Quibble, 8. Edict

Nish has a murderous daydream. Realizing Quibble is in danger, Cate hatches a plan.

8. Edict @Definition

To my surprise, the shearing was well underway. Quote directed, vigorous and attentive though he’d herded the sheep home only two days ago and must still be tired. We chatted a few minutes. He showed me some of the fine rope he brought back with him from our supplier, the hermit Glossary, who lived east of the mountain.

As I saw I wasn’t needed at the shearing, I went to the kitchen and found other work. Ellipsis and Marginalia were as clumsy as ever, and it was an hour before we got the bread in the ovens. By then, I was famished. I put together a meal of day-old bread, goat cheese blended with dill, and milk. Tired of Ell and Nell’s company, I crossed the cloister to the dormitory, thinking to share the food with Quibble. She’d managed gruel with ease – now for something harder. I was almost to the door when Cate hobbled up the cloister’s arcade from the tower and entreated me for a talk.

“I have to see the new Dazed,” I said impatiently. An earful of Cate: the weather, crops, animals he saw and all their doings, some philosopher he’d read and how much of a fool he reckoned the fellow was, tidbits of gossip from down the mountain gleaned kindness knew when or how. “I can’t leave her alone long, you know.”

“It’s about Quibble,” he said, then turned and headed for the tower door.

Why, that fat old fox! I thought. He could wangle a dinner invitation to a hennery.

Getting the whole story out of Cate was unlikely, but I needed what information he would share. I considered my options. Threatening to throw him off the monastery’s parapet was appealing. At last I’d prove true what the Dazed said of me: madwoman. Entertaining bloody images, I dogged his slow steps to the door.

Once in the tower, we traversed a narrow passage, then Cate turned aside and began climbing the spiral staircase to the garret. I thrust my shoulders beneath his arm to help him climb. Not for the first time, I wondered why Cate insisted on studying and sleeping there, putting himself to the trouble of hobbling up and down the stairs. I’d entreated him many times to take the empty cell opposite mine in the women’s wing of the dormitory, where I could look after him. He never considered it. He only ever said the garret was where he belonged.

There were one hundred sixty-four steps to the top of the staircase. Even with my help, Cate would be gasping for breath by the time we got there. But this wasn’t my first game with the fox. I knew how it would go. He would sit on the top step wheezing for a while with his back against the oak-paneled door. Then he would open the door to the single-roomed garret, offer me wine, and delicately unfold the secret he’d kept since the previous night.

Or he’d better. There’s quite a wide window up there.

I finished the meal in a hurry. Cate shared some idle news – “Quote saw wolves hunting from the High Meadow” – then sat drumming fingers on his desk. Books were scattered there, a few open, others stacked. All were in one state or another of disrepair. The most decrepit, their spines crumbling, were laid one by one in a row. I sipped wine. Cate gazed out the window. He’d invited me; now he seemed hesitant. At last he threw me a furtive skance and said, “Did you think of an abbreviation for her?”

“Quill, I think. We’ll see how she likes it.” I returned his skance with an upward flit of my eyes. “Let’s have it, old man.”

He sighed, and I knew I wouldn’t like what he had to say.

“Have you noticed Quibble staring at you?” he asked.

“I told her it’s rude. I’ve seen all kinds of behavior in the newly Dazed, but I have to admit her staring is something else. She doesn’t seem to know she’s doing it.”

“Dazed instinctively skance. Quibble instinctively stares.”

I set the cup down. “What are you saying?”

“She’s different.”

A silence pregnant with dread fell between us. I’d been right: I liked neither what he’d said nor what he was leaving unsaid.

“You think she’s a latent Zero, don’t you?” I said at last.

The idea was abhorrent – this vibrant, clearly adroit young woman transformed into a cold and soulless Zero. Dead to herself. Dead to everyone. No more feeling inside her than isos had as they ministered cycle after cycle to the Ones’ needs. It was true that Zeros looked people in the eyes, but they meant nothing by it. They could even kill you and feel perfectly at ease with it. For all the blood in their veins, they were automatons.

Cate said nothing for a while. I wished more than ever that he would stare at me as Quibble did, let me read his eyes and register his feelings.

“I don’t know what she is,” he resumed, “but I have a guess, and I don’t like it. I believe Alnasl knows, but he isn’t saying. He clearly has his own plans. What worries me is whether they involve Aladfar. Or, worse yet, Vega.”

“Ah,” I said, drawing out the word. “That would explain how he behaved – he came alone, overstayed his welcome, didn’t give us a scrap of information. I know this much: Quibble hatched from no Egg. Is she in trouble?”

Cate’s gaze remained fixed on the sky. “If so, Alnasl didn’t say. But he told me how she came Without. She left the ceremony of Fear, went to the Axle and saw him at the tarry-not, and asked to be taken Without. Think about that, Nish: she asked.”

“Yes, I put that together already. But why does it matter?”

“Do you recall the tale about Exclamation and Meissa in The Eyes of the Excelsior? Do you believe it?”

I chuckled. “Not really. Granted, it’s a good story, but it strikes me as a myth. We know where Dazed come from and how it happens. The Zero Gienah has it worked out to a science. Something about genes. And I know what I’ve seen with my own eyes. So apply the razor: the simplest explanation is the right one. I’ll lay store by Gienah’s vials and microscopes, thank you, and I’ll leave the hokum to weak-minded Dazed.”

Cate smarted at the insult but carried on flatly: “Read closely with comparison to what Calculation wrote, the story explains a lot. Kindness’s origins. Many of the edicts for Dazed and Adroit. So, there may be something to the ‘excelsior’ part, too. The Zeros don’t let us read it for nothing, you know.”

“They don’t enforce edict for nothing, either! That story may be about kindness, but it smacks of control. Opiate of the masses, Cate.”

“Maybe. But let’s just imagine it’s true. Quibble is a lot like Exclamation. Her life has striking parallels to his. She was born with no Passage – naturally, you might say.”

“Oh? Did Alnasl tell you that?”

“No! Quibble. Last night, in her cell, when you asked Alnasl to share his glass. Quibble was standing next to me. She reached out and touched me. I thought she was finding out if I was real until she tapped the inside of my arm. It was a confession.”

“A confession of Unity?”

“One undergoes Passage dreaming.” Cate took a breath. “And then she tapped, ‘I did not.’ As soon as she’d said it, she dropped her hand to her side.”

“Well, I wanted her history—”

“But you asked when she’d eaten. Anyway, she could’ve just spoken up. I don’t think it was a coincidence, Nish. She picked a moment to tell me what she didn’t think Alnasl should know. Now, consider. Born with no Passage. Came Without on purpose. Looks people dead in the eyes. If any Zero knows what those signs mean, it’s Vega. If she’s aware of all this, or even any of it—”

“All right!” I said, not persuaded but weary of arguing on little sleep. “Suppose we imagine the worst. Quibble is an escaped One, a fugitive. Control is looking for her. The lady of kindness is plotting to make her a pawn or maybe some kind of messiah for the cult. What do you propose we do about any of that?”

“We cheat them all, Nish! None of the Zeros get her. We rob both arrays of their prize. They get nothing for all their plotting, and damn them for trying!”

I gave that a moment’s musing. “We rob Unity, too. You realize that, right? How do we hide her? What happens to all of us when she’s found, like Index was? Blindness, lameness. Or it might be worse, this time.”

“We won’t hide her,” Cate said. “That was our mistake with Index. Let her roam free. If her secret’s discovered, we’ll say she came from an Egg – just like any One, as far as we know. Who brought her? We don’t remember. For her sake, that’s the best answer anyway. It’s probably why Alnasl told us so little.”

“Is it?” I countered. “And what answer do you imagine Alioth will accept from Quibble? What happens to her?”

“What do you imagine the lord of control will do if we give her up right now?”

“Why—” I checked my tongue and thought about it. “He’ll rectify her!”

“Succinct,” Cate said in almost a mutter.

“All right,” I conceded. “So what are we going to do? How do we cheat them?”

Cate leaned forward in his chair and wrested his eyes toward mine. They didn’t quite get there. “We make her an Adroit,” he said.

“She’s halfway there already,” I admitted. “But adroitness isn’t a surefire thing, Cate. You never got there.”

“With Quibble, who knows?” Cate waved a hand at a fragile, crudely made book lying open near at hand. “Calculation tells us nothing of Exclamation’s experience when he first came Without. The little he knew came from Meissa. The Eyes of the Excelsior may be a fine tale, but I know as well as you it’s just propaganda. So we’ll be feeling our way forward in the dark. But I say we start Quibble at once. No slow immersion, we haven’t the time. She’ll have to acclimate as she goes. We start tonight.”

I skanced Cate uneasily.

“And you’ll do it,” he added.

I rose. “Me?”

Cate smirked. “Do you really want to trust Quote with this?”

I stood dumbfounded, lacking a counterargument.

“It must be you, Nish.”

“But I can’t! Cate, please don’t ask me for this!”

“It may do you some good. You’ve served a nine-year penance for nothing—”

“For nothing?!”

“For breaking edict, then! For bearing a child Dazed. For having the audacity to think he was yours. For putting us all in harm’s way. The lord of control took your son, blinded him, and left him in the Vale of Teeth – and that was all your fault! Is that what you need me to say, at last?”

I sat down, folded my hands in my lap, looked at them, felt the room float away. I roved untethered in the sky as if in a dream. I could recall a time – when was it? – that I lifted Index in the air and said to him, This is dreaming. Feel that? It’s a dream. I flinched at the memory, drew back. None of that now, Nish. I was torn. Only last night I’d thought I didn’t want to be Quibble’s anything: she could pursue whatever madness she wished on her own. And now I would be her adroitness? No. But what was left? Throw another innocent to the wolves? No, never. I can’t. I would be absolutely damned, as she’d said. Reflecting on it now as I stand before Quibble’s mirror, I believe I was damned already.

My cheeks were wet. I wiped them, rose, paced to the door, held it ajar, stood for a long time in silence. Still torn. I turned to face Cate.

“I can do what you can’t, Dazed,” I said. “I learn from my mistakes.”

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