Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (24 page)

Jewel of Wommack had planned on a husband and half a dozen babes for herself, to add to the ones already making the halls noisy at the Castle. She’d planned on a suite of rooms nobody else had seemed to care for, a corner suite with a window looking out into a tangle of huge old trees, where a tadling could step right from the windowseat onto a treelimb and back again. Three girls and three boys, she’d planned on, all raised loyal to the Confederation, fallen or not.

She set that aside, now. As she’d set aside the idea of being a child, when her parents had drowned, and taken up her post as the woman that’d have to do for her brother.

“I hear you, Lewis Motley,” she said.

She had some idea what a habit would be like. There’d been little room on The Ship for pictures of such stuff, but there were a few in the library her brother had mentioned, and she felt the weight of the wimple on her forehead already. And that brought a thought.

“I’ll not cut my hair,” she announced to nobody in particular. “You put that out of your mind.”

“Is that where your learning is?” asked Lewis Motley. “In your hair?”

The Grannys clucked their tongues, and Goodweather spoke up.

“Too much has happened for one day,” she said, “and all of us are in a sorry state. You there, making jokes at a time like this; and Gilead, about to faint on us. I believe you have the right of it, young Wommack, with your Teaching Order, I do believe that is exactly what we need, and I can see it down the way-it’ll be a thing that comes to matter. But for now, enough. Enough and a right smart piece left over. This meeting’s closed.”

And then she thought of one more thing. “Lewis Motley?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I’ll be expecting you in my room shortly, about that earache.”

“Granny,” said Jewel, “that’s a waste of your time. I’ve been trying to send him to you about that for days now, and he takes my head off every time I mention it. He’s
got
no earache, you care to listen to him, nor no headache either. You can tell him all you like how many times you’ve seen him, wincing like somebody stuck him with a pin again, rubbing at his head and scowling-it won’t do you a scrap of good.”

“Lewis Motley!” objected the Granny. “You’ve got your work cut out for you for a good time to come, and no quarter anywhere. This is no time to be distracted with a misery, you need to be the very best you can be! You come and see me and let me-”

He cut her off with a sudden chop of both hands in the air.

“Like you said, Granny,” he told them, looking right through them all and biting the words off one by one, “this meeting’s closed.”

At Castle Smith the sovereign was fretful, despite the fact that that very morning the new Granny’d flown in behind his Magician of Rank on his Mule and taken up residence in the Castle. She looked mean enough, and she talked the formspeech in a way that was a consolation to ears long used to hearing it, and having her there filled a hole that’d been gnawing at him. But he was not happy. He sat on the throne set up for him in the Castle Ballroom, now known as the Throne Room, and fidgeted, while his Queen watched him distractedly.

“She can’t do it,” said King Delldon Mallard Smith the 2nd. “I don’t be
lieve
she can do it!”

“She’s done it,” answered Lincoln Parradyne.

“She’s got no
right!”

“On the contrary, Your Majesty-she has every right. Or, to be more accurate, Brightwater Kingdom has every right.”

“There has
always
been the comset network on Ozark, Lincoln Parradyne. From the very . . . uh . . . first. The comsets supply our news. They carry our messages. They provide our education and our entertainment. They are everything that on Old Earth had to be done by a mail service, and a telephone service, and a television service, and a radio service, and a-”

“Your Majesty,” interrupted the Magician of Rank, “I am familiar with the history of Earth. And I assure you that the comsets have done far more than all the services and media of that misbegotten planet combined. We will be greatly inconvenienced without them.”

“Then-”

“But,
Your Highness, Responsible of Brightwater is as much within her rights to restrict the range of the comsets to the Kingdom of Brightwater as she would be to keep its buildings there, or its Mule herds there, or anything else that belongs to it. Brightwater provided the comset service to the Confederation, not to the Kingdoms-and the Confederation is no more.”

The King pulled at his lower lip, and blew out a long breath. “You didn’t mention this point to me before the Jubilee,” he said accusingly.

“On the contrary again, Your Majesty. I did.”

“I remember no such thing.”

“He did,” put in the Queen. “I was there at the time, and for sure he did. You laughed at him. You said he was talking nonsense. You told him not to bother you with stories meant to scare tadlings, when you had important business to discuss. I remember
most
distinctly.”

“Well, whatever happened-not that I’m admitting it, you . . . uh . . . understand, I tell you nobody mentioned it to me!-but isn’t there a law? Can’t she be stopped?”

Lincoln Parradyne raised his eyebrows.

“Your Majesty,” he protested, “the comset stations, and the equipment, and all the transmitters and relays,
all
those things, are the property of Castle Brightwater. The reply that was given to me yesterday by Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater-saying that to continue comset transmission would be an act of interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign Kingdoms-was absolutely right. Not to mention the expense, of course.”

“Even if the sovereign Kingdoms desire to be interfered with?” demanded Delldon Mallard, ignoring the part about expense. “In that one way only, of course.”

“Really, Your Majesty!” said Lincoln Parradyne. “Think what you are saying. Either we are independent, or we are
not.”

“Perhaps,” ventured the King, “Responsible of Brightwater has a price.”

“I doubt that,” said Marygold flatly.

“Even if she did-where would you
get
that price? You have not yet established a Royal Treasury, and it’s not because I haven’t reminded you.”

The point was a sore one with the King, who’d been putting off by every means possible the inevitable moment when he would have to inform his subjects of the new realities of taxation, and explain to them just what services they would be receiving from him in return for their funds. He did not have that worked out to his satisfaction as yet, and he was not so thick-headed that he did not realize it might take some fancy talking to bring it off. Taxes in the past had gone to Brightwater, and the services provided had been both obvious and welcome; things would be different now.

“Lincoln Parradyne?”

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“How about our building . . . uh . . . our own comset rig? It’s not secret how it’s done, is it?”

“No, it’s not secret. It was part of the information brought along when we landed here; it’s available to anybody.”

“Then let’s do it!” It seemed very obvious to the King.

“All of the Kingdoms,” said the Magician of Rank, “now that the Confederation has
finally
been dissolved, will have to consider that option. They might each build their own networks . . . they might go back to sending information by riders on Muleback . . . they might take up some of the devices of Earth. But it will take some time, Your Majesty. The decision must be made in each case, separately. The funds must be found. The necessary
technicians
must be found, or hired from elsewhere. A communication network requires experts, and money, and time.”

“Do we have the people we need, here in this Kingdom?” asked Queen Marygold practically. “Seems to me that’s the first question.

“No, Your Majesty.”

“Then where do you reckon-”

“Marygold of Purdy!” said the King. “I have asked you, now that you are a Queen, to be more careful of your speech. If the Magicians of Rank can manage to talk without sounding like Grannys, surely you can do the same!”

Lincoln Parradyne forbore to mention the pitiful weakness of that argument, and answered his Queen directly.

“Madam,” he said respectfully, “so far as I know they are all to be found on Marktwain-in Brightwater.”

“Curse
that female!” shouted the King of Smith.
“Curse
her!”

“Delldon, you have no way of knowing that Responsible of Brightwater is the one that ordered the comsets cut back,” said his Queen. “It was Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater that spoke to Lincoln Parradyne when you sent him inquiring, not that girl.”

The King sputtered helplessly about the ignorance of women, and his Magician of Rank moved to smooth the waters.

“I am much afraid, my dear Queen,” he said, “that the King is correct. Whoever may
speak
for Brightwater, it is Responsible that holds the reins of power.”

“That’s very odd,” commented Marygold of Purdy. “I don’t understand it at all, and I don’t see it as proper or fitting. How can a girl of fifteen be running a whole Kingdom?”

While Delldon Mallard was explaining that it wasn’t that way at all, it was just that as was entirely suitable the Family at Brightwater saw fit to leave a lot of trivial detail work to the elder daughter, in the same way that he and Marygold left such stuff to Dorothy of Smith, the Magician of Rank mulled over the question. Not for the first, nor yet for the thousandth time. If he had the answer to that question, he would have the secret to all the mysteries. But seeing as how he didn’t have, and no number of Formalisms & Transformations tried by him or any of the other Magicians of Rank would yield it up, there was little point in fretting over it. And so he smiled and spread his hands to indicate that he was as puzzled by it all as Marygold was.

“There is always a Responsible-though not always of Brightwater,” mused the Queen, leaning her chin on her hand. “And there always has been, so far as I know . . . and always she has had some special place. And yet she is not a Granny, and not a Magician, and not a Magician of Rank. . . And if you try to talk about it when you’re little, the Grannys tell you it’s not polite and shush you right up.” She stared up at the ceiling, high above her head, and concluded: “I wonder how it
works?”

“On Earth,” grumbled the King, “people did not understand science-and we know . . . uh . . . where that led. Here, we do not understand magic. And who’s to say it won’t lead to the same place?”

Lincoln Parradyne Smith was taken aback; it was a very perceptive thing to say, and sounded as odd in his sovereign’s mouth as a bray would have. He hadn’t thought the man had it in him.

“Nicely put, Sire,” he said with great formality, bowing low. “Nicely put.”

Silverweb of McDaniels found her refuge, finally, high up in the Castle, at the end of a tiny passage down which two people couldn’t have walked side by side. It was a room smaller than the one in which the Castle linens were stored, but it was big enough for her purpose and clearly not wanted by anybody else; the dust and the cobwebs lay thick enough to show that it got no attention but the yearly spring cleaning, and the one window was so dirty that she could see nothing through it but a weak and murky light even at high noon.

She began by throwing out everything that was in the small space, carrying what was worth saving into the Castle attics-a simple task, since they opened on the passage, and there was no lugging up and down stairs to be done-and putting all the rest down the garbage chute or, the floor below. There wasn’t much to dispose of. A narrow bedstead with neither spring nor mattress nor hangings, not even a straw tick; a wardrobe that couldn’t of held more than a half dozen garments, with a tarnished mirror on its single door that gave her back a crazed wavery image of herself; one low rocker, in need of polish but worth keeping; a threadbare rug the size of a bath towel and rank with mildew; and a pair of curtains that fell apart in her hands when she touched them-how long they had hung there she didn’t know, but it had to of been many years.

When the room was empty she put on one of the coveralls the servingmaids used for heavy cleaning, and wrapped a kerchief round her hair. She scrubbed the floors first, till the boards had a soft gray gloss and were satiny to the hand; they had never been varnished. She scoured the walls and ceiling, stripping away from the wall where the bed had been an ancient paper that might of been roses once upon a time. And when she had the wood bare, broad boards vertical up the walls and then crossing the low ceiling, she rubbed into it a sweet oil made from the crushed fruit of a desert bush. It took days, but when she had it done the room had a faint delicate odor that was nothing you could put a name to; she liked it because it made her think of early morning, or high grasses after a soaking rain. The doors and moldings, inside and out, got the same treatment, and it was thorough. Silverweb was as strong as any average man her own age, and she put her sturdy muscles to good use with the rags and oil.

There was the window. She made it clean, till the old glass sparkled with an almost imperceptible tint of yellow, and looked out. If she looked down she could see all the way to the coast, and even make out the white curl of low breakers against the sand. But looking out, she saw only the Holy One’s bright clear sky, and that was as she wished it to be. Trees, rooftops, mountains-any of those would have been a distraction, and Silverweb wanted no distractions.