Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods (12 page)

At the bottom of the stairs she paused, listening. Sometimes there were living things in the machines, and in that case emptying them could be difficult. There were no rustling or thumping noises. Encouraged, she began at the end of the row, unlatching and opening the doors that she had unlatched and opened the night before.

The indigo machine was empty. So was the green one. When she moved toward the rose washer, she heard a peculiar sound, a high-pitched whining. When the door was opened, she saw a litter of puppies lying on a pile of miscellaneous laundry. Five of them, each a different color and shape, three males, two females, all of about the same age. They half crawled, half fell out of the machine to wobble about on infant legs, tugging at her trousers and whining to be fed. She brought a bottle of milk from her apartment as well as some bread and meat scraps that all five tore at with tiny teeth, growling as they tugged and fought for possession of the best pieces. They seemed to be housebroken already, barking in treble voices to be let out. She thought of taking them to the dog pound. Surely there was a dog pound? And if there were? It could mean a half block walk or an interminable journey.

She surprised herself by finding the nearest grocery, instead, and buying a large sack of puppy kibble, wondering why she was doing it, admitting to herself at last that she was lonely. She could not remember having had that thought before, and it astonished her with its obviousness. Of course she was lonely. Why hadn’t she realized that in the past? Perhaps it had been yesterday’s unpleasant adventure, wandering quite alone as she had. For whatever reason, she welcomed the pups and made them a bed of a violet chenille bedspread and a bright pink tablecloth in an old fruit crate near the back door. She propped the door ajar so they could get into the weedy backyard to do their business.

She named them for their colors. Rouge, Liquorice, and Delphinium – Delphy for short – were the red, black, and blue pups. Silver and Gold were the silver-gray and yellow ones. ‘You can stay, at least temporarily,’ she told them. ’And those names will do until something of your character becomes clear to me. Then I’ll give you new names.’ She did not know where this thought came from, either. The names she had given them were adequate. Why should they need or expect new ones? Why should she?

‘You need friends,’ something inside her spoke. ‘You have no friends.’

She laughed. Who could have friends in this world of changing locations? Unless someone actually lived with you, in the same house, one day’s neighbor could become another day’s foreigner, adrift in some remote suburb.

When she closed the laundry to go for tomorrow’s map, the puppies barked behind her, demandingly, then trailed at her heels in an untidy kite’s tail of staggering doglets as she walked them three blocks to the kiosk and back.

‘There’s no excuse for not getting one’s map,’ she confided. ’There’s always a kiosk within six blocks. It’s arranged that way. If one doesn’t get a map, it’s because one is simply too scatterbrained.’

‘Or ill,’ her mind suggested with a discomforting and unusual percipience. ‘Or busy, or unconscious, or held prisoner, or crippled, or old, or drunk, or not very bright.’

‘Too scatterbrained,’ she said firmly. ‘We have ours, don’t we?’

There was scattered agreement from five small throats. Already she was beginning to see differences among them. Liquorice was going to be smooth-haired and large – he had huge feet. Rouge was going to be fluffy. The tips of his ears barely showed above his puff of fur, and he had a tightly curled tail. The yellow female tended to be a slinker, a peerer from corners and under chairs, with curious and suspicious brown eyes. The blue-gray one was afraid of nothing, and would have fur as sleek as lizard skin. The silver-gray one was quiet and thoughtful. She had this habit of looking wisely at Marianne, without blinking.

‘I have no idea why they run things this way,’ she told the puppy, sure she had asked a question about the city of Varnatur. ‘It’s always been this way.’

Though Marianne seemed to remember a place where things had stayed the same. Oh, the joyous recognition of a place like that. To see the same faces, the same places. To know them! Not always to be among strange places and people.

It was an aberrant thought. One she might be punished for, if anyone found out.

‘The Map Police could find out,’ she told the puppies. ’They really could. They know things about people. Sometimes they come into the laundry and arrest people. For the things they’re trying to clean, you know?’

Silver looked at her with complete understanding, as though she knew all too well.

Usually in the evening, Marianne watched the television. There were always three music programs, two drama programs, and the obligatory palace broadcast, in no consistent order. There was also the half-hour lost-and-found program, which she always watched with complete attention. It wasn’t the mappers’ fault: every program started with a disclaimer by the map commission, but sometimes things got disconnected. Children from their parents. Husbands and wives. Parts of houses. Belongings.

First there was a fanfare. Then the disclaimer, read by the High Commissioner. Then the brief announcements, sometimes with pictures. ‘Reward offered for the return of our beloved son, Roger Erickson, age three, lost during the last changeover.’ Name of family, name of house. Marianne wrote it down. She always wrote the locations down. Who knew? She might find one of them. Picture of Roger. Fat. Dimpled. Not very bright looking.

‘Not very bright looking,’ said Marianne.

‘Woof,’ agreed Rouge.

‘Reward offered for the location of our kitchen and servants’ quarters, inadvertently misplaced during the last changeover.’ Name of house. Floor plan of kitchen, as though that made any difference. ‘If you found a kitchen attached to your house and it didn’t belong there,’ Marianne remarked, ’you’d call them, wouldn’t you? Why show us the floor plan?’

Gold panted briefly, licked a paw, then returned her liquid brown gaze to Marianne’s face.

‘Reward offered for a set of five things taken from the palace,’ the announcer intoned. ‘Purposefully detached, not lost during changeover. All citizens are encouraged to keep their eyes open for five things that may have been stolen from the palace. Five similar things.’

Silver growled deep in her throat. Rouge laughed. Delphy tried to catch his tail. Gold and Liquorice were playing tag around the legs of a chair.

‘No,’ Marianne said, looking at them. ‘Puppies aren’t things. The announcement said five things.’

‘Not many things come in fives,’ her mind said.

‘No,’ she said again. ‘Puppies aren’t things. It couldn’t be.’

Today’s city was Brandton-Minor. Marianne checked the map over her morning coffee. The palace was at the center of the map, as it always was. Other things moved; the palace did not. Not the palace and not the Bureau of Maps. The Clean Machine had continued its slow approach and was now within six blocks of it. ‘We’ll probably never be this close again,’ she told the pups. ‘We can go see the palace this evening. After work. I’ll get tomorrow’s map at noon, and that’ll leave plenty of time.’ It seemed likely that palace viewing would need an hour or more. The television often showed endless streams of pedestrians and bus passengers on their way to or from the palace.

When she set out, the puppies in a straggling tail at her heels, the streets were full of people headed in the same direction. Marianne followed along, part of the human procession, smiling, nodding, exchanging a few words. Today she was tempted to look for someone recognizable. Someone she might have seen before. Marianne played this game seldom and saw anyone she recognized less often yet, but she frequently met the same half-curious, half-searching glances she knew was on her own face.

The block nearest the palace fence was very crowded. The puppies whined. Marianne picked them up and put them in the large canvas bag she was carrying. Their heads poked above the top, peering curiously at the crowd.

People worked their way to the fence, stood there staring for a time, then departed. Those at the back of the crowd were gradually shifted forward. When Marianne’s time at the fence came, she stared no less curiously than the rest. There was the sloping lawn, the two vast fountain basins to left and right, the slender pillars supporting the roof of the portico, the rows of flimsy trees. A line of black-clad guardsmen stood motionlessly upon the stairs. A gardener worked on his knees beside one of the fountains.

One of the puppies whined, briefly, and there was a small convulsion in the canvas bag. Marianne looked down to see the bag almost empty. Only Rouge and Liquorice stared up at her, their tongues out. The others had jumped out and run off. Somewhere.

‘Cute pups,’ someone said.

She looked through the fence into the eyes of a guardsman, his face immobile, as though carved from some dark stone. One hand held a leash from which a dog leaned toward the fence, straining, teeth exposed in an eager, hungry dog smile. ’I will bite you if I get a chance,’ the smile said. ‘They will reward me if I do it well.’

‘How many of them do you have?’ the guardsman asked in a significant voice.

She started to say, ‘Five,’ then choked the word off as Rouge barked a treble puppy bark and nipped at Liquorice’s ear. ’This is Rouge,’ Marianne said weakly. ‘This is Liquorice.’

He nodded, moving off down the row of spectators. At the far, right-hand corner of the palace was a low tower, crowned with a row of arched and curtained windows. One of the curtains twitched as though someone had been standing behind it, watching.

Marianne turned away. She wanted to look for Gold and Silver and Delphy, but something told her it would be dangerously foolish to do so just now. The place felt like the streets did just before change, shivering with purpose. Something impended. She hurried away through the crowd, slowing as it thinned in order not to draw attention to herself.

There were only a few blocks to traverse, back to the laundry. As she turned the last corner, she noted half consciously that the street was empty, an unusual thing for this time of night. It was not until she had come halfway from the corner, however, that they stepped out of an alley and came toward her.

Their hair was stiffened into spikes and dyed in shades of bright green or purple or blue. Their faces were painted. She stopped where she was, thought of running, knew it would do no good. Her money belt was at home. They would take her wallet, but she could spare that. If that was all they took…

‘Hey, mama,’ the largest of them said. His voice was silky, insinuating, a rapist’s voice. ‘Hey, lady. Hey, you. Where you goin’?’

It would do no good to talk. Talking would only make it worse. If she could stay on the street, likely they would not kill her. The Map Police did not like people being killed on the street. She was silent, quiet, holding her bag across her chest like a shield.

His name was written on his forehead in blue ink. Ironballs. Fanning out behind him were Blueshit and Wrecker, their names tattooed above the brows in purple and red, and a huge, muscular woman with her name on both cheeks, Brasstits. Her gilded nipples thrust through holes in a leather vest.

Rouge whined, pawed at the edge of the sack, overbalanced and dropped to the sidewalk with an abrupt half-bark of surprise.

‘Hey, she’s got puppies,’ said the woman in a narrow, nasal voice which was so surprised it was for the moment nonthreatening. ‘Pups!’

‘His name is Rouge,’ Marianne found the voice to say. ‘The other one is Liquorice.’

‘Where’d you get ’em?’ Ironballs asked in a mild tone.

‘I guess they were abandoned,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. ‘I found them.’

‘In a alley, huh?’ he said, almost sympathetically. She did not correct him. She didn’t want them to know where she lived, or worked. She merely nodded, not moving. Liquorice tried to climb out of the bag and she set him down beside Rouge.

‘We could eat ’em,’ offered Blueshit. ‘I ate dog once.’

‘You’d eat shit,’ Brasstits offered mildly. ‘You’d cut off your mother’s tit and eat that. Trouble with you, Blue, is you got no discrimination.’

Rouge, moving with unpuppylike speed, darted toward the alley entrance from which the mapless ones had emerged. With a shout, half of amusement, half of challenge, Brasstits turned and pursued him, Blueshit and Wrecker close behind, whooping with glee. Ironballs stayed where he was, eyeing Marianne as though he planned to butcher her for the pot. ’What you got good, Mama? Got money? Love or money, which? Huh? Maybe both?’ He raped her with his eyes, an anticipatory revel.

Liquorice barked briefly, lifted his infant leg and peed on the man’s boots. Ironballs let out a yell of rage and snatched at the pup who darted just out of reach, toward the alley.

‘Go home,’ said a voice in Marianne’s ear. ‘Go home, fast.’

Ironballs was chasing Liquorice; the others of the gang were chasing Rouge. For the moment, none of them was watching her. Marianne got into the laundry and double-locked the door, then stood in the dark, watching the street through a crack in the shutter.

A sound drew her attention from the window. All five of the pups were sitting behind her in a line, watching her watching the street. Rouge and Liquorice had somehow rejoined the others.

Out in the street, the four mapless ones emerged from the alley once more to stare up and down the street, waving their arms and cursing one another loudly for the loss of their prey.