IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
III: Responsibility
Chapter 23 Points of Culture
Tuesday, June 23, 2708 The stony ground pitches so
steeply that my knees seem to push at my pounding heart with every step. We make rapid altitude, now passing the first
drifts of snow. Frost rimes the rocks
and crunches in the gravel, and the trees grow low and twisted in some eon-slow
dance that bows perpetually to the mountain wind, their fanned-out branches
rippling in the thin, pine-scented air.
They moan and whistle all the while; I wouldn't dance to their music,
but I might make a couple soldiers do it, with a little rope. "Deirdre," Lufti
says, "Look down." "Huh?" "Behind
you." I turn back and see the
bloody footprints. "You cut your
foot on a stone." My bare feet have
gone so numb that I didn't even feel it. "Halt," I say
softly, but they freeze as though I shouted.
"Relax—I'm just calling a break." Untangling
the hammock, I shrug off my pack, my heavy bandolier and the rifle; the pistol
on my hip should suffice for any surprises.
Then I nestle the hammock around my shoulders once again, and sit on a
rock to take care of my foot. At least I
don’t have to worry about jungle sepsis up here; already the various little
swellings that I’d picked up have begun to subside. Some of the greenfire murk
has lifted from my heart. I gaze out,
stunned, at the view from here, across from our height to a whole range of
others like it and yet no two really alike, raw sculptures of the seasons, cold
beauty so ancient that the existence of life itself seems but a passing phase
to all that rock. Light shatters off the
ice so brightly that it pains the eye as must the face of God. Clouds march on beyond this stone
magnificence like floating mountains, themselves, of weightless ice and pearl. We've marched before it all this time and
only now do I see it in its fullness—what else must I miss, day by day? We sit and stare out at the
tumultuous horizon, trying to eat the beauty, since we have nothing else to
fill us. Quietly Damien begins to talk. "Up here they speak a
legend of stone women who dwell in the mountains, who step from peak to peak,
who can grow higher than the thunderheads and then dwindle back to human size,
or smaller." I sigh and lean back
against the coolness of a boulder to let the storyteller's spell weave over
me. “You might even have met one without
knowing it.” He gazes away for a moment,
before adding, “A stone woman lived near
Koboros, where I came from, and doubtless lives there still—nothing kills a
Mountain Maiden.” “Did you ever see her
yourself?” I ask. “I’m not sure,” he says
thoughtfully. "She can deceive
you." He peers at the
boulder-strewn heights as though trying to recognize a face in the jumble. "She doesn't look like stone till you
see her close up, they say, the chiseled and eroded face, the hard, hard
eyes. She has pine-shadow hair as ragged
as raven-feathers in a stiff wind. She
wears snow and moss and timber-felt. She
weeps poison tears. The tears are for
rage." I shiver and rummage in my
pockets for tobacco, but we've run out of that, too. Great going, Damien—this doesn't exactly
sound like one of your morale-builders. "She hates miners—all
Mountain Maidens do. They break open her
mother's veins, they split her children's heads." He must still have a soul full of smoke, I
guess. "So she poisons the miners
by embracing them and weeping; then they kiss her bitter-tasting tears. It happens in their sleep; they don't always
remember—but when they do they wake up screaming. They get the metals in their blood no matter
what precautions they might take. She
puts it there." Hesitantly Gaziley says,
"None of us ever worked the mines, right?" "No," I say, and
hope it's true. "Okay, then." But even as he says it, we all can’t help but
think of how often we’ve used metal, how much of it we carry even now. Damien concludes,
"Mountain Maidens aren’t evil—they even do us a good turn now and
then. They’re just the guardians of the
mountains, and they’re hard." I stand up, dizzy with
hunger, and pull out my pistol.
"Hand me some bullets, Damien." He frowns, puzzled, but
unloads some from his bandoliers. I load
my gun, aim at the ground and fire the full chamber while the others jump at
the sound. I hold out my hand to him,
load up again, and fire some more arm-jolting shots, the blasts echoing off the
rock faces below. "There," I
say when the echoes finally die.
"One bullet for each of us.
Metal. Tell the Mountain Maidens
that we've brought it back, and could they please let us pass in safety?" He nods and hums a tune as
it comes to him, reloading his bandolier from mine. Honestly, I should have used my own, but I
just did not want to bend over for
it. Or maybe the ghosts told my soul
that the bullets had to come from Damien, if he would sing to the Maidens for
us. But now I must bend anyway, to
shoulder my heavy things once more. "Come on," I say
wearily, "On your feet—break's over."
Then a few heads surface from behind a boulder to join us. Damn it all—I counted wrong! Stupid superstition—move on, Deirdre. * * * (“Oh man, these uniforms look like a pain!” I exclaim,
studying our purchases with the other three over cocoa at the Mulberry. I finger the scratchy, dark-brown material. “They even make the underwear from wool.” “Not all of it,” Lisa points out, running a finger along a
starched collar on a linen shirt, white and upright and clerical-looking, high
enough to irritate the chin. The
shirt-cuffs match. She shakes her head
over the double-breasted, wasp-waisted jacket and accordion-pleated trousers,
abruptly tightening again at the knee. “But
these clothes—the way they shape—will make it that much harder to conceal that
I'm a girl.” Jake rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Don't feel singled out. We'll all look like girls.” Don studied the collars and cuffs again. “Will we have to iron those, ourselves?” “Nope,” I say. “They’ll
probably have help for that. Leave it to
the students and we might try to sneak by without starching them at all.” “You’re wrong,” Jake said.
“I studied the school rules last night.
We iron, starch, and wash everything ourselves. ‘Young gentlemen must earn the privileged
life ahead of them,’ it said. And they will watch to see if we skip the
starch.” Lisa says, “And we’ll have to keep the brass buttons
polished, too. Even the ones at the
ankles. The brochure says that they
inspect for that.” Don picks up the socks and the white wool stirrup-hose with
distaste. “Won't all these layers get
awfully hot?” Lisa smiles, shaking her head. “We're hardly going to the tropics,
dear. Look, the uniform comes with
gloves. Since the rules say that we're
not allowed to wear them while writing, I’ll assume that it gets cold enough
indoors for students to want to.” She
picks up a dark leather belt. “See, when
you don't wear the gloves, you tuck them in on the left side—and this belt goes
over the jacket, by the way. The buckle
goes to the right, and you slide your student I.D. into the buckle
itself.” She lays the belt down. “Oh, and the stirrups of the hose go over
these little leather slippers that are supposed to pass for shoes.” Jake picks one up.
“They don't expect us to go outdoors much, I take it.” Don shivers. “Which
means that it must get pretty darn cold, even indoors.” For somebody born in a country with more
snow-days than not, he sure hates chilly weather. “We do get galoshes,” Lisa says. “I just didn’t get a chance to pick them up
yet.” I pull out the sleeves, also accordion-pleated, and ask,
“Why do they have to have such tight zigzag-stitching at the elbow-joints?” “To make us miserable,” Don suggests. “The culture likes to drive adolescents out
of their bodies, to keep them pure.” “Speaking of misery...” Lisa murmurs, gazing over my
shoulder, while Jake, across from me, suddenly chokes on his cocoa. Behind me a singsong voice says, “It doesn't work,
though. Forced purity never works.” Zora sits, with Incense's help, down at the
table with us, handing her crutches over to Jake, knowing full well that he'd
dearly love to club her with them. “They
designed the fullness of the upper pants to conceal any bodily betrayal
of...impurity. They do love their
pretenses.” Incense says, “Which brings us to your backstories. Boys traditionally, though informally, tend
to pair up in this academy. Ostensibly
they're ‘as pure as David and Jonathan' as they like to put it, but in reality
everybody just takes it in stride, as they also put it (when they mention it at
all) that ‘boys go through a phase'.” “Institutional homosexuality,” Zora drawls, “Though they
won't call it that. They unofficially
expect the students to sexually experiment with each other, so long as they
remain discreet.” I don't like the way
she stares at me when she says it. I swallow cocoa and say, “We're agents. Professionals. We can feign whatever role we have to.” Toulinians aren't the only ones who can play
the 'discreet' game. Of course everybody
at this table knows except Don, and I strongly suspect that he might have
figured it out, as well. “So,” Incense says as Zora helps herself to Jake's
croissant, “Randy, you and Jake will be a couple, as will Don and Lisa. And you will also pose as Don's brother. That will explain why the four of you hang out
with each other so tightly.” “Peeechy,” Zora says, getting crumbs all over herself. She drops the crumpled remains of the
croissant back on Jake's plate and tries to brush pastry-flakes off of her
blouse, but falls against Jake's shoulder trying. “Evvverybody shoul' be happy abou' how it
alll works out.” Incense finishes
cleaning her up as Jake shoves her back to upright. “And you,” Incense says, “Have let yourself get way too
tired again. Come on, let me get you
home.” “Feed her,” Jake suggests, staring in dismay at the
mangled, half-eaten remains of his croissant. Incense manages to get Zora back on her feet. While she holds her up, Jake and I put the
ex-outlaw's arms into the crutch-cuffs, as she says, “Dansssslessns. They hold all-boy waltzes...sort've. You'll havta learn to waltzzzzz.” And she nods off in Incense's arms. “I'll call you a cab,” Don says, and steps outside. Lisa holds out some water to Incense, with
which to dab at Zora's face. Incense
gives up and sits Zora back down, leaving her arms sticking out to either side
with the crutches still attached, her head sagged to one side. Incense says, “She needs more sleep than most, but she hasn’t
been getting it. She's been working a
whole lot harder on this case than she lets on, expediting tickets and
transportation to jump you ahead on the waiting list, getting those uniforms
made for you, everything. The urgency
beats down on us like the sun gone nova.” She looks to Jake. “And you, of all people, understand.” Looking slightly ashamed of himself, Jake nods. Don comes back in.
“The cab will arrive in about ten minutes. And you, Incense, are one brave woman.” “Not really,” she says, though she dimples. “Zora takes care of me, too. She keeps me anchored in this world. We need each other.” “Absolutely,” I say, and look meaningly at Jake. “Oracles should not live alone.” When the cab comes, we pack up our stuff to leave,
too. I pretend not to hear Lisa whisper
to Jake, “Don't worry, I won't tell the others what you were thinking.” “That was none of your business, telepath!” “Can I help it if you broadcast it louder than a cracking
glacier?” Then she splits off for her
own home, smirking. “What did you think?” I murmur to him. “Just that I’d wished you'd have smacked her harder. Zora, I mean.
Three years ago.” “Jake!” “Yeah, I felt sorry I thought it, too.” |
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