Califia's Daughters (21 page)

“Oh, shit,” she said to Culum, lying in the bathroom doorway with his chin on his paws. “I forgot to buy myself a shirt.”

Here she was, about to go to dinner with her mother's honored teacher, head of one of the most powerful families in Meijing, and the only clothing she owned was crumpled and permanently stained, thanks to Willa. And the shops around the gate would be shut by now. Perhaps she should plead exhaustion? Impossible to do so without causing offense. No way around it, she would be letting her family down badly this evening, confirming all Meijing's worst thoughts about the peasants living in the country. Damnation.

She slowly rubbed the towel across her scalp, stepped over Culum, and her eye was caught by a flash of color from the bed. A shimmering blue-on-silver-shot silk tunic and trousers with a two-inch band of embroidery, also blues and silver, around the collar and down the front. She held the tunic to her chest with the sleeve stretching down to her wrist; the trousers, too, reached her feet. She shook her head in wonderment: With fifteen minutes' warning, the family's guest had been provided with a warm room, beds for two hulking dogs, and clothing suitable for a misshapen barbarian. They'd even managed to come in and out without alarming the dogs. No wonder these people controlled the world.

The silk was cool and heavy, disturbingly sensual against her skin, but the clothes might have been tailored for her, and there was even a pair of soft cloth shoes, snug but not impossibly so. She went into the bathroom to see if her hair was anywhere near presentable, decided it was hopeless but at least clean, and spent ten minutes trying to decipher the labels on a collection of cosmetics, gadgets, and bottles she found behind the mirrored cabinet. In the end she settled for some nice-smelling face crème, rather than risk the spectacle of childishly applied makeup.

She was prepared to ask at the base of the stairs for directions, but just outside her door stood a casual cluster of children, laying in wait for the privilege of escort duty. As the procession went down the stairs, one of the bravest girls reached forward and gently squeezed Culum's tail. This reduced half the crew to shrieks of laughter, and they remained behind, huddled together on the carpeted staircase and exclaiming wildly, but Dian managed to gain Teacher Jung's office with her remaining three bodyguards.

Jung called for her to enter, but she barely looked up from the papers on the desk in front of her.

“I do not like to be discourteous,” she said, “but I think it best that I finish reading this before we talk. Please take some tea, and feel free to browse through the books.”

Dian took her cup to the shelves, where a gold-lettered spine caught her eye, and she sat down with the book of photographs of San Francisco—all from Before, of course—and drank her flower-scented tea. Ten or fifteen minutes passed before Teacher Jung stirred, tapped her papers together into a neat pile, and came to take the chair across from Dian. She was wearing gold-rimmed glasses.

“Thank you for waiting,” she said. “Ling's words had some bearing on our conversation. But first, tell me more about finding the child.”

Dian explained; to her surprise Jung pressed her, most knowledgeably, for further details: Where precisely had Dian found her? Was that the second or the third crossroads along that length of roadway? Had she kept the scrap of blanket? No? Pity, it might have helped to identify the group. Abandonment is a serious crime. And the names of the women who nursed the child? Yes, she knew of Jamilla, and Deirdre, although she had not had the pleasure of meeting either. The woman at the cantina was not identified? It should not prove difficult.

“But, surely,” she said finally, “you do not intend to take the child with you on your northern journey?”

“It would be a bit difficult,” Dian agreed. “I thought I might ask you for advice on arranging a dependable wet nurse and have her care for Willa while I'm gone. I can pay, that's no problem. I also wanted to ask you about her toes.”

“Certainly the toes can be dealt with, and at the price of some physical discomfort now we can save her a lifetime of mental agony as a pariah. There will be no trace by the time she begins to walk. As to the other, do not be ridiculous. You are Ling's family, therefore you are ours, and we take responsibility for one of our own. She will be cared for by us until you return.”

“Thank you, Jung Xiansheng. That's a burden off my mind.”

“Good. Would you care for another cup of tea? No? Very well.” She peeled her glasses from her ears and fixed Dian with a speculative gaze, then seemed to come to a decision. “My dear,” she said, “I would appreciate it if you would consider spending four or five nights with us and allowing me to perform some tests upon you. I do not mean physical tests,” she said quickly, seeing Dian's reaction. “Ling says in her letter that you may wish a detailed examination, and I would be happy to arrange for that if you so choose. Perhaps on your way back down. I mean psychological ones, or perhaps
parapsychological
is the word I want. Let me explain.” She poured herself another cup of the pale tea and took several sips as if to strengthen herself, then placed the cup decisively on the enameled tray and began.

“To much of the outside world, we in Meijing are a cross between traders and sorcerers—highly successful, disgustingly wealthy traders with a mania for privacy, sorcerers holding an uncomfortable familiarity with technology. Those who know us better are aware of the responsibilities we take on. The military police are the most visible, and therefore most controversial, but even our critics give us credit for schools and health care. We are a small population within the city, and yet we try to keep the population under our influence not only safe and free from disease but also mentally healthy. All of the children in the Bay Area are educated to the age of twelve, and nearly all citizens can read and write, at least in English. Citizens who are talented, whether they are Chinese or not, we nurture and educate further. We train and encourage not only scientists but musicians and artists, we establish libraries, even run film and video centers for entertainment.

“Gradually, carefully, we reintroduce the more useful machines, the more vital medical procedures, pushing back the darkness one step at a time. It is a good metaphor, for we often feel as if we were holding a small candle in a large and drafty space. For some time our success was questionable. There was a period of half a dozen years when I, for one, believed that we were playing a fool's game, that the light would go irretrievably out and humanity would be left in the black night, alone and without comfort until such time as it reinvented fire. And the future—who knows what it will hold? You may have heard of our neighbors to the north?”

“Queen Bess?”

“Her, and her liege cities where feudal tyranny is termed freedom, where slavery and perversions are matters of daily life. Bess and her ilk worship the dark and are most persuasive in convincing the ignorant that it is light. She is the reason we do not trade certain otherwise harmless goods that can be converted into arms.

“However, I am raising an umbrella against tomorrow's rainstorm. For now we have succeeded, by many harsh and selfish acts, in building a shield around our own flame, walking a narrow path between those who would have us share all our knowledge this very moment and those who would see us willingly burn our books and settle into the nineteenth century. Our behavior has at times appeared nearly as shameful as that of Ashtown, even to us, but I believe that time will reveal our ruthlessness to have been justified. All around us other lights guttered and died, but within the shield of these walls, ours survived.

“I wax too poetic, perhaps. I see you are amused. However, it is difficult to contain my enthusiasm and joy when I see what is happening in the world around me. For, to continue with the metaphor, we have found other souls in the darkness, and in passing our flame on to them, we strengthen the light for us all.” She paused to sip from the cup, and then continued.

“Your mother, the woman you call your mother and whose maternal surname you took, was one who came to us from out of the edges of darkness. We shared our flame with her, and she took it back, and your Valley became an outpost in the darkness. She also took with her one of us, my granddaughter Ling, who chafed beneath the restrictions placed on her here, who looked for a view beyond the walls.

“Ling writes to me regularly. With, I hasten to say, the knowledge and approval of first your mother and now Judith, as well as old Kirsten, whom I shall never meet but feel as if I know as a sister. If we are to help to spread the boundaries of civilization, we must have knowledge of the conditions of the people. I know your Valley well, thanks to Ling's reports. I feel as if I could walk into the big house and lay my hand on Lenore's shuttle, I could tell you what book Judith and Susanna are reading now in the evenings, where Lisa's new henhouse will go, how far Carmen has gotten with the new saddle she is constructing. Yes, you are astonished that I know so much. You have a spy in your midst, unsuspected and all-revealing. It is an uncomfortable thought for you.

“And now I am going to make you even more uncomfortable. I am going to ask you to go one step further and reveal to me, not the workings of your Valley, but of your own inner self.

“I acknowledge that I have no claim on you, that I have no right to this. If you refuse, there will be no penalty. I will only say that I do not ask it lightly or for the sake of the meaningless curiosity that was endemic in the times Before. I ask because there are faint intimations that this massive trauma humanity has suffered in the last three-quarters of a century has encouraged the development of certain previously rare and fragile abilities, the very existence of which was in times past seen through superstitious eyes. We would like to know if these nascent abilities are uncontrollable flukes or skills that might be encouraged and developed.

“And that covers what I wanted to say to you. Please think about my request; I do not wish an immediate answer. Tomorrow would be fine. Do you have any questions of your own before we go in to dinner?”

Dian wrenched her mind off Jung's words and came up with the question that had been bothering her ever since Ling refused to answer it.

“Yes. About the list of things that Ling asked me to bring back? Some of the things on it were expensive. . . .”

“If you are asking, does your village pay for it all, perhaps inadvertently through Ling's reports, the answer is no. We regard you, as I said, both as family and as an outpost, and therefore in need of certain assistance. Not to create dependency, for we do not wish to create colonies, but because you cannot yet afford them yourself without endangering your future through overspending your resources. We do not send food, or we have not in the past, but machinery, medicines, and the skills to enable you to live with greater productivity than mere subsistence—those we provide freely. Soon we would like to establish a communications system. If you are asking if this will become niggardly or stop were you to refuse my tests, that answer, too, is no. We are not petulant children here, and I have to assume that if you refuse me, you have good reason.”

“I am not—I don't intend to refuse, but couldn't they wait until I come back?”

“I would very much prefer that they not be put off, for two reasons. The obvious one is that you may not come back. You know as well as I that you are going into a highly dangerous area, and I am not talking about the four-legged animals. Beyond this, it would be helpful to have the results now, so that if we need to confirm any speculations or hypotheses that arise, we can do that upon your return.”

“I see. Well, in that case, yes, let's do it now. Or tomorrow, I mean. Whenever you like.”

“Good. Very good. I thank you in advance. And now the others will be waiting for us. I trust you are hungry?”

. . . SHE CONCEIVED A DESIRE TO SEE THE WORLD.

S
EVENTEEN

D
IAN WAS IN
M
EIJING FOR FOUR NIGHTS AND THREE
full days, but afterward, within a very few days in fact, her time there became timeless, a period of dreamlike insubstantiality, of vivid vignettes unconnected by any logic of cause and effect. This may have been a side effect of the mild hypnotic drug administered each morning before the tests began, but secretly Dian thought it was due to the otherworldly nature of Meijing itself and her basic inability to comprehend its structures, goals, and techniques of learning. The only clear times in her mind were the last day, which she spent largely in conversation with Teacher Jung, and the first evening, although even that was fuzzy around the edges.

Other than those two periods, there were rooms—three different rooms—two of them with huge banks of blinking, muttering computers that made Dian somewhat queasy until the technicians brought in some bamboo screens to conceal them. There was floating relaxation in her memory of those rooms, with a curiously repugnant flexible tube placed over one hand and a heavy snug helmet like a balaclava strapped to her head. Teacher Jung had been there, asking questions and making suggestions, along with an indeterminate number of white-coated women and men who came and went and spoke snatches of half-understood conversations in Chinese and English: “Clear signs in adolescence . . . .” “Pity we can't find the biological parents . . . .” “Dogs? Old Kirsten's influence . . . . threat . . . . fear response . . . . alpha and delta waves. . .”

Only twice did Dian feel, or later remember feeling, the unmistakable foreboding of a source of potential menace. The first was mild, from an innocuous-looking man in a white coat, around whom she could neither sit still nor concentrate, nor would she allow him to move out of her sight. The second time she could recall no specific source, just a wild rise in the level of excitement among the white coats.

That must have been late on the second day, because she could remember being tired but unable to fall asleep until late. But the very first evening in Meijing, before the tests began, she remembered clearly—most of it, anyway. Dinner was a simple family meal that included a handful of the older children, twenty-five adults, and as many dishes (as a primitive, and hence of uncertain manners, she was not forced to endure a formal banquet—for which, having heard her mother and Ling laugh wryly over such an ordeal, she was extremely grateful). Afterward she had come to be in a room so luxurious she was afraid to move lest her sleeve brush some precious and fragile object from a table or spill wine on one of the carpets, which were as colorful as the one she had seen in Deirdre's work shed, so thick and firm underfoot that if she closed her eyes she felt she was standing on the floor of a redwood grove. The dogs were there, and she was in an agony of anticipation at the potential disasters in their waving tails—but that must have been the following night, surely, when they were clean from their baths? Yes, that's right, Culum's ruff was damp, and once he and Tomas had made the rounds and presented their compliments to their amused hostesses and hosts, she ordered them to lie down in front of the fire and took her own chair in relief.

That first evening, then, was in the smaller, quieter room, with no dogs and fewer people, three of them men. The wine was stronger than she realized, and she remembered talking about herself rather more than was likely. At one point she found herself kneeling in the cool silk trousers on an inch of carpet pile, drawing rough diagrams of Old Will's watermill machines with a gold-nibbed pen on the same smooth, thick paper that Ling treasured for her most intricate ink sketches and brush calligraphy, paper Ling doled out a sheet at a time to the most prized of her pupils, paper taken tonight from a desk drawer in a casual stack by the young man with the inquisitive eyes and set before Dian as if it were a mere slate. She looked at the paper for a long minute before she realized that her audience was waiting, and realized also that it would be an act of intolerable rudeness to let these people know how intimidated she was by this unintentional demonstration of supreme wealth. She pulled herself together and touched the nib to the silken page.

However, she was reasonably certain that it was late on the second night when her door opened, to the conspicuous absence of any protest from Culum and Tomas, and the smooth, slim young man whose interest in the Valley had prompted the desecration of the fine paper with her childish drawings entered her room and her bed, asking polite but merely formal permission and slipping out before dawn, leaving Dian with the vaguely unclean sensation that she had been used to satisfy a faintly perverse taste for the bizarre. Yes, that was definitely the second night, without a doubt, because the following evening she had gone to her bed apprehensively and not fallen asleep until midnight had passed and she knew the visit would not be repeated.

There were two days of the tests. On the third day Teacher Jung sent for Dian after breakfast, and when Dian appeared, she stood up.

“Now, my child, we have locked ourselves inside the laboratories for too long. I believe we deserve a reward. Come, bring those monstrosities of yours and we shall take them for a walk.”

The dogs did little walking. Rather, they pounded up and down the hillocks and through the groves at a hard gallop while Dian and Teacher Jung made their more leisurely way toward the tallest hill in sight and started up the side. Dian hid her surprise—she had tended to think of Teacher Jung as venerable and frail, because of her size and the formality of her speech, but she had no trouble keeping up with Dian's long stride, and when they halted it was as much to admire a prize view as it was to rest. Only toward the top of the hill did Jung loop a hand the weight of a songbird's foot through Dian's arm, and even then the touch felt more like one of the truth machines in the laboratory than a bid for support.

They spoke of nothing in particular, the easy conversation of long acquaintance. Teacher Jung commented on the antics of the dogs and asked curious questions about breeding practices (she sympathized with the problem of inbreeding and agreed to keep an eye out for compatible stock to trade for some of the Valley's pups, and if the old trader asked if Dian had considered the potential market for those pups in Meijing, it was without pressure). She was interested in Dian's methods of communication with the dogs, trying to imitate Dian's piercing whistle and laughing at her own failure, and she asked about Ling, of whom she had been very fond and missed still: even detailed letters left out the important things. Using the subject of the Valley's healer, Jung worked her way around to what she had come here to say.

“I only regret that it is such an arduous road between Ling and us here in Meijing. I fear each time she comes will be my last opportunity to see her. Every three or four years is not enough. But she is happy, I think. She is needed in your valley and does not feel closed in. There are always those who need to be stretched, to feel that they live on the edge of a desperate situation, and she is one of those. A pioneer, I suppose. It is hard on those left behind, though. Her cousin talks about her a great deal, reads all the parts of her letters that I allow him. That was why he was so terribly interested in the mill machinery the other evening.”

Dian stopped. “That was Ling's cousin?” Teacher Jung's hand fell away and she continued walking. After a minute Dian followed her to the top of the diminutive mountain, on which had been placed a tiny pavilion of exquisite simplicity and an elegance even Dian recognized. Teacher Jung lowered herself gratefully onto a bench and patted the seat beside her. Dian sat.

“It is the most beautiful of all views, this one,” she noted. “Made only more lovely by the labor in its approach. Yes, he is Ling's young cousin. He craves nothing more than to follow her out of the city, a chance to perform actions more dramatic than the small and delicate nudges we perform here. You know, I think, that Ling met your mother on one of her visits here and was fired with a sort of missionary zeal. We could not stop her from leaving, of course, but I could not have foreseen how well it would work out in the end.”

Dian, however, was still thinking about Ling's younger cousin. “Do you like to kiss?” he had asked her; his mouth had tasted faintly of anise, his skin of salt and incense. “I . . .” she began, and stopped, unsure of how to put it. “He . . . came to my room the other night.”

“Yes, I know. I thought, however, that a repetition might not be for the best, although if you do not agree, you are most welcome to approach him. You have had quite an effect on our young men. And young women, in a slightly different way.” She shook her head sadly. “You blow into our careful warm nest like a gust of mountain air, whispering of wide horizons and barely glimpsed potentials of the human spirit and the strength to be found in simplicity. Here, if you will permit me another metaphor, we spend our lives nurturing the more exotic breeds of vegetation, the delicately perfumed tiny flowers and the subtly lovely species of bamboo. You are as unlike bamboo as it is possible to be, and to be near you is to breathe the heady air of another world. And you wonder that our young men find you attractive? It will take weeks to make them forget you. Some of them will find that you walk their dreams forever.”

“I . . . Oh, Jung Xiansheng. I'm sorry. I really shouldn't have come.”

For the first time Jung showed Dian a face other than the one of gentle good humor, and for an instant her old eyes snapped in something close to anger.

“Do not say that. You must never apologize for being what you are. Had I not wanted you here, not wanted the young people exposed to you, I would not have permitted you beyond the walls. Your being here has taught us all a great deal, about the world for which we take some responsibility, and about ourselves. Knowledge is never to be spurned, particularly self-knowledge, though it be painfully gained. You remind us of our duties, of the impossibilities of our task. We who have all the weapons we could want, all the skills and technology in the world, need to be reminded what it is to be an unprotected human in a dirty, nasty world. The last days have not been easy ones for you, and I thank you, humbly, for the effort you have made. I am grateful you came. And,” she added with a sly and wistful smile, “I am not entirely sorry you are going.”

“I, too, am grateful to be given entrance. I cannot even begin to thank you for having me here.”

“And now it is time to start back down this hill that gets just a little taller each time I come. Mai wishes to see you again—you remember Mai, the guard who brought you to me? I told her she could have you for lunch and afterward you might put on a small demonstration with these dogs of yours, if you do not mind. She is interested in the potentials of such animals. She is another one who feels the call of the horizon and works it out by the intensity with which she does her job.” Jung sighed again. “Perhaps it is time we thought about making a few small holes in the walls that we so laboriously built. It will not be easy, when the time comes to remove them. Many of us are struck down by spiritual agoraphobia at the thought of living unprotected.”

It was nothing, Dian carefully did not say, to the growing claustrophobia she felt at being hedged in by this golden and exquisite prison.

She spent the afternoon with Mai, ate lunch in a rooftop café atop one of the fingers of building that jutted out from the main wall, and went downstairs afterward to meet Mai's husband and two co-wives and their aggregate five children, none of whom were boys. The dogs behaved beautifully, Culum as usual and Tomas because he'd spent the morning running off his energy, and when the heat was out of the autumnal sun they all went outside and she demonstrated how the dogs could be controlled over great distances with whistles. The children were intrigued with the fetch command—”Culum, fetch the ball.” “Culum, fetch the knife.” “Tomas, fetch the horse” (borrowed for the purpose). Seeing their delight, Dian brought Culum over to where she and Mai stood, squatted down, and whispered in his ear the syllable of the guard's name while pressing his muzzle against the woman's leg. She then sent him off on another command while she casually walked thirty feet away from the guard. When he returned, she gave him another command.

“Culum, fetch Mai.” He looked at her, eyebrows peaked, tail stirring uncertainly. She repeated the command a couple of times until, just as she was about to give up, he understood and bounced across to where Mai stood. There he stopped. Fetching horses or sheep was easy, but this Mai had no reins, and one simply did not nip at friendly humans. He started to take her trouser leg in his teeth, only to be put off by her startled step back; finally he just walked around behind her and leaned. With considerable authority. The children were ecstatic.

         

The following morning brought a light tap at the door soon after what would have been dawn had it not been raining. Dian told the dogs to stay where they were and raised her voice. “Come in.”

The door opened to admit one of the household's children, balancing a small tray with a cup and teapot on it. Carefully closing the door, the child, who looked about nine, walked over to place the tray on the table next to Dian's bed, then stood back to address her in careful English.

“Grandmother asked me to tell you that the first ferry will go in three hours, and we will eat breakfast in one hour if you wish to join us.”

“Thank you, I would enjoy that. Um, could you remind me of your name? I'm afraid I can't keep track of all the new people I've met.”

“My name is Jian.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Jian, thank you for bringing me a cup of tea.” The child stood there hesitantly as if she had a question on the tip of her tongue. Dian reached over and poured herself some tea. “Is there anything I can do for you, Jian?”