The rain set in before he reached town. It drenched him. It turned the road to mud and sent streams crying through the roadside ditches.
It was never like this on the Ship. None of it.
With the megrim in Delera, Tansman closed the store. There was no business. Houses were boarded, just like the houses he had seen when he arrived in North Hill. There were those who fled the town, those who believed they knew places of safety. But who was safe if a man like Brother Boris could be stricken?—though there were even whispers about Brother Boris in those days before people stopped talking to one another.
And a pyre was laid in the town square. First logs, then bodies. And the smell rose above the town, saturating the town, penetrating everywhere, reaching into even the most tightly closed room. It was a constant reminder of the transience of life and the permanence of death. At least for mortal Colonists.
It was not Tansman’s problem. There was nothing he could do about the megrim short of breaking out Rilke’s medical kit. That would reveal him as a shippeen. That would ruin all of Rilke’s slow and careful work. As the number of dead mounted in the town and the bonfire burned, he wondered if revelation and ruination might not be better than this.
But it wasn’t his job. His job was to safeguard Rilke’s secret. So he closed himself in his room and read the works of the heretic Brother Alva Abarbanel and did his best to sleep. His bad dreams continued. Zebulon, his nightmare, continued. And there was no end to it.
One of the first nights, when he was sitting in his room listening to the one noise of the night, the neighborhood problem dog yelping and skittering through the alley below, there was a knock on his door. It was Old Garth.
Garth was nervous and diffident. Very nervous.
He said, “You won’t be wanting me tomorrow, will ye, Mr. Tansman?”
He didn’t say “boy” or “lad” much anymore. He said “Mr. Tansman.”
Tansman had closed the store by then. He had nothing for Garth to do. There was nothing he wanted for the old man but survival.
He said, “No, I won’t. Do you want to leave town until the megrim is past?”
Garth shook his head. “May I borry the wagon and team? They need someone to haul for the fire. I said I’d do. I know it was presuming. May I? Is it all right?”
“Garth, no!” said Tansman. “You don’t have to do it.”
Garth held out his hand, rough-backed and corded. It was trembling.
“Aye, I’m scared. I don’t deny it. But it has to be done. I watched ye the other day with Brother Boris. Ye were scared, but ye went ahead. It’s the same for me now.”
Tansman shook his head. How could he tell Garth of what he had really been frightened? There was no way, none short of admitting who he was, what he was. He couldn’t do that. The best he could do was…
He said, as firmly as he could, “I’ll deny you the wagon, Garth. This is a job that I should do.”
“I thought ye might say that. Na, lad, do na stay me. I’ve thought about this and me mind is determined. Somebody has to do the job, and when they asked me, I said I would. I do na want to die. But better me who’s had me life than somebody young who has his life yet to live. I’ll fight ye, boy, but I’ll na give in.”
They argued, and in the end it was Tansman who gave in. He could do nothing else. He had no argument to counter with and win except the truth, and he could not speak the truth. So finally Tansman gave Garth his permission to use the wagon and team, and in the morning Garth began his work of finding and collecting bodies and carrying them to the fire.
Tansman felt ashamed.
4. ALL-PURPOSE HOUSEHOLD HINTS AND HOME REMEDIES
Tansman awoke suddenly from a doze, unsure, and disoriented. For a moment he did not know if he were truly awake or whether this was another dream. A single oil lamp lit the room. A book, All-Purpose Household Hints and Home Remedies, lay open in his lap. It allowed no cure for the megrim.
Then he heard a noise outside in the alley again. He closed the book and set it aside. He picked up the lamp from the table and went downstairs. The air was cool outside.
The horses, well-trained, stood quietly in their traces, shaking a head and blowing, lifting a hoof and setting it down clack on the brick. Garth barely maintained his seat. The lines were slack in his hand, his eyes were shut, and he weaved on the wagon box. There were yellow streaks of vomit on his legs and between his feet.
He opened his eyes blearily at the light and said with care, “I’m sick, Mr. Tansman.” Then he fell forward out of the wagon.
Tansman untangled him from the lines. There was no question of taking him to the stable. He hauled him inside. He was lighter than Brother Boris, this little monkey man. Tansman carried him upstairs, undressed him, and put the old man in his own hard bed. Garth was marked by the megrim.
Then he went outside again and led the horses and trailing wagon to the stable. He unhitched the horses. He knew nothing of the gear so he left it in a careless heap, but he was able to remember how to rub horses down. The motions were automatic—his muscles remembered what his mind had forgotten.
His mind was on other things. What was he going to do? What did he owe Garth? This wasn’t the first time he had asked himself these questions. This moment had been foreseeable. This moment had been foreseen. But only now was an answer required of him.
Tansman told himself that still he did not know what he was going to do. But when he was finished with the horses, he walked slowly back up the alley, went upstairs to Rilke’s room, and opened the heavy chest. He took out Rilke’s medical kit. He looked at the kit, and then he closed the chest and left the room with the kit.
His mind said that it had no idea what he was doing, but his muscles knew. He was going to save Garth if Garth could be saved.
Tansman had led a quiet life, an isolated life. He had never truly liked another human being before, but in his heart he knew that he liked Old Garth Buie, this simple, ignorant old mortal.
In all his life he had never done another man damage. He had added some small knowledge to the human store, even added some years to the human lifetime. His lifetime, his sort of human.
But to know the quality of life on Zebulon, short and mean, and to know that in Daudelin there was an easier, simpler life, and then to choose the suspension of pain in the Ship, was to be guilty. He was guilty. He was a man of the Ships, and he would not give up Daudelin for Zebulon. But he would temper that guilt in one small way. He would save the life of Garth Buie.
Garth’s little gnarled body thrashed uneasily under the blankets Tansman had covered him with and brought Tansman awake in his chair. The lamp was low as he had left it. He turned it up and carried it close to the bed.
Garth was mumbling and moaning to himself. Tansman reached over to touch his forehead. It was feverish, as before, but possibly a bit cooler. Tansman fetched broth that he had been simmering over the fire and spooned it down Garth’s throat. Garth swallowed, but his eyes did not open.
Then it was afternoon. Tansman kept the windows covered, and the light was just a glow along the walls. It was time to give Garth another injection. As Tansman bent over, Garth’s eyes rolled open and looked blankly at Tansman. Tansman slid Garth’s sleeve up, placed the blunt tip against Garth’s arm as the eyes flickered, held the less strongly blotched arm steady, and pressed the button. Then he turned away and replaced the injector in his little medical kit. When he looked again at Garth, the wiry old man was resting easily, his eyes closed again. Tansman sighed—his tense muscles ached. He took soup for himself, made with the advice of All-Purpose Household Hints and Home Remedies. The book kept figuring in what he dreamed.
Tansman sat watching Garth in the last orange of the daylight. He nodded in his chair and fell asleep. Strange shapes lumbered through his mind. He was threatened, questioned and pursued. And with the light dimming in the room he looked to see Garth gone from the bed, dressed and vanished.
He went out to the patio roof of
the warehouse. There was a new film of wetness underfoot. The air was damp and heavy and the smell of the fire was part of the dampness and weight. It was a sticky elastic that couldn’t be peeled free.
Tansman went down the uncertain stairs to the alley, hand on the railing, one step at a time. When he reached the bottom, he wiped that hand dry on his pants and looked both ways. One way was the closed courtyard and stables, the other the street. Light moon gleam on unmortared brick, wet slick.
It was a strange silent uncertain moment. The alley was a lean foggy echo, dim, damp, and empty. He turned from the closed courtyard and walked slowly up the alley toward the street.
There was a sudden explosion of movement by the wall. It ducked into the building across the alley. Tansman followed, moving easily. There was no light there as there usually was. Tansman went up the stairs.
He heard Garth’s voice but couldn’t make out the words. He found the latch at the top of the stairs.
Garth said, “A shippeen, to be sure! He follows me! You must give me help. You know me—old Garth Buie. I was the one that went up in the balloon. Save me soul and body from perdition!”
The room was dark. Tansman could see that Garth was addressing a circle of faces. Garth looked around as he came in and gave a shudder of horror. He shrank away.
“But it’s me,” Tansman said.
“It’s him! It’s him! He’s a shippeen! Mr. Tansman is a shippeen!”
Tansman put out a hand but Garth could not be mollified with a gesture. He lifted a heavy, hand-pegged wooden chair as old as Zebulon and brought it over the shoulders of Tansman. It was only at that moment when the chair crashed into his shoulders, whipped his neck, and sent him down with consciousness draining that Tansman was sure this was a waking nightmare and not another dream. It was so hard to tell the difference sometimes.
His head ached. His neck was wrenched. His back ached. He had tensed just before the blow when he realized that he was going to be struck. Strangely, he knew he was awake and not asleep, but he was disconcertingly unaware of where he was or how he had gotten here. He could recognize reality now if only he could find it somewhere.
The circle of faces stared at him. From his knees he looked back from face to face. All were dead. Rotting dead. Dead and unfound.
He went down the stairs gaining greater sense of self with each step until in the alley again he had snatched the dream back from the place where dreams unrecalled are stored. He knew. He thought he knew.
Garth was at the corner when he reached the alley. He turned left out of sight. Tansman tried to run and skidded dangerously on the cobbles. An ankle became tender for a step or two. When he got to the street, he called, “Garth, Garth. Come back. I won’t hurt you.”
But Garth was running, clear now in the moonlight. He was screaming, “The shippeen! Help, save me!”
No windows opened. There was no response to his cry. If there were witnesses, they were not telling. Garth, the old man, fled through the town. Tansman ran after him.
Neither man ran well. When Garth reached the end of the paving, he left the road and began striking out directly up the hill. The road switched back on its way up the hill to the monastery. Garth scrambled up the hillside.
Tansman, following, saw there was a footpath. In spite of being struck by the chair he was able to follow without scrambling. That and the fact that Tansman was able to continue at all after being struck with the chair were testimony of Garth Buie’s weakness.
Tansman stumbled and lost sight of Garth. He followed the path as best he could up the slope in the uncertain moonlight.
He stopped at one point and said, hoping to be heard, “Look, Garth. Come back. I really mean you no harm.”
Then he took a long shuddering breath of cool black air, almost free of the town stink, and stopped stark and listened. He heard nothing. He moved on, following the path.
He was struck again, this time by no chair, but by the full wiry weight of a small body. Tansman went off the edge of the path. Garth was on his shoulders, and he felt a small sharp hurt in his side, and before he could be curious about it, it hurt much more than that. He knew he had been stabbed.
Garth said anxiously, “And you a shippeen, Mr. Tansman. You a shippeen.”
Tansman fell on his side and back and rolled with the slope. Garth landed astride him and was thrown as Tansman rolled. They rose and Tansman would have spoken, but he thought better of saying, “I’m really all right.” He didn’t think that Garth would be convinced. This was serious. He couldn’t let Garth reach the monastery.
Tansman launched himself forward and Garth protected his purity against this monster with his broad knife blade. The knife sliced Tansman’s arm, but Tansman’s superior weight brought Garth down. Tansman used his knee to knock Garth’s breath away. He then shifted it to nail Garth’s knife hand and wrested the knife away.
Garth tried to struggle free, heaving his body under Tansman’s weight, trying to free his pinned wrist, but lacking the strength. Tansman was stable, easily controlling Garth, but breathing hard. Then Tansman stepped off, rose and let Garth rise.
“I’m really all right,” he said now. “Please, Garth. Come back with me.”
Garth was indomitable. He said, “The Brothers will blot you, Mr. Tansman.” And he bolted up the hill.
Tansman ran after Garth and jammed the knife into him to make him stop running to the monastery. It wasn’t right. Garth should have been grateful.
Garth gave a cry and fell dead.
Tansman rolled away and came to his feet. He threw the knife as far away as he could. He was bleeding and a collection of bangs and bruises. He was sick and unsteady and he threw up, the taste hot and sour in his mouth. And retched again, and then again.
Then at last he turned and looked for Garth. Garth was not there. Fear rose again in Tansman.
Limping, he came on Garth’s body on the path. Garth was crawling. Tansman seized him by the leg. Garth cocked his other leg and kicked Tansman in the face. Tansman let go and Garth continued to crawl up the hillside.
Tansman pried a muddy rock out of the hillside. It was just larger than his hand. He crawled after Garth, grabbed and held him with one hand and hit him in the head with the rock. He did it several times and the rock was bloody.
He threw the rock away and rolled the body over. Garth was dead. His cheek was broken and his left eye hung loose from its socket.
Tansman wept. It was the first time since he had passed Trial and become an adult citizen of Daudelin almost forty years before that he had cried. He cried for himself and his innocence. He had murdered a man and knew it.
At last Tansman put the body on his shoulders and started down the footpath. He found it hard going, moved slowly, and stumbled frequently. He weaved as he walked. Twice he set the body down in the mud while he caught his breath and rested his aching shoulders.
The street was empty. He could see the glow of the fire, the muted smolder. The shutters remained closed. The street was his. The dog came shooting out from between two houses to sniff and snap, but he paid it no attention, continued to plod on, and finally it fell away and left him alone again.
He was walking in a trance, forcing himself to finish what he begun, mind in a state of suspension. He stopped and put the body down while he rested. His right arm was caked with blood, and the wound in his side made him gasp when he put Garth down.
Garth grunted in pain. His pain was so intense that his face screwed but the noise was only half-uttered. The worst of it was the silent part. His hand groped at his face and his broken eye.
Tansman made an inarticulate cry. This was by far the worst nightmare that he had had on Zebulon. He was no longer afraid, so that what he did cost him more. Tears of pain and pity in his eyes, knowing what he did and acting deliberately, wanting to be sure, he killed Garth for the third time. He put his hands around Garth’s neck and squeezed until he was certain that Garth was truly dead. The neck gave way under his hands and
then he continued to hold it too long until he was sure, sure beyond any doubt that Garth was truly dead.
Garth! Garth! Old mortal peasant fool. Colonist. Mudeater. Fellow victim.
He ignored the overpowering reek of singed hair and burned flesh. He added wood from the pile that stood at hand until the fire blazed. Then he added Garth’s belated body.
He stood as it burned and watched. He tried to think, tried to phrase things right in his mind, but he could not. He could not see to the bottom of his nightmare. All that he knew was that it existed and that it continued.
5. THE COMMENTARIES
The plague swept over Delera, washed back through, and was gone. People returned to town and unboarded their houses. They counted noses and restored life. When other stores reopened, Tansman reopened, too.
Tansman’s first reaction to killing Garth was to wait. But no one called on him to chat about strange cries in the street during the height of the megrim, so he was forced to think about what he had done. He wasn’t used to that. He was used to staying in his rooms and playing with chromoplasts. But now he had to think about himself.
He was a bewildered child. He couldn’t make sense of it. He felt he was wrong, but he didn’t think he was wrong, and he couldn’t reconcile the difference.
He had done exactly what he had been left on Zebulon to do—he had kept the Prometheans a secret. He had saved them embarrassment by keeping their modest good works modestly unacknowledged. But he could not find any satisfaction in it.
He did not think he was guilty. He had tried to save Garth’s life, and Garth had hit him with a chair and then stabbed him. And would have done worse.
But he did not feel justified, either. Strange thoughts came welling up as possibilities: He had killed Garth to get the old man to take him seriously. He had killed Garth to show him that he had the power to do it. He had killed Garth to stop the nightmare.
All he was certain of was that he was a child, and the old man had been younger than he. He was a child. He didn’t know what would become of him, and he didn’t know yet what he would become.
Farewell to Yesterday's Tomorrow Page 5