The Daemon in the Machine

by Felicity Savage

  Fumia poured the tea with exquisite grace. Crispin watched her hands and her tail as it curled around to hold the cups steady. Such dexterity imbued her movements that he wondered whether it was studied, and then decided not. For all her serenity, there was something innocent about her. It titillated him vaguely. He felt curious as to what she was doing, twenty-five and still unmarried. She filled two cups with the translucent green liquid, but she didn’t sit down. She moved to the gas burners at the end of the counter and placed something on a sizzling griddle. With her back to him, she asked, “Where’s Yozi?”

  “Yozi?” Crispin had to keep reminding himself who around here went by that name. “I’m sorry; I don’t know. I was out alone.”

  “Yes, he was here all evening, and you were not...I suppose I simply assumed that whatever you were doing, you would do it together.” Without giving him a chance to comment, she returned to the table and sank into a chair. A waft of her perfume reached him. He’d discovered that whatever the hour, midnight or noon, it was impossible to catch a Kirekuni woman less than flawlessly perfumed, painted, and coiffed. This didn’t merely apply to the Akilas, whose line of business might conceivably justify such attention to appearances, it also applied to the lowliest street vendor or tavern maid. Only the quality of the accessories varied. That was another difference between the women of the two races.

  “I suppose you left your daemon with Yozi, then?” Fumia said.

  “My—no.” Crispin had trouble keeping a grin from spreading across his face. “Actually, I’ve sold her.”

  “Really!” Fumia took a sip of tea. Crispin almost laughed to see her attempted carelessness as she asked, “How much did you get?”

  He extracted the roll of notes from his pocket and fanned them out.

  “Seven—seven thousand five—M’sieu Kateralbin! You were cheated!”

  He shrugged. “Not as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Why did you sell it?” Fumia sounded genuinely perturbed.

  “She—it—” He shrugged again. “It was getting on my nerves.”

  She stared at him, and then smiled. “You should do well in Okimako, M’sieu... May I call you Crispin?”

  “Indeed you may.” He found her forwardness surprising, but delightful. No Ferupian woman, at least none of those he’d known, would have dreamed of being the first to suggest given-name terms. “Why should I do well here?”

  “You’re unsentimental, and you like money.” She got up and went to turn whatever it was she was cooking on the griddle. The sound of sizzling filled the room, and the spicy fumes made Crispin’s mouth water. “Although, if I may attempt a character judgment, you like money primarily because you have not as a rule had very much. With us, it’s deeper; one could probably say that it’s in the blood.”

  In the blood. He shivered at her offhand use of the phrase.

  “However, were I to offer you a small piece of advice...”

  “Please do.” He had discovered that all Okimakoans, not just the Akila women, needed coaxing before they would say anything that might amount to an opinion.

  “I should not display my profits in the presence of my respected mother. It is possible that it would adversely affect her feelings toward you.”

  She still had her back turned to him. As he puzzled out that circuitously worded warning, he gazed at her perceptibly twitching tail, which she carried erect but close to her spine in the accepted “female demeanor. “Why?” he asked, as she returned to the table. “I had thought Madame Akila to be an astute businesswoman.” She must be—if Mick is to be believed, she ran this place basically on her own for years at the same time as bringing up four kids! “Would she take offense because I didn’t get more?”

  “Oh, no!” Fumia’s laugh tinkled, but he heard a tinge of bitterness in her voice as she said, “It is because my mother is an affiliate of the Dynasty. I had supposed Yozi...I had supposed you knew.”

  “Ye-es,” Crispin said. “I did pick that up, that she was.” Couldn’t miss it, not with that bloody great amulet hanging off her neck. “Doesn’t the Dynasty approve of making money?” He seemed to remember that Rae, his first true love, had described her childhood in Waiting as an idyll of dusty luxury—a superfluity more decadent, in light of the culties’ utter rejection of conventional materialism, than that of any aristocratic mansion.

  “Indeed not,” Fumia said. “To live in Waiting, one must supposedly reject all worldly concerns, including the desire for material prosperousness, In fact, my mother follows the precepts to the letter; she no longer cares for turning a profit. It is well that Yozi has come home; as the head of the household, perhaps he will be able to force her to see sense.” She did not sound particularly confident about Mickey’s powers of persuasion. “The Children of the Dynasty are so concerned for the well-being of my mother’s soul that they wish her to sell the business and turn the proceeds over to them. It has been all I can do, since my uncle died, to persuade her to refrain.”

  “Why—oh, so they can use the money to feed the hungry and clothe the poor?”

  “You do not know much about religion, do you?” Her eyes were dancing. He couldn’t tell whether the sparks were of humor or anger. “That is the Easterners—the Decadents of the East. The distinction between the cults is so complex that to attempt an explanation would be unseemingly temeritous of me.”

  Crispin had finished his tea almost without noticing that it had gone cold. As she refilled his cup he was making a literal translation in his head. Temeritous—humble form of “forward”...Oh, of course.

  “Please.”

  He could have laughed, it was so frustrating.

  “It is interesting that religion is a product of Ferupe, and yet a Ferupian is unfamiliar with its intricacies.”

  “We aren’t all culties, you know.”

  She bowed her head.

  “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “The Dynasty professes ascetism as a means to spirituality. And yet—I sometimes think it ironic. They have made the ultimate coup in terms of infiltrating the upper classes.” What could that be? Crispin sensed a chance to discover one of those secrets everyone knew and no one would spell out to him. But it would not be politic to interrupt her. “And their assets, which are numerous, are no longer invested in evangelical works, but in real estate. I ought to tell you that in the old city real estate is equivalent to political influence.” She looked at him sidelong. “It is a conservative estimate that a third of the old city is now owned by them.”

  Crispin nodded slowly. What she said fit with what he knew of the Dynasty’s activities in Ferupe. They bought ancestral mansions and estates, moved in, and pretended they had always been there, like thieves installing paste jewels in old crowns. A cynical ploy for visibility, of course, and even Rae had not been able to explain how they justified it in religious terms. Probably something about removing the temptation to materialism from the less enlightened. His thoughts tumbled over each other. Apparently in Okimako, as the cult gained wealthy adherents, the stakes for which they played had gone up, from maneuvering for increased visibility to maneuvering for real power.

  He sipped the hot green brew. It would have been better with milk.

  “And the Easterners, on the other hand, profess decadence,” Fumia watched him closely. “Perhaps it is only natural that such a philosophy should appeal to the poor. Is it not ironic? For whatever reason, the Easterners have attracted those who are forced by poverty to live in the style that the Dynasty recommends. Their definition of decadence, I think—I have no experience—has had by necessity to change: it comes closer to social uselessness, an easier thing for the poor to achieve than hedonism. They believe that by choosing not to participate in society, by living off it instead of in it, they are unbalancing the machine, hastening the final halt, which they crave as a terminally ill man craves death. They used to be a terrible nuisance, always clogging up the streets when one wanted to go somewhere.”

  Crispin stared
at the liquid in his delicate china cup. He looked up and met her eyes.

  “But this spring,” she said, “an edict against public demonstrations was issued, targeted specifically at such activities as are favored by the Easterners.”

  She seemed to want to say more. Her fingers were lacing and unlacing under the edge of the table.

  “Is that why there are so many policemen around the place?” Crispin asked cautiously.

  “Poli-su-man?”

  “—Disciplinarians.” His mind had momentarily blanked and substituted the Ferupian word.

  “Oh. Oh, yes. With an unruly, widely rooted organization like the Easterners, law enforcement is of course necessary. However...” She paused. “Several people—” (that, he knew, was a euphemism for “I”)—“several people are not sure that the law was wise in the first place. Am I making myself clear?”

  “No”

  “People...” She sounded distressed. Why was she so intent on telling him these things? Was it, in her eyes, a roundabout way of telling Mickey? “People are convinced that, before, the Significant would never have passed that edict. He likes His city to be colorful. Color—and energy—are Okimako’s lifeblood. Repression is not. It’s so difficult to explain! One does not usually have to! We...we follow the Significant because he is the Significant. Not because we are forced to. A law like this is an insult to our intelligence.” Distractedly, she sipped her tea. “Although sometimes, these days, my opinion of my countrymen’s intelligence is not so high as it once was!”

  She lapsed into silence. It was her sense of aesthetic propriety, not her sense of morality, that was outraged, he thought. Sentimental or not, Okimakoans were sensualists before they were anything else. (It was what made them a force to be reckoned with. How could mere morality ever stand against such unabashed materialism?) And he could see how deeply the stark black figures of the Disciplinarians, like blots on the richly colored cityscape, might pain Fumia and others like her. He had never met a people so proud of their civilization. Ferupians grumbled constantly: about the police, the rain, business, taxes, each other. Maybe this was because their national identity was secure enough that they didn’t feel the need to brag about it. But one also had to remember that in contrast to the Kirekuni Empire, Ferupe was aging, a geriatric nation. Could it be that she had long ago used up her lifeblood—all the qualities Fumia had mentioned as specific to Kirekune—and now she was graying?

  An unappealing concept. He shied away from it. The one really relevant thing she had said hit him, then. He almost stammered in his haste to get the words out. “Before. Fumia. Before what?”

  A loud hiss and a smell of charring issued suddenly from the griddle on the burner. Fumia sprang up. Shaking her head, she scraped the small, fat pancakes onto a plate and plunged the griddle into the water basin. Clouds of steam puffed up. She inspected the pancakes. “Burnt! I’ll make more, of course...I am so embarrassed...”

  “Queen, no!” Crispin said. The thought of waiting another ten minutes to eat was insupportable. “I’m sure they’re fine. They smell fine.”

  “I am a bad cook, of course, but not usually so bad as this...” She set about dividing the pancakes onto two plates placed on the counter. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “Sometimes I have a hard time convincing my mother that simply because her Prince Charmings have gained an amount of influence over our esteemed Ruling Significant, that is no reason—it is still not acceptable—for her to dress in homespun. The Children all do, you know, even on the hill. Some of them even spin the thread themselves. I would admire them for sticking by their principles, if it were not that everything else makes it painfully obvious that the spindles and so forth are no more than an affectation. It’s all right for some of them, I suppose, the young ones who’d look good in a flour sack; but my mother... She would have to give up rouge, too, of course, and eyepaint and corsets and all that sort of thing. And I’m sure you understand that in our business, it is very important for the madame herself not to look her age.” She came back to the table, carrying the plates and a vase of chopsticks. “What do you think it is we sell, Crispin?”

  Crispin selected chopsticks from the vase, furiously translating. She was already eating, her right hand in her lap, the chopsticks in her left conveying tiny morsels of pancake in rapid succession from plate to lips. She chewed as noisily and fastidiously as a cat. “Sex, I suppose.” He could not see how it was relevant.

  She smiled, looking at her plate. “We sell youth. The girls’ youth, and the clients’ own, returned briefly to them.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “There are no mirrors in the love suites unless they are specially requested in advance.”

  “Really.”

  “You haven’t been properly shown around the house, have you?”

  “Only the downstairs.”

  “The lobby. Pah. It is impossible to convey any real message through the decor of a waiting room. The most one can hope to achieve is good taste.”

  “I never thought of it like that,” Crispin said absently. He had finally succeeded in decoding her previous speech. So that was the secret that had been eluding him, or at least one of the secrets. The Significant Himself had apparently fallen under the influence of the Glorious Dynasty. Interesting! He had to thank her for cluing him in, but he felt sorry for her: she obviously yearned so deeply to speak her mind that she had to resort to confiding in a foreigner. He was dependent on her family and thus in no position to condemn her for her opinions even if he wanted to. And yet she was still incapable of speaking without reservation. She had slipped her revelation across backhandedly, like a package of illegitimate substances, before proceeding to babble of other things.

  It was necessary to pay full attention to the chopsticks in order to manipulate them successfully. He managed to get a piece of pancake into his mouth. Rice stuck together with egg, bits of something green: typical Kirekuni cuisine. “Delicious. My compliments to the cook.”

  “It’s nothing,” Fumia said softly.

  “I would be most grateful if you’d show me around the house sometime. I would love to see any rooms you’ve had a hand in decorating.”

  “If you wish.”

  Her eyes were lowered. He thought he saw the hint of a smile on her mouth as she finished eating and dabbled her fingers in the little bowl of water.

  “Is it true?” he said suddenly, wondering if she had been leading him on. “That the Significant has been corrupted by the culties?”

  “I should not use those words if I were you.” As she rose to clear away the plates, he saw her face slacken for a moment. Outside the windows, the sun shone blue-bright into the dusty little yard. The shadow of the house had shrunk. The statues, with their intertwined limbs and stony grimaces, looked agonized—as if they were clutching each other in the throes of pain. Even in the kitchen it was no longer cool. He understood why Fumia chose to do her cooking at dawn.

  High-heeled, perky footsteps sounded in the hall. “Fumiaaaa! Good morning! What’s to eat?” Zouy entered the room, simultaneously brushing her hair and putting on makeup—the brush held in her tail, the jar of paint in one hand, and a hand mirror and applicator in the other. Her eyes (one kohled, the other not) widened as she saw Crispin. “Ooooh. M’sieu Kateralbin.”

  Her lips gleamed red and her dress was immaculately laced, the bows at her décolletage as neat as if she had been gift-wrapped—yet Crispin felt as if he had witnessed something he should not: the final phase of the process that transformed the Akila women from real people into decorous dolls. Seeing Zouy like this was like seeing her half-skinned. The very sight hurt like the touch of a finger on a flayed limb. She was flushing. Petal pink spread upward from her neckline to her hairline, deepened to rose, and continued to grow darker. She ducked her head. Swaths of black hair slid forward around her shoulders.

  “My—my apologies,” Crispin stammered, “for being—” For being what? For being in the kitchen when she had not expected him to
be? For being male? For being here at all? When he didn’t know just what element of Kirekuni protocol had been breached, how could he salvage the situation?

  Then, miraculously, Fumia was behind him, taking his arm in a light, firm grip, guiding him around the immobile Zouy and into the hall. Crispin found himself absurdly conscious of the older woman’s body and of the heavy perfume she wore. It was like an incongruous breath of night.

  “My apologies,” she murmured, facing him. “That was indecorous of her.”

  “Oh, it’s all right,” Crispin said, staring. Her black chignon fit into the black pattern on the green wallpaper, and in that complex, dim frame her face floated, a suspended marble, enigmatic almost to the point of divinity. Her lips parted. Crispin could not bear for her to speak. Zouy had left the door of the anteroom ajar. He muttered some excuse and dashed for it. Behind him, he heard Fumia’s tinkling, intolerable laughter. After the bright kitchen, the anteroom—really no more than a glorified stairwell—seemed pitch-black. He collided with Mickey, who was descending the stairs as stealthily as a burglar. Mickey staggered back against the banister. The high-collared sleeveless tunic that he wore bared his arms; muscles stood out like string as he gripped the rail. His face was bony as an urchin’s under the shock of reddish brown bristles.

  “Your fucking family is driving me crazy!” Crispin hissed at him in Ferupian, and pushed past, taking the stairs two at a time. He burst into the bedroom and slumped back against the door. As he came to himself in the blessed stillness, he found that he was gripping the hilt of his dagger.

  Nothing moved between the four pastel walls. On the dressing table stood a clutter of discarded girl things: empty cosmetics containers, a statuette of a veil dancer, a rose quartz inkwell, a childhood doll, broken hair sticks in a broken vase. So far, Crispin had refrained from poking, fearing to discover further evidence of the room’s most recent occupant, but on an impulse he went to the table and opened the drawers. They were all empty except for the bottom one, in which he found a metal pipe, its bowl stained with soot, and a little leather pouch, both items disingenuously wrapped in a length of red silk. He opened the pouch and sniffed. The next minute he was stifling coughs; his head reeled and for a moment he feared he would pass out. He retained just enough presence of mind not to drop the pouch. Shakily, he resealed it and put it back.