by Jo Clayton
On the screen Pradix was driving himself and his men into building a funeral pyre for the enemy; one by one his men began slipping away from him, showing by their glances and their gestures that they thought he had cracked his head on something and let his wits run out. Before long he was alone, sweating and struggling with the trees his men felled and left laying. Parnalee cut repeatedly from the madman working on that crazy magnificent pyre to shots of Empire soldiers flying toward the bloody ground, bent on avenging the death of their brothers.
Xalloor slipped in and crept as quietly as she could to join Aslan. She dropped on the floor beside the cushion, wrapped her arms about her legs and watched the play unfold with a curious double vision. One part of her saw it critically, judged the skill or lack of it in every aspect, recognized the tricks and the cynical manipulations, the lapses in taste and logic; the other part was entranced by what was there, that part plunged into the play until she was drowning in it, surrendering like a child to sensation and emotion. How those two parts could exist in Xalloor simultaneously and separately without destroying each other was something Aslan had never been able to understand in all the time they’d been together, something Xalloor had tried more than once to explain and failed each time.
As Pradix lit the pyre and flames leaped upward, the needlenosed fliers of the avenging soldiers were visible on the horizon, black specks growing larger by the moment. Suddenly the sky darkened, turned an eerie ominous greenish purple as clouds swept in from every side. A funnel formed behind the fliers, caught up with them, beat them from the air like a maidservant killing gnats and raced on toward Pradix and the pyre. Closer and closer it came until its blackened vortex filled most of the screen with Pradix a tiny figure kneeling on the torn and trampled glass. Then it was gone; the broken world it left behind was quiet except for the vigorous crackling of the funeral fire. The small figure of the kneeling man was there still, untouched, shining in the dimness of the coming storm as if lit by another fire, one that burned inside him. A bird sang. The sweetness of its song was almost unbearable.
There was an explosive sigh as if every lung in the Smelter empties itself at the same moment. Otherwise the silence was unbroken.
Parnalee, you’ve the Luck of the crazy cradling you, Aslan thought, I can’t believe Tra Yarta passed this one. Was he suckered by the casting of that boy with his Huvved face and form? She rubbed at her nose, gulped down the tea left in the cup; it was cold, but the small bitterness was a satisfying counter to the fantasy on the screen. A headache began at the back of her skull; she rubbed at her nape, closed her eyes. How long does this go on? she thought. Where’s Churri? She slitted an eye and sneaked a look at Xalloor. Have you two decided to split? The dancer looked placid as a sleeping lizard, but that didn’t mean much, she was sunk in the Spectacle and nothing else mattered.
Somehow Pradix had changed from a fighter to a poet, she’d missed the transition while she was fussing, but wasn’t much bothered by that. He wasn’t the Prophet yet, but he was getting close. He’d acquired three men with assorted instruments and a rough cart with straw sticking out all over, pulled along by a team of yunks painted battleship gray with vertical black stripes. Since Parnalee had thrown in tarmac highways kept in top condition and a swarm of small black vehicles rushing along them at near supersonic speeds, not to mention the vast assortment of fliers that passed by overhead, the reason for that cart with its two-yunk propulsion system escaped her. She poured some more tea; she needed a touch of reality or she’d start giggling and get herself lynched from the looks on the faces around her.
He was going from village to village, mixing sedition with preaching, poetry with politics, escaping again and again just before soldiers landed on the town, building toward a finale that got the rebels on their feet, shouting out the words to the poem he was chanting in the ancient worker’s vag that was the basis for the Hordar they all spoke today; apparently it was a poem everyone here knew, probably one of those she’d sent Churri hunting way back in that other life, the kind no Huvved ever heard. Reluctantly she got to her feet with the rest, but she refused to chant with them.
Pradix the poet stood on the cart’s bed, straw about his feet, music on three sides, Yesil Uranyi perched on the front, drums going tam tam tummm toom, Saadi Klemm on his left, twee twee tootle too ooh, wandering flute, and on his right, scree ooh wee, singee singee, the fiddling man Nanno Inallet. Pradix the not yet Prophet stood in the cart and chanted his vagger song.
year ya year ya year ya ya
fear ya hear ya fear
shake ya shiver
terror fever
same old song, same old
sad song
same old sad
song
some men get old
some women cold
old ya cold ya
NO O NO
I ya we ya I an we
we shout
NO O NO
them wonda what we been about
them wonda bout we fire
heartfire red and red
not dead
not we
them canna tame we an I
them canna tame I
am too weight-I
too long I wait I
old song sad song dead song dead
so them say so
old cold dead
NO!
I ya we
I an we
do stomp o
press shun
I an we
this genna ray
shun
ay shun I shun we shun
they
I an we do stomp oppression
I an we this generation
“YA!” the crowd in the village shouted. “YA!” the rebels in the Smelter shouted. “No,” they shouted, players and viewers, “Fireheart! Weight-I wait-I! NO! Shun,” they shouted, players and viewers, “Press! Stomp! Shun! Stomp oppression, this generation, I an we, YES! YES! YES!”
2
Xalloor pinched Aslan’s arm, then began wiggling through the crowd, heading for the door. Aslan blinked, then followed, crossing against the streams of adults who were moving toward the bar. Some of the older middlers were kicking the mats and cushions to one side to get ready for the dance that would go on until the musicians tuning up in a corner by the comset ran out of wind. Others were standing around throwing verses back and forth, a kaleidoscope of clashing sounds. A number of the younger middlers weren’t waiting for music but were already undulating in the preliminaries to one of their less comprehensible dances. Made Aslan feel her years; forget about the ananiles, they couldn’t return that resilience of mind that only the very young possessed.
The wind was picking up outside, the tree limbs woven overhead groaned and creaked, the stiff thick leaves rubbed against each other, singing like crickets. The trees grew close together, blocking moonlight and starlight; whoever walked this path after dark carried light with him or her and blessed the trees for they ceiled the path to the Minemouth and hid the walkers on it from the Warmaster’s wandering eye. Rod lights flickered like earthbound stars as clumps of middlers hurried toward the dance, brushing past Aslan and Xalloor without taking notice of them. When the rush diminished to a trickle, Aslan hurried to catch up with Xalloor.
“What…”
The dancer looked round, her face lit by a flash of laughter, clickon clickoff, there and gone. She shook her head.
Aslan sighed, matched steps with her. “The script. Who won?”
“Me. Sort of.” Xalloor thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacket and slowed a little, letting Aslan light the way for them both. “I told them, look, you go and on at people like that, they turn their heads off. Worse’n that, they turn you off. You want ’em to listen, you keep coming back at them all right, but you sugarcoat it, I mean you want to sneak it past ’em before they know what you’re doing. I said, you want to see how it’s done, look at one of those Spectacles, I mean really look, forget about the story, figure
out what he’s saying and how he’s saying it. But you got to do it better, faster, don’t forget how quick the bitbits’ll be after you, you’ve got maybe ten minutes playing time before they locate the transfer station and trash your cassette. Lan, you should’ve seen that script, it’d send a wirehead into coma.”
“When are they going to start the clandestines?”
“Things keep going like they are and they get hold of some more writers, which they really need, believe me, they natter on all the time about poets, but they don’t recruit any, it’s enough to make you throw up your hands and say hell with everything. Amateurs! Couple months from now. That’s what the plan is. Three months top limit.” Another strobe grin. “Maybe.”
“Why maybe in that tone of voice?”
“Elmas’s back. We were still arguing when she came in, she wanted to talk to Evvily, so we broke up. Just as well, Ylazar was starting to repeat himself and that could go on till entropy took us all.”
“She say anything? What the tight-down was about?”
“Not in front of the nonnies, no.” She clicked her tongue, wrinkled her nose.
Aslan sighed again, the familiar little sound stabbed a weak spot; she wanted her mother here, scold or not, wanted something from her old life, she was tired, so tired of improvising an existence.
Xalloor banged on the Minemouth door, stepped back while the keeper slid it open just wide enough to let them through one after the other. She got her lightrod out again and began almost galloping along the rough floor of the gallery, heading for the lift. There was a suppressed excitement about her, a wired-up energy that said clearer than words she had news, exciting maybe frightening news.
They went up two levels, followed Kele tunnel until they reached the stubby offshoot where they’d set up housekeeping. Xalloor stirred the fire to life, added more coal and crouched before the grate with the bellows, working with hard won expertise (her first attempt at a coal fire was unalloyed disaster, they had to run down a Hordar who knew about sea coal and iron grates and was willing to lend a hand so they didn’t freeze before morning). As she coaxed tiny flames from the ashy lumps, some of the dank chill went off the room. It was a room, there was a yosstarp ceiling, wrinkled and sagging, walls of wood scrap scavenged from the company houses, a wooden floor covered with lignin mats that Aslan had woven, putting to work one of the skills she’d learned a few assignments back, a neat herringbone pattern that earned her some condescending praise from the much defter weavers among the outcasts. She’d made mats for a number of rooms like these, glad to have some way of passing the time; besides, the scrip she earned brought her and Xalloor things they couldn’t have acquired otherwise, like the glass and bronze oil lamps and the earthenware vase sitting on a crate in the corner by the fire, the nergi flowers in it adding dark rich red and orange tones to the drab gray of the tarp and the washed-out brown of the mats and the walls. There were two pallets raised from the floor on crude frames that Aslan and Xalloor had glued together from rusty tramrails and salvaged bricks, there were several cushions they’d gotten from one of the weavers in return for several weeks hard work carding yunk wool, blankets issued by the Council; sheets were a luxury few living here could afford. There was the crate which they used for storage and some smaller boxes that served as tables. Chilly drafts came wandering through the cracks no matter how often she or Xalloor pounded caulking between the boards. Not down the chimney, though, bless the local tech; Hordar filters were useful for more than purifying water. Despite all this, they were surrounded by stone and earth and that was like living inside a block of ice.
While the dancer fussed with the fire, Aslan moved round the room, lifting the chimney glasses, telling herself she ought to wash them one of these days, trimming the wicks and lighting them. These lamps burned fish oil smuggled in from the Sea Farms and that oil announced its origins for several minutes after the wicks were lit; after that either the smell went away, or their noses went on strike. The soft amber light filled the room, chased away the shadows and gave an illusion of warmth. She poured some water in a kettle, hooked out the swing spit and clamped the bail in place. “Move over a bit, Loorie, let me get this on so we can have some tea. Did you get anything to eat over there?”
Xalloor tossed the bellows aside and came to her feet in that boneless ripple that made Aslan feel clumsy as a stone god. “It’s going good enough, I was just trying to catch some warm.” She dropped onto her pallet. “Some sandwiches, I think they were, might have been relics of the Prophet. Why is it, Lan, that earnest types never have a palate?”
“Genetic, I suppose.” Aslan got to her feet, brushed her hands against her trousers. “I thought that might happen, so I begged some cold meat and rolls from Prismek, a minute, I’ll fetch them.” She pushed past the double tarp they used as a door and tied taut once they were in for the night, came back with a basket, its contents wrapped in old soft cloth. “He had some krida he was frying for breakfast, there’s a sackful of those tucked under the rolls. And he threw in some green meelas and some cheese to go with them.”
“I love you forever, Lan.”
“So tell me what it is you didn’t want to say out there.”
“Remember I said we were still arguing?” Xalloor pulled a box across the slippery mat to her pallet and began laying out the feast.
“So?”
“I didn’t exactly mean we, not when Elmas came in; there was some peculiar tea going round and it got me in the gut, I was out back in the facilities listening to my insides grumble and wondering if my knees were going to work right when I finished dropping my burden. Well, I don’t need to go into that any more, but what happened was, when I came back Churri and Holz had gone off along with most the others. I was ticked, let me tell you, I could’ve used an arm to lean on right then, I was moving slow and careful. That must’ve been why they didn’t hear me and stop talking.” She popped a krida in her mouth and crunched happily at it, rolling her eyes with pleasure at the taste.
“Loorie!”
“Dearie dai, im pay shunt,” Xalloor scooped out a handful of the krida and sat with her fingers crooked about the succulent fishlets, “pay and play. Outside’s in. Here and now. Not Bolodo.”
Aslan closed her eyes. After a moment, she heard a hissing as the water boiled and a few drops landed on the coals. She kicked a cushion across to the box, hooked the kettle away from the fire. As she made the tea, she did her best to not-think, not-feel. Behind her she could hear Xalloor eating steadily and was grateful the dancer didn’t feel like talking right then. She left the tea steeping, stood leaning against the crate, her elbows behind her, resting on the top. “Outside’s in?”
“You hear what Elmas ’n the isyas were after?”
“My students said she was going to blow the Brain. Get rid of the Sech’s files. Make as much trouble as she could.”
“Yah. That’s where she ’n the isyas ran into ’em.”
“Hmm.” Aslan lifted the strainer, inspected the tea and decided it was ready. She carried pot and bowls to the box, folded herself down onto the cushion and poured tea for herself and Xalloor. She cradled her bowl between her hands, glad of the warmth and the heaviness, it gave her something to hold onto. “Exactly what did you hear, Loorie?”
“Le’ me see, I’m supposed to be good with dialog. You been in the depot, you know how it’s laid out; we were in the big room so we could walk through a scene whenever we fixed something and see how it played. There’s tarp hung all over, makes it hot sometimes, but no one fusses about that,” she held up one of the krida, “frying’s all right for fish, but me, I’d rather not, eh? There’s a couple of old minecars in there, lot of junk, you had to navigate it in the dark, you’d end up with two broken legs and your face pushed in. What I mean, we don’t try to light the whole place, so there’s lots of shadows and it’s easy to get lost round the edges. Well, I wasn’t trying to get lost, it was just I wasn’t making much noise and walking along like I was my grandmoth
er after she outwore her ananiles. I fetched up by one of the cars and decided I’d better lean against it for a minute. Felt nice and cool against my face. I started to feel better. They were talking all that time, but I wasn’t listening until I heard outsiders in that tone of voice, you know, when someone’s about to be shoved head down in shit and it won’t be the locals. Being it was Elmas speaking and considering how the Council crawls around her, I got interested fast. I thought she was talking about us.” She broke off to sip at the tea.
Aslan moved one hand carefully from the cup, pressed her heated palm against her mouth. When the heat was gone, she lowered the hand. “Who was there?”
“Um, Elmas, that pilot what’s his name, it’ll come back to me in a minute, one of her isyas, the one that’s living here all the time now, Lirrit I think’s her name, Evvily and Ylazar. Pilot, ah! I knew I’d get it, Karrel Goza, yah, he didn’t say anything, he doesn’t talk much anytime. Ylazar said something, I didn’t hear it, his back was to me and you know how he mumbles. The woman warned us, Elmas said. We had to get Skimmer undercover, she said. Or lose her, she said. Ylazar Falyan, we need a boat and yoss pods and enough fuel to fill Skimmer’s tanks, we need it tonight, she said. Ylazar said something I didn’t hear that time either, didn’t need to hear it, you know him, if there’s anything he hates worse than moving, it’s moving fast. Do it, she said, now. She gave him the mean eye and he got to his feet and went out, muttering to himself.” Xalloor grinned. “She say hop, they jump and don’t bother asking how high. The pilot, he got up and went out after Laza, said nothing, just left. Before they were out the door, Elmas started on Evvily. Get word out, she said, the woman jigged the Brain and set up open corridors for anyone who wants over the Wall, in or out. No melters, no alarms, no defenses at all. I’ll get time, place and duration at the meeting with the outsiders, give it to you for distribution soon as we get back here. Evvily wasn’t about to be tramped on like Ylazar. Do you trust her? she said. It’s your word going to guarantee this, she said. She makes a fool of you, it hurts us all.” Xalloor jumped up and danced over to the storage crate; she got out the stone bottle with the rix brandy they kept for celebrating small triumphs, came back more soberly, her face and body shouting her nervousness. “Give me your bowl,” she said.
