Changer's Daughter

by Jane Lindskold

  Demetrios answers for the group clustered around a couple of green X’s chalked on the practice floor to represent the primordial grove that the folks in stage design and lighting are still working overtime to complete.

  “Wait a moment,” he says with the precise diction of a schoolteacher. “Phoebus has something clogged in his pipe.”

  This is too much for the satyrs. Guffawing and making lewd gestures, they mime what they’d do with a clogged pipe. Standing over where Lil would begin her entrance, Mary Malone is visibly regretting the waiver of sexual harassment that she’d signed as part of her contract.

  “We’re ready now, Miss Malone,” Demetrios calls politely.

  “We’re ready now...” Georgios mimics in a prissy voice.

  “Shut up and ready on my signal!” Mary hollers. “One and a two, and music!”

  A roadie starts the recording. Thunderous chords from bass and rhythm shake the air, followed two measures later by a wild riff from the drums.

  “Now!”

  Mary walks a diagonal line across the stage, not strolling as Lil has in the few rehearsals she’s attended, but waving her arms and shouting directions to the dancers.

  Georgios, corrected for the third time in as many measures, feels the music, even in recorded form, touching something primal within him.

  It isn’t right that she tease him like this! There’s a heat in his head, a swelling in his groin. He thrusts from the hips, answering the music.

  “Not yet!” the drill sergeant barks. “That’s in the next measure, Loverboy! Why did I ever promise I could get you idiots ready for an early debut! Cut the music!”

  When the music dies, so does some of Georgios’s frantic lust, enough so that he notes the worry in Demetrios’s eyes. Then Malone is yelling at them again, reciting their steps:

  “Leer right, leer left, follow her with a shuffle step, then begin to follow more rapidly. Short steps. When Lil stops to look at Tommy—that’s when the pelvic thrust comes in. Remember! You’re miming out the lust that she’s containing, that he’s too absorbed in his music to feel. Got it?”

  Georgios nods stiffly. He’s got to get laid. If he doesn’t get laid, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. For a wistful moment, he wishes that he were at home, where the mares are near. Then he remembers that there is a city out there full of women available for a price.

  Absorbed in this fantasy, Georgios shuffles back to his mark. The cowboy boots he’s wearing hurt his hooves, but he hardly feels the pain. When the roadie starts the recording again, Tommy’s music enflames his imaginings as he begins to plan.

  He’ll take a couple of the other satyrs with him. They can sneak away from Demetrios’s surveillance if they’re careful. Then they’ll take a cab to the nearest red-light district and buy a couple girls for a couple hours.

  Nobody’ll listen to a whore if she says that a couple of men hung like horses—and with horse hooves and tails—bought a few hours of her time. They won’t be violating their promise to Arthur and Lil that they’d be prudent.

  Georgios licks his lips, imagining each of the women he’ll have in exquisite detail: buttocks, breasts, long legs, round thighs, ripe mouths. He’s panting as the music comes to an end and not just from the exertion of the complicated routine.

  “Perfect! Perfect!” shouts Mary Malone, her leotard damp and transparent with sweat. “That’s just perfect!”

  Yeah, Georgios thinks. It will be just perfect.

  When Chris Kristofer enters his office, he finds a note from Arthur glowing on his terminal.

  “Meeting. My office. As soon as you’ve checked your mail.”

  Obediently, Chris does checks his mail, thinking as he reviews the messages and taps out a few routine responses, that Arthur has become much more considerate over the last week. Before the conference about Tommy Thunderburst’s concert, the King would have ordered him and Bill to appear without delay, then complained when they didn’t have the answers he wanted.

  Over at the other side of the office, he can hear Bill chuckling about something.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing much, just a cat joke the Wanderer tacked to the end of her last report. She’s on her way to Tennessee to get away from the winter weather.”

  “Lucky her. Ready for the meeting?”

  “Yeah. Wonder what impossible quest King Arthur has for us today?”

  They find out as soon as they get settled in the King’s office, and Arthur has offered them juice and pastries from a tray that he had prepared with his own hands.

  “Yesterday, I spoke with Lovern,” Arthur begins, “and learned how desperate are his staffing needs. I agreed to speak with several athanor for him. I need your help in locating a couple.”

  When the humans nod acknowledgment, and Chris readies paper and pen (having learned that such little gestures reassure Arthur that he’s paying attention), the King continues:

  “One is Alice Chun, the novelist. You may be familiar with her books. I’ve been trying to reach her for several weeks, but I can’t get past her agent. Find her.

  “I also need to speak with Anson. I’ve left messages for Eddie, but I have no evidence that he’s picking up his e-mail.” A week before this omission on Eddie’s part would have been enough to set Arthur sulking, but now he accepts it as the way of things. Chris can’t help but wonder what Eddie had said to his friend and liege to so alter Arthur’s behavior.

  “Try and find him. Their itinerary places them in the city of Monamona, but I don’t have a hotel address. You may need to phone every place in the city asking for either Anson A. Kridd or Eddie Ibatan or possibly Dakar Agadez.”

  Bill raises his hand. “Are you certain they’re using those names?”

  “I’ve checked our files here,” Arthur answers, “and there is no record of any of them getting extra identification papers for this trip. If those names don’t work, I’ll give you the name of my one local contact. I don’t want to call on him too soon, since I don’t know the details of Anson’s business.”

  Chris nods, understanding such delicacies from his days with the newspaper. “The last thing you want to do is mess up Anson’s deal just when you need a favor from him.”

  Arthur grins. “Precisely. Can you get started at once?”

  The two humans nod, but, despite Arthur’s reformed behavior, Chris feels he must caution the King not to get impatient.

  “I’ll start tracking down Anson, sir, but remember, this may take some time. Do you have any idea if they’d prefer the tourist hotels or go for more ‘native’ accommodations?”

  “Anson was working on a business deal of some kind,” Arthur replies, “so they should be avoiding the low end places—bad for the image—especially in a place like Nigeria.”

  “Thanks. That gives me a starting point.”

  Bill says, “That leaves Alice Chun for me. I think I’ll bypass her agent altogether and see if I can learn something from her editors. Do you know if she has a web page?”

  Arthur blinks. “I didn’t think to check.”

  “I will, then.” Bill rubs his hands together briskly. “I’ll see what I can get done before my class this afternoon.”

  “Thank you,” Arthur says. “Meanwhile, I’ll be speaking with some of the others. I’ve also thought of several people to contact who were not on Lovern’s list. I may need your help later to find some of them. They’ve been out of touch for a while.

  He rises then, both to dismiss them and to see them to the door. “Again, thank you for your help on this matter.”

  As they are walking down to their office, Chris says to Bill, “You know, I think he’s getting to trust us.”

  “Yeah,” Bill grins. “Things are getting better all the time.”

  Seated in the dining room at the Other Three Quarters Ranch, Wayne Watkins savors his beer and studies his host.

  Technically this is his second visit to the ranch. His first had been immediately after discovering the w
olf track the day before. At that time, he had found Frank MacDonald shoeing horses and unwilling to be interrupted. However, he had invited Wayne to return the following day.

  Now, after giving him a tour of the quarter-horse stables and putting a couple of the horses through their paces, MacDonald had invited him to stay to lunch.

  “I can’t do anything fancy,” he had said, “but I’ve got some fresh bread and a bean soup.”

  Wayne, eager to get a closer look at this place, would have accepted an invitation to eat peanut butter and jelly on stale bread.

  “Thank you,” he’d said. “Just let me call my foreman and tell him that I’m postponing our meeting a few hours.”

  Now he watches as MacDonald places a bowl of thick soup—he’d have called it a stew—in front of him. There’s the promised bread and some cheese, too.

  The odd thing is that no one else joins them for lunch. MacDonald has at least twenty horses on the place. Wayne had seen other livestock: cows, chickens, ducks, guinea pigs, some sheep and goats. There’d been gardens, too, bedded down for the winter except for some cold-weather crops like cabbage and kale, but pretty extensive. Far too extensive for one man to tend. Yet no one else comes to the table, and MacDonald mentions no other residents.

  A couple of big dogs of uncertain persuasion—but neither of them large enough to have left the print he saw—lounge nearby. Wayne drops a piece of cheese on the floor, but, though the long-eared hound nearest to him looks hopeful, it doesn’t dive for the treat.

  “I don’t give them table scraps,” MacDonald explains, taking his seat. “Keeps them sharp.”

  “Good idea,” Wayne agrees.

  They eat for a time in relative silence, Wayne not wanting to push his business and MacDonald apparently absorbed in the simple act of eating. He’s an odd one, Wayne decides. Quiet even in his body language, but with a sense of being aware of everything around him.

  When a thud comes from the kitchen, MacDonald doesn’t even turn his head. He just says “Cat” in a strong, stern voice, and in a moment a chubby red tabby cat comes slinking out of the kitchen.

  “Can’t train them,” MacDonald says. “They’ve got too much sense of themselves.”

  “Like people,” Wayne says, though he doesn’t really believe it.

  “Worse,” MacDonald replies.

  “You’ve got the horses well trained, though.”

  “Hardly need to train a quarter horse to herd. Harder to keep them from doing it, they love it so.”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen that.” Wayne follows this reflection with a long, convoluted anecdote about a cow horse belonging to a friend of his. MacDonald listens with apparent interest, though he must have heard stories like it plenty of times.

  “I’m interested in buying a couple of your horses,” Wayne says, when he’s finished his story and MacDonald has told one of his own, “to work the parcel right next door. You interested in selling?”

  MacDonald considers. “Maybe. I’d need to meet the folks you plan to have riding them.”

  “I’ve got a couple greasers riding herd,” Wayne says. “Foreman’s a good man for a Mex. He’s the one who said he’d like a horse or two. Land over there gets rough at points.”

  “I know.”

  Belatedly, Wayne remembers that the land in question had been leased by MacDonald before he’d pulled strings with the government and gotten the lease for himself. Mentally, he kicks himself, hoping he hasn’t queered the deal.

  MacDonald is studying him now, or maybe not him, maybe the wall behind him. In the shadowy room, it’s hard to tell where those eyes are looking, the lashes are so long, like a girl’s or a cow’s.

  “Good not to have trucks ripping up the land,” Wayne flounders. “We’re hauling in most of our feed, so there shouldn’t be overgrazing.”

  “That’s good.” MacDonald smiles slightly. “Not much there to feed anything. I used it for a buffer.”

  Wayne nods. “I’m not surprised. You strike me as a man who appreciates room.” He thinks of an opening to the matter that really interests him and charges ahead. “It’s pretty wild out here. Ever have any predator trouble?”

  “Not really,” MacDonald says. “I keep a close eye on the horses, send out dogs with them, dogs or llamas. Coyotes don’t get messed up with things that can fight back. They can outsmart most dogs, but llamas think differently. Coyotes don’t know what to make of ‘em.”

  “Ah.” Wayne tries desperately to think of a way to introduce the question of wolves. “I haven’t seen much sign of coyote on my land.”

  “That’s good.”

  For a moment, MacDonald seems more than reasonably relieved. Wayne wonders why, then decides that the horse rancher must have hunted them out of the area and is glad to know that they haven’t come back in.

  “You hunt?” he asks casually.

  “Not for many, many years,” MacDonald says. “Got bored with it. Didn’t seem much of a match, person with gun against critter.”

  “Ah.”

  Wayne decides to leave that one alone. Something about the ranch house had been bothering him ever since he had come inside and now he realizes what it is. Most ranch houses are decorated with trophies: hides or racks of antlers at least, sometimes even whole animals stuffed and mounted. There’s nothing of the sort in MacDonald’s house, not even an antler lamp-stand or a bit of fur on a cushion. He wonders if MacDonald is a nature lover or an eco-nut. If so, he wouldn’t tell Wayne even if there were wolves in the area.

  As if embarrassed by his gaucheness, Wayne brings the conversation back to horses. They talk for a while, then go see the animals MacDonald might consider selling. In the end, they agree that Wayne will return the next day with Jesus.

  They part friendly, but as soon as he’s on the road out, Wayne is on the phone, making calls. He’s got to find a way to lure MacDonald off his land, even if just for a day or two. Then, when the OTQ is without its master, he’ll make a reconnaissance of his own.

  Outside the rain is falling, not the warm rains of spring, the rains that herald hanami, the celebration of the cherry blossoms, but the colder rains of autumn. Katsuhiro has the kozo-washi panels on the sides of the large central room of his house open to welcome the coolness. The wind that darts playfully through the fusama and the shoji is very welcome.

  Silver falls the rain, slanting lines.

  There is a poem there, but he is distracted from composition by the awareness that someone else shares the room with him. He turns his head, aware that his hair is gathered in the heavy samurai knot he has not worn for decades, indeed, centuries. His clothing is old-style, too. The sleeves of the kimono are heavy with the gold thread and silk of karaori weaving.

  Turning his head shows him a large piece of fabric spread out upon the floor. Parts of it have been covered with a thick paste. He smells the starchy scent of the rice flour and rice bran that went into its making. With the tip of one finger, he touches the paste and finds it still wet.

  Someone is decorating a cloth in the katazome style. Yes. There is the stencil set in place, awaiting the next application of paste. The pattern is quite elaborate and he doesn’t think it is one of the traditional designs: cranes or flowers. Brides once prepared futon covers in this fashion and put them in their hope chests. Now clothes dyed in the katazome style have become rare and collectible. Women have better things to do with their lives. Better?

  He wonders, but then, he would wonder. He isn’t a woman. Their lives are not his life.

  Curious, he rises so that he can see the pattern from above, gain a sense of what it depicts, though its ultimate subtlety won’t be visible until the dying is complete and the paste cleared away. For a precious moment, he begins to understand what is depicted there and is filled with such wonder and fear that his blood runs hot.

  He is too hot, but when he tries to undress, the long sleeves of his kimono twist about him, come to life, snakes seeking to strangle the life from him. He thrashes, tearing at
the fabric with his fingertips, heat growing so that sweat dampens the bindings, making it cut the bare flesh beneath.

  He cannot reach his sword... Where is his sword? He has lost it! Lost it! Something touches the side of his face...

  Awakening is sudden, triggered by the knowledge that something has touched the side of his face, a realization carried to him by trained muscles, combat-honed reflexes that even nightmare cannot fool.

  He is in bed within the room inside Regis’s compound in the hot, damp, stifling city of Monamona. Winter coolness is a dream. The binding fabric of his dream kimono proves to be only sweaty sheets entangling his naked limbs. Revelation is lost with wakening. The one thing he is certain of is that he is not alone and that, as in his dream, his sword has been taken from him.

  Moving slowly, he frees his limbs from their wrappings. In the hot, still air, he hears breathing. Someone is sitting in the chair near his writing table, pulled back into the shadows. Remembering that his room is monitored (though he wonders if Regis cares about him any longer, for he has not been called into the Chief General’s presence for two days now) Katsuhiro is careful.

  Sniffing the air, he tries to identify his caller by scent. Taiwo smells of Old Spice aftershave, rather than of sweat. Teresa wears perfume. Regis, despite his use of Western antiperspirants, has a sour smell all his own: salt, vinegar, and sickness in the bowels. Katsuhiro smells none of these scents from the silent figure in the darkness. Instead he smells sweetness, like baked goods, a hint of chocolate, banana pudding, peanut-oil-fried akara, donuts.

  In the darkness, then, he smiles and whispers a single word, speaking old Mycenaean, a language dead for thousands of years, but once used as a trade tongue among the athanor.

  “Spider?”

  A soft laugh. “Awake now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You found me.”

  “Yes. Do you want out?”

  “I want Regis dead and my sword returned to me.”

  “Good goals. I share one, sympathize with the other. Do you want to be released?”

  Katsuhiro remembers his dream, remembers his horror at being disarmed. Takes it as an omen.