A Door Into Ocean (33 page)

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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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FOR MERWEN, DAYS crawled by with still no word from Lystra. Each day her heart died a little, felt a bit emptier, more certain that Lystra's soul had fled the Last Door and would not come again in the same shape to Raia-el.
The lifeshaping tunnels were rebuilding, slowly. Rafts all over Shora had been hit, but the few lucky ones sent starter cultures by clickfly to everyone in need. And this time Usha built emergency caches into secret places on the raft, to be better prepared for next time.
As Merwen had promised, she took in three stonesick guests, all of whom had been Unspoken by their Gatherings at other rafts and had been sighted at the soldier-place. Shaalrim and Lalor also had moved in, to share the intense care that these guests needed. Often Merwen would stay up with them throughout the night, listening to the endless song of the sea, muffled though it was now with the swamp of overgrown raft seedlings. So long as she stayed close by her sisters, they would stay away from the soldier-place with its gemstones.
On those nights Merwen wondered a thousand times where Lystra was, and where the seaswallowers were, a worry almost as bad as Lystra, for the raft seedlings had to be thinned out, and fleshborers swarmed so thick that one could barely stay in the water. The overcrowded raft seedlings festered and oozed scum that poisoned fish and octopus, while fleshborers devoured what little remained. Then mudworms bloomed and turned the sea brown, without fish to consume them; and fanwings that skimmed the sea for food sickened from the mudworms, until flocks of their bodies drifted on the raft seedlings. The one thing worse than swallower time was the time when swallowers failed to appear.
It turned out that swallowers were traveling northward, after all, but they crowded into narrow lanes, staying hundreds of raft-lengths away from any Valan dwelling. Usha sampled the sea and detected a toxin that repelled seaswallowers.
Merwen was in the silkhouse, reshaping fungal swirls on the wall, when a helicopter came again, hovering and sputtering to a halt outside.
Quickly she sat down with her crippled mother, to reassure her.
Ama's hand pressed hers, just a little. “Think of them, Merwen. I never thought I'd see a sister alive more helpless then myself, yet so often, now, they drop from the sky. It's hard not to pity them.”
Merwen smiled and thought how a few words from her mother could breed more strength than days of strain wore away.
The Valan death-hasteners came in for Merwen, of course; they never seemed to care for anyone else. As usual she let herself go limp in their grasp, limper even then Ama, who could still flick an eyelid or raise a hand to her dear ones. For the Unspoken Valans, Merwen would make no sign at all with her body, neither to help nor hinder. What use was it, when they could not touch her soul?
Still, it could do her own body no good to be bumped across the raft and into the dead machine until welts swelled all over. Nor was it any better for her soul to be hauled off as if worth no more than a netful of fish. She had to remember, always, that she was in the hands of unfortunates, but the effort drained her will.
Where would she end up this time? The shell of dank, rotting stone? Instead, she found herself in the place of Realgar the word-weaver again, for the first time since Unspeech had begun. Merwen relaxed a bit; the visit was bound to be brief, since she could say nothing. Next to him, though, stood the blond one who committed atrocities against the mind. In both their faces the purple microbes bloomed, and Merwen wondered what that signified. Would the death-hasteners plumb new depths of madness, even as Trurl had warned?
Someone else, in a dusty yellowish blanket, waved arms at her. “Merwen! It's me; I came back, Merwen, to troubleshare again.”
She reeled at the voice. Not Spinel, not here. Had Spinel fallen sick too?
“It's
me,
Merwen. Don't you know me?” With a flurry of movement the garment was loosed and tossed in the air. Spinel was free after all, as alive as Merwen's own daughters. She rushed to embrace him, until the soldiers pulled them apart, and her bruises throbbed anew.
“Enough,” said Realgar, with a glance at jade. Jade's metal stick touched Spinel.
Spinel's eyes rolled from the pain, then he tottered and half collapsed. He picked up the blanket again and dragged it over his head, his face a picture of misery.
His pain stung Merwen far worse than her own. Spinel was more than her own daughter; he was a Valan child who had placed himself freely in her hands, her last bright hope for a oneness of Valan and Sharer. Spinel was purple by choice, and the day he had made the choice, Merwen had pledged her life against his pain.
Spinel's throat dipped as he swallowed. “It's … not so bad, Merwen.”
Merwen's eyes fell, overcome with the anguish and yet the joy that Spinel was here again as a Sharer. Even his starstone and plumage were that of Uriel, not altogether a bad thing. Deliberately she seated herself on the floor to compose her mind, as if for a Gathering. Spinel glanced at the soldiers, then sat before her.
“Spinel, I want to know,” said Realgar, “how long Merwen and the other Protectors plan to flout our rule.”
Spinel swallowed again. “He wants to know how long you plan to … not share will.”
“Spinel, we may not concern ourselves with what the Unspoken ask to know.”
“But I have to, or it hurts,” Spinel blurted.
Merwen realized that the young Valan did not know whitetrance and could not control his pain at all. It dawned on her, then: without whitetrance, no Valans could properly control their own pain.
She had always known they lacked whitetrance, but she had never drawn this connection. Conscious beings were meant to control pain, to say yes or no to their physical selves, else how could their souls be freed?
“One more chance, Spinel,” Realgar warned.
“Please, Merwen—”
“Since you ask, Spinel, we will of course resist until Valans leave or share healing.” Valans grew old without learning whitetrance; no wonder they were ill.
“Does she realize,” said Realgar, “that many more sisters will die?”
“Do you realize that others will die?” Spinel said hollowly.
“Sharers have died, physically, since the beginning of time.”
“But deaths will be hastened,” Realgar added. “Does Merwen wish to have that on her conscience? Does she know that we have her daughter?”
Spinel said, “Do you know Lystra's here? I spoke with her, but she still shares anger with me.”
Lystra, alive still.
Merwen's hope soared on wings, then plummeted. Lystra, in a stone cell, all this time. “Is she well?”
“No, she's—” Pain from the metal stick twisted his face once more.
Despite herself Merwen shut her eyes hard. “Spinel, this place makes me tired. Why don't you come home with me?” If only Spinel would come home so Usha could share with him the way to hold pain in his fingerwebs. No, he had no fingerwebs, but he did have a soul, and that made all the difference.
“Enough nonsense,” said Realgar. “The breathmicrobes. Tell her to get rid of them, or else.”
Spinel said, “He wants you to chase out the breathmicrobes.”
Merwen opened her eyes again and considered this. “A sad wish, Spinel. If Valans intend to live in our ocean, surely they wish to swim as well as possible.”
“Spinel, Merwen knows what Valans think of breathmicrobes, and we know where this new strain came from.”
Spinel said, “He thinks you made the breathmicrobes to resist Valan medicines.”
“Usha did make the strain,” Merwen said. “It escaped from her collection when our tunnels were destroyed.”
“Then she can get rid of it,” Realgar insisted.
“He still doesn't want to share it, Merwen.”
The request was fair enough, Merwen thought. Suppose she offered a “cure,” if Spinel were to be freed, and Lystra … No, that would mean trading threats, a sick thing to do. She must offer to share the “cure” outright, hard though it was to think of breathmicrobes as an illness to be cured.
Before she responded, Realgar said, “Tell her to get rid of the strain, if she values her children.”
Spinel's mouth opened. “Your—your daughters, Merwen,” he stuttered. “Something will happen.”
Her heart sank. A threat had been made; it was too late to be generous. “Lystra is a selfnamer,” she said calmly.
“Her younger daughters,” Realgar corrected. “And all the children of Sharers everywhere.”
“I think he means Weia and Wellen.” Spinel barely forced the words out.
“I hear you, Spinel.” There was a pause, expanding as if to fill the room. Merwen stretched herself, her back straightened, and her breasts
lifted. “Do you know for what reason sisters become Unspoken? It is because they cry for demands which would only hurt them most.”
Realgar leaned forward across his desk. “This is no riddle game. You are ruthless, Protector: you stop at nothing, even infecting our own children. Very well. Every Sharer child age two to twelve will be held as security until something cures this plague.”
Spinel said nothing, but sat like a stone.
“Go on, Spinel. Every native child age two to twelve.”
Still he said nothing. A shriek split the room; Spinel's eyes stood out from the sockets, his body collapsed and curled up on the floor.
“I hear, Spinel,” Merwen whispered, sensing the defeat into which Spinel had unwittingly trapped her.
“Much better. You're talking sense at last.” Realgar nodded to Jade, who replaced the stick at her belt. “What do you say, Protector? Twenty-four hours to think it over?”
Her eyes widened with a new idea. “I will do something else for Valans, Spinel, something they all need, very badly; for this, I would share speech again. I will share with them the whitetrance to govern pain.”
This only seemed to infuriate Realgar all the more. “You still dare to flaunt your illegally deathblocked minds? What kind of a selfnamer are you? Do you think nothing of your own children?”
“I am a very poor selfnamer, Spinel. I lose patience too quickly. Perhaps my daughters will share more understanding with Valan children than I do.”
Spinel was sobbing quietly on the floor, his starstone swung out from his neck.
“No grace period,” said Realgar curtly. “Your children are forfeit.”
The soldiers hauled her out, without waiting for her to turn white.
 
Realgar was surprised and gratified at how well Talion's strategem had worked. That young Spirit Caller really was a key to the heart of Protector Merwen, her first significant weakness that Realgar had discerned.
But he would have to follow through with taking the children. Though it was stretching the letter of the Code, which allowed hostages to be taken only from key officials, he could fall back on the official Sharer claim that all their adults were equal Protectors under their own law. To take their children—an ingenious move: he wondered
why he had not thought of it before. It would not be long before some one of those mothers cured the Plague.
Beside his desk, Jade still stood, rigid as an epileptic. Her face and hands were deep violet, almost indigo; it seemed to bloom worse in women. “I know what I'd like to do,” Jade said. “Line up those little ones and snuff them out before their mothers' eyes. That would get results.”
“Cool down, Jade,” he warned.
“The Patriarch's Law wasn't made for catfish, I tell you. Not for their Protectors, not for their daughters. All those little brats will spit in your eye as sure as that old cat you just threw out.”
AROUND THE GLOBE, all the native children that could be found were hauled in to the Valan company bases. At Headquarters, that meant over a hundred youngsters were herded into the infirmary under Doctor Nathan's supervision. The age range eliminated troublesome infants and adolescents, but still they did not settle in easily. Unless sedated, they would not stay in their beds; instead, they huddled in corners underneath, as if seeking a tunnel-like shelter. Finally Nathan had the beds wheeled out and spread mattresses across the floor. That seemed to work better.
Food was another problem, until Spinel was called in to advise the staff. Spinel turned out to be helpful in other ways; he was known and trusted by the Raia-el children, and he knew all their games and stories. Soon he was indispensable to Nathan, as he kept the girls entertained and in reasonable health. The doctor was relieved to keep some respect for Patriarchal Law, and Realgar was convinced he could keep the little ones until their mothers gave in.
Spinel was kept too busy to think, in the mattress-lined infirmary, with the girls who clamored for a story or the others who had to be
coaxed to eat. He felt a warm glow inside. For the first time in months, he thought, he was really doing something to help his Sharer sisters.
Some of the girls still huddled alone, withdrawn, with hollow stares. Spinel winced to see them, the ones who would not respond. But others had recovered their wits quickly, and the older ones tried to arrange some kind of order in their strange surroundings. Wellen mimicked Usha's brisk mannerisms, urging others to sweep off their mattresses and finish the food on their plates, even if it did not taste like the squid steamed at home.
As they recovered courage, the girls began to clamor for their mothers again, more boldly now. Wellen decided to call a “Gathering” to address the problem, since everyone knew that the Gathering had the last word on everything. No one there had a selfname yet, but they could choose them easily enough—the Teasing One, the One Who Won't Go to Sleep, the One Who Spits Up Her Food. Wellen was simply the Screamer, since everyone agreed she screamed louder and more piercingly than anyone else could. Spinel called himself the Impulsive One, and some girls complained they did not know what that meant, but he stuck with it.
They crowded closely into one of the wards; an elbow knocked Spinel's eye when he tried to rearrange his cramped legs. The room was full of wriggling arms and translucent webbed hands, and voices chattering excitedly all at once.
The door to the corridor swung out and a staff nurse poked his head in.
“It's okay,” Spinel called out. “Just another game.”
The white coat vanished.
“Quiet!”
Wellen shrieked. She had no idea how to start a Gathering, but this way seemed effective. The girls settled down to a hum of whispering and giggles as they shoved into each other. “All right,” said Wellen, “the reason we're making a Gathering is to figure out how to get home.”
“Home, I want to go ho-ome,” whined Malsha, and she began to cry. Others joined the chorus. Spinel's throat stuck and he thought, Another minute of this and I'll be crying, too. He hugged Malsha and tried to soothe her as she pressed her head to his chest.
“We
all
want to go home. But how?” Wellen's eyebrows furrowed like Usha's.
“Swim home!” piped Weia Who Spits Up Her Food.
“Yes, swim home,” others joined, and their mattresses squeaked as they bounced.
Spinel called above their bobbing heads, “The guards will stop you. The guardbeam will reach you and bring death.”
“We won't reach for any guardbeam,” Wellen said.
“But the beam will reach you anyhow.” From the top of the garrison, a directed-energy unit aimed constantly at the sea around the perimeter. There could be no escape by sea.
Someone said, “Let's float away on airblossoms.”
“Good idea,” said Wellen. “Where do we get airblossoms?”
“We'll send for them by clickfly. My mom will send them.”
“Mine, too … .”
Spinel sighed. The idea was less than practical, but it would keep their hopes up.
A girl started to moan, drowning out the discussion. “Ssh,” said the others, hugging and patting her. But her sister shook her head. “She's tired of gathering. She always does that when she's had enough.”
Wellen's eyes opened wide. “We've all had enough. We'll all scream. We'll
all scream,
until they let us go home.” She took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and screamed at the top of her lungs.
Within minutes, every girl in the room had joined in. Spinel clapped his ears against the din; then he picked himself up and stepped awkwardly over squirming bodies to reach the door. As he pushed the door open, a nurse and Doctor Nathan came running down the corridor. “What's going on?” shouted Nathan, his voice barely audible.
“It's just a game—” The screams drowned him out; it was hopeless.
Nathan pulled Spinel down the corridor until they could hear each other. “What set them off?”
“They want to go home,” Spinel admitted.
The doctor wiped his sleeve across his forehead. His eyes closed, then opened to gaze balefully at Spinel. “What's keeping their mothers, anyway? Why don't they give in and get their daughters back?”
Spinel shrugged and looked at his feet. “Maybe they don't know how.” He tried to squelch any thought of what Merwen and the rest must be going through.
“Can't you calm the girls again?” The doctor rubbed his hands anxiously.
Curious, Spinel wondered what would happen if the girls could not be calmed. “I don't think so,” he said reflectively. “Once they get started, they'll scream for hours.”
Nathan rolled his eyes and sighed. “Torr's name, I'll have to sedate the whole lot of them.”
“Oh, no, don't do that.” The thought of all those children lying doped sickened him. Already several nurses were at the door with their needles poised. “Wait. Let them outside for a while, that will do it. They need more swimming time.”
Nathan looked relieved. “Sure, they can spend the rest of the day in the swim cage.”
So the nurses hustled them out to the swim cage, a giant collander with a fence around the edge, set in the water off the deck. Gleefully the girls plunged in, while guards collected at the edge and ran boats around the fence of the cage. Spinel joined the children for a while, diving and splashing and chasing one another.
By suppertime, the girls had to be coaxed back out of the water for their meal in the detested infirmary. In fact, they came more easily than usual, since the exercise had whetted their appetites. Spinel urged them out, promising plates full of fresh fish for dinner, with a long song-story about Shora to share afterward. When the last pair of webbed feet had padded off to the infirmary, he leaned exhausted in the outer doorway, where a wet trail remained as if a caravan of frogs had marched in.
Nathan laid a hand on Spinel's bare back. “I don't know how we'd manage without you. I would have given up long ago.”
“Thank you, sir,” Spinel began, but something in the doctor's praise gave him pause. “What do you mean, given up?”
“If those girls wasted away to nothing, I couldn't very well keep them here. I'd lose my license.”
Spinel was chilled. Did his comfort for the children only prolong their captivity?
“Come in for your supper,” Nathan added. “You've more than earned it.”
“In a minute, sir.”
The door clicked shut. Alone, Spinel watched the twilit sky. A rush of suppressed thoughts welled up in his skull. There were Merwen and Usha and all the families of Raia-el, ground to pieces by the Valan machine. Lystra, he knew, was locked away beyond sight or sound,
subject to horrors of which only rumors trickled out on the tongues of Jade's guards. In the midst of it all, Spinel himself had become nothing more than a gear in that machine, making the wheels turn while he enjoyed a false freedom. He was worse than useless here; he would be better off dead.
Spinel found himself walking aimlessly across the windswept deck, toward the perimeter fence. As he reached a gate, his feet dragged to a halt.
The sentry grinned and lunged forward. “Haven't had enough ocean?” Her voice was a gruff contralto.
“I guess not.” Spinel forced a careless tone and twirled the starstone on his bare chest.
The gate creaked and clanged. “You come back when my shift's up, and I'll show you a good time.”
Spinel's heart pounded as he skipped along the open edge, an arm's-length away from the waves and death from the guardbeam. But there were rafts beyond the horizon, where he belonged. Maybe the land beyond death was like that, a living raft on the infinite sea.
 
In the watchtower atop the headquarters complex, an alarm buzzed. The guard on duty leaped from his chair where he had slept for the past half hour.
Outside the southeast window, the beam stretched down to the sea, where it ended in a cloud of steam.
The monitor droned that a man without an identity tag had dived off the deck a few seconds before. Place of impact had sustained direct fire; estimated chance of hit, eighty-two percent.
The guard yawned and watched the steam roll over the raft seedlings. Ten to one it was just another legfish plopped over the deck. Unless some poor bloke forgot his tag.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Still the monitor scanned blank. Satisfied, the guard turned away. Even if somebody had dived deep enough to avoid boiling, he would have had to come up for air by now.
 
In the infirmary ward, Wellen tugged at the white rags of the malefreak that was clearing plates away. “Spinel promised to share a story,” Wellen croaked, her voice still hoarse from the screaming. “Where is Spinel?”
“Don't know.” The malefreak went on stooping to collect plates,
some of which Wellen had stacked neatly, while others had landed face down, spreading greenish sauce over the mattress. No matter how hard she and Spinel tried, they could not get every little sister to share cleaning up. Wellen wished her own mother could share this job once; then she would never complain about her own daughters anymore.
Wellen gasped; for a moment she wanted home so badly that everything went black in front of her eyes. Slowly it ebbed away. It had been worst the first day, when she had waked up to this nightmare of malefreaks in vulturous plumage, flat walls with sharp creases whose length tricked the eyes, nauseating smells and jarring sounds. She had held onto Weia and kept her eyes shut, hoping it would all go away. But it had not.
Then Spinel had come—Spinel, the funny creature who was a malefreak yet was different, somehow. Spinel was the one whom Mama and Mamasister had brought home for a pet, a souvenir of their long journey. Spinel brought good luck, she felt, since Mama had come home safe with him. This time, now, Spinel had not brought Mama back, but he always promised that Mama would come soon, if only the girls stayed brave.
Where was Spinel? Gone to fetch Mama?
In the far corner, Malsha was arranging leftover seaweed on her scalp like Valan headfur. “See,” she called to the malefreak, “I'm a Valan now. Can I go home?”
Irritated, the malefreak wiped Malsha's head with a cloth. Wellen giggled loudly to bother him some more. But he just dumped the plates onto a cart and pushed it down the tunnel outside.
Wellen wrinkled her nose at the departing white coat. It was no use; Lystra had always said that you could not get the truth out of someone who hid herself in rags.
As evening wore on, she fretted more. Something was wrong for Spinel to be away this long. The other girls sensed it too, and some started whining for Spinel and his story. Malsha would probably cry all night without a story.
When the malefreak came back to put out lights, the girls chorused, “Where is Spinel?”
“Don't know.” He looked away.
Malsha said, “I won't go to sleep, then.”
“Me neither, me neither.”
“We'll scream again,” Wellen warned.
The malefreak turned to her, eyes like pinheads. “Spinel won't come back anymore. He went home. He tells you to stay and be good.”
Wellen sucked in her breath. “That can't be. Spinel couldn't share parting like that. I know—he's in the stone-place with Lystra!”
“Stone-place!”
Malsha gasped and began to cry.
“Is he there, is he?” Wellen sprang at the malefreak and tore at the white cloth. If only she could get rid of those rags, maybe the malefreak could share truth.
The malefreak slammed her back onto the mattress and uttered Valan gibberish. “Spinel is dead, do you hear? He tried to escape. Let that share a lesson with you. You share any more trouble, you'll die too.”

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