The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  “She can’t do it,” said King Delldon Mallard Smith the 2nd. “I don’t believe she can do it!”

  “She’s done it,” answered Lincoln Parradyne.

  “She’s got no right!”

  “On the contrary, Your Majesty-she has every right. Or, to be more accurate, Brightwater Kingdom has every right.”

  “There has always been the comset network on Ozark, Lincoln Parradyne. From the very . . . uh . . . first. The comsets supply our news. They carry our messages. They provide our education and our entertainment. They are everything that on Old Earth had to be done by a mail service, and a telephone service, and a television service, and a radio service, and a-”

  “Your Majesty,” interrupted the Magician of Rank, “I am familiar with the history of Earth. And I assure you that the comsets have done far more than all the services and media of that misbegotten planet combined. We will be greatly inconvenienced without them.”

  “Then-”

  “But, Your Highness, Responsible of Brightwater is as much within her rights to restrict the range of the comsets to the Kingdom of Brightwater as she would be to keep its buildings there, or its Mule herds there, or anything else that belongs to it. Brightwater provided the comset service to the Confederation, not to the Kingdoms-and the Confederation is no more.”

  The King pulled at his lower lip, and blew out a long breath. “You didn’t mention this point to me before the Jubilee,” he said accusingly.

  “On the contrary again, Your Majesty. I did.”

  “I remember no such thing.”

  “He did,” put in the Queen. “I was there at the time, and for sure he did. You laughed at him. You said he was talking nonsense. You told him not to bother you with stories meant to scare tadlings, when you had important business to discuss. I remember most distinctly.”

  “Well, whatever happened-not that I’m admitting it, you . . . uh . . . understand, I tell you nobody mentioned it to me!-but isn’t there a law? Can’t she be stopped?”

  Lincoln Parradyne raised his eyebrows.

  “Your Majesty,” he protested, “the comset stations, and the equipment, and all the transmitters and relays, all those things, are the property of Castle Brightwater. The reply that was given to me yesterday by Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater-saying that to continue comset transmission would be an act of interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign Kingdoms-was absolutely right. Not to mention the expense, of course.”

  “Even if the sovereign Kingdoms desire to be interfered with?” demanded Delldon Mallard, ignoring the part about expense. “In that one way only, of course.”

  “Really, Your Majesty!” said Lincoln Parradyne. “Think what you are saying. Either we are independent, or we are not.”

  “Perhaps,” ventured the King, “Responsible of Brightwater has a price.”

  “I doubt that,” said Marygold flatly.

  “Even if she did-where would you get that price? You have not yet established a Royal Treasury, and it’s not because I haven’t reminded you.”

  The point was a sore one with the King, who’d been putting off by every means possible the inevitable moment when he would have to inform his subjects of the new realities of taxation, and explain to them just what services they would be receiving from him in return for their funds. He did not have that worked out to his satisfaction as yet, and he was not so thick-headed that he did not realize it might take some fancy talking to bring it off. Taxes in the past had gone to Brightwater, and the services provided had been both obvious and welcome; things would be different now.

  “Lincoln Parradyne?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “How about our building . . . uh . . . our own comset rig? It’s not secret how it’s done, is it?”

  “No, it’s not secret. It was part of the information brought along when we landed here; it’s available to anybody.”

  “Then let’s do it!” It seemed very obvious to the King.

  “All of the Kingdoms,” said the Magician of Rank, “now that the Confederation has finally been dissolved, will have to consider that option. They might each build their own networks . . . they might go back to sending information by riders on Muleback . . . they might take up some of the devices of Earth. But it will take some time, Your Majesty. The decision must be made in each case, separately. The funds must be found. The necessary technicians must be found, or hired from elsewhere. A communication network requires experts, and money, and time.”

  “Do we have the people we need, here in this Kingdom?” asked Queen Marygold practically. “Seems to me that’s the first question.

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Then where do you reckon-”

  “Marygold of Purdy!” said the King. “I have asked you, now that you are a Queen, to be more careful of your speech. If the Magicians of Rank can manage to talk without sounding like Grannys, surely you can do the same!”

  Lincoln Parradyne forbore to mention the pitiful weakness of that argument, and answered his Queen directly.

  “Madam,” he said respectfully, “so far as I know they are all to be found on Marktwain-in Brightwater.”

  “Curse that female!” shouted the King of Smith. “Curse her!”

  “Delldon, you have no way of knowing that Responsible of Brightwater is the one that ordered the comsets cut back,” said his Queen. “It was Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater that spoke to Lincoln Parradyne when you sent him inquiring, not that girl.”

  The King sputtered helplessly about the ignorance of women, and his Magician of Rank moved to smooth the waters.

  “I am much afraid, my dear Queen,” he said, “that the King is correct. Whoever may speak for Brightwater, it is Responsible that holds the reins of power.”

  “That’s very odd,” commented Marygold of Purdy. “I don’t understand it at all, and I don’t see it as proper or fitting. How can a girl of fifteen be running a whole Kingdom?”

  While Delldon Mallard was explaining that it wasn’t that way at all, it was just that as was entirely suitable the Family at Brightwater saw fit to leave a lot of trivial detail work to the elder daughter, in the same way that he and Marygold left such stuff to Dorothy of Smith, the Magician of Rank mulled over the question. Not for the first, nor yet for the thousandth time. If he had the answer to that question, he would have the secret to all the mysteries. But seeing as how he didn’t have, and no number of Formalisms & Transformations tried by him or any of the other Magicians of Rank would yield it up, there was little point in fretting over it. And so he smiled and spread his hands to indicate that he was as puzzled by it all as Marygold was.

  “There is always a Responsible-though not always of Brightwater,” mused the Queen, leaning her chin on her hand. “And there always has been, so far as I know . . . and always she has had some special place. And yet she is not a Granny, and not a Magician, and not a Magician of Rank. . . And if you try to talk about it when you’re little, the Grannys tell you it’s not polite and shush you right up.” She stared up at the ceiling, high above her head, and concluded: “I wonder how it works?”

  “On Earth,” grumbled the King, “people did not understand science-and we know . . . uh . . . where that led. Here, we do not understand magic. And who’s to say it won’t lead to the same place?”

  Lincoln Parradyne Smith was taken aback; it was a very perceptive thing to say, and sounded as odd in his sovereign’s mouth as a bray would have. He hadn’t thought the man had it in him.

  “Nicely put, Sire,” he said with great formality, bowing low. “Nicely put.”

  Chapter 15

  Silverweb of McDaniels found her refuge, finally, high up in the Castle, at the end of a tiny passage down which two people couldn’t have walked side by side. It was a room smaller than the one in which the Castle linens were stored, but it was big enough for her purpose and clearly not wanted by anybody else; the dust and the cobwebs lay thick enough to show that it got no attention but the yearly spri
ng cleaning, and the one window was so dirty that she could see nothing through it but a weak and murky light even at high noon.

  She began by throwing out everything that was in the small space, carrying what was worth saving into the Castle attics-a simple task, since they opened on the passage, and there was no lugging up and down stairs to be done-and putting all the rest down the garbage chute or, the floor below. There wasn’t much to dispose of. A narrow bedstead with neither spring nor mattress nor hangings, not even a straw tick; a wardrobe that couldn’t of held more than a half dozen garments, with a tarnished mirror on its single door that gave her back a crazed wavery image of herself; one low rocker, in need of polish but worth keeping; a threadbare rug the size of a bath towel and rank with mildew; and a pair of curtains that fell apart in her hands when she touched them-how long they had hung there she didn’t know, but it had to of been many years.

  When the room was empty she put on one of the coveralls the servingmaids used for heavy cleaning, and wrapped a kerchief round her hair. She scrubbed the floors first, till the boards had a soft gray gloss and were satiny to the hand; they had never been varnished. She scoured the walls and ceiling, stripping away from the wall where the bed had been an ancient paper that might of been roses once upon a time. And when she had the wood bare, broad boards vertical up the walls and then crossing the low ceiling, she rubbed into it a sweet oil made from the crushed fruit of a desert bush. It took days, but when she had it done the room had a faint delicate odor that was nothing you could put a name to; she liked it because it made her think of early morning, or high grasses after a soaking rain. The doors and moldings, inside and out, got the same treatment, and it was thorough. Silverweb was as strong as any average man her own age, and she put her sturdy muscles to good use with the rags and oil.

  There was the window. She made it clean, till the old glass sparkled with an almost imperceptible tint of yellow, and looked out. If she looked down she could see all the way to the coast, and even make out the white curl of low breakers against the sand. But looking out, she saw only the Holy One’s bright clear sky, and that was as she wished it to be. Trees, rooftops, mountains-any of those would have been a distraction, and Silverweb wanted no distractions.

  Then came the very last thing. She worked on a table in the attics, finding her materials in broken vases and cracked or chipped glass things of all kinds. There were punchbowls there, and oval plates with nests for stuffed eggs, pitchers meant to hold tea for twenty or more, great glass trays for passing sandwiches, and as in any good Ozark household there was a bin of glass shards and chips kept for the principle of thrift and because the tadlings liked to use them for playing house. The leading was the only thing she lacked, and she found it easily enough in the town.

  She cut and fit the pieces carefully, measuring and remeasuring, checking after each added bit to be certain there was no mistake; and when she was through she was flushed with pleasure. For her labors she had a pane of glass that fit into her single window, formed of every shade of yellow, from the palest lemon to a deep color that almost lapsed into orange. She set it firmly into the window frame, over the old glass, and made it secure, and she had perfection. In the early morning and all through the day till midafternoon the air in the room was golden, glorious yellow; then as the sun grew lower it took on a paler tint, the light of afternoons in winter when the lamps are on but the curtains are still open. Still a golden light, though it lacked the splendor of the morning.

  “It is my place,” she said when everything was ready and she stood looking round her. “My place.” Her brothers would not think to come here, nor be interested if they did. There was nothing here for them.

  Grateful, overwhelmed at the mercy the room offered her, Silverweb of McDaniels dropped to her knees on the bare gray-white floor, raised her eyes to the flood of golden light, and folded her hands-not in the prim steepling of the Reverend and the Grannys and the Solemn Service, but clasped together and round one another as if something beyond price were sheltering inside them.

  Her lips moved, but she made no sound; the words were not intended for any human ear.

  Holy One,

  Hail and all hail!

  Hosannah!

  Hosannah, glory in the highest!

  Allelulia!

  Amen.

  The prayer moved through her; as it was repeated again and again it was no longer Silverweb praying the words, but the words praying her. Love unbearable caught her up and surged in her, a touch that carried bliss for which no words would ever be adequate, and she became a part of the golden light. She was a crystal that rang to the touch of a Thing unseen but more real than the floor under her knees, a crystal burning in a constant fire that would one day-the Holy One grant her that grace!-burn away every last flaw and let the light pour through her as it poured through her window. And she, Silverweb, would disappear.

  Oh, the flesh of her might move around, it would carry her through days and speak the necessary phrases and lie in a foolish bed at night and put food and drink into its mouth-but she, the real Silverweb of McDaniels, would not be there. She would be caught unto the One and radiating the glory of the universe; that would be her privilege and her life.

  Soon there was only the one word left, and even her lips ceased to move. Looking at her, you might have thought she was not breathing, but she was. Her breath was the Allelulia! and all the rhythms of her blood and breath had set themselves to its measure, and she was aware of nothing else.

  Anne of Brightwater knew that her daughter was occupied deeply by some project. Every day Silverweb ate breakfast with her family at Castle McDaniels, did the chores set her with her usual serene efficiency, reappeared again at supper-rarely at the noon dinner, but always at supper-read with them in the evenings, or sang for them in the clear strong voice that was the backbone of the Reverend’s choir. Whatever was asked of her she did willingly, while the eight brothers tried in vain to shake her calm and she smiled at them. She would peel pan after pan of vegetables: given a basket, she’d go off and gather fruit or nuts; she would milk goats and bring the pails back brimming, not a drop spilled; hand the girl a pile of the most boring sort of stuff to mend-her brothers’ stockings, or the heavy linen napkins and pillowslips-Silverweb took up her needle, found a chair, and shortly the work was done. She complained never, argued rarely, and spoke only when she was spoken to.

  It was unnatural, and Anne knew it. No healthy young woman of sixteen, soon to be seventeen, behaved like that. She should have fussed, the way chores had been loaded on her in the last few weeks, testing for some response; she should of been complaining bitterly-and with justification. The Castle had servingmaids in abundance, and Silverweb had a mind glittering in its brilliance, a mind that had terrified the Grannys and impressed whatever crevice it was in the computers that set her lessons and graded them once she outgrew Granny School. Silverweb had finished every course offered, before her twelfth birthday; and someone-a human someone-had come to apologize. They were extremely sorry, he told Anne of Brightwater and Silverweb’s father, Stewart Crain McDaniels the 6th, but there was nothing left to teach the girl.

  “Youall could of course bring in a human teacher,” the man had said, hesitantly, almost as if there were something impolite in the suggestion. “There are specialists that know many things we’ve never seen any need to include in the programs. . :”

  Stewart Crain had been firm in his response; Silverweb knew far too much already to suit him. A young woman that’d turned down four young men he’d offered her for husband, one after another, with the same fool reason-she didn’t “choose” to marry? A young woman that’d run away from home to try to join Responsible of Brightwater on her Quest, and had to be sent clear to Castle Airy for the three Grannys there to punish? He’d not have her taught more things she might use as warp or woof for her stubborn and always unexpected behavior; oh, no. He sent the man away, thanking him brusquely for his concern, and that was the end of it. Th
ereafter, Silverweb relied on the libraries.

  But now she did not do even that. When she first began disappearing, slipping away as soon as the mountains of household and garden tasks set her were finished, showing up again only when her absence would be remarked upon, the libraries had been Anne’s first thought. After all, through the brief days of the Jubilee, while the other young ones spent their time at the plays and the fairs, Silverweb had moved inflexible between their rooms and the libraries of Brightwater. But she had not found her daughter among the books. Not in the Castle’s own very respectable room of volumes and microfiches; not in the town library with its banks of machines making available all the books of the world and facsimiles of some from Old Earth; not in the ample and specialized library of the Reverend.

  And then she had had a thought that she almost dared not entertain: was it possible Silverweb was slipping away to meet some young man? Anne would of been obliged to make a show of stern disapproval for that, but in her heart she’d of been overjoyed. A girl not married at Silverweb’s age, and showing no sign of any interest in the state, was a rare creature on Ozark. Anne didn’t mind having a rare creature about, precisely, but she’d rather have had grandchildren, and the boys were still far too young to provide them.

  She set the servingmaids, a few that she knew to be trustworthy, to watching, then. And they came back with just the news she’d feared. There was not, so far as any of them could find out, a young man in the picture.

  At last, when she’d made up her mind to confront Silverweb and demand an explanation-an awkward thing at her age, and with her behavior so sickeningly perfect that it allowed no smallest chink for objection-the mystery was solved for her. Among the Castle staff there was a very old woman, well into her nineties, that’d been there all her life, born in the bedroom of her mother, also a McDaniels servingmaid. She was not expected to do anything now but sit and rock; though she insisted she could still outwork any woman in the Castle, she made no attempt to prove it.