"This is not the place for more talk," he said. "You are drunk. Can you ride some more?"
"I can sail a fish to the moon!" responded the barbarian confidently. Sam dearly would have liked to have seen that, but she was relieved that the pair got up, threw some coins on the table, and made their way out of the tavern. She was having great problems stifling the giggles and stuffed some more sandwich in her mouth to cover it. "How far are we from this city?" Charley asked Zenchur. "Not far," the navigator responded. "A few hours. We should be in by nightfall."
Charley groaned. "More hours on that hard seat! Well," she sighed, "I don't think my rear end can get any more bruises. It's tough sitting here now on this chair."
"I think I want a bathroom," Sam said. "They got one or is it out the back?"
"Oh, there's one off the kitchen. Through there. Come-I should go, too."
Charley didn't really have to go but she had this sudden fear of sitting there alone while her two links to this world were both out of sight. "If they have separate rooms I guess I should, too."
"They do. Even in the home there are two bathrooms." The men's room was surprisingly clean, with two bowl-shaped toilets in two door-less stalls. They looked a lot like pinched oval toilets without seats, and on either wall of the stall were grip handles. Apparently you didn't sit down-you just squatted and held on to the handles. Zenchur was appalled by the idea of a toilet seat. "It would be so-unclean," he said, shaking his head.
Still, he didn't have the problem. He just stood there and pissed into it, while she had to take down her pants, remove the codpiece, and hold on for dear life. You sure as hell wouldn't spend any time reading in these Johns. She envied him the convenience but couldn't help but stare a bit. My god, it was so-large! How did they walk with those things between their legs?
Zenchur would have been far more startled had he known that this was the first time Sam had ever seen a male organ except in a picture.
If Sam was having trouble, Charley had to practically undress to be able to go. The toilet was the same sort of hold-on affair but shaped very differently. Still, this was gonna take some getting used to.
Even so, here was another thing that seemed oddly different. Flush toilets-inside plumbing. A small, basic sink with running cold water. And while the toilet paper looked more like Kleenex and came out that way, and was rough, it was none the less a manufactured product. Clearly, for all its looks, this was not any Dark Ages civilization.
There was a full-length mirror that was a big aid in rewrapping the dress, but which also gave her a real look at herself. She looked thin, thinner than Sam ever looked, and the skin was really smooth. It was a hell of a body, better than she remembered Sam's as being. Even the boyish face looked not at all boyish now but, well, sexy. It was more than just the look, though; it was the way you moved and carried yourself and even the way you used your face. She would have preferred a better face than Sam's, but it was, overall, the kind of body she would have killed for.
Maybe it was the beer again, but, God! Was she horny!
She got ready, then left the bathroom and rejoined the pair already back at the table. She was relieved to see them both; she had this paranoid fear that they would somehow disappear and leave her alone in this world.
As they made their way back to the stable she saw two of the white-robed girls walking hand in hand across the street, their white masks impassive, their features-frankly, even their sex or humanity-impossible to tell. She didn't think she ever could've stood that, although you never know what you'll accept if you grow up thinking that's normal. The sad thing was that little girls probably dreamed of the time when they'd wear the white robes and masks. It was being grown up.
Still, she had to wonder how easy to get those outfits were. They all looked manufactured, that was for sure, but fitted, probably. They'd make one hell of a disguise in a pinch, though-and in this kind of society who would dare pull off the mask and hood and risk being wrong? She bet that such an act would be tantamount to rape for these people.
Before leaving they went into an odd little store and Zenchur purchased a small device that looked something like a spout from the top of a gas can with a long, narrow and bendable base. It wasn't until they were back on the road, however, that he explained it.
"Learn how to use it," he told Sam. "If you learn the proper positioning and get it just right you will not have to sit to pee. It is very handy out in the wilderness where there are few or no bathrooms."
"Yeah-what about those bathrooms?" Sam asked. "Modern plumbing, and I swear those lights and fans were electric!"
"They were. The town is rather modern, as are most. There is a small generating plant at a waterfall not far from here." "But there were no wires anyplace!" "So? Your world is so primitive it runs its wires openly? And do your plumbing pipes run atop your streets? How ugly that would be!"
It was time to change the subject. "Those two men back there-who were they? They sure didn't look like nobody 'round that town," Sam pointed out.
"I do not know who they were but, you are correct, they are not from anywhere around here. The big hairy one might barely be considered Akhbreed at all, I think. Certainly from some primitive wedge far away from here to the north. The other-I am not sure. He was wealthy but no noble and his speech marked him as coming from elsewhere. Such men hire men like the barbarian to do dirty work they do not wish done themselves. Such men are the sort who usually hire me, in fact."
The countryside grew less wild; the farms seemed smaller and more specialized, the towns a bit larger although still in that European provincial style, and traffic built up, not just on foot or horseback but wagons and carriages of every shape and kind. They made good time, reaching the city before sundown, and it was a city-one hell of a city. Sam had expected something on the order of the primitive farming village and castle she'd seen in her vision, but this was something else.
Densely populated and stretching out along the shores of a lake or sea, its central core rose up in great buildings like shining cathedral spires, and out from it spread the rest of the city, smaller buildings to be sure, certainly much lower, but it was sure a big city all the same.
"Tubikosa contains about a half a million people, all Akhbreed," Zenchur told them. "It is one of the largest cities on the planet, and one of the grandest, although it is also one of the most dangerous. If a changewind ever got this far in, there would be no place to really run and hide from it."
Charley frowned. "What's the chances of something like that happening?"
The navigator shrugged. "Who knows? Perhaps tonight, perhaps in a week, perhaps in a hundred years. There has been none through here in more than a century and a half, that is known, and the people are complacent. They choose to ignore the risk, perhaps even the inevitable, just to live and work here."
Charley couldn't get a handle on all this. A civilization great enough to build maybe forty-story buildings, crazy as they looked, with electricity, indoor plumbing, and all the comforts of home, yet one that still used the horse and wagon as a primary means of getting around, with no buses, cars, trains, or anything else, and maybe no TV or even radio, and where swords, spears, and armor were still the rule, and who had a city of half a million people with mostly dirt streets where the women dressed in robes and saris and scarves on their heads and the men dressed like Shakespeare or Robin Hood. It didn't make much sense at all.
It did have mass transportation, though, of an old-fashioned sort. Horses pulled big double-decker stagecoaches that looked like buses and acted like them, too, and all over the place fancy-looking three-wheeled enclosed black carriages went about, picking up people and letting them off, and were clearly cabs.
Zenchur took them eventually to an area just off the waterfront and well away from those gleaming spires. It was clearly a low district, with narrow streets and grimy buildings. As darkness overtook the city the lights came on, including many for signs that looked just like home even if you could
n't read them, and the main streets were lit not by lamp posts but by long strips of indirect lighting running along the top of the first floor of buildings on both sides. The secondary streets and back alleys weren't lit at all and looked for that all the more menacing. They went through a district whose nature seemed no different than any back on their own Earth and very easy to spot. In the midst of joints and painted pictures of semi-naked women and muscle men were basically store fronts, lit from within, most having several young and heavily made up women in them, lounging and looking back out at the street, and here and there one with some well-built and well-oiled muscle men wearing only tights doing much the same thing. No white robes and masks around here.
Just off this district, Zenchur pulled up to a creaky old place of brick and stone that might have been whitewashed regularly once upon a time, and stopped. It was five stories high and looked and smelled older inside than outside. The reception area was quite small, hardly a lobby and more just a registration desk behind which was a tough-looking middle-aged woman wearing a colorful if threadbare green flower print sack dress and scarf.
"Hello, handsome," she said upon seeing Zenchur. "Been a while since you was through here."
"I just need a room on the street for maybe two nights," the navigator responded. "One that sleeps three. And we have some baggage that's heavy."
She nodded. "Fourth floor, second on the left. Here's the key." She looked at Charley and smiled sweetly. "You know the house gets ten percent if you run anything for profit in the room."
"Nothing like that. Long story not worth the telling, but if you must know she ran away from one of the wedge villages far to the northwest and quickly regretted it, her young and impulsive brother went to find her-and did-and now I am helping them work things out if I can."
"Old story," the woman commented. "She's got all the nice moves and looks like a real nice body. The boy got much potential for anything useful?"
"He's bright but unskilled and neither of them knows the language."
"Well, if you want a quick turnover, you take 'em over to Boday. A little of Boday's universal love potion and some lessons and she'll be broke in perfect. The boy-without the language best he can do is get much the same treatment. There's a small bunch that likes 'em real young."
"I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do yet with them," Zenchur told her, possibly truthfully. "At any rate I'm going to need to find a good Pilot heading southwest." He took out two large, golden square coins and passed them to her. "This should cover it."
She nodded, picked up, then bit the coins, then stuck them in a slot in the desk, then turned to the back where there was a curtained-off doorway. "Zum!" she shouted. "Haul ass!"
The curtains parted and a huge man entered. He was close to seven feet and had to stoop to get through the doorway, but he was also enormously broad, the kind of man whose muscles had muscles. He was getting on, though; his hair was gray, his face was lined and wrinkled, the skin on his hands was tight, but most unsettling was the expression in his eyes and on his face, that of a rather childlike confusion.
The woman said something to him in an unintelligible tongue, and he grunted and gave an equally unintelligible reply and went immediately past them and out the doors.
Zenchur looked at Sam and Charley and cocked his finger, and after a moment they followed. He led them down a hall, then up four flights of creaky, narrow stairway. The key was one of those massive types, and he fitted it in a lock and opened the door to the room.
It was not exactly the Regency Plaza. A bare, round bulb burned when a button was pressed on an old wall plate illuminating a smelly room with two large windows covered by tattered drapes. There was a sink with a single long, curved pipe for a faucet, a worn bowl, and two porcelain cups both of which were chipped. There were also two beds the size of double beds, more or less, next to each other opposite the sink. Both had twin sets of small, round pillows, a bedspread that looked clean, and, under it, some dark sheets. Charley hoped that they hadn't been dyed to match the stains.
"The toilets are down the hall," Zenchur told them, "and I do mean just that. If you want a bath it's at a commercial bath house down here, and it's public, so I think Sam will have to wait and I wouldn't like to send Charley in alone. Don't worry-as you probably already know, bathing is not some-tiling done often here, even by the nobility."
Charley sat on the bed. It sank down unevenly, was lumpy, and creaked something awful. It definitely was both too old and not built like beds back home. She wasn't sure she wanted to find out how it was, or was not, put together, though.
There was a knock, and Zenchur opened it and found the huge man there carrying one of the heavy trunks in each hand and the duffel on his back. The navigator pointed and the man put them down, then took each one in one at a time and set them near the windows. Zenchur nodded, the man looked pleased, and left.
"What is that?" Charley had to ask.
"Oh, that is Zum. At least he answers to that name. He has been here longer than anyone now at this hotel. He's from some Outland wedge, and he never was very bright and knows none of the language. You might have noticed that the woman downstairs used a different tongue for him if you have a good enough ear. Because of the language problems with such as him there is a straight and simple language-short, net nonsense, perhaps a few hundred real words-that is used by folks to communicate with such as him. He was probably taken here or wound up here as a boy, fell into selling his body-you saw the men in the windows-and then grew too old or perhaps impotent or both. Now he serves out his days doing the basics for this old hotel, just like the woman downstairs, Argua, who was once young and beautiful and had a thousand lovers before she grew old and fat. Zum will see to the horses and wagon, too."
"Speaking of fat, when do we eat? Or do we?" Sam asked.
"Yes, we do, and we might as well. As you might guess the service here is not that great, but there is a not very fancy tavern a few minutes' walk from here that serves some decent food and asks no questions. Come, if you are not too tired- but remain mute, particularly around here, when out of this room. No slips. Here the word will be getting around about you."
Sam glanced at Charley, knowing that her friend must be as dead as she was, but Charley said, "We'll go. I don't think I want to be alone in this place."
"Oh-you may change if you wish now, Charley," Zenchur told her. "In this neighborhood at this time of day a slit skirt, top, and scarf are appropriate, and it might make you more comfortable. Here-I will show you in the trunk."
Charley was of two minds about this. She didn't like the idea of his suggesting such a radical change-they would still be completely at his mercy and who knew what he might do with her?-but the outfit she'd been wearing was now so tight and uncomfortable she was dying to get out of it. She finally accepted his suggestion, choosing a long pattern skirt slit right up to the thigh and a pullover that matched, sort of, but was so clingy it left nothing to the imagination. Still, she had a freed of of movement in her legs that was more than welcome, and the stuff was dry and clean even if she was not.
"One more thing," Zenchur said warningly to Charley. "For your own safety, be solicitous of us. Open the doors ahead of us, pull our chairs out at the tavern before sitting, and when food and drink comes it will be on a serving tray and you will be expected to serve, always with a smile and no comments."
"Huh?"
"It isn't just sex people want down here. It would be best if it appeared that we were your clients and not merely your companions. That way it seems as if you are already working for someone and, therefore, no one else will make any moves on you. Understand?"
"Yeah," she sighed and looked at Sam. "You got all the luck."
6
Backup System
"Wait here just a couple of minutes. I will be right back," said Zenchur.
Sam's eyebrows rose. "Where you goin'?" she asked suspiciously.
"It has been a long day. Do you need such constant pro
tection that I cannot go to the toilet?"
Sam shrugged, and Zenchur left.
"Think he's pulling anything?" Charley whispered.
"Maybe. He put us in this sleaze bucket in the worst part of town. I heard that woman down there suggest that he send you over to some bastard called Boday to get 'broken in.' They give ya some kind'a potion and you just sort'a love everybody and then they teach you all the right moves and that's it, sounds like."
Charley didn't like that. "Potions are just strong drugs in liquid form. He could slip either or both of us one any time and we wouldn't know. I don't like this, Sam. The way he was talkin' I really don't think he's made up his mind yet, but he's gettin' ideas. What a place! All them respectable folks wearin' fancy clothes and the women all wearin' them robes and virgins them white bags and masks and here we got a district where anything goes and no cops show. It's like they took everything bad in them and put it all in these few blocks and said, 'Okay, here's the place of sin. Stay here and we don't bother you.'"
"We got to figure something before he does," Sam said firmly, "and soon, 'cause it's pretty damned clear he's thinkin' real good. Damn it, I don't care what his reputation is, he's a flake and a whacko. I can't say I think too much of these wizards if they trust people like him."
She paused a moment and continued, "I dunno. It's kind'a funny, really. I think he was all set to do it, no real problems, and then, well, somethin' happened. He suddenly figured out what all this was about even though he wasn't supposed to. Figured it and changed. I wish we could get him to tell us what is was."
Charley frowned. "You know, he's taking an awful long time in the john, for a man. Damn! I don't like this! We got to eat and I got no place to run around here, but it's like in a slasher movie where you're huddled in the closet hoping against hope the slasher won't find you while all the time knowing he will. I wish we could grab that hypnotic jewel he's got. Then he'd dance our tune! Or at least something we could use as a weapon-just in case."
When The Changewinds Blow Page 14
