CHAPTER 1

The child struggled under his hands; and he blamed it
not at aD. The sight of the Long Whip rising and falling
on the naked hack of ten-year-old Avalon of Wommack
made his own stomach chum. Avalon was a slight and
scrawny child, narrow of shoulder, the copper Wom-
mack hair gone dark now with the swift-pouring sweat
of her agony and clinging in a drenched coil along one
frail shoulder blade. Something about the nape of her
neck, where a babyish curl nestled all alone, tore at him
worse than the blood.

"Look you well," hissed Eustace Laddercane Trav-
eller the 4th through clenched teeth, holding his
youngest son's head as every parent in Traveller King-
dom had learned it must be done. Not just the iron grip
that kept the small head from turning away, but the lit-
tle finger of each hand jabbed cruelly into the comers of
the child's eyes, drawing the eyelids back taut against
any possible hint of their closing.

It hurt, of course; but not so much as the smack of
that Whip would hurt, should one of the College of
Deacons see the child avoiding its present duty: to
watch the public whipping of Avalon of Wommack.
And one day this boy he held so tightly now would per-
form the same service for the babe that swelled his

And Then There'U Be Firework

mothers belly this very moment, as his older children
held their younger brothers and sisters all around him.
His wife had not been spared, either, though Eustace
Laddercane had requested it; her time was very near,
and it a tenth child—mis whipping was enough to set
off her labor and see his tenth-bom arrive in the public
square. But the Tutor had been absolutely adamant
about it. Should that happen, he'd told him, it would be
a blessing for the newbom, its first sight in this world
one guaranteed to further its moral education and set it
on the Straight path for life.

Should that happen, thought the father, he'd blind
the babe with his own two thumbs before he'd let that
be its first sight of the world ... the Holy One grant
that it not happen.

Avalon of Wommack was well shielded from any lust-
ful eyes. The Whipping Cloth hung foursquare from its
hooks above her head to her bare feet, with only the nar-
row space cut away at the back to allow the Whip room.
But it did nothing to shield her screams. Eustace Lad-
dercane hoped they hurt the ears of the Magicians of
Rank that stood one at each comer of the cloth, twelve
inches between them and their pitiful victim.

The whipping itself, now—no man could have done
that, though not one had courage enough to stop it It
was Granny Leeward of Castle Traveller, her that was
the own mother of the Castle Master, that wielded the
Long Whip.

She'd explained Avalon of Wommack's grievous sins
to them all carefully before she began me chastisement,
looking all around her with those measuring eyes, count-

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

ing. She knew precisely how many people should be
there on the walkway that bordered the square, did the
Granny. Ninety-one excused by the College of Deacons
for illness near unto death, a sign of sure wicked-
ness in those ninety and one; and seven hundred
thirteen that left to be counted. Eustace Laddercane
was certain mat Granny Leeward was able to count each
and every one of the seven hundred thirteen, and would
have known if even one had been missing. They lined
up by household and by height, the tallest at the back.

There still was not room for all of them within the
Castle walls, and it had been necessary to lay out this
whipping ground outside, burning away every last sprig
and blade of growing life, grading it flat as the top of a
table, anchoring down the board walkway that bordered
it with spokes of ironwood hammered into chinks
blasted out of the Tinaseeh rock. But that was chang-
ing. The people of Tinaseeh, they were dying with a ter-
rifying speed, ten and twenty and more now in a single
day . . . soon they'd be able to take their Whipping
Cloth inside one of the courtyards, right into Roebuck
. . . might could be soon they'd have ample space in
the Castle Great Hall itself, and be hard put to it to find
anybody left to whip.

Avalon of Wommack had sinned doubly. First she
had sinned against the cause that bid the Chosen Peo-
ple of Tinaseeh repopulate this land, to replace the
dying who by their very deaths had revealed the vileness
or their souls. Avalon's father had brought her home a
husband, a man of seventeen, and Avalon not only had
not welcomed her bridegroom tenderly and obediently

And Then There S Be Firewwh

as was expected o( her, not only refused to go wiBingly
to the marriage bed where this male twice her size and
near twice her age might do her the favor of placing his
seed in her womb—Avalon had tried to hide herself
away. They had dragged her from a granary, half
suffocated already on the grain and on her terror. De-
spite the fact. Granny Leeward had hammered the point
home, that Avalon's womb had been through two full
cycles. And secondly, there was the additional fact that
Avalon of Wommack was a Two. and a female whose
name came to the numeral two was intended by destiny
to be passive and submissive and weak. The giri had also
sinned against her Naming.

That, the Granny had said, was the greater sin of the
two. A young girl, modest and timid as was fully appro-
priate, might be leniently treated for fearing the wed-
ding bed and the inevitable childbed that followed it.
She might well of had only a token stroke or two of the
Long Whip for that, provided she went then and did
her duty ever after.

But to rebel against her Naming was not just to rebel
against Jeremiah Thomas Traveller's orders to many
and be fruitful, the orders of a mere man. It was rebel-
lion against the path laid out for her by the Holy One; a
fearsome evil, a defying of the divine law.

And so the number of lashes had been set at twice
twelve. A memorable number. Eustace Laddercane re-
membered only one other unfortunate to earn so high a
number as that, and that time it had been for stealing
food from the common stores and gorging on it And

And Then There U Be Fireworks

that time the Whip had fallen on the broad back of a
man full grown.

The Long Whip whistled through the air—stroke sev-
enteen. The Magicians of Rank put themselves to the
trouble of calling out the number each time for the
watchers, that they might not lose track and think that
surely it had to be almost over.

At his side he felt a long shudder take his wife's body,
and he dared a quick look, sure it was the birth pains,
but she knew his thought as soon as he did, and without
turning her head she murmured to bim not to take
foolish chances, that she was all right All right, she said,
but for the whipping-

Avalon of Wommack did not scream again after the
nineteenth stroke, but Granny Leeward took care not to
leave the people wondering what was the point of laying
five more strokes on a body already dead.

"Praise be," said the Granny solemnly. "The house-
hold of this youngun can go tranquil to its beds this
night Avalon of Wommack has paid in full the debt of
her wickedness, and she stands now in eternal bliss,
smiling and singing at the right hand of the Holy One
Almighty. Praise bel"

The Magicians of Rank raised their long shears as one
man and cut the loops that held the Whipping Cloth to
the hooks, and there was nothing then to see but a pile
of bloody linen, very nearly Hat, upon the stained

ground.

Somebod/s child, walking the edge of hysteria,
screamed out over and over: "Where did Avalon of

And Then There'll Be Fireworks
Wommack go? Where is she?" And there was the ring-
ing smack of a full blow across that child's face as its
mother moved desperately to offer up a penalty before
the College of Deacons could prescribe one.

And Granny Leeward's voice rose strong and sure—
and why not, seeing as how she was little more than
sixty and mighty young for a Granny—leading them in
the hymn that had been chosen to end this particular
whipping. It was seemly; its title was "Divine Pain,
Willingly Endured." Except that Avalon of Wommack
had not been willing.

The members of the College of Deacons moved
along the walkway, their arms folded gravely over their
chests, watching and listening for any sign of somebody
singing with anything less than righteous enthusiasm. It
was, after all, an occasion tor celebration, what with
Avalon of Wommack's eternal bliss and her family's
tranquillity and all; and the College of Deacons was
fully prepared to see to it that a suitable explanation was
provided for anybody present that couldn't understand
that on their own.

The little ones sang their hearts out, and the older
ones sighed and released their grips upon the small
heads just a mite. The children knew already; sing, sing
loud, and sing joyful. Make a joyful noise . . . they
knew. Or there'd be a smaller version of the Long Whip
waiting at home, and the mother assigned a specific
number of strokes to be laid on, by the Deacon that'd
spotted the wavering voice. It made for hearty music.

Eustace Laddercane Traveller the ^th believed, really
believed, in the Holy One Almighty. And there had not

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

been a whipping yet that he had not raised his own
voice in the closing hymn, almost roaring out the words,
waiting for the divine wrath to reach the limit of Its en-
durance and strike Granny Leeward dead before his
eyes. It had not happened yet, but his faith that it
would was a rock on which he stood, and a comfort to
him in the nights when often he dreamed it was a child
of his loins that cringed and screamed and twisted under
the strokes of the Whip.

"It went well, to my mind," said Nathan Overholt
Traveller the loist. "No faintings, no foolishness, and
no punishments to pass out afterward—all very satis-
factory."

The other three nodded, and agreed that it had gone
well enough.

"Well enough, perhaps." That was Feebus Timothy
Traveller the 6th, youngest of the Magicians of Rank on
Tinaseeh. "But the child ought not to have died."
The two Fanon brothers, Sheridan Pike the 2$th and
Luke Nathaniel the i9th, looked at each other. There
were times when they wondered about Feebus Timothy,
finding him a tad soft, wondering if there wasn't a slight
taint of Airy blood there somewhere to account for what
came near at times to romantic notions. Times when
they felt he'd profit from a stroke or two of the Long
Whip himself. He sorely needed toughening up.

"There is no room on Tinaseeh for a disobedient
child," said Nathan Overholt harshly. "The subject is
closed."

"There was a time," persisted Feebus Timothy,

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"when we could have saved her, any one of us, no mat-
ter how many lashes she had taken."

"There was a time," said Sheridan Pike reasonably,
"when we could cause the Mules to fly and carry us on
their backs, and a time when the winds and the rains
and the tides obeyed us. And that was that time, and it
is gone. We deal now with this time."

The mention of the powers they had lost silenced
them all. It was not something you got used to. Once
you had been someone whose fingers could make a cas-
ual move or two and a cancer would shrivel and disap-
pear inside the sick one's body, leaving no trace behind.
Once you had been someone that could SNAP through
space, moving from the Wilderness Lands of Tinaseeh,
across the vastness of the Oceans of Remembrances and
of Storms, to land less than a second later in the court-
yard of any of the twelve Castles of the planet Ozark.
Once you had been someone who saw to it that the rain
fell only when and where it was needed, and that the
harvests were always bountiful, and that the snow fell
only deep enough and often enough to be an amuse-
ment for the children and a change for their elders . . .
once.

Now, on the other hand, it was as Sheridan Pike had
said. Now they had to deal with this time. Four Magi-
cians of Rank, their tides as hollow as their stomachs
and their gaunt faces, garbed in a black grown shiny
with wear, and their only power now the power of fear.
It was a painful comedown, for they had been truly
mighty.

Luke Nathaniel Farson had been picking idly at his

And Then Therell Be Fireworks

front teeth with his thumbnail, a maddening little noise
in the silence; and then he stopped, just before they
could demand for him to, and asked: "Do you suppose
it's true, that rumor about the Yallerhounds?"
"Luke Nathaniel!" Even Feebus Timothy got in on
the outrage.

"I don't know," mused the other man. "They're hun-
gry. We're hungry, here at the Castle . . . think of the
people in the town. A Yallerhound, or a giant cavecat,
that's a sizable quantity of meat. And though it's true I
can't think of any of the men with strength enough left
to take a cavecat, you know as well as I do that a boy of
three could catch a Yallerhound. AH you have to do is
call the creature, and it will come to you."

"Nobody," said Sheridan Pike, "nobody at afl.^ would
eat a Yallerhound. They would starve first."

"They will, then/' said Luke Nathaniel "Those that
haven't already.*'

"Change the subject/' ordered Sheridan Pike flatly.
"Can't any of you think of something that's not intoler-
able to talk about? You've lost your magic powers, but I
wasn't aware that you'd lost your minds as well."

"Well," said Feebus Timothy, "we could discuss to-
day's scheduled urgent and significant meeting. That's
not intolerable, just useless, and silly, and stupid."

"Your sarcasm is very little help. Cousin/' said Sheri-
dan Pike.

"All right, then, 111 ask seriously. What is on today's
agenda?"

"A discussion of the situation."

"Again?" Feebus Timothy was serious now, serious

And Then There's. Be Fireworks

and Habbergasted. "Whatever for? We have had nine
hundred and ninety-nine 'discussions of the situation'
and we have yet to arrive at a single—"

Sheridan Pike cut him off. "Jeremiah Thomas Trav-
eller is Master of this Castle, master of the four of us,
son of Granny Leeward, and representative of the Holy
One upon this earth. If he says we are to discuss the sit-
uation yet one more time—or one hundred more times
—then we will discuss it"

Feebus Timothy snorted, "The only thing in all that
that impresses me. Cousin, is the claim that he's Lee-
ward's son. That I believe, it being a matter of record;

and that I'm impressed by. As for the rest of it ... if
you'll pardon a phrase from the fonnspeech . . .
cowflop."

"You talk a good line," said Luke Nathaniel Farson.
"But I have yet to see you do more than talk."

Sheridan Pike moved smoothly to cover the charged
silence, and observed that another discussion was not
necessarily a waste of time.

"Each time we meet," he said, "there is the possi-
bility that we will hit upon something we have over-
looked before, colleagues. Somewhere there is a clue to
be found, if only we were wise enough to spot it"

"The clue you seek," retorted Feebus Timothy, "lies
in pseudocoma on a narrow bed at Castle Brightwater.
Where we put her, we wise Magicians of Rank, these
sixteen months past"

"Nonsense!"

"Not nonsense," said Nathan Overholt, knowing he
plowed ground already furrowed to exhaustion, but too

10

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

tired to care, "not nonsense at all. Feebus Timothy is
somewhat confused, and somewhat overdramatic, but
the facts of the matter are obvious. While Responsible
or Brightwater went about her interfering and infuriat-
ing business on this planet, we were truly Magicians,
with the power of Formalisms & Transformations at our
command. From the moment we laid her in pseudo-
coma on that bed my cousin refers to so poetically, our
power began to wane . . . and now it is gone. Entirely^
completely, wholly gone. Magic is gone . . . and on
Tinaseeh we have no science. The question is: why?"

"We have no science because we never needed it,"
said Sheridan Pike disgustedly. "Magic was a great deal
faster than science ever hoped to be, and far more
efficient"

"No, no ... that was not my question! And you
know it, don't you?"

"Of course I know it!"

"Then stop playing the fool!"

"He is not playing the fool," said Luke Nathaniel
wearily, "he is just cross, like the rest of us. And we have
considered that question so many times already."

"Magic/' said Nathan Overholt, "is a great web, a
great web in always changing equilibrium. Touch it any-
where, change it anyhow, and you affect the whole.
When we removed Responsible of Brightwater from
that web-"

"We haven't removed her. She's in better health than
any of us. In pseudocoma you don't need to eat"

"In a sense," Nathan Overholt went on, "we removed
her. We changed her from an active principle to a pas-

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

sive one . . . and yet she is a female. How can a female
represent an active principle?"

"Granny Leeward is exceedingly 'active' with the
Long Whip/' observed Luke Nathaniel. "And she is fe-
male."

^She is not a principle—she is only an item."

Feebus Timothy longed to lay his head, still aching
from the screams or Avalon of Wommack, down on the
table, right then and there, and go to sleep. They had
been over it And over it The difference between an
item and a principle. The difference between substi-
tution of a null term and substitution of a specified
term. The degree of shift in an equation sufficient to de-
stroy its reversibility—or restore it And over and over
. . . what role had Responsible of Brightwater, a girt of
fifteen like any other girl of fifteen to the eye, played in
that equation, such that the cancellation of her input
had been enough to destroy the entire system?

There were never any answers. That she had known a
little magic, some of it more advanced than was suitable
for a female or even legal, they all knew. The four of
them had been present when Responsible fell into
Granny Leeward's trap and changed the old woman's
black fan into a handful of rotting jet-black mushrooms
before their astonished eyes. Jeremiah Thomas Traveller
had been mightily impressed by that, as the Granny had
intended him to be.

But they were Magicians of Rank. It was a Trans-
formation, certainly, and the girl should not have been
able to do it, but it was trivial. It was a baby trick, such
as any one of them might have done—in a less ugly way

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And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

—to entertain guests at a celebration of some kind. It
was probable that it had been as much blind luck as
skill, and mostly the product of the girl's rage; for she
had lain in torment while they watched her and mocked
her misery, suffering from the girt of Andersen's Dis-
ease, die deathdance fever that Granny Leeward had or-
dered them to impose as punishment for her scandalous
behavior. And she'd shown no sign of any talent for
things magical but that one . . . nor had she been able
to stand against them when the nine Magicians of
Rank had chosen to impose pseudocoma upon her or
during the months that had dragged by since. If there
was something special about her, why had she not
leaped up from that bed and laughed at them and put
all of them into pseudocoma?

It was hopeless.

"It's hopeless," he said aloud. "Hopeless."

The others looked at him, suddenly caught by the
nuance of his voice. He was young, and he was inexpe-
rienced, but he had been a skilled Magician of Rank.
Now they detected something ... a note of petulance.
Petulance?

Nathan Overholt Traveller reached over abruptly and
laid his hand on the younger man's forehead and swore
a broad word.

"He's burning up with fever!" he said. "One of you
get the Granny, and tell her to lose no time coming
down here!"

It had been bound to happen sooner or later.
Sickness, the Master of this Castle had been telling ev-
eryone, sickness and death, were nothing more than the

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And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

marks of wickedness and sin made visible in the flesh.
Only the Holy One culling the rotten fruit from the
crop and leaving the sound and the wholesome behind.
It made an entertaining sermon, and perhaps dulled
grief for some . . . after all, if those that suffered and
died deserved their fate, then what was there to grieve
over?

But the Magicians of Rank had been uneasy, listen-
ing. For if one of them, one of the Magicians of Rank,
one of the Family, were to fall sick or, the Twelve Gates
forbid, to die—how was that to be explained? The ur-
gency of preventing that had provided them with a
shaky justification for the extra rations they shared in se-
cret in the Castle, while tadlings cried with hunger in
the houses of the town. Eggs, they had been eating . . .
it was safe to assume that no one else on Tinaseeh had
seen an egg in six months or more, much less eaten one.
And now this? It must not happen.

"Why call the Granny?" demanded one of the
others, and Nathan Overholt took time from rubbing
the temples of his brother's head to give him a look of
contempt

"We have no magic now, you benastied fool," he
spat, beside himself with worry, and his elegant manners
and speech forgotten for once, "and no medicine either.
We have nothing—except what the Grannys know. The
ancient simples. The herbs and teas and potions and
plasters of the times before magic, the Holy One have
mercy on us all! Now get her!"

"Nathan Overholt-'

"You think," shouted Nathan, "you think that if one

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And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

of us falls to a fever we will be able to stand on the
whipping ground and convince the people of Tinaseeh
that we order that Whip laid on out of our own inno-
cence of all sin? You think that Granny Leeward would
scruple to set that Long Whip to your back, or to mine,
<f that seemed necessary to further the cause of the Cho-
sen People? Dozens, man, don't you realize that if
Feebus Timothy has it we may all be in the same fix,
whatever it is—and it could be anything? Now go!"

He went around behind his brother and clasped the
young man's head in his hands, closing his eyes, concen-
trating fiercely. It was an act he knew to be only super-
stition. But perhaps. Perhaps there was still some frag-
ment of healing in it. He could not do nothing at all.
He had no desire to die like Avalon of Wommack had
died; nor did he want to leam how many strokes of the
Long Whip it would take to kill a strong man in
reasonably good condition.

15

CHAPTER 2

Mount Troublesome was not much, as mountains go; it
peaked at a fad past four thousand feet, and it hadn't a
glacier or a crevasse to its name. On the other hand,
though it didn't live up to the "Mount" part, it more
than made up for that in its fidelity to the "Trouble-
some" part It missed no smallest opportunity for ra-
vines to get stuck in and caves to get lost in and vast
duckets to be scratched ragged in; and it was abun-
dantly generous in poisonous ivies and creepers winding
along the ground and up around the trees to hang down
and smack you in the face. Springs were everywhere,
trickling along under matted undergrowth that looked
solid as a stable roof, till you set foot on it and sank in
icy water up to your knees. There were waterfalls'
enough to go around, pretty white water gushing over
sheer rock faces into pools circled by ferns and near-
wfllows. The pools were tempting to the eye, and might
of been pleasant-feeling, but you waded them at your
peril and the pleasure of dozens of small ferocious yel-
low snakes with ingeniously notched teeth. It did hap-
pen to be a fact that Mount Troublesome was the tallest
thing on the entire continent of Marktwain.
The seven old women toiling their way up its tangled
sides were more than satisfied with the obstacles it

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

presented. If it had been any worse, there was consid-
erable doubt in their minds that they could of made it
to the top at all

"Drat the ornery female!" Granny Sherryi'ake had de-
clared after the second time a whole hour had to be
wasted finding a way round a beny thicket as impene-
trable as solid rock and twice as unpleasant And she
went on to expand on that, and elaborate on it, and
weave variations on it, as the hours went by and it be-
came obvious that there was no way they could reach
the top before nightfall. They'd be overnighting out on
the mountain.

But Granny Hazelbide, that was in residence along
with Granny Gableframe at Castle Brightwater, had
taken exception to that It was fully appropriate, she'd
said, slapping back at a branch that had slapped her
first, for a woman named Troublesome to choose a
mountain named Troublesome when she went into
exile.

"FuBy appropriate, and seemly," said Granny Hazel-
bide. "I'd of done the same exact thing, in her place."

"Well," grumbled Shenyjake, "there may be some-
thing to what you say."

"I should hope and declare there is. Naming is nam-
ing!"

"But," went on the other doggedly, "I do not see that
there was any special merit to be gained from her es-
tablishing herself at the very most tip top of this ac-
cursed hump of dirt and rock. She was not named Peak
of Troublesome, you know. Halfway up would of done
it, seems to me. Quarterways up."

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And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

"Troublesome of Brightwater was instructed to take
herself as far away from the rest of the population of
Brightwater as it was possible for her to get," said
Granny FrostfaD firmly. "I hold with Hazelbide; she did
what was proper. But I surely do not find that it makes
for a pleasant little stroll."

"Time was," fussed Granny Gableframe, "this would
of been no more than that, for any of us."

"And in such a time," snorted Granny Frostfall,
"we'd none of us of crossed a city street to pay a call on
Troublesome of Brightwater. Can't say as how I see that
it applies, Gableframe-"

Granny Gableframe didn't bother to argue, but
sighed a long sigh and took a firmer grip on her walking
stick with her thin old fingers. It wouldn't do to lose it

Grannys had always been thin, that went with the ter-
ritory; but these seven were thin to the bone, and those
bones pained them. Grannys had always been old; but
up till recently they'd been protected from the usual
miseries of old age by their own Granny Magic, and
from its more unusual miseries by the skills of the Magi-
cians and the Magicians of Rank. Without that protec-
tion, things had changed for them. Angina and arthritis,
gall-bladder colic and kidney trouble, ulcers and head-
aches and high blood pressure, all the bodily discom-
forts taken for granted as the lot of any aged woman on
Old Earth, had struck the Grannys of Ozark. It was
even said that at Castle Clark—though she denied it
fiercely—Granny Golightly was developing a cataract in
her right eye.

Under the circumstances, when Granny Gableframe

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

first proposed that the seven of them should go up to
the mountaintop and talk to Troublesome of Bright-
water, the hilarity had been like a squawkercoop with a
serpent inside, and two servingmaids had come running
to find out what the commotion was.

"You are daft, Gableframe," the other Grannys had
said with a single voice, and they'd sat in their rockers
and cackled and held their aching sides at the very idea.
Seven creaking old ladies, half blind and half deaf, feet
too swollen to go in their shoes and bones so brittle they
barely dared move them—and they were to trek up the
meanest mountain on Marktwain in the middle of the
autumn? It was a fool idea to top all fool ideas.

"That does take the rag off the bush, Gableframe,"
they'd said, and it was unanimous.

"And what do you propose to do, ladies?" Gable-
frame had challenged them, standing there arms akimbo
and her sharp chin stuck out ahead of her. "You pro-
pose to just sit here, do you? While the crops all die and
the animals sicken and the people do the same, and Re-
sponsible of Brightwater lies month after weary month
on that white counterpane, so still the only reason I can
believe she's alive is that her body has yet to mortify?
Well, ladies? You laugh right prompt, real quick to
make fun, you are! But I don't hear you offering any
plans of your own."
They did know two things, there was that. In the first
months after Responsible had been struck down, while
the power of magic was waning but not yet exhausted,
the Grannys had managed to leam two small pieces of
information. They'd read tea leaves, they'd swung their

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

golden rings on long black threads, they'd stared into
springwater till their eyes were red and weeping, night
after night. And back at them had come two scraps.

The reason behind the trouble, the reason behind Re-
sponsible's deathlike interminable sleep, was "an impor-
tant man." That had come first, and after much labor,
and had irritated them considerably. Then there had
been the search for that man's location in this world,
holding the golden rings over the maps, holding their
breaths as well, waiting for one ring to begin its telltale
swinging and circling. All atremble like they were, it
took a sharp eye to tell when the movement was of its
own self and when it was just the doings of a Granny
that's hand was no longer steady.

And then there'd been argument. The Spells were so
little use by then, the movement of the rings so near no
movement at all, and so ambiguous—was it Tinaseeh or
was it Kintucky? All of a week they'd nattered over that,
half for one and half for the other, knowing that if they
made the wrong choice there'd be no second chance.
There weren't resources enough for trying twice, for one
thing. And for another, if anything was to be done it
had to be done swiftly; there was nothing in the way of
extra resources of time, either.

Grannys Gablerrame, WhifBebee, and Edging had
been strong for Tinaseeh, swearing it was Jeremiah
Thomas Traveller that was the "important man." Did
he not, after all, rule that continent with a fist of iron,
and hadn't he always? And hadn't he always hated Re-
sponsible of Brightwater and everything she stood for?

"Hmmph," said Granny Cobbledrayke of Castfe

21

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

McDanieIs, "it's not Jeremiah Thomas as rules Tina-
seen, it's his mother, her that took Leeward as her
Granny Name and is about as much like a leeward side
in a storm as a lizard's like a bellybutton. Don't give me
Jeremiah Thomas Traveller for an 'important man*—
he's a mama's boy, and always was."

She, and the rest of the Marktwam Grannys. had
been set on Kintucky, and Castle Wommack. Hadn't
Responsible herself, they argued, run away from Castle
Wommack—her that wasn't afraid of anything living or
dead—run away, rather than face Lewis Motley Wom-
mack? And wasn't it Lewis Motley Wommack that now
governed all of Kintucky?

"He is barely twenty-one years old ... -wouldn't be,
not quite yet," Gableframe protested. "A boy yet, last
time we saw him! Here for the Jubilee, remember? With
his little sister Jewel set to tag around after him and
keep him out of mischief? How can that one be the 'im-
portant man,' I ask you?"

"He is important on Kintucky," said Sherryjake.

"Well, we don't know how that came to be/' grum-
bled the others. "We don't know atall. Way our magic
was working in those last months, for all we know the
messages we got were plain scrambled . . . might could
be Jacob Donahue Wommack the 23rd's still hale and
hearty and Master of that Castle and the whole tale
about it being Lewis Motley in charge is no more than
a puckerwrinkle in a puny Spell. Who'd be fool enough
to put a wild colt like that one in charge of a Kingdom?
Now last you. . ."

But the time had come when the decision had to be

22

And Then There'Q Be Fireworks

made; and for want of anything better to base it on
they'd deferred to Granny Hazelbide, seeing as it was
Hazelbide had had the raising of Responsible of Bright-
water and knew her best of any of them.

Now, fighting the thorns and the vines and the poison
weeds, keeping a sharp eye for the false earth over run-
ning water, making a hardscrabble way up through a
drizzle that threatened to be a rain and praying they'd
find at least an overhang to shelter them through this
night, they hoped they'd decided rightly. Everything
rode on this one throw of the dice, and Granny Hazel-
bide shivered with more than the fever that plagued her
now every day of her life, thinking what she'd done if it
was the wrong choice and she had convinced the others
of it. And what they'd do to her . . . law, that would be
a production!

"Ah, Hazelbide," said Granny Willowithe, her that
almost never spoke, and had done her grannying in the
farther reaches of the Kingdom where there were few to
bother her, "if you are wrong?" It was always that way.
Those as spoke rarely, when they did speak it tended to
be significant- and to be what everybody else was think-
ing and hadn't gotten up gumption to give voice to.

Troublesome of Brightwater woke to a wind howling
round her cabin doors and windows, and that was ordi-
nary enough. She woke also to a downright infuriated
rapping on her cabin door, and that was distinctly not
ordinary. Over ten years she'd been here now, and she'd
never had a visitor but her little sister, and that only
three times. It could not be her little sister this time.

23

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

She listened again, and stretched in the warmth of
her bed, wondering if it had been maybe something
blown by the winds, or something in a dream, half a
mind to go back to sleep. And then the hollering came:

"Troublesome of Brightwater, will you open this door?
Or have you taken to murdering old ladies along with
the rest of your wicked ways?"

That brought her up out of her bed in a hurry. Old la-
dies, was it, on her doorsill? She went to the door just as
she was, and stood there before them mothemaked and
barefoot, with no cover but the heavy black hair that
tumbled almost to her knees. She held the door with
one hand and set the other on the curve of her shame-
less hip, and she sighed a sigh of sheer wonderment.

"Whatever in all the world?" breathed Troublesome
of Brightwater, looking them over. "Whatever in all the
wondering twelvesquare world?"

The Grannys were a sight to behold, for sure. They
were wet and they were dirty and they were nettle-
stung, and they were cold and wrinkled and miserable.
With no more Housekeeping Spells to use, and nothing
around for a tidy-up but one stream the width of their
hand trickling over slabs of bare rock, they were as piti-
ful a representation of seven old ladies as had ever met
the eye.

"Out of my way, trollop," announced Granny Gable-
frame, and would of pushed right past Troublesome
into the welcome warmth of the cabin; but the young
woman barred her way with one sturdy arm.

"I'm no trollop. Granny Gableframe/' she said. "I'm
virgin as I came from my mother's womb—and that's

24

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

more than any one of you here can say back at me, as I
recollect. As for my costume, I don't recall sending out
any invitations. You've gotten poduck, Grannys."

"Law, the creature's enjoying it," muttered Granny
Hazelbide. She'd had the raising of her, too. "Trouble-
some," she demanded, "will you for the love of decency
drop that arm and let us in? We are tired near to death,
we spent all yesterday on this mountain and all last
night in a cave full of varmints and dripping water, and
we've no magic any more to ease the toll all that has
taken. Would it pleasure you to see one of us drop dead
right here before your eyes, you dreadful female?"

Troublesome dropped her arm at that and let them
by, saying: "Well, that's more fair. A trollop I'm not,
but a dreadful female I'm willing to admit to. Do come
• in, and I'll put the kettle on and stir up the fire. I don't
suppose youali'd take your clothes off and let me hang
them to dry, would you?"

That met the frigid silence she'd anticipated, and she
nodded her head in resignation.

"Stay cold and wet, then," she said, "and die of pneu-
monia, not on my doorstep but on my hearthstone—but
don't you lay it to my account. There's not a one of you
as has anything different to her body than I have myself,
and I do believe I could bear the sight of your old
skinny-skin-skins ... for sure I would not lust after
you! But if you rank your modesty higher than your
misery, so be it; I'll not squabble with you."

The cabin was small and bare, and even after Trou-
blesome got the fire crackling in the fireplace the best
she could do was pull up a rough board bench with no

25

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

back to it for them all to sit on and try to bake the damp
from their bones. Troublesome had no rugs, and no cur-
tains; her bed was a pallet laid on a rope frame in the
comer, she had one straight chair and one rocker and
one low stepladder and a small square table and a cook-
stove. And except for a bucket or two and a shelf here
and there, that was it. The Grannys were bemused by it,
even with their teeth chattering.

"Don't have eight cups, do you?" asked Granny Sher-
ryjake.

Troublesome chuckled, and admitted she didn't, and
served them up the scalding tea in an assortment of )'ars
and ladles and whamots that was ingenious, but not ele-
gant.

"Never needed more than three before," she told
them. "One to drink with, one to measure with, and one
in the dishpan soaking."

"I can't say as you exacdy ... do yourself proud,"
commented Granny Frostfall, and a kind of snort of
agreement ran down the bench.

"No, I don't suppose I do," Troublesome agreed.

"Tain't natural," said one, and Troublesome's eye-
brows rose.

"You expected things up here to be natural?" she
asked.

The Grannys sighed all together, seeing it was a hope-
less case, and Troublesome went to a row of three pegs
on a wall by her bed and took down a long dress all in a
soft scarlet wool and slipped it over her head.

"There," she said, "now I'll not be quite such an
ofiense to your eyes." And her long fingers were almost

26

And Then There'U Be Fireworh

too quick for those same fourteen sharp eyes to see as
che put the mass of hair into a braid and wound it up
around her head and fastened it tight

It was unjust that anything so wicked should be so
beautiful, or so clever, or so serene, or so happy with her
lot—especially the last—and the Grannys stared glumly
into the fire and pondered on that

"Well, ladies," Troublesome said at last, sitting her-
self down on an upended bucket with her arms wrapped
round her knees, since it wouldn't of been mannerly to
take a chair while the old women huddled on that
bench, "now you're a bit warmer and dryer, maybe
you'd tell me what I'm beholden to for the pleasure of
your company?"

"Maybe you might offer us a bite of breakfast first!"
snapped Granny Gableframe. "If you care to spare it!"

"It's already cooking," said Troublesome calmly, "but
I can't do anything much to hurry it along. And while
we're waiting on it—no, I don't have eight plates either,
but as it happens I do have eight spoons—while we're
waiting on it I see no reason not to make the time go by
speaking up on the reason for this visit. I'm afraid I'm
not much for visitors."

The Grannys allowed as how they never would of
figured that out if she hadn't mentioned it, and she
chuckled again.

"Earn your keep, you dear old things," she teased
Aem, brazen as brazen, "earn your keep. What brings
you Hanging round my door all unannounced and
unkempt, with snow before the week's out or my name's
not Troublesome of Brightwater? You should be home,

27

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

each in your rocker with your knitting, by your own fire,
telling terrible stories to the tadlings."

Granny Hazelbide was embarrassed; true, this one
was properly Named, and her outrageousness came as
no surprise to anybody, but it had been her, poor
Granny Hazelbide, that had tried to keep some control
over her when she was a little girl at Castle Brightwater.

"Troublesome," she said sadly, "have you no feelings
atall?"

"Probably not," said Troublesome promptly. "Feel-
ings about what?"

*Times arc hard, young woman," said Hazelbide,
"times are fearsome hard! You talk of sitting by our fires
. . . there's precious little left to lay a fire with, down in
the towns. People are suffering, and your own sister lies
near death in the Castle. How can you sit these and face
us and make jokes over it all?"

"Would it help," Troublesome put the question, "if I
moaned about it instead? Would it ease anybody's
fever, stop anybody's bleeding, or put food in anybody's
stomach or fire on their hearth? Would it wake my sister
—who is nor, by the way, anywhere near death. Not as
near as the seven of you, I assure you."

"Ah, you're heartless," Granny Hazelbide mourned.
"Just heartless!"

Troublesome said nothing at all, but waited and
watched, and they began to smell the porridge on the
stove and their stomachs knotted.

"Well, we want you to make a journey," said Granny
Gableframe when it finally became clear that they'd get

28

And Then There'll Be Firework

no more out of the girl. "A long and a perilous journey.
And that's why we're here... to ask you. Politely."

Troublesome stared at her, black brows knit over her
nose, and gave a sharp "tchh" with her tongue.

"A journey? Go on a trip?"

"Yes. And a good long one."

She stood up and went to the stove and began passing
the porridge over to them, warning them to use their
shawls to hold on so they'd not burn their fingers.

"Certainly can't hurt the shawls, the state they're in,"
she said.

She watched them while they ate; and seeing that
they were truly hungry, she didn't bother them, but
busied herself pouring more tea and serving more por-
ridge until it seemed to her that everybody was at last
satisfied and she could gather up the motley collection
of serving things in her apron and put it all into a pan of
hot soapy water.

Whereupon she sat down, shaking her hands to dry
them, and said, "No more excuses, now. You're dry, and
you're warm, and you're fed and watered. It's too cold
for you to be taking baths at your age, so youll have to
stay dirty, and I've no remedies for your other miseries;

I've made you as comfortable as I'm capable of. Now
111 have you tell me about this journey, thank you
kindly."

"We want you to go to Castle Wommack," said
Granny Hazelbide, and Troublesome almost fell off her
makeshift stool in astonishment

"To Kintucky? Granny, you've lost your mind en-
tirely! However would I get to Castle Wommack?"

29

And Then There U Be Fireworks

"On a ship."

"Granny Hazelbide, there's no ship goes to Kintucky
any more, and no supplies to last the journey if there
were. You've been nibbling something best left on its
stem, f say."

"We have a ship/' said Hazelbide, putting one stub-
born word after another, "and a crew—not much of a
crew, but it'll serve in this instance—and supplies
enough to get all of you to Kintucky and back. Includ-
ing me Mule you'll be taking along to get you from the
coast to the Castle."

"Dozens!" said Troublesome. "I'd of said that was
impossible."

"It wasn't cheap."

"It took all we had," put in Granny Whiffietree, "and
aB that the Grannys had on Oklahomah, and a contri-
bution or two—not necessarily voluntary, if you take my
meaning—from a few useless Magicians and Magicians
of Rank. But we did it"

"Bribed the ship captain, did you? And bribed the
crew?"

"That we did."

"And you think they'll stay bribed!"
"We do. The captain's a Brightwater, and all but one
of the crew as well. And that one's a McDaniels. They'll
stay bribed."

"Supposing," hazarded Troublesome, leaning for-
ward, "that I was such a lunatic as to go gallivanting off
to Kintucky in the middle of me autumn . . . just sup-
pose that, which I'm not... what precisely is my goal,

50

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

other than to drown myself and the captain and the
crew and that poor Mule?"

They told her, and they watched her face go thought-
ful, and Granny Gableframe pinched the next Granny
down on the bench, gently; they knew then that they
had her.

"I agree," said Troublesome slowly, "that it's sure to
be Lewis Motley Wommack the ^yd. I do agree on
that. Not a thing Jeremiah Thomas Traveller could have
done that would account for what's happened, but that
Wommack boy is something else again, and I do believe
he lay with Responsible while the Jubilee was going on."

"So that's who it was!" exclaimed Granny Hazelbide.
"How did you know?"

"Ask me no questions. Granny, I'll tell you no lies,"
said Troublesome. "It makes no nevermind how I knew.
But you've chosen right, for sure and for certain- How-
ever. . . you've nothing here but missing pieces."

"Explain yourself!"

"Did you learn, before your magic wound down, that
if somebody went to see this 'important man' it would
make some difference in the course of events on
Ozark?" Troublesome stared them down, and they had
to admit that they hadn't

"And did you learn that just because he's the cause of
Responsible's hearty nap he knows how to wake her up
again?

"And did you learn that even if my sister was awake
again, she'd be able to do something about all this tribu-
lation we suffer from? Did you?"

It was no to both, of course, and they had to admit it

31

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"But you*d send me half round the world on a wild
goose chase, on the slim tagtail of a chance that Acre
might be some use to it?"

And they agreed that they would.

"Well," said Troublesome. "I never heard such non-
sense."

"Sass!"

"No, I never did. Unless it was youall coming up here
like you did, risking pneumonia coming up and breaking
every bone in your bodies going down—'cause you pay
me mind, now, if you thought you had a hard time get-
ting up here, you just wait till you try getting back
down! It's a heap faster, but it's not a safe trip. No way,
no way in this world, am I going to take any part in such
a fool project, and you should of known better than to
ask me."

"Your sister lies—"

"Tell me no more about how my sister lies!" shouted
Troublesome. "And tell me no more about the suffering
of the people down there below! Wasn't it those very
same people that would not heed my sister when she
tried to warn them, and voted away the government that
was holding them all together? Wasn't it?"

Troublesome—"

"And for all my sister had done for them, was it not
those very same people that showed her no more grati-
tude than they would a stick? That's the people we're
talking about, amn't I right, Grannys? Don't you ask me
to reel sorry for those people—1 despise them for a pack
of contemptible ignorant two-faced good-for-nothing
belly-creeping serpents, do you hear me? If their stom-

52

And Then. There'll Be Fireworks

achs hurt them and their backs pain them and their
hearts are broken, they've asked for that, and no call to
come whimpering to me! They made their beds, let
tiiem wallow in them and cry in their pillows."

"And your sister?" said Granny Hazelbide, ever so
carefully, in the hush. When Troublesome got going,
she gave a spectacular performance, and even the
Grannys were impressed just a tad.

"It is well known," said Troublesome of Brightwater
in tones of ice, "that I have no natural human feelings.
My sister can rot there for all I care—not that she will,
that doesn't go with it, but she's welcome to—and you
know it perfectly well. Ask any man, woman, or tadling
on Marktwain about the compassion and the warm
heart of Troublesome of Brightwater and see what you
get back, if you don't know it already!"
Troublesome wasn't out of breath, but she was out of
patience and way beyond out of hospitality. She stood
up then and ordered them off, ignoring what they said
about needing to rest, stuffing a careless handful of
peachapples in a sack with some cold biscuits and shov-
ing it at them for food on the journey home, telling
them where the water was safe to drink and which paths
to stay shut of. Warning them of a place where the
snakes were thick this time of year because of a rock that
got warm each day in the sun, and all but slamming her
door behind them. They were back out in the weather
and the downhill trek ahead of them before they could
catch their breaths, and they heard the thump of that
bucket as it hit the wall when she gave it a toss across
the room.

33

And Then There U Be Fireworks

"Well!" said Granny Frostfall. "I've seen manners,
and I've seen manners ... but she does beat all. She is
every last thing she's made out to be, and some left over,
and I'll wager she eats nails for breakfast when she's got
no company to see her."

"She has a reputation to maintain," pointed out
Granny Hazelbide.

"What's important," said Granny Gableframe, "and
all that matters now except for getting down this dratted
mountain, is that she'll do it."

"We're sure of that, Gableframe? I don't see it!"

"Oh, we're sure," said Gableframe; and Granny Ha-
zelbide and Granny Sherryjake agreed. "We had her the
minute she asked us to tell her about it, don't you know
anything atall? If she'd turned us a deaf ear, now, and
refused to even listen, and sent us all packing without so
much as letting us tell her why we were here . . . well,
that would of been Troublesome's way."

"Oh, yes," said Granny Hazelbide. *(We've got her
fast, the Twelve Comers preserve us all."

"But howll she know where to go? How to find the
ship?"

"I had that aD on a slip of paper before ever we
started up this overblown hill," sniffed Granny Hazel-
bide. "And tucked away safe in the pocket of my skirt
And it's tucked away safe now in her own hand, every-
thing she needs to know. She gave that bucket quite a
Bing, there at the last, and she may well pitch the bench
we sat on into her Ere—but she'll keep that piece of
paper safe. Every last detail she needs to know, it's on
mere."
54

And Then There's. Be Fireworks

"Law, Granny Hazelbide/' said one or two. And "My
stars, Hazelbide."

"Well, I know her/' said the Granny. "I know her
well."

"Can't say as I envy you that."

"I don't envy my self that, but there's times it's use-
ful," said Granny Hazelbide. "And now let's us head for
home. Might could be we'll make it before dark. Like
Troublesome said, it's a sight faster going down than
coming up."

55

CHAPTER 3

Smalltrack was neither a supply freighter nor a pleasure
craft. The smell aboard, in spite of a powerful scrub-
bing, made you instantly aware that it had been a
fishing boat tor a very long time. Having the Mule
aboard didn't improve matters, since Dross had no re-
spect whatsoever for a human being's ideas about waste
disposal; she added a new fragrance to the prevailing
reek of blood and entrails and ancient sUme. The cap-
tain and the four men of his crew had been on work-
boats of one kind or another all their lives; if they no-
ticed the smell atall, they paid it little mind. They knew
themselves fortunate that it was wintry weather, and no
hot sun broiling down to bring everything to a constant
simmer and perk. As for their passenger, if she found
conditions not to her liking, they didn't mind that atall.

If pushed, all five would have acknowledged a relish
for the idea that Troublesome of Brightwater might not
be all that comfortable crossing the Ocean of Storms to
Kintucky in their racketydrag old boat. They didn't pre-
cisely want her to sutler, being good-natured men, but
they were in mutual accord that she had a trifle discom-
fort coming to her. If the mechanisms of the universe
saw fit to provide that discomfort without any call for
their hands meddling in it, why, they found that posi-

37

And Then There U Be Fireworks

tively Providential. It spoke to their sense of the fitness
of things.

They were Marktwainers—four, including the cap-
tain, being Brightwaters by birth, and a single McDan-
iels finishing up the party—and they were conscious
enough that the woman who spent her time silent on an
upturned barrel in the stem, looking out over the rough
water, was their kinswoman. It comforted Gabriel John
McDaniels the zist that he was fust a tad less related to
her than the other four, but they all recognized it as a
burden to be borne. Relations, like poison plants and
balky Mules and the occasional foolfish spoiling a catch,
were part of the territory; wasn't anybody didn't have
kinfolk they'd just as soon not of.

They'd had their instructions from the Grannys:

**You leave her alone, she'll leave you alone." Same in-
structions as for most pesky and viperous things in this
world, and they'd proved accurate enough. She sat there
on her barrel by the hour, peering through hooded eyes
they none of them would of cared to look into directly.
If she wanted a drink of water, or something to eat, or a
blanket to wrap round her strong thin shoulders, she got
it without bothering any of them. If there was anything
she wanted that she didn't have—and likely there was,
though it was said she lived a spare and scrimped exist-
ence on her lonely mountaintop—she didn't mention it
And if a line fouled near to her, or a solar collector was
wrong in its tilt, she fixed whatever was awry, without
fuss and without error and with no assistance from the

crew.

38

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

^'Uncanny, she is," muttered Haven McDaniels
Brightwater the 4th, some six hours out to sea. "Just un-
canny!" He cleared his throat and stared up at the gray
flat lid of the sky as if he was indifferent to the whole
thing, just mentioning it in passing. "Can't say as how I
wouldn't rather of had something else along ... say a
serpent, or maybe a Yallerhound."

Gabriel John McDaniels spat over the side to signify
his disgust and demanded to know what Haven McDan-
iels had come along for, if that was the way he felt
about it.

"What'd you expect?" he asked, jamming his hands
into his pockets and setting his feet wide against the roll
of the boat. "You expect a fine lady sitting on a tusset?
With needlework to her hand, maybe, and a kerchief to
her delicate little nose? That is Troublesome of Bright-
water back there, just as agreed upon with the Grannys,
and exactly as advertised."

<<! know it," said Haven McDaniels sullenly. "You
think I don't know it?"

'*Well, then," Gabriel John answered him, "there's
no call to comment on it I strongly misdoubt the
Grannys would of offered each of us the sum they did if
we'd been taking a Yallerhound to Kintucky. We're
being paid for the hazard of the thing . . . and she's
rightly named, is Troublesomel Rightly named, her as
could fry your heart in your chest with no more'n her
two blue eyes, if she'd a mind to."

The captain heard that, and it didn't surprise him.
He'd heard the rest, too, but he'd been ignoring it One

39

And Then There'll Be Fireworh

of the advantages to captaining so small a boat was that
neither crew nor anybody else aboard could keep any-
thing from him. He spoke up sharp and quick.

'That's enough of that, Gabriel John McDanieIs," he
rapped out "Days we've got ahead of us, this trip. Bad
weather and poor food and none of us truly fit... last
thing we need here is superstitious claptrap fouling the
air."

"Now, Captain—"

"I said it was enough. You hear me? I can speak
louder, should there be call for to do so. You look to the
weather, Gabriel John, and to this leaky woodbucket we
travel in so precariously, and leave the tall tales to the
tadlings and the Grannys. I'm purely astonished, hear-
ing such stuff from a full-grown man, and him with four
years' full service now on the water."

Gabriel John McDanieIs was not impressed, and he
was not about to drop his eyes to the captain. He'd not
spent his own childhood roaming the Wilderness Lands
of Marktwain with the man, but his daddy had; and
many a night he'd seen the two of them with more whis-
key in them than had pleased his mother. He held Cap-
tain Adam Sheridan Brightwater the Jyd in HO awe.

"You're obliged to take that stand," he said, speaking
right up. "We know that, all of us. But there on that
nailbarrel sits the Sister and the Mother and the Great-
grandmother of Evil, the Holy One help us all, and we
all of us know that, too! If she so chooses we'll have
storms and leaks; and if she don't so choose we'll have
an easy journey of it That's no tale for tadlings, now—

40

And Then There U Be Fireworks

that's same as saying the sun's more use to solar collec-
tors than snow is."

There were two Michael Callaway Brightwaters
standing near, one of them a ^oth and the other a 37th,
something of a nuisance in such close quarters. They
hadn't much use for one another, or for Gabriel John,
but they shook their heads like one man now and al-
lowed as how he was absolutely right and the captain
could leave off his tales any time.

"We're not fools," said the one they called Black
Michael—not that his hair was any blacker than Mi-
chael Callaway the ^yth's, that was called simply Mi-
chael Callaway in the ordinary fashion, but you
couldn't be having them both speak up every time one
was wanted. And Michael Callaway nodded, saying:

""We came for the money, same as you. Captain. And
what trouble we've got on our plates is trouble we
bought ourselves. Complaining about it, that's not
seemly; I agree to that. Howsomever, Captain, you'll do
us the favor of telling us no lies, thank you very much."

The captain stared at the three of them, considering,
and at the eloquent back of Haven McDanieIs Bright-
water the 4th, pretending to be fooling with a sail—him
that had started all this—and he shrugged his shoulders.

"All right," he conceded. "I'll not dispute youall on
it I don't care for her myself . . . they say she was a
child once, but I'm hard put to it to believe it. But I'll
not listen to prattle over the matter, either, mind you.
As Michael Callaway rightly says, this is our own doing,
of our own free will, and talk'U change nothing. Fur-
41

And Then There'll Be Fire-works

thennore and to go on with, such talk heard at the
wrong end of the boat might well provoke the lady.
You'll do me the favor of not chancing that. That's my
last word!"

Truth was, he thought as he turned away from them
with a set jaw intended to impress them with his
firmness of purpose, the sight of her made his blood run
colder than the seawater. No woman should stand six
feet tall like she did; no woman should fit to a fishing-
boat like she'd been born on one, when she'd spent her
whole life in Castle and in mountain cabin; no woman
should have the dark fierce beauty that somehow flamed
around her, putting him in mind of the black roses that
grew near the edge of Marktwain's desert in deep sum-
mer.

Anybody'd described her to him, and him not know-
ing, he'd of thought she'd stir his loins. Especially out
on this b'damned ocean with no other woman for many
a mile and many a long lonely night. Yet when he
looked at Troublesome of Brightwater, for all the sweet
curve of her breasts and hips and the perfection of her
face, he would of swom he could feel his manhood
shriveling in his trousers. He'd as soon of bedded a tall
stake of Tinaseeh ironwood.

That didn't mean he'd tolerate a dauncy and frac-
tious crew, whatever the feelings she raised in him or in
them. He'd keep the men too busy to have time left over
for mumblings and cany-ons. He wanted to get this fool
trip over with—he needed the money the Grannys had
come up with, and how they'd done it he couldn't imag-
ine, but it was none the less a fool trip for all that—and

42

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

he wanted to find himself back in his own bed, cosy
with his own wife, that was a sort round woman more
his style. With a voice like the call of an Ozark house-
dove just as the sun was coming up, and no more like
that female in the stem than if they'd been different
species altogether.

'"You turn to," he barked over his shoulder at the
men, "and 111 do my share, and we'll get this out of the
way and be home to brag on it before we have time to
think."

Nobody said "if we get home"; they weren't whiners.
They'd been offered a fair sum of money badly needed,
and they'd do the job it was offered for. Still, it was a
sony time of year to take to sea in a boat this size and
age. Troublesome or no Troublesome. Had the boat
been newer, that would of been a help; had it been
larger, they couldn't have handled her with only the five,
and that would not have been a good thing. It would
cause a certain amount of fuss and feathers to drown
five good men, for sure—but if they drowned a daughter
or Castle Brightwater they'd set every Granny on Ozark
whirling like a gig . . . that happen, they'd better hope
they all drowned with her. It'd be more comfortable in
the long run.

Behind the men. Troublesome chuckled under her
breath, and Gabriel John jumped like he'd been
pinched.

"Knows what we're thinking, that one does," he said
flatly.

"And so does the Mule, and that doesn't bother
you."

45

And Then There U Be- Fireworks

"She bothers me," insisted the man doggedly, "con-
sidering what I was thinking just then when she
laughed."

The captain turned back and grabbed Gabriel John's
shoulder in his Est. "That's one word too many," he said
through his teeth. "One word too manyl You guard
your thoughts and keep 'em proper; and you sail this
boat and keep your mind on your business. I don't in-
tend to have to say any of this again."
As they'd said, there were certain stands he was
obliged to take.

It happened that Troublesome did know what they
were thinking. But not because of any telepathic
powers, such as the Mules had, or the Magicians of
Rank. No special powers were required to read those
stiff backs with the muscles knotted round the necks-
whopping headaches they were going to have, later onl
—or the rigid shoulders, or their muttering back of their
hands and out of the comers of their mouths. It amused
her mightily to think that they could believe she had
special skills and still be fretting about their hides; it
showed a lack of common sense. After all, if this boat
went down, she'd go down with it Or perhaps it was
their souls that they were really worried about, and not
their hides; perhaps they thought the wickedness might
blow off of her in the seawind and stick to them forever
and ever more. She chuckled again, and watched the
muscles in their backs twitch to the sound, before she
turned her head to look out over the water.

She wasn't sure,of what she'd seen out there, not yet

44

And Then ThereU. Be Fireworks

Might could be it'd been only a trick of the light slanted
on the water, such as had ages back made men think
dragons swam in the oceans of Old Earth. Might could
be it had been the squint of her eye against that light, or
her irritation of mind. There was not a single reason to
believe that a creature never seen since First Landing-
seen then by a group of exhausted people that might
have been over given to imagining—should choose to
show up a thousand years later and swim alongside her
to Kintucky. It was as unlikely a happenstance as had
come her way within memory, and she wasn't going to
assume it for gospel too quickly.

First, she'd wait for another sight of that great tail
split three ways. And then probably she'd wait for the
loyal purple of the thing's flesh to show up clear in the
gray of the sea. And when both had happened, assum-
ing they did happen, she'd think it over—and might
could be she'd go below and swallow a dose to cure her
of her mindfollies.

The Teaching Story had not one word extra to spare
on the subject of the creature she half thought she'd
seen. The fuel on The Ship had gone bad. Every last
thing had been going from bad to worse. The time had
come when it was land or die; and then just as they
made a desperate plunge toward the planet below them
the engines gave up completely and The Ship fell into
the Outward Deeps. At which point, as the Grannys
taught ib
Even as the water closed over the dying ship and
First Granny told the children to stop their cater-
wauling and prepare to meet their Maker with their

45

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

mouths shut and their eyes open, a wonderful thing
happened. Just a wonderful thing!
Forty of them there were, shaped like the great
whales of Earth, but that their tails split three ways
instead of two. And their color was the royal pur-
ple, the purple of majestic sovereignty.
They met The Ship as it fell, rising up in a circle as
it sank toward the bottom. And they bore it up on
their backs as easy as a man packs a baby, and laid
it out in the shallows, where the Captain and the
crew could get The Ship's door open, and every-
body could wade right out of there to safety.
They were the Wise Ones, so named by First
Granny; and it may be that they live there still in
the Outward Deeps. . . .

And it may be that they don't. A thousand years ago,
that was, that First Granny had looked into the huge
eye of one of them and seen there something she
claimed at once for wisdom, and no least sign of them
since in all this long time. They could certainly all have
died—long, long ago. If ever they were real, that is, and
not an illusion born of desperation and nourished on
Grannytalk.

No other Teaching Story made mention of them, and
no song; not even a scrap of a saying referred to them. It
made them most unlikely traveling companions! Why,
even the creatures of Old Earth, those left-behind ones
that nobody'd seen since before the Ozarkers left their
home planet, came up now and again in sayings. Take
the groundhog; what a groundhog might be, Trouble-
46

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

some couldn't have said. There was nothing whatsoever
in die computer databanks about them, nor anywhere
else. But she knew easy enough from the roles ground-
hogs took in daily converse that they couldn't of been
any kind of hog- "Quick as a groundhog down a hole!"
the Grannys would say. "No bigger'n the ear on a
groundhog!" "Saw its shadow and popped under like a
groundhog!" Had to of been little, and quick, and some-
how significant; you could figure that out from the
scraps. But the creatures of the Outward Deeps? They
were mentioned nowhere at all, and what mysterious
purpose might bring one to be her escort now . . . She
sighed. It wasn't reasonable; but then her ignorance was
great

Troublesome turned her head to the wind and took a
deep breath of the salt air to drown out some of the fish
stink, and gathered her shawls closer round her, wrin-
kling her nose as the blown spray spattered her face. It
would come up a rain shortly, she was sure, and the men
would be blaming her for it Law, what wouldn't she
give to have had the weather skills they were willing to
lay to her account! Now that would of been of some
use. Dry fields she could of watered, and high winds tak-
ing off the good topsoil she could of tempered, and
where the rivers were bringing sullen rot to the roots of
growing things she could of driven back the clouds and
let the sun see to drying them out There'd of been a
good deal less hunger on Ozark if she'd been able to
turn her hand to such work as that.

Instead of which, she thought, reality falling back
over her with a thump, she was off on the wildest of

47

And Then There II Be Fireworks

goose chases, set her by seven dithering Grannys. Off to
see the Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd-

No special wonder her sister had lusted after the man
and taken him so willingly to her bed. There was no
prettiness to him, no softness anywhere, but he was a
man to feast the hungry eyes on, not to mention a few
other senses- He gave off a kind of drawing warmth that
naturally made you want to shelter in it, male or female
—as she herself gave off a cold wind that said, Stand
Back! If lust had been one of the emotions known to
her she might very well have fancied him her own self;

in a kind of abstract fashion, she could see that. But
handy though he might be in a bed, the idea that some
act of his lay behind Responsible's sorry condition, or
that he could do anything to improve it ... ah, that
was only foolishness. Troublesome had no hope for the
journey's end; she traveled to Kintucky for the excellent
reason that she'd never been there and might never have
a second chance, and because curiosity was one of the
emotions she was familiar with.

There were times, in point of fact, when she found
herself so curious about the workings of this world that
the lack of any source to ask questions of was almost a
physical pain. At such times, there being no purpose to
such a feeling, she was grateful for the mountain to take
out her energies on, and she welcomed the work given
her to do though she understood it scarcely at all. She
would go at her loom then with a vengeance, making
the shuttle fly, singing ballads so old she didn't know
what half the words meant. Unlike her sister, she could
sing to pleasure even the demanding ear, and when her

48

And Then There'll Be Fireworks
audience was only birds and small creatures she didn't
mind doing it. There was nobody on the mountain to
wonder at a female singing out "I go to Troublesome to
mourn and weep" when the word was her very name,
nor to pity her for the next line all about sleeping un-
satisfied, nor to wonder as she changed tunes where
Waltzing Hayme might be. She loved the queer ancient
songs and valued them far above such frippery as was
sung these modem days.

Thinking of it, she very nearly began to sing, and
then remembered the five men—it would not do to have
them hear her singing and carry the tale of it back to
Brightwater. She closed her lips firmly on the riddling
song she'd almost let escape, and resolved to close her
mind just as tight to the questions running round there.
She'd get no answers to them in her lifetime, and might
could be it wasn't meant that humans should have those
answers. Might could be, for instance, that they were
the proper knowledge of the Wise Ones, kept in trust
against a time when they might be needed, . . .

Granny Hazelbide, commenting to the little girls on
Ae Teaching Story about the saving of the Ozarkers at
First Landing, always said the same thing: "First
Granny looked right into the eyes of one of them, just
right into its eyes! And she said then and there, no hesi-
tating and no pondering on it, 'They are the Wise
Ones,' and no doubt that is so."

Perhaps, thought Troublesome. Perhaps. She'd seen
eyes to creatures that looked to contain all the secrets of
the universe. The feydeer, for example, along the ridges
above timberline. They had eyes you could gaze into

49

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

forever, and they had minds as empty as a shell left
behind by its tenant and scoured out by a determined
housewife. Rain gave them a fever that became a pneu-
monia and kept them few in number, but they hadn't
sense enough to go down a few feet on the mountain
where they could have stood beneath a tree or under a
ledge out of the weather. They just waited, shaking and
bedraggled, for the rain to kill them off. It gave the lie
to those eyes, for all they looked so knowing.

She had a firm intention, if there was indeed a Wise
One keeping this dilapidation of a boat company for
some purpose of its own; and it was that intention that
kept her here with her eyes fixed to the water, hour after
hour. She wanted to look, her own self, "right into" the
eye of the sea creature. It would be an eye to remember,
if it were no more a gate to wisdom than the feydeer'sl
Judging by the tail she thought she'd caught a glimpse
of, be the animal truly wise or truly foolish it was as big
as this boat The eyes would be ... how big? The size
of her head, with a pupil to match? Might could be.
Law, to see that, to give it a look as it rose to dive, and
to get a look back! That would be a thing to remember
all her days and all her nights, and she had no intention
of missing it if it came her way. She had no other
chores; she would sit here and watch over the water for
that exchange of glances, all the way to Kintucky and all
the way back if need be.

The men turned surly eventually, as was to be ex-
pected. And after they'd seen Troublesome well onto

50

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

the land the captain thought it prudent to let them talk
it out of their systems while the boat rode at anchor.

They went on awhile about their various disgruntle-
ments, allowing as how they were sony they ever let the
Grannys tempt them to this forsaken place. Allowing as
how they'd never before seen a Mule swim the sea with
a woman on its back and they called that witchery and
they'd like to hear the captain deny them that. And they
did a ditty on the short rations—as if they were any
shorter than they'd been ashore—and another on the
constant drizzling rain that had pursued them all the
way and looked likely to pursue them all the way back,
and they'd like to hear the captain deny them that!

Adam Sheridan Brightwater was wise in the ways of
surly men; he denied nothing, made uninterpretable
noises when they drew breath and seemed to expect a re-
sponse, and let them wear themselves out. Only when
they were reduced to muttering that if she hadn't been a
woman, by the Holy One, they'd of gone off and left her
and her bedamned Mule to tend for themselves did he
add anything to the conversation. Seeing as there was no
knowing how long they'd be there waiting for her, he
thought it might be better to turn their minds from the
idea of abandoning her in the Kintucky forests and
heading for home.

^'What do you suppose she was looking at back there
all that time?" he threw out, rubbing at his beard.
"That has got to be the lookingest woman ever I did see
. . . and nothing to look at but water, water, and still
more water. Thought her eyes would drop right out of
her head."

51

And Then There'U Be Firework

"I don*t know what it was she was staring after/'
Gabriel John answered him prompdy, "but I know one
thing—it never turned up, and she's given up on it"

"How do you know that?
"Heard her. This is a mighty smafl boat, if you hadn't
noticed that already, for keeping secrets on."

"What'd she say?" demanded Black Michael, and
when Gabriel John told them they whistled long and
low.

"No woman says that," declared Haven McDaniels
Brightwater.

"She did." Gabriel John was staunch as staunch.
"Right in a string, she said it, three broad words such as
I never heard before at one time in the mouth of a man.
And I saw her give the gunwales a kick that I doubt did
her foot much good. In a right smart temper, she was!"

"We could ask her," Michael Callaway proposed.

"Ask her? You enjoy being dogbit, Michael Calla-
way?"

"There's no dogs on this boat, you damned fool!
Mules, but no dogs. Talk sense, why don't you!"

Black Michael gave him an equally black look and
smacked his thigh with the flat of his hand and called
him a damned fool.

"You ask her a question," he said, "shell take your
head right off at the armpits! Dogbit's not a patch on it,
I can tell you. Why, I had the uppity gall to ask her
highandmightyness could I help her with a jammed
hatch, Michael Callaway, and I near lost part of my
most valuable anatomy when she flung it back at me
. . . you'd of thought I'd offered to toss her skirts up

52

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

and tumble her, tall scrawny gawk that she is, and I
meant her only a kindness! Huh! I say leave her alone,
as Ae Grannys directed, and be grateful if she follows
suit Womanbit, that's what you'll be otherwise ... or
womankicked, or womanstung, or worse!"

Captain Brightwater nodded his agreement with that
as a general policy, it being somewhat more than obvi-
ous, and the nods went slowly all round.

"Maybe she'll sight whatever it was on the way back
after all," he said easily. "And maybe that'll make her
pleasanter to be around. We can hope."

Troublesome, doing her best to keep the branches
rrom whipping Dross into a refusal to go on through the
Kintucky Wilderness, was not expecting any such thing.
The tail she'd seen again, a time or two, and a flash of
purple. Sufficient to prove that the animal was there and
as real as she was. But had it meant her to see anything
more, had it intended a shared glance, it would have
happened by now, and she'd resigned herself to that
She'd not be staring over the water on the trip back,
yearning after what she was not to have.

She only hoped they'd make it back to Marktwain,
Glad as she was that they hadn't seen their huge com-
panion, those stalwart sailing men, and determined as
she was to let slip no careless word now or later, she was
astonished. It seemed to her that they might well have
trouble even finding Marktwain again, it being no
bigger than a continent- What kind of sailors were they,
that an animal the size of their boat could swim along-
side them from one side of the ocean to the other, and

55

And Then There U Be Fireworks

them never even notice it? Come time to land again, she
might have to point them out the coast or they'd sail
right on past

"Disgusting," she said to Dross, who said nothing
back, but whuffled at her in a way Troublesome was
willing to take for confirmation. "Plain disgusting!"

54

CHAPTER 4

"I say we should use the lasers, and the devil take the
treaties." The King of Parson Kingdom took a look at
their faces and shivered in the cold, and he said it over
again, louder and clearer, to be sure they'd heard him.

There'd been a day when a statement like that, aD
naked and unadorned and enough to shock the whiskers
off a grown man's face, would have been cushioned
somewhat by the rugs and draperies and furnishings of
Castle Parson. No longer. The Castle had been stripped
of everything that had any value, and it was nothing
now but a great hulk of stone in which every word
echoed and bounced from wall to wall and down the
bare corridors. Any citizen choosing to look in the win-
dows at the royal Family might do so; no curtains hung
Acre. And the chair where Granny Dover sat pursing
her lips at the King's scandalous talk was the only chair
they had left; a rocker for the Granny in residence, and
a courtesy to her old bones. As for the rest of them, they
sat on the Boor and leaned against the wall, or dragged
up the rough workbenches that had once been out in
the stables and now served for eating meals. When
there were meals, which was far from always.

"Jordan Sanderleigh Parson the 2^rd/* said the
Granny grimly—she'd never said "Your Majesty" to

55
And Then There U Be Fireworks

him nor ever would—"you've been hinting at that, and
tippytoeing around that, these last three days now . . .
but I never thought I'd live to hear you come right out
and say it in so many words."

"And only blind luck that you have lived that long,"
the man retorted-

"No," said the old lady. "Many a thing as has
changed in these terrible times, many a thing. Kings at
Farson and Guthrie, 'stead of Masters of the Castle, as
has been since First Landing and is decent and respect-
able! Three old fools at Castle Purdy calling themselves
Senators, if you please, and splitting the Kingdom's
governance three ways, when they never could run it
even when it wasn't split and they had tradition to give
'em a due what to do every now and again!"

"Granny, don't start," begged the King, but she paid
him no mind whatsoever.

"But the day's not come yet," she went on. "when an
Ozarker—always excepting the filthy Magicians of
Rank, that, praise be, have had their teeth pulled any-
way—when an Ozarker would raise a hand to harm a
Granny. I'll be here a while yet, if we do live on weeds
and bad fish. I'll be here a while."

Marycharlotte of Wommack, huddled against the
draft in a comer more or less sheltered from the wind,
challenged her husband and drew her shawl tighter
round her shoulders.

"We gave our word," she flung at him, "as did Cas-
tles Guthrie and Purdy! We aren't degraded enough,
living worse than animals in a cave—at least they have

56

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

fur enough to keep them warm, or sense enough to
sleep the winter out—we aren't degraded enough? Eat-
ing thin soup three times a day, made like the Granny
says out of weeds and roots and one bad fish to a
kettleful, and the Twelve Gates only knows what peo-
ple not at the Castle must be living on! That's not
enough for you yet? All the animals slaughtered, all the
children and the old people sick, and the young ones
fast joining them, that won't satisfy you men? Must we
be liars and traitors as well, before you've hod enough?"

Jordan Sanderleigh Farson turned his back on his
Queen and spoke to the wall before him, down which a
skinny trickle of water ran day and night from the damp
and the fog.
"We cannot go on like this," he said dully.

"There's a choice?"

**We cannot go on fighting a war," answered the
King, "grown men from a time when ships can travel
from star to star and computers can send messages over
countless thousands of miles . . . fighting a war with
sticks, and boulders, and knives, and a handful of rifles
meant for hunting or taken out of display cases at the
museums. You should see it out there, you two . . .
you're so smug, you should go take a long look. It's a
giant foolery, entirely suitable for the comedy at a low-
quality fair in a Purdy back county. Except that people
arc not laughing, you know. People are dying."

**I thought that's what you wanted," said Marychar-
lotte. "People dying."
"You made it right plain that was what you wanted,

57

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

all you men," Granny Dover backed her up. "No ques-
tion."

The man leaned against the wall, whether it was de-
spair or exhaustion or both they did not know, and
shouted at the two of them.

"We never had any intention that it was to drag on
and on and on like this!" he roared. "A week or two, we
thought, maybe a month or two at worst and a few hun-
dred dead, and then it would be overi This isn't what we
meant to have happen ... oh, the Holy One help me
in a bitter hour, it was never what was intended, never!"

The two women, the one near a hundred years oH
and the other in the full bloom of her years, but both lit-
tle more than bones wrapped in frayed rags, they kept
their silence. He looked to them for the smooth moves
to comfort that he expected, the reassurance that of
course it wasn't his fault and he had done all he could
and more than most would of been able to; and none of
that was forthcoming. They didn't say to stop his whin-
ing ... but he heard it nonetheless. Jordan San-
derleigh, raised on the constant soothing words and
hands of Ozark women, felt utterly abandoned. This
was indeed a new day, and a new time altogether, when
the women of his own household looked at him like
they would a benastied three-year-old.

"Jordan Sanderleigh," said the Granny, and she meas-
ured her words out one by one and hammered them in
with the tip of her cane, "when this war began, a Sol-
emn Council was held- All the Families of Arkansaw,
(here assembled. And it was agreed that we were

58
And Then There'll Be Fireworks

Ozarkers, not barbarians such as we left on Old Earth
because we despised them worse than vennin! And it
was agreed that in the name of decency, to which we
still lay claim, I hope, no Arkansawyer would use a laser
against another or against another's holdings. Signed it
was, and sealed. And we'll not be the ones as goes back
on it"

The man flung himself down on the nearest window
ledge and closed his eyes. He remembered the occasion
well. Himself, King of Farson; James John the i7th,
King of Guthrie; the three Purdy Senators ... the
Granny was right that they were fools, all they could do
was squabble among themselves, but they'd had dignity
that day, the Purdy crest on their shoulders and their
staffs or office in their hands. And the women, all absent
to show their disapproval, but willing when it was over
to admit that if there had to be a war it was a consid-
erable improvement over the ancient kind for them to
meet before it and set up its conditions. He had not
been ashamed that day, and he had not been poor; he
had been eager to get at the war, to settle once and for
all the question of who should be first on Arkansaw, to
be done with it and take up their lives once again. And
he had been more than willing to sign that treaty ban-
ning the lasers... it was civilized.

"We all die, then/' he said aloud. "Slowly. Like fools
and lunatics."

The Granny hesitated not one second.
„ "So be it," she said.

"Ah, you women are hard," mourned the man.

59

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"Ah, you men are fools. And lunatics." Marychar-
lotte of Wommack mocked him, matching her tones ex-
actly to his. And he said nothing more.

Out in the ravaged Wilderness Lands of Arkansaw
the struggle went on, as it had for near twelve months
now. First there had been the preliminary squabbling, as
each of the Castles moved to lay out that it should rule
over all on Arkansaw henceforth, and be first among the
three Kingdoms, and had thought to do that with words
and threats and strutting about. There'd been no idiot
behavior such as had disgraced Castle Smith, no purple
velvet and ermine and jeweled scepters and Dukes and
Duchesses—a King and a Queen, dressed as they'd al-
ways dressed, that had sufficed. But it had never occurred
to either Farson or Guthrie that the two other Casdes
would argue about their obvious and predestined su-
premacy on the continent
And then when it became obvious to everybody that
neither Farson nor Guthrie would ever accept the other,
and that Castle Purdy would never do more than wait to
see which was the winner so that it could join that side,
there had been the period of drawing back to the Cas-
tles to decide what was to be done. There had been the
shameful ravaging of the tiny continent of Mizzurah off
Arkansaw's western coast, both the Kingdoms of Lewis
and of Motley, so that that land which had been the
greenest and fairest of all Ozark now looked like the af-
tertime of a series of plagues and visitations of the wrath
of some demented god. Not that Mizzurah had wanted
any part in the feuds of Arkansaw, but that Arkansaw

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had been desperate for even Mizzurah's pitiful re-
sources.

And then the war had broken out—with the dignified
meeting first, of course, to lay down the rules—and it
dragged on still. Civil war.

When the citizens of Mizzurah had been ordered to
join in the fighting on Arkansaw, they had made it more
than clear that no amount of harassment would bring
them to any such pass, so that it had been necessary for
the Arkansawyers to take the Masters of Castles Motley
and Lewis and hold them hostage at Castle Guthrie as
surety against their people's obedience.

And now the men of Mizzurah fought alongside the
men of Arkansaw, divided up three ways among the
three Castles as was fair and proper, since it was that or
see the hostages hung, or worse; but they spoke not one
word, and they never would- In silence, they drew their
knives, that had been intended for the merciful killing
of herdbeasts, and used them on other Ozarkers as they
were commanded, excepting always the delicate care
they used to be sure they raised no hand against another
Mizzuran. In the same silence they dropped great boul-
ders from Arkansaw's cliffs down on columns of climb-
ing men, and threw staffs of Tinaseeh ironwood to pin
men against those cliffs for a death not one of them
would have inHicted on any animal. The officers had the
few rifles, and no Mizzuran was an officer, which meant
they had no shooting to do, and that was probably just
as well. The Lewises were without question the best
shots on Ozark, having always fancied the sport of
shooting at targets, and keeping it up over the centuries

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when most of the Families had let the skill fall away
into disuse.
The Mizzurah women fought beside their men, those
not required back at home to care for tadlings and
babes. "If the men must go, we go also/' they'd said,
and the women of Arkansaw, that would have nothing
to do with the civil war among their men themselves,
had nodded their heads in approval. It was fitting, and
they would have done the same, had the situations been
the same. They had been much embarrassed when a
Purdy female, a tad confused about what was after aU a
complicated ethical question, took up an ironwood staff
and marched off to join her older brother in the Battle
of Saints Beard Creek; and it was the women of Castle
Parson, happening to be closest, that had gone out and
got the tool creature and brought her back to a willow
switch across her bare buttocks, for all she was sixteen
years of age. If that was what it took to make things
clear at Castle Purdy, that was what it took, and they
had not scrupled to do it

Thirty men, two of them Mizzurans, were dug in at a
mine entrance near the border of Farson Kingdom
under the command of Nicholas Andrew Guthrie the
41 st, on this day. Three days they'd been there now, and
though water was plentiful it was fouled—that'd be the
work of the Purdys, upstream—and the food was gone

since the night before.

Their leader stared sullenly into the drizzle, and sat in
the slimy packed layers of wet leaves at the mine-mouth,

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aad would not be persuaded to go inside where it was at
kastdry.

"The sentries have to stay out here/' he pointed out

"You're not a sentry."

"AU the same."

"Ifs foolishness," objected another Guthrie, close kin
enough to offer open criticism regardless of rank.
"Whatll you gain that way, except pneumonia?"

"Pneumonia," said Nicholas Andrew Guthrie. "And
m welcome it. Rather die that way than most of the
other possibilities... at least it's an honorable death."

"Not if you leave your men without a leader by
catching it, you blamed pigheaded fool!"

Nicholas Andrew Guthrie didn't even turn his head.

"What you talk there is the talk of a war that's real,"
he said, and spat to show his disgust. "This is no real
war, and I'm no real leader, and youall're no real sol-
diers. And you'd be no more leaderless without me than
you are while I sit here and court the passing germs, so
Aut your mouth."

<'That's inspiring talk," said his cousin. "Really makes
us all feel like throwing ourselves into the heat of battle,
let me tell you."

**You want inspiration," said Nicholas Andrew, "you
go home and get some. You'll get none out here. Here,
you've got nothing whatsoever to do but wait for a Far"
son, or might could be some pitiful Purdy, lost as usual,
to show up, so you can stick him through the gut with
whatever's handy, or him you. Might could be you'd
even have the privilege of doing your gutsticking on a

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And Then There U Be Fireworks

Mizzurah woman, just for the variety of the thing. And
everybody can cut one more notch on the timber nearest
them to signify the occasion. That inspire you? It
doesn't inspire me, not the least bit."

There was a long silence, broken only by the constant
nameless noise the drizzle made. And then a man spoke
from behind them- "How many do you reckon there are
left of us?" He had a festering sore on his leg, that
would get no better in this damp, and a bandage to his
shoulder, and he leaned against the mine wall to keep
from falling. "How many, sir?"

My brave and stalwart company, thought Nicholas
Andrew wryly. My company of walking dead. Flourish
of trumpets, roU of drums, off left. Aloud, he said he
didn't know.

"What with the bad food, and the sickness there's
neither magic nor medicine to treat, and what with the
cold, and this bleeding twelvesquare excuse for a war
. . . there might could be two thousand of us, all told."

"Two thousand, Nicholas Andrew Guthrie!" The
man staggered and clutched at nothing, and somebody
moved quickly to grab the shoulder that wasn't hurt.

"Come on, now," said the kinsman hastily, "you

don't mean that, and it's a downright cruel thing to

»
say.

"Well, I stand by it," snapped Nicholas Andrew.
"And if only a Purdy or a Farson'd come by this place,
might could be we'd be able to make that one thousand
nine hundred and ninety-nine."
There was silence behind him again, and he hoped it
would last this time; he had no heart for talking to

64

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iI

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

them. The figure he'd named was a blind guess, but it
could not be much more than that Taking it in round
numbers, there'd been ninety thousand of them when
this began; fifty thousand Guthries, twenty thousand
Farsons, and twenty thousand Purdys. At least sixteen
thousand Lewises and Motleys combined, he'd hazard.
And what was left would hardly make one good-sized
village . . . and nothing gained for it, nor nothing ever
to be gained. Over those centuries when violence was
just something in stories and songs around the fire, and
an evil something at that, the Ozarkeis had forgotten
what their native stubbornness would mean if it were
put to violent purposes.

It meant nobody would ever yield. It meant nobody
would ever give up, ever say, "All right, let's stop before
every last one of us is dead in this mess. All right—you
can be the winner, if that's what it takes to stop this!"

It would never happen. When only two Arkansawyers
of different Kingdoms still remained alive on this land,
they would be fighting hand to hand—with two rocks, if
that was all they had left to fight with, as seemed likely.
And it would be a fight to die death. It seemed some-
times that somebody ought to of remembered, when it
started, what a war would be like when there could be
no giving up ever. . .but nobody had.

The Gentles had no doubt gone deep into the bowels
of the earth; not one had been seen since since the first
day of the fighting. And if they simply waited there long
enough, they would have Arkansaw back for their own
again, what was left of it, without a single Ozarker to
trouble them.

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And Then There'U Be Firewwiss

"I think I hear something," whispered a boy at his
side, crawling up close to whisper it in his ear. "Want I
should go take a look?"

"You step outside this mine-mouth/' said Nicholas
Andrew flatly, and right out loud, "and provided you
did indeed liear something* youll be picked off before
your beautiful blue eyes can blink twice."

"Oh ... I thought I could get out there, quick-like,
and scout around."
Nicholas Andrew was so weary of explaining what
two and two added up to, and explaining it to babes
barely out of their diapers... He drew a long breath,
and tried to sound patient.

"Supposing you did hear something, son," he said,
"and supposing it was a human being and one fighting
against us. Either hell stay where he is, which'll do us
no harm, or he'll come out into the open where we can
pick him off from here—which'll do us no harm. If he
made a noise, you can be sure the idea was to get one of
us to come out and be picked off. Otherwise, he'd of
kept quiet. You follow all that?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy. "Yes, sir, I do. I expect I'm
mighty ignorant"

"I expect you're mighty young," said Nicholas An-
drew. "Now get back inside where it's safer."

Ignorance. He thought about ignorance. His own mil-
itary training had been composed of a speech made to a
couple dozen like him. TTieyM all been told that war
wasn't much different from hunting, always excepting
what the quarry was, and that they'd been picked for
their natural qualities of leadership and their good

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

health, and that they were expected to vse their com-
mon sense. That had been the sum total of it.

At Castle Guthrie the state of despair was not quite
so complete as it was out in the Wilderness Lands or at
the other two Castles. Castle Guthrie had been richest
to begin with; it was richest still, though its poverty was
astonishing. And it had the two hostages, two living
symbols that some real action had once been taken—
Salem Sheridan Lewis the 43"3, and Halbreth Nicholas
Smith the i2th, him as was husband to Diamond of
Motley and Master of Motley Castle. Whether he
would have stayed on as Master there after the Confed-
eration of Continents was dissolved, or gone back to
Smith Kingdom to |oin his kin, there'd not been time
for anybody to find out. Before the issue could be re-
solved, he'd found himself hostage here; and might
could be there were times when he was thankful for the
curious chance of it It would not of been easy for him
to choose between his own household—his wife and his
children—and his kin. Especially when his kin were
known to out-Purdy the Purdys for stupidity.

Around the one fire they had burning in the Castle,
the Guthries sat in Council. James John Guthrie the
17th, another threadbare King; Myrrh of Guthrie, his
sixth cousin and his queen as well; Michael Stepforth
Guthrie the nth. Magician of Rank (for all that
signified these days); three older sons and an odd cousin
or two.

They were not discussing the possibility of bringing
into this war the cruel and efficient lasers, of which every

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Arkansaw Family had a plentiful supply, used to shape
Tinaseeh ironwood and work AAansaw mines and quite
capable of cutting a man into strips no thicker than a
sheet of pliofilm. They were not yet reduced to consider-
ing such measures, unlike the Parsons, for they had one
hole card left to them still. They were discussing the
question of whether a Guthrie ship might be put to use.

"We only have men enough left to send one medium-
sized ship, maybe a Class C freighter," Michael Step-
forth was saying, "but one is all we ought to need, and a
Class C quite big enough. We send it in to Brightwater
Landing, we take the Castle, we get ourselves a com-
puter and a comset transmitter and three or four techni-
cians that know how to assemble and run those, grab
whatever they tell us we have to have in the way of
equipment—and back we come. Why not?"

"You think Brightwater'd let us get away with that?"
demanded Myrrh of Guthrie. "It's a far sight from
being what I'd call a secret operation."

"We don't have any reason to believe Brightwater
even knows there is war on Arkansaw," said her hus-
band. He gave the high stone hearth an irritated kick
with the toe of his boot, and then did it again for good
measure. "For all they know, we're fat and prosperous
over here, living peacefully and respectably, sitting
round the tables tossing off strawberry wine and rem-
iniscing about the olden days."

"Goatflop," pronounced Granny Stillmeadow. Ele-
gance had never been her strong suit "I suppose they
think snow doesn't fall here, nor diphtheria touch the

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babies, nor rivers ever go to flood, nor any other such or-
dinary human catastrophes. I suppose they think we
Arkansawyers are immune to all such truck. Goatflop!"

"All right," said the King, "I'll grant you that's not
reasonable. I'll grant you that wasn't the brightest
speech I ever made."

"That's mighty becoming of you," snorted the
Granny. "Seeing as how it was beyond question the
stupidest speech you ever made, and not for lack of
other examples to choose from."

"Granny Stillmeadow," said the man, "you can
granny at me all you like, and no doubt I deserve it. But
it still holds that they have no reason, none whatsoever,
to be suspicious of one of our ships at their Landing. If
they think we're starving over here, they'll be just that
more likely to think we've come to beg for food, and I
say let them—just so as we get inside the Castle."

They thought about that a while. It was true, there'd
been no communication between the other continents
and Arkansaw—it was barely possible that, with the
comsets out and the Mules not flying, the war on Arkan-
saw was as much a secret to the Brightwaters as condi-
tions on Kintucky were to the Families of Arkansaw. It
was not something you could test, one way or the other.
The war took up so much of their minds that there was
a sneaking tendency to consider it the major preoccu-
pation of everyone else on Ozark as well . . . but that
was clearly foolish. Childish. Might could be everybody
knew, and what they thought of it would not be any-
thing to pleasure the ear. And might could be nobody

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

knew except the sony citizens of Mizzurah, that had
suffered its effects directly. There was no way of know-
ing.

And it was true that nobody but Brightwater and
Guthrie had had ships of a size adequate for ocean
transport, and Guthrie still had its ships; putting one of
them to use was something open to them, however
much it might strain the last fragments of their supplies
and energies.

"Think, Granny Stillmeadow," said Michael Step-
forth Guthrie. "Think what it would mean, if it
worked."

"With computers, and computer technicians to run
them, we'd have just enough of an edge," put in one of
the sons. "Just enough to turn things around. Granny."

Yes. They would be able to offer the remnants of the
population of Arkansaw quite a few things, if they had
the computers. And do to them quite a few things, if
they seemed reluctant to accept the benefits offered.

"It's everything wagered on one throw," said Granny
Stillmeadow, "I remind you of that. We might send a
ship once; we might get into the Castle once . . . but
there's only the once. And I remind you that even that
piddling chance is a matter of pure ignorant luck, no
more! We've not so much as a Housekeeping Spell
to set behind it as a prop-up, don't you forget that!"
"So? Our luck is not as good as anybody else's?"

The Granny made a noise like a Mule whuffling, and
brought her knitting needles to a full stop, and stared at
him in a mixture of contempt and disbelief that had an
eloquence words would be hard put to it to match.

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

"Coming from you, Michael Stepforth," put in
Myrrh of Guthrie, "that does sound half-witted. I'll
back the Granny on that We may all have started even,
so far as luck was concerned, when we began this—
everything fair and square. But when we brought the
Masters of Lewis and Motley into this Castle and put
them under guard, them as had no quarrel with us nor
ever wanted any, nor ever raised a hand against any
Arkansawyer . . . then we changed that luck consid-
erably."

"Purdy and Farson were in on that, too!"

"Purdy and Farson don't have the hostages—Castle
Guthrie has them," said the Granny grimly. "A Guthrie
stands guard by their doors. A Guthrie takes them their
rations, and checks to be sure their bonds are adequate.
Not a Purdy, my friends, not a Farson—that is our per-
sonal contribution, done on our own resolve, and volun-
teered for, as I recollect Nobody forced it on us. And
for that, you mark my words, we will pay."

"We have paid!" James John Guthrie looked more a
madman than a monarch, roaring at the Granny and
shaking his fists. But she was not impressed one whit.

"And we will pay more," she told him. "I wouldn't
send a rowboat across a rain puddle myself, the way the
Universe is stacked against this Family at this particular
point in time. As for taking all the men we have left as
are strong enough to fight, and all the supplies called for
to last them to Brightwater, and sending them off in a
ship across the Ocean of Remembrances? Pheeyeew!
Why not go dig up a Gentle and shoot it. James John
Guthrie? Why not jump off the Castle roof, for that

71

And Then There U Be Fireworks

matter, and be done with it? It'd be quicker and
cleaner."

The Granny shoved her rocker back and stood up,
very slowly and carefully. Her arthritis was tormenting
her, and she had a crick in her neck that was about to
drive her wild, from staring up at the Guthrie men while
she tongue-lashed them.
"You think it over good and long before you decide,"
she said, trying not to let the pain overrule the contempt
in her voice as she struggled to straighten her spine.
'*You think it over good and long and thorough. Might
could be you ought to pray over it, too—I know I
would. Take yourselves down to where Salem Sheridan
Lewis the 43rd, that good man, that honorable man, sits
a prisoner in your Castle, and ask him to pray with
you. ... I reckon you've forgotten how, these many
days past. And when your minds are made up, do me a
favor—keep it to your own selves. If you decide on any
such folly as that expedition off to Never-never Land,
don't you tell me about it; I don't care to know."

"Granny Stillmeadow," sighed the King of Guthrie,
"you're no help at all, you know that?"

"I should hope I am not any help to you, I never in-
tended to be for one instant! Myrrh of Guthrie, you
plan to sit there and listen to these idiot males go on
with their claptrap, or you want to come with me and
see if there's maybe some small thing we can do upstairs
for that tadling down with the fever?"

Myrrh of Guthrie looked around her once, and then
she didn't hesitate.

"I'll be right with you. Granny," she said.

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"I'll go on ahead," said Cranny Stillmeadow. "The
air's cleaner outside this room."

And with that she turned around and stalked out,
leaning on her cane and striking the floor with it every
step like a stick coming down hard on a drumhead.
There was no possibility of mistaking the Granny's
opinion of them. Even with nothing fo go on but the
sight of her aching back.

CHAPTER 5

Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd was feeling reasona-
bly content with his lot. He would have gone to some
pains not to admit it, since the rest of the population
was of a much different mind, but he found the current
Spartan regime exactly to his taste. The rooms of Castle
Wommack—all four hundred of them—had always
given him a vague feeling of claustrophobia; he knew
why now. It had been all that furniture. The massive
benches lining every hall, and the huge tapestries behind
them. The draperies that you could have easily made a
tent for five or six people out of, with the green velvet
with twelve inches of gold fringe . . . and the occa-
sional variety of gold velvet, with twelve inches of green
fringe. The vases of flowers and the paintings in their
heavy frames, and the thick carpets, all four hundred of
them ... no, he took that back. There had never been
carpets in the kitchens. Make it three hundred and
ninety-seven carpets. He had been smothered by all that,
but he hadn't realized it; after all, in rooms thirty feet
square, with fourteen-foot ceilings, the furnishings had
been scattered around in a lot of empty space—as he
recalled, there'd been a deliberate effort expressed by his
cousin Gilead to keep the Castle's decoration "spare."

75

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

That had been her word, and he'd assumed it had some
congruence with reality.

But now that it was all gone he realized that he could
at last breathe freely. He liked the feel of the bare stone
floors under his feet, and the look of the arched high
windows open to the air and sky. He no longer felt that
he had to go out and pace the balconies in the middle of
the night, he was contented to pace his own almost
empty room instead.

As for his once elegant wardrobe, now only a mem-
ory, and the diet of grains and root vegetables and in-
geniously concocted soups that had replaced the roasts
and stuffings and steaks and lavish desserts ... he had
never cared about such things anyway.

And at the moment he had several specific things to
be happy about. There was, for instance, the blissful
ease of his mind- At first he had been like the man with
a toothache that comes and goes, always braced for the
next twinge out of nowhere. Now, enough time had
gone by since the last intrusion from Responsible of
Brightwater that he felt secure in his privacy. She had
been a parasite coiled in his head, never mind how many
hundreds of miles of physical space separated them, and
he had lived in constant dread of the stirring of that
. . . thing . . . within him; it was gone, praise the
Twelve Gates and the Twelve Comers, forever.

And there was the fact that Thomas Lincoln Wom-
mack the 9th was now Master of this Castle, and had
lifted from Lewis Motley's unwilling neck the burden of
Guardianship that had chafed it so mightily since the
death of Thomas Lincoln's father. He had detested

76

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being Guardian, and everything that went with it—all
that constant fiddling detail—and he was firmly deter-
mined that never again would he have to administer so
much as a dollhouse, or be responsible for anything
more than his own person- His sister Jewel had the
Teaching Order that had replaced the old comset educa-
tional system well in hand, and showed a .natural talent
for administration that he recognized as invaluable. He
didn't even have to worry about that.

Bliss, basically. Impoverished bliss, perhaps, and a
nagging concern for the problems of sickness and crop
failures and the like that plagued Kintucky—but it had
to be admitted that all of that was out of his hands and
beyond his power to alter in any way. What he could
do, he did; mostly, it amounted to encouraging Jewel of
Wommack and her flock of Teachers in their efforts, all
far more productive than his could have been. The ways
they found to stretch supplies, and the things they
thought of when there was pain to be eased ... He ad-
mired it, loudly and openly and enthusiastically. And he
thanked the Powers that none of it required anything
more of him personally than that unflagging enthusi-
asm. Enthusiasm, he could always produce.

Thinking about it, a bowl of hot oats and half a cup
of milk comforting his stomach, he leaned back in his
chair and put his feet up on his desk, folded his arms
behind his head^ and sighed a long sigh of satisfaction.

At which point, his door flew open without so much
as a warning knock, and he found himself facing a
woman taller than he was, thinner than he was, and
looking much the worse for wear, though it was clear

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

she was beautiful underneath the scrapes and the grime.
It took him only a couple of minutes to recognize Trou-
blesome of Brightwater—there was only one woman on
the planet who looked like she looked—and that was
such a shock that he leaped to his feet and knocked his
chair overin the process.

"Uhhhh . . . Troublesome of Brightwater!" he man-
aged, and bent to pick up the chair and set it right

"As you live and breathe," she said.

"Well, I know it wasn't exactly a fanfare and a red
carpet, Troublesome, but you took me by surprise. I
thought you spent all your time on top of a mountain
and never came down except for emergencies . . . like
clearing a pack of rats and weasels out of Confederation
Hall, for example. Not to mention that however in the
world you got here, all the way from Brightwater, is be-
yond me. Surely you didn't expect me not to be sur-
prised?1'

"May I come in or not?" Troublesome demanded.
"Finding you wasn't easy, young man, and I'm sick of
prowling your halls in search of your august presence."

"Please do come in," said Lewis Motley readily
enough. "I'm . . . well, no, I can't say I'm delighted to
see you. We'll no doubt end by regretting that you
dropped by, I'm aware of that But 1 am most assuredly
interested to see you. . . .Do come in, and sit down."

Troublesome's eyes Sicked over the room, and she
clucked her tongue in amazement

"What is it?"

"All this furniture." She stepped inside and closed
the door behind her. "Brightwater's got a rocker for the

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And Then ThereQ Be Fireworks

79

Grannys, and beds all around, and that's about it Ev-
erything else has gone for firewood long ago."

"I was just thinking how bare it was. And how much
I liked it bare."

"A matter of your point of view, I expect," said Trou-
blesome. "It looks mighty grand to this pair of eyes."

"You're on Kintucky," he reminded her. "How, I
don't know—we'll come back to that. But on Kintucky
we could bum fires day and night for a hundred years
and we'd still only have cut down the undergrowth. If
we could eat trees, we'd be well fed here."

Troublesome reached for the offered chair, turned it
backwards so she could lean her arms and chin on its
back, and stared at him until he began to feel uncom-
fortable. And then it dawned on him why he felt that
way, and he hollered till he got a servingmaid's attention
and told her to bring up some food and drink.

"Not that it'll be much," he warned her. "Bread, I ex-
pect. And coffee, if we're lucky and Gilead's set some by
for the odd special occasion."

"Considering it's been near on two days since I've
had anything but water . . . and you do have glorious
water on Kintucky, I meant to comment on that . . .
I'm not likely to complain. And the Mule I left in your
stable was not the least bit ungrateful tor what he was
getting there."

"The Mule," mused Lewis Motley Wommack. "You
came in by Mule, did you? Now, Troublesome, I don't
mean to seem to doubt your word, but—"

"Just from the coast," she sighed. "One leg after an-
other, solid on the ground. The rest of the trip was in a

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And Then There U Be Fireworh

pathetic beerkeg that's got the nerve to call itself a ship,
and for which the only good word I've got to offer is
that it didn't sink on the way over here. No doubt it'll
make up for that oversight on the trip back, always pro-
viding it'll still even be there when the Mule and I trek
back down to the shore. No, Lewis Motley Wommack,
I am not claiming I can get a Mule to fly; I had trouble
enough getting it to move at all."

"Well, it might have been that you could. Consider-
ing your reputation."
Troublesome let that pass, and he went on.
"Will you tell me why you're here and how you got
here?" he insisted; he was rapidly running out of pa-
tience. "It's about as likely as a goat playing a dulcimer,
you know. I think I'm entitled to an explanation."

"Passel of Grannys sent me," said Troublesome.
"They near killed themselves, poor old things, getting
up Mount Troublesome to talk me into it and then back
down again. And they used up everything they had left
in this world to bribe the captain of that purely pathetic
boat and his patheticker crew, and putting together
supplies enough for this cany-on. The supplies they
meant me to have while I rode the Mule here, those I
left for bribe, along with a trinket or two, to keep my
trusty friends from heading back to Brightwater and
stranding me here. And the Holy One defend them if
they do strand me . . . if I have to swim back, I'll find
them, every last one of them, and they'll rue the day
they ever did any such a misbegotten trashy thing."
"Oh, they'll be there," said Lewis Motley.
"You think so?"

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And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

Tou put it very well," he said, looking at the ceiling.
**I doubt very much they'd care to have your lifelong
vengeance on their coattails, Troublesome of Bright-
water."

"Let us hope you are right," said Troublesome
grimly. "For their sakes, and everybody else's."

"How does everybody else figure into it?" he asked,
and she passed along the Grannys' tale to him, while he
sat there shaking his head. For a while it was his won-
derment at the Grannys going to all this trouble and ex-
pense, and Troublesome going along with it, for no
more motivation than some old tea leaves and a gold
ring on a thread in a stray wind. And then when it
began to be clear to him that it had to do with Respon-
sible of Brightwater, it was his dis-ease at the position he
was being put in. True, this was Responsible's infamous
sister; and true, if there was anything bodacious to do,
she'd either done it or invented it But there was such a
thing as tattling, and there were certain kinds of tattling
that were even more despicable than other kinds, and he
felt like a skinnywiggler on a hot rock before she got to
the end of it

"Hmmmmm," he said, by way of response, and
fooled around with his beard some. And then
"hrnmrnm" again.

Troublesome gave him a measuring glance, and
cleared her throat. "If it's your gallantry as is causing
you pain, Lewis Motley, you can set that aside. The
Grannys already told me Responsible lost her maiden-
head during the Jubilee, and seeing as how you were
there at the time and footloose, and seeing as how you

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And Then There U Be Fireworks

are the most spectacular example of manfiesh I ever laid
eyes on, I do believe I can add up two and two and
come out with four. And if I already know you were
bedding my sister, we can perhaps just acknowledge that
and move on to something more significant"

Lewis Motley cleared his throat, and blessed the fates
that had put this female on Brightwater and him clear
across an ocean away from her.

"Well?" she asked him. "Does that simplify matters

for you some?"

"It does," he began, and was much gratified that the
servingmaid came in just then with the bread and the
coffee and gave him a chance to collect himself.

"Yes," he said again, when he'd got his breath back.
He took a drink of the coffee and made a face; it wasn't
much more than troubled water, weak the way they
made it to stretch the last of the beans, and grain added
in with a liberal hand. "That was abrupt, but it did ease
my mind. I wouldn't have felt justified in telling you
that, but if you know it already we've cleared the air.
Now what exactly is the question the Grannys think I
know the answer to? Because I warn you. Troublesome

of Brightwater-I doubt it"

Over her shoulder he saw the flash of a long robe in
the hall, through the door the servingmaid had left
decently open instead of shut tight as she'd been
shocked to find it, and he called out for his sister to join
them. He knew the look of that robe, though he wasn't
aware it was exactly the color of his eyes, by a frayed
place at the back of the hem that came from too many
hours spent on Muleback. It would be useful to have his

82
And Then There'U Be Firework

aster here as a buffer between himself and Trouble-
some, now the indelicate part of the conversation was
past; furthermore, he enjoyed showing her off.

"Jewel!" he called to her. "We've got company-
come seel"

"Company?" She stepped in the door, one hand on
the sill, the long sweep of her sleeve falling almost to the
floor. "Are you wasting my time with foolishness again,
Lewis Motley?"

Troublesome gasped, and clapped both hands to her
mouth, and through her fingers she said, "Jewel of
Wommack, I declare I never in all this world would of
known you!"

The grave eyes of a woman grown looked back at her,
that had been a child's eyes so short a time ago, calm,
and possessed of a natural authority. The copper hair
was hidden away completely under the wimple, and
most of the face as well, but Jewel was all the more
beautiful for the mystery the Teacher's habit lent her.
For the first time she could remember. Troublesome of
Brightwater was uncomfortably aware that she herself
could do with a change of clothes and a tidy-up.

"Troublesome of Brightwater," said the Teacher, the
first of all the Teachers. "I never thought to see you
again, and now here you are. . . . What brings you
here?"

"She*s just about to set me a question," said her
brother. "Sent here by the Grannys of Marktwain as-
sembled, on a mountaintop no less, for that precise pur-
pose. You sit down with us, sister mine, and have a cup

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of this temble coffee, and if I can't answer die question
perhaps you can help me a tad.

"It has to do with Responsible of Brightwater," he
added, as if it were an afterthought of an afterthought,
and he watched JeweTs lashes drop to shield her eyes as
she took the third chair and poured her coffee.

"The Grannys know full well," said Troublesome.
seeing no reason to waste time, "that the magic they
were able to do was done on mighty puny power. But
they were sure enough they were right to put this expe-
dition of one together, and sure enough to convince me
to try it Jewel or Wommack, they are of the opinion
that your brother knows how it came about that Re-
sponsible of Brightwater has been in a sleep like unto
death these past two years. And if he knows that, they
believe, it just might could be he'll also know how she
can be waked up."

She looked at the man, in a silence so thick she could
have stirred it with her coffee spoon, and then at his
sister, and her heart sank.

"Ah, Dozens!" she said despairingly. "Dozens! You
didn't even fenow, did you? I can tell, just looking at
you! Without the comscts, and Kintucky out here on
the edge of nowhere, and no travelers anymore ... I
suppose nobody on Kintucky knows. Ah, the waste of all
this! Bloody Bleeding Dozens!"

Lewis Motley was so taken aback he couldn't have
spoken a word, or moved, but Jewel of Wommack
reached over and took the other woman's hand in both
of hers.

"Tell us," she said, in the voice that every Teacher

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

was trained to use, or sent to do research and keep out
of the classrooms if she couldn't. It was a voice that
could not be disobeyed because it left no possible space
for disobedience.

"My sister," said Troublesome, and because the ex-
haustion in her face frightened both the Wommacks,
Lewis Motley shouted again for a servingmaid and de-
manded the last of their, whiskey, "just into summer-
time, after the Jubilee, fell into a kind of sleep. Or a
-coma. ... To look at her, you would think she was
dead, but she has no sickness, and the name Veritas
Truebreed Motley puts to it is pseudocoma. Just a sleep
that does not end and cannot, so far as we've been able
to tell, be ended. And since the day it began, everything
has gone from bad to worse on Marktwain and Oklaho-
mah; we hear there is war on Arkansaw. What may be
going on in the rest of the world nobody knows ... or
even if there is a rest of the world any longer. Since the
trouble started with whatever happened to my sister, the
Crannys are convinced that there's a connection there—
that if we could wake Responsible there would be hope
for Ozark again. And they were certain—certain sure!—
that Lewis Motley Wommack had the key to it. ...
Law, but they're going to be in a state over this, and I
don't blame them, I don't blame them one least bit!"

"Just a minute, Troublesome," said Jewel.

"If Lewis Motley Wommack didn't even know about
this," insisted Troublesome, "then the Grannys have
made a mistake to end all mistakes, and a minute—nor
a dozen minutes—won't change that."
The servingmaid came running with the whiskey, and

85

And Then Therell Be Fireworks

Jewel poured it out with a level hand and passed Trou-
blesome of Brightwater the glass.

"You drink that," she said calmly. "And then, let's us
ask him. Before we decide to speak of mistakes and
waste and the end of the world, let's just ask him. Might
could be he knows more man you think he knows, pro-
vided the questions are put to him properly."

Lewis Motley had his whole face buried in his hands,
and they could see the muscles of his arms straining

under the cloth of his sleeves.

"Never mind throwing chairs, dear brother," warned
Jewel emphatically, keeping a wary eye on him. "This is
not the time nor the place."
"Curse them!"

The bellow shook the lamp hanging above their
heads, and although neither Troublesome nor Jewel
jumped, they both had to grip their chairs not to.

"Curse them all, the idiots? I never had any such
thing in mind—they must all have been crazy! Oh, it I
could only get my hands on them, it I could just—"

Troublesome looked at Jewel of Wommack. "He
knows something," she said, over the din. "He knows
something after all."

"He knows everything, from the sound of his connip-
tion fit," said Jewel coldly. "Now it's just a matter of
getting it out of him . . . once he's worn himself out
Talk of women having hysterics!"

"I've been a damned fool," said her brother.

"Not for the first time, nor yet the hundred and first"

"But this time is exceptional."

"Then the sooner it's admitted to, the sooner well

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

know if it can be mended. I suggest you tell us what
you've gone and done, Lewis Motley."

"Can I have some of that whiskey?"

"You can not. That's for medicine, pnd precious little
we have left of it! There's nothing wrong with you but
temper, and if you haven't died of temper before this
you won't die of it today. Just speak up."

Lewis Motley sighed a long sigh, and began. "Your
sister," he said to Troublesome, "was causing me a good
deal of. . .misery."

Troublesome was dumbfounded.

"Misery? In what way, causing you misery? She was
clear back on Marktwain, you were all the way over here
on Kintucky."

"I hesitate to say it of her—"

"Say it!" commanded Troublesome.

"Your sister would not grant me privacy of mind," he
said then, and the words fell, quaint and formal, in the
stillness of the room.

"Lewis Motley," said Jewel simply, "you are either
mocking us or you are stalling for time, and whichever
one it is, it's not to be borne."

"No, I am not!" he protested. "Responsible of
Brightwater mindspoke me"—she had gone far beyond
just mindspeech, but he would not talk of that before
two women, even to defend his actions—"every day,
day after day after day, till I was nearly mad with it I
would be sitting working, I would be eating, I'd be see-
ing to a problem in the stables, I'd be talking as I am
now, with one of the Family . . . and suddenly she was
there, in my mind." He shuddered. "There've been

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

many females that tried to tag along after me, but they
had at least the decency to do it in the flesh, where a
person could see them and have a fair chance at getting
away. Not Responsible of Brightwateri Oh no—not that

one.

"And so you did what?" Troublesome held her
breath, waiting.

"I sent for the Magicians of Rank, and asked them all
to come here on a matter concerning Miss Responsible
of Brightwater, which they were willing enough to do,
let me tell you; and I told them what she'd done—
because she'd gone far, far past the bounds of decency
—and I asked them to make her stop. That's what I did.
But not for the smallest wrinkle of time did I intend
anything of the sort you've described to me. Trouble-
some. I meant them to reason with her, threaten her
perhaps, set a small Spell on her . . . just stop her un-
speakable mucking about in my mind! Never did I mean
them to hurt her. . . . Jewel, tell her. Little sister, ex-
plain to this woman that I never meant them to do her
harm."

Jewel of Wommack nodded, her eyes the color of
river ice in late afternoon.

'*He is mischief incarnate," she said slowly, in grave
agreement, "but he would not do anybody deliberate
harm. He simply does not t/iinfe—he never did. And
now, because of his selfish temper, if the Grannys are
right we have this dreadful time of trouble all to be laid
at my brother's feet For all time. Congratulations, to
the Wommack Curse!"

Troublesome gnawed at the end of her thick black

And Then There9!! Be Fireworks

braid, dust and leaves and all, a gesture Thorn of
Guthrie had tried in vain to break her of.

"Lewis Motley Wommack," she said carefully, "what
did Responsible say to you when you asked her to stop
it? Did she just refuse, say no, flat out with no explana-
tion? That's not like her . . . not that any of it is like
her. . . but what did she say to you?"

The man's face went cold and hard, and now it was
Jewel's turn to clap her hands to her mouth, because she
suddenly understood, before the answer came.

"I never asked her," he told them, voice like granite
and a face to match. "She was m my mind; she knew
how it repulsed me. . . . It would have been a very cold
day in a truly hot place before I stooped to beg that vile
little—before I stooped to ask Responsible of Bright-
water to stop her foul behavior. Ask her, indeed—what
do you think I am?"

Troublesome stood up and went over to a window,
turned her back on him and on the Teacher, and stood
staring out into the tangled woods beyond. She was
shaking from head to foot, and her teeth gritted to keep
them from chattering, in spite of the whiskey, and not
until she had it under control did she turn round again,
even through the spectacular bout of tongue lashing that
Jewel of Wommack turned on Lewis Motley with. He
had been told in baroque detail what an utter, despica-
ble, pathetic, unspeakable, pigheaded, stupid, fool mde
he was, with elaborations and codas and emendations to
spare, before Troublesome said another word. And
when she did speak, her voice was hoarse with rage re-
strained.

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks
"Lewis Motley Wommack," she said, "I cannot ex-
plain this, and I shan't try. I have no way of knowing
the truth of it; I never knew even that Responsible had
the skill of mindspeech. But I swear to you, and I know
whereof I speak: my sister would never have knowingly
done what you say she did. If she did it, she was be-
witched, or mad, or anything else you fancy—but she
would not have done that- Saving only Granny Gray-
lady, there's not an Ozarker alive more scrupulous
about privacy than my sister. And you . . . you never
even asked her. You couldn't stoop, to one small ques-
tion. Lewis Motley, I would not be you and bear the
burden of guilt that you will bear. Not for any power in
this Universe."

"I tell you—" he began, but Jewel's hand came down
hard on his arm and silenced him.

"You've told us," said Troublesome. "You've told us
all I care to hear from you. You've answered the ques-
tion I came to ask, and the Grannys were right. It took
all the Magicians of Rank to put my sister to sleep, ap-
parently; it will no doubt take all of them together now
to wake her up. All of them; now when the ships are not
running the oceans, and the Mules are not flying, and
the Magicians of Rank are scattered to the four comers
of the world . . . four of them somewhere in the wilds
of Tinaseeh, if they still breathe. And somehow, we will
have to get them all together at Brightwater and have
them undo this awful thing. And I'd best get on with it
The crew was half mutinous all the way here. Not a
cloud came up they didn't charge me with having
caused it just by being on their leaky old rowboat—I'm

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

not anxious to leave them waiting for me any longer on
your coast."

"I'll ride with you," said Lewis Motley at once. "I
know the shortest ways—we'll save time."

Jewel of Wommack stood up, put one slender finger
in her brother's chest, and pushed. It was a measure of
his state of mind that it brought him to a full stop; or-
dinarily, he was about as easy to stop as an earthquake.

"You will not," she said flatly. "You've done enough.
You've done so much more than enough already, my be-
loved brother, that your name will go down in history-
be satisfied with that. You may well have destroyed an
entire world for the sake of your pride—be satisfied with
that And I will ride with Troublesome of Brightwater
to the coast to see if her ship has waited for her. And if
it hasn't, I will see to it that a way is found to get her
home, if I must call in every man still able-bodied on
Kintucky to turn his hand to shipbuilding "
"I would feel better if—"
"No doubt you would!" she cut him off. "I haven't
any interest in you feeling better. You have a lifetime
ahead of you to spend trying to ease your guilt, but FU
not help you! And besides that. they wouldn't obey you,
Lewis Motley. Not as they will me, if that proves need-
ful-
Lewis Motley closed his eyes and made no more ob-
jections. She was right. Not a man on Kintucky that
would not, it a Teacher asked it of him, build a ship or a
cathedral or a rocket or anything else she might de-
mand. It had been planned that way, and it had gone
according to plan; the Teachers were not )ust respected,

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

they were reverenced. He could not command that sort
of loyalty.

And then . . . there was the way his head   was whirl-
ing. It could not be true, but what if it   were? What if
Responsible had not known, really had not   known, what
she was doing to him? And he had not even   given her
the chance to stop?

He had seen it himself, it was what had led him to
her bed, scrawny plucked creature that she was; there
had been something special about her, and he had been
determined to investigate it. Was it his curiosity, and his
pride, that had made Ozark a wasteland . . . and how
many deaths lay at his door?

He could not have ridden to the coast, he realized, as
the two women left the room and slammed its door
behind them. He could not, at that moment, have risen
from his chair.

92

CHAPTER 6

It was cold at Castle Brightwater; bitter bone-stabbing
cold, the cold that comes when the skies are full of snow
that refuses to fall; and the sky was a leaden sorrowful
gray. No fires burned in any of the Castle fireplaces.
The people in the towns and on the farms were better
off by far than those at the Castle, because it had been
for the most part a clear and sunny winter, and the solar
collectors on their roofs had been adequate to cany
them even through days like this one. The problems of
keeping warm a hulking stone Castle designed with all
the traditional drafty corridors and stairways were con-
siderably more formidable.

Troublesome had gone through the gloom of the Ca&-
t3e like a wind added to the drafts that already whined
there, with a fine disregard for the staff scuttling out of
her way and the just-barely tolerance of the Family,
shouting for Veritas Truebreed Motley the 401, the Cas-
tle's very own Magician of Rank. "Where is the man?"
she had demanded as she tore up and down the halls
and through the parlors, and "Where has he gotten to?"
She got nothing for her troubles but shrugs and raised
eyebrows, but she was accustomed to that; ten years'
practice being shunned toughened you up some.

She found him at last, by the simple expedient of

9?

And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

looking everywhere there was, up on the Castle roof rub-
bing his hands together and cursing fluently in a spot
where a tower kept off the wind but let the dim light by.

"It's a fine thing," he observed, glaring at her, "when
it's wanner outside the place you live in than it is inside,
in the dead or winter. I've a good mind to move into
that hotel down by the landing—I'd be more comfort-
able there, and I'm sure the company would be better.
How did you find me, anyway?"

"Used an algorithm," said Troublesome.

He made a face, not appreciating that word in her
mouth, and went on as if she'd not used it. "And it's
finer yet, when a man can't even find privacy on the be-
staggering roof of a bestaggering Castlel First, it was one
of the Grannys; and then it was Thorn of Guthrie—
curse her narrow pointy little soul—and now, the
Twelve Gates defend us all, it's you? What's next,
ghosts and demons?"

"Morning, Veritas Truebreed," said Troublesome
calmly. "Nice to see you, too, I'm sure."

"What do you want with me?" the Magician of Rank
demanded, cross as a patch. "Whatever it is, the answer
is either no, I can't or no, I won't—there aren't any
other answers at the moment"

"Might could be you're right," she said, "and might
could be you're wrong. Long as we're being all binary
here."

"Troublesome, youll provoke me," he warned her,
and she let him know how alarmed she was at that pros-
pect

"Besides which," she added, "you were already pro-

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

voked before ever I set foot on this roof. And you may
go right on being provoked till you choke, for all I care."
"Well?" Veritas Truebreed was blue with cold and
purple with outrage, but he knew quite well she could
outlast him. "Speak up, woman; what are you here tor-
menting me for?"

Troublesome looked him up and down, noting that
he'd abandoned the elegant garments of his station for
something that looked more like a stableman's winter
wear. Something nubby and bulky, with a thick lining
and a narrow stripe and a capacious hood. It showed
good sense on his part.

"I want you to wake up Responsible," she told him.

"You want me to what?"

"I've been to Kintucky and back, Veritas, and I—"

"You've been to where?"

"As I said, Veritas Truebreed, I've been to Kintucky
and back—never you mind how, just let me tell you it
wasn't easy and it was hardly what you might call a holi-
day excursion—and I've heard the whole sony tale from
the lips of Lewis Motley Wommack the 3 3rd his very
own self, and you'd best hop it. Time's a-wasting."

The Magician of Rank stopped rubbing his hands to-
gether then, and blowing on them, and he leaned back
against the stone of the tower, closed his eyes, and
groaned aloud Kke a woman birthing.

"Only you could have brought this upon me. Trou-
blesome of Brightwater," he said at last through
clenched teeth, when he'd done with his groaning,
"only you! We don't have trial and misery enough al-
ready; now we have to have this. Oh, for the power to

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

do )ust one tiny Transformation- ... I'd turn you into
a slimewonn, with the greatest of pleasure, I'd step on
you with my shoe heel... no, I'd set fire to you, right
at the tender end where your little yellow eye was, and
then—"

"Demented," said Troublesome.

"What?"

"You're demented. Mad. Plain crazy. And I've heard
enough and a few buckets left over from you. I'm not
interested in the twisted inventions of your imagination,
Veritas Truebreed. I am interested in having you wake
up my sister—bringing in all the other Magicians of
Rank you need to help you at it, if that's required, and I
suppose it is. though it's mighty curious that it takes
nine-to-one odds for one small female like Responsible
—and I'm interested in seeing if the Grannys are right
that that will improve things around here a tad. Either
you leave off your drivel and come along to get started
on that, or I'll push you off the roof—how's that for
managing without Formalisms & Transformations?
Nothing fancy, 0 Mighty Magician, just shove you
right off and let you try the effect of the stone down
there in the courtyard on the very same body you came
into this world with. You'll squash, I expect, and the
Holy One knows you deserve it"

He opened his eyes and sighed, and she wondered im-
patiently what was next There are only just so many
meaningful noises in the sigh & moan & grunt & groan
category, and he was running through them at a great
rate.

"It can't be done," he said simply, and that surprised

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

her. "I'm more than willing, but it—cannot—be—
done. Don't you think we tried?"

Troublesome hunched down beside him and regarded
him seriously. This didn't look to be at all funny, if he
spoke the truth.

"You explain," she said. "Rig/if quick."

"When we realized what we'd done," said the man,
making vague hopeless gestures, "we tried right away to
undo it. The Mules weren't making more than about
ten miles an hour by then, some of the boats were a
knot or two faster, whatever was left of the energy that
had been fueling the system was winding down fast. . .
but since it had taken all nine of us to put Responsible
into pseudocoma we had a feeling it would take all nine
to get her back out again. We all got here; and since you
were yammering about the difficulties of your jaunt to
Kintucky, allow me to observe that there was nothing
easy about iW—but we did get here somehow. And in
the dead of night we stood round her bed and we did ev-
erything we knew, and made up a sizable amount of
stuff that had never been tried before . . . and we kept
at it until there was barely time for some of us to get out
before people saw us leaving. Whether everyone got
back home again, I don't know . . . and I'm not sure I
care. But we did try. Troublesome."

"And what happened?"

"And nothing happened. The only difference be-
tween pseudocoma and real coma is that the victim of
pseudocoma does not deteriorate physically or mentally.
Otherwise, it's exactly the same—and we did a good job
of it. Oh yes; that's a downright magnificent pseudo-
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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

coma we put her into. She went right on iust as she

»
was.

"Do you understand it?" Troublesome asked gravely.

"No, of course we don't understand it, curse your in-
solence for asking! We ougAt to understand it... do
you have to rub my nose in it? Does that give you pleas-
ure?"

"That's my sister," she reminded him. It was no time
to make her ritual speech about having no human feel-
ings.

"And die hope of the world."

To her amazement, she saw that there were tears on
his cheeks, running in rivulets down into his beard; it
wouldn't do to let him know she saw that, and she
devoted her attention to watching a seabird wheeling
above them. It must have gone demented, too, she
thought absently.

"We were so careful," he mourned beside her. "One
thousand years of being so carefid. Keeping the popula-
tion small, so that there was always abundance. Balanc-
ing every substance that went into the soil and the water
and the air, and every substance that came out, to guard
its purity. We made a paradise ... no crime, no war,
no disease, no crowding, no hunger, no—"

"I remember, Veritas Truebreed," Troublesome cut
him off. "I was up on a mountaintop a good deal of the
time, but I do remember. And I'd rather hear explana-
tions than memorial services, if you don't mind."

"We have some guesses."

"Guesses? What kind of guesses?"

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He didn't answer her, and she turned to look at him,
tears or no tears.

"I said, what kind of guesses?"

"They ought, by rights, to be secret. ..."

"Oh, hogwallow, you tool man! Secrets, at a time like
this!"
"Maybe you're right," he said, "and I'm too tired t^
care any more . . . and nobody'd believe you even if
you weren't too mean to tell, so what does it matter?
We assume—just assume, mind you, we've no proof-
mat there was something about Responsible that was es-
sential to the functioning of magic. She had no powers,
of course, beyond those of any other female; don't mis-
understand me."

"You're a liar, Veritas—I told you I had the whole
story from that poor piece of work at Castle Wommack,
and he had a few words to say about Responsible's
powers; seems as how he mightily disliked being sub-
jected to them."

"Even on Old Earth," said the Magician of Rank
stiffly, "in the times of utter ignorance of magic, there
were rare individuals capable of mindspeech—as there
were rare individuals seven feet tall. Your sister is a
freak, as those were freaks, with no knowledge or control
of her abilities. But she is something else, something
... a catalyst, perhaps? Somehow, whatever she was,
taking her out of the system of magic brought it to a full
stop. And pseudocoma takes magic—you can't put
someone into it, nor take them out of it, with solar en-
ergy or electrical energy or any other kind. By the time

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we realized what had happened, there was no energy left
—without her—for us to use to cancel the coma. So far
as I know, that's the way of it And if you could get aH
nine of us together in her bedroom again, which I
doubt, since the ships aren't sailing and the Mules
aren't Sying, it would be the same as it was. Just the
same as it was. . . /'

"You were fools," said Troublesome. "Plain fools."

That long groan again ... it was getting boring, es-
pecially since he was in no pain.

"You were, you know," she said, happy to twist the
knife.

"We didn't redKze,*' he protested. "We had no idea
that she mattered that way. . . ." And if someone had
told them, he thought to himself, if they'd been warned,
it would have changed nothing. They wouldn't have
believed it They had hated Responsible of Brightwater
so much, and they had so welcomed a legitimate oppor-
tunity to punish her for humiliating them, he knew that
no amount of warning could have held them back.

"You do not know the hours," he said slowly, "the
countless hours I have spent standing beside her all by
myself . . . trying things. Hoping I'd jog something
loose, find the right thread accidentally. Because what-
ever it is that she is for, that is still intact That's still
there, if I could only get at it."

"How do you know that? How can you possibly
know?"

He raised his eyebrows at that, and he admonished
her to think. After all, he pointed out, she had a reputa-
tion for wisdom as well as wickedness. And, goaded like

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that and held in the fierceness of his eyes wanting to get
back at her for the way she'd spoken to him, she saw it

"Ah," she breathed, "you're right! Otherwise, if it
were otherwise, she'd be like someone in true coma . . .
she'd be curled tight and wasting away and—"

"And all the rest of it Yes. And she's not. She looks
exactly as she looked the hour we did our work, and that
can mean only one thing—all that is left of the energy
of magic is concentrated there in her, keeping her from
ever changing."

Something in his tone caught her attention, and she
looked at him close, and marveled at the way of the
world. Revelation followed upon revelation.

^Tou hate her," she said. "She's your own kin, grew
up here under this roof playing on your knee and riding
piggyback on your shoulders—and you hate her worse
than sini Why?"

Veritas Truebreed squared his shoulders, and he met
her eyes, but he said not one word. No one not a Magi-
cian of Rank was ever going to know the answer to that
question, not from his Ups. Not ever.

"It must have been hard," murmured Troublesome.
"All those years, pretending to be helpful . . . playing
at being loyal."

"It was."

Troublesome went back down into the Castle, her
breath making little white puffs in the air, and she
found Giannys Hazelbide and Gableframe, and told
them.

"It seems," she wound it up, "that you went through

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all of this and gave up the last of your treasure things—
not to mention a certain amount of discommodance on
my part—all for nothing. It's a shame."

"No," said Granny Gableframe firmly. "It wasn't for
nothing, young woman. In no sense of the word. We
traded an ignorance big as this Castle for a whole pot of
knowledge, bubbling and simmering this minute. I'd say
as it was a fair trade. We're not out of it, mind you, not
by many a mile, but we at least know how we came to
be where we are."

"Knowledge," said Granny Hazelbide, "is for using.
Now we have some, the problem is how we put it to use.
And for that. Troublesome, we don't need you. No call
whatsoever to keep you from your homeplace any
longer, and we're grateful to you for what you've done,
however much it sticks in my craw to say it We're be-
holden to you."

"Hazelbide, you exaggerate," said Granny Gable-
frame.

"You know any other living soul on this earth as
would of done what Troublesome did?" demanded
Granny Hazelbide. "Gone off in the cold and damp in a
leaky boat with a bribed crew, on what was ninety-nine-
to-one a wild goose chase? Gone off and chanced being
stranded forever in a wilderness, dying aD alone in some
Kintucky briartangle? Just because we asked her to, and
no other compensation offered?"

"Flumdiddle!" said Gableframe. "The fact you raised
Troublesome's addled your brain—which it can't toler-
ate much of, I might add. That's her own sister as lies in
there, and it's her own people as are suffering. She had

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as much to gain from this as any of us, and more than
some, and I'll be benastied before I'll say we're be-
holden to Troublesome of Brightwater! The ideat"

"One more time, Gableframe," said Granny Hazel-
bide, tight-lipped. "Just one more time, I'll tell you.
. . . Troublesome has no natural feelings. Responsible
could die this minute, putrify right there on her bed,
and her sister's only complaint'd be the smell. And that
goes for every sick baby and hungry tadling and suffer-
ing human on the face of this world, you have my word
on it. If she helped us, we're beholden. You care to be
benastied as well, that's your choice."

Troublesome chuckled, and Granny Hazelbide said:

"See there?"

They were sitting there together, the two old women
rocking quick and hard to show their irritation, and
Troublesome still grinning, when the Mules began to
bray in the stables, and Granny Gableframe said,
"There's somebody coming—listen to that racket!"

"Probably Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd," ob-
served Granny Hazelbide. "Swam all the way here for
penance, and crawled the rest of the way when he ran
out of water,"

"For sure it's a strange Mule to bring all that on,"
said Granny Hazelbide. "That's all we need now, when
we should be setting our minds to how to use what
we've learned—company. Botheration!"

"Don't you get awfully tired of that?" asked Trouble-
some.

"Tired of what?"

"The formspeech. Having to go 'botheration' and 1!

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swan' and 'flumdiddle' and 'mark my word' and all the
rest of it. Do you keep it up when you're all by your-
selves and nobody around to say, 'Eek! I heard a Granny
talking normal talk like anybody else'?"

The Grannys drew themselves up in outrage, right to-
gether like they'd practiced it, and Troublesome chuck-
led some more. There was nothing more fun to tease
than a Granny.

"Troublesome of Brightwater," said Granny Hazel-
bide stiffly, "just you go and see who's come—or what's
come, might could be that's more near the mark! I wish
to goodness it -would be young Wommack, I'd pull
every hair of his beard out one at a time . . . but well
not be that lucky, it'll be somebody useless, or worse.
You've had your thanks, missy, and we've had your sass,
and now we're even—make your young bones useful
and see what's come to pass."

But Troublesome didn't have a chance to more than
straighten up from her chair before a knock came at the
door; and when they called, "Come in!" it was a serv-
ingmaid of Brightwater and an Attendant from Castle
McDaniels, the latter looking as if he'd fall over if you
blew on him.

"I'm here," he blurted out, "with a message for Miss
Troublesome. Law. but I was scared to death she'd be
gone before I got here. . . . Miss Troublesome, I'm
pleasured to see you."

"First time in her life she ever heard thati" said the
two Grannys together, and Troublesome allowed that it
was, and the young man hurried to explain himself.
"I don't mean as how I'm happy to see her," he said

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hastily, stumbling into the doorframe and causing the
servingmaid to put a sturdy hand to his elbow to help
him out "Don't misunderstand me; it's that I'm happy
to see she's not gone yet. If you see what I mean."

"The distinction's a mite subtle," said Granny Gable-
frame, "But we won't hold it against you, whatever it
might mean, seeing as how it's clear you've had a hard
ride and a long one and can scarcely stand on your feet,
much less orate and do declamations. What are you
after with Troublesome of Brightwater, young man?"

"Message from Castle McDaniels, ma'am," he said,
bobbing his head. "And it's urgent"

"Then deliver it," snapped Troublesome, running out
of patience. "Before you fall over. It'll be more practical
that way, by a good deal. And don't mumble. When I
get urgent messages brought in to me at a last gasp like
this I like them to be turned over with clarity."

"Troublesome!" Granny Hazelbide was fairly quiver-
ing. "Will you not tease the poor young man, for all our
sakes!"

"Oh, that's all right. Granny Hazelbide," said the At-
tendant from McDaniels, trying not to lean on the serv-
ingmaid. "I've been warned about her already, at some
length. Missus McDaniels, her that was Anne of Bright-
water, she talked to me about Miss Troublesome tor it
must of been a good hour and a half. I expected horns
and a tail on her, if you want to know the truth of it."

And Troublesome chuckled some more. For a day
that had begun with spoiled food and bad water and a
crew of sick and surly men on a leaky boat, this one was
turning out to have its good parts.

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"Well, then," she said. "You've seen me, and you're
disappointed I don't live up to your expectations. That's
clear. Now pass on the message, and you can be on your
way and get some rest Just speak right up."

"You're to stay here," said the Attendant.

"I'm to stay here? That's it? That's your urgent mes-
sage?"

"Because Miss Silverweb's coming/' he told her. "She
wasn't quite ready to leave when I was, and she couldn't
of kept up with with me if she had been, I'm sure—I was
told to ride hard all the way and not spare the Mule or
me either one. But she says you're to stay right here
until she gets here, never mind how anxious you are to
leave, and never mind how much mere's people en-
couraging you on your way."

"Miss Silverweb said that?"

"Yes, miss. And her mother as well."

"Hmmmph."

Troublesome gnawed on her braid, and the Grannys
stopped their rocking, and Granny Hazelbide pointed
out that considering the number of days she'd lost al-
ready another one couldn't do much harm. Or another

two.

"Did she say why?" Troublesome asked the Attend-
ant

"Miss?"

"Did either of those women say why I was to wait?"
asked Troublesome impatiently. "I can't see much point
to it myself—I don't even know Silverweb of McDan-
iels, except that I believe I changed one of her diapers

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once. She for sure does not know me. Why should I
wait for her?"

"Well," said the Attendant, "I can't say as I under-
stand it. But I can tell you what they said to me."

"You do that, then," said Troublesome.

"Miss Silverweb, she said I was to tell you just this:

you stay here, because she knows how to wake up Miss
Responsible, but she needs your help to do it And
that's all."

The silence went on and on, and the Attendant
leaned more and more obviously on the servingmaid,
who fortunately showed no sign of collapsing under the
strain, and when Troublesome spoke at last her voice
was hesitant

"You say that Silverweb of McDaniels knows how to
wake my sister. . . ."

"So she claims, miss. I'm just passing it on, as I was
bid."
Troublesome turned to the Grannys.

"Well?" she asked them. "Is it likely? You know the
girl. . . any reason she should know what nine Magi-
cians of Rank don't?"

"Miss Silverweb'll be here by morning at the latest,"
pleaded the Attendant "And if I've got here and told
you, and you're gone on anyway, I won't dare go back, I
can tell you. Missus Anne was most particular about
that. 'If she doesn't wait for Miss Silverweb, don't you
bother coming back here,' she said to me. And I've
worked there, and done my job right, more'n six years
now. Shows where hard work won't get you."

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'Troublesome/' said Granny Gableframe, speaking
right up, "I can't say honestly I know any reason why
you should stay. Rumor is, Silverweb of McDaniels*
gone some kind of religious lunatic, shut up all me time
in an attic praying and carrying on. Not that I don't
hold with prayer, mind you, indeed I do, in its place-
but they say Silverweb carries it to and beyond extremes.
On the other hand, reason or no, what's the harm?
What's one more day to you? You've got no appoint-
ments to keep on your mountain, what's a few hours
more or less at Brightwater?"

Troublesome gave it a minute or two for real, and a
minute or two for tormenting them, and then she nod-
ded slowly, and the Attendant went limp with relief and
veiy nearly did fall down.

"All right," said Troublesome. "I don't suppose it can
make any difference; and I don't mind admitting I'm
curious. Ill wait for the child. Pray with her if need be."

"She's no child. Miss Troublesome," said the Attend-
ant, very serious in spite of his exhaustion. "You wait tifl
you see her—that's no child, nor ever wifl be again. Nor
no woman, either."

"Well, what is she, then?"

"You'd best wait and see for yourself," the Attendant
said, and that appearing to be all he could manage, die
Grannys motioned for the servingmaid to take him
away. Which she did, murmuring soothing words to
him all the way down the corridor.

"Youall don't know anything about this?" demanded
Troublesome, arms akimbo. 'This .is no Granny mis-
chief, cooked up between you?"

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"Honestly," said Gableframe. "How you talk."

"Your word on it or off I go this minute," declared
Troublesome.

"Phooey," said Granny Gableframe right back at her-
"It*H be a fine day when I give you my word on any-
thing. As soon give my word to my elbow. And who are
you to doubt a Granny's word?"

"Troublesome," put in Granny Hazelbide hastily,
"I'm with Gableframe on that But you said you'd stay.
And you know this is no scheme we planned for you—
we've got no heart these days for schemes. Leave off
your nonsense, now, and keep your word."

"And so I will," said Troublesome. "I beg your par-
don, I forget sometimes the way things have changed in
this world. Up on that mountain ... I don't see it the
way youall have to."

"Understandable," said Granny Gableframe. "Not
natural; but understandable."

"I suppose they'll make me sleep in the stable," Trou-
blesome fussed.

"I'll put you up in my own room if they try it," said
Granny Hazelbide. "I'm not afraid of you, and die
Twelve Gates knows I'm used to you."

"I'd rather stay in the stable."

"Suit yourself. Just so's you stay."

"My word on it, to you and to my elbow," said Trou-
blesome solemnly, crossing her heart elaborately with
one finger. "I'll wait for little Silverweb and see what
she's got to offer."

109

CHAPTER 7

There was no order to it, when it happened—it hap-
pened everywhere, all at once, all at the same time.
Twelve Castles there were on Ozark, and not one was
overlooked or granted a delay. Nine Magicians of Rank
as well, spread around over the planet, and they were
stricken all together, with a unity that they had known
before only on that single occasion when they had
joined forces against Responsible of Brightwater.

Veritas Truebreed Motley the 4th was the only Magi-
cian of Rank on the continent of Marktwain, and the
course of events was so swift that he heard only the first
scream from outside the Castle walls before he was liter-
ally thrown to the floor with his hands pressed desper-
ately to a head that he was sure would burst ... he
could hear nothing more after that but the message ex-
ploding there.

The ordinary citizens and the Grannys were spared
that penalty; the Magicians felt only a sudden nagging
headache, nothing out of the way. For them, unlike the
Magicians of Rank, the problem was not what was in
their heads but what was in the sky.

Above Castle Brightwater, suspended well out of
reach of ordinary weapons but easily within sight of the
eye, a giant crystal had appeared, spinning slowly on its

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point for just a moment before it stopped and hung
there motionless above them.

It looked to be one hundred feet from tip to tip,
stretching straight up, though it was hard to be sure
without knowing exactly what its distance was from any
object of reference. And it was in the shape of a flawless
diamond, perfect in its symmetry, perfect in its utter
transparentness. It would have been invisible, in fact, ex-
cept that from some angles it acted as a prism and cast
huge rainbows over the land and buildings beneath it,
turning the countryside to a fairyland of glorious color.
It made no sound at all. It came from nowhere and
nothing held it in its place, nothing that could be seen.
It was beautiful, and mysterious, and wholly terrifying.

The Grannys heard die screaming and ran out onto a
balcony to see what the commotion was about this time,
took one horrified look at the thing, and ran even faster
after Veritas Truebreed. By the time they reached him
he was aware that similar scenes were taking place at
every one of the Twelve Castles, and he wished himself
anywhere else in the Universe. . . preferably at the bot-
tom of the sea. Any sea.

"Veritas Truebreed Motley," fussed Granny Gable-
frame when they found him, "whatever in this world are
you doing? A lot of help you are, rolling on the floor and
carrying on with that carry-on! You have colic or what?
Get up and come see what's arrived this day to brighten
the comers where we are. . . might could be you could
be of some use at last!"

When that didn't budge him from me niche he had

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managed to thrash his way into, or bring him out of the
position of tight-coiled agony he was twisted into, the
Grannys knelt beside him and began an expert probing.
He screamed louder, and begged them not to touch
him, and if he had not been paralyzed with pain they
would not have been able to stop his frenzied efforts to
smash his brains out against the stone walls of the Cas-
tfe.

"Men," said Gableframe. "Always there when you
need them."

"Veritas?" Granny Hazelbide stood up and poked
him with her shoe. "You stop that caterwauling, you
hear me? I know you can hear me, don't you make out
you can't!"

As a matter of actual fact, he could not hear her over
the din in his head. He could see her mouth moving,
and his long experience with Grannys gave him an excel-
lent idea of what the two of them must be saying, but
they might as well have been in the next county for all
that he was able to hear of their bad-mouthing. There
was only one sound, and it filled all his perceptions, and
it was surely going to be the death of him unless he
somehow got help. He had time to wonder, through his
agony, how Lincoln Panadyne was faring at Castle
Smith, where the "Granny" in residence was only an old
woman hired by the Magician of Rank to placate the
Family when Granny Gableframe walked out on them
to move to Castle Brightwater. Veritas Truebreed had
sense enough left to know that nobody but a Granny
was likely to be able to help any of them.

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One word, Veritas, he was screaming at himself si-
lently, trying to get through the unbearable waves of
noise, you've got to say one word! Only one wordt

Granny Hazelbide poked at him again disgustedly
with the tip of one pointy-toed black high-heeled shoe,
and was fust getting ready to draw back her foot for an
actual kick when he finally succeeded in croaking out
that word. And it brought both old women to rigid at-
tention as if it had been a Chann and a Spell and a
Transformation all combined into one. The sound that
had come out of Veritas' mouth, strangled and de-
formed but comprehensible, was the word "Mules!"
And once again, before he went back to the howling
that was completely unlike the cries from outside—
those were only terror—he said it "Mules!"

"Mules," repeated the Grannys, looking at one an-
other. "Do you suppose. . ."

"I do," said Granny Gableframe. "What else could

do that?"

"Maybe that thing hanging over our heads," said
Granny Hazelbide grimly, pointing up at the ceiling and
tapping her foot to a smart beat 'Two sharp ends it's
got like a double needle, and no knowing what it can
do."

"Well, we can't talk to it, Hazelbide," snorted
Granny Gableframe, "that's for sure. And the Twelve
Gates only knows what will happen if one of those
scared sick lunatics out there takes it into his head to
shoot at the thing with a laser . . . likely to mean the
end of all of us, and nothing left where Ozark was but a

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puff of dust, if that happens. The Mules, on the other
hand, we could talk to."

"Gableframe. . ."

"I said talk to! Not either one of us is equipped to do
any mindspeaking, and the Mules know that full well. I
mean tett, ordinary tongue-and-mouth-and-teeth talk."

"What makes you think they'll listen?"

"Hazelbide, you have brains in that head or pud-
ding?" Granny Gableframe was clear out of temper.
"Stand there and go wurra-wurra like that poor fool on
the Boor if you like, but any ninny can see there's no
way of talking to that. . . creation ... up in the air,
and the only clue we've got is what Veritas said, and I
intend to hightail it for the stables!"

Granny Hazelbide knew sense when she heard it; she
followed the other without a word, and without a glance
behind her for the Magician of Rank in his awesome
misery. She was only sorry there wasn't time to look for
Troublesome and make her go along with them.

At the stables, they found the Mules standing in omi-
nous silence. If the expressions on their faces could be
interpreted in any human framework, they looked both
grim and determined. In any framework, they had their
attention fully occupied with something.

Granny Gableframe marched up to Sterling, the best
creature in the stable, and said howdydo and she'd like
it to listen to her. And when that had no effect, she
whacked it smartly right between the eyes.

"You, Mule!" said Gableframe. "I want a word with

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you, and I do know that you can understand me just
fine!"

Sterling rolled her eyes and laid back her ears, and
Granny Gableframe whacked her again. She'd never
thought to see the day she'd be dealing with a hysterical
Mule.

"You want to listen polite-like and of your own free
will. that's fine with me/' said the old lady. "I'll be
polite, too, as is proper, it pleasures me not atall to
abuse any creature. But if you'd rather do it the hard
way, I'm prepared for that, and I do intend to have you
hear me."

"You think that'll work?" asked Granny Hazelbide,
tapping her nose with her pointing finger. "It was al-
ways Responsible as talked to the Mules, and she had a
mighty different approach to it"

"You have a better idea?"

"No-sir, you go right to it And I'll try another one,"
said Granny Hazelbide, and went off to make her word

good.

"Sterling," said Granny Gableframe, "I have reason
to believe you're trying to mindspeak poor Veritas True-
breed, and I'm here to tell you that if that's what you're
up to you're pouring sand down a rathole. He's curled
up in a hole in the wall like a puking babe, howling and
begging to be shot or poisoned a one, he doesn't care
which, and a less promising mode of communicating
I've never come across in all my born days! Now if you
have something you'd like to get across to the Magician
of Rank, m'dear Mule, I'd suggest you turn down the
power somewhat more than a tad. You are addressing a

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human male, not Responsible of Brightwater, and he is
most surely not up to taking in what you are putting
out. Do you hear me. Sterling?"

The Mule gave her a look down its nose, and raised
its ears one notch, and the Granny said it all over again,
with more emphasis in the hard places.

"Tone it down!" she admonished Sterling, winding it
up. "Tone it down or you might as well leave off en-
tirely! That man's mind is frail as a flower petal up
mere, you can't just go banging around in it like some
kind of natural disaster!"

Sterling whickered and ducked her head, and the
Mules all around Joined in.

"You suppose. Granny Hazelbide," said Gableframe
then, out of breath entirely, "you suppose that means
we got it across7"

"If we didn't, we probably can't/' came the answer,
"and the only way I know to find out is to go see what's
left of old Veritas Tmebreed." She brushed down her
skirts and sneezed twice at the dust and remarked on
stablemaids and how they got lazier every year, and
Gableframe did the same, and then they looked at each
other.

"You ready?" said Hazelbide.

"I'm not ready to go out and walk under that thing
hanging in the air over my head; nor am I ready to see
every last soul running around and screaming like their
tails was caught in a door when it hasn't yet done any of
'em aiy harm wftatsoever. . . and I for sure don't want
to go stare at that pitiful excuse for a Magician of Rank.
But I will, Hazelbide, I will. Let's get at it"

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"Fool Mules," Granny Hazelbide grumbled. "Now

what?"

And all the way back to the Castle door and up the
steps, she grumbled. It was one thing for the Mules to
mindspeak the Magician of Rank—the Magicians had
always known the Mules were telepathic, and vice versa
—but the Grannys weren't supposed to know all that
But Granny Hazelbide was ready to bet twelve dollars to
a dillyblow that when the Mules did turn down their
power of projection to accommodate the limitations of
Veritas Truebreed's mind the very first thing they'd
done was inform him that the Grannys had told them to
do so. And thftt was going to be a fine kettle of fish.

Things were a mite less chaotic . . . the townspeople
had recovered from their first shock at the sight of the
giant crystal and were gathered in clumps, talking and
shaking their heads. This was not exactly the normal
order of the day, but the Grannys found it an improve-
ment on the original running around in circles and
screaming. They hurried past a group of Attendants and
servingmaids that looked ready to head them off, and
went straight on up to Veritas Truebreed to see if their
trip to the stables had been a mission of mercy or a red
herring.

They found the Magician of Rank much the worse
for wear, white as a sheet and soaked with cold sweat,
still rubbing his head and trembling afl over. But he was
able to talk.

"According to the Mules," he said gruffly when they
came through his door, "I've you to thank for an end to
118

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

y

that unspeakable torture. And I wiU thank you—
because if it had not stopped I would be dead—and
then I would appreciate an explanation."

Granny Gableframe didn't miss a beat. She reminded
him that the Mules' telepathic ability was a pretty open
secret after all these years. And she reminded him that
he had been the one bellowing "Mules!" and they'd
only followed directions. "And as for mindspeech," she
finished up crisply, "we Grannys don't have it, so you
needn't go searching for revelations there. We went
down to the stable and whacked the Mules over the
head and told them—out loud—that if they were trying
to talk to you they were hollering themselves into obliv-
ion . . . and then we came back to see what happened.
You appear to be recovered—"

"I will never be recovered from that, thank you very
much!"

"Never mind, Veritas Truebreed, you are at least on
your feet and talking 'stead of howling, and we'll accept
that for now. The question is: what have the Mules
been telling you?"

The Magician of Rank swallowed and stammered,
and Granny Gableframe threatened to kick him with
her shoe the way Granny Hazelbide had.

"Speak up," she said, infuriated. "Time's a-wasting!
The Mules never tried mindspeaking you before, and
there's never been a gigantic humungus hodacious
chandelier-bobble hanging up in the air before, and I for
one am inclined to believe there's got to be a connec-
tion! What did the Mules want with you?"

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"Ifs a wild tale/' said Veritas Truebrced.
"It's a wild sight," said Granny Hazelbide. "You take
a look?"
"I looked. I saw ... it One of the basic primordial

shapes."

"Primordial shapes be hanged, do you know anything
useful?"

"Careful, Hazelbide, you'll have a heart attack," cau-
tioned Granny Gableframe. "And a lot of help that'll
be."
''Well, the man's maddening!"

"And if I had four wheels I'd be a tin lizzy. Calm
down and let him talk. . . he'll get around to it Even-
tually."

He did.

"It seems," he said slowly, "according to the Mules, it
seems that thing you refer to as a chandelier-bobble is a
kind of mechanism for the focusing of energy. It pulls
in energy and concentrates it. . . and stores it"

"To do what with?"

"Just a minute. . . ." Veritas Truebreed wiped his
brow with the back of a shaking hand. "I've got to sit
down."

Granny Gableframe clucked her tongue and told him
not to be such a sissy, but he sat down all the same.

"The Mules tell me," he said when he was settled,
"that there is a group of planets not too far away from
here that is called the Garnet Ring; and that their
representatives—something called the Out-Cabal, and
according to the Mules you'll be able to fill me in on
that, and I will assuredly be interested in knowing why

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—that their representatives have been keeping an eye on
us for some time. The crystal out there is sent by the
Gamet Ring, on the basis of information reported back
by this . . . Out-Cabal . . . and the Mules say there's
one just like it over each of the Castles of Ozark."

"Ohhhh dear!" cried Granny Hazelbide. "Oh my!
That is a predicament, for sure and for certain!"

"Indeed it is," echoed Granny Gableframe. "They tell
you anything more, Veritas Truebreed?"

"I got the distinct impression," he snapped at her,
"that you two knew more about this than they did."

"Not accurate," said Gableframe. "Not precisely."

"Isn't it? According to the Mules—"

"You believe a passel of pack animals, Veritas, or you
believe two respectable Ozark Grannys?"

"After what they did to me? Those 'pack animals' you
mention? I believe them!" The Magician of Rank was
furious, and beginning to feel more himself. "It's more
than clear that some very important information has
been kept from the Magicians of Rank by the Grannys
of Ozark for hundreds of years—information that might
well have been crucial to the running of this planet—
and I want you to know that I resent it, and that steps
will be taken!"

"You don't say?" Granny Gableframe said. "What
do you have in what's left of your mind, Mister High-
andmighty? You without so much as a Housekeeping
Spell on hand! You get your powers back . . . such as
they were, such as they were . . . and then you can prat-
tle about taking steps. In the meantime, you mind your
mouth."

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And Then There'U Be Firework

"You are an unpleasant old woman," said the Magi-
cian of Rank.

"Grannys are supposed to be unpleasant old women,"

retorted Gableframe. "You want something young and
willing, you don't go looking for a Granny. Now what
I'd like to know is how long that thing's going to be a
part of our sky out there and what it's intended to do to
us. If you know, we'd appreciate you spitting it out"

And then she muttered, "Oh, law, it heard me!" as a
sudden pulsing. . . not exactly a sound, more a kind of
powerful vibration that thrummed in the stone walls
and floors . . . began. "I suppose that's it, wanning

up," she said.

"I suppose so too/' said Veritas Truebreed. "How
would I know? Until this accursed day, I had never
heard of an Out-Cabal. Nor a Garnet Ring. You ladies
have minded your mouths admirably."

"It was our duty to do so," said Granny Gableframe.
"Quit your complaining over things you admit you don't
know any more about than the doorknob does."

"The Mules say," Veritas Truebreed sighed, "that
this planet is about to be taken over by the Garnet Ring.
We are, they tell me, now 'eligible'—that's the way they
put it—to be so treated. The crystals will remain where
they are, doing whatever that is they're doing, until they
are fully charged. And then, I am assured, we will be un-
able to resist this Garnet Ring. And I suppose it's true?"

"Could we do anything like those crystals?" asked the
Grannys in one voice.

"They might could be only an illusion," added

122
And Then There'll Be Fireworks

Granny Hazelbide. "I've seen you Magicians of Rank
do some fancy things along that line, in my time."

Veritas Truebreed shook his head. "The Mules tell
me they're real, and that they're as powerful as the Out-
Cabal says they are, and that they can do what they
claim. Now you tell me if the Mules are likely to know
what they're talking about."

"Well, it's misery," said Granny Gableframe, "Just
plain misery—but we have no reason to think they
don't. And plenty to think they do."

"Then we know where we are," he said wearily.

"Do we know how much time we have?"

"We have whatever time it takes until those things
are 'fully charged/ like I said before. That's all the
Mules knew."

"Well," asked Granny Hazelbide, "what do you plan
to do?"

"Me? I plan to go lie down and not move my head
until the Out-Cabal comes to cut it off."

"My, that's impressive!" scoffed the Granny. "You
expect a medal for that, do you?"

"Be reasonable!" shouted the Magician of Rank, and
winced at what it did to his aching head. "As you so po-
litely pointed out to me, not three minutes ago, I
haven't a Housekeeping Spell to my name. What do you
expect me to do?"

"There are a lot of people out there," said the
Granny, "as are frightened half to death. They're not as
accustomed to wonders and marvels as you are, not by a
long sight- And they respect you, magic or no magic. I'll

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And Then There U Be Firework

thank you to go get on the comset and spread the word
—in some suitable form. I don't believe I'd tell them
what you just told us, not quite yet Just get on there
and tell them that there's no reason to be afeared right
at this wry minute, which is true. And that well get
back to them, which is true. And that we're working on
the problem—which is true. I do believe you could han-
dle that, Veritas, and I believe you're obliged to. Right
now!" She did not say scat, out of politeness.

On his way out the door, moving as fast as his condi-
tion would allow, and making other allowances for the
unsteady feeling the whole Castle had with that low vi-
bration running all through it, he very nearly ran right
over Silverweb of McDanieIs.

"Silverweb—" he began, but the Grannys, right be-
hind him, gave him a push.

"Not now, Veritas Tmebreed Motley, not now.'"
fussed Granny Hazelbide. "Whatever Silverweb of
McDanieIs needs, it won't be anything as concerns you,
and you're needed to stop the panic out there in the
town and all around the countryside. We Grannys'U see
to Silverweb 1"

But Silverweb needed no seeing to at all. She was as
radiant as if she'd been living on strawberries and thick
cream, as beautiful as ever, and as serene as if this were
the most ordinary of days. She was there, she an-
nounced, to get Troublesome—and the Grannys real-
ized they'd seen no sign of Troublesome of Brightwater
through all of tins, which was becoming of her and

124

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showed a proper consideration—and then Silverweb
went on to say that she and Troublesome were going to
take Responsible of Brightwater out into the desert of
Marktwain to the sacred spring.

"We'll hitch a Mule to a wagon," said Silverweb, her
voice like rich melted butter running over in the dish,
"and spread it with a comforter and a pillow to make
Responsible lie easy. And Troublesome and I will lay
Responsible inside, and we will take her away."

"But, child/' hazarded Granny Hazelbide, touching
the arm of the creature—as the Attendant had said, not
a child, and not precisely a woman, either, but the
Granny had the privilege of her years—"this is no time
for such a trek! Don't you know what's happened?"

"What has happened/' said Silverweb of McDanieIs,
"is that the Holy One has spoken to me and told me
that I must get Troublesome, and that she and I must
take Responsible out into the desert- That is all that I
need to know. Granny Hazelbide."

«*T*   i-   "

But—

"There's Troublesome now," added Silverweb.
"Right on time."

Troublesome had her sister gathered up in her strong
arms, a comforter wrapped round her, and no more trou-
ble than a tadling; she wasn't even out of breath, despite
all the stairs.
"You lead on, Silverweb," said Troublesome, "you're
the one as knows how this is supposed to go. And I'll
follow. Can you hitch up a Mule? If you can't, I can."

Silverweb laughed. "I can hitch a Mule," she said. "I

125

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

can hitch up any living thing that walks this planet, and
I can do a sight more than that. You )'ust come along
with me—and I thank you kindly for waiting for me."

It took the Grannys' breaths away. They stood there
in silence—not the usual way of things—as the two
young women left with their sleeping charge. And then
they watched from the balcony as the gates were opened
and the wagon that carried Responsible was pulled out
of the Castle yard by a prime Mule.

"That'll be Sterling," said Granny Hazelbide, and
Granny Gableframe nodded.

"It would be."

"Whatever do you suppose is going to happen?
There's nothing out there in that desert to eat nor to
drink, and those two didn't gather up so much as a
peachapple before they left here. . . ."

In the streets the people drew back, whispering under
their breaths, to let the wagon through, and the parents
held the tadlings up high to see. And above them, the
crystal had lost its transparent clarity and was beginning
to take on a pale garnet color, that pulsed along with the
thrumming in the stone and in the air.

It was beginning to accumulate its charge.

126

CHAPTER 8

Marktwain's desert, the one and only desert Ozark had,
was something of a mystery. For one thing, the rest of
the continent would have led you to believe there could
be no desert there; Marktwain was lush green farming
land, surpassed only by the emerald richness of Miz-
zurah, all the way to its coasts in all directions. That you
could go through the pass between Troublesome's
mountain and the others in its chain (not really much
more than high hills, but the Ozark Mountains of Old
Earth had not been towering peaks, either, and there
was thus a precedent for it), and suddenly find yourself
heading smack into a real desert—that was always a
surprise.

It wasn't large, and was called simply "The Desert";
if you've only one, there's no special need to name it
The technology and the knowledge necessary to bind its
sands with plant life and turn it green as the rest of the
continent had been part of the Ozarkers' equipment
even at First Landing. When Marktwain's population
passed sixty thousand, the two Kingdoms of Brightwater
and McDaniels all parceled out in towns and farms, the
idea of keeping a desert for its unique character ceased
to be anything but romanticism. But it was left alone,
nevertheless, and it was a rare day when anybody did

127 "

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

more than go to its border and glance out over its empti-
ness. The desert belonged, by treaty signed on First
Landing, to the Skenys.

Troublesome of Brightwater and Silverweb of
McDaniels headed out into the desert, waiting one on
each side of the wagon, and the few people that had fol-
lowed them that far turned back and let them go on. It
was one thing to be those two and go trifling with the
Skenys; ordinary folk had best mind their own business.

And it was as well they did. Troublesome and Silver-
web had hardly crossed the first smooth ridge of sand,
talking idly of the foolishness going on in Smith King-
dom with its clown of a King and its dithery females,
and on down the ridge's far side, before they saw ahead
of them a group of Skenys standing and waiting.

"How many do you think, Silverweb?" Troublesome
asked softly, abandoning the ridiculous tale of the

Smiths.
"I was told there would be forty-four," said Suver-

web. "It is a number significant to them."
"Forty-four Skenys!'' Troublesome blew a long

breath.

Not since First Landing had any Ozarker ever seen
more than one Skerry at a time, and to sight one was so
rare that it obligated the whole Kingdom where it hap-
pened to spend a day of celebration and full holiday in
4he Skerry's honor. Just what the sight of forty-four
might have meant in the way of obligations was difficult
to imagine. It surely would have been a heavy burden of
worry and debate, and Marktwain's citizens had more
than enough of worry on their plates at that moment

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And Then There'U Be Firework

Sterling stopped dead when she saw them, and would
not take another step, and the two women hesitated, not
sure whether to try forcing her on or not

"What do you think, Silverweb?" Troublesome
asked, measuring the animal with nanowed eyes. "Shall
I encourage this blamed Mule a tad?"

Sterling's ears went flat back, and she walled her eyes,
to indicate what she thought of the idea, but Trouble-
some was not impressed. "You care to find out who's
meaner, you or me," she told the Mule, "I'm ready any
time."

"I think I'd wait," said Silverweb, "and see if we get
some kind of sign."

"Like forty-four Skenys at once? Like a giant crystal
over our heads?"

"I had something less outlandish in mind," Silverweb
answered. For example . . ." And she pointed, doing it
discreetly with the tip of her chin as befit a situation
where the fine edges of manners weren't well known, to-
ward the Skerry that had separated from the group and
was heading toward them.

"Is it male or female, I wonder?" Troublesome said
softly.

"We don't even know that there are male and female
to the Skenys," Silverweb reminded her. "We know
only that they arc more beautiful than anything else
that we have ever seen."

And that was true. The one approaching them, mov-
ing over the sand with a gliding step like someone on
ice, and at ease on ice, was blinding in its beauty. Much
taller than Troublesome, who missed six feet by only a

129

And Then There'll Be Fireworh

quarter of an inch, copper-skinned and its silver hair like
a fall of water in the sun well below its waist, with eyes
of purest turquoise, it lacked only wings to make it
Angel. Angel of what was the question . . . and nobody
knew.

As nobody knew what substance of bone must be
required to support the slender muscular bodies of a
race that claimed eight feet as its average height Or
how many there were, or what they ate, or why it was
they hated all water except the narrow trickle they held

sacred.

Another time. Troublesome would have been adding
up the bits of data, storing them in her mind to puzzle
over later, as she did faced with any mystery. But not
now . . . not when the Skeny smiled at them, leaned
over the wagon, and lifted Responsible up in its aims
and against its slender body, leaving the comforters and
pillows behind in the bottom of the wagon; and then it
turned, motioning with its head for them to follow.

Troublesome didn't like that at all, and it distracted
her attention completely. That was, after all, her own
kin being galloped off with by a being that nobody knew
whether it might eat her alive or keep her for a pet or
skin her for her hide. But she hadn't much choice, ei-
ther, distracted or not; they were outnumbered many
times over, even if they'd known what manner of living
thing they dealt with. . . and they didn't

The voice in her mind was gentle enough, but it was
firm.

DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER, YOU THAT ARE NAMED
TROUBLESOME, it Said, LEAVE THE MULE AND THE

130

And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

WAGON WHERE THEY ARE, AND FOLLOW US. NO HARM
WILL COME TO YOUR SISTER OR TO ANY OF YOU—HOW
COULD YOU THINK SUCH A THING?

Troublesome was not accustomed to mindspeech,,
and she didn't like that, either. Two of the indigenous
species of Marktwain were telepathic, then. It made
sense, when you thought about it... how else could
the treaties have been negotiated? For sure. First
Granny and the others had not landed speaking
"Skerry," nor would the Skerrys have been fluent in
Ozark English. She'd never thought about it before, and
it was only that she was so flustered that she thought of
it now. It kept her mind off the possibilities up ahead,
that she could in no way predict. But it was said that
when the Mules mindspoke anybody they nearly de-
stroyed that person's mind in the process. The Skerry's
voice in her mind only made her think of bells, chiming.
Deep bells.

THAT is HOW YOU TELL, came the voice again, and
she judged that there was laughter in it THE DEEP

BELLS ARE THE MALES, THE MIDDLE ONES OUR FEMALES,
THE MIXED ONES THE SHEMALES, AND THE HIGH CHIMES
ARE OUR CHILDREN, WHO DID NOT COME ALONG WITH US
TODAY.

"Oh, now, that's not likely!" Troublesome protested
aloud. She was impressed, but she would push fust so far
and no farther. She had no intention of just thinking at
anything, if it did stand eight feet tall.

YOU ARE QUITE RIGHT, said a different voice, rr is A

CONFUSION OF TRANSLATION. MY FRIEND MEANS THAT
THAT IS HOW YOUR HUMAN MIND INTERPRETS OUR

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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

COMMUNICATION. YOU HAVE BELLS AVAILABLE TO YOU
AS A MODE OF PERCEPTION; WE MAKE USE OF THAT
MODE, FOR ITS CONVENIENCE . . . OTHERWISE, YOU
WOULD HEAR. . . UNPLEASING NOISES.

"Botheration," said Troublesome, and hurried her
pace to keep up. Beside her, Silverweb called ahead to
the Skerry.

"She is one that would prefer privacy of mind," said
Silverweb. "You are distressing her with your invasions."

"I'd live through it," said Troublesome crossly. "I've
lived through worse, and I don't need mollycoddling."

"There's no need for it," Silverweb answered. "I am
here, and if they want to use mindspeech they can do it
through me. I don't mind it"

"Not at all? Having your whole mind naked like
that?"

Troublesome said it before she thought; and then she
knew a deep shame, remembering the way she had
lambasted Lewis Motley Wommack the ^yd for ex-
pressing a similar dislike. And he had had it to bear, if
he spoke the truth, over months—not just a few mo-
ments, as she had- It might very well be different with
another human, instead of this alien creature; never-
theless, she was ashamed. She had not known what it
would be like, nor had she made any attempt to imagine
it

"Not a scrap," said Silverweb of McDaniels. "Any-
thing in my mind, they are welcome to. My only prob-
lem is keeping up with youall in this sand—I'm not ex-
actly short, but the rest of you are a good deal longer of
leg than I'll ever be." She was silent a minute, and then

132

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

nodded. "They tell me," she went on, "that it is abso-
lutely necessary for us to hurry—that the crystals charge
quickly and we have no time to spare."

All the Skenys had in fact gotten far ahead of both
the Ozark women, who had had no practice walking
over dry sand and were floundering as much as they
were stepping.

"If we don't hurry it up, Silverweb, I'll wager they'll
just pick us up and cany us, too." fretted Troublesome,
"like a couple of armloads of kindling. You fall down,
I'll smack you, so help me."

"Your bark," observed Silverweb, "is much worse
than your bite. Why do you go on like that?"

Troublesome had the usual answer ready. "I have a
reputation to maintain." She needed it embroidered
across her chest.

"Worked hard building it up, too, as I recall."
"J|      "Far too hard to throw it away now, in the middle of
a desert."

Silverweb laughed, and stumbled, and hurried on as
best she could. The Skerrys were leading them eastward,
toward a line of rocks humped up on the horizon.
Darkest gray, almost black, some of them jet black,
against the sand. Where the sun struck them, rays of
light split out like spears. It was hard on the eyes; what
would it be like if this were not wintertime?

"The spring is there by those rocks," said Silverweb.
"Or so I have been told." Her yellow hair was coming
down from its usual elegant figure-eight of braid, some-
thing Troublesome had never seen happen before; she
found that it worried her, and she stopped to coil the

133

And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

heavy weight of it back again, tuck in the stray ends,
and anchor it firmly with the ironwood pins.

"Careful, Troublesome of Brightwater," Silverweb
teased her. "It begins with tidying up a friend in the des-
ert, and first thing you know you are seized with a lust
for helping people and taking in stray tadlings."

"Nonsense—I just can't abide mess."

Silverweb only laughed at her. "That's Responsible's
line, my friend/' she said, "not yours. You should see

yourself."

"Silverweb?"

"Yes?"

"What happens when we get there?"

"Whatever happens. Don't dawdle. Troublesome."

"It's farther than it looks."

"Save your breath, then!"

It was wise counsel; Troublesome hushed and con-
centrated on closing the gap between them and the
rocks. And at last they were there, a few minutes behind

the party of Skerrys.
When she saw what they were doing, she would have

rushed forward to stop them, but Silverweb had a firm
and astonishingly powerful grip on her arm, and the
voice of a Skerry rang, equally firm, inside her head.

WE ARE SORRY, it Said, TO BE DISCOURTEOUS . . . tF
ONLY WE HAD MORE TIME, WE WOULD OBSERVE YOUR
PREFERENCES, BUT THE CRYSTALS ARE GORGING ABOVE
YOUR CITIES. THERE IS NO TIME LEFT FOR NICETIES.
TROUBLESOME OF BIRGHTWATER, SILVERWEB OF MCDAN-
EELS, THIS IS WHAT MUST BE DONE . . . PAY CLOSE
ATTENTION, AND DO NOT FORGET ANYTHING THAT WE

134

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

TELL YOU. TROUBLESOME, YOU SEE THAT ROCK, THERE
WHERE THE WATER OVRFLOWS ITS BASIN?

The rock. Where the water overflows. Where her
sister now lay naked, her hair loose in the water and her
head pillowed on another rock set gently under it, where
the water bubbled up out of some hidden source and
poured over the still and lovely body. So frail, she
looked!

"I see it."

TAKE YOUR PLACE THERE, Came the Voice. WE SKERRYS
WILL FORM A ... YOU HAVE NO SEMANTIC CONSTRUCT
FOR IT, IT IS A SHAPE OF POWER . . . HERE AROUND THE
HOLY WATER. YOU ARE TO SIT BESIDE YOUR SISTER, ON
THAT ROCK. SILVERWEB, YOU OF CASTLE MCDANIELS, YOU
WILL KNEEL UPON THE SAND, AND YOU WILL CALL DOWN
THE LOVE YOU HAVE LEARNED TO DRAW UPON. YOU WILL
ASK THAT THE SLEEPER WAKE, SILVERWEB OF MCDANIELS,
WHILE WE SKERRYS SING FOR YOU. PLEASE, TAKE YOUR
PLACES!

"I'm dreaming this," said Troublesome, too worried
to be anything but cross and rude, but she did as she
was bid, and she went and settled herself on the boulder
near Responsible's head. Behind her, she heard the soft
hiss of movement, and she looked over her shoulder and
saw Silverweb kneeling on the sand with her arms raised
to the sky and her eyes already rapt, even in the scalding
sunlight and the constant battering of rays struck from
the rocks. The Skerrys had taken up positions that
looked to her to lack pattern of any kind, but she was
willing to believe it was a congruent shape for them. She
was willing to believe almost anything.

135
And Then There U Be Fireworks

And now they were going to sing.

And Silverweb was going to pray.

"But what am I supposed to do?" she asked hoarsely;

there was sand in her throat "Outside of keeping this
child from drowning, that is."

SHE WILL NOT DROWN, came a voice Troublesome felt
was new. Not that it mattered. Bells are bells. THE

WATER IS NOT DEEP ENOUGH OR SWIFT ENOUGH. THAT IS
NOT THE DANGER.

'Tell me, theni"

IF SILVERWEB OF MCDANBSLS IS SUCCESSFUL, IF THINGS
GO AS WE EXPECT THEM TO GO, THERE WILL BE ...
SUDDENLY, WITH NO WARNING ... A KIND OF TEAR IN
THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE. AT THAT INSTANT, WE BE-
LIEVE THAT YOUR SISTER WILL WAKE. AND AT THAT
SAME INSTANT, THERE WILL BE A CHANCE FOR SOME-
THING EVIL TO COME THROUGH THE TEAR WE HAVE
MADE, SOMETHING THAT WATTS ALWAYS FOR JUST SUCH
AN OPPORTUNITY, THROUGH AGES UPON AGES OF TIME.
YOU ARE TO PREVENT THAT.

Troublesome felt terror in her somewhere; she would
have sworn there was none left in her.
The voice went on, confident, urgent, soothing her.

YOUR ROLE HERE, THE ROLE FOR WHICH YOU HAVE
BEEN LEARNING ALL YOUR LIFE LONG, IS TO RECOGNIZE
THAT EVIL THING HOWEVER BEAUTIFULLY IT MAY BE DIS-
GUISED, AND TO STOP IT FROM ENTERING THIS SPACE AND
THIS TIME. THAT, TROUBLESOME OF BRIGHTWATER, IS
WHAT YOU ARE FOR IN THIS WORLD—WE NEED AN EX-
PERT IN EVIL.

Troublesome felt the terror go, and in its place a rrag-

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meat of knowledge, as of   something forgotten long ago
and now remembered for a   fraction of time. From the
breadth of that scrap of   remembrance, she straightened
and stared at the Skerry   she thought was speaking.

"Silverweb!'* she cried out, taut as a bowstring.
"What about Silverweb? You know what you leave her
open to?"

SILVERWEB OF MCDANIELS IS PROTECTED. THERE ARE
FEW SHIELDS SO INDESTRUCTIBLE AS PURITY AND VALOR
IN COMBINATION. SHOULD ANYTHING GET NEAR HER
WITH STRENGTH ENOUGH TO PASS THOSE SHIELDS, WE ARE
MORE THAN ABLE TO DEAL WTTH IT—AND IT IS NOT
LIKELY. BUT ALL OUR ATTENTION, AND ALL OF HERS,
MUST BE FOCUSED ON A SINGLE POINT. YOU ARE THE
ONLY ONE, TROUBLESOME, WHO CAN PROTECT YOUR
SISTER. BE READY, NOW! DON'T WATCH US; WATCH THERE,
CLOSE BY HER HEAD, WHERE THE ANCIENT EVIL WILL TRY
ITS BEST TO BREAK THROUGH. ... IT IS WEARY PAST
BEARING OF LYING TRAPPED BENEATH THAT SACRED
SPRING!

Troublesome understood that well enough; she
turned and set her eyes to watch, holding her breath, her
lower lip caught between her teeth and her strong hands
at the ready for. . . whatever might come.

And the Skerrys sang.

It was not precisely music, as Troublesome under-
stood music. Nothing to it of fiddle or dulcimer or gui-
tar, nothing of melody or harmony either; not even
mythm. She could make no sense of it, but it rose over
the sand and the rocks with an unmistakable power. It
was a call to that same Source that Silverweb called

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upon, and it supported her call, bore it up and carried it
on what must have been notes and chords, focused it as
Troublesome strained her eyes for anything—

There it was! Lovely in the water, a rose that rocked
gently on the surface of the clear water, a single perfect
yellow rose the size of her two cupped hands, with a
scent that was as seductive as wickedness ever had been
in all of time. Troublesome would have known it any-
where. She had it instantly, before it could drift one
inch closer to the sands that were its first goal, crushed
between her palms, and all her muscles knotted as she
struggled with a loathsome squirming Unknown desper-
ately determined to make the world its territory for a

change.

"Nasty piece of work that you are," shouted Trouble-
some of Brightwater, laughing and exultant, "begone to
wherever you came from, crawl back in your hole, you're
no match for me, nor ever could be! Squirm all you like,
and foul me all you care to ... not even trained, are
you? Ah, you're a sony excuse for a Holy Terror, let me
tell you; I was expecting more of a challenge!"

Occupied as she was, she had no way of knowing that
the long silver hair of the Skerrys, and the tunics they
wore, were being whipped and buffeted in a wind
against which—for all their lives spent in this desert—
they could scarcely stand. Or that their singing was
being choked by the clouds of sand that had turned the
sky black above them. Or that around Silverweb, like a
shield shaped to her body, there was a clear space where
no wind blew and no sand whirled, and all was still; and
where all was radiant with a clear golden light that was

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the same color the evilness had chosen as a strategy to
deceive them. Even the stench as the thing lost its con-
trol of scent-of-rose and began to pour out the smell that
was natural to it could not break the concentration that
poured through Troublesome's hands as they gripped
her adversary by what might have been its throat.

That adversary did not impress Troublesome, nor
could it touch Silvenveb; they were the two polarities
that served to hold this timespace intact. But the Skenys
were mightily impressed, and they gave a great sigh of
relief in Troublesome's mind, all the bells calling out to-
gether, as they saw the golden rose crushed and rubbed
to a slime in her hands, and they felt the wind fall and
saw the desert sky clear once again.

Troublesome bent to rub her arms clean in the sand
—she had no least intention of fouling the sacred water
with the vile stuff that covered her to the elbows. Scru-
pulously, she gathered each grain that might have been
contaminated by it into a heap before her, and she
scrabbled a hole in the sands and shoved those soiled
grains into it and laid a flat heavy rock over the spot to
mark it. And still she wondered if that would do it...
might could be there were tiny suckers and cells that
would leach out through the sand and make the sacred
water a new poison in a Universe already copiously
overendowed with poisons. She was hesitating, crouched
over the flat rock that seemed a puny barrier against
such harm, when she felt Suverweb touch her shoulder,
and jumped, startled.

"The Skenys say,*' Silverweb told her, "that it is en-

And Then There U Be Fireworks

tSrdy dead, with nothing left that can exist in this world.
They say it is not like other deaths, where a substance
will recombine as it goes back to its original elements
and enter the cycle of life again—it is too alien. You are
not to worry, they say; you did what was required, and it

is over."

"WeB, it wasn't much/* said Troublesome. "I could
do that every day and twice on Sundays."

"They would be pleased if you were denied any such
opportunity," said Silverweb dryly. "That's a direct

quote."
"Direct as you can make it, I expect Bells . . . what
kind of language might that be?"

Troublesome?"

Troublesome looked at her, still shaking the sand off

her arms.

"Yes, Silverweb?"

"It worked."

"What?"

"I said—it worked. Look there, behind you."

Troublesome whirled, and had she not been careful
she might well have cried, and spoiled her image for-
evermore. In the silver of the water, Responsible's eyes
were open, and she was speaking her sister's name.

140

CHAPTER 9

Over Castle Airy, the giant crystal was beginning to take
on the color of the small mallows that grew wild along
Oklahomah's seaclifis; a tinge redder than the pale color
of peachapple cider well made, but not yet the color of
strawberry wine. As the crystal's pulsing grew stronger,
its humming more clearly felt somewhere in the marrow
of the bones, the point that aimed toward the sky and
the point that aimed straight down toward the Castle it-
self began to look as if they could pierce both targets.
They were darker at the points.

The people of Airy had gone inside their houses, and
were huddled with their families. If they were to die,
they would at least die together, not alone out in a field
or a stable, or back of a counter in some store, some
workshop. It was better to wait with your children and
your kin and whoever you might love close by you.
There was no doubt in their minds that they were going
to die.

They only wondered how it would be. Would the
thing plunge down toward the ground like a missile and
explode in rosy flame or rosy poison? A gas, perhaps,
spreading out over the Kingdom and taking them all as
it coursed the air? And would it be a merciful poison,
one that meant no more than a kind of falling asleep?

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Or would there be convulsions and agonies and desper-
ate clawing at the throat? Or would it stay there in the
air and send out its cargo or death in rays, as the lasers
did? Or something else, something completely unknown
. . . and would it be merciful ... or would it be the
stuff of nightmare? They looked at the tadlings, and es-
pecially at the babies, and prayed that it would be mer-
ciful, and swift

At the Castle, Charity of Airy and the three Grannys
in residence could feel the terror. It took no telepathic
powers to sense an emotion like that, coming from every
side of you, and they bit their lips and frowned till their
heads ached. It wouldn't do to take the contagion of
that terror; might could be they would be needed later,
and in their right minds.

Castle Airy had no Magician of Rank for the Mules
to contact; and given that there were three Grannys
there to be put up with that was not surprising. But the
word had come in from Brightwater by comset almost at
once, Veritas Truebreed Motley passing it along just as
calm as he would have announced a blizzard. The
women of the Castle blessed the fortune that had made
them part of that system, and wondered what it was like
for the Kingdoms that were neither part of the Alliance
of Democratic Republics nor supplied by a Magician of
Rank. . . they would be completely isolated now.

Granny Forthright didn't like it a bit

"That thing up there," she fussed, waving at the ceil-
ing over her head with one knitting needle, "it scares the
bejabbers out of me—and J know what it is, not to men-
tion knowing that Airy's not the only Castle so blessed.

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Now what do you suppose it must be like for the
Families that don't know those things?"

"Well, it won't do," pronounced Granny Flyswift
"And that's all there is to it."

"I agree, it won't/' said Charity of Airy, "but talk is
cheap—I suggest we give it some careful thought before
we go doing anything. Is there truly anywhere that
there's neither comset transmission, nor Magician of
Rank, nor even a friendly neighbor to pass the word
along? Count them off, ladies, and carefully!"

"Brightwater, McDaniels, Clark, and Airy," said Fly-
swift "All on the comset, all brought up to date by
Veritas Truebreed. That's four."

"Mizzurah's got no comsets," put in Granny Heath-
erknit, "but there's a Magician of Rank at Castle Mot-
ley for the Mules to tell direct, and Granny Scrabble
there to see to it they don't kill him in the process. And
seeing as Mizzurah's not much bigger all told than our
back garden, there'll be somebody on the way to Castle
Lewis with a message long since. That's six. And Tina-
seeh. . . bad cess to it anyway . . . Tinaseeh's got four
Magicians of Rank at Castle Traveller, no need to worry
about that crew. And Granny Leeward, which is a
shame; I'd of been right pleased to see the four at
Traveller get their brains scrambled."

"Granny," chided Charity of Airy. "How you talk!"

"That's seven," said Granny Heatherknit, ignoring
her completely. "Seven of twelve."

"Castle Guthrie on Arkansaw has a Magician of
Rank, and so's Castle Farson—that's nine ... oh,
law!" Granny Flyswift made a soft and sorrowful noise.

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"Ah, law," she said, counting it up on her fingers,
"it'll be Purdy and Wommack as think they're all alone
in this. No comsets, no Magicians of Rank, no way to
know whatever in the world is happening and nobody as
would care to make the effort to tell them. I can't say as
I'm specially worried about the Wommacks—"

"You should be/' Granny Forthright interrupted.
"They'll be declaring it's the Wommack Curse again."

"Forthright, that slipped my mind entirely! You're
right as right! And wouldn't you know it, wouldn't you
just know it, it'd be the fool Purdys, as don't know
enough to come in out of the rain anyhow, and the
Wommacks with their fool curse, as are left stranded?"
Granny Flyswift raised a finger beside her eyeglasses.
"It's near on enough to make a body think they may
have something with their curses and their poor-mouth-
ing about bad luck following 'em everywhere and every-

when!"

"They make their own luck,*' Charity of Airy scoffed,

"and you know it—don't talk nonsense at a time like
this! Anybody wants a curse bad enough can manage to
bring one down; you just have to put your back into it.
And there's nothing we can do about either Wommacks
or Purdys—they might as well be back on Old Earth for
all we can do."

"And that makes eleven," Granny Heatherknit
pointed out. "There's somebody left out"

"That's easy done and easy accounted for," said
Granny Heatherknit. "Nobody wants to think about the
Smiths. The Purdys now, they just need encouragement
and they'd be all right And the Wommacks, a good
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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

clout between the eyes'd break them of blaming every-
thing and its little fingernail on their old curse. But the
SmirAs, I declare there's no hope for them! Do you
know, they caught one of their Attendants again—this'll
be what, the ninth time?—trying to tap into the comset
transmissions in the dark of the night? I cannot believe
the-"

"Granny Heatherknit!" Charity of Airy so rarely
raised her voice that they all three jumped, and Heath-
erknit closed her mouth in sheer surprise. "If the whole
world came to an end in a thunderclap, you wouldn't
have time to get ready, for it would catch you gossip-
ing!"

"Begging your pardon, Charity," said Granny Heath-
erknit "I got carried away."

"And I assume," Charity went on in a more normal
tone, "that we've no reason to concern ourselves with
the Smiths. They've got Lincoln Parradyne Smith the
39th over there, and whatever else he may be, he's a per-
fectly good Magician of Rank. It'll be only the Wom-
macks and the Purdys, poor souls."

"You don't suppose the Mules would call on the
Grannys in such a hardscrabble?" hazarded Flyswift.
"Castle Purdy has one, and there's two in residence at
Castle Wommack."

All four women shuddered at the very idea, and the
other two Grannys gave Flyswift a long hard look.

"If they did," said Granny Forthright solemnly,
"there's now three less Grannys on Ozark."

"Pshaw! I'm not so sure," said Flyswift. "No, I'm not
so sure as a Granny's mind is any punier than a Magi-
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And Then There'U Be Firework

clan of Rank's. Who's to say, excepting always the Ma-
gicians of Rank theirselves, and why wouldn't they?"

"You care to try mindspeech with a Mule?" de-
manded Granny Heatherknit. "Or anything else as lives
and breathes? Or doesn't, for that matter?"

Granny Flyswift admitted that she wouldn't, particu-
larly.

"Well, then."

Charity of Airy, tucking back a strand of the hair now
gone snow white with the long months of hardship and
worry, made a sudden hushing sound. That was twice
she'd caught them by surprise in one morning—it was
not like Charity to be ill mannered—and they thought
as they often had lately how she'd gone gaunt and old
since pneumonia had taken her daughter Caroline-Ann.
She'd doted on Caroline-Ann, had Charity.

"You thought of something. Charity?" asked Granny
Heatherknit gently. "Have we forgotten somebody?
Twelve Families there's always been, and twelve we've
counted off—unless a thirteenth's landed, and a fine
time they've picked if they have, I must sayl We've ac-
counted for all, to my mind."

"It's not that," said Charity. "No, it's something that
)'ust struck me. And I may not be right"

"And you may not be wrong, either. Many a long
year now you've been solving problems, it stands to
reason you'd get good at it," said Granny Heatherhut
"What's struck you, m'dear?"

"Those things. Those crystals."

"Struck us all, I do believe. Charity."

"Yes, but I've been thinking about them. . . .

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

Veritas Truebreed Motley says they're devices to gather
up energy, focus it—that they're up there charging, like
batteries. And I ask myself, where are they getting that
energy? It's happening fast, Grannys. You go look and
see how much darker they arc, and feel how much
louder! What arc they drawing on for a source?"

"Charity, might could be there's a mothership up
there, beaming it down to them; might could be any-
thing!"

The Grannys nodded, all in agreement on that; the
unknown was, after all, the unknown. But Charity had
something on her mind.

"I have an idea," she declared, "and I plan to spread
iti" And she was running for Castle Airy's comset
speaker, her skirts hitched up in one hand and the cane
she'd taken to using lately clutched in the other.

"If I can get through!" she called back over her shoul-
der, and out the door she went, leaving the Grannys
staring after her.

"Well," said Granny Heatherknit to the others, "bet-
ter one of us turn on the set over there or we'll miss it
ourselves, and wouldn't that be a comedown? Not a one
of us as can keep up with Charity, cane or no cane."
Granny Flyswift moved slowly, belying her name, but
she was close by the comset stud, and it Bickered and
came on about three words into Charity of Airy's mes-
sage.

"—to me," she was saying. "I might could be wrong,
but I have a feeling about this. The crystals over the
Castles, they're nothing more than enormous batteries,
storage ceDs» and till they're charged they can't harm us.

147

And Then There U Be Fireworks

Jid perhaps they charge on sunshine, or wind, or
fcardust, for all we know. But 111 lay you twelve to
hree, citizens, seeing as how they come from a plane"
ary alliance that's founded on magic and not science
... Ill lay you twelve to three they feed and grow fat
on the plain scared-sick terror that's coming off this
planet like a hurricane. I'll just bet you they do!"

The Grannys looked at each other, and back at Char-
ity's confident face on the comset screen. She could be
right; she'd always had an uncanny way of knowing
things, made up of three parts common sense, three
parts intuition, three parts blind luck, and one part they
didn't care to put a name to.

"It is just possible," Charity went on, "that if we
can*t stop them we can at least slow them down some.
If we can only be calm, and leave off feeding them fear,
while we think what to do. It can't hurt, and it might
help. I want you to turn your hand to something else
than being scared, you hear me? Times tables, that's
always good. Or counting backwards from one hundred
by threes, that's even better. You can't keep your mind
on being scared if you're doing that You tadlings as
don't have your numbers mastered, or anybody as is so
scared they've lost their numbers, you do the alphabet
backwards. Backwards, now! You can't do that and give
off terror at the same time."

The people listening agreed that it made sense, and
even if it hadn't it would be something to do; and those
that had no comsets any longer had neighbors pounding
on their doors to tell them.

Charity's voice went on and on, soothing and strok-

148

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ing, going out to four Kingdoms. Even Veritas True-
breed Motley, nursing his aching temples with a cold
doth at Brightwater, was nodding agreement She had
me principle right, however ignorant she might be of its
workings.
"Now/' said Charity of Airy, "I'll do it with you.
We'll all be calm together, calm as pond water. 100. 97.
94.91. Hmmmm. . . 88. . .85. • ."

In the houses, they said it with her. And the tadlings
tried the other thing and were amazed at how hard it
was. Glottal stop, that was easy. Z, to go on with. Y, and
then X, a person could manage. But from there on it
was hard work, and who ever would of thought it? The
alphabet, that everybody knew like they knew the look
of their thumbs! Backwards it fairly brought the sweat
out all over you. X. . . Q?

"Can't be Q!" said a tiny one, crossly, stamping her
foot "It's not time yet for Q\"

"What is it, then?" challenged her brother. "You're
so smart. . . oh! I know! W! Before X comes W!"

"Pheeyeew," fussed the little girl. "W. . . now, let's
us Just see. . ."

Charity of Airy and the Grannys were well satisfied;

they could feel the easing in the air almost immediately.
It was just as well, under the circumstances, that none
of them could see or sense the carnage in Smith King-
dom, where Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39th was pay-
ing the penalty for his phony Granny that was no
Granny, and the people of the Kingdom along with
him. Long before it occurred to any of the other Magi-
cians of Rank to ask a Mule to pass the message along to

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the Mules of Smith, Lincoln Parradyne had paid his bill
in full; he lay dead on the floor of the Throne Room, his
brain crisped in his skull like a dead coal. And the only
thing spared him was the horror outside and in, where
the people of Smith trampled one another in their panic
as they tried insanely to flee the menace above them.
The crystal over Castle Smith was fust a little different;

its color matched the color of the blood smeared on the
streets and the stairs of the town, almost exactly.

Troublesome of Brightwater lifted her sister out of
the spring and held her close, sacred water and all, won-
dering if she had ever been so happy before. Bring on
the giant alien crystals, bring on the slimy alien wick-
ednesses, bring on anything you fancied; nevertheless,
her sister was awake again.

Responsible fought herself free of Troublesome's em-
brace, which was somewhat more enthusiastic than was
compatible with breathing.
"Troublesome?"

She tugged at the long black braid, to get Trouble-
some's attention, and wiped some of the water on her
face, and asked plaintively if she could please have an
explanation. It was not every day a person woke up
naked in a creek, with a crowd attending.

She listened, her face growing more and more stem,
while she was told. All about the awfulness that had
come when she was put in pseudocoma. The poverty
and the sickness and the weather all uncontrolled ... it
sounded like the tales of Old Earth . . . and nobody
knowing what might be happening anyplace but the

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

four Kingdoms of the Alliance, except for rumors. AH
about the Grannys' climb up the mountain, and Trou-
blesome's dreadful ocean voyage. And when the part
about Lewis Motley Wommack the ^rd came alon&
she cried out a broad word in total indignation that star-
tled Silverweb of McDaniels right out of the last scraps
of her rapture.

"It would of been when I was asleep, TroublesomeF
declared Responsible of Brightwater. "That fool man!
Ignorant, that's what he is, not to mention no sense at
all. Half the night on Brightwater it's day on Kintucky»
clear across that ocean on the other side of the world-
did he never leam anything? I was dreaming ... I
remember the dreams. Oh, I remember them well. and
they're not fit for Silverweb's ears. But never, never did I
imagine that while I dreamed I was intruding on his
mind. . . . The idiot! Oh, I'll make him pay, I promise
you—oh, how I'll make him pay! He'll curse the day he
was born, and long for the day that death releases him
before I'm through. . . stupid man!"

"He is that," said Troublesome. "He might have

asked you—but he wouldn't stoop. That's how he put

', fi

it

Responsible struggled from her sister's arms onto the
rocks, where she sat hugging her knees and clothed only
in her long hair, that was almost dry now in the hot des-
ert sun.

"It was the Timecomer Prophecy," she said sorrow-
fully, "and no way to escape it. But I must say there's
nothing elegant to the way it was fulfilled."

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"Nor any excuse," said Silverweb. "For either him or
you."

Responsible hadn*t any interest at that moment in
subtle moral questions. "Now what?" she said. She was
a tad dazed, but she was not so addled that she intended
to get into a discussion of how she and young Wommack
might have managed to avoid what had been decreed
since the beginning of time. What she wanted to know
was the status of things.

Before Troublesome or Silverweb could speak, the
Skenys took it up.

RESPONSIBLE OF BRIGHTWATER, THE PLANETS OF THE
GARNET RING NOW SEE THIS WORLD AS RIPE FOR THE
CONQUERING, AND THEY HAVE COME TO PLUCK IT—IT
FALLS NOW WITHIN THEIR LAWS OF COLONIAL RIGHT.

i CAN SEE THAT IT MIGHT, Responsible replied, not
caring how much her mindspeaking might startle the
other two women. There didn't seem to be much left in
the way of secrets anyhow. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE,
EXACTLY?

THEY HAVE HEARD THE REPORT OF THE OUT-CABAL,
THAT THIS WORLD HAS FALLEN TO ANARCHY AND DISAS-
TERS, AND THEY HAVE SET A ... YOU HAVE NO SEMANTIC
CONSTRUCT FOR IT. NO ... YOU DO! YOU MUST IMAGINE
A STORAGE CELL, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER, ONE
HUNDRED AND TEN FEET FROM POINT TO POINT, POISED
OVER EACH AND EVERY OZARK CASTLE AND FEEDING NOW
—CHARGING NOW—WHILE WE STAND HERE TALKING.
THEY ARE SHAPED LIKE DIAMONDS, AND YOU WOULD CALL
THEM . . . CRYSTALS. THEY ARE DEADLY, AND THERE IS
VERY UTTLE TIME.

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And Then There Q Be Firework

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE? Responsible asked them, and
Troublesome realized suddenly that her sister's mind-
voice was |ust that, a voice, and not bells. When she had
the leisure, if she had the leisure, she would consider the
question of why that caused no barrier to the conver-
sation. HAVE THEY BROUGHT OUT THE LASERS AGAINST
THE THINGS? HAVE THEY TRIED A TRANSFORMATION, A
DELETION TRANSFORMATION WITH ALL THE NINE MAGI-
CIANS OF RANK—

The Skerry cut her off.

YOU FORGET, it Said. THERE HAS BEEN NO MAGIC ON

/

THIS WORLD WHILE YOU SLEPT—YOU HAVE BORNE IT ALL
WITHIN YOUR SELF. AS FOR THE LASERS, YOUR PEOPLE
HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING WHAT IT MIGHT DO IF THEY
WERE TO PIERCE THE CRYSTALS, OR EVEN IF THEY WERE
TO TRY—NOR DO WE, NOR DO THE MULES, NOR DO THE
GENTLES. THE GENTLES, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER,
ARE VERY DISTRESSED BY ALL THIS. ... I DO NOT
KNOW IF THEY WILL EVER COME UP TO THE DAYLIGHT
AGAIN. NOW, WE ALL ASK THE SAME THING, AND IT SEEMS
TO US ONLY JUSTICE, SINCE IT IS YOUR PEOPLE WHO
HAVE BROUGHT ALL THIS UPON US. WE ASK THAT YOlf
DO SOMETHING, FOR THIS WORLD IS IN YOUR CHARGE.

It seemed to Troublesome that that wasn't justice at
all, or even likely, and she and Silverweb both protested
at once that Responsible was bound to be weak and like
a newbom babe for some time, that she would have to
get her strength back as anybody does after a long time
ill, and that asking her to take on a whole passel of alien
planets in her condition was downright ridiculous. It
came out garbled, a scrap from Troublesome and a scrap

153

And Then There'U Be Fireworh

from Silverweb, and some scraps from both, but they
were of one mind on the matter.

What they had not taken into account was the
strength of the energy that was being lent to Respon-
sible by the Skenys and the Mules. This was their
planet, too, and had been theirs many thousands of
years before ever an Ozarker set foot on it, and they had
no desire to see it fall to the Gamet Ring, with who
knew what consequences to follow. They didn't know a
great deal about the peoples of the Garnet Ring, but
they knew enough to be sure they weren't anybody
you'd want for neighbors, and never mind the details.

Responsible of Brightwater gave her sister and Silver-
web one look of considerable irritation, drew on the
more than ample reservoir of energy the Mules and the
Skenys were offering her, and before the other two
women could so much as draw a breath she had
SNAPPED the three of them back to her own bedroom at
Castle Brightwater, leaving Sterling to bring the wagon
home.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, where she'd lain so
long silent and motionless, she clucked her tongue, and
glared at Troublesome and Silverweb, both of them
more than slightly startled by their unaccustomed mode
of transportation.

"This won't do," announced Responsible. "This
won't do at all. Let me get something on my bones be-
sides my skin, and I'll see to it."

And she headed for her wardrobe with her hands al-
ready busy braiding her hair, pausing only the few sec-
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onds it took to advise Troublesome that she'd never
seen anybody quite so grubby and it would be a good
thing if she had a tidy-up before she forgot how the
parts of a decent female were supposed to be arranged.

155

CHAPTER 10

*'My la^y—I am afraid."

The words came from an unusual source; Jessica of
Lewis, Teacher Jessica these past seven months, was in
the usual run of things a tower of strength. She was a
true Three: brilliant, creative, high-spirited, and one for
whom everything seemed to come easily. She had
slipped into the Teaching Order as a hand slips into a
glove made to its measure. None of the usual kicking at
the traces for Jessica of Lewis. Not a flicker when her
beloved books— "Real books!" the others had whis-
pered. "Not micros, real books' And three of them!"—
had been taken from her and added to the community
library in Castle Wommack's north wing. When all the
rest were down, it was Teacher Jessica they relied on, to
bring their spirits up and to remind them once again
that for those that are vowed to poverty die experience
of poverty is no hardship.

Now she sat in Faculty Meeting, fifth down from
Teacher Jewel of Wommack, so fast had she ascended
through the ranks, and said: "My lady, I am afraid."

"We are all afraid," Teacher Jewel responded. "Not
to be afraid would show a lack of common sense, or an
unhealthy detachment from reality. There is a group
consensus; nowhere in that consensus is there space for

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the crystal suspended above this Castle. How could we
not be afraid?"

"That bodacious great rock hanging over our heads
and ready for to drip down blood, it looks like . . . Law!
Teacher Jessica, I should hope we're afraid!"

"If it is a rock," said Jewel of Wommack carefully,
giving the new Teacher Candidate a measuring look,
"what is holding it where it is, Cousin Naomi? Rocks do
not Boat, neither do they fly. And there is no more
magic."

Naomi of Wommack met her kinswoman's eyes with-
out flinching; a good sign, thought Jewel. Naomi's
speech was rougher than any Candidate's they had ac-
cepted yet; one would have thought she was trying for
the formspeech used by the Grannys, except that even
the Grannys no longer said "for to" before their verbs
. . . perhaps in a moment of great excitement one
might, but Jewel could not recall an example. Naomi
had come out of a pocket on the tar side of the Wilder-
ness Lands of Kintucky, from a cluster of six households
so isolated they had not had comsets even before Re-
sponsible of Brightwater was struck down. The rest of
Kintucky had not even known they were there, and
given the possibilities of marriage open to them they
would not have lasted long—it was good fortune a
Teacher, canvassing the Wilderness on her Mule, had
stumbled across them.

"There will be again," said Naomi, confident as a
child. "As there do be star and sun and tree. Somehow
it's got a hitch in it, it's a kind of drought as comes in a

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bad year for the rains, but no reason for to doubt I
don't doubt"

Jewel of Wommack believed her; she was as trans-
parent as thin new ice on a puddle. And—always pro-
vided they all lived through whatever this crisis was—
Naomi's ways might require more polishing than the
other Candidates' had. Maybe. Jewel had discussed it
when Naomi of Wommack joined them, and there had
been disagreement among the senior faculty.

"She will be going back to Teach in the Wilderness
Lands and along their borders/' Jewel had reminded
them. "Might could be that if her speech and her man-
ners are greatly changed they won't trust her there, and
trust is the foundation of Teaching. Think of my
brother—when he took up the speechmode of the Magi-
cians of Rank, purely to spite them, and then kept it up
purely to spite the rest of us—think how it changed the
way people behaved around him. He has a good deal
more difficulty coaxing the young women into the hay-
mows than he had when he spoke like anybody else . . .
and a very good thing that is, I might add."

"But how, my lady," the others had protested, letting
the matter of Lewis Motley drop, "how can she be re-
spected if she speaks like she does, and drinks her coffee
out of her saucer?"

Jewel's eyes, always dark blue, had gone even darker,
and she had rebuked them sharply, reminding them for
what seemed to her the ten thousandth time that it was
presence that inspired respect, not fine manners and
flowery speech.
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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

"Do you ever look at your Teachers* Manuals?" she
had asked them, exasperated. "It's set down there for
you clearly enough, if you'd only look!"

It was among the Rubs Major

The essence of inspiring belief is to achieve
congruence, so that the channel of the voice and
the channel of the body are in every smallest
feature in true harmony.

And the codicil:

And it would be well if the channel of the heart
could be harmonious as well, providing always tor
the protection of the innocent

That is ... if you knew too much. keep it to yourself,
and never mind the congruence of the heart, which was
why it went in a codicil.

Candidate Naomi of Wommack met die congruence
requirement to perfection. Her words were rough, her
features were rough, her manners were rough, her move-
ments were rough. She strode when she walked, she
leaped up when she stood, she collapsed in a heap when
shesat . . .

"It is congruence." Teacher Jewel had said, ending
the discussion. "It may be of great value. I know no re-
quirement that Teachers must be like dolls, all matched
the way the Grannys are. I may in fact go back to an
easier way of speaking my own self; I was more comfort-
able that way."

A voice in the back of her head had said sadly: No,
you w3l not And she had known it was true. Senior

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Teacher of the Order, and not yet sixteen-she needed
every mark of authority she could get, including the ele-
gant speechmode—not quite his own, but elegant none-
theless—in which Lewis Motley Wommack had drilled
her till she wept. He had been quite right

"My lady?"

Jewel was wrenched from her reverie, and embar-
rassed that she'd been able to fall into it, considering the
circumstances.

"I apologize," she said distractedly. "My mind was
somewhere. . . in a pleasanter time."
"We are wondering," said the speaker, a young
Teacher whose voice had the granite edge fright gives
when held back on tight rein, "if we should go on with
the lessons today. We are afraid ... the children are
even more so."

"And what are the children doing at this moment,
Teacher Cristabel?" Jewel asked her. "Do you know?"

"Huddled around their parents, sitting in their laps
and being rocked if they're little enough, cowering
under beds and porches . . . anything to get out of
sight of that. . . thing. Whatever it is."

"In that case," said Jewel of Wommack resolutely,
"we will of course go on with lessons. And the quicker
the better. The most helpful thing we could do would
be to present those children with die idea that there is
order in their days despite diat unholy object, and that
it hasn't the power to make the grownups set aside the
usual daily routine."

One of her faculty had a thought that had been diick
on the far side of the world, in Airy Kingdom.

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'They are all about to die/' she said. "Better they die
together than apart."

Jewel felt a rage that would be no help here, and she
put it aside to be dealt with another time, and set her
questions.

"Teacher Cecuia," she asked, "how is it that you
know they, or any of us, are about to die?"

"My lady!"

"Well? If you have information, speak up; and if you
have none, hold your peace. Has that crystal done any
one of us, or any thing, injury?"

"Not yet, my lady."

"Not yetl But it will, eh? It does not fit the group
consensus, will not be poked or shoved into the model
we have built and labeled HERE SITS THE REAL WORLD
. . . and therefore, it has to be a source of death."

"But my lady—"

"Perhaps," said Jewel icily, "might could be the time
has come for a change in that model. Had you thought
of that? It is unknown; one fears the unknown. No
doubt the first rainbow ever to be seen in the sky had
people running and squalling, too."
Teacher Candidate Naomi was fascinated. Jewel
could tell, and before she could call out something dis-
graceful, the Senior Teacher moved smoothly on into
her next sentence.

"Until such time as we have evidence that that thing
is a danger, we will behave normally," she instructed
them. "That is our duty."

The Teachers and the Candidates nodded, though
some did it reluctantly. They could see the rightness of

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what she said, and hoped those Teachers out riding
their circuits or in residence in small towns beyond
reach of the Casde would see it as well. The sight of the
Teachers at their posts presenting history and grammar
and mathematics and ecology and music theory to the
children, as they did on any other day, would go a long
way toward calming any panic. Business as usual, that
was what was needed.

Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd must have
thought so, too. He came into the room in a fury, de-
manding to know why they weren't already on their way
to their classes.

Jewel's voice sliced the air like a whip: "When I say
that they are to go to their classes, they will go—and not
until!"

The other women dropped their eyes and folded their
hands; except for Naomi, who would not for anything
have missed a single detail of the confrontation between
brother and sister.

"Jewel, I do not mean to interfere—" the young man
began.

"Then don't. Co on about your business ... if you
have any business . . . and leave us to ours. You have
nothing to contribute here, and we have no time to cod-
dle you."

I will never stop paying, thought Lewis Motley;

never. She wanted a home, and a nuns body beside
hers at night, and babes in her arms, and tadlings play-
ing round her that looked just like that man; that's all
she ever wanted. And I gave her this instead.

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It had been necessary, he was still convinced of that
Without the comsets, cut off from the rest of the conti-
nents, the people of Kintucky would have been con-
demned to ignorance and superstition; the Teachers had
been absolutely necessary. But she was not going to for-
give him.

And there'd been the matter of Responsible of
Brightwater. . . that had not been necessary.

He gave her a stiff and formal nod, longing for the
days when she'd worshiped the ground he walked on
and the air he breathed. He wondered sometimes if he
would ever love anything or anyone as he loved his little
sister. He hoped nob

"I beg your pardon," said the former Guardian of
Castle Wommack, and closed the door quietly behind
him as he made his exit

"Now then," said Jewel—and they all understood;

(he incident had not happened—"the only question is
what you are to tell the children. And we must decide
quickly, because you should be in your classrooms in ten
minutes, and well prepared. Suggestions, please."

Teacher Sharon of Airy, second in rank to Jewel her-
self, spoke first

"Do we know anything?*'

"Nothing,*' said Jewel. "It was not there; it appeared
out of nowhere and it was there; it remains there. It
grows darker in color, and the Castle throbs with the vi-
bration it is emitting. That is all."

'*We cannot tell the children that!"

"Why not? It is the truth."

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And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

The protests came from eveiy one of the seventeen
who sat around the table, except Naomi of Wommack.

"Dozens," said Naomi. "What point is there making
up tales and pretty lies? Reckon any tadling smart
enough to do his three-times is going to see we're lying
—they do, you know. You can't lie to tadlings. Best
they see we know what they know and howsomever,
pointy rock or no pointy rock, we're there for to teach
same as always. Unless one of youaH has an explanation
to offer 'em as will pass for truth."

"Well? Have you?" Jewel asked the silent women.

"It seems harsh," said Teacher Sharon, considering.
"It is quite clear," Jewel of Wommack told her hesi-
tant faculty, "that whatever that is up there, it was not
brought us by the Good Fairies for our delight. What is
haish is letting those children cower and shiver and cry
all the day long while we sit here and console one an-
other. You wiD go to your classes—as usual. If the chil-
dren ask what that is in the air, you will say you don't
know, and you will go on with your lessons—as usual If
they do not bring it up, you will not bring it up. As for
me, I will get the fastest Mule we have in the stables
and ride out to by to reach the Teachers in the country
schools, as many as I can, and I will be telling them
what I have told you. As usual. Do youall understand?"

"Yes, my lady."

Fifteen grudging yes-my-ladys, and one willing one
horn Naomi of Wommack; Naomi would of been will-
ing, Jewel suspected, if ordered to lay herself full length
in a fire.

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And Then There U Be Fireworks

"Let's get on with it, then/' said Teacher Jewel, and
she took up the small bell at her right hand to give the
three rings of dismissal.

So it was that Jewel of Wommack was not in Boone-
vflle when the emergency alarms shrilled from every
comset in the Castle and the town. She was out on
Gamaliel, a Mule short in temper but long on endur-
ance, making her way around a thicket of tangled briars
toward the thirty-one families of Capertown, six miles
beyond the borders of the capital.

There was a delay white the people realized what the
sound was, it had been so long. For a few moments they
thought it was something new from the horror in the
sky, and the Teachers were hard put to it to keep their
charges calm as they waited for word to come explaining
it to them. They kept their voices steady and went on
with the measured presentation of principles and con-
cepts, and if their hands trembled they clasped them
firmly behind their backs. The astonishing noise went
on and on and on. And then, almost everywhere at once,
people remembered.

"It's the comset alarm!" It came from a hundred
places. People stared at one another, and shouted:

"What does it mean?"

The comsets had been silent on Kintucky two years at
least; and even when they'd been an ever present part of
daily life, the alarm had been rare. It was no wonder
they were confused. But when they turned to look at the
comset screens set in their housewalls they saw that it
was true; they were functioning again. The red cafl light
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And Then There'U Be Fireworks

in the upper right-hand comer of each screen was blink-
ing steadily on and off, and the alarm shrilled on. Those
that had hung a picture or a weaving over the screen to
escape its dead gray eye always staring at them rushed to
take away the barrier and get to the ON stud.

"Ah, the Holy One be praised, the Holy One be
praised!" cried Granny Copperdell at Castle Wom-
mack. "Will you look? It's herself, oh glory be, it's her-
self! It's Responsible of Brightwater herself"

First a miracle of terror, now a miracle of some other
kind . . . life was confusing. But even in the classrooms
everything else stopped, while the people of Ozark lis-
tened to Responsible's voice.

She began by explaining, for those Castles that might
not yet know, what the crystals were and where they
came from. She spoke hurriedly and promised them de-
tails later, when there was more time.

"But for now," she said, "the details don't matter.
For now, youall must listen to me, and pay close atten-
tion to what I say, and waste no more time in carry-ons.
Listen, now!

"The peoples of the Camet Ring are not savages—
they have laws. By their laws they may move to conquer
only planets and systems of planets that are governed, as
they are, by magic rather than by science. And of those
planets they are constrained to conquer only in two situ-
ations: first, when the planet they're hankering after has
gone to anarchy and has no government of its own to be
displaced; second, if the planet they fancy is dying any-
way, of natural disasters or of war. Ozark—this planet-
comes near meeting both those conditions at this very

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minute, if what I'm told is true; and I've no reason to
doubt it. And that is why the Garnet Ring has set those

crystals in our skies.

"I do not know what the crystals will do if they aren't
stopped," she told them. "I haven't the least idea. I do
know, however, that they have power enough to destroy
us twelve times over, no matter how it is they go about
it And I know how to stop fheml If youall will help me,

and waste not one second."

Responsible paused and gave them time to take all
that in, and beside her, beyond the range of the cam-
eras, Troublesome squeezed her sister's left hand, and
Silverweb of McDaniels held tightly to her right hand,
and the Grannys sat with their hands pressed to their
lips. As for Veritas Truebreed Motley, he paced. There
was no way of knowing if the comsets were working on
the other continents where they'd been disused all this
time. There was no way of knowing if there was any-
body left alive on some of those continents to hear tile
alarm and turn on the comsets if they did still work.
And there was no way, for sure there was no way, to pre-
dict whether, even if everything was working and all the
Ozarkers were hanging on Responsible's every word, she
would be able to persuade them. The suspense was al-
most as hard on him as his humiliation. How had Re-
sponsible of Brightwater been brought out of pseudo-
coma, without the help of the Magicians of Rank?
Nobody would tell him; Responsible had just smiled, a
maddening gleeful smile, when he tried to find out

Veritas Truebreed smacked his fist in his palm, and
he paced.

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Meanwhile, Responsible went on talking, keeping her
voice in the mode that carried the message: THERE is NO

QUESTION BUT THAT I WILL BE OBEYED. "At CVery CaS-

de," she said, "you will call a Family Meeting, and elect
—at once!—a Delegate to the New Confederation of
Continents of Ozark. The Magicians of Rank will SNAP
the Delegates here to Brightwater as quickly as you
choose them ... if you have no Magician of Rank in
residence, be ready; one will be with you within the next
half hour, and will not be pleased if you have no Dele-
gate ready to return with him when he arrives, I warn
you. Confederation Hall is at this very minute being
made ready for the Delegates—"

Troublesome whistled softly, long and low, and Sil-
verweb smiled at the lie, and the two of them—followed
by the Grannys at as much speed as the old women
could muster—headed out of Castle Brightwater for
Confederation Hall. with Troublesome waving the keys
above her head to show she still had them.

"Once the Delegates are here," Responsible went on,
"they will offer a motion that a New Confederation be
formed, second it, and pass it by unanimous vote—they
will have ample time and more than ample time to write
a new Constitution and work out all the trimmings and
doodads they care to, when the crystals have been with-
drawn. But that wiU not be enough.

"It will be necessary/' she told them solemnly, "to
call the roll."
That had never been done within the memory of any-
one living, nor the memory of their parents, nor their
grandparents. Very early, before the Ozarkers had

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moved out from Marktwain and their number had been
small, it had been done. But now?

"The Garnet Ring wants this planet very badly/' said
Responsible. "Whatever you have done to it as I slept,
and I understand that you have not been idle in your de-
struction, it is still rich in ores and forests and land and
seawater. . . everything that a crowded system like the
Garnet Ring needs and does not have. They have set no
controls on their population and no controls on their
greed—they will not give us up for a gesture. It will be
done, one vote at a time, for every citizen over the age
of twelve years. Kingdom by Kingdom. Stay at your
comsets, and when the Chair says to begin, you will an-
swer one at a time, in an orderly fashion. You will say,
for example: *I, So-and-So of Clark, hereby cast my vote
for the New Confederation, and I say Aye; let it be so
recorded/ It is of course your privilege to vote against
the New Confederation; if enough of you do so, we wiB
learn what the Garnet Ring proposes to do with us."

And she let them think about that a while. As a dem-
ocratic method of persuasion, it had its shortcomings,
and she was conscious of them. On the other hand,
death or slavery weren't overly democratic either, and
they appeared to be the other alternatives. If the means
turned out not to be justified by the ends, she would
have some paying to do. She'd worry about that when it
happened. Right now, she had a world to convince.

A comcrew tech stuck his head in at the door, then,
and raised both fists above his head and shook them at
her. That meant the data was back to the computeis;

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And Then There'a Be Fireworks

that meant the comsets had been turned on everywhere
—even on Tinaseeh. That meant they were working,
and it meant there were Ozarkers to watch them. Re-
sponsible would have jumped up and down for joy ex"
cept that it would of introduced an element of confu-
sion into her presentation.

She nodded at the man and then began again, since
there might of been those coming in just then from the
woods or the fields, or only just finding a house that still
had a comset in working order. And she went through it
all one more time. And when she got to the end of that,
she began again.
By the time she had reached the third recitation of
the manner of calling the roll of every Ozarker over the
age of twelve, the first Delegate had landed in the yard
of Confederation Hall, his arms clasped round the waist
of Shawn Merryweather Lewis the yth. Magician of
Rank in residence at Castle Motley, the two of them
seated on a bedraggled and scrawny Mule without so
much as a saddle blanket. Never mind, though; it had
been able and willing—it had in fact been eager—to fly.

They were landing everywhere, and the Grannys of
Brightwater threw open the doors of Confederation
Hall and shouted them a welcome, while Troublesome
sneaked out me back door and went home, and Silver-
web stood and smiled. Now they would show those
cursed Garnet Ringers, whatsoever they might be! They
would show them what a people united could do, how
swift and sure a freedom-loving people could move to
set up a new and a strong government, how quick such a

171

And Then Tkere'U Be Fireworks

government could move to take care of such petty mat-
ters as weather and hunger and disease and disaster and

wari

The Grannys were as near ecstasy as a Granny could
get, and in the excitement of the moment they had not
even noticed that the arthritis that had been crippling
them was gone. They stood on the steps of Confed-
eration Hall, holding the doors wide, the teais pouring
down their faces, cheering as each new Delegate arrived,
and as each Mule and Magician of Rank SNAPPED out
of sight to go after the next one.

They paid no mind to the fact that SHverweb of
McDaniels, amusement in her eyes and cobwebs on her
dress, was headed back toward Castle Brightwater to see
what she could do now to help Responsible. Nor did it
occur to them that Troublesome was long gone.

It was a brand-new day.

172

CHAPTER 11

On Tinaseeh there was no need for anybody to ride out
into the countryside to search out people beyond the
range of the comsets. The Castle stood grim and dark at
the central point of the three squares marked off by the
logs of ironwood, set upright side by side and lasered to
wicked points; this was Roebuck, capital city and only
settlement of Tinaseeh, and it had ample room within it
for the six hundred and three persons still alive in Trav-
eller Kingdom.
Except for the members of the Family and the Magi-
cians of Rank, except for the College of Deacons and
the Tutors—and except of course for Granny Leeward
—the people of Tinaseeh were frail and ill. Measles and
croup and hunger took the young; pneumonia and can-
cer and hunger took the old; and at the Castle the Magi-
cians of Rank themselves took turns guarding the secret
stores of extra food and the priceless herbs. They could
trust nobody else with that duty.

When the comset alarms went off, piercing the
stillness that covered Roebuck like a visible miasma, bro-
ken only by the exhortations of Jeremiah Thomas Trav-
eller the 26th and his Deacons—no child had laughed
on Tinaseeh in many days, and now they were past cry-
ing as well—they were like red-hot irons through the

m

And Then There Q. Be Fireworks •

ears of the silent people. And Jeremiah Thomas, know-
ing the high tone at once for what it had to be, cursed
in a way that brought the members of his household up-
right in shock. They had never heard a single broad
word cross his lips before, not one; and there he stood
shaking his fist at the wall where the red comset light
was blinking, and shouting fit to turn the air blue for

miles around.

Granny Leeward was the first to recover, and the first

to realize how little time they had.

"He's right," she said urgently, "though 111 not de-
fend the filth he's used to express himself. . . . I do be-
lieve his mind's turned, and no wonder. But we should
never of left the comsets in the houses! They ought to
have been ripped out, made truly useless, the day we got
back here from the accursed Grand Jubilee, aye, if not
long before. Leaving them, that was a grave mistake,
and Jeremiah Thomas is right thrice over! But listen—it
will be a while, might could be quite a while—before
the people remember what that sound is. Might could
be they won't remember, for that matter; I don't recall
they've ever heard it. If we hurryl If we get out and call
them out of their houses before they notice the lights—
those, now, they'll remember. All of you, you go fast,
you go from house to house and silence the wicked
things, cut the wires or whatever it is as makes them go,
and we might could get out of this yetl If we hurry,

mind!"

"What could it be for?" marveled Feebus Timothy
Traveller the 6th, staring around at the others. "What
do you suppose?"
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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"Whatever it is, it comes from the womb of evil,"
said Leeward viciously, "for only Brightwater has the
means to send out that alarm. And whatever it is, we do
not care to hear it!"

"Now, Granny Leeward," the young Magician of
Rank protested, "it may have to do with the crystall
And if it does, we—"

"No doubt it does have to do with the crystal,"
Granny Leeward threw back at him. "And no doubt
you're still not quite over that fever you came near tak-
ing, eh, Feebus Timothy? Of course it has to do with
the crystal; and nevertheless, we do not choose to hear!
Where is your faith?"

If the people of Tinaseeh had not been so weak and
so sickly, the Family might have been able to bring it
off. Some would of been in the half dozen stores of
Roebuck; some in the schoolrooms of the Tutors; some
outside the walls working in the forests or the fields;

some would of been walking in the town on their way to
or from any of these things. But far too many of the
handful of people remaining were housebound by sick-
ness, and from their pallets laid on cold bare floors they
had demanded that the comsets be turned on, and they
had heard every word spoken by Responsible of Bright-
water.

While the rest of the Family and its deputies were
racing through the streets to try to prevent that from
happening. Granny Leeward and Jeremiah Thomas Trav-
eller sat alone before the comset at Castle Traveller
and heard it all—twice through. And when the others

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returned to report that they had failed, that they had
been too late, the Granny was ready for them.

"Call the people together," she said. Her voice made
them think of the water that ran deep in the Tinaseeh
caves in utter blackness, too cold even for blindfish to
survive. "Those as cannot walk are to be carried, and
those as try to say you nay are to be offered . . . prom-
ised ... a taste of the Long Whip. Everybody, every
last chick and child, is to be brought into the Inner
Courtyard to hear Jeremiah Thomas speak against this
temptation. Souls are precious things—we'll not see
them lost this easily!"

It took time, because the messengers were few and al-
ready tired from their first hasty dash through the town,
but not so long as might have been expected, given the
frail health of the people. The College of Deacons met
some of them in the streets, already on their way, cany-
ing sick children in their amis. And in not much more
than an hour after the alarm had sounded, they were all
assembled. The Family, the Magicians of Rank, the
College of Deacons—they sat on a platform used in
happier times for the feastday services of the church,
meant to give space for the Reverends and the choirs.
The people that could stand stood, lined up in a
squared-off horseshoe with the platform at its open end.
Those that couldn't manage that leaned against the
rough walls or lay on their pallets on the ground, or were
cradled in the arms of relatives and friends.

And Jeremiah Thomas Traveller spoke, while Granny
Leeward sat at his right hand with the Long Whip

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coiled and ready in her lap, and a muscle twitching high
in her right cheek fust along the ridge of the bone.

"My people," said the Master of Castle Traveller ten-
derly, raising his arms and spreading them wide in the
pastoral embrace, "you know how I love you! More dear
to me you are than ever son or daughter was to other
man, more tightly bound to me than ever the bonds of
blood have been! For you are the faithful. . . out of
holy suffering you have come pure and filled with pre-
cious, nay, with priceless grace; around you the wicked
and the weak in spirit have fallen like grass before the
scythe, and yet you have stood- You have not fallen.
You have not shrunk from the blade, not from its very
edge; when it was at your throat you have bent to give it
the kiss of fearless love. You have never doubted' How I
love you—perhaps I love you more even than is fitting,
but the Holy One will forgive me that

"And how do I know all this? How can I be sure? Oh,
my beloved people, only think what has been vouch-
safed to you this glorious day! Those the Almighty
loves, those are chastened; those the Almighty trusts,
those are tested; those the Holy One counts among the
elect, those are sent the blessing of ultimate temptation
that they may demonstrate their contempt for all temp-
tation! And this has come to you, to you, to every last
and least and weariest one of you ... for the Almighty
knows, knows in confident glory, that there is no test
your faith is not equal to!

"When I think"—and here Jeremiah Thomas let his
hands move in and cross over his heart, and he added a

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judicious quaver to his voice—"when I think what
honor has been done you, my beloved Sock, I am struck
to die heart. Who am I, that this blessing should pour
down on me? Who am I, that I should lead so mighty,
so fearless, an army of souls? What an honor has been
done me, the least of all the servants!

"Fall to your knees," urged Jeremiah Thomas Trav-
eller the z6th, his words honey and oil spreading
around him, "fall to your knees! The trollop has spoken
again from the citadel of sin, and you have heard her!
And unto you, beloved, has come the opportunity to say
to the Daughter of Brightwater a Nof that will echo
throughout the farthest comers of this world! NoJ you
will say, we are not afraid of the abomination that
pulses and grows each moment more gorged with blood
above our heads, tor it is only one more of the puny
tests sent to try our faith, and we gtory in that trial! Nof
you will say, we are not afraid of your Garnet Ring, of
your Out-Cabal, of your bedtime tales invented for the
terrifying of little children—for we are not little chil-
dren, but warriors of the faith! There is no Gamet Ring!
There is no Out-Caball There are no alien peoples
prepared to make of us slaves or victims! There is only
the just symbol of the wrath of the Holy One Almighty,
set in the skies above us as a sign of the anger we have
earned . . . and when we cry out Not and No.' and NoJ
nine times nine times again to the Whore of Bright-
water, that symbol will fade away as do the clouds, that
bring the gentle rains, and as the sunlight, that makes
way for the healing hours of the night!"

Beside him the Granny sat nodding, her face smooth

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now with satisfaction, the Long Whip twitching every
now and again at a particularly telling phrase from the
lips of her son.

The "mighty army" listened in silence, and they
heard the man out, as was proper. There were some that
had been standing, and as the sentences rolled on
slipped to the ground or leaned more heavily against the
walls; but not one left, and not one made a sound.

And then, when the last Amen had been shouted out
and Jeremiah Thomas Traveller stood soaked with sweat
and glowing with his righteous exultation, -and ordered
them back to their homes to take a day's holiday for
prayer, one man stepped forward. Eustace Laddercane
Traveller the 4th, him that had had a wife and ten chil-
dren, and had seen that wife die in the throes of giving
that tenth child birth, and had seen five more of his
tadlings harvested by death since the day he had stood
and forced them to watch the public whipping of Av-
alon of Wommack. He stepped out from among the
others and walked straight and without so much as a
tremble to his lips right up to the platform. The Granny
leaned forward, uneasy, though her son had dropped to
his knees and was holding out his arms to gather in this
man he thought overcome with the emotions of die mo-
ment; and the Granny was right in her judgment.

Eustace Laddercane Traveller looked them over
where they held their places. The Master of Traveller,
and his Family assembled, not a one lost to disease or
privation. The four Magicians of Rank in their elegant
black. The College of Deacons, all trim, to be sure, but
all hearty, all with color in their cheeks. And when he'd

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looked them over one by one he turned his back on
them, standing where Ac Long Whip could wrap him
round without the Granny having to do more than raise
her arm, and he called out in a voice as strong as
Jeremiah Thomas's had been.

"The citadel of sin is just behind me," shouted Eus-
tace Laddercane, "and its whore sits there holding the
Long Whip and hovering over her loathsome son. him
that is a false Reverend, and a false guardian, and the
bar of all liars! Look at them . . . look well, for I've no
skill at preaching, and I*ve got no words to sway you
with—but I've got eyes, and so have you. There sits evil,
and I know it when I see it And if Granny Leeward
does not strike me down, I will go as Delegate to the
New Confederation at Brightwater, if I have to swim
the Ocean of Storms and the Ocean of Remembrances
to get there! And if she does, if she does—choose you
another Delegate, and then go back to your homes and
cast your votes for the only hope you have in this life or
me next!" And he waited, then, only the set of his
shoulders betraying his awareness of what might fall
upon them in the seconds just ahead.

You would not have thought that dragtau pitiful
crowd of people could manage to cheer or to shout or to
clap their scrawny hands together, but you would of
been wrong. Man, woman, and child, they roared their
approval of Eustace Laddercane Traveller's words and
of his election as Delegate, and the Inner Courtyard be-
came a forest of fists, raised high and waving their
defiance, now and forevermore. On the platform, the

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rats were abandoning ship: the Family was moving
back, as far as they could get from the howling mob; the
members of the College of Deacons were leaping from
the platform into the crowd to join the revolt; and the
Magicians of Rank were squabbling among themselves
as to which should be the one to SNAP the Delegate to
the meeting at Confederation Hall.

Only the Granny held fast, rocking slowly where she
sat, letting the Long Whip fall from her nerveless hands
in utter disgust. She knew they would not touch her.
Not even the father of little Avalon of Wommack. And
she knew it was not because they feared her, one old
lady deserted now by everything that had made her pow-
erful. It was because they would sooner have touched
the most uncanny creature that ever lurked at the bot-
tom of a fouled sea and dragged itself across the swollen
bodies of things long dead to feed upon them. She
would have many a long and lonely year to rock, and to
remember. . , she was the youngest of all the Grannys.

The process of re-forming the central government of
Ozark was an orderly one, despite the excitement The
Delegates filled the rows at the front, the Magicians of
Rank found a space just behind them, and the Grannys
that could get there filled the balcony. Delldon Mallard
Smith the 2nd seized the occasion to tear off his purple
and ermine robes and his crown and set them afire on
the steps of the hall, causing a stink that permeated all
the rest of the proceedings before the blaze could be put
out; and he had some difficulty explaining the death of

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his Magician of Rank—justified for once, since in fact
he did not undeistand why Lincoln Parradyne had died.
But he was there, and though foolish he was willing.

The motion for a New Confederation was put for-
ward, seconded, and carried; and the great roll called by
comset, the voices coming in from all over Ozark.

Responsible of Brightwater, up in the balcony where
she belonged, could have wept at the pitiful number of
votes there were to cast. Ozark had had at least half a
million people only two years ago; now, with every King-
dom heard from, and every citizen above twelve years
shouting a hearty "Aye!", she could only 6ght back the
tears . . . that number had been reduced to a fraction.
It was going to be a long hard pull, rebuilding what had
been so wantonly torn down and so casually destroyed,
and it would be a very long time indeed before they
need concern themselves again with controlling popula-
tion growth. But she was not going to have any time for
tears.

The Teaching Order on Kintucky, that was a good
idea; she would be seeing that it spread far and had its
branches in every Kingdom that would accept it Mis-
sions of mercy were going to be needed, Magicians and
Magicians of Rank, even the Grannys, flying in to feed
the hungry and heal the sick and see what must be done
to repair the devastation. Other missions, less open,
their members very carefully chosen, must go to the
Gentles, and to the Skenys, and to the Mules; debts
were owed, and they must be paid. The weather must be
brought back under control, and the Magicians sent to
hasten the process of regrowth over the wastelands that

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And Then There'll Be Fireworks

had been Arkansaw and Mizzurah ... and if it were
true, what she had been told, that the Masters of Cas-
tles Lewis and Motley were held hostage at Castle Far-
son, she would take pleasure in settling that score per-
sonally. Steps must be taken to work against the
prejudice still smothering the Purdys, that the long
feuds had only made deeper and more irrational. Some-
thing must be done to counter the mythology of the
Wommack Curse, that had bloomed and fattened into
a monstrous burden on the people that now put their
faith in it. . . and that task she might could trust, with
a little discreet assistance, to the Teachers of Wom-
mack.

The three monarchies could put away their raggedy
trappings now, and if the King of Castle Smith was any
example to judge by, they'd be welcoming the opportu-
nity to do so. She would send . . . yes, she would send
Silverweb of McDaniels to supervise the long healing
process on Tinaseeh, backed by the two Magicians of
Rank that were Travellers by birth. High time the Far-
son brothers spread their talents around; with only eight
Magicians of Rank left to serve the planet, they'd be
needed. And high time Silverweb had something to do
that would tie her to this earth a tad.

And there was the delicate problem of placating the
Magicians of Rank. For them to know as much as they
knew already was chancy and would interfere for a while
with their effectiveness; for them to know anything
more would destroy them utterly. She hadn't time to be
everywhere and do everything herself, nor was that her
role. Ways would have to be found, pretty fabrications

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that skirted the far edge of the truth, face^aving expla-
nations that the eight distinguished gentlemen could
grab at and cling to. That line of Veritas Truebreed's,
that named her as a catalyst, would do for a start

She leaned over the edge of the balcony, looking
down on the back of the Delegation from Castle Wom-
mack; it seemed to her that the shoulders of Lewis
Motley Wommack the ^yd had lost a good deal of
their arrogance. That suited her; and it would suit her to
find him something exceptionally burdensome to do for
all the rest of his life. Or until her anger was all used up,
whichever just happened to come first
She was still stunned at the lists, that seemed to be
endless, of the dead and the injured and the desolate
. . . that would be a pain she carried to her grave, she
rather expected. But she could not afford to indulge it,
as she could not afford to indulge herself in any other
mercy granted the rest of the living creatures of this
planet Responsible of Brightwater, Meta-Magician of
Ozark for this generation and young enough to have
scores of long hard years ahead of her, watched only
long enough to be certain that the one negative vote to
come in on the roll call came from Granny Leeward of
Castle Traveller, And then she stood up and stretched a
tad, and headed back to her rooms to set to work.

Above the Castles of   the Twelve Kingdoms of Ozark,
slowly, reluctantly,   the great crystals were going pale and
silent The thrumming   that had filled the whole world
for days was no more   than a tone just at the limit of the

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And Then There'll Be Firework

ear's perception, and dying fast In the stables, the
Mules were whuffiing their approval.

And Sterling waited, with a message for this Respon-
sible, to be passed on when her death drew near to the
next in line, and so on down through time:

THE OUT-CABAL REMINDS YOU THAT THE PLANET OZARK
REMAINS UNDER CONSTANT OBSERVATION.

185

For information about joining the Ozark Offworld
Auxiliary, the official organization for the Ozark Fan-
tasy Trilogy, write to Suzette Haden Elgin, Route 4,
Box 192-E, Huntsville, AR 72740- She'll be grateful if
you send along a stamped self-addressed return enve-
lope when you write.