“But, but,” the directors babbled.
“We suggest you return to whatever custom you followed when you arrived,” said Curvis mildly.
“That would require interference with personal choice,” cried the plump director. “Since we have listened to the words and music of Siminone Drad, such interference is anathema to us.” He gestured appealingly to the tallest of the directors, a youngish one who stood silently behind the others, chewing upon his knuckle. This was Siminone, who flushed and bowed when his name was mentioned, then went back to worrying his knuckle, like a dog a bone. “Anathema,” repeated the director, as though repetition would do what reason would not.
“Having too many children foisted on them is anathema to the Fisher Folk, your kindred,” said Danivon firmly. “And it is certainly deadly for the children themselves. You must return to whatever you were doing before.”
“But we used to be very strict,” cried the young director. “Particularly in expressions of sensuality. It was Siminone who showed us that such strictness also constricts the music, leading to disharmony.”
Danivon shook his fist at them threateningly. “You’d best become strict again, or use some other type of limitation.”
“To do so would destroy spontaneity,” cried Siminone, breaking his silence in exasperation.
Danivon snorted. “There are a number of spontaneous children outside whom you must now make provision for. Though they are fewer than they were, though they are no longer capable of reproduction, every one of them can at least carry a tune….”
“Carry a tune!” exclaimed Siminone. “You think a tune is all that’s needed….”
Danivon interrupted him. “We’ll leave you to it. When we return, we’ll stop here at Choire again to be sure you’ve understood what we’ve said. Plague now or plague then, but in any case plague, unless you have accommodated your policies to the status quo.”
They returned to the ship, where Jory begged the Enforcers to tell them all about it while the twins, pretending disdain, listened avidly.
“And you would really have spread plague?” Nela demanded angrily.
Danivon smiled at her and reached out to stroke her cheek. “It is almost never necessary actually to do it, Nela. We’re not the ogres you think we are. The threat is enough. I’ve never used plague myself, and from what I was taught at the Academy, it’s probably been used only half a dozen times in the last several hundred years, in all cases against badly overpopulated and totally intransigent provinces.”
“But how would you keep it from infecting the neighboring lands,” Bertran asked. “How do you keep it from wiping people out.”
“We use diseases that are spread through close contact, sometimes through sexual contact,” said Curvis. “And we use self-limiting strains that never kill the entire population.”
“We had a disease like that on old Earth,” said Nela. “An immune deficiency disease. It was killing lots of people when we … when we came here.”
“Such plagues are known to arise spontaneously on overcrowded planets,” Jory commented. “When any environment exceeds its carrying capacity, plagues begin to manifest themselves, though humans are always surprised when it happens.”
“We have an evil history of destroying the homes in which we live,” said Asner. “‘That’s all right,’ people say to one another. ‘Burn down the house. We can always go live with Grandpa God!’” He snorted and threw up his hands. “Enough of this depressing stuff.” He winked ostentatiously and patted a pocket. “Let us leave these Enforcers to their business while we go have something to drink.”
Bertran tightened his arm about Nela’s shoulders as she wiped her eyes, and they both went away after the old ones, somewhat cheered at the prospect of something a bit stronger than tea.
“What Asner said reminded me of Siminone Drad,” said Fringe. “Siminone thinks he can burn down his house and still go on making music. Doesn’t he see….”
“They don’t see,” said Danivon. “They never see, or we would not need Enforcers.”
“Danivon and I agree that Siminone Drad is the problem,” Curvis said firmly. “Now we must do something about him.”
Fringe felt very much the junior member, with too little experience to disagree, and after they had settled upon a method and cast lots for the duty, it was Fringe herself who went back to Choire in the late evening to Attend the Situation.
She went up the trail toward the music in a state of controlled unthink. All day she’d been telling herself she need merely do what had been decided was necessary, without thinking about it. Danivon and Curvis were agreed this was necessary, they had more experience than she did, therefore she’d do whatever they thought best. Once at the top, she accosted the first passerby, saying she had returned to ask a question that only Siminone could answer. When she was taken to him, she removed her glove and offered her bare hand. He took his hand from his mouth to put it into hers. She pressed it warmly, running her thumb along the knuckle he habitually chewed. There was no need for violence. The touch of her thumb, previously anointed with material from her Enforcer’s kit, was all that was needed. She had scarcely released him when his knuckle went to his mouth again, and he unknowingly licked up the carefully engineered virus she had pressed upon his skin. Fringe put on the other glove she carried in her pocket, its inner surface previously anointed with the suppressant.
“What did you want to know from me?” he asked.
“Who composes the music sung here?” she asked. It was a spontaneous question, one that had occurred to her on the way up.
“I do,” he said simply. “Much of it.”
She smiled meaninglessly and thanked him. On her way down the twisting trail, she realized that when Siminone died a few days hence of the euphoric disease she had given him, the music he had not yet written would die with him.
She looked at her fingers in distaste, remembering Zasper Ertigon.
“You will hate yourself sometimes,” he had warned her.
“I hate myself all the time, now,” she had said.
Until the fish ate the child, she had not remembered his words. Until a few moments ago, she had not fully understood what he meant. She had a sudden urge to strip off the glove, suck her infected thumb, and make an end of her involvement in such matters. Better unthink that, as well. She fixed her eyes upon the trail and thought of her turtle shell at home. Gray thorn and gray leaf and gray mist rising. Heights were perilous. Perhaps she should have stayed at home, in her own pond.
When Fringe returned to the Dove, she found Danivon on deck alone, staring across the glittering water where the long-legged forms of the Fisher Folk moved along the dikes between the shallow fishponds. Some carried buckets of food for the fish, others carried spears as they searched for the small gavers who fed in shallow waters at night.
He turned and greeted her in a muted voice, thinking her face was more than usually pale in the moving light of the flares. “I waited for you,” he said.
“The music we heard today …” she said to him, as though she were taking up a conversation they’d been having moments before.
“Wonderful,” he said enthusiastically. “No one can sing like the people of Choire.”
“… was composed by Siminone Drad.”
“Ah.” He shook his head at her. “Gone. Too bad.”
“It is worse than that,” she insisted. “It’s tragic. Why was it necessary to …”
“To Attend the Situation?” he asked. “Hadn’t Siminone caused the Situation? Curvis and I both thought he had.”
“Undoubtedly he had, but we could have talked to him….”
“‘Each Enforcer to his own solutions,’” quoted Danivon sententiously, thinking once more that women were unsuited to this work. Even beautiful women. Even a beautiful, pale woman with hair like a fiery torrent and a body like a cool flame. “You didn’t have to go,” he said gently. “Curvis or I would have gone.”
“Why didn’t we c
onsider talking to Drad,” she persisted. “I’m not quarreling with you, I’m asking for information.”
Danivon settled on the railing. “Talking to him would merely have increased his tendency to think. He is an innovator, and that’s what innovators do: They think. They don’t reason, mind you. They don’t see consequences. And they’re never contented with things as they are but must be always fiddling. Siminone might fiddle, for example, with the implications and applications of his former dicta, coming up with other interesting changes he could make. Our conversation might stimulate quite a number of insights. Then, when we came back from upriver, we would find Choire doing something entirely new, different, and reprehensible. A man who makes changes can’t stop making changes. You know the rules, Fringe Owldark. ‘If one death will do …’”
“‘If one death will do, do one death,’” she said. Of course she knew. One death rather than a few. A few rather than many. And many, when one must. Danivon was right. It would probably have been a choice, eventually, of Siminone or plague. One death or many. Reformers were always a problem. But the music….
“One thing that was not discussed with them,” she said stubbornly, “was feeding the increased number.”
“Feeding?”
“Salt Maresh sends food to Choire. If there are more people in Salt Maresh, then less food goes to Choire. Much less. We could have pointed that out.”
“In our experience …”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” she finished for him, remembering Jory’s history lesson earlier in the day.
Danivon regarded her with sympathetic eyes. She was being fairly reasonable, for Fringe, so he would give her the benefit of his wider experience. “You heard Jory talking about Earth. It was the same then. Telling people they will go hungry has never worked. When I started out as an Enforcer, I tried preaching good sense. I’ve said things like, ‘Momma, you know you can only get two babies through the dry season, so why did you have three, or five, or seven,’ and they tell me, ‘They’re here now! They’ve got to eat!’ Or, they say, ‘Abidoi will provide.’ But, after they say their god will provide, it’s their neighbors they beg from, the ones who still have food because they’ve only one or two children. And, often as not, the neighbors give them food and both families watch their children starve, tears all down their faces, never once admitting they’re responsible for it themselves. Everybody’s possessed by the notion his own children are entitled to life, no matter what happens to other people’s.”
She turned her face away, hating this talk of death. He spoke so matter-of-factly, so dryly, so unemotionally. She turned abruptly to go to the peace of her cabin.
And found herself standing within the circle of Danivon’s arms, her face only a finger’s length from his own.
“Fringe Owldark,” he murmured. “Fringe, don’t fret so. Don’t worry so.” His hands touched her shoulders, the back of her neck and head. “Don’t gnaw over every little thing, Fringe. You can’t chew over every decision. You mustn’t feel it all so much. Don’t be sad. I don’t want you to be sad.”
“Don’t,” she thought she said. “Danivon. Let me alone.”
“I won’t let you alone,” he whispered, putting his lips to her throat at the corner of her jaw, just below her ear. “You’re alone too much.” His tongue made dots of fire down her neck, up onto her cheek. His lips covered hers. “You’re alone all the time.” And “Shhh,” he said when she struggled, only a little.
“Danivon, I don’t want this!”
“Little liar,” he whispered. “Lovely little liar. Owldark the beautiful. Owldark the perverse. Owldark … who makes me shiver, just thinking of her….”
“Danivon….”
There was no one there, no one on the deck. Most of the crew had gone fishing with the Heron Folk. The others of the sideshow were away or asleep. Only if she cried loudly would anyone hear.
She cried softly, so no one would.
Zasper, as requested, met Boarmus in the Swale. At first glance, having no other explanation for Boarmus’s eyes glaring between puffy lids, his haggard cheeks, his slightly trembling hands, Zasper assumed the Provost was ill. Zasper, much aware of his retirement from Council Enforcement, felt it was not his role to offer comment upon the Provost’s health, so he contented himself with a carefully judged, barely adequate obeisance plus the all-purpose word:
“Sir.”
Boarmus beckoned him toward the river. “An excursion boat is just leaving, Ertigon. I have it in mind to see something of the Seldom Isles.” His words were a braying whisper, as though he could not decide whether to say or not to say.
This was a puzzle. “Sir?”
“Accompany me aboard. You can offer commentary.”
“Sir.”
They were the last to board. Boarmus believed the boat would not be spied upon. The dead men hadn’t known he was coming here until just before he left. The dead men hadn’t known he would be taking a boat. If they were busy doing whatever they were doing in Panubi, probably it was safe to talk on a boat in Enarae. Maybe.
The wallowing vessel thrust off immediately and began making its slow way down into the turgid flow of the swamp river. Boarmus moved to the bow, where no one else was standing, and, drawing Zasper close to him, whispered only inches from his ear, “If you know of any benign local gods who still have any clout, old man, summon them up! We’re all in deep, deep trouble, and I need all the help I can get!”
Zasper ostentatiously wiped spittle from the side of his head where Boarmus had sprayed him and regarded the man with distaste. Enough politeness. “What are you up to, Provost?”
Boarmus gripped him harder. “Listen to me, Ertigon. I’ve something to tell you, and pray heaven we can’t be overheard, for if we are, you’re dead and so am I, and likely also your protégés, Danivon Luze and Fringe Owldark, both.”
Zasper started in surprise, glared threateningly, but kept silent. Boarmus had a twitch above his eye and his skin was gray. He looked like a man frightened half to death, not one to chivvy if one wanted sense. Whatever this was, it wasn’t of Boarmus’s doing. “Tell me,” said Zasper.
“You know about Brannigan Galaxity, Ertigon. You know about Brannigan’s Great Question Committee, you know all the members of it came here to Elsewhere.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“What you don’t know is that they’re still here.”
“Still …?” Zasper made no sense of this. “You mean, their bodies are still here?”
Boarmus leaned even closer and began whispering rapidly into Zasper’s ear, reciting his tale in a frenzy of words that tumbled over one another and had to be sorted out and rearranged by their confused listener. He went on talking for some little time. Zasper didn’t interrupt, though his eyes narrowed and his breathing quickened.
Boarmus concluded, “They were supposed to sleep. Wake up once a year and be informed, then go back to sleep. I don’t think they’ve been asleep….”
“Not recently?”
“Not … not ever. I try to imagine. What that would do to someone, some normal person. Being awake, in the Core, all that time….”
“But … even so. That wouldn’t explain—”
“Of course not!” hissed Boarmus. “It doesn’t explain anything. Nothing explains anything. I’ve tried … oh, I’ve tried, I’ve read, everything they left, all their biographies, everything. Nothing explains anything. But what’s happening … it’s coming from the Core. And they’re what was put into the Core. So somehow …”
“You say these people went in there so they could come out once the Great Question had been answered?”
“That’s what the documents say. But Chadra Hume, my predecessor, thinks they meant to come out whenever they decided conditions were right. And in the logs down there, one of the Provosts asked when they would come out and they said when they decided to.”
Zasper shook his head wonderingly. “And they’ve been awake in there, all this time.”
>
“They must have changed the specifications.”
“Which were designed to keep them … sane, I suppose.”
“I suppose.”
“So now they’re not?”
“I don’t know! I’m not even sure it is them. Is it just a few of them? Maybe one or two? Or is it all of them? Or … is it something else entirely, maybe using their names?”
“Can you shut it down? The Core?”
“No. There’s no way. But I think it … they know we’d like to shut it down. If it were you, you’d know, wouldn’t you? Even if you were crazy … especially if you were crazy, you’d know. You’d suspect!”
“You think they’re after Fringe and Danivon?”
“How would they get at Fringe and Danivon? Fringe and Danivon are in Panubi. Reason tells me it’s impossible for them to reach Panubi, and yet it … they spoke of Panubi.”
Boarmus fell silent, mopping at his face where sweat ran slickly. “While you and I are talking, my young aide is sending a message to City Fifteen. Secretly, I hope. There’s a group there who’ve been looking at this problem for some time. Chadra Hume informed them a long time ago. Even in his time, he felt something was very wrong….”
“What do you want from me?”
“Anything. Advice. Help.” He took in Zasper’s blank expression and sighed. “Maybe I only wanted someone to talk to. Oh, I know what you Enforcers think about the Council, Ertigon. We’d have to be complete fools not to know. You take us for pompous idiots, mostly, layabouts who spend our days eating and drinking and engaging in our effete little rituals, none of which mean anything, accomplish anything. You’re perfectly right, that’s what we are. But then, that’s what we were assigned to do. That’s what we’re here for. It’s what all public servants have always been: roadblocks, resistors, interceptors of change, valves designed to shut down the flow of events, inhibitors of revolution, delayers of evolution, servants of the status quo. Here on Elsewhere we call it maintaining diversity, and we send you Enforcers out whenever there’s a threat to custom or habit. As we see it, we’ve been faithful to our charge, Ertigon, just as you’ve been faithful—more or less—to yours.”