The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “That is one of the ways it could have happened,” the Gardener said. “The how is less important than the why. It was done to save your people.”

  “Because we owe them a debt,” said Falija very solemnly. “From long, long ago. Because humans don’t have racial memories, and they need them very badly. And there’s only one place in the universe where man’s history can be found, and that’s with the Keeper.”

  Mr. Weathereye, who had been leaning in the doorway, said, “We are told the Keeper is an observer, not a creator. It is eternal and omniscient but generally uninvolved; one who hates being bothered but enjoys puzzles and riddles. The last people to bother it were the Pthas, who came to the Keeper with a request. The Keeper honored their request, but then it put itself in a place where no one could bother it again unless one person could walk seven roads at once. It sounds childish in the saying, like a nursery rhyme. Just as nursery rhymes mean far more than the children who chant them know, this meant far more than it said. It was anything but childish in the doing.

  “Twice before, the Siblinghood had found seven way-gates that made one road. Stars and their planets move, you know; they don’t stay in the same relative positions forever. Consider the movements of billions of stars in a galaxy. Consider how difficult to find seven of them, well in advance, mind you, that will make the one configuration. The First Order of the Siblinghood tried, and most of them died in the attempt. The Second Order tried and was forestalled. Now, this hour, the Third Order of the Siblinghood makes the attempt once more. Here are the seven walkers who are one, and before this hour passes, they must walk the roads, find the Keeper, and ask it to give humans back the racial memory the Quaatar took from them when they were barely human.”

  “Now?” said Wilvia in weary but dignified disbelief.

  “Now, while the vile races are preoccupied elsewhere,” said the Gardener. “Before that machine runs out of power and they start thinking again about finding and killing you. We must not take an extra moment. Come now, just you seven and Falija. We must go back up the mountain to the way-gate into Fajnard. Mr. Weathereye is no doubt needed on B’yurngrad, and the rest of you must stay here.”

  We moved, though unwillingly. Wilvia and I seemed least disposed to go, I imagine for identical reasons. Each of us felt we had just returned home, to those who mattered most to us. As we went, I noticed Ferni still standing at the corner of the house behind us, staring after us as though his whole life were being torn away.

  The Gardener walked among us. “I have something to tell you. Some of you may not return from this effort. If a choice were to be made among you, Margaret, how would you feel about that?”

  I looked at her with disbelief. “You mean, some of us may end up dead.”

  “It’s possible.”

  I laughed, shaking my head. “If you had asked me that a week ago, Gardener, I’d have said fine, so long as I don’t have to go on ruing all the mistakes I’ve made.”

  “And now?”

  “When I saw Wilvia’s children and realized they weren’t cursed, as mine had been, when I saw the others…I don’t have to rue my life. Together, Margaret has not done badly.”

  “So you’re no longer willing to die, to escape your regrets?”

  “If you have to choose one to live, choose someone younger.”

  “And you, Ongamar?” the Gardener asked.

  Ongamar whispered. “Oh, I’ve looked forward to forgetting what I’ve seen for such a long time…don’t choose me to live, Gardener.”

  “And you, Mar-agern?”

  “I have no thoughts on the matter. I’ve never thought of doing away with myself, but if a choice had to be made, I wouldn’t be afraid…”

  “And you, Naumi?”

  He turned to stare at her. “I have wanted only a few things in my life, only one of them greatly. Since that is not to be, further life seems rather barren. There are others here who will live more happily than I.”

  “And you, Wilvia?”

  Wilvia smiled. “My dearest wish…one of them, at least, has been granted. My husband and children were, are far more important to me than my own life. If Joziré were still alive, he’d have returned to me! And if he is truly gone, and I can save my children by letting them go, then I will let them go.”

  The Gardener whispered, “And you, my child, Gretamara?”

  She looked up, far up, where the stars reached their light across the universe. “My life has always been in your hands, Gardener. I’m content to leave it there.”

  “And lastly, you, M’urgi?”

  She replied truculently, “Well, don’t expect me to march off to battle singing hymns of martyrdom! A few years ago, when life was smoke and dirt and desperate interventions that didn’t work a lot of the time, I’d have been more willing. But lately? I have something to live for. I saw Ferni’s face back there. He’s waiting to see what happens…” She stopped, looked up, tears glinting at the corner of her eyes. “Even so, well, even so, if my death helps the human race…the shaman taught me to die.”

  We had arrived at the way-gate and the Gardener lined us up while glancing at the horizon where the first faint light was showing. “We don’t know how the Keeper will respond. It may refuse us. It may grant your request but take your lives in payment. Nothing of the little we have learned of the Keeper tells us it will do this, but it is a possibility. It may let all of you live, which is also a possibility, and if that is so, when this is over, we will have much to rejoice over.”

  I, Margaret, heard a sigh from someone, a deep breath from another, the slight shifting of our feet, but nothing more.

  “Very well, one at a time: you, Margaret, go seven roads, and stop just inside the way-gate we just arrived through, up the hill, here on Tercis.” She pointed up the hill, toward the black pool hidden in the forest. “You, Wilvia: six roads, stopping on the world where we found you, just inside the gate. You, Gretamara: five roads, stopping at Chottem, and you, Ongamar: four roads to Cantardene…”

  “The K’Famir…” Ongamar said between clenched teeth.

  Weathereye patted her shoulder. “The Siblinghood has warriors between every pair of gates. They will not stand aside for any but you seven.”

  Gardener continued. “M’urgi goes three roads to B’yurngrad; Naumi, two roads to Thairy; Mar-agern, one road to Fajnard, each of you stopping inside the gate. As the Third Order discovered, as Naumi’s friend Caspor discovered, when the roads among these gates are shown in a particular two-dimensional plane, they make a seven-pointed star with a seven-sided space at its center. On star maps, that space is light-years in width and empty. We have reason to believe the interaction of the way-gates around it make the space much smaller than it looks.

  “When you are each in your assigned gate, the center of that space will be to your left. I have seven timepieces here, to hang around your necks. When your timepiece says zero, you turn and walk to your left, through the side of the way-gate.”

  “And what will happen?” I, Gretamara, asked.

  “I don’t know,” said the Gardener, extending her arms in a gesture of relinquishment. “Those of us who planned this and brought it to fruition believe someone will await you there, but this is a blind road with an unknown end.”

  Voices murmured a response. The Gardener put the timepieces around our necks. Gretamara reached up to kiss the Gardener’s cheek. Ongamar pulled herself erect, and said, “I walk for an end to pain and an end to Cantardene.”

  M’urgi cried, “If I don’t return, give my love to Ferni…”

  Naumi murmured, “Same message, to the same recipient.”

  “Enough poignancy,” said Mar-agern. “This new brain of mine is equipped with all sorts of hope. Farewell for now.”

  We went into the pool, I first, since I had the farthest to go. Light and dark, light and dark, counting, being sure I went six gates. Behind me always a quivering surface, shimmering with something that was not light. It might as well have been the
sound of dry leaves rubbing together, or the feel of a draft under a door, the smell of old ice, the rasp of a file on the skin of my hand, any sensation or none. At last, the exit to Tercis was ahead of me.

  I turned to my left and checked the timepiece the Gardener had hung around my neck. The others would all be in place by now, all of them waiting for zero. I concentrated on breathing quietly until zero came. When it arrived, I stepped through the wall of the way-gate, then stepped again, the scintillating specks that pulsed around me fading with each step: fading, fading, gone. Ahead was nothingness, and I walked into it, wondering desperately if I would be able to keep a straight line.

  After what seemed a considerable time, I heard someone calling “Margaret?” into the silence of the place. Naumi’s voice, deeper than the others’. “Ongamar?” he called.

  A sound, perhaps an answering voice. I started to go toward it, then stopped. Better just go on walking. After a while, he tried again, off to my left. “Margaret?”

  “Over here,” I called. “Should I come toward you?”

  “No!” he said. “Not until we’re all within sight of one another.”

  Calls came from left and right and we walked. The sounds came nearer. The nothing below our feet became something. A surface. I saw Gretamara emerging from a dark fog to my left, and beyond her, M’urgi. On my right, Naumi appeared, then Ongamar. Between M’urgi and Ongamar, two shadows came toward us, emerging as Mar-agern and Wilvia.

  “Keep walking until we can touch one another,” Naumi called.

  We walked for what seemed a very long time. We could see one another, but the distance stayed the same. The floor seemed to roll away beneath us like a treadmill that welled up from some point in the center of their circle and flowed out continuously, keeping us in the same place.

  M’urgi called, “Stand still a minute.”

  We did so, watching her. She stood very straight, concentrating, and a trail of light shot upward from her forehead, high above us all. I thought of her leaning upon the substance that fills the universe, which separates matter and transmits light and knows and remembers everything.

  “Shut your eyes,” M’urgi called. “Hold out your hands. We’re right next to one another.”

  I reached out my hands, grasping at others I felt on either side, the three of us tugging and sidling as we connected with the rest.

  “Now,” cried M’urgi. “Open your eyes but hold on tight.”

  We stood in a circle only a few steps across. In the center, suspended in space, I saw a little creature, legs crossed, a book on its lap. Across the pages words ran endlessly from right to left, left to right, top to bottom, bottom to top, interweaving with one another.

  At the same time I saw this, I saw what the others saw, just as I had used to sense as they did when they were part of me. M’urgi saw a pillar of fire, words of smoke pouring up through it. Naumi saw a tree, its roots extending into the depths beneath us, its higher branches beyond his sight above, and every leaf a journal. Wilvia saw a dragon with jeweled scales, each one engraved with a history. Ongamar saw a stone pillar reaching from the beginning to the end of the universe, with little beings swarming all over it, carving words. Mar-agern saw herds of creatures in a meadow, each of them reciting the story of a people. Gretamara saw an anthill, each ant carrying a grain of sand on which was engraved the chronicle of a living race.

  I was the eldest. I swallowed deeply, and asked, “Are you the Keeper?”

  It looked up from its book, out of the flame, out of the leaves, the dragon’s eyes, the words on the stone, the meadow creatures, the anthill. “Think of it!” it said wonderingly. “One road is seven roads, walked simultaneously by one creature. How did you manage that?”

  Wilvia smiled at the dragon charmingly. “Only through great sacrifice, Keeper.”

  “Patience,” said M’urgi.

  “Labor,” said Mar-agern.

  “And torment,” Ongamar offered.

  Naumi shook his head. “Only by doing our duty, but the how is not as important as the why, Keeper—”

  “—which is to heal our people,” interrupted Gretamara.

  The little man hummed, the ants hummed, the tree hummed. “I have not been near creatures in a very long time. The rule is, one must have a bell and a gate, but I thought I’d made both very difficult indeed. Yet here you are. What have I to do with you? Who are you?”

  “The human race,” I said.

  M’urgi added, “You have our history in your smoke.”

  “Oh, yes,” it said, peering at us with myriad eyes. “You’re not very old, and you’re quite ignorant.”

  “We are imperfect,” said Gretamara to the ants, who had flown together in a swarm before her. “We are lacking. We have no memory of what we were, and thus no reach toward what we may become. We desperately need to know our past, but in all the universe only the Keeper has the racial memory of mankind.”

  “That is true. I have the histories of every race, every kind, all the move-about, reproduce creatures, and also those of others that have lived without moving or creating. I have the secret lives of stones and the memories of stars. I have the initial impetus, the births of all galaxies, the deaths of a good many. I have millions of years of some races and a few moments of others. Their souls are here.”

  “Their souls?” faltered Ongamar. “Of every creature?”

  “Is each of you a creature?” asked Keeper.

  “That’s a trick question,” Naumi said quickly. “We couldn’t have found you if we each were a separate creature. No, all of us are one creature.”

  “I know that,” said Keeper. “All of you are human, and billions more are human, and all humans are one creature, sharing one soul. Yes. And one for birds, and one for the dinosaur…”

  “One soul for the dinosaur?” asked Mar-agern. “Then one soul for the umoxen, as well?”

  “Oh, an enormous, ramified soul for umox, going back to the very beginning of life on its planet. Umox arose from a star race that went before, as the soul of Bird arose from the soul of Dinosaur. The soul of the scurrying lizard inhabits every warm-blooded winged thing, the soul of the brachiating gibberer inhabits the soul of man, and the soul of great singers and sages inhabits the soul of umox and chitterlain…Oh, yes. Keeper has seen this. Keeper has perceived it.”

  “But no…no soul for each of us?” asked Margaret.

  The man turned his head, the tree turned a twig toward her, each leaf an eye that seemed to look into her heart.

  “Each of you?” the Keeper asked. “One brief life of limited experience, barely informed? Full of false starts, marred by misinformation, rife with regret? Much given to embarrassment and sorrow, lit here and there, if you are lucky, with delight. Do you really want to spend an eternity being only that? What of the lives you’ve lived within your minds, and what of your other selves in other worlds? Each time you make a choice, your universe splits. One of you does one thing, one of you does the other. One of you goes on to fulfillment and joy, the other is mired in pain and anxiety, each in a separate world, but they are all you…

  “All the fragments, all the sundered parts come here, melded then into a single me-ness with all possibilities realized, all pains endured, all joys delighted in, one mind containing all that it was and could have been or hoped to be or imagined itself to have been!

  “You need not go back to fix it, Margaret. In some world, you did fix it! You need not go back to unsay it, Mar-agern. In some world, it was unsaid. Ongamar, in some life it was untouched. And when you are assembled, you will know it, in that everlasting instant…” Keeper paused, stared, as if dreaming.

  “An everlasting instant?” whispered Naumi.

  “That instant when the whole being that is you is aware of itself as a whole and dances together upon the green meadows of eternity in a dance that seems endless…”

  “Only that instant?” asked Wilvia longingly.

  “Long enough for you to know! Once you know, you
know. Once you are complete, you are complete forever. And all that, every moment of every day of every lifetime, makes only one leaflet growing on the sprig of humanity. Still, that leaflet is one I keep forever…”

  Everything became very still. All movement stopped. The Keeper swelled in size: “The Gentherans sent you here, did they not?”

  “The Gentherans are our friends,” said Gretamara.

  “Keeper knows that. You are here because of them, and because my daughter, the Gardener, has espoused your cause. You are here because she and her friends conspired so that nature’s laws might be broken without disobeying me. Ah, she is clever, my daughter. Wily, too. And now she sends you here, telling you what?”

  “Telling us nothing,” said Wilvia in her most queenly voice. “Except that we may die in the attempt. We have agreed to that, even if this plea is fruitless. It is a chance we took to benefit our people.”

  Keeper seemed to ponder this before replying. “Who is to say the memory of all mankind would work for you as you believe it will? What do other races think? Perhaps they would prefer you fade and die, becoming only a footnote in my journal. Who would speak for you?”

  “We would,” said someone outside the circle. Margaret looked over her shoulder. “Falija,” she murmured.

  “Falija,” the little person affirmed. “Together with a number of our people, Keeper.” She murmured their names as they came into view, a great many of them, gathering into a ring around the seven. “My parents, their Gibbekot and Gentheran friends, their friends of other races who have found humans to be worth the saving.”

  Naumi tried to see into the fog, but saw only shapes there. He heard a chittering, a birdsong, a bray that was half cow, half horse, the chatter of people.

  Falija said, “My people have watched the human struggle for thousands of years. Without the means to be good, still they struggle to be so. Seeing such a struggle, any ethical and powerful race would do what could be done to ease it. Such a powerful race would say, ‘Other races have a racial memory, can we not provide man with one of his own?’

  “We could try. Still, no matter how much truth it might contain, the whole would be a lie. Should we ask a race to gamble its future on the basis of a lie? Only Keeper records only truth.”