For a time there was only a hexagram of light in my left eye, and a rhombus of vaguer color in my right—; then, creepingly at first, but with ever-greater speed, a net of green sparks spread across my sight.
“What is it?” came the Redeemer’s voice.
“A six-pointed star. With a net drawn across it.”
“What color is the net?”
“Green.”
“Green? You’re sure?”
“Yes. Green and rust-colored.”
A pause. The sound of a quill being scraped against a cup. The smell of India-ink.
“And the net? Also green?”
“Yes. The net is fading now.”
“Does the star remain?”
“Yes. It’s beginning to turn.”
“Clock-wise?”
“Yes. Wait—: there’s a cloud behind it.”
“What color?”
“Yellow.”
Another pause. The rustling of paper. “Yellow, you said?”
“Yes. It’s already gone.”
“What now?”
“Nothing. Gray lines on a grid.”
“Is it the old grid?”
I opened my eyes with a sigh. “Same as ever.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” the Redeemer said smugly.
Now the candle was lit again, and slid closer to me, and I bent slowly forward till my eye was at its flame.
“What is it?” the Redeemer whispered.
I brought my eye closer still, so close that my brow began to prickle from the heat. The brightness was so severe that I could feel the flickering and bucking of the flame, like a curious finger-tip, on the lining of my brain.
“The net,” I said quickly. “The flare. The yellow cloud.” I paused a moment. “The same star as before.”
“What else?”
I sat back with a groan. “That’s all.”
The Redeemer nodded and closed his book. “Was there pain?” he said, touching my forehead lightly with two fingers.
I cursed him silently. “You know there was.”
“How much?”
“There was pain,” I said. I brushed his hand away.
“You’re becoming more sensitive,” he murmured, touching my face again. Something I’d seen had excited him—; that much was clear. “More pain with the candle, or more with the match?”
“More with the candle,” I said. “With the candle it was as much as I could bear.”
This pleased him better still. “A full reading!” he crowed, holding his notes aloft. “Fuller than most, at any rate. Four signs!”
Usually he said nothing when we’d done, and asked me no more questions—; the reading must have affected him profoundly. “Will it take long to puzzle out?” I asked.
“Don’t be impatient, Kansas. Bide here for a spell.” He snatched up his notebook and spun away again.
I sank wearily to one side, covered my eyes with my palms, and tried to make my own sense of what I’d seen. The result, as usual, was an over-powering urge to sleep. There was nothing wondrous, to my mind, in our sessions, other than the amount of pain they caused me. I had as much confidence in the power of my left eye to foretell the future as I had in my right ear’s ability to predict rain. From the next room, as if across a great body of water, the rustling of folio pages could be heard. A familiar voice intruded on my repose.
“A yellow cloud, Virgil? Yellow? Are you quite sure?”
I sat up with a start, as though prodded awake, to find the Redeemer sitting next to me at the table. His arms were folded tightly against his belly and he was watching me with violence in his look—: at first I thought I’d somehow spoiled the reading.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong? I did my sovereign—”
“You’re to leave tonight,” he said, cutting me short.
I frowned at him. “Tonight, sir? But I haven’t—”
“You’ve heard about the trouble up in Memphis?”
“I’ve heard there’s some manner of epidemic making the rounds,” I said, pressing my fingers to my temples. “Pulmonary grippe. Catarrh.”
“Not catarrh,” the Redeemer said, his eyes brighter than before. “Yellowjack.”
“The fever?” I said hollowly.
“The same.”
I watched him for a moment before I spoke. Something in his manner made me circumspect. “They’ve certainly kept it quiet,” I said at last.
“There’s no keeping it quiet any longer, Kansas.” His voice was sedate and teasing, as though withholding the punch-line to a joke. “Eighty-score are dead—; thousands flee the city every hour.” He clucked his tongue against his teeth. He and Parson both made that same sound, usually as a sign of satisfaction. I began to grow skittish in my seat.
“It’s the seventh day of Judgment up there, according to the Colonel,” the Redeemer said finally.
“The Colonel’s in Memphis?”
The Redeemer shook his head, toying with two burnt matches on the table-top. “He left the day before yesterday, after finding his cook face-down in a pan of hopping-john.”
I tried in vain to catch his eye, hoping to guess the joke before he made it. “As good a sign to jump ship as any, I suppose.”
“Black bile and blood-puddles everywhere,” the Redeemer said, still twiddling the matches. “Rivers of it in the streets.”
I said nothing. My skin was going hot and cold by turns.
“Not everybody’s cleared out, though,” he added playfully.
Blearily, as if through a the bottom of a bottle, I began to see.
“Stacey’s clearing-house, for example, is still open for business. Goodman Harvey’s with old Stacey, managing things on our end.” He scratched his nose. “At present, of course, there isn’t much to manage.”
Goodman Harvey, I thought. Naturally. The only boot-licker in the whole chain of command more eager to please than I was. I knew exactly what the Redeemer wanted of me now. Seeing this, he said nothing more, content to watch me struggle against my better judgment—; the struggle, as always, was a brief one.
“How many?” I asked in a bloodless voice.
He closed his eyes, one after the other, like a tom-cat in a patch of sun. “How many what, dear K?”
“You know damned well, sir. How many niggers.”
He arched his back, cracked his finger-joints against the table, then settled down more comfortably into his chair. He was too content even to chide me for my language. I’d seen him take pleasure in his power over me before, but never with such ruthless, careless coziness. When finally he spoke I learned, in no uncertain terms, just how little I was worth to him.
“Fifty-seven souls,” he said coolly, pushing a dog-eared ledger toward me. I recognized the hand-writing — curlicued, girlish — as Parson’s. Fifty-seven Christian names were listed, each of them male. The list was divided into four columns—: (I) age, (II) weight, (III) disposition, and (IV) marketable skills. A fifth column, labeled “Sold For,” as yet remained blank.
The most I’d ever taken on a single run was seventeen head, and that mostly women. I should have bowed to him politely, walked down to the landing, and dog-paddled all the way to New Orleans.
“Why so many?” I asked. My voice was thick as custard.
“Because we can, Kansas! We can—; and we have the yellowjack to thank for it. It’s the fourth birthday of the Trade, and the fever has given us a present—: enough panic to run a herd of bison through. If Jefferson, or Rush, or even old Baron were still receiving, we’d ship every last darkie off this island tout à fait!” He quieted himself, with an obvious effort, and gave me a sober look. “But Pop Stacey — blast him! — won’t take more than fifty-seven.”