Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Carnie got dressed in front of me, stepping out of her robe and into an orange-red dress as if I weren’t watching. She asked me to fasten her armropes of winking orange, lifting up her red curls so I could tie the strings of the chemilooms behind her shoulders. I could not decide then if she were trying to seduce me or get me to copy her or simply to convince me that she was the naive child she pretended to be.

  I thought then that whatever she was trying, she had failed. She had succeeded only in convincing me of what my uncle had already told me. In spite of her youth, her silliness, I could well believe she had been on Solfatara, had known all of it, the pervs, the sots, the worst the happy houses had to offer. I think now she didn’t mean anything by it except that she wanted to be cruel, that she was simply poking at me as if I were an animal in a cage.

  At supper, watching Sapphire set Pearl’s plate for her between taped marks, I wondered whether Carnie was ever cruel to Pearl as she had been to me, shifting the plate slightly as she set it down or moving her chair so she could not find it.

  Sapphire set the rest of the plates on the table, her eyes dark blue from some old bitterness, and I thought, Jewell shouldn’t have brought any of them with her from Solfatara except Pearl. Pearl is the only one who hasn’t been ruined by it. Her blindness has kept her safe, I thought. She has been protected from all the horrors because she couldn’t see them. Perhaps her blindness protects her from Carnie, too, I thought. Perhaps that is the secret, that she is safe inside her blindness and no one can hurt her, and Jewell knows that. I did not think then about the man who had blinded her, and how she had not been safe from him at all.

  Jewell called the meal to order. “I want you to make our new pianoboard player wilcome,” she said. She reached across the table and patted Carnie’s hand. “Thank you for doing the introductions, and for bandaging my foot,” she said, and I thought, Pearl is safe after all. Jewell has tamed Carnie and all the rest of them. I did not think about the sidon she had tamed, and how it now lay on the floor in front of the cardroom door.

  The first shift Jewell decked me out in formals and a black-red dog collar and had me stand at the door with her as she greeted the tappers. They were in formals, too, under their soot-black work jackets. They hung the many-pocketed jackets, heavy with tools, on the rack in the anteroom along with their lanterns and sat down to take off their high shoes with hands almost as red as mine. They had washed their hands and faces, but their fingernails were black with soot, and there was soot in every line of their palms. Their faces looked hot and raw, and they all had a broad pale band across their foreheads from the lantern strap. One of them, whom Jewell called Scorch, had singed off his eyebrows and a long strip of hair on top of his head.

  “You’ll meet almost all the tappers this shift. The gaming house will close hiffway through and the rist of them will come over. Taber and I stagger the shifts so simmthing’s always open.”

  She didn’t introduce me, though some of the tappers looked at my eight-fingered hands curiously, and one of the men looked surprised and then angry. He looked as if he was going to say something to me, and then changed his mind, his face getting redder and darker until the lantern line stood out like a scar.

  When they were all inside the music room, Jewell led me to the pianoboard and had me sit down and spread my hands out over the keyboard, ready to play. Then she said. “This is my new pianoboard player, boys. Say hillo to him.”

  “What’s his name, Jewell?” one of the men said. “You ginna give him a fancy name like the girls?”

  “I nivver thought about it,” she said. “What do you think?”

  The tapper who had turned so red said loudly, “I think you shid call him sidon and kick him out to burn on Paylay. He’s a Mirror.”

  “I alriddy got a Carnelian and a Garnet. And I had a sidon once. I giss I’ll call him Ruby.” She looked calmly over at the man who had spoken. “That okay with you, Jick?”

  His face was as dark a red as mine. “I didn’t say it to be mean, Jewell,” he said. “You’re doing what you did with the sidon, taking in simmthing thit’ll turn on you. They won’t even lit Mirrors on Solfatara.”

  “I think that’s probably a good ricommendation considering what they do lit on Solfatara,” Jewell said quietly. “Sot-gamblers, tap-stealers, pervers …”

  “You saw that Mirror kill the tapper. Stid there right in front iv ivverybody, and nobody kidd stop him. Nobody. The tapper bigging for mercy, his hands tied in front of him, and thit Mirror coming at him with a sot-razor, smiling while he did it.”

  “Yes,” Jewell said. “I saw it. I saw a lot of things on Solfatara. But this is Paylay. And this is my pianoboard player Ruby. I din’t think a man should be outlawed till he does simmthing, di you, Jick?” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you know ‘Back Home?’” she said. Of course I knew it. I knew all the tapper songs. Kovich had played in every happy house on Solfatara before somebody broke his hands. He had called “Back Home” his ropecutter.

  “Play it, thin,” she said. “Show thim what you can do, Ruby.”

  I played it with lots of trills and octave stretches, all the fancy things Kovich could do with five fingers instead of eight. Then I stopped and waited. The nitrogen blowers kicked off, and even the fans made no noise. During the song, Jewell had gone and stood next to Jack, putting her hand on his shoulder, trying to tame him. I wondered if she had succeeded. Jack looked at me, and then at Jewell, and back at me again. His hand went into his formals shirt, and my heart almost stopped before he brought it out again.

  “Jewell’s right,” he said. “You shiddn’t judge a man till you see what he does. That was gid playing,” he said, handing me a plastic-wrapped cigar. “Wilcome to Paylay.”

  Jewell nodded at me, and I extended my hand and took the cigar. I fumbled to get the slippery plastic off and then had to look at the cigar a minute to make sure I was getting the right end in my mouth. I stuck it in my mouth and reached inside my shirt for my sparker. I didn’t know what would happen when I lit the cigar. For all I understood what was going on, the cigar might be full of gunpowder. Jewell did not look worried, but then she had misjudged the sidon, too.

  My hand closed on the sparker inside my shirt, the nitrogen blowers suddenly kicked on, and Jack said lazily, “Now whit you ginna light that with, Ruby? There in’t a match on Paylay!”

  Jewell laughed, and the men guffawed. I pulled my empty hand sheepishly out of my jacket and took the cigar out of my mouth to look at it. “I forgot you can’t smoke on Paylay,” I said.

  “You and ivvery tapper that kimms in on the down,” Jewell said. “Ive seen Jick play that joke on how many newcomers?”

  “Ivvery one,” Jack said, looking pleased with himself. “It even worked on you, Jewell, and you weren’t a newcomer.”

  “It did not, you tripletapping liar,” she said. “Lit’s hear simmthing else, Ruby,” she said. “Whit do you want Ruby to play, boys?”

  Scorch shouted out a song, and I played it, and then another, but I do not know what they were. It had been a joke, offer the newcomer a cigar and then watch him try to light it on a star where no open flames are allowed. A good joke, and Jack had done it in spite of what he had seen on Solfatara to show Jewell he didn’t think I was a sidon, that he would wait to see what I would do before he judged me.

  And that would have been too late. What would have happened when I lit the cigar? Would the house have gone up in a ball of flame, or all of St. Pierre? The hydrogen-oxygen ratio had been high enough in the upper atmosphere that we had had to shut off the engines above a kilometer and spiral in, and here the fans were pumping in even more oxygen. Half of Paylay might have gone up.

  I knew how it had happened. Jewell had interrupted the down-pilot before he could ask about sparkers, and now, because her feet had hurt, there was a live sparker in her house. And she had just convinced Jack I was not dangerous.

  I had stopped playing, sitting there staring blindly at the keyboar
d, the unlit cigar clamped so hard between my teeth I had nearly bitten it through. The men were still shouting out the names of songs, but Jewell stepped between them and me and put a hardcopy on the music rack. “No more riquists,” she said. “Pearl is going to sing for you.”

  Pearl stood up and walked unassisted from her white chair to the pianoboard. She stopped no more than an inch from me and put her hand down certainly on the end of the keyboard. I looked at the music. It showed a line of notes before her part began, but I did not know that version, only the song that Kovich had known, and that began on the first note of the verse. I could not nod at her, and she could not see my hands on the keys.

  “I don’t know the introduction,” I said. “Just the verse. What should I do?”

  She bent down to me. “Put your hand on mine when you are ready to begin, and I will count three,” she said, and straightened again, leaving her hand where it was.

  I looked down at her hand. Carnie had told her about my hands, and if I touched her lightly, with only the middle fingers, she might not even be able to tell it from a human’s touch. I wanted more than anything not to frighten her. I did not think I could bear it if she flinched away from me.

  Now I think it would have been better if she had, that I could have stood it better than this, sitting here with her head on my lap, waiting. If she had flinched, Jack would have seen her. He would have seen her draw away from me, and that would have been enough for him to grab me by the dog collar and throw me out the door, kick me down the wooden steps so hard that the sparker bounced out, leave me to cook in the furnace of Paylay.

  “Now whit did you do thit for?” Jewell would have said. “He din’t do innything but tich her hand.”

  “And he’ll nivver do innything ilse to her either.” he would have said, and handed Jewell the sparker. And I would never have been able to do anything else to her.

  But she did not flinch. She took a light breath that took no longer than it did for my hand to return to the keys and hit the first note on the count of three, and we began together. I did not do any trills, any octave stretches. Her voice was sweet and thready and true. She didn’t need me.

  The men applauded after Pearl’s song and started calling out the names of other songs. Some I didn’t know, and I wondered how I could explain that to them, but Jewell said, “Now, now, boys, Let’s not use up our pianoboard player in one shift. Lit him go to bid. He’ll be here next shift. Who wants a game of katmai?” She reached over and pulled the cover down over the keyboard. “Use the front stairs,” she said. “The tappers take the girls up the back way.”

  Pearl bent toward me and said, “Good night, Ruby,” and then took Jack’s arm as if she knew right where he was and went through the curtained door to the cardroom. The others followed, two by two, until all the girls were taken, and then in a straggling line. Jewell unfastened the heavy drapes so they fell across the door behind them.

  I went upstairs and took off the paper shuffles and the uncomfortable collar and sat on the edge of the bed Jewell had fixed for me by putting a little table at the end for extra length. I thought about Pearl and Jack and how I was going to give Jewell the sparker at the beginning of the next shift, and wondered who I was copying. I looked at myself in the little plastic mirror over the bed, trying to see Jewell or Jack in my face.

  I had left my cigar on the music rack. I didn’t want Jack to find it there and think I had rejected it. I put my shuffles back on and went downstairs. There was nobody in the music room, and the drapes were still drawn across the door of the cardroom. I went over to the pianoboard and got the cigar. I had bitten it almost through, and now I bit the ragged end off. Then I chomped down on the new end and sat down on the piano stool, spreading out my hands as far as they would go across the keyboard.

  “I understand you’re a Mirror,” a man’s voice said from the recesses of Pearl’s chair. “I knew a Mirror once. Or he knew me. Isn’t that how it is?”

  I almost said, “You’re not supposed to sit in that chair,” but I found I could not speak.

  The man stood up and came toward me. He was dressed like the other men, with a broad black dog collar, but his hands and face were almost white, and there was no lighter band across his forehead. “My name is Taber,” he said, in a slow, drawling voice unlike the fast, vowel-shortening accents of the others. I wondered if he had come from Solfatara. All the rest of them except Pearl shortened their vowels, bit them off like I had bit the cigar. Pearl alone seemed to have no accent, as if her blindness had protected her from the speech of Solfatara, too.

  “Welcome to St. Pierre,” he said, and I felt a shock of fear. He had lied to Jewell. I did not know who St. Pierre was, but I knew as he spoke that St. Pierre was not the patron saint of tappers, and that Taber’s calling the town that was some unspeakably cruel joke that only he understood.

  “I have to go upstairs,” I said, and my hand shook as I held the cigar. “Jewell’s in the cardroom.”

  “Oh,” he said lazily, taking a cigar from his pocket and unwrapping it. “Is Pearl there, too?”

  “Pearl?” I said, so frightened I could not breathe.

  He patted his formals pockets and reached inside his shirt. “Yes. You know, the blind girl. The pretty one.” He pulled a sparker from his inside pocket, cocked it back, and looked at me. “What a pity she’s blind. I wish I knew what happened. She’s never told a soul, you know,” he said, and clicked the sparker.

  It was not a real sparker. I could see, after a frozen moment, that there was no liquid in it at all. He clicked it twice more, held it to the end of his cigar in dreadful pantomime, and replaced it in his pocket.

  “I do wish I could find out,” he said. “I could put the knowledge to good use.”

  “I can’t help you,” I said, and moved toward the stairs.

  He stepped in front of me. “Oh, I think you can. Isn’t that what Mirrors are for?” he said, and drew on the unlit cigar and blew imaginary smoke into my face.

  “I won’t help you,” I said, so loudly I fancied Jewell would come and tell Taber to let me alone, as she had told Carnie. “You can’t make me help you.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “That isn’t how it works. But of course you know that,” and let me pass.

  I sat on my bed the rest of the shift, holding the real sparker between my hands, waiting until I could tell Jewell what Taber had said to me. But the next shift was sleeping-shift, and the shift after that I played tapper requests for eight hours straight. Most of that time Taber stood by the pianoboard, flicking imaginary ashes onto my hands.

  After the shift Jewell came to ask me whether Jack or anyone else had bothered me, and I did not tell her about Taber after all. During the next sleeping-shift I hid the sparker between the mattress and the springs of my bed.

  On the waking shifts I kept as close as I could to Jewell, trying to make myself useful to her, trying not to copy the way she walked on her bandaged feet. When I was not playing, I moved among the tappers with glasses of iced and watered-down liquor on a tray and filled out the account cards for the men who wanted to take girls upstairs. On the off-shifts I learned to work the boards that sent out accounts to Solfatara, and to do the laundry, and after a couple of weeks Jewell had me help with the body checks on the girls. She scanned for perv marks and sot scars as well as the standard GHS every abbey has to screen for. Pearl did not have a mark on her, and I was relieved. I had had an idea that Taber might be torturing her somehow.

  Jewell left us alone while I helped her get dressed after the scan, and I said, “Taber is a very bad man. He wants to hurt you.”

  “I know,” she said. She was standing very still while I clipped the row of pearl buttons on the back of her dress together.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s like the sidon.”

  “You mean he can’t help himself, that he doesn’t know what he’s doing?” I said, outraged. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.” />
  “The tappers used to poke at the sidon with sticks when it was in the cage,” she said. “They couldn’t reach it to really hurt it, though, and Taber couldn’t stand that. He made the tappers give him the key to the cage just so he could get to it. Just so he could hurt it. Now why would he want to hurt the sidon?”

  “Because it was helpless,” I said, and I wondered if the man who’d blinded Pearl had been like that. “Because it couldn’t protect itself.”

  “Jewell and I were in the same happy house on Solfatara,” she said.

  “We had a friend there, a pianoboard player like you. He was very tall like you, too, and he was the kindest person I ever knew. Sometimes you remind me of him.” She walked certainly to the door, as if she were not counting the memorized steps. “A cage is a safe place as long as nobody has the key. Don’t worry, Ruby. He can’t get in.” She turned and looked at me. “Will you come and play for me?”

  “Yes,” I said, and followed her down to the music room. Before the shifts started, while the girls were upstairs dressing, she liked to sit in the white chair and listen to me play. She understood, more than any of the others, that I could play only the songs I had copied from Kovich. Jewell, to the end, thought I could read music, and Taber even brought me hardcopies from Solfatara. Pearl simply said the names of songs, and I played them if I knew them. She never asked for one I didn’t know, and I thought that was because she listened carefully to the tappers’ requests and my refusals, and I was grateful.

  I sat down at the pianoboard and looked at Pearl in the mirror. I had asked Jewell for the mirror so I could see over my shoulder. I had told her I wanted it so she could signal me songs and breaks and sometimes the ropecutter if the men got rough or noisy, but it was really so I could keep Taber from standing there without my knowing it.