Gibbon's Decline and Fall (74 page)

Please, let this be right.

The contents of the vial made only a small puddle in the
chalice. She had brought only the one vial with her, afraid that if she allowed herself a choice, last-minute worries would confuse the decision made with so much thought, so much troubled concentration.

Oh, please, Sophia. Let this be right.

Later in the morning, properly dressed and combed, she had returned with the others to witness the dedication. By then the plaza was alive with motion and sound, with the flap of banners and flutter of wings as hundreds of white doves were released into the soft airs. Through a tube hidden in Sophia's bronze sleeve, water flowed into the chalice, filling it until it overflowed. The first drops sounded clearly in the silence; then the pumps started and the huge wave flowed and the plaza was filled with water sounds as all the surfaces sparkled wetly under the morning sun. At the back of the fountain the pool emptied into a long, lovely water stair that tumbled from lily pool to lily pool between sloping paths, down the long hill to a park below, and thence under bridges and around gardens into some hidden course that led to a river, and thence to the sea. By the time all the speeches were over, it was too late to wonder if she had been right. Sophia's chalice had been emptied into the pool, and the pool into the river many times over. Too much water under the bridges for second thoughts, she told herself solemnly. Right or not, it was done.

Still, she had stayed behind, as though waiting for a sign, while Hal and the others went off to lunch, seemingly untroubled by whatever choice had been made. Of course, they hadn't known she was going to do it here, this morning. Maybe they thought she would do it some other time. Or had done it, long ago, while the fountain was being tested, before it was installed.

She didn't feel like joining the others, not just yet. She was weary of happening! So much, so terribly much had happened. The terrors of that journey from Lizard Rock. The windup of Lolly's trial, which had turned out to be a complete anticlimax. Jagger was replaced by a novice prosecutor, and Rombauer was replaced by Judge Frieze. The perjured jurors were named as alternates and then removed from the jury: a jury, which, in due time, had brought in a verdict of not guilty with recommendations for counseling, that all-purpose—though often quite useless—contemporary ameliorative. Today's snake oil.

Lolly was in the care of Agnes McGann, who was still
Reverend Mother. She had carried Lolly off to be rebuilt, retrained, refurbished. Not as a demonstration project. More as the tail end of the former order of things. Aggie had decided she was tired of gates but was darned if she was going to give up a life that meant a lot to so many women.

Faye had seemingly had a remission, though she told Carolyn she thought it had been something mightily curative in Tess's tea. And Jessamine had a new companion, her coworker, Val. Ophy and Simon had not changed, no more than Carolyn and Hal or Stace and Luce.

Helen was home, and she had her children with her. Her daughter Emily was like a three-year-old: infantile, uneducated, illiterate. Her son had been taught what all the boys at the Redoubt had been taught. It would take all Helen's strength to undo what the Alliance had done to them, had taught them, but without reinforcement of those teachings, in time they would forget. One prayed.

As for the Alliance, according to Mike Winter, it had melted away. There were stories and even film clips of a vast marching in the cities, a great demonstration building for days, getting larger and larger, like some huge storm gathering. And then, at the end, it had come apart, tattered like a wind-torn cloud into tiny rags and shreds. The driving force that had welded it and wielded it had vanished. The misogyny that had driven it had ended. The men who had taken part in it could answer no questions about it. They disliked being reminded of it and could not even remember why they had been there.

And now, now it was done.

And what would she say if they asked her?

Perhaps she would say, as Sovawanea might have said: Perhaps I chose, or perhaps Sophia chose for me.

If Sophia had done so, she wasn't telling. There was no sign, no omen, no nothing. With one last look into Sophy's well-remembered face, she rose and walked off across the plaza toward the stairs. A waste receptacle stood beside the steps. She stopped beside it, gathering the contents of her pocket into a single wad, which she dropped into the basket, vial and all. Now all evidence of her act was gone. There was a finality in the gesture that had been missing this morning.

She stopped, motionless, listening. There was a sound, as
of a door opening, far off. A vast silence. Then the door closed, leaving an echo from childhood, as of a child's voice calling in the summer dusk …

“… ninety-nine, one hundred. Ready or not, here it comes.”

S
HERI
S. T
EPPER
is the award-winning author of
A Plague of Angels, Sideshow, Beauty, Raising the Stones, Grass, The Gate to Women's Country, After Long Silence
, and
Shadow's End. Grass
was a
New York Times
Notable Book and Hugo Award nominee, and
Beauty
was voted Best Fantasy Novel by the readers of
Locus
magazine. Ms. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.