The Ozark Trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin

Author:Suzette Haden Elgin [Elgin, Suzette Haden]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Omnibus, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction
ISBN: 1557285926
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: 1981-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Responsible sat at her desk, the private account books before her, and worked, doggedly. It was work that had needed doing before she had left the Castle in February; it was work that needed doing now; and it would make an excellent device for forcing the hours of this day to go by.

At nine o’clock sharp she’d tuned her comset for automatic printout, and she would not miss one word spoken. The speeches and their rebuttals, the Chair’s summary and the results of the voting-assuming they got to the voting today, which was not all that likely-would be transcribed silently onto pliofilm and deposited in the comset slot where her copy of the day’s news still lay unread. She had waked up that morning, an hour after Lewis Motley Wommack left her bed, to the sound of a late spring rain drumming on the roof and against the north windows, and usually that would of been her idea. of an ideal setting to curl up in her bed with the news-sheet and her pot of tea. But she’d had no stomach for the “news” this morning. None of what had happened at Confederation Hall would be news to her-except the things that mattered most but would not be printed on the pliofilm. And anything new that had happened beyond the narrow focus of her present interest, anything that was of importance and might deserve her attention, she did not want to know about right now. She had no attention left to give such things, and would do a slapdash cattywampus job of tending to them-far better to have them wait till this meeting was over and she knew where matters stood.

She was tired, from tension and from lack of sleep; the shower she’d had before her tea had not driven away the gritty feeling under her eyelids nor the ache in her muscles. Nevertheless, she sat at her desk and she studied the columns of figures, forcing them not to blur by squinting fiercely until she added a headache toher other problems and was tempted-just slightly tempted-to squander a Spell or two on her self.

“Pay attention, Responsible,” she told herself sternly, “and don’t be such a frail little flower.” A good hard pinch would wake her up fairly effectively, and save the energy she might well need for real magic before this week was over. She applied the pinch, swore softly, and looked again at the columns of numbers.

There was, for example, the one hundred thirteen dollers entered under the ambiguous heading “Herbs Needed.” Herbs needed by whom? For what? And how could anybody spend one hundred thirteen dollers on herbs at one time? The Grannys gathered their own herbs, as did she and the Magicians; only the Magicians of Rank were considered so busy that their herbs must be provided for them by others.

She laid down her stylus, cross at the ambiguous entry, cross that she hadn’t demanded details when it had come through on the private budget line in the first place, and went to the comset.

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