The Visitor (21 page)

Michael was back in a short time, giving her a hard look and reaching for the emergency alarm flags.

“Is someone hurt?” she managed, as he pulled out the flags that meant a medical emergency.

“Owen,” he said. “We think he's fallen and hit his head.” He hummed through his teeth for a moment. “Ayward is gone.”

“Gone!” she said, astonished at her own surprise. Well, she hadn't
known
, not really. It could have been demons, trying to trick her. “How could he go anywhere without Owen?”

“We don't know. I've got to request a medic,” he said, rushing out the back door to comply with the Regime's dictates about the injured. Injured people had to be seen to right away, so if necessary, they could be bottled in time.

Gritting her teeth, Dismé went along to Ayward's rooms, where she found Aunt Gayla sitting on the floor, weeping as she cradled Owen's head, Molly and Joan wailing dirges behind her. Driven by conscience, Dismé knelt to get a good look at Owen. He had a bump on his head, though not a big
one; there was no blood and he was breathing very naturally. If he had fallen where he lay, he had possibly hit his head on the shelf above him.

When the medic arrived with the horse-drawn ambulance, the configuration was more or less the same, except that Rashel was contributing a raging dissonance to the chorus of lamentations. In addition to the medic from the Department of Medicine there was an agent from the Office of Chair Support, Department of Death Prevention, Division of Health, BHE. This man took Rashel and Aunt Gayla off into another room, and they returned after a time wiping their eyes, though whether from fear or anger, Dismé couldn't tell. Now the agent wanted to see Dismé.

Though Arnole had always denied it, everyone more or less believed that interrogators from the BHE could tell if someone lied to them. She would be careful not to lie. Not really.

“You're the Director's sister?” he asked.

“Step-sister, sir.” Her forehead itched abominably. She rubbed at it with her fingers.

“I understand you were out early this morning?”

“Yes, sir.” It was true he understood that.

“Birdnesting, your sister said. What's that about?”

“I'm interested in the wildlife here, at the edge of the forest. Since the Happening, the distribution of wildlife in the world has changed enormously, but we have few if any recent studies. I'm writing a little journal about the various species of local birds.” True. All true.

“Ah.” He frowned at the form before him, tapping his pen. “Do you have a permit from the Office of Textual Approval?”

“A permit from the Office is not required unless one submits for publication, sir.”

“Ah, right.” He stared at her face. “Did you see anything unusual?”

“After I got all scratched up, I was mostly interested in getting home, so I really wasn't paying attention.” All of which, heaven knows, was true enough.

“You know your sister's husband is gone.”

“That's what Michael said. I don't understand how he could be gone without Owen. Maybe when Owen wakes up, he'll know.”

“The medics say Owen has been drugged.”

“Drugged?” she stared with her mouth open. The Chairs used drugs, of course, to keep occupants comfortable, but she couldn't imagine how Owen could have been drugged. He was a strong young man, and Ayward could only use one hand.

The man saw her puzzlement. “This man, Ayward. Is it true his father also went away?”

“Yes, sir. He did. I miss him a great deal.”

“After so long?” His voice softened. “You must have loved him.”

Dismé, rubbing at her forehead once again, allowed herself a few angry tears that would no doubt pass for grief. “My father died when I was very young. Arnole became a kind of replacement father to me.”

“Well, then. Don't worry about this matter. I'm sure the mystery will be solved.” He patted her on the shoulder as he turned to go out, and she heard his voice in the hall, telling Rashel how puzzled and worried she was. “It is strange, Madam, to have it happen twice.”

“Not at all strange,” she said slowly, in a bitter tone. “They were father and son, and consequently much alike.”

“Intransigent?” he asked.

“Stubborn, certainly,” she replied. “My husband's father was a salvage child, saved from among outsiders. He remembered a youth among outlanders, where things were done differently.”

“So your husband would have grown up with that example,” the agent said. “Yes. You're right. It's not so strange as I had at first assumed.”

“He went so suddenly,” she blurted angrily. “Before I had a chance to…well. It was all very…unfortunate.”

Dismé was behind the door, and through the crack she could see Rashel's face set in furious frustration. Had she
been looking forward to that second Chair? Savoring Dismé's possible reaction to that second Chair? Had Dismé's furious pity concerning the first Chair lost its savor?

The agent nodded once more. “You'll need to be careful. Your sister has seen it happen twice. She is extremely upset.”

“I know,” Rashel said, with momentary satisfaction. “But my sister will get over it.”

S
everal senior officers were together in the officers' mess when a messenger arrived with a folder for the bishop, who buttered a bit of toast, slathered it with game paté, and chewed reflectively while perusing the first page of the document.

“Post rider brought this communiqué from the Office of Conformity Assurance in Apocanew,” he said at last. “The Office was called out to examine flood damage up at the Faience center. Repairs will put them over budget.”

Major Marchant, on yet another visit to Hold, looked up with a startled expression. “I thought Faience came under my jurisdiction.”

The bishop raised his eyebrows. “For what goes on there, yes, Mace, but when BHE took over the place the physical fabric was defined as Ephemeral Art, full of trees and mazes, and maintenance of such stuff falls under Conformity Assurance.”

“Ah,” murmured the major. “Does your communiqué mention the woman running the museum…what's her name?”

“Rashel Deshôll.”

“Deshôll, ah, right. Just last year I signed a Hold-honor commendation for her exemplary reorganization of the Faience.”

The doctor had seen the major's face and heard his too casual tone being a little too uncertain of the name of the “woman running the museum.” Anyone at the Inexplicable Arts sub-office in Apocanew should know that name as well as he knew his own. Now the major's cheeks were a bit flushed, his manly nostrils were slightly dilated.

The bishop remarked, “No doubt she's done a commendable job, but I've also had a report from Colonel Professor Zocrat's office suggesting that she may be a nexus for demonic activity.”

“What business has the Division of Education with Faience?” asked the major, now openly annoyed.

“There's a school for workers' children at Faience,” said the bishop, mildly. “It's a legitimate concern.”

The doctor leaned back in his chair, gray eyes flicking from one to another of his fellow officers from beneath arched brows, wide mouth impudently and forever curved beneath his long nose as he said, “What's being suggested, Bishop? Contagion?”

Marchant looked slightly stunned.

The bishop shook his head. “Our agent reports two cases of strange vanishment in Deshôll's immediate family, father-in-law and husband; both were chaired, both disappeared.”

“Disappeared? How can anyone in a Chair disappear?”

The question came from Captain Trublood, who, in the doctor's opinion, showed a great deal of presumption by constantly hanging around.

“Inexplicable, indeed, Captain!” the bishop said. “The family was scrutinized very carefully on both occasions, however, and we found absolutely nothing to involve the Deshôll woman in the disappearances or in the fact that one of the students at the Faience school sorcerously set fire to his desk. In that case, Deshôll wasn't even present, though her sister—ah, Dismé Latimer—was. We brought the boy in, but as usual, the power didn't persist throughout interrogation.”

“Because the kid couldn't remember how he did it?” asked the doctor.

“He wouldn't have been asked
how
he did it,” said the general, irritably. “He would have received the standard interrogation we use whenever demonism is suspected. Only the doctrinally orthodox can get a permit. Needless to say, the boy had no permit!”

“Our sub-office investigated after the disappearance of both Arnole and Ayward Gazane,” said the major. “In the last incident, we found no tracks, he wasn't hidden anywhere, no one in the place knows anything and the man had seen no one but family and servants for over a year. I suspect he drove his chair down the hill and over a cliff into the lake.”

“Why would he have done that?” asked the doctor, just to be irritating.

The major scowled. “Gazane founded the Inclusionist school, which had proven useless. He was given a chance to refocus himself, and couldn't. He'd been quite depressed. I'm sure no one at Faience was involved. The step-sister is a bit weird, but she's not bright enough to have had anything to do with it.”

The doctor noted the major's tight lips and watchful expression. All this intimate knowledge of Ayward when he couldn't remember Rashel's name? The major had lovely eyes. Altogether an attractive package, the major. Was Rashel also an attractive package?

“What's her name again?” he asked, casually.

“Who? Deshôll?”

“No, the ah…step-sister.”

“Ah, Dismé,” said the major. “Dismé Latimer. Why?”

With an effort the doctor managed to say in an indifferent voice, “No reason. Just that it's an odd name.”

The general waved the matter away. “Leif, where did this nexus allegation come from?”

The bishop poured himself more wine. “We have a Special Agent at Faience, woman named Leek. She works there, her daughter attends the school and keeps an eye on the teacher, the monitor, and the other children.”

“Special Agents from the Office of Investigation?” inquired the major, suddenly pale. “Why wasn't I told?”

The bishop nodded. “I'm not stepping on your toes, Major. No one is overriding your authority at Faience, but it's necessary to keep an eye on the place. It's off to hell and gone. Anyone could be up to mischief, without anyone in authority knowing anything about it.”

Indeed, thought the doctor to himself. Indeed they could be up to mischief including the hiding away of a woman named Dismé Latimer whom he had been trying to locate for a very, very long time.

S
ome distance west and over the mountains from Bastion, a single traveler made his way along a dusty road, little more than a wagon track leading over a ridge and then down again by long, winding traverses to a wide and fertile valley. He had made this trip several times during his life, whenever he could arrange it. Except that he seemed very strong and fit for a man of his obvious age, there was nothing remarkable about him.

As he neared the summit, he searched the verges of the trail, letting his eyes come to rest on a cairn of stones that marked a turn to the right and a scarcely visible path to a sheer rock wall. In an inconspicuous cleft was a metal panel with a translucent window set into it. Behind the window, a red light glowed softly. He laid his palm upon this window and sat down on a nearby rock to wait. The way might not open at all. If it did, it would not do so immediately.

After some time, a voice spoke from the rock. “You wish to confer with Allipto Gomator?”

He rose, speaking in a firm voice. “I do.”

“What do you want with her?”

“I have news of this and that.”

After a lengthy silence, the voice said, “Enter.”

The rock moved aside, and he went through the cleft, down a short corridor of stone, and into a domed cavern,
mostly natural, though he could detect places in which the stone had been cut or perhaps melted away to provide for the transparent chamber before him. Inside it sat an old woman wearing a wimple of gold beneath a robe and hood of green. Though spotted with age, her hands were lovely, with long and graceful fingers.

“Welcome, my friend,” she said. “I have not seen you for years.”

“I was in Bastion for some time,” he grumbled. “They have ways of hampering movement.” He sat silent for a moment, then said, “You're looking well.”

“I'm looking old.”

“You've changed little, Ma'am, since I first saw you.”

“Be seated. May I offer you something to drink?”

They decided on tea, which came out of a dispenser next to the table on which the seeress kept her crystal ball and was passed to the man through a slot in the chamber. When they had sipped and spoken of nothing much for a few moments, she said, “What do you have for me.”

The man twisted himself into a more comfortable position and crossed one leg over the other. “To the west of here, a new place has built up. It is called Goodland, Gladland, or Goldland, depending on who's telling. An explorer who went there said it looks like an unassailable fortress, with only one huge gate.”

“Did he talk to the people who live there?”

“He didn't see any people. Just a very forbidding wall and a closed gate. Also, I have heard that the being which used to lie far in the north has come south, toward this same place.”

The seeress sat as though carved in stone for a long moment. “Do you know anything else about it?”

“Nothing. The wagoneers who come by there say the place is set on the dry plain. They are amazed at this, wondering who would build such a place in the desert.”

“Anything else?”

“In Bastion, beneath the Fortress, they have discovered a device. It is only partially uncovered as yet. It seems to be made of stone, but such stone has not been seen before.”

The seeress took some time to think about that, as well. “And what will they do with it?”

“They have already appointed people from Inexplicable Arts to examine it. My son's wife is one of them.”

“If I recall correctly, he is not your son.”

“Only you and I know that, Lady. He believes he is. Certainly he was born some spans after I married his mother.”

“Don't I recall that you married her out of kindness, to save her from shame and bottling.”

“Kindness, yes. Or perhaps out of lust. She was very beautiful.”

The old woman laughed. “I have always respected your candor. Do you think this device is important?”

“I believe, Madam, that this device is only one of several, or even many. It is my intention to find the others. I've already found a clue to their whereabouts.”

“And you base all this conjecture on what?”

“My reading, Madam, done in my youth, in the archives of the Fortress itself, beginning with an account we have discussed before, concerning the discoveries of Hal P'Jardas.”

“You give credence to his flaming woman, then? What was her name? Tamlar?”

“I believe in Tamlar more now than ever. We are beginning to hear much about the Council of Guardians, Seeress. Their names and attributes are known. Prayer is uttered in their names. They are too often identified with the Rebel Angels for my taste, but if one presumes the mythical nature of such angels, the mis-identification does no harm.”

She regarded him narrowly. “You think this device has something to do with the Council? You think it's magical? Or perhaps merely powerful.”

He thought for a moment before replying, “From a certain point of view, the two are indistinguishable. Sufficient power would always look like magic to one who lacked knowledge of it. And, yes. I think this device will turn out to be very powerful indeed.”

“Ah,” she murmured. “Will that affect me, at all?”

He regarded her with a slight smile for a long moment,
sipping his tea. She did not hurry him. Eventually, he set down the cup and said, “According to P'Jardas, Tamlar said this is the land of Elnith of the Silences, who sleeps beneath these lands and will emerge in time. Think on those words, Lady. If these are the lands of Elnith, then she is here. If she will emerge, in time, then she is hidden now. P'Jardas lived some centuries ago, so she has remained hidden for a long time. You are the seeress. Perhaps you can tell me who or what has slept here all that time. Who, or what will emerge.”

She answered from a throat suddenly dry and rasping. “As I have said, though only to you, I am not a believer in magic.”

“But you are a believer in power,” he said, smiling.

She nodded. “Yes. I am a believer in that.”

“In Bastion, a great deal is heard about the Council of Guardians. It begins always with Tamlar, with fire. Next are mentioned the names of Aarond of the Anvil and Ialond of the Hammer. Is this a systematic seraphium do you think? First fire, then those who shape matter. Then, who next? Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun, who are said to be caretakers of souls, and after them the tutelary deities of earth, air, and water, Hussara, Volian, and Wogalkish, along with one called Jiralk the Joyous, bringer of life. Oh, yes, definitely it is systematic. Or metaphorical.”

He finished his tea and set the cup back in the slot through which it had come. “This assembly may be, of course, both metaphorical and real. There are said to be a score or more of these Guardians.” He rose and bowed to her. “I will come again when I have discovered more. Have you anything to tell me in return?”

“Very little, my friend. Things are quiet here.”

She said it with some bitterness, and as though in acknowledgment, he bowed again, very low, before leaving. When he had gone, the green-robed woman bent her head onto her hands, feeling both weariness and confusion. Before her, the crystal ball came alive with fire, and she raised her eyes to confront a globe of blinding light that faded, al
most at once, into a fleeting image. She thought the image was herself, but it faded too quickly to be sure.

“Elnith,” she said to herself. “Elnith of the Silences. Sleeping below these lands. And what does that have to do with me?”

 

The cavern of Allipto Gomator had been built by several successive Omega Station awake teams when the darkness of the Happening was beginning to wane and time lay heavy on their hands. At first, Nell had considered it the height of hubris to build such a place. It would be dependent for custom upon casual wanderers at a time when there were unlikely to be enough human beings left to wander anywhere! She had, however, underestimated the antsiness of mankind. The Darkness was only half lifted before people began trickling by in ones and twos and dozens, most of them eager to trade a little information about the outside world for a trifle of food or medicine. Nell had been amazed at the number of animals the wanderers had managed to keep alive: horses, cows, llamas, sheep and goats, dogs and cats, various sorts of chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and pigeons, as well as the occasional example of native fauna: deer, squirrel, ferret, bear.

During her last two wakes, Arnole Gazane had been one of her most faithful informants. The various wakers who played “Allipto” had seen him several times, Nell herself had seen him first as a youth, then as a middle-aged man, now as one approaching age. Rising from her chair, she divested herself of her costume and went down the winding stairs into the station itself where she found Raymond, Janet, and Jackson engaged in their continuing argument about the limitations of Omega Station.

Jackson was saying, “The nuclear plants they had time to install couldn't maintain power for the habitat plus 200 coffins, but now there aren't 200 coffins.”

“Strictly speaking, there are,” murmured Janet. “I mean, they're all occupied. The freeze units are still on.”

“But they don't have to be,” Nell said as she approached.

Janet gave her an angry look. “What would we do with…”

“Take the sleepers with us when we go outside,” Nell remarked.

Silence.

“We always planned to go out eventually,” she said firmly. “Listen. It's time, isn't it? Some of the sleepers are still alive, they just won't wake up. Why don't we take them out into the sunlight! Does it matter whether we die out there or down here?”

Raymond heaved a huge sigh. “We've always known Emergence might be necessary; let's just grit our teeth and do it.”

“We've maintained a presence,” said Janet. “That's what we were supposed to do. We've got the old lady up there spreading useful information.”

“I'm the old lady on this shift,” Nell said, “and we need to get past providing information. The population is edging up toward a million. The people in Chasm probably have all the technology we had in the 21st, and the other people are relearning it. We don't have many years left, and we can best help if we're outside. Besides, things are happening. My informant just told me the Bitch thing is oozing itself toward a new construction that's sprung up on the plains southwest of us, toward Henceforth. Doesn't that entice you at all?”

“We can send some pings,” murmured Janet.

Nell cried, “Pings can't get anything out of the Bitch, we've known that for centuries! They can ping at her interminably, and she just ignores them! Let us for the love of God get out of here and
learn
something…”

“I'd like to know something about the Bitch
before
we go out there,” said Janet in a reproving tone.

“You're not going to learn anything in here,” Nell snarled at her.

Janet frowned. “You're so hasty, Nell. Far too hasty. Did any of the other crews find out if it's alive?”

“How would they know, Janet? Everything we've learned about it came from the moon base. They're the ones who
mapped the world for us, including the area of the Arctic covered by that critter. What difference does it make whether it's alive or not?”

“Because it barely moved at all until recently,” said Jackson, putting his hand on Janet's shoulder.

She shook him off. “Something made it move. We ought to find out what before we leave the safety of the redoubt.”

Nell threw up her hands and went to the dispenser for tea.

Looking after her, Raymond said, “If something made it move, it had to be the increasing population. That's the only real change, that and the improvement in natural environment over what we had in the 21st century. Benign changes in general climate. Slight lowering in sea level since the high after the Happening. More ozone. The changes from season to season are much milder now, but you knew that. No change in…”

“All right!” Nell cried from across the room. “Why do we keep repeating what we all know?”

Raymond raised his voice and went on, “…anything else except the number of people. Which has doubled in the last century.”

Janet laughed. “From a half million to a million? There were over four hundred million of us in this country alone!”

Nell said impatiently, “A number we now know to have been excessive for one continent. Presumably, something under one million was about right, or at least, not wrong, because we're reaching that figure without anything else happening. That is, if anything that's happening has anything to do with humanity at all, which it may not! Let's at least
postulate
that more than a million is, if not wrong, at least on its way to becoming wrong.”

Janet snarled, “Nell, who made you the arbiter of what's right or wrong?”

Nell thumped the table. “I'm not making a moral judgement, I'm making a pragmatic one! Before the Happening, the world was full of people, and we were using up the Earth's resources at a fantastic rate. Somehow we felt we'd find some other world before we used up this one, and going
to space was a spectator sport. That game's over. We're not going anywhere! Therefore, all the attitudes that led to use-up-the-world-and-leave-it-behind are
wrong for us
, and whatever attitudes keep the Earth fit for what people and animals are left is
right for us
, and I defy you to come up with any better definition.”

“So what else is new?” Jackson asked, flippantly, then, seeing the expression on her face, “Sorry, Nell. It's just…last time I fell asleep with those words ringing in my ears. I had hoped we'd have something else to discuss by now.”

Nell snorted. “You don't seem to be listening! You want something else to discuss? How about the vast being that's crawling toward the new place out there on the plains? How about Raymond's weird sensor readings on the fog that's haunting Bastion. How about the really weird artifact that's been found under the Fortress in Bastion,
or
the fact that we are beginning to hear a good deal about the Council of Guardians…”