The Margarets (49 page)

“It’s a Gentheran survey ship,” remarked the Gardener. “It’s been buried here for a very long time.”

We moved down the dimly lit passageway and came to a viewscreen that looked across a clearing into a forest. Through the trees we saw a shoreline and an expanse of water. Along the shoreline was a village swarming with very small people, somewhat humanlike in appearance.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“At the far end of nowhere,” replied the Gardener. “A place that interests no one, a place visited only by accident. The Frossians were determined to kill Wilvia, Queen of the Ghoss, so we kept moving her about in order to keep her safe.”

“When we were children,” I said, “we invented Queen Wilvia, and Naumi the Warrior, and all the others. There was a spy, too. I suppose Ongamar was the spy. I wonder if they found a warrior…”

A door opened at our approach to disclose a courtyard garden with flowering trees grouped around a burbling fountain. Cushioned chairs were set around it, one of them holding a slender, careworn
woman, who rose, startled by our arrival. She wore a simple white robe and a diadem. The glowing gem at the center of her forehead was her only adornment.

“Gardener,” she said, but she was not looking at the Gardener. Her eyes were fixed on me.

“Wilvia,” the Gardener cried. “You’re pale, tired. Why are you all alone? Where are your companions?”

“They had to go,” she gestured, her eyes still fixed upon Gretamara. “A long, long time ago. Who…how…?”

The Gardener motioned to me to be seated, remaining standing herself to observe the two of us. “You recognize yourselves?”

“Myself?” Wilvia stood. “She’s younger than I.”

I shook my head. “I’ve been living with the Gardener since I was twelve. People who live there don’t age very fast. One named Ongamar has been a bondslave on Cantardene since she was twelve, and bondslaves do age. There are four more of us.”

“As I told you,” the Gardener said to Wilvia.

“I know you told me!” Wilvia took a step away, her cheeks burning with quick, hectic color, her eyes shifting restlessly, her voice shrill. “Being told is one thing. Confronting oneself, after all these years…Oh, Gardener. When I saw you, I thought it might be my children! Or Joziré!”

“You know your children are well, for you and your friends left each of them in a safe place, did you not?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “My friends and I…”

“But where are your companions? They should be here.”

“Gone,” said Wilvia, taking a deep breath. “They had to go to Tercis to take their child. They weren’t supposed to be gone for very long, but when they started back, they realized they were being followed. They sent a message here, to the ship, to let me know why they hadn’t returned.”

“I need to see,” said Gardener, moving through the garden. I rose to follow her, but Wilvia stayed where she was.

“Gardener, there’s something wrong with her,” I said, as we went from the garden into another ship corridor.

“Isolation is wrong with her,” the Gardener said angrily. “Isolation, and grief. Her children were taken away for safekeeping, her
husband also, a pair of Gibbekot were her only companions. We didn’t mean for her ever to be left alone!”

A door opened, and we went through into a control room. The Gardener turned to the right, to the communications room. “Access message from Prrr Prrrpm and Mwrrr Lrrrpa.”

“Message accessed.” Two faces appeared on the screen.

The Gardener said. “Prrr Prrrpm and Mwrrr Lrrrpa. Message!”

The larger Gibbekot said, “Wilvia, we can’t come back to you just now. We have placed Falija in foster care, as planned. As we were leaving Tercis, we detected someone following us, which means we have to lead the followers away. We knew it was a risk. Have patience. We will return to you as soon as possible…”

The screen went blank. We returned to Wilvia.

“You’ve been alone since they left?” cried the Gardener.

“Alone, yes. I know it seems longer than it really has been. I still have books to read. There’s plenty of food. Sometimes I spend days just watching them, out there, wondering at them. They’ve been almost wiped out over and over, but they don’t remember a thing…”

“And no one has come here at all?”

“Sometimes in the nights, I’ve wakened, thinking I’ve heard the gate. It makes a kind of liquid sound, you know, like water, flowing, but nothing happened except for the sound. I’m sure you’re right, that no one knows the ship is here.” She sat down again, closing her eyes and trembling. “Tell me it’s time to go?”

I got up and sat beside her, putting my arm around the queen. “You will not be left here alone again,” I said, staring directly at the Gardener as I said so.

“Quite true,” said the Gardener. “If the two of you will give me just a day or to so I can make sure everything is…”

“No,” said Wilvia. “Enough, Gardener. Years in the first place I was taken, years in the second and third. Almost a year, maybe more, in this place. I am beginning to think I have died and am only imagining being alive! I’ll go where you go, or I’ll go through the way-gate to Tercis.”

The Gardener sighed. “No doubt that will do as well, though by this time the way-gates may be swarming with K’Famir.”

“We can be sure there’s no one in the gate-room,” said Wilvia. “You put a sensor in there.”

“And you left Lady Badness behind on Chottem,” I said. “I doubt she’s let anyone come through.”

“Lady Badness?” asked Wilvia.

“Lady Nepenthe, Mistress of Forgetfulness,” said the Gardener, with a twisted smile. “A talent we share. Mankind gave us that talent, they wanted us to have it because they needed it themselves. I have used it regularly on the villagers in Swylet. Lady Badness will have used it on the men in the cellar who saw all that treasure and forgot it even while they were looking at it. But it’s a human thing, and it’s not likely to work on K’Famir, though…who knows? Very well, we’ll go to Tercis, and you two will wait for me there while I go to B’yurngrad by other ways.”

Wilvia stood, shaking her long garments down around her. She stood proudly erect as though stretching herself upward.

“Don’t you need belongings of some kind?” I asked.

“I need nothing,” she said, with a smile that trembled into tears, “save to leave this dreadful place.”

She followed us back the way we had come. The door opened on an empty room. The door slid open. We moved quickly to the shining gate and went away.

I, Naumi, was at the academy when Jaker commed me from the office of Poul-Jaker’s import-export company, to say their sales rep Stipps had returned with the bondslave they wanted. Her name, he said, was Ongamar. She did speak several languages, and sewing had indeed been her livelihood. Though he had been directed only to find her, matters on Cantardene were extremely volatile, and since her life was at risk, he had taken the liberty, which he hoped would be forgiven, of rescuing the poor woman.

“Where is she?” I demanded, after a moment’s awed appreciation of this folderol.

“He brought her here,” said Jaker. “But we can be with you shortly. It seems appropriate to let her rejoin her…other family members.”

I set out to report this development to everyone else, wherever they were, just getting out of bed or bathing or having breakfast, and in a very short time they commed from the gate to tell me we had visitors. When I arrived there, so-called Stipps bowed, saying:

“You’re looking well, Naumi.”

“Thank you, sir,” I replied. “I rather expected to see you. Just at the moment we’re very busy. Is this the lady?”

“Ongamar. She has important information about the ghyrm. I know you’re very busy, but do you feel it would be worth your while for the two of you to find out pre-
cisely what our enemies are up to just now? I know the Gardener and Lady Badness have been otherwise occupied. It would only take us a moment.”

I laughed, not from amusement. “If the lady is willing, I am willing, Mr. Weathereye. Flek, Jaker, will you be host for me? See that everyone has breakfast, and we’ll be back shortly.”

“You
know
him,” said Jaker. “What did you call him?”

“A nickname. From my youth. I’ll tell you all about it when we return…”

Ongamar was small and somewhat bent, as though by habit, but her eyes snapped as she looked at me. I hustled the other two past the gate guards and returned. Mr. Weathereye took us each by the hand and we…traveled somewhere.

We very gradually coalesced not far from a trio of towering…what? Smoke. Fire. Sullen darkness lit with livid flame. Dweller, Mr. Weathereye told us without words. Drinker. Darkness. They were immense, and we were nothing, a huddled, small, muttering form. Ongamar and I knew that humans spoke many languages: dead ones, live ones, artificial ones, extraterrestrial ones. Mr. Weathereye had a wide variety of mutters to pick from, and esoteric nonsense in several tongues slipped from his mouth.

“What is it saying?” demanded Drinker of Blood.

“Just babble,” replied Dweller in Pain. “Some prelinguistic source has been carried into space by a more advanced race, and their Members have ended up here. Ignore it. You were telling us about Cantardene…”

Darkness replied, “We found the copy! The one to be killed. It got away through a trade duct! I howled for the source to come, but the copy got away and took our machine with it!”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” said Dweller.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t?”

“You don’t need the machine because you don’t need the duct. You’re getting the raw material directly from Earth through Chottem, aren’t you? That supplier, what’s his label?”

Darkness snarled, “D’Lornschilde. And he overcharges us.”

Dweller continued. “That doesn’t matter either. When our people conquer Chottem, as we will, we’ll get it all back.”

After a pause, Darkness muttered, “I suppose you’ll say it doesn’t matter that the copies are named Mar Gar Et. A ghyrm told us about the Mar Gar Et on Cantardene, one coded On Ga Mar. The ghyrm said there was another Mar Gar Et on B’yurngrad, one coded Mar a Gi. They’re copies, and copies are dangerous.”

“That is dangerous,” admitted Dweller.

“Why? Why dangerous?” asked Drinker.

“Dangerous because of ancient oracle!” cried Dweller in Pain. “All Quaatar know when seven roads are walked at once, Quaatar end. Frossians too, most likely. And K’Famir. This oracle goes far, far back in history of great Quaatar race.”

Darkness nodded ponderously. “This is why we look for copies. We found more! One Mar Gar Et in Fajnard. One Mar Gar Et on Tercis, where Gentherans were seen! That’s four.”

“Four can’t do anything,” said Dweller.

Darkness said sulkily, “The Mar Gar Et that got away on Cantardene knows about ghyrm. If she talks to Gentherans, she’ll tell!”

Dweller laughed, a fume of smoke and licking blue flame. “Even if she tells Gentherans everything, I say, again, again, it doesn’t matter! Five copies, six copies, doesn’t matter. It’s too late to help the humans, because very soon there will not be any humans. There are enough ghyrm piled up on Cantardene that we can start dropping them on Earth right after we test them on B’yurngrad.”

Our substance became rigid and manifested a foggy mass rather like a huge ear.

“B’yurngrad is our test. We will drop enough ghyrm to kill every human there. If one of your Mar Gar Ets is on B’yurngrad, there will be one less copy. When B’yurngrad is dead, we scoop up the ghyrm and take them to Earth.”

Our muttering little form eased away, losing shape, losing substance, becoming nothing. Ongamar and I felt solid soil beneath our feet, looked up to see the sky, the building where we were all staying at the academy.

“You will be going to B’yurngrad almost immediately,” said Mr. Weathereye in a strange, far-off voice. “Perhaps I will see you there.”

“Where did he go?” asked Ongamar in a strangled voice.

“God knows,” I said, then surprised myself with a blat of nervous
laughter. The episode had been ridiculous, but I was sweating, my teeth were clenched, my stomach felt as though I had swallowed an anvil. Ongamar was gray, shuddering, tottering. I took her arm to support her, and she leaned as though to hold me up. Perhaps I needed it. So propped, we entered the building and found the common room where Flek and Jaker were with Mar-agern and Margaret. Gloriana, Falija, and Bamber Joy arrived almost immediately. Margaret provided us with cups of strong coffee—from the new coffee plantations on the Southern Isles—and we made halting conversation while we waited for Ferni. When he arrived, I introduced Ongamar, adding, “Mr. Weathereye says she has vital information.”

“He thinks so,” Ongamar said. “I have seen ghyrm being made, and he thinks I should tell you about it.”

Then she told us a story. It was obviously one she had told before, for she told it without hesitation, almost matter-of-factly, while giving us far greater detail than I, for one, felt was necessary. Several of us had to leave the group to stand breathing deeply in the open window.

“That’s why the genetic match,” cried Flek. “They’re made from human beings.”

“Assuming the little creatures I saw were a kind of human, yes,” Ongamar agreed.

“At least the ghyrm bodies are,” said Ferni.

“Is there anything to them but bodies?” Caspor asked.

Flek said, “Something, yes. Something that processes information, remembers, reports. Not a brain, exactly. More of a computer with only one program.”

“So if the flesh is mostly human,” said Jaker, “where does it get its motivation? That has to come from somewhere else.”

I asked, “Ongamar, did you ever detect anything from your parasite that felt human?”

She considered. “Not really, no. If I delayed giving it what it wanted, it punished me. I suppose humans might have that reaction, but the ghyrm was that way all the time. It wanted blood and pain, only that. It didn’t eat, smell, touch, or look at anything else. It wasn’t interested in anything else. If it had been human, surely it would have…wanted some variety, wouldn’t it?”

We spoke of this for some time. I did not want to discuss the
other thing. I did not want to think about the other thing, but finally we ran out of anything more to say about the ghyrm, and I could not hesitate any longer. I told them what the cabal planned to do, first on B’yurngrad, then on Earth. “When they have killed every human on B’yurngrad, the Mercans will scoop the ghyrm up and repeat the process on Earth itself.”

There was a long, deadly silence before Flek cried, “But that’s ludicrous. This cabal—it sounds like monsters out of a fairy story! Shadowy beings of total terror. Surely they have families, children that they care about. No living thing could be that…that uncaring. That bloodthirsty.”

“You would not say that if you had been there,” said Ongamar harshly. “If there was anything but cruelty inside the K’Famir on Beelshi, it didn’t show. And they don’t care about their own families. Their women are for amusement or breeding; their daughters are for sale or disposal; their sons are turned into copies of their fathers. Living creatures are valued only for their usefulness, and if they aren’t useful for anything else, they become useful for the young males to use in perfecting their skills of torture in their malehood schools.”

“But we don’t understand why,” I said, sounding plaintive even to myself. “We feel we need to understand why.”

Margaret responded. “Naumi, I strongly suspect they don’t need a why. When one considers violence and cruelty, the whys seem to get lost. During my studies on Earth, I had to watch accounts of human history, and I can’t count how many times I saw and heard some human cry out, ‘But why do they want to kill us?’ People of one color killing another. People of one religion killing those who followed another. People of one language killing those who spoke another. Sometimes just people rioting, killing anyone, because they couldn’t stand the lives they had…”

“We don’t do that,” cried Flek, obviously distressed.

Margaret said, “You personally may not, but humans do. The only difference between the human race and the Quaatar is that humans in general believe those who do so, do so in error, and they urge penitence. When I studied the Quaatar language, I learned they believe avoidance and regret are signs of weakness. You can’t convince them they’re wrong because right and wrong aren’t part of their vo
cabulary. Male Frossian and K’Famir are like that, but so are some humans.”

A silence fell. My old friends gathered around me.

“Remember Grangel,” said Caspor. “He was sort of Frossian.”

“He was,” said Flek, beginning a chain of reminiscences. I knew what she was doing. Trying to talk us into calm.

I said to the others, those still strange to us, “Why don’t you go on over to the commissary and get something to eat? Ongamar looks like she could use both food and a lot of sleep.”

Margaret and Mar-agern chivvied them out. Though Glory and Bamber Joy looked rebellious, they were too well mannered to object. The six of us continued talking. The others returned and scattered in various directions to take naps. Later that afternoon, when Ongamar and Margaret came back into the common room, they found me sitting there alone.

“Was your discussion valuable?” Margaret asked.

“Possibly,” I said, feeling a quick, almost furtive smile cross my face. “Our old talk road has yielded a plan, and Flek has made certain adjustments to her machinery. There’s one rather large detail to be sorted out yet, and given that uncertainty, one hesitates to say how valuable the discussion may have been. We’ll be ready shortly, however. You need to tell your people to prepare. We’re leaving for B’yurngrad!”

Those of us who assembled at the way-gate to B’yurngrad included Ferni and Ongamar, all those who had arrived through the gate from Fajnard, plus Caspor and Flek to see us off. Some of us had climbed and some of us had been hoisted; all seemed to have greeted the experience with grim resolution rather than any sense of adventure, except perhaps for Ferni. Ferni was the perennial adventurer, and I could tell that M’urgi was very much on his mind. Ferni, Mar-agern, and I carried armor, knives, and the components of the newly calibrated anti-ghyrm machine, as well as weapons ready for use. The others bore lighter packs of supplies, and Falija rode on Bamber’s shoulders.

Caspor said for the sixth time, “You understand, we have no idea where on B’yurngrad the way-gate will come out?”

I gritted my teeth. “Caspor, we know. We intend to use the gate to get on planet, then we’ll contact the Siblinghood and have them pick us up.”

“If they’re reachable,” said Ferni in a surly voice. “Which they were not when I left there.”

“You can always go back by ship, the way you came,” I suggested through still-gritted teeth. There was entirely too much repetition going on. I have never liked repetition.

Ferni growled, “There’s a two-day difference. Even if we can’t reach the Siblinghood, we ought to be able to…”

“Stop arguing,” said Flek. “You could emerge in wilderness somewhere, which is why you’re all wearing locators, so the ships with the heavier machines will be able to find you.”

“Let’s get on with it,” snapped Margaret. “You’re saying the same things over and over, and we’ve already waited extra time for them to recalibrate this equipment…”

I threw her a grateful glance. She winked at me. I thought how odd it was to wink at oneself.

“Keep in mind the machines aren’t thoroughly tested,” said Flek. “The running time on the prototype is short. With these new settings, it’ll burn itself out even sooner…”

“Right,” I said, almost shouting. “We know, Flek. We know there’s a risk, but Margaret’s right, we’ve talked it to death.”

Checking our weapons, Ferni and I went first through the gate, while Mar-agern, cradling her weapon somewhat apprehensively, brought up the rear.

We emerged between huge stones into a rock-walled, grass-carpeted corridor that was open to the air above us. A few paces away, the corridor split into two. The right turn brought us to the sister gate, the pale one that would lead, if Caspor was correct, directly to Cantardene.

“Well,” said Margaret, “I guess we don’t have to use that one. Ongamar’s already been rescued.”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Ongamar.

I pointed in the other direction. “That way.”

We squeezed through the very narrow opening to the left and
came out between the boles of two huge trees at one edge of a small, sun-stippled glade. On its far side, a narrow opening showed us grasslands freckled with hide-covered tents, smoke skeining above them into a calm and cloudless sky. In the opening between glade and grassland, facing us, a woman sat enthroned, with a considerable company of armed tribesmen squatting at either side.