The Visitor

  “I always think of that,” he said, slightly angry himself. “Among the Spared, someone always desires another’s downfall. However, if we are paralyzed by that, we never do anything.”

  “True.” She took a deep breath. “So what do you plan now?”

  He murmured, “For tonight, we hide you, Dismé. So your sister won’t see you or that sign on your face.”

  She looked at herself in the mirror once more. “It’s nice to know you can be sensible on occasion.” She went into the adjoining room, where she had left her own outer clothing.

  He wiped his forehead, saying, “There’s a cloak in there for you. We leave tomorrow at dawn, as planned.”

  “We can’t leave without our children. We cannot travel without them.” Her voice was still remote and echoing, but it sounded amused, for all its distance.

  “I meant to introduce you to them early tomorrow morning but now will be better. In fact, it may be best if you don’t go back to your room until much later. I didn’t count on all this much disturbance. Though I doubt it, your sister might realize who she saw down there, and decide to visit you at once.”

  “All my things for the trip are under the bed, so the keeper wouldn’t see I had packed for a trip. You have my book.”

  He fetched the Latimer book from his cache, then attempted his former insouciance. “We’ll get your clothing after everything calms down. Let’s go call upon Bobly and Bab.”

  “Bobly and Bab?” She came into the room, neat and ordinary, the gleaming sign upon her brow hidden by a scarf.

  “They are brother and sister, which is good, since those are the roles they play. They are in their thirties, which is also good, since they have acquired circumspection and reason.”

  “Children of thirty? I’m not that old myself!” Her voice was now almost itself once more. “What am I to do about this?” she gestured at her forehead. “We don’t want this seen, do we?”

  “You’ve hidden it well enough, for now.”

  “I’ll take the Nell Latimer book. Have you read it?”

  “Yes. With some understanding and more confusion.” He handed it to her, and she put it in the pocket of her cloak. He led her out onto the window ledge—which he noted she walked along freely, unafraid of its height—and into the narrow maintenance hall, down that to a precipitous stair leading to other narrow corridors, one of which had several cobweb festooned doors along it. The doctor knocked twice on one of these, then twice again, then once.

  The door opened and a tousled head looked out from sleepy eyes. A little light-haired person, perhaps five or six years old, dressed in an child’s pink nightgown, saying, “Well, Doctor, it’s a bit late for it, but how nice of you to call. Come in. Don’t disturb the spiders.”

  They stepped inside, ducking to avoid the webs, as another little person came sleepily into the room, a male version of his sister, neither of them any larger than a small child, and each with a child’s voice, face, and manner.

  “Dismé, may I introduce Abobalee Finerry and her brother, Ababaidio. Otherwise known as Bobly and Bab.”

  “We’re all packed,” Bobly chirruped. “Ready to leave at the crack of dawn, if that’s what you came to ask.”

  The doctor shook his head. “Actually, I’ve brought you your mama.” The doctor pulled Dismé forward. “Can you give her my bed for tonight? She shouldn’t be seen just now, though she’ll have to pick up her things from her rooms before dawn.”

  Bab turned to Dismé, inquiringly. “Are you packed, Mother dear?”

  Dismé blinked at the designation, smiling a little. “I packed a bundle. It’s under my bed. Everything’s in it including the clothes I plan to wear.”

  “She can’t be seen,” whispered Bobly to the doctor. “She’s been a naughty girl?”

  “No.” The doctor shook his head. “She’s been quite…ah amazing, as a matter of fact, but someone wants to harass her and I’d rather she had a good night’s sleep.”

  “Ah, well,” said Bobly, with a thoughtful look. “We’ll have to think of something. Later.”

  “Yes,” agreed the doctor, rather wearily. “Later.”

  Bobly looked him up and down. “You’ll need to get back into your usual haunts, won’t you? We hear something weird and wonderful’s happened. The place is buzzing like a hive about spectacles and marvels and all sorts of upsets! Most likely the big men will be calling meetings right and left. Wouldn’t do for the Most High Colonel Doctor to be where he couldn’t be found!”

  “There’s talk already?” the doctor exclaimed. “What weird and wonderful thing?”

  “Apparitions. Angelic voices coming from the cellars, things exploding, then disappearing. Oh, my yes. Much, much talk. Music, it’s said. Drummers. A whole connivance and contraption. So, you’ll be wanted.”

  He hesitated, shifting from foot to foot, his eyes on Dismé.

  She murmured, “We left connivances and contraptions in plain view in your apartment, Doctor. Items of incriminating nature that probably should be put away.”

  The doctor slapped his forehead with his hand, cursing at himself. The book, laid out for all and sundry to peer at. Her costume. Oh, my yes. “Later,” he said, taking himself out the door. “Keep her out of sight.”

  “He’s been up to mischief again,” said Bab.

  Dismé regarded the two of them, looking from face to face. “You’re really twins, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Bobly. “And people of our size aren’t uncommon in New Kansas, though the Regime thought we were children when they kidnapped us from our caravan. They do that, you know.”

  Dismé nodded. “I know. My best friend was taken that way.”

  “Luckily, they thought us too young for rape, so we arrived here bruised but mostly unharmed. Luckily, the doctor is the one who examines youngsters, deciding if they need whatever help he can provide, including getting them across the border and back to their families.”

  “How does he do that?”

  “Oh, he claims children are ill with some catching disease, and he sends them to a clinic on the far edge of Praise or Comador, and then he loses the record, which isn’t difficult or unusual, and the children just sort of get lost. Anyhow, he knew immediately we weren’t children, and he’s the one who helped us disappear before we disappointed the Regime by failing to grow up. They wouldn’t have kept us, you know.”

  “The Regime?”

  “Oh, my no. We’d have been slaughtered long since like any other freak. Any abnormal thing is demon touched, you know that. Fit only for bottling, if that. But the doctor gained us a reprieve.”

  “He keeps you here?”

  Bobly replied, “He doesn’t keep us at all. He offered to return us or let us be part of his…efforts. We took a liking to him. We approve of his efforts, so we decided to stay for the time being. He found us this safe lair, and we travel around among the towns, dressed as children, acting like children, then when we’re in here, we’re ourselves. Now, bed for you!”

  Dismé looked about herself, aware of weariness for the first time, but seeing nowhere to lie down except the floor. Bab, however, bent down and pushed on a molding which ran along the bottom of the paneled wall. The molding, and the knee-high length of wooden skirting to which it was attached, slid inward a few inches, then upward and out of sight, disclosing a long, low, floor-level cubby hole. Inside, level with the floor, she saw the long side of a mattress with pillows and a blanket.

  “Hocus-pocus,” he said. “Grumfalokus. That’s where the doctor sleeps when he’s hiding from his mother.”

  “From his mother?” Dismé laughed, breathlessly. “I didn’t think he had a mother?”

  Bobly said, “The doctor’s real mother was one Aretha Camish Comador, but he was orphaned young. This one is his step-mother, a sort of half-aunt married to the doctor’s father. His step-mother’s always on him about being nonconformist and maybe catching the Disease. You slip in there, lady, and have a bit of rest. Later we’
ll figure out how to get your things.”

  After a moment’s consideration as to the best method of getting into the bed, she lay face down on the floor next to the opening and rolled through it onto her back, which left her supine in the center of the narrow mattress. She felt of the outer wall, finding it to be built of stone, roughly mortared. The air was fresh and rather cold, so it wasn’t a coffin. She wasn’t really closed in.

  Bab asked her curiously, “What’s that on your forehead?”

  Dismé felt for her scarf, which had come loose in the rolling about. “I have no idea. It came…today.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “It tingles. Not as bad as when your leg goes to sleep, but rather like that.”

  Bab bent to look into her face. “Now I’ll lower the board. You latch it from your side. The latch is there by your left hand, and that way you’re safe. It’s counter-weighted, so you can raise it with a fingertip if you want to get out.”

  The board slid closed, leaving her in darkness. She fumbled for the latch and pressed it home. For a few moments, she heard muffled conversation from outside, then silence. There were blankets folded along the wall, and she pulled them over her, snuggling into the warmth. She was weary enough now to let go of the self she had been holding like a screen between Dismé and the recent happening. The person inside her was no longer herself. Something wonderful and dreadful had happened. Roarer? she suggested. Is that you?

  Don’t worry about it.

  But I’m all strange, changed.

  Not at all. I’ve visited here before, from time to time. You’ve heard my drums, roaring.

  And what am I to do?

  Just go on being. All will take care of itself.

  Go on being what?

  Why don’t you start by getting some rest?

  Which, after only a few more dazed and wondering moments, she did.

  Above her in the Fortress, Rashel was climbing the stairs to the corridor where Dismé lived, furious at what had happened and eager to take it out on someone. She approached the keeper’s cubby and demanded to be taken to Dismé’s room.

  “She’s not there,” said the keeper, one Livia Squin, second cousin to a minor Turnaway who’d provided her with the job.

  “I didn’t ask if she were there, I asked to be taken there,” said Rashel in her most infuriating voice.

  The keeper was given to irascibility at the best of times, which this was not. “Not allowed to,” she said. “Not unless she asked me to, and she didn’t.”

  “I, Madam, am here on Regime business. Dismé Deshôll is my sister.”

  “I don’t know that, do I?”

  “My identity card, Madam.” Rashel handed it over.

  “This doesn’t tell me you’re her sister.” The keeper stared at her, eyes bugged out, teeth stubbornly clenched.

  Rashel gave her a long, measuring look. “It’s very strange. I don’t know you at all, and yet I think…I think I detect signs of the Disease in you. Being unnecessarily obstructive is one of the symptoms. I know, because my husband had the Disease. I knew when he started getting obstructive that he must have it, and what do you know? He did! It must be that demons have gotten to you somehow. I’m meeting with the chiefs of Happiness and Enlightenment tomorrow. I think I’ll mention it to them…”

  The keeper pushed her key across the counter, saying furiously, “She’s in room 415, down the hall to the end. Bring back the key when you’ve unlocked the door.”

  “Of course,” said Rashel. “When I’ve left a note.”

  She stalked down the hall, hard heels falling noisily, fingers making an irritating clatter with the key. Once inside she looked about to be sure she was in the right room. Oh, yes. There were books she recognized, and a few items of clothing. They couldn’t be paying her much if all she had were these few old rags that she’d had in Faience. A shelf of knick-knacks, a drawer of snacks including a half bottle of cider, tightly corked. From her pocket she took a vial half-filled with a grayish powder. A moment’s search turned up a corkscrew. She opened the bottle and emptied the contents of the vial into it, meantime chanting an incantation in which the ingredients of the potion figured along with long sleeping and horrid wakening. She set the bottle on the chest, the cork slightly loosened, to make it easier to remove.

  She crowed to herself, quite audibly: “She’ll drink that tonight or tomorrow. I’ll stay in Hold until I can find her body and claim it. She won’t really be dead. Not if Hetman Gone’s recipe’s a good one.”

  She started to leave the room, then remembered her reason for being there, the note. She found a bit of paper and jotted a few words: “Sorry to have missed you, see you tomorrow, your sister, Rashel.”

  General Gowl had fallen into a drunken sleep on the sofa in the penthouse, following an afternoon’s dalliance with a new and excitingly unwilling servant girl. He was awakened by a terrible voice calling his name. Groaning, he forced himself to sit up, then to rise and stand awkwardly in the middle of the room, hearing the summons. Where was the girl? Who had wakened him?

  The girl had fled, and the waker had been, perhaps, someone from outside? He went out into the roof garden and wandered from there to the chimney. Yes, someone was calling his name inside there. He opened the secret door and went into the dogleg cleft that led past the place where the brazier stood. Arriving there, he found the place empty, but he waited, as though for an assignation, neither impatiently nor wonderingly, but blankly, as a well-fed and watered gelding might wait at a shaded hitching post, unconcerned about what would happen next. What happened next was a volume of smoke pouring from the chimney and the emergence of the general’s particular angel.

  “On day four of this span, the army will move,” said the angel, in a voice that sizzled like molten bronze. “On day six they will be at the border of Bastion. There my Quellers will come upon them, and you will go into battle. The world is about to become yours, General Gowl.”

  The general accepted the idea as pleasurable, not at once, not under these dreadsome conditions, which made him want to cower like a child, like little lopsided what’s-his-name, Fortrees, all those years ago. He took command of himself and repeated obediently, “Two days from now the army will move. Two days later they will be at the border of Bastion. There the Quellers will join them.”

  “Not join,” laughed the voice. “Come upon them. Your army will not follow the Quellers…”

  “I will lead them,” said the general firmly.

  “Indeed,” said the voice as it funneled back into the chimney from which it came. “For an enemy has arisen, and battle is required. These are my orders: Each of your subordinates must select someone to travel with the army to contribute to the strength of the Quellers.”

  The voice and the presence were gone. The general stood for some moments assuring himself that the angel had indeed told him battle was imminent. His people would have to be told. He would call a meeting. Meantime, how strange to have thought of little Fortrees. He had not thought of him in years, decades. What was it that had brought him to mind?

  Struggling with memory, he went to the penthouse and rang for his aide, who came pantingly into the room, almost forgetting the courtesies due the general in his eagerness to speak.

  “The Colonel Bishop has been looking for you, sir. There’s been an…event, down in the cellars, where the artifact was.”

  “Was?” cried the general.

  “Oh, yessir, it’s gone now. The bishop has called a meeting since we couldn’t find you, sir, and he told me to let you know as soon as you were located…”

  The aide said no more, for the general had all but knocked him down on his way to the stairs.

  Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav was awakened (or so he made it appear by much yawning and rubbing of supposedly sleepy eyes) by a functionary from BHE, who said a meeting had been called in the staff room on the third level. Col. Dr. Ladislav was wanted.

  “Tell them I
’ll be there as soon as I can get dressed,” he murmured. “I’ve been asleep.”

  The functionary bowed and left bearing the message, while the doctor washed, combed, and dressed himself. Only when he had double-checked to see that everything incriminating was put away where no one would find it even through deliberate search, did he leave his quarters to attend the meeting on level three.

  There a large table was surrounded by a noisy group, with General Gregor Gowl Turnaway among the noisiest.

  “There you are, Doctor,” cried the general. “What do you know about all this business of somebody destroying the artifact. Somebody from outside! Now, how did they get in, I ask you.”

  “I guess I let the person into the cellar,” said Jens, hands turned up in innocent wonder. “Someone was behind me as I came down the stairs. Naturally, being gentlemanly, I stood aside to let him or her, or…drat. I shall simply say she, until someone proves otherwise. Wasn’t she expected?”

  “Expected? What would make you think…”

  The doctor said firmly, “The voice spoke of kinship, of Elnith of the Silences. I immediately remembered Hal P’Jardas’s account of his stay here, before settlement. You know.”

  “P’Jardas?” growled the general. “Oh, Right! Yes. Of course. Something required by Elnith of the Silences for settling here in her land. We spoke of it not long ago.”

  “Well, this person was it, wasn’t she?” murmured Jens, looking around for a vacant chair. “The voice said ‘kinswoman.’”

  “That’s rather the point,” growled the Colonel Bishop. “Who is she? The woman in the cellar, I mean.”

  “It would be difficult for anyone to say,” murmured the doctor, dragging a chair up to the table. “She was painted.”

  “How did she get into the Fortress?” demanded Mace Marchant.

  The doctor looked up at Marchant’s voice, wondering why the man was here in Hold again, as though he didn’t know. Rashel was here, so Marchant was here. How cozy.

  “Who knows,” said the doctor. “It may be someone who lives here, or works here. Or, the person was dropped on the roof by demonic forces, or hatched by a very large bird…”