The Vistor

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Wait, oh, wait." Smell of damp chill. Taste of mildew.

  "Going, coming, where?" Smell of silence, taste of dust.

  "Gone, something, wasn't it?" Nothingness, cold, mold.

  "Not here. Never here. Look for it, oh, look for it..."

  Dismé stared after them, but for a time they disappeared, only to reassemble and return toward her, stopping once more near the bottle wall, where they spiralled over the shining bottles, across and back, across and back.

  "It?"

  "No. Where. Where."

  "Lost, lost, lost, nowhere, lost..."

  Sadness overwhelmed her and she went astray in it as the ouphs surrounded her, wrapped her briefly in a soggy blanket of woe, then departed in a skein of fog among the trees. They were mist and memory and old things falling to ruin. They were shadow and sorrow and recollections of gifts long lost.

  Tears on her cheeks, Dismé took her up bucket again. If she turned it on its side, it had a sharper sound. So she drummed, pam-atum, pam-atum, PAM-atuma...

  Something cracked. She searched around herself, finding nothing, trying it again with that sharp PAM, this time hearing the crack as coming from the bottle wall. More than one bottle! Several! Had she done that?

  She ran to tell Arnole about ouphs and drumming, remembering he was gone only when she was almost at the house. She thought briefly of telling Ayward, but if she did, she would have to tell him how she knew about ouphs. The Dicta did not mention ouphs. Since they were not in the Dicta, knowledge of them would be considered evidence of heresy, or of imagination, which was almost as bad. Besides, could she trust Ay-ward not to tell Rashel?

  It took only a moment to decide not to tell anyone at all.

  11

  colonel doctor jens ladislav

  In the capital of Bastion, the city of Strong Hold, or, as it was usually called, simply Hold, the central area around the Fortress and the three great Avenues leading northwest to Turnaway, southwest to Comador, and eastward to Praise were kept clean and orderly by order of the general. These were the only parts of Bastion seen by most visitors.

  The farther from the Fortress one moved, however, the less attention was given to maintaining streets, buildings, or alleys. Toward the edges of the city, the numbering of buildings became erratic; one street was indistinguishable from another; the collection of trash was an irregular exercise carried out by punishment battalions; and the state of the sewers could be determined by a diagnostic sniff of the air. It was here that housing for the workers was built, and from one such building, known to its inhabitants as Old Stink Fifty-four, a man came running very late at night into Comador Boulevard, then along that thoroughfare toward a clinic run under the aegis of the Department of Medicine.

  It was far too late for any official agency to be open, but since the runner would pass the clinic on his way to the nearest carriage halt he had decided he could spare ten seconds to find out if anyone was there. Remarkably, a doctor unlocked the door.

  "What is it?" he asked crisply, putting his hands on the man's shoulders to keep him from falling down. The doctor's uniform identified him as of too high a rank to work nights or to be called out on late-night emergencies, and the running man's experience with ranking officers of the Regime made him tongue-tied for the moment, unable to do anything but stare at the long, narrow face, the long elegantly shaped nose, and the upward curving lips beneath. This latter characteristic made the running man remember not only why he had come, but, with sudden hope, who this doctor was.

  "Dr. Jens Ladislav," said the doctor, offering his hand.

  So stimulated, the man remembered his own name. "Millus," he panted, wiping his hand, which was somewhat bloody, along his trousers. "Forgive me, Dr. Jens, sir, but I came to fetch a doctor. It's my friends. One woke with the Terrors, the other got cut, and he's bleeding bad."

  "I'll get my bag," said the doctor, doing so, and taking up a heavy cloak at the same time, for the night was turning chill, as it often did at this altitude, irrespective of the season.

  "You say the man woke in a frenzy?" the doctor asked, when they were in the carriage he had fortuitously been able to hail as it went by on the thoroughfare. "What was his name, again?"

  "Les Tarig, sir. That's the man who did the damage. He woke like a wild man, screaming, and calling out the names of people I'd never heard of. 'Dismé, Dismé,' he called, and 'Where are you Dis, leave her alone, get off her,' and such like things. So it was Matt tried to calm him, Matt's always a one to make peace, and Tarig grabbed up the scissors from the table and went for Matt, and it was all we could do to get him tied down."

  The doctor looked extremely thoughtful at this intelligence. "And where is Tarig now?"

  "He's there still, sir. Tied up on the bed. Fomenting and furying like one possessed. And here we are, sir. It's because we are so near I came running past the clinic on my way to the carriages, not expecting to find your eminence there..."

  "Nothing eminent about it. I'm a doctor. I work there."

  "Oh, yes sir, but you're a Colonel Doctor, and you work there daytimes, and even that is surprising." This was said in a tone of approval. "Most of the ranking doctors, they leave it to the student sorcerers to care for people like us."

  "Let's see to Matt," said the doctor, somewhat embarrassed by this encomium, as he got out of the carriage, bag in hand.

  Inside the place was a warren of rooms that the doctor recognized as being typical of bachelor quarters anywhere in Bastion, rooms repeatedly split and redone and refurbished and unfurbished, while over all rose a reek that denoted carelessness in the toilets, burned pans in the kitchen, and the miasma of unwashed clothing. In the army, where the doctor had spent some years of service, men managed somewhat better, for sergeants always had a supply of miscreants for latrine duty and kitchen duty and laundry duty, plus the power to keep them at it until the job, was done better than passably. Here, however, there was no assigning or doing, but only a slothful slope ever steepening into piggery.

  Their destination was an airless and bloody room where a sturdy man lay bound upon the bed, still heaving, staring, and making urgent noises even through the tight gag someone had put on him. The doctor spared him only a glance, for the injured man, Matt, lay on the floor, unconscious. One of the inhabitants pressed a pad of cloth to his cheek, which, when the doctor lifted it, displayed a lengthy cut that went across the cheekbone from near the corner of the eye almost to the corner of the mouth. Luckily, it had not gone all the way through the cheek. "Ah," said the doctor in a tone of concern, "This is bad enough, but was he hit on the head, as well?"

  "He was, sir. He fell back against those pipes."

  The doctor examined his eyes, felt of the head, sighed and mumbled to himself in an unconscious litany, ahwell, ahwell, ahwell, then aloud: "Ahwell, is there an anchorite here?"

  "Old Ben," suggested someone, without moving.

  "Right enough, Old Ben," agreed another, who also lacked the power of motion. Anchorites worshipped a goddess called Elnith of the Silences. They took vows of silence and of helpfulness toward others. Though they were said to be numerous, they were rare birds in Bastion, and inoffensive ones, or they would not have been allowed to exist.

  "Can he be fetched?" queried the doctor in some temper.

  "Tssh, tssh, get Old Ben," said someone else. "The doctor's about doing sorcery."

  The whisper of sorcery brought out those few denizens who had not yet appeared, so that Old Ben had to fight his way through a clutter of them when he arrived. The doctor gestured, and the mob vacated the room, not without curious glances. Though inquisitive, they had no wish to be exposed to sorcery. The anchorite shut the door behind them.

  "Clean water," the doctor demanded. "Possible?"

  "There's a kettle there on the stove," said the anchorite with one lordly gesture, his mouth tight shut.

  The doctor grinned and beckoned; the steaming kettle was brought. The doctor removed clean cloths and a little basin fro
m his kit and added something from his bag to the wash water before cleaning out the wound. He then directed the anchorite to turn away, which he did, closing his eyes to give the doctor complete privacy for his magic.

  The doctor took two vials from a secret compartment in his bag, pouring the contents of one around and deeply into the wound before sucking up the contents of the other into a glass device with a needle at its end which he then stabbed into the injured man's leg, leaving scarcely a mark when he withdrew it. Such needles were used by chair attendants, and only by them. No ordinary person used this kind of needle, for doing so might be interpreted as attempting a form of magic.

  During this process the doctor whispered urgently, under his breath, his usual enchantment for such occasions, a list from his herbal:

  "Aconite, adder's tongue, agrimony, aloes,

  Bugloss, burdock, calamintha, pussy toes,

  chamomile, cherry bark, clover, common clary,

  chickweed, chicory, black chokecherry,..."

  The list could go on to the letter Z, and Jens knew medical uses for virtually all of them, though some, he suspected, depended more upon faith than fact. When he had finished, both vials and device went back in the secret pocket he used for illicit materials. Owning illicit devices was sin enough to get the doctor either chaired or bottled, no matter that he customarily achieved a cure rate six times that of any of his colleagues.

  Jens Ladislav had been a colonel for three years. He was a bronzed and active man of forty-two who had spent a lengthy apprenticeship with doctors of the previous generation. He had also traveled extensively along the borders of Bastion, and while still a mere Lieutenant-Medic had "discovered" (through the help of an outsider) a huge cache of medical books and implements, a feat which had put him in good odor with the Regime.

  While still in favor, Jens had slipped away for a season and returned with useful information concerning cures for the ailments that afflicted his superior officers. When proffering these cures, previously unknown to Bastion physicians, he said he had learned them from "herbalists" who lived in the mountains. He cured the OC Bishop of a persistent infection acquired by rapine among outlanders in his youth. The bishop was grateful enough that he allowed some latitude for the doctor's "studies," but neither he nor General Gowl quite trusted the doctor. He was too well liked to be trustworthy, and they spied on him from time to time.

  Once the illicit materials were safely hidden, the doctor turned the anchorite around once more, telling him to press here, and here, so, to hold the lips of the wound together while he sewed it, and the two of them cooperated with neatness and dispatch, the doctor taking notice of the fact that the old man's hands were quite clean, even the nails. When the sewing was done, the doctor cleaned the surface of the wound once more, then placed a pad of cloth across it and sealed this to the face with several lengths of sticky stuff at which the anchorite widened his eyes.

  "The Regime knows all about this stuff," said the doctor with a shrug. "It's not artful and it's not demonic, it's just a kind of cloth with some rubbery cement along one side of it, to hold bandages on."

  The anchorite smiled, which the doctor found pleasant, since he got few enough of those during a day's work. Pain usually preoccupied people to the exclusion of politeness, no matter how grateful they might be. He went to the door, called Millus into the room, gave him instructions as to the care of the patient and the command to bring him to the clinic in two days' time. Then he rose and approached the boar's nest of a bed where the bound man had continued heaving and snorting. Leaving him tightly bound, the doctor took off the gag and gave the fellow a drink.

  "Can you talk sense?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir," said the bound man in a panicky voice. "Is he all right, Matt? I didn't even know it was him..."

  "He's all right. Here. Let me look at your eyes. Ah. Yes. Now, let me listen here, like this. Good. Let's remove the ropes. Ben, take those scissors outside, as well as anything else that looks dangerous, and thank you for your help.

  "Ah. Now, suppose you tell me about it?"

  "It ...it was the Terrors, sir. That is, I guess it was. I hadn't had them before, but I've heard people tell. All I knew was, the monsters had me, and my little friend Dismé, like in the Time of Desperation, sir, horrid things, oh, with such a taste and smell to them, like choking, and they had me and they had Dismé, and I was trying to get to her, and suddenly I had a weapon in my hand and I started stabbing the thing that held me..." He sobbed drily. "It was Matt."

  "Dismé who?" the doctor asked. "And where is she?"

  "Oh, sir, the only Dismé I ever knew was a little girl I played with in Apocanew, when I was a child. Dismé Latimer, and she's all grown up by now, still in Apocanew so far as I know. In my dream she was only a tiny girl, but it seemed real..."

  The doctor took a notebook from his pocket and perched on the bed like an angular bird. "Now, I want you to be very patient with me and answer a great many questions. Let's start with everything you ate or drank all day yesterday?"

  When he left the room an hour later, the doctor was no less puzzled than he had been on other similar occasions when hanging about the clinics at night had garnered him a victim of the Terrors. Last span there had been four dead when he arrived, and two more dying, for that man had laid hands on a bludgeon and the house had been asleep. Nothing seemed to unite those who had the Terrors. Some were young, some old, some women, some men, some workers, some fanners, some do-nothings, some who had eaten little or nothing, some who had feasted and drunk enough cider to fill a bull's bath. Most of them, though not all, had been to market recently, which meant little or nothing, since almost everyone went to market every day or so.

  The doctor stopped in the entry of the place and trumpeted for the inhabitants to attend upon an announcement. When they were all more or less gathered, he said:

  "I have found demonic magic in Tarig's room, and if it is there, it is likely to be elsewhere in this building and you will need to exorcise it at once."

  This brought forth a gabble which subsided only when Old Ben raised his arms, invoking silence.

  "Every bit of cloth in the building must be washed in hot water and soap and dried in the sun," said the doctor. "That includes all clothing, bedclothes, blankets, curtains, rag rugs. Every floor and wall must be washed. Every cooking utensil. The magic has been painted invisibly by a night demon, and only by washing everything can you dispose of it. When you have washed everything, then each light a candle and go through every room singing all nine verses of hymn number forty-three, the one that begins, 'Oh, forfend all demons...' "

  "The whole thing?" complained one surly young man. "I don't even know the whole thing."

  "Learn it," said the doctor severely. "The demon may come back and paint the magic on things again, so it would be a good idea to wash things regularly." He then turned aside, catching, as he did so, a glimpse of laughter in Old Ben's eyes. He winked. The anchorite returned the wink.

  "Thank you, Colonel-Doctor Ladislav," said Millus, with a low bow. "Thank you very much, sir."

  "What place is this?" the doctor asked.

  "Office of Housing, Unmarried Men's Quarters, Number Fifty-four, sir. The tenants call her Old Stink, but officially, she's Hold Housing Fifty-four."

  Outside the door, the doctor was surprised to find Old Ben waiting for him. The anchorite drew him away from the windows and whispered, "Doctor, may I ask a favor, sir?"

  The doctor hid his surprise at hearing speech. "Of course."

  "My order ... they need healers, and they authorized my speaking to you. Would you consider allowing me to apprentice to you? The clinic isn't far from here, and I can work hard and learn well."

  The doctor stared at him for a moment, considering whether such an arrangement might involve him in any greater danger than he ran from day to day without it, deciding finally that it would not. "Be there in the morning," he said. "I am glad to have an extra pair of hands, particularly clean ones." A
nd he shook the man by the hand and went back to the carriage, which had waited for him.

  On the way back to the Fortress, the doctor took out his notebook and wrote down an account of the evening, as he did whenever he encountered anything at all strange. He concluded his account with a few words about Old Ben, who was an interesting fellow very much to the doctor's taste. He also wrote down the name Dismé Latimer, for it was the second time he had been made aware of that name recently.

  12

  nell latimer's book

  Over the last few weeks, the International Prayer group has been covered by every magazine, the lead item in every webcast. It's been on the cover of MILLENNIUM THREE, NEWS-OP, and FAME. It's been praised by several prominent conservative pastors and acknowledged by the President. The hundred or so Congressmen who have always made a ballyhoo about attending prayer breakfasts were pictured last week participating in a daily IPC prayer session. I am still able to sense the daily prayer time without knowing it in advance. The world can be smelling of sunshine one moment, and the next moment it is adrift in this thick purple odor that accumulates, like smoke, hiding the horizon.

  Our interstellar visitor, meantime, even though it's no longer headed toward us, is still a major mystery. It does not act like a comet, or an asteroid. It's getting closer and closer to Jupiter—it will actually come closer to Jupiter than it did to Saturn—and every observatory in the world is watching, not that they'll see much since the transit will be behind the planet. General scientific opinion is that it'll be deflected slightly toward the sun, crossing the orbits of the outer planets again as it exits the system.

  Whenever I see my carefully constructed shelter, I laugh at the irony. It'll take me years to save up that much money again. Oh, well, maybe I can use it for storage.

  The transit of Jupiter has occurred. Everyone was wrong. The thing didn't hit the planet, it didn't get slightly deflected. It was whipped around Jupiter like a skater at the end of a line, and snapped into a new trajectory that's headed straight toward Earth, or, where Earth will be when it gets there. Incredulity and fury are the emotions of the day. Everyone's up against the wall, politicians, scientists, media people. Everyone feels betrayed. The danger was past, and now it's not, despite the fact that the math does not check out. This is fairly simple Newtonian physics after all, nothing arcane about it. The mass figures obtained from the speed and orbital change when the thing was nudged by Saturn are not compatible with the diversion caused by Jupiter. A thing with the mass derived from the Saturn transit could not have approached Jupiter at that speed from that angle and been changed to its current speed and its current direction. Some unknown force has been involved in changing the trajectory.