before it occurred to her that now would be a good time to ask the Gardener some of the things she had long wanted to know.

“Gardener,” she said, “since you’re being so kind, would you tell me please where the cats come from?”

“Ah,” said the Gardener, “well, where do cats come from? From
kittens, no doubt.”

Grandma Bergamot chuckled. “Oh, mayhap they do, or mayhap not. These cats of yours are no ordinary cats, Gardener.”

“True,” she replied. “Well, there’s no reason not to tell you, Grandmother Bergamot, for your heart is good and you mean no ill to them. My cats come from the far side of Chottem, far east from the sea cities, where lies the blessed land of Perepume. There the cliffs rise from the sea to prevent invasion by ship, and great ragged continents of perpetual cloud prevent invasion from the air. Now that men have come to Chottem, however, it will not take them forever to find a way past these barriers. That means the people who live there may need to find a new world, though it will be a time before it becomes necessary for them to go.” Then she turned to the cat at her side and said, “Isn’t that true, lovely one.”

“Oh, very true,” said the cat, with a wide yawn as it stretched itself into a bow from tail-tip to tongue-flip. “As far as it goes.”

Grandma put her hand on the cradle, which felt silky smooth under her hand. “This cradle is old,” she murmured.

“Many children have used my cradle,” the Gardener agreed. “Including some even smaller than this one.” Then the Gardener said something else, then something else again, and before long, while I watched from the gate, Grandma was walking out and the busy dogs were in the exact same place they had been when she entered that gate. Though she felt she had been inside for a very long time, the sun still stood in the eastern sky as it had when she had entered.

She resolved to tell her friends about the cats from Perepume, and about the time standing still, for it explained so much that they had wondered about. The Gardener stayed young forever, because…because…Why was that?

Wonderingly, still licking the honey from her lips, she went off home, unable to remember anything except that Mariah d’Lornschilde had died in childbirth and Benjamin Finesilver had given his girl baby away to the Gardener and she herself had seen the child being rocked in its cradle by a girl called Gretamara.

Inside the Gardener’s House, we sat sharing fragrant tea, the steam
wreathing our faces and moistening our cheeks.

“Was there anything in what just happened that you did not understand?” the Gardener asked.

“I understood very little of it,” I said. “I know you could have saved the woman’s life but did not do so…I don’t understand that. I know you are keeping the baby here, even though several of the women out there would care for it well enough for it to grow fat and healthy, and I don’t understand that, either.”

“This child,” said the Gardener, laying her hand on the cradle, “is now the heiress of Bray. The previous heiress of Bray, her mother, was a foolish woman, a self-centered woman, family-proud and accustomed to the servitude of others. What reason might one have for wishing her daughter to grow up here instead of in the House of Bray?”

I thought that over. “Perhaps to let her learn of other things than she would learn there?”

“See, you do understand the answer, both to your first question and your second.”

This was a troubling thought. “Then this child must learn to value things other than those Mariah valued.”

“Yes,” said the Gardener. “You and I must make sure of that. She will be high-spirited, I know, but she has no taint of evil. She will accept tutelage if both she and we are wise. We will court wisdom on her behalf by naming her Sophia. Sophia is the spirit of wisdom.” She sipped her tea. “Are you happy here, Gretamara?”

I thought about this for some time, for I wished to say nothing to the Gardener that was not the truth. “I am often very happy here, Gardener. Your gardens fill me with such joy that it sometimes hurts. I value the ways of healing that you teach. Still, I think there is pain in much of what you do, and I do not understand why you changed my name or why we stay here, behind the fence, always alone.”

The Gardener sighed, rising to look out the low, many-paned window that gave upon the garden. “As a young child, you had several people you enjoyed being, a queen and a warrior and a spy, this one then that one. Many children have such selves, harboring all kinds of possibilities within themselves. Each person contains the seeds of several persons. I have named one such person Gretamara to distin
guish her from the rest. Gretamara is a healer.

“As for being alone, I am accustomed to solitude. My friends and I have a job of work to do. If it is to be done well, we must reduce distractions and interruptions…”

I interrupted, “But you’re always being distracted and interrupted.”

The Gardener laughed, “As you have just done! Not always interrupted, Gretamara, as you will learn. And, as I was saying, distractions and interruptions must be reduced without cutting ourselves off from one another or the daily lives of the people who have chosen and created us to care for and defend them. Our task must be accomplished without anyone noticing what we are doing. So, my friends and I live a compromise, sometimes meeting, sometimes separately, but always near a gate and a bell to summon us into ordinary life.”

I asked, “Am I…one of your friends?”

A shadow crossed the Gardener’s face. I thought it might be an expression of sorrow, but if so, it soon passed. The Gardener said, “Unlike ordinary people, Gretamara, we cannot choose what or who we will become: We are as we are made to be. You cannot choose to be one of us, but you can choose to be of inestimable value to our work. That choice is not to be made today, however, not even very soon. For the time being, your task is only to stay contentedly here, learning to heal those in need and whatever else I can teach you.”

“May I learn another thing, then?”

“What thing is that?”

“Your stories, Gardener. Please, may I learn all of your stories.”

“My stories?” The Gardener smiled. Outside the garden grew, the cats strolled, the sky paled, pinked, darkened. It wasn’t a bad time for stories. “I will tell you a very old story about the angry man and the fish…”

Which she told me. A story that I heard again and again, later, many times, in many places.

It did not take long to find out that Earth was no different from Phobos. People on Earth engaged in ritual repetition; most of them thought as little as possible; most of them occupied themselves with things and events that were not very important. Amusement stage dramas were the same as the ones I had seen on Phobos. All music had been so extensively filtered, corrected, and augmented by technology that it all sounded alike. Singing voices were improved by electronic means, as were the faces, the bodies, and the dramatic ability of actors and actresses. No one was plain; no one was allowed to be ugly; no one was very different from anyone else. In school, the stupid students got the same grades as the smart ones except for the tiny secret marks the educational archivists made in their records—in case a VIP needed a truthful reference.

I took my usual refuge in books, finding escape easier now that I had books written in other languages. No one had the time to sanitize books in Omniont or Mercan tongues, so Omniont peoples were allowed to be weird and eccentric, Mercans were unremittingly repulsive and violent. That most ancient of people, the Pthas, were enigmatic and profound. Their language was one of the most beautiful to hear, but the Pthas themselves were gone. They had ruled our galaxy for a billion years, fostering young races, helping people rise from barbarity to civility,
but in the end, they had left our galaxy to explore the mysteries of the universe. The Pthas had taught that merely speaking their language would mold the mind toward truth. For that reason, so much as any human could learn to speak their language, I learned to speak Pthas.

The Quaatar were another story. They considered their language too holy for anyone except a Quaatar to speak, but I (along with two others in my class) learned to read and speak it. Out of bravado, I suppose. Showing off.

Each of the races whose languages we learned had different notions of good, bad, honor, dishonor, truth, or justice, a bewildering but marvelous array: more fruit for supposition and interpretation in one volume than in everything I had read until then. The K’Famir had no word for truth or justice; they had over fifty for degrees of torment and at least that many for honor, divided into classes, depending upon whose honor had been defiled, how grossly, and by whom. The Frossians had no words for good or bad: things were either edible or nonedible, profitable or unprofitable. The Quaatar had no words for equality, fairness, or impartiality. To each of them, every other Quaatar was either above or below them, while every thing or trait was either Quaatar or filth. The Quaatar word for filth was the same as their word for food: it applied to all non-Quaatar races except the K’Famir and the Frossians, who were called
gvoiup
, a collective noun meaning “morsels saved to be eaten later.” Of course, as the didactibots never tired of reminding me, books were only books. Only long experience could truly teach translators how to interpret and explain these exotic beings.

When I was eighteen, I was admitted to the Advanced College of Linguistics and Policy from among whose graduates most of Earth’s diplomats and ambassadors were selected—that is, those persons that Earthgov titled ambassadors or diplomats. What they were called by the other races involved was known only to a few, who thought it wisest not to publicize the matter.

ACoLaP, as the school was called, was one of the few educational institutions with a permanent exemption from the nondiscrimination rules. In all Earthian, nondidactibot schools, exceptionally bright students could move no faster than the slowest in the class in order that no lazy or inept student be left behind. It had proven easier to
slow down everyone than to speed up the laggards. Earthgov, however, felt this rule should not apply when Earth’s planetary security was involved, which gave my admission a definite éclat. Both my parents basked in the glow generated by this accomplishment, and I was trotted out on various occasions to meet my parents’ friends, rather as a prize cow might once have been.

Since neither Mother nor Father had been at all helpful in my achievement, I rather resented their gloating. I had to give myself a good talking-to in order to let it go. They were not bad people; they were as they were. If they had been different, probably so would I, and I rather liked the way my own life was tending, for I had met someone.

Sybil, one of my classmates, was the daughter of a largish clan of professional people, and Sybil invited several of her classmates, including me, to dinner at her family’s home. I liked Sybil far better than the other students she had invited, for they were among a small elitist group at the college, about a dozen sons and daughters of extreme wealth and power. Though two of the young men had condescended to honor me with their attentions a time or two, I had not been interested, but my indifference did not extend to Sybil’s brother. He was Bryan Mackey, young Dr. Mackey, currently established in the extended residency program of a premier and respected hospital.

Young Dr. Mackey had a mop of sandy hair, amber brown eyes, a wide mouth, and a disconcertingly penetrating look, which he focused on me the moment we met. We sat next to each other at dinner. He asked me out. I agreed, somewhat nervous at having an actual date, and even more nervous on finding the experience enjoyable.

Thereafter, whenever he had a few hours off duty, he asked to see me, usually for dinner, where he very shortly fell into the pattern of complaining throughout the meal about problems in his professional life.

“The man doesn’t know medicine?” he said of a superior.

“He’s an administrator,” I said, in what I hoped was a soothing voice.

“Yes, but he’s a
medical
administrator. How in heaven’s name can a man administer a program he knows nothing about?”

A week or so later it was something else, and something yet again the week after that, a whole chain of somethings I could identify very readily as “annoyances”: directors who knew little but directed much; decisions that favored ease over idealism; rulings that frustrated his skill; orders that wounded his pride. I had seen it all on Phobos, where it had been decently hidden by custom. Here, his bleeding resentment was ripped out and laid before me in all its blatant gore.

“There’s a better way to do that procedure! The damned rules were written twenty years ago! Mortality is a lot higher than it needs to be, if they’d just let us treat people the way we’ve been taught to…”

Slightly irritated, I said something I’d thought of many times but had heretofore refrained from saying. “Have you considered that they may want to keep the mortality as high as possible?”

He turned, eyes blazing, only to pale as though he had been slapped in the face by an icy wind. “You mean…”

“My father says population numbers aren’t dropping fast enough. Desertification has eaten too much cropland there’s no way of replacing. Look at how hard they’re pushing emigration.”

“Emigration! Call it what it is: providing slave labor for the Omniont Federation and the Mercan Combine.”

I said, “It’s not really slavery. It’s bonded labor for only fifteen years. It’s better than dying, Bryan.”

“Have you ever seen a settlement planet?”

I shook my head, worried at his tone, which was more hostile and furious than usual, even for Bryan.

“Well then, don’t be so damned sure it’s better than dying.”

I felt myself getting angry. “Do you enjoy being with me?”

“Margaret! You know I do!”

“Most times when we’re together, I go home feeling…as though someone had been beating on me.” Actually, I usually went home full of such vicarious anger on his behalf, such overriding animosity against those who were frustrating him, that I lay awake most of the night explaining to them what stupid people they were. I had little experience with violent emotion, and that little had been troublesome. Even on Earth, I had seen little or no emotion
displayed until I met Bryan, who was looking at me now with wrathful exasperation. I spoke through gritted teeth:

“Could we…could we just have dinner together sometimes without your being…so furious about everything?”

He gaped, then closed his mouth with a snap, turning red, breathing heavily. I was about to get up and leave him there when he said through his teeth, “You’re right! Father tells me the same thing. He says I mustn’t take the day’s frustrations home with me. Good heavens, Margaret, you must think I’m a…well, I don’t know what. Rude, certainly.”

I smiled in relief, demurred, insisted it wasn’t all that important, just that I thought we would digest our meals far better (tasteless though they were) if we were less overwrought.

Once in a great while thereafter, he would begin a tirade, only to shake his head at himself, and say, “Forget it, it isn’t important.” Instead we talked about books, about an experimental theater movement, about music. One night, I went home with him for an hour or so, leaving him breathlessly to return to my parent’s apartment. The next time I told Mother I was spending the night with friends. Neither parent questioned this. Both of them had fallen back into the Phobos habit, speaking constantly of work or speaking of nothing at all.

When Bryan and I could take a panting moment from our lovemaking, we decided, quite independently, that we were perfect for one another. Preoccupied by sensations that were completely new to us both (since early youth, Bryan had been kept far too busy to get sexually involved with anyone), fearful of saying, feeling, or doing anything that might threaten our delight, we played with one another very carefully, avoiding anything that might be in the least annoying. With Bryan, I felt complete. Those strange splittings-off that I had imagined happening on Mars when I was nine and here on Earth when I was twelve seemed to have healed. I didn’t have that arms-reaching-out feeling with Bryan. My arms were delightfully full.

The fact that we didn’t speak much about our relationship seemed natural to me. It was the way things had been on Phobos, it was in keeping with my upbringing. To Bryan, I realized it was purposeful,
the result of continuing resolution, his perseverant gift to me, not to involve me in his rages, disappointments, frustrations. For this honeymoon of time, we rejoiced in one another, avoiding all irritating subjects, each of us remaining blissfully unaware of the other’s true desires or plans or hopes for the future.