by Jo Clayton
“I hear and obey, O Ykkuval.”
“Good. Be ready by ninth hour. I’ll send a Drudge to fetch you.”
Ilaцrn sat in the dark outside the gardener’s hutch, watching the stars shift overhead and soaking his left hand in an infusion of langtana leaves; he’d already soaked the right hand and was doing easy exercises with the wrist and fingers. Playing all day like this was tearing up his fingers even if it was music only by an extreme extension of the concept.
He smiled and did more finger push-ups, the thick springy grass cool and pleasant against his skin. More playing than he’d done since he and Imuл had grown old and creaky and stopped their wandering from Dumel to Dumel. He thought about Imuл and was surprised to find only a faint bittersweetness left of the pain that once tore through him when he remembered his sioll.
It was very late, past midnight. He was sleepy but not enough to hit the bed, not yet. He was happy. For two tendays he’d sent his Riddle tunes into the empty air without a hint that anyone heard them. Today, though… today was payoff. Today made all of it worth the soreness in his fingers and the boredom in his soul. Twelve Crawlers out of use, six of them permanently. Ahhh.
The loud click of a door shutting snapped him out of his reverie. He got to his feet, stood wiping his damp hand on his old tunic as he watched two shadows walk along one of the Dushanne Garden’s paths, both of them carrying bulky packs. Two?
Holding his breath, he ghosted after them.
On his belly among stinkweeds that had grown tall and thick as scrub trees, Ilaцrn watched the cloaked figure climb from a sleek small flier. The spy from Banikoлh. As he had the last time, he started talking before he reached the shelter of the wall niche. “When I took the virus the last time, you said you wouldn’t call me across any more; you said you’d work a way to get me called home. Chaos broke last night when they found out the com wouldn’t work. How many times do you think I can shake loose before that lard-head tumbles to what’s happening? What! What’s that! Who’s he?”
Good, Ilaцrn thought. I want to know, too.
“You wanted to know why you’re here. He’s it. Look at this.”
The spy took the flake Hunnar handed him, slipped it into a reader, then sucked in his breath. Hastily he covered his surprise and made to return the flake.
“Keep it. The money’s in a special account, separate from the other. You’ll need that flake for authorization to transfer the funds.”
“And… mm… what’s it buying?”
“Transportation.” Hunnar set his hand on the squat dark figure of the other Chav. “You get him past Koraka’s forward line and drop him at the edge of the swamp. That’s all.”
The spy opened his mouth to protest, shut it again. The fur on his face was ruffled, his mouth was pinched into a black pout. His fingers had closed around the small reader, his thumb was moving across them, as if he caressed both himself and the gelt enumerated on the flake.
The scent of mesuch fear and greed was bitter as the stench from the stinkweed. Hewn watched the spy weighing the dangers of doing and not doing. You laid the stones for this the moment you let spite and greed goad you into taking your first bribe, fool. You might as well agree. You’re dead if you don’t. His eyes widened as he saw the second Chav edging away from Hunnar; the spy didn’t notice. He was too preoccupied with his struggle. No, I’m wrong. You’re just dead. He caught his lip between his teeth, bit down hard as the Chav stepped swiftly behind the spy and drove his fist into the mesuch’s back, jerked it away. No, not his fist. A knife with a blade hardly wider than a needle. The spy started to turn and the Chav struck again, this time driving the knife in under the chin.
The body dropped to the gravel. The Chav wiped his knife on the mesuch’s cloak, then slipped it up his sleeve.
Hunnar touched the sprawled body with the toe of his boot. “Too bad. But I suppose we couldn’t have milked much more out of him.” He stooped, pried the flake and the reader from the spy’s hand, straightened.
“Didn’t think he’d wear it, taking me in.”
Together they loaded the mesuch’s body into the flier, then tossed the packs in on top of him.
Hunnar stepped back. “You’re on your own, Kurz. As long as the Yaraka com system stays out, keep in touch. If you need supplies, I’ll do my best to get them to you.” He tapped the reader with the claw on his forefinger. “You don’t make it back, this goes to your son. I promised it and I keep my word.”
Kurz lifted his hand in the claws-in open-hand salute, reached for the sensor board.
The whine of the flier’s lifters in his ears, Ilaцrn crept backward through the stinkweed thicket, eased himself round the corner, and ran for the hidden door, moving as quietly as he could without diminishing his speed. His belly churned with the knowledge there was no chance of passing on what he’d heard before morning. Too bad too bad too bad… the words echoed in his head to the padding of his bare feet.
8. The Ways of Bйluchad
1
As the caцpa train rounded a hillock crowned with kerre trees, Shadith saw a Dumel ahead, nestled in a bend of the Menguid River, half a dozen sail barges tied up to the wharves lining the riverbank on both sides.
For some time now, they’d been out of the bottom-lands into rolling countryside-brush and grass with browsing beasts, instead of wide fields of plowed and planted land. The road ran west with little deviation from the straight line, up and down, over hills, across small valleys, always gaining altitude no matter how many dips it made, though the gain was slow and subtle enough to be nearly imperceptible; the Menguid sometimes ran beside the road, sometimes curved away so that they wouldn’t see it for several days, though more than once Shadith watched the tips of the stubby sails of the barges gliding past, just visible above the brush growing on a hillock, or the bright flutter of a burgee to remind her that there were other folk about.
There were no more lay-bys kept supplied by the Ordumel they were traveling through. No more Ordumels, only scattered farm houses and stock cabins.
This section of the road was poorly maintained, more ruts and potholes than paving, and few used it. Now and then they passed a farmwife on her way to market in a caцpa cart or a boy herding small animals that looked like cotton poufs on dainty black legs that her wordlist eventually told her were called cabhisha. Most of the traffic was on the river.
The Dumel ahead was flying bright pennons and oriflammes, burgees from the barges tied up at the river landing. Flowers blooming brightly on their heads and shoulders, Meloach were playing in circle games with Fior children dressed in red and orange trousers with brilliant white smocks embroidered in blue and green.
Overhead the two Eolt rose to a faster airstream and went gliding swiftly toward the Dumel.
Danor brushed his hand across his eyes.
Shadith winced as she saw how it was shaking. The happy scene below must be like ground glass on his nerves.
She kneed her caцpa closer to Maorgan. “What’s this place called and why the celebration?”
“Dumel Olterau. I think…” He clicked his tongue as he counted days on his fingers. “Time. How it slips and slides away. It’s the first of Seibibyl… that means this is the first official day of Summer-and if I haven’t lost track completely it’s also Rest Day. Supposed to be good fortune next year when Summer begins with Rest.”
As they rode into the town, a ring of dancers came from a side street, laughing and clapping, several of them singing, others beating out the rhythm with wooden clogs and tambourines. One of the singers was a pretty Fior girl with bright red curls and a spray of freckles across her nose; she glanced at Maorgan, looked up and saw the Eolt, then thrust two fingers in her mouth and produced a loud whistle. When she had everyone’s attention she pointed at the Eolt, then at Maorgan. “Ard,” she shouted.
“Ard. Ard. Ard.” The shouts passed on and came back as more and more people crowded around them.
The singer caught hold of the caцpa�
��s halter, looked up at Maorgan. “Will you come?” She sang the words, a ripple of pleased laughter in her voice. “Will you come stay with me, Ardcoltair?”
He laughed, lifted her onto the caцpa’s withers, and kissed her thoroughly to the shouts and cheers of the crowd. “Take us to the blai, Sun-blessed. My friend there’s in mourning and in no mood for pleasure. But once he’s settled, we’ll sing the Summer in for you.”
Fingers sore, throat raw from the hours of singing and playing, soul still aglow from the joy of the music, Shadith moved wearily along the deserted walkways of the blai. There were no nightlights, but the blaze that was the Bйluchad night sky made them unnecessary. Looking up was like gazing on a permanent fireworks display.
Where Maorgan was now she’d hadn’t the faintest idea, and she was too tired to care. On the other hand, she had a very good guess what he was doing-the Bйluchar weren’t used to female harpers, but they didn’t let that put them off. During the first break from playing, the Olteraun Fior had crowded round her, men and women both, offering themselves as bed partners, brushing against her, hands moving on her breasts and buttocks until she slapped them away and got the idea across that she wasn’t interested in kaus and kikl.
She shifted the strap of the harpcase, dug in her pocket for the odd cylindrical key the Blai Olegan had given her, started to insert it into the lock hole-and stopped, sniffing. There was a peculiar pungent smell coming from the next room over. Danor’s kip.
She frowned. The way he was acting… She eased the strap off her shoulder, set the case down, and walked the short distance to Danor’s door. She tried the latch. Locked. The smell was much stronger here, made her feel… well… odd. The closest she could come was that time on Avosing where the planet’s air was permeated with hallucinogenic spores.
She leaned against the door and tried to get some sense of the man, but all she could read was a jumble of pain, rage, and a flood of grief so terrible she cried out against it. She closed her eyes, tried to concentrate, her head so tired from the music and the exuberance of the dance, from the excited attentions of Keteng and Fior, from the glory of the Eolt song, that her brain felt like mush. Focus. Exclude. Strip away the flourishes of emotion, feel the beat of the body.
By the time she managed to reassure herself about the strength of Danor’s life flow, she’d breathed in enough of the smoke to send her floating.
She contemplated stretching out there on the walkway, melting with the smoke, absorbing just enough to keep her drifting, in a state where nothing mattered, all the twists and turns of need and rejection wiped away… Her knees stopped holding her up. She didn’t fall, it was a slow-motion folding down. It amused her. She kept folding until her face was pressed against the tiles. That was amusing. And pleasant. The tiles were cool and smooth.
She drew in a long breath-and sneezed violently, the spasm triggered by the pollen grains she’d sucked in with dust from the grouting between the tiles. She sneezed again and pushed onto her knees, appalled at what had happened to her.
Bones feeling like half-set gel, she used the latch to pull herself to her feet, then staggered back to her own door. She stood leaning into it, her forehead pressed to the wood, half forgetting what she was there for until her nose prickled again and broke her out of her trance. She unlocked the door, hauled the case inside, and stood slouched in the doorway, gathering herself.
As soon as she managed to get the bar down and into its hooks, she stumbled across to the bed and fell facedown on it, sinking into a sleep so deep that if she dreamed she never knew it.
2
Aslan clicked the Ridaar off. “That’s enough for now. I’ll show you more when you’ve talked a bit.” She settled back in her chair and smiled at the four youngsters, two Meloach and two Fior boys, all of them around eight or nine years old.
I want children who are good friends, she’d told Teagasa and Oskual. They’ll be shy at first, but having friends with them will help them relax and loosen their tongues.
Why children? Oskual asked. If you’re gathering history…
There’s an official truth and a folk truth in every culture and often they don’t coincide. Children pick up on folk truth, sometimes it seems from the air itself, and they aren’t driven by politics and adult shame to conceal these things. I’m not a historian, Aslan finished. I record cultures. All facets of them.
She leaned forward, moved her eyes from face to face, a gesture meant to collect them and make them feel part of a whole that included her. “What do you do when you want to decide who goes first? Say in a game you’re playing.” She watched the scrubbed, sober faces, suppressing a sigh. So obviously on their best behavior, spines stiffened by parental admonitions. “No, don’t tell me. Show me.”
An eight-year Meloach named Likel had already proved to be the most talkative of the four, the leader insofar as this small group had a leader. Xe had bright red mossflowers blooming on xe’s head and shoulders and already a beginning of the Denchok lichen web threading across xe’s torso. Xe fidgeted in xe’s chair, twisted xe’s narrow pointed face into a comic grimace. “If it’s just us,” xe said, “and ev’one wants to go first, we do the Digger Count.”
Xe turned to Colain, a short Fior boy with shiny black hair and eyes bluer than a summer sky. “Le’s dig.” Xe and Colain made fists, pumped them together through the air. “One. Two. Three. Diggit!”
Colain grinned. He’d kept his fist while Likel had flipped out his middle finger. “Stone b break knife.”
Likel did the hand flutter that served Keteng for a shrug.
Sobechel, a younger Meloach with most of xe’s mossflowers still in bud, though showing bright orange tips, played a knife to cut Colain’s paper. Brecin, a gangly Fior boy with hair close to the orange of Sobechel’s flowers, wrapped Sobechel’s stone in paper. Then, with a nervously engaging grin, Brecin extended his fist to Aslan.
She raised her brows, grinned back at him. “Phra phra, why not.”
“One two three,” they chanted together. “Diggit!” Aslan kept the fist, saw herself breaking Brecin’s knife.
His grin threatened his ears. “You win, Scholar. You go first.”
“Mm. I think I’ve been framed.” She chuckled. “All right. What do you want to know?”
Likel scooted his chair closer. “You got any pictures in there of where you come from?”
Brecin pulled up his long bony legs and sat on his feet with his knees pointing out, his shoulders up, his arms hooked over the back of the chair. “And what’s your family like?”
“And why d d do those mesuch want to c c come here and mess up everything?” Colain pushed at the lank black hair that kept falling into his eyes. There was an edge of anger in his voice that embarrassed him when his eyes met Aslan’s; he went almost purple, looked quickly away.
“And what it’s like riding between the stars.” Sobechel had a dreamy look on xe’s face, pale eyes the color of dust glistening with visions of distant places and strange things.
“Hm, that covers a lot of ground. Let’s start with my family. My mother is a businesswoman, she runs her own company… um which makes things sort of like locks only fancier with a lot of bells and whistles to discourage thieves. She lives on a world called Droom which is so far away you couldn’t see its sun if you went out at night and looked at all the stars. Even from University I can’t see Droom’s sun, though it is a bit closer. My father is a poet. I don’t see him much. He’s always somewhere else.”
“Like Glois’ dad,” Sobechel said. “He an Ard and he never comes back.”
“Maorgan?”
“Uh-uh, another one. I think Glois’ Da, he stays mostly on Melton. Maybe he’s dead. Those mesuchs over there are crazy they say.”
“How c c come you live on… um… University and your Mum is way away somewhere else? D d do lots of people do like that?”
“University is a whole world that’s a school where people go to study things, write books, teach classes. The
y come from a thousand and a thousand worlds. Some stay and some go home. I stayed.”
“Ah.” Colain nodded. “Like Chuta M m meredel. Our teachers went there to study. But they c come b back.”
Sobechel clicked his tongue against xe’s chewing ridge. “So it’s different out there. And everyone don’t come back. Your cousin Timag for one. He went for a bargeman and hasn’t showed face here since Teagasa was beating the letters into you head. Scholar, you said you’d show us pictures. Can I see a starship? Ol’ Barriall, he use to deal with Free Traders and he said he’d bring me a picture of a ship, but he never did. Yours will be better anyway, his woulda been just flat and black and white.”
She smiled. “Oh I might have a thing or two to interest you, Sobechel. If you’ll all turn your chairs to face the wall, we’ll have ourselves a show. Then it’s my turn to ask questions.”
Aslan switched the settings on the Ridaar and gathered her subjects into a circle around her. “Now. Give your name, then tell us a little about your family, whatever you’re comfortable saying. Just to let your great great many greats grandchildren…” she smiled at the giggles this started in them, “know a little bit about you.”
“Cha oy, my name is Likel, Budline Kel-Poradd. My Parent has the Everything Shop, you know, you walk past it coming here from the blai. That’s where Sobey got with ol’ Barriall, he come here every month or so, down from the mountain lakes and the fac’tries there. ‘Cept in winter, a course.” Likel fidgeted in xe’s chair, stared at the shell panels in the ceiling. “I’ve got three older sibs, I’m youngest. Um. There’s Himtel, xe’s Denchok now, got a bud growing, so I’m about to have a nexter. Then there’s Mal and Wen, xes were same-summer buds. Xes finished school last year, looks like xes will be going into slough… um… that’s turn Denchok… soon’s the olle bushes bud out. Himtel works at the store, xe going in partners with the Parent in a couple more years. The twins, xes work at looms in Sobey’s Parent’s weaving mill. Both of xes say xes going to go look for land when xes get enough money saved to put down a payment. Won’t be in any Ordumels round here, though, land is family kept and don’t change hands often. They thinking maybe Tatamodh down south. Me, I don’t know what
