The Gate to Women's Country

  "We're meeting someone?"

  "Morgot is meeting someone," he said softly. "Something to do with a trade agreement. Grain supplies, I think."

  "She's been really worried about the allotments. I guess the harvest wasn't good last year."

  "Well, actually, it was about the same as usual."

  "Then why was our ration cut?"

  "Because there are more of us. There were about two hundred babies born in Marthatown last year, and the year before that."

  "People must have died to balance it out!"

  "Not many. No contagious diseases this year. No raids or battles."

  "What's Morgot going to do?"

  "I think there's some move afoot to trade Marthatown's dried fish for inland grain."

  The road began to coil up into the hills. Morgot drove while Joshua and Stavia walked beside the cart to save the animals. Not far down the slope from the road a reforestation crew was working in a cleared area, dropping feathery tree seedlings into shovel slits, pressing them closed. Morgot called out to them and walked down, inspecting the soft tufts of new growth among the stumpy roots of old trees. At the edge of the clearing something moved and fled with a flash of white.

  "A deer?" Morgot asked, incredulously.

  "We've seen several," the crew leader told her.

  "I thought the project released them far north of here."

  "They did, Morgot. But it's been ten years."

  "That long!"

  "They could even be wild ones. Survivors from before the convulsion."

  Stavia was still gazing at the place in the forest the thing had vanished. A brown flow of incredible grace and speed. Deer. She had seen pictures, of course, but they had not been seen in the wild for generations. After the convulsion, a few deer had been found in a park or zoo somewhere north, and a breeding program had been started with annual releases into the wild. But, to think of actually seeing one! They were certainly different-looking from sheep or donkeys, or even from those pictured reindeer in Beneda's book.

  They went on, over the first range of hills. A strangeness at the edge of the landscape caught Stavia's eye. Below them, to the south, was a place where the green of field and tree ended and a carpet of black and gray extended to the south and east, losing itself in distances. "Look at that! What is that?"

  "A bleak devastation," remarked Morgot from the back of the wagon, sitting up to get a look at it. "You haven't seen one before, have you? There are only a few them up here in and around Women's Country, but if you went far enough south of the sheep camps past Emmaburg, there wouldn't be room to drive a wagon between them. Down there, south and east of the mountains, there's nothing but bleak desolations, as far as you can travel. The whole continent is gone. Here, use my glasses."

  Stavia twiddled with the precious glasses, bringing the cancerous gray up close. "But there's nothing growing there!" The land looked ashen. Even the rocks were twisted and melted.

  "Nothing at all," Morgot agreed. "Remember Cassandra's lines in Iphigenia at Ilium, I have seen the land laid waste and burned with brands, and desolation born from fiery wombs. "Well, that's one of the places she was talking about."

  "Is it dangerous?"

  Morgot flapped her hand in front of her mouth in a cooling gesture. "Hot. Not with fire, with radiation. You walk across that place, a few days later all your hair will fall out and you'll start dying. Still, a bleak desolation isn't as dangerous as some of them, because you can see it. Some of them, you can't see. The rock looks all right, and the plants, but it will kill you just as surely as this one. The one south of Marthatown is like that. We call them masked desolations when they're like that."

  "How do you know it's there?"

  "We've still got some preconvulsion radiation detectors. Whenever we send an exploration team, we send a detector with them. Or a good map."

  "A desolation," repeated Stavia, staring at the bare, black place until it was hidden behind a hill, lost in the tree-specked ranges. "How did they make it?"

  "With their evil weapons. You know that."

  "Yes. I guess I did know that."

  That night they camped in a grove of eucalyptus trees, the air redolent with the medicinal tang of the leaves. The donkeys were tethered in a meadow, the wagon half hidden among junipers.

  "We won't let the fire linger," Morgot said. "There really have been some Gypsy-bandit attacks up this way, and I don't want to attract their attention with a blaze."

  "What do they want?"

  Morgot paused before answering, as though to choose among possible answers. "Oh, the usual thing seems to be a little rape and abuse, steal the wagons and the animals, take any food, sometimes kill whoever's along."

  "Where do they come from?"

  "Garrisons, mostly. Men who won't return to Women's Country because it's considered dishonorable but who can't stand the discipline of the garrison either. They're mad at everyone, but maybe a little angrier at women than at anyone else. And they feel guilty for having left the garrisons, which makes a dangerous combination. They link up with one another, maybe with some Gypsy women, and create a gang."

  "Why didn't we bring an escort of warriors?" Stavia looked from face to face in the firelight. They seemed not to have heard her. "Morgot?"

  "Don't worry about it, Stavvy. I'm sure we'll be fine."

  Stavia was sure she would not sleep, but when her eyes opened, it was on morning light. Joshua was brewing tea. "Get yourself up, girl. Take those little beasties down to water so they won't have a cold bellyful when we start off."

  Morgot was sitting at the edge of the stream looking little older than Stavia, her skin gleaming like ivory as she rubbed it with a rough cloth and ladled water over herself. "Good, daughter," she said approvingly. "Let's get a quick start and be at the Travelers' Rest before dark."

  They breakfasted quickly, then drowned the fire and departed. Looking back, Stavia could see the haze of their smoke still hanging in the grove, like fog. Far down the valley was another foggy plume, dust stirred up on the roadway. Gypsies? A band of itinerant metal scavengers? Or a traveling show? Both Morgot and Joshua looked at it, without comment.

  They went between bare hills and down long slopes, coming at evening to a grove almost like the one they had camped in the night before, tall, untidy trees with bark and leaves hanging in shredded curtains of aromatic gray. Here, however, was a long, low building half of stone and half of timbers, steep-roofed and heavy-doored. Outside the wall were half a dozen wagons: a couple of brightly painted ones; show people; three laden with bits of metal and lopsided ingots from the hermit mines and smelters in the mountains; plus one wagon very much like their own.

  Over the gate the words were spelled out in twisted twigs. TRAVELERS' REST. The gate opened on a courtyard with stables; the door upon a huge common room floored in wide boards and full of suppertime smells. From across the broad, low room two women came toward Morgot, greeting her with sober looks, casting quick glances at Stavia.

  "My daughter," Morgot announced. "This is Joshua. They were company for me on the trip."

  The women nodded, introduced themselves. "Melanie Hangessdaughter Triptor Susantown. Jessica Hangessdaughter Triptor Susantown. Sisters of Susantown. We've ordered supper. If you'll join us?"

  Joshua excused himself to go unhitch and stable the donkeys, saying he would dine in the servitors' quarters. Stavia wavered. She could go with him or stay, opting finally to stay, regretting later that she had. The talk was all of trade, of grain quotas, of the movement of dried fish and root crops. Individually, parsnips could be interesting. By the ton they were not. Once her hunger was assuaged, she curled into the inglenook beside the fire, drifting off into quiet as their voices went on and on.

  "... we can manage if it's reduced by one third, at least," she heard Morgot say.

  "Agreed," one of the sisters said.

  "We'll send our agents."

  "And we ours."

  "Done then. Thank you, sisters." r />
  Then Morgot was shaking her. "Come, Stavia. It's time we went to our beds."

  She sounded so tired, Stavia thought, so very tired. When they were side by side in their bed upstairs, she put her arm comfortingly over Morgot's side, hearing a murmur in return.

  "Sleep well, Stavvy."

  "Sleep well, Morgot."

  THEY RETURNED by a different road. About noon, Joshua halted the donkeys and sat as though listening, rubbing his forehead between fingers and thumb of one hand.

  "What?" asked Morgot.

  "Something happened. Something changed. Somebody headed this way..."

  "Shall we go back?"

  "No. I don't feel so." He clucked to the donkeys and they set off once more. Toward evening, when it came near time to make camp, Joshua leaned back into the wagon and said softly, "Morgot!"

  "Hmm."

  "I think we've bought trouble."

  "I thought you felt this road would be clear?"

  "I think it was. Perhaps this morning someone had decided to go somewhere else and then during the day, they decided to come here. I don't know. I wouldn't feel it until they decided to do it. Things change sometimes. Besides, there's been much movement among the trees along the ridge this last mile or two. No birds. A very great and unusual silence."

  "Oh, Lady."

  "Well, we are interested in finding out, are we not?"

  "What do you think?"

  He shut his eyes, as though concentrating, his forehead wrinkled. "I'd say half a dozen of them. No more than that."

  "What shall we be? Bait or fleeing prey?"

  "What are you two talking about?" Stavia begged. "Who decided to do what? Are we going to be attacked?"

  "Likely, yes. We're discussing whether to flee and hope they can't catch us or camp and let them come find us. Bait them in."

  "Bait them in!" Stavia's voice squeaked, a treble peep, like a terrified mouse.

  "It rather depends on Stavia, doesn't it?" Joshua said.

  Morgot nodded. "Stavvy, I want your oath."

  Stavia gulped and trembled, going into one of those fits of self-consciousness which required that the actor Stavia take over before the usual Stavia did or said something hideously gauche. Oaths were given only on the most important occasions. Oaths were not daily activities. "Why? What?" She blurted.

  "Whatever happens, you are to say nothing about it afterward."

  "You don't need the oath for that. If you don't want me to say anything, I won't."

  "No. That's not good enough. Your oath on it."

  She shivered. The actor Stavia said calmly, "Oh, all right, Morgot. By my citizenship in Women's Country, I swear. I haven't any idea what's going on!"

  "Perhaps better so." Morgot nodded. "We bait them, Joshua. And we pray you've seen rightly that there are no more than six."

  They drove the donkeys into a thick grove of trees, and Stavia watched in amazement as Joshua opened a panel in the side of the wagon and removed several lengths of chain. With these, he chained the donkeys to the wagon and the wagon to several of the trees, making the fastenings tight with many tight turns of tough wire.

  "They might try to cut the animals loose in the dark," he said. "Or make off with the wagon. They can't. They won't be able to get any part of it loose and go running off with it."

  Then Morgot moved around the wagon, laying fires. She laid five of them, getting Stavia to bring sticks, and piling them thickly above thin, shaved kindling. When this was done, she sprinkled each pile of sticks with powder and laid a trail of the powder to a point close to the wagon. It had the sharp, interesting smell of fireworks.

  "Now, we eat," said Joshua, building a small fire at some distance from this arrangement. "We'll have tea, and munch our supper, and lay our blankets out over there, where we're in plain sight, and then, as soon as it's dark, we'll go back in there where the wagon is. Got that?"

  "Stavia goes up a tree," Morgot remarked. "I've got it all picked out."

  Stavia opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. There was no point in protesting. She had no idea what she was protesting against. There were a number of things going on that she could not understand.

  Nor did she have any better idea when the star-pricked dark came down like a heavy curtain and she found herself tied to a thick branch twenty feet above the wagon, a folded blanket cushioning her from the ragged bark.

  "Not a word," Morgot had said. "Not a sound. If you are in pain, suffer silently and not a squeak."

  The only sound from beneath her was small talk, the mumbled exchange of people readying themselves for sleep. Nothing at all interesting. Darkness. Discomfort. A sky full of glaring stars. Somewhere something moving in the underbrush.

  Stavia tensed.

  A birdcall, like a signal. Not Joshua, not Morgot. Then people, moving.

  A cry. A flare of light, darting off in different directions like a starfish of fire, then leaping flames from the fires Morgot had laid. Stavia saw people beneath her, scurrying figures near the donkeys, near the wagon, several other strangers staring around themselves, taken by surprise, one starting to turn his head when his head came off and bounced away down the hill. A silver wheel was turning where his head had been. The wheel whipped away. Stavia opened her mouth to scream, then decided to bite down hard on her tongue instead.

  Someone else screamed and then stood there, staring at the place where his arm had been. He had been leaning over Morgot's blankets with a knife raised in the hand which was no longer there. Other cries, shrieks, something silver whirling like a great platter, around and around. Stavia couldn't help it. She gasped.

  Beneath her, someone looked up, saw her, grimaced through discolored teeth, and started up the tree. The silver platter came out of the fire-lit shadows and plucked him away, in halves.

  There was a great quiet. Only the firesounds. A light wind. Joshua was beside the wagon, putting something beneath the wagon floor. A short handle and a chain with a curved knife at its end. Morgot handed him another, then took a pair of wood-handled pliers and began unwiring the chain that tied the donkeys.

  "Alas," said Morgot. "Alas, such is the fate of warriors' sons." Her voice was soft, flat, unemotional, and yet there was an undercurrent of exhaustion in it, as it sometimes sounded when she came home from a long Council meeting or when Stavia came upon her in the middle of the night, in the kitchen, brooding silently over a cup of cooling tea. "Stavia. You can come down now."

  "I'm coming."

  "Step directly into the wagon, daughter. There's a good deal of gore around."

  "How... how many of them were there?"

  "Joshua?"

  "I counted seven. I felt one going away." His voice was weary and depressed.

  "I'll get our blankets." Morgot was gone, stepping over and around misshapen objects which littered her way. In a moment she returned. "These will have to be laundered. Josh, look at the shoulder on that body over there."

  He went to lean over it. "Melissaville tattoo," he said. "The one down in the hollow had a Mollyburg label on him."

  "I saw one Annville and one Tabithatown. I think the other two were Gypsies."

  "Almost as though they'd been detailed here, wasn't it?" Joshua asked. "Picked out, one from here, one from there."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think the one that got away would have had a Marthatown tattoo. Aside from that, there's nothing much. Fuzzy. Confused. No real intentions yet."

  "Someone may come looking for them."

  Joshua sighed. "I remember there being a ravine about two miles back."

  Morgot sighed as well. "Stavia, go over beside that rock, spread out your blankets, and stay there until I call you."

  "Mother, what does... ?"

  "Your oath, Stavia."

  "Was not to say anything about it afterward."

  "It is now afterward. Not a word."

  Stavia bit her already somewhat mangled tongue. They weren't going to tell her. They weren't going to
explain. They were going to leave it just as it was. She stepped down into the wagon. One of the boards of the wagon bed was not quite flat. She kicked it and it dropped into place. There was something under it. Obviously. Some kind of weapon. Weapons. But Joshua was not a warrior. And Morgot...

  And she had given her oath not to ask.

  She looked up to find Joshua's eyes upon her, his head cocked warningly.

  She took her blankets to the rock Morgot had indicated and lay there, wide awake, while Morgot and Joshua gathered up the remains in the wagon. After a time, Joshua drove away east, toward the gray light of a gibbous moon, whistling thinly between his teeth. Morgot lit the lantern and wandered around their campsite with the little camp spade, burying the burned remains of all the fires but one, raking all the footprints away, shoveling dirt over bloodstained soil and raking it smooth with a branch before littering it with small rocks and bits of wood. After a time she came near Stavia's blankets, spread out her own and went to sleep.