Commitment Hour lop-2 Read online

  "How could there be anyone else here?" she asked, softer but not soft.

  "I don't know what's going on; I just know there's trouble, all right? Go someplace safe and stay there."

  "Don't talk to me like that!"

  "Cappie, please…"

  But the rushes parted and she stepped out to join me. I sighed. So much for vigil.

  Surprisingly, she wore pants, bleached cotton pants. Perhaps I shouldn't have been taken aback — pants are more practical than skirts when spending the night in a mosquito-filled marsh — but I had never seen her in pants, not in the years she was female. She must have sneaked the clothes from her father's closet: they were much too big for her slender frame. Held sloppily at waist level by suspenders and stuffed firmly into socks at her ankles, the pants billowed in the middle like the sail of a perch boat. Her shirt billowed too, a man's shirt so large and loose there was only a hint of her compact breasts under the cloth. And her hair… no billowing there. Her long black beautiful hair was gone. Just a few hours earlier, it had draped fluidly over her bare shoulder as her daughter Pona sucked sloppily at supper. But now Cappie's lovely thick hair was chopped off raggedly, as short as mine.

  Cappie the woman was dressed and barbered as a man. I wondered if this could be some new ploy to arouse my interest. If so, it hadn't worked; I found it unsettling and unnatural. Commitment Day tradition allowed candidates to wear whatever they liked, but the town would still be scandalized.

  "What have you done to yourself?" I blurted.

  "Think about it," was her only answer. "What are you doing here?"

  Under normal circumstances, I would have lied or brushed her off — it was a reflex I'd acquired over the preceding months. Since winter, I hadn't had the stomach to share anything with her, certainly not events that confused or disturbed me. Now, however, she looked so unlike herself that the reflex didn't spark. I told her everything, all the while glancing furtively at her hair, her clothes. She snorted in outraged disbelief when I swore there was a second violinist; but she had figured out the music came from the duck flats and she could see I didn't have my instrument with me.

  When I finished my story, she headed immediately for her own duck trap. The brisk way she stomped off intimidated me; I didn't go after her. In a moment I heard her curse with a phrase no woman should ever use, and something heavy splashed into the water.

  She walked back slowly. In the darkness I couldn't identify the expression on her face.

  "A duck for you too?" I asked.

  "Part of one. Are you going to use that spear for anything?"

  "If you think I should track down the stranger, you're wrong," I said. "I don't want to break vigil any more than I have already."

  "Then give me the spear." She held out her hand.

  "Don't be ridiculous. You're a woman."

  "I'm better with a spear than you are."

  I had to laugh. In her male years, yes, Cappie was an absolute master with the spear, both in target throwing and hand-to-hand fighting. If she Committed as a man, she would surely be offered initiation into the Warriors Society. But this year she was a woman and unfit to wield a weapon. Her clothes must have gone to her head.

  "Go hide someplace safe," I told her. "Down by the dead tree where we once saw the owl, remember? I'll stay close to that tree too; if the stranger comes back, you can call for help and I'll be right there."

  She stepped in close to me, and I thought she was coming for a hug of reassurance. I started spreading my arms. Then her fist ploughed hard into my stomach and she kicked my feet out from under me. I crumpled to the ground and lay there dizzily, the smell of mud under my nostrils.

  The spear was no longer in my hand. Somewhere far above me, Cappie said, "Go hide someplace safe."

  I lay on the flats several minutes, my head spinning. Eventually I managed to flop over on my back and stare up at the stars as they reeled like drunken fireflies. My stomach fluttered on the edge of vomiting, but I had no strength to fight it down. I simply waited to see what happened… and my stomach settled, the stars slowed to a stop, and the murkiness in my brain cleared.

  Cappie had breast-fed Pona at supper. She had been a woman then; I saw all the evidence anyone could need. The mood during our own meal was strained, but we were used to that. Then we had gone our separate ways to prepare for the vigil, she to her parents and I to my foster father.

  Sometime after we parted, she must have been possessed by a devil. Or a legion of devils. When devils possessed a woman, they often made her think she was a man. Hakoore, the Patriarch's Man, claimed that Commitment Eve was too holy for devils to leave their burrows, but the Mocking Priestess said it was the devils' favorite night of the year: the air was alive with power that they sucked up with toothless mouths in their skin.

  For once, it looked like the Mocking Priestess was right.

  I rose painfully to my feet and looked around. Cappie was gone, my spear was gone, and I was alone in the dark.

  Toward the south, somewhere near the spot where Cypress Creek smoothed over Stickleback Falls, a violin began playing again: "Don't Make Me Choose." The stranger obviously wanted to catch our attention. I took a deep breath, then started toward the sound.

  I knew the marsh trails well. I had walked them many times as a child, violin under my chin, pretending to be a wandering troubadour. These trails taught me the power of music — my playing scared utter hell out of wildlife. Many of the marsh landmarks I'd named in honor of animals I'd frightened there. A patch of stinging nettles I'd christened Turtle Terror; a stretch of puckered mud was Heron Horror; and an OldTech horseless cart half-swallowed in bog I called the Frenzy of Frogs.

  The OldTech machine was now no more than a stepping-stone across sucking muck. Four hundred years earlier, before the collapse of OldTech culture, there must have been a road running through this marsh; but it was gone now, swallowed by mud and time, just as everything else of twentieth-century Earth had been swallowed. When I was young, I sometimes like to scare myself with the image of a skeletal driver trapped inside the swampbound cart, fingers clutched on the steering wheel, bony feet still pressing the pedals. More likely, he simply abandoned the vehicle — stepped out and called to the sky, "I want to leave!" Then he was carried off to the stars by the so-called League of Peoples, just like all the other traitors who turned their backs on Earth in the Great Desertion.

  Good riddance.

  As I clambered onto the cart's grille, the music ahead of me stopped in mid-phrase. I paused and listened. Silence… then a shout followed by the splash of something hitting open water. I raced forward, swiping my way through head-high reeds till I came to a clear area on the bank of Cypress Creek itself.

  Cappie stood waist-deep in the water, her spear held over her head and ready to plunge downward, as if she were going to jab a fish. I couldn't see what she was aiming for, just black water lapping around her. She waited, holding her breath, watching the stream in front of her.

  On shore near my feet was a violin bow, and a few paces off, the violin itself, lying facedown in the mud. I hurried to pick it up. It looked like a fine instrument, lighter than mine, with the scroll more ornately carved. The strings weren't gut, but metal wire. Wire strings must last a lot longer than the gut ones I made myself; I wondered where I could get a set.

  As I wiped muck off the violin's bridge, water surged loudly behind me. I turned in time to see a stranger erupt from the creek a stone's throw away from Cappie.

  The stranger was a Neut. No doubt of that. Its homespun shirt hung wetly over full breasts that sagged slightly with age; but Its face was thickly bearded and lean as a man's. In Its hand It held a huge knife, a machete dripping water and glinting in the starlight.

  "You'd better hope my violin isn't damaged," the Neut said to Cappie.

  "It's all right," I called out.

  Stupid. Neither of them had noticed me yet. Cappie half-turned at the sound of my voice, and in that moment, the Neut lunged. If th
at lunge hadn't been slowed by the water… but it was, and Cappie dodged in time, knocking the Neut's machete aside with the butt of her spear. She tried to follow through with a cross swing that brought the spear point around to attacking position, but she was off balance and slow. I shouted, "Quick!" but the Neut was gone, vanished beneath the water again. Cappie stabbed out once but hit nothing.

  "Watch that It doesn't grab you underwater!" I yelled.

  "Shut up," she yelled back. But she retreated toward the riverbank, all the while holding the spear ready to drive downward. When her thighs touched the bank behind her, she stopped and waited, in fishing position again.

  I set the violin on a clean bed of reeds and approached Cappie, saying, "Get out and give me the spear."

  "No."

  "You can't fight, you're possessed. Women are very susceptible…"

  The Neut geysered up a short distance to our right. Cappie turned to meet the attack, spear held high. The spear was within reach, perhaps my only chance to get it away from her. I seized it with both hands, just as she was stabbing out.

  I think I saved her life. If she had followed through, she would have run straight into the blade that the Neut thrust at her, stomach height. But my hold on the spear brought her up short, twisting her body out of the path of the knife. She grunted with pain, but it was only the pain of wrenched muscles, not metal piercing flesh.

  There was no time to congratulate myself. Cappie's weight and the force of her jab jerked me forward to the edge of the creek bank. My feet slid on mud like sleigh skids on snow; for a heartbeat I stayed up, dancing for balance, then I furrowed into the water with a deep plunging sound, directly into the gap between Cappie and the Neut.

  Water stung in my nostrils as my head went under. A body bumped against me; I'd lost my grip on the spear, so I punched out blindly, hoping it wasn't Cappie. My fist was slowed by water and connected without force, but it still spooked my opponent. The body surged away from me with noisy splashing.

  Good — someone was afraid of me. If it was the Neut, I was pleased; but if it was Cappie, the Neut was still out there somewhere, ready to impale me on Its knife. Without coming up for air, I kicked out into the night-black water, just trying to put distance between me and the Neut's blade. A few strokes, and my outstretched hand collided with the opposite bank of the creek. Cautiously, I lifted my head.

  The Neut, Cappie and I stood dripping in a widely spaced triangle: me against one bank, Cappie against the other, the Neut in the middle, several paces downstream. Cappie no longer held the spear; I assumed she'd lost it when I fell into the creek.

  Keeping Its eyes on both of us, the Neut asked, "Is either of you named Fullin?"

  The question startled me. I said, "No," immediately, the same reflex that automatically lied to Cappie whenever she asked what I truly thought.

  Cappie said nothing.

  "This makes things easier," the Neut said with a dark smile. "Two against one isn't so bad when I have the knife."

  The Neut waded down the center of the creek, until It stood on a direct line between Cappie and me. That particular stretch of the Cypress isn't wide — from the middle it was only a few steps to either bank, where Cappie and I waited to see which of us the monster would attack. Behind my back, my hands scrabbled for any sort of weapon: a stone I could throw, a stick I could jab at the Neut's eyes. I found nothing but a dirty piece of driftwood, shorter than my forearm and light as a bone with the marrow sucked out. It would break into tinder with the first strike of the Neut's knife… but I swung it up smartly and hoped that in the dark, the Neut couldn't see how flimsy my defense was.

  I must have looked intimidating — the Neut lunged for Cappie instead of me.

  She still had the spear. Just below the surface of the water, she must have held it pressed between thigh and bank so that her hands would seem empty. I marveled at the ingenuity of the devil that possessed her. Now she snapped up the spear in the face of the Neut's charge and thrust forward. The Neut managed to parry the attack with Its knife, but not entirely. Cloth ripped. In the dark, I couldn't tell if the spear point had torn flesh as well as shirt.

  The Neut wasn't fazed by whatever damage It had taken, and now It was inside the arc of the spear. Cappie had no room to swing her weapon around for another attack, and the Neut was raising Its blade. Without hesitation, Cappie let go of the spear and grabbed the Neut's knife arm with both hands.

  I plunged forward to help as the two of them wrestled. Cappie was at a disadvantage: pressed up against the bank, she had no space to move for better leverage, while the Neut had a weight advantage. Slowly, the knife descended toward Cappie's face. I wished I had time to find the spear, but it had sunk into the creek as soon as Cappie released it. The only weapons I had were my bare hands, my vulnerable musician's hands. I delayed another second, trying to decide how I could save Cappie without risking injury to my fingers. At last, I grabbed the Neut's shoulders and dragged sideways, the two of us slamming against the bank beside Cappie.

  For the second time that night, I had saved Cappie's life. My move had thrown the Neut off balance; with groaning strength, Cappie angled the knife point away from her body and over the ground. A split second later, she let go of the blade. The Neut's momentum stabbed the knife deep into the mud. Immediately, Cappie leaned over and punched the Neut in the face, bare knuckles into soft cheek. I shouted to her, "Run!" and grappled to pin the Neut's arms.

  At that moment, a boot stepped onto the bank beside my head — a boot surrounded by violet fire. I began to lift my eyes to look at the newcomer; then a metal canister struck the ground and exploded into smoke.

  The smoke stung like a hundred campfires and stank like the marsh's worst rot. My stomach was already fragile from Cappie's gut punch out on the flats; now, I bucked up my supper, vomit splashing warmly on my hands, the Neut, the mud. I tried to keep my grip on the Neut's shoulders, but my muscles felt as slack as string. Cappie made one more swing at the Neut's jaw, but her fist had no strength behind it. The Neut slumped, not from the punch but the smoke, and all three of us collapsed helplessly onto the mud, tears streaming, bile dripping down our chins.

  With my last remaining energy, I dragged myself to one side, away from the mess I had gagged up. Part of me wanted to let go of the bank, and sink into the creek to clean the stomach-spill from my hands; but I was afraid I'd drown retching, too weak to keep my head above water. My eyes turned back to that fiery boot; and slowly I followed the boot upward, to leg, to body, to helmet.

  It was a knight in full armor. Not metal armor, but something glossy — OldTech plastic. The helmet was completely blank, no holes for mouth or nose, only a smoked-glass plate in front of the eyes. The violet fire surrounding him gave off no heat, but hissed softly like a sleeping snake.

  Through the smoke, I saw Cappie weakly pull the Neut's machete out of the mud. Before she could use it, the knight kicked the knife lightly from her hand. " 'Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,' " he said. "That's from Othello, Act One, Scene Two. Not that I expect anyone to care. Centuries ago, my ancestors could impress the peasantry by quoting Shakespeare, but now it takes tear gas. Oh, well — time marches on. Hello."

  TWO

  A Finger Exercise for Master Disease

  "Damn it, Rashid," the Neut croaked to the knight, "this isn't funny." It coughed deeply and spat.

  "Don't fuss," the knight said. "You're perfectly all right."

  The three of us in the water lifted our heads to stare at him, tears streaming from our eyes and vomit crusting our clothes.

  "Some people should cultivate a sense of humor," the knight muttered. "Two days from now, you'll be stopping strangers in the street to tell them this story."

  I heard a soft click and the violet fire around his armor winked out. Sighing, he slipped into the water beside us. I shied away, dragging myself farther along the bank though my arms were weak as twigs. The knight wasn't interested in me; he put his arm around th
e Neut's shoulders and helped the creature wade to the middle of the creek, away from the smoke near shore. There, he bent the Neut over and scooped water into Its weeping eyes.

  "Let's get you washed up," the knight said. "You'll feel a hundred times better when you're clean."

  The words jarred me worse than the choking smoke. A woman had said almost the same thing to me a year before, in circumstances that still made me cry out "No!" suddenly, day or night, when the memory came unbidden.

  I had been down-peninsula in Sobble Beach, playing for a wedding dance. It was a good spring for weddings; I'd played three already and was scheduled for two more before solstice. The men of the town attended my performances enthusiastically — as a woman, I wasn't beautiful but I behaved as if I was and that fooled most people. One man in particular, a young carpenter named Yoskar, was always in the front row whenever I coy-smiled my way onto the podium. Between songs, Yoskar and I flirted. On my break, we even slipped out a side door and spent a tasty few minutes teasing flesh to flesh on the beach. Mouth and hands only, of course — I was always faithful to Cappie, even when he was far away.

  It turned out that Yoskar had someone else in his life too. I met his other woman after the dance, as I walked under a shadowy aisle of cedars on my way to the boat that would take me home. The woman moved quietly and she had a knife.

  Her first stab took me in the back, but high and off center, stopping itself against my shoulder bone. I nearly passed out; if she had immediately tugged back the knife and gone for my throat, Master Day would have welcomed a new violinist in the Fields of Gold. Luckily for me, the woman was as surprised as I was that she had actually plunged a blade into my body. She stood there stupidly, staring at me as I staggered about. By the time she had recovered enough to consider another attack, my head was clearing too. I had just enough time to squirm the knife from my back and throw it into the darkness before the woman was on top of me, clawing at my throat and scratching for my eyes.