by Lionel Fenn
"He is beautiful, is he not?"
"Impressive," Gideon hedged, gnawing on his lower lip and wondering how Whale's bat would do against such a creature—assuming he could get close enough to use it.
"I captured him myself," she said proudly.
"What did you do? Blow him a kiss?"
She turned him around and glared. "You are making fun of me, hero, yes?"
"No," he said quickly. "It was just a guess."
"And a good one," she said, the glare shifting to a smile the likes of which he'd last seen in the zoo—on a thoroughly bored cobra he had watched during feeding time in the snake house, with the mice plump and quivering. "You are very clever."
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
"Can I go now?"
"You don't like me?"
The dark thing shifted ponderously, but it didn't come any closer, a fact Gideon noted, knew was important, and didn't much care about now since Thong had shifted her nail to scratching lightly at his left arm.
"Are you asking if I think you attractive?" he said.
"No. I know I am. I want to know if you like me."
"And if I say no?"
"I will reward you for your honesty, if not your knowledge of women."
He could think of no response that she wouldn't, under the circumstances, consider inflammatory, and so tried his best you've-got-me-over-a-barrel smile. She responded by not setting his shirt on fire. He was grateful to the tune of admiring her pet once again before backing away and looking at her sternly.
"Are we finished?" he said.
"Finished?" she replied innocently.
"With the games, Thong. With the games."
Disappointment shadowed her face. "It is not much fun in the jungle, you know. I was hoping we could continue for a while."
Disregarding the consequences, he pointed at her, then at the clearing, then at the hut, then at the dark thing muttering dragon imprecations to itself in the cage.
"I am tired," he said. "I am hungry. I am thirsty. I am fed up to here trying to walk a tightrope between you and your cold fish of a sister. If it isn't too much trouble, I would like to know, now, what in god's name is going on that I should so wonderfully and coincidentally run across you two again. I want to know what your plans are. I want to know where my friends are. I want to know what the hell that goddamned thing is doing, Jesus Christ!"
He dropped flat to the ground just as a cloud of acrid flame reached out of the cage and disinfected the air where he'd been standing; his shirt dried instantly, and he was positive a fair portion of his hair had been considerably shortened.
"My pet," Thong said blandly, "is attuned to my emotional state and the emotional disturbances which reach me."
He remained where he was until he was sure he wouldn't be attacked a second time, then slowly, tentatively, got back to his feet. "You mean that thing knew I was mad and was protecting you?"
She nodded.
He inhaled, exhaled, then walked around the firepit to the center hut. Thong followed, not quite able to muffle her laughter when he tossed aside the dragon-pelt covering and had it slap back in his face.
"Yes," she said. "Do sleep, my hero. In the morning we shall answer all your questions."
"Thank you," he muttered.
"And," she added, leaning close to whisper in his ear, "in the afternoon you shall tell me how you and I will kill my sister."
The drums grew louder.
The volcano spat smoke and lava.
And Gideon stepped into the hut, and knew he wasn't alone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In the center of the hut's circular floor was a shallow depression in which a small flame burned. The sooty, hide-covered walls were rife with shadows, and the smoke from the flame drifted toward a narrow hole in the conical ceiling. A wooden chair crudely made of sticks tied together with dried vines and rusted wire had been set on the other side of the pit.
And in the chair sat a man.
Gideon took a cautious step forward, the better to see the figure he was facing, the better to get a running start out the door in case it was needed.
The man was rather small by jungle standards, his flesh tinted a faint grey and drawn so taut over his skeleton that it took a good man's imagination not to believe he was actually dead. His hair was stringy, grey, and hung to his shoulders; and he was absolutely naked save for a loincloth of bilious green, the original owner of which hide must certainly be pleased it was dead so as not to have to look at itself every morning.
"Welcome," the man said in a crackling, deep voice.
Gideon let the flap drop shut behind him, his left hand hovering around the knob of his bat. "Who are you?"
"A guest," was the answer, accompanied by a smile that let Gideon know how clever was the stranger's wit in the midst of an adversary situation.
Figuring it had to be a trap but too weary to avoid it, he found another chair by the door, pulled it over to the fire, and sat, his legs stretched out, his head tilted back. "Are you in as much trouble as I am?" he asked with a companionable grin.
"No."
That figures, he thought, and debated whether or not to find out the man's story, to see if he were going to be an active ally or one who took sides when fortunes shifted with the wind. Or still further, a secret enemy who was on the Wamchus' payroll, ordered to feign friendliness so that Gideon's every move would be accurately and surreptitiously chronicled for his mistresses. On the other hand, judging from the man's obviously dire condition, if he were in fact an ally and not a knife poised over his back, he probably wouldn't be of much help if push came to shove and the sisters Wamchu lost their collective temper. It would, then, be considerably more noble just to keep the man in ignorance, make no friend of him, and perhaps, someday, he would go free.
"Worse."
Gideon jerked upright, realizing he had bored himself into a doze. "What?"
"Worse," the man repeated, staring glumly at the flame.
"Worse what?"
"Worse trouble."
"Than me?"
"I."
"Don't start, pal," he said angrily.
The man shifted uneasily, bringing his scrawny legs up under him to sit Indian fashion, tucking the loincloth's flap demurely between his thighs. "I only said I was in worse trouble than you apparently are. Had I known such a declaration would cause a debate, I would have held my tongue." Which he did, until his fingers slipped away and he sighed loudly.
A loon, Gideon thought in despair; I am caged with a loon.
He considered for a moment, then said, lightly, "What did you do, make a pass at them?"
The man nodded.
Gideon stared.
"It is my position," came the attempted clarification.
"You... huh?"
"My name is rather descriptive," the man said, not without a touch of incomprehensible pride. "They call me, in the great palaces of Choy, Bones Abber. Which translates, rather roughly, you understand, into 'the official masseur of the wives of the Wamchu when they are abroad.'" He held up a long-fingered hand, turned it over, turned it back. "Such tales these could tell if they could only speak the language."
"Oh. I see."
Abber chuckled. "Do you now?"
He did. He suspected, with a chill that strutted along his spine, that Bones Abber had once been an ordinary man. But his skills in relieving the tensions of a hard day's foetid and cancerous deeds were repaid in a most repellent manner—continual contact with the alabaster flesh of the beautiful women in the two other huts had scorched, frozen, baked, iced, seared, chapped, and otherwise mortified his own flesh into its present condition. He also suspected that the man had been given no choice in the matter.
"Do you know," Abber said as he held his hands over the warmth of the flame, "that Chou-Li has a turnip-shaped birthmark on the underside of her left breast?"
Of course, there is mortified and there is mortified.
"I assume," the man continued, "t
hat you are not, in the proper sense of the word, a guest, either?"
"Not on your life," Gideon said.
Abber pulled a hank of his hair in front of his eyes, studied it, picked something out of it and tossed it into the flame. Then he lifted his head, and Gideon saw that he also had a beard, short and laced with white where it wasn't spiced with grime.
"Perhaps," the masseur said with a deliberate air, "it would be of mutual advantage to combine forces in a perhaps foolhardy, but no less daring and courageous for all that, bid for the removal of our confinement."
Gideon rubbed his eyes with a pair of knuckles, as much to give himself time to sort out the implications of the statement as to keep himself awake. "Sorry, but I was under the impression you liked your job."
"It has its rewards. It also has its damnations."
Gideon shifted his chair around until he could watch Abber's eyes. And an odd pair they were, too, though he couldn't say why. "Look," he said with a show of barely controlled patience, "I am exhausted, out on my feet. I really want to get some sleep, and I can't be bothered trying to figure out whether you're tricking me or not."
"I am not, I assure you."
"Good. Then suppose you tell me, assuming we could get away, where we would go? Do you know the jungle?"
"I am conversant with it in some respects, yes."
Right, he thought; now the guy talks to trees.
Abber leaned forward, strings of hair falling over his face. "May I ask where you were headed when your journey was so abruptly interrupted?"
Gideon shrugged; what the hell. "I was trying to find a man named Harghe Shande."
Abber threw up his hands and looked to the ceiling. "Well, I shall be damned."
"What?" Gideon almost stood. "You know him?"
Abber nodded vigorously, the ends of his hair raising welts on his chest.
Take it easy, Gideon told himself then; do not get yourself in a sweat simply because this loon says he knows a man you've never met. But he didn't ask the question again because he was afraid the guy would beat himself to death.
"I don't believe in miracles, you know, but... would you happen to know how to get to his... whatever?"
Abber nodded again.
Gideon smiled. "Wonderful!"
"As in an opium-induced dream," the masseur said, "I can see his residence now, resplendent in amenities, filled with laughter and joy and the delights of culinary fulfillment. Such a man is he, my dear fellow, that knowing of our troubles he would lay down his life for us without a moment's hesitation nor thought of reward save that he had enabled his fellows to discard the yoke of repression. An angel. A saint."
Gideon wondered.
"Alas, however, such a dream must remain so, for I have attempted several times to vacate this place, and I fear that the dear sisters will not be so easily escaped."
"You read a lot, don't you?" Gideon said.
Abber nodded, then stared. "My dear sir, how did you know?"
"It's a gift," he said, and rose, moved the chair aside, and lay down near the fire on the softest pile of dirt he could find. "First, I have to get some sleep before I drop."
"But you are already down."
"A figure of speech."
"Chou-Li, or Thong?"
"Abber, go to sleep. You're going to need all the rest you can get."
There was a silence.
"You are a hero, aren't you."
He opened one eye.
"I have read of such people, of course. They usually don't carry baseball bats. Swords, perhaps, or exotic weapons one only reads about but can't spell. A baseball bat, however, is something new to the legends."
He closed the eye.
"I will think about it. It must have symbolic meaning."
He pretended to snore while he shamed himself to sleep by devising fourteen delightfully different ways to cook his sister without a fire or duck sauce. And he didn't wake up until someone knocked on the hide door, and someone else tugged frantically on his arm.
—|—
The instinct for survival rolled him instantly to his feet, bat in hand, as Abber pulled him urgently away from the door. Sleep was hard to dispel, but once it was gone he saw wooden bowls being slipped under the hide by a delicate, pale hand. Then a voice called his name, urging him to eat quickly for there was business to be done.
Abber wasted no time. He gathered up the food and placed it on the firepit's rim, hunkered down, and used his fingers to scoop into his mouth what looked to Gideon like porridge in need of a well-earned vacation. His stomach, however, made no fine distinctions save between living and starvation, and he was surprised when he tasted the pink stuff and found it good, the blue stuff and found it delicious, and the brown stuff with just a hint of nut flavoring, with an aroma that reminded him of his mother's best boiled beef.
And as they ate, he questioned the grey man about the day's usual routine.
After breakfast, the sisters would argue until noon about what to do next. After lunch, they would either continue their fighting or demand a massage to calm their nerves so that the vibrations would not be picked up by their eavesdropping husband. A siesta would then be interrupted by the last meal of the day, after which they would go hunting for something to kill, for the sport of it, for practice, and because if they didn't kill something else they would surely kill each other.
"I do not know, however, how your presence will change things. I suspect, for the time being, not very much."
Gideon nodded. Thought. Ate. Thought again, and nearly lost all his breakfast when a great billowing wind slammed into the hut, and the temperature rose at least forty degrees in an instant. Abber only shrugged, explaining as Gideon looked for a soft place to dig that it was merely Thong's pet being let out for its exercise.
"What does it do, knock down a few mountains?"
Abber frowned. "Intriguing. I never—"
Gideon shut him up with a glare, then stood and dusted his bed's debris from his clothes. He really was going to have to get something new; he was beginning to look like a rich man pretending he didn't have a dime.
Then the hide door was folded back, and he threw up a hand to shade his eyes from the day's blinding light.
"You will come out, please," Chou-Li said flatly.
He didn't hesitate. With Abber behind him, he stepped into the clearing and, still blinking to get his vision adjusted, looked around with a friendly smile. Thong was standing by the dark thing's cage, tapping a foot impatiently, waving them over with a stiff jerk of her arm. Chou-Li balked, though Abber moved without delay, and Gideon wished to hell he knew which one he should obey.
An icicle formed from the sweat on his chin.
Got it, he thought, and trailed after the blue-clad woman, seeing no path other than the one that had brought him here, which meant he either had to run that way with every assurance of being followed, or dive into the jungle and make a trail of his own.
He hated decisions.
Especially those that reeked of doom more than vaguely.
Thus, he admired the way Abber cowered off to one side, and admired even more the way the morning's golden sun enhanced Chou-Li's blue silk dress and Thong's crimson sarong. Were this a different time and a different place and different circumstances and different women, he would have blushed and stammered and begged one for a date. That, unfortunately, was fantasy. This was the real world as he had come to know it, and as they looked him over while scowling at each other, he felt as if he were being measured for an afternoon's diversion, like being drawn and quartered.
"Have you made up your little mind?" Thong asked him then.
"About what?" he said, thinking she surely couldn't mean the plan about her sister.
"I think he is confused," Chou-Li said scornfully. "He is not yet fully awake."
"Of course he's awake," Thong snapped at her. "He dare not be anything less."
"I think we should wait awhile, perhaps an hour or so, until his wits have retu
rned."
Thong sneered. "He has no wits, sister. Only brawn. He is awake enough."
"Are you sure? We do not wish to fail."
"Fail at what?" Gideon asked.
"How can we fail? That cretin probably doesn't even know yet we are not home."
"All the more reason to be certain the hero does not confuse which side he is on," Chou-Li said with a threatening look toward her sister.
"He is ready, I tell you."
"For what?" Gideon asked.
Chou-Li turned so quickly that the flaps of her slit dress snapped like whips against her thighs. "I do not think so!"
Thong's sarong fairly bristled with electricity. "Well, if you had thought before, sister, we would not be here now."
"Thought about what?" Gideon asked.
Chou-Li raised a fist and Thong did the same, and Gideon backed away when he saw a spear of fire collide with a ball of ice, the explosion that followed melting part of the dark thing's cage and two buttons off his shirt.
"Hey!" he said, and took another step back when the women glared at him, half turned, and his belt couldn't decide whether to burn or become ice cubes. "No, hold it!"
They held it.
"Look..." He wiped his face, pushed back his hair. "Look, I think maybe we ought to calm down, okay?"
"Why?" the sisters asked in one voice, fire and ice.
"Because if you kill me, I won't be around."
A pause. A reluctant double nod.
Then he saw Abber still cowering expertly, and dared himself to do it, dared himself to accept the grey man at his word.
You're gonna die, a small voice warned him.
Shit, he thought, I hate damned decisions.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was either going to be a hell of a warm day, Gideon thought, or Thong doesn't trust me. A look to his shirt confirmed both his suspicion and the weather report—it was damp with perspiration, and his palms felt as if he had dunked them in warm milk. He dried them on his jeans, his rump, and hooked his thumbs in his belt.
Chou-Li and her sister exchanged meaningful glances which the masseur simultaneously translated into a high-pitched whimper, and strode toward Gideon with hips swinging, hair hissing, eyes narrowed and waiting.
