Fever Season

by C. J. Cherryh

  "The Adventists don't see it that way."

  "Technology is just another form of Adventist Melancholy," her brother replied, proud of his epigram and setting himself to remember it for other audiences.

  There might even be some truth to it, he considered as Marina pulled the ropes back into the boat. Neither Adventist nor Revenantist, when in the grip of their more absurd teleology, ever considered the possibility that the grass was not greener on the other side of the atmosphere. And while the possibility of escape was very nice, the old texts said that most people never left the planet they were born on; they never left the planet their great-grandparents were born on, either.

  For Richard, whose life, he believed, would be pretty much the same with or without space travel, it just didn't matter very much.

  "But what about the sharrh?" his sister asked when they were well clear of the East Dike.

  That was the final question, and answer, for everything on Merovin. What about the sharrh: unseen and implacable, beyond reason and appeal, the aliens stood between Merovin and its gods. Adventist, Revenantist and Jane—whatever they imagined their differences to be, they were bound primarily by their similarities and those similarities were contained in the single word: sharrh.

  "There are no sharrh," Richard said after pushing hard on the pole. It was a revolutionary remark—a blasphemous remark—and he didn't need to look back over his shoulder to know the look on his sister's face. "Do you watch a roach nest after you've poured boiling water on it?"

  "No," Marina admitted in a soft voice.

  "Of course not. The job's been done. So why should the sharrh be hovering over us, watching our every move, making judgments about every little thing we do? It's our arrogance; we think they care."

  Marina tugged the cap off her head. "Roaches come back," she admonished, tucking the cap under the rail again.

  "So, the analogy isn't perfect. Yes, the roaches come back. Yes, the roaches will outlast everything on Merovin. But I think we're a damn sight cleverer than roaches."

  Marina heard something unfamiliar in her brother's voice— something that sounded dangerously close to belief and commitment. "You won't be so clever if the College hears you say something like that," she cautioned urgently.

  "I wouldn't say anything like that to the cardinals, Ree. I'm not about to do something stupid like start a crusade—but I'm not going to live my life worrying about myths, superstitions or the sharrh."

  Marina said nothing more to him about the sharrh or the activities they'd witnessed in the warehouse—not in the poleboat nor in the days that followed. She had activities and worries enough of her own between the reception honoring Andromeda's return to the city and the failure of Tom's messenger, Raj, to reappear.

  Of course, had the youth come to the door he would most likely have been draped in livery and dragooned into the temporary corps of domestics necessary to put on a proper occasion. Eleanora had been so imposed upon—though not quite to the point of donning livery. It was not uncommon for a House to provide genteel employment for those whose income had fallen far below their social station. Richard had suggested, in one of their fleeting conversations as the week wore on, that Eleanora be described as the daughter of one of Kamat's trading partners who had suffered irreversible losses.

  Marina took note that m'sera Slade was not to be passed off as a Kamat blood relation. Then, remembering the sense of lifetide that had accompanied Eleanora's arrival, she gave the newcomer some of her more discreet clothes. No need to fire the rumors, or their mother's suspicions, before absolutely necessary.

  "So you'll have her pouring tea?" Richard nodded as he asked the question. "Just the right place. I knew you'd think of something."

  Marina managed a weak, harried smile. It was Satterday. Andromeda, who had disembarked at noon, was resting in her rooms. The kitchen swarmed with hired help, as did the entry-level salon and drawing-room. The first guests would arrive at dusk and it began to appear that the event might happen without untoward disaster.

  "I won't be able to be here," Richard informed her, as if he didn't know what his casual words would do to her carefully arranged schedule.

  "A joke? It's a very poor time for a joke, Dickon."

  "Not a joke. I've spent the week wining and dining every man of influence I could put an arm around. They've managed to pry Anastasi Kalugin off the Rock... I'd hoped he'd be willing to come to the reception for mother, but he wouldn't agree. Said there'd be too many people asking too many questions about the census and other things he'd rather not discuss."

  "But he'll talk about the warehouses and Megary and the Sword of God with you—someplace else?" Marina slumped down into one of the armchairs, torn between her anger that he would abandon her this way and her fear. "Richard, don't do it. They control the blacklegs; they've got to be in on it one way or another."

  "I don't think there is a they where House Kalugin is concerned anymore. Beside, Ree, it's not as if I'll be meeting him alone. None of the men will be here. I'm sorry," Richard backed toward the door as his sister's face darkened. "I truly am—but we have to take the opportunities that fall to us."

  He pulled the door shut behind him. Marina's comments were lost to the sound of glassware shattering against the wood. He was well aware that he merited his sister's anger but events had, in fact, been ripped away from his control.

  For three days he had met with househead after househead, breaking the codes of silence as he told them what he'd seen at Megary and the East Dike warehouse and what he knew of Rod Baritz and the disappearance of Jordie Slade. He challenged his peers to meet in Kamat's upper rooms on Satterday, during Andromeda's reception, and had been told, with varying degrees of politeness, to leave the conjunct realm of trade and politics to those who knew it better.

  His failure had shown clearly in the averted eyes that had greeted him at the Ramsey Bell, Friday noontime. He'd wandered home slowly, wondering how he'd explain that he'd embarrassed Kamat in front of the entire city, and arrived to find a deck of vellum calling cards waiting on the vestibule table.

  The old men would not take his word for anything, but their curiosity had been roused and they'd made their own investigations. Richard shuddered to think what skeletons had fallen out of which closets as afternoon became evening but only this morning he'd been informed that Anastasi Kalugin was taking a personal interest in the matter. Since then it had been a steady parade of negotiations, messengers and the occasional warning from a senior house culminating with a simple scrawl from the governor's younger son.

  I will meet with you, and those of your choosing, at twenty-one hours, this evening in the meeting hall above the Fishmarket.

  By then Richard had also been informed of whom he would be advised to choose and the folly of questioning the change in time and venue. Telling his sister was his last gesture before retreating to his octagonal office far above the entertainment level of the house.

  Pacing from one wall to the next, Richard rehearsed any number of conversational gambits and discarded them all. He and Anastasi Kalugin were roughly the same age—but similarities ended there. They had known of each other all their lives but they were not peers, much less friends. By the time he was ready to dress for the evening, Richard more than half hoped one of the elder househeads would usurp control of the Fishmarket meeting.

  He lingered at Kamat long enough to compliment the women of his family on their appearance and to greet the earliest guests—ranking women and a lesser assortment of men. Then he was off across the bridge to Wayfarer's and on to the Fishmarket.

  "You're expected," a surly blackleg informed him as he entered the cavernous lower hall.

  "I can't be late," Richard muttered to himself as his coat was lifted from his shoulders and the appropriate staircase pointed out. "I set my watch by the Signeury chimes just this afternoon—"

  '"M'ser Kalugin," the blackleg interrupted, "does not use the Signeury chimes."

  It would be a long
evening if even the hired blacklegs were speaking with hidden meanings. Richard thanked them with a curt nod and hurried up the stairs.

  The room above the Fishmarket was one of many large halls scattered throughout the city. The middle ranks of Merovingen society—those who had a bit of extra money but who still dwelt in tiny apartments—held their celebrations in such places. On rarer occasions they became the setting for meetings too important to be held in public and too delicate to be held in any one House.

  After checking the lay of his collar and hair, Richard pushed through the double doors. He stood at one end—the empty end—of a large room which fell silent as his presence was noted. His heels echoed on the wooden floor; it took eternity to reach the dais where Anastasi Kalugin stood waiting.

  "I understand you're the cause of all this," the governor's son said—a greeting carefully, and successfully, calculated to set Richard at a disadvantage.

  The head of House Kamat felt a hastily eaten canape rattle vilely through his stomach. Kalugin seemed in control of everything; the notion of demanding accountability from any member of Merovingen's ruling family seemed utterly absurd. The smile spreading slowly across Anastasi's face, went a long way to confirm that impression.

  Richard swallowed hard. "I suppose I am," he said, expecting to sound like a young fool. But the men, Nikolay's friends and competitors, who formed a ring around the dais didn't regard him as a fool. Kalugin's smile faltered and Richard had a moment to reflect that perhaps they did have much in common after all.

  "I'm impressed that you travel with an escort, m'ser Kalugin. I'd have been more impressed on Monday last if I'd seen a blackleg or two along East Dike or at Megary slip where East Dike goods are exchanged for god knows what—and good men have died for asking the wrong questions."

  The smile was gone completely now. "My sway over the blacklegs stops somewhat short of East Dike—as you're well aware."

  "No, I am not aware; I should not need to be aware—"

  "Don't be foolish," Anastasi interrupted.

  "Foolish! I'll tell you what is foolish: sitting by idly while the business of your House and family is ripped apart—that's foolish, Anastasi Kalugin. Using the city as a battleground in your family wars—that's foolish, too. Or don't you care that none of this could happen if the Signeury weren't paralyzed?"

  "I care."

  There were murmurings in the ring of men beyond them. The sounds of new arrivals, of disagreement and surprise. Richard heard them but was not affected by them. Of course Anastasi cared; he was scared beneath his pallor and elegance else he would not have placed himself here in this room.

  "Then you should do something, m'ser Kalugin. It will not be enough to sit back until the waters clears. The Signeury has certain obligations to this city, to the Houses that keep Merovingen alive—and your family isn't living up to those obligations." He paused, but Anastasi said nothing and he feared he had not been understood. "Merovingen is not a hostage in the battles within your House."

  Richard became aware then of a collective intake of breath in the circle beyond himself and Anastasi. There was muttering as well, and in the lengthening silence the young Househead sensed approval as well as stunned surprise among the older gentlemen. Kalugin heard it too.

  "That could be treason," the governor's son said.

  While Richard wracked his mind for the right words, the circle parted and a third man joined them on the dais. Vega Boregy: a man about Nikolay's age, a man whose reputation in the city entitled him to join any gathering but, so far as Richard knew, a man who had not been invited to this one.

  "I doubt that, m'ser Kalugin," Vega purred, easily displacing both young men from the center of attention. "Our mercantile barons are simply trying to remind you that they put your great-grandfather in the Signeury and they can pull you out of it—or keep you there."

  "It would be treason—"

  "The winners are never guilty of treason. I would have thought you'd learned that above all else at your father's knee."

  "Iosef’s more worried about you and your damned sister than he is about Merovingen." Richard and Anastasi snapped about to see who among the others had spoken, but the circle held its secrets.

  "There, Anastasi," Boregy continued, "you should be honored. The barons prefer you to the rest of your infernal family. They think you can win it all."

  Anastasi Kalugin glared into Boregy's face, giving Richard and his associates ample time to wonder what alliances had already been drawn between Merovingen's most powerful banking family and a Kalugin heir. A House's banker, like its lawyers and doctors, knew where the scandals and skeletons were hidden; and no merchant believed that anything was truly not for sale if the price were right. Yet Boregy's roots went deep into the mud of the Det delta; as a man and as a House they risked no less than any other in this room in any struggle with Nev Hettek.

  "It will take time," Kalugin said to Boregy alone.

  "We're setting our own men to guard the warehouses," Richard interrupted, obliquely telling Kalugin that time, as a commodity, was in short supply. "And we'll take other measures to assure ourselves that commerce moves unimpeded through Merovingen."

  Now it was Kalugin's turn to wonder what else this collection of merchants might do to protect its interests and Richard's turn to pray that the men arranged behind him would not reveal how little had been discussed, much less decided. Kamat got lucky, for the men enjoyed the spectacle of a discomfited Kalugin in their midst.

  But power is a heady wine and each man gathered in that hall above the Fishmarket had drunk deep. The merchant barons—acting in concert for the first time in living memory— had found within themselves a weapon of awesome power. Anastasi Kalugin studied that weapon and in faint expressions only Vega Boregy could interpret, compared it with others in the Kalugin arsenal.

  Richard Kamat had drunk most deeply of all and, for the moment, saw the world with lesser clarity. Everyone wanted to have a word with him, to shake his hand and to tell him how much he reminded them of Nikolay. He left the hall awash in pride and amazement: the way he felt in those rare moments when his father's praise had erupted unexpectedly. He returned to Kamat expecting to celebrate and was surprised to find it dark with only Eleanora to greet him.

  "It was very dull," she told him, "with only women, children and old men to provide the conversation. Your mother seemed not at all displeased, but your sister seemed in a fine rage when all the guests had left before midnight.''

  Intimate family realities dampened the glow of the evening. "She'll recover," Richard replied, suddenly aware of the hours he had spent at the Fishmarket after Kalugin and Boregy had left.

  "Did you get what you wanted?"

  "I think so—"

  "Did you get what I wanted?"

  Richard let his coat fall over a chair and put his arms over her shoulders. Dressed in Marina's clothes, Eleanora seemed like another younger sister but there was a burning fatalism in her eyes that would never be assimilated into an aristocratic house.

  "It will not happen again—I can only promise you that; I can't find Jordie or bring him back."

  He felt but did not see the flicker of tension that raced through her. "Karma, then," she whispered, meeting his eyes again. "A beginning in every ending."

  He could have taken her in his arms and made a most spectacular beginning. Instead he gave her the same quick hug he would have shared with Marina.

  "Definitely a beginning," Richard assured her as he backed to the stairway.

  FEVER SEASON (FINAL REPRISE)

  C.J. Cherryh

  Jones stared with apprehension at the little card the harried blackleg was making out for her at the table set up on Moghi's porch. Jones, it said, Altair X.

  "I ain't no X," she protested.

  "Ye're s'posed t' have three names."

  "Well, maybe I got three, but my mama never told me. It sure as hell ain't any X."

  "It's X," the blackleg said. And went on writing in t
he blanks. "Adventist."

  "Ain't."

  "Convert?"

  "Ney."

  "Adventist." That went in the blank. The most damning thing a body could be in Merovingen, except Janist. And the man went on writing. "Residence?"

  "My skip."

  "What's its number?"

  "I dunno. It ain't got a number."

  "It's got a number. It's on your license. Let's see it."

  "I ain't got it on me. It's on my skip, "'s supposed to be."

  "Go get it."

  Jones looked around at the line, that stretched clear off the porch. "I got to go through this damn line again?"

  The blackleg set her card aside on the table. "Sorry. I need the number. Next."

  "Ye damn—"

  The blackleg looked up. Not without a certain anxiety. But Del Suleiman had her by the arm, and patted her shoulder. "Ye go. I save yer place. Mira, ye go get our license."

  "No holding places," the blackleg said.

  There was a mutter up front, all around. "Line ain't moving, then," yelled Libby Singh, and the mutter got uglier. "We can jest stand."

  "Blacklegs ain't getting no ride in this town."

  "Get the damn papers!" the blackleg yelled, his face reddening. "Every canaler in this damn line better have the damn papers when they get here!"

  "Atterlad," Hen Fregit said, and waved a hand. "Ain't n'body movin' in this line till we all got back. Hear it?"

  There was a shifting among the canalsiders, a little muttering, but partners and kids and family folded their arms and stood, still as monuments, exactly in place, and no lander moved up in line to fill the vacant spots, as canalers went to the skips and poleboats tied up along the porch and under Fishmarket Bridge, and all along the bank.

  No one had moved when they got back either. And Altair Jones unfolded the waterstained paper that was her shipping license, and held it up in front of the officer's eyes. "That's the number on the paper. Ain't the number on my skip. My skip ain't got a number."