224                        Sheri S. Tepper

dipped his hands and wrists, letting them soak while he considered what had happened, what would happen in the morning. If what Coyote had said was true, the two humans should not be too quick to move in the morning. Give the Orphan-hunters time to get through the gate before Oily and Abasio came there. And proceed through the gate with the least possible fuss and no tantrum of outraged masculinity.
    He returned the dye pot to Olly and went on to the barrel for water to rinse his hands and arms. Behind him, he heard the even thwack, thwack, thwack of the dye block slapped down on the cloth squares. When he returned, she was adding another fluid to the bucket, one she'd been steeping so she could amplify her pattern with another hue. She was working with a troubled,
distracted air. Abasio watched her, head cocked, worried by her silence. The firelight jumped, gleaming from bright runnels on her cheeks. "You're crying!" he exclaimed, suddenly guilty over his recent anger and irritation. The silent tears dripped from her jaw, and she licked them from the corners of her mouth. "Oily, sweet..."
    She leaned into his arms, crying, "Abasio, why are they hunting me'? I haven't done anything to anybody." She shook her head, the tears flying. "l was just beginning to think I knew something about me. I try to forget there are people--things hunting me, but then something reminds me, and it makes me so--scared."
    It was the voice of a child, lonely and forlorn. It was Elrick-Ann's voice, the voice of his ma when she had looked in the mirror at the tattooed emblems on her breast and wept for her youth. It was the cry of the lost lambs he had been sent after in his boyhood, to find them and return them to the fold. It was his own voice, a few times he remembered, when all had seemed past understanding or acceptance.
    Abasio held her more tightly, rocking slowly back and forth by the coals of the fire where the stewpot steamed and bubbled and the little fire made cracking noises in the night. It was Coyote's talk of the hunters that had set her off, but he had laid the groundwork for her misery. He silently cursed himself and things in general. For the moment it didn't matter that he couldn't lust after her. He cared for her in her trouble and pain, and for this firelit time, that was enough.

    The walkers were among the first through the gate the following morning. They had passes that, they said, allowed them to cross any border. The type of pass was so unfamiliar, however, that the person in charge at the gate had to summon her captain before opening the barrier and letting them through.
"Enjoy your travels through Artemisia," the captain said, nodding politely


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            225

but distantly, wondering at the difficulty she was having in keeping her voice at its natural pitch and intensity. She wanted to gasp, to squeak. She wanted to run and hide.
"One moment," said the taller walker, refusing to be dismissed.
    The captain summoned all her discipline to quell a shudder and put on an attentive face.
    "We're seeking a female person of about twenty years. We are told she has dark hair and eyes. It is likely she is traveling alone. Have you seen such a one?"
The captain shook her head. "What has she done?"
    "1 did not say she had done anything," the taller walker said, raising his brows. "Why we seek her is our business only. Not your business."
    The captain swallowed the bile that seeped bitterly at the back of her tongue and said carefully, "I merely thought more information might help me assist you better."
"You need no more information. Answer the question."
The captain turned to the gatekeeper, who shook her head wordlessly.
    "No," whispered the gatekeeper. "Only men, traders, truckers, a few older couples, but no woman traveling alone."
    The questioners turned without further word and left, stalking out through the gate and into the countryside along the road that led to the town.
    "What kind of a pass did they have?" the gatekeeper asked her captain in a trembling whisper. "Who are they?"
    The older woman shook her head. 'kit was issued by the Place of Power. It's rather like the ones the name-changers and the book-burners carry. These �.. people are called walkers; the people from manland talk about them, I've not seen them before; they don't frequent Artemisia much; but that is no doubt what they are."
    She dusted her hands together, furrowing her brow, "I'd better get to town before they get there. I need to talk to Wide Mountain Mother about this."
    She galloped away on one of the swift horses reserved for officers on urgent business. She left behind her a gatekeeper bursting with curiosity. Most days at the gate were boring enough that any exceptional happening made a welcome break in the routine. The gatekeeper hadn't been told to be quiet about it, so with hints and whispers and dramatic shudders, she told everyone who came through about the two strangers and their pass.
    "So they said it was none of our business why they wanted her," she murmured, as she shunted Abasio and Olly's wagon off toward a small structure under the shade of several large trees. "Can you imagineT'
'~And they had a pass?" Oily asked, not needing to pretend interest. ~They did. Not that they'd have needed one, if they'd wanted to come


226                              Sheri S. Tepper

in regardless, for it's clear they go where they will! Their pass was issued by the Place of Power, my watch captain said, and that's a mystery, isn't it? We get some of our machinery from the Place, west of us, though I've never been there myself. The book-burners come from there. But why should the Place of Power send beings like that wandering about? I tell you, it made me shiver just hearing them speak. Like when you wake in the night to hear--I don't know. Some strange sound outside your window where no sound should be."
    "Our dog often barks at such sounds," rumbled Abasio, tossing a wicked glance in Coyote's direction.
    "Dogs hear things we don't!" cried the gatekeeper, looking directly at Coyote, who lay on the wagon seat looking perfectly doglike and servile. "So do cats, or even birds. Earthquakes, for instance. Animals hear things and they howl. I'll tell you, these beings made me want to howl, as though I'd heard something horrid without knowing it." She flapped her hand at them, miming her discomfiture, and pointed to the door of the small structure. "Now you go on in there. The Mankind Management officer will be with you in two pumps of a ram's rump."
    "Lamb's tail," said Abasio gravely, remembering his youth among the flocks. "It's the lambs that shake their tails."
    "Maybe in your country," giggled the gate guard. "But our rams seem to do most of it here."
    Then she was gone, and the two of them were left staring at each other in a small, bare room that smelled strongly of chemicals.
    The woman who joined them was lean, horsefaced, and pleasantly matterof-fact. She explained the controls she could offer, the belts, the surgery, the implants, the escorts; she agreed that Abasio's condition was worrisome, took samples of various body fluids, and went off to consider the matter. When she returned some time later, she looked thoughtful.
    "In one sense, you're healthy," she said to Abasio. "You have no sign of IDDIs, rare for a ganget--and I assume you were a ganger, from the scars you bear. You have no evidence of plague, which is more or less endemic in manland. You are ailing, however, and we have no antidote to what's ailing you. So far as we know, there is none. None, that is, except the drug you took in the first place, one available in the cities, which is no doubt where you got it."
    "I didn't take it," said Abasio stiffly, giving up any pretense of hiding his history. "Someone gave it to me without my knowledge."
    "Whichever," she said. "More of it would make you feel quite your old self, for a time, but it would not be a good idea for the long run, as I'm sure you've figured out."
Abasio nodded dismally.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            227

     "We have records of this stuff, but this is the first evidence we've had of
it in circulation. By itself, it does not kill.""I felt half-dead," Abasio objected.
    "I know. You were debilitated by the dose given you, but you were not in danger."
"I don't understand," complained Oily.
    The woman explained: "There are a lot of sexually transmitted viruses floating around in manland. One particular group of these we call possum viruses, because they play dead. They don't manifest for years, or even decades, if then. This allows the virus to permeate virtually an entire population. Then, given certain stimuli--Starlight is one--the viruses are jolted into life, into virulence. The stimulated virus can be transmitted sexually, also, and it is inevitably fatal. Though many victims die quickly, someone who is lightly infected and received a minimum dose of the drug might last
some weeks, or even months during which they could be infecting others." "So Abasio wasn't infected?"
    "No, surprising for a ganget, he was not. He neither had the bug nor gave it to anyone. Even more surprising, considering how addictive the drug is."
    Abasio said, "There are lots of addictives, and lots of people using them. Eventually, they all die."
    The woman grinned without humor. "It's that eventually that makes the difference to us, cityman. We're not overly concerned about drugs that kill one off after five years, or ten. If one of our people gets taken with it, we have time to correct the matter, and we do. We always neuter addicts, and their children, if any, to make sure both the genetic inclination and the addiction itself is limited. If there's any reason to think that may not work, we go further!" She nodded grimly. "However, we do worry about drugs like this Starlight. There's no time to save a life when eventually can mean tomorrow!"
    Abasio grimaced, rubbing his forehead. Seemingly, he had had a lucky escape. Sybbis hadn't been infected when Little Purp bought her. Little Purp had no sexually transmitted diseases, so Sybbis had acquired none. He, Abasio, wasn't going to die. Eventually, he'd get over the effects of the drug. Eventually.
    The woman went on: "You're young. You're strong. Our people believe the effects will wear off. Since we don't know how rapidly your body is getting rid of the stuff, it's hard to say how long recovery will take."
    She twiddled her fingers, considering. "While we're rigorous in protecting the health of Artemisians, we've a certain reluctance to destroy lives in the process, and putting you under stress or dosing you with more drugs certainly won't do you any good. Are you planning on going straight through our land?"


'                 228                              Sheri S. Tepper

    The question was asked of Abasio, but it was Oily who answered. need to stop at the library in Artemisia. And we have a delivery for the Wide Mountain Clan."
    The woman went on staring at Abasio, waiting until he met her gaze. "I'll let you travel on a special pass specifying that in your present condition, you're no threat to us."
    Abasio tried not to be offended by this, without much success. He was offended. And embarrassed.
    The woman turned to Oily. "As for you, young woman, since you're healthy and not sexually active, and since you're going to the Wide Mountain Clan, I'll give you a pass that far, and they can decide what to do with you from there."
    "What did the person in the house say'?" asked Coyote when they were in the wagon once more headed south.
    "She said they have a population that's in balance with their environment; they intend to maintain it that way. She said they have no sexual diseases and don't intend to let any in."
    "How very sensible of them," said Coyote, turning to dig his teeth into his flank and burrow there furiously.
    "You're lucky she didn't know about your fleas," snarled Abasio. "She said we were healthy, more or less, but we didn't think to have her check you as well. You may be harboring plague in those fleas of yours."
    The Coyote, growling deep in his throat, did not reply as he continued his pursuit of whatever was biting him.

    The city of Artemisia, when they arrived there after several hours' travel, did not meet Abasio's expectation of a city. On the ridges above the river a dozen or so large, complicated buildings faced one another with facades of shimmering tiles laid in swirling patterns as of flame or boiling cloud or the movement of blown leaves. The shallow stream in the valley was a mere wandering trickle~ a silver glitter among braided flat banks of pinkish gravel, an endearing infant creek, dappled by sun and dwarfed both by living trees, golden in the autumn sun, and the huge sun-bleached carcasses of dead ones that lay on either side. These white hulks, so Coyote told them, came shuddering down the arroyo when spring floods sent a muddy fury rioting between the banks. Well above this line of debris, the low adobe buildings of the town sprawled like sand castles.
    Artemisia shone like gold and polished gemstone, all softly glittering. Nothing in it obtruded upon the sight. All was a whole, organic as a forest.
    "Who lives up there?" Olly wondered, pointing at the larger buildings on the ridges.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            229

    Abasio did not reply. He was making a careful examination of their surroundings, both for any sign of the walkers and for a building that looked like a library. He had no very clear idea what a library should look like, but he expected something imposing, certainly something larger than anything he could see.
    Noticing Abasio's confusion, a woman left a nearby group of chatting women and came toward them. "Can I help you find something'?"
    "We would thank you for directions to the Clan of Wide Mountain," said Oily.
    "Wide Mountain House is at the bottom of the hill, on the left of the plaza," the woman directed. "Look for the sign of the thistle." She returned to her group and the half-dozen women in it and whispered to the others as they stared after the wagon, heads together in intimate exchange.
    At the bottom of the hill the roadway opened into a gravelly clearing centered upon an open-sided, peak-roofed platform where a trio of musicians were plucking and strumming on guitars, a practice session that was frequently interrupted by one or the other of the participants. The clearing was bordered all around with courtyard walls and tall gates, some open, some closed. The sign of the thistle hung above a timbered archway that gave onto a stone-paved enclosure bright with potted flowers. Inside, Olly found an official with whom she was allowed to leave her packages.
    "Very nice work," said the woman when she had unpacked the neckerchiefs onto the counter between them. She knotted one loosely about her throat, patting the knot and adjusting the folds. "Our old kerchiefs were faded to nothing, and any respect shown their wearers was purely from habit. What's this other packet?"
"Silk yardage, printed," Oily replied. "Ordered through you."
    The woman referred to a notebook, nodding. "Ordered by Fashimir Ander, yes. Good enough. There's a trade group heading west this afternoon, and they can deliver it. Shall I pay you the balance, or shall I send it to the dyer'?"
    Oily passed over the note Wilfer had given her. "Half the remainder to me," she said. "Because it was my work. The other half sent to Wilfer Ponde, for his profit."
    The woman unlocked a strongbox and rapidly stacked silver rats, passing the coins across the counter. "I'11 send a draft on our bankers in the Edge at Fantis. They will send the coin to Whitherby."
"You have a banker in the Edge'?" asked Abasio curiously.
    "Indeed," she replied, giving him a sharp look. "Surely you wouldn't expect us to send coin through that gang-ridden and lawless realm?"
    Abasio remained impassive. He wouldn't expect it, but then, he'd never considered how payment might take place across borders. Edges were evidently more complicated places than he had thought they were.


230

Sheri S. Tepper

"Anything else?" queried the woman, seeing Olly's hesitation.
    "I--1 was given a pass only this far by the woman at the gate. She said you could decide... what to do with me, And I need to visit the library of Artemisia."
    "Now, why would you want to do that?" the woman asked, with an interested expression.
Olly knotted her hands in her pockets. "I have--personal reasons."
    "I see." The woman arranged several items on the counter, lining them up, disarranging them, and lining them up again. "I'11 have to inquire." She went swiftly out, and they heard her footsteps tapping away down a long, hard-surfaced corridor.
    "Of course she wants to know why," Olly whispered to Abasio. "But 1 shouldn't tell her who I really am, should I? Not with those creatures hunting me."
    Abasio started to speak, then fell silent as footsteps approached. A large gray-haired woman came into the room and sat down to face them.
    "I'm the Wide Mountain Mother," she said, staring at them with lively interest. "What business do you have with our library?"
    "Excuse me, ma'am," said Abasio, shuffling his feet like a scolded schoolboy. "But my wife here--her folks died just a year or so ago, and her old aunty told her the rest of the family came from somewhere near the thrones. And neither of us ever heard of that place, so we thought there'd be something about it in your library, it being so famous. That's why we brought your neck scarves ourselves, so we could ask about that."
Oily stared at him, wondering where this bumpkin had come from! "The thrones," said the woman, leaning back to give him a long, level look. "Now, that's interesting. The thrones are a part of our legends, but !
had thought them entirely mythical. What do you know about them?" "Just that they were set up at the Place of Power," said Oily.
    "This is the second time today someone has been concerned about the Place of Power," the woman said. "At a meeting of the Group this morning, here came a border captain bursting in full of questions about passes issued by the Place of Power."
    "Yes, ma'am, we heard about that at the gate, ma'am," said Abasio bashfully.
Oily kicked him on the ankle. He was overdoing it.
    "The holders of the passes were looking for a dark-haired girl about your age," the woman said. "And though you claim to be married to this man, who pretends at being witless, showing more skill at it than he no doubt
intends, the medical officer says you are a virgin yet."Oily held her tongue. What could she say?
The woman went on: "We trade with the Place of Power, as we do with


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231

the Edges, in manland. I see no problem in your going there with whoever next makes the trip westward. However, I cannot guarantee you will find any thrones."
    Oily rubbed her forehead. "Since you're not sure the thrones are at the Place of Power, I'd like to see if there's any mention of them in the library."
    "Well, as to that--I think you should talk with a librarian. She would know what books there are, what books have been preserved or remembered."
"You're talking about the fifty-year rule?"
    "The fifty-year rule, yes. Works of opinion are often destroyed while works of fact are left undisturbed. Now, l'm sure at one time many books might have told all about the thrones, but it may be that those books no longer exist."
"But the librarian will know."
"The librarian." The woman smiled. "Of course."
"How do I find---a librarian?"
    The gray-haired woman smiled again. "One of them happens to be my daughter Arakny. She'll return from work shortly. If you'd like to drive down the little alleyway beside Wide Mountain House, you'll find a place to camp above the stream. I'll tell her where you are. As for your companion"--she smiled at Abasio---"I'11 send someone to show him about."
    Oily started to leave, then turned back. "The pass," she said. "The woman at the gate said--"
"Leave it for now," the older woman replied. "Arakny will sort it out."
    She rose to show them out, watching as they crossed the courtyard and mounted the wagon seat once more.
    The younger clanswoman had returned to lean in the inner doorway, arms folded, brow furrowed, remarking, "Do you think she is the one?"
    "Which one, my dear? The one the walkers are looking for? I should think so, yes. The one your contact in the Place of Power mentioned might be coming this way? Possibly. The one our Seers have said will come, the key for the lock, the pivot on which the world balances? I wouldn't presume to guess."
    "! sneaked around front and looked in their wagon. There's a coyote with them."
"A coyote? Ah. How very Artemisian! You think it means something?"
    "1 don't think anything. If ! think too much, those walkers might come back here to ask me what I thought."
Wide Mountain Mother sighed. "Is there anything further on the walkers?" "They went through town this morning, shortly after we got the first report. They stopped several women and asked questions. The women who were questioned were examined within minutes. Their blood pressure was

ntial

1

Ilal/
chl~


232                              Sheri S. Tepper

up. Adrenaline was up. Strong gut reactions, almost as though they had eaten something poisonous. The physicians say it's a panic reaction, like the reaction primates have to snakes, purely instinctive, so far as they can tell, though they're not ruling out subsonics or an unknown pheromone. We'd had enough advance warning to detail a dozen observers, men and women
with different fields of experience, including Shabe.""Why Shabe? She's a painter."
      "She's a painter, yes, but she's also the closest thing to an anatomist we
had available. She says they walk too fast.""Too fast?"
"Like an engine, she says. With the wrong rhythm."
"You're saying they're not human, daughter?"
    "I'm only telling you what Shabe said. Shabe doesn't think they're people, and I don't, either. The places where they stood for any length of time are burned bare. The soil stinks. And you no doubt remember what the captain said when she told the Group about them this morning."
    "She said they scared her. She said they were perfectly polite and not at all overtly threatening, and yet she was so troubled by them, she was sick."
    Mother rubbed hands along her upper arms, where gooseflesh had risen from a sudden chill. Over the past decade or two, walkers had become ubiquitous in the surrounding lands, so travelers said. The library said they were beings returned from a former time. Monsters were also returned from a former time. They had come back soon after men went to the stars, but only recently had they become common. Neither monsters nor walkers had often been seen in Artemisia. Mother would have preferred that state of affairs to continue.
    The younger woman interrupted her train of thought. '~Will you really send Arakny to talk with the girl?"
    "Of course. Arakny is a librarian, a procurer and keeper of information. She gets it from everywhere, books and tales and art--and people. Sometimes she has to trade. Sometimes, as in this case, we must give a little to get a little."


CHAPTER 10

~he doctor who had drugged Abasio at Nelda's behest had been returned to his practice and Nelda herself to her songhouse, both by the mercy of Old Chief Purple. The sudden prospect of a worthy son, or even a worthy grandson, was very attractive to him, and he decided that Nelda had, everything considered, done him no harm.

    Nelda, thanking every natural or supernatural force that she could identify or imagine, went back to her songhouse and took up her duties once more. She heard from several sources that Sybbis was pregnant and from the same sources that Young Chief Purple was said to be seriously ill. There was other gossip about the Purples, something about one of the members of the gang having disappeared. Nelda listened to all of this, exclaimed over it, and considered herself well out of the whole mess, even though the possibilities of extortion from Sybbis no longer existed.

    Several ordinary weeks went by as she pursued her daily duties, beginning at midmorning most days and


234                              Sheri S. Tepper

continuing into the night. Came a certain morning, however, when she arrived
 at the songhouse with her stalwarts to be greeted by a duo of weeping girls. "Liliane, she's sick!" cried one. "So's Telline," cried the other.
    Such news was not unusual. Girls were always getting sick. Thirty was old in the songhouse trade. Few of them lived past thirty, and those, so went the current wit, were the ugly ones. She herded the weepers in front of her as she went back to the long, low dormitory room where the girls had their own cot cubicles.
    Liliane was indeed sick. The flesh around her eyes was livid and swollen, the tight skin glistening as though it were about to burst. Her lips were dry and cracked. She had a high fever and a sickening smell. She did not seem to see Nelda but moved restlessly on the bed, rocking from side to side in a ceaseless, mechanical motion accompanied by panting exhalations of quick, shallow breaths.
    "Carry her out back," Nelda directed, and four or five of the other girls seized handholds of blanket and carried it with Liliane atop out into a chilly back storeroom, which Netda's ganger boss called "the infirmary," which Nelda called "out back," and which the girls themselves called "the dead ward." Justifying the infirmary title were half a dozen cots along one wall, and Liliane was put onto one of them, soon to be joined by Telline. By noon, three of the other girls were beside them. By midafternoon, Liliane was dead.
    During these early hours, there was virtually no traffic in the house, so the customers were not inconvenienced. Nonetheless, Nelda did as her job required and sent messengers to the doctor and to the owner of the songhouse, a ganger who arrived an hour later to see for himself, for Telline, he explained to Nelda, was a favorite of his. He was sweating when he arrived, sweating and shivering at once. Before he looked at the girls, he said, he would have a drink of something cold. Two swallows later, he collapsed, and by the time the doctor arrived, looking pale and rather frightened, the ganger too was dead, along with three more of the girls, all their eyes shuttered beneath livid masses of swollen flesh.
    The sickness was like no sickness he had seen in Fantis before, the doctor said. It was everywhere, all at once, a few here, a few there, in the gang houses, in the marketplace, in the songhouses. Sparing children and the old, alighting here and there among the townfolk, it seemed focused on the gangers and the songhouse inhabitants, whether boys, girls, or eunuchs.
    TeClar and CummyNup Chingero first heard of the disease from the househag who nursed sick or wounded men. Two of the Purples were dead, she said to them furtively, two who had been well on the previous day. Their


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235

bodies were out back, not even disposed of yet. Also, a woman upstairs was sick.
    TeClar and CummyNup did what they usually did when they were bothered. They went to talk to Mama.
    Mama's place was outside Purple territory. Normally, the brothers would have been challenged a time or two on their way there, but this morning no one seemed to be in the mood for challenging anybody. When the brothers knocked on Mama's door, she opened the little window to see who they
were, but unlike her usual self, did not unlock the door with cries of welcome. Instead she asked gently, "How you boys feelin"?" "Fine, Mama."
"You feelin' sweaty? Hot? Weak?"
"No, Mama."
"You been goin' to the songhouse lately'?"
Actually, they had, but not often. "Mama, you role us not to go there." "You do like I tole you?"
    Both of them nodded. The Chingero boys actually enjoyed beer and conviviality more than they did sex, and they had resorted to the girls in the songhouses only occasionally. Since they had followed Mama's instructions most of the time, neither of them felt she needed to know about their lapses.
    "Then you can come on in." She opened the door to admit them, and they came in to find Mama's two younger children, Billibee and Crunch,
seated quietly side by side, very wide-eyed and scared-looking."What you hear 'bout this sickness'?" she asked them.
TeClar told her about the Purples, while she nodded and frowned.
    "1 hear the same," she said. "My frien', upstairs, she has a boy with the Blues. Some of 'em dead, the Blues. You know what I think, boys. I think time's come to get outta this place."
    TeClar and CummyNup were surprised, then doubtful. They needed to go back to the house to get this or that. They shouldn't just run off. They didn't have any money.
    "I got money," she told them. "All these years you been bringin' me money, I kep' mos' of it. No sense you goin' back for anythin'. Likely you go back, you catch this sickness an' you die!"
    They stayed at Mama's until the late, dark hours, then left in a vehicle CummyNup had stolen for them. For no particular reason~xcept that it was the direction Abasio had said he was going--they headed north. At the end of one night's travel, they took refuge in a truckers' hostel. When Mama began asking questions of the truckers, however, she heard rumors of sickness in the cities to the north, along the lakeshore.
"We goin' the wrong way," Mama said, settling her plump self into the


236                              Sheri S. Tepper

cushions she had piled around her. "North is wrong. I don' even think Basio wen' there."
"He said!" complained CummyNup.
    "Don' care 'bout that," she said firmly. "I don' think he wen' there. One thin' 'bout Basio, he lucky. He always lucky. You don' go wrong followin' a lucky man."
"Can' follow him. Don' know where he is!" complained TeClar.
    "We don' have to fin' him," said Mama. "Jus' go the same way and take care of ourseIfs."
    "Like to fin' him," said CummyNup stubbornly. "Jus'--you know, see if he need help."
    "Well, mebbe we will," said Mama. '"Cause if he say he goin' this way, he prob'ly go that way instead."
    Though they discussed it further, Mama's reasoning prevailed. Abasio was lucky. If there was disease northward, then Abasio had probably gone the other way. Crunch and Billibee didn't care what direction they went. They had never been out of the city and found the whole thing wonderfully exciting.
    Accordingly, on the following morning, the family turned east, intending to make a wide clockwise circle around Fantis. The day was cloudy. They could not see the mountains to the west, nor could they see the sun. There were no maps. The world east of Fantis was farm country, rolling ground with rutted roads going hither and thither, no signs, few villages, unfamiliar landmarks, very few places to buy fuel for their smoking, sputtering boiler on the back of the vehicle. Inevitably, they got lost.
    They camped out--an uncomfortable new experience, for they had brought little bedding with them. Mama showed them how to snare rabbits, a skill she had used to snare rats in the city. Mama showed them how to roast rabbits over a fire, and how to build the fire itself. When they encountered a village on the following day, Mama bought more bedding, canvas, and a grill to hold the cooking pots she had refused to leave behind in Fantis. Night found them lost again, but more comfortably.
    Slowly, day by day, they worked their way more or less south, though they often ended up going the wrong direction when they could ~ind no roads going in the right one. Though CummyNup was fond of the smoky vehicle, they finally decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Mama sewed packs for them all and they left the machine in a ditch one morning, thereafter moving more consistently south, across the fields when there were no roads to follow. They found they could buy food at the farms they encountered, and they learned it was best if Mama or the children made the approach, for the farmers were wary of gangets.
    Though they did not keep an accurate account of the days, it might have been four or five after they abandoned the vehicle that they first saw refugees.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            237

They had laid up for the night in a grove along a stream bed with a trickle of water in it, not enough to bathe in--which annoyed Mama--but enough to fill their canteens and cook their supper. North of them was a road that led along the side of a hill, and as dark fell they saw clots of people on it, moving eastward.
"Where they goin'?" asked Crunch in too loud a voice.
    "Hush," said Mama. "Don' know. An' better they don' hear you yellin' an' come on down here. We don' have food to spare."
    She watched the people moving along the road until it was too dark to see them, now and then cautioning quiet. When they awoke in the morning, them were still people moving on the road, small groups of them trudging wearily, some empty-handed and others carrying burdens or pushing loaded carts. Now and then a vehicle would come smoking importantly along, pushing the hikers out of the way.
"I goin' fin' out wha's goin' on," said CummyNup. "You stay hid." Mama was as curious as the rest, so she didn't try to dissuade him. He snaked his way north until he was near the road, then took up a position under a tree.
"Hey!" he yelled to the next group that came within hearing.
    The group halted, two women, one man, a staggering toddler at one of the women's skirts. They weren't gangers. From the looks of them, they were probably shopkeepers. Dues-payers.
"Where you goin'?" cried CummyNup.
    "Away from Fantis!" called one of them. "Where's the nearest village?"
"Why?" CummyNup cried. "Why you leavin'?" "Sickness," the man replied. "Ever'body dyin'." "What kind of sickness?"
    "They just fall down an' die," the man said, mopping at his face. "They say it's that new drug, Starlight."
"Where's the nearest .village?" the woman asked. "We need to buy food!" CummyNup had no idea where the nearest village was, but it stood to reason the road they were on led somewhere. "Jus' keep on the road!" he cried. "You'll get there."
    He waited until they were out of sight before snaking his way back down the slope to the grove where Mama and the others waited. By the time he arrived there, more people had appeared on the road. He told them what the
people had said, but he didn't mention Starlight. He had reason not to. "Look like we got out jus' in time," TeClar commented.
    "Now we got to stay away from those folks," Mama said grimly. "If Fantis got a sickness, those folks prob'ly carryin' it with 'em."
Then began what they later called the sneaky trip, during which TeClar


238                              Sheri S. Tepper

or CummyNup reconnoitered their path during twilight hours and the family traveled mostly after dark. They stayed away from the roads, most of which were cluttered with fleeing cityfolk. They bought all their food at isolated farms, and Mama insisted that the boys shave their heads to let their natural hair grow out so the country people would feel less hostile toward them.
    It was Mama who reminded them winter would be coming and there might be better cover in the mountains, so they turned toward the west. One night they crossed the highway, which was edged with small groups of refugees, and began to work their way south along the foothills. Right about midnight, TeClar, who was leading the way, sat down suddenly and put his hands on either side of his head.
"Wha's wrong, TeClar?" asked CummyNup in a worried voice. "Don' know," he replied. "Jus', all of a sudden, got this pain, like."
    Crunch and Billibee cut some pine tips to make a mattress, and Mama helped TeClar spread his blankets while CummyNup built a fire.
    TeClar lay down on the blankets and shivered until Mama wrapped him tightly.
"Wha's wrong?" CummyNup asked Mama. He knew what was wrong. She didn't answer him, just shook her head and suggested to Crunch and Billibee that they take firebrands and look around close for water since she had filled the kettle with most of what they carried.
    Billibee found a pool of rainwater in the top of a hollowed rock. They dipped it out by the spoonful to fill the canteens. Mama, meantime, made sugared tea and spooned most of a cup down TeClar's throat, after which he seemed to go to sleep.
    Mama sat beside him, staring into the fire, trying to hold time tight inside herself, binding it so it couldn't pass away. The skin around TeClar's eyes was puffy. She had seen that right away. Now it was darkening, as though it had been bruised, making his face look skull-like.
    Crunch and Billibee were burrowing in the packs, wanting something to eat. Well, let them eat. Might as well. If she knew anything, there'd be one fewer of them to eat a meal tomorrow.
    She felt tears in her throat and looked up at the sky, making the tears run down inside, swallowing them. CummyNup and TeClar. These two boys-she had seen the skull in their faces when they were born, even before that, when the man came through the window with his knife. There was doom in that beginning. Who could question that? Doom in that beginning, with no daddy to teach them and her only sixteen. Little tots, they'd been, full of questions. Little tots, then bigger, then suddenly ganget boys, gone from home, following the purple-crested ones, strutting and crowing like little cocks. Lookee me, 1ookee me, Mama.
Lookee me, 1ookee me. Me with my crest and my tattoos. Me with my


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            239

colors on my back. Me with my victories to tell. Me with death peekin' 'round the corner at me.
    What was there for them except that? What could she give them instead of that? Still, she'd made them promise her: Don't abuse old folks or babies. Don't kill people just tryin' to live. Don't you ever force a woman says no. If you got to fight, fight people as strong as you, otherwise it's just hateful.
    So, so, they'd lived this long, and they'd been decent as they could. They'd whored and they'd drugged, and this was the end of that, the skull that had shown in their faces when they were born. Thoughtless and heedless like all the gangers, boastin' and braggin' tbr today, tomorrow unthought of, but still good boys.
Faithful to her. Faithful to Abasio, too, and where was he?
    She rested her head on her knees tiredly. Oh, they'd had a good chance of getting away. If only, if only! What had TeClar done? Gone to that songhouse when he'd sworn to her he hadn't'? Probably. Taken just the tiniest bit of that drug, when he'd said he hadn't. Even if he hadn't, even if he'd had his way with some town girl, who was to say she hadn't been infected too. The end was in the beginning--her own mama used to say that. You start a certain way, that's the way you end.
"He look bad," whispered CummyNup in her ear.
    He did look bad. The flesh around his eyes was swollen now. His breath came in harsh little pants, whuff, whuff, whuff. She laid her hand on his
face and almost jerked it away from the heat of him."Mama? He dyin'?"
"Hush," she said. "Don' you scare the chil'ren."
"He is," CummyNup whispered. "He is.~'
"You go get those two settle' down. Mebbe they can sleep some." After a time, they did sleep, and she sat alone listening to the whuff, whuff, whuff, not realizing she herself had nodded off until the silence brought her awake. No breathing. The body beside her cold.
    And then she cried, silently. Now, now would it be CummyNup? Or might he be spared? Would it be Crunch too? And Billibee?
    Morning came. Looking southward, she saw five tall pillars of stone at the bottom of a valley where a stream ran clear and pure. CummyNup got up, looked at his brother, then stared around himself, tears washing down his face.
     "I know where's this place," said CummyNup in surprise, licking the
salt tears from around his mouth, wiping his face on his arm."Where'?" Mama asked.
    "Those be Wise Rocks. Basio, he talk 'bout this place, talk 'bout this place like he know 'bout it. Right near here, he say they a farm..."
They had no tools to dig a grave, so they rolled TeClar's body in his


240                              Sheri S. Tepper

blankets, shoved it into a crevice, and covered it with stones before striking out toward Wise Rocks Farm. On the way there, they passed several bodies, some of them almost fresh, one of them bringing an exclamation to Mama's lips, a cry, almost of fright.
    "Wha'?" demanded CummyNup, turning the corpse with his foot. It was just a man, with letters branded on his forehead. He did look familiar, but CummyNup couldn't remember him. "Wha', Mama?"
"Somebody mebbe I saw once," she said. "Long time ago."
    "Somebody broke all his bones," said CummyNup. "This one didn' die from no sickness."
    "Well, an' he had that comin'," said Mama, in such a voice as CummyNup had never heard from her in his life.
    It was Mama who approached Wise Rocks Farm to ask Farmwife Suttle if she knew Basio. And it was Farmwife Suttle who opened her arms to the family, gangers or no. If they were Abasio's friends, they were hers, though she set certain rules for them to minimize the possibility of their transmitting disease. For a time, she said, they would cook their own foods separately, dig and use a separate privy, wash their clothing and linens in a separate place. To all of this they agreed, so glad to be given a roof over their heads, an old but solid shed out past the barn, they would have consented to almost anything.
    Privately, the Farmwife felt the risk of disease was low and getting lower every passing day. Very few who had come as far as Wise Rocks Farm had been carrying the fatal disease, though some had had illnesses of other types. Besides, she needed help, as she told Mama Chingero.
    "I can use extra people," she said grimly. "I'll feed as many of the refugees as I can, and the farmers up the Crystal will help me do it, but I can't have them overrunning the place, trampling the fields, killing the livestock, and threatening our peace. Do you have weapons that will keep them at a distance?"
    CummyNup allowed that he did. Gangers seldom went anywhere without weapons, even when they were pretending not to be gangers. And he had TeClar's weapons as well.
    "Well, then, you join the men who are guarding the road. I'm surprised you missed them on your way in."
    Mama explained that they had come under cover of the forest, not on the road, and she asked what she and the children could do to help.
    There was much that needed doing. People from the farms up the valley brought grain and winter vegetables down to Wise Rocks Farm. Each day Farmwife Suttle and the Widow Upton cooked up a huge pot of this stuff, making a kind of porridge, to which they added eggs and vegetables and scraps of meat. While the food was still warm, they put it in the wagon and


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            241

sent CummyNup and Mama Chingero down to the foot of the.valley, where the road was, to distribute it to any hungry person coming by. By bringing the food to the road, they explained to the Chingeros, they forestailed people coming up the valley looking for it, people who might kill livestock and damage the cropland.
    "Whitherby has a tent village outside it," the Farmwife told Mama Chingero after a few days. "I'm told the people there are mostly healthy enough. Those who were sick didn't make it this far."
    Yes, Mama said to herself. That was true. Those who were sick hadn't quite made it this far.
    "Me, l'm surprise' the gangets don' take over," whispered CummyNup, looking over his shoulder. "I keep waitin' for them to come. Renegades. Blue Shadows. Cranks."
    "lhey gone like your brother gone," said Mama. "They the ones got sick an' died."
    Each day teams of men from the farms went up and down the road, digging graves for the bodies left along the road. Shortly after they arrived, CummyNup borrowed a shovel and went back to bury TeClar.
    Then, in a matter of days, the flow of refugees stopped as though it had never been. The last few brought descriptions of Fantis empty, Echinot empty, both wiped out in the space of a dozen days, though the Edges were still there. Hearing this, CummyNup told Mama he wanted to see what had happened. Against her advice and the advice of every other person at Wise Rocks Farm, he packed a sack of food, took a firelighter and a full canteen, and hiked along the empty road, back toward the city.
    He passed the remains of campfires, places where magpies and crows gathered thick upon carrion, these growing more common the farther he went. The Edge was as it had always been. From behind the great steel gates, men watched him go past without a word, certainly without a challenge. Was it only his imagination, or did it seem there were fewer of them than before'?
    As he approached the Patrol Post he was confronted by half a dozen armed men gathered around a large open wagon, all of them dressed in leather clothing with green hats and mantles.
"Whatso!" he called, wanting to be friendly.
"Where do you think you're going?" growled the largest of the men.
    "Jus' thought I'd see if there's anybody left," he said, gesturing toward the city.
    "No more than deserve to be," the man replied, going back to loading the wagon from a nearby pile of coops and cages, kegs and bags. From inside the coops and cages came a scurry of movement, a flutter of feathers. Several others of the brown and green came around the comer of the building


242                              Sheri S. Tepper

mounted on some of the patrol's horses and driving the rest of the herd before them.
"Where you takin' them?" asked CummyNup.
     "The geldings we'll let loose on the prairies east of here. The mares go to the horse farms in Low Mesiko," said one rider. "We've already been through the city, letting animals go. Lots of dogs and cats. Lots of chickens. We found some exotic pets too. Critters from far away, and those're in the wagon."
"Nothin' much lef' but cockroaches, I 'spose," said CummyNup.
    "Lots of rats, and maybe a few people," said the man. "But we don't concern ourselves with people."
"Why's that'?" asked CummyNup.
    "First place, there's plenty of 'em. Second place, we're the Animal Masters," said the other. "Fence cutters, cage destroyers, pen wreckers. If you see any animals we missed, turn them loose. You see any really strange ones, stop on your way out and tell us. We'll have people here for several days yet."
    The speaker waved a casual farewell and went off after the horses, leaving CummyNup to go across the bridge and get himself promptly lost in the warehouse district.
    Half the buildings he knew were gone; half the streets he sought were blocked with the wreckage of burned buildings and fallen walls. Here and there in the open streets he came across green-gowned women bearing canvas sacks at their belts and iron-tipped staffs in their hands. They were working their way systematically from crack to crack, from dirt alley to dirt alley, making holes with their staffs and dropping seeds into the holes. CummyNup didn't need to ask who they were. Farmwife Suttle had told all about them. These were Sisters to Trees. He greeted them politely and went on past.
    He went first to Abasio's place, where Elrick-Ann had been. If he ever saw Abasio again, he would want to know about Elrick-Ann. He saw no sign of her, but there was a sheet of paper on the bed, held down by a heavy book. Reading wasn't something CummyNup did well, so he folded the paper into his pocket. Farmwife Suttle would read it for him.
    Leaving Abasio's place, he went to Purple House, finding it unburned, seemingly untouched except for the corpses here and there. Young Chief lay in his room upstairs, half eaten by rats. He hadn't died of the plague. Somebody had slit his throat for him. CummyNup went on up to the roof, pushing open the door to the women's quarters with some difficulty. Someone had blocked it from inside.
    He saw movement and went toward it. A woman dressed in mud-colored robes screamed at him to stay away, then attacked him with a knife, but CummyNup was too quick for her.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            243

      He held her wrists in one big hand as he drew the veils away from her
face with the other. "Sybbis!" he gasped, unable to believe it."Who're you?" she cried. "Who're you?"
    "CummyNup Chingero," he said. "I was a Purple. Me'n my brother TeClar."
    "Where you been?" she screamed. "Why ain' you dead? Everbody's dead
    He let her go, prudently taking the knife. He gave her water from his canteen and food from his stores, which she gulped like a famished dog. It had been days, she said, that she'd been alone, surviving on what edibles she could find in the house. Everyone else had died. Carmina, Soniff's woman,
had run off with her baby, and Sybbis didn't know if she was dead or not. "1'11 take you out of here," said CummyNup.
"Take me to Bloodruns!" she cried. "Take me home!"
    Even after she had seen the wreckage in the street, she insisted on going home. CummyNup tried to find it for her, without success. It could have been on one of the blocked streets, maybe in an area that was burning briskly.
    "If you're wise, you'll take her away from here," said one of the Sisters to Trees who had been watching them trying to get through a blocked street. "There will be nothing left alive here in another few weeks. Even the rats will starve." She jabbed her iron-tipped staff into the ground, dropping seeds into the hole. "Here as in the east," she chanted. "Here as in the west.
Where cities die, come Sisters nigh, and seeds will do the rest.""Why you doin' this?" CummyNup asked.
    "Why, look at this mess!" exclaimed the Sister. "Filth and wreckage, offal and death! In time, the trees and shrubs and grasses we're planting will grow up green to cover the scars. The insects will return, and the birds. Then the Animal Masters will bring prairie dogs and ferrets, foxes and hawks
and rabbits to nest in the old cellars and make nests on the rooftops." "Why'?" cried Sybbis. "I don' unnerstan' why."
    The Sister gave her a long, level look, then shook her head and went back to her planting.
"I wanna know why!" Sybbis screamed.
    The Sister turned and came back to her, taking her by the shoulder in a large, calloused hand and speaking softly. "When places grow too large for peace or health, with people who are not countrymen but warring tribes, they inevitably die. All such places carry their own destruction within them."
    "You did it!" Sybbis sobbed. "You a monster that kill everbody so's you could plan' trees."
    "Someone did so we could plant trees," whispered the Sister. "But if it was a monster, it was one greater than I." She turned away again, and this time Sybbis did not call after her.

11/


244                              Sheri S. Tepper

    Though Sybbis continued to threaten a tantrum, CummyNup eventually convinced her it would do no good to go on hunting the Bloodruns, that it made better sense for her to return to the farm with him. They made their way back to a familiar intersection, and from there Cummylgup was able to guide them among the wreckage until they came to the bridge.
    At the near end they were stopped by men dressed all in black except for red and white insignia upon their shoulders and above the clear visors covering their faces.
    "What weapons will we find in this place?" one of them asked CummyNup. "What chemicals?"
    CummyNup scratched his head and told them what he could about the weapons that had been in use, while the visored men conferred with one another. Sybbis knew something about chemicals, for the Bloodrun gang had controlled the trade of salt, and of lime fi)r privies, chlorine for the baths, lead and zinc for paints, and arsenic for killing rats, as well as certain other necessities. The Bloodruns had kept stores of all these things in a warehouse near the bridge, one painted in Bloodrun colors.
    They questioned her closely, and when they had finished, she demanded to know who they were.
    The foremost among them took off his helmet and scratched his short, graying hair. "We're an advance patrol of the Guardians. We've been sent to see to the destruction of weapons and the long-term storage of chemicals.~' "Why?" asked Sybbis yet again.
    "So the water and soil don't get poisoned," he replied, giving her a curious look. "Are the Sisters here yet'? Have you seen Animal Masters?"
    CummyNup told them they would find members of both groups in and around the city, then he half-led, half-dragged Sybbis across the bridge, glad to be out of the place.
    They took their time returning to Wise Rocks Farm, where Sybbis, between throwing tantrums over this thing and that, wept over her sister and her father, not knowing if they were dead or alive. Mama Chingero, hearing one such brouhaha, said to the Farmwife, "I take care of that Sybbis. You got to talk serious to a girl like that. No more conks here, so she got to make somethin' of herself, startin' out by heppin' you!"
    Though Sybbis complained bitterly, Mama would not let up on her, and eventually she became what the Farmwife called reasonably useful around the place, though the Widow shook her head over unswept corners and greasy pots. The refugee flow dwindled to nothing, leaving only the people in the tent town and a few marauders who lived by killing livestock and robbing people until they were hunted down by posses of farm folk, irritated beyond enduranc~. By the time the first ,snows of winter came, Fantis and Echinot


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            245

lay empty under the snow, with even the corpse-fed dog packs run away or dead themselves. Word came that the cities north and east of Fantis had also been emptied by the plague.
    The tent town outside Whitherby began to dwindle as the refugees moved on. Some were hired by farmers or truckers. Others with particularly citified skills announced their intention of going on south, through Artemisia, to the towns of Low Mesiko, or west, to the stilt towns along the Faulty Sea. A few found work in Whitherby itself, and word came of this pattern repeated over and over again among the villages in manland. Three-quarters of the city population had died, including virtually all the gangets. The other quarter had been widely spread among the villages or across the borders.
    The Edges, so travelers said, appeared untouched. Some travelers had actually gone to the gates and asked the guards. They had been told there was no sickness there. Still, few people were seen through the gates, and no one from outside had been in to make sure.
    When things had been quiet for long enough that everyone had settled down, CummyNup found Originee alone in the barn and asked if she would read the writing he had found in Abasio's place.
    "It was written by a Sister to Trees," Farmwife told him. "Dictated by someone called Eirick-Ann. Elrick-Ann did not die of the plague. She has gone with the Sisters to an encampment in the western mountains, to be a cook for them. She wants Abasio to know she's all right."
    CummyNup heaved a sigh and asked if Mama, Billibee, and Crunch could stay at Wise Rocks while he went south searching for Abasio.
    "He my frien'," said CummyNup. "Maybe he need me. An' I oughta tell him what Elrick-Ann say."
    "I'd be glad to have your mama stay," Originee answered. "She's been more than helpful. As for the children, Seelie would be most unhappy to see them go. I think they'd benefit from some schooling, too, don't you'?"
    CummyNup could only agree. Very few of the things learned in the cities had stood him in good stead in the countryside. Even his appearance had been against him. Now that the farm people knew no reinforcements could arrive from the cities, and now that his hair was partly grown out, CummyNup was more acceptable. He thought he wouldn't have much trouble working his way south, the way Originee said Abasio had gone.
    Sybbis wanted to know all about Abasio, and CummyNup had no reason not to tell her. Sybbis narrowed her eyes, thought long thoughts, and asked certain odd questions, such as had Abasio frequented the songhouses and had Abasio used drugs much, and did he by any chance have a knife scar on his shoulder. She found more meaning in the answers than CummyNup did, for she demanded to go along. They argued over thi~ for some days


246                              Sheri S. Teppet'

until Sybbis took advantage of a private moment in the haymow to convince CummyNup she would be a good traveling companion. CummyNup had had girls before, but never one like Sybbis!
    Originee, who heaved a sigh of relief at the idea of Sybbis's imminent departure, told CummyNup about Abasio's wagon and horse, that he was escorting an Orphan, that he had become a dyer, and that there were gangets after him and walkers after the Orphan.
    "Maybe the gangets are dead, so if Abasio thinks it's safe, tell him to come home," said Originee. "Tell him I'm looking out for his grandpa, but he'd be better home."

    Behind Wide Mountain House in Artemisia, Abasio drove the wagon down the alleyway and parked it in the shimmering grove above the stream, as he had been directed to do.
    "I'm not getting much out t)f this bargain st) far!" Coyote complained with a yawn. "Tell me what happened."
    Abasio merely grunted as he went to unhitch Big Blue, leaving it to Oily to mollify Coyote.
    Oily repeated as much of their conversation as she remembered, concluding, "And they sent us here, where we're to wait until a librarian named Arakny shows up."
"Is that all'?" Coyote sounded disappointed. "Are you sure that's all'?"
    Abasio had led Big Blue down to the stream and now returned with him to the wagon, the horse's muzzle dripping with moisture.
    "I'm thirsty too," Coyote whined. "And you're not telling me everything!"
    Olly filled the kettle from the barrel, splashed water into a bucket for him, and knelt beside him as he drank.
      "We're not keeping anything from you, Coyote. They just didn't tell us
much. I get the impression they're being sneaky here in Artemisia." "Sneaky'?" Coyote pricked his ears.
    "I think they're letting books be destroyed, but they seem to have some way of keeping the information alive. They're going to let us talk to a librarian. And they'll let us go with them to the Place of Power."
     She stood up, brushed her hands together, and said fretfully, "You know
what I wish we had'? I wish we had a map.""A map?" asked Abasio.
    "A map!" she said. "A chart. Oracle told me about them. Diagrams that show what lies along the way. Rivers and mountains and so forth." She sought a straight stick, broke it to gain a sharp point, smoothed a patch of


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            247

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dirt, then drew a map of their journey to Artemisia, marking rivers and mountains along the route. Coyote watched, turning his head from side to side, nodding intelligently as she explained.
    Abasio wondered why he had never thought of maps before. The gangers customarily drew diagrams before a battle, showing where each group was to assemble, which streets or alleys they would attack, but he had never thought of having a diagram that extended outside the city. "That could be useful," he mused.
    She said, "I'd like to know what countries are where! What's south of Artemisia? What lies east and west?"
    "As to that," said Coyote, "High Mesiko lies south of Artemisia, and south of that Low Mesiko, both populated by small busy brown people in temple towns. East begins a wilderness of forests, going on forever, where the Black clans and the White clans make their clearings and plant their crops. West of here is the Place of Power, and beyond that is the country of the Sisters and the Guardians, who live among the high mountains, and beyond that the dry desert and then more mountains and the seashore, where the yellow people live in boat-bottomed towns."
    "I know of that place beside the Faulty Sea. Oracle came from there, though she's more sort of tan than yellow. And hearing about it is interesting, but it doesn't take the place of a map."
    Coyote said, "My hermit said no one is allowed to make maps now. Those who burn the books also destroy maps. If people do not have maps, they are less likely to travel. If they travel seldom, they stay on the roads. The Guardians do not like them going off the roads. Or the Sisters to Trees, either."
"Besides," said Abasio, "people are safer from monsters on the roads." "That's true," said a familiar voice from among the trees. To a jingle of bells, Black Owl stepped out of their shade. "Monsters generally avoid the roads."
Coyote ducked beneath the wagon and curled up behind a wheel.
    Olly cried, "It's like a puzzle! No maps, so nobody leaves the roads! No old books, so nobody wonders what happened or what used to be! Why would that be?"
    "You won't solve the puzzle by shouting," said Abasio, looking around with a slightly furtive air.
"True," remarked Black Owl, with a laugh.
    "It's very nice to see you again," said Oily, remembering her manners. "We didn't expect you."
    "I've come to show the young man the wonders and delights of Artemisia!"


248

Sheri S. Tepper

Abasio mumbled, "I should--stay with her."
    "Oh, no. Arakny is coming to talk with her, woman talk, probably. We would only be in the way."
Coyote moved restlessly, glaring at Oily. She ignored him.
"Go on, Abasio," Oily said. "1'11 wait here for what's-her-name."
     "Arakny," said a voice from among the nearby trees. "Arakny, the librarian."
$fie came from fl~e wl'nd-f~ie~'e~d s~d~
no longer quite young, her dress and boots of fringed sheepskin, her graying hair in braids, one of Olly's scarves loosely knotted around her neck.
    She gave them both a long looking-over before waving Abasio and Black Owl away, like a mother shooing out the children. "Go, now. Olly and I have much to talk about."
    They went off, Abasio turning to look over his shoulder at them. Coyote peered through the wheel spokes, his eyes alert. Olly saw Arakny watching Coyote, a strange expression on her face. Amusement, perhaps'?
    If so, Arakny said nothing about it as she turned and looked over the horse and the wagon, the wood basket and grill on its side.
    "Why don't you build a fire and we'll have tea'?" she suggested. "Do you have chairs'?"
    "Folding ones, up top," Olly remarked as she went obediently to the wood basket. "I have woodmint, or raspberry, or chamomile."
    "Woodmint. It's soothing to the nerves." Without ado, Arakny climbed atop the wagon and lowered two of the folding chairs old Cermit had made, bent wood and laced rawhide. She hefled them approvingly, judging them to be both comfortable and light.
    "You've come to ask about the thrones," she said when Oily had set the kettle to boil and the pot ready beside it. "It isn't but once in a coon's age someone comes to ask about the thrones. Those who do, so it is said, have mason to ask, for they are of a thronish kindred."
Olly turned to her in astonishment. "Others'? Besides me?"
    "So our library records. Every now and then. From hem, from there. A woman or a man will show up, asking about the thrones, for they've had a prophecy or a dream or a vision of one kind or another. What was it with you'?"
     Oily paused only momentarily before deciding upon the truth. "A proph-
ecy. Told by an Oracle, in an archetypal village. I was the Orphan there." "And this old aunty whom your friend mentioned to Mother'?" "Was the Oracle. The only aunty I ever had."
    "Ah." Arakny leaned back and looked up at the sky through the glittering leaves. "It is said the thrones are at the Place of Power, but I've never seen them there. Or heard of anyone who has."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            249

    "'It is said, it is said,' "muttered Oily in an annoyed voice. "By whom is it said'?"
    "By our library," said Arakny, shifting the kettle a finger's width on the grill and whistling tunelessly between her teeth.
    "Look," said Oily with some irritation, "either you tell me what you know or you don't. I didn't have a lot of sleep last night, and there's no point in my struggling to stay awake when I'm learning absolutely nothing!"
    "I'm not holding back. I'm just deciding where to begin. I guess I begin when man went to the stars."
    "That seems to be where everything begins," snarled Olly. "I'm really sick of hearing about when men went to the stars. We seem to date everything from that, as though it were the single important event in history, and it isn't even our history. It's theirs, the ones who went!"
      "That event happens to be central to our current thinking, nonetheless,"
Arakny said crisply. "Central, because it both relieves us and tantalizes us." Oily cocked her head. "Relieves us'?"
    "We who remain behind. The fact that man has already gone to the stars relieves the rest of us of the responsibility for being intrepid and marvelous. Of becoming something wonderful. Ol' seeding the universe with intelligence."
"I didn't know we were responsible for that."
    "Many philosophers thought so, for generations. They wrote so. They claimed that that was the purpose of man, why he had license to use up the world as a chick uses up its egg: so we could hatch from it. So we could leave it behind, like a broken shell."
    Olly sighed. "I can see people believing that. But once it's been done, the rest of us can just live. Even though we have only the eggshell to live
on."
    "The rest of us can just live. We in Artemisia do just live, making the most of our eggshell and being quite sure that other living things are allowed to live also. Our country is based upon that principle. But still we're tantalized
by questions our library doesn't answer. Like: Why didn't everyone go?" "You wonder how they chose who went and who stayed'?"
    "Yes, we wonder that. What gave them the right to leave some of us here?" She stirred the fire, pushing an unburned branch farther into the flame. "Also, why haven't some of them come back to fetch the rest of us'? Or why haven't they sent us word where they ended up?"
    "Maybe they're still on their way," murmured Olly, remembering things Burned Man had told her. "I had a friend, an ex-Edger, who said it would take men generations to reach even the nearest stars."
    Arakny sighed. "Perhaps that's it. Whatever the reasons, our library speaks of the chaos of that time, nations falling apart, holes opening up in the sky-


~'liml

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(Co~t

250

Sheri S. Tepper

blanket, all the forests being destroyed. And it goes on to say that in a place of power, there rose up three great thrones."
    "A place of power. Are there more than one? Is it a different place of power from the one you know'?"
    "I don't know. Now, some versions mention only the thrones. Others say that upon them sat three great and ancient rulers who would bring order and hope to the world. As a librarian, I find no dichotomy between the versions, for in olden books thrones has more than one meaning. In some cases, thrones
meant beings, not chairs.""Beings?"
"An order of angels."
"Surely angels are mythical!"
    Arakny laughed shortly. "At one time ogres were thought to be mythical, and trolls, and dragons. At any rate, in some old books, thrones were a very
high order of angels, just below the cherubim and seraphim.""What did the thrones doT'
      Arakny shrugged. "They came to restore the balance, so the old stories
say. The world was out of balance, so the thrones rose up to restore it." "How?"
    Arakny shrugged again. "I've sought the answer to that in the library, without success."
    "If they arose to restore balance," Oily said in her most reasonable voice, "then they must have made some changes. So what changed at that time?"
    Arakny stretched widely. "So many things. Archetypal villages were set up. Monsters returned. The eastern cities died, and those on the western sea." She rose to take up the steaming kettle and rinse out the pot before adding the tea leaves and pouring the boiling water over them. "The fiftyyear rule happened then, and the name changes."
"I know about the fifty-year rule, but name changes?"
      "Teams of people changed the names of things, or places. Sometimes
they took away the names of cities, or streets, or even whole territories." "What do you mean? How can you--"
    "Well, let's say a clan has always lived in a place they call Sacredhome-of-our-fathers, but the clan moves away because there's a drought. Somebody else moves into that same place, and they call it New-home-ofour-people's-gods. Then the first clan comes back. Both groups say that place belongs to them. Both claim a holy right to the same territory, and they're killing each other over it. Then one morning, a team shows up and tells them they can't call it either one of those names anymore. They have to call it This - quite - ordinary - and- not - very - attractive -place - that is - disputed- because - of- intermittent- habitation -patterns - due - to - conflict and-climatic-changes."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            251

    "Which makes oratory somewhat difficult," Olly said with an appreciative grin.
    ~'Well, it certainly doesn't make a good war cry! If they persist in fighting, then the teams come back and take other names and words away. Words like invaders and enemy and terrorist and retaliation. Anyone who says those
words falls asleep for days and days.""How do they do that?"
    "I haven't any idea, even though it once happened to us. We didn't used to be Artemisians. We used to be Dine, and Zuni, and Hopi, and Apache, and Ute. Some of us were Tewa or Tiwa or Anglo or Hispanic. We all had separate languages and separate histories and rituals. Some of us had books, and some of us had oral traditions; some of us had sandpaintings and some o~' us had dances; and we were all fighting over who had which bit of land or how much water we could use from the river. So the name-change team took all our fighting words away, and when we couldn't say the words anymore, we couldn't fight over it."
"But you can say the words now!"
    "Nobody gets mad about them now. People only fell asleep over words that made them angry. Angry enough to kill people over."
    Oily shook her head in bewilderment. "Then why didn't they do it with the gangs in the cities of manland, where everybody's always fighting and killing one another?"
    Arakny furrowed her brow and made a rocking motion with one hand, maybe this, maybe that. "Wide Mountain Mother says the name-change teams were only interested in certain places. Places along the western sea, and Artemisia, and in the Mesikos. It's like when we bring certain animals back. We don't put them everywhere. Just certain places, appropriate places .... "
    Her voice trailed off into quiet, and she stared musingly into the smoke. "We don't put mountain goats on the prairies or bison on the peaks. Each thing to its proper place. It's probable that them are proper places for man and places man should stay out of." She sighed. "Anyhow, the name-change teams came from the Place of Power. I've been to the Place of Power-well, to the marketplace outside--but I've never seen or heard of any thrones there.
"And that's all you know?"
    Arakny measured tea into the pot and poured boiling water over it. She shrugged. "I don't know that, as an absolute. I'm only quoting what our library says."
"Is that all it says?"
"No. That's merely all it says to me. It may say something else to you."
    Oily gave her a puzzled look. "Well then, I'd like to---go there, see what more there is," Oily said.



252                              Sheri $. Tepper

"You don't need to go there. It has already come to you."
"I don't understand," she gaped.
    "It has come to you. I bring the library." Arakny reached into her pocket and brought out a small packet, the size and shape of a not-very-thick book. Attached to it was a silvery mass, like a number of linked chains. Arakny flipped them open with one hand, and they locked into the semblance of a
lacy cap. "It is here.""A library!"
    "More than one. All the libraries we've collected since men went to the stars. And not only books but songs and stories and paintings and dances,
all the tales and histories, however told, however remembered.""So when the book-burning teams come--"
    "They bum books. They do not look in librarians' pockets. They do not burn this."
"Where did you get it?"
    "We get them from an Edge. They make marvelous things in the Edges. This library can record words or sights or smells. Anything I can sense, the library can pick up. It can read books. There's an attachment to turn pages.
It can read tapes and discs and cubes. It's a marvelous thing!""You have more than one of these?"
    "Every librarian has one, plus there are a few extras. They can all be linked, too, so that information that one has can be shared among all of them."
"May I?" Olly asked, pointing to the silvery cap.
    "Oh, indeed," said Arakny. "You may make your way through the library while I have tea. And when you have finished, we will join your friend at the men's houses on the height."
    Arakny helped her put on the cap and showed her the controls on the side of the packet. "It's just an on-off switch. When you turn it on, you'think your question. The library gives you what information it has on your question, which leads you to another question, and so on. Some people spend days hooked up to it."
"Days," breathed Oily.
    Arakny patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry. I'm here. I'll take care of you. I won't let you starve."

    In the marketplace outside the Place of Power, Tom Fuelry and Qualary Finch wandered among the booths, buying a bit of this and a bit of-that. Though they met often by appointment and had become close friends--which is what Qualary insisted they were, no more than that Tom had formed the habit of showing up in this neutral territory to meet her as though by accident.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS

253

This was for her protection, in case she should ever need to say how she had met him or come to know him. At least, so Tom believed, ignoring the pleasure he took in her public person, which was quite distinct from her private one. In private she had become wanton, luxurious, instinctive, ignoring everything around her as she focused completely on appetites she had never known she had. In public she was as alert as a little squirrel, noticing everything that went on around her and conm~enting humorously on it under her breath, a running monologue that delighted him. As he had commented to Nimwes, it was like being in love with two different women without the complications of infidelity.
    Today she was commenting on the weather, the shoppers, and the goods offered for sale, and he was trundling along behind her, listening with en-
joyment, when she stopped so suddenly that he almost ran into her. "What?" he said, following her gaze. "Sornething," she muttered. "Oh, Tom."
    She was staring fixedly into the sheltered space made by two vehicles parked at right angles where half a dozen children, Domer children and outsiders, had drawn a circle in the dirt and were playing marbles. So much Tom saw at once, though it took him a moment more to see what had attracted Qualary's attention.
    Near the vehicles, almost hidden by them, stood a black-helmed walker. There were other walkers scattered throughout the market, but for the most part they were behaving as walkers did, either standing totally immobile or striding about on their incomprehensible business. The one Qualary was watching, however, was acting as no walker had ever acted. It was twitching. It bent its head jerkily forward, then back. Its arms flicked forward, then back. The children, who were only a few feet away, did not seem to notice it. They went on playing, moving around their circle, their voices rising in derision or complaint, while the walker grew more and more agitated.
    One of the players made a good shot, jumped to his feet, and waved his arms in self-congratulation as he gave a victory yell.
    "You will surrender!" the walker shouted suddenly, darting forward to grasp the waving child by the shoulder. "You will surrender!"
    The child screamed as he went up into the air, suspended by the shoulder. He screamed again. There was a noise, a cracking, as of a dry stick broken, then the child went flying even as the walker moved forward again. Another child flew screaming through the air to strike the pillar of stone where the first one lay unmoving. Several onlookers howled with rage as the walker teetered and jittered, shouting at the remaining cowering children, "You will surrender, render, render, render!"
    A flung stone caught the walker on the head. It turned and began to stalk the thrower, only to be overwhelmed from behind by three large men who


254                              Sheri S. Tepper

bore the walker onto the stony ground and began bashing it with whatever stones or tools had been closest to hand.
    Qualary ran to the place the children lay, joining a mixed group already there, Domers, Gaddirs, and outsiders, women weeping, other children screaming in dismay.
    An ArtemisJan woman still holding the skeins of wool she had come to sell stood up from the crumpled bodies and said in an expressionless voice, "Both. Gone."
   Weeping adults went to their knees beside the bodies.
    The men battering the walker stood up and backed away from the wreckage that still twitched, jerked, twitched, black fingers scrabbling against the gravel. The men were themselves battered and bruised and splotched with the walker's body fluids. One attacker held his arm protectively in the other hand, the injured wrist dangling at an unnatural angle.
   "Tom, Tom," Qualary whispered, clutching at him.
    He put his arms around her. "Let's get out of here," he said, wanting desperately to get back to Gaddi House and tell His Wisdom what had happened. His Wisdom wouldn't be surprised, l/e told himself, anymore than he himself had been. Appalled, but not surprised.-
    He led her back to the wall. They had just cleared the gate when he saw a column of black-helmeted walkers approaching, Quince Ellel's robed form in their midst. Tom darted to one side and through an open door, pulling Qualary after him and holding her there until the last of the procession had passed by. Ellel had not seen them.
    "Why?" she cried, seemingly unaware of Ellel's passage. "Why did it kill them?"
    He shook his head. If His Wisdom was right, the walker had killed the children for no reason at all, but he'd rather not tell her that. It wasn't something he wanted her worrying over. Or talking about.
    He took her with him into Gaddi House, left her weeping in his quarters while he went to His Wisdom, then returned to lie down beside her and hold her close. She wept for a long time before falling asleep with her head on his shoulder.
    Some time passed. Outside the window, darkness filled the garden, which turned on the lights. The fountain played softly, peaceably, quietly glimmering. Tom stretched his arm, relieving a cramp in his shoulder, and the motion brought her half-awake.
   "I'm too heavy," she murmured, moving away from him.
    "Shh," he said, pulling her back where she had been. "You're not too heavy. We just haven't moved for hours."
   She wiped at her tear-smeared face. "I have to ?,, h .....           e."
   "Why? What do you have to do?"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            255

    "Tonight--tonight I have to get ready, get my things together. Tomorrow I do Ellel's quarters."
"Does she know you have a Gaddir friend?"
    Qualary pulled herself up and considered this question. "I don't think so. I think she stopped being interested in me a long time ago. Once she has things under control, she pretty well loses interest."
"Have you thought what you'd say if she ever found out?"
Qualary shifted uncomfortably. "She'd kill me."
    Tom smiled at her. "I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't like that at all. I'd rather you protected yourself."
    "Against Ellel? Oh, my. She's--she's hard to protect against. She comes at you when you don't expect it."
     "But we know what she's like. We know what she's afraid of. And if
you offered to find out things for her, things about Gaddi House..." "Oh, Tom, I'd never ask you to--"
    He smiled again. "I have no intention of telling you anything that would be troublesome, either for y? or for me or for anyone else. But there are things we can tell Ellel that aren't troublesome. Ordinary things, but still, things she doesn't know."
    "It would give me an excuse for seeing you?" she asked. "Oh, do you think it would?"
"She might even give you time off to do more of it."
    Qualary Finch surprised herself by smiling. Then, ashamed of herself for smiling so soon after what she had witnessed that day, she broke into tears again.
     The next morning, when she had cleaned Ellel's quarters thoroughly, she
dallied over the last few chores, waiting to be noticed."What's keeping you?"
    The voice was more toneless than usual. Qualary swallowed deeply, fixing her eyes on her feet.
    "Ma'am, there's a Gaddir man been attentive to me lately, and I wondered if you'd like me to see what I can find out from him." She had rehearsed that sentence a hundred times this morning. Now she glanced up through her lashes to see mask and robe standing petrified, like stone.
      '~He tells me things," she went on. "I don't know if they're important
or not. Probably not, but still I thought I should ask." The robe sagged only a little. The mask tilted. "Tells you things? Not asks you things?" "Oh, no, ma'am, he never asks me anything." "What kinds of things does he tell you?"
    "Oh, history, mostly. Like how many people there were before men went to the stars. And--"


256

Sheri S. Tepper

"How many?"
    "Five hundred million on this continent, he says. He says there were eleven billion in the whole world."
    Long pause. Metallic laugh. "There weren't that many. There couldn't have been."
    Qualary swallowed. Fuelry had covered the possibility of contradiction. "Oh, ma'am," she said, "he may not know what he's talking about. He's just a worker over there. But he does go in and out all the time."
    "Yes. Go on seeing him. Get friendly with him. Really friendly, you understand me!"
Flushing, Qualary nodded.
      "Ask him about Seoca! Ask him about the old man. Ask him if there are
any children in Gaddi House. Ask him what they do in there.""He may not know."
    "Well, whatever he knows. He likes history? Ask him when Gaddi House was built. And why, why was it built."
    Greatly daring, Qualary murmured, "But, ma'am, don't you and the other Domers know why'?"
    The answer was only murmured, as though from someone distracted. "It was here when our people got here. But we had no records of its being here.
So we don't know who built it. Or why." The robe quivered. Qualary turned, ready to leave, only to be stopped. "Qualary." "Ma'am."
"Did you hear what happened in the market yesterday?"
Frantic thoughts chased one another. Say yes. Say no. Say nothing.
    "I heard... something," she said unwillingly. "Someone was hurt, was it?"
    "Some children teased a walker." That dead, metallic tone again. "That's a dangerous thing to do, Qualary."
"Oh, yes, ma'am. That would be dangerous."
      Silence. Then, "If anyone asks, you tell them about the children teasing
the walker. Won't you?" "Oh, yes, ma'am." She fled.
      "And now you're safe," said Fuelry, when she told him how the con-
versation had gone. "You're only doing what she's told you to do." "She wants to know all sorts of things." "Like?"
    Qualary repeated what she remembered: Seoca, children, the purpose of Gaddi House, when and why built.
"Well, let's see. Seoca is old, but he's alive and well. Yes, there are


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            257

children in Gaddi House, but they're all the children of the workers. They have a school here, just as the Domers have a school for Domer children. As for Gaddi House, it was built so long ago that no one knows when. Tell her that."
    His Wisdom insisted that was true, at least for the lower parts of the great building, though the upper and outer shell had probably been built more recently.
'~She wants to know what is done in here."
     He ticked a tingemail against his front teeth. "You could tell her Gaddi
House was set up to preserve the earth and the place of all life upon it." "That has a nice sound to it," said Qualary. "Is it true?"
    "Oh, I'm sure it is," he said, sliding his arm around her. "Haven't you noticed how I'm preserving you and your place in it, for example?"
     She made a little sound, as though she tried to laugh but found it hurt too
much. ~'Ellel says the children teased the walker. That's why it killed them." He looked at her in disbelief. "She expects you to believe that?"
     "She doesn't care what I believe. She only cares what we say. We...
Domers. She wants us to say it was the children's fault." "Does she know you saw it?" She shook her head.
"Don't tell her," said Fuelry. "You'll be safer if she doesn't know."

    After Black Owl showed Abasio the town, which extended through a series of plazas with homes and offices of various sorts grouped around them and nothing anywhere that Abasio thought of as the least citified, they went down the slope toward the stream, Black Owl pointing up the opposite slope as he said, "Wide Mountain Mother thought you might enjoy feast night at the men's house."
"Men's house?" Abasio asked.
"On the ridge. Those large buildings are men's houses."
    "The men don't live down here?" Abasio asked, turning to look over his shoulder. He was looking for the clearing where he'd parked the wagon, and he saw it through the trees. Oily and Arakny were there, sitting beside a small fire with their heads together.
    "Off and on, now and then," Black Owl said. "But living among men suits men best. Women are peripheral to our lives. The women say they are occasionally adored, but mostly ignored." He laughed. "If that's true--and who am I to contradict the women--it suits both of us best when we are allowed to live in accordance with it."
    Abasio looked where he was going just in time to avoid tripping over a large stump above the stream bed. "How do you mean?"

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258                              Sheri S. Tepper

     Black Owl sat upon the stump and assumed an attitude of oratory. "We are happiest when our men and women relate to one another naturally, unconstrained by contrary custom. I will tell you how the women say it. They say this: In past times, men never gave up having mommies. When they grew up, they merely took a sexual mommy and went on being boys at home. To keep the women from escaping being mommies, the men made certain rules about what women could do and how women could behave."
     This did not seem totally unreasonable to Abasio, though he was glad Oily was not there to hear it.
     "When a mommy got old and fat, sometimes a man would throw her out and get a younger mommy. But," said Black Owl, striking a pose, "our women say being a mommy for anyone is damned hard work, and being a mommy for grown men is boring, so came a time--it was shortly before men went to the stars--that women fought a great battle and refused to be men's mommies anymore."
"I've never heard that," said Abasio, openmouthed.
     "Oh, yes. It was called the Old Folks' War, and the women were called feminists. They were greatly revered by our foremothers." Black Owl rose to his feet and led the way across the stream bed, leaping over the silver threads of water and winding his way through the white hulks of dead tree~ that lay along the far side.
    "What happened?" asked Abasio, when he had caught up to him. "In the war?"
    "When the feminists first rose up, they were cursed by certain groups of old men who knew God personally, so the women declared war on the old men and on their God. The oldest women among the feminists, some who had been thrown away by their menfolk and many who had little time to live anyhow, took secret weapons and poisons and began killing the old men. Their battle cries were 'Tit for tat,' and 'Sauce for the gander.'"
    "Did they kill all the old men?" Abasio was aghast, thinking of his grandpa.
    "No, just judges and priests and those who made the rules and spoke for the men's God. The old women were imprisoned or put to death, but other
old women took their place, and in time many more old men died.""So what happened!"
    "So many old men were dying that they decided it was time to reexamine the rules and perhaps even get a new god. Finally, after much shouting, everyone agreed that men were at their best among men, women at their best among women, that their problems arose when one sex made rules for the other, and that they enjoyed one another most when they were least constrained to endure one another's company. So here in Artemisia, each sex makes rules only for itself, and we live mostly apart, but with no walls


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            259

between. When we want one another, we are here, and when we do not want one another, we go apart."
     Abasio shut his mouth abruptly. He had never considered such a way of doing things. "Who cooks for the men?" he demanded. "Who mends their clothes'?"
     "Why should anyone cook for us but ourselves?" Black Owl asked, astonished. "And if men can make costumes for the dances, can they not sew up a shirt? We do both things very well, as you will see tonight. It is the first dance of the season. The Owl Society has made a feast and invited everyone to enjoy the food, the dancing, and the company. We are having roast lamb."
"Artemisia has a pastoral culture, then'?"
     "Some of us graze sheep on the desert in winter and early spring and in the mountains in summer. Some of us farm the lands along the river and cut hay from the pastures there. Some of us keep sun-pit greenhouses for winter food. Our main trade crops are wool and leather, vegetables and meal. Wc keep goats for milk and.cheese. We have different sons of horses for the patrols and the shepherds.
     "Since men are stronger and our chemistry inclines us more to battle, we provide most of the patrols and most of the sheepguards who take the flocks to pasture. We also fight off the occasional troll or ogre that comes too far south."
     "It doesn't sound like the kind of society that would have a huge library and need librarians," said Abasio. "I expected it to be more--more citified."
     Black Owl shook his head firmly. "Cities are not good for this world! Wherever a city is, there also the land dies and the creatures of the land die. Look at the nests of ants, how around them the land is barren. So it is with people when they live like ants."
    They had climbed the far bank onto a sandy road that led to the ridge above the town. The buildings there gleamed orange and salmon and copper in the evening light. Drum sounds filtered downward, alon~g with the _r_atlJ.e of camborers and the thud of many feet stamping in unison.
    "Owl House," said Black Owl, when they had climbed almost to the top. The building he indicated was tiled with a design of eyes and wings, talons and beaks. On the hard earth before it, a circle of gorgeously costumed men danced to the sound of the drums, stopping every now and then to confer about their performance, while the drummers and chanters stood impassively on the sidelines and a scattering of onlookers watched from the porches on three sides. Smoke rose from pits at one side of the house, and the smell of roasting meat made Abasio salivate hungrily.
"Do the dances have meaning'?" Abasio asked.
Black Owl cast a quick look around him, then said sotto voce, "Don't


260                              Sheri S. Tepper

ask that of anyone else. Our men would be much offended that the meanings aren't clear to you after the endless hours they spend in ritual, in making costumes and carvings, in learning the stories of our people and our land."
    He led Abasio toward a circle of chairs set in the shade of the porch, two of them occupied by elderly men with gray braids and bright blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "A guest," he called. "A dyer, from manland, who travels through Artemisia." He turned to Abasio and indicated the elders. "TalJ EJ,k. NJgb~ Raven..Now, you ~vJJJ .~ here, in corMoft, watching tile early dances. And when the womenfolk join us, we will eat."
    He slipped away among the clustered participants, leaving Abasio to seat himself between the two old men. Despite the color and rhythm going on all around him, his thoughts were back in the river bottom, where Olly was. What was she learning'? What could Arakny tell her?
His distraction was broken by the man to his left, Night Raven:
"You are a cityman'?"
Abasio nodded. "From Fantis." "Fantis, alas," said Tall Elk. "Cities, alas," returned Night Raven.
Abasio took this for a ritual exchange and merely nodded. Tall Elk nodded in return. "You have a name?" "Sonny Longaster." "Ah."
      Night Raven rocked forward to get a good look at Abasio's face, saying,
"Tonight we dance the return of the bison.""Bison?" asked Abasio.
    Night Raven nodded slowly. "Soon after men went to the stars, the Animal Masters cut all the fences, then bred many bison and returned them to the prairies. I have ridden there myself to see the bison on the grasslands, yes, from the foot of the mountains to the far forests."
    "My grandpa told me there are Black and White clans in the forests," Abasio remarked.
    Tall Elk commented, "Our storytellers say they were different colors long ago. Long have they fought, capturing one another's women and lathering children upon them. They are all the same color now. Still, those who once were blacks call themselves blacks, and those who once were whites call themselves whites, no matter who their mothers were."
    Abasio forestailed any further questions about himself by asking, "The woman who said she was the Wide Mountain Mother--whose mother is she?"
    Night Raven laughed, tugging at the long gray braid that lay across his shoulder. "She is all our mother. She was chosen to be mothermost of 'all the Wide Mountain women."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            261

"But she obviously wasn't your real mother."
"A real mother is who?"
"The one who had you, who was pregnant with you."
Tall Elk gave him a curious look. "Do you, then, know who bore you?" "Well, yes."
"I don't know who was my birth mother. Do you, Raven'?"
    Night Raven scratched behind one ear, reflectively. "l always thought it might have been White Rose. People used to tell me I resembled her. And I also thought I was the birth son of Stout Bear. Do you remember him?"
    "Of course. He died fighting that winged thing that was stealing the sheep. We sing his praises still."
"So you don't know who your parents were?" Abasio persisted. "They were healthy. What more is needful to know?" "How do you know that?"
     Tall Elk pursed his lips and looked severe. "We do not allow pride to get
in the way of the health of our children, that's why.""Pride or stupidity," remarked Night Raven.
    "With the Wide Mountain Clan checking on us all the time, who's allowed to be stupid'?" laughed the other.
"I don't understand what you're saying," Abasio persisted.
    Night Raven shook his head at such ignorance. "Some men and women are healthy, some are not. Some women are good breast mothers, some are not. Some persons care for toddlers well. Some are good at educating older children. To insist on bearing children if one is not healthy, to insist on rearing children when one is unskilled at it, or on educating when one is ignorant--why, that is what animals do! That is how sheep behave! Every ram tries every ewe. Every ewe nurses her own lamb. Can the ewe see if the ram mounting her has runny eyes? Does the ram care that the ewe's udder is collapsed? Does the bad mother among sheep give her lamb to another sheep that will mother better'.> No, for they are animals! A man or
woman who acts so is no better than a sheep!""That's rather harsh," Abasio offered.
    "Man must recognize his animal heritage before he can humanize himself," snorted Tall Elk. "In the bad old days, man sentimentalized his animal nature. He acted like the sheep but called it love. If bearing unhealthy children
is love when man does it, then it's love when sheep do it too." Both the old men laughed, almost silently. "But who raises you if your parents don't?"
    Tall Elk tugged at one of his braids, as though stimulating thought. "First a breast mother. Then men and women who like raising little ones. Then men and women who like educating older ones."
"And you live with them?"


262                              Sheri S. Tepper

    "All our people, including little people, stay wherever they are happiest. We do not pull at people as though we owned them."
    Abasio gestured toward the dance floor, where there were many youngsters of both sexes among the men. "What if a woman wants to do men's kinds of things? Hunt, or be a shepherd, or dance?"
    Night Raven shrugged. "Some of the women's households do those things. Most men enjoy one kind of thing, and most women enjoy another, but that does not mean all men and all women are alike. We are not archetypes. We are individuals."
    "But this Mankind Management Group of yours makes your decisions for you."
    The two old men looked at him with serious faces. Tall Elk reached out a bony old hand and shook him gently by one shoulder. "Listen, young dyemaster. Our Management Group makes only the decisions of where and how many! Think! These are the most important decisions men can make, yet before men went to the stars, no one ever made them.t Each man fucked as he willed! Each woman bore as she would! Life, they said in that time, was holy, but they meant only their own lives, and so in many places all life died!"
    "We in Artemisia say no life is holy unless all life is holy!" commented the other old man. "Here, in the Land of the Sages, no town may overstress the land and its life. Each must be small enough that the inhabitants know one another by name. So is disruption and ugliness avoided! So does beauty and order surround us. The librarians tell us that in olden times people were
anonymous and many, and evil was done without shame.""But not here," murmured Abasio.
    "No; in Artemisia, each of us is known. We wear our name upon our faces, in our costume, in our clan insignia. Each of us is responsible for what he does. He does not blame his heritage for what he becomes!"

      Oily seated herself carefully in the rawhide chair across from Arakny. She
put her hands to her head, feeling the silvery cap with gingerly fingers. "It's all right," said Arakny. "It won't hurt you." Still, Oily hesitated.
"I want to know," she said plaintively. "But--" "But the idea of knowing scares you." "Yes," she agreed, surprised.
    "I know. It's easier not to know too much. You can believe nice easy things if you don't know too much. Like, 'good guys always win.' And 'generosity is rewarded.' And 'life is eternal.' Stuff like that." Arakny laughed. "We librarians tend to be cynics. We have to be brave."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            263

Oily smiled tremulously. "I'11 try," she said, taking the little box into her lap. She leaned back, her finger on the button, then turned it on.
    Arakny watched as Oily stiflened, as a startled look came into her eyes, then as consciousness fled away. She had gone inside herself, where all the information now was. It was scary. Scary to experience. Scary to watch.
    Arakny lifted her cup and sipped her tea, eyes fixed thoughtfully on the girl sitting across from her. No two librarians ever found the same information, because no two ever asked precisely the same question. Even when the words were the same, the mental attitude toward the words was different, the experiences underlying the words were different, the need-to-know was different. So now, this girl would ask the same questions Arakny had asked, but she would not receive the same answers.
    Sometimes, when two librarians had explored a similar area of knowledge, they shared their perceptions with one another. Perhaps this girl would do the same.

    Oily stood upon mist, with mist around her. On every side, above, below, behind, the mist was a presence. It was there, tangible though tenuous, occupying all available time and space.
    "What is your question?" the presence seemed to ask. "You have reached the library. What is your question?"
The question Oracle had told her to ask, of course.
"Ask one only child," she cried.
    One only children, dark and bright-eyed, blond and pale-eyed, fat ones, lean ones, laughing ones, crying ones, an endless river of only children flowed through her mind, great hordes of them, parented and orphans, familied and foundlings, abandoned nameless infants and sole heirs to great dynasties. None of them looked familiar to her. She did not find herself among them. She could not find herself in all this mob.
"Thrones," she thought. "One only child, and thrones."
    The hordes disappeared as though they had been smoke. Now were thrones with their heirs presumptive seated upon them, princes, princesses, a procession of nobility, of majesty. Here waved the flag of a country, here sat a cr~wn, a scepter, here were guardsmen and councillors and courtiers. Some thrones were ancient, of times and countries long past, and others were new as tomorrow, but none of them was the throne she knew, the gray throne, the great throne... one of three.
    "Three thrones!" she cried mentally, sending the plea into whatever and wherever the library was. "Three thrones, and one only child, and two who made her."
A moment's vacancy, as though the mist sought within itself, and then


264                              Sheri S. Tepper

they were there, as she had dreamed them long ago and often since. Thrones. Tall and gray, covered all over with strange carvings. Three of them standing side by side, ponderous and immemorial. Surely such things could not move, and yet they did. They shifted. The two at the sides moved behind the center one so that she saw only that one. Then they separated into three. Then they merged once more. One throne. Three thrones. Three that were, in some special way, alike. Three of the same kindred. Superimposed. Apart. Superimposed. One kindred. Of one kind.
    She looked intently at the one, the single great gray chair where it stood solidly upon its four legs, its four feet. Huge legs. Monstrous feet. See how the feet changed, shifted, grew toes, extended claws that extended and reached. See how the legs lengthened and jointed themselves, bending beneath the throne as though to leap upward. But it wasn't a chair any longer. The back of it had bent backward, bowed, become a neck, the end of it shaped itself into a head. Now it turned upon its great legs, its huge feet, so she could see its mighty head, its ears and mane and enormous glowing eyes. It had not actually been a chair at all. It had always been an ani--no. Not an animal, not a beast. A being. A huge, monstrously ancient being that now stood high upon its legs as it stalked out of its place, out of its cavern, out of its lair. See it walk onto the mountain peaks. It strides, oh, it strides. It strides across the peaks, across the sky. It leaps from star to star, galaxy to galaxy, its fiery mane flowing behind, its great taloned feet tearing at the nebulae, its mighty shoulders thrusting aside the dark veils where nothing is and all is about to be.
    Ancient it is. Immortal it is. A servant of life it is, created in the dawn of time before life had yet emerged, to control that life and keep it within proper bounds.
    See how it returns across the sky and comes to rest, how it sits upon its feet, becoming only a chair once more, splitting to become two, or three, or more if more are needed. And see how living creatures come into the cavern where the thrones are, now one creature, now another, to bow down before they sit upon it, upon them. And those who sit upon the thrones, they rise, they go away, they do the thrones' command and they return. And again they go to do the thrones' command. And they return, to go again. Until at last they return and seat themselves but do not rise again, but melt instead, but flow, but become part of what it is they sit upon. Liquid substance absorbed into other substance making an alloy. Water flowing into water. Fungible. Indistinguishable.
    "I have seen you before!" Oily cried. "I have seen you before. Did I sit there, upon you? Have you sent me away to accomplish some great thing'? Am I to come back to you now?"
No answer, only the chairs, three, then one, then three again.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                 265

    "The Place of Powcr," she asked. "Where are the thrones? Where is the correct place of power'?"
    Sunset over the mesa, a dome black against the sky, a high, blocky fortress to the right, a wall, gates, people coming away from the gates with the things they had traded for. Inside the wall, four families contending with one another and with a great, golden fortress. Outside the wall, green-robed women, green-and-brown-clad men, leathered warriors and women of Artemisia moving away from the gates and the sun sinking behind them as the stars pricked out, one by one.
    And a tide of walkers along the road. Black-helmed figures like ants, flowing into and out of the place of power, the earth charred beneath their feet, the vegetation dying where they walked.
    And from the fortress, a call, a summons, like the call of a mighty commander to an errant armsman: "Come! Now! Too long have you delayed!
You are past time! Come now to my aid, before it is too late." Dismayed, she asked something, something, something. The world around her melted into nothing.
    She saw the pattern. It emerged from what she knew, what she had been told, what she had seen and guessed and speculated about. It was like the patterns the dyer used. This block and that, joined in such a way.
A long, long silence. A long time of learning.
She looked up into Arakny's eyes.
    'q took the cap off you," she said. "You've been in there a long time, and you were drifting. Sometimes it does that to people. We never let a woman use the cap while she's alone. You can get lost in there!"
    "Do you know what's in there'?" Oily asked, her voice sounding harsh and unaccustomed, as though she had not used it for several years.
    "You mean, do I know the answers to your questions'? No. Even if I asked your questions, I would get different answers. 1 do know, in a general way, what's in there: all the information from everywhere that the librarians of Artemisia have managed to collect in more than a hundred years. Everything anyone ever wrote or said or danced or painted or sculpted. Everything we know about people now. That's what we're for, we librarians. We catch everything in our webs.
    "And the machine--the... brain in there--it puts it all together to make more than the sum of its parts." She laughed. "ln a way, it's smarter than we are. It can extrapolate better than we can. People, you know, there are some solutions they won't accept. The brain in this thing, it accepts everything."
    Oily shook her head in wonder, in awe. "And they make this in the Edge?"


266

Sheri S. Tepper

    "The device itself, yes. Empty, of course. What we put into it is our business." She began to fold the cap.
"Don't put it away. I have to borrow it for a while."
"You haven't found what you needed to know?"
    "Your Place of Power is the right one. I came from there. I must go there now, urgently." She reached for the library, tugged at it.
    Something in Olly's voice made Arakny release her grip on the library. "What is it, Oily Longaster'?"
    Oily looked at the library in her hands, looked up past Arakny at the glowing sky, soft pink in the 1owe of sunset. "Only a pattern, Arakny. Things I know without knowing how I know. But it is as important to you as it is to me. I do not ask for your library out of any trifling curiosity."
    Arakny ran her fingers across her hair, undecided. "I'm not supposed to--"
    "I know. But if you ask Wide Mountain Mother, she will tell you it's all right."
"How do you know that?"
Oily held up the library. "I know, that's all."
    Arakny stared at her for a long moment, then sighed. "Well, I'll ask. Keep it for now. I think we'd both profit from a meal and a rest. We'll go up the hill to join your..."
    "I can't take time to!" Olly rose to her feet. The sense of urgency in her had risen like a tide.
    Arakny shook her head. "No matter where you have to go, you can't go now. You can't travel in the dark. No one will guide you until tomorrow. You must take time to eat and sleep, and tomorrow you can go as fast as
you are able." She started toward the stream, beckoning imperatively. Coyote barked sharply.
"Go on," said Olly. "Let me take care of... my dog."
    "Yes," called Arakny. "Take care of... your dog." She walked toward the river.
"What?" demanded Oily of the animal behind the wheel.
"I want to see the dances."
"You weren't invited. But that's all right. I'll tell you about them." Coyote growled. "Untie me at least!"
     She did that, suggesting that he lie still until they were gone. "There's food in our food box. You can have all of it. No hunting in Artemisian chicken yards! I want to stay in their good graces."
     Coyote snarled, "You're leaving them. You're going to the Place of Power! You said so!"
     "That's where I have to go!" she cried in an agonized whisper. "I want to start now, but I suppose she'~ right. There's no way--"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            267

"That thing she had, that--library. Do you suppose I could try it'?"
     Oily gave him a long look. "Coyote. I promise you. You'll have a chance to try it."
     Then she turned and trudged away after Arakny. She felt hollow inside. Perhaps it was only hunger. Perhaps it was something else again. The sound of that voice still rang in her mind: No~v. Urgently. Before it is too late.~ And here she was, going to a dance!
     Still, Arakny was right. Big Blue needed to eat and rest. She and Abasio could not travel in the dark. Probably they needed a guide, would get there more quickly with a guide. So, early in the morning, then. As soon as it was day !
     She caught up with Arakny at the stream and followed her up the opposite slope. Above them the sound of drums and rattles welled and ebbed, voices rose, smoke blew down toward them smelling of meat and resin.
     As they neared the top, Arakny paused to say, "Usually the first dance of the season is one of thanksgiving for the return of the rains, and it's followed by the mend-the-world hoop dance. I've heard they're going to dance the return of elk and bear and bison tonight, if they have had time to make preparations."
     "We saw elk on our way here," said Olly in a preoccupied voice. "We think we saw bear."
    Taking no notice of Olly's preoccupation, Arakny said, "They've been wanting to do those dances for the last five years, but the Animal Masters said there weren't enough animals yet. It's not right to dance it until we've actually done it! Lord of all trees, what we went through! We had forests to replant in certain places, to stop erosion, and the Sisters to Trees were in and out of here every week. Then the Guardians showed up to teach us how to clean the water. Then we had to improve meadows by adding certain forbs that had been wiped out. The Guardians provided seeds, but still, it was backbreaking work!
    "After all that was done, we got our breeding stock t?om the Animal Masters. Then when the elk were breeding again, we had to protect the calves until the population was large enough to sustain itself. This meant raising sheep to feed the predators, to keep them alive also, for they are required in the mended earth just as the elk are required. We had to protect the calves
.from poachers from the cities too.""How did you do that'?"
    "Our men mostly ambushed them and killed them. The cities care nothing for a renewed earth, but our rule is, man may not eat what he does not. protect!" She sounded so ferocious that Oily blinked.
    They made their way toward the porch, where they found Abasio seated between two elderly men, all three of them talking and nodding and laughing.


268                              Sheri S. Tepper

Arakny and Oily joined the group, and Oily was introduced to Tall Elk and Night Raven.
    Before them, dancers turned and twisted in the light of the setting sun, light gleaming from their oiled skins, from the feathers they wore, dancing
to the beat of the drums and the sound of the singers."What are they singing?" Olly asked.
    Night Raven replied: "They sing in one of the old languages of the blue boy rain walking on the wind, of the yellow girl rain that comes with the sun of spring, of the black male rain that makes the arroyos flow, of the white woman rain that soaks the fields. They beg the rains to come again, to make this place their home, to regard us as their children."
    The two visitors sat cross-legged, arms resting on their knees, quietly watching the dancers. After a time, Arakny signaled to one of the young people on the porch who brought them food on wooden trenchers: sliced meat and flat circles of bread and vegetables Olly had never tasted before.
    "Beans," Abasio whispered to her. "And tomatoes. Grandpa used to grow them sometimes, but our season wasn't really long enough."
    "Tomato and onion and green pepper," agreed Arakny. "And bread made from corn, and melon and beans and roast lamb. And peaches and apricots and apples. And honey from the hive. And milk and cheese from the goats. Bounty. In the autumn we celebrate bounty. It was a habit of one of our groups long ago, and the others of us found it appropriate."
    The rain dancers left the circle, and others entered, these bearing bundles of wooden hoops that they laid in piles around themselves and took up one by one as they danced, interlacing them with their arms and legs to make wings, becoming birds; to make manes and heavy legs, becoming animals. Oily watched in fascination as they danced, never missing a beat of the drums, the hoops spinning, shifting, interlocking, working up from legs onto arms, from arms onto hands, now all the hoops joined together to form huge lacy spheres around each dancer, and out of these large openwork eggs the dancers hatched, feet first, ending with the spheres carried triumphan~y above them.
    "They have danced creation, the hatching of life, the final mending of the earth," whispered Arakny. "The hoops are symbolic of the cycles of life, birth and death joined, each thing dependent upon other things, all existence woven together."
    Other dancers entered the circle. The drummers and singers went on tirelessly. Olly ate everything on her trencher and would have gone ~'or more if she had not feared to appear greedy. She wanted to tell Abasio about the library, about what she'd learned, but it did not seem appropriate with so many people about.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS

269

    Instead she whispered to him, "I need to talk to you. As soon as we can politely leave, let's go."
He nodded, peering at her face, "What?"
"I'11 tell you down at the wagon."
    He nodded again. Someone came with a jug and a basket of gourd cups. They drank the beverage offered, water and honey and fruit juices mixed together.
"No beer?" asked Abasio.
    "We cannot waste our time so," Arakny replied, '~or our grain. Water is our drink, usually. Or goat's milk. Though sometimes the cider from our apples tums, you know, becoming something more. We drink that, in order not to waste it." She grinned at them impishly.
    It had grown dark; only the tirelight illuminated the dancers, giving them an otherworldly look, half tire-colored, half dark, reduced to outlines and flat surfaces, demonic, perhaps, though they were undoubtedly good demons.
    Abasio squeezed Olly's hand, the gesture saying he was preparing to leave. "Where will I find..." he asked, rising.
    Arakny looked up at him. "Over there." She nodded across the fire. "The compost house is behind the crowd over there, beyond those two trees."
    "We'll leave when I get back, in just a moment," he murmured to Oily, turning to stride off around the circle.
      She rose, fidgeting. She should get back to the wagon, put things away,
be ready to leave early in the morning. As soon as it was light!A chorus of joyful cries came from the watchers.
    "Look!" cried Arakny, echoing the others. "Here come the bison dancers, the elk dancers! Oh, look!"
    New dancers had entered the circle, men wearing antlers, men wearing bulky headdresses with carved horns. They circled and stamped, they spiraled, shaking their leathered lances. The people cried encouragement as the drums quickened and a new song was sung.
    "We've worked so hard on this!" said Arakny, tears in her eyes. "It's taken so many years."
    Alert for Abasio's return, Olly detected a restless movement among the watchers across the circle, a heaving, as though they had been disturbed. The fire leaped up, and she caught a momentary glimpse of a huge figure
there. briefly lit, then lost in darkness once more."Who was that'?" she asked Arakny.
      "Who'? Someone over there?" The woman peered, wiping at her eyes
with her sleeve. "I don't see anyone except people from town." "Someone very tall, very big."
~'A stilt dancer from the Rabbit Society, probably. They sometimes end


270                              Sheri S. Tepper

the evening with clowning." She turned her attention back to the dancers, leaving Oily to stare into the darkness, disturbed by what she had seen, though uncertain as to why.
     "Those strange people who entered through the gate this morning. Those two walkers," Olly murmured. "Did they go on?"
"South," said Arakny. "Oh, yes. Women from town watched them go."
    "How about people coming in? Did anybody else... remarkable come in today?"
    Arakny turned toward her, giving her a curious look. "I don't know. I was told about the two walkers. I was told about you. No one else was mentioned to me."
"Gangets? From one of the cities up north?"
"No one said. What's the trouble, Olly Longaster?"
"I think I'll go find Sonny."
"We'll go together," the woman said, rising, her forehead furrowed. They moved to the rear of the circle of watchers and worked their way around the outside in the direction Abasio had gone, stumbling a little in the shadows. As they approached the far side of the crowd, almost opposite where they'd been sitting, they found much of the audience standing in small agitated groups, muttering to one another rather than watching the dancers.
    Arakny seized one mutterer by the arm and demanded, "What's happened?"
A confused babble answered her.
"Stop!" she commanded. "One of you--what's happened here?"
    The short woman she was holding by the arm answered: "Three men, Arakny. Three men from outside, gangets by the looks of them. They spotted this other visitor walking over toward the compost house, and they grabbed him. Some of the men objected, and they got knocked on their heads. Look over there." She pointed through the milling bodies to a place where several costumed men lay, surrounded by others.
"What did they look like?" Oily demanded. "The three gangets?"
    "Why, as to that--I don't know. I didn't see it. Ask Lithel, she saw it. She saw the whole thing."
    Olly recognized Lithel, the woman who had talked to them at the gate that morning, the one who had been so sympathetic to Abasio, who was now busy bandaging one of the fallen.
    She answered Arakny's question in a rapid mutter. "One of them was bald, with a beard and a hammer. It was the hammer did this damage." She was sponging away the blood that seeped down the man's face. "One wore whips at his belt. He told the others what to do. The other of the three was a giant, hairy as a bison, and he stank."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            271

    "Where did they go?" cried Oily, recognizing the description as the same three who had stopped Cermit's wagon in Whitherby.
    "They went down the hill," the woman replied. "Our men were objecting, and the little man was assuring us they would not kill him until they were in manland once more."
    "What does she mean?" Olly seized Arakny by the arm. "Kill him? What does she mean?"
    "Our treaty with manland forbids gangets killing one another in our territory," the woman answered. "It does not forbid their taking your--husband back to manland and killing him there."


CHAPTER 11

~~~ hey will kill him there."
At first the words were meaningless to Oily; then they made dreadful sense. She stood briefly in paralyzed dismay, then spun around and ran frantically toward the sandy road.

    "Wait," Arakny called, trotting after her. "Wait, Oily Longaster! Where are you going?"

"Back to the wagon!" Olly cried.

"You can't go after them! You'll get yourself killed!" "I know," breathed Oily. "Oh, heaven, I know." Arakny followed, but Olly soon outdistanced her. She had been running on the prairie for days, back and forth from the moving wagon, gathering dyestuffs compulsively, as though life depended upon the artifice. Her legs had become quick and strong; they were tireless now as she sped down the hill and across the wandering skein of water. By the time she reached the wagon, she was quite alone.

She stumbled against one of the wagon wheels and


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273

held her breath. Where was Coyote? She heard a yawn. He was curled against the wheel.
"Wake up!" she demanded, falling to the ground beside him.
She was greeted by a brief flash of starlight on teeth.
    "Araughrrr," he said, deep in his throat. "Who could sleep with all this clatter."
"Are you awake?"
"Of course I'm awake! What is it?"
    "The men after Abasio, they've taken him. You said they were far behind!"
    "They were," he replied, suddenly ear-prickingly alert. "They were a considerable distance, a day's run. Three of them. Two ordinary smellers and a stinker."
    "They must have hitched a ride with someone," she said bitterly, "for they were here, up the hill, at the dance. They saw Abasio, and they took him, just like that. Almost as though they knew who he was. Almost as though someone had told them what he looks like now."
    "Don't talk to me in that suspicious tone," snapped Coyote. "I didn't tell them."
"Someone did."
      "Someone may have done, but that's not the problem at the moment, is
it? What do you want from me? Conversation? Counsel?""Rescue!" she demanded angrily.
"You have a high opinion of my abilities, girl."
    "Not yours, no," she whispered, raising her head to listen. Down near the river, Arakny was calling her name. "The two who were following me, looking lbr me. The walkers you said smelled so strange. What would they do if they thought those three gangers had me?"
Coyote scratched himself reflectively. "They'd go find out, most likely." "You could make them think it was so!"
    "Make the two walkers think the three gangers had you?" He snorted. "Lying to those two might be the last act of my sneaky life. A very bad idea."
    She shook him frantically. "You're clever. You kept the ogres away from us. You can do the same thing with the walkers, somehow, without lying, without their knowing even who did it. You can figure out a way. Make
them think the gangers have me and are taking me back to the city. Please!" "What do I get out of it?"
She cried, "What do you want?"
    "I don't know," he said, stretching. "I'11 think of something." He licked his jaws thoughtfully. "What do you want him back for?"
She glared at him. "Why... because. He's my--well, he's..."


274                              Sheri S. Tepper

    "You don't know why you want him," commented Coyote. "But you'll no doubt think of some reason, sooner or later."
"Hurry," she commanded. "Arakny's coming."
      "Achr," he growled. "I need your clothes. Something womanly. Some-
thing you wear next to your skin!"She gaped at him.
    "Come, girl, don't dally. You want your whatever rescued, give me credit for a bit of clever of my own. Give me your underwear!"
      She stripped off her tunic, pulled the soft stuff of her chemise over her
head, and dropped it, tugged the tunic back on."Where will you be?" Coyote whispered.
    "West. Toward the Place of Power. I can't--I can't wait here. I have to~-I have to go."
Arakny called again, this time from the grove along the river.
    Coyote gave Oily a look, distant lights reflecting from his eyes, then snatched up the chemise and scampered under the wagon and thence into the darkness among the trees.
    "What are you doing?" demanded Arakny, coming across the clearing. "You're not going to try to go after him alone."
"Who would go with me?" asked Oily in a bitter voice. "You?"
    "Yes," said Arakny gravely. "Though I think it's a fool's pursuit, I'!1 go with you rather than see you go alone."
    Oily leaned against the wagon and laughed hysterically. "I learned to fight as a child, Arakny. A Hero taught me. I learned well, but I remember what he told me. Between two fighters of equal skill, the larger will probably win. Between two groups, the more numerous will prevail. We're both outskilled and outnumbered."
    "I know," said Arakny. "That's what I've been trying to say." She stared beneath the wagon. "What happened to your dog?"
    "He ran off," Oily replied. She turned hopelessly away from the older woman and stared into the darkness. She wanted to go after Abasio. She longed for him, grieved for him, could not think of anything but him, and at the same time she could not let herself take the time.
"We'll go after him," said Arakny. "I'11 get some of the warriors."
    Olly shook her head. "No. I can't. There's something more important."
    "More important!" Arakny 18oked at her in amazement. "What could be more important?"
"Oh, Arakny. Arakny. So many things."
"I can't imagine what."
    "Let me put you a problem, Arakny. The world will end tomorrow, and you have the power to prevent it if you go very quickly to do a certain thing.


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On your way, you see a child drowning in a river. If you stop to help the child, the world will end. Where does your duty lie'?"
    Arakny merely stared, not answering, her mouth working as though she could not find words.
    Oily said softly, "I cannot help Sonny because I have to go to the Place o~' Power. And you cannot go after my friend, my love, because I need you to take me where I must go. Now. At once. Tonight!"

    Abasio had been captured with such efficient violence, he did not fully realize what had happened until he found himself jerking along in the dark, tied in the saddle of a horse, hearing the sounds of other horses ahead and behind. He'd been hit on the head. He compared his current pain with pain remembered and assured himself it was no harder a blow than he'd had in his youth during any one of several notable ganger wars. No. No worse than that, which was quite bad enough.
    His attempt at self-assurance didn't help. He remained disoriented and dizzy, and every time he opened his eyes, his head felt as though it would explode. If he kept his eyes shut and rested his head on his bound hands, the flashing agony dwindled to a sullen throb and he could think. He'd been captured, he told himself. By gangers, no doubt. They hadn't killed him. Maybe they'd been instructed not to.
    "Where are we going?" he asked, angered to hear his voice trembling like that of a pleading child.
    The man riding ahead of him answered. "Be quiet, Purple boy. We're takin' you 'cross the border. Old Chief Purple says bring 'im your han's, so tha's what we'll do. You behave yourself, we'll do you quick."
    Abasio considered this, knowing something was wrong with it but unable to identify just what for some time. Gradually, his mind cleared.
    "You can't take him my hands," he said. "Not if he wants to see the tattoos."
     The man behind him rode up beside him and leaned close, a miasma rising
around Abasio like that of an untended privy."Whachu mean?" he growled.
    Abasio turned his face away, breathing through his mouth. "! mean you can't see rny tattoos. My hands are dyed. You'll have to take all of me back." He'd been hoping a live body was less smelly to transport than a dead one, but if they willingly traveled with this reeking giant, one rotting body more or less would make little difference to them.
"Whatso, Thrash'," complained the giant. "D'ju see's hun's?"
    The man riding in the lead called, "Never mind. We'll stop in a bit, have a look then. If we can't take his hands, maybe we'll take his head."


276                              Sheri S. Tepper

    "Head'11 rot before we'd get it there," complained the third man. "Han's're all right. Han's dry out okay. Heads rot till y'can't tell whose. We got nothin' to put 'im in to keep 'im from rottin'."
The lead man was unperturbed. "Talk about it when we stop."
    Abasio slumped in the saddle. He'd never planned to die this way. Of course, he'd never really planned to die anyway. And Oily! Would she know what had happened to him? Maybe--maybe she'd try to rescue him!
    Maybe she'd better not, he thought bleakly. Better limit the damage. She wouldn't have a chance against these three, and somehow he couldn't see the people of Artemisia helping her out. No, any thought of being rescued was what Grandpa would call a foolish hope. Here he was, ending up just as Grandpa and Ma had always feared, on the wrong end of a retaliation.
    He slumped further, head resting upon his bound hands. Given enough time, maybe he could gnaw his way out of these bonds.
    And then what? He considered how he might escape, playing the scenes over as the horse plodded into darkness. All his scenarios ended in his recapture and immediate dispatch. By the time the man in the lead called the journey to a halt, he had no ideas left.
    "We'll stop until morning," the leader announced as he dismounted and came toward Abasio. He pulled Abasio not ungently from the saddle and stood him on his feet. "May as well know who has you, boy. Give you our arena names, jus' so you'll know who's doin' what. I'm Thrasher. This is Masher, and the big one's Crusher. An' so's you'll know why, Old Chief
Purple's payin' us a crow for you.""How'd you know who I was?"
    "Recconized you, boy. We was standin' guard for Whistler when you bought some stuff. He called you by name."
Abasio grew cold in the pit of his stomach. "You're Survivors." "What else, boy? Survivors, sure."
    The other two men busied themselves collecting wood and setting a fire, then Crusher lifted Abasio---casually using only one hand to do it, as though he lifted a stick of firewood--into the light of the fire where Abasio's hands could be seen. Thrasher laughed abruptly and muttered a command, at which Crusher carried their prisoner to a stout tree and bound his wrists behind him around the trunk.
    When the giant left him alone, Abasio tested the bonds. He was tied with thong, but there wasn't a long enough piece of it between his wrists to abrade it on the rough bark. He would bloody himself to no purpose if he tried. The men were professionals. But then, he'd known that as soon as he'd heard their names. These were Survivors' survivors. Rulers of the arena, become mercenaries. Almost legendary, they were.


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"What'd you do to Old Chief Purple?" demanded Thrasher from his place near the fire.
    If they were not yet beyond the border of Artemisia, the story might keep him alive for a time. He told it, stringing it out while the three spread their blankets and collected a pile of firewood for the night.
    When the story was done, Thrasher said, almost sympathetically, "Too bad. Nothin' you did wrong, ganget. But you know how 'tis."
    He did know how it was. You got paid for doing somebody, you did somebody. It didn't matter whether the somebody was guilty of anything. Most times the victims of tallies weren't guilty of anything. In his younger years, Abasio himself had taken part in retaliations without asking whether the victims had actually done anything wrong. Soniff said fight, everybody fought. That was how it was done.
    He complained, half-aloud, "Whyn't the Old Chief send Purples'.> I'd have thought he'd send Purples."
    Thrasher laughed, a sneery cough of amusement. "Purples! Who'd he send from the Purples? Purples are a joke!"
    Masher added, "On'y way the Purples stay alive is Old Chief pays off the other gangs not to fight 'em."
    Abasio stirred indignantly. "Warlord says the Purples are getting deeper and stronger all the time." The three Survivors laughed, slapping at one another in their amusement. When they had somewhat controlled themselves, Thrasher chortled, "You're young. And you're a farm boy. You're not old enough to remember. We remember. Was a time, gangers filled Fantis clear up to the edges."
    Abasio sat straighter, raising his voice above the coyote chorus that had erupted beyond the fire. "I thought--I thought Fantis got emptied out when people went to the stars!"
    "Nah. Fantis was full long after that. Even when we were kids, Masher and me, it was full then."
    Abasio forgot the discomfort in his arms and wrists, the rock that was making a hole in his rump. Was Fantis actually getting smaller?
    "Is drugs," said Crusher in a sleepy voice. "Lotsa people dyin' on drugs. That new stuff Whistler brought. I hear people dyin' on that."
    Abasio stared in Thrasher's direction, seeing only a blanket-covered lump. "People dying... how?"
    "Hmm," the lump yawned. "Just lay down an' die. Drugs and battles. And sicknesses. Doesn' matter. I won' be around to see the endin'." The lump yawned again. "Your endin', that's diff'rent. I'll be around to see that."
Abasio slumped against the tree, full of questions he couldn't ask. So the


278                              Sheri S. Teppcr

city was dying. He'd known that, somehow. All those derelict buildings. All those babies born dead, or dying. All that strut and crow from the gangs, like cocks on a dungheap. Was this the way the cities in the east had gone'? And the ones in the west'.> Were the cities of manland only the tail end of citydom, doomed even when Abasio's ma had been young'? She'd said so more than once, but back then, Abasio had preferred not to believe.
    Did the people in the Edges know the cities were doomed? Was that why they'd gone out, away'? And what about the farms? Surely the farms weren't dying. If the farms died, nobody would have anything to eat! The Edges needed to eat too. So if the Edges survived, likely so would the farms ....
    The coyote voices rose in a chorus of howls, then fell into silence. One of the horses whickered, half a question, half a complaint. A few moments later another horse~)r was it the same one?--whickered from farther away.
    Abasio's head sagged onto his knees, full of new ideas. Whistler and Sudden Stop selling death as though it were sweet corn. Gangers dying, not even with the sense to run away. Elk and bear being brought back. Forests being replanted. Rivers being cleaned. Women being Sisters to Trees.
    And places like Artemisia springing up, IlOt a farm, not a city, not an Edge, but something in between. The woman at the border had said they were in balance, whatever that meant. Presumably it meant enough people, but not too many. How many was too many'? Who decided such things?
    The horse whickered again, this time from a considerable distance. Abasio raised his head, listening intently. Horses didn't ordinarily wander so far when they were hobbled. Had that been one of the ganget horses? Or someone else's?
Thrasher turned uneasily in his sleep.
    Abasio held his breath. Let it be the ganget horses. Let it be the ganget horses wandering away, far away, so the men would have to spend hours hunting them in the morning. Hours during which... what'?
Foolish hope, he reminded himself. Only foolish hope.

    Not far to the southwest of Artemisia the pair of walkers who had come through the town moved along side by side, a bit more slowly than in daylight but still far more quickly than ordinary men could have marched in darkness. They had settled on this direction after using the daylight hours to search south, east, and west of the town. Eastern routes led to grasslands and forest. Northwestern routes led into high, cold mountains. Other southern routes led mostly through wilderness, but this was the straightest line to High Mesiko, the most logical destination for their quarry to be seeking. People went this way seeking work, so they had been told. There was much commerce going on in southwestern climes.


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    "Food," said one to the other after miles had gone by in silence. Usual communication between them was infrequent and monosyllabic. Food. Rest. Left. Right. Faster. Slower.
    The other expressed no agreement or dissent, merely slowing his pace to fall slightly behind the speaker, who led the way up a slight rise to where he had an unobstructed view of the country around them. Though it was a dark night, they were able to see quite clearly by starshine.
    Each sat down to eat a bar of compressed fuel from the pack he carried. The fuel was tasteless. Taste was unnecessary. Sleep was also unnecessary. What was necessary was that energy be replenished and certain automatic procedures be carried out. These took place whenever the walkers stopped, whether for nourishment or to await instructions.
    An owl sounded from the nearest brush, single hoots uttered deliberately, with long pauses between. Then it swept above them on silent wings, visible against the stars. Neither of them looked up. In the surrounding desert coyotes yipped and howled, but they did not look at the coyotes, either. They had not been sent after coyotes. They had been sent after a young person with dark hair who had been an Orphan in an archetypal village. They had been sent with a retinue, a new Orphan, a Wet Nurse, other persons costumed variously in procession, including one person with the power of command. The purpose of this unusual show had not concerned the oddmen. They had asked no questions about it, though it was in all respects unique. Their instructions had been specific: Make room for the new Orphan by removing the old Orphan and returning her to the Place of Power.
    There had been no old Orphan to return. No one had seen her leave. She had been there, so everyone said, only the day before.
    As soon as the procession was out of sight of the village, the two had been commanded to leave the rest and search the mountains. An easy search, they had been told, for a young woman alone, without help, who would no doubt be blundering about among the trees, lighting fires and yelling for help. The oddmen had been given words to use: soft words, gentle phrases, and a special tone of voice.
    But there had been no girl. No fires in the night. No voice calling. Only the sleepy mutter of birds and small creatures, the scratch of claw and nibble of teeth. The walkers had gone east, and north, and south, and west of the valley. They had moved outward from it. Eventually, they had come to a woman who had seen the girl and directed her to the city. They had gone to the city. They had not found her. They had retumed from the city. They sought her still, as did others of their kind. They would find her eventually. They were not at all impatient.
A voice came from the night, a high, howling voice, clear as a bell: "Three men from Fantis took a young person with dark hair. They took

of


280                              Sheri S. Tepper

the person from Artemisia town. Three men from Fantis are traveling back toward manland with the young person, on horseback."
    The oddmen rose. To anyone observing, the motion would have been a blur, so fast it was. Fire bloomed from their helms, and they spun, lighting the desert with wheel spokes of light, fierce white beams glaring into the darkness.
    Nothing. Two or three coyotes darling toward the safety of shadows. An owl surprised on the top of a cactus. They did not care about coyotes. They did not care about owls.
"I heard," said one emotionlessly, "a voice."
    "It was not malfunction," verified the other. "It may have been deception. Perhaps the person referred to is not the person we seek."
    "We must go back," replied the first. "Even if it is deception, we must go back to make sure."
"Back," agreed the second.
    They turned and ran the way they had come. A watcher, and there were watchers, could have seen only blurred motion, a progress too fast to observe. One watcher followed nonetheless, trotting rapidly northward even after the movement of his quarry could no longer be seen or heard.

    Abasio was too uncomfortable to sleep. Hours wore by as he sat, sometimes with his head on his drawn-up knees to ease the pain in his head, sometimes struggling to his feet, inch by aching inch, to ease his back. After one such maneuver, he found he badly needed to pee. He didn't want to end up sitting in it, so he worked his way around the trunk of the tree, shifting his bound wrist a bit at a time, until he was on the side away from the sleeping men and the smoking remnants of the fire. The trousers he wore were baggy, and by dint of much tugging against the rough trunk and shaking of his legs, he managed to get the fabric located so the pee would run down his leg onto the soil rather than soaking into his trousers.
    So he thought, forgetting the boots he wore. The trousers got a minimal share, but the soil shared half the remainder with the inside of his boot. He stood with his head down, cursing silently, interrupted in his discomfort by a voice asking:
"Where is the woman'?"
    Abasio held his breath, frozen. The voice had not come from any one of the Survivors. It did not sound like a human voice. A beam of intense white light from the Survivors' camp went past the tree trunk, throwing distant foliage into stark relief, black and white. When the light went out, he could see nothing but flowing afterimages on the insides of his eyes.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            281

    Something rough and hairy pressed against his lips. Coyote's voice whispered in his ear, "Be still."
"Where is the woman from the village?" the strange voice asked again. "Wha'?" someone responded. Thrasher's voice, sounding strangled. "Where is the woman?" the first voice asked again.
    Fur brushed Abasio's jaw. "Sit down," whispered Coyote from his left shoulder, a mere breath in the darkness. "Quickly, quietly, get your hands down in the grass where they can't be seen."
    Abasio's knees sagged obediently, and he sank under the pressure of Coyote's fi)refeet, ending by sitting in the very puddle he had wanted to avoid.
    "...don't have any woman!" screamed Thrasher for the third or fourth time.
An inch from Abasio's ear, Coyote breathed. "Now stay silent." Abasio held his breath while the Coyote went around the tree and sat down on Abasio's hands. So it felt, at least, warm, furry, and heavy enough to renew the pain in his wrists as the weight dragged at the thongs.
    "The person you took from Artemisia," said the cold voice. "We want her."
    The light of the fire flared up, orange light washing around Abasio, flickering on either side of the place he sat in shadow. Something was being dragged. Something made a keening noise, a scalpel of sound, then gasping noises, as from a person half-strangled.
    "Wazza man!" screamed Masher. "Not a woman! A man! Tied to that tree, over there, that tree."
Coyote barked. The glaring white light washed over him and past him. Abasio shut his eyes, blinded once more.
     "That is an animal," said the terrible voice. "Do not lie to us, ganger!
Tell us where the woman is, the one from the village.""No woman!" Thrasher cried. "Crusher. Help!"
    The giant bellowed like a bull. The keening noise shrieked briefly. The giant howled. Something fell heavily.
    "It is not wise to attack us," said the terrible voice. "It is not wise to lie to us."
Silcnce. Coyote sat heavily. Abasio could feel his breathing.
    "They have ceased to reply," said a terrible voice. "Why have they ceased to reply'?"
"They have malfunctioned," said the same voice.
"Lately they malfunction more often during questioning."
A brief silence.
"Perhaps the woman is with the horses."

iial

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tn
~lv


282                              Sheri S. Tepper

"We will look there."
Departing movement, too fast to be quite human.
    "Pull your hands as far apart as you can," whispered Coyote from behind the tree. "I've got to chew you loose."
    Abasio pulled, gaining a little slack as he felt the furry snout pressed between his thumbs. The thongs moistened and stretched slightly. Teeth chewed noisily; the tongue lapped wetly. After what seemed forever, Abasio's wrists parted company.
"Come on," demanded Coyote, nosing Abasio's thigh.
    "Where are the horses'?" Abasio asked, trying to rub feeling into one leg with hands that were completely numb.
      "I sent some of my family to drive them as far away as possible," Coyote
answered. "I suppose they managed it, for I don't smell horse near here." "Can those~an they track me?~' Abasio wondered.
    "Possibly. My packmates will try to forestall any tracking--if you'll get moving." He punctuated this demand with a nip at Abasio's thigh.
    Abasio yelped and moved forward, promptly tripping over a root and falling on his face.
    "Hold on to my tail and pick up your feet!" Coyote snarled in frustration. "Move, cityman!"
    Abasio struggled to his feet, and they moved slowly into the darkness, the fireglow dwindling behind them.
"How'd you find me?" Abasio whispered.
    "Finding you was the easy part. My packmates saw you and howled your location. It was Olly's idea to get the two sets of hunters hunting each other. More or less."
"The gangers--are they dead?"
"I imagine so. If not, so close as to make no difference."
    "Those walkers were surprised when the gangers died. Did you notice that?"
    "I wouldn't have said surprised," Coyote growled. "I don't think those creatures feel surprise. But I think they didn't intend what happened."
    "Right," muttered Abasio. "As though they weren't quite in control of the situation."
Behind them, coyotes yipped and howled.
    "My packmates," Coyote explained. "Some of them following the walkers. Some of them crossing our trail. Brushing it out. Peeing on it. Shitting on it. Dragging dead skunks and dead fish over it. Making new trails. When I sent my packmates after the horses, I sent Olly's undershirt with them. It's out there on the desert. Those walkers will find it. It's obviously woman clothes. It smells of woman. It'll make them think she's out there, somewhere, and that'll distract them, maybe."


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"You think they can smell--like that? Like you can?"
"Who knows what they can do? They may even be able to hear us now."
    Abasio took the hint and moved more quietly, without speaking. Only after a long silence did he whisper, "Where are we going?"
      "As far away as we can get. Then 1'11 leave you someplace safe and go
find your sweetheart.""She's not."
    "Maybe not. Still, she didn't think twice about sending me after you. And she was quick at figuring out a plan too. Clever, she is. Like me."
    "Cleverer than I am," said Abasio bitterly. "Both of you. I would never have thought of leaving something that smelled of her."
     "Speaking of smells," said Coyote, skidding to a halt on all four feet and
twitching his tail out of Abasio's hand. "I smell a cavern.""How can you smell a cavern'?"
    "1 smell moisture and bat droppings. Also, there are swallows cheeping, high on the walls. I can hear them."
    Abasio listened. There were rustling cheeping noises, high and to his right. "You want me to wait here'?"
    "Here is as good as we're likely to find. You'll be under cover. There's water. Oily said she was heading west, but I'll need to pick up her trail, and I can do that faster alone. If I don't return in a day, work your way south and west, and I'll find you." The last words came softly as he moved off into the dark.
    Abasio sat down obediently, grateful for the stop, which gave him a chance to take off his boot and the squishy sock inside it. Though he could hear the drip of water off to his right, he'd wait until light to find it. Then he'd drink and wash out his sock and bathe his wrists where the thongs had cut. Meantime he sucked at the skin of his wrists, softening the crusty edges of the abrasions.
    Slow time went by, darkness fading slowly until he could detect a wash of fluid gray seeping along the edges of the eastern world, a flowing liquid line ol' desert and mesa. The sky lightened, imperceptible degree by imperceptible degree. Soon he could distinguish the glimmer of water lying in the hollow, the dark arch of the cavern above him. He remembered his thirst and started to get up, only to stop, frozen in place.
    It was sound that stopped him, sound coming from the north, a humming, soft as a bee caught in a jug, a frustrated whine that increased in volume, rapidly becoming painful. Abasio put his hands over his ears and crouched to put his muffled ears between upraised knees. The sound screamed overhead, an excruciating lance of noise that went through him on its way south, leaving him panting.
Something plopped onto the sand, a feathery fluttery helplessness, blood


284                              Sheri S. Tepper

on its beak. It struggled briefly and was still. Other swallows fell, littering the soil around Abasio with agitated movement and agonized complaint that lasted only briefly,
    When all was quiet, he stood up, feeling his head with his hands, assuring himself he was largely undamaged, though emotionally he felt he'd been maimed. His ears seemed intact. He wasn't bleeding, and he could hear the resumed sound of bird and insect. There was residual pain in his head, but that was left over from the assault by the gangets. Unlike the helpless birds, he'd managed to block the worst of it with his hands.
    Thrashing sounds from the canyon below him drew his eyes in that direction in time to see a large furriness emerging from the brush. It was blackish brown, the size of a half-grown cow, and it pawed at its doglike head as though in pain.
    "Bear," Abasio's mind told him wonderingly. Except for the distant forms spotted during his journey south, he had never seen the actual animal. He couldn't remember reading about bears being dangerous, though the thing below him obviously could be. It weighed as much as two large men, at least, and no doubt there were formidable teeth in that muzzle,
    The wind blew softly past Abasio's cheek toward the animal. A moment later, the Bear rose on its hind legs and turned in his direction, nose wrinkled, teeth exposed--very long teeth--small eyes peering. It made a muffled noise, of exasperation or curiosity or surprise. Or anger. As though, perhaps, it thought he, Abasio, had been responsible for the painful noise.
    Abasio looked around him for a place to hide, a place to run. Could a bear climb trees? His eyes came back to the animal below him, still standing, still watching. Perhaps if he merely stood very still...
    The Bear dropped to all fours, exposed its teeth in a muffled growl, and started purposefully toward him.

    The sound that had killed the swallows was heard by many in Artemisia, including Arakny and Oily, who were traveling west along a little-traveled canyon road that Arakny said was the straightest route toward the Place of Power. Big Blue stopped at the sound, four hooves dug into the gravel, head up, ears pricked and swiveling as the noise went past. The women's heads turned similarly, following the sound, which had a peculiar attribute of motion, as though some shrill machine moved invisibly in the air above them, coming from the north and dwindling away west like a monstrous
flying voice calling to another of its kind."What was that?" breathed Arakny.
    "The walkers," said Oily. She had no doubt that what she said was true. This horrid noise shared certain qualities with the voices that had called to


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            285

her in the forest above the village. Both sounds had the same insinuating directionality, the same quality of threatening focus.
    "The walker ones who came into Artemisia? The ones who were looking for you?" asked Arakny.
    Oily nodded. She started to speak, stopped, began again. "I think the sound came from where Sonny--Abasio was." She leaned sidewise across the footboard to blow out the lantern that had dimly lighted their way during the dark hours. '~I don't think the gangers have him anymore. I think he's either escaped--or he's dead."
"What makes you think that?"
    "My pet dog," said Oily in seeming irrationality, as she climbed down to the road. She was blinking rapidly to keep the tears back, aware it was no time for tears. "I sent my pet dog to look for him, and I think he got there."
"You what'?"
    "Never mind. Just take my word for it." Olly rubbed her eyes, unable to decide what to do next, deciding in favor of doing nothing at all. Coyote knew she was headed west. If he was still alive, he would come after her. If he was not alive, likely Abasio was not, either. She refused to consider the implications of that as she stood leaning against the wagon, motionless, too tired to move, too tired even to grieve.
"You want to stop here?" asked Arakny.
    Oily murmured, "Not want--must. Big Blue is so weary, he's stumbling. He's traveled a long way."
    "You say you sent your pet dog," remarked Arakny, as she climbed from the wagon seat. "Are you going to tell me about this pet dog? Is it anything like your pet bird?"
    Oily raised her head and stared blindly into the face of her companion. "It's not a bird. It's a guardian-angel."
"I see. How do you know it's the walkers that made that noise?"
    Oily sagged wearily. "Because I've heard the sounds they make. Not that particular one, but something like."
Arakny stared at her. "Are you hungry?" '~No. Just so tired I can't think." "Tea, then. Before you sleep."
    Arakny led Big Blue within reach of some foliage he'd been trying to get at, then took the grill from the wagon and set about making a fire, moving through these chores with practiced efficiency, as though she had done them often before.
    Olly filled the kettle and brought it from the water barrel, the guardianangel fluttering to her shoulder as she passed the wagon.
"We're low on water," she said with a shiver. The air had grown cold


286                              Sheri S. Tepper

during the night, and though it was somewhat light, it would be hours before the sun warmed them. The angel's feathers against her cheek were chill, like ice.
    Arakny gave her a sympathetic glance as she went into the wagon and came back with a blanket.
"Lie down here, where it's warm." She spread the blanket by the fire. Olly lay down, pulling one side of the blanket over her and rolling an end beneath her neck as a pillow. The angel cuddled beneath her chin, making
broody noises, its slender beak pricking the skin of her shoulder."Tell me about this pet dog," Arakny demanded.
    Oily sighed. "He's actually a coyote. And he talks. He came up to us outside your borders, in the desert. He offered to come with us and be our-our sentinel, our guard, if we'd let him enter the city. He'd already saved us from the ogres, so we owed him a favor, and he said he was hungry for conversation."
Arakny looked silently into the fire, her face unreadable.
"It's true," claimed Oily, almost angrily.
    "Oh, I'm sure you think it is," Arakny responded in a kindly voice. "Just as you think all of it is. I can accept parts of it. The walkers. After all, I've seen them and heard about them from others. I can accept you were Orphan in an archetypal village. There are such villages here and there." She thoughtfully stirred the fire once more. "I can accept you were given a prophecy and that you've quoted accurately what you were told, though I don't necessarily believe the prophecy itself. I can even accept that you call your bird a guardian-angel, that it talks, sometimes pertinently, and I can admit it looks like no bird I have ever seen. I accept that your 'pet dog' is a coyote. I knew that the first time I saw him. But I cannot accept that he talks, no matter that our ancient legends speak of talking coyotes and bears and even birds and insects. My guess is ventriloquism."
    "Ventriloquism is a shaman's trick," snorted Oily. "I know all about that. Oracle did something of the kind when she used her cavern voice. I assure you--' '
"---Coyote is not a ventriloquist's dummy," said a voice from up the hill. Arakny jumped to her feet. Branches rustled. Gravel skittered down the bank and sizzled across the road like water on a hot pan. Coyote emerged
from the uphill foliage and remarked: "I, too, find myself unbelievable." Arakny sat down abruptly.
"Did you find Sonny?" cried Olly.
    "I did," responded Coyote. "Do you have any water left'? I've had no water for hours."
    Olly rose, took down the bucket hanging from the rear of the wagon, and half-filled it. "Tell me!"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            287

      Coyote stuck his nose in the bucket and lapped thirstily. Arakny got up
from the fire and went up the hill, losing herself in the trees."Where's she--?" Oily murmured.
    "Let her go," said Coyote. "She's hunting for whatever human person or human-directed mechanism is pretending to be my vocal cords. Eventually
she'll realize there isn't one.""So?"
    "So I sent some of my packmates north, one of them carrying the garment you gave me. They moved the horses away from the gangers, quite far away. They dropped your clothing near the horses, where it might be found. I, meantime, went south."
"You found the walkers?"
    "I howled to my colleagues, who howled back their location. I went there and called to them from the darkness." Coyote turned and grinned at her fiercely. "Cleverly, as you suggested. I told them a dark young person had been taken north by gangers. It wasn't a lie. Abasio is young enough and dark enough to fit the description. The walkers went like the wind, too swift for me to follow."
    Arakny returned in a scatter of gravel, her brows drawn together as she stared at the speaking animal. "He talks."
    Coyote stared at her, then barked twice, panting and crossing his eyes to make himself look like an imbecile dog.
"Stop that!" Oily demanded. "Tell me what happened!"
    Coyote uncrossed his eyes and gave Arakny a wicked glance. "I couldn't have kept up with them, they went so fast, but I knew where they were going better than they did. At least, my packmates had howled me which way the gangers were headed, and that they were on horseback. The walkers had to cast back and forth, searching, while I could run directly there. By the time the walkers arrived, I had come up to the gangets and had found the tree where your friend was tied. I let them see me to keep them from seeing him, and that worked well enough. They killed the gangers, not meaning to, then decided you might be with the horses, so they went off to find you. If all went as planned, they found your garment and will believe
you were there, somewhere far north of here.""What about Sonny?" cried Oily.
    "1 chewed him loose and brought him partway. Since we didn't know exactly where you'd got to in the meantime, it seemed sensible to let him rest while I located you."
    "He actually talks!" marveled Arakny. "It's him. He's really doing it. But how can he, with that tongue, that shape of jaw? His mouth isn't made for speaking!"
"Nor yours for singing," snapped Coyote. "Any bird can do it better,


288                              Sheri S. Tepper

but some of you learn to do it nonetheless. So I learned to talk, with difficulty. Have the courtesy not to tell me what I can and cannot do!"
Arakny subsided, but watchfully, as though she still suspected a trick. "You heard the horrible noise'?" Olly asked him.
    Coyote snarled. "1 did. A cry for reinforcements, perhaps? A notice they had found you, or almost'? An attempt to kill or cripple you? That noise would have maimed you if you'd been close enough to it."
    Coyote stuck his muzzle into the bucket and lapped once again. When he had drunk his fill, he said: "I promised your friend I'd be back to collect him. He's not far, but have you something I could eat first? If I take time to hunt--"
    "Eggs," said Olly. "And bread. And the remnants of last night's stew. No, night before last's stew. The one I made the night we met."
    "The stew," he agreed. ':It smelled very tasty when you were cooking it, though I wasn't hungry at the time."
    Oily brought the pot out of the wagon and set it on the ground, where Coyote wolfed the contents within moments and then chased the pot about on the gravel as he licked up the last drops.
    When he had finished, he sat down and licked his jaws for some time, getting the last of the flavor. "Stay here," he directed. "Get some rest. i'11 bring Sonny as soon as possible."
He trotted up the bank and was gone amid a shiver of foliage.
"I don't believe this," said Arakny.
"Believe it or not," Oily replied. "I'm too tired to care."
    Shaking her head at her own disbelief, Arakny cleaned up the pan and the cups they had used, then drove the wagon into a screening copse, where she unhitched Big Blue and hobbled him. Full daylight had come by the time she took her place on the wagon seat to stay on watch while Olly and her angel slept and Big Blue chomped his way along the edge of the trail.

    Abasio had managed to get five or six feet up the rock wall before the Bear arrived, knowing all the time it wasn't high enough to do him any good. When the Bear arrived, that point was made even clearer as the animal reared up to full height and took a good sniff of Abasio's nearest body parts. Even as scared as he was, Abasio had time to think that everyone and everything in the world seemed interested in his sex life.
    He had no time to think anything else before the Bear sat down and said in a conversational voice, "Not eating you."
    Abasio was startled into letting go of the rock. The resultant slide dumped him almost at the Bear's feet.
"Not," the Bear repeated. "Did you think?"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            289

"Yes," said Abasio, for the moment incapable of duplicity.
     "No," said the Bear thoughtfully. "Fish, yes. Eggs, yes. Ant eggs too. Not big animals much." He sighed deeply and drooled a little. "Looking for woman person. Dark hair. You seen her?"
Abasio's mouth clamped shut, and he felt sweat start out on his face. The Bear sniffed. "You know where," he accused. "You not telling me."
     "Two walkers have been looking for a dark-haired woman," Abasio explained. "I don't think they intend to do her any good."
     "Them." The Bear nodded. "I saw them. They look this place, that place. Whuff. Talk funny. Smell funny." He pawed at his ears. "Make noise like-don't know. You hear it?"
Abasio nodded. "It killed some of the swallows."
     The Bear got up and nosed among the feathered bodies. "Poor birds," he said sympathetically. "Go to waste. Not eating them. Feathers prickly. About this girl..."
"What do you want her for?" demanded Abasio.
     "I telling," the Bear growled. "You nervous person. Flesh persons nervous. Right?"
"What do you mean, flesh persons?"
"Like you. Not like those two. Part flesh, maybe. Not all. Smell funny." "I never thought they were quite human."
"Not animal, either. Find girl. I take girl. Where she goes."
     Abasio laughed. "We've already got a coyote who says he wants to serve as our guide."
The Bear sat down again. "Can have two'?" "Where did you intend to guide us to?" "Where she goes."
"Do you know where the thrones are'?"
The Bear pointed with one large paw. "That way."
    "That's probably where she'd like to go. I'm not sure Coyote knows where that is."
    "Coyote knows." Bear wrinkled his nose, as in disgust. "Coyote goes around. Coyote says much." Bear nodded to himself in satisfaction. "Bear
goes straight. Bear says little. Bear says true.""Coyote isn't honest?"
    Bear shrugged. "Sometime. A little." He used the claws on a front foot to comb the hair at his throat. "He good sneaker. Bear good fighter." As though to demonstrate this, he reared up to full height, extended both clawed feet and growled hideously.
    Abasio shuddered. After swallowing deeply he managed to say, "So if we want to get there unnoticed, he'd be better at it'? But if we had to fight, you would?"


290                              Sheri S. Tepper

    Bear sat down, making a whuffing noise that Abasio interpreted as agreement, or laughter, or both.
"How would he feel about your--joining us?"
    The Bear shrugged, a massive heaving of huge shoulders. "Coyote! Today, this way. Tomorrow, that way. Who can tell?"
Abasio slumped. "He said he'd be back to get me."
"He will. Sometime."
    Abasio picked up his soggy sock and went to the shallow pool that lay within the cavern's entrance and overflowed in a trickle that led down a face of stone into the soil, where it disappeared without a trace. He washed the sock in the overflow, well below the level of the pool, wrung it out, and smoothed it on the rock face in the sun to dry.
      "How did you learn to talk?" he asked the Bear, who was licking his
feet with great attention to the furry spaces between the toes. "Mama talks," said the Bear. "Many bears do." "Have you any theory as to---to why?"
"Don't know. Some cubs talk. Bigger animal, more talk."
Abasio thought this over. "You mean, the smaller animals don't talk?" "Rabbits, hardly any. Coyotes, some. Bears, lions, a lot." "Lions?" gasped Abasio.
"Not many yet. But most talk. Buffalo talk. Eagles talk."
    Abasio thought this over. "Coyote wanted to go with us just to hear conversation. ' '
"Coyotes say that."
"You think it a lie?"
     The Bear shrugged once more. "Maybe. Maybe helps woman. Bad things
everywhere. Woman needs help." "Help getting to the thrones?" The Bear shrugged.
"She's had this prophecy about the thrones," said Abasio.
"What's prophecy?"
    "A telling about the future. Someone told her she is to find five champions who'll take her to three towering thrones being gnawed by four something
elses. Oh, there's six set on salvation in there somewhere.""Five what?"
"Champions. People to fight for her."
"She got some?"
    "Me," said Abasio. "Maybe Coyote. Maybe that woman from Artemisia."
    "Me," said the Bear, rearing up on his hind legs to rip the bark from a tree in long, tattered shreds. "Need one more. Find one, stop looking."
Abasio's jaw dropped.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            291

    "You think bears not smart," challenged the Bear. "Can't count one an' one arl' one."
Abasio nodded, feeling himself flush.
    "Bears smart. Coyotes smart. Other animals smart. We don't talk. man says not smart." The Bear made the repeated whuffing noise that Abasio
identified as laughter. "You know, we count-smell.""Count-smell?"
    "Smell whole thing. Part gone, smells different. Something more. Smells different. Count-smell. Not one, two, three. Is thing, more thing, less thing."
    "I suppose that would work," agreed Abasio, who had seen a mother cat with a litter of seven search for one missing kitten. "Smart or not, why would you want to help Oily? You don't even know her."
    The Bear scratched his jaws and head with both front paws, ending with a vigorous ear massage. "Good thing," he said at last. "Like eat fish. Like follow bees. Like--winter sleep."
"You instinctively want to help her?"
    "Yes." The Bear lay down and put his muzzle on his paws. "Coyote here sometime. Sleep now."
    Amazed at himself for doing so, Abasio lay down beside the Bear. If Grandpa could only see him now!


CHAPTER 12

jf Arakny had had some trouble believing in Coyote, she found it impossible to believe in Bear. She was asleep when he came shambling down the hill in advance of Coyote and Abasio. Big Blue scented him first. The horse's frantic whinnying awakened Arakny. She almost fell off the wagon seat when she saw the large furriness sitting quietly on the roadway some distance from them.

    "Not eating you," remarked the Bear between Arakny's shrill ululations.

    "Big black bear," remarked the guardian-angel from its perch on the door. "Not eating you."

    "He's not going to eat you," Abasio reaffirmed, as he came sliding down the bank.

    Big Blue shuddered and stopped whinnying, though he went on snorting, eyes white-rimmed and ears laid flat. Arakny subsided, shamefaced. It had been the surprise that set her off, she told herself. If she hadn't been so startled, she wouldn't have yelled like that.

"Another one!" she blurted.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS

293

"Another what?" asked the Bear, unmistakably annoyed.
"Another talking animal!" she gasped.
    Bear wrinkled his muzzle and showed his teeth, only slightly. "Six animals talk. Five talk human. Two two-legs. Two four-legs. One angel."
"Sorry. 1 didn't mean to be insulting," Arakny managed to say.
    Coyote remarked, "You weren't insulting. Bear just likes to show he can count and then belabor the point. He has no sense of humor."
"Sense humor!" snorted the Bear. "Coyotes laugh at fleas!" "How did you know it was a guardian-angel?" asked Arakny. "Obvious," said Bear. "What else?"
"Two two4egs!" cried Abasio, belatedly. "Where's Oily?"
"Asleep," muttered Arakny. "By the fire."
"Nobody's asleep by the fire!" he cried. "Where is she?"
     Arakny stared stupidly at the fire, gradually coming to herself. "Gone?" she said in disbelief. "Gone?"
"Where?" cried Abasio again.
      Arakny pointed westward, grimacing to herself. "We'll catch up to her
 shortly. She can't have gone too far. She had this--this compulsion.""She found something out?"
     "I think so. She didn't say what. Except that she had to get there, to the Place of Power. Soon."
     Abasio ranted. "We can't let her travel out here alone! It's dangerous. I'll harness Big Blue. You put the grill on the wagon." He took the harness from the peg where Arakny had hung it the night before, calling as he did so, "Which way do we go from here'?"
      Arakny pointed up the canyon. "There's a fork at the top of the canyon up ahead. The left fork turns south, toward Low Mesiko. The right fork continues westward across the prairie. It's been some years since I've traveled to the Place of Power, but I remember the landmarks. Oily will stay on the trail. It's the shortest way."
      "We're short on food," remarked Abasio. "We'd intended to buy food in Artemisia."
      "You're also low on water," said Arakny. "But if we leave now, we'll reach Crooked Wash yet today. We can get food and water there."
      The angel left its perch on the wagon and flew to a branch near where Coyote and Bear were, where it teetered and peered, chuckling to itself over and over, "Big-fur-bear. Tricksy feller." Abasio harnessed Big Blue, and Arakny fretfully examined their stopping place, searching for anything they might have dropped or overlooked, somewhat handicapped in this effort by her desire to watch the animals.
      "Mother won't believe this," she muttered to the world at large, in variations. "Nobody will."

of

1
IV


294                              Sheri S. Tepper

    Abasio mounted the wagon seat, and Arakny climbed up beside him. Bear shambled beside them, and Coyote trotted in the shade between the axles. Neither animal had anything further to say. Time and distance went by almost silently, with only the creak of the harness, the clatter of the wheels, and an occasional snort from Big Blue disrupting the quiet. Their way led gradually upward along the side of the arroyo, a serpentlike trail that came at last over the rim onto level ground and into the blinding rays of the lateafternoon sun. Abasio reached into the wagon and found his driving hat, pulling its wide brim down to shield his eyes.
    Arakny pointed ahead, toward the blue mountains. "Big River is between us and the mountains. You can't see the valley yet. Crooked Wash is about halfway--"
"We should be able to see Olly! How far ahead could she have gone?" "We'll catch up to her," Arakny said. "She'll have to stop to rest, or eat." A mile farther on Coyote leaped into the wagon and went to sleep. Bear disappeared over a ridge and did not reappear for some time and then only at a distance. The angel drowsed on one leg, its head sunk into its feather ruff.
"Coyote told you and Olly what happened'?" Abasio asked Arakny.
    Arakny nodded. "It was probably the relief--knowing you were alive, were all right. She was terribly grieved about not going after you."
    Abasio said, "I thought they would kill me." He swallowed and looked resolutely ahead. "I should tell you about the walkers. Something has been bothering me ever since it happened. I'm almost certain the walkers killed the three gangers without meaning to."
    "Accident," murmured Coyote from behind them. "They killed the men by accident."
"Accident?" questioned Arakny.
    "As though they didn't know that what they were doing could be fatal," said Abasio. "It was like a bull charging someone with his horns, because that's what bulls do! They just did it, as if they were designed to do it. They didn't think about its killing anyone."
"Maybe they didn't care?" asked Arakny.
    Abasio shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't think care is the right word. They intended to question the men further, but by that time the men were dead."
Inside the wagon, Coyote raised his head and sniffed. "I smell smoke!" "Up ahead," verified Abasio. "A town, I think."
    "Crooked Wash," said Arakny. "Since we don't want to draw a lot of attention and stir up a lot of talk, it would be wise to keep our visit casual."
    "No talking coyotes, right?" asked Coyote with a little sneer. "No talking bears?"


295
A PLAGUE OF ANGELS
  '~Frankly, l think we'd be less conspicuous without undomesticated ani-
n~als of any descr, i,ption."
   "I'11 tell Bear, Coyote said, shaking himself awake. "We'll rejoin you
                                                                                      to
atcr."
 He leaped from the wagon and was gone, leaving the two humans go
 on toward the village. As they came closer, the dwellings seemed to emerge
 as though from the earth, a dozen sprawling mud houses arranged haphazardly
 around a dusty square.
 "Crooked Wash," said Arakny, pointing toward the narrow, twisting
 canyon that bordered the dwellings on the south. "Ahead, to your left, there's
 a footpath down to the water. You fill the water barrel while 1 dicker for
 some food." She jumped from the wagon and strode off toward one of the
  dwellings, where she entered its courtyard without knocking.                              ,,
Abasio noted the sign of thistles above the gate. "Wide Mountain Clan,
he said to no one in particular as he drove on to the edge of the arroyo, where he got out to stare at the stone dam that made a small pool below them. Wooden buckets, iron-hooped, stood beside the overflow pipe.
      His presence had been noticed by others, a few here, a few there: women drifting from their houses; children bubbling up from the arroyo; a horseman jogging in from the north; dogs sniffing the wagon wheels, their necks bristling as they growled in the back of their throats. By the time Abasio had brought two brimming buckets up, there were a dozen folk eager to carry water in return for the novelty of talking with strangers.
       It was not long until Arakny returned, several children trailing behind her with string bags and baskets. She opened the wagon door and stowed the contents as the children passed them up to her: vegetables and fruit, corn ~ncal. and meat.
       Arakny's kerchief elicited respectful questions: Did the Wide Mountain ~oman need help? Did the Wide Mountain woman desire cooked food? How [tbout company for their journey? To all of which Arakny replied courteously n(~ and no and no, they were going west for a bit, but the journey was neither ilnportant nor urgent. Just a young dyer being escorted to the western trail, the one that led toward the Faulty Sea.
        They were on their way within the hour. Coyote rejoined them When they were out of sight of the village, and a bit farther on, Bear came from behind a clump of cactus to scuffle along behind, sniffing at this and digging at that, falling behind, then galloping to catch up again.
        "Bear knows a good place to stop for the night," Coyote informed Abasio with a doggy grin. "To your right, ahead, there's a spring and a grove of trees."
~'l can't stop," grated Abasio. "We haven't found Oily.


296

Sheri S. Tepper

      "I'll go looking, sniffing her out, as soon as you're settled," said Coyote.
 "I can catch up to her more easily on my own.""Then why didn't you--"
     "Because I was tired too!" Coyote snapped. "I've had some rest now, so now I'll find her!"
     The day had almost gone by the time they came to the spot Bear knew of, only enough light left to see to the necessary chores of firewood, food, and harness. Coyote and Bear disappeared into the surrounding dusk to find their own suppers and to go look for Olly's trail, so they said, while Arakny made stewed meat with corn dumplings and peppers. She claimed it was a family recipe, and she used the cooking time to give Abasio a lengthy history of the Wide Mountain Clan while the fire crackled and their dinner steamed fragrantly.
     Before their supper was ready, Coyote returned, licking his jaws, to announce that he and Bear had found Olly's trail and were going after her.
    Abasio stood staring after them as they moved off into the darkening landscape, Coyote's nose to the ground, Bear shambling after him. He should go with them. He said so to Arakny.
    "You'd fall on your face," she said impatiently. "It's dark. You can't smell out a trail, and they can. They'll find her if she's to be found. Settle
down. Get some rest. Tomorrow may be harder than today.""Is that an Artemisian saying?"
    "It's a truth of life," she snorted. "Always. In Artemisia as elsewhere." She stirred the pot.
    He sighed, trying to think of something besides Oily. "Does Wide Mountain Clan make the laws in Artemisia?"
    "We don't really have laws. We have justice, which is another matter. Before men went to the stars, I have read they had laws instead of justice. Among us, each dispute is settled on the basis of equity, not upon the basis of rules someone has made up."
"You settle your disputes on the basis of what people need'?"
    "No, on what is needful, not only on man's needs but upon the needs of animals and trees and rivers as well. We are all one. Our needs are one."
    Abasio gestured toward the dark, where the animals had gone. "So Bear could ask for justice from your people'?"
    Arakny flushed, as though slightly embarrassed. "We have persons who serve as representatives of animals or trees or rivers, and we have decided disputes in favor of bears. It would be interesting to have a Bear argue his own best interests."
"You sound very well-regulated."
    Arakny shrugged. "It is not onerous. We make sure all our people have opportunities for study, and child-bearing and rearing, and adventure--"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            297

"And p'nash," said Abasio, in a sarcastic tone.
     "That too," agreed Arakny, grinning at him. "Lots of opportunity for dancing and singing and p'nash."
     Abasio said a few choice words about p'nash, indicting Black Owl first, then most Artemisians by association, and finally Oily because she had
 defended them, the whole explosion surprising him as much as it did Arakny. "You're upset," she said unnecessarily.
    "I'm worried about her!" he cried. "I love her! Damn it. I've loved her since the first minute I laid eyes on her. We've spent days and days together, and I still love her, and now she's just--gone like this."
    "Are you two sweethearts? I know you're not man and wife, so don't tell me that."
"What would you know about man and wife!" he grumped at her.
    "Those from the Faulty Sea, they marry one another. I've watched how they act toward one another."
"Well, what would you know about sweethearts, then'?"
    "I've had a few," she said. "Lovers. We don't just go to the dances and end the evening with a general orgy, you know. That's not what p'nash is, though you seem determined to think so."
    "l don't really. It's just--I love her, and I haven't been able to--and she--"
"You don't know how she feels?"
    "She's... she doesn't feel anything for me, so far as I know. Sisterly, maybe."
    "She feels a great deal more than you think," said Arakny, sleepily. "You should have seen her face when she thought you were dead."
    Guiltily, Abasio thought about that for a long time. He opened his mouth to pursue the subject further, hearing in that instant a soft little snore from the bunk above. He changed his mind.

    Some distance west ot' them, Oily lay rolled in her blanket under a sheltering arroyo bank beside the embers of her campfire, her food packet and water bottle beside her. Late in the night, she awoke all at once, thinking sonicone had called her name. She listened, but heard nothing. There was no sound of bird, no distant yip of coyote. Even the insects were quiet, probably because of the cold. It was the cold that had awakened her. Beneath the glassy heavens, the air had turned to ice! She should have brought another blanket. Failing that, she needed to put some wood on the few vagrant coals that breathed beside her, seeming almost to sigh beneath their ashes as they glowed and faded and glowed once more.
She rose, the blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders, and went up


298                              Sheri S. Teppcr

out of the arroyo, onto the desert, away from her sleeping place toward a patch of dead cedar she had seen before she'd lain down. It showed darkly against the sand in the light of the stars. She caught no glimpse of those who waited there until they rose up on either side of her.
    Abasio and Arakny found the blanket at first light, still lying beside the patch of sage. Coyote, who had brought them there in some haste, pawed at it with an expression of disgust and said it reeked of the smell of walkers.

     Mitty and Berkh were having supper together in Berkli's quarters, served by Berkli's servants, drinking Berkli's wine.
"Ellel's going to do it, isn't she," Mitty said, making no question of it. "Probably," said Berkli. "I saw her going out the gate at sunset with a couple of walkers and some of her people. She had an air of elation about her. I have no doubt she'll return sooner or later with some hapless young woman." He twirled his glass, staring through it. "Sometimes I think Ellel has willed this woman into being. She has created her, by sheer force of determination and desire."
     "I keep wondering why," Mitty mumbled. "I mean, when this shuttle project was first conceived of in my grandparents' time, it made some sense. There really were materials in that space station that we needed, or thought we did. Since that time, however, we've found most of what we need right here."
"Or we've learned to do without."
     "But the project goes on, like some monster set into motion that we can't shut down. Do you really want to go into space, Berkli? Or to the moon? Why?"
     "Why do we do a lot of things? Why did our forefathers come here in the first place?"
    "Why--they came because civilization around them was being wiped out by drugs and disease and monsters. They were faced with retreating into savagery or finding somewhere where knowledge and technical skills could be preserved. They'd heard there was power remaining here, cities remaining here. And there were, of course. Are. And we're sitting on the only fusion power source in the world, one that is automatic and eternal, so far as we know. We can't get into it to check, but, as Ander so elegantly puts it, who cares what's going on inside, so long as the output is what we need." Mitty laughed shortly. He did care, immensely. He very much wanted to know, but several generations of Mittys had failed in their attempts to get into the power source to examine it. "We've done reasonably well by the world, Berkli. We've educated teachers who've educated whole generations of Edgers. Without us, it's possible they wouldn't have survived."


ward a darkly ' those

de the >awed

.~rved

)f it.
ith a
bout
)ung
:-11el
~ of

A PLAGUE OF ANGELS
                                                                                   299 Berkh stared into his wineglass, finding his reflection there among vagrant
glimmers of lamplight. "Do you ever wonder where the monsters came from?"
"Hadn't we always had them?"
       "Not according to Berkli family history. About the time men went to the stars, monsters started to turn up here and there and everywhere. There was one in Urop, a giant water creature out of a lake somewhere. Nessie, it was called. Then trolls began infesting the forests. Big Foots, they were called then. Then came wivems and griffins and dragons. And ogres, eating men! It's all there, in the Berkli family notebooks, each new appearance described."
       Mitty shook his head. "I haven't thought much about monsters, I'm afraid. But then, the Mitty family's always been single-mindedly devoted to the technical end of things. Since there were so few technicians and scientists left, preserving their knowledge became rather a religion with us."
       "Then I wish you'd preserved enough to discover whatever guidance system it was men used when they went to the stars! I know damned well it wasn't a human mind, and 1 don't like this nasty business Ellel's up to!"
      Mitty gave Berkli an astonished look and said offhandedly, "But we know perfectly well what they used! It was complicated, but perfectly within our capabilities. It was earth-based, of course. Transmitters and receivers, widely scattered."
'~Where exactly?"
     "I don't know. Mitty family history lists the names of the places where they were. Cape Canaveral. Houston. But of course, those names don't exist anymore. Our forefathers didn't record locations. Why would they? The~ knew where the places were. They didn't expect places to disappear. The books that might have told us where they were have been destroyed. Our family histories don't include maps, and we ve been unable to find many."                                                    '
     13erkh scowled, his fingers making a rum-atum-atum on the table edge. "Well then, if we could have built a system like that, why didn't we do it'? Why is Ellel looking for this Gaddir female when here s another way to do
  it?"
                                                               t     '

"It's being done this way because we /Bund the plans and specifications
 for doing it this way, and because she's her father's daughter! Look at how
 she's taken over his walkers."
"Which weren't even his!" Mitty fumed. "He was merely lucky enough
to dig them up! Or unlucky enough! What made the man go digging just there, blowing great holes in the ground! Other people had seen those same records. My family had seen them~ None of them had gone digging for androids."                        �


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Sheri S. Tepper

     Berkli smiled behind his hand. The Mitty family had never forgiven Jark for invading Mitty expertise in that way.
     "I find Jark's digging for them easier to understand than why some prcast~-~ll bureaucracy manufactured thousands of android soldiers and then left them in cold storage." Berkli went to the window, seeking movement to relea~e
the tension he felt. "Where does she control the walkers from?" "Why--why--I don't know."
    "Jark the Third gave some to your family. Where do you control from?"
    "I've a control box in my quarters, one set to a specific frequency and particular recognition code. Jark the Third gave it to my father as a gilt. along with a few dozen of the things."
    "He gave Ander's father a few likewise, and my father being gone, he offered a few to me, which I refused on aesthetic grounds, to Jark's great amusement and Ellel's annoyance. Almost as though he was buying us off, wasn't it? Soothing us. Making us think they were only toys, amusements. Of course, maybe he thought they were, after he'd reprogrammed them."
    "No," said Mitty, with sudden vehemence. "No, he didn't, Berkli! 1 know we speak of his having done so, but it isn't strictly true. He couldn't have actually reprogrammed them. No one could. The basic functions are so well protected that Jark couldn't have changed them. The original design provided for a series of abort signals to override the basic functions."
    Berkli turned slowly, furrows of concentration between his eyes. "I don understand."
    Mitty fumbled for an example. "When a walker is about to kill someone, it receives an abort signal, then a command to do something else, such as-oh, go find something. Because they were built to find things, they can do that. They can do something a little less destructive, but they can't do anythin~ that isn't destructive because their fundamental nature is destructive. They're nuclear powered, of course, so they destroy even when they're standing still. Their bodies are shielded somewhat, but their feet aren't. They burn the soil they stand on. Nothing will grow there for at least ten years, which is
long as I've been experimenting, trying to find out if the effect is permanent." "But Ellel touches them."
    "Ellel wears a mask these days. She keeps her arms and hands and body covered. Haven't you wondered why?~'
    Berkli shook his head in dismay. "I had assumed they were more or less harmless."
    Mitty frowned. "No, Berkli. No. Haven't you seen the pathways where they walk? Haven't you heard about one of them killing two children in the marketplace?"
"Two of our children?" Berkli asked in a hushed voice.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            301

    "Domer children. Not Founding Family children, but they could just as well have been mine. Or since you have none, your sister's. Everyone's talking of it."
    "She'll have to call the walkers in!" cried Berkli. "Put them away somewhere. Where they can't do any more damage."
    '!How do you suggest we convince her of that'?" Mitty asked dryly. "Even if we could convince her, how many of the walkers would still be capable of obeying'?"

    Two walkers had risen up on either side of Olly as though they'd grown out of the earth. She'd felt their presence in the same instant they had clamped her arms in steely hands. She'd started to cry out, but something had pinched her on the thigh, and the effort to make a sound had become, all at once, beyond her. She'd known it was a drug, something they had injected her with, something that made her body an unfeeling, limp bundle of flesh.
    Then they had wrapped her in something and carried her away between them. She hadn't been able to raise her head voluntarily, but it had bobbed as the two trotted along, up and down, allowing her to catch a glimpse of the horizon against the stars, a glimpse of the coals blinking slowly in the dark. Then everything disappeared, and there was nothing she could identify. The ceaseless bobbing was making her sick. She had shut her eyes and tried to concentrate on breathing.
    They could kill her. Any resistance on her part, and they would kill her. Not meaning to, but because they didn't know how not to. The safest course was to endure silently, to answer any questions they asked, if and when they did so.
    They showed no signs of doing so. Their motion was continuous and direct. They did not swerve or backtrack. They were taking her to some specific place.
    Gradually, as the night wore on, feeling came back into her body and her muscles spasmed involuntarily, fighting against one another and those who hctd her.
~'Drug wearing off," said a cold voice.
    "Put her down," said a cold voice, perhaps the same voice. "We wait hctc."
    She was put down, not gently. Her ankles were bound with something n~ctallic, so her fingers told her when she felt of it. It had no links or end. She was effectively hobbled, like a horse, able to sit up, probably even able
I~~ stand and walk a few steps, but unable to run away.She shivered.
"Cold," said the voice. "Cover her."


302                              Sheri S. Tepper

    Something crisp and crackling was wrapped around her. Not a blanket. It was too light and too rustly for a blanket. More like paper. Whatever it was, it worked. She was immediately warmer.
    Silence. She wasn't uncomfortable. Her hands were free, she could turn over, she could adjust the covering. The need to pee was an immediacy, too long delayed. She stood up and stumbled away from the two crouched figures,
barely visible in the night, dragging the covering with her. "I need to pee," she said, hoping they understood. They did not respond, did not even seem to hear her.
    She dared not go too far. When she had finished, she found a soft spot and lay down again, as far from them as she dared go, uncertain where they actually were. Somewhere close, her hair told her, prickling at the back of her neck. Nothing she could do about that. At least they hadn't hurt her.
They didn't even seem interested in her.Exhausted, she fell into a doze.
    When she opened her eyes, she was still wrapped in her covering, a silvery foil that crackled when she moved. Wrapped in similar bundles, other forms sprawled around her. As she moved, she saw a person sitting cross-legged beside her, eyes peering through the holes of a glittering mask.
    Olly started to ask, then decided not to. She would not ask who, or where, or why. Instead she merely sat up slowly, pulling the filmy wrapping with her for warmth, regarding the woman before her with watchful judgment.
     "What's your name?" the masked form asked in what Olly took to be a woman's voice.
"Olly Longaster."
     "We've been hunting for you for a very long time, Oily Longaster." The woman rose. "The name is a pseudonym, of course, but no matter. We were
 becoming afraid you didn't exist!""We--who?" Olly asked.
     "We Domers. My name is Ellel, by the way. Normally, I'm addressed as Madam Domer."
"Not Elly?" Oily asked, moved by some devil of disrespect.
      "No. Not Elly," the woman said with displeasure. "Quince Ellel. Ellel
 is my family name. Your family name is probably Werra."Olly's mouth dropped open. "My--"
     "Your family name. Werra. I'm fairly sure of that, though it's remotely possible you came from one of the other lines. There are only three it could have been. Werra, Seoca, or Hunagor. Qualary tells me Seoca is still alive. Hunagor's been dead a long time, as has Werra, but reproductive cells can be preserved."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Olly.
"Oh, come now," the voice sneered.


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303

Oily did not care for the sneer. It trusted not at all.
    "My name, Oily Longaster, was given me by a friend," she said in her most dignified voice. "I know it is not my own. However, I do not know what my own is, or if, indeed, I was ever given a name.
      "Well, for ancestors' sake, girl, where have you been?" The woman
laughed, as at an ugly joke. "They must have called you something!" "Orphan," said Oily, "was what I was called."
     The eyeholes turned to peer at her. "You were in a village? An archetypal village?"
     Oily nodded slowly, regretting that she had let this be known. Though she didn't know why, she felt it would have been better to have kept the matter to herself.
     "By the Dome," the woman swore. "So you were there after all! When we didn't find you there, I thought it was a false lead." She laughed again, ~t dreadful snigger. "I actually sent a dozen of my creatures to dispose of
 the Bastard who gave us your blanket. I don't like liars.""You--you killed Bastard?"
     "They killed him if they found him," she said carelessly. "Which they probably did."
      Oily, thoroughly confused, drew the wrapping more closely around herself. '~The things that captured me? Do they work for you? What are they?"
      "Devices. Partly a kind of flesh. You didn't think they were human, did y~uT'
      "1 didn't think they were anything to do with me. It would be kind of you to explain who you are, who you think I am, and what is all this business of searching and finding."
      "But of course, my dear," Ellel said in a gloating, self-satisfied voice without an ounce of kindness in it. "I'm sure you've heard of the Place of Power because everyone has. We Domers are from the Place of Power, and for a number of years we've been looking for a Gaddir child with a particular talent."
"What is a Gaddir? Why do you want this person'?"
       "A Gaddir is--well, we believe it is someone who inherits a specific genetic makeup, a genetically transmitted talent. And we need that talent for a little project of ours."
"Which is?" Oily breathed, angered by this amused, patronizing tone.
       The woman laughed, a brittle laugh, like breaking glass. "Why, to remedy old wrongs, to put things right. To resume the governance of earth!"
       "Why me?" Oily pleaded. "I know nothing about governance of anything."
       "One wouldn't imagine you would! But you're from the proper family, no doubt about that!" Her hand reached toward Oily but withdrew without


304                              Sheri S. Tepper

touching her. "It's really nothing to do with you, girl. Nothing you need to think about or worry about. A simple errand. I'll verify you can do it, and when you've done it, we'll pay you well. We'll only need to borrow you for a few days." The woman turned away, saying carelessly over her shoulder, "A few weeks at most."
    The words fell into Olly's mind like keys into a lock. Part of the pattern. Part of the whole thing. Still, it would be wise to verify. "Borrow me for what?" she cried.
    "It's far too complicated to discuss. There's no time now. When we're sure you're the right one, we'll tell you all about it."
    The woman went to one of the sleeping persons and kicked, not gently. "Up, Qualary. Get the others up. Time we started for the Place."
    "Excuse me," Olly called, "but I was forcibly removed from the company of my friends. They will be wondering what happened to me. If you don't mind..."
    Her voice trailed off in response to Ellel's sudden change of attitude, the half-crouch, the hands extended like claws.
"We don't need your friends!" the woman snarled. "I need them," snapped Olly, without thought. "Don't be annoying!"
    The woman snarled a command at one of the walkers who turned and pointed his hand at Olly. She went down like a felled tree, rigid, every muscle spasming uncontrollably. The world turned hazy around her.
    "I said we didn't need them," said Ellel in her former voice, with a dismissive nod at the walker. "Though I can't imagine why you'd want to,
you'll be back with them in due time. Nothing to concern yoursell' about." "Be still," said a voice.
    Oily thought it was herself speaking to herself, as one did at times of danger, remembering childhood warnings, restating them under stress. Then she thought it wasn't her own voice, for it went on, repeating the phrase in a whisper.
    Painfully, she turned her head to see Coyote lying behind a clump of sage, his nose flat against the earth.
"Don't worry," he said. "We'll be nearby."
    His image disappeared in a flash of light from inside her head. She turned her head to see where the woman was, and when she turned back, there was only a clump of sage, no Coyote. She told herself solemnly that she had dreamed him. She had seen a coyote-shaped rock. She had made up the voice. He hadn't been there.
    But if she'd imagined him, wouldn't she have imagined him saying something else? Something more comforting? Perhaps something about rescue?
She had no time to go on with the thought. The two walkers who had


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captured her now lifted her and placed her in a hammocky sling on a pole, then carried her away with great rapidity toward the west.
      At least, she told herself dizzily, she was going in the right direction. And she'd been given a label for who she was. She tried to follow that thought to some conclusion but lost it in the general dizzy haze. It was impossible to think when she was being swung and jostled like this. Her head ached. Her stomach felt as though it would heave at any moment. She shut her eyes

      They stopped for food during the morning. Oily felt too nauseated to eat, though she drank some tea that the woman called Qualary offered her. Olly tried to ask about the walkers when Qualary returned for the cup.
"Those--those walkers who caught me. Did someone create them?"
      The woman, who had seemed friendly enough before, now turned away abruptly, hushing Olly with a whispered, "Shhhh."
      "What is it, Qualary?" Ellel called from some distance away, where her own meal had been served to her in privacy. She ate with her mask pushed up onto her forehead, her back turned to the rest of them.
      "Nothins, ma'am. I tripped over a r0ckl" [h~ w9man 3ai~l in fib c~prc3sionless voice.
"Pick up your clumsy feet," the woman said. "Is she all right'?" "Quite all right, ma'am. Perhaps a little sick from the motion."
      "That's nothing," said the voice carelessly, with a cackle of laughter. "Feeling sick is the least of her worries."
     Oily shut her mouth and resolved to ask no more questions, not to talk o� her friends, not to ask about the walkers. Anything she said wouM be wrong; any question she asked might do harm.t They were going westward. For the time being. that was enough.
The .~un was midway down the sky in the west when they stopped next.
       pleadingly that she had to go and was allowed to go off behind a with only Qualary, serious-faced and silent, as a guard. The woman
         pond when Oily used her name, though she offered a sYrnniathetie hand when Oily staggered on her way back.
    "Not much farther," the woman murmured without moving her lips. "You'll get a chance to rest soon."
"Hurry her up!" called Ellel, when she saw Olly tottering along. "May I walk the rest of the way?" Oily asked. "I'd feel better." "My dear, you couldn't keep up," sneered Ellel.
    "As soon as I get the kinks out of my legs, I can walk as fast as any of you humans are walking," Oily said stubbornly.
    Ellel bowed, a mockery. "Why then, walk! And she won't fall behind, because if she does, she'll be taught how to keep up!"
Oily had hoped that by walking she might be able to spot Coyote, or Bear,


306                        Sheri S. Tepper

or even her guardian-angel, though if it had really been a guardian-angel, it should have been with her when she was captured! She saw no sign of them. Qualary and one of the other women walked just behind her, guarding her.
     Very shortly they came to the western edge of the tableland and descended by a well-traveled path to walk through golden trees and great bunches of purple asters in a river valley old enough to have been much flattened and silted in. Soon they came to the river itself, and the narrow plank bridge that crossed it, the whole suspended on ropes that swayed rhythmically as they walked across. When they emerged from the belt of trees on the far side, it was to look upward through eroded canyons toward another tableland high above them.
    By early evening they reached an upward-sloping road, one so wide and smooth it had obviously been built for vehicles. Around the second curve, the vehicle appeared, parked in a wide graveled place, a truck much like those that carried goods between villages and cities, though this one was shinier and newer than any Oily had seen in Whitherby. At their approach, the driver, who had been lounging beneath a tree down the slope, scrambled back to his machine and adopted an attentive manner.
    Olly's escorts unceremoniously bundled her aboard; the others, except for the walkers, climbed into the truck with muttered oaths and complaints. It was damned near nightfall, they said. They were sore, they said. They had walked too far. They grouched and murmured to the sound of the engines as the vehicles went groaningly upward. Once in a while they could hear Ellel's voice raised in tuneless song from her seat by the driver.
    "Got her, got her, got her," she caroled. "Got her to go, to fly, off to the sky. Oh, got her."
    Beside Oily, Qualary shifted her weight uneasily. When Oily looked up, she saw the older woman watching her with an expression of heartfelt pity.

    Coyote led the way, sniffing out the trail the walkers had left. Bear roved right and left, to rout out any dangers that might be lying in wait. Behind them, Abasio and Arakny drove steadily westward across the mesa, down the same trail Orphan had traveled, across a shallow in the the i'iver beside the narrow footbridge, on through the trees and meadows and up the far road, arriving a little before dawn at the place the truck had been parked the afternoon before. Coyote and Bear sniffed their way around the place, up and back, before returning to block the progress of the wagon and bring Big Blue to an abrupt halt.
    "What?" snarled Abasio from the wagon seat. They had been moving since dawn of the previous day, they had not even stopped to eat, and he was hungry, tired, and furious with Oily for running off and getting captured.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            307

"From here, better go afoot," said Coyote.
"Where is she'?" demanded Arakny.
     "Up there," said Coyote, pointing with his nose. "Inside the wall. They'd done her no harm this far. She was walking with them until they got into a vehicle, right about here. From what's left of the smell, the vehicle went up the hill about sunset."
"It was walkers who took her?" demanded Abasio.
     "Who captured her, yes. But it was humans who brought her here. Some men. Some women."
     "So now what'?" demanded Arakny, climbing down from the wagon seat to stretch her legs. "I don't imagine we can get over that wall."
     Bear whuffed, that peculiar noise he made that Abasio equated with laughter. "Go under," he said. "Not over."
"What does he mean?" Arakny asked the air. "Under!"
    Coyote licked his nose. "He means what he says. We can't go over the wall, but we can go under it. That means we have to leave the wagon here and go on on foot. Sneakily." Coyote licked his nose again.
    Arakny glanced eastward where the sun just edged above the horizon. "It'll soon be full light. There'll be traffic on this road. If we don't want
the wagon seen, we'll have to hide it somewhere.""Easier said than done," snarled Abasio.
    "Easy done," said Bear. "This way." He strolled across the road, back the way thcy had come, then disappeared behind a clump of pifions up a side canyon.
    With some difficulty, Abasio got the wagon turned around and drove Big Blue after Bear. A flat wash of gravel extended past the pifions and up the side-canyon, around an outcropping of stone, and into a good-size pocket of unexpected greenery. Evidently the little side-canyon had a spring in it, for the verdant growth extended halfway up the slope, hidden along its entire length between buttresses of bare stone.
    Abasio climbed to the top of the wagon. Even from this vantage point, the road up the larger canyon was quite invisible.
"What do we take?" Abasio demanded of Coyote.
"Bring horse," said Bear.
"Fo(~d," suggested Coyote to Arakny. "If we have to wait."
"Wait for what?" she asked.
Coyote merely licked his nose. Bear scratched himself.
    Muttcring angrily, Arakny filled two canteens and made up a packet of broad, dried meat, and fruit while Abasio unhitched Big Blue and put a bridle on him.
Coyote looked at Bear, his head cocked, one ear up, one down. "Enough," said Bear.


308

Sheri S. Tepper

The angel cried woefully as it flew to Arakny's shoulder.
"Good angel," said Bear. "Can come."
       "No, no, no!" cried the angel. "No, no, no!" It flew from Arakny' shoulder to a nearby tree, from that up the slope to another, then disappeare into the tumbled rock.
Abasio cried out and started to climb after it.
"Let it go," said the Coyote. "It's gone to find Oily."
       They stood for a time looking aimlessly in the direction the angel bar gone before Arakny turned with a sigh and asked, "Where are we going'?"
       "Through the forest," said Coyote, peering up and down the road to be sure no one was coming. "Follow me."
      They went across the road, over its outer edge, and down the embankment into the canyon, where juniper and pition grew thickly, fogging the air with fragrance. Here, if they were careful, they could walk unseen by anyone traveling the road unless that person looked directly down on them from above. The bushy little trees grew too closely to the ground tt) walk beneath them.
      By the time there was much traffic on the road, the sun was halfway toward noon and they had come through the shorter trees to walk among pines and spruces whose branches hid them from above. It was cooler in this more verdant forest, though the ground between the trees was still the sparsely grown pinkish gravel of the plains.
      The farther they went, the farther the road was above them, winding along the south wall of the canyon. From time to time they could see the glimmer of sun on an ascending vehicle.
      "Must be a market day," remarked Arakny. "Everyone's headed up."
     "Could we join the market'?" asked Abasio.                    ayt~e sneak in through
  the gates?"
     Arakny shook her head. "One of my more vivid memories of this place is the identifying crystals that were fastened to people's bodies, like jewelry. I recall welded-on bracelets or collars or ear studs. Without such identification, no one gets in."
    Abasio subsided. Since they had found Oily gone, he had tried to think not about her but only of what he was doing at the mt)me~t. He could be an effective rescuer only if he didn't panic, and the thought of her being in the hands of the walkers made him panicky. He remembered too well the confrontation between gangets and walkers, the sounds he had heard from behind the tree. Even though Coyt)te said Oily wasn't hurt, as long as she remained with those creatures she could be.
    Bear and Coyote knew where they were going, although for the moment, Coyote was rivaling Bear in being laconic. Neither one of them intended to reveal the destination, probably wisely. If one or more of them were captured before reaching wherever they were going, it would be better if the humans


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            309

could not tell their captors any specifics about where they were headed. No one would think of asking the animals.
    Coyote had said "under the wall," which was suggestive. It implied what'? Tunnels? Caverns? Old worked-out mines, full of rotting timbers? Or a bear hole, a muddy burrow full of the roots of trees'?
    Abasio sighed and walked, trying to keep his mind only on what he was doing.
    Arakny. meantime, was putting one weary foot in front of another, wondering why she was here, what she thought she was doing, whether she ought to be here or someplace else. Certainly, invading the Place of Power hadn't been in the orders the Wide Mountain Mother had given her. "Go spend some time with the girl and find out what she's up to" had been the assignment. Perhaps even now there were clanswomen scouring Artemisia, looking for her. Well, no. Word would soon filter back from Crooked Wash that she had been there yesterday. They would know where she had been headed. Trackers from one of the men's societies would soon find where she had come to, but until the whole matter became clearer, they would take no action except that of following her trail.

"You may leave us, Qualary," said Quince Ellel.
    They were in Ellel's quarters, Qualary and Oily just inside the door, Ellel moving restlessly about a few feet from them.
    "l'd be happy to stay and help, ma'am," said Qualary, moved both by pity and despair for the girl beside her.
    "I said you may leave us!" said the golden mask, in tones of deadly thrcztt.
    "Ma'am," murmured Qualary, backing out the door. feeling Olly's body sag against it as it closed. She went down the corridor, past the turn. In a m~~ment she heard the door jerked open, then slammed shut again. She went back and put her ear against it, hearing Ellel's voice rising and falling, like a oh;rot, like a litany.
    "Got you, got you, got you," Ellel sang, over and over. "Got you, girl. No matter how you run, how you twist, how you hide, found you."
    "I didn't twist and I didn't hide," said Oily. "I was on my way here when you took me."
    The eyeholes glared. The hands came up. The mask was lifted, and it took every jot of Olly's self-control not to scream at what she saw there. It was Burned Man all over again, only worse. The eyes were all right. The lips were terrible, but complete. But as for the rest, the riven cheeks, the corrupted nose, the forehead blistered and eaten like the surface of the moon. The twisted flaps of ears. The horror of the oozing chin and the neck...


310                              Sheri S. Tepper

    "Don't take me for a fool," the horrid lips said, sucking on the words. "Oh, girl, don't take me for a fool. It suits me to let the others think I'm less than ! am. They don't believe I can do what I'm doing, and so much the better. They won't try to stop me until it's too late. Now. We need to talk about you. After all this time I'd been hunting you, I caught you coming here. Why'?"
    "Curiosity," Oily replied, carefully unfocusing her eyes as she had learned to do with Burned Man. Some things simply should not be looked at. "The Oracle in my village gave me a prophecy about the Place of Power. I was
to answer some questions here, so I came here to do it,""What questions'?"
    "I don't know yet. Even if ! knew the answers, which I'm not sure that I do, that doesn't mean I know the questions."
    Ellel began a restless movement, to and t'ro. After a moment, she took the lid from an ornamental jar, removed a glassy oval, thrust it into her mouth, and bit down sharply, making crunching noises. Her pupils dilated. Her breathing slowed.
Oily moved toward a chair.
    "Not there!" Ellel snapped. "That's my father's chair. Over here. On this." She pointed out a much-carved and painted bench that looked uncompromisingly uncomfortable and proved to be so. Too weary to care, Oily sat, her head sagging onto her folded hands.
    Ellel moved around the cluttered space, muttering to herself, looking into cupboards, under pieces of furniture, behind draperies and tapestries. Once in a while she asked a question. Several times she slapped Oily with her gloved hand when Olly did not answer immediately. The questions were silly, meaningless, as though Ellel were only passing time, as though she thought someone might be listening. Time wore on, but Ellel's search went on, every corner, under every piece of bric-a-brac.
    Oily dozed and woke again at a slap across her face. Ellel was before her, holding her shoulders.
    "Time," Ellel said, her voice flat and unemphatic. "Everything secure. No one hiding in here. None of Mitty's little devices. Now we'll find out if you're right for the job!" She tugged Olly erect, pulled her across the room to a locked door, unlocked it, pushed it open, pulled Olly through into darkness.
"Minute," she said. "Minute. No lights. Can't do the job with no lights." In a moment she returned with a lighted candle, which she carried down a dusty corridor, through another door, and put upon a table near the doorway. The little flame barely illuminated the dust, the curtains around the huge bed, the window across the room.
"Brought her, Daddy," said Ellel in that same flat voice. "Got her."


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Silence.
No. Not quite silence.
Oily felt her hair rise at the back of her neck, felt her skin creep.
     "Good, good, daughter," came the words, a whisper, a mere crepitation from behind those dusty curtains. "Oh, that's good, Princess."
     "Got to check, of course," Ellel went on. Her tone was coldly implacable. "It would be foolish not to check."
     She gestured Oily to sit in the chair by the bed, and Olly fell into it bonelessly, so tired she would have sat anywhere.
     The metal bands that slid around her arms and legs were fastened before she knew they were there. Ellel stooped before her, eye to eye, peering intently at her from a terrible madness and an equally terrible purpose. Ellel was letting her see the purpose, letting her know there would be no random or erratic behavior, no way of escape. Ellel smiled, and among the ruined teeth, Olly saw death waiting.
     "This is an input console," Ellel said, pointing to a device beside her. "Information is fed through here into the helmet. The helmet comes down over your head. That is the output console. If you can understand what comes in, you can make a signal come out. The signal goes to the engines. I'm
telling you this so you'll understand. I've told them all.""All?" Olly whispered.
    "All the girls my walkers have found. All they've brought to me here. All who have sat in this chair."
"Where--where are they now?"
    Ellel went to the window and opened it. Cold night air came in, raising the dust in clouds, sweeping the sill.
    "Out there," she said, gesturing into the night. "Out, through the window. There's a pit in the rock below this window. The crows roost there. And the buzzards. Coyotes come there--I hear them singing. None of those who
went out this window could do what has to be done."Olly's head sagged.
    Ellel whispered. "I'm not using the full array. I'm not sure we could disconnect if I used the full array. I'm only using enough to test. Just to test."
    Oily felt the helmet come down. She felt points pressing at her scalp, then pain, a terrible, searing pain that was everywhere, simultaneously. She opened her mouth to scream, saying to herself she had to scream, to let the pressure in her head escape, and in that instant the pain ended, all at once, as though a door had opened inside her to let it flow through and away.
    A question asked itself. This was moving and that was moving and the other thing was moving, too, this thing at that speed and the other thing more slowly, so how should this thing move to meet that one?


Wi-

312                              Sheri S. Tepper

    In that way, she told herself, knowing the answer the way she had often known answers. It was like catching a ball. It was like seeing the pattern the dye blocks would make before they were printed or knowing what Bastard's motivation had been in talking with Fool. It was the same kind of problem: A joined to B joined to C yielded X without question, incontrovertibly. One needed to move in this way to arrive at that point. It was simple.
    Other problems presented themselves. It didn't matter. No matter what the problems were, she could solve them. There was no pain. Only certainty.
    The helmet moved. She was aware of the pain again, for the briefest possible moment, then it was gone. The bands released her arms, her legs. She put up her hand and found blood on her face.
    "I want to wash my face," she said calmly from a depth of despair. Everything was clear. Clear and unbearable.
"Go, go wash your face," Ellel said, pointing the way.
    As Oily got up, staggering, for the moment unable to move, she heard Ellel babbling behind her.
    "All we have to do is plug her in!" cried Eliel. "It's finished except her. Almost. Only a few days left. Then we'll go, Daddy. Just like you
wanted to. See the moon, see the stars!""Good, that's good, daughter."
"You want to see her, Daddy? You want to see her?"
    While Olly stood, wavering, Ellel pulled the curtains roughly apart. 'I'he movement set off an explosion of dust in the dimly lit place. Oily gasped
and coughed. She knew the smell. Part of it, at leasi. But only partly. "Here she is. Here she is."                     '
    Oily turned and saw what lay on the bed. Ellel went on talking with the creaking voice, but Olly paid no attention alter that.

    Berkli responded to a request from Ellel that he come to the Dome after her morning ceremony. Her enormous excitement and his recent conversation with Mitty made him more apprehensive than he otherwise might~have been. Though unwilling to acknowledge it, he had to admit she had sounded victorious. He waited until the walkers left the Dome, then dame slowly through a side door, slowly, hearing Ellel's voice before he saw her stalking slowly toward him across the mosaic floors. For a moment, all he could think of was the big cats he had occasionally seen from the walls, stalking their prey as she stalked now, shoulders high and eyes intent.
    When she came up to him, she stopped, drawing herself up to her l'ull height and uttering a peculiar noise somewhere between the crow of a cock and the bray of a trumpet. She gestured toward the people behind her, two of Ellel's female servants supporting a young woman between them. The


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            313                      ~

young woman looked desperately tired. There were small bloody wounds on her forehead and horror in her eyes.
     He had expected to feel something if and when this happened, but he was unprepared for the rage that overtook him. Ellel had done it. She had actually done it. Unforgivably, the bitch had done it.
     He took a deep breath and held it, willing himself to be calm. He walked bc~ide her, smiling. He listened, smiled, listened again while Ellel spoke softly, cogently, while she told him she had found the girl, had tested the ~firl. The girl could guide the shuttle. All was as had been planned.
     He felt his control slipping. She preened while his anger welled. Face flushed, neck swollen, but still smiling, he excused himself to turn and walk away from her.
     Oily, sagging between her two guards, saw him go, saw Ellel poised behind him, the line of her back like that of a serpent, ready to strike. Her eyes glittered through the mask, the damp snaky tendrils of her hair waved around her mask. Medusa, Oily thought irrationally. Oracle had told her tales about Medusa, and here she was.
     This was more of the pattern. Just as she had known the meaning of that terrible chair, so she knew the portent of the total pattern. The only child had come to the right place and her destiny was high indeed! Stratospheric! Extraterrestrial!
    She swayed between the two women who were holding her, who had held her all during the strange ceremony in this terribly strange place. There had been more walkers than she could count, the smell of them like a nauseating gas. making her so dizzy that most details had been lost upon her. Ellel's voice reverberating in this pillared hall had been only sound with no sense. These rituals and confrontations had no meaning, but then, no more meaning was necessary. All the veils of fatigue, fear, and hunger did not hide the central fact, the core of certainty.
    Now, drawn away from the women by Ellel's hand, she followed blindly, like a toddler too weak to resist.
    ~'Come along," said Ellel, moving rapidly across the vast space and into a seemingly endless corridor. "I want to show you to my colleagues. My dear colleagues, who have supported me so faithfully all these years. Qualary ! Come with us."
    The woman trotted after them as they went down curving hallways and ramps, through doors, past cavernous, noisy spaces, and into a kind of foyer, where two men were seated in massive chairs facing one another as they played a complicated game with white and black pieces on a figured board.
    Oily, breathing shallowly, staggering from being dragged so quickly along, saw them without seeing them, her mind scurrying about like a mouse seeking a hole. Behind the men was a window, and through the window she could


314

Sheri S. Tepper

see something huge that she had no label for. A tower? One tower inside another'? It made no more sense than the rituals had done.
    "Gentlemen," Ellel said in a gloating voice. "Mitty. Ander. I'd like to introduce you to the last surviving Gaddir!"
     The man addressed as Mitty turned slowly toward her, one hand holdin~
a gamepiece that sank slowly toward the table. "The old man is dead. then?'~ "I mean besides him," snapped Ellel "No," Mitty said flatly. "Not possible."
"Tell me your name, girl!" demanded Ander of Oily.
"Oily Longaster," whispered Oily.
Mitty laughed. "Hardly a Gaddir name."
    "Wen'a!" Ellel blazed. "No matter what she calls herself, the tissue sample says she's Wen'a! Her ability says she's Werra!"
Mitty gave her a quick, almost frightened look. "Her ability---"
    "Really, Ellel?" Ander commented, twisting his mouth into an appreciative smile. "Here's our wonderful Ellel telling us she was right all along!"
    "Isn't she always'?" Mitty asked in an expressionless voice as he swept the white gamepieces from the board. Ander followed his example, the table gathered the board and pieces into itself and folded into Mitty's chair.
    "W'ell," said Ander, nodding toward Oily with a meaningless smile. "How nice that you've joined us. Particularly just now."
    "1 was given no choice," said Olly in a stubborn, childlike voice she did not recognize as her own. It was a voice on the edge of tantrum, teetering into hysteria. "I was--was--"
    Mitty gave her a look, admonishing, warning, what? She couldn't tell~ but she swallowed her words and was silent.
Ander chuckled. "No. Our Ellel doesn't give any of us much choice."
      "This young woman looks tired to death," said Mitty, calmly, objectively.
He gave Ellel a long look. "I suppose you've had her up all night." This was so near the truth as to make Ellel mutter angrily. ,
    Mitty spoke to Ellel, but his eyes were fixed on Olly's. "She needs rest. She needs fi)od. She'll do you no good if she falls ill, Ellel. Send her oi� with Qualary. Let her get some sleep and some breakfast. You'll want her at the peak of her--ability, won't you'? Didn't Werra's plans specify as much? It seems to me I remember something of the kind. And now thztt she's here, we can take our time to discuss how matters should go."
Oily dropped her eyes. He was talking to her, telling her something. Ellel spoke with only slight annoyance. "How thoughtful of you, Mitty. By all means." She turned toward Qualary. "Take her home with you, Qualary!" She dismissed them both with a gesture. "Mitty and Ander and I have things to talk about."
Qualary took Oily by the shoulder to lead her away.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            315

     Ellel's strident voice reached them as they neared the door. "Don't misplace her, Qualary."
"No, ma'am," said Qualary doggedly.
    "My walkers will make sure you don't," Ellel said in a razor-edged whisper. "They're watching you, Qualary. And you, Oily Longaster. You can't take two steps without their seeing you, nor three without their catching you!"
    She paused, then laughed as she saw Qualary's expression. "Why, Qual~lry! You don't like them, do you?"
    "It's--sometimes hard to get my work done with them around," murmured Qualary, bending her shoulders and back, bowing her head, groveling a little, just a little, for groveling pleased Ellel mightily.
    "Oh, my dear, they won't interfere. They'll simply be sure our guest doesn't wander off. Or that you don't let her out of your sight."
    "Yes, ma'am," said Qualary again. She bowed her head even more submissively and waited until Ellel had turned back to the others before she drew Oily out into the corridor.
    "What was that thing through the window?" Oily whispered, pointing over her shoulder.
"That's the shuttle," Qualary answered quietly. "A kind of spaceship." So that was a shuttle. Somehow, she hadn't expected it to look like that. She had thought it would have wings, like a bird. "What are they going to do with it'?" she asked. She knew. She only wanted to hear the words.
      "Fly away." Qualary laughed chokingly, a bitter sound, making fluttery
motions with her hands. "That's what they say.""Where?" Olly breathed.
    "I only know what they say," Qualary replied, giving her an impenetrable look. "Can you walk?"
    "Rather than be carried by those things," Oily said, "I can walk, yes. I like them no better than you do."
    "Hush," the woman said, putting her fingers on Olly's lips and glancing sidewise, to see who might have heard.
    "But I do want to send a message to my friends," Olly said stubbornly, moving Qualary's fingers away. "They'll be worried about me."
    Qualary shook her head, leaned close, and whispered, "I have no way to scnd a message to anyone outside the wall. Ellel would have to do it."
    Oily felt her eyes overflow, tried to blink back the tears with no success. "I'm so tired."
    Qualary, distressed, wiped the tears away, whispering, "You've been up all night, just as Mitty said."
    Oily opened her mouth to tell of the wildly disordered apartment where she had spent the night; of that terrible face beneath a shoddy too-small


316                        Sheri S. Tepper

crown, which should have been laughable but wasn't. It had seemed a kind of madness. Oracle had said something once about madness: The only difference between a futile madman and an ~/.fective tyrant is power and will. Ellel's vision of herself might be mad, but she had the power and the will to make it come true. What could she tell Qualary of this? Nothing that would do any good.
    Dismayed at Olly's pallor and her silence, Qualary nudged at her. "You haven't slept?"
    "No," Olly replied, falling back on simple complaint, simple needs, simply stated. "And I haven't had anything to eat or drink. And I do have to let my friends know where I am."
    "Well, then, food and rest can be had at my house." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "And I have a friend who can send a message. Maybe."
    They left the precincts of the Dome and went into an ordinary street, not unlike the streets back in Whitherby, except that it was thronged with blackly glittering walkers who watched with redly gleaming eyes, heads swiveling as Qualary and Olly went by. They went into Qualary's house, an ordinary house. Looking dazedly out the window, Oily thought it a banal setting for the creatures, swirling like eddies in the aftermath of a flood, their bodies moving aimlessly while their eyes kept this house under purposive observation.
"Do all of them belong to Ellel?" Oily cried, on the verge of hysteria. "All the ones you see out there. Artder and Mitty have a few, but they never use them. Berkli has none. He hates them. But then, Berkli is a doubter." She fetched a pillow, helped Oily lie down on the sofa, and covered her with a soft blanket.
    Berkli had been the man routed from the Dome. "What does Berkli doubt?"
    "Oh, he doubts everything. Doubts the Domers should have ever left their towers by the seas to come here. Doubts they should have bothered with the shuttle at all. Doubts they'll ever get the shuttle finished. Doubts they'll get the guidance system they need to fly it."
    Oily had no doubt they had already found their guidance system, but it was obvious Qualary didn't understand the implications. "Why do they want to go?"
    "To the space station? They say there are materials in the space station that they want."
    Olly had heard that during her previous night's experience. "They say l am a Gaddir."
    Qualary rubbed her forehead. "They say so. ! don't know exactly what that means."
"Do you think I am a GaddirT'


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                 317

     Qualary pivoted on one foot, a swinging motion, back and forth, back and forth, as though perhaps the motion helped her think. "There were three Gaddir families. Hunagor died long before I was born. Werra died when | was just a teen. Tom says old Seoca is still alive, though nobody outside Gaddi House has seen him for ages."
     "Ellel says I'm a Werra. Could my mother and father both have been from this Werra family?"
     Qualary shook her head, confused. "Girl, I don't know. None of them talk with me; they just talk around me. All I know is what I overhear."
    Oily sighed. "I've seen the shops the Domers run. I can figure out what they do, how they live. But what do the Gaddirs do?"
    Qualary shrugged. "I've asked my friend Tom--he's a Gaddir--but all he does is make jokes. The Gaddirs don't say what they do. Or did."
    "Someone here sends people to burn books. And change the names of things."
      "People speak of that in the marketplace, but it isn't the Domers who do
it. I'd have heard about it if they did." "Somewhere here are thrones." Qualary shrugged. "I don't know."
Oily sighed. "Thank you for telling me what you do know, Qualary." Qualary wrung her hands together. "It's because I know how you feel. I really do. Sometimes with Ellel I've been so~so scared,! And when the walkers are around, I just freeze. I hate feeling like that, and the only time I feel even halfway safe is when I know exactly what's expected, what I have to do. I thought--I thought the more you knew, the easier it may be for you. I don't want anything to go wrong. When things go wrong, people get hurt."
    She made a sound of distress, bowing her head to hide her eyes. Then she sai~l, "You must be starved."
    She went into the neighboring room, where Oily heard at first agitated steps, a few muffled gasps that might have been sobs, then noises that were gradually quieter and more purposeful. She had almost fallen asleep when
Qualary returned bearing a tray that she placed on a small table by the sofa. "Scrambled eggs," she said. "Green pepper sauce. Pition muffins." "You're very kind," Oily murmured. The smell of the food awakened her slightly, and she sat up to nibble for a while in drowsy silence before
asking, "You've never heard anything about five champions, have you?" Qualary shook her head.
"What about six people or groups set on salvation?"
    Qualary, buttering a muffin, answered without hesitation. "The six set on salvation are the Sisters to Trees, the Guardians of Earth, the Artemisians, the Northern Lights, the Sea Shepherds, and the Animal Masters."
Oily was amazed and showed it. "The who?"


318                              Sheri S. Tepper

    "The six groups set on salvation, dedicated to saving the earth. I've heard there are others elsewhere, but those six are the ones we trade with, in the marketplace here."
    "I met a Sister to Trees," Oily offered around a mouthful of eggs. "And 1 know some Artemisians. I've heard the Artemisians mention the Animal Masters and the Guardians, but I don't know what the Guardians do."
    "They're mostly involved with water and soil, with stopping erosion and cleaning up pollutants. The Northern Lights run ozone plants. The Sea Shepherds govern fisheries. The Animal Masters run breeding farms, set hunting quotas, and hunt down poachers--though of course the Artemisians do that too. It was the Animal Masters who salvaged zoo and farm stock after men went to the stars, and it is they who bring the camel caravans across the desert from the west."
    Oily started to ask about talking coyotes and bears, then bit her tongue. Any such information given to Qualary could get back to Ellel. It would be unfair to ask Qualary to keep secrets. Instead, she yawned. The food had drawn her blood away from her brain, and she was suddenly overwhelmingly drowsy. "I'm sorry," she gasped. "I'm so sleepy."
    "Lie down. Sleep." Qualary rose. "I'll be here when you wake." Looking down at the weary woman, she thought it was the least, perhaps the only thing she could promise.


CHAPTER 13

~sk, dreamed Oily to herself, one only child.

She walked in a dark place, her hands held by a person on each side of her. These were her parents, she knew. Father. Mother.

"Where are we going'?" she asked them.

    "We're there," they said, both at once, with one voice. "Here we are."

    P~nd they were there, where the three chairs were, tall chairs, gray and ancient, their arms and backs carved with beings whose bodies were twisted into curly words. Mother went to the left-hand seat, and Father to the seat in the middle. Oily was all alone.

    "Here we are," the ones in the great chairs said. "Here we are, child. These are the thrones."
    "What do you want with me?" she cried. "Why am I here?"

    "We need you, child. You were born because we need you to do something for us."

"I don't want to!" she cried. "I want to go away with


320                              Sheri S. Tepper

Abasio. I want to go to the Faulty Sea and see the stilt houses. I want to travel to Low Mesiko. I want to... want to..." She wept in her dream. "It's not fair."
    "There's a way," said the right-hand chair. "There's always a way. Everything has happened before. If not here, elsewhere. If not now, then. Every question has been answered before."
    The right-hand chair was empty. She wanted to get up next to Mother and Father, but it was too tall to sit in.
"It's too big for me," she said. "It towers."
"Yes," they agreed. "It's huge. It's old. It's not for you."
    She laid her hands on the seat. It felt old and powerful and wise. Everything was there, in the chair. Everything she needed. And it connected to everything else, everywhere.
    "The end is in the beginning," said the chair. "To the weak, succor; to the strong, burdens."
Then they were gone, all of it was gone, and she was merely asleep.

A knock at Qualary's door.
"Tom!" Qualary cried, ~'hen she had opened it. "V~'hat br/ngs you here?"
    He had a strange feathered thing on his shoulder, not quite a bird. "I understand you have a houseguest," he said, smiling at her.
    "Where's my Orphan?" said the leathered thing, turning its bright black eyes this way and that, stretching its ruffled head from side to side, clacking its rapierlike beak. "Where's my Orphan?"
    "Where did you hear about her?" asked Qualary, her eyes on the leathered being.
    "Oh, someone saw you walking along the street." He strolled into the room and gazed at the young woman asleep there, her face peaceful.
      "There's my Orphan!" said the leathered thing, fluttering to the back of
the sofa and settling there with a chortling sound. "My Orphan." Tom said, "So it's true. Well. Do you know who she is?" "I know what Ellel says," she murmured. "She's a pretty thing," he said softly.
"You had some interest in her?" Qualary asked in a worried voice. "Now, Qualary"--he smiled again--"of course I do. Isn't this supposed to be the missing Gaddir child? The rumored child? The child who is going to solve all of Ellel's problems?"
    "I think she'll be safer if you don't take any interest in her," whispered Qualary.
    "She would have been safest if Ellel had taken no interest in her, but perhaps you're right." He looked out the window at the passing hordes.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            321

~What do you suppose would happen if we tried to take her over to Gaddi House right now?"
    "We'd be stopped!" she said, distressed. "Ellel has told the walkers the girl is to stay here. Don't do anything to set the walkers off, Tom! Please! You know what they can do!"
    "Well, of course," he said softly, "I wouldn't endanger either of you." He touched her cheek, smoothed the furrows between her eyes. "Ellel will know | was here. If she asks why I came, tell her 1 found the girl's pet bird, and I was curious about her. Don't worry over it, Qualary. Everything will work out."
    "I do worry about it!" she cried in an agonized whisper, looking over his shoulder at the shifting masses of walkers. "I keep watching them. See the one on the corner, jerking and twitching, just like the one did that killed the children!"
He patted her face and was out before she could say good-bye.
    When he reached the street, he was stopped almost immediately, one walker holding him, one questioning him.
    "What are you doing here?" the walker asked, with a peculiar buzzing and rattling in the metallic voice, as though some part were not firmly c~nnected.
    Tom also noted the slight tremor in the hands that held him. Well, he told himself, assuring himself he was calm, if they'd all been built about the samc time, it stood to reason they'd all break down at more or less the same ti~n�. Which, if his luck held, wouldn't be for a few days yet.
    '~I came to see Qualary Finch," he said in a quiet, authoritative voice. '~But she has a guest, so I left."
~'What are you doing here?" the walker asked again. Hc repeated his words, still quietly. "What are you doing here'?"
    He thought for a moment, feeling the hands tighten painfully upon him. "F~11�I wanted me to come here," he said at last. "Ellel wants me to be friendly with Qualary Finch."
Still the tremor, but the hands loosened. "What are you doing here?" "Ellel wants me here."
    The hands released him, the figures stepped back. As he walked slowly and carefully away from them, he heard one of them asking the other, "What are you doing here?"

    Abasio, Arakny, and their guides arrived at the top of the canyon late in the morning. They had passed the separate mesas with their deeply riven


322                              Sheri S. Tepper

canyons. They had come by scree slopes dotted with juniper below deeppocked, horizontally striped walls of gray and ochre. They had looked up at crenellated rimrock rising like shield walls and, behind that, vast tablelands thrusting massively against the sky, layer on layer on layer, a gargantuan earth-cake cut through to show its very foundations. Gradually, the scarred cliffs had closed in on either side, pink and pitted pillar stones fronting shadowy side-canyons, the wall before them looming taller the closer they came. Now they were only ants crawling at its base, unnoticeable ants against the immemorial stone, feeling their own insignificance with every step they took.
    This was true of Arakny and Abasio, at least. The animals did not seem in the least awed. Their destination was, as Abasio had suspected it might be, the entrance to a mine. Not a mine, Coyote said. No, Bear agreed. Nonetheless, it looked like a mine, a cobwebbed hole framed in tilted timbers, damp-mottled and gray with age.
    Inside they found a sandy cave, both warm and dry, with a pen where horses or burros had been kept, complete with a manger and a stack of sweetsmelling hay.
"Horse," muttered Bear, pointing with one paw.
    Obediently, Abasio turned Big Blue into the pen, removed his bridle, and filled the manger.
"Water," grunted Bear, from behind a buttress of stone.
    Abasio found Bear with his nose in a bucket set beneath a dripping crevice in the moss-grown wall. When Bear had finished, Abasio took the bucket to the pen and hung it by its handle over a post where it would not be kicked over.
"Now what?" asked Arakny. "Now you wait," said Coyote. "For what?"
"For somebody to come."
"Who?"
"I imagine Herkimer-Lurkimer." Coyote grinned.
      Abasio sat' down on a chunk of stone and asked, "Would this Herkimer-
Lurkimer by any chance be your hermit?""I said my hermit died."
"That's what you said. Was it a fiction'?"
      "It was the story of my life. My story. Bear has a story, and Rabbit, and
King Buffalo. Stories don't have to be absolutely true, just essentially true." "All of the storied beings can talk?" asked Arakny.
    "Of course. How can we explain things to men otherwise? How can we convince them of our intelligence, our brotherhood?"
"No," remarked Bear. "Brothers too close."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            323

     Coyote laughed. "Cousinhood then," he agreed. "We are at least distant cousins."
     "My people don't need explanation!" Arakny exclaimed as she sat down next to Abasio. "We understand the kinship of life without animals talking human talk!"
     Bear shrugged, a very human gesture. "You tell stories. Children listen. In stories, animals talk."
     Abasio said, "He's right. We all tell animal stories where the animals talk. Why do we do that?"
"Same as trees," said Bear. "Same as mountains. Cousins."
     Arakny nodded slowly. "I suppose it would be harder to kill off a whole species if you were accustomed to having conversations with it. Easier if you depersonalize it first." Seeing Coyote's laughter, she demanded, "You're not a mutation. What are you?"
"A hungry animal, waiting for Herkimer-Lurkimer."
"Are you flesh? Or are you like those walkers?" Abasio asked. "Flesh," said Coyote. "Oh, yes. Flesh."
     "Hungry flesh," remarked Bear. He went out into the daylight and wandered off among the trees, where they saw him ripping up a dead stump to get at the grubs within.
     "Me too," said Coyote, slipping out into the light. "Be patient. We'll be back."
     Arakny opened her packet of food and offered it wordlessly to Abasio. "What are they?" she asked.
    He took a piece of bread, bit off a mouthful, and chewed it thoughtfully before he answered, "My guess is they've been created to talk to men. So men will stop killing them."
    "But we had stopped!" she spluttered through a mouthful of bread and cheese. "We've reduced our numbers appropriately. We kill only what we need as part of the food chain."
"Still, we could forget again," Abasio commented.
    "That's the problem with civilized behavior," said a voice from behind the pile of hay. "It has to be constantly reinforced if you want it to persist!"
    Both Abasio and Arakny jumped to their feet as the hay pile slid forward, toppling away from the wall. From behind it appeared a round-faced fellow brushing hay from his hair.
    "Tom Fuelry," he said, grasping Abasio's hand firmly between his own. ~'Sorry I'm late. I knew you were coming, but I wanted to check on the girl
before I met you.""Oily?"
    "Is that her name? She's unharmed. She looks a little tired, but otherwise quite all right."


324                              Sheri S. Tepper

"She's safe!" cried Abasio, clutching at Arakny.
     Tom shook his head. "I didn't say she was safe, I said she was unharmed. At the moment, none of us is safe."
     Abasio stepped away from his companion, becoming angry as suddenly as he had become elated. "But Coyote said--Herkimer-Lurkimer. What was all that about'?"
     "Herkimer-Lurkimer? That's one of Seoca's jokes. It's what he calls himself sometimes. He'd like to have met you himself, but he can't manage
 the ladder anymore. He's waiting up above.""Coyote?"
"Coyote has his own way in. Come along."
     Wordlessly, they followed him behind the pile of hay where a narrow door stood open. Tom stopped to pull the hay against the opening before shutting the door, hiding the way they had come. Then he led them down a dimly lit tunnel with branches extending on either side.
Arakny made a noise as though she'd been struck.
     Abasio skidded to a stop beside her. She glared into one of the side-tunnels where shadowy forms stood against the wall. The closest one regarded them from half-opened eyes, its feet dangling limply beneath long skins.
     Fuelry came back to where they were standing. "Sorry. I should have warned you. It's deactivated, don't worry about it."
     Abasio went into the side-tunnel for a closer look. The thing they had seen was only one of many. "Who? What.'?"
     Fuelry fidgeted. "This is a bit-part storage tunnel. The one you're looking at is a Spinster Sister. The one next to it is a Faithful Sidekick, then there's a Sycophant and a Termagant/Gos~p. Bit-pan players."
    "From archetypal villages'?" Abasio asked. "But I thought the people there were real!"
    "Most of them are," soothed Fuelry. "But many of them require ancillary bit-pan players, and it's often difficult to fill the role. We don't think it's fair to ask someone with larger capabilities to spend their lives with half a dozen lines of dialogue and no extemporaneous actions." He nodded toward the Spinster Sister. "She needs only housecleaning and cookery skills plus a few hundred basic words and phrases. 'Dinner's ready, John. Wipe your feet, John. Close the door behind you, John. Are you busy, dear?' She's basically interchangeable with the Author/Artist's Wife/Mistress model except for the sexual-compliance chip."
"We'?" asked Abasio. "Who is we'?"
    "We people in Gaddi House," said Fuelry. "We people who set up and manage the archetypal villages. Among other things."
He led them rapidly along the wider way until they encountered a vertical


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            325

shaft lit at the top. He gestured Abasio to lead the way up the metal rungs protruding from the stone.
    "There are lifts," he said. "But they're huge, and we'd have to turn the power on. I'll come last. To catch you if you get dizzy." He bowed to Arakny.
    Arakny did not get dizzy, though she had to pause twice to rest on the way up. At the top they stepped out into another tunnel, furnished with a complicated door that Fuelry opened with a slow scream of rasping metal.
    An old man sat outside in a wheelchair, holding out his hands to Arakny and Abasio while the young woman at his side watched him as a mother watches a child.
    "Welcome to Gaddi House," he said. "I'm Herkimer-Lurkimer. Thank you for taking such good care of my Orphan."

     Qualary was told to bring Oily to the meeting room at the Dome for a briefing.
"Briefing?" asked Olly. "What's a briefing?"
     "It means informed," said Qualary. "They'll talk at you. If you'll take my advice, don't say much. Just listen. It's probably better to say you don't understand something than to ask questions about it."
    "Better to appear stupid than contentious, is that it?" Oracle had said that about olden times, that the basic strategy of women and slaves had been to appear stupid rather than contentious. Those in power would allow stupidity bccause it verified their unflattering view of women and other races.
    Qualary gave her a startled look. Indeed, that was it, but it had taken Qualary years to get to the point of understanding it. Olly's perspicacity was somewhat disconcerting.
    ~'I wish I weren't so dirty," Oily said, looking at her clothing with disgust. ~'1 stink of smoke and sweat."
    "We're about the same size," offered Qualary. "I'll find you something clcan to wear while you have a bath."
    While Olly rejoiced in the novelty of washing herself in warm water inside a warm house, something she had last experienced at Wise Rocks Farm, Qualary went through her own garments and selected a shirt and trousers in sunset colors. Olly, gazing at herself in the mirror, relished the unfamiliar silkiness of the fabric in a color that made her skin glow and showed off the shining darkness of her newly washed hair.
    The transitory pleasure lasted only until they reached the street. While Qualary expressed surprise that the mobs of walkers had been reduced to a l'cw hundred, still those hundreds parted only reluctantly before them, red


326                              Sheri S. Tepper

eyes following every step they took. The air was redolent of them, a mephitic stench that made Oily gag. She swore under her breath.
    "Just a little way," Qualary murmured, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze. "They won't follow us inside the Dome building."
    And they did not. Once inside, the air became clear; the corridors were empty; the reception room itself appeared airy and orderly. The four Domers she had seen previously---even Berkli, who had mn away in such a hurry-waited for her in one comer together with a scatter of other people to whom she was not introduced. Their dress alone separated them into four groups, one of which wore long, patterned sleeves that could have been done by no one but Wilfer Ponde. Or herself.
"Domer Family members," muttered Qualary, without moving her lips. "Sit there," Ellel directed Olly, pointing to a chair. She was standing commandingly still, one arm extended. Obviously, this was the Ellel her own people knew best. Calm. Efficient. Knowledgeable.
    Oily sank deep into a boneless chair while Qualary faded into tl~e draperies along the wall, her head lowered. The Four Family heads sat behind a table, as though they sat in judgment.
    At the right, Ander held a full glass in one hand and an almost-empty bottle in the other. Next to him was Ellel, then Mitty, with Berkli at the left. The other Family members stood around and behind these four, many of them staring curiously at Olly, who returned the stares, examining their faces, keeping her own expressionless. When uncertain how to behave, Hero had told her, give the impression of uninvolvement or affability, for threat begets threat and anger begets anger. It was much the same thing Oracle had said: Be affable. Be stupid.
Olly's attention was drawn from them when Berkli asked in a kindly voice: "Have you had something to eat? Have you had a chance to rest?" Ellel snorted. Olly simply nodded.
    "Now that you're settled in," said Ander in a much-slurred voice, "we thought it would be a good idea to let you know what we es-espect of you." He cocked his head and waited. Oily looked attentive, but said nothing.
    "That is," he murmured indistinctly, put off by her silence, "if you're interested."
    Ellel laughed harshly. "Interested or not, she will be told what is expected."
    Murmurs from those in attendance, some approving, some not. A few of the older persons present shook their heads at Ellel, as though she were guilty of some breach of manners. One or two threw similar glances in Ander's direction, but he merely filled his glass once more and drank thirstily.
Ellel did not seem to notice. She leaned forward in her tall-backed armchair


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            327

and held out one hand, finger extended, a pointer that said more clearly than words, attend.
    "When men went to the stars, they left behind them a space station, moon settlements, at least one partially finished shuttle, and, it is said, a starship under construction. In addition, enormous quantities of equipment and supplies were left here on earth, much of it carefully stored. Some of us believe our kindreds' outward migration was intended to be only the first wave of a continuing process.
"We believe that we, too, may go to the stars."
    "If we wish to do so," Berkli interrupted with a studiously impersonal. expression on his face, as though he dared her to object.
    She's talking to her people, not to me, Oily thought. It's them she has to convince. As for him, he's like a cat, teasing a snake to make it strike. Did he know what poison the snake carried?
    Ellel turned on him with elaborate forbearance, every word chosen carefully to sway those in the room to her own opinion. "Of course, Berkli. But even if we choose not to migrate outward, we have already chosen to continue man's upward progress here on earth. The first step in either alternative is to take a look at the space station and the moon settlements to see what vital information and materials have been left for us there."
    She turned back toward Oily, as though expecting a comment. Oily contented herself with silence.
    Ellel waited. When it became apparent that Oily intended no comment, she went on. "The shuttle is virtually complete except for its guidance system." She waited again, this time fingers tapping impatiently.
    Olly looked at each of them, seeking a clue. What did they expect her to say? That she'd be delighted to serve as their guidance system? She felt hysterical laughter building up inside herself.
"I'm sure she understands," said Berkli quietly.
Olly nodded at him gratefully.
    The Ellel onlookers nodded similarly and smiled. Good. The system understood what was expected of it. Some few others, standing in comers, frowned in dismay.
    "Werra tole us 'bout you," said Ander. "You"--he took a deep breath and pulled himself together--"you're the one. The only... child."
"The one what?" asked Oily, totally forgetting Qualary's warning. Ellel's face flushed, her mouth twisted, but before she could speak, Berkli rose and put his hand on her shoulder, restraining her. She shook him off, angrily.
    "Ellel," Berkli said softly. "Surely she has the right to know what Ander means." He leaned across the table, saying, "The residents of Gaddi House


328                              Sheri S. Tepper

used to mix freely with the people here in the Place. My father told me of seeing Hunagor. Many of my generation remember meeting Werra and Seoca. It was Werra who said that a Gaddir child would have the ability to guide ships in space."
     Did he think she didn't know? Well, perhaps he didn't know about the chair in Ellel's quarters. Perhaps he hadn't been told about all the other girls who had sat in that chair. She started to speak, only to be quelled by a warning glance from Berkli as he went on:
     "Some years ago, Ellel obtained cell samples from one or more of the Gaddirs."
"From Werra," Ellel confirmed, "and Seoca."
     Mitty spoke up. "So if Ellel has established that you are of their lineage, I think you can rely on that information. And that's what Ander meant when he said you were the only Gaddir child. You may not be the only one in existence, of course, but you're the only one we've found."
     Berkli sat back, every line of his face warning her. The room simmered silently, a pot just on the boil that might, with only a bit more heat, boil over. If it did, Oily thought, it would disclose something terrible below that steamy surface.                                                         o
     Mitty coughed and said in a conciliatory tone: "I'm sure none of us expects you to guide the ship tomorrow. ! would expect you'd need... a time of familiarization. You'll need to see the ship itself. You'll need to talk with the engineers. If you have this ability."
     "She has it," said Ellel, an edge of anger audible in her voice. "I've told you that !"
    "But she is unpracticed in using it," Mitty interjected, with a meaningful look at Oily. "If you were expected to guide a ship today, would you be able to do it?"
    So. That was where they were tending. Mitty and Berkli were conspiring to give her time. Not escape, which they might be unable to arrange, but time. She shook her head firmly and spoke clearly. "No. Not safely. To do it safely, I will need more information."
    Silence again. Ellel's eyes snapping with anger. Mitty keeping a quiet face. Everyone else watching, waiting.
      "What sort of information'?" asked Berkli. ~'Since yours is a Gaddir talent,
I suppose you'll need information from Gaddi House?" "I will," said Olly, reading him correctly. "Never!" snarled Ellel.
    "Then I can't do the job," said Oily, keeping her voice flat and unemotional.
    The others murmured among themselves. Ellel's golden mask glared at Oily as though to pierce her through. Oily managed to return/ the look with


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            329

one that was virtually mindless. She had allies in this room, but she would not keep them long if Ellel knew it.
Abruptly, Ellel's face cleared. She had thought of something.
    "Well then," she said, in a voice that was little more than a keening whisper. "I shall take this matter under advisement. It may be possible for her to go into Gaddi House. Under the proper conditions. I will think it over. ' '
    Oily took a deep breath, ready to assert herself again, only to see from the comer of her eye a tiny motion of Qualary's hand. It was a warning. Best she not break Qualary's role again. Don't appear contentious. Though she wanted to scream defiance, she stayed quiet. They couldn't kill her if they needed her to guide their ship! They couldn't hurt her seriously.
    But it would be dangerous to say that. She threw another sidelong look at Qualary and found the woman's eyes fixed pleadingly upon her. She bit down her anger and said in the childlike tones she remembered using when Oracle had been grumpy, "Oh, I'll help ifI can. I think it's all very exciting."
    Several bystanders dressed in silks with fluttering sleeves smiled and murmured to one another. Ander nodded drunkenly, apparently satisfied. Berkli and Mitty carefully did not look at each other.
    "Take her away, Qualary," Ellel snarled. "I'll let you know later about where she can go."
    "Ma'am," bobbed Qualary. She came to put her hand on Olly's shoulder, and they departed as they had come.
    "You did very well," murmured Qualary as they went down one of the long curved corridors around the Dome. "You didn't give her much of a chance to get mad at you."
"Is there some way I could talk to Berkli?" Olly asked.
"Berkli! Why?"
    "He may have useful information, and he might tell me things Ellel won't. I'd like to talk to him."
    "Trying to talk with Berkli would be a good way to get yourself killed! Ellel hates him almost as much as she hates Gaddi House. Berkli has no power. The walkers belong to Ellel. He doesn't dare cross her. Not him, nor Mitty either!"
    Despite this warning, when they emerged into the air, they found the walkers going away, flowing toward the gates in the wall. Only a sparse dozen remained to watch them.
    Inside, Qualary went to the window, her mind busy with a thousand suspicions brought about by the sudden departure of the others, the threats Ellel had made.
    "You never told me about last night. What happened while you were with Ellel'?"


330                              Sheri S. Tepper

    Once more Oily tried to put words to the experience. Once more she failed. "I can't... it's hard to describe," she said. "It was just---confusing. Her place is like a... I don't know. It's sort of like Oracle's cavern, all cluttered up with meaningless stuff."
    "I know," said Qualary, sitting beside her. "I know. I'm her housekeeper. I know exactly what it's like."
    Oily threw up her hands. "As for her, she's strange. What she says she wants and what she really wants may be different things. I kept feeling she was lying to me, but also lying to herself."
    "Did you mention where you came from?" Qualary asked. "Did she ask anything about your childhood? Did you tell her anything about your growing up, who took care of you?"
    Oily tried to remember. "She knew 1 came from an archetypal village. l'd already told her."
"Did you tell her anything about it'?" Qualary persisted.
    Had she'? Oily tried to remember and couldn't. "I must have told her something," she confessed. "1 was so tired, and so hungry, and she kept..." She couldn't describe it.
    Qualary shook her head, trying to make the motion seem casual. "It probably doesn't matter," she soothed. "It probably makes no difference."

    In the archetypal village where Olly had grown up, day had succeeded day as though nothing at all had happened. A new Bastard had come to take the place of the old. There was never any shortage of Bastards, as Drowned Woman remarked---or of Fools, said Oracle, for they soon had another one of those as well. The new Orphan was only a baby, kept so shut away by the Wet Nurse that the villagers did not know if it was a boy or a girl.
    Oracle missed having an Orphan to cosset with biscuits and to plague with good advice. Drowned Woman spoke of her fosterling longingly from time to time. Burned Man recalled her as well, saying what a quick pupil she had been, how exceptional her understanding. Remembering in what company the Wet Nurse had arrived, none of them spoke of "their" Orphan in her hearing, though it was likely she overheard them anyhow. Wet Nurse, they all soon confirmed to one another, was a sneak.
    Winter came with early snow, and the peddlers told of disease among the cities. This telling was reinforced by the farmers who supplied them with food. The cities were dying, they said. Then the cities were dead. No more gangets.
    Hero went out to see what was happening in the world and returned with a look both stern and sad on his face. "Woe and pity!" he cried. "For the cities are no more."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            331

     Burned Man sat in his front window and wept as though he would never stop. "All those children," he cried. "All those poor children."
     "Come now," said Oracle impatiently. "Hero says most of the children who were born healthy are still healthy, and as for the rest, you knew very well they were headed toward such an end! That's what got you in this fix in the first place!"
"But--but--" he cried.
     "There is no but!" she exclaimed. "If a man leaps from a high cliff and breaks his legs, do we say, 'But it isn't fair! But it isn't right! But someone should have figured how to leap from cliffs without breaking bones! But all the cliffs should have been leveled long ago!' We don't blame the council or the mayor. Instead we say the jumper is a damned fool and lucky that he isn't dead. Surely the end is in the act! And if your gangets go to the songhouses and take drugs when they know it causes disease, surely the end is in that act as well."
     "They don't mean to die!" he cried. "And what of the innocent man or woman your jumper pulls over with him when he goes!"
    "Few ever mean to die," Oracle replied. "And no one ever means to be pulled over by someone else, but those ends are also in the act. Who one chooses to be with is as important as what one chooses to do. Danger is communicable, like disease."
"1 blame the Edgers!" he shouted. "They could have--"
    "Man believes what he wants to believe," sighed Oracle, "and he usually wants to believe someone else is to blame. So blame who you like. You might remember what you yourself told Orphan. There are not enough Edgers in the world to have fixed the cities. There are no acceptable solutions to some problems!"
    Still, Burned Man would not be consoled for days. He spent his time between fury and tears, until at last both emotions wore themselves out and
left him much as he had been before.It was then that the walkers came.
    They came in great numbers in the early morning, along the road and from among the trees on either side of the village, and down the trail that ran beside the waterfall. They found Oracle asleep in her cavern and Drowned Woman playing with the Water Babies, they found Burned Man fixing his breakfast, they looked for Hero but missed him, for he was off on a quest. The three they found they took over the hill with them and down into the valley of the Crystal, where they took old Cermit from feeding his chickens and Farmwife Suttle from milking her cow, and then with all these folk who had succored and loved Orphan, they went at great speed into the southwest, returning to the Place of Power whence they had been sent.
At nightfall, Hero returned to the village to learn from Miser and Artist


332                              Sheri S. Tepper

and Ingenue what had happened there and that the black-helmed creatures had sought him, Hero, as well. Long into the night he sat at the flap of his tent, thinking heroic thoughts. At dawn he rose, mounted his horse, and left the village without a declamation, without a stated quest. For the first time in his life, he had encountered a situation he could not meet alone. He knew of other villages, of other Heroes. He intended to go to them, all of them, and ask for help, for there was a maiden to be rescued. A maiden he knew.
    During the long night, he had been surprised to discover that knowing Orphan made a definite difference.

    By an inside route through Gaddi House, up certain shafts and across catwalks above otherwise untraversable areas, it was possible to reach the roof, a vast graveled area broken here and there by glass-roofed openings that let light into the gardens far below. It was old Seoca, Orphan's HerkimerLurkimer, who suggested Tom take their guests to this vantage point. It was from behind the roof's low parapet that Tom showed Arakny and Abasio the Place of Power, pointing out shuttle and Dome and explaining how the Domers had arrived in the long ago.
    When he had finished, Abasio said, "Everything looks calm down them, very peaceful. But earlier, you said none of us was safe. What did you mean'?"
    Tom leaned upon the parapet and pointed downward. "See those walkers moving about? A lot of them recently left, but there are stilLenough of them to kill us all. One word from Ellel, and it would be like a scythe cutting grain. Men would fall dead, harvested."
    "I've heard the sound they make," said Abasio. "From miles away, but the sound still pained me and killed birds."
    Tom went on: "Think how many of them there are! Thousands, getting older every hour. Wires corroding, circuits wearing, crystals fracturing. Even pseudoflesh eventually sickens and dies. His Wisdom thinks these creatures may have been stored away in the first place because they were considered dangerous or unreliable. Otherwise they'd have been used for something, wouldn't they? Well, what happens when their systems break down?"
    Arakny and Abasio considered this in silence, which Arakny eventually broke to say, "No one has told us yet what this woman Ellel wants with Oily."
      "The shuttle is almost complete. It lacks only a guidance system to be
able to carry them out, away, into space." "They think Olly has one?" "They think she is one." "I don't understand--'?" "You mean--?"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            333

    Both of them shouted, heard themselves shouting, guiltily hushed themselves.
    Tom said, "According to what I've been told, certain persons of the Gaddir lineage have the mental ability to do this thing. Have you ever heard of idiot savants'?"
    Arakny had. "They are persons without competent mentation who nonetheless have a single outstanding talent, as for example creating representational art, or rendition of music heard, or instant calculation."
    Tom nodded. "The Gaddirs I speak of are savants with normal mentation. They can instantly establish the interaction of seemingly unrelated facts. One facet of this talent is to compute the relative motion of two or more bodies in space. It's a talent many people use when they play games. They see a thrown ball, and they jump to catch it, unconscious of the calculation that has taken place in computing the speed and direction of that jump. Gaddir
talent is the same, only vastly more powerful." "So they'd put Oily in this ship~" "Install," said Tom very quietly. "What do you mean, install?"
"I mean, put wires in her head," said Tom. "Install--"
    Arakny and Abasio shared glances, hoping they had not heard him correctly, knowing they had.
      "--but it will only work if she's willing," contin~,t'~t Tom. "According
to His Wisdom, she must be willing.""Does she know this?"
    "Parts of it. I doubt she knows she'd be wired into the ship, though she may know even that by now."
"If she knew, why was she in such a hurry to get here?" cried Arakny.
    "If she doesn't know, is she to be allowed to find out about it?" Abasio demanded in an angry voice.
    "Necessarily, yes. Since she has to be willing, she has to know all about it. Though they are holding Oily prisoner, in a sense she holds them as well."
    "She only came here, or started for here, because of her prophecy," grated Abasio.
"What prophecy was that?" asked Tom.
Abasio quoted it, in full.
"Ask one only child,
Ask two who made her,
Ask three thrones that tower, Gnawed by four to make them fall. Find five champions,
And six set upon salvation,
And answer seven questions in the place of power."


334                              Sheri S. Tepper

      ~'Well, as to the three thrones that tower," said Tom, "they are here.
Gaddi means 'throne.' This is Throne House.""And what are the thrones'?"
    Tom looked over their heads, as though seeking revelation. "I don't know, even though I've gone with His Wisdom when he goes down to the throne room, where they are. What he sees may be different from what I see. He
sometimes tells me the thrones were made before men were made." Arakny said, "Are they things? Or beings?"
    Tom sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "They look like thrones-great, gray chairs, tall and imposing. But they're carved all over with... creatures. The chamber where they are is misty or smoky, sometimes more than others, and it's often hard to see the thrones. I know Hunagor is sitting in one of them, and Werra is sitting in another, and the third one--well, it's
more or less empty, though it has old Seoca's name carved on it." "Hunagor? Werra?"
"Two of His Wisdom's kinsmen. They died some time ago."
"The thrones are crypts, then. Coffins?"
    Tom shrugged. "One could say that, I suppose." He shook himself. "lf you've seen enough up here, His Wisdom is expecting us."
    They returned the way they had come, oppressed by the vast shadowy spaces inside the great house, wondering at all this empty space housing so few, for when they asked, Tom replied that there were only a couple hundred Gaddirs, in space enough for thousands. There had been thousands once, he said. Long ago. When they were needed.
      "But there are only two hundred now, and that includes the children and
our agents," he said, "who do His Wisdom's will, out in the world." They were taken to join the old man on his terrace.
    "I've shown them the Place," said Tom. "I've answered their questions, so far as I could, but they want to know about the thrones."
    "Of course they do," said the old man. He reached out his hands to Abasio and Arakny. "The thrones have been here a long time. Think of the phrase 'seats of power.' When one sits in a seat of power, one can accomplish things. If it is necessary that certain things be accomplished, then the appropriate seats of power rise up. This is natural law. It always happens."
"Rise up from where?" Arakny asked.
    "Well, as to that, I'm not sure. Out of time, perhaps. Or some other space. Or the inside of the earth, perhaps, where they were forged at the beginning of the planet. I truly don't know. I'm not sure even the thrones know their origin."
"But one sits there?"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS

335

     "One can. Briefly. If one is of the right lineage. And then one understands certain things that have to be done."
"Tom says your name is on one of them. You sat there?"
     "I did. Briefly. You're welcome to go look at them, so you can tell Oily about them."
"We can tell Oily?"
     "If you choose to go to her, yes. Tom tells me she's being kept in a house down there in the Place. She's with a woman we know, a very pleasant woman. Tom can take you down there, or try, at least, though you may be
 stopped. As with most things, there's danger involved.""Danger from this Ellel person?" demanded Abasio.
     The old man gave him a wide-eyed look, like a child's. "Ellel needs Oily, but she doesn't need either of you. She may feel you are an entanglement, a complication, and Ellel habitually disposes of complications. She may kill you. Or take you hostage."
He waited, but neither Abasio nor Arakny replied.
     "On the other hand," the old man continued, "she may let Oily come back here with you. Which would be a good idea, if possible."
"And if Olly decides not to do this... guidance thing?" asked Abasio. "Ellel would be very angry."
     "It sounds to me like danger if she does and danger if she doesn't," said Arakny. "What difference does it make?"
      "Oh, every decision makes a difference," said the old man. "Though
sometimes we lack the ability to distinguish between alternatives.""How do we get to her?" Abasio asked.
    Tom snorted, a sound like a troubled laugh. "We walk out the gate of Gaddi House and stroll across the grass, where there's still some left. We go down the street and knock on Qualary's door. That's how I got there yesterday, though I almost didn't get back!"
    Arakny threw up her hands, her voice rising stridently. "It hardly sounds like a mission requiring courage and resolution, to take a simple walk down the street!"
    The old man bowed his head over his knotted hands. When he looked up, he spoke softly. "Often the most terrible struggles take place quietly, behind a screen of normal activity and civility, behind a curtain of diplomacy. In secrecy, in silence, a whole race may be destroyed without notice. Whole cultures and species have been destroyed while men smiled and spoke of economics, of employment, of progress, of the welfare of mankind. Is a threat less deadly because it does not scream and rage and threaten force of arms?"

"So out there is danger."

x,


336                              Sheri S. Tepper

    He gave his answer gravely. "Yes. But so long as you remain here, you are perfectly safe."
    "Being perfectly safe is not what I had in mind!" cried Abasio, in a fever of impatience. "There was danger all around when we started out on this journey. I don't see that anything's changed. It was gangers and walkers and monsters then, it's just another kind of gangers and more walkers and monsters now. I told Farmwife Suttle I'd keep Oily safe, and that's what I'll try to do. I want to go where she is."
    "Ah," said the old man. "Well, that's a quick decision." He turned to Arakny. "And what about you?"
    "I don't know," she said. "The girl is a nice enough girl, but she's not family or a close friend. On the other hand, she has my library, and I should take some steps to retrieve it. Also, my whole duty is the acquisition of information, and I am learning things here in the Place of Power that I did not know, things my people do not know. I am weighing whether I should risk my life to learn more, or go back to my people with what I already have."
    "Or put what you know down onto paper and send it by messenger," said the old man.
"What messenger?"                                     The old man turned to Tom. "| was thinking of Coyote." "He would take the message," said Tom.
    Arakny thought this over silently for some moments. "You don't care if all Artemisia knows about this?"
    The old man shrugged. "Up until now, we've played a quiet game, but now the gamepieces have begun shouting. Now we win or we lose, and it
doesn't matter who knows.""And if we win'?"
      "Life has a chance. You Artemisians may go on with your noble exper-
iment at civilizing mankind.""And if we lose?"
    "Death gathers. Tyranny is triumphant once more. Evil stalks the earth, and all life dwindles into death. Yours and mine and Coyote's and Bear's. And your elk. And your bison. And the forests planted by the Sisters to Trees. And all the fish in the seas. All."
    She shivered, trying twice before the words would come out. "I'd like to see the thrones so I can tell Olly about them, but I will tell Wide Mountain Mother as well."
"Tom will take you," said the old man.
    When they were out in the hallway, Abasio said, "You don't look at all eager."
"I'm not," Tom said flatly. "I'm an engineer, or I like to think so. I like


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                337

things to be definable, measurable. The thrones are not definable, and they make me feel inadequate. Uncomfortable. No matter. His Wisdom said to show you."
      They went with him through the security points and the dusty labyrinth, past huge old doors that Tom said had never been opened in his memory, down the last stretch to a door in every way similar, except that the dust lay less thickly around it. When the gigantic portal swung open, it blocked the entire corridor and gave them no way to go forward but into the room itself.
      "Follow the tracks," Tom told them, pointing at the dusty floor, serpenttryfiled by wheels. "I'll wait for you here." He had no wish to go into the room again. He had not slept well since he had been there last.
      They went alone, laying their hands against the pillars, feeling moisture and a barely discernible vibration, as of some huge engine in motion, some mighty heart beating far underground, perhaps at the center of the earth itself. The dust rose beneath their feet and fell again, half-covering the footprints they had just made. The wheel tracks twisted and coiled, and they followed in the same path, coming at last to the place the pillars stopped, the open place before the dais.
     The air was clear. No smoke. No mist. Three great chairs, carved all over with creatures. Carved eyes saw them, carved faces perceived them, carved mouths opened imperceptibly wider, carved nostrils took their scent. On the left-hand seat sat a woman. Not entirely human, thought Arakny. Not entirely dead, thought Abasio. The figure was half-absorbed into the stone, but its eyes also saw; its nostrils smelled their presence. High on the back of the chair was carved the word Hunagor. In the center chair, the figure was male, with the word carved high above his head: Werra.
     The right-hand chair was empty of human form, though it, too, had its crowded quota of other beings. It bore the name Seoca. The dais was deep in dust, though none lay on the chairs themselves. The air around the chairs seemed to tremble, as air shimmers over a heated roadway.
     Abasio wanted to speak but did not. He knew his words would not penetrate this air. He glanced at Arakny and found her eyes on him, wide and slightly frightened. He put his lips near her ear and whispered, "All the things carved there. They're still... alive."
She looked again. The creatures had lived once. Each of them had come
to sit in a particular chair. Each of them had been absorbed into it. Maybe they were, in a way, still alive. She shuddered. Maybe they were... the thing itself. Not merely thing, not merely being, but both. An indescribable amalgam, ancient as stone, partaking of stone, but sentient and aware and awfully, dreadfully alive.
    They stood a moment more, scarcely breathing, unspeaking, finally backing away until they were among the sheltering pillars, then quickly and more


338                              Sheri S. Tepper

quickly following their own tracks back the way they had come. When they stood clear of the great door at Fast, gasping as though they had run a great way, Fuelry shut it behind them.
"Who are they'?" Arakny whispered.
"They? The thrones?" he asked, as though surprised.
"Sitting there?"
     "You mean Hunagor? Werra? People. I knew Werra. My father knew Hunagor."
"Not human people," said Abasio firmly.
"What makes you say that'?"
"They don't look entirely human. They're--they're different."
     Fuelry rubbed his face and chin with one hand, as though scrubbing away cobwebs. "They were human."
     "You have only to look at them," insisted Abasio in a hushed voice, as though he were afraid of being overheard.
     Tom said patiently, "But you see, I knew Werra. He was as human as His Wisdom is.'~
"Will the old man come down here'? Sit there? Like them?" Arakny asked.
     "He says he will. When the time comes. Which will not be for many years."
     "Tom," Abasio insisted, "if you know that, you must know other things. What's the purpose of all this?"
    He led them back the way they had come. "I can only tell you what Seoca has told me, over and over. The purpose of Gaddi House is to protect the earth and the place of all life upon it. That's what the thrones do! I don't know how they do it, not entirely. I know parts of things. People come here. They talk to His Wisdom. He gives them instructions and supplies. The people leave again. They go out into the world, here, or there, as he commands. They do things, this, or that.
    "But I don't know them all. ! don't hear what's said to them all, see what's given to them all. I don't know how it all fits together. I don't know what's behind these other doors."
"This place is old," whispered Arakny.
    "Seoca says this down here is ancient beyond counting, but I never believed that."
Abasio shook his head. "I think he spoke truth."
Arakny asked, "Will Coyote take the message I'm going to write?" "His Wisdom says if you write your message, I am to send it."
    They returned the way they had come. When they came through the last secured door, which Tom locked again behind them, Abasio stopped short, head alertly cocked.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            339

"What's that?" he asked in a surprised voice.
    The other two listened, at first hearing nothing. Then they made it out against the susurrus of moving air, a plaintive whistle, a strain of melody. It came nearer, though still far off, seeming to emanate from a cross-corridor a considerable distance down the hallway where they stood.
    Two men emerged from one side, the tune emerging with them. Without seeing Abasio or the others, the two men crossed the hallway and disappeared down the cross-corridor, the tune following after.
    "Whistler!" Abasio choked out. "And Sudden Stop, the weapons man! What are they doing here?"
      "They are agents of His Wisdom's," whispered Tom. "Two of His Wis-
dom's most trusted men. They have just returned from the cities of manland." "I know," Abasio gasped. "I saw them both there!"
    Though Arakny looked at him curiously, Abasio said nothing more, though his mind was full of confusion. When he had first seen Whistler, Sudden Stop, and the old man with the donkey, he had assumed they had encountered one another accidentally. Later on, when he found out who Whistler and Sudden Stop were, he had been sure of it. But perhaps it had not been accidental. Perhaps they had been traveling together. Why? What had the drug merchant and the arms merchant been doing here?
    When they returned to their suite, Arakny wrote her letter, spending considerable time at it. It was almost midnight before she finished. She put her letter into a small bag made of heavy cloth that Tom had provided. Something for Coyote to get his teeth into, Tom had said.
    When morning came, Tom arrived to take them to Olly, saying that Arakny's missive was on its way. He stood waiting for them calmly enough, but Arakny saw the little beads of sweat along his hairline and the almost imperceptible twitch at the comer of one eye. He didn't much want to leave Gaddi House. Well, neither did she, though Abasio seemed immune to her terrors.
    Terrified or not, they went out the massive gate and strolled, as Tom had said they would. Arakny tried to convince herself it was like an early morning walk in any civilized place, though in places the ground was blackened and the trees were dead. Where there was still grass, it was sere at the tops but green at the roots. Recent warmth and rain had started it growing again. The air was almost springlike.
    That being so, why was she gasping? She could not seem to breathe as she ordinarily did. The air did not nourish her lungs. It was smothering her. So too Abasio, and Tom. Panting, both of them, like running dogs.
    She looked around, but there was no one else abroad in the place. No person, dog, cat, no song of bird. The air was utterly still. She reached for


340

Sheri S. Tepper

Abasio's hand, unaware she had done so until she felt his fingers squeezing hers, looked at his face to see the same apprehension there that she felt. He took a painfully deep breath, heaving at the air as at a monstrous weight.
      They approached Qualary's house, the horrid pressure increasing with every step. Each breath came unwillingly, for now there was a smell, too, rank and choking. Even Tom coughed, giving them a swift, apologetic look. They came to the door of the ordinary house, Tom l~l~oc]~cd. The doora~efied.
      "Good morning, Tom," said Qualary Finch, her voice reverberating as though echoing from some great distance, the sound coming as through delirium or nightmare: Goooood Moooohrniih~g.
      Tom said something, they could not hear what. Oily came from a bedroom yawning, to throw her arms about Abasio, about Arakny, to weep glad tears at seeing them. All of it veiled, distant, unreal, each act in slow motion, each sound resonating, all of them caught in nightmare and unable to waken.
     And then the pressure and the smell surged up around them like a tide of fi)ulness, making them struggle and crouch and turn to look, gasping like caught fish, for the street behind them had filled with walkers, rank o/n serried rank of them, forms that had slipped silently into place like gamepieces, file after file, black helmets aligned in an obdurate grid.
     And there, suspended before them like trophies, exhausted and pale, were Burned Man and Oracle, whom Abasio did not know, and old Cermit and Farmwife Suttle and Drowned Woman. Whom he did.
     "Grandpa!" cried Abasio in a huge voice, and then in one of shattered surprise: "Ma!"
     Came a crow-call of command to make the enormous rank and file of walkers turn as one and go trampling away, feet stamping down, the road shivering and the air crashing, leaving behind only a hundred or so to surround Ellel, her pale hair a snaky tangle around her face, her mouth open in a toothy grin of amusement, her eyes glittering at their expressions of confounded pain.
    "What are you doing with them'?" cried Oily, though Qualary reached out for her, trying to quiet her. "Why have you brought my friends here'?"
    "Not only your friends, it seems!" cried Ellel in a triumphant voice. "Not only yours, no. And we are keeping them here for reasons you well know, Gaddir child. Keeping them safe, for a time. Their safety depends upon your doing precisely what we--l--want you to do."

    The hostages were taken away. Tom got the others inside Qualary's house and shut the door behind them. Though Abasio and Arakny were boiling with impotent rage, Oily was silent and pale.
"Why does she have Abasio's folk? How did they get your Oracle'?"


341
A pLAGUE O[~ ANGELS
                                                 have said, a true Oracle, then
~kny cried to Oily. 'If she is, as you
                   known they were coming-                                  good. We
uldn't she have Tom soothed "Arakny this ranting does no
                                                ,                         coming and
"Hush, hush,"
ist be calm. We must think. Perhaps the Oracle did see them ~o saw beyond that! Perhaps she let them take her for a reason. :Arakny, muttering, threw herself into a chair.
      broke her silence to say, "Oracle might have done that, for a reason.
Oily . was so quiet that it gaine,d all their attention. Abasio asked,
: Her voice . ,~,:o ,411a~e of yours?' ~,                         of me when I was a
iWas my ma ~n u~ -,, ~n,~ tenlied- "she took care
 ,,Drowned Woman,          '~'"J
    child."                                                        ,,              "But
              Woman["
"She tried to kill herself when you ran off to the city, said Oily.
  our grandpa summoned a resurrection team, and they brought her back.
     :rward, she had no memory of you, or him, or anything much, so she
 was sent to a village as an archetypal Suicide. She was my friend. ls my
  friend. As is Burned Man."
  ,'Burned Man? He's the scarred one?"                                                     -- '
     "Burned Man. An archetypal Martyr. Also my friend. He taught me
                                                                        1 came home from
many things.",
      ,,1tostages,' said Abasio bitterly. "I thought when
    the city, 1 had done with hostages-
       Tom raised his voice, demanding to be heard. "There is no immediate
    threat to them. Remember that. Let's not be impetuous, thereby making
             ,,                                me as well," growled
things worse.
        "I'm surprised she didn't seize up Abasio and
      hrakny.                         "She wants Abasio here fuming and fussing, for
                                      does
        ~'No," murmured Oily.
she thinks that may influence what I decide to do. You, Arakny, she
not know, but she'll leave you alone while she assesses your worth to her.
       ,'That's true," said QualaW, wonderinglY. "That's exactly how she is." That's the way Ellel is." -. � hat stra~'gely expressionless voice, "1 su,,p-
                       "said Olly, st~11 m t � "i .....           t my friends free of her.
          "lsupp�se' ~ - .hat they want in oraer to
        pose I have only to oo w
           Tom Fuelry shifted uneasily.                           ,- ~"
        Abasio cried, "There are things to consider nrst.
        .. ,,. 'd Oily. ,'And there                     ttle i~n't ~ead5 yet.
        ~'1 gnow, sa~    . _. ,, .~oreed T,,m. T ......     ;~n ~' whispered
            ,' here's no great nuny, _~ht need additional mtor~n~ ....                     ,,
          "~hey admitted that you
          Qualary. "They even said you might want to go to Gaddi House.
             "Did they now?" Tom's head came up. "They said she might want to
            otoG         F


Sheri S. Tepper

    Oily got slowly to her feet. "Berkli said that. I think he and Mitty were trying to be helpful. But it was his saying so that made Ellel decide to take hostages."
    She drummed her fingers upon the table. "Well, what is done is done. Now the longer we stay here, the more danger there is to all of you. And to Qualary herself. Ellel brought the hostages to assure that 1 return from Gaddi House. Let us give her no time to add to their number or change her mind. We'll go now. Though 1 may have to come out again, at least the rest of you will be safe there.
"Qualary, can you go to Ellel'?"
Qualary shivered. "Yes. I can."
    "Tell her--tell her I am going into Gaddi House. Tell her I am going there to learn to use my--my talent safely and well. Say that 1 want to see the shuttle this afternoon, that I will do whatever is needful to obtain the release of my friends."
Tom cried, "Are you sure'? ls this really what you want to do'?"
    "I don't know what 1 want to do," she said simply. "I'm not sure what I must do. But this will give me time to think about it."
    She took Qualary's hand and squeezed it. "Go now. We don't want her to blame you for anything."
    Qualary went out, observing the walkers on the opposite side of the street, strung out here and there along the way. They did not stop her, but they watched her, jittering and mumbling to themselves. They were not trustworthy. If she made a wrong move, they'd kill her without meaning to, without caring. She made herself walk slowly, fighting down the urge to run. If she ran, she would die.
    She heard the others come out behind her and cast a quick look over her shoulder to see them walking quietly across the grass. The walkers watched them go, jittering, twisting, muttering, but not stopping them. Resolutely, she looked where she was going. Merely doing her own task would be quite difficult enough.

    Ellel and the others were in an anteroom of the Dome, while beneath the Dome itself were all the thousands of walkers who had been in the street. Ellel stood motionless, looking at them. Beside her, Berkli moved jerkily from one pillar to another, his voice raised in irritation.
    "How long do you intend to keep them here, Ellel'?" He gestured at the walkers as though to push them away. "How long'?"
    "Until I need them for something," she replied in a careless voice. "I may need them for something. Perhaps to quell a rebellion."
"Why? Are you casting me in the part of rebel'?"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            343

     She laughed. "No, Berkli. I see you for what you are, an uncooperative Domer, one who cares little for our accomplishments and even less for human progress."
     "I care a great deal for human progress!" he cried. "I'm just not sure what it is."
     "You never will be," she snapped, catching sight of her servant. "Well, Qualary! What is it?"
Qualary delivered her message, her head bowed submissively.
Ellel snarled, "You'll bring her to the silo this afternoon. Is that clear'?"
      "She said she would need to see the silo," said Qualary. "See the shuttle.
 She needs to see everything, understand everything, so you'll all be safe." "Don't push her, Ellel," urged Mitty.
    "1 don't suppose a few days more really matters," commented Ander oflhandedly. "The shuttle isn't quite ready, in any case."
Ellel jerked her head toward the doors, signaling Qualary to go.
    Berkli turned from his revulsion at the walkers to his more recent annoyanco. "Taking hostages was a nasty thing t'o do, Ellel. It was uncivilized,
even for you. Where are you holding them?""Why? Do you want to see them?"
    He grinned at her, knowing it infuriated her. "As a matter of fact, yes. I understand one of them is an Oracle. I don't often have an opportunity to get a prediction about important things, such as a shuttle trip into space."
      ~'Trust you to fall prey to superstition!" she sneered. "By all means,
Berkli. They're being held in the meeting room."~A bit luxurious for prisoners, isn't it?"
    "It's convenient," she snapped. "Accessible. In case 1 think of some question I want answered in the middle of the night. In case I want a prophecy of my OWrl!"
    Berkli, with Mitty trailing along, went to the meeting room and found that no food or drink or beds had been provided, an oversight typical of Ellcl. She would overlook the simplest of human needs and then wonder why people were uncooperative. Berkli summoned Domer staff members and had them equip the room both with the necessities for a lengthy stay and with the luxuries to make that stay bearable.
    '~Thank you," said Oracle, who seemed to have appointed herself spokesperson. "You have our gratitude."
     '~I apologize for my colleague," Mitty said. "She overlooks details." He
excused himself and departed, looking troubled."He doesn't like this," said Oracle.
    "No. But he's not a fighter," murmured Berkli. "Mitty will go a long way to avoid confrontation. He eschews evil, but he won't take up arms against it."
"Can you tell us what this is about'?" Oracle asked.


344                              Sheri S. Tepper

"You are the Oracle, why don't you tell me?" Berkli challenged her. "I can do that without foresight," she said. "Orphan--that is, Oily--was brought here to do something Quince Ellel cannot do. It has something to do with a journey into space. It is something Oily might choose not to do,
and we have been brought here to guarantee her cooperation.""That took no oracular talent'?"
    "No. I merely listened to the talk that was going on around us this morning," she replied. "I can extrapolate from that. Quince Ellel longs for the
stars, though she will settle for an empire on earth, with herself as Empress." "You foresee this."
    "I judge that it is true from what I see of her. Not all the archetypes are in the villages, Dome-man. Some of them still walk among ordinary men. And sometimes 1 do not need to foresee. Sometimes I need merely look and
listen to learn interesting things. Such as the fact that the cities are gone." '~What cities'?" he asked, suspiciously.
    "The last cities," she replied. "Those few that were left in manland. I thought you here in the Place of Power kept track of the status of the world and its peoples."
    He furrowed his brow. He hadn't looked at the information console for days. Had anyone looked at it lately? With all this triumphant strutting that had been going on, it was likely no one had looked at it in some time. Perhaps he'd been the last one, and he certainly hadn't paid any attention to the cities.
    Oracle nodded at him, as though she read his thoughts. "The cities are gone," she said. "Fantis and Echinot and all the rest. The plague has walked through them, winnowing their populace, separating the grain from the chaff, consuming the chaff while the grain was ttung outward, into the villages, into the farms. Now on all this continent, the cities are as though they had never been. Now we have only towns, as in Artemisia, where people are known to one another. There is neighborhood once again, where before were
only unknown men doing evil to faceless victims."He gaped at her, and she smiled in return.
"You needn't take my word for it. Verify it for yourself."
    Leaving the luxurious room at a laborious trot, Berkli went down the long, polished corridor to the Dome. The lift chair sat empty against the wall, but be-
fore he could sit down in it, Ellel and several of her walkers came upon him. "And where do you think you're going'?" she asked him. "I need to check the data. Ellel, did you know--" "You need to check nothing." "Someone needs to!"
    "No. You have meddled with my affairs once too often," she snapped. "I'm confining you to your quarters!"
"You are what?" he gasped, choking down laughter.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            345

    She turned and stalked away. He laughcd out loud until the walkers took hold of him, carried him to his own quarters, then shut him in. They stood outside and would not let him out again. He bathed first, to get rid of the stink of them and because Mitty had said their touch was dangerous. Then he sat beside the window, staring out in bemused fury. Of all the Domers, he was the only one who knew the cities had died. And he wondered if it made any difference to anyone.

    CummyNup Chingero, on his slow and meandering way south, had encountered this one and that one who had escaped from the cities as he had, this one and that one who had been immune to the plague or who had been ~~l' abstemious habit and had not caught it. To these men, and women, CummyNup spoke fondly of Abasio the Cat, Abasio the Clever, Abasio the fincst and first among men.
    Somewhat to his astonishment, Sybbis spoke even more eloquently than he. Abasio was tall, and strong, and handsome. Abasio was a prince, a warrior, a mighty lord. Abasio was the kind of men other men should follow. She, Sybbis, was his consort and was carrying his child.
    CummyNup was more than a little peeved at this claim, and he challenged her about it. How could she claim Abasio as the father of her child?
    Because, she said. She had put it together from things she'd heard in Fantis before Old Chief Purple slit Kerf's throat for him. And from things CummyNup had told her back at Wise Rocks Farm. And from things she hersell' had observed when she got pregnant.
    CummyNup had to agree, it sounded like Abasio, knife slash, bullet pucker, and all. He couldn't get over it. She had been a virgin when Kerr ~ot her, which meant she'd stayed a virgin until Abasio had her, which meant she was Abasio's woman and his alone.
    ~' 'Cept for that time in the barn back at Wise Rocks," CummyNup was so injudicious as to remark.
    That, so said Sybbis, had been his good fortune and she'd done it only because it was necessary, so he'd bring her along. She certainly couldn't stay at Wise Rocks Farm in safety while her lover, consort, king, and lord was down in the southlands someplace, running into all sorts of monsters and stuff, now could she'?
    Many of those who heard CummyNup's stories about Abasio were men at loose ends with no particular plans for the future. Some of them were exgangets who, at Sybbis's insistence, shaved their heads and wore long white leather vests with a cat-head on the back to show they were all followers of the absent but no doubt potent Abasio. In the meantime, CummyNup was their captain, and he accumulated several hundred followers in this manner.


346

Sheri S. Tepper

    One night, while he was standing watch, more or less alone because he enjoyed it, he was approached by a coyote who came up to him and wished him good evening.
    CummyNup was not much surprised. Being a cityman, he knew very little about the natural world. It would not really have surprised him if a spider had crawled out of its hole and greeted him in ganger lingo. So he wished the Coyote a good evening in return, and the two of them fell to talking.
    When CummyNup said he and his group were searching for Abasio the Cat, the Coyote asked if that would be the Abasio who was once a Purple. Abasio who traveled south in a dyer's wagon?
Yes, said CummyNup, that was the Abasio.
    Why then, said the Coyote, he'd be happy to tell CummyNup where Abasio might be found: there to the southwest where the mountain cut a broken line into the stars. He pointed with a paw, and CummyNup marked the place against the morning.
    When morning came, he told the assembled men and women that he had had a revelation during the night. Actually, he started to tell them about the Coyote, but he knew there were skeptics in the group, so the information took the form of a revelation. Either way, the several hundred men who were following CummyNup all agreed to march toward the mountain where Abasio awaited them.

    Wide Mountain Mother found a cloth-wrapped package on her doorstep. The cloth had tooth-holes in it, and inside was a letter from Arakny. The missive was somewhat moist and also pierced with tooth-holes, but not unreadable. When Mother had read the first page, she felt she understood the tooth-holes, but when she read further, she felt she understood nothing at all.
    Hurriedly, she sent messengers up the hill to the men's houses. After conferring with the warriors and her own council, she sent messengers out in all directions. By midafternoon, the people of Artemisia were gathering outside the town, and by nightfall, a throng of them, headed by feathered warriors, set off westward toward the Place of Power.
    "What did Arakny say?" one of Wide Mountain Mother's daughters asked, this one also a librarian.
    "She said she had seen the thrones," Mother answered, without expression. "She said she does not know whether they are intelligent machines or monstrous beings. In either case, she fears what they may intend."


jn a quiet garden of Gaddi House, Oily told Tom she wanted to see the old man.

"My Herkimer-Lurkimer," she said, "who owes me an explanation, at the very least." She laughed, a little bitterly. "Oh, yes. If he's my HerkimerLurkimer."

"He told us he was," murmured Arakny.

    "If that's true, then I was a child here, where you say the thrones are," she murmured. "I've dreamed of
thrones. Was that because I saw them as a child?" "Perhaps," said Tom. "That could be so."

    "No doubt seeing them again will refresh my memory." She rubbed her forehead fretfully. "Can I see them

before I see him? Can you show them to me, Tom?" Tom assented, though grudgingly.

"Do you want to go with us?" Oily asked the others.

    Arakny shook her head. Even Abasio had trouble meeting her eyes.

    He said gravely, "I'll go with you if you ask me, Oily, but only because you ask!"


348                              Sheri S. Tepper

Arakny threw up her hands. "I may as well go along."
    They went by a longer route than Abasio and Arakny remembered from their previous trip, though it may have only seemed so because Olly stopped so many times along the way--stopped to put her hands on closed doors, to feel the walls, to listen for sounds, to sniff, as though she smelled something they could not.
"How does it make you feel'?" Abasio asked her.
    Olly stopped dead, her mouth working. "How does it make me feel! All this, you mean? It makes me feel like a chip on a river! Washed along, willynilly. It makes me feel as Oracle must have felt, sent away as a child because of what she was, of what she could do! It makes me feel trapped and desperate! That's how I feel."
    Abasio reached out for her, but she shuddered away from him, her face closed and angry.
He said, "I only meant, does it seem familiar?"
    Olly breathed deeply, calming herself. "Yes. I suppose it's familiar. Mostly it smells familiar. But also, I feel I almost know what's behind these doors, that any minute I'll remember." She dropped her eyes. "If I want to remember."
"The place depresses me," Abasio said awkwardly. "It makes me itchy."
    "Oppressed," said Arakny. "There is something here that is... not..." Her voice trailed away disconsolately.
    "Not human," agreed Olly, turning to their guide. "Would you agree, Tom?"
    He shook his head, annoyed. He would not agree. "I've been a Gaddir since I was a child. I've never had any sense it was not a human thing to be."
    "Coyote said something about our needing to think of intelligence as hun~an," Olly told him, staring through him. "So if we find intelligence,
we assume humanity goes with it. That's our protection, isn't it?" "Protection against what?" he demanded.
    "Against having to learn to communicate with others, who think differently than we do." She squeezed his arm and urged him on.
    They came at last to the designated door, which Tom opened while Olly stood at his shoulder, nodding, murmuring, as though committing the procedure to memory. The three stood aside to let her enter.
    Without a moment's pause she went swiftly along the wheel tracks, losing herself among the clustered pillars, leaving the other three to shift uncomfortably behind her.
    Tom thrust his hands deep into his pockets, bunching his shoulders against the chill. Arakny shivered in the same surge of lonely cold. Abasio merely shut his eyes and listened.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            349

    Eventually they heard a sharp cracking, then a creaking, as of something opening. These inanimate sounds were followed by what might have been a voice. If it was a voice, it was not Olly's but that of someone larger, someone, thought Abasio, more female. All they actually heard was a questioning murmur with a periodic upturn.

"Who?" whispered Tom.
"Hunagor," grated Arakny. ~'Who else'?"
"Hunagor is dead!" said Tom, his voice shaking.
"To you, to me, yes. But we're not Gaddirs. Maybe she's not dead to

    The murmurs stopped, to be succeeded by others, lower, below the level o1' any human voice.

    "I suppose that's Werra," said Abasio, trying without success to sound flippant.
    Neither of them answered. They merely stood, waiting for the voices to stop. When the murmurings ended, however, other sounds began and continued: draggings, crashings, distant reverberations, and echoes, as of mighty portals opening to disclose impossible vacancies beyond. And at last came
a great, sure humming as of a mighty engine turning. Then even that faded away into dusty silence. Footsteps.
    Olly came from among the pillars to join them. They searched her face, finding there a deadly quiet, but no other difference.
    Tom shut the huge door behind them, and they returned as they had come, pausing at a turn in the corridor as Oily fell behind. They turned to see her standing before one of the massive doors, ankle-deep in the dust drift that lay before it.
"You can go back," she said to them.
"You don't need me to guide you?" Tom croaked. "No. I can find my way." "You can get in there?"
    "I believe I can, yes. Before I see Herkimer-Lurkimer, I need to see this. Go on, I'll be all right."
    She ran her fingers across the word that was graven deeply into the door, reading it as much with her fingers as her eyes. Graven over and over, ornamentally, cursively, in a thousand alphabets: Werra. Werra. Werra.
    Tom drew them away, but they heard the rending of the door opening behind them as they went.
    "They always open," said Tom, tonelessly. "Even when it's been... ten thousand years. They screech and squeal, they make a racket, but they


350                              Sheri S. Tepper

always open. Sometimes I think they were brought here, maybe from the stars, aeons ago. Or grew here, like great trees." He flushed, as though ashamed of this outburst, compressed his lips, and said nothing more as they returned to occupied space.
     As they entered their suite, Abasio found himself seeing the rooms with strange eyes. Why did these spaces seem unt'amiliar and odd'? Should corner meet comer like this'? Should floors be softened like this? Should there be a place to sit, a place to lie down'? A place to prepare food and serve it? An arrangement for cleaning oneself and one's possessions? Rooms. Human rooms. Rooms that would speak of human needs even to something alien and totally strange.
     As other rooms might speak of other creatures. As the throne room spoke of other beings. An alien space.
     Arakny went into the next room and shut the door behind her. Abasio dropped heavily into the nearest chair, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. He tried to think of nothing at all, but his mind kept going back to the
 great chairs, trying to imagine their occupants as alive and speaking.He opened his eyes to find Olly watching him from the door.
     "It didn't take long," she said. "I just wanted to look at the--at what's there."
He sat up. "Olly, what's this all about?"
    She sat beside him on the low arm of the chair, putting her arm around his shoulders, her head against his. "When I was at your grandpa's farm, he talked about his windmill. He told us he had built a device, a heavy little wheel that tums only when the wind is very strong. It shuts down the mechanism so it doesn't flail itself to nothing."
    "I know," said Abasio. "Grandpa's automatic shutdown system. I used to climb up there to oil it, when I was a boy."
    "One might think of these--these thrones as something similar to that wheel. They're a device also, a shutdown latch that takes over when life is threatened. They're also living things. They swim in time, not dying as we do, but living on, epoch after epoch. They may have looked quite different when they were new, but over the aeons they've accreted. They may have been ignorant when they were first made, but now they know things we don't know. No. That's not right. No, what they do is, they accept things we won't accept. And that makes them frightening to us. We're used to believing we're the only intelligent beings around and that our reality is the only one."
    Her voice faded into silence. Abasio swallowed painfully. ~'But Tom says Hunagor and Werra were human."
    "Well, they were. They were human agents, but there have been other agents who weren't human. And all those other agents have been absorbed into the primordial thing, the throne, the angel, the whatever."


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                 351

"Absorbed alive?" he croaked.
    She came to kneel before him, taking his hands in her own. "What is ~alive,' Abasio? Is an entity that thinks and cares and needs still 'alive'? If so, then Hunagor still lives. And Werra too. And all those who became part of the thrones before him. As I would be, or you, if we still cared and thought and needed, no matter what we--looked like. No matter where we'd gone."
    She pressed her cheek against him, rose, and turned as though to go, then changed her mind. Instead, she sat down again and said, "Will you wait for me, Abasio?"
"Wait for you?"
"Until I get back in a little while."
"Where are you going'?" he asked, fighting panic.
    She looked at her twined fingers for a long moment, as though the answer were there. "I said it before. Herkimer-Lurkimer owes me an explanation. Even though I understand some things, there are others that seem foggy. I want to see the shuttle. It's--it's scary to think 1 have to--to spend my life this way! I've hardly lived at all yet!"
    "But, but," he cried, "when the shuttle comes back, surely they'll let you go!"
    'q don't think it would matter if they did. I think once you're really hooked up to that system, you don't get loose again. That's one of the things I want to ask him, the old man."
"If that's true, you won't go. You can't. I won't let you!"
    She shook her head slowly. "Oh, Abasio, I'm not sure I'd let me, either, but if I do... would you give your life for me?"
"If I had to!" he cried, without thinking. "To save you!"
"Well, you see, I'd give mine for you. And you are part of life."
    She leaned forward, her forehead pressed against his. "I feel the pattern, Abasio, mostly. I know if that ship goes, there's a chance--more than a chance--that whatever comes back, it won't be me. But if I don't go, I see the pattern of what will happen here. Pain and terror. The walkers changing, becoming something else, something worse. I see them, Abasio. They're human in form, but they aren't alive. They don't care about life. I can see the pattern of their design, their manufacture. They can aggregate, did you know that7 They can join themselves together to make bigger things, more dangerous things. Two alone are terrible, but when two join, they are many times as dreadful. And when two join to two more, and those to another two, they are horrible beyond belief. I can see them, towering, thundering, thc very planet breaking apart beneath them!
"What they would leave behind would be a cinder, dead as ash."
She rubbed tears from her cheeks. "All the lovely birds! All the flowers.


352                             -~$heri S. Tepper

Arakny's elk she was so proud of! The fish you caught for our dinner. All
gone, Abasio. Coyote gone. Bear gone.""Why'? Why would Ellel want that?"
    "She doesn't want that. She's risking that. People like her have always been willing to risk things they didn't want to happen. Usually for power. Oh, she knows what the walkers may do! Men designed them to destroy the world. One tribe of men said to some other tribe, If we are conquered, then let the earth perish.~ If we can't live as we like, then let us all perish.t"
She scrubbed at the tears again. "Will you wait for me?"
"Yes," he said, scarcely able to get the words out. "Yes. I'll wait."
    Her fingers clung to his for a moment, and then she went out without a backward look.
    He wanted her. All of him wanted all of her, all at once, and so completely that he shook with it. Whatever had ailed him ailed him no longer! In this moment he was unassailably aware of that fact.

    Seoca sat in his chair upon the terrace. Olly sat cross-legged before him. She had thought she might remember him, but she did not. He was merely an old man, someone who had used her as a fly fisherman uses a fly: to make the big fish rise.
"You want Ellel to go?" she asked.
    "Ellel should go," he replied. "But we can't force her. We don't do that. We can create weapons, but we can't use them. Our lineage unsuits us for it. Even if we could do it physically, we're not allowed to philosophically.
Only if the means is correct is the end appropriate."She said, "-You need me to take her?"
    He nodded. "Everything we know about her says she will go only if she believes she has captured you in spite of our best efforts at hiding you, if she is forcing you despite your best efforts to resist, if she is compelling you against your will. If you came to her with open hands, offering to guide her, she would be too suspicious to accept your offer."
    She glanced upward in sudden comprehension. "That's why they didn't just go ahead and build the kind of system they used to use?"
    He nodded. "She would never have trusted an electronic system. She'd have been sure Mitty had sabotaged it. Oh, she'd have let the shuttle go. She'd have sent Ander, perhaps. Or some other of the Ellels. But for herself, she cannot trust what she has not trampled and conquered and bent to her will! She cannot trust what she does not hold by force."
    "It was you who gave them the specifications for the Organic Guidance System?"


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            353

    "It was Werra, actually. He put the plans where they'd be found. He told the Domers you existed. But then we hid you and would not tell her where you were. We frustrated her for years, and now only her triumph over us
has convinced her it is safe for her to go.""Why must she go herself?."
    "Because if she does not go, she will stay here, in control of her walkers. She knows what they're capable of. She'll end up using them. On the other hand, if she goes, it will set other wheels in motion. It is not her going but
what happens after she goes that will be decisive! One way, or the other." "Wheels within wheels," she murmured. "Oh, indeed."
    "Oracle used to tell me a story," she remarked. "It was an ArtemisJan tale, about Changing Woman and the monsters."
    "| think I know the tale. Was it about Old Age, and Cold Woman, and the animals needing worse monsters than that?"
    "That's the one. Coyote and Bear asked Changing Woman for worse monsters to kill man, so they could keep their hides. But instead, she taught them to talk. I thought it was just a story, but someone did teach them to talk."
     He smiled. "There's another version, you know. In that one, she teaches
them to talk, but she creates some terrible monsters as well.""To eat up man."
"No. Just to get him to pay attention. So the story goes." "1'11 have to put that into Arakny's library." "Do you have Arakny's library?"
    She took it from her pocket and showed it to him. After that, they talked a great while longer. Before she left him, the old man leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
"Thank you, child," he said. "Thank you, child."

    Later that afternoon, Oily emerged from Gaddi House and asked to be taken to the shuttle. Mitty, in a move unusual fi)r him, insisted on being present. He stayed with Ellel in the control section while Dever took Olly through the crew space, the passenger cubicles, the moon lander, the engines. Mitty heard Dever's voice going on and on about galley arrangements and toilet arrangements, including a great deal of tediously graphic information about the difficulty of weightless elimination.
    When Dever ran out of shuttle explanations, they went down to the floor once more: During the entire tour, Oily had remained expressionless, as though what was said did not much matter, and now she said to Ellel, "I need some additional information."


354                              Sheri S. Tepper

     Ellel had been waiting for opposition, poised for battle. "You need know nothing beyond--"
    "If you want us to get where we're going, I need to know some things," said Olly with a sudden icy hauteur that cut through Ellel's belligerence like a knife. "I need to know who is going, and how many. It makes a difference."
"We're all going," grated Ellel.
    "That cannot be true," said Oily, stating it as simple fact. "I counted the spaces in the shuttle. That's why 1 had to see it, to know how large it is. You can take no more than a hundred humans if you take no walkers. If you take walkers, you can put several in each cubicle, but that means you will take fewer humans. Even if you took no walkers and a hundred humans, there are many more of you than that. Inevitably, some will go and some will stay. ! need to know which ones."
"I can see no possible reason why--"
    "I don't know why, either," said Olly. "I can't give you reasons or argue with you because I simply know it's necessary without knowing why. This guidance thing is done subconsciously, it's a kind of wild talent, not a science. If it's going to work, I have to know who's going. The cargo enters into the calculation."
    Mitty spoke forcefully. "Ellel, that's not unreasonable. Surely you've already decided who's going to go along! You can make up a list for her, can't you? What difference does it make?"
    It made a difference to Ellel, who wanted her will to be done, however arbitrary it might be, without question or hesitation, but she glared at him from behind her mask and agreed. She would punish him for his interference when she returned.
"How soon?" demanded Ellel, her eyes glittering.
    "Whenever you're ready," said Oily with flat indifference. "When you know who's going, send someone with a list. When you're ready to leave, I'll be ready to guide you."
    Ellel was confused, almost disappointed by this ready acquiescence. "I won't free your friends until you do!" she cried. "You understand that! And worse will happen to them if you disappoint me!" She stood, fingers extended as though they were talons, head forward as though to strike.
    "She understands that," said Mitty. "Let's not make a battle out of ~t--"
    Oily interrupted. "You needn't threaten me or my friends, Madam Domer. Believe me, I understand you completely."
    Mitty took her out, leaving Ellel to stew silently behind them, too set upon battle merely to let the matter alone. If she could not get a fight from Oily, she would get one from the hostages!


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS

355

But she had no more success there.
     "You needn't rage at me," Oracle said calmly. "If Oily says you'll be guided, then you will. She won't lie to you."
     Ellel laughed at her. "History is made up of broken promises," she said in a sneering voice as she looked around the luxurious meeting room, which now had the appearance of a hasty camp, with beds scattered here and there
 and people sitting about looking bored and apprehensive, both at once. "True," Oracle agreed. "Still, some do not lie."
     Ellel gave Oracle a penetrating glance. "My associate, Berkli, said he wanted you to prognosticate for us. About the success of our journey. Did he receive a prophecy?"
     "When he found we were tired and hungry and thirsty, he arranged amenities for us, saying he would return later for the foretelling," said Oracle. "I thought it both kind and wise of him to do so. I'm a better Oracle when well fed."
     "One could have guessed that," sneered Ellel. "It took two walkers to carry you."
Oracle recognized the voice of an habitual provocateur and did not reply.
     "Since you have not yet given your prognostication, I will ask for it now," Ellel said, with a sidelong look.
     "The rules require that I be paid," said Oracle. "This guarantees the veracity of what I say."
     "Oh, you'll be paid." Ellel laughed. "With your life, perhaps. Or I'll let you keep your sight. Or your tongue. Is that sufficient payment?"
     "Indeed it is," said Oracle, in a voice Oily scarcely would have recognized, so sweet it was. "Is there a private place here where I can concentrate?"
     Ellel opened a door into a neighboring room furnished with a table and a few chairs. "In here."
    Oracle went into it, drawing from her capacious robes a small leather bag, and from the bag an incense burner and a bell. "Simple devices to assist my concentration," she murmured. "One becomes habituated to their use."
    Ellel folded her arms and leaned against the closed door while Oracle busicd herself. Oily would have recognized the scent, the smoke, the sound of the tinkling bell, the sight of Oracle climbing onto the table with great
agility and folding her legs beneath her. Ellel sneered at all of it. "Ask your qucstion," said Oracle, in a voice unlike her own. "Will our trip to the space station be successful'?"
    Oracle's eyes rolled back into her head. She breathed heavily. Her voice came as though from a distance.
    "Four court disaster. Three cannot reach the moon. Two families alone achieve the stars."


356                              Sheri S. Tepper

    Oracle breathed more shallowly, panting. Slowly, slowly her eyes came back to normal.
    "What does it mean?" snarled Ellel." 'Four court disaster'--what does that mean?"
    "I honestly don't know," said Oracle. "Does it refer to four t'amilies? Some difficulty on the flight, perhaps. Some interfamily conflict. Could that be?"
    Ellel pondered, her fingers making a rapid tattoo on the door behind her. "Families. Your forecast says families. And why the stars, when we do not intend to go beyond the moon?"
    Oracle shrugged. "I am a bona-fide Oracle, Madam Domer. I do not plan what is to be said, and ! cannot interpret it. Nor can I pile prognostication on prognostication to arrive at greater and greater detail. What I have said,
I have said, and that is all I can say until the situation changes.""And if I don't believe you'?"
    "You can ask those who know me. They will tell you the same. You can ask other Oracles; we are all more or less alike. You can bring some other Oracle here, or go to some village where one is."
    "Families," muttered Ellel. "Not merely I, then, as the head of the family, but other members as well are to go. But only two families."
    Oracle shrugged. "Perhaps you have arrived at a clue to the meaning. The more of you Domers who go, the fewer of your creatures may go. Perhaps your mission depends on there being a proper balance of both, family members plus walkers. As for the reference to the stars, surely the success of this first journey sets the pattern for those that follow. In the beginning, so I have heard, is the end."
"Are you saying that's what is meant?"
    Oracle put out her hands, palms out, denying this. "No, no. I would not presume to interpret. I merely offer a possibility. There is one thing I can tell you, however. The fact that I prophesy a journey clearly implies that Olly will cooperate in guiding you. Otherwise, no journey would be possible, would it?"
    Ellel became very still. Why had she not seen that immediately'? Why, because--she told herself--she had always assumed as much. She had seen herself, even as a child, standing beside her father on the moon. The two of them, standing there together! She had never admitted doubt, not once. She smiled to herself and opened the door to go out into the larger room. She thought she had not decided to go to the moon but she had really known all along she would go!
    While Oracle was out of the room, Domer servants had set food upon a long table, where Drowned Woman and the Farmwife were now making a quiet meal, side by side. Oracle went toward them with a surreptitious look


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            357

at Ellel, who was leaving, head down, as though she were thinking long, serious thoughts.
    "What did you foresee?" asked Farmwife Suttle, with a curious glance at Ellcl's departing back.
    Oracle said loudly, "If they plan correctly, they will achieve the stars as men did long ago."
The door to the corridor snapped shut.
"Olly's going to take them there, then?" whispered Drowned Woman. "Seemingly so," said Oracle, helping herself to roast lamb. She sniffed the meat, detecting thyme and parsley, basil and mint. Such cookery was a rare thing in archetypal villages. Her own had never been graced with an archetypal Chef.
    "You eat with better appetite than I," said Drowned Woman bitterly. "You seem to care little for Orphan. Don't you grieve for her?"
    Oracle's voice quavered as she answered. "What is to be is to be. Grieving will not change it. If she guides the ship, we will not be harmed."
    Oracle rose, leaving her plate untouched, to stare out the window at the sky. "Herself traded for us."
"Your prophecy," said Farmwife heavily. "I don't suppose you--"
    "No!" said Oracle sadly. "Though I was prepared to lie if necessary, when the time came, I could not. Ellel's prophecy is true."

    Deep in the night, Abasio lay sleepless on his borrowed bed, wishing he were elsewhere.
    The door opened, admitting a sliver of lamplight, a slight silhouette dark against it.
"Basio?" Olly's voice.
"Yes," he said urgently. "Yes. When did you get back?"
    "I've been back," she said. "Wandering around in this place. It's endless, Abasio. The part down below, it's monstrous huge. I could explore down
there for my whole life and probably not see it all.""What were you doing'?"
    "Looking at things. Things the old man told me about. Things the thrones have stored away down there. Things that grew, and things that they made. And some things people like Tom have made too. They have workshops and laboratories here .... "Her voice drifted off. After a moment she sighed. "And partly I've just been waiting for everyone to settle down. I didn't want anyone fussing at me. Tom. Or Nimwes, or Arakny. You know."
    "I know," he said. "They're all upset." He threw back the covers to get up and go to Oily, all unclothed as he was.
He realized his nakedness too late, as she came to him with a little rush,


358                              Sheri S. Tepper

pushing under the cover beside him, pulling it over them both. "Don't get up."
    She lay with her face below his, her lips thrust into the curve of his neck, her body stretched along his, her arms around him.
    "Did you see the shuttle?" he whispered, not wanting to ask that question or any question, but needing to hear her voice over the drumroll of his heart.
    "I saw it," she whispered. "It isn't very big, Abasio. A hundred passengers is all it holds."
"You can't go with them," he muttered desperately. "You mustn;t!"
    "I haven't decided. I don't want to decide right now. That's one reason I'm here. So I don't have to decide. So I don't have to think about it."
    His arms tightened about her. His lips found hers, wet with salt tears. He licked them away with the tip of his tongue, put his mouth to her closed eyes, to the lobe of her ear, covered her jaw with kisses, bringing them to her mouth once more.
"Oily," he whispered.
    "Shhh. Oh, Abasio, I don't want to talk. I don't want to think of words, reasons, arguments why, why not. I see why women sometimes don't want to think. I see why they want to be mindless, like the hens with their proud rooster. Oh, if they had to think, if they always had to think, they wouldn't-they wouldn't love anyone. They wouldn't take a chance. They never could. It--they... too monstrous..."
"What is?" he asked, his arms tightening.
    "Don't," she whispered. "Don't talk. No words. Make me not think of words, Abasio."
    The clothing she wore was loose, only a robe of some filmy stuff. His arms slipped inside it and drew her against his skin, herself soft and sleek, smooth as polished wood, soft as a bird's feathers. He felt her heart beating against his own, bent his head to her breasts, soft little breasts, no nipples, the nipples turned inward like a little girl's.
    He nuzzled, and a nipple came thrusting against his lips, erupting against his tongue, at first soft, then hard and impatient. There was a fever in the skin of her breast.
    She murmured something, a command that was not a word, pushing her hips against him, throwing one leg over him. He pulled his arm from beneath her and thrust her robe aside, letting the lamplight from the next room fall along her body, breast and belly and thigh, all flushed bright, all in restless movement, quivering, pushing against him.
He whispered her name, not knowing he'd done it.
"No words... Abasio."
No words, then. He sank into a waiting moisture, a waiting softness,


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                            359

feeling resistance, drawing back in fear of hurting her, only to feel her pushing against him hard, crying out, only partly in pain.
    And then no more thoughts. Words that were not words. Movement and all the complicated geometry, Abasio thought, unaccountably, of body A meeting body B, both in motion, needing no guidance. Instinctive. Inside himself, herself, idiot savants who knew without knowing how they knew. The thought fled and was gone in an explosion of light behind his closed eyes.
    And a long silence, broken by Oily who breathed one word into his ear: "P'nash."
He wanted to laugh but had only enough breath to go on living.
After a moment: "So that's p'nash," she said again, sighing.
    He did laugh then, the laughter rising around him like a warm bath, losing himself and all words and all worries in it, holding her close, never to let her go.
    They slept as love left them, still entwined. During the night Abasio moved away, tangled himself among the covers, reached for her, found her, reached for her, found her.
    And shortly before dawn he reached for her once more and found her gone.

    While Oily lay in Abasio's arms, certain servants were summoned to Ellel's quarters, Qualary among them. The door to the locked room was open. Two things lay on the terribly dusty bed; one bundle wrapped in a blanket, long and thin, tied about with cords, the other an open case. In the case were Ellel's clothes and her personal things, and on top, a crown, a scepter. Qualary pretended not to see as Ellel shut the case and latched it before going into an open closet and seating herself at the console inside.
    "Those two things are to go into the shuttle," said Ellel, over her shoulder. "Dever is waiting. He'll say where to put them."
    Qualary sent the servants away with the case, with the bundle, meantime hearing Ellel's voice raised in little urgencies, commands, punctuations as her hands tapped, as her eyes scanned the readouts before her. She finished up with a flourish and a crow of laughter, then rose, shut the closet, and locked it, before stalking into the larger room.
      "Clean up in there while I'm away," she said to Qualary, gesturing through
the open door at the room behind her."ma'am."
    "Get all that dust out. Wash the window. Get the furniture replaced. It's all filthy."


360                        Sheri S. Tepper

"Ma'am."
    "And take this list of those going on the shuttle to Gaddi House immediately. We leave at dawn."
    "Today, ma'am'?" Qualary couldn't keep a squawk of astonishment out of her voice.
    "Dever says we can. No reason to wait, so we'll leave at dawn." Ellel laughed, a low, chortling laugh, the laugh of a child given a wonderful surprise. "We're going away, Qualary, but don't think you mice will play. No such thing. No, no. Everyone in the Place will wait here patiently, no matter how long it takes me. And don't try to fiddle with my closet, clumsy girl! Any fiddling with my closet sets my creatures off, and then you'll all regret it!"
    Qualary could not take in what Ellel was saying. She watched wordlessly as Ellel left, standing for a long moment as though paralyzed, then turned as though drawn by invisible wires into the terribly dusty room.
    The bedcurtains were still pulled back. The impression of a body still marked the filthy linens. The indentation of a head still hollowed the pillow. The smell of dust and walker and something even worse still permeated both. Shuddering, .scarcely aware of what she did, Qualary pulled the bedding away from the bed, feeling it shred beneath her hands, and kicked the pile out into the next room, from there out into the corridor, all the time rubbing her hands down her sides to remove the feel of having touched it, the paper in her hand tattering as she moved.
    Then, realizing what she had done, she put the paper flat on the table and pushed the torn edges together to read what was written there. A list. The first name, Ellel's, followed by the names of two dozen members of the Ellel Family. Then Ander's name, plus two dozen of his people. Qualary knew the names. The list included most of those with influence. Most of those with power. None on it were very old or very young. No Mitty nalnes. None of the Berklis. The rest--the rest~ almost a hundred walkers, identified by serial number in Ellel's hand. Her own selected companions.
    "'We will flit on, flit on over to the moon,'" Qualary sang in a mad little voice, quoting Ander, glad that he was going. Glad that Ellel was going. Glad they would both be gone. Knowing they could not be gone long enough.
    Shortly thereafter she was at the gate of Gaddi House. "The list," she announced, handing the paper to a hastily summoned Tom Fueiry. "This is the list of who's going, Tom!"
"Qualary," he said softly, caressing her, "come in."
    "I can't," she whispered. "Ellel gave me things to do. They have to be done before she gets back."
"There's time," he said. "Believe me, dear one. The flight cannot be


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS
                                                                                    361 hurried. It takes so much time going, so much time returning. You've done
enough today."
"Too much!" she cried. "Oh, Tom, I've done too much!"
       She had done too much. Arakny had done too much, and Abasio. There had been much too much already done. Tom knew it was true, but it didn't keep him from going up to the guest suite occupied by Arakny and Abasio where he believed he would find Oily.
      Instead, he found her outside that suite, sitting on a bench that looked out over an enclosed garden, dressed in the bright clothing Qualary had given her.
"The list?" she asked in a quiet voice.
He nodded. "Qualary says they leave at dawn."
"Who's on it?"
"Ellels, Anders, walkers." "No Mittys? No Berklis?" He shook his head.
"Don't worry about it, Tom."
"I want to help you! What am I to do?" he cried in fear and pity.
       She sighed. "One very special thing, Tom. I need to talk to Coyote. Can
 you reach him?""I can. Yes."
"Send for him. I need him here, very quickly. Also, I want you to give
a message to Abasio."
'~l~ut Abasio is here! Surely you left him not long ago."
     She shook her head. "It wasn't the time to say what I want to say. He was too---we were both too... involved with other things." Her eyes lit uo at that memory, wiping all trace of apprehension from her face for an instan/. Then she looked at the list she held and remembered where she was.
    She gave Tom her message for Abasio, repeating it twice, seeing his face grow grim. "One other thing," she said. "One request of him and you both. Come watch me leave. From the roof. You and Qualary and Abasio and Arakny. Wave me good-bye and watch us go. I will take comlbrt from that, and likely there will not be a sight like it soon again."

    Dawn came on a late fall morning under a lowering sky. Blackness filled the west, cloud and snow mixed with rain, muttering thunder and a turmoil of wind, its breath reaching into the Place of Power, snarling of more and worse to come. Up and down the canyons trees lashed in that wind, bending unwillingly, branches creaking. On the eastern horizon was only a pale greengray glow, as of a sickened sun crawling reluctantly from a fevered bed.


362                              Sheri S. Tepper

    Only a dozen or so were abroad in the Place of Power. Four of them were there at Olly's request, braving the wind from the top of Gaddi House, quaking in the cold. The rest stalked the path from the silo to the Gaddi House gate: Ellel and two files of striding walkers.
"Can the Witch see me from down there?" whispered Qualary.
    "I think she has eyes only for Oily," said Arakny, with a curious glance at the other woman. She had not said "Witch" out loud before. Nonetheless, the word had a much-used sound in Qualary's mouth.
    "Where is Oily?" grated Abasio, tears running down the comers of his mouth.
"At the Gaddi House gate," Tom answered. "Below us."
    She was there, dressed in the sunset-colored garb that Qualary had given her the day before, moving steadily out onto the roadway where Ellel and her walkers waited, her angel on her shoulder, its plumes fluttering raggedly in the wind.
The walkers moved toward her.
Olly stopped and held up her hand, forbidding them.
    Ellel jittered from foot to foot, dancing with scarcely withheld fury. Even from the roof they heard Olly's clear voice calling, "I come willingly or not at al~, ElJe/."
    Ellel shouted an irritated command. The walkers halted. Olly moved forward once more, walking swiftly among them and past Ellel to become their leader as they returned to the shuttle silo. It was she who was first at that distant door.
    "1 should have done something," gasped Abasio. He could still feel her body, feel the warmth of her breath, smell her skin. "I should have done something!" He could not breathe. There was a hardness in his throat, a
pain in his chest as though something there had broken."You did all you could," said Tom.
    Arakny thought all of them had done all they could, but still there must have been something left undone, or the girl would not be going away, not like this. Why was His Wisdom letting her go'? Or was he as impotent as they?
    At the door of the distant silo, the rosy little figure turned and lifted a hand in gallant farewell.
    Abasio leaned on the parapet, his shoulders heaving. Arakny hugged him, tears running down her own face, unregarded.
    From that distant door, Ellel was watching them through glasses. At length, she made a triumphant gesture and disappeared within.
"It will be safer below," said Tom, tugging at Qualary.
They did not hear him. He had to repeat himself several times and then


                        A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                 363

insist, almost angrily, pulling at each of them before they would leave the roof.
      "Can't we see it go?" asked Qualary, torn between relief and despair. She did not want Oily lost any more than the others did, but oh, to have Ellel gone, if only for a time! The very thought made her buoyant, as though she had laid down a great weight. "Can't we see it go?" she repeated.
     "From inside," said Tom flatly. "His Wisdom says you can watch with him."
       They found His Wisdom in a large room with Nimwes and a few dozen
 other Gaddirs watching the silo through screens and sensors."When?" asked Abasio.
     "Soon," said His Wisdom. "The walkers and Domers have been getting into the thing since about midnight."
     It seemed unconscionably long until they saw the domed top of the silo crack and open, like the bud of a flower, its steel petals blooming on the stem of the walls, the last few workmen leaving, carefully shutting and bolting the thick doors behind them.
    After that it was only a little while until a great noise battered at them from speakers set high on the walls. Then the screens showed roiling smoke and a belch of orange fire from exhaust vents at the base of the silo and the shuttle itself protruding slowly, reluctantly from the top of the structure. It moved upward, more swiftly, more swiftly yet, lunging toward the sky poised on its cylinder of white light, thrusting, hastening, then soaring at the tip of a long, fiery diagonal.
    Even in the midst of Abasio's grief, something inside him leaped up at the sight of that ship going. He felt again that surge of ownership he had l'elt as a child, when he had looked from the belt of Orion to the great stars Betelgeuse and Rigel, when Grandpa had told him there were men out there. In that telling, Abasio had taken possession of the stars, and even now ~omething of that wonder and glory trembled in him for a moment before thoughts of Oily returned.
Hc was still looking up, but the ship had gone beyond his sight.

ll

of

Y

    For some long time after the last trace of the shuttle's flight had vanished into a cloudless sky, no one moved. They merely sat and watched the smoke clear away from the silo, watched the people of the Place of Power come from under cover, a few here, a few there, little by little, to stand in chattering groups around the empty silo, staring at the equally empty sky.
    Oracle came from the Dome, with Farmwife Suttle and Burned Man and [)rowned Woman and old Cermit stumping along behind. Berkli came from


364                              Sheri S. Tepper

somewhere, twitching with anger but immaculately dressed. His Wisdom whispered to Nimwes, and shortly after someone approached this group with bows and gestures, inviting them to Gaddi House itself.
     "I told my people to bring your friends and kinsmen here," said His Wisdom to Abasio. "I count Berkli among that number, and possibly we will count Mitty also, if he has brought himself to take sides."
     He motioned to Tom, saying: "Bring them up to my quarters, Tom. Nimwes is preparing tea for us there. I know they'll all want to talk together. At a time like this, we should not be alone."
     They came, Berkli first, to stare around the room, his brows furrowed. He strode to kneel at old Seoca's feet and give him his hand. "I would have done anything to prevent this, sir. I kept coming up with ideas, but none of them worked. All these years I've been thinking of Ellel as a ch~d, a mere annoyance, too young and silly to be a real threat. But she was. Is. We let her get too strong."
     ~'I know," said His Wisdom. "Though history instructs us vividly, people refuse to recognize tyrants until the blade is at their throats. Oily herself said it to me just this morning: People believe what they want to believe." He sighed. "Tell me, where is your friend Mitty?"
    "I asked him to come, but he won't. He feels even worse than I, for he's just now realized he's as culpable as the rest ot' us. We should have stopped her decades ago! Now--now it's too late. If she gets back with the weapons and we don't do something then, there'll be no stopping her!" He grimaced. "The only thing I can be grateful for is that all the Mittys and Berklis are still here and maybe we can put our heads together and come up with a plan."
Tom looked up, alert. "A plan?"
    "We must be ready when she gets back! We have these few days while she's gone. When she returns, we can't let her go on doing what she's been doing!"
      His Wisdom was smiling, though wearily. Tom took a deep breath. "Was
that what she meant?" he blurted. '~Olly?""What?" demanded Abasio.
"She gave me a message for you."
"Why didn't she tell me herself?" cried Abasio, wounded. "Because--she said you were both--preoccupied with other things. So she gave me the message, to give to you as soon as I might. She said the
struggle would begin when she left. She wanted us, you, to be--resolute." "With her gone, what does it matter!" Abasio cried.
    "She said you would say that," cried Tom. "And I was to say to you, if she gave her life for you and everyone, then you must give some of yours in her memory. She said it would give her great peace of mind if she knew


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS                                 365

you did not despair, not you, or Arakny or Qualary or me. She said there is a struggle coming, the last great struggle, in which life itself is the prize. And she told me to tell you His Wisdom's story about cleaning the water tank."
    His Wisdom chuckled and wept at once, while Berkli looked on, askance. Water tank?
      "It matters what you do," the old man murmured. "What will you do to
honor her memory, Abasio Cermit?""Then she's not coming back ....
    The old man said, "Suppose she did return, but wounded or maimed. What would you tell her you had done to honor her sacrifice?"
    Abasio put his head in his hands, refusing to answer. Arakny put her arms around him, shaking her head at Tom. Let him alone a bit, her stance seemed to say. He'll be all right, but let him grieve a bit.
    "Was it Ander who convinced her not to take any of us?" asked Berkli, returning to his own line of thought. "No Berklis? No Mittys?"
    "Partly," said Qualary, offering him a steaming cup. "But I think it was Oracle who decided her at the end."
    "I did?" asked Oracle from the doorway. "How very interesting." She came in, followed by the other hostages, to be introduced to His Wisdom and accept tea from Nimwes. Drowned Woman took a cup into her hand, but she could not drink it for her tears. The fragrance had brought back the memory of her sitting on Orphan's rickety stoop, talking about the world.
    "I presume we can go home now," said Farmwife Suttle in a brittle voice. "Now that Olly's gone."
    Oracle put her hand to her forehead. "Ellel said we would be free to go if Oily guided them on their journey." She pressed with her fingers, as though to soothe an ache, then said dazedly, "She lied, however. I should have realized that at the time. Ellel lied."
     They stared at her, wonderingly, glancing at one another. Abasio's head
came up. Tom stopped what he was doing and stared at Oracle. "But surely you are free to go," said Tom. "No," she said. "No, none of us is free to go." "Why not?" cried Drowned Woman.
    "I don't know," Oracle replied. "But she's done something. She's set some trap." Oracle moved out across the adjacent terrace to the parapet, where she leaned over to peer down into the canyon below. Her silence drew others to her side. There below them, along every inch of the wall that separated the Place of Power from the world at large, stood Ellel's walkers, and those Mitty had considered his, and those of Ander, all the walkers except those on the shuttle, guarding the walls of the Place.
Tom exclaimed, "That's where they went!" He ran out of the room,


366

Sheri S. Tepper

calling to someone in the corridor. After a time he returned, shaking his head angrily. "They're posted all the way around. They're at the back gate as well as the front. They're all along the wall."
"Why?" asked Drowned Woman. "Why are they there?"
    "To prevent our getting out, I should think," said the old man. "This place and these people are Ellel's place of power. She does not want to lose Mitty's skill---or the pleasure of killing Berkli and me. She wants to find us all here when she returns. She plans to deal with us before she moves on the rest of the world."
Tom blurted, "When she returns with the weapons--"
    "Her ambitions extend far beyond the return of the shuttle," muttered Berkli. "Why didn't we all realize that years ago?"
    "We are all hostages now," said Abasio tonelessly. Perhaps that was why Olly had gone so quietly. Perhaps she had known it did not matter.
    He turned to Oracle, as though hoping she would contradict his words or his thoughts, but she did not. She refused to meet his eyes as she murmured, "There are no acceptable solutions to some problems."

    "Well," gasped Ander from his place beside his colleague in the shuttle. "That was exciting. Are you sure we shouldn't bring someone more experienced up here? Someone who knows what buttons to push?"
    "There is no one 'experienced,' and we don't push any buttons," said Ellel. "According to Dever, the Werra offshoot does all that, quite automatically, without any intervention from us."
    She unbuckled her belt and floated free, awkwardly grabbing at handholds to move herself into position to see the booth where Oily sat, her head and face invisible beneath the helmet, her strange bird resting upon her lap, between her cupped hands. Oily had entered the booth by herself without being forced or assisted. She had held the bird in one hand while she had pulled the helmet down with the other. She had even pushed the button that started the insertion sequence, and she had not cried out when the mechanism had whined its way through her skull. Perhaps, Ellel thought, the helmet first provided an anodyne, though the replica she had used on several hundred infants and girls over the years had never done so. Her victims had always howled like skewered animals when the wires went in. Olly hadn't cried out during the test. She hadn't cried out this time, either. Nor had the bird, which was looking at Ellel now with beady, seemingly intelligent eyes.
    So all Ellel's practice had been for nothing. Nothing! All those babies. All those little girls and silly maidens, all that hysteria and howling, for nothing. Well, it had been worth a try. Repeated tries. The very fact that only Olly had been successful proved the truth of W,erra's statement. A