A Door Into Ocean (21 page)

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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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IT WAS NOONTIME in the market square. “Melas,” Spinel insisted, “what would happen if every one of us just stayed in the square tonight?”
The farmhand was on his back, fixing a bent wheel on his produce cart. “You're moonstruck.”
“No, listen.” Spinel was mindful of Uriel, who stood close by. The air was cold, but sunlight from between shifting clouds warmed his back a bit. “If
everybody
stayed, even women, customers too.”
“You'd see the biggest massacre this side of Iridis.” Melas grimaced as he pulled out a bent nail with his hammer.
“No, you wouldn't. Think, Melas: What use to them is a market full of corpses? Who would run the town?”
Melas threw down his hammer, picked himself up, and clapped dust from his hands. “They'd ransack the town and rape the women. Or didn't your sister tell you how it was?”
Blood rushed to his face, but he kept himself steady. Spinel could only begin to guess what his family had undergone. “At least Harran tried something. Why didn't you?”
Melas leaped and swung at him. Spinel caught his fists; he was easily the stronger, now. Melas wheezed as they grappled, until another voice interrupted. “Easy, there,” urged Picrite the barber, distracted from shopping. “What's all the fuss, gentlemen?” Picrite added in his smooth-tongued way.
Melas wiped his face. “This young cur came back from the Ocean Moon just to taunt us in our chains.”
“I'm saying there's a way out, Melas. Even the Patriarch says so; just ask—”
Picrite's gaze fell. “Your own brother-in-law died trying,” the barber said.
“But there's another way.”
“Look,” snapped Melas, “if the Patriarch wanted us to be free, why did He send Dolomites to ravage us?”
Spinel looked to Uriel, whose robe swirled in the breeze. Uriel said, “The Patriarch knows that men must make their own freedom.”
Disgusted, Melas turned away.
Picrite looked furtively about, then whispered, “A Spirit Caller might do something. Dolomites are superstitious folk; they even want their beards cut a certain way, depending on which planets are up.”
“That's just it,” said Spinel. “Uriel will stand with us.”
“Stand where?”
Melas shouted back, “If you get even
ten
men to stay, I'll join you.” With a surly shove at his cart, he moved off.
Spinel clapped his hands. “Here we go. We'll fill the square yet. It's simple,” he explained to Picrite. “We just stand here, all bunched together, and don't leave. And Uriel—”
“I will lead an Open Calling at that time,” Uriel said, “A time for us all to call to the Spirit of the Patriarch.”
“To call for the freedom of Chrysoport?” Picrite was definitely keen on it now.
“We start a half hour before curfew,” Spinel added.
“Hm.” Picrite rubbed his chin. “I have to get back to my shop, but I'll let my customers know. Might even smuggle some knives for protection.”
“Oh, no, you can't do that. A flash of a knife could touch off a massacre, like Melas said.” Spinel's own words startled himself. This was not just a game, he thought uneasily.
Uriel's hand lifted. “Weapons are inappropriate for Spirit Calling.”
“Ha; the Patriarch Himself has enough of them.” But Picrite assented and went his way.
Elated, Spinel moved on with Uriel among the vending stands to recruit others. The next two they approached shook their heads, but several more were receptive. A few women were particularly eager, some who had lost a son or a husband in the uprising. The message spread throughout the town.
By evening, when Spinel reached home, even his father had heard of the plan.
“Yes.” Cyan sighed. “Rhyol told us.”
“Rhyol—oh.” The Dolomite “lodger.” Fear crept on Spinel then; it had not occurred to him that the enemy was bound to find out beforehand.
“Rhyol is worried,” Cyan added. “He urged us to stay home and bar the door.”
Spinel hardened his resolve. “I'll bet he's worried. Too late to stop now, and I'll be there, if none of you are.”
“We'll
all
be there,” Galena called from the hall. “You can tell Rhyol his dinner's on the stove.”
 
Above the market square, the sun sank into a bed of pink clouds, rich as the velvet lounge of the
Cristobel
. The shadow from Rhodochron's tree crept over the cobblestones to where Spinel stood.
Uriel held a bell overhead and rang it steadily, signaling to begin the Call. Spinel looked around self-consciously, wondering who would respond. A few villagers warily drew near.
A guard stepped up to Uriel, his lips set in a grim line. “You're not intending any trouble, are you, Father?”
Uriel inquired, “Do you address myself or the Patriarch?”
The guard muttered some reply and sketched a six-point in the air, just above his ruby stonesign. He strode off to rejoin the group of Dolomites at the square's main entrance, twice the usual number. Nonetheless, a crowd soon grew around the Spirit Caller, huddling together for warmth as well as for safety.
To Spinel's amazement, some women brought their children along. Surely they knew what they were getting into? His eyes darted nervously, then froze. “Mother!”
Galena pushed her way through the crowd, with Cyan in tow, who carried Oolite on his shoulders. And Beryl actually brought her infant Chrysoprase, mercifully asleep in her arms. “Not the baby!” Spinel exclaimed.
“I said all of us,” Galena told him. “Have we a nursemaid at home?”
“But—” Spinel lowered his voice. “Beryl, this could get rough.”
“Tell me about it, Spinny.” Beryl's cheeks were drawn tight. “You think we're any safer at home?”
Spinel looked down: there was nothing to say. In Torr's name, how had his own town come to be a battleground? With men disarmed and helpless, children became victims and soldiers both. But that was not the plan, was it? Anxiously he looked back to Uriel, who had lowered his bell and now stared solemnly at the sky.
An amplified voice blared overhead. “All citizens immediately disperse to your homes. Anyone who violates curfew will face prison, repeat, prison. All citizens disperse immediately …” The voice roared on, repeating its message.
“It's not even six yet,” came an indignant shout. Villagers nodded and moved closer together. Uriel stood still, deaf to the world. Spinel peered above heads, trying to gauge their numbers; at least three hundred, he figured, counting children.
A disturbance stirred the edge of the crowd and rippled inward. The Dolomite captain was elbowing his way through to the Spirit Caller. “Enough of this foolery,” he told Uriel. “No loitering in the square after curfew.”
Uriel showed no sign of recognition. His rapt face watched the heavens.
“Enough, do you hear! No standing in the square!”
“He can't talk now,” a woman said. “He's calling the Spirit of the Patriarch.”
“To free Chrysoport,” another added.
The Dolomite turned in disgust. “You'll never be free; we'll sell you to the slavers,” he told the crowd. “Five minutes, and we start to haul you off.”
From farther off, Albite the baker cried, “Then who'll make your bread for breakfast?”
The Dolomite stiffened and yelled, “For the last time, no more standing in the square!” His beard shook and his voice echoed from the storefronts across the street.
Very slowly, Uriel sat down, still staring skyward. Spinel did likewise, and automatically others followed. With a wave outward, the entire crowd was lowered, until none but the guard stood in the square.
He turned so crimson, he might have had a stroke. Instead, he stomped roughly out of the crowd, heedless of whom he stepped on.
Spinel let out a deep sigh and shut his eyes a moment. When he looked up again, he saw all the people wedged calmly together, desultory frocks and caftans like a meadow of wildflowers, and beyond in
the street a solid wall of soldiers. Light was fading fast, draining colors away, until flashlights poked through the dark; somebody had been smart enough to think of that. Voices were murmuring, and a few infants wailed.
A scream shattered the calm, then another. People at the edge of the crowd were being dragged off, limp beneath the neuralprobe.
Around Spinel, figures extended, half stood; dark eyes widened, like cows' eyes. Here and there a dusky shadow popped up and scrambled out to hurry home.
“Uriel!” Desperately Spinel whispered at him, pleading for help, but Uriel was too busy Calling. He had to do something, though, or all that day's effort would go for nothing. What could Spinel do; what would Lystra have done?
Spinel found himself shaking all over. He knew he was about to get up and do something, and he felt quite out of his head. He rose unsteadily, as if the ground were rolling. “Bring them back!” he called to the wall of guards. “Bring them back, or we'll
never
leave, do you hear?”
“Never!” a motley chorus echoed. “Bring them back!”
“And tomorrow,” Spinel added,
“we'll bring the whole town
.”
Of course, the town jail could not possibly hold the whole town. Now people settled in more firmly and shouted defiance at their oppressors. The screams stopped; it appeared that only a fraction of the crowd had been hauled away. But the mood was getting uglier, and here and there a knife glinted in the flashlight beams, which was just what Uriel had warned against. How much would the Dolomites stand for? Soldiers now pressed in a ring all around the crowd—practically the whole garrison must be here. One false move, and …
Uriel raised his arm high and beckoned all who could see. “The Patriarch hears us,” Uriel said. “The Patriarch calls on us to sing to Him. We will sing the Anthem of the Nine Legions.”
Spinel gasped; it was a stroke of genius. All the armies of Valedon put together would think twice before disrupting a singing of the Patriarch's Anthem. Uriel began, Spinel loudly joined in, and the song swelled throughout the crowd. Everyone knew at least the refrain, and most knew the nine legionary verses as well. And Uriel knew countless others, for every known planet and some long dead … .
Spinel's voice faltered at last, exhausted from the day's campaign. A few stars peeked through the clouds. There was even a hazy sickle of a
blue moon. He slumped at his mother's side. As his eyelids fluttered he imagined that the stars were plantlights above the clickfly webs at a Sharer celebration. Then Lystra flashed into his dream, and he plunged into the ocean after her, pursuing her beating feet even to the deepest realm of nautilus and seaswallower. I'll chase you to the floor of the world, his mind whispered, but she never looked back
BACK IN IRIDIS, Berenice could hardly wait to see Realgar again. At the door to his Iridian establishment, she was met by three pairs of guards: Iridians in blue with gilt tufts at the shoulder tips; Sards, maroon beneath capes of indigo; and Dolomites in their shapeless gray woolen cloaks. It gave her a start, for Realgar had commanded only Sards before.
A servo reached for her bearskin coat, but she kept it to show Realgar, since he had captured the beast after all. The servo padded ahead of her down the magnificent Sardish carpet, a universe of hunting scenes in russet and gold. At either side of the hall stood beasts he had caught and preserved, from stags and wildcats to the dreaded silver bears.
Realgar had a peculiar sense of honor about the hunt. He would hunt quite alone in the evergreen wilderness, armed only with portable weapons, though a servocopter could have bagged a forest full of fauna in a day. Men, he would say, were ordinary, civilizable creatures to be fought and mastered by the state, but wild things were an impenetrable mystery, only to be faced alone. In a strange way her heart understood this, though she feared for him almost more in the forest than on the battlefield.
And yet his worst tragedy, like her own, had fallen in the safety of his own home with his dearest at his side … . Berenice shuddered and pulled at the clawed clasps of her coat. For now, at least, Realgar was
posted in civilized Iridis, rather than among Sards whose sophistication overlaid exquisite treachery. In a sense he was a rebel among his own kind, though not as much as she was among hers.
Merwen … if only you could understand
.
A door slid wide. Cool air brushed her, and blue sky smiled in the open courtyard: a shooting range. Berenice could not see the targets, but Realgar stood in sharp profile, his left hand at the base of the fire-whip in preference to his damaged right, the shaft leveled with a blue streak toward a hidden target.
Unconsciously Berenice clenched her fingers together, responding to the tension focused in his stance. There had been a time, just after her husband left her, when she might have become an officer. It was a good career for a lone noblewoman without hope of a family.
Realgar must have seen her, despite his concentration, for the streak vanished. He tossed his weapon to the servo and came quickly to meet her. “We all missed you,” Realgar said as he embraced her.
Cassiter was watching them gravely. She looked uncannily grown up in her red uniform that was a miniature of her father's. As soon as Berenice looked at her, the girl's face lit up and she skipped over to reach her arms up to Berenice's neck. “Mama Berenice, you'll be our mama, now, won't you? Did you bring me my whorlshell?”
“
Shora,
I forgot.” With everything else on her mind—still, Berenice could have kicked herself for the lapse. “Next time, I promise.”
“Then you're going away again.” Cassiter looked down and pouted.
Berenice removed the girl's round cup of a helmet and pressed her hair, the fine straw-colored locks of her lost mother. “Next time, perhaps you'll come to visit
me
.”
Berenice glanced at Realgar for his reaction, but he only said, “I hope you plan to stay long enough to leave your coat, at least.”
With a trill of laughter she surrendered her coat at last to the waiting servo, who almost seemed relieved to carry it off.
“A worthy foe that was,” Realgar observed, meaning the bear. “Nearly clawed my eyes out.”
Berenice made a face of mock horror. “Ral, I'd much rather have your eyes than an old bearskin!”
“So you've got both. Cassi's getting to be a good shot, now, aren't you, girl? Show Mama.” So it was plain “Mama” now. He had always been careful to say “Mama Berenice.”
Cassiter obligingly returned to the range and took her firewhip from
the servo. She aimed it seriously, her cheeks and lips as straight as her father's. Berenice moved behind her just in time to see the target appear on the screen: six black dots in a hexagon standing on end, innocuous enough. But the dots had barely leaped into view before three lines of flame connected them, intersecting precisely in the center. There was not a sound from the weapon, only a
whoosh
as the flames sprouted into a starsign.
Berenice stared, vaguely uneasy.
“Excellent,” said Realgar. “You're not superstitious, are you?”
“Of course not. Very good, Cassi.” Jets of carbon dioxide sprayed the flames down.
“Would you like a try at it?” Realgar asked.
“Thanks, but I'm out of practice. Cassi would show me up terribly.”
They retired to the parlor for refreshment, and Elmvar was brought in by the nanny, a servo of broad maternal build wrapped in a cheerfully embroidered peasant skirt. Realgar and Berenice sipped cocktails, while Cassiter and Elmvar plowed through the tea cakes, munching the ones they liked and crumbling those they did not. Realgar said, “I was comforted to observe that Sharer children are little better behaved, despite the abundance of mothers.”
Berenice laughed as delicately as any other cultured Iridian lady. She refrained from pointing out that Realgar in fact ruled his own children as strictly as he chose. He wanted to make her feel needed as a mother, but she felt that far more from the way Cassi hugged her.
“It's good to see you happy,” Realgar said. “You never seem to laugh, when you're purple.”
“Do I not?” She would think about that later. “Sharers are full of laughter. How is your new post working out?”
He turned first to the children. “All right, kids, off to bed.”
“Aw, Papa,” they chorused. They hugged Berenice again before their peasant-skirted nanny bundled them away.
Realgar leaned back and stretched his legs. “You have no idea what it took to get away for a night.” He told her some of his concerns, mostly things Berenice either knew or guessed. The diversity of the High Protectoral Guard was one headache. Talion had decreed the Guard's cosmopolitan makeup, to enhance the conviction of Valans everywhere that the High Protector and his Guard were in fact theirs. And besides, Berenice thought, Talion little trusted his own ambitious underlings. Realgar would not say as much, although he must have
been aware of why he was appointed over several Iridians senior to him.
“It's a curious mix,” Realgar said. “Dolomite troops are the sturdiest in a crunch but fiercely proud, tending to fly off the handle at a fancied insult. Also, they're put off by modern equipment and female commanding officers.” Iridian and Sardish troops contained about a third women. “Your Iridians, now, are precisely trained, beautiful for drills and parade exercises. But get them on a battlefield—” Realgar shook his head. “A corps of servos. My apologies,” he added politely, “but it's no wonder you get provincials to fight your real battles.”
Berenice raised her glass. “And which troops are the best, all round?”
“Well.” He looked up and past her. “Sards have special skills, of course. Especially in intelligence.” Berenice watched his face turn blank. He almost never displayed his thoughts directly, but often he showed a blankness that might tell as well. Sards were masters at information extraction, the twisting and probing of minds, a guild so covert that even its stonesign was unknown to the uninitiated. Patriarchal law held that the mind was inviolate, but no state could function without some flexibility.
“Berenice, before it slips my mind, we're to dine with your parents tomorrow night.” At her frown he added, “You did promise.”
“I'm to see Talion that day. I have to make sure that—”
Realgar took her hands and murmured, “You hold too much on your shoulders. Leave Shora to the Patriarch. Surely you must trust His wisdom.”
She let herself melt in his arms, but the sense of unease would not subside.
 
The next day, Lady Berenice walked the skystreet of Center Way toward Palace Iridium, ignoring solicitous hangcars as usual. Without newscubes to tell her, she might not have known that Iridis swarmed with Pyrrholite refugees this winter and that food riots overran the older sections. The bazaars far below were full, as always, and from this height who could tell how many of the crowd were foreign, or how ragged were their clothes, or how sunken their eyes.
Palace Iridium rose ahead, its monumental facade crowned by the image of Malachite. Within the palace, Berenice had to wait ten minutes outside the office of the High Protector.
Talion himself looked startlingly solid after Berenice's sessions with his light-image, as if someone had just filled in a mold of his form with clay. He clasped his fingers upon his desk. “Lady Berenice. What have you to report?”
“Little, in fact. Sharers are content with the current situation. I have certain questions—”
“You intend to interview myself?” Talion's voice deepened with irony, “Our side is content, as well.” His words were rapid, even brusk. “In fact, you may consider this an exit interview. From now on, we can manage without your services, which you so graciously provided for—was it six years?”
Berenice was surprised and irritated. “I still serve Shora. I must know what Malachite intends for that world.” She had to find out how far Merwen's fears had been justified.
“Oh, not to worry. It turns out that the native life science is less developed than we had feared.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Envoy found that their ‘lifeshaping' would require a generation at least to create any threat to us.”
“Well, I told you they were no threat.” Although not for that reason.
“Exactly,” said Talion. “You are prescient, as always. Now events can take their normal course.” A melodic tone of dismissal sounded. “If you will excuse me, my lady, I run a tight schedule.”
Automatically she rose and turned toward the door. Then she stopped and turned back. “What normal course?”
“The present course. My lady, I have a meeting now.”
Berenice stepped to his desk and leaned across it. “Will things go back to what they were?”
“Of course not.” Talion stood behind the desk; two servos moved discreetly from opposite sides of the room. “A new era begins in our—”
“New
how
, Talion?”
The mask of his face slipped askew. The High Protector was shaken by such astounding breach of protocol. “If you really care so much for your native friends, why didn't you get them to take an Envoy?”
“But that takes
time
, to adjust.”
“Malachite had six months. That had to suffice. It will be nine years
before he returns, don't you see? He can't sit and wait for little men to make up their minds.” Talion pulled back, regretting his outburst. “I warned you not to meddle in affairs of state. Leave, before you leave me no choice.”
The servos were closing in.
“Nine years or ninety, you will answer to the Patriarch!” Berenice fled the office, the halls, and the intricate maze of gem-studded corridors. Shaking uncontrollably, she found herself outdoors, leaning against the face of Palace Iridium, her body framed by a single marble tessera of the epic mosaic. Across the courtyard stood the skystreet, from which viewpoint these tesserae spread as small and numberless as grains of sand.

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