by Jo Clayton
When she reached the wharves and plunged into the noisy swirl of life there, she sighed with relief. There were three ships being. on and off loaded, wharfmen hauling crates and barrels and bales, exchanging incomprehensible comments on what she guessed was a game of some kind, talking in a local slang she hadn't a clue about, seabirds keening, cats squawling, assorted rodents hissing and shrieking, thuds and creaks from the ships and warehouses, intermittent roars from the crane mo-, tors and a crackle-sputter from small motorized flats darting about like startled waterbeetles. There were metal barrels with fires built in them, several portable cookshops with hot drinks and fried whatever adding their lot to the tapestry of smells, spilled spices, pungent woods, numberless, nameless THINGS redolent of mystery and mighthave-been. It was all lively and loud and built layer on layer atop the generic effluvium of salt sea shores.
She threaded through the anttrails of the lading crews, stopping and starting, a dance where she was doing all the work while her oblivious-partners went their way unimpeded and unconcerned. When she reached an empty wharf, she stopped to look around.
An old man sat there on a sacking pillow beside a pile of netting that was discolored and desiccated as a heap of dead leaves after three years rotting. His face was bristly with a two-day crop of stubble; he had a stained salt-andpepper mustache and straggly gray eyebrows, faded eyes of an indeterminate color somewhere between watery urine and weak tea. His coarse yellowish-gray hair was braided into a club that hung low enough to bump against his withered buttocks whenever he moved his shoulders. His legs would have been crossed at the ankle if he'd had ankles; one leg was gone below the knee, the other was missing a foot. A pair of shears, a ball of cord, and a shuttle lay on the planks beside him. As she walked toward him, he was pulling a hank of netting into his lap, inspecting it for holes, breaks, and frayed patches. He came across a ragged tear, took up the shears, cut away broken ends, then began the tedious process of mending the hole. He didn't seem to be working especially quickly, but he was cutting loose and pulling more net past before she reached him.
She dropped onto the wharf beside him, sat with her legs dangling over the edge.
He gave her one quick morose scan, then went back to staring out the mouth of the harbor, his bony hands working on their own with no prompting from him.
A seabird dropped like a stone, plunged beneath the surface, came up with a fish caught sideways in its beak. It paddled lazily on the small, subdued waves until it was in the lee of the wharf, then it tossed the fish up, opened wide to catch it as it fell. And squawked with rage as another of its kind came swooping by, stole the fish, and went flying off with it. Shadith laughed, the sound surprised out of her. She got a hooded look from the old man, a derisive twitch of hismustache that reminded her briefly of Rohant before he darted the kanaweh. The local said nothing, just sent a gob of spittle arching into the water.
Shadith scratched at her chin; old goat wasn't overawed by her godhood, not him; she was just some nosy foreigner. Sweet sweet xenophobia, almost made her feel at home, running into that again. "Town uphill looks like someone pulled the plug; where'd everbody get to?"
"Don't they work where you come from?" His voice was rusty, as if he spoke at most two three words a week; his hands continued their steady drive, servo-mechanisms with enough internal memory they didn't need help from the mainbrain.
"Now and then they did a bit," she said, "now and then. A bit here, a bit there."
His mustache twitched. Now that was almost a smile, bet it herniated his whole face. Should I push it? Na. Rohant old lion, get your butt down here, hanh?
She sat watching the fisherbirds soar and drop into the littered water, sometimes after fish, sometimes after bits of garbage bobbing on the low waves. From the scum marks on the piles the tide was a handspan below high and dropping. With three moons to mess things up, they must get different tides every day, the local ephemeris 71 be the size of an encyclopedia. No wonder we came at a creep the last part of the trip. One thing about being reared in a desert, you don't get a feel for things like tides. Talking about deserts and people brought up in them-crawl out of bed, you lazy cat, I'm tired of being kicked about, it's time we started taking hold.
A rusty, grating noise broke her from her thoughts, old man clearing his throat; she looked around. He set the shears down, let his hands rest on the net, still for once, as he fixed a malevolent glare on her. "Word is you workin t'night, singin on the comnet."
That was the first Shadith had heard of it, could have been something Rohant worked out… Without a word to me. Tsoukbaraim, I get my hands on him, nil rip those dreadlocks out one by one. Teach him to take advantage like that. No fool sells me, but this fool herself. Ahlahlah.
She clicked her tongue, shook her head. I suppose it could be the locals assuming things. We'll see… we'll see..
She blinked at the old man. "Sing for my supper, hmm?"
"Nought's free, Wanish." He dropped his eyes to the net, began working on the hole. "You and yours, you pay goin rates like eveh'one else." He said it with considerable verve and she knew she'd been wrong. He didn't question what she was supposed to be, he simply saw all authority types as outside himself, battening on him and his like leeches, with privileges he'd never have and they hadn't earned. Seeing her forced to work for her perks was something he contemplated with a vast surprise and a vaster satisfaction. If there were an appreciable number like him, Asteplikota's rebellion wasn't going to move like he thought it would. Idiot woman! this place may be revolting but it's not where the revolution's stirring. Hmm! if the lameness of a pun's any measure, I'm about as low as you can get.
She swung her feet and stared out across the water, inventing maledictions for Ginny in half a dozen langues and trying to rhyme them inside and across those langues. She didn't want to think about what the songfest meant or why she was being squeezed into it, she didn't want to think about Ginny up there watching everything, jerking their strings, worse than that creep guard, she didn't want to think about him looking at her whenever he wanted to, whatever she was doing.
Sometime later there was a change in the noise on the working wharves; she twisted around to see what was happening.
Looming head and shoulders over the smaller locals, cats pacing beside him, Rohant came striding toward her.
She pulled her legs up, got to her feet. "'Bout time," she said.
He blew his nose into a handkerchief like a small tablecloth, tucked it over his belt, and glanced past her at the ancient. "Come on," he said. "Out there on the horn, I think." He pointed toward a pile of black rocks near the mouth of the harbor. "No ears and some sort of lookout, I can see the railings."
"Yeh, I got a thing or two to say."
He flared his nostrils. "Rat been telling tales?"
"So it WAS you sold me."
With Dyslaera courtesy keeping his teeth well covered, he grinned at her and ran the tip of his forefinger claw down her cheek, touching her so delicately all she felt was a faint tickle. "If someone had to play the fool, better you than me."
"Shithead."
"Make that mister shithead, sir, business agent."
"I'll do that. Soon's it rains up."
Cats pacing majestically behind them, they strolled to the end of the wharves, turned onto a flagged pathway and followed it to the lookout.
***
Shadith hitched a hip on the top rail. "Well?"
Rohant stepped over Nagafog and leaned on the rail beside her. "It was strongly suggested we contrive some way of paying transport and lodging with a hint they'd throw us back if we jibbed."
"Poor little naif, browbeaten by the local grubbers, I don't believe."
"Mebbe so mebbe so, thing is, this is a big enough deal there'll be Islander yips flying in."
"Flying
"What I like about you, kitcat, don't need to draw you diagrams."
"Flat out?" It wasn't really a question, merely a probe to confirm Rohant was thinking wh
at she was. She chewed on a hangnail and scowled at the caked scum and decaying seaweed that marked the highpoint of the tides. It seemed obvious to her that the only chance they had was grabbing the fastest flitter they could find and making a run for the… what was it? the Kasta? whatever, and brute-forcing it, shooting their way in and rummaging for the skipcom. If she'd learned anything at all from her dealings with Ginny, it was that finessing was worse than futile. Everything they'd tried so far got them wound tighter and tighter in the web.
"We have a choice?" Rohant used the toe of his boot to massage Nagafog's ribs; the big male opened his mouth, let his tongue hang, and purred like a magnified kitten. Jealous, Magimeez came to her feet and stood rubbing her head against the Ciocan's leg.
"None I see. But it's so clumsy, so dumb." She wrinkled her nose. "Embarrassing even, devolving to primitive like this."
"Gets your back up, you can sit here and moan about grace."
"All I can see to moan about is it probably won't work. How you rate the chances?"
"Between null and nil."
"We see eye to eye on that." She flung her head back and glared into the cloudly blue arching over them. "To EYE to EYE to EYE." She shivered, hugged her arms across her breasts. "Where's Kikun?"
"Sleeping."
"Swamp thing took it out of him."
Minh
"So when's this singsing?"
"Short while after sundown, they've set aside an hour for us to fill, you mainly." He ran his boot toe along Nagafog's ribs, looked slyly round at Shadith. "There's a reception afterward. Touchy-feely for the yips. At least that's what I gathered."
She made a face at the sky, slid from the rail and brushed the dust off her behind. "Assuming Ginny doesn't decide to ground us, Kikun fades and acquires a flier while we're dancing our jig?"
"Nay. Assuming nothing. They try to stop us, we go through them."
"Them?"
"Whoever."
Shadith shivered. "I hate this."
"Don't we all." He dropped his hand on her shoulder, squeezed. "We do what we have to, Shadow."
"That make it better? Never mind. What happens the rest of the day?"
"You get a look at the broadcasting studio, then you get to figure out the program, then you get to rehearse."
"I get? Hanh! You're in this, too."
"Me?" He looked uneasily at her. "I run a business, not a dance troupe and I couldn't carry a tune if you wrapped it up and handed it to me."
She ran ahead a few steps, turned and danced backward, examining with exaggerated appreciation his big body and noble head. "Maybe not, but ahhh my dear, oooh my friend, what grand scenery you'll make."
"Hross-lan." He grabbed for her, missed as she skipped back, giggling. "Scenery, my foot." Scrambling after, her, he kicked into one of the flags, nearly fell over, but righted himself before he landed on his face.
She giggled again, prudently widened the space between them. "Foot, foot, talking of foot. Foot in mouth disease, foot in… uh!" She took another step back, fell over Magimeez who'd slipped around her and crouched on the flags, landed on her behind and temporarily knocked the wind out of herself.
Rohant scooped her up, threw her over his shoulder and strode off down the path, ignoring the fists beating on his back. When he reached the first wharf, he set her down. "Behave yourself, kitcat."
She balanced a minute between annoyance and amusement, then opted for laughter. "Just you wait, Ro, just you wait…" She inspected him, noted the sudden apprehension on his broad face and laughed again. "Come on, let's go inspect that damn studio."
WATCHER 5
CELL 62
The woman sitting at the sewing machine glanced up from her work, gaped at something across the dick-locking room. The worker next to her noticed the lessened noise, snatched a look, then began staring on her own. The infection spread. Then the first woman got up and walked out, leaving her machine and her work without a word, ignoring the shouts of the overseer. With the same intensity of purpose, the nineteen other women got to their feet and walked out.
CELL 63
The Nakiskwen Gospah scowled at the screens that took transmissions from his Na-priests and the kanaweh sleds they rode by courtesy of the Nistam who might be a brainless idiot but who had the survival instincts of a wolverine.
The roads were freckled with walkers, heading north, heading south, all of them bound for the Pilgrim Way.
He turned to the Na-priest standing beside him, black vizard pushed back, the exposed face more of a mask than the mask itself. "One thought one had kept the rumors out," he said, his meager features twisted into a scowl.
The Na-priest shrugged. "One has. One has canvassed the Confessors and the Wik priests. No whispers. None. Every Wik in the country is clean. Someone would have heard something about the tattlers if that is how word got through about the Avatars."
"If they are Avatars and not a fraud dreamed up to catch us napping. What news from your sources in Kwamitaskwen? One wouldn't put anything past that old buzzard."
"Nothing there. He's got the same problems at a slightly less advanced stage, seems to be a factor of distance from the Mistiko Otcha Cicip."
There was a crack of laughter from the Gospah, then a series of snorts. "Same problems, eh? That does bear thinking about. Oh yes, it does."
CELL 52
The Gospah of Kwamitaskwen listened to the whining complaints from the largest of the Plicik landlords, concealing his extreme dislike of the man with an ease born of long practice.
"… what's one going to do with one's stock, huh? huh? Tell one that, huh? huh? They walk out on one, they don't need to expect one is going to take them back, one two three just like that, compensation, there has to be.compensation."
The Kwamitaskwen Gospah tented his hands and smiled blandly at the Plicik thickhead. "One is sure one can arrange for your neighbors to take them in." He ignored the sudden dismay on the oaf's face as he visioned the loss of all his Maka serfs and how much it would cost him to replace them. "One needn't bother oneself about this small Inconvenience. As for compensation, wall, it is the Pakoseo Year, so proclaimed from the Heart of the World and Landlaws are suspended for the duration. Ah… one's memory becomes more impossible every, day, but one seems to recall one has not received your assessment yet. No problem one is sure. Obviously your accountant was among those who left."
CELL 1
The room was huge with massive beams in a complicated criss-crossing web of polished wood and broad tapestries on the walls that absorbed the sound from the bright throng circulating slowly about conversation knots like antibodies in an arterial flow. And in the middle of all that brightness and glitter, the small drab form of the Singer. And the larger but still drab form of the Ciocan, the two cats beside him, restless and ill-tempered enough to back off all but the most determined. Kikun was nowhere in sight.
CELL 2
Only one moon of the three was up, Sisipin almost full and not quite at zenith yet. The night was bright with him, the few puffs of cloud shimmering llike mother-of-pears. Beside the Great Hall there was a terrace blasted out of the mountain; it was littered with ground vehicles and the sleek closed flits of the visiting elite. There were no guards; no one in Atehana would dare trespass or pilfer up here.
Kikun was a shadow and sometimes less than a shadow, even to the snooping EYE; there were times even the EYE lost him. He wove among the flits, putting a hand on one, then another and another and so on until he chose the one that pleased him; he tried a hatch, opened it with no difficulty and slid inside. He was out again almost immediately, running downhill to the center of the town.
He turned into a small deserted public garden where he'd cached their gear late that afternoon, all but the harpcase. He gathered it up, started trotting back to the terrace and the chosen flit.
Pukanuk Pousli paced restlessly back and forth along the width of the Bridge. He was bored with inaction; the ground agents became more redundant as each day pas
sed, he had little part in the acquisition and the editing of these scenes and less interest in them. He stopped before the central cells and scowled at Kikun laboring up the mountain under his load of luggage. "How long you goin to let 'em run… sir?" The last word lagged perceptibly behind the rest.
Ginbiryol Seyirshi pretended to ignore this minor sniping. He could have plotted the growth of the Lute's insolence point by point, almost used it as a calendar to mark the stages of an operation. Once the endgame began, Puk usually came to heel like any hunting dog at the prospect of action, but there was a serious question in Ginbiryol's mind whether the pattern would repeat this time. And a fear stirring in him that Luck had turned on him, that the Three he had assembled were something more than they seemed; Asteplikota and that woman had said it, Avatars seldom knew what they were. His mind told him that was nonsense, but a coldness spread through him every time he looked at Cell 1 and its neighbors. Having dealt with that fear by once again refusing to acknowledge its validity, he sat watching the eddies of the party and Kikun's maneuvers and chewing over what he should do. Shadith. She was a focus of this… this unpredictability, this growing sense of disaster just ahead. He loathed having to abort large sections of a schema and losing much of the nuance he'd been cultivating, but-this aspect of his plan had been going sour from the moment that girl showed up. He was approaching the point where the danger she represented would outweigh her usefulness; in fact, that moment might be now. He lay back in the chair, closed his eyes. He was not accustomed to so much vacillation; ordinarily he saw the right path like a red thread through the weave of events and acted on it without doubt or waffling. Now… it was like fighting through a polluted fog, nothing to tell him where to go or what lay ahead of him.