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"I don't. I see you'd like to go with your new rank?"
"Something like that."
"You are a James, aren't you, Phillip? Well, I'll see that it is done by the end of the day. Captain James.
How do you like that?"
Jarrod smiles. Shrugs.
"I thought those girls brought you new clothes."
"Someone did."
"You don't like them?"
"I'm a ranger."
"Will you ever call me mother?"
"I'm a ranger, Mother."
"I see. At least let me have those rags cleaned, will you? I promise to have you back in them by
tomorrow. In fact, if you wear them to the ball it might be ... quite a surprise for everyone."
"All right. Mother."
Tatum James smiles. He pours more tea into her cup.
In the afternoon, Jarrod wanders the grounds. Old Maggie finds him in the garden, where he has been
looking over the town, trying to memorize the layout of the streets.
"I have to go on back now," she says. "What are you going to do?"
"Take Manelli's commission, I guess. Use it to go south."
"I thought I was reuniting you with your mama. Bringing you down here done my heart good."
Jarrod nods.
"But I may have got you into a situation you don't want to be in, instead."
"That's all right, Maggie."
"So. There's lots you don't know about your clan yet, and I ain't got time to teach you. Your mother has
a power, though. She's not a woman with much pity."
"Some say rangers have no pity either."
"Some say that."
"I would like to ask you one question."
"All right."
"Is Ocean in charge, or is she?"
"Well now, that's a good question. That is a good question."
Maggie looks around for some place to sit down, but there are only tended flowers and bare ground.
She comes and stands beside Jarrod, and they both look over Olympia.
"Tatum James is the reason the James-Kensingtons weren't killed or driven off their land by the Matties.
She warred them down to stalemate. But the clan couldn't hold it for years; she saw that. She saw that
the only way to save them was to make a sacrifice of herself to whoever the boss of the Matties
happened to be."
"It happened to be Ocean."
"That's right. And that is the Wallapa Alliance. It's Tatum James stepping down from heading her clan
and coming here until she dies."
"So Ocean's in charge."
"In a manner of speaking."
"I see."
"Good, because I don't. This place has got more plots hatching than a caterpillar with the wasps in it."
A breeze flows through the streets below, flapping the canvas of the merchant stalls, and bending the few
trees still shading the avenues. Many have been cut for firewood, leaving most streets lined with stumps.
"Well, got to go," Maggie says. "I wish you well, ranger. California."
"California."
"Drop by on your way back, and I'll fix you some more of that hedge nettle tea."
"I will, Maggie. That I will do. Maggie ..."
"Hmm?"
"Something is happening. In the Earth's interior. Something is changing."
"What?"
"Information for you. I'm paying you, Maggie. It's only right."
"All right, then. Do your people know what's going on?"
"The declination is changing. That means the magnetic field something is affecting it."
"Well? So?"
"If it happens fast, there could be "
"Earthquakes?"
Jarrod pauses, looks back over Olympia's spread. "Very bad earthquakes. Change in the atmosphere.
We don't know. Death. A lot of it."
* * *
Jarrod stays in the garden and watches Maggie's wagon pull away, Hildie the mare trotting resolutely
down the street. Resolutely toward home. Not me, Jarrod thought. Not for a long time. When the sun
sets, he goes back in. His mother is out for the evening, and Jarrod takes his evening meal in his room.
The attendants come and clear the plates. They bring him back his ranger green, cleaner than it has been
since the day it was taken from the loom. He puts his real clothes back on. After midnight, he slips out of
the room and down the stairs. Barbara is awake, sitting on a stool by the door. She does not hear a
ranger step lightly beside her. The faint creek of a front window being opened. A man the shade of night
slipping through.
Out into the streets streets Jarrod now has a good map of in his head.
He makes his way past darkened houses, empty merchant stalls. He makes his way to the Chine. A
guard is out on his rounds. He does not see Jarrod. In the shadows, Jarrod peers into the dirt square.
The Chomskyite sits with his back against the stake that binds him to the earth. At first he appears to be
sleeping, but Jarrod hears him mumbling to himself. Delusion brought on by dehydration. Jarrod watches
for a few moments longer. The man moves slightly, rattling his chains. Enough.
Jarrod takes his blowgun from under his shirt. He brings a dart from his pocket and dips it in the little vial
of concentrated hemlock. Drops it down the tube of the blowgun. Takes aim.
The dart flies as true as Jarrod's aim, into the neck of the Chomskyite. The man slaps at the sting, as if it
were a mosquito. He sits up, looks at the sky. Fifteen seconds. Twenty. The Chomskyite makes a sighing
sound, expelling both air and spirit. His head droops; his hand trails in the dust of the square.
Jarrod glances around quickly, then stalks over and removes the dart from where it has fallen next to the
body. And fades back into the shadows of Olympia town.
* * *
Jarrod passes a week in his mother's rooms. Every day is a succession of times to eat, times to walk in
the gardens. Conversation that Jarrod only listens to. He learns, makes connections, so that more and
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