The Ozark trilogy (77 page)

“It is just possible,” Charity went on, “that if we can’t stop them we can at least slow them down some. If we can only be calm, and leave off feeding them fear, while we think what to do. It can’t hurt, and it might help. I want you to turn your hand to something else than being scared, you hear me? Times tables, that’s always good. Or counting backwards from one hundred by threes, that’s even better. You can’t keep your mind on being scared if you’re doing that. You tadlings as don’t have your numbers mastered, or anybody as is so scared they’ve
lost
their numbers, you do the alphabet backwards.
Backwards
, now! You can’t do that and give off terror at the same time.”

The people listening agreed that it made sense, and even if it hadn’t it would be something to do; and those that had no comsets any longer had neighbors pounding on their doors to tell them.

Charity’s voice went on and on, soothing and stroking, going out to four Kingdoms. Even Veritas Truebreed Motley, nursing his aching temples with a cold cloth at Brightwater, was nodding agreement. She had the principle right, however ignorant she might be of its workings.

“Now,” said Charity of Airy, “I’ll do it with you. We’ll all be calm together, calm as pond water. 100. 97. 94. 91. Hmmmm ... 88. 85 ...”

In the houses, they said it with her. And the tadlings tried the other thing and were amazed at how hard it was. Glottal stop, that was easy. Z, to go on with. Y, and then X, a person could manage. But from there on it was hard work, and who ever would of thought it? The alphabet, that everybody knew like they knew the look of their thumbs! Backwards it fairly brought the sweat out all over you. X... Q?

“Can’t be Q!” said a tiny one, crossly, stamping her foot. “It’s not time yet for Q\”

“What is it, then?” challenged her brother. “You’re so smart ... oh! I know! W! Before X comes W!”

“Pheeyeew,” fussed the little girl. “W... now, let’s us just see ...”

Charity of Airy and the Grannys were well satisfied; they could feel the easing in the air almost immediately. It was just as well, under the circumstances, that none of them could see or sense the carnage in Smith Kingdom, where Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39
^th
was paying the penalty for his phony Granny that
was
no Granny, and the people of the Kingdom along with him. Long before it occurred to any of the other Magicians of Rank to ask a Mule to pass the message along to the Mules of Smith, Lincoln Parradyne had paid his bill in full; he lay dead on the floor of the Throne Room, his brain crisped in his skull like a dead coal. And the only thing spared him was the horror outside and in, where the people of Smith trampled one another in their panic as they tried insanely to flee the menace above them. The crystal over Castle Smith was just a little different; its color matched the color of the blood smeared on the streets and the stairs of the town, almost exactly.

Troublesome of Brightwater lifted her sister out of the spring and held her close, sacred water and all, wondering if she had ever been so happy before. Bring on the giant alien crystals, bring on the slimy alien wickednesses, bring on anything you fancied; nevertheless, her sister was awake again.

Responsible fought herself free of Troublesome’s embrace, which was somewhat more enthusiastic than was compatible with breathing.

“Troublesome?”

She tugged at the long black braid, to get Troublesome’s attention, and wiped some of the water on her face, and asked plaintively if she could
please
have an explanation. It was not every day a person woke up naked in a creek, with a crowd attending.

She listened, her face growing more and more stern, while she was told. All about the awfulness that had come when she was put in pseudocoma. The poverty and the sickness and the weather all uncontrolled ... it sounded like the tales of Old Earth ... and nobody knowing what might be happening anyplace but the four Kingdoms of the Alliance, except for rumors. All about the Grannys’ climb up the mountain, and Troublesome’s dreadful ocean voyage. And when the part about Lewis Motley Wommack the 33
^rd
came along she cried out a broad word in total indignation that startled Silverweb of McDaniels right out of the last scraps of her rapture.

“It would of been when I was asleep, Troublesome,” declared Responsible of Brightwater. “That fool man!
Ig
norant, that’s what he is, not to mention no sense at all. Half the night on Brightwater it’s day on Kintucky, clear across that ocean on the other side of the world—did he never learn
anything?
I was dreaming ... I remember the dreams. Oh, I remember them well, and they’re not fit for Silverweb’s ears. But never, never did I imagine that while I dreamed I was intruding on his mind ... The
id
iot! Oh, I’ll make him pay, I promise you—oh, how I’ll make him pay! He’ll curse the day he was born, and long for the day that death releases him before I’m through ...
stu
pid man!”

“He is that,” said Troublesome. “He might have asked you—but he wouldn’t stoop. That’s how he put it.”

Responsible struggled from her sister’s arms onto the rocks, where she sat hugging her knees and clothed only in her long hair, that was almost dry now in the hot desert sun.

“It was the Timecorner Prophecy,” she said sorrowfully, “and no way to escape it. But I must say there’s nothing elegant to the way it was fulfilled.”

“Nor any excuse,” said Silverweb. “For either him
or
you.”

Responsible hadn’t any interest at that moment in subtle moral questions. “
Now
what?” she said. She was a tad dazed, but she was not so addled that she intended to get into a discussion of how she and young Wommack might have managed to avoid what had been decreed since the beginning of time. What she wanted to know was the status of things.

Before Troublesome or Silverweb could speak, the Skerrys took it up.

RESPONSIBLE OF BRIGHTWATER, THE PLANETS OF THE GARNET RING NOW SEE THIS WORLD AS RIPE FOR THE CONQUERING, AND THEY HAVE COME TO PLUCK IT—IT FALLS NOW WITHIN THEIR LAWS OF COLONIAL RIGHT.

I CAN SEE THAT IT MIGHT, Responsible replied, not caring how much her mindspeaking might startle the other two women. There didn’t seem to be much left in the way of secrets anyhow. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE, EXACTLY?

THEY HAVE HEARD THE REPORT OF THE OUT-CABAL, THAT THIS WORLD HAS FALLEN TO ANARCHY AND DISASTERS, AND THEY HAVE SET A ... YOU HAVE NO SEMANTIC CONSTRUCT FOR IT. NO ... YOU DO! YOU MUST IMAGINE A STORAGE CELL, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER, ONE HUNDRED AND TEN FEET FROM POINT TO POINT, POISED OVER EACH AND EVERY OZARK CASTLE AND FEEDING NOW—CHARGING NOW—WHILE WE STAND HERE TALKING. THEY ARE SHAPED LIKE DIAMONDS, AND YOU WOULD CALL THEM ... CRYSTALS. THEY ARE DEADLY, AND THERE IS VERY LITTLE TIME.

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE? Responsible asked them, and Troublesome realized suddenly that her sister’s mindvoice was just that, a voice, and not bells. When she had the leisure,
if
she had the leisure, she would consider the question of why that caused no barrier to the conversation. HAVE THEY BROUGHT OUT THE LASERS AGAINST THE THINGS? HAVE THEY TRIED A TRANSFORMATION, A DELETION TRANSFORMATION WITH ALL THE NINE MAGICIANS OF RANK—

The Skerry cut her off.

YOU FORGET, it Said. THERE HAS BEEN NO MAGIC ON THIS WORLD WHILE YOU SLEPT—YOU HAVE BORNE IT ALL WITHIN YOURSELF. AS FOR THE LASERS, YOUR PEOPLE HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING WHAT IT MIGHT DO IF THEY WERE TO PIERCE THE CRYSTALS, OR EVEN IF THEY WERE TO TRY—NOR DO WE, NOR DO THE MULES, NOR DO THE GENTLES. THE GENTLES, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER, ARE
VERY
DISTRESSED BY ALL THIS... I DO NOT KNOW IF THEY WILL EVER COME UP TO THE DAYLIGHT AGAIN. NOW, WE ALL ASK THE SAME THING, AND IT SEEMS TO US ONLY JUSTICE, SINCE IT IS YOUR PEOPLE WHO HAVE BROUGHT ALL THIS UPON US. WE ASK THAT
YOU
DO SOMETHING, FOR THIS WORLD IS IN YOUR CHARGE.

It seemed to Troublesome that that wasn’t justice atall, or even likely, and she and Silverweb both protested at once that Responsible was bound to be weak and like a newborn babe for some time, that she would have to get her strength back as anybody does after a long time ill, and that asking her to take on a whole passel of alien planets in her condition was downright ridiculous. It came out garbled, a scrap from Troublesome and a scrap from Silverweb, and some scraps from both, but they were of one mind on the matter.

What they had not taken into account was the strength of the energy that was being lent to Responsible by the Skerrys and the Mules. This was their planet, too, and had been theirs many thousands of years before ever an Ozarker set foot on it, and they had no desire to see it fall to the Garnet Ring, with who knew what consequences to follow. They didn’t know a great deal about the peoples of the Garnet Ring, but they knew enough to be sure they weren’t anybody you’d want for neighbors, and never mind the details.

Responsible of Brightwater gave her sister and Silverweb one look of considerable irritation, drew on the more than ample reservoir of energy the Mules and the Skerrys were offering her, and before the other two women could so much as draw a breath she had SNAPPED the three of them back to her own bedroom at Castle Brightwater, leaving Sterling to bring the wagon home.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, where she’d lain so long silent and motionless, she clucked her tongue, and glared at Troublesome and Silverweb, both of them more than slightly startled by their unaccustomed mode of transportation.

“This won’t do,” announced Responsible. “This won’t do atall. Let me get something on my bones besides my skin, and I’ll see to it.”

And she headed for her wardrobe with her hands already busy braiding her hair, pausing only the few seconds it took to advise Troublesome that she’d never
seen
anybody quite so grubby and it would be a good thing if she had a tidy-up before she forgot how the parts of a decent female were supposed to be arranged.

“My lady—I am afraid.”

The words came from an unusual source; Jessica of Lewis, Teacher Jessica these past seven months, was in the usual run of things a tower of strength. She was a true Three: brilliant, creative, high-spirited, and one for whom everything seemed to come easily. She had slipped into the Teaching Order as a hand slips into a glove made to its measure. None of the usual kicking at the traces for Jessica of Lewis. Not a flicker when her beloved books— “
Real
books!” the others had whispered. “Not micros,
real
books. And three of them!” —had been taken from her and added to the community library in Castle Wommack’s north wing. When all the rest were down, it was Teacher Jessica they relied on, to bring their spirits up and to remind them once again that for those that are vowed to poverty that experience of poverty is no hardship.

Now she sat in Faculty Meeting, fifth down from Teacher Jewel of Wommack, so fast had she ascended through the ranks, and said: “My lady, I am afraid.”

“We are all afraid,” Teacher Jewel responded. “Not to be afraid would show a lack of common sense, or an unhealthy detachment from reality. There is a group consensus; nowhere in that consensus is there space for the crystal suspended above this Castle. How could we
not
be afraid?”

“That bodacious great rock hanging over our heads and ready for to drip down blood, it looks like ... Law! Teacher Jessica, I should
hope
we’re afraid!”

“If it is a rock,” said Jewel of Wommack carefully, giving the new Teacher Candidate a measuring look, “what is holding it where it is, Cousin Naomi? Rocks do not float, neither do they fly. And there is no more magic.”

Naomi of Wommack met her kinswoman’s eyes without flinching; a good sign, thought Jewel. Naomi’s speech was rougher than any Candidate’s they had accepted yet; one would have thought she was trying for the formspeech used by the Grannys, except that even the Grannys no longer said “for to” before their verbs ... perhaps in a moment of great excitement one might, but Jewel could not recall an example. Naomi had come out of a pocket on the far side of the Wilderness Lands of Kintucky, from a cluster of six households so isolated they had not had comsets even before Responsible of Brightwater was struck down. The rest of Kintucky had not even known they were there, and given the possibilities of marriage open to them they would not have lasted long—it was good fortune a Teacher, canvassing the Wilderness on her Mule, had stumbled across them.

“There will be again,” said Naomi, confident as a child. “As there do be star and sun and tree. Somehow it’s got a hitch in it, it’s a kind of drought as comes in a bad year for the rains, but no reason for to doubt.
I
don’t doubt.”

Jewel of Wommack believed her; she was as transparent as thin new ice on a puddle. And—always provided they all lived through whatever this crisis was—Naomi’s ways might require more polishing than the other Candidates’ had.
May
be. Jewel had discussed it when Naomi of Wommack joined them, and there had been disagreement among the senior faculty.

“She will be going back to Teach in the Wilderness Lands and along their borders,” Jewel had reminded them. “Might could be that if her speech and her manners are greatly changed they won’t trust her there, and trust is the foundation of Teaching. Think of my brother—when he took up the speechmode of the Magicians of Rank, purely to spite them, and then kept it up purely to spite the
rest
of us—think how it changed the way people behaved around him. He has a good deal more difficulty coaxing the young women into the haymows than he had when he spoke like anybody else ... and a very good thing that is, I might add.”