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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

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BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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With that, the lights went out.
Dazedly Wellen groped across the mattress. “Weia?” Her sister clung to her, and Malsha crept close also for comfort.
Dead … Spinel
…
dead.
Wellen barely slept that night. Someone was always whimpering or sobbing. All she could think of was Spinel, who must be dead, like the old grandmother she had seen once, all shriveled up, her arms crossed in calm before the coral deadweights at her wrists pulled her down through the ocean, with the songs floating after.
Sing for those who dwell on land.
What if Lystra were dead too, by now? What if Mama and Mamasister were dead?
In the morning Wellen stared listlessly at the bowl of breakfast mush.
Weia wrinkled her nose at it. “I won't eat that.”
“Me neither,” Wellen decided
The nurse took no notice.
Wellen cleared her throat. “I
won't
eat, at all, anymore. Not a thing, until I go home.”
BY THE SECOND week of the hostage operation, Realgar was losing patience. He had not expected the children to fill his infirmary for more than a day or two. Was there not a native mother on this planet who would cure the Plague to get her own daughters back?
At other bases, his troops were a headache. Dolomites seemed to follow orders, but the Iridians who had been up here the longest tended to have trouble “finding” native children on the rafts. Or else the kids would “escape” after a few days. One captain even had the cheek to claim that without birth certificates she could not verify the age range according to orders.
The general issued reprimands, but with resistance so widespread he could not press too far, lest word reach the Palace that his command was ineffective. To replace the troops was better; but how could he do that with the planet under quarantine?
Troop morale plummeted as the Purple Plague spread. Only Siderite seemed to take some hope, even a perverse satisfaction, out of the present stalemate. The day he turned purple, Siderite packed off to Raia-el, put up a tent, and stayed there, having promised that he would get his studies going again, one way or another. Realgar had let him go and detailed a helicopter to drop off supplies and spy on him. Anything was worth a try, at this point.
Today a boatload of natives were detected, approaching Headquarters. This, Realgar hoped at last, was a delegation to sue for terms.
As soon as they landed, however, the natives simply sat before the fence and turned white. Realgar's hopes fell, and his anger kindled. He went out to the perimeter to view this astounding sight: five pallid Sharers facing soldiers awash in dreadful violet, as if the color had seeped directly from one side to the other. No one spoke, except the inescapable voice of the sea.
Realgar strode stiffly past them as if reviewing troops. They were the same five who had come to him for the first prisoners: the Protector, the long-nosed one, the one who had been pregnant, the quiet one, and the guerrilla. All had turned to statues of ice, their lips frozen shut.
They're inhuman, he thought. They are wild things. I would not begin to understand them, even if I cared to.
Realgar barked at the captain, “Get rid of them.”
“Sir?”
“Fifty kilometers out. And set the guardbeam on automatic.”
“Yes, sir.” If the captain recognized the significance of this move, she showed no sign. Any native who came within ten meters of the deck would be incinerated.
Realgar returned to his office. Jade had left a message, and he called her on the monitor.
“General, those clickflies are a gold mine of information, and we just hit pay dirt. Natives have lifeshaped a virus—a Valan-killing virus.”
“A what?”
“It says, essentially, ‘We here at Sriri-el have lifeshaped a virus to make an end of Valans, and what do you sisters out there think of using it?”
For a moment his throat tightened. Realgar had suspected this all along, that something might have slipped past even Malachite the Infallible. Still, he reminded himself that the lifeshaping places of the most intractable rafts had been smashed open, and nothing worse than mutant breathmicrobes had emerged.
“It's a bluff,” Realgar decided. “They know you've cracked their code, Jade, and they're trying to scare us.”
“Possibly,” she admitted. “There's another good one, about hostages released. I checked and confirmed it: a Dolomite company let all their native hostages go.”
“Indeed,” said Realgar icily. “There's an explanation, I suppose?”
“‘Whereas,'” she quoted, “‘the native witch-women bewitched our encampment in the manner detailed below, and whereas Dolomite regulations forbid battle with witches, the offspring of said witches have been released and all further contact is to be kept to a minimum.'”
“The trollheads,” Realgar muttered. “What the devil's got into them?” In combat Dolomites were tigers; he had seen them on Valedon. Outnumbered five to one, a company of them had stormed a Pyrrholite outpost, smashed through its defenses, and held the breach until reinforcements arrived.
“Witches, that's what. Witches to send hailstorms to fell their crops and decimate their sheep herds.” Jade's voice was thick with sarcasm.
“You reassured them, of course.”
“I invoked every Torr-forsaken authority we've got: the High Protector, the doctors, the scientists—nothing made a dent in their skulls. Witches are witches, as far as they're concerned.”
And two more divisions of Dolomites were just settling in. Damn Talion, he should have known better. “Get me Horak on line, immediately.”
The Dolomite Major General Horak was responsible for those mutinous soldiers. His lightshape soon appeared in the viewing chamber, broad-chested with huge arms. Horak wore Iridian uniform, as did all the general staff, but he kept his thick beard and his mustache that curved in twin spirals.
“Now, Horak, what can you tell me about witches at Base Eighty-six?”
Horak thrust his jaw forward. “General, I graduated from the Academy, and I know as much as any modern fighting man.” There was a slur on the word “modern.” “My people have venerable traditions which have guided us since the birth of Valedon. If you so order, I will request the Protector of Dolomoth to send a Spirit Caller of the First Rank, who is authorized to neutralize witches.”
“That will not be necessary.” Realgar knew what was going on here. Each province had made its own way to cope with the Iridian hold on technology. Sardish lords served Iridis to the letter and received the highest favor in return. Pyrrholites set up a rival center, which thrived until it was smashed. Dolomites rejected “modernity” altogether and cultivated over the years an elaborate counterstructure of myth and mysticism. Their faith in the myths infused their independence with a mulish strength, a strength that could be useful, when it was not a damned nuisance.
Realgar was not about to let a man under his command make a fool of him by invoking a Spirit Caller. “Horak, your troops could use some air-raid drills to dispel the local magic. Alert all bases for mock attacks via satellite, at unannounced times, until further notice. Full response maneuvers will be expected.”
Horak showed no reaction, but Realgar expected that his troops would rather deal with “witches” than with unholy lightning from the stars.
Later that day, Nathan reported that the native children in the infirmary were still refusing food. “I think it's a hunger strike,” he said.
“A hunger strike? I thought you had the kids under control.”
“We did, sir, until that young Spirit Caller tripped the guardbeam. He was like a pied piper with them.”
Realgar shook his head. “We've got to tighten security. The troops just don't understand that.”
“Yes, sir, it's hard, with no combat for months—”
“We
are
in combat, Doctor, and don't you forget it.”
“Yes, of course, sir,” said Nathan placatingly, “the troops just can't see it, that's all.”
Realgar was tired of hearing it. His own children were still hostage to this Purple Plague. “Let the kids starve. And let their mothers hear about it.”
AFTER THE ABORTED witness in whitetrance, it took Merwen hours to swim back, picking her way among the raft seedlings. She rested at last with Yinevra on a branch off Raia-el. Yinevra lifted her chin ahead, and her eyes stared past Merwen, lids hooded, lines drawn down from the corners. Yinevra shared Merwen's nightmare, as surely as they sat together, a hand's-breadth apart. The sense of that sharing filled Merwen's mind and touched corners nearly forgotten, across the long years since the time when they had shared everything with each other. Merwen's lips moved, but for a long while she could say nothing. The wind breathed a shrill song past her ears. “It's three days since the last clickfly sighted Wellen.” The girls would sicken unless they swam in the sea each day.
“And Lystra?” Yinevra asked.
Merwen swallowed hard. She had heard nothing of Lystra, except words she should have Unheard, from the Valan wordweaver at the soldier-place.
A wave crashed up the branch. Merwen watched the beads of water form on her arms and on Yinevra's legs. Yinevra lifted herself to stand,
then offered a hand to help Merwen up. She accepted, and with that touch the old specialness sparked between them. For the first time in many years, for just the thinnest web's-breadth of time, they both reached beyond their names together.
As they walked toward the silkhouse, they passed Siderite's tent, a bit farther up toward the ridge. Siderite's silent presence was a challenge to Merwen. It beckoned her to respond, to accept this Valan who seemed ready to turn purple with Sharers, as Spinel had, and Nisi. Still, a helicopter hovered over him at all times. He was not free of death-hastening yet.
Outside the silkhouse, Usha and Shaalrim were talking in somber tones, while Lalor already sat in white. Merwen walked up quickly and caught Usha's waist. “What is it now?”
Usha's lips hung heavily. “Eight from Umesh-el went to the soldier-place, to witness in white, as we did. Four did not return.”
“Caught in stone?” she said faintly.
“Beyond stone.” Usha could say no more.
Ishma, the stonesick one, explained, “Columns of light-that-is-death struck from the tip of the soldier-place to the sea. Yes, there will be more death to come, in more unimagined ways, until Shora Herself shall come to an end.”
Merwen said sternly, “Death will come until the end of time, what's new about that?” But the news bore down on her like weights of coral. Four more to mourn, and still there was no end in sight to the horrors Valans would share in the name of the wage of Death.
Usha stirred again. “The children,” she remembered. “They are starving, clickflies say. They will not eat, trapped in stone.”
“See,” hissed Yinevra, “our daughters have more backbone than their elders. Those death-hasteners must
go.
Send them a worse plague, Usha, to drive them away. Hordes of stinging mites, perhaps. Even Nisi says it's the only way. I tell you, Merwen, what else can you share with sisters who know only pain?”
There they were, at odds again. “Share more of their pain,” said Merwen, “until they run dry. An ocean swallows infinite pain.”
“But Valans don't belong in this ocean. I insist—”
“Try a pain-stopper, then,” suggested Ishma. “The drug we use for children who don't yet know whitetrance. In other raft systems, sisters have shared this drug with soldiers. The soldiers love it, and they bring our children back.”
Usha said, “That drug is not healthy; it must be used with care.” But there was a hungry question in her eyes.
Sickened, Merwen looked away. Then her eyes widened at a sight by the water's edge. A fishing boat was drawn up, and three Sharers stepped out onto the raft core. One of them was Spinel.
Time stopped; the joy Merwen felt was almost too sudden. Somehow she found herself embracing him, and they held for a long while. Spinel's hair had grown out again, and something hard pressed Merwen's cheek. It was the starstone that hung from his neck. That would cause trouble, but for now it only mattered that Spinel was home. “At last, Spinel, at last you're home again. Did … anyone else?”
Spinel shook his head, and his headfur tossed like the fins of an angelfish. “I escaped. I dove way under and swam, until these sisters picked me up. They would not share speech for three days, but I'm not Unspoken, am I? I had to escape, because of the children; they're trying to get out, and—”
“You mean Wellen and Weia? Are they all right, are they?”
The news spread, and mothers came from everywhere to ask after this one or that one. Spinel had to tell many times how the girls were eating, how frightened they were, and whether they might come home soon. But he had nothing to say about Lystra.
 
By nightfall Spinel was exhausted, his throat hoarse from sharing with the mothers any last shreds of hope for their girls. The swarm of tiny faces he had left behind still haunted him when his eyelids closed. Sharers were turning away now, and some entered whitetrance to mourn for the witnessers of Umesh-el. But not everyone could mourn at once; there were the infants to feed, and airblossoms to harvest, and a shockwraith hunt the next day.
Merwen's silkhouse was full, now, with Shaalrim and Lalor and their infant, and those three strangers whose look pried at him as if something were wrong. The strangers seated themselves between Spinel and the doorhole, their mute presence telling him that he did not belong there. Spinel was perplexed and impatient. Would he have to plead with them for days, as he had with those other sisters? He was not the children's jailer. Merwen was here, she would explain.
“Merwen?” She stood beside the doorhole, in no hurry to explain. Uneasily Spinel rubbed his palms at his waist.
Merwen walked over and clasped his shoulders, looking up to him now. “We still share no stone, Spinel.”
He blinked, “Oh, right.” Between his fingers he twirled the starstone, its smooth surface warmed by his chest. “But this is different. It's a starstone, like Uriel's; it's
me.
I'll keep it to myself. It won't hurt anyone.”
Merwen whispered, “The choice is not mine alone.”
“You mean—” Spinel looked again at the three sullen strangers who blocked the doorhole. He would have to outstare all of them; it was worse than when Lystra had gone sour. “Look, what's the matter with you? It's just a bit of ‘rock,' that's all. You got to get used to it.”
“Yet it means something special to you, I share that,” said Merwen. “It also means something very different to us.”
“Well, I don't care what it means.” He pushed her arms away. “I didn't come back from Valedon and escape the guardbeam just to argue about a stonesign with
a bunch of stupid catfish.”
Spinel took off and ran from the house along the water's edge where the branches pleated into channels, as he recalled so well. He trembled, furious at everyone: at his own lost family, at the soldiers who came to crush a planet underfoot, at Sharers who sat by and let it happen while they quibbled over nothing.
A breeze from the sea chilled him slightly. His anger cooled until only a dull ache remained, the emptiness of longing for a home that was not. He had left home to find home and found only death on a dying ocean.
When Merwen appeared he was startled, though he had figured she would come after him. What in Valedon did she want from him? he wondered, not for the first time. He inched away, avoiding her touch.
“Spinel, those who share our home now are stonesick: they have to stay away from stone. Do you understand?”
“Of course I do,” Spinel snapped. “Didn't I sit with Lystra on the traders' steps?” he glared accusingly. “What good was that, after all? Why don't you get rid of all Valans for good? Then you'll be rid of stone too.”
“I don't want that. I can't want it.”
“But how can you let the soldiers—” He threw up his hands at a loss to say what he meant in Sharer tongue.
“We share healing with soldiers, and we tunnel through the barriers
that divide us. We must resist their illness as long as we can, or how will they learn? You learnshared these ways before.”
“I know your ways. I shared them with my sisters in Chrysoport. But I didn't know that you have ‘things' to fight soldiers.” Spinel knew a word for “fight,” but not for “weapon.” “Usha could lifeshape a thing that would make the soldiers die, before they make you die.”
Merwen was silent. Spinel suddenly recalled just how forbidden it was, impossible even for a Sharer to think about killing another human person. For a minute he thought that Merwen would Unspeak him, as Lystra had.
Merwen said, “Do you really wish to see me hasten death?”
The thought shook him unexpectedly. Spinel could not begin to imagine Merwen herself taking a life; even to try made him incredibly sad. His hand lifted of itself to touch her cheek, round as a jewel beneath her eye. “I—” He said in Valan, “I don't want them to get you, that's all.”
“Spinel, do you remember the ancients, how they lived and died? Their knowledge was so great that they could swim among the stars, as we swim among rafts. Yet a spark ignited them and they burned, until nothing but fire remained, and a few lost ones, groping among the cinders. Only Shora escaped, to a place that will quench fire, will drink of it forever. Can't you see that?”
“I can believe you when you say it,” he whispered as if mesmerized.
Merwen looked down. “It's yourself you have to believe. Perhaps Raia-el is not the place for you, just now. Nisi will welcome you on Leni-el.”
“Nisi? Not Lady Nisi?” Spinel was astonished. Not that noble lady who had left him in Iridis after his taste of servos and splendor? It was one thing to leave Chrysoport, but Nisi had left a highstreet of Iridis to return to this battered world.
 
On Leni-el, Spinel found Nisi working a seasilk loom as she had so often before. Thinner than ever, her bare shoulder blades pointed sharp as a soldier's uniform when she threw the shuttle. She looked up, with little surprise; clickflies had brought word. “So you return, Spinel the non-commoner.” Her lips twisted in a smile, but she kept up her speed at the treadle. The defiance in her gaunt face seemed to have crystalized in the wells of her eyes. “And why did you choose exile?”
Spinel uncomfortably traced circles with his toe. “I just came home,
or tried to.” Home had been swimming with Lystra among the branch shadows, taming the starworms and hunting the shockwraith, or sitting with Lystra on the traders' steps, or lying with her out on an empty raft, just within reach of the sea. What had broken it? The loss rushed at him, and he clenched his jaw to hold it back.
“I'm a double exile, you know,” Nisi said. Spinel listened with reluctance, torn as he was by his own sorrow. “Yes,” she went on, “that is why I came here from Raia-el.” The treadle stopped, then, and she sat back to gaze across the sea. Somewhere helicopters droned, more common than fanwings these days. “Where did we go wrong, my parents and I? We believed in free trade, in the wealth of things to be shared—in a way, I still do. It could be, could have been, if …” Vexedly she clasped and unclasped her fingers. “No, it's too late. Shora has only one choice left, and Merwen would rather die than choose it.”
“You mean, to fight back? Nisi, Sharers could fight back. Usha can make things—”
“Of course they can, at any time. Malachite was wrong.” Nisi shuddered. “It was hard for me to face that fact, I whose House served the Patriarchy since before I was born. But it's true. Sharers could wipe out the Valan force in a week—now, not generations from now.”
“So why don't they?”
“Because then they wouldn't be Sharers anymore. Or so they think.” Nisi sighed. “They think they're fighting hard enough now. Outside Headquarters, nearly half the bases are letting children go.”
“Really? Why?” This was cheering news.
“Annoyance, persuasion, persistence.” Nisi flashed a grin. “Sharers are awfully good at it. They ought to be, after thousands of years of practicing on each other.”
“It can work,” Spinel exulted. “Even in Chrysoport, we held off the Dolomites with nothing. We could have thrown them out, if only—”
“No. Not in the long run. Soldiers don't work like a Gathering. Generals run wars, and generals mean to win. And Ral—he's a Sard in the end.” Nisi's voice faltered, and she twisted her head back until the tendons pulled straight on her neck.
Spinel said, “I think Merwen means to win, too.”
Nisi's sudden glare startled him. “Win what, Spinel? Don't you know why Merwen brought us here? To convince Sharers everywhere that Valans are human,
humans who can't be killed.
Better for them if we had stayed where we belonged.”
“It can't be like that. There has to be something else,” Spinel exclaimed, trying to convince himself. Nisi's shuttle was already flying again. But it had to be more than plain foolishness that had brought Merwen to weave in the shadow of the firemerchant's door.
BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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