The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  The matter had been put in hand by the following morning, and Colonel Verbold was much in evidence as troops began to assemble outside the city. Donatella Furz, who had been alerted by both Clarin and Rheme, circled through the gathering men, her long legs ticking off the distance as she searched for one particular participant. She found him at last, red-eyed, obviously somewhat brou-sotted, sitting in the shade of his own mule as he cleaned his rifle.

  ‘Tasmin,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

  He grunted at her.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Going with the troopers,’ he mumbled. ‘Get everything cleaned up.’

  ‘Wasn’t Justin’s death enough for you?’

  He glared at her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  She sat down beside him. ‘I’m talking about vengeance, Tasmin. Clarin said you really wanted to kill Justin. I can understand that. He did rather slip through your fingers….’

  ‘Bastard,’ he growled.

  ‘But that doesn’t make this more sensible.’ She gestured around them at the assembling ranks.

  ‘Colonel Verbold said I could go.’ He sounded like an unreasonable five-year-old.

  ‘No, what he said was that he couldn’t stop you tagging along. However, he did mention his displeasure to Rheme, who mentioned it to Clarin, and both of them told me.’

  ‘I’ve got to …’ He fumbled for words, unable to find them.

  ‘You’ve got to get it out of your system,’ she said for him.

  ‘Celcy,’ he blurted. ‘She died.’

  ‘Yes, she died. And Lim’s dead. And the Eagers are gone, and the Enigma, and Redfang, and a couple of dozen others. I can’t say I blame you for wanting to kill Justin and trying your best, even though you damn near got yourself killed in the process. Still, Justin had a lot less to do with Celcy’s death than he did with Gretl’s, for instance, but I’m not out here with a stun rifle set on high-fry, trying to do a mop-up job that troopers are trained for and we’re not.’

  ‘Gretl wasn’t your wife. Celcy was mine.’

  She stared at the pig-headed man before her with a combination of pity and irritation. Part of this was her fault. If she hadn’t lectured him, hadn’t gotten his back up over Celcy, if she hadn’t made him aware of and, therefore, guilty over his attraction to Clarin, maybe matters would simply have taken their proper course and he would have let himself forget. Damn!

  ‘Tasmin, do you value our friendship enough to go into that tavern over there and have a glass with me? Broundy, maybe? Hot tea?’

  ‘You won’t change my mind.’

  ‘ After we talk, you do what you like, Tasmin. I won’t try and stop you. I promise.’

  Unwillingly, he shouldered his weapon and followed Donatella through the scattered groups of men. When they were seated at the back of the almost-empty place with steaming drinks before them, she regarded him thoughtfully, trying to find a key to that locked, barricaded door he was using for a face.

  He was sotted, exhausted, agitated, and pale. Jamieson and Clarin had both mentioned that he had lost weight since Celcy’s death, and Don thought he had lost even more since she had first met him. He didn’t look well. Obsessed, perhaps. Maybe just stubborn. Maybe merely guilty.

  ‘Why did you pick her, Tasmin? Out of all the women in Deepsoil Five. Why did you pick Celcy?’

  Of the many questions she might have asked, he had not expected this one. The stubborn rejection he had ready would not serve. ‘Well… I didn’t pick her, not really. I met her. She was working at the commissary. She was admiring some little trinket, and I bought it for her. I made some remark about buying a pretty thing for a pretty girl….’He tried to focus on Don, having some difficulty in doing it, but his voice was clear.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, one thing led to another. You know.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Next time I went in there, I asked her to have lunch. She told me about her family, how she lived. It sounded … bleak.’

  ‘You felt sorry for her?’

  ‘In a way. She was trapped in that life. It was extremely limited.’

  ‘And, of course, she was sexy.’

  He flushed. ‘That’s my own affair, don’t you think?’

  ‘I think we’ve shared enough of ourselves that we can talk about it, Tasmin. Take it as agreed. She was sexy. She made you feel – powerful. Protective.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Did you ever really look at her, Tasmin? Did you really evaluate how much of her you liked? Did you make a conscious choice, based on how well you got along? Did you ever compare her with other women?’

  He made an impatient gesture, which she immediately and correctly interpreted.

  ‘There weren’t any other women. You were completely tied up in yourself and your work, and you weren’t looking for someone who could live happily with you. She was pretty and sexy and she was doing a menial job, which you regarded with aristocratic distaste. She was there. She needed someone, and you responded.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, flushing. ‘You make it sound superficial, but all the conscious choice business is pretty cold-blooded, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? I don’t know, Tasmin. I’ve never been married. All I know is, given your nature, you probably take a lot of care in the fitting of your Tripsinger robes. You were probably very selective about picking a mule from the stables. I know you take infinite care in checking out your synthesizer, because I’ve seen you do it. After all, those things are important and essential to you. But according to you, you didn’t give that much care to seeking a wife. You simply found her, like a bit of crystal in your path. You let her get accustomed to you, let her learn to depend on you without ever making any conscious decision to do so. Then, having done that, you couldn’t in good conscience let her down.’

  He glared at her. Nothing she had said was really incorrect, and yet she infuriated him.

  ‘You are admirable in many respects, Tasmin. And honorable. But you are sometimes so damn stubborn it takes my breath away.’

  ‘You’ve no right to say that,’ he blurted. ‘I left Deepsoil Five to find out why she died. I’ve traveled God knows how many miles trying to find out why she died. One thing led to another thing, and they all led to Harward Justin – him and his minions. You say Justin isn’t that responsible? Then you tell me why she died.’

  ‘She could have died, Tasmin, because she knew you were disappointed in her and she wanted to do something you would wholly approve of.’

  ‘You’re saying I killed her….’

  ‘I’m saying that when any of us get into relationships where one person totally depends on another, we kill something. Ourselves, perhaps. Or them.’

  ‘We got along!’

  ‘Of course you did! Good Lord, Tasmin, between you and Jamieson, I’ve heard all about your life together. You were in love with Jubal, and she was scared to death of it. You were fascinated by the Presences, and she was in sheer terror of them. You were always forgiving her for it. Always making excuses for her. Always patronizing her. She may have died because she wanted to live up to your expectations, Tas. Oh, maybe she was brou-sotted at the time, I hope so, so that she didn’t know what was coming – maybe in her fogged up mind she decided to do one marvelous thing that you would have to admire.’

  He gasped at her, unable to find words.

  ‘It’s true. You were at least as responsible as anyone else. But all you want to do is blast someone to make yourself feel better. First it was Lim, but he was dead. Then it was me, but you decided it wasn’t my fault. Then it was Harward Justin, but he got killed without your help, much. Now who is it going to be? Some mutinous trooper who doesn’t know a Presence from a piece of rock salt?’

  Donatella was crying, partly for herself. ‘Quit looking for someone to blame, Tasmin, and get on with your life….’ She understood his feelings very well. She had been through it her
self, with Link. She got up and left him there, staring at the steam rising from the cup in front of him.

  When the troops marched out, Tasmin did not go with them. He was outside the city, at the foot of the Emerald Eminence, singing with Bondri Gesel.

  ‘Donatella said it,’ he sang, ‘but it isn’t true….’

  They sat in quiet sunlight while machines thundered in the city, clearing away rubble, finding bodies, occasionally finding one that lived. Tasmin couldn’t identify what was going on inside himself, a kind of freshness coming, as though someone had opened a window inside him so that a chill, pure wind blew into him. It hurt. It was very cold and it hurt.

  ‘It wasn’t the whole truth, what Donatella said.’ He gasped again. ‘You know about us, Bondri. With us – each of us sees the truth our own way, from our own totally egocentric point of view, and then we insist on that. It’s like kids, fighting. You did. I didn’t. You did, too. You viggies don’t have those kinds of arguments. When you sing it, it comes out, “He felt hurt that she seemed to do this, and she was wounded at his lack of consideration, but neither intended such an outcome.”

  ‘Yes, you perceive us properly,’ sang Bondri Gesel. ‘We would sing that, more or less.’

  ‘I guess that once the words of memory are set into our minds in a specific way, that’s how we remember. We can’t remember the thing happening, we just remember the words we told ourselves about it. I told my mother once that I didn’t want a blind woman for my mother, and she remembered that for years. Every time she remembered it, she cried. She said blind is what she was, and if I said what I did, it meant I didn’t want her. I don’t think that’s what I meant, and yet it’s true. She was right. There was no way to separate what she was from her blindness. I had to accept her blindness if I was going to accept her. There’s no way to separate people into pieces of themselves and only accept the pieces we want. If the viggies had been singing to her, what they said wouldn’t have hurt her, for they would have said it all – not just part of it….

  ‘I’m beginning to think I talk to myself only in skin quieters, Bondri. What I say isn’t necessarily what I mean. It isn’t even the truth. It just gets me by….’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Bondri Gesel. ‘It’s important to you? You really want to sing your Celcy, Tasmin Ferrence. Sing your Celcy as we would sing one of ours?’

  Tasmin put his head in his hands, wetting his palms with tears. ‘Yes. I would like to sing the truth of her, Bondri. Because how do I know what happened to her until I know what she really was? I can’t believe she went there because of me….’

  Bondri shook his head, an astonishingly human gesture. ‘Don Furz should not have tried to sing her to you alone, Tasmin Ferrence, because she did not know her. Even you should not sing her alone, Tasmin Ferrence. Who else was there, Tasmin Ferrence? She had no children. From what you say, your males saw only her quality of tineea. You have a word, flirtation. It is the same. It is a little dance the females do when they are too young to mate. The tineea. It says, admire me. Flatter me. Sing pretty things to me. Expect nothing from me, for I have nothing yet to give. It is this quality of tineea I hear in your song of her.’

  ‘There was more to her than that!’

  ‘Yes. There is always more.’

  ‘She was going to bear my child.’

  ‘Is this difficult or dangerous among humans?’

  ‘Not particularly, no. But she didn’t want to do it. She was doing it only for me.’

  ‘Ah. Well, then, we might sing the song of a child who reluctantly began to grow up for love of her mate. It is already a better song than tineea alone.’

  ‘She went to the Enigma, even though she was terrified of the Presences.’

  ‘You speak often of terror when you speak of her. Was she often frightened?’

  ‘She was always frightened. Her parents died when she was little. She was abandoned. Her uncle raised her, but he had children of his own. I was the first person she ever had that she belonged to – that belonged to her. She was afraid she would lose me, terrified, of that – of everything.’

  ‘Ah. Well. This is a different matter. Now we will sing of her valiance, of her courage, to be so afraid and yet to try to conquer it.’

  ‘She gave Lim what he needed when I refused it.’

  ‘We will sing of generosity.’

  ‘She loved me. If Don’s right, she died because she loved me.’

  ‘We will sing of devotion.’

  Courage. Generosity. Devotion. They were not words he would ever have picked for Celcy, and yet he could not say they were not true. ‘I kept saying to myself that I would find the time to be with her more, time with her enough to reassure her that she wouldn’t lose me, enough so that she could start to grow up. She might have become a person quite different from the one people saw.’

  ‘We will sing of possibilities, Tasmin Ferrence. We will sing of what she might have become, given time.’

  Tasmin sighed, a breath that filled him completely, that left him completely, suddenly aware of truth. ‘Sing what she might have become. That’s it. That’s the part that hurts so. That I didn’t give her time to become it before she died.’

  ‘So we will sing.’

  Tasmin cried, then laughed, weakly, wiping the tears away. ‘Is it true, what you sing, Bondri? Are your songs true?’

  ‘Truth is what we sing, Tasmin Ferrence.’ On Tasmin’s arm the viggy fingers lay, four of them, three and a thumb, petting him. ‘You did not know her well enough, Tasmin Ferrence. And then she died. All things die. You did not know her as you should have, as you would have done. You cannot sing her now. You blame yourself. So, that becomes your song. You can sing that you blame yourself for not taking time. Bondri’s troupe will listen and help you sing. “He blames himself,” we will sing, “but it is not his fault. He did what he could do.” It is not fault. It is a debt you owe. You cannot pay it to her, but her child lives. You can learn to sing that child. And to that child, if you will sing devotion and courage and generosity long enough, that, too, will be true. If you will sing what she might have become, then the child will grow, knowing these things about his mother. And what starts now as a song full of time that never was, becomes, in time, the truth.’

  Tasmin thought about it, slowly nodding his head. So. So. So. What starts as an enigma score, becomes the truth.

  ‘Think about it, Tasmin Ferrence.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, Bondri. When Jamieson gets back, I’ll talk to him about it. He knew Celcy. And he knows me so well….’

  The viggy gasped as though hurt. It was a very human sound, full of a deep and abiding pain.

  ‘Tasmin, my friend. This morning I was told of something very sad and grievous that now I must sing to you….’

  Thyle Vowe asked Tasmin to speak for the Tripsingers in negotiations with the Presences. Donatella was invited by her colleagues to represent the Explorers. After thinking about it only briefly, Don declined.

  ‘Let Tasmin represent us,’ she said to her colleagues. ‘I can’t do anything for you that he won’t do. And I have something else I have to take care of.’

  As soon as services were reestablished, she withdrew a good part of her savings from the BDL credit authority and spent the lot on bantigons, which she offered to the five giligees in Bondri’s troupe. She had two friends she wanted them to work on. Link, of course. And Gretl Mechas, who had shown up out of the settling dust, like a wraith, half naked and quite mad.

  After her initial shock and surprise at seeing Gretl, Don had asked few questions. Months ago she had identified a tortured body as being that of Gretl Mechas, doing so because it was found with Gretl’s clothes, not because she had actually recognized any part of it. Now, even as she realized it had been some other poor creature’s body, put there so that no one would look for Gretl, she also realized that Gretl might have preferred that that anonymous body had been hers, that she had been, in fact, dead, gone, out of it. On the surface, Don accepted
this, even while she plotted with the giligees. ‘You want me to let your family know, don’t you?’ she suggested, carefully staying away from the subject of Gretl’s lover. ‘Back on Heron’s World?’

  Gretl started to say no, then nodded yes. ‘Yes. Tell Mother I’m alive. Not ready to come home yet. Maybe not for quite a while. Never maybe. Maybe sometime. Yes. But alive.’ Alive, her mind said, wishing her soul could be convinced of that. She consented to go to the viggies because Don suggested it and because she was not able to decide to do anything else. After what she and the others had done to Harward Justin, she did not know if she would ever be fit to do anything normal and human again. And yet, at the end it had been Gretl who had convinced the others to let him die.

  Link had been slow to agree to Don’s offer. At length, however, he had consented to go into the ranges with Don and Gretl and spend a time there with the giligees.

  When ten long days had passed, the giligees had not yet done for Gretl what they hoped, eventually, to do. Gretl stayed with them. Link, despite his doubts, had been a simpler matter. He returned to Splash One with Don, weak and staggering, but walking. Each day he became stronger. Don watched his strength return, wondering why she did not feel the euphoria she had expected; then knowing why, never mentioning it to him. Now that Link could explore again, it seemed likely there would be nothing to explore. The dream had come true; the reason for the dream had departed. The irony of this escaped neither of them. They spent a great deal of time in each other’s company, gently making love and purposely saying very little, as though their emotions were a forest of ’lings they needed to thread their way through, very carefully.

  After several days of this, Donatella did make time to have lunch with her Cousin Cyndal.

  ‘I was so sorry to hear about Lim’s wife and baby,’ Cousin Cyndal said, with an air of competence and without looking at the menu. ‘When Lim and I arranged the whole thing, he never said a word to me about the financial side of things. I feel responsible.’