Changer's Moon (15 page)

There were cars dotted here and there along the streets as she wound her way deeper into the maze of curves, most with men sitting in them. One or two smoking cigarettes, all with small earphones and wires coiling away from them. Well, that's it, she thought. The sickness is here too, my mistake. She recollected the phonecall and nodded. Nothing strange about the way he spoke, not now.

When she reached Simon's house, she went round to the side door, and knocked there, hoping that this was what he meant, a gesture toward propriety meant more to mislead the watchers than any attempt to hide her presence from them. Watchers and listeners. He had to be at least a little frightened by the listeners like fleas infesting the streets.

The door opened before she had time to bring her hand down. Simon pulled her inside into a passionate embrace that made her grind her teeth as her not-quite-healed rib protested with a stabbing ache like cold air on a sore tooth. His hand went down her back, cupped a buttock, then reached out and pulled the door shut. “Hope the bastard got an eyeful,” he said with the dry burr more akin to his usual tones than the prissy caution over the phone. “What the hell, Jule, you look like something you find stretched out on a freeway.”

“So kind of you to notice. I need a drink, Simon.”

He led her through the kitchen and into the living room. “What's it been? Six months? I tried calling a couple times but you were either not in or not answering your phone.” He slid open the door to the liquor cabinet. “Gin or what?”

“Gin'll do,” she said absently, staring around her with blank dismay. Vast holes gaped on the shelves that covered the walls. “You've had.…” Her eyes swept over the phone sitting with silent innocence on the table beside the TV and his sleek, expensive entertainment center. She swallowed and stopped talking. Passive receptor, pick up a whisper and pass it out over the phone line. Michael's voice calm and competent. The one they use, loud noises scramble it like an egg so if you can't stomp it or flush it, turn the radio on. “I see you've still got your records. I'm down tonight, feel like hearing the Bolero loud. Would your neighbors howl?” Paranoia, she thought. Do the futile little tricks, jump through hoops for the bastards.

He brought her the drink, the ice cubes clinking, his bare feet whispering over the plush of the rug, the intractable cowlick a pewter gray comma in the lamplight. “What.…” he began, but went quiet as she laid her finger across her lips. “Let them complain. Not that they will.”

Once the driving rhythms of the music were filling the room, she relaxed a little. Simon settled on the couch beside her. “What's all that about?”

“You've had visitors.” She waved a hand at the bookshelves. “They leave droppings behind.” In quick spare language she told him about the visit of the blackshirts, about the dead man down the hall, about the bug in her phone, about the men sitting in the cars outside. “We don't know how to deal with a police state, our kind,” she finished. “We can't take it quite seriously. I've got a cracked rib, my books are being burned, my publishers won't touch me any longer, that's real, all of it, but when I hear them talking on the TV, when I stand in the middle of my own living room and listen to that vulture rant, I just can't believe in him or any of them. This kind of thing belongs in a bad thriller, don't you think?” She looked around at the plundered room, shook her head. When did they clean out your books?”

“A month ago.”

“How bad is it getting? Are they burning professors yet?”

“Not funny, Jule. The apes are in charge of the men. No. That's insulting apes.” He looked at the phone, passed his hand over his hair, ruffling the cowlick further. “I've been told I have to revise my texts. Correct them, if you will. Some of the things I said happened didn't, at least in the new official version of history.”

“Ah. I always thought some of ours envied some of theirs their control over what gets printed or put out on the air.” She laughed unhappily, raised her glass. “Here's to one world. Their bastards and ours, brothers under the skin.”

He made a grumpy throat-clearing sound, half a protest, half a reluctant agreement, flicked a fingernail against his glass, watched the pale liquid shiver. “I'm too comfortable, Jule. I'm going to do what they tell me and try to ride this thing out. You're right, it's absurd. People will see that, they have to. This country, we're too stubborn, too … well, I don't know … too sane I think, to let this go on much longer. We wobble from one side of the center to the other, but the wobble always straightens and makes most people just a little wiser than before. History and time, Julia, they're on our side; when this is over they're going to need people like you and me to write it down and put it in perspective.”

She watched him with a familiar detached interest, her writer's eye. In spite of his optimistic tone he was uneasy with his position, felt diminished by it but hadn't the energy or will to drive himself the way he knew he ought to go. This was a man struggling with his ideals—no, struggling with his will to surrender those ideals, or if not surrender, set them on the shelf for the moment because they are inconvenient. At this moment, he seemed collapsed rather than convoluted, his humor banished by the inner and outer pressures that were combining to drive him toward those extremes he both feared and despised. She got up, changed the record and came back, the melting ice still musical in the remnants of her drink.

“Maybe you're right,” she said. “Time. I've come to the end of my time, there's none left, no time nohow.” She held the glass against her face and thought dispiritedly about her own disintegration, here she was analyzing the poor man down to his back teeth, judging him, when she couldn't keep her own mouth shut, had to dump her own worries on him, worries that were none of his concern, nothing he should have to deal with. The drink was mostly melted ice and tasted foul, the ice clicked against her teeth and made her shiver.

“Jule, I get the feeling you're telling me something but I don't hear it.”

“Just getting maudlin, Simon my love. I came to say good-bye. I'm broke. Flat. Giving up my honest ways and starting on a life of crime. Tomorrow morning, as a matter of fact. Going to work a credit card swindle with the help of an old acquaintance and when I've got money enough, I'm going to buy me a smuggler and head for the north countree.”

“Jule, you shouldn't be telling me all that. What if I.…”

“Sold me? Poor Simon. They're going to push you too far one of these days, my dear, and where'll your comfort be then? If they do, go see the Magic Man, he'll put you onto something to save your soul. Before I go, remind me to tell you how to find him.”

He took her hand, his own was trembling a little, sweaty and hot. “Look Jule, if you need money.…”

“No. No. Let me do this my own way. I'm poison, Simon. Guilt by contagion, you know what that is.” She sat up, laughed aloud. “If you could see your face, poor dear. Ah well, it's all material for the next book. I think I'll try another thriller. Once I'm in another country. Mind putting me up for the night? Damn curfew complicates things. I don't want anyone asking me questions right now, might prove a bit embarrassing with five different idents in my purse.” She gave him a rueful grin. “I know, my love, but I couldn't leave them home, god knows who gets in my place when I'm not there. I'm rather off men right now, so the couch will do. I feel like a leech, but things were coming out the walls at me. That's enough about me. More than enough. What are the peabrains getting after now? Who they planning to banish from the lists of history?”

THE PRIESTESS

The sun was clear of the horizon, a watery pale circle covered with haze, when she slid wearily off the macai, slapped him on the rump and sent him off to wander back to the tar. She stumbled on cold-numbed feet along behind Cymbank's houss and stores, empty gardens and empty corrals, to the deserted silent grove behind the Maiden Shrine. She was giddy with fatigue and the need for sleep that pulled more heavily on her than the bucket or the overloaded satchel. She forced herself on; it couldn't be long before the Agli or his minions came after her. She was breathing through her mouth, sucking in great gulps of air, shuddering with the cold, the heavy white robe sodden past her knees, slapping against her legs, making it increasingly difficult to walk.

But she went on, step by slow step, vaguely rejoicing in the difficulty and discomfort.
She
said it would be hard enough and it seemed that was so. The hitching posts were black fingers thrusting up through the snow. She passed them, circled round to the side of the living quarters and found the door. She palled at the latch. The door wouldn't move. She turned her back on it, set the bucket down, shrugged the satchel and the quiltroll off her shoulder. Then she got down on her knees and began scraping the snow away from the door with bare hands that were soon numb and blue and beginning to bleed. She worked without stopping or paying attention to the pain, worked until she had cleared a fan of stone before the door. Then she forced herself up and stood on trembling legs before it, for a moment unable to move, no strength left to pull it open and go inside.

Scent of herbs and flowers.

Warmth spread through her. She stepped away from the door. It swung open before she could reach for the latch again. She lifted the bucket and the satchel and the quiltroll and stumbled inside.

It was dark and no warmer in there, but wood was stacked on the foyer hearth. She laid a small fire and turned aside, meaning to get the firestriker from the satchel.

Scent of herbs and flowers.

The fire was burning before she completed the turn. She froze, straightened and looked around.

To her left were the public rooms of the sanctuary, to her right the living quarters of the Keeper. She got to her feet, bent her weary body, caught up her burdens and shuffled toward the right-hand door. She set her hand on it, marking it with a bloody handprint though she didn't know that till later. It opened before her and she went inside.

The room inside was sparely furnished: a worktable, a backless chair pushed under it, a cobwebbed bedstead in one corner with a dusty pad on the rope webbing that crossed and recrossed the space between the posts and sideboards. There was a window over the bed, the glass rounds intact in their binding strips of lead; no light came through them as the window had been boarded over outside. As Nilis stood gazing dully at the glass, she heard a creaking, then a clatter, then dull thumps as the boards fell away and light came in, painting bright rounds of color on the wall and floor, ruby and garnet, emerald and aquamarine, topaz and citrine. She smiled, tears coming into her eyes at the unexpected beauty. She put her burdens on the worktable, hung her cloak on a peg, turned to the fireplace built in the inner wall. Wood was laid on the firedogs, ready for lighting; a wrought-iron basket held more wood for replenishing the fire when it burned low. She took the striker from the bucket and a paring knife and knelt on the stone hearth, her knees fitting into hollows worn there by generations of shrine keepers. She cut slivers of dry wood from one of the split logs, got the pile of splinters burning and eventually had herself a slowly brightening fire. She stood, pulled her forearm across her face, shoved the hair out of her eyes, warmth beginning to glow within her, the smells of spring blowing round her with the sharp clean scent of the burning wood. For the first time in many passages, she bowed her head and sang the praises of the Maiden, the words coming back as clear as they'd been when she learned them as a child.

With some reluctance, she left the warmth of the bedroom and went back into the small foyer. She pulled the outer door shut, slid the bar through its hooks, stood a moment enjoying the quiet and the dark, the flickering red light from the fire, then she went back into the bedroom, crossed it and moved through a doorless arch into the small narrow kitchen.

The end walls were mostly doors, two at each end. There was a heavy table, a backless chair, several porcelain sinks with drains leading outside into a ditch that went past the hitching posts into the grove behind the shrine, a bronze pump whose long curved lever looked frozen in place, whose lip had a dry smear of algae grown there and died in place since the Keeper had been taken away. Above the sink, there was a row of small windows, boarded up, the boards shutting out the light except for a few stray beams that came lancing in, lighting up the dust motes that danced thick in the air. Again, as she stood watching, the boards dropped away and rounds of jewel colors played over and about her.

She smiled, opened one of the nearer doors. A storage place, a few bowls and pans left, a glass or two, milky with dust, some lumps that weren't immediately identifiable. The door beside it opened on another shallow closet—brooms, the straws worn to a slant and curling on the ends; another bucket, its staves separating at the corners, dried out, needing a good soak and the bands tightened; a large crock half full of harsh lye soap women made in the fall at the winter cull from rendered fats and potash, taking turns to stir the mess with long-handled paddles, trying to avoid the coiling fumes of the mixture, adding the potash by handfuls, watched over by an aged soapmaker who knew just when she should stop that and wash the soap out with brine. Hard stinking work, a whole week of it each fall, but well worth the time and effort—a year of clean for a week of stench. The Keeper worked with the tie-women, stirring and rendering and boiling and reboiling, earning her portion of what was produced. The women didn't ask it of her, they would have given her the soap as gift, but they felt happier with her there blessing their work by being part of it. Nilis wrinkled her nose. It wasn't something she looked forward to, in fact she'd kept well away from the soap grounds as had most of her family, but she looked down at the soap now and knew she'd keep the Keeper's tradition. The soap ladle had a leather loop tied through a hole in the handle and hung on a peg beside the crock. There was a tangle of dusty rags, some worn bits of pumice stone and a few other odds and ends useful for cleaning small bits.