Sideshow, стр. 80
Nela, however, voiced the thought before Fringe could suppress it. “That’s dreadful!”
“Look about you,” said Jory. “Do the people seem dreadful?” She turned toward Nela and fixed her with a bright-eyed stare. “It is no worse than is done in other places. For example, in your time and country, were there not many children killed?”
Nela said, “Many were, I suppose. But not like this!”
“In your time a primary cause of death in children was by violence, no?”
Nela nodded. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “But the deaths were accidental! Children weren’t specific targets! Or, if they were, it was some crazy person killing them!”
“Oh, I see. If they died by accident, they were not really so dead? It is better to die if your killer is crazy?”
Bertran blurted, “There’s a difference!”
Jory shrugged. “Whether eaten in a basket on the Fohm or killed by a madman with a gun, the children became equally dead. Each form of death is acceptable to its own culture.”
“Of course they weren’t acceptable,” cried Nela.
“If they had not been acceptable, something would have been done to stop them. Accidental deaths are usually acceptable, even expedient. And it’s often the business of government to obscure the connections between cause and effect so that expedient deaths will seem to be … accidental.”
“Expedient deaths?” questioned Nela.
“I know what she means.” Bertran turned aside, and they saw sourness cross his face, a fleeting shadow, as on the face of someone who has unwittingly bitten into unripe fruit. “If you are overpopulated, or have an underclass, as in our time, it’s to the advantage of everyone if they kill each other off.”
“One advantage of the Hobbs Land Gods,” murmured Asner. “That there is no overpopulation, no underclass.”
“If you don’t mind being enslaved,” cried Fringe.
“Actually, I’ve wondered about that,” said Asner thoughtfully. “I’ve been places where the Hobbs Land Gods were active, and it didn’t seem that bad to me!”
Fringe backed away from him as though he were contaminated, her face drawn into an expression of disbelieving horror.
“He’s not going to infect you,” said Jory impatiently. “He was just trying to tell you something.”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
“I do,” cried Nela. “I want to hear it!”
“I merely wanted to point out,” said Asner, “that those who were influenced by the Hobbs Land Gods—”
“Enslaved,” spat Fringe.
“Influenced,” repeated Asner. “Those who were influenced were happier and less violent but no less curious or intellectually free than any of us here and now.”
“I don’t care,” cried Fringe. “A slave is a slave.” She turned away, angry and embarrassed. “No matter how the slavery feels to him.”
“I merely remarked—”
“Who are you to remark anything!” demanded Fringe. “You, Asner, who are you, to talk so of the Hobbs Land Gods? What gives either of you the right to meddle in my … all our lives?”
Jory fixed her with an amused eye. “As to who I am, Fringe Owldark, I have been a number of people: wife and mother to persons long departed, lover and friend of unhuman marvels, savior of humanity (so I have been told), fartraveler, prophetess and guide, bender of time, explorer of the far reaches, and now—”
“And now retired,” interrupted Asner, jabbing her with his elbow.
Jory turned an amused stare on him, concluding, “As for the rest, I meddle when I can. To the extent I am allowed.”
Fringe flushed. “Well, if you’re going to meddle with me, I have a right to know why!” Hot with annoyance she looked down at her writhing hands and worked them, finger by finger, as though readying herself to take up weapons and do battle.
“She’s right, you’ve hectored her and them enough, Jory,” said Asner, turning to gesture across the railings at the surrounding watery landscape. “You’ve philosophized and theorized sufficiently! If Fringe prefers to be miserable in her own way rather than be happy in some other way, it’s her choice. The preference isn’t unique or original with her, so let us discuss something else. Geography, for example. We’re getting near the border of Shallow, at the top of the delta. The water meadows of Salt Maresh will begin to show up soon, with their long-legged fishers. There’s a small river port not far upstream where we’ll be stopping to—”
“Oh, Holy Mother,” cried Nela, staring across the moving waters.
“What?” Fringe looked up.
“Is that your diversity!? Oh, oh, Holy Mother.” Nela leaned and pointed. Following the extended finger, Fringe saw. A basket floating out in midstream, bobbing on the wavelets, carrying a child some three or four years old who held tight to the closely woven rim and cried silently, mouth open, eyes and nose streaming.
“You said babies …” said Fringe to Jory, surprised and offended at this event following so soon upon her catechism.
Jory corrected her, “I said children.”
Nela cried, “Why would anybody … why would they send a toddler instead of an infant. I don’t understand!”
“Perhaps the toddler is a boy and the family prefers a newborn daughter,” suggested Asner calmly. “Or vice versa.”
“Perhaps the toddler is defective in some way,” suggested Jory quietly. “Or, perhaps, the child and its mother simply did not get along.”
The basket bobbed on the river waves. The child looked up, saw them, stretched out its arms, and cried across the water. “P’ease … p’ease….” The river flow swept the basket on past, the child’s voice still rising in a wail of fright. “Oh, oh, pick Onny up, p’ease. Pick Onny up….”
Bertran heaved himself away from the rail, Nela thrashing in his wake, sweat beading both their foreheads. “I can’t believe this,” Bertran snarled. “I can’t….”
Where the basket bobbed, something large and many toothed raised itself from the water and gulped hugely.
Fringe turned blind eyes away from the water, shutting out the sight, driving out the memory of it. Such things were. Diversity implied both pleasure and pain, both justice and injustice, both life and death. That’s