The Enhancer

by McCullough, Teresa; Baxter, Meg

  "That's the Gurkonian Temple," Thera said, and pointed out the large arched windows and high towers of the house of worship. "In back the fruit trees grow, each one planted for the dead who are buried there. That's the source of that old expression -- when people swear 'by the roots of my father's tree'-- those are the trees, planted in the cemetery near the Gurkonian Temple. Some people have many trees near their grave contributed by friends and relatives."

  How different it was from the Ezants and their crowded, unmatched buildings, Meeral thought.

  They passed several camping areas that looked very much like the ones Chak had used. She thought she saw a wagon that looked like Chak's but the dogcart went too fast for her to be sure.

  Several miles later they arrived at the small dairy farm. Meeral noticed that Thera watched her carefully when she enhanced. More than once the older woman asked Meeral exactly how and why she did some particular part of enhancing. Then the older woman would jot something down on paper.

  Enhancing the intricate movement of ten fingers when milking a cow was complicated. Though Meeral had enhanced milking for years, she worried that she might have lost her ability. Last night she could not make the cider as cold as she made the beer.

  However, the cows on the Pactyl farm had the same number of udders and teats as the cows in Cyrtuno. Enhancing the movement of the milkmaid's fingers was easy. The milkmaid's bucket filled simultaneously with eight more buckets from eight more cows. Then Meeral enhanced the milkmaid's arms as she lifted the buckets and poured the milk into a large milk jar.

  "Some enhancers have trouble getting all their fingers working in the right direction," Thera said, "but you did it easily. You've done it before?"

  "Yes. Daily. For years. I could have saved you the trouble of coming out here, but then I would have missed seeing all this, and I loved the ride."

  "I loved your help," said the milkmaid. "You could get a job here, I bet."

  "Oh?" Meeral said. "Don't you have an enhancer to help you?"

  "This is too small a farm," the milkmaid said. "Enhancers can make more money in the city."

  As they drove away from the farm Thera said, "You were surprised there wasn't an enhancer to help the milkmaid, weren't you?"

  "Cyrtuno has so many . . . "

  "Cyrtuno is located near the original source of enhancers, Nifrona, the first enhancer. They taught you about her in school, didn't they?"

  "Yes," Meeral said. "The house in which Nifrona had lived isn't far from our house in Cyrtuno. Though a family lives there now, women treat it as a shrine. They say all the enhancers around Cyrtuno are descended from her."

  "All enhancers, everywhere, are descendants of Nifrona." Thera said, emphasizing every word.

  "How could that be? She lived only a few hundred years ago. As I remember from what they told me in school, she had only three children, and one was a boy."

  "Men can pass enhancing to their female children, although they can't enhance. Your skill comes from both sides of your family. However, as to Nifrona living only a few hundred years ago, she was born in 4285 ag."

  Meeral did a bit of mental arithmetic, subtracting 4285 ag. from the present year of 4608 ag. Then said, "More than three hundred years ago but how can all enhancers be descendants of Nifrona? There are so many, at least around Cyrtuno."

  "Well, figure out how many years between the birth of a girl to her age when she has a baby."

  "Fifteen? twenty? twenty-five years?" Meeral suggested.

  "Let's say, twenty-five years. In three hundred years you have twelve sets of twenty-five years. Just start multiplying."

  "You mean three children the first twenty-five years, nine the next, twenty-seven the third . . . Ò After a pause, Meeral said "Eighty-one the fourth."

  Thera laughed and said, "We won't have time for you to figure it out now, but you'll see I'm right if you keep multiplying by three. Not all families increase as little as three each time. I know of one man -- both his mother and grandmothers were enhancers. He fathered a child every year. His wife died at the birth of their ninth daughter. He married again. He repeated his fruitful pattern twice more, always finding an enhancer for wife."

  "Imagine what one person can do for the world -- even hundreds of years later."

  "We can leave a million descendants in three hundred years, for good or for evil," Thera said, emphasizing the last word and giving Meeral a long look.

  The way Thera had emphasized the word "evil" and the look she had given her distracted Meeral from enhancing. The dog stumbled. She quickly helped him regain his footing and continued enhancing the pull on the cart, but she stared at Thera's profile. From the moment they met, the older woman had made Meeral feel comfortable, but now Thera was frowning. Immersed in her thoughts, Thera almost went past their next stop. She gave a sharp command for the dog to turn the cart into a narrow road.

  Inside a long, wooden building one weaver and one enhancer operated seven looms at the same time. The weaving was an elaborate pattern that required a great deal of motion with the foot pedals.

  It turned out to be easier than enhancing milking, in spite of the complicated motions of hands and feet. While Meeral enhanced, Thera took out her paper and charcoal and jotted down some notes.

  The two women took a different road back, crossing wider streams. Usually the dog waded right through the water, but sometimes he pulled the cart over a wooden bridge. When they crossed over a particularly long bridge, Thera said, "Look to your right. That's the East Ocean."

  Thera commanded the dog to stop so Meeral could gaze at an endless expanse of water.

  "What's that out there?"

  "You mean the whitecaps on the waves?"

  "No. Is it a boat?"

  "Yes. A sailboat. It's probably carrying goods from the city of Binrel in Drarie. They load and unload the boats in Pactyl Harbor."

  "Are there many people on it?"

  "Mainly sailors. Most of the sailors you see on Pactyl streets are from Drarie ships. That country has a huge navy. If they ever decided to invade us, I don't know how we could defend ourselves. We only have a few merchant ships and no warships."

  As they made their way toward the city, Meeral thought of Chak's wagon and Glitob's talk of the Draries and Jarph's fear of the city. Was Pactyl a dangerous place, she wondered?

  Now, she thought, I'm getting as bad as Jarph, looking for evil everywhere. What was it that Shejani used to say? "You find what you look for." I'm going to look for a good new life in Pactyl.

  "How are you feeling?" Thera asked when they returned to the Ezant compound and finished a healthy meal.

  "Wonderful! I've seen things I've never seen before."

  "Do you like what you see?"

  "Yes. It's much nicer than I thought it would be. I can see why Shejani . . . " She stopped. "I can see why people like it here," she finished lamely, hoping Thera had never heard of Shejani.

  Thera did not ask about Shejani. She asked if Meeral was too tired to demonstrate more enhancing skills.

  When Meeral said she was not, Thera led her to a place with many shelves filled with books.

  "The library," Thera said.

  A man was sitting at a long table reading a book. About three feet above his head a flame hung in the air. Meeral knew that the flame gave out light but no heat.

  "Find the enhancer and the source of that light," Thera said.

  Meeral grabbed onto the image and felt a vague tug. She led Thera up the stairs, through the house, out the back door where an elderly woman was sitting in the shade of a tree.

  The woman looked up and asked, "Is anything wrong with the library light?"

  "No. Meeral just traced it to you. Now we will find the source of that light."

  Following another tug, Meeral quickly walked across the compound to an Ezant building of worship. The candle was burning on the altar.

  Thera jotted something down on paper. "Now I can check the books," she said.

  "Books?"


  Thera took Meeral back to the library. Identically looking volumes filled one section of shelves. At a table a man and a woman each copied information into a newer version of the volume.

  "I reread this volume this morning before we went out," Thera said. "Now I can see if all the information is correct."

  She fixed Meeral with a steady gaze that Meeral found disturbing, then she flipped through the pages until she found what she wanted. Placing the open book on the table, she pulled the paper on which she had been taking notes out of her pocket and laid it next to the book. Carefully she checked the book with the paper. "Here you are," she said, pushing the book toward Meeral. "It's all correct, just as they sent it from your Ezant school in Cyrtuno."

  Unsure of what to expect, Meeral read:

  Meeral 4591- daughter of Boktod (page 241) and

  Shejani (Volume 183 page 178) Level 8.

  No known limitations. Can enhance cold. Enhance both hands and both feet of a person. All fingers in dairy.

  "Are all these books just listing the descendants of Nifrona?" Meeral asked.

  "Yes. Remember how many people you got when you kept multiplying by three?" Thera said with a smile. "Would you like to see your parents' record?"

  Meeral nodded. Perhaps now she'd learn more about her mother.

  Thera first flipped to the familiar names of her father's parents and a cross-reference to her own name.

  Meeral sensed something almost too businesslike in the way Thera brought out volume 183 and found Shejani's record. Meeral hesitated. Would she learn why her mother never acted like the peasant she claimed to be? Anxiously she began to read:

  Shejani (4572?-4608) Origin unknown. Level 10.

  No known limitations. Children: Meeral 4591 -

  Volume 154, page 372.

  Meeral flipped the pages of the book. Every other entry had "daughter of . . ., " except Shejani's. Only her entry read "origin unknown." Between Thera's brows was the ridge of a frown and her eyes were covered with that thin veil that Meeral had seen before.

  CHAPTER 5

  "The High Priestess wants to see you later this afternoon," Thera said.

  "Why?" Meeral asked. Zavona wasn't interested in her the first time she saw her. Why now?

  Instead of answering her questions, Thera said in a brusque tone, "You'll want to rest and change your clothes. She'll send someone to your room when she's free." She turned away without even a smile saying, "I need to do some things here before I go back to Macy House."

  Watching the retreating full hips and broad shoulders of the older woman, Meeral felt the same sense of loss she had felt the last time she saw Grandmother Varis.

  Just before she disappeared, Thera turned and said, "I'm sure I'll see you again," but Meeral had the feeling that Thera was not sure at all.

  Meeral walked slowly to her room. She poured water in the basin that had been left on the floor, stripped off her blouse and skirt and washed herself. She put on her best summer dress, the one she had brought to apply for a job. As she was fastening the buttons she felt the silver-colored charm that lay just below her neck. She had a vague awareness of something being wrong -- some danger -- and she had no one to whom she could turn for help.

  Grandma Varis was far away. The man who rescued her was out of reach. Thera, who had been so kind and friendly, had suddenly changed. Even her mother was disappearing under the label of "Origin Unknown."

  Her mother had told her about her parents. Why didn't the Ezants know? When Shejani was born, her mother had been a housemaid in the home of a noble woman and her father had been the groom that took care of the horses in the stable.

  "I was only six months old," Shejani had told her, "when the noble lady gave birth to her baby girl. She was a tiny little thing and caught some kind of disease from the nurse who was supposed to take care of her."

  Meeral remembered how indignant Shejani had acted as she said, "The noble lady sent the nurse packing. That lady could see how healthy I was and how well my mother took care of me, so she asked my mother -- your grandmother," Shejani said, "to help with the sick little girl. A neighbor woman took care of me while my mother stayed with the baby day and night, even when she caught the disease the nurse had given the little girl."

  Meeral still remembered how elated she felt when her mother said, "The baby lived," and then she recalled the feeling of loss as Shejani had lowered her voice so Meeral had to lean close to hear the awful words: "My mother died."

  "That noble lady," Shejani continued, "took care of me as if I were her daughter. I became her daughter's companion and was educated along with her -- I learned to read, to play music, learned proper manners. I even got riding lessons -- from my father. He was the groom, you know."

  "One day when we were going riding," Shejani continued, her voice low in anticipation of the horror that was to come. "We were mounting our horses for our morning ride when something spooked the girl's horse. She fell." Shejani's voice rose. "The horse's hoofs raked the air near her. Father rushed forward, shielding her from the frantic beast. A hoof smashed his head . . .Ó Her voice dropped. Ò . . . killing him."

  Meeral remembered bursting into tears over the death of a grandfather she had never known, even though Shejani hurried on to tell her that the groom that replaced him was Boktod, Meeral's father. When Shejani fell in love with Boktod, the noble lady gave them her blessing and encouraged them to move back to Boktod's hometown of Cyrtuno. She gave them money. That's how he paid for the house where Grandma Varis now lived.

  Boktod had died when Meeral was three years old and Shejani did not even try to get a job in Cyrtuno. Whatever money the noble lady had given her was almost gone and Shejani did not want to work as an enhancer in Cyrtuno. She knew where money was and how to get it. She went to Pactyl and got what she called a "protector." Meeral heard other names for what Shejani did; even before she knew the meaning, she was ashamed of her mother.

  Why didn't the Ezants, who seemed to have information on over a million people, not know about Meeral's grandparents?

  Meeral brushed her hair vigorously as she brooded about the label the Ezant record book had given her mother: Origin Unknown. Pulling her hair back tightly, Meeral twisted it into a knot, as she had done since she was fifteen. She stuck in the pins, fastening the knot firmly.

  Shoving her comb into the trunk, she began to smooth the wrinkles out of her clothes that lay there. The familiar feel of the wool and linen cloth calmed her, as did the smooth wood of her flute. Even the silk gown that Shejani disdained was pleasing to touch. She was sure that Thera's veiled looks had something to do with Shejani. Probably the High Priestess had more unpleasant tales of her mother's life in Pactyl. She would not give in to her taunts any more than she had to the men in the tavern in Cyrtuno.

  When Felm came for her, Meeral was playing a stately tune on her flute. Though she put the instrument into the trunk, Meeral carried with her the melody and walked in the proud manner her mother had taught her.

  Meeral's first surprise was to find that Zavona was as tall as she. Prince MorToak must be quite tall. Meeral remembered from her prone view of him a few days ago that he looked down on Zavona. Meeral's second surprise was the greeting.

  "I can see from the way you walk," Zavona said with a smile, "that you are her daughter. I am so sorry about the death of your mother. The whole community misses her."

  Meeral stared at her in amazement. Then, recalling her manners, she said, "Thank you." She could feel herself blush as she tried to adjust to Zavona's kind words.

  "Didn't you expect me to say that? It's true, you know."

  "No . . . I . . . " Meeral searched for the right response. "I had not thought that a religious community would miss her."

  "She did not believe in Gurkon or Ezant, but she did believe in our work. Shejani gave us as much money as she could." Then Zavona added, with a smile, "She also persuaded several men to contribute."

  "I didn't know religious groups accept
ed money from people who don't believe . . . "

  "Money is money. We accept it if it's not stolen. Even then, if we don't know how to return it, we can use it to open another school or help a village. Do you remember the drought in Cyrtuno a few years ago?"

  "In 4603?" Meeral said.

  "The crops were a total disaster, weren't they?"

  "You mean my own mother -- she was responsible for the village getting through the winter without anyone starving?"

  "Yes, she and others who contributed. Cyrtuno got a school earlier because of her -- and you. We give appropriate attention to places in which donors have a particular interest. We just had another large donation, thanks to you."

  Meeral looked at her in confusion. "Me?"

  "Yes. Prince MorToak. If he hadn't brought you here I couldn't have shown him what we are doing. His ideas about women are a confused combination of the very old-fashioned and the very modern, but he gave us a good contribution before he went back to Lurdoa City."

  Meeral turned her head, hoping to hide the blush that was creeping up her cheeks. Zavona, perhaps tactfully, was busying herself with a large book on her desk.

  Opening the book, Zavona said, "While you're here, you can help complete your mother's records. What are the names of your grandparents on your mother's side?"

  Now she could erase that "origin unknown."

  "Their names are . . . " Meeral fumbled for words. "Shejani always called them . . . " She continued weakly, ". . . 'Mother' or 'Father' -- or even, 'your grandmother or your grand . . .'"

  "You don't know either, do you?" Zavona said.

  "I know the whole story," Meeral said in an unaccustomed rush of words. "Her mother was a housemaid in the home of a noble woman and . . . "

  She told the High Priestess the story as her mother had told it to her. When she came to the part "That noble lady took care of her as if she were her daughter. She became her daughter's companion and was educated . . . "

  Zavona interrupted, her voice brisk and businesslike as she said, "' . . . along with her daughter, . . . books, . . . music, . . . manners, even riding lessons from her father.' Is that right, Meeral? It seems that your mother used the same words every time she told her story." Zavona looked at her with a touch of impatience.