Chapter 17 — Ottilie's War Thing Passes
Chapter 17 — Ottilie's War Thing Passes
~ 1 ~ “My mistress, Mortimer Kane has come to me with news that the Friend has directed him to build a new Keep. Dr. Kane requests Arch funds for its construction. He has already purchased the land which is his chosen location for it in Southern California. And he has asked me to convey his greetings to you, Thersa,—conditional on the event that you are not dead.”
It had been a decade since the Second World War had ended. Giselle and Thersa were walking on the beach of Thersa’s seaside mansion near Havana—an exercise which Giselle found far pleasanter than that of walking beside Thersa in the icy alpine lake near her Swiss villa. In these days, it was almost always Alice who was seen in her Swiss Villa, Thersa only occasionally appearing as herself as she was doing on this early morning in Cuba.
“Are funds available for it, Giselle?”
“Yes, my mistress. Arch is doing very well in the postwar economy.”
“In that case, I will give some thought to it. Giselle, now that you have delivered the last of the Elixir, how long can the Circle continue?” Oh, Thiuderieks, have I failed?
The Table of Elixir had vanished from Greystone Castle, and the supply of Elixir was now exhausted. Thersa had not known, when she had discovered the Table’s absence recently, that it had been removed from the Castle just a week earlier by Commons Denizen Ottilie Krüger, with the assistance of fifteen-year-old Rhoda Knox.
On the day of hearing Giselle’s news about the new Keep, Thersa later found, in the purse which Ottilie had given to her, a letter addressed to her and written in Ottilie’s hand. The letter was attached to the end of a thin cord tied through the center hole of a small hardwood disk. Thersa smiled. The letter contained an Old Goth Chant to the Place-god of the Table of Elixir. By intoning the Chant, Thersa would be able to direct the Table’s Place-god to obtain the cooperation of various Powers in restoring the Table Room and the Table of Elixir to a place on which she chose to place the wooden disk.
Thersa instructed Giselle to provide the requested funds to Mortimer Kane, and to inform him that she, Giselle, had explained to Alice that Kane’s request honored a prior commitment by her great aunt. “Tell him that Alice sends her greetings and that she has approved the expenditure—with the stipulation that ownership of the new Keep revert to Arch when the Friend no longer requires the structure’s service.”
Kane laughed to himself, agreeing to that condition.
Rhoda had told her father, soon after their return to Home Ranch from their European sojourn, that the “apparition” of Ottilie had promised that a Lintel for Rhoda’s own Workshop would be at the Back Gate of his Workshop.
After finding the Lintel there, Martin had assisted Rhoda in making her own Workshop in one of the Aeronauticas hangars. Rhoda had not told her father of her secret exploration of the Great Maze and her discovery of Frederick Knox’s journals hidden within it. She had discovered that the letters of Frederick Knox’s wife, Ingundis the Weaver, were in fact a Maker’s journals concerning secret Maker techniques. Rhoda had been drawn to her letters by Frederick, in his letters, addressing his wife fondly as “Rhoda”. Rhoda herself had been named “Rhoda” at her grandfather Walter’s urging, and she understood now that his reason for it had been the name’s deep family roots.
Upon touching those letters for the first time, Rhoda had received Strands of her namesake’s Living Memory. Those Strands illuminated some techniques—about which the earlier Rhoda Knox, known as Ingundis the Weaver, had written in her journals—which had been developed by the Weaver and her husband during his War Thing. The modern Rhoda Knox had been most interested in the technique for twinning a Workshop, then moving the twin Workshop along a Pathway of the Great Maze like a ship in a deep channel of water.
It was possible for a Keen Maker to twin a Workshop more than once, all of his or her twinned Workshops being essentially the same Workshop to their owner. Only the Workshop in which the owner was currently present would be actual. After acquiring her own Workshop, Rhoda had twinned it so that she would have the ability to secretly enter her Inner Sanctum from her bedroom, by means of the Great Maze. Usually, however, in order to maintain the secrecy of her discovery, she had patiently traveled with her father the twenty miles to her Workshop's Front Gate at the Aeronauticas field. Years later, Rhoda used the same twinning technique to establish her Workshop in Ontario.
At Martin’s Back Gate, Commons Denizen Ottilie had left the Lintel that she had promised to Rhoda.
Then she heard, as she had expected, melodious voices coming to her from the House of Women—the Place that she intended to make her next and final destination. She listened for a long time, in order to determine the direction of the high-dimensionality sound, and learned that she must backtrack on the Footpath by which she had come to Martin’s Back Gate. This Footpath continued on past the Back Gates of other Keen Makers’ Workshops, including her own, which she had irrevocably vacated when she had set out with its Lintel. The Pathway was narrow and winding, and on it, the dilation of Earth’s Province’s time was so great that the path was extremely perilous for any Denizen.
The only sure time that Ottilie had on her Footpath was her personal time, which was directed to the purpose for which she was placing each footstep. Any wavering while she was following that Footpath might well bind her chronology into a hopeless entanglement with foreign chronologies. That risk was greatest when Ottilie followed the Footpath past her own vacated Back Gate in the Craggy Heights—passing through the developing future moment when Manuel, Victoria and Rhoda would briefly cross this Footpath to look down into the vast abyss of the Sundering Flood.
The scent of wild roses mingled with the indistinct voices from the House of Women, evoking in her a sense of her personal familiarity with an event—deep in Meaning but shallow in Doing—through which she was passing. Understanding that this event in her future was pressing very close, Ottilie focused her listening ever more intently on the distant voices from the House of Women. But it was impossible for her not to sense the crisis: In that future moment, the question of Rhoda Knox being declared Head of the War Thing hung in the balance.
A short distance beyond that crisis point, Ottilie’s Footpath abruptly changed direction. She hesitated. Then, finding that her Pathway was rising in the direction of the Airs enveloping the Craggy Heights, Ottilie strode confidently into the high Airs.
In Airs as high as those in which Ottilie was now walking, a Keen Maker can distinguish her Pathway as “flagstones” of foot-sized Electra, and the Electra of her Pathway are scattered in a nearly-random meander set in an immense field of other Electra. Through these she must pick her own way.
The Face of each Electrum reveals a tiny region of the vast hyper-essential dimensionality of the upper Airs through which Pathways meander. With one foot on an Electrum’s Face, a Keen Maker can discern a few other Faces of her Footpath. She must determine which of these Faces lies most closely in the direction of her destination, and place her next step upon it. In this manner, she can work out a Footpath to her destination.
When a Keen Maker chooses her way wisely, the White Light of the non-spectral colors shining on the Electra Faces of her true Footpath becomes brighter, making her Footpath ever more easily discerned as she nears her destination.
Ottilie made her way in the high Airs, stepping from one Electrum to another of her Footpath, gradually coming nearer to the beckoning voices.
Her Footpath passed into the always-present “stratus cloud” of the Swirling Mist. The “particles” of the Swirling Mist are the Faces—many, many times smaller than the Faces of the Electra—of the innumerable chemic selfed things, the obverse Faces of which constitute the physicality which makes up the whole of the material universe, including Ottilie’s former body.
To Ottilie, it was not long ago that her body had lain on the floor of Ellie Herder’s office laboratory—poisoned by Ellie Herder’s sword and stained by Ellie Herder’s blood—reposing in death before the the Separator sitting on the other side of the Fishbowl's glass wall. In the moment of the two women’s deaths, the chemic Faces of the Separator had opened into the Netherworld.
The obverse faces of the chemic Electra composing her dead body in Earth's Province were scattered in complete randomness in the Swirling Mist. Although their density was extremely low in the Mist, it was likely, however, that Ottilie would, in traversing it, see some of their faces in the field before her. It was imperative that she not see them, in order to reach the Houses, so she closed the eyes of her hyper-body and used her other senses to guide her until she had passed through the Swirling Mist.
When she sensed that the Mist was behind her, Ottilie opened her eyes and saw the shadowy, numinous cloud from which the voices were coming. They sounded now as if they were in an adjacent room.
Feeling relieved, Ottilie stood still, listening to the sweet, rushing sound of the perilous Sundering Brook—the origin in the high Airs of the Sundering Flood—which was flowing between her and her destination.
Listening carefully, Ottilie heard, in the flowing water’s voice, the lamenting yet expectant voices of myriads of Denizens who, like her, had died from Earth’s Province. These Denizens did not yet have the freedom that she had, to move on their own. She did not attempt to wade across the Brook, knowing that doing so without an invitation from the House of Women would certainly be fatal to her mission.
Denizen Ottilie was dressed as the milkmaid whom fifteen-year-old Rhoda had met in Greystone Castle. Although a decade had passed since then for Rhoda, that meeting had occurred only days earlier for Ottilie. Because the time of Ottilie’s War Thing might not yet be firmly established for the House of Women, Ottilie was not yet ready to cross over the Sundering Brook; she would cross only when her personal time and the time of the women in the House were concurrent.
She was certain that now her personal presence was near to the owners of the voices, and it was, therefore, in their immediate past. But those voices’ location in time relative to all of the other experiences of her life was yet to be determined, because her length of time on the Footpath might be only seconds or it might be decades, relative to the House of Women (and to the House of Men, which shared the same present).
Standing at the edge of the Sundering Brook’s flowing water, Ottilie hailed the owners of the voices, seeking to establish a restricted temporal Bridge. She shouted in Old Goth, “Sisters of the House of Women, I seek your company!”
The response was a murmur of voices within the cloud, soon followed by a commanding voice demanding, "Sister, tell us from where you have come.”
Ottilie answered, “I have come from my War Thing, in which you have served me well.”
The murmur grew louder. The commanding voice, rich in the qualities which would allow it to be heard above the din of battle, demanded, “Tell us your name.”
“I was known as Fraulein Ottilie Krüger; it was my fate to be War Queen, like Valkei.” Perhaps it is Valkei who is speaking to me.
After another lengthy murmuring, the voice challenged her defiantly: “We do not know of your War Thing!”
Denizen Ottilie reflected for a moment before saying, loudly but evenly, “In that case, it must be that, for my War Thing, your present is in my past only on the Edge of Meaning—excepting, of course, the Bridge of our conversation.”
“You are a Avatar of the Foe! Your argument is an old ruse. Does the Foe have no imagination?”
“Of course not; he is not human. You, however, do have imagination, Sister Valkei.”
“My voice is known to his minions.”
The cloud grew darker, but those looking through the Gate saw Ottilie clearly. The milkmaid at the Gate smiled at them as though she were seeing them, too, although she was not. She reached into her purse. The object that she pulled from it blazed with the brightness of the sun, and they turned away their dazzled eyes as though they had, in the flesh, looked directly at the sun of Earth’s Province.
Ottilie heard a more distant voice, which she perceived to come from the House of Women, deeper in the Cloud: “Mistress Valkei, we have received a Call for your Crown!”
A great commotion erupted within the cloud, and the commanding voice of Valkei that Ottilie had heard earlier declared, “The Crown is mine alone to bestow! I will join you and find out what devilry is assailing us.” As Valkei was speaking, her voice was growing more distant from Ottilie. Her voice and that of her handmaid gradually faded…and suddenly vanished over the horizon of the Bridge’s Niche. Ottilie knew, by the voices’ sudden vanishing, that the hearing Bridge was not connecting the Houses’ present and future with her War Thing’s past. And she was suddenly sure that it was she who had made that call for the Crown—from her past—and that she had caused a Docking crisis by bringing the force of her past War Thing into the present and future of the House’s Denizens!
She asked, “Does any Keen Maker remain with whom I may speak?”
“Speak, whoever or whatever you are; I am a Keen Maker.” The Old Goth accent of the new voice was more like Ottilie’s own accent.
Ottilie said, “It is good that our hearing Bridge remains. I perceive now that I have brought to you, in my person, the Niche of my War Thing. Because you are in an unanticipated act of Docking with it, I must pull back to prevent damage to both the ‘dock’ and the ‘vessel’. You can see that whether I am or am not an Avatar, such damage would be to the advantage of the Foe. I will fall back on my Footpath, to a place where I cannot see your House’s cloud fence, so that you may deal with this Docking in relative tranquility.”
Then Ottilie declared, “Know, however, that the light which you have seen is truly that of Valkei’s Crown. The call to Valkei for her Crown may have been instigated by me, by reaching just now into my purse for a token of my authenticity. But I have only once before possessed the Crown—before I knew even that my War Thing existed. Valkei must have released it to me then.”
“If it is as you say, then you must indeed fall back. Otherwise our Houses will be cast into a temporal convolution too difficult to unsnarl. Know now that you are speaking with Ingundis the Weaver.”
“The wife of Frederick the Maze Maker! If you are that Ingundis, then my War Thing will follow yours by two centuries.” Ottilie retreated swiftly on her Footpath. She was quickly lost to the sight of Ingundis the Weaver, who was the most recent resident of the House of Women, the duration of her personal tenure having been, to her, only a week.
~ 2 ~ Keen-sighted Imogen, the handmaid on watch who had seen the milkmaid and had called Valkei, had remained on watch. After Imogen confirmed the milkmaid’s retreat, Ingundis the Weaver left at once, knowing that she must communicate personally to Valkei, the fact of Ottilie’s withdrawal.
Ingundis the Weaver came to the Floor of the House of Women, where many Keen Maker handmaids and their Keen Maker mistresses were busy at the Calling Portals, a few of them moving about briskly between the Portals and the Device Treasury. The House was always partially in the present of all past War Things, for which the Seam of Meaning and Doing would be open until the final War Thing closed. Ottilie’s War Thing was the only one existing here for which the Edge of Meaning was nearly completely sheared from the Edge of Doing.
The Floor’s many workbenches laden with Calling Portals gave it the look of a vast, old-fashioned garment factory. The Treasury which the Floor surrounded looked like an enormous, well-organized grandmother’s attic. And the arrangement was similar in the House of Men. In fact, the two Houses were superimposed on each other, although the Women saw only their Place and each other, and the Men saw only their own.
The thatched roof over the superimposed Houses was accessible by six spiral staircases, one at each corner of the hexagonal Floor, but there were no walls or other support for it; the roof served as its own support. Residents of the two Houses were able to climb any of the spiral staircases onto the outside of the thatched roof and meet with other residents there in the lush grass of the Grassy Meadow. Open to the pure light of the high Airs, the Grassy Meadow was the Place in the Commons in which Denizens were closer to that light than they were in any other Place. There, men and women of the Houses were able to enjoy each other’s company as they would on an earthly picnic, or find a solitary knoll on which to meditate in great peace.
On the Floor, a Calling Portal like a cluster of large, flaring trumpets rose from each workbench’s center, and various kinds of Calipers hung along the workbench’s sides. Two or three handmaidens in Makers' apparel tended each workbench, either standing at the bench or sitting at it on high stools. These Calling Portal workbenches varied in size and style, and they were scattered irregularly around the Floor of the House.
The Denizens of the two Houses met crucial needs of War Thing members by providing services and some physical items to them, wherever they were in the Advancing Front of Earth’s Province. The services included such things as Shade Teller communications, and determination of the scope of a War Thing member’s Net. Physical items from the Treasury were retrieved from Devices like the Casket of Hamner or purses of Keen Maker women. Also, House residents who had brought Secrets of the Clan’s War Things with them, revealed the Secrets to be acted upon when they felt that the time was ripe.
Ingundis the Fair and her handmaids—the women who had been her apprentices—were the original Denizens of the House of Women, and their first task had been the fabrication of the Calling Portals. Keen-eyed Imogen, the first of her handmaids, who had spotted Ottilie at the Gate, had once served in Thersa’s camp. Imogen had accompanied Ingundis the Fair as her handmaid, when Ingundis the Fair had left Thersa’s camp to seek the camp of Thiuderieks, with his rumored Workshop.
The foundations of the two Houses had been laid by Thiuderieks, Thorismund, Ingundis the Fair, and their apprentices when they had been alive together in Earth’s Province. Thiuderieks had foreseen the need for the Houses, knowing that the struggle with Sunderer over the Soma would encompass a vast Niche extending into the remote future of Earth’s Province. He had tasked Thorismund with making the Design for the two Houses. That Design included its guiding thatch, which was like the bow of a ship cutting its way through the flowing, essential hyper-dimensionality of the high Airs’ temporal order.
By means of the Houses, a living continuity of effort was maintained over the long duration of their struggle with the gods and Denizens of the Foe’s Circle.
Thiuderieks had understood that the crucial problem in a long struggle with the gods is the great difference between the temporal present for gods and the passing instant which humans experience in the present moment. He foresaw that the gods’ very slowly changing present which his Clan must get through in order for an engagement with the gods to be concluded, would be a very long time in human terms—about 8,000 years. Initially, in the work with his apprentices, he capitalized on the fact that Makers in their Workshops are partially free to move about in the gods’ present, within a short duration of chronological time, but this requires mellowing back to Earth’s Province at the end of that short duration of time.
But a Maker who is dead is completely free of Earth’s Province’s time, and Thiuderieks saw that Denizen Makers, who had died to earth’s Province, would be able to maintain the needed continuity of effort in the 8,000-year engagement with the Foe over the Soma. So, he devised the system of the two Houses, in which Denizen Makers engaged with all of the Clan's past War Things nearly concurrently during their tenure there, the need for aid in the more ancient War Things gradually tapering off.
The Denizen Makers needed to bring the Niche of each new War Thing into hyper-dimensional alignment with the Niche of the Houses, while maintaining the Houses' alignment with all previous War Things. This movement, called Docking, required careful preparation. Otherwise, in the act of Docking, the Niche of the Houses might fractionate into random present moments of past War Things.
Keen Maker Denizen Ingundis the Weaver realized that the sudden appearance of the tip of Ottilie’s War Thing, in the person of Denizen Ottilie, was posing a crisis of Docking preparation. She looked around at the activity on the Floor and saw Valkei coming toward her, so she waited for Valkei to come up to her. Before Valkei could open her mouth to speak, Ingundis the Weaver said, “Sister Valkei, the Denizen who calls herself Fraulein Ottilie Krüger maintains that she has brought the Niche of her War Thing to us!”
“Sister Ingundis, if we are truly moving now into her past as our present, she must be driven from our Gate at once! We must prevent our Houses from becoming temporally snarled beyond remedy!”
“She has expressed the same concern, and she has voluntarily withdrawn beyond our visual horizon. Imogen reports that only the auditory Bridge to her remains.”
“That move is a point in her favor.”
“What is the situation of your Crown?”
“My Crown is frozen in its place, Sister. My handmaids cannot budge it, and neither can I.”
“Please, take me there so that I may see this for myself.”
“Come. I value your opinion, Sister Weaver. Our Thing desires to know your opinion, too, for we have begun to receive other indications that a new War Thing is coming to us. Let us cross the Floor to examine the Crown in the Treasury.”
“Sister Valkei, I have observed that the milkmaid at the Gate, if she were dressed in battle dress like you, would greatly resemble you.”
Valkei turned and smiled at the Weaver. “That is why I suspect her to be an Avatar—perhaps a model of me—sent ahead of the new War Thing by the Foe, to deceive us.”
“That may be so. …Sister Valkei, are you, too, sensing a rapid change in the Airs here?”
“Yes! And the thatch above us is stirring! As the Houses’ Thing has surmised, we are engaging a new War Thing!”
A handmaid ran up to them. “Mistress Ingundis the Weaver, we have a Call for Summons Stationery from the Keen Maker of the new War Thing. The Call came to your husband, Master Frederick, in the House of Men, because it is he who has most recently used the Casket of Hamner in Earth’s Province. For his part, he approves the request, but the Keen Maker is a woman—a maiden. So, as you know, you must hear her request and come to a decision either agreeing or disagreeing with that of Master Frederick.” After the handmaid had gently placed her hands on her mistress’s ears, Ingundis the Weaver grasped the handmaid’s forearms and heard, “Ink, pen and parchment!” The voice was that of the milkmaid at their Gate. The German accent in the voice’s Old Goth was like the Weaver’s own accent.
Ingundis the Weaver considered that Ottilie Krüger was most likely genuine, although that was yet to be proved, given Valkei’s suspicion that Ottilie was an Avatar. Ingundis thought that the milkmaid’s crafty conjectures demonstrated the wit of a Keen Maker, but she knew that there were Makers who served the Foe. But if the milkmaid was an Avatar modeled on Valkei—or modeled on Ottilie Krüger, who might well resemble Valkei—and if the Avatar obtained access to the House of Women, it would serve as a means for the Foe’s Powers to ravage the Houses. Then all of the Houses’ inhabitants would pass quickly from the Commons, leaving unfinished the secret tasks which would complete their War Things in Earth’s Province. And even if the milkmaid was truly Ottilie Krüger, the situation of the Crown—which she claimed to be holding in her hand—was indeed precarious because of the strength of the temporal convolution that it implied.
The Weaver acted on her first instinct, saying, “Answer the Call by granting the request and any further requests made by the same voice.” When the handmaid had left them, Ingundis the Weaver said to Valkei, “The voice of the one who made the Call is that of our visitor at the Gate.”
“If that is true, we must learn how her personal present has come to us before her past. It is not impossible for that to happen, but the circumstances must be unusual, if it has. …Sister! The Floor is dispersing into the Exscape of this new War Thing’s Niche! We are Docking with the Niche of the War Thing, having made scant preparation. Our visitor at the Gate has brought her past into our present with violence!”
Valkei and Ingundis had at once clasped hands tightly to prevent their separation by the convulsion. Now Ingundis said, “As you were speaking, I saw a complexly-divided Antechamber, as one sees her Antechamber from her Inner Sanctum’s Wending Way. Now it is becoming a beautiful tapestry, rippled by the force of storm winds blowing through the building in which it is housed.”
“I see no tapestry, Sister Weaver.”
