The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  Fuming, Maybelle reassembled herself and turned to check her belongings, which were now in a state of total disarray. She did a quick inventory of the jewelry case. One pair of rather valuable earclips missing. The security guard had used only one hand for parts of the search. The other one had undoubtedly been busy filching jewelry. Maybelle toyed with the idea of accusing the woman. What would it gain her? Delay. Which she didn’t want. Which might even have been the motive for the theft.

  Pretend not to notice it, she had told herself. You’re probably being watched right now, so lock up the cases and pretend not to notice. Which she had done, just in time for the porter to take the cases down to the tender.

  Now she was bounding around on Jubal’s purple ocean, almost at the launch site and herself seemingly the only passenger for Serendipity. Well, that’s what Rheme had said. No one was getting off of Jubal these days. No body and no thing.

  Except for brou. And the things the Honorable Wuyllum had stolen. And the things Honeypeach had stolen. And a few cartons near her feet that were tagged as belonging to Aphrodite Sells.

  ‘The rets are deserting the sinking ship,’ she quoted, without having any clear idea what rets were. Something little and scaley, with unpleasant teeth, that came onto ships simply in order to leave them, ships like the ones on Serendipity, shallow and gently curved, with long, triangular sails.

  ‘We’ll miss you, Mayzy,’ Honeypeach had said. ‘You have no idea how much.’ There had been a threat in that, which Maybelle had pretended not to hear.

  ‘Settle yourself in,’ her father had directed. ‘Pick the best part of the capital city and rent yourself some kind of expensive-looking place. Rheme’s arranged for some woman to help you; he’ll give you her name.’ That was all the Honorable Wuyllum had to say on the matter, but then he was much preoccupied with stripping Jubal of as much wealth as possible in the few days or weeks that remained.

  That’s funny,’ said the boatman. ‘The loading ramp’s not down.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, a queasy feeling rising from her stomach to the bottom of her throat and resting there as though it had no intention of moving.

  ‘It means we can’t get onto the ship,’ he muttered. ‘Dumb shits.’ He hit a button on the control panel and a horn blatted over the sound of wave and wind.

  Maybelle put her hands over her ears. The horn went on blaring for some time. When it was cut off, she heard an answering howl from the tower.

  ‘Return to port. Ship is lifting in the hour and will accept no passengers or additional cargo, by order of the launch commander.’

  ‘Tell him who’s on board,’ Maybelle directed between dry lips.

  ‘He knows,’ the boatman mumbled in a surly voice. ‘You think he don’t know!’ Still, he put the amplifier to his lips and told the tower who he was carrying.

  ‘Return to port,’ the tower blared. ‘Ship is lifting in the hour….’

  Maybelle fell back onto the seat. There had been that vicious tone in Honeypeach’s voice when she had said goodbye. Something eager, lascivious, and sniggering. If anyone could have arranged this disappointment, Honeypeach could. All she would have to do was call Justin….

  ‘We have to go back,’ the boatman said. ‘We’ll get fried if we stay out here when she lifts.’

  Maybelle had nothing to say. What was there to say? What would she do when she reached shore? Run? Run where? She huddled on the seat, oblivious to the blare of the tower or the liquid slosh of the waves, lost in apprehension. When they came within sight of the dock, she saw the ebony and gold of the guards from Government House. Someone had sent them to meet her. Someone had known she wouldn’t be leaving.

  The sound of a hailing voice brought her head around. A small fishing boat lay just off their port bow. The plump figure at the helm was shouting at them. The tender boatsman slackened speed, let the boat come almost to a stop.

  ‘Miss Maybelle Thonks?’ the helmsman cried. Plump. With gray hair. She thought she had seen him somewhere before, though she could not see much of his face behind the goggles and high-wound scarf.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, petrified with fright.

  ‘Mr Gentry asked us to pick you up, Miss. If you wouldn’t mind.’ He smiled at her in a grandfatherly manner.

  She cast a quick look again at the dock. Household guards still there, and among them someone else. Someone in an extravagant hat and drifting multicolored veils. Honeypeach. Oh, yes.

  ‘I’ll go with this man, boatman,’ she said in her rarely used imperative voice, covering fear with a pretence of arrogance. ‘Hold the boats together while I toss my luggage in.’

  She transferred herself from tender to fishing boat, hearing angry shouts from the dock over the slupping waves. It wasn’t until she was in the other boat, together with all her belongings, that she realized anyone could have used Rheme’s name. By then it was too late to do anything about it. The wake of the BDL boat was disappearing in the direction of the dock, and the boat she was in was speeding north along the shore.

  16

  Tasmin, Donatella, Clarin, and Jamieson left the north-south valley by striking southeast through a gap that the charts identified as the Ogre’s Stair. There was no Password and they had an anxious time getting past the Presence. Donatella thought she had a Password that could be adapted, but the Ogre was not amenable. They were about to give up in anger and frustration when Clarin stopped them.

  ‘Let me,’ she said, opening her music box and kneeing her mule to the forefront. ‘Tasmin, help me.’

  She touched the keys and began singing. It took Tasmin only a moment to realize what she had done. Once or twice Don’s previous efforts had seemed to quiet the Stair. Clarin had taken those brief phrases and wound them together, amplifying and extending the melody, attaching a harmonic line from quite another score, and then orchestrating the whole thing as she went. Tasmin picked up the harmonic line and began to sing it, their two voices rising together.

  He had never sung with her before.

  It was as sensual as touching her. More. It was like making love. He knew this, understood it, and set it aside, refusing to think of it, even as his voice went on and on. The music had its own logic, just as lovemaking did. Its own logic and its own imperatives. It wasn’t necessary to think or explain. The thing was of itself, a perfection.

  The mules began to move forward on their own. Don and Jamieson followed, their mouths open. Jamieson was stunned at what he was hearing. He had sung with Clarin, but it had not been like this.

  Clarin’s voice had almost a baritone-contralto range, as softly mellow in the lower ranges as an organ pipe, as pure in the higher ones as a wooden flute. Tasmin’s range was smaller, lower, the quality of his voice richer, more velvety. The two blended as though they were one.

  When they reached the end of the initial melody, Clarin raised the key and began a variation.

  Tasmin followed her, effortlessly.

  Beneath them the Ogre’s Stair was motionless.

  They reached the top on a soaring, endless chord that drifted away into the sky, becoming nothing. The Stair was behind them. As they left it, it sang to them, three tones of enormous interrogation.

  Tasmin and Clarin rode on, not noticing, not hearing, oblivious to the world around them.

  Don did not have her translator working.

  ‘Good Lord,’ she breathed, looking toward Jamieson, astonished to find him pale and shivering, tears in his eyes.

  ‘Jamieson,’ she murmured. Clarin and Tasmin were riding on, not looking at one another, silent. ‘Jamieson?’

  ‘Just once,’ he mumbled to her. ‘Just once. If I could …’

  She nodded, understanding. There was nothing she could say. Poor Jamieson. Too much propinquity. She squeezed his shoulder sympathetically. He loved the girl, and she loved Tasmin, and Tasmin loved – what? Celcy? Jubal?

  By the time they reached the bottom of the slope, Clarin was herself once more. She had dug a pack
age of sweet stores out of her pocket and now offered them around.

  ‘The people tracking us know we’re headed south. And since the only thing you did to stir up suspicion was to come up with the Enigma score, they may realize we’re headed that way.’

  Don agreed. ‘When they get out of that valley we left, they’ll hit a major east-west shipping route, with virtually no problems on the way.’

  ‘We’ll simply have to get there first,’ Tasmin said, lifting a mule foot and staring at it as though fascinated. He was still lost in the music, still finding it hard to connect with reality. ‘We’ve lost a little time dealing with the Ogre, but as I read the charts, I think we can make a fairly short traverse of the Blinders, just east of us, and come into one of the main east-west routes ourselves.’

  ‘The one that comes through Deepsoil Two, Six, Eight, and Nine?’ Jamieson asked in a fairly normal voice. ‘That’s an easy run. I know every Password on that route.’

  ‘Good for you, Reb. And Nine is just through the Mystic Range from Harmony.’ He thumped the mule and tightened the cinch, then took a candy from Clarin and sat down beside her. ‘We need to move fast. Justin’s got the interior shut off, and he wouldn’t have done that unless he expected the CHASE Commission to arrive momentarily. As soon as he gets their verdict, he’ll send word to the troops, and anything we have to say will come much too late.’

  Jamieson nodded. ‘What do you think we have, at best? A few days? A few weeks? That, at most, if we’re going to show them anything while they’re here. We’ve got to collect our evidence and then get back to the Deepsoil Coast at a dead run.’

  With the situation thus delineated, unaccountably they all felt better. The situation was fully as bad as they had thought it was and they were all agreed on it, which relieved each of them of having to worry it out individually. Don even managed a quirky smile at the sight of Clarin trying to replace her lost crystal mouse by baiting a new and elusive beast with candy. It evaded capture, and they mounted once more, setting out at a good pace toward the Blinders.

  After that, they did not seem to pause, not for days. Sleep came and went in brief periods of exhausted slumber, forgotten all too soon, along with snatched meals and hasty relief stops. Jamieson fought them through the Blinders, finding an amazing strength from somewhere, this time leaving them with mouths open. They left the last of the crystal towers in the evening when the refracted light from the setting sun made it almost impossible to see anything in any direction and found themselves on the open trail to Deepsoil Two with only easy Passwords between themselves and the dirt town. In Two, Tasmin requisitioned four additional mules from the citadel, letting their own animals trail along unburdened for most of the following day as they caught up with and joined a caravan headed east and stayed with it all the way into Deepsoil Six. The caravan rested for eight hours, but Tasmin and company slept only five, rising in the dark to continue on the way, timing their departure to let them come to the first intervening Presences at dawn.

  Clarin caught a crystal mouse in the ’lings above Deepsoil Eight.

  She had it half tamed by the time they reached Nine, feeding it crumbs and singing repetitive melodies to it, to which the others dreamed as they rode.

  Jamieson sang them through the Startles, above Harmony to the west, and they planned to sleep that night in the caravansery. There was no citadel in Harmony, but the caravansery manager put himself out to be as useful as possible, fetching food and towels and assorted oddments to a running commentary.

  ‘Nice to have a group of ’Singers here again,’ he said, his chins and bellies wobbling in emphasis. ‘Hat a bunch earlier you wuttn’t believe.’

  ‘Tripsinger trouble?’ Tasmin asked, disbelievingly. ‘I haven’t heard that we’ve got any troublemakers, currently.’

  ‘Naah, the Tripmaster was all right, him and his assistant. Wagon men was all right, too. The cook even helpt me fix a meal for the lot of ’em. No, it was those others with ’em.’

  ‘Passengers?’

  The fat man shook his head, first chins then bellies swaying like waves generated from a common source somewhere around the ears. ‘Don’t think so, no. Four men with mules o’ their own, come along after the caravan lookin’ for some woman and baby. Tripmaster sait the woman left ’en back outsite o’ Twelve. Crazy, if she went that way. Lots longer that way. Have to go through Thirteen and Fourteen on yer way up to Six, then come the way you come from there. Take almost twice’t as long.’

  ‘You didn’t happen to hear who it was they were looking for, did you?’ asked Tasmin, dry-mouthed.

  ‘Woman’s name was Terree. Same’s that Soilcoast singer got himself kilt on the Enigma …’

  ‘These men didn’t happen to say who they were, did they?’ Donatella asked.

  ‘Oh, no neet to tell me the name o’ the one of ’em. Bins, he was. Chantiforth Bins. My wife buys ever cube those tamnt Crystals put out. True believer, she is, just so long as she won’t have to get up off her lollyfalooz to do nothin’ abou tit. Ever time I come in the room, it’s that cube rantin’ and ravin’ like some bantigon with a buttache. I’ve seen him till I’m sick of him. Heart him, too, and he toesn’t make any more sense up clost than on the cube. I knew he was lyin’ the minute he startit talkin’.’

  ‘But he didn’t find the woman.’

  ‘Nah. She was long gone. Way I think, that Tripmaster he hit her somewheres.’

  ‘Hit her!’

  ‘Right. Like hit her in the trees or hit her in a hole in the ground so’s those fella’s cuttn’t hurt her none. Her’n the baby.’

  ‘The answer to all our problems,’ said Jamieson, sotto voce, leaning heavily on Clarin. ‘Hit ’em in a hole in the grount.’

  ‘I’ll hit you in a hole in the grount if you’re not careful,’ murmured Clarin, smiling at him.

  ‘Where’s the Tripmaster now?’ Tasmin asked, trying to glare at them and succeeding only in looking weary.

  ‘Gone on t’Five. ’Forn he went, he ast me to get ’long there and help her out. Whispert it, kind of. The Tripmaster that was.’

  ‘When was this?’ Tasmin said, dangerously patient.

  ‘Was yesterday since. Trouble was, I can’t go til these ones go away.’

  ‘Did the Tripmaster say where they came up to the wagon train? Bins and his bunch?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Come up on it down at the turn off where one roat comes up here t’Harmony and one goes east to nothin’ much. I think that’s right. Course, you might ask ’em. They’re all of ’em asleep in there.’ And he pointed to one of the dormitory rooms, halfway down the long hall. ‘They lookt for her but din’t fint her. Sait they’re goin’ on t’Teepsoil Five, first thin’ tomorrow.’

  ‘Armed?’ asked Jamieson.

  The caravansery manager shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. No arms I saw.’

  ‘I guess we don’t sleep?’ Donatella asked, only half a question.

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ said Tasmin. ‘Do you have any Bormil tea?’ he asked the caravansery manager. ‘Or Tsamp? Something that will keep us awake for a while?’

  ‘Now, what kint o’ caravansery wuttn’t have Tsamp,’ the manager nodded. ‘Sure I got Tsamp. You want it powdert or cookt in somethin’?’

  They settled on Tsamp in broth, drinking enough of it that their nerves were screamingly alert when they left Harmony, headed south.

  When the sun came up, they found themselves at the fork of the trail, a long ridge leading away to the east, groves of trees speckling the shallow soil between the westward trail and the Presences, and not a sign of Vivian or the baby. They called and searched for an hour, then spent some time hailing with the machines, and then, in a mood of fatalistic exhaustion, turned east and rode for the Enigma.

  Tasmin had seen it before, from the north side, from between the twin needles, between the two insolent daggers of bloody ice. He had looked down onto the little flat that lay between those daggers like a stained handkerchief between two gory
swords, and he had seen that handkerchief fold away around Celcy, around Lim, wrapping away those arrogant enough to test the Enigma.

  Now he saw the same place from below.

  A polished ramp of crystal wound upward toward that same little flat. All the shards and shattered fragments had been cleared away. It gleamed like cut glass, like ruby or dark garnet with paler edges, as though its blood had coagulated in some places and had run with water in others, dark clots and pale tints intermingled where something bled into the sea of that great crystal, bled forever and was forever washed away.

  Within the bloody traceries glinted the web of fracture, the delicate tracery of dislocation, of tilted planes and vacant edges, shivering with dawn light.

  ‘Where did you go before, Don?’ Tasmin asked. ‘When you talked to it?’

  ‘Up there,’ Donatella answered. ‘It was a dim, gray day, with fog in the air. Not like today. I … I don’t recall being afraid then.’

  ‘Are you now?’

  ‘Lord, yes, aren’t you? That thing is glaring at us.’

  ‘I expected to be afraid. But then I’ve only been here once, and my experience was a different one from yours.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Clarin asked. ‘Now you can tell us, Donatella. What was your clue? What did Erickson give you that took you up there?’

  Donatella turned and adjusted her music box, finding a particular setting and playing it so softly they barely heard it, a haunting melody, rising and falling in quiet repetition, as though water ran upon stone, eating it away. ‘An-dar-ououm, an-dar-ououm.’ It was the Enigma score, and yet it was neither synthesizer nor human voice.

  ‘Viggies?’ asked Jamieson. ‘Is that viggies?’

  ‘I’ll cut in the translator,’ she said. ‘Now listen.’

  The same melody, translated. ‘Let the edges sleep. Let one half sleep,’ sang the translator, ‘let it sleep in peace, let it rest, let it rest, let water run deep, let the edges grow, let the way come clear, soft, soft, let the fingers sleep, let one half sleep.’