Fire Dancer Read online

  Jal had also told them that a gold-masked furry was the male polarity’s favorite slave.

  The male polarity spoke first. His voice was as liquid as the captive stream. What he said, however, was not pleasing to Jal. The trader argued respectfully, but adamantly. After a few minutes, he turned toward Kirtn. “The male polarity has decided he prefers his furry paramour not to be pregnant. Bad luck for you.”

  Kirtn measured the two sensual halves of the Loo-chim whole, then turned back to Jal. “What does his sister say about that?”

  Jal made an ambiguous gesture. “She’s used to her husband’s enthusiasms. They generally don’t last long. She has her own diversions, too.”

  “But she’s not particularly pleased by his latest playmate?” persisted Kirtn, looking back at the female polarity.

  She returned his gaze with open hostility.

  “It’s been awhile since the male polarity slept between his sister’s sheets,” admitted Jal.

  “Does she share her brother’s lust for . . . furries?”

  “Only if they’re male,” said Jal dryly.

  Rheba saw both the satisfaction and the cruelty in Kirtn’s smile. She looked away, wondering what he was planning. Fear slid coldly in her veins. It was not safe to be around a vengeful Bre’n.

  Kirtn spoke Rheba’s name softly, using their native tongue. “Don’t worry, sweet dancer. I’ll keep you out of the Pit.”

  Before Rheba could ask what Kirtn planned, the Bre’n began to whistle. The fluting notes were like sunlight on water, brilliant, teasing. The song was as old as Bre’n sensuality. It evoked promises and pleasures gliding beneath the double sun of Deva’s spring.

  The skin across Rheba’s stomach rippled with an involuntary response. She had heard this song as all Senyas children had, at a distance, carried by a scented breeze. She and her friends had speculated on the song’s meaning, giggling because they were too young to respond otherwise to the music’s sliding allure. But she was no longer a child, and the song was not distant. Resolutely, she tried to close out the sounds, using the concentration that was part of her akhenet discipline.

  The song defied discipline. It burned through her will like lightning, incandescent, exploding with possibilities. Almost, she felt sorry for the female polarity who was learning the leaning of the old Senyas saying “as seductive as a Bre’n.” All that the song lacked was the female harmony. Rheba knew the notes, but refused to whistle them, fearing to unravel the snare Kirtn was weaving around the female polarity.

  Rheba closed her eyes, held her lower lip hard between her teeth and shuddered with the effort of ignoring Kirtn’s siren song.

  The Bre’n saw Rheba’s distress, misunderstood its source, and regretted her reaction. He had hoped she was old enough to understand, if not to respond to, the song. It hurt him to see her shudder, as though appalled by the song’s celebration of passion and pleasure. Up to this instant, he had been careful to shield his young fire dancer from a Bre’n’s intense sensuality. He mourned her rude coming-of-age, but thought it preferable to dying in the Pit.

  Jal listened to the Bre’n song, watched the Loo-chim, and sighed with either envy or disgust. He murmured a counterpoint to Kirtn’s song that only Rheba heard. “Just four of the Equality’s planets are advanced enough to forbid pairing smoothies and furries. Loo is one of the four. But the Imperial Loo-chim’s taste for furry perversity is an open secret. The male polarity’s infatuation with the female furry is a scandal. Yet . . . I admit . . . if Bre’ns are as good on a pillow as they are singing, I can understand why the gold-masked furry has such a hold on the male polarity.” Rheba trembled and resolutely tried to think of nothing at all.

  The song ended on a single low note that made the crystal ferns quiver and chime. The female polarity remained utterly still for a long moment, then stood up as though she would talk to Kirtn. She got as far as the glass wall before self-preservation overcame lust. UnAdjusted slaves could be carries of diseases other than physical violence. The woman’s fingertips traced Kirtn’s outline on the cool glass. She spoke softly. Rheba did not need Jal’s translation to know that Kirtn had won. He would not be going to the Pit.

  The female polarity removed her hand from the glass. She looked at Rheba, at the disheveled golden hair and slanting cinnamon eyes, and at the supple, utterly female body. The hand moved sharply. Blue nails flashed. Fingers snapped in contemptuous dismissal.

  Disappointed but not surprised, Jal turned to Rheba. “The Loo-chim is not impressed by you. It has prettier specimens that are already Adjusted.”

  “What would impress it?” said Rheba.

  Jal shrugged. “Kerenga only knows. The Loo-chim already drinks the cream of the Equality.”

  “Wait,” she said, when he would have turned and led her away. She faced the Loo-chim bubble. As she had done on Onan, she began to build colored shapes within the transparent surface of the bubble. Her hands pulsed in subtle patterns of gold. Her palms itched. She ignored the sensation. The shapes she created were small, few, but brilliantly colored. They winked in and out of patterns like geometric leaves driven by a fitful wind.

  The female polarity’s blue nails flicked disdainfully against the bubble. She spoke a curt phrase. The male polarity gave her a spiteful look and countermanded the order. The Loo-chim began arguing with itself in cultured, razor phrases.

  Jal frowned and watched his feet. Kirtn eased over to Rheba’s side and put a comforting hand on her shoulder “What are they saying?” he asked Jal.

  Jal sighed and looked like a man with a toothache. “She’s jealous of his furry. He’s jealous,” he looked at Rheba, “of your furry, both as mate for his furry and as mount for his sister. She’s jealous of you, too, because the furry she wants is yours.”

  Kirtn did not know whether to laugh or swear. He stroked Rheba’s hair reassuringly, a gesture that brought a frown to the female polarity’s face.

  “So?” demanded Rheba, impatient with lusts and counter-lusts.

  “So they argue,” said Jal simply.

  After a time, the female polarity made an imperative gesture and snapped her fingers under her brother’s nose. He made an angry, dismissing gesture. She snapped her finger again. He continued to look angry but did nothing.

  Jal sighed. “No luck, smoothie. It' s the Pit for you.” He turned to leave.

  “No,” said Kirtn.

  The flat denial made the ruby rocks moan. Jal twitched Kirtn’s leash. Blood flowed. The Bre’n did not move.

  “Look, furry, it won’t do any good,” said Jal, more discouraged than angry. “You’re lucky not to be going to the Pit yourself.”

  Kirtn ignored the trader. He turned to Rheba and trilled a single phrase in the highly compressed whistle language of the Bre’n. “Whatever I do, don’t fight me.”

  Rheba whistled a single note of surprised assent.

  Kirtn turned toward Jal. “You might as well kill both of us here and now. If you separate us, we’ll die anyway.”

  Jal’s grip made the training leashes tremble. “I doubt that, furry. Oh, it’ll be painful, I suppose, but you’ll make new friends.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Kirtn harshly. “Bre’n and Senyas are one. Without mutual enzyme transfer, we die.”

  Rheba succeeded in keeping both surprise and admiration from showing on her face. Jal did not.

  “It’s a thought, furry. But the other furry didn’t say anything about symbiosis with her smoothie kid.”

  Rheba bit back a sound of dismay. She had forgotten bout the Senyas boy; and so, apparently, had Kirtn.

  “Did you separate the Bre’n from her Senyas?” asked Kirtn, fear in his voice.

  “No.” Jal grimaced at the memory. “When we tried, she went berserk.”

  “You would too, if someone had just condemned you to death by slow torture,” said Rheba enthusiastically. “It’s ghastly, the worst death in the galaxy.”

  “Rheba.” Kirtn’s whistle was sharp. “Eno
ugh. The less lies, the less chance of being caught.”

  She subsided with no more embellishment than a delicate shudder. She watched Jal with huge cinnamon eyes. He frowned, plainly wondering if there was any truth in Kirtn’s words. “Stranger things happen in the Equality at least six times between meals,” he muttered after a long time. “But—enzyme transfer? How does it work?”

  Kirtn turned Rheba until she faced him, no more than a hand’s width away. “I’m sorry,” he whistled. “It’s all I could link of.” And the Bre’n spring song had helped to stir his thoughts, he admitted silently to himself. “Don’t fight me, little fire dancer,” he murmured as he bent over her.

  Kirtn drew Rheba to him and kissed her as he would a woman. Shocked, she did not resist. She had known Senyas boys on her own planet, friends whose playful fumblings had ended in transitory pleasures. But she had never thought of her Bre’n mentor as a man. Since her planet had died, she had even stopped thinking of herself as a woman.

  Gently, Kirtn freed his dancer, hiding his sadness at her shocked response to his touch. He turned toward Jal. “That’s how the enzyme transfer works,” he said, his voice toneless.

  Jal snickered. “More than enzymes could get transferred that way.”

  Kirtn’s gold eyes became as flat as hammered metal. He said nothing. Even so, the trader moved uncomfortably. He turned toward the Loo-chim and stood for a long moment, plainly calculating the risk of Imperial wrath against the profit to be made from selling two high-priced slaves instead of one. He drew a long, slow breath and began to speak persuasively.

  Neither polarity seemed to appreciate what Jal was saying. The Loo-chim glared at itself, then at Jal, then at the slaves. Finally the Loo-chim spoke to itself. As he spoke, the male’s smile was vindictive. The female spoke in turn, smiling with equal malice. The Loo-chim turned back to Jal and made a twin, abrupt gesture. Jal stopped talking as though his throat had been cut.

  The bubble opaqued, then cleared. It was empty. The ferns quivered in musical relief. Even the stream seemed to flow with greater ease. Jal stared at his slaves, waiting for them to ask. They stared back. His hand tightened on the training leashes, sending a warning quiver up their silver links.

  “The Loo-chim is generous,” said Jal dryly. “Indecisive at times, but still generous. If both of you survive the Loo-chim Fold, the Loo-chim will then address the question of enzymes, separation and survival.”

  Rheba felt relief flow in warm waves along her nerves. She sagged slightly against Kirtn’s strength. His breath stirred her hair as he thanked the Inmost Fire for Its burning benediction.

  “You’re not safe yet,” Jal said sharply to her. “First, you have to survive Adjustment. Then you’ll have to find an Act. The Loo-chim has no use for your smooth body, but if you’re talented in some other way they’ll find a place for you in their Concatenation.”

  Rheba looked confident. Jal made a contemptuous gesture.

  “If you’re thinking of your Chaos trick, forget it. You’ll have to find something more dramatic than a few colored shapes. The Loo-chim has a six-year-old illusionist who does much better than that.” Jal waited before continuing in a hard voice, taking pleasure out of deflating her. “If you survive Adjustment, I’ll send someone to help you with your Act.”

  Rheba’s face was carefully expressionless, but Jal was skilled in reading the faces of slaves far more experienced than she. “It won’t be easy, smooth bitch. The male polarity bought the furry’s boy. What the Loo-chim buys, it keeps. You’ll never take the boy off planet. You got yourself turned into a slave for nothing.”

  V

  The exterior of the Loo-chim Fold was a high, seamless brown barrier capped by a nearly invisible force field. Only the subtle distortion of light gave away the presence of energy flowing soundlessly over the slave compound.

  Jal saw that both his slaves had noticed the Fold’s deadly lid. He smiled and made a soft sound of satisfaction. “Good. You’re alert. You’ll need that to survive. There’s no real sky in the Fold—only energy. If you try to climb out, you’ll die.” He stepped up to a wide vertical blue stripe that was part of the fence and began speaking in the language of Loo.

  Rheba’s gaze was withdrawn as she measured the enormous currents of energy flowing silently so close to her. Her hair shimmered and lifted as though individual strands were questing after energy. Her body quivered, each cell yearning toward the compelling, unseen tide surging just beyond her. To reach it, join it, ride forever on its overpowering waves—

  “Fire dancer,” said Kirtn roughly, using the Senyas tongue.

  Rheba blinked, called from her trance by her mentor’s command. She turned toward him, her hair shifting and whispering, her cinnamon eyes incandescent.

  “Don’t let it summon you,” he said harshly. “You can’t handle that much energy.”

  She sighed and let go of the filaments of force she had unconsciously woven. She caught her long, restless hair and bound it at the nape of her neck with a practiced twist. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly, staring at the invisible energies pouring over the Fold, “so alive, so powerful, always different and yet always familiar, safety and danger at once. Like a Bre’n Face. Like you.”

  His eyes reflected the light of Loo’s topaz sun as he watched his dancer grope toward an understanding of him—of them. She was growing up too quickly. One day she would look at her Face and realize what it held. How would she feel then? Would she be mature enough to understand? Would he be able to wait? On Deva she would have been at least ten years older, her children safely conceived, safely born, before she saw the truth in the Face. But Deva had burned, spewing its children out into a galaxy where they had to grow up too soon or die forever.

  Jal returned, breaking into Kirtn’s bleak thoughts. With a gesture, the trader motioned them toward the indigo slit in the fence. “You aren’t counted as a new slave until you drink at the well in the center of the Fold. That is the only water in the Fold. Don’t forget what I told you on the ship, or you won’t live long enough to get thirsty. When you’re inside both concentric circles that surround the well and the center of the compound, you’ll be safe from any attack by other slaves. That’s all I’m allowed to tell you.”

  Before they could ask questions they were sucked into the blue stripe. Their bonds fell off as they passed through the wall. When Kirtn looked over his shoulder, the slit was gone, leaving behind a uniform brown fence as tall and obdurate as a cliff. It stretched away on both sides until it vanished into the silver haze that gathered beneath the Fold’s invisibly seething ceiling.

  In silence, they examined their prison. The haze made distances impossible to estimate.

  “How big?” he asked, turning toward her.

  She shut her eyes, trying to sense the subtle flow of energy, currents of heat and cold and power that would tell her whether the fence quickly curved back on itself or stretched endlessly into the mist.

  “Big,” she said finally, blinking her eyes and rubbing her arms where bindings had deadened her flesh. “We could walk the fence for days and not come back here.”

  His whistle was short and harsh. “Well,” he said, flexing his arms, ignoring the pain of returning circulation, “at least we’re not tied any longer.”

  She swallowed. The drug Jal had used to knock her out had left her mouth feeling like old leather. Her throat was sore, her tongue like a dried sponge. She knew that Kirtn had to be as thirsty as she was, but neither of them was eager to take the trail leading off into the center of the mist. Both of them knew instinctively that the most dangerous part of any territory was usually the watering hole, where every living creature must eventually come to drink or die . . . sometimes, both.

  But they would never be stronger than they were right now. Delay was futile. Without speaking they set off down the broad path, walking carefully, quietly, side by side. As she moved, Rheba gathered energy, renewing it from moment to moment, even when she was full. She dared not
let the energy drain away, or she might be caught empty at the instant of attack. For Jal had left them no doubt that they would be attacked; the only uncertainty was when. And by what.

  A small wind gusted, carrying groans and cries to them. Shapes mounded at the edge of the mist. Some shapes moved, some were still, some writhed in a way that suggested ultimate pleasure or ultimate pain. Wind shredded the mist, revealing a small humanoid form.

  It was a child. A very young girl, naked and emaciated. Half of her face had been burned away, but still she lived and walked, making small noises that carried clearly on the wind.

  Rheba leaped off the path, running toward the child. Knee-high white bushes clawed at her naked legs and mist twisted like cold flames, consuming the ground. She fell once but scrambled to her feet without pausing, her eyes fixed on her goal.

  Dark shapes leaped onto Rheba’s shoulder, flattening her onto the dank ground. She felt the rake of claws and the burning of teeth in her neck. In a searing burst, she released the energy she had held. Her attackers cried out and scrambled away from her, all except one that clung to her with flexible, clawed hands. Kirtn broke its neck with a single kick. He snatched up Rheba and ran back toward the path. Nothing followed him.

  “The child!” screamed Rheba, fighting him. “The child!”

  “Bait,” he said succinctly. “That was a gtai trap.”

  Belatedly, she remembered Jal’s lectures on board the Devalon. The gtai were semi-intelligent pack hunters who used wounded prey as a lure. Whoever or whatever took the bait could be acting as predator or savior; the gtai did not care, so long as what fell into the trap was edible.

  She felt the claw marks burning on her back and knew how close she had come to death. Gtai regularly hunted—and caught—armed groups of men. She should have remembered Jal’s words.