by Ann Maxwell
M/dur snapped his fingers together, the J/taal way of expressing agreement.
“All right,” said Rheba. “We’re inside the sanctuary, healthy, and willing to eat ashes in order to get out of the Fold. In short, we’re Adjusted. How do we get their attention so they’ll take us out of here?”
The J/taals exchanged looks, but M/dere remained silent. No one had an answer for Rheba.
Fssa whistled sweetly in her ear. “In the time I’ve been in the Fold, I’ve noticed that every thirty-eight days there’s a lot of activity around the well. The ceiling changes and people come down. Slaves who are gathered around the well divide into groups. The ceiling comes down again. People and some slaves leave.”
“But how are the slaves who leave chosen?”
“I don’t know. I could ask Rainbow. It knows a lot of—”
“No!” said Kirtn and Rheba together, not wanting a rebirth of her debilitating headaches. She added, “I doubt if that rock learned anything buried in the ground.” Frustration crackled around her in a display of temper that would have brought a rebuke to a much younger fire dancer than she was. “Why in the name of the Inmost Fire didn’t Trader Jal teach us something useful?”
“He made it plain that you would have to play more spectacular fire games if you wanted the Loo-chim to buy you,” said Kirtn, remembering the Loo-chim’s dismissal of her creation of fire images on their transparent chamber walls.
“Fine,” she snapped. “But how will that help you to stay with me? How will that help the J/taals to stay with us so we can keep our promise to them? And Fssa? What about him?”
One of the clepts snarled chillingly. M/dur looked up and spotted a small, angular man lurking around the edge of the piece of ground they had marked off as their camp. The clept snarled again, showing a flash of blue-white teeth.
“Please,” said the man in hurried Universal. “Not to harm this miserable slave. I’m born of a weak species, no more aggressive than flowers, not a bit.”
M/dur looked at Rheba. The J/taal did not understand Universal, and Fssa had not been told to translate for the stranger.
“What do you want?” said Kirtn, standing up.
The man made a low sound of fear as he measured Kirtn’s size. He turned to Rheba and said pleadingly, “Gentleher, all I want is out of this kaza-flatching Fold!”
Some of the words might be unfamiliar, but the sentiment was not. Rheba’s lips twitched in a barely controlled smile. “Come away from the bush. We won’t hurt you.” Then, to Fssa, “Translate for the J/taals, snake.”
The man came forward with tiny steps, bowing to her every other instant until he looked like a stick bobbing in a wild current. “Gentleher, my name is Yo Kerraton Dapsl. Dapsl. please. So much easier among friends and I very much want to be your friend,” he said fervently.
She looked at the small, sticklike figure moving crabwise out of the brush. His skin was very dark, more purple than brown, stretched across bones barely softened by flesh. He stood no higher than her breast, making even the J/taals' compact bodies seem tall. His eyes were the color of white wine, with no pupil. The Fold’s murky light seemed far too bright for him. It was a miracle that he had survived the trek from the wall to the well.
“How did you get this far, Dapsl?” said Kirtn, echoing her thoughts.
Dapsl moved in obvious distress, closing his eyes and bowing his head. A clept growled. “I—that is—it was—” He ran his hands over his thin face and frail arms. “It was—I don’t—”
“It’s all right, Dapsl,” she said gently. “It must have been terrible for you, but you survived. You’re safe, now.”
Dapsl shuddered so violently that his Fold robe quaked. “Yes, that’s right,” he said quickly. “I survived, didn’t I? After all, I’m here so it’s obvious that I survived. Yes. Quite clever. Yes.”
Rheba looked at the man, then at Kirtn. “He’s a little mad, isn’t he?” she asked in Senyas.
Two clepts snarled, then howled, watching Dapsl with hungry silver eyes. He made a frightened sound and began muttering prayers to purple gods.
“Silence the clepts,” said Rheba to M/dere. “He’s about as threatening as a flower.”
M/dur muttered to a clept. Fssa’s acute hearing translated the comment, but only for Rheba’s ear. “He says that he’s known some pretty deadly flowers.”
“Yes,” said Rheba impatiently, “but what can Dapsl do to us here?”
M/dere and M/dur exchanged a long silence, then he made a gesture that was the J/taal equivalent of a shrug. She turned toward Rheba. “Whatever the J/taaleri wishes.”
Rheba turned back toward Dapsl. “What do you want from us?”
“A simple exchange, gentleher. My information for a place in your Act.”
“I don’t understand.”
He smiled, revealing ivory teeth. “I know. Is it a bargain, then?”
Kirtn’s hand moved to her arm, subtly restraining. “He may be child-sized, and nearly as helpless,” whistled Kirtn, “but he plainly is an adult of his species. Don’t let your instincts rule you.”
She looked into Kirtn’s eyes. The impatient comment she had been about to make died on her lips. “Mentor, will I ever stop learning from you?” she whistled in Bre’n.
He smiled and stroked her arm beneath the loose Fold robe. “No one is mentor here. We all learn from each other—or die.”
She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. Dapsl made a sound that could have been distress or disgust. Kirtn looked up with clear golden eyes.
“Is it a bargain?” repeated Dapsl.
“How long have you been in the Fold?” said the Bre’n. “What do you know about the Loo that might help us? Why can’t you help yourself with all your information? Why do you need us?”
An emotion that could have been anger or unhappiness distorted Dapsl’s thin face. “If I answer all your questions, I won’t have anything to bargain with, will I?”
“If you don’t answer some of our questions, you won’t have any bargain,” shot back Kirtn.
Dapsl hesitated. “My information is good. I’ve been out of the Fold. I’m back here as . . . punishment. But I know what you need to know. I know how to get out of the Fold!”
“As slaves or as free men?”
Dapsl’s laugh was shrill. “Slaves, of course. The only free men who leave here are dead. Didn’t you know, furry? There’s no escape from the Fold—except one.”
Kirtn grunted. “Keep talking, small man. We want to get out of the Fold.”
“Then you have to be chosen. And to be chosen, you have to have an Act that is good enough to perform at the Loo-chim Concatenation.”
“What does that mean?”
“Our bargain.” The voice was prim, inflexible. “I won’t say more without a bargain.”
Kirtn and Dapsl stared at each other.
“I could peel the truth from it,” said M/dere calmly, her eyes as cold as a clept’s. “I could peel it one layer at a time. That wouldn’t take long. It’s such a little thing.”
Fssa’s translation went no farther than Rheba’s ear. “In return for information,” she said hastily, “you want to be part of our Act?”
“Yes,” said Dapsl eagerly. “It’s my only way out of the Fold.”
She stared at Dapsl, weighing him. She closed her eyes. It was easier that way. His voice was adult; his body that of a child. Akhenet instincts were inflexible where children were concerned. “Kirtn?” she whistled. “Shall I put it to a count?”
He whistled a brief note of agreement.
“J/taals,” she said. “Count yourselves for and against Dapsl’s bargain.”
The silence was brief. M/dere spoke, but her eyes were on Dapsl the whole time. “We must have information, J/taaleri. And if he causes trouble, we can always feed him to the clepts.”
Dapsl shuddered, for Fssa had made sure that the translation carried to the little man.
“Kirtn?” she asked.
“
Yes. We need information.”
Fssa whistled a soft affirmative in her ear, a sound both Bre’n and Fssireeme at once.
“Then it’s done,” she said, turning toward the frail, frightened man. “Your information for a place in our Act—whatever that might be.”
Dapsl sighed and sidled closer to her, trying to stay as far away as possible from the clepts and the J/taals. As he sat down next to her, his hand slid up beneath the sleeve of her robe. She flinched away. Instantly two J/taals closed in. Dapsl squeaked.
“Don’t sit so close to her,” said Kirtn. “And don’t touch her at all unless she invites it. Otherwise, you’ll make them nervous”—he gestured toward the J/taals—“and me angry. We’re very careful of her, you see.”
Dapsl licked his lips and looked at the large hand so close to his throat. “Yes, of course, she’s something to be careful of, very luxurious, soft and golden.” He looked up. “But I’m a man, not a furry. Surely she prefers a man’s touch to— ahhhk!”
Kirtn’s huge hand closed around Dapsl’s robe, lifting him up and then thumping him down on the other side of the Bre’n, away from Rheba. Air whuffed out of the little man’s lungs. The J/taals’ blue-white smiles flashed as Kirtn bent over the frightened man.
“No,” said Rheba gently. “Let me.” The fire dancer leaned across Kirtn’s lap until her face was on a level with Dapsl’s. “You’re less attractive to me than those prowling clepts.” She pointed to Dapsl’s long, intricately braided cranial hair and his smooth, purple-brown skin. “That no more makes you human than Kirtn’s beautiful velvet body makes him animal.” Her hand caressed Bre’n lips, stroked across his muscular shoulders, savored his textures with obvious pleasure. “Do you understand me, small Dapsl?”
“Perversion,” he whispered, swallowing.
Her hair seethed. Fire danced on the fingertips that reached for Dapsl. It was Kirtn who intervened with a clear, derogatory whistle that made Fssa quiver in admiration. The snake hissed soft laughter beneath her restless hair.
She smiled despite her rage, but her voice was not gentle when she spoke. “Don’t touch me, Dapsl. Ever. You won’t like what happens. If you can’t accept that, walk away. Now.”
Dapsl’s eyes narrowed to pale horizontal slits. She thought suddenly of the J/taal’s comments about deadly flowers. Then his eyes relaxed and it was as though the moment of anger had never been.
“I would never touch a female who kaza-flatches,” he said, his smile not at all pleasant.
Fssa refused to translate the little man’s words when she asked what “kaza-flatch” meant. He directed a burst of sound to Kirtn, however, and his skill was so great that she did not hear kaza-flatch defined. The Bre’n did, however. His hands flexed with eagerness to be around the small man’s throat.
“Start talking,” snarled the Bre’n, “before you choke on your information.”
Dapsl looked at Kirtn’s hands and began talking in a high, rapid voice. “All the slaves in the Fold potentially belong to the Loo-chim. But the Loo-chim won’t take just any slave. You must have an Act that is good enough to be performed at the Loo-chim Concatenation.”
Rheba started to speak.
“It will be quicker if you don’t ask questions until I’m finished,” said Dapsl sharply. “The buyers come to the Fold, review the Acts, and decide who goes and who stays. Getting out of the Fold is only the first step. Then you have to compete with all your owner’s other Acts. Only the top three Acts go to the Concatenation. The rest are broken up and sold to whoever has money to buy. But once you’ve appeared at the Concatenation, the Act can only be sold as a unit, and can only be bought by a member of the Loo aristocracy—perhaps even the Loo-chim itself. It’s a great honor to be owned by the Loo-chim,” he added, pride clear in his voice.
Kirtn muttered something graphic and unflattering in Senyas. Fssa translated with embellishments until Rheba shook him and told him to behave. The snake subsided with a flatulent noise directed at Dapsl.
“I don’t expect animals to appreciate what I’m saying,” Dapsl muttered. “Why didn’t Jal send you to the Pit instead of the Fold?”
“Jal?” said Kirtn sharply. “How did you know that we were put here by Trader Jal?”
“Why—ah—it’s—” Dapsl squeaked and scuttled away from Kirtn’s hands. “It’s the talk of the city! Everyone knows that a new gold-masked furry was brought in and that the male polarity is hoping the animal dies before it can practice its furry perversions on the female polarity.” He glanced frantically from clepts to J/taals to Kirtn, then moaned and regretted his birth. “Gentleher, please! Control your animals!”
Rheba’s eyes glowed with unborn firestorms, but all she said was, “You were speaking of Concatenation, Acts, and aristocracy. Keep talking on those subjects, small man. If you speak about animals again I’ll burn your greasy braids off.”
“If your Act is good enough to get you out of the Fold, but not good enough to get into the Concatenation, we’ll be sold to people too poor to buy machines.” Dapsl moaned softly. “It’s a terrible loss of caste. And hard, very hard. Even the strongest don’t live long. You’re crippled in one leg and chained in the other. No escape, no rest.” He moaned and put his head in his hands. “No escape, no escape, no . . .”
Rheba sighed and felt her rage drain away. It was hard to be mad at such a pitiful creature. Just because he had the personality of a cherf with a broken tooth was no reason to frighten him half out of his ugly skin. “The Act,” she prompted gently. “What makes a good Act?”
“Why, displaying your Talent, of course.” Dapsl’s voice was high, surprised. “You must have a Talent or you would have been sent to the Pits.”
Rheba looked at Kirtn, remembering the female Loo-chim’s lust. “Is mating in public considered an Act?” she asked dryly.
Dapsl smiled eagerly. “Oh, yes. When performed by ill-matched animals it’s considered a high form of comedy. The Gnigs and the Loradoras, for example. The female is so huge that the male has to—”
Rheba cut him off with a gesture of distaste. “No. That has nothing to do with our Act.” She frowned and looked at the J/taals. “M/dere, were you chosen as gladiators?”
“I don’t know. When our J/taaleri’s ship was captured, we fought until he was killed. Then we were unemployed, and could not fight.”
Fssa’s murmur continued even after the J/taal woman had stopped talking. “If the slaver saw them fight, I’m sure he brought them here for blood sports.”
“Did you fight for the Loo-chim to see?” asked Kirtn.
“No. The slaver merely displayed a construct of his capture of the ship.”
“That would be enough,” murmured Fssa.
The J/taals did not answer, except to say, “We’ll be gladiators for you, if you want. You are the J/taaleri, and fighting is our Talent.”
“No,” said Rheba quickly. “If the Loo found out that you were employed by me, they would probably kill all of us. Besides, blood sports aren’t much better than public mating. I’d rather not have to participate in either.” She remembered the J/taal’s graceful, swift and intricate exercises. “Gymnasts! I’ll make fire shapes, Kirtn will sing, and you’ll do a tumbling act.” She turned toward Dapsl. “Is that the sort of thing the Loo-chim would enjoy?”
“Too cluttered. Just you and the big furry would be much better.”
“No,” said Kirtn and Rheba together.
“All of us,” she continued, “or none of us. That’s the way it is.”
Dapsl grimaced. “A variety Act. They’re the hardest kind to stage effectively. But,” he brightened, “they are unusual. Most slaves don’t get together. Language problems or fear or both. Yes,” he said, absently chewing on the end of one of his thirty-three intricate braids, “it just might work.”
“And you,” said Kirtn, “what will you do for our Act?”
“Me? Why, I’ll manage it, of course.”
XII
“No, no. no!” s
houted Dapsl, yanking on a handful of braids in frustration. “All that grunting might impress barbarian enemies, but the Loo-chim will find it extremely unaesthetic. Do it again. Quietly!”
M/dur said something that Fssa wisely failed to translate. After the first few days, Rheba had made it clear to the snake that his job was to prevent rather than to incite trouble. So the Fssireeme ignored Dapsl and fluttered a metallic blue ruff that was as functionless as it was pretty. Kirtn smiled, but did not tease Fssa; like the snake, the Bre’n had been on the receiving end of a sharp lecture from Rheba about the necessity of being civilized to one another. Unfortunately, Dapsl had not learned the lesson.
“Ready?” said Dapsl, beating time with two sticks he had scrounged. “On four—a-one and a-two and a-three and a-four.”
The J/taals formed a diamond with M/dere in the center. In time with Dapsl’s beat, they executed an intricate series of backflips, leaps and lifts that ended in a pyramid that was three J/taals across and two high. On the next beat the pyramid exploded into five J/taals doing individual gymnastics that wove in and out of each other with dazzling ease. At least it appeared easy, and so long as the J/taals smothered grunts of effort, the appearance remained intact.
“Better,” said Dapsl grudgingly, “but must you women sweat so much? Ugh. It mats your fur.”
In lieu of translating M/dere’s response, Fssa preened his sparkling new ruff.
Dapsl sighed and pulled halfheartedly on three of his braids. “Again. On four. This time do it s-l-o-w-l-y. Try to make it appear that you are f-l-o-a-t-i-n-g. And don’t frown. You’re enjoying yourselves, remember? Sweating, grunting, grimacing beasts are for the fields, not the Loo-chim stage.”
M/dere snarled and looked toward Rheba, but the fire dancer was deeply involved in building stage props made of flame. She did not notice the J/taal’s silent appeal.
When Rheba raised her hands, a line of fire followed, creating an arch. She moved her fingers. Brilliant blue vines writhed up the arch, held trembling for a moment, then exploded into a shower of golden blossoms. The arch became an incandescent cage big enough to hold a Bre’n. Her hands danced, braiding light into silken lines with which to hold a raging beast.