And Eternity (24 page)

“Thank you,” Orlene said, relieved. “The other thing, I went to Nox to recover my own baby, but she said I had to have an item from each Incarnation. From you, a new thread, to-”

Lachesis was replaced by Clotho, the lovely, youngest Aspect. “That is my department; I spin the threads of life. But this is no minor thing you ask! For one thing, what is the point, if your baby is already dead?”

“My baby died because he had come upon an incurable malaise of the soul. That malaise continues after his death and will prevent him from ever being a truly good spirit. I’m trying to free him from that.”

Clotho looked at her. “I sympathize with your need, but each thread I spin represents a potential life. I cannot sacrifice any one of them without excellent reason. I know you are the granddaughter of Niobe, I mean, Lachesis but we cannot do favors merely because of such a relationship.”

“If there is any way I can earn it,” Orlene said. “Any thing I can do-”

“We really do not stand in need of anything a mortal might offer, and even less of anything a ghost could do. Certainly we can consider the matter, and if anything occurs-” She shrugged.

Orlene felt the weight of defeat. She knew she had nothing to offer but her plea. Clotho was treating her fairly: she could not claim otherwise.

They reached the next thread. This one was amidst several others; it was evident that no close associates of this person had died recently.

They approached-and were in the presence of an old woman on a convoluted carpet. “Miss Ember,” Atropos said, reappearing.

The woman jumped! “Oh, I didn’t see you coming! What can I do for you? I have some nice knickknacks for sale-”

“I am Atropos, an Aspect of Fate. I have watched you,and know that you are a good woman. I want you to take my Office and cut the threads of life.”

“Is this a joke? I may be old and crippled, but my mind is sound. What are you trying to pull?”

“I can prove my identity, if you wish. This is not a joke.”

“Very well: prove it.”

Atropos flung a line of web. It settled around the woman. Then Atropos flung another line, up through the roof of the house. She became a giant spider. She hooked onto the line that secured Mazie Ember’s carpet with one leg, and used the others to climb the other line.

The climb was rapid. In a moment they were passing through the roof and rising up into the sky. Atropos/spider hauled the cargo up to a local cloud. Then, perched on the top of the cloud, Atropos resumed her human form. “This is part of the power of an Incarnation. Do you wish to see more?”

Mazie was evidently shaken, but not convinced.

“Yes.”

Lachesis reappeared. “I am the central Aspect of Fate, Lachesis. I measure the threads of life.” Then Clotho; “And I spin them. The three of us share this body, and you would share it, too, being immortal until you chose to leave.”

Mazie was becoming persuaded. “I never thought that I would ever be offered such a job! But I can’t move my limbs at all; that’s why I use a medical carpet. I would be useless.”

“No,” Clotho said. “You would join our body, leaving yours behind. Atropos would assume your body, and it would assume her likeness and mortal capabilities, and she would use your carpet to fly away to her pressing business among the mortals. You would regain full use of your limbs.”

“Oh, my!” Mazie exclaimed, astonished. “What a dream!”

“But you would have to share time with the other two,” Clotho said. “Lachesis and I would be your constant companions. Our duties are pressing; it is no holiday we offer you. Merely a new mode of existence.”

Mazie shrugged. “No.”

Atropos reappeared. “You do not wish to take the Office?”

“Oh, I would love the Office! But not the responsibility. I could not ever trust myself to decide when a life should end. I am sure I would make mistakes, and that is too important to allow mistakes. So I know I must not do it.”

“We all have had to learn our Offices,” Atropos said. “We all have made mistakes. But we keep striving to do better.”

“But I don’t trust my own judgment,” Mazie said. “I have always been dependent on the decisions of others. To be suddenly free of pain, of paralysis, and to be making decisions for others, no, I know I would make a mess of it. So I thank you for the offer, and I make the one decision whose correctness I can be sure of: not to take what you offer.”

Atropos gazed at her, then faded out. The carpet slid back down the line, into the house, and resumed its former position, no harm done. “We can’t force a person to take the Office,” Atropos said. “But it leaves us up the crick. I don’t have any more good prospects.”

Clotho reappeared. “Are you sure you have to go,You know we’d rather have you stay with us.”

“I have to go,” Atropos said, manifesting again. “What I have to do, no other can do for me. I guess we’ll just have to shop for any woman who’ll take the job, even if she isn’t the best. I hate this, but that’s the way it is.”

Lachesis manifested. “It is your prerogative to end your tenure when you choose. We must support you in this, just as we supported Clotho’s predecessor when she decided to marry the Japanese martial artist. It will work out somehow: it always has. It is not as if your successor will be alone or unguided.” But she did not look happy.

“If I may ask-” Orlene said hesitantly.

Lachesis glanced at her. “Oh, Orlene, I forgot you were with us! Of course we shall return you to the Abode!”

“No, I mean, I have a question about your change of Aspect. Does it have to be a woman?”

Lachesis paused. “Why no, of course not,” she said. “No Incarnation is fixed by sex. But during both my tenures, no, it doesn’t have to be a woman.”

“I think I know a man who might be good, and who might accept it,” Orlene said. “If you were willing to consider him-”

Jolie and Vita, hitherto satisfied to leave it to Orlene,came alive together.
You don’t mean-
Jolie started.
Roque?
Vita concluded, with horrendously mixed emotions. “Who is this man?” Lachesis asked sharply.

“His name is Nicolai,” Orlene said. Jolie and Vita relaxed, amazed. Orlene, pretty much lost at her death and after the encounter with Nox, was now really taking hold! “He’s an old Gypsy widower, whose only daughter is married and gone. I don’t know if he is still alive, actually,

Lachesis spread her hands. Between them a webbing appeared: a section of the Tapestry of Life. She peered closely into it. “He is alive.” She put her hands together and the webbing vanished, except for a single strand.

Then they were moving rapidly along that strand. All else blurred past.

They came to rest in a village in southern France. The old Gypsy man’s refuse hovel remained almost unchanged-and so did he. He had been about sixty years old; now he was eighty, and slower, but still doing for himself in the Gypsy way.

Atropos appeared to him. “Nicolai,” she said.

The old man’s gaze swung to fasten on her. “I hear you, Mistress of threads! What do you want with me?”

“How are you at judging folk?”

“Excellent!” he said. “I can tell almost at a glance how much money a man is worth and how much he will yield for a trinket.”

Atropos smiled. “All Gypsies can. But suppose you had to make decisions on their lives?”

“A man does what he has to. But we do not like to kill. That is seldom necessary.”

“I will be direct. I am Fate. I have three Aspects, one of which I must replace before the day is out. We are considering you to replace that Aspect, but we are uncertain whether we want a male, and whether you should be that male. If you are interested, you must persuade all three of us, and we may not be kind in the investigation. We can not give you time to consider; our deadline is hard upon us, and if you do not wish to be considered, we must go elsewhere immediately.”

Nicolai hardly blinked. “The Romani are quick to assess any situation. Answer me three questions, and I will answer yours.”

“Ask.”

“Which Aspect?”

Atropos touched her ample bosom. “Me, Atropos. I cut the threads of life.”

“Will I have complete discretion about which threads to cut?”

“No. You must always consider the benefit of the entire Tapestry of Life, and the interests of the other Aspects and the other Incarnations. The cutting is never random or careless. But within those guidelines, you do have discretion. No one else will second-guess you.”

“Will there be occasion for music or dancing or storytelling?”

“If you wish.”

“Then I am interested.”

Atropos gazed at him. “You didn’t ask about magic or immortality or power.”

“I didn’t need to. I know what Incarnations are. I know the power they wield. I know they are immortal as long as they want to be. I know they can choose their forms and that at least one aspect of Fate is always young and lovely.”

“That won’t do you any good,” Atropos warned. “Only one Aspect can assume form at a time, the other two becoming mere thoughts. You will never be able to touch Clotho.”

“But what joy to be near her!”

“Then let her be the first to question you,” Atropos said grimly.

Clotho appeared, deceptively young and bouncy. “So you like to dance,” she said. “How can you reconcile that with the serious business of cutting threads?”

“What is life worth without merriment? Serious matters constantly beset every mortal person. We can seek reprieve only in the innocent pleasures of life, such as music and dance and the appreciation of luscious flesh like yours.”

Clotho was not much moved. “If you faced death tomorrow, would you dance today?”

“Yes! I face death every moment of my life, especially now that my years are almost done, so every moment I make the most of it. There can be no better death than with a fiddle in my hands and a song in my throat and beauty in my eye.”

She remained skeptical. “Let me see you dance, then.”

“Give me a partner.”

Clotho hesitated, obviously not wanting to be diverted by getting into it herself.

I’ll do it!
Vita thought.
I think his dancing is terrific!
“Do it, then.” Orlene turned the body over to her. “I’ll dance with you!” Vita cried. “But I don’t know the tanana!

“Then learn it,” Nicolai said, assuming a formal position. He seemed unsurprised by her appearance from nowhere. “Stand opposite me, look me in the eye. Now respond as I move, so.” He demonstrated, and as he moved, he seemed to lose forty years.

Vita followed his directions, haltingly at first, then with greater confidence. Soon she was doing a bit of the tanana, and becoming extraordinarily sexy in the process. The dance left barely enough to the imagination to differentiate it from abandoned lovemaking, yet that caused the imagination to run rampant. Her hips flung out, and around, and forward in unmistakable emulation of vigorous copulation. Her breasts stood up and shook independently. But it was the movements of the head that had the greatest effect, particularly the eyes. She shot dark glances sidelong at her partner, those looks barely passing her tousled hair, and Nicolai met them with such burgeoning implication that even in the midst of her own effort she blushed. Jolie knew that the Gypsies were supposed to be lusty folk; now she knew that it was no exaggeration. They made sex appeal into an art, and it was truly shameless: they had no shame in it. Jolie felt Vita’s increasing delight in the forms of it: this was almost as good as making it with Roque!

Meanwhile Clotho watched, her cynicism slowly becoming interest, and her interest excitement. Her body mirrored in diminished scope the motions Vita was making. Finally she could stand it no longer; she stepped forward, joining the dance.

Clotho was good at it; obviously she had had experience dancing. She quickly picked up the motions Vita had struggled over, and her voluptuous body gave her a head start. Orlene, watching, had a thought:
She is Norton’s lover?

You died, Jolie reminded her.
He still prefers you, but you can not join him.

I have no business being jealous, she agreed.
All the same . . .

Nicolai adapted without a hitch. Now he danced opposite two young women, and courted them both, and made both feel helplessly wanton. He could have stripped the clothes off each and done whatever he wanted with them, and neither would have objected; rather, they would have joined in with enthusiasm. They were captive of the tanana, and reveling in it. They had lost the social limitations they had come with, for the abandon of the dance.

Nicolai brought it to a halt. With the termination of his motion, his age returned. “That is the way I want to die,” he repeated. “With lovely, panting maidens surrounding me. I have no fear of death when I have the dance. It is even better to the music, and with costume.”

Clothe and Vita looked at each other. Indeed, they were panting, more from excitement than from the exertion of the exercise. “I must learn that dance!” Clotho said. “Eighty years old, and he can do that to me, I must learn it!”

Then she was replaced by Lachesis. “You have one vote, Nicolai,” she said. “But I am not frozen at twenty; I have more on my mind than physical expression.” Nicolai squinted at her. “Orb!” he exclaimed. “You are her mother!”

“Now how would you know that?” Lachesis asked, startled.

“I am of the Romani. I see the family favor. Orb, she was beautiful, and she had a talent with music. She said once that her mother had been the most beautiful woman of her generation. I have seen none lovelier than Orb. You what were you like when you were her age?”

Lachesis changed, becoming abruptly younger, and stunningly beautiful. “When I was Niobe,” she said.

“Ah, she was right!” he breathed. “And can you also make music like hers?”

“No. She derived that from her father’s side. Now stop trying to flatter me, and we’ll see whether you qualify for our position.”

“I was not trying to flatter you!” he protested innocently. “You know I spoke only truth.”

“And a Gypsy can charm anyone!” she said. But she did not revert to her older form. She had been charmed, despite her caution.

“What would you have me do?”