The Ardath Mayhar MEGAPACK®

by John Maclay

  Aristotle lay back down on the stone of the door­step, but he was too much filled with unholy glee to sleep again. Tenacity found him there, looking innocent, when she came with her basket of eggs.

  It was raining again, as Tenacity settled to her afternoon of sorting through her harvest of herbs, setting aside those to be dried in the sun, those to be pounded and sealed into jars, and those to be infused immediately. Aristotle had taken himself off to his shed, leaving the door stone to the mercy of the rain. After a snack of old hay, he settled himself to resume his interrupted nap.

  An uproar from downhill woke him, just before sundown. He arrived in the yard just in time to see a small group of villagers, led by the puffing judge, whose bulk was not easy to carry up so steep a hill, pound on the door of Tenacity’s tidy cottage. It opened, and he could see by her expression that his mistress was not pleased.

  “How, now, Judge Barlow! ’Tis an untoward time of day to be battering at the doors of honest folk! Your business had best be of the most urgent, else I will be most annoyed.”

  “Here is a warrant,” he panted, waving a sheet of parchment in her face. “Just this past hour I have indicted it, at the plea of those who have reason to abhor you. You are accused as witch, Mistress Cobble. Two several people have raised the cry, and by the law of our land I must take you to be tried.”

  “And hanged, I’ll warrant,” the little woman snapped. “Just as they’re doing now in Salem, harrying poor old folk who have neither wealth nor kin to stand between themselves and a wicked judge. Cotton Mather hath much to answer for.

  “You will find, however, that I am neither poor nor friendless. Have a care, you who accuse me. Those who tread on the unfortunate may find them­selves trodden in turn.”

  But those behind the judge raised outcry, and Aristotle could see in the failing light that Mistress Cradshaw and Mistress Blakeby were among their number, together with three men from the town. There was the apothecary, whose business was much infringed by Tenacity’s trade in healing herbs; the schoolmaster, with whom she had crossed wits more than once, to his chagrin; and the parson. Tenacity’s infrequent attendance at meeting had doubtless ripened his mind against her.

  In the last of the sodden daylight, Tenacity was hurried from her house, bundled in her cloak against the growing chill of the evening. Aristotle could see that beneath the cloak she held her reticule, and he was comforted. In that shapeless handbag she kept a bit of almost everything she might need under any circumstances.

  Taking advantage of the darkness that now hemmed the sky, making useful shadows about the countryside, Aristotle followed the procession. He was not aston­ished to see Thomas Watley join the judge at the edge of the village. That pause at the gallows had given Aristotle much food for thought, and even be knew the tales of witch-hangings that even now were taking place in other parts of Massachusetts.

  Being so small, the village of Rideover had no lockup. When such a thing was found to be necessary, Judge Barlow’s woodshed was forced into service, and there they took Tenacity and flung her into its chill and comfortless darkness. To that place of incarceration Aristotle followed faithfully, keeping always out of sight, though he was certain that his mistress knew him to be nearby.

  There was no window in the shed, but he huddled against the rough log wall and bleated very softly. A wisp of a whistled tune answered him, and he sighed so gustily that it blew out his whiskers. Then, reas­sured, he dozed against the shed until the first light of dawn woke him.

  Too late! The judge’s manservant, coming to bring the prisoner some food, surprised the goat before he could escape. Feeling much assured at the justification of the charges against the old woman, the man thrust her goat into the shed with her.

  “Belike, we’ll see a double hanging,” he hissed as he closed the door behind him. “It do be said that goats are the cattle of the Devil.”

  It was noon before the two captives were brought from the shed. Tenacity was given opportunity to wash herself and tidy her hair and clothing. Aristotle was watched with disturbed attention, and his watchers were not reassured by the amusement in his vertically pupilled yellow eyes.

  Trial was held in the schoolhouse, which did triple duty as school, church, and courtroom. The place was crowded, and in that throng there was hardly one who had not taken some ill of flesh or spirit up the hill to Tenacity Cobble and returned comforted with poultice, physick, or sympathy. Now they waited with relish for the entertainment to begin, little caring that the victim was one who had done them nothing but good.

  Tenacity and Aristotle sat quietly on the bench provided for them, watching the villagers gape and whisper and smirk. It was plain that they thought a witch-trial of their own brought them nearer to the prominence of greater and more populous places than Rideover. And when the judge entered, resplendent in robe and wig, it was also plain that there was no hope of justice to be found in that crowded room. “Hang...hang...hang...,” went about the room in a breathy whisper.

  The testimony would have been comic, had it not been so venomously false. The two women who accused her set into words all the jealousy and suspi­cion that the old woman had waked in their tight­-pinched hearts. Tenacity’s nephew attested that he had seen her engaged in satanic rituals. And two young children, well-coached by their fond parents, went into convincing fits when Tenacity passed by them on her way to the witness-box.

  “Is it not true that...?”

  “Do you not admit...?”

  “Can you possibly deny...?”

  It was quite plain that the questions, not her answers, were the words taken to heart by the hastily­ assembled jury. Tenacity looked over the judge, the jurors, the folk who were now set avidly forward in their places.

  “Have you anything to say on your own behalf?” asked the judge at last.

  “I have,” she answered. Quite tranquilly. “Every soul within this chamber knows that I have dealt justly by all, that none who came to me for aid was ever denied, and that I asked no payment. All know that never once has any being suffered because of me.

  “If frivolity and greed can thus overset the works of a good life, then I see that I have embraced the wrong part of my art. However, I am not ignorant of other arts, though I have never practiced them.

  “I warned you that those who tread harshly may, in their turn, be trodden. Now you will see proof of that.” And she began to whistle. In total silence, the old lady and her goat vanished from the sight of the stupefied group. One who sat by the open door looked about outside, then called out in dismay. “They stand upon the hill! Witchery!”

  From the sky, which had seemed to be clearing in the forenoon, came a clap of thunder fit to shake the earth. Rain poured down in sudden fury, and a rumb­ling could be felt, more than heard, in the earth and the air.

  From the vantage-point to which his mistress had taken them, Aristotle could see white water roaring in a wall down the small river that circled the farther edge of Rideover. Reaching the flat spot on which the village had been built, the water spread out fanwise, rising with terrible rapidity. The houses nearest the river vanished in a cloud of spray. The road disap­peared. The schoolhouse dissolved into a jumble of logs and clapboard. The waters swept clean the place where the village had been, and when they subsided there was no trace that might have indicated the presence of Man.

  Aristotle looked up at Tenacity. Just below them, snug on its little hill, their house and sheds, their cattle and sheep, their poultry and dovecote waited. The goat was unsurprised. Who but a familiar can know better the powers of a witch?

  A SHIMMER OF BLACKNESS

  Reading ancient history and archaeology and anthropology can provide wonderful material for stories. This might have taken place on Santorini, if some visitor from the future had been doing on-the-spot research.

  I gripped my stylus tightly to stop my hand’s shaking. If this was
indeed the ending of everything we knew, giving in to hysteria would not help. And I might as well keep my dignity—for what good that would do.

  The Philosopher stood quietly, waiting for us to complete our copying of his words. The last, it might be, that would ever fall from his lips. The thought made tears form in my eyes, but I held them back and shaped the script carefully. Who would read the words? Perhaps none ever would, but I would finish my task with all due care.

  The marble pave trembled, causing the old man to sway and to catch at a pillar. The volcano rumbled, deep in its throat. Ash filled the air, stinging the eyes and making it hard to breathe, but not one of us rose from his bench or even looked up, except in a covert fashion. Our island home was doomed. The last of the ships had gone, and even the pleasure boats were now far across the Middle Sea. Only we remained to record the death of a country and a culture.

  I blinked hard. Not only ash was burning my eyes. The wasting of so much beauty, so much joy was a sorrowful thing. As the Philosopher paused, I looked up at him and saw that tears were staining his face and his garment, making tracks down his ashy face. Reassured, I let my own flow also.

  Perhaps our observations and records would help no one. Yet we had felt, each one of us, that a careful record of every phase of the ending of our world might help our kinsmen, far across the sea on the mother-island. Crete, too, was subject to tremors.

  I looked down at the graceful angularities of my script. A concise description indeed. It only remained to wait until the last possible moment, writing all the while before casting the precious wax tablet into the waters, sealed in its floating case.

  Glancing up again, I saw that the Philosopher was staring at something behind the row of benches that held us, his helpers and disciples. I turned my head that I might also see. A finger of chill ran up my backbone.

  At the back of the lecture-terrace was a platform of white stone. It was used in acting out plays composed by those of our number who indulged in such things. Now, a shimmer of blackness was forming in the center of the pale stone. Something was...growing... there.

  The discipline held us rigid until he bent his head, indicating that we might rise and turn to see. He walked through our ranks, as we turned, touching first one, then another, with gentle fingers. But his eyes were set upon the squarish shape that was becoming, there on the terrace where he had taught us so many things.

  We crowded after him, up to the edge of the knee-high ledge. In the exact center of the stage, the shimmer was solidifying into a tangible thing, black as the chitin of a beetle, with the same iridescent glints in its dark coloration. It was shaped like a woman. A woman who lay on her back, legs folded, feet tucked into the backs of knees, forming two angles of a triangle blunted at her waist to meet another formed by her arms, which bent above her head, hands crossed precisely above her, elbows making another pair of angles.

  The glow that had accompanied its formation died away, leaving the thing dull. Infinitely detailed, it followed the contours of the woman faithfully, yet we knew that it must be a casing of some kind, for its texture was extremely hard. Yet there was no indication of an opening.

  The Philosopher stepped up onto the platform and bent over the casing, touching it delicately.

  “It is warm, not hot,” he said, and we came to our senses and began describing this strange occurrence, each in our own words, ending with his observation upon the temperature of the thing. We had no more than completed that task than our teacher gasped with surprise.

  We looked, and he pointed downward. A pale cone of flame was forming above the brow of the black figure. He dared a quick pass of his hand through it, flinching as the light touched his skin.

  “It is cold—burningly cold. Painful to touch.” We wrote that down, too.

  The flame concentrated into a blade of whiteness. With precision, it moved down the shape, brow to nose to chin. Down the torso, bisecting the hips, it moved, and over the sunken space between the knees. When it reached the end of the black casing, it winked out.

  There was a moment of silence, as we waited for the thing all knew must come. With a slight crack, a hissing, the tip of the thing split into halves and hinged back to lie on the stone. Even the Philosopher was reluctant to look inside, and our positions were too low to see clearly what was contained within. As we hesitated, there came a sigh, and a woman sat up, then stood to turn toward us.

  She was black, also, yet a lustrous, sheeny black that invited the eye. Between her brows was a pale gem that glowed with fires similar to those that had freed her. She was naked, without even a jewel for concealment. Our women wore only skirts, but the glimpse of even an ankle was enough to set other men panting. Even we, faced with a view of those long legs, the neat ankles, the rounded thighs, felt a tingling that only our long disciplines held in check. When our eyes met hers, that tingle died aborning.

  They were the eyes of one who held knowledge to make even our Philosopher pale by comparison. She looked at us, one by one, ending with him who stood so near to her, frozen into attention. Once she had assessed us, she bent with the flexibility of a bull-dancer and brought something from the casing at her feet. It was small, black, shiny. She held it to the gem between her eyes, and her gaze drew inward, concentrated.

  Not one of us breathed, I think. If I were already bereft of flesh, I could not have been less conscious of myself as a living being. Even the Philosopher, wisest of all who had ever lived upon Thera, seemed stunned and abashed.

  When she removed the thing from her forehead, she looked at us again, and this time her eyes were bright and compelling. “Speak to me,” she said. “Tell me what you call this place, in this time. I wished to arrive just before the eruption, the cataclysm that destroyed this island and shattered the power of Crete. I can hear the noise of the mountain. Speak!”

  The Philosopher bowed his head. “We call this island, our home, Thera. Long past, our fathers came here from that other, greater land you call Crete. And we are, in very deed, awaiting the end of all. The volcano is shaking everything, now. It will not, I think, be long.”

  She bent her dark gaze upon him and scanned him, head to foot, with much interest. “You are?” she asked.

  “I have been called the Philosopher for many years. But I was born Kyros, the son of Pylli. My school has trained thinkers who have gone out over the civilized world, bringing the gift of precise observation and clear thought to lands where such disciplines were unknown. Now we wait to die with our homeland—but not without recording for those who come after us the things that we learn from the catastrophe.” He raised his head and looked into her shining ebony face. There was no lack of confidence in him now.

  She nodded slowly. “A laudable task, though not precisely everyone’s sort, I should think. Is the island cleared, then, of people, except for yourselves?”

  He swept his hands wide. “In all of Thera, only we remain. Everything afloat was commandeered by the Governor for the saving of his people. He remonstrated long with me and with my adherents when he learned of our decision to remain here. It pained his heart. Yet he promised, if he survived, to scan the waters for at least a year, searching for our floating writing-cases that will hold our notes upon the matter. To those who think, Lady, death holds no fear.”

  We stood straighter, proud of him and of ourselves. None other, not even the soldiery, had the discipline to choose our road, we felt. To hear our teacher speak of the decision made us realize that fact more acutely than ever before. Who, indeed, would choose to die in the embrace of an eruption, given the chance to escape?

  “Are you...?” It was the voice of Kapyl, the youngest of us all. “Are you, then, the Earth Mother, come to see to the ending of your own?”

  I held my breath. The question had arisen in my own mind as well. Who else might arrive in such a strange fashion? Though in no tale I had ever heard had the Earth Mother been described as
she now stood before us.

  “At least—at the very least—I am one of her daughters,” the woman said. She stepped high to clear the edge of the case and now stood upon the stone floor of the platform. Her feet alone were not bare. Narrow golden straps held a thin sole of some scarlet stuff upon them.

  From the platform one could see across the terrace, the vineyards that now lay gray and dead beneath a layering of ash, to the Mountain itself. It spewed a stream of ash and steam high into the air, hiding the sun. A bright streak of lava was drooling from a crack partway up its side. We turned to follow her gaze, though we knew all too well what would meet our eyes.

  She drew in her breath sharply. “A frightening sight,” she said to Kyros, who stood at her elbow. “One well worth traveling so long and so far to see. It will be recorded, never fear, in all its horror and glory for a generation far removed from this to study and to appreciate.”

  The Philosopher’s white brows rose to the edge of his hair. His eyes kindled. “You come from—where? Almost, from your words, I might think it to be the future, some era yet to come. Explain, if you will, your words.”

  “The future.” She smiled, the whitest of teeth glinting in her shining black face. “A future that I am forbidden to explain or describe, Kyros. And that is a pity, for I believe that you would fit well there. A scientist of your devotion might well teach an old lesson anew to those of my generation.”

  She studied his face for a long moment, while the terrace heaved so drastically that a long crack split the marble and the stone, making an ugly scar down its length. She rode the tremor lightly, as a sailor rides a heaving deck, though she reached a dark hand to steady Kyros.

  “I have the authority—there is no doubt of that. When I volunteered for this duty, Anders told me....” Her voice wavered away, as she thought deeply. Then she spoke again. “Kyros, I have the power to transfer you to my own time and place. It is so different from this—so utterly divided by intervening history and social evolution that it might well dismay you. Even send you into madness. Yet if you could survive that stress, there are valuable things that you might bring back into your race. The discipline that you exhibit—and that you were able to instill into your adherents—is all but lost to the world of the future. Will you come with me?”