Mouche heaved a huge sigh and gave up the effort at grief supremacy. "You're righ'," he announced. "Likely he didn' wan oo hur ny 'eelings ... "
"And you're nobody's bad luck," insisted Ornery.
Mouche nodded and forgot himself enough to try to smile, more because of Ornery's good intentions than at his interpretation of the facts. If good fortune had come to his family, it had happened only after he, Mouche, was gone away. If that wasn't bad luck, what was it? Almost as though he hadn't belonged there. And if not, where did he belong? Was it possible he had been brought here, well, at least to House Genevois, for a purpose? By fate? Now there was a large thought.
When they had finished eating, Mouche still ruminating on fatefulness, the gardener took a look at Mouche's face, then told him to do no more than he could comfortably do for the rest of the day. A barrow was laden with tools and they pushed it to a long arbor walk overgrown with fruit vines and edged with flowers, where things needed a general clipping and weeding and neatening up. Mouche had his own taste to guide him, which was considerable. Ornery had a shipman's love of order, for, as she told Mouche, disorder breeds death at sea, where a loop of rope or a tool left out of place can spell the difference between life and death.
Mouche found that concentrating on the work made the pain lessen. Between them they worked, both sensibly and conscientiously enough to feel a sense of satisfaction in late evening when the gardener finally came to see what they'd accomplished. The man nodded once or twice as in pleased surprise, then patted their shoulders as he took them back to his own house to give them a plentiful supper.
"Well, now, I'd have said you were both useless as tits on a boar, but you've proved me wrong," the old man said when he had filled Ornery's stew bowl and salad bowl and laid out a thick slab of cheese on a chunk of brown bread wrenched from the new loaf. After another long look at Mouche's face, he furnished him with a mug of broth and more chunks of the bread to be softened, he said, by dipping.
"What are you doing here, and how did it all happen?" he asked when he had them provided for.
Between mouthfuls, Ornery explained about the Timmys without once referring to them by name. "And Mouche told me his Madame says, people who don't exist, can't exist, not until this Questioner person goes away. And the Questioner person is to be staying here, in Mistress Mantelby's house.
"Par's I'm concerned, it's all a mistake, an' I got to get me back to the ship," said Ornery. "This Mantelby woman, she took me wrong, she did. I'm no supernumerary. I got to get back, or maybe I'll lose my place. An' I got to get word to my sister, too, or she'll fret herself sick over me."
" 'ould you sto' us?" Mouche asked the old man. "If we ran away?"
The old man poked the fire and snorted. "Well o' course I'd stop you. Old I may be, and not so spry, but I've still got good sense, as well as work that needs doing. Now, you stick around here, workin' away, stooped a little, maybe, so's you look older, with nice thick veils over your young faces and a good deal of manure rubbed in your hair and eyebrows, that one up at the house, she'll ignore you like you don't exist, just like she allus did them others that don't exist. That cut on you, thas good protection, too, for she doesn't pay attention to people that're hurt, or sick. But you run off, that steward, he'll report it because he's her nephew, and if he doesn't tell her everything, she'll put him out on the street, maybe blue-body him into the bargain. My, she loves disposin' o' nephews. So, he'll tell her if you run off, depend on it, and right then you'll go down in her bad book. She don't abide being crossed, so people don't stay in her bad book long. Right soon they just vanish, quick as you can say, oh, my gracious. Sometimes there's bones and sometimes there's not. And who you think she'll take to task for you leaving? Whose back will she stripe? Whose bones will she roast? Eh? Mine, that's whose."
He shook his head sadly and set a burning splinter to the pipe he had just filled with shreds of fragrant willowbark, then waved the smoking pipe about his head to drive away the midges. "No, sailor, I'll send letters for you, so your people won't worry, but you'll be smart to wear those old invisibles' robes and the thick veils. I scrounged 'em for you as uglification, just to keep you meek and safe from harm. I had the laundry boy wash 'em and stitch 'em together, to make them big enough. I figure anybody in those robes likely won't get seen anyhow, seein' as how we don't see those robes, if you take my meaning."
There was a good deal of sense in what he said, and though Ornery fretted over her shipboard position, the gardener assured her the Hags would set it right. It wouldn't make sense for men to lose their positions because of some emergency measure. Once everything was back to normal, it would be fixed.
It was weariness as much as anything else that made Ornery agree. They wrote their letters, one to Ornery's captain, one to Ornery's sister, and one from Mouche to Madame, then they went out through the dusk into a Timmy house where they curled up on Timmy mats under Timmy blankets. Ornery fell asleep while it was still light outside, though Mouche stayed longer awake, feeling with delicate fingertips the swollen flesh of his face and wondering what was to happen to him now.
In the cities and towns of Newholme, things went from greasy glasses and burned biscuits to filthy streets and food rotting in the fields before some kind of order began to emerge, or, if not order, at least a more amenable disorder. A kind of controlled chaos, as the Hags put it. A godawful mess, according to the Men of Business. Priority was given to food and fuel. Necessary things were getting done. Unnecessary ones, uncritical ones, were long delayed and might, in fact, not get done at all.
The Consort Houses held only staff and boy-children too young to work. There were no supernumeraries to be found anywhere on the streets, and it had even begun to dawn on a good many people that had the Timmys not been so ubiquitous all those generations, likely there would have been no such things as supernumes. The new order required a new economic basis, of course. The Timmys had worked without pay, though they had been provided with housing, clothing, and food. The new workers took up more space, ate more food and required more fabric for clothing, and some of them even demanded wages. The CMOB struggled with these matters while trying to pretend that things had always been this way.
At House Genevois, Madame sent a message to a certain one and awaited a visitation in her parlor, and when he arrived, she tried not to breathe as she told him his wards, his proteges, the Dutter boys, had been pressed into service.
"Who by?" He grunted.
"By Mistress Mantelby," she replied, keeping her voice carefully neutral.
The man across from her shook. For a moment she thought his spasms came from illness or distress, but then she realized he was laughing.
"Monstrous Marool has them? Oh, does she? What a joke! Oh, that's a rare one, that is. Well, Madame, all our agreements stand. I won't hold you responsible for their being pressed into service, not even if they come back in worse condition than when they left."
"You are kind," said Madame, with the least possible deference in her nod.
"Not at all," he said, departing. She sat for several moments after he left, breathing through her mouth, hearing his final words resonate, realizing at last that he had meant them literally. He was not at all kind. He would be incapable of kindness.
At the port outside Sendoph, a tall, blue-skinned protocol officer arrived on the Questioner's advance cutter to spend half an officious hour with the Men of Business and a day with the Hags, most of it in inspection of the Mantelby mansion. Mouche and Ornery were trimming lawn edges in the garden when they saw the blue one stalk through. The two had taken the gardener's advice and made themselves useful but inconspicuous, though Mouche did not believe for a moment that this strategy would save him from Bane's malice. The head gardener told them Bane had been installed as Mistress Mantelby's toy boy, and Dyre, too, had been taken up to the main house to enjoy himself.
"You'd think they were kin of hers, the way they act," the old man whispered over the evening meal. "Oh, I he
ar things, I do. All the servants up there at the house, they're talking about it. She's shameless, that one. She'll cosset him, or them, until they think they shit pure gold. She'll take them to bed with her, and she'll give them stuff to make them feel like lords of creation, and they'll play round games. Then one day they'll wake up in shackles in her playroom. I've seen it happen a hundred times ... "
" 'lay roon?" asked Mouche, apprehensively.
The old man shivered. "Call it a dungeon, you'd be closer on. Down in the old wine cellars. Playroom is what she calls it. There's machines in there, and sometimes when the machines are through, all that's left is grease."
"I don't understand," said Ornery.
Mouche did understand, all too well. He whispered to Ornery of the picture at House Genevois.
Ornery turned back to the old man. "You've seen it a hundred times, gardener? Truly?"
The old man shrugged and pursed his lips. "Well, no, boys, not strictly, no. That's liar's license, that is, to make the story ring right. I'd say she does for at least three or four men a year, most of 'em Consorts, but some just plain folk, like a footman at table she takes a dislike to or some cook that spoils the roast. And nephews, o' course. She loves disposin' of nephews."
"Why does she do it?" breathed Ornery.
Madame had explained psychotic sadism to her students, but Mouche could not yet speak without considerable pain, so he made no attempt to pass that information on. Madame had said some people were made that way, and they did it out of vengeance, and some were born that way, and they did it because hurting and killing made them feel powerful. Either way, there was no cure for it, for each act led to the next with no way to retreat.
"Whatever reason Mistress Mantelby is like she is, you keep tight to what I told you," said the old man. "I'm trusting you to keep out of the way and be silent. Just like those things we used to have that never existed. You understand?"
By the time the Questioner and her entourage arrived, affairs at Marool Mantelby's mansion were as calm and usual as it was possible to make them. The only change for the household was that Bane and Dyre were to be housed in a suite at the far end of the servants' quarters during the Questioner's stay, because of the stink. So the old gardener said. For that reason and others, everyone was more or less holding their breaths until the visitation was over. It wouldn't be long. So everyone had been told.
37—An Intimate Disclosure
On the evening the Questioner arrived ornery asked the gardener if they might make use of the washhouse in the compound, and he gave his permission, so long as it was after everyone else had gone to bed, provided they were stingy with the firewood in the boiler and mopped up after themselves. The stone-floored little building was near the wood stove and the pump and was furnished with wooden tubs of various sizes. Ornery took herself and her clothing inside, locked the door, lit the boiler, and heated a good quantity of water.
Mouche, however, on learning that Ornery had gone to commit an act of cleanliness, stopped scratching himself and decided it was long past time for himself to have a bath also, to rid him of vermin if nothing else, so he went along to the room, jiggled the latch, and walked into the place. She was standing in the tub, washing her hair. She was Ornery, no doubt of that, but she was also unmistakably female.
Ornery seized up a towel and covered all pertinent parts while stammering a long exposition of how she had been turned into a chatron as a boy. Mouche smiled as politely as his wound would allow. His studies at Madame's had exposed him to women's bodies in all varieties of age and inclination; he had seen chatrons and hermaphrodites as well, and he knew Ornery was physiologically a girl and he said so, intelligibly.
Ornery protested.
Mouche shook his head, bewildered. He knew Ornery was a girl, and moreover, he knew she had a body that was sleek and lovely. He liked the looks of her very much, though he felt no desire toward her. He had been trained not to feel desire until and unless desire was wanted, and, if he had thought about it, he would have realized that he had felt no spontaneous desire since he first saw Flowing Green.
By this time he was able to speak with reasonable clarity, though with some pain and effort. "That may have worked on a ship where, I suppose, you kept yourself covered and where few of the men had seen a woman in their entire lives, but it won't work with me. Why don't you just finish your hair and tell me what's going on?"
"Don't touch me," demanded Ornery.
"Of course not," said Mouche, annoyed. "What do you think I am?"
"You're not fixed," Ornery stuttered, reaching for her clothes. "And neither am I."
Which was perfectly true, of course. Mouche wasn't fixed. He wouldn't be until he was sold. And of course he would not force himself on Ornery, because if Ornery—the female Ornery—got pregnant, she could be executed for mismothering, and Mouche was not the kind of person to endanger another in that way. So Mouche told himself, illustrating his goodwill by leaving the room with the utmost dignity and closing the door gently behind him.
Ornery checked the door. The lock was broken. It seemed to lock, but in fact it did not. So, all right, he hadn't picked the lock in order to get at her. With some apprehension, she went back to the room they shared, where Mouche attempted once again to explain that he was both honorable and harmless and that Ornery did not need to worry. His friendly overtures were rebuffed. Further, Ornery adopted a new manner toward him, one of nervous shyness, like a young cat only recently made aware of dogs. Her native gregariousness had led them into a friendly and trusting camaraderie, but now her sense of prudence dictated otherwise. Suddenly, she became suspicious and almost preternaturally alert.
Mouche, in turn, could not decide whether he was annoyed with her or not. Given the high status of women on Newholme and the very low status of supernumes—even ones who got jobs as seamen—he could not quite envision a circumstance which would have led him, had he been female, to pretend otherwise. He would very much have liked to discuss it with Ornery, but she was not of a mood, as yet, for any discussion at all.
38—The Questioner Arrives
Questioner arrived without fanfare. Her shuttle set down near Sendoph late at night. Though Questioner had intended to enter the planetary system from the side nearest the moon where the Quaggi had died, the immediacy of the geological problems on the planet had made her change her mind. The Quaggi would wait. She could stop at the outer planet on her way out.
By morning she was ensconced at Mantelby Mansion, her maintenance system unloaded and ready, her reference files properly arranged, Ellin and Bao settled, and the rest of her varied entourage provided with rooms of their own, along with a separate dining salon. The entourage had caused quite a stir. Of the eight persons attached to Questioner, in addition to Ellin and Bao, no two looked anything alike, and some of them looked only remotely mankindly. The peepers from the walls had seen this with a good deal of interest, and had immediately sent messengers off with descriptions of each one of the eight.
By breakfast, Questioner had her people taking scanner views of every street from Naibah south, and inventorying all businesses, agricultural enterprises, and the like, from Sendoph north. The work could have been done automatically, by miniature spy-eyes, but Questioner did not advise her so-called aides of this. The opportunity to be rid of them for some days, if she was lucky, was too good to miss.
Within the hour, Ellin Voy and Gandro Bao were on their way to the Panhagion in a carriage borrowed from the Mantelby stables while another, larger carriage was being modified to carry the Questioner. The ride was neither long nor uncomfortable, and Ellin considerably enjoyed the amusement of seeing Bao dressed as a woman. Questioner had approved his doing so, since he would otherwise have to wear veils and his efficiency would be impaired. Ellin had to admit that, within a few moments, she thought of him as a woman, for he acted and looked exactly as a rather grave, pleasant, youngish woman might. He had, so he said, learned women's ways and women's wiles over years of st
udy with a Kabuki master of the genre.
Among all these pleasurable details, Ellin could not understand her uneasiness. There was something in the atmosphere of the place, the city, or perhaps the planet, that made her feel queasy. A melancholy in the air. A sadness. A late-autumn, leaf-burning, chill-wind-blowing, inexorable-lifeloss-coming kind of feeling. She felt it like a ghostly hand on her shoulder, and it made no sense at all.
"Do you feel it?" she whispered to Bao, her eyes on the back of the veiled coachman.
Bao stared out at the world, looked up at the sky, across the valley at the long shredded lines of smoke trailing away to the south. "Something," he admitted in his woman's voice. "The hairs on my neck are standing on end."
When they left the carriage at the foot of the Temple stairs, Ellin stopped a young woman and introduced herself, asking to be taken to someone in charge. She and Bao were escorted into the forecourt of the Temple, where they watched as women placed lighted incense sticks in great sand-filled basins on iron tripods. Smoke rose from hundreds of glowing wands to fill the vault with haze that was lit by vagrant rays of light from high, gem-colored windows. Seen from below, the smoke shone in fragments of ruby and emerald, sapphire, amethyst, and amber, a shifting glory against the gold mosaic tiles of the ceiling.
"It is only the imperfection in the atmosphere that allows us to see the light," said a voice at their shoulders. "So with us, only our own imperfections allowing us to see what perfection might be."
The person addressing them was tall and thin and brown, dressed in a crimson, long-sleeved garment topped by a complicated headdress of striped wine and flame. "I am D'Jevier Passenger," she said. "One of the Temple Hags."
"Madam," Ellin bowed. "My name is Ellin Voy and this is ... Gandra Bao. We are uncertain as to the respectful form of address ... "
"Ma'am will do," said D'Jevier. "Or, you may call me simply Hag or Oh, Hag, or Revered Hag, though I doubt the latter is always sincere. I am your servant, Ma'am, and that of the Hagions."
Tepper,Sheri - Six Moon Dance Page 25