by Dave Duncan
The rain had started again. Misi and her daughter seemed to converse during their long silences by means unknown to man, for without warning Pula rose and closed the shutters on the north side. Then she hauled a leather cape from one of the chests, swathed herself in it, and went out on the platform to take over the driving.
Misi came in and shut the front shutters. She stared down at me for a moment in silence and without expression. I was wearing a blue wool tunic and a pagne, for breeches would not go over my splints, but I also had a blanket pulled over my legs, and now I instinctively tucked it tighter around me, disconcerted by this calculating study.
My nerves were the weaker—I spoke first.
“How much of me do you own now?”
After a moment she made her peculiar woofing chuckle. “We’re partners now, Knobil.”
I was about to ask what sort of partners, and then I didn’t dare.
Misi stooped to rummage in one of the cubical chests, stretching brown cotton over hips as wide as hippos’ backs. Once I would have reached out automatically to pat or pinch. Now that her pretense of idiocy had failed, I had abandoned any pretense of wanting Misi Nada. Incredible as it seems to me now, at that time I felt a powerful physical revulsion when I looked at heir—her bloated obesity, her coarse greasy skin, her lank gray hair. Herdmen preferred their women small, even tiny, and perhaps that was the origin of my distaste, although Sparkle had been built on generous lines.
I had turned away to stare broodingly at the scenery. Then Misi flopped down heavily at my side as the cab rolled. She was holding two pottery beakers.
“Drink to our new partnership!” she boomed in her deep harsh voice. She curled her mustache in a smile.
I accepted a beaker with poor grace. “I’m no trader, Misi. I can’t ride or hunt…or scout or cook. I can’t even walk yet. I certainly couldn’t haggle—”
“You’re a better man than Jat!” she said and tossed off her drink. Then she looked at me expectantly.
I shrugged and swallowed mine—then gagged at one of the worst tastes I had ever met. Misi leered and pursed her lips so that I might seal our agreement with a kiss. I pretended not to understand. “I’m not a better man than Jat for what you want,” I said, hoping that I was wrong about what she wanted.
“He’s a coward! Trouble makes every one of his parts run.”
“Afraid of angels, is he?”
She heaved her great shoulders in a shrug, took my beaker, and threw it out of the one open window. She tossed her own beaker after it, in what seemed an oddly extravagant gesture. “You’re my partner now.”
“Partner? In business? But I have no skills and no goods—”
“I paid Jat. I’ll pay you,” she said complacently and slid a giant hand under the blanket to feel my left knee. She frowned, for it was hot.
“I was exercising.”
She threw off the cover and began tightening the straps on my splints with quick deft movements, the normal pretense of stupidity now discarded. Her touch brought goose bumps up on my skin. She noticed and chuckled again. She stroked a finger along my thigh, tracing one of the thin red scars.
My heart was pumping furiously. “Misi, why do traders buy wetlanders? And don’t throw manure about luck!”
She smiled mockingly. “Wetlanders are great lovers.”
“That’s not true!! Hrarrh told me you buy men and women, both. And you don’t care what sort of shape they’re in—”
“What sort of shape are you in, Knobil?”
I was sweating. I wiped my forehead. “I’m not… I’m… Misi—what was in that drink you gave me?”
She nodded thoughtfully and patted my leg. “It comes from the jungle. Makes tall tree grow in forest.”
Yes, it certainly did that. A wild shivering seized me, a strange excitement. “Misi…when I’m better…when my knees have healed, then I’d like—”
“Not till then, Knobil?”
“Well… I suppose I could try—yes, now!”
Pulling away from my grasp, she rose and hauled her great tentlike garment over her head, revealing the bulging form that I had only guessed at before. Her belly was as broad as the Andes, and hairier. Her breasts were even more enormous than I had expected or had imagined a human frame could bear. As I reached for them, she stepped away to slam the shutters shut on the third window and to dismantle the bench, hauling those chests across to add to the bed and make it wider. Blood roared in my ears, and my whole body throbbed. I heard my tunic rip, although I had not been aware of trying to remove it. Gasping with eagerness, barely able to speak, I stretched out my arms to her in the gloom. “Now, Misi! Now!”
She straightened, putting her fists on her hips. I could not see the expression on her face, but it was there in her voice—mockery and contempt. “Ready for that kiss, Knobil?”
“Oh yes! Please, Misi! Please…”
—2—
THEY CALL IT THE VIRGIN’S WEB.
Long afterward, in the archives in Heaven, I was shown a treatise written nine or ten cycles ago by a man identified only as Saint Issirariss. With a name like that, he was probably a forest dweller himself, and his account was so detailed that he must have had firsthand experience of the web. I was asked to add some notes of my own to the records.
The greatest jungles of Vernier are not found, as one might expect, in the hot areas near to High Summer. Farther east the trees are older, the forest thicker, and the undergrowth denser. Where the topography favors heavy rainfall, the true deep forest is a cool twilight of perpetual damp, and it is there that the darkfolk live. As Kettle was fond of pointing out, heavy pigmentation is an adaptation to jungle life, and while it is possible that the dark races are descended from original black ancestors, more probably their pigmentation has been increased by natural selection. The seemingly sinister name refers only to their color, for of course the darkfolk as a whole are neither worse nor better than any other folk. It is among them that a spinster may arise, but any race can produce a villain when opportunity is present.
The basis of the elixir, Issirariss wrote, is a brew prepared according to a secret recipe, thought to consist of roots, herbs, insect eggs, and spider venom. In that form, he referred to it as nuptial beer and stated that some of the forest tribes use it in their wedding ceremonies. When the dancing and feasting reach a climax, the young bride and groom share a bowl of the concoction and then retire to the marriage chamber, there to find climaxes of their own, no doubt. Nuptial beer is relatively harmless and socially beneficial, or so Issirariss claimed.
He speculated that the drug known as the virgin’s web is prepared from nuptial beer by simple concentration. Long simmering over a slow fire, he thought, might be sufficient. The process cannot be very difficult, because spinsters seem to have no difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply for their evil purposes, yet the secret is jealously kept.
Only very rarely can any outsider obtain the web. Misi’s sample had been handed down from her grandmother or perhaps from some more distant ancestor, but it had not lost its power with time. From the effect it had on me, I suspect that it may even have grown more potent.
The human race has a long history of seeking aphrodisiacs, putting faith in many—all, according to Issirariss, either ineffectual or dangerous. The virgin’s web is certainly not ineffectual. Moreover, it has several properties peculiar to itself, not found in any other.
It acts on persons of either sex, which is rare. Of course, Misi had only pretended to drink, for she would have defeated her purpose had she taken the drug herself. That was fortunate, I suppose, because Misi roused to the same sort of insane fit as I was in would have killed me. It was I who almost killed her.
Poor Misi! She had known by hearsay what effect the web would produce, but she could not have expected the manic strength it induced in me, or the insatiable violence of my reaction, or the long ordeal she would have to endure until the effects wore off. She must have believed that her greater size would let her remain in con
trol, but no one could have resisted my frenzy. In my fruitless striving for release, my frantic quests for variety, my cataclysms of mindless ecstasy, I tossed her around as if she weighed nothing.
Oblivious to pain, I hurt myself also. Early in my madness, I ripped off my splints. Later we found the broken planks and snapped bindings. My knees were not ready for vigorous exercise. The half-healed bones were cracked, the weakened tendons strained, and any chance that I might walk properly again was lost. Yes, I hurt Misi, but fortunately I inflicted no broken bones or permanent injury on her, only innumerable bruises, and probably much terror.
Dear Misi! In spite of that terror, she never cried out or tried to disable or kill me. At least, I do not think she did; I probably would not have noticed if she had. She endured and even cooperated, not that she really had any choice.
According to Issirariss, a second peculiarity of the virgin’s web is that it will not provoke a general orgy. Once I had fixed on Misi as the victim of my lust, then the cab could have been invaded by an army of the world’s most desirable women and I should have ignored all but her. That, he wrote, is a greater danger for a woman who takes the potion, for no normal man can satisfy her need and she will go mad with frustration.
I was not frustrated. Once I started, Misi could not resist me and I was incapable of stopping until the madness wore off. Again and again I struggled to a climax, but the relief was momentary, being succeeded at once by even greater urgency. Driven by my frenzy, I could not have done otherwise than I did, so I feel little guilt, yet I regret most bitterly that I hurt her and frightened her. Eventually the effects waned or my strength gave out. After uncounted orgasms my arousal vanished as suddenly as it had come, and I collapsed into a deep coma-like sleep.
The virgin’s web had a third unique property, one I did not appreciate or comprehend until much later.
My unconsciousness probably did not last very long, for I awakened howling at the pain in my knees, which were black and hugely swollen. I was sprawled naked on the floor of the cab, surrounded by shreds of bedding, lit by a cruel sunlight streaming through a broken shutter, sweat-soaked and shivering in spasms of feverish reaction. Misi, equally bare, was trapped below me, battered and bruised and bloody, half-stunned still by her long ordeal.
After a few moments, I recalled how I had maltreated her. While I had been experiencing unending deliriums of rapture, she had been hurting. Then I forgot my own troubles. I wept. I stroked her cheek. I struggled to move out of the way so that she could rise, for we were crushed together in a very small space, and I was incapable of rising. Meanwhile I apologized a thousand times.
I told her over and over how sorry I was, and how much I loved her.
Oh, my beloved Misi!
For I did truly love her—beyond measure, beyond expression. I cherish her memory still. No other woman ever has, or ever can, mean to me what Misi Nada did and still does.
Issirariss called that the imprinting effect.
—3—
MY GUESS HAD BEEN CORRECT. Heaven had set up a roadblock at a natural narrowing of the borderlands in the east of January, middle of Thursday. The angels were still there when Misi and Pula and I returned, long after my experience with the virgin’s web. Now I could walk, after a fashion, keeping my knees straight. We had detoured very far back westward, waiting on my recovery.
That was a strange journey. Misi and Pula had to trade in little settlements for food and even do the cooking. They were appallingly horrible cooks, both of them, never having cooked before. I was in great pain at first and could do little to help, but the thought of taking over the cooking myself was a big incentive for me to heal.
We were fortunate that no unscrupulous men or hungry animals took advantage of us, two women and a cripple wandering defenseless in the borderlands. Yet I remember that long loop west and then back east again as the happiest time of my life. I was with Misi, and nothing else mattered. I would have joyfully journeyed at her side forever—even if that meant continuing to eat her cooking.
Where a great spur of mountain reached close to the wide river, we came within sight of an encampment of four tents and three angel chariots. The landscape was spotted with thickets of white-trunked trees amid glades of the greenest grass I had ever seen. A soft rain was falling.
As our hippos munched their lazy way along the narrow plain, a solitary long-legged angel came stalking through the woods to meet us. His stripes showed him to be Black-white-red. There must have been others around, staying out of sight.
I was sitting on the bench, just inside the front window, with my feet out on the platform. Misi was at my side, driving.
Black was well named, being as black as anyone I have ever met. Most of the forest races are short, but he was very tall and very lanky. He wore no hat and his frizzled crown of jet hair shone with diamond sparkles. I was looking down at him as he strolled alongside the cab, which is why I noticed his hair especially. His nose was broad, but the rest of him was as elongated as a fishing pole. He wore the fringed leathers of an angel, and he carried a long gun. He was very young.
So even the angels looked young to me now?
He studied me carefully, peering up with deep black eyes that seemed to brim with melancholy. “May good fortune attend you, trader,” he said formally.
“May Our Lady Sun shed her blessing on you also, sir. I am Nob Bil.” I did not introduce Misi.
I was very nervous, and the angel’s steady scrutiny was rapidly making me more so. I was also in pain, for although my legs were stretched out before me, I could not keep them completely straight without looking unnatural, and they were howling at the slight bend I had imposed on them. Agony and fear together were soaking me in sweat. I could only hope that the rain was disguising that.
“You are brave to travel alone, trader.”
“There are four other trains right behind us, sir.”
That statement was true so far as it went, but the others were not associated with us and might even be unaware that we were now ahead of them. We had followed their convoy eastward and then outrun it with our single, and almost empty, wagon.
“And your horses are with them, Nob Bil?”
“They are, sir. I have twisted my knee and cannot attend to them myself at the moment.”
Black frowned glumly at that tale. Misi had coached me well, but I decided to take the offensive in the hope of diverting more questions. “And what brings you gallant angels to these parts? Not danger, I hope?”
The angel’s eyes continued to examine me morosely. “We have been passing a warning to traders. Have you heard of it?”
“No sir.”
He sighed. “You traders are as bad as herdmen!”
“I am told that herdmen slaughter one another on sight,” I said reprovingly. But I was remembering one of Violet’s old jeers, that herdmen smelled different. I was a herdman half-breed—had this angel seen through my disguise already?
“True. I only meant that traders do not cooperate at all.”
“Give away information, you mean?” I tried to sound shocked. Despite my pain and the quiverings of my normal cowardice, I was starting to enjoy the game. I wished I dared look at Misi.
“I suppose that sounds immoral to you? Well, here is the problem. You are between jungle and desert, of course, but the west end of the borderlands is now cut off by the Andes and the Great River. That’s an impossible barrier for traders. We can guide people and their livestock across the canyon, but not wagons. Or chariots. And the barrier is moving east, obviously.”
Jat had long since vanished from my life, but I could recall his geography lessons. “You mean we must head north, across the desert?”
Black nodded, sparkling all the jewel drops on his hair. “We have arranged a truce. And we provide escorts,” he added, before I could say whatever he expected me to say.
“How urgent is this?” I asked, worried about my inability to defend my beloved Misi and her daughter, recalling vague
yarns about the fierce red-haired men of the desert.
“Not very,” the angel confessed. “You have time for a trip or two back to the mountains. Before you bounce grandchildren on your knee, though, you must cross the desert to the north borderlands. You may stay there or come south again across the grasslands as you wish—just don’t say you weren’t warned! And don’t wait too long or there will be no one left to trade with. We hear there is a spinster at work.”
My spine tingled. Black had thrown in that unrelated remark in the hopes of eliciting a reaction. Obviously I was supposed to know what a spinster was, but I didn’t. Was it dangerous? In all her lessons, Misi had not thought to mention spinsters, so they must be rare. I could not ask her for help, for she was playing moron again. But Misi was no moron. She had steered the team into a stand of small trees, heavier growth than she would normally have chosen. They slowed us, of course, but the noise of crunching was much louder than usual, making conversation difficult. Moreover, Black was being squeezed between the side of the cab and the sides of the cut we were making, and he had to constantly step over stumps and fragments of trunk. This made it harder for him to keep his eyes on me. The slash also made the cab bounce and lurch repeatedly, jarring hot irons through my knees.
But if hard work gains rewards, then I ought to pass scrutiny. Misi and Pula had made me a leather jacket and breeches in trader style. They had tried to use an old set of Jat’s, but I was much too large for those. My coat was unfastened to display the fine floral shirt that Jat had coveted—actually it was only the front, for Misi had taken it to pieces to fit my wider chest. The cuffs showed, although the top of the sleeves did not reach my shoulders. I sported the appropriate curved-brim hat; my hair and beard and eyebrows had been dyed, my face and hands darkened also. We had not been able to do anything about my eyes.
I looked like a trader—unusually large for a male, but a trader nonetheless.
Spinster? “Where?” I asked, playing for time.