"Why is that?"
He dropped his voice to a whisper. "Pre-Happening books are very hard to read. The words are almost the same, but the spelling is different. Few if any of the people here in Hold have either the patience or inclination to burrow through them. I, myself, struggled to acquire the skill. As a result of my struggle, I can offer you a key to spelling changes which much simplifies the task."
Dismé did not mention that she already knew about reading pre-Happening books. She merely nodded, to show she understood.
He went on, "Also, everyone knows the former world was full of heresy, but since all the heretics are dead, they and their books are historic. Anything historic is tolerable. A book written post-Happening, however, would have been written by one of the Spared—since according to the Spared, only they exist—who would not have dared be heretical. If you follow me." He cocked his head questioningly.
She nodded to show she understood him.
"Now, as I was saying, if they ask why you are reading nakity-nakity, you say you don't know, ask the Colonel Doctor."
She almost chuckled. "I see. Am I to infer that some of what you do is not approved by the ... powers that be."
His eyes opened wide, his eyebrows rose, he appeared extravagantly shocked. "You wouldn't want to infer that, would you? If you made any such inference, your conscience would require you to report me at once to the Office of Investigation, Department of Personnel. To make any such inference would imperil you, because you are associated with me. You must not, therefore, allow yourself to infer anything to our mutual detriment. It will be far safer to assume I am perfect in every regard, that everything I do or tell you to do is commanded directly by the Rebel Angels." He scratched one ear, thoughtfully. "Or perhaps the Regime, as the angels may have no particular interest in minutia, as why on earth should they?"
She caught her breath and forbid herself to laugh. "Yes, Doctor."
"Very good. You will begin working for me only when you have settled into your own quarters. Today, you will be allocated living space and you will fill out request forms for whatever furnishings and supplies you will need. Remember to be detailed in your requests. First requests are usually filled with only moderate obfuscation and delay. Subsequent requests are met with disbelief. If you forget to ask for a chamber pot the first time around, no amount of explanation will get you one later."
She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
"While you have that expression on your face," he said, "it is appropriate for me to emphasize once more the imprudence of inference. Don't infer from my manner and deportment that others in my office share my opinions, my vocabulary, or my intentions. It is also unwise to seem personable. Toward others here in Hold you must convey a presence that is both dull and demure. You have, I note, a face which can be virtually vacant. Keep it that way, but do not turn off the mind behind it."
"Yes, Doctor," she said, smoothing her brow, slightly compressing her lips and half lidding her eyes.
"Excellent. Your eyes are now remote, your lips make a formidable barrier against confidences, your demeanor conveys an unqualified indifference. See that you maintain that expression as you take this note down to the supplies office on the first floor, and fill out form eleven A five thirteen."
He shooed her as he rose to open the door and put his head out. "Who's here," he asked the air. "Ah. Trublood. Would you take Citizen Dismé to the housing office, please. Thank you."
The young officer stood up as she came out of the Doctor's office, nodded in a peremptory manner, and started out at a fast pace down the corridor. It was all she could do to keep up as they covered three hallways and two sets of stairs.
"Down there," he said, pointing.
"Thank you," she murmured breathlessly, reminding herself not to smile at him.
"Don't mention it," he said, nostrils pinched in annoyance. "We have pages who lead people about and fetch tea and the like. Colonel Doctor Ladislav never seems to remember that." And he went angrily back the way they had come while Dismé continued to the indicated door. The room was divided by a counter, the area behind it occupied by two men at large desks and two women at small ones. Dismé vacated her face as she approached the counter. She murmured a toneless, "Good morning."
One of the women cast a glance at the nearest large desk, holding herself ready to move or not, as indicated. The large man looked up briefly. Dismé had vacated her face by the time he saw her, and he muttered incuriously, "See to her Miram."
"Yes, Captain," she said, rising and advancing on Dismé with a slightly worried expression. "What?" she asked.
"I have just been hired on as an assistant to Colonel Doctor Ladislav," Dismé said in a deadly monotone. "He told me to come here and you would assign me quarters."
Miram fetched a book from a nearby shelf and turned to a set of plans showing floors and corridors and rooms, each room with vertical lists of names neatly printed in, some with all names crossed out, some with all but one or two. "Women's corridors," she muttered. "Let's see, vacant, vacant. I've got 306 or 415. You can have your choice; Elida Ethelday was in 306, she's gone back to Comador, and her room's nearest the stairs; 415 is in the corner tower, so it's not as warm, but it has a nice view."
Increasing the distance from the stairs would also decrease traffic in the corridor outside, Dismé thought. She didn't mind a cool room, and quiet was something she preferred.
"Four-fifteen," Dismé said. "May I look at it before I go to the supply officer?"
"Oh, of course, of course. I've got the key here, but first I have to put your name down."
Dismé wrote her name and job and watched while it was inked in minuscule letters at the bottom of the 415's list of tenants.
"Key," said Miram, handing it to her. "You go out and turn right to the main corridor, where the town flags are. Turn left there and take the first stair to your left. There's a sign that says women's corridors. Go up three flights, tell the fourth floor keeper who you are, she'll put you on the roll."
"Keeper?" murmured Dismé.
"Women's corridors have keepers," said Miram, surprised. "To protect their tranquility. Of course."
"Oh, of course." She followed directions, main corridor lit by a skylight five stories up, three flights of stairs lit by inadequate lanterns. The sad-faced keeper had a few candles and a little alcove at the head of the stair where she could see anyone who came up or went down. Dismé introduced herself, was properly enrolled, and was read the rules:
"No men visitors in your quarters, not even relatives. Women relatives who visit may stay overnight if you're not on duty. No pets except birds in cages, small ones. Inspection irregularly, at least every twenty days, with reprovals for untidiness. Five reprovals equals a beating, and I don't recommend it. Keep food put away, it attracts mice. You're lucky, there's a slop chute right next to your door on the outside wall. Chamber pots are to be emptied and rinsed out promptly. You can get reprovals for smelly quarters."
The room at the end of the hall was shaped like a fat raindrop, with the door almost at the angle of two right-angled straight walls, a third wall curving into the three-quarter circle of the tower at the corner of the building. The curved wall had a narrow window in each quarter-circle arc, each with a separate view across the city and surrounding countryside. Dismé carried pen, ink, and paper in her bag, and she sat down to make a list. The room already had a bed, a chair, and a wash stand. There was room for a desk, a bookshelf, and a commode. A stove stood between two windows on the curved wall. When she had her list complete, she asked the keeper how to find the supply office and went there.
The supply officer took forever to read the list.
"Y'say sheets and blankets and a pillow, but you don't say bed," he commented.
"There's a bed already there."
"Not your bed. Whadever you're gonna use, you godda ast for. Otherwise, somebody fines a bed there and no bed on your rekazishun, they take the bed."
"Give me a mom
ent," asked Dismé. "I'll put down the bed and the chair and the wash stand that's already there." She did so, then resubmitted the list.
"You got down here curdens or shades but you don' say how many winnows."
She amended her list once more. Three windows, curtain rods.
"There's curden rods already there," he said.
"Not my curtain rods," she responded.
"They're fas'ened in. Stuff that's fas'ened in, you don't got to rekazition. Like a stove. Id's build in, so take it offa the lis."
"I see."
"You don' got down here no rug."
"Am I allowed a rug?"
"You don' know 'less you ast for one."
"All right," she murmured, "I'll ask for a rug."
They continued in this wise for some little time, adding an oil lamp, a fuel box (a limited supply of firewood and coal was provided), and concluding with a grudging agreement on the part of the supply officer that most of what she'd asked for could be delivered to the room by the following day.
Dismé returned to the Division of Health offices, where she was ostentatiously ignored by Captain Trublood. An officer of lesser rank gave her meal chits, an overnight chit for the hostelry where she was staying, and another one that allowed her to go on living there until her quarters had been furnished. "Do some sightseeing," this one suggested kindly. "Go over to Mill Street. It has all kinds of nice shops, and there's respectable places to eat, and a little park."
Accordingly, Dismé went to Mill Street and spent the afternoon wandering in the dull little shops and having a barely edible meal at a café and sitting in the little park, which had more weeds than grass and no flowers except six badly maimed marigolds around a broken sundial. Noting her own lack of appreciation, she realized she had been spoiled by Faience. Molly Uphand was a superlative cook with access to unlimited milk, cream, eggs, meat, vegetables, and fruit from the surrounding farms; the grounds were visually exciting; and the contents of the Museum, at least the artistic ones, put any shop to shame. Aesthetics obviously didn't occupy a high place among the mostly Turnaway masters of Hold.
She decided to go back to her hostelry, started to rise, then sat back down again. The hair on her neck prickled. She was being watched. She took several things out of her bag and laid them on the bench as though looking for ... her handkerchief, which she wiped her nose with as she turned toward the items lying on the bench in order to glance toward the area that had been behind her. There was a figure standing against a building at the end of the street, where the park ended. That is, she thought it was a figure of a person, though it could have been ... anything. It was too far away to see the eyes though, for some reason, she thought they were red. Keeping her head down, she replaced the items in her bag, stood up, shook out her skirts, and turned slowly in that direction. The figure was gone.
She returned to her hostelry, had a better meal in the refectory there, and wrote a letter to Mrs. Stemfall saying she had been hired and would not be returning to the Conservator's house, though she paused a few moments before adding those last words. Staying in Hold might involve danger, but going back to Faience was out of the question. If something wanted to look at her, it could do so as well in Faience or Apocanew as here in Hold. This Fortress, with its hall keepers and bureaucratic systems, was among the safer places she could be.
She walked over to the Fortress, and in the main corridor, the one with all the dusty flags, she located the post service office, where she paid a fee to have the letter taken to Apocanew on the train; another, lesser fee to have it delivered in Apocanew to someone on the route list who worked at Faience; and still another, quite small fee to have that person deliver the letter to Mrs. Stemfall. Returning to the hostelry, she locked door and window, pulled the curtains, and settled herself to sleep, grinning unashamedly at the thought of what Rashel would do and say when she heard the news.
Just before she dozed off, however, the grin faded as she remembered what Doctor Ladislav had said. "A man, traveling with a wife, and one or more children..."
She was obviously expected to play the part of the wife, but where were they to get the children? She drifted into sleep with the question unanswered.
In the night, she had several dreams that half wakened her, not her usual type of dream, but something much more real and immediate. When she woke at dawn, she was the surprised possessor of a discrete section of missing memory concerning climbing down a well and traveling through caverns, and the memories were still returning, like bubbles in a mud pool, each preceded by a feeling of fullness and then a soggy pwufl as the bubble broke to disclose an event in all its details. Dismé lay abed until the day was well advanced, recollecting her journey underground with amazement, some embarrassment, and more than a little joy to know that somewhere Arnole still lived.
She also thought about the dobsi in her head. She could not feel it, but now she knew it was there! Should she tell the doctor? Would it upset him? Would it place him at risk? The initial impression she had of him made her believe that he and the demons might well be of like mind, but in the end, she decided not to mention it.
31
a visit to hetman gone
Two days later, Mrs. Stemfall went into the dining room where Rashel was having her noon meal in lonely splendor. Just outside the door, she adopted a dour and disapproving face.
"Parm me, Ma'am," she muttered, with a sniff. "But there was a letter from your sister, Miss Dis. She ast me to tell you she has that job they was offering. She won't be coming back."
Rashel turned quite pale. She had received Michael's message regarding the "stuck door and extra day away" with a degree of composure, expecting Dismé to return today. Now she rose from the table and left the dining room, missing the sly smile that fled across the housekeepers face. Upstairs, in Dismé's room, Rashel pulled out the drawers, opened the cupboards and threw wide the closet door. They were empty except for a tattered shirt and pair of men's trousers, which she regarded with momentary rage until she realized the belt around them was Dismé's own. She returned to attack Mrs. Stemfall.
"You packed her things! You sent them on to her."
Mrs. Stemfall allowed herself a measure of hauteur. "I did no such thing. I'd have had no time to do so."
"I'll get to the bottom of this. I'll question Joan and Michael. If you have..."
Mrs. Stemfall turned in outrage and left the room, feeling Rashel's fury crackling the air after her. Rashel raged through the house, looking for evidence, so she said, that one of the servants had helped Dismé do whatever it was Dismé was alleged to have done. Molly Uphand retaliated by providing a supper that was barely edible, but Rashel didn't notice. Carrying her rage from the house to the museum, she went on so furiously in the succeeding days that a number of museum staff took sick.
In the classroom, Lettyne bit her lips in aggravation. Tidbits of news about Dismé had been good for a few coins from her mama, and now that source of income had departed. At home, Molly Uphand smiled quietly behind a dish towel, postponing a good gossip with Joan about it until they were home. Dismé had often lent a hand and was well-liked.
Rashel's interview with Michael caused the gravest affront. He denied taking baggage from maid or cook or housekeeper to send on to Hold. He denied he had packed any such thing himself. He kept his temper very well, considering that half-a-dozen times he came within a breath of assaulting her. When a momentary lull allowed him to do so, he tendered his resignation to the Caigo Faience, thereby renewing hostilities.
"What do you mean, you're leaving?" she snarled.
"I have already secured a driver's position in Hold which is to begin in a few day's time."
"You don't have my permission to leave!"
"I'm sure the BHE will find someone for you within the next few days," Michael replied. "I informed them earlier, and they said it would take little time to replace me."
"You informed them!"
"Yes Ma'am. In accordance with the rules of my
contract."
"I am your employer!"
"Respectfully, no Ma'am. I work for the BHE, like the rest of the staff of Faience and this house. We all took the job on short notice, to oblige, for a minimum term that was over some time ago. Any or all of us can leave on three days' notice."
Rashel opened her mouth to shriek, but was forestalled when he held out a packet.
"Pardon me, Ma'am, but this letter was delivered a few minutes ago."
"From whom? From where?"
"A rider, Ma'am. On a black horse up from the city."
She ripped open the envelope, read the first two lines, and turned quite pale.
"Ma'am?"
She wiggled her fingers at him, brushing at him. Go, said her hand. Go away. He went, noting her discomfiture with great satisfaction.
Behind him, Rashel read the brief note again. And yet again. Nothing changed what it said. She was summoned from Faience to meet with Hetman Gohdan Gone. Damn him and damn him! She had tried to ignore him, and failed. She had tried to charm him, and failed. She had tried compliance, but mere compliance didn't satisfy him either. He was not susceptible to any form of handling, and it was all her fool mother's fault! Her foolish, stupid mother who had obligated all Rashel's future life.
She remembered screaming at her mother for involving her in such a thing. "How dared you?" Rashel had cried.
"Because it was the only thing I could think of," her mother had replied, glancing up at her daughter from the hands that twisted in her lap. "He wanted to sacrifice you. I bargained for your life by convincing him you could be of help to him..."
Rashel hadn't believed her. She had seen no reason why the Hetman would have wanted to kill her. He hadn't even met her!
In the face of this disbelief, Cora would have been wise to have gone away at that point, or to have sent Rashel away. She loved her daughter, however, and did not assess either the depths of Rashel's hatreds, or the shallowness of her affections. As a result, Cora died quite suddenly, just before Rashel and Ayward were married. She was quite alone at the time, and only the timely arrival of the cleaning woman allowed her to be bottled while tissue was still harvestable.