The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Sure. Lou Ellen’ll help.” Glory set Falija on her lap and scratched her fur around her ears.

  I continued my examination of Falija. “That’s a very strange cat. Could be a Manx, since it doesn’t have much of a tail.”

  “It’s a new kind,” Glory said.

  I supposed she was right. It was a new kind to me, at any rate.

  “It’s more…omnivorous, like people,” Glory said. “The…lady told me so.”

  Falija was standing on her hind legs with her front ones on the table, making the little prruup prruup noises. “She’s hungry,” Glory announced. “Can I fix a plate for her?”

  I nodded, fascinated by this little animal. Glory found some leftover oatmeal in a pot on the stove, an apple in a bowl, and a chicken leg in the refrigerator. She cut everything up in pieces and put it on a plate. The moment Falija saw it, she jumped off the chair and cleaned the plate, including the pieces of apple, eating slowly and neatly, while I scrambled eggs and made toast.

  When the cat had finished eating, Glory fetched a little bowl of water and Falija washed. First she took a little drink, then she dipped her paw in the water and washed her face, and dipped and washed down her neck and around her ears, and then she dried off the paw on the rug.

  “That’s not any ordinary cat,” I said around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Gloriana, tell me truthfully, where did you get that creature?”

  Glory looked out the window for a while, then she looked me in the eye. “A lady gave me some money to take care of her for a while and keep her safe. She’s very smart, Grandma.”

  “She’s a mutation of some sort,” I half whispered, as though I were afraid someone would hear me.

  “That’s what everybody says I probably am, because I don’t look anything like all the rest of the Judsons. Every single one of them has light hair and blue or green eyes but me, including you, and Aunt Mayleen and Mama, and they’re only Judsons by marriage.”

  I stared out the window. “Oh, somewhere in the line, there’s always a dark-haired ancestor.”

  “Well, it’s nobody recent,” said Gloriana. “And nobody else is my size, either.”

  Falija climbed onto my lap. She had claws, but when she climbed, she just barely caught the clothes. Her claws didn’t touch the skin, and there she was on my lap, turning around and around, and settling down to have a nap, still going prruup prruup prruup and opening those huge eyes to stare at me. I stroked her, very softly, while her little pawlike hands pressed and released against my leg, kneading and kneading.

  “She certainly acts like a mammal,” I said. “That’s what kittens do with their feet at the mother’s mammaries, pressing and kneading that way. It’s like baby goats and lambs and calves, butting at the udder. But, Glory, those paws, those eyes, she’s not a real cat. Some kind of marsupial, maybe? Her hind legs and pelvis aren’t built like a cat’s, and neither is her head. She has a much higher skull than a cat…”

  “Maybe she’s just a newly discovered species.”

  “No species I ever learned about while I was at school. No kind I’ve ever read about, either. Of course, there’s no special reason she should be terrestrial.” I gave Glory a hard, searching look. “I’d be inclined to say she’s neither Tercian nor Earthian.”

  “I’ve told you the truth,” Glory said, turning red. “And you can see for yourself she’s just a baby and needs taking care of. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “All right,” I said, “But Gloriana, you promise me something. If you need help with this little one, you come straight here to me! Promise, now.”

  Since I was already the one Gloriana went to when she was in trouble, I figured it would be an easy promise.

  When Glory had finished with our dishes, Falija was asleep, so we sat out on my little porch while Gloriana went back to wondering why she was so different from all the other Judsons.

  “And something else,” she said. “How come my mama and Lou Ellen’s mama don’t look alike when they’re identical twins?”

  “They used to look alike,” I said. I fetched the album from the bookshelves inside. “See there, that’s when they were babies. You couldn’t tell the difference between them.” The picture was of Maybelle and Mayleen as babies, sitting back to back on a picnic bench, like a pair of bookends. “It wasn’t that they were born looking different, Glory. It’s how they’ve lived their lives.”

  “They have different personalities,” Glory said. “You’d think that should be the same, too.”

  “One would expect so,” I said, for hadn’t I expected just that? Time to change the subject. “Your mother says you have a litter box for Falija.”

  “Yes. And she knows how to use it.”

  “She has a very short tail. Hardly as long as my thumb. She has a poophole.” That’s what we all called it. It isn’t polite, but the more common words are abusive and contemptuous, and the correct terms occasion intense embarrassment among the Rueful, as though they referred to something esoteric and possibly blasphemous.

  “Poophole is at least a specific vulgarity rather than generalized lewdness,” said Glory, grinning at me. She sometimes quotes me word for word. She remembers a lot of things people say, whole paragraphs that seem to stick in her mind like a caramel on teeth. Funny child. I loved her very much.

  “Lou Ellen was with me when the lady gave me Falija,” Glory said, not looking at me. “I asked her to stay last night, but she wouldn’t. Whenever I ask her to stay, she says, ‘No, no, Glory. It’s all right. It’s a pretty path along the water and through the fields, and I keep looking for…things.’

  “Grandma, what do you think she’s looking for? It’s a mile up to the notch where the bridge is and three miles from there, by the road, to Billy Ray’s farm. Lou Ellen says it doesn’t take her any time at all, so she has to have a secret way to cross the river. She never shared it with me, and we share everything, absolutely everything, but not that, and it hurts my feelings.”

  I didn’t have to answer, because Falija had wakened. She reached up with a little paw and patted Glory’s chin, wiping off a tear. Then she licked the paw, and that made Glory smile and forget about Lou Ellen.

  I didn’t forget, however, because I’d seen her in that weird dream yesterday. On the pier. Talking to the strange people, Falija’s parents. I didn’t believe that dream had been real, not at all, so perhaps I was going absolutely mad, instead of simply partially mad, an idea that for some time had seemed rather convincing.

  I Am Naumi, with Fernwold

  “I knew a woman, Naumi,” said Fernwold, who was sitting in hot water up to his chin. “Years ago.”

  “Ah,” I replied, opening one eye. “And you’re just now remembering her? Why?”

  “You just reminded me of her, somehow. Perhaps it’s the way the steam curls your hair around your ears. Hers did that, too. Or maybe I was just thinking of hot pools, and it reminded me of B’yurngrad. That’s where she was…is.”

  I gritted my teeth at the thought of Ferni and his woman, reminding myself sternly that this obsession was a private one, never mentioned, never to be shared. Ferni had every right to be attracted to some woman, damn her, whoever she should be. “Who is this woman?” I asked, managing to sound interested.

  “Set out to be a translator for the Diplomatic Corps. Got detoured into being a bondslave. Freak accident marooned her on B’yurngrad. Siblinghood picked her up, sent her into the wastelands to learn shamanism.”

  “Did she have a name?” I asked, merely to show I was listening.

  “M’urgi,” Fernwold said. “That’s what the shaman named her. I forget what it means.”

  “Something mythic, no doubt.” I sat up a little so I could see the arrival and departure board by the door. I liked very much being with Ferni, but if he was going to talk about women, I would just as soon be somewhere else. Besides, nonplanetary transshipment points had a reputation for last-minute changes in boarding times.

  In this case,
it was no help. I still had entirely too much time. I let myself slip into the wet once again. This particular transshipment point, Gilfras Station, had been established by that ancient and honored race, the Pthas, only they knew how long ago. Its current crew mined comets for water and made a very good thing out of it, that is if everyone paid what Ferni and I had paid for a private bath, and why in heaven’s name had I done that!

  Ferni mused, “A name that’s mythic? I suppose that’s possible. Last time I was among other Siblings, I heard the shaman died, and M’urgi was called to active duty, still on B’yurngrad.”

  “How long since you’ve seen her?” I asked.

  “Been with her? Oh, ten, eleven Earth-count years, I suppose. Maybe more.”

  “Not unusual for you. I didn’t see you for a full five years after we left the academy.”

  His forehead furrowed as he said tentatively, “I was busy, running about. That whole time is hazy.”

  “And you’re wanting to go see…what? If you remember her correctly? If she remembers you?”

  With a great thrashing of water, Fernwold sat up.

  “There was something about her, Naumi! When I first saw her, I felt I’d known her for years. When we talked, I could have been talking to you, she was so familiar. She could have been your identical twin.”

  “No she couldn’t!” It sounded rude even to me. I amended, “That is, not if she was female.”

  “I don’t mean biologically.” Ferni subsided, letting the water flow over his chin once more, stopping just short of his lips. “Psychologically, maybe. Maybe nothing, just an addled mind seeking connections.” He stared moodily into the water, seeking answers. “I applied for some leave to go find her a few years back. They said no. She was busy, too busy to be interrupted. The Siblinghood is worse than the Omnionts, I swear. At least the Omnionts let you go after fifteen years.”

  “Do you want to be let go?” And oh, wouldn’t I bless and curse the day that happened. If Ferni were just…elsewhere, where he could be remembered with joy and without this constant internal battle not to get personally involved!

  “That’s not what I meant!”

  Silence except for the soft plutter of wavelets against the sides of the tiled pool, the shlush of the water running away to the boiler, the gurgle as it returned.

  “If you can get your shamanistic friend off your mind for a little while,” I said. “I asked you to meet me here because I need your help,”

  Ferni looked up, lips curving. “I have more to say about her, but I can give you a few minutes, Noomi.”

  Ignoring the slur, I explained. “The Siblinghood has given me a problem.” I paused to think, rubbing my face with the back of my hand. I needed a shave. At age thirty-six, thirty-seven, maybe it was time to grow a beard. Which was simply a divagation, putting off the ridiculous, or the sublime, I had no idea which. I said as quickly as possible, “Somewhere within our reach there’s a being no one has ever seen, and this being knows everything.”

  “What did you say?”

  I repeated myself.

  “The Siblinghood knows this?” Ferni, incredulous.

  I sat up, removed the wet towel from around my head, and said, “I’m told the Siblinghood presumes this to be true.”

  “Why, in the name of Chamfalow’s chief cook?”

  “Well, this is the way it was explained to me: Mankind is in a very dangerous situation regarding survival as a race. Unlike every other presumably well-intentioned race, we do not have a racial memory…”

  “You’re joking! The Gentherans have a racial memory? The Pthas had a racial memory? And the Garrick?”

  “According to what I’ve been told, all of them do or did, yes.”

  “Since one already knows a good deal of human history, one expects there must be a catch in there somewhere.”

  “Isn’t there always? As I understand it, the memory in question would include everything back to the time our parental primate stepped down out of a tree. Maybe even farther back, to the first time we crawled out of the ooze. And, we must know it, not learn it. Know it so we feel it in our bones. Or membranes, if we didn’t have bones at the time. We have to remember war, not merely think about it. We have to remember struggle, and pain, and having beasts eat our children. Presumably, this inner knowledge would halt our tendency to do the precipitous, silly, and often very dangerous things that people reared in relative safety often do for stupid or prideful leaders, like sheep running ahead of a purposeful, nipping dog.

  “The only hope of finding such a memory lies in our finding someone or something who knows everything, including the true history of the human race. The solution also requires that this thing or creature exist within our reach, since if it doesn’t, its mere existence is of no consequence to mankind.”

  “Ah,” said Ferni, wiping steam out of his eyes. “And?”

  “The problem they’ve given me is to find the being.”

  “To presume there’s a being, then find it.”

  “More or less, yes.”

  “I presume there’s a pot of universal elixir sitting on the bench in the changing room; I think I’ll go find that.” Ferni snorted, getting water up his nose.

  I didn’t reply.

  Ferni said, “You’re serious?”

  “Deadly serious. They told me it is likely the penalty for not finding it will be our own extinction, sooner or later, and not much later at that. Have you ever…have you ever seen recordings of the planet they call Hell?”

  “Ugh.” Ferni ducked under the water, came up spluttering. “I’m a member of the Siblinghood, Naumi! I’ve never heard of any of this! Unless…could it be a Third Order thing?”

  My eyebrows went up at this. “This plan or plot or whatever one may call it, is being implemented by a small secret group within your organization. Is there a secret group called the Third Order? If so, very interesting, because it’s not the first time they’ve fiddled with my life. They had something to do with my being at the academy in the first place.”

  After a considerable silence, Ferni offered, “I know the name. Is it possible some kind of…spatial anomaly is involved in all this?”

  “Well, if the thing exists, it has to exist somewhere. An anomalous location might explain why no one knows where.”

  “I wonder if the old talk road would come up with anything?”

  “The other four are meeting me on Thairy. That’s why I asked you to meet me here. There’s a quick route from here to Thairy. And to B’yurngrad, if you’re wanting to look up your shamaness. Just think, one day there from here, one day to Thairy from here. No lost time. Lucky Pthas to find the wormhole to end all wormholes…” I realized I was babbling and fell silent.

  Fernwold steamed. “All this vapor is doing nothing for my powers of ratiocination. Assuming I have any. Do we know anything at all about this being?”

  “The Siblinghood archives have several ancient stories that involve something or someone called the Keeper. Many of them were preserved by the Pthas, and that fact lends them additional credence. Some of the stories drop clues to the Keeper’s approachability. The number seven figures prominently. There are a few phrases common to most of the stories. ‘One person walking seven roads at once finds the Keeper.’ Or, ‘Seven roads are one road.’ Most of the stories are about untangling a difficulty or solving a problem…”

  “And we want this Keeper because it, or he, knows everything?”

  “It, I think. Knows everything. Yes.”

  Ferni emerged gradually from the water, heaved himself out of the pool, and reached for a towel. “Tell me one of the stories.”

  I gawked at him, then averted my eyes.

  “Come on, Noomi! Presumably they told you some of the stories. Tell me one!”

  “I can tell you one about a man and a fish,” I said.

  Now it so happened that a man of Dabberding was walking along the River Rush one day when a fish spoke to him from the shallows along the bank.

>   “Hi there, you, man,” said the fish. “How is the world treating you?”

  “Not well,” growled the man of Dabberding. “My wife is ill, my children need shoes, the cow went dry, my donkey is lame, my old dog is on her last legs, and a fox is eating my chickens, one after the other.”

  “Ah,” said the fish. “That must make you very angry.”

  “It makes me boil,” said the man of Dabberding. “My wife is sick because my neighbor dragged her out in a rainstorm to help him gather up his geese. My children need shoes because they went to help their mother and ruined the shoes I’d just bought them. The cow went dry because my neighbor said his bull would breed her for less then I usually pay. The bull was no good, but my neighbor wouldn’t give me my money back. The donkey is lame because my wife had to ride her in the mud, into the village, to see the healer. My old dog is on her last legs because she caught cold for trying to bring the geese in, and the fox is eating my chickens because my neighbor’s no-good bull bashed a hole in the coop, and I’ve no wire to fix it with.”

  “So you’re angry,” said the fish.

  “Oh, if my neighbor were here in front of me, I’d bash him bloody,” said the man of Dabberding. “This is all his fault.”

  “Is there anything you’re angry about that the right information wouldn’t fix?” asked the fish.

  The man of Dabberding thought for a while, then he said, “I would know how I could heal my wife, how to make shoes for the children, where I could find a good bull, where I could find a little money to rent another donkey to let my donkey rest until his leg gets better, who’s giving away a good pup so my old dog could lie contented in the sun, and how to keep the vermin out of my chicken coop.”

  “Then the problem is solved,” said the fish. “I will tell you where to go.”