by neetha Napew
every gathering of locals he'd encountered, whether diners or merchants, sailors
or pedestrians, had been racially mixed.
He looked backward. The lot who'd been trailing them had spread out to block any
retreat back up the street and yes, they were also wholely human, and similarly
armed.
"That's nice of you," Caz said, replying to the invitation, "but we have other
plans of our own." He spoke for all his companions. Jon-Tom casually swung his
staff around from his back, slipped the duar out of the way. Talea's hand
dropped to her sword. There was some uneasy shuffling among the humans
confronting them.
"I'm sorry. We insist."
"I wish you would encyst," said Flor cheerfully, "preferably with something
cancerous."
The insult was lost on the man, who simply blinked at her. Both clusters began
to crowd the travelers, edging in from front and back.
There was a light metallic sound as Talea's sword appeared in her hand. "First
one of you rodents lays a hand on me is cold meat."
In the dim light from the oil lamps Jon-Tom thought she looked lovelier than
ever. But then, so did Flores Quintera.
She'd assumed an amazonian stance with her own short sword and mace held
expectantly in front of her, the light gleaming off the saw teeth lining the
steel.
"Ovejas y putas, come and take us... if you can."
"Ladies, please!" protested Caz, aghast at the manner in which his attempted
diplomacy was being undermined from behind. "It would be better for all of us
if... excuse me, sir." He'd been glancing back at Talea and Flor but had not
lost sight of their opponents. One of them had jumped forward and attempted to
brain the rabbit with a small club, whereupon Caz had hopped out of the way,
offered his apologies, and stuck out a size twenty-two foot. His assailant had
gone tumbling over it.
"Dreadfully sorry," murmured Caz. His apology did nothing to stem the rush which
followed as the two groups of encircling humans attacked.
The narrowness of the street simplified defensive tactics. The set-upon arranged
themselves back to back in a tight circle and hacked away at their antagonists,
who threw themselves with shocking recklessness against swords and knives. The
light and sweat and screaming swam together around Jon-Tom. The duar was a heavy
weight bouncing under his arm as the blunt end of his staff-club sought out an
unprotected face or groin.
It occurred to him that a little magic might have frightened off their
assailants. He cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. It was too late
now for singing. He couldn't stop defending himself long enough to swing the
duar around.
Three frustrated attackers were trying to get beneath his enormous reach. He
held them off with the club. One slipped underneath the staff and raised a mace.
Jon-Tom thumbed a stud on the staff and flipped it around in an arc as he'd been
shown. The spring-loaded spearpoint sliced across the mace-wielder's thighs. He
collapsed, moaning and holding his legs.
Something dark covered Jon-Tom's eyes as he was hit from below and behind.
Flailing wildly with the staff, he went over backward. The staff intercepted
something yielding, which yelped once.
A heaviness pressed down on his senses as well as his eyes. Then everything
turned to mush, including the noise of fighting. His thoughts swam sluggishly as
though he were trying to think through Jell-O. Dimly he could still make out
shrieks and screams from the continuing battle, but they sounded faint and far
away. He recognized the high-pitched challenge of Talea alternating with Mudge's
taunts and curses. Flor was yowling war cries in an interesting mixture of
English and Spanish. The last sight he'd glimpsed before the black cloth or bag
or whatever it was had been slipped over his head showed a starlit sky mottled
with clearing rain clouds and a sickle moon beaming bluely down between peaked
roofs that overhung the street like cupped hands. He hoped they were formed in
prayer for him.
Then even that wish faded, along with the remnant of his consciousness....
XX
At first he thought a fly had somehow tumbled into his brain. It was beating
against the sides, trying to get out. When the fly-feeling gave way to a
certainty that the buzzing came from elsewhere, he opened his eyes and hunted
for its source.
An oil lamp burned on a simply hewn wood table. A gruff announcement came from
someone unseen.
"He's awake!"
This was followed by the pad-padding of many feet. Jon-Tom struggled to a
sitting position. Gravity, or something, tried to pull off the back of his head.
He winced at the pain. It slowly dribbled away, down his neck and into oblivion.
He discovered he was sitting on the edge of a cot. In the dim lamplight he could
now make out the familiar shapes of his staff and duar leaning against the far
wall of the room.
Flanking his possessions were two of the humans who'd attacked him. One wore a
bandage across his forehead and over one ear. The other exhibited a deep purple
bruise and knot over his right eye. His mouth also showed signs of having been
cut.
Normally an execptionally pacific person, Jon-Tom experienced an
uncharacteristic surge of pleasure at this evidence of the damage he and his
companions had done. He'd made up his mind to make a rush for the club-staff
when a door opened on his left and half a dozen people marched in.
Leaning forward, he was disappointed to discover he could see nothing past the
door except a dimly lit corridor, though he could hear distant conversation.
The new arrivals stationed themselves around the room. Three of them took up
positions in front of the door while another closed it behind them. Two
additional lamps were lit. Everyone in the room looked very determined. Another
trio sat down at the table. Someone brought a few roughly forged goblets and a
couple of plates piled high with steaming meat and a close relative of boiled
potatoes.
There were no windows in the room. The only light came from the three oil lamps
and the crack beneath the door. Captors and captive examined each other with
interest for long minutes.
Then one of the three seated at the table spoke to him, and Jon-Tom recognized
the blond spokesman who had confronted him in the street.
"You hungry?" Jon-Tom shook his head. "Thirsty?" Again the negative motion,
accompanied by a smile and an obscene gesture. Jon-Tom was not thinking like a
would-be lawyer now. He was still light-headed and maybe just a little crazy.
His actions and silence did not seem to upset his interrogator, who shrugged and
said, "Suit yourself. I am." He picked up a potato-thing and spread some sort of
transparent glaze over it, using a spoon set in a small jar. Taking a bite out
of it, he chewed noisily. Glaze slid down his chin and onto his chest.
When he'd finished half the tuber he looked again at Jon-Tom. Then he asked
bluntly, "Head hurt?"
"You know goddam well it does," Jon-Tom told him, feeling of the lump that was
maturing on the ba
ck of his skull.
"We're sorry about that." And to Jon-Tom's surprise the man sounded honestly
contrite. "But you wouldn't come with us voluntarily, and we didn't have much
time to talk. Patrol could've come along."
"If you've been facing twelve armed people in an unfamiliar street, would you
have gone along?"
The blond smiled wryly. "I suppose not. We're not much on tact, I guess. But it
was imperative you come with us, and we had to get you away from the animals."
That made Jon-Tom take another anxious look around the room. No question about
it, he was the sole captive present.
"Where are the others? Where are my friends?"
"Where we left them. Scattered around the alleys of the Loose Quarter. Oh, they
didn't seem badly hurt," he added when Jon-Tom looked ready to rise from the
cot. "Far less so than our own people. We simply led the fight away from you
once we had you drugged and under control."
"Why me?" He leaned back against the rock wall. "What's so interesting about
me?"
The stocky speaker peered hard at him. "It is said that you are a wizard, a
spellsinger, from another world." He seemed at once skeptical and yet anxious to
have that skepticism disputed.
"Yes... yes, that's right." Jon-Tom stretched out his arms and waved his
fingers. "And if you don't let me out of here in ten seconds I'm going to turn
you all into mushrooms!"
The leader shook his head, looking down at the floor and then up again to smile
at Jon-Tom. He clasped both hands together on his lap.
"Any spellsinger requires his instrument to make magic." He nodded in the
direction of the closely guarded duar. "You threaten emptily. I had heard that
you controlled a river dragon. That plus your admission just now is proof enough
for me."
"How do you know that I'm controlling the dragon? Maybe I'm just trying to
frighten you into releasing me. Clothahump the turtle is still back at our
barracks, and he's a powerful wizard, much more powerful than I am. Maybe he's
controlling the dragon and even now setting up a spell to dissolve all of you
like so much tea."
"We know of the hard-shelled bumbler who accompanied you. We know also that he
and the great dragon are even now arguing absurdities back in the harbor
barracks. We know this not through magic but through our well-organized and
loyal network of observers and spies." Again the smile. "Sometimes that is worth
more than magic."
Network, Jon-Tom thought? What's this talk of spies and networks? Something
else, something about the attitude of the people in the room, their attacking
with nonlethal weapons, all bespoke something deeper than your everyday
garden-variety robbers.
"Who do you spy for? Aren't you all citizens of the city or county of
Polastrindu?"
"By birth," admitted the man, and there were murmurs of agreement from the
others in the room, "but not by inclination, or belief."
"You're losing me."
"We don't want to do that," said the man, unclasping his hands. "We want you to
join us."
"Join you? In what? I haven't got time to join anything else. I'm already into
something vitally important to your whole world." He started to recite
Clothahump's warning about the coming cataclysm.
"The Plated Folk are readying their greatest invasion of these lands in their
history, and they have--"
"We know all that," said one of the other guards impatiently.
Jon-Tom gaped at the woman who'd spoken. She was one of the trio blocking the
doorway. "You know?" Nods of assent came from several of the others.
"But I thought... Clothahump said he was the only one perceptive enough to...
but how do you know?"
"Patience," the blond urged him. "All will be explained.
"You asked if we were not citizens of the city, and what we wanted you to join
us for. We are citizens of this city, yes, and we are something more, we
believe. As for what we want you to join, I have already told you. We want you
to join us."
"What the hell do you mean by 'us'? Some kind of political organization?"
The man shook his head. "Not really. Us. Us... we humans." He spoke patiently,
as though explaining to a child.
"I still don't follow you."
The man looked in exasperation at his companions, then once more back at
Jon-Tom. "Listen to me carefully, spellsinger. For tens of thousands of years
mankind has been compelled to exist as a lowly equal with the animals. With the
hordes of stinking, smelly, hairy beasts who are obviously our inferiors." This
was said with casual disregard for his own unkempt mat of fur. "With those who
are destined to be damned together with the rats and mice they so readily
discriminate against themselves."
Jon-Tom didn't reply. The man almost pleaded with him. "Surely you have felt the
inequality, the unnaturalness of this situation?" He paced in front of Jon-Tom's
cot, occasionally shaking clenched fists at him.
"We are more than animals, are we not? Clearly nature has intended us to be
superior, yet some unnatural force or circumstance has held us back from
achieving our birthright. The time to change that is near. Soon mankind shall
inherit this world, as nature intended him to!"
"You're talking, then," said Jon-Tom slowly, "about a race war?"
"No!" The stocky leader turned angrily on him. "This is to be a war for the
race, for the human race, to place it in its rightful position as leader of
civilization." He leaned near, stared searchingly into Jon-Tom's face. "Tell me
then, spellsinger: do the humans of your other-world exist equally with the
animals?"
My God, Jon-Tom thought in panic. What do I say? How perceptive are they? Can
they detect, through magic or otherwise, if I lie? And if so, and they learn the
truth, will they use that to gather support among the humans here for their own
hateful plans?
But are they after all so hateful? Do you hate what this man is saying, Jon-Tom,
or do you hate the thought that you might agree with him?
"Well?" the man prompted.
No reply was worse than anything he might say, he decided. "The humans I've met
are no more than the equal of the other animals here in size and intelligence.
Some have shown themselves to be a damnsight less so. What makes you think
you're so superior?"
"Belief, and inner knowledge," came the instant reply. "This cannot be the way
nature meant things to be. Something is wrong here. And you have not yet
answered my question about the relationship between humans and animals in your
world."
"We're all animals together. Intelligence is the determining factor, and the
other persons I've met here have been pretty much equal in intelligence."
"Ah... the other animals you've met here. What about your own world's
'animals'?"
Jon-Tom's voice rose in frustration. "God damn you, shape and size has nothing
to do with it!"
"It confirms what the dream raiders told us," murmured someone in the back of
the room. There were other unintelligible whispers, smug and self-satisfied.
Jon-Tom found them
unsettling.
"Anyway, I won't join you." He folded his arms. "I doubt that many will. I know
plenty of humans already who can tell the difference between civilized and
uncivilized, between intelligent and ignorant, without having to think about it,
and it hasn't a fucking thing to do with body odor. So you can take your
'belief' and 'inner knowledge' and stuff it! Those are the kinds of groundless,
half-assed reasons dictators have used throughout history for discriminating
against others, and I don't want anything to do with it.
"Besides, humans are just another mammalian minority here. Even if they all went
nuts and joined you, you're far too outnumbered to even think the kind of
genocide you're contemplating has a chance of success."
"You're right on all counts," agreed the leader, "except one."
"I don't think I overlooked anything."
"Perhaps it would be better if I explained." The voice had a hoarseness to it
that suggested a severe cold or laryngitis. The man who'd spoken stepped out
into the light. He was as thickset as the leader and even more hirsute. Long
black hair flowed below his shoulders, and his beard almost obscured his face.
Brown and blue leathers were draped tentlike on his body.
Jon-Tom was by now almost too furious to think straight. "Who the hell are you,
jack?" He was thinking of Mudge and Clothahump, of the aristocratic but friendly
Caz, and the acerbic Pog. The idea that this motley mob of near barbarians
considered themselves good enough to lord it over his new-won furry friends was
almost more than he could stomach.
"My identity is perhaps better shown than stated," said the black-haired shape
as he reached up and carefully removed his head.
The skull thus revealed was smaller than a human head, but occupied almost as
much volume because of the bulging, bright green compound eyes. The chitin was
bright blue spotted with yellow patches. A slash of maroon decorated the
mandibles. Antennae drooped toward Jon-Tom. They were constantly in motion,
alternating like a swimmer's arms.
It spoke again, the same harsh, rasping tone. The mouth did not move. Jon-Tom
realized the insect was generating a crude approximation of normal speech by
controlling the flow of air through its breathing spicules.
"I am Hanniwuz," said the apparition huskily. "This suit I wear is necessary
