And Eternity (27 page)

“I was sorry I missed you,” the Captain told Basil. “But Obelia was right; you did good work, and I will testify on your behalf. I don’t think you’ll spend time in prison.”

“Thank you, sir. But I did get into this to make money,I’ll take my punishment.”

“You may find yourself with money anyway,” Obelia murmured, taking his arm.

Atropos reappeared. “We are agreed: you have good judgment, Nicolai. You may assume the Aspect.” She stepped through the wall of the saucer, and Orlene and Nicolai were hauled after.

This time there was no transition; they were abruptly back at Nicolai’s hut. “We shall set a golem to resemble you,” Atropos said. “You will seem to have died naturally.” She flung more webbing, and it formed into an image of the man, lying on his bunk, unmoving. “Do you wish to leave a message?”

“No. I am old; they know I am due to die soon. Let it be this way.”

Atropos stepped through the wall again, and again they were hauled after, on the invisible web. They arrived in an apartment where a black woman was making a bed. Atropos gestured, and the great skein of the Tapestry of Life appeared. She reached out and touched one thread, moving it slightly. She nudged another thread so that it lay in the place just vacated. Then a little pair of clippers appeared in her hand, and she cut that second thread.

The clippers disappeared. She extended her hand to Nicolai. “Take my hand, take my Aspect,” she said.

Nicolai grasped her hand. The two stood there for a moment, then let go. Then Nicolai began to change form, coming to resemble Atropos.

She glanced at Orlene. “We made the change, girl,” she said. “It’s his substance, become mine. He is with Fate.”

Orlene looked, and saw the young Clotho, then the middle-aged Lachesis, then the old Nicolai. “But I must masquerade as a woman,” he said. He changed, becoming an old gray-haired woman, with a long dark skirt, antique feminine boots, a blouse that looked flat-chested, and a ludicrous little hat. “Will this do?”

Orlene smiled. “It will do. But watch the whiskers.”

“Oops.” The whiskers disappeared. “But I’d better give the body to one of the others, till I catch on better.” Lachesis appeared. “Yes, we shall have some adjusting to do. It will be strange for a while, hiding a man!”

The former Atropos glanced at them. “You folk better get out of here; there’s going to be an ugly scene shortly.”

“An ugly scene?” Lachesis asked. “You never told us exactly why you had to step down so suddenly.”

“Because I saw something you weren’t looking for, and it wasn’t right to use my office to change it, but it had to be changed. My daughter remarried, and I thought he was a good man, but he turned bad, and started beating her, and now he’s going to beat her too hard. So I switched out the threads. Go on, get out of here!”

Lachesis faded out, but did not leave. She had merely become invisible, and Orlene with her. “And give that girl her thread!” the woman called. “She earned it!”

The woman who was making the bed looked up. “What?” she said, as the magic surrounding the former Atropos faded, leaving her solid and visible. Then: “Ma! But you died ten years ago!”

“Not quite. I came back to do you one more favor, girl. Now you be sure to testify to what you see, and tell them the background too.”

“The what?”

“That man’s been beating you nigh to death! Think I don’t see those scars? Tonight he’s going to beat you too hard and kill you, only I’m going to free you from him.”

“But-” Then the man returned. He had been drinking, and he staggered, but he had plenty of energy remaining for belligerence. “Get out here, woman!” he yelled.

The woman started forward, but ex-Atropos blocked her. “He’s going to kill you this time!” she warned. “He’s going to hit you too hard and then claim you fell. You’ll be better off free of him, and you will be, once he’s in jail for manslaughter. Stay back.” Then she marched out to meet her son-in-law. “You good-for-nothing drunken bum! You crazy wife-beater! You cheat on her, you treat her like dirt, and then you come home and mess her up some more! I always knew you were no good, and now you’re worse! Now pack up your things and get your tail out of here, you slime!” She continued, getting more specific and more insulting, making it quite clear where he stood with her and how far away she wanted him to get from her daughter.

He hit her, of course. Ex-Atropos was old, and deprived of the protection she had enjoyed as an Incarnation, she went down without a sound.

“Time to go,” Lachesis said sadly. “But we must help her!” Orlene protested. “No. She is dead. That was her own thread she cut.” Then Orlene understood. Atropos had substituted her own thread of life for that of her daughter, so that she would not have to cut her daughter’s thread. Now the man would pay the penalty for murdering her, while her daughter survived to make a better life.

Vita had been correct: that old lady didn’t fool around. They arrived back in the webbed Abode. “You have seen more than outsiders usually do,” Lachesis said. “You have seen our challenge and our pain. But you have also helped us in a significant manner, and you have earned your thread. We will hold it for you until you have the acquiescence of the other Incarnations. Now you must go, for we have much to resolve, and we prefer to do it by ourselves.”

Orlene could well understand! That saucer hijacking, and that change of Aspects-and the sudden death of the woman who had been Atropos. “Thank you, grandmother,” she said, and left immediately.

I think we’d better take a break
, Jolie thought
. That’s for sure!
Vita agreed.
Those Incarnations they’ve got real jobs to do! It isn’t all peaches and cream for them, any more than for us!
“Amen,” Orlene agreed, shaken.

In the morning they caught the Hellevator back to the mortal realm, careful to get off at the right stop. They didn’t want to get carried on down to Hell by accident!

They emerged in Mock Hell and made their way out, ignoring the temptations on the way. They took a carpet to the rocketport, and discovered that it had been replaced by a saucerport.

I don’t want to get on a saucer!
Vita protested. Jolie laughed. “This one isn’t going to the Moon! It should be safe enough.”

The girl was not completely reassured, but didn’t argue. Jolie bought a ticket by charging it to Luna’s account, as she had been told to do, and the charge was accepted.

The saucer was really preferable to the rocket, because it had no need for acceleration restraints and its quarters were generous. Indeed, they sat in an easy chair and watched through a genuine window as it took off, lifting from the pavement without a jolt and sailing over the city.

A man came over. “Looking for company?” he inquired in a tone that all three of them recognized.

Jolie turned the body over to Vita. “I’m underage,she snapped.

The man moved on. It was evident that he had judged her age correctly, but hadn’t been bothered by that detail. However, he did not want the kind of scene she threatened to make.

“But you know, I don’t feel underage when I’m with Roque,” she remarked.

It is because he respects you as a person,
Orlene thought.
He disagrees with the letter of the law, feeling that the maturity and discretion of those concerned should be the determinant, rather than an arbitrary figure. Your experience and judgment indicated…
“Oh, pooh! He was just too hot for me to hold back!”

That too
, Jolie thought. The girl did not want reason, she wanted passion. But the Judge would never have done it for passion alone.

“Anyway, he knew one of you two would scream if you thought it was wrong,” Vita concluded. “And you didn’t scream, did you!”

Not loud enough
, Orlene agreed, laughing.

The saucer arrived in remarkably short order. Its velocity was deceptive; without inertia, it could travel at very high velocity without seeming to.

They took another carpet to Luna’s estate. Luna was there to greet them. “Tomorrow is Saturday,” she said. “I will be out for the morning, but I have asked Judge Scott to look in on you. Meanwhile, I am sure you can use a good night’s rest, after your extended tour.”

They discovered that they were indeed tired, emotionally as much as physically. They greeted the griffins, who seemed for a moment not to recognize them, and settled down.

They were, of course, ravenous; they had seemingly spent two days without food. Actually, only the time they had spent traveling to and from the Hellevator, here in the mortal realm, counted; still, there was a psychological effect.

“One thing I must be sure you understand,” Luna said. “You may have been absent longer than you thought.”

Vita was in charge at the moment. “Two days,” she said. “But you know, in that short time they had changed from a rocket to a saucer. It-It was okay, but we’d rather have ridden the rocket.”

“Two years,” Luna said gently.

“What?”

“Unless special dispensation is made, the time that a mortal spends in Purgatory differs from that of the mortal realm. It may be extended or compressed, but normally seems to be a year here for a day there. I regret I did not think to warn you before; certainly I should have.”

She’s right!
Jolie thought.
I knew that, but I forgot, because it doesn’t happen to immortals. Only to mortals who go physically into Purgatory, which seldom happens. What an oversight!

What an oversight! Orlene echoed, appalled.
What have we done to Vita?

“But I feel the same,” Vita said.

“You are the same, dear,” Luna said. “You have aged only a few hours, the time you spent in traveling-for the aging process in the Afterlife is so slow as to be meaningless in mortal terms. But the time has passed here, and you are now legally two years older.”

“You mean I’m still fifteen, but the law says I’m seventeen?”

“True, Vita. You are now that much closer to the age of consent, if that is important to you.”

Vita chewed on a mouthful, knowing that Luna knew her situation with the Judge, and also knowing that it must not be spoken. “So if I went back to Purgatory for another couple of days, I’d be nineteen, and-”

“And legally of age to make your own decisions, in this region of the mortal realm,” Luna said with the faintest of smiles.

“Gee.” Vita’s notions were stirring up like the winds of a tropical storm.

They had trouble falling asleep, because of amazement over the passage of two years and horrified reflections on the recent (or was it recent?) events of the saucer-jacking and Atropos’ change of personnel. So they turned on the commercial holo, and satisfied themselves that the news was indeed two years later. Then it went into a rather soupy romance, and they soon became oblivious.

In the morning, true to her word, Luna left on her errand, and they changed into something nice in anticipation of Roque’s arrival. But not too nice, because Vita was determined that it not remain on her long.

There was a chime, and Vita sailed to the door. There he was, and indeed he looked a bit older. Vita didn’t care. She leaped into his arms. “Oh, Roque!” she exclaimed between ardent kisses, “I didn’t know it was so long! Can you forgive me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

She looked at him archly. “Have you found someone else?”

“No. It has been a legal and lonely period.”

“Then you don’t have a choice! Oh, my love, my honey, my grand man, I’m so sorry, I thought it was only two days, I never would have done it if I’d realized, I don’t want you to suffer!” She paused. “You did suffer?”

“Horribly!”

“Then we have two years to make up in one terrific splurge of passion! Get your hands in gear, can you feel me while you’re carrying me to the bedroom?’’

“I can try.” He picked her up, and she virtually curled around him, trying to get everything into play at once.

Talk of nymphets!
Jolie thought.

One would think she was the one who had been waiting two years!
Orlene agreed.

Roque staggered into the bedroom with the squirming Vita, who was kissing him all over his face and neck and shirt collar while she ran her hands around his body, pulling out his shirttail. His thinning hair was hopelessly mussed.

They fell on the bed and indulged in a scramble of undressing in which Vita’s hands did more feeling than Roque’s did. Before it was complete, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and scrambled into the position of mergence, kissing him hungrily all the while.

“A moment.”

One might have thought it impossible for either to pause at this point, but this was a peculiarly compelling presence.

They paused.

“Who the hell are you?” Vita demanded.

That’s Nox, the Incarnation of Night!
Jolie thought.

“True, ghost-woman” the Incarnation responded. “Orlene must assume the body.”

But Vita’s in the middle of
, Orlene protested. “Then I will change the form of that body to the masculine aspect.” Indeed, as she spoke, the change began.
Give me the body!
Orlene thought desperately. Vita, feeling the ghost’s horror, yielded the body.

Suddenly it was Orlene in conjunction with him.

“What?” Roque asked, aware of the change, and dismayed.

“It is Nox!” Orlene exclaimed. “She threatens ultimate horror! Oh, what an awful time for her to-”

“An Incarnation?” he asked. “What possible-”

“Now enter my dream.” Nox said.

“She is sheer mischief!” Orlene said. “I need her help, and she makes me suffer for it! I must do what she demands!”

Then the dream surrounded them. It was chaos.

“And the Earth was without form, and void,” Roque said, actually sounding relieved to be in a changed situation. “We seem to be in the beginning of things.”

“I’m sorry,” Orlene said. “Nox does these things. I never would have gotten you involved if I had realized-”

“What is that you hold?”

Orlene checked. She was floating separately, with a sphere in her hands. It glowed, showing a scene of swirling chaos similar to the one outside, but with a single speck amidst it. “I don’t know; it just appeared. A crystal ball?”