With this, he could no longer scoff at Lafier’s inexperience.
“What’s the matter?” The clerk kept staring his way.
“Uhh... How much does the average person need to get by for half a year?”
“Hmm... Pardon me, but that’s a rather abstract way to set a price.”
“Sorry!” Red in the face, Jinto reached for the sash clip. “I’ll come back later!”
“Wait a moment, sir,” said the clerk. “Would you mind parting with it for 1,500 deuth (DYOOTH)?”
“1,500 deuth?” 1,500 sounded like a lot, but for all he knew, it might not have measured up to a single scarh.
“How much would that be in scarh?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, lowering his volume, “This is just business, so I don’t normally like to pry. That being said, given the situation out there, I can’t say it’s wise to concern yourself over the conversion rate to scarh.”
“Now that you mention it...” Jinto felt a great deal of gratitude for the clerk’s roundabout counsel.
“Incidentally, I’d say you can live comfortably on around 20 deuth a day.”
“I see...” Jinto ran the numbers in his head, and realized that that amounted to around six months’ living expenses.
“How about I give it to you for 3,000 deuth?”
“Sir,” he replied icily, “not to repeat myself, but we’re running a business here. Moreover, we are the only shop in town that deals with goods-to-money conversion.”
In other words, this was their best offer, and there would be no haggling.
“Okay,” Jinto relented. “Please, I’ll take 1,500 deuth for it.”
“A wise decision, sir.” Tactful enough not to ask for Jinto’s bank account number, the clerk slid 1,500 worth of deuth in cash over the counter.
“Please count and see.”
“Right.” It was a stack of 100s. Jinto counted 15 bills, and then stashed them into his pocket. “That’s 1,500 all right.”
The clerk bowed. “It was a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Um, can I ask you something?” ventured Jinto. “Out of pure curiosity, how much are you planning to sell that for?”
“Good question,” he said as he handled the sash clip. “It isn’t customary for us to wear such sash clips, as we don’t wear daüchlong robes. However, the exceptional quality and craftsmanship of this piece should make for an attractive figurine of sorts. I think I’d like to sell it for at least 30,000 deuth.”
Hearing that he’d traded it in for a 20th of its actual value didn’t rile Jinto up.
“I hope you make a killing on it,” said Jinto sincerely.
“Thank you very much,” he replied, smiling from ear to ear.
Now that he had money, buying clothes was the next order of business.
At first, he thought he only needed to buy Lafier some new ensembles, but now it seemed he could use a wardrobe change, too.
The various vending machines dispensing apparel tended to draw the eye, but since they didn’t accept cash, he soon gave up on them. On the other hand, clothing stores proved more numerous than accessories and decoration. Jinto chose to visit one such store he’d crossed on his way to this place and retraced his steps.
In front of the building that contained the clothing store, a flairiac (grounded car) was parked. The car’s build was quite ungainly, and several figures in the green-brown military fatigues were standing around it.
“Stop where you are, citizen!” blared the car’s megaphone. Jinto ducked his head, but it wasn’t him they were accosting.
A handful of troops restrained a young girl.
“Wha, what’re you—” she shrieked with equal parts fear and shock. Passing onlookers paused in their tracks.
“You too, citizen!” blared the car again. Another handful of troops crowded around the middle-aged man in question.
“There’s no need to panic,” the megaphone insisted. “If you cooperate, there will be no trouble. Please state your names and addresses. We ask that you show us some identification as well.”
“What am I guilty of!?” shouted the girl.
“You must have failed to hear our military’s notification. Blue hair is considered a declaration of self-enslavement to the Abh.”
So that was it. The two they had apprehended had both dyed their hair blue.
“I happen to like deep blue. What of it?” said the man.
“You are trying to emulate the Abh, which is a shameful act for a liberated citizen.”
“You’ve got to be joking!”
“I’ll have none of your sophistry!”
Murmurs of protest were stirring amidst the spectators as well. The residents of Clasbule were relatively combative in nature.
“We’ll be giving you two until tomorrow, 10:00 AM planetary time to dye your hair and report to the liaison office that’s now set up at City Hall. If you refuse, you’ll be considered recalcitrant in your self-subjection to the Abh, and summarily arrested.”
Jinto watched the two territorial citizens unwillingly disclose their names and addresses as he headed toward the clothing boutique.
“We are the Evangel Unit of the United Humankind’s Peacekeepers! If you know any family or acquaintances who have dyed their hair blue, we ask you to persuade them to change it to a color better suited to humanity. You have been warned. Starting 10:00 AM tomorrow, there will be no more warnings. Offenders’ hair will be removed at once...” So the megaphone decreed to the assembled onlookers behind Jinto as he paced away from the scene.
Chapter 8: Gorocoth Lamhirr (Lafier’s Transformation)
Clasbule’s long night was finally receding into the dawn.
Wow, Jinto mused as he approached the cave, how long’s it been since I’ve had somebody to wait for me at home?
Was she being good and waiting there for him? He’d only been gone for around three hours, after all. Plus, the enemy seemed busy laying their hands on people who’d made the dire mistake of choosing to dye their hair blue, so she was probably fine... Or so he was telling himself to tamp down his anxiety.
“Lafier, I’m back!” He didn’t want a gun aimed at him again.
There was no change to the entrance of the cave. No traces of blood adorned the trap, so he knew no animals taller than knee-height in stature had trespassed. Jinto carefully rewound the carbon crystal fiber onto the spindle.
“Lafier!” No response.
His anxiety creeping back, Jinto took the compuwatch out of his pocket, equipped it, switched on its flashlight, and went to the cave’s far end.
There she was, breathing lightly as she dozed. Her face’s profile looked so much like a young child’s it was frankly astounding.
Jinto sighed with relief.
“Lafier, wake up.” He shook her shoulders. The royal princess’s eyes reeled open, and suddenly she drove Jinto back and reached for her phaser!
“It’s me! It’s me!” Jinto stroked his backside.
“Oh. So it is.” Lafier relaxed. “You scared me.”
“And that’s my fault how?” said Jinto. “I called for you a million times, and you weren’t waking up. Honestly, I doubt the trap would’ve alerted you anyway at this rate.”
“Shut up, Jinto,” she said, shutting him down. She narrowed her eyes. “What are those tacky clothes supposed to be?”
“Oh, this old thing?” Jinto looked down at the jumpsuit he’d donned. How many colors were plastered over it? The three primaries went without saying, and joining them in the madness were indigo, pea green, pink, reddish brown, tan... there were roughly 20 shades in all.
The clerk at the boutique had assured him the color scheme looked dapper on him.
“I think you’re gonna have to get used to colorful.”
“I refuse,” she stated bluntly.
“Okay, you don’t have to get used to it, but I do need you to tough it out,” Jinto compromised.
“Forbearance is necessary in life,” she a
greed reluctantly.
Jinto sat down, opened the duffle bag he’s acquired in town, and took out a can.
“What’s that?” asked Lafier, peering.
“Hair dye.”
“Hair dye?”
“Yep. Gotta do something about your blue hair, don’t you think?” Jinto read the label. “Oh, good. It says just spill it on your hair.”
“You mean to dye my hair!?” she said, eyes widening.
“Uh, duh. Did you think I felt the urge to dye MY hair? I bought some for you in black. Thought you’d probably like black the most.”
“I refuse!” Lafier covered her hair with her arms and shrank back.
“C’mon...” Jinto was not expecting this. “So you don’t like black, then? Maybe I should’ve picked red or yellow.”
“I don’t dislike black; I like my hair the color it is. It’s an exquisite shade, not too dark, not too ligt...” Lafier was ready to launch into a fervent diatribe.
“Gotcha, gotcha. I think it’s really pretty, too,” Jinto consoled her. “Thing is, over in the city, they’re rounding up people who’ve dyed their hair blue.”
“My hair isn’t dyed!”
“Yeah, and why’s that? Think about it: once they see that it’s NOT dyed, I daresay it’d turn even worse for us.”
“Coo lin mahp ahs tang kip!“
“You oughta wash your mouth out. Not that I have any idea what you said.”
“I suppose I have no other choice...” she said, dejected.
Jinto had lost his patience, though. “Man, you Abhs are real hard to understand. You’re fine with genetic modification, so what’s so bad about a little cosmetic modification?”
“How many times must I tell you, you too are A—”
“I’m Abh? Yeah, well, it’s hard to feel that way whenever stuff like this happens.” Jinto shook the can. “O noblest Fïac Lartnér, though it pains a lowly peon like me to impose upon you, couldst you offer your hair most beauteous upon me? Or do you wanna do the damn thing yourself?”
“Give it to me; I’d never let you lay a hand on my hair!” Lafier practically wrested the can from his hands.
Making no effort to read the label, Lafier attempted to take off the can’s cap.
“You’ve gotta take off your circlet first!”
“I do?”
“Of course! I’m trying to pass you off as a Lander, Lafier. You ever met a Lander wearing a circlet?” Then it occurred to him. “Oh yeah, I guess Abhs don’t really take ‘em off very often. Is exposing your froch in public embarrassing, or...?”
“You always think up such strange things,” she said, seemingly impressed.
“Then it’s not embarrassing?”
“No. We simply don’t take them off because doing so is inconvenient.”
“Okay, good. Then I don’t have to worry about it.”
Jinto’s heart thumped a little. The froch spatiosensory organ was composed of over 100,000,000 individual lenses. The closest point of comparison would be an insect’s compound eye. In all honesty, the thought that Lafier’s forehead was sporting an insect eye was less than appealing.
However, when Lafier begrudgingly removed her circlet, he sighed with relief. It was diamond-shaped, with the luster and color of a lamh (pearl). Depending on how much light was shed on it, it also at times resembled more of a ruby. The individual lenses were too small to see with the naked eye, so it looked more like a synthetic machine part or some eccentric finery.
Far from unsettling, it was as though she’d pasted on a sliver of a gorgeous jewel.
“Wow, it’s super noticeable,” said Jinto.
“Don’t tell me you want me to remove IT, too!?” Lafier’s terror was plain to see. “I can’t remove it. If you demand I gouge it out, then...”
“Whoa, whoa, no, that’d be way too cruel.”
Lafier sighed with relief.
“Whaddya figure me for, a serial slasher?” Jinto fetched a hat from inside his duffle bag. “I bought you this. Try it on, would you?”
Lafier tipped it on, shoving it down to her brow. Now her froch was totally concealed, and her overly perfect facial features also slightly obscured from view.
On the other hand, her pointy Abliar ears were jutting out of her hair for all to witness.
“Your ears.”
“Ah!” She stuffed the tips of her lobes into her hat and hid them behind her hair.
“Is this okay?”
“I like it,” Jinto grinned.
“If I wear this hat, then surely dyeing my hair isn’t necessary?” Lafier attempted in vain to stuff all of her hair into the hat.
Jinto coolly smacked her with the truth: “Dye it. It’ll always be peeking out. And if you want to cut it so that it’s always totally concealed, then that’d be a haircut for the books. Is that what you’d prefer?”
Lafier shuddered just imagining it. “Fine.” She bit her lip and mustered some grim resolve. “If it must be done, then I shall do it.”
“So dramatic. The people here dye their hair for fun, you know. Whatever happened to the Lafier who was all ‘if things turn critical, I want you to take the navigation log and leave me’? Are you that Lafier? Where did your penchant for self-sacrifice fly off to?”
“Shut up, Jinto. I’ll have you know I love my hair.”
“I wasn’t saying you have to dye it for the rest of your life. It’s just for the time being, Lafier.”
“The rest of my life? I couldn’t stand it!” Lafier took off the hat, and her long locks danced back down. The princess took her bluish-black hair and lovingly caressed it.
Jinto was beset by a needless sense of guilt. “You’ll meet your true hair again soon!”
“Right,” Lafier nodded. She plopped a drop of hair dye on her head. Black proceeded to devour the bluer hints of her coif. Through some principle unbeknownst to them, the dye didn’t touch the skin or fabric her hair touched, but continued to spread out thin across her whole head of hair.
In less than a minute, the Abh girl with the bluish-black hair had transformed into a girl with vivacious yet totally black hair. The only thing standing in the way of being able to describe her as “average” was her peskily lovely face.
“Looks great on you.”
“I’m in no mood for flattery,” she said, but she was not so dissatisfied after all, grooming her black locks with her fingers.
“All right, next up, your clothing.” Jinto handed over the duffle bag, and with it its entire contents. “They’re all in here. I’ll be outside, so please change.”
“Sure.” Upon taking the girl’s clothing out of the bag, her brow furrowed. “These long robes are strangely shaped. Though they’re better than I was imagining.”
Lafier’s attire was striped blue and red, a very mild-mannered design here on Clasbule.
Jinto stood up. “Call me when you’re finished changing.”
“Wait, Jinto!” She opened up the duffle bag facing the floor. The only thing left inside was a pair of shoes. “There’s no jumpsuit in here. Is it really all right for me to wear this long robe over my military uniform?”
Jinto closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The time had come to slap her with yet another abominable truth bomb.
“That’s not a long robe,” Jinto put it to her gently. “You wear it in place of your jumpsuit.”
“I’m meant to wear this over my undergarments!?”
“‘Fraid so. That’s how they do it here. There were some women who wore this kind of clothing on my home planet, too. They call it a ‘one piece’ there. Don’t know how to say it in Baronh.”
“I don’t care about that!” Lafier regarded this “one piece” with suspicion and fear. “Must I... Must I truly wear this?”
“Yes,” said Jinto patiently, “if you want to pass as a Clasbulian.”
“You are a cruel, cruel man, Jinto!”
Jinto shook his head. “Please understand, I’m not doing this because I want to.”
“Is that so?” Her suspicious gaze fell on him. “Then why, exactly, have your cheeks been twitching this entire time?”
Once Lafier had changed clothes, Jinto declared he would be taking a short break, and soon he was snoozing. Meanwhile, Lafier kept watch in her new “one piece,” gun in hand.
Jinto guessed he must have napped for two hours and change, because when he stretched out and cricked his neck, he felt refreshed.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Yep,” nodded Lafier, who was sitting by the cave entrance.
There was something they needed to take care of before they could leave. They had to erase as much evidence of their being Star Forces as possible.
Jinto dug a hole at the bottom of the ravine. He’d wanted to dig it at the cave if possible, but with their limited toolset, it was next to impossible to bore through rock.
Thus, he interred their Star Forces knapsacks. Lafier’s military uniform and Jinto’s jumpsuit joined the pile to be buried. Then, finally...
“I should bury that thing, too.” Jinto reached his hand.
“You can’t!” Lafier clutched her circlet to her chest.
“Why not? It’s military-issue, you can get it replaced a thousand times over later.”
“This is the first circlet I was ever supplied with upon entry into the military. It’s a keepsake to me.”
“Then we’ll just dig it back up at some point. It’s a circlet, it won’t rust or something.”
“That’s true, but it might also prove useful.”
“For example?”
“I can’t think of one.” But Lafier was not budging.
“If you ask me, we shouldn’t be in possession of anything that’d give us away...”
“We’ll be carrying guns and our compuwatches. What’s a circlet compared to them?”
“Hmm, guess you’ve got a point there...”
Jinto used the cfoc (small shovel) to pile soil on the rest of the discarded items, and then he used his hands to pile soil on the shovel itself.
Jinto stashed the compuwatch into his new jumpsuit’s pocket, and the phaser into the duffle bag he’d bought at Lune Beega.
A War Most Modest (JNC Edition) Page 12
