Changer's Moon (31 page)

“He don't look it.”

“Lot of dead men thought that.”

“He got him a two-ended tongue.”

“He's giving you the truth.”

“Truth he sees.” Anoike shrugged, a quick lift and fall of her shoulders. “Wasn't talking 'bout truth. He a good politician.”

“Politician?”

“Guess you never had no election campaigns.” She grinned. “Hey Lou, I vote we go for sure. No politicians.”

The doctor's chuckle was warm and filled with contentment. “Never be a world without politicians, Anoike. I suspect they just call them something else.”

“Glass half-empty, hey, Doc?” She grinned effectionately at him. “Right … uh … Serroi. Message to Dom Hern, then Ram for here. Then what? Connolly, I think. He some messed up inside. You want I should round up everything down to mosquito bites, or just bad-off?”

Grenier frowned thoughtfully at Serroi, then nodded. “Stick with the bad-off until we see how much time we've got. Anoike, tell the council what's happening.”

“Uh-huh.” Anoike moved her shoulder again, grinned, then went through the slit with a quick energetic twist of her lean body.

“How long before Julia wakes?”

“I'm not sure.” Serroi strolled over to him. She clasped her hands behind her head and stretched, feeling a deep pleasure in the pull of her muscles. “Don't worry, Lou. Her body's worked hard. Takes time to recover from that.”

Anoike leaned through the door. “Want them in here?” She looked around. “Make it some crowded.”

Serroi pushed the hair off her face. “Better outside where we won't disturb Julia's sleep. What's happening at the meeting?”

“Prioc, he making a speech saying we wrong to run out on our country. Should stay and fight. Not many agreeing with him. Your man, he got him his army.”

7

Julia woke to well-being and thought for a moment she'd died, but the familiar smells chased that idea off. The blackness around her was thick and still. She was alone. It felt very late, how late she had no way of knowing or even guessing. She felt a stab of fear, a flash of illogical anger. Illogical because she'd meant to tell them to leave her. Anger because they hadn't given her the chance to make the gesture. That anger like the death-illusion lasted only a few seconds. She sat up, clutched at the pallet as dizziness sent the dark wheeling. She took a deep breath, another. No pain. Weak as a wet noodle, but no pain. And she was hungry. Not just hungry, but ravenous. I could eat one of Angel's horses. What happened? Did I snatch my shaman out of dream? Nonsense. More likely the visitors did something. Some kind of drug. Miracle drug. That's the only kind of miracle that happens here. Where is everyone? She threw off the blanket, rolled onto her hands and knees and levered herself onto her feet. Lyn, she thought, I could use you now. After this new dizziness passed she pulled off the sweaty nightgown, dropped it on the blankets and stumbled to the end of the pallet, stopping when she kicked into the battered suitcase there. She lowered herself onto her knees, opened the case and began feeling around in it. Her fingers caught in a loop of leather, sandal strap, her old sandals, worn but more comfortable now than her boots would be. She lifted them out and set them beside her, poked about some more. Something folded. Heavy zipper, snap, double-sewed seams. A pair of jeans. Soft powdery dust lay deep in the folds, whispered from the worn denim when she shook the jeans out. A shirt folded under the jeans. She didn't bother looking farther, enough to cover herself, that's all she wanted. Getting onto her feet again showed her how weak she still was. All those weeks lying on her back, her muscles rotting. Stopping to rest every third breath, she got the jeans pulled up and zipped; they rode precariously on her withered hips, would have slid off but for the jut of her pelvic bones. She pulled the shirt on without bothering to unbutton it, rolled up the sleeves and let the tail hang, slipped into her sandals and wobbled to the door slit. Another stab of fear, hastily suppressed, then she laughed at herself and pushed through.

The moon was a feeble glow through the cloud fleece and the camouflage netting, but enough light came through to show her the disruption around her, shelter sides without their canvas tops, the edge of an empty corral—but over the noise of the wind she could hear a muted mutter of voices. She took a few steps and leaned against a tree, shaking with relief. She wasn't abandoned. After her heart slowed and her breathing settled, she started toward the sounds.

Lyn came rushing around a bushy young pine and nearly slammed into Julia. “Oh!” Her eyes lit and she grinned with delight. “Jule, you're up. You're looking lots better.” She looked over her shoulder, looked quickly back. “Dr. Grenier wanted you to sleep as long as you could, but we're 'bout ready to jump and he said go wake you and bring you. Bring the blankets and your clothes, it's winter where we're going.”

Julia laughed. “Going? Slow down, Lyn. You've lost me.”

Lyn pulled her hand over her hair. “Don't you remember what I told you?”

Julia leaned against a tree and closed her eyes. “Umm.… a little. The man and the little green woman.” She opened her eyes, stared into the darkness. “Offered … what? A refuge. Is that what you're talking about?”

“Uh-huh. You go on and find Dr. Grenier. I'll collect the blankets and things. Get him to find a place on a truck for you, if he hasn't already; you're not ready for a long march.” She clasped her arms across her narrow chest as if she were holding herself down, muting the excitement that made her want to fly. “Henny and Bert, they're coming for the tent. We leaving nothing behind for the creeps.” A frown. She reached out and touched Julia's arm. “You need a prop? I can go with you, come back later.”

“I'm fine if I take it slow. Any chance of getting something to eat?”

Lyn drooped. “I doubt it. Everything's packed. Maybe Serroi saved you something; Jule, she healed everybody, not just you, Anoike's shoulder, Ram, even old Anya's rotten tooth, she puts her hands on you and they go transparent and shine and when she takes them away, well, that's it.” She hesitated a minute longer, then with a wave of her hand she darted away.

Julia started shakily toward the meeting meadow. Before she reached it, Lyn trotted past her, blanket roll over her shoulder, suitcase bumping against her leg. She flashed Julia a grin and vanished into the darkness ahead. Julia kept moving along, stopping at a tree here, a tree there, catching her breath. After a while she started giggling softly. Magic healer. I did it. Missed one little detail though,
she
not he. Was right, after all. 'M dead and dreaming. Fantastic. Out of thin air. Don't believe it. Not quite moral, is it. Too easy. Magic, it's a cop-out, friends, you got to earn your salvation, slog along or it ain't worth it, it's smoke in the hand, squirting out the fingers if you try to hold it, the fish that got away.… She reached the edge of the clearing and stood gaping at the organized chaos before her.

Several military vehicles in the middle of the meadow, crammed to the canvas with cargo, motorcycles crowded around them. She recognized all but the largest, having been in on the raids that took them. More vans and a pair of pickups. Off to one side Angel and his band squatted beside a large horse herd. She looked up but couldn't make out any stars through the net. Must be getting close to morning, she thought. It was obvious that Georgia and Angel had taken their people out on raids to gather up as much as they could before the what did Lyn call it? the jump. Some folk were bustling about, though what they were doing she couldn't tell, some were sitting in groups, waiting, the adults with stuffed backpacks, the children with smaller loads. In spite of the crowding and the constant swirling movement, the meadow was surprisingly quiet, though there was an explosive excitement trapped beneath the net. Most faces were grave, some were sad. An old woman reached out and touched the trampled grass, stroked it as she would a cat or a dog, something loved.

Unnoticed in the shadows Julia began circling round the meadow, looking for the doctor, expecting to find him with the other council members somewhere near the uphill point of the meadow, the visitors with them. When her legs, began to shake, she stopped and caught hold of a tree; even that gentle slope was almost too much for her. She hung on a minute, then eased herself to the ground. Some of the trembling passed off after a few minutes: she pulled herself together and opened her eyes.

Samuel Braddock came strolling around one of the trucks and stopped to chat with a knot of boys working up to a fight, driven to the point of exploding by the tension and excitement that seemed to build without release. He got them laughing with a few words and sent them off in different directions; he passed on to exchange a few words with a glum-looking man, left him relaxed, still not smiling but looking around with interest. Another group was struggling with an awkward roll of canvas, on the point of spitting at each other as they tried to get it on top of the load in the back of a pickup. He did little but say a few words, yet in a few minutes the roll was being roped into place and he was strolling on. She watched him, smiling. Last year, when she'd followed Georgia and Anoike to this place, she'd been surprised to find a prosperous small community hidden under the trees, a printing press powered by a water-wheel, gardens growing everywhere, schools outdoors under the trees and a thousand other small details that added up to a placidly working society that was also very effective at attacking the monster growing below. It'd taken her less than a day to understand who was responsible for the shape and continuation of the community. She pulled herself back onto her feet. This isn't getting me fed.

Three shadow shapes stood apart at the high edge of the meadow, watching the confusion, talking now and then, a few words only, Dr. Grenier, the alien woman and the man. They shifted position a bit and saw there was a fourth with them. A quick hand, a flash of stiff gray hair, a bit of leg. Not enough to recognize.

Lou Grenier saw her first. “Julia.” He came toward her, his hands out. When he reached her, he gripped her upper arms, searched her face. “How are you?”

“Hungry.”

A quiet chuckle. The little woman Serroi came up to them. “Here.” She held out a packet. “I thought you might be hungry when you woke. A woman named Cordelia Gudon made some sandwiches for you in between rounding up a herd of children and getting them started collecting their possessions and fixing their packs. I'm afraid it's water if you're thirsty.”

“Del. She would.” She held the packet in both hands and gazed at Serroi across a chasm greater than the chasm between their two worlds, a chasm whose name was magic. She could begin to accept and perhaps comprehend it as a sort of alien technology with rules to its manipulation like those that governed the physical sciences here. Yet she was dimly aware that there was something more, something numinous and luminous and sorrowfully shut away from her that existed within the delicate porcelain figure before her. She opened her mouth, closed it again. Words were her profession but she was robbed of them here. Everything she thought to say seemed banal or impertinent. Since banality seemed the least offensive, she said, “Thank you for my life.” She lifted the packet. “Twice.”

A quick brushing gesture swept the words away. “If I could choose to heal and did, then I could accept your thanks, but no. You owe me nothing. The same would have happened were you my worst enemy and threatening what I hold most dear.” She grinned suddenly, an impish, urchin's grin that banished magic and mystery and made Julia want to hug her. “I will take credit for the sandwiches.”

Lou touched her arm. “And you'd better find a place to sit and eat. Before you keel over and Serroi has to work on you some more. No way to treat a work of art, you should know that, Jule.” He was half-serious, half laboriously joking, missing what she was missing though he wasn't aware of it, yet something was provoking him into caricaturing himself. She patted his arm though he was making her more uncomfortable than Serroi had, started to turn away. The shifting of the others let her see the fourth person more clearly. “Magic Man, they chase you out too?”

He grinned at her, his pointed nose twitching as it always did when he was amused.

Serroi looked from him to her. “You know the Changer?”

“Since I was a little girl. He used to work on my father's farm.”

Serroi looked amazed, then skeptical. “Work?”

“Uh-huh, helped with the planting, milked the cows, mowed, raked, ran the baler; we used to hoe weeds together and he'd tell me stories to make the rows pass faster … stories …” Her voice trailed off. “You called him Changer?”

“I know him as Coyote or Changer. He's the one who brought us here, Hern and me.”

Magic Man winked at Julia. “Didn't I tell you that you'd be all right, Little Gem?”

She smiled at him, feeling the old warmth come flooding back when she heard his pet name for her, then blinked at the sudden thought that all this might be only his scheming to bring the healer to her. She dismissed that at once as obvious nonsense, but there was still this little niggling question that wouldn't go away.

Braddock came sauntering up the slope, a canteen dangling from one finger. “Julia,” he said, smiling his startling, youthening smile. “Here. You might want something to wash those sandwiches down with. Anoike's saving you a place on one of the trucks. Better go find her, we're about ready to jump.” He turned to Magic-Man-Coyote-Changer. “Anything special we need to do? If not, let's move.”

PRIESTESS

She wanders about the shrine unable to settle at anything. At first she thinks it is the residue of excitement from the Turnfete. It had been a subdued celebration, yet filled with joy and hope as it was meant to be. The Turn toward light and warmth. In the heart of winter a reminder of spring's promise. A promise too, that the winter will one day be gone from their hearts.