Dancer's Illusion Page 9

  The moment of irrational rage passed; but like fire, it left its mark on her mind. It was some consolation to see how rapidly the zoolipt inside Kirtn healed his bruises and ragged cuts. It was not enough to neutralize her anger.

  “Don’t bite off more than the zoolipt can chew,” she snapped as she leaned against the gate to swing it shut.

  Kirtn looked at her in disbelief. “You dance with coherent light and then tell me to be careful?” He laughed the rich laugh of Bre’n amusement. “When you follow your advice, I will.”

  He put his shoulder to the gate. As always, his easy power surprised her. The gate moved quickly, smoothly on its massive hinges. It closed without a sound. He slid the bolt home.

  It was none too soon. From the far side came hoarse cries. The gate vibrated with the force of pounding fists. They had not thought to bring a battering ram, so they used themselves.

  “Will it hold?” asked Kirtn, bending over to see how badly she had damaged the bolt’s brackets.

  Rheba picked up the pieces she had cut off the two brackets. The hot pieces burned her. She could draw out the heat, but it would take more time than it was worth. Her akhenet lines offered some protection to her fingers. What the lines missed, the zoolipt would have to heal later.

  Energy flared hotly as she welded the pieces into place. It was an easy job, requiring power but little finesse. When she was finished she stepped back to suck on her burned fingertips.

  “It should hold as soon as the metal cools,” she said.

  Fssa stretched out of her hair. His head darted to each bracket, touched, and withdrew. He was brighter. The brackets were darker. Cold. Fssireemes were, after all, energy parasites. It was not a heritage they were proud of, but it had its uses.

  “Next time you can cool off the pieces before I handle them,” said Rheba.

  Contrition moved in dark pulses over the snake’s radiant head. “I should have thought of that sooner. Are you badly burned?”

  “Doubt it,” she answered, looking critically at her fingertips. As she had expected, they were whole again. “The zoolipt is no good on figment itches, but it’s death on burns. See? Brighten up, snake.”

  Fssa took her advice literally. He let himself glow until he was a sinuous shape stitched through her still-wild hair. He enjoyed her dances almost as much as Kirtn did. With so much energy flying around, no one missed what he siphoned into himself. And it felt so good to be warm. Almost as good as his Guardian memory-dream of home, formations of Fssireemes soaring in the seething sky-seas of Ssimmi.

  “Fssa,” patiently, Rheba’s voice, “what are they saying?”

  Belatedly, the snake realized that the illusionists were talking and he was not translating. “Sorry,” he hissed. “When you dance it reminds me of home.”

  She touched Fssa comfortingly and nearly burned her finger all over again. She had promised to find Ssimmi if she could. And she meant to. The snake had done more to earn it than any of the former slaves waiting impatiently aboard the Devalon for the captains to return.

  “The Yaocoons aren’t pleased,” summarized the snake, boiling whatever three ranting vegetables and a fruit tree were saying into four words.

  “How bad is it?” asked Kirtn. His yellow eyes searched the immediate area in useless reflex. He probably would not see trouble coming or would not recognize it if he saw it. How threatening was a kippi in bloom? Or a plateful of sliced fruit?

  Fssa’s sensors, darker now than his energy-rich body, gleamed like black opals as he scanned the group of gesticulating vegetables. “I’sNara is talking now.” The snake listened, then hummed in admiration. “What diction! What clarity! What invective!”

  “What meaning,” prompted Kirtn.

  “Irrelevant. Her suggestions are impossible for a Fourth People’s inflexible body. To do what she proposes would challenge a Fssireeme.”

  Kirtn and Rheba waited, wishing they could understand Yhelle. Fssa hissed with Fssireeme laughter.

  “Talk, snake, or I’ll tie you in knots,” snapped Kirtn.

  Fssa waited until a Yaocoon outburst ended. “Without obscenities, the Yaocoons say they’ve never heard of Ara.”

  Bre’n lips thinned into a snarl. “Who’s lying—the Yaocoons or that crazy cucumber?”

  “I’sNara suspects the Yaocoons are lying. She’s quite emphatic about it. I never would have expected such . . . color . . . from her.”

  Rheba waited and sweated and wondered if it was safe for her to let go of the excess fire she had gathered. The longer she held it, the more tired she would be when she let it go. It was one of the dancer ironies; the greater the energies employed in the dance, the greater the dancer’s depletion afterward.

  “F’lTiri has taken over now,” offered Fssa. “He’s less original, but louder. Between epithets, he’s asking about the children.”

  “And?” demanded Rheba when Fssa fell silent.

  The answer was a sharp descending whistle, forceful Bre’n negative. “Now he’s asking about the—”

  Suddenly the vegetables transformed into screaming, angry Yaocoons. As the appearance of planthood vanished, so did the appearance of sanctuary. Beneath their illusions the Yaocoon carried guns. The guns were real.

  “—rebellion,” finished Fssa. The snake sighed like a human. “At least we don’t need to worry about being thrown back over the wall. They wouldn’t let go of us now if I begged in nine languages.”

  X

  “Not yet, dancer,” whistled Kirtn, sensing that she was weaving her energy into potentially deadly patterns.

  “I could cool them off,” suggested Fssa in Senyas understatement. He could turn their bodies into blocks of flesh as frigid as rocks orbiting a dead sun.

  Rheba waited, hair seething, bright as fine wires burning. The guns were mechanical, like the gate. She would not be able to deflect the bullets. She might be able to distort the plastic barrels enough to make the guns useless. She could burn the people holding the guns. It would take time, though, more time than bullets needed to reach them.

  She moved closer to her Bre’n and waited.

  F’lTiri stared at each Yaocoon in turn. They became uncomfortable. Some of them lowered their weapons. A few even retreated behind invisibility, leaving only the guns visible.

  I’sNara stalked up to a weapon that seemed to hang in midair. “I see you, Tske,” she said deliberately.

  The Yaocoons gave a collective gasp. I’sNara had done the unspeakable.

  “Can you see me?” she asked in a sweet voice. And vanished.

  The Yaocoon behind the weapon materialized as he poured his energy into searching for i’sNara. When he could not find her, another Yaocoon joined with him, then another and another until five Yaocoons combined in a mental sharing that was both more and less than J/taal mercenaries could achieve. It was a mind dance of sorts, but limited to projecting or penetrating illusions.

  The five cried out and pounced. I’sNara wavered into visibility, fighting their projected illusion of her as she really was. In the end she lost. She was forced to appear before them with no illusions. She had made her point, however. If she had wanted to kill them while they searched for her, she could have.

  She had made her point too well. They tied her with a rope that had no illusion of softness. F’lTiri, too, was tied. Two Yaocoons had slipped up behind him while i’sNara taunted the others with her invisibility.

  The same five who had unmasked i’sNara turned to concentrate on Rheba and Kirtn. The last shreds of their tomato, worm and vine illusion evaporated instantly, for they had no means of fighting the anti-illusion projection. The Yaocoons, however, did not stop. They continued to focus their projections on Bre’n, Senyas and Fssireeme, not realizing that the three were appearing as themselves.

  When five Yaocoons could not penetrate the “illusions” in front of them, more Yaocoons joined in. Soon there were ten, then twelve, then twenty Yaocoons trying to nullify the alien appearances of Rheba, Kirtn and Fssa. It
was futile. Illusionists could change the appearance of reality, but could not change reality itself.

  “Redis,” murmured one Yaocoon.

  The word moved from one mouth to another, picking up speed like a stone rolling down a steep hill. “Redis, Redis Redis RedisRedisRedis!”

  Weapons came up.

  Fire leaped in Rheba’s akhenet lines.

  “No!” screamed i’sNara. “They aren’t Redis! They aren’t even Yhelles!”

  Weapons paused. Yaocoons turned to look at i’sNara.

  “They’re from outside the Equality,” she said quickly. “They were slaves with us on Loo.”

  The Yaocoons whispered among themselves, but not quietly enough to defeat the Fssireeme’s hyperacute hearing.

  “—believe her?”

  “Unillusioned, she looks like Ara’s memory of i’sNara.”

  “Yes, but the Stones—”

  “He is f’lTiri. She is i’sNara. We were Libs together. I can’t be mistaken!”

  “A lot of Redis were once Libs.”

  “If we can’t believe in our own unillusions, we might as well surrender to k’Masei right now.”

  The last was a snarl of frustration. The group broke apart, becoming more themselves, if startling colorations could be overlooked. One of the Yaocoons shivered and reformed, woman not man, chestnut-haired. She was tiny, perfectly formed without being unreal, and vivid.

  “Ara,” murmured f’lTiri. Then, “Where’s my son?”

  The woman Ara looked at the two Yhelles with little welcome. “A lot has changed since you were sold to Loo. If you are indeed the ones who were sold to Loo. K’Masei takes the illusions of former clanmates and uses them to haunt us.”

  Rheba walked forward a few steps, smoldering like a sunrise just below the horizon. “As you said, if you can’t believe in your own unillusions, what’s left?”

  “I find it difficult to believe you’re real at all,” said Ara bluntly.

  “Reality Street affected me the same way,” admitted Rheba.

  Ara’s pale eyes glanced toward Kirtn. “That’s not real. He’s a sensualist’s illusion.” There was utter conviction in the woman’s voice. She could accept Rheba, but not the tall man with her.

  Rheba looked at her Bre’n, trying to see him with Ara’s eyes. His copper skin-fur rippled over muscles that ensured grace as well as crude strength. Metallic copper hair curled against his powerful neck. His yellow eyes had a fire that rivaled hers in full dance. He stood like a clept watching an enemy, predatory purpose barely held in check, dangerous and fully alive. “Actually,” Rheba murmured, rubbing her cheek against his arm, “he’s a poet.”

  Kirtn smiled at her and whistled a seductive phrase out of a Bre’n courtship song. Her breath caught at the song’s beauty, and his, but she managed to whistle the next phrase, a rising trill of longing that haunted the silence that followed.

  Ara stared, riveted by possibilities that transcended cultural prejudices.

  “Now you know how they destroyed the Loo-chim,” said f’lTiri, his voice divided among too many emotions to name.

  “And her fire. Don’t underestimate that,” sighed i’sNara.

  “If he came from the Ecstasy Stones,” Ara said finally, “I know now why we’ve lost so many to k’Masei’s illusions.”

  “I didn’t come from Stones, Ecstasy or otherwise.” Kirtn’s voice was rich with barely contained laughter. “You’re as . . . unusual . . . to us as we are to you.”

  “That’s more fantastic than any illusion I’ve known,” Ara said. She looked at Rheba again. “Do you really burn?”

  “Try me.” Rheba’s smile was challenging. She disliked Kirtn’s effect on women. Irrationally, she blamed the women rather than the Bre’n.

  Kirtn listened, slanted eyes unusually intense as he looked at his dancer. She was too young to be sexually possessive, yet she edged closer to it every day. She was too young to have akhenet lines arching over her hips, yet he had seen such lines, traceries of fire to come. She was too young to Choose, yet she gave off energies that kept him in a constant state of sexual awareness. Too young for Bre’n/Senyas passion. Yet. . .

  He forced himself to look away.

  “I don’t think I will,” said Ara, measuring Rheba’s incandescent lines. The Yaocoon turned back to i’sNara. “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t think I will,” said Ara, measuring Rheba’s incandescent lines. The Yaocoon turned back to i’sNara. “Why are you here?”

  “We told you. Our children.”

  “Your children aren’t here,” said Ara, regret and longing in her voice.

  “So you say.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I haven’t seen their absence.”

  “What could convince you?”

  “Join with me and f’lTiri to make a twelve. If we still can’t find them, we’ll leave.”

  Ara smiled but her voice was sad. “I’ll join with you and you still won’t find them. And you won’t leave.”

  I’sNara hesitated, then accepted some words and ignored the rest. “Where are they?”

  “With the Stones.”

  “Alive?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ara in a strained voice.

  “When did they leave?”

  “Not long. Six days. We told them not to. We begged. They were strong in their illusions. We needed them for what was to come.”

  “Rebellion,” said f’lTiri flatly.

  “Yes.”

  The Yaocoons surrounding them made an uneasy, animal noise. Ara turned on them. “If the Tyrant can hear us in the center of our own illusions, then—”

  “—we might as well give up,” interrupted a thick voice. “You keep saying that. Are you sweating to be around your lover again? He’ll be waiting for you in the Redis hall. The Tyrant never lets anyone go. No hurry, Ara, no hurry at all. Koro will still be there when the Final Illusion fades.”

  “Koro! What do you know about my son?” shouted f’lTiri.

  “Ask Ara,” said the man. “She’s decided that her first illusion is the only one worth having. Even though he’s an unillusioned traitor!”

  Ara projected the appearance and stench of rotting meat on the speaker. He coughed and disappeared.

  Before she could say anything, the thick-voiced man reappeared further away. “What about the other two?” he demanded. “They aren’t tied.”

  Rheba stepped closer to Kirtn. He put his hands on her shoulders again, ready to partner her dance if it came to that.

  “So tie them,” suggested i’sNara when the other woman hesitated. “They won’t object. I promise.”

  Kirtn eyed i’sNara doubtfully. “We won’t?”

  “No,” said i’sNara in a firm voice. “We came for information. If we have to have our hands tied to get it then we’ll have our hands tied.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Rheba to Kirtn in Senyas. “Plant fiber or plastic, I’ll burn through it. Or,” she added maliciously, “you’ll break it in a display of Bre’n muscles that will make women moan.”

  “Shut up, dancer,” said Kirtn amiably, holding out his hands to Ara. He smiled at the tiny woman and murmured, “I’m yours.”

  An illusion of incredible beauty suffused the Yaocoon woman.

  Lightning smoldered in Rheba’s hair. Kirtn glanced over at her and smiled like a Bre’n. He whistled softly, “There is no beauty to equal a Senyas dancer.”

  Her hair crackled ominously. It settled searingly around his neck, half attack, half caress. When she realized what she had done she made a startled sound. Her hair curled very gently across his cheek and lips, sending sweet currents of energy through him. “The zoolipt must be upsetting my enzyme balances. Apologies, mentor.”

  His eyes watched her with the hot patience of a Bre’n. “Accepted, dancer.” Then, smiling, “Perhaps I told the Loo-chim the truth. We need to share enzymes from time to time in order to stay healthy.”

  Gold raced over h
er akhenet lines. She leaned against him, savoring textures and strengths that were uniquely Bre’n. She almost accepted the challenge and temptation implicit in his words. But his presence was so fierce that caution held her. He radiated like a Bre’n sliding toward rez. She stepped back, afraid of disturbing forces she could not calculate or control.

  She turned and held out her wrists to Ara. “Tie me, then, if that’s what it takes to make you. feel good.”

  Ara stared from the uncanny Bre’n to the young woman smoldering in front of her.

  “I won’t burn you,” said Rheba impatiently, damping the fires in her akhenet lines.

  “You burn everything else in sight,” muttered Ara. She accepted a strip of plastic held out to her by the thick-voiced Yaocoon.

  Rheba waited with outward tranquillity while she was tied. The plastic bonds were cool, thick and loose. Ara was saying as plainly as words that she doubted the efficacy of bonds where Rheba was concerned. Ara turned to tie up Kirtn. She lingered so long over the job that Rheba’s hair lifted in hot warning.

  “What a marvelous texture,” said Ara, stroking Kirtn’s arm with appreciative fingers. “Is it real?”

  “Yes,” said Rheba, stepping close enough that Ara felt the heat from akhenet lines. “Like my fire.”

  Quickly, Ara backed away from both Senyas and Bre’n. She turned toward the illusionists, whose potential she understood. “Come with me.”

  “What?” said f’lTiri sarcastically. “You aren’t going to tie us together in a Loo chain, slave to slave to slave in lockstep?”

  Ara’s appearance dimmed, making visible her inner embarrassment. “You’re either enemies or you aren’t,” she said. “If you are, a Loo chain won’t make any difference.”

  “Since when have Yaocoons tied friends?” F’lTiri held out his hands, accusing her with more than his voice.

  “Since k’Masei the Tyrant,” snapped Ara, angry with more than his words.

  Unexpectedly, f’lTiri smiled. “I don’t blame you, child. Koro loved you once.”

  Ara’s face became the utter blank of an illusion waiting to form. She turned and began walking up what looked like a brook lined with Ghost ferns. The four bound people followed.