Fire Dancer

by Ann Maxwell

  ANN MAXWELL

  Fire Dancer

  Futura

  An Orbit Book

  Copyright © 1982 by Ann Maxwell

  First published in the United States of America in 1982 by The New American Library, Inc.

  First published in Great Britain in 1987

  by Futura Publications, a Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd

  London & Sydney

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 0 7088 8237 4

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow

  Futura Publications

  A Division of

  Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd

  Greater London House

  Hampstead Road

  London NW1 7QX

  A BPCC plc Company

  I

  Onan was the most licentious planet in the Yhelle Equality. No activity was prohibited. As a result, the wealth of the Equality flowed down Onan’s gravity well—and stuck. Nontondondo, the sprawling city-spaceport, was a three-dimensional maze with walls of colored lightning, streets paved with hope and potholed by despair, and a decibel level that knew no ceiling.

  “Kirtn!” shouted Rheba to the huge Bre’n walking beside her. “Can you see the Black Whole yet?”

  Kirtn’s hands locked around Rheba’s waist. In an instant her lips were level with his ear. She shouted again.

  “Can you see the casino?”

  “Just a few more buildings,” he said against her ear.

  Even Kirtn’s bass rumble had trouble competing with the din. He pursed his lips and whistled a fluting answer to her question in the whistle language of the Bre’ns. The sound was like a gem scintillating in the aural mud of Nontondondo. People stopped for an instant, staring around, but could find no obvious source for the beautiful sound.

  All they saw was a tall humanoid with very short, fine coppery plush covering his muscular body, giving it the appearance and texture of velvet. On his head, the fur became wavy copper hair. A mask of metallic gold hair surrounded his eyes, emphasizing their yellow clarity. His mask, like the coppery plush on his body, was the mark of a healthy Bre’n.

  Although Rheba looked small held against the Bre’n, she was above humanoid average in height. Her hair was gold and her eyes were an unusual cinnamon color that seemed to gather and concentrate light. Other than on her head and the median line of her torso, she had neither hair nor fur to interrupt the smooth brown flow of her body. Almost invisible beneath the skin of her hands were the whorls and intricate patterns of a young Senyas fire dancer.

  Rheba slid down Kirtn’s body until she was standing on her own feet again. As she regained her balance, a man stumbled out of the crowd and grabbed her. He rubbed up against her back, bathing her in unpleasant odors and intentions. The patterns on her hands flared as she reached toward a dazzling electric advertisement, wove its energy, and gave it to the rude stranger. He leaped back as though he had been burned. And he had.

  “I don’t think he’ll play with a fire dancer again,” said Kirtn in a satisfied voice.

  Kirtn picked up the shaken man and lofted him onto a passing drunk cart. Then the Bre’n gathered up Rheba again and shouldered his way into the anteroom of the Black Whole. After the streets, the quiet was like a blessing. Kirtn smiled, showing slightly serrated teeth, bright and very hard.

  Rheba scratched the back of her hands where the patterns had flared. Her hair shifted and moved, alive with the energy she had just called. Muttering the eighth discipline of Deva, she let both energy and anger drain out of her. She had come into this city willingly and so must abide by its customs, no matter how bizarre or insulting they might be to her.

  “We should have taken out a license to murder,” she said in a mild voice.

  Kirtn laughed. “We didn’t have enough money to buy a half-circle of silver, much less the whole circle of a licensed killer.”

  “Don’t remind me. We could hardly afford to be licensed innocents.” Rheba grimaced at the mere 30 degrees of silver arc stuck to her shoulder. “Come on, let’s find the man we came for and get off this festering planet.”

  They had not taken three steps before a black-dressed casino employee approached them. His only decoration was a simple silver circle fastened on his shoulder. Kirtn and Rheba saw the man’s license at the same instant When the man spoke, he had their attention.

  “No furries allowed.”

  Rheba blinked. “Furries?”

  “That,” said the man, hooking a thumb at Kirtn, “is a furry. You’re a smoothie. Smoothies only at the Black Whole. If you don’t want to separate, try the Mink Trap down the street. They like perverts.”

  Rheba’s long yellow hair stirred, though there was no breeze inside the Black Whole’s anteroom. Kirtn spoke a few rapid words in Senyas, native tongue of Senyasi and Bre’ns alike. “If we kill him, we’ll never get a chance to talk to Trader Jal.”

  “I wasn’t going to kill him,” said Rheba in Senyas, smiling at the man with the silver circle who could not understand her words. “I was just going to singe his pride-and-joys.”

  Kirtn winced. “Never mind. I’ll wait outside.”

  Rheba began to object, then shrugged. The last time they had bumped against local prejudices, she had been the one to wait outside. She could not remember whether sex, color, number of digits or lack of fur had been at issue.

  “I’ll make it as fast as I can,” said Rheba, her hand on Kirtn’s arm, stroking him. She took an uncomplicated pleasure from the softness of his fur. Kirtn’s strength and textures were her oldest memories, and her best. Like most akhenets, she had been raised by her Bre’n mentor. “I can understand a prejudice against smoothies,” she murmured, “but against furries? Impossible.”

  Kirtn touched a fingertip to Rheba’s nose. “Don’t find more trouble than you can set fire to, child.”

  She smiled and turned toward the licensed employee. She spoke once again in Universal, the language of space. “Does this cesspool have a game called Chaos?”

  “Yeah,” said the man. He flicked his narrow, thick fingernail against Rheba’s license. “It’s not a game for innocents.”

  Rheba’s hair rippled. “Is that opinion or law?”

  The man did not answer.

  “Where’s the game?” she asked again, her voice clipped.

  “Across the main casino, on the left. You’ll see a big blue spiral galaxy.”

  Rheba sidestepped around the man.

  “I hope you lose your lower set of lips,” he said in a nasty voice as she passed him.

  She walked quickly across the anteroom of the Black Whole, not trusting herself to answer the man’s crudity. As she passed through the casino’s velvet force field, a babble of voices assaulted her. Throughout the immense, high-ceilinged room, bets were being made and paid in the Universal language—but gamblers exhorted personal gods in every tongue known to the Yhelle Equality.

  Rheba knew only three languages—Bre’n, Senyas, and Universal—and Kirtn was the only other being who knew the first two. The multitongued room made her feel terribly alone. One Senyas, one Bre’n. Only known survivors of the violent moment when Deva’s sun had built a bridge of fire between itself and its fifth planet.

  One Senyas, one Bre’n; one galaxy of st
rangers.

  With an effort, she shut away the searing memory of extinction. She and Kirtn had survived Surely others must also have survived. Somehow. Somewhere. She would find them, one by one, if it took all the centuries of her life.

  Rheba dove into the gamblers congealed in masses around their games, blocking aisles and passageways with their singleminded focus on gain and loss. When courtesy, strength and flexibility were not enough, she gave discreet shocks to the people who barred her way. Soon she was beneath the glitter-blue pulsing galaxy that marked the game known as Chaos.

  There were eight tables, six pits, three circles and a ziggurat gathered beneath the galaxy. At each station, humanoids won and lost at games whose rules were subject to change upon agreement of a majority of players or upon one player’s payment of ten times the pot. There was only one inflexible rule: If a gambler could not pay he could not play. On Onan, penury was the only unforgivable sin.

  Cheating was not only expected in Chaos, it was required merely to stay in the game. Inspired cheating was required to win. If a player was so inept as to be caught at it, however, that player had to match the pot in order to remain in the game. As the anteroom guard had mentioned, Chaos was not a game for innocents. But then, Rheba was an innocent only by default of funds.

  She peered at the closer gambling stations, trying to find a man with blue hair, pale-blue skin, and a lightning-shaped scar on the back of his right hand. She saw various scars, as well as skin and hair of every hue, but none of the scars and skin tones made the correct combination. Impatiently, she turned and headed toward the third pit.

  “Game?” asked a contralto voice at her elbow.

  Rheba turned and saw a tiny, beautiful woman with satin-black skin, eyes and hair. She wore a metallic silver body sheath that covered enough for most planetary customs and not a millimeter more. A silver circle nestled between her perfect breasts.

  “I’m innocent,” said Rheba, smiling, “but I’m not stupid. No game, Silver Circle. No thanks.”

  The woman smiled and resumed playing with a pile of multicolored gems, arranging and rearranging them in complex patterns, waiting for a player whose eyes would be blinded by the rainbow wealth of jewels.

  As Rheba turned away, a blur of blue-on-blue caught her attention. She stood on tiptoe and stared toward the top of the crystal ziggurat. A man was climbing into the kingseat, the only seat on the seventh level of the ziggurat His skin was blue, his hair a darker blue, almost black. As he settled his outer robe into place, she spotted the pale flash of a jagged scar from his wrist to his fingertips. Even more arresting to her than the scar was the superb ivory carving he wore around his neck. The carving’s fluid, evocative lines were as Bre’n as Kirtn’s gold mask.

  “Trader Jal!” called Rheba.

  The man looked down. His expression of disdain could have been caused by genes or temperament; either way, it was irritating.

  “I loathe yellow-haired licensed innocents,” said Trader Jal, dismissing Rheba. He sat back, taking care that his silver circle was revealed. The gesture carried both pride and warning.

  “That’s two things we have in common,” said Rheba clearly.

  “Two?” Jal leaned forward, surprised by the innocent who had disregarded his warning.

  “Mutual loathing. An interest in Bre’n artifacts.”

  One side of Jal’s mouth twitched, anger or amusement “Bre’n artifacts . . . ?”

  Rheba pushed back her mass of yellow hair, revealing a large carved earring. Like the pendant worn by Jal, Rheba’s earring evoked a Bre’n face. Kirtn had never told her whose face it was. After the first time, she had not asked again.

  “Recognize this?” she asked, lifting her chin to show the carving’s fluid lines.

  Jal smoothed his robes, a movement meant to disguise the sudden tension of interest in the muscles around his black eyes. “Where did you get it?”

  “Three things in common,” said Rheba. “That’s the same question I would ask of you. Information is a commodity. Shall we trade?” As she spoke, her right hand closed around a packet of gems in her robe pocket. The stones were all the wealth she and Kirtn had. She hoped it would be enough to buy the answer to the question that consumed her: Bre’ns and Senyasi; did any others survive?

  Before Jal could answer, a fifth-level player called out in a language Rheba had never heard. Jal answered, his voice like a whip. His purple nails danced across his game computer. Inside the crystal ziggurat, colors and shapes and sequences changed. Sighs and shouts welcomed the permutations. A new cycle of Chaos had begun.

  Rheba called out to Jal. The trader ignored her. She did not need a computer to tell her that until this round had ended, Jal was lost to her. She looked at the man standing on her left, a dilettante’s circlet whispering into his ear.

  “How long did the last cycle take?” she asked.

  The man looked at his thumbnail, where symbols glowed discreetly. “Seventeen hours.”

  Rheba groaned. Every minute their ship was in its berth at the spaceport, her Onan Value Account—OVA—was reduced by twenty three credits. She could not afford to wait until Jal won or lost or tired of gambling. She would have to find a way to end the cycle quickly.

  Rheba wriggled into the dilettantes’ circle, placed a circlet over her ear, and listened while the game computer’s sibilant voice told her the rules of the present cycle of Chaos. Even as she listened, a rule changed, modifying the game like moonrise modifying night. She pressed the repeat segment and listened again.

  At core, the present cycle was a simple progression based on complementary colors, prime numbers and computer-induced chance. On the first, or entry, level of the seven-level ziggurat, the money involved was modest. The bets doubled automatically as each step of the ziggurat was ascended. A bet of 100 credits on the entry level meant a bet of 200 credits on the second level, 400 on the third, and so on up to the kingseat, where the equivalent bet was 6,400 credits.

  The base of the crystal ziggurat had no openings for new players in this cycle. Nor did the second level. There was one opening at the fourth level, but she could not afford the ante, much less the play. Jal, in the kingseat, collected one-half of every pot above the third level He would not be leaving such a lucrative position soon. She would have to make an opening on the lowest level and dislodge him from the kingseat.

  A walk around the ziggurat gave Rheba her quarry. The man was drugged-out and had less than fifty credits on his computer. She eased her way through the crowd until she was close to him. Her fingers wove discreetly, her hair stirred, and the man began to sweat like fat in a frying pan. After a few moments, he stood up abruptly and plunged into the crowd, headed for the cooler air of Nontondondo’s frenzied streets.

  Rheba slid into the hot seat before anyone else could. She punched her code into the computer. Her OVA dropped by ten credits, ante for a single round.

  She watched the center of the crystal ziggurat where colors, shapes and groupings shifted in response to energy pulses from each player’s computer. She bet only enough to keep her seat while she sorted out the various energies permeating the ziggurat. The pulses were so minute that grasping them was difficult. She was accustomed to working with much stronger forces.

  The game’s markers—the colored shapes—were composed of energy, making telekinesis an unlikely, if not an impossible, form of cheating. The computer could probably be bribed, but it would take more time and credits than Rheba had to find put. Several of the players at various levels were in illegal collusion, setting up complex resonances that could only be defeated by chance or the end of the cycle. At least one player was an illusion. She could not determine which player was projecting the illusion, or why.

  After several rounds of play, one of the many collusions was challenged and broken up. She began to feel more at ease with the tiny currents that created the colored markers. Slowly, discreetly, while credits flowed out of her OVA, she began to manipulate the game’s markers, using
a fire dancer’s intuitive grasp of energy rather than her own computer.

  It was a difficult way to cheat. Intense concentration made the swirling patterns on her hands burn and itch. Slowly, a red triangle changed to green, upsetting a fifth-level player’s program and costing him 10,000 credits. The man swore at his bad luck and switched from building fives of green triangles matched with reds to building threes of yellow squares balanced on greens.

  No one but the computer noticed that Rheba was several hundred credits richer for the man’s misfortune. Rubbing the backs of her hands, she studied the shifting markers, placed her bet, programmed her computer, and went to work with her mind, shortening wavelengths of energy, shifting red to blue.

  It was easier this time. Within minutes a red triangle blinked and was reborn as blue. The victim was a fourth-level woman. She stared around with harsh white eyes, as though she sensed that cheating rather than chance had unraveled her careful program.

  Rheba was 300 credits richer. She used it as leverage against a third-level player who was barely able to hang onto his seat. His orange circles paled to yellow; he had no blues to balance them and no credits to buy what he needed. His circlet chimed and informed him that his credit balance could not sustain a third or even a second-level ante.

  In silence the man switched places with Rheba, who had bet against him. She had 1,200 credits now, enough for three rounds—if no one raised the ante or bet against her one-on-one.

  Her progression from entry to third level attracted little attention. There were sixty players on the first three levels, and they changed rapidly. When she progressed to the fourth level, however, there was a stir of interest. Only twelve players were on that level, three seated on each side of the ziggurat, well above the heads of the crowd.

  Twelve minutes and 46,000 credits later, Rheba settled into the fifth level, one of only eight players on that level. The players were seated two to each side of the ziggurat. Three of the players teamed illegally against her, but she did not have the skill to decipher their signals and thus prove how they cheated.