by Mel Dunay
Paa looked uncomfortable and examined his teacup intently. He probably knew what Amita got up to, and why she did it. The whole Mount Snarl district got tax breaks just because the minister of agriculture had a young, pretty mistress from a village near the top of the mountain.
Neither Kajjal nor Rina had ever done anything of the kind, and Rina sometimes wondered if it wasn’t the contrast with Amita that kept Paa from getting more wound up than he already was about Rina’s and Kajjal’s fashion designs, and their willingness to model the clothes themselves.
“Anyway,” Maa didn’t even seem to notice their reactions, “The priests will wait until nearly the end of the blooming if they have to. If you need to wrap things up down here, you should have a little time.”
“Your mother and I will need to start back soon though, so we can prepare. You might be on your own for the trip up,” Paa warned her.
“That will be fine,” Rina said. Fond as she was of her parents, she didn’t feel like traveling with them all the way up Mount Snarl.
Rina managed to get things sorted out in less than a week, but the river that cut through Rivertown overflowed, and took out the bridge closest to her home.
She had to take a motor rickshaw halfway across town to the south to find a bridge that wasn't bottlenecked with politicians heading up to their vacation homes in Summertown, or tourists trying to get to one of the bigger, more commercial smokeflower festivals in the foothills of the Blue Smoke Mountains.
She had planned on traveling by the cheap, narrow-gauge train as far as Summertown, but there had been an accident on that line, and the only train going to Summertown was the luxury express.
It was evening by the time she and her suitcase reached the bus stop on the edge of town, and she sat down on her suitcase to wait for a bus that would take them up to Summertown. Do I have everything? Rina worried. What did I forget?
She'd brought a nice chiffon sari with her for more formal dinners, and some chic skirts and shirts in the latest Imperial styles just to make everybody's eyes pop out at home.
Her mother had told her not to worry about her clothes for the ritual: the family would take care of that, which meant that she was probably going to look gaudy and tacky in the end result, but with any luck, there would only be a couple of photos of her dressed like that.
Sometimes Rina envied curvy little Kajjal for her ability to make saris look good-Rina was taller and leaner, and although knee-skimming Imperial style skirts looks great on her, she had to choose her saris carefully so that she didn’t look rangy and gangly in them.
Rina had her phone, and the plugin charger for it, even though the electricity was a dicey proposition where she was going, and the solar charger for when the electricity was out...were her subscriptions to the mobile novel site up to date?
She dug the phone out and tapped the screen a couple of times. Yes, the phone had chapters from all the serialized novels she had planned to subscribe to.
She had her purse, which meant she had makeup, money, a pencil and a small design sketchbook, a couple of pairs of nice earrings to wear if she wanted to or sell if something went wrong and she needed more money.
Right now she wore tan and white tennis shoes, denim shorts and a cream-colored polo shirt that hopefully wouldn’t show the grime too much.
The bus pulled up and she got on. Men brushed past her repeatedly as they squeezed their way to the rear. She didn't like the way some of them looked at her, but she tried not to let it bother her.
She needed to wear these clothes to stay cool and move around more easily, and she wasn't going to be intimidated by anyone leering at her.
She did not manage to get a seat, but she grabbed one of the overhead grip straps towards the front with one hand, planted her suitcase between her legs, and then held on tight to her purse.
Her balance was good enough to where she didn’t fall down or bump anyone when the bus lurched into motion.
A couple of hours outside of Capital, the bus passed through a stretch of mango orchards. The season for their fruit had passed, and there were no workers moving among the trees, but what always struck Rina about this place was how overgrown the space under the trees looked, with paths that looked like they had been made by deer rather than people.
A toll gate with the barrier lowered the road ahead. There was no booth for collecting money from the drivers who passed through. Instead, there stood a creature like an six-foot tall preying mantis, its shell gleaming maroon and yellow in the sun.
“Is that a Gnosha?” A pale-skinned tourist with an Imperial accent asked. “I always thought they were some sort of hoax your government put on to fool your lot.”
“I don't know why the government gave them this stretch of land when there was already a major road on it,” Said one of the other passengers with disgust.
“I do,” Rina said.
“The Minister of Agriculture realized that the hills on the other side of the Gnosha reservation would make a great addition to his tea plantation. So, he confiscated that land by eminent domain for a road, that’s no use to anyone but the truckers hauling his tea to market.”
The tourist’s eyes were starting to glaze over, but Rina plowed ahead.
“Then the Minister had the government sell him the leftover land it didn’t need for the new road. At a discount price, of course.”
“You make the Gnosha sound like a bunch of innocent victims,” The man next to Rina said.
He was college age, with a grubby plaid shirt and jeans torn at the knees, and a weak attempt at a beard.
Rina knew the type: going to college on the money raised by a working class or lower middle class family, but determined not to learn anything or work at anything, just smoke, drink and hit on women.
“Well, they were,” Rina said. “It wasn’t their idea, and there's not much they or anyone else can do when the government invokes eminent domain.”
“At least they got this toll road in compensation,” said one of the other passengers. “That’s surely a gold mine for them.”
Rina shook her head. “You must not have traveled this road since they took it over. The Gnosha aren’t interested in money. You’ll see.”
The bus stopped in front of the barrier, and the driver opened the door on the passenger side. The Gnosha stooped forward and leaned into the opening, gripping the frame of the doorway with three-fingered hands no bigger than Rina’s.
Most of the passengers flinched, and Rina thought she heard a startled yelp from one of the small children on the bus.
For her own part, she tried to squash her gut level dislike of insects by focusing on the Gnosha’s face, which looked like that of a cartoon frog, with large, shining green-gold eyes and a wide, thin-lipped mouth that turned up slightly at the corners.
That expression of friendly curiosity reminded Rina of the two or three other Gnosha that she had met-maybe they weren't all like that, but the ones who were interested in dealing with humans usually were.
“Greetings,” said the Gnosha in a voice that sounded like it was made by a complicated flute than a human throat, “Welcome to the territory of the Stetemo Hive. We collect toll in a different way than you do.”
He paused. At least, Rina thought this one was a he-she had been told that these relatively small Gnosha, who had no cutting edges on their forearms and shins to defend themselves with, were builder drones, chosen for toll duty because humans found them less intimidating than the other castes.
“Everyone must leave the bus and come with me,” the Gnosha said. “To the sandpit over there...” He gestured to a square, sand-filled area in sight of the road, framed with weathered wooden beams.
“What are you going to do to us?” The question came from an austere looking woman with the shaved head and orange-yellow robes of an ascetic in religious orders.
“Whatever it is, you’re not going to do it to me!” The driver snapped. “I’ve got to stay with the bus.”
“Don�
��t be silly,” Rina said. “I’ve been this way before, and all the Gnosha want us to do is draw a picture in the sand. Each of us, in turn. That includes you,” she said to the driver, “Because they won’t let you leave until you draw your picture, and without you to drive us, none of us are leaving, and I for one have to reach Thundermouth by the end of the week.”
The driver scowled at her, but Rina could tell from looking around that most of the passengers were scowling back at him. Nobody wanted to be stuck here for any length of time.
One of the few people who wasn’t scowling was a man standing up a couple of rows back from Rina. He was taller than the people in front of him, but not enough to show Rina more of him than a hawk like face set on a strong-looking neck and a pair of shoulders that seemed to match the neck.
The man wore a white dress shirt open at the throat. His face wore a look of polite curiosity, that reminded Rina of the expression on the Gnosha toll collector's face.
“Fine, you win,” the bus driver said. He turned off the bus, and started to step out of the vehicle. Over his shoulder he added, “But you’re coming with me.”
“I should hope so,” Rina said. “Someone’s got to show you how it’s done.”
She followed him out of the bus. The rest of the group came after them. Rina walked confidently up to the sandbox, and started to draw an embroidery pattern she had sketched the other day in her idea book, a pattern full of loops and spirals. She looked up at the Gnosha to see what he thought.
“The Hive approves,” he said. “Thank you for contributing to our understanding of how humans think.”
The bus driver went next, drawing a stick man next to a box with a money symbol inside. Then came a woman with the saffron robes and shaved head of an ascetic, who drew an ancient religious glyph.
Then came the tall man Rina had noticed earlier. He might have been anywhere between thirty-five and forty. Seen close up, his longish hair was limp and sticky from the humidity, as was his shirt, and the somewhat battered khaki pants that he wore.
The clinging clothes hinted at a lean, well-formed figure, as the man dropped into a graceful crouch and drew a four-legged stick figure with a smiley face.
Rina only recognized it as a horse when the man added a mane and tail. Then he drew a series of jagged, angular things that might have been writing in a language Rina did not know.
The Gnosha was silent for a moment, then said, “I have told the Queens that after paying the toll, you expressed a wish to speak with them. They are willing if you will meet them at the main hive dwelling right now.”
“I would be honored,” The man said. He had a heavy, rather nasal voice, not unattractive, but with a bit of a growl buried in it. “Can you tell me where to go please?”
The Gnosha pointed towards a narrow trail that started at the toll gate and wound away into the underbrush.
“Thank you.” The man bowed at the waist, in as close to the Gnosha style as a human being could manage, and set off down the deer trail at a jog.
“What’s that idiot trying to do, break his neck?” The young man with the beard sneered.
Rina shrugged, and offered an answer.
“He seems to know how to handle a Gnosha trail, so maybe he’s done business with one of the other hives. Some of them hire humans to act as go-betweens in their dealings with other groups of Gnosha.”
The young man’s eyes narrowed. “I wonder how you got to know so much about those freaks. You some kind of bug lover?”
Rina felt her face go hot with anger. “Maybe if you had a real job, you’d have done business with the Gnosha yourself, and then you’d know just as much about them as I do.”
The young man’s scowl deepened. “I don't let uppity women like you tell me how to run my life.”
“And I don’t let ignorant layabouts tell me how to run mine,” Rina said.
The young man took a step towards her but the bus driver put a hand on his shoulder.
“She’s not worth it,” He said. “Besides do you really want the bugs to know that you’re bothering a bug lover?”
He steered the younger man away towards a small group, mostly men but with one or two women, who were taking a smoke break.
Rina backed slowly away from them, leaned up against the bus and started reading a novel on her phone. Looking back, she felt as though she had been a little pompous when she was talking about the Gnosha, but that was no excuse for the young man to get freaky on her.
Every now and again she looked up to see what was going on. After she and the bus driver had shown everyone how it was done, the other passengers paid this unusual toll without making much fuss. But most of them were taking their own sweet time about deciding what to draw in the sand.
Rina had learned early on that the Gnosha did not really care about artistic ability, they were just curious to see what the humans would draw, when asked to do so with no time to prepare. It was a little like some of the tests psychologists came up with.
Finally, the last of the other passengers finished their drawings, and begin to board the bus. The tall man with the rumpled clothes had not returned and Rina asked the toll collector if he was planning on spending the night at the Hive.
“Unlikely,” said the toll collector, after a pause to check on the situation telepathically. “The man who asked to meet with the Queens is only a messenger, not a negotiator. He will be back soon.”
The driver began to climb up into the bus. Rina stopped him and said: “I don’t know if it matters, but the toll collector said that the one man who left us, is probably coming back.”
The driver frowned. “The company rules say we’re only supposed to stay ten minutes past the time needed for a ‘rest stop,’ and I’m counting this whole crazy toll thing as a rest stop. If he doesn’t show up by then, we're not waiting for him.”
Rina didn’t try to argue with him. The driver was a jerk, but it wasn’t fair to try and make him break the rules he was supposed to operate by. He and the other passengers didn't owe anything to someone who couldn’t keep to the rules.
On a whim, she let the other passengers board in front of her.
Just as she was getting ready to board, the toll collector said, “The messenger comes,” and a moment later Rina heard rustling sounds that might have been a deer leaping, or a man jogging fast.
A moment later, the man rounded a curve in the deer trail and came into view, still a few hundred yards away.
His shirt was now plastered to his chest with sweat, and he moved like a professional runner, his arms swinging in counterpoint to his legs.
At fifty feet away, his eyes locked onto Rina’s with a pleading look, and they must have picked up a flash of sunlight, because for a moment, his eyes looked almost golden to Rina, and then the next moment they were dark brown again.
Rina understood exactly what he wanted to ask, and that he could not spare the breath to call out and do the asking himself. She pulled some money out of her purse and climbed up into the bus.
“Please wait just a minute,” she said to the driver and handed him a couple of small bills, a little more than the average tip. “That man who had business with the Gnosha is headed back here at a dead run.”
The driver clenched the money in his fist and leaned sideways to call out to the toll collector.
“Is that guy in trouble with you people?” The driver asked.
“No,” the toll collector said. “If he had been, we would have arrested him and notified your central government. Perhaps he is afraid you would leave him.”
The driver stared down at the money in his hand, and Rina could tell that he was counting and re-counting it in his mind. “Oh, well,” the driver said at last. “Next bus through here isn't for two days, and it won't take him long to get here.”
Rina watched through the bus windows as the man skidded to a halt in front of the Gnosha toll collector, made a quick bow, and then climbed up into the bus.
“Thank you for waiting,
” he said, and pulled out his wallet to tip the driver for not leaving him.
The driver accepted the tip without comment, and Rina was tempted to point that he’d already been tipped once for this service.
But she thought better of it-she’d only talked the driver into staying because she felt bad about the idea of someone running that hard to catch the bus only to be stranded in a place with no place for humans to stay.
She didn’t want this strange man, who carried messages to the Gnosha and ran flat-out in the sticky heat of late summer, to think she was interested in him.
They had left the Stetemo Hive Reservation far behind when someone pinched the back of her thigh, just below where the shorts ended.
Rina glared over her shoulder at the probable culprit, who grinned at her, daring her to do something about it. It was the young rowdy she had been arguing with earlier.
“Leave me alone!” she snapped.
She couldn’t do much else-if she tried to use pepper spray on him she would spray a lot of comparatively innocent bystanders as well.
“Sorry ma’am,” the young man said mockingly, and she turned back to face the front.
About an hour later he tried it again.
“Stop that,” she told him again. “Or I’ll have the driver stop the bus and throw you off.”
“You and what army?” That came from the bus driver.
Rina was shocked. Usually they backed her up on this threat. But then again, this one hadn’t care for her bossing him around at the toll gate.
“You hear that? You can’t do squat to me, you twit!” The rowdy jeered.
Rina glared at him, and he smacked his lips at her. A couple of older men and women around him looked away; most of the men younger than that smirked.
There were only a couple of women in their twenties on the bus; one was pregnant, working class and wore a sari; the other was the ascetic that Rina had noticed earlier.
Both looked at her disapprovingly, as if they felt that she deserved what she got. The only person who looked at all sympathetic was the tall man who’d had a message for the Gnosha Queens.