Tepper,Sheri - After Long Silence

by After Long Silence(Lit)

  "Do you know where the fish market is, Reb?"

  The boy flushed with pleasure. Tasmin seldom addressed him by his sobriquet. "Clarin and I studied the city map for a while. I think I can find it."

  He did find it, after several false turns, although finding a place to put the car was another thing. The market was long and narrow, extending across the length of the fish farms and the fleet moorings. The wares on display included both native and farmed out-system fish, finned and shelled and naked skinned. Though Jubal had a paucity of land life—a few small animals like viggies, a few birdlike and insect-like creatures—its shallow oceans burgeoned with species, and the rainbow harvest made up most of the protein needs of the human inhabitants. They struggled through the crowd toward the south end of the market, asking as they went for Vivian Terrée.

  Tasmin knew her as soon as he saw her. She was so like old pictures of his mother that she could have been related by blood. That same triangular face, the same deeply curved and oddly shaped mouth in which the lower lip appeared to be only half as long as the upper one, giving her a curiously exotic appearance. That same long, silvery hair—though Vivian wore it braided and pinned to keep it out of her way. Lim must have been attracted by that unbelievable resemblance.

  "Vivian?" Tasmin asked.

  She pushed a wisp of hair from her forehead with one wrist, keeping the bloody fingers extended. Her other hand held a curved knife. "Yes?"

  "I'd like to talk with you, if you have a minute."

  "I don't have a minute. I don't have any time at all. They don't like us having conversations while we're supposed to be working." Her face and voice were so full of worry and pain there was no room for curiosity.

  "I can wait until after work. My name's Tasmin Ferrence. I'm Lim's brother."

  She stared at him, her eyes gradually filling with tears. The knife hand trembled, as though it wanted to make some other and more forceful gesture. "Damn you," she said in a grating whisper. "Damn you to hell."

  In his shock, Tasmin could not move. Clarin stepped between them as though she had rehearsed the movement. "Don't say that, Vivian. I don't know why you would say that. Tasmin was only a boy when his brother left home, and he doesn't know any reason for you to say anything like that. See. Look at his face. He doesn't know. Whatever it is, he doesn't know."

  The woman was crying, her shoulders heaving. Tasmin straightened, looked around to meet the eyes of an officious and beefy personage stalking in his direction. He moved to meet this threat. "Are you the supervisor here?"

  The man began to bluster. Tasmin drew himself up. "I am Tripsinger Tasmin Ferrence. I am on official business for the citadel. I need to talk to this woman, Vivian Terrée, and I intend to do so. You can either cooperate or I can report your lack of cooperation to the citadel. The choice is entirely up to you."

  The bluster changed to a whine, the whine to a slobber. Tasmin left him in midcringe. "Clarin, find out where we can talk."

  Vivian led them out of the market and around to the rear where a flight of rickety stairs took them to the second floor. The tiny apartment was as splintery and dilapidated as the stairs, with narrow windows that did nothing to ventilate the scantily furnished two rooms or ameliorate the overwhelming stench of fish.

  The baby was playing quietly in a crib. A boy child, about two or a little older. He turned to look at them curiously as they entered, holding up his arms to his mother. "D'ink."

  "Lim's son?"

  "Lim's. Of course." She filled a cup and held it to the baby's lips. "Little Miles."

  The name came as a shock. Named after their father? Lim's and Tasmin's father?

  "Lim didn't live here?" Tasmin fumbled.

  "We didn't live here. We had a house, a nice house, on the rocks over the bay. There was a little beach for Miles to play on. Lim borrowed against it."

  Miles? "You lost it?"

  "I guess I never really had it." She turned on him, glaring. "We would have it if he hadn't done that crazy thing. He borrowed against the house. Against everything we had. A hundred-day note. Due and payable at the Old Moon. He was dead by then." She leaned over the child, weeping.

  Tasmin looked at Clarin, pleadingly.

  "Let me take the baby out on the stairs," she said to Vivian. "You and Tasmin need to talk." She went out with Jamieson, and he could hear them playing a rhyme game on the landing while the sea birds shrieked overhead.

  "Vivian. I don't … I don't know why Lim did that. His agent told me about it. I don't understand it."

  "He had to get to you."

  "To me? I hadn't even seen him in fifteen years! I wrote to him and he didn't even answer!"

  "You wrote to ask him for money. Why should he send money to you!"

  Tasmin bit back the obvious answer, controlled himself.

  "Vivian, I don't know why. Mother was in need; I thought Lim was making it with both hands."

  "Let your damned father take care of her!"

  "He died. Years ago. Not long after Lim left." After Lim had left, Miles Ferrence had almost seemed to court disaster.

  She was shaking. "Dead?" She got up, moved into the next room. Tasmin could hear water running. In a moment she returned. Her hands and face were wet. She had washed off the fish blood. "Dead?" she asked again.

  "Why does it matter?"

  "I suppose it doesn't, now. Everything he went through. Trying to prove himself to that rotten old man!"

  "You didn't even know him!"

  "I know about him." She began to weep again. "He was … he was terrible. Oh, God, he hurt Lim so."

  "Well, Lim hurt him."

  "Later. Later Lim hurt him. Later Lim tried to. To get even a little. Because it didn't seem to matter. Poor Lim."

  "I don't understand."

  "How old are you?" she asked suddenly, eyes flashing.

  "Thirty-two."

  She counted, shaking her head. "Lim was thirty-seven, almost thirty-eight. He was only twelve when it happened. So, you were only seven. Maybe you didn't know. I guess you didn't." She bent forward, weeping again.

  "Vivian, please. Talk to me. I don't know what happened. I don't know what you're saying. Yes, my father was a very unpleasant person sometimes. Yes, I think he was harder on Lim than he was on me because Lim was older."

  "Hard! I could forgive it if he'd just been hard."

  "I don't know what you're talking about. I'd like to understand, but I don't. I just don't."

  "You really don't know?"

  "I really don't know."

  She got up, wiping her eyes, and wandered around the room, picking things up, putting them down again. She went to the door and looked out at the child, sitting on Jamieson's lap being party-caked by Clarin. The mouse was on her shoulder once more, and the baby couldn't decide what to look at, Clarin's hands or the little animal.

  "When Lim was twelve," Vivian said, "he went to choir school."

  Tasmin nodded. All Tripsingers and would-be Tripsingers went to choir school.

  "There was this man, the assistant choir master. Lim told me his name was Jobson. Martin Jobson. "

  "The name doesn't mean anything to me, Vivian."

  "He was probably long gone by the time you … Well, he was one of those men—what do you call it?" She paused, her face very pale. "A man who screws little boys?"

  Tasmin ran his tongue around a suddenly dry mouth. "You mean a pedophile?"

  "He did it to Lim."

  "Oh, Lord. How awful … "

  "He could have gotten over that I think. He really could. He said he could have gotten over that, and I believe him. But Lim went home and told his father, your father."

  Tasmin shut his eyes, visualizing that confrontation. She did not need to go on. He knew what she would say.

  "Your father told him it must have been his fault, Lim's. Your father said he must have asked for it. Invited it. Seduced the man, somehow. Your father told him he was ruined. Debauched. That's the word Lim always said, debauched. He to
ld Lim he was filthy. Perverted. That he couldn't love him anymore."

  "No," Tasmin murmured, knowing it was true. "Oh, no."

  "Your father had this viggy he was going to give Lim, and he gave it to you instead. Because you were a good boy. Pure, he said."

  "My viggy … "

  "Lim let it loose. If he couldn't have it, he wouldn't let you have it either. He went crazy, he said. He heard the viggy singing to him, words he could understand, like a dream. He had delusions. After that … after that it didn't matter what he did. He was already ruined. That's what he thought … "

  "So when he ran away … "

  "He was just getting even. A little."

  "Ah." It was a grunt. As though he had been kicked in the stomach. He got up and went to the door, moved outside it onto the narrow porch, and bent over the railing. The blue-purple of the bay stretched away to the headlands on either side, and beyond the bay, the ocean. At the limit of his vision he could see the towering buoys of the Splash site. Star ships came down there. Ships whose thunder was cushioned from the planet by an enormous depth of ocean. Things came and went, but the foundations of the world remained unshaken.

  Unlike the men whose foundations trembled when new things came upon them. Unlike brothers, when they learned the loved and despised was not despised at all and had not been loved enough.

  "God," he said. It was a prayer.

  "Master?" Jamieson stood beside him, his hand out, his face intent with concern.

  "I'm all right." He moved back into the shabby room. "Vivian. I'll help. I'll help you all I can. You and the baby."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. Not just yet. But I will help. Would you go to Deepsoil Five? My mother would make you very welcome there … no! Don't look like that. She didn't know. I swear to you, she did not know. My father … he was a cruel man in many ways, Vivian, but neither she nor I knew anything about what you've told me. Lim never told us." He put his arms around her.

  "He still loved his father," she said, weeping. "And he was ashamed."

  Clarin came in with containers of hot tea, obtained from a vendor down in the bustle. Jamieson went out and returned with crisply fried chunks of fish, the chortling baby high on his shoulders, exclaiming, "Fiss, 'ot fiss." Both the acolytes inspected Tasmin as though for signs of illness or damage, and he made an attempt at a smile to reassure them. They were not reassured.

  They sat without speaking for a time. Eventually, Vivian said something about the baby, her face softening as she said it.

  Tasmin asked, "Do you know what Lim was doing, Vivian? Why he did it?"

  "He had to get to you," she replied. "That's all I really know. He needed something by Don Furz, and you had it. And he told me if he could get that, we'd be wealthy. His family would be proud of him, and we'd be wealthy."

  "Nothing else? Only that?"

  "That's all. It was a secret, he said. A terrible secret."

  She knew nothing more. They left her there, promising to return. Tasmin gave her what money he had with him, enough to last a few days. "Don't go back to the market," he told her. "You don't need to do that."

  On the way to the car he fished in his pocket, bringing Celcy's earclip out at last. He stood by the car, staring at it for a long moment. All he had left of her. All.

  "Jamieson."

  "Sir?"

  "You're a clever fellow, Reb. Somewhere in all this mess there will be someone who buys gems. I paid four hundred for a pair of these. Firestones are more valuable here than they are in the interior. You ought to be able to get at least a hundred for this one clip, just on the value of the stones. That's enough to buy passage for a woman and a child, isn't it?"

  It was Clarin who replied. "Yes, Sir. More than enough." There was an ache in her voice, but Tasmin did not notice it. She was fighting herself not to put her arms around him, but he did not notice that either. His face was so tired and bleak, she would have done anything at all to comfort him. The best she could do was do nothing.

  "Can you do that, too?" Tasmin asked. "Get passage. Earliest possible trip with someone reliable. On the Southern Route, I think. It's longer, but there hasn't been a fatality on that route for quite a while."

  "Yes, Sir." Jamieson and Clarin shared what Tasmin had come to identify as "a look."

  "I'm all right. You heard the whole thing from the stairs, I know. It's … well, it's a shock to find someone you've—"

  "Hated?" Clarin tilted her head to one side, examining him through compassionate eyes.

  "I guess. It's a shock to find someone you've hated didn't deserve it. It turns the blame inward."

  "No more your fault than his," said Clarin, blinking rapidly. "Excuse me, Sir, but your father must have been a bastard."

  "He was." Tasmin sighed. "In many ways he was, Clarin, he was."

  "And then what?" asked Jamieson. "Shall we go back on the same trip?"

  "Go back?" he shook his head, for a moment wondering what the boy was talking about. "To Deepsoil Five? Of course not, Jamieson. The mystery is still there, isn't it? I still don't know what Lim was doing. I still don't know why Celcy died!"

  "Where next, Sir?"

  "To Don Furz. That's the only clue we have left."

  Donatella Furz returned to the Chapter House at Northwest late in the afternoon of the agreed-upon day, having come up the coast in a small BDL transport ship and inland from there in a provisions truck. Zimmy would be expecting her, undoubtedly with something special set up by way of dinner and amusement. She needed him, needed to talk to him. Events of the past three days had been as confusing as they were frightening. She kept thinking of Gretl, even though what was happening to her was nothing like what had happened to Gretl except in its atmosphere of obdurate menace. At the moment of peril she had had no time to be frightened. Only afterward, considering it, thinking how close to death she had come both times, did the cold sweat come on her and her stomach knot.

  Now she had to confide in someone. Someone close. Who else could it be but Zimmy? She found herself rehearsing the conversation she would have with him, his exclamations of concern. He already knew about Gretl—everyone at the Priory knew about Gretl—he'd understand her fear. Even thinking of telling him made her feel better, as though the very fact she could share her troubles and dangers somehow lessened them. If she could trust anyone, she could trust him. Even though she hadn't told him anything yet, she would now. She had to be able to talk to someone!

  Zimmy, however, was not waiting for her.

  She didn't want to make an undignified spectacle of herself over the man—he was a services employee, after all, and the Explorer King had said enough on that score already—so she showered and changed and went down to the common room for a drink and the odd bit of chitchat. Chase Random Hall was in his usual place, a high backed chair with the unmistakable air of a throne. She nodded in his direction and received a nod in return.

  "All well, Don?" he called, bringing every eye in the room to rest on her.

  Damn the man. "All well, Randy," she returned with a brilliant smile. "The doctor says I'll live." She circulated, exchanging the gossip of Splash One for the gossip of Northwest. The evening meal was announced, and still no Zimmy. Now she began to worry, just a little. Had he forgotten the date of her return? He would be full of apologies and consternation if that was the case, busy taking little digs at himself. Or had something happened to him? She turned away from the thought. It was enough that people were trying to kill her; surely there was no reason for anyone to try to kill Zimmy. Of course, there were always accidents.

  "I don't see Zimble around," she said to her dinner mate.

  "Zimmy? Oh, he went out. Let's see, I saw him go out the little gate about midafternoon. Shopping, he said, and then an amateur show with friends."

  "Ah." She kept her voice carefully casual. "After what I saw in Splash One, I grow concerned about any absent face." The conversation switched to Gretl Mechas, and she quickly changed the subject. They t
alked of Crystallites, suspected and proven, and she remained puzzled. He must have forgotten. Though Zimmy usually didn't forget. Not anything. He was the kind of man who remembered every word of conversations held years before; the kind of man who sent greetings on obscure anniversaries; the kind of man who kept gift shops in business. He had a little notebook full of people's birthdays. This minor talent, or vice, would have made him merely a sycophantic niggler were it not for his humor and charm. No, she could not imagine Zimmy forgetting.

  She was in the lounge at a corner table, half hidden by her table mates, when he returned. She saw him in the hallway, checking the message board. Ralth was halfway through a complicated story that she chose not to interrupt, so she did not call out or make any gesture, but merely noticed Zimmy from under her lowered lids. Zimmy turned, his mobile face twisted into a laughing response to someone's remark.

  And saw her.

  Don let her lids drop closed, frightened at what she had surprised in his face. Shock. Shock and astonishment. He had not expected to see her here. He had not expected to see her anywhere. She gasped and put a hand to her throat, not looking up. Something hard pressed up. She gulped.

  "Don? What's the matter?" Ralth was looking at her with concern.

  "I swallowed the wrong way. Got so intrigued by your story, I forgot to breathe." She laughed and looked up. There he was. Zimmy. Now he was beaming at her. Waving. If she hadn't seen him for that split second, she would have believed in his apparent pleasure at the sight of her. She waved back, as though she hadn't a care in the world.

  Inside, a part of her screamed.

  If he had not expected to see her at all, then he had expected her not to be here. Not to be anywhere. To be dead.

  Zimmy. So. Well and yes, Donatella. He is a Chapter House man. A hired man. Here for your comfort. Did you think love would change all that? Did you think he loved you just because he said so? A hired man is a hired man, that is, a man who works for money, loves for money.

  Who had paid him?

  Ralth's story concluded to general and amused disbelief. She excused herself and went to greet Zimmy, hiding her inner turmoil, pretending. "Zimmy! Lord, it's good to be back. Splash One is a madhouse." Her throat was tight, but her voice sounded normal.