Tepper,Sheri - After Long Silence Read online

  AFTER LONG SILENCE

  Sheri S Tepper

  [06 nov 2002—scanned for #bookz]

  [08 nov 2002—proofread by Wiz3]

  1

  When Tasmin reached for the gold leaf, he found the box empty. The glue was already neatly painted onto the ornamented initial letter of the Enigma score, and it would dry into uselessness within minutes. He spent a fleeting moment wanting to curse but satisfied himself by bellowing, "Jamieson!" in a tone that was an unequivocal imprecation.

  "Master Ferrence?" The boyish face thrust around the door was wide-eyed in its most "Who, me?" expression, and the dark blond hair fell artfully over a forehead only slightly wrinkled as though to indicate "I'm working very hard, now what does he want?"

  Undeceived by all this, Tasmin waved the empty box and snarled, "One minute, Jamieson. Or less."

  The acolyte evidently read Tasmin's expression correctly for he moved away in a nicely assessed pretense of panic mixed with alacrity. The gold leaf was kept in a storeroom up one flight, and the boy could conceivably make it within the time limit if he went at a dead run.

  He returned panting and, for once, silent. In gratitude, Tasmin postponed the lecture he had been rehearsing. "Get on with what you were doing."

  "It wasn't important, Master."

  "If what you were doing wasn't important, then you should have checked my supplies. Only pressure of urgent work could have excused your not doing so."

  "I guess it was important, after all," Jamieson responded, a quirk at the corner of his mouth the only betrayal of the fact that he had been well and truly caught. He let the door shut quietly behind him and Tasmin smiled ruefully. The boy was not called Reb Jamieson for nothing. He rebelled at everything, including the discipline of an acolyte, almost as a matter of conviction. If he weren't almost consistently right about things; if he didn't have a voice like an angel …

  Tasmin cut off the thought as he placed the felt pad over the gold leaf and rubbed it, setting the gilding onto the glue, then brushed the excess gold into the salvage pot. It was a conceit of his never to do the initial letter on a master copy until the rest of the score and libretto was complete. Now he could touch up the one or two red accents that needed brightening, get himself out of his robes and into civilian clothes, and make a photostat of the score for his own study at home—not at all in accordance with the rules, but generally winked at so long as the score didn't leave his possession. The finished master manuscript would go into a ceremonial filing binder and be delivered to Jaconi. They would talk a few minutes about the Master Librarian's perennial hobby horse, his language theory, and then Tasmin would borrow a quiet-car from the citadel garage and drive through the small settlement of Deepsoil Five, on his way home to Celcy.

  Who would, as usual, greet his homecoming with sulks for some little time.

  "This whole celibacy thing is just superstition," she pouted, as he had predicted. "Something left over from old religious ideas from Erickson's time. We've all outgrown that. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to come home at night even if you are copying a score."

  The phrases were borrowed; the argument wasn't new; neither was his rejoinder. "That may be true. Maybe all the ritual is superstition and nonsense, Celcy love. Maybe it's only tradition, and fairly meaningless at that, but I took an oath to observe every bit of it, and it's honorable to keep oaths."

  "Your stupid oath is more important than I am."

  Tasmin remembered a line from a pre-dispersion poet about not being able to love half as much if one didn't love honor more, but he didn't quote it. Celcy hated being quoted at. "No, love, not more important than you. I made some oaths about you, too, and I'm just as determined to keep those. Things about loving and cherishing and so forth." He tilted her head back, coaxing a smile, unhappily aware of the implications of what he had just said but trusting her preoccupation with her own feelings to keep her from noticing. Sometimes, as now, he did feel he stayed with her more because of commitment than desire, but whenever the thought came to him he reminded himself of the other Celcy, the Celcy who, when things were secure and right, seemed magically to take this Celcy's place. She didn't always act like this. Certain things just seemed to bring it out.

  "I sure don't feel loved," she said sulkily. He sighed, half in relief. She might not take less than a day to forgive him for having been away for the seventeen days it had taken to orchestrate and copy the new Enigma score—or, more accurately, the putative Enigma score since it hadn't been tested on the Enigma yet, and might never be—but she would come around eventually. Nothing he could do would hurry the process. If he ignored her, it would take even longer, so he set himself to be pleasant, reminding himself of her condition, trying to think of small things that might please her.

  "What's going on at the center? Something you'd like to see? Any good holos?"

  "Nothing good. I went to a new one that Jeanne Gentrack told me about, but it was awful." She shivered. "All about the people on the Jut, starving and trying to get out through the Jammers after their Tripsingers were assassinated by that crazy fanatic."

  "You know you hate things like that, Celcy. Why did you go?"

  "Oh, it was something to do." She had gone alone, of course. Celcy had no women friends and was too conventional to go with a man, even though Tasmin wouldn't have objected. "I'd heard it was about Tripsingers, and I thought you might like it if I went." She was flirting with him now, cutely petulant, lower lip protruding, wanting to be babied and cosseted, making him be daddy. He would try to kiss her; she would evade him. They would play this game for some time. Tonight she would be "too tired" as a punishment for his neglect, and then about noon tomorrow she might show evidence of that joyously sparkling girl he had fallen in love with, the Celcy he had married.

  He put on a sympathetic smile. "It's great that you'd like to know more about my work, love, but maybe seeing a tragic movie about the Jut famine isn't the best way to go about it." Of course, she wasn't interested in his work, though Tasmin hadn't realized it until a year or two after they were married. Five years ago, when Celcy was eighteen, her friends had been the children of laborers and clerks, and she had thought it was a coup to marry a Tripsinger. She had listened to him then, eyes shining, as he told her about this triumph or that defeat. Now all their friends were citadel people, and Tasmin was merely one of the crowd, nothing special, nothing to brag about, just a man engaged in uninteresting activities that forced him to leave her alone a lot. He could even sympathize with her resentment. Some of his work bored him, too.

  "It's not just that she's bored, Tas," his mother had said, fumbling for his hand through the perpetual mists that her blindness made of her world. "Her parents died on a trip. Her uncle took her in, but he had children of his own, and they wouldn't be normal if they hadn't resented her. Then, on their way to Deepsoil Five, there was a disaster, one wagon completely lost, several people badly maimed. Poor little Celcy was only eight or nine and hardly slept for weeks after they got here. She's frightened to death of being abandoned and of the Presences."

  He had been dumbfounded. "I never knew that! How did you?"

  She had frowned, blind eyes searching for memory. "I think Celcy's uncle told me most of it, Tas. At your wedding."

  "I wonder why she never mentioned it to me?" he had mused aloud.

  "Because she doesn't want to admit it or remember it," his mother had answered in that slightly sharpened voice reserved for occasions when Tasmin, or his father before him, had been unusually dense. Tasmin remembered his father, Miles Ferrence, as a grim, pious man who said little and expected much, given to unexpected fits of fury toward the world and his famil
y, interspersed with equally unexpected pits of deep depression. Miles had gone into peril and died at the foot of the Black Tower the year after … well, the year after Tasmin's older brother had … Never mind. Tasmin had been surprised at how difficult it was to mourn his father, and then had been troubled by his own surprise.

  Celcy was still talking about the holodrama, her voice becoming agitated and querulous. "I couldn't see why they didn't build boats and just float down the shore. Why did they have to get out through the Jammers?"

  He closed his eyes, shutting out other thoughts and recollections, visualizing the map of the Jut. The far northwest of Jubal, an area called New Pacifica. A peninsula of deepsoil protruding into a shallow bay. At the continental end of this Jut were two great crystal promontories, the Jammers—not merely promontories but Presences. Between them led a steep, narrow pass that connected the Jut to the land mass of New Pacifica and the rest of Jubal, while out in the bay, like the protruding teeth of a mighty carnivore, clustered the smaller—though still very large—offspring of the Jammers, the Jammlings.

  "Jammlings," he said. "Scattered all through the water. I don't think there's a space a hundred yards wide between them anywhere. The Juttites would have needed a Tripsinger to get through there just as they did to get between the Jammers."

  "Oh. Well, none of the characters said that in the holo. They just kept getting more and more starved until they got desperate." Her face was very pale and there were tiny drops of moisture on her forehead. "Then they tried rushing past the Jam … the Jam … the Presences, and somebody tried to sing them through and couldn't and everybody got squashed and ripped apart and … well, you know. It was bloody and awful." Her voice was a choked gargle.

  Well, of course it was, an inner voice said. As you should have known, silly girl. He pulled her to him and quelled the voice sternly, annoyed with himself. Her hysteria was real. She had been genuinely upset by the drama. Sympathy was called for rather than his increasingly habitual impatience. "Hey, forget it. All past history and long gone. Now that you're pregnant, you need more cheerful influences." With a flourish, he produced his surprise. "Here, something I picked up."

  "Oh, Tasmin!" She slipped the ribbon to one side and tore at the paper, pulling the stuffed toy from its wrappings and hugging the gray-green plush of the wide-eyed little animal. "It's so cunning. Look at that. A viggy baby. I love it. Thank you." She stroked the feathery antennae, planting a kiss on the green velour nose.

  He suppressed the happy comments he had been about to make. The toy had been intended for the baby, a symbol of expectation. He should have said something to that effect before she opened it. Or perhaps not. She was more pleased with it than a baby would be.

  He tried with another gift. "Except for a preceptor trip next month, I've told the Master General I won't be available for any extended duty until after the baby comes. How about that?"

  "I wish it was already next month," she went on with her own thoughts, only half hearing him.

  "Why? What's next month?"

  "Lim Terrée is coming to do a concert. Less than three weeks from now. I really want to hear that … "

  Lim Terrée.

  He heard the name, then chose not to hear it. Not to have heard it.

  Instead, he found himself examining Celcy's smooth lineless face, staring at her full lips, her wide bright eyes, totally unchanged by their five years of marriage. She was so tiny, he chanted to himself in his private ritual, so tiny, like a doll. Her skin was as smooth as satin. When they made love, he could cup each of her buttocks in one of his hands, a silken mound. When they made love his world came apart in wonderful fire. She was his own sweet girl.

  Lim Terrée.

  She was pregnant now. An accident. The doctor had told them she couldn't possibly get pregnant unless she took the hormones he gave her, but she wouldn't take the drug. Could not, she said. It made her sick. Impossible that she could be pregnant, and yet she was. "Sometimes we're wrong," the doctor had said. "Sometimes these things happen." A miracle.

  Tasmin was amazed at his own joy, astonished at his salesmanship in convincing her it would be fun to have a child of their own. Too soon for a test yet, but he hoped for a son. Celcy wouldn't mind his caring for a boy, but she would probably hate sharing him with a little girl. "Fear sharing him," he told himself, remembering his mother's words. "Not hate, fear."

  He coughed, almost choking. He couldn't just go on staring at his wife and ignoring what she had said. He had to respond. "When did you hear he was coming?"

  "There are big posters down at the Center. 'Lim Terrée. Jubal's entertainment idol. Straight from his triumphant tour of the Deepsoil Coast.' I got his most recent cube and it's wonderful. I don't know why you couldn't do concert versions, Tasmin. Your voice is every bit as good as his. He started as a Tripsinger, too, you know."

  He let the implications of this pass. It wasn't the first time she had implied that his profession was not very important, something that anyone could do if they were foolish enough to want to. Mere Trip-singer was in her tone if not in her words, betraying an ignorance shared by a significant part of the lay population on Jubal. She was wrong about Lim, though. He hadn't been a Tripsinger, merl or otherwise.

  Lim Terrée.

  "I know him," he said, his voice sounding tight and unnatural. "He's my brother."

  "Oh, don't make jokes," she said, the petulant expression back on her face. For a moment she had forgotten her recent neglect. "That's a weird thing to say, Tasmin."

  "I said he is my brother. He is. My older brother. His real name is Lim Ferrence. He left Deepsoil Five about fifteen years ago."

  "That's just when I got here! He was a Tripsinger here?"

  Not really, he wanted to say. "You were only a schoolchild when he left. And yes, he did some trips out of here."

  "Did he really do the Enigma? Everyone says he did the Enigma." She was suddenly eager, glowing.

  It was hard to keep the resentment out of his voice. "Celcy, I don't know who 'everyone' is. Of course Lim didn't sing the Enigma. No one has ever got by the Enigma alive."

  She cocked her head, considering this. "Oh, people don't always tell the truth about things. Tripsingers are jealous of each other. Maybe he went with just a small group and got through, but it was never recorded or anything."

  He made a chopping, thrusting-away gesture that she hated, not realizing he had done it until he saw her face. "Lim Terrée did not do the Enigma trip. So far as I remember he led two caravans east through the Minor Mysteries, one out to Half Moon and back, and one through the Creeping Desert to Splash One on the Deepsoil Coast and that was it. He didn't come back from that one."

  "Four trips?" She gave him a skeptical look, making a mocking mouth. "Four trips? Come on, Tasmin. Sibling rivalry, I'll bet. You're jealous of him!" Then she hastily tried to undo some of the anger he realized he had let show in his face. "Not that I can blame you. He's so good looking. I'll bet the girls mobbed him."

  Not really, he wanted to say again. They—most of them, at least the ones his own age—knew him for what he was, a man who … better not think about that. He wasn't even sure that it was true anymore. Dad had screamed and hammered his fist, calling Lim filthy, depraved. Was that it? Depraved? Something like that, but that was after Lim had gone. Tasmin had only been sixteen, seventeen when Lim left. Lim had been five years older. Memory didn't always cleave to the truth, particularly after someone had gone. Perhaps none of what he thought he remembered had really happened.

  "I don't remember," he equivocated. "I was just a kid, just getting out of basic school. But if you want to go to his concert, love, I'll bet he has some tickets he'd make available—for his family." Which seemed to do the trick for she stopped sulking and talked with him, and when night came, she said she was too tired but didn't insist upon it after he kissed her.

  Still, their lovemaking was anything but satisfying. She seemed to be thinking about something else, as though there were s
omething she wanted to tell him or talk to him about but couldn't. It was the way she behaved when she'd spent money they didn't have, or was about to, or when she flirted herself into a corner she needed his help to get out of. He knew why she did those things, testing him, making him prove that he loved her. If he asked what was bothering her before she was ready to tell him, it would only lead to accusations that he didn't trust her. One of these days, they'd have to take time to work it out. One of these days he would get professional help for her instead of endlessly playing daddy for her in the vain hope she'd grow up. He had made himself this promise before. Somehow there never seemed to be time to keep it—time, or the energy to get through the inevitable resentment. Looking at her sleeping face, he knew that Celcy would regard it as a betrayal.

  Sighing, unable to sleep, he took his let-down, half hostile feelings onto the roof. It was his place for exorcising demons.

  Virtually every house in Deepsoil Five had a deck or small tower from which people could watch approaching caravans or spy on the Presences through telescopes. He had given Celcy a fine scope three years ago for her birthday, but she had never used it. She didn't like looking at the Presences, something he should have realized before he picked out the gift. Back then he was still thinking that what interested him would interest her.

  "A very masculine failing." His mother had laughed softly at his rueful confession. "Your father was the same way." And then, almost wistfully, she added, "Give her something to make her feel treasured. Give her jewelry next time, Tas."

  He had given her jewelry since, but he'd kept the scope. Now he swung it toward the south. A scant twenty miles away the monstrous hulk of the Enigma quivered darkly against the Old Moon, a great, split pillar guarding the wall between the interior and the southern coast. Was the new score really a password past the Presence? Or would it be just one more failed attempt, ending in blood and death? The Enigma offered no comment, simply went on quivering, visibly occulting the stars at its edge in a constant shimmer of motion.