“It’s all part of being a Librarian, having tickly fingers,” Genya announced as she slotted the object back on its shelf. “By the way…” She turned back towards Isabel. “I was under the impression that there was a far worse excruciation for you Dawn-Singers…” Genya leaned forward with a dancer’s gaze, peering as no one ever had into the forgotten shade of Isabel’s eyes. “You’re supposed to be blind, aren’t you? But it’s plain to even the stupidest idiot that you’re not…”
Next dawn, the skies were clear again. Once more, the Floating Ocean was calm and distant and blue. Those in that valley who cared to listen to Isabel’s song might have thought that day that it sounded slightly perfunctory. But ordinary daybreaks such as these were easy sport for Isabel now. She was even getting used to the different feel of the minaret which came from the fault in Mirror 28. Under blue skies which only a connoisseur or an acolyte would have noticed a slight darkening of in the western quadrant, she hurried across the fields towards the rosestone walls of the Cathedral of the Word.
Even though their prosecutors were able to argue the facts convincingly the other way, neither Isabel not Genya ever thought that their acts in those long ago days of Ghezirah’s endless summer amounted to betrayal. They knew that their respective Churches guarded their secrets with all the paranoid dread of the truly powerful, who are left with much to lose and little to gain. They knew, too, of the recent terrors of the War of the Lilies. But their lives had been small. Further up the same rosestone wall, if Isabel had cared to follow it beyond her valley, she would have eventually have found that its fine old blocks was pockmarked with sprays of bullets; further still, the stone itself dissolved into shining heaps of dream-distorted lava, and the gardens still heaved with the burrowing teeth of trapmoles. Yet Nashir had suffered far less in the War of the Lilies than many of Ghezirah’s islands. In the vast lattice of habitation which surrounded Sabil, there were still huge rents and floating swathes of spinning rubble. Seventeen years is little time to recover from a war, but peace and youth and endless summer are heady brews, and lessons doled out in the Church classrooms by the rap of a mistress’s cane sometimes remain forever wrapped in chalkdust and boredom. Day after brilliant day in that backwater of a backwater, Isabel and Genya wandered deeper into the secrets of Cathedral of the Word’s cloisters and gardens. Day after day, they betrayed the secrets of their respective Churches.
The Cathedral and its environs are vast, and the farms and villages and towns and the several cities of Nashir which surround it are mostly there, in one way or another, to serve its needs. Beyond the ridge of the Isabel’s valley, standing at the lip of stepped gardens which went down and down so far that the light grew blue and hazed, they saw a distant sprawl of stone, glass, spires on the rising horizon.
“Is that the Cathedral?”
Not for the first time that day, Genya laughed. “Oh no! It’s just the local Lending Office…” They walked on and down; waterfalls glittering beside them in the distant blaze of, far greater, minaret than Isabel’s. Another day, rising to the surface from the tunnels of a catacomb from which it had seemed they would never escape, Isabel saw yet another great and fine building. Again, she asked the same question. Again, Genya laughed. Still, within those grounds with their wild white follies and statues a shrines to Dewey, Bliss and Ranganathan, there were many compensations.
As their daily journeys grew further, it became necessary to travel by speedier methods if Isabel was to return to her minaret in time to sing in the night. The catacombs of books were too vast for any Librarian to categorise even the most tightly defined subject without access to rapid transport. So, on the silk seats of caleches which buzzed on cushions of buried energy, they swept along corridors. The bookshelves flashed past them, the titles spinning too fast to read, until the spines themselves became indistinguishable and the individual globelights blurred into a single white stripe overhead. Isabel and Genya laughed and whooped as they urged their metal craft into yet greater feats of speed and manoeuvrability. The dusty wisdoms of lost ages cooled their faces.
They rarely saw anyone, and then only as faint figures tending some distant stack of books, or the trails of aircraft like scratches across the blue roof of the Ghezirahan sky. Genya’s training, the dances and the indexing and—for an exercise, the sub-categorising of the lesser tenses of the verb meaning to blink in sixty eight lost languages—came to her through messages even more remote than the tick of Isabel’s modem. Sometimes, the statues spoke to her. Sometimes, the flowers gave off special scents, or the furred leaves of a bush communicated something in their touch to her. But, mostly, Genya learned from her bees.
One day, Isabel succumbed to Genya’s repeated requests and led her to the uppermost reaches of her minaret. Genya laughed as she peered down from the spiralling stairways as they ascended. The drops, she claimed, leaning far across the worn brass handrails, were dizzying. Isabel leaned over as well; she’d never thought to look at her minaret in this way. Seen from the inside, the place was like a huge vertical tunnel, threaded with sunlight and dust and the slow tickings of vast machinery, diminishing down towards seeming infinity.
“Why is it, anyway, that you Dawn-Singers need to be blinded?” Genya asked as they climbed on, her voice by now somewhat breathless.
“I suppose it’s because we become blind soon enough—a kind of mercy. That, and because we have access to such high places. We Dawn-Singers know how to combine lenses…” Isabel paused on a stairs for a moment as a new thought struck her, and Genya bumped into her back. “So perhaps the other Churches are worried about what, looking down, we might see…”
“I’m surprised anyone ever gets to the top of this place without dying of exhaustion. Your apprentices must have legs like trees!” But they did reach the top, and Isabel felt the pride she always felt at her minaret’s gathered heat and power, whilst Genya, when she had recovered, moved quickly from silvery balcony to balcony, exclaiming about the view. Isabel was little used to seeing anything up here, but she saw through her fading eyes many reflected images of her friend, darting mirror to mirror with her pretty silks trailing behind her like flocks of coloured birds. Isabel smiled. She felt happy, and the happiness was different to the happiness she felt each dawn. Chasing the reflections, she finally found the real Genya standing on the gantry above Mirror 28.
“It’s darker here.”
“Yes. This mirror has a fault in it.”
“This must have been where you first saw me…” Genya chuckled. “I thought the light had changed. The colours were suddenly deeper. For a while, it even had the bees confused. Sometimes, the sunlight felt almost cool as I danced though it—more soothing. But I suppose that was your gaze…”
They both stared down at the gardens of the Cathedral of the Word. They looked glorious, although the pillared space where Genya had danced seemed oddly vacant without her. Isabel rubbed her sore eyes as bigger blotches than usual swam before them. She said, “You’ve never told me about that dance.”
“It’s supposed to be a secret.”
“But then, so are many things.”
They stood there for a long time amid the minaret’s shimmering light, far above the green valley and the winding rosestone wall. Today felt different. Perhaps they were growing too old for these trysts. Perhaps things would have to change…The warm wind blew past them. The Floating Ocean glittered. The trees murmured. The river gleamed. Then, with a rising hum like a small machine coming to life, a bee which had risen the thermals to this great height blundered against Isabel’s face. Somehow, it settled there. She felt its spiky legs, then the brush of Genya’s fingers as she lifted the creature away.
“I’ll show you the dance now, if you like.”
“Here? But—”
“—just watch.”
From her cupped hands, Genya laid the insect on the gapped wooden boards. It sat there for a moment in the sunlight, slowly shuffling its wings. It looked stunned. “This one’s a white-tai
l. Of course, she’s a worker—and a she. They do all the work, just like in Ghezirah. Most likely she’s been sent out this morning as a scout. Many of them never come back, but the ones that do, and if they’ve found some fine new source of nectar, tell the hive about it when they return…” Genya stooped. She rubbed her palms, and held them close to the insect and breathed their scent towards it, making a sound as she did so—a deep-centred hum. She stepped back. “Watch…” The bee preened her antennae and quivered her thorax and shuffled her wings. She wiggled back, and then forwards, her small movements describing jerky figures of eight. “They use your minaret as a signpost…” Genya murmured as the bee continued dancing. Isabel squinted; there was something about its movements which reminded of Genya on the rosestone paving. “That, and the pull and spin of all Ghezirah. It’s called the waggly dance. Most kinds of social bees do it, and its sacred to our Church as well.”
Isabel chuckled, delighted. “The waggly dance?!”
“Well, there are many longer and more serious names for it.”
“No, no—it’s lovely…Can you tell where’s she been?”
“Over the wall, of course. And she can’t understand why there’s hard ground up here, up where the sun should be. She thinks we’re probably flowers, but no use for nectar-gathering.”
“You can tell all of that?”
“What would be the point, otherwise, in her dancing? It’s the same with us Librarians. Our dance is a ritual we use for signalling where a particular book is to be found.”
Isabel smiled at her friend. The idea of someone dancing to show where a book lay amid the Cathedral of the Word’s maze of tunnels, buildings and catacombs seemed deliciously impractical, and quite typical of Genya. The way they were both standing now, Isabel could see their two figures clearly reflected in Mirror 28’s useless upper convex. She was struck as she always was by Genya’s effortless beauty—and then by her own plainness. Isabel was dull as a shadow, even down to the greyed leather jerkin and shorts she was wearing, her mosey hair which had been cropped with blind efficiency, and then held mostly back by a cracked rubber band. She could, in fact, almost have been Genya’s shade. It was a pleasant thought—the two of them combined in the light which she brought to this valley each day—but at the same time, the reflection bothered Isabel. For a start, Mirror 28 poured darkness instead of light from her minaret. Even its name felt cold and steely, like a premonition…
Isabel mouthed something. A phrase: the fault in Mirror 28. It was a saying which was to become popular throughout the Ten Thousand and One Worlds, signifying the small thing left undone from which many other larger consequences, often dire, will follow…
“What was that?”
“Oh…Nothing…”
The bee, raised back into the air by Genya’s hands, flew away. The two young women sat talking on the warm decking, exchanging other secrets. There were intelligent devices, Isabel learned, which roamed the aisles of the Cathedral of the Word, searching, scanning, reading, through dusty centuries in pursuit of some minor truth. They were friendly enough when you encountered them, even if they looked like animated coffins. Sometimes, though, if you asked them nicely, they would put aside their duties and let you climb on their backs and take you for a ride…
The modem was ticking. Another day was passing. It was time for Genya to return beyond the walls of the Cathedral of the Word. Usually, the two young women were heedlessly quick with their farewells, but, on this blazing afternoon, Isabel felt herself hesitating, and Genya reached out, tracing with her ravaged and sensitive fingers the unmemorable outlines of her friend’s face. Isabel did so too. Although her flesh then was no more remarkable than she was, she had acquired a blind person’s way of using touch for sight.
“Tomorrow…?”
“Yes?” They both stepped back from each other, embarrassed by this sudden intimacy.
“Will you dance for me—down on that paving? Now that I know what it’s for, I’d love to watch you dance again.”
Genya smiled. She gave the same formal bow which she had given when they had first met, then turned and began her long descent of the minaret’s stairs. By the time she had reached the bottom, Isabel had already strapped herself into her crucifix and was saying her preliminary prayers as she prepared to sing out another day. Unstarry darkness beautiful as the dawn itself washed across all Ghezirah, and Isabel never saw her friend again.
Of the many secrets attributed to the Dawn Church, Isabel still knew relatively few. She didn’t know for example, that light, modulated in ways beyond anything she could feel with her human senses, can bear immense amounts of data. As well as singing in the dawn each day from her crucifix, she also heedlessly bore floods of information which passed near-instantly across the valley, and finally, flashing minaret to minaret, returned to the place where it had mostly originated, which was the gleaming island of Jerita, where all things pertaining to the Dawn Church must begin and end. Even before Isabel had noticed it herself, some part of the great Intelligence which governed the runnings of her Church had noted, much as a great conductor will notice the off-tuning of a single string in an orchestra, a certain weakness in the returning message from the remote but nevertheless important island of Nashir where the Cathedral of the Word spread it vast roots and boughs. To the Intelligence, this particular dissonance could only be associated with one minaret, and then to a particular mirror, numbered 28. The Intelligence had many other concerns, but it began to monitor the functioning of that minaret more closely, noticing yet more subtle changes which could not be entirely ascribed to the varying weather or the increasing experience of a new acolyte. In due course, certain human members of the Church were also alerted, and various measures were put in hand to establish the cause of this inattention, the simplest of which involved a midday visit to the dormitories beside the river in Isabel’s valley, where apprentices were awoken and quietly interrogated about the behaviour of their new mistress, then asked if they might be prepared to forgo sleep and study their mistress from some hidden spot using delicate instruments with which would, of course, be provided.
The morning after Isabel had watched the bee’s dance dawned bright and sweet as ever. The birds burst into song. The whole valley, to her fading eyes, was a green fire. Still, she was sure that, if she used her gaze cautiously, and looked to the side which was less ravaged, she would be able to watch Genya dance. Her breath quickened as she ascended the last stairway. She felt as if she was translucent, swimming through light. Then, of all things, and amplified by mechanisms which mimicked the human inner ear, the doorway far at the base of her minaret sounded the coded knock which signified the urgent needs of another member of her Church. In fact, there were two people waiting at Isabel’s doorway. One bore a stern and sorrowful demeanour, whilst the other was a new acolyte, freshly blinded. Even before they had touched hands and faces, Isabel knew that this acolyte had come to replace her. Although she was standing on the solid ground of Ghezirah, she felt as if she was falling.
Unlike many other details of Isabel’s life, the facts of her trial are relatively well recorded. Strangely, or perhaps not, the Church of the Word is less free in publishing its proceedings, although much can be adduced from secondary sources. The tone of the press reports, for example, is astonishingly fevered. Even before they had had the chance to admit their misdeeds, Isabel and Genya were both labelled as criminals and traitors. They were said to be lovers, too, in every possible sense apart from the true one. They were foolhardy, dangerous—rabid urchins who had been rescued from the begging-bowl gutters of Ghezirah by their respective Churches, and had repaid that kindness with perfidy and deceit. Did people really feel so badly towards them? Did anyone ever really imagine that what they had done was any different to the innocent actions of the young throughout history? The facts may be plain, but such questions, from this distance of time, remain unanswerable. It should be remembered, though, that Ghezirah was still recovering from the War of the Lilies,
and that the Churches, in this of all times, needed to reinforce the loyalty of their members. It was time for an example to be made—and for the peace to be shown for what it really was, which was shaky and incomplete and dangerous. For this role, Isabel and Genya were chosen.
As a rule, the Churches do not kill their errant acolytes. Instead, they continue to use them. Isabel, firstly, had her full sight, and then more, returned to her in lidless eyes of crystal which could never blink. Something was also done to her flesh which was akin to the operations which had been performed on Genya’s fingertips. Finally, but this time in a great minaret on the Church’s home island of Jerita, she was returned to her duties as a Dawn-Singer. But dawn for her now became a terrible thing, and the apprentices and clerks and lesser acolytes who lived and worked for their Church around the forested landscapes of the Windfare Hills returned from their night’s labours to agonised screams. Still, Isabel strove to perform her duties, although the light was pure pain to the diamonds of her lidless eyes and the blaze of sunlight was molten lead to flesh which now felt the lightest breeze as a desert gale.
No one’s mind, not even Isabel’s, could sustain such torment indefinitely. As the years passed, it is probable that the portions of her brain which suffered most were slowly destroyed even though the sensors in her scarred and shining flesh continued working. Isabel in her decline became a common sight amid the forests and courtyards of the lesser academies of the Windfare Hills; a stooped figure, wandering and muttering in the painful daylight which she had brought, wrapped in cloths and bandages despite the summer’s endless warmth; an object lesson in betrayal, her glittering eyes always shaded, averted in pain. She was given alms. Everyone knew her story, and felt that they had suffered with her—or at least that she had suffered for them. She was treated mostly with sadness, kindness, sympathy. The nights, though, were Isabel’s blessing. She wandered under the black skies almost at ease, brushing her fingers across the cooling stones of statues, listening to the sigh of the trees.
Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod Page 30