“Kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!” shrilled the tranced mob.
An old man jumped up and started haranguing the crowd. I could just follow his dialect. He was talking about Terra. He was talking about riots. He was jabbering mystical gibberish which I couldn’t understand and didn’t want to understand, and rabble-rousing anti-Terran propaganda which I understood much too well.
Another blaze of lights and another long scream in chorus: “Kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!”
Evarin stood in the blaze of the many-colored light.
The Toymaker, as I had seen him last, cat-smooth, gracefully alien, shrouded in a ripple of giddy crimsons. Behind him was a blackness. I waited till the painful blaze of lights abated, then, straining my eyes to see past him, I got my worst shock.
A woman stood there, naked to the waist, her hands ritually fettered with little chains that stirred and clashed musically as she moved stiff-legged in a frozen dream. Hair like black grass banded her brow and naked shoulders, and her eyes were crimson.
And the eyes lived in the dead dreaming face. They lived, and they were mad with terror although the lips curved in a gently tranced smile.
Miellyn.
Evarin was speaking in that dialect I barely understood. His arms were flung high and his cloak went spilling away from them, rippling like something alive. The jammed humans and nonhumans swayed and chanted and he swayed above them like an iridescent bug, weaving arms rippling back and forth, back and forth. I strained to catch his words.
“Our world…an old world.”
“Kamayeeeeena,” whimpered the shrill chorus.
“…humans, humans, all humans would make slaves of us all, all save the Children of the Ape.…”
I lost the thread for a moment. True. The Terran Empire has one small blind spot in otherwise sane policy, ignoring that nonhuman and human have lived placidly here for millennia: they placidly assumed that humans were everywhere the dominant race, as on Earth itself.
The Toymaker’s weaving arms went on spinning, spinning. I rubbed my eyes to clear them of shallavan and incense. I hoped that what I saw was an illusion of the drug—something, something huge and dark, was hovering over the girl. She stood placidly, hands clasped on her chains, but her eyes writhed in the frozen calm of her face.
Then something—I can only call it a sixth sense—bore it on me that there was someone outside the door. I was perhaps the only creature there, except for Evarin, not drugged with shallavan, and perhaps that’s all it was. But during the days in the Secret Service I’d had to develop some extra senses. Five just weren’t enough for survival.
I knew somebody was fixing to break down that door, and I had a good idea why. I’d been followed, by the legate’s orders, and, tracking me here, they’d gone away and brought back reinforcements.
Someone struck a blow on the door and a stentorian voice bawled, “Open up there, in the name of the Empire!”
The chanting broke in ragged quavers. Evarin stopped. Somewhere a woman screamed. The lights abruptly went out and a stampede started in the room. Women struck me with chains, men kicked, there were shrieks and howls. I thrust my way forward, butting with elbows and knees and shoulders.
A dusky emptiness yawned and I got a glimpse of sunlight and open sky and knew that Evarin had stepped through into somewhere and was gone. The banging on the door sounded like a whole regiment of Spaceforce out there. I dived toward the shimmer of little stars which marked Miellyn’s tiara in the darkness, braving the black horror hovering over her, and touched rigid girl-flesh, cold as death.
I grabbed her and ducked sideways. This time it wasn’t intuition—nine times out of ten, anyway, intuition is just a mental shortcut which adds up all the things which your subconscious has noticed while you were busy thinking about something else. Every native building on Wolf had concealed entrances and exits and I know where to look for them. This one was exactly where I expected. I pushed at it and found myself in a long, dim corridor.
The head of a woman peered from an opening door. She saw Miellyn’s limp body hanging on my arm and her mouth widened in a silent scream. Then the head popped back out of sight and a door slammed. I heard the bolt slide. I ran for the end of the hall, the girl in my arms, thinking that this was where I came in, as far as Miellyn was concerned, and wondering why I bothered.
The door opened on a dark, peaceful street. One lonely moon was setting beyond the rooftops. I set Miellyn on her feet, but she moaned and crumpled against me. I put my shirtcloak around her bare shoulders. Judging by the noises and yells, we’d gotten out just in time. No one came out the exit behind us. Either the Spaceforce had plugged it or, more likely, everyone else in the cellar had been too muddled by drugs to know what was going on.
But it was only a few minutes, I knew, before Spaceforce would check the whole building for concealed escape holes. Suddenly, and irrelevantly, I found myself thinking of a day not too long ago, when I’d stood up in front of a unit-in-training of Spaceforce, introduced to them as an Intelligence expert on native towns, and solemnly warned them about concealed exits and entrances. I wondered, for half a minute, if it might not be simpler just to wait here and let them pick me up.
Then I hoisted Miellyn across my shoulders. She was heavier than she looked, and after a minute, half conscious, she began to struggle and moan. There was a chak-run cookshop down the street, a place I’d once known well, with an evil reputation and worse food, but it was quiet and stayed open all night. I turned in at the door, bending at the low lintel.
The place was smoke-filled and foul-smelling. I dumped Miellyn on a couch and sent the frowsy waiter for two bowls of noodles and coffee, handed him a few extra coins, and told him to leave us alone. He probably drew the worst possible inference—I saw his muzzle twitch at the smell of shallavan—but it was that kind of place anyhow. He drew down the shutters and went.
I stared at the unconscious girl, then shrugged and started on the noodles. My own head was still swimmy with the fumes, incense and drug, and I wanted it clear. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do, but I had Evarin’s right-hand girl, and I was going to use her.
The noodles were greasy and had a curious taste, but they were hot, and I ate all of one bowl before Miellyn stirred and whimpered and put up one hand, with a little clinking of chains, to her hair. The gesture was indefinably reminiscent of Dallisa, and for the first time I saw the likeness between them. It made me wary and yet curiously softened.
Finding she could not move freely, she rolled over, sat up and stared around in growing bewilderment and dismay.
“There was a sort of riot,” I said. “I got you out. Evarin ditched you. And you can quit thinking what you’re thinking, I put my shirtcloak on you because you were bare to the waist and it didn’t look so good.” I stopped to think that over, and amended: “I mean I couldn’t haul you around the streets that way. It looked good enough.”
To my surprise, she gave a shaky little giggle, and held out her fettered hands. “Will you?”
I broke her links and freed her. She rubbed her wrists as if they hurt her, then drew up her draperies, pinned them so that she was decently covered, and tossed back my shirtcloak. Her eyes were wide and soft in the light of the flickering stub of candle.
“O, Rakhal,” she sighed. “When I saw you there—” She sat up, clasping her hands hard together, and when she continued her voice was curiously cold and controlled for anyone so childish. It was almost as cold as Dallisa’s.
“If you’ve come from Kyral, I’m not going back. I’ll never go back, and you may as well know it.”
“I don’t come from Kyral, and I don’t care where you go. I don’t care what you do.” I suddenly realized that the last statement was wholly untrue, and to cover my confusion I shoved the remaining bowl of noodles at her.
“Eat.”
She wrinkled her nose in fastidious disgust. “I’m not hungry.”
“Eat it anyway. You’re still half doped, and the foo
d will clear your head.” I picked up one mug of the coffee and drained it at a single swallow. “What were you doing in that disgusting den?”
Without warning she flung herself across the table at me, throwing her arms round my neck. Startled, I let her cling a moment, then reached up and firmly unfastened her hands.
“None of that now. I fell for it once, and it landed me in the middle of the mudpie.”
But her fingers bit my shoulder.
“Rakhal, Rakhal, I tried to get away and find you. Have you still got the bird? You haven’t set it off yet? Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t, Rakhal, you don’t know what Evarin is, you don’t know what he’s doing.” The words spilled out of her like floodwaters. “He’s won so many of you, don’t let him have you too, Rakhal. They call you an honest man, you worked once for Terra, the Terrans would believe you if you went to them and told them what he—Rakhal, take me to the Terran Zone, take me there, take me there where they’ll protect me from Evarin.”
At first I tried to stop her, question her, then waited and let the torrent of entreaty run on and on. At last, exhausted and breathless, she lay quietly against my shoulder, her head fallen forward. The musty reek of shallavan mingled with the flower scent of her hair.
“Kid,” I said heavily at last, “you and your Toymaker have both got me wrong. I’m not Rakhal Sensar.”
“You’re not?” She drew back, regarding me in dismay. Her eyes searched every inch of me, from the gray streak across my forehead to the scar running down into my collar. “Then who—”
“Race Cargill. Terran Intelligence.”
She stared, her mouth wide like a child’s.
Then she laughed. She laughed! At first I thought she was hysterical. I stared at her in consternation. Then, as her wide eyes met mine, with all the mischief of the nonhuman which has mingled into the human here, all the circular complexities of Wolf illogic behind the woman in them, I started to laugh too.
I threw back my head and roared, until we were clinging together and gasping with mirth like a pair of raving fools. The chak waiter came to the door and stared at us, and I roared “Get the hell out,” between spasms of crazy laughter.
Then she was wiping her face, tears of mirth still dripping down her cheeks, and I was frowning bleakly into the empty bowls.
“Cargill,” she said hesitantly, “you can take me to the Terrans where Rakhal—”
“Hell’s bells,” I exploded. “I can’t take you anywhere, girl. I’ve got to find Rakhal—” I stopped in midsentence and looked at her clearly for the first time.
“Child, I’ll see that you’re protected, if I can. But I’m afraid you’ve walked from the trap to the cookpot. There isn’t a house in Charin that will hold me. I’ve been thrown out twice today.”
She nodded. “I don’t know how the word spreads, but it happens, in nonhuman parts. I think they can see trouble written in a human face, or smell it on the wind.” She fell silent, her face propped sleepily between her hands, her hair falling in tangles. I took one of her hands in mine and turned it over.
It was a fine hand, with birdlike bones and soft rose-tinted nails; but the lines and hardened places around the knuckles reminded me that she, too, came from the cold austerity of the salt Dry-towns. After a moment she flushed and drew her hand from mine.
“What are you thinking, Cargill?” she asked, and for the first time I heard her voice sobered, without the coquetry, which must after all have been a very thin veneer.
I answered her simply and literally. “I am thinking of Dallisa. I thought you were very different, and yet, I see that you are very like her.”
I thought she would question what I knew of her sister, but she let it pass in silence. After a time she said, “Yes, we were twins.” Then, after a long silence, she added, “But she was always much the older.”
And that was all I ever knew of whatever obscure pressures had shaped Dallisa into an austere and tragic Clytemnestra, and Miellyn into a pixie runaway.
Outside the drawn shutters, dawn was brightening. Miellyn shivered, drawing her thin draperies around her bare throat. I glanced at the little rim of jewels that starred her hair and said, “You’d better take those off and hide them. They alone would be enough to have you hauled into an alley and strangled, in this part of Charin.” I hauled the bird Toy from my pocket and slapped it on the greasy table, still wrapped in its silk. “I don’t suppose you know which of us this thing is set to kill?”
“I know nothing about the Toys.”
“You seem to know plenty about the Toymaker.”
“I thought so. Until last night.” I looked at the rigid, clamped mouth and thought that if she were really as soft and delicate as she looked, she would have wept. Then she struck her small hand on the tabletop and burst out, “It’s not a religion. It isn’t even an honest movement for freedom! Its a—a front for smuggling, and drugs, and—and every other filthy thing!
“Believe it or not, when I left Shainsa, I thought Nebran was the answer to the way the Terrans were strangling us! Now I know there are worse things on Wolf than the Terran Empire! I’ve heard of Rakhal Sensar, and whatever you may think of Rakhal, he’s too decent to be mixed up in anything like this!”
“Suppose you tell me what’s really going on,” I suggested. She couldn’t add much to what I knew already, but the last fragments of the pattern were beginning to settle into place. Rakhal, seeking the matter transmitter and some key to the nonhuman sciences of Wolf—I knew now what the city of Silent Ones had reminded me of!—had somehow crossed the path of the Toymaker.
Evarin’s words now made sense: “You were clever at evading our surveillance—for a while.” Possibly, though I’d never know, Cuinn had been keeping one foot in each camp, working for Kyral and for Evarin. The Toymaker, knowing of Rakhal’s anti-Terran activities, had believed he would make a valuable ally and had taken steps to secure his help.
Juli herself had given me the clue: “He smashed Rindy’s Toys.” Out of the context it sounded like the work of a madman. Now, having encountered Evarin’s workshop, it made plain good sense.
And I think I had known all along that Rakhal could not have been playing Evarin’s game. He might have turned against Terra—though now I was beginning even to doubt that—and certainly he’d have killed me if he found me. But he would have done it himself, and without malice. Killed[97] without malice—that doesn’t make sense in any of the languages of Terra. But it made sense to me.
Miellyn had finished her brief recitation and was drowsing, her head pillowed on the table. The reddish light was growing, and I realized that I was waiting for dawn as, days ago, I had waited for sunset in Shainsa, with every nerve stretched to the breaking point. It was dawn of the third morning, and this bird lying on the table before me must fly or, far away in the Kharsa, another would fly at Juli.
I said, “There’s some distance limitation on this one, I understand, since I have to be fairly near its object. If I lock it in a steel box and drop it in the desert, I’ll guarantee it won’t bother anybody. I don’t suppose you’d have a shot at stealing the other one for me?”
She raised her head, eyes flashing. “Why should you worry about Rakhal’s wife?” she flared, and for no good reason it occurred to me that she was jealous. “I might have known Evarin wouldn’t shoot in the dark! Rakhal’s wife, that Earthwoman, what do you care for her?”
It seemed important to set her straight. I explained that Juli was my sister, and saw a little of the tension fade from her face, but not all. Remembering the custom of the Dry-towns, I was not wholly surprised when she added, jealously, “When I heard of your feud, I guessed it was over that woman!”
“But not in the way you think,” I said. Juli had been part of it, certainly. Even then I had not wanted her to turn her back on her world, but if Rakhal had remained with Terra, I would have accepted his marriage to Juli. Accepted it. I’d have rejoiced. God knows we had been closer than brothers, those years in the Dry-towns. A
nd then, before Miellyn’s flashing eyes, I suddenly faced my secret hate, my secret fear. No, the quarrel had not been all Rakhal’s doing.
He had not turned his back, unexplained on Terra. In some unrecognized fashion, I had done my best to drive him away. And when he had gone, I had banished a part of myself as well, and thought I could end the struggle by saying it didn’t exist. And now, facing what I had done to all of us, I knew that my revenge—so long sought, so dearly cherished—must be abandoned.
“We still have to deal with the bird,” I said. “It’s a gamble, with all the cards wild.” I could dismantle it, and trust to luck that Wolf illogic didn’t include a tamper mechanism. But that didn’t seem worth the risk.
“First I’ve got to find Rakhal. If I set the bird free and it killed him, it wouldn’t settle anything.” For I could not kill Rakhal. Not, now, because I knew life would be a worse punishment than death. But because—I knew it, now—if Rakhal died, Juli would die, too. And if I killed him I’d be killing the best part of myself. Somehow Rakhal and I must strike a balance between our two worlds, and try to build a new one from them.
“And I can’t sit here and talk any longer. I haven’t time to take you—” I stopped, remembering the spaceport cafe at the edge of the Kharsa. There was a street-shrine, or matter transmitter, right there, across the street from the Terran HQ. All these years.…
“You know your way in the transmitters. You can go there in a second or two.” She could warn Juli, tell Magnusson. But when I suggested this, giving her a password that would take her straight to the top, she turned white. “All jumps have to be made through the Mastershrine.”
I stopped and thought about that.
“Where is Evarin likely to be, right now?”
She gave a nervous shudder. “He’s everywhere!”
“Rubbish! He’s not omniscient! Why, you little fool, he didn’t even recognize me. He thought I was Rakhal!” I wasn’t too sure, myself, but Miellyn needed reassurance. “Or take me to the Mastershrine. I can find Rakhal in that scanning device of Evarin’s.” I saw refusal in her face and pushed on, “If Evarin’s there, I’ll prove he’s fallible enough with a skean in his throat! And here”—I thrust the Toy into her hand—“hang on to this, will you?”
The Marion Zimmer Bradley Science Fiction Page 27
