The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories (11 page)

"It's her loss, then," Davout said, though his fingers signed .

she signed, and Davout felt a shiver caress his spine. "But I am a coward, too!" Katrin cried. "I am not your brave Dark Katrin, and I cannot become her!"

"Katrin," he said. "You are the same person—you
all
are!"

She shook her head. "I do not think like your Katrin. I do not have her courage. I do not know what liberated her from her fear, but it is something I do not have. And—" She reached across the table to clasp his hand. "I do not have the feelings for you that she possessed. I simply do not—I have tried, I have had that world-eating passion read into my mind, and I compare it with what I feel, and—what I have is as nothing. I
wish
I felt as she did, I truly do. But if I love anyone, it is Old Davout. And . . . " She let go his hand, and rose from the table. "I am a coward, and I will take the coward's way out. I must leave."

his fingers formed, then . "You can change that," he said. He followed her into the bedroom. "It's just a switch in your mind, Silent Davout can throw it for you, we can love each other forever . . . " She made no answer. As she began to pack grief seized him by the throat and the words dried up. He retreated to the little kitchen, sat at the table, held his head in his hands. He looked up when she paused in the door, and froze like a deer in the violet light of her eyes.

"Fair Katrin was right," she said. "Our elder sibs are bastards—they use us, and not kindly."

A few moments later he heard a car drive up, then leave. his fingers signed.

He spent the day unable to leave the cabin, unable to work, terror shivering through him. After dark he was driven outside by the realization that he would have to sleep on sheets that were touched with Katrin's scent. He wandered by starlight across the high mountain meadow, dry soil crunching beneath his boots, and when his legs began to ache he sat down heavily in the dust.

I am weary of my groaning . . .
he thought.

It was summer, but the high mountains were chill at night, and the deep cold soaked his thoughts. The word
Lethe
floated through his mind. Who would not choose to be happy? he asked himself. It is a switch in your mind, and someone can throw it for you.

He felt the slow, aching droplets of mourning being squeezed from his heart, one after the other, and wondered how long he could endure them, the relentless moments, each striking with the impact of a hammer, each a stunning, percussive blow . . .

Throw a switch, he thought, and the hammerblows would end.

"Katrin deserves mourning," he had told Davout the Silent, and now he had so many more Katrins to mourn, Dark Katrin and Katrin the Fair, Katrin the New and Katrin the Old. All the Katrins webbed by fate, alive or dead or merely enduring. And so he would, from necessity, endure . . .
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

He lay on his back, on the cold ground, gazed up at the world of stars, and tried to find the worlds, among the glittering teardrops of the heavens, where he and Katrin had rained from the sky their millions of children.

 

I started my career as a writer of historical fiction, specifically novels taking place in the Age of Sail, a genre pioneered by James Fenimore Cooper and later practiced successfully by C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, among others. I enjoyed writing these journeyman works, but over time I grew frustrated by the sameness of the setting. Book after book, I had a cast of a couple hundred males aboard a small ship. I longed to break free into the universe, which I eventually did by becoming a science fiction writer.
When I began writing SF, I realized that I could tell practically any story that appealed to me, as long as I set it in a science fiction context, and so I made a list of the sorts of stories I longed to write. The list was as follows:

1. A future in which everything went right. (This became my novel Knight Moves.)
   
2. A future in which everything went wrong. (This became Hardwired.)
   
3. A mystery/thriller. (Voice of the Whirlwind)
   
4. A first-contact story. (Angel Station)
   
5. A Restoration-style comedy of manners. (The Crown Jewels and its sequels)
   
6. A hard-boiled mystery. (Days of Atonement)
   

Within a six-to-eight month period, I had these works outlined, at least in my head. (Voice of the Whirlwind, which I had begun some years earlier, took a little longer.) For the next several years, I went about the task of realizing the works that I had envisioned during that one manic period of creativity.
As I worked my way to the end of the list, I began to worry that maybe I'd lost my creative spark: I hadn't had anything like that period of creativity in the time since.
Then I wrote Aristoi, and I stopped worrying.
None of this has any direct bearing on "Lethe," except to note that the very first thing I wanted to write was the future in which everything went right.
In my versions of this future, every box has been checked on humanity's collective wish list: there is no poverty, war, disease, or death. Some might claim that this deprives the future of the raw material for fiction, but my own view is that, with our inherited burden of tragic distractions out of the way, we might be able to get on with the actual search for meaning.
In any case, getting rid of war and death makes the search for a story all that much more imaginative.
I wrote "Lethe" in a period in which I was looking for just that kind of challenge. In order to challenge myself further, I decided to outdo Comedy of Errors by making the story about two sets of triplets.
And I couldn't avoid death altogether. The foundation of the story, after all, is what happens when death occurs in a culture where death simply does not happen.
It occurred to me that it would make an interesting challenge to write this same story over again from the point of view of any of the other Davouts or Katrins, but I haven't taken up the challenge as yet.
This was the first, but not the last, story taking place in what I call the College of Mystery sequence.

 

"
Ecce homo,
" said German Freddie with a smile. "That is your man, I believe."

"That's him," Brocius agreed. "That's Virgil Earp, the lawman."

"What do you suppose he wants?" asked Freddie.

"He's got a warrant for someone," said Brocius, "or he wouldn't be here."

Freddie gazed without enthusiasm at the lawman walking along the opposite side of Allen Street in Tombstone. His spurred boots clumped on the wooden sidewalk. He looked as if he had somewhere to go.

"Entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary," said Freddie, "or so Occam is understood to have said. If he is here for one of us, then so much the worse for him. If not, what does it matter to us?"

Curly Bill Brocius looked thoughtful. "I don't know about this Occam fellow, but as my mamma would say, those fellers don't chew their own tobacco. Kansas lawmen come at you in packs."

"So do we," said Freddie. "And this is not Kansas."

"No," said Brocius. "It's Tombstone." He gave Freddie a warning look from his lazy eyes. "Remember that, my friend," he said, "and watch your back."

Brocius drifted up Allen Street in the direction of Hafford's Saloon while Freddie contemplated Deputy U.S. Marshal Earp. The man was dressed like the parson of a particularly gloomy Protestant sect, with a black flat-crowned hat, black frock coat, black trousers, and immaculate white linen.

German Freddie decided he might as well meet this paradigm.

He walked across the dusty Tombstone street, stepped onto the sidewalk, and raised his grey sombrero.

"Pardon me," he said. "But are you Virgil Earp?"

The man looked at him, light eyes over fair mustache. "No," he said. "I'm his brother."

"Wyatt?" Freddie asked. He knew that the deputy had a lawman brother.

"No," the man said. "I'm their brother, Morgan."

A grin tugged at Freddie's lips. "Ah," he said. "I perceive that entities
are
multiplied beyond that which is necessary."

Morgan Earp gave him a puzzled look. Freddie raised his hat again. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I won't detain you."

 

It is like a uniform, Freddie wrote in his notebook that night. Black coats, black hats, black boots. Blond mustaches and long guns in the scabbards, riding in line abreast as they led their posse out of town. As a picture of purposeful terror they stand like the
Schwartzreiter
of three centuries ago, horsemen who held all Europe in fear. They entirely outclassed that Lt. Hurst, who was in a
real
uniform and who was employing them in the matter of those stolen Army mules.

What fear must dwell in the hearts of these Earps to present themselves thus! They must dress and walk and think alike; they must enforce the rigid letter of the dead, dusty law to the last comma; they must cling to every rule and range and feature of mediocrity . . . it is fear that drives men to herd together, to don uniforms, to impose upon others a needless conformity. But what enemy is it they fear? What enemy is so dreadful as to compel them to wear uniforms and arm themselves so heavily and cling to their beliefs with such ferocity?

It is their own nature!
The weak, who have no power even over themselves, fear always the power that lies in a
free
nature—a nature fantastic, wild, astonishing, arbitrary—they must enslave this spirit first in themselves before they can enslave it in others.

It is therefore our duty—the duty of those who are free, who are natural, valorous, and unafraid, those who scorn what is sickly, cowardly, and slavish—we must
resist these Earps!

And already we have won a victory—won it without raising a finger, without lifting a gun. The posse of that terrible figure of justice, that Mr. Virgil Earp, found the mules they were searching for in Frank McLaury's corral at Baba Comari—but then the complainant Lt. Hurst took counsel of his own fears, and refused to press charges.

It is wonderful! Deputy Marshal Earp, the sole voice of the law in this part of Arizona, has been made ridiculous on his first employment! How his pride must have withered at the joke that fortune played on him! How he must have cursed the foolish lieutenant and his fate!

He has left town, I understand, returned to Prescott. His brothers remain, however, stalking the streets in their dread black uniforms, infecting the town with their stolid presence. It is like an invasion of Luthers.

We must not cease to laugh at them! We must be gay! Laughter has driven Virgil from our midst, and it will drive the others, too. Our laughter will lodge burning in their hearts like bullets of flaming lead. There is nothing that will drive them from our midst as surely as our own joy at their shortcomings.

They are afraid. And we will
know
they are afraid. And this knowledge will turn our laughter into a weapon.

 

Ike Clanton was passed out on the table. The game went on regardless, as Ike had already lost his money. It was late evening in the Occidental Saloon, and the game might well go on till dawn.

"It's getting to be hard being a Cowboy," said John Ringo. "What with having to pay
taxes
now." He removed cards from his hand, tossed them onto the table. "Two cards," he said.

Brocius gave him his cards. "If we pay taxes," he said, "we can vote. And if we vote, we can have our own sheriff. And if we have our own sheriff, we'll make back those taxes and then some. Dealer folds." He tossed his cards onto the table.

Freddie adjusted his spectacles and looked at his hand, jacks and treys. He tossed his odd nine onto the table. "One card," he said. "I believe it was a mistake."

Brocius gave Freddie a lazy-lidded glance as he dealt Freddie another trey. "You think John Behan won't behave once we elect him?"

"I think it is unwise to give someone power over you."

"Hell yes, it was unwise," agreed Ringo. "Behan's promised Wyatt Earp the chief deputy's job. Fifty dollars." Silver clanged on the tabletop. Ike Clanton, drowsing, gave an uncertain snort.

"That's just to get the votes of the Earps and their friends," Brocius said. He winked at Freddie. "You don't think he's going to keep his promises, do you?"

"What makes you think he will keep his promises to
you?"
Freddie asked. He raised another fifty.

"It will pay him to cooperate with us," Brocius said.

Ringo bared his yellow fangs in a grin. "Have you seen Behan's girl? Sadie?"

"Are you going to call or fold?" Freddie asked.

"I'm thinking." Staring at his cards.

"I thought Behan's girl was called Josie," said Brocius.

"She seems to go by a number of names," Ringo said. "But you can see her for yourself, tonight at Shieffelin Hall. She's Helen of Troy in
Doctor Faustus.
"

"Are you going to call or fold?" Freddie asked.

"Helen, whose beauty summoned Greece to arms," Ringo quoted, "and drew a thousand ships to Tenedos."

"I would rather be a king," Freddie said, "and ride in triumph through Persepolis. Are you going to fold or call?"

"I'm going to bump," Ringo said, and threw out a hundred-dollar-bill, just as Freddie knew he would if Freddie only kept on nagging.

"Raise another hundred," Freddie said. Ringo cursed and called. Freddie showed his hand and raked the money toward him.

"Fortune's a right whore," Ringo said, from somewhere else out of his eccentric education.

"You should not have compromised with the authorities," Freddie said as he stacked his coin. "Once you were the free rulers of this land. Now you are taxpayers and politicians. Why do you bring this upon yourselves?"

Curly Bill Brocius scowled. "I'm on top of things, Freddie. Behan will do what he's told."

Freddie looked at him. "But will the Earps?"