The Artifact of Foex (26 page)

Journey held out her hand to Chet and
switched languages without missing a beat. “This is Chet Baikson,
who’s a student at Semaphore. I met him on the lucid mud dig site.
And this is Fenimore LaDaven, who was
in
the dig
site.”

“Got it," Aureate said with a grin.

They switched back to the unknown language,
Journey waving her arms in illustration. At one point, she shot
Chet a sly look and made big-breast motions with her hands. Aureate
smirked and gave him a fleeting, assessing kind of look.

Chet blushed furiously. He could only hope
Journey was relaying his enjoyment of her breasts and not his
cross-dressing, which she hadn’t been witness to, anyway. Were they
deliberately being rude? Chet stepped away from the group and
kicked a bottle cap in the gutter.

Why hadn’t anyone
told
him there was
a Flame with yellow eyes? He would have wanted to know! It seemed a
terribly important fact. Apart from Othnielia, who else had been
talking about Aureate? Oh yes, Journey had wanted to consult with
her about the Raptus and why it was acting so strangely. Aureate
was an expert—why? Who was she
really?
No one these days
had those classic honey eyes, no one. Something stirred in the back
of Chet’s head; some poem or passage wriggled in his mind, half
forgotten...

“Oh, Journey, we have an opening in the troop
tonight! Venitte broke an ankle," Aureate cried out. Chet found her
language switch almost dizzying this time. “Can you fill in?”

“Yes!” Journey clapped her hands together,
her whole face radiating delight.

The other members of the Intako Dance
Company—now outside the van, watching the Flame with much the same
expressions as Chet and Fenimore—seemed less enthusiastic at the
prospect of dancing with a stranger without an audition or even a
rehearsal. “So you’re Journey, eh? How much do you know about the
goncang?
How about the
tersenyum dan menipu?”
said the man with the orange-green hair, arms crossed.

Journey immediately dropped the duffle bag,
loosened her fancy new clothing and demonstrated. Even knowing
nothing about dance, Chet was impressed. Her body—her whole
self—was involved in the movements. She reached out a hand to the
man and swung him into action. That’s when the dance became truly
intense, both athletic and blatantly sexual. Passersby began
gathering around, curious and alive to the possibility of a free
show. They actually applauded when Journey and the man finished,
arms outstretched dramatically. Even members of the Intako Dance
Company applauded. Aureate shamelessly grabbed Knife’s hat—he
yelped—and passed it around the audience for change. Meanwhile,
Journey conferred with the dancers, speaking the same technical
language. Though Chet understood their words, he didn’t really
understand
what they were saying.

Aureate flipped a coin into the air and put
in, “We all do a solo to start the second act. You can skip that
part if you like.”

“You kidding? I don’t have anything prepared,
but I can do flick-flacks!”

Journey kicked off her shoes and
demonstrated. She could even touch her feet to the top of her head.
Chet didn’t know how she could pretend like gravity didn’t exist,
but it clearly worked. Again, a crowd gathered, and again, Aureate
passed around Knife’s hat. By this point the dancers were grinning.
Journey was clearly good—or at least good enough—in their eyes,
too.

Chet, Fenimore and Knife retreated to the
main lounge while Journey went to prep with the rest. The
passenger-ship lounge was almost full: about a hundred well-dressed
people of every race, size and shape were nattering away, drinking
and snacking.

Getting into the spirit of things, Chet
volunteered to fetch the first round of drinks. On the way back to
the table, all three drinks balanced in his hands, he noticed
Fenimore was chatting up a young man sitting at the table behind
them. Seeking fresh blood, was he? Chet was so distracted that he
didn’t watch where he was going. He tripped over their duffle bag
and fell directly onto Knife.

“Abyss!” Knife cried out as the drinks
splashed. His whole front was wet. He jumped out of the seat,
staring in horror at his soaked shirt, and by proxy, his chest
beneath. The crowd around them grew silent and whispered to one
another, watching.

“Knife, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Chet cried,
upset. He tried to wipe Knife off, but Knife swore and batted his
hand away.

“You’ll only make it worse," he said, almost
hyperventilating. “I have to get out of this shirt.”

It was the only clean shirt Knife had, Chet
realized.“Let’s go out to the deck and I’ll switch shirts with
you.”

Without a word, Knife stumbled toward the
door. Chet followed, wringing his hands. He glanced back; Fenimore
had resumed his conversation—or his softening up—of the young man.
Chet frowned, wishing Fenimore would
care
more.
Might
as well wish the sun rose at night,
Chet thought with a snort.
Fenimore didn’t care about anyone, save himself.

There was only one other person on deck. She
was smoking a short distance away, a long, fluttery silk scarf
around her neck. Knife stripped off the wet shirt and rubbed
himself dry with the expensive dinner jacket Journey had insisted
upon purchasing. His chest was blistered, Chet was alarmed to see.
If Knife weren’t bistre colored, his skin would probably be very
red. Chet felt worse by the second. Knife fished a lighter out of
his pocket, began running the open flame against his chest, and
sank to the deck with a sigh. Chet followed him down, hands
outstretched helplessly.

Bereft of direction, Chet glanced around and
abruptly realized they were at sea. The ship had set sail already,
the sea calm under a clear, windless sky. Other boats, large and
small, were sailing on the nearly still waters. Chet understood
with a start that the Flame were surrounded—completely and totally
surrounded—by a deadly substance. It was as if they had set sail in
the center of a bubbling volcano. One little slip over the deck
rail and they would—what?

Knife glanced at Chet. “Don’t look so scared,
boy. I’m fine. Or I will be.”

“I really am sorry, Knife. I didn’t mean to
do that,”

“I know, Chet.” Knife put a consoling hand on
his shoulder.

Chet relaxed. Despite the incidentback at the
Wetshul hotel, Chet discovered how much he cared about Knife’s
opinion of him. The Flame had a crispness about him—a brevity of
words and actions—that Chet admired. He felt better knowing that
not only was Knife okay, but his opinion of Chet was apparently
unchanged by the event.

The smoker finished her cigarette and was
heading back into the lounge. Knife glanced up as she passed.
“Excuse me, could I bum one of those?” He looked startled as the
woman handed him a smoke, but murmured, “Thanks," all the same.
Knife lit the cigarette and leaned back against the deck, still
running the lighter over his chest.

Chet eyed him. “Knife, could I ask you a
question?” Knife waved a
feel free
gesture. “What do you
do for a living? I don’t mean the work you do for Pelin. How do you
make money?”

Knife grinned around the cigarette, his teeth
and the whites of his eyes almost glowing against his dark skin. “I
trade stocks and bonds. When I’m low on petty cash, I trade stocks
and bonds for other people. Besides paying my way, it puts me
front-and-center of Genis’ business in Allistair. Which comes in
very handy in doing my other job—as you say, Pelin’s work.”

“You, um, track
marks
on Genis’
Exchange?”

“Some of them. Merchants have this bad habit
of assuming Flame are still commodities that can be bought and
sold. We’re too vulnerable to that sort of thing, always have been.
It’s not just Merchants, either. There’s bad behavior all around
when it comes to Flame. We’re too easily controlled, you see,
physically and otherwise. We have this tendency to be emotionally
sensitive and, as they say these days, co-dependent, which leads to
all manner of abuse.”

Chet tucked his chin. “I can see the physical
part of the problem.” Even
he
could kill the Flame at any
time, he realized with a sinking heart.

“Yeah, but the physical is only the tip.” He
took another drag and added, almost as an aside, “My problem is,
I’m Flame, too. I get so emotionally involved with my prey that I
tend to lose sight of the original purpose in tracking them down. I
like my prey a little too much for my own good. Been blindsided and
murdered that way more times than I can count. I keep promising to
myself it won’t happen again, then it does.”

“What’s it like... to die?”

“Much as you’d imagine.” Knife gave him a
sharp look and stubbed out the butt. “It hurts, then I go back to
Pelin. Don’t really remember the between times. We’re flesh like
everyone else, and it’s the flesh that dictates what’s important
and what’s not. I’ll have your shirt, now, thank you for offering,
Chet.”

After the clothing switch, they reentered the
lounge. The lights had been dimmed and someone was introducing the
dance troop. Chet and Knife slunk back to their seats as the music
started.

Chet forgot that he was wearing a wet shirt
that was a little tight for him. He forgot to breathe, even. The
Intako Dance Company was
spectacular
. From the first
moment, the men and women—and Flame, he reminded himself—stole the
entire room. Chet gulped, his mouth dry. After a time he thought to
look for Journey. Though he spotted Aureate right away—she hadn’t
changed from before—he couldn’t see Journey. They were all wearing
fancy headdresses, effectively masking the Flame from view, though
he doubted that was the headdress’s original purpose. Chet finally
leaned over and asked Knife during a slower dance. Knife grinned
and pointed out one of the men. He was so similar to the others
Chet hadn’t even considered him.
Oh.

A musical interlude followed the first
performance. Then the solos began. Aureate’s solo was a comedy act
centered around her big tits, set to accompanying music played by
the live musicians. It was hilarious to watch, especially with her
ability to control how large or small they were. She mimicked
accidentally deflating a tit, then looked up at the audience, eyes
round with exaggerated horror and shock. Chet couldn’t help but be
drawn into the grotesque, exaggerated story she told without words;
he found himself leaning forward in his seat, giggling like a
child. Chet was very sorry when her solo wrapped up. Journey’s solo
was far less impressive, but Chet knew that Journey had made it up
at the last minute. It was pretty good for all that.

After a dazzling finale, when the lights came
up, Chet enthusiastically joined the standing ovation. He hadn’t
realized... he hadn’t realized that Flame could be like
that
, too. They kept surprising him. He wondered whether
he’d ever surprised Journey, then felt the smile slide right off
his face.
Probably not.
There was nothing special about
him. He was—and would always be—just another guy.

Chet drank alone at the table, still filled
to the brim by the performance. Knife was chatting away with some
guys at the bar, apparently a gentlemanly discussion about
livestock prices and ceros betting. Fenimore had left with his
target a few minutes ago, trailing the young man out as if he were
an animal—indeed, a predator—tracking blood scent. Chet hadn’t felt
as bad about that as he thought he would.

Someone sat down next to him, and Chet jerked
awake. It was Aureate, in the same form as before. She was dressed
in tight fitting street clothes draped by a loosely-woven crocheted
sweater, artfully ripped in all the right places. Aureate’s bald
head was bare, and she still had stage makeup clinging to her
face.