“Human rights?”
“The right to peaceful existence in one’s home, to be free of unreasonable harassment, of false imprisonment or torture, to speak freely one’s feelings and opinions, to assemble with like-minded friends, to worship or not, as one liked. If I hear what you are telling me, there are no human rights on Elsewhere.”
Nela shook her head, confused. “But that can’t be, not if Danivon denounced this man because he murdered children….”
“No,” said Danivon, offended. “That’s not why I denounced him. That would have been improper.”
They stared at him, and he at them, neither understanding the other.
“Our job is to protect diversity,” he said through gritted teeth, “the very diversity from which the answer to the Great Question will emerge, the very diversity that is the essence of humanity! In that diversity children are always being killed for any number of reasons. If the killing is proper to that place, then it is proper. But this old man took children across borders. He interfered in the affairs of a province! Here on Elsewhere, we let one another alone.”
Nela quivered in outrage. Bertran squeezed her shoulder and said softly, “There is much we have to learn about Elsewhere. I don’t think we have the right to comment. Not yet.”
Fringe looked pleadingly at Nela, who turned her head and stared angrily away over the lagoon. She started to speak, but felt Bertran’s fingers pinching. It was an old signal between them, and they excused themselves. As by mutual consent, they headed toward the sanitary facilities at the top of the stairs.
“What have we come to?” Nela whispered as they climbed.
“Nothing we have any control over,” he replied sensibly. “I think we should take breathing space and withhold judgment.”
“But, I liked her! I really liked her, Berty. I liked Danivon too. And they have no more moral sense than a pig, or a tiger,” she cried.
Bertran shrugged, sending a like tremor through his sibling, as he whispered, “Look, Nela, we grew up in a religious family in a small town. We were educated in parochial school, which you have to admit is hardly a microcosm of things as they are. Then we went to the circus, and except for some raging egos, that was fairly well insulated from the world too. I can’t say for certain that our time was all that different! We’d be wiser not to judge too quickly.”
She shook her head stubbornly.
“Besides,” he went on, “we’re stuck with them, Nela. We haven’t any choice. Even if we decide we detest this world and all its works—including Danivon and Fringe, who, you have to admit, have been damned nice to us—we’re here, with no chance of going anywhere else.”
“I don’t care,” she said stubbornly.
He shook her. “Unless you’re suddenly avid for martyrdom, we can’t toss away friends because they’re not … maybe not the friends we would have chosen at home.”
She bit her lip and was silent.
While Fringe stared after the twins with troubled eyes, the others gathered their equipment into a pile, ready to carry it back to their rooms. They had just finished when a shout from across the water drew their attention from their paraphernalia to an approaching gainder-yat.
Fringe heard the cry and turned, still so preoccupied with what she had been thinking that she thought the old woman on the deck of the yat was Aunty or Nada come alive again. The old thing was staring at her with that alert, fowl-eyed look that had typified Fringe’s kin, a look that seemed to search her soul for something edible. However, as the yat drew closer, she saw this wasn’t Nada or Aunty, but someone even older, a wisp of a thing, a clutter of bones in a tight-drawn skin. The man leaning on a stick beside her was also very old, though not so old as she, and Fringe recognized them!
Curvis put down an armload of juggling gear and moved to catch the ropes the oarsmen tossed him. The others straightened from their tasks and watched. When the plank shuddered down, the old woman tottered toward it without taking her eyes from Fringe. Something shadowy moved behind her, moved and shifted as she cried out in a shrill bird voice:
“There, Fringe Owldark! Carry an old woman down.”
Fringe, astonished, found herself carrying. She had a confused impression that she was not the only one carrying, but on the landing stage she was the one setting the old thing on her feet once more and keeping an arm around her so that she didn’t blow away.
“Why, girl, you’ve grown beautiful,” the old woman cried, releasing a hand to pat at her cloud of white hair. “Remember me? Jory. Jory the Traveler.”
Fringe repeated the name, “Jory, Jory the Traveler,” as though the title might do something to solve the mystery of this old one’s appearance here, at this far corner of the world.
“Fringe?” said the old woman. “I am disappointed! Don’t you know me?”
Fringe stared at her helplessly. Recognize her, yes, but know her? “When I was a girl,” she said at last. “Long ago.”
“Not that long ago! Why, it was I who gave you your name. Did I tell you, Asner? It was I who gave her her name.”
“You’ve told me,” said the old man, pushing between the two of them. He’d needed no help getting down the plank, plunking slowly along with his stick. “Don’t let her fuss you, girl. She does that all the time. Travels around. Meets people. Then pops in on ’em half a lifetime later, all innocence.” He mimed a teacup, lifted eyebrows, “‘Well, of course we met, thirty years ago at the carnival in New Athens.’ ‘Don’t you remember, we shared a dish of thusle custard fifty years ago in Denial.’ Half of it’s sheer fiction, made up for the occasion.”
“This isn’t fiction,” the old woman said with a laugh. “We’ve been down along the shores of Deep, fishing.”
“Did
