"This," Irving breathed, "ain't gonna be no fun at all."
Chapter 6
Don't It Make
My Brown Eyes Blue
Alchemy is the science of coming up with what one needs when one has foreclosed all other possibilities.
—The Books of Rules, XVIII, 21(a)
"I haven't done this spell in, oh, seven, eight hundred years," Ruddygore commented. "Had to look it up, in fact. The Rules allow more latitude than normal on how a slave is marked, with at least three dozen possibilities. However, the ring method is the only one recognized internationally and throughout Husaquahr, since it's the only one with permanence. You see, once the ring is inserted and the spell given, it cannot be removed or altered by anyone—the Rules are quite strict on that."
Joe frowned and looked at Ti, who had actually asked for this to be done prior to their journey. He didn't like it, not a bit. "You sure about this?"
She nodded. "Master, it is the only way I can gain any real freedom, as odd as that may sound. It marks me instantly, not only as property, but as your property. It is the only security I may have."
"She's right," the sorcerer assured him. "If she'd had this, she wouldn't have had to have been accompanied into town to pick up things for you, tend to things, that sort of thing. Theft of a registered slave is punishable by reduction to slavery status yourself almost everywhere, and purchase of a stolen one the same. Nor can she be transferred to another without the owner's consent and be bound to serve. You might as well just kidnap and imprison any lowborn. It's not worth the risk when there's so much easier stuff to lift, and she becomes nearly impossible to market."
"Yeah, that's true here, now, but when we get into Hypboreya, what will they care?"
"Oh, you'll find that an evil regime is even more a stickler for law and order than a benign one, as a rule, since they trust no one and are inherently paranoid. Indeed, there's nothing poor and oppressed people seem to like more than having slaves about. It's a cruel streak in human nature, but, the fact is, no matter how poor, how miserable, and how oppressed you are, you can always point to a slave and say, 'At least I'm not a slave.' That attitude also serves the ruling regime's interest, obviously, since no matter how much they lay on the people, there's one lower rung. No, she'll probably be safer than you, although, my dear, even the common folk will treat you like dirt."
Joe shrugged. "Okay, then. Go ahead. What do we do?"
Ruddygore removed a small bronze-colored ring from a box. It looked quite ordinary, and had an opening which, with a bit of flexing, fit into her nose. "This will sting for just a moment," the sorcerer warned her, grasping the ring between two fingers. He then shut his eyes a moment, and there was a surge of energy into the ring that went around it and into her nose. She flinched, then relaxed. Ruddygore opened his eyes, examined his work, nodded to himself, and then actually moved the ring around. There was no sign of a hole or joint, but it wasn't in stiffly. You could turn it, as if she were born with it and with the proper hole inside her nose.
"Hmmm. . . . Yes, blood from the incision mixed with the ring quite well. A pretty fair job, if I do say so myself. It actually looks quite . . . exotic ... on you, my dear. The only problem I know from one of these is head colds. It's hell to blow your nose with one of them in. But, of course, I've already given you both enough immunization spells to cover anything I could find in the books." He turned to Joe. "Final phase. Take the ring like I did. Yes, that's it." He reached out and put his fingers on Joe's, and the big man braced for a shock or something, but nothing happened. "That's it," the sorcerer said, letting go. "You can release the ring now."
"I didn't feel anything," Joe said, thinking something went wrong.
"You lose thousands, maybe millions of cells, every day," Ruddygore told him. "Only a couple are needed here and the few off your fingertips were plenty. The ring now has, well, for want of a better word, your genetic code in it. You alone can alter the record. Anyone touching it with you will know instantly she's yours. A transfer can only take place if you do what we did with someone else, your fingers where mine were, and you tell it you want to transfer title. It's quite elegant. The same system is used on prized livestock all over the world. Bigger rings, of course."
"What happens if we're separated? Or if the worst happens and, well, you know."'
He nodded. "If the worst happens, and you do not get the chance to make a transfer, the ring's memory will clear. The first person to hold it as you did will own her, just as you can claim unbranded cattle on the range. On the other hand, if you're merely separated, no matter by what distance, but your body still lives, it holds. She'll either be on her own initiative to find you, within her class limitations, or she'll be taken as a ward of the state and put to work, pending your location, if any. Since nobody ever looks, then the initiative's on your shoulders to find her."
Ruddygore looked at Ti. "You're dying to see what it looks like, I know. Go ahead. There's a mirror over there."
Joe nodded, and she went over and looked at herself. It didn't look ugly or disfiguring, as she'd feared. She'd seen some rings in some slaves that were awful. In fact, it really locked in the exotic dancer image. And she really did feel much better with it in. She was now defined to the world, and she felt oddly as if chains that had been holding her were suddenly cast aside.
"Master, may I go back down into town?" she asked Joe.
"Why? Just want to test it out?"
"Partly. But I also beg permission to buy something I saw earlier. There is a merchant in the marketplace who has among his wares castanets. I have been dying to try some dances with castanets and without the drums. . . . Please?"
He shrugged. "All right, go ahead," he said, then thought of something. "Wait a minute! From this moment on, and forever after, until I tell you different, if anybody demands to know who your master is, you tell them you are owned by—" He thought a moment. "—the great warrior chief Cochise, who won you in a fight. Got it? Get used to calling me that, even in private. We won't know who's listening and we don't want the name 'Joe' to pass either of our lips if we can help it."
She grinned. "Yes, Master," she responded. "Can I go now?'' He nodded, and she was off.
"She'll do," the sorcerer said. "The one thing that didn't change a whit about her was her drive for self-perfection. Even in her situation, she wants to be the perfect dancer, the perfect slave. The only thing I did yesterday was to give her some armor, so she can take all the crap that will be dished out to her. She still won't like it, but she'll be able to handle it better. She's got more self-confidence now, too. She spent time this morning before she went into town down in the armory, practicing leaps and jump-kicks. She's also got quite an eye with a knife at short range, and might well handle some other weapons she was previously good at. Not swords, or battleaxes, but, well, what some call 'women's weapons.' And I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a kick from those runner's legs! Her carrying a weapon is out, both for propriety and for her own protection, but I'd keep some at hand just in case."
"That's good to know. Marge is the best scout and spy I can think of, but she's only good in a fight as a diversion."
"There's one more thing, and I think perhaps it should be reinforced with Ti and explained to Marge as well, who might not understand. You've made a good start in letting her call you 'Master,' which, by the way, she doesn't mind, and which is natural to her, said without thinking about it, and your idea of using a pseudonym, even in private. The thing is, you're going to have to go even further. You're going to have to stop thinking of her as your ex-wife and think of her totally as your slave and property, no matter how unnatural that feels on personal and moral grounds. And I mean think that way, not playact. You may have to reign her in harshly, even treat her roughly, and I mean that. She has the absolute best possible disguise to go into that country. As I said, even the Baron, who knows her appearance and might, just might recognize her, although I think even there the chance is slight
, would disbelieve his own memory at seeing the mighty Tiana as Ti the slave. Still, if he's at all involved in this business or going to be and gives a description, that's where the attitude you display toward her becomes most important. They'll be looking for a wedded couple—partners. They'll see a slave. They must believe that's all she ever was, and that part's up to you. Your lives and others depend on it."
"You mean yell at her? Make her grovel? Beat her if she doesn't do something? I'm not sure I can. The whole idea of slavery is repugnant to me."
''Remember, once inside enemy lines, you must be what your son would call a 'badass' or 'tough dude.' The one thing an evil society does best is spy on itself. There will be eyes on you constantly, sizing you up."
"I'll try. I hope she understands."
"Joe—there is no way she can get her old body back. Even if, by some impossible good fortune, you secured it, there's no way to get it back alive and no way in any event I could do it. And even if, by some unbelievable occurrence, you got the spell as well, you couldn't make hide nor tail out of it, let alone remember its complexity. Not even Dacaro could, and he's a pro."
"Maybe if you'd use the Lamp to wish for the formula, I'd risk it anyway," he told the big man.
"Joe, it wouldn't help. The Lamp's magic is djinn magic. It can no more tell me how to do it in this universe than it could suddenly give you a total grasp of quantum physics. That Lamp's a curse, because those who see what it can do assume it is somehow godlike. It's not. If it were, I could use it to become a god and end all this foolishness. The only way is the hard way, Joe. Face it."
It was impossible to argue with the logic. The bodies had to be destroyed.
"And, I'd suggest a new name for Ti as well. It will not only remove the last link in the identification chain, but it will help you divorce the woman that was from the girl that is. Tell her no longer to answer to 'Ti.' She won't. It'll be gone. Then tell her to answer to and think of her name only as 'Mia.' Got it? Mia."
"Mia?"
Ruddygore nodded. "To protect her from having her old self revealed, I told you I took elements from her. Her second, rudimentary slave personality and background I took mostly from her own memories of a palace maid whose name was Mia. If you tell her that's her name, it will seem to her as if it really is. Understand? It's consistent."
"Yeah, okay. Mia. That closes the disguise on her, but everything you say makes me the weakest link in this. Not just how I behave and how I treat others, but we know how these things always go. Somehow, sometime, I'm going to bump into the Baron, even if he's not involved, and probably at the wrong time. If he's got any freedom at all, he's probably given those descriptions out just for revenge. I might not last ten seconds up there, and you know it."
Ruddygore nodded. "I've been thinking about that. And he knows you're an Amerind, which is rather distinctive here. I cannot transform your body or do much magic on it. You're locked in as a twenty-year-old Joe. We can, however, make use of the Baron's knowledge that you're what they call back on Earth an Indian or Native American. That's why I asked Doctor Mujahn to drop by this afternoon. He's the best alchemist Hu-saquanr ever produced—he actually has turned gold into lead.''
"I thought the idea was to turn lead into gold."
"He's halfway. Don't knock it. Pure science is often unprofitable. At any rate, I want to see what he can do for you. Strictly chemicals, potions, and nostrums, of course. But he can do some startling things in cosmetology, and they stick, unless you have the antidotes. And," he added, "he's so absentminded in day-to-day things he won't remember he was even here, let alone you, ten seconds after he leaves."
"Uh—I assume he has the antidotes to anything he tries on me? That he's not so absentminded that he'll forget how to reverse things?"
"I assume so, too, yes.''
"Well, if he can do anything, I'll try it. I want to come back alive from this one if possible. What about Marge, then? Sugasto's seen her, and a man and woman traveling with a Kauri will strike a few folks as familiar."
"I doubt if that's a real problem, if you and Ti aren't recognized. All Kauri look absolutely identical except to another Kauri, the same as all members of the nymph family. Remove her wings and color her leaf-green and she could be any wood nymph in the world—sorry. But you get the point. It's only by your total familiarity with her personality and manners that you know it's her and not another. I 'm not concerned about her being recognized at all."
Doctor Mujahn looked like a bumbling, middle-aged accountant in dark brown monklike robes, complete with small mustache and thin, slicked-down hair and glasses. He also looked like the kind of man who'd forget his head if it wasn't attached.
He poked and probed and took some skin and blood samples and cooked up a whole bunch of weird stuff, and he often had to be reminded that a subject was there and he wasn't doing research in his laboratory.
"Bleaching the skin is out, but we can tint it, going from the more olive cast to bronze," he muttered, not really to anybody else but himself. "We've got endless options on the hair, but because of the skin bath I'd recommend a medium brown. Poor contrast but it'll have a slight reddish tint, and it can be cropped and thickened, yes. Hmmm. . . Brown eyes . . . Let's see, let's see." He fumbled through a case full of vials. "Red . . . bloodshot . . . black . . . pinkeye . . . Ah! This one! Can't tell for sure what exact color will come out, but it should be somewhere between emerald and turquoise.''
"Wait a minute. You can even change my eye color?" Joe asked him.
"No problem. Simplest of all, really, except for making everything black or albino. That's child's play.'' He puttered around some more and came up with a vial that seemed made of polished obsidian. "Ah! Yes, the final ingredient! I find it fascinating that your people don't have much in the way of facial or body hair."
"What is it? Hair-growing formula?"
"Yes. We looked to give one fellow a hairier chest once. Poor man looked like an ape at the end. Tsk-tsk. Blew my demonstration. Oh, don't worry! It was a simple mistake—I used one part per thousand when it should have been one per hundred thousand. I was always better at working out formulas than following them. Once baked a loaf of bread that rose so dramatically it blew the roof off the house. Not as bad as the fireworks mixture I did once. You can still see the crater where the town used to be ... Hmmm . . . All right. Now I have everything worked out for you exactly correct. At least I hope I do."
Joe felt much like Irving had felt being introduced to Gorodo. All he wanted was out of there.
He had Ti—no, Mia now, he'd have to remember that—in the room with him. Poquah was also there, looking over the alchemist's shoulder, and that was the only reassurance he had. The Imir was one of the few known adepts who was of faerie, and he was pretty damned good. Ruddygore said he'd never be as good as a human adept with the same talent, simply because he was of faerie, but that he was already the most knowledgeable and powerful of the elf family in all history. The Imir were also one of the rare warrior races of elves, and were great in a fight. But Ruddygore had proclaimed that his adept was needed here, particularly if Joe failed.
First the alchemist used a bathtub that could only have been Ruddygore's—it was the largest even Joe had ever seen—and, after elf servants filled it with water, he began mixing and stirring various potions in there. Joe grew more nervous when he saw that no exact measuring devices were being used; it was a pinch of this and two drops of that.
Finally, Doctor Mujahn proclaimed the mixture correct. "You must get in and submerge completely," he told Joe. "Eyes and mouth shut, but once under, turn your lips out in a pucker, as if about to give a big kiss. That's quite important. Don't worry if you swallow a little bit. The worse that will do is turn your urine green for a few days. Stay under until I tap you on the head. Then you can come up. That, too, is important."
"Uh—you're sure I'm not gonna come out purple or something?"
"Reasonably sure. Of course, I could always test, I suppose, but i
t's such a waste of time."
"Test!" Joe ordered.
He sighed. "Very well, very well. Let's see. Ah. This leather patch will do fine." He picked up a small patch of dark brown leather, stuck it to the end of a pair of pliers, and dipped it into the bathtub. Then he waited, and waited, whistling a bit as he did so.
"Hey! How long does this take?" Joe asked nervously. "I have to breathe, you know!"
"Oh, almost done. Another little bit... yes ... there!" He pulled the patch up.
The leather was a yellow orange and most unattractive.
"I don't want that color!" Joe protested.
"Oh, don't worry about that. It's matched to your current skin color. Naturally, it's going to have a different, but predictable, effect on ordinary brown cow leather. It will work. This is the expected result. Come, come! Your turn!"
Joe sighed. "All right, all right. If it goes too wrong Ruddygore will have to cancel this whole thing and send other people." He slipped off his loincloth and sandals and went over, hoisted himself up, paused a moment, took a deep breath, let it out, then took in another and held it, then slid into the tub. He submerged all the way, eyes shut, as instructed, but only at the last minute did he remember the pucker. A little did come in. It tasted like cream soda.
His whole body tingled, and he was very uncomfortable. Besides, the water might have been nice and warm when they poured it, but it was at best lukewarm now. He began to fear his lungs were going to burst, and he could hold his breath a pretty long time. As long as he had to pucker, why the hell didn't they give him a breathing straw? Just when he decided he could hold it no longer, that he was coming up anyway, he felt a none too gentle blow on his forehead and he immediately broke through the surface, gasping for air and coughing.
"Out! Out! Get out quickly or you won't stay even!" the alchemist shouted, oblivious to his discomfort. He managed to lift himself out and stood there dripping on the floor.
Songs Of The Dancing Gods Page 13