The Visitor (6 page)

I sent Neils a message about Selma's discovery, which he didn't acknowledge, and since he was due back in two or three days and I had time, I logged some eyetime to verify what Selma had shown me, mentioning it in passing to a few close associates.

No one has been able to see anything yet. The thing is a dark body in dark space, visible only as a shadow. Neils returned eventually, I dumped the whole thing in his lap, and he in turn involved some colleagues around the world, and I heard nothing more until this morning when he told us the thing is not huge and far away but smaller and inside the orbit of Uranus. It is now reflecting a little light; it will indeed cross earth's orbit; and it may do so at an inopportune time, i.e. when that point is occupied by the human race.

However, said Neils, over our incipient panic, since the thing will be influenced by the gravitational pull of Saturn, which it will almost certainly encounter closely, or by Jupiter, which is even more likely, it's difficult to say just where it's going to end up. He hemmed and hawed and we pressed the matter until he confessed that if it hit us, even glancingly, its apparent size indicated the damage would be…ah…possibly terminal. Of life, that is. He would only say apparent size, because no one knows how big the thing actually is.

We were all sworn to secrecy. Not enough was known to get the citizenry into an uproar. We all agreed to this, even those of us with families. Most people face their own deaths as inevitable. I understand that even the death of loved ones can be grieved through. But everybody? The whole human race, every thought, every passion, every achievement wiped away? Gone? That thought creates a deep shuddery feeling, like swallowing an earthquake.

 

These notes are turning out to be more about me than about Selma, even though I'm only writing in it when there's something astronomical to report. It's been several months since the entry above, after which I argued with myself for almost a week before deciding that if the situation is utterly terminal, nothing I do will make any difference. If we get hit not quite that hard, however, I may be able to save our family without breaking the silence we've sworn to keep. I can't tell the truth but I can tell a plausible lie, and I do have a separate savings account with enough money in it to build a shelter.

So I babbled at Jerry while I was peeling potatoes: “A meteor shower. Something extraordinary. I'm going to build us a shelter, Jer.”

“Nell, I keep telling you, if you'd just put your trust in…”

“Shh,” I said, mock angry. “I'm not going to ask God to protect us when we're able to protect ourselves. When you started getting religious, we agreed not to fight about it. You can pray away all the meteorites in the universe and I won't mind a bit, but I'm going to build us a shelter.”

When the two of us met and courted and married, we were fellow scientists. We stayed fellow scientists for five or six years, but sometime along in there, back maybe four or five years, Jerry gave up on science. I honestly don't know whether he got religion first and gave up science out of religious conviction, or his career disappointment made him use religion as an excuse. Back then I was gaining a respectable reputation as a solid, workaday hack, who had made several
small discoveries and who had added some to the knowledge store of the human race by slogging away at it. That was fine by me. I've never had any huge aspirations; I just like astronomy.

Jerry, however, has…had big ambitions. The Nobel Prize, at least. Or some cosmological theorem named after him. He didn't like slogging, preferring innovative and highly flamboyant theorizing on the basis of very little, all of which tended to raise the hackles both of his colleagues who played by the rules and of the big names in cosmology who had totally invested themselves in other points of view. I've always known Jerry was egocentric, but he kept his ego mostly under wraps at home. Also, he has…had a lovely dry humor and I thought we were okay. I was busy, and I liked my work. He was busy teaching and writing and doing what cosmologists do, causing an occasional flurry but becoming no more an immortal in his field than I am in mine.

Being an immortal doesn't matter to me. If one looks out into the universe and perceives what true immortality would mean in terms of time and space, it takes monstrous hubris to even conceive of personal immortality, much less desire it. However, once Jerry turned religious it became clear that Jerry really wanted to be immortal, one way or the other, and if science wouldn't do it for him, religion might.

Personal beliefs are unarguable, even if the other side has all the facts. Jerry wasn't interested in facts, so we didn't discuss his belief in a near future apocalypse. I just went ahead and had the shelter built: reinforced concrete, buried under twelve feet of dirt with an escape hatch. I ordered dehydrated food enough for a year. In a separate pit there's a fuel tank for lanterns and stove, tied in with flexible connector lines, disconnected until time of use. There's an air filtration system run by pumping a bicycle and a water tank on heavy springs that can sway any which way without breaking. Also, in a survivalist catalogue I found a sort of hollow pipe with a folding windmill inside that can be pushed up into the wind and connected to a generator. There
are bunks for four: one for Michy, who's five, and one for Tony, who's three, one for Jerry, one for Nell.

During the construction, Jerry went around with his above-it-all smile firmly fixed on his face. His actions were as affectionate and sweet toward me as always, though they didn't feel right. The only actual criticism I got was a kind of teasing: “The wrath of God Almighty approaches, and she wants to build a shelter?”

Keeping the evasions to a minimum, I usually said something like, “As a parent, it makes me feel better to have it, that's all.”

“Why no solar panels?” he asked, grinning at my bicycle power source.

“Meteors can set fires and kick up dust. There might not be any sunshine for a while,” I murmured. “Besides, whoever's in here will need some exercise.”

He just gave me his uplifted look, as though he'd spent the morning watching Archangel Gabriel unpack his Sousaphone. “Nell, if it makes you feel better, by all means, have a shelter.”

The man I married was a seeker, a man of many ardors, an amateur musician of some talent, an artist with clay (though he never worked at it). Before he turned to religion, we'd lived though several of his passing enthusiasms about different
ways of life
: a brief fling at being a vegan, a few months of yoga, a bout of transcendental meditation, none of them lasting long or changing what he was.

This last exploration, however, was different. It changed what he was, and I know with absolute certainty we would not have married if he'd been like this when we met. We have, however, two children and almost ten years of honorable and faithful history, and I've been trying to respect that.

D
ismé grew from child to maiden, Rashel changed from girl to woman. Rashel was totally preoccupied by the changes, though Dismé hardly noticed them, for she was concentrated on staying out of Rashel's way. She began by moving into the attic room that Roger had used, the one nearest Aunt Gayla. There, Dismé informed Cora, she would be better located to help her great aunt when Gayla had the terrors.

“An excellent idea.” Call-Her-Mother sniffed, watching Dismé's face. “You are the logical person to see to her, though I'm amazed you want to do it.”

“Oh, I don't want to,” murmured Dismé off-handedly. “The spiritual advisor at school said I had to.”

As, indeed, he had done, after being carefully led to that suggestion during Dismé's annual citizen's review. Spiritual advisors were notably contrary, and Dismé had only to voice a well-rehearsed expression of distaste at the idea to make him insist she do it. Sacrifice for family, tribe, and country were, after all, Regimic virtues.

Attics were where servants lived, and servants were a class of people Cora and Rashel found uninteresting. The attic location coupled with the vague, slightly servile manner Dismé had adopted, made her seem inconsequential and boring. Even though playing a servant's role made her re
sponsible for much of the housekeeping, Dismé considered the demotion to be an improvement over being watched all the time. Also, since her father's death, she had noticed that Gayla's habit of irrelevant babble made her virtually inaudible to the family. Aping this habit was easy, and between age eight and eighteen she gradually disappeared into the walls of the house, her voice heard only as background noise, while Cora and Rashel almost forgot she was there.

When Gayla had the Terrors, Dismé dealt with them. Whatever the teachers required at school, Dismé provided it. She was completely ordinary and totally obedient, requiring no “conferences” with teachers or workers from the Bureau of Happiness and Enlightenment. From her new listening post in the attic, Dismé noted that Rashel returned from periodic visits to town in moods of fury, even frenzy. She guessed that whomever they saw on these trips was the same one who had sent Rashel home bloody and bruised after Father died, and this pleased her. All in all, she spent ten years like a chip in an eddy, whirling slowly, not going anywhere, not much caring, maintaining her intrinsic buoyancy through her solitary pleasures, despite Cora and Rashel's recurrent efforts to scuttle her.

She was not physically mistreated by either of them. They had a revulsion against her being hurt or doing anything that could conceivably injure her. The endless pain they caused was not physical but emotional, for they redefined her existence from day to day by surrounding her with a torturous unreality. Rashel and Call-Her-Mother sidled along pathways Dismé could not see. They climbed scaffolding of opinion toward a goal she could not even imagine. They spoke together in a language that made no sense to her, though every word of it was a word she knew.

“Don't you see, Dismé? Are you blind?”

“Look at that! You did it. Can't you do anything right, Dismé. I'm so ashamed of you.”

“Look at this, Dismé! Do you want to bring the Regime down on us all? This is most offensive!”

Sometimes they were speaking of a picture she had drawn
or a verse she had written in her notebook, or some other private something they had dragged out for collusive deconstruction. Sometimes it was merely some household chore, not completed as they would have had it, or some chance remark by a third party whom they supposed had been speaking of Dismé. Years of this might have worn her into despair, made her believe she was insane or worthless had she not found enough delight in daily life to cushion the constant abrasion.

Over those same ten years, Rashel cultivated her ambition by building a corps of dear, dear friends. She had determined upon a career in the Department of Inexplicable Arts.

“That's where the power is,” she said.

“Will be,” agreed her mother. “If
The
Art is recovered. Which it hasn't been, not in a thousand years. Nobody's had The Art since the Happening.”

“We know
someone
who does!”

“Hush, Rashel. Be silent.”

Everyone knew The Art had been lost a thousand years ago, during the Happening. Of every thousand who had lived before the Happening, nine hundred had died during the impact, flood, fire, ashes, and plague. Of every hundred who survived the initial violence, ninety had died of the cold and darkness. Of every ten who survived the cold, nine had died of the monsters. Before the Happening, men had been mighty wizards, capable of miraculous feats. After the Happening, the power of The Art was lost. The Spared, however, had been saved and led to safety by a corps of Angels who had rebelled against God's tyranny and brought their chosen people to Bastion where their duty was to discover the lost Art once again.

“Definitely the Inexplicable Arts,” said Rashel, admiring herself in the mirror. “Perhaps I will be the one to restore the Great Art to humanity!” She laughed. “In the meantime, I have an invitation to a BHE soirée!”

The Office of Personnel Allocation, Department of Ephemeral Arts, Division of Culture, Bureau of Happiness and Enlightenment, often held soirées where unmarried
Regimic men could meet appropriate women. If a man married a non-Regimic woman, he gave up all hope of a successful career in government. Any such liaison betrayed a serious defect of character. Rashel, who had learned to be ultra-Regimic in public no matter what she did privately, had pulled various strings among her dear, dear friends to get an invitation.

Attending such affairs alone was considered slightly improper for women, so on the day Rashel dragged eighteen-year-old Dismé along, only to park her in a corner as soon as they arrived, which Dismé much preferred in any case. She was quite content to sit there, observing the crowd, until Rashel appeared arm in arm with an elderly man whom she introduced as a long-time friend, bidding Dismé be attentive to his wishes.

“You're the lil sisser,” he announced, leering at her. “Rashel's lil sisser.”

Dismé forgot to fade into the wall. “No,” she said definitely. “I am not her little sister. I am not related to her at all.”

He waved his finger at her. “Now, now. Mussn tell stories. Rashel says she's gotta sisser, then she's gotta sisser. C'mere, sisser. Less go out onna porch.”

Dismé looked around. No one seemed to notice what the man was doing, which was to put his hands on various parts of her and try to get them under her clothing. At that point, another man came up behind him, pushed the drunken man away from Dismé and sent him away in the grip of two BHE guards.

He then returned to Dismé. “I apologize for that oaf,” he said. “My name is Ayward, by the way. Professor Ayward Gazane. College of Sorcery.” He lowered his voice. “That ass who was attacking you needs a flogging. Public drunkenness is prohibited, as I'm sure you know, but he's a Turnaway git, which means he ‘gits' innumerable second chances not available to the rest of Bastion.” He smiled, making her smile, his long, bony face grave and concerned beneath its crown of curling, slightly graying hair, his slender figure inclined toward her, his voice gentle. During the
rest of the afternoon, he stayed at her side, and she was grateful for his attention, the first she had received from a man since her father died.

Rashel, whose own reception at the gathering had given her food for much profitable thought, rode home beside her sister without noticing Dismé's flushed face or shining eyes.

The next day, Ayward Gazane sent a note, which Dismé intercepted before Call-Her-Mother could see or dispose of it, and thereafter, they met in the college park, drawn to each other as two fireflies in a darkness, wandering the graveled paths through long, honeyed afternoons full of interest and enjoyment of a completely proper kind.

In truth, Ayward was not strongly sexed, and the young Dismé would only have been confused by any overt approach. She had grown through loss and confusion into a girl who lived almost entirely inside her head, taking refuge in the places she created there, not so much repulsed by others' reality as unable to perceive it. Her only other male friend had been the son of one of True Mother's friends, a little boy whom she had played with in the park. Ayward threatened her composure no more than that five-year-old boy had done, and she came to believe she loved him.

That was before Rashel noticed something different about Dismé, followed her to a couple of her trysts with Ayward, found out about the courtship—if that is what it was—and told her mother all about it.

“You're too young, Dismé!” Cora was firm. Since Father died, Dismé had called her Cora, and Cora had given up trying to change this form of address.

“But Cora, all we do is talk with one another…”

“Enough! He's years older than you are. No, Dismé. This can't be allowed, it's most improper.”

Rashel had been less tactful. “You're too plain and too stupid to interest Ayward Gazane for very long! I mean, look how you're dressed! Like a rag-woman. He's a professor, an important asset to the Regime, and I want him for myself.”

Rag-woman was probably accurate, as Cora had chosen Dismé's clothes ever since Val was bottled. The next morn
ing, Dismé was told to pack her things, as she was being sent to her Aunt Genna's home in Newland. She had barely time to get the Latimer book out of its hiding place and conceal it beneath her cloak before she was packed off in a hired wagon.

Once there, she received letters from Ayward. The first one said that he was coming to get her. The next letter said he would come carry her away, in secret, before Rashel could stop him. The third letter said he would wait for her until she was old enough to marry without her mother's permission, since “that was the major stumbling block.” His fourth complained that he didn't know what to do about Rashel. He felt he was being ensorceled by her, hag-ridden, succubus-bound. She was so powerful, so determined, so set on having him…

A letter from Rashel arrived shortly thereafter. Cora had been bottled, very suddenly, after a brief illness. Dismé was to return to Apocanew. And by the way, Rashel and Ayward were being married on the day Dismé returned home.

Dismé preferred to stay in Newland, with Genna, but a messenger from the Regime brought an official document saying Rashel had been appointed Dismé's guardian. Dismé was to return to Apocanew. Frozen faced, she did so, giving Ayward and Rashel her hand and wishing them well. At that meeting she also met Ayward's father, Arnole, who was in a Chair.

He was the first Chaired person Dismé had ever seen close up, and she was glad to note it was a probationary Chair and that he seemed to have all his body parts. Still, the fact that he was in a Chair at all meant he was suspected of having The Disease. Families with Diseased members were tainted, and Dismé wondered mightily at Rashel taking this risk.

After the brief ceremony, while Rashel was swanning before the guests, Dismé retreated to the garden, only to be followed there by Arnole, who parked his chair next to the bench and demanded she sit down and talk with him. At that moment her will was frozen, and if he had invited her to jump into the River Tey, she might well have done so. She sat, in icy silence.

“Why did you come back here, child?” His voice was anything but fearsome. It reminded her of Father's voice, thawing its way through her chill. Dismé tried to explain that Rashel was her guardian, that she had no choice in the matter.

“Why does Rashel want you here?”

She gaped at him, forced by his directness to consider a matter she had preferred not to define. Why indeed? “Because I'm in love with…was in love with…your son and it wouldn't be any fun for her if I were somewhere…away.” The moment the words were uttered, she knew they were dangerous and wished them back, but Arnole merely squeezed her hand and said he understood.

“
I
never understood,” she cried. “I never understood Rashel. Or her mother.”

“Her mother? Not yours?”

“Not mine. Never mine.”

“And what was it you didn't understand?”

“They were always seeing things I can't, hearing things I couldn't hear! I could never figure out how to do things the way they wanted them done…”

“Don't worry about anything Rashel or her mother may have said to you,” he said in a firm, dismissive tone. “They were both—Rashel still is—headed somewhere you don't want to go.”

She laughed on an indrawn breath. “They were always telling me their way is the only way to go!”

“Oh, no, my dear. No, not at all. So long as it harms no one else, one's own way is always preferable.”

Those few words would have been enough to make her his friend, but there were many more words and stories and talk. It was like being suddenly adopted by a comfortably clucking mother hen. Or perhaps more like being taken into the nest of a father eagle. All at once there was a strong wing extended over her head when it began to spit lightning. Nothing required Arnole to live with the family, but he insisted upon it, a parent's right, no matter that he was Chair-bound. Whatever his reason, Dismé blessed him for it. Within a season, he had taken the place of the father she had
lost, the brother who had vanished, the mother who had departed. He even extended himself to Gayla, giving her a friend to hold on to as well. During events that defied understanding, he was there, eyes alert, senses weighing what was going on. And most wonderful of all, he talked with her.

“What are you thinking about, Arnole?”

“You sound like a ping,” he commented.

“You've seen pings, Arnole?”

“Oh, indeed. Always wanting to know what people think.”

“Well, what are you thinking about!”