The Visitor (19 page)

“Anything else?”

“Travelers have spotted a kind of fortress about midway between here and Henceforth, out on the plains. We can't get a ping near it, and all we know about it is that it wasn't there ten years ago. For some reason, the wagoneers call it Goldland.”

“Could it be another religious bunch, like Bastion?”

“We don't know. Goldland is just what the passing wagoneers call it. It could be called something else.”

She mused for a moment. “I guess the place you call Chasm answers the question about where the demons get their trade technology.”

He smiled. “Probably.”

“They still wearing those crazy horns?”

“They are, and we still don't know why. And we're picking up that eerie fog in other places than Bastion, now. Last team said it's moved into the countryside, and now it's beginning to show up in the nearer towns. Nobody has a clue as to what it is. It almost acts like something living, but when a ping gets close, nothing!”

“Couldn't it be some function of the monster on top of the world? Excuse me, monster who used to be on top of the world?”

He took his cup and her bowl to the sterilizer, staring into the screen that substituted for a window. A view of trees, mountains, piled white clouds with stormy bottoms. “Anything could be some function of that. We know nothing, less than nothing about it.”

She sighed and rubbed her neck. “Anything from the Mars colony?”

“Moon base is still in touch with them, and they have a very slightly increasing population. Moon base itself is still teetering. And that's it.” His tone of voice spoke of finality.

“Which means the human race has at least two chances to survive, maybe three, so what are we still in here for?”

He shrugged again. “We've pretty much done what we were supposed to do. Thanks to the stuff sent back by the moon team, before they left for Mars, we've been able to make accurate maps of the current surface of the earth. Three or four teams back, we printed the maps, showing the terrain, rivers, mountains and so forth. What survived seems to be anything that was a thousand feet above sea level pre-Happening. That means scattered islands where Australia and New Zealand, Indonesia and the Philippines used to be. Anyhow, we've made thousands of map copies available to peddlers and merchants and caravan leaders.”

“What cover did you use?”

“As we agreed, we've printed ‘Council of Guardians' at the bottom, to explain who made them.”

“Right,” she said, distractedly. “I'd forgotten about the ‘Council of Guardians.'”

“That's our role, Nell. Can't forget our role. We haven't had anyone willing to play Allipto Gomator for eight years! Time you got back into your seeress's garb.”

“Time we got out of this tomb into the fresh air,” she said.

“You still want to emerge,” he said in a defeated tone. “Don't you?”

“I've argued for it the past two wakings,” she snarled, angrily. “I would like to meet my many-greats grandchildren.”

He sighed and patted her shoulder. “Why don't we put off talking about that until the others are awake?”

“How many others, Raymond?”

“Two in this shift.”

“I didn't mean just this shift, Ray. Why not wake everyone? Why go on with this?”

He stared at her, his face pale. “If we wake everyone, there'll be twelve of us, Nell. Just twelve.”

She gasped. That was half as many as there had been last time she'd been awake. “My friend? Alan Block.”

“He's still alive and waking.”

“We didn't last as long as they thought we would, did we?”

“Long enough,” he said, patting her shoulder. “We lasted long enough.

W
hen Rashel first took over the Faience it had been piled high with Inclusionist artifacts, which she had immediately started weeding out, including many things that Ayward had been responsible for collecting. Whenever Ayward and Rashel were together, they argued furiously about her actions.

“The painting you're talking about shows a sorcerer with his magical staff, summoning the power of the light,” Ayward cried dramatically.

Rashel retorted, “It's what they used to call art, yes, but it's not part of The Inexplicable Arts. This painting is simply a piece of Durable Art! It portrays a man leaning on a rake or hoe, staring into the sunset. It's actually included in an encyclopedia of artworks dating before the Happening. You'll find it in the C of S library.”

“The College of Sorcery had already declared it part of the Canon of Arcana, Rashel. It was on my Master List.”

“No one refers to your old master list anymore, and I'm certainly not going to call it to their attention.”

Ayward turned white. “Once something is declared part of the Canon, your job should be to find out its meaning.”

“Once something is
mistakenly
declared part of the Canon of Arcana, it is my job to exclude it. Calling this simple old painting a part of the Canon destroys the integrity of The Art. Can't you see that?”

“Better a false inclusion than a false exclusion!” he cried.

“Dicta before personality! That's what the Bureau says!”

“Frash what the Bureau says.”

“Hush,” she sneered. “Someone might be listening.”

Someone
was usually listening, at the time and afterward, when Ayward complained to her.

“Everything from the time of the great mages is magical, Dis. People moved without labor, brought forth food without toil, built great structures with The Art. Ah, Dismé, I long for that time.”

His longing did not impress her as once it might have done. Whatever Ayward longed for was no longer Dismé's concern, still less his marital dispute about the painting. There was nothing unusual about Ayward quarreling with Rashel, except that this was the last quarrel they would have.

A day later, three men from the Bureau of Happiness and Enlightenment came to arrest Ayward Gazane on suspicion of having The Disease. A few days later Rashel called Dismé and Gayla into the study and told them that Ayward had been found guilty and had been sentenced to body-part donation and chairing.

“He's in a Chair?” breathed Gayla.

“He's been sent to the donor center and they've taken some parts and put him in a Chair, yes. But he's quite mobile, really.” She turned hot eyes on Dismé. “Stop that crying, Dismé! Ayward is my husband, not yours. Save your tears for your own family, if you're ever lucky enough to have one!”

Dismé's tears came from her revulsion at the gloating pleasure she had heard in Rashel's voice. Revulsion was also what she felt when she first visited Ayward. He was crouched in the Chair, only visible from the waist up, his head bent over so that he peered into his lap, his left arm and hand buried inside the Chair. She spoke to him, but he did not answer, though she bent near to listen, for it was hard to be heard or to hear over the constant noises the Chair made, bubbling and wheeping and an occasional shrill keening, like wind through stiff grass. Arnole's Chair had been al
most silent, and Dismé found the noise of this one irritating past endurance, as though it had been designed to drive Ayward to despair.

She went to the barn and sat looking at the trees. Ouphs came out of the forest to settle on the glass towers, but she did not even glance in their direction. Oh, if she had only gone away when Arnole said to go. Now she was trapped! Rashel despised Ayward, and Gayla only irritated him. There was no one else here who was in the least sympathetic, and she could not in good conscience abandon him!

Arrangements for Ayward had been made by Rashel. A suite of rooms in the unused north wing of the Conservator's house was opened up and furnished for Ayward and his young attendant, Owen Toadlast, assigned here to expiate some minor crime through service to the Office of Chair Support. Though Dismé steeled herself to visit Ayward often, not just at the required Cheerful and Supportive visits of the whole family, he did not speak to her or to anyone. Dismé herself had become so laconic since Arnole's disappearance that she had to make a conscious effort to talk if not with Ayward, at least at him. Each day she made a mental list of ordinary topics, but even this superficial chit-chat fell into an abyss of silence, leaving her virtually mute at all other times.

Rashel noticed, of course. “Cat got your tongue, Dismé?” she asked, in her usual badgering manner. “What's the matter with you. Not feeling well?”

“I'm fine, Rashel. Just thinking about…” Dismé went down the list of unexceptionable things she could be thinking about. Schoolwork. The weather. What they were having for dinner, or “…things I have to do for school.”

Recently added to the students in Dismé's class was a preadolescent girl student whose mother worked at Faience. The girl's record was much decorated with gold stars for, among other things, “Correcting other students' false ideas.” Her name was Lettyne Leek, and she seemed determined to catch Dismé dispensing “false ideas” or die trying. One day in class dear Gustaf rose to his feet with an expression of
wonder, gestured broadly with one hand, cried
Hail Tamlar, let there be fire
, and set his desk ablaze. Dismé bit her lip to keep from crying out, and her eyes went at once to Lettyne. Oh, if only Gustaf had not done it in public, where people could
see
him! The teacher was already bearing down on him, and Lettyne, her face screwed into righteous hauteur, was busy making a note of the time and the place and the names of all those who had been witnesses. Oh, poor boy! Now he was in for it!

Though Gustaf had always behaved in exemplary fashion, and though the spell had been mentioned the day previously in enchantments class, nonetheless, the BHE was summoned to take him away to Apocanew, keeping him overnight for interrogation. When he returned to school the next day, he was no longer able to start a fire with a gesture.

“They didn't ask me to explain how I did it,” he whispered to Dismé. “They just asked about the Dicta, over and over, and did I believe in the Dicta, and didn't I know I was supposed to have a permit. Then they asked about enchantments, didn't I know what the necessary elements of enchantments were, and then they said set fire to something, and I was thinking about needing the permit and the necessary elements and I couldn't remember how I did it.”

“You didn't think about it the first time,” she said.

“No,” he replied in a puzzled voice. “It just chimed in my head like a bell, and I did it without thinking.”

She gave him a long and measuring look and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Gustaf, if you will go into quiet places, by yourself, it may be you will hear that chime again. But if you hear it when others are around, you must ask it to wait until you are alone.”

He looked at her for a moment in puzzlement, then suddenly nodded in understanding. “It doesn't come from what we learn here, does it?”

She shook her head.

He smiled a secret smile. “It comes from somewhere else. Somewhere better.”

During her visit to Ayward that night, Dismé spoke of
Gustaf's fire-starting, and Lettyne's continual effrontery. “The girl is trying to catch me doing or saying something wrong,” she concluded. “She's ready to pounce.”

To her amazement, she heard Ayward's gravelly whisper, “Anything reflecting on you would reflect on Rashel. You might be wise to mention all this to Rashel if the opportunity presents itself.”

She put her hand on his cheek and cried, “Oh, Ayward, I'm so glad you're talking! I've been so concerned about you…”

“Shh, Dis. Talking got me into this…” he pounded the arm of the Chair with his right hand, though softly. “I won't talk to anyone but you and Owen.” He laughed, a painful, rasping laugh that hurt her ears. “I wish this damned rain would stop. Day after day.”

The rain was becoming a trial for them all. The children were depressed and moody, each day's lessons were like all those before, the hours passed like endless plockutta. At the Caigo Faience, Rashel worked even longer hours than usual, and when she made the required Cheerful and Supportive visits to Ayward's quarters, she expounded to him in a exalted, mysterious voice about the device that had been discovered under the fortress at Strong Hold.

“A momentous discovery,” she said. “Perhaps the very fountainhead of the dark canon!”

Rashel was deeply involved in the project, but Ayward was against it, or against her doing it, as he wrote to her in dozens of scribbled notes.

“What is this mysterious thing?” Dismé asked him. “Rashel seems very involved in it.”

“Mysterious,” he snorted. “I suppose it is. The Regime decided to add a dungeon or some fool thing under the Fortress, and they've dug up a device. Rashel has been given a look at it. She's shown me a drawing, and the thing is obviously sorcerous, I told her to check the Archives for the P'Jardas account. You wouldn't know about that…”

She was offended by this offhand assumption. “As a mat
ter of fact, Arnole told me about Hal P'Jardas and his fiery woman. What has that to do with this thing they've found?”

“It has to do with a letter P'Jardas sent to the Regime not long before he was bottled. He said he'd been going through his old notes, and he believed the mound where the Fortress was built was the same one the fiery spirit emerged from.”

“So anything in that mound…”

“Anything in or on the mound would be contaminated by sorcery even if not itself magical. They've found this pillar thing inside the mound. According to P'Jardas's account, there were pillars all over the mound. Arnole told me those were taken away when the fortress was first built; the archives have records of the move. Someone should try to find them.”

“But if the thing is sorcerous, shouldn't it be examined?”

“It's dangerous,” he cried. “But when I tell Rashel so, she doesn't listen. If someone else had told her about the P'Jardas account, she might have paid attention.”

Rashel announced loudly over dinner that there was concern among people in the Regime that Ayward was unrepentant. If that were true, come spring he might be sentenced to a second Chair!

“No,” said Gayla, giving her a horrified look. “Oh, no, Rashel. Don't. Enough is enough. He couldn't…he couldn't stand that!”

“Well,” said Rashel in a severe tone. “It isn't my decision, Gayla. Ayward knows the consequences of behavior as well as I do!”

Dismé expressed her anger at Gayla. “She married him! Doesn't she have any sympathy for him at all?”

“She's required to be cheerful and supportive, Dismé, but not sympathetic,” Gayla said in a bitter voice. “Not with Ayward's father gone the way he did. If Rashel were sympathetic and then Ayward went, eyebrows would be raised, questions asked. Had she been permissive? Had Owen not done his job well? Had the rest of us, including you, Dismé, made all their required visits during which we were optimistic, cheerful, and kindly? It's almost always the family's
fault if people leave. If they are well-treated, people do not leave their loved ones.”

Dismé had searched Ayward's haggard face too often to believe such sentimental blather. “He hasn't the strength to love anyone,” she said in an angry whisper. “It takes all his strength just to be awake every day until the Chair puts him to sleep at night. They've taken everything from him. His work…”

“Whatever that amounted to.”

“You believe Ayward was mistaken? About Inclusionism?”

Gayla threw up her hands with an explosion of hectic laughter. “Oh, for heaven's sake, child. You know Ayward! He can't decide between a boiled egg or a fried one for his breakfast. You've seen him dither for an hour over the choice of what color shirt to wear! Coming up with Inclusionism saved him from ever having to make up his mind, that's all!”

Dismé flushed with instant humiliation. Though she had never thought of Ayward in this way, she knew it to be true the moment it was said. Who should have known it better than she? Even so, she had to warn Ayward about what Rashel had said, though she waited until Rashel went on a trip that would keep her away for several days.

Ayward didn't reply for a long time. “Did she say when?”

“She said this spring, Ayward.”

“Poor Rashel,” he said. “Ah, poor Rashel. So unhappy. So embittered. So willing to destroy anyone to get her way, without even knowing what her way is. I believe that when your father did what he did, and your brother disappeared, she felt betrayed. All her life since has been taking vengeance against their leaving her…”

“What do you mean, betrayed? What do you mean, did what he did?”

“Well, taking his own life that way. Rashel said…”

Dismé said in angry astonishment, “How can you think that, Ayward? Father didn't…”

He interrupted her. “Hush, my dear. We won't worry about it now.”

Dismé's fury drove her out of the house. The rains had given way to an interlude of mist, and she felt as though the outward mist permeated her as well. Rashel had told Ayward that Val Latimer had killed himself! Why would Rashel have said such a thing? Was it only to build yet another drama around herself? To make her life more interesting and vital? Poor child, her dear, dear friends would say. Poor child. Look at what she's had to bear!

She found herself running along the path that led to the glass towers, almost invisible in the light rain. As she approached the tallest of them, she realized she had literally walked into a great pool of ouphs who swirled and eddied all around her.