by Jo Clayton
Rohant bared his tearing teeth in a broad grin. "So we take our chances. The Wheel turns."
The Nish'mok nodded. "One expected that." Gelid marmalade eyes moved over Shadith, touched Kikun, moved back to her. "Do you concur? Does the Hunter speak for you, Dancer? Singer?'
Kikun hissed, laughed as he saw the Kiscaid flinch. Shadith stared back at the Nish'mok, her mouth set in a stubborn line.
"I see." He swung the chair around, flicked a switch on the corn. "Nahwac, time is." He swiveled back and stood. "It is apparent one must give you further reason for acquiescence. Come."
They emerged from the empty door-lined corridors into the whip of a wind heavy with rain and the salt tang from the sea. They were on a covered walkway that circled three stories above a barren stony court, a pit without shelter from rain or sun or anything else the weather provided. The Nish'mok waved the guards back, pointed at an arcaded overlook. "Stand there, the three of you. Watch."
Down in the pit a door opened. In groups of two, three, five, prodded by unseen kanaweh, a number of locals, men, women, children, came blinking into the watery daylight like revenants from a graveyard-which they might as well have been. Hostages or rebels, whatever they were, what life was left to them was most probably going to be short and painful.
One of the last arrivals was a youngish woman with a kitkew tied to her back. Her legs were cut off at mid-thigh, she had a black patch over one eye and wild black hair twisted into dreadlocks much like Rohant's. A guard more impatient than the rest booted her out of the doorway, then stood watching as she crawled along on stumps and elbows till she reached the north end of the pit-court where there was fractionally more shelter from the rain.
Several young boys separated from the rest and crossed to the woman, moving with a peculiar sliding, sidling gait-prepubescent, thin and ragged, archetypal street urchins. "Miowee." It was almost a song one boy made of her name. The sound came lightly to the listeners despite the wind, clear and sharp, even amplified a little. "Sing for us, Miowee."
About a third of the adults seemed horrified by this turn; they walked away and clustered in a tight knot at the far end of the court. The rest gathered into a ragged arc about the woman, squatting patiently, waiting for her to begin. It probably would have been more politic if she'd refused them, more prudent to keep quiet and refrain from baiting her captors, but even three stories above her, Shadith could see that she was a woman for whom prudence would always be a second choice.
Miowee looked up at Makwahkik and laughed, an unrepentant, irrepressible sound that mocked him and all he represented. Swinging the kitskew around, she bent over it a moment, tuning it, then she swept a cord and threw back her head, fixing her eyes on the watchers above, challenging them to do their worst. She played a complicated effervescent tune that settled quickly to simplicity, the pit acting like a gigantic sound horn.
Forgetting anger in delight, Shadith clutched the rail and leaned into the sound as far as she dared, shivered with pleasure as the streetsinger's rough contralto filled the horn. "Fire in the streets," Miowee sang: There's fire in the streets The streets fill with dead children Children fight your killers with stones Stones and bones build our revolution Revolution burns in our blood Our blood rises in a drowning tide The tide sweeps away the murderers of our souls Our souls burn with Oppla's fire…
Miowee interrupted the chainsong for a passionate cadenza on the kitskew, singing vowel sounds around and through the voice of the instrument, an endless outflow of pain and anguish with an edge of fury. Shadith vibrated to the anger and the artistry, felt an answering passion rise in her. She sang softly with the singer below, not trying to compete with her, following her lead, then stopped to listen as Miowee reclaimed the chain: There's fire in the streets The streets rise against the thieves of our strength Our strength fuels the revolution Revolution builds in our hands Our hands reach out and take hold of life The life your stranglers steal We steal back with steel and stones Stones and children's bones fuel our fury Our fury rages through the streets The streets burn with holy fire
Once again Miowee let the chain slide; she played and crooned, fantasies of pluck and strum, of soaring wordless song that was attack and assertion of her self and cause-and Shadith opened her throat and sang with her, wordless wondrous play and passion, her soprano lifting up and up, echoing, mirroring, plaiting distant harmonies… until Miowee stopped the interplay, stilled the strings with a sudden, powerful dissonance. After a beat of silence, she took up the chain… There's fire in the palaces and factories The factories fill with the stilled breath of dead men Dead men rise and cry out for retribution Retribution rides the winds of revolution Revolution burns with holy fire There's fire in the streets…
"Enough!" Amplified and colder than the rain, the Nish'mok's shout drowned instrument and voice both.
Shadith swung round, furious at the interruption; she opened her mouth to excoriate him-and a laugh was startled out of her as Miowee complied but got in a small dig, a slide down a string, a clown's pratfall in sound.
Makwahkik ignored both of them. "You at the far end, stand with your backs against the wall, the rest of you join the singer. Quickly." The handheld bullhorn filled the space without effort. He wasn't shouting any more. He didn't need to. "Kimeesit."
A kana stepped through the door, touched his chest and bowed, a lean, gray-haired man taller than most. "Move them."
The man bowed again and stepped back inside.
The next several minutes were noisy confusion and deliberate brutality, the meanness of the kanaweh gnawing at Shadith all the more because it was so unnecessary, these people were starvling skeletons with barely enough energy to stand; only the boys were offering any resistance and even that was passive rather than active-they clustered around Miowee, taking on their own bodies the shoves and kicks that were aimed at her, the cuts from the limber, slitted canes.
When the confusion was sorted out, around a dozen prisoners were pressed against the southwall, the rest (about twice the number) were regimented in three rows back against the northwall; eight kanaweh were arranged in a line across the middle, four facing south, four north. Kimeesit stood in the doorway looking up.
Makwahkik held up four fingers, then pointed south. He clapped his hands.
The sound made Shadith jump, then gasp; the crack of the pellet guns came amplified and echoing up the pit. Four prisoners fell.
"One has learned your lesson, Singer," Makwahkik said. "Tomorrow it will be eight." He clapped his hands again and the kanaweh began herding the prisoners out of the pit. "The next day ten. You can stop it any time."
WATCHER 9
CELL 3
"One Sing "Tom He c the
CELL 2
"One Sing "Tom He c the
CELL 1
"One has learned your lesson, Singer," Makwahkik said. "Tomorrow it will be eight." He clapped his hands again and the kanaweh began herding the
Ginbiryol Seyirshi stroked the simi and smiled with contentment as the scene played out. He was almost regretting the need to ash the world. This was better. Much better. Experience counted, after all. Yes. Makwahkik was handling her very well indeed. And I was right about that streetsinger, she will be more important than ever if I read him correctly. We Praise again this night. Yes. Yesss.
He turned his head. Ajeri Kilavez was playing with her sensorpad, readjusting the EYE transmissions. "I am aware, Ajeri tiszt, how difficult it was to shift the EYEs, all those EYEs, without losing important scenes. Good work, Pilot."
"Thank you, sir."
He cleared his throat. "Puk is?"
"I think we can untie him tomorrow."
"Not tonight?"
"Better not."
"Hmm." Ginbiryol swallowed his disappointment without much difficulty, it was the tiniest of flaws in his vast and increasing happiness. He went back to studying the Cells, one hand stroking the simi, the other moving over the test:transfer sensors of the pathecorder outlet. Chapter 19. So
mehow, someway, I'm going to get out of this
The room was a cube, covered floor, ceiling, walls with institutional gray enamel, so many layers of paint the thickness was tangible like an ancient dirty hide pulled over the stone. The entrance was a rectangle of gray-painted steel with a slot waist-high for mealtrays and a head-high covered grill for looking in at whoever occupied the room; a second door led into a smaller room with a toilet and shower, washbasin, and mirror. A three-layer bunk bed was shoved into the corner opposite that door. There were two battered wooden chairs pushed against a wall, a table and an hassock out in the middle of the floor. In a futile attempt to liven what was essentially a prison cell, some hopeful soul had brought in rugs with geometric patterns in bright primary colors and scattered them about and had tucked matching coverlets over the bunk beds. There was no window, air and light came through a grill up where the walls met the ceiling.
Shadith pulled a hand across her mouth, looked at it, then at Miowee. "Don't be more stupid than you have to. Killing yourself won't change anything. He'll just bring another lot in here and hold them over our heads."
"So I should let you corrupt me when he couldn't?"
"Corrupt? Sar! Look, dead, you're dead, he goes on. That seem like a good trade?"
"Dead he can't use me. Dead he can't suck me into his rot."
"If you're set on it, take him with you. At least it wouldn't be a total wipe."
Miowee stared at her, laughed. "You're something else, you really are."
"Well, it's not my world." She frowned, glanced at the ceiling, not seeing the stains crawling over the gray paint, seeing Ginny's Bridge instead. She twitched her shoulders, folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself. "And it won't be yours much longer," she burst out. "Any of yours, not even him."
"What?" Miowee lifted the patch, wiped at the scarred socket beneath it. She fitted it back, dropped her hand to her lap. "What you 'on about, girl?"
Second thoughts chased each other round and round in Shadith's head, she suspected Makwahkik had arranged to overhear whatever passed between her and Miowee and she wasn't happy about whispering her secrets in that yellow-eyed jakal's ear. "I wonder if weasel-face is listening now?" She snorted. It seemed suddenly hilarious that there might be another nose snooping into her business. Concentric shells of panting voyeurs with old Shadow sitting mouse in the middle.
Miowee sniffed, wriggled backward on the lowest bunk until she was leaning against the wall. "Someone out there listening, or electronics? And anyway, what's it matter?"
"Hmm." Shadith dropped onto the hassock, sat with one foot tucked under her thigh. After a minute, she smiled. "Serve him right if he is."
"This conversation stopped making sense 'bout three or four sentences back."
"That's because I've left things out."
"So put them in."
"Why not. There's a thing with a clutch of names, Planetbuster, Worldbanger, maybe just Buster or Banger, Nutcracker, Eggpeeler, you get the idea, right? Right. Part bomb, part… something else-very else. Weird. Anyway, it goes boom and instead of a world, you've got rubble."
"You telling me the Mahk Hen has one of those?"
"Na, and he wouldn't use it if he did. He's not terminally stupid, just corrupt-to use your favorite word." She scratched at her knee, shook her head as Miowee twisted her face into a comic grimace. "All right, all light, I'll stop wuffing. I've lied so much I doubt if I can ever remember the truth, but here goes. This is a play. A drama. All you Kiskaids are actors in it, you turn and twist for the amusement of an audience you'll never see, your lives and your deaths, every emotion you feel, every joy, every agony…" slapping her hand on her knee she counted out the words, ".. all your pains and pleasures, all of it is being recorded for clots with too much money and a dearth of brain cells, slimy little perverts who get off on other's people's pain and torment." She drew her mouth down, shook her head. "Sorry about that lurid bit, call it lack of editing." She sighed, shook her head again as she saw Miowee's face go blank with rejection. "Listen, don't turn me off yet. We were brought here, my friends and I, to make your passions more intense and your suffering worse. Not by our choice, believe me on that if nothing else. The Director of this drama did all the deciding, he reached out and took us and dumped us here. We weren't supposed to know what was happening or why, but he slipped up there. I'll explain later, if you really want to know. You can see why he lighted on the Ciocan and his beasts, impressive, yes? And the way you Kiskaids feel about reptiles had to play some part in why he chose ICikun for the Dancer. Me, I'm a music student. With baaad luck." She reached inside her shirt and rubbed carefully around the wound, it helped the itch a little.
"You expect me to accept this, this fantasy?"
"Expect? Accept what you want. Believe what you want. Maybe I'm lying, though what the point would be, I don't know. It's up to you if you want to play the fool. If not, open your ears. Asteplikota told me about the plague that started all this, how it popped up out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere. He did it, him sitting up there now watching us." She jerked a thumb at the ceiling. "Ginbiryol Seyirshi. Ginny the Creep in his perambulating, poison machine. It was him planted plague on you. Yeh. He wanted a Pakoseo Year and that was the fastest and surest way to get it. Oh, it's just a guess, I admit that, but if I were you, I wouldn't bet against it."
Miowee shook her head. "I don't believe it. Do you know how many people died?"
"Not his people. Besides, that's what he wants, people dying, he feeds on that dying, sucks up the agony to pleasure his customers."
"I… look, if it was for power or revenge, maybe… but for a picture show?"
"I was told his picture shows bring him… mmm, consider the worth of everthing produced on this world for… say five years since you don't have a lot of hi-tech here, then multiply that by a thousand." Shadith spread her hands. "Got it? No? Don't blame you, it's one of those numbers that's too big to make sense."
"Shows? How many has he…"
"I don't know."
"I thought the Nistam was a monster, but…"
"Yeh. And talking about the Nistam, I have no doubt at all that Ginny's stuck his thumb in your rebellion and he's still beavering away on both sides to make the hate come stronger and the fighting worse. He buys men and women, you know, he uses people like he's using us, tricking them into doing what he wants." Agitated and uncertain, she pushed her hands back and forth along her thighs, her palms catching on the zippers; she didn't want to say the rest of it, but she was sick of lying. "We got word out to our families, we had to, you know, we used your high Hoofta's own skipcom, they're coming for us…" she laced her fingers and squeezed palm against palm, "they're a long way off, eighty-three days altogether, though it's less than fifty now, they'll have started as soon as they heard… the thing is, my people… Ginny's afraid of them… I'm afraid… because of us… as soon as he gets the pictures he wants… boom! Good-bye evidence. Which means good-bye Kiskai." She forced a smile. "Makes it rather silly to play at suicide, don't you think?"
"That the point of this… this… whatever it is?"
"No point, really. I just got tired of playing games. There's still room for maneuvering, it's pretty damn hopeless, but, well, to be honest, the only times I've contemplated suiciding myself is when I'm petrified with boredom and the one thing you can say about this mess, it's not boring."
Miowee stared at Shadith for several minutes, then switched round on her stomach and wriggled to the edge of the bunk so she could see the grill. "He's watching us? Now? Through that maybe?"
"Through that? Not him. Weasel-face maybe, not him, he doesn't work that crude. Probably is watching, I'm one of his catalyst points, his stars, you might say. That's a guess, there's no way I can be sure."
"Why not? You seem to know everything else."
"I've a Talent, not omniscience. You can't see or detect EYEs, that's the point of them."
"What Talent?"
"Not mindreading."
She turned her head, tilted it back. "You hear that, Jakal? You can relax now. Your secrets are safe."
"I see."
"You Kiskaids say that a lot."
The door clanged open, two kanaweh came in, separated and stood on either side of it with weapons drawn. Miowee snickered.
They ignored her, though there was a brassy tinge to their ears, and waited with punctilious rigidity for whoever it was they were escorting to appear in the doorway.
Shadith was not greatly surprised to see Makwahkik walk in. She sat where she was, her mood turning peculiar on her, a swimmy feeling like she had in the first days after she was shot; her emotions had been yanked around so much recently, it was as if she'd been put in a wringer and squeezed dry. She was surprised when he pulled a chair out from the wall and sat down, she'd expected to be hauled off and questioned about the Banger.
"I want to make some things quite clear," he said. "Do you hear me?"
She blinked at him, shrugged.
"Do you hear me?"
"Yes."
"The woman there will go with you at all times; you will not be touched, whatever you do. Any punishment you earn, she gets, so think hard. Singer, before you act…" he paused for emphasis, then went on, "and speak.
I'm telling you now, say nothing to disturb the people training you. And I don't want quibbling about what I mean by disturbed, I'm sure you're quite aware what subjects should be avoided. Do you hear me?"
"There's a cycle of twenty-seven songs you'll have to learn within the next two weeks. That instrument of yours isn't suitable, we'll provide one, the Paleka Kitskew." His streaky eyes flicked to Miowee at the squeak startled out of her, shifted back to Shadith. "The Gospah Ayawit has consented to its use. It's a stringed instrument like the one you were given in the infirmary, only bigger. I've been told the fingerings aren't complicated and shouldn't present any great problems to a musician of your ability." Once again he turned to Miowee. "You know the songs, you'll play with the Singer, rehearse her until she does them properly." He examined the streetsinger's frozen face, bared his teeth in a grin as much a threat as any of the Ciocan's, though he lacked the Dyslaeror's tearing fangs. "You have a daughter. Yes. We found her. You didn't expect that, did you? No. But what's a little betrayal beside your treachery, traitor? The Singer's misdeeds will be punished on your flesh, yours will be punished on your daughter's." He reached up his left sleeve, withdrew a flat photo, took it by a corner, and skimmed it at Miowee.