Flesh and Gold (19 page)

What we were afraid of was that the Folk would tell the Consortium about the gold. Teaching them the language had been a game, and I admired their passion to learn, but that was before they found the gold. Especially there was one female who began to look like a ringleader. So we guarded them more closely, until they became as edgy as we, and one day when Ferrier came to pick up a gold shipment I found my knife gone—one of the Folk had stolen it—and I called them out about it.

One of the males got angry and flung a lump of gold. It hit Ferrier, and he shot the poor fellow dead. I nearly killed him then. I wish I had.

There was enough money to live on by that time, I'd been doing the work for over twenty years. I began to think of getting out of it all. I had to. There were only thirty-five or forty of these Folk, and I didn't know how to explain to their owners that one of them was missing. And I realized that one of them was pregnant, their female ringleader who
had made Ferrier so uneasy. It had never happened before, and it made me wonder. I was anxious for her. It was fixed in my mind that Ferrier would try to do her harm.

There was nothing I could do for her without breaking up our whole scheme. I thought I might be able to move her into some undersea exhibit, or some scientific collection, one of the tens of the tens of institutions that Zamos itself runs—but by the time I had made some arrangements I found that Ferrier had used a contact on Fthel Five to put her into a brothel!—dear Saints, a Zamos brothel!—where they were prepared to split whatever income she made! Of course I was helpless after that.

I felt myself forced to tell the Consortium representatives when they came. I was afraid my crew would betray me, even though they were taking up the gold along with me. There was no way, no way I could tell them, without, without making, them angry—no, no, I don't want water!

But I never thought—never thought—they would go so far as to make my own crew lay hold of me while they heated an iron bar red hot—three who called themselves civilized, and one of them a woman!—fired it red hot—and—and—oh my eye! Augh! I am going to be sick!

Yes, thank you, somewhat better, I suppose . . .

I never saw any one of them but Ferrier again, crew, Folk, Consortium. My shock was so deep I found myself in a hospital when I came back to consciousness. They did not harm my wife. She had brought me to the hospital, and now she is living in one room in the city here, she's a faithful woman, I owe her that much. And waiting. For me, poor fool!

About Ferrier, yes. As soon as I woke I swore to accuse them—I mean all of them, whoever they were working for, and I offered myself to the police when I heard that Ferrier was arrested.

On the second night in that hospital at home I woke in my bed and esped Ferrier himself, I swear it!—in a doctor's greycoat, come to attack me with a needle, and no matter how I tried I was too weak to call out before it was too late and the poison seized me. You may tell me it was a dream but I am a poisoned man.

The doctors did their best to save me and sent me here under guard to be safe, but I had become afraid to testify, I was so full of pain, and because you had worked with Thordh I made up that stupid story while I dithered.

At last it came to me that instead of being my enemy you might become my greatest friend, and so I have told you this story.

“Thank you,” Skerow said. “I would like to know a few things more, and then we will let you rest. Are you sure the Consortium asked you to care for the undersea Folk, as you call them? Did they pay you with drafts, and if so was there any Consortium crest on them?”

Nohl lay breathing heavily with his eyelids half lowered.

“I never thought much about it I was so pleased to see the money, but I'm damned if I'm sure of the Consortium. I heard them talk of Zamos, that I'm sure. And they paid me in old silver
pistabat
.”

Skerow's heart sank. She believed everything Nohl had said, and his story had explained nearly everything, but except that it would put Ferrier out of circulation his testimony left her no nearer saving Kobai.

Nohl stirred himself and swallowed air. “If I had found that gold before I sold the land this would never have happened.”

Skerow could not fault his greedy logic.

Evening shadows were folding themselves over in the park when Skerow went back to where the swollen brains pressed their lobes against the half-translucent glastex,

where
the moss grows
over burning heads
. . .

:Surely we are not quite so buried,:
said Hrufa.

“My poem is meant to tell you that you are not,” Skerow said. “Your help meant a lot to me, and I came to thank you for it.”

The thoughts of the Ancestors gathered around her, and the old man who had once been dignified said,
:It took us some while to come to it, but we were able to prove to ourselves that we could be useful. Good-bye, then, Skerow. Send us our taster of life, and hope that we are gone before you need our help again.:

The too-bright lights had been turned down for the night, and Skerow stepped out of the dimness into the dark. The faint throbbing of pumps was the only sound she could hear, and she stood for a moment, unwilling to break by her leaving a link that joined the Ancestors to the world. But they had already fallen into a dream, and she moved away in peace.

SIX  

Fthel V:
Manador and Lebedev

The sequence appeared on the monitor of Manador's terminal, silent but looking very much like the commercial streamers that trailed half her messages because she did not want to pay to keep them off. At first she thought it was only a soft-porn ad for something harder, but when she realized that its central figure was Jacaranda Drummond she crushed the butt of her dopestick and turned up the ventilators to clear the air and her mind.

The scenes were as tightly edited as if they had been filmed for a commercial: woman being herded, examined like cattle for signs of disease by Lyrhht doctor, decorated like a sacrificial animal to please the bloodthirsty, touched on shoulder, hip, neck by death's angel the Kylklad, dropped into a place she could not escape from, attacked by the devil—

As the scene was flickering off at the crunch of death, Manador hit
stop, rewind, replay
. Nothing came on the screen but static. A copy-proof transmission. She stared at
the screen while it flickered with calls from old pugs saying hello, new ones needing jobs, impressarios wanting new blood. She clawed the off switch with a red nail and sat listening to ventilators whirring, the suck of drains, the grinding of the disposal unit, and the deep throb of the recycler.

She got up and took seven steps to her private quarters. Discarded her ballerina's black wig, washed down the pale makeup, wiped the red nail enamel, and colored her white chopped hair
tziguat
yellow. Her skin was a deep clear blue, not slate-colored like a Varvani's, and she laid on lotion to give it a bloom, then lined her mouth and lips with green pearl essence; she left her brows and lashes white as frost. She coated her nails with adhesive and dipped them in gold dust, dressed in a straight-cut trouser suit of midnight blue velvet that matched her eyes, its V-neck edged in yellow satin.

Her image in the long mirror gave back the bracket-creased smile that showed her small sharp teeth.

In the Gamblar at Zamos's brothel Lebedev, fighting terror and boredom equally, dealt skambi with his aching hand. He had never found the game interesting; it killed time in prison, that was all.
Here you are sitting on your arse doing nothing, Lebedev
. His sore ear droned with the words.
You have not even seen the mermaid
. He dared not try. He was grudgingly grateful to be alive playing skambi rather than dead being recycled somewhere.

But he was tired of “Number forty-three today, gentlepersons! Enter credit I.D. numbers and wagers on your panels!” Bored with civil servants drowning their own boredom in vodka with peppers and gold flakes, and the five-seed wines of Kemalan IV. As a Police Inspector he had already seen too many of the highroller wearing the lady in red on his arm, the woman in black with her tumbler of whiskey, and the ingenuous new Bimandan ambassador
staggering drunk with an alien world's wonders as well as its new ambrosias. Even the image of Zamos wandering about in his gold and purple toga had lost its novelty.

“Numbers nineteen, seven and fifty-one are wild!” he called, and switched on displays, gave a wind of the crank, and set the clock. The light burned down on him, and his fingers were sweating in the white gloves that wore out so quickly.

As he raised his hand to thread disk number forty-three on the first spindle he froze and stopped being bored. Manador was standing in the doorway near the poker tables, drawing darkness into herself and looking like a photographic negative.

He dropped the disk on the table, picked it up and placed it on the spindle. He could feel his eyes darting in their sockets searching for escape routes. Manador had lost her lover and wanted somebody's skin. She came forward to lean on the mahogany shoulder of the
concello
playing a Bengtvad hymn,
Hail to the Heavenly Yeih
, transcribed for the Orpha
dugak
.

“West plays forty-one, eh”—he swallowed on a dry throat, while Manador's eyes, those disks that burned blue flames, moved without hurry to settle on him—“North passes, first of three allowed”—he noted it on his panel—“East . . .”

Her eyes caught his. The bracket-creases of her mouth widened, but not in a smile.

His intermission came up after the game; he pulled off his gloves and armbands, slipped away in the press of people to the hall where the machines were. He wanted time and space to think, but they were not here among the elbows of the Bengtvadi, Dabiri, Bimanda. He found an empty seat and dropped a token. A porn game flared on the screen; he punched buttons randomly and it gave him a razz for bad
play. Another token brought him slivovitz when he expected vodka, and he drank it anyway. He was sure she would betray him.

A soft voice said, “Are you all right, Mister Dealer?”

Ai'la was standing beside him wearing a robe of big gently colored tropical flowers and a headdress to match; she was collecting tumblers and goblets for the cycler. Some show of feeling had come into her face during the last few days in which she had watched him with mildly curious eyes; it was as if she had sensed that he too was not quite a citizen, and for him she had stopped displaying her careful poise. She whispered, in a child's conspiratorial manner, “Can I get you some drink that is not like that cheap stuff you took?”

He whispered back, “I would love to have it, dear miss, but save it for a better day.” He would not trust her yet, but maybe . . .

There were holstered bullies at every door, and he was too well known for his fight with South to dare trying to escape. Nothing for it but to brazen it out. When he returned through the doorway he found Manador sitting at the skambi table, in South position. She did not look up.

“Number fifty-seven today . . .”

The disks hissed against each other. Manador had pulled down her smoke-cone so that Lebedev could see only the tip of her nose over her green pearl mouth with the dopestick that was giving off its over-sweet fragrance. Her teeth clicked on the onyx holder and her nails tapped the disk as she played it. She murmured, “What are you doing here, Lebedev?”

“Didn't you know I had been in prison? I learned to deal skambi there.”

She smiled thinly and hissed, “You will be sorry they let you out, Lebedev.”

One or two other players, thinking she was bantering, smiled as well. Then Lebedev had the fearful thought that everyone else in the room, in the brothel, was smiling at him, with pink, green, or thin grey lips, with horned beak or lifted snout, waiting greedily for some fist to crash against him. He licked his own lips. “East plays ten and South plays . . . four?”

It was an illegal move. The other players might have let it pass, but he knew Manador had the dented six that the other dangerous South had held, and her four would have won the game. She lifted the cone and her eyes challenged him. Her whole body seemed aimed at him.