Redworld, p.8
Redworld, page 8
I strained my eyes, peering across the Bridge, but the stars were intermittently blanketed by clouds, and I could see very little.
I felt my skin ripple. I peered into the curtained starlight. The rails were visible only to the halfway point. There they seemed to disappear into black fog. In fact, the whole Bridge seemed to vanish there.
I was quite amazed.
Burnie began to whine again. The yed’s erstwhile fatigue was gone. He was oddly excited. He was dancing around in half circles, but kept peering across the Bridge. He yipped a couple of times, and ran partway out on the span, and there he stopped, trembling.
I came up behind him.
The hair on the animal’s shoulders stiffened outward in a bulky ruff. He began to bark. “Burn! Burn! Burn!” The spectral declaration echoed wildly up and down the gorge.
There was only one person that he would do that for.
Gil, where are you? Are you … over there?
This was still a Bridge, but it was no longer the Bridge that carried the trains across Sticks Creek into Damaskis and points south. At this fragile shimmering moment it was the juncture of two worlds.
With one slow enchanted motion I picked up a second stone from the cobbled road bed and tossed it into the blackness. It hit nothing. There was no splash from below. How could this be?
The clouds parted and the stars sparkled again.
Something … someone … a tall figure … seemed to be standing there, on the other side of what used to be Black Bridge, just over the edge of certainty. The outlines of this—thing—wavered and shimmered in the starlight.
My heart fluttered, and it was hard for me to breathe.
I peered into the darkness. “Gil?” I whispered.
The figure made no reply. There was only the stillness.
They have let him come partway, to meet me. I took a step toward the figure, then another. Where did emptiness begin?
I remembered now why I was here. I remembered what I needed. “Gil.” (My cry was so loud that it frightened me. But my desperation overwhelmed even my great fear.) “Gil! Give me my sermon!”
There was a pause as the living silence moved in again. Then an eerie sound seemed to flow out of the wraith. The figure was whistling. It was a jaunty, familiar air. And I recognized it immediately. It was Josi’s tune—the four lilting mysterious notes of the serail. The prelude to purchased love.
I cried out to him. “That? My sermon? How? How?”
But it was over.
The night was changing again. The cloud cover was thinning. I could see more of the Bridge. The figure was fading.
“Gil!” I cried. “Wait! Don’t go! Not yet!”
Even as I stood there, stunned and marveling, Burnie collapsed in a panting heap. The river began to return. The clouds passed, and the far end of the Bridge seemed slowly to reappear, as though being recreated out of nothing.
The creek noises were back. Ferails, kriks, night avelas. The creek itself was running audibly. Brightstar and his minions were brighter than ever. The wind was blowing, and the leaves were falling again.
It was over.
I called Burnie.
Josi’s tune? Has my sermon been sitting all this time in Josi’s Tower? By the sorry sons of siriS!
THAT NIGHT, back home in my cot, I dreamed.
I was in the Tower, in the Main Room, at the foot of the stairs. The place was full of people, but there was no sound. The blank silent faces watched me as I began my slow, liquid ascent. I could hear the deadened crunch of my shoes on the stair carpet. I looked up at the landing. Josi was there in her rose wrapper held tight over her lace nightgown. As I watched, she pulled the wrapper and gown up and aside, exposing a stretch of pink thigh. She looked at me.
I floated up the rest of the stairs in one long bound. I took her in my arms. (I marveled at my expertise.) I kissed her. I peeled away her robe. We were naked, and lying together, right there on the landing.
And I woke up, clutching my pillow.
I lay there for a long time, thinking. First of Josi. Then about Gil. And especially about Gil on the Bridge. And I began to remember tales of other family encounters. Stories that both Father and Mother had told us. I had forgotten them. Grandfather Rork, the railman, told me about a night run from Dervil to Vosstown. He was sitting up in the cab, cracking the long plaited whip over the team of eight draft borches, invisible except for the starlight reflecting from their glistening rain-soaked backs, and the big cast alumen wheels were clacking merrily along the rails. Well, he saw this swinging lantern half a stadia up ahead. He stopped the team, of course, and got down and crunched up the tracks toward the lantern swinger. “What’s wrong?” he called out. No reply, but the silent signaler held the lantern higher so Grandfather could see his face. “Rudo!” gasped Grandfather. It was his cousin Rudo, who had been killed in the War, years before. The figure put the lantern down and … disappeared. Grandfather looked around for him briefly, but knew he wouldn’t find him. He soon discovered the point of the visitation. The heavy rains had washed out a section of track on the cliffside, uprail. If Grandfather had gone on, he would have been killed. In addition to his life, he acquired a fine lantern.
And there were other tales, even wilder. When Great-grandfather Randol immigrated into this area a hundred years ago his wagons were ambushed by a band of pakoes. They had tied him to a tree, and were going to shoot him with his own crossbow, when this strange translucent lady materialized in front of him. The bandits fled screaming. Great-grandfather was just as scared as they were, until he recognized her as his former fiancée, Zilia, dead of the plague for half a douzaine years. His only complaint was that she vanished without helping him to get untied.
And there was Cousin Epps, also dead, but allegedly seen afterwards in three villages at once.
And Great Aunt Dillie. Mother said images of her used to be seen in our house on Koray Avenue on Treaty Day. But one year Mother set a place for her at table, and the appearances stopped. During all this, Aunt Dillie wasn’t dead. She was very much alive, and was in fact being sought by militia in four counties for swindling large sums of money from rich widowers.
But the strangest case of all was our cousin Bibi. Stories were told of her, when she was a little girl. Once in the night, when Brightstar was directly overhead, she closed her eyes, and she saw and heard strange and terrible things. A procession at night, by torchlight. The faces shone with hate. They came to a tall building. A woman was inside. They wanted to kill her. A man tried to stop them. Bibi saw his face. A crossbow fired an arrow. Bibi screamed and covered her eyes. No more images. She refused to talk about it. She’s a grown woman now, and she still refuses to talk about it, at least when I’m around. She won’t even visit Mother if she thinks I’m anywhere near. Did she see the Madonna? Who was the man? The Revenant? Or was it all her imagination?
Other families had held converse with the dead, and could report strange events. However, if I had to pick a family line with the richest history of such episodes, I think I’d pick the Randol-Rorks.
12
Sheep May Safely Graze
THE FOLLOWING FIRSTDAY I was seated at the jaq table munching my bread and spread and waiting for Squire Vys to finish cranking up the old music box. It was a little after noon, and Josi’s had just opened. Boogi was still sweeping up. The place had evidently had a busy night. I wondered what it was like here, say late Cinqueday night. Probably very exhilarating, very sinful, and very, very profitable.
Squire Vys finally got the box started and sat down.
“Your move,” I said. “I just took your acolyte, check.”
He recaptured silently.
Just then Josi and Myria wandered by, shaking their heads at the nonsensical game and the nonsensical people who played it. Ah, Josi! I watched her from the corner of my eye. I could reach out and touch her gloved hand. I wondered what would happen if I did.
They say a woman knows when she is adored. Do you know, Josi? And if you did know, would you take any notice? I doubt it. Oh, you might give me a casual curious glance, as though you had found a new animal in the Damaskis zoo. And that would be the end of it.
I will look at you, and I will say, “Join us here, Josi. Sit down. Let’s hold hands.” I am reaching the point where I am ready to do something like that, and I am past the point where I care what you will say.
Except that right now, at this moment, I am a coward.
I moved my chief scientist. “Check.”
Squire Vys moved his high priest.
“And check again,” I said.
He touched his cavalier.
“Can’t move the cavalier,” I warned. “It’s pinned.”
“Sorry. In that case the game’s hopeless. I resign.”
He whistled a couple of bars, very softly.
It was the tune.
I had to act, while Josi was still here. It was now or never. I gathered my courage. I called over to her. “Josi.”
She turned instantly and came back to the jaq table. Her eyes were oddly wide and questioning.
I may have stammered a little. I put it to both of them. “That tune, you know, the four notes? It means something. It’s important to me to know. They play it on the temple bells, and on the companile at the collegia. The girls here use it on their customers.” I faced my jaq partner. “Just now you, Squire Vys, whistled it. I ask you both, what is it called? What does it mean?”
Vys said nothing. He looked at Josi; she looked back at him.
It was Josi who finally replied. “There are some things about the melody that you can’t possibly understand.…”
“Please, Josi.…”
She sighed. Another look at Vys. She said, “It is called ‘Sheep May Safely Graze.’ “
“‘Sheep’ …? What are sheep?”
“A sort of mythical animal,” she said. “A symbol of peace. They don’t really exist … not here on Redworld, anyway.”
And just exactly what did she mean by that? I pressed on. “Somehow the tune is familiar. Is it an ancient folk melody?”
“No,” she said. “The composer is known, but he has been dead a long time.”
“I don’t suppose I would recognize the name?”
Her mouth twisted into a strange smile. “Probably not. His name was—Bach.” The word was peculiarly accented.
I shook my head. I was missing something, but no matter. “But the song is important … to you, Josi … to you, Squire. … How? Why?”
The old man flashed a warning look at her.
She ignored him. “Your theology seems to rest on a man called the ‘Revenant.’ I’m sure you know this?”
“I know the scriptures and the traditions,” I said cautiously. “But you are switching the subject. What has that to do with the melody?”
She evaded the question. “The Revenant is in the process of rescuing a lady known as the Madonna, when he is shot in the back with an arrow. He dies, but comes back to life. He has become immortal. Right?”
“That’s the story. But what—”
She interrupted with a question that left me reeling. “Pol,” she said quietly, “have you ever had any experience with immortality?”
I thought of Gil on the Bridge, and the four whistled notes of “Sheep May Safely Graze.” I managed a gurgle. “Wait up! How did we get from a simple little tune to immortality?”
“Granted, they are two separate things. So let us make a little bargain. You answer me, and I’ll answer you. Have you … communicated with … the dead?”
And now it was my turn to think that she could not possibly understand. That night at the Bridge.… And before that, all the other strange things in the Randol-Rork family histories. There was no way to explain these happenings to her or to anyone. Nor did I want to.
“Pol?” she persisted. “Have you? Have you ever contacted anyone?”
How much to tell her? I sighed. “Yes, I think so.” I looked her full in the face, as though to say, that’s all you get, you beautiful creature. And now it is your turn. The tune, Josi.
It was the first time I had really examined her up close. I could see the fine texture of her cheeks and throat. Yes, a faint rose cast. And I smelled her perfume. Something delicate, ambiguous, as though it was up to the beholder what message it carried. She wore a pink blouse that buttoned loosely just above her breasts. She put a hand on her hip, and her light cerise tunic shifted a little. I could hear faint rustlings next to her body. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Come back after work,” she said. “I will explain the tune to you.”
At this moment I’m noting things because I’m looking for things—things that set her apart from common folk. She is too nearly perfect, as though she were the work product, the climax masterpiece, of a group of artists skilled in female proportions … musculature … voice … coloring … movement. If all feminine erotic essence were collected, compressed, and distilled into one eternal woman, the result would be Josi.
Perfect? Well, not entirely. That hand on my shoulder. Something odd. One finger was not flexed. The second index finger was thrust out like a dead stick. Perhaps once broken and badly set?
She took her hand away, and I began to breathe again.
“Dama,” said the squire quietly. “I will speak to you later.”
She shrugged, then passed on beyond the table, headed for the serving counter.
AND THAT AFTERNOON, when I went up to get Gearing’s brew, she was waiting for me.
We sat down at one of the little tables. She asked Boogi to bring us a couple of brews.
I had never been so close to her for so long. I instantly set about to memorize the shape and texture of her body. I traced her bare arms up to her shoulders. I examined minutely the outline of her nose, the curvature of her lips. Yes, Josi, your eyes are indeed gray, and your black ringlets are not of this world. Once our legs touched under the table, and I shivered.
“What?” I blinked at her.
“I said, have you heard a single word I have told you?”
“Yes, of course.” But why are you telling me this, Josi? To keep our contract? In return for telling you I have communicated with the dead? There’s more to it than that. There’s much here I don’t understand.
She is telling me a great deal; certainly enough for the sermon. Yet, of herself she is telling me nothing. She seems to speak freely; yet these words come across to me from great distances and a far away time. She is hiding everything essential. And so she is talking to me, freely, yet not freely.
No matter. Toward the end, my eyes were bugged out and my mouth was wide open.
Squire Vys was indeed the Squire Vys, the great negotiator of the Treaty, thirty years ago. And it was he who donated the great sky-metal bells to the temple and to the collegia.
“I met him during the armistice, right after the war,” said Josi. “He was rich. I was his girl. When he wanted me, he would whistle. You know, ‘Sheep May Safely Graze.’ “
“He taught you the tune?”
“No. I taught him.”
“Aha! Go on.”
“Back in oh-five, when he gave the bells to the temple and to the collegia, all he asked was that they play that tune. That was to be in memory of me. He didn’t tell them that, though.”
“He gave even the big one, the Revenant?”
“That one too. But the froom axle is rusted into the yoke, so it will never ring.” She smiled in contemplative afterthought. “Maybe when the Revenant himself comes.…”
I shrugged impatiently and she returned to her story.
“We broke up after the war. He gave me some money, and I came here and bought all this property, all these houses you see here.” She hesitated as though wondering how much to tell. “The Tower was … already here. I built up this house around it. Well, Vys disappeared for a while. And then I heard he lost everything, that he was ruined. And then we met again. And here he is. This is his home, now.”
“What do you mean, ‘we met again?’ “I asked. I knew now this was the crux of the whole thing. I very nearly had my sermon.
“How we met again? Our ‘Reunion’? Is that what you want to know? Well, it happened one evening. I was out in the front yard, admiring the sunset.” She explained it all, in detail. And at the end she showed a sudden concern. “Squire Gearing is going to be a mite peeved, you’ve been gone so long. Tell him I had to wait for the brew to simmer. Take him a piece of cake. On the House.”
I had it. The perfect sermon. Everything was here. Everything fitted together. Even the temple and the collegia were involved. Gard ought to give it at least a B+. I took a great breath. I needed but a title. And that was the easiest part. I said firmly, “Squire Vys broadcast his charity without expectation; yet, after many days, it was returned to him, multiplied.”
“What …?”
“The scriptures are fulfilled,” I said. Actually, when you consider everything, it was kind of awesome. “You have just written my term paper.” With some help from the phantom on the Bridge.
She looked at me as though I were crazy. “Don’t forget the cake.”
On my way back to the mill I thought about what I had heard, and I thought about Josi. Mostly about her. Well, Josi, you and I sat across the table from each other. We carried on an intelligent conversation. My leg touched yours, and you didn’t withdraw in contempt, horror, or disdain. Now, Josi, suppose the next time we meet, suppose I ask you some simple thing that will let us be together again. Say, a walk around the block. What would you do? What would you say? Would those beautiful gray eyes pop out in total astonishment? Would you then catch a glimmer of how I felt about you? And would you, in front of everybody, throw your head back and make those marvelous red-flecked curls dance with mocking laughter? Well, Josi, something is going to happen. Between you and me, and soon.
THE NEXT EVENING I happened to wander through the collegia gym, an ancient cathedral-like structure housing a game court and an indoor track. Nothing was going on. The place was empty, silent. I stood immobile for a moment, next to an old lyrichord on the east wall.
