by Ann Maxwell
She frowned. “That might work. We’ll tell Dapsl that Rainbow is one of the First People, and thus a legitimate, intelligent part of the Act. Then no one could take it away from us, once we appeared in the Concatenation. But—ice and ashes! How I wish that rock didn’t split my mind!”
Fssa waited, a study in subdued metal colors.
She ground her teeth. “All right Ask it. But make it short.”
Fssa whipped into his Rainbow communication mode. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the lightning that lanced through her brain while Fssireeme and the Zaarain library talked. As she had hoped, the exchange was brief. She opened her eyes and stared coldly at Fssa, her head still shattered by alien modulations.
“Rainbow doesn’t want to rearrange itself, but it will. It’s terrified of dismemberment, you realize.”
“Yes,” she said grimly. “I understand. If you hadn’t told me it was alive, I’d have torn it facet from facet the first time it curdled my brain.”
Fssa’s sensors winked as he ducked and turned his head. “It’s very sorry that it hurts you. We’ve tried to find a frequency that doesn’t, but we haven’t been successful.”
She sighed. “I noticed.”
From across the camp, the J/taals stirred. If they were bothered by headaches, they gave no sign. Dapsl rolled out from beneath his robe, shrugged into it, and began cursing the clepts. The ceiling turned to sullen brass, then slowly began bleaching into smoky white.
“Another day,” muttered Kirtn, flexing his hands suddenly. “I don’t like being a slave, fire dancer.”
“I’m unAdjusted myself,” she said, watching Dapsl stalk over to the blue fountain to drink. “When I think that animated purple ashcan is considered human and you aren’t—” She did not finish. Nor did she have to.
Suddenly her hair leaped and writhed like dry leaves caught in a firestorm. She staggered, her eyes blind cinnamon jewels alive with energy.
“What—?” Kirtn caught her and tried to calm her frantically lashing hair. “Rheba!”
She did not answer nor even hear. She was caught in a vortex of energy building, twisting, spinning rapidly and then more rapidly until it was a solid cone of raw power dipping down from the ceiling. Abruptly, the turmoil ceased. A large group of people stood by the well. They were richly dressed, arrogant of expression, and Loo to the last tint of blue in their skins.
“The buyers,” said Kirtn, shaking Rheba. “Fire dancer. Fire dancer!”
His command for attention ripped through her daze. She blinked, held by untrammeled energy that had come down, touched. She stretched yearningly toward the ceiling, as though she would touch it with her fingertips. Her hair crackled with the wild power of a fire dancer who was overflowing with energy. Then she turned toward the Bre’n, who watched her with concern shadowing his yellow eyes.
“I’m all right,” she murmured, smiling dreamily. “That felt . . . good. I’m renewed. I haven’t felt like that since I sat in the center of a fire dancer circle.”
Slowly, Kirtn’s concern became relief. “Good. But be careful. Energy like that can ruin you as quickly as it can renew you.”
She blinked again, as though awakening after a long sleep. “There would be worse ways to die. I wonder if that’s what the other dancers felt when the sun bent down and seared them to the bone. . . .”
Dapsl’s screech cut through the air. “Line up! Line up! The buyers are here! Line up!”
Four guards stepped out from behind the group of buyers. In clipped Universal, they spelled out the rules of what was to come. The ceiling amplified their voices so that everyone within the two-circles sanctuary could not avoid hearing the words.
“You will perform your Acts for the buyers within that circle.” An area the size of a large Loo stage suddenly glowed in front of the well. “Those Acts that are chosen will leave with their buyers. Line up!” People from all over the sanctuary began walking toward the well. Within minutes, nearly one hundred people had gathered. Rheba and Kirtn stared, for they had not seen a quarter of that number coming and going from the well. All of the people appeared healthy—at least, they moved easily enough. She counted fourteen distinct racial types before she gave up. Then with a sudden surge of hope she looked among the people again. As though he shared her thought, Kirtn stared through narrowed eyes. But no matter how hard they both searched, they saw no one that resembled either Senyas or Bre’n.
Dapsl’s shrill enjoinders to action grated on their ears. “Get that snake under control before someone steps on it and ruins our Act. You—Kirtn! Listen to me! Be sure those clepts stay out of the way during the Act!”
Kirtn ignored the little purple man and picked up Rainbow. It disassembled in his hands. Crystal faces shifted slowly, as though pulled by magnets, then reformed along new alignments. When it was finished, Rainbow looked like a rough crown. New facets glittered in the light in a suitably barbarous display. Some of the facets were patterned with engravings. All were vivid, colorful.
“Good for you,” muttered Kirtn, although he doubted Rainbow could understand him. Gently, he set the crown on his head. Rainbow shifted subtly, fitting his head with a grip that was both secure and comfortable. Very soon Kirtn no more noticed Rainbow’s presence on his head than Rheba noticed Fssa’s presence in her hair.
The clepts moved between Rheba and the watching Loos.
“The clepts!” shrieked Dapsl. He turned on Rheba and the snake, who was invisibly woven into her hair. “Get those kaza-flatching clepts out of the way!”
Her lips parted in a smile that was more warning than reassurance. “The clepts are part of the Act.”
“But they can’t—we haven’t practiced—it’s impossible!”
“They worked while you slept. Whether the results please you or not, they are part of the J/taals and therefore part of our Act. Now shut up, little man. If Fssa can overhear the Loo buyers—” Abruptly she stopped speaking. Dapsl did not know the extent of the Fssireeme’s skill. Nor did she want the irksome little man to find out. She did not trust him. He thought like a slave and she did not.
Dapsl chewed angrily on the frayed end of his longest braid, muttered a comment in a language that Fssa did not know and went back to harrying the J/taals. Beneath the cover of Rheba’s hair, the snake transformed a part of himself into a sensitive receiver aimed at the gathering of Loos.
“Can you hear anything?” she murmured, her voice so low that it was little more than a vibration in her throat.
Fssa, who had left a coil of himself around her neck, picked up the vibrations as easily as he did her normal speech. He could speak in a soft whistle to her, listen to her answer, and still not lose track of the Loo conversations. He shifted, reforming the listening extension of himself until it bloomed like a spiky silver flower below her left ear. “Nothing yet. I’ll try a different mode.” The flower widened, petals reaching toward the Loo. “Got them!”
She was silent then, letting Fssa drink up every foreign syllable he could.
“Line up!” snapped Dapsl. “Only an unAdjusted slave would keep a Loo waiting. These buyers are aristocrats only one birth away from the Imperial Loo-chim.”
As though summoned by Dapsl’s words, the Loos walked forward, pacing the line of waiting slaves like generals reviewing troops. At intervals one or another of the Loo signaled. The guards stepped forward then and summarily removed one or more slaves from the line of hopeful Acts.
“Rejects,” hissed Dapsl. “Their smell probably offended, or their color, or perhaps the Loos are merely bored with that particular race. Get those kaza-flatching clepts in line!”
Rheba ignored Dapsl’s nervous dithering and watched the approaching Loos. Their flimsy robes turned and flashed in the cold sunlight, revealing embroideries in tiny precious stones across the very sheer cloth. She wanted to believe that the robes were barbaric, but could not. Like the room where she and Kirtn had first seen the Imperial Loo-chim, the robes were luxuriant without being crass.
Two by two the traders passed, each pair composed of a chim, a man and a woman so like each other as to be identical twins. Rheba looked at their faces—shades of blue, broad-cheeked, high-nosed, arrogant. There was neither sympathy nor simple interest in those paired dark eyes, until the seventh buyer, a male with no twin female on his right hand.
“Jal,” breathed Rheba. “Trader Jal!”
XIV
Jal smiled and bowed sardonically. “Lord Jal,” he corrected. “All buyers in the Fold are lords and ladies of Loo.”
Rheba looked from Jal to the blue-skinned pairs appraising the ranks of slaves. “But there’s just one of you.”
Jal’s expression revealed a loss so terrible it almost made her forget how cruelly he had used her and Kirtn. She understood what it was to have everything and then lose it in a single irrevocable instant. She looked away, unable to face herself reflected in his dark eyes.
“My chim died,” said Jal. It was all he said. It was enough. He looked coldly at Dapsl. “What’s this, Whip? A menagerie?”
“An Act, my lord,” Dapsl said quickly, bowing so low that his purple braids danced in the dust. “A unique Act for the amusement of the Loo-chim and the lords and ladies. We have a story to tell in song and motion that will make you laugh and cry and sigh with wonder. It’s the tale of—”
Jal cut off Dapsl’s prepared speech with a curt motion. The Loo lord who had been known to them as Trader Jal looked over the gathering of Bre’n and Senyas, Fssireeme, and J/taals and clepts. An expression that could have been rage distorted his features. “All of you?” He moved as though to motion the rejection of J/taals and clepts.
“Lord—” said Dapsl softly, urgently, twisting his braids in distress. “Lord, this is a unique Act, one that will gain you much pride at the Concatenation, and much wealth afterward. Before you decide, please, let us perform.”
Lord Jal looked at Dapsl for one long, unwavering moment. The small man tugged silently at his braids, holding Jal’s eyes for an instant, looking away, then looking back with silent pleas.
“Done,” said Jal. “But if I don’t like the Act, Dapsl, you will never leave the Fold.”
Dapsl made a small sound of despair and looked at Rheba. “Please,” he said, speaking so quickly that his words tumbled over one another, “please think again about including the animals. Just you and the big furry, a single dance of kaza-flatch, even the songs. Yes—the songs. You can even keep the snake. No one will notice and then I’ll—”
“No.” Rheba’s voice was as smooth and hard as a river stone.
Dapsl wilted. He glanced at Lord Jal, but found no comfort in that broad blue face.
The lords finished their review of the slaves. Whether they had previously divided the slaves among the aristocracy, or whether each chim only reviewed slaves it had captured, no one else spoke to or even looked at the Act that included Rheba and Kirtn. When the lords turned away and walked back toward the blue chairs that had appeared along one curve of the stage, Rheba let out her breath in a sigh. Kirtn looked over and touched her arm in mute understanding. Each had been afraid of being rejected for no better reason than the whim of one of the blue chims.
Dapsl waited until the chims had withdrawn beyond the range of normal hearing. Then he turned on Rheba. His voice was so tight with rage that it squeaked. “If your perverted tastes have cost me my freedom, I’ll make your life as short as your ugly little nose!”
Rheba looked at Dapsl’s own long, slender nose. It was quivering with his bottled rage. She smiled. “You’re a Fold slave. You couldn’t leave the Fold without an Act. How am I responsible for your freedom or lack of it?”
“Because Lord Jal sent me here to help you, you ungrateful kaza-flatch!” He breathed deeply. “Now, bitch, stand here and watch the Acts. There shouldn’t be any real competition here, but watch anyway. You’re so stupid that anything you learn has to be an improvement!”
Kirtn’s hand dropped onto Dapsl’s shoulder. The touch was gentle. The possibilities were not. “Cherf,” said Kirtn, “I’m tired of your voice.”
Dapsl’s small face turned unusually purple but he said nothing more. Instead, he pointed toward the stage. One of the groups had walked into the half-circle reserved for the Acts. The lords and ladies conferred among themselves briefly, then a chim waved for the Act to begin.
There were three people standing on the Act place, facing the semicircle of indifferent chims. The three were smooth-skinned, with an abundance of red hair that grew like a crest down the median line of the skull and fell in long waves down the back to the hips. They were not obviously male or female, and alike enough to be clones. At an unseen signal they began to sing. Their voices were pleasant, their harmony good, and their songs . . . uninteresting. The beat was invariable, more like a chant than anything else. Like the red crest flowing to their hips, the trio’s songs were not far removed from barbarism. After the third song, one chim snapped its fingers suddenly. Another chim leaned closer to the first and began speaking in low voices.
Rheba felt Fssa stretch toward the conversation with senses that were far more acute than any human and most machines. She waited with outward patience, as did everyone else, while the chims talked. At last she dared a soft whisper to Dapsl.
“What’s going on?”
Dapsl answered without moving his head to look at her. Even his lips barely moved. His voice was softer than hers. “The chim who captured this trio revoked Concatenation hold.”
“Explain.”
The small man’s eyes flicked to Rheba at her curt demand, but his face did not turn. “All Fold slaves are potential Concatenation Acts. The chim just signaled that it no longer believes this captured trio good enough for the Concatenation. You see, each chim can enter only three Acts at the Concatenation.”
“Is that other chim trying to buy them for its own Acts?”
Dapsl made a sound of disgust. “No chim would buy another’s rejected Act. They’ll be sold for pleasure or work or pain, whichever the buyer wants.” He looked critically at the three. “Separately, they might be quite a novelty among kaza-flatchers. That hair has possibilities. . ..”
Rheba did not ask what the possibilities were. She was sorry she had asked anything at all. She watched while the two chims bargained over the three slaves. Then, apparently, a deal was struck. Two guards stepped forward and separated a pair of red-haired barbarians, leaving one behind.
At first the slaves seemed too stunned to respond. Then they realized that they were being sold separately, and not as an Act. They turned to the chim who had first enslaved them and spoke rapidly in a language that Fssa either did not know or did not want to translate. Their voices became thinner and higher, more desperate, but neither the chim who had enslaved them nor the chim who had bought them seemed to notice.
The ceiling came down in a simple flick of power that licked up one guard and two barbarians in the time it took to blink. When the remaining barbarian realized what had happened, he went berserk. His scream of rage and pain made Rheba’s hair stir in reflexive sympathy to another creature’s agony. Before the cry was complete, he leaped at his guard. His unsheathed claws seemed to gather light at their sharp tips.
There was a surge of energy from the ceiling. The barbarian froze in mid-leap, feet off the ground, claws extended, screaming silently, imprisoned in a column of raw light. His hair rippled and writhed, replicating the currents that tormented him. His lips peeled back, revealing serrated teeth and a tongue that bled from being bitten through in the first instant of agony. But the blood never touched the ground and the screams were silent, imprisoned in the column as surely as he was.
“Stupid,” said Dapsl, watching the barbarian writhing silently, tortured and held by currents of pure force. “He was told not to attack anything within the two circles. Now he knows why.”
“Will they kill him?” said Kirtn, his own lips peeled back in a silent snarl.
“Oh, no. They don’t have their
price for him yet.”
Rheba shuddered and willed herself not to collect any of the energy that seethed around the barbarian. She thought she could bleed off some, perhaps even enough to prevent his torture, but she suspected that if she was discovered it would be her death sentence. Yet she did not know how much longer she could watch and do nothing.
“No,” continued Dapsl, “they won’t kill him. They won’t even damage him.”
The column of energy sucked back into the ceiling with no more warning than it had come down. The barbarian fell to the stage in a boneless sprawl. The guard who had been attacked looked at the chim who had bought the barbarian. The chim spoke softly. The guard picked up the barbarian, waited an instant, and the ceiling came down again.
The two remaining guards brought out the next Act. The rest of the slaves stood without moving, afraid even to breathe. Rheba remembered the time she had first entered the two circles, when she had considered attacking the guards at the well. She was profoundly glad that she had not.
The guards stepped off the stage, leaving behind four small people who looked like racial cousins of Dapsl. From their hair they drew long purple strands, wove them together with dazzling speed, and presented for the chims' inspection a hand-sized tapestry.
“Is weaving considered an Act?” asked Kirtn, his voice too low to carry beyond Dapsl’s ears.
“Any skill can be made into an Act. Namerta,” he added, “is known for its weavers.” He stroked his intricately braided hair with pride.
The various chims fingered the Namertan’s creation. Special care was taken by the chim who had captured the Namertans. That chim stroked, examined, and picked at the hand-sized patch, then spoke to the guards. The ceiling flexed and the Namertans vanished.
“Accepted,” said Dapsl, his face proud. “Namertans are almost always taken to the Concatenation. No other race can equal our skill at weaving.” He added a phrase in his own language.