The Past Through Tomorrow (67 page)

“See here. Mr. Dumbjohn,” he snapped, reverting to my plebe year designation, “are you in love with her?”

I tried to hedge. I had not yet admitted to myself that my interest was more than in her welfare. He cut me short.

“You do or you don’t. Make up your mind. If you do, we’ll talk practical matters. If you don’t, then shut up about her.”

I took a deep breath and took the plunge. “I guess I do, Zeb. It seems impossible and I know it’s a sin, but there it is.”

“All of that and folly, too. But there is no talking sense to you. Okay, so you are in love with her. What next?”

“Eh?”

“What do you want to do? Marry her?”

I thought about it with such distress that I covered my face with my hands. “Of course I do,” I admitted. “But how can I?”

“Precisely. You can’t. You can’t marry without transferring away from here; her service can’t marry at all. Nor is there any way for her to break her vows, since she is already sealed. But if you can face up to bare facts without blushing, there is plenty you can do. You two could be very cozy—if you could get over being such an infernal bluenose.”

A week earlier I would not have understood what he was driving at. But now I knew. I could not even really be angry with him at making such a dishonorable and sinful suggestion; he meant well—and some of the tarnish was now in my own soul. I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have said that, Zeb. Judith is not that sort of a woman.”

“Okay. Then forget it. And her. And shut up about her.”

I sighed wearily. “Don’t be rough on me, Zeb. This is more than I know how to manage.” I glanced up and down, then took a chance and sat down on the parapet. We were not on watch near the Holy One’s quarters but at the east wall; our warden, Captain Peter van Eyck, was too fat to get that far oftener than once a watch, so I took a chance. I was bone tired from not having slept much lately.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be angry, Zeb. That sort of thing isn’t for me and it certainly isn’t for Judith—for Sister Judith.” I knew what I wanted for us: a little farm, about a hundred and sixty acres, like the one I had been born on. Pigs and chickens and barefooted kids with happy dirty faces and Judith to have her face light up when I came in from the fields and then wipe the perspiration from her face with her apron so that I could kiss her…no more connection with the Church and the Prophet than Sunday meeting and tithes.

But it could not be, it could never be. I put it out of my mind. “Zeb,” I went on, “just as a matter of curiosity—You have intimated that these things go on all the time. How? We live in a goldfish bowl here. It doesn’t seem possible.”

He grinned at me so cynically that I wanted to slap him, but his voice had no leer in it. “Well, just for example, take your own case—”

“Out of the question!”

“Just for example, I said. Sister Judith isn’t available right now; she is confined to her cell. But—”

“Huh? She’s been
arrested
?” I thought wildly of the Question and what Zeb had said about the inquisitors.

“No, no, no! She isn’t even locked in. She’s been told to stay there, that’s all, with prayer and bread-and-water as company. They are purifying her heart and instructing her in her spiritual duties. When she sees things in their true light, her lot will be drawn again—and this time she won’t faint and make an adolescent fool of herself.”

I pushed back my first reaction and tried to think about it calmly. “No,” I said. “Judith will never do it. Not if she stays in her cell forever.”

“So? I wouldn’t be too sure. They can be very persuasive. How would you like to be prayed over in relays? But assume that she does see the light, just so that I can finish my story.”

“Zeb, how do you know about this?”

“Sheol, man! I’ve been here going on three years. Do you think I wouldn’t be hooked into the grapevine? You were worried about her—and making yourself a tiresome nuisance if I may say so. So I asked the birdies. But to continue. She sees the light, her lot is drawn, she performs her holy service to the Prophet. After that she is called once a week like the rest and her lot is drawn maybe once a month or less. Inside of a year—unless the Prophet finds some very exceptional beauty in her soul—they stop putting her name among the lots entirely. But it isn’t necessary to wait that long, although it is more discreet.”

“The whole thing is shameful!”

“Really? I imagine King Solomon had to use some such system; he had even more women on his neck than the Holy One has. Thereafter, if you can come to some mutual understanding with the Virgin involved, it is just a case of following well known customs. There is a present to be made to the Eldest Sister, and to be renewed as circumstances dictate. There are some palms to be brushed—I can tell you which ones. And this great pile of masonry has lots of dark back stairs in it. With all customs duly observed, there is no reason why, almost any night I have the watch and you don’t, you should not find something warm and cuddly in your bed.”

I was about to explode at the calloused way he put it when my mind went off at a tangent. “Zeb—now I know you are telling an untruth. You were just pulling my leg, admit it. There is an eye and an ear somewhere in our room. Why, even if I tried to find them and cut them out, I’d simply have the security watch banging on the door in three minutes.”

“So what? There is an eye and an ear in every room in the place. You ignore them.”

I simply let my mouth sag open.

“Ignore them,” he went on. “Look, John, a little casual fornication is no threat to the Church—treason and heresy are. It will simply be entered in your dossier and nothing will be said about it—unless they catch you in something really important later, in which case they might use it to hang you instead of preferring the real charges. Old son, they
like
to have such peccadilloes in the files; it increases security. They are probably uneasy about you; you are too perfect; such men are dangerous. Which is probably why you’ve never been cleared for higher study.”

I tried to straighten out in my mind the implied cross purposes, the wheels within wheels, and gave up. “I just don’t get it. Look, Zeb, all this doesn’t have anything to do with me…or with Judith. But I know what I’ve
got
to do. Somehow I’ve got to get her out of here.”

“Hmm…a mighty strait gate, old son.”

“I’ve got to.”

“Well… I’d like to help you. I suppose I could get a message to her,” he added doubtfully.

I caught his arm. “Would you, Zeb?”

He sighed. “I wish you would wait. No, that wouldn’t help, seeing the romantic notions in your mind. But it is risky now. Plenty risky, seeing that she is under discipline by order of the Prophet. You’d look funny staring down the table of a court-martial board, looking at your own spear.”

“I’ll risk even that. Or even the Question.”

He did not remind me that he himself was taking even more of a risk than I was; he simply said, “Very well, what is the message?”

I thought for a moment. It would have to be short. “Tell her that the legate she talked to the night her lot was drawn is worried about her.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes! Tell her that I am hers to command!”

It seems flamboyant in recollection. No doubt it was—but it was exactly the way I felt.

At luncheon the next day I found a scrap of paper folded into my napkin. I hurried through the meal and slipped out to read it.

I
need your help
, it read,
and am so very grateful. Will you meet me tonight
? It was unsigned and had been typed in the script of a common voicewriter, used anywhere in the Palace, or out. When Zeb returned to our room, I showed it to him; he glanced at it and remarked in idle tones:

“Let’s get some air. I ate too much, I’m about to fall asleep.”

Once we hit the open terrace and were free of the hazard of eye and ear he cursed me out in low, dispassionate tones. “You’ll never make a conspirator. Half the mess must know that you found something in your napkin. Why in God’s name did you gulp your food and rush off? Then to top it off you handed it to me upstairs. For all you know the eye read it and photostated it for evidence. Where in the world were you when they were passing out brains?”

I protested but he cut me off. “Forget it! I know you didn’t mean to put both of our necks in a bight—but good intentions are no good when the trial judge-advocate reads the charges. Now get this through your head: the first principle of intrigue is never to be seen doing anything unusual, no matter how harmless it may seem. You wouldn’t believe how small a deviation from pattern looks significant to a trained analyst. You should have stayed in the refectory the usual time, hung around and gossiped as usual afterwards, then waited until you were safe to read it. Now where is it?”

“In the pocket of my corselet,” I answered humbly. “Don’t worry, I’ll chew it up and swallow it.”

“Not so fast. Wait here.” Zeb left and was back in a few minutes. “I have a piece of paper the same size and shape; I’ll pass it to you quietly. Swap the two, and then you can eat the real note—but don’t be seen making the swap or chewing up the real one.”

“All right. But what is the second sheet of paper?”

“Some notes on a system for winning at dice.”

“Huh? But that’s non-reg, too!”

“Of course, you hammer head. If they catch you with evidence of gambling, they won’t suspect you of a much more serious sin. At worst, the skipper will eat you out and fine you a few days pay and a few hours contrition. Get this, John: if you are ever suspected of something, try to make the evidence point to a lesser offense. Never try to prove lily-white innocence. Human nature being what it is, your chances are better.”

I guess Zeb was right; my pockets must have been searched and the evidence photographed right after I changed uniforms for parade, for half an hour afterwards I was called into the Executive Officer’s office. He asked me to keep my eyes open for indications of gambling among the junior officers. It was a sin, he said, that he hated to have his younger officers fall into. He clapped me on the shoulder as I was leaving. “You’re a good boy, John Lyle. A word to the wise, eh?”

Zeb and I had the midwatch at the south Palace portal that night. Half the watch passed with no sign of Judith and I was as nervous as a cat in a strange house, though Zeb tried to keep me calmed down by keeping me strictly to routine. At long last there were soft footfalls in the inner corridor and a shape appeared in the doorway. Zebadiah motioned me to remain on tour and went to check. He returned almost at once and motioned me to join him, while putting a finger to his lips. Trembling, I went in. It was not Judith but some woman strange to me who waited there in the darkness. I started to speak but Zeb put his hand over my mouth.

The woman took my arm and urged me down the corridor. I glanced back and saw Zeb silhouetted in the portal, covering our rear. My guide paused and pushed me into an almost pitchblack alcove, then she took from the folds of her robes a small object which I took to be a pocket ferretscope, from the small dial that glowed faintly on its side. She ran it up and down and around, snapped it off and returned it to her person. “Now you can talk,” she said softly. “It’s safe.” She slipped away.

I felt a gentle touch at my sleeve. “Judith?” I whispered.

“Yes,” she answered, so softly that I could hardly hear her.

Then my arms were around her. She gave a little startled cry, then her own arms went around my neck and I could feel her breath against my face. We kissed clumsily but with almost frantic eagerness.

It is no one’s business what we talked about then, nor could I give a coherent account if I tried. Call our behavior romantic nonsense, call it delayed puppy love touched off by ignorance and unnatural lives—do puppies hurt less than grown dogs? Call it what you like and laugh at us, but at that moment we were engulfed in that dear madness more precious than rubies and fine gold, more to be desired than sanity. If you have never experienced it and do not know what I am talking about, I am sorry for you.

Presently we quieted down somewhat and talked more reasonably. When she tried to tell me about the night her lot had been drawn she began to cry. I shook her and said, “Stop it, my darling. You don’t have to tell me about it. I know.”

She gulped and said, “But you don’t know. You can’t know. I…he…”

I shook her again. “Stop it. Stop it at once. No more tears. I do know, exactly. And I know what you are in for still—unless we get you out of here. So there is no time for tears or nerves; we have to make plans.”

She was dead silent for a long moment, then she said slowly, “You mean for me to…desert? I’ve thought of that. Merciful God, how I’ve thought about it! But how can I?”

“I don’t know—yet. But we will figure out a way. We’ve got to.” We discussed possibilities. Canada was a bare three hundred miles away and she knew the upstate New York country; in fact it was the only area she did know. But the border there was more tightly closed than it was anywhere else, patrol boats and radar walls by water, barbed wire and sentries by land…and sentry dogs. I had trained with such dogs; I wouldn’t urge my worst enemy to go up against them.

But Mexico was simply impossibly far away. If she headed south she would probably be arrested in twenty-four hours. No one would knowingly give shelter to an unveiled Virgin; under the inexorable rule of associative guilt any such good Samaritan would be as guilty as she of the same personal treason against the Prophet and would die the same death. Going north would be shorter at least, though it meant the same business of traveling by night, hiding by day, stealing food or going hungry. Near Albany lived an aunt of Judith’s; she felt sure that her aunt would risk hiding her until some way could be worked out to cross the border. “She’ll keep us safe. I know it.”

“Us?” I must have sounded stupid. Until she spoke I had had my nose so close to the single problem of how she was to escape that it had not yet occurred to me that she would expect both of us to go.

“Did you mean to send me
alone
?”