At the seventh level v1.., p.9
At The Seventh Level (v1.0), page 9
Q: Perhaps if is the Poet’s servingwoman? Have you considered that?
A: Of course. We’re not fools here, you know, Citizen. We’ve changed servingwomen—much against the Poet Jacinth’s will, since she was deeply attached to the old one. We’ve set every conceivable guard, set watches everywhere throughout the Temple, tried every combination of safeguards our best men could devise. It makes no difference, still the poisoning goes on. The doctors are seriously alarmed…
Q: No one else has been affected?
A: No one. Only the Poet herself.
Q: Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to harm her?
A: None whatsoever.
Q: Very strange. The food has been analyzed, I suppose?
A: Of course. Numerous times.
Q: And the results?
A: There were no results.
Q: I don’t understand.
A: There has never been any detectable poison in the food or drink. This is not surprising, however, since the poisoners are extremely clever at devising new combinations with which our chemists are not familiar. It is, of course, an unregistered crime, you must remember, or we would know what poison was involved—not that any respectable Criminal would harm a Poet, female or not.
Q: I understand. Well, then, perhaps we bad best leave the next step to Citizen Jones. He has bad a great deal more experience in dealing with this sort of thing than I have.
A: So we have heard. And you will be assisting Citizen Jones in the future?
Q: I expect to do so, although at the moment the Citizen is having some minor difficulties.
A: I hope that he is able to resolve them satisfactorily. We can’t afford to have this sort of thing going on, it leads to a lack of confidence in the police.
Q: I wouldn’t worry.
They wouldn’t worry, eh? The agent they had requested stuffed full of drugs, tied up and abandoned to die, but not to worry. It being a registered crime.
Coyote glanced through the other transcripts, which did little more than recapitulate the one he had already read, and then flung the folder across the room in disgust and went to sleep where he lay.
Chapter 6
Coyote stood uncomfortably in the room where the student had brought him and waited. For this interview the interpreter had refused to help him.
“I would have far more difficulty in dealing with the Poet Jacinth than you would, Citizen,” the Abban had insisted. “You have no taboos to hamper you. And as for ritual and precedent, in this case there is none. You will handle it better without, me there, nervous and confused, hampering you.”
They had dressed him in a blue tunic and sandals, his hair was caught back with a clasp of hammered silver set with amethysts, and over the tunic in an elaborate drape he wore a robe of deepest purple, made of the silken fur of the hela-foxes of Abba. He carried a silver staff bearing the insignia of the Palace of Law, it having been decided that this was closest to his professional status, and around his neck swung an ankh of a rare lavender metal from the Extreme Moons. This extraordinary costume had been produced from somewhere in the depths of the Palace of Law, and he was assured that some such garb—and usual* ly more elaborate than this—was expected of anyone speaking directly to the lady Poet Jacinth. The intent was, of course, that his splendor should convey a compliment to the Poet; he only wished that his inner confidence matched his outer magnificence.
Another student appeared in the door, smiling, and indicated that Coyote should follow him. They went down a long hall, turned left and went down yet another, and stopped in a smaller room, octagonal, paneled in wood and smelling of subtle incense. At each of the eight sides there was an oval window, and the student indicated to Coyote that he should go look out.
“Are you allowed to speak to me, Citizen?” Coyote asked the boy abruptly, and was answered by a polite negative shake of the head. He looked at the narrow “student” stripes on the boy’s brown tunic; there were three. Apparently this young man was of too high a level to be excused from the rule of speaking only in verse, and not skillful enough to convert the Abban verse to Panglish.
“I thank you, then,” said Coyote. “This is the Trance Cloister?”
Another nod.
“I will wait until the Poet has finished her meditation, since she is expecting me. She will come through here afterwards, I take it?”
Another nod, and he was gone. Coyote snorted. Good riddance. How the hell was the business of a Profession, even a religious Profession, to be carried on when people were forbidden to speak except in rhymed couplets?
He went to one of the windows and looked out into the garden of the Trance Cloister. It was oval, like the windows densely green, set with pools and fountains; at the far end there was a circle of great boulders and set within the circle a triangle of gaza trees. Their slender branches were borne almost to the ground with the weight of the huge green star-shaped blooms they carried at this season. In the middle of the triangle he could see the Poet Jacinth, kneeling in a plain robe of scarlet, with her black hair flowing loose down her back. She was motionless, her arms spread to the heavens and her head thrown back, and Coyote fought the impulse to turn and bolt. He felt like a perfumed monkey sent to profane a temple service by a gang of adolescent humorists.
He sent a thought her way, gently, SOMEONE IS HERE, and she turned her head and rose from her knees, looking at him with wide eyes. She hesitated, and then began walking toward him, the scarlet cloth clinging to her in the wind, and he saw that she was very beautiful. Her hair was absolutely straight and fell to her waist like a scarf of black silk, caught back at each temple with a silver clasp. She was deeply tanned, and no wonder, if she spent—as he had been informed—six hours of each day in meditation in that garden. It was a classical face, with high, abruptly slanted cheekbones, a perfect oval shape, an aristocratic nose, black eyebrows like wings, and a slender mouth with a flawless curve. Almost too perfect a face, for his taste; he liked a bit of difference, some flaw to break the mask. But her eyes, as she came nearer, made him frown with interest. He reminded| himself to find out if she was on any sort of medication; perhaps the famous Permanent Medication so beloved as a punishment from the Women’s Discipline Unit? The eyes were black and enormous, the almond shape praised in old poems, with a violent line around the pupil, and they were so wide open that she looked like a startled animal ready for flight.
She came in through a door at the side of the room and reached out her hands in a gesture that he supposed must be a traditional greeting, though he had not seen it before. He did not touch her, but waited, and when she sank gracefully to the bare floor, her hands folded inside her long, full sleeves, he followed suit and sat facing her. Whatever code of etiquette might apply here, she would not expect him to be flawless at it; he would do the best he could.
She smiled at him, and then spoke slowly, in heavily accented but charming Panglish.
“It is my pleasure that you visit me; so few distractions come to fill my days. And days and nights alike are long when one is all alone.”
Coyote considered the speech carefully. Probably, if she had confined herself to the prescribed couplets, he could have followed her, although he did not know the special vocabularies of Poetry. But he was glad no one had told her, because she must be translating the rhymed Abban into English blank verse, a sort of virtuoso performance that he could take pleasure in. There was a pause, a hesitation with closed eyes, before she spoke, but so brief as to be almost unnoticeable. It must take considerable skill.
“Thank you, Citizeness,” he said. “If I can offer you welcome distraction I will be honored. But even more important, I come to attempt to insure your safety.”
The wide eyes opened wider. The effect was almost frightening.
“Can you tell me, please, my lady Poet, about this poison that they are tormenting you with?”
She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked at him again, solemnly.
“Each morning when I go into the garden, and always when the moon has touched the trees, the poison comes—like knives within my skull—and drives me to the earth, and pins me there. The pain comes again and again, till I feel no more…each stab no more than seconds long, bid deathly deep.”
“Where is the pain?” he asked her. “Can you tell me exactly where you feel it?”
‘
‘But I have told you once—inside my head!”
“Never cramps in your muscles, or stomach pain—always just stabs of pain in the head?”
She nodded still smiling, watching him like a child, waiting for miracles.
He thought lor a moment. He knew no poison that could behave as this one was supposed to, but then he knew very little about poisons.
“Citizeness?” he asked tentatively. “Is it forbidden for a man to enter the garden where all this happens, once you are there?”
“If you are a man, the keys unlock all doors,” she said, “Be at my side, if you will, and welcome there.”
She had understood at once, and he was pleased with her “That’s exactly what’s needed,” he said with approval. “I need to hear you when the poison takes effect, then perhaps I will he better able to judge. At the moment I’m mystified.”
She lowered the disturbing eyes, looking down at her knees.
“If you fail, my friend, I go joyously to death,” she said, “If not, I will carry this burden yet a while.”
He wanted to reach out, touch her, reassure her, hut the memory of the staring eyes kept him back where the rigid, foolish etiquette could not have. The more be sat near her the more he fell that what, he saw in her eyes was perhaps not the effect of drugs alone but of some subtle warping of the mind as well, some trace of the ancient sickness they called “madness.” He would have to ask if a doctor could be brought to her; in this day and age it was barbaric to find a woman suffering a plague out of the Dark Ages of the twentieth century.
He took leave of the Poet, asking that she arrange for his return visit that night, and waited while she summoned another student to lead him back out to his waiting flier. There was just time for him to have his dinner, make sure that the two women who shared his quarters would not be punished for his neglect in the morning, and then it would be time to come back.
When he lay between Aletha and Josepha, his duties suitably discharged, he asked them about the Poet Jacinth’s condition.
“Could she have a doctor?” he asked.
The girls looked at him, amazed, and Josepha spoke to him wonderingly. “Is she sick, Citizen?”
“I think so; I am afraid so. Could she have one?”
“Of course,” said Josepha. “She is given the tenderest of care, always. She is beloved of all of us. You must tell them at the Trance Cloister that she is not well, and they will send a specialist at once.”
Coyote sighed. “Well, that at least is a relief. I thought it might be difficult…and she’s pathetic.”
Josepha leaned on one elbow and turned to him the inevitable interested face of one woman hearing of another’s physical ruin.
“You are not speaking now of the effect of the poison?” she asked.
“No…there is something else.”
“What is the matter with her, then, Citizen? Could you tell?”
“I think she is mad,” he said flatly. “I’m no expert, but it seems to me there is madness in her eyes.”
“Madness?”
Aletha spoke then, in Abban, too rapidly for him to understand, and both women laughed softly, turning their heads away. In order not to offend him with their noise, he supposed.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded. “Madness isn’t funny at all, it’s a disease, and a damned unpleasant one. Do you know what it is?”
“Yes, Citizen,” they answered respectfully.
“Then why is it funny? Just because the mad don’t bleed or break out in spots doesn’t mean they aren’t suffering.”
“Citizen—”
“Yes. Aletha?”
“We would not contradict the Citizen, lowly women that we are.”
“Contradict me. I don’t find you lowly at all. I find you highly.”
“Highly?”
“Highly attractive. Highly pleasant. Highly intelligent. Highly to be recommended.”
It was a lie, but he had an obligation to these two helpless hunks of flesh entrusted to his whims.
“Highly lovable,” he added, for good measure. He could have loved them, too, in exactly the same way Ratha loved her dog. Not one iota’s difference.
They were still hesitant, so he coaxed them. When he got back home he was going to say something so outrageous to Tzana Kai that she would hit him for it, just to get the bad taste out of his mouth.
“Please,” he said gently. ’Tell me. I really want to know why you reacted that way.”
Aletha, the braver of the two, sat up and crossed her legs neatly and folded her bands in what he now knew to be the standard posture for respectful discourse.
“Her madness is known, Citizen,” he said. “The Poet Jacinth would, of course, be mad. And you must not wish to take her madness from her. That would be very cruel.” “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps the Citizen has not taken thought,” murmured Josephs.
“Perhaps the Citizen is stupid,” said Coyote. “Please explain.”
“Think of the way she lives,” said Aletha. “She rises each morning at four, and for two hours she must meditate in the Cloister. Then she receives the sick; because she is holy, she can heal where doctors have failed.”
“How does she heal?”
“With poetry, of course, how else?”
“Goon.”
“That takes her morning, usually. Then she must spend 93 several hours more in meditation. Then two hours at her official duties—preparing poems for state occasions, for officials who have need of sacred lines to ease the burden of their work, many things of that kind.”
“When does she eat, for the Light’s sake?”
“Once a day, at the evening dinner hour. Then into the garden for more meditation.”
Coyote made a sound of disgust. “And her friends?
When does she see them? When—”
“She has no friends,” said Aletha. “She is a holy woman, thus she cannot have females for friends. And of course no woman can be the friend of a man; the female brain is not fit for such a role.”
“That is not true,” said Coyote, raising a mental finger at the Fish and his warnings.
“But it is,” said Aletha serenely. “I would not contradict the Citizen, of course, but things are as I describe them.” “As you describe them?”
“The Poet Jacinth cannot have friends; it is forbidden.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Coyote, but she looked at him blankly and went on, and he gave it up.
“Her madness, under the circumstances, is a necessity.”
“Part of her professional qualifications, in short,” said Coyote.
“Yes, Citizen. You have understood in spite of the inadequacy of our explanations.”
“May she read? Look at threedies? Play a musical instrument? Pick flowers? Swim? What is she allowed to do? When does she have time off for herself?”
Aletha looked shocked and Josepha made distressed noises.
“A holy Poet of the Seventh Level,” said Aletha, “even if by the will of the Light that Poet should be a female, has no need of such things, Citizen.”
“She summons madness instead.”
“Yes, Citizen. It is expected.”
“Tell me,” said Coyote, “if she were a man, instead of a woman, would she still need madness to support her?” Aletha laughed and lay down beside him once again, while Josepha went to prepare his bath.
“Of course not,” said Aletha. “If a man is Poet of the Seventh Level, his concubines see to it that he is happy. It’s not the same thing at all.”
“And why has she no male concubines?” Coyote demanded.
At the very mention of such heresy, Aletha leaped from the bed and scuttled after Josepha, leaving him to fume alone.
Chapter 7
Coyote sat in the darkness of the gaza trees, where a low chair had been placed for his comfort, and waited for something to happen. Abba’s twin moons had just risen and were flooding the garden with their pale green light so that everything seemed edged and stippled with silver-green. The trees stood out in the moonlight like silhouettes cut from paper, no depth to them, like scenery trees for children’s plays. The air was thick with the smell of flowers and the wind off the river. From inside the cloister he could hear the sounds of thumb-pianos and small bells, ringing under the tireless hands of the meditating students.
The Poet went to her accustomed place within the circle of great stones, and raised her face to the skies, lifting her arms and spreading them wide. He had watched her the night before; she had stood motionless there for hours, sometimes moving her Ups in words he could not hear, sometimes silent. And nothing had happened. No poison. No pain. He was here again tonight to see if it would be different He was sure that no one could possibly have come over the walls or down from any of the trees to do her harm, even if it were possible to do so without her noticing— which was not unthinkable in view of the depth of her trance. The moonlight was bright, though, so bright that no smallest movement could go unnoticed. And be was in no trance, except that of boredom.
The minutes crept, one after another. Coyote was tired, 96 as well as bored. He caught himself wishing there would be another attack on the Poet so that he could get on with this, and was mildly astonished at his own callousness. However, it was possible that his presence here was sufficient to keep whoever was out to harm Jacinth from trying it again, and in that case what would he do? He could not sit here every night from now on, like the guardian angels of prehistory. Eventually he would have to go back to Mars-Central, heavy taxes or no heavy taxes.
