by Jo Clayton
“No, no, not that one, the numbers are on them, you can read, can’t you.” Aside to her companion: “Mouse, if that scroov shows his face round my ship again, I’ll skin him an inch at a time and feed it to him broiled.”
The little gray man scratched his three fingers through a spongy growth that covered most of his upper body; he blinked several times, shrugged and said nothing.
“Sssaaah!” She darted to the loaders, cursed in half a dozen languages, waved her arms, made the workers reload the last cart. Still furious, she stalked back to where she’d been standing. “Danny Blue, you miserable druuj, I’ll pull your masters rating this time, I swear I will, this is the last time you walk out on me or anyone else.”
“Blue wants, Blue walks,” the little man said. “Done it before, ‘II do it again.”
“Hah! Mouse, if you’re so happy with him, you go help Sandy stow the cargo.”
“I don’t do boxes.”
She glared at him, but throttled back the words that bulged in her throat, stalked off and stood inspecting the crates as they rolled past him.
Danny walked round a stack of crates, Felsrawg trailing reluctantly after her. “Hya, Kally, I’m back.”
She wheeled. “Where the hell you been, druuj!” Her eyes went wide when she realized what she was seeing. “Huh? You’re not Danny.”
“Remember lnconterza? Matrize Lezdoa the scarifier? I can go on.”
“Never mind. Someday you have to explain to me how you grew a head of hair and three extra inches and changed your face that much,” she glanced at her ringchron, “in nine hours.” She looked past him. “And where you got the baba there.”
“Be polite, Kally, Felsa’s no man’s baba. Woman’s either.”
“Hmp. You not giving me any excuse for leaving me to do your job, are you.”
“No. But I’ll contract an extra year if you give Felsa space onboard.”
“Guarantee no walking?”
“Guarantee. My word on it.”
“Deal. She got anything but what she’s carrying?”
“Nothing but a name. Felsa, I’ll have you meet free trader and shipmaster Kally Kuninga. Kally, this is one Felsrawg Lawdrawn. She doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, but she’ll learn.”
“You finished? Right. Get your ass over there and do your job. Mouse he’s been having vibrations which means we gotta get the hell out before the sluivasshi land on us.”
She looked Felsrawg over, head to toe back again. “She’s your problem, Danny. Keep her outta my hair and see she’s fumigated before you bring her on board.” She twitched her nose, swung round and stalked off.
Felsrawg snorted. “Bitch.”
“Sure. And if you say it to her face, she’ll laugh, then she’ll slap you down so hard you bounce. Come on. I’ve got work to do.”
##
Felsrawg found a quiet corner near a stack of empty crates where she’d be out of the way of the workers. Danny was right, she didn’t understand any of this, maybe she never would. She thought about that a minute and decided it was blue funk and not worth the air it took to say it, she might not know how those clink-clank slim-slam things worked, but she could see what they did. That’s all she needed. She looked at her slay rings, sniffed. I don’t know how they work either, but I got damn good at reading them. The sun was going down in the west, she thought it was the west, it felt like west, just like it did back home and the Kuninga woman was a gasht all right, but she looked normal, at least there was that.
The clattering stopped, the demons rode their metal carts across the hard white stuff that covered the ground and vanished behind some odd looking buildings. The rollerramp was folding itself up, squeezing together into an impossibly small package; it might not be magic, but it surely looked like it. Danny loped around like a Temu herder chasing strays, getting everything folded up and tucked away in that thing. Ship? It reminded her of an old tom swampspider after twenty years of mating battles, battered and molting, missing a leg here and a mandible there, but tough as boiled bull leather. She heard her name and stepped out of the shadow to wait for Danny who was coming to get her. It starts, she thought. Say one thing, it should be interesting.
3
Yaril and]aril went slipping down a long long slide and burst into brightness, glowspheres zagging across complex crystal lattices on a hot young world circling a sun in the heart of a hot young cluster. Aulis came zipping round them, cousins and strangers, seekers and linkers, greeting them swinging through wild exuberant loops yelling welcome come and see we thought a smiglar had eat you Yar000h Jar000h. Aetas came, younglings budded since they left, bursting with curiosity, wallowing in the explosion of joy, Afas came, trailing after Nurse Agaxes, laughing and singing their infant songs, absorbing the excitment, the joy, though they had no idea what created it. And Agaxes came, majestic and slow, swimming in on all sides, and, finally, finally, father-mother meld at last there shimmering, expanding, opening to absorb them, hold them within in a hot and loving embrace.
Churrikyoo moved.
Before the absorption was complete, it emerged from Jaril, fell into the lattice and went hopping away, matter become energy, stasis become motility, non-life become life.
##
Yaril and Jaril rest in the embrace of mother-father reading off memory into memory until the whole is transferred, then the embrace ends.
Father-mother go drifting off to digest and discuss the tale with their community-companions. Waves of joy flush pink and gold through them, their children who were dead are alive again, more than alive are triumphant and weighty with story, treasure beyond all other treasures, a meaty and complex narrative to be considered for meaning and style, taken bit by bit, balancing each bit by another, bit against whole, centuries worth of contemplation and dissection.
Surraht-Aulis whole and complete again, Yaril and Jaril emerge, go darting away to join a cluster of other aulis. They race through the lattices, chasing the radiant frog Churrikyoo, a new game for aulis, a wonderful game because no one can win, no one can touch the frog, only chase after it until he, she, they lose it. They play the old games too, merging and remerging, telling their tale into the auli legend horde. They are sad when they remember Brann, but they remember her less and less as the world turns on the spindle of time. They are home and valued, they are merging with their agemates, spinning a community of copulation and exploration, song and story, merging, emerging, remerging.
They are Home.
Knowing with all her body that the pocket reality was collapsing around her, Brann fell away from it and landed on her hands and knees in black sand. The Bay at Haven. Massulit lay on the sand beneath her. She closed her hand about it, pushed up until she was sitting on her heels with Massulit cuddled against her stomach.
Tak WakKerrcarr came over to her, reached a hand down to her and pulled her onto her feet. He pointed at Massulit. “I see you’ve got yourself a new playtoy.”
She looked at the sapphire, watched the star pulse for a breath or two. “You want it?”
“It’s not the kind of thing you can give away, m’ dear.”
She slipped the Stone into a pocket, rubbed at her eyes. “Yaro? Jay?” She remembered the Eating of the Geniod and was suddenly terrified, turned so quickly she stumbled and nearly fell; recovering, she continued to swing round, kicking sand into a storm about her knees; her arms flying out, her eyes wild. “Yaro? Jay?” Her voice cut through the twilight, agony in the syllables as she cried out again and again the names of her change-children. “Chained God,” she, shrieked, “If you ate my babies…” She ran along the sand, past Trago who was kneeling in the wash of the outgoing tide ignoring them all, staring into the shinning heart of the Eye, past Simms and Korimenei who stood silent on the sand, watching the drama but outside it. “If you fed my children to that Abomination…” She stopped, glared at the mountain rising dark against the gegenschein, Isspyrivo the Gate. “If you took them, you DIEEEE!!!” She turned and ran back. �
�I’ll tear you,” she screamed as she ran. “I’ll feed you to rats, I’ll… I’ll…” She stopped where she’d started, swung round and round, flinging words to the wind, helpless to do anything but shout yet almost demonic in her rage. “I’ll DRAIN you…” Round and round. “Dead, dead! DEAD!”
Tak WakKerrcarr came running and tried to hold her but she broke away, Maksim swore and plunged at her. He ignored her struggles, wrapped his arms about her and held her tight against his massive chest. She kicked and hit at him, clawed at him, she was blind with rage and grief and an overmastering terror, she didn’t know him, she no longer knew where she was. He kept her pinned with one huge arm, caught her hands in his and pressed them against his ribs, all the time talking to her, his bass voice flowing over her, calm, quiet, caressing, until she stopped fighting him and lay against him, shaking and sobbing.
A vast red figure came down the Mountain, shrinking as she came until she was a mere fifty yards of four-armed, crimson female god. Slya Firehcart tapped Maksim on the shoulder, wrapped her upper right hand around Brann when he released her. She got to her feet, lifted Brann till they were more or less eye to eye. “T’SSSH, T’SSSH, LITTLE NOTHING. WHAT’S ALL THIS?” A huge fingernail moved along Brann’s face, scraping away tearstreaks.
Brann blinked, tried to gather her shattered wits. “What happened to them? My babies…”
“THOSE FUZZBALLS? EHHH, UTILE NOTHING, THEY WENT HOME, THAT’S ALL. YOU WANTED THEM TO GO HOME, DIDN’T YOU. YOU HAD POOR OLD MAN OVER THERE SPRINKLING ITCH POWDER ON ME, SAYING SEND THEM HOME SEND THEM HOME.”
“Home…” Brann tugged a hand free, scrubbed at her eyes. “Yes.. . but I… not so soon, not without saying… not so suddenly…”
Slya set her down on the sand. Like a huge and clumsy child playing with a doll, she brushed at Brann with her upper right hand, plucked at her clothing with her upper left hand, smoothed her hair with one huge forefinger. Though the god was being kind and affectionate and meant no harm, Brann was exhausted and more than a little battered when Slya left off her efforts. Brann edged cautiously away, backing into Tak. She tilted her head to look up at him, smiled at him, then held her hand out to Maksim. She started to speak, closed her mouth, startled by a loud shout from the boy.
Trago was on his feet, pointing at Isspyrivo’s peak. “Look,” he cried again. “Chained God. God-not-Chained.”
A golden metal man a hundred meters tall stood upon Isspyrivo’s glaciers, posing like a dancer. The setting sun glinted on hundreds of angular facets, the light off them so brilliant it was blinding. He moved. He was slow and clumsy at first, lurching, teetering on the verge of falling over, but he kept coming. Like Slya Fireheart he came striding down the Mountain toward them and with each step the awkward stiffness diminished until the metal moved with the elasticity of flesh and the God-Not-Chained gleamed and shimmered liquidly instead of glittering. -
Paying no more attention to them than to the seagulls gliding around him, he walked out across the water and stopped in the middle of the bay. Slya Fireheart whistled, stomped her feet and shouted her approval of this new male god in the pantheon. He looked over his shoulder at her, crooked a finger. She whooped and went running to him across the water, each fleeting touch of her huge red feet sending up spurts of steam.
There was a shine not the sun on the northern horizon. Amortis came undulating across the water, her hair flowing in her personal wind, her gauzy draperies molding her lush body, her large blue eyes flirting with the God-Not-Chained.
Slya glared at her, Amortis glared back.
The god watched, preening like a cock two hens were fighting over. A thought flowed sluggishly across his perfect face. He left his companions, came striding back to the beach. He scooped up Trago, set the boy on his shoulder and went off with him.
Korimenei cried out, then fell silent as her beast came running across the sand and jumped into her arms.
Slya and Amortis trotted after the god, Slya slid her top right arm about his shoulders, her lower right arm about his waist, bumped her solid hip against his. Amortis took his other arm, brushed sensuously sinuously against him murmuring at him all the time, her voice like leaves rustling in a lazy summer breeze.
There was silence on the beach until the unlikely quartet vanished over the horizon.
Brann sighed. “So that was why,” she said. “That was what all this was about. All the terror and the dying and the pain. To build a body to house that… that Monster.”
“So it seems,” Tak WakKerrcarr murmured in her ear. “Do you mind?”
“Yes,” she said fiercely, then she shook her head. “It’s futile, but I mind. Look what we’ve loosed on this miserable world. I’d like to…”
‘It’s god-business, Thornlet. We’re out of it now and lucky to be alive. Let’s stay that way. You coming back with me?”
She leaned against him and looked at Maksim. He was over with Korimenei and a stocky red-haired man she didn’t know; she saw him touch the man’s face with the affection and tenderness he’d saved for her till now. I’ve lost him too, she thought, but I never had him, did I. He looks well. And happy. What kind of jealous bitch am I that I resent it? She smiled. Just your average sort of jealous bitch, I suppose. Nothing special. “Maksi,” she called.
He looked round. “Bramble?”
“Going back to Jal Virri?”
“Yes, I’ve got an apprentice to teach.” He threaded his big hand through Korimenei’s flyaway hair, shook her gently. “Work her little tail off. You?”
“I’m for Mun Gapur. See you round. Tak?”
“Give the girl a rest, Maks, come see us some time. Bring your friend if you want. Ta.”
5
The next morning, a bright clear cool morning with air that bubbled in the blood like wine, Brann stood beside one of the few coldsprings in Tak WakKerrcarr’s watergarden at Mun Gapur. She held Massulit out away from her. “I don’t want it, Tik-tok. I don’t want it anywhere round me. It makes me nervous. It reminds me… She swallowed, the pain suddenly back, the loss raw in her.
“It goes where it will, Thomlet and that’s not me. You want to lay a curse on me even I couldn’t handle, try giving it to me.” His mouth twitched in a smile part rueful, part calculating. “You might give it to Amortis.”
Brann snorted, then she smiled too, a small reluctant lift of her mouth corners. “I will never ever forget that scene. I hope Slya sets her hair on fire.” The smile went away. “And melts him into slag.”
“Ah, m’ dear.”‘
“Hunh!” She contemplated Massulit a moment longer then tossed it into the spring and watched it sink through the clear cold water. It shone briefly but intensely blue, then settled dark and anonymous among the stones at the bottom of the pool. “There. I give it to nobody.” She turned away, brushing her hands as if she brushed away the whole of the painful time just past. “This is a fire mountain,” she said.
“True. Why?”
“Build me a kiln, Tik-tok.”
“You need to rest a while, Thornlet, Relax.”
She moved her shoulders, ran a hand through her long white hair. “I can’t, luv. Not for a while yet. Do you understand? I need to be busy. I need to do something with my body, my hands, my mind. Something with meaning to me. When I was last in Kukurul I saw newware from Arth Slya. It gave me, idea I want to try. Any clay deposits round here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see what I can find out. You’re sure?”
“They were my children, Tik-tok. I have to grieve for them a while. But only a while. We have time, luv. If nothing else, we do have time.
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