“But—like that?”
“She must learn to live with it. People will recognize her and let her go. They will tolerate in her things they would not tolerate in themselves, for she’ll be a curiosity and something of a celebrity.”
“A freak, you mean.”
“So? She’s already restless down there. Sooner or later she’s going to go away. Let her adjust and let World adjust to her. She is going to live like that for a very long time.”
It was a sobering thought.
It was a bar in a Fluxland up in the north wilds called Hjinna. Like many of the Fluxlands in the wilds, away from any Anchors, it tended to be populated with people in the business of Flux—minor wizards false and true, retired stringers, and a fair number of fugitives. Powerful ex-stringers usually established the places in reality and relaxed to enjoy them rather than rule them.
The bar was Flandy’s Bar, and inside tough-looking men and women were drinking and talking and showing off and even gambling, something not usually possible in Flux, but possible here under the rules of the Fluxland’s proprietor, as he liked to call himself.
Through the swinging front doors stepped an enormous man, well over two meters tall and weighing, it seemed, better than two hundred kilos. He was clearly a dugger, with a purplish complexion, a misshapen, hairless face, and a permanent, insane grin, while his skin seemed all mottled and full of discolorations. In many places he would have been the object of horrible fascination and some fear, but not in Hjinna. Lots of retired duggers and those taking a break between six-month-long stringer routes were always about. In fact, although this one was a stranger to almost all of them, only one, an elderly man who’d been drinking pretty heavily, eyed the newcomer with recognition and then growing fear. He got up and made his way quickly to the back of the bar and then stepped out into the alley behind, still clutching his bottle.
The alley seemed clear, and so he turned left—and suddenly came up against a solid wall that hadn’t been there a moment before. He cried out, turned, and started the other way—and ran into another wall. In fact, he was now in a high box, the only outlet being the door back into the bar.
The door opened and a figure dressed all in black stepped out. He was a big man with a long, drooping handlebar moustache. He was dressed in stringer fashion, complete with whip and sawed-off shotgun. He was not a young man—his hair was gray and his face worn and aged, with wrinkles around the eyes—but he was in pretty good shape.
“You!” the old man croaked. “But—you’re dead! A hundred saw you fall nigh on to twenty years ago!”
“Eighteen,” the man responded. “Eighteen years, three months to be exact. So if I’m a ghost, Gilly, then what’s that make you?”
“Hey! Wait! I always liked you!” The old man paused for a moment. “This is a trick, isn’t it? Who are you—really?”
“Does it matter? I want Coydt, Gilly. I want him bad, and I want him in Anchor.”
Gilly took a swig from the bottle to steady his nerves. “Coydt? You nuts? Nobody can take Coydt; you know that!”
“I’ll take him, Gilly, because he won’t know who’s after him even when you tell him.”
“I don’t talk to Coydt. Oh, sure, we was cozy once, but nobody’s really cozy with him for long. You wind up dead—or worse.”
“You know, Gilly. You keep track. I haven’t got all night either. You know where they are. You know where they all are. You’re too scared of them not to know.”
Gilly drained the bottle, but it didn’t help. “He’s down near Anchor Logh. Half a world from here.”
“Yeah. He pulled a job down there, Gilly, and he doesn’t know it yet, but he pulled the wrong one. He woke up the dead with that one, Gilly, and now I’m going to get him.”
“What was that business to you?”
“She’s my kin, Gilly, though I didn’t even know about her until this. I can’t let people do that to kin. You know the code. You put the word out. You tell any dugger along the route that’s going out. It’ll get to me. If it’s good information, I’ll make it good with you, Gilly, I really will. Cross me, and you’re dead, too.”
Gilly laughed. “How can I cross you? Who’s gonna believe after all these years that a dead man’s out stalkin’ Coydt?”
“You give him the word if you want. He’s so puffed up and egomaniacal that he’s liable to set up a meet just to see for sure. You go ahead, Gilly. You tell him Matson’s back from the grave.”
7
SIDEBAR STRINGING
Stringers did not usually ask for Sister Kasdi when they called on Hope, so it was with some curiosity that she decided to go down to the reception hall and see these who had. For lots of personal reasons she loved the taciturn loners who plied the trade routes between Anchors and Fluxlands, not the least of which was her envy of their freedom.
Two figures waited in the temple reception room. One was a small, thin young man barely Kasdi’s height and almost as thin, although he wore the black of his profession. The other was an even shorter individual, perhaps one hundred and fifty centimeters, who was very fat, although her ample stomach was not nearly matched to her enormous breasts. She had long, thick black hair that fell down her back almost to her waist, wore unusual dark blue denim pants that seemed quite baggy, and a white tee shirt, obviously made for a very large man, but necessary to keep her enormous frontage covered.
“Suzl!” Kasdi almost screamed, and ran to the small, fat woman, hugging and kissing her. Finally, they stepped back and looked at each other.
“Cass, you look lousy,” Suzl told her.
Kasdi laughed. Of all those on World, friend and foe, only Suzl refused to call her by anything but her original name—and was probably the only one who could get away with it. “You seem to have made up for what I didn’t eat,” she shot back. “You’re fat!”
“Well, I enjoy life. Oh, uh, Cass, this is Ravi. He’s my boss, so to speak, and, well, sort of my husband.”
That caught the Sister off-guard for a moment. “Husband?” She was well aware that, as a result of a misfired spell long ago, Suzl was physically female only to a point; she had a male sexual organ and was, despite appearances and manner, really a man.
Ravi looked a bit nervous for a stringer, but said nothing.
“Yeah. I keep him respectable. We both have what each other wants most, but I have two big bonuses.”
Kasdi got the drift, and wasn’t sure whether to be shocked or understanding and tolerant. Suzl had always gone both ways sexually and was unashamed of the fact—even before her strange spell. But she had been born and raised a woman and grown up that way, and could hardly be impugned for being attracted to men. Ravi, on the other hand, was obviously a lifelong homosexual, and that was a different moral problem. It was tolerated in Flux but suppressed in Anchor, and the Church frowned on it as interfering with the prime mission of procreation. Still, Kasdi was not one to make preachments now. She was very glad to see Suzl, the only person alive who could and would tell her to her face exactly what she was thinking, no matter how blunt or uncomplimentary it may be.
“Come! Both of you! Sit down over here and talk a while!” Kasdi invited, and they took chairs in a corner of the room. “How long has it been?”
“A couple of years at least,” Suzl replied. “We were through once about ten months ago, but you were off conquering someplace or other. Actually, we’re a little off the route here, but when we heard about the ugly business, I just had to come by.”
Kasdi nodded, some of the euphoria fading as reality was brought up. “Yes. So it’s spread through the network.”
For the first time, Ravi spoke, in a thin, reedy voice that was somewhat grating. “It has spread through all of World, and not merely from this source. There is every evidence to show that Coydt’s own people are also telling the tale to get maximum effect.”
“He would,” Kasdi said angrily. “Some day we’ll meet, he and I, and he’ll learn the price of his work.”
> “You’re not the only one gunning for Coydt, Cass,” Suzl told her. “Somebody else has the whole stringer network out trying to track him down.”
“Oh? Who?”
“You’re not gonna like this.”
She felt an odd chill. “Why? What do you mean?”
“Well, those that have seen him say he looks like and claims to be Matson.”
Somehow she both expected and feared those words, words she had somehow suspected to hear despite all evidence and experience for eighteen years. “You know Matson’s long dead. He died in my arms from a hole in his chest the size of a grapefruit. You know. You were there, too, that day.”
Suzl nodded. “I know, although I never saw him. You and lots of others did, though, and I don’t doubt anybody. He’s officially dead, that’s for sure. But whoever this is has taken his form and knows all the stringer codes. Anybody with power can seem to be anybody else in Flux, you know that, but one thing’s sure. Whoever he is, he has Jomo with him.”
The huge, misshapen dugger came immediately to mind, so brutal and grotesque on the outside, but so very gentle and understanding on the inside. Jomo had been Matson’s chief driver, the train boss, and fiercely loyal to his boss. Jomo, too, had been there that terrible day, and he had been the one to pull her off his lifeless body. She’d heard he never went back to the trains again, refusing to work for any other stringer, but had retired and gone to work in one of the old dugger communities in the wild. She had not seen him either, not in eighteen years, except in the nightmares she had off and on to this day, reliving that horrible scene.
“Jomo could explain a lot,” she told them. “He always liked me, and he worshipped Matson. He’d know all the people and all the codes. If he found somebody up there with a grudge against Coydt, and they are legion, and with Flux power, it might be a way to throw Coydt off balance. Maybe—maybe he th’inks he’s revenging for Matson, to pay off the injury to Matson’s child.”
“Could be,” Suzl agreed. “It’s sure got old Coydt’s boys running around, though. Coydt seems to feel the same way you do, and he’s moving heaven and hell to find out who it is. Word is that three of his best people have already turned up dead, so I guess they found out.”
This was getting interesting in more ways than one. “Suzl—Ravi—do you know where Coydt is now?”
“He is in Anchor, certainly,” Ravi responded. “He has altered his appearance and has appeared in a number of Anchors just southwest of here, mostly under old and familiar guises and aliases. You will not catch him unawares in Flux, if that is your thinking, and people are far too frightened of him to betray him in Anchor—even to you—pardon me, but you see how it is seen elsewhere. He even kidnapped and cursed forever your own daughter.”
She nodded. “I know. But he still knows I’m looking, and now he has a different enemy as well. In a way, Jomo is doing me a great service. If Coydt fears ambush in Anchor from Jomo and his companion, whoever he really is, he will spend most of his time in Flux, where eventually he will have to come to terms with me. But if he wants no fight with me right now, and he doesn’t seem to, then he has to expose himself in Anchor to an unknown assassin. I wonder if he’s feeling uncomfortable for the first time in his life?”
“I would doubt it,” Ravi replied. “I do not think Coydt can feel very much anymore. Do not ever believe he is afraid of you, even if he should be. If he chooses not to take you on, it is because he has other things to do. He loves only fear in others and the power it generates for him. He is quite cautious in Anchor, but he walks where he wills and when he wishes. It is for others to fear him. Nothing else is acceptable to him.”
“Still, the pressure is on him, all the more if he is up to some new evil plan. If that’s so, it’s directed against me and the Church, and Jomo can queer his plans. If he’s not afraid, he’s at least being overcautious, and that’s better than nothing.”
Suzl decided to change the subject back to the original. “How is Spirit doing?”
“She’s adjusted well, although it was very hard on her at first. She’s restless, though, being trapped here. Mervyn thinks I ought to let her go into the world, but I can’t see how I can in good conscience. I mean, in many ways she’s like a baby. No shame, no embarrassment, and very little communication or understanding. Come—let’s go out and see her, and you’ll see my problem.”
Her weeks in the garden had given Spirit the time to think and sort things out as the complex spell worked its way into every fabric of her and became in a very real way a part of her.
In a way, understanding was due to Coydt. His demonstration in his office back in the Pocket had shown her that attitudes, which are taken for granted, were not the same as reality. Having the time to think and reflect on her life and attitudes before the spell and compare them both to her behavior now and to other people’s reactions to that behavior had given her an understanding of just what had happened to her.
Clothing was normal. People did not walk around in the nude and it was considered immoral behavior. She knew and understood this, but could no longer accept it. Clothing, any form of covering, seemed immoral, unnatural, even repugnant to her now. She knew that her beauty combined with her nakedness would make men lustful and turn folks on, but she didn’t mind—although once she would have. She would never again apologize or feel inhibited by anything that was normal and natural.
She slept a lot, and it seemed that every time she awoke things seemed different to her. Small things she’d never noticed, like the sound of a quiet breeze in the treetops or the shapes of clouds or the rustling of wind in the grass, were beautiful and endlessly fascinating. Nothing that other people prized or worried about seemed the least bit important to her anymore, not even any of those things that used to worry and concern her. She wasn’t even sure now if she wanted the spell broken. Time no longer had meaning, nor did ambition. Her wants were simple and her needs were few.
She found all her memories in place, but more and more they seemed somebody else’s memories, and they did not belong to the kind of life she could imagine living now. At first she had dwelt on the past, but now it was becoming so unreal to her that it was quite literally irrelevant. She ceased to think about it, finally, and with that a psychological barrier snapped and a total change came over her.
Now, ten weeks after the change (although she didn’t know it), the old Spirit was practically dead. She had come, psychologically, head-to-head with the reality of her existence and its permanence, and her mind had taken the easiest, most comfortable path of total acceptance. One day she simply awoke and thought nothing strange, unusual, or different. She was the way she was and she could no longer even think of being any other way at all. So absolute was the acceptance that she no longer even thought of herself as cursed, or as a victim, or in any way different than she should be. She no longer even missed speech or reading; forbidden forever as they were to her, she dropped the very concept. Whatever was no longer relevant or applicable she simply edited out of her very thoughts.
Her mother, of course, was both relevant and applicable. She didn’t like being trapped here in the temple garden. It wasn’t natural or normal, nor could she here fill her natural need for sex. She had only one particular place she wanted to go, and that briefly, but she could stand being caged only so long.
She was taking a shower under the small waterfall that was the centerpiece of the garden when they showed up—her mother and two strangers. She emerged from the waterfall and walked out of the stream and up to them, a quizzical look on her face. She felt like a giant in a land of short people; she was a head taller than the tallest of them. She realized from the man’s dress that he must be a stranger, and she guessed that the fat one with the enormous tits must work for him.
“Wow! She’s gorgeous!” Suzl exclaimed. “Hello, Spirit!”
The nude girl looked blank, and Kasdi said, “She can’t understand a word, can’t even read intonations. We’ve worked out a sign language sy
stem, but that’s the best we can do. Here—I’ll throw a little spell your way that will save you a lot of grief and long hours of learning.”
It was simpler after that, although along with the signs a large amount of exaggerated gesturing and gyrations was necessary to convey real information. It was like doing a whole conversation in pantomime. For example, to indicate that Suzl and Kasdi were old friends required a lot of back-and-forth pointing, a hug, and a peck on the cheek by each. It sometimes took several minutes to get a simple concept across, but it worked. To Spirit, with infinite patience and no time sense, it was a conversation.
Hello. Your mother and I are old friends. This man is my lover and my boss. We are stringers. You are attractive/sexy/pretty. We would like to be your friends. The concept of stringer, for example, involved miming a line or rope being pulled, followed by a mock whip and ride-in-place. But the message got through.
Spirit smiled and kissed them both and returned the greeting. She turned, looked over at a nearby tree, then ran for it, leaped up and caught a branch with her hands, then pulled herself up on it with contortionist’s ease. There was a small cluster of fruit there, jabagua, related to the banana, and she picked the stalk and jumped back to the ground, landing on her feet. She went back up to them and offered each a fruit.
Even Ravi was impressed by the display. “Anyone who can move like that can take care of herself,” he commented.
“Yeah,” Suzl agreed. “Look, she’s gonna go nuts if she stays here and I think you know that.”
“You’ve been talking to Mervyn,” Kasdi said suspiciously.
“Sure. We saw the old boy in Globbus on the way here. I admit it. And I agree with him—now more than ever.”
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