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IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume V: Sharing Insanity
Chapter 25
Friday,
November 13, 2708 (Cybil sits up and hugs her knees at the sound of wolves howling
in the dawn. We couldn’t find shelter
last night, so we improvised with tarps and trees—none of which could keep out
a predator, of course. Seriously, they
can hardly keep the wind out. I smile at her where I lie and say, “Don’t worry, pet. They sound rather far away. And rainbow wolves become notorious cowards
if they find that human beings also travel in a pack.” I see tears on her face in the first dim light. “It’s just that I’m not used to this. I am So.
Not. Used. To. This!” I sit up and put my arms around her, and she sobs and sobs on my
shoulder. “I know, chickling.” I murmur
over and over in her hair, but I don’t really know, and I don’t actually want
to tune in telepathically to find out. I
have always embraced the things that I wasn’t used to. She feels warm and plump against me in the
cold. Does it matter if I can’t empathize, so long as I can
sympathize? It’s like Merrill’s
allergies—just because I don’t share them doesn’t mean I can’t see how they
bother him. I tell her, “Yes, yes, it all seems so unfamiliar to you, but
you’re learning, you’re doing just fine.
I’m really impressed. It wasn’t
that long ago that you’d fall apart if you got a run in your stocking. Now look at you! You’re a regular adventurer!” “Y-you think so?” “I’ve seen with my own eyes, dearheart.” “Thank you, Zanne. You’re a
peach.” Cybil wipes her nose on a
kerchief that I offer her, then goes off to wash up a bit. Pretty soon I hear our hamster-feed “cereal”
bubbling in the pot. I perform my own morning ablutions, flinching by the ice-rimmed
creek. At least I’ve kept a brush, and a
stick of lipstick; I can still feel like the woman I am, even when I have no
mirror to confirm it.) This morning finds Kurmal a
little better. He has managed to
contribute a dark flow to the chamber-pot, and now he can sit up and take a
little soup. Good stuff, too; Zofia got
fresh beef from somewhere, and has cooked it up with lots of garlic; garlic can
cure just about anything, they say. And
she stirred in potatoes and spring greens and everything else needful for a
healthy broth. (Cybil gives Elmer second-helpings of “cereal”, along with the
teenagers. No one, seeing how thin he
is, objects. For that matter, not all of
the crew looks happy about their first helping, unused to the taste of alfalfa
pellets in their grains and nuts, though I myself have a much more cosmopolitan
palette than that. I think they would
just as soon see us run out, anyway. But Elmer, now, he dives in with gusto, his spoon rattling against
the tin camp-dish from the shaking of his hand.
He smacks his lips and says to Cybil, “Ma’am, you’ve made a new man of
me!” “Well, New Man,” I say to him, “Now that you know we have rescue
in mind, are you going to save us trouble and show us the way to your former
employer?”) “Troops’re movin’,” Kurmal
says weakly as he sets the bowl aside; he shakes a little, splashing the
portion left. “Lotsa differen’ troops.” “Theirs or ours?” I ask. “Gover’ment troops. Theirs, I guess.” He sinks back on the pillows and smiles on
Zofia. “Not a rebel anymore,
pers’nally.” “I can respect that. Consider yourself mustered out. But tell me...” “Can your folks harry
theirs?” he asks, fever rising in his face again. “I done all I can, Deirdre. Gotta settle down. Always more rebels where I come from...” “Can you tell me where the
troops are headed?” I ask, but too late; his eyes glaze over as he slips back
into a stupor. At least we got some
broth into him, first. I sit there for
awhile just listening to his labored breathing, before I go out for a smoke. (Elmer stares at his bowl, scraping up the last few seeds. “Pet food,” he says in his gravelly
voice. “Smart. At the factory the new bosses give us nothing
but the company food.” He holds up a
spastic hand. “They don’t even pretend
to follow the original recipes anymore.
Poison. They’re making the whole
country eat poison. Why?”) Zofia joins me outside, but
she shakes her head when I offer her a light; fewer rebels use tobacco up here
where the air thins out. I tell her, “I
can’t stay much longer, you know.” “I know.” And just saying that, hearing that, every
bone in my body aches to stay there forever, to farm for my food and never
shoot another bullet or hide in another tree.
You should’ve chosen this sooner, Kurmal. “Listen,” I say. “You’ve got a nice, out-of-the way location,
here.” I wave my cigarette at the
forest-rimmed fields. “And you’ve kept
Kurmal alive longer than most could’ve done.
You know any herbalists around here?” She nods. “My late husband’s aunt.” “How’s she feel about the
Revolution?” “Bitter,” she sighs. “She raised my man like a son after his dad
died for the cause. And then he...” Damn. I drop my cigarette-butt and grind it under
my heel. “Can you pump her for knowledge
anyway?” “M-maybe.” “Think she’d turn you in if
she figured out what you wanted it for?” She turns wide eyes to
me. “What do I want it for?” “We need a hospital in
these parts.” Time to ruin
Paradise. “I think you’d make a good
nurse.” She straightens and slowly
salutes me. “I’ll learn whatever I need
to, Ma’am.” Then she looks out over her
fields and says, “The rye will grow tall.” I take her by the arm
towards the storage-shed, where I saw some useful household chemicals. “First I’d like to teach you how to mix up a
wound-wash called Dakin’s solution...” (Pauline takes Elmer’s shaking hand and says, “Neurotoxins. It all adds up to neurotoxins. You’ve gotten more than most, undiluted, but
everyone could end up like this.” I nod. “For some reason
somebody wants the entire country in an altered state—and saturated with
magentine.”) * * * (George still seems shaken, days after his ordeal, but he promised
a lesson, in his capacity as Changewright, and he’s doing his level best to
deliver. And, as good initiates, we must
attend, sitting on the dusty floor in that stinking room. One more lousy night of short sleep. Randy, you’re a sybarite; why’d you ever
choose the life of an agent, anyway? For this demonstration we have lit candles, the better to see what
he’s doing, and their light dances ruddily over all the young faces, casting
shadows up the wrong way, making the familiar weird. It’s not like actual satanic worship or
anything, just an imitation, for instruction.
I keep telling myself that, trying to keep the shivers down, trying not
to study the layers of blood in the filthy carpet, trying to keep my heightened
mind from distinguishing the small rat splatters from the great soakings from
something or someone much larger. Oh God
be with me! “First you make sure you have your rat good and stunned. You don’t want bit in the middle of the
ritual.” Nervous giggles answer. He reaches for a box on the table. “I feed them herbs for that, oxstager, goda
root, and berries of the hellbind, mixed with a little grain. A rat can starve to death in two days; after
awhile he’ll eat anything.” The candles give off a haylike odor. Who knows what herbs he’s worked into the
wax? I do feel a little dizzy, come to think of it. He lifts a rat out of a box.
The creature moves his legs feebly, but doesn’t offer much
resistance. “You see? He’s awake—after a manner of speaking—but
incapable of fighting back. Maybe
distracted, too—some of what I gave him can bring on visions.” George smiles affectionately, petting the
fur. “He goes to his demise in a sacred
state.” He lays the rat down onto a silver platter. “We place the rat on silver, for the
fem…feminine principle.” And a nervous
“oooo” whispers through the crowd. For a
second it seems to strengthen George, as he holds up a yellow knife with a
white-honed edge. “And we gild the knife
with gold, to represent the masculine principle. Make sure that you keep it as sharp as
possible; you don’t want to waste a second sawing through a rat’s throat.” Students giggle again, and he tries to smile
back, but he looks drained once more.
“Henceforth we shall call the rat Chalice, and name the knife Atháme.” Even I know that’s not right, and I’m a Baptist! “You can read all manner of books with various chants for every
kind of ritual, each warning you not to deviate one word from the original,
even dictating what tone of voice to use.”
His face whitens as I watch, and he wavers a moment. “Yet I find that the rites become much
more…exciting…when you follow Holy Impulse and improvise.” He raises the knife, wavering a moment over
the rat…and drops it, fainting. Don and Aaron rush over to him, stretching him out and elevating
his feet. Don says, “You’ve been under
too much stress for this, physically, emotionally, and toxicologically. We can continue the lesson another day.” He only replies, “Pull me out of the way, for now. I do feel tired.” George glances over at Jake, who looks lost
in thought, not quite here. Then he
turns instead to me. “Randy, take over
for me.” “Me?” I squeak. “Yes. You Lumne boys
plainly know a thing or two about dark matters.
Who knows what you get up to out on that island?” And I hear the others murmur in astonishment,
asking each other why they never thought of that before. “But, but, Don knows a lot more than me.” Don actually participated in some of Alroy’s
rituals. “I’m just the baby brother.” George laughs weakly. “Time
to grow up, Baby.” Then he turns serious
and says, “Follow Holy Impulse.” “No. Let it come to
you. And not in Toulinian, either. Let your mouth find words unknown to you.” I scoot around to the Changewright’s former
position, take up the knife in a trembling hand, and gulp in a deep breath of
candlesmoke for inspiration, but all it does is make me dizzier. “Ooga gooba looba moop!” I chant as earnestly as I can, and everybody
laughs. “Jaloopa moopa noop!” Faintly I hear George sigh, “You’re not even trying. Tune in.” Oh sweet Jesus, grant this poor sinner the gift of tongues, that I
may turn this over to you! But
wait—stupid paralyzing panic! I already
know languages that people in this school never even heard of. In Pakashki I cry, “Forgive me O Lord!” Everybody sits up straight, as I feel a power
surge through me. “We have no lamb, O
Lord, only this poor beast. And You want
mercy, not sacrifice. May Your blood
cover his blood, and deliver us from this insanity!” And I plunge in the knife.) |
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