The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  I puzzled at the word as I translated it into Frossian. Those in the faraway. “Is that their name?”

  “It’s a descriptive term for people in hiding. Here, they are the Gibbekot. If humans live on a planet, the Gibbekot become falunassa in faraway mountains perhaps, or deep deserts, or great canyons, always in the most secret places. They are not fearful. They simply prefer not to have the problems that result from unlike creatures housed too closely together.”

  I stared into the distance. “Won’t the Gibbekot object to my coming?”

  “No. You’ve been described to them. We told them the umoxen had adopted you. That was sufficient endorsement.” He returned to the cave and picked up his pack. “Let’s put space between us and this place before those Frossians return.”

  Luckily, we had a moon providing enough light to let us see our way on up the canyon, past confluences with other small streams, the wash growing narrower, shallower, and rockier the farther we went, at last dividing itself neatly into two tumbling brooks, left and right, both leading up stony channels.

  “Here we go,” said Rei, as he turned to the right and began climbing up the stream, from rock to rock.

  I followed. There had been a time, I reflected, when this journey would have been impossible for me. On Earth I would have been too weak and too flabby to have walked any distance at all carrying a pack. My flesh had grown hard during the years of bondage. Perhaps I should thank the Frossians for that.

  During the next few hours, as we passed several other places where streams or dry washes came in from the sides and as the stream we followed became a mere trickle, I became less sure I should thank anyone. “Rei, how much farther do we climb?”

  “Not far. You’re doing well.”

  It still seemed a great distance. The sky was growing light when a breeze from behind us carried a great uproar to our ears. Shouting. Something mechanical, roaring.

  “Aircar,” said Rei. “Hurry.”

  I managed to be close behind him as he climbed the last plunging stretch of piled stone and stood erect at the top. “There,” he said, pointing. “Gibbekot country.”

  We stood on a natural dike. The source of the stream we had followed was a small lake stretching from the dike at our feet eastward toward green pastures sloping upward to gently rounded hills, these backed in their turn by receding ranges of blue mountains. Umoxen grazed in the valley, but there was no sign of other inhabitants.

  Rei moved to one side, thrust his hand into a crevice in the rock, and pulled. Somewhere wheels turned and creaked. Somewhere a valve opened and the lake before us developed an eddy that spun itself into a vortex. Below and behind us, a spate of water boiled out of the rivulet to gush wildly over the rocks we had climbed, the soil where we might have left tracks, any surface where any trace of us might have remained. Rei stood for some time, watching the water wash away all traces of us, and when he was satisfied, he thrust his hand into the crevice once more and shut the water down. As it silenced, we heard the roaring again, nearer.

  He plunged into the shallow water and began to wade around its edge. “There are a dozen sizable streams entering the river we walked in. After rain, any of them might be in spate. There are about fifty little canyons and washes on this upper stretch, where we climbed, and the same is true of the other forks. Even if the Frossians have the patience to search them all, they are unlikely to get this far, and if they get this far, they will get no farther. Frossians like dampness, but they’re afraid of open water.” He raised his head and called across the valley. The echoes returned, amplified. An umox, the nearest, turned ponderously from its grazing and came toward us, down the left side of the lake. Rei plowed through the shallows to intercept it, with me close behind. The umox waded out to meet us; Rei grabbed handfuls of the creature’s long hair and pulled himself onto its back, then tugged me up beside him. The umox lumbered out onto the meadow and across the grasslands toward the nearest grove of trees. It did not speak to us, at least, not in any way I could hear.

  “Scenters won’t be able to smell us,” I said.

  “Not over the smell of the umoxen, no,” Rei agreed. “Here. Pull the back of my cloak up over yourself. It’s unlikely they will see us, and we will be under cover soon.”

  I covered myself. Rei lay flat on the broad umox back, and I lay on his back, both of us covered in a cloak very much the color of the umox’s wool. The roaring came close, closer. The umox stopped, grazed, took a few steps, grazed again. I was about to panic when Rei murmured, “From above, the umox is one of a herd, all grazing. Hear them?”

  I did hear them, all around us. Our own umox was working its way steadily through the herd toward the edge. Peeking from below the robe, I saw trees not far away. The herd leader snorted, and all of them moved into the trees, quite quickly, as the machine roared directly overhead, turning to return, even lower.

  By that time, we were on the ground, lying in a hollow beneath a fallen tree, and the herd was moving into the open pasture once more. Rei said, “Anyone searching along the ground will find valleys full of umoxen on every side, streams everywhere, many little canyons and tricky places easy to get into and hard to get out of. Frossians have explored here from time to time, but none has ever left here to tell others what he may have found.”

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  “We Ghoss were told to bring you, reason enough.”

  “Told by whom, Rei!”

  He shrugged. “Those who have the authority to do so.”

  I gave up in frustration. Be thankful, I told myself. Be damned thankful you’re here instead of down there. The words resonated, bringing a childhood memory. Be thankful we’re up here, on Phobos, not in that windstorm down there on Mars. Be thankful you survived your bondage. Be thankful for your strength, your endurance. Be thankful you didn’t go with Bryan, wherever he ended up going. Be thankful you didn’t run off on the dragonfly, when you were a little girl. Be thankful the woods are all around us, for the aircar circled endlessly above us.

  Be resentful about all those years of language study, however, for all they did was get you into trouble with the Frossians. Of course, I wasn’t dead yet. Language might still have some use.

  “Here,” said Rei, pointing ahead once more. “Here is the Gate of the Gibbekot, and through it is the way to your freedom.”

  Our way led into a shallow valley grown up in forest. On both sides the trees marched up slopes that grew gradually steeper. This was a new thing for me. I had labored for fifteen years among the riverside woods that drained the pastures of the umoxen: a few large purple-leaf trees, widely separated, with thin saplings and brush between, and never any feeling of being cut off from the light. Here, the darkness was a palpable presence even at the edge of the forest, a deepening reality as we went farther to be surrounded by many kinds of trees: the shutter-leaf, which seemed ubiquitous; silver-leaf, columnar black-bolled trees with leaves that were silver on the bottom; parasol-trees, with huge, tall green-gray trunks culminating in a flat canopy well above the general forest, some dark green, some laden with brilliant red fringes. We could see perfectly well, it wasn’t a question of being unable to see, but it was like seeing in late evening, bulks and masses of shadow, movement rather than form, a muffling of sound along with nose-filling, palate-touching smells, mostly resinous, occasionally threatening. I shuddered.

  Rei patted my shoulder and pointed to a tree we were passing. “That’s what’s making you shiver. We call that Fros-bane. Take a good look at it. You don’t want to touch it, ever.”

  The bole was a pale green, smooth as my own skin, with tiny beads of amber upon it, evenly spread as dew.

  “See those drops? That’s the bad stuff. Like an acid. Eats your skin, gets into your blood, you end curled up in a circle, screaming at the pain. The Gibbekot have planted them all through the woods, along here. They’re immune to the stuff, but the Frossians aren’t.”

  “The trees might work better if they didn’t
smell so bad,” I opined. “I’d avoid them just because of the smell.”

  Rei grinned. “Frossians have no sense of smell. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

  I glared at him. “They’ve been saying I stink for the better part of fifteen years!”

  “They say it because we say it. If the hay is moldy, we say it stinks. The Frossians think it means rotten, evil, malign. They can see in the infrared, but they have no sense of smell. Ghoss do, however. Umoxen do, and the Gibbekot don’t want to hurt Ghoss or umoxen.”

  I thought about this. “Is this tree natural? Or was it genetically created by the Gibbekot?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because poisons and thorns and other defenses usually evolve against a particular life-form. The Frossians aren’t native here, so it wasn’t against them. What kind of thing threatened these trees to make them develop this defense?”

  Rei said over his shoulder, “The Gibbekot got them from the world where the Frossian queens live. It’s the only world that’s truly Frossian, the great hatchery from which they all come, and there are deep valleys there full of trees that had already evolved defenses. The Gibbekot just sent for them.”

  “The Gibbekot are spacefaring?” I asked in amazement. “You never said they were spacefaring.”

  “I still haven’t. I said sent, not went. Now hush. You’re making too much noise. That aircar may be carrying listening devices, and we need to keep our eyes and ears open.”

  To me, whatever path we followed was indistinguishable from any other way among the trees. The forest floor was covered with a thick blanket of leaves, needles, mosses, all held together by the wiry stems of ubiquitous creeper that grew only a finger’s width high but unendingly wide. When I turned to look back, the way we had come, I couldn’t see a footprint anywhere. The creeper simply flattened beneath our feet and sprang back once we had passed.

  I whispered, “How are you finding your way?”

  “Ghossways,” came the reply. “Now hush.”

  I hushed. We heard the aircar behind us, in the direction of the lake, I thought. It came a little closer, then turned back the way it had come. We walked for an hour or more, then began to climb as the floor of the valley climbed. By this time, evening had come, all aircar sounds had ceased, and the darkness beneath the trees had increased enough that I was eager to emerge from the gloom. Within a few hundred yards, we came from the shadow into the red light of sunset, the sky scattered with clouds ranging from gold to crimson to violet-gray. Before emerging, we scanned the sky carefully to be sure it was empty. When we were sure, we climbed a slanting ledge to an outcropping of stone that jutted from the hilltop, a narrow slot in it leading to another small, sheltered cave.

  “How many of these places are there?” I asked.

  “Enough to hide us, whatever direction we go. Tonight we stop here,” said Rei, gesturing to include sandy floor, smooth walls, a store of firewood stacked high against one wall, a water jar, sacks of food. “They know we’re here. When they’re ready, they’ll send for us.”

  “And until then?” I asked.

  “We can build a fire, heat some food, talk about the weather, read a book—I brought one for you…”

  “A book,” I breathed. “I haven’t read anything for…”

  “I know,” he said. “I brought you a book written by a Gibbekot. We’ll read it together, and that will give you a taste of their language.”

  I warmed myself at the fire, ate the food Rei provided, drank the tea he gave me, something new, something with an oddly attractive taste. I started to look at the book, a simple collection of words, one to a page, but was too sleepy to go on. Yawning, I curled up beside the fire.

  I was not asleep. It felt like a dream while asleep, but I knew it wasn’t a dream. Rei watched me. When I was totally relaxed, he reached out to shake me. I tried to speak, couldn’t speak, tried to move, couldn’t move. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. It was peaceful where I was, a firelit bubble of complete tranquillity.

  “She’s sleeping,” he called.

  The two beings who materialized at the entrance to the cave spoke to Rei with soft voices as they carefully unwrapped something they had brought with them. Rei turned me onto my stomach and applied whatever it was gently to the base of my skull. I felt something there, a kind of creepiness, as of something settling into place.

  “How long will she be like that?” asked Rei.

  One of the beings said, “Until it’s completely absorbed. It grows up under the skull in back, very thin, very flat. Then it has to connect to the rest of the brain, and that takes a while.”

  The other said, “It takes a good while, actually. It could take as long as a season…”

  “She’ll go on sleeping all that time?” asked Rei, with a furtive look at the stack of supplies.

  “Yes. She’s profoundly asleep, though a dream state sometimes occurs, and she may be aware this is happening. Don’t worry about the process, it’s always successful. All her body functions are slowed down, as though she were hibernating. She won’t need to eat or drink. Just send an emanation if you need more supplies, and someone will bring them. Keep her warm.”

  “We’ll be safe here?”

  “Completely,” said the larger one, with a lick at his fangs and a twist of his furry ears. “You may depend upon it. When she wakes, there will be a period of confusion. Just ease her through it, and don’t forget to read her the book.”

  “But she already knows her language.”

  “She doesn’t know ours,” said a visitor, departing.

  Rei took the book from my hand and put it safely with our packs before covering me with a blanket. I remember thinking how thoughtful they had been, but then, they had known we would be coming.

  I Am Wilvia/on Hell

  On Shore, which is what the water people call their world, little towns have been built all up and down the sea’s edge, many of them on stilts above the water, and waterside property is already filled. Some of the people have moved back into the forest and built mud houses there. It is warmer in the forest, where the trees break the sea winds at night, but the people come back to the shore in the daytimes, to fish and gather seaweed, while the children race up and down the sandy beaches, in and out of the warm, rolling sea. Most of the females are pregnant most of the time, and there are many, many babies.

  Through sensors planted here and there, I, Wilvia, watch, I, Wilvia, listen. Half insane in my solitude, I have memorized their faces and names, have learned their simple language. I understand when one tribe of the people talks of starting a new village. The old village is getting crowded, they say, and they think it would be good to go up the river a long way. The good food of the shore can be found up the river, too, where there is room to spread out. Also, the biggest trees grow along the river, the best ones for boats! They can build boats and trade the boats for things to eat.

  “Maybe we should leave big trees,” says one of the males. “Takes a long time to grow a big tree.”

  “There’s more,” says another one of the males. “There’s plenty of big trees. They’ll never run out.”

  “I guess you’re right,” replies the first one. “We do have to make room for more of us all the time.”

  “Oh, yes,” the other replies. “We always have to make room for more.”

  “Fools,” I say, thrusting my forehead against the screen I am watching, reaching out to turn off the sound. “Oh, fools, fools.”

  Perhaps I should go outside. Perhaps I should show myself to them. Become their queen, perhaps, if they don’t kill me first. Rule them as Joziré and I ruled the Ghoss…

  We had a Trajian juggler at the court. The Trajian are long-lived but few, inveterate wanderers, often abused and abased, seemingly unable to settle in any one place. Their females command a very high bride-price, as there is only one of them for every two or three males. My juggler, Yarov, was a solemn little long-armed fellow with no assistant, no ma
te, for he had been unable to raise the bride-price necessary. He had stayed with us for a surprisingly long time. When I knew we might have to flee, I gave him a box of gold and gems, things he could use to travel, to keep himself, to buy a wife, for I knew how lonely he was. He stood before me, his little mouth open, as though he could not understand kindness. I told him it was not half what I owed him for the pleasure he had given us.

  I wonder about him often. He did a wonderful trick, tossing a little carved king into the air, which separated and came down, arms, legs, torso, head, crown, seven separate pieces that were miraculously reassembled and tossed skyward again. I took it as an omen. Though our reign might be broken, we would reassemble and reign again…

  So, should I reign over these creatures?

  No, and no, and no. Those who brought me here said both my life and the future of mankind depends upon Queen Wilvia staying hidden! Hidden on this virtually unvisited planet called Hell, buried in this ancient Gentheran ship, only its sensors connecting me to reality, only its maintenance system keeping me alive. Only this stale tragedy to occupy me: these fools…

  So, I am in hell, Wilvia is in hell. But, oh, my children, where are they? Beloved! Where is he? Where are those I love while I cower here, of no use, no use to them at all.

  Joziré and I ruled the Ghoss, and we did it well. I was pregnant, expecting our first child, when the Thongal came. Joziré was taken off in one direction, I was taken in another. For a while, I was hidden in a Walled-Off on Tercis. It was a strange place, but better than this. The hunters followed me there, so we went to Chottem, to live among the Gentherans. There, the Gardener visited us from time to time to reassure me that Joziré was well. That was far, far better than this. Then hunters came to Chottem, so we returned to Tercis, only for a little time, and my protectors brought me here. My guides said no one would find me, and they would be my companions.