Shriek: An Afterword

“Ah, but I know that they worry about us, and that worries me.”

Duncan did a rather unconvincing imitation of a shuffling gray cap. If I hadn’t seen him do it before, I wouldn’t have known what he was trying to do.

“Half-wit.”

“Unappreciative pedant. But what else did they say?”

“Also tell him,” Mortar added, without a hint of threat, “that he might want to go into another line of work.”

“Ho ho! Haven’t you said the same to me sometimes, Janice? So how can you complain?”

“Do you want to hear the rest or are you going to be difficult?”

“I’m sorry,” I said to M & P, remembering a valuable bit of advice from Sybel about how it’s never too late to correct your course so long as you’ve not yet run aground. {Because Sybel was, of course, an expert on sailing metaphors.} “I’m sorry, but I was joking. I’m not really Duncan’s sister. I just like to claim I am sometimes, you know, because it makes things more interesting. My apologies.”

I turned to the rest of the tourists, who had regrouped in front of me and had become a little too interested in my conversation with M & P.

“Now, as we continue, notice the telltale Trillian period details in the building across the square—in particular the fluted archways, the broad columns, the fine filigree. Also note—”

“I don’t believe you,” Mortar said, with the kind of earnest emphasis that can be interpreted as sternly polite or quietly angry, depending on your inclination.

Not for the first time, I remember thinking that perhaps it was time to change careers again.

The second part of Nativism reflected an odd prejudice that Duncan had tried to refute in his own book: most historians {and laypeople} thought of and wrote about the gray caps as if they represented a natural phenomenon, as immutable, faceless, and unpredictable as the weather, and, therefore, best understood in the aggregate, like the change of seasons or a bad thunderstorm. {Would that the Nativists had treated the gray caps like weather and tried to divine, from certain signs—a lowering of the temperature, a particular type of cloud, a strange hot wind—what the gray caps had planned for us.}

As Duncan wrote in his book so many years ago:

Looking back at all of Ambergris’ many historical accounts, the answers to three basic yet profound questions are always missing: (1) in the absence of a strong central government, how does Ambergris manage to avoid fragmentation into separate, tiny city-states? (2) What cause could there possibly be for the fluctuating levels of violence and personal property damage experienced during the Festival? (3) Given the presence of members of over one hundred contradictory religions and cults in the city, what prevents occurrences of holy war?

For Duncan, the answers always returned to the gray caps, who, by use of hidden influence {the first physical manifestation being Frankwrithe & Lewden’s use of fungal weapons} and a multitude of carefully engineered “spore solutions,” kept the population balanced between anarchy and control. To Duncan, this meant that it served the gray caps’ interests for Ambergris to lurch ever forward, never truly disintegrating or cohering, but instead always on the edge, teetering.

However, Mary and her Nativists refused to believe in conscious gray cap machinations. In an article for Ambergris Today, Mary wrote:

Time and again, apologists blame the gray caps for our own follies and misdeeds. Such a position abrogates personal responsibility and is as irresponsible as those religions that attribute deeds to the sun, moon, or sea. We are, ultimately, responsible for our own actions, our own history, and our own happiness. I do not refute any claim that the gray caps are vile and degenerate creatures, or that they have not influenced our city in a negative way. But they have not done so with intent. Their story is not that of an overarching conspiracy, of careful control over centuries, but instead the pitiful tale of a subjugated race that acts with the same instinct and lack of planning as any of the lower animals. For us to confer intent upon them—or to seek intent from them—turns us into victims, unable to fashion our own destinies. I reject such crackpot ideology.

Mary mercilessly picked away at any attempt to prove that the gray caps had exhibited conscious thought or causality, no matter how minor. For example, in a letter to the editor for a broadsheet, Duncan wrote about what appeared to him to be a side effect of the gray caps’ efforts: {I did not. I considered these effects to be as intentional as all of the overt harm done to us by the gray caps.}

The very spores that keep the population in thrall also undertake many beneficial tasks. For example, Ambergris has stayed relatively disease-free throughout its history, with no documented plague as has occurred in Stockton and Morrow. Whether intentional or not, these benefits should not be overlooked.

Mary skewered this idea, writing in a subsequent issue, “Does the absence of disease lead one to the immediate conclusion that some force other than common sense and hand-washing is protecting us?” {I am ashamed to admit that her letter to the editor, in response to my own, sent a little thrill down my spine. I know she wasn’t responding to me personally, but it was still direct communication of a kind.}

“It all sounded so logical in her book,” Duncan complained to me as we looked down at Trillian Square from his apartment window. Below us, M & P and the rest of the tourists were milling about, not sure what to do. “It doesn’t matter that her proof is as insubstantial as mine.”

“Yes,” I said, “but can’t you provide proof, Duncan? Can’t you do something?”

“How? With another article for AFTOIS? All the mentions in the world in Mary’s books do me no good. I’m offered a few interview opportunities, but only if I play the role of clown or eccentric. Anything I said to them would be tainted and instantly discounted. Better not to speak at all.”

Earlier, I had sighed and turned back to Mortar and Pestle.

“You’re right. I wasn’t joking,” I said. “Duncan is my brother. So I’ll let him know what you said next time I see him. Now can we—”

“And give him this letter,” Pestle said, pulling a sealed envelope out of her pocket and handing it to me.

I took it from her as if she had given me a dead fish. What further surprises could the day hold? How patient should I be? It was difficult not to see them, on some level, as Sabon’s personal emissaries, sent to torment me.

“…and give him your letter,” I continued, lying. I threw it away, unread, at the first opportunity. “But I have a favor to ask in return. I need you to relay a message for me.”