When they started forward, Rhiana felt another flare of malignant magic. There and gone. As if someone were testing her. Even though this time she thought she was ready, she still could tell nothing more than that the wizard intended her harm, and that he or she was more powerful than Rhiana herself. Otherwise, she would have been able to discern a direction, a purpose, something about the wizard other than his existence.
Chapter Twenty
At just after midnight, Kate pulled into the parking lot of a Waffle House in Jacksonville and rested her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. She couldn't hold out any longer. She needed to go to the bathroom and she needed to get away from the unending questions on this intercultural, interspecies road trip from hell. She didn't want to think anymore about why people built their houses out of wood, or what made neon lights work, or why citizens who didn't have children, or who had them but didn't send them to schools, had to pay the same school taxes as those who had, or how a free-enterprise system was different than a feudal one. She didn't want to try to explain the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government to people who thought one person could embody all three branches and be all things to all people. She didn't, quite honestly, want to think about anything but stuffing her face with a fried steak and some delicious, terribly unhealthy hashed potatoes slathered in melted cheese and chili and tomatoes, and probably even a sugary nondiet soda and a slab of apple pie the size of Montana. Unhealthy, she thought. Give me something that will block my arteries right this minute and drop me dead on the floor of the restaurant so I don't have to listen to that goddamn bear-boy tell me again why things in Glenraven are so much better than things here.
Sanctimonious did not even begin to describe…
She sat up and forced herself to smile. She turned in her seat, the fake smile pasted to her face, and took a deep breath. "Okay, folks. Remember. They're costumes. Rhiana and I made them, and you can't let anybody touch them because if someone touches them, it might destroy the makeup or the tiny little motors that make all the pieces work. And you're wearing them because you have to have your pictures taken tomorrow…" And if any of you asks me how a camera works again, so help me, I'll murder you. "…and it takes hours to get all the stuff on. Got it?"
Dagreth and Kin nodded. The warrag cleared his throat. "What about me?"
Kate's fake smile slipped. "You just went half an hour ago."
"I wasn't talking about that," the warrag snarled. "I meant what about food?"
"Dogs can't go into the restaurant, and there's no way in hell I could pass you off as a human in a costume, so you're going to have to stay in here and wait. I'll bring you back a couple of steaks. You want a drink?"
"Do they have beer?"
It was Kate's turn to snarl. "No, they don't, and if they did you couldn't have one. Nobody is drinking on this trip. If we get stopped for some reason, I'm going to have enough of a time explaining the three of you without having to explain why the inside of the van smells like a keg party."
They all looked at her as if she'd metamorphosed into Ghengis Khan and told them she'd come to burn down their village, rape their women, and steal their gold. I don't care, she told herself. I don't care what they think of me; I don't care if they like me; I don't care about anything but getting this over with and getting back home to my life.
"One more thing," she said. "Boys…when you go in to the restroom to pee, lock the door. Don't—DO NOT—forget to do this. There are only so many things I can pass of as being part of a funny costume." She picked her purse off of the floorboard and added. "And remember, just smile. Be polite. You're just like everybody else in the restaurant, except that you're hot and you're itchy because you've been in costume for hours."
No more stalling.
She opened her door and got out. She waited as they followed her. She tried to look like a woman who could turn people into creatures from another world—she tried to look confident and proud of her handiwork and just the slightest bit pleased by the stir she knew she was going to cause. She had admired the costumes she'd seen at conventions; they were some of what she'd liked best, in fact.
I made them, she told herself. I have to believe or no one else will believe. Underneath the latex and foam and makeup, they're people just like me. I made these freaking pains in the ass.
She decided maybe she shouldn't think about it too much after all. She was getting cranky.
She went first, Rhiana followed, and the Kin and the dagreth brought up the rear. The warrag flopped on the Kin's seat and pressed his nose to the window and managed to make it clear that he felt put out about being left behind.
"Be good," she turned and told him through the glass, "and I'll bring you something tasty."
"Woof," he said, and sounded nothing like a dog when he said it. Smartass.
Inside the restaurant, long-haul truckers lined the row of stools, slurping down black coffee and joking with the waitresses. A family of five crowded into one of the booths, the teenage children sullen, the younger one chattering endlessly. The father, like the truckers, sucked down coffee like he feared he'd never taste it again. A young couple sat in the next booth over, murmuring to each other over the table and holding hands.
No one paid any real attention when Kate and Rhiana walked in. Val and Tik right behind them were another story. The two waitresses' eyes got big when Val smiled at them, and bigger when the dagreth ducked through the door, shifting his shoulders sideways so that he could get in.
"Sweet Jesus," one of them whispered, and when she did one of the truckers turned around. A couple of the others glanced over at their shoulders. Eyes narrowed as the room full of strangers sized up Kate and her touring freak show, and in spite of the smiles that the dagreth and the Kin were passing around, it began to look to Kate like she'd made a miscalculation.
Then the scrawny teenage boy in the booth said, "Oh, man, what great costumes! Dad, look, they had costumes like that at ConVolution—you remember I told you about them—" And the father looked over and said, "Yeah, Marty, I see the goddamned costumes, but people who would wear them at this time of the night to go to a goddamned Waffle House are goddamned morons, and besides, if you've seen one fucking costume, you've seen 'em all. Eat your food so we can get going."
And just like that, the truckers turned back to their coffee and the waitresses lost the wide-eyed looks and the customers pretended that the world around them held no surprises, that they could find a rational explanation for every inexplicable event in their lives if only they looked hard enough or far enough, or found someone who had already done the looking and who could tell them all the answers.
People were blind, and they were blind not because they couldn't see, but because they wouldn't. In this instance, they were blind because they chose to believe the words of a skinny, daydreaming kid instead of the senses that tried to alert them.
Sad and scary, but it sure worked in Kate's favor.
Marty, she thought, if your dad wouldn't deck me, I'd kiss you.
The Waffle House visit went well after that. The waitress who had their booth was charming and cheerful and fascinated by the costumes and the work that went into making the "appliances"—the noses and ears and teeth and hands and other things that couldn't be hidden by clothing. Kate remembered sitting through two rather long convention panels on making such appliances by people who did it for a living. She bullshitted about plaster casts and carving with dental tools to get the small detailing and about having to put in each hair and whisker by hand, and when she couldn't think of anything else to say without revealing her abysmal ignorance of the actual magic of costuming, she yawned with completely unfeigned exhaustion, and the waitress refilled her coffee and left her alone.
Both Val and Tik ordered twice as much as they intended to eat, and Kate asked for a doggie bag. Doggie bag in hand and a couple of friendly "bye's" later, they were out in the parking lot.
Kate's knees went weak when,
as they were walking back to the van, a highway patrolman pulled into the lot. He'd probably been stopping for a cup of coffee, but when he saw the four of them, he cruised slowly past the glassed-in storefront, probably looking for trouble. He didn't see it, but that didn't stop him from pulling to a stop next to the four of them and rolling down his window.
Kate anticipated disaster. She smiled, though, and walked toward his car. "Hi."
"Good morning. You folks headed somewhere?"
"Orlando," Kate said. "Professional costumers' guild meeting and a pitch for some work for Disney."
He nodded and looked at the dagreth and the warrag. "They look pretty convincing."
"They'll look better after I've had time to go over all the appliance edges. Some of them are starting to work loose. It takes almost eight hours to apply the full makeup, though, so it's easier for us to do all the major things beforehand and then simply do touch-ups on site. At least it makes more sense when I can't get off from my regular job until early Saturday."
He evidently decided they were harmless, because he smiled a little and glance toward the Waffle House. "You have any trouble?"
"Not really. We get some funny looks, but people are pretty understanding."
"I'm glad to hear it." He nodded again. "Well, have a safe trip," he told her. He put his car into gear, pulled it into a parking space next to the van, got out, and walked toward the restaurant.
Kate ushered everyone into the van, then collapsed into the driver's seat. "This is going to make me nuts."
"He was another of your sheriffs, wasn't he?"
"Florida State Highway Patrol. We're not really in his jurisdiction here, I don't think, but if we'd been doing anything we weren't supposed to be, he would have nailed us."
"Nailed…"
Kate said, "Never mind." She pulled out of the parking lot and back onto Interstate 95, thinking that she had another six hours of driving to do, but she didn't have six more hours of darkness and she didn't have six more hours of stamina.
Tik started in on the restaurant. "In Glenraven, you would never find an inn as bare and bleak as that," he said. "No wine, no comforts, no tables, no song—"
Kate refused to put up with any more. "There are evidently all sorts of things you would never find in Glenraven, but that doesn't mean I want a list of them. In fact, I don't want to hear another word about your world or your forests or your people. You're here now, and I can't help that. I'm sorry for you that you can't get back home. I'm doing everything I can to help you. But in the meantime, just shut up about it, okay?"
All four of them gave her the stricken "she's Ghengis Khan" look again.
Wearily, she tried to soften her sharp words. "This is my home," she said. "This is my world. I'm sorry that you don't like it; I'm doing my best to get you back to your own home. But I love my world. I love my country. I love the stupid little restaurants and the cheap, tacky stores and the towns and cities and the big empty spaces in between. I love the roads. I love the people. They're people who have been kind to all of you; who have mostly been kind to me. None of them attacked you; because you looked different. None of them tried to hurt you. Some of the people in my country are stupid or mean or ignorant, but not most of them."
Val shook his head, and his expression was one of disgust. "You can say that after those three men hurt you—after they tried to kill you?"
"I can say it because it's true. Most people are good people."
Rhiana turned sideways in her seat and looked at Kate. "That's wishful thinking. Most people are never tried—they never decide whether to be good people or bad because nothing in their life ever pushes them toward disaster. People aren't good just because they haven't done anything bad, anything hurtful. Most people's lives never rise above mediocrity and passive acceptance because they never have to." Her face, in the pale glow of the dashboard lights, was ghostly green, eerie, lighted from beneath so that the shadows flowed upward and accented all the wrong parts of her features. "I know about people and their capacity for good and evil, because I've lived in a world where a woman of concentrated evil beat us down and sucked the life out of us for a thousand years. I've seen damned few heroes rise out of that despair to fight against the evil. I've seen many more people who willingly embraced the evil and made it their own, a part of their lives. They hurt others willingly; they destroyed lives and futures because they could, because the system supported their behavior and no one would stand up against them. But neither the heroes or the villains made up the majority. The most common people of all were the ones who pretended that they didn't see anything. They pretended nothing was wrong, that if they refused to see the evil being done all around them, it wouldn't touch them. By pretending they saw nothing, they made the evil possible."
Kate didn't want to think the majority of people would choose evil or blind ignorance if confronted with a situation that required heroism. She wanted to think that heroes were all around her, that they weren't really rare or special, that if something terrible happened, she would jump in to help and everyone around would be beside her getting involved, trying to make the bad thing better.
Kitty Genovese, her mind whispered. She recalled reading of Kitty Genovese, the young woman murdered slowly in front of a crowd of people who could have come to her rescue. Those people chose to refuse involvement or personal risk; instead, they listened to Kitty scream, waiting for her to die without doing anything. Anything.
Her mind grew louder in its anger, and more insistent. Think of Germany in the era of Hitler. Of Italy and Mussolini. Think of the Holocaust. For every Anne Frank hidden in a secret room, how many people found no one who would try to save them? Remember the genocides of African tribes by other African tribes, and Cambodian regimes wiping out their own people and Serbian and Croatian killing off each other even though they were neighbors and had been all their lives. Don't forget land grabs and religious wars, Torquemada and Cortez and the American West, inquisitions and political liars and graft and vice and Tammany Hall and organized crime.
What do you have to hold up against that? Mother Teresa? Miep Gies? If people are basically good, why are almost all the examples bad?
Kate didn't want to consider the direction her thoughts were taking. Her optimistic nature wanted to insist that her neighbors would do for her what she would do for any of them. She wanted to believe that the little town of Peters would rally around her and support her against its own sons, the men who had attacked her, in spite of the fact that they didn't approve of her religion and probably not of anyone who followed it. She wanted to believe that the businesses she'd dealt with would treat her as a human being instead of as an account, that her friends would never say anything to hurt her, that her enemies could be made to see that their persecution of her was wrong.
She used to fervently hang on to her belief in the Tooth Fairy, too, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Maybe it was time to grow up. Maybe it was time to admit that the people worth knowing and caring about were rare. That she wasn't going to meet them every day. Maybe it was time to quit expecting the best of everyone she met; time to stop thinking that if she treated people well, they would treat her well in return; time to quit assuming that if things went wrong, she would be the first person in line to try to make them right again, and that everyone around her would join her in making them right. She was alone. Her own family had turned their backs on her, and would never have anything to do with her again unless she said the things they wanted her to say and did the things they wanted her to do. Her own family. Better face it, she told herself. You're in this alone, and the only person you'd better look out for is yourself.
She glanced over at Rhiana and looked into the rearview mirror at Tik and Val and Errga. Maybe she should embrace that level of cynicism…but she wouldn't. She believed that individuals could make change happen. She believed that people were worth effort and care and that the meaning of life was never a matter of getting by without
getting bruised, but a matter of living by convictions and holding on to honor and taking stands when stands mattered, regardless of the cost.
Life is more than covering your own ass, she thought. Too many people hadn't discovered that, but Kate had. Her life had meaning. Had purpose. If she lived by her convictions, she would, perhaps, gradually uncover the pattern of that purpose. Even if she didn't, she would certainly leave the world a slightly better place than she'd found it.
Chapter Twenty-One
"Outskirts of Fort Lauderdale," Kate said. "This is where we find a place to rest."
Errga closed his eyes and breathed in the machine scent of the place. He tried to imagine himself trapped in this world forever; no deep forests rich with the moist, musky scent of humus, the sharp green odors of growing plants, the hot blood-and-flesh scents of animals. No hot, flat plains waving with tall grasses, full of prey to be caught and crunched and savored. Here there were only the endless ribbons of highways rolling through the remains of what once must have been great stands of trees, and the houses and guild houses and vehicles that filled the air with their fuel scents. When Kate pulled off the highway into the city, he raised up and looked out the window, and discovered the place they had reached sprawled beyond all imagining. Houses squatted beside houses as far as his eyes could see—all of them low and set back on broad roads—and he sensed, from scent and sound, that they spread further in all directions than he could walk in an hour. Perhaps further even than he could run in that time. He flattened himself on the floorboards and closed his eyes tightly and growled. Eyes closed, he could feel the mass of humanity weighing in on all sides of him.
He shivered and huddled, hoping this would not be the place they came to rest.
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 02] Page 14