The January Dancer

by Michael Flynn

  The harper shifts the burden on her back and half turns. But there are things she wants to know, questions she still needs to ask, and so with ill grace, she relents. “I will stay awhile longer—for your madness,” she tells him, and resumes her seat.

  “Play me the journey through the creases,” the scarred man says. “I want to see what you make of it.”

  The harper remains silent for a time. Then she bends over and retrieves the harp from its case. “The slide down Electric Avenue has been played before,” she says, “but perhaps there is one more variation on that theme.” Her fingers dance and notes swirl with almost superluminous speed. “I’ve always liked the image of the alfvens plucking at the strings of space,” she says over the glissando. “Space travel is rather like playing the harp.”

  “Perhaps,” says the scarred man, “but the alfvens move the ship and…” He pauses, then smiles. “Ah.”

  The harper shows her teeth and the arpeggio rushes into a desperate decelerando, slowing into a steady orbital rhythm whose measure is the “long line” of an ancient island poetry, and finally settles into a Lament for the Vale of Eireann so broad as to blanket a world. A drinker nearby cries out, “Oh, God!” and turns himself weeping aside. Others there are who hang down their heads or brush away tears at their cheeks.

  The Bartender leaves his post and crosses the room to confront them. He says, “People come here to forget their sorrows, and not to have new ones added.” He gives the scarred man a sour look. “How long will you sit there? People think you’re part of the staff—or part of the furniture.”

  “I’m waiting for someone,” the scarred man says.

  “Oh, you are? Who?”

  A shrug. “Don’t know yet.”

  The Bartender purses his lips, but the amount of disapproval he can muster is as nothing to that normal to the scarred man’s countenance. “Another round,” the harper says, and the Bartender turns his gaze on her. “Try to play something more cheerful,” he tells her.

  “I’d think that music that moves a man to drink would be more welcome here.”

  “You’d think wrong.” And he turns away and returns to his post with large strides. Shortly after, a serving wench arrives with fresh bowls of uiscebaugh.

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t thrown you out long ago,” the harper tells the scarred man. She sips from her bowl, then frowns and regards the bowl with disbelief. “Either he is serving better whiskey now or I’ve lost the tongue for the difference.”

  “He serves the worse drinks first, hoping to discourage the drinking. But most who come here can’t tell the difference anyway. Ol’ Praisegod won’t throw us out. I’m one of the afflicted he’s supposed to comfort.” His laugh is rough and broken, like shale sliding down a high mountain slope. He raises his bowl in salute to the Bartender, who affects not to notice. “Ah, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if we weren’t here every day. I’m his freakin’ touchstone, I am. The one constant in his life. We’re—”

  The scarred man falls suddenly silent and his eyes widen. “No. You can’t,” he says between clenched teeth. He grips the table edge, first with one hand, then the other, and seems to vibrate like a plucked string of the harp. The harper watches with alarm and turns in her seat to see if the Bartender has noticed.

  The harper’s sudden movement has drawn his attention. He looks at her; then past her to the scarred man; until, with a mirthless smile, he shakes his head and returns to his business.

  He has seen this before. Ill-comforted by that thought, the harper turns once more to her companion.

  And he is preternaturally calm. “Ready for the rest of the tale, darlin’? I warn you, there are parts of it that can’t be spoken of, even yet. But those are the parts I like best telling.”

  The harper frowns. There is something strange about the withered old man. Something odd in his voice, as if he has just remembered something important. Or forgotten it.

  “The thing to remember about a pursuit,” he says easily, “is that it always takes longer when you’re chasing. ‘A stern chase is a long chase.’”

  The harper grunts without amusement and plays a few lines from a courtship dance on Die Bold. Surprisingly, the scarred man recognizes the tune and recites a few words.

  “I fled him down the labyrinth of my mind

  And hid from him with running laughter…

  “‘The labyrinth of my mind,’” he repeats more slowly. “Aye, maybe courting is the answer.” He looks at the harper and his smile is this time almost human. “It wasn’t always a courting song, you know. It’s from an old poem from ancient Earth.”

  “You were speaking of a chase,” the harper says a little abruptly.

  The scarred man appraises her, as if wondering what she is chasing down the labyrinth of his mind. Then, “A chase. Yes. Though no one quite knew it.” He slouches in his chair and waves an arm. “Come then, harper, attend my tale.”

  Geantraí: The Stern Chase

  “The Corner of Jehovah is a bad place to be,” the scarred man says.

  …since one must find his way in and find his way out, and neither is an easy thing to do; although more do manage the first than the second. Without the aid of the Terrans, it is close to impossible. But help need not be voluntary, nor even witting, and to each rule there is an exception.

  The exception stepped into the bubbling activities of the Tarako Sarai, that broad open market space where Menstrit curves off shamefacedly toward the reputable parts of town (shedding its name in the process and becoming born again as Glory Road). The monorail, three streets, four winding alleys, and twelve decidedly twisted pedestrian walkways converge there. To the west, Port Jehovah stretches nearly to the horizon, and tall, graceful ships gleam ruddy in the early-morning sun as if wrapped in goldbeater’s foil. In every other direction, the topsy dwellings of the Terran Corner teeter over the edges of the market.

  Cubical stalls made of dull composite disguised with bright pastels line three sides of the sarai. Each stall abuts its neighbors, save where walkways from the Corner squeeze between them. The west side facing Menstrit and the Port is open, and there are situated the monorail station and a carpark for ground vehicles. Before the sun has even angled into this plaza, the dukndar-merchants have, in a rattle of chains and counterweights, heaved up steel stall-front doors, calling to one another and wishing good luck or ill as their competitions dictate. The stalls are open-front, with chairs and benches and racks within arranged as required for the best display of their wares.

  Overnight, lighters and bumboats from Port Jehovah off-load the orbiting ships and bear groundside exotic arts and jewels and foodstuffs from far-off worlds. Much of this cornucopia makes its way to the Tarako Sarai, some of it legally; there, to be snatched up by eager, early-rising Jehovans, anxious for a taste of the foreign. Eager enough indeed to dare the very edge of the Corner to get it.

  Later, ferry boats drop and off-load the travelers—the sliders, the world-hoppers, the touristas—gawking and pointing and capturing images and pawing through the merchandise for bargains and native handicrafts. They dress wrongly—for the climate, for the world, for the time of day—and their bodies throb off-synch to the tock of shipboard time and not to Jehovah’s sun. As they enter the sarai, the bustle increases, and with it the markup on the goods. Isn’t this cute, couples and triples ask each other. Those booths look like storage sheds or little garages. Is that a magician? How does he do that with the snake? Oh, I didn’t know the human body could bend like that! Is that a legtrikittar they’re playing over there? How strange! How strange!

  The market speaks to them. Ah, yes, sahb, this is the True Coriander, known no-but else place! Seven ducat only, and that is that my children go hungry. See, here, come into my stall, when you see ever so fine ’shwari, look good-good on memsahb. Oho, not memsahb? Then, here you find special double-throw silk, made only on J’ovah, think how this feel on her skin…! Hutt! Hutt! No mind his silks. See here my drizzle-jew
els, how they sparkle so? Genuine from Arrat Mountains.

  In the center of the market, push-carts peddle, performers sing and juggle, and food vendors hawk their smoking barbecues and searing tan-doors. Is hot day, you like kulfi-kone, eye-said krim, most excellent! Pull-pork! Koofta kabob! Hoddawgs! Winnershnizzle! Pukka Terran food, you find him nowhere else!

  But you, sahb, I make it five ducat fifty.

  A wink, a lowered voice, a proffered discount, and Gladiola Bills and Shanghai ducats waft magically from purse to poke. And if the promise “Product of Jehovah” is no more genuine than the discount, little harm is done. Even in the ricochet ruckus of the starport sarai, some things are never said. Some of the “Jehovan” wares that leave with the tourists on the upbound ferries had arrived but a short while before on the down-bound lighters. Why pay duty for so short a stay?

  “Mango kulfi-kone,” one of the thinning horde asked of the sweets vendor, who heaped a waffle-cone with two scoops of the rich iced-milk, holding it out and saying, “Half ducat, sahb.”

  “For two such paltry balls? A quarter ducat would be too much.”

  The vendor’s eyes lit. This sahb was no “slider” but, by his long, fringed kurta brocaded with yellow and red flowered borders and with the amber prayer beads wrapped round his wrist, a Jehovan merchant from the City. No Terran, to be sure, but he knew his manners. “It grieves me that I cannot offer it for less than forty-three. The fruit alone costs such much, and I must pay the women who cut it.”

  “Thou pay’st them too much. See how small they have diced the pieces! Thirty might be generous for such slovenly knife-work.”

  “Bakvas, shree merchant! The smaller the pieces, as all men know, the greater the flavor. Forty.” Their voices had risen, as if in argument, and some of the sliders looked at them askance and edged away. You never can tell about those people.

  “Thirty-five!”

  “Done!” the vendor cried in vehement agreement. He extended the cone with one hand and offered the other.

  “There can be no handclasp with only one hand,” his customer recited, and offered the firm grip of a Jehovan, rather than the limper Terran grip. A few coins changed possession, neither man so boorish as to visibly count them. As God is One, a man who cannot count his money by the heft and feel of it should seek another work!

  The vendor watched the merchant reenter the crowd, pause at the kabob-maker’s stall, and—and another customer asked for a kulfi-kone, and paid the half ducat without banter—aye, as if the vendor were but a bisti worker—and when the vendor looked again, the Jehovan merchant had vanished.

  Each market day, after the sliders have gone and the dukndars have twice tallied their accounts—once for themselves, and once for the men of the Jehovan Purse—and the shutters have rattled into place and lock-bars dropped home, the collectors of the Terran Brotherhood drift into the market. A man watching could not say at any moment, “They have come,” but suddenly they were there. Men and women, plainly dressed, mingled with the vendors and whispered a few words here and there, and a portion of the ducats and bills and Jehovan shekels were transferred to the coffers of the Terran Welfare and Benevolent Fund. The food vendors donated also such of their goods as remained at the end of the day; and these were carried off immediately to shelters and kitchens in the Corner. What happens to the hard currency no one has ever asked.

  One such collector was named Yash. He had entered the market first, using a crack in the back wall of the vacant handi dukn through which a lithe man could slip. Old Nancy Verwalter had made the finest hand-phones in the Corner, but she had died two years before and the back wall of her dukn had been opened with picks and pry bars.

  A few loafers squatted about the plaza, and these Yash studied with grave interest. It was not unknown for agents of the Jehovan Purse to audit the market in the hope of squeezing one more shekel from the dukndars. Their grooming and clothing usually marked them out, but some were more clever and knew how to blend in.

  A few men, disinclined to visit the charity kitchens, had begged cuts of meat or a few samosas or a sandwich from the vendors sealing their coolers and boxes and extinguishing their fires. One such man lounged against the wall of the shoe-dukn, where he nibbled on a pita. His kurta was a plain, dingy white, lacking any brocade or fringe. Satisfied that the market was unwatched, Yash spoke a few words over his handi and soon his runners emerged from a variety of waypoints to circulate among the merchants of the Tarako Sarai.

  Yash did not leave his post while the runners gathered and brought him the harvest, but continued to monitor the market. At a few quick signals, his people could vanish.

  The sliders thinned out, anxious to catch the next ferry up. The bum with the pita must have finished, for when Yash glanced that way again, he was gone. A hand signal: Hutt! Hutt! If the market thinned too much, his collectors would stand out too prominently, should any Pursers be about.

  Finally, the take was complete. Yash counted it quickly and inconspicuously, then divided it into four equal parts, giving the other three to Bikram, Hari, and Sandeep. “By different routes,” he reminded them. On the other side of the hole in the back wall of the handi dukn, a wonderful array of options presented itself.

  Yash himself took to Jasmine Way, which wound crook-legged past the Mosque of the Third Aspect with its prominent rooftop observatory and where “the Submissives” prayed standing with their faces turned to the sky. There, a bare-chested man squatted in a ragged dhoti and Yash dropped a dinar in his cupped hands, careful to pull it from his own scrip and not from the bundle hidden under his blouse. Dividing the take into four parts ensured that all would not be lost if a courier were robbed or arrested—much of a much, in Yash’s opinion—but it also ensured against a pettier form of thievery: The four parts must still equal one another when they were delivered to the Committee of Seven.

  Yash’s path to the Seven was not straightforward, but the starting point and ending point were fixed, and there were certain theorems in topology, unknown to Yash, that could be solved by a man learned in such things. Thus, as he made his way past the Fountain of the Four Maidens, through the narrow colonnade beside Ivan Ngomo’s pastry-dukn, and even up Graf Otto’s Stairs, of which none but those born to the Corner know, Yash did not particularly remark the variety of men he chanced upon: beggars, holy men, idlers gazing in display windows, a customer at a knife-kiosk, a man signaling in vain to an auto-rickshaw, a messenger brushing briskly past him only to turn back sharply at some forgotten task. Yet, a closer inspection might have noted a curious resemblance of feature among some of them.

  The Seven—who were now six in number, one having found it safe to emerge from the wind—had expected four knocks upon their door, as each runner arrived. The fifth took them by surprise. Eleven knives slid quietly from their sheaths, Bikram being ambidextrous, and the Memsahb nodded to Sandeep, who was closest to the door.

  The heavy wooden portal was thrown open and bounded against the wall and—

  There was no one there but an old sweeper garbed in a grimy dhoti tucked up at the waist, and brushing with a hand-jharu at the leaves that littered the outer colonnade. He blinked at the sudden opening of the door and pushed erect. “Ah,” he said easily and with none of the deference expected of custodians. “Those of Name greet the Seven of Jehovah.”

  And he smiled with all his teeth.

  The Seven were disturbed by this unexpected advent. “It’s been long since the Secret Name has called on us,” said the memsahb chairman. Yash and his crew had been dismissed and only the Committee now sat. The courier looked around the room with studied disinterest. He seemed more at ease than he should have—there were the lime pits by the Dunkle Street ghauts, after all—but those of the Confederation were an arrogant folk and even their servants strutted like masters.

  “So long that ye have forgotten your duties?” the courier asked. He styled himself Qing Olafsson, but no one in the room supposed it his true name. Years of silence—and no
w two had come in as many weeks, each bearing the same office-name. The Memsahb knew some unease over this, as of raindrops quickening before a coming storm.

  “Dere gifs no dooty,” one of the Committee said. But the Memsahb placed a hand on his arm and he fell silent. Qing thought her a hard woman, and all the harder for her pale appearance. White hair, white skin—she wore a white chiton, too. Such a hue betokened something soft and gentle, like snow or cream, not this hard-edged ceramic.

  “What my colleague means,” she said in a grandmotherly way, “is that our homeworld is your hostage.”

  “And thus your obedience more assured,” Qing answered, and he noticed how eyes narrowed and lips pressed. No more than two of them might be willing servants of the CCW, he thought, had willingness any weight.

  “But not our love,” said another member.

  A shrug did for the old proverb. Let them hate, so long as they fear.

  And what was asked was a simple matter, a mere nothing. No betrayals were required; no deaths demanded. “I have an ears-only message for Donovan,” he said. “You need only point me in his direction. A handshake, an introduction, that is all.”

  “An’ why air ye needing this Donovan?” asked another council member. “Sure, he swims deep, and does not surface for trifles.”

  Qing smiled. “That is a matter between him and the Secret Name. Best if none know what is to pass between us.”

  The Memsahb placed her hands in a ball on the table before her and leaned slightly over them. “There is a problem.”

  “I am grieved to hear it. Does this problem come with a solution, or must the Secret Name speak with the Dreadful Name?”

  Oh, they flinched at that! And some looked to the door. Couriers oft traveled with companions should their messages be ignored. If the servants of the Secret Name were the Confederacy’s eyes and ears, those of the Dreadful Name were its hands and fists.

  “Tscha!” said a dark-haired woman who had not spoken previously. “What are we owink to League? We live in corners, like rats. Tell him of Donovan.”