A Plague of Angels by Sheri S. Tepper
Posnia found her sister smoking a drug called Dreamland and listening to recordings by a newly heralded street singer.
“I hear you went to an Oracle,” whispered Posnia, when she had divested herself of her red-and-green-striped street gown. “It all over Fantis how you go gettin’ a pro-phecy.”
Sybbis pursed her mouth, as though to spit, rolled over, and turned the music up so they could not be overheard.
“How the hell you hear that?”
“What she tell you?” Posnia whispered.
“What you think! I not goin’ get pregnant ’less I cn get fucked!”
“He still can’t do it?”
Sybbis made a face. “I don’ think he has any li’l bitty idea what ‘it’ is. He goes through the motion, like maybe he seen somebody do it, or somebody maybe tole him about it, but he just pushin’ nothin’ ‘round. It this dinky thing the size my thumb, Posy. You wouldn’ believe! After a while he sigh and sorta yawn and say somethin’ like, ‘Is that enough, you think?’ ”
“He doesn’ come?”
“He doesn’ get close.”
“He’s never seen one stiff?”
“Posy, don’ ask me. He’s smart enough ’bout some things, but he just doesn’ know nothin’ ’bout that. I think he never did grow up. I think he like a baby still. I think his pa made sure he never fin’ out he not like other men.”
“How could he keep from findin’ out?” Posnia cried, surprising herself at the sound. She put a quick hand over her mouth. Someone could be listening.
Sybbis whispered, “He got these Old G’s. His daddy’s men His daddy’s Warlord, even. They always close aroun’ him. They tell him he can talk to this one or that one, he can do this or that. Tha’s what Carmina say. She the Warlord’s homewoman, an’ I figure she should know.”
“You think his father know? Old Chief Purple?”
“ ’Course he know! But I think maybe he hope.”
Posnia shook her head in confusion.
“Little Chief not thirty yet. Maybe Old Chief, he hope like, Little Chief’s just slow. Maybe he hope if his son is a good Chief, the res’ will come. Like you train a dog to fetch, later you train’m to roll over.” Sybbis laughed, chokingly. “Train’m to kill enough Blue Shadows, maybe he can do t’other thing.”
“What are you going to do?”
Sybbis sobered, her eyes narrowed. “I not goin’ like that other one, that Elrick-Ann, tha’s for sure. She at the baths, an’ I see what happen to her.” She shuddered, remembering the livid scars that crossed Elrick-Ann’s face and body.
“I hear she get away from the Greens. Nobody knows how. People say even Wally Skins don’ know.”
Sybbis pouted. “That don’ matter. What matter is, what that Oracle say. It got to be up to me. He don’ know it his fault I not pregnant, and don’ look for me to tell him, tha’s for sure. I got to get me pregnant some other way. Otherwise it be me the Greens are cuttin’ on.”
Posnia looked apprehensively at the curtained door leading to the Chief’s quarters. “Sybby, you can’t.”
Sybbis settled herself, placed a hand across her sister’s mouth, and leaned toward her ear.
“We go to the baths. Two, three times a week. The men stay outside when we go in. There a back door. You ’member that hag we use to have? She our nursemaid at Blood-run House. Nelda?”
“She got sold to—”
“I know where she got sold to. She got sold two or three times, but now she got a songhouse on Happy Street. I wrote her a letter askin’ her to meet me at the baths nex Fifth-day.” Sybbis patted her breast, pulling up a corner of the note so Posy could see it. “You take it when you go.”
“You want me goin’ to a house on Happy Street! Sybby! Why don’ you send the letter?”
Sybbis spoke between gritted teeth. “Because I don’ wan anythin’ direc from me to Nelda. Jus in case Little Purple start askin’ questions. I don’ wan’ anything lead from me to her.”
“She won’ come.”
“She will. She use to steal things at Bloodrun, and we both know ’bout it. She goin’ to remember that. She goin’ to be afraid we tell on her if she don’ do what we want. Either you or me.”
“Why do I have to be there?” Posnia whined.
“You have to be there, ’cause when the time come, you goin’ to preten’ to be me!” her sister snapped.
Posnia was much tempted to lose the letter. Her prior experience with Sybbis, however, had been that when Sybbis was frustrated, it was Posnia who felt the pain. Therefore, out of apprehension rather than any sense of sisterly helpfulness, Posnia paid one of the bath-girls to deliver the note. The bath-girl, almost as a matter of course, unsealed the missive and read it, hoping for something juicy she could sell to a gang Chief Finding nothing at all, she delivered the letter out of fear of what might happen to her if she did not.
Nelda, in her turn, remembered the Bloodrun girls as fully capable of retaliation, so she took herself to the baths on the following morning, where Posnia drew her into a private room already occupied by Sybbis.
“Sit down,” Sybbis snapped when the two of them had been left alone.
Nelda stiffened, gripping the knife in her pocket. What was this one up to?
Sybbis, however, seemed more confiding than threatening. “I got me this problem, Nelly.”
Nelda sat down and leaned slowly forward, feeling her shoulder gripped by Sybbis’s strong hand, hearing Sybbis’s whisper, too low to be overheard by anyone.
At the end of Sybbis’s recital, the brothel mistress shook her head in mingled amusement and apprehension. “What do you want from me?”
“I cn come here, then I cn go the back way an’ get me to your place, Nelly. Or some other place, nearby. I put on a blackie robe, like you outside women wear, and I go someplace. Someplace, Nelly. You pick it. And you have to find me a cock. A quick one, one guarantee to make baby roosters.”
“What am I to tell this cock?”
“Tell him nothin’ ’cep he gets paid. Don’ tell him who I am ’less you want your throat slit. I wear a mask when the time come.”
“Tattoos,” Nelda reminded her.
“Daddy wan’ to make it up to me for sellin’ me, so he tell Young Chief he musn’ tattoo me. It not in the contrac’.”
Nelda laughed. “Determined, aren’t you? Well, you always were. How come you let your daddy sell you to that one at all? The whole city knows Little Purple has no balls at all, no more than a bitty child.”
“Daddy need the money real bad. His insurance was goin’ up and up, and he los’ a big sponsor. One those battery-shops, they decide on the Renegades ‘stead of the Bloodruns. Daddy sits me on his lap an’ call me his sweet baby an’ say he sellin’ me to the Purples, but I should be patient for a little, ’cause Young Chief prob’ly sen’ me home again pretty soon.”
“You think he won’t?”
“He sen’ me in a basket! Or dead! Only reason I tell you is so you understan’ why I got to do this, Nelly I got to get pregnant. Young Chief got to think it his, too. It lucky he so ignorant. He believe anythin’ anybody tell him. And his daddy, he wan’ to believe it too!”
“When’s your baby time?” Nelda asked. With infertility rampant, the mechanics of conception were well understood by the women of Fantis.
“Nex Third-day,” said Sybbis, who’d kept close track of her timing for months.
“That’s real soon,” said Nelda. “Maybe I can’t get everything put together so soon.”
“Well, it then or it a month from then,” said Sybbis. “One or the other.”
They talked awhile longer, Sybbis explaining how she would manage this, how she would manage that, Nelda asked for a hefty price, and Sybbis granted it almost without bargaining.
“When I get pregnant, he be so puffed up, he give me the whole Purple war chest ’f I ask for it!’ ”
Sybbis had her bath and went home with her escort, believing things were well begun. Nelda, for her
She made a mental list: Whoever she picked must be reasonably like Young Chief Purple in coloring. Since this was a gang-lord’s child, his heritage could include ferocity, or at least good physical coordination. Perhaps the assignment would appeal to the Survivors—a supergang made up of men who’d survived battle in the debt-arena. Survivors were the quickest, the strongest—or at least the luckiest—Fantis had to offer. That would be a good heritage for Sybbis’s child.
Problem was, all the Survivors drank and boasted. The word would get out in no time. No. No, a Survivor was not a good idea.
And there were three additional problems, from Nelda’s point of view. The first was merely logistical: bringing the cock and hen together secretly and frequently enough to assure success. Sybbis’s ideas on that matter were innovative, but they needed methodical refinement. Luckily, Sybbis had a healthy heritage on both sides, giving no reason to doubt her fertility.
Which brought up the second problem, one, Sybbis hadn’t even mentioned. If Nelda wanted no problems later on from Sybbis or the Bloodruns, this baby would have to be healthy, which was true of few babies these days. Many had drug-induced deformities. Many had genetic or transmissible disease. Men who frequented the brothels were likely to be tainted with one of the nasties. Ball-rot. Twinky-droop Blood boils. All of which were sexually transmitted. In addition to these, many men had one of the IDDIs, which were invariably fatal. Sometimes they knew they had it; often they didn’t Sometimes they didn’t care. Women who mated with such men usually didn’t survive pregnancy.
There could be none of that. Not if Nelda wanted to keep her neck intact. No, this one had to be clean, which meant a casual. Someone who only rarely came to a brothel. No, better someone who didn’t come there at all.
Which brought the third problem to mind: keeping him quiet afterward.
And though Sybbis was in one hell of a hurry, Nelda knew she must not be. This matter must be accomplished carefully, she told herself. Very carefully indeed. If it were done, it should be well done so that she could retire to the country on the proceeds.
Among the crowd gathered with their market baskets, waiting to go out the gate of the Place of Power to the marketplace beyond, Qualary Finch was an undistinguished member, being a brownish woman, a monotone of skin, hair, and clothing that resembled a carving as much as a living person. As though to increase this likeness, she had transferred into her daily life her workaday pose as furniture: a slightly wooden manner, a stillness of face, and a gracelessness of movement that suggested the unpracticed manipulations of an unpainted marionette.
This carryover was understandable inasmuch as she had worked for the. Witch for two decades, and it explained the lack of reaction she displayed when greeted by a fortyish, graying, round-faced fellow carrying a market basket of his own.
“You’re Qualary Finch, aren’t you?”
She nodded the least possible nod, turning slightly away so as not to encourage him. She did not recognize him as a Domer, which meant he was probably a Gaddir. It wasn’t forbidden to speak to Gaddirs, but neither was it discreet.
“You don’t know me,” he went on, undiscouraged. “But I know your brother Bossik. He’s told me all about you.”
Qualary shuffled her feet, more than a little embarrassed. Unlike the rest of the family who had always given at least lip service to the Domer notion that Gaddi House was at best obsolete and at worst up to no good, her older brother Bossik was a renegade, a heretic, a man who actually said that Gaddirs might be decent folk, for all anyone knew to the contrary. How had Bossik gotten to know this one? And how did one respond to such an introduction?
She was spared the necessity of deciding when the man went on:
“Whenever I see Bossik, he tells me something new and wonderful about you. He says you make the best venison stew in the world.”
Bossik Finch had indeed told him this, though it had taken a good deal of time and maneuver to get him to do so.
Unaware of all this effort, Qualary flushed. “Oh, well,” she murmured. “You can’t believe everything Bossy says.”
“On the contrary.” The stranger beamed. “He said you were the prettiest woman in the Place, and I’m inclined to agree with him.” This was a lie, but not unwelcome.
Her mouth dropped open as she considered what one might say to this Pretty? She? He must be joking!
He gave her no time for rebuttal. “My name’s Tom Fuelry. No laughter, please. Ma was a jokester, and it really is my name. Are you on your way out to market? Me too. I’ll walk with you.”
And she found herself walking, talking about nothing much, all at a loss what to say or do about this assault upon her daily routine. They went through the gates, which allowed free egress on market days—though no one could come back inside without the proper permanent identification—and once outside strolled through the chatter and tumult of the market itself, full of hawkers and merchants and peddlers and traders, in addition to the local farmers with their produce and grains and meats.
Under Fuelry’s watchful eye, Qualary bought a rat’s worth of sausage, a few mice worth of fresh vegetables, several packets of seeds, two potted flowering plants, a small bird in a cage, a jar of honey, a sack of crushed grain that she planned to cook with meat and raisins—so she said—and a freshly killed chicken. To Fuelry’s astonishment, she asked if anyone had live little fish for sale and was distressed that no one had. Meanwhile, Tom Fuelry bought venison chops, potatoes, late sweet corn, and two bottles of wine transported all the way from the shores of the Faulty Sea.
Both of them summoned Domer tote-boys to carry their baskets and strolled back to the walls together, where they waited in line with their tote-boys to be approved by the sensors.
When they were safely inside, Fuelry said:
“You don’t know me at all, but your brother does. If you consult him and he recommends me, and if you’d like to do so, would you join me for dinner in my quarters tonight? I can’t drink all that wine alone. It would be a sin to try.”
Without quite knowing how it happened, she found herself agreeing. On her return to her own placid and lonely house, she didn’t even call Bossik to ask him about his friend. She told herself it wasn’t necessary. In fact, she would have been embarrassed to do so, for Bossy would tease her as he always had when they were children, and she didn’t think she could bear it. It wasn’t anything she’d ordinarily do—have dinner with a Gaddir (she no more than any Domer making the distinction between Old Seoca and those who served him)—but since he was a friend of her brother’s …
All this consideration was to no point. Had she tried to reach her brother she would have found him gone. Fuelry had made quite sure that Bossik Finch would be elsewhere when he approached Qualary.
She went to the Gaddi House gate at sundown, where Fuelry waited to escort her through the checkpoints to a labyrinth of halls and rooms and stairs and lifts inside.
“I’ve never been in here before,” she whispered. “None of us Domers have. I thought it would be … strange.”
“Nothing strange about it,” he said offhandedly. “Just a big apartment house for people to live in.”
Elsewhere and below in Gaddi House, there were indeed strange places, some of which. Tom shuddered to go into and most of which he had never even seen. He knew of them only because the old man had spoken of them as he spoke of many marvels in the place. Sometimes Tom thought the old man merely imagined what was behind certain huge doors or down certain winding corridors, Imaginary or not, Tom didn’t mention them to Qualary, Tom was one of half a dozen people the old man talked to, but none of the half-dozen ever talked about what he said, not even to one another.
Tom’s own quarters were roomy and pleasant, facing on a sizable balcony that ext
“You have windows,” she cried. “I didn’t know Gaddi House had windows.”
“Oh, yes,” he remarked. “All the living quarters are built around these atriums. It’s really quite comfortable Different from the separate houses most of you Domers live in, and I must say I envy you your gardens.”
She agreed that the gardens were enjoyable and went into some detail about her own small house, her own small garden.
“I often think it would be nice if we could visit back and forth more,” asserted Fuelry. “Domers and Gaddirs seem to be getting more and more isolated all the time. We share the Place, we ought to be friendlier.”
She hadn’t thought about it. She did so now, trying to do so honestly. “There are fundamental differences in philosophy,” she said seriously “Ander says there are variations in the essentialities of our experience. Dissonant intellectual matrices.”
Fuelry gave her a long, level look, and she blushed again, wondering if he had understood her. Wondering if she had understood herself. She knew she had used the right words, and she thought she knew what she meant. Of course, the differences were philosophical, and Domers said Gaddirs couldn’t understand philosophy. Gaddirs were unregenerate pragmatists. They cared only for what worked. They served no higher purpose. The Domers, on the other hand, cared for eternal verities. World order. A united mankind. A civilization of philosophers.
Fuelry, who thought it interesting that she quoted Ander rather than Ellel, made no attempt to dig into what other things Ander might have said. Instead, he turned the conversation to gardening, a comfortably pragmatic subject that the Founders were not greatly interested in and had therefore never bothered to invent a jargon for. He chatted, and filled her glass, and asked a few questions as though the answers didn’t matter, and when the wine had been drunk and the food eaten, he helped her into her jacket and escorted her to the gate, where he planted a chaste kiss upon her cheek and let her go back to her quarters, totally unscathed and thereby reassured.