Gorgon Child

by Steven Barnes

  Chapter Ten

  Dance of Life

  6:00 P.M.

  "Colleen! Colleen!" The cries shook the dining hall. A large woman, over six feet and in no way petite, took the raised dais in the center, and someone handed her a guitar. She grinned like a jack-o'-lantern, dropped her voice into a gravelly bass rumble, and sang:

  "Oh, Susan B., don't bother waiting up for me.

  I'm going out with the boys, for a little . . . fun.

  Lock all the doors before you do your chores,

  Don't let any strangers in, and get the dishes done.''

  Promise sat quietly in the dining hall, absorbing her surroundings. It was not yet time to make a move. Aubry sat beside her, as tense as a coiled snake. He ate without a sound, his shoulders hunched, with that familiar I'm not really here expression on his face.

  The guitarist raised her pitch to its normal level, and sang a reply to the previous lines:

  "Sorry, darling Charlie, but I've got a date to keep.

  The other girls are waiting, I can hear the car horns beep.

  When you read the morning papers, dear, don't let it shake your sleep,

  That they found some rapist slaughtered in the morning . . ."

  The music and laughter of the evening had not been lost on either of them. They were separate from the hundred or so women and five men in the room. They were not yet a part of Ephesus.

  Promise's eyes searched the room, looking to see if her mother was there. No. No sign of her, and there were no empty seats at any of the tables.

  There was no rigid sense of organization, so in that sense things had not changed in her absence.

  The sisters sat in groups and clumps, a hundred laughing, happy faces. Many were paired with lovers, all were grouped with friends. All but Promise and Aubry.

  The kettles of gumbo had emptied and filled again, and a mixed gender team carried them back to a kitchen in the rear of the lodge for refilling.

  Aubry was being pointedly ignored. Occasionally a woman would glance at him, eye him speculatively, then turn and whisper to a friend or lover. Derisive laughter would follow. She knew Aubry could cope with fear, or hatred, or even contempt. But derision was a totally new experience, and he had no frame of reference from which to understand it.

  "Wait, love," she whispered. "Our turn will come."

  "I don't know how much more of this I can take." His big hands were tensing and untensing as if they longed for something to break. There was nothing for Aubry to focus his discomfort on. Nothing to do but bide his time and wait.

  He leaned to whisper in her ear. "Isn't there a ritual of challenge here? You said something about that."

  "Yes, for the position of combat mistress," she whispered in reply. "But you have to be a woman, and you have to be a member of the family."

  "Then you could challenge Jenna if they readmitted you?" His eyes narrowed.

  "Aubry. Jenna and I went through that, years ago. It was no contest, and she's had ten years to get better. She wouldn't be who and where she is if she wasn't superb."

  Aubry grunted, and continued to eat.

  They were alone at their table, last to be served. The food was as good as her memory had suggested. The protein was mostly fish, and that was secondary to the pasta shells that formed two-thirds of the course.

  Next to that were plentiful leafy vegetables, and ice-cold water. It was simple, and nourishing, and she loved it. Aubry chewed every bite as if searching for lumps of poison.

  It was almost funny.

  A gust of sudden laughter took her mind back to the song rocking the room. Again the singer lowered her voice, and scowled:

  "Oh, Susan B., have some beer in the fridge for me,

  Are you putting on weight again? Your arms look thick.

  If all that exercise did nothing I'm not surprised

  When will you get tired of this fitness kick?"

  And this time, fully half of the women in the room joined her in the retort:

  "Never, darling Charlie, for this isn't flab, but meat

  Six months of heavy training now, And three months on the street.

  And after years of running, yes revenge is very sweet

  And they'll find some rapist slaughtered in the morning . . ."

  For her, the meal and the music and the company were intoxicating. It was amazing how easy it was to slip back into the rhythms, almost as if she had never been away. She felt herself shrinking. Once more she was a child, a girl who still had sensation on the left side of her body, who laughed and played with her friends, still knowing no world outside the communes. Still playing wondering childish games of what-if.

  And now . . .

  But for Aubry, she could disappear back into this world without a backward glance. The old ties were still binding.

  Why not? Aubry could survive without you better than he can with you. He could disappear back into the slums of any of a dozen cities, and survive. Thrive. He only stayed with the Scavengers because he knew that you needed him. These are your people. They would forgive you if you didn't have Aubry with you. . . .

  But even as she thought it, she knew it for the lie it was. Aubry was her man, and she could no more leave him than she could shed her skin.

  Her Plastiskin sparkled briefly, mockingly.

  At the front of the room the song was concluding, the wife's final mocking words being sung as sweetly as a lullaby:

  ' 'Never, darling Charlie, do you hear one word I say

  And well I know the kind of games you play when you're away.

  It wouldn't much surprise me if you don't come home by day

  And I find that I'm a widow in the morning."

  The women applauded and cheered and stomped as the guitarist took her bow, and the food trays were cleaned away.

  Promise didn't know her, at least was not sure that she remembered her. She had the vaguest memory of a chubby twelve-year-old named Colleen. The smile was similar but the memory could easily be faulty.

  "My second song this evening is about Mother Eve. We all know Mother Eve, don't we? Sure. She brought sin into the world!" The crowd laughed and hooted appreciatively.

  Colleen drew a thin, dark cigar from her shirt pocket and lit it, inhaling with relish before exhaling a thin plume of smoke into the air.

  "Well, it hit me that all Mother Eve did was bring an awareness of dyin' into the world. And with that awareness, people starting doing things—"

  She struck a chord on the guitar. "They started building—" and she struck another chord, "and having babies—" Colleen grinned as her fingers wrung music from the strings.

  "—and loving each other like crazy, 'cause that's what there is to do in this world. Leave it a little better off than you found it, and love each other like crazy.

  "And Mother Eve gave us all of the good things that we have, because she had the courage to go and do while Adam was busy playing with himself. She gave us courage, and curiosity, and everything. And Men took that story and twisted it around, and used it against us, tried to make us ashamed that we were the thinkers and the doers, and tried to make us more passive. Well—"

  She launched into her song then, and Promise remembered it. The first verse was about Mother Eve, and before she had gotten two lines into it a dozen voices had joined her, and the rafters shook with song.

  By the second verse, which was equally raucous, Promise had joined in. This one dealt with a male scholar's speculation that Joan of Arc may have been a boy. That one was stood on its ear by a complementary, shamelessly bawdy verse suggesting that Napoleon Bonaparte was a woman.

  Aubry rolled his eyes and sighed. Two more women joined Colleen on the stage, and all carried string instruments. Promise gripped Aubry's hand. "This is it. This is what we're waiting for."

  "What?"

  "The dancing is about to begin."

  The music rose to the highest cross-beams in the room, and, in a way that Promise only dimly understood, completed her tran
sition to the past. She didn't feel anything of herself, didn't feel anything of the past years.

  One at a time the women stood, and danced around the room joyously. It was Ephesus's tribal dance, an offshoot of the same root that produced Durga, a remnant of an earth magic from prehistoric India. They reveled in their own feelings and in the very aliveness of their sisters; together, they celebrated their bodies.

  Promise remembered. It was entirely too easy to remember. Suddenly she was a girl again, innocent again, with all of her life ahead of her, feeling her body move to the music, riding the music, knowing that she had a special connection with it that none of her sisters enjoyed. She took that knowledge, turned it around and around in her head until it emerged as a decision.

  The chain of the dance went on, and as it passed their table, Promise rose and joined it. She had a last and final image of Aubry looking after her, eyes ablaze, taking in the twist and undulation of her body, and she knew again how the natural expression of her body's potential was that which was sensuous, or sexual. It didn't have to be the overemphasized bump-and-grind of a stripper, or the desperate, shallow sexuality of a prostitute.

  It was there, it was there in the natural polarity of man and woman. Perhaps it was her sense of this that had eventually driven her away from her sisters. It she would be a whole woman, she must have a whole man.

  Her body moved as if each sway, each moment of movement to the beat, started somewhere deep inside her, somewhere inviolate and untouched by life. Aubry claimed his Nullboxing movement originated in such a place.

  She threw her head back and moved, aware that as she did, all eyes in the room were on her, moving with her. As she reached the front of the room she stayed there, and danced for them as she had never danced before.

  There was music, and there was space, and there was her mind and her nervous system. And within that matrix she plied her craft. Transitory art, impermanent gift to the world. A fleeting touch, a suggestion of life beyond struggle, gift given with no thought of survival.

  Primal woman.

  She could smell herself as she moved, as her sweat began to flow. As slowly, the other women and men in the room began to clap their hands together. A low cry of appreciation rang out as she pushed beyond and beyond. The room spun, everything coming together now.

  Now there was no time, and she had never been away.

  And yet all the pain of her separation, all of the months and years wandering in the world. The hundreds of men that she had taken to her bed, in search of . . .

  What?

  Aubry? In search of someone who could make her feel complete, as she tried to make him feel? And if that was what she truly needed, then who could say that it was wrong? Who could say that her life, as her dance, in not concealing itself and its deepest mysteries from her diadic opposite, was less than they had asked of her, less than her family required it be.

  Everything, every fear, every joy, every hope of her life was there in that dance. She swirled and leapt, every follicle of her hair, every flicker of her finger utterly alive.

  And as she danced, her hands went to her clothing and tore them free, scattered them to the winds. Naked to their i-yes she danced before them.

  Durga, the dance of life.

  There was an almost wolflike howl of approval as the smell of her sweat and passion rose in the air. She clicked her teeth, triggering the microprocessor implanted within her jawbone.

  The Plastiskin erupted into fire, and the room went silent.

  The musicians ceased to play, and all eyes were upon her.

  There was a blur, an accelerating whirl, dizzying, maddening, hallucinogenic . . .

  And then she was still, in a womb of motion. The rest Of the world spun, but she was still, calm. She breathed in, find the world fluxed. She breathed out, and the world receded.

  Everything was motionless. Now she was here, and now there, and in between there was nothing but feeling, nothing but a flare of emotion. At last she spiraled down on her left knee and the ball of her right foot, her arms extended beseechingly.

  She stood slowly. There was still no sound from the room around her. Her hands rested lightly on her hips. She looked out at them.

  "I am woman," she said. "I am you. I am what you made me, and you are my sisters. If you would curse me for loving, then there is no love. If you would curse me for needing, then drown your children. If you would reject my man without knowing him, then you are as guilty as any witch-burner. I have always carried you in my heart as the strongest and most wonderful family anyone could have. I beg you. Do not soil that memory. Forgive me. Take me back. Give my love a chance."

  Slowly, still without a sound from the assembly, Promise pulled her clothes over a body gleaming with sweat, and stepped down.

  Subtly at first, then with growing fervor, a sound like hyunn-huh! hyunn-huh! began to fill the room, swelling and blossoming, until every throat carried it. Promise didn't hear it. She saw only Aubry, and the twin tracks of tears on his beautiful face, and the love that shone in his eyes for her.

  And her love for him burned within her with every step as she passed the rows of women as they looked at her, looked at him.

  And in their eyes, there was no longer contempt or amusement. And when he took her into his arms, and kissed her deeply, there was nothing in the world for either of them but the sound of the hands clapping, and feet stamping, and the love of her family, and the love of her man.

  It was, for Promise, the happiest moment of her life.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gorgon

  Thursday, May 25

  Marina Batiste was on the riverbank, in sight of the bridge now. She pulled herself up a few cold, wet inches at a time. If she allowed herself to think about it, she was miserably uncomfortable. She didn't allow it—not while there was a job to be done.

  She made out the individual figures of the "Nigerian Liberation Front" cardboard revolutionaries as they patrolled the Dja Bridge, wasplike infrared/laser-sighted machine pistols at the ready. According to Quint and Ibumi, the bridge was a cantilever span, twelve hundred feet long, the longest bridge in Cameroon.

  Her body was blackened with heat-reflective makeup. Neither visual nor thermal scan would pick her up. As silent as a night cloud, she wiggled in closer, trusting the automatic focus on her portable holo rig.

  "I count eight men," she subvocalized. The transmitter anchored in her jawbone would pick up anything louder than a thought, broadcasting it tightbeam to a computer-assisted receiver some thousand yards away. There, it was recorded for future broadcast on TriNet. Always assuming that she survived to bring it back.

  Security was everything: in all of southern Africa, that area controlled and united under Swarna's PanAfrican flag, there was no safe haven for Gorgon or anyone associated with them. Covering this operation for TriNet meant that Marina was a very long way from friends. Curiously, that idea pierced the normal veil of dispassion that masked her fear. She was the only woman, the only outsider, ever to have the opportunity to watch Gorgon make a kill.

  Perhaps it was only the adrenaline of fear, but her heart jackhammered in her chest.

  The receiver whispered in her ear: "One more man. Need visual." That was Ibumi's dry rasp, and it made her skin crawl. Ibumi was second in command, Quint's lover, and as spooky a human being as she'd ever met. Ibumi was Swahili, his family American for three generations.

  She crawled a little closer, near the no-man's-land Quint had established for her. ' 'Come closer than the tip of the rock's shadow," his voice echoed grimly in her ears, "and I'll kill you myself."

  Finally, she had her vantage point. From here, she could see the bridge, the guards, and the limousine containing four frightened people. Officials from Union Carbide, and the multinational Energy trade union. They were huddled inside, bound hand and foot.

  They would die in—Marina checked her watch—twenty-two minutes unless Energy put pressure on President Harris to meet with Swarna. It wou
ld never happen. Harris's official position was nonrecognition of the PanAfricans, a policy strengthened through economic sanctions and support of northern guerrilla forces. And an abortive assassination attempt which America denied in public and cursed in private.

  The assassination of Swarna could have worked, destabilizing the twenty-year-old black nation. Only Swarna could hold the PanAfricans together, a man as charismatic and invaluable to his movement as Fidel Castro had been to his. And the assassination, so brilliantly schemed, had been leaked to the American press by traitors within the State Department, the mission forced to abort in midstride. An embarrassing, expensive failure.

  Actions like the ones on the bridge were Swarna's way of striking back. A little war of nerves. The Nigerian Liberation Front, a puppet group, kidnapped Energy officials. Swarna could disavow their actions, but refuse to intervene. By an odd coincidence, their demands coincided with Swarna's needs.

  Surprise, surprise.

  "Nine. Contact made. In car with hostages. Proceed?"

  Snipers were in place on the hills to either side, and they would make their move shortly. Unless they deactivated the explosives first, such a move would be murder and suicide.

  Marina peered through her holocamera's night-vision scope. A Gorgon was moving into position just east of the bridge. She focused in on his weapon, tugging her memory until the right facts surfaced. The man carried an Armasault AT-14 semiautomatic rifle and peered down at the bridge. Firing 1200 particle/liquid explosive shock antipersonnel or armor-piercing rounds per minute, the Armasault was custom-made for Gorgon. It was configured with either vibration-sensitive geophones or an advanced ambient light nightscope, both AI enhanced for accurate location of targets. According to Quint, the starlight sensitive devices were infinitely preferable to the revolutionaries' infrared, because IR is detectable. The Liberation Front snipers might as well send up flares advertising their positions.