by Ann Maxwell
“What’s wrong?” whistled Fssa.
The snake’s head rested on top of Rheba’s. His twin multicolored sensors wheeled, “seeing” his surroundings in a barrage of returning sound waves. His whole length was incandescent, burning beneath her rippling hair like very hot embers beneath flames. He was in a high state of excitement. He liked new planets almost as much as he liked new languages. Especially warm planets, although by Fssireeme standards Yhelle was only a few shades removed from frigid. It was, however, much better than Daemen had been.
“We don’t like the look of that black arch,” said Rheba. “Although the illusionists didn’t seem to mind it.”
“Arch? Where?”
Kirtn turned and stared from the snake to the enormous arch looming in front of them. “Right ahead of us.”
Fssa’s sensors focused into the area beyond his two friends. He moved his head restlessly from side to side like a clept questing for an elusive scent. He hissed and turned back to Kirtn. “I don’t see anything but air.”
“You don’t see anything at all,” muttered the Bre’n, referring to the fact that Fssireemes were blind to the wavelengths of light that were the visible spectrum for Fourth People.
“That’s what I said,” whistled Fssa, a musical confusion in his trill.
“No,” said Rheba, touching Kirtn’s arm. “Fssa is right. The arch must be an illusion that exists only in the visible wavelengths of light. Since Fssa uses other means of ‘seeing,’ he isn’t fooled.”
“Wait here,” said Kirtn.
He strode toward the arch, stopping a hand’s width away. He reached out . . . and his fingers vanished into darkness.
The illusionists reappeared beneath the arch, startling him. They were polite enough to conceal their smiles, although laughter rippled in their voices.
“It’s only a simple illusion,” said f’lTiri, dismissing the arch with a flip of his hand.
“It doesn’t even have texture,” added i’sNara, poking holes in the arch with her tiny white hands. “It never changes. Even our youngest son could do better.”
“Fssa wasn’t fooled,” Rheba said, walking up behind Kirtn.
F’lTiri looked at the Fssireeme with new appreciation. “I’d like to see the planet you came from, snake.”
“So would I,” responded the Fssireeme in a sad tremolo.
Rheba touched him with a comforting fingertip. The snake had been born—if that was the proper term for Fssireeme reproduction—beyond the Equality’s borders, on a planet so distant that no one knew its Equality name. In fact, neither the old Deva navtrix nor the new Equality navtrix had ever heard of a planet called Ssimmi. Fssa could not go home, because without a location on the navigation matrix, no one knew where in the galaxy his home was. And Fssa wanted very badly to go home.
“He uses sound waves to see,” said Rheba. “That’s why he saw through the arch’s illusion.”
I’sNara looked thoughtful. “That might help with some Yhelle illusions. But the most enduring illusions are based on reality. The best ones have feel and texture. The extraordinary ones precisely mimic reality in every way.”
“Then how can you tell the difference?” asked Kirtn.
“When their creator gets bored or dies, his illusions vanish.”
“You can tell the difference between normal illusions and reality?” asked Rheba.
“Of course.”
“How?” she asked plaintively.
“How can you create fire?” asked f’lTiri.
She shrugged. “I’m a fire dancer. It’s what I do.”
“And we’re illusionists. We can be fooled, though.”
“And I can be burned,” said Rheba wryly. She looked at the uninviting illusion ahead of her. “Why do you call it Reality Street?”
F’lTiri laughed. “Because most of the people who use the street are tourists, not illusionists. It’s the only place a realist can go on Yhelle without a guide.”
Kirtn sighed and turned to Rheba. “I’m ready if you are.”
“You’re a poet,” she said accusingly. “You’d trade reality for a good illusion any day.” But she followed him through the arch, for she was a dancer and he was her Bre’n.
Reality Street was a riot fit to boggle the sensory apparatus of any Fourth People worthy of the name. If a plant grew anywhere in the Equality, it grew along Reality Street. If an animal breathed anywhere in the Equality, it breathed on Reality Street. If anything was manufactured or imagined anywhere in the Equality, its counterpart thrived on Reality Street.
Or at least it appeared that way.
The city-state of Serriolia was the centerpiece of Yhelle’s master illusionists. It also was the center of intra-Equality trade. Not everything on Reality Street was an illusion, but deciding what was and was not real would take a concatenation of First People . . . or perhaps a single Fssireeme.
It was early morning in Serriolia, but groups of people wandered Reality Street’s straight line, stopping to marvel at various manifestations. The people were as mixed a group as Kirtn and Rheba had left behind on the Devalon. There were one or two races that they had not seen on Loo, though the Loo-chim had prided itself on owning two of every kind of living being known in the galaxy.
Kirtn thought that at least one of the strange races wandering Reality Street was an illusion. Even a Bre’n poet balked at accepting a tall, fluffy-tailed, rainbow-striped biped as a real Fourth People. Especially when it shook out flowered wings longer than it was tall. Its teeth, however, might have been real, so Kirtn was careful not to stare.
Nearby, a grove of Second People whispered between purple leaves. Laughter rustled and whiplike branches snapped in amusement. Kirtn remembered the carnivorous Second People he and Rheba had burned to stinking ash on Loo, though not in time to save the children who had stumbled into the grove’s lethal embrace. He wondered if this grove, too, was insane.
He snarled soundlessly and looked away, not wanting to remember how the children had died. He hoped that the grove was only an illusion, and that Rheba would not see it at all. He glanced around and saw that she had stopped halfway down Reality Street. He walked back to her.
Rheba was entranced by a fern growing in lyric profusion among dark cobblestones. Long fronds rose in graceful curves. Each lacy frond was an iridescent blue, trembling with hidden life. A cool perfume pervaded the air near the fem. Hesitantly, she touched a frond. The fem bent down, enveloping her in scent.
“That’s a beautiful illusion,” she sighed. “I haven’t touched or smelled anything that nice since the gold dust on Daemen.”
I’sNara reached past Rheba and took a frond between her fingertips. She broke off a small piece and waited. The frond remained the same.
“That’s either real or a class twelve,” she said, sniffing the piece of plant appreciatively. “Probably real. Ghost ferns are difficult illusions. Not many get the scent just right.”
“Where do they grow normally?”
“On Ghost.”
Rheba turned to see if i’sNara was teasing her, but the illusionist seemed lost in her enjoyment of the fern’s delicate scent. “I thought Ghost was just a myth.”
“Oh no,” said i’sNara, surprised. “It’s not part of the Equality, but it’s real enough.”
“Have you ever seen a Fifth People?” asked Kirtn.
“They’re rather hard to see,” said i’sNara wryly. “I’ve never had the pleasure, but my mother’s second grandfather saw a Ghost once.”
“How did he know it wasn’t an illusion?”
“Ghosts aren’t illusions. Only a realist could confuse them.”
Rheba was still trying to think of an answer when Kirtn distracted her.
“Look at that!” He pointed down the road, away from the spaceport.
A starsurfer was swooping down on them. Its vast, mirror-finish sail was belied out by an invisible wind. The sail worked as a huge lens, magnifying and reflecting their astonished faces, their mouths li
ke black caves opening endlessly until sail and ship were swallowed up and nothing remained but a giggle drifting down from a nearby tree.
F’lTiri snickered. “I forgot to mention that Serriolia’s children practice their trade on Reality Street. Only the young ones, though. Realists are such easy prey.”
Kirtn turned toward the tree and bowed, adding a Bre’n whistle for good measure. The pink leaves shook. A small Yhelle leaped from a branch and hit the ground running.
“You scared him,” said i’sNara, but there was no censure in her voice.
“I meant to compliment him,” said Kirtn. “Being swallowed up by our own astonishment is a shrewd illusion for one so young.”
“But he didn’t know you were real. He’d never seen someone like you before, so he assumed you were an illusion,” explained f’lTiri. “Then he tried to penetrate your illusion, and couldn’t. Then he assumed you were at least a class eight teasing him by pretending to be a realist. So he fled, leaving you to tease tourists rather than one small Yhelle.”
Rheba looked down the long, straight street. Colors she had no name for surged brightly on either side. In the distance, well back from the street, fantastic buildings grew, architecture representing every Cycle from First to Seventeenth, made up of every material from mud to force fields.
She sighed and rubbed her aching eyes. Itching eyes. They itched like new akhenet lines of power beneath her skin. She rubbed her shoulders where new lines had formed when she had been forced to tap a Zaarain core on Daemen. But it was not her shoulders that itched, it was the back of her eyes.
Kirtn bent over her and pulled her fingers away from her eyes. “Did you get something in them? Spores? Pollen?”
She blinked rapidly, but her eyes did not water. Nor did they feel as if anything foreign was in them. “They just itch in back. As if new lines are forming.”
“I’ve never heard of a dancer getting lines back there.” He looked carefully at her. Twin, cinnamon-colored eyes looked back at him, translucent pools with a hint of gold veining. The whites of her eyes were clear and glossy, visible sign of her health. “They look fine.”
“They don’t feel that way. The zoolipt must be asleep.” She shook her head fiercely. “Wake up, you useless parasite. I itch!” Nothing happened. She whistled a Bre’n curse. “It did fine on my other akhenet lines. I only itched a little, even after wrestling with that Zaarain core.”
Kirtn tilted back her chin. New lines lay gold beneath her tawny skin, thicker lines, deeply curved, line upon line sliding beneath the scarlet silk of her brief ship clothes. His whistle was a combination of disbelief and distress. “You’re too young for so many lines, fire dancer. If you develop too quickly—”
He did not finish his sentence. He did not have to. Rheba knew that it was as dangerous to push a dancer’s growth as it was to push a Bre’n balanced on the edge of rez. But there had been no choice, not on Daemen or Loo or Onan. They had done what they must to survive. If that forced her to develop too quickly, so be it. It was better than dying.
“Besides,” said Rheba, as though she had been speaking aloud all the time, “I’m the first dancer to have a zoolipt inside. It will keep me healthy.” She smiled sourly. “Until it gets tired of my taste, that is.”
“At least you don’t itch anymore.”
“Except my eyes,” she said, knuckling them in exasperation. “Oh well, nothing’s perfect. Not even a Zaarain construct.” She blinked rapidly and looked for the illusionists. They were gone. “Where are they?”
Kirtn looked around. All he saw was flowers, ferns, trees, and a cluster of First People humming softly among themselves. They must have stopped growing eons in the past, for their crystal faces were worn and dull. Their songs were still pure, though, as haunting as an autumn moonrise.
And then he realized that the stones were singing a Bre’n work song. The biggest stone laughed, shimmered, and became f’lTiri. Beside him was i’sNara, equally amused. The illusionists’ pleasure was so transparent that Kirtn could not be angry. He smiled and made a gesture of defeat.
Fssa made a startled sound. “They fooled even me,” he whistled. “Their sounds were real, and shaped just like First People.”
“Did you bounce sound off us?” asked f’lTiri.
“No. I just listened.”
“Try it.”
The illusionists promptly became the image of First People. They chimed and quivered sweetly.
Fssa went through a series of transformations, then froze in an odd convolution of quills and cups. “Got you!”
The stones became furred quadrupeds sleeping in the sun, snoring deeply.
“Where did they go?” hissed Fssa, then answered his own question by changing shapes until he caught the illusionists again. “There!”
The furred animals became a carpet of flowers covered in silence. At least, to Rheba and Kirtn it was silence. To Fssa, it was a sound absorber. No matter which frequency he used to probe, no echo returned. The illusionists were effectively invisible to him. In desperation, he assumed the grotesque fungoid shape that he used to talk with Rainbow.
Rheba yelped and knocked Fssa out of her hair. “Forget it, snake! I’ll take silent illusion to your sonic reality.”
Fssa collapsed into a dark snake shape. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I barely whispered,” he added meekly, turning black with chagrin.
She bent over and put him back into her hair. “Even a whisper on that wavelength gives me a headache.”
I’sNara and f’lTiri reappeared, obviously delighted.
“You must be twelves,” said Kirtn. He whistled in the sliding loops of Bre’n admiration.
“Alone, each of us is an eight,” said i’sNara. “Together, we’re nearly eleven. With our children or some of our friends, we’re twelve.” She laughed in exultation. “If you only knew how good it feels to stretch again! The Loo-chim never wanted anything more complex from us than an image of its own perfection staring out of its mirror.”
“It’s the first time we’ve really felt free,” added f’lTiri in oblique apology. “But don’t worry. We won’t tease you or the snake anymore.”
“Good,” said the Bre’n. “Now, if you could just hold the rest of Serriolia to that promise . . .”
Fssa made a rude, fruity noise.
“You can say that again for me,” muttered Rheba. She knew that Serriolia would be exactly what it was, an endless joke on nonillusionists.
With a final, flatulent mutter, Fssa buried himself up to his sensors in Rheba’s consoling hair.
By the time they reached the end of Reality Street, Rheba and Kirtn were in a state of sensory surfeit. They stood and stared at the force field that divided them from the rest of Yhelle. The field was even more daunting than the ominous arch had been.
Rheba allowed a filament of her energy to brush the outer edges of the field. There was a crackle and a sense of dissonant power in the instant before she disengaged. Kirtn looked at her, a question in his yellow eyes.
“If it isn’t real, it’s so close that it makes no difference,” she said.
Kirtn asked no more questions. If a fire dancer said an energy field was real, then it was real in every way that mattered. “Can you penetrate it?”
She hesitated. “If I had to, I probably could. It’s not Zaarain, but it’s more complex than the power Loo or Onan used.” She looked around, but saw no one other than Kirtn. She sighed. “Where or what are the illusionists now?”
He did not even bother to look. The illusionists had gone giddy with laughter and mutual transformations before they were two-thirds of the way down Reality Street. When last he had seen them they were a thunderhead stitched with lightning that looked suspiciously like a mass of Fssireemes.
“F’lTiri?” called Rheba. “I’sNara?”
There was no answer, unless a snicker from the pavement beneath their feet could be counted.
Her hair stirred, whispering strand over strand in murmur of gathering
power. “Enough is too much,” she muttered.
“What are you going to do?” asked Kirtn.
“See if illusions burn.”
Kirtn’s lips fought not to smile. “I should stop you, dancer.”
“But you won’t.”
His lips lifted in a predatory smile. “What poet could resist finding out the colors of a burning illusion?”
She waited, but the illusionists did not appear. Her hair fanned out, hiding Fssa in a seething cloud of gold. He hissed ecstatically, reveling in the energy she drew into herself from her surroundings. He floated in a chaos of energy, supported by hot strands of dancer hair. It was as close to his Guardian-induced memories of home as he had come in the Equality.
Akhenet lines lighted beneath Rheba’s skin. Whorls and curves and racing lines of gold shimmered as she rechanneled the energy she was drawing into herself. Her lines remained cool, however; this was only a minor dance. She would not even need the partnership of her Bre’n. She glanced up at him with a sidelong smile and a question. “Any. favorites?”
He pointed to some small bushes that grew along the margins of the force field. The bushes bore gnarled, spotted fruit that gave off an unpleasant odor. A similar plant had grown in the Loo slave compound. The fleshy fruit was not poisonous, but it tasted as vile as it looked.
She half closed her eyes as she reached out to the plant with her dancer senses. Gold pooled in the palm of her hand, viscous energy waiting to be used. She tipped her hand and let the fluid drip down.
The plant stank and died.
“Must have been real,” observed Kirtn.
Her hand moved on to the next plant. Gold dripped. The outline of the fruit glowed oddly, then vanished rather than burned. A tiny skeleton of a real plant remained, withered and obviously dead. She recalled her fire before it could touch the skeleton.
Kirtn squatted and examined the brittle remains. “Feels real,” he said, sniffing and cautiously tasting a fragment of withered fruit. He spat it out immediately. “Tastes real.”
“It was,” said f’lTiri’s voice. “A long time ago.”
