“Mother?” It was Naomi, breathless but somehow more adult in tone than when I had seen her last. “I have some absolutely wonderful news. I’m going to be married!”
“Married. To –”
I found it hard to get the words out. The Blessed Jasper was father to a tenth of the children in the Blessed Order, but he had not married for 40 years.
“To the Blessed Jasper?” I said at last.
“No! Of course not, silly.” Naomi’s laugh, young and carefree, grabbed my heart. “Mother, I’m going to marry Elder Walker. Aren’t you going to congratulate us?”
No 90-year-old Jasper. Instead, rugged and ageless Cyrus Walker, with his bald head, barrel chest, and sly, grey eyes. The heir apparent to the leadership of the Blessed Order had chosen my daughter – my not-yet-14 daughter – to be his wife. She would join the three cowed, abject women already married to him. My work had not saved her. It came too late.
“Mother?” said Naomi. When I still could not speak, Elder Walker’s voice came on the line. “Of course, we hope you will be here for the wedding. You will come, won’t you?”
It was more a command than a question. Elder Walker was used to commanding.
“Ah – uh – of course, I’ll – when – when will the wedding be?” I still had hope. Elder Walker, whose sexual appetite had been whispered about by the women since I was a small child, would surely be one of the men taking the newest drug that I had provided. A couple more months . . .
“Oh, don’t worry, there’s plenty of time for you to get here. The ceremony won’t be until Saturday.”
“Which Saturday?”
“The next one. July 3.”
Today was Monday. Five days from now.
“Too soon,” I said, and then, to cover my mistake. “I mean, it will be hard for me to get away from the lab at such short notice. Is there anyway it could be later – even a few weeks?”
“The arrangements have all been made. They can’t be changed.” Elder Walker’s voice left no room for negotiation. “Tell people at the university that it’s your daughter’s wedding. They will understand.”
“May I speak again to Naomi?”
“You can speak to her tomorrow. Then you’ll know what day and time you’ll be getting here, and we’ll see how you fit into the ceremony. Naomi would like you to be part of it. See you in a few days.”
I heard a click and was left with a dead line. In a few days I might be dead, too. I knew I would go to Bryceville – I had to, to talk Naomi out of it, plead with Elder Walker to wait, ask for an audience with the Blessed Jasper. Hopeless, but I had to try everything.
And I would go to Bryceville with memories of my own subversive work against the Blessed Order intact. The selective-memory suppression drug I had used on my last visit required a careful protocol and weeks of preparation.
What were the chances that I would be interrogated again during my visit? I would have to take the chance. I told myself, it had been only three months and after all I was there for a wedding, not a research review.
I felt a powerful urge to drop everything and head at once to Bryceville. The sooner I knew the worst – all the worst – the better. A night, long and sleepless, and a brief conversation with Naomi the next morning, convinced me otherwise. I worked the next three days in the lab, pausing only for meals and brief naps and never leaving the building.
At two o’clock on Friday morning I returned to my apartment, showered for the first time in four days, and set the alarm for eight.
At nine o’clock I did something I had done only twice before in my life. I rented a car. I took it to the university, picked up a package from the lab, and eliminated a group of files from my computer, overwriting the storage areas so there was no possibility of reconstruction. Then, instead of taking the usual bus to Bryceville, I drove. On dusty roads, through sheer-sided red canyons and across stark desert scenery, the car’s air conditioning fought the summer heat while I, shivering and sweating by turns, worried about Naomi and what was going to happen the next day. The more I thought about Cyrus Walker, the more Naomi’s fate seemed worse than mine. I had lost my virginity to the Blessed Jasper; she would lose her whole life when she became Elder Walker’s fourth wife.
A mile and a half before I came to the outskirts of Bryceville I left the highway and parked the car in a little arroyo. It would be in trouble there in the event of a flash flood, but it was well out of sight of anyone on the road. I took a knapsack out of the trunk. That was my usual luggage when I went home for visits. Then I hesitated.
Should I take the other thing, too? If I didn’t, I might have no chance to come back for it. The cylinder would fit in my knapsack, but suppose that were to be searched? It never had been, so far as I knew. All it usually held were toilet articles, a couple of changes of clothing, and some small gift for Naomi. I had never checked closely to see if anything had been removed and returned.
I looked at my watch. In 15 minutes the Escalante bus was scheduled to pass by this part of the highway. I had to be on it. I finally decided to leave the cylinder behind in the locked trunk of the car, and hurried back out of the arroyo.
I had cut it close. The bus was no more than a mile away, its outline shimmering in the heat, when I reached the road. I stood by the roadside and waved, and it wheezed to a halt.
“Bryceville,” I said, as I climbed on board. “How much do I owe?”
“Not worth charging you.” The driver, a towheaded man in his early 20s, nodded toward the road ahead. “We’re almost there, you could have walked it in half an hour. But I guess it’s a bit hot for that.”
“Hot, and dusty,” I said, and went to sit down. I was glad to see that only half a dozen other people were on the bus, and none of them had the dress typical of members of the Blessed Order.
The bus dropped me off in the usual place near the edge of town. It was just after one o’clock, so all the children were in school and no mothers were waiting. In fact, no one at all was on the street. My precaution in arriving by bus felt like a waste of time as I walked slowly toward Elder Walker’s house, in its favoured position next to the Patriarch’s tall lodge.
Why there, and not to my mother’s house, where Naomi lived? I think I wanted to know the worst as soon as possible. I approached the door of scrubbed white oak, and gently knocked. After a few seconds it was opened – by Naomi.
“Mother!” She sounded delighted and she looked wonderful, cheerful and radiant and more free of worry than I have ever been. “I didn’t think you would arrive so early.”
“You’re living here,” I said. Too late.
“No, I’m not. I came this morning to help with the arrangements – it’s going to be a huge ceremony. Cyrus isn’t here, he’ll be back in a few minutes. But the Patriarch is. Come in and see him.”
I would rather spend time with the Devil. But I stepped into the familiar broad hall flanked with Anasazi relics and followed Naomi to the rear of the house.
She led me not to the big living room where Elder Walker had gazed out of the window at the rolling tumbleweed, but to a little, dim-lit den. I had to wait for my eyes to adjust before I could see the Patriarch sitting in an armchair.
At once, I knew what Naomi apparently did not. I was looking at a man close to death. He was small and shrivelled, a doll figure dwarfed by the massive chair. The skin of his bald head was like a jaundiced saffron egg, marked by prominent dark veins. His mouth was open, a dark toothless cavern, and his yellowed eyes stared at nothing. When they did not move as I stepped closer, I knew that he was blind.
After the Patriarch, what? The inner circle would never be open to me, or to any woman, but it was not hard to guess its decision. When the Blessed Jasper died, Elder Walker would become the Patriarch.
Looking again at Naomi, I realized that I had been wrong. She knew – knew that Jasper had little time to live, knew that tomorrow she would marry a man destined for supreme power within the Order. That sounded wonderful to her
– but what about the life she would lead afterwards, as a fourth and lowest wife? At 13, no one thinks of the long-term future.
“Can we go home soon?” I said. “I want to see your grandmother, and I would like to spend some time with you before the wedding.”
“That might be difficult.” She gave me the rapid, side-of-eye glance that I had seen her use on older men. “Cyrus said we’d be very busy today and it would be better for me to stay at this house tonight.” She added, her chin pushed a little forward, “It will all be very proper and respectable. Two of Cyrus’s brothers and two of his sisters will be here.”
“Naomi, we need to talk.”
“We’ll have plenty of time for that – after the wedding.” She turned at the sound of the door opening back along the hall, and said importantly, “I think that must be Cyrus. I must make sure that things are ready for him.”
She hurried away. I took another look at the Patriarch. He lolled in his chair just as he had when I arrived, apparently seeing and hearing nothing.
That seemed to be confirmed when Elder Walker breezed in. He ignored the Blessed Jasper and came straight across to me.
“Excellent, excellent.” He clapped his meaty hands together. “You are early, and we need all the help we can get. Rachel, I want you to go down to the main meeting hall and tell Belinda Lee that the table arrangements for the meal have to be changed. Tell her that the Blessed Jasper” – the skeletal figure made no movement at the sound of his name – “must be seated alone at a special dais, and he should not be served a meal.”
“Naomi,” I began. “I’d like to meet with her and –”
“Tomorrow. Far too busy today, all of us.” He took my arm and led me back towards the front door. “Lots of time for the pair of you to talk tomorrow. Off you go and help Belinda. And you won’t need that just now.” He took my knapsack from my hand and hefted it speculatively. “We’ll get it to you later.”
I went cold, recalling how close I had come to bringing the cylinder. I said not a word, but as he ushered me into the street he spoke again. “One other thing, Rachel. The questioning regarding the progress of your work. We’ll put that off until after the wedding. We’ll do it on Sunday, all right? Hurry along now.”
He closed the door before I could reply. Instead of hurrying I leaned my back against the sturdy wall of the house and closed my eyes. I was unprepared, and interrogation on Sunday would doom me. All the way from St George I had wondered what I should do – what I could do, what I dared to do. Now, I had no choice.
Sometimes I wonder where I came from. That feeling is never stronger than when I have spent a few hours with my mother. She was thinner than ever and very frail, but she was enormously cheerful. She asked me about my work, and after a couple of minutes of simplified description she nodded and said, “A wonderful marriage, it will be. As I’ve told Naomi, she is very lucky. Everyone expects that Cyrus Walker will become –”
She paused, reluctant to voice the unspeakable. Cyrus Walker will become the new Patriarch when the Blessed Jasper dies.
“Mother, Elder Walker is an old man, at least 60, and he has three wives already.”
“Do you think that Naomi minds that? Rachel, don’t you ever even look at your own daughter? Naomi is happy as can be, every move she makes says that. She wants to marry Cyrus.”
“But she’s only 13. She’s a child.”
She stared at me. “You had Naomi at 14. I had you at 14.”
“But that doesn’t mean it was right. To spend your whole life bearing children, until you are too old or too sick or die doing it.”
She stood up, and she was trembling. “Rachel Stafford, I don’t want to hear one more word. I didn’t bring a child of mine into the world so that she could spout blasphemy. I didn’t raise you that way, and I didn’t raise Naomi that way, either. It’s that godless college you work at, and that godless work you do. I should never have let you go. I’m going to lie down.”
No use reminding her that she had had no say in the matter. My future had been decided by Elder Walker and the Council. Mother had been a nonentity, as I would also be a nonentity except that my continued presence at the university was both useful and lucrative for the Blessed Order.
At eight o’clock my knapsack was dropped off at the house by a teenage girl whom I did not recall meeting before.
“I’m a friend of Naomi,” she said. She stared at me curiously, and I wondered what tales were told in Bryceville of the strange visitor who was Naomi Stafford’s mother. After she had gone I looked inside the knapsack and found that the contents were not arranged as I had packed them.
By 10 o’clock it was fully dark. I waited another hour until my mother, who after our first disagreement had said no more than a few words to me all evening, was in bed and soundly asleep. Then I slipped out. The street was quiet and empty. Unless something had changed in the past few months, the summer curfew in Bryceville would last until five in the morning.
I moved slowly and tried to stay in the shadow of buildings until I was safely out of the town centre. I had no flashlight with me – a failure of planning on my part – but the Moon was only a few days past full and there were no clouds. Even so, the world looked different enough at night that I was not sure I had the right arroyo until I actually saw the car.
The cylinder weighed about 10 pounds. With more time in the lab I could have cut that down considerably, but everything had been done in a blazing hurry. I tucked the smooth, grey shape under my arm and started back.
It was after midnight when I reached the outskirts of Bryceville. In the past two hours clouds had moved in from the west to hide the Moon. The weather was changing. I sneaked again through the dark streets, knowing that the hard part lay ahead of me.
That effort could not begin until morning. I tiptoed upstairs and lay down in the same bed where I had slept as a child. Amazingly, I slept like a child. Or perhaps not so amazingly. The mind can push a long way, but at some point the body asserts it own demands.
Summer rain in Bryceville was a rare treat. The wet morning faces that I passed on the streets all seemed to be smiling. People who recognized me paused to congratulate me. I forced a smile of my own, held my knapsack tightly under my raincoat, and hurried on.
The ceremony would be held in the town meeting hall at 11:30, followed at once by the reception in the same building. As I had expected, Belinda Lee was already there, worrying over final arrangements. She did not question my presence. Elder Walker had assigned me to help her yesterday, he must have done the same today.
I went to the rear of the hall to put down my knapsack and hang up my raincoat. Walking to the arroyo and back I had thought about the layout of the meeting hall and wondered where to put the fat, grey cylinder. It had to be hidden, but it also had to be accessible to me during or just before the ceremony.
Belinda Lee, thank God, was a worrier who liked everything planned and perfect to the last detail. She was not at all surprised when I appeared to have the same attitude.
“Right here,” she said, leading me to the third long bench. “You’ll enter with Naomi, then you leave her at the front and come and sit down at the aisle end for the whole ceremony.”
“I just want to run through it once to make sure,” I said.
Belinda’s vague nod said, all right, but I’ve got other things to do. Women were arriving with home-cooked food, which had to be placed ready for serving after the wedding. She took no notice of me when I sat down on the bench and leaned forward to peer beneath it. The solid wooden back ran all the way to the floor, and there was a good foot of open space below the seat.
I went back along the aisle, picked up my knapsack, and walked slowly forward leading an imagined Naomi on my arm. As the dais I paused respectfully with head inclined, then turned and went to sit at the end of the bench. I slipped my knapsack underneath and bent down as though it would not easily fit. The fat, grey cylinder had to come out. I eased it free, pushed it back a li
ttle farther, and used the empty knapsack to hide it completely from sight. Leaning far forward, I could still reach its black valve.
Two other young women, strangers to me, were at the front of the hall now. I went forward.
“I’m Naomi’s mother. Elder Walker sent me to help. It smells awful musty in here, and with the rain we don’t want to open the windows. Do you have anything to make it smell nicer?”
Female members of the Blessed Order do not question male authority, even when it comes secondhand. “We’ve got disinfectant,” one of them said. “But it doesn’t smell all that good.”
“How about rosewater?” the second one asked. “We’ve got plenty of that. Wouldn’t it be better?”
“It would be perfect,” I said. “Bring me all you can find. And the disinfectant, too.”
They looked a little doubtful as they went off. With reason. Ammonia and rosewater provide an aroma like nothing you can imagine. By 9:30 the front part of the hall had its own unique smell; neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but enough to make people sniff and look puzzled when they came in. I left, highly nervous about what I was leaving beneath the bench, and made my way through the rain to Elder Walker’s house.
If I had ever imagined that I was a key player in preparations for the wedding ceremony, the illusion ended with my arrival at the house. I was hardly noticed. Elder Walker had already departed, sequestered with the rest of the Council, but half a dozen older women had been there since early morning. Naomi’s attention was all on her appearance. The Order held that elaborate dress and undue attention to person was sinful, but no one seemed to have told my daughter. She was fretting about her puffy face, her imagined double chin, and the state of her complexion. And what would happen to her dress and her hair when she had to walk in the rain? I told her – truthfully – that she looked radiant and absolutely gorgeous. The idea of Cyrus Walker forcing himself onto and into that soft young body made me want to vomit.
All unions of the Blessed Order are said to be fore-ordained by Heaven. Today the weather seemed to support that. At 11:15, just as we prepared to walk over to the meeting hall, the rain stopped and the sun emerged.
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