The Visitor by Sheri S. Tepper Page A

answer.
    Arnole had said, when she had complained about never getting proper answers, “Ah, Dismé, how many interesting questions are there? An infinite number? Here inside the Regime, however, we are told that all the answers are in the Dicta, which has many words but little pith, so the permissible number of answers is quite small.”
    â€œThat’s exactly right,” she said angrily. “No matter who I ask, they answer out of the Dicta! Even when it doesn’t fit.”
    â€œDoing such is not a new thing. In the former world,there were people who said all truth was contained in this or that holy book, this or that holy image, these or those holy beliefs. No matter how complicated their world became, no matter how much it changed, the only answers permitted were those that grew ever more tortuous and convoluted.”
    â€œUntil?”
    â€œUntil, some say, God turned his back on them for their failure to use the minds they had been given.”
    â€œIs that why the angels rebelled? Because God gave up on us?”
    â€œI have often thought so. What should happen, of course, is that people should stop trying to answer with plockutta.”
    â€œPlockutta?”
    â€œIn ancient times the mages of Tabitu printed approved spells and prayers on cloth flags. The mages believed every time the flag fluttered in the wind, making a sound like plockutta, plockutta , the spell or prayer was communicated to the powers that be. Plockutta, of course, is only the sound of a rag in the wind, as are many of the answers we are given.”
    Though Rashel talked plockutta most of the time, Dismé did not make the mistake of considering her a fool. It was safer if Dismé went on playing the fool, the spinster aunt, the perpetual adolescent, roles she had played convincingly for years. This despite the fact she knew some part of her was stronger and more savage than such roles allowed. Sometimes she dreamed of this part, this Roarer, pacing back and forth in its inner lair, or she heard the echoes of its bellowing when she was frightened. At times of ultimate frustration, she imagined herself throwing Rashel’s bloodied carcass into Roarer’s den, assuming she could find its den, for when Roarer came from hiding, it rushed through her consciousness with a great thunder of drums or wind, leaving no way to track it to its lair.
    Despite her fears, problems and disappointments were easier to bear at Caigo Faience than they had been in Apocanew. In Faience, beauty surrounded her. She had a pleasantroom instead of the unfinished attic she’d had in Apocanew, and even on the first night the aromas from the kitchen made her salivate. The food turned out to be as good as it smelled, and except for Rashel—who remained at the museum until late—they had their supper with the staff so they could get acquainted.
    The housekeeper was dignified, white-haired Mrs. Stemfall, with her pocketful of keys; the coachman was hawk-handsome dark-haired Michael Pigeon; the maid was broom-thin, sniffly Joan Uphand, and the cook, Molly, Joan’s mother, was a stouter version of the same. It was Dismé’s birthday, her twenty-fifth, which no one had remembered but herself, but she did not mind. She had long felt it was better not to have a birthday than to be reminded one had spent another year meeting no one’s expectations. Lacking remembrances from others, she gave herself a gift. Very early next morning, before anyone else was up, she would go out into the grounds by herself and see the dawn in all its glory.
    She went to bed full of anticipation and slept the night through without waking. When she emerged from the house shortly before dawn, however, she encountered a wandering, melancholy smell totally incompatible with her plan. The spring morning should smell of mist, mint, and damp soil, as it had the day before, but a smell of lonely autumn was wafting about instead, a redolence of fading