Nela shook her head, confused. “But that can’t be, not if Danivon denounced this man because he murdered children….”
“No,” said Danivon, offended. “That’s not why I denounced him. That would have been improper.”
They stared at him, and he at them, neither understanding the other.
“Our job is to protect diversity,” he said through gritted teeth, “the very diversity from which the answer to the Great Question will emerge, the very diversity that is the essence of humanity! In that diversity children are always being killed for any number of reasons. If the killing is proper to that place, then it is proper. But this old man took children across borders. He interfered in the affairs of a province! Here on Elsewhere, we let one another alone.”
Nela quivered in outrage. Bertran squeezed her shoulder and said softly, “There is much we have to learn about Elsewhere. I don’t think we have the right to comment. Not yet.”
Fringe looked pleadingly at Nela, who turned her head and stared angrily away over the lagoon. She started to speak, but felt Bertran’s fingers pinching. It was an old signal between them, and they excused themselves. As by mutual consent, they headed toward the sanitary facilities at the top of the stairs.
“What have we come to?” Nela whispered as they climbed.
“Nothing we have any control over,” he replied sensibly. “I think we should take breathing space and withhold judgment.”
“But, I liked her! I really liked her, Berty. I liked Danivon too. And they have no more moral sense than a pig, or a tiger,” she cried.
Bertran shrugged, sending a like tremor through his sibling, as he whispered, “Look, Nela, we grew up in a religious family in a small town. We were educated in parochial school, which you have to admit is hardly a microcosm of things as they are. Then we went to the circus, and except for some raging egos, that was fairly well insulated from the world too. I can’t say for certain that our time was all that different! We’d be wiser not to judge too quickly.”
She shook her head stubbornly.
“Besides,” he went on, “we’re stuck with them, Nela. We haven’t any choice. Even if we decide we detest this world and all its works—including Danivon and Fringe, who, you have to admit, have been damned nice to us—we’re here, with no chance of going anywhere else.”
“I don’t care,” she said stubbornly.
He shook her. “Unless you’re suddenly avid for martyrdom, we can’t toss away friends because they’re not … maybe not the friends we would have chosen at home.”
She bit her lip and was silent.
While Fringe stared after the twins with troubled eyes, the others gathered their equipment into a pile, ready to carry it back to their rooms. They had just finished when a shout from across the water drew their attention from their paraphernalia to an approaching gainder-yat.
Fringe heard the cry and turned, still so preoccupied with what she had been thinking that she thought the old woman on the deck of the yat was Aunty or Nada come alive again. The old thing was staring at her with that alert, fowl-eyed look that had typified Fringe’s kin, a look that seemed to search her soul for something edible. However, as the yat drew closer, she saw this wasn’t Nada or Aunty, but someone even older, a wisp of a thing, a clutter of bones in a tight-drawn skin. The man leaning on a stick beside her was also very old, though not so old as she, and Fringe recognized them!
Curvis put down an armload of juggling gear and moved to catch the ropes the oarsmen tossed him. The others straightened from their tasks and watched. When the plank shuddered down, the old woman tottered toward it without taking her eyes from Fringe. Something shadowy moved behind her, moved and shifted as she cried out in a shrill bird voice:
“There, Fringe Owldark! Carry an old woman down.”
Fringe, astonished, found herself carrying. She had a confused impression that she was not the only one carrying, but on the landing stage she was the one setting the old thing on her feet once more and keeping an arm around her so that she didn’t blow away.
“Why, girl, you’ve grown beautiful,” the old woman cried, releasing a hand to pat at her cloud of white hair. “Remember me? Jory. Jory the Traveler.”
Fringe repeated the name, “Jory, Jory the Traveler,” as though the title might do something to solve the mystery of this old one’s appearance here, at this far corner of the world.
“Fringe?” said the old woman. “I am disappointed! Don’t you know me?”
Fringe stared at her helplessly. Recognize her, yes, but know her? “When I was a girl,” she said at last. “Long ago.”
“Not that long ago! Why, it was I who gave you your name. Did I tell you, Asner? It was I who gave her her name.”
“You’ve told me,” said the old man, pushing between the two of them. He’d needed no help getting down the plank, plunking slowly along with his stick. “Don’t let her fuss you, girl. She does that all the time. Travels around. Meets people. Then pops in on ’em half a lifetime later, all innocence.” He mimed a teacup, lifted eyebrows, “‘Well, of course we met, thirty years ago at the carnival in New Athens.’ ‘Don’t you remember, we shared a dish of thusle custard fifty years ago in Denial.’ Half of it’s sheer fiction, made up for the occasion.”
“This isn’t fiction,” the old woman said with a laugh. “We’ve been down along the shores of Deep, fishing.”
“Did you catch anything?” Fringe asked stupidly.
“Not what we needed,” replied Jory, looking over Fringe’s shoulder to catch Danivon’s glance. He was standing a little distance away, staring as though his eyes would fall out, his nose twitching. Then he came forward in a rush.
“Who?” he murmured, thrusting in among them. “Now who’re these people, ah?”
“Jory,” muttered Fringe unwillingly, indicating the old woman with her free hand. “And Asner.”
“The people from noplace?” crowed Danivon. “Is that who you are? Ah?”
“Asner,” complained the old woman with a hint of laughter. “Did you tell the Shallow people that? That we were from noplace?”
The old man shrugged. “I might’ve,” he said. “When you’ve been as many places as we have, it’s hard to remember where you’re from.”
Danivon grinned and sniffed. “People from noplace. Now isn’t that strange. Someone I know received a rather peculiar … suggestion from noplace. Would you know anything about that?”
They turned on him looks of bland incomprehension, which he met with studied calm.
“What’s on your mind, boy?” demanded the old man in a grouchy tone. “Don’t fuss us, now. Don’t play about making conversation. I can tell there’s something on your mind.”
“How can you tell that?”
“How can you tell when it’s raining, boy! By the water on your head! Don’t waste time. You get as old as we, there’s no time to waste.”
Danivon sniffed deeply, smiled slowly, like a sunrise. “We’re planning an expedition upriver and you seem to be headed that way. Am I right?”
“Think of that,” Jory interrupted. “An expedition. So exciting, expeditions. Moving about, place to place, seeing new things, unraveling mysteries. Even when you think you’ve seen everything there is to see, there’s something else … beckoning.”
Asner regarded Danivon with a skeptical eye. “What’re you wanting, boy? Directions?” He looked up, his eyes widened, he nudged Jory and murmured, “Would you look at that?”
Nela and Bertran were descending the stairs in their synchronized fashion, Bertran’s arm around Nela’s shoulders.
“I do think that’s ziahmeeztwinz,” murmured Jory.
“Joined people,” said Fringe.
“What I said,” the old woman remarked. “Now isn’t that interesting. Wonderful how travel broadens one, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said he. “What’s ziahmeeztwinz?”
“Two babies born joined together,” she said. “Except they’re always two boy
s or two girls.”
“Not in this case,” said Fringe. “And how do you know about such things?”
“Oh, my dear, a person as widely traveled as I knows bits and pieces about a lot of things.”
“I’ve been in most places on Elsewhere,” said Danivon. “And I don’t know about ziahmeeztwinz.”
“But you haven’t been where I’ve been, boy. I don’t mean here,” said the old woman. “I don’t mean now.” She smiled sweetly at Nela and Bertran who had, by this time, joined the group. “I’ve never met a pair of ziahmeeztwinz before.”
“Siamese twins,” cried Nela. “How do you know that word.”
The old woman said something in a language Fringe could not understand. The twins replied in the same language. The old woman fumbled a bit with it, as though it might be a language she had not used for a long time. Still, the twins seemed to understand her well enough, and soon the three of them were babbling away like birds on a branch while the old man gloomed at them and the three Enforcers listened with their mouths open.
“Think of that!” Jory cried at last, turning to Fringe. “We’re almost countrymen. Virtually time-mates.”
“They got caught in an Arbai Door,” said Danivon, gesturing at the twins. “Caught and left in limbo forever. And you?”
The old woman cocked her head, regarding him with complete attention. “An Arbai Door! Isn’t the galaxy full of wonders! Now, what’s this about going upriver?”
Danivon’s nose twitched. She hadn’t answered him. She wasn’t going to answer him. His nose told him that. “Perhaps we need you to go along.”
“So lovely to be wanted,” she cried, clapping her hands. “We’ll go, of course. Won’t we, Asner?”
“If you say so, Jory. Whatever you say.” He sighed dramatically. “She’ll get her way no matter what I say, so I just give in right away to save trouble.”
“Now, Asner, that’s not fair.”
“Fair or not, that’s the way things are.” He winked at Danivon. “Women!”
Danivon, casting a glance at Fringe from beneath half-closed eyes, did not respond. She, however, grasped him firmly by one arm and drew him to one side.
“You have to be joking,” she said.
He shook his head at her. “Not.”
“Danivon! She’s … she’s old! Look at her! She doesn’t weigh as much as your left leg from the knee down. Bird bones held together by skin. First sniff of danger, she’ll be dead!”
He tapped his nose and said again, “Not.”
“Isn’t that thing ever wrong?”
“Hasn’t been yet. And what’s it to you? She wants to go. She isn’t your granny.”
Fringe flushed. The old woman wasn’t her grandma, or old aunty. And yet. Yet. “She’s something to me, Danivon. I may not have known it till this minute, but she is something to me!”
“They’re talking about you,” Nela was saying to Jory. “Fringe feels it would be unwise for you to go along.”
“What does she care?” asked Jory with a secretive smile.
Nela persisted. “She’s concerned about the danger to you.” Fringe’s concern for the old woman was welcome to Nela, who did not want to believe Fringe was the amoral monster her earlier words had made her out to be. “Quite frankly, I think she’s sensible to be concerned.”
“Child, you worry too much,” said Jory, patting Nela’s cheek. “I’ve lived a long time. Isn’t that right, Asner? You get to be our age, you don’t worry so much.”
“Doesn’t do any good when you do,” said Asner. “So after a thousand years or so you give it up.”
Fringe, meeting Danivon’s obstinacy, threw her hands into the air and turned her back on him to face the group once more. “Everybody’s crazy!” she cried. “Old woman, you mustn’t do this.”
“What’s this device?” asked Jory, paying no attention to Fringe’s remonstration as she ran her fingers up and down a shiny track on Fringe’s machine.
“It’s a Destiny Machine,” said Bertran heavily.
“A fortune-telling device,” explained Nela.
“Oh, goody,” cried Jory. “Well, then, why don’t we leave it to the machine. Your machine, Fringe Owldark, to answer your own objections. Show me what to do.”
Fringe sulkily pointed at the levers, and Jory picked three of them to touch, gently. One red. One green. One blue.
The machine trembled. Small bells rang tunefully. Fringe stiffened. She hadn’t arranged for melody. The bells were random; they rang when hit by one of the traveling capsules, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in dissonance, but there was no way to make them play a tune. “In this world of Elsewhere,” they rang. “Elsewhere’s where I go….”
The tune played on. Glittering gems moved out from the center of the device and spun at the far edges, spiraling like a tiny galaxy. One far light gleamed brighter than the rest. It shone, like a little sun. It spun, moving onto a nearer track, circled, coming closer, still closer, then fell into the bin. Abruptly the music stopped, the machine quivered and was still.
Fringe glared at her invention. It wasn’t supposed to stop until it had delivered at least three capsules.
“Now what?” asked Jory, peering into Fringe’s face.
Fringe picked the capsule out of the bin and turned it in her hand, seeking the word she had lettered upon it. It was there, but not in her handwriting. Not in her letters. Not a word she had painted at all.
“Go!” it said.
“Go!” read Asner, taking it from her.
“Go!” whispered Jory to Fringe, her eyes glinting like cut gems in the sidelong light. “Well now, isn’t that nice.”
Houmfon: capital city of the province of Derbeck, a river port half a day’s sail up the Ti’il from its confluence with the Fohm. Cobbled streets, arcades, shaded gardens, and a town square beside the Palace wall where the great iron gates are shut tight and draped with purple. In the Palace, Old Man Daddy is dying.
He has lived a long full life. He has killed all his enemies face-to-face and most of his friends from behind. He has eaten from golden plates and drunk from goblets of pearl (after his taster has tried everything first). He has had seven wives and a hundred concubines (though only one son), and now he is dying. He lies on his canopied bed in the lowest tower room, a rock-walled round beneath the treasure vaults, his breath wheezing in and out, his eyes rolling blindly beneath their shuttered lids, his hands twitching on the covers as though they needed to grab one more thing, one more time. On the curved benches around the walls sit the dozen chiefs of the chimi-hounds and the dozen high priests of the dabbo-dam. The dabbo-dam holds the manifestation of Chimi-ahm; the chimi-hounds hold the fount of power. Old Man Daddy has held both, but now they are slipping away. His breath rasps and his fingers grab at nothing.
Around the walls the chiefs and the high priests exchange significant glances. Old Man Daddy has been a much loved son of Chimi-ahm, a faithful practitioner of dabbo-dam, a generous patron of the chimi-hounds, no less in his latter days than in earlier ones. Recently Old Man has known he hadn’t much longer, recently Old Man has arranged everything. The chimi-hounds have been paid and new, powerful weapons smuggled in from a category-six province have been put in their hands. The priests have been paid and gifts made at the altars. After the funeral and the proper period of mourning, an election is to be announced. The result of that election, already paid for by Old Man Daddy, is to be foretold by dabbo-dam and assured by the hounds.
It has been arranged. If people do not agree, the hounds will put an end to dissent. Mutterers will go flying, leaking from many holes. Old people. Women. Brats. Blood everywhere. That’s what makes elections. When all the blood is washed away, Old Man Daddy’s only son, Fat Slick, will have been elected Holy-head of Derbeck. In Houmfon, the great image of Chimi-ahm will smile, confirming the work of man. Then there’ll be fireworks and barbecue and everybody singing and no doubt Chimi-ahm himself will come down to walk with the people, for Chimi-ahm (unfortun
ately) has been doing that frequently of late.
Chimi-ahm, in fact, has become almost as worrisome to his priests as he always has been to the populace at large. Before now, Chimi-ahm usually did what the priests thought best. Now, strangely, it seems to be the other way around.
Still, the knowing glances dart from chieftain to high priest to chieftain again, sliding across the ladder against the wall, the ladder leading up to the treasure vaults. Though Old Man Daddy named him as successor, Fat Slick is a witless wonder, a slob-lipped nothing much. His mama was a luscious though brainless High Houm often possessed by Zhulia the Whore, the female personage of Chimi-ahm. Old Man Daddy has always claimed Fat Slick was his own get (and who’d have said different), but with Old Man no longer able to say … well, maybe Fat Slick isn’t Old Man’s son at all. Maybe he’s nothing much. Who’s to say who’s been bought and what’s been paid for? Chimi-ahm whispers maybe it’s some other man’s son? Maybe the high priest’s son? Or the son of the boss chimi-hound chief? Or the boss chimi-hound chief himself, old Houdum-Bah?
Outside, in the hall, where the long tables are kept stocked with drinks and eatables and sniffables, outside are whisperers, scurriers, fetchers, and mutterers, dressed all in white with white cloths twisted around their heads, naked feet painted blue, backs of their hands painted blue, blue stripes on forehead and cheek, little people, servant people, the zur-Murrey, which means “blue boys” in the old language, the tongue most of the people still speak. The Murrey are as human as the highest of the Houm, but they are beige and small, with stiff black hair that stands up like a brush. Only the paint on hands and feet and face says which color-tribe each one belongs to.
“They won’t go for Fat Slick,” says one of the blue boys to one with yellow feet and ankles, yellow dots beside his eyes and down his jawline. “Fat’s for the chop, the flop, the drop, the long hang down. Fat’s for the pit, the spit.” And giggles then, hysterical giggles, for there’s scarcely a Murrey in the palace, male or female, who hasn’t been handled by Fat Slick in one way or another, none of them nice.
“Ten on sunset,” breathes a green boy to a blue, the keeper of the last breath pools. Ten derbecki that Old Man Daddy will draw his last breath as the sun falls. “Ten more on sunrise!” Ten derbecki that Fat Slick will draw his last at dawn, on the gibbet. Those in power don’t like Fat Slick. Though Fat Slick is stupid—and ordinarily the priests and hounds would prefer somebody not quite bright—for some reason they’ve taken against him. Whisper says Chimi-ahm himself has taken against him! So, money flows like water, up and down in the Palace, everybody betting. Betting makes it more real, more actual, more sure. Oh, to see either one of them dead! Oh, to see both of them dead in the space of one day!