Her mortal life was over anyway. She had nothing left to live for. It was really no contest. “I’ll do it.”
Lisa smiled. “We’re so pleased. We know you will do what has to be done. We know that our mortal situations will be protected from evil, with you in charge.” She extended her hand.
Niobe was taken aback. “Wait! I didn’t mean right this instant! I have to put my mortal affairs in order—”
“Lachesis will do that for you,” Lisa assured her. “Before she moves on to her own situation.”
Surely she could trust an Aspect of Fate to know the importance of the proper disposition of Earthly affairs! Especially when it was vital that Satan not know of the change.
Niobe took Lisa’s hand. There was the odd jolt she had experienced twice before.
Then she was inside Lisa, looking out out through her eyes. A nondescript middle-aged woman stood before her: the old Lachesis.
Good-bye, mortal situation! Niobe thought with abrupt nostalgia. No life was easy to leave, even a completed one.
“Take the body,” Lisa said, and turned it over to her.
Niobe stood again in her own form, in different flesh. Her original flesh had been lost when she had become Clotho, so long ago, and when she had returned to mortality she had taken Lisa’s flesh. Her pattern, even to the genes of reproduction, had carried across. Now that flesh was subject to the will and image of the prior Lachesis. Surely Lisa, too, felt nostalgia, knowing that the flesh that had been hers had just passed to a third identity. It was a familiar yet strange business.
Niobe shook hands with the woman who had been Lachesis. “I think you already know anything I would say. Go to your situation and be happy.”
“I can never thank you enough—Lachesis,” the woman said. “Do you know what mortality offers for me now?”
“It’s really not my business—”
“A title,” the woman exclaimed. “I am in a position to inherit a title and a grand estate in Europe, and be a lady of quality with servants and functions and responsibilities. I always longed for this and feared it could never come about. As Lachesis I indulged my propensity for managing things—”
“That’s a quality of those suitable for that Aspect,” Niobe agreed.
“But now it can be real. I mean, mortal. And the estate needs me; without a person of the blood, it will fall prey to greedy distant claimants and taxes—it would be destroyed. But now it has come to me, if I claim it in time, and I know so well how to manage it! If I die of some disfiguring disease within twenty years, still I shall be well satisfied!”
Obviously so. Different folk had different dreams, and the right dream was worth one’s life. “Bless you, and prosper,” Niobe told her warmly.
“Bless you, wonderful woman!” the other responded. Niobe returned the body to Lisa so that she and Atropos could bid farewell to their companion. It was strange, sharing Fate with the woman who had succeeded her as Clotho, but evidently she had chosen correctly, on that day a quarter-century ago. Lisa had done the job.
When the other two were done, they changed to spider form and slid up the web to Purgatory. How quickly it all came back! Niobe did not for a moment regret her second tenure as a mortal, and she felt a lingering pang for that suddenly lost life—but she also felt an abiding joy for her return as an Incarnation. To be an Immortal—there was no mortal experience to match it!
The Abode was unchanged: a cocoon, a house made of silk, the most comfortable retreat for the spinner and handler of threads. Still there was no staff, for the three women of Fate remained too independent to be waited on. There was a reasonable supply of Void-substance for Clotho. Everything was in order.
“Now it is my turn,” Lisa said, and started out again.
“Already?” Niobe asked. “But we just got here!”
“Yes—to be sure you had your bearings. As you can see, I have arranged things for my replacement; it will be a fortnight before she has to visit the Void.” She paused. “What an experience, that first time!”
Niobe shrugged, mentally. It was essentially the business of each Aspect to choose her successor, and the time other own return to mortality. Niobe had become Clotho, in large part, because the prior Clotho had liked her, and now was Lachesis because the three Aspects had agreed she was needed. She would go along with what had been decided.
Clotho descended a thread toward the western coast of America. “To what situation are you going?” Niobe asked.
“True love,” Lisa answered raptly. “One day last month I was hiking in the mountains when a young man floated down on a flying carpet to ask directions. He had an accent I recognized. ‘You’re from Hungary!’ I cried. He was taken aback. ‘My parents were,’ he said. ‘My mother was carrying me when they fled during the—’ and he shrugged, for in America few understand how it was in Budapest. ‘I’m from there too,’ I told him, and I spoke to him in our language. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘I am not good at it! All my life has been here.’ But he understood enough. Now he wants to marry me. He understands about how I am, almost twice his age. We did not tell his mother about that—she would not understand—so I told her my own mother had told me how it was with her when she fled, and then I told her in our tongue my own experience as if it were my mother’s—and I think it could have been my mother’s, if she hadn’t died in the invasion of our homeland—and his mother cried with the memories, and she reminded me so much of mine, I cried too! I think she wants me to marry her son twice as much as he does! I will move in with them, and I know I will never have trouble with my in-laws!”
Niobe hated to raise the question, but felt she had to. “Yet you believe this is the work of—of the anonymous one—to get you out of the way?”
“Yes. Lachesis—the one before you—verified how that one had nudged that thread to place him flying where I was hiking, so we would meet. So little a thing—but though there was manipulation, the person is genuine. There is no great evil in him. The unnamed knows I would not take an evil man. An Aspect of Fate cannot be deceived by fool’s gold! So the intent may be evil, but the offering is good. It is not for me the evil is intended, but for you.”
Yes, surely so. The ways of Satan were devious but effective. But maybe this time the Father of Lies would find himself outmaneuvered, for the Incarnation of Fate was no innocent mortal to be fooled by manipulations of chance. Especially not with a former Aspect returning, with her firsthand knowledge of Satan’s ways. You have a surprise coming, O Evil One! she thought.
They came to ground in an unsettled area. A young woman was walking at dusk toward the high cliff that descended to the crashing sea. She was Oriental and quite pretty.
Lisa intercepted her. “Where do you go, solitary maiden?”
“What does it matter? My life is over.”
“But you are young and pretty and intelligent,” Lisa protested. “You have much to live for!” Obviously Fate had researched this woman’s thread.
“No, I have nothing to live for,” the girl demurred. “My family has cast me out for not following the old ways, for being too willful and violent, and now I have no family.”
Niobe knew that the Oriental cultures could be very strict about their traditions, and that there were sometimes conflicts with the ways of the Occidental world. The girl had probably refused to marry the man the family had chosen for her. Niobe could understand, even though her own arranged marriage had been a good one. She disliked admitting it, but parental judgment did seem to be as good as that of the participants. But America touted itself as the land of the free, and it had become unacceptable for girls to heed the judgment of their elders. There was more to tragedy than lost romance.
Amen! Atropos agreed.
“And now you are ready to depart this world?” Lisa asked.
The girl glanced at the cliff. A gust of sea breeze ruffled her black hair. “If I have the courage.”
“I have an alternative.” And Lisa explained about Fate and the role of Clotho.
It took the young woman a while to grasp it, understandably, but when she peered over the dark and savage ocean, she decided that this was a better alternative. Atropos took over the body, extended her hand, and it was done. Clotho had changed.
Lisa now stood in her physical form, just like herself; all traces of Oriental heritage had vanished. Niobe had never quite understood the magic that did this, but of course that wasn’t necessary. Welcome, Clotho, she thought, and the process of education began.
They returned to the Abode and relaxed for a few hours. Niobe, as Lachesis, took over the body and contemplated the Tapestry, while Atropos continued to explain things internally to Clotho. The prior Lachesis had left the Tapestry in good order, considering the troubled times, so there was nothing urgent to do at the moment. Niobe had seen the job performed during her prior tenure as an Aspect, but now the responsibility was hers, and that was different. She hoped Satan would leave them alone for a few weeks while she got into it—and knew he wouldn’t.
Next day it was Atropos’ turn. There had been an accident, and her mortal great-grandchildren had become orphans. They would become wards of the state and be assigned to separate foster homes unless she, their only remaining blood relative, assumed control. They were eleven and nine years old; Atropos believed she had enough mortal years left in her to get the older one to the age of discretion before she died. She had to do it; they were her blood kin. Satan did not seem to have arranged this; rather, he had foreseen the opportunity and arranged for the other two Aspects to leave at the same time Atropos did. If Lachesis had not caught the hint in the Tapestry, Satan’s ploy would have been effective. As it was, no easy time was coming, Niobe was sure, but at least they had a chance to win.
Atropos slid down a thread to the one she had selected. This brought her to a slum area where an old black woman sat in her rocking chair on a rickety porch, watching children play handball in the street. She looked up as Atropos appeared before her. “‘Bout time you got here,” she remarked.
Even Atropos was taken aback by this. “You know me?”
“I know you. I was expecting Death, though, not Fate.”
“I have come to ask you to take my place. If you do, you will meet Death only as a business associate.”
“I thought he already was. I’ve buried more kin than I can count on my hands.” She held up her gnarled spread fingers.
“If you take this office, you will cut the threads on the lives of a million times that number.”
“Somebody’s got to do it.”
Atropos turned the body over to Niobe. “Then take my hand,” Niobe said. “But do not think the job is always easy.”
The old woman hardly blinked. “No job worth doing is.” She took the hand.
Then the old Atropos was sitting in the rocker, and the new one was with Fate.
At that point a child dashed up. “Grandma! I made a score!” Then, seeing a stranger in the chair, he skidded to a halt.
Niobe gave the body to the new Atropos. “It’s okay, Jimmy,” she said. “She’s just visiting.”
“Oh.” Suddenly shy, the boy backed away.
“Jimmy, it’s time for me to go away,” the new Atropos said. “You do me a big favor, now, and show this lady to the bus stop. Tell the folks I’m gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Just gone. Jimmy. They’ll understand.”
“Okay.” The boy, given an important job to do, led the old Atropos away down the street.
Niobe took over the body again, changed to spider form, and mounted a thread. Now that’s some trick! the new Atropos thought. I always squish bugs.
“Not anymore,” Niobe said in her spider’s voice. “You will master this trick too.”
She brought them to the Abode and resumed her human form. “In fact, we had better practice the basic motions right now,” she said. “Because things may get hectic soon.”
Hectic? both others inquired.
Quickly Niobe explained how Satan had conspired to get three new Aspects of Fate together. “Now I am a retread,” she concluded. “I had several decades experience as Clotho, ending twenty-five years ago. We hope Satan doesn’t know that.” She felt free to name the Prince of Evil, here in the Abode, because it was secure from uninvited intrusion. Each Incarnation was supreme within his or her home. “So we can afford to fumble about at first; that will reassure him, and he may be careless. But we have to take care that we don’t do too much damage. These are human lives we are manipulating, remember.”
They practiced using the mouth to speak, assuming the spider form, climbing the web, and using the travelthreads to move about rapidly, so that any of the three could get about well enough. Then Niobe explained the three jobs: how Clotho spun the threads of life, Lachesis measured them, and Atropos cut them to their lengths. “I hardly know my own job,” she confessed. “So I really am learning too. I’m likely to mismeasure the lengths I need for particular parts of the Tapestry, which will result in some of what the mortals take to be odd coincidences. We won’t have to pretend, to make thinks look awkward.”
“But we could use a real bad blunder to start off,” Atropos concluded. She seemed to have a ready grasp of the essentials; the prior Atropos had chosen well.
Clotho tried some spinning. She had no mortal experience at this, so was clumsy. She had been selected as much for availability and militant spirit as for dexterity, for the notice had been short. Niobe had to guide her carefully, and even so, the thread was somewhat loose and irregular. But she could do it, however slowly.
Now it was Atropos’ turn to try some cutting. Niobe measured a thread, then turned the body over to the old woman. Atropos took the little scissors and snipped one end, then the other. “Oops,” she said. “I cut it too long!” She cut a small bit off the end. “There—that’s about right, now.”
They prepared about twenty threads, snipping freely to trim them down to size. “When we get more experienced,” Niobe said as she took them to the Tapestry for placement, “we’ll do them wholesale. There are far too many lives on Earth for us to handle individually.” She set the threads in—and they fell out.
That was funny. “They always seemed to grow right in place for the Lachesis I knew in the old days.” She recovered a thread and set it in place again—and it fell out again. “I don’t remember her having to tie them in.”
“Maybe I spun them wrong,” Clotho said nervously. “I don’t think so. But we can try some new ones.” Clotho spun some more, and Niobe measured, and Atropos snipped, still having trouble getting the lengths exactly right; more snippets fell to the floor. But the new threads also refused to stay in place.
They couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The floor of the Abode was littered with snippets, but no threads had been successfully emplaced in the Tapestry.
There was a peremptory knock on the door. Niobe took the body and went to answer it.
Thanatos stood there, more forbidding in his hooded cloak and skull than she recalled him. The off-white bones of his fingers clenched spasmodically. Truly, he was Death Incarnate. “What are you up to?” he demanded.
Niobe was taken aback. “I’m just trying to do my job,” she said.
Thanatos’ square and bony eye-sockets stared darkly at her. “You have changed.”
“We have all changed,” Niobe said, and had Clotho and Atropos show their forms briefly. “But we’re having some trouble—”
“Trouble!” Thanatos exclaimed, striding into the Abode. Beyond him, outside, Niobe saw his fine pale horse, the one she had ridden on, back at the outset. “Twenty-six babies needlessly dead!”
“Babies—dead?” Niobe asked. “I haven’t emplaced any threads, let alone cut them short!”
“No? What do you think these are?” Thanatos demanded, stooping to pick up a handful of snippets. He was angry, and he frightened her even though she knew he was no threat to her.
“Just the trimmings—”
“Trimmings!
” Thanatos roared. “You don’t trim lives from the front ends!”
Niobe fell back against the silken wall, stunned. “The—the front ends?”
Thanatos held up one of the full-length threads. “Here is a Thread of Life,” he said scathingly. “Here is the front, here the rear. When you cut off a segment from the rear—” he made a snipping motion with two bone-fingers—”you shorten that life by that amount. When you cut it off at the front, you shorten that life by this amount.” And he dropped the whole thread to the floor.
“Leaving only this.” He held up two fingers, almost touching each other.
“Oh, no!” Niobe exclaimed with horror. “We cut them off after days—or hours!”
“And twenty-six babies died, poisoned in the hospital,” Thanatos continued grimly. “Because a dietician got the wrong container and put salt in their formulas instead of sugar! The mortals think that’s a tragic accident, but I knew it was your handiwork. I had to take those babies!” His fury fairly shook the Abode.
Niobe burst into tears. She was middle-aged, but it made no difference. She was too appalled to react any other way.
It was Atropos who took over the body and the situation. “Don’t chew her out, Death,” she snapped, “I did it, and I’m mortified. I didn’t know—and I sure as hell won’t do it again!”
Thanatos looked at her, their situation registering. “All three—new?” he asked. “No experience?”
“Not exactly,” Atropos began.
Don’t tell him! Niobe urged. If he knows, Satan will know!
“But all three of us have changed in the last few days,” Atropos said. “And as you can plainly see, not one of us is experienced in her role.”
“How could all three of you change at once?” Thanatos asked. “You lose your continuity!”
“Now he tells us,” Atropos said. “This morning I was sitting in my rocker, waiting for you to come haul my soul away. Now I’m apologizing to you for messing up.”
Thanatos relaxed. “I was new, too, last year, and your forerunners helped me greatly. I know how it is; I made mistakes too. I’m sorry I ranted at you. Let’s see if we can work this out.” He sat on the silk couch and drew back his hood. The face of a rather ordinary young man emerged.
With a Tangled Skein Page 21