Dancer's Illusion

by Ann Maxwell

“It wasn’t,” agreed i’sNara. “But the Redis didn’t share. Only Redis were allowed into the Stones’ presence. And only a few Redis, at that. So another clan was formed out of unhappy snatchers, the Liberation clan. Besides,” she smiled, “there were all those highly trained snatchers and nothing to practice on but their own clan—unthinkable. Stealing from your own clan is grounds for disillusionment.”

  “And you were caught stealing the Stones?” said Kirtn. “Is that why you were exiled?”

  “We’re Libs,” said f’lTiri proudly. “It was our duty to snatch Stones from the Redis. But the Redis didn’t have any sense of humor. It wasn’t just that we were snatchers—our history is full of snatchers—but that our mere existence suggested that the Redis were not holding the Stones for the good of all Serriolians. The Redis Charter is quite specific about the Redis stealing Stones for high purposes rather than for selfish pleasures. The Redis Charter is posted in every clan hall. The fact that the Charter rather than the Stones circulates among the clans is attributed to the Stones’ extreme worth.”

  “Or the Charter’s extreme worthlessness,” added i’sNara sarcastically.

  Rheba rubbed her temples and wondered why she had urged the Yhelles to tell her everything. She was totally confused. Her hair crackled. Kirtn stroked the seething mass, gently pulling out excess energy. After a moment her hair settled into golden waves that covered her shoulders.

  “What’s the worst that can happen if you go back?” Rheba asked bluntly.

  “That’s just it,” said i’sNara, her voice soft. “We don’t know.”

  “Will your clan disown you?” asked Kirtn.

  “No,” answered f’lTiri. “Never.”

  “You haven’t broken any local laws?” pressed Rheba.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you reluctant to go home?”

  “We may be sent after the Stones again, and caught again, and sold to Loo again. Or worse.”

  Rheba tried not to groan aloud. The more she heard of Yhelle and Serriolia, the less she liked it. She could, and should, just set down in Serriolia, sadly but firmly say goodbye to the illusionists, and then lift for deep space with all the power in the Devalon’s drive.

  But without f’lTiri’s masterful illusions, a fire dancer and a Bre’n would have died on Loo or Daemen.

  “You don’t know what will happen to you?” said Kirtn, his voice divided between statement and question.

  “No, we don’t.”

  Kirtn sighed. “Then we’d better go find out.”

  II

  Rheba activated the privacy shield on her bunk, enclosing herself in darkness. She sat cross-legged, eyes unfocused, her breathing slow and even. Light bloomed from her hands, curling up from akhenet lines of power that were so dense her fingers seemed solid gold. Within the pool of light, like a leaf floating on a sunset pond, lay her Bre’n Face. She stared at it, letting her worry about the illusionists’ future slide away with each breath.

  The Face had been carved by Kirtn and given to his dancer when she was ten years old. Each Senyas dancer had a Bre’n carving; no Face was the same. Normally Rheba wore the carving as an earring, depending from the seven intricate fastenings that insured against accidental loss. It was more than a decoration, and more than a pledge of Kirtn’s Choice of her as an akhenet partner. The Face was also a teaching device. Dancers, especially young ones, were supposed to meditate upon their individual Face every day. In time, the Face would teach them all they needed to know about the relationship between Senyas and Bre’n.

  Rheba, however, had not spent enough time in meditation. The fact that she had spent most of her hours since Deva’s burn-off in pursuit of bare survival did not excuse her. If her partnership with Kirtn went sour because she did not understand what was required of her, neither one of them would survive. Bre’ns whose akhenet partners thwarted them long enough went into a berserker state called rez. In that state they killed everything within reach—most especially their dancers—and ended by killing themselves.

  No one knew precisely what drove a Bre’n to rez, or if anyone did, she had not been told. Kirtn had slid into rez once on Loo. Only a combination of her innate skill as a fire dancer and Fssa’s incredible ability to withstand heat had saved them from burning to ash and gone. Afterward she had silently vowed to study the Face no matter what happened. Except for her time on Daemen, she had done just that.

  She gathered her thoughts, focusing only on the Face. It looked back at her, benign and aloof, waiting. Then, as she inhaled, the Face changed into a Bre’n profile against a subtly seething field of dancer energy. In the next breath it was two faces, Bre’n and . . . was it Senyas? Was that bright shadow a young woman’s face, eyes half closed, transported by an unknown emotion? Her smile was slow, mysterious, as inhumanly beautiful as Kirtn, but the woman was Senyas, not Bre’n. It looked like her own face, but she was not half so beautiful, had never felt an emotion so intense.

  The Face shifted with each breath, each pulse of her blood. It was countless faces now, waves on an ocean stretching back into time, waves swelling toward future consummation on an unseen shore. Bre’ns and Senyasi intertwined, turning slowly, akhenet pairs focused in one another, touching and turning until they flowed together, inseparable.

  Their faces were all familiar, all the same, Kirtn’s face with yellow eyes hotter than dancer fire. He turned and saw her and she burned. He called her and she came, turning slowly, touching him passionately, and his eyes another kind of fire touching her. . . .

  Rheba’s hands shook, breaking the Face’s hold on her mind. She realized that her akhenet lines were alight, burning in the closed compartment until the heat was stifling. Reflexively she damped her fire, sucking energy out of the air until it was a bearable temperature.

  She did not look at the earring. She fastened the Face to her ear with fingers that still trembled. She was glad that Kirtn was not with her. What would he think of a dancer so undisciplined that she could not control her own thoughts? Instead of learning more about Bre’n and Senyas, her willful mind had combined her present worry about the illusionists with her past experience on Loo, when a young Yhelle illusionist had appeared as Kirtn, sensuality made flesh.

  She did not know why that experience had gone so deep into her psyche, but it had. Bad enough that she had dreamed about it while asleep; to have it interfere with dancer meditation was intolerable.

  She whistled a curt phrase. The shield retracted into the bunk. M/dere waited outside. The J/taal smiled and gestured for Rheba to follow. Rheba did, wondering who wanted her and for what. Without Fssa there was no way of knowing; J/taals did not speak Universal, Senyas or Bre’n, and she did not speak J/taal.

  Kirtn was in the control room arguing with the illusionists. Fssa, dangling from Kirtn’s neck, let out a delighted hiss when he sensed Rheba’s unique energy fields. Without pausing in his argument, Kirtn lofted the snake in Rheba’s direction. She snatched him out of the air, bracing herself as his weight smacked into her hands.

  No matter how many times she held him, she was always surprised. His dense flesh was unreasonably heavy. In her hair, however, he weighed almost nothing. He had once told her that he “translated” her dancer energy into his own private support system. She had questioned him further, only to be told in arch tones that she “lacked the vocabulary to understand.”

  “If you get any heavier I’ll drop you,” she muttered as she wove him into her long hair.

  “You’ll break your toe,” whistled Fssa smugly. Whenever possible, he used the whistle language of Bre’n. It required the least amount of shape-changing to reproduce. In addition, Bre’n was lyric, multileveled and evocative, all of which made it irresistible to the linguistically inclined Fssireeme. “Don’t take a snake’s word for it,” he encouraged. “Drop me.”

  Rheba made a flatulent sound, a Fssireeme way of expressing disgust. Fssa’s hissing laughter tickled her neck.

  Both illusionists began shouting. A
s they shouted they seemed to grow taller and wider with each word until they loomed threateningly over the control room.

  “What’s the problem with them?” Rheba said softly to Fssa.

  “Fourth People.” Fssa sighed like a human. “Sometimes I think you pay for having legs by lacking brains.”

  “Tell me something new, snake.”

  “The illusionists are trying to convince Kirtn that he should just drop them at Serriolia’s spaceport and leave. He’s trying to convince them that—”

  Kirtn’s roar drowned out Fssa’s speech. The snake hummed in admiration. As far as he was concerned, Bre’ns made the best sounds of any Fourth People.

  “—going with you! Now shut up and get ready for the landing!”

  “But—”

  “Shut up!”

  Rheba winced. The illusionists slowly deflated until they were normal size. Kirtn took a deep breath and reached for his lunch—a cup of mush that nourished the body and left the palate to fend for itself. With the life-support systems overloaded, it was the best the ship could do. He tasted the mush, grimaced, and slammed the cup into its nook on the control console.

  “Cold.” It was just one word, but whistled in Bre’n it described a world of disgust.

  Rheba walked over to the cup. She pointed at it with her finger. Energy flared for an instant. She handed the cup to her disgruntled Bre’n. “Don’t burn yourself.”

  “The zoolipt would take care of it.”

  Rheba shuddered. She did not like to think about the turquoise alien that had entered their bodies on Daemen. Kirtn was more philosophical than she about the zoolipt, perhaps because it had saved his life when the Seurs were doing their best to kill him. She did not deny that the turquoise soup had its uses. She was just uneasy knowing that a Zaarain hospital had taken up residence in her cells. Things Zaarain had a habit of being unpredictable.

  The ship’s lights flickered so briefly that only she and the energy-sensitive Fssireeme noticed it. A chime sounded twice, then twice again. Fssa’s voice, via a memory cube, notified the inhabitants in thirty-three languages that landing was imminent.

  I’sNara approached, a look of determination on her normally bland features. “We’ve decided that we want to be put down on Tivveriolia. It has a good spaceport with all the most modern downside connectors.”

  “What’s the transportation like from there?” asked Rheba innocently.

  “Very fast. F’lTiri and I won’t have any problem at all getting to Serrio . . .” Her voice faded as she realized that Rheba had tricked her into admitting that Serriolia was still their ultimate destination. “You’re worse than he is.”

  Rheba smiled. “I’ve been working on it.”

  I’sNara hesitated, then whispered, “Thank you,” and hurriedly withdrew to stand next to her husband. Neither illusionist spoke again until the ship touched down and the downside connectors were in place.

  “No formalities?” asked Kirtn when the call board remained dark.

  “If you need anything more than the port supplies, you just send out a call in Universal. If anyone is interested, you’ll get an answer. The port facilities are free, although it’s customary to show yourselves on Reality Street as payment. You two will be a sensation,” added F’lTiri. “We’ve never seen your kind before. You’ll be the source of a thousand new illusions.”

  “And after Reality Street?” asked Rheba.

  “The Liberation clan hall. They’ll tell us where our family is, and”—he smiled grimly—“whether we have to spend the rest of our lives projecting invisibility.”

  Rheba and Kirtn looked at the control board. A series of numbers and colors moved in a continuous loop, describing the environment around the ship. She sighed. Hardly an ice planet. It was warm, even for Senyas tastes. Kirtn would begin to shed after an hour out there.

  The illusionists stood eagerly by the downside door. They had no luggage, having escaped Loo with no more than their lives. When the door retracted, they stepped eagerly onto the ramp.

  Kirtn and Rheba stood quietly for a moment, letting their bodies respond to the alien planet. The gravity was slightly heavier than Daemen’s had been, but the difference was not enough to be tedious. All of the Equality planets—indeed, all of the planets inhabited by Fourth People—were functionally identical in such gross characteristics as gravity and atmospheric content. Where one Fourth People could survive, all could survive.

  The degree of comfort in which Fourth People could survive changed markedly from planet to planet, however. Loo had been too cold for Senyas tastes, Daemen too barren, and Onan too chaotic. Yhelle felt to Rheba as if it would be too hot and far too humid.

  Kirtn grunted as though agreeing with her unspoken thoughts. Sweat sprang beneath his weapon harness and brief shorts. Within moments, his whole body was wet. Even the gold mask surrounding his eyes was dark.

  “You won’t need my robe to keep warm here,” said Kirtn, glancing down at his fire dancer. “And I don’t need my fur.”

  “I could skin you,” she suggested, lips straight in an effort not to smile.

  “Promises, promises. By the Inmost Fire,” he sighed, “I wonder what an illusion of coolness is worth here.”

  A thoughtful look crossed Rheba’s face. She held her hands near his face and concentrated. Her hands pulsed with subdued gold, but no flames came. Instead, a cool sensation came to him as she sucked heat out of the air around him.

  “How’s that?” she asked.

  He smiled and hugged her. “Nice.”

  She concentrated again, trying to keep the heat at bay. He blew gently on her lips, teasing and distracting her. “Don’t tire yourself out keeping me cool. I’ll survive.”

  “But you’ll shed,” she said flatly, She held up her hands. Tiny coppery hairs stuck to her moist skin. “You’re shedding already!” She made a sound of mock disgust. Every spring on Deva, she had teased her mentor about his unsavory habits. “Senyasi never shed.”

  “Really?” whistled Kirtn, pulling a long gold hair off his shoulder harness. “What’s this?”

  “An illusion,” she said serenely. “We’re on Yhelle, remember?”

  Kirtn looked around. The spaceport with its scarred apron and downside connectors looked like every other Equality spaceport he had seen. Cleaner, perhaps. Certainly cleaner than Daemen’s had been. But for a planet of illusionists, the landscape was disappointingly mundane. Only later did he realize just how subtle Yhelle’s first illusion really was.

  “Let’s get it over with,” said Rheba, taking his sweaty hand in hers and pulling him down the ramp. “‘The sooner we begin, the sooner we end,’” she intoned, quoting an ancient Senyas engineering text.

  The Bre’n gulped a chestful of the stifling air and followed, whistling minor-key curses.

  As Kirtn and Rheba left the Devalon’s protective radius, the J/taals and their war dogs—clepts—flowed smoothly outward until Rheba was surrounded. She was their J/taaleri, and their job was to see that she came to no harm.

  A clept ranged by i’sNara, its silver eyes smoldering in Yhelle’s humid light. I’sNara made a startled sound and stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” said Rheba.

  “The J/taals,” said i’sNara. “They’re forbidden.”

  “What?” said Kirtn.

  “Forbidden,” repeated i’sNara. “They’re death, and death doesn’t respect illusions.”

  Rheba stared at the illusionist’s face. “But—”

  I’sNara simply looked more stubborn. F’lTiri came and stood by her side. “It’s true,” he said. “If the J/taals are along, every Yhelle will be against us, even our own clan.”

  “Ice and ashes!” swore Rheba. “Fssa, tell the J/taals to take their clepts and wait in the ship.” Then, remembering Daemen, where the J/taals had disobeyed and followed her, she added, “Make sure they know that I’ll be worse off if they’re with me than if they’re in the ship.”

  Fssa shifted in her hair until h
e was the proper shape to emit the grunts, clicks and gratings that composed most of J/taal communication. Their language was very primitive, because intraspecies telepathy made speech useful only with outsiders and enemies.

  The J/taals did not like one syllable of what they heard. That much was obvious from the ferocious expressions that settled on their faces. Equally obvious was the fact that they were not going to protest their orders.

  “Why aren’t they arguing?” asked Kirtn.

  “They know it’s useless,” whistled Fssa. “Yhelle’s phobia about J/taals is common knowledge in the Equality. But they weren’t sure Rheba knew, since she isn’t from the Equality.”

  Rheba frowned. “They won’t try to follow me as they did on Daemen?”

  “No.” Fssa’s whistle carried overtones of absolute confidence.

  “Explain,” she snapped in Senyas, the language of precision and directness.

  Hastily, the snake shifted to create Senyas vocal apparatus. “It would be pointless for them to follow. Without Yhelle guides—and no illusionist would come near them—they would be hopelessly lost in Serriolia’s streets.”

  “Why?”

  “Illusions.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Rheba, glancing around the spaceport, where everything looked normal to the point of boredom.

  “It will,” the snake hissed.

  III

  Reality Street led at an oblique angle away from the spaceport. The transition from port to city was ominous. An ebony arch loomed above the entrance to the street. The arch was filled with a sable nothingness that was like a curtain sealing off whatever was beyond.

  When Rheba glanced around she saw nothing but the spaceport. There were no buildings rising beyond the aprons, no hills or mountains or clouds, nothing but downside connectors and the functional, asymmetrical machines that cared for spaceships. It was as though the spaceport were the whole of the island city-state of Serriolia.

  The illusionists looked back to where their friends waited, gestured encouragingly, and vanished into the black emptiness beneath the arch. Kirtn and Rheba looked at each other. As one, they stopped.