Mother of Eden (19 page)

But the man himself was right behind me. “I’m afraid the rules are the rules, my dear. They can only be changed in Council. But you did
well
well, Ringwearer, for a first try at a difficult job. You made clear how foolish these stories are, and you made at least some attempt to explain why the knowledge of the Teachinghouse is superior. Even that bit at the end, well, we do want our mother to plead for mercy, don’t we? We do want her to be distressed. We want it, even if mercy can’t be given. So I think it was a nice touch, well judged even.”

I was like one of those little wooden people we’d seen at Veeklehouse: a little wooden Gela with strings pulled this way or that to suit the big men of New Earth. But, just like those poor dead women, I’d heard a story long ago that, however twisted and worn down it had become over the generations, might well have begun with Gela herself, the real Gela, the living woman called Angela Young, who came from a real place on Earth.

That little boy was still screaming.

Luke Snowleopard

“Thank you for seeing me, Father,” I said to the chief.

We were in a little stone house in forest, which he kept for hunting. I was standing in front of him. He was sitting in a big chair with a woollybuck skin thrown over it, looking me up and down.

“You’re quite a fighter, from what I’ve heard.”

I said that was nice of him and that I liked to think so.

“Tell me
 
.
.
. er
 
.
.
. Snowleopard,” the chief said. “Why did you come here from Old Ground? I’d guess your work there was much the same as over here.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Chief. Me and my mates were bored. We’d got to talking to a few blokes from here who came over to trade, and it sounded as if this place might be interesting.”

“And is it?”

“I like it well enough, Father, but I’m not hard to please. A bit of meat, a fight now and again, a woman or two, and a drop of badjuice.”

“Badjuice?”

“You don’t have it over here, Father. It’s a kind of fruit juice that makes you feel happy.”

“Ah, yes, I heard something about that. I guess you miss it, then?”

“Oh, no, Father, my friends and I make it here. We brought some of the badjuice mud with us. You mix the stuff with fruit juice and let it sit for a while, and then it turns. You should try some, Father. It takes away your troubles. All the ringmen like it back at the Headmanhouse, though they can’t take much before they fall down.”

“So is there anything you miss on the other side? Friends, family?”

He had a polished stick with a band of metal round the top of it, and he tapped it against his hand while we talked. Two of his own ringmen were waiting outside.

“I’m not the family sort, really, Father. I guess I’ve got quite a few kids over there, but I’ve never bothered much with all that.”

“And how does it feel to be with us Johnfolk, after being on David’s side all your life?”

“It feels good, Father, if only because it’s a change. I’m going to tell you the truth: Johnfolk or Davidfolk, it doesn’t make much difference to me. I don’t really care about those old stories. I know you’ve got to have them to keep the women and kids happy, but for myself I don’t give a bat’s dick.”

The chief found that funny. “Well, you say what you think, I will give you that.”

“Not to everyone, Father, but somehow I had a feeling you’d know what I meant. John, David, Gela: They’re all just children’s stories as far as I’m concerned. Me and my mates like fighting, and we’ll fight hard for anyone who looks after us. So any old story you want us to stick up for, well just tell us which one, and we’ll do it.”

“You know the Ringwearer, I believe?”

“We knew her dad, Father. Blackglass, we called him.”

“What was he like?”

“Oh, you know, another fighting man: raised to be tough and hard, and not too bothered about anything. We knew her mum, too.”

“Really? And what was she like?”

“One word, Father: silly. But she was a good good slip.”

The chief laughed at that.

“Which I bet the girl is, too,” I added. “You should see the way she looks at me, Father.”

“Speaking of slipping,” the chief said, “I understand you’ve been going with Firehand’s girl Purelight?”

Tom’s dick. How did he bloody know? It was only last waking I’d first given her one.

“That’s true, Father.”

“So what’s the latest news on the Headman?”

“Not many wakings now, Purelight says. The old guy can’t eat a thing anymore, and he can barely get enough air.
.
.
. I must say, Father, I’m impressed you know already about me and Purelight. It’s only been a—”

“I
am
well-
informed, Snowleopard, my friend, and I’d bear that in mind if you’re going to work for me. When I decide I need a listener in someone’s house, I always take on three four.”

“That’s smart, Father. And am I right in thinking you won’t tell me who the others are?”

“Well, of course.”

“I understand, Father,” I said in my best sincere voice, “but you
can
trust me.”

The chief laughed loudly at this, banging the end of his stick down on the stone floor. “I can
trust
you!
You?
Do you mean trust you like David Strongheart could trust you? Or like Firehand can trust you? Or do you perhaps mean like the Ringwearer can trust you, who I hear speaks of you as her special friend and protector?”

I laughed. The chief was a funny guy. I’d never really noticed that before. “Well, now you put it that way
 
.
.
.”

“Now I put it that way, you agree you can’t be trusted.”

“You see right through me, Father.”

“Well, I hope you see through me, too, my friend, because if you do, you’ll know how I treat people who let me down.”

“I do see that, Father. I see a man who doesn’t hesitate and doesn’t hold back.”

“Tell me something from the Headmanhouse that I don’t know.”

“When the Ringwearer came back from the Rock last waking, she threw up all over the floor of the Tall Cave.”

“Ha! She likes kissing holefaces well enough, and letting slowheads try on the ring. But it seems this wasn’t so much fun.”

“I guess not, Father, though I reckon her dad would have enjoyed it.”

The chief wasn’t listening to me. “So she wants everyone to love her,” he said, looking down at the stick he was patting against his hand, “but she’s not so keen on the tough stuff. Pretty much like Greenstone. Well, that should make things easy.” He glanced up at my face with a faint little mocking smile. “Okay, good, I think we’re done here, Ringman Snowleopard. You know how to get hold of me, so make sure you do.”

“Thank you, Chief Dixon, I will.”

Part IV

Julie Deepwater

Me and Glitterfish took a boat out to gather nuts near the edge of forest. We waded waist-
deep, feeling down for the little bumps on the stems of the wavyweed, plucking them off, and tossing them into a bowl that we floated between us like a tiny kneeboat. Just nearby, only a few yards away, shone the open water, pink and green, and behind the pulsing of the trees we could hear the
sigh sigh sigh
of small waves breaking up as they reached the shallow water of the Grounds.

“I’m seriously thinking of moving over to Mainground,” Glitterfish said after a while. “Maybe try to be with that chap Tommy.”

Tommy was one of the guards who had come over, that time Lucy did for the spearfish.

“But Glits, it’s different between men and women over there. Here people slip together, make a baby, slip with other people, be friends. There, when you go with a guy you become
his
: his shelterkeeper, they call it over at Nob Head.”

She shrugged. She was so much the opposite of me—
she settled so easily for things I would never never accept, and she lived for motherhood, which I’d never wanted at all—
yet in some ways we had a lot in common. We both liked quietness.

“The way I figure it, Julie, if I’m going to have to live with guys with spears all round me, I may as well pick one of my own to protect me from the others. You said something not so different yourself. You said that if we ended up with guards here, you’d leave and go to Mainground.”

“I did say that, but I didn’t mean that I’d become the woman of some guard!”

Glits tossed a handful of nuts in the bowl and stood up straight to stretch her back.

“Well, obviously not,” she said. “You don’t like to slip with men.”

“But even if I did, Glits, I’d—”

She didn’t let me finish. “If you went to Mainground, you’d have to live among guards. So you must have been thinking that you’d rather live among them there than here.”

I combed my fingers through the shimmering weed.

“Mainground’s a big big place,” I said. “There’s Davidfolk over much of it, but there’s Johnfolk, too, down alpway, and I’m quite sure there must be others who’ve kept themselves apart from all of that, just like us Kneefolk did. I just wouldn’t settle down until I’d found them.”

“You could be wandering around all your
life
!”

I laughed. “Well, that wouldn’t be
so
bad!” I took the bowl of nuts and tipped it into the bottom of the boat. “Glits,” I began in a completely different voice. “There’s
 
.
.
. there’s something I meant to talk to you about. When my mum was alive she told me something, and she asked me to pass it on to my own daughter, but obviously I’m not going to—”

I broke off because Glitterfish was laughing.

“Are you going to tell me the Secret Story, Julie?”

“You already know it?”

“Oh, yes. My mum told it to me. She made quite a thing of it: how it made me special, how I mustn’t tell anyone at all, and specially not Starlight.”

“And you still remember it?”

“I do. Mum made me go over and over it. She was proud proud that she knew it.”

“I
thought
she might, actually. She used to hint sometimes about something special she knew that other people didn’t.”

“That sounds like Mum.”

“So she heard it from her mum, and my mum heard it from hers, and
 
.
.
. let’s see
 
.
.
. you’d have to go right back to my great grandmother, your great-
great grandmother, before you get to a woman who we both come from. It’s an old story, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s supposed to have come all the way from Gela.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t see why not. I guess it might have changed a bit after all that time.”

“We should compare what we’ve heard. See if we heard the same. I think it comes from Gela, too. You must tell it to your daughters when you have them. Tell them from you and from me. There needs to be another story in the world, apart from the story about David and the story about John.”

Starlight Brooking

The old story says that something changed inside Angela when she lost the ring. She’d been in Eden for many wombs by then. She’d had five kids. She’d understood that no one was going to come soon from Earth. She’d been making do with Tommy. You’d think, when she’d lost so much, that losing a little thing like that wouldn’t make so much difference. But she was like a boat that’s so low in the water that all it takes to sink it is one more stone.

I had a moment like that, too, but it wasn’t such a small thing. It was the death of those two stonebreakers. The sight of them falling falling falling, that long long time they were still alive, still whole, but beyond the reach of anyone: It went round and round in my head. And I kept thinking about how I’d been used, like a little wooden Gela, and about how, when it came to it, I’d been ignored.

Two three times on the way back to Edenheart, the Head Teacher tried to make cheerful conversation—
“Rather fuggy in the Cave this waking, don’t you think, Ringwearer? Rather fuggy and warm”—
but neither me nor Greenstone would answer him.

“I really need to talk with you about this,” I said to Greenstone as we jumped down from the car.

There must be more than one way to play old Firehand’s game,
I kept thinking as I went back and forth through the House. There had to be some way for me and Greenstone to stay on top of things, without having to do for people who’d done nothing wrong.

I had to keep moving. If I’d been on Grounds I’d have taken out a boat and paddled till I felt calmer, but here all I could do was go back and forth between the different wallcaves. I went into every single one of them that was on the ground and then—
something I’d never done before—
I began to climb one of the ladders to the floors above. Only ringmen and helpers normally ever went up there, and now they stared in amazement and dismay as I came up among them.

“Can we help you, Mother?”

“Have you lost your way?”

On the top floor was the small cave where the Time Counter stood: two metal bowls, one above the other, their outer surfaces the shiny red of polished redmetal, their insides a pale, scabby green. The upper bowl was counting out the seconds into the lower one—
drip—
drip—
drip—
drip
—while the Timekeeper sat beside them on a stool, watching the water level rise toward the mark of the Fourth Horn. He was a bald, middle-
aged man who looked a bit like my uncle Dixon, and it took him a few heartbeats before he recognized me.

“Ringwearer!” he gasped and, in his haste to kneel and kiss the ring, he tripped over his own metal horn, sending it clattering noisily across the stone floor.

I smiled as his bald gray head bent over my hand. I had power. I had power in my own right. The big people of New Earth might think they could control me. They might think they could force me to tell their story for them, as if my arms and legs were made of nothing but wood and string, but every small person in Edenheart thought I was wonderful, every small person would happily do whatever Mother Gela asked.

I patted the Timekeeper’s head.

“Blow the horn!” I told him.

“But Mother,” he exclaimed, “it’s not yet time!”

“Blow it anyway. Blow the Fourth Horn. I’ll take responsibility for it.”

Trembling, he picked up his metal horn and went to the windhole. He glanced back at me, thinking perhaps that I was only having a joke with him, or maybe that I’d gone mad, but I nodded to tell him to go ahead. He reluctantly lifted it to his lips.

Parp.

“Blow it properly. I promise you won’t be blamed.”

He lifted the horn again.

Paaaarp-
Paaaarp-
Paaaarp-
Paaaarp! Paaarp-
Paaarp-
Paaarp-
Paaarp!

There was a silence beneath us for a few seconds, silence but for the humming of the Great Cave. And then, from down below in Edenheart, came an answering horn:

Paaaarp-
Paaaarp-
Paaaarp-
Paaaarp! Paaarp-
Paaarp-
Paaarp-
Paaarp!

I went to the windhole, leaned out, looked out at the houses of Edenheart laid out below me like little toys, and listened as the other horns, up and down the caves, repeated what the Head
man
house had begun:

Paaaarp-
Paaaarp-
Paaaarp-
Paaaarp! Paaarp-
Paaarp-
Paaarp-
Paaarp!

The Timekeeper was listening to it, too, with his horn still in his hands. I winked at him, and his face suddenly broke into a grin, like a little boy whose mum has suddenly done some wonderful and outrageous thing.

It was pointless, of course, and it changed nothing, but I felt a little stronger as I climbed back down the ladder, like I’d proved something to myself.