Read Online The Visitor by Sheri S. Tepper - Free Book Online Page B

it, that’s all.”
    â€œWhy no solar panels?” he asked, grinning at my bicycle power source.
    â€œMeteors can set fires and kick up dust. There might not be any sunshine for a while,” I murmured. “Besides, whoever’s in here will need some exercise.”
    He just gave me his uplifted look, as though he’d spent the morning watching Archangel Gabriel unpack his Sousaphone. “Nell, if it makes you feel better, by all means, have a shelter.”
    The man I married was a seeker, a man of many ardors, an amateur musician of some talent, an artist with clay (though he never worked at it). Before he turned to religion, we’d lived though several of his passing enthusiasms about different ways of life : a brief fling at being a vegan, a few months of yoga, a bout of transcendental meditation, none of them lasting long or changing what he was.
    This last exploration, however, was different. It changed what he was, and I know with absolute certainty we would not have married if he’d been like this when we met. We have, however, two children and almost ten years of honorable and faithful history, and I’ve been trying to respect that.

7
dismé the maiden
    D ismé grew from child to maiden, Rashel changed from girl to woman. Rashel was totally preoccupied by the changes, though Dismé hardly noticed them, for she was concentrated on staying out of Rashel’s way. She began by moving into the attic room that Roger had used, the one nearest Aunt Gayla. There, Dismé informed Cora, she would be better located to help her great aunt when Gayla had the terrors.
    â€œAn excellent idea.” Call-Her-Mother sniffed, watching Dismé’s face. “You are the logical person to see to her, though I’m amazed you want to do it.”
    â€œOh, I don’t want to,” murmured Dismé off-handedly. “The spiritual advisor at school said I had to.”
    As, indeed, he had done, after being carefully led to that suggestion during Dismé’s annual citizen’s review. Spiritual advisors were notably contrary, and Dismé had only to voice a well-rehearsed expression of distaste at the idea to make him insist she do it. Sacrifice for family, tribe, and country were, after all, Regimic virtues.
    Attics were where servants lived, and servants were a class of people Cora and Rashel found uninteresting. The attic location coupled with the vague, slightly servile manner Dismé had adopted, made her seem inconsequential and boring. Even though playing a servant’s role made her responsible for much of the housekeeping, Dismé considered the demotion to be an improvement over being watched all the time. Also, since her father’s death, she had noticed that Gayla’s habit of irrelevant babble made her virtually inaudible to the family. Aping this habit was easy, and between age eight and eighteen she gradually disappeared into the walls of the house, her voice heard only as background noise, while Cora and Rashel almost forgot she was there.
    When Gayla had the Terrors, Dismé dealt with them. Whatever the teachers required at school, Dismé provided it. She was completely ordinary and totally obedient, requiring no “conferences” with teachers or workers from the Bureau of Happiness and Enlightenment. From her new listening post in the attic, Dismé noted that Rashel returned from periodic visits to town in moods of fury, even frenzy. She guessed that whomever they saw on these trips was the same one who had sent Rashel home bloody and bruised after Father died, and this pleased her. All in all, she spent ten years like a chip in an eddy, whirling slowly, not going anywhere, not much caring, maintaining her intrinsic buoyancy through her solitary pleasures, despite Cora and Rashel’s recurrent efforts to scuttle her.
    She was not physically mistreated by either of them. They had a revulsion against her being hurt or doing