by Jo Clayton
"My answer depends on yours."
"I don't like talking about… well, I suppose we're in this together and it doesn't matter all that much what that b'naduk finds out. I mindride. Just animals, people are too complicated, signals clash, give me a headache. Anyway, what I mean is when I want, I look through eyes, hear through ears not mine."
Kikun came ambling back; he dropped on his stomach beside her, pulled loose a strand of grass and began chewing on it. After a minute he spat out the shreds of fiber, reached round the harpcase and began stroking her arm.
Shadith ignored him. "The man who snatched us, he's got this pet, a simi; he likes to keep it around. I used its eyes and ears and picked up a few things. Names, for one. Ginny the Boss, Puk the Lute, Ajeri the Pilot. This world's called Kiskai."
Kikun wrapped his hand about her wrist, rubbed it against his face, smelled at it. She tried to pull away, but his long slim hands were much stronger than they looked. She jerked at her arm, glared at him.
An image bloomed in her head: Kikun and not-Kikun, painted in black and white stripes, head to toe, dancing with energy and an oddly attractive awkwardness, naked and grossly priapic, grinning amiably, that friendliness a little frightening.
Another image: Her original body, angular, phthistic, long throat distended though she couldn't hear the song, vague figures behind her, her sisters dancing the dreams in that song.
"How…" she said, aloud; she glanced at Kikun. His eyes were closed, there was a satisfied smile on his face. She shook her head, pulled her hand free, reserving her questions for later. "Where was I?"
"Ginny."
"Right." She thought a minute then laid out what she knew of their captors, finished, "You know who he is, what he's doing, don't you."
"Think so. About a year ago there was a man come to Voallts Korlatch in Spotch-Helspar. We deal in rare beasts, train exotics for pets and stock hunting preserves, that sort of thing. Though I say it myself, we are the premier traders in the field. So we have a lot of scouts out looking for new material and a lot of stock on hand. The man, he called himself Zradit do Watts, he wanted to buy old records from us, worlds we looked into where the beast stock wasn't worth the bother collecting. Which we explained to him were Family property and not for sale at any price. Then he wanted to buy a pair of Ri-Tors, offered half again what they were worth. Don't know if you know the Ri-Tor. Hard to keep captive, tend to die on you trying to escape. About ten times the size of Magimeez here." He stroked the sleek black head of the cat pressed against his thigh. "Happens we had a pair, but they were already contracted for. Besides, we want to know who we're selling to, we like to know where the beasts are going and how they're going to be used. So we do background checks on our clients." He grinned as he met Shadith's skeptical gaze. "It doesn't cost us, csezheri. On the contrary. Very much on the contrary. Those that can afford what we provide are the kind to run like scalded moggies from any smell of sleaze. We don't have to pander to the sickheads which suits us just fine."
"If you say so. Watts was Ginny?"
"No. Agent. Go-between."
"I can certainly believe that, he likes his skin, our Ginny."
"Right. But we didn't have much trouble making the connection. Watts' list wasn't long, just slimy, with Ginbiryol Seyirshi perched atop the pile. We took a good look at what we found and we said no thank you, we don't care to deal."
"Why? What's wrong with Ginny, besides him being a murderous kidnapping little bastard, I mean."
He sat rubbing the cat behind its mobile ears and scowling at the sky. "Ginbiryol Seyirshi, entertainment entrepreneur extraordinaire. Phah! The butabek makes snuff-flakes. Torture milked to the last drop. His client lists read like a roll of… hmm, well, say a list of those Voallts Korlatch will not deal with. Hunting is one thing, but slicing up a beast while some mokkus jerks off, that's different. He's also got a thing for offing children. Nice huh?"
Shadith frowned. "That doesn't quite… he likes creatures more than people, the children, all right, he's weird about children, especially girls. Don't get your backhair up, Ciocan. I believe you, it just means he's more complicated than I thought? She moved her shoulders uneasily, not happy with that idea, then shifted focus to another suggestion. "You said his agent wanted Ri-Tors. You think he's planning to exchange you… us… for them? Or maybe he's running out of victims and wants the world list you wouldn't give him."
"No, I'm afraid not. Nothing so simple. I think we're players in one of his Limited Editions. A snuff job on a grand scale, if anything that drunk does could be called grand."
The hawk came wheeling down, lit on the trunk, wobbled a little, then perched there, treading the wicker uneasily, his eyes fixed on Rohant.
After staring at the bird for a long moment, Kikun turned to the meadow in front of him, pounced on a tuft of grass and came up with a small rodent. He jumped to his feet, took it to the trunk, and tossed it to the hawk.
Rohant scowled. "Don't do that, Kikun; I don't want Sassa taking food from anyone but me."
"He won't." Kikun's nostrils flared as he watched the bird tear into the rodent. "You, me, same thing to him." He came back and sat beside Shadith, slender wiry arms draped over his drawn-up knees. "Tell the tale, shi'che'i Ciocan."
"Not much left worth telling. Wars and massacres, plagues and… you name it, he sits up there recording it." He growled, then spent some time soothing the cats; the anger in his voice made them uneasy. The hawk screamed and beat its wings. Kikun chirrupped at the bird and calmed it, though it still stepped nervously from foot to foot.
Shadith scratched at her arm, scowled. "Three people? That's all he's got up there, counting him, you can't count the mercs or the Paems."
"He's got money and drugs and a Talent at twisting people. Given he locates a place in the right mood, that's all he needs. Rumor says he's depopulated half a dozen worlds. For what that's worth." He spat, his dreadlocks moved out from his scalp. "They say he boils down the death of a people to the peak moments, his definition of peak." He spat again, wiped his hands on his knees; his golden eyes narrowed to threat slits as he contemplated Ginny's iniquities. "They say he does one Limited Edition about every ten years, he makes a thousand copies of the show and charges a WorldYear Income for each. And gets it. I think that's why we're here. I think this world is ready to explode and we're detonators. We could be infected with some plague, we could be put here to start a war, you name it, csezheri."
"Sari What a mess. By the way, call me Shadow, hmm? I think you're right. Any ideas what we do about it?"
Kikun laughed suddenly. "He's mad as a wish with its foot in a hole. Hopping. You had better walk very soft, Shadow our friend."
Shadith blinked. "Mindread? You can stretch it that far?"
"Oh, no. It just come to me. Things do that. Now and then, then and now." He blinked at her, looking for the moment as mindless as the little lizard he'd held a while ago. "What is, was, will be, it's all here, in me, in you, Twiceborn. In this also." He pulled a blade of grass loose, handed it to her.
She let the grassblade fall, switched her stare to the wide blue stretch of empty cloudless sky. "Then he's watching right now. He'll always be watching. Listening to everything we say. Whatever we try, he'll know it and can counter it before we can do anything."
Kikun shrugged. "So so."
"Tsoukbaraim!"
Rohant chuckled, bit it off, more anger than humor in the sound. "I figure that doesn't need translating."
"Fill in the blanks," she pulled her hand across her mouth, "any little obscenity you feel fits the occasion. I might as well be back at the Station with that creep herding me."
"What?"
"Never mind." She made a face. "Out of the fryingpan into the ftyingpan. Well, remembering that the little viper's listening, any ideas for getting us out of this?"
"You know Dyslaer?"
"No and even if I did, he's got plenty of translation capacity in that ship of his, it's half kephalos." She shook her head at the
Ciocan's skeptical grunt. "Eighty-three days is a long time, that's the insplit count from the Station to here. I'd 've gone crazy sitting there staring at the walls, so I went mindwalking round the ship, picking up whatever I could. You never know before the moment what you're going to need when. Which reminds me, I have a sinking feeling, if the locals don't kill us he will. He'll make sure there's nothing left to tie him with this place. He's got enough firepower aboard to ash a small fleet. Nasty stuff. Including a worldbanger. I think. Looked like it, anyway, from what I've read."
"Boom," Kikun said. His voice was soft and sad. "Doom. Some say the world will end in ice. Ice is nice, but fire is surer. You have said too much, Shadow twiceborn."
"I said too much when I named him, Clowndancer. All the rest flows from that…" She stopped talking because Kikun wasn't listening any more, he was staring fixedly into the empty sky. Before she could say anything, he went limp, giggling to himself, in some world she had no access to. She turned to Rohant.
The Ciocan shrugged. "Don't ask me. He gets like that when there's a change in the wind." He gave Magimeez a last headrub and got to his feet. "You the only one had a look at the lay of the land, Shadow." He scratched at his mustache, smoothed his thumb over the dangling ends. "Dio! I'm tired of dancing around the obvious. Only way off this world is someone comes and picks us up. You know, I know, the one place we're likely to find a skipcom is where Ginny has his surrogates running this operation and that'll be in the biggest city around. Which way do we go?"
Shadith flung her arms out, let them drop. "East, west, I don't know, either way we get there. The biggest cities I saw were on the two coasts. Mountains." She flicked her fingers at the peaks beyond the tree tops. "I saw two ranges of them, one on each side of this continent, both of them run north/south. Tell me which one we're in, I'll tell you where we go."
Kikun yawned, flipped onto his back. "Backtrack the sun." He laced his fingers over his rib cage and smiled amiably at Rohant, then Shadith. Rohant growled, irritated by Kikun's deliberate obscurity. The wind whipped his mane about his head as he thrust his hands into the pockets of his tunic. "Diol why…" His face went blank, he crumpled to the grass.
Shadith swung around. Three men stood in the shadow of the Whisper tree. One of them held a weapon to his shoulder, he was bringing it round to her. She flung herself to one side, diving behind Rohant's body for its minimal protection while she reached for the hawk, meaning to send the bird at them…
She ran out of time. The stunbeam swept over her and she went down and deep.
WATCHER 2
On the Bridge, the scenes in the cells kept changing, a mosaic of hate and pain and terror.
CELL 20
"Wicikinkatim nanipotima," the street boys chanted, faces blacked with mud-filthy dog, murd'ring hound-slings whirring, petting with pebbles the kipao (street guard) who backed away from the whore who'd tolled him into the alley. Holding his pants up with one hand, he fumbled for his gun with the other, his eyes searching the murky shadows for the taunters; he was young and frightened, greasy with sweat. "Pipo, pipo," the street boys chanted, hidden in the smoky shadows. Pigflea, pigflea. Giggling and whooping, a boy came darting from a doorway and flung mud at the guard's face, went scrambling away as the man clawed at the mud and began shooting at the jeering children he couldn't see. The teener whore dropped flat and crawled away as a second boy rushed silently up behind the guard, snatched the gun away from him and faded back Into the night. The young kipao panicked and started to run. A shot came from somewhere behind, blew his head into bloody shards. The street boys whooped their triumph in wild ululating howls, a boy soprano sang, ''Tocikatim tocikopipo"-dead dog, dead flea.
CELL 21
Flitters whine over a dark huddle of shacks, search lights spear down into the narrow, crooked streets. In the flitters, dark intent faces are lit by the amber glows of the of the control panels, kanaweh all, the Nistam's secret security police.
Light from one flitter flowed over a ragheap In a boarded-up doorway, came sweeping back; the ragman scuttled off, running as fast as he could in a lurching lopsided panic.
The kana handling the light Impaled the tcuttler with it, thumbed a jak stud, triggering a spray of explosive pellets from the gun tied into the light.
"That's another one for us, he said. "Scratch it down, Kaweeshk. Two more and ltoshin buys the beers this week. Come on, Weeshk, let's lob a gas grenade in house that pikshikoshk come out of, see if we can flush the rest of 'em."
"Put a cork in it, Wakso. You know what the Gospah said. Street is fair game, houses we leave alone.
"Damn jerkoff, sticking his twitchy nose in places it don't belong. Let him play with his Na-priests and leave us do our job. I'd like to…"
"Shut up, fool. And pay attention to what you doing, I thought I saw something move down there."
CELL 22
The streetsinger looked carefully around, set out her silverbowls, adjusted the patch over her empty eyesocked and shoved a fragment of wood against the forward wheel of the skateboard she used to get around since she had her legs crushed under a Na-priest's ground car a few years back. She settled the kitskew (a stringed instrument like a lute) on her stumps and began playing a lively air, one meant to draw attention to her. She knew better than to stay long in any one spot, so she'd developed her act to make her impact fast.
"Miowee, Miowee, It's Miowee." The urchin she'd paid was doing a grand job, he'd got his friends to help, they were dancing and clapping and laughing; they probably would have done it without pay because they liked her, but she never took advantage of that-which was why their enthusiasm lasted. "Miowee," they cried, pulling In the crowd to hear her. She increased tempo for a moment, then slid into her favorite complainsong:
Eh, Oppalatin, it's Miowee speaking. You
Haven't been round here lately and we
Have built ourselves some misery.
What, God? You been busy stringing
Cloud to cloud, sick of seeing
Ayawit's fat ass raised In prayer?
Oppalatin, I Miowee do respectfully
Suggest you straighten out a thing or two:
Childs who dine on dreams and drink cold air
Who sell their bodies till their souls
Are no longer there.
Us who fry for saying things that's true,
Who drip our fat on Ay-No-Wit's
Designer spits and dip our tippy
Tosies in his hot and holy coals.
Us who're beat and booted out when all we do
Is ask the bloody bosses for our due
And proper wages. Do you hear me,
God? Is your ear free? Listen!
Eh, Oppalatin, it's Miowee asking.
Do you have a nose, oh God? You
Haven't poked it out in ages. Oh?
Can't stand the smell of blood? Then do
Something 'bout the dogs that make it flow.
Eh, Oppalatin, if you don't know
Them, here they come, I gotta go.
The crowd melted away from around her. The children scooped up her silverbowls and gave them to her, then they ran before and behind her as she dug her sticks into the paving and sent her skateboard racing down the bolthole she'd laid out for herself before she began her song. Behind her she heard a child cry out, she sobbed with rage but she didn't turn back, there was nothing she could do. Nothing but keep singing out her fury and her condemnation of the way things were. Maybe, someday, kipaos wouldn't beat children in the streets.
CELL 23
Chanting in the Oldlangue, the line of Kampriests dropped incense into the half circle of bronze braziers.
Kneeling on a totem inlay, the Kawa totem, a group of Kawa families with infants wafted for the Singing-in and the smoke blessing for their children. Suddenly, one woman gasped, pointed at the streamers of smoke twisting above the braziers. "Them," she cried, "The Three, do you see them? There. Nataminaho. See! See! Beasts beside him, There. The bird ov
er him. And there. Opalekis-Mimo. And there. Nikamo-Oskinin."
As she began there was silence, then another and another cried out Yes, yes, I see them. Eyes widened, went dark as pupils expanded. Even the priests succumbed to the general hysteria and SAW.
CELL 24
A line of dancers serpentined through the mean streets of the Maka Quarter, acquiring new dancers with every undulation of its ever lengthening body. Drummers marched beside them, tapping out the heartbeat of the dance, the support of the song, the ancient street song of the Pakoseo attributed to the Prophet of the first Pilgrimmage.
Children ran with the dancers, a mob of street urchins, blowing crude whistles or swinging bull-roarers, dancing with the Serpent though not part of it.
Women leaned from upperstory windows In the decaying houses, throwing down offerings of grain and bits of cloth and colored paper, a rain of prayer for fertility and empowerment.
Bands of Na-priests and pairs of heavy-armed kipaos watched from side streets, waiting for the order to break up this defiant and patently subversive festival. It would come, they knew it, they just had to wait until the edge was off the crowd, until the miserable Makas had exhausted themselves and their passions.
CELL 1
Shadith lay cuddled next to Rohant, both unconscious, the cats were slung across the Ciocan's legs, also out. Kikun sat beside them, watching events with his usual detachment. They were In a cage made from limbs the site of a man's arm, pointed and pounded into the dirt, net over the top, ropes pulled taut around them and around, knotted and reknotted to each of the uprights. The hawk flew in. uneasy circles overhead, having followed the flier that brought the captives to this clearing in a forest of antediluvian trees forty meters across at the base, the smallest a hundred meters tall. Half a dozen men sat round a fire In the center of the clearing. Several others were moving in and out of the moonlight, busy at obscure tasks. Tvio men stood arguing in low tones, stiff with anger. Sisipin had set long ago, Natamin was a faint glow behind the tree tops, Niskikin was a fingernail crescent directly overhead.