Riders Of The Winds

by Jack L. Chalker

  He heard her but didn't turn around. "If you're awake and feeling all right, there's drinkable water in the cask with the water sign on it and warm ale in the one with the mug on it. There's also hard rolls and dried trail meats in the box just to the right of them with the diamond on it."

  She jumped, then caught herself. Uh-uh. No more of this "poor little old me" bullshit. She was naked, thirsty, and hungry and this guy could have done anything to her by now but hadn't, so relax. The beer sounded great but not when it was hot enough to take a bath in. The water wasn't much better but at least it didn't surprise, and the food wasn't exactly great but it did fill. Only when she was done did she climb forward to see what this new man was like and what the situation was. She was still naked but it didn't matter to her. Let the guy have his jollies if he was that way.

  He was a big man, well over six feet and with the look of one who is trim and lean but still had muscles to spare. His face and hands showed weathering and evidenced hard work and that said a lot about him as well. He was about as solid and all-around masculine a man as she'd ever seen in real life.

  "I'm Crim," he said in a friendly tone. "And who are you today?"

  "I—I'm Misa," she responded. "But I'm also Susama and Sam and some long name I can't really remember right now." Her tone and inflection was strictly peasant and bottom class, but her grammar and general vocabulary and structure was more standard, sort of like a peasant girl who'd spent a fair amount of time as the servant of somebody high up. It was kind of folksy, but nobody would ever mistake her for an aristocrat. The accent was strictly Mashtopol sticks—down home, way down, on the farm. "I'm sort'a all mixed up inside my head." He nodded. "That's understandable. Hopefully it'll sort itself out over time. In the meantime, do you know who I am and where we're heading, sooner or later?"

  "I guess you're somebody hired by the shadow man to bring me to him," she responded, then frowned. "Seems to me somebody else dressed like you was supposed to do that a long time ago but he double-crossed me."

  Grim nodded. "I heard about that. Well, like most of the independent Navigators I have my problems and my hangups beyond the normal kind,' but that kind of thing isn't one of them. For one thing, I'm being paid only on delivery and the pay is so high nobody can outbid it and be trusted. Boolean may be as crazy as the rest of 'em but he always keeps his word. For another, it's not just the pay. There's no way I'd ever work for the other guy, and he's the only one who really wants you other than Boolean."

  "Boolean." She repeated the name. "Yes. I remember that name now. Is he the shadow man?"

  "I have no idea, not having seen any shadow men. He's usually either a voice or a vision, though, so maybe that's as good as any. Hell, even his name's a joke. In the tongue he uses when he thinks, it's not a name at all but a number system. Algebra, I think. Invented by an Outplaner named Boole a long time ago. I think he took it as a sort of private joke."

  She stared at him. "You know the Outplanes? And the languages?"

  "Well, some. It just happens to be some knowledge I— acquired along the way, as it were. You're from the Outplanes, too, originally, I'm told."

  She hesitated. "I—I know that I am, but I don't have no real clear memories of it. Just bits and pieces here and there, some making no sense at all."

  He turned to her and said something that sounded like an ugly string of monotones. She stared at him and shook her head.

  "You understood none of it?"

  "Didn't sound like nothing at all."

  "That was English," he told her. "I was told it was your native tongue. We'll try and work on it and maybe it'll come back to you over time. It's a handy language to know when dealing with Boolean. That's his language. One of them, anyway."

  She sighed and shook her head. "There's just so much— missing. I remember all sorts of scenes, but they don't make no sense and don't go together. Kind'a like memories from when you was real small. Some basic shit, maybe, but no details."

  "What do you remember clearly?" he asked her, probing a bit.

  "Well, all of bein' Misa, that's for sure. All but that last night when I had the runs and went to the clinic. Ain't much after that, 'cept I can, well, remember a real pretty woman, maybe the prettiest I'd ever seen, and she was takin' me someplace. That's about it. Or did I dream her?"

  "She's real," said Crim. "That's Kira. You'll meet her before too long with a clear head. But is that it? Just Misa?"

  "No, no. But the more you go back from there the fuzzier it all gets. I lived a while in Tubikosa. A long time. Not in the straitlaced world of most of 'em, but in the entertainment district where them hypocrites snuck down to blow off steam and do all that shit they preached against. My lover's an artistic alchemist. Creates beautiful girls for the courtesan trade. I remember all that, too, only it's a little bit fuzzier. No dates or real order, just the whole thing sort'a running together in my head. Old friend of mine was a courtesan. Me and Boday we sort'a lived off her and doin' stuff for the other folks down there. She didn't mind none and that was the funny part—my friend, I mean. She's smart and she was gonna be the big wheel, the queen of big business and all that, and she found out she loved bein' a whore. Most of the girls either hated it or had no choice or were under drugs and all, but she really liked it. Crazy."

  Crim shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe everybody's so busy trying to be what everybody else tells them they should be that they never have time to be themselves. No offense, but it's the people who enslave and victimize those girls that are the real criminals. It'd be a pretty victimless crime if only the ones who wanted to do it did it and got to keep the profits. Nobody ever held a sword to somebody's throat and said, 'Go fuck a prostitute or I'll kill you.' They buy what they want and need but for some reason, like pleasing all the others, never can get in normal life. It's not my thing, but I can't condemn somebody who does it for herself and because she wants it. Problem is, you mostly can't keep the crooks out of it—and, of course, when you get past your prime you haven't got much of an old-age job."

  "Maybe. I guess maybe I been so busy tellin' myself that I don't much care what nobody else thinks about me that I kind'a forgot not to do the same thing to other folks."

  "Do you remember even further back? Before Tubikosa?"

  "Not clear, anyway. I didn't have much fun or much of a life back then, I don't think. It's like I said—a scene here, a scene there, and some funny memories of things that ain't in Akahlar or not the way I somehow think they should be. I ain't tryin' too hard to remember, truth to tell. I don't think I'd want to go back there, somehow. I know where we're goin', sort of, and I know why I gotta go and what I gotta do—sort of. I know I got to go if I can and I got to do it—if I can. And I want to find my lover and my friend. Any sign of 'em?"

  "Oh, yes. They would have wound up where you did except they thought you were captured by the rebel troops. They got captured by a witch gang who took your friend for you and hauled them off to their camp. With no word about you, Boolean wanted them to lead the enemy away from the Kudaan, so they set off ahead. If both they and we make it, then we'll meet them in Masalur. Not much hope of meeting up ahead of time, and I don't think we want to. The enemy suspects the trick now and they're off hunting both them and us. If we link up it'll be all the easier for them."

  She nodded. "I guess so. I just, well, don't want to screw it up at this point, not when I finally got myself a little put together. The Misa in me wants what Sam had but doesn't want to be Sam, if that makes any real sense. Sam was such an asshole. She didn't know what she had or what she wanted and let everybody else do her thinking for her. Hell, she even lied to herself. I'm done with that. You got to make the most of what you are and not waste it all tryin' to be or dreamin' of bein' what you're not and can't never be. For the first time in my life I'm damn happy to be what I am and I don't give a flying fart what nobody else thinks. I can't free myself from this job, and if I can't do it then this is all the time there is, but while it is I'm gonna make t
he most of it. I liberated my mind and now I'm gonna liberate the rest of me as much as I can."

  She suddenly got up a little and looked out and around the wagon and to the back. "Are we it? Nobody else?"

  Crim nodded. "Just us. My train had to keep going on its scheduled route in order to keep anybody from noticing and pointing a finger right at us. They're all around, even here. They're looking, and many of the lookers aren't human in any way. Just be sure you don't make it rain. She has more experience with that than you do and she's got a sorcerer right next to her to use that energy and send things through."

  "Don't worry about that," she assured him. "But what about the pretty woman? Are we gonna meet up with her separate?"

  He cleared his throat. "Uh, well, not exactly. Aw, hell, I'd better explain the whole thing to you. In about four hours you're going to know it all anyway."

  She stared at him. "Huh?" From the looks of the sun that would be about sundown. "What is she? Some kind of vampire or something?"

  Crim chuckled. "No, although you're not the first to suggest or suspect that, and there are many, I think, who believe it. It began a while back now. She came here accidentally from one of the Outplanes, like you did."

  "Oh, yeah?" She was getting very curious about this now.

  "I didn't start out to be a Navigator. When I was very young, I worked as an apprentice to a shady trader named Yangling. I had some natural magical talent—that's where the navigating comes in—and Yangling had high hopes for me as a tool, more or less. Then Kira quite literally fell into his hands—at least she was found, unconscious, near his place and taken to him by those who found her. As soon as I saw her there I think I fell in love with her, even before she recovered. I was assigned to find out from her all that was possible, since Yangling had made me study an Outplane language which was her native and only one. I spoke it poorly, awkwardly, and probably made only a very little sense, but she seemed appreciative that I could speak to her at all and that she could be somewhat understood. This was particularly important because the language here was an illegal one. A number of the younger and newer Akhbreed sorcerers had taken to using it as a sort of standard for some reason. It was thought that some knowledge of it might prove useful."

  She nodded. "All right, I'm following this so far. Sounds kind'a romantic."

  "It was, in a way. We got to know each other quite well. She improved my English immeasurably, but she never could get the hang of Akhbreed. It's that sort of tongue. She was a wonderful person, but tragic, too. She had not many months before been in an accident that was not even her fault. It had broken her neck and spine. She had some jerky movement, nothing useful, in her arms and fingers but not much else, and no real feeling below that. That beautiful body was useless and unfeeling and she was basically no more than a talking head."

  "What little memories I have seem to show her pretty lively."

  He nodded. "Anyway, Yangling was furious. He called in a bunch of top black magicians he had on his payroll and they went to work on her. Didn't do any good, though. Nothing short of a changewind or some terrible magic would have her mobile. Well, Yangling was more interested in the fact that she could read intercepted communications from top sorcerers with ease and then I could translate them to him. They thought of changing her into an animal, using a curse of some sort, but there are few animals that can read and speak in human tongues and nothing was certain there. The changewind option, if chance provided it, might alter her mind or her sanity. Yangling had a garden filled with erotic statues, and with her face and body there was talk of turning her into stone, her soul imprisoned, and animating her head only when her services were required. I couldn't have stood that, and I told her enough that she seemed to just want to die. I had to do something."

  "You got your own magician?"

  "Sort of. The blackest of the black, really. A grotesque figure who wandered the mountains mere filled with hatred. No one dared seek him out, or could conceive of wanting to, but I did. I offered to trade information—many of the complex and totally incomprehensible Akhbreed spells we had been intercepting. To my surprise, he agreed, although he said I would have to raise my own demon and do my own bargaining. At that point I was ready for anything."

  She was shocked. "You sold your soul to a demon for her?"

  "No, no. That's for fairy stories. Demons might like to eat you, for they hate all humans, but they couldn't care less about souls. I did the ritual, scared to death, and I raised the demon in the pentagram just right. It was a horror, worse than any nightmare imaginable. There were only two ways to make him do anything he didn't want to do, and one involved human sacrifices—this one of children. That was sure, but I could never do it. The other was risky and involved a way of threatening a demon with being trapped in the netherhells, regions of nothingness between the Outplanes. That's possible, but when a demon is doing something under duress, particularly for a human, he's not honorable. This one basically gave me one choice or it said it would rather spend eternity in the netherhells—and you believed it. I took the choice, and while he was mean he wasn't very bright. They often aren't. It's worked out."

  "Yes? And the choice?"

  "I wanted not just her body restored, I wanted a way for her to get out, to escape becoming the inevitable courtesan or slave. We became—fused, in a way. All that Kira was, is, is inside me, inside not just my head but all of me, yet it isn't a part of me. I have her memories but they're somebody else's memories, not mine. I'm still the same as I ever was, and maybe a little more. In some ways it's been quite—useful. My command of English is absolute, and my knowledge of Outplane science and devices is improved. More important, I understand the feminine outlook, which is both a more similar and more different view of the world than I'd ever thought. I also know what attracts them and what turns them on, what they want in a man. That's been—useful. Not just in the way you think, but in various dealings as well."

  "But—I saw her!" .

  He nodded. "It's my turn from sunup to sundown. That's the way the curse works. Then it's her turn. For me, it's just going to steep, and she takes over, physically and mentally. Like me, she has all my memories, and so she knows what went on during the day—she will know about you and this conversation as I know about last night—but she will not be me. She likes men, by the way. Sorry. Apparently more now than before, and for the same reasons I gave about women. She's formally registered as a citizen of Holibah, the kingdom we were in, which took some bribes and connections. This business seemed perfect, since any kind of permanent relationship with anyone is kind of out of the question for either of us, and because she's sleeping all day and I sleep all night there is a presence here who needs no sleep at all, which is quite handy, particularly out here. In most ways she got the better of it. She gets to be wined and dined and romance men in the dark, and I get to do all the shit work during the day. I pay a bit by not having a night life and she pays by lonely nights standing guard at four in the morning, but we are best at our appointed times. Still, the joke is really on the demon. It was going to keep us lovers forever apart, unable to kiss or embrace, but we are closer than if we could."

  She whistled. "And I thought I was havin' identity problems!"

  "No, no!" he laughed. "There's no conflict, I'm not Kira and she's not Crim. Just remembering what the other said and did isn't the same as being them. Still, as I have her English, she's got my native command of Akhbreed and my knowledge of its people and its territory. And, there's an odd by-product. We age only when we are 'alive,' as it were. Each of us is aging at half the rate."

  He paused. "It's hard to explain, but when you talked I couldn't help thnking that in a way that's what you've got to come to grips with yourself. Sam doesn't pop out at sunset, but she's still a part of you that you have to deal with. You're not the Misa we saw last night. You're totally different. You're Sam with a Misa outlook and maybe that's not so bad."

  She considered it. "Well, we'll see. I got to see thi
s change, though, before I'll believe it."

  "You'll see it. Or, rather, you'll be around many times when it happens. It's very quick. But we, all three of us, luck willing, will be with each other for quite some time. Months, probably. It's a long way to Masalur."

  "You're a Navigator. How come we just can't go straight there?"

  "Because the Earth is round. All of them are."

  "What? I don't see - . ."

  "Akahlar intersects with thousands of worlds, but the only common points are the hubs, the points of greatest force and power. The rest are compressed around the hubs and only intersect at certain random intervals. But when they do touch, they are worlds touching round worlds—so that actual point of overlap is very narrow. Kudaan is a world, not a desert. This is the Kudaan Wastes, a large desert on the planet, but not all of the planet is this way by any means. If we go outside that narrow overlapping strip then we'll simply wander the face of Kudaan and never intersect a hub. The only way to go is along the strips and through the hubs. We're being a little roundabout in our routing, but we're still going to head for the border of Mashtopol and we have to go into and through that hub to go farther. There are no short cuts, for anybody. At least there I have a number of contacts. We'll get you new identity papers—as Misa, I think, a colonial peasant of Kudaan whose services are bound to me by your liege lord as a favor because I'm short some experienced animal tenders. That won't be citizenship or anything—you'll be little more than a bound slave I can't sell but that's about the only restriction—but it'll explain your appearance, ways, speech, and the like."

  "That's okay. I don't mind."

  "We'll probably play a bit with your appearance, too, just to make it even harder for them. Maybe dye your hair and a few other simple things. The real colonial women of the Kudaan, as opposed to the refuge people, have certain cultural things about them and we want to be right just in case. They're considered primitive and terminally crazy from the sun and because they generally like to live in that sort of place. I wouldn't worry about the dialect—your class dialect is okay and there are probably dozens or hundreds around just the dry continent."