by Jo Clayton
The matrons brought her to the foot of the curved shallow-stepped stair to the altar stage with its Chair of the Gospah and above that the Totem of Oppalatin-an immense maskin carved from some dark tight-grained wood, rearing on his hind legs, reaching out with silver claws extruded and gleaming, as if to at once embrace and threaten the accembled believers. The women backed away from her and lay on the crimson carpet, their faces pressed to the wool, their arms outstretched. The girl-children with the kitskew came timidly forward, placed it on the lowest step, then backed away and dropped flat behind the matrons.
The Gospah Ayawit stood beside his Chair, a massive backless banc with the form in abstract of a maskin crouching, carved from the same wood as the Totem. He beat his staff on a wooden soundboard beside his feet, "Opplatin Awashoneeotehiya'asewacikapiyah," he intoned in the liquid heart-rhythm of the ancient langue. "Oppla's bounty blessings be. Well done, Omisa, Otanisan. Depart now, your work is complete." He brought the staff down again, stood waiting while the matrons and the girls got to their feet and backed out, spines arched, heads bowed over hands pressed together, fingers up. When they were gone, he stood smiling benignly down at Shadith. "Prepare, O Nikamo-Oskinin, prepare." A third time he set the board booming. "Ni-tahwaikis."
A flute and a pair of basenote Longhorns joined the drums. The Sound filled the chamber, beating with her heart, throbbing in her brain. She relaxed and let it take her, swimming in the seething, complex stew of emotion in that great chamber, emotion as strong for her as the sound.
A masked figure danced through long, velvet, beaded drapes at the left of the altar, an androgynous figure with grasses and cornhusks knotted into a rustling robe and wooden plaques linked to form scapulars before and behind; it held a black and white blanket, swinging it up and around as it came toward Shadith. She dropped to her knees as she'd been exhaustively instructed, the blanket dropped over her, concealing her completely.
"Tahnokipo Waposh." Boom-boom went the sounding board.
A second figure danced out…
The ceremony went on and on, the tension lessening, rebuilding, lessening, building to a higher plateau, the drums throbbing, seizing control of every heart in that sounding chamber, bringing them into unison, seizing control of the breath until there was a single creature breathing, the cynical and the unbelieving there for status and curiosity caught with the others in the powerful impulse of the rite…
Shadith wrinkled her nose at the door, set her back against the steel and grinned to Miowee. "I'm holy again."
"Wahhh-weh." Miowee plucked a tinkly tune from the kitskew. "Do I bow, do I slap my brow on the slates you consecrate?"
"Yes, you bow, come now, kowtow." She whirled dizzily about the room, tripped over the hassock and went skidding on a rug until she slammed against the bunk, folded in the middle and collapsed on the husker mattress.
"Grace incarnate." Miowee played another phrase of the jokesong. "You finished?"
Shadith rubbed at the sore spot where her head had cracked against the bunkframe. "Looks like. You know, it's funny, I thought the Gospah would have his nose out of joint at this messy hangup. Female thing."
"Why? Wikpriest on up, they have to deal with bodies all the time, there's a rite for everything from spitting to shifting." Miowee shrugged, picked another tune, it was the one they'd been working on to camouflage their conversations, now it was the question she couldn't ask.
Shadith groaned and got to her feet. "After all that, I'm hungry enough to eat a Slither raw. And tired! Wake me when the food arrives." She shook her head (an unspoken answer to the unasked question), climbed the ladder and slipped into the top bunk.
For the past week she'd been methodically ransacking the Kasta, searching for the child; she'd been sure Makwahkik was keeping her close at hand in case he needed to beat on Miowee. Needed was an ambiguous word and an apt one, because Miowee opened wounds in him that he refused to acknowledge yet suffered from. What she was, what she said, what she did, all of it was a scathing condemnation of everything he'd given his life to. His trouble was he wasn't stupid, so she reached through his defenses and showed him to himself and he didn't like what he saw. He NEEDED to crush her, to destroy her independence, her integrity, to force her to acknowledge his rightness, his worth.
With their question tables and surgical theaters, their prisoners mutilated in mind and body, the cellars made her weep and swear and churn with nausea, but she kept looking. No child. After she finished that part of the search, she lay a long time staring into the dark, trying to forget what she'd seen.
Ground level had a kilometer-squared of floorspace; it was a maze of offices and kana sleeping quarters and kitchens and a kana cafeteria with separate officer dining halls and preliminary interrogation units and cells and cells and cells (Miowee had lived there over two months before Makwahkik's demonstration) and prisoner chapels and kana chapels and detention suites and a repair facility for the kana flits and assorted storerooms, plus a scatter of anonymous nooks and crannies. Even late at night there were kana scribes working there, kana torturers hauling prisoners to the question tables, kana guards coming in and out, bringing back wounded and dead kanaweh from the stone and fire fights in the city, bringing in battered and wounded prisoners, along with whatever dead Makas and Tanaks they could lay their hands on so they could identify them and haul in their families to suffer for their misdeeds. It took five days to search that level and even then she wasn't sure she'd nosed out all of it. No sign of the child anywhere.
Second level held the infirmary, larger and more elaborate offices, meeting chambers, record rooms, computers, corn banks, guest suites for visiting kana officers, more kitchens and washrooms, an armory (light arms), the flit garage, a fuel dump, a number of anonymous nooks and crannies, but not so many as below. She finished that level the night before the rite was scheduled. No child.
She lay on the bunk and wondered if her assumptions were correct, but that was only a bit of foreplay before she plunged into the exhausting search. Unless she was entirely mistaken in everything she thought she knew about him, Makwahkik simply couldn't let the child go far from his hand. She closed her eyes, found a prowling cat, and slid into him. There were cats everywhere, cats were Makwahkik's clan totem and untouchable; besides this, they earned a welcome because they kept down the vermin attracted by the muck in the cellars, the food in the kitchens; they paced through the halls, trotted through the maze of heating ducts with the arrogance of ownership, slept on top of cabinets, on desks and in chairs with the clerks and others shooing them without thought when they were in the way; they went where they wanted when they wanted without being much noticed. And they served Shadith as well as they did Makwahkik and the kanaweh.
Third level held Makwahkik's office, the high chapel of the Kana (used for funerals and graduation rites and other Kana ceremonies), the Nish'mok's personal flit storage and repair shop, quarters for his bodyguards, for his Aide Nahwac, reception rooms of varied stages of grandeur, assorted high security suites like the one where she was now, where Rohant and Kikun were living, another armory, communication rooms that were busy day and night, busy now as she sent the cat trotting through them. This floor being much less extensive than the two below, she pushed on so she could finish with it before her lessons started again.
"Food, Shadow, food." A clatter of metal against china. Shadith released the cat and dropped back into herself. "Yeh," she muttered and fought the dizziness that came from prolonged riding. Levering herself up, she looked over the edge of the bunk. "Ah."
Miowee was sitting at the table, pouring herself a cup of the local tea. "Any interesting dreams?"
'Fraid not." She swung down and seated herself across from the streetsinger. "Maybe later. This so-called meal could bring on a few." She made a face at the soup and salad and single paper-thin slice of dry toast. "This is all? After what I had to do this morning?"
"Be glad Ay-no-wit hasn't decided you should fast for the duration."
>
"Hunh! Tell you something, I don't deal well with being ordered about."
"Eat your soup while it's still warm."
"Yes, mama-not." She sighed and picked up the toast. "So. What is this Culmination thing? When I asked the Gospah, he soured up his face like I spat in his wine."
Miowee took a long drink of tea, sat the cup down with an exaggerated care. "Why bother? It's just a collection of rituals, you'll learn, they have to teach you the songs."
"Uhhh-huh! Tell me."
"How should I know anything? I'm Maka, they barely teach us to read."
"You're Maka like I'm Ay-no-wit's twin sister."
"My mother was. It's the truth, Shadow."
"And your father?"
"Why should I tell you that?"
"No reason. Doesn't matter, anyway I could probably guess a lot of it. You're good as someone else I know at avoiding answers. And you're making me more nervous by the minute. What hellish little surprise has the Gospah got waiting for us?"
"You're a nice child, Shadow, there's heart to you. I don't know what your home is like; being it produced you, it must be a pretty good place to live."
"Why do I get the feeling that's a eulogy over my corpse? Come on, Mee, you're not my mama, curb those hormones, huh? What I don't know could hurt the hell out of me."
"Know. That's the problem. I don't KNOW anything. Just rumors. Stories. Last Pakoseo Year was a long time ago, no one remembers it. My grandmother wasn't even born yet." She pushed at her hair, made a face at Shadith. "All right, all right. Calm down, will you. And eat while I'm doing this or I stop right now." She waited until Shadith started spooning up the soup, sighed, and started talking again. "Story is there are always Avatars, sometimes more than one set of them. There's holy dances and holy songs and at the Culmination there's the Sacrifice."
"To coin a phrase, I see." Shadith broke the toast in half, sat holding the smaller bit. "That's how the Gospah keeps his grip on things, right?"
"You got it."
"Come on, come on, give." She popped the toast in her mouth, rubbed her thumbs rapidly across her bunched fingers. "The whole thing," she said thickly, "not just a hint."
"The Avatars return to Oppalatin."
"Aaah! Details, woman. How?"
"Remember, you asked. The story goes there's a mock battle, not so mock where you're concerned, you three. You're tied to stakes and the stakes are piled round with oil-soaked wood. There's singing and music and someone cries out that you go willingly to the Father of All. And they light the fire. And when it's over, they gather the ashes and take them up in a flit and drop them over the heads of the Pilgrims and everyone goes home, edified and sanctified."
"Oh, yes. We'll see about that." Shadith drained her cup, pushed the chair back. "I'll sleep on it a while, see if I can come up with something."
Late that night, hours past midnight, she found Miowee's daughter lying curled up on a mat at the foot of Makwahkik's bed.
WATCHER 11
CELL 9
Asteplikota opened and shut his hand, pressing and releasing, pressing and releasing the padded spring his therapist had given him so he could build up muscle to replace that sliced away by the cutter beam. "I don't know," he said and looked curiously at his brother. "I don't fully understand them, I never did. You want a guess, they were trying to get home. Medd. Not selling out to the Nistam."
Kiscomaskin vaulted onto the stone balustrade that went round the terrace at the back of the merchant's house where they were staying for the moment, ignoring the chasm at his right hand as he walked along the lichened stone with careless ease; showing off was one of several childhood habits he'd never shed-especially when he was alone with his elder brother.
He came back, stood with the vanishing sun setting his hair on fire, his hands clasped behind him. "Does it matter? You know Ayawit, he'd find a way to co-opt them, no counting their inclinations and Intentions. He would and he has. You're a reasonable man, Aste my oste, that's your weakness. And you like people too much. That's another."
"And you're not reasonable and you don't like people? If that's true, why are'you doing all this?"
"It's a scam, Aste. Look at the way we're living." He waved his hand at the house and the wild extravagant view. "Were you half this comfortable when you were beating history into stoneheaded Kawas and Kisars?"
Asteplikota shook his head, smiling fondly at his younger brother, not believing a word of what KIscomaskin had said, judging him by himself and by the oldtime wit he remembered when Kisca was a brilliant but erratic scholar, filled with fervor for the righting of ancient wrongs. "You could be sitting at Ayawit's right hand, brother. Have you forgotten his fancy for you?"
"Not half." Kiscomaskin shuddered, swayed, jumped hastily down. "Enough of this silly game. We have to take them out fast, brother. People are getting confused and dispirited, watching Ayawit parade them about. She was on the comcircuit, that girl of yours, singing for them like she sang for us. A week ago. I've been getting shit in the face ever since. The Opla-cursed Judges want to know what's going on. We could lose a big part of our funding. They have to die and we have to find a way to blame the Nistam for it."
"Kisca my oste, get her away from them, she'll be more useful alive. If you can't get them all, at least take her, It'll break the set, that's all you need."
"Can't do that, Aste my oste. Be hard enough to pull off an assassination, kidnapping is out of the question."
"They'd help, if you could get to them. I've seen that girl work. It is amazing what she can do."
"So you say, little brother. I can't take the chance. Besides, it's already started." He looked up, frowned at the clouds gathering overhead. "I'm leaving for the Main less than an hour on. I probably won't be back before the Culmination. You take care, you hear?" He closed his hand tight on Asteplikota's uninjured shoulder. "Don't stay out too long. It's going to rain, I don't want you catching pneumonia."
CELL 4
Late at night in the Nish'mok's personal quarters on the fourth level of the Kasta, a small sleek cat darted from behind a leather divan, ran like black water along the wall and crouched by a cluttered worktable, ears pricked, whiskers twitching. When she was satisfied the silence was going to continue unbroken, she jumped lightly onto the table and nosed through the papers, files, cassettes, and other items scattered about on the polished wood until she found Makwahkik's keypac. She batted it onto the carpet, then stalked tail-high to the board beside his computer outlet. Her tail jerking side to side, she crouched and nosed at the pad, then she raised on her toes and batted at the onswitch. When screen went bright and the outlet started humming she jumped away, then dropped to her stomach and crawled cautiously back; moving awkwardly because control was being forced on her from outside, she hit other keys, entering the Nish'mok's password. When she was done with that, she licked vigorously at her sides, looking up repeatedly at the screen until the run was finished.
Shaking her head angrily, the rider on her brain irritating her more and more, she settled to work, tapping instructions into the outlet, shutting down the security network over certain selected areas of the Kasta.
She stared at the screen until it flashed the endsignal, then she exited the program, turned off the outlet, and leaped to the floor. For several moments she raced wildly about the room, playing with ghosts, then she bit at the keypac until she had it secure in her mouth and went trotting around behind the divan. The POV slid after her, caught the tip of her tail as she vanished into a heating duct whose loosened grill she'd clawed aside.
"Amazing what the girl is able to do with that peculiar Talent." Ginbiryol Seyirshi scratched behind the simi's small round ears; the Pet sighed with pleasure and flattened himself against his owner's chest. "One would think that its scope would be quite narrow."
Ajeri Kilavez crossed her legs and jiggled her foot. "One would think," she said Her voice was slow, slurred, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She wasn't used to endphasing
under this much pressure, especially without Puk as balance, and it was undermining her confidence in herself. More important, it was eroding her confidence in Ginbiryol.
He looked swiftly at her, as swiftly away, and seethed with hatred for that interfering girl. Voallts had insulted him and he was going to destroy them for it, but there was none of this corrosive rage in that, it was prudence more than anything else; he didn't leave enemies behind him. Her he wanted in his hands, his own hands. Urgently, passionately, he WANTED her. He glared at Cell 1; Shadith was stretched out on the top bunk ostensibly asleep, her face a map of her efforts, grimacing, twisting, continually shifting expression. He was tempted to send the mercs after her, but he resisted, it would throw everything into chaos; he might get some good footage, but he couldn't control the outcome. Let the Schema run its course, let her play the role he chose for her. That would have to do him. He set the simi aside and swung the chair around to take a look over other developing scenes.
CELL 14
"They're turning against us…"
"No, that's not it, the Pakoseo helped us in the beginning, now it's hurting. The Maka have no time for us, no thought for us, they're getting ready to walk away. Tanak, they're worse. We're losing our base."
"No, that's not it, it's the Three, Ayawit's got his claws in them somehow, I've heard…"
"And I've heard, and I've heard and I've heard, I'm tired of hearing.."
"Whose fault is that? If you DID something…"
"Do what? Makh Hen's agents are like fleas, they everywhere and you don't know when they're going to light or who on…" The acrimonious exchanges went on and on in the basement somewhere in the Maka Quarter where the Five were meeting, waiting for a sixth to arrive-the Council of the Five, all of them with prices on their heads, the men who provided whatever organization and leadership the chaotic rebellion possessed, the reality where Kiscomaskin was the shining symbol, the grounding under his feet.