by Andre Norton
"These are good." Anyone would be better than Russtif, to be sure, but there was the additional promise in the mind touch of the woman. One could not lie with thoughts as one could with words.
The woman did not try to take the cage, but neither did she loosen her hold on Dung's rags. Instead, she gave a slight pull which brought him around and started him for the open tent flap. Then they were out in the twilight where other tents' smoky torches and impulse lamps gave a measure of sight.
A moment later the man joined them.
"Trouble?" The woman did not use speech, but had mind touch that Dung found easy to catch.
The man could not laugh in that mind-to-mind communication, but there was something in his answer which was light as laughter.
"Trouble? No, he will be slightly puzzled perhaps for a space, and then congratulate himself on a bargain that he made. I wish we could clear out that whole den of his."
"Think freedom?"
Dung caught not only words but a picture – a picture that showed paws, and insectile legs, and tentacles looping through wire, mastering the catches on the cages in the tent behind. "Bend so – push. Go, little ones, go!"
Dung felt a touch on his own grime-blackened hand. The smux had thrust a foreleg through the wire netting, was grasping with a claw the catch of the cage. Like those in the tent, Toggor had caught that message and was following the promise that was like an order.
Gasping, Dung held the cage against his body. But that gesture came too late. Toggor had already freed himself and caught with all four claws at the rags across the pinched chest of the hunchback. Dung dropped the cage, then nearly stumbled over it, except a strong hand caught at his bony shoulder, pulling the small figure back on balance.
Dung cupped both hands about Toggor, having no fear of any cutting slash from those claws, for the smux fitted itself into the hollows of his palms as if those were a safe home nest. Now those hands swung out to the man who stood so straight and tall that Dung had to stretch his neck painfully to see his face, offering Toggor to him who had paid that unbelievable sum to free the smux.
"Hold him well, little one. Bring him that we may tend him – he still hungers and thirsts. And " – the mind speech was softer than any Dung had ever heard in a short hard life – " so do you."
Thus one who had always slunk through shadows now walked as straight as an ungainly and broken body would allow, a friend sheltered in hand and a stranger on either side acting as if one was as tall and well formed as themselves. It was beyond belief yet it was the truth!
Chapter 2.
Twice when they passed some patrolling guard, sent to keep the peace among the dealers in the strange and rare who gathered like an untidy fringe about any space port. Dung hung back, and would even have dived for the shadows, but for that grip on the rags across his hump, steering him straight ahead until they passed the invisible boundary which kept those in the Limits from the respectable portions of town.
The lingering twilight was enough for Dung to see the stares which greeted their party. Passersby, used to strange sights issuing from the Limits, seemed to judge their small group even stranger. Yet neither of the spacers appeared aware of the comment they caused, and Dung was brought along as one who had every right to walk there.
They came to one of the large shelters for travelers, light beaming richly from its wide doorway, house guards on duty. Dung, straining his neck upward, ready to twist away from a blow or kick, saw that the guard on the right did move forward a step as if to question their passage, but retreated again when the spacers paid him no attention.
Together the three crossed the wide lobby with its ring of luxury shops, its throngs of people, making for one of the transport plates Dung had heard of but had never seen. They had it to themselves, other people drawing back as they approached. Their carrier whirled upward and then sped into one of the open hallways three stories above the lobby. It was stomach-turning for Dung, who gulped and gulped again. The invisible plastaglass sides did not give any suggestion of protection.
Dung swallowed hard for the third time as they stopped before a door and the spaceman put out a hand to press against the lockplate, letting the door withdraw into the wall to give them entrance. Toggor stirred and pushed against the sudden involuntary tightening of Dung's hold. This was such luxury as trash from the Limits had never seen. His misshapen feet sunk into a thick carpet that was a lush green and gave forth a tangy, spicy smell.
There was no smoking torch or lantern here. The walls themselves glowed, and that glow grew more brilliant as the door rolled shut behind them. A wide couch heaped with cushions ran along the left-hand wall, and other cushions were piled one upon the other at various points here and there – each flanked by a low table or double sets of shelves on which were a number of things Dung did not have time to study, for that grasp on his rags drew him to one table which the spaceman swept free of tapes and a queerly shaped bowl.
"Put the smux here." The woman did not use the mind touch but the trade tongue, and loosed Dung to gesture to the now clear surface. "Or will it run?"
Dung licked lips dry with that never-ending fear. They had bought the smux. Perhaps Dung had only been necessary in its transportation here. Now there might be no longer any need for this one misshapen and twisted body.
Obediently his thin fingers uncupped and set the spike-covered body in the place the woman had indicated.
"Stay," Dung thought. "These are good." Though how he could be sure of that!
Toggor crouched, drawn into a ball with legs hugging his pulpy body. The eyestalks on his bristly head extended a fraction with all the eyes facing outward and around, ready for attack from any direction.
The man went to the wall and tapped on a row of buttons there. There moved out a section on which sat a tray with a number of small covered boxes and dishes. He brought the tray to the table on which Toggor crouched.
"What does it eat?" Trade speech again.
Dung's own mouth watered and his belly pinched with longing as the spaceman snapped off the lids of the dishes and showed a variety of food.
"Meat," Dung said and stood, hands behind his own body lest they move of themselves and snatch some of that bounty.
"Well enough." The spaceman moved two of the dishes a fraction closer to the smux, but Toggor made no attempt to try their contents. That in-and-out pattern which could reach Dung spelled out the smux's wariness.
"Toggor wishes to know where he must fight," Dung interpreted.
"There is no fighting, only eating. Tell him so!" The woman no longer had any hold on Dung, but her hand moved to the upbent head, touched lightly between and above the reddened eyes.
"No fight – eat." Dung strove to fit his thoughts to the pattern Toggor could catch.
For a long moment it seemed the smux did not understand, or, understanding, did not believe. Then a claw flew, with a speed which made it hardly visible, to the nearest dish to seize upon a cube within and transfer it to clashing mandibles.
When the smux had fed a second time and was now using both foreclaws to empty the dish, the woman spoke again, this time no trade talk but words that were clear in Dung's head.
"Eat you also. If there is other which you want, just say it so."
Dung felt as Toggor must have moments earlier: that there might be a threat to come. Why had he been brought here and offered – But also, as it had with Toggor, hunger got the better of wariness and he grabbed for a flat round of bread-cake already spread with lumpy gor-berry jell. It was crammed swiftly into mouth. His eyes were not on stalks, able to watch all sides of the room, but Dung used them as best he could while he ate, ate so fast that the taste of the food was lost in the swift chewing and swallowing.
There seemed to be no trick. He ate more slowly when no hand came forth to snatch away food, no foot raised to boot his bag-of-bones body. In all the seasons Dung could remember never had he been offered freely such a wealth of food.
None but wel
l-cleaned dishes were on that tray when smux and Dung were done. The smux balled up, his legs wrapped about his body. He might doze now for several hours. Dung eyed the piles of cushions and wished he could do likewise. But those who had brought him here were not yet through.
This time the spaceman caught Dung's shoulder and drew his captive to a wall, over which he passed his hand. A second door opened. There was a tight little room therein – no cushions, nothing but bare walls and floor.
Ah, rightly had Dung feared them. He was to be shut up in there. Twisting his body did no good; there was too strong a hold on him. His rags tore as the spaceman stripped the rotten cloth away from the hump, away from Dung's body. Bare so that all the bruises mottling the greenish flesh could be seen, the hunchback was placed well inside, and the door closed before he could throw himself at it in one last despairing attempt to escape imprisonment.
Out of the wall shot streams of water, warm against the skin. Two metal arms unfolded from the shining surface of the cell and caught him. To hold him under that flood to drown? No, they were brushing down the small body, rubbing to dislodge the grime which had always been a part of Dung. No more struggle. Standing still, a faint pleasure grew within him – clean as never any such as Dung could be. Even the wild matted hair was washed and combed back, its wet and curling ends brushing the hump.
The skin of the hump was different from the rest of the grimed hide which covered his body. He had never seen himself in any mirror, but his fingers had long ago told him it was thick and hard, almost like the covering on his nails, with a ridge down the middle of the back which only by painful contortion Dung could touch. Through it he had little or no feeling.
The water shower died away, and the door which had sealed came open again. But the spaceman did not drag Dung forth. Rather, he stretched an arm above Dung's head and pushed a thumb tight to the wall.
Water had come before, now it was wind, warm and drying. Dung swung slowly around as he realized its purpose. Even the hair which had lain so lankly back arose and answered, to fly up and out.
Then the wind was cut off, and when Dung looked up in disappointment the hand of the spaceman reached inside the place of water and air, holding toward him a folded piece of cloth. Dung took it and shook out a small robe, clean and white and of a soft wooly texture unknown to any beggar in the outer Limits.
To be fed, and clean, and wearing a whole garment – Dung's wildest dreams had never taken him so far before. Regretfully the claw fingers caressed the soft folds about the top-heavy body. One walk into the night known to Dung, and that covering would be snatched by the more powerful.
He came out of the washing place blinking. It had been a long time since tears had come to Dung. There was a far memory of a time when sobs had choked his throat and shook his body, when there had been pain and more pain. Then there came the day when there was a door left unguarded because Dung was a useless unknown thing, unneeded. Strength had come, enough to creep away and begin life in the shadows. But there had been a time before—so far away and dim now. Being clean and clad again triggered that memory. However, fast on it followed fear so deep that Dung dropped to the floor, folding in upon himself, waiting again for what had ended that other good time, blows and hurting in the head with the threatening thoughts . . .
"Why do you so fear, little one?"
Dung would not look up. The words in his mind did not hurt, but who cared what became of Limits trash or would want to know the past of such a one?
"We wish to know, little one. And there is no need to fear."
Dung struggled to raise his head the higher slantwise. "I am Dung." He said it and thought it – thought the vileness which had given him his name.
"Never so. You are what you believe, little one. Do you call yourself by that name for filth?"
She was too clever, she guessed, she knew. Now he allowed his hands to cover his face. His face, yes, but who could hide thoughts? And both of these could pick his thoughts out as Toggor picked scraps of meat from within an orker shell.
"Farree?" She spoke that name aloud. Now they would laugh and push him out the sooner into the coming night, the outer Limits which would be the worse because he had left for a space.
"Dung!" He corrected aloud, his voice rising squeakingly high. "Dung!" If he did not claim that other name, perhaps he would be allowed to escape all but the jeers.
The woman dropped to her knees, bringing them near face-to-face so he need not hold his head at such an angle to view her. Her hands reached to gently touch the grotesque shoulders.
"Farree. Hold by what birth gave you, little one. Do not accept what unseeing ones force upon you."
Dung's head shook uncomfortably from side to side. What did this one who lived in luxury know of what one faced in the Limits?
"You are not of Grant's World?" It was the man who spoke.
Dung shivered. In truth he did not know from where he had come; the early days were so overlaid now by the terrors and torments that had followed.
"I am Dung." He must hold to that, to do otherwise was to stand bare of body and defenseless in a ring of Limits bullies. He had seen the weak kicked and pummeled to death for daring to show any spirit.
There was a pulling at the clean robe about him, and he looked down to see Toggor catching hold with his foreclaws, drawing himself up the cloth. Dung had never handled the smux before this twilight, but there was nothing to frighten or disgust him.
"Good." Not a word, a feeling projected by the smux and filling him with warmth – it was like a burst of shouting. The smux might be living for the moment, but he was triumphant in the joys of that moment. Dung wished that he could share the creature's relief and joy.
"You can, if you wish."
Dung stared at the woman fronting him still at his own level.
"If with this stranger – brother you can communicate, then – " She looked around and up at the man and straight-away he opened another inner door of the room.
What came dancing into their presence then was a creature the like of which Dung had never seen, although those who dealt with strange life forms had given him his only shelter. Among the bizarre his own affliction had seemed less conspicuous.
"Yazz. I am Yazz." The words seeped into his mind as the newcomer pranced around him, uttering sharp mouth sounds into the bargain.
Its body was as tall as Dung, its head topping him. Four slender, golden brown legs supported smoothly rounded flanks and a sleek-haired barrel. The head was triangular. A mane with a froth of frizzly hair near-covered its large eyes and then rose to curve down its long, slender neck and shoulders.
Those eyes peering carefully at him were a bright red like the gems a Lord-One might wear, and its muzzle was open far enough to disclose gleamingly clean teeth of a golden yellow several shades lighter than its coat.
It had a wisp of tail, which fluttered from side to side as it stood, still now, viewing Dung. "What are you, brother one?" Its head tilted a little to one side as it surveyed him. "No, there are two of you." It had apparently sighted Toggor.
"Large, small. Different. What?"
The words came into Dung's mind smoothly but less forcibly than those of the man and the woman.
"I am . . ." Dung began to reply and then suddenly hesitated. Never before had he had to explain what he was: a wretched mistake in a world which named him trash. "I am – me," he answered dully. "This" – he had taken the smux into his two hands again – "is Toggor. He is a smux."
That he was answering the questions of what was manifestly an animal seemed now no stranger than anything else which had happened since the two off-worlders had found him.
"What do you do?" Yazz returned. The creature was bubbling with what Dung realized very dimly was content – happiness – though to define happiness was beyond him.
What did he do? Fight to live and yet every day come closer to the knowledge that for him there was little reason to go on struggling at all. "I – live." He said tha
t aloud, not in thought.
"You live." It was not as if the woman was agreeing with him, rather that she was confirming some necessary belief. "Now comes a time when you may do more. Since you can talk with the Little Ones – there is a place for you, Farree – "
"I am Dung," he corrected her again, but inside him there was a small spark of wonder aflame. Did these two – could they – He did not even want to think of the brightness which might just be true.
But it would seem that this wonder of wonders might be after all, for the man said then: "You have no kin, you are apprenticed nowhere?"
Dung laughed, a broken cackle which had seldom left his lips. "Who wants Dung? I am of the trash of the Limits."
The woman's hand suddenly laid fingers across his lips. He could smell more strongly the spicy scent which seemed as much a part of her as her skin or the glory of her hair.
"You are Farree. Say not that other name. And now you are apprenticed if you wish. We welcome one who can talk with our small ones."
So it was that Dung became Farree, though to him it remained like a dream from which he might awaken into the despair of the real day. He ate voraciously what they provided, never knowing when they might tire of their careless generosity. He learned to keep his body clean and to answer to that other name, but he shrank from going out, from leaving this refuge from all he had ever known.
Though these rooms in the towering rest place for travelers were not the home of the two he had learned to call Lady Maelen and Lord-One Krip (even though they objected to his names of state), to him they were greater palaces than any of the nobles' of Grant's World, whom he had only seen at a distance. No, this was only a temporary resting place; these two were truly out of space. They had a ship of their own finned down in the repair field where various changes on it were being made. Strangest of all was the fact that these changes were being made to accommodate bodies which were not human nor even of human shape. They were to hold in comfort animals!