Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks by Suzette Haden Elgin Page A

that’s a downright magnificent pseudocoma we put her into. She went right on just as she was.”
    “Do you understand it?” Troublesome asked gravely.
    “No, of course we don’t understand it, curse your insolence for asking! We ought to understand it ... do you have to rub my nose in it? Does that give you pleasure?”
    “That’s my sister,” she reminded him. It was no time to make her ritual speech about having no human feelings.
    “And the 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 careful. Keeping the population small, so that there was always abundance. Balancing 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 explanations than memorial services, if you don’t mind.”
    “We have some guesses.”
    “Guesses? What kind of guesses?”
    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 fool man! Secrets, at a time like this!”
    “Maybe you’re right,” he said, “and I’m too tired to 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—that there was something about Responsible that was essential to the functioning of magic. She had no powers , of course, beyond those of any other female; don’t misunderstand 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 subjected 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 energy or electrical energy or any other kind. By the time 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 all nine of us together in her bedroom again, which I doubt, since the ships aren’t sailing and the Mules aren’t flying, 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, especially since he was in no pain.
    “You were, you know,” she said, happy to twist the knife.
    “We didn’t realize ,” 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 opportunity 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