A Door Into Ocean (22 page)

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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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THE WINDOW OF the Hyalite reception hall bulged out over the city. Light points spread and crowded below like a frozen sea of waterfire. Other objects were motile; they swam and pulsed through the city's angular veins. Berenice leaned into the window as if she could seep through its restraint and plunge into the ocean of night. A dark place to hide, to plan her next move … . She had not felt such apprehension since the day she had hidden in the shockwraith's lair.
Malachite could not deliberately have left Shora to the wolves. Yet it was equally unthinkable for Talion to disregard the Envoy's wishes so confidently, the moment his back was turned.
Behind her a dress train swished. “Berenice,” called Cristobel, her tones low yet rising fashionably at the last syllable.
Berenice half turned her head, her eyes cast down. The evening dress she wore was an unaccustomed nuisance. Its long embroidered train anchored her, made her a fixture jutting from the floor, dependent
upon the tortoise-shaped trainsweepers that scurried about to keep the trains untangled and unstepped on.
“Berenice,” said her mother again. “Have you made the acquaintance of our dear unfortunate guests from Pyrrhopolis?” Cristobel's hand drooped in invitation. Her arched nails matched the cream of the stonesign at her neck. Her figure mirrored that of her daughter, but her face was all ovals, from the dome of her forehead to her rounded chin. To achieve a serious air she shrewdly kept her hair natural. Whatever gray hairs appeared, Berenice thought vengefully, she knew who had put them there.
Without a word, Berenice clasped the offered arm. She had to be civil and calm, at least on the outside. Cristobel leaned to her ear and whispered, “Come now, dear, Talion won't hold that spat against you.” She paused, then added, “Our guests, you know, arrived in such unfortunate haste.”
The Pyrrholite couple showed little sign of haste. They wore their provincial style, multiple layers of seasilk, fur trim, beaded embroidery on puffed sleeves, their robes cut short, mid-calf. That was just as well, since a room full of trains could confuse the trainsweepers and short their circuits.
“We still can't find a place,” explained the Pyrrholite woman. “Why it was that everyone had to rush to Iridis, with all those lovely coastal spots around, I have no idea. For months we've looked, and the only establishment remotely suitable doesn't even have a skin-texturing room.
“Your parents took us in,” the husband told Berenice. “How fortunate that one so generous runs the refugee program.”
Cristobel in fact ran most of city politics, her fingers reaching every streetlevel and district. Her lashes lowered. “One must set an example. All Iridians will do their part.”
“Oh, they have, surely,” said the woman. “Of everyone I know, not one has not been taken in somewhere.”
“Oh,” said Berenice, “then are food riots at an end?”
The Pyrrholites blinked at each other.
Cristobel squeezed her daughter's arm. “Of course the common lot have a difficult time. We process hundreds daily. But what of the thousands who failed to escape?”
“Three days the Envoy left us.” The voice of the Pyrrholite man
was low, intense. “Those who got out afterward might have wished they had not. They were little more than ghosts, their skin peeling from the bone, their bodies rotted away … .” He caught himself and offered a charming smile.
“You'll pull through,” Cristobel told the Pyrrholites. “You know, you could regenerate your capital by investing in our lunar development plan … .”
Berenice caught sight of Realgar and her father walking toward her, absorbed in conversation. Realgar's head inclined toward the shorter man, whose indigo talar and train contrasted with his own brilliant dress uniform. Hyalite's features were as precise as his daughter's, though more intricate, with many crisscrossing lines.
Realgar slid his arm behind her, but she kept her expression cold. He knew what Talion was up to—and he had not told her.
Hyalite winked and raised his glass. “When will you two tie the knot at last? You know, my dear, all of us adventurers do settle down, sooner or later.”
“Yes. How's the moon trade?” Too abrupt; she had to keep her voice casual.
Hyalite nodded, drumming his fingers on his empty glass. “Winding up smoothly.” From above drooped a servo arm to replace the glass with a full one.
“Winding up?”
“Yes, actually we're getting out of lunar trade—”
“Out of trade! After forty years, Father?” The depth of her own reaction surprised her. “Free trade” had been her goal for so many years, before the rise of the great Houses.
“The new restrictions make it uneconomical.” Hyalite looked her straight in the eye as he said this. “Mining is the thing now. You can't imagine what minerals lie untouched on the floor of that ocean. Enough to even our trade with distant planets and to pay half our taxes to Torr.”
Berenice's fingers closed tight around her glass. “No more profit in seasilk?”
“Oh, the new raft rakers will take care of the silk and spice line. So much more efficient.”
“It's … hard to think of, Father. After all these years.”
Hyalite's face lit up, and the lines stretched. “Even you are sorry to
see those days pass. Why not? You built the business as much as I, in the early days. As a child, you picked up the langauge before anyone; at age eleven, you were my official interpreter, remember that?”
Despite herself, the corner of her lip pulled into a smile. “I remember that, and how I swam among Sharer children. And I remember the way we traded then.”
“Oh, yes.” Hyalite laughed. “It was marvelously informal at first.” He nodded to Realgar, who listened politely. “No shops had been built yet, so we just heaped all our goods in a pile on the raft. A few days later the stuff would disappear, and we'd find a pile of native stuff, not just seasilk but preserved octopus, herb leaves, even odd sorts of powders that we didn't yet know were medicines.”
Yes, thought Berenice, it was all so informal that Malachite came and went three times without concern for the “native humanoids” of the Ocean Moon. “Won't you miss it, Father? Won't you deal with the natives at all anymore?”
“Well, yes, but the new regime is bound to change things.”
Realgar caught her waist. “Berenice, love, you must be starving,” he said a little too loudly.
“Sh, I'm never hungry.”
But already her mother's gown whooshed toward them. “Into the dining room,” Cristobel commanded. “I'll warn you, though, your father has taken to redecoration in his old age.”
“My dear,” Hyalite chuckled. “New surroundings keep us young, don't they?”
At first glance, Berenice saw nothing new, just the velvet wall with the same polished mosaic panels. She swirled her train back and seated herself between Realgar and the Pyrrholite woman. As her father pulled out a chair across from her, he tangled himself in his own train, despite the little servos scurrying behind. Hyalite was always an outdoors man, never quite used to the city.
Servo arms reached downward with cocktails. The arms were not white but deep amethyst, with ultralong fingers linked by stylized scallops of webbing.
Her breath stopped. For an instant she was back on Shora, in the late afternoon, where eager arms and laughing faces hovered over plates of crabmeat and steaming succulent fillets and seaweeds, and the lively hands were speaking and laughing, almost as much as their lips did. But here, Sharer “arms” were just another—
“Marvelous,” the Pyrrholite woman exclaimed at Berenice's ear. “You're an artistic genius, Hyalite.”
But Hyalite saw his daughter's face. “Berenice, it's just a novelty. I thought you'd—”
The table shuddered beneath her palms as she shot upright. “What have you done? What will become of Shora?”
“I? Why, nothing, child. Please, why upset yourself—?”
She wheeled and ran from the dining room, her train tearing under a hasty step. From behind, her mother hissed at her father, “I told you so.”
In the foyer she spoke to the wall terminal. “What date next passage to Shora?”
As a voice flatly recited the freighter list, Realgar came and caught her by the shoulders. “My love, what's come over you?”
She struggled until his hands fell to his sides. “I've come to my senses, that's all. I warned you about my parents.”
“And you were warned to keep out of affairs of state.”
Fear chilled her again. As if he read her thoughts, Realgar said, “No one wants to hurt you. We want you safe from a situation that does not involve you.”
“Does not—involve—me.” Her words dropped like lead. Unbelievingly she shook her head. “You never took me seriously. At all.”
“
Seriously
? Do you realize all the trouble I've gone to?”
“It's too late, Ral. You've forced me to choose, and I've chosen.” Her throat stuck. She had not actually chosen until that moment. She turned again toward the terminal, but Realgar pulled her back.
“You can't go to Shora.”
“Why not?”
“Martial law.”
Dazed, she repeated, “Martial law? On Shora?”
“We're responsible for them, Berenice, responsible to the Patriarch. The High Protector must govern them somehow.”
“He's invaded them—he's—”
“
No
, by Torr.” Realgar's sudden anger checked her. “Nothing's happened at all—yet. Nothing's happened to your precious Merwen or her precious children. We're about to tighten discipline, that's all. We have to start somewhere. If they're as peaceful as they seem, they won't give us trouble. Trust me, Berenice. I'll go easy on them.”
“You.” She crept backward until her palms met the velvet wall. Her
nails sank into it as if clawing at a padded cell. Her surroundings detonated into unreality; wall moldings and table knobs stood in bold, jagged outline, meaningless fragments apart.
Realgar was holding her, shaking her. “Berenice, do you hear me? You can't go on like this forever.”
“It's over, all right.” Her own voice sounded dead. “It's hard to realize just how over it is.”
“I can't leave you like this; I know you too well.” Genuine anguish shook his voice. “What will become of you,” he whispered, if you don't come round, this time?”
That was it. She was trapped in her parents' house. Sirens and searchlights, combing the seas—inside her head, this time. “A sanatorium.” She spoke now with calm dignity. “Realgar, would you let them put me away in a sanatorium? Would you?”
He did not answer right away. Every tendon of his neck stood out. “I only want what is best for you. You need a long rest. There's my hunting lodge in Sardis. My servos will escort you.”
A sanatorium or a Sardish retreat. What a choice. “I'll go, Ral. Just let me be.”
“You're sure, now? You won't do anything foolish?”
“Oh, no, I promise.” The wealth of Hyalite, a brilliant husband, a ready-made family. Bring me a whorlshell, Mama Berenice.
Flute of whorlshell lift in hand … .
Somewhere, another name was screaming.
THE MORNING AFTER the Spirit Calling in the Chrysolite market square, another Dolomite battalion was brought into town. Soldiers crowded the streets, disrupting traffic and setting tempers on edge. Regular commerce had to carry on, and the vendors put up with it as best they could. By evening most of the entrances were blocked off, but twice as many villagers as the night before stayed for another Calling
with Uriel, whose collection bowl was so full he could almost have slept at an inn. That night they remained without incident, despite the hordes of soldiers that bristled outside.
In the days that followed, an unspoken truce seemed to develop: in the market square, one was safe, but anyone caught out at night in a back alley could still expect arrest or a beating. A new mood of pride infected the populace, as if they had snatched something back from their oppressors. Most soon forgot about Spirit Calling and started playing music and dancing to pass the time until dawn.
The new night life even began to draw traveling acrobats and theater troups who used to ignore the sleepy town, especially once the garrison was cut back again (there were other campaigns, after all) and the pass regulations began to break down. People mislaid their passes with disconcerting frequency, and the lower-ranked soldiers grew increasingly tired of replacing and enforcing them. The job of soldiers was to besiege cities and bring home fortune and glory, not to issue summonses to barefoot villagers. And the garrison commander was reluctant to start anything that might disrupt the flow of tax revenue to Dolomoth.
A month later, only Spinel seemed to remember how it all started. Spinel wandered around town with Uriel, getting an intriguing glimpse of the life of a Spirit Caller. Problems of all sorts were brought to the Caller for his wisdom, and it both fascinated and disturbed Spinel to realize the hidden weights of misery that could bury the simplest of lives. A young woman suffered a hideous skin disease that spread slowly, with no affordable cure. A brother and sister had become mortal enemies after their birth-home was left to one but not the other. Each knew that only the Patriarch could rectify the matter, but somehow Uriel always had an answer, or at least a question, that made them feel better.
At his house, Spinel was introspective. Beryl asked, “Where's your tongue got to, these days? What's a talespinner without a tongue?”
His mother warned, “Wrinkle your brow long enough, and when the cock crows, it will stay.”
Spinel ignored them, so long as they tolerated Uriel, who often slept over in their bit of a hallway. In summer Uriel would sleep out on the beach, but winter's chill sent him indoors with whoever would take him in.
On a warm day, Uriel returned to the sea to bathe himself. Spinel
watched as the old man lathered his shoulders amid the waves that snarled and foamed at the shore. It was easy to imagine that the entire sea, encircled by shore, was just an outsized bathtub compared to the ocean Shora. “Uriel, do you ever get sick of people's complaints?”
“All the time,” Uriel said.
Spinel frowned and pursed his lips. He had not expected such a frank answer. Sand-clouded water swirled around his hands.
“Well, do you think I'm a servo?” Uriel's eyes were laughing at him. “Some more than others. Each soul is unique. Each day brings something new, and much that is the same. How about you?”
Spinel squinted at him, shy of revealing foolishness but curious for a reaction nonetheless. “I think there are two sorts of troubles people have: one sort, the world lays on people; the other sort, people lay on each other.”
“And most, we lay on ourselves.” Uriel waded to shore and dried himself with a rag. He replaced his amorphous robe, then the sparkling starstone.
Spinel was trying to decide about something that had puzzled him for a long time. “You know, when I met Malachite on Shora, I got the feeling that his Patriarch didn't seem to care much about folks like Sharers, or even us. He cared mainly about the Protectors, and a few Iridians maybe, and Merwen if she could ‘run' things. But when the Patriarch talks to you, He cares about us.”
“The Patriarch has many messengers.”
“But He must care the same, no matter who He sends. Uriel, when this Spirit calls to you, how do you know it's Him?”
“When your own father speaks,” Uriel asked, “how do you know?”
“I can see him, touch him.”
“Trust your senses.”
“But Torr is four light-years away,” Spinel insisted. “You can't sense Torr in an instant; it's—it's against
physics.”
Uriel's lips turned up a bit.
“All right, I don't really know any physics. Even so, Uriel—well, what if there's more than one Patriarch on Torr?”
“Did I ever speak of Torr?”
Spinel froze as if something were crawling up his back and all the way over his scalp. Uriel stood there as always, his cheeks sagging with age. Spinel felt himself overcome with mental vertigo. “Your Patriarch … He's not on Torr?”
“Is He? Sometimes He seems more distant than the farthest galaxy. At other times, He whispers in my ear.”
“Then He's everywhere, like Shora. Or could it be that ‘He'
is
the same as Shora?”
“Is the sea half empty or half full?”
Spinel's lips parted, but he stood without speaking. Dried sand itched on his leg; absently he rubbed it off, one foot, then the other.
Suddenly he was angry. “Why do you cheat us, then, all you ‘Spirit Callers'? If ‘He' is everywhere, anyone can call ‘Him.' You play the Protector's game making us think the Torran Patriarch really cares about us somehow, when He wouldn't give a day-old fishhead for any one of us.”
“Didn't I invite you all to call with me, that night in the square?”
“But we couldn't, not like you do. Like you say you do.” Spinel was incensed: a common charlatan had been unmasked.
“You called as much as I did.”
“I sure didn't hear anything.”
“You heard, but did not understand. Understanding takes time.”
“Then
make
people understand. Isn't that your job?”
For a moment Uriel twisted his face as if in intense pain. Then he relaxed and sighed. “I'm not very good at my job.” He reached into a deep pocket of his robe and pulled out something on a thin chain. It was a starstone. He slipped it around Spinel's neck. “Perhaps you'll do better.”
“Hey, what's that! I'm not apprenticed or anything—”
“Who is, then?”
Spinel stood speechless, while the sand blew all around, and the startling object lay cold on his chest. He had given up hope of a stonesign for the Ocean Moon, only to receive without asking an ocean-blue star of stone.

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