The Margarets (47 page)

In House Mouselline, I, Miss Ongamar, pinned and basted, seamed and embroidered, and each day my escape plans ripened. Those plans, almost a year in the making, were now complete. I had pulled together all the notes I had made, put them in order, and transcribed them all in minuscule script on the inside of my Hrassian robes. I had recently stolen money from House Mouselline, not a difficult task, since Lady Ephedra trusted Miss Ongamar to tally each day’s receipts and make up the transfer document for House Mouselline’s banker. These accounts would be audited, of course, but I had begun after the last audit and still had time to spare.

Disguised as a Hrass and using the stolen money, I had purchased a go-pass on an outgoing ship that was to leave during the anniversary celebration of the Great Leader’s accession to power, tomorrow. House Mouselline would be closed, today was my last day, so I took my self-allotted share from the cash box and tucked it under my padding, totaled up the transfer document and laid it atop the box, then began tidying the little cubby where I worked, paying no attention to the clamor in the showroom, until I heard my own name.

“Miss Ongamar, yes. If you don’t mind.” I was stunned by the voice, a human voice, male, very firm, a little amused.

“This shop is only for the
tamistachi,
the elite of
K’Famir,” shrieked Lady Ephedra. “Dirty human slaves are not welcome.”

The man laughed, a deep, truly amused chuckle. “Ah, but Lady Ephedra, I am not a dirty human slave, I am a diplomat from the Dominion. Here, my diplomatic pass. Here’s identification, see, my likeness without a doubt, resembling no one else.”

“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, someone may see you here, someone may smell you here…”

“Then it would be wise to let me see Miss Ongamar so that I may go away the sooner, would it not?”

I heard the scuttling feet and stood with my back to the wall. The curtain that enclosed my cubby was drawn aside with a rattle of rings, and Lady Ephedra pointed toward me with both left arms. “She is here! See her and go!”

The man stood politely aside while the Lady departed, then slipped into the cubby, looked me over from head to toe with one eye and one eye patch, whispering as he did so:

“Gather up what you need and come with me.”

“And who are you,” I grated, halfway between anger and terror. I had needed only one more day! If anything was guaranteed to make the Lady Ephedra my enemy, this was it.

“I am sometimes called Stipps, sometimes Mr. Weathereye,” he said, bowing slightly. “I often work with the Dominion and the Siblinghood, which group tells me your term as a bondservant was actually fulfilled some time ago. I have the documents here, as approved by the K’Famir official for this sector, and if you will be kind enough to take me to your living quarters, we will discuss your future plans.”

I dithered. If…if what he said was true, then I needn’t fear the retribution that Lady Ephedra would exact. On the other hand, if it wasn’t true, I was in trouble up to my eyebrows. On the one hand, the man seemed very sure, but on the other hand, people were often very sure about things that had no truth to them whatsoever…

He leaned forward. “Please, Margaret. Just release your hold on the back of that chair and come with me.”

“Ongamar,” I corrected him. “Miss Ongamar.”

“Yes, Margaret. I know.”

Somehow, he managed to convince me. Somehow he managed to
dissuade Lady Ephedra from making a fuss as we went out of the building to the street and down the narrow way to my rooms. When I reached out to put my key in the door, he whispered, “Where is it?”

My throat froze. I shivered in terror, trying to speak.

“Point,” he said in my ear. “Just point.”

I did so. Mr. Weathereye said, “Ella May?”

“Here,” said a female voice, the person herself coming through the alley gate, a sturdy woman with a case in one hand. We went in. The woman opened the case, empty except for a small set of implements, which she removed before she went to the closed closet door.

“It’s in here?”

I nodded. The pair went in. I heard a scuffle, then a scream so shrill it made my ears hurt, then a panting sound, another scream and silence. The woman came out, wiping a peculiarly shaped knife on a piece of glowing fabric.

“Now,” Mr. Weathereye said cheerfully to me. “Do you have anything here you want to take with you?”

I begged, “Where are we going?”

“Off Cantardene, my dear. My claim of signed release documents was a false one, for which I apologize. By this time, Lady Ephedra will have summoned the K’Famir, who will shortly assault this dwelling with the aim of killing you. We suggest you quickly put all necessities into this case, and we’ll go.”

I was jolted into movement. I had already set aside a folded change of clothing and shoes. My Hrass robes and disguise lay ready, and if this man could not do what he told me he could do, I might still use these to escape. I saw his eyebrows rise when I put the disguise into the case, filling it completely. Ella May dropped the implements atop the Hrassian false nose, and we went out the door.

The gate through the wall was open. In the alley outside a dark, smooth vehicle hummed quietly. Its doors opened, Ella May climbed inside and extended a hand to help me inside, where I collapsed onto the seat with an abrupt sense of mixed elation and horror. Either I would wake up and be back in Lady Ephedra’s fitting room, or I had escaped. I had no intention of finding out which. If this was to be a temporary ecstasy, I would not abbreviate it.

The vehicle rose soundlessly except for an almost subliminal hum. Mr. Weathereye touched the door and it became transparent. We looked down on K’Famir wearing the straps and weapons of police massed at the street opening of my little alley, then pouring down it in a flood, blocking both door and alley as a dozen or so of them rushed into my dwelling.

“Why?” I cried. “Why do they want to kill me?”

An old woman seated in front next to Ella May turned and said, “The orders came from the palace of the K’Famir Chief Planner. Next to the Great Leader, that’s as high as K’Famir go. Some long time ago, he gave a Thongal spy a few ghyrm to be fastened upon certain human bondslaves on Cantardene to see if these bondslaves were part of a conspiracy. You were one of them. Lately, the Chief Planner learned that the Siblinghood had been looking for you, watching for you. This was taken as proof you were part of a conspiracy, so he ordered that you be killed now, tonight, instead of later, which Lady Mouselline preferred.”

“Why?” I whispered. “Why would he even know about me?”

“Perhaps he doesn’t. He probably takes take his orders from someone else,” said Mr. Weathereye. “We don’t really know what creature may be at the top, but if it isn’t K’Famir, then it’s Quaatar or Frossian.”

“Or all three,” said the old woman. She turned toward me once more. “I’m Lady Badness. We had already planned to come for you. Such badness here among the K’Famir, always such badness. Lady Mouselline always has her fitters killed, but she has delayed your execution several times, and we took advantage of that, not wanting to…betray ourselves beforetime. When we learned that the Chief Planner’s office wasn’t going to wait any longer, we moved quickly, as we are moving to find out who the creature at the top of this evil pyramid may be.”

“Who told you that they wanted me killed?” I cried.

“Someone who listens for us,” Lady Badness replied. “We have people who listen for us. The K’Famir walk in the Bak-Zandig-g’Shadup, their clothing brushes against one of our listeners, they walk away, but now their clothing listens to what they say and tells us about it.”

“I guess I’m one of your listeners, too,” I said. “That’s what I did,
there in the fitting room. I listened.”

Below us, the K’Famir were coming out of the house. One of them waved something to another.

“What’s that thing he’s waving?” asked Ella May.

I looked down, uncertain. Suddenly the image magnified, and I saw what it was.

“Oh, no,” I cried. “My go-pass. I was going to leave Cantardene tomorrow…”

“Will they know the pass was sold to you personally?” Lady Badness asked sharply.

I shook my head. “I bought it in the guise of a Hrass, for they’re always coming through Bak-Zandig-g’Shadup…”

“You left most of your belongings back there,” said Mr. Weathereye. “They may assume you plan to return. In any case, unless they’ve recently had a great advance in technology, they cannot see this flier, even if they are looking directly at it.”

This rang an alarm in my mind, but for the moment I could not think why. “Where are we going?”

“We have a place here on Cantardene, a very safe place, we hope, and just until we can figure out a way to get back to…where do we want to get back to?” he asked the old woman.

“Thairy, I believe. That’s where we started from…”

“But the others were going to B’yurngrad…”

“…or B’yurngrad. I imagine either would do.”

I murmured, “What do you do there, or here? I mean, what is your work?”

The man laughed. “Rescuing maidens. Not without self-interest, you understand. Since the K’Famir kill anyone they suspect of knowing something touchy about the K’Famir, and since you were scheduled for killing, we assume you have something that will prove to be very useful to us.”

“Oh,” gasped I with a spurt of pure joy. “Oh, after all these years, I do have something for you!”

Their ship sped across the pleasure quarter to the outskirts of the city, passing above Beelshi. I shuddered.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Weathereye.

“I saw them…” I began, stopping, gulping, my throat blocked by
swallowed tears.

“Tell us,” Lady Badness said firmly.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I wrote it all down.”

“Which is why you must! We haven’t time for documents.”

I started haltingly, finally letting it all spew out: the little creatures, the little boy, the creation of the ghyrm, the pools of light and dark I had seen in the mausoleum, the strange machine. Gasping, my face wet, I concluded, “The K’Famir worship the Eater of the Dead. Torturing living things turns them into what you killed back there.”

Ella May cursed under her breath. “Lady Badness! Look there, ahead. They’ve found our ship!”

“How could they?” demanded Lady Badness. “It was shielded. No one comes out here!”

Below us the K’Famir swarmed over the ship like ants.

“They can’t get into it,” said Weathereye.

“Unfortunately, neither can we,” said the old woman.

“They have shield detectors,” I said, coming out of the spell of my narrative to realize what was going on. “One of the customers at House Mouselline was talking about its patron being honored for inventing it. The K’Famira laughed a great deal. He hadn’t invented it, only bought it from the Omnionts.”

“Now the woman remembers!” grated Weathereye. “We don’t dare go down there. If we do the correct thing, we blow the ship right now and let them think we’re in it.”

“Too late,” cried the pilot. “They’ve detected us!”

“Do the correct thing, then,” cried Weathereye. “At least take some of them with it.”

The ship below us went up in an enormous billow of smoke and fire that threw some hundreds of the uniformed K’Famir through the air like windblown leaves. “That should distract them for a time,” growled Ella May.

“How does it work?” Weathereye demanded. “Their sensor. Does it detect the veiling system, or does it penetrate the system to detect the ship?”

I gaped, trying to remember what else they had said. “It detects the system,” I said at last.

“Turn the system off in this ship, Ella May,” Weathereye ordered.

“Get down as close to the ground as you can. Night is coming. Set us down in the shadows somewhere, among these hillocks. We’re trapped here now. Have to figure out something…”

“The gates,” said Lady Badness. “She told us about the gates on the Hill of Beelshi.”

“She didn’t tell us where the hell they go,” snapped Weathereye.

“They don’t both go,” the old woman snarled in return. “One goes, one comes. Remember!”

“What I remember is the genetic work the Siblinghood has done on the ghyrm,” Ella May said as she searched for a place to set down. “And what you told me of the armaments research they’re doing on Thairy. Whatever they came up with to kill ghyrm also killed humans. It finally makes sense!”

“It’s true the closest tissue match to ghyrm is human,” said Lady Badness, turning toward me. “Weathereye and I belong to a small group of interested bystanders, well, not always just bystanders, obviously, since here we are, not just standing.”

“What do you mean, the ghyrm are human?” I cried.

“No, no, dear. Not human. Humans are the closest genetic match. What you saw there on the Hill of Beelshi makes it clear the ghyrm are manufactured from humans.”

“But the little creatures I saw weren’t human. I could hold one of them in my hands!

“They must have once been human, genetically speaking. The human genetic dictionary contains many words, perhaps whole paragraphs, that are not usually expressed. Under certain conditions, however, the genetic vocabulary changes. If the environment is impoverished, much of what is thought of as human is simply repressed, letting simple, earlier processes take over. Language is reduced, then lost. Argument is replaced with violence. Symbols and repetitive chants replace art and music. Minds are reduced in complexity, reactions are simplified. Reproduction may be limited to certain castes. So with the little ones you saw. Genetically, they must still be human, however. Torture simply removes the remnants of humanity—pain does that, you know. It destroys the higher centers of the mind, leaving only the screaming hunger that lies at the center of all ancient life.”

“Leaving, also, genetics sufficiently like yours that your immune system does not react to them,” said Weathereye. “Your bodies do not reject them, as they would anything foreign. Which means they can take their time to feed on you quite nicely.”

“You say, genetics like ours,’” said I. “Your genetics aren’t human?”