The Ozark trilogy (50 page)

“You’re welcome ten times over, Granny Gableframe,” said Responsible. “And as for your settling, that’ll be no problem. There’s no such thing as too many Grannys in a Kingdom. I’ll send the word around, and we’ll have the Magician take you to see the towns that apply for your services, and let you choose at your leisure.

“In the meantime,” said Granny Hazelbide, “I’ve told her we can use her here-if she can abide our plain ways, that is. We’re a tad short on scepters and crowns and suchlike.”

“You’ve a wicked tongue and a cold heart, Hazelbide,” said Granny Gableframe, “and you’ll live to regret it.”

Granny Hazelbide chuckled, and patted her friend’s knee, and then turned serious.

“They’ll quiz you to a nub, come breakfast time,” she warned. “Thorn of Guthrie will want every last smidgen, every last
detail,
and those two boys of Ruth’s are more curious than’s healthy . . . and Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater is worse for gossip than seven old ladies not fit to granny. You want to keep to your room and put all that off awhile?”

Granny Gableframe hummphed; and then did it louder.

“
No-
sir,” she said, tart enough to pucker metal. “I have no intentions whatsoever, just
no
intentions, of furnishing that lot with the tale they’re after. Here I am, and that’s the end of it, and if they won’t have me on that basis they can throw me a pallet in the stables with my Mule. I’ll not discuss it, I put you on notice here and now. And you needn’t go to any effort to prepare them for it, ladies, for I’m fully capable of telling them where to take their nosy questions when the time comes. Just leave it to this old Granny, thank you kindly.”

“You sure?”

“Sure as sure, Responsible,” declared the old lady. “It’ll be a day to remember when I can’t manage a few Brightwaters with their mouths flapping.”

“Fair enough,” said Responsible, “and I’ll enjoy the spectacle. Now has anybody seen to your rooms?”

“Sent a servingmaid to do that, it’ll be half an hour ago now,” said Granny Hazelbide. “There’s an empty room two doors down from me, looking out over the meadow and the creek, and has its own bath and a nice little old fireplace in a corner. Just the thing. It’ll be ready whenever Gableframe cares to go up there.”

“All taken care of, are you?”

“That I am,” said the Granny, “or do seem to be. Depends of course on how clear Hazelbide’s instructions were, and whether she fancied a mudtoad or two under my pillow as a welcoming gesture.”

Responsible smiled; they were going to enjoy themselves, those two, and perhaps with a little time to recover from whatever outrage Lincoln Parradyne Smith had perpetrated on her, Granny Gableframe could be cozened into staying at the Castle permanently. She’d be company for Granny Hazelbide, and the idea of two Grannys on call at all times appealed to Responsible in the strongest terms just now.

“Want to give me a bit of advice, you two?” she asked suddenly.

Granny Hazelbide jerked her chin toward the other Granny. “Already told her about it,” she said. “We’ve just been waiting on you to ask.”

“What do they want, blast and blister them?” asked Granny Gableframe. “I do believe they are the most . . . Hmmmph. I wish they’d mind their own business.”

“Almost said a broad word, did you, Granny?”

“Never you mind. What’d they want?”

“Well,” said Responsible, “we had a little talk, by way of my Mule. It does
rankle,
you know-having to use a Mule for interpreter. Lacks a certain dignity.”

“You be glad the Mule is willing,” cautioned Granny Gableframe. “You thank your lucky stars and comets for that small favor in a cold world! Cause there is
no
way that the human being could pass mindspeech directly with the members of the OutCabal and stay sane! It’s been tried, and what was left over afterwards was not pretty to look upon.”

“Died in a locked room, she did,” said Granny Hazelbide, nodding her support, “and nothing any level of magic could do for her. Crawled around in her own filth and howled, day and night, and just plain luck that the next Responsible was already nine years old at the time and able to get through the muck that was left of her mind when it was needful. You
appreciate
the Mule filtering that down for you, hear? You want your brains burned right out of your head?”

“The
point,”
said Responsible, “is that it makes it look as if the Mules are more stable of mind than we are. I don’t fancy that.”

“Faugh!” said Hazelbide. “It’s not that atall. The Mule’s just closer in its perceptions to the Out-Cabal than humans are, and the sharing seems to be no strain for the creature. Might could be they’re Mules themselves, in which case we’ve no call to be embarrassed. Now what did they want, or you plan to sit there going on about your dignity all this night?”

Responsible told them, and they put in the necessary Granny noises at all the proper places, and approved of the stand she’d taken.

“Handled it right well, I’d say,” said one; and the other allowed as how that was accurate.

“Got ‘em on a
neat
point, didn’t you, missy? I’m proud of you.”

Responsible thanked Granny Hazelbide for the compliment, pulled up a rocker, and began to rock. She was still mad, and the distraction provided by Granny Gableframe’s sudden arrival was beginning to wear off. The chair started to creak in protest at her speed, but she didn’t care; if it fell to pieces, it might relieve her feelings some.

“Responsible,” observed Granny Hazelbide, “why don’t you just take an ax to that rocker? It’d be quieter and quicker.”

“Why’ve you got your dander up, anyway?” asked Gableframe. “Seems to me you bested them; aren’t you satisfied?”

“No, I am not!”

She rocked harder, which wasn’t easy.

“Law, she’ll take off any minute and fly chair and all out through that window!” said Granny Gableframe. “Girl, what is your complaint? The Mule give you a headache?”

Responsible stopped rocking so suddenly that she nearly fell out of the chair. “I just don’t understand it,” she announced. “And what I don’t understand, I purely
despise!”

“Well, you’re not the first,” said Gableframe. “Nor will you be the last. The time comes the Out-Cabal lets four five years go by and no message sent, then I’ll begin to fret-we’ll know then they’re up to some devilment.”

“We don’t know, and we wouldn’t know,” Responsible said, flat out, and struck the rocker arm with her fist. “We just
assume!
”

Granny Hazelbide sighed, and shook her head.

“There she goes again, Gableframe,” she said. “Been through this with her I don’t know how many times now, and her only ten years old the first time, and her pigtails pulled back so tight they made her ears stick out-and she’s not changed since. My, but she’s stubborn!”

“I say,” said Responsible, “and there’s nobody to say me nay, either, that we have no proof the Out-Cabal can do anything they claim. No proof there’s any such group of planets as the Garnet Ring. No proof that there is any such thing as the
Out
-Cabal, far as
I
can see, and I’m not exactly shortsighted!”

“Now, Responsible-”

“Never mind your `now-Responsibles’! You give me one bit of evidence, one solid piece of anything to show me I should believe in all this stuff; I’ll back down. So far, you’ve had nothing to say that sounded any more sensible than Emmalyn of Clark prattling about umbrellas inside the house and spitting when you see three white Mules, and I’m purely sick of it.”

“You recall that other young woman, Responsible, if you want proof-she had the same problem you have, and bad cess to the Grannys advising her that they couldn’t keep her from pushing it to where she did! Her mind didn’t leave her on account of fairy tales, Responsible of Brightwater, and she did no more than insist that they speak directly to her and not through the Mules. She didn’t defy them, nor question their existence!”

“And what about that lightning they chased you with, and the fire all round your pretty little feet last time?
Not
to mention they know
everything
as happens here on this planet, when and as it happens! You forget that?”

Responsible drew a deep breath, and began to rock again, careful to keep it slow and sensible.

“Look here,” she said to them. “Let’s just look at what you say, and no more of this carryon, fair enough? I don’t know about that other Responsible, though I’m for sure sorry about her; that’s been two hundred years ago or more, and the circumstances that went with it wrapped up in more mysteries than an onion has layers-I don’t consider that evidence. Being that nobody but the Grannys and one lone woman in every generation
knows
about the Out-Cabal, it’s understandable that we don’t have much in the way of details on the subject . . . but for all we really know she just had too hard a row to hoe and wasn’t strong enough to bear it. As for their fancy effects-I’ve got
Magicians
as could do everything I’ve seen them do, and Magicians of Rank that make their magic look like baby fooling. Knowing what goes on on Ozark’d be cursed easy if you just happened to
be
on Ozark, let me point
that
out! And if they’re so all-fired omnipotent and powerful, if their magic’s as far superior to ours as a spaceship’s superior to a river raft, like they claim, then why haven’t they shown us some of it? Why haven’t they rattled things around a bit? Moved some mountains? Canceled some of our weather? Ruined some of
our
magic, at least?
Shoot!
”

The two Grannys traded glances and allowed as how that was quite a speech, fit to try the patience somewhat more than somewhat, and added a half dozen more platitudes to the broth, until Responsible got disgusted with them, too.

“I made you a speech,” she said wearily, “you could at least make me an answer. Two of you-you ought to be able to work up something.”

Granny I-Iazelbide rocked and knitted, and rocked and knitted some more, and they all waited, and then she said: “Let me ask you a question, Responsible of Brightwater.”

“At your service.”

“Say there’s no Out-Cabal. Say there’s no Garnet Ring, no group of planets all bound by a single system of magic and out to add to their numbers. Say that long-ago Responsible
did
scare her own self insane. Say all the things you propose are true. But then answer me this: if it’s not them, if it’s no Out-Cabal, then who or what is it?”

“Someone on this planet,” Responsible muttered. “Somebody right here on Ozark.”

“For hundreds of years? Child!”

“For just as many hundreds of years,” insisted Responsible, “ we’ve managed to keep all this secret not just from the people of Ozark but even from the Magicians and the Magicians of Rank. That’s every bit as hard to believe, but we’ve done it.”

“Well, who do you suspect, then?” Granny Hazelbide demanded. “Speak right up, there’s nobody here but us!”

Responsible said nothing. She’d run it through the computers on run-and-destroys till she was blue, and it kept coming out with a whole passel of choices. Might could be it was a Magician of Rank-or two or three of them-passing it along to new ones carefully chosen as they grew old, and enjoying themselves tremendously at what they put the women through. Might could be it was the Skerrys-nobody knew anything about the Skerrys, what they could or would do, hidden away in Marktwain’s small desert and not seen once in a hundred years-could
certainly
be the Skerrys. Could be the Mules themselves, and wouldn’t
that
be a fine howdydo! She’d had some experience with what a Mule could do if it took a fancy to, and might could be they were not all that happy having their tails braided and their backs saddled and bridled and behaving in general like the Mules of Earth; might could be they’d been getting their own back, in their own way. It wasn’t unreasonable; it was so far from unreasonable that she shivered.

“Look at the child! She’s all aquiver!”

“I’m all right, Granny Hazelbide.”

“All right, are you? Take a closer look at yourself, missy-you that has no trouble whatsoever facing down the whole crew of Magicians of Rank assembled, and knows more than all nine of them put together. You that knows more than all twenty-nine of us Grannys and sees the web of the universe laid out clear and clean before you like a tadling does a fishing net-
you,
Responsible of Brightwater! And you’ve done no more this night than send six seven sentences back and forth between you and the OutCabal, filtered through the mind of a Mule to keep it easy for you, and I do believe you’ll have to be carried up to your bed! What’s that, Responsible, if not proof the Out-Cabal’s real?”

“You speak mighty plain,” said Responsible. “Guard your tongue!”

“There are times,” answered the old woman, “only plain speaking will do the job. Think I want to see
you
with your mind destroyed? Just because I failed to speak up plain when my turn came? I’m not such a shirkall as that, nor yet such a fool. You
can’t
walk,
can
you? Now
can
you?
”

Many things were not clear to Responsible at that moment. It seemed to her, for example, that even the Grannys should realize that all that power and wondrous knowledge they claimed she had was being carried around in a head that had seen only fifteen summers go by, and half the time didn’t know what to do with what it knew. It seemed to her they’d realize that her loneliness was a torment, an awful and awesome burden like the whole sky down upon her two shoulders, with no living soul to ask any question of. It seemed to her they’d know so many things; and it seemed to them-that at least was clear-that she knew so much more than she did.