The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  A scream came from between the blades, impossibly shrill, barely within the limit of hearing, and was echoed by a howl of fury from the basket as the tentacle turned toward the house, quivering, quivering.

  “More of them in there?” asked Ferni.

  “If the tentacle stays rigid, yes,” I said, scrubbing the blades in the snow to clean them. “When they kill someone, they sometimes split into buds. The buds don’t always grow, but sometimes they do.”

  “The Order wants us to capture them…” he said doubtfully.

  “I know,” I said, returning his knife carefully. “Several times I’ve tried, but it’s impossible to capture the tiny ones. There’s no way to hold them securely outside a laboratory. We have to put everything that may be contaminated in that building, then we have to burn it.”

  “What about her?”

  “We strip her bare, shave her head and body hair into her clothes, throw them into the house along with that spot on the snow, which could conceivably have buds in it, search her body, wrap her in one of our coats, and take her back to the oasthouse.”

  “She’ll freeze!”

  “It’s partly the cold that’s kept her alive so far. The things aren’t as active in the cold. She won’t freeze in the time it will take us to get her back. I’ve done this before, during even colder times. I’m quick at it.”

  Under the clippers from my tool kit, the girl’s clothes and hair fell away like wool from a shorn sheep. I scanned every intimate part of her, an inspection that Ferni regarded with discomfiture.

  “I violate her no more than needed,” I explained. “I look only in the creases. The creatures do not enter the body orifices. They have gills, and they need air. Here, wrap her in my coat, I have four or five layers on besides it. They’ll keep me warm enough until we get back.”

  “How do we fire the house?” he asked.

  “An incendiary in the pocket of the coat. Pull the lever and toss it inside.”

  I checked to see that the tentacle still pointed rigidly at the house, forced the tentacle into the basket, and closed it, then put the bundled girl over my shoulder and started back the way we had come, leaving the basket for Ferni. From behind me came a sudden whoosh, then the crackle of flames and the sound of curses. He caught up to me where the lane joined the road.

  “Let me take her.”

  “When we get halfway, you can have her.”

  We went on trudging toward the steam plume above the oasthouse, sun breaking through the clouds above us in momentary encouragement. At the halfway mark, we traded burdens, arriving finally at the oasthouse under B’Oag’s accusatory frown.

  “We committed no violence on her,” I snapped from behind my colleague. “The thing was killing her. It already took the woman. Was that her mother?”

  He looked down guiltily. “Her ma, yes.”

  “Well, she didn’t get to Joy, Oastkeeper. She’s simply gone, erased from existence. That’s what the creatures do. You should talk to your neighbors and let them know the facts.”

  “What about her?” he grumped, pointing at the girl.

  “I’m taking her to your baths, where I’ll search her skin, to be sure there are no more.” I would do it, though I was positive there were no more. My “finder” should have reached for her if there had been. However, I remembered too well finding a bead of a thing on my clothing one time when I undressed for bed, and I’d been positive that time, too.

  “What about her ma’s body?” B’Oag asked Ferni.

  “We left it in the house, and we had to burn the house behind us, for there were more of the creatures inside.”

  The oastkeeper grumped, “Thought what you were for was to catch ’em, take ’em away. That all was a good house.”

  “You can’t catch the tiny ones,” Ferni told him sternly. “Some are too small to see. And, since you knew about all this, now we’ll need to know who may have brought it here and who else knew about it besides you.”

  B’Oag scowled. Ferni scowled back at him, a look that transformed his normally genial face into one of threatening ferocity, threatening enough, at any rate, to result in a less overtly hostile conversation.

  I left it to Ferni and lugged the girl off to the baths, where I stripped off even the silky shirt and trousers that served as a warm bodysuit by day and decent sleepwear at night. During a northern winter on Fajnard, one got bare only in the tight oasthouse baths with their deep tubs of steaming water, constantly draining back into the stone basin they came from, constantly renewed and reheated. I took the girl into the tub with me, held her nose, and submerged her for a long count of thirty. No ghyrmlets surfaced, gasping for air. I dragged, her out, wrapped her warmly, got myself dressed, and took her to a warmed bed. Her body was alive, but only time would tell if her mind still was.

  It was some time before I returned to the oasthall to find B’Oag looking haggard and ill-used, ostentatiously avoiding my eyes as he attended to business. Ferni sat waiting by the copper, a steaming cup in his hand. Seeing me approach, he set out another and poured from the pot. “Well?” with raised eyebrows.

  “She’s clean.” I took a grateful sip of the hot tea. It had honey in it. “The basket?”

  “Back in the lockroom. B’Oag says the girl, G’lil, and her mother worked with the weavers’ guild in the nearest town south, place called Vaccy. Summers, after shearing season, the local women weave at the mill; winters they weave with small looms at home, piecework, special commissions, fancy stuff they’ve no time for in summer. When the weather permits, they pick up supplies at the mill. Not long ago, the girl came in here, wanting to talk to B’Oag about Joy, how people got taken there when they died, what could be done to assure it happened.

  “Finally, she admitted it was her mother who was dying. The doctors in Vaccy said there was nothing more they could do. B’Oag says he told her to take the doctors’ word for it, just keep her mother warm and well fed. The girl asked him if that was true even if someone had found a Taker. That’s what they call them around here. Takers. He told her all that was foolishness. This is what he tells me now, which may well be a lie. His excuse was that he didn’t think she’d actually found one. Then you arrive, making him believe she might actually have done so. We discussed where she might have found it, and he said the only place the girl ever went was to the mills and provender stores in Vaccy.”

  “The mills import raw material and export fabric?”

  “They do, yes.” He turned back to his tea. “They buy wool and hair from the farms around here that were started when the colony was founded: sheep, camel, goat. The mills import down from Chou-birds raised somewhere in Omniont space, and umox wool from Fajnard. The fiber for ultrasilk and vivilon comes in as cocoons, great sacks of them.” He laughed. “According to B’Oag, the mills label the fine fabrics as coming from the Isles of Delight.” He laughed. “Seemingly the K’Famir merchants don’t want it known their underwear is woven by dirty humans.”

  I shook my head. “This girl didn’t weave vivilon, her hands are hard as rocks. Nonetheless, she was there, at the mill. Your mentioning cocoons makes me wonder…”

  He nodded. “When B’Oag mentioned it, it struck me that cocoons with something live inside could make an excellent hiding place for vast numbers of infant ghyrm.”

  I thought about this for a while. “It doesn’t answer the question of how she knew what she’d found, or thought she knew. The things are repulsive in their own shape, but they usually pretend to be something else.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “This search-and-destroy business we accomplished today is new to you, isn’t it.”

  He nodded again. “So?”

  “So what have you been doing during your years with the Siblings? I thought all of us were out seeking ghyrm.”

  He shook his head at me. “There are more things than ghyrm threatening the Siblinghood. There’s the question of the survival of the human race. There’s exploration for new colony pla
nets, and from time to time certain people need to be located, which we also do. That is, those of us who are not, like you, busy killing ghyrm as a full-time job.”

  “What people do you locate? And for whom?”

  He merely smiled at me.

  “Oh, right. You’re a Sibling of Silence. Very well. We won’t talk about that. What shall we talk about?”

  He mused, “I was interested in your story last night, about how you got here to B’yurngrad. You said you could have gone on a ship into Mercan space. Any idea where it was going?”

  I shook my head, still annoyed by the memory. “I found out later, yes. It was headed for Fajnard. Where the Frossians are. How about you? How did you get into the academy?”

  “I don’t know, and they don’t say. They just tell you you’ve been recommended, and that’s it. Many of the cadets were from well-to-do families, and heaven knows I wasn’t. I got in with the group I told you about the other night, Naumi and the others, and we all did well through our fellowship, six of us, all of us helping each other when needful. When I graduated, I was sent on one of those ‘can’t remember’ missions…”

  “Which is…?”

  “One I literally can’t remember. They take the memory away, so no matter what some inimical force might try, they can’t get it out of me. I don’t even know if I joined the Siblings before or after, but I’ve been with them ever since.”

  “At least you’ve traveled. Except for my youth on Phobos and ten years or so on Earth, I’ve spent my whole life here on B’yurngrad, and I spend too much time regretting all those years of school, learning languages I’ve never used. When the shaman died, I fulfilled her burdens, which I’ll tell you about another time; and then I was briefly apprenticed to a full-time ghyrm-hunter. That’s when the Siblinghood made me a member.”

  “B’yurngrad isn’t a bad world. It has some really beautiful places on it.”

  “Unless ghyrm have been reported at one of them, I’ve never been there.”

  “No vacation?” he asked, seemingly astonished.

  “I’ve never asked for one,” I said, somewhat surprised at my own admission. “I didn’t know it was allowed.”

  “It’s a rule that we’re allowed to have vacations. You’re probably entitled to at least a year’s off-time by now.” He mused, staring at the still-steaming cup before him. “Tell you what. There’s something happening, something I think you’d be helpful at. Let’s arrange for some vacation, and we’ll do some traveling together.”

  The idea was attractive. I could not remember being so taken with an idea for many years. Not since…not since childhood. Not since the visit to Mars.

  “Mars,” I murmured. “The dragonfly.”

  He looked at me wonderingly. “Is that where they are? On Mars?”

  “Where what are?”

  “The dragonfly ships. The ones the…person pilots. It was a kind of vision or dream Naumi had, at the Academy. I don’t really remember what he said.” He laughed ruefully. “Do you ever get these weird memories? As though you’ve been somewhere or done a particular thing before?”

  I could only nod, yes, indeed, we all did.

  In the morning, the sun came out, the day warmed. The girl, G’lil, who had spent the previous night bundled up next to the coil in my room, began to moan and quiver. At noon, she awoke, and I fed her soup, as much as she would swallow.

  “Now,” I demanded, “suppose you tell me where you got that thing that we stopped from killing you.”

  “What thing…you mean the Taker. Ma…where’s Ma?”

  I took several deep breaths and told myself to be patient. “G’lil. Your mother is dead. She was not taken to Joy, she was eaten, and you came very close to being eaten, because that is what the ghyrm do. They are parasites, like leeches, they live off other creatures’ lives.”

  “But,” she cried, “but Ma said, but the man said, they said she’d go to Joy, it would take her there.”

  “It didn’t take her there! It didn’t take her anywhere.”

  “I don’t believe you,” the girl cried. “I won’t!”

  From the doorway, Ferni spoke. “She has too much invested in pretty lies, M’urgi.”

  “I know,” I said grimly. “So, we do this another way.” I put both my hands on her shaved head, closed my eyes and chanted. The girl quivered, tried to squirm away, then went limp, eyes wide open, seeing something. She moaned, cried out, then began to scream.

  Below us, in the oasthall, furniture tumbled, boots thundered up the stairs. B’Oag came down the corridor bearing a truncheon, his face red with anger.

  Ferni held up his hand, stopping the big man as though he had run into a wall. When Ferni beckoned, B’Oag came to stand beside him in the door. The screams were subsiding into moans once more. I removed my hands and stood up, staggering a little. G’lil’s eyes opened. “Aaaah,” she cried. “Dead. All dead.”

  “Right,” I snapped rather weakly. “All dead. As your mother is dead. As you would have been dead.”

  “What did you show her?” Ferni asked in an awed voice.

  “I showed her that little colony from Earth, Cranesroost. I showed her in lengthy detail how that looked, before and during.”

  “What?” demanded B’Oag.

  Ferni said, “The envoy showed the girl a memory of a human colony that was eaten by the ghyrm, Oastkeeper. When the ghyrm were through with them, nothing human lived in those places at all. Not a hair. Not a cell.”

  “He said…” The girl wept. “He said it would take her to Joy. The man said it would.”

  “Now we get to it,” I growled. “What man?”

  “The man at the mill. I was there to get supplies for the winter weaving, and he was delivering sacks of cocoons to the mill boss. He heard me telling my friend how bad off Mama was, and he said he had something that would help her. He said he couldn’t give it for free, but he gave it to me for a half jig-bit, for almost nothing. He said it was a Taker.”

  “What did it look like?” asked Ferni.

  “Like a few beads on a little string of vivilon. One red one, one blue one, two yellow ones. He held it to my ear so I could hear it sing. He said put it around her neck…” The girl shuddered. “Oh, Ma, Ma, what did I do to you?”

  I sat down on the bed, suddenly exhausted. “Do we have to burn the mill, Ferni?”

  B’Oag began to rumble threateningly, like his own heating system readying an eruption.

  Ignoring him, I continued “It’s within our authority, but I dread the upheaval that will cause. These people have little else to sustain them.”

  “There may be an easier way,” Ferni replied. “Let the girl rest, and come with me. And you, Oastkeeper, don’t get in an uproar over something that may not happen.”

  We went outside, some distance from the oasthouse, where I sat wearily on a wall.

  “I’ve never seen that done before,” said Ferni.

  “It seems to be a talent I have,” I said. “The ability to see other worlds, to take a spirit shape and go into other worlds. My shaman had it, too. It was she who taught me. Once I have seen something, I can show it to someone else…”

  “How did you see that destruction?”

  “I had seen a little of it before, on Earth. For the rest, I reached out to some creature that had seen it all: not with human eyes, but good enough for all that. It may have been a horse, or a dog, or even a goat. My shaman taught me to connect with the minds of animals. That’s why the chitterlain is content to stay with me. She knows I’m taking her south, where her kindred are.”

  He muttered, “Since the mill is all that sustains these people, I believe we can ask our Siblings to exterminate any pests that may be sheltered there without harming the mill itself or the people thereabouts.”

  “They can do that?”

  “I’m told so, yes, on a small scale. There’s been some recent technological advance among my old academy friends that give them the capacity to disinfect one building, mo
re or less, though not yet a city, and certainly not a planet. I can’t make contact from here, however.”

  “How did you get here?” I asked, amazed that I hadn’t wondered this before.

  “There’s a flier, hidden over behind one of those hills.”

  “Well, go then. Find out about it.”

  He gazed at me thoughtfully. “M’urgi. While I’m at headquarters, I’m going to arrange for some time off for both of us. Whether they approve the strike or not, I’ll be back here within the next few days to get you…”

  “You’re taking a lot for granted,” I half snarled.

  “No. I’m not taking anything for granted, and you know it! This is important, and I can’t even take time to explain it to you now. Just remember, I’ll be back within a few days. Stay here. If they approve the strike, it will happen during the next few days. Tell B’Oag he has to get everyone out of the mill who may be working there or maintaining the place. If anyone lives close, they should go away for a few days. May I rely on you for that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you may expect them to send the machine, unless I bring word they can’t when I return.”

  “They, being who?”

  “Dominion or the Siblinghood. One or both.”

  “Ah yes.” I shrugged. “One or both. Or as we in the field say, one is both. Sometimes they seem joined at the heart.”

  We returned to the oasthouse. Ferni packed up his belongings and departed. I explained in some detail to B’Oag that he had to see to emptying the mill.

  “They won’t do as I say, Envoy!”

  “Tell them they may do as you say in comfort, or I will come down there, and they will do as I say with pain. I will lay my hands on them and show them! You saw how that girl suffered. Do you want it for them as well?”

  When he had grumbled his way onto the road, I returned to the girl, who grizzled at me lengthily about her bare skull before demanding sulkily to be taken to her home.

  “No home there anymore, girl. The thing you brought into it multiplied like weeds in the spring. We had no way to get them out of your house, so your house had to be burned.”