Every Ozark child was familiar with the building called Confederation Hall, whether they lived five miles away or clear on the far side of the Ocean of Storms. Little girls in Granny School, and the boys under the instruction of their Tutors, became familiar with it whether they would or no, and at a very early age. They drew it on sheets of pliofilm and took the pictures home to be fastened up on the housewalls; they made lopsided models of it from Oklahomah’s thick blue clay and gave them to their fathers for desk ornaments. The girls embroidered it on heavy canvas, with name and date beneath; the boys built it of scrap wood and carved their names with the points of their first good knives.
It was red brick, two stories high plus a tiny attic said to be haunted by a half dozen dead Grannys, with tall narrow arched windows framed in stone, and stone steps leading up to a central door. And the whole sitting square in the middle of a broad green lawn with a walk all around. A spanking-white bandstand stood in the left front corner of the lawn as you faced the Hall door, and the other corner had a statuary group lasered out of Tinaseeh ironwood. There on the pedestal block was First Granny, wading ashore with her skirts pulled up just high enough to show her shoetops; and there was Captain Aaron Dunn McDaniels, standing on the shore and reaching a hand to her; and there stood a miscellaneous child beside him looking very brave. The inscription across the base read: FIRST LANDING-MAY 8, 2021.
Confederation Hall was authentic Old Earth Primitive, right down to the solar collectors on its roof. And the children knew why. “Not every thing on Earth was bad,” the Grannys and the Tutors told them. “When the Confederation of Continents was established in twenty-five twelve, meeting then just one week in the entire year, Confederation Hall was built as it was to remind us of that. It represents some of the good things.”
Ordinarily it was a building empty enough to have an echo in its corridors. Even during the one month in four when the Confederation met, the delegations and their staffs weren’t large enough to dent its emptiness, running as they did to two or three men and a single staff member. And the other eight months there was nobody at all there but an Attendant to show visitors around, one official to keep up the records and the archives, and a few servingmaids to see to the cleaning. The Travellers disapproved of that; if they’d had their way it would of been closed up tight except during meeting months. But the Traveller children were taught to make the embroidered pictures and the wooden models just like everybody else’s.
Today it was a long way from empty. Responsible of Brightwater, standing at the speaker’s podium in the Independence Room, ran her eyes over the crowd of delegates with satisfaction. Not one Family had boycotted the Jubilee, leaving the assembly without its full complement of votes; the message had come in that morning before breakfast, the Smiths were delayed but they would be there. Not every seat was filled-though every seat in the balcony was-and there were empty rows at the back. But it was a satisfying turnout, and when the Smiths did arrive they’d take up a goodly number of those empty spaces.
Twenty-eight of Ozark’s twenty-nine Grannys, lacking only Granny Gableframe of Castle Smith, filled the first row of the balcony, a sight Responsible had never seen before and wasn’t sure she could handle with a straight face. They looked like twentyeight matched dolls up there, each with her hair knotted up high on top of her head as required, each with the same thin sharp nose and tight-puckered mouth, every last one of them in the same crackly gown and triangular shawl and high-topped shoes, and round eyeglasses perched halfway down their noses whether they needed them or not. Not to mention the twenty-eight sets of flying knitting needles. Responsible looked away from them hastily, feeling unseemly laughter tugging at her mouthcorners, and concentrated on the Travellers instead. That was dampening enough to end all hazard of either laughter or smile. And talk of waste! The Traveller delegation, by her rapid count, numbered twenty-four ebony-coated men. Quite a contrast with the grudging tokens they sent to regular meetings, and each and every one of them entitled to speak to any question raised, plus offer a rebuttal. They had men enough there to tie up the floor for hours at a time.
At her side, in the big square-cut chair reserved for the leader of the meetings, sat her uncle Donald Patrick Brightwater the 133rd, fidgeting. Since her father had been dead these seven years, it was Donald Patrick that would take over on behalf of Brightwater once she finished the welcoming speech. And he was itching to get at it, too, she could tell. It was made particularly clear when he grabbed her elbow and hissed at her under his breath to get started.
Responsible didn’t intend to be hurried. There were still people moving into the balcony doors to stand and try to get a glimpse of the proceedings below, and the delegates hadn’t yet left off rustling documents and muttering to one another. She’d not begin to speak till she had silence in the room, and she was not through looking her audience over. She’d had a bad moment when she saw who was included in the Wommack delegation, though she ought to of known Lewis Motley Wommack wouldn’t let himself be left behind. A Grand Jubilee would come along only once every five hundred years; you miss your chance at one, you weren’t likely to get a second try. She would have to deal with the problem he presented as it was presented.
“Responsible!” said her uncle, too cross now to be discreet. “Will you get on with it? At this rata it’ll be noon and time for dinner before we get past your performance!”
He had been opposed to her making the speech at all.
“It’s not appropriate,” he’d complained, three Family meetings in a row, while his wife sat and lived up to her name and waited for him to exhaust himself. Patience of Clark wasted no words on her husband unless she was convinced he couldn’t be relied on to talk himself into silence unassisted.
Donald Patrick had had arguments he considered potent. In the first place, he’d pointed out, women were not allowed in the business sessions of the regular Confederation meetings; therefore, a woman ought not to be allowed in this one. In the second place, if the excuse for having a woman present on the Hall floor was her social function as hostess of this to-do-which he could grudgingly see might be reasonable-then that welcoming speech should not be made by Responsible, it should be made by her mother, as Missus of this Castle. Thorn of Guthrie had raised her brows at that and allowed the ivory perfection of her face to be marred by a frown that was as downright ugly as any expression Responsible had ever seen her use, and had declared as how she’d have nothing to do with it; and no argument of Donald Patrick’s would sway her.
“Why won’t you do it?” he’d demanded, smacking his fist in the palm of his hand. “I will feel like a plain fool sitting there listening to a fourteen-year-old girl-”
“Going on fifteen,” put in Granny Hazelbide.
“-a fourteen-year-old girl giving the welcoming speech on behalf of this Castle and this Kingdom. And so will every member of the Brightwater delegation. And so would you, Thorn of Guthrie, and you, Responsible, if you had any decency at all, or any respect for your father’s memory, rest his soul?”
Thorn of Guthrie had looked at him and sighed, and then she turned to Responsible and said, “Well, Responsible, will you abide by my order and let your uncle do the honors?”
Responsible had said no, and Thorn of Guthrie had said “You see?” and Donald Patrick Brightwater had stomped out of the room in a black mood that had lasted well past suppertirne.
Responsible had made an effort at calming him, in the few chinks of time available to her, promising that as soon as the speech was over she’d move to the balcony and mind her manners for the rest of the week. And Patience of Clark had put as much of her skill into soothing him as she’d considered reasonable.
But he sat beside her as unresigned and as infuriated as he’d been from the beginning. When Responsible began to speak, the silence having grown tangible enough to suit her, she felt almost obliged to be ready to leap aside at any moment and prevent him from snatching the sheets of paper out of her hands. He had his eyes fixed on the brilliant bunting that circled the room at the level of the balcony and ran across its front rail, with the crests of the Twelve Families hung in strict alphabetical rotation at each looped-up swath, and an expression of propriety slapped onto his face like a mask. But like all men, when sitting rankled him his thigh muscles kept tensing, and he would inch forward in the chair, and then recollect the situation and jerk suddenly bolt upright again. And then start it all over, tugging at his beard and then crossing his arms over his chest and then tugging at the beard again. He put Responsible in mind of a five-year-old too far from the bathroom, and she hoped his manners would last him till she finished.
She knew the words of the speech by heart, every one of them the perfect word. All about the solemnness of this occasion. Commemorating that great day five hundred years ago when after much struggle the Twelve Families had set aside their fears of anything remotely resembling a central government and allowed the Confederation of Continents to be formed. Commemorating the slow but steady progress as they moved from meeting one week in the year, a token foot in the waters, toward the present one month in four. A couple dozen sentences about the wickedness and corruption of Old Earth that had driven them away and into space, and the mirroring sentences that congratulated the Confederation for letting none of those varieties of wickedness arise here on Ozark. She rang the changes and pushed the buttons, and she could of done it all in her sleep, so far as the words went.
But the manner of saying those words-the modulation of her voice and the phrasing, the set of her features and the positions of her body-that was a very different matter. That demanded considerable fine-tuning, a constant eye on the men she faced, an adjustment for a frown here, a careful pacing of a phrase for a wandering expression there; it took her mind off both her uncle and Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd.
If it hadn’t been for that, she’d of been delighted to let Donald Patrick read the words; and if it hadn’t been for that, and the fact that her mother knew full well she hadn’t the skill to control this roomful of males, Thorn of Guthrie would of insisted on her right to read them and backed Donald Patrick in every objection he raised. Thorn had no reluctance for the limelight.
A thousand years had gone by here on Ozark, and who knew how many billions before that on Earth; and still men spoke solemnly of the power of logic, the force of facts and figures, and remained convinced that you persuaded others and won their allegiance by the words you said. It would of been funny if it hadn’t been such pathetic ignorance, and there were times when Responsible wondered whether the males of other inhabited worlds suffered from the same ancient illusion.
It would for sure have been helpful if she could of known whether the members of the Out-Cabal shared the same faith in the power of the surface structure of language. In fact, it would of helped to know whether those three beings were males of their species, just for starters.
She put that thought out of her head instantly; it was distraction, and a sure certain way to lose her audience and run into objections to her plans for this day.
In the balcony the Grannys noted appreciatively the skill with which Responsible wooed her unruly crowd, and Granny Hazelbide felt she was justified in her pride at having brought the girl up. She stood up there, bald as brass before the restless males, and she played them as easily as a person that lived by fishing would play a little stippleperch in a creek. It looked easy when she did it, and Responsible looked cool and easy herself in her elegant gown of dark green with a pale green piping round its hem and collar. But Granny Hazelbide had held the girl’s head all the night before while she’d first vomited everything she’d eaten and drunk at the Banquet and the Dance-which wasn’t much-and then retched miserably on an empty stomach and cursed the weakness of her body. Not more than an hour’s sleep all told had she had, Granny Hazelbide was certain of it, but none of that showed now. Not a tremble of her hands, brown hands that showed the hard work they did, against the creamy paper. Not a slightest hesitation of that voice, though her throat must of been raw. Smooth as satin, bold as brass, cool as springwater, that was her girl.
It wasn’t working on the Brightwater men, naturally; they were used to Responsible and took her about as seriously as they did the servingmaids. And the Travellers were fighting it, staring up at the ceiling to break the hold of it upon them. Granny Hazelbide sincerely hoped they’d hear from their women later about their illbred behavior. But it was working on everybody else, they were just this side of trance, and the final paragraph would finish them off. Not a one had protested as Responsible read off the list of events that would fill Opening Day, and the comset screen on the front wall behind her spelled out the lengthy agenda in small bright lights.
There was to be a Memorial Address by the Reverend Terrence Patrick Lewis the 5th, head of the church of this Kingdom. There was a Commemoration Ceremony. There were three separate Awards Ceremonies for service to the Confederation, and at each of those there’d be awards speeches and acceptance speeches and folderols. There was a noon banquet, with two guest speakers. There was a reading of the Articles of the Confederation, with a commentary to follow from the senior Magician of Rank pointing out the satisfying parallels between the structure of the Articles and the notations of Formalisms & Transformations. When Responsible got through, there were not five unscheduled minutes available from the end of her welcoming speech to the Closing Prayer that would-so the lights recorded-be pronounced at six o’clock precisely that afternoon, just in time for supper. And Granny Hazelbide could tell by the backs of their necks and the set of their shoulders that the Traveller men were silently lamenting the loss of time before they could get on with what they’d be seeing as the real business of this Jubilee, and that the restraint was unsettling their stomachs. She wished she could of hoped they’d empty those stomachs as Responsible had hers, but it wasn’t likely. No doubt the Travellers had to answer some calls of nature, but the idea that one of them might be so human as to vomit went beyond the bounds of imagination. That would, after all, be waste.
She felt the eyes of Granny Leeward on her then, her that was a Traveller born and bred, as Responsible had reminded her, and she didn’t like it. The woman was uncanny, and she held some trump card-that much had been clear from the way Responsible went white when her name was mentioned, as well as from the arrogance of her behavior. She’d all but shoved the other Grannys aside taking the central place in the balcony row this morning, and she hadn’t scrupled to do it without so much as a beg-your-pardon, either. Some trump card. Something that Granny Hazelbide had no clue to, but that came near unsettling her stomach.
Wickedness in a Granny was unthinkable; they were human like any other human, and they could make mistakes, but in everything moral they were above reproach. And it therefore made no sense that she should suspect Leeward of evil intent . . . but something there nagged at her.
Responsible had matters well in hand and needed no attention. She had turned the meeting over to her pettish uncle with casual ease and gone out into the hall to climb the stairs to the balcony. The men were still half stupored from the word patterns flowing over and around them, a situation Donald Patrick would no doubt put an end to in short order. He couldn’t talk for beans, never had been able to. But it was his meeting now, and Granny Hazelbide could afford to give her mind over fully to the problem of Granny Leeward, where logic did apply.
No Granny could do deliberate evil, that was a given. It would turn inward and destroy her if she tried. She would sicken, and the evil would show plain in her eyes and in her flesh. Not Granny Leeward; the woman was rail-thin and had a nose like a fishhook, but she had the radiant bloom of health. It followed then, followed as the night the day (and praise be that had never failed yet), that Granny Leeward planned no wicked act toward Responsible of Brightwater or anybody else. She could not.
And yet, wherever Granny Leeward moved, the other Grannys pulled away from her, drew back their stiff skirts. The woman that sat at her right hand now, Granny Golightly of Castle Clark, was not overfastidious. She was famous for her mischief, and for a certain cavalier disregard of the consequences of that mischief. Still she was edged to the right in her seat in a way that crowded her next neighbor and could not be comfortable, but preserved her from any chance of touching Leeward-it kept a full two inches of space between them. That provided the second given: it was not just herself, Granny Hazelbide of Brightwater Castle, as looked at Leeward and saw darkness puddling round her skirt-hems; it was all the Grannys.
And that provided the third. Twenty-seven Grannys could not be wrong. She might be overly suspicious herself, because she had raised Responsible of Brightwater and knew the Travellers had set themselves to bring down the Confederation the girl was sworn to maintain. One or two others might have a hidden soft spot for Responsible, those as had known her well years ago, a child visiting the Castles of near kin. But every one of them, even those that scarcely knew the daughter of Brightwater, was pulling back from Granny Leeward like she was a source of polluted water. That many Grannys, all turning against one of their own-that had never happened before. Not ever. Generations ago, when the poor soul at Castle Wommack had nearly brought the whole system crashing down around their heads by giving a Wommack girlbaby an Improper Name, and the Twelve Gates knew there was cause and aplenty for resentment, no Granny had turned on the foolish one. And Granny Leeward had done nothing yet this day but sit there and watch the proceedings, knitting sedately on an unidentifiable strip of dark-gray work-probably underwear for the young girls of Traveller, scratchy to subdue the natural passions the Travellers feared inflamed them all-knitting and watching. And breathing. She’d done nothing more.
Granny Hazelbide saw Responsible come in at the side door and motioned to her to come take her seat; she’d had enough and then some, and she meant to head for home. It was all very well leaving matters to Responsible and mouthing platitudes about lying in beds once they were made, but she loved that child. She had a few tea leaves to brew, and a few Charms and Spells to try, and furthermore she intended to set strong wards in Responsible’s bedroom, where she slept not twenty feet away from Granny Leeward’s bed. And might could be she’d take a nap; she wasn’t as young as she had been.
Responsible accepted the seat gratefully, however much it might annoy her uncle to look up and see her there among the Grannys instead of in the back row as he would consider fitting for her age and station. She was worn completely out; if there was a reserve of energy left in her someplace, she didn’t know its location and hoped she wouldn’t find herself obliged to seek it.
Here she could keep an eye on her uncle, and an eye on the delegations, and her presence would make it plain to Granny Leeward that she wasn’t afraid of her. She was afraid of Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd, but she was safe from him up here, and she intended to surround herself with respectable females of all ages and degrees until she was back in her room with her door barred against all untoward possibilities that might involve him.
There’d been a good deal of sympathy for the sister, young Jewel of Wommack, when the Attendants had brought the gossip back from the Landing. Two Grannys telling that child she had to keep her brother in order, more shame to them, and if they thought it was good for Jewel’s character she hoped they both came down with pimples on their nosepoints. It wasn’t fair to the girl, especially since she would surely believe them, and torture herself through the whole Jubilee-instead of enjoying herself as she ought to of been allowed to do-following that wicked young man around and worrying about how to see that he did no harm.
Personally, Responsible had no intention whatsoever of turning her safety from Wommack over to his sister. Jewel was beautiful, and it was said that she was astonishingly learned, and she had the awkward elegance that meant the beauty would be the lasting kind. But Responsible had looked her full in the eyes at last night’s Dance, going down a Reel, and what she’d seen had been the clear innocent eyes of a child. A wise child, but a child all the same. Responsible of Brightwater was prepared to love the girlshe was irresistible-but she would take care of herself her self.
And she’d speak to the two Grannys. They’d no right to spoil the girl’s entire holiday with their rearing practices-the Gates only knew when she’d get another one, stuck there on Kintucky. Let them bring her up properly when they had her home again at Castle Wommack; that struck Responsible as quite soon enough.