On Assignment to the Planet of the Exalted

by Helena Puumala

  Wen grinned at him, and then, conspiratorially, at the patrons.

  “I didn’t say that, now, did I?” His grin grew wider. “A painter had left a crock of red on a trestle, and the kid, his flit bubble open, grazed it, just enough to upset it, and spill it—right into the flit and on himself! He was a mighty ruddy boy for a while, and, maybe, learned to fly more carefully!”

  The room exploded into laughter, whether as an expression of collective relief, or genuine appreciation of the tale’s twist, Kati did not know. People at many of the tables clapped.

  “Sounds like they’re cutting close to the bone,” Joaley muttered beside her.

  “The comics do push the limits a bit,” Mirry said, overhearing Joaley’s words. “They have to be smart about it though—we don’t allow them on the stage otherwise. Listen, and you’ll note that after a few salvos they’ll retreat for a while.”

  She was right. The stories—whether true or not, Kati had no idea—about the duo’s travails as they had tumbled their way across the Space Lanes in one decrepit tub after another, were amusing. The listeners ate it up, and many patrons detoured via the coin bowl on their way to the washroom or the bar.

  The boys shot a few more darts later in their set—one actually had to do with the Klensers and the prices the Oligarchs were charging for their services—and Kati found herself holding her breath again, expecting a nasty, drunken reaction from someone at the handful of tables which were occupied by the colourfully dressed Exalteds. But nothing like that happened; in fact, at the end of the set, some of those whom she judged to belong to the Oligarchic families, walked by the money bowl, throwing coins into it. Kati raised her eyebrows questioningly at this, and Mathilde grinned at her.

  “Not all the members of the Four Hundred are complete lunatics,” she said. “Only most of them, and it’s the sanest who come to Marita’s. They know that Marita runs a peaceable operation; she has Mutt and Batt to bang heads if anyone starts trouble.”

  *****

  Kati and Joaley’s turn on the stage arrived.

  The crowd around them was getting noisy and somewhat rowdy by the time Darce and Wen ceded the spotlight. Apparently the comics meant to stay and listen to the two newcomers, for they joined Mathilde while Kati and Joaley took their instruments to the stage.

  “Let’s start with some of the songs we learned from Jakob’s crew,” Joaley whispered to Kati, perusing the crowd while she pulled up a stool. “The audience seems a little restless; maybe we can get them to do a little bit of singing.”

  “Or to dance in the aisles,” Kati muttered.

  Marita’s did not have a dance floor at all. Kati wondered whether this was a peculiarity of the establishment, or if Vultairians did not encourage dancing. She rather suspected it was the latter; if so, it was too bad. Physical activity such as dancing could use up a lot of energy, and a bar crowd often had an excess of that.

  Joaley grinned and launched into one of the songs with her rikah, even as they had rehearsed it earlier. Kati picked the tune up with her guitar, and, on that cue, Joaley set the rikah down and began to sing, in a voice incredibly sweet. At the chorus, Kati joined in, in her more ordinary voice, ceding the vocals again to the red-head for the second verse. At the end of it Joaley called on the audience to join in the chorus, and some of them did, off-worlders who apparently were familiar with the song. At the next chorus they picked up more participants, and by the time they were into the second song from Jakob’s ship, they had most of the room singing the choruses, many of the participants with more enthusiasm than talent.

  Mirry walked by the stage after the second song, clapping her hands.

  “This is great,” she mouthed, “especially if you can keep it up for the two hours.”

  The Granda, reading Mirry’s lips, gave a mental snort.

  “Course you two can keep it up,” The Monk subvocalized. “The red-head has a node to help her, too. She does have a lovely voice—much better than yours—so you may as well showcase it as much as you can.”

  “I intend to do ‘The Mudball’ song, though,” Kati subvocalized back. “That way, if Maryse was right, and there are people from the slave ship on this world, maybe we can get word of our presence to them.”

  Her opportunity came shortly into the second hour of their show. By then, Joaley had been singing non-stop, except for some intervals of light-hearted patter on Kati’s part. She talked about practising their songs on the ship which had brought them to Vultaire, about chancing upon Marita’s Terrace when they had arrived in Port City, and about her impressions of the city as it had been that afternoon when she and Joaley had explored it for a couple of hours. She kept it all very friendly and up-beat; perfectly happy to leave biting humour to Darce and Wen, aware all the time that the bar’s patrons were more interested in Joaley’s singing than in her chatter. However, the moment came when Joaley sighed that she was desperate for a mug of something to drink, her throat was feeling raw, and could Kati take over for her?

  Kati agreed with a smile, and suggested that Joaley bring her a mugful, too; her node would clear the alcohol out of her system quickly enough to keep her performance unimpaired. Joaley lay her rikah on her stool with a grateful nod, grabbed a few coins out of the bowl which already had a respectable amount in it, and headed for the bar.

  “Our sweet songstress needs a break for the health of her throat,” Kati told the audience, strumming a few chords from her guitar. “You’ll have to put up with me by myself for a bit, but I do have a treat for you! I don’t think that you’ll feel deprived—I may not have my partner’s voice, but I do have a song for you. It’s a great sing-along song from my world, a song that I have sung to, and with, people of all ages, including children. It has never before been sung on Vultaire, and I will teach it to you. So listen carefully now—I’ll sing a verse first in the original language, and then in Vultairian. I have translated it especially for you, and I promise that you’ll be singing the chorus with me in no time, and the rest of the song soon after.

  “It’s called: ‘The Ode to a Mudball’.

  Chorus

  “This is our mudball, our dear mudball,

  Our dear world, our home,

  Ours to care for, and to love and to cherish,

  And ours to roam.

  I promise I’ll try to look after our world,

  And I also do ask of you,

  That you’ll do the same, oh do the same,

  And please love it too.

  Please love it, too, you,

  Please love it too.

  First Verse

  “I run through an alpine meadow

  A million flowers at my feet,

  I’m sniffing the clear mountain air,

  And oh! It smells so sweet.

  Chorus

  Second Verse

  ”I sail across the ocean blue,

  I breathe in the salty breeze,

  I watch the whales and the dolphins

  Play among the waves of the seas.

  Chorus

  Third Verse

  “I ride a camel ‘cross a desert,

  It’s hot, it’s tough, and I’m dry,

  But we reach the oasis by sunset,

  That night, watch the stars in the sky.

  Chorus

  Fourth Verse

  “I snowshoe across the frozen tundra

  All warm in my parka and boots.

  We get to the edge of the ice-pack,

  It calves bergs with creaks and hoots.

  Chorus

  Fifth Verse

  “I run along city sidewalks,

  Zipping by the kiosks and the shops,

  So happy I do a little dance

  At the lights, and the traffic stops.

  Chorus

  Sixth Verse

  “I run through the trees of the forest,

  The jungle’s amazing in the rains,

  As are the north woods of pine and birch,

  And the rolling, gra
ss-covered plains.

  Chorus.

  The Granda had helped her translate the song into Vultairian, and Kati had been quite amazed and gratified at how well it worked in that tongue. Very shortly she had the room with her, people at first humming along as she sang, and beating the rhythm on the tables, while stomping their feet or clapping their hands. It was a catchy song, and the customers at Marita’s bar got caught up in it just as the children had done on the slave ship, oh, ages ago, it seemed. She had told Murra that the song would be her signature to the captives whom she would be looking for. She was tossing her message bottle on the waters this night; what the results might be, she had no idea. She could only hope.

  “Kati, that’s a fantastic song!”

  Joaley was back, pushing a beer mug at her hand. Kati grabbed it, swallowed from it, and lay it on the floor beside her stool. She smiled at the red-head.

  “I’ll do it again,” she said. “You can try to follow the music with your rikah if you want. I don’t know if you should sing along—you might want to save your voice.”

  “I’ll sing with you.” This was Mathilde, come to stand by the stage with her rhyele in her arms.

  Kati grinned at the Vultairian balladeer. Mathilde was so tall that her eyes were nearly at Kati’s level, and those eyes were bright with enthusiasm.

  “Hey, great idea, if you don’t mind,” Kati told her, and then Darce and Wen had rushed to the stage, too.

  “We can join in the chorus,” Darce said stoutly. “We’re not singers of Joaley’s or Mathilde’s calibre, but we can throw our voices into the chorus.”

  “Good. You can learn the song even as the audience learns it. Okay, everybody! Let’s sing this song and have fun! If you can’t remember the words just hum along; I’m sure that all of you already know the chorus. Pretty soon we’ll have you all singing all the verses of ‘The Ode to a Mudball’!”

  *****

  “Hey ladies! It’s time to quit! We’re closing up shop and all the customers have to be out in a half-an-hour!” Mirry shouted to what had turned into a trio on the stage, with Darce and Wen seated cross-legged on one edge, joining lustily into every rendition of the chorus of the “Mudball song”.

  Not that their voices were particularly audible among the roomful of enthusiastic singers. Kati, at the end of the final chorus of the song, glanced at the time counter hung above the bar, and gasped. The set should have been over thirty minutes ago! Mathilde saw the expression of surprise on her face and laughed.

  “Didn’t realize that the time was getting away from you, did you? I think that everyone in this room has been having the time of their lives! Marita’s going to want you to do this again tomorrow night. Her business is going to be booming!”

  Kati found that she had to wipe sweat off her brow.

  “I guess we’ll have to tell the audience to come back tomorrow,” Joaley said, laughing, reaching for the sack in which she stored her rikah.

  “Okay, everybody, you have been a fantastic audience and a bunch of great students tonight, but it’s time to call an end to the evening. Our proprietress wants to close up shop shortly, and you know what: I want to stop singing and get some sleep. My friends tell me that we’ll be here, doing this again tomorrow night, so do not despair. We’ll have our fun again!”

  Darce started the clapping and within seconds the whole room went wild with the noise, while some stomped their feet rhythmically and others shouted with glee. Kati got off her stool and nestled her guitar into its case with a sigh; she realized that she truly was tired. Mirry came back with a tray of five full beer mugs and handed them to the performers.

  “These are on the house,” she said. “Mom is awfully pleased with your performance. This place will be packed tomorrow night; you guys are going to be the talk of the town by the morning!”

  The patrons appeared to be in a contest to see who could be the quickest to express their approval of the performance by tossing money into the coin bowl. Generosity seemed to be the rule for this time of night; it was not just coins going into the bowl, but paper money too, and Kati caught sight of a Federation credit chip or two among the take.

  “You’re going to need a large bag to haul that around,” Darce said, grinning at the overflowing bowl as the stream of donors began to thin.

  Kati made a decision then and there. She nudged Joaley to get her attention.

  “We should share with Mathilde, and Darce and Wen,” she whispered in a voice audible only to a noded person who was paying attention.

  Joaley glanced at the bowl and nodded.

  “Let’s ask them to our room,” she whispered back. “That way we’re not announcing it to everybody.”

  That is what they did. They borrowed a sack from the bar into which they collected the take, and the five of them took that plus the beers and the tray of food that Sam had left for the performers, upstairs into Joaley’s and Kati’s room. Once there, with the door closed behind them, they spread the contents of the sack onto one of the beds and counted “the loot”, as Kati quickly took to calling it, to the amusement of her companions.

  “So what’s a fair way to divide this?” Joaley asked. “There are five of us, so I suppose dividing into five even portions would be one way to go. I’m okay with that, since even a fifth of this take is a pretty decent sum.”

  “What!” Mathilde was scandalized. “I don’t think so! This was your set, Kati and Joaley, and it was your song that got the crowd going! Maybe you can pay me a little bit for helping out, and the same with Darce and Wen, but we already made an honourable amount through our sets, so it’s hardly fair that we take a full share each from your pay.”

  “It was Kati’s song, not mine, that set the crowd afire,” Joaley protested.

  “You Mathilde, and Darce and Wen could throw your profits into the total pot,” Kati suggested. “Then we could divvy up the whole into five, and each of us take a fifth. That would be fairer, right?”

  “But all Darce and I did was sing the chorus,” Wen objected. “That’s no more than what any audience member did.”

  “Moral support,” Kati said. “With you guys sitting on the edge of the stage there was less chance that some enthusiastic drunk might try to climb on stage to cuddle the singers.”

  Joaley and Mathilde burst out laughing.

  “I can just imagine Mutt and Batt peeling drunks off your form as you’re singing and playing, Kati,” Mathilde howled. “Let’s hope none of them think of it tomorrow night!”

  “But seriously people,” Joaley added, and yawned. “Let’s go with Kati’s division. She and I aren’t in this out of greed; one fifth of the total suits each of us just fine. Besides, the sooner we divvy up ‘the loot’, the sooner we can eat, kick you guys out, and go to bed.”

  “I’ll admit that I could use the money,” Mathilde said with a sigh. “It would help me look after my brother; things have been kind of tough for us lately.”

  “And Wen and I will be able to buy passage off this world a lot sooner, if we’re making money like this,” Darce added. “Which will be good for us, but then we won’t be providing moral support for you girls on the stage.”

  His mouth had taken on a crooked grin.

  “Oh, we won’t have any trouble replacing you,” Mathilde laughed.

  “That one has joined your Troupe,” subvocalized the Granda tartly, but Kati realized that she did not mind.

  It might even turn out to be useful to have a Vultairian singer with them. Assuming that she was willing to travel out of the Port City with them. And with Lank and Rakil, who were going to be the replacement for Darce and Wen, just as soon as they arrived on planet.

  *****

  “The granda node is of the opinion that Mathilde has decided to join our entertaining group,” Kati said to Joaley when the two of them were preparing for bed, a short time later, their visitors finally gone.

  “She’s a fine addition, especially if we’re to entertain in places like this one,” Joaley
replied. “She can fill the early hours while the patrons are still busy eating. She doesn’t seem to mind it, and certainly won’t, if we make a habit of dividing the whole evening’s take among the members of the Troupe. That was a brilliant idea, by the way, and probably I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

  “It just occurred to me that it’s more important for us to maximize good will, rather than the profit. And what we took in tonight, between the two of us, already pays a month’s rent—we’ll be sitting pretty if we can do even half as well for any length of time.”

  “I wonder about the brother that she’s looking after,” Joaley mused, drawing an exquisitely ornamented brush out of her bag and running it through her fiery curls.

  Kati admired the red hair even as she took out her own, much more modest brush, and began to work the tangles out of her own, dark brown locks.

  “Hope he’s not a simpleton, or something,” Joaley added.

  “He could just be younger than she is,” Kati said. “The parents could be dead or something, and she has been left with the responsibility for a child sibling. We don’t really know how things work on this world, but it’s pretty clear that if you’re an ordinary Vultairian there’s nothing like a Social Services Department to help you out, if life throws a nasty one at you.”

  “That sounds about right.” Joaley sighed. “It’s hard to believe that this is a Federation World, and an old one at that. It feels a lot like home to me, and that is not a good thing.”

  Kati giggled. Joaley arched her eyebrows.

  “I was just thinking that Marita’s is not all that different from some of the bars that I knew on my home world. If it had a dance floor, and if it was a room instead of mostly on a terrace...oh, rats! I’m not sure I’m making sense any more, I better crawl under the covers!”

  She lay her brush on the dresser, and stumbled into her bed, turning off the light above its head. Her last thoughts before falling asleep were of Jake, and of Mikal.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kati crawled out of bed the next morning while Joaley was still fast asleep. She had a quick mist-shower, dressed, and slipped downstairs to look for some breakfast, leaving her roommate to her rest. The restaurant was in operation, although Marita, Sam and Mirry were not around. This was hardly a surprise, since all had worked late the night before. The kitchen was under the direction of Leni, a heavy-set woman to whom Joaley and Kati had been introduced the previous afternoon. She hailed Kati as an old friend, and told her to settle at the table where the performers had eaten their supper the evening before.