Woman Who Loved the Moon (23 page)

They bring an extra chair to hold the platter of food.

Vadek says to Mischa, “It’s too bad you don’t play chess.”

Mischa picks up a black pawn and makes it disappear. “Check,” Vadek laughs. Mischa brings the pawn back. “I can’t sit for hours with my legs dangling.”

“If you played chess you could.”

Yoshio Atawak says, “Only if you are a monomaniac. Vadek, you’d sell your soul to the devil for the chance to beat him at chess. When is your match with Elk Zekar?”

“Yoshio, I thought you knew everything.”

“I do not. Almost everything. Is it tonight?”

“No—a few days.”

“His daughter is staying in the hotel, you know, Elsen Zekar.” Yoshio is looking at Mischa. Under the table Mischa’s hands are moving: look at this look at
this
!

Vadek says, “Is she?” He examines the chess board, unconcerned. But after a moment he says gently, “Mischa, stop that.”

Mischa stops.

Yoshio Atawak looks at them both, and then shrugs.

Mischa asks, “What is Elk Zekar like?”

“I like him,” Vadek says. “I like the way he plays chess.”

Atawak says, “I admire you. I would not agree to contest a telepath at tying shoelaces.”

“Can you still tie your own shoes?” says Vadek. He moves a pawn.

“Of course. No matter that it takes me an hour to bend down.” Atawak moves a pawn. Vadek moves a bishop. “Now why the hell did you do that?”

Mischa asks, “Will you win this time, too?”

“I think so.”

* * *

“Are you still happy, Elsen?”

“Happy... Yes.”

“Don’t go tomorrow. Stay another day in the hotel with me. One more day.”

“Another day... But then I must go.”

“Why if, it makes you so unhappy? Why must you see him at all?”

She will not answer him.

* * *

Yoshio Atawak sticks his head into the closet dressing room. It is all that he can get inside the door. “Message for you from Vadek,” he says. “He will not be at the show tonight, because he is playing that chess game, but he sends his regards.”

Mischa nods. He has become used to the champion’s presence during the shows, just as he has become used to Elsen’s warmth in the dark night...”I wish him well.”

“I saw him off. He seemed confident. Chess games take hours sometimes. I don’t think he ate enough dinner, either—”

“By whose standards, Yoshio?”

“Oh, not you too, Mischa!”

Mischa escapes to the stage. He misses Vadek—but Elsen is there, pale skin, pale hair, eyes like gems. She is going to see her father in the morning, he has not been able to talk her out of it. What is a telepath in a bad mood like? he wonders. Do Zollians let themselves have bad moods? Will her father be in a bad mood if Vadek beats him at chess?

Almost, he wishes that Vadek would lose.

He looks for Elsen after, but she is gone, and he guesses that she is hiding from him. (“Anger is ugly, Mischa. Go away, don’t look at me!”)

* * *

“Mischa, Mischa.” Chaka’s voice. Reluctantly he comes awake in a bed that is too big for him. Chaka is leaning above him. “Mischa, please wake up. Vadek’s in jail!”

“Jail?” A nightmare—he is not awake.

“Wake up! They say he murdered that Zekar person.”

Mischa comes awake. “Atawak.”

“He isn’t here, he’s at the jail. He called from there. It’s morning. He asks us to come there, Mischa. Vadek asked for you.”

“For me?”

They meet Yoshio Atawak at the jail. His face is blotchy. His secretary is with him. “I spoke with Dov Dolk, the prosecutor. It seems that Vadek went in to play the match with Zekar—and walked out of the room a few moments later, dazed, with a bloody letter opener in his hand. Zekar was dead on the floor. They let me see Vadek a moment, only a moment. He asked for you. Then he kept saying my name over and over, as if it were a rock he could hold on to.” The secretary holds out a sandwich. Atawak takes it and stares at it in loathing. “I don’t want it. Take it away.”

“But you haven’t eaten!”

“Take it
away
!”

The room in the jail is bare, white, dreadful, and Vadek sits in its center and shivers, as if cold. “I can’t remember,” he says. Panic nibbles the edges of his voice. “I went to the study—the pieces were all set up; it’s a beautiful set, blue and white on a crystal board—Zekar came round the desk to meet me. He was smiling. I
think
he was smiling. I felt warmth, and then a wave of fear, anger, hatred and rage, like an electric shock. It was horrible. I don’t know what happened then. I was holding the letter opener and Zekar was bleeding on the floor.” He shakes. “They took away my chess set, the little peg one. It was in my pocket. I wish I had it.”

The prosecutor deigns to speak with them, her distaste for non-telepaths plain in her thinned lips, her shuttered eyes. “We have ascertained that there were no other visitors to Elk Zekar’s house. Vadek Amrill was alone with Elk Zekar. The story he tells, the hatred he says he felt, were his own. Zollians do not hate, we are disciplined.”

“Vadek—Vadek’s not like that,” Mischa says. Dov Dolk looks down at him and does not answer. “What will you do to him?”

“We have doctors for such people. We will fix him.”

“Change him?”

“For the better, I assure you. It does not hurt.”

Vadek says, “What do they say, Mischa?” Mischa tells him. Atawak is roaring protest in the halls. “Change me? What am I, an animal? A freak? What will they turn me into? They cannot make me a telepath. What will they take from my mind?”

“Don’t, Vadek.”

“Will they take my
chess
?”

Mischa walks out into the hall. Atawak is raging; Dov Dolk is icy cold. Mischa holds his cards, shuffles, palms. Misdirection. Illusion. Atawak is purple and his voice is shaking the walls.
In another minute they will throw us out.
Dov Dolk is holding her head in pain.

“Yoshio. Yoshio!”

“What!”

“Shut up.” Yoshio shuts up. Mischa says to the prosecutor, “Please listen to me. For just a little while.”

* * *

They have drugged her and blindfolded her. “Elsen?” he says.

“
You
told them.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you tell them?”

“For Vadek—and all of us.”

“How did you know? I handed
him
the letter opener.”

“You used my techniques. Misdirection. Illusion. You gave the Zollians Vadek, knowing their dislike and contempt for non-telepaths would blind them. But I know Vadek. The hatred was not his, it was yours, funnelled through your dying father’s mind. Your fear, your anger, your rage. It dazed Vadek as you knew it would.”

“It did. Why didn’t it blind you, too?”

“I looked at you, and remembered where you live, where you chose to live. On Gilbert’s World. A planet of teleports.”

“You looked at me. Mime, magician, freak, why did you look, why did you speak? It was easy; it was so easy. You gave me the courage to do it, Mischa. I loved you a little. Trapped—you trapped me. Tell me, will Chaka be your lover, freak? Will Vadek? Will anyone again? Who would want you, with your little boy’s body, but a freak and a fool? We all make a magic, magician; the illusion is the loving. I am a freak, she is a freak, he is a freak, you are a freak—ugly little man—I hate you, Mischa Dramov! I hate you.”

* * *

Ace of spades, jack of diamonds, queen of hearts, joker. Play, hands, play with the cards.

ALL PASSENGERS DISEMBARKING ON LYR REPORT WITH HAND LUGGAGE TO THE LOUNGE.

(“Hey, Mama, look at that funny little man!”—”Ssh! It’s rude to point. Remember him—that’s the magician!”)

Don’t look at me, say Mischa Dramov’s hands, don’t look at me, look at the cards, look at
this,
don’t look at
me.
DON’T LOOK AT ME!

Jubilee’s Story

The original title of this story was “Gimme Shelter.” Virginia Kidd, when she bought the story for
Millennial Women
, asked if she might change it, saying she felt it was somewhat obscure. I agreed. Upon reflection, I think she was probably right. But I wanted you, the readers, to know about it, because I wanted you— those of you who can—to remember what the Stones were singing about in that song, to remember what it felt like to exist so consciously at the moment of change. Remember the lyrics: “It’s just a shot away... it’s just a kiss away.” There are moments in our lives when we can feel the universe pivot. I tried to show one of those moments, which are always personal and often quite small, through the mind of Jubilee.

* * *

Jubilee, Apprentice Historian, to Dorian, Historian of the White River Pack: Greetings.

I wanted to make this History very orderly, very formal, as you taught me. But it’s hard to do that, sitting here in a strange room, trying to write, trying to remember. Memories aren’t orderly. Hannako, the Historian here at Ephesus, says that confusion always happens when one is newly come to the page. She says I should write the story any way I want to. So I will just set it down as I would tell it pretending that I am home, talking to my little sister. Today is Tuesday, June eleventh. We entered the territory of Upper Misery Friday evening.

Elspeth was going to Ephesus to live with Josepha for a while. Josepha was going to have her fourth baby. I was going with Elspeth because I wanted to see Josepha, too, and because I love going to new places. Ruth came with me so that we could be together. And Corinna traveled with us to take care of us, because not all of the territory between White River and Ephesus is safe. Corinna is an amazon.

The territorial markers for Upper Misery were very odd. They were only pieces of old wood, with scribbled chalk words across them, as if a child or someone very feeble had put them up. I asked Elspeth, when we first saw them, “Why would anyone choose to name a place Upper Misery?”

She shrugged. “Overweening pessimism.”

It was very quiet. Birds screamed sunset challenges at us from all the trees. Corinna went on ahead of us. She came back to tell us, “There’s no town.” There was just a jumble of ramshackle buildings surrounded by scored farmland. I think the road had once been paved, but now it was all chopped up with holes, and covered with dust and brush. It looked rarely used. No one had tried to repair it.

We went past the buildings. There was one well-kept house. “I wonder where the people are,” Ruth muttered. “It’s weird.”

“In that house,” Corinna said. I thought I saw a face look through a window at us. But no one came out.

We found an abandoned barn to sleep in. “Maybe they think we’re devils,” Corinna said. “Gah, this place stinks of horse dung!”

“They can’t be that ignorant,” Elspeth said. “Though we are surely dangerous to them, if they follow the old customs. Free women!”

We all smiled. Ruth stretched, showing off her muscles. Ruth is very strong, and very beautiful. “Even living in this pigsty, they must believe they’re free,” she commented. “What is the opposite of us?”

Elspeth was suddenly somber. “Slaves.”

* * *

The visitor came while we were eating breakfast. “Well?” Elspeth said.

He flushed under his red beard. They are not used to women talking to them like that. Then he said: “My wife—Kathy— she’s going to have a baby. Maybe today. She’s thin, very small, maybe too small to bear a child—” He stopped in mid- spate. “We are all alone here,” he said.

Just looking at her face, I knew what Elspeth would do.

“How old is Kathy?” she asked him.

“Seventeen,” he said. Elspeth looked at me. That is only two years older than I am.

“I will come,” she said.

Ruth said, “You will go into his house?”

Elspeth said, “What do you think, Corinna?” We all turned to her. She is tiny, like a fist, or an arrowhead. She seems lazy, until you see her move, and then she’s fast as a thrown knife. I would not like to get in Corinna’s way.

“What about Josepha?” she said.

“Josepha is not alone,” Elspeth said.

“I think it will be all right,” Corinna said.

“Thank you,” the boy stammered. I could see that behind the beard he was probably not much older than seventeen himself.

We went with him into the travesty of a town, to that one unbroken house. As we entered the hallway, a man with a big gray-and-red beard came out of a door. “Jonathan—I told you I didn’t want them,” he said angrily.

Jonathan said, “Kathleen is
my
wife.”