by Ann Maxwell
Credits drained precipitously from her OVA until she managed a desperate twist of energy that made a whole row of markers flash into incandescent silver. Though startling, the effect was not unprecedented; the computer of Chaos was known for its wry sense of the improbable. Nonetheless, there was a murmuring on the fifth level that was echoed by the crowd growing around the crystal ziggurat. Gradually, other games stopped. Gamblers and dilettantes flowed toward Chaos like a gigantic amoeba progressing from one viscous pseudopod to the next.
Rheba barely noticed the casino’s slow transformation. The curling patterns of power on her hands were visible now, glowing softly, pale gold against the rich brown of her skin. She scratched the backs of her hands absently, totally absorbed in her strategy. For the sake of appearances she programmed her computer from time to time, but her success depended on other less obvious skills. Whistling quietly, she wove tiny increments of energy inside the transparent ziggurat.
Her circlet purred, signaling an end to programming. The players paid the ante. The instant that her credits were placed, Rheba’s circlet chimed and whispered of changes: Jal and the other players had matched the pot in order to change the rules; player number 7 would now play nude or forfeit.
Rheba looked at the number 7 glowing on her computer and grimaced. She stood up and stripped quickly, knowing that pragmatism rather than voyeurism motivated the others. They assumed that she had some electronic means of cheating concealed beneath her flaring, multicolored robe.
Naked and unconcerned, she cast aside both her outer robe and her brief crimson ship clothes. She sat and studied the markers while casino personnel studied her clothes. The searchers found a few personal weapons and the packet of expensive but otherwise ordinary gemstones. They did not find anything that could have been used to influence the Black Whole’s sophisticated computer.
“The earring,” said Jal coldly.
Rheba punched a query into her console. The answer flashed back. Smiling, she looked up to the kingseat. “Ear decorations are not considered clothing.”
Without hesitating, Jal tapped his console and matched the pot ten times over, allowing him to change the rules without recourse to the rest of the players. The crowd quivered and cried out in pleasure, a single organism focused on the credits glittering inside the clear ziggurat. Rheba’s circlet chimed and explained the new rule: All decorations must be removed by player number 7.
She reached up to the intricate fastenings of her Bre’n earring. It pierced her ear in seven places, both as decoration and as surety that she would not lose the carved Face depending from the lobe of her ear. The Face swayed, turning. No matter which angle of view, there was always someone in the carving, aloof and haunting and most of all sensually alive.
Before she turned over the earring to the casino employee, she punched another query into her computer. The OVA figure by her number plummeted as the game console spat a closed silver circle into her hand. She fastened the circle into her hair. Licensed to kill, she faced the casino employee once more. The earring dangled hypnotically between her fingers.
“I value this. Don’t damage it.”
The employee carefully took the earring, scanned it with exquisite machinery, and found only the molecular patterns associated with fossilized bone.
“Nothing, Trader Jal,” said the employee.
“Satin?” snapped Jal to someone behind Rheba.
Rheba turned around and was startled to find the tiny black woman standing as close to Rheba’s feet as she could get.
“Psi, almost certainly,” said Satin with a graceful, dismissing gesture. “Yet none of the psi blocks have been bribed.” She looked up. “Where do you come from, smooth child?”
“A planet called Luck.”
Satin laughed, a sound as sleek and cold as polished steel. She turned back toward Jal and waited in amused silence. Jal stared hard at Rheba.
“It would have been cheaper to talk to me while I was still innocent,” observed Rheba. “Forfeit, Trader Jal? I’ll settle for what I came for—information, not money.”
“Your tongue needs trimming, bitch.”
“That’s four things we have in common—yours does too. Do you accept my offer?”
“Forfeit?” Jal made a harsh sound. “No, smooth blond cheater. Never.”
“A side bet, then,” she said, curbing her temper.
Jal looked interested. “What are you wagering?”
“Answers.”
“Too vague. Three weeks bonding.”
Rheba blinked. If she won, Jal would be bonded to her for three weeks, virtually her slave. If he won, she would be bonded to him.
She would have to be very sure not to lose.
“Three days will be enough for my purposes,” she said, not bothering to conceal her distaste for the man in the kingseat.
“But not enough for mine.” He leaned down toward her, smiling unpleasantly. “Three weeks.”
For an instant, she wanted to flee from those dark eyes boring into her. She desperately wished Kirtn were near, a solid strength at her back. Then she remembered why she had come to Onan. The need to find others of her kind had not changed. And Jal wore a Bre’n carving.
“Done,” whispered Rheba.
Even as she spoke, the pot increased ten times over and the rules changed for a third time. Colors vanished from the markers. As the colors faded, so did Rheba’s means of winning the game.
II
Rheba looked at her OVA reading. She had just enough to match the pot ten times over and thereby change the rules. Unfortunately, Jal had enough credits in his OVA to match even that pot ten times over and still buy drugs for everyone in the casino. Whatever rule she made, Jal could afford to unmake.
Credits drained suddenly from her OVA. Jal had programmed a matching series of threes and circles so quickly that no one had time to intervene. Before he could repeat the coup, a sixth-level player programmed counterinstructions. Jal’s progression of shapes and numbers was irretrievably scrambled by the shrewd attack, but the damage to Rheba was done.
Silently, she dropped from fifth to fourth level. She ignored the cold wash of fear that made her skin prickle and concentrated on discovering a way to beat Jal’s game. Making and holding black outlines was different—and more difficult— than merely changing the colors of existing shapes. She needed time to adjust, to learn.
Before she had done much more than measure the extent of her weakness, her circlet chimed and sweetly spoke of diminishing credits. She had to descend to the third level or leave the game.
“Forfeit?” inquired Jal in a bored voice.
Rheba stood between levels, staring into the ziggurat as though considering the offer. She frowned and scratched the back of her left hand, wondering why it was so difficult for her to make and hold outlines. She could do seven or eight at once, but it was difficult and dangerously slow work.
“Forfeit,” urged Satin in her quiet voice. “Save what’s left of your OVA. Jal isn’t a pleasant master, but he’s better than being broke in Nontondondo.”
Rheba barely heard the advice. She contemplated Jal’s markers, saw the pattern emerging in them, saw that one bet would complete his series. To defeat him she would have to create seven times seven markers with seven different shapes, and do it in less time than it took for Jal to instruct his computer on the winning sequence. Forty-nine shapes. Gods, it would be easier to suck out all the energy and leave a transparent void.
“Forfeit,” murmured the crowd, echoing Satin.
Most people had bets on Trader Jal, a favorite among the habitués of the Black Whole. To them, she was a diversion, a lucky innocent whose luck had failed. Her hair stirred, strands sliding one over the other with a subtle susurration of power.
“No. I’m staying.”
She slid into the third-level seat and programmed a flurry of instructions into her console. The crowd murmured and shifted in surprise. Rheba had just swept the pot, betting every credit she had th
at for a period of fifteen seconds she could block each grouping of primes that any or all players tried to make. It was an impossible, suicidal wager.
Silence expanded out from the ziggurat. Circlets breathed instructions into players' ears. Behind privacy shields, fingers poised over computers. A chime announced the beginning of the game.
The markers vanished.
Frantically, futilely, players programmed their computers. The ziggurat remained empty of shapes. Players banged fists and consoles against the ziggurat’s lucent surface, but no markers materialized. There was nothing in the center of the ziggurat except gold numerals counting off the seconds remaining in the bet. Four, three, two, one.
Zero.
The light permeating the ziggurat ebbed until all levels became orange, signifying the end of the game. The pot and Trader Jal belonged to Rheba. All she had to do was find her way past the bettors before anger replaced disbelief.
Quickly, Rheba pulled on her shipclothes, fastened her earring and gathered up her robe. The crowd watched soundlessly, still stunned by the sudden reversal of fortunes. Rheba glanced up at the kingseat. Jal smiled. She concealed a quiver of distaste beneath the colorful folds of her robe.
“We’ll talk on my ship,” she said in a low voice.
For a moment, Jal remained the still center of the room’s silence. Then he came to his feet, and silence shattered into exclamations of anger and unbelief. Rheba looked out over the multicolored tide of upturned faces, sensed Jal climbing down from the kingseat behind her back and felt very vulnerable.
“Cheater,” muttered a second-level player.
The sentiment was echoed on all but the kingseat level. Jal merely descended, smiling as though at a joke too good to share. Rheba began to wonder who had lost and who had won—and what precisely had been wagered. Insults and imprecations were called in many languages as Jal bowed condescendingly in front of her.
“Your three-week bondling suggests that you move your smooth, cheating ass out of here,” he said very softly. “That disappearing act cost the crowd a lot of credits.”
Unhappy voices swelled and broke around Rheba like angry surf. Deliberately, she looked only at Jal, ignoring the crowd edging in around her. “You first, Trader,” she said, pointing to a nearby exit.
“And leave your back uncovered? Bad tactics, smoothie.”
“Turning my back on you would be worse. Move.”
Jal pushed through the crowd, breaking an uneasy trail for Rheba. The crowd surged and ebbed restively. Eight steps from the exit, a gray figure crowned with lime-green curls leaned out of the crowd. The woman yelled something in a language Rheba did not know. Obligingly, Jal translated the obscenities for Rheba. She ignored the incident until a gray hand poked out of the crowd. The gun grasped in the gray fingers needed no translation.
Rheba’s foot lashed out, kicking aside the weapon. It went off, searing a hole through someone else’s flesh and the black stone floor. The crowd erupted into a mob that had neither head nor mind, simply rage and weapons looking for excuses to be used.
She fought grimly, sucking energy from the casino’s lights, weaving that energy into finger-length jolts of lightning. People close to her screamed and tried to push away, but the mob had become a beast that ate everything, even its own young. The people who went down were trampled. Those still standing did not seem to care about the bodies thrashing beneath their feet
Rheba kicked and shocked a narrow trail to the exit, leaving a wake of tender flesh, until she stepped on something slippery and went down. She screamed, air clawing against her throat, calling Kirtn’s name again and again. Her hands and aims burst into incandescence as frantic flames leaped from her fingertips to score the legs of people trampling her.
A questing Bre’n whistle split the chaos. Rheba poured all her desperation into her answering whistle. She tried to get to her feet, knowing Kirtn could not find her at the bottom of the churning mob. A brutal heel raked her from forehead to chin, sending her down in waves of dizziness.
Abruptly, the mob parted. Kirtn appeared in the opening, shouting her name. Furiously he tore off pieces of the mob and fed it to itself until he created a space where he could lift her to safety. When he saw her bruised, bleeding body, his face became a mask of Bre’n rage.
“Burn it down,” he snarled. “Burn it!”
Energy scorched through Rheba as the Bre’n’s rage swept up her emotions. Overhead, high on the casino’s arched ceiling, she drew a line of violent fire.
The Black Whole’s “nonflammable” draperies, decorations and games had not been made to withstand the anger of a fire dancer goaded by a Bre’n. The ceiling became a white hell. Instantly casino force fields went down, allowing exits in all directions. The mob fragmented into frightened people seeking the safety of Nontondondo’s cold autumn streets.
No one noticed a tall furry carrying a smoothie away from the fire. Rheba watched the flames with interest, her chin resting on Kirtn’s hard shoulder. The ziggurat housing Chaos was a spectular staircase of flaming colors that reflected the progress of the fire. There was a great deal of fire. Too much. Once ignited, the casino’s accouterments burned with an almost sentient fury.
She concentrated, trying to draw energy out of the fire before it could spread farther than the Black Whole. But the fire had grown beyond her, rooted in its own searing destiny. When she tried to gather up energy, she got too much, too soon. Fire leaped toward her, blistering her fingers in the instant before she gave up and released the monster she had birthed. She sucked on her burned fingers and tried again to quell the flames.
“Stop it!” growled Kirtn, shaking her. “You’re too young to handle that much raw energy.”
Rheba struggled against Kirtn’s strength but could not free herself. “Just how else will I learn?” she asked in a strained voice. “There aren’t any more fire dancers to teach me—remember?” Then, immediately, “I’m sorry, Kirtn,” she whispered. “You lost as much as I did when Deva burned.”
Kirtn’s cheek touched the silky, crackling radiance of Rheba’s hair, silently forgiving her. “You’ve learned too much already. More than a young fire dancer should have to know. You should be doing no more than lighting candles and cooking food for akhenet children, not—”
“Cooking alien casinos?” finished Rheba wryly. “I seem to remember a certain Bre’n telling me to burn it to ash.”
Kirtn looked startled. “Did I?”
“You did.”
He frowned. “I must have lost my temper.”
“You looked very fierce,” said Rheba, only half teasing. “I’ve never seen you look like that, not even the day Deva burned.”
He said nothing. Both of them knew that Bre’ns were subject to berserker rage, a state called rez. In rez, Bre’ns destroyed everything around them, most especially themselves and their Senyasi. Rez, while not exactly a tabu subject, was not a comfortable one.
Rheba shivered suddenly. She had lost her robe somewhere in the melee and would not be warm until she got to the ship. “We’ll make better time to the spaceport if you put me down.”
Kirtn measured the people surrounding them. No one seemed to be watching. He sat Rheba on her feet, saw her shiver, and gave her his cape. She accepted it with a murmur of thanks and no guilt; Kirtn’s fine “fur” was as efficient as it was short
Rheba walked as quickly as she could without attracting attention. Her left ankle complained of maltreatment. She ignored it. Time was all that stood between them and intense questioning by local police—or worse, the Yhelle Equality Rangers. She had not taken out an arson license, an omission that would cost her freedom if the Rangers caught up.
“You haven’t asked me about Trader Jal,” she said.
Kirtn made a noncommittal sound. His slanted eyes picked up every shade of gold as he searched the streets and byways for trouble.
“I won.”
He glanced down at her without slowing his stride. His lips parted in a small sm
ile, revealing the serrated edges of his teeth. “How did you manage that, little dancer?”
“I cheated. But I didn’t have time to collect my winnings.”
He chuckled. “Too bad. We could use the credits.”
“The credits are registered to our OVA, if the locals don’t block the account. But it was Jal I didn’t collect. He’s mine for three weeks.” She smiled proudly up at her Bre’n.
He stopped and looked down at her, his face expressionless. “You’re old enough to take a pleasure mate,” he said evenly. “I’d hoped to have some say in the selection, but I suppose that custom died with Deva.” He shrugged. “If Jal is what you want, I’ll go back and get him for you.”
Rheba’s mouth opened and closed several times before she found her voice. “Pleasure mate!” she screeched. “I wouldn’t use that cherf to wipe my feet! By the light of the Inmost Fire, are you in rez?”
Kirtn’s expression remained bland, wholly unreadable. “The casino guard spent a lot of time explaining to me how virile Jal was,” he said, turning away and walking toward the spaceport with long strides, “and how much chased—and caught—by local women.”
She stared after him. “That guard has his head wedged so far up he can’t see!” she shouted after the receding Bre’n. “Have a little faith in your akhenet’s basic good taste!”
“My akhenet cheats,” called Kirtn as he turned a corner and disappeared. The sound of his laughter floated back to her. “Hurry up, little cheater.”
She cursed and hurried after him. When her foot slipped on a piece of rotten fruit, her weakened left ankle took the brunt of her fall. She smothered a sound of pain and exasperation as she pulled herself back to her feet. She rounded the corner at a fast hobble. Hands reached out of the darkness, grabbing her. In the instant before she screamed, she felt the familiar texture and strength of her Bre’n.
“I turn my back on you for a minute and you’re in trouble again,” he muttered against her hair. “And you say that you’re old enough to have a pleasure mate. Gahhh!”
Rheba chose action over further argument She ran her fingernails around the rim of Kirtn’s sensitive ears, tickling him as she had done since she was four years old and had discovered how to get the better of her huge teacher.