Gibbon's Decline and Fall (66 page)

It was Faye who did so. She could not look upon this unimagined form without the shape of her own Sophy invading the space between. Her Sophy, the sculptured form in her studio, all that loveliness, all that incomparable and incorruptible beauty, hung like a ghost in this alien air, a beauty that deserved more than the talk-around chitchat, the circuitous blather they were all uttering, like so many chickens in a poultry yard. They had come, after all, to find the person they loved, had loved, in one way or another. The words crowded her throat.

“I have to know about Sophy,” she demanded of the familiar stranger. “Tell us about Sophy.”

The scaled one was sitting beside Agnes, holding her hand. “I wish I could tell you.”

“You must try …,” Faye insisted.

The scaled one squeezed Aggie's hand. “She was reared outside our village by Padre Josephus and his old wife, visited by our robed teachers, told appropriate stories, given appropriate ideas to make her proof against losing objectivity. At first she knew me only as a voice in her mind, a presence, a ghostly companion. I knew of her as my life's work, my reason for being. Arrangements were made to support her and keep her and educate her as you were educated, to learn of the world, to find the enemy.

“So when she was grown, she went out into the world and met you, the six of you. She learned about women from you.” She breathed deeply, in very human distress. “She learned how very different you can be, one from the other: God loving, God rejecting, man loving, man rejecting, life loving, life rejecting. She learned of a world in which it is hard to be a woman, a world where women's worth is undervalued, where their achievements are belittled, where their good sense and humanity are denied. She lived as a woman in a world where some men rape women and excuse themselves by saying the woman asked for that treatment. She lived as a woman in a world where some men mutilate women, and beat them, and burn them, and are excused for doing so by male religious leaders who say that all this is proper and right. She lived in a world where these same religious leaders are shown respect by other nations in the name of expedience or cultural diversity. She lived as a woman in a world where women may not be
angry or resentful or they are thought strident, where women may not fight back or they are considered militant, where any assertiveness makes them bitches, where, whether Judeo-Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist, they are expected to be dutiful to their wombs, as Sophy herself defined it, in accordance with the Hail Mary Assumption.

“All this made sense for a primitive, sparsely populated people, prey to disease and predators and war. But for an over-populated, scientifically advanced people, it made no more sense to Sophy than it had to us. She thought perhaps your persecution resulted from a conspiracy among males. We had considered that and rejected it, but she in her turn explored that possibility. She found that the males who would desire such a conspiracy are too xenophobic to maintain one beyond the tribal level. She looked elsewhere, discarding this notion and that, as we had before her. Finally she did what we had not done: She began tracing individual lines of influence from each persecutor to the one who had influenced him, and from that one to the next one higher, and from that one to the next one higher yet. She researched each of these, learned about them, found out, so she said, what made them tick.

“She traveled here and there, following stories of pain, and in each of those places she traced the cause. When a crazed man shot women's doctors, she found who had written the book or given the speech or television talk that the crazed one listened to; then she sought the teacher of the one who wrote the book or gave the speech or broadcast his venom; then the one who had influenced that one. So she went from lonely psychopaths to crackpot groups moved by preachers and commentators who were in turn moved by lords of dominion. Always it led back to the Alliance. When a few years ago your
Wall Street Journal
quoted the dean of an Islamic university as being in favor of mutilating women, Sophy found he had been taught by an imam who had been taught by a member of the Alliance.

“The Alliance was headed by a man named Webster. The enemy of women was a creature named Webster.”

She breathed deeply, staring over their heads.

“And then?” asked Aggie.

“Well, we are female, too. Your enemy is our enemy. If he knew of us, he would not merely eat you and leave us in peace. Knowing that one has an inexorable enemy is corrosive. It sickened Sophy, like a cancer.” Sovawanea's body trembled
in an almost human shiver. “Add to that the fact that she had always had great trouble coping with the feelings of her chimp-human body, that lusting that drives you to ignoble ends, all that passion that commits you to foolishness. Your chimp-human violence racked her. She couldn't cope with the pain your chimp-human procreation causes, the millions of people who can find no place or use in life, the hopeless people, too many to be cared for and, thus, uncared for.

“She suffered. I felt her suffering. And I felt her resolution when, at last, she determined to go into the lair of the beast and see for herself what he planned for womankind.”

After a long silence Carolyn breathed, “Where?”

“A place called the Redoubt.”

“I've heard of it.”

“I believe many have heard of it. To their pain.”

“Have you been there?” Jessamine asked.

Sovawanea shrugged, that oddly human shrug. “I knew she had gone there. I could not read her thoughts while she was there, but when she disappeared, I thought she might have been captured by that enemy, so I went to the Redoubt seeking her. Then I saw the place.”

Carolyn regarded her through slitted eyes. “How did you get there?”

“By our ways.”

“Your ways. Like how?”

“Like the bus.”

“Which isn't really a bus?”

“No.” She frowned. “It isn't really a bus, but when you get on a thing that looks like a bus, you expect to move with the bus in the direction it is facing. When we use our ways to travel, mental alignment is a precursor to movement, and on a bus mental alignment is automatic.”

“What are we talking about?” Jessamine demanded. “Telekinesis?”

Sovawanea shook her head. “No. Mentally assisted technology. A tiny device implanted in the head that amplifies certain wave patterns. The travel is technological, but it is thought controlled. Padre Josephus doesn't really drive the bus, though it amuses him to go through the motions. He merely
thinks
it where he wants it to go. And since you expect it to go in whatever direction it is pointed, your own thoughts do not interfere.”

“So you went there. You saw the place,” said Faye. “Can you take us there?”

Sovawanea clutched her hands together, half turned, gritted her teeth with an audible sound of agitation. “I could.”

“Will you?”

“There is danger. Too much danger. The place is well guarded. With so many of us, we could be caught. If we are caught, we are as good as dead.”

“But you went,” said Carolyn. “Wasn't there danger for you?”

“I am only one. It is easier to hide one.”

“Hide, how?”

“People see what they expect to see. It takes only a minor influence to bend space around oneself, to keep oneself unseen.…”

“Like the walls around this place that Padre Josephus spoke of,” Carolyn said.

“Like that, yes.”

“But you could hide us that way.”

“No. Not all of us. I could only … make things hazy. It wouldn't be good enough.”

“You understand that we have to see.”

Sovawanea shook her head sadly. “I understand that you think you do. Isn't my word enough?”

“No,” said Agnes. “It isn't. At this moment we could be talking to a demon who is seeking to undermine the word of the Church. My Church. Which is allied with Webster. Shall I take your word for it that the Alliance is evil? Or shall I keep in mind that we are fallible? That we may be wrong.”

Carolyn said, “I agree. We have to know what is happening. And why.”

Sovawanea teetered on her long, clawed toes. “If you are very good. Very … obedient. If you think only quiet thoughts, no matter what you see.…”

Carolyn stared around her at the others, and they at one another doubtfully. It was Jessamine who said firmly, “We must know. Mustn't we?”

After a long pause Sovawanea nodded. “I suppose you must. Sophy needed to see. You probably need to see, as well.” She went to the stove and opened the door, disclosing the glowing coals within. “Come close around me. We must hold hands, so that we travel together.”

She wore a chain and pendant like the one Tess wore.
Now she took it from about her neck and set it on the floor in front of her. The pendant had a faceted stone set within it that spun and glittered in the firelight.

She said, “Look at the sparkle and try to think of nothing very much. When you feel yourself going, do not fight against it.”

“Going?” whispered Ophy.

“This device does not look like a bus, so we must align ourselves in the direction of movement. Look at the light. Let it show you the way.…”

They looked as she directed, weary from too much happening, too little sleep, too much apprehension, finding it surprisingly easy not to think of anything much. Their eyes remained fixed on the glitter, unable to leave it. Sovawanea spoke, her voice murmuring in the sibilant, softly melodic tongue of her people. The glitter coalesced, became a glow that crept toward them, like water. The glow expanded in a plane, making a gleaming pool around them. Then the circle turned on its diameter, making a sphere, and within this bubble of light they were gathered up and moved. Through the substance of the light they could see the world flowing beneath them like a river, a liquid running, desert and mountains and rivers, cities alight, dark untenanted spaces sweeping by like dark water.

Carolyn looked from face to face, seeing variously apprehension or fear or wonder or eagerness. Aggie's face was expressionless; her eyes were tightly closed. She kept them closed as time went by, opening them only when their movement slowed, as the world halted beneath their feet.

They stood in a circle of ashen fire on a barren hillside where a throat of darkness gaped into the earth. All around them were mountains, dire and menacing under a lowering sky that spread a mat of filthy cloud upon the jagged horizon. These were badlands, volcanic lands, tortured and drear and black. In one direction a contorted road wound into a distant valley, marked along its length by guard posts and gates; in the opposite direction that road ended in a pair of heavy doors. The tunnel between the doors was guarded by a partially lowered portcullis, where a few visored, anonymous men moved restlessly in and out, like ants crawling through the teeth of a skull. On the portcullis were broad convex bosses graven with a symbol: a spider's web with a thunderbolt at its center.

“Look upon this place,” said Sovawanea. “This is the Redoubt.
This is the place of your enemy. Here your spider lairs.”

“Where are we?” Carolyn murmured.

“Almost on the Canadian border. The builder of this place took some trouble to confuse its location. The Canadians think this is U.S. soil, the Americans think it is Canadian. As a result, neither bothers it. Look here at our feet, where we stand in this gray circle. We will step out of this circle, the circle will remain, and in order to return we must come to this circle once more. Hold the location in your mind so that you can find it.”

Her whispering voice grew sharp. “Listen to me. Aggie, whether you trust me or not, you must listen. Here it is night. They do not expect us. Because they do not, and because we will dress ourselves in their clothing, they will not think of invaders, but you must do nothing to attract attention to yourself. They would hear us if we spoke, therefore do not speak. Listen. Look. Hear and see for yourself. I will do nothing to impede you. I will try to cover us, to veil us from their sight, but it will work only for a short time, only so long as we do not touch them, so long as we hold our emotions at bay. If you feel strongly, he who lairs here may feel that emotion and track upon it as a dog does a scent.
You must remain calm
, no matter what you see or hear.”

She stepped out of the circle, and they followed her, walking slowly, carefully, hiding behind the nearest stones as the visored men came in or out of the entry. An interval came when no forms moved beneath the portcullis, and they followed Sovawanea's darting form as she slipped beneath the iron teeth. Inside was a long, broad corridor, almost a road leading into the mountain. To their left was a short corridor with doors opening along it. They skulked past the first few rooms where they heard men speaking inside, then slipped into one that was dark, silent, and empty. They saw it only in the light that came in from the corridor, a dressing room, clothing hanging on racks, showers at the rear, urinals and toilets to one side. The uniform included loose trousers, boots, a light long-sleeved tunic that fell to the knees, an ornamental breastplate, and a visored helmet. It took longer for Ophy and Carolyn to find trousers short enough not to drag on the floor than it did for the rest of them to get dressed.

“Anonymity is one of the tenets of the Alliance,” murmured Sovawanea as she thrust her arms through the sleeves
of the tunic. “All the men here are Webster's servants. It works to our benefit that he does not bother to distinguish among them.” She cursed briefly in her own language at the boots as she stuffed them with pieces torn from one of the tunics. Her feet were too thin for the footwear to stay on otherwise.

They went back to the wider entry hall and turned left, into the mountain, walking quietly down the broad though ill-lit tunnel, passed by an occasional little cart that came spinning by in either direction. Scores of smaller tunnels opened out on either side. The one they walked along was long and straight, vanishing into nothing at its end. Carolyn was reminded of the endless concourses of some badly designed airports before they began to hear a distant reverberant clamor, voices echoing in a large room. They felt the effort of the walk. Partway, Sovawanea took the boots off and carried them, and Bettiann bit her lip to keep from groaning at the pain in her legs.