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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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The Chrysoport youth seemed happy enough here, excited as a girl at her first hunt for a shockwraith. Merwen followed his gaze to the swarm of marchers in the distance. For a moment she was puzzled; then the meaning dawned on her, sending an eerie tingling sensation to her feet. The marchers were those of whom it was said that death
pays a wage.
Kaol the Dolomite had been one, but here was a whole school of them, so many that they merged into a mass of thornlike shoulders and. thick black boots that struck the hard black pavement, pounding, pounding incessantly. If these creatures were all human, as Usha insisted, then some purpose must guide their boots, but what could it be? Did the pavement flatten the soles of their boots, or did the marchers work together to polish the somber pavement as smooth as a nighttime sea?
“GENERAL REALGAR OF Rhodochrosite,” intoned the monitor of Berenice's main hall.
Berenice lifted her chin and straightened her long neck before the mirror wall of her salon. Surely Realgar was still at the parade? She had not expected to see him again; he was so busy nowadays, with his new post at the Guard and winding up the Pyrrholite campaign. She stared in dismay at the image of her bald scalp, which she had just had shaven within the hour. Never mind; she rose and pushed away the white servo arms that snaked from the ceiling for her manicure and skin toning. Hurriedly smoothing her talar, she headed for the hall.
At the sight of him in full uniform, Berenice caught her breath. The crescent line of Realgar's shoulders glittered with jewels: for his family
house, Rhodochrosite, and sardonyx for his homeland, and commander's grade rubies, and rows of others he had been awarded. Yet the spell was soon broken by the two children at his side: his son, Elmvar, a squirming eight-year-old, and the elder sister, Cassiter, who gaily carried Realgar's plumed helmet. “Look, Mama Berenice!” she cried. “The parade—wasn't it the greatest ever?”
“Yes, Cassi, it was. Realgar, how
did
you get away? The Malachite reception—”
“Just for a minute, that's all.” He took Berenice's hands and kissed her. She closed her eyes, savoring the salt of his tongue.
Realgar drew back slightly to look at her.
Her bare scalp twitched. “Don't tell me,” she sighed. “I look ghastly.”
“A Sharer already.”
“You know I'm about to leave.”
“Of course, that's why I'm here. Cassi and Elmvar will miss you more than ever.” He patted his son's tousled hair. “Berenice. Couldn't you stay just a month more? The Torran Envoy has incredible things to show, gifts from the Patriarch. It's your last chance for ten years.”
“My apologies to Malachite, but I've a promise to keep. This moonferry was the last one I could get before Merwen's Gathering, the one which will judge my selfname.” She sighed again. She was flattered that he had come to see her off, despite all the ceremonies, but why did he have to make things difficult?
“Very well, but this time I insist that you return before the seaswallowers march across the globe.”
“Realgar, please.”
Stern lines hardened in his cheeks. Even the children were still for a moment, sensing his mood.
“I'll stay as long as Talion orders.”
Realgar let out a deep breath. “For Torr's sake,” he whispered, “just don't make yourself a watery grave.”
Berenice swallowed. She herself dreaded the whirlpools of those cephaglobinid monsters when they migrated from pole to pole. But Sharers faced the migration twice a year, and this year Berenice would face it with them. Then they would truly accept her as a sister of Shora.
A squeal came from Cassiter; Elmvar was tugging at the helmet, trying to wrest it from her.
“Elmvar, leave the helmet to Cassi,” Realgar said. “Go play with this.” He pulled the raygun from his belt, a ceremonial weapon as antiquated as a sword. The boy took it and waved it bravely about the hall, while making ferocious noises.
Suddenly Cassiter dropped the helmet and clapped her hands over her ears. Berenice winced; the child was still sensitive to sudden noises, years after her mother's death. She ran to Cassiter and folded her in her arms, rocking gently.
Berenice had no children of her own. Her first marriage had ended with her defective firstborn, which the doctors had blamed on her own genes. They had sterilized her then and her husband, heir to the House of Aragonite, had left her to build his dynasty elsewhere.
In despair, she had gone back to Shora, her birthplace, where her father had founded the moon trade. Sharers could mix and match human genes at will, even correct the bad ones. No Valan doctor would risk his neck to perform such “witchcraft,” but Usha had fixed Berenice soon enough. Berenice could bear a healthy child now—if she dared. On Valedon, the very secret of her “cure” was an everpresent knife at her neck.
Then Realgar had entered her life, a gift of fate, or perhaps of her scheming parents, at whose home she had met him. She had fallen for him, with his ambitions and his two darling children. But how would Realgar fit into her life as a Sharer? Never mind, for now. Berenice pressed Cassiter's hair. “Cassi, do you know what I'll bring you from the moon? A whorlshell, that's what, a perfect whorlshell polished by the sea.”
“A whorlshell? A real one, with golden stripes?”
“That's right, just for you.”
Cheerful again, Cassiter beamed and let Berenice release her. As Berenice stood again, she caught a softness in Realgar's eyes, a rare show of feeling. “They need you,” he said. “As much as I do.”
“Yes.” She barely voiced the word. She was just on the verge … it would be so easy to give in, now, to solve everything for good. But there was something else she had gained from Shora, beyond physical wholeness: a wholeness of the spirit, a source of refuge that she would never find on Valedon. She could not give up Shora for marriage, not yet.
Cassiter picked up the helmet again and plunked it on her head It
came down over her eyes, but she marched ahead blindly, and her brother started to follow. “Come on, troops! For'ard! Tighten up the bleeding line!”
“That's enough, now,” said Realgar. “We have to be going. Time to say goodbye to—”
Immediately the children rushed back and clung to her. “You can't go already,” cried Elmvar. “Then there's just the old nanny servo; she's ugly, and she smells like motor oil.”
Berenice swallowed hard and forced herself to look up at Realgar.
“They get so out of hand,” he apologized. “They need a mother to keep them in line.”
“Not for that, surely; they can't lack … discipline?” She paused at the word, recalling with distaste his dismissal of rebel Sharers.
His shoulders straightened. “Cassiter. Elmvar. Stand here.” His voice had not risen, but the children released the folds of Berenice's talar and went to stand beside their father. “Now say goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Mama Berenice,” they chorused.
Unexpectedly, desire overcame her. Her head felt light, and she thought that if he asked her now she would surely say yes. But Realgar seemed content to look long and hard into her eyes, satisfied that he still held her. “You shall return safely, Berenice,” he pronounced, as if binding even the elements to his will.
 
At the space landing, Berenice stepped gingerly among plastic shreds and metal curls. A gust of wind cooled her scalp but threw sour dust in her face. Ahead of her sat the battered old moonferry; it almost seemed to shrink back, as if apologizing for its existence amid Iridian splendor. If only she could have taken her father's liner, the
Cristobel
, but no reputable member of the Trade Council would carry her Sharer friends.
There they were, at the dark entranceway: Merwen and Usha. They wore brief shifts of seasilk to satisfy Valan notions of modesty, but their bald violet heads were unmistakable. As she drew near, signs of ill health appalled her. Their fingertips fluttered feebly, and their skin had a flat, dusky look, a smokier shade of amethyst.
“Oh, share the day, Merwen,” she exclaimed in Sharer speech. “I'm so glad you're safe!” At least they had kept out of jail, or worse. She held Merwen close; it felt like embracing an ocean. “Surely the air at
least was better for you, up the coast?” Hesitantly she kissed Usha, whose face was even more dour than she had remembered.
Merwen smiled faintly. “We breathed. And we shared learning, very much.”
“That's wonderful. That's what you hoped for, isn't it?” Berenice fingered the opal stonesign at her neck. How could she reprove Merwen, whose mind flowed as if she had lived since the day that Shora opened the First Door? Yet Sharers had to be warned. “Talion's upset,” she blurted out. “The Protector, he—he's heard bad reports, false, perhaps. You did not trade without stonesigns?”
“We shared seasilk and herbs,” said Merwen, “but no coin or other non-lifestuff.”
“And medical treatments? You know that's too dangerous here.”
Merwen paused. “We know.”
“And you did not call yourselves
‘spies'?”
“The term seemed apt. We shared learning, after all.”
Berenice frowned. “A ‘spy' shares hiddenly, for subversive purposes. You're not subversive, are you?”
“Are we not?”
The words numbed her. Are we not? What in Torr's name was Merwen getting into? When Merwen the Impatient One chose, she could sway the minds of thousands in any Sharer Gathering. But to try that here—it was unthinkable. Berenice could not tell her, for her own tongue froze at the thought. Yet somehow Merwen had to know that Talion meant business this time. She cleared her throat. “Merwen. Valedon is not your home.”
“Is it yours, Nisi?”
Was it? She could not answer, and suddenly there was nothing more to be said. To collect her thoughts, she looked away, and then she noticed the stranger, a gaping youth who stood next to Usha as if he belonged with them. She drew herself up straight and looked him over: clearly a commoner, his coarsely woven shirt buttoned askew. His olive face and his hair looked clean, but he still might have lice.
“Berenice,” said Merwen, switching to Valan speech, “another friend comes to teach and learn with us.”
The boy bowed, a little too deeply. “Spinel, son of Cyan the stonecutter of Chrysoport, if you please, my lady.”
“Indeed.” Had she not explained to Merwen about nobles and commoners?
And a male, no less. By the Nine Legions, whatever could Merwen want with a “malefreak” on Shora? But now, after what had just passed between them, Berenice was too proud to ask Merwen her reasons, or even the more crucial results of her mission on Valedon. Soon enough, Merwen would have to answer, to the Gathering.
 
Spinel was abashed at his first encounter with an actual Lady of Iridis. Her arched nose and precisely etched lips reminded him of one of those quartz statuettes that sold well as wedding gifts. Yet her clothes, though sleek and seamless, looked disappointingly mundane, and her opal stonesign was of indifferent workmanship. And her bare scalp—was she trying to look like Merwen?
From behind, a shrill whine pierced his ears. Spinel dropped the bags, clapped both hands to his head, and squeezed his eyes shut for good measure. The sound died slowly, and someone pulled his arms down. It was a man, short and loose-skinned, with a fleshy nose and a deep hollow below his throat. He shouted in Spinel's ear, “She's just warming up, starling.” The man's breath had a touch of liquor. “You coming or staying?”
“Who are you?” Spinel demanded.
“I'm your captain, Captain————” He pronounced a name that sounded like a whistle. “But you just call me Dak, starling. Captain Dak, at your service from here to Torr.” Captain Dak jerked his head toward the ramp against his ship, which even Spinel could tell was not about to fly as far as Torr.
Merwen started up the ramp, but Usha stopped in her tracks like a mule. At that, Lady Berenice hurried over and spoke in low urgent tones.
“Hey, Sharer, you remember me,” Captain Dak called to Usha. “At least I'm made of ‘life-stuff'” A grin split his face, and he laughed silently.
Somewhat mollified, Usha let herself be led up the ramp until she fanned her toes across the doorsill.
Spinel picked up his bags and started on up, but for an instant he lost sight of everything except the dizzying fact that Valedon, his whole source of existence, was about to slip away from him. In panic he whirled and stared backward, outward, as if he could scan the entire planet with a glance and swallow it with his eyes. But all he could see
was the windswept space landing, with ships planted here and there like tree stumps, and pavement crisscrossed by wandering strangers.
“This Door is not ours, either,” Merwen told him, “but it's the only way back home.”
That's fine for her, Spinel thought as the ship door closed behind him. There is no way home for me.

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