Kathleen Ann Goonan - Queen City Jazz

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QUEEN CITY JAZZ

by KATHLEEN ANN GOONAN (1994)

[VERSION 1.1 (May 11 2006). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version

number by 0.1 and redistribute.]

For Joseph

Thanks to my readers: Steve Brown, who believed in the book and named Verity; Wanda Collins,

Sage Walker, Pam Noles, and Beverly Suarez-Beard. Thanks also to Virginia Kidd, whose enthusiasm

helped me finish this book, and to David Hartwell, whose insights were invaluable.

Special thanks to my husband, Joseph Michael Mansy, for his support, encouragement, and scientific

expertise; to Tom Goonan, for historical facts and many important technical suggestions; to John

Cramer, for the idea that made it work; to Amy Roberts, who was there; and to Irma, Mary, and Susie

Goonan.

Memories of Russell and Vera Goonan, and Clarence and Eva Knott -- and their homeplaces -- were

with me as I wrote this book, as well as the memory of Steve Hibberd.

-=*=-

Strange futures lie open, holding worlds beyond our imagining.

--Eric Drexler,

Engines of Creation

In New Orleans -- if you could get to New Orleans -- would the music be loud enough?

--Annie Dillard,

An American Childhood

-=*=-

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IT’S A GIFT

Sometimes their hand will stretch out, and after it they run -- through woods -- cross lots -- over

fences, swamps, or whatever...

--The People Called Shakers

ONE

TRUE SIMPLICITY

John was blue, steady as the blue light far down the abandoned maglev track; Verity and Cairo had

walked down it one spring day when Verity was only ten though she was forbidden by Evangeline.

Verity watched the light in wonder, thinking of John. It still received the hidden signal programmed into

its chips, activated, John told her, by power stored in its solar battery.

Verity had flipped her straw hat back over her shoulders so that it hung by the string around her neck

and watched the light for a long time before Cairo, her dog, grew restless and thrust the picture of home

before her relentlessly, several times. It was a plain, white frame house on a low hill protruding from a

glittering green sea of soy and corn, five miles from the Great Miami River. Solar power was allowed by

the Scriptures, as long as it was not Enlivened, and they had several ancient panels on their roof which

John had foraged from far-off Columbus.

Verity had gone with John, when she was little, urging the horse on with pictures of oats, though

John thought it was the flick of his whip that moved the beast. The empty, deactivated City scolded them

audibly for disconnecting the solar panels. It terrified and fascinated her. She begged to go back, but

John had been more spooked than she, and it was several day’s journey besides. One wagonload was all

they got from Columbus. Cincinnati was closer, but it was still living, and the Scriptures absolutely

forbade contact with an Enlivened City. John wasn’t too comfortable about Dayton either, although it

was only about ten miles away.

And if people were colors then Sare was yellow like warm golden cornmeal after it was ground at the

mill on Bear Creek, or the sun just after it rose over the fields and forests of Western Ohio. Evangeline,

Sare’s twin sister, was hard and green like the emerald ring Verity wore on her right hand. They were

both around forty.

Blaze, nineteen, was wild as an orange autumn sunset seen through the black branches of the bare

orchard just before storm set in. That wild sound was in him too, of branches rattling furious in wind

rushing from the flat plains to the west, crystallizing the sky with rapid frigidity. Verity loved weather,

and weather’s changes, and how people were like weather. She had once hooked into some old

weathersats and eddied through years of the quickened flow of storm systems for several hours before

John flung open the door of the evening-darkened library and rudely disconnected her, telling her

roughly that she could read all she liked but to stay away from that and that she didn’t need to know.

That annoyed her. Weather, she told John, is very important to farmers and he said well that weather’s a

century old, a lot’s happened since then.

But she often crept into that corner of the library afterwards and hooked herself in. Russ said it was

all right, anyway. Anything in the library was for them all. John was not the boss. He only thought he

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was sometimes. The tiny bumps behind her ears where she hooked in hadn’t been discovered till she’d

been cleared, certified, and taken from Edgetown, just outside Cincinnati. At that time Verity was, by

their best estimation, three years old.

Sare had told Verity how she had found the nubs, the second day Verity was with them. Sare was

braiding Verity’s hair when she felt the right nub with her little finger. “I trembled,” she said. “Then I

pulled back your hair for a better look. I’m not the fainting type, but I almost fainted then.” Verity had

been certified plague-free by a Certifier -- an old man -- in Edgetown. Verity didn’t remember it, but

apparently she was taken inside a small black building for a while and brought out with a nod. The

Shakers had no idea what went on inside the building, just knew that they trusted the old man as he had

been a friend of a long-dead Sister. Yet though she was plague-free, the nubs proclaimed her abnormal,

and the source and effect of this anomaly was completely unknown to the Shakers and therefore to be

feared.

They had called a Meeting immediately. Verity could imagine the arguments, but they loved her

already and kept her of course, despite the unknown danger.

The Shakers had not dared venture back to Edgetown since they had added Verity to Shaker Hill,

even though four Elders and two Elderesses had died and should have been replaced. They never really

talked about it, but Verity knew it was because of her. The nubs behind her ears were proof of some sort

of tampering; tampering which might infect the Shakers in some unknown way or even kill them. The

Shakers took responsibility for her, but fear of the unknown kept them from returning to Edgetown for

more children, and the community had dwindled. Twenty years ago, it had been thriving, with fifty

Brethren, mostly very old people. The last of those old ones had died when Verity was a child.

But so far, in all the years of her growing up, Verity had posed no danger. She seemed quite normal.

She knew she was lucky to be at Shaker Hill; they told her so, and she believed it. Her days and nights

were part of a larger Shaker cycle bound to the land, exploiting nothing, using what they needed. They

were all going to Heaven when they died, which was a lot like Ohio, all ordered and filled with the

living light that Verity felt she saw everyone moving through fairly often, especially in the evening

when they were preparing dinner, and sometimes when they all worked to get the hay in. Most of them

did not like Cairo much. She had come wagging out of a thicket a few years earlier, and became Verity’s

dog. They were inseparable.

The rest of her family was a jumble of doors -- the private rooms in which the Brothers and Sisters

lived -- and kind faces, arms that hugged, voices that scolded or more often gently corrected and

instructed, a deep and wide community that held her in a hammock of relationships until she was

sixteen, and taking in the triticale harvest by herself since Tai Tai was not feeling well that day.

Verity hadn’t seen the Flowers since she was a child, but often longed for them with a shortening of

breath, an ache in her chest, with a vision that spread out inside her mind like the growing light of day.

And she had found it hard to believe that Bees were almost as large as humans (if they even existed at

all, that is), but that day of harvest, when she was sixteen, she found that it was so.

Her back ached from bending over with the scythe. Her bike lay on its side a quarter mile away, at

the top of the bank above the flood plain where she worked, its rust-flowered blue paint catching the

sun. The Great Miami River glittered wide, deep, and olive-green, edged by a steep drop-off at the end

of the field. It overflowed its banks each spring, making this fertile ground and worth the fifteen-minute

bike ride. The remains of a small, old town, Miamisburg, lay across the river. The earthquake flood had

swept much of it away. A few remaining sections of a fallen iron bridge lay tangled in the river below.

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Verity’s rhythmic swipes slowed as a foreign vibration entered her body even before she could hear

it. Cairo, who had been lying in a cool thicket at the edge of the field, leaped up and whined.

Verity turned, shaded her eyes with her hand, and saw against the sun a small black dot which grew

steadily larger.

It was following the path of the river.

And it was a Bee.

Sweat burned her eyes as she stared. She was twenty feet from the bluff overlooking the river, and

wanted to run, take cover, but couldn’t move. Her heart contracted in fear as she gradually realized how

large it was.

Her entire body hummed as the Bee halted and hovered near her, over the middle of the river and

about thirty feet above in the air. She was caught in the rush of air stirred by its wings, in the loud,

lovely tone they gave forth in vibrating, almost as if the strength of the sound could lift her too.

Soft gold and brown bands circled its body and glowed in the sun. Its front was a black complication

of shiny parts. The eyes that stared at her reminded her of the heart of a Black-eyed Susan. Pictures

hummed in the air between them, and Cairo leaped up, stiff-legged, and began to bark.

A man’s face was before her, half torn away and unrecognizable. Spurting blood and gray brains

mixed with ivory splinters of bone. The remaining eye stared lifeless and she felt deep horror yet could

not look away.

Vision segued insistently to a woman lying dead in a white room, her pale face washed by blinking

green and blue lights. Deep anguish and inexplicable guilt seized Verity.

The next instant Verity stood on the edge of a high chasm surrounded by tall buildings. Far below

flowed rivers of light. Across the chasm an impossibly huge iris moved in the night wind, filling her

with deep happiness which switched suddenly to a darkness she fully believed would never, never end.

Her own anguished cry startled her. Her vision cleared. She saw the field, the river, the sky above.

And the Bee.

Faced with the hovering Bee, her hair blown back from her face by the wind from the vibrating

wings, Verity knew with stunned and instant certainty that the pictures came from Cincinnati, yet did not

know why she saw them, what they meant, or why they tore at her.

But she suddenly realized what would happen next.

“No!” she screamed, as the Bee pivoted, darted high into the blue sky, then plummeted full speed into

the Great Miami River with a loud smack as it hit the water.

Verity ran to the bluff and plunged down the steep slope. Rough brush tore at her bare arms and

clothing as she half ran, half slid down the hill, raising dust that made her cough.

She dove into the river and the current took her, frightening her: they usually swam upriver in a

protected cove. Not here in the open river.

The Bee swirled fifty yards from her downstream, and slowly revolved so that its thin legs protruded

upward, and Verity realized that it was dead, killed from impact or water -- she did not know which but

was saddened.

She trod water for a minute, struggling with the invasion of darkness and blood which filled her

mind, feeling the cool, pure pull of the depths of the river, wondering what it would be like to dive deep

and never come up, but flow along the bottom in long, powerful surges and never take of air again but

breathe only lovely, cool green water.

The Bee’s last thought eddied from her and she shivered.

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Cairo’s frantic barks brought her back. She was flotsam in the river, rushing toward Cincinnati.

With a powerful kick, she oriented herself and angled toward the base of the old maglev bridge, and

scrambled ashore on slippery mud, gasping, while Cairo danced around her, licking her face, sending an

icon at which she laughed: an empty bowl.

She hugged the dog, taking in the smell of her, the hot furry prickle of short black fur against her bare

arms. Cairo closed her jaws gently on Verity’s forearm and let go, leaving small white indentations

where her teeth had been.

Verity got up. It was a long walk back to the field, and she still had a tenth of an acre to harvest

before dark.

At that moment, when she was wringing water from her shirt, the second miraculous thing happened

in the day she later called the day of miracles, though the miracles were dark and strange and troubling,

but she felt from the Scriptures that that was what a miracle was: something which thrust itself on you

that you did not understand, something which frightened you, something which gave direction,

something which glowed in the dark of night like the radio stone.

She heard faint singing. It was a still day, near the very end of high summer, and hot, with no breeze,

almost stifling. That’s why she could hear them out there, the Rafters, not their words really, but their

tune, rising and falling.

She stood dripping on the bank, breathing hard, and they swept around the bend that hid Dayton -- a

good City for foraging things like jars for preserving, and safe too as it had never been Enlivened.

Though John was as frightened of it as if it had been.

She counted ten of them, all standing, all staring forward: Norleaners. They must have gotten split off

the Old Ohio up toward Steubenville, on the West Virginia line. About sixty years ago during the

earthquake the old riverbed of the Ohio, which once flowed crosswise past the south end of the Glacier

at the end of the last ice age, had opened. Part of the river filled its old bed again and swelled the Great

Miami River. At least that’s what Blaze told her, that the ancient sideways Ohio River still flowed close

to the surface under the farm, that’s why their well pipe only had to go down ten feet, and that’s why the

gravel of Bear Creek was smooth round moraine stones, because it had been glacier scoured.

John just said that the earthquake, which happened before he was born, had been one of the Signs.

Rafters rarely came this way, though -- at least not the informed ones. It was much more hazardous,

with raw new cliffs dropping into the river, and islands everywhere. Mostly they ran aground way

upriver before they got too far down this new branch.

Verity gazed upriver as the raft approached. There was a wigwam in the middle -- all of the rafts had

one or more, depending on the size, for shelter.

A woman stood at the till, tall and straight and then leaning hard against it. Maybe she was the one

shouting and sobbing.

Verity watched without moving, knowing that something important and vital was unfolding before

her. She’d never seen Rafters by herself before, and only twice earlier when she was with Blaze and he

grabbed her away roughly saying that was something she oughtn’t see and that they had to stay far away

from the plaguers.

One of them slumped onto the raft. The steerswoman let go of the stick and shook the person -- a

woman, Verity thought -- but the ghostly singing of the rest continued. The first woman screamed and

kicked the second overboard with short, hard kicks, rolling her closer to the edge until she slipped off

and was swallowed by the river. The raft swirled in an eddy and Verity watched it all happen again, the

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distant, dull splash of the second body into the river, the harsh scream of the woman, and the cheerful

song of the others who were still aboard.

Cairo flattened her ears and bolted upriver as if she’d caught sight of a fox.

The sun stood bold overhead like a great ball of brilliant silent sound, beating into Verity, as, down

by the bridge, she saw a third body shoved into the river.

-=*=-

“You didn’t wear your hat today,” scolded Evangeline, as Verity wearily pushed open the screen

door to the house and let it slam behind her. Evangeline put the back of her hand to Verity’s cheek and

pulled it away, saying, “It’s a burn and you can only survive so many with your fair skin. You’ve had at

least three and you’re still only sixteen. Be more careful, girl!” She shook her head and went back to

breaking eggs into a bowl on the counter. A cake, Verity hoped.

Verity had hooked into an old pharmacological volume one time and had seen how skin cancer had

grown exponentially during the last century, after the brief solar flare that disrupted radio

communications. She also knew there had been cures -- something to do with genes -- that Shakers were

forbidden by Scripture to use. Anyway, Evangeline was just being overprotective.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, saying nothing about the Bee or the Rafters, her own miracles, though it

might be selfish. They would figure out some way to make them vanish, or not miracles, or perhaps they

would believe her and become alarmed or angry.

Evening sun filled the western windows, and the curtains Blaze had woven, intricate with tiny

turquoise triangles and rose-pink stripes, flared into the large dining hall with each puff of wind, lazy as

a turtle’s swimmy breath.

Evangeline stirred the pot of triticale, which boiled in great slow spits of filmy liquid, and Verity

glanced in and saw orange bits of carrot and wrinkled her nose at the pot of turnips, which she actively

disliked. No meat tonight. That was all right with her. She never ate it, though she would hunt for rabbits

if they insisted.

Ev raised one black eyebrow at her so that it slanted on her white face like a crow’s wing, and Verity

sighed and crossed into the dining hall and began to take the chairs down off the wall. Eight, slid in

around the generous oak table, and then eight of Blaze’s napkins, the splotched ones dyed in beet juice

and then striped green, despite John who invariably complained that stripes were expressly forbidden by

the Millennial Laws, and maybe the lamp to light because night was coming sooner now.

Verity heard the tramp of feet on the porch. The kitchen door opened and Sare danced in, her face

flushed, twirling so her skirt stood out and John followed, much bluer in Verity’s opinion than usual,

more full of whatever made him so blue though it could not be sex since Shakers were celibate but

maybe, she thought, love, which was allowed. A rare smile lit John’s face as he stood very still, and

watched Sare.

For a moment it was as if no one else was in the room. John took a step toward Sare, holding the

basket of apples they had picked as if they were an offering.

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Then he turned his head, saw Verity and Evangeline and blinked, as if they had appeared quite

suddenly. His smile vanished, and his eyes were tinged with sadness.

“Just about the last of the apples,” John said abruptly, and hoisted the heavy basket up on the kitchen

counter. Transparent, they were called, one of the genetic patents as was every squirrel, fox, or deer. The

animal’s copyright stamp generally grew in fur patterns behind the right ear, though sometimes Verity

found one between the legs as pigmented skin. She only knew about the apples because Blaze had told

her. Not that she believed everything he said.

“Send that dog right back outside,” commanded Sare, and Verity tried not to be annoyed. She was

lucky to be able to keep Cairo, since it said there right in the Millennial Laws, Section VII: “No Believer

is allowed to play with cats or dogs, nor to make unnecessary freedom with any of the beasts of the field,

or with any kind of fowl or bird,” and also, “No dogs may be kept in any family gathered into order.”

And also that they may not be called by any Christian name, so Cairo was a place, but Verity didn’t see

why they bothered with that rule at all seeing as how dogs were forbidden to begin with. Cairo had been

the subject of many a Meeting, but they were also forbidden to hurt any animal (as if killing for meat

wasn’t hurting, and Shakers had always eaten meat) and she refused to leave, so they finally accepted

her. Verity had never told anyone that they shared pictures in their minds -- that would have been it. If

they believed her.

She yanked open a drawer to get out the silverware, but pulled it too hard, so that the whole drawer

crashed onto the floor, because an odd feeling surged in her seeing John and Sare so happy together.

She stood looking at the mess on the floor and without thinking said, “I saw a Bee today.”

Everyone in the kitchen -- John, Sare, Evangeline, and now Blaze, just coming in the door -- said,

“Where?”

-=*=-

Ev asked the Blessing -- “We give thanks, O Lord, for this gift of life pure, untainted and human,”

and after they all held hands and listened to the curtains flap during the Moment of Silence they all

started in on Verity again.

“I could not have fished it out, I didn’t even touch it” said Verity for what seemed like the hundredth

time, wondering why she was supposed to avoid such things and why at the same time there was this

devouring curiosity. She resolved for sure not to tell them about the Rafters, and most especially not the

way some of them had been pushed off the raft.

Blaze was hurt and angry that she had not told him immediately. John was concerned and asked

careful, precise questions about what it looked like and how high it had flown and things she couldn’t

really remember or report to his satisfaction though he asked again and again.

Verity could see that Sare was itching for dinner to be over so that she could run to her room and put

something down in her Book, full of neat words and numbers, where she measured flower petals,

counted how many carrots you could expect from a single seed after four generations, and wrote down

the results of her plague screens, which she got from a little machine which hummed and sat away from

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the main buildings in its own little house, the only thing allowed here from the Years of the Flowers.

Because otherwise they might all die, or worse, be made so strange that they couldn’t get to Heaven.

Tai Tai looked severe, as usual, thin and tough as a bramble vine and most concerned about purity

and the Olden Ways. She knew the most about the Years of the Flowers, and she also said the least. “It’s

best forgotten,” she would say.

Ev had told Verity that Tai Tai’s entire family had been trapped and eaten right near the Eastern

Seam of Cincinnati, when the Conversion had surged out of control, and how when they had found her

as a girl, those old Shakers who had passed over, she wouldn’t speak. They observed her for a week

before they made their decision: a thin girl of ten who each morning took a stick of incense to the Seam,

which was a rather rough part of Edgetown and not fit for little girls. While the morning light brushed

the smooth wall, high as the skyscrapers within because of course it was the half-formed embryo of new

ones, she burned the incense, glared at the wall, then left to do her scavenging. She kept herself neat and

clean and her hair braided, and the Shakers were impressed and rescued her. Since childhood she had

kept a journal of numbers and symbols which Verity had once peeked at, wondered at: brackets, dots,

numbers, letters, all jumbled together crazy and tight.

It was she who had admitted to Verity when Verity was young and waking up from nightmares and

jumping trembling and crying into her bed each night that the Flowers on tops of the buildings --

Verity’s nightmares -- were real. Real, and living, as alive as the hydrangea bushes which crowded

around the house. “Ah, those evil Flowers -- why do you ask me such things?” She had hugged Verity

tight, her nightgown crisp white in the moonlight that poured through the window and brushed the green

and yellow quilt with dim color. “They are genetically engineered. Huge. When they raised their heads

from the buildings, when they bloomed, we were all so frightened, we ran... horrible that such huge

Flowers could be alive... nan is evil, a sin against God and humanity.” Verity remembered nothing after

that except crying, and that Tai Tai had refused to talk about them ever again, but strangely enough

Verity could sleep after that, and her dreams of the Flowers were happier. Yes, Tai Tai said nothing at

this news about the Bee, but she didn’t eat much, and stared out the window. Her thin ebony face was

drawn and her lips were tight.

And Russ, the old man, whom Verity loved, joked a lot, his round bald head glowing gently after

they lit the lantern. He said, “Well, Verity, there was your chance to get away from us old folks. Why

didn’t you just jump on its back and ride away?”

Tai Tai glared at him.

Russ turned to Tai Tai and said, “I guess you want her to be just like you, old woman. You’ve never

had a man in your bed and all these years I’ve been so willing,” with a wink round the table while Tai

Tai’s mouth tightened even more. She threw down her napkin and huffed off.

“You shouldn’t tease her like that, Russ,” said John, but it wouldn’t make any difference. This was

Russ’s house, and he’d grown up in it as a boy, before his parents had turned it into a Shaker

Community. He made no secret of the fact that he’d had sex and thought it wonderful.

“It doesn’t have to involve reproduction,” he’d told Verity once, when she was little and standing

next to him while he pruned the apple trees. Her job was to run off with the fallen sticks and pile them

for kindling. “But these lily-livered souls are afraid it might, and I don’t blame them. There are dangers

-- I don’t deny it. Maybe I was just lucky. And you never know what might come out, nosiree -- ha!

Might be a clutch of dragons, or a woman so all-fired smart that she puts the sun to shame, like Tai Tai.

Not that that’s bad, but Tai Tai seems to think it is. Poor thing. Or people who see things different than

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they do. That’s the problem, now that the genes are all mixed so strange, people are just afraid of what

might happen, that’s all -- at least these people.” He sighed, and clipped, then said, “Well, they definitely

got the population under control,” as if he was talking to himself, but then said, “Verity, when you get

older, keep in mind that you don’t have to stay here forever. These are the best folks on the earth, but

they ain’t the whole of it, and you strike me as a girl who might want to know more.”

Verity had wondered about the dragons for a long time, and when she finally asked Ev about them,

she snorted and said, “Don’t listen to everything that silly old man says.” So when Russ told her about

the Bees, even though the Shakers all seemed to agree that such Bees really existed, Verity took it as just

one more story. One of Russ’s grand and casual exaggerations, like the dragons.

Until now.

Evening was the time of day which most seemed as if it might be like Heaven, when they cleaned up.

They all moved around the farm kitchen in motion harmonious as dance. Blaze sat down at his

hammered dulcimer (“Trying to slither out of work again?” asked Russ) and picked out some tune that

he made up as he went along, then did a little Bach, and started in on a Rafter song. He could slip them

past Sare if he didn’t sing the words -- she hated them.

I’ve got a mule and her name is Sal

Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal

She’s a good old worker and a good old pal

Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

Only, of course, since they were all around listening he just played the tune, and Verity thought the

words as he winked at her, thinking about the other horrible thing she had seen today and wondering

why she didn’t tell them about it too.

Blaze had taken Verity over near Miamisburg one spring day when she was thirteen, and showed her

the old canal bed. “Two hundred years old,” he said. “Look.” He knelt and picked up some sticky

crumbly black stuff. “Asphalt. There was a little airport here too -- you know the Wright brothers lived

over in Dayton, don’t you? Russ’s great great great -- well, something like that -- some far-back

grandfather used to be one of their customers. They had a bike shop. I believe this railroad line was in

use at the same time. Four means of transportation running side by side.”

“How do you know all that?” she asked, staring at the shallow indentation. “It just looks like a ditch.

I can barely see it. It’s not very deep.”

“Didn’t have to be,” he said. “Couldn’t be. It was a lot of work to dig the things. They hardly had any

machines then. It was a lot like now. The bottoms of the boats were flat. Mules pulled them. Read it in a

history book in the library.”

He claimed an old steam railroad had run right through the southeast corner of the yard by the house,

too, and that he could see the ghost train, but that it never stopped even when he tried to flag it down.

Verity had poked around trying to find a trace of tracks, but never had. Blaze was crazy about trains.

After the cities had become allergic to each other, the maglev tunnels that crisscrossed North America

had all been blown up, to keep the contagion from spreading, but Blaze was constantly trying to find out

if they’d ever surfaced in Dayton, and if so, where.

“Show me the exact book -- the exact page -- where it tells about the canal,” she told him. It was best

to check his references. She jumped down into what he was calling a canal bed, landed on her feet in tall

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Kathleen Ann Goonan - Queen City Jazz

dry grass, and thrashed around some to scare possible snakes. She caught him out, sometimes -- he made

a lot of stuff up, and she’d believed all of it when she was little and felt silly about it now. He was

always talking about going to the train station in Cincinnati too, which was clearly impossible.

“Maybe I will, Demon,” he said, and grabbed her by her thin shoulders and squeezed hard, stared into

her eyes with wide green eyes that didn’t blink, then jumped away. “Race you home,” he said, his voice

catching in a funny way, and of course he won. Blaze’s Gifts were baseball, music, caring for the three

plow horses and the five sleek swift riding horses, and running very fast. A lot of Gifts, really, when the

only one she had was Dance.

Verity wiped dishes and looked out the window over the sink, at the night sky sprinkled with new-

evening stars delicate like they were at this time and not blazing and strong like on a winter midnight.

Everyone else had finished and was getting the other room ready for Evening Meditation. Russ said that

all this drudgery stuff was taken care of by nan in Cincinnati, because of Enlivenment. “But you never

know what them things might be up to next,” he’d said with a smile and a wink, just as if the biggest

fear of everyone else was another jolly joke to him, who once went all the way to Denver on the maglev

in the golden days of the end of the Years of the Flowers. Blaze’s Book was full of Russ’s stories,

scribbled in a wild hand she could barely read.

And her own Book?

She wiped the last dish and put it on the shelf, wiped down the counter, and put the drain board away

under the sink. Everything was clean. She turned the lamp down and stood in the dark for a moment,

listening to night sounds through the open window -- the orchard soughing in the light breeze, and dying

crickets singing. She thought of what she had to add to her Book now.

The Bee hovering above her, of course, but how would she show how it had measured her with those

strange and wondrous eyes?

Her Book was full of pictures, which made it hard to show some things -- but easier, maybe, to show

others. That was what always came out. Just pictures. Sometimes she wondered why. Why didn’t she

use words, like Blaze, or numbers, like Sare and Tai Tai?

She heard Blaze play a few chords on the pump organ, then they began:

Of the Mother’s love begotten,

Ere the worlds began to be,

She is Alpha and Omega,

She the source, the ending She

Of the things that are, that have been

And that future years shall see

Evermore and evermore.

Verity hung up her towel and went in to join them at the second verse.

They sat still on their benches in the Meeting Hall, quiet after the hymn.

Verity felt the Great Blessing echo through her body, unfolding like a flower of light which drew

brilliance from the air around her straight into her body, and then it gathered into the center of her bones,

concentrated, bright, and rushed upward through her spine until it flowered somewhere above the top of

her head.

She began to jerk, but paid little attention to it -- the way her head snapped forward on the end of her

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KathleenAnnGoonan-QueenCityJazzQUEENCITYJAZZbyKATHLEENANNGOONAN(1994)[VERSION1.1(May112006).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]ForJosephThankstomyreaders:SteveBrown,whobelievedinthebookandnamedVerity;WandaCollins,SageWalker,PamNoles,andBeverlySuare...

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Kathleen Ann Goonan - Queen City Jazz

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