The Ozark trilogy (79 page)

Meanwhile, Responsible went on talking, keeping her voice in the mode that carried the message: THERE IS NO QUESTION BUT THAT I WILL BE OBEYED. “At every Castle,” she said, “you will call a Family Meeting, and elect—at once! —a Delegate to the New Confederation of Continents of Ozark. The Magicians of Rank will SNAP the Delegates here to Brightwater as quickly as you choose them ... if you have no Magician of Rank in residence, be ready; one will be with you within the next half hour, and will not be pleased if you have no Delegate ready to return with him when he arrives, I warn you. Confederation Hall is at this very minute being made ready for the Delegates— “

Troublesome whistled softly, long and low, and Silverweb smiled at the lie, and the two of them—followed by the Grannys at as much speed as the old women could muster—headed out of Castle Brightwater for Confederation Hall, with Troublesome waving the keys above her head to show she still had them.

“Once the Delegates are here,” Responsible went on, “they will offer a motion that a New Confederation be formed, second it, and pass it by unanimous vote—they will have ample time and more than ample time to write a new Constitution and work out all the trimmings and doodads they care to, when the crystals have been withdrawn. But that
will not be enough
.

“It will be necessary,” she told them solemnly, “to call the roll.”

That had never been done within the memory of anyone living, nor the memory of their parents, nor their grandparents. Very early, before the Ozarkers had moved out from Marktwain and their number had been small, it had been done. But now?

“The Garnet Ring wants this planet very badly,” said Responsible. “Whatever you have done to it as I slept, and I understand that you have not been idle in your destruction, it is still rich in ores and forests and land and seawater ... everything that a crowded system like the Garnet Ring needs and does not have. They have set no controls on their population and no controls on their greed—they will not give us up for a gesture. It will be done, one vote at a time, for every citizen over the age of twelve years. Kingdom by Kingdom. Stay at your comsets, and when the Chair says to begin, you will answer one at a time, in an orderly fashion. You will say, for example: ‘I, So-and-So of Clark, hereby cast my vote for the New Confederation, and I say
Aye
; let it be so recorded.’ It is of course your privilege to vote
against
the New Confederation; if enough of you do so, we will learn what the Garnet Ring proposes to do with us.”

And she let them think about
that
a while. As a democratic method of persuasion, it had its shortcomings, and she was conscious of them. On the other hand, death or slavery weren’t overly democratic either, and they appeared to be the other alternatives. If the means turned out not to be justified by the ends, she would have some paying to do. She’d worry about that when it happened. Right now, she had a world to convince.

A comcrew tech stuck his head in at the door, then, and raised both fists above his head and shook them at her. That meant the data was back to the computers; that meant the comsets had been turned on everywhere—even on Tinaseeh. That meant they were working, and it meant there were Ozarkers to watch them. Responsible would have jumped up and down for joy except that it would of introduced an element of confusion into her presentation.

She nodded at the man and then began again, since there might of been those coming in just then from the woods or the fields, or only just finding a house that still had a comset in working order. And she went through it all one more time. And when she got to the end of that, she began
again
.

By the time she had reached the third recitation of the manner of calling the roll of every Ozarker over the age of twelve, the first Delegate had landed in the yard of Confederation Hall, his arms clasped round the waist of Shawn Merryweather Lewis the 6
^th
, Magician of Rank in residence at Castle Motley, the two of them seated on a bedraggled and scrawny Mule without so much as a saddle blanket. Never mind, though; it had been able and willing—it had in fact been eager—to fly.

They were landing everywhere, and the Grannys of Brightwater threw open the doors of Confederation Hall and shouted them a welcome, while Troublesome sneaked out me back door and went home, and Silverweb stood and smiled. Now they would show those cursed Garnet Ringers, whatsoever they might be! They would show them what a people united could do, how swift and sure a freedom-loving people could move to set up a new and a strong government, how quick such a government could move to take care of such petty matters as weather and hunger and disease and disaster and war!

The Grannys were as near ecstasy as a Granny could get, and in the excitement of the moment they had not even noticed that the arthritis that had been crippling them was gone. They stood on the steps of Confederation Hall, holding the doors wide, the tears pouring down their faces, cheering as each new Delegate arrived, and as each Mule and Magician of Rank SNAPPED out of sight to go after the next one.

They paid no mind to the fact that Silverweb of McDaniels, amusement in her eyes and cobwebs on her dress, was headed back toward Castle Brightwater to see what she could do now to help Responsible. Nor did it occur to them that Troublesome was long gone.

It was a brand-new day.

On Tinaseeh there was no need for anybody to ride out into the countryside to search out people beyond the range of the comsets. The Castle stood grim and dark at the central point of the three squares marked off by the logs of ironwood, set upright side by side and lasered to wicked points; this was Roebuck, capital city and only settlement of Tinaseeh, and it had ample room within it for the six hundred and three persons still alive in Traveller Kingdom.

Except for the members of the Family and the Magicians of Rank, except for the College of Deacons and the Tutors—and except of course for Granny Leeward—the people of Tinaseeh were frail and ill. Measles and croup and hunger took the young; pneumonia and cancer and hunger took the old; and at the Castle the Magicians of Rank themselves took turns guarding the secret stores of extra food and the priceless herbs. They could trust nobody else with that duty.

When the comset alarms went off, piercing the stillness that covered Roebuck like a visible miasma, broken only by the exhortations of Jeremiah Thomas Traveller the 26
^th
and his Deacons—no child had laughed on Tinaseeh in many days, and now they were past crying as well—they were like red-hot irons through the ears of the silent people. And Jeremiah Thomas, knowing the high tone at once for what it had to be, cursed in a way that brought the members of his household upright in shock. They had never heard a single broad word cross his lips before, not one; and there he stood shaking his fist at the wall where the red comset light was blinking, and shouting fit to turn the air blue for miles around.

Granny Leeward was the first to recover, and the first to realize how little time they had.

“He’s right,” she said urgently, “though I’ll not defend the filth he’s used to express himself ... I do believe his mind’s turned, and no wonder. But we should never of left the comsets in the houses! They ought to have been ripped out, made truly useless, the day we got back here from the accursed Grand Jubilee, aye, if not long before. Leaving them, that was a grave mistake, and Jeremiah Thomas is right thrice over! But listen—it will be a while, might could be quite a while—before the people remember what that sound is. Might could be they won’t remember, for that matter; I don’t recall they’ve ever heard it.
If
we hurry!
If
we get out and call them out of their houses before they notice the lights—those, now, they’ll remember. All of you, you go fast, you go from house to house and silence the wicked things, cut the wires or whatever it is as makes them go, and we might could get out of this yet! If we hurry, mind!”

“What could it be for?” marveled Feebus Timothy Traveller the 6
^th
, staring around at the others. “What do you suppose?”

“Whatever it is, it comes from the womb of evil,” said Leeward viciously, “for only Brightwater has the means to send out that alarm. And whatever it is, we do not care to hear it!”

“Now, Granny Leeward,” the young Magician of Rank protested, “it may have to do with the crystal! And if it does, we— “

“No doubt it
does
have to do with the crystal,” Granny Leeward threw back at him. “And no doubt you’re still not quite over that fever you came near taking, eh, Feebus Timothy? Of
course
it has to do with the crystal; and nevertheless, we do not choose to hear! Where is your
faith
?”

If the people of Tinaseeh had not been so weak and so sickly, the Family might have been able to bring it off. Some would of been in the half dozen stores of Roebuck; some in the schoolrooms of the Tutors; some outside the walls working in the forests or the fields; some would of been walking in the town on their way to or from any of these things. But far too many of the handful of people remaining were housebound by sickness, and from their pallets laid on cold bare floors they had demanded that the comsets be turned on, and they had heard every word spoken by Responsible of Brightwater.

While the rest of the Family and its deputies were racing through the streets to try to prevent that from happening. Granny Leeward and Jeremiah Thomas Traveller sat alone before the comset at Castle Traveller and heard it all—twice through. And when the others returned to report that they had failed, that they had been too late, the Granny was ready for them.

“Call the people together,” she said. Her voice made them think of the water that ran deep in the Tinaseeh caves in utter blackness, too cold even for blindfish to survive. “Those as cannot walk are to be carried, and those as try to say you nay are to be offered ... promised ... a taste of the Long Whip. Everybody, every last chick and child, is to be brought into the Inner Courtyard to hear Jeremiah Thomas speak against this temptation. Souls are precious things—we’ll not see them lost
this
easily!”

It took time, because the messengers were few and already tired from their first hasty dash through the town, but not so long as might have been expected, given the frail health of the people. The College of Deacons met some of them in the streets, already on their way, carrying sick children in their arms. And in not much more than an hour after the alarm had sounded, they were all assembled. The Family, the Magicians of Rank, the College of Deacons—they sat on a platform used in happier times for the feastday services of the church, meant to give space for the Reverends and the choirs. The people that could stand stood, lined up in a squared-off horseshoe with the platform at its open end. Those that couldn’t manage that leaned against the rough walls or lay on their pallets on the ground, or were cradled in the arms of relatives and friends.

And Jeremiah Thomas Traveller spoke, while Granny Leeward sat at his right hand with the Long Whip coiled and ready in her lap, and a muscle twitching high in her right cheek just along the ridge of the bone.

“My people,” said the Master of Castle Traveller tenderly, raising his arms and spreading them wide in the pastoral embrace, “you know how I love you! More dear to me you are than ever son or daughter was to other man, more tightly bound to me than ever the bonds of blood have been! For you are
the faithful
... out of holy suffering you have come pure and filled with precious, nay, with priceless grace; around you the wicked and the weak in spirit have fallen like grass before the scythe, and yet you have stood.
You
have not fallen. You have not shrunk from the blade, not from its very edge; when it was at your throat you have bent to give it the kiss of fearless love. You have never doubted. How I love you—perhaps I love you more even than is fitting, but the Holy One will forgive me that.

“And how do I know all this? How can I be sure? Oh, my beloved people, only think what has been vouchsafed to you this
glorious
day! Those the Almighty loves, those are chastened; those the Almighty trusts,
those
are tested; those the Holy One counts among the elect, those are sent the blessing of ultimate temptation that they may demonstrate their contempt for
all
temptation! And this has come to you, to
you
, to every last and least and weariest one of you ... for the Almighty knows, knows in confident glory, that there
is no test
your faith is not equal to!

“When I think” —and here Jeremiah Thomas let his hands move in and cross over his heart, and he added a judicious quaver to his voice— “when I think what honor has been done you, my beloved flock, I am struck to that heart. Who am I, that this blessing should pour down on me? Who am I, that I should lead so mighty, so fearless, an army of souls? What an honor has been done
me
, the least of all the servants!

“Fall to your knees,” urged Jeremiah Thomas Traveller the 26
^th
, his words honey and oil spreading around him, “fall to your knees! The trollop has spoken again from the citadel of sin, and you have heard her! And unto you, beloved, has come the opportunity to say to the Daughter of Brightwater a
No!
that will echo throughout the farthest corners of this world!
No!
you will say, we are not afraid of the abomination that pulses and grows each moment more gorged with blood above our heads, for it is only one more of the puny tests sent to try our faith, and we
glory
in that trial!
No!
you will say, we are not afraid of your Garnet Ring, of your Out-Cabal, of your bedtime tales invented for the terrifying of little children—for we are not little children, but
warriors
of the faith! There is no Garnet Ring! There is no Out-Cabal! There are no alien peoples prepared to make of us slaves or victims! There is only the just symbol of the wrath of the Holy One Almighty, set in the skies above us as a sign of the anger we have earned ... and when we cry out
No!
and
No!
and
No!
nine times nine times again to the Whore of Brightwater, that symbol will fade away as do the clouds, that bring the gentle rains, and as the sunlight, that makes way for the healing hours of the night!”