Tansman did not want to look, but the edge in Brother Boris’ voice made him turn. And he saw nothing, for Brother Alva sat steadily, expressionless, one hand still on his bag, the other still resting in the ruff of his little dog. The only difference was that now the dog was lying instead of sitting.
Brother Boris looked up at Tansman with his red bully face. Overbearing. Not unintelligent. But if Brother Alva was heresy, was the red brother evil, or was he disease?
Brother Boris said, “And why do you travel with the megrim abroad, Mr. Tansman?”
For want of a better, Tansman assumed a modified version of the tone he had used with Garth. Lofty, but not disrespectful—anything but that with a Brother of the Confraternity, a Questryman. He hid his fears behind carefully measured speech.
Through tight teeth he said, “I’m to mind the interests of my uncle, who keeps a store in Delera. I didn’t know of the danger of megrim when I set out. By the time I came to North Hill, it was easier to go on than to go back.”
“Aye, yes,” said Old Garth. “You should have seen him running like a hound-driven cony through the streets of North Hill.”
He laughed. Tansman smiled stiffly. He felt caught in a guessing game with no clue to the right answers and his neck at stake.
“Why cannot your uncle mind his own interests?”
“His parents are old and ill and not expected to live,” said Tansman. “He goes to visit them.”
“I misdoubt he’ll be stopped by the megrim, neither,” said Garth, to Tansman’s gratitude. “He’s talked of nothing but Mr. Tansman’s coming this turn of Aleph. Fragile as the old folk are, he’ll only be hurried by news of the megrim.”
“A dutiful son,” said Brother Boris.
Struck by inspiration, Tansman turned again on the seat before Brother Boris could level another arrowed question.
He said, “It must be uncomfortable for you to ride so long back there, Brother Boris. May I offer an exchange of place?”
The offer was instantly taken with a “Bless you, my son.” In making the change to the back, Tansman let his hat be caught by the wind. It fell to the road and rolled. Tansman scrambled after it, the little dog rising and barking at him.
By the time he caught up to the wagon again, Brother Boris was firmly established on his seat beside Old Garth. And he, Tansman hoped, was firmly established as a hound-driven cony with pretensions. Let him be laughed at by these ignorant mortal men. He was safer that way, and he knew who he was.
He still had to ride facing Brother Alva in the back of the wagon, Brother Asmodeus, but whatever Brother Alva saw with his penetrating eyes he was bound to keep to himself. It was not comfortable to turn on the seat and speak, as Tansman knew, and Brother Boris learned. So on they rode to Delera, as they were, and Tansman leaned against his bag—not Brother Boris’ pack—and lived with the rising cold.
It was well after dark when they reached Delera. The road came down a steep grade to the town. Halfway down, at a bend, another road led back up the hill at an angle. There the monastery stood at the crest, a great bulk looming in the uncertain light of the full moons that shone through the breaking clouds.
Brother Boris said, “We thank you for the ride.”
“Our honor, Questryman,” Garth said.
Brother Alva lifted his dog down, and then his bag and Brother Boris’ pack. He looked up the road to the monastery and then to the road behind them. And stood waiting.
“I may be down to see you soon,” Brother Boris said. “I must see to the state of faith in Delera and a beginning is a beginning. What is it that your uncle sells?”
Tansman said, “Sundries. But I am no clerk.”
Garth threw off the brake and lifted the reins.
“What are you, Mr. Tansman?” asked Brother Boris.
But the wagon was in motion then, and Tansman was spared the explanation of chromoplasts. He doubted that Brother Boris would have understood.
2. THE POSSIBILITY OF NEW COVENANTS
The town of Delera was dark, and Tansman feared for a moment that the plague had outstepped them and silenced the town. It was a strange sort of fear, not of plague or the pains of death, but a child’s fear of the unknowns that dwelt in blackness. The planet of Zebulon and the town of Delera were places of night. There was even a curious sense of relief in Tansman’s fear—if the megrim had struck like wild lightning, leaving death and silence behind, he wouldn’t have to play this game anymore. He could go home. It was an attractive thought.
But Garth seemed untroubled and the relief and the silence were broken by a street dog. It raced out of the night and fell in beside them, barking and playing tag with the horses’ hooves. Then the town became another place, merely sleeping.
Old Garth pulled into an alley between two adobe piles and the dog fell away, self-satisfied. Then Tansman could see lights on both left hand and right, invisible from the street.
Garth reined the horses by a door on the left. It opened and there was a figure in the doorway holding a lamp.
“Aye, Mr. Rilke,” Garth said. “Here we are and lucky to be here. There’s megrim in North Hill. Hop on down. I’ll see to the horses and wagon.”
“Philip, my boy!” said the man in the doorway. He had a pointed chin and long wispy hair. His face was pale in the lamp glow.
Tansman threw his bag down and jumped after it. Under Garth’s eye he said, “Uncle!” with all the appearance of enthusiasm he could muster. His travel-befuddled legs were unsteady under him.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, improvising. Then Garth and the wagon rattled on toward the stables in the back.
“I take it you’re Rilke,” he said then in considerably less friendly tones. “You don’t look that much like your pictures.”
The man in the pictures was barely more than his age and looked like anybody. This man was older and didn’t look like anybody—he looked like a Zebulonite.
“Save it for inside,” Rilke said tiredly. “People live in the next house. Unless you want to give them a life history.”
Rilke closed the door behind them and led the way inside. A curtain separated the living quarters from the store at the front of the building and Tansman got only a glimpse of darkness and an impression of things hanging—sundries. They passed on into the kitchen.
“I imagine you’re hungry,” Rilke said. “I don’t suppose you know how to cook. Garth will come in and do for you while I’m gone. I’ve prepared him. I told him you were a society boy and don’t know how to wipe your behind.”
His tone was short and sharp and he didn’t look at Tansman. He crossed to a hanging kettle over an open hearth fire and gave it a stir.
Tansman said, “I expected you in North Hill. I should have been warned that you weren’t coming.”
Rilke turned. “I didn’t feel up to it, sonny. And you’re here just as soon as if I’d made the trip.”
He didn’t look well. He looked tired and sick. His hair was sparse and had only a tenuous connection to his head. His skin was papery.
That was the price of fourteen years on Zebulon. It turned you into a sick old mortal man. No one would have thought Rilke and Tansman of an age. Tansman was young—youngish. And Rilke had to be his uncle. Never a brother or a cousin. Tansman hadn’t understood the reason for their nominal relationship before.
He set his bag on the table and opened it, found a bottle made of glass and threw it to Rilke, not caring particularly whether or not he managed to catch it. He managed to catch it.
Tansman said, “You had a Questryman resting his back against that half the distance from North Hill. If Old Garth hadn’t come to my aid a couple of times, I would have had real trouble with his questions. Does Garth know about you?”
Rilke drank from the bottle, closed his eyes, and then took a weak step to a chair. After a moment he looked up and said, “What was a Questryman doing in the wagon? What did he pump out of you?”
Tansman rose and walked to the kettle an
d gave it a stir. Then he looked around for a plate. He felt an obscure joy. He didn’t like Rilke and his air of moral superiority. If they were on the Ship, where opinion knew Rilke and his kind for sentimental fools, Rilke would never have dared to take this tone. Tansman was a scientist, a useful man, a credit to Daudelin. Here on Zebulon, Rilke felt free to exercise his contempt. Well, let him. Tansman knew who he was and he knew who Rilke was. He didn’t mind finding Rilke sick—that was justice. And if he knew the answers to Rilke’s questions, he was ready to let Rilke sit and whistle until he was ready to give them.
He said, “What do you have to drink?”
Rilke indicated a pot. Tansman lifted the lid and sniffed.
“Is that what you ruined your liver with? What else do you have?”
“Water.”
“All right, I’ll have water. You know, I’m not one of your people. I’m not part of this Group of yours.”
“I know,” Rilke said, the hostile note in his voice plainly evident.
“I agreed to help Nancy Poate. I’m already sorry, but I agreed and I’ll do it. I’ll sit in your chair for two months, and I’ll do my best to see that you aren’t discovered when the Questryman comes down here and checks over this store. But I don’t like you any better than you like me. I’ll thank you for a little civility. And I’ll thank you for a plate.”
Rilke handed Tansman a plate.
“Thank you,” Tansman said. He began to serve himself stew.
Rilke pointed a finger at his back and said angrily, “I know you, too. I’ve heard all about you. You’re an ice skater. You never did anything real in your life. You skim along on the surface of things. I don’t thank Nancy Poate for sending you. I mean to tell her so.”
“Tell her so, and be damned. If you were more persuasive and less meddlesome, maybe you could attract someone more to your taste than I seem to be. As it is, it seems that you are going to have to make do with me.”
Tansman sat down at the table with his stew. Rilke looked at him fiercely and Tansman looked steadily back. At last, Rilke sighed and dropped his eyes.
“Water,” said Tansman. “And a fork.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” said Rilke. But he rose and drew Tansman water and found him a fork. “Tell me about the Questryman.”
“Garth picked him up at the first crossroad outside of North Hill. He said that he means to investigate the state of faith in Delera, including this store.”
“‘There’s little enough to worry about,” Rilke said. “All of our books have been checked by the Questry and given an overmark. The rest of the stock is innocuous.”
“He discounts me in any case,” said Tansman. “He believes me to be a society boy who doesn’t know how to wipe my behind. It’s the other one that Garth was afraid of, the one Brother Boris was escorting to the monastery. Brother Asmodeus. If he hadn’t been under an interdict of silence, I believe Garth would have run from him.”
“Alva Abarbanel? Here?”
Tansman nodded. “That was his name.”
Rilke buried his face in his hands and began to cry, suddenly, loudly, shockingly. Tansman was so taken aback at this fall into weakness and defeat that he almost ceased to eat. He took another bite. But Rilke continued to cry, shoulders heaving, so at last Tansman dropped his fork. The stew was not so good anyway.
“What is it, Rilke? What in hell is it?”
Rilke lifted his head and shook it. “He shouldn’t have written the book. The Possibility of New Covenants. I told him not to. He defended the Sons of Prometheus. And now he’s under interdict.”
“You know this man? This Zebulonite?”
“He was our best hope. He is a man of intellect and honor and he followed his mind to conclusions that other men will not dare. He said that new Godly Covenants were possible, that purity and the Ships were not a contradiction in terms. If he had kept his silence, he might someday have led Zebulon into a better state of understanding of the Ships. We were in correspondence.”
“Did you tell him who you were?”
“He knows what I am—a liberal, truth-seeking man. And that is all. But what are we to do now? I must talk to Nancy. Oh, God! All these years. I’m so tired.”
Then Rilke raised his head and wiped his eyes. “And you must be tired, too. Let me show you the way upstairs.” He blew his nose to regain his composure and dignity.
Rilke picked up Tansman’s empty plate and set it on the sideboard. “There’s so much to show you before I leave tomorrow. You’ll need a good night’s sleep. You won’t be able to ask anything of Garth. He knows nothing. He’s worked for me for thirteen years, but if he thought I was from a Ship, he would be off to the monastery in no time to fetch the Questryman.”
“If you can’t trust him, why don’t you get rid of him and find somebody you can trust?” Tansman asked.
Rilke shook his head again. “You really don’t understand, do you? ‘Old Garth’ is the reason I do what I do. He’s had a life five times as hard as I have, and he’ll be dead a good sight sooner. He’s five years younger than I am.”
“You must be joking!”
“Because he’s younger than you, too? He is. Things need to be evened, and I mean to spend my life trying to see that they are. Even though I despair. Come along now.”
As Rilke led Tansman up the stairs, Garth came in through the door from the alley, dusting his hands.
“Well, lad,” he said. “All squared away?”
Tansman stopped with a foot on the stair and looked at him, stared as though he could pierce the mask of monkey wrinkles and find beneath a man as young as himself. After a moment he said, “Yes, thank you.”
Rilke said, “There’s stew waiting in the kitchen.”
“Ah, thankee.”
The bed in the spare room was hard. The room was bare and close. It was the farthest that Tansman had ever been away from home and he slept badly. He dreamed, something he never did in his safe bed in the Ship, something he never remembered doing. His dreams were ugly and frightful.
A horse screamed in terror. It plunged in the heat and stink, frantic to be free.
Smoke, acrid smoke, rose in a smothering stinging billow.
It was hot from the fire, but Tansman felt cold, felt alone. Helpless.
He lay head down in the cart of bodies, unable to move. He was not dead. He was not sick. He couldn’t be. But he could not protest. He was helpless.
The men in gloves and masks stoking the fire pulled the bodies free and flung them on the pyre. And all he could do was slip closer and closer to their hands. He wanted to protest, but he couldn’t. He was alive! It wasn’t right. He didn’t want to burn. He didn’t want to die. Not yet. Not with so much undone, so much left of his life to live.
But he couldn’t stop them. There was nothing he could do. And suddenly he recognized the men behind their masks. Brother Boris. Simple Brother Boris, smiling behind his mask and enjoying himself. And Hans Rilke.
“Into the fire,” said Rilke. “Into the fire.”
And Brother Boris said, “A beginning is a beginning. You take the arms, I’ll take the legs.”
Tansman wanted to protest. No. No. But they lifted him up and went, “One, two, three.”
And then rattling across the town cobbles came a wagon.
Garth! Old Garth! Good old Garth!
Just as they threw Tansman up in the air toward the fire, he came rolling past and Tansman landed in the back of the wagon.
“He’s too young to die,” Garth called. “He’s too young. Too young. To die.”
“But he’ll be the better for it,” called Brother Boris.
And Rilke yelled, “Don’t trust Garth! Don’t trust Garth! Come back, Tansman.”
And on the wagon rolled toward the far side of the square. And Garth was laughing.
That was when Tansman woke in the dark, on the hard bed, sweating, trembling, but alive, safe and alive.
Ah, but still on Zebulon.
3. THE SECRET OF THE SHIPS
One week after Rilke’s departure to visit his dear old parents, leaving his store in the care of his flighty young nephew down from the city, Brother Boris came out of the monastery and began his examination of the state of faith in Delera. He did not begin with Tansman. He did not begin with Hans Rilke’s store.
Oh, but Tansman did hear all about it. It was his introduction to the town. They came to have a look at the city boy turned clerk and to talk of the progress of Brother Boris through the town as he hunted infection of the mind and infection of the spirit, the better to save Delera from the infection of the body, the megrim. Tansman stood behind his counter and listened.
He heard who was in trouble, and he heard who would be in trouble. He heard what Brother Boris was asking, and he heard what he should have been asking. It was an education in human nature. At first he was shocked by the talebearing, for men would come and confess their confessions and smile and be patted on the back. Only gradually did he realize that what seemed craven self-service and shameless subservience to the superstitions of the Confraternity was really a deep and universal fear of the megrim. The megrim killed half those it struck and left another third witless. Reason enough to welcome Brother Boris and his apprentices.
Tansman sold many copies of the Colligations of the Confraternity, fewer but substantial numbers of the Teachings and the Commentaries, and almost no other books. When he might have been observing the floggings in the town square, he stayed in the store and studied his own copies.
He studied as though he were back in school again. He studied as though he were readying himself for Trial. He despised every moment he had to spend in learning this ignorant nonsense, cramming information into his head that might be useful, might be essential, or might never be asked, knowing that once his examination was over he would forget every bit of it. But he was determined not to fail, for the sake of his neck. He did not want to suffer the fate of the Sons of Prometheus. He had no desire to be “blotted.” He didn’t even care to be flogged for the health of the town.
Farewell to Yesterday's Tomorrow Page 3