Ceremony (3 page)

“I spent too long in the safety and nonpressure of Skiljansrode,” she explained again. “I have lost my edge. I am not comfortable being Marika. The weapons... I feel almost silly carrying them. But they were our sigil. Going around armed, making dramatic gestures. We are too old. I’m almost ready to become one of the Wise.”

Grauel snorted. “Maybe in another twenty years. You’re still hardly more than a pup.” She spoke thus in defense of herself. She was much older than Marika, but she was not ready to lay down her huntress’s role.

Barlog said, “I think I understand, Marika. When I am out in the cloister I too get the feeling that the world has left me behind.”

Grauel agreed. “I encountered young voctors who didn’t know who we are. Or were, perhaps I should say. Not that we were ever that famous. But there was a time when our being Marika’s bodyguards meant a lot more than it does now.”

“It slips away,” Marika said.

“It hasn’t been that long, Marika.”

Bagnel arrived first. A group of baffled novices delivered him to Marika’s door. A male in the cloister? Impossible. They were scandalized. They had heard stories about the bizarre doings of this silth called Marika, but had not believed them before this.

Marika was amused.

“Well,” Bagnel said as the door closed behind him. “The living legend herself. Where have you been, Marika? We agreed to fly together at least once a month. One day there wasn’t any more Marika. No message. No excuse. No apology. Nothing for years. Then out of nowhere a typically peremptory summons. And here I am, though I should have requited indifference with indifference.”

It took Marika a moment to realize he was teasing, that he was glad to see her. “You’re looking a little gray around the fringes, Bagnel.”

“I have not had the privilege of taking an extended sabbatical. My brethren would gray the fur of a statue.” He looked troubled.

“What is it?”

He glanced at Grauel and Barlog, as always disturbed by their presence. “Are they immortal?”

“They are as safe as ever, my friend. The Redoriad will join us presently, though I do not expect her immediately. Most Senior Bel-Keneke will wait till Kiljar has arrived before she makes her own entrance.” She did not add that the room itself was safe, for she, Grauel, and Barlog had made independent sweeps in search of the sort of listening devices Marika herself had once used habitually.

“Nothing really remarkable. Just the persistent element that wishes the sisterhoods ill. It has been growing stronger recently. Nothing to be concerned about, mind you. Just aggravation enough to keep me on edge.”

Marika considered him closely. “There’s more than that, isn’t there?”

“You read me better than ever. Yes. I have found evidence that those who fled have not broken entirely their ties to their homeworld. Evidence that they are in contact with those who are driving me gray.”

“What?” A tendril of fright touched Marika. “How can that be?”

“It is easy enough. It is not difficult at all to slip a darkship through to the surface, to some remote rendezvous. Especially when I have no advance warning.”

“Then it isn’t over.”

“It never was. You knew that. The Serke just fled to a safe place. I suspect their overall goals had to change somewhat once they were driven off the homeworld, simply by force of circumstance, but there was no reason for them to give up trying to seize control of everything.”

Marika paced, mused, wondered that the Serke had gotten so entangled in a brethren scheme that they had allowed themselves to become the tools of their own destruction.

Bagnel added, “Unfortunately, nobody takes the threat seriously anymore. They have been quiet, so are forgotten. Nobody even hunts them now, except as a convenient side flight on a trip to the starworlds. But if they were hiding anywhere convenient they would have been found already.”

“They aren’t strong enough to try a comeback,” Marika said. “Even with help from their supposed aliens.”

“You think not?”

“If they were, they would have tried. Right? They have not. Therefore they are not.”

“Irrefutable logic.”

“Smart, Bagnel. I suspect they have no support from any alien--if one even exists. If one does, that relationship must be less intimate than we once thought. In my reflections I have begun to suspect that they may have no direct contact at all.”

Bagnel looked startled.

“Yes?” Marika asked.

“You continue to amaze me.”

“How have I managed that now?”

“You just struck close to the picture we have developed by questioning prisoners and others who may be in the know one way or another. What seems to have happened is that they did make a contact, but they could not deal with the alien because the alien was alien--though from other things we have learned they don’t seem that alien. If you are following this.”

“I’m trying.”

“Apparently being unable to deal with the alien, they stole, possibly by killing the alien and appropriating everything that belonged to them. So it’s possible they’re hiding from the alien race too.”

“If you are going to go rogue, why do it halfway?” Grauel asked. “Marika, mistress Kiljar is about to arrive. I hear the novices shuffling in the hallway.”

“We’ll talk more later, Bagnel. I’m happy to see you have become so important among the brethren. I cannot think of anyone more deserving.”

Bagnel snorted derisively.

II

Kiljar, too, had aged, but she had been old when Marika had seen her last. She was shocked by what time had done to the Redoriad. Kiljar had lost large patches of fur, and what remained was mostly gray or white. She had lost a lot of weight, too, and begun to stoop, but her eyes remained brightly intelligent.

More than age, long-term ill health had diminished the Redoriad most senior. She had to walk with the aid of a cane. One side of her body was partially paralyzed. She responded to Marika’s horrified glance with a lopsided expression of amusement. “A stroke,” she explained, slurring her words. “Weakened the flesh but did nothing to the mind. I am recovering slowly.”

“Could the healer sisters not...?”

“They assure me there is nothing more they can do without killing me. That seems too heroic a measure to effect a cure.”

“At least you have been able to take it in good part.”

“The hell I have. I resent it. It angers me so much I go into howling rages against the All. They think me quite mad at the Redoriad cloister. But none have yet found the courage to try ousting me from first chair. They think I am dying anyway. They spend their time trying to outmaneuver one another so as to stand at the head of the pack when I go. But I am going to disappoint them. I am going to outlive them all. You look good, Marika. I suspect that a few years beyond the edge of the world were just what you needed. You seem less driven, less saddled by doom.”

Marika looked at her sharply, surprised that Kiljar read her so easily.

She suspected one unconscious reason she had isolated herself was because of self-doubt, an inclination, following the destruction of TelleRai, to credit those sisters who called her Jiana and doomstalker. Four sequential destructions of the place she called home, with those who dwelt there, was enough to make anyone ask questions.

“The most senior is approaching, Marika,” Barlog said from the doorway.

“Leave it open. Sit somewhere.” Barlog still had difficulty getting around, all these years after recovering from the wounds she had suffered at Maksche.

We have all been injured and left crippled, Marika thought. In the heart if not in the flesh.

Bel-Keneke arrived. Marika reached back in time to find greetings appropriate to a most senior of the Reugge. There had been no formalities, no ceremonials, no obsequies, observed at Skiljansrode. Marika held them in contempt because she considered most of them unearned.

Bel-Keneke, too, had changed, though now she seemed more secure in her role than when last Marika had seen her. “You can dispense with the ceremonials, Marika. I know they do not come from the heart. You are looking well.” She ignored Bagnel and merely nodded to Kiljar. “You should be seen here more, Marika. There are times when we could use your slant on the world.”

“I will be seen more,” Marika said. “That is why I have come back.”

“Direct as always. So. We are all here. Let us get to it. Tell us about the grand project you want to attempt.”

Marika prowled while Bel-Keneke seated herself. Barlog, in the background, in her customary array of weapons, looked increasingly uncomfortable. Marika gestured for her to sit, as she had directed earlier.

She did not sit herself. She could not. She was about to broach the result of many years of thought and felt shy about doing so. It was not the usual sort of Marika idea, full of fire and blood and doom for enemies of the Reugge. She was afraid for its reception.

She moved to the center of the room and stood there with her guests watching from three directions. She ordered her thoughts, ran through calming mental exercises. Finally she attacked it. “I have an idea for stemming the snow and cold.”

“What?” That was Bel-Keneke, who was least accustomed to Marika’s ways. But the others looked at her askance.

“A major engineering project that might allow us to turn back the ice.”

“Major?” Bagnel murmured. “You have a gift for understatement, Marika.”

Kiljar said, “If you managed that you would be immortalized with... “

“It is not possible,” Bel-Keneke said. “You are talking about halting a process of such a magnitude that... “

Bagnel added, “Perhaps we ought to hear her idea before we tell her it is impossible.”

Marika gave him a nod of gratitude. “Excuse me, mistresses. I know it would be a large project and extremely difficult, but it is not impossible--except perhaps in that it presumes the cooperation of all the Communities and all the brethren bonds, working toward one end. Achieving that will be more difficult than the actual engineering and construction.”

“Go on,” Kiljar said before Bel-Keneke could interject negative comments.

“Review: The problem is that insufficient solar energy penetrates the dust and falls upon the planet. The solution--my solution--is to increase incident radiation.”

“Do you plan to sweep the dust up?” Bel-Keneke asked. “Or to stoke the fires of the sun?”

“Not at all.”

“Why so negative, sister?” Kiljar asked. “Do you feel threatened because your predecessor has come out of hiding?”

Marika ignored the sparks. Those two old arfts never had had much use for one another. She said, “We collect solar energies that are flinging off into the void and redirect them toward the planet. We do that by constructing large mirrors.”

“Large mirrors,” Bagnel said.

“Very large. Wait. I admit there will be difficulties. The orbital mechanics of our situation, because of the presence of so many moons, will make maintaining stable orbits for the mirrors difficult. But I have been studying this matter for some time. It is not impractical. If we can install the largest mirrors in the planet’s leading and trailing solar trojan points and keep them stable... “

“Pardon me,” Bagnel interrupted. “The idea is not original, Marika.”

“I did not think it was. I assumed the brethren had thought of it long ago and had not brought it up because it was in their interest to have the weather help destabilize the social structure. It was no coincidence that the inclination to rebellion grew stronger as the cold crept down. I believe the factors behind the planning failed only because they got overeager.”

“You are, perhaps, half right. In such an engineering program the brethren would have required the same level of cooperation you already mentioned. We would not have gotten it. There is, too, the sheer magnitude of the thing. I have heard that the necessary mirrors would have to be thousands of miles across. If you mean installing them in the trojan points where the sun’s gravity and the world’s balance, rather than in the lunar trojans, they would have to be almost unimaginably huge to reflect enough energy to make a difference.”

“Those are the points I mean, as I said. The main mirrors would require less stabilization there. But, as you say, they would have to be more huge than anything any meth has imagined. I picture them on the order of five thousand miles in diameter.”

“I fear you underestimate considerably.”

“Utterly impossible,” Bel-Keneke said.

“Let her talk, sister,” Kiljar countered. “Marika is no fool. She would not have brought this up had she not worked most of it out already. If she says it can be done, then she has done enough calculation to convince herself.”

“Thank you, Kiljar. Yes. The idea first occurred to me while I was still a novice, many years ago. There were too many other demands on my attention then, so I did not pursue it. Later, when I retreated to Skiljansrode, I did have the time. It is the major reason I have remained out of touch so long. I will admit that I have not done all the calculations necessary. The orbitals require calculations all but impossible with pencil and paper. But the brethren once developed a system for rapid calculation, else they could not have orbited their satellites. I am hoping that the system, or at least the knowledge to replace it, survived the bombing of the Cupple Islands. That system, skilled labor, the metals, technology, and such would be required of the brethren. The Communities will have to lift the materials into the void--and contribute the talent where necessary. Skiljansrode will provide the reflecting material.”

“A grand stumbling block in the scheme as the brethren worked it out,” Bagnel said.

“As I see it, we would need a web of titanium metal-work--or possibly one of golden fleet wood if that proves either impractical or the titanium cannot be produced in sufficient quantities--supporting an aluminized plastic surface no thicker than a hair.”

“It’s a possibility,” Bagnel said. “I am amused by the notion of wooden satellites. But that is neither here nor there. Discounting for the moment all the other problems, where do we get this plastic? The same notion occurred to those who toyed with this among the brethren. They were unable to produce such a plastic and were reduced to thinking in terms of a heavy aluminum foil that proved too brittle in actual trials. The breakage ran better than fifty percent.”