Dancer's Luck

by Ann Maxwell

  “It’s more than you have,” said Daemen tightly. Then, “I’m sorry. Please don’t look like that.” He smiled and touched her cheek. “Forgive me?”

  Rheba smiled in spite of her anger. She could no more blame Daemen for defending his home than she could blame Fssa for searching for his.

  “Are there any landing regulations?” asked Kirtn brusquely, jostling Daemen as he rearranged the pilot mesh.

  Daemen’s hand dropped from Rheba’s cheek. “I don’t think so. We didn’t have more ships after we left. Nobody ever comes here, either.” His expression became both amused and hard. “Superstitious idiots! They believe their own myths.”

  Kirtn, remembering Satin, said, “Oh? What myths?”

  “They act as though Luck were contagious,” muttered Daemen.

  “See that dark spot?” he asked, pointing over his head to the southern hemisphere.

  “Here?” asked Kirtn, pointing to a blot not far from the south pole of the planet.

  “Yes. That’s Center Square. All of our cities are on a modified grid pattern that connects to other Squares. At least, they used to connect. There are some pretty big mountains to avoid,” he added, explaining the absence of people in various parts of the southern hemisphere.

  “What about here?” said Rheba, pointing to a similar network of lines and splotches in the northern hemisphere.

  “Ruins,” Daemen said curtly. “They were farthest from Center Square. When the master grid energy went eccentric, they died.” He saw the look on her face and added, “It was a long time ago. At least two Cycles, from what the Seurs have been able to find. We don’t go up there much. The farther you get from Square One, the less advanced the technology, as a rule.”

  “Someone might have survived,” said Rheba, oddly moved by a disaster hundreds of thousands of years in the past.

  “Someone did.” Daemen made a dismissing motion. “They’re savages now. That’s a long way to go to study savages. We’ve got plenty closer to home.” His slim finger pointed to a tawny patch of land over the south pole. “There, for instance. The energy grid went eccentric in the last Cycle. The Seurs patched what they could, but the mountains here are terrible. Square One survived—at least, its food installation did. It still registers on our maps.”

  Daemen stared at the spot for a long moment. “Mother wanted to go there. It was the first colony. She believed it would have the most advanced technology there, buried, waiting to be found by The Luck. But the other Seurs talked her out of it. We went out into the galaxy instead.” He made a wry face. “The Daemen isn’t coming home with his hands full of miracles. The Seurs will be disappointed.”

  Rheba put her hand over Daemen’s in silent sympathy. It would be hard on him to go home with nothing but his family’s death to give to his people. Her hair stirred, curling across the young man’s cheek.

  Kirtn glanced away from the Devalon’s outputs, saw Rheba’s hair silky across Daemen’s cheek, and asked coldly, “Just how disappointed will they be?”

  Daemen looked confused. “They won’t be hostile, if that’s what you mean. They’ll be glad enough just to get their Daemen back. Without me to guide their archaeological searches, they might just as well pick a dig on a random basis.”

  “You’re rather young to be so knowledgeable.” Kirtn’s voice was neutral, yet somehow challenging.

  “What does age have to do with it? I’m The Daemen.”

  The Bre’n gave a muscular shrug. “Your culture, your problem. Ours is to get you home in one piece. Is there a spaceport beacon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kirtn turned back to the outputs. Bre’n whistles and Senyas words filled the cabin. An output turned blue-gray with silver dots. A flat mechanical tone replaced the discourse between man and machine. Kirtn looked back at Daemen. “You have a spaceport beacon. Primitive, but effective. We’re locked on. If we stray, the tone will vary. You should be home in"—he glanced down at the outputs—"about seventeen minutes.”

  Although he said nothing more, his listeners had the distinct impression that Kirtn would have been happier if the figure had been in seconds.

  Rheba looked closely at her Bre’n, wondering why he had taken such a dislike to the charming Daemen. She let go of Daemen’s hand and touched Kirtn’s shoulder, silently asking what was wrong. He ignored her. The only thing he wanted to say on the subject of Daemen was goodbye.

  Kirtn raced the ship toward the planet at a speed that was only marginally safe. Though the Devalon was equipped to protest, it did not. The ship’s Senyasi builders had also programmed it to recognize the energy patterns of Bre’n rage.

  VIII

  No one met them at the spaceport. A cold, fierce wind blew in a cloudless sky, making the Devalon hum like a too-tight wire. The ship quickly extruded stabilizers. The humming ceased, but not the feeling of unease that it had caused. Scraps of plastic chased clouds of grit across the scarred apron. None of the scars were new, and there were no other ships in sight.

  Rheba looked at the hologram of the spaceport and shivered. She did not need the ship’s outputs to tell her that Daemen’s namesake was a cold, barren planet.

  Daemen, as though seeing the city for the first time, looked as dismayed as Rheba. It was obvious that the reality outside did not match his memories.

  “How long were you gone?” asked Rheba.

  “Four years.”

  “Just four? But you said you were a child when you left.”

  Daemen turned, focusing his rain-colored eyes on her. “My years are longer than yours. In Loo terms, call it seventeen years.”

  Rheba shuddered. In Loo terms, that was an eternity. Slaves might have shorter lifespans, but it certainly did not seem that way to the slaves. She looked speculatively at Daemen again, wondering how such a vulnerable young man had survived so long on Loo.

  “Ready?” asked Kirtn abruptly.

  Rheba turned toward her Bre’n. “But there’s no one out there. We can’t just dump Daemen downside and leave!”

  Kirtn’s expression said that he could do just that with no difficulty at all. He was very tired of her longing looks at the handsome young enigma who was so important that a whole planet was named after him. “What do you suggest we do—start a baby-sitting service?”

  Akhenet lines lit beneath Rheba’s skin, giving her a sullen glow. “I suggest,” she said angrily, “that we either wait for some contact or give him an escort to whatever passes for the local palace.” She turned her back on Kirtn and spoke gently to Daemen. “Which would be better, Daemen? Wait or go looking?”

  Before Daemen could answer, Kirtn spoke. His words were clipped, his tone as cold as the wind dividing around the ship. “Looks like we don’t have a choice. Company coming.”

  He whistled curt instructions to the computer. The hologram of the spaceport shifted, zooming in on one area. As the magnification increased, the figures walking up to the edge of the spaceport became clearer. They were a ragged lot, yet they walked with the assurance that came from power.

  “Know them?” asked Kirtn.

  Daemen bent forward to peer into the hologram, which had descended to chest height. The Bre’n noted sourly that Daemen chose to lean over Rheba’s shoulder rather than take a half step aside to improve his view. A curt whistle shifted the hologram back up to the ceiling. Unfortunately, it did not shift Daemen’s position.

  “Seurs,” Daemen said after a moment. “You can tell by the walk. They usually wear special clothes. Guess the synthesizer still goes eccentric from time to time.”

  Rheba looked at the approaching group. The only thing “special” about their clothes was the wretched fit and color. The last time she had seen something that repulsive was when the Devalon*s food cycle had crossed outlets with the ship’s sanitary arrangements during a rough replacement.

  “Do you remember any of them?” asked Kirtn.

  Daemen stared at the approaching men and women. He shifted and stared again. “They�
��re thinner than I remember,” he said dubiously. “One of them might be Seur Tric.”

  “Friend or foe?” snapped Kirtn.

  Daemen turned to face the hostile Bre’n. “Why do you keep hinting that the Seurs don’t want me back?”

  Kirtn’s gold eyes took on the sheen of hammered metal, but his voice was neutral. Even so, Rheba put her hand on Daemen’s arm in a gesture that was meant as both warning and protection. Kirtn ignored her glance, but her hand on Daemen’s arm rankled more than the young man’s demanding tone.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong—you’re the leader of this planet?” asked Kirtn softly.

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ve been gone, so the Seurs have been running things.”

  “That’s their job,” said Daemen shortly.

  “Do they like it?”

  Daemen looked surprised. “Of course!”

  “Then what makes you think they’ll just tamely hand over the power to you?”

  “I’m The Daemen.”

  “Is that another word for stupid?” asked Kirtn, disgust clear in his voice.

  Before Daemen could answer, Fssa stuck his head out of Rheba’s hair. “The only possible translation of ‘Daemen’ in any language is ‘Luck.’ “

  “Shut up, snake!”

  Hastily, Fssa ducked back out of sight.

  Rheba looked at Kirtn. The lines on her body still rippled with light, but now it indicated unease more than anger. Her Bre’n mentor was not acting rationally—or at least not very politely. It was unlike him to be so abrupt with a vulnerable young being like Daemen. With an unconscious, worried frown, she rubbed the akhenet lines on the back of her arms and turned away to study the hologram.

  The group’s clothes did not improve on further examination. If anything, the color combinations became more repulsive. Also— She leaned forward with a muffled exclamation. Some of them were wearing ropes of jewels, great clumps strung haphazardly from crudely formed plastic links. In all, the gems were almost as ugly as the clothes. There was one cheering sign, though. “They aren’t armed,” she said. “At least, not in any way I can see. What do the Devalon’s sensors say?”

  Without comment, Kirtn turned away from his disgusted contemplation of Daemen’s innocence. A whistled trill sent colors racing over the ship’s outputs. The Bre’n watched a moment, then commented, “Not enough metal on them to make a baby’s ring.” He looked up at Daemen. “What kind of weapons do you use?”

  “We don’t. Well, not often. Whips,” he said finally, reluctantly. “Mother wouldn’t touch the plastic knives. If they don’t shatter, they bend. She said they weren’t worth the shit that went into making them.”

  Kirtn smiled, wishing it were the mother rather than the son who had been rescued from Loo. She sounded a lot more practical. But she had not survived. He looked at Daemen, speculation bright in his yellow Bre’n eyes. How had the insolent halfling outlived the rest of his family? Was he as treacherous as he was handsome?

  “I don’t see any whips,” said Rheba. “As for knives . . . those clothes are so baggy they could be wearing a service for twelve and not make a wrinkle.”

  “Don’t worry about knives,” said Daemen, smiling reminiscently. “Mother was right. About all they’re good for is drawing designs in warm pudding. Besides, once they see who I am, knives will be the last thing on their minds.”

  Kirtn disagreed silently and strenuously. If he were the Seurs, knives would be the only thing on his mind, unless better weapons were available.

  The group stopped at the edge of the apron, looking up at the slim alien ship. They talked among themselves in low murmurs that the Devalon’s sensors easily picked up.

  As the first syllable of the language sounded in the cabin, Fssa reappeared and went into a series of astonishing contortions. After trying a variety of shapes, he settled on his usual form plus a concave extension ringed by metallic blue frills. Using the extension, he sucked every bit of alien language out of the air, learning and extrapolating with fantastic speed.

  Daemen, who had never seen Fssa as anything more than a snake, stared at the transformations in open awe. “What is he doing?”

  “He’s—” began Rheba.

  “Stretching,” interrupted Kirtn. When Rheba would have finished her explanation, he closed his hand firmly over her wrist and thought an emphatic negative.

  Rheba flinched at the no ringing in her mind. She started to argue, thought better of it, and pointedly turned away from Kirtn. She was not, however, going to go against such a direct order from her mentor, even though she could not understand why he did not want Daemen to know the nature of the Fssireeme’s genius as a translator.

  She stared at the hologram as though the skinny, badly dressed natives were the most fascinating thing in the galaxy. Gems winked back at her, as gaudy and improbable as diamonds on dung beetles.

  When he was sure that she would not disobey him, Kirtn released Rheba’s wrist and watched Fssa. The snake turned his sensors toward Kirtn without moving the odd extension he had made. A Bre’n whistle issued from some undetermined place to the left of the dish. Kirtn listened until he was sure that the Fssireeme had learned the new language. Only then did he turn back to Daemen.

  “What are they saying?” asked Kirtn blandly.

  “Not much. They’re excited by the ship, wondering who we are and why we’re here, that sort of thing,” said Daemen absently. He swayed forward, closer to the hologram—and Rheba—as he tried to identify individual Seurs.

  “Fssa?” whistled Kirtn. “Is that what they’re talking about?”

  “Yes,” answered the snake in Bre’n. “They’re wondering if we might have some technology to trade.”

  “And they’re hoping we’ll trade technologies,” added Daemen, still staring into the tube.

  Kirtn gave the young man a hard look, but Daemen did not notice. “Still think they’ll be happy to see you?” asked the Bre’n.

  “They’d be happier if I were bringing them something,” admitted Daemen.

  Rheba looked around. “That shouldn’t be too hard,” she said. “We have lots of odds and ends that we don’t use.” Her glance fell on Rainbow. It was wrapped in its fine cargo mesh, hanging from a recessed hook over the control board. Rainbow dangled overhead whenever it was not in the tool locker, bending Fssa into improbable shapes. “Too bad you aren’t a machine,” said Rheba to the crystal mass. “I’d trade you for something useful.”

  Daemen stood on tiptoe, leaned, and unhooked the cargo net.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Kirtn.

  Surprised at his tone, Daemen took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was valuable to you.”

  Kirtn looked sourly at the crystals gleaming through the fine cargo net. Remembering Rheba’s agony, he was not too sure that Rainbow was valuable to him. “Maybe it isn’t. So what?”

  Fssa made an anguished sound. His body darted protectively toward Rainbow, but it was out of reach.

  Daemen looked at the snake nearly falling out of Rheba’s hair, then at the expressionless Bre’n. Daemen glanced at Rheba. She, too, looked as though she were trying to decide if Rainbow was more trouble than it was worth.

  “Some of these crystals are very old, as old as any my mother ever found,” said Daemen simply. “But the machine must be badly tuned, or it wouldn’t give you such a vicious headache every time it’s activated.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Rheba. “Rainbow isn’t a machine.”

  “Of course it is. It’s a Zaarain machine—or what’s left of one.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Kirtn, looking at Rainbow with new interest.

  “Look,” said Daemen confidently, “your people may build the best ship in the galaxy, but mine know more about history than any six races put together. That,” he said, tapping a fingernail on one of Rainbow’s scintillant surfaces, “is a Zaarain construct. A machine.”

  Kirtn frowned. He knew that Zaarain con
structs were not necessarily machines. The Zaarains had constructed unusual life forms as well as incredible machines. Nonetheless, Rainbow as machine made more sense than Rainbow as living entity. Of course, the lithic races of the First People were both improbable and very real.

  “Rainbow is part of an installation core, I think. Hard to tell,” added Daemen, turning the net so that he could see all sides of the crystal mass. “Not much is left.”

  “Then how can you be sure?” asked Kirtn.

  “The carvings,” said Daemen in the patient tone of a teacher talking to a very stupid student. “Etchings, really. Or viasynth, if you want to be technical.”

  “Then it isn’t . . . alive?” asked Rheba.

  Daemen laughed. “It’s a machine. How can it be alive?”

  Fssa burst into rapid Bre’n speech, arguing in stanzas of desperate poetry that his friend was as alive as he himself was. Rainbow was fragmented, to be sure, but that did not change the fact of its viability.

  Kirtn whistled a shrill imperative. Fssa subsided. He was very black as he wove himself back into Rheba’s comforting hair.

  “Assuming it’s a machine,” said Kirtn, “what good is it to you?”

  “None, probably. But it’s better than empty hands. I’ll pay you for it as soon as I can. Although, if the synthesizer is snarky, it might be a while until I can make something useful for you.”

  Rheba hesitated, torn between Daemen’s need and Fssa’s affection for Rainbow. She turned toward Kirtn. “Daemen did, after all, steal most of the price of the navtrix. . . .”

  Kirtn could have pointed out that without her, Daemen would have been stuck on Loo. But he did not. If Rainbow was a machine, it belonged to Rheba, for it had been Rheba who insisted on saving it from the depredations of slave children. If Rainbow was not a machine, it belonged to itself, and could not be given away or sold.

  She looked from Rainbow dangling passively in the cargo net to Daemen. He looked both vulnerable and hopeful; despite his brave words about being welcomed back, it was obvious that he was worried about coming home empty-handed.