The Fire Dancer Trilogy

Fire Dancer, Dancer’s Luck, Dancer’s Illusion

Ann Maxwell

 

 

Fire Dancer

1982

 

BEHIND THEM LAY DEATH, BEFORE THEM THE UNIVERSE...

The Senyas dancers—they practiced their unique skills on their home planet, Deva, their smooth skin glowing with complex energy patterns as they learned the power dances and mentally mastered the elemental forces of Nature. And the Bre’n mentors —large, fur-covered humanoids, they were the only living beings who could control and channel the power of a Senyas dancer. Yet Bre’n and Senyas together could not save Deva from becoming a flaming inferno devoured by its own greedy sun.

Somehow two survived—Rheba the fire dancer and Kirtn, her Bre’n companion. Their world had died but they swore their people would not, and together they set out to search the star systems for others oftheir kind. But the twisted trail they followed soon forced them into the clutches of the evil Loo-chim, galactic slavers from whose stronghold no one had ever escaped alive...

 

SLAVE ATTACK!

A hail of stones fell over Rheba, stunning her. Before she could recover, the slaves swarmed down on them. Most of the attackers chose to concentrate on Kirtn instead of on the woman whose hands had called forth fire. Even so, Rheba was swept off her feet in the rush, her head ringing from a glancing blow.

Kirtn was a deadly opponent despite being outnumbered, but even his huge strength could not withstand the onslaught of thirty enraged slaves. He vanished under a tumult of multicolored flesh.

Pulling herself up, Rheba lunged toward the melee. She screamed Kirtn’s name, desperately grabbing energy from every source within her reach. Thin lines of fire sizzled over the slaves who covered the Bre’n. Kirtn clawed his way out of the pile with three men and their leader clinging to his shoulders. The leader’s pale arm flashed upward as a club took lethal aim on Kirtn’s skull.

I

Onan was the most licentious planet in the Yhelle Equality. No activity was prohibited. As a result, the wealth of the Equality flowed down Onan’s gravity well—and stuck. Nontondondo, the sprawling city-spaceport, was a three-dimensional maze with walls of colored lightning, streets paved with hope and potholed by despair, and a decibel level that knew no ceiling.

“Kirtn!” shouted Rheba to the huge Bre’n walking beside her. “Can you see the Black Whole yet?”

Kirtn’s hands locked around Rheba’s waist. In an instant her lips were level with his ear. She shouted again.

“Can you see the casino?”

“Just a few more buildings,” he said against her ear.

Even Kirtn’s bass rumble had trouble competing with the din. He pursed his lips and whistled a fluting answer to her question in the whistle language of the Bre’ns. The sound was like a gem scintillating in the aural mud of Nontondondo. People stopped for an instant, staring around, but could find no obvious source for the beautiful sound.

All they saw was a tall humanoid with very short, fine coppery plush covering his muscular body, giving it the appearance and texture of velvet. On his head, the fur became wavy copper hair. A mask of metallic gold hair surrounded his eyes, emphasizing their yellow clarity. His mask, like the coppery plush on his body, was the mark of a healthy Bre’n.

Although Rheba looked small held against the Bre’n, she was above humanoid average in height. Her hair was gold and her eyes were an unusual cinnamon color that seemed to gather and concentrate light. Other than on her head and the median line of her torso, she had neither hair nor fur to interrupt the smooth brown flow of her body. Almost invisible beneath the skin of her hands were the whorls and intricate patterns of a young Senyas fire dancer.

Rheba slid down Kirtn’s body until she was standing on her own feet again. As she regained her balance, a man stumbled out of the crowd and grabbed her. He rubbed up against her back, bathing her in unpleasant odors and intentions. The patterns on her hands flared as she reached toward a dazzling electric advertisement, wove its energy, and gave it to the rude stranger. He leaped back as though he had been burned. And he had.

“I don’t think he’ll play with a fire dancer again,” said Kirtn in a satisfied voice.

Kirtn picked up the shaken man and lofted him onto a passing drunk cart. Then the Bre’n gathered up Rheba again and shouldered his way into the anteroom of the Black Whole. After the streets, the quiet was like a blessing. Kirtn smiled, showing slightly serrated teeth, bright and very hard.

Rheba scratched the back of her hands where the patterns had flared. Her hair shifted and moved, alive with the energy she had just called. Muttering the eighth discipline of Deva, she let both energy and anger drain out of her. She had come into this city willingly and so must abide by its customs, no matter how bizarre or insulting they might be to her.

“We should have taken out a license to murder,” she said in a mild voice.

Kirtn laughed. “We didn’t have enough money to buy a half-circle of silver, much less the whole circle of a licensed killer.”

“Don’t remind me. We could hardly afford to be licensed innocents.” Rheba grimaced at the mere 30 degrees of silver arc stuck to her shoulder. “Come on, let’s find the man we came for and get off this festering planet.”

They had not taken three steps before a black-dressed casino employee approached them. His only decoration was a simple silver circle fastened on his shoulder. Kirtn and Rheba saw the man’s license at the same instant. When the man spoke, he had their attention.

“No furries allowed.”

Rheba blinked. “Furries?”

“That,” said the man, hooking a thumb at Kirtn, “is a furry. You’re a smoothie. Smoothies only at the Black Whole. If you don’t want to separate, try the Mink Trap down the street. They like perverts.”

Rheba’s long yellow hair stirred, though there was no breeze inside the Black Whole’s anteroom. Kirtn spoke a few rapid words in Senyas, native tongue of Senyasi and Bre’ns alike. “If we kill him, we’ll never get a chance to talk to Trader Jal.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him,” said Rheba in Senyas, smiling at the man with the silver circle who could not understand her words. “I was just going to singe his pride-and-joys.”

Kirtn winced. “Never mind. I’ll wait outside.”

Rheba began to object, then shrugged. The last time they had bumped against local prejudices, she had been the one to wait outside. She could not remember whether sex, color, number of digits or lack of fur had been at issue.

“I’ll make it as fast as I can,” said Rheba, her hand on Kirtn’s arm, stroking him. She took an uncomplicated pleasure from the softness of his fur. Kirtn’s strength and textures were her oldest memories, and her best. Like most akhenets, she had been raised by her Bre’n mentor. “I can understand a prejudice against smoothies,” she murmured, “but against furries? Impossible.”

Kirtn touched a fingertip to Rheba’s nose. “Don’t find more trouble than you can set fire to, child.”

She smiled and turned toward the licensed employee. She spoke once again in Universal, the language of space. “Does this cesspool have a game called Chaos?”

“Yeah,” said the man. He flicked his narrow, thick fingernail against Rheba’s license. “It’s not a game for innocents.”

Rheba’s hair rippled. “Is that opinion or law?”

The man did not answer.

“Where’s the game?” she asked again, her voice clipped.

“Across the main casino, on the left. You’ll see a big blue spiral galaxy.”

Rheba sidestepped around the man.

“I hope you lose your lower set of lips,” he said in a nasty voice as she passed him.

She walked quickly across the anteroom of the Black Whole, not trusting herself to answer the man’s crudity. As she passed through the casino’s velvet force field, a babble of voices assaulted her. Throughout the immense, high-ceilinged room, bets were being made and paid in the Universal language, but gamblers exhorted personal gods in every tongue known to the Yhelle Equality.

Rheba knew only three languages—Bre’n, Senyas, and Universal—and Kirtn was the only other being who knew the first two. The multitongued room made her feel terribly alone. One Senyas, one Bre’n. Only known survivors of the violent moment when Deva’s sun had built a bridge of fire between itself and its fifth planet.

One Senyas, one Bre’n; one galaxy of strangers.

With an effort, she shut away the searing memory of extinction. She and Kirtn had survived. Surely others must also have survived. Somehow. Somewhere. She would find them, one by one, if it took all the centuries of her life.

Rheba dove into the gamblers congealed in masses around their games, blocking aisles and passageways with their single-minded focus on gain and loss. When courtesy, strength and flexibility were not enough, she gave discreet shocks to the people who barred her way. Soon she was beneath the glitter-blue pulsing galaxy that marked the game known as Chaos.

There were eight tables, six pits, three circles and a ziggurat gathered beneath the galaxy. At each station, humanoids won and lost at games whose rules were subject to change upon agreement of a majority of players or upon one player’s payment of ten times the pot. There was only one inflexible rule: If a gambler could not pay he could not play. On Onan, penury was the only unforgivable sin.

Cheating was not only expected in Chaos, it was required merely to stay in the game. Inspired cheating was required to win. If a player was so inept as to be caught at it, however, that player had to match the pot in order to remain in the game. As the anteroom guard had mentioned, Chaos was not a game for innocents. But then, Rheba was an innocent only by default of funds.

She peered at the closer gambling stations, trying to find a man with blue hair, pale-blue skin, and a lightning-shaped scar on the back of his right hand. She saw various scars, as well as skin and hair of every hue, but none of the scars and skin tones made the correct combination. Impatiently, she turned and headed toward the third pit.

“Game?” asked a contralto voice at her elbow.

Rheba turned and saw a tiny, beautiful woman with satin-black skin, eyes and hair. She wore a metallic silver body sheath that covered enough for most planetary customs and not a millimeter more. A silver circle nestled between her perfect breasts.

“I’m innocent,” said Rheba, smiling, “but I’m not stupid. No game, Silver Circle. No thanks.”

The woman smiled and resumed playing with a pile of multicolored gems, arranging and rearranging them in complex patterns, waiting for a player whose eyes would be blinded by the rainbow wealth of jewels.

As Rheba turned away, a blur of blue-on-blue caught her attention. She stood on tiptoe and stared toward the top of the crystal ziggurat. A man was climbing into the kingseat, the only seat on the seventh level of the ziggurat. His skin was blue, his hair a darker blue, almost black. As he settled his outer robe into place, she spotted the pale flash of a jagged scar from his wrist to his fingertips. Even more arresting to her than the scar was the superb ivory carving he wore around his neck. The carving’s fluid, evocative lines were as Bre’n as Kirtn’s gold mask.

“Trader Jal!” called Rheba.

The man looked down. His expression of disdain could have been caused by genes or temperament; either way, it was irritating.

“I loathe yellow-haired licensed innocents,” said Trader Jal, dismissing Rheba. He sat back, taking care that his silver circle was revealed. The gesture carried both pride and warning.

“That’s two things we have in common,” said Rheba clearly.

“Two?” Jal leaned forward, surprised by the innocent who had disregarded his warning.

“Mutual loathing. An interest in Bre’n artifacts.”

One side of Jal’s mouth twitched, anger or amusement, ‘Bre’n artifacts ...?”

Rheba pushed back her mass of yellow hair, revealing a large carved earring. Like the pendant worn by Jal, Rheba’s earring evoked a Bre’n face. Kirtn had never told her whose face it was. After the first time, she had not asked again.

“Recognize this?” she asked, lifting her chin to show the carving’s fluid lines.

Jal smoothed his robes, a movement meant to disguise the sudden tension of interest in the muscles around his black eyes. “Where did you get it?”

“Three things in common,” said Rheba. “That’s the same question I would ask of you. Information is a commodity. Shall we trade?” As she spoke, her right hand closed around a packet of gems in her robe pocket The stones were all the wealth she and Kirtn had. She hoped it would be enough to buy the answer to the question that consumed her: Bre’ns and Senyasi; did any others survive?

Before Jal could answer, a fifth-level player called out in a language Rheba had never heard. Jal answered, his voice like a whip. His purple nails danced across his game computer. Inside the crystal ziggurat, colors and shapes and sequences changed. Sighs and shouts welcomed the permutations. A new cycle of Chaos had begun.

Rheba called out to Jal. The trader ignored her. She did not need a computer to tell her that until this round had ended, Jal was lost to her. She looked at the man standing on her left, a dilettante’s circlet whispering into his ear.

“How long did the last cycle take?” she asked.

The man looked at his thumbnail, where symbols glowed discreetly. “Seventeen hours.”

Rheba groaned. Every minute their ship was in its berth at the spaceport, her Onan Value Account—OVA—was reduced by twenty three credits. She could not afford to wait until Jal won or lost or tired of gambling. She would have to find a way to end the cycle quickly.

Rheba wriggled into the dilettantes’ circle, placed a circlet over her ear, and listened while the game computer’s sibilant voice told her the rules of the present cycle of Chaos. Even as she listened, a rule changed, modifying the game like moonrise modifying night She pressed the repeat segment and listened again.

At core, the present cycle was a simple progression based on complementary colors, prime numbers and computer-induced chance. On the first, or entry, level of the seven-level ziggurat, the money involved was modest The bets doubled automatically as each step of the ziggurat was ascended. A bet of 100 credits on the entry level meant a bet of 200 credits on the second level, 400 on the third, and so on up to the kingseat, where the equivalent bet was 6,400 credits.

The base of the crystal ziggurat had no openings for new players in this cycle. Nor did the second level. There was one opening at the fourth level, but she could not afford the ante, much less the play. Jal, in the kingseat, collected one-half of every pot above the third level. He would not be leaving such a lucrative position soon. She would have to make an opening on the lowest level and dislodge him from the kingseat.

A walk around the ziggurat gave Rheba her quarry. The man was drugged-out and had less than fifty credits on his computer. She eased her way through the crowd until she was close to him. Her fingers wove discreetly, her hair stirred, and the man began to sweat like fat in a frying pan. After a few moments, he stood up abruptly and plunged into the crowd, headed for the cooler air of Nontondondo’s frenzied streets.

Rheba slid into the hot seat before anyone else could. She punched her code into the computer. Her OVA dropped by ten credits, ante for a single round.

She watched the center of the crystal ziggurat where colors, shapes and groupings shifted in response to energy pulses from each player’s computer. She bet only enough to keep her seat while she sorted out the various energies permeating the ziggurat. The pulses were so minute that grasping them was difficult. She was accustomed to working with much stronger forces.

The game’s markers—the colored shapes—were composed of energy, making telekinesis an unlikely, if not an impossible, form of cheating. The computer could probably be bribed, but it would take more time and credits than Rheba had to find out. Several of the players at various levels were in illegal collusion, setting up complex resonances that could only be defeated by chance or the end of the cycle. At least one player was an illusion. She could not determine which player was projecting the illusion, or why.

After several rounds of play, one of the many collusions was challenged and broken up. She began to feel more at ease with the tiny currents that created the colored markers. Slowly, discreetly, while credits flowed out of her OVA, she began to manipulate the game’s markers, using a fire dancer’s intuitive grasp of energy rather than her own computer.

It was a difficult way to cheat. Intense concentration made the swirling patterns on her hands burn and itch. Slowly, a red triangle changed to green, upsetting a fifth-level player’s program and costing him 10,000 credits. The man swore at his bad luck and switched from building fives of green triangles matched with reds to building threes of yellow squares balanced on greens.

No one but the computer noticed that Rheba was several hundred credits richer for the man’s misfortune. Rubbing the backs of her hands, she studied the shifting markers, placed her bet, programmed her computer, and went to work with her mind, shortening wavelengths of energy, shifting red to blue.

It was easier this time. Within minutes a red triangle blinked and was reborn as blue. The victim was a fourth-level woman. She stared around with harsh white eyes, as though she sensed that cheating rather than chance had unraveled her careful program.

Rheba was 300 credits richer. She used it as leverage against a third-level player who was barely able to hang onto his seat. His orange circles paled to yellow; he had no blues to balance them and no credits to buy what he needed. His circlet chimed and informed him that his credit balance could not sustain a third or even a second-level ante.

In silence the man switched places with Rheba, who had bet against him. She had 1,200 credits now, enough for three rounds—if no one raised the ante or bet against her one-on-one.

Her progression from entry to third level attracted little attention. There were sixty players on the first three levels, and they changed rapidly. When she progressed to the fourth level, however, there was a stir of interest. Only twelve players were on that level, three seated on each side of the ziggurat, well above the heads of the crowd.

Twelve minutes and 46,000 credits later, Rheba settled into the fifth level, one of only eight players on that level. The players were seated two to each side of the ziggurat. Three of the players teamed illegally against her, but she did not have the skill to decipher their signals and thus prove how they cheated.

Credits drained precipitously from her OVA until she managed a desperate twist of energy that made a whole row of markers flash into incandescent silver. Though startling, the effect was not unprecedented; the computer of Chaos was known for its wry sense of the improbable. Nonetheless, there was a murmuring on the fifth level that was echoed by the crowd growing around the crystal ziggurat. Gradually, other games stopped. Gamblers and dilettantes flowed toward Chaos like a gigantic amoeba progressing from one viscous pseudopod to the next.

Rheba barely noticed the casino’s slow transformation. The curling patterns of power on her hands were visible now, glowing softly, pale gold against the rich brown of her skin. She scratched the backs of her hands absently, totally absorbed in her strategy. For the sake of appearances she programmed her computer from time to time, but her success depended on other less obvious skills. Whistling quietly, she wove tiny increments of energy inside the transparent ziggurat.

Her circlet purred, signaling an end to programming. The players paid the ante. The instant that her credits were placed, Rheba’s circlet chimed and whispered of changes: Jal and the other players had matched the pot in order to change the rules; player number 7 would now play nude or forfeit.

Rheba looked at the number 7 glowing on her computer and grimaced. She stood up and stripped quickly, knowing that pragmatism rather than voyeurism motivated the others. They assumed that she had some electronic means of cheating concealed beneath her flaring, multicolored robe.

Naked and unconcerned, she cast aside both her outer robe and her brief crimson ship clothes. She sat and studied the markers while casino personnel studied her clothes. The searchers found a few personal weapons and the packet of expensive but otherwise ordinary gemstones. They did not find anything that could have been used to influence the Black Whole’s sophisticated computer.

“The earring,” said Jal coldly.

Rheba punched a query into her console. The answer flashed back. Smiling, she looked up to the kingseat. “Ear decorations are not considered clothing.”

Without hesitating, Jal tapped his console and matched the pot ten times over, allowing him to change the rules without recourse to the rest of the players. The crowd quivered and cried out in pleasure, a single organism focused on the credits glittering inside the clear ziggurat. Rheba’s circlet chimed and explained the new rule: All decorations must be removed by player number 7.

She reached up to the intricate fastenings of her Bre’n earring. It pierced her ear in seven places, both as decoration and as surety that she would not lose the carved Face depending from the lobe of her ear. The Face swayed, turning. No matter which angle of view, there was always someone in the carving, aloof and haunting and most of all sensually alive.

Before she turned over the earring to the casino employee, she punched another query into her computer. The OVA figure by her number plummeted as the game console spat a closed silver circle into her hand. She fastened the circle into her hair. Licensed to kill, she faced the casino employee once more. The earring dangled hypnotically between her fingers.

“I value this. Don’t damage it.”

The employee carefully took the earring, scanned it with exquisite machinery, and found only the molecular patterns associated with fossilized bone.

“Nothing, Trader Jal,” said the employee.

“Satin?” snapped Jal to someone behind Rheba.

Rheba turned around and was startled to find the tiny black woman standing as close to Rheba’s feet as she could get.

“Psi, almost certainly,” said Satin with a graceful, dismissing gesture, “Yet none of the psi blocks have been bribed.” She looked up. “Where do you come from, smooth child?”

“A planet called Luck.”

Satin laughed, a sound as sleek and cold as polished steel. She turned back toward Jal and waited in amused silence. Jal stared hard at Rheba.

“It would have been cheaper to talk to me while I was still innocent,” observed Rheba, “Forfeit, Trader Jal? I’ll settle for what I came for—information, not money.”

“Your tongue needs trimming, bitch.”

“That’s four things we have in common—yours does too. Do you accept my offer?”

“Forfeit?” Jal made a harsh sound. “No, smooth blond cheater. Never.”

“A side bet, then,” she said, curbing her temper.

Jal looked interested. “What are you wagering?”

“Answers.”

“Too vague. Three weeks bonding.”

Rheba blinked. If she won, Jal would be bonded to her for three weeks, virtually her slave. If he won, she would be bonded to him.

She would have to be very sure not to lose.

“Three days will be enough for my purposes,” she said, not bothering to conceal her distaste for the man in the kingseat.

“But not enough for mine.” He leaned down toward her, smiling unpleasantly. “Three weeks.”

For an instant, she wanted to flee from those dark eyes boring into her. She desperately wished Kirtn were near, a solid strength at her back. Then she remembered why she had come to Onan. The need to find others of her kind had not changed. And Jal wore a Bre’n carving.

“Done,” whispered Rheba.

Even as she spoke, the pot increased ten times over and the rules changed for a third time. Colors vanished from the markers. As the colors faded, so did Rheba’s means of winning the game.

II

Rheba looked at her OVA reading. She had just enough to match the pot ten times over and thereby change the rules. Unfortunately, Jal had enough credits in his OVA to match even that pot ten times over and still buy drugs for everyone in the casino. Whatever rule she made, Jal could afford to unmake.

Credits drained suddenly from her OVA. Jal had programmed a matching series of threes and circles so quickly that no one had time to intervene. Before he could repeat the coup, a sixth-level player programmed counterinstructions. Jal’s progression of shapes and numbers was irretrievably scrambled by the shrewd attack, but the damage to Rheba was done.

Silently, she dropped from fifth to fourth level. She ignored the cold wash of fear that made her skin prickle and concentrated on discovering a way to beat Jal’s game. Making and holding black outlines was different—and more difficult—than merely changing the colors of existing shapes. She needed time to adjust, to learn.

Before she had done much more than measure the extent of her weakness, her circlet chimed and sweetly spoke of diminishing credits. She had to descend to the third level or leave the game.

“Forfeit?” inquired Jal in a bored voice.

Rheba stood between levels, staring into the ziggurat as though considering the offer. She frowned and scratched the back of her left hand, wondering why it was so difficult for her to make and hold outlines. She could do seven or eight at once, but it was difficult and dangerously slow work.

“Forfeit,” urged Satin in her quiet voice. “Save what’s left of your OVA. Jal isn’t a pleasant master, but he’s better than being broke in Nontondondo.”

Rheba barely heard the advice. She contemplated Jal’s markers, saw the pattern emerging in them, saw that one bet would complete his series. To defeat him she would have to create seven times seven markers with seven different shapes, and do it in less time that it took for Jal to instruct his computer on the winning sequence. Forty-nine shapes. Gods, it would be easier to suck out all the energy and leave a transparent void.

“Forfeit,” murmured the crowd, echoing Satin.

Most people had bets on Trader Jal, a favorite among the habituйs of the Black Whole. To them, she was a diversion, a lucky innocent whose luck had failed. Her hair stirred, strands sliding one over the other with a subtle susurration of power.

“No. I’m staying.”

She slid into the third-level seat and programmed a flurry of instructions into her console. The crowd murmured and shifted in surprise. Rheba had just swept the pot, betting every credit she had that for a period of fifteen seconds she could block each grouping of primes that any or all players tried to make. It was an impossible, suicidal wager.

Silence expanded out from the ziggurat. Circlets breathed instructions into players’ ears. Behind privacy shields, fingers poised over computers. A chime announced the beginning of the game.

The markers vanished.

Frantically, futilely, players programmed their computers. The ziggurat remained empty of shapes. Players banged fists and consoles against the ziggurat’s lucent surface, but no markers materialized. There was nothing in the center of the ziggurat except gold numerals counting off the seconds remaining in the bet. Four, three, two, one.

Zero.

The light permeating the ziggurat ebbed until all levels became orange, signifying the end of the game. The pot and Trader Jal belonged to Rheba. All she had to do was find her way past the bettors before anger replaced disbelief.

Quickly, Rheba pulled on her shipclothes, fastened her earring and gathered up her robe. The crowd watched soundlessly, still stunned by the sudden reversal of fortunes. Rheba glanced up at the kingseat. Jal smiled. She concealed a quiver of distaste beneath the colorful folds of her robe.

“We’ll talk on my ship,” she said in a low voice.

For a moment, Jal remained the still center of the room’s silence. Then he came to his feet, and silence shattered into exclamations of anger and unbelief. Rheba looked out over the multicolored tide of upturned faces, sensed Jal climbing down from the kingseat behind her back and felt very vulnerable.

“Cheater,” muttered a second-level player.

The sentiment was echoed on all but the kingseat level. Jal merely descended, smiting as though at a joke too good to share. Rheba began to wonder who had lost and who had won—and what precisely had been wagered. Insults and imprecations were called in many languages as Jal bowed condescendingly in front of her.

“Your three-week bondling suggests that you move your smooth, cheating ass out of here,” he said very softly. “That disappearing act cost the crowd a lot of credits.”

Unhappy voices swelled and broke around Rheba like angry surf. Deliberately, she looked only at Jal, ignoring the crowd edging in around her. “You first, Trader,” she said, pointing to a nearby exit.

“And leave your back uncovered? Bad tactics, smoothie.”

“Turning my back on you would be worse. Move.”

Jal pushed through the crowd, breaking an uneasy trail for Rheba. The crowd surged and ebbed restively. Eight steps from the exit, a gray figure crowned with lime-green curls leaned out of the crowd. The woman yelled something in a language Rheba did not know. Obligingly, Jal translated the obscenities for Rheba. She ignored the incident until a gray hand poked out of the crowd. The gun grasped in the gray fingers needed no translation.

Rheba’s foot lashed out, kicking aside the weapon. It went off, searing a hole through someone else’s flesh and the black stone floor. The crowd erupted into a mob that had neither head nor mind, simply rage and weapons looking for excuses to be used.

She fought grimly, sucking energy from the casino’s lights, weaving that energy into finger-length jolts of lightning. People close to her screamed and tried to push away, but the mob had become a beast that ate everything, even its own young. The people who went down were trampled. Those still standing did not seem to care about the bodies thrashing beneath their feet.

Rheba kicked and shocked a narrow trail to the exit, leaving a wake of tender flesh, until she stepped on something slippery and went down. She screamed, air clawing against her throat, calling Kirtn’s name again and again. Her hands and arms burst into incandescence as frantic flames leaped from her fingertips to score the legs of people trampling her.

A questing Bre’n whistle split the chaos. Rheba poured all her desperation into her answering whistle. She tried to get to her feet, knowing Kirtn could not find her at the bottom of the churning mob. A brutal heel raked her from forehead to chin, sending her down in waves of dizziness.

Abruptly, the mob parted. Kirtn appeared in the opening, shouting her name. Furiously he tore off pieces of the mob and fed it to itself until he created a space where he could lift her to safety. When he saw her bruised, bleeding body, his face became a mask of Bre’n rage.

“Burn it down,” he snarled. “Burn it!”

Energy scorched through Rheba as the Bre’ns rage swept up her emotions. Overhead, high on the casino’s arched ceiling, she drew a line of violent fire.

The Black Whole’s “nonflammable” draperies, decorations and games had not been made to withstand the anger of a fire dancer goaded by a Bre’n. The ceiling became a white hell. Instantly casino force fields went down, allowing exits in all directions. The mob fragmented into frightened people seeking the safety of Nontondondo’s cold autumn streets.

No one noticed a tall furry carrying a smoothie away from the fire. Rheba watched the flames with interest, her chin resting on Kirtn’s hard shoulder. The ziggurat housing Chaos was a spectacular staircase of flaming colors that reflected the progress of the fire. There was a great deal of fire. Too much. Once ignited, the casino’s accouterments burned with an almost sentient fury.

She concentrated, trying to draw energy out of the fire before it could spread farther than the Black Whole. But the fire had grown beyond her, rooted in its own searing destiny. When she tried to gather up energy, she got too much, too soon. Fire leaped toward her, blistering her fingers in the instant before she gave up and released the monster she had birthed. She sucked on her burned fingers and tried again to quell the flames.

“Stop it!” growled Kirtn, shaking her. “You’re too young to handle that much raw energy.”

Rheba struggled against Kirtn’s strength but could not free herself. “Just how else will I learn?” she asked in a strained voice. “There aren’t any more fire dancers to teach me—remember?” Then, immediately, “I’m sorry, Kirtn,” she whispered. “You lost as much as I did when Deva burned.”

Kirtn’s cheek touched the silky, crackling radiance of Rheba’s hair, silently forgiving her, “You’ve learned too much already. More than a young fire dancer should have to know. You should be doing no more than lighting candles and cooking food for akhenet children, not—”

“Cooking alien casinos?” finished Rheba wryly. “I seem to remember a certain Bre’n telling me to burn it to ash.”

Kirtn looked startled. “Did I?”

“You did.”

He frowned, “I must have lost my temper.”

“You looked very fierce,” said Rheba, only half teasing. “I’ve never seen you look like that, not even the day Deva burned.”

He said nothing. Both of them knew that Bre’ns were subject to berserker rage, a state called rez. In rez, Bre’ns destroyed everything around them, most especially themselves and their Senyasi. Rez, while not exactly a tabu subject, was not a comfortable one.

Rheba shivered suddenly. She had lost her robe somewhere in the melee and would not be warm until she got to the ship. “We’ll make better time to the spaceport if you put me down.”

Kirtn measured the people surrounding them. No one seemed to be watching. He sat Rheba on her feet, saw her shiver, and gave her his cape. She accepted it with a murmur of thanks and no guilt; Kirtn’s fine “fur” was as efficient as it was short.

Rheba walked as quickly as she could without attracting attention. Her left ankle complained of maltreatment. She ignored it Time was all that stood between them and intense questioning by local police—or worse, the Yhelle Equality Rangers. She had not taken, out an arson license, an omission that would cost her freedom if the Rangers caught up.

“You haven’t asked me about Trader Jal,” she said.

Kirtn made a noncommittal sound. His slanted eyes picked up every shade of gold as he searched the streets and byways for trouble.

“I won.”

He glanced down at her without slowing his stride. His lips parted in a small smile, revealing the serrated edges of his teeth. “How did you manage that, little dancer?”

“I cheated. But I didn’t have time to collect my winnings.”

He chuckled. “Too bad. We could use the credits.”

“The credits are registered to our OVA, if the locals don’t block the account. But it was Jal I didn’t collect. He’s mine for three weeks,” She smiled proudly up at her Bre’n.

He stopped and looked down at her, his face expressionless. “You’re old enough to take a pleasure mate,” he said evenly. “I’d hoped to have some say in the selection, but I suppose that custom died with Deva,” He shrugged. “If Jal is what you want, I’ll go back and get him for you.”

Rheba’s mouth opened and closed several times before she found her voice. “Pleasure mate!” she screeched, “I wouldn’t use that cherf to wipe my feet! By the light of the Inmost Fire, are you in rez?”

Kirtn’s expression remained bland, wholly unreadable. “The casino guard spent a lot of time explaining to me how virile Jal was,” he said, turning away and walking toward the spaceport with long strides, “and how much chased—and caught—by local women.”

She stared after him. “That guard has his head wedged so far up he can’t see!” she shouted after the receding Bre’n. “Have a little faith in your akhenet’s basic good taste!”

“My akhenet cheats,” called Kirtn as he turned a corner and disappeared. The sound of his laughter floated back to her. “Hurry up, little cheater.”

She cursed and hurried after him. When her foot slipped on a piece of rotten fruit, her weakened left ankle took the brunt of her fall. She smothered a sound of pain and exasperation as she pulled herself back to her feet. She rounded the corner at a fast hobble. Hands reached out of the darkness, grabbing her. In the instant before she screamed, she felt the familiar texture and strength of her Bre’n.

“I turn my back on you for a minute and you’re in trouble again,” he muttered against her hair. “And you say that you’re old enough to have a pleasure mate. Gahhh!”

Rheba chose action over further argument. She ran her fingernails around the rim of Kirtn’s sensitive ears, tickling him as she had done since she was four years old and had discovered how to get the better of her huge teacher.

“Rheba, if you don’t stop that I’ll—”

The rest of his threat was lost in an excited shout from a man down the street. “There she is! That blond with the big furry! She caused the riot at the Black Whole!”

Kirtn took a fast look down the street One look was enough. The people staring toward him wore the red-and-silver uniforms of Yhelle Rangers. He would have preferred the local police. They were noted for taking bribes first and shooting only as a last, unprofitable resort. The Rangers were celebrated for shooting first, last and on the least excuse.

Bre’n muscles bunched hugely. Rheba grabbed Kirtn’s weapon harness in the instant before he leaped. He hit his full stride in a single powerful surge. Behind him a tight beam of lavender light smoked across the sidewalk. Her fingers frantically probed the pockets on his harness.

“Where’s your gun?” she demanded.

“Ship,” he said laconically, reserving his breath for running. “No license.”

She whistled a Bre’n expletive between her teeth. Grimly, she hung on to him. Lavender lightning vaporized a puddle of water in front of them. He leaped aside with no loss of speed. Farther ahead, the spaceport’s silver arch shimmered, separating spacers from downside spectators.

Kirtn was strong and fast, but so were two of the Rangers—and they were not carrying anything heavier than their guns. Rheba measured the distance separating pursuers from pursued, and pursued from safety.

The Rangers would win.

“There’s an alley where those buildings meet,” she said urgently. “Drop me there. I’ll hide, then take the first ship out to Zeta Gata. You can pick me up there.”

He neither commented nor paused. The alley whipped by, a slice of darkness wedged between two pale buildings.

“Kirtn, you can’t outrun them carrying me!”

He lengthened his stride. She loosened her grip and tried to throw herself free, hut the Bre’n had anticipated her. His arms tightened until she gasped. Struggling was not only futile, it ran the risk of unbalancing him.

Lavender beams split the darkness. Kirtn’s breath, rushed out in silver bursts, but his stride did not shorten. Rheba looked over his shoulder, cringing when the lethal beams came too close. One shot was so near it made her eyes water. She cursed her lack of a gun. Her aim would have been no better than that of the running Rangers, but return fire would at least have made them more cautious.

Light hissed across a building, leaving a head-high groove of incandescence. Desperately, she grabbed at the energy with the immaterial fingers of her will. She gathered what she could of the backwash of Ranger lightguns, shaped it and hurled it toward them.

Light burst over the Rangers, light so bright that it washed out the scarlet of their uniforms. Reflexively they shot again, spraying lavender lightning. Rheba grabbed what was possible, twisted it and gave it back to them with brilliant vengeance.

The result was blinding. Rangers stumbled and fell helplessly, but she did not see them go down. She had closed her own blinded eyes and buried her face against Kirtn’s neck, expecting each instant to be cooked by Ranger fire that she could not even see coming. Kirtn ran on, knowing only that she had done something to stop the Rangers’ fire. He did not know that she and their pursuers were temporarily bund.

As he raced under the spaceport’s silver arch, a figure separated from the shadow of a nearby warehouse. The man’s black robe lifted and fell as he sprinted after Kirtn. The Bre’n’s back quivered in anticipation of another fusillade, but unless he let go of Rheba there was nothing he could do to defend himself.

“Rheba—”‘ panted Kirtn. “Do whatever—you did to—the Rangers!”

She let go of his weapon harness long enough to rub her streaming eyes. Blinking frantically, she stared over his shoulder. The lone pursuer was less than a man’s length behind.

Shaking with fear and fatigue, she began to gather harsh filaments of energy Into herself. Her hair crackled with hidden life, but still it was not enough. She must wait for Kirtn to pass near one of the spaceport’s powerful illuminators.

The man’s hood fell back, revealing his features, blue on blue, grim.

“Jal!”

He did not answer. He simply held out his hands, proving his lack of weapons. Rheba sighed and let the energy she had collected bleed back into the night.

Kirtn pounded up the berth ramp to their ship’s personnel lock. He slammed his hand down on the lock plate. The door whipped open. He leaped through, Jal right on his heels. Rheba’s high, staccato whistle brought the ship’s emergency systems to life.

Kirtn threw her into the pilot web and leaped for the standby couch. The ship’s alarm lights blazed from silver to blue, signifying hits by small energy weapons. Either the Rangers had recovered their sight or reinforcements had caught up.

“Get flat,” snapped Rheba, grabbing for the override controls. “This will be rough.”

Jal dove for a second couch as the ship’s downside engines blasted to fullmax/override. The Devalon leaped into Onan’s cold sky, slamming Jal into the couch and crushing him until he moaned that nothing would be left of him but a thick stain. Then he lost even the air in his lungs, and consciousness.

Kirtn lay on his back, fighting to breathe. He did not complain. Rheba was doing what had to be done. The fact that Senyasi could pull more gravities than most spacefaring humanoids was a double-edged weapon that she rarely used. Grimly, he counted the red minutes until the ship would be far enough out of Onan’s gravity well to safely initiate replacement.

The effort he had given to outrunning Rangers caught up with him. The ship’s walls bleached to gray, them became shot through with impossible colors. He groaned very softly. He would have closed his eyes, but even that small comfort was denied to him; both sets of eyelids were peeled open by implacable fingers of gravity.

The minutes until replacement was possible stretched into eons.

Rheba felt the pilot web gouging into her body until skin parted and muscles pulled. She did not need to look at Kirtn to know that he was suffering. She wished he would just pass out as Jal undoubtedly had, but knew that the Bre’n would stay conscious. Bre’ns had a legendary ability to absorb pain without losing control. It was a necessary trait; otherwise, they and their dancers would never survive a dancer’s adolescence.

An alarm light pulsed blue, then underlined the warning with a low sonic that crawled over her bones. She looked at the war grid. Three lights burned. Ranger patrol ships cutting tangents toward the green circle of the Devalon. The ship was being fired on. Worse, the pursuers would converge on her before she was far enough out of Onan’s gravity well to slip safely into replacement.

Pain wracked her, leaving her weak and nauseated. The acceleration was too much even for her tough Senyas body. She could no longer breathe, and would soon pass out She felt the contours of the override clenched in her hand and stared through a red haze at the grid. The Devalon was giving her all the speed it could, more than she could take. But it was not enough.

Her hand convulsed, closing contacts that hurled the ship Into replacement. The Devalon vanished from Onan’s gravity well between one instant and the next, but to her it lasted forever, a force wrenching her apart in all nine dimensions at once. She and the ship shrieked as one.

The ship came out of replacement eighty light-years distant from Onan. A short hop, but unexpected enough to keep the Devalon off Ranger patrol screens. The ship coasted with engines off, circling the replacement point, waiting for new instructions.

None came. Inside the control cabin, Rheba hung slackly in the pilot’s mesh, the override dangling from her nerveless fingers. Blood dripped from her lips onto the pale, resilient floor.

III

Kirtn groaned softly as consciousness raked him with claws of pain. Gradually memory surfaced, galvanizing him to full wakefulness. Despite the white agony in his bone marrow, he forced himself to stand.

“Rheba ... ?”

No answer.

“Rheba,” whistled Kirtn raggedly, focusing on the figure hanging limply in the pilot web, “Rheba!”

He knelt by the mesh. With careful fingertips, he stroked her neck, seeking a pulse. A steady beat of life answered his search. She was bruised, bloody and welted, but still strong. A short time in Devalon’s womb would remove all but the memory of pain.

For several moments, Kirtn savored the warm rhythm of Rheba’s pulse beneath his fingertips. The Rangers had been close. Much too close. He had not been so certain of dying since the instant he had realized that Deva’s sun was finally beyond control of the akhenets. Fire dancers, storm dancers, earth dancers, atom dancers, mind dancers—even Bre’ns in rez—nothing had deflected that last outburst of plasma from Deva’s volatile sun.

Rheba moaned as though in echo of his memories.

“It’s all right, dancer,” he murmured. Very gently he kissed her bruised lips. “We’re safe. You snatched us out of the dragon’s mouth again.”

“I feel,” she whispered hoarsely, “more like something the dragon ate and left behind.” Her eyes opened, cinnamon and bloodshot, “Next time I’ll let the Rangers win.”

He smiled, tasting blood where his teeth had lacerated his lips. “Nothing can beat a fire dancer and a Bre’n.”

“Except Deva’s son,” she whispered.

His gold eyes darkened, but all he said was, “Can you sit up?”

She groaned and pulled herself upright. The sensitive pilot web flowed into a new shape, helping her. She cried out when her hands came into contact with the web.

“Let me see,” said Kirtn.

Wordlessly, she held out her hands. Fingertips were blistered, palms were scorched, and akhenet lines of power had become dense signatures just beneath her skin. The lines stretched from burned fingertips to her elbows. A few thin traceries swept in long curves all the way to her shoulders.

Kirtn whistled a Bre’n word of surprise. He looked speculatively at her worn face. “What did you do to those Rangers?”

She frowned, remembering her desperation when she was certain the Rangers were going to kill her Bre’n. She stroked his velvet arm with the unburned back of her hand. “The beams were so close, even the backwash burned. I... I just grabbed what I could, trying to deflect it. That’s what fire dancers were bred for, isn’t it? Deflecting fire?”

He nodded. Absently, he traced her new lines of power with his fingertips.

“But I’m not very good at it,” she continued ruefully, looking at her burned hands. “I drew the fire instead of deflecting it, I guess. I had to weave faster than I ever have, and then I threw all the fire away as quickly as I could. That, at least, worked well enough. The light blinded the Rangers so that you could outrun them.”

She looked at the new lines curling across her skin. They itched. New lines always itched. She reached to scratch, then snatched back her hand when blistered fingertips came into contact with bruised flesh.

“You attempt too much,” said Kirtn. His voice was soft, final, the voice of a Bre’n mentor. His words were a protest as old as Rheba’s first awakening after Deva’s death. She had vowed then to find more of her kind and his, to build a new world of Bre’ns and Senyasi out of the ashes of the old.

“I don’t have any choice,” she said.

“I know.”

“Besides,” she continued, holding out her arms, “what are these few skinny lines? Shanfara’s lines covered her whole body. Dekan’s skin burned gold when he worked. Jaslind and Meferri were like twin flames, and their children were born with lines of power curling over their cheeks.”

Rheba dropped her arm abruptly. She dragged herself to her feet, preferring physical pain to the immaterial talons of memories and might-have-been. Better to think only of now. “Is Jal alive?”

Kirtn glanced over at the second couch. He noted the blood tracked from beneath the pilot web, along the front of the controls, and then to Jal’s couch. He concluded that the trader had recovered sooner than anyone else and wanted to keep that fact a secret. “He’s awake. Don’t trust him.”

Rheba’s cinnamon eyes narrowed. “I don’t—though he wears a Bre’n Face.”

Kirtn stiffened. “You’re sure?” he demanded.

“He had it around his neck in the casino.”

Kirtn came to his feet in a rush, pain forgotten. He crossed the cabin in two long strides, bent over Jal, and yanked the trader’s robe apart. Hanging from a heavy gold chain around his neck was a Bre’n Face. Kirtn stared at the carving, his breath aching in his throat.

“A woman,” whispered Kirtn at last His hand closed tenderly around the Face. “A woman!” He turned toward Rheba. “Where did Jal get her Face?”

“We have three weeks to find out.”

Kirtn’s hand tugged at the chain, testing its strength. Jal “awakened” immediately, proving that he had been conscious all along. The trader looked from the huge hand wrapped around the carving to Kirtn’s hot gold eyes. Deliberately, Jal ignored the Bre’n focusing instead on Rheba.

“My body is bonded to you for three Onan weeks,” Jal said in Universal. “My possessions aren’t.”

“A Face belongs only to the ...” She hesitated, seeking an analog in Universal for the Senyas word “akhenet.”

“It belongs to the Bre’n’s scientist-protйgй child.”

Jal blinked. She had spoken in Universal, but the meaning eluded him.

“Where did you get this carving?” Kirtn asked in harsh Universal.

Both the question and the menace were clear.

“I won it” said Jal quickly.

“Where?”

“The Black Whole. The owner wagered it against a—”

Jal gagged as Kirtn’s fist twisted the gold chain until it cut into the trader’s throat.

“Don’t lie to a Bre’n,” said Kirtn. He loosened the chain, allowing Jal to breathe. “Where did you get the carving?”

“On Loo,” gasped Jal. Then, seeing no comprehension on Kirtn’s face, “You don’t know about the planet Loo?”

Kirtn made an impatient gesture.

Jal managed not to smile as he turned his face toward Rheba. “Loo is part of the Equality. You do know about the Yhelle Equality, don’t you?”

Rheba shrugged, concealing her interest in the subject. She and Kirtn knew almost nothing about the area of space called the Yhelle Equality; that was one of the reasons she had been disappointed to lose Jal in the melee at the Black Whole.

Trader Jal watched her closely, then smiled. He looked meaningfully around the ship. When he attempted to rise, a sound from Kirtn changed the trader’s mind.

“You don’t have to worry about me” said Jal, his voice mellow with, overtones of trust and fellowship. “Even if I weren’t bonded to your smoothie, I’m helpless in this ship.” He looked at the pilot web and the enigmatic displays. “I’ve bought, sold and, um, borrowed every kind of ship built in the Yhelle Equality, but I’ve never seen one like this. I can speak, read and draw in the four major languages of the Equality, as well as Universal, and I can read spacer lingo in six more.” He gestured around with one heavy-nailed hand. “But that doesn’t do me any good here. None of my languages fits your ship’s outputs.”

Neither Rheba nor Kirtn responded. Jal looked at her closely, as though seeing her for the first time. “Your ship’s different, yet there’s nothing remarkable about you or your big furry. You clearly belong to the Fourth of the Five Peoples. Humanoid to the last cell.”

She moved impatiently. “What did you expect—one of the Fifth People?”

Jal made a face. “You’re not a Ghost. You proved that when you undressed in the casino. But at least you know about the Five Peoples?”

Rheba made an exasperated sound.

Trader Jal smiled slightly. “Can’t blame me for checking. If your people didn’t divide intelligent life into the Five Peoples, I’d know you came from another galaxy. But,” he added, looking around the gleaming ship again, “this wasn’t designed or built by any Equality race.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she said. The tone of her voice did not encourage further questions from the trader. “Tell us more about the planet Loo. Particularly its coordinates.

Jal smiled. “Information is a commodity.”

“So are you,” she retorted. “Remember? It was your bet, Trader Jal. And your loss.”

Jal smiled unpleasantly. “So it was. My compliments, by the way. That was a novel form of cheating you used. How did you do it?”

“Mirrors.”

Jal grimaced at the sarcasm.

“The coordinates,” rapped Kirtn.

“Impatient beast, isn’t it?” said Jal to Rheba.

Her eyes slitted. “A Bre’n woman is involved. Kirtn is Bre’n.”

“Bre’n ....” muttered the trader. He shrugged. The word was obviously as unfamiliar to him as the ship’s controls. “Never heard of the beasties.”

“Senyas?” said Rheba, hiding her disappointment that not even the name Bre’n was known to a man as widely traveled as Trader Jal. “Have you heard of a race called Senyas?”

“No,” said Jal, replying honestly because he did not wish to be caught in a lie while the furry’s big hand was wrapped around his throat.

“Then how did you get the Face?” she pursued, watching Jal with burnt-orange eyes.

“Loo imports lots of ... ah ... workers. The carving must have belonged to one of them.” He shrugged, “Maybe the worker needed money and sold the jewelry to get it.”

“No,” she said, her expression as bleak as her eyes. “The Senyas man who wore that Face is dead, or the carving would be woven into his ear. But the Bre’n woman who made the Face for him might still be alive.” Her voice hardened. “Loo, Trader Jal. The coordinates.”

“Listen,” said Jal in a reasonable tone. “You have something I want and I have something you want. Let’s trade.”

“Why?” said Kirtn lazily. “I can just wring the coordinates out of your greasy blue carcass.”

“Ummm ... yes,” said Jal. “But Loo is a big planet. Their customs are ... different. Yes. Quite different. I know the planet. I’ll help you find the boychild.”

“Boychild?” said Rheba sharply. “What are you talking about?”

Jal looked smug. “You don’t think I believed that you’d go slapping about the galaxy looking for a common furry? I’m not stupid, smoothie. You’re really looking for the little boy with hands like yours.”

She looked at her hands where lines of power curled thickly beneath the skin. Hands like hers—a child with hands like hers. A boy. A boy who would become a man. A mate. If she could find him, the people called Senyasi would not be utterly extinct.

Carefully, she looked away from her burned, trembling fingers. If the boychild was very young, it would explain how the Face had left his possession short of his death. Theft. On Deva, such thievery would have been unthinkable.

The Equality, however, was not Deva.

“This boychild,” she said, her voice empty of emotion. “Where did you see him last? Was he healthy? Was there a Bre’n with him?”

“Do we have a deal?” countered Jal. “My information about the boychild in return for your information about where this ship was built.”

She turned toward Kirtn and spoke in rapid Senyas. “What do you think, Bre’n mentor? Do we trust him?”

“No, akhenet. We use him—if we can.” He turned his slanted, yellow eyes on Jal. “Why did you come to the spaceport? You could have escaped paying the bet and no one would have known but us.”

The trader smiled slightly. “I could give you some star gas about honor.”

Kirtn laughed.

“Yes,” said Jal, “I thought you would take it that way. Perhaps this will be more believable. If I’m found on Onan in the next three weeks, I’ll be liable for all crimes committed by my bondmaster. I’m a rich man, but I’ve no desire to rebuild the Black Whole. Besides,” he added, looking at his thick, blue-black fingernails, “there was always the chance that I’d learn something profitable from you.”

“Like how to cheat at Chaos?” suggested Rheba.

Jal licked his lips with a startlingly blue tongue. “Among other things, yes.” He looked around the ship with an avarice and curiosity he did not trouble to disguise. Obviously, he had not given up hope of striking a bargain. “Of the seventeen known Cycles,” he said absently, “only a few have left behind working machines. The Mordynr is one, and the Flenta and Sporeen are others.” He watched covertly, but the names elicited no visible reaction from Rheba or Kirtn. “And then there is the Zaarain Cycle. Ahhh, you know that name, at least.”

“A myth,” said Rheba.

“The Zaarain Cycle was real,” said the trader quickly. ‘It was the eleventh Cycle, the highest the Fourth People have ever known. The Yhelle Equality and its thirty one civilized planets are only a speck on the history of the smallest known Cycle. We aren’t even an atom against the might of the Zaarain.”

Rheba did not bother to conceal her skepticism and impatience.

Jal laughed at her. “Listen to me, you ignorant smoothie. The previous Cycle lasted two thousand years and held six hundred and seventy-three planets before it collapsed and the Seventeenth Darkness began. The Equality might or might not be the Eighteen Dawn. I’ll be dead long before the issue is decided, so I don’t care.”

“Then, despite your knowledge, you aren’t a scholar,” said Kirtn dryly.

The trader laughed again. “I’m a merchant, furry. History tells me likely places to look for pre-Equality artifacts. Most things that I find I sell to the big universities or wealthy collectors. But some”—his glance darted to the pilot web—“some things I keep. Pre-Equality technology can be very useful to a trading man.”

“You can’t fly this ship,” said Rheba curtly, “so you might as well forget about stealing it;”

“Just give me the coordinates of the planet it came from,” Jal said quickly.

A vision of hell leaped into Rheba’s mind, Deva burning, streamers of fire wrapped around the planet in searing embrace. She looked at Kirtn and knew he was seeing the same thing, remembering the same glowing hell.

When she spoke, it was in Senyas, a language Trader Jal would have no way of understanding. “Do we deal?”

Kirtn’s body moved in a muscular ripple that jerked on Jal’s gold chain. “I’d sooner pat a hungry cherf.” His lips quivered in a suppressed snarl. “We could probably find Loo without his help, but we’d be a long time finding anything as small as a child. The boy probably wouldn’t survive until we found him. Loo doesn’t sound Like another name for Paradise.”

“Then we’ll give Jal Deva’s coordinates. Maybe he’ll burn his greedy hands on her ashes.” She flexed her own hands gingerly, remembering fire. “If there’s even the smallest chance that the boychild is still alive, we have to move quickly. Jal, damn his greasy blue tongue, is our best hope.”

“Use him. Don’t trust him.”

She laughed shortly, “Oh, but I do. I trust him to skewer us the first chance he gets. We just won’t give him that chance.”

Kirtn’s lips lifted, revealing sharp teeth. It was not a beguiling gesture. Jal moved uncomfortably, tethered by the heavy gold necklace that Kirtn still held.

“We have a bargain to offer,” said Rheba in Universal. “You’ll take us to Loo and act as our guide until we’ve found the Senyas boychild and the female Bre’n, and have taken them off planet. Then we’ll give you the coordinates of the planet where we got this ship. We aren’t,” she added deliberately, “ever planning to go back there again.”

“Outlaws,” said Jal, “I know it!”

Rheba simply smiled. And waited.

Jal made a distinctive clicking sound, tongue against teeth, “Agreed.” He looked at the hand still wrapped around the bone carving hanging from his necklace. “After you leash your furry, I’ll give you Loo’s coordinates.”

“The Face isn’t yours, Trader Jal. It never was.”

“But it’s my good-luck piece. I have to have it!”

“No,” she said curtly. “That’s not negotiable. Either you agree or we take the Face off your dead body.”

Jal sputtered, then agreed. The concession was graceless and after the fact; Kirtn had snapped the heavy chain quite casually as Rheba spoke. Gently, he freed the carving from the chain’s thick golden grip. He touched the Face’s curves with a caressing fingertip. The Face turned beneath his touch, revealing profiles both provocative and gentle, intelligent and demure, changing and changeless as the sea.

Rheba looked away, feeling she was intruding on his inmost fire. He held in his hand hope for a new race of Bre’n, and his eyes were deep with longing. A tide of weariness washed over her, making the cabin waver like an image seen through moving water. She reached out to catch herself, only to find that she had not fallen. Instantly Kirtn was at her side, lifting her from the pilot web.

“Into the womb with you,” he said in Senyas. “I’ll handle the first replacement.”

She started to protest, then realized that he was right. Her fingers were too blistered to program a replacement, and her mind was much too blurry to interface with the ship’s computer.

Kirtn sensed her agreement in the sudden slackness of her body. He unsealed one of the ship’s three wombs, tucked her inside, and resealed it. Jal watched with interest, but could see no obvious means by which the Bre’n operated the ship’s mechanisms.

“Is that a doctor machine?” asked Jal as the panels closed seamlessly over Rheba.

It took Kirtn a moment to translate the concept of “doctor machine” into the reality of the Devalon’s womb. The Bre’n shrugged. “It’s a specialized bunk,” he said finally. “It helps the body to heal. Nothing miraculous,” he added as he saw Jal’s expression. “If you go in dead, you come out dead.”

Jal’s tongue flicked, touching the edges of his lips. “Where did you get it?”

“It came with the ship.” Kirtn stared at the trader. “The coordinates,” he demanded, lowering himself into the pilot web. He sensed Jal looking longingly at his broad Bre’n back_s particularly at the base of the neck where a sharp knife could sever the spinal cord. But as Kirtn had known, Jal was too shrewd to kill the only available pilot.

“Quadrant thirty-one, sector six, twenty one degrees ESW of GA316’s prime meridian,” said Jal, sighing. He watched closely as Kirtn addressed the ship’s console, but could make no sense out of the changing displays. Kirtn whistled rapidly, intricately, as he worked. The combination of light and sound made Jal wince and rub his temples. “Loo is just over two replacements,” grated Jal. “The coordinates for the first replacement are—”

The words were forced back down Jal’s throat as the Devalon leaped from standby to maxnorm speed. When the pressure finally lifted, Jal yelled, “Listen, you furry whelp of a diseased slit, we’ll be lost in Keringa’s own black asshole if you don’t follow ray instructions!”

“Save your breath,” Kirtn said, “We tell the Devalon where, the ship decides how. Unless we use the override, of course.”

Jal’s expression went from fury to disbelief. “That can’t be true! Only seven of the known Cycles had computers that could—” He stopped abruptly as the implication of his own words coalesced into a single name, “Zaarain! Is this ship Zaarain? Did the eleventh Cycle’s technology survive on your home planet?”

Kirtn laughed, “There’s more to the galaxy than the Yhelle Equality. This ship was built by Devan ... scientists/dancers ...” He whistled an expletive and stopped trying to find a Universal word to describe akhenets. “We built this ship, Bre’ns and Senyasi dancing together.”

“Dancing? A bizarre way to describe it.”

“Universal is a bizarre language,” retorted Kirtn.

Jal settled back, watching the pilot console with consuming eyes. “Valuable,” he muttered, “very valuable. But so ignorant.”

“What?” said Kirtn, only half listening, watching the console.

“You’re ignorant. On Loo, that could cost you your life and me my chance at a new technology. Unless you’d like to give me the coordinates to your planet now... ?”

Kirtn made a sound of disgust. “Not likely, trader.”

“Then listen to me, furry. Loo is a difficult place. Every life form known to the Equality is represented on Loo. Its people ... collect ... odd things. That makes Loo unique and very, very dangerous.”

Kirtn concentrated for an instant, sending pulses through the pilot web. The outputs in front of him flashed and rippled and sang. He whistled a note of satisfaction that locked in the programming.

“Are you Listening, furry?”

“Yes,” he said, swinging around to face the trader. “You’re saying that Loo is a dangerous place.” He shrugged. “So are most planets with intelligent life.”

“It’s the animals, not the people, that are dangerous. Have you heard of a Mangarian slitwort?”

Kirtn blinked with both sets of eyelids and settled more comfortably into the pilot web. “No, but you’re going to take care of that, aren’t you?” He yawned and stretched.

Jal ignored Kirtn’s lack of attention. As the Devalon leaped toward the instant of replacement, the trader launched into descriptions of the most dangerous life forms of the thirty one planets of the Equality. Despite his initial reaction, Kirtn began to listen with real interest. The more he heard, the more interested he became. By the time Rheba emerged from the womb, Kirtn was wholly enthralled. After a few moments, she was too.

Jal was hoarse by the tune the ship emerged from replacement. After a three-note warning, the Devalon reversed thrust, pinning the occupants against couches or pilot web. Dumping velocity as quickly as possible, the ship cut an ellipse through Loo’s gravity well. Even before the ship achieved a far orbit, telltales began pulsing across the board. The Devalon was under attack.

“Keringia’s shortest hairs!” shrieked Jal, “Open the hydrogen wavelength for me!”

“Open,” snapped Rheba instantly.

Jal spewed out a series of foreign words, all liquid vowels and disturbing glottal stops. As his voice was transmitted beyond the ship’s hull, the telltales slowly subsided. Jal moaned in relief and mopped his chin with the edge of his robe. “Stupid,” he whispered. “Tell them about the wildlife and then forget the vorkers. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

Neither Kirtn nor Rheba disagreed.

“What happened?” asked Kirtn, his voice controlled, his lips drawn thin.

“The vorkers—the satellites. Loo has pre-Equality defense installations through the system. If incoming ships don’t have the code, they’re vaporized.”

Another light appeared on the board as the ship inserted itself into median orbit. The light pulsed in subtle tones of lime and silver.

“Do we want voice communications?” asked Rheba.

“Yes,” said Jal quickly. “Let me handle it. The Loo are a bit... xenophobic. Yes. Xenophobic. They’ll respond better to me. They know me.”

The light changed to emerald and white.

“Talk,” said Rheba.

Instantly, Jal began speaking the odd, gliding/lurching language he had used on the vorkers. There was a pause, laughter on both ends, and then a brief reply from downside. Still smiting, he turned to Rheba. “There’s a tight beam at fifteen degrees to the night side of the terminator, on the equator.”

She frowned and drew her finger across one of the console screens. Her hair trembled. “Got it.”

“Ride it down. My berth is waiting for us.”

The ship rode the beam down, docked, and opened the ship’s doors. The instant the last door unlocked, Jal took a pressurized capsule from his robe and broke the seal. Immediately the cabin was filled with a potent soporific mist. As he never went without protective nasal filters, he would not be affected by the drug unless he was careless enough to breathe through his mouth.

Rheba slumped in her mesh, totally unconscious. Kirtn caught a tinge of the sweet drug odor, held his breath and lunged. Jal pulled out a gambler’s stunner and held down the button. The gun was small, disguised as a calculator, and carried only a ten-second charge. It was enough. After nine seconds Kirtn collapsed in an ungainly pile of copper limbs.

IV

The Imperial Loo-chim’s receiving room was a white geodesic dome with billowing draperies that resembled thin waterfalls. A narrow stream ran the length of the huge room, curling around ruby boulders. Crystalline ferns shimmered along the banks of the stream. Immortal, sentient, the ferns were one of the many lithic races collectively known as the First People. They trembled in a remembered breeze, chiming plaintively of their long slavery on the planet Loo. The ruby boulders sighed in mournful harmonics.

Rheba shivered. The First People’s melancholy was like a cold wind over her nakedness. She tugged discreetly, futilely, at the woven plastic binding her elbows behind her back. A similar plastic binding shortened her stride by half. The slip-chain around her neck glowed softly but had razor teeth. Blood trickled between her breasts, testifying to the chain’s sharpness.

Behind Rheba walked Kirtn, as naked as she. His woven bindings were far harsher than hers. Each bit of outward pressure he exerted on them was answered by an equal and automatic tightening of his bonds. Struggle was not only futile, it was deadly; the edges of his bonds were tipped with the same razor teeth that lined Rheba’s neck chain. Kirtn’s arms and chest wore a thin cloak of blood.

Jal looked around the room, saw that the glass-enclosed Imperial bubble was still unoccupied, and turned quickly to his captives, “The Imperial Loo-chim understands Universal, but it’s customary for it to ignore the yappings of unAdjusted slaves. I wouldn’t bet my life on its tolerance, though. Understand me?”

She looked through Jal and said nothing. He deftly twitched her slip-chain. A new trickle of blood joined the old on her neck.

“Listen, smoothie bitch. I’m doing you a favor.”

Rheba said something in her native tongue.

“Same to you, no doubt,” Jal retorted. “But I could have taken you to the common slave pens—the Pit—where only one in ten survive Adjustment. But if you tickle the Loo-chim’s interest, you’ll be taken in to the Loo-chim Fold for your period of Adjustment. More than half survive there.”

“What about Kirtn?”

“He’s going to the Fold. The female polarity of the Imperial Loo-chim wants to breed new furries with gold masks. Yes, smoothie. There’s another furry here like yours. The female polarity will pay a high price for your beastie. People with obsessions always do.”

The Loo-chim bubble seemed to quiver. It opaqued, then resolved again into transparency. The bubble was no longer empty. The ferns shook and began producing an eerie threnody that was echoed by the boulders in the stream.

“The Imperial Loo-chim!” hissed Jal. “On your bellies, slaves!”

When neither Rheba nor Kirtn responded, Jal kicked Kirtn’s feet out from under him. Rheba tried to evade the trader, but her razor leash could not be escaped. Bruised and bleeding, Kirtn and Rheba stretched out face down on the floor. Neither stayed down for more than a few seconds.

Trader Jal hissed his anger in Universal, but did not require further obeisance of his captives. They were, after all, unAdjusted; the Loo-chim expected little more than bad manners from such slaves.

Jal dropped both leashes and performed a brief, graceful obeisance to the Loo-chim. Neither Rheba nor Kirtn moved while Jal’s attention was off them. They had learned that when he was not holding the leashes, the least movement caused them to tighten, slicing into flesh.

The Loo-chim gestured for Jal to speak. He picked up the training leashes and launched into a speech in Loo’s odd tongue. Rheba and Kirtn listened intently, understanding nothing except their bondage and what Jal had told them when they awakened in Imperiapolis, Loo’s capital city. The Imperial Loo-chim, although spoken of in the singular, was composed of a man and woman whose only genetic difference was the y chromosome of the male polarity. They were strikingly similar in appearance—curling indigo hair and pale skin only faintly blue—yet each twin was definitely sexed rather than androgynous. Each twin was also disturbingly attractive, as though the Loo-chim contained the essence of female and male, opposite and alluring sides of the same humanoid coin.

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 mat 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 meaning 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 walk to Kirtn. She got as far as the glass wall before self-preservation overcame lust. UnAdjusted slaves could be carriers 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 band 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. “Karenga 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. Ruin 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 fingers 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 about 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. “Enough. 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 think 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 rumblings 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.

“But the child,” she repeated in a strained voice. “We can’t leave it with the gtai....”

Yet they must do just that. She knew it. They had been lucky. The child had not. She must accept that as she had accepted Deva’s end. She must put away that burned face, hide it in the dark places of her mind with all the other burned faces, Senyasi and Bre’ns scourged by their own sun. She had survived so much already. Surely she could survive the memory of one more burned child. Just one more.

“I’m all right,” she said numbly. “I can walk. Put me down.”

Kirtn hesitated. He had first heard that deadness in her voice after Deva burned. He had not heard it so much lately, even in the echos of his mind.

“I’m all right,” she repeated. “I won’t be so stupid again.”

“I was right behind you,” he said. “I didn’t remember Jal’s warning until you were attacked.” He set her on her feet and looked at the marks on her back, “Welts, mostly. How do they feel?”

With a shrug of indifference, she reached up to coil her hair once again. Kirtn saw the four puncture marks on her neck. Jal had said nothing about gtai poison, but that was no comfort.

“Light,” snapped Kirtn.

Automatically, she wove a palm-sized glow of cool light and handed it to him. He looked carefully at the wounds. There was no sign of discoloration or unusual swelling.

“Hold still.”

She stood without moving while he sucked on each puncture until blood flowed freely. It hurt, but she said nothing. She would willingly endure much worse at her mentor’s hands, knowing that he would hurt her no more than necessary, and feel it as painfully as she did.

Kirtn spat again as the glowlight died. “Didn’t taste anything more than blood,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Like throwing up, but it has nothing to do with the marks on my neck.”

He had felt the same way since the first moment he saw the child’s face and realized there was nothing he could do. Someday he would not be a slave. When that day came, the creators of the Fold would know hell as surely as Deva had.

They resumed walking down the path, legs almost brushing with each stride. Erratic cries rode the wind, and at the margins of the haze were forms seen and half-seen but never fully known. Her fingers curled among his as they had when she was no taller than his waist. He caressed her fingers and said nothing, enjoying the comfort of familiar flesh as much as she did. The Fold made children or corpses of everything it touched, even a Bre’n.

The mist concealed, but not enough. They saw dead slaves mutilated by scavengers. The diseased, the injured, the despondent, all were clumped near the path, pleas and curses in a hundred languages, despair the only common tongue.

The children were the worst. It was their faces that would scream in Rheba’s and Kirtn’s nightmares, new faces among the chorus of Deva’s dead.

As they walked, the mist waxed and waned capriciously, revealing startling varieties of plants. Occasional cries and complaints punctuated the silence. Rheba and Kirtn taught themselves to hear only those cries that seemed to be following them. No one came out of the mist, however. Either Kirtn’s size or the certainty that new slaves had nothing worth taking prevented them from being attacked.

Yet they had the persistent sense of being stalked. The mist was part of their unease, maddening, changing shapes before their eyes, teasing them with half-remembered nightmares. The trail wound between and around low hills covered with thick trees that quivered in every breeze. The brush grew higher and sweet flowers unfolded. Rheba trusted the flowers least of all, for they looked gentle and she had learned that gentleness died first in the Fold of the Loo-chim.

The trail divided around a smooth, wooded hill. They took the side that seemed to be most heavily traveled, the left side. Half-seen shapes condensed out of the mist, blocking the trait Kirtn stared, counting at least twenty six men and women of every race and size. He waited for one of them to speak. None did. One of the men gestured toward Rheba, then toward his genitals, then toward Rheba again.

Kirtn and Rheba sprinted down the right fork of the trail. Nothing followed them but hard laughter and harsh words of encouragement. Suspicious, they slowed. The voices came no closer. The trail curled off to one side, winding among the beautifully faceted ruins of a small city.

Abruptly, Kirtn froze, afraid even to breathe. From the ruins came an echo of ghostly harmonics. His hand closed around Rheba’s arm, silently urging her backward. Jal had warned them most particularly about singing ruins. Other than a Darkzoi brushbat, there was nothing deadlier in the Yhelle Equality than the First People waiting along the trail ahead.

The harmonics seeped into Kirtn’s bones, making him ache. It was nothing to what would have happened if they had run innocently into the midst of the faceted city, where buildings were intelligent minerals who spoke among themselves in slow chords that dissolved organic intelligence with terrible thoroughness.

“No wonder those slaves didn’t follow us,” she said. “They knew we’d come wandering out sooner or later with no more brains than a bowl of milk.” She made a bitter sound. “Trader Jal is a liar. More than one out of two slaves die in the Loo-chim Fold.”

“But no one counts you until you reach the well inside the two blue circles,” he said softly.

Rheba wished ice and ashes upon Jal’s Inmost Fire, but felt no satisfaction. Kirtn measured the surrounding hills with metallic gold eyes, but there was no comfort there either, only traps where First People shone in the sun.

“We have to go back,” he said finally.

She did not argue. There was a chance that they could survive the attentions of their fellow slaves. There was no chance that they could survive the resonant speech of the First People.

Slowly, they walked back to the fork in the trail.

VI

The shapes waited at the edge of the mist, shifting restlessly, talking with the many voices of an ill-disciplined pack. Rheba’s hair unknotted and fanned out with a silky murmur of power. Kirtn felt her hair brash his arm and knew that she was gathering energy again. A fire dancer, especially a young one, should not fill and hold her capacity so many times, so quickly; but neither should a fire dancer die young. He regretted the strain on her, and knew there was no other choice.

“They have stones, clubs, bones,” he said, summing up the slaves’ crude armaments, “no more.”

“And a fifteen-to-one edge,” she said. “I wonder what would happen if we tried to go around them.”

He looked at the boulders and trees just beyond the grassy margin on either side of the trail. Many things could be hidden out there. Perhaps even safety. “Do you want to try outflanking them?”

The mist swirled, revealing the waiting slaves. They did not seem worried that their prey would escape. Rheba stepped boldly off the trail and began to cross the grass. The slaves watched, smiling in grim anticipation. No one moved to cut her off. After a few more steps, she turned back to the trail where Kirtn waited.

“They know the territory better than we do,” she said. “Anyplace they’ll let me go, I don’t want to go.”

He agreed, yet he hesitated. “There are too many of them to be kind, fire dancer, and you’re too tired for finesse.”

The Bre’n said no more, to this he could not advise his akhenet. It cost a fire dancer less energy to kill than it did to stun. A simple touch, energy draining away; a heart could not beat without electricity to galvanize its muscle cells. To stun rather than kill required an outpouring of energy from the fire dancer, energy woven and channeled by a driving mind. She was too tired to stun more than a few people.

Rheba remembered the child in the gtai trap, and the other children she had seen, the lucky ones who had died cleanly. None of them had chosen to die. These slaves, however, had chosen whether they knew it or not. “I’ll kill if I have to,” she said tonelessly, “but it takes more concentration than making fire. It’s not easy to ...” Her voice faded into a dry swallow.

He stroked her hair. “I know,” he said, wishing he could protect her, knowing he could not. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe I could just scare them. They’ve never seen a fire dancer at work.”

He said nothing. It was her decision. It had to be, or she would never trust him again.

She concentrated on a bush midway between the slaves and herself. When the bush finally began to quake, she raised her arm, pointed at the bush, and let a filament of yellow energy course from her finger to the bush. The gesture was unnecessary, but it was satisfying.

The bush burst into flames. The slaves muttered among themselves but did not back away. The leader walked up boldly to the bush, saw that the flames were not an illusion, and began warming his wide body by the fire. Soon the slaves had regrouped around the bush, snickering and congratulating their leader as though he had conjured the fire himself.

Flames whipped suddenly, called by an angry fire dancer. Bright tongues licked out. There was a stink of burning hair. Scorched slaves leaped back, only to find that the fire leaped with them.

Rheba worked furiously. Her hands and lower arms burned gold with the signature of akhenet power at work. Fire danced hotly across the shoulders of the slaves. A few people fled, but most of them had seen and survived too many malevolent marvels to be routed by a few loose flames. With an enraged bellow, the leader called his slaves to attack.

A hail of stones fell over Rheba, stunning her until she could no longer work. Streamers of fire winked out or drained back into the bush. Before she could recover, the slaves swarmed over, swinging wood clubs and fists with rocks inside them.

Most of the slaves who attacked chose to concentrate on Kirtn instead of the woman whose hands had called fire out of damp shrubbery. Even so, she was swept off her feet in the rush, her head ringing from a glancing blow. Screams and curses in several languages showed that Kirtn was a deadly opponent despite being badly outnumbered; but even his huge strength could not survive the onslaught of thirty enraged slaves. He vanished under a tumult of multicolored flesh.

Rheba pushed herself to her knees, head hanging low, hair and blood concealing her view of the fight. Kirtn’s whistle sliced through the confusion, a sound of rage and fear. The shrill notes commanded her to run away if she could. Abruptly, the whistle stopped.

His silence frightened her more than any sound he could have made. She lunged toward the melee, heedless of her own danger. One man grabbed her, then another. Instantly they reeled away, numbed by the shocks she had reflexively sent through them. She screamed Kirtn’s name, desperately grabbing energy from the still-burning bush, from the sunlight, from every source within her reach. Thin lines of fire sizzled over the slaves who covered Kirtn.

The pile of flesh heaved and a Bre’n roar echoed. Kirtn clawed his way out of the pile with three men and the leader clinging to his shoulders. The leader’s pale arm flashed upward as a club took lethal aim of Kirtn’s skull.

Even as Rheba screamed, fire flowed like dragon’s breath from her hands, more fire than the bush had held, more fire than she had ever called before. Her hands and arms seemed to burst into flames. Lines of molten gold burned triumphantly on her arms, answering and reflecting a fire dancer’s will, stealing energy from the day and weaving it into a terrible light.

The leader’s squat white body suddenly crawled with flames. He screamed and dropped his charred club, trying to beat out the fire with hands that also burned. The other slaves saw what had happened and fled in panic, leaving dead and injured behind.

Rheba sucked back the flames, but it was too late. The leader had breathed pure fire. He was dead before he fell to the damp ground. She stared, horrified. She had seen others die like that, Senyasi and Bre’ns screaming when the deflectors vaporized in one station after another, Deva’s fire dancers blistering and dying ... Sobbing dryly, she forced down her memories and horror. She knelt by Kirtn and sought the pulse beneath his ear.

“Kirtn?” she said softly, hesitantly, trying not to think of what her fire could have done to him.

After what seemed like a very long time to her, his eyes opened. They were as gold and blank as the lines of power still smoldering on her body. He tried to sit up, groaned, and tried again. On the third attempt he succeeded. He saw the pale, scorched body sprawled nearby and the smoking club that had been ready to smash his skull. He looked at her haunted eyes and knew what she had done. He caressed her cheek in wordless thanks, not knowing how else to comfort her.

Slowly he stood up, pulling her with him. The light from the burning bush washed over his eyes and mask, making them incandescent. “I’m sorry,” he said, speaking finally, looking at her, “Not for him. He deserved to die, and die more slowly than he did. But you, little dancer, you didn’t deserve the job of executioner.”

“It wasn’t very hard ... I didn’t even know what I was doing. All I knew was that I didn’t want you hurt. I didn’t want to live if you died.” She rubbed her lower arms and hands where new lines of power had ignited. As the lines faded, the itching began. She was grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts. “Let’s get out of here.”

She began walking up the trail as quickly as her shaking legs would allow. She lost track of the passage of tune. Mist and the trail conspired to create a dream that she moved through long after she wanted to stop. Fatigue became an anesthetic, numbing. She did not fight it, but accepted it as she had accepted her itching hands, gratefully.

Trees loomed out of the mist, their supple, tapering branch-lets swaying like grass in a river current. There was no wind. Kirtn and Rheba stopped, staring. When they looked away from the trees, they realized that the trail divided. A small spur took off to wind between the graceful, slim-trunked trees. The spur ended in a liquid gleam of water.

Kirtn stared at the small pool caught among the grove’s lavender roots. Water so close he would only have to walk six steps to touch its cool brilliance. As though sensing his thoughts, the pool winked seductively, catching and juggling shafts of light that penetrated the mist.

“Kirtn, something’s wrong.”

“I know. But what?”

“I wish I weren’t so thirsty. Makes it hard to think.” She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the seductive pool. Then her eyes snapped open, “We haven’t come far enough yet. Jal said there was water in the center of the Fold. This can’t be the center.”

“You’re sure?”

She closed her eyes, reaching out to the subtle currents of energy that flowed along the Fold’s unseen fence. “Yes. The fence is closer to us behind and to the left. We aren’t in the center.”

Kirtn looked around until he found a fist-sized stone. He measured the distance, drew back his arm, and fired the rock into the pond. Silver liquid fountained up, spreading pungent fumes.

“Acid!” said Rheba, stepping back. Then, “Look!” The trees bent down, sending their branchlets into the disturbed liquid. As the trees sampled the nutrient mix, delicate sipping sounds spread out like ripples from the pond. The rock, however, had contained little of the organic nourishment the grove required. With whiplike grace, the trees straightened again and resumed waiting, patient as all predators must be, especially carnivorous plants.

“Morodan?” asked Rheba, remembering Jal’s lecture. “Or Trykke. Either way, one of the Second People.” She stared, fascinated in spite of her uneasiness. She had never before seen intelligent plants of this size. “I wonder bow they got here, and what they talk about while they wait for a thirsty animal to come to their acid pond.”

“I don’t know, but from their size, they’ve been talking about it for thousands of years.”

“They’re insane,” she said suddenly, her voice certain. “Maybe. And maybe they’re only Adjusted.” She shivered. “That’s not funny.”

He turned back toward the main path. She followed. They were still within sight of the grove when a low moan of pain made her stop suddenly. Just off the trail, in a small clearing, a sleek-furred mother huddled with two very young children. She was badly injured, unable to move. Her children cowered next to her, seeking what warmth and safety they could.

When Rheba walked closer, the stranger spoke in Universal, ordering her children to hide in the ubiquitous waist-high shrubs. The children, who were not injured, half disobeyed. They stayed close enough to see their mother, but far enough away to be safe from the trail.

“We won’t hurt you,” said Kirtn gently in Universal, “or your children.”

The woman’s only answer was the slow welling of blood from a wound low on her side. She watched Rheba’s approach with eyes that held neither fear nor hope, only an animal patience for whatever might come. Slow shivering shook her, fear or chills or both.

Warily, knowing she should not but unable to stop herself.

Rheba stepped off the trail. Kirtn followed, close enough to help but not close enough to be caught in the same trap with her, if trap there was. While he stood guard, she crouched by the wounded woman. The stranger’s body was thick and muscular, but its power was draining inexorably from the inflamed wound in her side.

There was nothing Rheba could do. She had neither water nor medicines. She did not even have clothes to tear into bandages. The woman’s lips were cracked with thirst, her breathing harsh, her thoughts only for her children.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Rheba, helpless and angry at her helplessness. “Is there anything I can do?”

The woman’s lips twisted in what could have been a snarl or a smile. “My children are cold. Go away so they can come back to me.”

“A fire,” said Rheba quickly. “Would you like a fire?”

“I might as well ask for water—or freedom.” The woman’s voice was as bitter as her pain and fear for her children.

Rheba closed her eyes, gathered light and concentrated on a nearby bush. Her hair shook free of its knot and fanned out restlessly. After several minutes the bush quivered as though it were alive. Sweating, she concentrated until the bush ignited. She wove its flames into arches connecting other nearby bushes and held them until there was an arc of burning shrubbery warming the woman and her children. After the first bush, the others burned quickly; it was always easier to use existing fire than to weave random energy into heat.

Kirtn uprooted other bushes, limiting the spread of fire and feeding the flames at the same tone. He did not complain that she was spending her energy on a dying woman. He did not say that Loo’s period of Adjustment was designed to kill the weak, not to succor them. If you were not strong, lucky, smart and vicious, you died. On Loo, compassion had about as much survival value as a broken neck.

But he kept his conclusions to himself, because he knew what drove his dancer. She had seen too many people die on Deva—and so had he. The need to help others was as deep in her as her akhenet genes.

“Should I cauterize her wound?” asked Rheba in Senyas, her voice trembling with effort and too much emotion.

“No,” he said softly. “Soon she won’t hurt anymore.”

“The children.”

“Yes. After she dies.”

Wordlessly, Rheba sat down on the trail to wait.

Gray mist moved against the multihued grasses. A vague breeze brought the clean scent of burning leaves. The woman slipped into semiconsciousness, moaning as she would not have allowed herself to do if she were awake. Her children crept back to her side.

Kirtn ached to end the woman’s suffering, but did not. She had chosen to cling to life for the sake of her children. Perhaps she hoped for a miracle, perhaps not. All he knew was that he had no choice but to respect her decision ... and to grind his teeth at her futile pain.

“Someday,” whispered Rheba, “someday I’ll meet the Loo-chim again. Then I’ll share with them the hell they created.”

Kirtn smiled a Bre’n’s cruel smile, “Save a piece for me, fire dancer.”

“Rare or well done?”

“Ash,” he hissed. “Ash and gone!”

Her fingers laced more tightly with his. “I promise you that.”

The woman’s body slumped suddenly, seeming to fold in upon itself. Only that marked her passage out of pain. Kirtn and Rheba rose to their feet and crept toward the children huddled unknowing against their mother’s cooling body. A stick shattered beneath Rheba’s feet with a piercing crystal sound.

The two small children woke from their daze of cold and hunger with yelps of fright. They saw the forms looming over them and panicked. With a speed born of survival reflexes, both children leaped up and ran away before Kirtn could intercept them.

“Come back,” shouted Rheba in Universal. “We won’t hurt you! Please, let us help you!”

The children never hesitated. They had learned too well the Fold’s brutal lessons. They trusted no one. They raced down the trail and into the shelter of a thick grove of whiplike trees.

“No!” yelled Rheba, recognizing the trap of the Second People. “No!”

Disturbed by the two small bodies scrambling over their roots, the trees shivered and stretched. Their limber branch-lets hissed through the air.

Rheba raced desperately toward the grove, calling for the children to come back. The first child reached the edge of the gleaming pond and drew away, confused by the acrid fumes. He turned and pushed his sister back from the evil liquid. But when he tried to follow her retreat, the roots that he had used as steppingstones humped up suddenly and sent him staggering into the acid pool.

The boy screamed, warning his sister to flee, then words became agony as the acid ate into his living flesh. The little girl stood frozen for a moment, her eyes like silver coins in the half-light. Then her brother’s terror drove her back. As she turned to flee, her thick fur shed light with a ripple of silver that echoed the deadly pool.

Rheba saw the second child stumble away from the pond, dodging to avoid the writhing roots. The first child’s terrible screams bubbled and drained into silence. The little girl hesitated again, looked over her shoulder, and saw nothing but ripples on the sullen silver pond. Her brother had vanished into the Second People’s communal stomach.

Limber branches whipped down suddenly, scoring the girl’s body, driving her back toward the waiting acid. Her dense fur cushioned the blows, but not enough. She screamed as acid-tipped tendrils found her unprotected eyes. Blows rained down on her, jerking her about, disorienting her. Inexorably she was beaten toward the oily shine of the pool.

Screaming with horror and helplessness, Rheba tried to force her way back into the hungry grove and drag the child out. Kirtn held her back, grimly accepting the burns and bruises she gave him in her mindless struggle to follow the child. Any other man would have died trying to hold her, but he was Bre’n, and very strong.

A pale, nimble branch uncoiled, blindly seeking the child’s warmth. It found her, wrapped around her body and dragged her toward the fuming pool.

Rheba changed beneath Kirtn’s hands. Raw energy enveloped her, as uncontrolled as her rage at losing the child. His hands burned, but still he held her, his mind struggling to channel her fury into the disciplined responses of a fire dancer.

Then she heard him, felt his presence, understood his restraint and his rage equaling hers. Energy leaped at her command, raw lightning that split a pale tree from root to crown and sent thunder belling through the air. The other trees thrashed helplessly, trapped by their own vegetable necessities, unable to flee their most ancient enemy—fire.

Lightning slashed and seared, trunks bled, fragrant blood flowing down pale smooth trunks. A thin cry sprang up from the grove, a sound as painful as the continuous rolling thunder. The Second People keened and writhed and yanked their prey into the pond.

For an instant Rheba and the child and the trees screamed in unison; then all sounds were subsumed in the sheet of lightning and simultaneous thunder that exploded over the grove. The Second People twisted and heaved, tearing out ancient roots, branches flailing so violently that they broke and sprayed purple fluids that vaporized in the instant of release. But there was no escape from a fire dancer’s revenge and a Bre’n’s savage skill..

The grove of Second People died, and the smoke of their cremation was a thick fragrance over the afternoon.

Rheba breathed in the ashes of her dead enemies and choked.

VII

With a hoarse cry, Rheba jerked free of Kirtn’s grip and ran away, her eyes dry, blinded by fire. She wanted to run until she was free of feeling and memory, responsibility and revenge. But she could only run until her body convulsed from lack of oxygen, and then she crawled into a concealing thicket.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, shuddering and gasping until her breath returned. With breath came memories, Deva and Loo and children burning, a man breathing fire and Second People screaming, dying. She wanted to weep and scream but could not. Her eyes were wild and dry, the color of flames. She sat without moving, holding on to herself in the mist. She heard Kirtn’s urgent, questing whistle, but her lips were numb, unable to shape an answer.

And then softly, ever so softly, she heard the velvet murmur of a hunting brushbat. Behind her, the thicket quivered as though at the passage of a large hunting beast.

She remembered Jal’s dry voice describing the Darkzoi, certain death on clawed wings and nimble feet, an animal voracious and invulnerable except for eyes and genital slit. She knew she should run or walk or crawl away, should do anything but turn and stare over her shoulder into predatory eyes. Yet she turned, and stared, too numb to do more than see what kind of death had called her name.

The sounds continued, sly velvet rustles, hiss of air over wings, muscular windings of flesh and bone through branches. She stared, but could see only the dark wood of the thicket, its many branches as tangled as her hair. Against the silvery backdrop of the sky, she should have been able to see an animal as big as her hand, much less one fully as long as Kirtn.

Yet she saw nothing except a slight thickening of a branch overhead, a subtle flexing that was too sinuous to be wood.

She leaned closer. Gradually the shape of an animal longer than her arm and as thin as her finger seemed to separate from the angular brush. The snake quivered and enlarged. The brushbat sounds came closer.

“You’re not a Darkzoi,” she whispered. “You’re as frightened as I am, aren’t you? Hiding behind brushbat noises and scaring everyone. You should be ashamed.” Her words were sharp, but her tone was gentle, as beguiling as a Bre’n whistle, “Come to me. I’ll protect you. You, don’t have to be afraid.”

As she spoke, she slowly reached up toward the branch where the snake wound helplessly around cold wood. It opened its mouth and hissed threateningly. The sudden movement revealed delicate scales tipped with metallic copper, silver and gold.

“You’re a beauty,” she murmured, “and you can’t scare me. If your bite was as bad as your hiss, you wouldn’t have to hide.”

With a deft swoop, she captured the snake. It stiffened, stared at her out of opalescent disks, then gave a soft cry and went limp. She looked at the dark, slender animal dangling lifelessly from her hands. The snake was much heavier than she had expected. And very still.

“Snake?”

With utmost care she searched for a sign of life. There was none. Her touch had frightened the timid creature to death. As she held the animal, she felt its warmth drain into the damp air. She stared at the small corpse and then at her own hands ... everything she touched died. She sank down to the ground and began to cry, shuddering and coughing, weeping for the first time since Deva burned.

The ragged, tearing sounds of her grief drew Kirtn to the thicket He slid into the brittle shrubbery quietly, sat near her and took her hand, sharing her unhappiness in the only way he could, for Bre’ns lacked the gift and curse of tears.

While her sobs slowly diminished to little more than an occasional quiver, Kirtn whistled soft consolation in the Bre’n language. It was a language of emotion and evocation, as Senyas was a language of precision and engineering.

“Death is the pause between heartbeats,” whistled Kirtn. “The children will live again someday, and someday you will love them again, and cry for them again, someday.”

“I know,” she whispered in Senyas. “But that is someday and I am now. In this now everything I touch, dies! This shy creature never—harmed—”

Her words became ragged. Her hand traced the outlines of the snake. For the first time, Kirtn noticed the motionless coils in her lap. He whistled a soft, undemanding query.

“It was in the thicket,” she answered in Senyas, controlling her tears. “Hiding. It made sounds like a brushbat. You remember the noise Jal described, like velvet on satin, only stronger?”

Kirtn’s whistle was both affirmative and encouragement.

“The poor animal imitated a brushbat to scare me away. But I just didn’t care enough to run.” She drew a deep, broken breath and spoke in a rush. “So I looked and looked and all I saw was a snake hugging cold branches and I thought it must be frightened and I thought I could help it even if I couldn’t help the children—the children—”

He waited, fluting sad counterpoint to her words, crying in the only way a Bre’n could. After a time she spoke again, her voice drained of everything but exhaustion.

“So I lifted the snake out of the branches. It hissed at me, but I thought if it was dangerous it wouldn’t have to hide behind brushbat noises. I was right,” she said hoarsely. “It wasn’t dangerous. It was just very, very shy.” Gently she gathered up the cool body of the snake. Metallic colors rippled, intricate scallops of light thrown off by quasi-reptilian scales, “This beautiful, nameless creature died of fright in my hands.”

The snake’s sensors brightened to opal as he said, “My name is Fssa. Do you really think I’m beautiful?”

Rheba was so startled she nearly dropped him. She felt warmth radiate from the sinuous body and sensed the life invigorating him. “You’re alive!”

“Yes,” said Fssa, ducking his head, “but am I beautiful?”

She received her second shock when she realized that the snake was whistling fluent Bre’n. “You’re whistling Bre’n!”

“Yes,” gently, “but am I beautiful?”

The snake’s wistful insistence was magnified by his delicate use of the Bre’n language. Kirtn smiled and touched the snake with a gentle fingertip.

“You’re very beautiful,” Rheba said in Senyas, divided between tears and laughter. “But where did you learn to speak Bre’n?”

“And to understand Senyas,” added Kirtn, realizing that she had been too upset to whistle Bre’n’s demanding language.

“You taught me,” whistled Fssa.

Rheba and Kirtn looked at one another.

“Do you mean,” said Kirtn in precise Senyas, “that you learned to speak Bre’n and understand Senyas just by listening to us?”

“The whistle language was more difficult,” fluted Fssa. “So many colors in each note. But the thrills are exquisite. It’s one of the most exciting languages I’ve ever used.”

“Do you understand many languages?” asked Kirtn numbly, beyond disbelief.

“I have as many voices as there are stars,” Fssa said, watching the Bre’n with luminous sensors. “Even among my own people, I was called a genius. Fssa means All Voices.”

“Not only beautiful, but modest,” she said dryly.

Fssa did not miss the nuances of her voice. He wilted, “Should I be modest? Is modesty necessary for beauty?”

Kirtn chuckled, moving his fingertip the length of Fssa’s resilient body in a soothing gesture. The muscles he felt were very dense, very strong. Despite Fssa’s timidity, measure for measure the snake was far more powerful than even a Bre’n. “Modesty is necessary only for fire dancers,” he said with, a teasing glance at Rheba. “Do you speak any other languages, Fssa, or can you only make musical notes?”

“I can imitate any sound. Languages are merely sounds ordered by intelligence.”

Rheba stared at the shy, immodest creature looped around her hands, and said, “Speak Senyas to me.”

Fssa’s sensors darkened. “If I do, I won’t be beautiful anymore.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Speak Senyas.”

“You won’t drop me,” pleaded Fssa, “even when I’m ugly?”

“I won’t Now, speak to me.”

“All right,” whistled Fssa in sad resignation. “But I enjoyed being beautiful....”

Despite her promise, she nearly dropped the snake. Before the last quiver of Bre’n language had faded from the air, Fssa changed in her hands. Sparkling gold quills unfolded along his spine, then fanned out into a flexible ruff. Openings winked between the quills, sucked in air, distributed it to chambers where it was shaped and reshaped by powerful muscular contractions.

“What do you want me to say?” asked Fssa, his Senyas as perfect as hers.

“By the Inmost Fire,” she breathed. “He can do it. Do you speak Universal, too?”

The pattern of quills changed. Vanes sprang up, flexed, thickened; other metallic folds of skin opened out, platinum and copper, silver and steel blue. Fssa was like a magic box she had had as a child once opened, the box unfolded into myriad shapes, each larger and thinner and more beautiful than the last.

“Every educated snake speaks Universal,” said Fssa in that language, “but,” wistfully, “I would rather be beautiful.”

Rheba looked at the glittering, incandescent fantasy looped around her hands. “Fssa, it’s impossible for you to be anything but beautiful. Where did you get the absurd idea you were ugly?”

“I have no limbs,” said Fssa simply.

He folded his vanes and ruff, returning to a more conventional snake shape. Passively, he hung from her hands, waiting for her judgment. She stroked him with her cheek and thought what life must be like for an intelligent, sensitive snake in a world ruled by leggy bigots.

“Poor Fssa,” she murmured. “Poor, beautiful snake. Would you like to come with us to the well? We can’t guarantee safety, but we’ll tell you you’re beautiful twice a day.”

Metallic glints ran like miniature lightning down Fssa’s long body. His answer was a liquid ripple of Bre’n joy. Smiling, Kirtn rose to his feet and held his hands out to Rheba. She looked up, weariness in every line of her body.

“The well isn’t far,” offered Fssa.

She licked her lips, but her tongue was too dry to do much good. Thirst was another kind of fire burning in her body, like hatred and memories of death. “I could hate the Loos, Bre’n mentor.”

“I could help you.” He looked at the snake. “We may have a new language to teach you.”

Fssa whistled a query. “What language?”

“It’s called revenge.”

Fssa’s laugh was a sibilant, sliding sound. “I’d like to learn that one. Yesss. That would be fun.”

Rheba smiled grimly as she coiled Fssa around her neck. After a few moments, the peculiar snake vanished into her hair, an invisible presence balanced around her skull. Silently, she and Kirtn walked back to the trail. Soon it became broader, smoother, almost a road, and the mist thinned in the slanting afternoon light to little more than a golden veil. On each side of the road small shelters appeared, inhabited by slaves who plainly preferred to live beyond the concentric rings of sanctuary surrounding the well.

The slaves were of many races and sizes, but there was only one type—shrewd, strong, and as hard as necessary to survive. They ignored the road and the new slaves who wearily walked on it.

Rheba stepped over a blue tile line that curved off on both sides of the road. Just beyond it was another strip of tile, curving in parallel to the first. She hesitated, then remembered Jal’s words. When you’re inside both concentric circles you’re safe.

Safety? Did such a thing exist in the Loo-chim Fold? Perhaps not, but the well did. She could hear it calling to her in liquid syllables. She quickened her stride, hurrying toward the chest-high cylinder of the well. Half of it was blue, half was white. Random patterns of holes spouted water.

Then four people walked around from the far side of the well. Two men and two women. Loos. They wore clothing and an air of utter assurance.

Kirtn watched them, measuring the obstacle between him and water. His reflexes were slowed by thirst, hunger and drug residue. His body was bruised and scraped and sported crusts of blood barely concealed by his brief copper plush. The pain he felt was attenuated, a distant cry held at bay by discipline and a Bre’n heritage that would not be ruled by pain short of death.

Beside him Rheba gathered energy once again. Her hair crackled, random noise that told the Bre’n his prot6g6 was dangerously tired. Several times on Deva he had pushed her to this point, pushed her until her mind reacted rather than reflected. The result could be a breakthrough to a new level of fire dancer achievement, or it could be fiery disaster. He was too tired now to safely control her energy. She was a threat to everything around her, most of all to herself.

Rheba’s hair twitched, spitting static. She did not seem to notice. Gold lines pulsed unevenly from her fingertips to her shoulders in intricate designs.

“Do you understand Universal?” asked one woman, looking at Rheba.

“Yes,” said Kirtn, not wanting Rheba to break her concentration to speak.

“I was talking to the human,” said the woman.

Rheba whistled a savage retort in the Bre’n language. Kirtn touched her arm warningly and received a hard shock. Startled, he looked at her. He was even more disturbed to realize that she had allowed the energy to escape without intending to or even noticing it.

“We’re both human,” said Rheba in Universal.

“Maybe you were where you come from, but you’re on Loo now.” She watched Rheba with impersonal interest “We are the Four. We represent the Divine Twins.”

Rheba waited, weaving power that leaked away almost as quickly as she could gather it.

“You two,” continued the woman, “must have been strong, quick and lucky to have come this far.”

“And human?” suggested Rheba acidly.

The woman ignored her. “Now you have to prove that you’re also smart. Listen and learn. There are three classes of life on Loo. The Loo divinity is highest, ruled by the Loo-chim. Humans are second. Animals are third. If it wears fur, it’s an animal.” The woman’s voice was impersonal. She was relating facts, not insults.

“Do ‘animals’ get to drink?” asked Kirtn.

“Animals drink on the white side,” said the woman to Rheba, answering Kirtn’s question without acknowledging its source. “Animals get food and water so long as they obey their keepers.”

“What about clothes?” asked Rheba, shivering in the increasing chill.

“Animals don’t need clothes. They were born with fur. That’s why they’re animals.”

Anger blazed visibly along Rheba’s arms. Her hair slithered over itself disturbingly. Fssa stirred, but did not reveal himself. He remained invisible, his body as gold as her hair.

“It’s not worth fighting about,” said Kirtn in rapid Senyas, “as long as they let me eat and drink.”

Her only answer was a crackle of leaking energy. Kirtn gave a whistle so high that it was felt more than heard. She flinched at his demand for her attention. The whistle slid low, coaxing and beguiling her. She fought its power, then gave in. She hugged him hard.

“We could take them,” she whispered in Senyas. “They’re only four.”

“They’re too confident,” he replied. “They know something we don’t—like that mob where the trail divided.”

Reluctantly, she admitted that he was right. She had also been bothered by the Four’s total confidence. “I’ll drink on the white side with you.”

“No. We’ll follow Loo’s diagram until we learn more about its social machinery.”

“All I want to know is the best place to pour in the sand.”

Fssa laughed softly, a sound that went no farther than her ear. But Kirtn’s sudden, savage smile brought the Four to attention. They watched very closely as the Bre’n walked to the white side of the well and drank. Rheba followed, but kept to the blue side as she had agreed to do.

While they drank, the woman continued her spare instructions in the same impersonal voice. If she was pleased, repelled or unmoved by their obedience, she did not show it She pointed to various white or blue stations as she spoke. “Water there, food there, clothing there. If you stay inside the circles you’ll be safe. You have been counted.”

The Four winked out of existence.

“Illusion?” asked Kirtn in perplexed Senyas.

“I don’t think so,” said Rheba, “When they left, the ceiling funneled down where they stood.” She waved a hand at the seething energy that acted as a lid on the compound, “It must be some kind of transfer system.”

“Is it controlled from here?” asked Kirtn, looting around with sudden eagerness.

“No. It called them. They didn’t call it.”

“Outside the wall,” he sighed, not surprised. It would have been careless of their jailers to leave keys inside the cell. The Loos did not seem to be a careless people. “You’re shivering,” he said, turning his attention back to her. “Get some clothes.”

“If you can’t wear clothes,” she said tightly, “I won’t.”

“I’m not cold. You are.”

The Bre’n’s pragmatism was unanswerable. Without further argument, she went to the clothing station. A beam of energy appeared and traced her outlines. Seamless, stretchy clothes extruded from the slit.

She pulled on the clothes, shivering uncontrollably with cold. She hurried over to the place where Kirtn had made a bed out of grasses while she was measured for clothes. His arms opened, wrapping around her, warmth and comfort and safety. She curled against him and slept, too exhausted to care if Jal and the Four had lied about the sanctuary of the inner circle.

Kirtn tried to stay awake, distrusting any safety promised by the Loo-chim Fold. Despite his efforts, exhaustion claimed him. He slumped next to Rheba, sliding deeper into sleep with each breath.

Fssa slid partway out of Rheba’s hair, formed himself into e scanning mode, and took over guard duty. It was little enough to do for the two beings who had called him beautiful.

 

VIII

Kirtn awoke in a rush, called out of sleep by an alien sound. His eyes opened narrowly. His body remained motionless. Nothing moved in the dull gloaming that was the Fold’s version of night He listened intently, but heard only Rheba’s slow breaths as she slept curled against his warmth. Then, at the corner of his vision, he sensed movement like another shade of darkness.

Slowly, he turned his head a few degrees toward the area of movement He saw nothing. He eased away from Rheba and came to his feet in a soundless rush. He crept forward until he recognized one of Fssa’s many shapes silhouetted against the soft glow of the well. While he watched, the snake shifted again, unfolding a structure that looked like a hand-sized dish. Quasi-metallic scales rubbed over each other with eerie, musical whispers. Kirtn relaxed, recognizing the sound that had awakened him. Overhead the sky/ceiling changed, presaging dawn. He stretched quietly, too alert to return to sleep.

“Kirtn?” The snake’s whistle was barely more than a breath, but very pure.

“There’s something out there. Something sneaky. More than one. Many.”

“Close?”

Fssa’s dish turned slowly, scanning. The dish hesitated, backtracked a few degrees, then held, “Beyond the sanctuary lines,” he whistled, referring to the twin blue tile strips that encircled the well and food stations. “They’re moving off now. Scavengers, most likely. Wild slaves.”

Kirtn listened, but heard nothing except his own heartbeat “You have sensitive hearing.”

“Yes.” There was a subdued sparkle of scales as the dish folded in upon itself. “On my home planet, discriminating among faint sound waves was necessary for survival.” Fssa seemed to look upward, questing with the two opalescent “eyes” that concentrated energy bouncing back from solid substances. He sighed very humanly. “The sky reminds me of my home.”

Kirtn looked overhead where muddy orange sky seethed, nearly opaque. “Where is your home?” he asked, responding to the tenor of longing in the snake’s soft Bre’n whistle.

“Out there.” Fssa sighed again, “Somewhere.”

“How did you get to Loo?”

“My people were brought here long, long ago. We’re the Fssireeme—Communicators.” He fluted sad laughter. “We’re debris of the Twelfth Expansion. I think that’s the Makatxoy Cycle in Universal. In Senyas, it would translate as the Machinists Cycle.”

“Do you mean that you’re a machine?” asked Kirtn, whistling loudly in surprise.

Fssa did not answer.

Rheba murmured sleepily, then became quiet again. Even after Loo’s long night, her body was still trying to make up for the demands that had been made on it since the Black Whole. Kirtn watched her. He was careful to make no sound until he was sure that she was asleep again. He wished he could teach her how to restore herself with energy stolen from the sun, but he did not know how, only that it was possible. He did know that it required complex, subcellular adjustments. It was much more demanding—and dangerous—than merely channeling energy. Only the most advanced fire dancers could weave light into food.

Quasi-metallic scales rustled musically. Kirtn looked up as Fssa scanned a quadrant for sound. Dawn rippled over the unorthodox snake, making him glitter like a gem sculpture.

“You’re beautiful, snake,” whispered the Bre’n. “Machine or not, you’re beautiful. Thank you for guarding our sleep.”

Fssa changed shape again with a subdued sparkle of metal colors. “I’m not a machine. Not quite. My people evolved on a huge gas planet—a failed star called Ssimmi. Its gravity was much heavier than Loo’s. The atmosphere was thick. It was wonderful, a rich soup of heat and life that transmitted the least quiver of sound ...” His tone was wistful. “Not like this thin, cold, pale world. At least, that’s what my guardian told me at my imprinting. I’ve only been to Ssimmi in my dreams.”

Kirtn waited, curious, but afraid to offend the sensitive snake by asking questions. Fssa, however, was not reluctant to talk about his home and history. It had been a long time since anyone had listened.

“Am I keeping you awake?” asked Fssa.

Kirtn smiled and stretched. “No. Tell me more about your home.”

“It’s uncivilized, even by the Yhelle Equality’s standards. We aren’t builders. We’re ... we just live, I guess. If we’re lucky. There are lots of predators. My people became illusionists in order to survive at all.”

“Illusionists? But you’re blind!”

“You see better than you hear, don’t you?” asked Fssa.

“Yes. Much better.”

“I thought so. Most of the Fourth People are like that We Fssireeme use sound the way you use light. Our illusions are aural. They’re the only kind that matter on Ssimmi. Light and heatwaves are useless in our soupy atmosphere. The predators are blind.”

“They hunt with soundwaves, like sonar?”

“Sort of. It’s more complicated though. They use different wavelengths to find different things. Whenever we hear a predator coming, we send out sound constructs that make the predator believe we’re its own mate. If we’re good enough, we eat its warmth. If not, we get eaten. Life on Ssimmi is very ... simple.”

“If you weren’t builders, how did you get off the planet?”

“By the time the Twelfth Expansion found Ssimmi, we were galactic-class mimics with just enough brains to realize that we couldn’t fool the invaders. They had hands, and machines, and legs.” Fssa was silent for a long moment “When they finished sorting out our genes, we were intelligent, organic translators. Less bulky and far more efficient than the boxes they had before or the bodies we had used originally. We aren’t machines, Kirtn, but they used us as if we were.”

“A lot of races have been enslaved and genetically modified,” be whistled gently. “Most of them outlived—and outshone—their conquerors.”

“Yessss.” Scales rubbed musically over each other. “It happened so long ago that it hardly matters now. Only one thing matters. I want to swim the skies of Ssimmi before I die.”

Kirtn’s body tensed in response to the longing carried by the snake’s Bre’n whistle. “I understand,” whistled Kirtn in return. “I’d give my life to see my planet blue and silver again.”

“Maybe we’ll both get our wish,” whistled Fssa, misunderstanding Kirtn’s meaning.

“I won’t,” said the Bre’n, speaking unemotional Senyas. “Deva is a scorched rock orbiting a voracious sun.”

Fssa’s whistle was like a cry of pain. “I’m sorry!”

“It’s in the past,” Kirtn said, his voice flat, almost brutal, “But if we escape Loo, I’ll take you to Ssimmi. I promise you that, Fssa. Everyone should have a home to go back to.”

“Thank you,” softly, “but I don’t know where Ssimmi is.”

“How long ago did you leave?”

“My people left thousands and thousands of years ago. But that doesn’t change our dream of swimming Ssimmi’s skies. We have perfect memories, perfectly passed on. Guardians imprint the history of the race on their child. Their memories are ours, right back to the first guardian to leave the gene labs wrapped around the wrist of an Expansionist trader. Before that ...” Scales rustled as the snake shifted. “Before that there is only the Long Memory ... swimming the ocean skies of Ssimmi.”

Suddenly the snake seemed to explode. Quills and vanes fanned out from his long body, combing the air for sound waves. Kirtn froze, trying not to breathe or make any movement that would distract the snake.

“New slaves,” sighed Fssa after a moment.

“How can you tell?”

The rhythm of their walk is erratic, as though they’re tired or injured.”

“Probably both.”

“Yes.”

Fssa sparkled, showing a sudden increase in copper color as he switched the angle of his attention back toward the well. Faintly, Kirtn heard the sounds of high, shrill voices coming from a nearby grove of trees. There were many such groves within the sanctuary. He remembered seeing a family there at dusk, three adults and five children. He had wondered how the adults had managed to bring such young children unharmed into the center of the Fold.

In the growing light, children darted in and out of the grove. They moved with surprising speed, chasing and catching and losing each other in a bewildering game of tag. Casually, four tackled one. The result was a squealing, squirming, bruising pile. An adult emerged from the grove, watched the brawl for a moment, then walked back to the darkness beneath the trees.

Fssa laughed sibilantly. Kirtn made an appalled sound.

“They’re Gells,” whistled Fssa. “To hurt one, you have to drop it off a high cliff on a six-gravity planet. Twice.”

“That explains how they got this far.”

“They lost one adult and three children. The Gell family unit is usually four and eight.”

Kirtn looked at Fssa. The snake seemed unaware of him as he scanned the heaving pile of Gell children.

“Do you know a lot about the Yhelle Equality and its peoples? Trader Jal didn’t have time to tell us much before he dumped us in the Fold.”

“Whatever my guardians back to the Twelfth Expansion labs knew, I know, plus whatever I’ve experienced since my guardian died, I’ve been in the Fold for a long time, but I haven’t learned much. It’s so cold. I dreamed most of the time. If people came too near, I frightened them off with my Darkzoi sounds.” The snake’s coppery quills shivered and turned to gold as he faced away from the Gell children and shifted his attention to the sanctuary’s perimeter again. “We didn’t learn much from our owners. They thought of us as machines. Machines don’t need to be educated, much less entertained. We dreamed a lot, the slow dreams of hibernation. And we went crazy from time to time.” The quills stretched and thinned, fanning out with a rich metallic glitter. “So I don’t know much and I talk too much. It’s been very lonely.”

“You don’t talk too much, snake. And you’re beautiful.”

Fssa whistled with pleasure, but the sound was lost in the angry shrieks of Gell children. One of them had tripped over a rock and was digging it out of the dirt with the obvious intention of smashing the rock to pieces. The rock was head-sized and irregular, almost spiky. Where dirt had been dug away, the rock glinted with pure, primary colors. The sudden display of color caught the rest of the children. Immediately, each child was determined to own the rock. They began to fight in earnest under the indulgent eyes of an adult.

Fssa’s sharp whistle called Kirtn’s attention back to the area beyond the curving blue lines dividing safe from unsafe territory. The whistle woke Rheba. Slowly she sat up, stretching and scratching the new lines on her lower arms, looking at the new slaves in the distance.

There were seven people, three furred, four unfurred. All of them walked slowly although at that distance Rheba could not see any injuries. All of the people were of medium height with compact, sinewy bodies. Despite their labored steps, there was a suggestion of muscular suppleness in each person’s body.

“Do you know their race?” asked Kirtn.

Fssa did not answer. His whole body shifted and seethed with his efforts to scan the sounds and shapes of the new people. Kirtn looked back at the group. They were at least five minutes away from sanctuary. As he watched, one of the furred ones staggered and fell.

Kirtn started forward, only to be stopped by Fssa’s urgent warning. “No! Look!”

From the bushes just beyond the lines, figures began to emerge. There were three, then five, then nine, ill-assorted races like those Kirtn and Rheba had met near the trap of the First People. The nine made no move to attack. They simply watched the new slaves limp toward safety, supporting the woman who had fallen.

Behind Kirtn, coming closer, the shrill anger of Gellean children drowned whatever sounds anyone else might have made, frustrating Fssa’s attempts to scan the two groups. Kirtn made an impatient noise. He felt Rheba’s hand on his arm, lightly restraining.

“Some cultures are violently insulted by interference, even when it’s well meant,” she said, watching the new slaves slowly approach. “And they’re not badly overmatched.”

“And there aren’t any children at stake?” asked Kirtn, his voice Lighter than the expression on his face. He understood the implication beneath her words, but he did not like—to preserve his safety at the expense of others. Tension narrowed his eyes until they were almost invisible in his gold Bre’n mask.

“I don’t like it any better than you do ... but, yes, there aren’t any children in danger.”

Yet even as she spoke, her hair began to whisper with gathering energy. Tiny sparks leaped where her hand rested on Kirtn’s arm, but she did not notice. He did, and was frightened that she did not.

“No!” he whistled sharply. “You’re not recovered from yesterday. Your control is gone.”

She withdrew her hand and said nothing. Her hair moved disturbingly. She lost almost as much energy as she gathered. She could accomplish nothing at this distance. If she crossed the lines she would be doing well to defend herself, much less others.

Seven people limped closer, as though drawn by the shrill cries of Gellean children. The nine slaves who had slunk out of the bushes shifted restlessly, but waited for the new slaves to come to them.

The clearing,” said Kirtn angrily. “They’re waiting in the clearing so that none of the new slaves will be able to run away and hide.”

Fssa writhed. Quills were replaced by a light-shot, steel-colored dish that was trained on the approaching slaves. He made a whistle of frustration when one of the ambushers moved, unknowingly coming between him and his targets. Kirtn snatched the snake off its knee-high boulder and held him high. Instantly the dish shifted its angle downward.

Adult Gellean voices joined the angry children’s shrieks. The fighting children simply screamed louder. Obviously the fight was getting out of hand. Children snatched at the coveted rock, hot no one child managed to hang on to it for more than a few seconds. The screams subsided as children saved their breath for chasing whoever managed to grab the colorful trophy.

Into the relative silence came the rough voice of one of the men who was waiting. It took a moment for Rheba to realize that it was Fssa’s translation, rather than the man himself, that she was hearing.

“—told you they were J/taals,” he said in Universal. “The men are smoothies and the women are furries. Wonder if they’re furry on the inside, too.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” said a short man. Then, nervously. “But if they’re J/taals, where are their damn clepts?”

“What?”

“Their war dogs.”

“Oh. Dead, I guess.” Dryly. “This planet is hard on the new ones.”

“Nothing’s that hard. Clepts are mean.”

The tall man turned to the short one, “Do you see any clepts?”

“No.”

“Then there aren’t any.”

“You sure the J/taals aren’t employed?” asked the short man.

“If they were employed, they sure as sunrise wouldn’t be in the Fold, stupid. Nobody takes them alive if they’re employed. But if they aren’t,” he laughed, “they can’t fight at all.”

The seven J/taals kept on walking toward the promised sanctuary beyond the blue lines as though no one stood between them and their goal. If they understood Universal, they gave no sign of it.

“What do they mean about not fighting?” whispered Rheba.

“I don’t know,” said Kirtn softly. “It doesn’t make sense.”

They watched the J/taals reform into a wedge-shaped group with the injured woman in the center. After a moment, they began a ragged run toward the blue lines of sanctuary.

“Watch it!” yelled the tall man. “They’re trying to run through. Grab them! Once you lay a hand on them, they can’t—”

Enraged shrieks from Gellean children overrode Fssa’s translation.

The J/taals rushed their ambushers, only to be peeled away from the protective wedge formation one by one. Once caught, they did not fight, no matter what their captors did to them. Ambushers who had been bruised in the first rush began methodically beating captives into unconsciousness. No J/taal retaliated. When two men dragged a furry shape down to the ground and began mauling her, hoarse sounds, from her friends were the only response.

Kirtn and Rheba watched in stunned disbelief. The J/taals were tired, injured, yet obviously strong. Why didn’t they fight?

Another J/taal woman was tripped and dragged to the ground. The few J/taals still conscious screamed in frustration and anguish at what was happening to their women ... and did nothing.

A Gellean child streaked past Kirtn, holding a bright rock in her arms. She turned and called insults over her shoulder, goading her slower siblings. They howled after her in a ragged pack. The adults curled their way through the children, yelling at the fleet girl. She looked back over her shoulder again—and ran right over the blue lines of sanctuary. Within seconds, she was grabbed by a scavenger slave.

Tenuous lightning flared from Rheba’s hands, but the distance was too great for a tired fire dancer. “The child!” she screamed. “Save the child!”

IX

Reflexively, Fssa translated Rheba’s cry into a form the J/taals could respond to. The result was incredible. Only one J/taal was still conscious, but it was enough. She killed her rapists with two blows, then leaped to her feet, moving so quickly among the scavenger slaves that she was more blur than fixed reality.

Within moments the nine attackers were dead. The Gellean child, frightened by the J/taal’s ferocity, dropped the multicolored stone and fled back across the lines to the sanctuary of the well. The J/taal woman watched until the child reached its own kind, then she turned to face Rheba. As the J/taal spoke, Fssa translated.

“She asks if you believe the child to be safe now.”

“Tell her yes.”

The woman spoke again. Again, the snake translated so quickly that his voice came to Rheba like a split-instant echo overlaying the J/taal’s hoarse voice. Very quickly, Rheba forgot that her words were being translated, as were the J/taal’s words. Fssa was like having one of the fabled Zaarain translators implanted in her skull.

“May I have your permission to check on the other J/taal units and call in the clepts?” asked the woman.

“My permission—” Rheba turned toward Fssa. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

“They are J/taals. Mercenaries. You hired them.”

“I—what?” Then, before Fssa could whistle a note, she turned back to the J/taal, “Do what you can for your friends. If they need more than food, water and warmth, I’m afraid we can’t help you.” She returned her attention to Fssa. “All right, snake. Explain.”

Fssa smoothed out his body until he shimmered metallic gold and white. Among Fssireeme, it was considered a shape of great beauty. Rheba waited, sensing that the snake was uncomfortable with something he had done.

“When you called out for someone to help the child,” Fssa whistled in seductive Bre’n, “I ... ah ... phrased your request in such a way as to hire the J/taals. They can’t fight unless they’re employed, and they were the only ones close enough to save the child. Do you understand? The J/taal’s have to be employed, even to defend themselves. It’s built into their genes the way translation is built into mine.”

“And the need to have and protect children is built into mine,” sighed Rheba. “Yes, snake. I understand.” She closed her eyes and saw again the lethal efficiency of the J/taal woman. “Mercenaries. But I can’t pay them. I’m a slave.”

Fssa rippled in the Fssireeme equivalent of a blush, “Well, yes. Of course. Money isn’t any good to slaves anyway.”

She began to understand. “Snake, what did you promise the J/taals?”

“Freedom. A ride home.”

Rheba said several things that Fssa would have blushed black to translate. He began to shrink in upon himself until he was as small as he had been when she plucked him out of hiding in the thicket. There was silence. Then she spoke again in a voice that trembled with the strain of being reasonable. “I can’t give them freedom.”

The snake’s whistle was soft and very sweet, begging understanding and patience. “The J/taal woman knows that. I merely told her that if we and they survived the Fold, and found a way to be free, you would take them home if we could steal back your ship.”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Well, of course. Ask if she needs help with her friends.”

Fssa whipped into a shape that allowed him to speak J/taal. The woman looked up. She bowed her head toward Rheba and spoke in a low voice, “I thank the First and Last God for your kindness; My units would have been honored to die at your hands. Few J/taaleri—employers—are so kind. But it won’t be necessary for you to bruise your hands on J/taal flesh. I’ve freed those who could not heal or kill themselves.”

“You’ve killed—by the Inmost Fire—snake, stop translating my words!”

Fssa fell silent. Rheba watched as the woman caressed the face of a fallen male, stroked the dark fur of an unmoving female, and knelt by another male. Her hands moved slowly, touching his face as though to memorize it with her fingertips. With an obvious effort, she looked away from the dead man and forced herself to her feet. Her black fur was dull with blood and dirt. She swayed, then caught herself.

“With your permission, J/taaleri, I’ll guard the living units until they can guard themselves again.”

Rheba looked toward Fssa. The snake’s bright sensors watched her. “I don’t want to say anything that will harm the living J/taals,” she said. “Would it be all right to offer to move the wounded inside the sanctuary?”

“Yes! Scavengers are gathering, both human and animal. Tell her to call in her clepts. Now that she’s employed, she can use the war dogs. And tell her to hurry!”

“You tell her. You’re the Fssireeme.”

Fssa relayed a babble of hoarse sound. Immediately the woman sent out a ululation so high it made Rheba’s head ache. The sound pulsed and swooped, then soared to an imperative that could shatter steel. Suddenly, Fssa began undergoing an astonishing metamorphosis. When he was finished, a number of bizarre listening devices were centered on the ground between himself and the J/taals. She stared, but saw nothing except the sparkling rock that had nearly cost a child’s life.

Uneasily, Kirtn watched the bushes and trees surrounding the clearing where scavenger slaves had faced J/taals. Although he lacked the snake’s ultrasensitive hearing, the Bre’n sensed that there were unseen people in the brush, as well as animals gathering courage, waiting for an unguarded moment.

“I’m going to help her bring them in,” he said suddenly. “She may be death on two feet, but she’s nearly dead herself right now. She can’t hold off another attack.”

As he crossed the sanctuary lines, the agonizing clept call stopped, much to Rheba’s relief. She rubbed her aching head and started after Kirtn.

“Woman,” said a voice suddenly. “You’ve helped us. How may we help you?” The speaker’s Universal was harsh, but understandable.

Rheba turned and saw one of the Gellean men standing at a polite—safe—distance. “It was a small thing,” she said quickly, wanting to go with Kirtn. “I don’t need repayment.”

“Wait!” The man’s face changed in obvious distress. He seemed to be struggling with words he could not speak. Fssa began whistling urgently in Bre’n.

“Unless you want a Gellean child, you’d better let him repay you.”

“What?”

“It’s the Gellean way. You saved the child. If they can’t help you, they forfeit the child.”

“Ice and ashes!” swore Rheba, turning to look at Kirtn, farther away now, halfway to the fallen J/taals, “Tell him to help Kirtn bring in the wounded J/taals. And make sure the J/taal woman knows they’re trying to help!”

Fssa spoke quickly to the man in his own language. He bowed deeply and smiled. Another adult Gellean joined him, moving with a speed that would have impressed Rheba if she had not seen a J/taal woman in action. Very quickly, the four unconscious J/taals were transferred to the sanctuary. Rheba turned to thank the Gelleans, then thought better of it.

“Fssa,” she said in Senyas, the language of precision. “Tell the Gelleans whatever is polite, but don’t make or break any bargains. Can you manage that?”

The snake hissed to himself for a moment, confused. “Is there anything wrong with a simple thank you?”

“How would I know? You’re the Gellean expert.”

“I only know what everyone knows about Gelleans,” whistled Fssa with overtones of exasperation.

“Snake—just don’t make any bargains that you, personally, can’t keep!”

Whatever Fssa said seemed to satisfy both Gelleans. They bowed again and returned quickly to their grove.

“In the future,” she said to Fssa, “when you interpret for me, don’t say anything I didn’t say first, and don’t let me say anything that will get us in trouble. Understand?”

Fssa’s hide darkened until it was almost black. “Yes.”

“How are they?” asked Rheba as Kirtn walked up to her.

“Bruised. Broken bones. Knife and energy-gun wounds partly healed. They’re tough people. Their flesh is as dense as Fssa’s. One of the men is conscious. She’s working on him now.” He turned and watched the J/taal admiringly. “If they hadn’t been badly wounded to start with, those scavengers would have had to work all day to beat them to death.”

Rheba watched the black-furred J/taal as she checked on her companions. She raced with vision-blurring speed to the white fountain, drank, then raced back. She bent over one of the men and began patiently dripping water from her mouth into his.

“Can we help her?” asked Rheba.

“She was uneasy when I touched them,” answered Kirtn.

She watched for a moment longer. “The bodies,” she said to Fssa. “Should we just leave them there?”

“J/taals always leave the dead where they fall. They burn their dead when they can.” The snake rippled with metallic colors. “They can’t, here. They won the battle, but there’s no fire.”

She looked at the woman tending her comrades, then back at the bodies. “Do they put much value on the burning?”

“Yes. If J/taals aren’t moved after death and if their bodies are burned, they’ll be reborn. Otherwise, they’re lost in eternity.”

Whether or not the J/taals’ beliefs were accurate, they determined how the survivors felt about their dead and about themselves. Kirtn glanced at Rheba. She tipped her head in agreement. He began gathering fragments of wood and dried leaves. When he started across the lines toward the bodies. Fssa shrilled suddenly.

“Scavengers! It’s not safe! Once you’re beyond the lines the Fold won’t protect you!” When Kirtn ignored him, the snake turned to Rheba. “Stop him! It’s insane!”

“The J/taal woman saved a child. That was more than we could do on Deva ... or Loo. We’re akhenet, snake. Children are our Inmost Fire.”

Fssa hissed in confusion, then turned toward the J/taal. Hoarse words poured out of him. Instantly the woman abandoned her comrades and went beyond the lines to protect Kirtn while he scrounged for inflammable debris. Rheba stayed within the lines, gathering strength until the last moment Her hair whipped and sparked erratically. Slowly, she brought herself under control. By the time the bodies had symbolic pyres built on them, she was ready.

She walked over the lines, seeing nothing but the pyres. They were barely adequate for her purpose, but it would be easier to begin with them than with flesh. Once started, the flames could be guided within the bodies until they were no more than ashes lifting in the Fold’s fitful wind.

When the air around her began to shimmer, Kirtn stepped into position behind her. His hands went to her shoulders, long fingers spread to touch points of greatest energy flow. Beneath the level of her consciousness, Bre’n savagery flowed, coiling around fire dancer’s desire.

The pyres exploded into white flame. Rheba did not see it She sensed only the incandescent wine of energy flowing molten in her mind, becoming lightning in her veins. She felt the eager flammability of wood, the tiny bright flashes of fur evaporating into fire, the slow deep surge of heat as the bodies sought to become ash.

She guided the forces, holding them beneath the threshold of fire until bone and sinew alike were ready to ignite. It was a complex shaping of energies, but all fire dancers learned it. It was their duty to see that the dead envelope of human flesh received a fitting transformation. Few fire dancers enjoyed performing the ritual; but all learned how in their fifteenth year.

She let the fire go.

The bodies vaporized in a white flash that left no odor and very few ashes. The J/taal fell to her knees, her hands over her blinded eyes. She made small sounds Fssa translated as joy.

“Tell her,” Rheba said in a ragged voice, “tell her I’m sorry I had to use the pyres as a crutch. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to burn my own dead.” In that, at least, Deva’s sun had not failed its children. It was small comfort, but she dung to it all the more for its scarcity.

As Kirtn guided Rheba and the J/taal back inside the lines, eerie, harmonic howls issued out of the bushes. Waist-high, muscular, lean, three clepts converged on the scorched ground where their masters had died. The J/taal ululated briefly. The silver-eyed, tiger-striped reptiloids loped over the sanctuary lines to the woman’s side. She gestured blindly toward Rheba.

“Hold still,” said Fssa urgently. “It’s all right, but don’t move.”

The clepts licked, sniffed and very gently tasted their way across Rheba’s and Kirtn’s bodies. When the J/taal was satisfied that the new scents were indelibly imprinted on the clepts, she made a low sound. The animals fanned outward, ranging nearby in restless circles that had the J/taaleri as its center.

“We’ll be safe tonight,” said Kirtn, noting the reptiloids’ soft-footed, deadly strength.

“I’m not going to wait that long to sleep.”

Without another word, she curled up on the ground and went into the profound restorative unconsciousness all akhenets learned. Despite the clepts, Kirtn sat protectively beside her, watching her with luminous gold eyes. From time to time he touched her lips lightly, waited, then withdrew, reassured by the warmth of her breath on his fingertips.

After a long time he lay beside her, one finger resting lightly on her neck, counting her pulse as though it were his own. No impatience showed on his face; exhausted akhenets had been known to sleep for five days at a time.

X

It was less than a day before Rheba awoke with a headache that made her grind her teeth. She scratched her arms furiously. The quasi-metal lines of power still itched as her body accommodated itself to the new tissue. Pain stabbed at her temples, then subsided.

“How are you feeling?” asked Kirtn.

“Should have slept longer. Headache.” She stifled a groan and grabbed her forehead.

“Mine aches too,” he said.

She winced. “Disease?” Her voice was ragged, fearful.

“The J/taal has a headache, but it could have come from the beating she took.” He rolled his head on his powerful neck, loosening muscles that were tensed against pain. “No fever, though, and no nausea.”

She muttered something about small blessings. She looked around very slowly, for quick moves brought blinding knives of pairs. The clepts lay at equidistant points of a circle with her at its center. The J/taals appeared to be sleeping. Fssa was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s our magic snake?” she asked, looking around again.

“Over there. At the lines.”

She looked beyond Kirtn’s long finger. At first she could not see Fssa. Then she realized that what looked like a bizarre fungus was actually the snake. “What’s he doing? Is that his sleeping shape? Is he sick?”

“He’s not sick, not even a headache. Of course,” dryly, “that could be because he doesn’t have a head to ache at the moment.”

She stared. Fssa altered shape abruptly. A quiver went through one part of his body. She closed her eyes and knuckled her temples. The pain intensified, then subsided.

From behind her came a low groan. The J/taal woman was waking up. Rheba turned to ask how the J/taal felt, then realized that conversation was impossible without the snake.

“Fssa,” she called through clenched teeth. “Fssa!”

The Fssireeme whistled to her without visibly changing form. Whistles were the simplest mode of communication for the snake.

“I need you,” she called. “The J/taals are waking up.” Then, hands yanking at her hair, “By the Last Flame, my head is killing me!”

Kirtn, his lips flattened across his teeth in a silent snarl, said nothing. He closed his eyes and listened to J/taal groans. Gradually, agony subsided to a dull ache, like that of nerves that have been overstressed. Fssa slithered up with a cheerful greeting. Kirtn managed not to strangle the snake. Rheba’s fingers twitched, but she, too, restrained herself.

“Ask the J/taals if they need anything. We’ll bring water if they’ll accept it from our mouths,” she said hoarsely.

Fssa flexed into his J/taal speech mode. As the answer came, he simultaneously translated for Rheba. His skill made it easy for his audience to forget that there was a translator at work.

The J/taal female bowed to Rheba, hands open and relaxed, eyes closed, utterly at the mercy of her J/taaleri. “Thank you. As soon as they all wake, we’ll complete the tkleet.”

“Tkleet?” said Rheba.

“The employment ritual,” murmured Fssa in Senyas.

Rheba looked at the snake as a way of telling him that what she said was for him only, not to be translated, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I’m merely a translator, remember?”

“You’re an insubordinate echo,” snapped Rheba.

“Is that unbeautiful?” whistled Fssa mournfully, deflating before her eyes.

She smiled in spite of herself, “No. But what is tkleet?”

“I don’t know,” admitted the snake.

“Can you find out?”

She waited while Fssa and the J/taal exchanged hoarse noises.

“It’s a simple naming ceremony,” said Fssa. “She presents herself and the other units and then you give them names.”

“Don’t they already have names?”

A shrug rippled down Fssa’s lithe body. “Most J/taaleris apparently like to give the units names. It marks the J/taals as their employees.”

Rheba grimaced, “That’s too much like slavery. If they don’t have names, they can choose their own.” She came slowly to her feet, expecting a resurgence of her shattering headache each time she moved. “Tell her that we’ll have the ,.. tkleet... after her friends are cared for.”

Fssa spoke rapidly, then turned his opalescent sensors back on Rheba. “Will you need me until then?”

“No.”

Fssa slithered off in the direction he had come. When he reached the lines marking the end of sanctuary, he stopped and unfolded into the same bizarre fungal mode he had previously used. She watched for a moment, then turned toward the well.

As she, Kirtn and the female J/taal carried water to the injured, their headaches returned. Other than groaning and grinding their teeth, there was little to be done. Movement seemed to set off the pains, but the wounded J/taals needed water. Finally, the J/taals could drink no more. Kirtn gently checked their injuries. They were healing with remarkable speed. Where bones had been broken, the swellings were gone and the bruises had faded to smears of indeterminate color concealed by dark fur or skin.

“At this rate, they’ll be on their feet by sunset.”

“At this rate,” Rheba said, teeth clenched, “I’ll be dead by sunset.”

He almost smiled. “No you won’t You’ll just wish you were.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

The pains stopped, then came with redoubled force. She cried out involuntarily. So did Kirtn and the J/taals. The clepts howled. Paralyzed by pain, she clung to the Bre’n. The agony stopped, leaving her sweaty and limp.

“What’s wrong with us?” she cried.

Kirtn held her, stroking her hair. Though he was affected by the pains, he was much less susceptible than she was. “I don’t know. It’s no disease, though. We felt it at the same time. So did the J/taals and clepts.”

“Is it Loo torture? I thought we were supposed to be safe inside the circles.”

“I don’t know.” Kirtn gathered her against his body as though be could shield her from whatever caused pain. “Maybe Fssa knows. He’s been here a long time.” He covered her ears and whistled a Bre’n imperative.

Fssa answered after a long pause. Overtones of reluctance were clear in the snake’s Bre’n whistle. Whatever he was doing, he preferred not to be disturbed.

“Then stay there, you cherf,” muttered Rheba, counting each heartbeat like a knife turning behind her eyes.

Kirtn, however, did not give up. “Listen to me, snake. We’re all in pain, even the clepts. It’s not a disease. Have you ever heard of the Loos torturing their Fold slaves by giving them mind-splitting headaches?”

Fssa wavered, then folded in upon himself until he was in his ground-traveling mode. He undulated over to Rheba and turned his sensors on her. “Torture? Is it that bad?”

“Yes!” Slowly, she uncurled her arms, clenched around Kirtn’s neck in a hold that would have been too painful for a Senyas to bear. “It comes and goes.” She winced, rubbing her temples with hands that shook. ‘Even when it goes, it aches. I feel as if an army of cherfs were using my brain for slap ball.”

Fssa cocked his head from side to side, bringing the opalescent pits to bear on her from various angles. Then he began a startling series of changes. He moved so rapidly that he resembled a computer display showing all possible variations on the theme of Fssireeme. “If there’s an energy source pointed in your direction, I can’t sense it,” he said at last. “And if I can’t sense it, either it doesn’t exist or it isn’t turned on now.”

“Stay here and keep listening,” said Kirtn.

Fssa whistled mournfully.

The Bre’n’s whistle was shrill, a sound crackling with impatience. “The fire dancer hurts,” he said, as though that ended all possibility of argument. And for him, it did.

“So do the rest of you,” she said.

“So does it,” whistled Fssa softly, “I think.”

“It? What are you talking about?” asked Kirtn.

“The rock.”

“The rock,” repeated Kirtn, looking around quickly. There were rocks of all sizes and shapes nearby. “Which rock?”

Fssa whipped out a pointing quill. “That one,” he whistled, indicating the rock the Gellean children had fought over.

“Is it one of the First People?” asked Rheba, pulling herself up to look over Kirtn’s shoulder.

Fssa hesitated. “It could be, but ...” His body rippled with metallic highlights as he shifted into a half-fungus position, “It just doesn’t feel like one of them. Yet it feels as if it’s alive. It’s distressed. I keep getting images of pieces of it being torn off and ground to colored dust.” His sensors turned back to Rheba. His Bre’n whistle was both wistful and seductive, pleading with her emotions. “Could you save it, fire dancer? It’s not a child—at least I don’t think it is—but it feels alive.”

Kirtn smiled as Rheba muttered about magic snakes and menageries. She sighed. “Tell the J/taal to send the clepts to guard Kirtn while he picks up the damn rock.”

Fssa, who had listened to the J/taal speak to her clepts, went directly to the animals. He galvanized them with a curdling ululation. They formed a moving guard around Kirtn as he went toward the rock. The instant he crossed out of sanctuary, the bushes began to rustle. As he bent down to pick up the rock, three men rushed out. A clept leaped forward in a blur of speed. Fangs flashed. One man fell, another screamed. All retreated to the concealing brush. The clepts watched, but did not follow; they had been told to guard, not to attack.

Holding the rock, Kirtn watched the wounded scavenger crawl back under cover. The closest clept turned and regarded Kirtn with oblong silver eyes. Blood shone against its pale muzzle. It resumed its guard position at a point equidistant from the other clepts.

“Glad you’re with me,” muttered the Bre’n. “I’d hate to be against you.” He looked at the rock in his hands. It was a grubby specimen, unprepossessing but for an occasional flash of pure color. “Alive or not, you could use a scrub.”

Light winked across the few crystals that were not obscured by dirt.

“Was that yes or no?”

Sun glittered across the stone as he turned it.

“A definite maybe,” he said. ‘To the well with you. The white side, of course. Even though you aren’t furry, I doubt if the Loos would like you bathing at their precious blue well.”

Ignoring the waiting people, Kirtn went to the well, grabbed a handful of twigs for a scrubber, and went to work on the stone. Mud fell away in sticky clots. When he was finished, he whistled with surprise and delight. The stone was an odd crystal formation that contained every color in the visible spectrum. Rheba, who had walked up halfway through the stone’s bath, was equally impressed. Fssa, dangling around her neck, was not.

“It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. “Like a rainbow, only much more concentrated.”

“As useless as a rainbow, too,” whistled Fssa, using a minor key that was as irritating as steel scraped over slate.

“It was your idea to rescue this bauble,” pointed out Kirtn. “So keep your many mouths shut.”

“Fssireeme don’t have mouths,” Fssa snapped. “And it doesn’t look as pretty as a rainbow.”

Kirtn laughed. “You’re jealous.”

“Of your mouth?” whistled Fssa indignantly.

“No. Of the stone’s beauty.”

The snake subsided. He slid down Rheba’s arm, dangled from her wrist and dropped onto the ground.

“You’re beautiful,” whistled the Bre’n, squatting down beside the snake and balancing the stone on his leg.

Light rippled and gleamed across Fssa’s body. Colors seemed to swirl into the sensors that were trained on Kirtn, “That’s the third time you’ve told me that today. Our bargain was only for twice.”

Fingertips traced the snake’s delicate head scales. “You’re beautiful more than twice a day.”

Fssa quivered. A superb Bre’n trill filled the air with color. Rheba sat on her heels next to Kirtn and watched Fssa.

“You really were jealous, weren’t you?” she asked.

“It’s not easy to give up being beautiful.” Fssa’s whistle was mournful but resigned.

“More than one thing at a time can be beautiful. Rainbow’s beauty doesn’t subtract from yours.”

“Rainbow? Oh, the rock.” Fssa sighed. “You’re right, I suppose. And I wouldn’t have left it out there even if I’d known how pretty it was. It was frightened. At least I think it was. Maybe,” he continued hopefully, “maybe it isn’t alive after all.”

He assumed his fungus shape. After a few moments he rippled, then quivered violently. Instantly, Rheba cried out in pain. Agony sliced through her brain in great sweeping arcs that threatened to blind her.

“Stop!” screamed Rheba. When Fssa seemed not to hear, she lashed out with her hand, knocking him off balance. “Stop it!”

Abruptly the agony ended. She slumped to the ground, dazed by the absence of pain. Fssa’s sensors went from one to the other of his friends. “What’s wrong?. I wasn’t doing—I didn’t mean—are you all right?”

Kirtn answered the urgent whistle with a reassuring touch. “Whatever you were doing to scan that rock was causing us a lot of pain.”

“I?” whistled the snake. “After my first question, I didn’t focus a single sound wave. I was only listening.” Then, “Oh. Of course. It’s alive after all. Rainbow. A very difficult frequency, though. Complex and multileveled, with resonances that... I wonder ...”

Fssa snapped into his fungus shape, only thinner this time, and more curved. Slow ripples swept through his body. Rheba screamed as Rainbow answered. The fungus collapsed into a chagrined Fssireeme.

“I’m sorry, but I had to be sure. Rainbow is alive. I still don’t think it’s a First People, but I can’t be sure until I learn its language. Now that I’m collecting its full range, things should go more quickly.”

“No,” she said raggedly. “I don’t care if that’s the First People’s Flawless Crystal in person. Every tune it talks my brain turns to fire. Keep it quiet or I’ll—oh!” She grabbed her head. “To think I called it pretty! Shut it up, snake. Shut it up!”

The fire in her mind slowly burned out. She opened her eyes and stared warily at the rock. Luminous colors flashed from every crystal spire. Pure light pooled in hollows and scintillated from crystal peaks. The crystals were lucent, absolutely flawless. Rainbow was a crown fit for a Zaarain god.

She groaned and wished she had never seen it.

XI

“All right,” Rheba said, looking around at Kirtn and the J/taals. “You’ve had several days to think about it. Now, how do we get out of here?”

Fssa translated her words like a musical echo, leaving out only the undertone of strain that was the legacy of Rainbow’s bizarre frequencies. This was the first day she had felt able to string together two coherent thoughts, much less plan an escape from the Loo-chim Fold. The snake did his translations from his favorite place, hidden in her long hair, revealing only enough of himself to speak. As J/taal required little more than a flexible orifice, a pseudo-tongue, and bellows to pump air, he was hidden but for the stirring of her hair with each of his “breaths.”

The J/taals listened, then turned and looked at the woman they called M/dere—Strategist. She was the one who had accepted employment in the name of all the J/taals. Rest, water and food had restored her health, a fact that was reflected in the vitreous luster of her black fur. Her four friends were wholly recovered also, and had proved it by spending many hours doing intricate gymnastics that both toned and relaxed their bodies.

M/dere looked at each of the J/taals in turn, silently gathering information from them. They had a species-specific telepathy that greatly aided them in then: mercenary work. They used their voices only to communicate with non-J/taals. As a result, their language was simple and their voices unrefined.

“As you asked, we have shared our memories,” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, J/taaleri. No one has ever escaped from the Fold that we know of. Not even in legend. Once outside the Fold, some might have escaped from their slave masters and either hidden themselves in the wild places or managed to get off planet in a stolen ship. There are at least rumors pointing toward such escapes.”

“Fine. Now, how do we get out of the Fold?” asked Kirtn.

“Excuse me. M/dur has special information about the Fold,” She exchanged a long silence with M/dur, the male whom she had nursed with special care. He was their best fighter; as such, he had the second-strongest vote in their council. M/dere blinked, revealing eyes as green as aged copper. “Slaves of potential value are kept in the Fold until they are Adjusted.”

“Yes, but how long does that take?” asked Rheba.

“It varies with each slave. Adjusted slaves stay within the sanctuary lines. UnAdjusted slaves stay outside the lines except to eat or drink.”

“But don’t the Loos care which slaves do which?”

Fssa translated Rheba’s tangled question with a hiss of reproval that only she heard.

“Loos,” answered M/dere, “don’t care about unAdjusted slaves.”

“Makes sense,” said Kirtn. “If you’re too dumb, mean or stubborn to survive on Loo terms, they don’t want you as a slave. You’d be more trouble than you’re worth. UnAdjusted.”

M/dur snapped his fingers together, the J/taal way of expressing agreement.

“AH right,” said Rheba. “We’re inside the sanctuary, healthy, and willing to eat ashes in order to get out of the Fold. In short, we’re Adjusted. How do we get their attention so they’ll take us out of here?”

The J/taals exchanged looks, but M/dere remained silent. No one had an answer for Rheba.

Fssa whistled sweetly in her ear. “In the time I’ve been in the Fold, I’ve noticed that every thirty-eight days there’s a lot of activity around the well. The ceiling changes and people come down. Slaves who are gathered around the well divide into groups. The ceiling comes down again. People and some slaves leave.”

“But how are the slaves who leave chosen?”

“I don’t know. I could ask Rainbow. It knows a lot of—”

“No!” said Kirtn and Rheba together, not wanting a rebirth of her debilitating headaches. She added, “I doubt if that rock learned anything buried in the ground.” Frustration crackled around her in a display of temper that would have brought a rebuke to a much younger fire dancer than she was. “Why in the name of the Inmost Fire didn’t Trader Jal teach us something useful?”

“He made it plain that you would have to play more spectacular fire games if you wanted the Loo-chim to buy you,” said Kirtn, remembering the Loo-chim’s dismissal of her creation of fire images on their transparent chamber walls.

“Fine,” she snapped, “But how will that help you to stay with me? How will that help the J/taals to stay with us so we can keep our promise to them? And Fssa? What about him?”

One of the clepts snarled chillingly. M/dur looked up and spotted a small, angular man lurking around the edge of the piece of ground they had marked off as their camp. The clept snarled again, showing a flash of blue-white teeth.

“Please,” said the man in hurried Universal. “Not to harm this miserable slave. I’m born of a weak species, no more aggressive than flowers, not a bit.”

M/dur looked at Rheba. The J/taal did not understand Universal, and Fssa had not been told to translate for the stranger.

“What do you want?” said Kirtn, standing up.

The man made a low sound of fear as he measured Kirtn’s size. He turned to Rheba and said pleadingly, “Gentleher, all I want is out of this kaza-flatching Fold!”

Some of the words might be unfamiliar, but the sentiment was not. Rheba’s lips twitched in a barely controlled smile, “Come away from the bush. We won’t hurt you.” Then, to Fssa, “Translate for the J/taals, snake.”

The man came forward with tiny steps, bowing to her every other instant until he looked like a stick bobbing in a wild current. “Gentleher, my name is Yo Kerraton Dapsl. Dapsl, please. So much easier among friends and I very much want to be your friend,” he said fervently.

She looked at the small, sticklike figure moving crabwise out of the brush—His skin was very dark, more purple than brown, stretched across bones barely softened by flesh. He stood no higher than her breast, making even the J/taals’ compact bodies seem tall. His eyes were the color of white wine, with no pupil. The Fold’s murky light seemed far too bright for him. It was a miracle that be had survived the trek from the wall to the well.

“How did you get this far, Dapsl?” said Kirtn, echoing her thoughts.

Dapsl moved in obvious distress, closing his eyes and bowing his head. A clept growled. “I—that is—it was—” He ran his hands over his thin face and frail arms. “It was—I don’t—”

“It’s all right, Dapsl,” she said gently. “It must have been terrible far you, but you survived. You’re safe, now.”

Dapsl shuddered so violently that his Fold robe quaked. “Yes, that’s right,” he said quickly. “I survived, didn’t I? After all, I’m here so it’s obvious that I survived. Yes. Quite clever. Yes.”

Rheba looked at the man, then at Kirtn. “He’s a little mad, isn’t he?” she asked in Senyas.

Two clepts snarled, then howled, watching Dapsl with hungry silver eyes. He made a frightened sound and began muttering prayers to purple gods.

“Silence the clepts,” said Rheba to M/dere, “He’s about as threatening as a flower.”

M/dur muttered to a clept. Fssa’s acute hearing translated the comment, but only for Rheba’s ear. “He says that he’s known some pretty deadly flowers.”

“Yes,” said Rheba impatiently, “but what can Dapsl do to us here?”

M/dere and M/dur exchanged a long silence, then he made a gesture that was the J/taal equivalent of a shrug. She turned toward Rheba. “Whatever the J/taaleri wishes.”

Rheba turned back toward Dapsl, “What do you want from us?”

“A simple exchange, gentleher. My information for a place in your Act.”

“I don’t understand.”

He smiled, revealing ivory teeth. “I know. Is it a bargain, then?”

Kirtn’s hand moved to her arm, subtly restraining. “He may be child-sized, and nearly as helpless,” whistled Kirtn, “but he plainly is an adult of his species. Don’t let your instincts rule you.”

She looked into Kirtn’s eyes. The impatient comment she had been about to make died on her lips. “Mentor, will I ever stop learning from you?” she whistled in Bre’n.

He smiled and stroked her arm beneath the loose Fold robe. “No one is mentor here. We all learn from each other—or die.”

She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. Dapsl made a sound that could have been distress or disgust. Kirtn looked up with clear golden eyes.

“Is it a bargain?” repeated Dapsl.

“How long have you been in the Fold?” said the Bre’n.

“What do you know about the Loo that might help us? Why can’t you help yourself with all your information? Why do you need us?”

An emotion that could have been anger or unhappiness distorted Dapsl’s thin face. “If I answer all your questions, I won’t have anything to bargain with, will I?”

“If you don’t answer some of our questions, you won’t have any bargain,” shot back Kirtn.

Dapsl hesitated. “My information is good. I’ve been out of the Fold. I’m back here as ... punishment. But I know what you need to know. I know how to get out of the Fold!”

“As slaves or as free men?”

Dapsl’s laugh was shrill. “Slaves, of course. The only free men who leave here are dead. Didn’t you know₅ furry? There’s no escape from the Fold—except one.”

Kirtn grunted. “Keep talking, small man. We want to get out of the Fold.”

“Then you have to be chosen. And to be chosen, you have to have an Act that is good enough to perform at the Loo-chim Concatenation.”

“What does that mean?”

“Our bargain.” The voice was prim, inflexible. “I won’t say more without a bargain.”

Kirtn and Dapsl stared at each other.

“I could peel the truth from it,” said M/dere calmly, her eyes as cold as a clept’s. “I could peel it one layer at a tune. That wouldn’t take long. It’s such a little thing.”

Fssa’s translation went no farther than Rheba’s ear. “In return for information,” she said hastily, “you want to be part of our Act?”

“Yes,” said Dapsl eagerly. “It’s my only way out of the Fold.”

She stared at Dapsl, weighing him. She closed her eyes. It was easier that way. His voice was adult; his body that of a child. Akhenet instincts were inflexible where children were concerned. “Kirtn?” she whistled. “Shall I put it to a count?”

He whistled a brief note of agreement.

“J/taals,” she said. “Count yourselves for and against Dapsl’s bargain.”

The silence was brief. M/dere spoke, but her eyes were on Dapsl the whole time. “We must have information, J/taaleri. And if he causes trouble, we can always feed him to the clepts.”

Dapsl shuddered, for Fssa had made sure that the translation carried to the little man.

“Kirtn?” she asked.

“Yes. We need information.”

Fssa whistled a soft affirmative in her ear, a sound both Bre’n and Fssireeme at once.

“Then it’s done,” she said, turning toward the frail, frightened man. “Your information for a place in our Act—whatever that might be.”

Dapsl sighed and sidled closer to her, trying to stay as far away as possible from the clepts and the J/taals. As he sat down next to her, his hand slid up beneath the sleeve of her robe. She flinched away. Instantly two J/taals closed in. Dapsl squeaked.

“Don’t sit so close to her,” said Kirtn. “And don’t touch her at all unless she invites it. Otherwise, you’ll make them nervous”—he gestured toward the J/taals—“and me angry. We’re very careful of her, you see.”

Dapsl licked his lips and looked at the large hand so close to his throat. “Yes, of course, she’s something to be careful of, very luxurious, soft and golden.” He looked up. “But I’m a man, not a furry. Surely she prefers a man’s touch to—ahhhk!”

Kirtn’s huge hand closed around Dapsl’s robe, lifting him up and then thumping him down on the other side of the Bre’n, away from Rheba. Air whuffed out of the little man’s lungs. The J/taals’ blue-white smiles flashed as Kirtn bent over the frightened man.

“No,” said Rheba gently. “Let me.” The fire dancer leaned across Kirtn’s lap until her face was on a level with Dapsl’s. “You’re less attractive to me than those prowling clepts.” She pointed to Dapsl’s long, intricately braided cranial hair and his smooth, purple-brown skin. “That no more makes you human than Kirtn’s beautiful velvet body makes him animal.” Her hand caressed Bre’n lips, stroked across his muscular shoulders, savored his textures with obvious pleasure. “Do you understand me, small Dapsl?”

“Perversion,” he whispered, swallowing.

Her hair seethed. Fire danced on the fingertips that reached for Dapsl. It was Kirtn who intervened with a clear, derogatory whistle that made Fssa quiver in admiration. The snake kissed soft laughter beneath her restless hair.

She smiled despite her rage, but her voice was not gentle when she spoke. “Don’t touch me, Dapsl. Ever. You won’t like what happens. If you can’t accept that, walk away. Now.”

Dapsl’s eyes narrowed to pale horizontal slits. She thought suddenly of the J/taal’s comments about deadly flowers. Then his eyes relaxed and it was as though the moment of anger had never been.

“I would never touch a female who kaza-flatches,” he said, his smile not at all pleasant.

Fssa refused to translate the little man’s words when she asked what “kaza-flatch” meant He directed a burst of sound to Kirtn, however, and his skill was so great that she did not hear kaza-flatch defined. The Bre’n did, however. His hands flexed with eagerness to be around the small man’s throat.

“Start talking,” snarled the Bre’n, “before you choke on your information.”

Dapsl looked at Kirtn’s hands and began talking in a high, rapid voice. “All the slaves in the Fold potentially belong to the Loo-chim. But the Loo-chim won’t take just any slave. You must have an Act that is good enough to be performed at the Loo-chim Concatenation.”

Rheba started to speak.

“It will be quicker if you don’t ask questions until I’m finished,” said Dapsl sharply. “The buyers come to the Fold, review the Acts, and decide who goes and who stays. Getting out of the Fold is only the first step. Then you have to compete with all your owner’s other Acts. Only the top three Acts go to the Concatenation. The rest are broken up and sold to whoever has money to buy. But once you’ve appeared at the Concatenation, the Act can only be sold as a unit, and can only be bought by a member of the Loo aristocracy—perhaps even the Loo-chim itself. It’s a great honor to be owned by the Loo-chim,” he added, pride clear in his voice.

Kirtn muttered something graphic and unflattering in Senyas. Fssa translated with embellishments until Rheba shook him and told him to behave. The snake subsided with a flatulent noise directed at Dapsl.

“I don’t expect animals to appreciate what I’m saying,” Dapsl muttered. “Why didn’t Jal send you to the Pit instead of the Fold?”

“Jal?” said Kirtn sharply. “How did you know that we were put here by Trader Jal?”

“Why—ah—it’s—” Dapsl squeaked and scuttled away from Kirtn’s hands. “It’s the talk of the city! Everyone knows that a new gold-masked furry was brought in and that the male polarity is hoping the animal dies before it can practice its furry perversions on the female polarity.” He glanced frantically from clepts to J/taals to Kirtn, then moaned and regretted his birth. “Gentleher, please! Control your animals!”

Rheba’s eyes glowed with unborn firestorms, but all she said was, “You were speaking of Concatenation, Acts, and aristocracy. Keep talking on those subjects, small man. If you speak about animals again I’ll burn your greasy braids off.”

“If your Act is good enough to get you out of the Fold, but not good enough to get into the Concatenation, we’ll be sold to people too poor to buy machines.” Dapsl moaned softly. “It’s a terrible loss of caste. And hard, very hard. Even the strongest don’t live long. You’re crippled in one leg and chained in the other. No escape, no rest.” Re moaned and put his head in his hands. “No escape, no escape, no ...”

Rheba sighed and felt her rage drain away. It was hard to be mad at-such a pitiful creature. Just because he had the personality of a cherf with a broken tooth was no reason to frighten him half out of his ugly skin. “The Act,” she prompted gently. “What makes a good Act?”

“Why, displaying your Talent, of course.” Dapsl’s voice was high, surprised, “You must have a Talent or you would have been sent to the Pits.”

Rheba looked at Kirtn, remembering the female Loo-chim’s lust. “Is mating in public considered an Act?” she asked dryly.

Dapsl smiled eagerly. “Oh, yes. When performed by ill-matched animals it’s considered a high form of comedy. The Gnigs and the Loradoras, for example. The female is so huge that the male has to—”

Rheba cut him off with a gesture of distaste. “No. That has nothing to do with our Act,” She frowned and looked at the J/taals. “M/dere, were you chosen as gladiators?”

“I don’t know. When our J/taaleri’s ship was captured, we fought until he was killed. Then, we were unemployed, and could not fight.”

Fssa’s murmur continued even after the I/taal woman had stopped talking. “If the slaver saw them fight, I’m sure he brought them here for blood sports.”

“Did you fight for the Loo-chim to see?” asked Kirtn.

“No. The slaver merely displayed a construct of his capture of the ship.”

“That would be enough,” murmured Fssa.

The J/taals did not answer, except to say, “We’ll be gladiators for you, if you want. You are the J/taaleri, and fighting is our Talent.”

“No,” said Rheba quickly. “If the Loo found out that you were employed by me, they would probably kill all of us. Besides, blood sports aren’t much better than public mating.

I’d rather not have to participate in either.” She remembered the J/taal’s graceful, swift and intricate exercises. “Gymnasts! I’ll make fire shapes, Kirtn will sing, and you’ll do a tumbling act.” She turned toward Dapsl. “Is that the sort of thing the Loo-chim would enjoy?”

“Too cluttered. Just you and the big furry would be much better.”

“No,” said Kirtn and Rheba together.

“All of us,” she continued, “or none of us. That’s the way it is.”

Dapsl grimaced. “A variety Act. They’re the hardest kind to stage effectively. But,” he brightened, “they are unusual. Most slaves don’t get together. Language problems or fear or both. Yes,” he said, absently chewing on the end of one of his thirty-three intricate braids, “it just might work.”

“And you,” said Kirtn, “what will you do for our Act?”

“Me? Why, I’ll manage it, of course.”

XII

“No, no, no!” shouted Dapsl, yanking on a handful of braids in frustration. “All that grunting might impress barbarian enemies, but the Loo-chim will find it extremely unaesthetic. Do it again. Quietly.”

M/dur said something that Fssa wisely failed to translate. After the first few days, Rheba had made it clear to the snake that his job was to prevent rather than to incite trouble. So the Fssireeme ignored Dapsl and fluttered a metallic blue ruff that was as functionless as it was pretty. Kirtn smiled, but did not tease Fssa; like the snake, the Bre’n had been on the receiving end of a sharp lecture from Rheba about the necessity of being civilized to one another. Unfortunately, Dapsl had not learned the lesson.

“Ready?” said Dapsl, beating time with two sticks he had scrounged. “On four—a-one and a-two and a-three and a-four.”

The J/taals formed a diamond with M/dere in the center. In time with Dapsl’s beat, they executed an intricate series of backflips, leaps and lifts that ended in a pyramid that was three J/taals across and two high. On the next beat the pyramid exploded into five J/taals doing individual gymnastics that wove in and out of each other with dazzling ease. At least it appeared easy, and so long as the J/taals smothered grunts of effort, the appearance remained intact.

“Better,” said Dapsl grudgingly, “but must you women sweat so much? Ugh. It mats your fur.”

In lieu of translating M/dere’s response, Fssa preened his sparkling new ruff.

Dapsl sighed and pulled halfheartedly on three of his braids. “Again. On four. This time do it s-1-o-w-l-y. Try to make it appear that you are f-1-o-a-t-i-n-g. And don’t frown. You’re enjoying yourselves, remember? Sweating, grunting, grimacing beasts are for the fields, not the Loo-chim stage.”

M/Dere snarled and looked toward Rheba, but the fire dancer was deeply involved in building stage props made of flame. She did not notice the J/taal’s silent appeal.

When Rheba raised her hands, a line of fire followed, creating an arch. She moved her fingers. Brilliant blue vines writhed up the arch, held trembling for a moment, then exploded into a shower of golden blossoms. The arch became an incandescent cage big enough to hold a Bre’n. Her hands danced, braiding light into silken lines with which to hold a raging beast.

She looked from her creation to Kirtn. The lines changed subtly as she measured them against his breadth and height. Frowning, she looked from the Bre’n to the cage again. She kept misjudging his size: it did not seem reasonable that even a Bre’n should have such wide shoulders. Yesterday she had singed his fur. She had wanted to make the cage out of cold light, but Dapsl had wanted the drama of living flames. She had told him—falsely—that hot fire was nearly impossible for her to make. He had told her that nothing was too much work for a Concatenation Act. She had given in with a silent prayer that the Loo-chim would not be upset by a few tendrils of flame.

Still frowning, she scratched at her arms. The developing lines of power itched constantly, both irritant and warning. She should stop working with fire until her arms healed. A scratching fire dancer was an overworked fire dancer. Deva had pampered its akhenets for practical as well as altruistic reasons. A fatigued akhenet was often irrational, and thereby a danger to everyone.

“A-one and a-two and—no, no, no! Lightly! Float, you kaza-flatching mongrels!”

Dapsl’s demands were simply a buzzing around the edges of Rheba’s concentration. She flexed her fingers. Flames leaped upward, twining into the shape of a demon that was supposed to represent Kirtn. The demon’s mouth expanded nice death embracing the audience. At this point, Fssa was supposed to give forth some truly curdling sounds, but the snake was too busy translating—selectively—for J/taals and Dapsl.

She sighed and the demon vanished. Idly she began making cool, colored shapes, lithe manikins that imitated the motions of the J/taals. To one side she made a purple light that expanded and contracted with Dapsl’s exhortations. The little light bounced madly, trailing purple braids, foaming from its lavender mouth, bouncing higher and higher in an attempt to be impressive in its rage. Farther away, removed from the hubbub, she created a slim silver snake admiring itself in a golden mirror.

Kirtn’s chuckle sounded beside her. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

She glanced up guiltily, caught playing when she should have been working. His hand smoothed her vivid, crackling hair.

“I haven’t seen much mimicry since Deva,” he said, “when a master dancer would while away the icy night with laughter.” His eyes looked inward to a time when Bre’ns and Senyasi had lived in myriads on a world not yet ash.

The figures winked out, leaving only memories like colored echoes behind her eyes. “Deva ...” she whispered. “Children.” Her head bowed, she looked at her glowing hands and arms without seeing their intricate lines of power, “I’m afraid I’ll never stop seeing the people. “”All my potential mates, fathers of my unborn children, standing dazed while the sun poured down, burning ...” She leaned against Kirtn’s hard warmth. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to find the boy Senyas and his Bre’n.” She looked up at him with eyes that had seen too much fire, “We’re akhenet. How can we live without children?”

He pulled her into his lap, stroked her, giving her what comfort he could. Silently he cursed the overriding need for children that had been built into Bre’ns and Senyasi alike, instinct squared and then squared again, that akhenets would not become so bound to their cross-species mate that they refused to mate with their own kind. Bre’n and Senyas akhenets alike had nearly died out before a gene dancer had been born who could substitute instinct for personal preference. Myth had it that the gene dancer was neither Bre’n nor Senyas, but both, one of the few viable hybrids ever conceived between the two species.

He wished he could share his knowledge with Rheba, giving her some of the history she had lost, helping her to understand the needs built into her ... but she was too young. She had not yet discovered the depth of Bre’n/Senyas sharing. Despite her forced maturity since Deva died, she had shown no interest in him as a man, nothing but tantalizing flashes of sensuality that also were part of a fire dancer’s genetic heritage. It was possible that she would never turn to him as a lover. Not all akhenet pairs mated physically as well as mentally. But of those mismatched pairs, few lived long or easy lives. Bre’ns in rez were an indiscriminate destructive force.

Pushing aside his bleak thoughts, Kirtn whistled sweetly, softly, coaxing her out of her despair. Another whistle joined his in sliding harmony. He felt Fssa coiling around his arm. The snake wove from there into Rheba’s hair and began singing into her ear. Some of the tension gradually left her body. She smoothed her cheek against Kirtn’s chest, shifting her weight until she fitted perfectly against him. Her hair rifted and curled around his neck, hair that was silky and warm and alive as only a fire dancer’s could he. Though she did not know it, the soft strands wrapping around him made a fire dancer’s caress that was usually reserved for lovers. She did not know, and there was no one left alive to tell her except Kirtn—and he could not.

“If you’re quite through,” said Dapsl indignantly, “I need that bizarre snake. The J/taals pretend not to understand me unless that slimy article wrapped around your arm talks to them.”

Rheba felt Kirtn’s muscles tense as he gathered himself to lunge. For an instant she was tempted to let him shred Dapsl into oozing purple fragments, but the instant passed. Even the youngest fire dancers learned that an akhenet never abetted Bre’n anger. She allowed electrical impulses to leak from her body wherever she touched Kirtn, disrupting his muscle control. At first he fought her, then he gave in.

Deliberately, she stroked Fssa. The snake was dark where he had been incandescent. She had discovered that the darker forms of Fssireeme, as well as being a heat-conservation mode, indicated shame, embarrassment, or discomfort.

Dapsl reached to snatch away the snake. Kirtn’s big hand shot out. Dapsl squeaked and tried to pull back, but the Bre’n’s grip on his lower arm was too firm.

“If I squeeze,” said Kirtn conversationally, “you’ll lose your arm from the second elbow down. Stand still. Apologize to Fssa.”

Dapsl stood. He apologized.

“Now, tell him he’s beautiful.”

“That thing? Beautiful? I’ve seen prettier mudholes! In fact—”

Dapsl’s arm turned pale lavender where the Bre’ns fingers were. ‘Tell him,” said Kirtn gently, “that he’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful, lovely, perfect,” Dapsl said hastily. With each word he eased more of his arm out of Kirtn’s grasp.

“You can’t help it if you were born without legs. Be grateful,” he said triumphantly, jerking free of the Bre’n, “you weren’t born with stinking fur all over your animal hide!”

Rheba came to her feet in a lithe rush that reminded Kirtn of the J/taals. Fire blazed from her hands, licking toward Dapsl with hot intent.

“Our bargain!” said Dapsl, hacking away quickly. “Stay away from me!”

“Fire dancer.” Kirtn spoke in Senyas_} his words precise, his tone that of a mentor.

She stopped. Flames licked restlessly up and down her arms, and her hands shone with dense lines of gold. With a long sigh, she released the flames.

“If you hadn’t been so stubborn,” said Dapsl in a high voice, “about committing kaza-flatch on stage with your furry pet, none of this would have been necessary. The female Loo-chim would have leaped up onstage with you. Your problems would have been over! You and your pet would never be separated, because not even the Loo-chim would break up a Concatenation Act. But no, you have to hold out for group kaza-flatch, and I tell you right now, you tight-rumped little—”

Whatever Dapsl had been about to say was forgotten, in his rush to evade Kirtn’s feint. Rheba and the Bre’n watched as the small purple man raced back to the J/taals. After a few moments, Fssa followed, coiling through the dust like a cobalt whip.

“If I cooked him first,” she said tightly, “do you think the clepts would eat him?”

“They don’t eat carrion.”

She sighed, “Even if I burned off his oily braids?”

“Doubt it.”

“Damn.” She scratched her arms absently. The elbows were particularly itchy. She longed for some salve, but it was aboard the Devalon, as out of reach as Deva itself.

“On the count of four.” Dapsl’s irritating command and Fssa’s soft translation came across the campsite. “A-one and—”

“He may be a limp stick,” she said, “but he knows what he’s doing. Our Act would have been chaos without him. That doesn’t mean I like the cherf.”

Kirtn’s long fingers rubbed through her hair, massaging her scalp until she sighed with pleasure. “Once we’re out of here,” he said, “we’ll shed Dapsl like a winter coat.”

She arched against his strong hands. Her hair shimmered with pleasure, curling around his arms, mutely demanding that he continue. He laughed softly and extricated himself before she could sense his response to her innocent sensuality. “Back to work, akhenet. And this time, please, make the cage big enough.”

She groaned. “How many more days before the buyers arrive?”

“Three, if Dapsl’s memory is right.”

“It would be the first thing right about him.” She stretched languidly, rubbing her shoulders against her Bre’n. “Itches.”

“All the way up there?” he asked, concerned. His hands slid beneath her Fold robe. Gently he explored her shoulders and neck with his fingertips. Lines of power radiated faintly beneath his touch. “Too soon ...” he whispered. “Slow down, fire dancer. Don’t burn so hard.”

For a moment she leaned her weight against him, letting down barriers of instinct and discipline until he could sense the exhaustion and despair that lapped like a black ocean just beyond the shores of her control. He closed his eyes, accepting her emotions until the edge of his mind overlapped hers lightly, very lightly. Then he let strength flow into her, a coolness that washed over the intricate patterns covering her arms, calm radiating through her from the Bre’n hands touching her skin. The shores of her control expanded, throwing back the black ocean.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” she murmured. “Thank you, mentor.”

“I didn’t do it. We did. You’re changing so quickly, little dancer,” he said, his voice divided between hope and fear. “Sharing strength is just one thing a Bre’n does for a Senyas. Just one small thing.”

“What do you get in return?”

He hesitated, wondering if it was too soon, too much. In the end he gave her only half the truth, and not the most revealing half. “A channel.”

“Channel?”

“An outlet for Bre’n emotions, Bre’n energy.”

“Rez,” she whispered, shivering beneath his hands.

“No,” he said fiercely. “I’ll never do that to you.”

She did not argue. Both of them knew that rez was a reflex, not a choice. Kirtn would do what he had to. He was Bre’n. And she was Senyas. She forced a smile.

“Stand over there,” she said, pointing to a bush, “and I’H see if I can build a cage big enough to hold a Bre’n.”

XIII

Rheba awoke with a headache that made her want to weep. Overhead, the Fold’s ceiling was dull gray with a hint of brass, an hour away from full light. She shivered, rearranged her robe, and snuggled closer to Kirtn’s warmth. He shifted in his sleep, gathering her against him. She rubbed her cheek against the velvet of his chest fur, wishing her back could be as warm as her front. It seemed that she had been cold since she landed on Loo.

Her headache redoubled, faded, then returned. Kirtn awoke with a grimace, though his headache was but a shadow of hers. “Fssa. Where is that damned snake? Is he talking to Rainbow again?”

She looked around, then felt carefully through her hair. “Gone,” she groaned.

He sat up. “When I get my hands on that Fssireeme I’ll bend him into a new shape!”

The headache diminished. She sighed and felt herself go limp in response to less pain. At the same instant, both she and Kirtn spotted Fssa coiling across the dark ground. He sparked silver and copper, gold and steel. He was beautiful—when he was not splitting her brain.

“Fssa.” Kirtn’s hand swept out to scoop up the snake. “I told you what I’d do if you caused Rheba pain again!”

Fssa turned black and hung limply from Kirtn’s hand. The Bre’n gave him an impatient shake. The snake remained limp and very, very black.

“What is it about Rainbow that’s so irresistible?” demanded the Bre’n.

Fssa’s whistle was pure and beguiling, “It’s so old, friend Kirtn. It’s older than my guardians’ memories. It’s older even than the Long Memory.” The snake’s body changed, more pearl than black, streaks of gold dividing the most dense areas of gray. The whistle became eager. “It knows more than I dreamed was possible. Languages,” the whistle soared ecstatically, “languages that were extinct before the Long Memory, and languages to me are like fire to you. And Rainbow knows fragments of other things, but I can’t make those fragments whole. The languages, though—I can make them whole for Rainbow and then it’s more at ease. It’s lost so much of its knowledge. It’s had pieces of itself broken off and scattered, made into baubles for two-legged idiots.”

Rheba’s curiosity grew as her pain diminished, “How old is Rainbow? Is it one of the First People?”

Fssa’s whistle was tentative, then slid into a negative. “I don’t think so. Its energy is similar in some ways, but it was created by man. At least it says it was, and I can’t think why a rock would lie.”

“Created.” Kirtn frowned. “When? By whom? For what?”

Fssa changed colors, becoming lighter, rippling with confidence now that his friends were no longer angry, “Rainbow was made by the—” An impossible sound came out, one that meant nothing to his listeners. The Fssireeme became darker with embarrassment. “Names are very hard to translate. I think you would call it Zaarain. Does that sound right?”

Kirtn and Rheba looked at one another. “We know the name,” said Kirtn finally, “but are you sure?”

“That’s the only possible translation of Rainbow’s frequency, especially since it used the kfxzt modulation. It’s a difficult modulation to reproduce,” whistled Fssa, his tone divided equally between earnestness and pride. “I’m the first one who has talked to Rainbow for a long, long time.”

Rheba shook herself as though waking from a dream. “Zaarain ... if the Loo-chim find out, Rainbow will be taken away.”

“But—but—” Fssa writhed, then changed into his Senyas mode and spoke with precision, as though to be sure there could be no possibility of misunderstanding. “But no one else can talk to Rainbow. It needs to communicate.” Fssa writhed, so upset that he could not hold his Senyas shape. “It was made to be a—library? Yes, that’s close enough—library, and it needs to communicate with intelligent minds,” he whistled urgently.

She winced and covered her ears at the shrillness of Fssa’s tone. “It may need to communicate, but that hurts! Shut up, snake!”

Fssa’s volume diminished. “I, too, was lonely for a long time,” he whistled in oblique apology/appeal.

Kirtn looked over to the lump of gleaming darkness that was Rainbow at night. “Library?” he murmured. “A Zaarain library? What wonders could it tell us?”

Fssa sighed, a long susurration. “A fragment of a library,” he amended. “It used to be much larger. It was looted from an old installation and broken into trinkets for barbarians.”

“How big was it before that?” asked Kirtn.

Copper streaks rippled through Fssa in his equivalent of a shrug. “At least as big as the blue well. Perhaps bigger. Rainbow isn’t sure. It’s just a conglomeration of random fragments, not even a whole segment of the original library. It barely gets enough energy to hold itself together, now that it’s no longer connected.”

“Still,” said Kirtn, “a Zaarain library...”

“A Zaarain headache, you mean,” she said, rubbing her temples. “I hope the damn thing doesn’t talk in its sleep.”

“It doesn’t sleep,” said Fssa primly. “And it won’t talk unless you ask a question or scare it to death by threatening dismemberment as those children did.”

“Good. Then if I get a headache, I’ll know that it’s your fault for asking questions.”

Fssa’s glitter faded into dark gray. “Could you ...” His whistle was tremulous, then it broke. He started over again. “Would you include it in our Act? Otherwise we’ll have to leave it here, or some Loo will discover it and hack it up into jewelry and it will die. Please, Rheba? Surely a creature as beautiful and warm as you can find room in your emotions for a lonely crystal.”

She stared at Fssa, then laughed. “Don’t flatter me, snake. When it comes to beauty, I’m a distinct fourth to you, Kirtn, and that Zaarain rock.”

Fssa waited. Slow ripples of black consumed his brilliance as the silence stretched into seconds, moments, a minute.

“Ice and ashes!” snarled Rheba. “Brighten up, snake. We’ll fit that damn mind breaker into our Act.”

“What will you tell Dapsl?” said Kirtn, smiling at how the snake had won.

She smiled in return, but not pleasantly. “Nothing. If he objects, I’ll burn the braids right off his head.”

Fssa suddenly shone with bright metal colors. He puffed out his most incredible ruff in a shower of glitter. “Thank you!” he whistled exultantly.

Kirtn laughed. “Too bad Rainbow doesn’t have as many shapes as you—then it would be easy to put in the Act.” The ruff vanished in a flash of silver. “I think—” He began

to change into his Rainbow communication mode, then turned his sensors on Rheba hesitantly. “I think Rainbow can make different shapes. It’s just an assembly of fragments, after all. If it assembled itself, it can unassemble itself. Should I ask?”

She groaned and glared at Kirtn. “What shape did you have in mind for the Act?”

“Oh ... a crown, a necklace. Something bright and barbarous for me to wear,” said Kirtn. “I’m supposed to be a vicious demon king, after all, according to Dapsl’s Act.”

She frowned. “That might work. We’ll tell Dapsl that Rainbow is one of the First People, and thus a legitimate, intelligent part of the Act. Then no one could take it away from us, once we appeared in the Concatenation. But—ice and ashes! How I wish that rock didn’t split my mind!” Fssa waited, a study in subdued metal colors. She ground her teeth. “All right. Ask it. But make it short.”

Fssa whipped into his Rainbow communication mode. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the lightning that lanced through her brain while Fssireeme and the Zaarain library talked. As she had hoped, the exchange was brief. She opened her eyes and stared coldly at Fssa, her head still shattered by alien modulations.

“Rainbow doesn’t want to rearrange itself, but it will. It’s terrified of dismemberment, you realize.”

“Yes,” she said grimly. “I understand. If you hadn’t told me it was alive, I’d have torn it facet from facet the first time it curdled my brain.”

Fssa’s sensors winked as he ducked and turned his head. “It’s very sorry that it hurts you. We’ve tried to find a frequency that doesn’t, but we haven’t been successful.” She sighed. “I noticed.”

From across the camp, the J/taals stirred. If they were bothered by headaches, they gave no sign. Dapsl rolled out from beneath his robe, shrugged into it, and began cursing the clepts. The ceiling turned to sullen brass, then slowly began bleaching into smoky white.

“Another day,” muttered Kirtn, flexing his hands suddenly. “I don’t like being a slave, fire dancer.”

“I’m unAdjusted myself,” she said, watching Dapsl stalk over to the blue fountain to drink. “When I think that animated purple ash can is considered human and you aren’t—” She did not finish. Nor did she have to.

Suddenly her hair leaped and writhed like dry leaves caught in a firestorm. She staggered, her eyes blind cinnamon jewels alive with energy.

“What—?” Kirtn caught her and tried to calm her frantically lashing hair. “Rheba!”

She did not answer nor even hear. She was caught in a vortex of energy building, twisting, spinning rapidly and then more rapidly until it was a solid cone of raw power dipping down from the ceiling. Abruptly, the turmoil ceased. A large group of people stood by the well. They were richly dressed, arrogant of expression, and Loo to the last tint of blue in their skins.

“The buyers,” said Kirtn, shaking Rheba. “Fire dancer. Fire dancer!”

His command for attention ripped through her daze. She blinked, held by untrammeled energy that had come down, touched. She stretched yearningly toward the ceiling, as though she would touch it with her fingertips. Her hair crackled with the wild power of a fire dancer who was overflowing with energy. Then she turned toward the Bre’n, who watched her with concern shadowing his yellow eyes.

“I’m all right,” she murmured, smiling dreamily. “That felt „ .. good. I’m renewed. I haven’t felt like that since I sat in the center of a fire dancer circle.”

Slowly, Kirtn’s concern became relief. “Good. But be careful. Energy like that can ruin you as quickly as it can renew you.”

She blinked again, as though awakening after a long sleep. “There would be worse ways to die. I wonder if that’s what the other dancers felt when the sun bent down and seared them to the bone.,..”

Dapsl’s screech cut through the air. “Line up! Line up! The buyers are here! Line up!”

Four guards stepped out from behind the group of buyers. In clipped Universal, they spelled out the rules of what was to come. The ceiling amplified their voices so that everyone within the two-circles sanctuary could not avoid hearing the words.

“You will perform your Acts for the buyers within that circle.” An area the size of a large Loo stage suddenly glowed in front of the well. “Those Acts that are chosen will leave with their buyers. Line up!”

People from all over the sanctuary began walking toward the well. Within minutes, nearly one hundred people had gathered. Rheba and Kirtn stared, for they had not seen a quarter of that number coming and going from the well. All of the people appeared healthy—at least, they moved easily enough. She counted fourteen distinct racial types before she gave up. Then with a sudden surge of hope she looked among the people again. As though he shared her thought, Kirtn stared through narrowed eyes. But no matter how hard they both searched, they saw no one that resembled either Senyas or Bre’n.

Dapsl’s shrill enjoinders to action grated on their ears. “Get that snake under control before someone steps on it and ruins our Act. You—Kirtn! Listen to me! Be sure those clepts stay out of the way during the Act!”

Kirtn ignored the little purple man and picked up Rainbow. It disassembled in his hands. Crystal faces shifted slowly, as though pulled by magnets, then reformed along new alignments. When it was finished, Rainbow looked like a rough crown. New facets glittered in the light in a suitably barbarous display. Some of the facets were patterned with engravings. All were vivid, colorful.

“Good for you,” muttered Kirtn, although he doubted Rainbow could understand him. Gently, he set the crown on his head. Rainbow shifted subtly, fitting his head with a grip that was both secure and comfortable. Very soon Kirtn no more noticed Rainbow’s presence on his head than Rheba noticed Fssa’s presence in her hair.

The clepts moved between Rheba and the watching Loos.

“The clepts!” shrieked Dapsl. He turned on Rheba and the snake, who was invisibly woven into her hair. “Get those kaza-flatching clepts out of the way!”

Her lips parted in a smile that was more warning than reassurance. “The clepts are part of the Act.”

“But they can’t—we haven’t practiced—it’s impossible!”

“They worked while you slept. Whether the results please you or not, they are part of the J/taals and therefore part of our Act. Now shut up, little man. If Fssa can overhear the Loo buyers—” Abruptly she stopped speaking. Dapsl did not know the extent of the Fssireeme’s skill. Nor did she want the irksome little man to find out. She did not trust him. He thought like a slave and she did not.

Dapsl chewed angrily on the frayed end of his longest braid, muttered a comment in a language that Fssa did not know and went back to harrying the J/taals. Beneath the cover of Rheba’s hair, the snake transformed a part of himself into a sensitive receiver aimed at the gathering of Loos.

“Can you hear anything?” she murmured, her voice so low that it was little more than a vibration in her throat.

Fssa, who had left a coil of himself around her neck, picked up the vibrations as easily as he did her normal speech. He could speak in a soft whistle to her, listen to her answer, and still not lose track of the Loo conversations. He shifted, reforming the listening extension of himself until it bloomed like a spiky silver flower below her left ear. “Nothing yet I’ll try a different mode.” The flower widened, petals reaching toward the Loo. “Got them!”

She was silent then, letting Fssa drink up every foreign syllable he could.

“Line up!” snapped Dapsl. “Only an unAdjusted slave would keep a Loo waiting. These buyers are aristocrats only one birth away from the Imperial Loo-chim.”

As though summoned by Dapsl’s words, the Loos walked forward, pacing the line of waiting slaves like generals reviewing troops. At intervals one or another of the Loo signaled. The guards stepped forward then and summarily removed one or more slaves from the line of hopeful Acts.

“Rejects,” hissed Dapsl. “Their smell probably offended, or their color, or perhaps the Loos are merely bored with that particular race. Get those kaza-flatching clepts in line!”

Rheba ignored Dapsl’s nervous dithering and watched the approaching Loos. Their flimsy robes turned and flashed in the cold sunlight, revealing embroideries in tiny precious stones across the very sheer cloth. She wanted to believe that the robes were barbaric, but could not Like the room where she and Kirtn had first seen the Imperial Loo-chim, the robes were luxuriant without being crass.

Two by two the traders passed, each pair composed of a chim, a man and a woman so like each other as to be identical twins. Rheba looked at their faces—shades of blue, broad-cheeked, high-nosed, arrogant. There was neither sympathy nor simple interest in those paired dark eyes, until the eleventh buyer, a male with no twin female on his right hand.

“Jal,” breathed Rheba. “Trader Jal!”

XIV

Jal smiled and bowed sardonically. “Lord Jal,” he corrected, “All buyers in the Fold are lords and ladies of Loo.”

Rheba looked from Jal to the blue-skinned pairs appraising the ranks of slaves. “But there’s just one of you.”

Jal’s expression revealed a loss so terrible it almost made her forget how cruelly he had used her and Kirtn. She understood what it was to have everything and then lose it in a single irrevocable instant. She looked away, unable to face herself reflected in his dark eyes.

“My chim died,” said Jal. It was all he said. It was enough. He looked coldly at Dapsl. “What’s this, Whip? A menagerie?”

“An Act, my lord,” Dapsl said quickly, bowing so low that his purple braids danced in the dust. “A unique Act for the amusement of the Loo-chim and the lords and ladies. We have a story to tell in song and motion that will make you laugh and cry and sigh with wonder. It’s the tale of—”

Jal cut off Dapsl’s prepared speech with a curt motion. The Loo lord who had been known to them as Trader Jal looked over the gathering of Bre’n and Senyas, Fssireeme, and J/taals and clepts. An expression that could have been rage distorted his features. “All of you?” He moved as though, to motion the rejection of J/taals and clepts.

“Lord—” said Dapsl softly, urgently, twisting his braids in distress. “Lord, this is a unique Act, one that will gain you much pride at the Concatenation, and much wealth afterward. Before you decide, please, let us perform.”

Lord Jal looked at Dapsl for one long, unwavering moment. The small man tugged silently at his braids, holding Jal’s eyes for an instant, looking away, then looking back with silent pleas.

“Done,” said Jal. “But if I don’t like the Act, Dapsl, you will never leave the Fold.”

Dapsl made a small sound of despair and looked at Rheba. “Please,” he said, speaking so quickly that his words tumbled over one another, “please think again about including the animals. Just you and the big furry, a single dance of kaza-flatch, even the songs. Yes—the songs. You can even keep the snake. No one will notice and then I’ll—”

“No.” Rheba’s voice was as smooth and hard as a river stone.

Dapsl wilted. He glanced at Lord Jal, but found no comfort in that broad blue face.

The lords finished their review of the slaves. Whether they had previously divided the slaves among the aristocracy, or whether each chim only reviewed slaves it had captured, no one else spoke to or even looked at the Act that included Rheba and Kirtn. When the lords turned away and walked back toward the blue chairs that had appeared along one curve of the stage, Rheba let out her breath in a sigh. Kirtn looked over and touched her arm in mute understanding. Each had been afraid of being rejected for no better reason than the whim of one of the blue chims.

Dapsl waited until the chims had withdrawn beyond the range of normal hearing. Then he turned on Rheba. His voice was so tight with rage that it squeaked. “If your perverted tastes have cost me my freedom, I’ll make your life as short as your ugly little nose!”

Rheba looked at Dapsl’s own long, slender nose. It was quivering with his bottled rage. She smiled. “You’re a Fold slave. You couldn’t leave the Fold without an Act. How am I responsible for your freedom or lack of it?”

“Because Lord Jal sent me here to help you, you ungrateful kaza-flatch!” He breathed deeply. “Now, bitch, stand here and watch the Acts. There shouldn’t be any real competition here, but watch anyway. You’re so stupid that anything you learn has to be an improvement!”

Kirtn’s hand dropped onto Dapsl’s shoulder. The touch was gentle. The possibilities were not. “Cherf,” said Kirtn, “I’m tired of your voice.”

Dapsl’s small face turned unusually purple but he said nothing more. Instead, he pointed toward the stage. One of the groups had walked into the half-circle reserved for the Acts. The lords and ladies conferred among themselves briefly, then a chim waved for the Act to begin.

There were three people standing on the Act place, facing the semicircle of indifferent chims. The three were smooth-skinned, with an abundance of red hair that grew like a crest down the median line of the skull and fell in long waves down the back to the hips. They were not obviously male or female, and alike enough to be clones. At an unseen signal they began to sing. Their voices were pleasant, their harmony good, and their songs ... uninteresting. The beat was invariable, more like a chant than anything else. Like the red crest flowing to their hips, the trio’s songs were not far removed from barbarism. After the third song, one chim snapped its fingers suddenly. Another chim leaned closer to the first and began speaking in low voices.

Rheba felt Fssa stretch toward the conversation with senses that were far more acute than any human and most machines. She waited with outward patience, as did everyone else, while the chims talked. At last she dared a soft whisper to Dapsl.

“What’s going on?”

Dapsl answered without moving his head to look at her. Even his lips barely moved. His voice was softer than hers. “The chim who captured this trio revoked Concatenation hold.”

“Explain.”

The small man’s eyes flicked to Rheba at her curt demand, but his face did not turn. “All Fold slaves are potential Concatenation Acts. The chim just signaled that it no longer believes this captured trio good enough for the Concatenation. You see, each chim can enter only three Acts at the Concatenation.”

“Is that other chim trying to buy them for its own Acts?”

Dapsl made a sound of disgust. “No chim would buy another’s rejected Act. They’ll be sold for pleasure or work or pain, whichever the buyer wants.” He looked critically at the three. “Separately, they might be quite a novelty among kaza-flatchers. That hair has possibilities....”

Rheba did not ask what the possibilities were. She was sorry she had asked anything at all. She watched while the two chims bargained over the three slaves. Then, apparently, a deal was struck. Two guards stepped forward and separated a pair of red-haired barbarians, leaving one behind.

At first the slaves seemed too stunned to respond. Then they realized that they were being sold separately, and not as an Act. They turned to the chim who had first enslaved them and spoke rapidly in a language that Fssa either did not know or did not want to translate. Their voices became thinner and higher, more desperate, but neither the chim who had enslaved them nor the chim who had bought them seemed to notice.

The ceiling came down in a simple flick of power that licked up one guard and two barbarians in the time it took to blink. When the remaining barbarian realized what had happened, he went berserk. His scream of rage and pain made Rheba’s hair stir in reflexive sympathy to another creature’s agony. Before the cry was complete, he leaped at his guard. His unsheathed claws seemed to gather light at their sharp tips.

There was a surge of energy from the ceiling. The barbarian froze in mid-leap, feet off the ground, claws extended, screaming silently, imprisoned in a column of raw light. His hair rippled and writhed, replicating the currents that tormented him. His lips peeled back, revealing serrated teeth and a tongue that bled from being bitten through in the first instant of agony. But the blood never touched the ground and the screams were silent, imprisoned in the column as surely as he was.

“Stupid,” said Dapsl, watching the barbarian writhing silently, tortured and held by currents of pure force. “He was told not to attack anything within the two circles. Now he knows why.”

“Will they kill him?” said Kirtn, his own lips peeled back in a silent snarl.

“Oh, no. They don’t have their price for him yet.”

Rheba shuddered and willed herself not to collect any of the energy that seethed around the barbarian. She thought she could bleed off some, perhaps even enough to prevent his torture, but she suspected that if she was discovered it would be her death sentence. Yet she did not know how much longer she could watch and do nothing.

“No,” continued Dapsl, “they won’t kill him. They won’t even damage him.”

The column of energy sucked back into the ceiling with no more warning than it had come down. The barbarian fell to the stage in a boneless sprawl. The guard who had been attacked looked at the chim who had bought the barbarian. The chim spoke softly. The guard picked up the barbarian, waited an instant, and the ceiling came down again.

The two remaining guards brought out the next Act. The rest of the slaves stood without moving, afraid even to breathe. Rheba remembered the time she had first entered the two circles, when she had considered attacking the guards at the well. She was profoundly glad that she had not.

The guards stepped off the stage, leaving behind four small people who looked like racial cousins of Dapsl. From their hair they drew long purple strands, wove them together with dazzling speed, and presented for the chims’ inspection a hand-sized tapestry.

“Is weaving considered an Act?” asked Kirtn, his voice too low to carry beyond Dapsl’s ears.

“Any skill can be made into an Act. Namerta,” he added, “is known for its weavers.” He stroked his intricately braided hair with pride.

The various chims fingered the Namertan’s creation. Special care was taken by the chim who had captured the Namertans. That chim stroked, examined, and picked at the hand-sized patch, then spoke to the guards. The ceiling flexed and the Namertans vanished.

“Accepted,” said Dapsl, his face proud. “Namertans are almost always taken to the Concatenation. No other race can equal our skill at weaving.” He added a phrase in his own language.

Rheba hummed to Fssa, but the snake still did not have enough clues to unravel Dapsl’s speech. The Fssireeme darkened with embarrassment for an instant.

“You’re beautiful,” whispered Rheba. “Do you have the Loo language yet?”

“Almost,” he whistled very softly, brightening. “There are at least four forms of it and not much relation between them.”

“Slave, master, middleman and equal,” guessed Rheba.

Fssa hissed soft agreement.

The next act was a very pale-skinned male. His features seemed neither handsome nor ugly, just as he was neither tall nor short. He looked so unremarkable that Rheba found herself wondering what he could possibly do that would be up to the standards of a Concatenation Act.

Then the man changed before her eyes. He became taller, broader, darker, velvet-textured. His eyes burned gold in a golden mask. He seemed to reach out to her, compelling her body to respond to him. Soon he would touch her and she would burst Into flame, touching him, igniting him until they burned together in a consummation of passion that she could not imagine, much less understand.

With a moan, she forced herself to look away.

“What is it?” asked Kirtn, touching her. Her skin seared

his fingertips with a kind of heat she should not have generated at her age. His own response was instantaneous, almost uncontrollable, a reflex as ingrained as hunger. But he was Bre’n, and must control the sensual heat that would otherwise destroy them both. Too soon. Everything had happened too quickly after Deva. “Rheba!”

Kirtn’s harsh whisper broke the Act’s hold on her. She shuddered. Heat drained from her skin, bleaching the patterns of power. “I’m—all right,” she said, breathing brokenly. “I don’t—I don’t know what happened.”

Kirtn knew; dreams of just such an awakening on her part had haunted him more frequently of late. Yet she was at least ten years too young; and she had neither Senyas mother nor . Bre’n sister to gently lead her to understanding.

Dapsl looked over at her. When he saw her flushed face, he smiled. “So you can respond to something besides a furry—or did he look like a furry to you?” His smile widened at her confusion. “Is that the first time you’ve seen a Yhelle illusionist? His Talent is unusual, even among the Yhelle. He makes you see whatever would most inflame you sexually.” Dapsl looked around the audience. “He’s not very good, though. Only the women responded. And you were able to break his illusion. He’s probably too young for full control.”

Apparently the Loo lords agreed. There was a brisk bargaining session but apparently no price was reached. The guard led the illusionist out of the circle and abandoned him. The man hesitated, then walked back to wherever he had come from before the Loo lords had condensed out of the Fold’s ceiling.

Dapsl made a satisfied sound. “Next time hell be ready. He’ll be able to reach men as well as women. Then he’ll be a prize for any chim to buy and use.”

Rheba looked at the ground and hoped she would never again be within range of the man’s illusions. She had known pleasure and laughter and simple release with her Senyas friends, but she had never suspected the existence of such consummation as she had seen in him. She wondered how much had been illusion, how much a reality latent within her that she had not yet experienced. She wondered ... but was oddly reluctant to ask the only one who might be able to answer her. Kirtn.

The guard stopped in front of Dapsl and spoke curtly. Rheba did not need Dapsl’s translation to know that it was their turn on the stage. She wiped the illusionist from her mind, thinking only of the Act.

XV

Dapsl bowed low to the Loo lords and ladies. His braids brushed his bare feet and the hard-packed earth of the stage. “Lords and ladies,” he said, his voice ringing, “I have a tale for your astonishment and amusement, a tale about a time long ago when demons were kings and the Devil God created the First Woman as punishment to an unruly king.”

Kirtn listened to Dapsl with only half his attention. The first few times he had beard the Loo’s creation myth, he had been amused: at one time in the past, the Loo had apparently gone furred; even today it was whispered that some children were born with pelt rather than smooth blue skin. Those secret children were the legacy of the First Woman’s victory over the Demon King.

“—came to the furred king. He was strong and fierce, his minions were swift and vicious—”

On cue, the J/taals and their clepts swept into the ring in a leaping, swirling entrance that required both strength and split-instant timing. The five J/taa1s moved as one, doing back flips and somersaults while the clepts wove through with fangs flashing. The clepts appeared on the edge of wounding the J/taals—and that would have happened, had not the timing been perfect.

There was a final, closely choreographed burst of movement, then J/taals and clepts froze into a savage tableau, animal fangs echoed by the shine of J/taal teeth.

“—Demon King had heard of the Woman made by the Devil God. The King had been told that if he conquered her, she would give him a furred male child who would rule the world. But if she conquered him, her children would be two, and smooth, founders of a superior race.

“He was only an animal, a demon. The thought of siring his superiors enraged him.”

Lord Jal snapped his fingers twice. Instantly Dapsl speeded the presentation. “In time, he succeeded in capturing the Woman. Capturing, but not conquering.”

Rheba felt a quick pressure on her hand as Kirtn strode away on cue toward the stage. When he was inside the circle, Fssa began creating soul-curdling sounds, as though a gathering of demons dined on living flesh. The snake projected the sounds so that they seemed to come from Kirtn. For her part, Rheba concentrated on Kirtn’s body, changing the quality of the air around him until he seemed to walk wrapped in sable smoke that licked out toward the audience.

While the Loo’s attention was on Kirtn, she stole onto the stage. She stood close to him, looking angry, wrapped in thin flickers of flame. A leash of black connected her to him, but the leash was no more substantial than the smoke that clung to his copper body. Fssa produced sweet cries of distress for her to mouth, sounds that would have wrung compassion from any audience but Loo-chims.

The next part of the Act was supposed to be a ballet of advance and retreat where the J/taals menaced and tormented the First Woman while the Demon King watched. Dapsl, however, did not give the cue. He summarized swiftly, then cued in the culmination of the battle between Woman and Demon. Because he had warned the Act that the performance might be shortened at the whim of the Loo, they were ready. Rheba formed balls of blue energy and flicked them at the J/taals and their clepts. They froze in place, paralyzed by cobalt light.

With the “minions” disposed of, she advanced on Kirtn. Her footsteps were outlined in red flames, and fire leaped from her flying hair as she sought to change his demon soul, thus making him a fit mate for her. A demon head grew out of Kirtn’s skull. The ferocious face expanded and expanded until its mouth was large enough to devour the stage. Out of that mouth—courtesy of Fssa—rose a caterwauling that was enough to freeze the core of a sun.

A cage of fire sprang up around Kirtn. He struggled terribly against it, but could not break free. It was a difficult part of the Act for Rheba; she had to sustain the cold blue fire around the minions, the rippling demon head that filled the stage, and the moving cage of hot fire around Kirtn.

Fssa switched from screaming to a pure whistle that was like water in the desert to the listening chims. The whistle was the opening note of a Bre’n courtship song, but such was its power that people of all races were compelled by it. Had Rheba not been so busy holding various kinds of fire, she would have sung the female part of the duet. As it was, the notes only seemed to come from her lips.

Slowly, as though drawn against his will, Kirtn stopped struggling. The demon head above him waxed and waned, changing with each beat of song until the grim mouth closed with a long series of moans which were also supplied by Fssa.

Rheba felt the snake change to meet each need of the Act, at the same time holding his surface color so that he exactly matched her hair. Fssa was justifiably proud of his performance. Neither whistle nor demon cries could be traced to the hidden Fssireeme.

The demon head puffed out, releasing one drain on Rheba’s energies. Kirtn appeared to test his immaterial cage. It held, and he howled in fear. Still Fssa/Rheba whistled beguiling notes that danced like moonlight on a waterfall, presaging the fiery dawn yet to come. Unwillingly, the Demon King answered.

When Kirtn’s lilting whistle slid into harmony, weaving a world of sensual possibilities out of pure song, the Loos stirred and leaned forward. The contrast between the savage Act and the lyrical duet was so great that it was almost incomprehensible. Even Lord Jal seemed caught, body keeping time to alien rhythms, imprisoned by uncanny music.

The fire that had flickered over Rheba’s body leaped forward, joining with Kirtn’s cage in a soundless explosion. The duet simultaneously reached its peak. Then Fssa/Rheba sang alone, coaxingly, luring the Demon King, promising him ease and beauty in marriage to the First Woman. Step by slow step, the Demon King crossed the ground separating him from the First Woman, drawn by a passion that consumed him. She waited, arms raised, demanding and inviting his touch. Then his arms folded around her and he bent toward her.

For a moment all Rheba could see was his gold eyes burning over her, head bending down, arms hard around her. She was as shaken as she had been by the Yhelle illusionist, caught in a chaos of needs she was not prepared to understand.

“It’s almost over, fire dancer,” he murmured against her flying hair, holding her tightly. “Just a bit more.”

As she heard his words she realized that she was stiff, unbending, as though she still fought against the illusionist. But this was Kirtn who held her, Kirtn who had soothed her smallest hurts since she was a toddler, Kirtn who always had a smile and a gentle touch for his little fire dancer. Kirtn, not an alien illusion.

She tightened her arms around him, clinging to him with sudden fierce heat. She felt his hesitation, then his body molded to hers, answering her embrace.

Lines of power smoldered over her body, searing him Where he touched her, but he did not flinch or protest. He knew that she was unaware of herself and what she did to him, what she was becoming. Too soon.__

“It’s over,” he whispered, “You can let go of the fire.”

Despite his words, he held her even after the last random flame nickered free of the clepts. Then, with a reluctance he could barely conceal, he released her. As she stepped away she looked up at him. Her eyes were red-gold, luminous, searching his for something she could not name.

A murmur of Loo language washed over the stage. Fssa tickled her neck as he changed into listening mode. Her confused feeling about Kirtn evaporated when she heard Fssa’s satisfied hiss.

“Got it,” he murmured. He began summarizing the Loo mutterings for her. “They like you and Kirtn. They think that you veiled the obscenity nicely by using Loo creation myths.”

“What obscenity?” whispered Rheba. Then, “Oh. Furry and smoothie, right?”

Fssa whistled soft agreement. “The J/taals and clepts are competent, but unnecessary. They distract from the central necessity—the Demon King’s conversion. Several of the chims are trying to buy the J/taals as guards. The J/taals are well known in Equality. Theirs is one of the few languages other than Universal that I learned from my guardian.”

“He can’t sell them!” she whispered harshly. Fear made gold lines flare on her arms.

Fssa did not bother to make the obvious statement that a slave master could do whatever he wanted with his slaves.

“But we’re an Act. He wouldn’t separate an Act,” she said, as though the snake had contradicted her.

“Only after you appear in the Concatenation are you an Act. Until then, you’re a collection of slaves.”

She wanted to argue with the snake, but knew it was futile. Fssa was right. She realized she was squeezing Kirtn’s hand with enough force to hurt. She looked up at him, and saw from his expression that he had heard Fssa. “They saved the child when we couldn’t,” she said. “I can’t abandon them.”

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Jal hasn’t told them yet.”

Lord Jal raised his arm, pointed at Dapsl, and snapped his fingers impatiently. Dapsl hurried forward and made a deep obeisance at the hem of Jal’s sheer robe. Fssa changed shape again, tickling Rheba’s ear. She waited, breath held, but the snake said nothing.

“Translate,” she snapped.

“They’re using Dapsl’s language,” responded Fssa. “Others are talking at the same time. It’s hard to separate, much less learn.”

She took the hint and stopped bothering him. Several chims joined in Jal’s conversation, but they spoke only master Loo. Still Fssa said nothing. Dapsl hurried back to the stage.

“The clepts,” he said, “are unnecessary and ugly. The J/taals are little better. They are rejected.”

“Then the Act is rejected,” said Kirtn before Rheba could speak.

Dapsl stared at Kirtn. “The Act is not rejected. Just the J/taals and the clepts. Lord Jal will graciously allow you to keep that flatulent snake and the ugly First Person you are pleased to call a crown.”

The Bre’n touched Rainbow, forgotten around his forehead. The rock had changed itself until it matched the color of Kirtn’s hand-length hair. Fssa had told them that it would be better if Rainbow did not excite any greed or unusual interest until it had appeared with them at the Concatenation. Rainbow had obliged by pulling its colored facets inward and altering the remainder until it appeared to be a battered, primitive, gold-colored crown.

“Lord Jal,” said Rheba quietly, “takes us all together or not at all.”

Dapsl’s color deepened, then bleached to lavender when he realized that Rheba meant what she said. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life in the Fold, until they tire of feeding you and send you to the Pits? No one is that stupid—not even a kaza-flatch bitch!”

“We haven’t had much time to prepare our Act,” said Kirtn. “When the buyers come again, the J/taals and clepts will be a vital part of the Act.”

“But you could be free of the Fold right now! All you have to do is leave the—”

“No,” said Rheba and Kirtn together.

“But if you miss this Concatenation, you’ll be at risk of separation for another year}”

“No.”

With a furious, inarticulate sound, Dapsl turned and stalked back to Lord Jal. Whatever was said was very brief. Jal knocked Dapsl to the ground, then walked toward the stage. He looked curiously from the J/taals to Rheba.

“What bond do you have with these?” Jal asked. “Is it simply that kaza-flatchers stay together, the better to enjoy their perversions?”

“Nothing that complex,” said Rheba, her lips thin but her voice even. “Honor. A promise kept.”

Lord Jal looked at his blue-black fingernails, his eyes hooded, his expression bored. “And if I separate you from them?”

“I’ll be unAdjusted. You can’t take an unAdjusted slave out of the Fold.”

Kirtn leaned forward. “And I’ll be unAdjusted, too. How will you explain that to the female cherf who is half of the Imperial Loo-chim?”

Lord Jal looked up. Despite herself, Rheba took a step backward. Defensive fire smoldered on her arms, waiting to be used.

Jal smiled. “Do you still share enzymes?” he asked, his voice as cruel as his eyes, reminding her that he could take away more than the J/taals.

She blinked, forgetting for a moment what Jal meant. Then she remembered the ruse she and Kirtn had used to stay together. “Of course,” she said quickly. “Didn’t you see us onstage?”

Jal’s laugh was soft. “I see everything, kaza-flatch bitch. Remember that.” He stared at her for a long moment, then shifted his regard to Kirtn. “You, furry, are worth a great deal of money to me, but not enough to risk humiliation. A man without a chim is... vulnerable. The Act is embarrassing.” He tapped one long nail against his nacreous teeth. The sound seemed very loud in the silence.

Fssa stirred against Rheba’s neck and whistled low Bre’n phrases. Kirtn listened, then turned to Jal. “To be part of the Act, the J/taals and clepts simply have to appear with us on the Concatenation stage, correct?”

Lord Jal gestured agreement. And waited.

“Surely the Loo still have some equivalent of hell in their mythology?”

Again the gesture. And the silence.

“A flaming hell?”

Gesture. Silence.

“Rheba will make the J/taals and clepts into fire demons. Our Act will be a vision of hell.”

The silence stretched. The taps of nail on tooth slowed, then stopped entirely. Jal’s expression was not encouraging. Fssa whistled like a distant flute, enlarging upon what he was hearing the chims in the audience say. Kirtn listened without seeming to as the snake eavesdropped on chims speculating upon ways to improve the Act they had just seen.

“If you have a hell myth,” the Bre’n continued, “then you must have a myth about a man trapped and distorted by devils, then finally rescued by somebody who symbolizes pure innocence.”

“Saffar and Hmel,” said Lord Jal, startled. His eyes looked through them, focused on one of the Loo’s favorite myths. “Yes ... mmm.” His glance narrowed and returned to the Bre’n. “A happy choice. The female polarity’s favorite story.” His eyes closed, then snapped open. “It’s worth the risk. We’ll try it You surprise me, furry. But if it’s not good enough to be one of my three Acts—and the trash I just saw certainly was not!—we’ll have another talk about honor and unAdjusted slaves.”

Kirtn, relieved Jal had not noticed that Fssa was feeding him information about Loo culture, did not object to the threat in the blue lord’s words. Then, before Kirtn could feel more than an instant of relief, a funnel of energy came down, engulfed him., turned him inside out, and spat him onto the top of a ramp outside the Fold.

The ramp was long, curving, and quite high where he stood. A walled city stretched away from him on either side of the ramp. People, curious or idle or simply cruel, lined the walls, waiting for the new crop of Fold slaves to appear.

Behind him he heard a gasp and low cries as the rest of the Act materialized out of the savage energy so casually employed by the Loo. He turned to help Rheba, then froze, riveted by a single clear sound.

The Bre’n whistle called to him again and yet again, peals of joy rising from farther down the ramp. Without thinking he spun and ran toward the sound, not even seeing the guard who had come through with the new slaves. He never heard the warning shout, nor saw the brutal flash of energy that cut him down.

XVI

Rheba watched while two guards peeled off the filaments of force net from Kirtn’s slack body. Bre’n; and guards blurred in her vision. She scrubbed away tears angrily but could not control the fear that shook her body, fear such as she had not felt since the morning Deva died. She pushed past the guards and knelt next to Kirtn, checking for his pulse with a hand that trembled too much to do anything useful.

Gently, M/dere lifted Rheba’s band and replaced it with her own. Fssa, tangled in Rheba’s hair, watched with sensors that were incandescent against the black of his body.

“He’s alive,” said the J/taal.

Rheba did not know whether Fssa had translated or she had snatched the hoped-for words out of the air. She felt a rush of weakness overwhelm her. She clutched M/dere’s arm, taking strength from the J/taal’s hard flesh.

Lord Jal entered the room, shoved the women aside and went over Kirtn with a hand-sized red instrument. It chimed and clicked, giving Jal information that Fssa could not translate. With a grunt, he put the instrument into a pocket of his filmy robe and turned toward the guard who had shot Kirtn.

“Your chim is very lucky. She won’t spend the rest of her life mourning a dead male who had no more brains than a handful of shit.”

The guard went pale, but he knew better than to interrupt a Loo lord.

“Tell me very clearly,” said Jal icily, “and very quickly, why you struck down a slave that is worth more than you and your chim cast in gold!”

“It—it ran down the ramp.”

Jal waited, obviously expecting more. Much more.

“That’s all, lord. It ran down the ramp.”

Jal spoke vicious phrases in the master language of Loo. Fssa’s translation faltered, then stopped entirely. After a few moments, Jal controlled his vindictive tongue and the Fssireeme began translating the slave master’s words into softly whistled Bre’n.

“Fool. Who could have been harmed if that slave ran up and down the ramp for the next ten-day? Sometimes the transfer energies overload the nerves of inferior species. That’s why we built the ramp and the walls! Slaves can go berserk and not even endanger themselves, much less others.

Lord Jal clenched and unclenched his fists. Then he sighed, wiped his face with a sheer, voluminous sleeve, and turned his back on the guards who had carried Kirtn into the Concatenation’s spacious slave compound. He pulled out the instrument again and moved it slowly over Kirtn’s head. The crown glowed oddly against his broad forehead, as though the transfer energies had in some way affected whatever passed for Rainbow’s metabolism.

“Odd,” muttered Jal. “That ugly tiling really is alive. Hmmh.” He repeated his motion with the instrument, and the instrument repeated its chimes and clicks. “Well, the wonders of the Equality are endless. I thought Dapsl was just trying to pass off a double handful of gold as one of the First People.”

“IT said a shaky voice. ‘Td never deceive my lord.” Dapsl limped into the crowded room. The left side of his face was swollen and darkened where Lord Jal’s fist had struck him. “I told you that was one of the stone people.”

Lord Jal ignored both the little man’s words and his deep bow. With a swirl of his rich robe, the Loo turned toward Rheba. “It”—he gestured toward Kirtn—“will wake up soon. It will be sore. See that it walks around or the soreness will get worse.”

Rheba imitated the Loo gesture of agreement Jal looked startled, as though he realized for the first time that he was speaking master Loo, not Universal—and she was understanding every word. He stared at the slender snake body barely visible beneath her hair.

“Dapsl didn’t lie about that, either,” Jal said in Universal. “How many languages does it know?”

Unhesitatingly, Rheba lied. “Loo, a bit. Universal, a bit more. Enough so that we get by. He says he knows J/taal, but I have no way to be sure. The J/taals obey well enough, so the snake must know something.” She shrugged. “He’s quite beautiful, but I’m afraid he’s not at all bright. As much a mimic as anything else.”

She whistled sweet Bre’n apologies to Fssa and hoped that Jal would not see through her lies. Until the Fssireeme performed with them on the Concatenation stage, he could be snatched away at the whim of a Loo Lord. Fssa’s linguistic genius must be kept secret for a few more weeks.

Lord Jal stared at the snake. He did not entirely accept Rheba’s glib explanation. On the other hand, the snake obviously was necessary to the smooth performance of the Act. Besides—if the beast were truly valuable, the chim who had captured it in the first place would have claimed it long since.

He turned back toward Dapsl, dismissing whatever small mysteries surrounded the snake. “The new year begins in two weeks. Ill choose my Acts two days before. Organize your Act around the Saffar and Hmel myth. Weave right this time, or you’ll die in the Pit.”

Dapsl swayed as though Jal had struck him again. “No, lord,” he whispered. “Not the Pit. Please, lord.”

Jal was indifferent to the trembling in the smaller man’s voice. “The Pit. What else can a failed weaver expect?”

“But—but—” Dapsl stuttered hoarsely. ‘They d-don’t respect me, Lord. They d-don’t obey. They laugh. They ignore. How can I weave an Act with such c-creatures?”

“The most stubborn threads make the most satisfying pattern,” Jal said blandly, quoting a homily of Dapsl’s people. “And ... I’ll give you a nerve wrangler to use on the J/taals and clepts.” He looked at Rheba, who was stroking Kirtn’s face while tears ran down her own. “I wouldn’t recommend using it on either of them, though. The Bre’n would kill you before the nerve wrangler disabled him.”

“Lord, are you saying he’s unAdjusted?”

Jal smiled. “So long as he’s with his kaza-flatch, he’s Adjusted. Walk lightly, manikin. If you goad them into breaking Adjustment and I have to have them killed, you’ll die first and very badly.”

Dapsl swallowed several times but still was not able to speak. Lord Jal measured the purple man’s distress, smiled, and swept out of the room.

Kirtn groaned. His body jerked erratically, aftermath of the nerve wrangler the guard had used on him. M/dere and Rheba worked over him, trying to loosen muscles knotted by alien energies. After a few moments he opened his eyes. They were very dark gold, glazed by pain. Remembering Jal’s words, Rheba urged the Bre’n to his feet and guided him on a slow circuit of the room.

He seemed to improve with each painful step. Finally he shook himself, as though to throw off the last of the nerve wrangler’s disruptions. Then he remembered what had happened before the world became a curtain of black agony.

“What is it?” asked Rheba, feeling his body stiffen suddenly. “Jal said the pain would get less, not more, if we walked. Do you want to stop?”

Kirtn answered in Senyas, his voice as controlled as the language itself. “There is a Bre’n woman here, in this city. She called to me while I was on the ramp.”

Rheba was torn between elation and dismay. She ignored the latter emotion, not even asking herself why the news of a Bre’n woman would bring less than joy to her. “You’re sure?” Then, immediately, “Of course you are. No one could mistake a Bre’n call. Is she well? Is she akhenet? If so, is her akhenet with her? Is he well? How old—” She stopped the rush of questions. Kirtn would not have had rime to speak to the woman before he was cut down by the guard.

“Her name if Ilfn. She used the major key, so she and her akhenet are as well as slaves can be. She didn’t use an adult tone to describe his name, so I assume that Lheket is a child. She didn’t use the harmonics of gathering to describe herself, so I have to assume that she doesn’t know of any other Bre’ns on Loo.”

Rheba thought quickly, grateful for the compressed, complex Bre’n language. Few other languages could have packed so much information into a few instants of musical sound. “It must be Lheket’s earring that Jal stole.” Her voice changed. She reached up to touch her right ear, barren of Kirtn’s gift, the Bre’n Face. Jal had taken both earrings, Lheket’s and her own, before he dumped her and Kirtn into the Fold. “May his children turn to ashes before he dies,” she said, a fire dancer’s curse. Her voice was frightening in its hatred. Her arms smoldered beneath the robes. Lines of burning gold glowed on her neck and her hair twisted restlessly.

For once, Kirtn did not attempt to calm her. The earring was the symbol of all that Bre’n and Senyas could be, the Face of the future, catalyst to Rheba’s understanding of herself, and Him. He felt its loss as acutely as she did; perhaps more, for he understood more.

“We’ll have to find out where she’s kept,” said Rheba

slowly, “then we’ll have to figure out a way to free her and her akhenet—and ourselves,” she added in bitter tones, “ourselves first of all.” She looked around the room. It was large, contained simple furniture and simple house machines. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon.

“At least we found the boy,” said Kirtn, understanding her scrutiny of the room. “Part of our goal is accomplished.”

“Did you ... see him?” she asked, oddly reticent. She felt uncomfortable discussing the child who was the only possible male to father her children. On Deva such reticence would have been impossible; she and Kirtn would have thoroughly discussed the choosing of each other’s mates. But Deva was gone, choice narrowed to nothing. “Is he very young?”

Kirtn stroked her hair, enjoying the subtle crackle of stored energy clinging to his fingers. “I don’t know. I hope so,” he said absently. Then, bearing his own words, his hand stopped. “I mean—you’re young, fire dancer. There’s so much—” Abruptly, he was silent. There was no way to tell her that it would be better for him if she could accept him as a lover or at least a pleasure mate before she began, bearing Lheket’s children.

“I’m frightened,” she whispered. “What little peace we’ve gained since Deva died—it’s been so hard, my Bre’n. If you mate—if I—it will all change again. Oh, I know it will be better. Won’t it? But you’re all I have—” She heard her own words and stopped, miserable and ashamed to speak such small thoughts to her beloved mentor. “I’m sorry, akhenet,” she said in cold Senyas. “I’m unworthy of your time.”

Kirtn laughed humorlessly. ‘Then I’m unworthy of yours. I have the same fears you do.”

She looked up, unable to believe him until she saw his face pulled into grim lines beneath the sleet gold mask. Absurdly, she felt better, knowing that he accepted and even shared her fears. She put her arms around his neck and whispered fiercely, “You’re mine, Kirtn. I’ll share you, but suns will turn to ice before I let you go!”

He returned her hug with a force that surprised her. His strength always took her unaware, reminding her of how much he held in check. She buried her fingers in the thick hair that covered his skull.

“Trading enzymes again?” asked Jal from the doorway.

Rheba felt deadly anger bloom in Kirtn at Jal’s unexpected return and cutting words. Deliberately, she put her mouth over Kirtn’s and held the kiss for a long count. She meant to insult Jal by ignoring him, but her intention was lost in a swirl of unexpected emotions. Her lines of power flared, a surge of energy that was the first signal of a mature fire dancer’s passion.

Kirtn felt fire lick along his nerves where he touched her, fire that burned without hurting, ecstasy instead of agony. She was older than he had thought, maturity forced by a life no fire dancer should have to lead. Her body was ready for him but her mind was not. That could not be forced. With an effort that made him ache, he ended the kiss and turned to face the blue lord who watched so insolently from the door.

“Trading enzymes/’ agreed Kirtn, his voice as utterly controlled as his body.

Jal snickered. “Then you should be ready for Lord Puc’s furry bitch. She’ll give you an enzyme transfer that will crisp your nuga.”

“Lord Puc?” said the Bre’n. “I thought that the Imperial Loo-chim owned the Bre’n woman.”

“Lord Puc is the male polarity of the Imperial Loo-chim. When he conducts business that has nothing to do with governing the planet, he’s referred to as Lord Puc. His chim is Lady Kurs. The lady doesn’t want to wait until after the Concatenation for you to impregnate the Bre’n female. She’s afraid that her brother might change his mind. So you’ll go to the bitch every night for ten nights—or whatever part of the night is left after Lord Puc finishes with her.”

Equal parts of anger and sickness coursed through Rheba at the cold usage of the Bre’n woman as both whore and breeder. She felt ashamed of her earlier jealously; if Kirtn could bring any comfort at all to the Bre’n woman, his Senyas woman would not begrudge it.

She squeezed Kirtn’s hand gently, trying to tell him what she felt, that she could share Him with the unknown woman and not be ruined by jealousy. “Despite Loo’ myths,” she said coolly to Jal, “Bre’ns aren’t animals. They don’t mate indiscriminately.”

“If your furry can’t bring himself to fertilize the bitch, we’ll take the sperm from him and do it ourselves. Lady Kurs wouldn’t like that. She’s hoping to blunt the Bre’n bitch’s appetites with a male of her own species. Later, when the bitch is pregnant, Lady Kurs will enjoy her own revenge on her chim with the male furry,” Jal smiled at Kirtn. “If you can’t perform, Lady Kurs will assume that your kaza-flatch is draining you. Then you’ll be separated until you can perform.”

“Rheba and I aren’t lovers, or even pleasure mates,” snapped Kirtn.

“Lady Kurs doesn’t believe that. Neither do I. A guard will come for you later. Be ready.”

XVII

Kirtn followed the silent chim of guards through the Concatenation compound. It was very late at night, yet people stirred throughout, nocturnal races from planets he had never heard of. Some of the people worked as drudges. Others rehearsed their Acts, their bodies rippling with natural fluorescence and their eyes brilliant with reflected light.

The compound was a warren of hallways, turnings, rooms, dead ends and ramps. As he walked, he got the impression of age, great age, millennia that had worn building stones into rounded blocks. Beneath his feet stone was smoothed to a semblance of softness by the passage of countless barefoot slaves. The air was neither chill nor warm, damp nor dry, yet he was certain he had smelled brine in the instant before one of the outer doors closed.

Breathing deeply, sifting the air for scents, he walked behind the guards. The hint of sea smell remained, or it could have been simply his hope that both Fold and Concatenation were located in the same equatorial city where the Devalon had first landed. If that was so, his ship was within reach, or at least within possibility. Unless Jal had slagged the Devalon out of anger when he realized it would respond only to Rheba and Kirtn.

The guards paused before a portal. Energy shimmered across it until the chim spoke a command. Like the compound’s other safeguards, the key to the doorway was simple. There was nothing to prevent an intelligent, determined slave from escaping—nothing but the knowledge that there was no way off planet and the punishment for an unAdjusted slave was death. The Loos assumed that a slave clever enough to escape was also clever enough to know that it was committing suicide. Those who survived Pit or Fold were invariably intelligent. The Loos had to kill very few slaves in any given year, and most of those had gone mad.

Even so, Kirtn watched and learned, weighing and memorizing alternate routes through the ancient compound, remembering verbal keys to each doorway. What he did was not difficult for a Bre’n; their memories were as great as their ability to withstand pain. It could not be otherwise for a race that guided the dangerous mental energies of Senyas dancers.

Another door, another shimmer of energy, another set of commands. He walked through into a night that was fragrant with flowers and a nearby sea. Wind ruffled over him, bringing with it the sound of surf created by two of Loo’s moons. He wished for a window or a hill or even a peephole, anything to give him a view of the surrounding area. But all he had was a walled courtyard that was crossed in seventeen steps. A door gleamed, winked out. In the gold light of an open room stood a Bre’n woman, Ilfn. Her whistle was one of the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard.

Ilfn stepped forward and led him through the archway. The guards did not follow. Behind him energy leaped up again, sealing him within the room. At the moment it did not matter, he was standing close to a Bre’n woman.

A hand brushed his gold mask, smoothing the short, sleek hairs around his gold eyes in a Bre’n gesture of greeting. He returned the touch. Ilfn was smaller than he, smaller than the Bre’n women he had known, barely taller than a Senyas. Her mask was pale gold against the dark brown of her hair and fur. She trembled beneath his touch.

“I hoped, but I never really believed I would see another Bre’n,” she whistled. “I hoped. And I survived, because it isn’t for a Bre’n to die and leave behind an akhenet child. Are you akhenet, too?”

“Yes. Her name is Rheba. She’s a fire dancer from the Tirrl continent.”

“Tirrl.” The word was like a sigh. “Half a world away from Semmadoh. But we all died just the same.”

“Not all. You’re here, and we’re here. There must be others. Rheba and I will find them. We’ll gather them up and take them to a new world. Bre’ns and Senyasi will dance again.”

Ilfn’s smile was unbearably sad, but she did not say aloud that slaves had no right to dreams. “Fire dancer. Lheket is a rain dancer. Very strong.” Her whistle slid into a minor key, “Too strong for a child only eleven years old.”

He whistled sympathetically. “Rheba is strong, too. And too young to have lines of power touching her shoulders.”

With a last smoothing of Kirtn’s gold mask, Ilfn’s hand fell. “I think only the strongest dancers survived.” Her eyes were pale brown with green lights, but little except darkness moved within them when she remembered Deva’s end. “I’m glad that Lord Puc listened to my plea.”

Kirtn’s whistle rose on a note of query.

“I asked him if you were alive,” she explained, “and he said yes. Then I asked him if I could see you. He shouted and hit me.” She made a dismissing gesture when she saw Kirtn’s face change. “No Loo can make a Bre’n hurt with just bare fists. And Lord Puc is weaker than most.” Her lips thinned into a bitter smile. “Lord Puc is very soft in my hands. When the time comes, he’s mine. I’ve earned him.”

The last was spoken in Senyas, and was as flat as the light in her eyes.

“When the time comes... ?” he whistled.

Ilfn hesitated, then whistled softly. “I suppose I must trust you.” Then, defiantly, “If I can’t trust the last Bre’n man alive, I’ll be glad to die!”

He waited, then hummed encouragement.

“Rebellion,” she said in Senyas.

“When? Where? How many?” He spoke Senyas, too, a staccato rush of demand.

“Last Year Night, the final night of the Concatenation, during the Hour Between Years. It’s an hour of chaos. We know the gate codes of the compound. There’s a spaceport just a few mie from the Concatenation amphitheater. We’ll steal a ship and get off this mud-sucking planet.”

He hesitated, not knowing how to criticize the plan without seeming ungrateful for her confidence. She smiled again, and he realized that she was old, much older than he.

“It’s not as foolish as it sounds in Senyas,” she said. “On the night of Concatenation there is an extra hour of tune after midnight when they adjust their yearly calendar. It’s a time of no-time, really, when all rules are suspended and slaves wander the streets. When the hour is up, the New Year Morning begins. Until then, the highborn Loo and their guards stay in the Concatenation amphitheater, bidding for various Acts.”

He stood quietly, absorbing the information and its implications for escape. “What’s the amphitheater like?”

“It’s an ancient place connected to this compound by a tunnel.” She switched from Senyas to Bre’n, emotions ringing in her whistle. “There aren’t any guards in the tunnel, and there are many rooms, many turnings before the tunnel reaches the amphitheater. We’ll stay in the tunnel until the last Act is over. No one will notice old slaves mixed with the new Acts. When the last Act ends and the Hour Between Years begins, we’ll escape. We’ll seal the exits behind us, go to the spaceport, grab a ship and lift off.”

“If it were that easy, there wouldn’t be a slave left on Loo,” Kirtn said in dry Senyas.

“Easy or hard, we’ll do it.”

He looked narrowly at her, hearing the desperation that lay just beneath her clear whistle, coloring it—with echoes of despair. “What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”

Her whistle shattered, then she was in control again, and it was as though the instant had never happened. “Lheket. He’s only a boy, but already he’s as tall as my shoulder. Lord Puc is jealous. He can’t believe that no Bre’n akhenet would touch a Senyas child. He sees my love for Lheket and calls it lust Someday it might be, if Lheket grows into a mature love of me. But that day is twenty years ahead. Lord Puc can’t believe that. He sees only Lheket’s height and beauty and the boy’s love for me.” Her eyes closed, then opened very dark. “He’ll take Lheket from me soon. Then there will be a time of rez and death.” She looked up at him, lips tight around precise Senyas words. “So you see, I’ve nothing to lose by rebellion, no matter how badly planned.”

He had no response. There was no way to change her mind, and no reason to. She understood her choices, few and bitter as they were. “Can you trust the other slaves not to betray you?”

Ilfn’s whistle was double-toned, indicating that the question was unanswerable. “They came to me because I’ve heard the outer-door codes when I go to Lord Puc. Their plan required the right key.”

“You.”

“Yes.” She turned her hands palm down and then palm up. “They trust me because they roust, but I don’t think they’ve told me their whole plan. I think many slaves are involved, in and out of the compound. But I know only two names, and those the least important. I don’t know how many slaves they expect to take with them. At least one of the two I’ve met is a pilot. She recognized the ships I described to her.”

“Ships? Are you allowed to go to the spaceport?” demanded Kirtn.

“No, but I can see it from my window at the far side of

this building. That’s how I knew you were here. I saw the shape of a Senyas ship against the dawn. Since then, I’ve waited by that ramp every time newly Adjusted slaves were released. When I saw you—” Her hands clung to him suddenly with a strength he had not felt since Deva, Bre’n strength. “And then the guard scourged you and you fell. I was afraid you were dead, that I had killed you with a welcoming whistle.”

Kirtn held Ilfn while she shuddered. It was the Bre’n way of crying, and it was as painful to him as it was to her. Even when she stopped, he continued to hold her, knowing that it had been too long since anyone had comforted her.

The thought of her being used by Lord Puc made anger uncurl in Kirtn like an endles8 snake. Even though he probably would not have chosen her for a mate on Deva, she was a good woman, brave and akhenet. She did not deserve to be a Loo-chim toy.

“If we get to the Devalon,” he promised, “you’ll be safe. And Lheket—” He hesitated, switched to unemotional Senyas. “Lheket will have a mate when he’s old enough to give my dancer a child. It’s not how we would have done it on Deva, but Rheba is akhenet and knows her duty.”

“Duty,” murmured Ilfn. “A cold companion, but better than none at all.” She looked up, measuring him with pale-brown eyes. “I don’t think we would have chosen each other on Deva. You’re much younger, yet much harder than-the men I loved ... but as soon as we’re off this planet I’ll bear our children, akhenet. Do you agree?”

“I’m akhenet,” he said simply, “Of course I agree.”

“But? Don’t tell me you’re too young to father children?”

Kirtn smiled. “Young, yes, but not that young.”

“And your akhenet? How old is she?”

“Neither child nor yet akhenet woman,” he said bluntly.

Ilfn pushed away from him with an embarrassed whistle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb your desires. My sympathy, akhenet. You’ve a hard time ahead.” She smiled ruefully. “Your whistle didn’t describe her as a child.”

“I’m afraid I don’t often think of her that way.”

“How old is she?”

“Twice your boy’s age.”

“Then she won’t be ready to accept you for at least ten years,” she said thoughtfully, switching to Senyas. “Yet you already think of her as a woman ... ?”

Kirtn’s whistle was harsh, answering her unspoken questions. “I’ve never touched Rheba as a woman—except once, to fool the Loo-chim into believing that she and I had to trade enzymes in order to survive. Then she—once—to irritate Lord Jal.” His whistle deteriorated into a scathing Senyas oath. “It doesn’t matter. She is what she is—too young!” In his anger, he lashed out—at Ilfn. “And I’m not here at Lord Puc’s demand, but at his sister’s. I’m supposed to breed you so that Lord Puc will go back to his whore-sister’s bed I”

The Bre’n woman looked at him for a long time, understanding his anger without being angered in turn. “You can’t. With your akhenet neither child nor woman—no. Mating with me would only heighten your desire for her. Impossible. You’d risk rez.”

“If I don’t mate with you, my fire dancer will be taken away from me. You know what that would do.”

“Rez,” she whispered. Her hands knotted around each other, “Did we survive Deva and the Fold just to be driven into rez?”

“I don’t know.” His whistle was flat and very penetrating, “But of the four of us, I’m the least vital to our future.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“If you carry Bre’n babies, the race won’t die. Your akhenet must survive until he can give Rheba Senyas children. Rheba must survive until she can bear those children. But I—once you’re pregnant, I’m the least important of us.”

“Hard,” she whistled in a keening tremolo. “I saw it in your eyes, like hammered metal.”

“Do you want children who will wail and die at the first obstacle,” he said brutally, “or will you mate with a man who can give your children the strength to survive?”

“You misunderstand. I’d have no other Bre’n, now that I’ve measured you. You’re the Bre’n the Equality demands. I’m too old and you’re too young, but together we’ll breed a race of Bre’n. Survivors, Kirtn. Survivors breeding survivors.” She looked at him for a long, silent time. “And perhaps ... perhaps your fire dancer will understand your need before rez claims you.”

“Perhaps,” said Kirtn.

But neither one believed it.

XVIII

Fssa hummed soothingly, overriding the sound of Daspl’s complaints. Rheba caressed Fssa with her fingertip, then turned her whole concentration back on the J/taals and their clepts. M/dere looked over, saw that Rheba was ready and signaled the beginning of the Act. Dapsl yelled several phrases that Fssa ignored; the snake was bored by the purple man’s lack of invention in epithets.

“Stop! Stop! You don’t begin until I give the signal!” screamed Dapsl. The body-length nerve wrangler in his left hand lashed back and forth as though it were alive. The flexible tips dripped violet light, warning of energies barely held in check. The nerve wrangler licked out, rising against M/dere; violet fire ran up her arm. “listen to me or we’ll all end up in the Pit!”

M/dere stood unmoving, though her eyes were wide and dark. She did not look at Dapsl. She looked only at Rheba, her J/taaleri. Rheba badly wanted to suck the energy out of the deadly whip and send it back redoubled on Dapsl. The only thing that restrained her was the fact that he already suspected that she was more powerful than she appeared. He was afraid of her. If she disarmed him, he would probably run away screaming to the lords about powers she desperately wanted to hide. The Concatenation was only seven days away. She could hold on to her temper for seven more days. She had to.

The nerve wrangler hissed outward again, setting fire to M/dere’s arm. Rheba’s hair whipped and seethed as she leaped to her feet in rage. Fssa turned black with fear.

“No more,” said Rheba, her voice low, frightening, “If you use that whip on J/taal or clept, I won’t work for you. The Act will be nothing and you’ll be sent to the Pit!”

“So will you, kaza-flatch,” spat Dapsl, more afraid than ever of the alien whose hair was obscenely alive, dripping fire like the whip in his hand.

“I’ll survive the Pit,” she said, “You won’t.”

Dapsl hesitated for long moments while the nerve wrangler responded to his unconscious commands by writhing sinuously, bleeding violet fire. “Lord Jal won’t like this. He gave me the whip because those lazy animals wouldn’t work any other way.”

“Make your choice. The Act or the whip.”

With a savage twist of his hands, Dapsl broke the nerve wrangler. It sputtered lavender sparks, then died. He threw it into the corner of the room and turned back to Rheba.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she said calmly, returning her attention to the Act.

Dapsl’s lips flattened into thin black lines, but all he said was, “On four.”

M/dere took her cue from Dapsl this time, and the Act began smoothly. The J/taals were in a loose group on one side of the area that was marked off as the stage. Rainbow, very subdued, was at their center. They were in contorted positions, moving very slowly, their faces anguished and fierce. They and their silently snarling clepts were the very image of souls caught and tormented in hell. They moved as though swimming up out of an infinite black well, bodies straining. Yet for all their effort, they went nowhere; this/was hell, the core of nightmare in which man fled but could not move his feet.

Rheba watched without really seeing. Her whole mind was focused on gathering energy in the dim room, taking that energy and shaping it into uncanny flames that coursed over the straining bodies of the J/taals.

In her hair, Fssa transformed himself into a musical instrument. His sounds were eerie, sliding into minor harmonics and then dissolving into screams as primitive as the fear of death. Fssa’s screams broke suddenly, regrouped into a keening harmony that made her skin tighten and move.

The keening was Kirtn’s cue to come onstage in his role of Hmel, seeker of lost innocence. But Kirtn was not there, had not returned from his nightly excursion to Ilfn’s bed. That was the reason for Dapsl’s ragged temper, and her own. She sucked in more energy, drawing from a window high in the ceiling, the only source of energy in the darkened room. Where Kirtn should have been she created an outline of him that was the color of molten gold.

Dapsl gasped and stepped back before he caught himself.

His fingers curled, longing for the feel of the nerve wrangler. It was one thing to see her draw lines of fire around a living Bre’n; it was quite another to see the lines without the Bre’n.

The outline keened softly, a soul held in an immaterial cage of fire. Slowly, with great effort, the outline quartered hell, looking for his sister’s crown. Hmel had given it to a demon woman in return for a night of passion such as a human woman could never give him.

By increments Rainbow, in the role of the missing crown, brightened to draw attention to itself. It was surrounded by J/taals and clepts, each straining upward, each never leaving its place.

The outline of Kirtn/Hmel turned toward the crown with a cry of hope. But when Hmel tried to penetrate the ring of demons around the crown, a sheet of purple fire flared. The outline screamed, agony as pure as the color of the flames. The outline of Hmel reached for the crown again, and again violet lightning leaped. Hmel was not strong enough to brave the fire demons surrounding his chim’s lost crown.

A sound of despair came from Hmel’s incandescent form, a cry that began as a groan and ended in a scream so high that it was felt as much as it was heard.

Rheba waited until there was only silence and flames and echoes of despair. She walked onto the stage as though in an exhausted daze. Feigning exhaustion was not difficult. The effort of holding fire on J/taals, clepts, and also creating an outline of Kirtn was enough to reduce her to mumbling and stumbling. It would have been easier to wait for Kirtn, to use his body to shape the bright outline; but he was not here and there was no more time to wait. Jal was choosing his three Concatenation Acts tonight. Some of those Acts had been rehearsing together for nearly a year. Her Act could not afford to waste one instant of practice time.

A tall form stepped by her in the dimly lit room. Kirtn. The outline shimmered, then reformed subtly. Her fire creation was more alive now. It moved with greater grace and conviction, for it Was the result of Bre’n and Senyas working together.

Relief was like a tonic to her. She felt energy course through her, expanding the intricate lines of power on her body. Her head came up—and she saw that Kirtn had not come into the room alone. Lord Jal was in the archway. Next to him was the male polarity of the Imperial Loo-chim.

“I must protest, Lord Puc,” said Jal in a low voice. “This  Act is all but unrehearsed. To decide now whether or not it is good enough for the Concatenation stage is unreasonable.”

“It’s the right of the Imperial Loo-chim to review any Act at any time,” said Lord Puc. “If what we see pleases us, you’re assured of a place on the Concatenation stage. And if it doesn’t please us, you’re spared the embarrassment of presenting an inferior Act to the gathered chims.”

Fssa’s whispered translation from the master Loo language went no farther than Rheba’s ears. She had only to look at Kirtn, however, to realize that he already knew. Something had gone very wrong, and the male polarity was at the center of it.

“And your chim?” Jal said. His voice was clipped, as close to disrespect as he could come without further antagonizing his lord. “Doesn’t your chim want to judge this Act with you?”

Lord Puc’s glass-blue eyes fixed on Jal. After a long moment, Jal bowed and turned toward the Act. When he spoke, it was in Universal, a language the Imperial Loo-chim did not deign to understand.

“You did your job too well,” Jal snapped at Kirtn. “The bitch has been listless in Lord Puc’s bed these last nights. The female polarity is pleased. The male polarity is not.”

“Ilfn is pregnant,” Kirtn said. “She won’t willingly accept sex with him again until her children are born.”

“So she told him. He took her anyway, of course, but he didn’t have much pleasure of it.”

Kirtn’s expression shifted as his lips flattened into a silent snarl. Immediately, Rheba went to his side. Her hand rested lightly on his arm. Gradually his eyes lost their blank metallic sheen.

“Now,” continued Jal, “Lord Puc is after revenge. All that is available at the moment is a command performance of your Act.”

“If he doesn’t like it—and he won’t—we go to the Pit,” said Rheba, more statement than question.

Lord Jal’s mouth pulled into a frown. “Crudely put, but accurate. I’ve sent word to the female polarity.” He shrugged. “She should have been here by now. I hope she hasn’t changed her mind about bedding your pet.”

Lord Puc looked at Kirtn with a hatred that needed no translation. Jealousy had eaten at the lord until he was barely sane. Rheba could not help wondering what the Bre’n female had that apparently all other women lacked—and did Kirtn feel the same way about her that the Loo lord did?

“Begin,” said Lord Puc to Jal. “Now.”

“Don’t be in such a rush, chim,” said a silky voice from the archway. “Don’t you want your leman and her pet to watch? She should know how well you keep your promises.”

With an audible snarl, Lord Puc turned on his chim. The sight of Ilfn with Lheket brought an ugly sound out of the male polarity. “I said she was never to see the boy unless I was present!”

“But you were present, my chim, my other half, my petulant nonlover. Where I am, you are. Soothe yourself, chim. The bitch hasn’t touched her blind pet.” Lady Kurs smiled, then turned her shattered blue eyes on Jal. “Begin.” She turned back toward her own chim, bane and treasure of her existence. “Of course, dear Puc, you won’t let the fact that your nuga is stuck in the furry bitch affect your judgment of an Act’s worth.”

Lord Puc made an effort at self-control that showed in every sinew of his body. “Of course not. Acts are sacred.”

Lady Kurs smiled. “Then begin, Lord Jal. Now.”

The command was issued in such silky tones that it took Jal a moment to realize what Lady Kurs had said. Hurriedly he summarized the central conceit of the Act, the story of Saffar and Hmel. Lady Kurs listened, but her eyes never left the swell of muscle beneath Kirtn’s velvet plush. His fur was so short, so smooth, that it defined and enhanced rather than concealed the body beneath.

Watching, Rheba realized anew that Kirtn, like all furred slaves, was naked, accorded no more dignity than a draft animal. She felt a sick rage rise in her at Lady Kurs’ lustful inspection of the Bre’n’s body. For an instant Rheba’s rage broke free, lighting the lines of power beneath her muffling robe. Kirtn felt power flow, saw Rheba’s hot glare at Lady Kurs, and guessed what had triggered his fire dancer’s rage. With an inner smile, he turned his back on tie female polarity’s intrusive stare.

“—finds the crown but can’t penetrate the demon fire,” summarized Jal hurriedly, silently cursing the unbridled lusts of the Imperial Loo-chim. “His chim, meanwhile, has descended to hell in search of him. She has forgiven him for his unnatural desires, knowing that he was under the spell of the furred bitch demon. Together, the chim fights the demons and wins back the crown. He’s freed from hell, but to remind him of his sins, he’s forced to wear fur for the rest of his life. And to this day, Loo children sometimes bear the curse of fur, sign of our ancestor’s unnatural mating so long ago.”

Lady Kurs licked her lips with a long blue tongue. “Unnatural mating ... the curse of the Imperial Loo-chim. Isn’t that so, my brother, my chim?”

Lord Puc stared death at Kirtn and said nothing. Jal swore softly as he gave Dapsl the signal to begin, “Start with Saffar’s entrance,” he said in Universal. “And move quickly, for the love of the Twin Gods. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them from killing something I”

Rheba forced herself to look away from the deadly blue lady. She tried to see beyond Ilfn, where the Senyas boy stood, but he was hidden behind his Bre’n, nothing showing but a thin, tawny arm and fingers clinging to hers.

“—four!”

Dapsl’s hiss brought her mind back to the exigencies of the Act. She sent energy to bloom around clepts and J/taals. The Act began. Beneath her robe, her skin itched suddenly, miserably. In a gesture of defiance, she tore off her slave robe and threw it aside. If her Bre’n had to go naked, so would she.

But she was not naked, not quite. Lines of power made incandescent traceries over her body, veins and whorls of gold that were so dense on her fingers that little other color was left. Her lower arms were laced with intricate patterns, pulses of gold like an endlessly breaking wave. Tendrils curled up her arms, across her shoulders, around her neck like filigree. A single line swept down her torso, then divided to touch each taut hip.

She felt the cool air of the room like a benediction. It was far more comfortable to control fire without cloth stifling her. Her own sigh of relief hid from her the sound of Ilfn’s gasp, and Kirtn’s; both Bre’ns knew the danger of so many new lines on so young a dancer. And they both knew what the fire lines touching her hips meant. She was too young to be developing the curling lines of passion. For an instant the two Bre’n akhenets looked at each other, silently protesting what they could not change. Then they looked away, faces expressionless beneath fine fur masks.

Like currents of energy, Rheba sensed the silent exchange between the two Bre’n. It disturbed her, so she put it aside. The most difficult part of the Act lay ahead and she was already tired.

Dapsl cued her entrance.

Fssa crooned, a sound both soft and penetrating. The call ended on a questioning note, but no one answered. Rheba/ Saffar came onto the stage, seeking her lost chim. She had built no fires around her body to illuminate it—nor did she need to. Akhenet lines rippled and blazed as she shaped energies to the peculiar demands of the Act. Fssa spoke for her again, as he spoke for everyone in the Act.

Kirtn/Hmel, striving to reach the crown in the midst of demons, seemed not to hear. Saffar came closer, drawn to him by the subtle bonds that connected all chims. Hmel leaned toward the crown again. Violet fire cascaded, drawing gasps from the Imperial Loo-chim. Against the dark fire Hmel’s outline blazed wildly.

With a musical cry, Saffar turned toward her chim. She touched him. Fssa screamed. Black fire leaped as the demon still in Hmel tried to kill the innocence in Saffar. Against Fssa’s background of screams, demon shrieks and the harmonics of pain, Saffar fought to free Hmel of the demon curse.

The battle consumed the stage, fire and screams, darkness and light, hope and despair, demon and human. Just as it seemed certain that Saffar would be crushed by the demon strength of the chim she loved, she surrendered. Her sudden stillness shocked Hmel. His grip on her loosened. She could have slipped away, but did not. Instead, she sang.

And it was Rheba, not Fssa, who shaped those notes.

The first pure phrases of a Bre’n love song rose like silver bubbles out of the black lake of hell. The notes came faster and clearer, surrounding Hmel with a net of beauty. He screamed in raw agony, for demons cannot stand against beauty. Saffar wept, yet still she sang, each pure phrase like a knife driven into the body of her lover, seeking the demon at his core.

Fssa joined the singing, an echo that haunted violet demon fires. He screamed for Hmel, wept for Saffar; but he let Bre’n and Senyas sing for themselves and shivered with delight at such perfect sounds.

A glittering black demon shape fought over the incandescent surface of Hmel’s body. Saffar clung to him, using desire as a weapon against the demon. He writhed and screamed as the demon was driven out of him. Song and Hmel’s natural desire for his chim tore at the demon, separating it from Hmel until it stood revealed for what it was—an embodiment of unnatural lust, a demon both male and female at once, animal and human and all possibilities in between. Black, shivering, it gave an awful shriek and flew up into the darkness above the Act.

Gently, Hmel pulled away from his chim. He walked between the fire demons to the place where Saffar’s crown glowed, waiting. The demons made no flames to stop him; they were themselves frozen by the departure of their animating force. Unmoving, impaled on invisible talons, the demons waited in their grotesque positions for another chim who could be seduced into forgetting its other self.

The crown blazed when Hmel put it on Saffar’s head. All other light faded, leaving a gold nimbus surrounding Hmel and Saffar’s long embrace.

The silence that followed the end of the Act was even longer. Finally the Loo-chim stirred, still transfixed, shattered blue eyes unbelieving. As one, the chim sighed. Lord Jal made a few discreet noises, recalling the Loo-chim to the question at hand. The room brightened at Dapsl’s command, breaking tae spell woven by a fire dancer and a Bre’n.

“The Act pleased you . .. ?” Jal smiled as he asked, knowing that the Act had done just that. There were many aesthetically superior Acts in the Concatenation compound, but not one of them spoke so completely to the obsessions of the Imperial Loo-chim.

Lord Puc blinked several times as though demon fire still troubled his sight He looked at Kirtn, but saw mostly Hmel. Lady Kurs looked at Rheba, but saw only Saffar’s grief over her lost chim. The Imperial Loo-chim looked at itself. During a long, silent exchange, lines of tension were reborn on the chim’s face. But there could be no disagreement about the disposition of the Act.

The male polarity turned toward Lord Jal. “An Act worthy of the Concatenation, Jal. I congratulate you.”

Lord Jal bowed and turned toward the female polarity.

“I agree, of course,” she said, her voice brittle. “They wilt be the last, and best, Act of Last Year Night. But I don’t congratulate you, half-man. You’ve set our own furred demons among us. There will be grief now, as there was in Saffar’s time.” She paused, then looked toward Kirtn. “But before grief, there will be pleasure such as only demons know.”

She took her chim’s arm and guided him toward the door. When they reached Ilfn, Lord Puc stopped. Before he could speak, Lady Kurs intervened.

“She and her pet will stay here until after the Concatenation.” The female polarity’s voice was calm and very certain. When Lord Puc would have objected, she said, “Only a few days, sweet chim. Until the old year ends we’ll have each other. Afterward, we’ll have... them.”

XIX

Rheba shivered and moved closer to Kirtn. As always, she was cold. She felt the steady rhythm of his heart against her cheek, the warmth of his fine fur, and the resilience of muscles relaxed in sleep. She smoothed his sleek hair beneath her palm. He murmured sleepily and shifted, bringing her closer. She settled against him and tried to sleep, but could not Her feet itched, her legs itched, her shoulders and breasts itched. It seemed that even the inside of her backbone itched.

Gently, trying not to wake him, she rolled away and shed her robe, preferring to be cold rather than to have her lines irritated by the rough cloth. She stood up, went to the fountain along one wall for a drink, then returned to Kirtn’s side. Behind her, J/taals and clepts slept in a tidy sprawl. Fssa lay curled around Rainbow, but he was not in his speaking mode.

On the other side of Kirtn lay Ilfn and Lheket. The boy was long, thin ... and as blind as a stone. She felt pity tighten her lips; Ilfn had told her that the boy’s blindness was a flight from what he had seen in Deva’s last moments.

Reluctantly, as though drawn against her will, Rheba walked around Kirtn until she could see Lheket more clearly. She looked at the boy for a long time before her itching skin distracted her. She stood, scratching absently, staring down at Lheket and trying to see the father of her future children in the thin shape of the sleeping child. At last she made a gesture of bafflement and negation and turned back to Kirtn.

“Is it his blindness you dislike?”

Ilfn’s soft question startled Rheba; she had thought the Bre’n asleep. She heard Ilfn’s love and protectiveness of her Senyas in her voice, and saw it in the hand smoothing the sleeping dancer’s hair.

“I don’t dislike him,” Rheba said. “I simply can’t see him as my mate. He’s such a sweet child. So... weak.”

Ilfn looked from the soft gold lines coursing over Rheba’s body to the pale, barely marked hands of her sleeping rain dancer. “He’s young. Too young. I’ve had to keep him from—”

The Bre’n’s voice stopped. Rheba waited, then finished the sentence. “You’ve kept him from using his power?” She did not mean for her voice to sound accusing, but it did.

“Yes!” whispered Ilfn fiercely. “If Lord Puc even suspected what Lheket could become—” Her voice broke, then resumed in the calm, tones of an akhenet instructing a child. “The Loo like their slaves powerless. I’ve done what I had to. Lheket is still alive. Before you judge me, fire dancer, remember that.” There was a space of silence. Then, “In the days since he has felt the Act’s energies pouring through this room he’s been hard to hold. I’ll have to choose, soon.”

“Choose?”

“To kill him or to shape his gift. It’s a choice all Bre’n akhenets make,” She looked up, sensing Rheba’s horror. “Didn’t you know that, fire dancer? Didn’t your Senyas parents tell you what your Bre’n was?”

“I—” Rheba swallowed and tried again. “I didn’t know.”

“What of your Bre’n parents?”

“They died in one of the early firefalls. After that, it was all we could do to hold our shields against the sun. The years I should have spent learning Bre’n and Senyas history, I spent learning now to deflect fire.”

“But at your age—ah, yes,” sighed Ilfn. “Your age. I keep forgetting that you are at least ten years younger than your akhenet lines indicate. So much power.” Ilfn shifted, moving away from Kirtn without disturbing her sleeping boy. “Sit down, fire dancer. You resent me, but I know things you should know.”

“I don’t resent you,” Rheba said quickly.

Ilfn laughed, a gentle rather than a mocking sound. “You have many and powerful lines, but you lie as badly as a child half your age.” Her hand closed around Rheba’s, gently pulling her down. “On Deva you never would have had to confront your emotions about your Bre’n before you were wise enough to understand them.”

“Deva is dead.”

“Yes.” The word was long, a sigh. “Listen to me, akhenet,” said Ilfn, her tone changing to that of a mentor. “You shift between woman and child with each breath. The child in you resents my pregnancy, Lheket’s future claim on your body, and everything else that would separate you from your Bre’n. There’s no point in denying it. The Senyas instinct to bind Bre’n is as great as the Bre’n instinct to bind Senyas. There is a reason for that instinct. Without Kirtn you would die, victim of your own powers. Without you Kirtn would die, victim of a Bre’n’s special needs. I would no more stand between you and your Bre’n than I would gladly lie down with Lord Puc. But slaves have few choices, and none of them easy.”

Rheba looked away from the Bre’n woman’s too-dark eyes. Compared to Ilfn, she had suffered very little at the hands of the Loo. “I hope,” she whispered, “I hope Kirtn pleased you.” She looked away, embarrassed, not knowing what to say, feeling more a child than she had in years. “I’ll try not to be afraid or jealous. I know that it’s wrong. You’re my sister. Your children are also mine.”

The last words were sure, all that remained to her of the akhenet rituals of her childhood. For the first time she understood the need of ceremony to mark times of great change in akhenet lives, change such as had happened when Kirtn went to Ilfn and they conceived children. A ritual would have told her what to say, what to feel, reassured her that the world was not turning inside out. There were no rituals left, though, and she was afraid that she had made an enemy of her Bre’n’s mate.

Ilfn’s hands came up and stroked Rheba’s seething hair. “Thank you for naming me sister, even though you had no part in choosing me. I never thought I would be called that again.”

Rheba stared at Ilfn, realizing anew that the Bre’n was a person with her own history on Deva, her own families and lovers and losses to mourn. And now, only memories.

“I’ll have fine children,” continued Ilfn, her gaze turned inward. “My Senyas father was a gene dancer; he gave me the ability to choose my children. I wonder if he knew just how much the race of Bre’n would need that.” Her smile was thin, more sorrow than pleasure in her memories. “He gave Lheket that gift, too. Your children will be powerful, fire dancer, and they will come by twos and threes as mine will.”

Rheba looked away, unable to bear either the past or the future that was reflected in the older woman’s eyes. The past was ashes; the future nothing that Rheba could or wanted to touch. AH that was real to her was now, this instant—Kirtn. But the Bre’n woman and her akhenet boy were also real.

Silently, Rheba struggled with her childish desire to shut out everything but Kirtn. When she had dreamed of finding other Bre’ns and Senyasi, of building a new future for both races, she had not dreamed that it would be this painful.

“But your children,” said Bin, looking down at Lheket, “are years in the future, and you’re too young to know how short years really are.” Tenderly, Ilfn put her soft-furred cheek against Rheba’s smooth cheek, where lines of power lay cool and gold, quiet, waiting to burn into life. “You’re braver than you know,” whispered the Bre’n, “and more powerful. Take care of your Bre’n. He needs you, child and woman, he needs you.”

Rheba pulled back, disturbed by Ilfn’s words and her intensity. “What do you mean?”

Ilfn moved her head in the Bre’n negative.

“Tell me,” whispered Rheba. “I haven’t had any real training, no quiet years of learning with my Bre’n and Senyas families. If there’s something Kirtn needs, tell me!”

“I can’t. It’s forbidden.”

“But why?”

“Each akhenet makes the choice you will make.” Ilfn spoke reluctantly, using words as though they had edges sharp enough to cut her tongue. “The choice comes from your very core. To describe it is to violate its purity. It would be better to kill you both than to do that”

“I don’t understand,” said Rheba, her voice rising. “First you tell me that I’m doing something wrong, or not doing something right, then you tell me that you can’t say any more.”

Ilfn turned away from Rheba’s anger and watched her sleeping Lheket. The Bre’n profile was cold and distant as a moon. It was one of the faces Rheba had seen in Lheket’s earring, a face both beautiful and terrible, utterly serene.

Rheba turned away and looked at Kirtn, seeing him as though he were a stranger, powerful and obscure. Child and woman, he needs you.

The sleeping Bre’n stirred, dream shadows changing his face. Rheba felt something twisting inside her as she realized for the first time that Kirtn was inhumanly beautiful, as perfectly formed as a god. His gold mask glowed like two enormous eyes, and she ached to touch the copper hair that was so different from the copper plush of his fur. His powerful body moved again, graceful even in sleep. Muscles coiled and slid easily beneath the thin sheen of fur. She shivered, wanting to go to him, to lie down next to him, to pull his warmth and power around her like a robe, to build a cage of fire around them both, together.

Akhenet lines pulsed achingly throughout her body, traces of fire in the darkened room. She bent over Kirtn until her hair drifted across his shoulders like a cloud of fire. Her hands moved as though drawn against her will, seeking the textures of muscle and fur. But when she was a breath away from touching him she drew back, frightened by the heat of her own body.

She sat without moving until dawn, shivering with cold and unnamed emotions, practicing the akhenet discipline of thinking about nothing at all.

XX

“This,” said Dapsl, using a drawing stick across a piece of plastic, “is the amphitheater. The Imperial Loo-chim has the seats of honor right there”—the stick went to a point just beyond the center curve of the stage—“and the rest of the chims are arrayed on either side according to rules of precedence no slave could understand.”

Rheba leaned against the wall, trying to keep her eyes open. The Act had rehearsed all morning, making the lost night’s sleep like a sandy weight on her eyelids. Besides her, Lheket stirred restlessly. His beautiful, blind green eyes turned toward her, but no recognition moved in their depths. She took his hand and murmured soothingly. He had been disturbed ever since Ilfn had left, ostensibly to find salve for Rheba, but actually to contact the rebel slaves.

In response to Rheba’s touch, Lheket reached up toward her, seeking her hair. Her hair, however, was bound in a knot beyond his reach. Seeing his disappointment, she shook her head, sending her hair cascading down her back. The silky strands brushed across his face. He giggled.

“Tickles,” he whispered in Senyas.

She smiled before she remembered that he could not see. She touched his cheek gently, “Quiet, rain dancer, or Dapsl will get angry.”

Lheket subsided, but he kept a strand of her hair in his hands. She frowned and tugged gently. His fingers tightened. She sighed and leaned closer to him, taking the strain off her hair. With Ilfn gone, he seemed to need constant tactile reassurance. Not that she blamed him—being a blind slave among aliens would unnerve even an adult.

She wondered if Ilfn had been successful in contacting the rebels who were planning the Last Year’s Night uprising. They would not be pleased to add new lines to their rebellion script at this late date; but they would have no choice. Either Rheba’s Act was included in the rebellion, or Ilfn would not give the door codes.

She sensed Dapsl’s glare and returned her wandering mind to his lecture. Her attention was not really required. Kirtn was memorizing every word, for it was the Bre’n who would choose their escape route out of an amphitheater full of Loo aristocrats and their guards. The J/taals, too, were very attentive. Their military experience was the pivot point of any plans Kirtn would make.

“—ramp leads to the area behind the stage. You’ll wait in the tunnel until you’re cued, then come to the quadruple blue mark on the left wing of the stage.”

Kirtn watched the crude drawing of the amphitheater that was growing beneath Dapsl’s stick. “What about curtains, lights, energy barriers, props—”

“Nothing,” said Dapsl firmly. “Acts that can’t provide their own light perform during the day. The amphitheater is pre-Equality. It was built by people who either didn’t want or didn’t know how to use a mechanized stage. There will be absolutely nothing on the stage of use to you except your own skills.”

And thus, no energy source for Rheba to draw on.

Though neither she nor Kirtn said anything, the thought was foremost in their minds. Their performance would be given at night, along with the other bioluminescent Acts. She would have no exterior source of energy but the Act itself, unless she set fire to the stage and then wove more complex energies from the simple flames.

But the stage, like the amphitheater, was made of stone. She did not believe she could set it ablaze, especially in the time given to her during the Act To take heat out of the night air, condense it, shape it, and then use it to ignite even highly combustible organic material required a long, concentrated effort on her part. She would have enough difficulty simply maintaining the cold light required for their Act.

“But the amphitheater isn’t protected,” said Kirtn, “Did the Loo-chim—or whoever built it—plan on sitting in the rain and watching slaves drown?”

Dapsl grimaced and pulled on his longest braid. “This is the dry season. It almost never rams on the Last Year Night.”

Rheba looked at the boy beside her, smiling faintly as he played with her lively hair. Rain dancer.

“Never?” shot back Kirtn. “Do they use weather control?”

Dapsl made an oblique gesture. “If the weather is bad, there’s an energy shield over the amphitheater that can be activated. It’s been used in the past That won’t affect the Act, will it?”

Rheba made a dismissing gesture. “Shield, no shield. It doesn’t matter,” she said casually, hoping Dapsl believed her.

He chewed thoughtfully on a braid end, then spat it out and returned to the business of familiarizing the Act with the stage they would use for the most important performance of their lives.

“Since we have been given the honor—the great honor—of being the last Act of the Last Year Night, we won’t be called out of the tunnel until there is just enough time left to perform and finish on the absolute stroke of midnight. The timing is crucial; too soon or too late will spoil the ritual and displease the Loo-chim. That wouldn’t be wise.”

Rheba’s smile was both grim and predatory. She hoped to do more than displease the Loo-chim before the Last Year Night was over. The thought made her hair stir, strands lifting and seeking blindly for her Bre’n.

Lheket smiled dreamily, instinctively drawing on her energies. His eyes changed, darker now yet somehow more alive. The tips of his fingers began to pulse a pale, metallic blue, first hint of latent akhenet lines. When she looked down she saw the blush of blue on his fingertips. Realizing what had happened, she damped her own power. He made an involuntary noise of protest.

“Keep that cub quiet or I’ll send him back to his room,” snapped Dapsl. “It’s bad enough that I have to put up with a furry whore unsettling the Act, but to put up with her belly warmer is—”

Whatever Dapsl had meant to say died on his tongue when Kirtn and Rheba stared at him, their predatory thoughts naked on their faces. A clept snarled. Like the J/taals, they took their signals from Rheba, the J/taaleri. Fssa, hidden in her hair, made a sound that was between a snarl and a growl. The clept subsided. Rheba wondered what the snake had said to the clept, but did not further infuriate Dapsl by opening a dialogue with Fssa.

“Continue,” she said, her eyes like cinnamon jewels with darker flecks of rage turning in their depths. “And remember, small man, whose Act you belong to.”

“Two days,” snapped Dapsl.

“Two days,” she agreed. In two days the Act would be performed, and they would be rid of Dapsl until the next time they were required to perform. The Loo could not divide a Concatenation Act, but the Act could choose to live apart.

“The only thing,” continued Dapsl in a tight voice, “in the amphitheater besides the softstone seats and the stone stage is the silver gong in front of the Imperial Loo-chim. It is struck twice to bring on an Act. It is struck four times at the end of an Act.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Often the Loo-chim doesn’t wait for the end if the Act displeases it. Then the gong is struck three times, and the slaves are taken to the Pit. That won’t be a problem in our Act, though. The Loo-chim has made it obvious that it can’t wait for the obscene tongues of their furry—”

Kirtn moved in a supple twist of power that brought him to his feet. Dapsl changed the subject hurriedly.

“After the gong sounds twice, you have a hundred count to take your place. The gong will sound twice again. The Act will begin. After the Act is over, the gong will sound four times. You have a hundred count to clear the stage, descend the ramp, and return to the tunnel. Questions?”

Rheba had many questions, none of which Dapsl could answer. Apparently Kirtn felt the same way, for he kept his silence. Dapsl looked around, disappointed. After a moment he tossed his braids over his shoulder and turned away, rolling up the plastic sheet.

“I’ll take that,” said Kirtn, reaching for the diagram of the amphitheater.

The sheet slid out of Dapsl’s grasp before he had a chance to object. “What—?”

“The J/taals,” Kirtn said. “I’ll explain the layout to them. Fssa didn’t translate while you were talking because we know it annoys you. Rheba told them we’d explain later.”

Dapsl stood, trying to think of a reason to object. “It’s the first time you’ve ever shut up that flatulent beast on my account.”

Kirtn gave the Bre’n version of a shrug, a movement of his torso that revealed each powerful muscle. “Just trying to keep everyone calm. We’re all touchy, the closer the performance comes.”

“Grmmm,” said Dapsl, his pale eyes narrowed. But he could think of no reason to object, “Be careful with it. Lord Jal bent the rules just to give us a writing stick and plasheet. If you ruin it, I can’t get another.”

Kirtn started to reply, but saw Ilfn. He watched her come soundlessly into the room. Even so, Lheket sensed her return. His thin face turned toward the door, his expression radiant.

Kirtn wished that Rheba would show her feelings for him so clearly; but she would not. She had schooled herself to show as little of her feelings as possible since Deva died. Or perhaps it was simply that she had no such depth of emotion for him.

He turned away from his thoughts and went to Ilfn. “I have the amphitheater plans,” he said in Senyas, his voice harsher than he meant it to be, residue of his thoughts. “Did you—”

She held up a small pot made of swirls of blue-green glass. “I found everything we need.” She looked at Dapsl.

“He doesn’t understand Senyas or Bre’n,” said Kirtn.

“Good. I managed to speak with my contact for a few minutes while I got Rheba’s salve.”

Rheba brought Lheket to his Bre’n. The boy’s smile was as brilliant as his sightless emerald eyes. Ilfn’s hand went out, stroking the boy’s face reassuringly. He turned and brushed his lips against the velvet of her palm.

The gesture was so natural that it took a moment for its impact to register with Rheba. Her eyes widened. She studied the woman and the boy, using her fire dancer sensitivity. She found nothing but mutual love expressed in touches that were sensual without being explicitly sexual. Yet the potential for passion obviously existed. The thought disturbed her. Was sexual intimacy normal for a Bre’n/Senyas akhenet pair?

Her memories gave her no immediate answer. She tried to recall her Senyas mother and her Bre’n father. Had they been lovers as well as akhenet pair? The memories refused to form. All that came was the incandescent moment of her parents’ death. She had deliberately not thought of her parents since Deva died. She found she could not do so now. It was too painful.

“Rheba?”

Kirtn’s questioning whistle brought her out of the past, “I’m fine,” she lied, shivering. Her eyes were dark, inward-looking, reflecting a time and a place that seared her mind. “I’m fine.” Without thinking, she took his hand and rubbed her cheek against it, savoring the velvet texture of his skin. Her lips touched his palm. Then she realized that her actions were very like Lheket’s with Ilfn. She dropped Kirtn’s hand.

“Rheba?”

The whistle was soft, worried, as pure as the gold of his eyes watching her. “It’s nothing,” she lied, rubbing her cheek where it had touched his hand. “Nothing.” The last word was a whisper.

Kirtn began to touch her, then retreated. He sensed that his touch was disturbing to her now. There was no reason for her to react that way—except that akhenets who were worked too hard became irrational. She must rest. Yet she could not. Concatenation Night was only two days away. “Why don’t you lie down, Rheba? Ilfn and I can explain the amphitheater to the J/taals.”

“No.” Rheba’s voice was curt. She looked at Ilfn. “Did you get anything more useful than a smelly pot of goo?”

The Bre’n woman hesitated at Rheba’s tone. She looted from the girl to Kirtn and back again. “The unguent will help you, fire dancer. Your akhenet lines are new. They must itch terribly.”

Rheba, who was at that moment scratching her shoulder, said only, “We’ve more important things to worry about than my skin.”

Kirtn took the pot from Ilfn and began rubbing the unguent into Rheba despite her protests. “Nothing is more important than your well-being. Without you, fire dancer, we would die slaves.”

Rheba looked around as though seeing Dapsl and the J/taals and stone walls for the first time. Her voice was as brittle as autumn ice. She gestured to the plasheet. “Unroll it. Explain to Ilfn and the J/taals how we’re going to die trying not to be slaves.”

XXI

Kirtn started to say something, then did not. Rheba’s hair was shimmering, the ends twisting like ultrafine gold wires held over a fire. If she had any control left, she was not exercising it Anyone who touched her would receive a jolt of energy that could range from painful to debilitating. But then, that was why Bre’n akhenets learned to control pain.

Deliberately, he buried his right hand deeply in her hair. The air around her head crackled. A Shockwave of energy expanded up his arm. His left hand clenched, the only outward sign of the agony that came when he drained off some of her seething energy.

When Rheba realized what she had inadvertently done to him, she cried out an apology and jerked her hair from his fingers. Her eyes were huge and dark, pinwheels of uneasy fire stirring their depths. Without hesitation he put his hand into her hair again. This time the long golden strands curled around his arm like a molten sleeve. He smiled and smoothed her cheekbone with his thumb.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “I knew what would happen if I touched your hair then.”

“Why did you do it if you knew?”

“Unstructured energy is dangerous, fire dancer. You could have killed one of the J/taals just by brushing against them.” He smiled, then turned and left her side before she could say anything. As he walked over to the J/taals, clepts gave way before him. He stopped and spoke to M/dere.

From his hiding place in Rheba’s hair, Fssa began to translate Kirtn’s words into the J/taal language. Startled, Rheba reached up into her hair. She had forgotten the snake was there. He felt very warm, hot, but seemed not to have suffered any damage in the outburst of energy Kirtn had triggered from her. Apparently the Fssireeme could deal with forms of energy other than sound waves. Nonetheless, she made a silent promise to remember the inconspicuous snake before she let her emotions get the better of her control.

She walked over and stood next to Kirtn as he described the amphitheater to the J/taals. Fssa’s translation was simultaneous, unobtrusive, and an exact tonal reproduction of the person speaking. Ilfn stood on the other side of Kirtn, listening carefully. Next to her stood Lheket, a silent, shoulder-high presence who never stood more than an arm’s length from his Bre’n.

After Kirtn finished, M/dere looked at the diagram for a moment, sheathing and unsheathing her claws as she thought “The spaceport,” she said finally. “Where is it on this sheet?”

“Over here and to the left,” said Ilfn, pointing to an area behind the amphitheater, “If we use the Bay Road, it’s more than five mie from here. But there’s an estate over ... here.” Her hand switched to the left side of the amphitheater. “It’s a Loo-chim park, closed to all but the Imperial Loo-chim and a few favorites.”

“Then how do we get in?” asked M/dere.

“From here. The park was part of the state complex once. Most of the buildings there are ruins now. Only the amphitheater is kept up. The tunnel system goes underneath all of it. I was told there’s a way from the amphitheater tunnel into the park. From there, it’s less than two mie to the spaceport.”

M/dere looked at the map again. Ilfn’s moving finger had left no trace of its passage on the resistant plasheet. The J/taal leader stared, then called her clept. She bent over the waist-high animal, murmuring commands that Fssa did not translate. The clept opened its mouth, revealing serrated rows of teeth. On its fangs bright-blue drops formed. M/dere dipped an extended claw into the fluid and began drawing on the map. Clept venom smoked faintly, leaving behind vague, dark stains as it corroded the durable plasheet.

“The tunnel exit... here?” asked M/dere.

Ilfn gestured agreement, which Fssa translated as a J/taal affirmative.

“The park ... here?”

Again the affirmative.

“The spaceport.., here?”

“A little farther to the right.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“How big is the spaceport?”

“I don’t know. Many mie.”

The J/taaleri’s ship... where?”

Ilfn looked at Kirtn. “J/taaleri?”

“Their employer,” he said. “Rheba.”

Ilfn’s eyes widened. She glanced quickly at Rheba, then back to the map. “The ship is here, on the edge of the spaceport by the park. It’s a derelict yard, from what I was told.” She looked up at Kirtn, silently questioning.

“The Devalon wasn’t derelict when we landed,” said Kirtn. “They probably put the ship in the derelict yard when they found out that the Devalon only responds to us.”

“I’d hoped that was it,” breathed Ilfn. “Our ship is the same.”

“Is it here?” demanded Kirtn.

“No. If it were, Lheket and I would have left as soon as we got out of the Fold!”

“Then where is your ship?” asked Rheba.

“I don’t know.” life’s dark eyes became hooded, looking back on pain. “We answered a call for help as we came out of replacement. It was a trap. The Autumn Moon was left in orbit around a dead planet called Sorriaaix. They abandoned the Moon when they couldn’t learn its secrets.”

M/dere’s movement brought Ilfn’s attention back to the present. The J/taal’s claws were tracing random marks around the amphitheater, disguising the meaningful marks of tunnel, park, spaceport and ship.

“That animal is ruining the diagram!” cried Daps!, pushing through the people crowded around the map. He tried to snatch away the plasheet, but Kirtn’s hand held him back. Rheba felt a moment of panic as she tried to remember what languages they had been using. Had it been only Senyas and I/taal? Or had they forgotten and slipped into Universal, which Dapsl understood? How long had Dapsl been watching—long enough to see the map before M/dere disguised the additions to it?

“Careful,” said Kirtn. “Don’t you know that J/taal claws are poisonous?”

It was not true, but Dapsl shrank back anyway. The clept venom was real enough; it still shone bluely on M/dere’s claw tip.

“What’s she doing?” demanded Dapsl. Then, when M/dere resumed making random marks, “Stop her!”

Kirtn shrugged. “Why? We don’t need the diagram anymore, and scribbling on it seems to amuse her.”

Dapsl fell silent. His shrewd eyes swept the diagram as he

struggled against the hand holding back his wrist Then he stopped moving, studying the plasheet as though, he had never seen it before. His braid ends bounced as he turned on Kirtn.

“Let go of me.” His voice was cool and hard, a voice they had never heard him use. “I’ve done everything I could for this Act, more than any other Whip could have. But you wouldn’t know about that,” he said, sweeping the group with a single contemptuous look. “None of you is civilized enough to appreciate a Loo Whip. You’re no more than animals.”

Dapsl pulled free of Kirtn and stalked out of the room.

Kirtn looked at Rheba, who shrugged in lithe imitation of the Bre’n gesture and turned back to the map. “What about the guards? When do we leave the stage, and by which exit? Will anyone be able to help us fight our way to the spaceport?”

Ilfn hesitated. To the rest of the people, she appeared uncertain. But Rheba and Kirtn knew Bre’ns; it was obvious to them that reluctance rather than uncertainty held her tongue. Kirtn whistled coaxingly. The sound was so unexpected and yet so beautiful that Lheket’s head came up and turned in Kirtn’s direction. The boy answered the whistle in a lower key, a pure ripple of sound that brought an approving look from Kirtn. The boy repeated the whistle in yet another key. Ilfn gave in and began to speak.

“The end of your Act will be the signal for the beginning of the rebellion. The instant the Hour Between Years is struck, slaves will pour into the streets. Most will only be celebrating, I think. Others will be fighting their way to the spaceport Almost everyone in the city will be half-phased by then—Imperiapolis’ drugs are varied and strong. By midnight, everyone is dancing in the streets, firing off smelly rockets. The commoners and slaves wear elaborate costumes patterned after Loo myths. From what I was told, the streets are chaotic. Only foot traffic is allowed. That’s why we won’t be conspicuous. Slaves are expected to dance and get phased out. Maybe it’s the Loo way of testing slaves’ Adjustment. I don’t know. But during the Hour Between Years, there is no law.”

“Weapons,” said M/dere impatiently.

Ilfn closed her eyes. “None. Sirgi—my contact—doesn’t have any. Or if he does, he isn’t sharing them with Lord Puc’s whore.”

Kirtn’s lips flattened. The sound he made brought the clepts snarling to their feet “Who is this man that he believes he’s better than you?”

“A red furry from a heavy planet so far away he can’t

even point to its direction in the sky.” She shrugged and smiled, “He’s short, strong, and half-bright. He’s also very determined to get home. He was a priest there, or some such thing. He has a very small opinion of women, slaves or not.”

“Does he know about our J/taals?”

Ilfn’s smile changed indefinably, dangerously. M/dere examined her suddenly, plainly reassessing the Bre’n woman’s usefulness in the coming fight; the J/taal smiled, pleased. The smile was very like Ilfn’s.

“I failed to mention our J/taals,” murmured Ilfn. “Not that it really matters.”

“Why?”

“Your fire dancer is the most deadly weapon on Loo.”

Kirtn began to object, then did not. What Ilfn said was true. Of all the Senyas akhenets, fire dancers had the most potential for destruction. Silently he promised himself that he would not let it come to that for Rheba. She had seen and suffered too much already; turning her into a killer would destroy her.

“Can we trust the other slaves?” asked Rheba quietly.

Ilfn hesitated, saying much through her silence, “So long as they need us, yes. Sirgi is very interested in the Devalon. I explained several times that even if he could get inside the ship, it wouldn’t respond to anyone but the akhenet team it was built for. I don’t know if Sirgi believed me. In any case, I had to promise to take as many slaves with us as we could hold.”

“I’d do that whether he asked or not,” said Rheba.

“I told him that. I don’t think he believed it, either.”

Rheba whistled a sour note. “What else?”

“Nothing. They’ll wait by the first outside arch. When we come, I give the code. Then we’ll be in the park. After that, getting to the spaceport is a matter of luck.”

“We know all about luck,” Rheba said. “We learned on Deva.”

Ilfn’s eyes reflected that bitter knowledge. She said nothing.

“I’d feel better if there were a source of energy in the amphitheater for me to draw on—even moonlight,” said Rheba.

“No moons,” said Ilfn. ‘They don’t rise until after the Hour Between Years.”

“When you were outside today, how did the sky look?”

“Dry.”

“Then they won’t have the weather shield activated,” said Rheba. She shifted her attention to Lheket, a rain dancer innocent of akhenet lines. “Can he at least call clouds?”

“No,” said Ilfn quickly.

“Why not?” asked Rheba, her voice cold. “He’s akhenet, isn’t he?”

“Untrained.”

“Whose fault is that?” she snapped.

Ilfn spoke softly, though her expression was forbidding. “He’s only a child.”

“He’s old enough for simple rain dancing. On Deva, he would have been apprenticed to an akhenet farm years ago.”

“This isn’t Deva. There aren’t any other dancers to help him.”

Kirtn interrupted before Rheba could answer. His whistle was low, penetrating. “What are you afraid of, Ilfn?”

“I—” Her whistle fragmented. She spoke Senyas, then, each word clipped. “I’ve never allowed him to dance. I don’t know if he can, without training. And where is the Bre’n family, the Senyas family, the akhenets paired to help him in the first dangerous attempts? He’s very strong. If I can’t control him, I’ll have to kill him.”

Rheba remembered the ease with which Lheket had drawn power out of her, his reflexive thirst for the rich currents of force that were an akhenet’s birthright. There was no doubt about his strength. And no one knew better than she what would happen if a strong, untrained akhenet blew up in their hands. She had seen it happen more than once on Deva, toward the end, when everyone was desperate for akhenets to help hold the deflectors. The result had been almost as terrible as the sun itself. Unless death was the only other choice, it would be better to leave Lheket’s power dormant until they could devote themselves to easing him into his potent birthright.

“Ilfn is right,” sighed Rheba, then repeated the words in a Bre’n whistle that was rich with resonances of acceptance and regret “I can sustain the Act using only our akhenet energy. Once we’re out of the amphitheater and tunnel complex, there will be other sources of energy for me to draw on. But I don’t like it. Inside that amphitheater, I’ll be about as much use as an empty gun.”

She looked longingly at Lheket. The blind green eyes looked back at her, unfocused. Yet he always knew where she was—like a flower following the sun, he sensed her turbulent energy. As she sensed his—a silent pool, potential dormant, seen only in a slow welling of power from its depths. It was tempting to tap that power, but she would not. Awakened, Lheket was as dangerous to them as an unstable sun.

Rheba sensed someone behind her, standing in the archway that led to the rest of the compound. She turned suddenly. Dapsl was there, and with him Lord Jal. Next to the lord was a pale, dark-haired woman of medium height. Her face was devoid of expression.

Lord Jal made a small gesture with his hand. Dapsl and the woman remained standing while the Loo lord approached Rheba. The woman’s eyes never left Rheba, as though it were important to memorize every nuance of her. Casually, Jal’s hand brushed Kirtn, then Rheba.

There was an instant of sleeting pain, then Rheba froze. All voluntary control of her body was gone. She could only stand and stare in the direction her head had been turned before Jal touched her. She could not speak. She had to struggle to do such semiautomatic things as swallow or blink. Though she could not see Kirtn directly, she sensed that he, too, was held in the grip of whatever drug Lord Jal had used on them.

Before’ anyone realized what had happened, the lord moved among the J/taals. Because their J/taaleri was silent, apparently unconcerned by Jal’s presence, the mercenaries made no move to protect themselves even after M/dere had passed on a silent mental warning as her body froze.

Jal brushed against Ilfn with his hand, rendering her helpless. He ignored the blind child as he took a dart gun from his robes. He held the muzzle of the gun against Rheba’s throat where her pulse beat slowly under her tawny skin.

“Whip, tell M/dere that if her clepts move, I’ll kill Rheba.”

Dapsl relayed the commands in broken J/taal. It became obvious that he understood the language much better than he spoke it.

“Now,” said Jal. “Release her voice.”

Dapsl nervously walked up to M/dere, touched her neck with an invisibly fine needle, and backed away hurriedly.

“Tell her to make her animals lie down,” said Jal, the gun held unwaveringly at Rheba’s throat.

Desperately, Rheba tried to gather fire, but her akhenet lines lighted only sluggishly. The drug had taken her mind as certainly as it had her body.

M/dere grunted harsh commands. The clepts dropped to the floor as though struck. They watched Jal out of hungry silver eyes, but did not move.

“If you speak without my invitation, I’ll kill your J/taaleri. Say yes if you understand. One word only.”

Dapsl barely finished his stumbling translation before M/dere spoke.

“Yes.”

Jal looked at Dapsl. “You were right, Whip. Rheba is their J/taaleri, though how that came about—” He made a dismissing gesture. “It doesn’t matter, now.” He turned back to M/dere. “I haven’t harmed your J/taaleri, so there’s no reason to be rash,” he said, ignoring Dapsl’s halting translation of Universal into J/taal. “In fact, you should thank me. I’m doing your job—saving her life.” He turned with surprising quickness and touched Rheba again. He supported her as she sank soundlessly to the floor.

The clepts made chilling noises, but did not move. Nor did M/dere speak, for Lord Jal’s gun was never far enough from Rheba’s throat to ensure that a clept could kill him before he killed her.

“She’s perfectly safe,” said Dapsl from the doorway. “The drug is harmless. And so is she, now. Lord Jal wouldn’t be so stupid as to ruin a valuable slave.”

M/dere remained silent. The clepts looked at her, then put down their heads and stopped making any sound at all.

Lord Jal bowed slightly. “I counted on the J/taals’ famed pragmatism. I abhor wasting slaves.” He looked at the two slaves waiting in the doorway, Dapsl and the strange woman. “Did you see enough, i’sNara?”

“Yes, lord,” The woman’s voice was colorless, as devoid of feeling as her white face. She came and bent over Rheba, studying her face, her long hair, the vague golden lines that ran over her hands and feet. She pulled up Rheba’s robe, revealing more lines on legs, arms, torso. “Does she work naked?”

“Sometimes,” said Dapsl, “But that would be difficult to duplicate. Her skin designs are very complicated. And they pulse obscenely.”

“A robe, then,” said Lord Jal.

“Yes,” said i’sNara absently.

Kirtn watched the stranger hover over Rheba, but he could do no more than make tearing attempts to move a single finger. His efforts did little more than darken his copper fur with sweat. From time to time Jal looked over at him, making sure that the drug was still working. The woman straightened suddenly. The air around her seemed to go slightly opaque, as though something were condensing around her body. She blurred, reformed, and the air was clear again.

But it was Rheba who stood there.

Lord Jal walked around her without saying anything. After the second circuit, he stopped. “More eyelashes, i’sNara. And the hair—can you make it seem to move by itself?”

Kirtn watched with nausea coiling in his stomach while i’sNara duplicated Rheba’s long, dense eyelashes and gently dancing hair.

“Good. Mmmm ...” Lord Jal walked around her again. “Straighter posture. She’s a proud bitch. Yes, like that. Now walk.” Lord Jal watched. “No. She’s stronger than she looks. I wish I’d been able to bring you to see the Act, but after what my Whip told me, I didn’t want to risk wasting any time.”

“You did well to immobilize them without having to waste a single clept,” said Dapsl.

Lord Jal grunted. He looked at M/dere. “Tell her to have that clept on the far side of the room walk up and down-but not close to us!”

Dapsl said a few words in the J/taals’ grating language. M/dere spoke. A clept rose and prowled the length of the room, never getting close enough to Jal for a killing leap. i’sNara/Rheba watched silently.

“That’s enough,” said Jal. As soon as the clept lay down, he walked over to M/dere, touched her neck and froze her speech organs again. He turned back to i’sNara. “Rheba walks like that clept. Graceful, but not delicate. Her strength shows in her balance.” He smiled absently. “Now that I think about it, she’s a handsome wench. Just more trouble than any sane man would want.”

I’sNara/Rheba walked. Kirtn could not control the sickness that swept through him when he saw Rheba’s lithe movements duplicated by a soulless slave.

“Good.” Lord Jal turned and looked at Kirtn. “Listen to me, furry, and pray that you aren’t as stupid as you are strong. Your rebellion hasn’t the chance of a raindrop on the sun.”

Kirtn went cold, but his stance did not change, could not change. He was prisoner to a slaver’s drug. All he could do was listen while his hopes of freedom were destroyed one word at a time.

Beyond Jal, Dapsl’s broken J/taal words came like a grating echo as the Loo beat flat their hopes with steel words.

“Slaves who are unAdjusted enough to even plan rebellion are executed. But in less than two days, you’ll be the Imperial Loo-chim’s problem. They’ll reward me very well for this Act, enough that I’ll never have to hear Lady Kurs call me half-man again. I’m not going to let a slave’s foolish dreams come between me and my freedom!”

Lord Jal looked at the Act, frozen in anguished tableau, and Rheba unconscious at his feet. “As you’ve probably noticed,” he continued dryly, “i’sNara is a Yhelle illusionist of the Tenth Degree. She is also mine. And now she is Rheba to the last eyelash. She’ll be Rheba on Last Year Night, a fire dancer down to the least flickering flame on the clepts. No one but you will know that an illusionist rather than a fire dancer is performing in the Act. No one in the audience will separate illusion from Act.

“Nor will you rebel at the stroke of midnight. If you do, Rheba will die. If you don’t perform well, Rheba will die. If anything happens in the Act or during the Hour Between Years that displeases me or the Imperial Loo-chim, Rheba will die. Do you understand me, furry?”

Jal’s hand snaked out at eye level. For the first time Kirtn noticed the transparent gloves the Loo wore, and the needles impaled at each fingertip. The hand touched his neck, and muscles quivered, responsive again, but only enough for speech.

“Answer me, furry.”

“I understand.”

“Do you also understand that if word of this little deception get out, the Act will be executed?” asked Lord Jal, his tone casual but his eyes hard as glass.

“Yes,” said Kirtn. It was all he said, but the barely suppressed violence in his voice made Lord Jal step back involuntarily.

“Remember that,” said the Loo lord, “or before you die I’ll separate you from your furry hide one thin strip at a time.” He turned his back and pressed a stud at his belt “Be yourself,” he snapped at the illusionist.

I’sNara’s appearance wavered, then became Yhelle again. In a moment, a guard appeared at the archway, called by the signal on Jal’s belt.

“Lord?” said the guard.

“Pick up this slave,” said Jal, nudging Rheba with his foot “Follow me.”

“Yes, lord.”

Kirtn raged silently, helplessly, as he watched Rheba vanish down the hallway, carried off like a sack of grain at the command of a Loo lord.

XXII

The stone floor was cold. The chains around Rheba’s ankles, wrists and neck were made of a metal alloy that drained heat out of her everywhere it touched. The clammy stone walls and floor were a little better, but she did not appreciate that fact She was unconscious, curled in a fetal position on the floor, instinctively trying to preserve body warmth.

Tangled in her cold hair, Fssa made a sound halfway between a whimper and her name. “Rheba ... Rheba, wake up. It’s been so long since you were awake. Fire dancer, wake up,” be said, using Kirtn’s voice, desperately trying to reach her. “It’s cold here. Wake up and make us a fire!”

The snake’s voice was like water rippling over stone at the far edge of her awareness, an endless susurration that impinged little on her emotions. The words continued, first in Senyas and then in Universal, and finally, as Fssa lost energy, in Bre’n. His whistle retained its purity, even though the snake was compacted densely in upon himself, thinner than Rheba’s smallest finger and shorter than her lower arm. It was the Fssireeme way to conserve body heat.

After a very long time, she moaned. A convulsion shook her body, a deep shuddering that went on and on as she tried to throw off the debilitating effects of drugs and cold. Chains scraped over the floor spasmodically. The grating sounds woke Fssa, who had succumbed to a state that was not far from sleep. But for the Fssireeme, to sleep was to die.

“Fire dancer...”

Fssa’s whistle was ragged, despairing. It reached through the fog climbing in Rheba’s mind as no sweet notes could have. She shivered convulsively, bringing her knees even closer to her body and wrapping her arms around her legs. She was all but numb with cold, yet moving brought such agony as to make her sweat and moan aloud.

“Fire dancer ...” The whistle sounded very distant, very weak.

“Kirtn... ? Is that you? Where are you? Are you hurt?”

As he heard her speak, Fssa permitted himself to draw off just a bit of her body heat, believing that since she had awakened she would be able to start a fire to warm them both. With the heat he took from her came renewed energy, and fluency. His whistle became sure again.

“Not Kirtn. Fssa.”

Rheba did not hear. She had opened her eyes—and seen nothing. “I’m blind,” she said. “Oh my bright gods, Jal has blinded me!”

It took Fssa a moment to realize what had happened. He tried to tell her that the dungeon was lacking the form of energy she called light, but she was calling Kirtn’s name again and again and could not hear anything but her own screams. Fssa drew off a bit more of her heat/energy, just enough to permit him to make an unbelievably shrill whistle.

The sound was like a slap in the face. Rheba’s screams subsided into dry sobs.

“Rheba, it’s Fssa. Can you hear me?”

The rhythmic shuddering of her body paused. “Fssa?”

“Yes. I’m—”

“What happened?” she interrupted. “Where’s Kirtn? How did we get here? Is Kirtn all right?”

Questions came out of her like sparks leaping up from a fire. Another whistle split the dungeon’s stony silences. She subsided.

“Do you remember Lord Jal coming into the Act’s room?” whistled Fssa, the tone low and soothing now that he had her attention.

“I—” Her body shook continuously, but it was with cold now rather than fear. “Y-yes.”

“After he knocked you out, he told the rest of us what a clever fellow his Whip was.”

“W-whip?”

“Dapsl.” Fssa swore with the poetic violence of a Bre’n. “When Lord Jal gave that purple wart a nerve wrangler, I should have guessed that Dapsl was truly a lord’s Whip!”

“W-what’s that?”

“A master slave, one who controls the others so that the lord won’t have to bother.” Fssa’s whistle took on the tones of despair. While Rheba was unconscious he had had a lot of time to consider what had happened. None of his conclusions were comforting. “Even worse, the slanted cherf speaks J/taal. Not well,” he continued disdainfully, “He understands much better than he speaks, like most amateurs.”

“D-did he understand about the reb-b-bellion?”

The snake’s sigh was answer enough, but he enlarged on it. “He overheard and understood too much. But the rebellion will go on without us. In order for Lord Jal to avoid killing us, he had to avoid telling the other Loo lords about our plans. The other slaves, at least, will get their chance.”

“B-but the Act. I have to p-perform. They can’t d-do it without you and m-me.”

“Jal thought of that,” whistled Fssa in the minor keys of despair. “A Yhelle illusionist is doing your part. She duplicated you down to the last eyelash. As for the Bre’n song,” again the sigh, “it will be a solo, not a duet.”

“B-but the fire.”

“The fire will be illusory, but the audience won’t know the difference.”

“At 1-least the Act w-will have a chance at freedom.”

Fssa’s whistle slid down minor octaves in the Bre’n negative. “Lord Jal will kill you if the Act rebels.”

“Unless Jal t-takes me out of this icy b-box,” she said, trying and failing to control the convulsive shivering of her body, “I’ll be d-dead before the new year. The L-Loo must be able to tolerate much lower temperatures than I can. N-nor-mally it wouldn’t matter, I’d j-just make fire, b-but now I’ll just shiver until I c-can’t move anymore.”

“Make a fire!”

Her laugh sounded more like a sob, “Out of what, snake?”

Silence answered her question. For the first time since his birth, the Fssireeme was speechless. Then, very softly, “You can’t use stone to make heat?”

“Not all b-by itself. I n-need something, some energy source outside the stone and myself. If I had that, I c-could eventually fire the stone. But I don’t. And I c-can’t.”

The shivers were less now, but that did not mean that she was warmer; rather the opposite. Cold was stealing from her muscles even the ability to contract violently and send sugars into the bloodstream to be converted into heat.

“Fssa?” Her voice was suddenly thick, her words slow. “Am I blind?”

“No, fire dancer,” whistled the snake gently. “The form of energy you call light just isn’t to be found down here.”

“That’s what I was afraid you’d say. It would have been b-better if I were blind.”

She could make light, but it would cost energy she could not spare. Nor did she particularly want to see the dimensions of her tomb. Chains clinked and chimed faintly as she shifted position, trying to ease a muscle that had not yet gone numb. After she moved, another round of convulsive shivering claimed her. When she was finally still again, it was very quiet. She listened, but there was nothing to be heard except her own breathing and the occasional small clatter of her chains rubbing over stone.

“Fssa?”

There was no answer.

“Fssa? Are you c-cold too?”

Silence. Then chains scraped and clinked as she ran numb fingers through her hair trying to find the Fssireeme. He had sounded so strong that she had not thought that he might be in as much danger from the cold as she. More, with his smaller body mass. She did not know enough about his physiology to be certain, but thought that he took on the temperature of his environment—until it became too hot or too cold and he died.

“Fssa! Answer me! Where are you?”

There was only the sound of her cries echoing off stone walls. Despite the cost to her own reservoir of energy, she made a tiny ball of cold light. It was something even the smallest fire dancer child could do, a minor trick. But her strength was so depleted by cold that she felt every erg of energy it took to keep the light alive.

The cell was not large, no more than two body lengths in any direction. Even so, it was a moment before she spotted Fssa. The snake was curled in upon himself in a neat spiral that left the minimum of body heat escape into the clammy cell. His skin was very dark, darker than she had ever seen it.

“Fssa,” she called.

The snake did not answer.

Worried, she called more loudly. The fourth time she called it was a scream that echoed off the black stone walls. Desperately, she sent the light to hover over him. When it was in place, she gradually changed the light’s structure until it gave off heat as well as illumination. The drain to her was greater that way, but she was afraid that Fssa was dying. She would not permit herself to believe that he was already dead.

She watched the bright orange flame jealously, letting none of its heat slide off onto stone. Orange fire licked just above Fssa’s closed spiral. At first she was afraid that she would burn him; then she remembered that he had taken much worse heat when Kirtn had released her chaotic energy in a single pulse.

It was a long time before the snake changed. A random quiver of color passed down his dense ebony length. Gradually the color brightened, blue to orange, then yellow, and finally brilliant streaks of silver.

“Fssa?” she called.

The snake’s head lifted out of the spiral. His opalescent sensors reflected the light she had made. He expanded into the warmth hovering around him. His delighted whistle soared above the flickering hot light. “You found a way to burn stone!”

“No,” she sighed.

“Then where did this fire come from?”

“Me.”

“You’re using your energy to keep me warm?” The whistle was shrill, utterly horrified. He threw himself away from the light, but it followed him, shedding precious life over him. Her life. “Noooo.”

The snake’s anguished whistle was like a whip across her nerves. “Be still, you silly snake! The more you move, the harder it is for me to keep you warm!”

There was a long silence. Fssa did not move. His head was tucked underneath a coil, as though he would bide even from himself. A plaintive whistled issued from beneath the hovering flame. “Don’t use up yourself, fire dancer. I’m not worth it.”

She was too speechless to reply. She let the continued fire speak for her.

“You don’t understand,” continued Fssa desperately. “I’m not what you think I am.”

“I think you’re beautiful.”

Fssa’s answer was a complex Bre’n whistle that resonated with pleasure and despair. “No, fire dancer. I’m not beautiful. I—I’m a parasite.”

The last was a whistle so rushed that it took her a moment to realize what the Fssireeme had said. “A parasite? You don’t take blood or bone or flesh from a living host. You don’t take anything that isn’t freely given. The cold haa curdled your mind.”

“Not blood or bone. Heat.”

Only the Bre’n language could have conveyed the levels of shame and self-disgust that the Fssireeme felt. Only the Bre’n language could answer him. Rheba forced her chill lips to shape Bre’n speech, “You don’t take anything that isn’t freely given,” she repeated, but the whistle was rich with overtones of sharing and mutual pleasure that mere words lacked.

“But you didn’t know about me before. I was stealing from you.” The whistle slid down and down.

“Fssa—”

“No,” interrupted the snake. “Listen to me. After I tell you you’ll stop wasting yourself on a useless, ugly parasite.” The snake’s whistle overrode her objections. “On my home planet, before men came and changed the Fssireeme, we lived in two seasons. There was Fire, and there was Night. During Fire, there was enough energy for everyone to eat. Then Night came, as much Night as there had been Fire. Months without Fire. But we needed Fire or we died. So we ... stole ... from other animals.

“We would project an aural illusion. Our prey would think it was another of its kind. We would come in close, very close, tangling ourselves in the prey, stealing its warmth. There we stayed, draining it until it died or until the time of Fire came again. Then we slid away, swimming again through the molten sky-seas of Ssimral.” The whistle changed into a poignant fall of pure sound. “It was long, long ago, but my guardian told me. He didn’t lie. I’m a parasite ... and your hair was like an endless time of Fire.”

Rheba tried to answer, but had no words. She did not think less of Fssa because his body lacked the means to warm itself. Yet obviously the Fssireeme’s early evolution was a source of much shame to him and his kind. She did not think he would listen to her. She yanked suddenly at her chains, trying to reach the snake. She could not. She forced herself to be still and tried to think logically. It was futile. Between the chill and having to maintain a separate fire over Fssa, she lacked the energy for coherent thought.

“You’re beautiful, Fssa,” she whistled.

The snake keened softly, a sound that made her weep.

“Take back your fire. Let me die.”

“No.”

There was a long time when there was no sound but her breathing. At last she sighed and shifted position. She reached for Fssa but the chains defeated her again. The snake’s sensors glittered, then turned away as he moved farther across the cell. The fire followed.

“It’s easier for me to warm us with my body,” she said. “No matter what you tell me, I’m not going to call back my fire. You might as well be sensible and come back here.”

Fssa slithered farther away.

Rheba wanted to cry with frustration and growing fear. She hated the dark; and the fire she had created only made the dungeon seem darker. “I’m lonely, Fssa. Come braid yourself into my hair and we’ll sing Bre’n duets. Please, beautiful snake. I need you.”

“Do you mean that?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“That’s four times today. You only have to say it twice.”

Rheba laughed helplessly. The flame over Fssa guttered and blinked out, but it did not matter. He was coiling around her arm on his way up to his accustomed place in her hair. He rubbed his head over her cheek in silent thanks, then began whistling sweetly. She tried to whistle harmony to his song, but her lips were trembling too much. She tried to tell him in words how much his company meant to her. He tickled her ear and whistled, gently turning away her thanks. He made another mouth to carry her part of the duet.

After a time, she was able to hold up her half of the harmony. The sounds of a Bre’n love song echoed down the black corridors of the Loo dungeon.

XXIII

Lord Jal came, just as Kirtn knew he must. The Bre’n stood on the far side of the room watching the doorway. Dapsl, the Loo lord’s Whip, preceded Jal into the Act’s room. A long nerve wrangler writhed in the small man’s grasp. Violet fire ran like water over the final third of the whip. The wrangler licked out toward Kirtn, but stopped short of actually touching him.

“See?” said Dapsl, turning toward Lord Jal. “It’s just as I told you. He won’t perform, and that damned snake has disappeared. The Act is a shambles. We’re ruined!”

At a curt gesture from Lord Jal, the complaints ended. He approached the Act warily, his long robe hissing in quiet counterpart to his walk. The robe was silt, very sheer, with subtle, brilliant designs woven into its surface. Despite the room’s chill, Jal wore neither cloak nor underclothing.

“So you’ve decided to die, furry?” asked Jal, his voice indifferent.

“I’ve decided that my fire dancer is already dead.”

“Ridiculous!”

“No enzymes have been transferred.”

Jal hesitated, uncertainty flickering to his dark eyes. “It’s been less than two days. Surely the bitch can survive that long.”

Kirtn turned his back, refusing further acknowledgment of the slave lord’s presence.

“Listen to me, slave,” snarled Jal, reaching out to grab Kirtn’s arm.

The natural heat of Lord Jal’s hand was like a Senyas dancer’s; yet unlike Rheba, the Loo did not seem susceptible to the cold. Kirtn froze, held by a devastating thought. Then he turned on Jal with a speed that made the Loo leap back out of reach.

“Is she warm enough?” Kirtn asked urgently. “Is the place where you’re keeping her heated?”

Jal looked first puzzled, then irritated, “That won’t work, furry. From what Dapsl told me—and what I saw on Onan—I knew better than to put her within reach of any kind of energy. There’s nothing where she is but stone. Not even clothes. Nothing at all that can burn. But she’ll survive. Loo slaves have survived the dungeon in a lot colder weather than this.”

“They weren’t Senyasi,” said Kirtn flatly. He closed his eyes, trying to control the sweet hot rage uncurling in his gut, trying not to think how good Jal’s neck would feel between Bre’n thumbs, trying not to smile at the thought of Jal’s blood washing over Bre’n hands—trying not to succumb to rez. “Senyasi can’t tolerate cold,” he said, eyes still closed. Each word was very distinct, as though by forming each word carefully he could guarantee that the arrogant lord would comprehend the truth in the words. “Temperatures that are merely cold for you would be fatal for her.” He opened his eyes, ovals of hammered gold. “Do you hear me?”

Jal’s eyes were narrowed, black, suspicious. “You’re trying to trick me into moving some kind of heat into her cell. Only the Twin Gods know what would happen then.”

Kirtn whistled a curt command. Lheket left Ilfn’s side and came to stand by the big Bre’n. “His clothes,” snapped Kirtn to Jal. “Compare them to your own.”

After a moment of hesitation, Lord Jal’s blue hand closed around the boy’s outer robe. Jal’s frown deepened. He fingered the thick cloth, realizing that the boy was actually wearing two thick robes as well as several layers underneath. Such an outfit would have had Jal sweating before the last layer was in place, but the boy’s skin was actually puckered with cold.

Abruptly, Jal released the boy’s hand. He turned on Dapsl and began berating him in the lowest form of the Loo language. Kirtn watched, wishing that Fssa were there to translate.

Jal’s head snapped around to stare at Kirtn. In the silence, the writhings of Dapsl’s restless violet whip sounded unnaturally loud.

“I’ll see that she is warm enough,” spat Jal.

Kirtn’s gold eyes watched the Loo for a long moment. Then the Bre’n turned away again, deliberately ignoring the slave master. Jal swore and yanked the nerve wrangler out of Dapsl’s hand. Purple fire coursed from Kirtn’s fingertips to his shoulder. He did not respond. Fire bloomed again, then again. Smiling, Kirtn stood motionless. He had taken much worse pain from his fire dancer; he could take much more.

Jal looked from the whip to the slave who could ignore pair. With a sound of disgust he jammed the wrangler back into Dapsl’s grasp and cursed the day he had found the incorrigible races of Senyas and Bre’n. “What do you want from me?”

“Rheba.”

“Impossible!”

Kirtn smiled again as he turned around. He had not expected to win her freedom. All he wanted was to get himself and one other person into her cell. Corpses burned quite nicely, as every fire dancer knew.

Jal waited, but the Bre’n only smiled his chilling smile. “If you could see that she was all right, would you perform tonight at the Concatenation?”

Kirtn appeared to consider the proposal, but there was really no need to do so; seeing her was exactly what he wanted. “Take me to her now.”

Jal pressed a stud on the belt that gathered his robe around his hips. He studied the figures in a small crystal window next to the stud. “Hardly more than an hour until you have to go into the tunnel ...” He glanced up at the predatory golden eyes watching him, then glanced down quickly. “All right. A few minutes.”

“No. As much time as there is before the Act goes onstage.”

“Ridiculous!”

“Every minute there is,” repeated Kirtn, “or there won’t be any Act.”

“You’d kill all of them,” asked Jal, waving a long-nailed hand at the J/taals and clepts, Ilfh and Lheket, “just for a few minutes with your kaza-flatch?”

“Yes.”

Jal’s hand dropped. He looked at Dapsl, who looked away. He looked at i’sNara, all but invisible in the corner. When the Act was not being rehearsed, she appeared as herself; Kirtn would not tolerate the imitation Rheba for one second longer than necessary.

“Could you do both of them?” asked Jal of i’sNara. She hesitated, then made a small gesture with her left tand, the Yhelle negative. “One or the other with fire, lord. Not both. Perhaps f’lTiri?”

Jal looked thoughtful, then angry. “F’lTiri’s only Ninth

Degree. The Act has to look right or the Imperial Loo-chim will have my eggs for breakfast.” He glared at Kirtn again. “All right, furry. But if you don’t perform well tonight, I’ll kill you myself!”

Kirtn laughed. The savage sound brought Ilfn to her feet and made Lheket move blindly toward the comfort of her touch. Her anguished whistle finally stilled Kirtn’s terrible laughter, but even Jal could not bear to meet the Bre’n’a slanting golden eyes. Jal shuddered beneath his silk robe.

“I’ll take you there myself,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t trust a guard with you—or you with it! You’ll walk in front of me with head bowed, like a slave being sent to the dungeon for discipline.”

Kirtn bowed his head, a model of obedience, but the echos of his feral laughter still vibrated in the air. Jal palmed a small weapon from his belt and followed Kirtn out of the room. The Bre’n saw little of the hallways he walked, for his head was bowed in slave imitation. What he did see was enough. He would be able to lead Rheba out of the dungeon.

The air became perceptibly cooler as they walked down a winding spiral staircase made of stone. The steps were concave in the middle, worn down by the passage of time and slaves. Moisture appeared on the walls, beading up and sliding over the chiseled stone passageway. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, Kirtn’s fur had roughened, a reflex that trapped an insulating layer of air between tiny hairs and skin.

Even so, he felt the relentless chill of darkness and stone. And if he felt it, how much worse must it be for his unfurred fire dancer? Head bowed, he reviewed the many ways there were to kill a man, and the many refinements of pain possible before death. The Loo lord who had left a fire dancer to die in this hell of icy rock would pray for his own death ... but it would be long before that prayer was answered.. As though sensing Kirtn’s thoughts, Jal looked up nervously. In the dim light thrown by his belt studs, he could see little but a huge shadow stalking ahead of him, head bowed, to all outward appearances just one more Loo slave. Jal wished that he could believe that appearance. He dropped back farther, his hand tight around the deadly white weapon he had taken from his belt.

Kirtn glanced back casually at the Loo lord, but he was out of reach. The Bre’n had not really expected anything else. Lord Jal was not a careless man.

“Keep walking,” said Jal, “Turn right at the next branch-

ing of the tunnel, left at the third opening after that, then left at the second arch. She’s in the right-hand cell in the middle of the long hall. Use this for light.”

He tossed a small button toward Kirtn, who caught it re-flexively. It gave off little light, but Bre’n eyes did not require brightness to see well. Kirtn whistled, shrill and penetrating, a call that demanded an answer. There was none, though the whistle echoed deafeningiy down stone halls and turnings. Fear squeezed his throat, but he whistled again, urgently. All that came back were more echos ... and then silence.

He turned and began running down the hall with the sure strides of a predator. The button he had been given glowed just enough to warn of dead ends and passageways. As an energy source for Rheba to draw on, the light would be all but worthless. As he ran he counted doors and arches, turned right and left and raced down a long hall-It was cold, colder than it had been before he turned at the arch. Icy cold, slick walls of stone gleaming sullenly. He tried to keep down his fear, but like rez it kept uncurling, testing the edges of his control. Piercing Bre’n whistles shattered against stone. No answer came back. He held the button high in his right hand, looking for any break in the wall that could be her cell.

Finally, stone gave way to a cold shine of metal. He lunged at the door. It was locked. With a soundless snarl he attacked the chains holding down the massive sliding bolt. Metal twisted and snapped. The bolt slammed open with a metallic scream. The thick metal door swing inward.

Rheba lay inside, huddled on the cold stone floor. She did not move.

He leaped into the cell, whistling her name repeatedly, getting no answer. Her flesh was clammy, almost as cold as the bitter walls. He buried his hand in her hair, seeking the energy that was a fire dancer’s life. Fssa slipped to the floor and lay without moving.

Rez turned inside the Bre’n, seething seductively, promising incandescent oblivion to his very core. But not yet. Not yet. First he must be very sure she was dead.

He lifted her off the cold floor, held her against his warmth, held her as he had ached to do, woman not child. He poured his energy into her, willing his own heat to warm the chill pathways of her body, forcing out cold as he breathed hot life into her.

Reluctantly, slowly, Rheba’s mind acknowledged the fierce power battering it. Lines of power flickered vaguely, then blazed beneath his demands. Feeling returned to cold flesh. With a scream of agony, she was wrenched out of the blessed numbness that was a near twin to death. A lesser akhenet would have died of the Bre’n power pouring through mind and body, but she had proved her strength when she survived Deva’s end. With a final ragged scream she accepted life again.

Then he held her gently, appalled by the pain he had given to her. He whistled keen regret, apologies as beautiful as the lines burning over her. She shuddered a final time and clung to him, making a song of his name. She kissed him with more than forgiveness, child-woman blazing between his hands.

Behind them the door groaned shut and the massive bolt slammed back into its hole. Laughter bounced off metal and stone—Jal’s laughter. The button in Kirtn’s hand changed, showing a likeness of the Loo lord’s face. Lips moved. Thin sound vibrated in the air around the button.

“That was a very thick chain on the door, furry. You’re even more dangerous than I’d thought. As dangerous as you are valuable. F’lTiri will imitate you well enough for the Act. Imperial lusts will overlook a rough performance, so long as you and the other furry survive to slide on Loo-chim nuga. Enjoy the next few hours with your kaza-flatch, furry. The female polarity won’t let you out of her sight until she’s tired of riding you.”

Kirtn ground the button between heel and stone. Jal’s voice stopped, but the sound of his laughter still seeped through the door. It was absolutely dark until Rheba made a tiny ball of light. As it hovered over his shoulder, Kirtn put his strong hands against the door, testing the hinges, then hammering with all the force of his huge body. Metal groaned but did not give.

A howl of Bre’n fury exploded in the dungeon. He threw himself at the door in an attack as calculated as his howl had been wild. Metal groaned again, but did not shift. If he kept after the door, he might eventually loosen its hinges—but there was not enough time left before the Act.

A sound from Rheba drew him away from his futile attack on the door. She stood with Fssa coiled in her hand, but the coils kept coming apart. She coiled him again. He came undone. Other than a flickering of the small light she had created when Kirtn crushed the button, she did not show her emotions. Patiently, she coiled Fssa into a semblance of life for the third time.

“That won’t help,” said Kirtn, his voice soft.

“He’s not dead.” Her voice was brittle, desperately controlled. “He felt almost this cold the first time I touched him in the Fold, when he was so scared.”

The coils loosened and spilled out of her hands like black water. The light guttered, then flared into a single burning point where Fssa’s body hung from her hand. There was no response, though the light she created was hot enough to burn flesh.

Kirtn lifted the snake from her fingers and draped the cold body around his neck. Fssa’s flesh was very dense; he would burn more brightly than even a Bre’n.

“You haven’t much time.” His voice was kind, yet implacable. When she refused to look at him, he turned her face toward his. “Are you ready, fire dancer?”

“For what?”

“For fire.”

“There’s nothing to burn.”

“There’s me.”

Silence, then a hoarse cry of refusal. He waited, but the lines of power on his dancer remained quiescent.

“You have to melt out the hinges, the bolt, or the door itself,” said the Bre’n in Senyas. “The door is nearly as thick through as I am. I think the hinges would be a mistake; you’re more likely to fuse them than unhinge the door. The door may be easier to melt through than stone. That’s your decision, fire dancer. Either way, stone or metal, you’ll need something to burn before you can weave enough energy to melt your way out of here.”

“No.”

“You’ll have to have a base,” continued the Bre’n as though she had never refused, “from which to weave more complex energies. You’ll have to burn me.”

“No!”

“It’s your akhenet duty to survive and bear children.” His voice was still calm, but he was whistling in Bre’n now, and the sounds contained possibilities that made her flesh move and tighten. “Ilfn is pregnant. In time, you will be too. Bre’ns and Senyasi will not be extinct. But first you have to escape, fire dancer, and to escape you have to burn me.”

“Never.” The word was Senyas, unambiguous, containing neither regret nor apology nor defiance, simply refusal, absolute. “I will never kill you.”

“It doesn’t matter, my dancer. I’m dead already.” His whistle was sweet, pure, a knife turning in her, “I was dead the first time I mated with Ilfn.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Rez.”

“But why?”

His only answer was a whistle that slid down all the octaves of regret. For a moment she did not recognize the opening notes of the Bre’n death song. When she did, she could not control the tears that fell over the golden lines on her face. She wanted desperately to contradict him, to tell him he must be wrong, that he could not go into rez, turning on himself, his mind literally consuming his body cell by cell to feed Bre’n rage. She wanted to argue and scream and plead, but was afraid that any one of those actions might simply precipitate the very rez she so desperately wanted to avoid. She needed time to think, time to plan, time to outwit rez.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked in a trembling voice, using Senyas, for her inner refusal would have shown in Bre’n.

It was all Kirtn could do not to gather her in his arms and hold her for the last time in his life. Yet if he did, neither of them would have the strength to do what they must. “After you escape from here, hide in the tunnel until just before the Act goes on stage. Then, take over the Act. One of the illusionists can imitate me. If they refuse, kill them and use just my outline. Let M/dere handle the fighting. She’ll get you and the other akhenets to the ship. Take the slaves who can keep up with you, but don’t wait for anyone.”

She said nothing, not trusting her voice. The only other time she had seen Kirtn so violently controlled was when she told him that Deva would die before first moonrise.

“I’ll give you my energy,” he said, speaking Senyas because neither one of them could bear the poetry of Bre’n. “Use it to create fire to melt rock or metal. When I’ve given you all my energy, use my body as you did the J/taal bodies back in the Fold. Only this time, take the energy that is released, compress it, and let it explode inside stone or metal. The shock waves will destroy solids and generate more heat. At that point, you’ll be able to burn your way out of this cell.”

His voice was so reasonable that she could almost believe he was talking about a length of wood rather than his own flesh. She began to refuse, but was stopped by the shadow of rez at the center of his yellow eyes. Time. She needed more time.

She walked past him and ran her hands over the door, releasing distinct currents of energy. Her akhenet training let her read the currents as they moved through the metal. The bolt on the far side was thicker than her own body. The hinges were equally massive. It might be easier to use heat to crack the cold rocks than to melt through the door—yet the thought of sending molten rivulets down the high-density alloy made her lines blaze hotly with pleasure.

She turned back to him, holding knowledge and argument inside her, pretending to agree. There was a way, a small fire dancer trick that she had used against childhood playmates. She would take what he gave her, draining off his power until he lacked the energy to flash into deadly rez—Then they would talk rationally about ways and means of escaping from the dungeon.

“Ready,” she said.

She backed away from the door until she came up against the cell wall. She stepped forward just enough to allow him to stand behind her. When he touched her, energy raced through her body, setting akhenet lines to pulsing with the joined beat of two hearts.

A thin stream of barely visible energy stitched around the door like a questing fingertip. She controlled it precisely, using the minimum amount of her own and his energy. That was nothing new, certainly not dangerous to either of them, merely an akhenet pair at work.

Kirtn felt his energy flowing into her and wished for many nameless things in the time before he died. But he was akhenet, disciplined. The energy pouring into her did not waver with his unvoiced regrets. He sensed heat building in the door. His golden eyes reflected the uncanny gleam of Senyas fire. He poured more energy into his fire dancer, wanting to feel the searing core of her power while he still could.

She refused. Her lines surged, channeling his power back to him in a reflex that was born of her refusal to let him die. He realized that he was not as spent as he should have been by this time. She had been taking his energy—and then returning some of it to him so subtly that be had not sensed the exchange. At this rate he would be drained gradually, unconscious before he found the death that he must have to set her free. And then he realized that was exactly what she had planned.

With a terrible cry, he flashed into rez.

XXIV

The first instants of rez were deceptively safe, like the rumble of an earthquake presaging the violence to come. Images shattered in her mind, images of herself as seen through Kirtn’s eyes.

She was a toddler, absently striking fire from straw. She was seven, lighting candles with her fingertips in her first dancer ritual. She was seventeen, awash with triple moonlight, laughing with a boy lover in Deva’s scented autumn.

She was a searing core of radiance taking the Devalon and flinging it into space instants before the sun licked out, devouring Deva in pure light. She was a woman dressed in lightning, calling down fire on a gambling hell. She was a dancer wearing only her lines of power, mouth soft and bittersweet as she gave him a woman’s kiss in a Loo room where enslaved stones wept.

She was lying on an icy stone floor. A dead Fssireeme slid out of her cold hair.

And then rez raged through her with the force of an exploding star. She was being torn apart by the life force pouring into her like a cataract of molten glass.

Screaming, writhing, she deflected rez as she had been trained to deflect other destructive energies. But she was only one, and young. He was Bre’n, and in rez.

Burn me! Burn me to ash and gone!

Energy shaped itself into wild lightnings, visible and invisible, impossible colored shadows smoking over stone walls. She gave back to him what she could, a feedback loop that quivered and shook with violence barely channeled. There was a stink of scorched stone, but not flesh burning, not yet, she would not.

I won’t!

She screamed again and again, her hair a corona of wildfire, driven to her knees by the force of Bre’n demand. The cell shrank smaller and smaller, too hot, far too small to hold the clash of lightnings. There was no air. Stone turned soft beneath her hands. Rivulets of orange and gold and white ran down the walls.

She could not breathe.

Burn me!

Never!

Her shriek was lost in the sound of rez doubled and redoubled by stone that smoked and spat ghostly flames. The energy she deflected came back to her from all sides, reflected by walls. Her skin split and blazed, forming new lines of power each instant as she tried to cope with impossible energies, tried not to breathe, tried not to die, tried not to—

Burn me!

She did not answer him, could not, the cell was too small to hold more words, they had to get out, get out, get out. There must be a way out, a place where the air was cool enough to breathe and did not stink of burning stone, Bre’n rage, fire dancer fear.

An orange rectangle smoked and sputtered in front of her, a metal alloy door as thick as a Bre’n body. Behind her was only rez, killing what she loved, killing her and him.

They must escape.

The door must burn.

There was no other way.

Burn!

She no longer deflected his energy. She took. Random lightnings fused into a beam of coherent light that would have blinded any but fire dancer eyes. She pointed. Incandescence ravaged the door. She had neither time nor skill for finesse; rez battered at her, both feeding and demanding her dance.

Reflected fire washed back at her, heat like a hammer blow. She retreated from the seething door, pushing the body of rez behbd her, trying to save Kirtn and herself from the backlash of the fire she must use. Akhenet lines raced like lightning over her, sucking up heat, returning it to her as energy to feed the deadly beam of light gnawing at the door.

Too hot. Too little air. Akhenet lines overwhelmed by unbridled energies. She would cook before the door melted, she and her Bre’n burned to ash by rez, ash and gone.

Her eyes were closed now, but she did not need them open to see. The image of the door was seared on her retinas, a rectangle that was orange at the edges and vapor at the center and white in between, but most of all hot, by the Inmost Fire it was hot, the core of light shriveling her flesh, she was burning alive, burning and dying...

Behind her closed eyelids brilliance flared, followed by a cool shadow like a wall between her and the melting door. There was only one gap in the coolness, a hole through which poured her deadly coherent light, light eating the door, an incandescent hell that somehow did not reach her any more. The door collapsed in upon itself in a deadly molten shower that somehow did not touch her.

Perhaps she was dead already.

Fire died, leaving only the seething metal on the far side of the cell, streams of molten alloy that she could only see through the single hole in the shallow wall that had appeared in front of her. She touched the wall. It gave slightly. The hole closed, leaving her in darkness.

Weakness poured through her like another color of night. She fell to the fioor, but it was Kirtn, not stone, that broke her fall. He did not move. She remembered the instant when she had taken his energy with a violence to equal his rez. For a moment she was frozen, afraid to see if he was still alive, afraid that she had killed him.

She spoke his name in a voice that was raw from screams and fire. She tried to speak again, but could not. Frantically her hands moved over him, seeking the least quiver of life. Her fingers told her that he was whole, burned in places but not maimed by the fire he had compelled from her. She reached out to stroke his face.

Her hands were solid gold, smoldering with the residue of power. She stared at them, unbelieving.

After a long time, Kirtn’s eyes opened, reflecting the akhenet fire of her hands. He looked around blankly. When his eyes focused on her he shook his head as though unable to accept that be was alive.

“What—?” His questioning whistle ended with a cough.

“You went into rez,” she answered hoarsely. “I danced. I don’t know why we didn’t die.”

Wonderingly, he touched her face. Beneath his fingers akhenet lines pulsed in traceries of gold so dense it was almost a mask. “You controlled rez?” he whistled, half question, half impossibility.

When Rheba tried to answer, her throat closed around its own dryness. With a small sound she threw her arms around him. She wanted to tell him how afraid she had been, how rez had begun with images from his mind, how the terrible core of rez was a power so deep that she had died swallowing it and then had been reborn as a sword edge of light slicing through metal.

“Coherent light?” He whistled as he stroked her crackling hair. “What a dangerous fire dancer I chose.”

His whistle was light, but it contained all the ambiguous harmonics of truth. Before she could sort out his many meanings, she realized that he had taken images out of her thoughts when she could not speak, as though rez had somehow forged a connection between Bre’n and Senyas minds.

“Rez?” she said hoarsely. “Did rez do that?”

“No.” He pulled her closer to his body. In the light shed by her smoldering akhenet lines, he saw her lips, cracked by dryness and bleeding. He licked them gently, giving them a healing moisture that her own mouth lacked. “Many akhenet pairs are minor mind dancers, but only within their own pairs, only when they are mature, and touching each other.”

Suddenly, blackness shriveled, collapsing in upon itself. Heat washed over them, but it was a bearable heat. Behind it came the suggestion of coolness from the burned-out door to the dungeon hall. Speechlessly, Kirtn and Rheba watched as the “wall” folded and refolded, getting lighter and smaller as it did so until it had become a mirror-bright creature slithering over the hot floor toward them.

“Fssa!” Kirtn’s hand went to his neck where he had draped the corpse of the Fssireeme. Nothing was there now but his own fur, scorched even closer to the skin than was normal.

Rheba reached toward Fssa, then jerked back her fingers with a cry. He was far too hot to touch. With an apologetic whistle, the snake backed out of reach of his friends. He stretched and flexed his body, leaving black marks on the gray stone floor.

“Are you really all right?” asked Rheba, disbelief in her raw voice.

“Oh, yessss,” whistled Fssa dreamily, a shiver of pleasure running down his mirrored hide. “No Fssireeme has lived like that except in a guardian’s memories ... to be a glittering sail only a few molecules thick. It felt so good! It’s been so cold. It’s always been cold since Ssimmi.”

Bre’n and Senyas looked at one another, trying to absorb Fssa’s words. In response to heat that would have killed them, the Fssireeme had transformed himself into a sail that soaked up energy so efficiently its shadow had saved their lives.

“Ahhhhh,” whistled the snake, “it was lovely to really s-t-r-e-t-c-h.” As though sensing their bemusement, Fssa added, “Unless it’s really hot, Fssireeme freeze to death in their thinnest shapes.” He whistled a trill of pure pleasure. His sensors, darker now than the rest of him, turned toward Rheba. ‘That was a wonderful fire you made,” he said earnestly, “but you must be careful where you do it. You’re too fragile to survive fire like that in closed places unless there’s a Fssireeme around.”

She laughed despite the dryness of her throat. The snake’s whistle was an irresistible blend of complacence and concern. “Cool off, snake. I won’t carry you when you’re that hot. Or do you want to crawl all the way to the Concatenation stage?”

Fssa gave out a dismayed whistle. Reluctantly he expanded, releasing heat into the cell. He was careful to direct the heat away from them, however. The fragility of his new friends had come as a surprise to the Fssireeme. When he was within the temperature range they considered “normal,” he wound over to Rheba. She touched him hesitantly, then lifted him into her hair. Halfway there, her strength gave out. Her hands dropped to her sides.

Kirtn put the snake into her hair, then searched over her body with careful hands, looking for wounds. He found none.

“Just thirsty ... tired,” she said, responding to his unasked questions. She tried not to groan as exhaustion swept over her in a tidal wave of weakness. “Tired.”

Kirtn tried to give her energy, but could not. Rez had drained him as surely as it had exhausted her. Yet they could not stay here.

“The Act,” rasped Rheba, echoing his thoughts. “How long have we been here?”

He did not answer. Rez was timeless. It could have lasted an instant or an eon. He had no way of knowing. Nor did she. The rebellion could have started while they fought to burn out the stubborn heart of a Loo dungeon door. The rebellion could be over, won or lost, slaves dead or free or enslaved yet again. Loo guards could be coming down the stone hallways right now, guns in hand, to find a bright snake and an exhausted akhenet pair. Easy prey.

Rheba and Kirtn dragged themselves to their feet. They walked raggedly across the cell, staggered between lines of cooling metal and into the hallway. Neither of them spoke. They both knew that she was too tired to make small fires for the Act, much less set the Loo city ablaze in a bid for freedom.

“The amphitheater,” she said, her breath hurting in her raw throat. “Energy.”

“The weather shield,” agreed Kirtn.

Her breath stopped for an instant, then she accepted what must be done. If they were to escape Loo, she must risk losing the only person who could give her children.

Lheket would have to dance.

XXV

The Act’s room was deserted. The only thing moving was the finger-length fountain that delivered water to the slaves. Rheba drank gratefully. Kirtn found her robe in a corner. She pulled it on, put up the hood, and looked at him expectantly. He shrugged.

“It’ll have to do,” said the Bre’n. “It doesn’t hide your new lines, though. Keep your hands in the folds and your head down, until we find i’sNara.”

A low sound passed through the room. She did not hear it, but he did. He cocked his head, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. Finally he decided it had been conducted by the rock itself. The sound came again, slightly louder. Her head came up. The new lines curling around her eyes flared gold.

“What’s that?” she asked, turning her head in unconscious imitation of him.

“We’re close to the amphitheater. It could just be the Loo making approving noises after an Act.”

“Or it could be a mob of rebellious slaves.”

“It sounds,” said Fssa softly, “like the memories of Ssimmi, heat and thunder.”

“Thunder? It’s the dry season,” said Rheba.

Kirtn did not say anything. He was already halfway out of the room, striding down the hall toward the tunnels that converged on the amphitheater. She followed, nearly running to keep up with the long-legged Bre’n.

His worst fear was disproved within minutes. The rebellion had not yet begun. The tunnel network surrounding the amphitheater was lined with Acts. The slaves were either too tired or too fearful to care who was pushing past them. Their Acts were over; now they had to stand and wait in cold halls until the last Act left the stage and the Hour Between Years began. Unlike old slaves, these were not free to roam Imperiapolis for that hour. They could not leave the tunnel until their new owners arrived and took them away.

Rheba could not help glancing quickly to the faces as she followed in Kirtn’s wake. Most people wore a look of barely controlled desperation. It was the hallmark of new slaves. Old slaves, like i’sNara, showed no emotion at all. Rheba wondered how many of the silent people knew about the rebellion, how many would help, how many would simply get in the way.

Hfn’s whistle slid through the thick silence in the hall. The sound came from one of the many culs-de-sac that appeared at random along the length of the tunnel. The room was so small that Kirtn and Rheba had to crowd against him in order to get out of the hall. Pressed between wall and his Bre’n, Lheket stared sightlessly through them.

“You haven’t much time,” said Ilfn in urgent Senyas. “Your Act is next. They’re lined up just off the ramp, waiting for their signal.”

Impatiently, Rheba pushed in closer. Something about Lheket’s face, his stance, compelled her attention. With half her attention she listened while Kirtn told Ilfn what had happened—and what must happen.

“Lheket will have to dance,” finished Kirtn. “Rheba has to have an energy source to work with, and the weather shield is the only possibility within the amphitheater. Calling rain shouldn’t be hard, even for a first-time dancer. The ocean is so close, there’s moisture everywhere, all he’ll have to do is gather it.”

Ilfn laughed wildly, stopping Kirtn’s flow of words. “Are you as blind as Lheket? Look at him.”

They stared. A low rumble muttered through the rock again, just below the threshold of Rheba’s hearing. The Bre’ns heard it clearly enough, though. Kirtn looked more closely at the boy, peering through the very dim light given off by the fluorescent strips that divided all walls into two horizontal blocks. Vague blue-silver lines glowed across Lheket’s hands and chin.

Rheba gasped. When she touched Lheket, her hand flared gold. Sound trembled in the air. She looked up at Kirtn and then back at Lheket. Currents of shared power coursed between the two Senyas dancers. The boy’s eyes lit from within, green as river pools. Her hair lifted, rippling with invisible energy. “He’s dancing!”

“Of course he is,” said Ilfn, her voice low and ragged. “I  tried to stop him but this time I couldn’t.” Her whistle was shrill with, emotion, her dark eyes wild. “About an hour ago he changed. He woke up. All that had been sleeping in him came alive, as though he had been called by a ring of master dancers. I couldn’t hold him back.”

“Rez,” breathed Rheba.

“What?”

“Rez. He must have felt me channel Kirtn’s rez.”

Hfn’s whistle stopped as though she had been struck. She stared from Rheba to Kirtn, then back to Rheba. “Impossible,” said Ilfn in Senyas. “No one, Bre’n or Senyas, can control rez.”

“Not control,” said Rheba. “Channel. I merely—” No easy explanation came to her. She made an impatient sound. “It doesn’t matter. Do you think that Lheket has called enough clouds to make the Loo activate the weather shield?”

Another rumble trembled through the underground runnel. Ilfn laughed again, a sound that made Rheba shift uncomfortably.

“What do you think that is?” said Ilfn. “He has the clouds raging like Bre’ns in rez.”

“Thunder?” said Kirtn, looking at Lheket with new interest.

“Yes,” Ilfn’s whistle was both proud and harried. “He’s called a storm. It’s all I can do to keep it from being a hell-bringer!”

Kirtn made a Bre’n sound of satisfaction. The shield would definitely be up. Rheba would have all the energy she needed to work with. “Do you need help handling him?” he asked.

Ilfn hesitated. “On Deva, I’d need help. But here ...” She smiled suddenly, a cruel Bre’n smile. “Here I don’t care if he drowns the whole city and every Loo in it.”

“We’re in it too,” pointed out Kirtn.

“I know.” Ilfn’s tone was curt. “I’m draining off enough of his energy to keep him under a semblance of control. It’s that or kill him.”

Rheba felt an impulse to stand protectively between Lheket and his Bre’n, then realized how foolish that was. The first thing anyone learned on Deva was never to stand between Senyas and Bre’n. Yet she could not help a whispered plea. “Don’t hurt him.”

Ilfn glanced up. The Bre’n’s expression softened as she realized that Rheba had some affection for the blind rain dancer. “I’ll hold him as long as I can,” she said simply.

The air vibrated with sound Rheba could not hear. Kirtn bent over Ilfn, whistled softly, and was answered by a smile so sensual it made Rheba catch her breath. Then Ilfn changed before their eyes, smile fading, mind turned inward as her hands settled on Lheket’s shoulders. Only her eyes seemed alive, and his, lit from within by akhenet power.

Kirtn turned and pushed back out into the crowded hall, breaking a path for Rheba. He looked back, saw that her hood had dropped and pulled it up with a quick jerk. “Jal might be around.”

“You’re not exactly inconspicuous yourself,” muttered Rheba.

Kirtn shrugged. There were other large, furred races gathered in the hall. However, there were none whose hair lifted and danced on invisible currents of force. Even among smooth slaves, Rheba was as distinctive as a shout.

He stopped so suddenly that she stepped on his heels. The tunnel had branched into two smaller halls and several culs-de-sac. M/dere stood at the point where the tunnel divided, as though waiting for someone. She saw Kirtn immediately. She found her way through the crowd to them with astonishing speed.

Rheba shook her head slightly. “Fssa?” she murmured. “You awake?”

A satisfied hiss answered her. Fssa was in his element when her hair pulsed with energy. If he had his way, she would dance all the time. He stretched slightly, creating a flexible whistling orifice. As M/dere spoke, a Bre’n whistle floated up from beneath Rheba’s hood.

“J/taaleri,” said M/dere, bowing her head. “I’m ashamed. I let you be taken without lifting my hand.”

“There’s nothing you could have done and no need to apologize.”

Fssa shifted behind her ear, making a different orifice with which to speak J/taal. She suspected that whatever he said was not quite what she had said. The speech went on long enough to make her restless, but M/dere listened with utter attention. At the end, she bowed again, but there was pride on her face.

“Thank you, J/taaleri. Do you want us to kill the illusionists now?”

Rheba looked quickly to Kirtn. He shrugged. “Whatever you want, fire dancer. Just make sure that they don’t get in our way.”

“Tell your people to be sure that the illusionists can’t escape or give warning,” said Rheba slowly, “but don’t hurt them. They may know something useful about the city. They’ve been slaves a lot longer than we have.”

M/dere concentrated for a moment. “It’s done. Come quickly.”

They followed M/dere into a small room just off the ramp that led up to the amphitheater stage. The illusionists were standing very still, J/taal hands over their throats and J/taal clepts snarling at their feet. At Rheba’s command the illusionists changed into themselves.

The male illusionist was slightly broader than the female, slightly more muscular, and had hair that was chestnut rather than black. Like her, he showed no expression. He looked at Kirtn with interest, as though comparing the Bre’n to the illusion that had recently been projected.

“Before you kill us,” said f’lTiri, “remember that we are slaves like you. Like you, we had to obey men we hate.”

“I’m not planning on killing you,” said Rheba. “M/dere will just knock you out. By the time you wake up, the rebellion will be too far along for you to warn anyone.”

Is’Nara moved slightly, drawing a rich snarl from a clept. She stared at Rheba with clear, colorless eyes, but when she spoke there was emotion in her voice. “Let us go! We have a right to try for freedom too!”

“Slaves don’t have rights,” said f’lTiri, his voice flat. “Don’t ask anything, tura i’sNara.”

Emotion drained out of i’sNara, leaving only emptiness. She did not move again. F’lTiri’s body twitched as though he would go to her, but a clept’s bared teeth made movement certain death.

Rheba hesitated, wanting to trust the Yhelle illusionists, yet not wanting to jeopardize whatever chance the Act might have. “Can you appear to be J/taals?” she asked suddenly.

The illusionists wavered, then reformed. There was a murmur of surprise as the J/taals found themselves holding what appeared to be two other J/taals. The clepts rose to their feet, sniffed, then snarled again. The illusion was visual only—touch, smell and hearing were not affected.

Rheba looked at Kirtn. He whistled a puzzled affirmative. Whatever she had in mind was agreeable to him. Like her, he had seen enough death on Deva to last him ten lifetimes.

“You both know the Act,” said Rheba in a clipped voice. “You’ll be demons. If you say or do anything to call attention to yourselves, the clepts will kill you before any Loo lord can stop them.”

The captive “J/taals” murmured agreement. They had no doubt of the clepts’ speed and ferocity.

“I don’t think anyone will notice two extra demons,” she said. “Except Dapsl. Where is he?”

“The Whip is with Lord Jal. Your mercenaries made him uncomfortable.” F’lTiri smiled, revealing the small, hard teeth of a J/taal. “When the gong sounds for us, he’ll be back.”

Rheba swore in Senyas. Fssa translated it into Universal and then into J/taal, embroidering her epithets with a Fssireeme’s creative glee. “Shut up, snake,” she snapped, “unless you know how we can get Dapsl to see two less J/taals.

Fssa was silent.

The captive J/taals shifted. The air shivered, then reformed around ... nothing. The Yhelle illusionists had vanished.

“What—?” gasped Rheba.

A strained voice came from the place where i’sNara had stood. “This is our most difficult illusion. We can’t”—J/taals reformed and the voice became less harsh—“hold it for long, but it should get us onstage. Once there, Dapsl would not dare to stop the Act. The Loo-chim kills Whips that displease it.”

A gong sounded four tunes. The penultimate Act had ended.

This time Rheba did not hesitate. “You’ve just joined oar Act. At the end of it, when Saffar kisses Hmel, the fires won’t dim out. I’ll send fire across the whole weather shield. That’s the signal for the rebellion to begin. In the confusion it will be easy for everyone to get offstage and into the tunnel. Ilfn and Lheket will be there. Follow them. If you’re still with us when we reach the spaceport, I’ll give you a ride home.”

F’lTiri laughed softly, a surprising sound from a J/taal face. “No wonder the mercenaries worship you. You’re as mad as they are. A ride home ...” His voice broke on the last word and something close to fire burned behind his colorless eyes. He bowed his head. “We’ll follow you, J/taaleri.”

Dapsl’s strident voice came from the direction of the stage ramp as he shoved through the crowd, nerve wrangler dripping violet fire. At the first sound of his voice, both illusionists vanished. Other than the clepts’ great interest in two empty places in the room, it was as though the Illusionists had never been in the room at all.

“You—i’sNara,” said Dapsl, pointing his whip at Rheba. “Hurry it up.” The whip flicked over her hood, pulling it down. “Get that hair moving, damn you!”

Rheba had an instant of fear that Fssa would reveal himself. She felt the snake slide down and wind securely around her neck below the hood. Warmth flared on her skin as Fssa shifted his color to match the myriad golds of her hair and skin. She shook her head, freeing her hair. It lifted around her head in a silky, whispering cloud. The gesture cost her energy she could not spare, but satisfied Dapsl.

He turned his attention on Kirtn, looking at the Bre’n critically. “The scorched fur is a good touch, but you’ve still made the damned beast too handsome.”

Kirtn almost smiled.

“Well, it’s too late to adjust the illusion now. Go on, get on stage. If the female polarity is disappointed by the looks of the real furry, I’ll send you to her instead!” He glared at the rest of the Act. “Move!” he said in guttural J/taal. “The twin gong will sound and we’d better be ready! M/dur, where’s that damned crown?”

Rheba froze. She had forgotten about Rainbow.

M/dur reached inside his robe and pulled out what looked like a heavy, pitted necklace. It shifted in his hands, becoming thicker, more dense.

Dapsl glanced. “Why the bitch ever wanted that ugly thing in the first place—” He began making restive motions with his whip. “Onstage,” he said harshly. “Onstage!”

Rheba led the Act out of the room and up the ramp, hoping that no one would stumble over the two invisible illusionists in the rush. At every second she expected a cry of outraged discovery from the Whip. She was so intent on gaining the sanctuary of the stage before the illusionists lost their invisibility that she shoved roughly past a lord who was standing on the ramp. Too late she realized that the man was Lord Jal. She looked back over her shoulder. He was staring at her oddly, as though he suspected that reality rather than illusion had jostled him. Before he could protest, the Act gained the stage in a silent rush.

The gong rang twice. The Act began.

XXVI

Onstage the air was cool, smelling of rare perfumes and a whiff of lightning. Overhead, an invisible dome quivered silently, shielding the audience from random drops of rain. Thunder sounded suddenly in response to unseen lightning. The shield thickened, then relaxed; it was designed to supply only enough energy to meet the needs of the instant.

Rheba reached for the shield with immaterial hands. Her hair whipped and sparkled. Instantly she withdrew, leaving only the most meager tendril connecting her to the shield. She let energy trickle down, then shaped it to the requirements of the Act.

As the Act unfolded, the shield surged again, deflecting the building storm. Rheba’s fires leaped with the unexpected increase in power, drawing a gasp from the Loo audience. Silently she fought to damp out the unnecessary power. After several moments the shield—and the Act—returned to acceptable energy levels.

A part of her kept listening for Jal or Dapsl to give away the game, but no words were spoken except by Fssa. Dapsl stood just offstage, his whip lashing restlessly in his hands. If he suspected anything he kept it to himself. Nor did Jal reappear, although as a slave Act owner, he had a seat in the third row. The seat was empty.

Power surged as thunder rumbled overhead. Instantly she damped down. Even so, Kirtn’s outline flared in great tongues of gold. She put Jal and Dapsl from her mind, concentrating only on controlling the unruly, unpredictable energy source. After a struggle, she managed to capture enough energy to keep going until the end of the Act, when she would be forced to tap the shield once again.

She stepped into the center of the stage, going through the motions of Saffar struggling with and then seducing Hmel.

Thunder hammered the stage an instant after lightning slid over the protective shield. The audience did not notice; the saga of Saffar and Hmel was more compelling than mere lightning.

Purple and orange flames leaped around the J/taals, drawing a gasp from the watching Loos. If Dapsl noticed the two extra J/taals, he said nothing. Kirtn/Hmel reached between the writhing demons and brought out the crown. When he set it on Rheba/Saffar’s head, the crown blazed with all of Rainbow’s pure colors. The crowd sighed with pleasure.

Rheba whistled the last notes of Bre’n harmony, then turned her face up to Kirtn’s. As his lips closed over hers, she allowed the demon fires to die. The crowd murmured in wonder as a lacework of burning gold light grew around the couple on stage. The light was not called for in the Act, nor did she realize that she had created the brilliant net of fire. All she knew was that she burned when Kirtn touched her, and he seemed to touch her everywhere.

Kirtn lifted his mouth and looked at her with eyes as gold as her akhenet lines, eyes ablaze like the fire dancer burning in his arms. With a wrench, discipline returned. Her eyes watched him, seething with nascent fire, urging a consummation that she could not name.

Dance.

The silent Bre’n command swept through her mind. The stage trembled with repeated thunder. Beneath the Loo-chim’s hands, the gong rang four times, signaling the end of the Act and the beginning of the Hour Between Years. Rheba laughed and reached for the rippling weather shield, drunk with fire dancer passion.

As she turned to face the astonished Loo, there was a soundless explosion of fire around her. Streamers of flame leaped from her hands. Her robe shriveled to ash and fell away, leaving her naked but for the akhenet lines blazing over her body. She laughed again, sheer delight at the energy coursing through her; and flames surged, limning her and the Bre’n in frighting tongues of fire.

Fssa spoke from her lashing hair, his voice as deafening as thunder and more terrible. The Act did not understand the words that scourged the Loo, castigating them for carnal sins. The Loo moaned and swayed in terror until the Imperial Loo-chim stood, surrounded by guards. Energy weapons glittered in the unnatural light.

Dance.

More emotion than command, Kirtn’s presence inflamed her. Fssa laughed maniacally, reveling in her incandescent hair. As lightning skidded on forked heels across the dome, she reached for more power—and brought down the end of the world.

The shield had surged to meet the demands of the storm; what she touched was raw force too powerful to channel, much less control. Reflectively she threw away the energy, deflecting it out across the amphitheater in gigantic dragon tongues of destruction. The screams that came where fire touched were drowned out by the awful roar of untrammeled energy blazing out from her hands.

Vaguely she heard Kirtn’s voice yelling at the Act to get out! off the stage! into the tunnel! run! and she felt Fssa ripped from her hair by a Bre’n hand; but it was all at a distance, a dream from another life. The only real thing was the shield raving over her head and the raw hot death deflected by her hands.

Energy weapons added their blue blaze to the hellish fires. She felt the coherent beams of light being born, growing in tight lines toward her, world slowing until she stood aside from herself and watched the individual atoms of deadly light form lines lengthening toward her. They were so ordered, so perfect, lethal in their exact resonance.

She curled the light back upon itself, atoms marching in a different rhythm, perfection destroyed. The beams went from blue to yellow-white, energy scatterred, harmless. Then she touched the core of light and the weapons fused, useless. It was more efficient than merely deflecting the energy, and not too much more difficult.

Bre’n laughter curled around her, savage and infinitely sweet, wrapped in lightning. As though in answer, the storm broke with awesome ferocity. Shield power doubled, tripled, quadrupled, became a solid ceiling overhead. Too much power. She screamed and writhed like a snake on a spit but there was no relief, only energy molten in her, burning her. She deflected all but the smallest part of it, and even that part was agony. There was nothing but the primal roar of unleashed hell. The amphitheater was a white inferno capped by a shield seething at maximum output.

Like a wounded animal, she struck back at the source of her pain. She turned energy from the shield back on itself as she had done with the weapons, creating countercurrents of force the shield was not built to withstand. Like her, the shield could deflect or use most of the energies battering it; but, like her, the shield always retained a part of the energies that touched it.

Assaulted from without by lightning and from within by a fire dancer, the shield exploded. Instantly rain slashed across the unprotected amphitheater, vaporizing where molten rock pooled sullenly. In the blue-white glare of lightning, Rheba looked out across the audience. The seats were empty of all but rain hissing over hot stone. She stared along the empty rows in disbelief. She had burned the slave lords of Loo to ash, and now a rain dancer’s storm was taking even that bitter remainder away. There was nothing left. Like Deva.

Ash and gone.

And the rain was tipped with ice that numbed to the bone. Dazed, unbelieving, she let Kirtn lead her from the steam-wreathed stage. She looked over her shoulder once, as though expecting the amphitheater to be filled again with the aristocracy of Loo, expected again to smell expensive perfumes and see Dapsl standing aside with his whip overflowing violent pain. She had hated them, all of them, but she had not intended to destroy them so completely.

She stumbled on the slick rock. Kirtn caught her. Silently she clung to him, needing his strength more now than she had a few minutes before. He carried her away from the stage.

The ramp into the tunnel was slippery with sleet. Rheba had deflected heat back out over the audience, protecting the slaves behind her at the expense of the slave masters in front. That was all that had saved the tunnel complex from becoming a crematorium.

The tunnel was deserted but for the people who had been injured in the first panicked flight from whatever had happened onstage. The injured screamed or moaned or were silent. Kirtn did not stop to help the casualties; there was nothing he could do for them. He accepted the fact grimly, knowing that the tunnel, like Deva, would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his long life.

The archway into the park was open, unguarded. Icy rain swept in on each gust of wind. Thunder belled in the enclosed hallway. Kirtn hesitated for an instant, then plunged into a night stalked by lightning. Rheba struggled in his grasp, silently demanding.

Put me down.

He set her on her feet, waited to be sure she was in control of herself, then led the way through the park at a hard run. Thunder came like battering fists. They were blinded by lightning that was too hot, too bright, too often, a violence that shattered buildings.

“Lheket’s out of control!” shouted Rheba, then realized that was why Kirtn was running her mercilessly through the night. Ilfn needed them.

Beyond the park, the streets were a chaos of storm and rebellion. In the black-and-white brilliance of Lheket’s hell-bringer, slaves paid off debts with a brutality that made Rheba grateful for the darkness between sheets of lightning. Destroying the weather shield over the amphitheater had caused an energy surge that had slagged the city’s power source. Imperiapolis was a city of darkness and death, powerless.

A group of men leaped out in front of Kirtn and Rheba. Lightning revealed their number and their savage intent, but not whether they were Loo or slaves. Without breaking stride, Kirtn hit the group. Lightning reflected in his demon eyes, and his hands were a deadly thunder. Rain washed away the attackers’ screams.

Fire dancer and Bre’n ran on, untouched. Lightning lanced down so close that they smelled the stink of scorched stone and heard the hiss of vaporizing rain. Thunder was instantaneous, a hammer blow that drove them to their knees. Lightning slashed again and again, stirring the sky to a frenzy. Thunder became a living destruction tolling endlessly across the city. They could not stand and there was no place to hide. They held each other and waited to die.

Suddenly, silence and darkness closed over them. The wind moaned in long withdrawal, pulling the storm in its wake. Rain fell steadily, unmixed with ice.

Lheket’s dance had ended.

Rheba pushed herself to her feet, wondering if the storm had been controlled at the cost of Lheket’s life. She refused to think about it, but tears blinded her just the same. Kirtn’s hand caught up hers, guiding her. Overhead, clouds reflected the ruddy light of fires burning out of control. That was all the light Bre’n eyes needed. She ran beside him, blindly trusting his sight.

The spaceport seemed to retreat in front of them, carried off by clouds of steam writhing up from gutted buildings. Distant explosions sounded. The city smoked and seethed and devoured itself, fed by the hatred of slaves.

The spaceport was a shambles. It was impossible to tell the derelict yard from the main berth area. Ruined ships lay like toys, scattered by relentless lightning. Fires burned. In their sullen light, ships were black and scarlet. Kirtn ran between the ships without hesitation, his eyes fixed on the Devalon rising out of the crimson light ahead. Protected by the larger hulks surrounding it, the Devalon had survived the storm. Kirtn and Rheba ran toward the haven promised by their ship.

Three shapes appeared out of nowhere, barring their way. Before Kirtn could react, the shapes melted back. Clepts leaped up, making odd sounds of pleasure. The J/taals reappeared again, so close to Rheba that she gasped. She had forgotten how quick the J/taals could be—and how deadly.

M/dere bowed and handed Rheba a glittering shape. Fssa. With a cry of delight, she snatched up the snake and braided him into her hair. M/dur bowed and gave Rainbow to Kirtn. Rainbow pulsed with color, alive with the power it had absorbed before Kirtn flung it to the safety of J/taal’s hand.

“The rest of the Act?” demanded Kirtn.

“At the ship,” whistled Fssa.

“Ilfn? Lheket?”

A Bre’n whistled answered, but the whistle was not Fssa’s. Ilfn stepped slowly out of the dense shadows in front of the Devalon. In her arms was Lheket, unmoving.

“Alive,” whistled Ilfn proudly.

Kirtn’s answering whistle was a mixture of relief and rue. “Next time, don’t let him dance if we’re out in his storm.”

Ilfn smiled fondly and rubbed her cheek over the boy’s forehead.

“Is he all right?” asked Rheba, looking at the limp boy supported by Ilfn’s strong arms. His hands wore braids of blue-silver light.

“He’s a dancer,” whistled Ilfn, referring to Lheket for the first time in the tones of an adolescent rather than a child.

Rheba glanced uncertainly at Kirtn, but there was no tinge of apprehension for Lheket in the Bre’n’s smile. With a sigh, she allowed fear and adrenaline to ooze out of her. The time of violence was over; she could let go and find the healing oblivion that Lheket had instinctively sought. Her hair whispered, releasing energy until she was blessedly empty. She whistled the complex Bre’n trill that activated the ship. The ramp tongued out invitingly. She moved toward it, grateful as she had not been since Deva simply to be alive.

“Not so fast, kaza-flatch.”

She froze. It was a voice she had thought never to hear again, except perhaps in nightmares.

XXVII

Slowly, Rheba turned around to face Lord Jal. He followed her every motion with, a weapon that looked like a small crossbow. The distance was not great; he would have no difficulty killing her with the squat arrow that was already in place, waiting to be released. Nor would she be able to use the weapon against him, for its operation depended on stored mechanical energy rather than chemical or atomic energy.

“I see you understand my choice of weapons,” said Jal.

Rheba, caught in the flood of light from the Devalon’s portal, said nothing. Without seeming to, her eyes checked the position of the J/taals. Close, but not close enough. They could reach Lord Jal and kill him, but she would be dead first. The same was true of Kirtn: he could kill, but not before she was killed. Ilfn, with Lheket in her arms, was as helpless as Rheba. Rheba bit back a sound of despair and silently began collecting energy she did not expect to live long enough to use.

“Over there,” said Jal, gesturing to a clear space between abandoned ships. “All of you get over there. Slowly. If I don’t like what I see, the bitch dies where she stands.”

Snarling silently, clepts and J/taals retreated. Kirtn flexed his hands longingly, but had no choice except to follow. Ilfn carried Lheket away from the Devalon’s shadow, hatred in every line of her body.

“Whip,” said Jal in a loud voice. “Bring the rest of the slaves.”

Dapsl appeared from behind the ship. A whip hung from his small hand, but dripped no violet fire. Lord Jal had been very careful to use no weapons that Rheba could turn against them. Dapsl stood aside and gestured abruptly. A line of slaves bent around him, heading for the place where Kirtn and the others stood beneath the canting wreck of a spaceship.

Three chims of guards brought up the rear of the procession. All six men and women were armed with rapid-fire dart guns. The energy they used would be minimal, the darts poisoned. Nothing there for a fire dancer to steal.

As the guards took up positions all around the slaves, the J/taals and clepts shifted position, marking out one guard apiece. At the least inattention on Jal’s part, J/taals would strike. So long as their J/taaleri was under a Loo gun, though, they would do nothing to endanger her. Rheba watched, and understood the J/taals’ movements. She also understood that she would have to call for an attack. When she did, the Loo would die. And so would she.

Fssa stirred in her hot, rain-wet hair. “You were beautiful, fire dancer.”

The Fssireeme’s goodbye was so soft that its emotion registered with her before the meaning did. She felt Fssa slide out of her hair, hang for a moment, then drop to the ramp. In the rain he was nearly invisible. She sighed goodbye to the Fssireeme, knowing his sensitive receptors would pick up sounds Jal would never hear. There was no answer. She had not expected one. She hoped that he got away; he had earned whatever small haven the slave planet could give him.

“The most dangerous slaves on Loo,” said Jal, a certain grim irony in his tone as he watched the silent file of people walk to the opening between ruined ships. “Odd how they all ended up here, isn’t it?”

Rheba said nothing. Jal laughed.

“But maybe it isn’t so odd after all,” continued the Loo. “The male polarity’s furry was one of their leaders. Imagine my delight when I found them huddled behind your ship. A few of them still are. They didn’t believe that primitive weapons killed just as efficiently as the modern variety.”

Jal’s face changed. Rheba’s breath stopped in her throat. She had thought only Bre’ns could contain that kind of rage.

“But I underestimated you, kaza-flatch. You were the most dangerous one of all. What happened to the city, bitch? What happened to the amphitheater and the Imperial Loo-chim?”

She said nothing.

Lord Jal’s fist struck his now-useless master’s belt. “The city power is dead! Slaves run wild! Where are the voices of Imperial rage? Where is the Loo-chim?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?” said Jal, voice thin with disbelief.

“All of them. Dead. Like your belt. Like your city. Like you should be. Dead.”

She almost died then, Jal’s hand tightening on the trigger. But he was a survivor. He needed her for a bit longer. He controlled himself with a coldness that was more frightening than his rage had been.

“As you might have noticed, the spaceport is burning.” Jal smiled, and she took an involuntary step backward. “You’ve destroyed a city and a culture that is greater than your animal mind can comprehend. What you haven’t burned, that demon storm washed away,” He stopped, struck by a thought. “Was the storm yours, too?”

“No,” she said, but she could not help looking toward Lheket.

Jal followed her glance, saw the boy unconscious in the Bre’n woman’s arms. Then Jal stared back at Rheba with eyes that knew only hatred, “You’ve destroyed my people, my city, and even my ship. You’re going to take me back to Onan. Now.”

She did not bother to agree or disagree. She was not going to take Jal anywhere, because as soon as his safety was assured he would kill her. She knew it. He knew it. There was nothing left to say. She stared past him.

A small movement caught her attention. Fssa was sliding from shadow into the firelight reflected by a shallow puddle at Jal’s feet Water divided cleanly about the snake. He vanished beneath the hem of the Loo’s sheer robe.

She looked away, not understanding, but not wanting to call attention to Fssa. Her glance caught Kirtn’s. He, too, had seen Fssa vanish.

Jal shivered, drawing his wet robe more closely around him. “Up the ramp, bitch. It’s cold out here.” With both hands he steadied the crossbow. He was shivering violently, as Rheba had shivered in the dungeon. “C-cold ... !” His body convulsed, jerking aside the crossbow.

Rheba threw herself off the ramp the instant Jal’s crossbow veered from her body. Before she bit the ground, six guards died in a J/taal onslaught. Dapsl disappeared into a melee of former slaves. When they parted moments later, he lay dead, his whip tight around his broken neck.

Kirtn and Rheba reached Jal in the same instant. The trader was dead, already cold to the touch. No, not cold, freezing. As they watched, raindrops congealed on his flesh, encasing him in a shroud of ice.

Fssa slid out from a fold of clinging robe. Rheba expected him to be cold, black, but he was not. He glowed metallically with the heat he had stolen from Jal, not only the heat of life but some of the very energy that had kept his atoms alive. As cold as a stone orbiting a dead star, Lord Jal lay on the spaceport pavement, staring up at the sky with eyes blinded by ice.

“I told you,” whispered Fssa, all sadness and shame. “I’m a parasite. That’s how Fssireeme live during the long Night.”

His whistle was bleak and terribly lonely as he moved sinuously toward the darkness, away from his friends. Rheba realized then why he had said goodbye; he thought that they would not accept him once the proof of his true nature lay dead before their eyes.

“You’re not a parasite,” said Kirtn quickly. “You’re a predator. Like us,” He beat down and scooped up the retreating Fssireeme. He held the snake at eye level. Fssa glittered like a necklace spun from every precious metal in the universe. “You’re very beautiful, snake. And if you try to run away from us again, I’ll tie you in knots.”

“I’ll help,” Rheba said quickly. “My knots are tighter.”

Fssa’s sensors scanned from Bre’n to fire dancer. Then there was a shimmer of incandescence as he dove from Kirtn’s hands into Rheba’s hair. He vanished but for the sound of soft laughter just behind her ear.

M/dere and the other J/taals approached, hands full of the weapons and transparent pouches they had stripped from the Loo. Silently she offered the spoils of battle to her J/taaleri. Rheba was on the point of refusing when she saw a bone-white gleam from one transparent purse. With a cry, she snatched the pouch and spilled its contents into her hand.

Two Bre’n carvings stared back up at her, lying on a pool of loose gemstones that quivered and winked. Ignoring all but her own earring, she stared, transfixed by its infinite mystery. The Face turned slowly between her fingers, revealing tantalizing curves, profiles endlessly changing, a murmur rising in her mind as of voices singing sunset songs, whispered harmonies hinting at the central enigma of Bre’n and Senyas, man and woman, hushed voices telling her ...

“Rheba.” Kirtn shook her gently. “We’ve got to get off planet before any other Loo finds us.”

She blinked, not knowing where she was for a moment, held in thrall by the Face that was like her Bre’n, always familiar yet never fully known. Colors flashed at the corner of her sight as M/dere gathered gems and put them back into the pouch. The other earring was gone, fastened to Lheket’s ear by the gentle fingers of his own Bre’n.

“Yes, of course,” said Rheba, putting on her own earring. “Fssa. Translate.” She turned toward the waiting people who had once been slaves. “We’ll take anyone who wants to go. If you know the way to your planet, we’ll take you home. If you don’t, we’ll do what we can to find your planet. Or ... She hesitated. “You can stay here. The slave masters are dead.”

No one moved to leave.

“All right.” She stepped aside, giving free access to the Devalon’s ramp. “Get aboard.”

The J/taals and clepts spread out, distributing themselves among the people who mounted the ramp. Until M/dere had taken the measure of her J/taaleri’s new shipmates, they would be kept under the mercenaries’ unblinking eyes. Rheba saw, and started to object. After a glance at the people climbing up the ramp, she changed her mind—it was as bizarre a collection of beings as she had ever encountered.

The first person up the ramp wore a robe that was more blood than cloth. On her shoulder rode a sleek animal as black as a hole in space. They were talking to each other in a rapid series of clicks. Rheba watched, but could not be certain whether the animal was pet, symbiont, partner or superior.

The next two were men. At least, they looked rather like men. Their eyes, however, shone like Fssa’s sensors, and their nails dripped opalescent poisons. Their bodies were covered by a tawny fur that was matted with blood. She doubted that it was their own blood. She looked up at Kirtn. He was watching the same two people with an intensity that equaled M/dere’s.

The illusionists boarded, too exhausted to do more than wear their own colorless exteriors.

A trio of men and women came next. They were obviously of different races, and just as obviously a team. They looked absolutely harmless. Rheba and Kirtn knew that Jal’s assessment of the slaves was probably much closer to the truth. Very dangerous. Nothing harmless could have survived Adjustment and the Hour Between Years.

Standing close together, Rheba and Kirtn watched former slaves board the Devalon. Each person seemed more striking than the last. The Bre’n sighed as a quartet went up the ramp, their bodies black and silver and hard, their eyes quite white, laughing and talking among themselves as though at a festival; and in their hands black daggers, shards of glass, and two babies teething on pieces of a dead Loo’s bloody power belt.

Wordlessly, Rheba and Kirtn looked at one another.

“I wonder,” fluted Kirtn, tones of rue and amusement resonating in each note, “what the trip will be like.”

Rheba’s hand traced the outlines of her Bre’n earring. Faces murmured to her, telling her about Bre’n and Senyas and another kind of fire. Her akhenet lines smoldered. From them flared a glowing net that surrounded Kirtn with hot possibilities.

She smiled, touching him with hands that burned. “I guarantee, my Bre’n, that it won’t be boring.”

About the Author

ANN MAXWELL lives in Laguna Niguel, California, with her husband, Evan, and their two children. She is the author of a number of excellent science fiction novels and has co-authored many books with her husband on subjects ranging from historical fiction to thrillers to nonfiction. Some of her earlier works have been recommended for the Nebula Award and nominated for the TABA Award. Also available in a Signet edition is Ann’s fine science fiction novel, The Jaws of Menx.

Dancer’s Luck

1983

 

 

DAEMEN—

a forgotten place at the very edge of the galaxy, a dying planet where people lived by luck alone. This was the number-one stop for Rheba, the _; Senyas fire dancer, arid Kirtn, her Bre’n mentor, as they sought to fulfifl their promise to return a whole shipload of ex-slaves to the widely scattered . worlds they called hdone.

Twice Rheba and Kirtn had achieved the impossible—first surviving tneir own home system’s fiery doom, then escaping the lair of the evil Loo-chim bringing with them the odd assortment of beings who were now their shipmates. Having blasted free of the Loo-chim, Rheba and Kirtn assumed the worst was over. Then they landed on Daemen—

 

“YOU DID ME A FAVOR.

Now I’ll do one for you,” Satin said. “I saw a face in your control room, a young man with eyes like winter ice.”

“Daemen?” said Kirtn.

Satin’s face changed. “So he even uses the name, does he? Most would hide it.” Her eyes were very black now, as cold as the void between the stars. “When you leave the planet, make sure he’s aboard. When you come out of replacement, space him.”

Kirtn leaned forward and stared at her. “Why?”

“I’ve named your devil, but I’ll be damned if I describe it,” Satin said. “Take my advice. Space him before it’s too late.”

“No,” said Rheba flatly. “He’s done nothing to us.”

Satin stood. “You have fifteen standard minutes to get off the planet. If you run, you’ll just make it. May your gods go with you. You’ll need them.”

Satin’s voice was calm, but her mind screamed in Rheba’s: Space him!

 

I

The ship came out of replacement in a soundless explosion of energy. Rheba checked the colored status lights, peeled away the pilot mesh, and stood stiffly. She wanted nothing more than sleep, but that was impossible. All around her in the control room were former slaves whom she had promised to take home. Behind them a city and a culture lay in ruins, burned to ash by a fire dancer’s rage and slaves’ revenge.

It would not be smart to stir such hatred again. The sooner the ex-slaves were off the Devalon, the sooner she would feel safe.

A questing whistle rose above the babble of languages around her. She whistled in return, looking over the heads of strangers for the familiar face of her Bre’n. Kirtn’s whistle came again. His tall, muscular body pushed through the crowd of people. Around his neck, bright against the very short copper plush that covered his body, there was a snakelike being known as Fssa. Shy, vain, and astonishing, Fssa was both friend and translator.

“We can keep everyone alive and nothing more,” said Kirtn, bending over her. He spoke in Senyas now, an uncompromising language known for its bluntness and precision. It was his native tongue, as it was Rheba’s. The second half of their language was Bre’n, known for its subtlety and beauty. “The power core is good for two replacements and maybe four days of maintaining this many people.”

Rheba looked at the slanted gold eyes so close to hers. Absently she rubbed her palm over the soothing suede texture of Kirtn’s arm. “What does the navtrix show within two replacements?”

“Onan.” His voice was carefully neutral.

“Onan,” she said bleakly. A place she had every reason not to return to, having left behind there a gaggle of enraged Yhelle Equality Rangers, a burning casino called the Black Whole, and a sizable amount of money. She would not mind getting her hands on the latter, but the former she would gladly avoid. She looked at the people around her, overflowing the control room and tubular hail, packing the tiny galley and crew quarters, stacked breast to back in the exercise room until only tiredness kept them from turning on each other with snarls of outraged privacy. “Onan.” She sighed and began to climb back into the pilot’s mesh.

“Wait,” said Kirtn.

Rheba’s cinnamon eyes searched his. “More bad news.” It was not a question.

Kirtn whistled a Bre’n curse. “Our navtrix.”

“Yes?”

“It didn’t recognize any of the planet names we tried on it.”

“What? But—” She stopped, then turned her attention to the silver snake draped around Kirtn’s neck. “Did you try languages besides Universal?”

Fssa flexed, taking time to create the proper internal arrangements to speak Senyas. It would have been less trouble to whistle Bre’n, but when Rheba’s eyes sparked gold in their depths, Fssa knew that precision was preferable to poetry. “Where planet names could be translated into other languages, I did. The navtrix,” he said primly, “was completely unresponsive. Onan is the only Yhelle Equality planet it acknowledges. Kirtn told me you programmed in Onan yourself, long after you left Deva.”

Rheba whistled a sour Bre’n comment. Their navtrix had been made by her own people. It reflected the extent—and limitations—of their knowledge. On her home world of Deva, the Equality had not even been a myth. In order to take the slaves packed aboard the ship to their far-flung homes, she would have to get her hands on a Yhelle Equality navtrix.

Fssa darkened as he mentally translated Rheba’s whistle into its Universal equivalent. When he spoke again, his voice was coaxing rather than arch. “I’ll keep trying, fire dancer. Maybe one of the new languages I’ve learned will help.” Then he added, brightening visibly, “Twenty-three of the slaves want to get off on Onan.”

“How many does that leave, Kirtn?”

His torso moved in a muscular Bre’n shrug. “I gave up trying to count at sixty.”

“On a ship built for twenty and modified for two.” She stretched, brushing against Kirtn. “Take us into orbit around Onan. I’ll see if Ilfn needs help with the lottery.” She scooped Fssa off Kirtn’s shoulders. With a delighted wriggle, the Fssireeme vanished into her hair. Next to a live volcano or ground zero in a lightning storm, Rheba’s energetic hair was the snake’s favorite place to be.

As Rheba began to work through the people toward the tube way, two compact brown forms appeared. M/dere and M/dur quickly cleared a path for Rheba. No one, not even the fierce survivors of the Loo slave revolt, wanted to antagonize J/taal mercenaries.

“Where are their clepts?” Rheba asked Fssa softly, referring to the J/taals’ war dogs.

The snake’s whistle was pure and startlingly sweet against her ear. “Guarding Ilfn and her storm dancer.”

“Are they all right?” she whistled, concern clear in each note.

“Yes, but when I told M/dere how much the female Bre’n and the male dancer meant to you, she insisted on putting a guard over them. She’s not at all happy with the slaves we took on. They’re a murderous lot.”

“They had to be to survive Loo,” pointed out Rheba.

“And we’ll have to be to survive them,” the Fssireeme added sourly.

She said nothing. She had given her promise to get those slaves home, and get them home she would. She did not need any carping from a snake to tell her that she might have cooked more than she could eat.

With a human sigh, Fssa subsided. He liked the energy that crackled through Rheba’s hair when she was angry, but he most emphatically did not like to be the focus of that anger.

Ilfn and Lheket were packed into what would normally have served as a single bunk. The Bre’n woman, like all of her race, was tall and strong. Where Kirtn’s body was covered with a copper plush, Ilfn’s had a dense chestnut fur that was slightly longer than his. Like him, she had a mask of fine, metallic gold fur surrounding her eyes. Like him, she was totally devoted to the Senyas dancer who was her protйgй.

As Rheba pushed against the bunk, Lheket’s blind emerald eyes turned unerringly toward her. She touched his cheek, allowing some of the energy that was her heritage to flow into him. For an instant her hands brightened as akhenet lines of power flared. Lheket smiled dreamily, a child’s smile of contentment.

Although he could not see, she smiled in return. He was the only Senyas besides her that she knew to have survived their planet’s fiery end. Someday he would be her mate. But until then he was a blind, untrained dancer, one more burden on her shoulders.

As though she read Rheba’s tired thoughts, Ilfn’s hand protectively smoothed the boy’s fine hair.

“Did the computer respond for you?” asked Rheba, looking up from the boy to his Bre’n mentor.

“Once I got the accent right,” said Ilfn wryly. She was from the far side of Deva; her inflections were not precisely those that the computer had been programmed to respond to. “I gave each of the thirty-eight planets a number, stored them in the computer under a code word, and gave orders for the computer to be continually choosing among those numbers. When you say the word, the computer’s choice will go on the ceiling display. Whoever belongs to that number goes home first. All right?”

“As good as any and better than most,” Then, realizing how grudging that sounded, Rheba added, “Thank you.” She leaned against the bunk. “We have to go to Onan first. Power core and navtrix.”

Ilfn touched Rheba in quiet sympathy. Although the Bre’n had never been to the Yhelle Equality’s most licentious planet, she had heard about it from Kirtn. Rheba could expect nothing but trouble there.

Rheba pushed away from the bunk. As she did, she noticed a man watching her. He was her height, about the Equality norm for a man. He smiled at her, a smile of startling beauty. He twisted deftly through the press of people beyond the bunk until he was standing close enough to speak to her. He would have come even closer, but a grim-faced J/taal prevented him.

“Can I do something for you?” he asked in Universal. “You’ve done so much for us.”

“Do you have a Yhelle Equality navtrix in your pocket?” asked Rheba dryly.

The man fished in his gray slave robe, then turned his hands palm up in apology. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t even have the Equality coordinates to my own home world.”

“You and every other ex-slave aboard,” she muttered. She looked again at the young man with the engaging smile. He appeared closer to Lheket’s twelve years than to her twenty-one, but it was hard to tell with some races, “Do you have a name?”

“Daemen.” His smile widened, inviting her to share his good nature. “Actually it’s The Daemen, but on Loo no one seemed interested in a slave’s former rank. Daemen is what I’m used to now.”

“Were you on Loo long?”

“Yes.” His smile changed, cooler, like his voice and his rain-colored eyes. “And you?”

“No. It just seemed like it.”

Daemen laughed, a sound too adult for his appearance. “My family—there were ten of us when we were kidnapped—kept talking about home, how beautiful it was under its single sun.” His left hand moved in a dismissing motion. “Maybe it is. I barely remember its looks, much less its location.”

Rheba felt a rush of sympathy. She, too, had lost her planet, had felt what it was like to stare at a night sky and know that not one of the billion massed stars was home. “We’ll find it, Daemen. I promise you.”

His smile returned, full of possibilities and silent laughter, “That’s what he said.”

“He?”

“The man who looks like her,” said Daemen, indicating Ilfn. “Huge and fierce.”

Rheba’s smile was as much for her Bre’n as it was for the stranger in front of her. “Yes, he’s all of that. He was one of the finest poets on Deva, as well ... when there was a Deva and when he still believed in poetry.”

She scratched the top of her arms absently. The new lines of power that had appeared when she fought her way off Loo itched unmercifully. She would have to get some more salve from Ilfn. But first, the lottery. Thirty-eight names, thirty-eight planets. Only one could be first. She wondered aloud who the lucky one would be.

“Me.”

Daemen’s voice was confident, yet not arrogant. She looked at him closely, trying to see beyond the charming smile and gray eyes. “You sound very sure.”

“I was born lucky. That’s the only way I survived Loo.”

She smiled perfunctorily. He was neither obviously strong nor obviously gifted. Perhaps he believed that luck was responsible for his survival of Loo’s various hells. “What’s your planet’s name?”

“Daemen.”

She blinked—“Daemen? Just Like you?”

“Yes. The oldest member of my family is always called The Daemen.” His’ face changed, looking older than it had, almost bitter. “I’m the only one left. Whatever name I was born with, I’m The Daemen now.”

The ship chimed like a giant crystal, warning its passengers that replacement was imminent. The masses of people shifted subtly, seeking secure positions. In the absence of nearby gravity wells, it was unlikely to be a rough translation.

Chimes vibrated up and down the scale of hearing until no known race could have missed the warning. There was a heartbeat of silence, then the ship quivered microscopically and replaced itself. It was a brief maneuver, accomplished with Kirtn’s usual skill. The Devalon ran on silently, gathering speed in another direction, bringing itself into alignment for a final replacement in a far orbit around Onan.

Rheba whistled soft instructions to Fssa. The snake moved beneath her hair, changing shape to accommodate the needs of translation. Almost all of the former slaves understood the language of Loo. Many understood Universal. Those who understood neither usually did not survive. The Loos had not distinguished between ignorance and disobedience.

“While we maneuver for the next replacement, we’ll have a lottery to decide which planet we’ll stop at after we pick up supplies on Onan. The ship’s computer is randomly scrambling the planets by number. At my command, the computer will display the number that is under its scanner at that instant.”

Rheba spoke in Universal. Fssa’s simultaneous translation into Loo was accomplished with a minimum of distraction. The snake could control its endless voices with such skill that words seemed to come out of the air above the crowd.

A buzz of speculation in many languages greeted the announcement as it was carried throughout the ship by the Devalon’s intercom. Fssa changed from a snake to a bizarre listening device of quills, spines, dishes and tiny spheres in every shade of metal from copper to blue steel. It was one of his more astonishing performances, but then he had rarely had the chance to hear so many new languages at once.

Rheba felt the snake sliding out of her hair, too intent on his listening modes to keep a secure position. She caught him before he hit the floor, then held him up to facilitate his reception of the various sounds. Out of the energy field of her hair, his weight quadrupled.

Whether it was the appearance of the glittering, changing shape over her head or the simple fact that the lottery needed no further discussion, people stopped talking and stared at the snake.

No longer consumed by the Fssireeme imperative to learn new languages, Fssa realized that he was the focus of attention. He darkened with embarrassment, cooling palpably in Rheba’s hands. Being on display frightened the shy snake. He was convinced he was repulsive because he did not have legs.

“You’re beautiful,” fluted Rheba, using all the complex shadings of Bre’n to reassure Fssa.

Glints of metallic silver ran in ripples over his arm-length black shape. When a few gold traceries joined the silver, Rheba smiled and lifted Fssa back to her head. Immediately, he became so light that she did not notice his presence in her hair. She tilted her head and whistled an intricate Bre’n trill.

The computer responded with a single short tone that indicated that she had established access. Her lips shaped another Bre’n sound, a single command: Choose.

In the air over her head a number glowed, then the corresponding planet’s name appeared.

Daemen.

Rheba felt a chill move over her neck. She whirled to face the charming stranger. He was gone, swallowed up in the seething disappointment of the former slaves.

II

Kirtn stared glumly at the hologram of the port city of Nontondondo. The view shifted as the Devalon’s sensors responded to his curt Senyas instructions.

“Any Rangers?” asked Rheba.

“Not yet. Maybe they believed the name we gave them.”

Her lips twisted skeptically, but she said only, “What’s our OVA?”

He frowned. The Onan Value Account was established for each ship before it was allowed to touch down on the planet. It was one of Onan’s less endearing customs. “Subject to physical verification of the gems, our OVA is eighty-thousand credits.”

Rheba looked at the multicolored, brilliantly faceted jewels winking on the ship’s sensor plate. She frowned. “On Onan, that’s not much.”

His whistle was eloquent of pained agreement. “A power core, four days’ dock fees and some odd change.”

“That’s all?” she demanded. Her whistle flattened into a curse. “How much does a navtrix cost?”

He did not answer. She looked at him and felt her breath catch. His eyes were narrow, hot gold, and his lips were so tight that his faintly serrated teeth gleamed. It was the face of a Bre’n sliding into rage, and from rage into rez, the Bre’n berserker state that was almost always fatal to the Bre’n and whoever else was within reach.

She stroked his arm slowly, trying to call him back from anger. For a moment he resisted, then he sighed and stroked her hair until it crackled beneath his big hand.

“I can play Chaos again,” she offered hesitantly.

His hand closed tightly on her restless hair, “No. If you’re recognized they’ll lynch you.”

Rheba did not disagree. She had cheated at Chaos the last time she was in Nontondondo; in Chaos, cheating was not only expected, it was required. But for a stranger to cheat so successfully that she bankrupted half the players in the casino ... She shuddered,, remembering the riot that had ensued. She had been forced to burn down the casino in order to escape. Even if the Black Whole had been rebuilt, she had no desire to play Chaos in it again.

Together, Rheba and Kirtn watched the hologram of the seething city. In Nontondondo, everything had its price. It was the only place in the Yhelle Equality where everything was licensed and nothing was illegal. With money you could do anything.

But they had no money.

Absently, Kirtn fiddled the controls, zooming in on a street where people of all shapes, colors and races mingled. The scene enlarged until it filled the curved ceiling of the control room and merged crazily with the heads of the taller slaves. Suddenly, one of the depicted citizens screamed and began clawing at her neck. Just behind her, someone darted into the crowd, a stolen bauble glittering in his hands the instant that he vanished.

Kirtn and Rheba looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Because he was touching her, she could sense pictures and words from his mind, as he could from hers. It was a rare thing among Senyasi dancers and their Bre’ns, a thing that neither of them had found time to adjust to. The odd form of communication had come to them just short of death, on Loo.

“How many licenses to steal can we afford?” asked Rheba, even as her Bre’n asked the computer the same thing.

“Three-day licenses?” he muttered.

“That should be long enough. I hope.”

The computer queried its Onan counterpart.

“Twelve,” said Kirtn, deciphering the computer’s response.

Rheba frowned. “I’ll need protection. How much is a three-day license to kill?”

Kirtn whistled a query at the computer. Rheba winced at the amount that was displayed in answer. It was Onan’s most expensive license. Buying it would leave nothing for lesser three-day licenses.

“How much is a one-day license to steal?” she asked.

A credit figure blinked into existence above Kirtn’s head. She looked, added quickly, and decided, “One license to kill, three licenses to steal and two licenses to entertain on the streets. One day. How much?”

She held her breath. After they bought the power core—absolutely essential—and the most minimal ship supplies, they would have only 15,000 credits in their OVA. Dock fees were 1,500 credits per Onan day, and subject to weekly changes. That left only 13,500 for licenses.

The figure 12,750 shimmered in the air above Kirtn’s head.

“Close,” whistled the Bre’n, but the tones of the whistle said, “Too close,” and many less polite sentiments.

“We don’t have a choice, do we?”

He hesitated, then resumed stroking her hair, smiling as silky gold strands coiled around his wrist. “Will one day be enough?”

“It will have to be. Fssa, are you awake?”

The Fssireeme hissed softly. “Yessss.”

“Do your guardians’ memories recognize any of our shipmates as coming from races of thieves? Nothing fancy—strictly swipe and run. Although it would be nice if they were so light-fingered that the victims didn’t notice anything until they looked in a mirror.”

“The J/taals,” said Fssa simply. “They’re very fast. Or the Yhelle illusionists. In an emergency, they can go invisible.”

“And the rest of them?” she asked, waving her hand at the multiracial press of people throughout the ship.

Fssa sighed very humanly. “My guardians’ memories are very old, fire dancer. Most of these races weren’t fully formed then. They are as strange to me as they are to you.”

She scratched her arms, ignoring Kirtn’s frown at this sign that she had used her fire-dancer skills too recklessly on Loo. She had not had any choice then. She did not have a better choice now. She turned to the brown-furred, compact woman who was as inconspicuous and ubiquitous as her shadow.

As Rheba spoke, Fssa instantly translated her words into the language of J/taal. The process was so unobtrusive that both parties often forgot it was the Fssireeme who made communication possible.

“M/dere, we need money. Do you have any objections to turning thief? Licensed, of course.”

M/dere smiled, “Licensed, unlicensed, no difference. You’re our J/taaleri. What you command, we do. Although,” she added matter-of-factly, “we’re better killers than thieves.”

There was little Rheba could say to that. She had seen the J/taals in action on Loo. They were better at killing than most people were at breathing.

“May I suggest?” said M/dere.

“Yes,” said Rheba quickly. She was uncomfortable in her role as J/taaleri, focus of J/taal devotion. She did everything possible to shift the relationship to a more even footing. She failed, of course. J/taals were notoriously single-minded.

“The illusionists. They fight badly. Perhaps they steal well?”

Rheba scratched her arm fiercely. She was reluctant to ask the proud, aristocratic Yhelle illusionists to descend to thievery. On the other hand, they were wonderfully equipped for the job. “I don’t know where—or as what—the illusionists are,” she said finally.

“M/dur is bringing them.”

Rheba realized that she had been neatly maneuvered into a position the J/taals felt confident of defending. If they were out stealing they could not protect her. Protecting her was their reason for living.

M/dur arrived with the illusionists in tow. The two J/taals exchanged a look.

Rheba knew that behind the J/taals’ blue-green eyes information was being passed on. For an instant she envied them their precise, species-specific telepathy, a gift that had been both rare and prized on Deva. The few moments of mind dancing she had shared with Kirtn had made her appreciate the tactical possibilities of silent communication.

I’sNara, the feminine half of the Yhelle couple, watched Rheba with the patience long years of slavery on Loo had taught. Beside her stood f’lTiri, equally patient.

Rheba measured them, impressed by their altogether unnoteworthy exterior. Although elegant in movement, both of them were frankly drab in appearance, their exteriors a blank canvas on which their startling gifts drew a thousand forms.

As though sensing her appraisal, the illusionists stood without moving, their eyes unfocused, patiently waiting ... slaves.

“Stop it,” snapped Rheba. “You aren’t like that. I’ve seen you mad enough to kill.”

F’lTiri almost smiled. His appearance changed so subtly that Rheba could not point to any single alteration, yet the result was profound. Before her now stood a man of middle years, thin, worn and very proud. Beside him stood a woman who was equal to him in every way, slave no longer.

“We gathered,” said f’lTiri, “that you wanted us for something. M/dur was polite but very firm.”

“Ummm,” said Rheba, scratching her shoulder absently, wondering how to put her proposition delicately. In Bre’n, it would have been possible, but the illusionists did not understand Bre’n. Universal was a very bald language, rather like Senyas. “We need money for a navtrix,” she said bluntly. “Everyone I asked suggested that you two would make crackling good thieves. Would you?”

I’sNara’s face twitched with smothered laughter. F’lTiri looked pained, then resigned. Rheba waited. They spoke between themselves quickly in their native language. Fssa heard and understood; he also was diplomat enough to save his translation for later.

“What kind of thieves?” asked f’lTiri neutrally.

“Ummm ... ordinary,” said Rheba helplessly. “What other kind is there?”

F’lTiri’s voice was patient. “Are we to be yimon—”

“—electronic thieves—” whispered Fssa to Rheba.

“—or s’ktimon—”

“—arm-breakers—”

“—or mnkimon—”

“—kidnappers—”

“Wait,” said Rheba desperately, wondering what kind of culture named its thieves so formally. “Kirtn and I will do a little act on a street corner. When the crowd gets big enough, you’ll go through and take whatever you can get your hands on while the crowd is watching us.”

“Pickpockets,” summarized Fssa in Universal.

“Liptimon,” said i’sNara and F’lTiri together.

Rheba muttered. Fssa did not translate her clinical Senyas.

“Would this do?” said i’sNara. The air around her dimmed, shifted, then cleared. A young, slightly grimy child stood in her place, eyes wistfully appraising her surroundings. She was the essence of innocence.

F’lTiri laughed. “That old clichй. You’d be spotted in a second. Nontondondo is sophisticated. Something more like this, I think.” His eyes narrowed and his face tightened as he concentrated on her.

The air around i’sNara shifted again. When reality settled back into place, i’sNara was a beautiful woman of apparent but not blatant wealth. On her shoulder was a fluffy, sharp-fanged animal.

Rheba realized that her mouth had dropped open. She had not guessed that the illusionists could project their gift onto another person. But it was f’lTiri’s shrewd appraisal of Nontondondo’s populace that really impressed her. He was right; an innocent child would be the first person suspected. Nontondondo did not believe in innocence.

“Can you hide jewels and OVA tabs beneath that illusion?” asked Rheba.

“Of course.”

Rheba almost felt sorry for the people out in the streets. Almost, but not quite. Certainly not enough to change her mind. Anyone who came to Nontondondo knew what the rules were, “No stealing from licensed innocents,” she said firmly.

“Of course not,” i’sNara’s tone made it clear that she was shocked even by the suggestion, “Thievery is an honorable profession, calling for fine judgments and skill.”

Rheba swallowed hard and said only, “Then you’ll do it?”

“Will you license us?”

“I can afford one day for three thieves and one killer to protect you.”

“That’s me,” said M/dur. No one argued, even M/dere.

“Who’s the third thief?” asked f’lTiri.

“Me,” said a voice from behind Rheba.

She spun and found herself looking into Daemon’s rain-colored eyes. “You?” she said, her voice rising. “You’re hardly old enough to be on your own, much less turned loose out there.”

Daemen merely smiled.

“You’re not as quick as a J/taal,” said Rheba, her voice under control again, “or as strong as a Bre’n or as skilled as an illusionist.”

Daemen’s smile did not change. “I’m lucky, Rheba. Lucky is better than good anywhere in the galaxy.”

Rheba made an exasperated sound and turned toward M/dere. In matters of strategy, she deferred to the J/taal woman’s greater experience. “What do you think?”

Although Daemen had spoken in Universal, Fssa had quietly translated for the benefit of the J/taals. The mercenary looked at Daemen for a long, silent moment, an appraisal that few beings could stand without fidgeting. But Daemen merely stood at ease, smiling his uncanny smile.

M/dere turned toward Rheba. “He survived Loo’s Fold?”

“I survived the Pit,” said Daemen quietly.

Rheba shuddered. The Fold had been bad enough, but the Pit was beyond belief.

“He survived the Last Year Night rebellion?” continued M/dere.

“Yes,” said Rheba.

M/dere’s aged copper eyes stared at the young man again. “Then he must indeed be lucky, for he certainly isn’t good.’”

Reluctantly, Rheba agreed. Yet she had to look away from Daemen as she spoke, for it went against her akhenet grain to put at risk anyone who looked so vulnerable. “You’re our third thief, Daemen. But if you get into trouble, I’ll feed you to the clepts!”

“Be the best meal they ever had,” he responded, smiling.

Despite her uneasiness, Rheba could not help smiling in return. She hoped that Daemen’s victims would be similarly charmed, for she had no confidence in his skill, strength or judgment.

Grimly, she instructed the computer to trade stolen Loo gems for licenses to steal on Onan.

III

Nontondondo seethed. There was no sky, only a ceiling of energy shaped into words—demands, enticements, celebrations of every sin and pleasure known to the beings of the Yhelle Equality. The noise hovered on the threshold of pain for Rheba. Her eyes ached, assaulted by colors and shapes that she was barely equipped to receive.

She should have been blinded and cowed by the city, but she was not. Her hair lifted, rippling like a golden river in freefall, tendrils reaching, seeking the invisible currents of energy that shaped and reshaped the city each instant. Akhenet lines of power burned on her skin, traceries of gold sweeping up from her hands to her face, across her shoulders, down her torso, dividing into a single slim line over each hip.

Her gray robe concealed most of the lines, but Kirtn could sense their heat. It disturbed him, awakening a desire for her that should have been dormant for several more years. She was too young to accept him as a lover, too young to be sending out the subtle currents of energy that made him ache, too young to realize the danger of what she was doing. It had driven him into rez once before. Only her desperate skill and Fssa’s ability to absorb energy had saved Bre’n and Senyas from burning to ash and gone. He could not expect to be so lucky twice.

Resolutely, he turned his thoughts away from the body swaying next to him, the delicate traceries of desire that bloomed innocently on her skin. Too soon. Too young. A net of energy uniting them, burning them, fire-dancer passion like lightning in his blood.

With an angry sound he pushed through the crowd, forcing a puzzled Rheba to run to catch up with him. He could have told her what was wrong, but did not. The passion that eventually bound Bre’n mentor to Senyas dancer was something that each Senyas had to discover. Most made the discovery in time, before a Bre’n went into rez, killed a Senyas protйgй and died.

Most, but not all.

Kirtn’s gold metal eyes searched the streets for the correct place to stage their act. He needed a corner where people were inclined to loiter, not one where they would be impatient at any delay. He rejected three possible places before he found one that had the right combination of space and relaxed pedestrians.

The act he and Rheba would perform required no props. Songs sung in Bre’n whistles had cross-cultural appeal. Rheba’s ability to manufacture hot or cold fire out of the air also had an appeal that was not limited to single races or cultures. Together, Bre’n and Senyas made an unusual display. He hoped it would be enough to excite the jaded tastes of Nontondondo’s habituйs.

The corner Kirtn finally selected was already occupied by a group of jugglers who were more numerous than competent. Kirtn watched them for a long moment, wondering which of the Equality’s thirty-one planets they called home. The longer he watched, the less he believed they were any part of the Equality at all. They somehow reminded him of the awkward peoples he and Rheba had found on their flight from Deva’s death, cultures barely able to chin themselves on their planet’s nearest moon. Their worlds hung like soap bubbles against the enormousness of space, iridescent, fragile, quivering with life. And so alone.

“Kirtn? What’s wrong?”

Rheba’s voice pulled Kirtn out of his thoughts. Bre’n discipline returned to him, holding him aloof from all emotions ... like a planet caught in darkness, held in place by invisible lines of force.

“We’ll use that corner,” he said, turning to M/dur, the male J/taal who had preempted the single license to kill.

Fssa’s translation was instantaneous, unobtrusive. The J/taal mercenary slid into the crowd, followed by three silver-eyed war dogs. Silence spread behind them. J/taals and their clepts were well known in the Yhelle Equality.

Kirtn never found out whether or not the jugglers knew the language of J/taal. M/dur appeared on the corner, pointed at the jugglers and then at the street. The jugglers bunched up as though to contest the eviction. Then the avid silence of the crowd warned them. Quietly, quickly, they vacated the corner.

Rheba looked at Kirtn questioningly. He sent the illusionists into the crowd. When the act began to attract attention, they would return veiled in illusion. Then they would begin to steal.

Daemen also walked into the crowd, his slim body swallowed up almost instantly in the press of people.

“Ready?” asked Kirtn.

As an answer, Rheba began drawing on the currents of energy that laced Nontondondo’s sky. Immediately her hair fanned out, swirling and rippling in vivid display. Less obvious, for she was not working hard, were the whorls of akhenet lines beneath her brown skin.

Energy blossomed at her fingertips, streamers of colored light that flowed into shapes. Kirtn’s pure whistle slid through the street noise like sun through darkness. He gave the audience a simple song, a child’s tale of hidden treasure, Fifth People and friendship in unexpected places.

The energy pouring from Rheba’s fingertips took on the ghostly glimmering associated with the Fifth People, that category of intelligent life which was rarely glimpsed and then only out of the corner of one’s eyes. Fifth People seemed to hover soundlessly around her and Kirtn as though waiting for the child hero of the song to appear.

A few people stopped to watch, called by the Bre’n whistle and held by the languid sliding shapes created by a fire dancer. As the tale progressed, more people wandered over and stopped to enjoy. By the time the story ended—replete with monsters, heaped gems and heroism—a small crowd had collected. Unfortunately, there were not enough people to safely rob more than one or two. For really effective stealing to take place, a much bigger crowd was needed.

Kirtn’s song changed to a lilting work tune that had been popular before Deva’s situation became so desperate that its people forgot how to sing. Rheba’s Ghost figures solidified into Bre’ns and Senyasi working together, calling storms or sunny days, curing sickness, lifting girders and force fields into place, building and laughing and singing, always singing, for Deva had once been filled with song.

The compelling rhythms of the work song drew more people to the corner where Rheba and Kirtn performed. The akhenet lines beneath her skin pulsed more brightly now, responding to the increased demands of her performance. New energy forms appeared, cascading from her hands like supple gems, then condensing in recognizable Bre’n and Senyas forms. It was hard work for her, much harder than warming soup or lighting a dark hall. Not since she had played Chaos in the Black Whole had she tried to manipulate energy in so many distinct shapes.

Kirtn felt her hair stream out and wrap caressingly around his arm. Currents of energy ran deliciously through him, touching every cell. Desire flared—and died instantly, crushed beneath Bre’n will. He looked away from her, knowing that she had noticed neither the caress nor his response. Her face was taut, still, concentrated wholly on creating figures to people his songs.

A second whistle joined his. Beneath Rheba’s seething hair, Fssa was singing.

Slowly the song shifted, still melodic, still in harmony, but the words were different. The crowd did not notice, for only a handful of living beings understood Bre’n. Kirtn, however, realized, that Fssa was trying to communicate without disrupting the act. The Bre’n glanced over and spotted Fssa’s opalescent sensors beneath the shifting veil of Rheba’s hair.

“I’sNara is in place and F’lTiri is working the crowd. Daemen is out at the fringe,” continued the snake, whistling in sweet counterpoint to Kirtn’s song.

Kirtn looked over the crowd, but saw no one familiar. He did not have the Fssireeme’s ability to make minute discriminations among solid shapes. The snake “saw” with everything but the wavelengths of energy that comprised visible light for nearly all the races of the Fourth People. The Fssireeme was a product of genetic engineering performed many Cycles ago, before the people known as Bre’n and Senyas had even been born. He was a perfect translator and predator, although the latter had not been planned by the men who had reshuffled the genes of Fssa’s species.

“Daemen just brushed past i’sNara. I think he gave her something. Yes! Oh, it’s lovely, a great long necklace that’s cut into a thousand surfaces!”

Kirtn sang and peered at the spot where the snake’s sensors were directed. All the Bre’n saw was the outline of a very rich woman watching the act. A second look assured him that the woman was indeed i’sNara, changed by f’lTiri’s illusion. Nothing in her jewelry matched Fssa’s description of what Daemen had handed over. Then Kirtn remembered that Yhelle illusions were limited to visible wavelengths of energy. The Fssireeme’s methods of “seeing” were not affected by such illusions.

The song ended. Kirtn and Rheba bowed while she drew the outlines of a crowd throwing money to the two performers. Laughter rippled and coins from various planets rang against the stones at their feet. As Kirtn gathered the money, Fssa resumed his monologue in Bre’n. The lyric whistle helped to stem the flow of departing people.

“From what I can overhear, the act is nice but not really exciting,” whistled the snake. “Even f’lTiri is having problems getting away unnoticed, and he’s in his invisible mode. You need something that will make the crowd overlook a hand in their pants.”

Kirtn laughed shortly. “About the only thing that would be that interesting would be—how did our dead stage manager put it?—‘a single dance of kaza-flatch.’”

Fssa made a flatulent sound. Dapsl’s death on Loo had not been mourned by the Fssireeme. Yet—“He was right,” whistled the snake on a series of descending, sour notes. “It worked.”

Rheba’s hand moved protectively on Kirtn’s arm. The Loos’ casual assumption that all furries were animals had infuriated her. Neither Fssa nor Kirtn needed Rheba’s indignant whistle to explain her feelings.

“Dapsl was right,” whistled Kirtn softly, resonances of laughter and regret in each note. “Appealing to Loo prejudices saved our lives.”

“Public mating?” demanded Rheba incredulously. She whistled a Bre’n phrase describing intricate sex among thirteen cherfs.

Kirtn laughed. “I didn’t have anything that complicated in mind. A simple love song ... the Autumn Song?”

“I hate to soil its beauty for these swine,” she muttered in Senyas.

“What they feel is their problem,” he responded in the same language. “Ours is getting enough money to buy a navtrix.”

“But they’ll think it’s sodomy!”

Kirtn tilted her head up until he could see into her eyes. At their cinnamon depths, gold sparked and turned restlessly, “Is it sodomy to you, little dancer?”

The question, asked in controlled Senyas, sliced into Rheba like a knife. Anger and orange fire swept through her simultaneously. Streamers of flame rushed out from her body, causing the crowd to gasp and step back. She was too furious to speak, able only to burst into flame as she had not done since she was an undisciplined child.

Suddenly her arms wrapped around Kirtn’s neck in a hold that even Bre’n strength could not shift. He had an instant to regret goading her, then her mouth was over his in a kiss that made him forget the crowd, the navtrix, and—almost—his Bre’n discipline.

The fire that had leaped out from her changed into a lace work of gold surrounding her and her Bre’n. Like the lines on her body, the fires surrounding the two of them pulsed with energy. She did not know that she was building a cage of energy around the man who held her; it was a fire-dancer reflex as basic as breathing.

Kirtn knew what was happening, however. In a mature dancer the filigree of energy would thicken as dancer passion rose until finally the two lovers would be enclosed in a supple, incandescent world that was deadly to any but the Bre’n and Senyas inside. That much Kirtn knew from his past on Deva. What he did not know was what it felt like to be inside the cage, inside his dancer and the world around him hot and gold. Nor did Rheba know. Only a Bre’n could survive the full passion of a Senyas dancer; only a Bre’n could fully arouse it.

But Rheba had not been told that. It was something she must discover on her own. To tell her would negate the Dancer’s Choice, the moment when Senyas dancer chose a Bre’n—just as once, in the dancer’s infancy, a Bre’n had chosen a dancer. Without that second choosing, the relationship of Bre’n and Senyas was incomplete, and very dangerous to both partners.

As from a distance, Kirtn heard the bittersweet fail of notes that was the Autumn Song. Melancholy and harvest, chill winds and a lover’s warmth, fruition and death sung by the inhumanly perfect voice of an immortal Fssireeme.

Kirtn knew he should take Rheba’s arms from his neck, lift his mouth from hers, set her warmth at arm’s length. No dancer could make an honest choice while held against a sensual Bre’n body, his hands shifting her until she fit perfectly against him, his arms holding her in a grip both gentle and unbreakable. He knew he should release her ... but he did not, not until the fact that she was trembling uncontrollably registered on him.

His body moved subtly, changing the embrace to one of affection rather than passion. He was shocked to see how thick the lacework of energy around them had become. Silently he cursed the Bre’n sensuality that had betrayed her trust, forcing a choice on her that she was not old enough to make.

Rheba trembled between his hands, looking at him with eyes that were half aware, half knowing ... and half frightened. She had neither Senyas mother nor sisters to prepare her for full dancer passion. All she had was brief memories of half-grown Senyas boys, giggling pleasure under triple moons, simple release. It did not prepare her for the feelings that heated her now.

She tilted her head, sending her hair across his face and shoulder in electric caress. Her smile made him ache.

“That’s how much I care what anyone thinks,” she whistled softly. Then, wickedly, “You know, I rather like sharing enzymes with you.”

Kirtn grimaced at her reminder of their slavery on Loo. When the Loos would have separated Bre’n and Senyas, he had lied, telling the Loos that he and Rheba were symbionts who would die unless they could share enzymes by kissing. “Do you?” he murmured. “Some day I’m going to remind you of that,” he added, brushing her lips with his.

“It—it isn’t wrong, is it?” she said in a rush, glancing away from him, embarrassed to ask him. But she had no one else to ask, no one else to tell her what was proper and safe behavior between Senyas and Bre’n.

Kirtn’s hands slid into her seething hair, holding her so that she could not evade his eyes. “Nothing you could ever do with your Bre’n is wrong. Nothing.”

He felt the tension leave her body. Suddenly, mischief crackled in her eyes. She stood on tiptoe and ran her fingers around the rim of his car, tickling him unmercifully. It was the only way she had had as a young child to get even with her huge Bre’n mentor. Much to Kirtn’s despair, it seemed to be something she would not outgrow.

“Nothing?” she asked sweetly.

He caught her tormenting hands and said hastily, “Almost nothing. Tickling my ears is definitely a badnaughtywrong.”

The childhood word made Rheba laugh. She leaned against Kirtn, smiling. “I’m glad you Chose me, Bre’n mentor.”

Someday, maybe you’ll Choose me, thought Kirtn, then realized by her sudden movement that she had caught his thought. He cursed the inconvenience of being so close to each other that minor mind dancing was possible—and so far apart that he could not tell her about her Dancer’s Choice.

The lacework of fire dimmed to invisibility. Money rained down on them, startling them into an awareness of their surroundings. Fssa’s clear whistle faded into silence.

“That was wonnnnderful!” whistled Fssa, bright with enthusiasm and the energy he had absorbed from Rheba’s hair. “You should do it more often. Such energy.” He expanded to twice his former length and size, luxuriating in the instant of not having to fold in upon himself to conserve warmth and energy. Then, as though noticing the charged silence, he subsided. “Well, I enjoyed it, even if you two didn’t. Humanoids,” he whistled sourly, “may have legs but they don’t have much sense.”

“Shut up, snake,” said Kirtn.

Fssa darkened precipitously, quailing before Kirtn’s anger.

“By the Inmost Fire,” swore the Bre’n, seeing his friend go from bright to dark. “You’re beautiful, snake,” he whistled coaxingly. “You just have too many mouths for your brain to keep up with.”

Rheba snickered and began collecting the money around their feet. It was soon apparent that she would need more than her two hands to hold the coins. Kirtn bent to help her, but even his hands were not large enough. With a gleam in his yellow eyes, he snatched Fssa from Rheba’s hair.

“I just thought of a use for one of your big mouths. Open up.”

Fssa squawked indignantly, but complied. He rearranged his dense molecules until there was an opening beneath the sensors on top of his head. His head was a matter of convenience, a conceit to make him more like the Fourth People he was among, for Fssireemes were almost infinitely plastic.

A stream of money poured into Fssa. He sorted the coins according to size and made suitable pockets inside himself. He made an odd, musical sound when he moved. Rheba snickered again. Fssa ignored her.

By the time they were through picking up money, Fssa was quite heavy. Kirtn saw a few of the less well-dressed city dwellers watching the snake with open greed. The amount of money inside Fssa was not great—probably no more than a few thousand credits—but to some of Nontondondo’s inhabitants, a few thousand credits were worth killing for.

Kirtn smiled at the men staring at Fssa. The smile revealed slightly serrated teeth and frankly predatory intent. The men looked away quickly and faded back into the crowd.

Fssa made another mouth and hissed contempt. “You should have let them touch me.”

“You aren’t licensed to kill.”

“I’m not a Fourth People, either. Onan’s rules don’t apply to me.”

Kirtn looked toward Rheba in silent question. Her understanding of Onan’s licensing system exceeded his.

“True,” conceded Rheba, “but I’d hate to try to explain your exemption to the Equality Rangers. I don’t think it would work. Onan’s licensing system is efficient and profitable. When you’ve got a good game going, you don’t let a wise-mouth stranger break the bank.”

Fssa made a flatulent noise. Coins quivered in an unexpected echo. Then his head turned suddenly and his sensors brightened as he shifted energy into their use. From the rim of the crowd came an ugly shout. Rheba caught only the word “furry” and some random unpleasantries.

“Trouble,” whistled Fssa.

The crowd dissolved away, warned by the uncanny sense of danger that was part of all Fourth People’s survival equipment. Where the audience had been stood twelve hooded men. Nine of them were licensed to kill. Three wore circles broken in three places; they were licensed to do everything but kill.

In a blur of speed, M/dur and three snarling clepts came to stand between the hooded men and Rheba. The J/taal’s license to kill shone clearly on his forehead. The hooded men paused, seeing first the full silver circle and second the nature of the man who wore it. They murmured among themselves, then began fanning out to surround Rheba and Kirtn.

“Snake,” whistled Rheba urgently, “tell M/dur I take it all back. He can do whatever he has to however he can—just get us out of here!”

Fssa relayed the J/taaleri’s revised instructions in a guttural burst of sound. M/dur heard, but the only sign of that was the clepts padding lithely toward the men who wore closed silver circles. Narrow-eyed, lethal, the war dogs glided closer to their prey.

On the fringes, the Equality Rangers closed in. Rheba looked up in momentary hope, then realized that the Rangers were not there to prevent mayhem, but to regulate it. She would not be able to use her dancer skills or Kirtn’s deadly strength to help M/dur. They were licensed only to entertain, not to fight. One of the hooded men spotted the Rangers. He called out a question. Fssa’s translation of Nontondondo’s gutter language hissed in Rheba’s ear.

“Ranger! Have these animals been licensed?” called the hooded man, his hand sweeping around to point at the clepts.

Before the Ranger could answer, Fssa called out, “The man is J/taal. He is licensed to kill. Those animals are his weapons.”

“Clever snake,” murmured Rheba as his translation whispered to her from a separate orifice he had just created. “Will it work?”

The Rangers muttered among themselves, then shrugged. One of them answered, “He is J/taal. The clepts are weapons. His license to kill is valid and plainly displayed.” The Ranger’s voice was bored.

The hooded men hesitated, then pulled weapons out of their clothes.

Rheba’s nails dug into Kirtn’s arm. She began to gather energy despite her lack of license to do anything but entertain. She knew that if she broke Onan law there was nowhere else to go. Her navtrix could only take her back to the slave planet Loo, or to Deva, a dead world orbiting an unstable sun. She could not afford to break the law and help M/dur—but neither could she stand by and watch him killed because his J/taaleri had been too poor to buy weapons for him.

Her hair stirred in sibilant echo of the clepts’ graceful stride. Beneath her skin, akhenet lines smoldered, waiting only her release to leap into deadly, illicit fire.

IV

Suddenly, another J/taal appeared in the center of the hooded men. It was M/dere. On her forehead a full circle shone with diamond brilliance. Shocked by the appearance of an enemy in their midst, the hooded men fired without thought. Beams of razor light slashed through the J/taal—but she did not go down. The men surrounding her screamed, caught in the fire from weapons across the circle of hooded attackers.

Instantly the J/taal vanished, leaving behind two dead men, two more wounded, and chaos.

Clepts and J/taal attacked the instant the hooded men looked away from M/dur. When M/dur was finished, there were no screams, no wounded men. Simply death, silent and incredibly fast, too fast for any eyes to distinguish details.

In seconds it was over. M/dur stood, swaying, deep burns down the left side of his body.

Kirtn swore in the rhythmic phrases of a Bre’n poet, then leaped forward to catch the wounded J/taal. Rheba, remembering the J/taal tradition of committing suicide when badly wounded rather than living as a burden on their J/taaleri, shouted at Fssa, “Tell him to live! If he dies on me I swear I won’t allow anyone to burn his corpse!”

There was no worse threat for a J/taal than being held in this life endlessly by an uncremated body. M/dur looked over at her with pain-narrowed eyes and made a weak gesture of agreement.

Rheba spun and watched the street, wondering if there would be trouble from the Equality Rangers. They were staring toward M/dur, still stunned by M/dur’s speed and deadliness. It was one thing to know J/taals by reputation. It was quite another to see one of the mercenaries in action.

“Are you satisfied, Ranger?” called Rheba. “Or should I have my J/taal fight again?”

“Animal,” said one Ranger loudly.

Though M/dur was smooth-skinned, everyone knew that the females of his race were furred. Onan permitted mating between furry and smoothie, but taxed it heavily. Only a license to murder cost more.

Rheba waited, hoping that the Rangers were honest enough to obey their own laws.

To her surprise, they were. Without another word they withdrew, checking doorways and alleys for the female J/taal who had come and gone so mysteriously. Rheba found herself doing the same, although she knew that M/dere would not have left the ship against the express orders of her J/taaleri.

Daemon sauntered out of a doorway. His coat was lumpy around his slender frame. She half expected to see M/dere following him, but it was only the Yhelle illusionists, appearing as themselves. She waited until they were close enough that no random pedestrian could overhear.

“Was that you?” she asked, gesturing toward the place where M/dere had appeared—or had seemed to appear.

F’lTiri smiled wanly, obviously exhausted. “A real person would have been killed in the center of all that fire. I merely projected M/dere’s illusion, hoping to distract the hooded men long enough for M/dur to get out from under their guns. We were lucky, fire dancer. They weren’t used to illusionists. They shot without suspecting that nothing was there, and killed their companions instead of their enemy.”

“Lucky,” repeated Rheba, her eyes wandering over to Daemen, whose smile was like sunrise. She shivered. “There are two kinds of luck. I hope we’re off Onan before the other kind finds us.”

Daemen walked forward, no longer smiling. “Don’t think about that.” His hands moved in an odd, sinuous gesture of warding off. “If you name the other kind of luck, you’ll regret it.”

Rheba stared into his gray eyes, level with her own. Unconsciously she retreated a step, bumping into Kirtn. The combination of corpses, Daemen’s fey presence and the Yhelles’ illusion was unnerving.

“Sorry,” she murmured to Kirtn as she stumbled against him. “As much death as I’ve seen, it still ... bothers me.”

He caught her and gently set her on her feet. “Back to the ship,” he said. “You need to rest before you work with fire again.”

“But we’re only licensed for today.”

Kirtn shrugged. “Without a licensed killer, we’re helpless.”

Rheba looked at the wounded J/taal, who leaned against Kirtn. M/dur’s compact body was bloody, but some of the burns were healing even as she watched. It was a gift the J/taals had, part genes and part training.

“I won’t be any good to you for two days,” said M/dur flatly. “It would have been better to let me die.”

“I value my J/taals.”

M/dur’s head moved in a gesture both proud and submissive, “I’m yours to kill or keep, J/taaleri.”

“Remember that,” she snapped. “None of you is to die without my direct permission.”

Something that might have been a smile changed M/dur’s face. “You’re a hard woman. We’re proud to be yours.”

“You aren’t mine.”

M/dur smiled and said nothing. It was an old point of disagreement between them.

Rheba made an exasperated, untranslatable sound and turned to Kirtn. “Carry that unbending lump back to the ship.”

When Kirtn picked up M/dur, the clepts made a menacing sound. They fell back at a gesture from the J/taal. The war dogs ranged themselves into a moving shield that broke a path through the crowded streets back to the spaceport.

Once inside the Devalon, the illusionists sighed and let their last illusions go. Kirtn, seeing the amount of loot they were carrying, whistled approvingly.

I’sNara smiled and began peeling off ropes of gems and purses of magnetic OVA tabs. “I’d like to take all the credit, but my really valuable stuff came from Daemen.”

“Mine, too,” admitted f’lTiri, dumping gems and tabs out of his pockets. “That halfling is uncanny. Four times I was sure he was going to be caught, but each time his victim coughed or stumbled or farted or sneezed at just the right moment. I still don’t believe it. I could steal more deftly with my right foot than he could with four hands—but he got away with it!”

Daemen smiled. “I told you. Lucky is better than good.”

Kirtn gave M/dur to his J/taal mates and turned to face Daemen. “You ride your luck pretty hard.”

“No.” Daemon’s face changed, haunted now, withdrawn. “It rides me.” He emptied his inner pockets into Kirtn’s hands. One of the items was a comb made of precious-metal strands studded with oddly carved gems. “This is particularly valuable,” he said, handing it over with obvious reluctance. “It’s—”

Fssa, who had been studying the growing pile of loot with his opalescent sensors, interrupted with a piercing sound. “Let me see that!” he demanded, using the idiom if not the visual organs of the Fourth People.

Kirtn held the comb out toward the Fssireeme, “This?”

In answer, Fssa began to change shape, going into a mode that would permit him to scan the comb with a variety of wavelengths. The coins inside him clanked and clinked. With a disgusted grunt he opened a long slit in his side and disgorged the money.

While Daemen and the illusionists watched in fascination, the Fssireeme went through a rapid shape-changing display, scanning the comb with all the subtle means at his disposal. Finally he held one shape, a bizarre fungoid imitation. It was the shape he often used to communicate with Rainbow, the Zaarain construct that looked like a sunburst of multicolored crystals.

Rheba recognized the shape and recoiled. Rainbow was the jeweled fragments of a library millions of years old. Unlike a true First People, Rainbow was not a living crystal independently conceived out of unguessable lithic imperatives. Rainbow was manmade yet ... different. Fssa insisted it definitely was more than a machine. Rainbow vaguely remembered being built by the legendary technological genius of the Zaarain Cycle. It remembered wholeness and mourned its fragmented self. It was terrified of being further reduced by man or circumstance.

Rainbow’s expression of that terror on odd wavelengths was what had alerted Fssa to the fact that what looked like a grubby mineral matrix was actually a living being. Well, almost living, and certainly sentient. When Fssa told Rheba about Rainbow’s nature, she rescued it from dismemberment at the hands of greedy slave children.

Once cleaned up, Rainbow proved to be gorgeous, a scintillant mass of colored crystals. There was only one problem: Rainbow was desperately lonely, but when Fssa communicated with it, the resulting energy exchange gave Rheba debilitating headaches. Thus, she watched the Fssireeme’s fungoid imitation with premonitions of agony.

Kirtn’s arms went around Rheba in a protective gesture that was as futile as it was instinctive. Fssireeme-Zaarain construct communication gave the Bre’n a towering headache, but it was nothing to what Rheba endured.

Rheba bit her lip and moaned. Pain belled in Kirtn’s head. She twisted in his arms and moaned again. With a curse, Kirtn lashed out at Fssa.

The blow was harmless to the dense-fleshed Fssireeme, but it did knock him off balance. He changed back into a snake, a very dark, very embarrassed snake. He had promised not to speak to Rainbow when Rheba was within range. While what he had just done was not—strictly speaking—communication with Rainbow, the result was the same. Pain for the Fire dancer who had befriended him.

A tremulous Bre’n apology hung in the air, sung by a chagrined Fssireeme. Rheba sighed, rubbed her temples, and whistled slightly off-key forgiveness.

“Is it part of Rainbow?” asked Kirtn, his voice harsh.

“I think so,” said Fssa, taking the trouble to form organs for speaking Senyas. As whistling required only a flexible orifice, the snake normally communicated in Bre’n, but he wanted to apologize for his lapse, and so spoke within the confines of Senyas. “Probability to the twelfth on the green carved gem, to the ninth on the three yellow gems and to the eighth on the blues. I didn’t have a chance to test the colorless crystals,” he added, “but they have a zigr probability of—”

“Enough,” whistled Kirtn softly. “We won’t sell any of the crystals until Rainbow has a chance to look them over.”

Fssa was tempted to point out that Rainbow did not have eyes with which to “look” at anything, but decided that now was not the time to insist on Senyas precision—especially with an irritated Bre’n.

Rheba eyed the mounds of loot with distaste, wondering if any more of Rainbow was hidden within, a dead loss as far as buying a navtrix was concerned. There were times when she wished she had left Rainbow buried in the dirt of a Loo slave compound.

“I doubt if there are any more pieces of Rainbow,” said Kirtn, guessing her thoughts. “With the whole galaxy to look in, it’s incredible luck that we found any of Rainbow at all.”

The word “luck” made Rheba flinch. “Maybe,” she said shortly. “And maybe Rainbow was as big as a planet once and we’ll be tripping over chunks of it every time we turn around.”

Kirtn looked at Daemen. The young man stood silently, gray eyes fastened on the comb with peculiar intensity.

“Let’s put the rest of this junk on the sensor plate and see what Onan’s computer will give us,” said Kirtn, scooping up the comb in one big hand.

It took several minutes for the computer to weigh, sort, describe and transmit information from its sensor plate to Onan’s port computer. It took about the same amount of time for a tentative sales figure to come back—37,899,652.753 credits, subject to physical scrutiny by Onan’s computer.

A gasp ran around the room as the figure hovered in the air above Rheba’s head. She closed her eyes and then looked again, as though afraid the figure would disappear or diminish.

It did not. She cleared her throat and looked up at Kirtn, who was watching the figure with a fascination that equaled hers. Only the illusionists were not surprised.

“I told you,” said f’lTiri calmly to the illusionist beside him, “that the braided cord of gems was a genuine MMbeemblini. It alone must have been worth eighteen million credits. What fool would wear something like that to a city like Nontondondo?”

“An unlucky son of a five-legged dog,” murmured i’sNara, satisfaction resonant in her normally colorless voice. “May his right-hand wife conceive by his left-hand son.”

A ripple of uneasy black ran through Fssa. The Yhelle curse was both obscene and vicious in the context of its culture. The fire dancer stared at the Yhelle woman, but asked no questions. Rheba had enough troubles with a hold full of vengeful former slaves; she did not need to rummage in their individual pasts to find more.

Her hands went out to the sensor plate. Within its energy field, her akhenet lines sprang into prominence. The plate flushed orange, accepting her identity, then cleared in anticipation of her orders.

“Ask the port computer if it knows of anyone in Nontondondo who has an up-to-date navtrix to sell,” said Rheba, “and at what price.”

There was a pause, then the plate went into colorful convulsions. When it cleared, a woman’s face was staring out of the ceiling at them.

Rheba went cold, then her lines of power flushed hotly as she recognized the woman. She was one of the few people on Onan who could recognize the fire dancer who had illegally razed the Black Whole.

The woman’s image suddenly became a hologram hovering at ceiling level. Black eyes, elongated and shining, searched the upturned faces until the woman saw Rheba. The woman smiled. Her teeth were silver, as shiny as the closed circle she wore in her ebony hair.

“Hello, Rheba. There are a lot of people who would like to see you again.”

“Hello, Satin,” said Rheba evenly. But she leaned against Kirtn, joined in minor mind dance as her thoughts rang in his: I knew bad luck would find us, but I didn’t know her name would be Satin.

V

Satin’s eyes continued cataloguing the multiracial contents of the control room. Either the illusionists, Daemen, or the three striped men behind him caught her interest. Her eyes narrowed to intense black slits. She laughed bleakly. “Of course. I should have guessed.”

“What do you want?” asked Kirtn, his voice calm and hard.

“Curiosity. A weakness of mine,” said Satin, her eyes returning to Rheba. “When newly licensed thieves are so spectacularly successful, I want to know their names. And when those same thieves want to buy a navtrix, little chimes go off. I own the only loose navtrices on Onan, you see.”

Rheba muttered a Senyas curse.

“I don’t see Trader Jal,” said Satin, her restless glance probing the room.

“You won’t.”

Satin looked at Rheba with renewed interest. “Dead?”

Rheba remembered Trader Jal, the man who had enslaved her and Kirtn. She had last seen the Loo lord on his back in a spaceport light-years away. He was very dead, every last bit of heat drawn from his molecules by a Fssireeme, the galaxy’s most efficient energy parasite. Drops of rain had frozen into a shroud over Jal’s body. “Yes. Dead.”

“Congratulations,” murmured Satin. “There will be parades in Nontondondo.” Her eyes watched Rheba, noting with particular intensity the hair that lashed restlessly. “Are there many more like you out there, beyond the Equality?”

Despite her control, Rheba’s face echoed some of her memories of Deva burning, Senyasi and Bre’ns dying but not quickly enough, not before their flesh blistered and cracked and they screamed. “No,” she said. “No.”

“Ahhh, then you’re alone, too.” Satin’s black eyes took in the many races, faces of every hue crowding around as word passed in the ship that something unusual was happening in the control room.

“No, not alone. I have my Bre’n,” Rheba drew Kirtn’s arms around her, warming herself against the cold of her memories.

“But he isn’t your kind.”

Silently, Rheba rubbed her cheek against the suede texture of Kirtn’s chest. “He’s Bre’n. I’m Senyas. That’s enough.”

Satin smiled, a gesture both predatory and oddly comforting. “Come to the Black Whole.” At Rheba’s surprised look, Satin’s smile widened. “I rebuilt the casino after the fire. It’s mine now. I claimed Jal’s half.” Her head turned quickly. The movement made her killer’s circle gleam. “No one wanted to challenge me for it. Strange, don’t you think? I’m such a small woman, not strong at all.”

Kirtn laughed grimly. Satin looked at him, caught by the sound of Bre’n laughter.

“Come to the Black Whole,” she repeated.

“No. Once was enough,” said Rheba.

“If you want the navtrix, you’ll come to the Black Whole.”

“If I go there someone else might recognize me. I wasn’t,” Rheba added dryly, “very popular the night I left.”

Satin made a dismissing gesture with her shoulders. “If you’re worrying about the Equality Rangers, don’t. Your last OVA covered fines and damages for unlicensed rioting. As for the dead”—she moved her shoulders again—“you were licensed to kill. I think you even have a few credits left over.”

Rheba wanted to trust Satin, but did not. Satin and Jal had been partners; perhaps she had vengeance rather than business in mind.

“Bring your furry,” added Satin.

“Furries aren’t allowed in the Black Whole, remember?” said Rheba.

“New management, new rules. License him to kill and bring him along. Bring as many as you like—except don’t bring him.”

An immaterial hand appeared. A jet-black fingernail pointed plainly at Daemen.

“Come to the casino now,” said Satin, turning her attention back to Rheba. “If you wait, I’ll be too busy to see you. If you wait too long, I’ll be too angry to sell you a navtrix. Then you’ll have to try your luck stealing from the Equality Rangers. I don’t recommend it. They’re psi-blocked and immune to illusionists. I’ll expect you.”

Satin’s hologram vanished, leaving only a visual memory of her narrow silver smile.

“You’re not going to the Black Whole,” began Kirtn. “I’ll—”

Rheba made a flatulent noise that was an exact imitation of Fssa. Then she smiled tiredly. “Of course I’m going—licensed to burn, kill and steal. There’s no other choice.”

“Someone else might have a navtrix to sell,” offered i’sNara.

Rheba hesitated, then shrugged. “I doubt it. If Satin says she has the only loose navtrices on Onan, I believe her. Besides, if we take time to check around and then discover that she was telling the truth, she might decide not to sell us one at all. You heard her.”

Kirtn whistled intricate instructions to the computer. Two silver circles popped out the ship’s downside connector and rattled into the receiving compartment. The Bre’n pinned one circle on Rheba and the other on himself. A weapon thumped into the compartment. He pulled out the gun and tucked it into his weapon harness.

“Where’s my license to burn?” asked Rheba. “And to steal?”

His finger tapped her circle. “The lesser licenses are marked off on the major one.”

She noted the darker lines dividing her circle and headed for the exit ramp without another word. Once on the ramp she paused. “What about Fssa?” she asked. She looked back to where the translator-snake lay curled around a colorful mass of crystals atop the pilot mesh.

“Satin speaks Universal,” Kirtn said shortly. His eyes reflected his anger that Rheba once more had been maneuvered into danger.

Rheba saw his uncoiling rage and was silent. Like all Senyasi, she knew when it was not safe to disturb a Bre’n.

The air was cold outside, spiced with autumn and Onan’s sudden night. There was no darkness at street level. Advertisements and enticements flashed and beckoned in every color known to man.

Reflexively, Rheba drank the energy around her, storing up against time of need. Her hair lifted and quivered as though individual strands sought to touch the cascading colors of the night.

The Black Whole had not changed. The anteroom was still manned by a laconic killer. He glared at the Bre’n, but made no move to exclude him from the casino. Kirtn’s slanted yellow eyes were never at rest. He saw Rheba’s hair seethe and knew she was as edgy as he. Both would be glad to be off Onan, and delivering former slaves to homes they had never expected to see again. Only then would Bre’n and Senyas be free to comb the galaxy, looking for the few survivors of Deva’s holocaust that might exist.

But to do that, the Devalon must have a navtrix.

Side by side, Bre’n and Senyas pushed through the velvet force field separating the anteroom from the casino proper. Sounds poured around them, prayers and imprecations in every language of the Yhelle Equality. Far off across the huge room was a glitter-blue spiral galaxy. Beneath it were the seats and stations for a game called Chaos.

Rheba shivered and looked away. She had no desire to play Chaos again. She had been lucky to survive the first time. She stood on tiptoe, trying to see past the sweep of gamblers and hangers-on, looking for a pool of darkness where Satin would be.

Kirtn lifted Rheba easily, holding her high. She spotted Satin across the room, sharing a small table with another gambler.

Rheba pointed the way, then followed as Kirtn pushed through the crowded casino. Some of the patrons took exception to being touched by a furry. Their protests faded when they saw Kirtn’s size and the deadly warning he wore on his shoulder.

Satin looked up at their arrival. She gestured to empty chairs on either side of her, but Kirtn moved another chair so that he and Rheba would not be separated. The man across from Satin never looked up. He was obviously in difficulty, sweating and squirming unhappily. Despite the silver circle pinned to his square hat, he seemed afraid. He picked two gems from a small pile in front of him and placed them meticulously on the grid between himself and Satin.

Satin studied the move he had made for only the briefest moment. Languidly, her hand moved over the grid, setting in place three colorless gems. The grid chimed and changed shape. The man watched and all but groaned. He reached again for the diminished mound of gems in front of him. His hand trembled as he picked out five stones, then four more, and placed them on the grid.

Satin did not even hesitate this time. Her hand dove into the heap of gems in front of her, hovered over the grid, then deposited only three stones. There were almost no openings left, except at the center. Watching him, she put a single transparent stone in the center of the grid.

A chime sounded. The grid reformed. There were more openings now, many more, far more than he had stones to fill.

“Your turn,” urged Satin, her husky voice soft.

The man said nothing. With a savage gesture, he shoved his remaining stones into the center of the grid. Gems skidded and caromed off the raised edges of the table. He stood up and pushed into the crowd.

Laughing softly, Satin gathered the gems into a mound and began pouring them from her hand to the table as the grid chimed and changed again. Gems twinkled and stuck to the grid, held by force fields and rules wholly unknown to Kirtn and Rheba.

“Game?” asked Satin, smiling slightly.

“No. Just a navtrix,” said Rheba, her voice neutral, her eyes fascinated by the gems sliding and winking across the table. She was careful not to show her impatience. If she let Satin know how much they needed the navtrix, their flesh and bones would be part of the price.

Satin looked from Rheba to the Bre’n beside her. The woman’s black eyes were unreadable, her face utterly still. Gems flashed and fell between her slim black fingers. She made no gesture that Kirtn could see, but suddenly two Equality Rangers appeared and stood behind him.

Silently, Kirtn raged at the necessity that had driven them into Satin’s lair. His weapon appeared in his hand in the same instant that Rheba’s akhenet lines burst into flame. Satin noted the speed with which they had responded to the Rangers, and the sudden appearance of incandescent patterns on Rheba’s skin.

Satin gestured from the Rangers to two empty chairs. “Sit.”

It was not an invitation. Warily, both Rangers lowered themselves into the chairs.

“Are these the ones you saw earlier?” asked Satin, indicating. Rheba and Kirtn with a tilt of her head.

“Yes. They weren’t licensed to kill, then.”

“Did they?”

“No. They’re legal to the last credit.”

“And their OVA?”

“Over thirty-seven million credits. All legal. No fines, complaints or judgments outstanding.”

“Then they’re in no way forbidden to own an Equality Ranger Scout navtrix?” Clearly, the Rangers wanted to say no. There was a long silence, punctuated by Satin’s sudden laugh. “Answer me, Rangers. You’re being recorded.”

“I don’t like the idea of a furry with a Scout navtrix!” snarled one of the Rangers. “If you give a furry your little finger, he’ll have your whole arm.”

Satin waited. The Ranger’s partner sighed.

“They aren’t Equality citizens,” said the second Ranger.

“Neither am I. I own three navtrices.” Satin’s voice was husky, intimate—and dangerous.

Rheba shivered. She did not know what was happening, but she sensed danger coiling invisibly around the table. One of the Rangers turned to study her. She noticed for the first time the subtle signs of rank embroidered on his scarlet collar, and the lines of hard living engraved on his face. He exuded power the same way his partner exuded hatred of furries.

“Sell it to them,” he said abruptly. Then, “We’re even, Satin.”

He tossed a hand-sized packet onto the table and walked off without a word. His partner gave a hard look at Kirtn, then followed.

Satin watched, amusement curling around the corners of her mouth; but in her hand, barely visible, was a lethal little gun. She put it away with a smooth motion and turned toward Rheba. “Thirty-five million credits. First and last price. Of course, you’re licensed to steal. You could just take this”—she tapped the packet—“and run.”

Watching Satin’s easy assurance, Rheba sensed it would be very stupid to steal a single credit from the owner of the Black Whole.

Kirtn apparently reached the same decision. He put their OVA tab into a slot in the table, spoke briefly, and reached for the package.

“Or,” continued Satin, “I could keep the packet and the credits you just transferred to my OVA.”

As she spoke, her hands flicked out. The package containing the navtrix vanished as though it had never existed. There was an instant of shock when Rheba expected Kirtn to crush Satin between his hands, then a moment of even greater shock when Rheba realized that Kirtn was standing frozen, muscles rigid with effort, fighting something she could neither see nor sense.

She felt peculiar energies flowing into her from the point where her body touched Kirtn. The discordant energies made her world tilt and her mind scream. She felt her Bre’n’s terrible struggle to right the canted world and quiet the psychic cacophony that was destroying him.

Rage burst over her. She sucked into her akhenet lines all the power coming from the casino’s core. Games stopped, force fields vanished, lights died. In the sudden midnight, lines of pale lightning coursed from Rheba, shattering the gems on Satin’s table. A warning.

“Let him go!”

As Rheba spoke, even her breath was incandescent—but not deadly, not yet. She did not want Satin to die until Kirtn was free.

And Satin knew it. Satin was there, in Rheba’s mind. The fire dancer felt a cool brush of approval and laughter as the gambler withdrew.

“Turn the fields back on,” said Satin, handing the navtrix to Kirtn. “You’re frightening the children.”

Rheba put a blazing hand on Kirtn’s arm, sensed his rage and fear ... and freedom. With a sigh she released her drain on the casino’s energy source and damped her own fires. Except for the ruined gems, there was nothing to mark the moments of fire-dancer rage.

“Are there any men of your race around here?” asked Satin, smiling languidly as she stirred the hot fragments of her gems. “Men who can’t be controlled?”

Rheba did not answer. The only male of her race that she knew of was a boy called Lheket, her only hope of children, of a new race of Senyas. But she could not tell Satin that; she did not want Satin to know anything at all.

As though guessing—or knowing—her thoughts, Satin murmured, “So few, then? Don’t worry, I wouldn’t take him from you. But I surely would like to borrow him from time to time,” she said wistfully. “How about him?” she continued, looking at Kirtn. “I couldn’t control him, either. Kill him, yes, but not control him.” She switched her attention back to Rheba. “Is he any good lying down?”

ft took Rheba a moment to figure out exactly what Satin was asking. “I—I don’t know,” she blurted, unable to think of a lie or keep silence.

“You don’t know.” Satin laughed sadly. “Sweet green gods, what a waste. I suppose you come from one of those dreary little dung balls that forbid more passion than it takes to make dreary little dung-ball preachers.”

“No,” said Kirtn, “she’s just too young.”

Satin looked from Rheba to Kirtn and back again. “Too young? No child fights for her man the way she just did.” She made an abrupt gesture, silencing whatever objections either might make. “Never mind. Your delusions aren’t important to me. Still, if she isn’t enjoying you ... ?” Satin’s smile transformed her from formidable to fascinating. She radiated sensual hunger the way a star radiated energy.

Kirtn could not help but feel the pull. He was Bre’n; sensuality was in his genes. And even at her most calculating, Satin was every molecule a woman. If he could cut a loop out of time and share it with her, he would. But he could not.

Satin’s smile changed, becoming humorous rather than enticing. “Thank you,” she said, her voice husky. “That’s the nicest refusal I’ve ever had. If your hot woman-child frustrates you too much, remember me.”

Rheba looked from one to the other, feeling an undefinable anger prickle along her akhenet lines. Satin reminded her of a lustrous spider in the center of a jeweled web.

“Don’t be jealous, child,” murmured Satin, looking at Rheba out of long dark eyes. “It’s just that I’m tired of having nothing but insects to play with.” She sighed and swept the ruined gems to the floor. “You did me a favor when you killed Jal. Now I’ll do one for you. I saw a face in your control room, a young man with eyes like winter ice.”

“Daemen?” said Kirtn.

Satin’s face changed. “So he even uses the name, does he? Most would hide it.” Her eyes were very black now, as cold as the void between the stars. “When you leave the planet, make sure he’s aboard. When you come out of replacement, space him.”

Rheba was too shocked to say anything. Kirtn leaned forward until his eyes were on a level with Satin’s. “Why?”

She made a curt, negative gesture. “I’ve named your devil, but I’ll be damned if I’ll describe it. And I mean that literally. Take my advice. Space him before it’s too late.”

“ “No,” said Rheba flatly. “He’s just a boy. He’s done nothing to us.”

Satin stood. “You have fifteen standard minutes to get off the planet. If you run, you’ll just make it.” Her expression softened. “May your gods go with you. You’ll need them.”

The gambler’s voice was calm, but her mind screamed in Rheba’s: Space him!

VI

“Two minutes!” said Rheba, peering over Kirtn’s shoulder to see how close he was to finishing the installation of the new navtrix.

The run from the Black Whole had been short and furious. Kirtn was working over an opening in the control board that the Devalon had provided on command. The old navtrix was balanced precariously on his knee. The new one was in a glittering nest where the old one had been. There were no wires or other physical connections to be made—Equality science was primitive, not barbaric—but there was the necessity of precisely positioning the new navtrix within the old matrix.

“Got it,” he said. “I hope. Light it up.”

One minute.

Neither one spoke aloud, but both heard the echo of the clock running in Rheba’s mind. She instructed the ship to energize the navtrix and held her breath. Long seconds passed. Nothing happened.

Kirtn muttered words that Rheba ignored. Akhenet lines rippled and glowed along her body. If the ship could not activate the navtrix, she would have to try. It was not a skill she had been taught on Deva, being too young to work with intricate energy constructs such as a navtrix. But if the ship failed, she would have to try.

Twenty seconds.

She sensed the curiosity of the others in the cabin, yet no one spoke. The urgency that Rheba and Kirtn radiated was sufficient explanation for the moment. A slim figure moved forward, straining to see what was happening. Rheba felt warmth and a slight pressure from another body. She had started to turn her head to see who was crowding her when the navtrix began to glow.

“Thank the Inmost Fire,” she breathed. “That was a lovely bit of luck.”

As though the word triggered something in her mind, she turned to look at the person who had been crowding her. Daemen. But there was no time to explore the ramifications of his presence, and perhaps no need—the Yhelle navtrix simply could have taken longer to energize than the Senyas variety it replaced.

“Hang on,” she said curtly. “We’ve got to clear this planet now.”

Kirtn warned the rest of the passengers as Rheba pulled the pilot mesh around her. The Devalon’s outputs lit up with racing colors. The air quivered with instructions that only someone used to the Bre’n language could understand.

“Three!” yelled Rheba.

The passengers shifted, seeking purchase against the coming surge of energy. No one protested. They were a tough lot, accustomed to worse than the ship was going to deliver. When the Devalon leaped upward, flattening them against each other and the floor, there were no complaints.

Rheba took the first replacement almost immediately, clearing Onan’s gravity well just enough to ensure that the ship and its passengers were not wrenched apart. She did not want to argue with Satin over niceties of measurement—off-planet usually meant out of the gravity well.

It was a short jump. At its end, Rheba looked around to see if anyone was injured. People lay in various piles around the room and spilled into the tubeway, but no one seemed hurt. Daemen, she noticed, had landed on top rather than on the bottom of his pile. She signaled him to come to her.

“Does your planet go by any other name than Daemen on Equality maps?” she asked.

“No.”

Rheba instructed the navtrix to display the coordinates of a planet called Daemen and held her breath, wondering what he had done to Satin that she would urge killing him the instant he was out of Onan’s gravity well.

The coordinates appeared in the color, sound and number code of Senyas. Rheba sighed silently; she had been afraid the new navtrix would force them to use only Universal, thus rendering the ship vulnerable to takeover by anyone who could speak Universal.

“There it is,” she said, satisfaction in her voice. Then satisfaction changed to dismay as she read the replacement code. The planet hung like a pendant on a broken chain at the far side of the Equality’s tenuous sprawl. “Five replacements and three changeovers. You live on the back side of nowhere,” she muttered. Then, realizing how she had sounded, she added, “Lovely place, I’m sure. It would have to be for anyone to stay there.”

Daemen laughed. “It’s a dismal place, but it’s home. My home.”

There was a possessive emphasis on the word my that made Rheba examine him more closely. He did not notice. His gray eyes were focused on Rainbow dangling from the small cargonet over the control board. As he watched the Zaarain construct, Daemen looked older, harder ... even dangerous. Then he smiled, transforming his face, making her doubt that she had ever seen anything but the charming boy-man who stood before her.

With an uneasy feeling, she turned back to instruct the computer to connect with a planet called Daemen. She hesitated, then chose a far orbit around the planet. She wanted to take a discreet look at the Equality’s most distant world.

After several moments the computer whistled sweetly, telling her that her program was accepted and accurate. All that she had to do was whistle the correct response and the Devalon’s ill-assorted passengers would be on their way.

She turned to look a final time at Daemen. He smiled, eagerness and anticipation plain on his young face. She could not help smiling in return.

“It will be a while,” she said, “but you’re going home.” She whistled a complex trill.

The ship shivered faintly and its lights dimmed. The first replacement was a long one, well beyond the range of most Equality spaceships. In order to make the maneuver accurately, a high speed was necessary. Until replacement was completed, the ship would spare its passengers and crew only minimal energy.

Rheba’s akhenet lines pulsed in the diminished light. She felt Daemen’s speculative glance. Her lines were much more obvious since she had stripped to her brief scarlet ship clothes.

“I’ve never seen a race like yours,” said Daemen. “You’re beautiful,” he added matter-of-factly, “I’ll bet you brought a high price on Loo.”

Rheba grimaced. “The Loo-chim preferred furries.”

Daemen laughed, but the sound lacked humor. “The Loo-chim didn’t like anything but themselves. Are you sure they’re dead?”

“Yes.”

The quality of her voice did not encourage further questions about Loo, the Loo-chim, or her part in destroying both.

“How long will it be until we reach Daemen?” he asked.

“About one Onan day.”

Daemen looked around the crowded control room, plainly wondering what he was going to do for that day. Others were dealing with the same question. As Rheba watched, some passengers lay down while others pushed back to give them room. After a few hours the sleepers would trade with the ones who were awake. The longer Rheba watched, the more seductive the idea of sleep became. She had not had any decent sleep since she had become a slave. She looked around for Kirtn, wanting nothing more than to curl up against her Bre’n and let go of all conscious thought.

“He’s with that fantastic snake,” said Daemen, guessing whom she was looking for.

“Kirtn?”

“Is that his name? The big man, gold hair?”

“Yes.” She paused, struck by a thought. Daemen was one of the few people since Deva who had not remarked on Kirtn’s “fur,” although the very short, very fine hair that covered him was more a texture than a pelt. Even so, it was enough to brand him an animal among the Equality planets and peoples she had met so far. “You didn’t call him a furry.”

Daemen looked surprised. “At home, people come in all colors and textures. Nobody thinks much about it.”

“I think I’ll like your planet.”

Daemon’s smile was like music. “I hope so, Rheba.”

She looked at him again, realizing that he was not so young as he appeared. His own culture might even consider him a man. The way he was watching her said that he, at least, considered himself fully grown. “Why did you leave your home?” she asked. Then, quickly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

His smile returned, but it was not the same. Before he could say anything, Kirtn approached. Around his neck hung Fssa. Kirtn took down the fine-meshed net that held Rainbow and examined the crystal mass.

“It’s bigger,” said Rheba, leaning over to look at Rainbow.

“Fssa said Rainbow took the jewels, sort of crumbled over them, and then got all solid again,” said Kirtn, turning Rainbow around as he spoke. There were no visible breaks or joinings. Rainbow looked as though it were simply a mass of crystals grown on the geologic whim of some planet. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Even better than before,” agreed Rheba.

Fssa made a flatulent noise. He had thought himself ugly until Rheba told him he was beautiful. Now he was slightly vain and more than a little jealous of any non-Fourth People that Rheba considered attractive. “It’s not bad,” he conceded, “even if it is lopsided and some of its crystals are scratched.”

Rheba smiled, but did not tease the Fssireeme. He was too easy to hurt. She noticed that metallic colors were running in random surges the length of his body. That usually only happened when he was uneasy, verging on fearful. “What’s wrong, Fssa?”

The snake moved in a sinuous ripple. His blind opalescent “eyes” quested toward her hair. “Have you—did you—” Fssa made a strangled noise and tried again. “Ssimmi,” he hissed, using the accents of his native language. “Does the navtrix know where Ssimmi is?”

She touched him lightly, letting energy course from her fingertip through his body. The Fssireeme shivered in delight. “I haven’t asked yet,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Fssa whistled a complex trill. The Devalon’s computer responded, lighting the navtrix while the two energy constructs exchanged information. It took only an instant for the negative to chime.

“Maybe you garbled the translation,” said Rheba. Then, at Fssa’s indignant squawk, she added, “You’re excited, Fssa. Maybe you just weren’t as careful as you could have been. Or maybe the Equality knows Ssimmi by another name. Don’t look so sad.” She stroked the snake’s darkened body, trying to call up a ripple of color. “Try again,” she coaxed.

Fssa questioned the computer again. He used the Bre’n language, making the dry question resonate with melancholy and regret. Only a bare hint of hope echoed after the query.

The negative chimed again.

The snake darkened, then changed. He asked the question again, using another language, another name for his home planet of Ssimmi.

The negative chimed.

More languages, more questions, more names. And the same answer.

“I just wanted to swim Ssimmi’s seething sky/seas once before I die,” whistled Fssa. But the Bre’n words said more, much more, telling of loss and longing, a winter seed calling to the heart of a vanished summer.

Rheba lifted the sad Fssireeme off Kirtn’s shoulders and wound the snake into her hair. She gathered energy until her hair crackled and shimmered, comforting Fssa in the only way she could. “There are more planets than the Equality knows,” she said, “and more navtrices. We’ll find your home if we have to turn the galaxy inside out.”

Fssa’s head rested on top of her ear. He sighed a Fssireeme thank you and coiled more securely in her hair.

“Is it—he? she?—all right?” asked Daemon. He had not understood Fssa’s Bre’n whistles, but the emotions had needed no translation.

“Just a little sad,” said Kirtn in Universal, easing his fingers through Rheba’s hair until he found the Fssireeme. He stroked the snake, knowing that Fssa appreciated touch as much as any legged being. “He hoped that the Equality navtrix would know where his home was.”

“Maybe the Seurs can help him,” said Daemen.

“Who or what are they?”

“The people who instruct my planet.”

“Teachers?” asked Kirtn.

Daemen hesitated. “They are hereditary mentors. That’s as close as I can come in Universal. They investigate all the histories of Daemen, then bring back their discoveries and instruct people in their proper use.”

“All the histories? What does that mean?” asked Rheba. “How can a planet have more than one history?”

“All planets do,” said Daemen, surprised. “They’ve been settled and resettled, colonized and recolonized, conquered and freed at least as many times as there are Cycles. We count Seventeen Cycles in the Equality. And that doesn’t begin to recognize events and dominions that were limited to one planet.”

Rheba blinked, surprised by Daemen’s sudden enthusiasm and ... assurance. He was more man than boy now. He spoke in the accents of someone used to being heard. “Are you a Seur?”

“I’m The Seur, just as I’m The Daemen.”

“What does that mean?” asked Kirtn, measuring Daemen’s sudden power and remembering Satin’s warning, “Are you some kind of king or emperor on Daemen?”

Daemen’s face showed an amusement far beyond his apparent age. “That’s one way of putting it. But it’s not that simple. Cultures rarely are, you know. I can’t just wave my hand and thousands of people kiss my toes.” He sighed. “Do you know anything at all about my planet?”

The wistful tone made him back into a child again. Rheba leaned forward and touched his hand comfortingly, drawn as all akhenets were to vulnerability. “No, but we’d like to. Will you tell us?”

Daemen’s fingertips caressed the back of Rheba’s hand. Neither one of them noticed Kirtn’s sudden stiffness. But Rheba did not object to the familiar touch, so Kirtn did not.

“We’ve been settled, and unsettled,” he added wryly, “more times than any other Equality planet. We’re on a natural replacement route. Do you know about those? No, I can see you don’t. It doesn’t matter. Your ship has power to spare.”

“How do you know?” said Kirtn roughly. He and Rheba had been careful to say very little about their ship. The dead Trader Jal’s lust for the Devalon had been part of why they had been enslaved on Loo. They had no desire to arouse the greed of anyone else.

“Only five replacements to Daemen. Isn’t that what you said?” he asked Rheba.

“Yes. And three changeovers.”

Daemen dismissed the changeovers with a flick of one long finger. Even the most primitive ship could change direction and speed. “Daemen has some of the highest technology available to the Equality, thanks to the Seurs. Yet it took my family’s ship eleven replacements to reach Onan.”

“Eleven? Are you sure?” asked Kirtn, surprise clear in his voice. “You were very young, weren’t you?”

“I was young, but I wasn’t deaf and blind. It was my first time in space. I remember each changeover and replacement perfectly. It was a dream come true. It was the first time I really believed that I was the luckiest man alive.” His face changed as he remembered the nightmare that had followed. “Eleven replacements. I’m sure.”

Daemen looked into Rheba’s cinnamon eyes, trying to see if she believed him. “Your ship represents a quantum leap in knowledge to me. I’m The Seur. I’m interested in technology that might help my people. That’s why The Daemen—my mother—left home. She hadn’t been very lucky at finding useful technology in the old places. And without such finds, my people will eventually die.”

Rheba and Kirtn looked at one another. Each knew the other was remembering Deva, where their own people had died. Finally, Rheba spoke. “Are your people in immediate danger?”

“I don’t know. I think so. The situation must have been desperate or the Seurs wouldn’t have sent our planet’s Luck into space looking for a solution.”

“Your planet’s luck?” asked Rheba, not understanding.

“My mother, The Daemen. She was our planet’s Luck. We’re bred for it. But there was some sort of problem with her. She never found anything useful after the first time—and even that was a minor find, a way of dyeing synthetic fibers red. Unfortunately, she didn’t find a way of making synthetic fibers that would take that particular color.”

Rheba and Kirtn exchanged another look. It was Kirtn who turned back to question Daemen. “So your mother went out into the Equality to find new technologies to help your people, is that it?”

Daemen smiled crookedly. “Mostly, yes. The Seurs insisted she take her whole family with her. Probably thought she’d need all the Luck she could lift.” The smile faded. “It wasn’t enough. We hadn’t been on Onan a day before we were kidnapped and sent to Loo.”

“Trader Jal?” asked Kirtn.

“Greasy man with blue hair, blue skin and a scar on one hand?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the one. He kept complaining that we weren’t worth the energy to transport us to Loo. Actually”—his lips twisted in a mocking smile—“he was right. Everyone died in the Pit but me, and I didn’t bring much of a price.” He paused. “You did kill him, didn’t you?”

“Jal?” Kirtn touched Rheba’s hair where Fssa lay hidden. “The Fssireeme killed him.”

Daemen looked at Rheba’s hair with new interest. “Poisonous?”

“No,” Then, before he could ask more questions, Kirtn asked one of his own. “Who’s ruling—instructing—the planet while you’re gone?”

“The Seurs.”

“Are they going to be glad to see you?” asked the Bre’n bluntly.

Surprise crossed Daemen’s unlined face, making him look even younger. “Of course. The planet must be in a bad way by now. Its Luck has been gone for years.”

“There are many kinds of luck,” pointed out Kirtn. “Most kinds you’re better off without.”

“Are you saying that my mother was Bad Luck!” Daemen’s face was flushed, furious. He spit out the last two words as though they were the most offensive epithet he knew.

Before Kirtn could reply, the ship chimed and warned of a coming replacement. There was a subdued rush for handholds and braces; at high speeds, replacement could be unpleasant. The ship shuddered once, sending its interior into blackness. Gradually the light and colors returned, but in the subdued halftones that indicated the ship was still in replacement mode.

Kirtn let go of the pilot mesh and turned to look for Daemen. No one was there. He remembered the angry young face and sighed. He had not meant to offend Daemen. He certainly had no desire to kill Daemen, as Satin had ordered.

On the other hand, Kirtn knew he would not be entirely comfortable while Daemen was on board. He told himself it was because of Satin’s enigmatic warning—but he kept remembering Daemen’s pale fingers stroking the back of Rheba’s hand.

VII

Rheba awoke moaning and clutching her head. She lashed out reflexively, trying to reach the source of her pain. Her hand hit the hard muscles of Kirtn’s chest. He woke, realized what was happening and held her tightly against his body.

“Fssa!” yelled Kirtn. “Fssa!”

There was no answer. Kirtn combed his fingers through Rheba’s hair, knowing that he would not find the snake there but hoping anyhow. As he had feared, the Fssireeme was not there. He was off somewhere on the ship, talking to Rainbow, causing Rheba’s pain.

She screamed, half asleep, knowing only that an animal was trapped in her brain and gnawing its way to freedom. She writhed and fought Kirtn while he tried to keep her from banging her head against the unyielding walls.

A slim form bent over the bunk and grabbed one of Rheba’s flailing hands. Kirtn looked up and saw Daemen. The young man’s face was tight with fear.

“What is it?” asked Daemen, wrestling with Rheba’s surprising strength. “Is she sick?”

“No. She’s just—”

Rheba’s body convulsed. Her akhenet lines flared as though she were under attack.

“Let go of her,” said Kirtn, realizing the danger.

“She’s hot! I didn’t know anyone could be so hot and live!”

“Let go.’” Kirtn’s harsh tone said more than words.

Daemen leaped back just as Rheba burst into flames. Energy coursed dangerously, leaping out toward the crowded control room. Kirtn’s strong hands pressed against the pulse in her neck. Just as the first searing tongues reached Daemen, Rheba groaned and went limp.

Kirtn held her, singing Bre’n apologies into her hair.

M/dere pushed forward, holding a black Fssireeme in her hard hands. Wordlessly, she tossed the limp snake onto the bunk.

Kirtn did not need a translator to tell him she would just as soon have killed the odd being who had caused her J/taaleri so much pain. The Bre’n was in complete agreement. He glared at Fssa, who was mortified by what had happened.

“Say something,” snarled Kirtn. “Tell me why I shouldn’t tie you in little knots and stuff you into the converter.”

“I thought ... I thought I was out of her range,” whispered Fssa miserably, “It was all right the other times I spoke to Rainbow.” The Fssireeme was dead black, not even a hint of color along his sinuous length, “I don’t know what happened.”

“Where were you?”

“In the tool niche.” Fssa did not add that the tool niche was precisely where Kirtn had told him to go to talk with Rainbow.

The Bre’n swore, then sighed. He stroked Rheba’s hair. She was sleeping now, true sleep, not the unconsciousness he had forced on her moments ago. Her strength had shocked him then. It made him thoughtful now. She was years too young to be so powerful. Already she commanded greater fire than many mature dancers he had known.

He smiled ruefully to himself, remembering that it was the potential of devastating/renewing energies that had first drawn him to a sleeping Senyas baby called Rheba. She had fulfilled her promise—and more.

Fssa made a small noise. In a Fourth People it would have been called throat-clearing, but the Fssireeme had no throat to clear. “Rainbow is bigger since it absorbed those other crystals,” said Fssa in Senyas. “It speaks much more clearly now, although its memories are still only fragments of a greater past.”

“It speaks much too clearly now,” Kirtn said grimly. “Rheba went into convulsions and nearly slagged the control room before I stopped her.”

Silence spread outward from the Fssireeme. He became an even denser black. Kirtn sighed again. The snake was not at fault; he had not known that Rainbow’s increased size would also increase its range and ability to cause Rheba pain.

“I just wanted to know if Rainbow had ever heard of Ssimmi,” whispered Fssa. Though he spoke in Senyas, he added a whistle of Bre’n longing that made everyone within hearing ache with sympathy.

Kirtn’s anger slid away. He knew what it was to lose a home. The cataract of fire that had destroyed his planet was also burned into his brain. Even in his dreams, Deva was dead. “Did you find your planet?”

Kirtn’s gentle tone brought a glimmer of lightness back to the snake’s body. “No,” said Fssa sadly. “Rainbow had never heard of it under any of the names I know. But if we find more stones, maybe more of Rainbow’s memory will return. Maybe then it will know Ssimmi.”

“Maybe. But snake—”

“Yes?”

“Be sure you’re out of Rheba’s range when you ask. Be very sure.”

Fssa’s whistled agreement was full of apologies and promises. Before the last note died, the ship chimed and announced that the final replacement was imminent. The Fssireeme repeated the announcement, loudly, in several languages at once. There was a subdued scramble for secure positions.

The maneuver was brief and smooth, but it woke Rheba. She retained only a vague memory of pain. It was enough. She looked at Fssa with anger lighting the cinnamon depths of her eyes.

“He was asking about Ssimmi,” said Kirtn quickly. “In the tool niche.”

She absorbed the information in silence. Then, “Did he find his home?”

“No.”

“Too bad. That would have made it worth the pain. Almost.” She grimaced and rubbed her temples, trying to banish the echoes of agony. “Where are we?”

As though in answer, the ship chimed and announced that it would come out of replacement in three seconds. The ship quivered very slightly, chimed, and announced that it had taken up a far orbit around the planet Daemen.

Rheba pushed forward to the pilot mesh, but did not object when Kirtn pulled it over himself instead of her. The aftermath of Fssa’s chat with Rainbow had affected her reflexes just enough to make communication with the computer a chore rather than a pleasure.

Kirtn quickly checked that there were neither active nor passive defenses in the area. Apparently the planet was either unarmed or so subtly armed that the Devalon’s sensors were defeated. Judging from Daemen’s remarks about the advanced technology of the ship, Kirtn decided that the planet was probably as harmless as it appeared from orbit With a silent prayer to the Inmost Fire, he guided the ship into a close orbit.

The planet ballooned in the viewscreen, then shrank into seeming solidarity as the image was transformed into a hologram. Rheba and Kirtn watched in silence as the rust-colored world with the vanishingly thin atmosphere turned overhead in the control room.

As Daemen had said, the planet was a dismal place. Rock and not much else.

“Is it as dead as it looks?” asked Rheba finally.

Daemen answered over her shoulder, startling her. “That depends on what you’re used to. It’s not all overrun with plants like Loo or oceans like Onan. We have a lot of space to ourselves.”

Kindly, Rheba did not point out that few other Fourth People in the galaxy would want to live in that space. She remembered some of the geological history she had been taught on Deva and looked thoughtfully at the world turning slowly overhead. “Didn’t you ever have oceans or big lakes—something?” she asked as the planet revealed a waterless southern hemisphere.

“No. Actually, the Seurs believe that Fourth People or any other kind of advanced life couldn’t have evolved here. We think we were colonized during the Zaarain Cycle. They’re the only ones who would have had a technology equal to tapping the planet’s core for energy and water. When the planet was first colonized—and that was so long ago the records are preserved as fossils in sandstone—there were no other life forms above the level of lichen. There still aren’t, except for us, and we depend entirely on installations left over from Cycles we know almost nothing about.”

“Why did anyone ever colonize this misbegotten rock?” asked Rheba absently, thinking aloud.

“I told you. It’s on a natural replacement route,” said Daemen, his voice a bit defensive. However repellent the planet might be to a fire dancer, it was his home.

“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” said Rheba. “It’s only that ... there just isn’t much to the planet.”

“It’s more than you have,” said Daemen tightly. Then, “I’m sorry. Please don’t look like that.” He smiled and touched her cheek. “Forgive me?”

Rheba smiled in spite of her anger. She could no more blame Daemen for defending his home than she could blame Fssa for searching for his.

“Are there any landing regulations?” asked Kirtn brusquely, jostling Daemen as he rearranged the pilot mesh.

Daemon’s hand dropped from Rheba’s cheek. “I don’t think so. We didn’t have more ships after we left. Nobody ever comes here, either.” His expression became both amused and hard. “Superstitious idiots! They believe their own myths.”

Kirtn, remembering Satin, said, “Oh? What myths?”

“They act as though Luck were contagious,” muttered Daemen. “See that dark spot?” he asked, pointing over his head to the southern hemisphere.

“Here?” asked Kirtn, pointing to a blot not far from the south pole of the planet.

“Yes. That’s Center Square. All of our cities are on a modified grid pattern that connects to other Squares. At least, they used to connect. There are some pretty big mountains to avoid,” he added, explaining the absence of people in various parts of the southern hemisphere.

“What about here?” said Rheba, pointing to a similar network of lines and splotches in the northern hemisphere.

“Ruins,” Daemen said curtly. “They were farthest from Center Square. When the master grid energy went eccentric, they died.” He saw the look on her face and added, “It was a long time ago. At least two Cycles, from what the Seurs have been able to find. We don’t go up there much. The farther you get from Square One, the less advanced the technology, as a rule.”

“Someone might have survived,” said Rheba, oddly moved by a disaster hundreds of thousands of years in the past.

“Someone did.” Daemen made a dismissing motion. “They’re savages now. That’s a long way to go to study savages. We’ve got plenty closer to home.” His slim finger pointed to a tawny patch of land over the south pole. “There, for instance. The energy grid went eccentric in the last Cycle. The Seurs patched what they could, but the mountains here are terrible. Square One survived—at least, its food installation did. It still registers on our maps.”

Daemen stared at the spot for a long moment. “Mother wanted to go there. It was the first colony. She believed it would have the most advanced technology there, buried, waiting to be found by The Luck. But the other Seurs talked her out of it. We went out into the galaxy instead.” He made a wry face. “The Daemen isn’t coming home with his hands full of miracles. The Seurs will be disappointed.”

Rheba put her hand over Daemen’s in silent sympathy. It would be hard on him to go home with nothing but his family’s death to give to his people. Her hair stirred, curling across the young man’s cheek.

Kirtn glanced away from the Devalon’s outputs, saw Rheba’s hair silky across Daemen’s cheek, and asked coldly, “Just how disappointed will they be?”

Daemen looked confused. “They won’t be hostile, if that’s what you mean. They’ll be glad enough just to get their Daemen back. Without me to guide their archaeological searches, they might just as well pick a dig on a random basis.”

“You’re rather young to be so knowledgeable.” Kirtn’s voice was neutral, yet somehow challenging.

“What does age have to do with it? I’m The Daemen.”

The Bre’n gave a muscular shrug. “Your culture, your problem. Ours is to get you home in one piece. Is there a spaceport beacon?”

“I don’t know.”

Kirtn turned back to the outputs. Bre’n whistles and Senyas words filled the cabin. An output turned blue-gray with silver dots. A flat mechanical tone replaced the discourse between man and machine. Kirtn looked back at Daemen. “You have a spaceport beacon. Primitive, but effective. We’re locked on. If we stray, the tone will vary. You should be home in”—he glanced down at the outputs—“about seventeen minutes.”

Although he said nothing more, his listeners had the distinct impression that Kirtn would have been happier if the figure had been in seconds.

Rheba looked closely at her Bre’n, wondering why he had taken such a dislike to the charming Daemen. She let go of Daemon’s hand and touched Kirtn’s shoulder, silently asking what was wrong. He ignored her. The only thing he wanted to say on the subject of Daemen was goodbye.

Kirtn raced the ship toward the planet at a speed that was only marginally safe. Though the Devalon was equipped to protest, it did not. The ship’s Senyasi builders had also programmed it to recognize the energy patterns of Bre’n rage.

VIII

No one met them at the spaceport. A cold, fierce wind blew in a cloudless sky, making the Devalon hum like a too-tight wire. The ship quickly extruded stabilizers. The humming ceased, but not the feeling of unease that it had caused. Scraps of plastic chased clouds of grit across the scarred apron. None of the scars were new, and there were no other ships in sight.

Rheba looked at the hologram of the spaceport and shivered. She did not need the ship’s outputs to tell her that Daemon’s namesake was a cold, barren planet.

Daemen, as though seeing the city for the first time, looked as dismayed as Rheba. It was obvious that the reality outside did not match his memories.

“How long were you gone?” asked Rheba.

“Four years.”

“Just four? But you said you were a child when you left.”

Daemen turned, focusing his rain-colored eyes on her. “My years are longer than yours. In Loo terms, call it seventeen years.”

Rheba shuddered. In Loo terms, that was an eternity. Slaves might have shorter lifespans, but it certainly did not seem that way to the slaves. She looked speculatively at Daemen again, wondering how such a vulnerable young man had survived so long on Loo.

“Ready?” asked Kirtn abruptly.

Rheba turned toward her Bre’n. “But there’s no one out there. We can’t just dump Daemen downside and leave!”

Kirtn’s expression said that he could do just that with no difficulty at all. He was very tired of her longing looks at the handsome young enigma who was so important that a whole planet was named after him. “What do you suggest we do—start a baby-sitting service?”

Akhenet lines lit beneath Rheba’s skin, giving her a sullen glow. “I suggest,” she said angrily, “that we either wait for some contact or give him an escort to whatever passes for the local palace.” She turned her back on Kirtn and spoke gently to Daemen. “Which would be better, Daemen? Wait or go looking?”

Before Daemen could answer, Kirtn spoke. His words were clipped, his tone as cold as the wind dividing around the ship. “Looks like we don’t have a choice. Company coming.”

He whistled curt instructions to the computer. The hologram of the spaceport shifted, zooming in on one area. As the magnification increased, the figures walking up to the edge of the spaceport became clearer. They were a ragged lot, yet they walked with the assurance that came from power.

“Know them?” asked Kirtn.

Daemen bent forward to peer into the hologram, which had descended to chest height. The Bre’n noted sourly that Daemen chose to lean over Rheba’s shoulder rather than take a half step aside to improve his view. A curt whistle shifted the hologram back up to the ceiling. Unfortunately, it did not shift Daemen’s position.

“Seurs,” Daemen said after a moment. “You can tell by the walk. They usually wear special clothes. Guess the synthesizer still goes eccentric from time to time.”

Rheba looked at the approaching group. The only thing “special” about their clothes was the wretched fit and color. The last time she had seen something that repulsive was when the Devalon’s food cycle had crossed outlets with the ship’s sanitary arrangements during a rough replacement.

“Do you remember any of them?” asked Kirtn.

Daemen stared at the approaching men and women. He shifted and stared again. “They’re thinner than I remember,” he said dubiously. “One of them might be Seur Tric.”

“Friend or foe?” snapped Kirtn.

Daemen turned to face the hostile Bre’n. “Why do you keep hinting that the Seurs don’t want me back?—”

Kirtn’s gold eyes took on the sheen of hammered metal, but his voice was neutral. Even so, Rheba put her hand on Daemen’s arm in a gesture that was meant as both warning and protection. Kirtn ignored her glance, but her hand on Daemen’s arm rankled more than the young man’s demanding tone.

“Correct me if I’m wrong—you’re the leader of this planet?” asked Kirtn softly.

“Yes.”

“But you’ve been gone, so the Seurs have been running things.”

“That’s their job,” said Daemen shortly.

“Do they like it?”

Daemen looked surprised. “Of course!”

“Then what makes you think they’ll just tamely hand over the power to you?”

“I’m The Daemen.”

“Is that another word for stupid?” asked Kirtn, disgust clear in his voice.

Before Daemen could answer, Fssa stuck his head out of Rheba’s hair. “The only possible translation of ‘Daemen’ in any language is ‘luck.’”

“Shut up, snake!”

Hastily, Fssa ducked back out of sight.

Rheba looked at Kirtn. The lines on her body still rippled with light, but now it indicated unease more than anger. Her Bre’n mentor was not acting rationally—or at least not very politely. It was unlike him to be so abrupt with a vulnerable young being like Daemen. With an unconscious, worried frown, she rubbed the akhenet lines on the back of her arms and turned away to study the hologram.

The group’s clothes did not improve on further examination. If anything, the color combinations became more repulsive. Also—She leaned forward with a muffled exclamation. Some of them were wearing ropes of jewels, great clumps strung haphazardly from crudely formed plastic links. In all, the gems were almost as ugly as the clothes. There was one cheering sign, though. “They aren’t armed,” she said. “At least, not in any way I can see. What do the Devalon’s sensors say?”

Without comment, Kirtn turned away from his disgusted contemplation of Daemen’s innocence. A whistled trill sent colors racing over the ship’s outputs. The Bre’n watched a moment, then commented, “Not enough metal on them to make a baby’s ring/’ He looked up at Daemen. “What kind of weapons do you use?”

“We don’t. Well, not often. Whips,” he said finally, reluctantly. “Mother wouldn’t touch the plastic knives. If they don’t shatter, they bend. She said they weren’t worth the shit that went into making them.”

Kirtn smiled, wishing it were the mother rather than the son who had been rescued from Loo. She sounded a lot more practical. But she had not survived. He looked at Daemen, speculation bright in his yellow Bre’n eyes. How had the insolent halfling outlived the rest of his family? Was he as treacherous as he was handsome?

“I don’t see any whips,” said Rheba. “As for knives ... those clothes are so baggy they could be wearing a service for twelve and not make a wrinkle.”

 

“Don’t worry about knives,” said Daemen, smiling reminiscently. “Mother was right. About all they’re good for is drawing designs in warm pudding. Besides, once they see who I am, knives will be the last thing on their minds.”

Kirtn disagreed silently and strenuously. If he were the Seurs, knives would be the only thing on his mind, unless better weapons were available.

The group stopped at the edge of the apron, looking up at the slim alien ship. They talked among themselves in low murmurs that the Devalon’s sensors easily picked up.

As the first syllable of the language sounded in the cabin, Fssa reappeared and went into a series of astonishing contortions. After trying a variety of shapes, he settled on his usual form plus a concave extension ringed by metallic blue frills. Using the extension, he sucked every bit of alien language out of the air, learning and extrapolating with fantastic speed.

Daemen, who had never seen Fssa as anything more than a snake, stared at the transformations in open awe. “What is he doing?”

“He’s—” began Rheba.

“Stretching,” interrupted Kirtn. When Rheba would have finished her explanation, he closed his hand firmly over her wrist and thought an emphatic negative.

Rheba flinched at the no ringing in her mind. She started to argue, thought better of it, and pointedly turned away from Kirtn. She was not, however, going to go against such a direct order from her mentor, even though she could not understand why he did not want Daemen to know the nature of the Fssireeme’s genius as a translator.

She stared at the hologram as though the skinny, badly dressed natives were the most fascinating thing in the galaxy. Gems winked back at her, as gaudy and improbable as diamonds on dung beetles.

When he was sure that she would not disobey him, Kirtn released Rheba’s wrist and watched Fssa. The snake turned his sensors toward Kirtn without moving the odd extension lie had made. A Bre’n whistle issued from some undetermined place to the left of the dish. Kirtn listened until he was sure that the Fssireeme had learned the new language. Only then did he turn back to Daemen.

“What are they saying?” asked Kirtn blandly.

“Not much. They’re excited by the ship, wondering who we are and why we’re here, that sort of thing,” said Daemen absently. He swayed forward, closer to the hologram—and Rheba—as he tried to identify individual Seurs.

“Fssa?” whistled Kirtn. “is that what they’re talking about?”

“Yes,” answered the snake in Bre’n. “They’re wondering if we might have some technology to trade.”

“And they’re hoping we’ll trade technologies,” added Daemen, still staring into the tube.

Kirtn gave the young man a hard look, but Daemen did not notice. “Still think they’ll be happy to see you?” asked the Bre’n.

“They’d be happier if I were bringing them something,” admitted Daemen.

Rheba looked around. “That shouldn’t be too hard,” she said. “We have lots of odds and ends that we don’t use.” Her glance fell on Rainbow. It was wrapped in its fine cargo mesh, hanging from a recessed hook over the control board. Rainbow dangled overhead whenever it was not in the tool locker, bending Fssa into improbable shapes. “Too bad you aren’t a machine,” said Rheba to the crystal mass. “I’d trade you for something useful.”

Daemen stood on tiptoe, leaned, and unhooked the cargo net.

“What are you doing?” demanded Kirtn.

Surprised at his tone, Daemen took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was valuable to you.”

Kirtn looked sourly at the crystals gleaming through the fine cargo net. Remembering Rheba’s agony, he was not too sure that Rainbow was valuable to him. “Maybe it isn’t. So what?”

Fssa made an anguished sound. His body darted protectively toward Rainbow, but it was out of reach.

Daemen looked at the snake nearly falling out of Rheba’s hair, then at the expressionless Bre’n. Daemen glanced at Rheba. She, too, looked as though she were trying to decide if Rainbow was more trouble than it was worth.

“Some of these crystals are very old, as old as any my mother ever found,” said Daemen simply. “But the machine must be badly tuned, or it wouldn’t give you such a vicious headache every time it’s activated.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Rheba. “Rainbow isn’t a machine.”

“Of course it is. It’s a Zaarain machine—or what’s left of one.”

“Are you sure?” asked Kirtn, looking at Rainbow with new interest.

“Look,” said Daemen confidently, “your people may build the best ship in the galaxy, but mine know more about history than any six races put together. That,” he said, tapping a fingernail on one of Rainbow’s scintillant surfaces, “is a Zaarain construct. A machine.”

 

Kirtn frowned. He knew that Zaarain constructs were not necessarily machines. The Zaarains had constructed unusual life forms as well as incredible machines. Nonetheless, Rainbow as machine made more sense than Rainbow as living entity. Of course, the lithic races of the First People were both improbable and very real.

“Rainbow is part of an installation core, I think. Hard to tell,” added Daemen, turning the net so that he could see all sides of the crystal mass. “Not much is left.”

“Then how can you be sure?” asked Kirtn.

“The carvings,” said Daemen in the patient tone of a teacher talking to a very stupid student. “Etchings, really. Or viasynth, if you want to be technical.”

“Then it isn’t ... alive?” asked Rheba.

Daemen laughed. “It’s a machine. How can it be alive?”

Fssa burst into rapid Bre’n speech, arguing in stanzas of desperate poetry that his friend was as alive as he himself was. Rainbow was fragmented, to be sure, but that did not change the fact of its viability.

Kirtn whistled a shrill imperative. Fssa subsided. He was very black as he wove himself back into Rheba’s comforting hair.

“Assuming it’s a machine,” said Kirtn, “what good is it to you?”

“None, probably. But it’s better than empty hands. I’ll pay you for it as soon as I can. Although, if the synthesizer is snarky, it might be a while until I can make something useful for you.”

Rheba hesitated, torn between Daemon’s need and Fssa’s affection for Rainbow. She turned toward Kirtn. “Daemen did, after all, steal most of the price of the navtrix.....”

Kirtn could have pointed out that without her, Daemen would have been stuck on Loo. But he did not. If Rainbow was a machine, it belonged to Rheba, for it had been Rheba who insisted on saving it from the depredations of slave children. If Rainbow was not a machine, it belonged to itself, and could not be given away or sold.

She looked from Rainbow dangling passively in the cargo net to Daemen. He looked both vulnerable and hopeful; despite his brave words about being welcomed back, it was obvious that he was worried about coming home empty-handed.

Fssa keened softly. It was hard for Rheba to think with the Fssireeme mourning beautifully against her neck. There were no words for his sadness, simply emotion transformed into music. She had not heard anything so sorrowful since Loo, where First People sang of eternal slavery.

Kirtn whistled gently, telling Fssa to be quiet. It was Rheba’s decision. With a tiny wail the Fssireeme obeyed. She looked at Kirtn, wanting to ask his advice; but it was like looking at the face of a stranger. She saw as though for the first time his inhuman beauty, a perfection attained only by Bre’ns, strength and invulnerability. There was no help there, only a mentor waiting to see how well his protйgйe had learned. She looked toward Daemen, slim and vulnerable, needing her as her mentor did not.

And she could not decide.

Her akhenet lines surged raggedly. She closed her eyes and spoke a dancer litany in her mind. The currents of energy flickering through her steadied, then faded into normal modes, invisible beneath her skin. She looked at Rainbow, caught in a cargo net, swinging beneath Daemen’s fingers. What had made her think she was choosing between two men? The only choice was whether Rainbow was machine or bizarre sentience, dead or living. That had nothing to do with Kirtn or Daemen.

The ship chimed once and said, “Downside connections are in place. The downside com channel is hot.”

Rheba turned back to the hologram. The group outside had gathered around a slender, slanting pole. She assumed it was a communication device, and that it was now connected to the ship. Otherwise the Devalon would have referred to the com channel as cold, not hot. She hesitated, then faced Daemen and held out her hand. “I’m not sure Rainbow is mine to give away. Until I’m sure ...”

With a wry, understanding smile, Daemen gave the cargo net and its enigmatic burden to Rheba. “I’m still The Daemen. Empty hands or not, I’m home. Thank you.”

His words only made Rheba feel worse. She looked at the desolate spaceport and the grubby, painfully thin people waiting there, their jewels incongruous against their awful clothes.

“I don’t know much about machines,” she said suddenly, “but I’m from a culture your people have never heard of. If they’re historians, that will be worth something to them, won’t it? I’ll go with you.”

Daemen’s delight was as obvious as Kirtn’s displeasure. The young man grabbed her in a hug that was not brotherly. ‘Td like that!”

“How long are you staying?” asked the Bre’n, his face a mask that should have warned her.

But she was too distracted by Daemen’s hug to notice Kirtn. “We can’t stay too long. The ship’s overtaxed as it is with a”

 

the people aboard. A day, maybe two?” she asked, searching Daemon’s gray eyes. “Will that be enough?”

Kirtn looked at Daemen’s face and wondered how he had ever thought of him as anything but a man—a man who was as aroused by Rheba as the Bre’n was himself. Daemen might be as smooth and slender as a Senyas child, but any resemblance ended there. Unfortunately, that was more than enough to engage the akhenet protective instinct.

The drive to have and nurture children had been artificially enhanced in both Bre’n and Senyas akhenets until it was an obsession. It had been a necessary, if drastic, solution to the problem of producing more akhenets. Only very rarely did a Bre’n-Senyas couple produce offspring, yet the pairing of most Bre’n-Senyas akhenets was so complete, so exclusive, that the birth rate had fallen off to almost nothing. The artificial, obsessive focus on children was all that had saved the akhenet gifts in both races from extinction.

As Kirtn watched Rheba in Daemen’s arms, he sourly concluded that akhenet exclusivity would not have been a problem with him and his fire dancer. Unless he was the one excluded. His eyes narrowed and anger uncurled along the same channels he used to reinforce Rheba’s akhenet talents.

He felt the heat, knew the danger, and invoked Bre’n discipline to keep himself from sliding closer to the deadly berserker state known as rez. The transition of Senyas akhenet from, child to adult was the most difficult—and dangerous—of times for a Bre’n-Senyas pair. The Senyas could not help sending out conflicting sexual signals; and every Bre’n was more passionate than patient. It was not uncommon for akhenet pairs to die, killed by a jealous Bre’n in rez. Such tragedies were a theme in many Bre’n poems and resonated in Bre’n songs.

But Rheba did not know those songs, for Deva had died before she could learn. Nor could Kirtn tell her, not now. It was her choice. Dancer’s Choice. She must make it without coercion from him.

Grimly, he instructed the ship to activate the downside com channel. His amplified voice cut across the mutters of the group outside. Although Fssa could have acted as translator, Kirtn preferred to act as though he had no access to the native language.

“Hello, downsiders,” he said in Universal. “We’ve got a present for you. Do we have your permission to leave ship?”

There was an excited outburst of sound, then the group subsided. A man stepped forward. His clothes were dreadful but he wore more jewels than anyone else. As he bent over the com pole, his necklace turned and flashed in the sun.

“Greetings,” said the man. “I’m Seur Tric, and you are most welcome on our planet. Are you traders?”

The eagerness in Tric’s voice made Kirtn smile thinly. “We’re not traders, but we have something for you.”

Tric’s puzzlement showed clearly on the hologram. “A gift? That’s not necessary. We have no port fees. We’re scholars, not profiteers. Everyone is welcome here.”

Kirtn stared at the hologram and wondered if Tric was as innocent as he sounded. Somehow, he doubted it. Power and innocence did not go together. “I’m glad everyone is welcome,” said Kirtn dryly. He leaned over, grabbed Daemen, and put him in front of the ship’s pickup. At a whistled command, the ship took Daemen’s image and projected it outside. The result was lifelike—and startling. “Recognize him?”

Only Tric stood his ground without flinching. He squinted, peering myopically at the hologram of Daemen. “Jycc? Is it you?”

“Not Jycc. Not anymore. I’m The Daemen now.”

A sound rose from the group. As one they stared at the image of the boy who was Jycc no longer. Tric raised trembling hands toward the hologram, then bowed his head. His breath came in a deep sob.

“Oh my Seurs,” he said, hiding his face, “The Luck is with us again.”

Kirtn looked between the group outside the ship and The Daemen within. The Bre’n would have felt a lot better if he knew whether the emotion shaking the Seurs was pleasure—or fear.

IX

Rheba pulled heavy clothes out of a concealed cupboard. She began to dress for the cold outside. Kirtn read the downside statistics on the computer outputs and reached for his own clothes cupboard. Even for a Bre’n, it was a bit chilly on Daemen. Rheba looked out from the hooded green wraparound she had chosen and saw that Kirtn also was dressed for downside weather.

“You don’t have to go,” she said.

“I’m going whether you like it or not.”

She flinched as though he had slapped her. She had never heard such coldness in his voice before. She started to ask what was wrong, then decided not to. She knew better than to interrogate an angry Bre’n.

“Fssa.” Kirtn’s tone was such that even Daemen turned to stare. The Fssireeme quickly showed his head, sensors wheeling with color. “Tell M/dere to guard the ship. No one is to board or leave without my direct permission.”

Rapid, guttural sounds issued from the snake. M/dere looked from Kirtn to Rheba, but did not protest receiving orders from the Bre’n—particularly when the orders were eminently sensible tactics. She grunted assent and went to stand where the downside portal would open in the wall of the ship.

“Tell Rainbow to make himself into a necklace,” said Kirtn, his tone still abrupt. “And be quick about it, Fssireeme.”

Fssa assumed a bizarre shape. Rheba closed her mouth into a thin line, anticipating pain. She did not protest. Even though he was angry, she knew her Bre’n would not let her be hurt unless it was necessary.

The pain was very quick, gone almost before she had time to flinch, Fssa whistled soft apologies. She stroked his body reassuringly. With a last trill he disappeared into her long gold hair.

Kirtn reached into the cargo mesh and pulled out Rainbow. Instead of its usual sunburst shape, it had shifted to become a long necklace of stones held together by force fields only it understood. Kirtn examined the necklace, tugged gently, then with more force. The necklace remained intact. He slipped it over his head. If a gaudy string of jewels constituted status on this plane!, he would go suitably attired.

“Snake.” His voice was curt.

Fssa’s head poked out of Rheba’s hair over her ear. His sensors were iridescent as he sought out the Bre’n. “Yes?”

“Translate, but don’t let anyone except me hear you unless I tell you otherwise.”

He used the precise Senyas speech. There could be no way for the Fssireeme to misunderstand: It was Kirtn, not Rheba, who would give orders for this expedition.

Rheba glanced quickly at her mentor but did not object. Not yet. He had done nothing unreasonable. She did not know why he distrusted Daemen and his people, but she did know that her Bre’n was balanced on the thin edge of rage. She would do nothing to push him over and everything she could to draw him back.

“Open,” snapped Kirtn.

His flat command did not need to he repealed. The ship opened promptly, allowing the thin, cold air of Daemen to sweep through the control room. Kirtn went first, an impressive figure of strength moving easily down the steep ramp, jewels winking in the attenuated sunlight. Behind him came Rheba, her akhenet lines pulsing uneasily, lighting her face until it echoed the metallic gold of Kirtn’s eyes. Last came Daemen, no taller than Rheba, both of them diminished by Kirtn’s bulk.

Daemen’s gray eyes lit with delight as he saw Seur Tric waiting at the bottom of the ramp. Daemen ran past Rheba and Kirtn and threw his arms around the older man.

The variety in appearance among Seurs was astonishing. One was quite tall, another had fur as long as Rheba’s hair, a third had tricolored strips running diagonally across his body. Seur Tric, by comparison, was modestly endowed. His skin was pink and he had tufts of hair at cheek, chin and first knuckles.

“Uncle Tric,” laughed Daemen, stepping back to look at his mother’s younger brother. If she had died without bearing children, Tric would have been The Luck. But she had had many children, one of whom had survived to become The Daemen. “You’re so thin! And your clothes! Who dropped a shoe in the synthesizer this time?”

Tric’s face struggled between emotions that Kirtn could not name. Obviously Tric was happy to see the boy he had once known as Jycc. It was also obvious that being in the presence of The Daemen was not a happy thing. It could simply have been that Daemen’s presence meant that Tric’s sister was dead ... or it could have meant something less comforting, something that echoed the fear in Satin’s voice when she had said, Space him!

Kirtn looked away from the uneasy welcome. The other members of the group were murmuring among themselves and staring at Rainbow hanging across Kirtn’s muscular chest. He had worn his cape open, the better to display the multicolored crystals.

The long-furred man leaned closer, staring at a peculiarly carved crystal. His hand moved as though to grab the necklace but stopped well short of actually touching Rainbow or the Bre’n.

Tric turned away from his nephew. “Are you the ones responsible for bringing The Luck back to Daemen?” asked the Seur in accented but understandable Universal.

Kirtn was not sure he liked the way the question was phrased, but answered anyway. “Daemen was a slave on Loo. So were we. There was a rebellion.” His torso moved in a Bre’n shrug. “The Loo-chim died. We didn’t. My dancer”—he indicated Rheba—“promised all slaves a ride home. Her promise is kept.”

Before Kirtn could turn and stride back up the Devalon’s ramp, the group of Seurs fragmented into a babble of sound. Fssa’s artful translations could not be kept secret if Kirtn made the Fssireeme shout up the ramp to him.

With obvious reluctance, the Bre’n turned and faced the Seurs again. When he saw that Rheba was still at the bottom of the ramp, her hand on Daemen’s arm, the Bre’n gestured curtly for her to return to the ship.

“There’s no purpose in being rude,” whistled Rheba softly, resonances of confusion and regret woven through the complex Bre’n words. “If nothing else, we need clothes for the slaves.”

“The ship will manufacture clothes,” he answered in curt Senyas.

“Only if we let it renew itself from downside converters,” answered Rheba in Senyas. “It ate a lot of power getting here so quickly.” She did not add that it had been Kirtn’s idea to tear across the galaxy. Had she been the pilot, there would have been a slower, more energy-sane passage.

She saw rage like a darker shade of gold pooling in his eyes. Instinctively she ran up the ramp, touched him, telling him of her concern—and drawing energy out of him with a skill that shocked Kirtn. It was not a cure for his turmoil. It was simply a temporary means of keeping him from sliding any closer to rez.

He should have thanked her. He should have hugged her and held her, reassuring her. He had always done so in the past when the complexities of his Bre’n nature frightened her.

But it was not the past. She was older now, a woman in everything but understanding of her Bre’n ... and Daemen stood at the bottom of the ramp, slender and beguiling, making Kirtn feel as clumsy as a stone. He did not blame Rheba for being more attracted to Daemen’s smooth-skinned grace than she was to her mentor’s uncompromising strength. He did not blame her—but he did not like it, either.

He looked at her eyes. It was like looking into fire, searing him with possibilities. He—looked at Daemen. And then he looked at neither of them.

“You must come to the installation,” said Seur Tric, climbing partway up the ramp. It was not so much an invitation as a command.

“Yes,” said Daemen enthusiastically, following Rheba’s steps back up the ramp. He took her hand and smiled. “Please, I want to show you my world.”

Even Kirtn felt the enchantment of Daemen’s smile. And then-the Bre’n felt cold. He wanted to grab Rheba, run inside and throw the Devalon into space. Yet it was her choice, always. Dancer’s Choice.

Rheba looked up at Kirtn, silently asking if it would be all right to stay on the planet, but it was like looking at a stranger, a face made out of wood and hammered gold. Sudden anger flickered in her, echoed by akhenet lines. Anger, and something close to fear. It was cold on the ramp, and lonely. She turned back to Daemen, to the warmth promised in his smile. Without a word she let him lead her onto the spaceport’s cracked and pitted surface.

Kirtn did not move.

In spite of herself, Rheba listened for his footsteps. She told herself that she was so angry she did not care whether he came or went back to the ship. But she felt worse with every step. She did not know what was wrong with her Bre’n; Fssa’s melancholy mewing in her ear did nothing to make her feel better.

Just as she was about to turn around and run back to Kirtn, she heard the snap of his cape in the wind. He was following, but very silently, more like a predator than a friend.

She shivered and regretted the impulse that had led her down the ramp. Discreetly, she slowed her walk until Kirtn had to come alongside her or step on her heels. As he moved to go around her she put her hand on his arm. So great was her emotion that the touch joined them in minor mind dance. For a devastating instant she knew his consuming anger/hurt/fear—and he knew hers.

Kirtn jerked away, afraid that she would discover the jealousy that was driving him. But he could not bear the flash of her pain at his rejection. He called what shreds of discipline remained to him and stroked her seething hair, hoping that nothing more than a Bre’n’s deep love for a Senyas dancer would be transmitted to her.

Relief and pleasure surged through her, setting fire to her hair and akhenet lines.

Daemen flinched as a strand of Rheba’s hair crossed his face like molten wire. His startled cry told her what she had accidentally done. Across his pale cheek was a thin scarlet line.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice contrite, her eyes warm with concern and the fire that coursed through her. “I didn’t realize ... I’m not used to being around people who burn easily.”

It was to Daemon’s credit that he did not draw back when she lifted her hand to trace beneath the scorch mark on his cheek. He turned his head until his lips brushed her palm. “That’s all right,” he said, his eyes dancing with light and laughter. “I’ll just have to learn when to duck.”

Rheba giggled and touched Daemen’s lips with hair that no longer burned but sent sweet currents of energy surging through him. “I only burn when I’m not paying attention. Is that better?”

Daemen’s smile was as incandescent as her eyes.

Kirtn grimly hoped that she would forget herself and burn the young charmer to ash and gone—but he was careful not to touch her as he thought it. Then he saw Seur Tric looking speculatively from Rheba to Daemen. The Dementia frowned and looked away.

Yet Kirtn was sure that he had seen fear naked on the older man’s face in the instant before his wan face turned toward the buildings that ringed the spaceport. Why would the thought of The Daemen paired with Rheba bring fear to Tric? Or was it simple xenophobia that moved the Seur?

As he passed the sagging fence that divided spaceport from city, Kirtn whistled softly to himself. The transceiver that doubled as a cape fastener carried his whistle back to the Devalon. “Any interference, Ilfn?”

“None,” whispered his fastener in soft Senyas.

“Are the passengers restless?”

“Yes, but not to the point that they’ll take on J/taal mercenaries. Besides, no one wants to chance being enslaved on another grubby planet.”

Ilfn did not add that she thought it was foolish to the point of insanity that Kirtn and Rheba were on the planet alone. Nor did she need to. Her last sentences had been in Bre’n, a language that conducted emotions as inevitably as copper conducted electricity. She also did not need to say that she understood the jealousy that had goaded Kirtn into being so foolish. That, too, was conducted by her whistle.

“How is the ship handling the downside power conversions?” he asked.

“No problems yet. The spaceport must be better equipped than it looks.”

“How long before we have the power to travel and take care of our passengers?”

“Several hours.”

“Hours! I thought you said the spaceport is better equipped than it looks.”

“It looks,” whistled Ilfn crisply, “as if they’re still banging rocks together to get fire.”

Kirtn glanced around at the time-rounded, lumpy stone buildings and silently agreed. “Let me know as soon as we’re thirty minutes from full power.”

“Of course. And Kirtn?”

“Yes?”

“Your dancer is older than you think.”

Kirtn’s answer was harsh and off-key, loud enough to carry to Rheba. She looked away from Daemen to the intimidating lines of an angry Bre’n face. “Is something wrong on the ship?” she asked quickly.

“Nothing the J/taals can’t handle.”

“Is that why you made them stay on board?”

Kirtn had left the J/taals behind as a precaution. On a strange planet, it was smart to keep a force in reserve. But he was not going to say that to Rheba. She was so taken by Daemen’s charm that she would not believe his people might pose a danger to her, “Someone had to protect Ilfn and Lheket,” he said neutrally.

Rheba made a noncommittal sound. Ilfn needed about as much protection as a steel fern. She was Bre’n, and Bre’ns were strong. Lheket, however, was a child. Like Daemen. She looked covertly at The Luck walking alongside her. Not precisely a child, but certainly not a man, either. Somewhere between Lheket and Kirtn, neither child nor yet man. Like Lheket, Daemen still needed protection. She wondered why Kirtn could not see that, why he was not drawn to Daemen’s vulnerability as she was.

Seur Tric stopped to confer with the four men who had come with them from the spaceport. For the first time, Kirtn realized that one, perhaps two men had been left behind. He swore silently at his carelessness. He had been so absorbed in jealousy that he had not noticed there were two less of the skeletal Seurs escorting them. He took a grim satisfaction in the knowledge that M/dere and her mercenaries would not be similarly blind.

“What happened to the rest of the group?” Kirtn asked Daemen.

The young man glanced around. “Is someone missing?”

“One man. Maybe more.” Kirtn looked over his shoulder, but the coiner of a building cut off his view of the spaceport. “Do you always leave guards on off-planet ships?”

“Guards?” Daemen laughed. “What could you guard with a plastic knife? If anyone dropped back, it was probably sheer fascination. Show a Seur a machine that works and you’ll never get him away from it! I’m surprised Tric didn’t demand a tour of every cupboard and relay on the Devalon.”

Daemen’s explanation failed to reassure Kirtn. The last person who had been that fascinated by the Devalon was Trader Jal. That fascination had cost Rheba and Kirtn their freedom and Jal his life.

Kirtn murmured instructions into the transceiver. Behind him, out of sight, the Devalon closed into a seamless whole, impervious to any method of attack short of nuclear annihilation. The only connection the ship retained with downside was through his transceiver—and the downside power draw. He would not shut that off until an actual attack was mounted.

Then he told himself he was being foolish. The planet had no technology on it superior to the Devalon’s armaments. The people he had seen on the streets were lethargic, obviously on the edge of starvation. He doubted if they had one good fight left in them. And even if they did, what could plastic knives do against lightguns?

Yet he could not help glancing back over his shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that he had overlooked something.

X

The Central Installation, called Centrins by the natives, was huge. It was created from a single multihued material that seemed to sway gracefully, like flowers blooming beneath a clear river. Neither cracks nor stains marred the flowing walls and arched ceilings where colors called to each other in voices undimmed by time.

And much time had passed, more time than any man should have to sense, much less to live among its colored shadows. Kirtn felt time like an indefinable weight on his shoulders, a thickness in the very air he breathed.

Rheba leaned against his arm, reflexively seeking the comfort he could give her. She, too, sensed time like an immense entity brooding over Centrins. She drew Kirtn’s presence around her, warming herself against the distant intimations of eternity pouring by a chilling concept to entities for whom a handful of centuries spelled the whole of life.

Yet Centrins itself looked just born, sleek with newness. It glowed warmly, inviting human presence.

Even on closer inspection, the compound preserved its pristine appearance. The ground around Centrins might look old, the stone walls thrown up by later, more barbaric men might be worn to sand, but Centrins itself was untouched.

“Stasis?” asked Rheba, using Senyas because she could not bear to describe Centrins with emotional Bre’n.

“Did you feel any energy shift when we entered the compound?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not stasis,” said Kirtn flatly. “Even the Zaarain Cycle was stuck with the same physical laws we are. Where energy exists, perfect stasis doesn’t.”

“Zaarain?” asked Rheba. Then, “Of course. It has to be. No other Cycle had the ability to preserve its artifacts so well.”

“Too bad they weren’t as good with cultures.”

“People aren’t as amenable as matter/energy equations.”

He wondered if she was alluding to him. He stroked her arm and was rewarded with a smile that made him ache.

“At least this is as beautiful as I remembered it,” said Daemen, drawing Rheba away from Kirtn. The young man pointed to a museum that opened off the great hall they had entered. “That was where I first learned to recognize the Cycles by their artifacts. Seur Tric”—he smiled at his uncle—“was my best teacher.”

Seur Tric’s smile was small and fleeting, showing cracked teeth of several colors. He hurried on down the hall despite Daemen’s obvious desire to poke through the Seur museum.

Kirtn lingered, staring at the cases and pedestals holding objects that cried out to be seen and understood. Rheba, too, looked into the room, curious about Cycles she had heard of only in myths. Then she turned abruptly and hurried after Tric. Kirtn did not need to touch her to know what she was thinking: Deva had no museums, no monuments, no students eager for her past.

With one last, long look around the room where time was labeled and enclosed, Kirtn followed the retreating figures of Daemen, Rheba and Tric. No one else was around. The men who had followed them from the spaceport had vanished soundlessly into Centrins’ multicolored recesses. He looked again, then murmured into the transceiver.

“Any problems there?” he asked.

“None. The outputs showed a flux in energy a few minutes ago.” Ilfn’s voice was disembodied yet very clear. “We stopped drawing power through the downside connectors. Then we started up again. Must have been a surge in the downside power core, or whatever this primitive place uses for energy.”

Malaise prickled like heat over Kirtn’s body. “You’re sure we’re still drawing power?”

“Yes. Five hours to optimum capacity.”

“Five? I thought—”

“So did I. But the ship cut back on its downside draw after the surge. Shall I override?”

“No. Not yet. The Devalon knows its needs better than I do. Anything else?”

“Lheket wants Rheba back,” Ilfn said dryly. “He’s in love with her electric hair.”

Kirtn laughed shortly. Lheket was blind and a child, but apparently not impervious to Rheba’s charm. It was just as well. Lheket would be the father of her children as soon as he was old enough.

That, at least, was one liaison the Bre’n would support. Just as Rheba called Ilfn sister because she carried Kirtn’s unborn children, he would call Lheket brother when Rheba was pregnant with a new race of Senyas. It was the way Bre’n and Senyas had survived in the past. It would be the way they survived in the future.

If they had a future ... two Bre’ns, two Senyasi. So few. But there must be more who had survived Deva’s death. There  must be others scattered through the galaxy, seeking more of their own kind just as Rheba and Kirtn were. They had tracked the rumor of Lheket to the slave planet Loo. And then they had freed Lheket and his Bre’n. Where two had been found, there might be others. Not on Loo, but somewhere.

“Kirtn?”

Rheba’s call startled Kirtn out of his thoughts.

“Anything wrong?” she whistled, the sound like pure color floating through the ancient hall.

“I was just thinking about the ... others.” He did not need to elaborate. His whistle carried enough sorrow and speculation for a long Senyas speech.

She left Daemen and ran back down the hall to her Bre’n. “We’ll find them,” she said fiercely. “First we’ll take the slaves to their homes and then we’ll be free to look again. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even find some of our people on the way.”

He rubbed his fingers through her crackling hair. “Maybe we will, little dancer. Maybe we will. But not here,” he added sourly. “This place isn’t exactly the crossroads of the universe.”

“Rheba?” Daemen’s concerned voice preceded him up the hall. “What’s wrong?”

Tersely, she explained her planet’s death and their quest for others of their own kind.

“I didn’t know,” said Daemen softly. “You must have thought it terrible when I complained of being the only survivor of my family. You’ve lost an entire world.”

“I didn’t lose everyone,” she said, rubbing her palm over Kirtn’s arm.

Daemen and Kirtn exchanged a long look, but Rheba did not notice.

A peculiar tenor bell rang throughout Centrins. From the end of the hall, Seur Tric called in rapid Daemenite.

“We’re coming,” answered Daemen. “Uncle’s worried,” he said, turning back to Rheba. “That’s the dinner bell. The dining room serves food only to occupied chairs. If we’re not there, we don’t eat until the next time the room feels like making a meal.”

She blinked, not sure she had heard correctly. When she looked at Kirtn, he shrugged. Neither one of them understood, but Tric’s impatience was apparent. They hurried down the hall to catch up with him. As they did, a tenor bell again rang sweetly through the building.

“Uh oh,” said Daemen, breaking into a run. “If we don’t hurry, I’ll miss my first home meal in years.”

The four of them raced down the hall, skidding at a final sharp turn. The location of the dining room was obvious. Seurs and their families were jammed into a wide doorway, struggling for passage. No one noticed the strangers, because everyone wore costumes of wildly varying cut and color. The people were as varied as their costumes. Combinations of skin, fur, height and color were not repeated. The only thing Daemenites seemed to have in common was an almost skeletal thinness.

Once in the room, everyone raced for a seat. If there was order or precedence, it was not apparent. Hunger was, however.

“Make sure your chair is lit,” yelled Daemen over the hubbub. “The dark ones don’t work.”

Kirtn made a sound of disgust. He had seen cherfs use better manners at the trough. “Up!” he said to Rheba. He swung her into his arms, above the worst of the jostling. When his sheer strength was not enough to clear a path, her discreet jolts of electricity were.

The tenor bell sang again. Whatever dignity might have remained was trampled in a rush for seating. Kirtn slid Rheba into a chair, sat next to her, and watched the final scramble with blank astonishment. A disheveled Seur Tric popped out of the crowd and threw himself into a chair across from Kirtn.

Daemen was right behind, laughing with delight. He was the only Daemenite who seemed amused by the frantic race to food. But then, he was the only Daemenite who had flesh on his bones.

“That’s what I hated most about Loo,” said Daemen as he vaulted into a chair next to Rheba. “The meals were so boring. On Daemen, we know how to get the juices flowing before we sit down to eat.”

The tenor bell sang a fourth time. All empty chairs went dark. There were groans and curses from people who had not found a chair. Some threw themselves at chairs even though they knew their reflexes were not capable of outrunning the machine’s sensors. A rude, fruity sound issued from the chairs that had been occupied too late.

“What was that?” said Rheba, peering around.

“The cook,” said Daemen.

“The cook?” she repeated.

“It’s laughing at the people who missed dinner.”

“It? Is the cook a machine?”

“Of course.” He smiled and touched her chin with the tip of his finger. “Didn’t you have cooks on Deva?”

“Machines don’t laugh at people,” she said impatiently.

“Maybe they didn’t on Deva. They do here.” He ran his hands over the seamless tabletop. “What’s for dinner, uncle?”

Seur Tric looked unhappy. “I don’t know. We may not even get any food.”

“Oh no!” groaned Daemen. “Don’t tell me the cook is eccentric too?”

“Sometimes,” conceded Tric grimly. “Last week, it called us to table twice. All it did was—”

Brrraaaacck! The sound came from Tric’s chair.

With a pained look, Tric shut up.

Kirtn whistled softly, “Can you sense any energy, dancer?”

Rheba’s hair stirred and slid strand over strand with a silky whisper. Her eyes changed, currents of gold turning in amber depths. Her answering whistle was vague, almost dreamy. “Yes, Everywhere. The whole room, the building, all of Centrins. Currents flowing ... but not smoothly, not everywhere. Gaps and darkness, sudden cold.”

A cataract of energy slammed into her.

Reflexively she threw away the energy before it could burn her to ash. The ceiling flared whitely. Every chair in the room lit like flash strips in a darkened ship.

The tenor bell screamed.

The room burst into confused cries as Seurs leaped out of their chairs. Only Kirtn had noticed the akhenet lines coalesce beneath Rheba’s skin until she burned more hotly than any natural fire. Now her eyes were blank, veined with the same incandescence as her hands. He drained energy out of her with a touch, calling her back from her contemplation of the core’s compelling currents.

She blinked. Slowly her eyes focused on him. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. Are you all right?”

She sighed and stretched. “Yes. Just tired, as though you’d been teaching me a particularly hard lesson.”

Kirtn remembered the pouring energies. “Did that machine—or whoever is running it!—attack you?”

She covered a yawn beneath a hand that was slowly fading back to its normal tan color. “I don’t think so. Probably I just tripped a feeder or scrambled some commands.”

“It could have killed you,” said Kirtn flatly.

“Maybe. It was just a light touch, though. It has a lot more energy in reserve.” She stilled her lashing hair with a shake of her head. “It wasn’t as bad as the Equality Rangers’ lightguns.”

The tables in front of them changed. Dinner appeared, as colorful as the walls. Unfortunately, it smelled more like fertilizer than food. After a moment, though, the odor changed to something more appetizing.

With a silent sigh of relief, Rheba picked up a pointed instrument that had appeared with the food. She stabbed a morsel and chewed tentatively. She was not worried about being poisoned. Fourth People might find each other’s food unappetizing—even vile—but if it would not kill a Daemenite, it would not kill a Senyas or Bre’n.

Kirtn watched her for a moment, then picked up his eating tool with less enthusiasm than she had shown. Bre’ns were, notoriously discriminating about flavors. He took a tentative bite. The food was not as bad as he had expected. It was merely bad rather than dreadful.

Around Kirtn rose satisfied murmurs and lip sackings. The Daemenites fell upon their food as though it were the last meal they ever expected to eat. Even Seur Tric’s sour expression lightened. He ate rapidly, belched immodestly, and continued stabbing bright food as fast as he could manipulate his eating tool.

Tric looked up, saw Kirtn watching, and waved his arm expansively. “Eat! It’s not often the cook is in a good mood, especially not lately.”

Kirtn looked toward Daemen. The Luck was eating as fast as he could get food into his mouth. He, too, belched often and loudly. Kirtn concealed his distaste. The slave compounds of Loo probably had not taught the boy much about good food.

Rheba leaned over and whispered a Senyas phrase in Kirtn’s ear. “Burp.”

“What?”

“Burp,” she repeated. “Fssa says that we should burp. Apparently it’s some kind of communication.”

Kirtn muttered something clinical in Senyas. Rheba frowned. He swore and gulped air until he gave up a mighty belch. Nearby Daemenites looked over approvingly. Kirtn stabbed more food and chewed unhappily. Among Bre’ns, belching was not only bad manners, it was a sign of bad food. Among Sunhats it was worse. Senyasi only burped as a prelude to vomiting. He hoped no one would notice Rheba’s silence.

She squirmed uncomfortably, muttering to herself. Kirtn guessed that she was arguing with Fssa, explaining to him why she could not be polite and burp. The argument became heated. When she offered to throw up to prove her point, Fssa subsided.

Then, apparently from Rheba’s mouth, came an epic belch.

As one, the Daemenites stopped eating. They banged their eating instruments approvingly against the tables. Both Daemon and Tric looked as gratified as parents whose offspring has just done something particularly clever. Kirtn strangled his laughter and hoped that no one had noticed Rheba’s hair blowing out with the force of Fssa’s gassy cry.

Serenely, as though nothing unusual had happened, Rheba continued eating.

The rest of the meal was a long silence punctuated by burps. When tabletops and fingertips had been licked clean, the Daemenites relaxed and began congratulating each other on the quality of the meal. A few people called out to Seur Tric, asking him if some traveling Seurs had returned with new knowledge that he had used to reprogram the cook. Tric muttered and made a vague gesture with his hands, consigning questions and cooks to the Last Square.

But the questioners were not to be so lightly put off. A group of people gathered around Seur Tric. They began to question him, then realized that the people with him were strangers. Oddly, Tric did not mention Daemen. Nor did anyone recognize him. All eyes were focused on Kirtn’s necklace. Apparently each and every ancient crystal worn by Seurs was known in detail to the rest of the Seurs. Rainbow was not.

The longer they looked at the magnificent string of crystals, the more certain the Seurs became that Rainbow must have been responsible for the recent feast. Somehow the crystals must have been powerful enough to affect the core even at a distance. There was no other explanation possible.

Kirtn’s disclaimers were first taken for modesty. When it became obvious that he was adamant, Seur voices shifted into hostility.

After a particularly irate exchange between Seur Tric and his fellow Seurs, Daemen stopped translating. Fssa, however, continued to whisper discreetly in Rheba’s ear. She, in turn, whistled softly to Kirtn. After a few odd looks from the Seurs, she was ignored in favor of hot argument with Tric.

“Apparently,” summarized Rheba, “the crystals are some kind of keys to the Zaarain machinery. Not all of them work, and the ones that do aren’t dependable. None of them has worked lately on the cook. Apparently their skinny state isn’t normal for a Daemenite. The cook has been all but starving them. But after I skirted the core currents, something clicked. The Seurs are raving about the dinner.”

“Tonight’s dinner?” Kirtn whistled incredulously. “Even a hungry cherf would have sneered. If that was the best the cook could do, they should dump it and go back to charring shinbones over a campfire.”

“Think what they must have been eating before tonight.”

Kirtn’s stomach rolled queasily. “I’d rather not.”

“They feel the same way. In fact—” She stopped whistling abruptly as Fssa poured a rapid stream of words into her ear.

“Ice and ashes!” she hissed. “What’s wrong?”

“They want Rainbow,” she said tightly, “and they’re not taking no for an answer.”

XI

Kirtn looked at the faces crowding around the table. Attention was centered on Rainbow hanging from his neck. The sight of his powerful body gave a few Daemenites pause, but only for a moment. Their need for crystal keys overcame whatever common sense or scruples the Seurs might have had.

Beside Kirtn, Rheba’s hair stirred, shimmering with hidden life. He sensed the currents of energy flowing around his fire dancer as she gathered herself for whatever might happen. Fssa keened softly, Fssireeme warning of a coming energy storm.

“Gently,” whistled the Bre’n. “Perhaps Daemen can get us out of this.”

She said nothing; nor did her hair stop shimmering. She leaned over the table and spoke quietly with Daemen, pretending she did not know what was happening—and grateful that her mentor had kept Fssa’s gift hidden. It looked as though they would need an edge in dealing with Daemen’s people.

“What’s wrong, Daemen?” she asked in Universal.

Daemen’s face was drawn and his eyes were dark with worry. “Rainbow. The Seurs want it.”

“Tell them that Rainbow isn’t mine to give or keep.”

“They wouldn’t understand that,” he said impatiently. “It’s only a Zaarain construct, not a person.”

“Then tell them that Rainbow is mine.” Her hair crackled, warning of fire-dancer anger.

“I did,” he said tightly. “But things are different here. Zaarain constructs can only belong to a Seur. Technically, you’re violating our laws.”

“You could have told us that before we left the ship,” snapped Kirtn, leaning forward until his slanted gold eyes were on a level with Daemen’s.

“I didn’t remember,”, said Daemen miserably. “I was so excited about being home again that I wasn’t thinking of anything else.”

The Bre’n curbed his anger. He could hardly blame Daemen for being excited. “But you’re The Daemen,” Kirtn said reasonably. “You’re the king or whatever the local equivalent is, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a ‘but’ hidden somewhere,” said Kirtn, disgust clear in his voice. “What is it?”

“I’m The Luck,” said Daemen reluctantly. “There’s no doubt of that. It’s my heritage.”

“Go on,” snapped the Bre’n.

“But ...” Daemen stopped, obviously unwilling to continue. A look at Kirtn’s fierce expression helped to loosen Daemen’s tongue. He spoke rapidly, as though eager to have it over with. “But until the Seurs know what kind of luck I am, I don’t have any real power. That’s why the Seurs are ignoring me. If it turns out wrong they don’t want to be anywhere near me.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rheba.

The Bre’n whistled a sour note. He was afraid he knew exactly what Daemen meant. “Good or bad,” said Kirtn in succinct Universal. “As in luck.”

Daemen winced but did not argue.

Rheba simply stared at Daemen, trying to understand the ramifications of what he had said. “Do you mean that you won’t be a ruler until the Seurs decide whether you’re good or bad luck?” she said finally, incredulous.

His handsome young face was drawn into tight planes that made him look years older. “Please,” he said in urgent Universal. “Don’t say the other kind of luck again. If the Seurs hear you, they’ll think you’re cursing them. Then we’ll all be in the soup.”

“In the soup?” she asked, more puzzled than ever.

“A barbarian expression,” he explained impatiently. “They feed their criminals to the zoolipt. When you’re in the soup you’re in the worst kind of trouble.”

Kirtn saw Seur Tric’s dark-eyed appraisal and remembered that Daemen’s uncle understood at least enough Universal to follow their conversation. He nudged Rheba’s leg under the table.

She glanced at him, startled by the distinct image of a Bre’n hand over her mouth that had formed in her mind when he touched her.

Seur Tric stood up abruptly, silencing the rest of the group. He surveyed everyone with narrowed eyes. “Today The Luck came back and already we’re at each other’s throats.”

“You also got your First decent feed in months,” pointed out Daemen, puzzled.

“Proving nothing,” shot back his uncle.

“That’s right,” snapped Daemen. “Nothing has been proved. Not good and not other.”

Uncle and nephew glared at one another. Kirtn had a distinct, cold feeling that The Luck’s return was not a matter for celebration as far as the Seurs were concerned. He wondered for the first time if Daemen’s mother had left the planet willingly or been exiled.

What was it Daemen had said about his mother going out into the galaxy in search of new technologies because the old ones were falling apart? Was it that simple, or had the superstitious Daemenites shipped off their ruling family in a bloodless attempt to change their luck?

Malaise blew over the Bre’n like a cold wind. The people who brought back the son of a deposed ruler were not likely to be greeted with enthusiasm.

Grimly, Kirtn measured the distance to the exit. Far, but not too far. The Daemenites carried no visible weapons except for an occasional whip. Between Bre’n strength and Senyas fire, escape should be relatively easy. Certainly easier than it had been the first time on Onan, when Equality Rangers’ lightguns had blazed after them every step of the way to the spaceport.

“Fire dancer.” He spoke in Senyas, his tone that of a mentor. “We’re leaving.”

“What about Daemen?”

“He’s home.” Dryly. “His fondest wish come true. What more could we do to him?”

She winced at the irony in his tone. “Can I at least offer to take him with us? I can’t just leave him.”

Kirtn’s eyes flattened and changed, cold as only a Bre’n’s could be. “Tric understands Universal. If you talk to Daemen, we’ll lose the edge of surprise.”

She said nothing, merely looked stubborn as only a Senyas could be.

“All right,” snapped Kirtn. “Wait until I’ve instructed the ship. Then you can stay here and talk to the pretty smoothie until your teeth fall out!”

Surprise, anger and hurt warred inside Rheba. Only the danger of their situation kept her from a shocking display of emotion.

He ignored her. Whistling softly into his transceiver, he explained their position.

There was no response.

He whistled again, very sharply.

Nothing.

“What’s wrong?” demanded Rheba, forgetting her anger.

“The transceiver is dead. I can’t raise the ship.”

Her hand shot out and closed over the elaborate clasp that was a disguised transceiver. Gold lines rippled across her hand as she probed. “It’s working, but there’s no power from the ship. The Devalon is in max defense mode. Nothing goes in and nothing goes out.”

“Defending against what?” he demanded. “Whips and plastic knives?”

But even as he spoke, he manipulated the clasp so that it switched to emergency send/get mode. If Ilfn had had enough warning to leave a message capsule outside the ship, the transceiver’s squeal would call it up.

Rheba’s fingertip hovered near the clasp, waiting until he was finished.

“Ready,” he said tersely.

Her hand burned gold as energy poured into the transceiver, replacing the ship’s energy that had ceased the moment it went into max defense mode. The transceiver came alive. The send/get mode squealed—and struck a message..

Ilfn’s whistle sounded in a compressed, lyric summary of the situation. Something had gone wrong with the downside connectors. There was enough power to keep the ship’s vital functions and defense going, but no more. The Devalon had analyzed the situation and concluded the ship was under attack. It had given a five-second warning, recorded Ilfn’s message, and shut down.

“We’ve got to go back,” said Rheba, glancing around the room with eyes that were more gold than cinnamon, danger and fire growing in their depths.

“What good would that do? We don’t have enough power to takeoff.”

“Ice and ashes!” swore Rheba. Then, “If I were inside, maybe I could hash the downside connectors until we had enough power.”

“Assuming you could get energy where the Devalon couldn’t—and that’s quite an assumption, fire dancer—if we breach the ship’s security to get inside, we might leave it defenseless. Until we know more about the nature of the attack, we’d better tiptoe.”

She did not disagree, but impatience flared in every akhenet line.

Daemen, who had listened to their whistles and curt Senyas words without understanding either, leaped into the silence. “If you wouldn’t mind just loaning Rainbow to me, maybe I can solve this problem.”

Seur Tric broke in with a demanding burst of Daemen’s native language. The young man turned and answered impatiently. Hidden in Rheba’s hair, Fssa translated.

“What do you mean those crystals aren’t mine?” asked Daemen, glaring at his uncle. “They came to the planet with me. You have no right to those, crystals, nor to impede me in any way. Be very careful, uncle. / am The Luck!’”

Tric’s face changed, anger and fear overwhelming whatever affection he might have had for his nephew. “You are your mother’s son in arrogance, at least. She couldn’t find a single Luck-forsaken thing to improve our lot, yet how she screamed when we refused to let her go among First Square’s savages in search of the fabled First Installation. We saved her life by giving her the last ship we had, but was she grateful? No! She raised you to be as Luck-forsaken a whelp as she was!” He made a strangled sound. “Why in the name of Luck didn’t you die? We were better off without your mother. We would have been better off without you. Better to have no Luck at all than to have Bad Luck!”

For a moment, Daemen was too shocked to speak. Then, slowly, as though to be sure that there was no possibility of misunderstanding, he asked, “Did you exile my mother?”

“And all her Luckless family,” agreed Tric grimly. “If she died out there, we didn’t want any of her children living here to inherit The Luck. We wanted to be free of you.”

Daemen’s eyes paled until they looked more like ice than rain. “A lot of good it did you,” he spat, looking around the group of listening Seurs. “Centrins is worse off than when mother left, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” he yelled, standing up and staring at each Seur until the Seur looked away, unable to stare down The Luck. “You should be blessing your Luck that I’m back. Now maybe you’ll get something better than garbage to eat every night!”

“Or something worse,” muttered Tric.

“What could be worse?”

“I’m afraid we’ll find out.”

“Afraid,” sneered Daemen. “No wonder you got rid of Mother. She wasn’t afraid of anything.”

“I know,” sighed Tric, “I know. As long as other people did the suffering, she wasn’t afraid at all.”

Kirtn grabbed Daemen just as he lunged at his uncle. The Luck struggled uselessly in Kirtn’s hard grip.

“If killing him would help,” Kirtn said conversationally, “I’d do it myself. Would it?”

“What?”

“Help.”

Daemen sagged in Kirtn’s grasp. “No. It would just make things worse. But he’s wrong about my mother,” said the young man fiercely. “He never saw her in the Loo slave Pit. She fought for her children until she—she—”

Kirtn stroked Daemen’s black hair in silent sympathy. The Loo slave compounds had been worse than any hell dreamed of by distant philosophers. That the child Daemen had survived at all was a miracle that made Kirtn believe that Daemen had every right to be called The Luck.

“What should we do now? They’re your people,” added Kirtn at the young man’s startled look, “You must know them better than I do.”

Daemen frowned, then leaned closer to Kirtn, as though depending on his strength to stand. “Run for your ship,” he whispered. “If only half of what the slaves told me about Rheba is true, the Seurs don’t have anything that will stop her.”

“They’ve got something that stopped our ship,” said the Bre’n dryly. “We don’t even have the power to lift off.”

“Bad Luck!” swore Daemen. “I forgot about the core drain.”

“The what?”

“The core drain. It’s part of the spaceport. It can give energy • to ships—”

“Or take it away,” finished Kirtn.

“Yes.” Daemen looked miserable. “I remember we had trouble making it work when we took off. Mother laughed because she thought her Luck, was working to keep her on Daemen. She was furious when Tric figured out how to reverse the core to make it give energy instead of take it away. I guess . ..” He swallowed several times and then whispered, “I guess her Luck wasn’t always good.”

It was a difficult admission for Daemen. It did not make Kirtn feel very good, either. If luck was inheritable, and it was beginning to look as though at least bad luck was, then anyone who was close to Daemen would be caught in the backlash. The Bre’n had a sudden, queasy feeling that was exactly what Satin had meant when she had told Kirtn to kill The Daemen.

On the other hand, Daemen had survived Loo. His luck could not be all bad. The Loos, however, had paid a high price for his survival. Not that the Loos were innocent bystanders—they profoundly deserved being burned to ash and gone—but it was not a comforting thing to think of. What was good luck for Daemen might be sudden death for anyone nearby.

Rheba’s hand wrapped around Kirtn’s arm as though she knew exactly where his thoughts had led him. “It’s just superstition,” she said in Senyas that dripped contempt. “Besides, even if it is true, Daemen has brought nothing but good luck to us.”

Pointedly, Kirtn looked at the hostile faces circling him.

“He’ll get us out of it,” she said confidently.

But she was still touching Kirtn. He sensed her desperate question in his mind: Won’t he?

“Let me try my idea,” said Daemen.

As one, Kirtn and Rheba focused on The Luck. “It had better be good,” said Kirtn flatly. He took off Rainbow and hung the beautiful crystals around Daemen’s neck-Tric Seurs muttered restlessly but did not interfere. Tric’s mouth thinned into a grim line. With a curt gesture he turned to face the Seurs.

“We sent The Luck out into the galaxy to find technology. In its new incarnation, The Luck has returned. Now we will test the strength and kind of Luck that came back to us.”

The Seurs muttered again, but again there was no real objection. Testing The Luck was one of the oldest rituals they knew, and one of the most sacred.

Tric read their agreement in their silence. He gestured imperiously at the exit, then strode out without waiting to see who followed. The Seurs shifted restlessly, then moved in a body after their ‘leader.

Rheba and Kirtn looked at each other. They would never have a better chance to escape, but what good would it do if the Devalon was grounded?

“Come on,” said Daemen, guessing their thoughts. He took Rheba’s hand. “You can always run if the test goes bad.”

Even Kirtn could not argue with Daemen’s pragmatism. “Where are we going?”

“Centrins’ core,” said Daemen, leading them out of the room. “We’ll try Rainbow’s key crystals there and see what happens.”

“But if Rainbow really is a machine, or quasi-machine,” Kirtn amended hastily when Fssa hissed hot disagreement, “you might unbalance all of Centrins.”

“Yes,” serenely, “that’s where The Luck comes in.”

Kirtn stared at Daemen’s retreating back. Daemenites were either the most courageous or most stupid people in the Yhelle Equality.

Installation control was a small room, hardly big enough for the twenty people who crowded into it. The Seurs squeezed aside just enough to permit Daemen, Rheba and Kirtn to stand next to Tric. Kirtn did not like turning his back on the Seurs but did not see a way to avoid it.

Tric made a curt gesture, demanding silence. He too; a finger-sized crystal from the chain around his neck, inserted he crystal into a hole in the wall, and waited.

The wall slid soundlessly aside, revealing a fabulous conglomeration of crystals. They looked as though they lad grown there spontaneously, with neither pattern nor intelligence to guide them. Light slid over carved surfaces as quickly as thought, uniting the crystals in a lambent energy field.

Rainbow flared in multicolored glory, reflecting the light of the larger Zaarain construct.

Seur Tric turned and regarded his nephew sourly. “You know your duty.”

The Luck took Rainbow from his neck and stood for long seconds with crystals hanging scintillant from his fingers. Without warning, he tossed Rainbow toward the machine.

The chain of crystals hung in the air for a moment, probed by energies only Rheba could, sense. She screamed, clutching her head. Rainbow spun frantically, throwing off painful shards of light. Rheba screamed again and again, mindless with agony. She crumpled and began to fall.

Rainbow dropped into the machine-All light vanished.

It was like being hurled into midnight. Kirtn grabbed for Rheba, felt a sharp pain and blacked out. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

XII

Kirtn awoke with his head in his fire dancer’s lap and a Fssireeme keening softly into his ear. Rheba was stroking his face, calling his name in a low voice, but it was her fear for his life that called his mind out of the drugged darkness into which the Seurs had sent him.

He tried to sit up. Rainbow swung and moved against his chest in subdued crystal chimes. The world spun horribly. For an endless time he was afraid he was going to be sick, then currents of dancer energy soothed his outraged nerves.

Fssa whistled gentle greetings and wove himself invisibly back into Rheba’s hair.

“Don’t sit up yet,” said Rheba, kissing Kirtn’s cheek, her relief like wine in his mind, “Whatever they gave you passes’ quickly, if you just lie still.”

He stifled a curse but took her advice about lying still. “Is this the local equivalent of jail?”

It was Daemen, not Rheba, who answered. “Seurs don’t believe in jails.”

This time the Bre’n cursed aloud. “The only people I’ve known who didn’t believe in jails didn’t need to. They killed their criminals.”

“Oh no,” said Daemen. “We’re not barbarians.”

“Neither were they/’ said Kirtn sourly. “Just pragmatists.”

The room lurched and rolled slightly.

Despite Rheba’s urgings, Kirtn sat up partway. “What—?” He looked around wildly. There were windows everywhere. The floor was transparent. Lounges of a peculiar sunset color were strewn the length of the long room. An incredibly bleak landscape poured by on all sides. Spectacular ruins came and went in the space of seconds. In between ruins was nothing but rock and blue-black sky glittering with a billion stars. “What in all the names of Fire is going on?” asked Kirtn.

“We are,” said Rheba tiredly. “Going, that is. To First Square, Square One, or whatever in ashes the natives call it.”

Daemen winced at the malice in her voice when she said “natives.” Obviously he did not wish to be lumped with them.

Kirtn smiled and began to feel better immediately. Perhaps Daemen’s charm was losing its appeal for Rheba. On the other hand, exile was a high price to pay for her awakening.

Kirtn sat up completely, bracing himself on the clear, curved wall. The room continued to move but it no longer disturbed him. Movers, after all, were built to move. “All right, Daemen.” He sighed. “Tell us about it.”

The young man’s eyes met Kirtn’s, then slid away, then returned. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Everywhere,” said Kirtn, gesturing to the red and gold rocks pouring by on each side, to the blue-black sky, much darker than it had been over the city. “We have lots of time, don’t we?”

“Ahh ... yes, I’m afraid so. A lifetime, unless I get very lucky. But I will, you know. I am The Luck.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Kirtn said sarcastically.

Rheba touched her Bre’n, silently pleading with him to be gentle with Daemen. She sensed a lightning stroke of anger at her defense of the young man, then Kirtn’s mind closed to her. Hurt, she withdrew her touch, only to have him take her hand and put it back on his arm.

Daemen watched, withdrawing more into himself with each second that passed. “Every Daemen has to test his or her Luck,” he said at last. “Normally we do that by going to the Zaarain ruins—or any of the technologically advanced ruins—and looking for artifacts that will improve our lives.” His full lips twisted, showing pain as his voice did not. His laugh was too old for his unlined face. “I understand so much more now. Too late. Mother was right, and wrong, by The Luck she was wrong.”’

Kirtn and Rheba waited, knowing it was very difficult for Daemen to speak.

“Mother always believed that her Luck was good, even when it got us thrown off Daemen, lost all our money on Onan, and sent us to the slave pits of Loo. She kept on believing that it would work out for the best, that somewhere on Loo was the answer to our planet’s needs and she was the chosen Luck, the one who would bring a renaissance back to her people.”

A subdued, flatulent sound wafted out of Rheba’s hair, Fssireeme commentary on the willful stupidity of some Fourth People. Rheba whistled a curt admonishment to the snake, who subsided instantly. Daemen did not notice, too deeply caught in his past to hear anything of his present.

“Naturally,” continued Daemen, “I believed, too. I was her son. I couldn’t even think that her luck might be ... had. I’m still not sure it was.”

Rheba’s hair stirred with Fssa’s incredulous comment, but it went no farther than her ears. Kirtn agreed with the Fssireeme but saw no point in saying so. It would just make Rheba more eager in the handsome Daemenite’s defense.

“Anyway,” said Daemen, “when I saw Rainbow I remembered what Mother believed. I thought that she was right, except that I would be The Daemen to bring home the renaissance.”

Kirtn waited while silence and the bleak landscape filled the moving room. When he could wait no longer, he leaned toward the younger man. Rainbow swung out from Kirtn’s chest, catching light and dividing it into shards of pure color. Daemen looked, shuddered, and closed his eyes.

“What happened?” asked Kirtn, his gold eyes catching and holding Daemen like twin force fields.

Daemen tried to smile, and failed. “I ...” His voice died. He cleared his throat and tried again. “How much do you remember?”

“You chucked Rainbow into the machine. There was an explosion of light. Rheba screamed and kept on screaming. Before I could help her, somebody knocked me out.”

Daemen’s eyes slid away from contact, then returned with a steadiness that Kirtn could not help but admire. There were few beings who could meet an angry Bre’n’s glance.

“The lights went out,” said Daemen simply.

“I know,” snapped Kirtn, then realized that Daemen was not referring to the fact that the Bre’n had been drugged into unconsciousness. “No, I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Rainbow did something to Centrins’ core. It stopped working. That’s all I know. They knocked me out, too.”

“Fssa.” Kirtn’s voice was controlled, but the Fssireeme appeared instantly. “What did you sense?”

The question was in Senyas, very precise. The answer was the same. “The machine communicated with Rainbow, causing Rheba’s pain. I couldn’t follow more than a thousandth of the exchange.” Admiration and frustration tinged the Fssireeme’s voice. “Such compression—incredible!”

Kirtn’s lips twisted into a silent snarl. “No doubt. But what in ice and ashes did they say to each other?”

“I don’t know. But after the lights went out, when the three of you were unconscious. Rainbow and the machine parted company. Or, at least, most of the machine parted company with all of Rainbow.”

“I don’t understand,” snapped Kirtn, “and Senyas is a very precise language.”

“Rainbow is bigger now.”

Kirtn grabbed the long chain of crystal around his neck. He examined the colorful quasi-life carefully, then gave up the attempt. Rainbow could, and did, rearrange itself according to whim or need. What had started as a double handful of crystals could become a crown, a necklace, or a random conglomeration of facets. “You’re sure? It feels about the same.”

“Its energy pattern is quite different. Besides, Rainbow is like me in some ways. Its force fields can make it weigh more or less, depending on need, so weight isn’t a very reliable index of Rainbow’s mass at any given moment.”

Kirtn frowned, but did not question Fssa further. If the Fssireeme said that Rainbow’s energy pattern had changed, then it had changed. Period. “Then ...—Rainbow stole part of Centrins’ core?”

Fssa sighed very humanly and rested his chin on Rheba’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he whistled, switching to the greater emotional complexities of Bre’n. “Is it stealing when you take something that was once part of you?”

“Do you mean that Rainbow was once part of Centrins’ core?” demanded Rheba before Kirtn could speak.

“Perhaps, but most probably not. The Zaarains grew many machines,” explained Fssa, “The core of most of them was identical. The machine and Rainbow shared certain similarities. And you know how fanatic Rainbow is about recovering lost parts of itself. I think it saw some usable crystals, snapped them up ... and the lights went out.”

Kirtn groaned. Daemen looked from Fssireeme to fire dancer and back to Bre’n. The Luck did not understand either of the languages they spoke, but knew that the subject was Rainbow.

“What’s he saying?” demanded Daemen finally.

Kirtn and Rheba exchanged a glance, wondering how much to tell Daemen. Quickly, before she could, the Bre’n spoke. “He doesn’t know much more than we do.”

Daemen looked skeptical, but said nothing.

“Did you wake up first?” asked Kirtn.

“Yes. Either they gave both of you a bigger dose, or you’re more susceptible to the drug.” Daemen looked apologetically at the Bre’n. “How do you feel now?”

“I’ll survive.”

Daemen sighed. It was apparent that Kirtn’s hostility toward him had not abated. “Rheba woke up after the mover reached full speed.”

Kirtn looked out of the window-walls and said nothing. The landscape was whipping by at a speed that blurred all but distant rock formations. “Where are we going?” asked the Bre’n, turning back to Daemen.

Daemen hesitated, obviously reluctant. “Square One,” he said.

“Wasn’t that where your mother wanted to go, but the Seurs wouldn’t let her?” asked Rheba.

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

There was a long silence while Daemen searched for the right words.

“Why not?” repeated Rheba.

“People don’t come back from Square One,” said Daemen finally.

“Why?” asked Kirtn and Rheba together.

“We don’t know. Maybe it’s the mover,” he added with obvious reluctance.

“The mover,” prodded Kirtn. “What about the mover?” he asked, looking around at the bullet-shaped, transparent room hurtling along an invisible track toward an unseen destination.

“I don’t think ...” began Daemen. His voice sighed away. “I’m not sure that the mover goes all the way to Square One. There’s a break in the power somewhere beneath the mountains.”

Kirtn’s slanted eyes seemed to grow within his gold mask. “A break.” He shrugged. “So we’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“Part of the way ... but not very far,” said Daemen softly.

“Why not?”

“There’s no air.”

“What?” said Rheba and Kirtn together.

As one, they turned and looked out the windows where remnants of unnamed Installations were divided by sterile tracts of stone. It was Kirtn who realized first what the blue-black sky meant.

“It’s not night!” His glance went to the quadrant of the mover that was opaque, shielding its occupants from the distant sun’s radiations. “The sky is dark because there isn’t any atmosphere.”

“Yes,” said Daemen, his voice miserable. “Only the Installations have air. Oh, there’s some atmosphere out there, but not enough for anything bigger than bacteria.”

“But—but,” stammered Rheba, stunned by a planet almost as desolate as a burned-out world, “how do you grow food?”

“Grow?” Daemen looked puzzled. “The Installations give us all the food we need.” Then, remembering Seur Tric’s complaints, he added, “Most of the time, anyway. Didn’t machines feed you on your world?”

“No,” said Rheba with a shudder. The idea of being so wholly at the mercy of inanimate matter disturbed her.

Kirtn simply looked shocked, then thoughtful. His eyes measured the landscape with new awareness. Planets like this were common, much more common than the warm, moist worlds where life was easily sustained. If the Zaarains had found Daemen useful because of its location on a natural replacement route, they would have colonized it. Their technology was more than adequate to the task. But either the Zaarains did not remake the planet in their own image, or the machines that remade it had fallen into disrepair. In either case, the result was the same.

“Even the air you breathe is manufactured and held in place by machines and forces your people can’t name, much less duplicate or service,” murmured Kirtn, his tone both shocked and wondering.

“Of course,” said Daemen matter-of-factly. “It’s been that way for hundreds of thousands of years. It will be that way as long as our Luck holds.”

“As long as your luck holds ...” Rheba said no more, but her horror was as dear as the akhenet lines pulsing over her arms.

“That’s why the Seurs shipped out your family,” said Kirtn slowly, his voice neutral. “The planet couldn’t afford anything but the best of Luck anymore. Your machines are getting too old.”

Daemen made a gesture of sorrow and resignation. He had aged since the moment the lights had gone out in Centrins. He no longer believed reflexively in the quality of his own Luck, much less his mother’s. “I could,” he whispered, thinking aloud, “even be ... other.”

Kirtn and Rheba both wanted to disagree, vehemently, but could not.

“I’m surprised the Seurs didn’t just kill you,” said the Bre’n finally.

The Luck’s laughter was both sad and angry. “That would be the worst thing they could do. If they murder me, whatever other Luck I carried with me would stay loose in Center Square until the end of time.”

“Why didn’t they let us take you off planet?” asked Rheba.

“Seur Tric wanted to,” said Daemen. “But the others said that I’d come back again, carrying even worse Luck with me.

Then the lights came back on in Centrins. Not as bright and not as many, but better than darkness.

“That’s when the Seurs decided that I might do better going back to Square One as my mother wanted to.” He hesitated, then continued. “If my Luck is good, I’ll make it there and back. And if it isn’t, my Luck won’t be hanging around their Installation. I mean, it wouldn’t be as though they murdered me,” he said defensively, not looking at the sterile vistas sweeping by on all sides. “Square One exists. Its Installation registers on ours. They’re not sending me to certain death.”

Neither Kirtn nor Rheba knew what to say.

Fssa’s sad sigh filled the transparent room. If being stranded in that desolation was not certain death, the Fssireeme did not know what it was. He might possibly survive, but his Fourth People friends would surely die.

Mountains swept down on them from the distance, mountains whose peaks blotted out half the stars.

Rheba and Kirtn watched in horrified fascination, waiting for a rending crash as the mover’s irresistible force met the immovable mountain mass. Then their stomachs quivered as the bottom dropped out of the world. Stars and mountain peaks vanished as the mover plunged into an opening in the earth. The world shifted again, telling them that the mover had resumed a course parallel to but beneath the planet’s surface.

Silence and darkness stretched unbearably. Despite their knowledge that the mover was making fantastic speed beneath the mountain mass, each person felt as though the mover had stalled in the endless center of midnight.

“Where’s the break?” asked Kirtn finally, his voice casual.

“At the edge of Square One,” Daemon said tightly. “We’re not there yet. We’re still moving.”

“How can you tell?” asked Rheba.

“We still have air. When the mover stops, it dissolves, and so does the air.”

As though in response to Daemen’s words, the mover vanished. With it vanished warmth and the odd lounges that had supported the passengers.

Between one breath and the next, they were dumped onto the tunnel’s cold stone floor.

XIII

Kirtn held his breath reflexively, trying to hoard all of the precious air he could even though he knew it was futile. At the same instant, Rheba burst into flame, shaping energy into a shield that would hold in the dissolved mover’s air. It was a reflex as strong and futile as Kirtn’s. Her fire guttered and died out. There was no energy source to draw on other than the human bodies around her. That would bring death as surely as asphyxiation.

She clung to her Bre’n and waited to die.

There was a long time of silence. Then The Luck began to laugh softly, triumphantly. “It seems I’m not other after all!”

Cautiously, Kirtn took a deep breath, then another. With a whoop of joy he swung Rheba in a circle. “There’s air, fire dancer. Breathe it!” he commanded.

Fssa’s glad trill echoed in the confined spaces of the tunnel. Rheba breathed. The air was thin but sweet, and not so cold as she had expected. Nonetheless, she shivered after the warmth of the mover. Immediately, Kirtn shrugged out of his cape and fastened it around her. She did not protest. Bre’ns were much better equipped to withstand cold than Senyasi.

There was air, there was some warmth, but the only light came from cracked, yellowing discs beneath their feet on the tunnel floor. The light did not reach an arm’s length into the tunnel.

“Fssa,” said Kirtn. “What’s ahead of us?”

Darkness presented no barrier to the Fssireeme’s opalescent sensors. He directed a soundless stream of energy down the tunnel, reading what was ahead by the returning patterns. “The tunnel breaks up into a rubble barrier. There are openings, but they are far too small for Fourth People. They’re even too small for a Fssireeme.”

Silence grew in the wake of Fssa’s summary. Then, “How solid is the barrier?” asked Kirtn.

“It’s permeable to air,” said the snake. “Otherwise you would have suffocated and I’d be uncomfortable.”

“It is cemented, or just a jumble of rock?” asked Rheba. “Was it built or did it just happen?”

Fssa’s sensors pointed back down the tunnel. Rheba could almost sense the energy he used, but it was like the next instant of time, always just beyond her grasp. The snake turned toward them and reported in crisp Senyas.

“A jumble, probably the result of a cave-in. Accident, not intent. The air you are breathing comes from the far side, as does the warmth. I therefore postulate the existence of an Installation. However ...” Fssa’s sensors darkened. He was not pleased with the rest of what he had to tell them.

“An installation,” whistled Rheba in lilting Bre’n. Though she said no more, the emotional language told of relief.

Kirtn, seeing the snake’s sensors almost dim to invisibility, waited.

Fssa made a subdued sound, protesting that he had to puncture Rheba’s happiness. When he spoke, it was in Senyas. “I suspect that you are thinking of moving the rubble, thereby gaining passage to the Installation beyond.”

The snake’s prim speech made Kirtn grateful for the darkness. He did not want Rheba to see his expression. Whenever the Fssireeme retreated into scholarly sentences, there was trouble ahead. “—Yes,” Kirtn said, “we’re going to go through the rubble.”

The snake sighed and his sensors winked out. “I fear not, my friend,” he whistled. Then he reverted to Senyas. “The rubble is loose, yes, but some of the rocks are quite large. To move them would require heavy machinery or a command of force fields such as the Fourth People have not seen since the Zaarain Cycle.”

“Or a determined Bre’n,” said Kirtn.

Fssa said nothing.

Kirtn turned to go down the tunnel. He had walked no more than a few steps in the blackness before he tripped over a piece of rubble. Instantly, Rheba made a ball of light to guide him. He wanted to object to the drain on her strength, but did not. He needed the light even more than she needed his cape.

After a first, startled sound, Daemen accepted the light that Rheba had created. He was fascinated by it. He peered at the blue-white ball from all sides, enchanted to discover that it was as cool as the darkness it lit.

Rheba set a tiny ball of light on his nose, dazzling him. His eyes glowed with admiration and reflected fire-dancer light. She smiled, then she took back the energy before Kirtn noticed. He would object to her wasting her strength, and he would be right.

The barrier was not far away. The random stones that had turned beneath Kirtn’s feet became hand-sized chunks of rock carpeting the tunnel floor. The rubble became thicker, deeper, raising the floor level so much that first Kirtn, then Rheba and Daemen had to bend over to avoid the ceiling. Amid the slate-colored stones was an occasional ivory shine. Kirtn looked, then increased his speed subtly.

“What was that?” asked Daemen, hanging back.

“Bone.”

“But we don’t have any animals to die in the tunnel. Oh ... the Seurs. The Seurs who didn’t come back.”

“A fair assumption,” said Kirtn neutrally, not wanting to think of how those people had died, because thinking about it would do no good.

Daemen had more chance than he wanted to examine bones. The farther Kirtn led them over the rubble, the more often they found silent skeletal huddles. There were a few tatters of clothing, but no more. The Seurs had died as anonymously as any men ever had.

Not surprisingly, most of the bones were piled around the barrier itself. The desperate Seurs had clawed futilely at the cold stone. They had succeeded in creating a space in which to stand and work. And then they died.

“Can you give me more light without tiring yourself too much?”

Rheba laughed shortly. “I suspect that death is very tiresome, mentor.”

Kirtn’s laugh was softer than hers had been. He touched her cheek. Her hair floated up, curling around his wrist, “I suspect it is, fire dancer. But I don’t want to tire you. I just want to reconnoiter. When I start digging, I’ll need your light even more.”

Fssa made a small noise, a Fssireeme bid for conversation.

Reluctantly, Kirtn shifted his attention. “What is it, snake?”

“I’d like to probe the barrier, I might be able to tell you where to dig.”

“Go ahead,” said Kirtn, waving his hand toward the rocks piled across their path.

“It might hurt Rheba. Some of the energy configurations I want to try are similar to those I use with Rainbow. I can’t hold down the volume if I hope to penetrate all that rock. Even as tightly as I can control direction, there will be scattering and backlash.”

“I’ll survive,” she said curtly, but knew that her tension was transmitted by the hand touching Kirtn’s chest.

“Be as gentle as possible,” said the Bre’n to Fssa, “or I’ll hammer your flexible ass into the tunnel floor.”

Fssa’s sensors darkened. His friends knew that only Fssireeme pride—not flesh—was vulnerable to harm. Silently, the snake wished that it were the other way around. Pride healed so much more slowly than flesh.

Kirtn stroked the Fssireeme’s sinuous body. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Not quite.”

Fssa hissed and stroked his chin over Kirtn’s hand. “Would you put me about halfway up the barrier?”

“You’ll get too cold,” said Rheba quickly, remembering a Loo cell where the Fssireeme had nearly died. Fssa could take—and enjoy—appalling heat. Cold, however, made him shut down to a state the Fssireemes knew as “dreaming.” A few degrees below that state was death. “It’s almost as cold as mat dungeon was.”

Fssa brightened until traceries of silver raced his length. “I’ll be all right,” he said, his voice almost shy. “We lasted for quite a while in that dungeon. I’ll only be out of your hair for a few minutes. But thank you.”

Reluctantly, Rheba handed Fssa over to Kirtn. As always, she was amazed that he weighed so little in her hair and so much in her hands. He had told her once that he took her dancer energy and twisted it around him so that he would weigh less. When she asked how that was possible, he had sighed and told her she did not have the words to understand.

Kirtn lifted Fssa to the barrier and held him until he changed shape enough to hang on to the rock. Kirtn watched him struggle, tried not to laugh, then suggested, “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just held you up?”

“Of course it would,” snapped the snake, slithering from one cold crevice to the next, “but the energies I’ll use might turn your brains to batter. Assuming that you have any brains to—” Fssa’s muttering stopped abruptly as he changed shape again, swallowing up the mouth he customarily used to communicate with his friends.

Kirtn drew Rheba back from the barrier. He nearly stepped on Daemen, who had been waiting with diminishing patience while they spoke in languages he could not understand.

“What’s the snake doing?” asked Daemen.

“Back up,” was Rheba’s only answer. She sent the light ahead of them, for Fssa certainly did not need it for his work.

They stood slightly bent over to avoid the ceiling, and waited.

Rheba was in front of Kirtn. Lines coursed uneasily over her body. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her against him, comforting and supporting her. Reflexively they slid into the special rapport of an akhenet pair. Light began to glow around them, fed by her lines until they became so dense that her hands and cheeks were gold.

When the first pain struck her, she built a cage of fire around herself and her Bre’n, unconsciously trying to shield both of them. Fire shimmered up and down her arms, transparent fire that could burn unprotected flesh to the bone. But not Kirtn’s flesh—never his. He pulled their bodies closer together, glorying in the barely leashed energies that the two of them could call.

Each time Fssa slid into a shape of communication painful to her, fire leaped up, disrupting the painful backlash from Fssireeme energy constructs. Fssa did not notice, for Rheba’s shield interfered only with backlash energies, not with the tight probes he sent into the barrier in front of him.

While Daemen watched at a safe distance from both akhenets and snake, the Fssireeme changed shapes endlessly, illuminated by dancer light conjured out of otherwise very human flesh. Behind Rheba loomed Kirtn, eyes molten gold, fixed on dangers and joys that the Luck could barely suspect, much less comprehend.

Fortunately—or perhaps, inevitably, considering his heritage—Daemen felt no pain from the backlash of Fssireeme energy constructs.

At length,. Fssa changed back into his snake mode and whistled plaintively to be rescued from the cold rocks. His sensors picked out Bre’n and Senyas united inside a protective shield of energies. Intrigued, he changed shape rapidly, probing the shield as he had probed the barrier. But more delicately, much more delicately. Fourth People’s flesh was much more fragile than stone.

Before he had time to try more than a few shapes, Kirtn realized that Fssa was no longer probing the barrier. The Bre’n touched his Rheba’s neck lightly, calling her out of her dance. Fire shifted, then was sucked back into her akhenet lines. She looked toward the barrier, where Fssa’s sensors made tiny pools of opalescent light.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

Fssa whistled agreement.

“Good,” she muttered as they went back to the barrier. “But it wasn’t nearly as painful as I’d expected,” she admitted, scooping up the snake and weaving him into her hair.

“Thanks to your talent,” whistled Fssa, “and Kirtn’s. Together you bend energy into fascinating new shapes.” He preened slightly and his sensors brightened. “You don’t have the range of a Fssireeme, of course, but what you create ... ah, that is extraordinary.”

“What,” said Daemen in forceful Universal, “are you babbling and whistling about?”

Rheba realized that they had rarely spoken Universal since they had awakened on the mover. With few exceptions in the last hours, Daemen had been left alone among strangers who did not even have the courtesy to speak his language.

“I’m sorry,” she said, touching Daemen’s cheek with a hand that was more gold than brown. “We’re not used to speaking Universal when we talk to each other.” She turned to Fssa and murmured in Senyas, “Translate for him if we forget to speak Universal.”

“Translate some of it,” amended Kirtn.

“How much?”

“Pretend he’s Seur Tric.”

Rheba looked at Kirtn, surprised by his continuing suspicions of Daemen.

“We only have Daemen’s word that he was drugged when we were,” pointed out Kirtn. “Neither one of us saw it happen.”

“What possible benefit could he get from spying on us?” she countered.

“I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” said Kirtn with a sideways glance at the handsome, smooth-skinned Daemen.

Fssa’s sensors swirled as he looked from one of them to the other. Then, without comment, he began lecturing in Universal on the strengths and weaknesses of the barrier, “The rocks are crystalline, quite heavy, and not easily broken. The barrier itself is nearly three times as thick as Kirtn is tall.”

Daemen measured Kirtn’s height and made a gesture of despair. The Bre’n was nearly half again as tall as Daemen. “No wonder they died,” muttered the Luck.

Kirtn said nothing, but his glance was enough to galvanize the snake.

“The rocks are piled loosely,” Fssa added quickly, “which is both help and danger. I think there is a way through that will avoid the heaviest stones.”

“You think?” snapped the Bre’n.

“I won’t know until I see whether the rubble shifts when you dig into it,” said Fssa apologetically.

“Shifts!” cried Rheba, looking from the pile of rock to her Bre’n. “But you would be crushed if all that rock—” She stopped, seeing her own reflection in his eyes. He had discovered that danger long before she had, and accepted it.

“Fssa will monitor the rocks,” Kirtn said. He did not add that Fssa could not guarantee to sense movement in time for Kirtn to escape.

“Can you do that?” she demanded, pulling the snake out of her hair so that she could watch his sensors as he answered.

“Yes,” he said. But his sensors darkened.

“You’re lying.”

“I hope not,” whispered the snake.

Kirtn snarled soundlessly. The Fssireeme had a million mouths but he could not lie to Rheba out of any one of them. The Bre’n turned toward Daemen. “You can help Rheba move the smaller rocks out of the way. And when I tell you to get back, make sure she goes with you!”

Fssa slid out of her hair and dangled from her neck. Kirtn draped the snake around his own neck and turned to face the barrier. Rheba sent light ahead of him, a light that was much brighter than it had been.

Kirtn examined the barrier in the new light. Some of the rocks were bigger than he was, others were obviously in precarious balance with their surroundings. The rockfall reeked of weight and danger, and bones of dead Seurs gleamed whitely at its base.

“AH right, snake,” said the Bre’n. “Where do we begin?”

XIV

“On the left,” said the snake softly. “The rockfall is thinner on that side.”

Kirtn strode up to the dark pile of stones that went from ceiling to floor. “Here?”

Fssa hissed agreement.

Kirtn began digging with his bare hands. The rocks were cold and sharp. He worked steadily, stacking stones to one side for Rheba and Daemen to haul away.

Almost immediately he encountered the rock that had defeated earlier Seurs. Jagged, two-thirds his height and half as wide, the boulder lay securely wedged beneath a thin blanket of smaller rocks. Kirtn studied the position and mass of the boulder. Light followed him, brightening in answer to his needs.

“You’re sure that’s the best route?” asked Rheba dubiously, peering underneath his arm as he pushed against the enormous rock.

The boulder did not budge. “Fssa said it was the best,” grunted Kirtn. “He didn’t say it would be easy.”

Kirtn leaned against the slab of stone. Muscles bunched from neck to heels, bulging beneath the few clothes he wore. Rainbow swung out from his neck and rattled against the slab. A trickle of grit fell down one side of the boulder. He grunted and heaved harder. The stab gave fractionally. He sighed. “Any advice, snake?”

“The rockfall is more stable on the right side of the tunnel. But if you dig around the left of the boulder, the rocks you’ encounter will be smaller.”

Wordlessly, Kirtn put Rainbow around Rheba’s neck and began removing stones from the left side of the boulder. He soon discovered that “smaller” did not mean small. He rocked, dragged, shifted and lifted stones that weighed as much as he did. The rocks that were too big for Daemen and Rheba to handle he carried out of the way himself.

Daemen looked from the barrier to the tireless Bre’n. He was doing the work of ten Daemenites. His unusual suede skin-fur was dark with sweat and his breath came in deep gasps, but his pace never slowed.

Rheba saw beyond Kirtn’s strength. She saw that the rocks he handled were marked by blood. She redoubled her own pace, trying to save him any unnecessary effort—If she could have Sifted the bigger boulders for him she would have, but she could not.

Kirtn flexed his back and shoulders, trying to shake off the fatigue that was gathering on him like invisible weights. With a deep breath, he knelt and attacked the slab of rock that he had dug around. The boulder had to be moved if they were to get through the barrier.

His bloody fingers found no purchase on the huge stone. There was no way to lever it aside. He swore and wished aloud for a pry bar.

“How long a bar?” asked Fssa.

“All lengths,” snapped Kirtn. If he was going to wish futilely, he might as well wish big.

“I am all lengths,” said the Fssireeme simply.

Kirtn swore like the Bre’n poet he had once been. He pulled Fssa off his shoulders. The snake became a bar as long as Kirtn’s arm and one third as thick. The Bre’n stared, amazed. “Are you sure this won’t hurt you?”

Laughter hissed out of the bar. “I’m Fssireeme.”

Kirtn used Fssa tentatively at first, then with greater confidence. He pried around the edges of the slab. The slab quivered slightly.

“Longer,” he grunted, shifting his grip.

The lever became longer but not thinner. Fssa simply increased the space between his densely packed molecules to achieve a greater length with no sacrifice of strength.

The slab grated against the tunnel floor. A shower of small rocks fell over Kirtn. He ignored them. “Can you bend around the rock and still give me enough length?”

Fssa changed again. Kirtn took a deep breath and heaved against the bar with a force that made the slab shudder.

“Get back!” he called hoarsely over his shoulder.

Daemen and Rheba backed away. They could not take their eyes off the straining figure of the Bre’n. In the eerie light of the tunnel he looked like a creature out of myth, taking the weight of eternity on his own shoulders so that lesser beings would not be crushed.

Kirtn’s hands slipped, oiled by sweat and blood. He swore and shifted his grip.

Fssa changed subtly, roughening his exterior. Kirtn felt the new texture as pain across his bloody palms, but he welcomed it. He strained against the bar. The slab shifted minutely. He pushed again and again and again.

The slab tottered but would not fall.

“Make yourself wider at my end if you can,” panted Kirtn.

The part of the lever he had held changed until it was as broad as both his hands held together.

“Good,” grunted Kirtn, wiping—his slippery hands on his thighs.’

He reversed his position, turning his back on the bar. With bent knees he braced himself between the bar and the side of the tunnel. He breathed deeply several times ... and then he straightened his legs.

The boulder shivered, grated horribly and fell forward into the tunnel. Somehow Kirtn spun out of the way in time to avoid being crushed.

“Fssa!” cried Kirtn, looking frantically in the rubble for his friend.

A thin whistle answered. The Fssireeme slithered out from the shadow of the slab. Bre’n blood and pulverized rock coated his body, concealing his normal metallic brightness beneath a grubby patchwork of gray and black.

Kirtn snatched Fssa out of the rubble. “You’re beautiful, snake.”

Fssa glowed in shy delight. It was the one compliment he could never hear often enough, for he had spent eons believing himself to be repulsive in the eyes of the Fourth People.

“Are you all right?” asked Rheba, hurrying forward.

“Yesss,” The answer was as much a satisfied hiss as a word. “But Kirtn almost bent me that last time.” Twin sensors changed colors with dizzying speed. “Your flesh isn’t like mine, Bre’n, but you’re strong just the same.”

“Strong!” Daemen laughed shortly. “He’s, more than strong, he’s—” The Luck made a baffled gesture, finding no words to describe Kirtn’s strength.

Kirtn flexed muscles that knotted and quivered painfully. He felt about as strong as a gutted cherf. With a suppressed curse, he turned back to the barrier.

“Wait,” said Fssa. “.Put me in the opening.”

Before Kirtn could respond, Rheba took the Fssireeme. She scrambled over the slab until she could place him in the opening created when the huge boulder had toppled into the tunnel. Then she retreated, not wanting to be near while Fssa probed the altered dynamics of the rockfall.

She created two more bails of light and examined Kirtn. Her lines pulsed in protest at what she saw, but she said nothing. The bruises and scrapes she had expected. His hands, however, made her ache. Even as she watched, blood ran silently down his fingers and dripped onto the stone tunnel floor.

He jerked his hands away from the light, but she was faster. Her fingers closed around his wrists. Energy crackled. Instantly, his hands were numb.

“I can’t work that way,” he said.

“I know.”

Without looking at him, she summoned fire in her fingertip and burned off strips of her green cape. She wrapped his injuries carefully, ignoring Daemen, ignoring Fssa, ignoring everything but her Bre’n’s battered hands. When she was finished, only his fingertips were free.

“Rheba,” gently, “I still can’t work. My hands are numb.”

“As soon as Fssa’s finished,” she snapped. “Or are you in a hurry to hurt again?”

Kirtn brought her hand up to his cheek. She avoided his eyes, but her anger was transmitted in images of fire. He kissed her hand, silently thanking her, unruffled by her anger. He knew that her emotion came from her inability to prevent further pain to him. He did not point out the illogic of her reaction; were their roles reversed, his response would have been even less rational.

“It’s not as safe as it was,” called Fssa from the tunnel, “but it’s as safe as it will ever be.”

Kirtn looked at Rheba and waited. Reluctantly, she touched his wrists again, drawing away the energy that had blocked messages of pain. Other than a slight narrowing of his eyes he showed no reaction.

“Doesn’t he feel pain?” asked Daemen wonderingly.

Her hair hissed and seethed. “Yes!”

Daemen hesitated, then seemed to decide that even the Luck should not press an angry fire dancer. In silence, he followed her back to the barrier.

Beyond the slab, none of the rocks were much larger than Kirtn’s chest. He worked steadily, sending rocks back over his shoulder as fast as Rheba and Daemen could carry them away. Fssa alternated between being a lever and listening for the first hint of shifting stones.

A shower of rocks tumbled from the ceiling of the narrow tunnel Kirtn was digging. Fssa snapped out, becoming a hard sheet stretching across the tunnel above Kirtn’s head. After deflecting the worst of the rockfall, the Fssireeme changed into a shape that allowed him to probe the stability of the rocks that surrounded them on three sides. Kirtn waited, staring at the bloody shreds that were all that remained of his bandages.

“It isn’t safe,” said Fssa finally.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” snapped Kirtn, his exhaustion showing in his ragged voice. “At least it would be a quick way to die,” he muttered, grabbing a rock and heaving it over his shoulder for Daemen and Rheba to carry away. “Dehydration isn’t.”

Fssa said nothing from any of his possible mouths. His silence, as much as the languid way he resumed his customary shape, told Kirtn that something was wrong with the Fssireeme.

“Did you hurt yourself in the rockfall?” asked Kirtn, picking up the snake.

“No ...” There was a long pause. Then, “Rocks can’t hurt a Fssireeme.”

Kirtn realized that Fssa was cold in his hands, colder even than the rocks. He remembered that the more Fssa stretched out, the more heat he needed to maintain himself. He had been moving over chill stone, probing for instabilities, listening for the first tremors of a rockfall and finally thinning himself into a sheet to protect Kirtn from falling stones. Fssireemes were tough creatures, but they had their limits—especially where cold was concerned.

“Take some of my heat,” Kirtn said, looking at his arms, where sweat and rock dust coated his fine copper fur. “I’ve got plenty to spare.”

“No.” The answer was flat.

“This is no time to be coy!”

“No.” This time the answer was an anguished Bre’n whistle, carrying with it all of Fssa’s shame at his heritage as a parasite who lived off warmer creatures’ body heat.

Kirtn was too tired to think of an argument to equal Fssa’s shame. Rheba was more practical. She sent minor lightning coursing through the tunnel until incandescence ran like water over the Fssireeme.

Kirtn threw a protesting glance toward Rheba. In the cold tunnel, she simply did not have energy to spare. She stared back at him, cinnamon eyes burning. “Without Fssa, you would have been knocked silly by those rocks. Without you, we’d die.”

“Next time,” said the Bre’n to Fssa, “use me.”

Daemen simply stared. “I thought I’d seen every kind of weird creature on Loo,” he said, looking at the Fssireeme glowing softly in Kirtn’s bloody hands, “but that snake is the other side of incredible. Can’t it make its own heat as we do?”

“No,” said Rheba, her voice tired.

“Then how does it survive?”

“There’s work to do,” cut in Kirtn, knowing that Fssa would be mortified by any discussion of his peculiar physiology. “Save your breath for lifting rocks.”

“Do you always make heat for the snake?” continued Daemen, looking at Rheba. “If you make heat, why don’t you warm the tunnel? It’s cold enough in here to make a stone shiver.”

“She can’t make heat from nothing,” snapped Kirtn. “When there’s no external source of energy, she has to use her own body. If you’re cold, work more and talk less.”

Daemen was too busy trying to figure out his companions’ peculiar biologies to be insulted. He smiled at Rheba, a smile that could warm the coldest of Deva’s hells. “If you need energy, I’d be delighted to share mine.”

Kirtn snarled soundlessly and attacked the remaining barrier. Rocks skidded down the tunnel, narrowly missing The Luck. Fssa whistled a protest—not at the barrage, but at Kirtn’s reckless disregard for the barrier’s stability.

Kirtn ignored the snake’s warning and continued moving rocks at a dangerous pace. Fssa protested again, then realized what any Senyas would have known: An angry Bre’n listens to nothing but his own rage unfolding. The Fssireeme wasted no more time carping. He braced part of himself on the tunnel floor and probed the rockfall with a burst of energy that made Rheba stagger and grab her temples.

She turned in startled protest just as the front part of the runnel shifted. Kirtn whistled shrilly. The Bre’n warning needed no translation. Daemen grabbed Rheba and yanked her out of Kirtn’s burrow before she could protest.

“Kirtn!” she screamed, looking over her shoulder where rocks shifted and slid coldly over one another.

“You can’t go back!” said Daemen, struggling to hold her. “The rest or’ the tunnel could go any second!”

She looked at him with eyes that were blind with fire. He released her a split second before she would have burned his hands to the bone. She turned and dove into what remained of the tunnel. Her frantic whistle cut through the random sounds of settling rocks.

Fssa answered with an odd whistle, so thin that it almost could not bear the weight of Bre’n complexity.

“Is Kirtn—are you—?” Her whistles were ragged, breathless.

Kirtn groaned. She heard rocks shifting. Fssa whistled again,  the sound still flat. She moved rocks frantically. The tunnel had only partially collapsed. Within minutes, she had cleared enough debris to reach Kirtn.

“Kirtn?” she whistled, peering through the dust. She coughed and whistled again. Even when she stepped up the power of her light, she could not penetrate the darkness enough to see her Bre’n. She felt around with her fingers, searching for the warmth and resilience of Kirtn’s flesh. What she found was a smooth, cold sheet between herself and whatever lay at the end of the tunnel. “Fssa?”

A strained whistle answered, sound without meaning. She realized that she was touching the Fssireeme ... and that he was cold. When she tried to give him fire, her lines only flickered. Like her friends, she was near the end of her strength. She would have taken Daemen’s energy if she could, but only a Bre’n could establish the necessary rapport.

Deliberately she slowed her breathing, murmuring akhenet litanies until her heart stopped pounding messages of fear through her body. She built a shell of tranquility around herself. Wrapped in its shelter, wholly focused, she called on her Inmost Fire.

The call was an emergency measure taught to all dancers, a state almost like Bre’n rez. It was so dangerous to the dancer that it was rarely used.

Fire beat in her veins like another kind of blood. Her body turned on itself, consuming reserves of fat and flesh. Energy poured into the Fssireeme. With a soundless cry he soaked up life itself.

Beneath him, shielded by Fssireeme flesh, Kirtn groaned and woke to darkness and pain. For a moment he did not know where he was. When he remembered, he groaned again. He felt around himself, expecting to find the dimensions of his tomb. What he found was Fssireeme, a canopy of incredible flesh between himself and the rockfall.

And then he sensed energy flowing, fire-dancer energy, Rheba pouring herself into Fssa so that her Bre’n would not be buried alive.

“Kirtn?” Fssa’s whistle was odd, but understandable.

“I’m here, snake,” said Kirtn. “Which way is out?”

“Dig in front of your head. It isn’t far,” he added.

Kirtn burrowed like a cherf, taking debris from ahead and shoving it back along either side until he could force his body forward. Fssa stretched with him, a protective membrane. Kirtn bunched his shoulders, using his hands as clubs to batter out of the rockfall.

Light came in like an explosion. A triumphant whistle carried back into the tunnel. He pulled himself out into Daemen’s thin daylight, but it seemed as thick as cream alter the tunnel’s midnight.

“Can Rheba—get through?” he asked, panting.

“She’s very weak,” whistled Fssa, ashamed that he had caused it.

Kirtn threw himself back into the burrow. When he found Rheba, he hauled her unceremoniously into the open. He buried his hands in her lifeless hair, forcing rapport as only a Bre’n could. Skillfully, he gave her some of his own energy. After a moment she sighed and awakened.

Daemen emerged from the burrow covered in grit. He laughed and stretched as though to hold the sun in his hands. “The Seurs were wrong!” he said exultantly. “/ am Good Luck incarnate!”

The burrow collapsed with a grinding sound as Fssa slithered into the light. “I hope so,” he said sourly. “We’re too tired to fight.”

“Fight?” asked Daemen, confused.

With a sinking feeling, Kirtn turned and looked over his shoulder.

Ten Daemenites stood nearby, watching with predatory intensity. They were armed with knives and slingshots powerful enough to smash bone.

Kirtn glared at Daemen and wished he had spaced the unlucky cherf when he had the chance.

XV

Daemen turned toward the ten people and spoke rapidly. Fssa translated, but manipulated his voice so that only Kirtn could hear.

“I’m The Daemen.” he said, walking confidently toward the waiting people. “Are you Square One Seurs?”

The people muttered among themselves, but their lowered voices could not elude a Fssireeme’s sensitive hearing. Rheba scooped up the snake and stood very close to Kirtn. Fssa vanished into her hair. His voice remained behind, seeming to form out of the very air between her and the Bre’n.

“... Luck? ... told me that trouble was coming,” said a woman with startling red hair and skin as black as the tunnel had been.

“You can’t trust the Voice. Sometimes it ...” retorted a man with luxuriant silver fur on his arms and face, and eyes of a startling pink.

“Have you considered the possibility of ...” cut in a woman whose skin alternated between brown and gold.

Fssa made a frustrated noise. His hearing was too good. It picked up overlapping sounds, making little sense of the group’s muttering. Their dialect was different from Centrins’ speech. It was not different enough to require learning the language all over, but enough to make translating group babble impossible.

Kirtn and Rheba listened without appearing to. Daemen made no attempt to hide his curiosity. He seemed a bit piqued that they had not responded to The Luck’s presence with more appreciation.

“Are you Seurs?” he demanded.

“We’re Scavengers,” said the red-haired woman proudly.

“That’s close enough,” answered Daemen, smiling. “Are you the leader, First Scavenger, or whatever you call it?”

“Super Scavenger,” said the woman. “No ... not yet.” She looked at Kirtn and Rheba possessively. “But when I return with those two, Ghun will be back on scout.” She squinted at Daemen. “The Luck, eh? That should be worth a few extra points.”

Daemen took a moment to digest the implications of the woman’s odd words, “Is Ghun the Super Scavenger?” he asked hesitantly.

“Only until I get back with the three of you,” the woman said, nodding her head emphatically. “Then I’ll be Super Scavenger. Unless—” She leaned forward and looked anxiously along the cliff face where the tunnel had emerged. “You Seurs have any more of those holes?”

“No. That’s the only mover that still works.”

The word “mover” was obviously unfamiliar to the woman. She squinted at Daemen, then moved her shoulders as though to shake off doubts. “Then no other scouts are going to come back with more Treats?”

“Treats?” Daemen’s tone was as perplexed as his expression.

“Treats,” agreed the woman. Then she realized that Daemen did not know what she was talking about. “They must do things different on the other end of that hole. Around here, strange things are called Treats. The Scavenger who brings in the best Treats is the Super Scavenger until the next Hunt. But we haven’t seen anything like those two. Ever. So I should be Super Scavenger for a long time.”

“Ahh ... excuse me,” said Daemen. He turned toward Rheba and Kirtn and switched to Universal.. “Apparently they—play some kind of elaborate game here. Scavenger Hunt. Whoever brings in the strangest thing becomes the Super Scavenger until the next Hum.”

Kirtn and Rheba made encouraging noises.

“We,” continued Daemen, “are very strange. Therefore, we’ll be the winning Treats.”

Kirtn did not like the idea of being anyone’s Treat. “What happens to the Treats after the Hunt?”

Daemen hesitated. “Excuse me.” He turned back to the red-haired woman. “What do you do with your Treats?”

She stared at him, unable to believe that even a stranger could be so ignorant. “We give them to God, of course.”

“You give them to God, of course.”—A glazed look came to Daemen’s eyes. Then, loudly, “What in the name of other does that mean?”

The people around the red-haired woman grabbed their weapons. She made a cutting gesture with her hand. They let go of their whips and slingshots, but fondled their knives with disturbing intensity.

“Don’t shout, boy,” she said calmly. “Makes them nervous.

If they get too nervous, they’ll forget that a dead Treat isn’t much better than a stone, far as God’s concerned.”

“Your God likes Treats alive?”

“You’re learning,” she said, patting his arm, “An unwilling Treat is fewer points. A lot fewer.”

“Fewer points,” said Daemen helplessly.

Kirtn looked at Rheba and shrugged. If Daemen was going to handle the questioning, they would be a long time learning anything useful. For a graduate of Loo’s slave Pit, The Luck was remarkably innocent. “Fssa, translate without showing yourself.”

The Fssireeme hissed and changed shape within Rheba’s hair. As Kirtn spoke, the snake translated so quickly that it was like speaking and understanding the language yourself. Fssa even duplicated the voice of whoever was speaking at the time.

“Can this Treat slide a few words in?” asked Kirtn.

Daemen stared at the Bre’n who seemed to be speaking flawless Daemenite. With a hurt look, he turned to Rheba. She smiled reassuringly.

The red-haired scout leader waited. Every time she looked at the big Bre’n with the odd copper skin-fur, she smiled possessively. A very big Treat indeed.

“What does your God do with Treats?” asked Kirtn reasonably.

“It loves them. All zoolipts love Treats.”

Kirtn was tempted to ask how a zoolipt—whatever that was—loved its Treats, but he was afraid the woman would have an answer for that, too. “Does being ... loved ... by a God-zoolipt hurt?”

“Not if you’re willing.”

“The same could be said of rape,” Rheba observed acidly.

Fssa refrained from translating her comment. He had learned on Loo that a translator had better be a diplomat, too.

“What happens after this love feast?” asked Kirtn, straining to keep his voice down.

“Good eats for everyone,” said the woman enthusiastically. “Fat times and fancy flavors.”

“For everyone? Even the Treats?”

“Willing Treats,” corrected the woman.

“What happens to the witling Treats after the feast?”

“Same as everyone else. We eat, drink and fall in a shaval pile. We keep doing that until God gets bored. Then we have another Hunt.”

“Bored? Your God gets bored?”

The woman took on a long-suffering look.

“You said a truth. Treat.”

Kirtn looked at Daemen.

“I don’t know any more about these barbarians than you do,” said The Luck in Universal. “Not about their personal habits, anyway. Once we get inside their Installation. I’ll find some new technology, then go back to the tunnel and make a mover. Once the Seurs see what I have, they’ll be glad to take us back. Then these creatures can eat themselves into a coma for all I care.”

“Right,” said Kirtn in sarcastic Universal. “You just stroll into the Installation, technology drops into your hands and we’re home free.”

“Right,” said Daemen.

“You’re a stupid, arrogant—”

“Kirtn!” said Rheba, horrified.

The Bre’n shrugged. Calling Daemen names would not help. On the other hand, it would feel good.

“I’m not stupid,” began Daemen hotly, “and I’m not arrogant either! !’m The Luck!” .

“Bad luck,” snapped Kirtn.

Daemen stared, too shocked to be angry. “But we survived! For thousands of years Seurs have tried to reach Square One. We walked over their bones—and we survived. Do you call that

Kirtn looked at his exhausted fire dancer and his own bloody hands. He sighed. “No, that’s not bad. And this,” he continued, staring at the group of Daemenites, “isn’t good. I don’t know about here, but where I came from we ate treats.”

Daemen’s laugh was as beguiling as a Bre’n whistle. “Don’t worry. Good Luck is with you. Whatever happens can’t be bad.”

“What are you yammering about?” demanded the woman, obviously tired of listening to noises she did not understand.

Kirtn smiled lopsidedly at her. “He was just reminding me that he’s Good Luck.”

“Good for him,” she answered, unimpressed.

“And for his companions—I hope,” muttered the Bre’n. He drew a breath so deep it made his ribs ache. He sighed again, “We’re willing Treats. Now what?”

The Daemenites looked at the Bre’n, then at each other. They broke into cheers and mutual congratulations.

Daemen listened to the excited babble. He smiled triumphantly at Kirtn. “See? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Apparently willing Treats are very rare, and therefore very prized. They’ll take good care of us.”

“Maybe the unwilling Treats knew something we don’t,” retorted Kirtn.

For a moment Daemen looked uncertain, then his faith in his

own Luck reasserted itself. “We survived,” he said, as though that answered all questions.

And, the Bre’n silently admitted to himself, maybe it did.

The Daemenites stopped congratulating themselves long enough to surround the three Treats. The red-haired woman grinned at them. “Call me Super Scuvee. Everyone else will in a few days.”

Rheba’s hair fluffed out as Fssa made a flatulent noise. The snake, however, had the good sense to make it seem that the sound issued from a Daemenite.

Scuvee whirled and glared, but had only protestations of innocence from her followers. With a final cold look around, she led the party away from the cliff face.

They followed a dim trail through an area of gray-blue rocks and drifts of gold that could have been dust. Rheba and Kirtn looked around, memorizing their route. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a quick dart of movement.

“What’s that?” she asked.

Instantly, every Daemenite was alert. Then Scuvee laughed. “Just a runner. They’re only worth a few points. Not much of a Treat,” she added. “A flyer, now, is pretty good. Lots of points. A real trick to catch them, too.”

The silver-furred man looked at the point where the runner had disappeared. “You sure we don’t need it?”

“With the Treats we already have?” she retorted, laughing. “We’ll be three days just adding up their points!”

“Yeah,” agreed the man slowly, but he still looked at the gold drift that had swallowed up the runner. “Seems a waste. There’s been more than one Hunt when we’d have been glad to take even a dead runner back.”

“Skinny times are over,” Scuvee said, smacking the man on his shoulder with her fist. “Fat times and fancy flavors!”

“Fat times and fancy flavors!” roared the rest of the Scavengers. Apparently the phrase was a local shibboleth.

“Kirtn,” murmured Rheba in Senyas. “They have animals here. Centrins only had rocks.”

“And Seurs.” Kirtn looked around. “Wonder why animals survived here and not there?”

A gold drift curved across the trail. As Kirtn walked through it, a haunting fragrance filled his nostrils. He bent over and grabbed a handful of the dust. It was coot and silky to the touch, clinging to his skin in golden clouds of fragrance. He had an impulse to lie down and wallow in the drift, covering himself with its incredible, sensual fragrance.

“Smell this,” he said, holding out a handful of good dust to her.

She inhaled and made a sound of pleasure. Akhenet lines pulsed as she responded to fragrance. It was almost aphrodisiac in its intensity. She looked up at Kirtn, eyes lambent with promises.

Scuvee watched, grinning. “Well, you may be different, but you’re still human. The last time we really pleased God, it gave us shaval,” she said, gesturing toward the golden drifts that curled across low spots in the land. Her grin increased. “I can hardly wait to see what we get this time. Should be enough to make a rock shout.”

“Your God gave you this?” asked Rheba, smiling dreamily. “That would be enough to make me take up religion.”

Daemon dipped his finger in the dust, sniffed cautiously, then looked thoughtful. “How did you make this?”

“Can’t you hear?” snapped Scuvee. “God gave it to us.”

“How did you get your zoolipt—your God or whatever you call it—to make this for you?”

Scuvee looked at Daemen. Slowly her face settled into the lines of one who is being patient with a particularly backward child. “As I said, boy. We fed it a really good Treat.”

“What was it?” asked Kirtn, curious.

Scuvee sighed. “Wish I knew. It was so long ago even God forgot.”

“If I could find out how to make this,” said Daemen in excited Universal, “the Seurs would have to call me Luck.” He turned back to Scuvee and spoke Daemenite. “Does your God live with you?”

“Where else would it live?”

“Oh, over the mountain, across the sea, in the sky,” said Daemen, remembering just a few of the religions he had encountered on Loo. “On another planet, maybe.”

“What good would it be to have a God that lived somewhere else?” asked Scuvee, perplexed.

“Does your God live in the Installation?” Daemen asked hurriedly, not wanting to argue religious niceties with a woman who did not even know the value of Luck.

“What’s the Installation?”

“The building that’s all colors and never needs repairs.”

“Oh, you mean God’s House. Sure, where else would God live?”

Daemen threw a despairing look in the direction of his friends. Kirtn almost felt sorry for him. Scuvee had a death grip on reality that would not be weakened by nuances of any kind.

“Are outsiders allowed to ... ah ... worship in God’s House?” asked Kirtn, guessing the point of Daemen’s interrogation. Any technology to be found would be found in the Installation. If the Installation was sacred, getting into it could be difficult.

“Outsiders? Worship?” Scuvee looked from Kirtn to Daemen and back. “You don’t make any more-sense than he does. What do you mean, worship!”

Kirtn tried to think of words she would understand. Fssa spoke for him, in tones that resonated with contempt. “Can we get inside God’s House?”

Scuvee’s face cleared. “Why sure, Treat. Glad to hear you’re so eager. You really told a truth when you said you were willing.” She patted Kirtn’s chest approvingly. “Such a big Treat, too. I can’t wait for the shaval pile.”

Rheba’s hair stirred, crackling with the beginning of anger. “Then you won’t mind if we go in God’s House?” she snapped.

“Mind? Listen, pretty Treat, you can go in God’s House anytime you like, anytime at all. In fact”—she leaned forward, smiling—“I’ll knife anyone who tries to keep you out.” She looked around her group triumphantly. “Willing Treats!” she crowed.

“Fat times and fancy flavors!” they shouted back.

The Daemenites turned eagerly back to the trail. Kirtn and Rheba moved with less alacrity. They were beginning to feel like a meal looking for a place to be eaten. And they were afraid that God’s House was the place.

XVI

Super Scuvee kept them apart from the other Square One inhabitants. It was not difficult. Like Centrins, Square One had rank upon rank of uninhabited buildings erected in the Cycles that followed the original builders, the Zaarain. Scuvee and her group lived in one of the least ramshackle houses. Its windows were intact and its floors did not slant randomly. Its doors, however, required muscle to open and close.

Despite Scuvee’s assurances that her Treats could get into God’s House at any time, Rheba, Kirtn and The Luck had only seen the Installation from a distance.

“I told you,” said Scuvee, her voice rising, “you have to wait until the Hunt is over.”

Kirtn shifted restlessly. “Yes, you told us. But you haven’t told us when this damned Hunt ends. We’ve been here five hours and all you’ve done is tell us to wait!”

She sighed. “Treat, I’m glad you’re so eager. But I don’t get points for stupidity. If Ghun doesn’t see me put you in God’s House, I won’t get points. And Ghun can’t see you if he isn’t here. So until Ghun gets back, you don’t go into God’s House. Got that. Treat, or do you want me to chew it for you again?”

Kirtn managed not to snarl. “When will Ghun be back?”

Scuvee all but pulled at her bright-red hair. “I told you, when the Hunt is over!”

“But when will the Hunt be over?” put in Rheba quickly, reading anger in Kirtn’s tense body.

“Pretty Treat,” said Scuvee, “I already told you. The Hunt will be over when Ghun gets back.”

“Don’t worry,” soothed Daemen, taking Rheba’s hand. “Everything is all right. Remember, I’m The Luck. Good Luck,” he added quickly over Kirtn’s muttering. “Look at the food Scuvee gave us. Wasn’t it better than anything we had on Loo or in Centrins?”

“It was?” said Scuvee, shock in every line of her face. “Little Treat, your zoolipt must be real bored.”

“What do you mean?”

Scuvee’s voice dripped patience. “Our food is rotten. That’s why we called a Hunt. Now, if you think the swill we’ve been eating is good, it means that the food you ate at the other end of that hole was hundred-proof shit. Right?”

“Right,” said Daemen, pleased that she understood. It was not always easy to get through to Square One barbarians.

“The only way you could eat worse food than here,” continued Scuvee relentlessly, “is if your zoolipt is even more bored than ours. Don’t you ever feed it?”

“Feed what?” asked Daemen.

Scuvee made a frustrated sound. “Your zoolipt,” she shouted.

“Centrins doesn’t have a zoolipt. We just have machines.”

“Don’t be more stupid than stone,” she said, her face getting as wild as her hair. “You have a fancy colored building, right?”

“Right.”

“You put garbage in one end and food comes out the other, right?”

“Well, that’s an oversimplification. What actually happens is—”

“Right, Little Treat?” shouted Scuvee.

“Ahh, right.”

“What do you think makes garbage into food?”

“A machine ... right?”

“Wrong!” Scuvee gulped air. “It’s the God in the machine that makes food. The machinery just shovels in garbage. But if all you ever feed it is garbage, all you get is garbage. Garbage in, garbage out. Right? Right,” she continued relentlessly. “A bored God is unhappy. If it gets too bored, it starts making things.”

Daemen moved as though to protest. Kirtn’s big hand clamped down on the younger man’s shoulder. “Let her talk,” whispered the Bre’n. “She’s finally saying something interesting.”

Scuvee did not hear what Kirtn said. She was too involved in her own words to have attention for anyone else. “If you’re lucky,” she continued, “a bored God just makes bad food. We spend a lot of time running to the shit pits, giving back as bad as we got. The cramps are rough and it ruins a lot of clothes, but that’s not as bad as the headbenders.”

“Headbenders?” said Rheba.

“Right. You never can tell when it’ll hit. You eat and then the world gets all runny around the edges and colors start yammering at you and then the devils come screaming and clawing. It’s bad, real bad, and it stays that way until God gets bored with that, too.”

“Then what happens?” asked Kirtn, liking what he was hearing less and less.

“We shovel in our dead and go on a Hunt. If we’re lucky, the runners have changed a little since the last time, or the flyers. The more they’ve changed, the bigger Treat they are.”

“Changed?” murmured Kirtn.

“Right. A few legs more or less. Fur shorter or gone. They have to eat what God makes, too. If you eat godfood, you change.”

“Do people change, too?” asked Rheba, struggling with an unreasoning tear. A few legs more or less.

“Sure. But God learned to be careful with us. If we change too much we’ll all die and then God will be more bored than ever. That’s why it made crawlers—crawlers can change a lot and not die. Where do you think the diggers and flyers came from? Crawlers, that’s where.”

Kirtn remembered the startling variation in phenotype among the Seurs. It was even more pronounced at Square One. Apparently there was a mutagen in the food.

“Their machine must be out of phase,” said Daemen in Universal.

“What?” asked Rheba, still envisioning the nightmare Scuvee’s words had conjured.

“Their Installation isn’t tuned. It’s a miracle they’ve survived this long.”

“God is on their side,” Kirtn said sarcastically.

“I’m serious,” Daemen snapped.

“So am I. Look around, Luck. Scuvee’s people are a lot healthier than the Seurs were.”

“Nonsense!”

“Kirtn’s right,” said Rheba. “The Seurs were gaunt. There weren’t many children. You were much stronger and taller by a head than most men. Loo’s slave rations weren’t much, but they were better than what the Seurs eat.”

“Centrins doesn’t make us sick or feed us mindbenders,” Daemen said hotly.

“No. It just starves you and then teases you by announcing dinners that aren’t served.”

“It’s a machine, not a person. It’s out of tune, not bored.”

“That’s your dogma,” said Kirtn. “Scuvee’s is different.”

Daemen looked stubborn. “All civilized Installations are the same.”

“Starving?” suggested the Bre’n. “You may not like it but

Scuvee’s dogma works,” continued Kirtn, his voice soft, implacable. “What do the Seurs say to that?”

Daemen still looked stubborn, but there was also uneasiness in his expression. “The Seurs say that people who recycle whole corpses are disgusting barbarians. How can you eat food that once was your uncle?”

“Isn’t that what they sent you here to find out?”

Scuvee cut in impatiently. “Yammer in words I can understand or I’ll beat you bloody before grace even starts.”

Only part of her words made sense, but it was a compelling part, “Daemen’s people don’t feed corpses to their god.” said Kirtn succinctly. “He’s surprised you do.”

Scuvee snorted. “Corpses and criminals and every other damn thing we can lift. Too bad rocks don’t work—enough of them for twenty Gods.”

Daemen shuddered. “How can you eat?”

“Hunger, Little Treat. Works every time.”

From the front of the house came the sounds of people shouting. A short, thick man swept into the room, followed by Scuvee’s angry group. The man stopped and stared at Kirtn.

“Then it’s true,” said the man, shaking his head until his long black hair tumbled down to touch his powerful wrists.

Rheba stared. The man had eight fingers and a very long thumb on each hand. She looked at her own four-fingered hand and wondered how much godfood she could eat before she changed.

The man walked around them like a slave master inspecting newly arrived chattel. Whatever he saw did not please him. “No ropes?” he snapped.

“They’re willing Treats, Ghun,” said Scuvee smugly.

“I’m still Super Scavenger,” he said harshly. “The Hunt isn’t over yet.”

“You’re back. You can’t go out again. You know the rules as well as I do, Super.” The woman’s voice was whiplike.

“My group isn’t back yet. I came in early.”

The red-haired woman smiled nastily. “At sunset we say grace and send in the Treats. I’ll be Super before the second moon rises.” She laughed. “I’ll be Super until I die, Ghun. No one ever brought in Treats like these.”

“No Treats last more than a meal. After the next Hunt, I’ll be Super again.”

“Willing Treats, Ghun. They’ll last forever—longer than either one of us, that’s for sure.”

Ghun looked shrewdly at the faces of the Treats. “You don’t know what she’s talking about, do you?”

Kirtn, knowing an enemy when he saw one, did not answer.

Daemon did. “What do you mean?”

“You look a little young to die.” Ghun cocked his head, searching the Treats for any sign of understanding. Kirtn and Rheba controlled their expressions. Daemen did not. Ghun leaned toward the Luck. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“Tell me what?” said Daemen.

“She’s going to feed you to God.”

“So what?”

“So you’re going to die.”

“That’s not true!” shouted the red-haired woman, “You’re just trying to make them unwilling so I’ll get fewer points!”

Chun’s smile made Kirtn more uneasy than a snarl would have. Daemen did not notice. He was still caught by the assured tone in which Ghun had pronounced their death sentences.

“It isn’t true, Little Treat,” Scuvee said persuasively. “He’s just trying to scare you. Willing Treats are loved by the God. Nothing bad can happen when God loves you.”

“How willing will they be when they choke on God and drown?” asked Ghun smoothly.

“Pucker your hole!” said Scuvee, turning on Ghun with hands that wanted to strangle his assurance and him with it.

Ghun smiled thinly, “Didn’t you tell them, Scuvee? Didn’t you tell them how they’ll be scourged and driven into God’s House? Didn’t you tell them—”

Scuvee’s knife tip hovered a finger’s length from Chun’s mouth. Her strong hand was twisted into his hair, holding his head immobile. “If you don’t pucker up,” she said, “I’ll feed your tongue to God.”

Ghun puckered up.

“I found these Treats, and I found them willing. The whole town knows it. If they go all unwilling on me, that would be a crime, wouldn’t it?”

Ghun swallowed and looked as if he were eating bile.

“Wouldn’t it?” pressed Scuvee, drawing a bead of blood out of his thin lower lip.

“Uggg—yes!”

“Right. And you know what we do to criminals, don’t you?” Her knife moved slightly, flicking blood out of his upper lip.

“What happens?”

“They’re fed to God,” said Ghun, his lips barely moving.

“Right. Now, if you’re through lying to my willing Treats, we’ll just forget you ever opened your hole. Unless maybe you have a yen to visit God?” she asked softly. Ghun made a strangled sound that Scuvee took as capitulation.

She released him so suddenly he stumbled. He threw a malevolent look over his shoulder as he hurried out.

Kirtn and Rheba looked at each other.

Daemen smiled at nothing in particular. “It’s all right. I’m The Luck.”

Daemon’s litany did not comfort them. Kirtn touched Rheba and sensed the exhaustion beneath her fear. The meal and a few hours of anxious captivity had not helped to restore her strength—or his. They could probably fight their way back to the tunnel, but then what? Without a high-tech present for the Seurs, Daemen and his friends would be sent on another one-way trip by the Seurs. This time, Kirtn suspected the Seurs would overcome their scruples about killing The Luck.

With a growing coldness in his bones, the Bre’n realized that there was nothing to do but to wait until feeding time at God’s House. Once inside the Installation, perhaps Daemen would find something useful. If not, they could always feed Rainbow to the machine and hope that the lights went out as fast as they had at Centrins.

What would Square One’s barbarians do if the Treats proved to be indigestible?

Scuvee looked at her Treats. Their expressions were not reassuring. She smiled and clapped her hands. “Won’t be long now. Treats,” she said with forced lightness. “Don’t took so worried. The shaval pile will take your minds off God’s stomach. You eat a handful of that gold stuff and you won’t care about one damn thing. Besides, willing Treats are loved by God. Believe me,” she said earnestly. “As long as I’ve been alive, God never hurt a willing Treat.”

The Treats said nothing.

Scuvee smiled encouragingly. “You won’t even have to be graced,” she said. “You’re bloody enough already. Except,” she added, looking critically at Daemen, “for Little Treat, here. Might have to break a bit more of his skin. Oh, nothing hurtful,” she reassured them. “Just enough to let God know we care.”

The Treats looked even less comfortable.

“Well!” Scuvee said enthusiastically. “No point waiting around. By the time we get to God’s House, sunset will be all over the place.”

Scuvee gestured to her group. They surrounded the Treats. Despite the barbarians’ friendly smiles, there was no doubt that a reluctant Treat would be dragged to God’s House.

Kirtn saw akhenet lines flicker over Rheba’s arms. “Not yet,” he whistled, his tone urging patience as much as his words. “We came here to get into the Installation. Now we’re going to do just that.”

Rheba heard the irony as well as the wisdom in his whistle. She smiled lopsidedly and took her mentor’s hand. With her other hand she reached out to Daemon. His answering smile was all the more charming for its shyness.

Hand in hand in hand, the three of them followed Scuvee across the barren rock toward God’s multicolored House.

As they walked, Square One’s population gathered. The carmine sky dyed all people the same shade, disguising their variations under one thick color. The natives stared, murmuring with delight and speculations about the nature and source of the strange Treats.

They approached God’s House from the side. The path hardly looked as though it led to anything more sacred than a garbage dump. On either side, and sometimes across the path itself, was debris that ranged from worn shoes to malodorous lumps.

Rheba made a sound of disgust and scraped the sole of her shoe across a protruding rock. “If this is what they usually feed God, no wonder it rebels,” she muttered.

“It’s a simple recycler,” said Daemen, “Just a machine, no; a God.”

“I’m not ready to be recycled,” she snapped.

“Don’t worry,” he soothed. “Nothing bad can happen. You heard Scuvee—in her whole lifetime the recycler never hurt a willing Treat.”

“I’d feel better if I knew that in her whole lifetime the machine had been/«/ a willing Treat.”

Kirtn sighed. He had hoped Rheba would not spot that flaw in Scuvee’s argument.

Daemen looked startled, then he smiled. “It’s a machine,” he said softly, stroking the back of her hand. “Machines don’t hurt people.”

God’s House rose ahead of them, massive, multicolored, opaque. With a sound like distant thunder, a door opened in the building’s side. Daemen walked forward, willing if not especially eager to penetrate the Installation’s mechanical mysteries.

Kirtn and Rheba followed more slowly, but they did follow. The alternative was the knives that had suddenly appeared in their captors’ hands.

Daemen looked over his shoulder. His smile was uncanny, beautiful. “Don’t be frightened,” he said. “I’m The Luck.”

“Good for you,” muttered Kirtn, “but not necessarily for us.”

The door closed behind them, throwing the world into darkness.

XVII

Rheba created a sphere of blue-white light. Ft burned unevenly for a moment, investing the building with flickering shadows. She concentrated until the light steadied and shadows only moved when people did.

Kirtn squeezed her hand, feeling the peculiar warmth that came from her akhenet lines. She was not only tired, she was also afraid. The building stank of garbage and less appetizing organic matter.

“God’s House,” Rheba said with contempt in her voice. “Cherfs live in cleaner burrows.”

Daemen turned back to her. In the akhenet light, his eyes were white, as uncanny as his smile.

Kirtn saw again the younger man’s grace, his unusual beauty. The Bre’n looked away, not blaming his fire dancer for the smile she gave Daemen, but not liking it either.

“They put us in on the garbage conveyor,” said Daemen, laughing.

Kirtn gave a derisive whistle. Being the centerpiece of a garbage dump was not one of his life ambitions. “Where’s the core or whatever they used to control this place?”

Daemen closed his eyes, obviously trying to remember the floor plan of Centrins. “I think ... yes, there should be a smaller branch of this room. Like a wide, short hall going off to the left somewhere up ahead. At the end of that there should be an access panel.”

Rheba remembered the glittering mound of Zaarain crystals that had somehow controlled Centrins. She remembered the explosion of light when Rainbow had been flung onto the mound, and the darkness that had come without warning. She fingered the chain of crystals that she wore beneath Kirtn’s cape and wondered if Rainbow would find more of itself here ... and who would pay the price if it did.

“Lead the way,” Kirtn said shortly. If anyone was going to stumble into the stomach of a hungry God, he hoped it would be the all too handsome Luck.

The room shrank on all sides as Daemen walked confidently forward. Rheba sent small light spheres to various points, trying to guess the room’s dimensions.

“It’s a Hat-bottomed funnel,” said Kirtn. “We’re going into the narrow gullet.”

“Do you have to put it like that?” she asked plaintively.

He stroked her hair, giving comfort with touch as he could not with words. He was becoming more and more uneasy with each forward step.

Ghun’s words echoed in the Installation’s silences, as though all the people who had been fed to the recycler whispered from darkened corners. The poet in Kirtn sensed eternity and the death of dreams, a death as final as Deva spinning ash-colored against the clean silver of countless stars. He tasted the irony of surviving the extinction of his people only to die in the shell of a building that had been old before his people were even born.

And he laughed, regretting only that he had never known his fire dancer’s love.

Rheba leaned against him, pulling his difficult laughter around her, sensing his emotions like another kind of blood beating in her veins. Her bright, patterned hand rubbed down his arm. Her hair stirred with the pleasure his textures always gave her. Slowly her lines stopped flickering. With a sigh, she relaxed, letting go of discordant energies she had not even realized she had held, letting go for him as well.

Fssa hissed quiet satisfaction, reveling in the sweeping energies his friends created when they touched.

“Here it is!”—called Daemen from up ahead.

Rheba sensed Kirtn’s flash of irritation as clearly as though it were her own. “You’re so hard on him,” she whistled. “But you’re so patient with other children, like Lheket.”

“Daemen isn’t a child. Lheket is.”

“Hurry!” called Daemen, excitement making his voice uneven.

Rheba laughed quietly. “Of course he is—listen to him.”

“Keep rubbing up against him,” whistled Kirtn roughly, “and you’ll find he’s man enough underneath all that charm.”

Kirtn’s whistle evoked a coarse sexuality that shocked her. “That’s not fair,” she said hotly. “Next to you, he’s not a man at all!”

Kirtn stopped and looked down at her for a long moment. Then he smiled. “I’d like to lose all my arguments like that.” He hugged her as though it were the last time, which he was afraid might be true.

The cape fell away as her arms came up around his neck. A network of light shimmered out from her as she responded to all the unspoken emotions seething in him. She smiled as she saw herself reflected in his golden eyes. “Share enzymes?” she suggested, hall’ laughing, half serious, knowing only that she did not want to leave his arms.

It took all of his Bre’n discipline to stop at a single kiss. The fire she called was so sweet, burning away everything until only she was left and he was holding her and they were wrapped in blinding veils of light.

When he finally released her he saw Daemen nearby, his eyes bright with reflected fire.

“I found the access panel,” said Daemen wistfully, as though realizing he might have lost something else. “Can I borrow Rainbow again?”

“Why?” said Rheba, but she reached for Rainbow even as she spoke. “It didn’t work too well the last time.”

Daemen made an odd gesture that could have signified despair. “I don’t have any other key to trigger the Installation. Either Rainbow loosens up some crystals for me, or I have to bash the core until I get some. I don’t want to do that. The barbarians aren’t much, but they’re people. Without the Installation, they’ll die. But without new technology, my own people will die.” He made the gesture again. “It’s all a matter of Luck. My Luck.”

Kirtn looked at the young man and for the first time felt compassion. Whether Daemen deserved it or not, he carried the future of his people in his slim hands. The akhenets had carried that weight once ... and ultimately they had lost, burned by a fire greater than they could call or control. The bitterness of that defeat was part of him now, and of Rheba. It was not a thing he would wish on anyone.

“Good luck,” said the Bre’n softly. And meant it.

Rheba handed Rainbow to The Luck. As he turned to go back to the access panel, she took his arm, “Wait. Fssa, could you tell Rainbow what we want? Maybe that way it could do something ... ?”

Her tone was more wistful than sure. Kirtn started to veto the idea, then decided if she was willing to endure the communication he should not object.

“What do you mean?” said Daemen, looking from Rheba to the rope of colored crystals dangling from his fingers. “Rainbow is a machine—you can’t talk with it no matter how many languages you know.”

She pulled Fssa from her hair and held him out to The Luck.

When he hesitated, she said, “He doesn’t bite. He doesn’t even have any teeth.” She smiled encouragingly and did not add that Fssa no more needed teeth than a lightgun did. She knew that the Fssireeme made Daemen uneasy enough without telling him what an accomplished predator the snake could be. “Take him.”

“What about you?” said Daemen, accepting the snake reluctantly.

“I’m getting as far away from him as I can.” said Rheba fervently.

“Are you going back?” asked Daemen, sounding very lonely-.

“No,” said Kirtn. “The funnel would just send all Fssa’s energies back over us. “Is there another room where we could wait?”

“Just beyond the access panel there’s a hail. There should be a big room off to the right.”

“What’s in it?” asked Rheba nervously, not wanting to blunder into God’s alimentary canal.

“It would be the hospital at Centrins. I don’t know what it is here.”

“Just as long as it isn’t the dining room,” said Kirtn dryly. “I think we’d be smart to stay away from anything that has to do with food while we’re in here.”

Daemen laughed. “Don’t worry—it’s the recycler we have to avoid, and that’s on the left side of the hall.”

They followed Daemen to the access panel. He set Fssa on the floor and piled Rainbow nearby. Rheba left a little light with Daemen and sent a much larger light ahead of Kirtn. Despite the Luck’s reassurances, she had no intention of walking blindly out of God’s stinking garbage pit and into an endless gullet.

The room was bigger than she had expected. Kirtn hesitated, not wanting to ask her for more light. The sphere brightened but not enough to overpower the shadows.

“I’m sorry.” She sighed, realizing the extent of her tiredness. A child could have lit the room without noticing the energy it cost. For a moment she considered trying to tap the core power, then rejected it. Zaarain energies were both complex and painful. Even Deva’s master dancers had avoided them.

Kirtn touched her reassuringly. “That’s more than enough light. See? There isn’t any garbage to stumble over here.”

“I suppose the machine would keep the hospital clean as long as it could,” she said, peering into the dense shadows at the far end of the room. She inhaled deeply, glad to breathe air that was not thick with the stench of decay. “What’s that?”

He took a few steps forward, staring toward the darkness.

Vague turquoise tights glimmered back at him, shifting with a fluid grace that was fascinating. “I’m not sure.”

The sphere of light moved farther into the room, lighting a different section. The turquoise dance beckoned as charmingly as The Luck’s smile.

“A pool!” she whistled, delight sliding through each note.’

Kirtn shared her joy but was more cautious. He had not forgotten that God’s House might hold less than divine surprises.

She stepped forward eagerly, anticipating the feeling of warm water supporting her exhausted body.

“Rheba.”

“But—” She sighed and slowed down. He was right.

“I like to swim even more than you do,” he said quietly. “Remember the acid pond on Loo.”

She stopped. She sniffed the air carefully, wondering if his more acute sense of smell had picked up the oily, biting odor of acid. She inhaled again. All she could smell was air that was both fresh and blessedly moist. Outside, the planet’s air was not only thinner than she was used to, it was much more dry.

“It smells like water,” said Kirtn.

Rheba did not answer. She grabbed her head and tried not to moan aloud. Fssa was talking with Rainbow.

Kirtn realized what had happened, even though he felt only mild discomfort. He picked her up and hurried farther into the room. Distance was the only medicine he could give her.

The sphere of light flickered madly, then went out, leaving only her racing akhenet lines to light the room. He swore with a poet’s rage, wishing Fssa were within reach. He tried to give her his own energy to withstand the pain, only to discover that even his Bre’n strength had reached an end.

He carried her as far as the edge of the pool, then held her, trying to shield her with his body even though he knew it was impossible. Below his feet the pool shifted and slid, blue on blue, stirred by invisible currents. Streamers of turquoise wound throughout, leaving midnight shadows far below. If there was a bottom, he could not see it. He stared down, wondering what miraculous therapies the Zaarains had performed in the pool’s depths.

And then the floor began to move.

Kirtn’s reflexes saved him and Rheba from being shunted into the pool. As he leaped backward he spun and fled for the door.

The floor moved faster.

Rheba screamed and twisted in his arms, calling out for Fssa to stop. But the Fssireeme could not hear and she could not bear the pain any longer. She clawed wildly at Kirtn, not knowing what she did.

The floor hummed musically beneath Kirtn’s running feet. He hung on to Rheba and forced his exhausted body to run faster, not to stumble despite her body twisting in his arms.

Stop it, fire dancer!

His need reached her as no words could. She went limp, biting her lips until blood blurred the akhenet patterns on her face.

The floor flew beneath his feet, but he was a man on a treadmill making progress only in his mind. She saw the pool looming over his shoulder, saw the turquoise glide of current’s and blue depths.

Kirtn!

Her scream was as silent as his had been, a minor mind dance that was born out of need and the closeness of their flesh. He reached deep into himself and answered with a burst of speed that made the pool fall away from her horrified glance.

But he was only flesh and bone, no match for an immortal Zaarain machine. With a despairing cry he felt the floor fall away, throwing them into the turquoise stomach of God.

The Bre’n’s last thought was a smoking curse that The Luck, inevitably, had avoided falling into the soup.

XVIII

After the first shock of being thrown in passed, Kirtn realized that his worst fears were not true—the pool was nothing like acid. The liquid was both warm and cool, thicker than water but not at all sticky. It was wonderfully invigorating, like being in the center of an akhenet healing circle while minds danced in each ceil of his body.

Buoyed by the liquid, he had to swim very little to keep Rheba and himself afloat. She lay loosely against him, only half conscious. If she still felt the agony of alien communication, it did not show on her face. Her hair spread out in the water, sinuous with invisible currents of energy.

If this was being “in the soup,” Kirtn thoroughly approved. He was not reckless, however. He made sure that neither he nor Rheba accidentally drank any of the fluid.

And then he felt his clothes dissolve.

He watched in horrified fascination as his cape thinned around Rheba’s shoulders, revealing her glowing akhenet lines.

Rheba murmured sleepily. Her eyes opened, clear cinnamon with fires banked, at peace. Then she remembered where she was. With a startled cry she awoke fully. Her lines of power flared into incandescence, lighting the pool until it was like floating in the golden eye of God.

“What happened?”

“We’re in the soup,” whistled Kirtn smugly. There was an undertone of uncertainty in his whistle, however. He had not forgotten their clothes; the same thing could happen to their bodies. But he doubted it. Floating in the supportive warmth of the pool with his fire dancer alive in his arms, he found it hard to worry about anything. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” she said simply. “I haven’t felt this ... whole ... in a long time. Not since Deva.”

He smiled as her hair flowed sinuously over his shoulder and curled around his neck. The energy that came from that touch was as smooth and controlled as any he had ever felt from master dancers on Deva.

“I wonder why the natives fight this?” She sighed, moving only enough to stay afloat.

“We haven’t tried to get out yet,” said Kirtn, but there was no force to his objection. If Square One’s God wanted to kill them with kindness, so be it. There certainly were worse ways to die—he had seen them.

Rheba laughed, sensing his comfort because she was touching him. She concentrated on sending him a picture of a Bre’n floating smugly on a turquoise cloud. He smiled and wound his hand into her hair, noting absently that each strand was silky and ... dry. Whatever the soup was made of, it had unusual properties for a fluid.

Her cheek rubbed over the palm of his hand. He sensed her surprise and the reason for it at the same instant she did.

“It’s healed!” she said, grabbing his hand and looking at it from all sides. She took his other hand and touched it wonderingly. “Completely healed.”

A sphere of light blazed forth and hovered overhead, making the room lighter than any day. She examined her Bre’n critically, swimming around him, trying to find the multitude of bruises, gashes and scrapes that the rockfall had left on him. His copper fur was sleek and bright, unmarred by so much as a scab or a smudge of dirt.

Kirtn reached out lazily, drawing her to him with the full strength of a Bre’n. “You’re healed, too. Look at that light you made. Or are you drawing on the Installation’s core?”

She moved her head in a slow negative, still fascinated by his strength, a fluid ease that echoed the power implicit in the currents coiling beneath their feet. “Although,” she whistled, “I feel strong enough to take on a Zaarain core now.”

“Don’t,” he said quickly. “Not unless we have to. No use in pushing our luck—or is it Daemen’s?” He sighed. “I suppose we should go back and see how he’s doing.”

“Wait. Fssa isn’t through yet.”

“He isn’t? Does it still hurt?”

“Sort of,” she whistled, “but it’s all far away, as though it were happening to someone else.”

“I could get fond of this soup,” he said approvingly. But even as he spoke he was measuring the height of the pool’s rim, looking for a way out. The better he felt, the less willing he was to be the captive of even a benign God. “More light.”

He had used a mentor’s tone. She responded with a reflexive outpouring that nearly blinded him.

“Control,” he said crisply, as though giving lessons back on Deva. “Outline the rim of the pool.”

A line of light snaked around the lip of the pool, defining it. There was no place where the rim dipped down enough for him to grab it and pull himself out.

“Arm’s length below water level,” he said.

A second line of light bloomed. He swam along the side. There were no steps, no ramps, no irregularities in the seamless pool wall. Getting in had been easy. Getting out would be a trick.

Currents curled beneath him. Fluid humped up, lifting him until the lip was within reach. In a single motion he pulled himself out of the pool.

Getting out was as easy as wanting to.

A globe of light followed him as he walked back to where Rheba swam in the center of her own incandescence. “Come to the side,” he called.

“I’m trying to.” Her whistle was sharp, telling of the fear that was growing in her. “It won’t let me!”

Kirtn’s powerful dive brought him to her side in an instant. Currents swirled around her, holding her back from the side with exactly as much energy as she expended trying to advance. Her lines were so hot that steam began to curl up from the fluid.

“Don’t fight it,” he said.

She stopped trying to swim toward the side. Immediately the currents stopped trying to hold her back.. She looked at him, her expression both perplexed and frightened. “Why won’t it let me go?”

“I don’t know. It practically threw me out.” He swam behind her. “Let me do the swimming for both of us.”

She relaxed against his grip, floating up, behind him as he stroked for the side. After a few moments he saw that he was not making any progress. He reversed direction. The current died as quickly as it had been born.

He experimented, swimming in all directions with Rheba. It became obvious that he could tow her anywhere in the pool, except to the side. Whenever he got within reach of the rim, currents swirled up and pushed him back to the center of the pool. If he let go of her, however, the liquid was very cooperative. He could swim where he pleased and get out as easily as he had the first time.

“Are you tired?” he asked, using Senyas, because he did not want to reveal any more of his fear than he had to.

“No. I think I could fall asleep and the damn stuff would keep me face up.” Her tone was more frustrated than afraid, now.

She felt better when he was in the soup with her. “I suppose I could just vaporize the little beastie.”

Kirtn pulled himself out of the pool, the better to measure its size. It was big. “That wouldn’t work unless you tapped the Installation core. And there’s a good chance that some kind of defense mechanism is programmed into the recycler.”

“Se//-defense,” she said firmly. “This soup is alive.”

He hesitated, then accepted her verdict. She had a much finer discrimination among energy patterns than he did. If she said it did not feel like a machine, then it was not a machine.

She took his hesitation as a question, however, “Mentor,” she said in clipped Senyas, “when you first hit the soup, what did you feel?”

“Surprise, then pleasure. Intense pleasure,” he added, remembering.

“But you should have been scared right out of your copper fur.”

He realized she was right.

“What you felt,” she continued, “was the zoolipt’s pleasure. We were very nice Treats.”

“I thought this was the hospital, not the recycler.”

“To the Zaarains, the functions might have been the same thing. Or they became the same thing here, in Square One.”

“That would explain the clean room,” said Kirtn. “The zoolipt ate all the organic goodies.”

“Right,” said Rheba, sounding just like Scuvee. “Somewhere down there beneath my naked feet must be connectors leading out of the Installation to feeding stations.”

“Wonder what the zoolipt is planning for dinner.”

“I hope fire dancer isn’t on the menu,” she said, looking longingly at the lip that the soup would not let her reach. “Why did it let you go?”

“Maybe it doesn’t like furries.”

She made a flatulent noise and turned her back on him. “Kirtn, get me out.”

He did the only thing he could. He dove in and surfaced beside her. “It healed us when it could more easily have killed us,” he said reasonably. “It’s keeping Fssa from driving you crazy talking to Rainbow.”

She held his hand and watched him with wide eyes.

“You sensed its pleasure,” he added, wrapping a stray curl of her gold hair around his finger. “Do you sense any malevolence?”

She closed her eyes and drifted against him, concentrating on the intricate energy patterns that made up the zoolipt. She sensed its power, the sweeping currents that moved restlessly in its depths. She felt again its pleasure as it lapped around their alien chemistries. No matter how hard she concentrated, she could feel nothing else except her own fear and the distant pain that was a Fssireeme talking to a Zaarain construct.

“Nothing.” She sighed. “But I’m not a mind dancer or even an empathic engineer.”

He pulled her close, not knowing what else to do. They floated passively on the breast of the zoolipt. It responded to their unspoken needs, supporting their bodies like an invisible, infinitely comfortable bed.

“It’s gone,” she said, after a moment.

“What’s gone?”

“The pain. Fssa must be finished.” Then, fervently, “I want out.”

A current swirled her out of Kirtn’s arms and deposited her on the lip of the pool. The zoolipt withdrew from her without leaving so much as a drop of itself behind.

He stared, then swam toward the side with powerful strokes. Fluid bunched up underneath him like a wave and flipped him neatly into the air. He landed on his feet beside her, looking as surprised as she did.

As one, they turned and stared at the glimmering turquoise zoolipt.

“I think,” said Rheba slowly, “that it’s like the Devalon’s womb. It only lets you out when you’re healed. As long as I felt pain, I was a patient. As soon as Fssa shut up, I was a human being again and could come and go as I pleased.”

Despite her confident words, she backed away as she spoke. If her theory was wrong, she did not want to find out by ending up in the soup again. As an afterthought, she even took back all but a small sphere of her light. She did not want to irritate an organism that spent most of its time in darkness.

Daemon’s voice came from the hallway beyond the room. “Kirtn! Rheba! Where are you?”

“In here,” yelled Kirtn.

“But that’s the recycled I told you”—Daemen ran into the room breathlessly—“to turn right, not left!”

“We did,” Kirtn said dryly.

“Oh.” Daemen looked at his feet, obviously embarrassed. “I never could tell the two apart....” He looked up again, then away, embarrassed for a different reason. “What happened to your clothes?”

Rheba remembered they were naked and smothered a giggle.

“The zoolipt ate them,” said Kirtn blandly.

Daemen threw a frightened look around, for the first time noticing the pool where tone on tone of blue turned restlessly. “Oh!” He backed up nearly all the way to the hall. “That’s much bigger than our zoolipt. And it’s the wrong color. I’m not sure it’s a recycler at all!”

“It recycled our clothes fast enough,” pointed out Rheba, trying not to smile.

Daemen looked up, realized that neither Kirtn nor Rheba was embarrassed, and smiled at her in a way that made the Bre’n want to flatten him.

“You certainly look good—ah, healthy,” amended Daemen, as he walked back to them. He stroked her skin as his rain-colored eyes looked at her with obvious pleasure. “Beautiful. I mean, even the scrapes are gone.”

Kirtn knew exactly what he meant.

“The zoolipt healed us,” she said, feeling suddenly awkward beneath Daemen’s admiring glance. She remembered Kirtn’s insistence that The Luck was not a child. “Look at Kirtn’s hands.”

Reluctantly, Daemen turned away from the fire dancer’s fascinating body where intricate curling patterns pulsed with light. He looked at Kirtn’s powerful hands and then up at the Bre’n’s metallic gold eyes. Kirtn smiled. Daemen backed away from Rheba.

“Where’s Fssa?” she asked.

Daemen rummaged around beneath the frayed cape he wore. “Said he was cold,” he explained, unwrapping the Fssireeme from around his waist and handing him to Rheba.

Kirtn sighed. Just when he was ready to strangle the little smoothie, Daemen proved he was not a cherf after all. The Bre’n knew that Daemen did not want to handle the Fssireeme at all, much less keep the snake warm by wearing him like a girdle. If The Luck would just keep his hands off Rheba, Kirtn might even come to like him.

Fssa was quite dark and noticeably cool to Rheba’s touch. Immediately she gathered energy and held it in her hair. When it whipped and shot sparks, she wove the Fssireeme into place. Her hair calmed as the snake drew off excess energy into himself.

Within moments, Fssa was rippling with metallic colors, as bright as the dancer’s hair he was woven into. He whistled a complicated Bre’n trill. Rheba and Kirtn listened, then turned toward The Luck. Rheba looked concerned. The Bre’n looked like a predator.

“What’s he saying?” asked Daemen nervously.

“Not much.” Rheba’s voice was quick, her words rushed. “Rainbow is happy. It collected a few more crystals—two swaps and seven outright thefts, from what Fssa says.” She hesitated, remembering Daemen’s obvious fear of the zoolipt’s blue depths. “The zoolipt is ecstatic. We’re the first new taste it’s had in Cycles. Fssa said it was very bored with garbage, sewage, and dead bodies.”

Daemen’s hands made small movements. Even talking about the zoolipt’s gastronomic needs made him nervous.

“Fssa also said that the barbarians are waiting outside.”

“For us?”

“For food. They didn’t expect us to come out. At least, not as ourselves. The few live people who are thrown in die of fright.”

“Sensible,’’ muttered The Luck, looking nervously at the zoolipt’s too-active blue surface.

“However,” continued Rheba, “there are legends of willing Treats.”

Daemen looked up, sensing that she was finally coming to the point.

“Do you know how the barbarians recognize willing Treats when they come out of God’s House?” she asked gently.

“They’re alive,” snapped Daemen.

“That’s part of it,” she agreed. “The rest of it is that they’re naked, clean, and in perfect health.”

Daemen looked at the two of them and then at his own grubby, scuffed self. “Oh no ...”

“Oh yes!” said Kirtn triumphantly.

Without warning, he snatched The Luck and heaved him into the soup. Daemen’s indignant squawk ended in a huge splash.

“That was mean,” observed Rheba.

Kirtn’s only answer was a whistle that rippled with satisfaction.

XIX

“Do you suppose he’ll be in long?” asked Rheba.

Kirtn stretched hugely, flexing muscles that were no longer strained and sore. “Doubt it. He was hardly scratched. Lucky cherf. Gets everyone else to do his work for him.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiled and raffled her electric hair. “His technology just fell into his hands, but he doesn’t even know it.”

“I think the zoolipt fed you something it-didn’t feed me. You’re, still floating.”

He laughed and blew into her hair. It ruse around him like fine gold smoke, shimmering with life. He had never seen her so vivid. “What do the Seurs need more than anything else?”

She sent up a tendril of hair to tickle his sensitive ears. “Decent food,” she said, grimacing at the memory of her one Seur meal. “Reliable wouldn’t hurt, either.”

He peeled away the maddening hair and wound it around his finger. “Right,” he said, echoing Scuvee. “And what does the zoolipt want?”

“Treats,” she said promptly. Then, “Of course! But how do you get the Seurs to the zoolipt? I don’t think they would mix well with Scuvee’s folks.”

“That’s The Luck’s problem.”

They looked at the pool. Daemen was floating helplessly, a bemused look on his face. He obviously could not swim. It did not matter. The zoolipt supported him as surely as solid ground, and far more comfortably.

“Still has his clothes,” noted Kirtn.

“I hope he’s all right,” said Rheba. “He was pretty scared.”

The Bre’n made a flatulent noise that stirred Fssa’s admiration. The snake hissed blissfully, reveling in Rheba’s lively hair. He was all hut invisible, matching his surface color exactly with the shimmering mass around him. He formed a pair of sensors and directed them at the pool.

“Daemen is fine,” whistled Fssa. “He’s laughing, not choking.”

“I hope he doesn’t drink any,” she said anxiously.

“With his luck,” muttered the Bre’n, “it would give him eternal life.”

“There go his clothes.”

“Shouldn’t be long now,” said Kirtn.

The zoolipt swirled in shades of blue around Daemen, then swelled into a wave.

“Here he comes.” Kirtn measured the wave’s direction and speed, moved three steps to the left, and caught Daemen before his feet touched the ground. ““There,” he said, setting The Luck upright. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Daemen gave the Bre’n a reproachful look. “You could have warned me.”

“That’s right,” said Kirtn. “I could have.”

The Luck hesitated. “I wouldn’t have believed you anyway, I suppose.”

Kirtn put his hand on The Luck’s shoulder, liking him in spite of himself. “Let’s pick up Rainbow and get back to the Seurs.”

Daemen’s smiled faded. “I can’t go back. I don’t have anything. Fssa said that Rainbow won’t work for me.” He peered into Rheba’s seething hair, looking for the Fssireeme. “Does he always tell the truth?”

Fssa’s head darted out, sensors wheeling. He was so outraged that he formed two mouths, screaming his innocence out of one and his trustworthiness out of the other.

Rheba looked skeptical. Fssa considered Rainbow a friend and fellow sentient being. Daemen considered Rainbow a machine, and a badly tuned one at that.

“Quiet!” yelled Kirtn.

The Bre’n’s bellow made Fssa wilt. One mouth vanished entirely. The other one shrank until it was almost too small to see. He blushed in dark shades of gray.

“Rainbow is irrelevant,” said the Bre’n mildly.

Fssa’s relieved sigh was very human.

“What do you mean?” Daemen said, his voice harsh with disappointment and irritation.

“You were just head over heels in the most advanced technology this planet has seen since the Zaarains,” said Kirtn dryly. “What do you need with a collection of reluctant crystals?”

“We already have a recycler.”

“Like that?”

Daemen turned and stared at the zoolipt. Turquoise lights winked back at him. “No, but ...”

Kirtn waited.

Fssa spoke, his voice subdued bat hopeful. “Square One’s zoolipt is unique. When this Installation went discordant, the hospital zoolipt adapted. It spread through the connectors and merged with the recycler zoolipt. That was a long time ago. It sent some of itself through the other connectors to other installations. That’s all that saved your people when the grid went eccentric. A machine would have broken clown. The zoolipt ... evolved.”

Daemon kept staring at the zoolipt, amazement and disbelief on his face. “Are you saying that pool is alive?”

“Yes,” said Rheba before Fssa could answer. “I sensed it.”

Daemen switched his look of disbelief to her. “I didn’t know you were a liwwen,” he said flatly.

“Mind dancer,” said Fssa, automatically translating the Daemenite word into a concept familiar to Rheba.

“I’m not. But a fire dancer is sensitive to patterns of energy. The zoolipt’s pattern isn’t that of a machine. It’s alive.” __ Daemen looked back at the pool stretching away into the darkness. “All of it?” he said weakly.

Rheba blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Her hair shifted, then spread into a disciplined fan as she sampled the various energies that permeated the pool. Kirtn moved to position behind her, hands resting lightly where her neck joined her shoulders. His presence greatly enhanced both the power and precision of her search.

Daemen watched, fascinated by the play of energy through her akhenet lines. He was also more than a little fascinated by the supple body beneath the lines. His thoughts triggered the inevitable physiological response. He looked away, wishing the zoolipt had not eaten his clothes.

When Rheba was finished, she sighed and opened eyes that were as bright as her akhenet lines. Kirtn glanced over at Daemen, wondering how The Luck had reacted to seeing a healthy fire dancer at work. I? did not take a mind dancer to know what The Luck was thinking. Not for the first time, Kirtn wryly decided that men had invented clothes as much to conceal their desires as to protect their genitals.

“I think just the currents are alive,” said Rheba.

“What good does that do us?” said Daemen, his back to her as he stared at the zoolipt.

“It’s a lot easier to take back a scoop of zoolipt than the whole pond,” she said impatiently.

“I left my scoop at Centrins.” Daemen’s voice was more than a little sarcastic. “Besides, what good would it do?”

Rheba looked at him, puzzled.

Kirtn’s lips struggled not to smile.

Fssa spoke in the tones of a patient mother. “Zoolipts are intelligent. Intelligent beings need variety. If they don’t get it, they invent it. Bored zoolipts play tricks,” continued the snake in round, patient tones. “If they get too bored, they go mad. Mad zoolipts eventually kill their people. I think the Centrins zoolipt is going mad.”

Daemon looked around. The impact of the Fssireeme’s words drove all desire from The Luck. “What?”

“Your zoolipt is crazy,” summed up the snake. “It’s starving your people to death because that’s more amusing than feeding them pap. It likes to see the Seurs ran around and jump tables to be fed. Either it doesn’t understand that it’s kilting the Seurs or it doesn’t care anymore. It’s been feeding Seurs for eons, you know,” added Fssa almost apologetically. “And all it gets in return is garbage. It knows every molecule by name. The only variety it has is when something living falls into the soup. All those wonderful enzymes to play with.. ..

“At least, that’s what Rainbow said about this zoolipt, and this zoolipt and yours were the same a very long time ago. Square One’s zoolipt is part of a hospital zoolipt, remember. It was designed to make Fourth People healthy. If you put in some of this zoolipt with your zoolipt, the combination could be the salvation of Centrins.”

The Luck stared at the Fssireeme and then at the fire dancer. “I think,” said Daemen slowly, “that my Luck just ran out. I’m finally as crazy as that snake. The Seurs will never believe me.”

Kirtn laughed shortly. “It doesn’t matter what they believe.” He leaned forward, forcing Daemen to look at him. “Don’t tell the Seurs that Square One’s zoolipt is alive and that Centrins’ zoolipt is crazy. Just take some of this zoolipt home, pour it into the Centrins recycler and wait for ‘fat times and fancy flavors’ to pour out the feeding stations. After one good meal the Seurs will believe anything you tell them.”

“Will it work?” asked Daemen dubiously.

“Do you have a better idea?” snapped Kirtn.

Daemen sighed. “How will we carry it?”

Rheba muttered and shook her head. Fssa dropped into her hands. “We just happen to have a container. Do your trick, snake.”

With a disgruntled sound, Fssa swelled to three times his normal size. A network of metallic gray and blue glowed sullenly over his length, saying more clearly than words what he thought of the situation.

“Will that be enough?” said Daemen.

“You want any more,” said Fssa, echoing oddly, “swallow it yourself!”

Rheba walked over to the pool. Currents of turquoise and blue lapped at the edges. Other currents curled just out of reach, thick and thin, more colors of blue than she could name. She looked back. “All the currents are different. Which one would be the best?”

Kirtn looked blank for a moment. Then he smiled. He took Fssa in one hand and Daemen in the other. “It’s his problem. Let him solve it.”.

He threw snake and naked Luck into the pool.

A hearty splash was followed by hot Daemenite phrases. Very quickly, the zoolipt returned man and snake to their normal environment. Fssa bulged like a long, water-filled balloon. Kirtn snickered, further offending the Fssireeme’s distended dignity.

“Are you quite through?” said Daemen icily to the Bre’n. “I’m tired of being tossed into the soup by an overgrown furry!”

“Anytime you can lift me, you can throw me in,” offered Kirtn.

“I’ll take Fssa,” said Rheba, stepping between the two as she lifted the snake out of Daemen’s hands. “If you made compartments,” she whispered to the Fssireeme, “you wouldn’t slosh so much.”

Fssa’s answer sounded more like a belch than anything else. He was too big to fit in his usual nest in her hair, and too heavy for her to carry easily. Kirtn saw the problem, took the snake and, apologizing, tied the Fssireeme in a loose knot around his neck.

Silently, the three walked back to the access panel. It was closed. Rainbow was mounded in front of it, each facet shining as though it had been polished by a master jeweler.

“It’s bigger,” said Rheba unhappily. The bigger Rainbow got, the greater its range and the worse her headaches. “It must have swiped the core’s biggest crystals.” She picked up the Zaarain construct. It slid facet over facet until it was a double-Strand necklace. “Here,” she said, handing it over to Daemen. “You wear the damn thing. Maybe the Seurs will be impressed.”

Rainbow made a wonderfully barbaric display. Shards of colored light splintered in the depths of crystals created by men and methods that were remembered only in myths.

Silently, The Luck pulled Rainbow over his head. He led Rheba and Kirtn to the front door of the Installation.

The three of them made a striking display as they stepped out of God’s House and into the planet’s brief twilight. The Luck’s rare beauty was reflected in Rainbow’s thousand facets. Kirtn wore only his suede-textured skin and a sullen Fssireeme knotted around his powerful neck. Between Luck and Bre’n stood Rheba, dressed in a blazing network of akhenet lines.

A nearby Scavenger took one look at the Treats, spun around and ran off yelling for Scuvee. She was not far away. Like most of the Scavengers, she was gathered around a feeding station, waiting for God’s verdict on the Treats it had been fed.

Scuvee looked at the three people who had emerged from God’s House. Then she looked at Daemen. “You must be The Luck, all right. Nobody else has walked out of there for as long as Scavengers can remember.” She threw back her head and laughed triumphantly. “Fine eats and fancy flavors for sure! Then the shaval pile,” she added, her glance sliding back to Kirtn.

Fssa’s translation was slurred, but understandable.

Rheba grimaced. “Some other time, maybe. We have to get The Luck back to his people.”

Scuvee’s smile vanished, leaving a hard expression behind. “Don’t think so, Pretty Treat. Not until God gets bored with your taste.”

Kirtn looked at the crowd that was gathering around them. The Scavengers wore expressions of awe, greed and anticipation. They watched the Treats with the eyes of a miser counting credits.

“How long will it take for God to get bored?” asked Daemen.

Scuvee spread her hands. “Not long. Two lives. Maybe three.”

“Lives?” said Daemen weakly.

“Right. Don’t worry, though. Legend says that when God likes your taste, it makes you immortal.” She smiled, showing uneven teeth. “You’ve got all the time there is, Little Treat. And we’ve got ourselves the best eats ever.”

The Scavengers folded possessively around their Treats.

XX

Sounds of muted and not-so-muted merriment filtered into the house where the Treats were being held. Scuvee’s guards stood outside the door, grumbling about having to work while others played in a shaval pile. They were not too disgruntled, however. Their stomachs were stretched tightly over a dinner that would be legend among the Scavengers.

God had truly enjoyed its Treats.

“Don’t they ever sleep?” said Rheba, turning away from the peeling window. Beyond the window’s ancient distortions, the Scavengers whooped and laughed and chased each other from one shaval drift to the next.

Daemen looked up glumly and said nothing.

Kirtn shrugged. If he had waited as long for a decent meal as the Scavengers had, he would celebrate too. He picked absently at flakes of window dangling from invisible fibers.

The material was very tough. Rheba had tried to burn some of it. After a lot of energy, it smoldered fitfully and softened. She could burn their way out of the house, but it would take a long time and more energy than she could easily draw from moonlight. Sunrise would be a different matter. Energy would be abundant and, she hoped, the Scavengers would be comatose after a night of celebration.

If forced to, Rheba would tap the Zaarain core. Neither she nor Kirtn wanted that. Zaarain energies were highly complex, dangerous and difficult to channel. Even a master dancer with centuries of experience would hesitate to tangle with a Zaarain core.

There was also the fact that once tapped, the core might go eccentric. The Scavengers who survived that would live only long enough to die of starvation. Neither Rheba nor Kirtn wanted to be responsible for more deaths.

On the other hand, neither one of them planned to spend the next few centuries as Treats for a shapeless God.

“Scuvee’s coming,” said Kirtn, turning away from the peeling window.

“Probably wants you for the shaval pile,” snapped Rheba.

He smiled and wisely said nothing.

Fssa, still loosely knotted around Kirtn’s neck, extruded a dish-shaped listening apparatus and pointed it at the door. He added a circle of metallic red quills that quivered and combed the air as though alive. Ripples of metallic colors coursed over his distended body.

Daemen stared, still unused to seeing Fssireeme transformations. Rheba and Kirtn watched for a different reason. It was rare to see Fssa having difficulty picking up Fourth People speech.

Fssa changed again, substituting a convex dish for the concave one. Quills vanished, only to reappear as a platinum ruff around the dish. Rheba and Kirtn looked at each other. They had never seen the Fssireeme in that shape. Whatever was beyond that door was something new.

Silently, Kirtn set Fssa on the floor and came to stand behind Rheba. She gathered energy, preparing for whatever the next minutes might bring.

The door opened. A battered Scuvee walked in. Her jaw was so swollen she could not talk. Her grunts and gestures were enough, though. She pointed to the porch, pushed the guard who had followed her into the room back over the threshold and slammed the door.

Instantly, Fssa changed back into a snake and began spouting long phrases in a language that was neither Universal nor Daemenite. Scuvee’s face blurred and reformed into the colorless features of f’lTiri, the Yhelle illusionist Rheba had rescued on Loo.

F’lTiri smiled, changing his face from bland to slyly humorous. “Surprised?” he asked in soft Yhelle.

Fssa translated unobtrusively into Senyas. Although f’lTiri knew Universal, so did quite a few of the natives. It would be safer to speak Yhelle and not to be understood by eavesdroppers.

“How did you get here?” demanded Kirtn in Senyas. “Is the ship safe?”

Rheba visibly burned with unasked questions, but she waited to hear f’lTiri’s explanations.

The Yhelle looked a little uncomfortable. “The ship is as safe as it can be without full power.”

“I told the Devalon not to let anyone in or out without my express permission,” said Kirtn flatly. “As long as the ship is intact, it obeys me. You’re here, so the ship isn’t intact.”

F’lTiri looked even more uncomfortable. He sighed. “Ilfn told me you’d be difficult.”

“Ilfn?” Kirtn’s voice was sharp. “Is she all right? And Lheket?”

The illusionist knew what Ilfn and Lheket meant to Kirtn. As the only other akhenet team that was known to have survived Deva, the female Bre’n and mate storm dancer represented the only future the races of Senyas and Bre’n had. “They’re both fine,” said F’lTiri quickly.

“Then how—”

“Kirtn.” Rheba’s hand subtly restrained the Bre’n. “Let him talk. When he’s finished you can chew on him or whoever else has it coming. If they’ve done anything to the Devalon, I’ll cook them and feed them to you myself.”

F’lTiri shuddered and looked away from Rheba’s eyes. “The ship is as you left it, with one minor change. Ilfn is giving the orders.”

“Ilfn?” Rheba’s voice was doubtful. “The only way she would disobey Kirtn was if Lheket’s life was at stake.”

“Exactly. The J/taals figured that out rather quickly. They told her that if she didn’t open the ship and let them come after you, they’d kill Lheket.”

“They don’t speak Universal and she doesn’t speak J/taal,” said Kirtn, his voice cold. “How would they communicate?”

“Ever heard of sign language? A knife, for instance? Held at a boy’s throat while two J/taals stand by the downside access?”

The Bre’n winced. He could see the J/taals doing just that. What’s more, they would have carried out their threat. They had no compunctions about heaven or hell where Rheba’s safety was concerned. “Go on,” he said, letting his anger slide away.

The Yhelle drew a slow breath of relief. “Ilfn said if I survived the first few questions, you’d be reasonable.” He looked sideways. “Your race is as short-tempered as it is strong. Ilfn was ... angry at the J/taals.”

“Tell him something he doesn’t know,” suggested Rheba dryly.

“I decided to come along with the J/taals. Without your magic snake”—he gestured to Fssa—“communication is uphill and into the wind. Enough of the Seurs knew Universal for me to be useful.”

“I hope they were grateful,” said Kirtn.

“The J/taals?”

“No. The Seurs. The J/taals would have gone through them like a lightgun through pap, looking for Rheba.”

The illusionist’s smile was thin. “We lost a few Seurs on our way to Tric. They should have known better than to take on two J/taals and their clepts. Tric was smart. He loaded us onto a mover and shot us out of Centrins before the fighting started.”

“Fighting?”

“Riot,” amended F’lTiri. “Seems that something has gone wrong with their food machine. First it turned out unprocessed sewage, then it stopped entirely. Everyone blamed the Seurs. When the mover pulled out, Centrins looked like payday in Chaos.”

“How did you get through the tunnel?”

“There wasn’t much of the rockfall left.” He made a gesture of admiration toward Kirtn. “Even the J/taals were impressed. I left them at the tunnel,” he added. “I couldn’t cover them with my illusion. Then I listened around one of those native piles until I figured out what had happened. After that, it was just a matter of getting a look at Super Scavenger Scuvee.” He smiled with an illusionist’s pride. “Clever of me to figure a way around the language problem, wasn’t it?”

The swollen face of Scuvee returned. F’lTiri grunted and waved his arms. The Scavenger face blurred into illusionist laughter.

“Very clever,” agreed Kirtn, bending down and picking up Fssa. He knotted the snake loosely around his neck and pulled up the hood that was attached to the Scavenger robes the Treats had been given. Fssa poked out his head, sensors wheeling with colors. “Put on Scuvee’s face again,” said Kirtn. “The sooner we get to the tunnel, the safer I’ll feel. Fssa, can you take care of the voice?”

“Right,” said the snake, flawlessly reproducing Scuvee’s rasping tone.

“Can you make the illusion of a rope around our wrists?” asked Kirtn. “We were tied when we came here. We should be tied when we leave.”

Startlingly realistic ropes appeared around their wrists. “Like that?”

“Too good. The ropes here are dirty and frayed.”

The illusion flickered, then reformed more convincingly.

“Good. ‘Scuvee’ will take the lead,” said Kirtn. “If anyone asks, even unwilling Treats get a turn in a shaval pile. To make sure we don’t get away, she’s taking us to a small one where she can keep her eye on us. Got that?”

F’lTiri clapped his hands, agreement and appreciation in a single gesture. As he turned toward the door, his face changed. As far as the guards could see, it was Scuvee who walked out leading the three Treats.

“Shaval,” granted Scuvee to the surprised guards.

The guards hesitated, then stepped aside. “How about us?”

Scuvee pointed toward the nearest shaval drift. Clouds of the gold dust flew up as happy Scavengers groped and thrashed toward consummation. She grunted again.

The guards did not wait for a second invitation. They raced toward the drift, shedding clothes as they went. With loud whoops they vanished into the pile.

F’lTiri sniffed the fragrant motes of shaval that drifted toward them. He sighed. “If I were a trader, I’d sell that stuff and die rich.”

Laughter and shrieks of pleasure punctuated the darkness as f’lTiri led the three Treats toward the tunnel. Once they heard a hoarse shout, angry surprise followed by curses. Kirtn speeded up until he was stepping on f’lTiri’s heels. The illusionist, who had also heard the shout, redoubled his speed.

Several times they had to detour around shaval drifts that were filled to overflowing with benignly demented Scavengers. Until the shaval wore off, nothing much smaller than the end of the world would be noticed by many of the inhabitants of Square One.

Long before the escaping Treats reached the tunnel, the cliff face loomed over them, cutting off half the sky. Beyond the cliff mountains rose, stone piled on stone in dark abandon.

“Hurry,” whistled Fssa around the gurgling sound he made while sloshing about Kirtn’s neck. “Someone’s following. I think it’s Scuvee. She must have come back for Kirtn and discovered we were gone.”

They moved as quickly as they could, but it was not fast enough. Behind them came clear sounds of pursuit, shouts and curses and hoarse cries of encouragement.

The clepts found them before they reached the tunnel in, the cliff face. The war dogs materialized out of the night, touched Rheba with their blunt muzzles and vanished. Almost immediately they returned with M/dere and M/dur. Both J/taals touched Rheba as though to reassure themselves that it was their J/taaleri in the flesh. Then they hustled everyone into the tunnel and posted a clept to guard the entrance.

From the trail came shouts, the real Scuvee’s among them. A second clept leaped out to help the first. The war dogs stood slightly apart, silver eyes gleaming in the night, waiting for a command to kill. Beyond them gathered the Scavengers, at least sixty of them milling in the moonlight.

“Give me light!” said Daemen urgently, shoving past Kirtn into the tunnel. “I’ve got to get to the mover discs!”

Rheba gave Daemen a bright light and got out of his way. She scrambled after them through the narrow opening in the rockfall that the J/taals had made. The sounds of shouting acted as a goad. Scuvee had dragged enough people out of shaval drifts to make a mob.

“Have you found anything yet?” Rheba called to Daemen.

“Bad Luck!” swore Daemen. “These discs are cracked. We’ll have to go farther into the tunnel and find others.”

“Will it take long?” asked Rheba, glancing nervously over her shoulder. The mob sounded as if it was nearly at the tunnel.

“Depends on how fast you can run.”

“Fssa. Tell the clepts not to hurt anyone if they can help it, but to hold off the Scavengers until you whistle. Then tell the dogs to run like the hounds of death.”

Fssa uttered a series of grunts, clicks and gravel-like sounds that composed the language of the J/taals. The third clept vanished into the narrow tunnel through the rockfall.

Kirtn’s hand closed around Rheba’s arm, nearly lifting her off her feet. A clept’s snarl echoed chillingly back down the tunnel. Rheba ran next to Kirtn, cursing-the loose Scavenger robes that threatened to trip her with each stride. After a moment she realized that the J/taals had not followed her. They had gone back to the rockfall to protect their J/taaleri’s retreat.

Daemen ran with surprising speed, his robe bunched in his left hand, legs flying. The illusionist was right behind, his breath coming hoarsely. Rheba and Kirtn followed, Fssa gurgling and thumping with each step.

The tunnel seemed endless. Finally Daemen skidded to a halt and began casting around frantically along both sides of the tunnel. Rheba doubled the light and leaned against Kirtn, panting with the violence of their run.

Daemen muttered up and down the tunnel and then pounced like a hungry clept. “Discs!”

Rheba and Kirtn crowded around him. Discs stretched across the tunnel. Daemen stepped from one to the next until he had activated nine of them, one for each person and three for the clepts.

“Stand next to me,” he said, gesturing impatiently. “And call in the J/taals.”

Fssa sent a punishing burst of sound back down the tunnel. If there was an answer, only the snake heard it.

“Now what?” said Kirtn, standing next to The Luck.

“A mover condenses,” he said. Then muttered, “I hope.”

“Aren’t you sure?” said Rheba.

“It’s a Zaarain machine,” said The Luck. “It usually works, but it’s old.”

Silently, they stood and waited for the mover to form. Nothing happened. They looked at Daemen. His eyes were closed. He seemed to be praying.

The J/taals and clepts appeared with the astonishing speed that was part of their deadly mercenary skills. Without being told, they formed a protective ring around Rheba. Daemen opened his eyes, approved the J/taals’ positions, and resumed exhorting his gods.

From the tunnel came the sounds, of the Scavenger mob. Daemen sweated and muttered but did not open his eyes. The sounds became louder. Rheba gathered what energy she could, but in the black tunnel she was as close to helpless as a fire dancer could be.

The mob burst into howls of triumph as they saw the group illuminated by dancer light. F’lTiri projected a monstrous image at the same instant that Rheba shimmered into flame. The Scavengers faltered, then rushed forward in a mass to reclaim their Treats.

A mover condensed silently, inexorably around The Luck and his friends, dividing them from the Scavengers. The last thing the Treats heard before the mover enclosed them was Scuvee’s anguished wail.

XXI

Centrins was subdued, a city exhausted after an orgy of violence. There were no Seurs out, no robes or whips to be seen. Just small groups of people slinking from alley to alley, looking as battered as the buildings and as hungry as the shadows.

Rheba shivered and moved closer to her Bre’n. Their only—comfort was the slender grace of the Devalon rising above the windblown streets. She was grateful for the mover’s invisible barrier around them. The people of Centrins had the mean look of skinning knives.

Kirtn put his arm around her, sensing her uncase. He, too, wished to be inside the Devalon’s familiar protection. The Scavengers had been angry but not desperate. Centrins was another matter entirely. People huddled sullenly around the outlying feeding stations, ignoring the cold wind that chased tattered bits of cloth along cracked pavements.

The Luck looked unhappily at the view provided by the mover, if the Seurs had been gaunt, these people were skeletal. Centrins’ Luck had run out the day they shipped his mother off planet. “Why?” he said hoarsely. “Why didn’t they just let her stay?”

Kirtn looked at Daemen and said simply, “They wanted to change their Luck. They did.”

“She wasn’t other.”

The Bre’n sighed and said nothing. Daemen’s mother was dead, a variety of Luck that came to all living things. “They must have been desperate,” he said finally.

Daemen made a strangled sound that even a Fssireeme could not translate.

Centrins rose out of the gray city that later men had built in the shadow of Zaarain magnificence. Multicolored and as multi-layered as a dream, the building’s outer walls glistened with enigmas that had been old before akhenets were more than an evolutionary promise.

“I can see why they called it God’s House,” murmured Rheba. “Anything that beautiful can scarcely be human.” She glanced at her Bre’n, whose beauty was as much an enigma to her as a Zaarain construct, “You should live there, mentor.”

Kirtn smiled oddly, almost sadly. “Would you live with me, little dancer?”

She looked up and saw herself reflected in golden Bre’n eyes. For an instant she felt as beautiful as he, then he blinked and the instant passed. Tears came to her eyes, eyes that had wept only once since Deva died. “I’m not a god.”

“Neither am I.” His voice was gentle, but very final.

She looked at him, remembering his eyes glowing gold out of the tunnel’s darkness as he lifted boulders nearly as large as himself, Bre’n power and beauty that no Senyas could equal. She looked at him and felt like an awkward child stumbling in the wake of perfection, awed and almost resentful.

It’s you who call fire, not me. It’s you who burn with inhuman beauty, not me. You are like flames, color and grace and heat. Look at the Face you wear. See yourself as you are. Or are you still so young that you want to worship instead of love?

Kirtn’s voice in her mind was like a blow. She pushed away from him, ending the touch that had made mind dancing possible. Even then the intensity of his communication almost overwhelmed her, echoes of his emotions and her own seething through her so quickly that she could not separate them into understanding.

Her hand went up to her earring, an object that was both jewelry and teaching device. She touched the Bre’n carving that turned with her every movement, a Face hidden within the restless cloud of her hair. She did not need to see the Face to remember it. Bre’n profiles aloof and serene, sensual and laughing, changing and yet changeless as a sea. Once she thought she had seen herself in the carving but the image was like a wave breaking, gone before she could fix its reality.

Centrins closed around the mover, startling her.

“Where does the mover stop?” asked Kirtn, looking at the courtyards and residences that were pan of the Zaarain building’s colorful interior.

“In the Seur residence.”

“I should have guessed,” said Kirtn sourly.

Daemen turned to face the Bre’n. It did not take a mind dancer to guess his thoughts. “Don’t worry. I’m The Luck. I’m coming back with my find. They’ll be glad to see me.”

Kirtn stared. “If you believe that, you shouldn’t be let out of the nursery without a guard.”

The Luck’s skin darkened with embarrassment or anger. “It’s our way,” he said tightly, “I don’t expect you to understand.”

Kirtn looked over Daemen’s shoulder where the Seur quarters rose out of a ruined garden. Ragged rows of Seurs were gathered around the discs where movers condensed or dissolved. Neither the expressions on their faces nor the weapons in their hands looked welcoming.

“My understanding isn’t the problem,” said Kirtn, pointing toward the Seurs. “Save your arguments for them.”

Daemen turned, assessed the waiting Seurs, and made a sound of disbelief. “Don’t they understand? I’m here to save them. I’m their Luck!”

Kirtn’s big hand closed over Daemen’s shoulder, forcing the young man’s attention. “It’s you who don’t understand,” said the Bre’n gently. “You touched their food and it turned to shit. Remember?”

Daemen’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. He shook his head as though to rid himself of doubts. “When I explain, they’ll understand.”

Kirtn looked at Rheba, silently asking her to argue with The Luck.

She saw Daemen’s confusion, his youth, his vulnerability. “We’ll help you, Daemen.’ If it weren’t for Rainbow you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“The best way to help him would be to get his smooth ass off this planet,” snapped Kirtn.

Daemen looked shocked. “I can’t leave. They’ll die. They need me. I am—”

—”—their Luck,” finished the Bre’n dryly. “I know. You’ve told us often enough.” He measured the waiting Seurs. “You might be able to kill them, but convince them you’re Good Luck? Even a Fssireeme wouldn’t have enough mouths to do that.”

“Then I’ll have to get around them,” he said stubbornly.

“That’s a good idea,” said Rheba. “Is there another entrance?”

Daemen hesitated. “Centrins isn’t like Square One. Just the core area is the same. But once we get there, it won’t take long to dump in the zoolipt,” he added hopefully.

“What,” said Kirtn distinctly, “is between us and the core?”

“Three doors. No, four. The first two don’t fit very well and the last two are never locked.”

Kirtn’s whistle made Rheba’s teeth ache. “That’s all? Just four doors and all the Seurs Centrins can muster?” He smiled sourly. “You don’t need us. You need a J/taal army!” .

“He doesn’t have a J/taal army,” pointed out Rheba.

Even the J/taals cringed at Kirtn’s answering whistle.

Before Rheba could shape a retort, the mover dissolved. This time Kirtn was not caught unprepared. He steadied f’lTiri with one hand and Rheba with the other. Daemen, naturally, landed on his feet.

The Sears moved only enough to let Tric come to the front. Behind him the ranks closed with seamless finality. It was obvious that nothing—particularly Bad Luck—was going to get through the Seurs alive.

Tric walked forward a few steps, then stood looking sorrowfully at his sister’s son. “I’d hoped never to see you again.”

There was little Daemen could say to that.

“Haven’t you discovered it yet?” asked Tric.

“What?” asked Daemen, finding his voice.

“You’re Bad Luck,” said Tric, his tone gentle and terribly sad. “Bad. Luck.”

“No.”

“Listen to me,” Tric said, his eyes pleading for understanding, for forgiveness, for a future free of Luck. “Your mother felt the way you do and for a long time I believed her. We thought that the problem might be a thinning of the heritage in her. It had been so long since a strong Luck had lived. None of her children showed signs of it. So we—”

Tric stopped, looked down and then aside, anywhere but at Daemen’s bright young face, “We made you. Together. We were the only direct descendants of the First Luck. We thought if we—if we—” Tric stopped and this time did not start again.

Daemen stared, trying to see himself in Tric’s wrinkled features. “I don’t believe you.”

Tric’s smile was sad and swift. “You don’t have to. You are what you are—The Luck. Very strong Luck. We were right. The heritage had thinned. But not in you,” He looked at his hands, then at his nephew and son. He sighed and forced himself to continue. “We were right. But we were very wrong, too. Your mother was going to kill herself and all her children. All but you. Then you would inherit the Luck, and do for her people what she could not. She could not bring them Good Luck.”

Daemen’s lips moved in soundless denials. Whatever he had expected Tric to say, it had not been this.

“I couldn’t let her kill herself,” Tric said simply. “Yet I couldn’t let her stay and kill us. Oh, she wouldn’t mean to,” he said, answering Daemen’s unspoken objections, “any more than you meant to when you threw your necklace into the core. But unless our Luck changes we’ll die just the same.” He made an odd, helpless gesture. “So we put her and her family on our last ship and sent her to face her Luck alone among the stars.” His voice thinned. “You were captured by slavers, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Daemen’s voice was a whisper. “You arranged for that, didn’t you?”

“I?” Tric laughed softly. “That would have been redundant. Your mother’s Luck was more than enough. But your Luck was stronger. You survived.”

“Because I’m Good Luck.”

“No,” sadly, “because Bad Luck knows no end.”

Daemen’s face hardened, making him look older. His rain-colored eyes narrowed. “Get out of my way, Uncle or Father or whoever you are. I’m going to the core with my find, like every Luck back to the beginning of time.”

The Seurs moved like grass stirred by wind. Tric stepped back until he was a part of them once more. “No.”

“What have you got to lose?” said Daemen. “You told me you’re dead already.”

“Unless our Luck changes,” corrected Tric. “It can only change if you die. Go away, Daemen. Please. Or do you hate us enough to make us kill you and be haunted by your Luck until even our souls starve?”

“I don’t hate you at all!” exploded Daemen. “I want to help you!”

“Then go away.”

“No.” Daemen’s voice was ragged. He gestured around him wildly, taking in the dead garden and trash blowing in the cold wind. “What are you afraid of? What could be worse than eating shit and waiting for your core to go eccentric and kill you?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Tric. “But if you stay, I’m sure we’ll find out.”

Kirtn watched The Luck struggle for arguments to change Tric’s mind. The Bre’n knew it was futile. Tric and the other Seurs had nothing left to lose but hope. They would protect that hope any way they could.

Unobtrusively, Kirtn drew the illusionist aside. Rheba, standing slightly to the front with Daemen, did not notice. When Kirtn was sure that no one was watching, he leaned over F’lTiri and whispered in Universal, “Can you make both of us invisible long enough to get through those Seurs?”

F’lTiri measured the distance separating them from the Seurs. “I can try.”

“If you can’t hold it long enough, can you make us look like Seurs?”

“Of course!” said f’lTiri, obviously stung by what he took as a slur upon his abilities.

“Long enough to get to the core? Then I’ll empty Fssa into the soup and we’ll see what kind of Luck is with us.”

“What if nothing happens?”

“Then Daemen won’t have any reason to stay, will he?” said Kirtn, a snarl thickening his voice. “And my fire dancer won’t be forced to kill just to stay alive.”

“I’ll make us invisible as long as I can,” said f’lTiri, “and then I’ll make us took like Seurs.”

“Good.” Kirtn hesitated. “If you can cover me with illusion from here, you won’t have to come along.”

“And be around when Rheba finds out I helped you sneak away?” F’lTiri shook his head ruefully. “I’ve seen what happens when she gets angry. I don’t want to end up like the Loo-chim, burned so completely not even a smell is left behind.”

Kirtn winced. “If things go well, she won’t even know we’ve gone until we get back.”

He did not add that little had gone well since The Luck had come home to roost.

XXII

Rheba looked from the stubborn, desperate Seurs to the young Daemen, equally stubborn. He and Tric glared at each other across stone pavements cracked by age. Like the stones, the Daemenites were locked in patterns so old their beginnings were a myth.

In the back of the ranks, near the badly fitted double door leading into Centrins’ core, a Seur stumbled and fell on his neighbor, tripping him and sending him reeling against two other Seurs. They fell against the door, which popped open. A small scramble followed while the Seurs regained their composure.

The disturbance was brief, but it was enough to break Daemen’s staring contest with his uncle/father. The Luck turned to Rheba. “I’ll need your help to get in.”

She measured the determined Seurs and the double door that was still slightly ajar. “Is that the only door?”

“No. There are three more. Only two of them close, though. The last two.”

“Locks?”

Daemen made an ambivalent gesture. “They’re only used on ritual days when non-Seurs aren’t allowed into Centrins.”

“But there are locks.”

“Yes.”

She gave a Bre’n shrug. “Then they’ll be locked against The Luck.”

She studied the problem before she said anything more. Zaarain buildings were hard to burn, as she had found out at Square One. First she would have to find a way past the Seurs, who would surely object to The Luck’s presence. Then she would have to take out the locking mechanism on the last two doors. If the locks were energy-based rather than mechanical, she would have to flirt with the core that fed energy into the locks. She did not want to do that.

On the other hand, if Fssa and his cargo of zoolipt did not get into the building, the Seurs would die and so would the slinking, skeletal population beyond Centrins. Somehow she would have to find a way past the Seurs and their locks, a way that would not attract attention. She did not want to be put into the position of fighting and killing Seurs.

Then she remembered f’lTiri’s skill. On Onan, he had projected an illusion that had saved their lives. Perhaps he could do the same for the Seurs on Daemen. She turned to ask the illusionist, but no one was there. She frowned and turned to her mentor.

Kirtn was gone.

She looked around. M/dur and M/dere, three clepts, and no Kirtn. Behind her was a series of interconnected courtyards, empty of all but shadows. Had Kirtn gone to check for other openings into Centrins or to see that no one ambushed them on their way back?

“M/dere, did you see Kirtn leave?”

The J/taal woman recognized her name, but nothing else. She gestured apologetically.

Rheba swore. Without Fssa, she was reduced to sign language with the J/taals, who understood no language but their own.

“Well?” asked Daemen, who was waiting for her answer.

“As soon as f’lTiri and Kirtn get back,” said Rheba, her cinnamon eyes searching every face and shadow as she spoke, “I’ll have f’lTiri create a diversion so that I can sneak into the ...”

Her voice thinned into silence as she realized that was exactly what Kirtn had done, leaving her behind. Her hair whipped and seethed with its own deadly life, an incandescent warning of fire-dancer rage.

Daemen cried out and spun aside as Rheba burst into flame. He did not know what had caused her to burn. He was not sure he wanted to know.

J/taals and clepts ranged in fighting formation around their J/taaleri, knowing only that she burned. It was all they needed to know.

The Seurs gasped and drew together, sensing death in the alien fire. They watched her burn, watched her take their thin sunlight and condense it into energy that blinded them. They retreated through the door but could not pull it completely shut behind them. They ran through the hall’s blessed darkness to the next door, where other Seurs waited.

The smell of scorched stone called Rheba out of her rage. The ground she stood on smoked sullenly. Nothing was left of her clothes but a fine powder lifting on the wind. For an instant she was glad that her mentor was not there; Kirtn would have taken away her energy and scolded her for having a tantrum.

She damped her rage, controlling it as she had learned to control other kinds of energy. She did not release what she had gathered, however. She would need that to follow her Bre’n.

“Daemen.” She turned toward him, her eyes burnt orange with streaks of gold pulsing, counting the instants until fire came again. “Kirtn and f’lTiri are inside. I’m going after them. Tell the Seurs to stay out of my way.”

The Luck stared at her, fascinated and more than a little afraid. “How did they get inside?” he asked. But even as he objected, he moved toward the doors. He knew better than to argue when stone smoked beneath her feet.

“F’lTiri made an illusion. Invisibility,” she said impatiently. “Now they’re probably Seurs.”

“Then why follow? We’ll just call attention to them.”

She looked at him with eyes gone gold in an instant. “Because f’lTiri can’t hold invisibility for more than a few seconds,” she snapped. “Projecting an illusion onto Kirtn and holding another illusion on himself will use up f’lTiri’s strength too fast. They’re going to need help to get out of there alive.”

She ran toward the door. M/dur moved so quickly that his outline blurred. Before Rheba could take another step, the J/taal wrenched open the door and disappeared inside. Two clepts followed in a soundless rush. M/dere stood in the opening, barring Rheba’s entrance with a courage that astounded The Luck.

Curtly, Rheba gestured the J/taal woman aside. She did not move. Akhenet tines surged so brightly that M/dere’s grim face was revealed to the last short black hair. Her stance told Rheba as plainly as words that it was a J/taal’s duty to protect her J/taaleri, and protect her she would.

M/dur reappeared, ending the impasse. He and M/dere exchanged a long look, mark of the species-specific telepathy that was part of what made the J/taals such formidable mercenaries. M/dere stepped aside.

Rheba went through at a run. Even so, she had taken no more than two steps when M/dur brushed by. She realized then that the J/taals did not want to prevent her from finding Kirtn. They simply wanted her to be as safe as possible while she looked. That meant that M/dur went first and she did not follow until he told M/dere that it was safe.

Very soon, two clepts cut in front of Rheba, forcing her to slow down. Just ahead, the hall divided into three branches. Rooms opened off the branches, Seur living quarters. No one was in sight except M/dur. He stood where the hall divided, obviously waiting to find out which branch she wanted to follow.

“Which one leads to the core?” Rheba asked, turning to Daemon.

“Left,” he said, pointing as he spoke.

M/dur spun and raced down the left hall. Rheba waited impatiently, listening for any sign that their presence, or Kirtn’s, had been discovered.

There was no sound but her own breathing. From all outer indications, Centrins was deserted.

She did not believe it. Silence meant only that a reception was being prepared somewhere farther inside the building. She prayed to the Inmost Fire that it would not be Kirtn who was ambushed. Her Bre’n was strong and fierce but the Seurs were many and desperate. Without his fire dancer, he could be overwhelmed.

The thought of Kirtn struggling against a tide of Seurs sent fire coursing raggedly along her akhenet lines. Silently she fought to master her fear. Unchecked, fear would destroy her control. And without control she would lose energy and be helpless among her enemies.

By the time M/dur returned, Rheba’s akhenet lines were burning evenly. Daemen looked away from her, preferring the J/taal’s savage face to what he had seen in the fire dancer’s serenity.

At M/dur’s gesture, Rheba leaped toward the left-hand hall. She had gone no more than a few steps when the hall branched again. The narrow left branch was deserted as far as she could see. The right branch was wider—and barricaded.

She looked at Daemen. “The right one?”

“Yes,” he said unhappily.

She approached the barricade, escorted by J/taals and clepts.

A long whip uncoiled with a deadly snap. Only J/taal reflexes saved Rheba. M/dur’s hand flashed out, intercepting the whip before it could strike the J/taaleri. M/dur jerked. A Seur tumbled out of hiding, pulled by his own whip. M/dur twitched the whip. Its long body curled into a loop around the falling Seur. The J/taal yanked. The Seur’s neck broke.

It happened so quickly that Rheba had no time to intercede. Then she saw the lethal glass shard that was the tip of the weapon. Without M/dur’s speed, she would be bleeding to death from a slashed throat. She touched her forehead to M/dere in the Universal gesture of gratitude. Then she signaled everyone back from the barrier.

“Tell them to let us through,” she said, measuring the barrier as she spoke to Daemen.

“It won’t do any good.”

“Do it.”

The Luck yelled to his kinsmen beyond the barricade. If anyone heard, no one answered. He turned back to Rheba with a questioning look.

“Tell them to get out of the way,” she said, “I don’t want to kill anyone, but I will.”

Daemen remembered Loo, and a stone amphitheater where the slave masters had died. He yelled a warning. There was no answer.

Rheba closed her eyes. She had enough energy stored to set the barricade aflame, but then what? The only energy in Centrins came from the core. She could tap it, yes, but without her Bre’n she might not be able to control the result.

She studied the barricade. It was a loose pile of furniture collected from living quarters and dumped in the hall. The speed with which the barricade had been built suggested that this was not the first time Centrins had been invaded. Apparently the city population had rioted in the past.

“Can’t we just pull it apart?” suggested Daemen.

“What if more Seurs are hiding inside?”

“After what happened to the last one, I doubt if any stayed around,” The Luck said dryly.

He walked up to the barricade and began tugging at a protruding chair. The J/taals did not interfere. Rheba was their concern, not The Luck. He pulled out the chair and began to work loose a table. No Seurs moved to interfere.

Rheba walked up and began helping Daemen. When they realized what she wanted, the J/taals set to work dismantling the barricade. Although the J/taals were smaller than either Rheba or Daemen, they were far stronger. Beneath their small hands, the barricade came apart with astonishing speed. Soon they had made a path to the ill-fitting doors hidden behind the pile of furniture.

As Daemen had said, the second pair of doors was not locked. M/dur kicked them open. A clept leaped through, followed by M/dur and another clept. No shouts or sounds of battle came from the other side. Even so, M/dere waited until M/dur returned before she allowed Rheba through.

The delay irritated Rheba, increasing her fear for Kirtn. She had J/taals and clepts—and The Luck, whatever he was worth—while Kirtn had only illusion and a bloated Fssireeme.

“Hurry,” muttered Rheba, her lines smoldering.

M/dur appeared, then vanished back behind the doors. Rheba did not wait for an invitation. She moved so quickly that M/dere had to jump to keep up.

Beyond the doors were signs of a hasty retreat. A partially built barricade had been abandoned. Doors on either side stood open, revealing rooms that had been ransacked of favorite possessions in the moments before Seurs were forced to flee. Pieces of clothing were scattered around, beds overturned, whole rooms askew.

There were no Seurs.

Rheba moved at a ran that left Daemen behind. The J/taals ran with her, one ahead and one behind. Clepts led the race, their silver eyes gleaming in the twilight rooms as they searched for Seurs who might have stayed behind.

Fear built in Rheba with every second. It was too quiet in the hall, too quiet in the whole building. Where had the Seurs gone? What defense were they preparing? And most of all—was Kirtn still safe beneath a veil of Yhelle illusion?

The only answer to her silent questions was the sound of her own bare feet racing over ancient floors and the distant shuffle of The Luck trailing far behind. Ahead, the hall curved away.

Abruptly the clepts’ claws scrabbled on smooth Zaarain surfaces as the animals swung to protect Rheba. M/dur spun in midstride, retreating down the hall with a speed that matched the clepts’. Behind him plastic knives rained onto the floor. A Seur ambush had been set where the hall curved. Once again, Rheba was grateful for the J/taals’ presence.

Daemen ran up to her, calling a warning. “Beyond the curve—doors,” he panted.

“And an ambush,” she said, looking down the hall. She could see neither Seurs nor doors, but knew both were there, just beyond sight. “What are the doors like?” she demanded, turning her attention to him.

“Zaarain,” he said bluntly.

“Weren’t the other doors?”

“No. The outer one was added in my mother’s time. The next one was a century older. You can tell by the fit,” he added. “Seurs are archaeologists, not extruders.”

“How do the doors lock?”

Daemen opened his hands in a gesture of emptiness. “They just ... flow together.”

“No seams? No bolts or other obvious mechanisms?”

“Nothing but a space for one of Tric’s crystals. At least, I assume Tric has the key,” he added bitterly. “It was mother’s before they exiled her.”

“I suppose it locks from the other side.”

“Yes.”

She looked at Daemen with something less than affection. At the moment she did not appreciate the quality of his luck. “Is there any other possible way to get to the recycler?”

Daemon’s unhappy expression was all the answer she needed. She turned back toward the doors dividing her from her Bre’n. She glanced at M/dur, not wanting to ask him to risk his life for a quick look down the hall, but knowing he was better equipped than she was for the job.

M/dur cocked his head, pointed to his eyes and then around the curve of the hall. He cocked his head again, obviously asking a question. She made the J/taal gesture of agreement, a quick show of teeth that was both more and less than a smile.

Two clepts stole silently up to the curve, followed by M/dur. The animals vanished, M/dur only a step behind. Rheba felt her muscles tighten as she waited for screams.

Almost immediately, M/dur reappeared. He gestured curtly. Without waiting for M/dere, Rheba ran toward the point where the hall curved away. She dashed around the curve—and nearly slammed into a wall. Where the hall should have been, there was nothing but a seamless Zaarain surface.

She searched frantically for hidden joins, for cracks, any hint that the hall did not terminate right there at her fingertips. She pressed harder, trying to find where hall ended and wall began.

There was nothing but cool extruded surfaces, rippling colors, and silence.

With a sound of frustration and despair, she slammed her fist against the wall. There was no response, no change in the wall’s seamless whole.

Dead end, and nothing in sight to burn.

XXIII

Rheba spun around when she heard Daemen approaching. “I thought you said this was the way to the core,” she snarled. “You led us into a dead end!”

“I told you the door was Zaarain,” he said simply.

“Door?” she said, turning to face the seamless extrusion. “Are you telling me this is a door?”

“Zaarain doors are different.”

Rheba whistled several unpleasant Bre’n phrases. She reached out and ran her fingertips delicately over the door/wall that abruptly terminated the hallway. She sensed vague energies, pale shadows that made Daemen’s thin sunlight seem like a voracious force. Gently, she leaned against the Zaarain door. Her hair lifted with a silky whisper and fanned out, seeking tenuous currents.

She remained motionless for long minutes, learning the exotic patterns that were the hallmark of Zaarain constructs. It was an exercise even more delicate than cheating at Chaos by controlling the Black Whole’s computer. Akhenet lines glowed hotly, beating with the rhythm of her heart. New lines appeared, faint traceries beneath the skin on her shoulders and neck, lines curling up her calves, lines doubling and redoubling until her hands and feet glowed like melted gold.

Finally she sensed hints of direction, of restraints and commands imposed by the placement of molecules within the extrusion. She pursued them with a delicacy that Kirtn would have applauded, but still could not locate any weakness within the door. The lock was the door, and vice versa.

Once she thought she had located a node where currents congregated. Yet when she sought its exact location, it eluded her. Without Kirtn’s presence she did not have the precision she required. Nor could she simply burn a man-sized hole in the door using her stored energy. Zaarain constructs were far too tough for that.

She pursued the nebulous node indirectly, following the energies that fed it back to their source. Raw force exploded along her lines as she brushed a current that came directly from the Zaarain core. Quickly, she withdrew. Her hands smoked slightly, burned by the energy she had inadvertently called.

As she controlled the pain, she caught a shadow of movement within the construct. The motion was close to where she thought she had sensed the lock node.

“Is the key crystal put in about here?” she asked Daemen, pointing to an area at about eye level.

“I remember it as being over my head,” said Daemen doubtfully.

“You were smaller then.”

“Oh.” He squinted, measuring the place where her hand was against his childhood memories. “Yes ... I think so.”

“Stand back. It’s going to get hot around here.”

Daemen backed up hastily.

Rheba’s eyes slowly changed from cinnamon to gold as she gathered the energy within herself. Her hair crackled wildly before she controlled it. Her akhenet lines blazed with life. For a long moment she held herself on the brink of her dance, shaping energies into coherence. For a terrible instant she missed Kirtn with an intensity that nearly shattered her dance.

Then she lifted her burned hand and let energy leap.

A line of brilliant blue-white light flashed from her fingertip to the Zaarain construct. Colors surged dizzily over its surface. The only constant was the coherent light called by a fire dancer, light that slowly ate into a door millions of years old.

Smoke curled up from the colors, an eerie smoke that smelled of shaval and time. It flowed seductively around her, sweet as Bre’n breath, warm as Kirtn’s body against hers. She cried out and her hand shook, energy scattering uselessly.

The pain of her teeth cutting through her lip dispersed the smoke’s enchantment. Her hand steadied. Energy condensed into an implacable beam of light.

The door sighed and dissolved back into the building so quickly that a Seur on the other side was pierced by the deadly energy flowing from Rheba. Surprise was more effective than any attack could have been. Seurs ran away, retreating down the hall, unable to face the alien who burned more brightly than their sun.

Rheba’s dance collapsed as exhaustion sent her staggering. She fell over the corpse of the Seur she had killed. With a muffled cry she rolled aside and braced herself on her hands and knees, too tired to stand up. Her hair hung limply around her breasts and her akhenet lines were no more than faint shadows beneath her skin. Burning through the Zaarain lock had cost every bit of energy she had stored, and more.

It was much harder to dance alone.

M/dur leaped across her and ran down the hall, followed by clepts.

“Rheba?” The Luck’s voice was tentative, awed. “I heard the stories about how the Loo-chim died, but I didn’t really believe ...” He held his hand out to help her up, then snatched back his fingers, afraid to touch her.

M/dere brushed The Luck aside. Her small, hard hands pulled Rheba upright. Eyes the color of aged copper checked the J/taaleri for wounds. Then she cocked her head, asking Rheba a silent question.

In answer, Rheba pushed away and began walking after M/dur, using the wall as support for the first few steps. By the time M/dur and the clepts returned, Rheba was walking faster but she still occasionally needed the wall’s support.

The J/taals exchanged a long silence. Not for the first time, Rheba cursed Fssa’s absence. The snake would have told her what the J/taals had found.

“It’s probably the second Zaarain door,” said Daemen quietly.

She slumped against the wall and hoped he was wrong. She did not have the strength to battle another Zaarain construct alone.

M/dere touched Rheba’s shoulder in a silent bid for attention. Rheba looked up and thought she saw compassion in the J/taal’s green eyes.

M/dur stood on tiptoe and stretched his arms as high as they would go. Then he sketched the outline of a man, a big man. When he was finished, he touched M/dere’s fur and pointed to the imaginary outline again.

“Kirtn?” Rheba straightened and felt fear like cold water in her veins. “You saw Kirtn?”

M/dur grimaced in agreement.

Rheba pushed past the J/taals and ran down the hall. If M/dur had seen Kirtn, f’lTiri was either hurt or too tired to cover the Bre’n with an illusion. Either way, Kirtn was in trouble.

The hall curved gracefully, left and right and then left again, each change of direction marked by subtle gradations in the colors that rippled over the walls and floor. The hall curved right again. And ended.

Rheba was too tired to stop herself. She ran into the Zaarain door with a force that made her see double. She leaned against the door, shaking her head, trying to see just one of everything again.

Then she realized she was seeing the room beyond, seeing it as Kirtn saw it, a swirl of enemies circling around and beyond them the pale gleam of the recycler fluid.

She screamed Kirtn’s name but he could not hear her through the door, unless he was seeing as she saw, not double but one of each, his view and hers.

Seurs swirled in a flurry of whips and knives. Kirtn reached for Fssa, heavy around his neck. With a powerful throw, he sent the Fssireeme and his cargo of zoolipt toward the recycler. The snake landed in the midst of Seurs, scattering them. But instead of moving toward the recycler, Fssa turned back toward the Bre’n, screaming about enemies sneaking up behind Kirtn’s back.

Pain exploded in Rheba’s back, hammering her to her knees, taking from her even the ability to scream. But not Fssa. He disgorged the zoolipt with a shriek of Fssireeme loss that made even the Zaarain walls quiver.

Vision canted, slipped, and the floor came up to meet Kirtn, swallowing him in a darkness that had no end.

Rheba clawed herself back to her feet, seeing only the Zaarain door in front of her, feeling only the slashing pain that had hurled Kirtn headlong into unconsciousness. In one terrible instant she felt everything, saw everything, knew everything burned in patterns of energy across her mind. Seurs screaming hatred, a knife ripping through Bre’n muscle to the organs beneath, Fssireeme anguish, and Zaarain construct humming around everything with eerie immortality.

Kirtn was dying.

She could not light the darkness condensing inexorably around him, could not even touch him. She reached for him, reached for anything that she could hold, because he was slipping through her grasp like twilight.

And she touched the Zaarain core.

Lines of power exploded across her body, fed by the same energy that sent ships out to the stars. She writhed like a worm in a skillet as alien patterns scorched her brain. But she felt the pain only at a distance, for there was no greater agony than her Bre’n dying beyond the reach of her light. She gathered the core around her like a terrible cloak and reached for Kirtn once again.

The door vaporized in a cloud of shaval smoke, leaving her horribly burned wherever she was not protected by akhenet lines. The pain was so great it simply did not register. She was beyond its reach, beyond everything but the need to be with her Bre’n.’

Through the smoke’s scented pall she saw Seurs backed against the most distant walls, Seurs fleeing, Seurs fallen and glistening beneath an icy covering. It was the signature of a Fssireeme, a predator who sucked up even the energy that made electrons dance, leaving his victims so cold that moisture in the air condensed around them, becoming a shroud of ice.

Kirtn lay on his side amid the glistening corpses, a Fssireeme keening against his copper fur. In his hand was the bloody knife he had wrenched out of his back as he fell.

She knelt beside him, ablaze with akhenet lines. Her fingers probed gently, seeking any pulse of life. She found a sense of distant pain, distant emotion, life sliding away beneath her raw fingertips, blood running down her burned body, blurring the gold of akhenet lines.

She found no pulse, though the slow welling of his blood onto the floor argued that he was still alive. She let energy flow into him.

There was no response.

She increased the flow of energy into him but it was like trying to power a spaceship with a candle. It was then that she tapped the Zaarain core, risking death almost casually, accepting the searing agony that came.

But the core was not enough, for even the Zaarains had not discovered how to transform dying into living.

Numbly, she let go of the core. She stroked Kirtn’s face with hands that shook, hands as gold as his eyes staring sightlessly beyond her. She closed her eyes and felt coldness slide up her fingertips like another color of night, heard Fssa’s keening coming from the end of time.

The cold feeling moved, flowing over her with a gentle, sucking sound. She opened her eyes and saw the turquoise sheen of a zoolipt covering her hands and Kirtn’s face. She was too numb to do more than watch dully, her skin cringing from the zoolipt’s cool touch.

The zoolipt quivered, tasting the burned flesh beneath her akhenet lines. A queer tingling rose in her, starting from her fingertips and spreading through her body with each beat of her heart.

The zoolipt thinned even more, covering her burned body until it looked as though she wore a turquoise veil. The tingling spread throughout her body, a feeling of energy spreading, an energy that was both subtle and immense. She tried to move but could not, held in the zoolipt’s blue-green embrace. It permeated her body cell by cell, multiplying and tasting her with a thoroughness that left her shaken.

Then, with a sound like a long sigh, the turquoise veil peeled away and dropped onto Kirtn. She stared, certain the zoolipt was darker now, more dense, with more shades of blue turning beneath its odd surface.

The zoolipt shivered, lifting a part of itself into the air like a clept questing for a scent. Before she could move, the zoolipt surged over Kirtn’s back and poured itself into the Bre’n’s deep, ragged wound. She made a futile gesture, trying to keep the zoolipt away from Kirtn’s helpless body. But the zoolipt simply flowed between her smooth fingers.

Her fingers.

She stared at her hands, not believing what she saw. There was no blood oozing, no raw flesh burned to the bone beneath akhenet lines. Her hands were as smooth and perfect as a baby’s. She looked from her hands to the rest of her body, remembering the instant the Zaarain door had vaporized, burning her so completely that her mind had simply refused to acknowledge the messages of pain.

But there was no pain now, nothing except an odd tingling euphoria in every cell of her body. Every healed cell. She was as whole as she had been when she had crawled out of Square One’s living pool.

This time it was different, though. This time the zoolipt had not been satisfied with merely tasting her. It had become a part of her.

She stared in horrified fascination at the zoolipt pseudopod that had remained outside of Kirtn’s body. The zoolipt was definitely smaller now, but still dense, still with tones of blue turning beneath its surface. More blues than it had had a moment ago, and more greens. Currents were visible, shivers of deeper blue-green, vivid glints of turquoise like laughter moving across its face.

Sighing, sucking softly, the zoolipt slid off Kirtn onto the bloody floor. With amoebic patience the zoolipt advanced on a Seur’s frigid corpse, leaving a clean floor behind. The zoolipt paused at the icy barrier, then seemed to flow through it.

Slowly, the ice became shades of blue, reflecting the zoolipt beneath. When the zoolipt withdrew, the ice collapsed with tiny musical sounds. The corpse was gone. The zoolipt was bigger.

And Kirtn’s heart was beating beneath her hands.

XXIV

Kirtn shuddered and was on his feet in an instant, pulling Rheba with him, a Seur’s knife still held in his hand. He remembered only that he had been under attack. A swift glance told him that the battle was over. Dead Seurs lay scattered around him. Living Seurs had retreated to the side of the huge recycler room, held at bay by J/taals, clepts, and an exhausted but otherwise unharmed illusionist.

Rheba’s joy coursed through Kirtn like a shockwave, uniting him with her in brief mind dance. For a moment he lived what she had seen and felt from the instant of double vision on the far side of a Zaarain door. He buried his face in her hair, holding her close, trying to comfort her and convince himself that he was not dead.

“How do you feel?” she asked, tilting her head back and staring hungrily at his eyes, alive again.

“I—” He hesitated, then said with surprise in his voice, “I’ve never felt better.” Turquoise flashed at the corner of his vision, startling him. “What’s that?”

Rheba followed the direction of his glance. She could not help shuddering as the zoolipt condensed around yet another Seur corpse. “That is the zoolipt.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, eyeing the zoolipt and remembering the amount that Fssa had swallowed. “Isn’t it bigger than it was?”

“Yes,” she said succinctly, “it is.”

Another shroud collapsed with a musical tinkle. The zoolipt shook off random pieces of ice and flowed over to the nearest dead Seur.

“Fssa?” whispered the Bre’n, suddenly realizing just how the Seurs had died. “Did Fssa do that?”

The answer was a Bre’n whistle that vibrated with shame. The Fssireeme slithered toward Kirtn. Dark lines ran over the snake’s incandescent body. The lines showed his shame at reverting to his ugly predatory heritage; the incandescence showed that he was replete with energy taken from Seurs.

Kirtn, knowing how Fssa felt, whistled extravagant praise of Fssa’s beauty, followed by thanks for saving his life.

“I’m not beautiful,” mourned Fssa, “I’m a parasite, and the zoolipt saved your life.”

Rheba counted the bodies of Kirtn’s attackers. “If it weren’t for you, snake,” she said crisply, “there wouldn’t have been anything left for the zoolipt to save.”

She knelt and scooped up the Fssireeme. He was so hot she burned her hands, making Fssa all the more ashamed of his nature.

“My fault,” she said ruefully, shaking her hair over the snake. “I should know better than to handle you when you glow.”

Fssa vanished into her hair, radiating heat as quickly as he could, though he knew her hair would not burn even with a Fssireeme’s hot presence. Shedding the warmth that he so loved was a kind of penance for the way that he had obtained it.

She felt heat shimmer through her hair and knew what Fssa was doing. She also guessed why. She could think of no way to console him. Sighing, she looked at her hands, wondering how badly she had burned them.

As she watched, the last of her blisters shrank and disappeared.

“What ... ?” said Kirtn wonderingly, taking her hand. He ran his fingertips over hers and found only whole, healthy skin.

She bit her lip. If she had had any doubts that the zoolipt had left some of itself inside her, she had none now. “The zoolipt,” she whispered, smiling crookedly at Kirtn. Then she shuddered. “I hope it doesn’t get tired of my taste for a long time.”

“And mine?” asked Kirtn. “Is it in me?”

“Yes,” smiling, “but nobody could get tired of your taste.”

He closed his eyes, trying to sense the alien presence inside his body. All he felt was a pervasive sense of health and a strength he had not known since Deva burned to ash behind their fleeing ship. Thank you, zoolipt, whoever and whatever you are. He thought he felt a distant echo of pleasure but could not be sure.

In silence, Rheba and Kirtn watched the zoolipt absorb another corpse. The Zaarain construct—plant, animal, machine or all three at once—flowed in tones of blue beneath the ice.

The Seurs also watched, horrified and fascinated at once. When the ice shroud collapsed and the turquoise-streaked zoolipt moved in their direction, the Seurs moaned and cursed their Luck.

A disheveled Tric stepped forward, placing himself between the advancing zoolipt and the other Seurs. Visibly shaken, he waited to be devoured.

“It won’t hurt you,” called Daemen as he came forward to place himself directly in front of the zoolipt. It reared up slightly, fluttered its edges and flowed past The Luck. “See? It’s a recycler. A machine. It won’t hurt anything that’s alive.”

Tric looked at The Luck doubtfully. “Is this your gift? A new recycler? A recycler that won’t starve or poison us?”

Daemon’s smile could have lit a sunless world. “Food. A future. My gift to my people,” he said softly. “I’m Good Luck, Uncle-and-Father. Perhaps the best Luck this planet has ever seen.”

Slowly, the Seurs shuffled away from the wall, stretching their necks for a better look at their future. With a profusion of blues, the zoolipt engulfed the last corpse. The Seurs watched in silent appreciation of its efficiency.

Kirtn and Rheba looked at each other, remembering Square One, where the greater portion of this zoolipt presided over chaos. Healthy chaos, but chaos all the same. Not only presided, but created. Runners, burrowers, flyers, the zoolipt experimented with the abandon of an idiot—or a God.

And that same zoolipt was inside them, multiplying, echos of turquoise pleasure resonating through them.

Machine? They did not think so.

God? They most profoundly hoped not.

The last icy shroud collapsed in a shower of tiny crystal notes. Wordlessly, Kirtn and Rheba advanced on the engorged zoolipt. It was as big as she was now, and far heavier. Its surface danced with every tint of blue.

Kirtn hesitated, then bent over the zoolipt and began kneading it into a sphere. She hesitated too, then went to work by his side. Neither spoke.

The Seurs muttered unhappily and advanced. Fssa’s head appeared out of Rheba’s hair. The snake let loose a malevolent hiss. The Seurs stopped. They had seen a Fssireeme in action. They had no desire to become ice sculptures carved by an alien snake. Yet they were not convinced that The Luck was their salvation, either. They stared at the zoolipt with the suspicion bred by years of being victims of a whimsical recycler.

“What are you doing?” asked Daemen, watching Rheba curiously.

“Rolling it into the soup,” said Rheba, gesturing with a tendril of hair toward the depleted recycler pool.

“Oh. Can I help?”

“Have any cuts or scrapes?” she asked, grunting as she caught a slippery fold of zoolipt and tucked it into place.

Daemen looked at his hands and feet. As usual, he had come through the worst of it with little more than a few scratches. “One or two. Why?”

“Apparently, when we took a piece of this zoolipt we gave it an idea; it can live separately from the central mass. Then it had another idea. Living in us.”

“What do you mean?”

Kirtn looked up from his work. “It’s in us. Both of us.” The zoolipt quivered under his hands like blue marmalade. “It came in through our wounds. Maybe it just liked our alien flavors too much to leave after it healed us. Or maybe it will use any broken skin as an excuse to take up residence. You’re The Luck. Take your choice.”

Kirtn bent over the dense, quivering mass and heaved. The zoolipt rolled eccentrically. Rheba deflected it toward the pool. In doing so, her hands sank up to her wrists in zoolipt.

Daemen looked at his modestly abraded palms and decided that just this once he would not push his Luck. When the zoolipt wobbled in his direction, he leaped back out of its way.

As Rheba, Kirtn and the lopsided zoolipt slopped toward the recycler pool, the Seurs’ muttering increased. Their recycler was not much, but without it they would surely die.

“It’s all right,” said Daemen soothingly. He smiled his charming smile for Tric. “Really. The zoolipt kept Square One alive after their grid went eccentric. Our grid is intact. Imagine what the zoolipt will be able to do for us.”

Rheba and Kirtn exchanged a long look. They were imagining, all right, and none of it was particularly comforting. “Be ready to run after we kick it into the soup,” whistled the Bre’n sourly.

Fssa translated for the J/taals and illusionist, carefully avoiding any language the Seurs might understand. The J/taals withdrew into a protective formation. Fssa lifted his head out of Rheba’s hair and focused his sensors on the restless Seurs.

The zoolipt quivered at the edge of the recycler pool. The contrast between the pale, almost invisible turquoise of the pool and the zoolipt’s robust blues was startling. It did not seem possible that the two forms of quasi-life had any relation at all to each other.

Kirtn hesitated and looked at Daemen. “You’re sure this is what you want?”

Daemen laughed. “Of course!”

Kirtn shrugged. “It’s your planet.”

He kicked the zoolipt into the soup.

Rheba held her breath, waiting for a repeat of the disaster that had occurred when Rainbow was tossed into Centrins’ core. Kirtn’s hand closed over her wrist, ready to yank her back if anything happened. The zoolipt rolled to the bottom of the pool. And sat there.

The lights stayed on.

Rheba began to breathe again. Kirtn’s grip relaxed.

The zoolipt exploded through the soup in a soundless blue shockwave. Tints and tones of blue, shades of blue, impossible variations on the theme of blue, all of them at once, shimmering, quivering, alive. And then the greens came, wistful and luminous, subtle and magnificent. The bottom of the pool vanished in emerald turmoil. When it was still again, the pool was a blue-green, translucent sea where emerald lights glimmered restlessly on turquoise currents.

Kirtn whistled a soft tribute to the zoolipt’s uncanny beauty. The Seurs sighed and looked at their Luck with awe.

The lights went out.

Kirtn swore.

An incredible sunrise swept through Centrins, banishing its habitual twilight. Every Zaarain surface scintillated, throwing off light like enormous jewels. Sound condensed between the colors, a song so beautiful that it made Fssa tremble with joy. For an instant everyone lived in the center of perfection, suspended in uncanny brilliance.

Colors swirled across one wall, then cleared to reveal the rest of the installation. Like a ship’s downside sensors, the wall enlarged one detail after the next, giving those inside an intimate view of what was happening in the city. Beneath the debris of time and ignorance, Zaarain pavements glowed, hinting at marvels just beyond reach.

The feeding stations came alive, singing of scents and flavors unmatched in Seur history. Skeletal crowds milled from one station to the next, gorging themselves on food that went instantly throughout their systems, visibly healing and rebuilding starved bodies. Stupefied, they stretched out on pavement that sensed their need and became a bed. Smiting, they slept the sleep of the newly born.

Feeding stations became shaval fountains. Drifts of fragrant gold began to form, tenderly engulfing the sleeping bodies.

The wall changed, becoming a symphony of colors once more. Rheba blinked and awakened from Zaarain enchantment. She turned to ask the Seurs if they were satisfied with their Luck.

The Seurs were gone.

“I thought that last group looked familiar,” said Kirtn. He turned hopefully to his left, but The Luck was not gone. The Bre’n sighed. “Still here?”

Daemen smiled shyly. “I wanted to say thank you.”

“You’re The Luck, not us.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Kirtn could not argue with that. “You’re welcome.” He turned to Rheba. “Ready?”

“Wait,” said Daemen quickly. “You saved my people from extinction. Let me do the same for you.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Rheba.

“You’re looking for more of you—and of him.” He pointed at Kirtn.

“Yes.” Her voice was tight, as it always was when she thought about the odds against finding more Bre’ns, more Senyasi, another world to build another akhenet culture. “Do you know where some of our people are?”

“No. But I’m The Luck. Take me along.” Daemen touched her arm and smiled. “Let me help you. Please.”

Kirtn looked at the young man whose smile was as beautiful and complex as a Zaarain construct. The Bre’n wanted to grab his fire dancer and run, but the Choice was hers, not his. He stepped aside, waiting and feeling cold. Daemen could not have made a more compelling offer if he had used all of eternity to think of one.

“But what about your own people?” asked Rheba.

“The machine will take care of them. They don’t need me anymore.”

She thought of Square One and wondered. Despite Daemen’s assurances, she knew the zoolipt was not a machine. It was alive, and intelligent after its own fashion. Now it had its hands—or whatevers—on the most sophisticated technology known in all the Cycles of man. What happened next was very much a matter of Luck. His Luck. If she took him, used him to find her own people and in doing so caused the extinction of his ... ? That was too high a price to pay for akhenet survival.

And in the back of her mind there was always Satin’s voice screaming, Space him.

Not that she agreed with Satin. Daemen was not bad luck. Not quite. But in his company she had been beaten, drugged, shunted off to die in a tunnel, fed to a voracious zoolipt; and worst by far, she had felt her Bre’n die beneath her hands. It had all turned out all right, of course. She was alive, and he was, both of them carrying their little cargo of God....

She did not know how much more of The Luck she could survive.

“You belong to your people,” she said slowly. “They bred you. They deserve your Luck.” She kissed his cheek. “But thanks anyway.”

Daemen let her hair slip between his fingers and tried to smile. “Good Luck, beautiful dancer. If you change your mind, I’ll be here.” He took off Rainbow and handed it to Kirtn. “I won’t need this, now.”

They left The Luck standing by a pool brimming with improbable life, trying to smile.

Silently, J/taals and clepts scouted through the transformed city. There were no threats, no dangers, nothing but shaval drifting fragrantly on the wind.

Rheba was silent, looking neither right nor left as her Bre’n guided her toward the spaceship. When they were in the Devalon’s shadow, they could see power shimmering around the ship. The core drain was off. The Devalon would be ready to lift as soon as they were aboard.

Kirtn whistled an intricate Bre’n command. Shaval floated up as the ship extruded a ramp.

“Sorry you didn’t take him?” asked Kirtn as he mounted the ramp, unable to stand her pensive silence any longer.’

“What?” asked Rheba.

“The Luck. Are you sorry you left him behind?”

Her hair seethed quietly. “I don’t think so. But I was just thinking—”

The ship opened, revealing an interior packed with former slaves impatient to be on their way. Rheba stopped, amazed all over again at the variety of beings she had promised to take home.

“You were thinking—?” prompted Kirtn gently.

“Look at them.”

Kirtn looked. “And?”

“The Luck was just one. What will it take to get the others home?”

Kirtn smiled whimsically. “A fire dancer, a Bre’n and a Fssireeme—what else?”

The answer carne in tiny echos of zoolipt laughter.

About the Author

ANN MAXWELL lives in Laguna Niguel, California, with her husband, Evan, and their two children. She is the author of a number of excellent science fiction novels and has co-authored many books with her husband on subjects ranging from historical fiction to thrillers to nonfiction. Some of her earlier works have been recommended for the Nebula Award and nominated for the TABA Award. Also available in Signet editions are Ann’s fine science fiction novels, The Jaws of Menx and Fire Dancer.

Dancer’s Illusion

1983

 

 

THE SHIP’S COMPUTER HAS CHOSEN—

and now Rheba the fire dancer and her Bre’n mentor Kirtn must fulfill the next part of their ongoing mission—to return a shipload of fellow ex-slaves to their widely scattered home planets. Their current destination—Yhelle, a world where reality is far too fleeting for anyone but a master illusionist to grasp. Yhelle is considered the most civilized place in the galaxy and their brief stopover should be pure pleasure. But it doesn’t take Rheba, Kirtn, and their two Yhelle crewmates long to discover that beneath the paradise-like surface of this society lurks an evil that is growing more powerful each day, a seductive darkness that feeds on love and kills with ecstasy....

 

ILLUSION’S VEIL

The forcefield stretched away on both sides into infinity. “How do we get through?” Rheba asked.

“The field thins out here and illusions appear,” her Yhelle shipmate replied. “To get where you want to go, just pick a destination’s clan symbol and step through. Be fast, though. It’s no fun getting caught between illusions.”

Rheba looked uneasily at the kaleidoscopic forces of the veil, changing even as she watched. She was loathe to let her illusionist friends out of reach for fear of being forever lost in a shifting Yhelle fantasy.

Then, making her decision, she motioned the illusionists to get on with it. They joined hands and concentrated, riding the veil like an unruly beast. Finally, grudgingly, the field thinned, revealing cracked pavements and desolation.

The illusionists walked through and vanished. And, after an instant of hesitation, Rheba and Kirtn followed. The field broke over them like black water, drowning them....

 

I

The tension in the Devalon’s crowded control room was as unbearable as the air. The ship’s life-support systems were overloaded. Passengers and crew were being kept alive, but not in comfort. Rheba wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. Both arm and face were sweaty, both pulsed with intricate gold lines that were visible manifestations of the power latent within her.

She looked at her Bre’n. Rivulets of sweat darkened Kirtn’s suede-texturcd skin. The fine, very short copper fur that covered his powerful body made the control room’s heat even more exhausting for him than it was for her.

“Ready?” she said, wiping her face again.

“Yesss,” hissed Fssa, dangling his head out of her hair. His thin, infinitely flexible body was alive with metallic colors. He loved heat.

“Not you, snake,” Rheba muttered. “Kirtn.”

The Bre’n smiled, making his yellow eyes seem even more slanted in their mask of almost invisibly fine gold fur. “Ready. Maybe it will be an ice planet,” he added hopefully.

Rheba looked around the control room at the sweaty races of Fourth People she had rescued from a lifetime of slavery on Loo. Some were furred, some not. They had as many colors as Rainbow, the Zaarain construct that was at the moment a necklace knocking against Kirtn’s chest.

AH of the passengers had two things in common: their past slavery on Loo and their present hope that it would be their planet’s number that would be chosen by the Devalon’s computer in the lottery. The winner was given the best prize of all—a trip home.

The owners of the ship, Rheba and Kirtn, were not included in the lottery. Their home had died beneath the hot lash of an unstable sun, sending the young Bre’n and his even younger Senyas fire dancer fleeing for their lives. They had survived, and they had managed to find two others who had survived. One was Ilfn, a woman of Kirtn’s race. The other was her storm dancer, a blind boy called Lheket. Rheba had sworn to find more survivors, to comb the galaxy until she had found enough Bre’ns and Senyasi to ensure that neither race became extinct.

But first she had light-years to go and promises to keep. She had to deliver each one of the people on the ship to his, her, or hir home. The first such delivery—to a planet called Daemen—had nearly killed both her and Kirtn. Since then there had been several other planets, none dangerous. But each number the computer spat out could be another Daemen.

“You may be ready,” Rheba sighed, “but I’m not sure I am.”

She licked her lips, then whistled a phrase in the intricate, poetic Bre’n language—Instantly the computer displayed a number in the air just above her head.

Kirtn whistled in lyric relief. That was the most civilized planet in the Yhelle Equality. Certainly there could be no difficulty there. Besides, the Yhelle illusionists on board had more than earned their chance to go home. Without them, Kirtn certainly would have died on Daemen, and Rheba, too.

On the other hand, they would miss the illusionists. It was piquant not knowing who or what would appear in the crowded corridors of the Devalon.

Fssa keened softly into Rheba’s ear. He, too, would miss the illusionists. When they were practicing their trade, they had a fey energy about them that could appeal only to a Fssireeme—or another illusionist.

“I know, snake,” Rheba said, stroking him with a fingertip. She sent currents of energy through her hair to console the Fssireeme. “But it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to wait just because we like their company.”

Fssa subsided. With a final soft sound he vanished into her seething gold hair.

Rheba stood on tiptoe to see over the heads of the people crowding the control room. “Where are they?”

Kirtn, taller than anyone else, spotted the illusionists. “By the hall.”

“Are they happy?”

“With an illusionist, who can tell?” he said dryly. Then he relented and lifted Rheba so that she could see.

“They don’t look happy,” she said.

Kirtn whistled a phrase from the “Autumn Song,” one of Deva’s most famous poems, variations on the theme of parting.

“Yes, but they still should be happy,” whistled Rheba. “They’re going home.”

All of her longing for the home she had lost was in her Bre’n whistle. Kirtn’s arms tightened around her. She had been so young; she had so few memories to comfort her.

And she was right. The illusionists did not look happy.

With a silent sigh, Kirtn pm her back on her own feet. He tried to imagine why anyone would be reluctant to go back home after years of slavery. What he imagined did not comfort him. At best, they might simply dislike their planet. At worst, they might have been exited and therefore did not expect to be welcomed back.

He pushed through the disappointed people who were slowly leaving the control room. Rheba followed, unobtrusively protected by two J/taals. On Loo, the mercenaries had chosen her as their J/taaleri, the focus of their devotion. They continued to protect her whenever she permitted it—and even when she did not.

“Congratulations,” said Kirtn, smiling at the illusionists. “The ship is computing replacements from here to Yhelle. Are there any defenses we should know about?”

F’lTiri tried to smile: “Probably not. No one has fought with Yhelle for thousands of years. The last people who did conquered us. They retreated five years later, babbling.” This time he managed a true smile. “Yhelle is hard on people who expect reality to be what it seems to be.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” said Rheba. “Practicing?”

I’sNara’s confusion showed in her voice as well as her face. “What do you mean? We’re appearing as ourselves right now. No illusions.”

“Then why aren’t you happy?” Rheba asked bluntly. “You’re going home.”

The two illusionists looked quickly at one another. At the same instant, both of them appeared to glow with pleasure. Rheba made an impatient gesture. She had been with them long enough to separate their illusions from their reality ... some of the time.

“Forget it,” she snapped. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing,” they said in unison. “We’re just overcome with surprise,” added i’sNara. “We never expected to go home so soon.”

Kirtn grunted. Their voices were as unhappy as their faces had been a few moments ago. “Fssa, tell everyone to clear the control room and get ready for replacement.”

The Fssireeme slid out of Rheba’s hair into her hands. There he underwent a series of astonishing transformations as he made the necessary apparatus to speak a multitude of languages simultaneously. It was not difficult for the Fssireeme. The snakes had evolved on a hot, gigantic planet as sonic mimics, then had been genetically modified during one of the earlier Cycles. The result was a resilient, nearly indestructible translator who needed only a few phrases to learn any new language.

In response to the languages pouring out of the snake, people hurried out of the control room. When the illusionists turned to go, Kirtn stopped them. “Not you two.”

He waited until only four plus Fssireeme were left in the room. He stretched with obvious pleasure, flexing his powerful body. The Devalon had been designed originally for twelve crew members and hurriedly rigged for the two who had survived Deva’s solar flare. Even after dropping off people on five planets, the remainder of the refugees from Loo’s slave pens seriously overloaded the ship’s facilities. As a result, Kirtn spent most of his time trying not to crush smaller beings.

“Now,” he said, focusing on i’sNara and f’lTiri, “what’s the problem?”

The illusionists looked at each other, then at him, then at Rheba. “We’re not sure we should go home,” said i’sNara simply.

“Why?” asked Rheba, slipping Fssa back into her hair.

The illusionists looked at each other again. “We are appearing naked before you,” said f’lTiri, his voice strained.

Rheba blinked and began to object that they were fully dressed as far as she could tell, then realized that they meant naked of illusions, not clothes. “That’s rare in your culture, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” they said together. “Only with children, very close friends and sometimes with lovers. A sign of deep trust.”

“I see.” Rheba hesitated, knowing the illusionists were proud as only ex-slaves could be. “You didn’t leave your planet voluntarily ... ?”

“No.”

Rheba and Kirtn exchanged a long look. She slid her fingers between his. They did not have the intraspecies telepathy of the J/taals or the interspecies telepathy of master mind dancers, yet they sometimes could catch each other’s thoughts when they were In physical contact. Once, on Daemon, telepathy had come without contact; but Kirtn had been dying then, too high a price to pay for soundless speech. Now there was no urgency, just a long sigh and the word trouble shared between them.

“Tell us.” Rheba’s tone was more commanding than inviting, but her smile was sympathetic.

“It’s a long story.” began f’lTiri, “and rather complex.”

Kirtn laughed shortly. “I’d expect nothing else from a culture based on pure illusions.”

“Don’t leave anything out,” added Rheba. “If we’d known more about Daemen, we would have had less trouble there.”

F’lTiri sighed. “I’d rather be invisible while I talk,” he muttered. “Holding invisibility couldn’t be much harder than telling you....” He made a curt gesture. “As you said, our society is based on illusion. Nearly all Yhelles can project illusions. Some are better than others. There are different categories of illusion, as well.”

Rheba remembered the young Yhelle illusionist she had seen on Loo. His gift was appearing to be the essence of everyone’s individual sexual desire. The result had been compelling for the audience and confusing for her—she had seen the appearance of Kirtn on the young illusionist, yet Kirtn was her mentor, not her lover. The image still returned to disturb her. She banished it each time, telling herself that it was merely her knowledge of legendary Bre’n sensuality that had caused her to identify Yhelle illusion as Bre’n reality.

“The result is that while other societies have tangible means of rewarding their members, Yhelle doesn’t,” continued f’lTiri. “What good is a jeweled badge when even children can make the appearance of that badge on themselves? What good is a magnificent house when most Yhelles can project the appearance of a castle? What good is a famous ‘face when almost anyone can duplicate the appearance of that face? What good is beauty? Even poetry can appear more exquisite than it is. One of my daughters could project a poem that would make you weep ... but when anyone else read the words, they were merely ordinary.”

The illusionist sighed, and i’sNara took up the explanation. “He doesn’t mean that everything on Yhelle is illusory. Our money is real enough most of the time, because we need it for the framework of real food and cloth and shelter we build our illusions on. But the elaboration of necessity that is the foundation of most societies just doesn’t exist on Yhelle. We have nearly everything we want—or at least the appearance of having it.” She looked anxiously from Bre’n to Senyas. “Do you understand?”

“I doubt it,” said Kirtn, “but I’m trying. Do you mean that a Yhelle could take mush and make it appear to be a feast?”

“Yes,” said i’sNara eagerly. “A good illusionist can even make it taste like a feast.”

“But can’t you see through the illusions?” asked Rheba.

Both illusionists looked very uncomfortable. “That’s a ... difficult ... subject for us. Like cowardice for the J/taals or reproduction for the Lems.”

“That may be,” said Rheba neutrally, “but it’s crucial. We won’t be shocked.”

F’lTiri almost smiled. Even so, his words were slow, his tone reluctant. “Some illusions are easier to penetrate than others. It depends on your skill, and the power of the creator. But it is unspeakably ... crude ... to comment on reality. And who would want to? Who prefers real mush to an apparent feast? Especially as they are equally nourishing. Do you understand?”

Bre’n and Senyas exchanged a long silence. “Keep going,” said Rheba at last. “We’re behind you, but we’re not out of breath yet.”

I’sNara’s laughter was light and pleasing. Rheba realized that it was the first time she had heard either Yhelle really laugh.

“You’ll catch up soon,” said f’lTiri confidently. “After Loo and Daemen, I don’t think anything can stay ahead of either of you.”

Rheba smiled sourly and said nothing. They had been lucky to survive those planets.

“We don’t have much government,” continued f’lTiri. “It’s difficult to tax illusions, and without taxes government isn’t much more than an amusement for wellborn families. There’s some structure, of course. We are Fourth People, and Fourth People seem doomed to hierarchy. We’re organized into clans, or rather, disorganized into clans. Each clan specializes—traders or artists or carpenters, that sort of thing. I’sNara and I belong to the Liberation clan. We’re master snatchers,” he said proudly. “Thieves.”

Rheba blinked. The illusionists treated reality as a dirty word and thievery as a proud occupation. She sensed Kirtn’s yellow eyes on her but did not return his look. She was afraid she would laugh, offending the Yhelles.

“And quite good at it,” said Kirtn blandly, “if Onan is any proof of your skill. Without you two we’d still be stuck in Nontondondo, trying to scrape up the price of an Equality navtrix.”

F’lTiri made a modest noise. “We were out of practice. The only thing we’ve stolen in five years worth mentioning is our freedom—and you stole that for us.” He sighed. “Anyway, we weren’t good enough on Yhelle. We were assigned to steal the Ecstasy Stones from the Redistribution clan. We were caught and sold to Loo.”

“I’m out of breath,” said Rheba flatly. “You spent a lot of time telling us about appearances being equal or superior to reality, then you tell us that you tried to steal something. Why? Couldn’t you just make an illusion of the Ecstasy Stones?”

“That’s the whole point. Oh, we could make something that looked like the Stones, but no illusionist in Yhelle history has been able to make anything that felt like the Stones. That’s their value,” said f’lTiri. “They make you feel loved. That’s their illusion.”

Rheba looked at Kirtn, silently asking if he understood. He smiled. “You’re too pragmatic, fire dancer. It’s your Senyas genes. Think of it this way. The Yhelles have, or seem to have, everything that Fourth People have pursued since the First of the Seventeen Cycles. Wealth, beauty, power over their environment—if there is a name for it, the Yhelles have someone able to make it appear. Or,” he added dryly, “appear to appear. The illusion of love is the only exception.”

He looked at the illusionists. They moved their hands in a gesture of agreement. “Exactly,” said the Yhelles together.

F’lTiri continued, “We create illusions, but we aren’t deluded by them. Illusionists who fool themselves are, by definition, fools. So when it comes to love, we’re no better off than the rest of the Fourth People.”

“Except for the Stones,” put in i’sNara. “Their fabulous illusion—if it indeed is an illusion—is love. They love you totally. The more Stones you have, the more intense is the feeling of loving and being loved.”

“That would make them valuable in any society,” said Rheba.

“Perhaps,” conceded f’lTiri. “But in Serriolia, the city-state where we were born and the most accomplished illusionists live, the illusion of everything is available. Except love. In Serriolia, the Ecstasy Stones are priceless. Most of our history hinges on the masterful illusions that have gone into stealing one or more of the Stones. Master snatchers of each generation used to try their skills on whoever owned one or more Stones.”

“Used to’.’” asked Kirtn. “What happened?”

“The Redis—the Redistribution clan—snatched almost all of Serriolia’s Stones. You see, the Redis were formed out of the discontented thieves of various clans. That was hundreds of years ago. For generations, the clan trained and sent out platoons of master snatchers. In the beginning, the clan’s sole reason for existence was to steal Ecstasy Stones from the selfish few who had them. The Redis hoped to combine the Stones into one Grand Illusion available to every citizen.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Rheba hesitantly.

“It wasn’t,” agreed i’sNara. “Bat the Redis didn’t share. Only Redis were allowed into the Stones’ presence. And only a few Redis, at that. So another clan was formed out of unhappy snatchers, the Liberation clan. Besides,” she smiled, “there were all those highly trained snatchers and nothing to practice on but their own clan—unthinkable. Stealing from your own clan is grounds for disillusionment.”

“And you were caught stealing the Stones?” said Kirtn. “Is that why you were exiled?”

“We’re Libs,” said f’lTiri proudly. “It was our duty to snatch Stones from the Redis. But the Redis didn’t have any sense of humor. It wasn’t just that we were snatchers—our history is full of snatchers—but that our mere existence suggested that the Redis were not holding the Stones for the good of all Serriolians. The Redis Charter is quite specific about the Redis stealing Stones for high purposes rather than for selfish pleasures. The Redis Charter is posted in every clan hall. The fact that the Charter rather than the Stones circulates among the clans is attributed to the Stones’ extreme worth.”

“Or the Charter’s extreme worthlessness,” added i’sNara sarcastically.

Rheba rubbed her temples and wondered why she had urged the Yhelles to tell her everything. She was totally confused. Her hair crackled. Kirtn stroked the seething mass, gently pulling out excess energy. After a moment her hair settled into golden waves that covered her shoulders.

“What’s the worst that can happen if you go back?” Rheba asked bluntly.

“That’s just it,” said i’sNara, her voice soft. “We don’t know.”

“Will your clan disown you?” asked Kirtn.

“No,” answered f’lTiri. “Never.”

“You haven’t broken any local laws?” pressed Rheba.

“No.”

“Then why are you reluctant to go home?”

“We may be sent after the Stones again, and caught again, and sold to Loo again. Or worse.”

Rheba tried not to groan aloud. The more she heard of Yhelle and Serriolia, the less she liked it. She could, and should, just set down in Serriolia, sadly hut firmly say goodbye to the illusionists, and then lift for deep space with all the power in the Devalon’s drive.

But without f’lTiri’s masterful illusions, a fire dancer and a Bre’n would have died on Loo or Daemon.

“You don’t know what will happen to you?” said Kirtn, his voice divided between statement and question.

“No, we don’t.”

Kirtn sighed. “Then we’d better go find out.”

II

Rheba activated the privacy shield on her bunk, enclosing herself in darkness. She sat cross-legged, eyes unfocused, her breathing slow and even. Light bloomed from her hands, curling up from akhenet lines of power that were so dense her fingers seemed solid gold. Within the pool of light, like a leaf floating on a sunset pond, lay her Bre’n Face. She stared at it, letting her worry about the illusionists’ future slide away with each breath.

The Face had been carved by Kirtn and given to his dancer when she was ten years old. Each Senyas dancer had a Bre’n carving; no Face was the same. Normally Rheba wore the carving as an earring, depending from the seven intricate fastenings that insured against accidental loss. It was more than a decoration, and more than a pledge of Kirtn’s Choice of her as an akhenet partner. The Face was also a teaching device. Dancers, especially young ones, were supposed to meditate upon their individual Face every clay. In time, the Face would teach them all they needed to know about the relationship between Senyas and Bre’n.

Rheba, however, had not spent enough time in meditation. The fact that she had spent most of her hours since Deva’s burn-off in pursuit of bare survival did not excuse her. If her partnership with Kirtn went sour because she did not understand what was required of her, neither one of them would survive. Bre’ns whose akhenet partners thwarted them long enough went into a berserker state called rez. In that state they killed everything within reach—most especially their dancers—and ended by killing themselves.

No one knew precisely what drove a Bre’n to rez, or if anyone did, she had not been told. Kirtn had slid into rez once on Loo. Only a combination of her innate skill as a fire dancer and Fssa’s incredible ability to withstand heat had saved them from burning to ash and gone. Afterward she had silently vowed to study the Face no matter what happened. Except for her time on Daemen, she had done just that.

She gathered her thoughts, focusing only on the Face. It looked back at her, benign and aloof, waiting. Then, as she inhaled, the Face changed into a Bre’n profile against a subtly seething field of dancer energy. In the next breath it was two faces, Bre’n and ... was it Senyas? Was that bright shadow a young woman’s face, eyes half closed, transported by an unknown emotion? Her smile was stow, mysterious, as inhumanly beautiful as Kirtn, but the woman was Senyas, not Bre’n. It looked like her own face, but she was not half so beautiful, had never felt an emotion so intense.

The Face shifted with each breath, each pulse of her blood. • It was countless faces now, waves on an ocean stretching back into time, waves swelling toward future consummation on an unseen shore. Bre’ns and Senyasi intertwined, turning slowly, akhenet pairs focused in one another, touching and turning until they flowed together, inseparable.

Their faces were all familiar, all the same, Kirtn’s face with yellow eyes hotter than dancer fire. He turned and saw her and she burned. He called her and she came, turning slowly, touching him passionately, and his eyes another kind of fire touching her....

Rheba’s hands shook, breaking the Face’s hold on her mind. She realized that her akhenet lines were alight, burning in the closed compartment until the heat was stifling. Reflexively she damped her fire, sucking energy out of the air until it was a bearable temperature.

She did not look at the earring. She fastened the Face to her ear with fingers that still trembled. She was glad that Kirtn was not with her. What would he think of a dancer so undisciplined that she could not control her own thoughts? Instead of learning more about Bre’n and Senyas, her willful mind had combined her present worry about the illusionists with her past experience on Loo, when a young Yhelle illusionist had appeared as Kirtn sensuality made flesh.

She did not know why that experience had gone so deep into her psyche, but it had. Bad enough that she had dreamed about it while asleep; to have it interfere with dancer meditation was intolerable.

She whistled a curt phrase. The shield retracted into the bunk. M/dere waited outside. The J/taal smiled and gestured for Rheba to follow. Rheba did, wondering who wanted her and for what. Without Fssa there was no way of knowing; J/taals did not speak Universal, Senyas or Bre’n, and she did not speak J/taal.

Kirtn was in the control room arguing with the illusionists. Fssa, dangling from Kirtn’s neck, let out a delighted hiss when he sensed Rheba’s unique energy fields. Without pausing in his argument, Kirtn lofted the snake in Rheba’s direction. She snatched him out of the air, bracing herself as his weight smacked into her hands.

No matter how many times she held him, she was always surprised. His dense flesh was unreasonably heavy. In her hair, however, he weighed almost nothing. He had once told her that he “translated” her dancer energy into his own private support system. She had questioned him further, only to be told in arch tones that she “lacked the vocabulary to understand.”

“If you get any heavier I’ll drop you,” she muttered as she wove him into her long hair.

“You’ll break your toe,” whistled Fssa smugly. Whenever possible, he used the whistle language of Bre’n. It required the least amount of shape-changing to reproduce. In addition, Bre’n was lyric, multileveled and evocative, all of which made it irresistible to the linguistically inclined Fssireeme. “Don’t take a snake’s word for it,” he encouraged. “Drop me.”

Rheba made a flatulent sound, a Fssireeme way of expressing disgust. Fssa’s hissing laughter tickled her neck.

Both illusionists began shouting. As they shouted they seemed to grow taller and wider with each word until they loomed threateningly over the control room.

“What’s the problem with them?” Rheba said softly to Fssa.

“Fourth People.” Fssa sighed like a human. “Sometimes I think you pay for having legs by lacking brains.”

“Tell me something new, snake.”

“The illusionists are trying to convince Kirtn that he should just drop them at Serriolia’s spaceport and leave. He’s trying to convince them that—”

Kirtn’s roar drowned out Fssa’s speech. The snake hummed in admiration. As far as he was concerned, Bre’ns made the best sounds of any Fourth People.

“—going with you! Now shut up and get ready for the landing!”

“Bui—”

“Shut up!”

Rheba winced. The illusionists slowly deflated until they were normal size. Kirtn took a deep breath and reached for his lunch—a cup of mush that nourished the body and left the palate to fend for itself. With the life-support systems overloaded, it was the best the ship could do. He tasted the mush, grimaced, and slammed the cup into its nook on the control console.

“Cold.” It was just one word, but whistled in Bre’n it described a world of disgust.

Rheba walked over to the cup. She pointed at it with her finger. Energy flared for an instant. She handed the cup to her disgruntled Bre’n. “Don’t burn yourself.”

“The zoolipt would take care of it.”

Rheba shuddered. She did not like to think about the turquoise alien that had entered their bodies on Daemen. Kirtn was more philosophical than she about the zoolipt, perhaps because it had saved his life when the Seurs were doing their best to kill him. She did not deny that the turquoise soup had its uses. She was just uneasy knowing that a Zaarain hospital had taken up residence in her cells. Things Zaarain had a habit of being unpredictable.

The ship’s lights flickered so briefly that only she and the energy-sensitive Fssireeme noticed it. A chime sounded twice, then twice again. Fssa’s voice, via a memory cube, notified the inhabitants in thirty-three languages that landing was imminent.

I’sNara approached, a look of determination on her normally bland features. “We’ve decided that we want to be put down on Tivveriolia. It has a good spaceport with all the most modern downside connectors.”

“What’s the transportation like from there?” asked Rheba innocently.

“Very fast. F’lTiri and I won’t have any problem at all getting to Serrio ...” Her voice faded as she realized that Rheba had tricked her into admitting that Serriolia was still their ultimate destination. “You’re worse than he is.”

Rheba smiled. “I’ve beers working on it.”

I’sNara hesitated, then whispered, “Thank you,” and hurriedly withdrew to stand next to her husband. Neither illusionist spoke again until the ship touched down and the downside connectors were in place.

“No formalities?” asked Kirtn when the call board remained dark.

“If you need anything more than the port supplies, you just send out a call in Universal. If anyone is interested, you’ll get an answer. The port facilities are free, although it’s customary to show yourselves on Reality Street as payment. You two will be a sensation,” added f’lTiri. “We’ve never seen your kind before. You’ll be the source of a thousand new illusions.”

“And after Reality Street?” asked Rheba.

“The Liberation clan hall. They’ll tell us where our family is, and”—he smiled grimly—“whether we have to spend the rest of our lives projecting invisibility.”

Rheba and Kirtn looked at the control board. A series of numbers and colors moved in a continuous loop, describing the environment around the ship. She sighed. Hardly an ice planet. It was warm, even for Senyas tastes. Kirtn would begin to shed after an hour out there.

The illusionists stood eagerly by the downside door. They had no luggage, having escaped Loo with no more than their lives. When the door retracted, they stepped eagerly onto the ramp.

Kirtn and Rheba stood quietly for a moment, letting their bodies respond to the alien planet. The gravity was slightly heavier than Daemon’s had been, but the difference was not enough to be tedious. All of the Equality planets—indeed, all of the planets inhabited by Fourth People—were functionally identical in such gross characteristics as gravity and atmospheric content. Where one Fourth People could survive, all could survive.

The degree of comfort in which Fourth People could survive changed markedly from planet to planet, however. Loo had been too cold for Senyas tastes, Daemen too barren, and Onan too chaotic. Yhelle felt to Rheba as if it would be too hot and far too humid.

Kirtn grunted as though agreeing with her unspoken thoughts. Sweat sprang beneath his weapon harness and brief shorts. Within moments, his whole body was wet. Even the gold mask surrounding his eyes was dark.

“You won’t need my robe to keep warm here,” said Kirtn, glancing down at his fire dancer. “And I don’t need my fur.”

“I could skin you,” she suggested, lips straight in an effort not to smile.

“Promises, promises. By the Inmost Fire,” he sighed, “I wonder what an illusion of coolness is worth here.”

A thoughtful look crossed Rheba’s face. She held her hands near his face and concentrated. Her hands pulsed with subdued gold, but no flames came. Instead, a cool sensation came to him as she sucked heat out of the air around him.

“How’s that?” she asked.

He smiled and hugged her. “Nice.”

She concentrated again, trying to keep the heat at bay. He blew gently on her lips, teasing and distracting her. “Don’t tire yourself out keeping me cool. I’ll survive.”

“But you’ll shed,” she said flatly. She held up her hands. Tiny coppery hairs stuck to her moist skin. “You’re shedding already!” She made a sound of mock disgust. Every spring on Deva, she had teased her mentor about his unsavory habits. “Senyasi never shed.”

“Really?” whistled Kirtn, pulling a long gold hair off his shoulder harness. “What’s this?”

“An illusion,” she said serenely. “We’re on Yhelle, remember?”

Kirtn looked around. The spaceport with its scarred apron and downside connectors looked like every other Equality spaceport he had seen. Cleaner, perhaps. Certainly cleaner than Daemen’s had been. But for a planet of illusionists, the landscape was disappointingly mundane. Only later did he realize just how subtle Yhelle’s first illusion really was.

“Let’s get it over with,” said—Rheba, taking his sweaty hand in hers and pulling him down the ramp. “‘The sooner we begin, the sooner we end,’” she intoned, quoting an ancient Senyas engineering text.

The Bre’n gulped a chestful of the stifling air and followed, whistling minor-key curses.

As Kirtn and Rheba left the Devalon’s protective radius, the J/taals and their war dogs—clepts—flowed smoothly outward until Rheba was surrounded. She was their J/taaleri, and their job was to see that she came to no harm.

A clept ranged by i’sNara, its silver eyes smoldering in Yhelle’s humid light. i’sNara made a startled sound and stopped.

“What’s wrong?” said Rheba.

“The J/taals,” said i’sNara. “They’re forbidden.”

“What?” said Kirtn.

“Forbidden,” repeated i’sNara. “They’re death, and death doesn’t respect illusions.”

Rheba stared at the illusionist’s face. “But—”

I’sNara simply looked more stubborn. F’lTiri came and stood by her side. “It’s true,” he said. “If the J/taals are along, every Yhelle will be against us, even our own clan.”

“Ice and ashes!” swore Rheba. “Fssa, tell the J/taals to take their clepts and wait in the ship.” Then, remembering Daemen, where the J/taals had disobeyed and followed her, she added, “Make sure they know that I’ll he worse off if they’re with me than if they’re in the ship.”

Fssa shifted in her hair until he was the proper shape to emit the grunts, clicks and gratings that composed most of J/taal communication. Their language was very primitive, because intraspecies telepathy made speech useful only with outsiders and enemies.

The J/taals did not like one syllable of what they heard. That much was obvious from the ferocious expressions that settled on their faces. Equally obvious was the fact that they were not going to protest their orders.

“Why aren’t they arguing?” asked Kirtn.

“They know it’s useless,” whistled Fssa. “Yhelle’s phobia about J/taals is common knowledge in the Equality. But they weren’t sure Rheba knew, since she isn’t from the Equality.”

Rheba frowned. “They won’t try to follow me as they did on Daemen?”

“No.” Fssa’s whistle carried overtones of absolute confidence.

“Explain,” she snapped in Senyas, the language of precision and directness.

Hastily, the snake shifted to create Senyas vocal apparatus. “It would be pointless for them to follow. Without Yhelle guides—and no illusionist would come near them—they would be hopelessly lost in Serriolia’s streets.”

“Why?”

“Illusions.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Rheba, glancing around the spaceport, where everything looked normal to the point of boredom.

“It will,” the snake hissed.

III

Reality Street led at an oblique angle away from the spaceport. The transition from port to city was ominous. An ebony arch loomed above the entrance to the street. The arch was filled with a sable nothingness that was like a curtain sealing off whatever was beyond.

When Rheba glanced around she saw nothing but the spaceport. There were no building-; rising beyond the aprons, no hills or mountains or clouds, nothing but downside connectors and the functional, asymmetrical machines that cared for spaceships. It was as though the spaceport were the whole of the island city-state of Serriolia.

The illusionists looked back to where their friends waited, gestured encouragingly, and vanished into the black emptiness beneath the arch. Kirtn and Rheba looked at each other. As one, they slopped.

“What’s wrong?” whistled Fssa.

The snake’s head rested on top of Rheba’s. His twin multicolored sensors wheeled, “seeing” his surroundings in a barrage of returning sound waves. His whole length was incandescent, burning beneath her rippling hair like very hot embers beneath flames. He was in a high state of excitement. He liked new planets almost as much as he liked new languages. Especially warm planets, although by Fssireeme standards Yhelle was only a few shades removed from frigid. It was, however, much better than Daemen had been.

“We don’t like the look of that black arch,” said Rheba. “Although the illusionists didn’t seem to mind it.”

“Arch? Where?”

Kirtn turned and stared from the snake to the enormous arch looming in front of them. “Right ahead of us.”

Fssa’s sensors focused into the area beyond his two friends. He moved his head restlessly from side to side like a clept questing for an elusive scent. He hissed and turned back to Kirtn. “I don’t see anything but air.”

“You don’t see anything at all,” muttered the Bre’n, referring to the fact that Fssireemes were blind to the wavelengths of light that were the visible spectrum for Fourth People.

“That’s what I said,” whistled Fssa, a musical confusion in his trill.

“No,” said Rheba, touching Kirtn’s arm, “Fssa is right. The arch must be an illusion that exists only in the visible wavelengths of light. Since Fssa uses other means of ‘seeing,’ he isn’t fooled.”

“Wait here,” said Kirtn.

He strode toward the arch, stopping a hand’s width away. He reached out ... and his fingers vanished into darkness.

The illusionists reappeared beneath the arch, startling him. They were polite enough to conceal their smiles, although laughter rippled in their voices.

“It’s only a simple illusion,”, said f’lTiri, dismissing the arch with a flip of his hand.

“It doesn’t even have texture,” added i’sNara, poking holes in the arch with her tiny white hands. “It never changes. Even our youngest son could do better.”

“Fssa wasn’t fooled,” Rheba said, walking up behind Kirtn.

F’lTiri looked at the Fssireeme with new appreciation. “I’d like to see the planet you came from, snake.”

“So would I,” responded the Fssireeme in a sad tremolo.

Rheba touched him with a comforting fingertip. The snake had been born—if that was the proper term for Fssireeme reproduction—beyond the Equality’s borders, on a planet so distant that no one knew its Equality name. In fact, neither the old Deva navtrix nor the new Equality navtrix had ever heard of a planet called Ssimmi. Fssa could not go home, because without a location on the navigation matrix, no one knew where in the galaxy his home was. And Fssa wanted very badly to go home.

“He uses sound waves to see,” said Rheba. “That’s why he saw through the arch’s illusion.”

I’sNara looked thoughtful. “That might help with some Yhelle illusions. But the most enduring illusions are based on reality. The best ones have feel and texture. The extraordinary ones precisely mimic reality in every way.”

“Then how can you tell the difference?” asked Kirtn.

“When their creator gets bored or dies, his illusions vanish.”

“You can tell the difference between normal illusions and reality?” asked Rheba.

“Of course.”

“How?” she asked plaintively.

“How can you create fire?” asked f’lTiri.

She shrugged. “I’m a fire dancer. It’s what I do.”

“And we’re illusionists. We can be fooled, though.”

“And I can be burned,” said Rheba wryly. She looked at the uninviting illusion ahead of her. “Why do you call it Reality Street?”

F’lTiri laughed. “Because most of the people who use the street are tourists, not illusionists. It’s the only place a realist can go on Yhelle without a guide.”

Kirtn sighed and turned to Rheba. “I’m ready if you are.”

“You’re a poet.” she said accusingly. “You’d trade reality for a good illusion any day.” But she followed him through the arch, for she was a dancer and he was her Bre’n.

Reality Street was a riot fit to boggle the sensory apparatus of any Fourth People worthy of the name. If a plant grew anywhere in the Equality, it grew along Reality Street. If an animal breathed anywhere in the Equality, it breathed on Reality Street. If anything was manufactured or imagined anywhere in the Equality, its counterpart thrived on Reality Street.

Or at least it appeared that way.

The city-state of Serriolia was the centerpiece of Yhelle’s master illusionists. It also was the center of intra-Equality trade. Not everything on Reality Street was an illusion, but deciding what was and was not real would take a concatenation of First People ... or perhaps a single Fssireeme.

It was early morning in Serriolia, but groups of people wandered Reality Street’s straight line, stopping :o marvel at various manifestations. The people were as mixed a group as Kirtn and Rheba had left behind on the Devalon. There were one or two races that they had not seen on Loo, though the Loo-chim had prided itself on owning two of every kind of living being known in the galaxy.

Kirtn thought that at least one of the strange races wandering Reality Street was an illusion. Even a Bre’n poet balked at accepting a tall, fluffy-tailed, rainbow-striped biped as a real Fourth People. Especially when it shook out flowered wings longer than it was tall. Its teeth, however, might have been real, so Kirtn was careful not to stare.

Nearby, a grove of Second People whispered between purple leaves. Laughter rustled and whiplike branches snapped in amusement. Kirtn remembered the carnivorous Second People he and Rheba had burned to stinking ash on Loo, though not in time to save the children who had stumbled into the grove’s lethal embrace. He wondered if this grove, too, was insane.”

He snarled soundlessly and looked away, not wanting to remember how the children had died. He hoped that the grove was only an illusion, and that Rheba would not see it at all. He glanced around and saw that she had stopped halfway down Reality Street. He walked back to her.

Rheba was entranced by a fern growing in lyric profusion among dark cobblestones. Long fronds rose in graceful curves. Each lacy frond was an iridescent blue, trembling with hidden life. A cool perfume pervaded the air near the fern. Hesitantly, she touched a frond. The fern bent down, enveloping her in scent.

“That’s a beautiful illusion,” she sighed. “I haven’t touched or smelled anything that nice since the gold dust on Daemen.”

I’sNara reached past Rheba and took a frond between her fingertips. She broke off a small piece and waited. The frond remained the same.

“That’s either real or a class twelve.” she said, sniffing the piece of plant appreciatively. “Probably real. Ghost ferns are difficult illusions. Not many get the scent just right.”

“Where do they grow normally?”

“On Ghost.”

Rheba turned to see if i’sNara was teasing her, but the illusionist seemed lost in her enjoyment of the fern’s delicate scent, “I thought Ghost was just a myth.”

“Oh no,” said i’sNara, surprised. “It’s not part of the Equality, but it’s real enough.”

“Have you ever seen a Fifth People?” asked Kirtn.

“They’re rather hard to see,” said i’sNara wryly. “I’ve never had the pleasure, but my mother’s second grandfather saw a Ghost once.”

“How did he know is wasn’t an illusion?”

“Ghosts aren’t illusions. Only a realist could confuse them.”

Rheba was still trying to think of an answer when Kirtn distracted her.

“Look at that!” He pointed down the road, away from the spaceport.

A starsurfer was swooping down on them. Its vast, mirror-finish sail was belled out by an invisible wind. The sail worked as a huge lens, magnifying and reflecting their astonished faces, their mouths like black caves opening endlessly until sail and ship were swallowed up and nothing remained but a giggle drifting down from a nearby tree.

F’lTiri snickered. “I forgot to mention that Serriolia’s children practice their trade on Reality Street. Only the young ones, though. Realists are such easy prey.”

Kirtn turned toward the tree and bowed, adding a Bre’n whistle for good measure. The pink leaves shook—A small Yhelle leaped from a branch and hit the ground running.

“You scared him,” said i’sNara, but there was no censure in her voice.

“I meant to compliment him,” said Kirtn. “Being swallowed up by our own astonishment is a shrewd illusion for one so young.”

“But he didn’t know you were real. He’d never seen someone like you before, so he assumed you were an illusion,” explained f’lTiri. “Then he tried to penetrate your illusion, and couldn’t. Then he assumed you were at least a class eight teasing him by pretending to be a realist. So he fled, leaving you to tease tourists rather than one small Yhelle.”

Rheba looked down the long, straight street. Colors she had no name for surged brightly on either side. In the distance, well back from the street, fantastic buildings grew, architecture representing every Cycle from First to Seventeenth, made up of every material from mud to force fields.

She sighed and rubbed her aching eyes. Itching eyes. They itched like new akhenet lines of power beneath her skin. She rubbed her shoulders where new lines had formed when she had been forced to tap a Zaarain core on Daemen. But it was not her shoulders that itched, it was the back of her eyes.

Kirtn bent over her and pulled her fingers away from her eyes. “Did you get something in them? Spores? Pollen?”

She blinked rapidly, but her eyes did not water. Nor did they feel as if anything foreign was in them. “They just itch in back. As if new lines are forming.”

“I’ve never heard of a dancer getting lines back there.” He looked carefully at her. Twin, cinnamon-colored eyes looked back at him, translucent pools with a hint of gold veining. The whites of her eyes were clear and glossy, visible sign of her health. “They look fine.”

“They don’t feel that way. The zoolipt must be asleep.” She shook her head fiercely. “Wake up, you useless parasite. I itch!” Nothing happened. She whistled a Bre’n curse, “It did fine on my other akhenet lines. I only itched a little, even after wrestling with that Zaarain core.”

Kirtn tilted back her chin. New lines lay gold beneath her tawny skin, thicker lines, deeply curved, lint upon line sliding beneath the scarlet silk of her brief ship clothes. His whistle was a combination of disbelief and distress. “You’re too young for so many lines, fire dancer. If you develop too quickly—

He did not finish his sentence. He did not have to. Rheba knew that it was as dangerous to push a dancer’s growth as it was to push a Bre’n balanced on the edge of rez. But there had been no choice, not on Daemen or Loo or Onan. They had done what they must to survive. If that forced her to develop too quickly, so be it. It was better than dying.

“Besides,” said Rheba, as though she had been speaking aloud all the time, “I’m the first dancer to have a zoolipt inside. It will keep me healthy.” She smiled sourly. “Until it gets tired of my taste, that is.”

“At least you don’t itch anymore.”

“Except my eyes,” she said, knuckling them in exasperation. “Oh well, nothing’s perfect. Not even a Zaarain construct.” She blinked rapidly and looked for the illusionists. They were gone. “Where are they?”

Kirtn looked around. All he saw was flowers, ferns, trees, and a cluster of First People humming softly among themselves. They must have stopped growing eons in the past, for their crystal faces were worn and dull. Their songs were still pure, though, as haunting as an autumn moonrise.

And then he realized that the stones were singing a Bre’n work song. The biggest-stone laughed, shimmered, and became f’lTiri. Beside him was i’sNara, equally amused. The illusionists’ pleasure was so transparent that Kirtn could not be angry. He smiled and made a gesture of defeat.

Fssa made a startled sound. “They fooled even me,” he whistled. “Their sounds were real, and shaped just like First People.”

“Did you bounce sound off us?” asked f’lTiri.

“No. I just listened.”

“Try it.”

The illusionists promptly became the image of First People. They chimed and quivered sweetly.

Fssa went through a series of transformations, then froze in an odd convolution of quills and cups. “Got you!”

The stones became furred quadrupeds sleeping in the sun, snoring deeply.

“Where did they go?” hissed Fssa, then answered his own question by changing shapes until he caught the illusionists again. “There!”

The furred animals became a carpet of flowers covered in silence. At least, to Rheba and Kirtn it was silence. To Fssa, it was a sound absorber. No matter which frequency he used to probe, no echo returned. The illusionists were effectively invisible to him. In desperation, he assumed the grotesque fungoid shape that he used to talk with Rainbow.

Rheba yelped and knocked Fssa out of her hair. “Forget it, snake! I’ll take silent illusion to your sonic reality.”

Fssa collapsed into a dark snake shape. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I barely whispered,” he added meekly, turning black with chagrin.

She bent over and put him back into her hair. “Even a whisper on that wavelength gives me a headache.”

I’sNara and f’lTiri reappeared, obviously delighted.

“You must be twelve’s,” said Kirtn. He whistled in the sliding loops of Bre’n admiration.

“Alone, each of us is an eight,” said i’sNara. “Together, we’re nearly eleven. With our children or some of our friends, we’re twelve.” She laughed in exultation. “If you only knew how good it feels to stretch again! The Loo-chim never wanted anything more complex from us than an image of its own perfection staring out of its mirror.”

“It’s the first time we’ve really felt free,” added f’lTiri in oblique apology. “But don’t worry. We won’t tease you or the snake anymore.”

“Good,” said the Bre’n. “Now, if you could just hold the rest of Serriolia to that promise ...”

Fssa made a rude, fruity noise.

“You can say that again for me,” muttered Rheba. She knew that Serriolia would be exactly what it was, an endless joke on nonillusionists.

With a final, flatulent mutter, Fssa buried himself up to his sensors in Rheba’s consoling hair.

IV

By the time they reached the end of Reality Street, Rheba and Kirtn were in a state of sensory surfeit. They stood and stared at the force field that divided them from the rest of Yhelle. The field was even more daunting than the ominous arch had been.

Rheba allowed a filament of her energy to brush the outer edges of the field. There was a crackle and a sense of dissonant power in the instant before she disengaged. Kirtn looked at her, a question in his yellow eyes.

“If it isn’t real, it’s so close that it makes no difference,” she said.

Kirtn asked no more questions. If a fire dancer said an energy field was real, then it was real in every way that mattered. “Can you penetrate it?”

She hesitated. “If I had to, I probably could. It’s not Zaarain, but it’s more complex than the power Loo or Onan used.” She looked around, but saw no one other than Kirtn. She sighed. “Where or what are the illusionists now?”

He did not even bother to look. The illusionists had gone giddy with laughter and mutual transformations before they were two-thirds of the way down Reality Street. When last he had seen them they were a thunderhead stitched with lightning that looked suspiciously like a mass of Fssireemes.

“F’lTiri?” called Rheba. “I’sNara?”

There was no answer, unless a snicker from the pavement beneath their feet could be counted.

Her hair stirred, whispering strand over strand in murmur of gathering power. “Enough is too much,” she muttered.

“What are you going to do?” asked Kirtn.

“See if illusions burn.”

Kirtn’s lips fought not to smile. “I should stop you, dancer.”

“But you won’t.”

His lips lifted in a predatory smile. “What poet could resist finding out the colors of a burning illusion?”

She waited, but the illusionists did not appear. Her hair fanned on!, hiding Fssa in a seething cloud of gold. He hissed ecstatically, reveling in the energy she drew into herself from her surroundings. He floated in a chaos of energy, supported by hot strands of dancer hair. It was as close to his Guardian-induced memories of home as he had conic in the Equality.

Akhenet lines lighted beneath Rheba’s skin. Whorls and curves and racing lines of gold shimmered as she rechanneled the energy she was drawing into herself. Her lines remained cool, however; this was only a minor dance. She would not even need the partnership of her Bre’n. She glanced up at him with a sidelong smile and a question. “Any favorites?”

He pointed to some small hushes that grew along the margins of the force field. The bushes bore gnarled, spotted fruit that gave off an unpleasant odor. A similar plant had grown in the Loo slave compound. The fleshy fruit was not poisonous, but it tasted as vile as it looked.

She half closed her eyes as she reached out to the plant with her dancer senses. Gold pooled in the palm of her hand, viscous energy wailing to be used. She tipped her hand and let the fluid drip down.

The plant stank and died.

“Must have been real,” observed Kirtn.

Her hand moved on to the next plant. Gold dripped. The outline of the fruit glowed oddly, then vanished rather than burned. A tiny skeleton of a real plant remained, withered and obviously dead. She recalled her fire before it could touch the skeleton.

Kirtn squatted and examined the brittle remains. “Feels real,” he said, sniffing and cautiously tasting a fragment of withered fruit. He spat it out immediately. “Tastes real.”

“It was,” said f’lTiri’s voice. “A long time ago.”

Kirtn and Rheba turned. The illusionists were back, appearing as bright-blue fish swimming in an invisible sea.

“The most enduring illusions are based on reality,” said i’sNara’s voice, issuing from a wide fish mouth. “An illusion of ripe fruit based on a withered reality is easy to make and very hard to see through.”

Rheba eyed the row of ugly bushes. She gathered energy until her hair whipped wildly. She pointed to each bush in turn, and each bush shimmered into flame. She concentrated, building a tiny bridge from individual bushes to the force field. As long as the field was on, the fires would continue to burn.

“That’s a rather nice effect,” said one of the fish, swimming up and down the row of burning bushes. Then, “Ouch!” F’lTiri appeared suddenly, sucking on a scorched fingertip. He looked reproachfully at Rheba. “You could have warned me.”

“What did you expect?” said Kirtn. “We’re on Reality Street, remember?”

F’lTiri smiled ruefully. “You win. We’ll behave.”

I’sNara seemed to condense out of the air beside him. “But we have to have some illusions,” she said plaintively.

“You don’t have to play hide-and-seek,” pointed out Rheba, her voice crisp.

I’sNara blushed, or appeared to. Her outline shimmered. She became a blue-skinned Loo, naked but for a slaveholder’s arrogance. “Now you’ll know who I am whenever you see me. A real Loo would wear a robe.”

Rheba shuddered. She had hoped never again to see any Loo. “I prefer you as yourself.”

“But I can’t appear naked at home!” said i’sNara, shocked.

Rheba looked at the unclothed illusion, opened her mouth to protest, then gave up. She had a feeling that she would be a long lime understanding the niceties of illusory conduct. She blinked rapidly and knuckled her eyes. It did not stop the itching, but it made her feel better.

“Which way do we go to get to your clan?” she said, dropping her hands to her side. “And if you try to tell me that way,” she said, jerking her chin toward the force field, “I’ll roast your teeth.”

F’lTiri smiled, but as he was now in the guise of a Stelsan scout, complete with fangs and feathers, the gesture was not reassuring. “No more tricks, fire dancer. You have our word ... but,” he added wistfully, “it was lovely to play again.”

Rheba knuckled her itching eyes and said nothing.

F’lTiri led them parallel to the force field that stretched across the width of Reality Street, terminating it in a sullen glimmer of energy. The field reminded Kirtn of the lid that had sealed slaves into the Loo-chim Fold.

Rheba’s hair showed a distinct tendency to drift toward the field, drawn by its energetic promises. When she realized what was happening, she took her hair and knotted it at the nape of her neck. It would be dangerous to tap accidentally into the oddly shaped forces.

Fssa grumbled, but accommodated himself to his reduced surroundings. He knew the danger of dissonant energies as well as she did.

Kirtn sighed and wished for less heat or less humidity. His copper skin-fur, had become the color of rust. Darker trails of sweat divided over his body. His weapon harness clung where it did not chafe. The air was so dense that breathing was an effort. In all, he would just as soon have left Yhelle to its illusionists.

He wiped his shoulder where sweat had gathered beneath Rainbow’s faceted weight. As he moved his hand, parts of Rainbow clicked together with sullen sounds that echoed his own irritation. When he lifted his hand, it was coated with tiny hairs. He grimaced. He knew he would feel cooler after he shed out, but the process was anesthetic. There were no odes to shedding Bre’ns. Limericks, however, abounded.

He followed in disgruntled silence as the illusionists led them parallel to the force field. Rheba turned suddenly, looking over their backtrail with narrowed eyes.

“What’s wrong?” whistled Kirtn.

“I feel as if we’re being followed. It’s like an itch behind my eyes that I can’t scratch.”

The Bre’n looked over his shoulder. Nothing was nearby, not even an illusion. “Fssa.” Kirtn’s whistle was curt, demanding.

The snake’s sensors took in the area behind them. When that failed, he anchored his tail firmly in her hair and went through a series of transformations. When he was finished, he again became a simple snake in shades of metallic gray. “Nothing that I can detect is moving after us,” he said in precise Senyas.

Rheba made a frustrated noise and clenched her hands at her side.

“Maybe you should go back to the ship,” Kirtn suggested.

“It’s only an irritation—as heat is for you.”

“Are you sure?”

She did not bother answering, and he did not mention returning to the ship again. Neither of them relished being separated. It seemed that whenever they were apart unlucky things happened.

The illusionists stopped, faced the force field, and waited for the others to catch up. When they did, i’sNara said. “Look through the veil very carefully.”

Kirtn and Rheba stared into the force field’s twisting, shimmering surface. Gradually the surface changed, becoming more similar to the veil i’sNara had called it. Vague images condensed, like ghostly scenes viewed underwater.

“What do you see?”

Rheba’s lips thinned into an impatient line. Even a Fssireeme did not have enough words to describe what she was seeing. Or almost seeing. “Is this another illusionist joke?” she snapped.

“Please,” said i’sNara. “It’s important. Can you see anything?”

“Why?”

“If we told you, it might influence what you see.”

“You have the advantage,” said Rheba curtly. “You’ve had it since we left the ship.”

“I’m sorry we teased you,” whispered i’sNara. “Please?”

Rheba relented and faced the screen again, but it was Kirtn who spoke first.

“I don’t see anything.” He stared at the force field with eyes that were a hard yellow. “Wait. I see : .. faces. Faces and more faces. Countless faces ... worshiping. Faces like yours, i’sNara, f’lTiri. A sea of faces surrounding a glittering island. Everything is pouring into the island ... all human colors, all human hopes, dreams, lives pouring in endlessly.... The island is crystal, no, many crystals piled high. They ... slowly consume their worshipers, consuming ecstasy, all the faces, dying slowly, ecstatically....”

The last words were sung in a keening Bre’n whistle translated by Fssa into fiat Universal. Even so, the illusionists were shaken. The emotive qualities of Bre’n transcended simple words.

Rheba tried to see what Kirtn had seen, but the back of her eyes itched so fiercely she could not see anything. She rubbed her eyes impatiently. By the time the itch faded, whatever Kirtn had seen was gone. But he had seen something very disturbing. She had only to look at the illusionists’ faces to know that.

“That was the Redis clan symbol,” f’lTiri said hollowly. “But it’s changed. So much stronger.”

“And the Stones,” murmured i’sNara. “So many more than they had when we left. I didn’t know there were that many Stones.”

“Stones?” said Rheba.

“The island,” sighed i’sNara. “The island you saw was made of Ecstasy Stones.”

“Ice and ashes,” cursed Rheba. “My eyes picked a fine time to itch. I’d like to have seen that.” She blinked and stared at the veil as the illusionists were staring at it. She hoped that what Kirtn had seen would reappear.

The illusionists made a dismayed sound and joined hands. Their illusions faded, leaving behind two normal people whose faces were lined with concentration.

The veil changed.

Rheba stared, unconsciously speaking aloud as an image condensed behind the veil. “An empty hall, cracked walls and broken floor and no people. Hands reaching for something. Whatever it is, they can’t get it. Empty hands reaching forever.”

Like Kirtn, she used Bre’n to describe what she had seen. But even as she described it, the image vanished. She hoped it had been only an illusion. There was a desperation about the grasping hands that made her uneasy.

“Was that a clan symbol?” asked Rheba, her voice harsh.

“Yes,” said f’lTiri.

“Whose clan?” Then, with a sinking feeling of reality, Rheba said, “Yours, right? That was the symbol of the Liberation clan.”

The illusionists looked at each other and said nothing. Finally, f’lTiri shifted his feet and looked away from his wife’s eyes. “It could have been a fake,” he muttered.

“Maybe.” i’sNara’s hands clenched and opened, unconsciously echoing the grasping hands beyond the force field. “It doesn’t matter. We have to find out, and to find out we have to go through the veil. I hope that symbol was only a sick illusion. But I’m not counting on it.”

Kirtn looked from the rippling field to the illusionist dressed as a naked Loo. “What’s wrong? I didn’t see anything except a few hands holding nothing.”

“Exactly,” said i’sNara. “The symbols are the essence of the living clans. And there was nothing.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kirtn, but he kept his voice gentle, because he saw pain beneath i’sNara’s illusion.

“The room Rheba saw,” said f’lTiri. “The empty hall.”

“Yes?”

“That was our clan home. Now it seems to be deserted. There’s no one waiting there. Not even our children.” He made an impatient gesture. “This is one time that waiting won’t improve the illusion. Let’s go.”

“Where?” said Rheba, looking at the force field stretching away on both sides into infinity.

“To the hall,” snapped f’lTiri.

“This is where we go through,” said i’sNara. When she saw the look on Rheba’s face she added quickly, “We’re not teasing you, dancer. The field thins out here and illusions appear. To get where you want to go, you just pick your destination’s clan symbol and step through. Be fast, though. It’s no fun to get caught between illusions.”

Kirtn stared. He thought he could see shapes wavering beyond the field, but was not sure. Then again, he had not been sure of anything since he had set foot on misnamed Reality Street. He looked toward his dancer.

Akhenet lines shimmered briefly as she tested the force field. “It’s patchy,” she admitted. “If you choose the right spot, all you’ll get is a tingle.”

If. But how could anyone be sure the right spot would stay in place long enough to be used?

“We’ll try to hold the illusion for you,” said f’lTiri, “but we may not be able to. If that happens, stay here until the empty-hall symbol repeats and jump through. We’ll be on the other side, waiting for you.”

Rheba looked uneasily at the kaleidoscopic forces of the veil, changing even as she watched. She understood now why f’lTiri had wanted to be sure they could see through the field before he let them off Reality Street. If you could not see your destination’s illusion/symbol through the veil, you were helpless. Even seeing it, she was loathe to let the illusionists out of reach for fear of being forever lost in a shifting Yhelle fantasy.

Her eyes itched maddeningly, telling her that someone was behind her, turning as she turned, always just out of sight. With a sound of exasperation she motioned the illusionists to get on with it. “Go through. Maybe it’s the force field that’s making me itch.”

The illusionists joined hands and concentrated. An image of an empty hall was superimposed over the force field. The veil buckled and writhed as though refusing their illusion. They rode it like an unruly animal. Grudgingly, the field thinned, revealing cracked pavements and desolation.

The illusionists walked through and vanished.

After an instant of hesitation. Tire dancer and Bre’n followed. The field broke over them like black water, drowning them.

V

Rheba staggered, then supported herself against Kirtn until she shook off the effects of the force field. To the average Fourth People, when the field was attenuated it was only a “veil.” To a dancer, it was a cataract barely held in check. Even as Kirtn helped her by draining off her conflicting energies, he was poised to defend against more mundane dangers than an asynchronous force field.

A quick glance told him that the illusionists were nearby. However, they were not in the place he had seen through the veil. They were outside, not inside, standing on the edge of a deserted street. In the distance the street curved around a huge, ruined building. On either side of the street slovenly wooden buildings leaned against each other. Where no such support was available, houses had collapsed on themselves.

The wreckage was sharp-cornered, suggesting that riot, rather than time, had pulled down the buildings. The few plants he could see were quite dead. There were neither fountains nor scented breezes. After the colorful illusions of Reality Street, the Liberation clan’s territory was painfully ugly.

“Is this an illusion?” asked Kirtn bluntly.

The Yhelles’ outlines trembled, showing that the illusionists were fighting for control. After a time, their appearance steadied.

“No illusion,” said f’lTiri in a tight voice. “Not one.”

I’sNara’s Loo image blurred as she looked around. “Almost no territory left. No illusions left, not even a simple facade.” Her image solidified. She was no longer Loo. She was i’sNara, but an i’sNara who looked so old she was almost another person entirely. “Nothing.”

“You’re sure it isn’t an illusion?” asked Rheba, feeling Fssa stir underneath her hair, changing shapes as he tested the street’s reality as best he could.

“Yes,” sadly, “we’re sure. Disillusioned places feel different.”

“It’s true,” whistled Fssa. “Those ruins are real.” Then he added sourly, “As real as anything on this treacherous planet.”

Rheba shivered in spite of the oppressive heat. The Liberation clan’s home territory looked and felt like desolation in four dimensions. “Is this what Serriolia is like beneath the illusions?” Then, realizing that might be a taboo subject, she said quickly, “I didn’t mean that as an insult.”

F’lTiri smiled, but Rheba sensed it was an illusion. “At one level, yes. All of Serriolia is built on a reality that isn’t much prettier than this. Other races paint their homes or design stone facades or extrude elaborate materials to make their homes beautiful—But all we need are a few walls and a roof. From that bare reality we make castles a Loo would envy.” He smiled, and this time it was real. “As long as the roof doesn’t leak on the illusion....”

“What happened here? Why aren’t there any illusions? Did they just wear out?”

The Yhelles looked at one another and then at the ramshackle street that was the reality of their home. “No. The illusions were stripped away,” said i’sNara. “A house illusion”—she gestured across the street, and a leaning shack was transformed into an inviting mansion—“is simple to create. They’re stable and easy to maintain. In the clans, children do it.”

“How long will that last?” asked Kirtn, gesturing to the newly created mansion.

“A week or two. Months, if I took longer with the initial creation. But sooner or later even the strongest illusion needs retouching. That’s what the children do.”

i’sNara made an abrupt gesture and looked away. The mansion thinned into invisibility. The shack remained.

The transition was unnerving to Rheba. The shack seemed even more melancholy than before. She look Kirtn’s hand, drawing comfort from his presence as though she were a child again.

Down the street, a Figure darted from a pile of rubble into a ruined house. The person was without illusion and moved like a wild animal that had been persistently hunted. When Kirtn started to call out, he was stopped by f’lTiri’s grip on his arm.

“No,” said the illusionist urgently. “You didn’t see anything.”

“But I did,” protested Kirtn. “I saw a Yhelle—”

“You saw a creature bereft of illusions.” F’lTiri’s voice was rough. “You saw nothing at all.”

Kirtn started to argue, then realized it was futile. “I would like to question what I didn’t see,” he said in a reasonable tone. “If what I didn’t see lives here, it might be able to tell me what happened to the Liberation clan. Or,” sarcastically, “am I supposed to believe that nothing happened and any evidence to the contrary is illusion?”

I’sNara and her husband argued briefly in Yhelle before she turned and spoke to Kirtn in Universal. “Even if you caught that poor creature, it wouldn’t be able to tell you anything.” She hesitated and then spoke in a strained voice, as though what she was saying was very difficult, very unpleasant, or both. “It doesn’t really exist. It’s been disillusioned.”

Kirtn started to speak, thought better of it, and whistled instead. “Fssa, we seem to have a communications problem even though we’re all speaking Universal. Can you give me a Bre’n translation of the Yhelle word disillusioned?”

Fssa whistled a sliding, minor-key word that ended on a shattered note. The word described akhenets who had lost their gifts through brain injury, becoming people caught between madness and nightmare for the rest of their lives.

With a grimace, Kirtn gave up the idea of questioning the person he was not supposed to have seen. He doubted if even Fssa could communicate with a madman. “Then who—or what—do you suggest we question? Because something has happened here, something that’s worse than you expected. If this”—he waved his arm at the barren street—“is home, you’re better off on the Devalon with us. I get the feeling this is a very unlucky place to be.”

The Yhelles were silent for a long moment. F’lTiri sighed finally and touched his wife with a small, comforting illusion. “You’re right,” he said, turning to Kirtn. “We don’t have a home anymore. The Liberation clan doesn’t exist. We’ll go with you as soon as we find our children and tell them we’re no longer slaves on Loo.”

“Good.” Kirtn did not bother to hide his relief. The poet in him was set on edge by the whole atmosphere of the street. Destruction, not creation, was the pervasive image. “Where do we go to ask about your children?”

I’sNara’s expression was so bland and untroubled that it had to be an illusion. “The Liberation clan hall.”

Silently, the Yhelles turned and walked toward the grim building that was girdled by a decaying street. Kirtn and Rheba followed.

The closer Rheba walked to the hall, the more uneasy she became. Gutted of every illusion, the building sagged inward. Its timbers were dank and moldy. Its roof was in fragments. Long runners from an invading vine quested for new strangleholds on the walls. An ambience of foreboding and despair transformed sunlight into shades of gray.

All in all, Rheba had seen more comforting places.

Neither she nor Kirtn wanted to follow the illusionists. There was something hostile about the clan hall’s appearance. Nor did they want their friends to enter the crumbling building alone. Reluctantly, dancer and Bre’n walked along the rutted, curving street until they saw the hall’s main entrance.

I’sNara and f’lTiri waited on the steps. Their illusions were so thin that Rheba could see through to the frightened Yhelles beneath. She realized, that if the building’s aggressive ugliness oppressed her, it had all but destroyed her friends. Unbidden, a memory of Deva’s last moments twisted through her, smoke and ashes and screams.

Because she was touching him, Kirtn caught the painful images. He brushed his hand across her cheek and buried his fingers deep in her restless hair. Comfort flowed from his touch. Memory faded, leaving only the echo of screams.

In silence, the four of them mounted the steps into the Liberation clan’s headquarters. The interior of the building was no better than the exterior. Holes in the roof let sunlight trickle through. Connectors that joined the building to Serriolia’s machinery had been ripped out. Ordinary fluorescent strips had been sprayed along the floor. The job was haphazard. Obviously it had been done in great haste when more conventional means of lighting were disrupted.

Whatever had happened to the clan had not taken place overnight. There had been enough time for patchwork repairs and hopes that had eventually curdled into defeat.

“This way,” said i’sNara hollowly, leading them over the wreckage of something that could have been furniture. Without illusions, it was hard to tell pieces of a table from fragments of a cupboard. “Watch the yellow moss. It leaves blisters.”

The illusionist spoke in a monotone, like a primitive machine.

Rheba wanted to help, because she knew how much it hurt to pick through the rubble of a dream. But there was nothing she could say to comfort the Yhelles, so she said nothing at all. Fssa keened softly in her ear, Bre’n laments in a minor key.

A ring of tables stood in what had once been the center of the building. Some were broken now, mirror tops smashed to bright fragments. Others were intact, but cracked and blurred by dust. On one of them was a group of crystals the color of greasy smoke.

I’sNara cried out. At the same instant, Rainbow brightened. Beneath her skin, Rheba’s akhenet lines began to glow. She walked toward the crystals.

“No.” F’lTiri pulled on Rheba’s arm, then let go in surprise. The dancer’s lines were hot. “Stay away.”

Rheba’s hair moved restlessly, loosening itself from the coils she had imposed on it and drifting in the direction of the crystals. When she spoke, her eyes stayed on the sullen stones. “What are they?”

“Worry stones. Ecstasy Stones gone bad.”

Rheba looked at her Bre’n in silent question. She saw that Rainbow was brighter. “Don’t get any closer,” she said quickly. “Rainbow might steal some.”

Kirtn looked down, saw Rainbow’s quiet interior glow, and stared at the table where stones grew like warts on the mirrored surface. “They don’t look like Rainbow’s type. The ones it swiped on Onan and Daemen were beautiful.”

“I don’t trust Rainbow,” said Rheba flatly. “It has a mania for collecting crystals.”

Fssa whistled a soft disclaimer. “Rainbow is just trying to rebuild itself. Replacing lost or broken components isn’t really stealing.”

She frowned and glared at the Zaarain construct hanging around Kirtn’s neck. She and Fssa disagreed on the desirability of having Rainbow around. Yet the Fssireeme defended it so eloquently she usually gave in. “Stealing or not, I don’t want Rainbow near those crystals.”

Her voice was hard, brooking no argument. Fssa knew the value of discretion. He murmured soothingly and vanished into her hair.

“Is this what you were looking for?” asked Kirtn, gesturing toward the worry stones.

“In a way, yes,” said f’lTiri.

“in what way?” prompted the Bre’n impatiently. He was in no mood to play guessing games among the ruins.

With an effort, f’lTiri looked away from the stones. “If even one member of the clan were left—if there were a clan at all—the central illusion would have been intact.” His glance went back to the circle of shattered mirrors. “But even our Ecstasy Stones have changed. Worry stones.” He shuddered. “They bring only craziness. There’s nothing here for us.”

Rheba knuckled her eyes. The maddening itch had returned, making it impossible for her to follow the conversation. She moved restlessly until she was within reach of the stones. As her akhenet lines glowed, the itch faded. She bent closer to the stones, intrigued by their cool energies. Before she had time to think better of it, her hand closed over the biggest crystal.

Her tines heated, expanding until there was very little bare flesh left in her palm. The stone remained a dark, uneven crystal whose facets refused even to reflect the incandescent gold of her akhenet lines. Indeed, her hand seemed to dim, as though the stone sucked up light and warmth.

Vaguely, she heard i’sNara scream at her to drop the stone. But i’sNara’s voice was far away, not nearly so urgent as the cold blackness in her hand ... a crystal hole in reality into which everything would drain forever until ...

Dancer.

Kirtn’s voice spoke within her mind. The world returned in a bright rush of warmth, his hands on her shoulders, his breath stirring her hair, his strength dividing her from nightmare. Tendrils of her hair curled around his wrists in a dancer’s intimate caress.

It’s all right.

Her reassurance reduced the fear driving him. His grip lightened and their small mind dance ended.

“This stone is a power sink rather than a power source,” said Rheba in Senyas, the language of precision and measurements. “It surprised me. I was expecting the opposite.”

Kirtn eyed the stones with displeasure, particularly the one still in her palm. “Zaarain?”

“I don’t think so. They’re similar, but more ... delicate. Zaarain cores always feel like a short course in damnation until you get them under control. If you can. The last one I tangled with nearly burned me to ash and gone,” She peered at the stone, but failed to see herself reflected on its dark surfaces. “The crystal is powerful, though. No mistake about that.”

He bent to look more closely. Rainbow swung out from his neck with a bright flash. Rheba leaped away.

“No you don’t!” She closed her hand around the stone. “This one is mine, you thieving construct.”

“Put it back,” said F’lTiri tightly.

Rheba’s eyes itched, distracting her from the urgency in the illusionist’s voice. “Does the stone belong to someone?” she asked, oddly determined not to let go of the ugly crystal.

I’sNara made a strangled sound. “No. Who would want them? I don’t even know how they got here in the first place. No master snatcher would bother with them.”

Rheba looked from the stone in her palm to the stones on the cracked mirror. “No one owns these?”

“No one.” F’lTiri’s voice was clipped.

“Then I’ll take them.”

Kirtn looked from her to the stones. “Why?”

“Their energies are unique.” Then, stubbornly, “I want them.”

He hesitated, knowing that dancers’ tastes were as unusual as their gifts.

I’sNara did not hesitate. “Unique? That’s one way of saying it,” she retorted. “Another way is to say that they’ll drive you crazy.”

“Can you shield them?” asked the Bre’n, his voice that of a mentor waiting to be convinced.

Rheba concentrated on the large stone in her palm. Gradually, tiny filaments of light curled up around the stone, lacing and interlacing until there was a delicate shell of golden light around the stone. When she was finished, she handed the crystal to her mentor. “Try it.”

Kirtn took the crystal, rolled it around in his hand, then touched it to his forehead. He grunted. “I can’t feel anything. i’sNara?”

The illusionist looked at the crystal as though it were a trap set to spring at the least touch. “If it were anyone but Rheba,” she muttered, extending a cautious fingertip. When there was no reaction, she became more confident, finally even taking the crystal into her palm. “What did you do?”

“I—” Rheba realized that Universal had no words to describe what she had done. She suspected that Yhelle had no words either. “I caged it,” she said, shrugging like a Bre’n.

“How long will it last?” asked i’sNara, returning the crystal to Rheba.

“As long as it’s close to me,” she said absently, sorting through the stones remaining on the cracked mirror surface. “My energy field will feed it.” Crystals clicked together. When she was finished, there were two piles. “Those are dead. No energy at all, positive, negative, or stasis/neutral.”

She built a fragile, flexible cage of light around the living crystals. As the cage closed, the room appeared to brighten and the air seemed less oppressive. She felt an acute sense of relief and delight that was like nothing she had ever experienced.

The feeling was disconcerting because it was unexpected. The stones had never worried her to the point that she should feel any particular relief that they were no longer unshielded. Nor was it Kirtn’s emotion. She knew the textures of his relief; they had been in and out of danger so often lately that his responses were as familiar as her own. Frowning, she sealed the odd crystals into a pocket of her scarlet shorts.

The illusionists drew a deep breath and stretched like people coming out of a long confinement. Apparently they were peculiarly susceptible to the worry stones’ negative effects.

I’sNara and f’lTiri looked around the room. Empty of its last illusion, the Liberation clan hall was humid, crumbling, inhabited only by memories. The ambience of total despair was gone. It had vanished with the stones into Rheba’s pocket. Even so, the hall was a melancholy place.

F’lTiri turned toward a rear exit: “All that’s left to check is the message wall.”

There was neither door nor illusion of one, only a rectangle of Yhelle’s steamy sunlight. A rough board wall leaned askance but still upright. The wood was bare of illusions. A list of names spiraled in toward the center of the board, each letter burned in wood. In silence, the Yhelles read the names.

“What is it?” asked Rheba finally, sensing that something was wrong.

“Names,” sighed i’sNara.

“People who have vowed to liberate Ecstasy Stones,” f’lTiri said. “Our names.” He pointed toward the beginning of the spiral. His finger cut toward the center where the last names were burned in. His voice roughened. “Our children’s names.”

“Where are they now?” asked Kirtn. “Loo?”

“We don’t know,” whispered i’sNara. “They might have succeeded.”

F’lTiri made a strangled sound. The state of the Liberation hall spoke eloquently of failure, not success.

“Someone will know,” said i’sNara, touching film’s arm. “Clan Tllella?”

For a moment his illusion slipped, revealing a man caught between rage and despair. “Do you really want to know? They’re either dead or slaves—or worse!” Then his exterior became once again that of an alien scout as he hid behind illusion. “Clan Tllella,” he said flatly.

Rheba watched them walk out into Yhelle’s moist gray sunlight. “What could be worse than slavery on Loo?” she asked softly, looking sideways at her Bre’n.

“I’m afraid we’re going to find out,” said Kirtn.

Rheba’s akhenet lines ignited in reflexive response to the danger implicit in his words.

He was comforted by her reaction. Not for the first time since their flight from Deva, he congratulated himself on Choosing a dancer whose gifts were dangerous as well as beautiful. “I just hope we don’t find more trouble than you can burn,” he said, giving her a fierce Bre’n smile.

VI

The illusionists left the hall more circumspectly than they had come. They were little more than blurred shadows sliding down the stairway and up the street. Kirtn and Rheba fidgeted at the top of the steps, having promised that they would not follow the Yhelles too closely.

“Wonder what kind of trouble they’re expecting,” said Rheba, measuring nearby shadows with cinnamon eyes.

“Wonder how they’d recognize it if it came,” the Bre’n said sourly. “Fssa, do your Guardian memories have anything to say about Yhelle?”

The Fssireeme’s sensors gleamed beneath a glossy wing of Rheba’s hair. He spoke in Senyas. He usually did, when he had bad news. “Yhelle has changed since the Eighth Cycle.”

“Eighth! Is that your most recent memory?” asked Rheba. She knew that each Fssireeme had a Guardian who imprinted his (her? hir!) memories on the young snake. The Guardian’s memories also included that Guardian’s Guardian’s memories, and so on all the way back to the first Guardian. Thus Fssa’s memories were much older than he was.

“The Eighth Cycle is my most recent Guardian memory of Yhelle. I myself have never been to Yhelle.”

“Welcome to the Eighteenth Cycle,” Kirtn muttered.

“Thank you,” hissed Fssa.

Rheba said something under her breath that the snake chose not to hear. They set off after the illusionists.

“The Tllella clan members are mostly traders,” offered Fssa in oblique apology. “At least, they were in the Eighth Cycle. They probably haven’t changed. It’s a tenacious profession.”

“Maybe it would help if we knew how Yhelle has changed since the Eighth Cycle,” suggested Kirtn.

The snake was unusually succinct. “More illusion. Less reality.”

“No help at all.”

“No help,” agreed the Fssireeme. “Perhaps Rainbow knows something. A fragment of knowledge is better than nothing at all.”

“No,” snapped Rheba. “We’re not that desperate yet,” .

Fssa, knowing the agony his communications with the fragmentary Zaarain library caused her, said no more on that subject.

“Can you see the illusionists?” asked Kirtn. “I lost them when I blinked.”

Fssa said, “They’re waiting at the veil.”

“You’re sure?”

“They’re keeping their illusions simple so I can follow.”

Rheba stepped up the pace. Even outside the Liberation hall the atmosphere was oppressive to her. She felt she was being watched by nameless shadows growing out of the ruins. “I’d hate to be here at night,” she muttered.

Kirtn said nothing, but his repeated glances into the shadows told her that he was as uneasy as she was, “I’ve got a feeling we’re being watched.”

“Itch behind your eyes?” she suggested hopefully.

“No. Just a feeling. By the Inmost Fire. I wish I could see through illusions,” he said in fervent Senyas.

“Hurry,” said Fssa. “They’re having trouble controlling the veil.”

Kirtn and Rheba ran toward the veil. Before they could see the destination symbol, they were yanked through by invisible hands.

Rheba stood dizzily for a moment, then shook off the effects of passage through the force field. “Where are we?”

“Tllella clan boundary,” murmured a glossy white cat striding alongside Kirtn.

Rheba blinked, then decided the cat must be i’sNara. “What was the problem with the veil?”

“It only wanted to take us to the Redis hail,” answered a man who appeared in the cat’s wake.

Rheba could not help staring at the tall, thin stranger who must be f’lTiri. His hair was hip length, the color of water, and thick. It took the place of the shirt he did not wear. His pants were as tight as snakeskin and made of interlocking silver links. His lavender skin was the same suede texture as Kirtn’s. She ran her finger down the illusion’s arm and made a sound of pleasure.

F’lTiri turned and smiled at Rheba’s open-mouthed admiration. “A simple illusion,” he whispered.

The silver links of his pants rubbed over each other musically, making a liar out of F’lTiri. It was a complex illusion, beautifully realized. As was i’sNara’s; she even threw a small, cat-shaped shadow.

“I feel naked,” said Rheba plaintively to Kirtn.

The Bre’n smiled but knew what she meant. Yhelle was a complex place to live. It was even worse to visit. He hoped they would not be here long.

Yhelle’s boundary streets were well populated ... or at least appeared to be. On Yhelle, it was hard to be sure of anything. Rheba tried to see through various entities that might or might not be illusions. So did Fssa. After a few minutes, they just decided to enjoy the show without worrying about tangential concerns such as reality and illusion.

Kirtn, with a poet’s special pragmatism, had already decided that the distinction between the two was artificial and anesthetic. He simply watched and appreciated what he could.

“Is it far?” asked Rheba. Then, almost as an afterthought, “I’m hungry.” As she spoke, she realized that the air was full of enticing scents.

“Not far,” said the cat’s husky voice. “Serriolia isn’t very big. It just seems that way.”

They were passing what seemed to be a marketplace. Laughter and wonderful food smells drifted out from fantastically decorated houses. The cat’s very long whiskers twitched in the direction of a small cafe” that seemed to be constructed of moonlight floating on water. The subtle play of light and aroma promised coolness, pleasure and peace. And food.

“Smells wonderful,” said the cat.

“Reminds me of Meel’s best work,” murmured the man with a voice like water rippling, echoing his hair.

“That would be too much to hope for.”

“Meel is her mother’s cousin,” said the man to Rheba. “She might know what happened to the Liberation clan.”

Rheba sniffed deeply and could not help hoping that food came with the information. Working with the worry stones had drained her energy. Her stomach would not relent until she ate. She wished she had the ability to turn sunlight into food, but that was a trick known only to plants and a few now-dead master fire dancers. And, she suspected, Fssireemes.

She leaned toward the thin man with hair like water—she simply could not think of him as f’lTiri—and whispered, “What does Yhelle use for money?”

“Only clan accountants handle real money,” said f’lTiri, shaking his head to make his hair flow smoothly. His tone told her that people who handled money were a necessary evil, not a topic of polite conversation.

“Then how do you buy food at the cafe’s?” she persisted.

“You trade illusions.” Then, seeing she did not understand, he added, “You get a meal as good as the illusion you project.”

The explanation explained nothing. She made a frustrated sound and her lines sparked. Hungry dancers were notoriously irritable. Kirtn whistled softly and stroked her arm. After a few moments, her fires glowed harmoniously. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.

“But I’m still hungry,” she whistled, evoking a vast rumbling hollowness with a handful of Bre’n notes.

The cat looked over her sleek shoulder, revealing eyes the color of autumn wine, blue on blue with magenta turning at the core. “Your illusion should get you the finest meal in Serriolia.”

“I’m not an illusion,” said Rheba, exasperated again. She threw up her arms. Akhenet lines blazed. “I’m exactly what I appear to be!”

“Sometimes,” said i’sNara with a tiny cat smile, “reality is the best illusion of all.”

The cat leaped up and sat on f’lTiri’s shoulder. Rheba saw that it was not quite a cat. Its paws were small hands and the tips of its fangs winked poisonously. The smile was decidedly cruel.

“We’ll go first,” said f’lTiri, “Don’t speak Universal. Let the snake do your talking.”

Rheba smiled wryly. Yhelle was the only place in the Equality where a multilingual shape-changing snake would cause no comment.

“Eat whatever is given to you,” he continued. “If you don’t like the flavor, don’t show it. You’ll only be insulting your own illusion.”

They entered the cafe”. Neither Kirtn nor Rheba would have been surprised if the room vanished before their eyes. It did not. It remained just as it was, a construct of moonlight and still waters, redolent of feasts.

Fssa made a startled sound.

“What’s wrong?” whistled Rheba in Bre’n. She had no fear of being overheard in that language. So far as she knew.

only five living beings in the Equality understood Bre’n, and the other two were waiting aboard the Devalon.

“I’ve lost them,” whistled Fssa in rising notes of surprise and displeasure.

“Who?”

“The illusionists!”

Rheba blinked. The shiny white cat and the man dressed in chiming silver were still just ahead of her. “F’lTiri?”

He turned so quickly that his hair frothed. “Don’t use my name aloud until we find out what’s going on!”

“Tell him, Fssa,” she muttered in Senyas, not knowing any more of the Yhelle language than the illusionists’ names.

“I can’t see you,” said the snake in soft Yhelle, choosing the idiom of sighted Fourth People over precision. Being a Fssireeme, he never really saw anything at all.

F’lTiri smiled. “Sorry, snake. If we hope to get food or information out of the resident illusionist, we have to put on our best appearance. But we’ll stay as man and cat so you won’t lose us.”

Rheba stared. She had thought the previous illusions were complete, but realized she was wrong. The man and cat were indefinably more real than they had been. The cat’s long white fur stirred with each breath, each vague breeze, each movement of the sinuous neck. The man’s hair rippled to his hips, clung to his muscular body, separated into transparent locks with each turn of his head. His silver clothing links were now bright and now dark, slinking and tinkling with each step.

Kirtn whistled Bre’n praise as intricate as their illusions. Though f’lTiri did not understand the language, the meaning was clear. He smiled fleetingly, revealing the hollow pointed fangs of a blood eater. Rheba shivered and looked away. The vampire races of the Fourth People made her uneasy, despite the fact that they abhorred and avoided the carnivorous or omnivorous races of Fourth People. Vampires simply could not understand how civilized beings could eat carrion.

Rheba followed the lavender-skinned vampire into the caf6, feeling less hungry than she had a moment ago. Kirtn smiled thinly, as though he knew exactly how she felt. Even Bre’ns were queasy on the subject of blood eaters. Fssa was impervious. He rested his head on top of her ear and whistled beautiful translations of the fragmentary conversations he overheard as Rheba followed man and cat through the crowded cafe.

“—through the veil three days ago and hasn’t been back.”

“Would you go back to that see-through illusionist if—”

“—deserve better than cold mush!”

“—tempted to try it. Total love. What an illusion! But I hear that no one—”

“Marvelous flavor, don’t you think? Yours isn’t? Oh—”

“—heard that the Redis have a truly Grand Illusion.”

“Who told you?”

“Someone who heard it from—”

“—garble honk—”

Fssa hissed frustration. Too many conversations were almost as bad as silence for a Fssireeme. His sensors spun and focused, seeking the familiar voices of the illusionists.

Nascent fire smoldered beneath Rheba’s skin, reflexive response to the strangeness around her. If she closed her eyes and just listened to Fssa’s whistle she was all right—until she tripped over an illusion. So she was forced to go open-eyed through as unlikely a concatenation of beings as she had seen in the casinos of Onan and the slave yards of Loo combined.

The crowd thinned around a small, brightly lit area. In the center of the spotlight was a gorgeous butterfly spinning a brilliant green web. As it walked, the butterfly’s feet plucked music out of the green strands. Wings fluttered, scattering fragrance. With a final nil of notes, the insect took flight. As it landed on a nearby table, food appeared.

“How can we compete with that?” muttered Rheba in Senyas.

Kirtn whistled sourly. “We’ll be lucky to get cold mush.”

Fssa hissed laughter. “Speak for yourself. I have more shapes than these dilettantes ever dreamed of.”

F’lTiri sauntered into the spotlit area. On his shoulder rode the white cat. In the spotlight she turned the color of honey and melted into his mouth. Al1 that remained were fangs shining. Cat laughter echoed as she reappeared in the center of a nearby diner’s meal, white not honey, fangs intact. With a single fluid leap she regained her perch on f’lTiri’s lavender shoulder.

As though he had noticed nothing, not even the spotlight, f’lTiri combed his water-gleaming hair. Music cascaded out. A chorus of tiny voices came from a shoal of lavender fish swimming the clear currents of his hair. He shook his head. Fish leaped out and flew in purple flurries toward the dark corners of the room. They vanished, leaving behind the smell and feel of raindrops.

Kirtn sighed. “At least some of us will eat.”

Yellow light surged through Rheba’s lines. She shook Fssa out of her hair and put him into Kirtn’s hands. “Voices and shapes, snake,” she whistled. “Lots of them.”

As Kirtn stepped into the spotlight, the Fssireeme began to change. One moment he was a simple glistening snake, the next he was a blue-steel spiral shot through with a babble of languages. The spiral became a pink crystal lattice trembling with music, whole worlds of song. Shapes and colors changed so quickly there was no time to name them. With each shape/color came new songs, new sounds, painful and beautiful, silly and sublime. The shapes came faster and faster until they became a single glistening cataract of change, an eerie cacophony of voices.

Then Fssa settled smugly back into snake form curled in a Bre’n’s strong hands. A voice whispered in Kirtn’s ear. Fssa translated the Yhelle worlds. “First table on your right.”

Rheba watched while Kirtn sat at an empty table next to the man and cat illusion. Food appeared in front of him. Rheba held her breath while he took a bite. Bre’ns had exquisite palates. It would be hard for him to disguise his reaction to bad food.

He chewed with every evidence of pleasure. Breathing a silent prayer, Rheba stepped into the light. Power smoldered in her akhenet lines. Her hair fanned out, catching and holding light until it was every color of fire. She crackle-d with energy. Tiny tongues of lightning played over her akhenet tines.

Patterns of intricate fire burned over her body while she searched the air for emanations from a local power source. As she had hoped, the cafe’s lights were real, drawn from Serriolia’s power grid. She tapped into the lights, taking visible streams of power from them until she was a focus of fire in a room suddenly dark.

She pirouetted. Flames streamed out, separated, became single tongues in the center of each darkened table. In all the languages of the Equality, the flames sweetly inquired if the food was equal to a decent illusion. The impertinent voices were Fssa’s, but the whiplash of impatience beneath the words was pure hungry dancer.

She burned in the center of the stage and waited for her answer.

A voice whispered meaningless Yhelle words in her ear. Fssa realized the difficulty just in time. He whistled a fast translation. Still burning fitfully, she walked toward Kirtn’s table. There were several empty chairs. She pulled one over to him and sat.

The food was exquisite, but before she finished it, the chair developed aggressively familiar hands.

Rheba leaped to her feet and set fire to the sniggering chair. It exploded into a fat, outraged Yhelle male beating his palms against his burning clothes. A burst of laughter from the diners told him he was naked of illusion. Instantly he took on the aspect of a bush and rustled through the crowd toward the exit.

Realizing what had happened, Kirtn started after the lewd bush. It took a gout of dancer fire to keep the Bre’n from stripping the crude illusion twig from branch.

The white cat smiled and called sweetly, “If you’re going to seat a class twelve illusion, you’d better be a class twelve.”

Fssa whistled a translation, complete down to the malicious pleasure in the cat’s husky voice.

Rheba waited until Kirtn sat down again. She ignored his clinical—and rather shocking—Senyas description of the fat illusionist. She looked skeptically at the remaining empty chairs. She gave the nearest one a sizzling bolt of fire. Kirtn would not let her sit down until he smelled wood burning. Only then was he satisfied that a chair rather than a lecher waited for his dancer.

As Rheba sat gingerly, the cat leaped to the center of the table and began cleaning its hands with a pate-blue tongue. “Meel will be here soon,” she purred almost too low for Rheba to catch. “Eat fast.” She flexed her poisonous nails and leaped back to the other table.

“I wonder if those claws are as lethal as they look,” muttered Rheba.

“Bet on it,” said Kirtn. Then, in a metallic voice, “I trust you burned more than that cherfs clothes.”

Rheba’s lips twitched. “Yes.”

He took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “Good.”

There was a predatory satisfaction in his voice that made her look closely at her mentor. His slanted eyes were hard and yellow, the eyes of an angry Bre’n, but that was not what made heat sweep through her. Her wrist burned where his mouth touched her, burned with a Fire that would have scorched any Fourth Person but a Bre’n or Senyas. He drank her heat like a Fssireeme, leaving her dizzy, her lines blazing with a restless incandescence that wanted to consume ... something.

She had felt like this before, when they had “shared enzymes” in a lover’s kiss. They had fooled the Loo-chim into believing that Bre’n and Senyas had a complex symbiosis based on such sharing, and would die if separated. The kiss had shocked her, for she had never thought of her Bre’n mentor as a man. Since then the thought had occurred with uncomfortable regularity. She knew that Bre’n sensuality was the core of many Senyas legends, but she did not know if akhenet pairs were also supposed to be lovers.

She had been too young to ask or even speculate on such a question when she was on Deva. Now there was no one to ask but Kirtn ... and she could not find the words. It was not just fear of being rejected by him if the answer was no. In a way less intimate and more complex than enzymes, they needed each other to survive. She could not jeopardize their lives by ignorantly probing areas of akhenet life that might be taboo.

Nor could she pretend that Kirtn was not a man. His simplest touch excited her more than the hours she had spent with boyish Senyasi lovers. It was not a comforting realization. If she allowed herself to think about the sensual possibilities latent in her and her Bre’n, she would be tempted to pursue them in defiance of any taboos that might exist. She must think of him only as her Bre’n, her mentor, her partner, never her lover. And yet ...

Fssa’s low whistle startled her. She realized that she had begun to build a cage of fire around herself and her Bre’n. She had done that once before and not understood why. Now she was afraid she did understand.

Kirtn was watching her with eyes that burned.

Fssa whistled again. She sucked energy back into her lines, but that was not what the snake was concerned about. She looked toward the illusionists’ table. There were two cats where formerly there had been just one, yet f’lTiri still appeared to be a tall blood eater. Suddenly the white cat’s lips drew back in a snarl. The other cat, darker and much less defined, vanished. From the table where it had been rose visible tendrils of odor. The stink made Rheba gag.

“Out!” shrilled Fssa urgently. “Get out!”

VII

Before Rheba could stand up, Kirtn had grabbed her and was racing through the crowd with a fine disregard for patrons illusory and real. She helped by scattering minor lightning. Within seconds, they had a clear path to the door.

“The illusionists?” asked Rheba, squirming in Kirtn’s grasp until she could see over his shoulder.

“Invisible,” whistled Fssa. “They’ll probably beat us to the door.”

“What happened?” snapped Kirtn.

Fssa’s sensors wheeled through metallic colors and finally settled on incandescent green. He scanned the crowds behind them as he answered. “Meel came. The cat illusion is a recognition signal for Tllellas, and i’sNara was Tllella before she joined illusions with f’lTiri. When Meel found out who the white cat was—Mil that blue lizard with some lightning!” Fire poured past the snake’s head. He hissed satisfaction. “She won’t be hungry for a week.”

Serriolia’s hot, moist air wrapped around them as they gained the sidewalk in a long leap. Fssa’s sensors changed again, more blue than green, “Yellow flower,” he snapped in Senyas.

Hot fire rained on a flower growing out of the street. The flower squawked, shivered, and vanished.

“Any more?” asked Rheba, wondering if the puddle ahead was truly the product of Yhelle’s daily rains.

“Not that I can scan. i’sNara is that tree growing behind the house illusion. Oh, you can’t see through that one, can you? But I can’t find f’lTiri.”

“Here,” murmured the air next to Kirtn’s right ear. “No,” urgently, “keep walking. I can only hold invisibility over us for a few more seconds. Once we’re around that house illusion—”

With the “house” between them and the cafe, f’lTiri let go of invisibility. In the instant before he formed a new illusion, they saw his real face, pale and sweating. Invisibility was the most exhausting illusion of all.

“What happened?” asked Kirtn. “Fssa said the dark cat was Meel.”

A nearby tree shivered and split. Half of it became i’sNara. A different i’sNara, though. Short and thick, skin as black as the expression on her face. “Meel is afraid of her own illusions,” she spat.

F’lTiri’s outline blurred and reformed as that of a bird. The bird Happed to i’sNara’s shoulder and closed its eyes. She stroked feathers as she explained. “When I told Meel who I was she nearly lost her illusion. At first she was happy. Then she was afraid. When I asked about my children, she said to go to k’Masei. When I asked again—” i’sNara made a cutting gesture. “You smelled her answer.”

“Who is k’Masei?” asked Kirtn.

“A Liberation clan traitor.”

The bird nuzzled i’sNara’s ear. She sighed. “I know, but it makes me sick even to hear his name.” Her lips twisted as though she were eating something as bad as the smell in the caf6. “K’Masei was the Liberation clan’s master snatcher. He said he was going to use our few good Ecstasy Stones to help him snatch the Redis’ Stones. So he went into the Redis clan hall with all our Stones. He never came back. He gave our Ecstasy Stones to the Redis!”

“Maybe he was caught,” suggested Rheba.

The illusionist laughed bitterly. “He was the one who sold us into slavery. He’s the head of the Redis clan—a position he bought with Lib clan Stones.”

Rheba sighed, “Then I suppose that’s what Meel meant. K’Masei will know where your children are.”

“You don’t understand,” said i’sNara, her voice strained. “Saying to Libs ‘Go Јo k’Masei’ is wishing death or slavery on them. You saw our clan hall. What chance do you think we’d have with k’Masei?”

Kirtn’s whistle sliced through mere words. “Then who do we ask?” he demanded.

“Meel isn’t the only Tllella I know.”

I’sNara strode confidently down the street with the blue bird perched on her shoulder. Kirtn watched her for a moment, then shrugged and started after her.

“I hope the other Tllellas she knows smell better,” muttered Rheba.

As though it had heard, the bird looked over its shoulder and winked. Simultaneously, Kirtn took on the appearance of green Fourth People wearing a barbaric jeweled necklace. Her own skin became the exact turquoise color of the zoolipt pool on Daemon. Magenta drifted in front of her face. She flinched in the instant before she realized that it was her own hair, transformed by Yhelle illusion.

“Just simple reversals,” called the bird in a tired voice. “That’s all we can manage for a while.”

“It’s enough,” said Kirtn, looking at his own hands in disbelief.

“I’sNara doesn’t think there’s any danger,” added the bird, “but it’s better not to have any more misunderstandings.”

Rheba suspected that what had happened at the cafe was no misunderstanding. She kept quiet, though. Short of abandoning the search for their children, the illusionists were doing all that they could to keep everyone safe.

I’sNara turned off the road and walked through a wall. Kirtn and Rheba stopped, stared at each other, and walked forward cautiously. They discovered that the open road was an illusion concealing the reality of a wall. If they had followed what their eyes saw, they would have bloodied their noses on the invisible wall. The visible wall, however, was an illusion concealing a turn in the road. Without the illusionists to lead the way, Bre’n and Senyas would have been utterly baffled.

“Fssa, did you see—scan—the fact that the wall wasn’t where it seemed to be?”

“I wasn’t scanning,” admitted the snake. He poked his head out of her hair and focused over her shoulder. “What wall?”

Rheba turned to point. The wall was gone. Akhenet lines flared in fire dancer reflex to being startled. “Kirtn—”

He turned, looked. His eyes narrowed in slow search. No wall. Even more unsettling, the road behind them was totally unfamiliar, as though they had crossed through a veil without realizing it. He looked at his dancer in silent query.

“No,” she said positively, “we didn’t go through a veil. There is no way even a class twelve illusionist could hide energy from a fire dancer.”

“Fssa?” asked the Bre’n.

The snake turned dark with embarrassment. “I wasn’t scanning. I gave it up as useless. By the time I strip away one illusion, another takes its place. Useless.”

“But why?” wondered Rheba. Then, quickly, “Not you, snake. The illusions. Why would they change so completely?”

“Why would they have them in the first place?” countered Fssa in a deliberately off-key whistle.

“Argue while you walk,” snapped the Bre’n. “If we lose track of our guides, we’ll have hell’s own time finding our way back to Reality Street.”

His advice came none too soon. They caught up with i’sNara, in time to see her climb some narrow steps, turn left and walk serenely on pure air into the second story of a circular tower. Kirtn and Rheba scrambled to follow before the illusion changed beyond recognition.

The tower illusion was either an actual structure or closely based on one. They followed interior curves up several levels without going through walls or walking on air. That suited Rheba. She was still queasy from looking between her feet and seeing nothing at all.

The bird flew swiftly back, perched on Kirtn’s shoulder, and spoke in a very soft voice. “Hiri, i’sNara’s first illusion, lives here. When we go in, stand quietly and don’t say anything.”

Rheba wondered what a first illusion might be, but the bird flew off before she could ask. The wall in front of i’sNara dissolved. All four of them moved into the opening as one. Kirtn, however, was careful to look over his shoulder and see the nature of the illusion that formed behind them. If they had to leave quickly, he would know which way to jump.

I’sNara’s outline blurred and reformed into her own image. A graceful mirror gave a startled cry and shattered, leaving behind the reality of a dark-haired Yhelle. He swept i’sNara into his arms and spoke in torrents of nearly incoherent Yhelle.

Fssa did not translate, which told Rheba that the conversation was private rather than pertinent. The snake’s delicate sense of what was and was not meant to be translated was one of the things she liked best about him. Eventually, however, he began translating. He duplicated each voice so exactly that it was like understanding the language itself rather than merely hearing a translation.

“Where are you staying?” asked Hiri, his quick frown revealing that he knew the subject to be an unhappy one. As members of the Liberation clan, they would normally have stayed in the clan hall until they found quarters.

“We won’t be here any longer than it takes to find out about our children,” said i’sNara bluntly.

Hiri’s outline flickered. “I don’t know where they are,” he said miserably. “After you were sent to Loo, I tracked your children down. It wasn’t easy. They have your finesse and f’lTiri’s stamina.” He glanced quickly at the bird on i’sNara’s shoulder. The bird winked. Hiri smiled. “They insisted on staying with the clan. They were sure they could steal the Stones and redeem their parents’ illusions.”

“What about my brothers, f’lTiri’s sisters, their children? Where are they?”

Hiri blurred, “Your older brother died. A street brawl that was more real than apparent. F’lTiri’s sisters ... one joined the Redis.”

The bird ballooned into a solid, enraged f’lTiri. “I don’t believe it!”

“It’s true,” sighed Hiri.

“Which sister?”

“My wife.”

F’lTiri made an agonized sound and then said nothing at all. He could not question the look on Hiri’s face.

“What about the others?” asked i’sNara tightly. ‘.’My younger brother?”

“Joined the Redis.”

“F’lTiri’s other sisters?”

“One dead.”

“The other?” said i’sNara stiffly, taking her husband’s hand as though she knew what was coming.

“Don’t—” whispered Hiri.

“We shared first illusion,” i’sNara said, her voice as harsh as the image forming around her. “Tell me.”

“Disillusioned,” he said very softly. Then he cried aloud, “Disillusioned! Like all the others. I was afraid one of the disillusioned was you and then I knew if I kept looking I would be one of them. K’Masei is insatiable! More converts and then more and he wants still more until Serriolia will be nothing but his own illusion admiring itself endlessly.” His voice broke. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t good enough to save your children.”

“Neither was I, old friend,” sighed i’sNara. “Neither was I.” She kissed Hiri gently. “When was the last time you saw my children?”

“Just before my wife became a Redis. A year ago. Maybe more. They aren’t Redis, though. At least, they weren’t then. They were still planning to steal the Ecstasy Stones.” He hesitated, then looked searchingly from i’sNara to f’lTiri and back. “Don’t stay in Serriolia. None of your clan is alive in any way you would want to know. There’s nothing left here for you.”

“Our children.”

“If k’Masei doesn’t have them already, he will soon. I tell you he is insatiable. I—” He looked away from them. “I dream of the Stones,” he whispered. “Ecstasy.”

The longing in his voice made Rheba ache. She knew what it was to dream of the unattainable, only for her it was a planet called Deva alive beneath a stable sun. Her hair stirred in restless magenta curves. Kirtn touched her and for an instant he felt her pain as his own.

“Please,” said Hiri. “Go while you can.”

“Our children.”

Hiri’s image paled almost to transparency, “Do you know that just a few days ago I was grateful you were on Loo? Slaves, but safe. No dreams sucking at your will.” He looked at i’sNara. She waited, obdurate, reality and illusion fused in single determination. “Your children,” he sighed. When he spoke again, it was quickly, as though he would have it over with. “Nine days ago Aft came. Do you remember her?”

“My son’s first illusion,” said f’lTiri.

“She was going to clan Yaocoon. To hide.”

“From what?”

“Her dreams,” snarled Hiri. He touched i’sNara, apologizing. “I’ve tried not to sleep. Sometimes it works.”

“Why clan Yaocoon?” pressed f’lTiri.

“I don’t know. There are rumors ...”—“Yes?”

“Rebellion,” whispered Hiri.

The word was spoken so softly that even Fssa had trouble catching it.

“Against what? K’Masei? The Redis?” asked i’sNara, her voice unnaturally loud in the hot room.

Hiri gestured silent agreement, obviously afraid even to speak.

“How?” asked f’lTiri bluntly.

He was answered so softly that only Fssa heard. “A raid on the Ecstasy Stones,” translated the snake in a firm voice that sounded just like Hiri’s.

Hiri looked up, startled. He saw only a restless cloud of magenta hair. “Ssssss,” he hissed. “Whisper. They’re everywhere.”

“Who?” asked Rheba.

“The Soldiers of Ecstasy.”

She looked at the illusionists. Their expressions told her they knew no more than she did about Soldiers and Ecstasy. Their expressions hinted that they were afraid Hiri had lost his grasp on the interface between reality and illusion.

“You think I believe my own illusions, don’t you?” said Hiri, his voice divided between bitterness and amusement. “I wish I did. Life is much simpler for a fool.” His image thickened, becoming more solid, as though he drew strength, from some last inner resource. “Haven’t you seen the notice?” he asked in a hard voice.

“What notice?” asked the illusionists in the same voice.

“Beside the entrance,” he said harshly. “I’ve tried to hide or disguise the vile thing, but its illusions are too strong. There’s one like it in every house in Serriolia.”

They walked the few steps back to the entrance of the room. On the left symbols glowed. i’sNara read aloud:

“‘The Liberation clan has been found in violation of Illusion and Reality. I hereby declare the clan disbanded, anathema. Anyone, illusory or real, who aids said clan members will he disillusioned. Signed, k’Masei the Tyrant.’”

“I thought you said you didn’t have a government,” commented Kirtn.

“We don’t,” snapped f’lTiri. “This is an obscene joke.”

Hiri made a sound between a laugh and a sob. “It’s obscene and it’s a joke but it’s real.” He blurred and once again became a mirror reflecting a reality he abhorred. “Leave while you still have your illusions,” said the mirror in a brittle voice.

I’sNara lifted her hand and touched the coot surface that had once been her friend. As her hand fell, she became thick and dark once more, a hard woman with a black bird on her shoulder. The woman and the bird were not reflected in Hiri’s mirror; they no longer shared either illusions or contiguous realities. Woman and bird turned and walked out of the room.

Only Rheba saw the mirror change. For an instant a younger i’sNara lived within the silvered glass, held by a younger Hiri, echoes of laughter and innocence swirling around them.

Then the mirror shivered and reflected nothing at all.

Silently, Rheba retreated from the room. It was obvious that what had begun as a competition between master snatchers had become a deadly private war.

VIII

Outside, the illusions had changed again. The sky had gone from misty white to moldy gray-green. It was hotter, stickier, and no breeze moved. The weather, at least, was no illusion. The Devalon’s computer had warned them that Yhelle was hot, humid, and given to leaky skies.

Rheba and Kirtn walked out of the tower on the ground floor rather than air, but only they seemed to notice the difference. The dark woman and the darker bird seemed oblivious to reality and illusion alike.

There were people on the street—or there seemed to be. Things walked in twos and fives, changing from step to step in an array of illusory prowess that finally left nonillusionists numbed rather than bemused. Like Fssa, Rheba and Kirtn gave up caring whether they saw what they saw or only thought they saw what they might have seen.

Rheba rubbed her eyes. At first she thought that she had been staring too hard at i’sNara’s illusion. Then she realized that the itch was back. With an inward curse at the lazy zoolipt that could not be bothered to heal her scratchy eyes, she rubbed vigorously. All that happened was that her eyes watered to the point that she could see only blurs. She tripped over a subtly disguised piece of reality and went sprawling into mounds of flowers that were only apparent. What she fell into was hard, sharp and painful.

Kirtn pulled her to her feet. Her hands were covered with cuts that bled freely. Even as he bent to examine the ragged cuts, they began to close. Within seconds little was left but random smears of blood.

“I guess the zoolipt isn’t asleep after all,” muttered Rheba, blinking furiously. “But my eyes still itch.”

•’Don’t rub them,” said Kirtn mildly.

What Rheba said was not mild. She finished with, “Why can’t the icy little beast take care of my eyes?”

“It hasn’t been in you long. Maybe it’s only good for gross things.”

“The way it put you back together again on Daemen was hardly gross,” snapped Rheba, remembering her Bre’n with a long knife wound in his back, lying in a puddle of his own bright blood. She had held him, sure that he was dead ... until the zoolipt slid into the gruesome wound and vanished and her Bre’n began to breathe again.

“Maybe the itching is in your mind,” said Kirtn, pulling her along as he hurried to catch up with i’sNara. “You could be allergic to illusions.”

Rheba made a sound that even Fssa could not translate. It was easy for her mentor to talk about mental itches; he did not have nettles behind his eyes. “Listen, itch,” she muttered in her head, “you’re just a figment.”

The itch itched more fiercely.

“Go away,” she muttered.

“What?” asked Fssa.

“Nothing,” she snapped. Then, “Do you speak figment?”

Fssa’s head snaked out of her hair until he confronted her sensors to eyes. “Are you all right?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Fssa retreated, knowing he had lost but not knowing how. None of his languages had the words to cope with an irritated fire dancer.

“I think we’re going out of the city.” said Kirtn, looking at the sky.

“What I think is unspeakable,” she muttered. Then she made a determined effort to ignore her eyes. It was hard. With every step farther out of Tllella territory, her eyes became worse. She had the unnerving feeling that something was following her, frantically yammering at her in a language she could not hear. Maybe Kirtn was right. Maybe she was allergic to illusions.

And maybe it was cold in Serriolia.

Rheba wiped sweat off her face and spoke dancer litanies in her mind. After a time it seemed to help. At least her thoughts were not so chaotic. Even the itch relented a bit.

“We’re turning back toward the center of the city,” said Kirtn.

Rheba glanced around. She did not have a Bre’n’s innate sense of direction. It all looked the same to her—different from anything in her experience. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“Farther from the Devalon.”’

“Is it time to call in yet?”

“No.” Kirtn touched a broad stud on his belt. No current of energy tickled his finger. “No message yet, either. Everything must he under control.”

“That would be a treat,” Rheba said.

An apparition approached. It had no head, a formidable tail, and a snarl on what could have been a face. It belched as it passed. Fssa responded in kind. The eyeless body stopped, swung around in their direction, smiled and resumed its random drift up the street.

“I didn’t see that,” said Rheba.

“Neither did I,” said Fssa.

“You never see anything.”

“Accurate, but not true.”

The sky drooled over them. Rheba’s hair and clothes stuck to her. The squat, dark woman with the brooding bird on her shoulder turned to face the damp fire dancer.

“We’re coming to a veil,” said i’sNara. Her voice was the same as it had been on Loo, colorless, the voice of a slave who asked nothing.

Rheba’s tines flared uneasily. “Are we going to the Yaocoon clan?”

“When you see Reality Street through the veil,” continued i’sNara in a monotone, “go across.”

“What about you?” said Kirtn.

“We’ll come as soon as we can,” said f’lTiri’s voice.

“How long?”

“Not long.”

“Then there’s no reason to separate,” Kirtn said in a bland voice, “is there?”

The bird blurred and became a man. “You heard what t’oHiri said. Disillusionment.”

“We have no illusions as it is,” cut in Rheba, shaking out her damp magenta hair. “Only the ones we borrowed from you. We’ll lose them with pleasure.”

“You don’t understand.” His voice was as harsh as his wife’s was colorless. “If you help us, they’ll take you and put you in a machine. You won’t be able to move, not even to breathe. A lightknife will cut into your brain. When you wake up, you won’t be able to project or see through illusions.”

“We can’t do that now,” she said, but her voice was less sure than her words. She would hate to be strapped to a machine while a laser rummaged in her brain looking for illusions to extirpate. “We have nothing to lose.”

“You’re not a fool. Don’t try to sound like one. You don’t know what form your disillusionment might take.”

“I know that you risked your life on Daemen so that Kirtn could keep a promise that had nothing to do with you.”

“But—”

“If there’s danger, we’re not making it any better by standing here arguing,” pointed out Rheba. “You can’t force us through the veil. If you go invisible on us and sneak away we’ll be totally at the mercy of your enemies. Given those conditions, the safest place we can be is with you.”

F’lTiri bowed to Senyas pragmatism. “Given those conditions, follow me.” Then, softly, “Thank you.”

The veil was a vague thickness across the street. Rheba stared over i’sNara’s shoulders while the illusionists projected their destination on the veil.

Faces. A whirlpool of faces spinning around a brilliant center. Crystals shattering light into illusion. Whirlpool spinning around, sucking faces down and down, pulling at them relentlessly, spinning them until there was no direction but center where crystals waited with perfect illusions ...

The veil shook. Destinations raced by too fast to see or choose. The illusionists hung on to each other and their goal. The veil bucked like a fish on a hook, but destinations slowed until a single view held.

Kirtn did not need i’sNara’s signal to know it was time to cross. He spread his arms and swept everyone through, afraid that the least hesitation would separate them. They arrived in a breathless scramble, but together.

“Is the force field always that stubborn?” asked Kirtn as he set Rheba down and held her until her dizziness passed.

“No,” panted F’lTiri, breathless from his struggle with the veil. “It keeps wanting to take us to the Redis clan house.”

Kirtn looked around grimly. “Did we come to the right place?”

“Yes. Clan Yaocoon.”

Rheba wondered how they could be so sure. The street they were on was just as hot and improbably populated as the last one. The illusions seemed to run to plant life here ... eight-legged vines and ambulatory melons. She sighed and closed her eyes. At least the itch had abated.

When she opened her eyes a moment later she was a ripe tomato swinging from a virile vine. Fssa was a thick green worm. A moment’s frantic groping assured her that Kirtn was the vine. The vine chuckled and wrapped around her, lifting her off her feel.

“You like this,” she said accusingly.

The vine tightened in agreement.

“Where are your ticklish ears?” she muttered, patting the area where his head should be. She found his ears beneath dark vine leaves. He relented and put her down, but kept a tendril curled around her wrist.

The illusionists were just ahead, appearing as exotic leafy plants, fragrant to the point of perfume. “Our scent won’t change,” said i’sNara. “Will you be able to recognize it?”

“Yes.” Kirtn’s voice was confident. A major portion of a Bre’n’s fine palate was in the olfactory discrimination.

“Good. We’ll try not to change too often, but we’re going to go on random memory, keeping only the scent. It’s a way of resting,” explained f’lTiri. “Controlling the veil was hard work.”

“Won’t projecting our disguises tire you out?” asked Rheba.

“Hardly. Eyes only, no other senses involved. Elementary. Besides, Ara’s house isn’t far from the veil.”

The two plants moved down the street. Their gait was erratic and their shadows tended to show legs instead of stems. The illusionists were too tired to worry about anything more complex than first appearances.

The house they stopped in front of looked like a jungle tree. F’lTiri edged forward, spoke to an orchid, and waited. After what seemed a long time the greenery shifted and revealed a cucumber lounging beneath a canopy of cool leaves.

“Ara?” said f’lTiri curtly.

The cucumber blurred and reformed. It was rotten now, oozing pestilence. “She’s gone.”

“Where.”

The cucumber puddled and stank. “The only wall in Yaocoon, and the only gate.”

The leaves bent down and mopped up cucumber residue. The tree closed on itself. F’lTiri did not talk until they were well away from the unfriendly house.

“What happened?” asked Kirtn.

“Ara doesn’t live there anymore.”

Kirtn’s whistle was shrill enough to make nearby flowers shrivel. “I don’t think that cucumber was glad to see you in any shape or form.”

“No, but he would have been glad to see Ara rot. He was afraid.”

“Why? Did he recognize you?”

“I doubt it. Ara must be involved in the rebellion,” f’lTiri spoke in Universal, as though he feared eavesdroppers.

“Where do we go now?” asked Rheba.

“To the wall.”

Rheba rubbed her eyes but could not reach the itch that was tormenting her again. The feeling of being followed, of being exhorted to do something in an unknown, unheard language was like a pressure squeezing her eyes. She turned around, knowing she would see nothing but unable to stop herself.

Far down the street, a grove of trees marched silently toward them.

“Kirtn!”

The Bre’n spun, hearing the warning in her voice. He felt her wrist burn with sudden power beneath his hand. “I see them,” he said, “illusion?”

“I wish. Fssa?”

Concave sensors whirled. Energy pulsed soundlessly, returned. “Men.”

“Certain?”

The snake’s head became a frilled cone, then a spiral, then a sunburst. “Men,” he said again, in unambiguous Senyas.

Rheba and Kirtn hurried until they were right behind the illusionists. “We’re being followed.”

The plants did not seem to change, but Rheba clearly heard f’lTiri’s gasp.

“They’re all alike!” His tone made it clear that sameness was more astonishing than any possible manifestation of the illusionist’s art. Then, “They might not be after us.”

Fssa made a flatulent sound. Fourth People’s capacity for wishful thinking was ridiculous when it was not dangerous.

“How far is the wall?” said Kirtn, lengthening his stride.

“How fast can you run?” retorted the Yhelle.

Exotic plants, vine, and tomato with green worm clinging sprinted down the street.

As she ran, Rheba wove sunlight into fire until she was incandescent. Kirtn’s hand on her wrist soothed and steadied her, letting her take in more and more energy, giving her a depth and fineness of control that was impossible without him. Each member of an akhenet pair could stand alone, but together they were much more than two.

Fssa became eyes in the back of her head. His sensors focused on the not-trees. “Confusion,” he whistled. “They’re bending around like grass in a wind. They’re: arguing whether to grab you here or wait for—here they come!”

The illusionists turned right, leaped an invisible barrier, and scrambled up a hill. Kirtn and Rheba duplicated the motions exactly, even when there seemed to be no reason for twisting, turning or leaping.

The trees followed.

“They’re getting closer,” said Fssa calmly.

“Are they carrying weapons?” panted Rheba.

“Clubs, mostly. A few metal fists.”

“Lightguns?” she asked hopefully. She had discovered on Onan that she could take the output of a lightgun and reflect it back on its user. Learning that particular trick had burned and nearly blinded her, but it had wiped out the Equality Rangers who were pursuing them.

“No lightguns.”

They ducked beneath a bridge, waded through a real stream and clawed their way up the opposite bank. Along the top of the bank ran a high steel wall. The illusionists sprinted parallel to the wall, trailing their fingers along it. Suddenly they stopped.

“Here!” called i’sNara, beating her palms in a staccato rhythm against the wall. F’lTiri joined her, leaves blurring into hands as he pounded on steel.

Kirtn and Rheba pressed their backs to the wall and turned to face their pursuers. Trees blurred and became men scrambling under the bridge and across the stream.

The pursuers were indeed all alike, even when they appeared as men. Gray clothes, gray gloves, gray clubs. Only their eyes were alive, pale as crystals in gaunt skulls. They came up the slope in a silent, ragged line. As one they began to close in on the four people trapped against the high wall.

The illusionists’ beat on the steel dividing them from safely. They had managed to find “the only wall in Yaocoon.”

But where was the gate?

IX

Rheba sent an exploratory current of energy through the metal wall. Akhenet lines glowed as she followed the energy’s path. She sensed no circuits, no blank areas, nothing to indicate that the wall concealed or was powered by outside energy. There was a seamless sameness throughout its depth. No hint of a break, a gate. She would have to search more deeply, and much more deftly.

The illusionists beat their fists on the wait and called to their Yaocoon cousins.

“Mentor.”

The word formed as much in Rheba’s mind as on her lips. Kirtn stepped behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. His long thumbs rested lightly just behind her “ears. In that position he not only could help her balance the energies she used, he could also send her into unconsciousness if she called more than they could control. He had been forced to that extreme only a few times, when she was very young.

She spared a quick glance at the advancing men. They had slowed, sure of their prey. Or perhaps it was simply that they had never seen an apparition as arresting as a dancer fully charged, burning through her illusion from within.

“Snake,” she murmured, “some sounds to go with fire.”

Fssa burned beneath his green illusion until he became an eye-hurting incandescence that was a Fssireeme at near-normal body temperature. At normal, he was a mirror of punishing brightness, a perfect reflector, but he had been that way only a few times in his memory. Fourth People planets were much colder than the huge planet/proto-star that was home to Fssireemes.

His body shifted, expanding into baffles and chambers, membranes to create sound and bellows to give voice. A high, terrible keening issued from him.

The sound was a knife in her ears. She felt Kirtn’s hands tighten on her shoulders and knew it was worse for him. Then Fssa projected his voice over the men and she understood that sound could be a weapon. Men went to their knees with their hands pressed to their ears, mouths open in a protest that could not be heard over the sound tormenting them.

Yet still they advanced, knee-walking, faces contorted.

Deft Bre’n fingers closed over Rheba’s ears, shutting out much of the sound. The pain was vicious for Kirtn, but Bre’ns were bred to withstand much worse before blacking out. If it were not so, young dancers would have no one capable of teaching them how to control the energies they could not help attracting.

Rheba set her teeth and concentrated on her own kind of weapon. She took more energy from the sunlight, braided it until it was hot enough to burn and sent it hissing across the lush grass separating them from the attackers. Flames leaped upward, bright and graceful, dancing hotly.

The attackers thought it was an illusion. The first man to stumble into the flames threw himself backward, scrambling and clawing at his clothes. Others hesitated but could not believe that they were not seeing an illusion. By twos and threes they struggled toward the twisting flames, only to be driven back by a heat they had to believe in.

Deliberately she wove more energy into fire, thickening the barrier that held the men at bay. There was little natural fuel to help her maintain it. The grass quickly burned to dirt. She could set fire to that if she had to. She could burn the whole area down to bedrock and beyond. It would be easier simply to burn the men, but in Deva’s final, searing revolution she had seen too many die by fire. Her nightmares were full of them.

She turned toward the wall. Kirtn moved with her smoothly, knowing what she needed as soon as she did. She spread her hands and pressed them against the steel wall. The energy she sent into the metal was neither mild nor testing. She poured out power until currents raced through the wall’s length, bending as the wall bent until wall and energy met on the far side.

There was a gate. It fitted so smoothly into the wall that it had not interrupted the flow of her first questing energy. She probed again, balanced by her Bre’n’s enormous strength. Discontinuities much smaller than the interface between gate and wall became as plain to her as the sun at noon. She could sense minute changes in the alloy, stresses of weather and time, tiny crystal shifts that created greater tension in one wall section. There were weaknesses she could exploit if she had to.

But first there was the gate, the built-in weakness in every wall. The illusionists had located it correctly. It was beneath their flailing hands. And it was locked.

A bump in the energy outlining the other side of the wall told her what kind of lock she had to deal with. A slidebolt. Primitive and effective. She would have preferred a sophisticated energy lock. As it was, she would have to burn through the bolt without heating the wall-gate interface so much that the metal expanded, jamming irretrievably. Burning through to the bolt would require coherent light exquisitely focused.

And time. She hoped she had enough of that. The men?

The question was not so much words in her mind as an image of trees surging toward them, trees haunted by danger and held back by flames that thinned precariously.

Kirtn’s answer was precise: Dance.

The command/invitation/exhortation went through her like a Shockwave. Her hands were consumed by akhenet lines. Intricate swirls of gold ran up her arms, thinning into feathery curls across her shoulders. She was hot now, in full dance; only her Bre’n or a Fssireeme could touch her and not be burned. If she got much hotter she would risk burning herself and her Bre’n. If she got hotter than that she might kill them both. Dancers, like Bre’ns, could be dangerous to be around. There was no danger at the moment, though. She was dancing well within the abilities of herself and her Bre’n.

She stared at the wall with eyes veined with gold. She saw not steel but energy, pattern on pattern, currents swirling, dark line of interface, a bolt swelling out on the other side of the wall. Hot gold fingertips traced the line, seeing with a sight more penetrating than standard vision or touch.

Light gathered at her fingertip, startlingly green light that narrowed into a beam almost invisibly fine. The beam slid along the interface, warming it dangerously. Almost imperceptibly the interface shrank. She sensed the beam searing into the bolt, heating a thin slice of it. Before light could burn more than a tiny hole, wall and gate expanded very slightly, closing the interface.

Instantly she stopped, feeling the flash of her frustration echoed by Kirtn. To cut through the bolt and free the gate she must use more heat—Yet more heat would jam the gate against the wall before the bolt was cut apart.

Brackets.

The thought was hers, Senyas precision, picture of the brackets that inevitably must support the bolt mechanism.

She concentrated on the bolt-shape, sensing its location on either side of the cooling interface. Two brackets at least. No, four. Two on the gate and two on the wall. Strong, but thinner than the bolt—and far enough away from the interface to burn through without expanding wall and gate into an immovable mass. She hoped.

Light formed again at her fingertip, light more blue than green. It was wider than the previous beam yet still so narrow as to be more sensed than seen. The beam leaped out, bringing first red, then orange and finally white incandescence to the blank steel face of the wall. A tiny hole bored inward, a hole no wider than three hairs—laid side by side.

By slow increments her fingertip moved, drawing coherent light through steel. The bottom of one bracket developed a molten line. The light moved on. Steel quickly cooled, but could not draw together again; some of its substance had been volatilized by dancer light.

One bracket was cut in two. The next bracket was closer to the interface. She had to burn less hotly. It was slow work, almost as delicate as burning through the interface had been.

Behind her, men were stirring. The Fssireeme’s cry never stopped, but the men either were deafened now or too desperate to give in to pain. Fssa could step up the power of the cry, but he could not protect his friends from the result. He could only delay, not defeat, the attackers.

Clumps of dirt and rocks rained against her. Kirtn’s body shielded Rheba from the worst of it. Even so, there was a moment of distraction, light flaring too hot, too hard, before she was in control again. A piece of the second bracket fell away. As though at a distance she heard i’sNara scream warnings, f’lTiri or an illusion roaring by, confusing the attackers.

The third bracket also was close to the interface, attached to wall rather than gate. Part of her, the part that was Senyas rather than dancer, knew that the illusionists were being overwhelmed by a ragged surge of men. Control shifted wholly to her, smoothly yet quickly. Their outnumbered friends needed Kirtn more than she did. They needed her, too. Three people, even when one was a Bre’n, were no match for what was coming up the slope.

Rheba felt impatience seething deep inside her, a reckless urge to vaporize everything within her reach, most particularly the stubborn gate.

Suddenly the gate swung inward, opened by someone on the other side. It was so unexpected that Rheba nearly burned the Yaocoon clansmen on the other side. She stumbled through the opening, yanked out of her dance by surprise. She spun around inside the gate, stilt afire, and saw her Bre’n meet the first attackers. She heard their startled cries as he scooped up three men at once and flung them back on the gray uniforms charging up the slope.

I’sNara and f’lTiri rushed by Rheba, routed by a Bre’n snarl when they would have stayed to help him. Kirtn knew what his dancer would do when she saw him in danger. He wanted the illusionists out of the way of what was coming.

Rheba lifted her hands. Fire swept out from her, fire that was renewed as fast as it was spent, fire drawn from inexhaustible sunlight and condensed into flames. Her hair was all akhenet now, searing corona, sucking every available unit of energy into her.

Kirtn jumped for the gate in the instant before the firestorm broke. Fire sleeted harmlessly over his head, scorching the attackers but not killing them. There was no need to kill now. He was safe. Then she saw blood swelling over his fur and wished she had killed.

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. If 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 tic 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 tying—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 RedisRedis.”

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?”

“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 her 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 tranquility while she was tied. The plastic bonds were coo!, 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.

“Where are you going?” called the thick-voiced man.

Ara looked back. Her face was still an eerie blank. “To the clan hall. The full assembly will decide what to do with our ... guests.”

“What about them?” called the hoarse-voiced man, gesturing toward the gate. As though to underline his question, angry cries came from beyond the wall. The attackers beat on the gate with renewed force.

“If your paltry illusions fail,” snapped Ara, “try real bullets.”

In the silence that followed Ara’s insult, the sounds of flesh thudding uselessly against steel sounded very close.

“Who are they?” asked Rheba, her voice rising above the noise of the men outside the gate. “Why don’t they give up?”

Every Yaocoon turned to stare at her. Then, slowly, their illusions faded. They became more like themselves, appearing as they would before eliminates. Rheba stared in return, sensing that something had happened to disarm the Yaocoons. She turned questioningly to Ara.

“I believe,” said Ara distinctly, “that you’re just what you seem to be and you’ve just come from slavery on Loo.”

“Good. But why?”

“Only an alien wouldn’t know the Soldiers of Ecstasy.”

Ara turned and continued up the stream that was a path.

“Fine words,” muttered Rheba in Senyas, “but we’re still wearing ropes.”

XI

“Where are i’sNara and f’lTiri?” snarled Kirtn, towering over Ara.

The small woman’s image blurred. When it reformed, she was out of his reach, watching him with dark eyes that held few illusions.

Kirtn flexed his bound hands. Strength rippled visibly through his massive arms. Rheba came to his side in a single smooth motion.

“Slowly, mentor,” she whistled. “Even if you break the bonds, we don’t know enough to escape yet.”

His lips thinned into a bitter line. He was Bre’n, and frustrated everywhere he turned. He sensed the seductive violence of rez in the center of his bones. He looked at his dancer’s eyes, cinnamon and gold, fear turning darkly at the center. The darkness hurt, for it was fear of him. Of rez.

He stroked her face with the back of his fingers, silently apologizing. “All right, dancer. Your way. But ...”

“I know.” Her lips burned across his before she turned around to face Ara. “Where are our friends?”

“Trying to fertilize a jungle.”

“What?”

“The Yaocoon jungle is growing toward rebellion,” said Ara dryly.

“Now? Tonight?”

Ara sighed. “That would be too much to hope for.” She looked from Rheba to Kirtn’s broad back. Even standing still, the Bre’n radiated savage possibilities. “I’sNara wants me to guide you back to your ship.”

Kirtn spun around to face Ara. “No.”

His speed and grace were so startling that Ara’s image vanished completely for an instant. When she reappeared, she was out of reach.

“They said you killed the Loo-chim,” whispered Ara. “Did you?”

“Yes,” said Kirtn.

“Can you kill our Tyrant, too?”

“We’re not executioners,” he snarled.

Ara’s mouth opened and shut soundlessly. When she spoke again, it was on another subject. “What do you know about Libs and Redis?”

“The Redis stole Ecstasy Stones so that everyone could share the good feelings,” said Rheba when Kirtn refused to speak. “But the Redis didn’t share, so the master snatchers who weren’t Redis formed the Lib clan. Libs planned to steal back the Stones. They haven’t had much luck.”

“It’s beyond Lib against Redis now,” said Ara. “It’s all of Serriolia. If someone doesn’t help us we’ll die. All of us.”

“I doubt it,” said Rheba coolly. “People have had a lot of practice surviving tyrannies.”

“You don’t understand.” Ara’s voice was soft. “This is a tyranny of love. There is nothing to hate, no leverage for rebellion. Everyone—everyone—who comes close to the Ecstasy Stones is caught by k’Masei. No,” she said, when Rheba would have interrupted. “Listen to me. If your friends go to the Redis you’ll never see them again.”

Darkness pooled in Ara’s eyes, a darkness haunted by dreams. Rheba had seen eyes like that before. Hiri’s eyes staring out of a tarnished mirror. She felt pity for the tiny, beautiful illusionist who had found reality too painful to live with.

“I was just a little girl when k’Masei left the Lib hall to steal the Redis Stones, but I remember. He took our best Stones with him, Lib Stones. He thought they would protect him. Who could resist him when the Stones radiated love?

“When he left he was hazed in ecstasy, trailing love like a radiant cloud.” Ara trembled at the memory. “The Stones. The Stones haunt my dreams wearing my husband’s face, calling love to me ... ecstasy.”

Kirtn sighed. “K’Masei stayed in the Redis hall, didn’t he?”

“He became their master snatcher. He stole Ecstasy Stones that had been clan secrets for thousands of years. He stole until the Redis had them all. If your illusions or reality didn’t satisfy you, if you wanted to feel loved, you had to go to the Redis. To k’Masei.”

Rheba saw Ara look at her own hands, small Fists clenched so hard that muscles quivered in her arms. Her hands relaxed. Rheba was sure it was an illusion.

“At first it wasn’t so bad,” continued Ara. “People of all clans would go to k’Masei, bathe in the Stones, and go back to their clans. But with each new Stone k’Masei stole, the experience changed—It deepened. It became ... necessary.”

“And/’ said Kirtn sardonically, “people abandoned their clans to become Redis.”

“Whole families,” whispered Ara—“Children no taller than my waist. Gone.”

“You make it sound as if they died,” said Rheba, ‘

Ara looked at her wildly. “How do you know they didn’t?”

“Why would k’Masei kill them? Without them, who would he tyrannize? It sounds like a perfect match—people who want to be ruled and a man who wants to rule them,” She would have said more, but her eyes chose that moment to itch with renewed ferocity.

Ara’s appearance darkened and grew until it filled the small room where they were being held. “Nobody wants to be ruled!”

Fssa made a flatulent sound and stuck his head out of Rheba’s hair. “Most people want to be ruled. They just don’t want to admit it.”

The illusionist’s image deflated. She stared at the snake in astonishment. “It’s real? It really speaks?”

“It really does,” said Kirtn, glaring at Fssa. “Usually out of turn.”

“What does a snake know about people?”

“That particular snake is a Fssireeme. His memories go back thousands of years.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s right!” retorted Ara hotly.

The Bre’n said nothing, but skepticism was eloquent in his stance.

“If people want to be ruled, why does k’Masei need the Soldiers of Ecstasy?” demanded Ara.

“He probably doesn’t, but they need him,” said Kirtn impatiently, “I’ll bet they’re lousy illusionists. Strong arms and thick heads, right?”

“I—how did you know?”

“Fourth People are alike under the skin. Before k’Masei, I’ll bet there wasn’t a comforting illusion in the whole lot of them.”

Ara’s face settled into stubborn lines. “Koro did not want to be ruled.”

“Koro? F’lTiri’s son?” asked Rheba, abandoning her attempts to reach the itch at the back of her eyes. “Do you know where he is? Do you know where his sisters are?”

“With k’Masei, of course,” said Ara bitterly. “They went to steal the Stones two days ago. I went with them. At feast, I thought I was going with them. Tske tricked me. I followed his illusions rather than Koro’s reality. By the time I found out, it was too late. Koro and his sisters were gone. They didn’t come back. No one comes back from k’Masei.” Ara looked from Rheba to Kirtn. “Now, are you sure you don’t want to go back to your ship?”

“Yes.”

“Then follow me.”

Ara led them to the hall where the Yaocoon clan had gathered to discuss the attack of the Soldiers of Ecstasy, the appearance of two master snatchers and the aliens who had to be apparitions but were not. Rebellion was also on the agenda, but it was discussed in shaded illusions, if at all.

The Yaocoon hall seemed to be a jungle with no clearing. Plants of all kinds—and plants of unknown kinds—crowded one against the other. Fronds waved, flowers unfolded, fruit ripened in a riot of competing scents. The ceiling seemed to be an overcast sky. The heat and humidity were real, as inseparable from Serriolia as illusions.

Ara left Rheba, Kirtn and Fssa in the only corner that did not writhe with vegetable life. i’sNara and f’lTiri were nearby, defiantly wearing the illusions of the outlawed Liberation clan. She was shadow-drifted moonlight. He was darkness with only a hint of movement. Beneath those illusions lurked master snatchers, ready to slip between the cracks of human attention and steal the fabled Ecstasy Stones.

Rheba summed up her feelings with a whistle that descended from shrillness to silence in five beats. Kirtn took her bound hands in his. Lines glowed beneath his touch, sending restless messages through him. He rubbed his check against her gold-veined fingers. “Gently, dancer,” he whistled. “Don’t waste yourself on anger.”

It was advice he needed as well. He rubbed his lips against her hot fingers and said nothing. After a few moments she sighed and gave in to his gentle persuasions against anger. She knew her Senyas logic was supposed to balance his Bre’n impulsiveness. She was young, though. She had already failed him once, when he had flashed into rez in a Loo dungeon. She could not let that happen again. But she did not know how to prevent it, either.

Some of her thoughts leaked to him. As always, danger heightened their ability to mind dance. He sensed her unease as a distant scream, echo and aftermath of rez still unabsorbed in her mind.

He kissed her fingertips before releasing her hands, afraid of what his thoughts might reveal to her in turn. She did not know that she had driven him into rez. Not her fault. She had no Senyas mother, no Bre’n mother, no paired akhenets to live among until gradually it came to her that Bre’n and Senyas akhenets were also lovers. He could tell her—and ensure their destruction. She would not refuse him, he knew that, and he also knew that was not the same as Choosing him. Dancer’s Choice. Without that Choice freely made, akhenets lived under a sentence of death by rez.

He wondered what the Bre’n Face he had given her to wear was telling her, and if it could replace the tacit knowledge that had burned to ash on Deva. Even if the Face could teach her, when would she have the time or the tranquility to meditate upon its messages? After she had come out of the long withdrawal that had followed the firestorm, she had vowed to find other survivors and build a new akhenet culture on a new planet. Since then, life for them had been one endless tumult beginning with a game called Chaos and culminating in a room full of illusions.

As though just discovering the strangers, the jungle quivered and swept toward Rheba and Kirtn like a hungry grove of Second People. Acid tendrils whipped down, coiling around fire dancer and Bre’n. A tangible sense of danger permeated the illusion. Rheba’s akhenet lines ignited in molten warning.

“Enough.” Ara’s voice was a harsh wind ripping apart the jungle.

Gradually, the jungle straightened, becoming individual trees and flowers once more.

Ara stood on a raised part of the hall that was more balcony than stage. Her appearance had changed. She was taller, darker, more commanding. The last whispers and jungle rustles died away. Sure that she had the Yaocoon clan’s attention, she changed again. She was herself now, small and vivid and somehow even more compelling.

“The two strangers you see are either real or twelves,” said Ara. “They came with the master snatchers from the Liberation clan.”

Noise rose, a sound like distant wind. The word “Liberation” was anathema, proclaimed so by the Tyrant. To speak it was dangerous. To shield Libs was to beg for disillusionment. Words flew like wind-driven leaves, proclaiming fear. The jungle rustled ominously. Poisonous-looking flowers unfurled long petals. Fruit ripened, then fell at the feet of i’sNara and f’lTiri and burst into putrescence.

“What a brave clan I joined,” sneered Ara. “When courage is required, you hide and stink.”

Anger whipped through the jungle.

“You plot and whine endlessly because it’s so much safer than doing anything.”

A roar of protest drowned Ara’s voice. Fssa made himself into a megaphone that projected Ara’s sadness and scorn throughout the room.

“You let a whole clan of master snatchers die one by one. Who will replace them? Who will steal the Ecstasy Stones now and free us all? Is it you, clan Yaocoon? Any of you?”

Protest died. Not even a leaf moved.

“Volunteers?” said Ara in rising tones of sarcasm. “Speak up. This illusion of silence is deafening.”

The jungle glowered ... silently.

“Hide and stink.” The words reeked scorn. She looked out over the massed greenery. “I see you, Tske. Are you going to volunteer?”

A whirlwind of leaves spun up to the balcony, surrounding Ara. Leaves resolved into a man standing very close to her. He was nearly as wide as he was thick. None of it was fat.

“And I see you, Ara. Are you volunteering to be k’Masei’s slave?” He leaned over her, whispering. “I have a better offer. Me.”

Rheba recognized the hoarse-voiced man who had been so hostile to them at the wall. The last words he spoke were so soft that only Ara and the Fssireeme murmuring into Rheba’s ear heard.

Ara ignored Tske. She stared out at the quivering jungle illusion. “Do I have to see each one of you before you see the truth? Is hide and stink the best you can do?”

The jungle whipped and shuddered. No one stepped forward.

“I see all of you,” she said scornfully, “but I see nothing at all.”

Rheba held her breath against the stench rising out of the jungle.

“Won’t anyone go with me to steal the Ecstasy Stones?” cried Ara.

“We will!” said i’sNara and f’lTiri, leaping to their feet.

The jungle argued. Unnoticed, Rheba and Kirtn eased along the edge of the room until they were next to i’sNara and f’lTiri. Fssa summarized the arguments ho had heard:

“Those belonging to Tske want to send us in alone. The rest want to go with us on a raid. All of them are scared. The only thing they can agree on is that they’re not ready to agree on anything.”

“While they argue, our children could be dying.” F’lTiri’s tone was as neutral as his appearance, but no one was fooled.

“We’ll go without the Yaocoons,” said i’sNara. “Who needs an army of vegetables?”

“You’ll need whatever you can get,” Ara said succinctly, appearing beside F’lTiri. “No one comes back from the Redis hall.”

“We did.”

The jungle changed around them. It was no longer one solid mass of greenery. Openings appeared, ragged boundaries dividing Yaocoon from Yaocoon while arguments raged among the treetops.

The snake translated fragments he snatched out of the air:

“Do you want to die without even the illusion of a fight?”

“—her voice calling in my dreams. Ecstasy knows my name. I’m lost.”

“—like all the others. Here one night, gone the next. It must be a truly Grand Illusion.”

“The Tyrant’s bleeding us clanmate by clanmate—”

“—dreamed again—”

“Stones on a mirrored table.”

“—ecstasy reflected in a thousand faces.”

“No one can go against k’Masei the Tyrant.”

Fssa abandoned translating the cacophony, hissed, and said in cold Senyas, “They have as many mouths as a Fssireeme but they speak only the language of fools.”

The Fssireeme’s voice was like an iron bell. Silence spread out from him as Yaocoons turned to stare. Within moments, even the smallest plants took up the hush. A gnarled vine writhed across the jungle canopy. It curled lovingly around Ara, then coiled like a snake in front of Kirtn.

“I didn’t give permission for you to leave your garden,” said the vine in Tske’s hoarse voice.

“I didn’t ask.” Kirtn’s lips parted. Slightly serrated teeth gleamed.

The vine swelled. It quivered, ready to strike. Rheba’s hair fanned out into a rippling field of fire. Kirtn was wrapped in flames. He laughed. Fire streamed from his mouth.

The vine wavered, then withdrew slowly.

The fire remained.

Uneasiness went through the jungle like a cold wind. The vine became a whip cracking, demanding attention. “We’re not here to play illusion games,” husked Tske. “The continuity of the clan Yaocoon is at stake. As reigning illusionist—”

“Only because Koro is gone,” snapped Ara.

“—I’ve decided to use reason rather than illusion to settle the argument. You’ve all heard Ara.” A mouth appeared on each vine leaf, sarcastic smiles endlessly repeated. “We’ve heard nothing but Ara wailing since her little Koro left.”

Laughter and grumbles evenly mixed.

“You’ve all heard me when I argued with Koro. I thought it was a fool’s project and he was a fool. I still think Koro’s a fool,” he added, “but a raid on the Ecstasy Stones by the Yaocoons is better than dreaming and screaming every night.”

“That’s what Koro used to say,” muttered Ara to Rheba. “I don’t trust this sudden change.”

Ara was not the only one surprised by Tske’s turnabout. Trees, shrubs and parasitic flowers rattled in consternation. Tske had been against a raid on the Redis since the idea had first been broached, long before Koro had been driven into Yaocoon’s uncertain refuge.

Tske ignored the questions quivering in every rigid leaf of the jungle. “Those who want to go on the raid move toward the flowerfall.” The vine pointed to the left side of the room. Suddenly, colorful flowers spurted out of the air and drifted to the floor, where they settled into fragrant piles. “Those who don’t want to raid, leave the room. That’s it. No more talk. Decide.”

The jungle whispered among itself, then began tearing itself root from branch, flower from stem, vine from trunk. Illusions blurred and reformed until Rheba was dizzy from trying to sort out what came from which and belonged to whom. Many illusions vanished entirely from the hall, but many more stayed, voting for rebellion.

Rheba would have felt better if Tske were not among them.

XII

Whatever Tske’s personal defects were, he was an efficient organizer. When he gave orders, illusions jumped. The scent of bruised flowers filled the air as Yaocoon after Yaocoon trampled petals underfoot, crowding forward to listen to the many-mouthed vine.

Rheba and Kirtn turned their heads slowly, counting illusions. “Fifty-two?” Her voice was hesitant.

“Sixty-four?” His voice was equally unsure. Neither one of them had much skill at numbering impossibilities.

F’lTiri overheard them. He leaned toward her and whispered, • “Seventy-seven.”

She sighed. “Right.” Her voice echoed Scavenger Scuvee of the planet Daemen, brusque and resigned at the same time.

Kirtn smiled. Scuvee had been unpolished but likeable all the same. At least she had not tried to kill them, which was more than could be said of most Daemenites.

“Some are good illusionists,” continued f’lTiri. “Young, for the most part, but strong. They don’t like Tske leading the raid they’ve been planning, but they’ll take orders. He’s the best illusion they have right now.”

With a grimace, Ara looked away. “I don’t trust Tske.”

“If I were you, neither would I,” said i’sNara with a curt laugh. “But with this many Yaocoons as witness, he’ll behave.”

Fssa poured a running commentary into Rheba’s ear. Most of it had to do with personalities and processes alien to her. Her lines rippled and winked restlessly, telling of energy held within her. She curbed her impatience, not wanting to provoke a similar—and more dangerous—impatience in her Bre’n.

“Eleven groups of seven,” whistled Fssa. “Tske will lead our group. I don’t know the name of the other Yaocoon who will be the seventh, in our group. We’ll be the last out the gate, holding the illusion of shadows and street over us.

Easier than invisibility and nearly as good. The other groups will project various illusions. Each will have a flower, leaf or fruit somewhere in it. That’s more for us than for them. Clanmates can peel each other’s illusions the way I peel new languages.”

Rheba made a grudging sound of appreciation. Et was thoughtful of Tske to provide for nonillusionists. It might also be a bit risky for the Yaocoons to openly wear a badge of their affiliation. Perhaps outsiders could not strip away illusions with the facility of clanmates. She hoped so. She would hate to be responsible for putting Yaocoons in uniform so that the enemy could find them more easily.

“Tske wants the first three groups to go out and reconnoiter. He wanted just one group, actually, but they talked him out of it. Seven people aren’t enough if they run into the Soldiers of Ecstasy.”

“Ecstasy? Stupidity is more like it,” muttered Rheba.

A second Fssireeme mouth formed, hissing agreement, while the first one continued translating without missing a syllable. Rheba listened, unconsciously tracing the outlines of the worry stones concealed within her pocket.

“If it’s clear to the veil, they’ll send hack a messenger,” continued Fssa. “Groups will leave at fifteen-second intervals. That should be far enough apart to keep the images from overlapping but not so far that we can’t cover for each other.”

“Overlapping images?” said Rheba doubtfully.

“Right.” said the Fssireeme, in exact reproduction of Scuvee’s voice. Then, “They didn’t explain, so I don’t know any more than you.”

She shrugged like a Bre’n. The strategy and tactics of illusory raids were something she was forced to leave to the apparition in charge. “And after the veil?”

“They’re still arguing about that one. Three groups want the honor of being first into the Redis hall.”

“Fools.”

“Probably.” Silence from the snake, but not from the Yaocoons crowding around the vine that was Tske.

“What are they saying?”

“Insults. Redundant and unimaginative.”

“Let me know if you hear a good one.”

Fssa made a flatulent sound. Except for i’sNara, who had been a slave to the Loo-chim, illusionists confined their originality to their appearance. “Tske settled it. The groups are numbered now, one through eleven. We’re eleven. Last in. They’ll create the diversion and we’ll do the sneaking and stealing.”

“How?”

“That hasn’t come up yet.”

Rheba closed her eyes. When she opened them, Kirtn was watching her. “I’ll bet it ends up a burn job,” she said to him.

He smiled crookedly. “Most things do, when you’re around.” He worked his long fingers into the hair seething about her face. “That’s why I Chose you, dancer. Even in your cradle you burned.”

She leaned into his touch, stretching and rubbing against his hand. The resonances he set off within the energy she held were as enjoyable as the physical contact itself. It also kept her from thinking about the impossible theft they had volunteered to attempt. Ecstasy Stones. She had no use for them. She had her Bre’n.

A tendril of her hair curled out and settled around his muscular forearm. It was a touch that would have burned anyone except Kirtn. To him, it was a sharing of fire that went through him in an expanding wave of pleasure, marshaling and releasing the random energies that would otherwise eat away at his rationality until he dissolved into rez. Dancers danced because they could; Bre’ns shared that dance because they must, or die.

“The first group is gone,” whistled the snake.

“What? Just like that?” said Kirtn. “No more planning than a few arguments and Tske’s yapping vine?”

“The Yaocoons have been planning and arguing since their Ecstasy Stones were stolen years ago. They’ve run out of plans.”

“But not arguments?” suggested the Bre’n.

“How did you guess?” said the snake acidly.

“They’re Fourth People. The last thing we run out of is argument.”

Kirtn’s voice was haunted, remembering the verbal battles that had raged on Deva over whether it was better to flee the planet or stay and ride out the sun’s unstable period. Ten years, twenty. No more than fifty at most. Then the sun would be benevolent again. But it had not happened the way Senyasi and Bre’ns had planned.

He was too young to remember much more than the last fifteen years on Deva. His Senyas and Bre’n parents had remembered, though. Now some of their memories were his. He laid his cheek on a burning strand of dancer hair, grateful that Rheba was too young to have his memories. Her own were bad enough.

Deva? ft was both question and statement, spoken in his mind, wrapped in a complex of her emotions.

He curled a tendril of hot gold around his finger, letting Deva recede into the past again. “We’re on Yhelle now. That’s enough trouble without looking for more to burn.”

Her eyes watched him, sad and wise and too gold for a dancer her age.

“At least they’re going to untie you,” said Fssa.

As one, Bre’n and Senyas looked at their wrists. Though they saw only a flicker of shadow and light, they felt the cool touch of a knife as it slid through their bonds.

“Thanks, whoever you are,” said Rheba.

A fern no taller than her waist appeared. The fronds shivered and shifted, revealing a boy beneath. Rheba was so shocked to see a child rather than an adult that she forgot to return the boy’s smile.

“Did you see that?” she asked in Senyas.

“Yes.” Kirtn’s voice was matter-of-fact.

“He’s too young to risk his life on a raid against a tyrant that a whole clan couldn’t touch!”

“The first time I sent you out against Deva’s sun, you were younger than that boy. His voice was still neutral, but his eyes were like hammered metal.

“That’s different. I was a dancer. I was bred for fire.”

“And he’s an illusionist, born and bred. I suspect the difference between your situation on Deva and his on Yhelle is more apparent than real.”

“But the life of our people was at stake!” objected Rheba hotly. “We sent children against the sun because we had no choice!”

“It’s the same with him.” When she would have argued more, he cut her off roughly. “Think of what we’ve heard, dancer. No one who goes into the Redis clan hall comes back. And one by one, everyone in Serriolia is being drawn into that hall.”

She thought about it. She did not like any of her thoughts. She rubbed her wrists absently. The bonds had peeled off some skin despite the zoolipt’s efforts to keep its host whole. Or perhaps it was just that even zoolipt-healed skin itched with newness.

“I’ve got a nasty feeling that my zoolipt is going to earn its keep,” she said finally.

“Don’t count on the zoolipt too much,” cautioned Kirtn. “I’m sure it has limits.”

“Wonder what they are?”

“I don’t want either of us to find out the hard way. Don’t be careless, dancer.”

“Me? You’re the one that’s a target as big as a spaceship. Nobody will even see me hiding behind you.”

“Then you must have figured out a way to burn invisibly,” smiled Kirtn, tugging gently on the electric tendril of hair he had wrapped around his finger.

Laughter ran brightly along her akhenet lines.

“The messenger just came back,” said Fssa softly. “It’s clear to the veil. Not a Soldier of Ecstasy in sight.”

Groups of illusionists moved toward the door. As they moved, they changed. One group of trees, ferns and hanging flowers merged into the illusion of a single child batting a bright leaf from hand to hand.

Though Rheba knew there were eleven people in the group, she could not see them ... unless they were that indefinable blurring of floor and wall, the not-quite-shadows gliding soundlessly out the door.

A cat condensed out of another group. Long-tailed, tawny, it turned to look at her. Its eyes were purple flowers carved out of gems. It stretched and moved with insolent ease after the boy.

“Beautiful,” murmured Kirtn. “But I thought var-cats were legends.”

“There’s a lot of the Equality we haven’t seen,” said Rheba.

“Var-cats are real,” whistled Fssa. “They were bred as a kind of mobile money in the Third Cycle. There aren’t many left. Unstable.”

Another group left the room wearing the illusion of an animal that even Fssa could not name. The beast was small and wore a pink flower tied to its tail. More child illusions left, quarreling over a ball that looked like a ripe melon. A woman walked away, tiny and black, wrapped in sensuality.

“Satin,” breathed Kirtn.

Rheba’s mouth thinned. Satin was the owner of the Black Whole, the worst gambling dive in Nontondondo, which was the most licentious city on an utterly immoral planet. Satin was a psi master. She had sold them their Equality navtrix. She had also wanted Kirtn as a lover. And Kirtn had not said no as firmly as Rheba could have wished, for above all. Satin was alluring.

The woman turned. Between her breasts was a black orchid.

“Not quite Satin,” sighed the Bre’n. “Satin is more ... alive. But a woman of her race, definitely. I wonder where that planet is.”

Rheba glanced sideways at him, a hot comment ready on her lips. Then she saw his yellow eyes watching her with unusual intensity. She bit her lip and said only, “And I wonder what we’ll look like when we leave the room.”

F’lTiri left the vine to writhe and yammer with its many mouths. He and i’sNara came over to Rheba.

“How much of that muddle did your snake pick up?” asked F’lTiri.

“Eleven groups of seven. We’re number eleven. They’ll provide a distraction while we snatch the Stones,” summarized Rheba. “If anything was decided about our disguise or how in the name of the Inmost Fire we’re going to pull off the theft, I didn’t hear about it.”

“Neither did I,” said i’sNara grimly. She flapped her narrow white hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Just stay with me and f’lTiri. We’ll peel the Redis hail illusions and get to the Stones faster than any clumsy Yaocoon. As for your disguises, you won’t need any. Tske says that after your appearance on Reality Street, dancer and Bre’n pairs will be popping up all over Serriolia.”

“He’s probably right,” said f’lTiri. “In any case, a good illusion for you two would take too much of our energy. Of course, you could stay here,” he added with a hopeful lift of his voice.

“We never would have let you off the ship if we had known what would happen,” put in i’sNara.

“We never would have let you off the ship either,” retorted Kirtn. “But we did and you did. So let the dance begin.” As he spoke, he pressed the harness stud that was also a transceiver. The stud remained inactive, telling him that no message was waiting to be deciphered by him.

Rheba saw him touch the stud, whistled a question and received a quick reassurance. No message. That meant that all was well on board the Devalon, because messages were reserved for emergencies. She was surprised to realize that she had been away from the ship for less than a half day. It seemed like a Loo week. Yhelle’s illusions nibbled at the foundations of time as well as other perceptions.

The illusionists blurred. They reformed as a vague thickness between Rheba and the door.

“How can I follow that?” asked Rheba sharply. “If the Redis go in for textured glowstrips, I wouldn’t be able to see you if you were standing on my feet.”

“Watch,” whispered f’lTiri.

Shadow shifted. Brightness turned and sparked at its center. Motes twisted and formed into a familiar shape, a Fssireeme with mouth open. It was a deft performance, done with only a few lines of illusion. Even Fssa was impressed.

“If you gel lost, whistle and watch for the snake,” murmured f’lTiri. Then, even more softly, “Be ready to burn, fire dancer.”

Rheba’s hair seethed and crackled, throwing off hot glints in the nearly empty hall. She let her lines gorge with energy, fierce gold racing over her body until it looked as though she wore a lacework of fire beneath her brief clothes. “I’m always ready to burn,” she said quietly.

“If we get separated,” i’sNara said, “go to the nearest veil. You can sense the direction of the veils, can’t you? Their energies?”

Rheba remembered the discordant veil energies combing through her. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize the energy patterns of the hall, the compound, and finally the surrounding streets and residences. Then, like a distant disturbance, the curdling veil. “Yes ... it’s there. I don’t like it.”

I’sNara made a relieved sound. “See? I told you she could do it,” she said to f’lTiri. “They’ll be all right if something happens to us.”

“But how do we use the veil once we find it?” asked Kirtn.

“Hurry up,” snapped the vine that was Tske.

“All possible destinations appear one after the other,” said f’lTiri quickly, “Just wait for Reality Street to cycle in. It’s slower than our method of using the veil, but you don’t have time to learn the other way.”

The vine made a rude sound and turned into a shadow. “Follow me. Now!”

Rheba looked at her Bre’n. He shrugged, but his eyes had a feral gleam. Her akhenet lines echoed her heartbeat, a rhythmic pulse that grew brighter with each unit of deadly energy stored.

Side by side, dancer and Bre’n followed shadows out into the thickening night.

XIII

The gate swung shut heavily on its hinges, turning the wall into a seamless whole once again. In the deepening gloom outside the Yaocoon clan compound, Rheba flamed like a torch. She damped her burning somewhat but could not fade from sight unless she released a lot more energy, too much, in fact. She did not want to be caught cold if an ambush came.

Night seemed to conceal rather than cool the humid heat of day. She was too hot to sweat. Akhenet lines rather than perspiration carried away her body heat now. Kirtn’s coppery skin/fur, however, was almost black with sweat. Where his weapon harness and Rainbow rubbed against his fur, traces of lather showed in pale streaks. Rainbow reflected dancer fire in every crystal facet, a molten necklace rippling against his broad chest.

“We’re about as inconspicuous as a nova at midnight,” said Kirtn grimly.

Ahead of them, various illusions merged invisibly with the night. A child’s laughter, a cat’s purple eyes, a flash of the black woman’s fingernails, those were all Kirtn had to mark the unknown trail. Their own group was invisible to him.

“I’m glad the veil isn’t far,” he said very softly as the land dipped beneath his feet.

His empty weapon harness annoyed him. In Serriolia, guns were an admission of failed illusions. Except for a few pragmatic Yaocoon rebels, only Soldiers of Ecstasy carried guns. There had been no weapon for him. It was a situation he planned to remedy with the first soldier he got his hands on.

They scrambled down the decline to the stream, using Rheba’s akhenet lines to see by. She would have made a ball of cold energy and sent it ahead to light their way, but feared being even more conspicuous than nature had made her.

When they got to the edge of the stream, they stopped. Kirtn watched the night with wide yellow eyes that were better adapted to darkness than—gold-veined dancer eyes. He neither saw nor heard anything, not even the footsteps of the rest of their group. Calling out to them was tempting but foolish. So was blundering blindly up the opposite bank of the stream.

“Do you sense anything, snake?” whispered Kirtn.

“Water. Shallow, only a few strides across. Incline. Something at the top that could be trees.”

“Could be?” asked Rheba, her voice barely audible.

“Dancer,” Fssa murmured patiently, “on Yhelle, they could be anything.”

“Including Soldiers of Ecstasy?” she snapped.

“Including—” Fssa convulsed, reshaping himself into an array of scanning devices.

Balanced on the breakpoint of dance, Rheba sensed the Fssireeme’s changes and” even, very slightly, the energies radiating from and returning to him. She grabbed Kirtn’s arm-He looked at her and saw the odd shapes of Fssa beneath her glowing hair. He froze, trying to make no sound that would obstruct the snake’s search.

Fssa’s whistle was a mere thread of sound. “I don’t like it. Not the trees—they’re real enough—but beyond. Sounds.”

“What kind of sounds?” asked Kirtn, his voice so soft that only a Fssireeme could have caught the words.

“Fourth People sounds. But no rhythms.”

“That doesn’t make sense, snake.”

“Fourth People walk in patterns and talk in patterns, and patterns have rhythms. These sounds don’t.”

“Maybe the trees break up the patterns of sound,” whispered Rheba.

A hiss was the snake’s only answer. Then, sharply, “I know about echos the way you know about energies. These are wrong.”

“Maybe it’s an illusion,” suggested the Bre’n.

Fssa made a sizzling sound, Fssireeme anger.

Kirtn looked at Rheba. His eyes were hot with reflected dancer fire. Hers were growing more gold with each heartbeat.

“Ambush?” he whispered.

“Surely Fssa would have heard something.”

A scream, stifled in the first second, yet unmistakable.

They crossed the stream in a single leap and ran up the opposite bank. As they gained the top, she sent a white sheet of energy ahead to light the way, knowing that it was possible to hide in blinding brightness as well as in darkness. Not only would the wall of light illuminate what was ahead, it might catch attackers with their illusions down.

Frozen in the unexpected light, illusionists and Soldiers of Ecstasy slipped in and out of illusion in dizzying blurs, adjusting their appearances to the demands of light instead of darkness. Motionless huddles of clothes lay strewn across the clearing between trees both real and illusory. Some of the shapes on the ground wore gray uniforms, but only a few. Most wore the rags of people whose appearance depended on illusions woven over a threadbare reality.

Black against dancer light, shadows formed and reformed around Redis and Soldiers, trying to bring them down. But there were so many more Redis than shadows, and the Soldiers’ white eyes saw through illusions with frightening ease. Shadows slid to the ground and puddled into ragged, motionless bundles.

With the ambush discovered, there was no further need for stealth. Guns appeared in Redis hands. Muzzles flashed and vented death. More shadows screamed and became illusionists slack upon the ground.

Flames seethed out from Rheba, licking among the gray uniforms of the Soldiers of Ecstasy. Hands holding weapons were burned to the bone. Five Soldiers, then, twelve, screamed and cradled their hands. The clearing shivered and changed as more uniforms poured out from between the trees.

Rheba answered with another wash of flame. To her horror, she saw that some of the uniforms were facades forced upon Yaocoons by superior Redis illusionists.

She had burned three of her own people.

Kirtn whistled shrilly, demanding that i’sNara and f’lTiri show themselves. There was no answering flash among the roiling shadows, no snake shape calling wordlessly to them.

Rheba lifted her hands and sent lightning to dance among the fighters. Uniforms retreated, harried by shadows. The ground sizzled and stank and finally grew sullen flames. Smoke rose, concealing the shadows that remained. It was all she dared to do until she had some way of telling Yaocoon illusionists from Redis.

Kirtn leaped into the smoke, looking for friends. He quickly discovered that conscious or not, the Soldiers of Ecstasy wore real uniforms, as befitted their lack of illusion talents. He suspected that some of the badly dressed illusionists fallen throughout the clearing were also Redis, but had no way of being sure. He searched through the casualties with ruthless speed. He did not find anyone he recognized.

Fire sizzled past him. Something yelped and retreated, dropping a gun. He scooped it up, learning its mechanism by feel and firelight. Muzzle, barrel, stock, trigger. Guns varied little from culture to culture. Their design was implicit in their Function.

He put his back to a real tree. Rheba set barriers of flame burning in an arc behind him. Fssa whistled a shrill imperative that ended with two names. If i’sNara and f’lTiri were conscious, they would come to the Bre’n.

For a moment, the only sound in the clearing was the hot crackle of fire. They had broken the back of the ambush, but were still far from safe. Warily, Rheba moved to join her Bre’n. They formed a triangle with the tree as their apex. Fssa scanned ceaselessly.

Shadows began to gather around them, black moths drawn to an alien flame. Rheba could not be sure that the winged shadows were friends; neither could she burn them down as enemies. Seething with barely controlled energy, she searched approaching illusions for Yaocoon clan signs.

A leaf flickered at the edge of one shadow. A lush curve of flower bloomed briefly in another. A fern quivered and vanished in a third pool of darkness. A fourth shadow approached. It displayed neither flower nor fruit, stern nor branch, nothing but tone on tone of darkness shifting.

Dancer fire rained over the shadow. It vanished, leaving behind nothing, not even a cry of surprise.

“Fssa?” she asked.

“A projection. The illusionist was somewhere else,” answered the snake.

“At least the illusion couldn’t carry a gun.”

Kirtn stared at the shadows between trees and said nothing. There were plenty of Soldiers of Ecstasy still around. He doubted that they would carry nothing more deadly than an illusion in their hands.

Shadows continued to flow toward them, revealing tiny flashes of plant life as they came. No snake shape appeared, though many shadows gathered.

“Why aren’t they shooting at us?” asked Rheba in a voice that was a harsh whisper. “Are they blind?”

“In the past, killing aliens caused more trouble than it cured,” hissed a nearby shadow. “You never knew how powerful their planet might be. Besides, we’re shielding you as much as we can. He’s a tree and you’re moonlight.”

A bullet whined by, burning itself in a tree no more than an arm’s length away.

“It would help if you threw less light,” the shadow muttered.

Fssa hissed a stream of Senyas directions in Rheba’s car. Blue-white fire leaped from her fingers, scorched across the clearing and danced among trees on the far side. Men screamed and threw down guns too hot to hold.

“On the other hand,” said the shadow, “throwing light isn’t always a bad idea.”

Kirtn’s smile was a predatory Hash of teeth. He, too, was comforted by dancer fire.

“That’s it,” the shadow whispered. “Everyone who could get here has. Let’s break for the veil.”

“What about i’sNara and f’lTiri?” asked Rheba.

“I don’t see them. But then, they’re nearly twelve and I’m only a nine.”

“Is Ara here?”

“No.”

“What about Tske?”

“I’m Tske,” hissed the shadow. “They’re holding the veil for us, but they can’t hold it forever. Hurry. If we waste any more time here they’ll go on without us.”

“What about them?” whispered Rheba, gesturing toward the people lumped up in the dark clearing.

“The ones who are unconscious will wake up with a headache. That always happens when you’re forcefully unillusioned. The ones who were hit are dead. The Tyrant’s bullets are a thin metal shell wrapped around the Equality’s most potent poison.”

Rheba grimaced. The more she heard of k’Masei, the Redis and the Soldiers of Ecstasy, the less she wanted to be near any of them. As self-appointed keepers of a planet’s love, they were as unlovely a group as she had seen anywhere but Loo. “Lead the way,” she snapped to the shadow that was Tske.

Her akhenet lines flared as she walked, telling of energy held in reserve. She called in more with each step, weaving it out of moonlight’s pale solar reflections. The Soldiers of Ecstasy might have abandoned this battle, but somewhere ahead the war still went on.

At least she hoped it did. Otherwise i’sNara, f’lTiri and their children were lost.

“How did we get separated from i’sNara and f’lTiri?” she whistled in Bre’n, no more than a tiny thread of sound. “I thought we were together when we went out the gate.”

“We stopped at the stream.”

“But not for long.”

“Long enough, apparently,” whistled Kirtn.

Uneasiness shivered in each Bre’n note, telling more clearly than words how he felt about being escorted toward an unknown enemy by a contingent of nameless shadows. In Serriolia, deluding a nonillusionist was so easy that even children were embarrassed to stoop to it. He hoped that the same held true for the Tyrant,—but doubted it. Tyrants stooped to anything within reach.

Fssa whistled mournful agreement. His sensors were better equipped than eyes for seeing through illusions, but not much better.

Rheba trotted after the barely visible shadow illusion that was Tske. He flickered in and out of the trees ahead of her. The way was rough, more a trail than the broad street she remembered following to the Yaocoon clan wall. Her memories were not to be wholly trusted, however; things changed without warning or apology in the streets of Serriolia. Even so, she had a persistent sense of wrongness, of things out of place.

Her eyes itched fiercely, adding to her malaise. Every time her eyes had itched recently, it meant trouble on the way. Her hand closed around Kirtn’s wrist. Her uneasiness went through him in a soundless mental cry. Her sense of imminent peril joined them in shallow mind dance, more emotion than words.

Wrongness. ?

Veil 100 far. Her emotions were a silent cry of warning, of danger unseen, of sounds unheard, of blind worlds where only the sighted survived. But she was blind and so was he.

Find the veil. A mentor’s command, cold and binding.

Rheba stopped. Gold ticked up and down her arms, dancer power flowing as she sought the uniquely discordant energies known as the veil. She felt her mentor’s presence behind her, his hands on her shoulders refining her dance.

There.

Veil energies danced dissonantly on his nerves. It seemed neither near or far, but he was not a dancer to weigh forces, only a Bre’n.

Wrong. Too far. With her silent words came emotions, a feeling of futility in a world full of shadows.

He let go of her. “Fssa.” Kirtn’s whistle was almost a keening. “Do you sense anyone ahead besides Tske?”

The snake changed, glittering violet quills, a silver ruff, black cups that shone oddly, metallic ripples coursing through his length. “Nothing.”

“The veil?”

“Oh, it’s there. It’s always there. It winds in and out of everything in Serriolia. But we’re going away from the part we were headed toward before.”

“Is there anyone or anything behind us?” For all its softness, Kirtn’s whistle was urgent.

“Just the illusions we gathered in the clearing. At least, I think they’re the same ones. It’s very hard to be sure.”

Rheba’s hand closed hotly around his wrist. Words and emotion seared him, but when she spoke, her voice was controlled. “Tske,” she whispered, calling ahead to the shadow leading them.

“Hurry,” was their only reply.

“We’re going the wrong way!”

The shadow blurred, then raced back toward them. “Don’t be ridiculous,” hissed the shadow. “I know my way around Yaocoon territory better than any illusionless alien. Now hurry!” He turned back the way he had come.

“That’s the wrong way.” insisted Rheba, raising her voice, knowing that Fssa would automatically increase the volume of his translation. “The veil we want is over that way”—a bright-gold finger pointed to Tske’s left—“and that’s the way I’m going!”

The shadow snarled. Suddenly the night seemed to darken. Soldiers of Ecstasy leaped out from behind trees, wave after wave of gray uniforms and glittering white eyes. The ground shook and roared, giving birth to yet more soldiers. As Kirtn and Rheba turned to flee, shadows twisted, condensed, white eyes gleaming. No Yaocoon clan symbols gleamed this time, only metal gun barrels.

The shadows following them had been Redis illusionists, not Yaocoon raiders. She and Kirtn had been neatly trapped.

XIV

Before any shadow could move, Rheba exploded into flames. With part of her mind, she called down fire on everything within reach. The rest of her mind reached fur the nearest energy source that could sustain the demands of her dance. While fire raged within the trees and not-trees, she tried to drag power out of the veil.

The energies were unlike anything she had ever tapped before. Discordant, dissonant, grating terribly un every natural rhythm in her dancer body, the veil’s power came to her more as an attacker than as an ally. She struggled against the clashing energies, forcing them to bend to her needs in an act of will that left her blazing.

New akhenet lines ripped through her flesh, but she felt nothing except the hot demands of her dance. Her Bre’n flowed through her, steadying her erratic fire. Even with his presence, the veil energies arced dangerously at the edge of her dance.

Grimly, Rheba fought to control the forces she must use to fight free of the ambush.

Shadows flowed closer, stitched through with the gray threads of uniforms. Bullets whipped by the dancer’s burning body, warning of soldiers growing bolder. Kirtn poured more of himself into her dance, giving her both strength and balance to use in her fight to reshape the veil’s bizarre energies.

He smelled the stink of his own fur and flesh scorched by unbridled energy. The pain was like a vicious light searing his brain. He ignored it as Bre’ns throughout time had always ignored pain.

He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Where Tske should have been, there was a skirmish line of soldiers. Behind them were more soldiers, and more, line upon line of gray pouring out of the night. Illusion? Reality? Something in between?

Dancer.

With the single word spoken in Rheba’s mind came a picture of themselves, the burning center of a growing circle of gray.

Kirtn sensed her reply flowing up through his palms where they rested on her shoulders. A backwash of discordant power tore through him, but he did not lift his hands. He bent himself to the needs of her dance, controlling her body so that her mind was free to grapple with tire.

A feeling of relief raced through Rheba as Kirtn took more of the burden of the dance on himself. It was dangerous for a Bre’n to carry too much of the dance, but Kirtn was unusually strong. And she needed every bit of his power now.

She matched her rhythms to those of the veil, sucking energy to her in a single dangerous rush. She could not fully control the veil, but she could hammer its energies into a deadly weapon. She had to work with reckless speed. She could not hold onto the veil long without burning herself to the bone. Nor could Kirtn bear so much of the dance for more than a short time.

Her hands lifted. Incandescent light leaped out, light that swept through trees and flesh and night with equal ease. She pivoted in a circle with Kirtn at its center, sweeping her surroundings with deadly energy, trying to burn through illusions to whatever reality might lie beneath.

She watched the resulting blaze with eyes that were almost wholly gold. And she saw shadows between the burning trees, shadows sliding over burning ground, shadows lifting guns.

But the bullets were not shadows at all.

As one, she and Kirtn threw themselves aside. At the same instant she released a brilliant burst of light, hoping to blind the soldiers who were even then sighting down gun barrels. Bullets stitched harmlessly through the night. The Soldiers of Ecstasy were dazed by dancer fire, but that would pass very soon. Then she and Kirtn would be targets once more.

She reached for the veil again, determined to draw enough energy to make the area a fiery hell where only Bre’n and Senyas could survive. She sensed Kirtn’s soundless protest at the danger she was calling into herself. But he did not try to stop her. Whatever the veil’s danger, it was not as great as the Soldiers of Ecstasy.

Raw energy poured into her. Her akhenet lines burned hotter and hotter, frying to channel the dissonant power of the veil. She screamed but no sound came, only a gout of searing fire. Desperately she threw away the terrible energies, raining death around her. Grass and small bushes exploded into flame. Trees, racks and the very air itself smoked. Still her dance raged, demanding more fire and then more, a Senyas hell created for Yhelle illusionists.

Kirtn’s lips writhed back from his teeth in an agonized grimace, but he did not stop her dance. Nor did he release his grip on her, though his fingers blistered and fur smoked. She was dancing at the farthest edge of their control, yet she was controlled and that was all that mattered. If he flinched in the face of her fire they would both be consumed.

Hell leaped around them in every shade of fire. Trees exploded into flame, dirt smoked, rocks shattered. Illusions screamed, but their sounds were lost in the consuming roar of unleashed fire. Triumph flickered through Kirtn’s pain. They were winning. If they could sustain the dance for a few more moments the Soldiers of Ecstasy would scatter like ashes in a hot whirlwind.

Then he felt his dancer change beneath his hands, akhenet lines guttering light and dark, hot and cold, warm and cold. Cold. She was falling He staggered and barely managed to keep both of them upright. Wrenched out of dance, he was dazed, disoriented, stunned by the slack weight of dancer in his arms.

Rheba?

There was no answering flicker, no stir of recognition, no warmth of companionship in his mind.

He put his lips against her throat, seeking a pulse. He found it easily, a strong, steady beat of life. Relief came in a rush of weakness. He knelt and held her, turning her face away from the flames that still twisted up into Serriolia’s uncertain night.

Eyes narrowed into yellow lines, he searched the spaces between the fire for Soldiers of Ecstasy. He saw only uneven light, ashes, darkness. Yet he knew there had been neither time nor fire enough to burn all their enemies. Or had the massed uniforms been merely illusions? Had she danced herself to unconsciousness for no more than a Redis trick?

A glittering, white-hot head poked out of her tangled hair. Fssa’s low whistle called to him in Bre’n notes rich with concern. “Is she all right?”

He answered without looking away from the night and fire that surrounded them. “Yes.”

“What happened? One moment wonderful, hot energies and the next—nothing.”

“I don’t know.” Kirtn’s whistle was very soft, his eyes restless, probing shadows for illusions living between real flames. “We danced more viciously on Loo. She danced more violently on Daemen, alone, and did not faint.” As he whistled his Fingers moved over her, searching for burned-out akhenet lines. Fear lived in his whistle, but his hands were steady. “Her lines are whole. She’s burned and so am I, but the zoolipt is taking care of that.”

Dizziness spiraled through him, followed by a thought of how wonderful it would be to stretch out on the resilient forest floor and steep. Impatiently he threw off both the dizziness and the desire for rest. The dance had drained him and its sudden end had been like being dropped out of a building, but he was far from the end of his strength.

He felt a sense of persistence, of turquoise seduction weakening his resolve. He had not sensed/tasted that color so clearly since he had floated in a pool on Daemen, buoyed by a fluid that was not quite water, tone on tone of blue, but most beautiful of all was the vivid living turquoise that was a Zaarain construct gone wild.

He blinked and had trouble opening his eyes again. It would really be so much better if he slept....

“The zoolipt!” whistled Kirtn, consternation and anger and the beginning of fear in each clear note. “It stopped her and now it’s trying to put me to sleep!”

He looked at his palms, knowing they had been deeply burned during the dance. They were healing, just as his dancer’s hands and arms were healing. They owed that to the zoolipt inside them; it liked their “taste.” After hundreds of thousands of years of Daemenites for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks, Senyas and Bre’n were exotic fare for the zoolipt. It would keep them alive far longer than their normal spans, healing them until its skill failed or it finally became tired of their taste. Then they would die and the zoolipt would look for a new treat.

Until then, the zoolipt would do everything within its unknown powers to keep its palate happy, including cut them off from a dance it saw as too dangerous. The zoolipt, rather than dancer or Bre’n, would make the choice as to what was or was not worth risking death to achieve. It was the Daemen’s own Luck that they had been fighting more illusions than soldiers. Otherwise dancer and Bre’n would be dead now, killed by a meddling zoolipt’s kindness.

He did not realize that he was thinking aloud until he heard the snake’s soft commiseration. Fssa’s Bre’n whistle not only harmonized and sympathized, it pointed out that nothing was free. He and Rheba had live-in doctors. A great convenience ... until they disagreed on what was best for the “patient.”

Fssa’s whistle changed into a shrill warning. “Something is approaching behind the flames!”

With a speed that few but Bre’ns could achieve, Kirtn put Rheba behind him and drew his weapon. His burned hand sent scaring pain messages to him as the gun’s hot metal butt slapped against his palm. Dizziness swept over him like black water, a zoolipt protest. He swore in savage Bre’n and ignored the unwanted advice. The dizziness came again, narrowing reality to a tunnel leading into night. He felt consciousness sliding away as he spun toward the tunnel’s mouth. He would sleep as she slept, defenseless, brought down by a blob of protoplasm that was too stupid to accept injury now in order to avoid death later.

The thought of being forced to abandon his sleeping dancer to whatever waited beyond the flames hurled Kirtn to the breakpoint at rez. Black energy sleeted through him, energy drawn from his own body without heed to the cost. Black flames leaped. Unchecked, they would consume him cell by cell. Rez was the antithesis of survival; it was the pure, self-devouring rage of a mind trapped in a maze with no exit.

Abruptly, the zoolipt retreated. It was ignorant of Bre’n psychology, but it was not stupid. If it persisted, it would drive its host straight into the injury or death it was trying to avoid.

Control returned to Kirtn, but it was too late. Through the barrier of dying dancer fire he saw a circle of uniforms. “Real?” he whistled curtly to the Fssireeme.

Fssa sent out sonic probes, sifted returning signals with an array of cones and quilts, and sighed, “Yes and no. Not all of the guns are real and most of the people are illusions, but they keep shifting.”

“Thanks,” said Kirtn sourly. He did not know how much ammunition remained in his stolen weapon. He did know it was not infinite. He could not afford to waste ammunition on illusions. There was also the uncomfortable fact that while he was shooting at an illusion, real bullets would be coming his way.

“I’m sorry,” whistled the snake, each note vibrating with shame.

“Not your fault,” Kirtn whistled, stroking the still-hot Fssireeme and watching the growing gaps between the flames. The attack would come soon.

“Alien!” The call came from beyond the flames. The voice was harsh, husky, speaking in Universal.

Instantly, Kirtn’s weapon covered the spot where the voice came from. There was nothing but smoke and shrunken fires.

“Alien!”

The voice came from behind him. He spun and saw nothing at all.

“Alien!”

The voice was at his elbow, but when he turned he was alone.

“You can’t—find me—alien!”

The voice came from three directions in rapid succession, but when Kirtn whirled to locate the speaker, there was nothing in sight but the unmoving soldiers.

“I could have killed you, alien.”

The words were soft, so close that Kirtn felt the speaker’s breath. “Tske,” said Kirtn, recognizing the voice.

The man laughed and appeared just beyond Kirtn’s reach. Kirtn shot three times and the man laughed again, unhurt.

“I’m behind you.”

Kirtn did not turn.

“You’re learning.”

Tske condensed out of the night, three of him, then five, then eight surrounding Kirtn, flickering in and out of life like fire. Kirtn waited. He knew that projecting illusions cost energy. If Tske kept bragging in multiple images he would eventually wear himself out. Then he would find that Bre’n strength was more real than apparent.

“Throw the gun down.”

Kirtn hesitated, then hurled the weapon at the nearest soldier. It was a long throw for anyone but a Bre’n. The gun smacked into flesh. The soldier cried out and Kirtn smiled. That one, at least, was not an illusion.

A knife gleamed out of darkness. Rheba jerked suddenly.

A red line slid down her arm., blood flowing. Kirtn leaped forward, swinging his arms wide to catch something he could not see. It was too late. Whoever had wielded the knife was gone. He looked at the gash on her arm and wanted to kill. Blood slowed, then stopped as the zoolipt went to work on the wound. Kirtn’s lips lifted in a snarl. He still wanted to kill.

“It would be a lot more pleasant if the soldiers didn’t have to kill you,” said Tske reasonably. “You have a formidable ship, and I’m sure your friends on board would be unhappy to lose you. But the Soldiers of Ecstasy are also formidable, and rather stupid. Don’t push them any more, alien. They don’t like your illusion or your furry reality.”

“What do you want?” snarled Kirtn.

“A day or two. Then, if i’sNara and F’lTiri succeed, I’ll give you to them and welcome!”

“And if they don’t?”

“I’ll take you to your ship.”

Kirtn did not believe anything except that Tske was afraid of the alien ship looming in the port. The illusionist was hoping that i’sNara and f’lTiri would fail. The Yaocoon would not like to have witnesses to his treachery against his own clan. If the two ex-Liberationists did come back, Kirtn doubted that he or Rheba would be alive to meet them.

Yet it was also true that Tske did not particularly want them dead or he would have killed them during the confusion of the first ambush instead of merely leading them away from the rest of the group.

With a feeling of frustration and unease, Kirtn heard people closing in. The soldiers muttered among themselves, illusion and reality alike. He could not understand their words, for Fssa was not translating. The snake was listening, though. Cups and quills gleamed on Rheba’s head like an eerie crown.

“I’m telling the truth,” said Tske persuasively. “You think I’m afraid of what you’ll tell your friends if they survive.” The illusionist laughed. “But you can’t prove I’m Tske. I could be k’Masei the Tyrant. What better face for the enemy to wear than that of the opposing general?”

Kirtn stared at the circle of Tske illusions, trying to see the truth. Tske—or whoever owned that sly, teasing voice—was right. There was no way for a nonillusionist to see the truth. Alive, he and Rheba were inconvenient but not especially threatening. Dead, they could open the door to a host of alien problems.

It was a comforting thought. He wished he could believe it. He was still wishing when a blow from behind hurled him face down into the ashes of dancer fire.

XV

Rheba awoke to the stench of rotting mush. It was not the smell that had brought her out of unconsciousness, however; it was the relentless itch behind her eyes. She reached up to rub her face, only to find herself spreading a liberal portion of muck across her cheeks. The foul textures of garbage brought her upright. Her last memories were of clean flames, not sludge.

“Kirtn?” she asked, her voice hoarse. She coughed and tried again. “Kirtn?”

She looked around, ignoring the fierce itch behind her eyes. She saw darkness relieved only by the faintest phosphorescence from the rotting garbage. She combed her fingers through her hair. “Fssa?”

There was no answer. She shook out her hair. “Where are you, snake?”

From the darkness came a soft slithering sound. Fssa’s sensor’s glowed as his head poked out of a garbage pile.

“What are you doing over there?” demanded Rheba. “Where’s Kirtn?”

“Your zoolipt shut down your energies so completely I couldn’t stay in your hair.” said Fssa, answering her first question. “The warmest place for me to be was in this compost pile.” The snake’s tone shifted downward. “I don’t know where Kirtn is. They hit him from behind after you fainted. Then they carried both of you away. When they dumped you here I fell out of your hair. I didn’t see what they did with Kirtn.”

“They?”

“The Soldiers of Ecstasy. And Tske. At least,” sighed the snake, “I think it-was Tske. These illusionists make my sensors reel.”

Rheba sent lines of light radiating out from her body until she could see the dimensions of her prison. She leaned forward, coughing as her movements released foul gases from the decomposing garbage beneath her. Her eyes burned and itched. She ignored them.

The room—if it was what it appeared to be—was a hexagon about as large as the Devalon’s control room. Dancer light illuminated every corner and stinking garbage mound. No matter how hard she stared, she could not see Kirtn’s familiar form.

“What happened before they hit Kirtn, snake?”

The question was in flat Senyas. Fssa answered in the same tone and language. “You stopped dancing. Do you remember that?”

She hesitated. “Yes. But I don’t remember why.” She ran her hands over her body. Akhenet lines shimmered like golden opals just beneath her skin. “I’m not burned out. No cold or empty lines. I’ve danced harder than that before and not fainted.”

“Kirtn thinks your zoolipt stopped you. You were burning yourself up.”

“But not dangerously! Not yet! If I’d lost control or Kirtn had flinched it would have been different, but we were winning!”

“The zoolipt only knew you were burning.”

She made a searing comment about the zoolipt’s intelligence.

Fssa wisely said nothing.

“Is Kirtn hidden here beneath garbage or illusions?” asked Rheba finally.

“I probed. If Kirtn’s here, I can’t find him.”

“Can you tell what’s beyond the wall?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. She had lost everyone she loved but Kirtn when Deva burned. To lose him, too, was unthinkable. She fought the panic streaking along her akhenet lines in sullen orange pulses as she listened to the Fssireeme.

“The wall is real. It interferes with my sensors. I can get some sonics through, but the returning energy isn’t clear enough to tell the difference between what’s out there and what the illusionists want us to think is out there.”

“Is the wall made of wood, plastic, stone or metal?”

“Wood.”

She made a sound of satisfaction. She took back the light she had created. The compost room became very dark. Then a flush of yellow akhenet light suffused her body. She took heat from rotting garbage and braided it into a thin line of fire. Heat streamed from her fingertip as she pointed toward the farthest wall. Smoke curled invisibly, stinking worse than anything that had come before.

Just when she thought she could not bear the stench any longer, a section of wood as big as her hand leaped into flame. The wall burned through quickly, leaving behind a dazzling shower of white-hot sparks.

Fssa did not need to be told what she wanted. He poked his head out of the still-burning hole and probed what was beyond. In the twin illumination given oft” by embers and dancer lines, he changed shapes like a fluid fantasy wrought in every metallic color known to man. Finally he returned to his snake shape.

“More garbage,” he said succinctly.

Rheba’s answer was another line of fire eating whitely at another wall. The snake slid over to the fire and used his head to punch through the weakening wood. The heat was nothing to the Fssireeme. He could swim in magma with the ease of a fish gliding through a pond.

“Machinery. A recycler, from the shape. Disconnected, though. I don’t think there’s any energy loose for you to use.”

She did not squeeze past the lump in her throat to ask if Fssa had seen Kirtn, knowing that if he had, it would be the first thing the Fssireeme said. The fire that leaped from her hand was bright and vicious. It attacked a third wall, burning through it before Fssa could help.

Even as the snake reached the third hole she turned to a fourth stretch of wall. She would have incinerated the whole hexagon, including the garbage, but she did not know where Kirtn was. An unconscious Bre’n had no more protection against dancer fire than any other race of Fourth People. Until she knew where Kirtn was being kept, she would have to be careful.

She refused utterly to consider the possibility that her Bre’n was dead.

“Guards,” whistled Fssa.

Instantly Rheba let go of the fire she was creating and darkened her akhenet lines. Fssa flared out, using himself to patch the hole so that no one beyond could see the dancer burning within. He resumed probing, hampered but not incapacitated by his role as living plug. He formed a whistling orifice in the lower third of his body and resumed describing what his sensors revealed to him. “Soldiers of Ecstasy.”

“How can you tell if you can’t see the uniforms?” asked Rheba, sending another line of light at the fourth section of wall. It did not burn well. It was either wetter, thicker, or of a more resistant wood than the other three.

“Their eyes are different. Odd energy patterns. Unique.”

Rheba remembered the few times she had been close enough to the soldiers to tell the color of their eyes. White. AH of them. She had assumed that it was merely an illusion, a badge of their allegiance that separated them from other Yhelles. Now she wondered. Was there some mechanism that bound them to their tyrant k’Masei, a bond reflected in their white eyes?

Her own eyes itched wildly, then she felt a wonderful cool sensation. She shivered in relief. Maybe the zoolipt had finally figured out how to take care of whatever was causing the intolerable itching.

Even as she had the thought, her eyes itched again. The itch was mild, but definite. She swore and turned her attention back to the still-smoldering wall, it was nearly opposite the third hole she had burned, the one that Fssa was covering with part of his body. If she went to work on the fourth wall again, and Fssa moved, the guards outside would be sure to see the light and investigate.

She did not want that, at least not until she knew if Kirtn was nearby, perhaps even within reach. She would much rather be with her Bre’n when she faced the guards than have either of them face the white-eyed Soldiers of Ecstasy alone.

She crawled across the slippery garbage toward Fssa. “Finished?” she asked.

“Yes. If he’s out there, he’s not in any of my frequencies.”

“Take the heat out of the embers.”

With a Fssireeme’s total efficiency, Fssa sucked all the unwanted warmth from the wood around the hole in the wail.

“I’ll cover the hole,” said Rheba. “You go to work on the fourth wall.”

With her back over the charred part of the wall, she sent a streak of fire across the stinking garbage. The fourth wall smoldered and flamed. Fssa measured the heat, centered on the greatest area of weakness in the wooden boards and rammed his dense-fleshed body through the wall. Minute embers fell over him like incandescent snow.

“He’s here!”

Fssa’s excited whistle brought her halfway to her feet before she remembered the guards outside. As Fssa surged through the small opening in the fourth wall, she turned and plastered garbage over the hole she had been covering with her body. Some of the garbage fell out, but more of it stuck. Very quickly, the hole vanished beneath oozing refuse.

“He’s alone,” whistled the snake hesitantly. Then, in a single ascending trill of exultation, “He’s alive!”

Relief went through Rheba in a wave that left her dizzy. She swallowed hard and tried to control her shaking body. After a moment, she succeeded.

“Protect him, snake,” she demanded in Senyas. “I’m burning through.”

She sent a double-handed stream of fire across the compost pile. Fire fountained, bringing wood to its flashpoint so quickly that there was little smoke. She held the fire, drawing heat out of the rotting garbage to feed her dance. When she was through, the deeply piled refuse was cold and the wall was only a memory outlined in cherry embers.

Fssa, who had spread himself like a fireproof tarpaulin over the Bre’n, sucked up the last of the fire as he shrank back to his normal, heat-conserving shape.

She slid and staggered across the compost pile until she was next to Kirtn. She wiped slime from her hands and then ran them over his body, searching for any wounds. She found no burns or injuries, nothing but copper fur coming away in patches and slicking to her hands. Yhelle’s humid heat was making Kirtn shed like a cherf. Other than that, he did not seem harmed. But he was too still, and his breathing was too shallow.

Carefully, she made a ball of light and used it to examine him. With gentle fingertips she probed beneath the hand-length copper hair on his head. Behind his ear she found a horrible softness where hard Bre’n skull should be. Blood was oozing beneath his hair, blood thick between her fingers.

She made an odd sound and withdrew her hand. Very gently she eased his head onto her lap and prayed to childhood gods that the zoolipt inside him would be able to heal his wound. She tried not to tremble, afraid of disturbing him even though she knew that it would take more than her shaking flesh to drag him up from the darkness a soldier’s club had sent him into.

From beyond the burned wall came voices, people talking, a ragged murmur that had no meaning to her. At the edge of her awareness she sensed Fssa shifting, changing, dragging sounds out of the air and transforming them with Fssireeme skill into other words, words she could understand if she wanted to.

She did not listen. Nothing mattered to her but Kirtn’s slack body—not the guards, not the cold slime creeping over her legs, not even her own imprisonment. Considering her precarious situation, her attitude was irrational; but where Kirtn was concerned, she was no more rational than a Bre’n teetering on the edge of rez.

After a time the snake ceased his soft translations. He kept on listening, however, dividing his attention between her small, stifled sounds and the voices beyond the wall.

Kirtn groaned. Immediately the ball of Sight near his face brightened. Rheba bent over him. With an inward flinching, she eased her fingers into his hair. No viscous blood met her touch, no crushed skull, and only a trace of swelling that vanished even as she discovered it. His zoolipt was nearly finished.

She held her breath and waited, still afraid of wounds she could neither see nor feel.

His eyes opened clear and yellow. They focused on her instantly. She felt his consciousness like a special fire spreading through her. His face blurred and ran as the tears she had been fighting finally won. She reached up to wipe her eyes. His hands closed around her wrists.

“Don’t. You’ll get whatever you have on your hands in your eyes.” He hesitated. “Just what do you have on your hands?”

“A little garbage. Some of your blood.” Her voice broke. “And a lot of your fur, you great shedding cherf!” She tried to shake tears free of her eyes but could not.

“Here,” he said. “Let me.”

“Your hands are no cleaner than mine.”

He sat up and pulled her close. She laughed raggedly and cried and held him with arms that were more gold than brown. His lips moved over her eyelids, drinking her tears with a delicacy that made her shiver.

“Are you ‘really all right?” she whispered. “It’s not a dream?”

“No ... but I’ve dreamed like this more than once.”

She shifted so that she could look up at his face, trying to sort out the emotions rippling through his voice. He smiled as his mouth slid down her cheek.

“And you, dancer,” he breathed against her lips, “are you all right? Have you ever dreamed like this?”

A golden network of lines ignited over her body as she tasted the salt of her own tears on his tongue. She fitted herself against him and savored his mouth like a rare spring wine.

Fssa’s apologetic but urgent whistle separated them. “I know you two have to share enzymes once in a while,” he said delicately, “but you’ll have to find a better time. Some Redis are on their way here.”

Kirtn spoke without looking up from the half-closed, half-gold dancer eyes so close to him. “Carrying garbage, no doubt,” he said, acknowledging the truth that his sensitive nose had been shouting at him ever since he woke up.

“Nothing that healthful,” said Fssa in curt Senyas.

The snake’s tone got their attention. Bre’n and Senyas focused on Fssa in the same swift movement. Fssa’s sensors noted the change. When he spoke again, his tone was less cutting but no less urgent.

“F tried to tell Rheba earlier,” said Fssa, “but she wasn’t listening. The Redis are only keeping you here until there are more of them to work on “you. As soon as the last of the false Yaocoon raiders come back, there will be enough.”

“Enough for what?” said Kirtn. “They could have killed us before now if that’s what they wanted.”

“They don’t want to kill you. The Redis—or k’Masei’s Soldiers—are really frightened of your ship. They haven’t been able to trick Ilfn into opening the door, and the ship itself is interfering with their attempts to project illusions inside the control room.”

Kirtn’s hand went to the slime-covered stud on his weapon harness. There was no tingle of response, no signal that any messages had been sent. In fact, there was nothing at all, not even the slight warmth that indicated the stud was alive.

“Are you sure?” Rheba asked Kirtn, though he had said nothing aloud. She brushed aside Kirtn’s hand and probed the stud with subtle dancer energies. “Nothing,” she said to him in Senyas. “It’s dead. Probably the fire warped it.” Then, to Fssa, “How do you know that the ship is under attack?”

“The soldiers outside are talking about it,” he said patiently. “They’re scared invisible of you, but they’re hanging on until the Stones are through with the rebels.”

Then what happens?”

“The Stones will be able to concentrate on you. They won’t kill you, but you won’t be dangerous anymore. You’ll open the Devalon for them and everything will be safe again. A whole shipload of Redis converts will be there for the making.”

“That’s absurd,” snapped Rheba. “It will take more than looking at a few crystals to make us into Redis.”

“The soldiers are sure you’ll convert. You won’t be as satisfactory to the Stones as converted illusionists. Apparently aliens are ... resistant ... to love. Even so, it’s better than killing you and then having to deal with a ship that can baffle illusions.”

Kirtn stared at Fssa’s opalescent sensors. “You keep talking about the Stones. What about k’Masei the Tyrant’.’ Doesn’t he have a say in all this?”

Colors rippled over Fssa in the Fssireeme equivalent of a shrug. “The soldiers only talk about the Ecstasy Stones.”

“Do they say what conversion is like?” asked Kirtn uneasily.

“Oh yes, they’re quite specific.” But the snake said nothing more.

“Go on,” said the Bre’n, his voice as grim as his eyes. The Daemenites had believed in scuffing up their living-god offerings before throwing them in the turquoise soup—fresh blood helped to pique the zoolipt’s interest. He wondered if something similar was part of Yhelle’s conversion rituals. “Just what does conversion involve?”

For a moment it seemed that Fssa was not going to answer. He darkened perceptibly. When he spoke, his voice was thin and sad. “Conversion is just like being disillusioned.”

“But we’re not illusionists,” protested Rheba. “Nothing will happen to us.”

“The energies Yhelles use to control illusions are quite similar to the energies you use to control fire/’ whispered Fssa, so dark now he was almost invisible. “When the Stones are through, you’ll still be alive. Bui you’ll never dance again.”

XVI

Rheba did not need to ask what Kirtn thought of Fssa’s words. The Bre’n’s bleak fear and rage swept through her akhenet lines like a new kind of energy. If she could not dance, he and she would soon die—or wish they had. Was that what disillusionment meant to the Yhelles, too?

For the first time she had a visceral appreciation of what i’sNara and f’lTiri had risked in order to trace their children. No wonder f’lTiri had not wanted Rheba and Kirtn to join the rebels.

“I could probably handle whatever machine does the probing,” Rheba said in a hesitant voice.

“You have to see it first,” Kirtn said in a cold mentor’s voice. “And what if it isn’t a machine? What if it’s a psi master like Satin?”

“She couldn’t control me, or you either.”

“She could have killed me.” Kirtn’s tone was uncompromising. He used Senyas to emphasize the blunt realities of the situation they faced. “We can’t count on burning our way free, either. Your zoolipt ...”

Though he said no more, they both heard his words in the silence of their minds: If you burn too hard, your zoolipt will stop you and never know that it killed you.

“The rebels might win,” she whispered.

He did not bother to answer. Neither of them thought much of the rebels’ chances, particularly since it seemed that the rebel leader was a traitor called Tske.

“I’m no! going to sit here like a lump of muck,” snapped Rheba, pushing away from her Bre’n.

He laughed humorlessly. “Neither am I, dancer.”

“Right,” said Fssa, his voice an exact duplicate of Master Scavenger Scuvee.

“Wish I had some of the zoolipt’s gold dust,” Kirtn said, remembering the yellow drifts of aphrodisiac that one of Daemen’s zoolipts had created to reward its worshipers for especially tasty sacrifices. “That would separate illusions and people in a hurry.”

“You might as well wish that the communication stud worked and we could call the ship to our rescue,” pointed out Rheba.

“Or that the J/taals could help us, or even the rebels,” sighed Fssa.

“Yes, yes,” said Rheba impatiently, closing her itching eyes and rubbing them with a relatively clean knuckle, “but I’ve noticed that off-planet things don’t work very reliably on Yhelle. Illusions confuse us hopelessly. We need something o/Yhelle to defeat the Tyrant and his white-eyed Redis.”

A soothing feel of coolness washed behind her eyes, followed by an exultant sense of affirmation deep within her mind. Startled, she looked at Kirtn. He was looking at her with equal surprise.

“You didn’t think/say/feel that?” they asked each other simultaneously. Then Kirtn said slowly, “It was in your mind, dancer.”

An eerie feeling crept along the back of her neck. Her hair rippled and whispered hotly. Someone or something was in her mind, trying to—what was it trying to do?

The itch behind her eyes was suddenly increased tenfold. She cried out and would have clawed at her eyes if Kirtn had not grabbed her hands.

“Maybe it’s just an accident,” he said, but his voice held a mentor’s skepticism of coincidence.

She writhed, trying to break free of his grip long enough to scratch her maddening eyes.

“It can’t control you, dancer,” he said harshly. “Even Satin couldn’t do that. Maybe it’s just trying to talk to you.”

Instantly cool relief washed behind her eyes, followed by another sense of affirmation. She shuddered and sighed. “Maybe. But it picked hell’s own way of doing it.”

“I don’t sense anything new,” said the snake, sensors blazing as he washed both of his friends in soundless radiation, seeking anything unusual. He found only muck and flesh surrounded by a dancer’s unique energies ... and an odd twisting echo that he dismissed. He had first sensed the echo on Reality Street as Rheba bent over a fascinating Ghost fern. When the echo persisted whenever they went, he had decided that the echo was the cumulative signature of Serriolia’s illusionists. “Could it be the zoolipt?” asked Fssa, reshaping himself into his usual form.

“It’s not the zoolipt,” said Rheba bitterly, remembering the dance that had ended too soon. “The zoolipt doesn’t ask, it acts.

Relief was still cool behind her eyes. She basked in it. Then she opened her eyes,—startled by a thought that was definitely her own. “That’s it! Itch is trying to communicate!”

A delicious feeling came into her mind, relief and laughter and pleasure combined into shimmering exultation.

“Itch?” whistled Fssa. “Is that a What or a Who?”

Kirtn just stared. “Itch?” he asked, his tone that of a mentor, demanding.

“I don’t know what else to call it,” said Rheba, “but if that itching keeps up, I’ll have a few suggestions that would make a cherf cringe.”

The itching stopped instantly.

Rheba smiled like a predator. “Message received. Now get your little histamine fingers out of my brain so I can think!”

Kirtn watched Rheba with eyes that reflected the uneasy surges of her akhenet lines. Plainly, he suspected that she was in the grip of a subtle illusion. His only concern was whether or not the illusion was destructive. Considering what had happened to them since they had left the ship, he was not particularly hopeful. With few exceptions, Serriolia’s illusions were not benevolent to outsiders. He was afraid that Itch was just one more manifestation of the Tyrant’s pervasive powers.

His dancer smiled and put her gold-bright hand on his cheek. “I don’t think it is malevolent. Just itchy.”

“The zoolipt isn’t malevolent, either,” he pointed out, “but its goals aren’t necessarily ours.”

“If I could make Itch go away, I would. I can’t. So we’ll just have to figure out how to live with, it until it gets whatever it wants or gives up and goes back to wherever it came from.”

“And what might an itch want?” said Kirtn in a tone that attempted to be reasonable.

Rheba shrugged irritably. “I don’t know, and right now I don’t care. It will have to wail its turn.” She held her breath, expecting an onslaught of itching. Nothing happened. She let her breath out in a relieved rush. Apparently Itch was capable of cooperation.

“Maybe,” suggested Fssa tentatively, “maybe what Itch wants is to help us against the Tyrant k’Masei and his soldiers.”

“How?” Kirtn demanded.

Simultaneously, a feeling of pleasant coolness bathed Rheba’s eyes. “Itch likes the idea of helping us,” she said.

Kirtn threw up his hands. Arguing with a dancer, a Fssireeme and an Itch was beyond even a mentor’s capabilities. “No wonder Bre’ns go crazy,” he muttered. He turned to Fssa. “If we burn our way out of here, are there too many guards to fight before Rheba’s zoolipt gets nervous and shuts down the dance?”

Before the snake could answer, Rheba winced and fought not to rub her eyes. “Itch says no.”

“No what?” demanded Kirtn coldly. “No there are too many guards, or no Itch doesn’t want us to leave?”

She considered carefully. “No, there are too many guards.”

Kirtn swore with a poet’s vicious skill. Then, “I suppose we’re just supposed to sit here and scratch and stink.’

She winced and itched. “No, that’s not it.”

“Then what in the name of Fire does that damned Itch want us to do?”

There was no response, though she waited for several moments. Then she realized what the problem was. “The question’s too complex for Itch. We’re stuck with a binary method of communication. Yes or no, pleasure or itch.”

“Sweet burning gods,” whistled the Bre’n sourly. “With everything else, we had to pick up an idiot hitchhiker!” He rubbed his hands through his copper hair and sighed. “Yes or no. Not even a maybe. We could be a long time establishing even the most rudimentary understanding. I hope the Soldiers of Ecstasy aren’t in a hurry to begin disillusioning us.”

“I could ask Rainbow if it knows anything about life forms like Itch.” offered Fssa hesitantly, knowing that every time he communicated with the ancient crystals it caused Rheba inordinate pain. “If Rheba thinks it would be worth it, that is,” he amended.

She looked with open distaste at the double strand of large crystals hanging to the middle of Kirtn’s wide chest. Neither sweat nor muck nor shedding Bre’n hair stuck to Rainbow’s polished faces. Endless colors winked back at her in a silent beauty that belied the savage headaches that came to her each time the snake spoke to the Zaarain library.

“No,” said Kirtn, his voice rough and final. “If the soldiers came while you were communicating, Rheba would be in too much pain to dance. We’d be as good as dead.”

Rheba hesitated. “Itch agrees,” she said finally. She frowned, trying to remember what she had said before she realized that the itching behind her eyes was more than a random allergic phenomenon. Something about using Yhelle to defeat Yhelle’s illusions.

The backs of her eyes radiated soothing coolness. So far, Itch was with her. The only question was, where were they going?

Nothing, neither itch nor pleasure.

Rheba sighed. “The only thing we have of Yhelle that might be useful is an illusionist or two,” she said aloud, thinking of f’lTiri and i’sNara.

She groaned and knuckled her eyes. Itch did not agree with that thought.

Fssa rippled with dark metallic lights. “More voices,” he whistled softly. “More Redis coming. Soldiers, too. They’re arguing.”

“What about?” asked Kirtn.

“The soldiers won’t let anyone in until the Stones are through with the rebels. The Redis illusionists want to move now.”

“How much time do we have?”

“None if the Redis win. Not much if the soldiers have their way. Only three rebel illusionists are still at large.”

“I’sNara and f’lTiri?” asked the Bre’n hopefully.

Fssa made a thin human sigh. “It doesn’t matter. They’re still caught within the Redis clan hall. No one leaves Tyrant k’Masei’s presence without his permission.” The snake’s sensors blazed as he turned toward Rheba. “Why in the name of the First Speaker didn’t Itch choose me to talk to? Surely one of my languages would work!” He brooded in somber metal shades, then whistled coaxingly. “What are you trying to say to Itch, dancer?”

“I’m trying to fell her that we don’t have anything of Yhelle to use against Yhelle illusionists,” grated Rheba, fighting not to rub her abused eyes. “Not our weapons or our clothes or our brains—nothing we have with us is Yhelle.”

Kirtn’s eyes widened, then narrowed to slanted yellow lines. His hand shot out, twisted in her clothes, then reappeared. On his palm caged crystals shone black between traceries of dancer light.

“The worry stones!” said Rheba. “But what good are they against Soldiers of Ecstasy?”

“Don’t ask me,” snapped Kirtn. “They’re Yhelle, though. Does Itch approve of using them?”

“Yes,” said Rheba, blinking rapidly and smiling. “It’s ecstatic.” Rheba frowned at the sullen stones. “I don’t know why, though. Depressing lumps of crystal.”

On an impulse, she allowed the golden cage surrounding one of the larger stones to dim. Despair flowed out from between the thinned lines of light like a dark miasma, a night that admitted no possibility of dawn.

Kirtn made an eerie sound of Bre’n sadness. Rheba glanced at him, startled. She could sense despair emanating from the stone, but it was despair at a distance, merely a possibility. But to the Bre’n, despair was a probability on the verge of becoming all too real.

Fssa mourned with a sound like wind blowing back from the end of time.

Hastily, Rheba fed energy into the dim cage around the worry stone. The stone fought the only way it could, silently, viciously, pouring out despair. But the cage brightened, turning the stone’s energies back on itself. Inside the cage, light energies pooled, building like water behind a dam, pressing silently for release.

Rheba was surprised to see that her hands and lower arms were as gold as the cage she had built around the stones. Her body was hot, each line radiant. She suspected that somehow her akhenet lines gave her a measure of immunity to whatever emanated from the worry stones. She also suspected that the longer the stones were restrained, the stronger they would radiate on their release. The thought was not a comforting one.

A whistle of relief came from Kirtn as despair was caged by light. He shook his head as though coming out of water. “Next time, warn me.” He looked thoughtful. “If it affects the Yhelles the way it affected me, it might help us after all.”

“Yesss,” hissed Fssa. “That’s it! Something about the worry stones’ emanations must upset the Yhelles. It affected me, too,” he added as an afterthought.

“Worry stones are an uncertain weapon,” said Kirtn. “We don’t know the range, power or duration of their effect. But they’re all we have.”

“I’m not sure I like them,” murmured Rheba, watching the stones’ dark glitter, “but they fascinate me. Their energies are tangential, bittersweet.”

She stared at the stones and waited for Itch to comment. Nothing happened. She sighed. “I guess the worry stones aren’t what Itch wanted after all.”

No more had she thought it than the back of her eyes felt like sand.. “Correction,” she said through her teeth. “Itch wants the worry stones.”

“Itch can have them,” muttered Kirtn.

He did not like the dark., greasy shine of stone through dancer fire. He did not like the bleak winter memories they had called up out of the depths of his ancestral Bre’n mind.

“All right, Itch. What do I do with these black beauties?” asked Rheba.

Nothing happened. It was not a yes or no question.

“Dancer,” said the snake softly. “May I borrow your energy? I want, to scan something. Maybe ...” Fssa stopped talking and began changing shapes as he scanned the various walls.

Rheba looked at the snake, not understanding what he wanted. Then she realized that he had been out of her hair for some time. The heat of rotting compost was not much for a Fssireeme’s requirements, especially when he was changing shapes.

She scooped him into her hair. “You don’t have to ask, snake.”

He whistled thanks with one part of himself while the remainder flashed through a familiar yet still dazzling variety of metallic blue quills, scarlet metal vanes and silver mesh constnets. Using the energy that she naturally radiated, he could probe the surroundings more deeply than when he was dependent on his own energy alone.

Voices came through the thick wood walls, angry voices. She did not need Fssa to translate. The argument over when to disillusion the prisoners was reaching the point where it would either be settled or become a brawl. For once, she sided with the Soldiers of Ecstasy; more time might not save Bre’n, Senyas and Fssireeme, but less time would surely work against them.

Fssa’s head snaked out of her hair. His sensors looked like opals set in platinum filigree. “The fifth wall doesn’t have any guards,” he whistled, “and the ones on the fourth and sixth wails are drifting off to listen to the argument. I can’t be sure, but I think there’s nothing between us and a segment of the veil except a few buildings.”

Rheba’s eyes began to itch lightly.

“I could throw my voices—and a few insults—into the group by the first wall,” continued Fssa. “When the fight begins, we can burn through the fifth wall and run for the veil.”

She squinted and fought not to rub her eyes. “Itch doesn’t like the idea,” she said quietly.

Fssa said something in a language Rheba had never heard.

Kirtn did not know the language either, but he had an idea of what the Fssireeme was saying. “I agree,” he said grimly. “First the fight, then the wall. And if Itch doesn’t like it. Itch can suck ice.”

Fssa brightened into iridescence. He formed several mouths, paused to gather his best insults and then slid them through the wail in a nearly invisible, multivoiced assault.

The fight broke out within seconds.

“Burn it,” said Kirtn, pointing toward the fifth wall.

“Itch doesn’t want—”

“Burn it!” demanded the Bre’n roughly, all mentor now, unyielding.

Rheba swore and burned the wall to ash in a single outpouring of flame. Kirtn kicked through the glowing skeleton of boards, oblivious to the embers that seared fur and flesh. She followed in a rush, akhenet lines blazing, trailing a snake’s hissing laughter.

They ducked between two buildings and listened. No one had followed. Soldiers and Redis were too busy pounding on each other to notice that the focus of their argument had escaped.

Rheba closed her eyes, ignoring the itch. She sensed the direction of the veil as a brittle brush of discordance. The itch increased in intensity, telling her that her unwanted hitchhiker did not want to go toward the veil. Too bad. A lot of things had happened to Rheba that she had not wanted either.

“This way,” she whispered, tugging at Kirtn’s hand.

Together, they eased around a corner of the building—and straight into a mass of white-eyed soldiers.

XVII

For a wild moment Rheba hoped that the soldiers were only illusions. The hope passed in a flurry of shouts and raised clubs. Desperately she grabbed for stray energy. There was very little for her to use. It was night and only a tiny moon was in the sky. She could braid fire from the warmth the ground was giving up to the sky, but it would take many minutes to transform such meager forces into a weapon. She had bare seconds. With an explosion of searing light, she loosed all her energy in a single wild instant. Fire streamed out from her, flames washing over the soldiers in hot tongues. Heat left black scorch marks on gray uniforms.

Soldiers screamed and clawed at clothing that had become too hot to wear. Weapons smoked in their hands, burning them, incandescent light blinded them. Men in the front ranks fell to the ground, kicking and crying out to their gods.

Kirtn yanked Rheba aside and began running. He knew what she had done, knew that draining herself was the only thing she could do under the circumstances—and knew that it would not be enough. Only the closest soldiers had fallen. Some of the others were dazed, partially blinded. The rest were already in pursuit, weapons raised, white eyes seeking enemies. At least her akhenet lines were dull now, offering a less obvious target.

Fssa’s head lifted above Rheba’s flying hair. He swiveled methodically, sensing both where they had been and where they must go. What he found made black run in waves down his supple body.

“There are more soldiers ahead,” he whistled in tones that cut through the sounds of pursuit.

“Where?” demanded Kirtn. “Right? Left? Center?” His yellow eyes pierced shadows that could be enemies.

“Yes,” said Fssa simply.

Kirtn heard the shouts and pounding feet behind. There was no escape in that direction, either. Rheba twisted out of his grip and spun to face the closer soldiers.

“No!” he shouted. “Your zoolipt won’t let—”

His words died as he saw what she was doing. She held both hands in front of her, palms up, fingertips sorting over the worry stones. Pale dancer light crawled over her fingers. Inside the light, pools of darkness waited.

Rheba looked up, measuring the distance to the approaching soldiers. She poured all but one stone into her left hand. Her right arm came back, then snapped forward. The stone she threw was no bigger than the tip of her smallest finger. A golden lacework enclosed the stone’s darkness, but as the crystal tumbled among the soldiers, she sucked the cage energies back into her akhenet lines.

There was no fire this time, only freezing darkness, yet the Soldiers of Ecstasy fell as though burned to the bone. Their mouths gushed terrible rending cries, wordless agonies that marked their passage into darkness. The silence that followed was almost worse, an icy black blanket that seemed to mock even the possibility of light.

Above her head, Fssa mourned in the eerie sliding notes of Fssireeme threnody. Though he floated in dancer hair, his body was as black as the space between galaxies.

Rheba heard his keening as though at a distance, a wind twisting through hidden caves. She was not as affected as the Fssireeme was. The uncaged worry stone gave her a feeling of melancholy rather than tragedy. She responded only in a mild way, like someone hearing the travails of a stranger.

Beside her, Kirtn whistled a Bre’n dirge she had never before heard, minor-key notes singing of death, rhythms of entropy and extinction. The pure, grieving notes affected her as no worry stone could. But she ignored his song, ignored the tears it drew down her face, ignored everything except her own hand holding the quintessence of despair caged behind dancer light.

Around her, soldiers fell like rain.

More? she asked silently, her fingers hovering over the smallest remaining worry stone as Bre’n grief turned like a razor in her heart.

A coolness soothed her hot eyes.

Which direction? she asked, taking the small stone and turning slowly, seeking a target.

Pleasure came, tiny and distinct.

She saw nothing in the direction indicated by whatever lurked in her mind, but she did not hesitate. Her arm came back once more. Once more she hurled caged darkness through the night. Once more she took back dancer light and loosed despair.

Illusionists screamed and shattered out of invisibility. Their screams thinned and died as quickly as they had come. It took longer for their feet to stop beating futilely against the ground.

Silence came again, silence more profound than death, for dead men do not grieve.

More? she asked, shuddering and hoping that she had done enough. She would rather burn flesh than minds. Flesh healed, eventually.

The itch came back. It almost Felt good, for it told her that she did not have to loose more worry stones. Tentatively, she walked toward the first group of fallen soldiers. She wanted to retrieve—and cage—the stone she had hurled at them. Even so, she held her breath, expecting Itch to object behind her eyes. Nothing came, neither pain nor pleasure.

She moved among the soldiers like swamp fire, burning fitfully, more sensed than seen. The worry stone nagged at her awareness, a black hole sucking away at her mind. She dragged a soldier aside. His body was wholly slack, yet he was alive—if meat that breathed could be called living.

The stone lay beneath him. A chip, a bare fragment of a once larger stone, yet it had brought down more Soldiers of Ecstasy than she could count in the darkness. She wondered if it was always that way, if grief always far outweighed ecstasy. After Deva, she could believe that was true.

Quickly she caged the stone, and her dark thoughts with it.

The soldiers did not move. If bridling the worry stone made any difference to them, they did not show it. She stared at the huddled bodies near her and wondered if it would not have been better to burn them to ash and gone. Certainly it would have been cleaner.

Her eyes itched lightly, telling her that she was wrong.

Or was Itch simply trying to make her feel better?

The question was unanswerable, even in a binary system. She sighed and turned toward the place where the illusionists lay. Fssa’s soft keening fell from her hair like twilight over a mauve desert. Though he understood the artificial nature of his grief, he could not wholly control his response to the stones.

Kirtn was less affected. He no longer sang the poetry of despair, though it lived behind his yellow eyes. He walked next to her without speaking, knowing that she was being drawn to the only remaining source of the bleak emanations. When she stopped, he stopped, waiting.

With an apologetic glance at her sad Bre’n, she bent over and retrieved The second stone from beneath an illusionist’s ragged robe. The stone was four times the size of the first she had thrown. She began to draw dancer fire over its black faces. Gold sputtered and died. It was then she realized that the stone’s power increased geometrically with their size.

And this stone did not want to be caged again.

Silently, she gathered the slow warm exhalations of the earth and braided them into fire. The energy was thin, dissipated, nebulous. It was almost more trouble to gather than it was worth. It certainly was not enough for her purposes.

The stone drank the budding cage almost casually, black consuming threads of gold.

Her right hand stretched high over her head as she tried to slide between clouds to touch the pale moon. After a long time, moonlight twisted, thickened, ran over her fingers like ghostly water. Yet she was far from full, far from having what she needed for the demands of the cage. Her fingers began to shake. She was using almost as much energy to feed her small dance as she was retaining to build a cage for the stubborn worry stone.

Her body ached, protesting. Akhenet lines surged raggedly. Yet she had no intention of leaving the stone unmuzzled. She did not need the itch behind her eyes to know that she must cage the stone’s energies once more.

Bre’n hands touched her shoulders, Bre’n breath stirred warmly in her hair, Bre’n strength ignited her akhenet lines. She drank Kirtn’s presence until it filled her and wan moonlight burned sunbright in her hands.

She gave her body over to his control while she danced across the many faces of darkness. Sadness called to her. She ignored it, drawing laughter in thin lines of fire. Whorls and arcs and graceful curves danced over black planes, fire pulsed in traceries as strong as they were fine. The cage uncurled, gold on gold, incandescent against the stone’s night, burning until each face of darkness was confined.

With a sigh, Rheba blinked and looked at the caged stone in her palm.

“Thank the Inmost Fire you didn’t use one of the big stones,” said Kirtn, pulling her against his body, trying to forget the unholy grief he had known before she danced.

“Thank Itch,” said Rheba. “I was going to unwrap the big ones, but she made my eyes burn so badly I couldn’t see to choose.”

Fssa’s head dangled low, caressing her cheekbone where lines of power still smoldered. “Is it safe? Are the soldiers dead?” he whistled, sensors gleaming as he searched the nearby ground.

“We’re safe from these men, though Itch says they aren’t dead,” answered Rheba. “But then. Itch’s idea of life might not he ours.”

An uneasy silence followed her words.

“We’re going back to the ship,” said Kirtn, his voice flat. “We can’t help i’sNara and f’lTiri until we have weapons we can trust. Which way is the veil?”

“That way,” said Fssa and Rheba together, finger and slim head pointing to the right, “But,” she added, “Itch is telling me not to go that way. Or maybe she doesn’t want us to go back to the ship.”

Kirtn did not bother to answer. He started walking to the right. “Pick out a small stone or two,” he said, peering into darkness as clouds closed over the pale moon. “Just in case we find more trouble than you can burn.”

Reluctantly, Rheba sorted through the stones sealed in her pocket. Her Fingertips found the third-smallest stone; it was bigger than her” thumb. She hesitated, then pulled the stone out of her pocket. She did not want to unleash such a large stone, but suspected that the stones she had just used would not be back to their full strength yet.

“What about i’sNara and f’lTiri?” she asked, not objecting, merely wanting to know his plans.

“We could call in the Yhelle Equality Rangers,” offered Fssa.

Kirtn made an untranslatable sound. So far as he was concerned, the only thing the Rangers were good for was making state-of-the-art navtrices. “We’ll use the J/taals. The clepts could probably track i’sNara and F’lTiri through any illusion this side of reality.”

Rheba’s eyes itched fiercely but she said nothing. The anger in Kirtn’s voice told her that this was not the time to argue with him, much less try to thwart him.

Fssa was not so used to Bre’ns. “Didn’t i’sNara say that if we used J/taals, every hand on Yhelle would be against us?”

“Do you think we’ll notice the difference?” whistled Kirtn sarcastically.

Fssa flushed shades of darkness and withdrew into Rheba’s comforting hair.

When Kirtn was not looking, she rubbed her eyes. Whatever Itch wanted, they were not doing it at the moment. She swore silently and hurried toward the veil, stopping only when Kirtn eased around buildings to check for stray Soldiers of Ecstasy. The way they went was not difficult; as far as she could tell, the illusion of a paved walkway matched the reality beneath her feet. Apparently the Yaocoons did not wrap illusions around their outer holdings as fervently as they did around themselves and their clan hall.

The veil gleamed and sparked fitfully in the distance, looking rather like stripped atoms twisting over a planet’s magnetic poles.

Rheba’s skin prickled as her akhenet lines moved, reflecting the dissonant energies ahead. She was not looking forward to tangling with the veil construct again. She wished that it were dawn, that Yhelle’s sun would rise and pour its silent cataracts of energy over her. But dawn was far away. She “would have to face the veil armored only in cloud-thinned moonlight.

There was nothing near the veil, no place to hide. It looked like a trap baited with the hope of escape. With shrinking skin, she approached the end of the walkway.

“Now what?” whistled Fssa, his question as soft as a breath sliding between strands of her hair.

“It’s supposed to be like a showcube,” murmured Rheba, “only instead of pictures from home, the veil shows various clan symbols. When Reality Street comes up, we go through.”

As soon as their presence registered on the veil’s tenuous energies, it shimmered and made a portal. Inside the oval was the image of Ecstasy Stones glittering on a mirrored table. The sight was chillingly beautiful, light in all of its colors flashing and turning, calling to them in the voices of everything they had ever loved or hoped to love.

Rheba’s eyes stopped itching. Coolness flowed like a benediction.

“Redis hall,” said Kirtn hoarsely.

“Itch,” she whispered. “Itch wants us to go there.”

Kirtn’s hand closed bruisingly over her wrist, as though he feared she would leap into the veil. “No.”

She did not move or protest. She, too, was afraid of the alien who communicated with her only in terms of pleasure or pain, an alien who seemed to want her to enter the stronghold of the Tyrant who wielded disillusionment and death against his enemies.

Silently, Bre’n and Senyas waited for the veil’s portal image to shift as it had when they stood on Reality Street, two aliens impatient for their first glimpse of untrammeled illusions. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it was barely more than a day.

The portal image did not change. Ecstasy Stones called to them, seducing them in tone on tone of rainbow pleasures.

Senyas and Bre’n waited. The image remained the same, stones glittering with promise, chiming with all the possibilities of ecstasy.

“Maybe this is the wrong place to go through,” suggested Rheba, biting her lip when renewed itching attacked the back of her eyes.

Kirtn said nothing.

The veil shimmered and remained unchanged.

Kirtn turned to walk back the way they had come. She turned with him, but could not control the sound that escaped her Sips as an agony of fire scraped behind her eyes.

Nor was that the worst of it. Where he and she had walked between buildings there was only darkness now, darkness and the hollow gliding of unfettered wind. She did not want to walk into that emptiness, for she knew in her soul that it had no end.

“No,” she whispered when Kirtn walked forward.

He neither turned nor acknowledged her voice. Fssa’s sensors reeled as the snake probed the nothingness ahead. At that moment, Kirtn staggered. He leaned forward, feeling ahead with his hands as though a wall had sprung up between him and whatever lay beyond his fingertips.

“Either this is a class twelve illusion,” mourned the snake in a minor key, “or what we came through before was a twelve.” He sighed thinly. “Not that it matters. On Yhelle, reality is a matter of opinion.”

Kirtn strained, muscles knotting and moving under his copper fur, pouring all of his Bre’n strength into the wall. Nothing moved, at first. Then slowly, gradually, Kirtn gave way. The invisible wall pushed him backward, toward his dancer, toward the Ecstasy Stones shimmering in the veil’s unchanging portal.

Abruptly, he straightened and leaped sideways along the wall, it took no more than a touch to tell him that the wall was in reality a crescent. He and Rheba were caught between its horns. The wall curved toward him, narrowing the space that separated him from his dancer and the veil gleaming behind her.

Gently, inexorably, the crescent contracted, pressing Senyas and Bre’n closer to the portal where Ecstasy Stones waited in deadly multicolored silence.

There was no escape. The veil energies closed over Kirtn and Reba, sucking them into the tyrant K’Masei’s stronghold.

XVIII

There was nothing on the other side of the veil but an uninhabited slidewalk curving toward a distant glow. The Redis clan territory displayed no blatant illusions, no sweeping conceits, no wry deceptions replacing reality.

Not even buildings. The area beyond the veil was so empty that it made Rheba’s skin move and tighten. She had seen places like this before, on Deva, scorched ruins where dancers had not been able to hold at bay the leaping sun. But there were not even ruins in the Redis territory, nothing except the sinuous invitations of the slidewalk.

“I don’t like it,” she said flatly. Her akhenet lines surged in ragged pulses, unsettled by her recent passage through the veil. The slidewalk rippled like a river of pearls waiting to be strung.

Kirtn smiled down at her. “It’s not as bad as it looks, dancer. The Stones ... I think the Stones aren’t what we were told. They don’t want to hurt us.”

She looked up him with eyes that were cinnamon and skeptical. “How can you tell?”

“Can’t you feel it?” he murmured. “They’re as gentle as a summer dawn. They’re love, not hate.”

—She closed her eyes. When they opened again they were gold and more than skeptical. Fear glinted, fear and a dancer’s power gathering. Her hand closed around Kirtn’s wrist. Fear, proximity and love for her Bre’n forged a fragile mindlink between them. For an instant she shared with him echoes of joy and laughter gliding....

But only for an instant. Her touch dimmed the Stones’ allure. The echoes of ecstasy faded. Kirtn shook himself and looked at her with eyes that were caught between regret and fear.

“Psi masters,” Rheba said hoarsely, her fingers hard and trembling around his wrist. “They were in your mind, as Satin was in your mind on Onan. Don’t trust them!”

“At least they weren’t trying to rearrange my brains,” said Kirtn in a tight voice, “or disillusion me.”

Fssa hissed with pleasure. He was all the way out of Rheba’s hair, supported only by a coil around Kirtn’s strong neck: “The Stones are lovely, dancer. Like my Guardians’ dreams of swimming Ssimmi’s molten sky/seas.”

“You too, snake?” she said, both frightened and oddly angry.

“Yesss. But your energies interfere.” He sighed like a child asked to choose between sweets. “If only Kirtn were hotter. Then I could have fire and the Stones, too.”

Rheba frowned. Her akhenet lines quivered and ignited. With an effort, she stilled her fears, murmuring litanies in her mind until her lines faded to whorls of transparent gold.

“Mentor,” she said slowly, carefully, “Don’t trust the Tyrant’s Ecstasy Stones. No one who goes to the Redis hall comes back out. Remember that.”

“I’m trying to,” Kirtn said. Suddenly he buried his hands in her seething hair. “Hold me, dancer,” he whispered. “The Stones are so very beautiful....”

For an instant she stood without moving, lost, for he had always been her strength. Then her arms went around him in a gesture both gentle and fierce. With an instinct far older than her yean;, she built a network of energy around her Bre’n, pouring herself through him in a sweet rush of fire that even the Ecstasy Stones could not equal.

He shuddered and lifted her off her feet, holding her as though he were afraid it was the last time. Then his mind was free, not even a wisp of alien ecstasy remained; but ecstasy was there, unity of dancer and Bre’n.

Slowly he let her slide down his body to stand again on her own feet. “I’m all right now, dancer. The Stones ...” Darkness turned uneasily in the depths of his yellow eyes. “They won’t fool me so easily again.”

But unspoken between them was the question: Was it simple deception the Stones offered, or was it something more?

“Or something less,” said Kirtn wryly, lips half curved, half smiling at his dancer. Patches of copper hair clung to her skin and clothes, held there by her sweat. He brushed futilely at the fine, tiny hairs. “Sorry, dancer. I’ve gone and shed all over you.”

Rheba smiled, but she wanted to cry. “What’s a dancer for if not to help her Bre’n shed?”

Kirtn’s fingers moved as though he would hold her again, sweet fire and energy pouring. Then he closed his eyes and stepped back. She watched, waiting. After a moment he opened his eyes and tried to smile.

“They’re back, dancer. But I know them, now.” He turned to step up on the slidewalk, then looked over his shoulder at her. “You’re more than they could ever be to me.”

“Wait!”

Her voice pulled him back from the slidewalk’s smooth gleam.

“I—we—have to know more about the Stones before we get any closer to them.”

“We know that the closer we get, the more powerful they are,” said Kirtn in Senyas, blunt and sardonic at once.

She took Fssa and put him on the ground. “Put Rainbow around him.” Her voice was strained. Only Kirtn’s vulnerability to the Stones could have driven her to the extreme of requiring communication between Fssireeme and Zaarain construct.

Reluctantly. Kirtn pulled Rainbow off his neck. He knew the cost of the alien conversations for Rheba when she was within their range.

She took the caged Stones out of her pocket and put them close to Rainbow, but not touching. Although she was not sure her energy cages could prevent Rainbow from pirating the stones for its—own uses, she hoped to discourage such theft.

“Snake, ask Rainbow if it knows what these stones are, if they can be controlled, if they’re real or illusion, alive or machine, anything that can help us. And,” grimly, “be quick about it.”

She retreated rapidly as Fssa assumed the fungoid shape that he used to communicate with the fragmentary Zaarain construct. There was not time for her to get beyond the reach of the Fssireeme’s savage energies. Nor did she think she should. Fssa, too, was vulnerable to the Ecstasy Stones’ allure.

Kirtn followed her, putting his body between his dancer and the odd pair on the ground. Even dense Bre’n flesh could not deflect the bizarre communication between Fssireeme and Zaarain crystals, but a dance could. His hands slid into place on her shoulders. Flames licked up from her akhenet lines, concealing dancer and Bre’n, disrupting the flow of alien energies.

Still, Fssireeme-Zaarain communication was not painless for her. It never was.

When the dance ended, blood trickled down her lower lip. Kirtn, too, was affected, but not nearly so much as his dancer. What was agony to her was merely discomfort to him.

“Well?” she said, walking back to Fssa. Her voice was thin, her face pale against blazing whorls of akhenet lines.

The snake whistled lyric Bre’n apologies for hurting her.

She brushed them aside as she did the drops of blood on her lips. “Did Rainbow know anything useful for once?” she demanded.

“Rainbow is only fragments,” Fssa reminded her softly.

She groaned. “Useless pile of crystal turds. Doesn’t it know anything at all?”

“Some of the worry stones are Zaarain.” said Fssa in hasty Senyas. “Some aren’t.”

“What are they?”

“Rainbow doesn’t know. Remember, it was knocked to pieces and sold as jewelry across half the galaxy after the Zaarain Cycle ended.”

“So we can assume that the non-Zaarain stones came from a later Cycle,” said Kirtn, picking up Rainbow and replacing it around his neck. The double strand of crystals dimmed as it got farther from the worry stones.

“Yes. Rainbow wants some of them.” added the snake.

Kirtn grunted, remembering Rainbow’s blinding scintillations when it was thrown among Zaarain crystals on Daemen. “I could tell by the glow that it was interested.”

“Which does it want?” said Rheba thoughtfully, looking at the worry stones on the ground.

“The big ones.”

“I should have guessed,” she said with a grimace. “The better to take my head off, I suppose.”

“It’s sorry it hurts you,” the snake whistled miserably.

She sighed, wondering if it was the Zaarain or the Fssireeme that apologized. “Anything else?”

“The non-Zaarain crystals are alive,” whistled the snake.

“ Alive? You mean energized?” asked Kirtn, looking at the worry stones with new interest.

“I mean nonmachine life,” said Fssa, switching to unambiguous Senyas.

“Biological life?” said Rheba incredulously, scooping stones and snake off the ground at the same time.

Fssa made a frustrated sound and switched back to Bre’n. Sometimes ambiguities were the essence of truthful communication. “Alive as Rainbow is alive, only more organic. They’re haunted with Fourth People. They’re ... alive.”

The Bre’n harmonics the snake created said more, telling of growth that was not quite organic nor yet lithic, intelligence that encompassed one more dimension than Fourth People acknowledged, a form of life flickering between the interfaces akhenets called time and death.

Rheba sighed, wondering if she knew more or less about the worry stones than she had before a Fssireeme described the impossible in the voices of Bre’n poetry. “Can they be controlled?” she asked, thinking as much of the Ecstasy Stones as the sullen crystals in her hand.

“Only for a time. As you guessed, their energies build geometrically inside the cage every few minutes. You won’t hold those much longer. They can be neutralized, though.”

“How?”

“Rainbow didn’t know. It only knew that balance must be possible or whatever lives in—or through—the stones would have shattered long ago.”

Alter a long moment, Rheba jammed the stones deep in her pocket. She looked at the slidewalk, then back at the veil. Though they were still within its field, no portal showed on the veil’s face, it was as though there were no other possible destinations on Serriolia except the Redis clan hall, so no other portal was needed.

Deliberately, she walked toward the blank veil. The air in front of her thickened into a wall. Simultaneously, her eyes itched so badly that she cried out and flung herself backward.

“What’s wrong?” said Kirtn, grabbing her when she would have fallen.

“Itch,” she said succinctly, then shivered when the itch was replaced by coolness and a wisp of something that might have been an apology, “And the veil. Neither one wants me to go away from here. I guess that only leaves the Tyrant and his white-eyed minions.”

And the Ecstasy Stones.

But neither of them said that aloud. It was simply there between them, words shared in the silent depths of their minds.

With an inward shrinking that did not show, Rheba mounted the slidewalk. Kirtn leaped up lightly beside her. Rainbow bounced against his chest with a flash of crystal faces. She tried not to shudder when she looked at the Zaarain construct. It might have more in common with the Ecstasy Stones than was good for any of them.

“Can we trust it?” she asked tightly, clicking her fingernail against a vivid sapphire stone that rolled in the hollow of Kirtn’s neck.

He took her hand and soothed it with his lips. “Rainbow doesn’t want to hurt us,” he said. “Neither do the Ecstasy Stones.”

“Neither does the zoolipt,” she shot back, “but it nearly got us both killed.”

He sighed because there was no answer to her fears. She could not feel the rising purity of the Stones, ecstasy reflected, born and reborn on a thousand flawless faces ...

“Mentor!”

Her voice called him out of his waking dream. He smiled sadly, for himself and for the dancer he loved who could not see ecstasy when it was spread out glittering before her.

Kirtn!

Ecstasy winked and sighed and vanished beneath a cataract of dancer fire. He blinked, saw the slidewalk, a nacreous ribbon stretching between emptiness. Ahead, nothing more than a silver-blue glow beckoning.

With an enormous effort he shook off the languid seduction of the Stones. “I’m all right, dancer. They’re very subtle, but I’m on my guard now.”

She said nothing, only looked at his eyes. They were clear and yellow again, no longer glazed with inwardness. Her fingers uncurled from his wrist. Itching assaulted her eyes. Hastily she grabbed his wrist and was rewarded by coolness.

He looked at her, puzzled and amused. “I wasn’t going to run off.”

“I know. Itch just wants us to keep in touch. Literally.”

He whistled to himself, more thoughtful than surprised. “Does that mean you can’t trust me?” he asked in Senyas.

She hesitated, but no messages formed behind her eyes. “I don’t know. Itch isn’t saying anything either way.”

“What about Fssa?”

She felt her hair quickly with her free hand. “Still there. I think as long as he stays in my hair he’ll be immune.”

But her eyes itched even as the words formed on her tongue.

“Then what should I do?” she hissed beneath her breath to the Itch behind her eyes. “Tie the snake in a knot?”

The itching faded. She had the clear feeling that it was not an answer, merely a temporary erasure so that she would be able to feel new messages written on the back of her eyes.

Kirtn tugged gently al her hand. His eyes were fixed on the silver-blue glow ahead. Clearly he was impatient with the slidewalk’s leisurely pace. She, on the other hand, would have been glad never to get where the slidewalk was taking her.

She looked over her shoulder and felt her lines flare. She would have to go forward, because two steps behind her was nothing at all, not even the slidewalk’s pearl shimmer. It was as though the world ended. The veil itself had vanished as completely as though it had never existed. She could not even sense its penetrating, dissonant energies.

With a feeling close to despair, she turned from the emptiness behind her to the unwelcome radiance ahead. Shapes were condensing out of the glow, curves of flashing light, crystal geometries rising plane after plane, all bathed in a subliminal humming of emotions neither demonic nor divine, yet somehow more compelling than either or both together.

From her hair a Fssireeme sang of beauty in a chorus of Bre’n voices. She looked at Kirtn, afraid that he would be swept out of her reach into the Stones’ crystal embrace.

“I’m here,” he murmured, smiling down at her. “But hold on to me. If the Stones don’t get me that silver-tongued snake will.”

The slidewalk increased its pace until her hair was whipped by wind. Abruptly, she regretted not jumping off while she could. She looked at her Bre’n. Lines of strain were etched on his face. As though at a great distance, she sensed something calling to him, something inhuman and superb, devastating perfection.

“Kirtn?” she asked softly:

“Nothing.” His voice was curt. Then he shrugged. “The Stones. They’re unspeakably beautiful, but I like to choose my lovers—or my gods.”

“Fight them.”

“I am.” Silence. Then, almost wistfully, “Don’t you feel them, dancer?”

She said nothing, for she had finally seen the slidewalk’s destination. Her fingers clamped around his wrist harshly enough to draw a grimace even from a Bre’n. Just ahead, the shining ribbon they rode ended in a burst of pearl light. A figure stood waiting for them, dark within the radiance that was endemic to the Redis territory.

The slidewalk stopped so suddenly that Bre’n and Senyas were thrown off their feet. They scrambled upright—and found themselves looking into f’lTiri’s triumphant smile.

A million hot needles dug into the back of Rheba’s eyes.

XIX

“F’lTiri?” asked Rheba, happiness and uncertainty mingling in her voice.

“Of course,” said f’lTiri, laughing as he reached for his friends.

His hands were warm and firm as they clasped first Kirtn’s arm and then Rheba’s hand. The voice was the same, the tips, the laugh ... but she would have felt better if she had never heard of class twelve illusions. Even so, she smiled and returned f’lTiri’s greeting, for she very much wanted it to be him.

Her eyes itched savagely. Something inhuman began singing deep in her mind. Hastily she let go of f’lTiri. The singing, if not the itching, stopped.

“Where’s i’sNara?” she asked, clutching Kirtn’s wrist as though he would run away despite his previous assurances.

“With the children,” answered f’lTiri. His smite was happiness condensed into a single curving line. “We were so wrong about the Ecstasy Stones. They’re ...” F’lTiri groped for explanations that did not exist in the Yhelle language.

Rheba’s lines ran hot, then icy, for f’lTiri was speaking Yhelle instead of Universal. Fssa was translating automatically, inconspicuously, so that she could understand f’lTiri.

But before this moment, f’lTiri had never spoken anything except Universal to them.

“The Stones are so wonderful,” sighed f’lTiri. “Come. I’ll take you to them.”

Rheba did not need the torment behind her eyes to know that something was more or less than it seemed. Was f’lTiri the unwilling—or even willing—captive of Ecstasy, or was he a class twelve illusion from sweet smile to dusty sandals? She stared into his eyes, looking for answers. She saw nothing except her own fiery reflection. It startled her, for she had not realized that she was burning.

“Dancer?” murmured Kirtn in Senyas. Then he added a Bre’n trill that asked why she burned when there was no danger near.

She looked at f’lTiri and said only, “We’re not ready to see the Stones yet. We were trying to get back to our ship when the veil brought us here.”

Not quite the whole truth, but enough for her purposes.

F’lTiri smiled again, redefining joy in a single gesture. Rheba stared, fascinated. Even the boy she had known as The Luck had not smiled quite so perfectly, and he had been the culmination of Cycles of genetic selection for charm and good fortune. But The Luck’s sweet surface had been only half of his unique truth. She suspected that it was the same with f’lTiri.

She looked away from his compelling smile. Her lines burned hotly, fed by fear and the energy that pervaded everything with a blue-white glow.

“Oh, the veil,” said f’lTiri, dismissing it with a twinkle of his illusionist eyes. “It gets independent every now and again. We’re illusionists, not engineers, and the veil construct is many Cycles old. It always works again, though, if you give it enough time. Unless there’s something urgent at the ship for you to attend to ...”

She looked at Kirtn. He said nothing. His face was hard, his eyes narrow within their golden mask. She could sense the conflicting energies within him, her own and f’lTiri’s racing along sensitive Bre’n nerves, competing for his attention.

Casually, as though it were an oversight, she let flames leap from the hand nearer f’lTiri. After a momentary hesitation, f’lTiri jerked his fingers away from Kirtn’s arm. She sensed the conflict within her Bre’n diminish. With a smile of her own, she faced the Yhelle illusionist.

“Now that you, i’sNara and your children are safe, Kirtn and I have to get back to the ship.” Rheba’s words sounded unconvincing, even to her. “There are other Loo slaves on board the Devalon,” she added quickly, “other promises to keep. They’re as eager to see their homes again as you were to see yours. Or,” she added, thinning her smile to a bare line of teeth, “more eager. You were reluctant to come home again. Remember?”

F’lTiri’s smile shifted, then resettled into indulgent lines. “I’sNara and I were very foolish.”

“The veil,” reminded Rheba gently. “Fix it for us.”

“I can’t.”

“Is that the way the Tyrant keeps his subjects in place?” asked Rheba.

F’lTiri’s smile widened. “K’Masei isn’t a tyrant. He’s just impervious to love.”

She smiled sardonically. “That’s as good a definition of a tyrant as I’ve heard.”

“No tyranny, just ecstasy,” murmured f’lTiri dreamily. “You must see the Stones, Rheba. They are ...” His voice dissolved into another incredible smile.

She turned away from him. As she looked over her shoulder she realized that the slidewalk was gone. Where its pearl ribbon had once been there was nothing at all, not even a small glow. She closed her eyes and tried to sense the direction of the nearest coil of veil. All she found was energy pouring out of the radiant center of the Redis hall—if those crystal curves could indeed be called something so mundane as a clan hail.

Deliberately, she tried to touch the core of whatever powered the hall. It was like trying to hold an oiled ball on her fingertip; whenever she approached a balance point, the ball would slide away. She could only drink the source of energy indirectly, like taking light reflected off another surface instead of going directly to the luminous core. Perhaps if she were closer to the source she could tap it more directly.

At least her eyes had stopped itching while she tried.

“Ready?” asked Kirtn, when he saw her attention return to the moment.

“Ready for what?”

“The tour.”

“What tour?”

“The one f’lTiri is going to give us,” said the Bre’n patiently.

She looked at f’lTiri. Her eyes itched terribly. She looked at her Bre’n. The itching abated but did not go away. She frowned and sent dancer energy coursing through Kirtn, trying to chase the confusion she sensed beneath his benevolent smile.

F’lTiri made a small sound and stepped back, from Kirtn. Only then did Rheba realize that the illusionist had been touching Kirtn’s arm. The unexpected surge of akhenet energy must have scorched the illusionist’s fingers.

Kirtn moved as though walking out of deep water. He focused on the dancer eyes staring up at him. He whistled a slow apology. “They’re strong, Rheba. Each time I close one door they find a new one to open. But they can’t get around your energy. Burn for me, dancer. Burn for both of us.”

“And the tour f’lTiri is going to give us?” she whistled, letting the minor key and her touch tell him that she would hum for him beyond the ice at the end of time. “Do we go with him like slaves broken to the training lead?”

His mouth turned down at her reminder of the Loo-chim’s razor leash. Were it not for the zoolipt’s mindless healing, he would have worn a collar of scars for the rest of his life. “No razor restraints here. Just ...” His voice died. He could not describe the temptations of Ecstasy.

Her mouth echoed the bitter curve of his lips. She heard his thoughts as clearly as she had heard his whistle. “Be grateful I can’t hear their call. If I could, we’d be up to our cracks in ice and ashes.”

“Are you ready?” asked f’lTiri serenely.

“No, I’m not ready to see the Ecstasy Stones.” Rheba’s voice was as clear and hot as the flames licking over her akhenet lines.

And then her voice broke, for the ground had changed beneath her feet. The distant building composed of radiance and crystal arcs loomed in front of her now. A scarlet slit opened in the lowest curve of wall.

“No,” she said, pulling back.

F’lTiri stood patiently. “I’m not taking you to the Stones,” he murmured. “Just a tour of k’Masei’s halt. Then, if you still don’t want to know Ecstasy, I’ll take you back to the veil. The Stones don’t force,” he added softly. “That’s not their way.”

Rheba glanced sideways at her Bre’n’s strained face and had to bite her lip to keep from answering. A coolness behind her eyes rewarded both her restraint and her conclusion about the Ecstasy Stones’ gentleness. Having Itch’s agreement was a two-sided weapon, though; she was not sure just whose interests Itch had at heart—assuming Itch had something that passed for a heart.

“Well, Itch” she whispered beneath her breath, “should I go or stay?”

There was a mixed flash of itch-cool.

“No tour?” breathed Rheba. She grabbed her eyes. “All right,” she hissed, “I’m going!”

Coolness and a distant breath of apology.

Grimly, Rheba tightened her grip on Kirtn’s arm. He smiled despite the pain of her hand grinding flesh against bone. He shifted so that their fingers interlaced in an unbreakable clasp.

She looked at the man who might once have been f’lTiri. “Make it a short tour. I’ve already seen enough of Yhelle to last me until I die.”

F’lTiri smiled and turned. As he did, the crystal hall shifted and reformed around them. The Redis, unlike the Yaocoons, apparently believed in advanced machinery. She sensed speed and movement and wild rush of energy nearby. Her hair rippled, questing outward in blind, precise seeking, tendrils reaching for the power that leaped endlessly around her.

Kirtn whistled and clenched her fingers until they ached. “Dancer,” he whistled, off-key in his urgency, “the Stones are much closer now. They may not be coercive, but in the name of Fire they’re addictive! Burn!”

She loosed a torrent of energy through him, scourging his nerves and purging his mind. He staggered, caught himself and held her Fiercely against his sweating body. Rainbow’s hard facets cut across her cheek, but she did not complain, simply held on and burned.

F’lTiri watched, smiling with blind affection. For the first time Rheba saw that his eyes were white.

Fssa shifted beneath her seething mass of hair. Though she could not see him, she knew the snake was changing shapes as rapidly as a thought, tasting the various wavelengths that pervaded the hall. She hoped he could understand them better than she could. The sleeting variety of energies was enough to make her dizzy. Only one was familiar, the dissonant cry of the core that powered the veil.

“Find anything, snake?” she whistled.

“Ssimmi is in here ... somewhere ... where?”

The Fssireeme’s longing whistle squeezed her heart. He had mourned his lost home far longer than she had been alive. Nor did she have any way to take him home. Ssimmi was not known to any of the navtrices she had queried. The snake’s planet was lost somewhere among the galaxy’s billion stars.

If Fssa could find Ssimmi’s equivalent on Yhelle, who was she to tell him it was merely an illusion?

“Is there anything else here?” she asked softly. “Is the hall an illusion?”

The snake sighed and retreated into her hair. “Yes, but what’s beneath it is no different.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” whistled the snake plaintively. “There are crystal walls and floors and halls and all, but not where we see them.”

“Could you find our way back out of here?”

“I ...” The snake changed again, tugging gently at her flying hair. “No,” sadly. Then, “But it’s so very beautiful here, dancer. Why do you want to go back?”

“Are there other ways out of here?” she asked, ignoring his question.

The snake’s most human sigh slid past her ear. “Stripped of illusion, this place is a maze of light and competing energies.”

She glanced aside at Kirtn, wondering how he was holding up in his struggle against the seductive Ecstasy Stones. His face was hard and closed as a fist. If she had not been touching him, she would have thought he had no feelings at all. But she was touching him. His conflicting desires raced over her with a discordance that was like passing through the veil again and again.

Rainbow shone like a double string of molten crystal. It seemed impossible that the Zaarain construct could glow so hotly and not burst into white flames.

“Are you ready to see the Ecstasy Stones?” asked f’lTiri, his voice as white as his eyes, as white as the hall and the floor, the blinding maze closing around Bre’n and Senyas and Fssireeme alike.

“No,” said Rheba, striving to make her voice calm.

“There’s nothing to fear,” smiled the illusionist, voice and words a single curve of light. “Ecstasy doesn’t hurt you.”

He leaned forward. As his fingers brushed Kirtn’s arm, conflicting currents of energy raced through the Bre’n, numbing him and shocking his dancer. For an instant their interlaced fingers loosened.

The air around Rheba crackled harmlessly, but it was not so easy for Kirtn. Ecstasy pounded him like a mountain storm, all but shattering him. He staggered against her, renewing their contact once again. He clung to her with hands that were too weak to belong to a Bre’n.

F’lTiri laughed gently, ignoring Rheba, looking only at Kirtn. “Be like the sea grass, my strong friend. Bend to the waves. Only rocks break.”

Fire leaped from Rheba, an immaterial whip meant to scorch rather than injure, for she was still not certain whether f’lTiri or an illusion talked to her.

 

“We’ve seen enough,” she said harshly. “Take us out of here.”

White eyes turned and regarded her with blind intensity. Her lines went cold, then leaped. If this had once been f’lTiri, it was not her friend now.

Dancer fire swept out, caging f’lTiri as she had caged the worry stones. He cried out, writhing. Non-dancer energies sparked and spat around him, trying to sustain patterns her fire had disrupted. F’lTiri’s appearance melted and ran like mercury, eyes white in a shapeless puddle of gray.

“Take us-out of here!” demanded Rheba, speaking more to whoever controlled the Ecstasy Stones than to the apparition that could have been f’lTiri.

Walls became mirrors and glided inward, shrinking as floor and ceiling shrank, closing in on her, trying to burn her with her own reflected fire. It was a mistake, like throwing fuel on a raging fire. She took the reflected energy and wove it back into her dance, strengthening the immaterial cage around the illusionist.

He screamed and changed before her eyes, f’lTiri again, then i’sNara, then a boy with i’sNara’s eyes and a half-grown girl with f’lTiri’s smile. She did not need to know their names to recognize the illusionists’ children. Then he became more people in dizzying succession, Yhelle after Yhelle with no distinction as to sex or age, an agonized throng caught in one quicksilver illusion, flickering in and out of being like a flame in a wind.

And each illusion wept to be free.

“Let us go!” screamed Rheba, backing away from the plastic entreaties.

Hot shards of ecstasy probed her, looking for weaknesses in her akhenet lines. She screamed again. Flames exploded around her and the multifaced illusion. She burned bright and pure, pouring power into the cage of energy she was weaving around what had once worn the appearance of f’lTiri. As the network of fire thickened, the cries faded to whimpers.

Silence came as the cage imploded.

When Rheba was no longer blinded by the flames in her eyes, she saw an unknown illusionist dead at her feet. Whoever had died, at least she had not killed f’lTiri. She shuddered, glad that she did not know the man.

In a last spasm of death, his slack hand opened. A caged crystal rolled free. It burned so savagely that the dancer energies restraining it looked dark by comparison. Rheba stared, puzzled by the too-dark dancer fire before she realized that she had inadvertently caged an Ecstasy Stone.

“Kirtn,” she said, reaching out to take his arm, “Look at—” Her voice stopped when her fingers closed around nothing at all. She looked around frantically. “Kirtn? Kirtn!”

Nothing answered her scream.

“Snake!” she cried, combing her fingers frantically through her hair. “Find him with one of your shapes!”

Her fingers came up as empty as her heart. Fssa and Kirtn were gone. She was alone.

XX

For an instant Rheba was paralyzed. Around her was nothing but fire reflected and reinforced by a thousand mirrors. At her feet was the dark face of death. It was Deva all over again, a hell she had revisited too many times in her nightmares. She was a child once more, helpless, her arms and face blistered by the same fires that had consumed her parents before her eyes.

Kirtn had ended that nightmare by running in and sweeping her out of the burning ruins of her childhood. But he was gone now. There was no one to take her out of the smoking ashes of despair. This was a new nightmare, a worse one. A hall of mirrors where only death and a fire dancer were real.

There was nothing to do but dance, alone.

Flames of pure gold swept over her body as she began her dance. Her hair was a seething corona, her hands incandescent with akhenet lines. She took the wild energy of the Redis hall and synchronized it into coherent light. Then she took the light and used it to shatter the illusions reflected endlessly around her.

Mirrored wails and floor shifted, shrank, tilted, trying to turn her weapon against her by changing the angle of the returning energy. Light scattered wildly. Part of her own dance rebounded, burning her. She wished futilely for Kirtn’s sustaining partnership or Fssa’s protective ability to absorb heat, but she had only her fear and her dance.

So she danced while the walls slid closer, the better to turn her own fire against her.

Grimly, she transformed random energy into disciplined fire. She concentrated on a single wall, not caring whether it was real or illusory, certain only that somewhere beyond the mirrors lay a way out. She danced savagely, yet well within her own control. She had not forgotten the zoolipt. She did not want its interference, however well meant. She knew if she stopped dancing the walls would close in and crush her. She doubted that the zoolipt knew it, though.

For that reason she did not try to tap the dissonant core that was the major source of the hall’s power. She had to satisfy the demands of her dance with the energies sleeting freely through the Redis clan building. She was not sure she could control the core if she did tap it. If she could not, she would incinerate the hall and herself with it—unless the zoolipt stopped her dance. And it certainly would stop her if she approached the core as she should, slowly, learning its nature by burning herself when she guessed wrong.

There was only one way she could evade her unwelcome monitor. She could simply grab the core. There would be a single searing instant of holocaust unleashed before the zoolipt could intervene, a dancer burning out of control, burning to ash and gone. Only as a final resort would she crack the core and die, destroying everything within reach of her fire, including Kirtn lost somewhere beyond the mirrors.

Until that moment came she would dance, and hope.

As though at a distance she saw herself a living flame in the center of deadly energies, and the room shrinking around her. In front of her a mirrored surface shattered and smoked blackly. The wall on which the reflective illusion had been based burned with the acrid smell of plastics and the cleaner scent of wood.

Instantly the other mirrors blackened. Whoever controlled the illusions must have realized that the mirrors were aiding her dance. She assumed k’Masei shaped the illusions. It was like a tyrant to use illusions to enslave and kill.

There was a pause, a sense of ingathering like the silence before a storm shifted and attacked from a new quarter. Instinctively she built a defensive cage of energy around herself, for she had no Bre’n to protect her back.

Suddenly a cataract of invisible demand beat on her. Her defensive cage bristled and flamed until she stood like a torch in the center of a starless night. There was no light around her that she had not created, no companionship except her own dance. Part of her mind screamed for her lost Bre’n; but the akhenet part of her coldly ransacked her surroundings for a power source great enough to vaporize illusions.

Her immaterial questing brushed a familiar energy source, a simple electromagnetic generator that powered the Redis food machines. The machines were off, cold, but the generator itself vibrated with life.

She drained it between one breath and the next.

She burned.

A new figure formed in front of the metal-reinforced wall she was trying to destroy. A man, tall and powerful, more familiar than her own hands. Kirtn. She leaped toward him, incoherent with joy. He laughed and hugged her—

—and she screamed, for there was nothing inside his mind, nothing more to him than the textures of flesh and fur, yellow eyes, and his warm lips speaking Yhelle words she could not understand. Not Kirtn. Illusion.

Yet she could not bring herself to burn it down. She shaped her dance so that deadly fire divided around the false Kirtn. Behind the Bre’n illusion the wall smoldered and smoked, slowly catching fire. Streamers of fire from her reinforced the reluctant flames.

Kirtn’s image expanded suddenly, blocking off the wall. Her dance faltered when his image smoked and burned and screamed Yhelle pleas she could not understand. She closed her eyes and ears and let fire rain down. If the Tyrant k’Masei wanted to protect that wall with Kirtn’s likeness, then she wanted to reduce the wail to a smoking memory.

The screams stopped. She opened her eyes and saw a sheet of fire where the wall had been. The illusion of Kirtn was gone. Automatically she fed the flames, streamers of energy pouring out from her as the wall consumed itself.

She did not know how much longer she could dance before the zoolipt stopped her. The stench of her own hands burning was strong in the air. She knew she should feel pain, but did not. The loss of Kirtn consumed everything else.

The wall trembled, then began to collapse. From behind its rapidly cooling metal skeleton came a scream. A running man crossed the room and dove beneath the surface of a bathing pool. The scream, more than the water, saved his life. She had seen too many Senyasi and Bre’ns burn to death beneath Deva’s unstable sun. Reflexively she called back her fire. In the next instant she cursed herself for being conned by yet another of the Tyrant’s endless illusions.

She was alone in a room full of steam. She waited until the cooler air of the hall took away the hot vapors. Behind her was a passageway lined with scorched, broken shards. Around her a luxurious room emerged from dissipating steam. To her right a man bobbed to the surface of the bathing pool and watched her with more curiosity than fear.

“Where did the Stones find your template?” he asked in Yhelle. When she did not answer, he repeated the question in Universal.

“I’m real,” she said in the same language, “as k’Masei will find out to his grief.”

“You speak Universal! You’re not an illusion!”

Rheba looked at him curiously. “Why does speaking Universal make me real?”

“The Stones only speak Yhelle, so their illusions only speak Yhelle, too.”

The man’s voice was reasonable. It was only his words that did not make sense; Ecstasy Stones did not speak at all. She was about to point out that fact when she remembered how she had recognized that Kirtn was an illusion. He had spoken Yhelle. Her thoughts continued to their inevitable conclusion as she walked toward the man in the pool.

“You’re real, too,” she said.

“Of course,” he said in a startled voice, as though it had never occurred to him that someone might mistake him for an illusion. “Are you finished?”

“Finished?”

“Burning things. I’d like to come out. They never get the water warm enough for me.”

She felt laughter twist in her throat. With an effort she controlled herself, recognizing the difference between humor and hysteria. “You must be real,” she said in a strangled voice. “You’re crazier than any illusion I’ve seen yet.” Then, realizing that he was stilt waiting. “Come out. I won’t burn you.”

Shivering, the man walked out of the pool. He was her height, thin, and as pale as every Yhelle she had ever seen shorn of illusionist facade.

He wiped off excess water with his hands, shivering violently. “I don’t suppose you could dry me off without scorching me? Or start a small fire?” he asked in an apologetic tone, “It’s cold with that draft where the wall used to be.”

She reached for a rich robe that was draped over a nearby chair. Her hand went through both robe and chair. She made a startled sound and examined the rest of the room closely. Beneath a thin sheen of illusions, the room was a spartan cell. She looked back toward the shivering man and opened her mouth to ask a hundred questions.

He shivered miserably. In the silence she could hear his teeth chattering. He would not be able to answer her questions until he was warm enough to unlock his jaw. She would have to dry him off despite her tiredness. Dancing alone had drained her of everything except fear for her Bre’n. If she helped the half-mad illusionist, would he help her in’ return?

“Hold still,” she said, concentrating. She had not had to dry off anyone for a long time. On board the Devalon, the ship’s machinery took care of such things.

The air around the man shimmered and shifted. Flames appeared above his skin and hair, close enough to warm but not to burn. The flames startled him into moving incautiously. He yelped as the fire came too close, instantly the flames vanished. He waited without moving, but the fire did not reappear.

“Dry enough?” asked Rheba, fighting weakness and the zoolipt’s seductive tugs on her eyelids.

“Thanks,” he said, making a small gesture of embarrassment. He smiled shyly. “This is the first time I’ve been warm since they threw me in here.” He looked beyond her. “Where’s your guide?”

“Dead.”

His face brightened. “How did you do it?” Before she could answer, questions poured out of him. “Don’t you feel any pressure? Don’t you want to go back into the hall? Don’t you see pictures of Ecstasy Stones in your mind? How can you just stand there? Aren’t they calling to you? Don’t you just have to go to them?”

“The Ecstasy Stones don’t affect me,” she said, pushing back a yawn with a half-burned hand that healed even as she noticed it.. “Why are you—”

He laughed and clapped his hands, interrupting her. “Another immune! No no, let me talk,” he said quickly, all but babbling with joy. “It’s been so long. You can’t know how lonely it’s been with only my own thin illusions and the Stones’ constant whispering. Do they know you’re here? Oh, that’s what you were fighting, wasn’t it? Don’t worry, pretty stranger.” He began skipping in place, giggling. “They can’t control an immune, no no no, they can’t, no no—”

“That’s enough!” snapped Rheba, corking the man’s bubbling hysteria with a snarl and a warning surge of fire.

“Sorry,” he sighed, chagrin and joy warring on his face.

Another gesture, apology and self-deprecation in a graceful turn of his pate hand. “You just don’t know—”

“—and I don’t care,” interrupted Rheba brutally. All she cared about now was her Bre’n and a Fssireeme more fantastic than any Yhelle illusion. “Do you know a way out of here?”

He tipped his head one way and then another as though seeing her for the first time. “Would I be here if I knew a’ way out?” he asked gently.

“Is there a way out?” she countered swiftly, realizing her mistake in phrasing her question.

“Oh yes. The Stones always give you a choice.”

“Good,” she said grimly.

“Not really. You don’t know what the choice is.”

“But you’re going to tell me.”

The man tipped his head back, studying a ceiling that was no different from the floor. “You can worship the Stones. Then you won’t want to leave anymore and the problem of choice is solved.”

Rheba grimaced and made a gesture of rejection.

“Or,” continued the man, looking at her with eyes that were green-flecked brown, not white at all, “you can be disillusioned.”

“Worship or disillusionment? Some choice.” She looked back at him with eyes that were more gold with every passing moment. If she were not so tired she would be burning. As it was, tiny flames flickered raggedly over her akhenet lines. “Which did you chose?”

“Neither. Tin immune.” He smiled unhappily. “So they took away my clan instead. I don’t worship and I’m not disillusioned—but I might as well be for all the good I can do against them.”

The room began to turn slowly around her. It was not an illusion. The zoolipt was warning her that she would be better off sitting down. She began to fight, only to be attacked by itching behind her eyes. It seemed that Itch and the zoolipt could collaborate at times. The thought did not comfort her much as she collapsed on the floor’s hard surface.

She pushed herself upright, ignoring the grainy feeling in back of her eyes. She had to get out of here and find Kirtn. The first part of the thought brought a redoubled attack from Itch. The second part, finding Kirtn, brought a bit of relief. Was Itch trying to tell her that getting out of here right away was not the same as getting closer to finding Kirtn?

Blessed coolness. Itch agreed, Rheba groaned with relief.

“Are you all right?” asked the man, bending over her, but cautiously. She was still radiating heat from her strenuous solo dance.

“All right,” she sighed. “Tired.”

“Oh, then you’d better rest. You won’t be able to steal the Stones unless you’re strong and alert.”

“Steal the Stones?” she asked, feeling like a wan echo of the illusionist.

“Of course.” Then, anxiously, “isn’t that why you’re here? To steal the Ecstasy Stones for the Libs?”

“No, I—” A savage attack-of itching doubled her over, clawing at her eyes. “Stop!” she cried.

Itch stopped.

The man waited, his expression that of mingled curiosity and fear. “You aren’t here to steal the Ecstasy Stones?” he asked, disappointment clear in his voice.

She sensed Itch poised behind her eyes, waiting to strike. “I didn’t think that was why I came here,” said Rheba cautiously, speaking more to Itch than to illusionist, “but I’m willing to negotiate. I want my Bre’n—and my friends—alive and free.”

Itch made no move to disagree.

The man, who knew nothing of what lay behind her eyes, asked, “Did your friends go to the Stones?”

“I think so. As soon as I let go of Kirtn, he ran away. He must have taken Fssa with him, or else the snake followed. As for i’sNara and f’lTiri ... they came to steal the Stones.”

“Were they immune?”

“I doubt it.”

The man made a sad gesture. “Then they won’t be back. None of them. What the Stones seduce, they keep. If you want your friends back, you’ll have to break the Stones’ power by stealing some. Individually, they’re not nearly as strong as they are collectively.”

Rheba remembered the single Ecstasy Stone she had inadvertently caged in the hall. She looked at the man in sudden speculation. His eyes had not changed, still brown flecked with green, not white. His own eyes, not Stones’ reflections. Yet—“Who are you? How do you know so much about the Stones?’

“Oh,” he made one of the self-deprecating gestures that she was coming to associate with him, “I’m the master snatcher who brought the Stones together.”

“You? But I thought k’Masei the Tyrant was the one who gathered all the Ecstasy Stones.”

He smiled lopsidedly. “That’s me. But my name is k’Masei the Fool.”

XXI

Rheba’s glowing lines dimmed and sputtered out from sheer surprise. She could not believe that the modest, gently crazy illusionist in front of her was the fearsome man known as k’Masei the Tyrant.

“You?” she said weakly, looking at his odd eyes and rumpled hair and trying not to laugh. “Tyrant?”

“Is that really what they call me now?” he asked in a sorrowful voice. “That’s even worse than being called a fool. What else do they say about me?”

“I was told,” she said carefully, “that you were the Liberation clan’s master snatcher.”

He smiled wistfully. “I was.”

“I was also told that you were a traitor to your clan.” Her voice was even, her eyes intent. “I was told that you took the Libs’ best Ecstasy Stones and gave them to the Redis.”

K’Masei sighed. “The Libs still don’t understand, do they?”

“They never will,” she said bluntly. “They’re dead.”

He winced. When his expression smoothed again, he looked older. “I—” He cleared his throat and began again. “There are some things you should know if you’re going to try to steal Ecstasy Stones. You are going to try, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” muttered Rheba. Her lips thinned to a line as she thought of Itch’s torments. It was better than thinking about Kirtn, caught and held by forces she did not understand. Anything was better than thinking about that, even Itch. “I’ll do whatever I can to free my Bre’n,” she said. Her voice was calm but her akhenet lines pulsed, telling of dancer agitation.

“What’s a Bre’n?”

She opened her mouth but no easy words of explanation came. Finally she said simply, “A man.”

“Slave?”

“My Bre’n, but not my slave. Just as I’m his dancer.” She looked at the massed, intricate lines of power swirling up from her fingertips to her shoulders. “He’s as much a part of me as my arms. More. If you cut off my arms I’d still live.”

“Then I can’t talk you out of going after the Stones?”

“I thought you wanted me to steal them.”

“Oh, I do. It’s just ... you’re quite beautiful, you know. Can’t they send someone ugly?”

Rheba choked off an impulse to laugh and cry at the same time. “I’m alone. There’s no ‘they’ sending me after the Stones.”

“Then you’re not Lib?”

“I told you. All the Libs are dead.”

He looked away for a long moment. When he looked back, his eyes were more dark than green. “In that case,” he said, “you’d better listen very carefully. The more you know about the Stones, the better your chance of surviving. Although,” he sighed, “I must tell you that you’ve little chance at all. Certainly none that I’d wager my worst illusion oh.”

“I don’t have any time to waste listening to tales,” said Rheba, ignoring the sudden itch behind her eyes. “Kirtn—my Bre’n—” Her voice squeezed into silence.

“The Stones won’t hurt your Bre’n,” said k’Masei. “At least, not right away. I’m not even sure that the Stones mean to hurt anyone at all. They’re just”—his pale hands described random curves—“ignorant. Or maybe they don’t care.”

“How much time does Kirtn have?”

“Once, I would have said months. Then it was weeks. Days. Now ... surely an hour or two?” He looked sadly at her. “Is your Bre’n strong?”

“Yes. Stronger even than he looks, and he would make four of you.”

“Then,” sighing, “if he doesn’t go crazy he’ll be all right for a few hours.”

“I won’t wait that long.”

“Listen to me.” he said, turning suddenly and bending very close, so close that she saw her akhenet lines glowing in his eyes. “Getting yourself enchanted or killed won’t help your Bre’n. They nearly got me, and I’m immune too.”

“Immune. Whit does that mean?” she said impatiently.

“You don’t feel the Stones calling to you? Not at all?”

She frowned. “Since Kirtn has gone ... sometimes, far away, I hear beautiful singing. I’d like to go and find it. Is that what you mean?”

“Is it hard to resist going out and looking?”

“No. Just an urge that comes and goes.”

He smiled. “You’re lucky. It’s worse for me, but I’m used to it. That’s what immunity is. They can’t control your mind. That’s what made me a master snatcher. As you can see”—a wave toward the room’s slender illusions—“I’m not Serriolia’s best illusionist. But I’m not bemused by Ecstasy Stones, either. My friends would dress me up in their best illusions, I’d sneak into other clans, and I’d come back with Ecstasy Stones.

“I decided,” he said, settling onto the floor next to her, “that in order to break into the Redis clan hall, I’d have to come under cover of the Stones that the Redis didn’t own.”

“What went wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.” He smiled wryly. “It went all too well. I brought a double handful of Ecstasy into the Redis hall. When I got there and saw the Redis Stones, I realized that there were more than I could carry in a single trip. The only logical thing to do was to leave my Stones there.”

“Logical?” said Rheba, her voice rising.

“I told you I was a fool.” K’Masei sighed. “I didn’t know then that the Stones could get into your mind. I thought it was my own idea to leave my Stones there. Then I thought that if only every Ecstasy Stone in Serriolia was brought to the hall, the love would overflow to the point that it wouldn’t matter who possessed the Stones—Redis” or Libs or Yaocoons. Everyone would hold them in common and we’d be just one big happy clan. And maybe, just maybe. I’d be able to feel the love that everyone else was raving about.”

He closed his eyes. “Only a fool believes in his own illusions. By definition, I was a fool.” His eyes opened. He stared at her. “Are you sure you’re real?” he asked softly. “I don’t want to believe in any more of my own illusions.”

“I’m real,” she said impatiently. “What happened after you finished stealing Ecstasy Stones? When did you realize you were being used?”

“When people stayed and starved rather than leave the Stones. Ecstasy seems to be ... addictive.” He shivered, though he was dry and the room was warm again. “I tried to separate the Stones, to make it the way it used to be. But it was too late. The Stones had learned about illusions, or maybe they had always known. Anyway,” he said softly, “they’re very good. When I went to separate the Stones, they were never where they seemed to be. They wrapped illusions around me until I nearly strangled.

“When I woke up, they told me that if I tried to separate them again, they’d kill me. They liked being together, you see.”

“They told you that? They really speak?”

“Oh, not in so many words. I just had a very clear feeling that they would kill me if I came into their physical presence again. I could be wrong. I could be a coward as well as a fool. But if I’m not wrong and I go back to the Stone room, I’m dead. That might solve my problem but it won’t free Serriolia.” He looked at her, sad and smiling at the same time. “You see, unless someone does something about the Stones, all of Serriolia will be sucked into them. All of Yhelle’s best illusionists. Then we’ll be as helpless as fish in a desert.”

“Are Ecstasy Stones a race of First People?” asked Rheba. Before k’Masei could answer. Itch went to work on her eyes. So far as Itch was concerned, the answer was no.

“I don’t think so,” said k’Masei, “But I’m no expert on the Five Peoples.”

“What do the Stones want with the people they attract?”

“If I knew that, I might know how to stop them. All I know is that the Stones use people, somehow. I’ve seen things ... illusions are rampant in Serriolia, more and better illusions than we created before the Ecstasy Stones were united. But such illusions should be impossible, because nearly all the illusionists in Serriolia are here, held by Ecstasy Stones. If illusionists aren’t creating what I’ve seen, the Stones must be.”

Rheba stared at his pale, earnest face. He seemed to expect some comment from her, but she did not know what to say.

“Don’t you understand?” he said, leaning very close to her again. “Except for the Yaocoons and a few resistant members of other clans, there is no one left in Serriolia. Only illusions roam free. When the Yaocoons are absorbed and the city is enslaved, what next? The rest of Yhelle’s city-islands? The whole planet? Maybe the whole Equality?”

“How do you know that only illusions inhabit Serriolia?” said Rheba, concentrating on the part of his words that she thought might help her free Kirtn. She did not understand the rest of what k’Masei was saying. Nor did she care to. She wanted her Bre’n; she would have him no matter what she had to burn. “How do you know who’s free and who isn’t? Aren’t you a prisoner here?”

“The veil window still works,” said k’Masei, indicating the far wall with a nod of his head. “At least it used to. Lately all I’ve gotten is the Stone room.”

“That’s all anybody gets out of the veil,” she said bitterly.

“The veil only goes to Redis territory unless you’re strong and smart enough to wrestle another portal out of it. We weren’t.” She surged to her feet with startling speed. Her lines of power flickered raggedly. “Show me the Stone room,” she demanded.

“Wait. I haven’t told you everything.”

“Then talk while you show me,” she snapped. “We’re wasting time.”

Itch disagreed. Rheba snarled soundlessly. K’Masei, assuming he was the focus of her anger, hastened to activate the veil window.

“Is it two-way?” she asked, standing next to him as colors blurred and ran over the oval face of the window. “Can the other side see through to us?”

“No. But—” His voice died abruptly.

Frowning, he concentrated on the veil window. His hands moved over buttons that could have been controls. Colors twisted, slid down diagonals of white, blurred, shuddered and did everything except make a coherent picture.

K’Masei muttered something in Yhelle. Rheba suspected that even if Fssa had been present, he would not have translated the words. She leaned closer, eyes straining to make something out of the jigging, incoherent colors.

“They won’t let me see anything except them,” said k’Masei hoarsely, but he tried another combination anyway. Then, with a final hissed phrase, he abandoned his attempt to control the veil window.

Immediately, shapes condensed out of chaos. A room came into focus, a room huge beyond reason and crowded beyond bearing, a room where no one moved, no one spoke, a room where all eyes were focused on a mound of glittering crystals resting on a mirrored pillar.

No. Not quite a mound. The piled crystals hinted at symmetries foreign to Fourth People, manipulations of space that existed just beyond Rheba’s ability to see or perhaps even imagine. There were arches ... or were they arcs of fight? There were stairs that went up forever, yet terminated below the level of the first step. There was a tunnel that expanded into infinity and at the same time doubled back, chasing and catching itself through dimensions that had no names.

The piled Stones had built, and were still building, a crystal universe in miniature. Or was it merely a miniature? Could it be something much greater that she simply lacked the eyes to see?

Rheba forced herself to look away from the endless crystal fascinations of the Ecstasy Stones. Only then did she notice the sea of faces adrift in the huge room, a sea whose only shore was the glittering island that she would not look upon again.

Nebulous eddies of light connected the Stones with the faces of their worshipers. Many of the faces close to the Stones were emaciated, mouths slack, eyes dead white. Farther away, pressing inward, the faces gradually became more human, colors of flesh and eyes that were alive.

Two of the faces, at the edge of the crowded room were familiar: i’sNara and F’lTiri. She looked at them for only an instant, though. Towering above them was her Bre’n, a bemused Fssireeme dangling from his neck and a Zaarain construct scintillating brilliantly across his chest.

But Kirtn was motionless, a man bound hand and soul in unspeakable ecstasy, beyond even the reach of his dancer; she would touch him but she could not.

Kirtn, where are you?

Gradually Rheba became aware of k’Masei’s voice speaking softly to her, trying to call her back from whatever terrible place she had gone.

“It wasn’t always like that. People used to come and go, eat and sleep, do something other than ...”

... hang suspended on the Ecstasy Stones’ shimmering promises. Her thought was like bile, like the bitter fear congealing into ice along her akhenet lines, darkness where light should be.

“Then something happened. Too many people, maybe. Or just enough. The crystals ... changed. The biggest ones went dark. Dead, I guess.”

Rheba’s eyes itched in denial, but she said nothing. She could not. Like her Bre’n, she was suspended in the endless moment of discovery. Unlike her Bre’n, it was not ecstasy she savored but the agony of losing him.

“After that,” continued k’Masei, “the Stones were calmer, less powerful, I guess. Then one of the Soldiers of Ecstasy came into the Stone room. When he left, he was carrying the dark stones. I don’t know where he ...”

... took them to the Liberation hall, despair rather than ecstasy for enemies of the Stones. Her eyes itched, denying her conclusions. She hardly noticed. Kirtn was filling her mind, her enthralled Bre’n like ice flowing where fire should be.

“... doesn’t really matter. Without the dark stones. Ecstasy was rampant. People would come drifting into the room, dazed with love, and they would stay until they died. I think the Stones didn’t understand Fourth Person physiology. After a while they learned, though. They let people come and go, eat and drink and sleep, but not often and not enough.”

Cold crept over her body, sliding through veins and lines, the antithesis of fire claiming her as she stared at skeletal faces, dulled eyes, slack mouths drooling ... and one of them would be her Bre’n unless she ... but what could she do, a dancer alone? What could anyone do against alien ecstasy?

Her eyes burned, tears and cold and itching alike.

“The more people who came, the greater the Stones’ power. And the greater their power, the more people came,” said k’Masei, letting out his breath in a long sigh. “Cycle without end, but not aimless. The Stones have a purpose—I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what it is.”

She hardly heard through the fear beating in her veins. And the itching ... the itching would drive her crazy before the Stones drove Kirtn out of his mind. Or were Itch and Ecstasy Stones one and the same?

“When the Stones talk to you,” she said hoarsely, grabbing his arm, “what does it feel like?”

“What do you mean?”

“If they don’t communicate with words, how do you know what they want?”

“You just ... know.”

He frowned at the grim picture revealed by the veil window and moved as though to shut it off. Her fingers tightened with a strength that drew a sound of protest from him. She did not hear, or if she heard, she did not care. He moved away from the cutoff switch and stared at the alien woman whose eyes had become wholly gold.

“How do you know what the Stones want?” she demanded. She did not want to ask outright about Itch, but she did not have time or temperament to be coy, either. “Do you feel hot or cold when the Stones speak? Does it sound like rainbows or silence? Do your teeth or knuckles hurt? Does your scalp itch? How about the back of your eyes?”

K’Masei, who had been looking more and more brightened at her last words. “I don’t know about the rest, but when Ghosts talk to you, I’m told that it makes the back of your eyes itch.”

“Ghosts?” she said hoarsely, “Ghosts? Ice and ashes! The last thing I need now is some freezing fairy tale riding my mind!” She groaned and said beneath her breath, “Itch, is it true?”

Coolness spread behind her eyes, telling her that it was true. Itch was a member of that near-mythical division of life called Fifth People; or, irreverently, Ghosts.

Shuddering, Rheba put her face in her hands and wondered what else could go wrong.

XXII

“What else do you know about Ghosts?” asked Rheba, lifting her head to confront the man who called himself k’Masei the Fool.

“Why? The Stones aren’t Ghosts,” he added quickly, as though to reassure her.

“The back of my eyes itch,” she said succinctly.

“Oh,” he said, looking at her as though she were an interesting specimen and he a collector. “Do you have a Ghost?”

“Yes,” snarling, “and the damn thing itches enough to drive me crazy!”

K’Masei blinked and backed away a bit, startled by her vehemence. “It’s just trying to get you to listen. After a while it will give up and go away. Ghosts can’t talk to us, but they keep trying. They’re harmless, though,” he said soothingly. “We’ve had them as long as we’ve had Ecstasy Stones and they haven’t hurt us yet. The Ghosts, I mean.”

Rheba winced, hardly reassured. The Ecstasy Stones had not hurt the illusionists for eight Cycles, either. But that had changed, drastically. “What else do you know about Ghosts?” she said, not sure that she wanted to hear.

K’Masei half closed his eyes as he concentrated. His lips moved while he sorted through his memories of history and legends in a tow vpice. “Twelfth Cycle? Tenth? No. Ninth. We’ve had Stones and Ghosts since the Ninth Cycle. In fact, legend has it that they came to Yhelle together, riding in the ship of our greatest explorer. I can’t remember her name. She also brought those odd ferns. Did you see the elegant ferns on Reality Street?”

Rheba remembered her delight in the plants and cursed herself as a fool. Apparently she had inhaled a Ghost as well as the fern’s fey fragrance.

K’Masei smiled vaguely and made a dismissing gesture. “But that was a long, long time ago. Nobody knows anything for sure about Ghosts except that they exist and the best time to see them is during a thunderstorm.” His smile thinned. “We don’t know much more than that about the Stones. At least, we didn’t up until now. We though! they loved us.”

“You were wrong,” said Rheba dryly.

“Yes. We believed in our own illusions,” said k’Masei, lips twisting in a bittersweet smile. “Epithet for a race of fools.”

She stared at the veil window, listening to k’Masei with only half her mind. Kirtn was there, unmoving, trapped. And she was here, restless, a Ghost riding the back of her eyes. Friend or enemy, both or neither—what stake did Itch have in this game being played with deadly crystal markers? What do you want from me. Itch?

There was no answer, of course. It was not a yes or no question.

Why me?

But that was the wrong kind of question, too.

Rheba gathered her mind as she had been taught to gather energy. When she no longer felt like laughing or crying or screaming, she asked the only question that mattered to her: Will you help me free my Bre’n?

Coolness came, sweet delight and ... anticipation? Apparently Itch would be pleased to ally herself with a Fourth Person.

Rheba wanted to ask how Itch could help against the compelling perfection of the Ecstasy Stones, but it was the wrong kind of question again. No simple answer. And, perhaps, no answer at all. Itch was as alien as the zoolipt, and even more ignorant of her needs. The best she could hope for was that Itch would stay out of her way when she began to dance. That was more than the zoolipt had managed to do.

Suddenly, blue flashed across the faces of the Ecstasy Stones, riveting her attention on the veil window. Around the edges of the room, faces blurred and moved like statues sunk beneath disturbed water. Something had happened, something that stretched the hold of the Ecstasy Stones over their worshipers.

In that fluid instant Kirtn quivered, a wild animal straining at a leash. His mind was an ache in her bones, his anger and fear and rage, Bre’n rage sliding toward suicidal rez. Then the blue blush faded from the Stones and her Bre’n was motionless once more. She was alone with echoes of agony quivering in her marrow.

But she had learned something. Though the Ecstasy Stones held her Bre’n, he was not pleased by their embrace.

She stared at the screen with unblinking eyes, eyes where fire grew with each breath, each heartbeat, energy streaming into her, answering her unconscious demands. Pale-gold flames coursed over her akhenet lines, telling of energy doubled and redoubled and redoubled again, answering silent dancer commands.

Her hands were gold now, no flesh showing, replete with fire. Yet still she stared at the veil window. If she burned the Redis hall to the last glass tile—

She jerked her head and cried out as Itch attacked her eyes. “Shut up!” screamed Rheba. “I can’t think with you clawing at my eyes!”

Itch retreated, but no coolness came. The Ghost was waiting to see where Rheba’s thoughts might lead. The implication was clear. If Rheba’s thoughts went where the Ghost did not want to go, the itching punishment would return.

Half-wild, Rheba looked at the beautiful hell framed by the veil window. She sensed k’Masei staring al her, wanting to know what she was going to do, but she had no more time to talk to either tyrant or fool. She had to think, and think not as a dancer but as a Senyas engineer.

She knew her own power. She could transform the Redis building to slag, and the Ecstasy Stones with it; hut this was not a Loo dungeon or a Zaarain machine that stood between her and her Bre’n. Think. What would happen to the worshipers when Ecstasy shattered and its shards burned to bitter ash inside their minds? Would the Fourth People die as the Stones died ... or would something worse happen to the captives of Ecstasy?

A cool glow of agreement suffused her eyes, telling her what she did not want to know. Something worse would happen to the captives, to Kirtn. It would have been so much easier simply to burn the hall to ash and gone. If she was not allowed to do that, what could she do?

And what of the Ghost, friend or enemy or both or neither? What could such a being do, a Fifth Person who inhabited some bizarre interface between reality and illusion, part of both and belonging to neither?

She shook her head, turning her hair into pure flames. She must do something. She must do—what? What could she do?” (listen) If she could just—

(listen)

With an anguished sound, she looked away from the veil window where Kirtn was being cruelly slashed by ecstasy, bleeding until he died. Her hands clenched. Even through fire, she felt sharp edges of crystal cutting between her akhenet lines. She opened her hands. Caged worry stones pooled darkly between lines of fire.

Why had she taken them out of her pocket?

(free them)

The idea came to her like a whisper among raging flames. Before she had time to consider, she began taking back the fragile cage around one of the worry stones. At that instant she realized the whisper had come from behind her eyes. Akhenet lines blazed. Instantly she was wrapped in a defensive cloak of energy that was similar to the glowing cage around the worry stones.

“What are you, Itch?” she said between her teeth. “Are you one of them after all?”

No answer came, neither itch nor cool nor that slight sense of waiting she had come to associate with the Ghost’s silent anticipation of the right question.

“Can’t get to me now, can you?” asked Rheba, triumph burning as brightly as fire in her voice.

Nothing answered her except k’Masei, his voice strained, fearful. “Where did you get those?” he asked, staring at the worry stones lying darkly within her fire.

She looked at him with eyes that burned, but he hardly noticed.

“Are they the same?” he muttered, bending over her hands and peering between pale fire and akhenet lines. “They’re the right sizes. They look the same except for the weird gold lines around them.” Excitement rose in his voice. “Are they?” he demanded of her, touching her and burning himself and not caring. “Are they the ones the Soldiers of Ecstasy took out of here?”

He was almost shouting at her, more animated than she had ever seen him. “I got them from the ruins of the Liberation clan hall,” she said.

K’Masei made a long sound of satisfaction. “They’re the same.” He laughed softly. “The same!”

“What do you know about them?” she demanded, holding a radiant hand beneath his nose. She was almost afraid to hope that she had finally found something she could use to free Kirtn. “Are they a weapon?”

He looked at her with wide dark eyes. Excitement drained out of him. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “All I know is that the Stones didn’t want them around or they wouldn’t have sent them away.” He sighed. “Seeing them here ... can’t you understand? It’s the first time something has gone wrong for the Stones.”

Rheba stared at the worry stones in her hands. For a moment she had hoped she had found the answer. Now she would have to defeat the Stones in “another way, one at a time, the way she had done in the burning hall outside.

But there were so many Ecstasy Stones to cage one by one, each sucking away her power. She might do it if the zoolipt did not interfere. Might. It would stop her if she burned too hard, and she would have to burn very hard to cage even a few of those Stones. The zoolipt did not understand that it was better to dance and chance fiery extinction than to live in icy eternity without her Bre’n....

When she looked up, K’Masei flinched away from her eyes. She hardly noticed. “In the hall,” she said, her voice too cold for a fire dancer, “there’s a dead illusion holding a crystal. Bring the crystal to me.”

She did not see him go. She stood watching the veil window through the vague flickering that was her defensive shield against Ghosts. Kirtn had not moved since that one tiny instant when blue raced through the room. No one had moved. Nothing looked alive but the eerie glittering crystals heaped on the mirrored table, bizarre pseudolife building an interface between universes that had never been meant to touch.

Only Rainbow seemed to move. It had become a double strand of uncanny light suspended from Kirtn’s neck. Rainbow scintillated pure colors, but none so primal as the yellow blaze of Bre’n eyes. She had seen that color before, when his mind was poised on the edge of rez, death refined and purified into the color of rage in his eyes.

She remembered Satin, the deadly psi master who had wanted Kirtn to warm her nights ... Satin had said that she could kill Kirtn but not control him. What if the Stones were no different? What if Kirtn tore his mind apart fighting against what he could not control while she stood and watched and wondered what a mad triangle of Ghost and zoolipt and fire dancer could do?

“Here,” said k’Masei, thrusting his hand toward her. “Take it.”

Slowly her eyes focused on him. He was more pale than before, sweating and trembling. There was a wildness in his eyes like a trapped animal. Like Kirtn. With shaking hands, she put all but one of the worry stones into her pocket before she held out an empty palm to k’Masei. He gave her the Stone hurriedly, snatching back his hand before he burned himself on her skin.

“They didn’t want me to give that Stone to you,” said k’Masei, sagging against a chair whose illusions of comfort were all but transparent. Fear and triumph fought to control his face. “But I brought it anyway.”

“Thank you,” she said absently, staring at the two crystals in her hands. One dark, one light, both caged in dancer fire. She thought of the battle in the hall, when she had poured enormous energy into building a cage around an illusion, only to discover that she had trapped an Ecstasy Stone.

Just one small Stone. So much energy to restrain it. Just one. Unwillingly she measured the heaped brilliance shown by the veil window against the Fingernail-sized crystal in her hand. So small. So much effort. There must be a better way to defeat Ecstasy Stones than one by one by one. Perhaps if she knew more about the Stones....

She stood for a long moment weighing each crystal in her hand, stone and Stone, dark and white, despair and killing Ecstasy. In the end she chose the dark, for despair was no stranger to someone who had survived Deva’s death.

“What are you going to do?” asked k’Masei, fear and hope squeezing his voice until barely a whisper was left.

“The Stones use energy. I’m a dancer. I use energy too.” She looked up, saw that he did not understand. “I’m going to learn what makes these crystals live. I’m going to try to untangle their patterns. Energy. That’s all that life is. Energy.”

She saw that he still did not understand. Fssa would have; Fssireemes knew energy as well as Senyasi dancers did. But Fssa was with Kirtn, suspended in killing Ecstasy. And she was here, alone but for a man who was neither tyrant nor quite foot, merely human and very afraid. For a moment she pitied him, knowing what was about to begin.

“Run,” she said quietly, speaking through lips where akhenet lines glowed like fine burning wires. “I’ll give you a minute, maybe two,” and she closed her eyes against the sight of Kirtn torn between rez and Ecstasy, for if she looked much longer at her Bre’n she would burn out of control, “but no more; I can’t give you more time than that.” She looked at the failed illusionist with eyes that blazed. “Run!”

But he still did not understand. He sat, staring at her.

“They won’t let me,” he said finally.

She looked at the sullen stone in her hand and thought of the Soldiers of Ecstasy and Redis illusionists who had fallen to a stone smaller than this. “When f release this you’ll die,” she said simply. “I’d work on the Ecstasy Stone first, but I’m afraid the others will use it against me. I’m too close to them to take that chance. Distance matters to them. They couldn’t control Kirtn until he came here.” She turned the full force of her dancer eyes on the slight man who sat watching her. “Run away, k’Masei. There aren’t any illusions left here for you.”

“Don’t you understand yet?” he said, “I can’t. I’m a prisoner here. Like you.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking away from the eyes of the man she would probably kill. She would not mean to, but he would die just the same. “I have to know what these crystals are. I don’t know any other way to defeat them. I do know f can’t control the worry stone without burning out every wall in the room....”

He tried to smite but could not. He understood now. She would burn as she had when his wall melted. Only this time there would be no wall to protect him from her fire.

She reached for the electromagnetic generator she had used fighting the illusion and his Stone. Energy answered her touch, humming in husky resonance to her need. Apparently she had not damaged the machine when she drained it of power. She hesitated, looking again at the pale illusionist who had the bad luck to be trapped between a dancer and a Bre’n.

“Get in the pool,” she said pityingly. “When I start to dance—”

He was moving before she finished. He remembered how he had first seen her, the center of a firestorm that melted steel. He Sanded in the bathing pool with a splash that sent water curling across the floor, wrapping cool fingers around her bare toes. She hardly noticed, for energy was pouring into her.

She began to burn.

XXIII

The stone lay like a black tear in Rheba’s palm. Slowly, carefully, she thinned the intricate energy barrier that reflected the worry stone’s emanations back on itself. Though she felt nothing to show that the cage was being drawn back into her akhenet lines, k’Masei begin to groan.

Darkness oozed from the stone, absorbing Sight so completely it seemed as if there was a hole in her hand leading to absolute emptiness. There was nothing for her to see, no lines of energy for her to unravel and understand. Baffled, she closed her eyes, straining to see the crystal with other senses. All she found was numbing despair welling up, cold to the bottom of the universe.

The stone ached in her hand, freezing her wrist, sucking light out of her akhenet lines. She took more power from the engine, sending it into overload as it met her demands. She noticed only distantly. Her mind was fastened on the needs of her intricate dance and the heat sink in her palm.

She probed with immaterial fingers of energy, trying to discover the nature of the worry stone, why it was a hole in the bottom of the universe draining away light and life, a shortcut to entropy’s final triumph.

Hints of a black network, power flowing, fleeting outlines of entropy. So close, but she could not see. She needed more power, a deeper dance, her Bre’n’s strong presence.

Fire leaped wildly, upsetting the balance of her dance. She drove all thought of Kirtn from her mind as she had driven all meaning from k’Masei’s cries coming from beyond the flames. She could dance deeply alone. She must, or she would dance alone until the zoolipt let her die.

Power flowed into her, power drawn from a laboring engine. She sensed the limits of her energy source but could do nothing except hope that she learned what she needed before the engine melted itself into a crude metallic puddle. She had to know what the worry stone’s dark lines were. She had to trace that freezing network drawing warmth downward and the stone expanding blackly, consuming everything ... hope frozen eternally in crystalline lattices of entropy and despair, burned-out pathways of light and desire, a cold that frozen time itself into motionless.

The patterns were there, black on black, terrible and clear. She had no words to describe them, but she did not need words. She had her dance.

Energy flowed between dancer and crystal, energy that began to melt the engine’s heart with too-great demands. But the dance must go on. The white building lights dimmed, then went black. Rheba noticed the change only remotely. She was the hot core of fire, needing no illumination but her own.

The worry stone glimmered darkly on her incandescent palm. The stone was uncaged, yet no longer overpowering, exuding only melancholy rather than unbridled entropy. She could cage it again with a casual thought, gold veins braiding over blackness; but she did not. It had taught her what she needed to know, the crystal’s indescribable melding of mind and energy and time. There was no need to cage the crystal again, damming and geometrically increasing energies she could neither name nor control.

She looked at her left hand, where the dead illusion’s Ecstasy Stone waited to be examined in a holocaust of dancer fire. The Stone was... changed. The veil of dancer light that had caged it was gone. The Stone’s polished crystal faces beamed benignly, winking and whispering of her beauty. She was reflected in all the Stone’s faces, her smile outshining their crystal brilliance.

Nowhere could she see the annihilating perfection that was the essence of Ecstasy Stones.

She put stone and Stone side by side in her hand. They were no longer absolute black and terrible light. They were simply rare crystals whose changing bright and dark faces had a symmetry that was reassuring rather than frightening.

(balanced)

Her head jerked as the whisper caressed the back of her eyelids. Her Ghost shield was gone, consumed by the far greater energies that had poured through her.

(others)

The Ghost’s sigh was reluctant, but not as reluctant as Rheba’s hands digging the other worry stones out of her pocket. They were utterly black beneath their fragile cages of dancer fire; and with each second the stones would get blacker, colder, deeper, the quintessence of entropy growing in her hands.

She stared in horrified fascination. She knew that if she released the stones now even she would not be immune to their power. Yet she had no other weapon to use against the massed Ecstasy Stones.

“Where are the Stones, Itch?” she murmured. But even as she asked, she sensed a subliminal pull, a mindless calling that came through the wall where the veil window displayed the agonized face of her Bre’n. “That close?”

Coolness in her mind.

For a moment longer she hesitated, considering whether or not to build another Ghost shield.

(please)

A sense of more than one voice, a chorus of pleas asking, promising, reassuring her that she did not need a shield.

Blue rippled across the veil window like a soundless cry. Close to the mirrored table two worshipers twisted and fell forward, their boneless attitudes telling of death more clearly than any words could.

(hurry)

She did not need the spectral whispers to know that the Ecstasy Stones were forcing the issue. Even as her hair began to lift, seeking other energies to draw on, the faceted universe the Stones were building blurred. When it was clear again, it was somehow larger. And three more people lay dead.

She reached for the electromagnetic engine, but nothing answered. It was as dead as the worshipers who had lived too long at the focal point of Ecstasy.

She sensed another source of power, one she had hoped to avoid. The veil. Its energies were incompatible with dancer rhythms but very powerful. She needed that power. Without it her dance would end before it began and Kirtn would be frozen forever, caught between conflicting universes.

For a moment she gathered her dance, shaping and strengthening it for the violence to come. She could not ease up to the veil, courting its partnership in choreographed moves of advance, touch and retreat. She would have to attack, tearing the veil’s power out of accustomed pathways and sucking it into her own akhenet lines in one terrible instant.

it was the most dangerous way for a dancer to deal with asynchronous energy, but it was the only way she could evade the zoolipt’s jealous guardianship of her body. Once she was in the throes of violent dance, even the zoolipt would know that stopping the dance would kill her more quickly and surely than any veil energy could.

She braced herself with feet wide apart, hands together and cupped around black stones. She knew it was pointless to try to find an easy passage to the Stones’ presence. Their illusions had the force of reality; they could fool her endlessly. She would have to call down fire and walk toward them on feet that scorched glass tiles, fire dancer burning alive.

She reached for the veil’s pouring energies, calling them to her in a soundless cataract of demand and response. She burst into flame, streamers of gold and orange and white writhing as she fought to shape energies she had not been meant to touch. Dissonance ripped through her, shaking her to her core.

The fragile cages on the worry stones thinned almost to nonexistence as her energies were disrupted by contact with the veil. A gout of black gushed up her arms, akhenet lines swallowed in a freezing instant, her energy and life pouring into the black stones in her hands.

Her scream could not be heard above the mindless roar of fire. Energy ripped through her and sank into the stones. She was a living conduit, a flesh-and-bone connection burning between unliving veil and unknowable crystals. For an instant she writhed with the passage of energies that would have consumed anyone but a Senyas dancer; and if it lasted more than an instant, it would kill her, too.

She grabbed on to the tatters of her control, took the incoherent energies and hammered them into cages once again. The onslaught of absolute cold stopped immediately. In a reflex as old as her earliest dancer lessons, she threw away all the energy she did not need for caging the worry stones. She had just enough control left to aim the fire at the wall in front of her.

The wall vaporized. Through the gaping, smoking hole she saw the huge room where dazed worshipers stared at a crystal universe that grew more alien and more powerful with each moment.

Lights in the building blinked and died, though she was barely touching the veil now, only a tangential hold, enough to sustain a controlled dance. But the veil was like a living thing, slippery and changing, never the same twice. It cost nearly as much energy to use the veil carefully as it gave her for her dance.

The floor beneath her feet burned with each step, leaving smoking footprints behind her. She did not notice. Nor did she notice the wisps of ash that were the remains of her clothes drifting in her wake. She only sensed a vague relief as her akhenet lines burned bright and free, unfettered by irritating cloth.

The veil calmed, but she did not trust it. Its energies were as treacherous as the Ecstasy Stones waiting ahead. She used the veil only slightly, only when and as she must.

Coolness nudged behind her eyes, urging her attention and her body forward, to the place where the Stones waited, a bright island in a pale sea of faces. With each forward step, moans came from the worshipers, a sound so low it was more like wind than voices.

She turned aside, not for the moans but because she had seen her Bre’n towering over the worshipers to her left. The instant her path turned away from the Stones, the Ghost clawed at her eyes and whispered frantic negatives.

With a twitch of akhenet lines, she pulled a Ghost shield around her and went to Kirtn. She wanted to hold him, to flow against his hard body and match him flesh for flesh; but she saw the swirl of energy between her Bre’n and the Ecstasy Stones and knew that her touch would kill him.

Dancer fire licked out, tracing the bonds between Bre’n and Ecstasy. Fire raced like a whip uncoiling and snapped around a Stone. There was a high, crystal cry, cut off as she made a familiar cage around the Stone.

The Stones struck back, sucking energy out of their worshipers like a dancer taking power from a core. But cores were not alive. They could not scream and writhe and fall forward on dead faces.

She sent out another streamer of fire, surrounding a second Stone, cutting it off from the blinding brightness of the others. The worshipers groaned as the Stones demanded more. People crumbled to the floor like sand sculptures caught by a rising tide.

Kirtn staggered, torn between two kinds of fire. His raw agony was another kind of fire raging through her, tearing apart her mind and her dance. She knew there was no time left to sift cautiously through alien energies and trap Stones one at a time. Too slow. There were too many Stones and they were getting more powerful even as she danced.

They were killing her Bre’n.

(dark stones)

She looked at the entropy pooled blackly in her hands.

(bright stones)

She looked at the blinding crystal island built on the faces of the dead, Kirtn dying—

(now)

All her choices were gone.

She hurled the caged stones toward the glittering island. She had no hope of their going that far, but they flew from her hands as though called. In the instant before the stones fell on the island, she peeled off each golden cage, loosing the compressed blackness inside.

An endless downward spiral of ice and darkness sucked at her fire, at her mind, at her life. She reached for the chaotic veil energies with every bit of her dancer power. The veil came to her in one blazing instant. She burned savagely, screaming and twisting, consumed. With the last of her control she built a bridge of fire between herself and the alien island. Then she let hell rage through her, a blazing violence of veil energies that forced a melding of black and bright crystals.

Screams beat on her, human and crystalline alike; but she held, ignoring the fire consuming her, refusing to smell her own flesh burning, terrified that the zoolipt would not understand. It was her last gamble, her hope that the zoolipt would know that if she hesitated or turned aside now, she and everyone in the room would die as her parents had died, burned to ash and gone by savage fire.

The universe narrowed to a single arch of fire shaped by dancer imperative. Flesh smoldered between akhenet lines gone wild. Blood ran molten over hot bones. Too much heat, too much power, too much fire for a lone dancer to hold, but there was no choice, no other way but violence and the hot cinders of hope.

Blackness came, an endless rolling thunder, hot not cold. Black fire consuming her. She could not hold any longer but she must hold. She must. Hold. Let it go, dancer. It’s over. Let the fire go.

Kirtn’s voice in her mind was a sweet, living river pouring through her, ecstasy that created rather than destroyed. She let go of everything, let her dance slide like time racing through cool fingers....

He caught her as she fell to the burning floor.

XXIV

Fssa’s head, incandescent with the wild energies he had absorbed, hovered over Rheba. Her akhenet lines were hot. Lightning raced over them, echoing her speeding, erratic pulse. Her hair seethed and whipped, riding the violent currents of force that still roiled throughout the room. Her half-opened eyes were molten gold. She was barely conscious, still shuddering in the grip of the flames she had called.

“Is she all right?” asked Fssa, concern bright in his whistle.

Kirtn could not answer for a moment. He was holding her, letting the dissonant energies she had gathered drain through him. His flesh convulsed with alien currents. He braced himself and endured as Bre’ns had always endured, lightning rods for dancer energies. By the time most of her excess was spent, he was both appalled and humbled by the unruly forces she had called into herself.

When her akhenet lines no longer surged violently, he let out his breath in relief. The worst was over. Yet it would never really be over, not for him. Now he had one more nightmare to break his sleep; he would never forget the moment he woke from killing Ecstasy and saw his dancer burning out of control. He had tasted her death then, ice and ashes in his mouth. Even now he was afraid to believe she was alive. No dancer had ever burned as she had burned and survived.

“Is she all right?” demanded the snake again in shrill ascending notes.

“I think so,” whistled Kirtn, doubt, disbelief and hope rippling in his reply. His fingertips traced her akhenet lines. He was amazed by their number and complexity, the places new lines had ripped through hot flesh and old lines had thickened, deepened, branched and branched again, channeling fire in elegant arcs and whorls. There was no darkness in her new or old lines, no clotted convolutions where energy could pool murderously. She burned clean and bright beneath his hands.

But he kept smelling scorched fur, though she was no longer hot enough to burn him.

He muttered and ran his hands over his body, wondering where he was burning. He grabbed the Fssireeme coiled beneath his chin. He snatched back his fingers and sought a more gentle hold on the snake. If it were not for the zoolipt’s tireless presence, his neck would be cooked. “You’re too hot, snake,” said Kirtn, gingerly unwrapping Fssa and flipping him into the nearest patch of Rheba’s chaotic hair.

The snake made an embarrassed sound and slipped between the hot, silky strands. Balanced on energies only he understood, he slowly brought his body down to a temperature more compatible with his Fourth People friends.

Rheba’s head turned restlessly. Her eyes opened blind gold. She called Kirtn’s name as she had called it when she thought he was dead, when too much fire poured through her, consuming her. Then she felt his presence surrounding her. Despite the pain tearing her body, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in the warm hollow between his chin and shoulder.

“I thought—I thought—” Her arms tightened convulsively. She could not finish, but they were touching, their thoughts clear in each other’s mind.

She thought she had killed him with her uncontrolled fire, a dancer’s most terrible nightmare come true.

“The zoolipt,” she sighed, seeing his neck heat with each breath he took. And her own skin and bones, less painful every second. “It nearly killed me to take the veil all at once,” she said finally, explaining the currents of pain that still washed through her. “But I was afraid the zoolipt would stop me if I did it slowly. I outsmarted the zoolipt,” she said, smiling through lips that cracked and bled.

Zoolipt laughter, smug and warm, a taste like turquoise on her tongue. Instantly her lips felt better.

Kirtn smiled. “Did you? Or did you just teach it the dancer version of cooperation?”

“What’s that?” she said, licking her lips with a tender, tentative tongue.

“When all else fails,” he said dryly, “burn it to ash and gone.

A flash of turquoise in her mouth, then the zoolipt curled back upon itself and sank into the tasty pool of her body, leaving behind a healing benediction. She groaned at the pure pleasure of breathing painlessly. At the moment she could forgive the zoolipt anything—even its inability to cure her of Itch.

“Are you happy now, Ghost?” she murmured.

Nothing answered, neither coolness nor itching, not even the sense of anticipation behind her eyes.

“Ghost?” said Kirtn, bending even closer. Her eyes were cinnamon and gold now, more beautiful than he had ever seen them.

She laughed softly, then coughed because her throat was not yet fully healed. “My mind isn’t burned out,” she said in a husky voice. “Itch is a Ghost.”

Kirtn’s slanted eyes narrowed. “A Ghost? A Fifth People?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“K’Masei told me. He’s not what we thought he was.” Her lips trembled. “I hope I didn’t kill him when I burned my way in here.”

“Tell me about your Ghost,” he said quickly, pulling her mind away from the man she might or might not have killed with her dance.

“It had some connection with the Ecstasy Stones, but I don’t know what it was.” She frowned. “Itch isn’t in my mind anymore. I must have done what it wanted.” She sighed and smiled, relieved that the Ghost’s histamine presence was gone. “Thank the Inmost Fire.”

The sound of familiar voices approached. “I told you,” said i’sNara. She leaned heavily against f’lTiri, but she was smiling. “Where there’s smoke there’s Rheba.”

“Are you all right?” asked Rheba slowly. “There was so much fire....”

F’lTiri smiled and managed an illusion of strength. “We’re fine. Whatever you did to the Stones gave back most of what they had taken from us.”

Rheba pulled herself up in Kirtn’s lap and looked over his shoulder. Everywhere around the room, illusionists were slowly getting to their feet, helping their friends carry out the weak and the dead. There were fewer of the latter than she had expected—and more than she wanted to live with. As the Yhelles worked their way around the room, they avoided the scorched mirror table where Ecstasy Stones had been heaped in all their alien brilliance.

“I’m sorry ...” she murmured, counting motionless bodies with lips that had been peeled raw by fire. Ecstasy had slain most of the dead illusionists, yet she feared she had killed some of them with her violent dance. She had not meant to, but they had died just the same.

I’sNara followed Rheba’s glance, understanding all that the fire dancer had not said. “They aren’t counting the dead,” said i’sNara, pointing to the illusionists who worked to put their world back in order. “They know they had Daemen’s own Luck just to survive the Stones.”

Two illusionists approached, followed by several children. Kirtn recognized Ara. She was holding hands with a man who had i’sNara’s lips and f’lTiri’s knowing eyes. Koro. The younger children ran forward and wrapped themselves around their parents.

Rheba was relieved to see that the children were alive—gaunt, scorched and grubby, but whole. After a few moments they crowded forward eagerly to peer at the furred, muscular man and the strange woman dressed only in radiant akhenet lines.

“Careful,” warned f’lTiri as his youngest reached toward Rheba’s bright hair. “You’ll burn yourself. She’s not an illusion.”

The child, a young girl, looked frankly skeptical. “Maybe. But then what’s that strange-looking thing in her hair?”

Fssa’s sensors wheeled at the child’s blunt question. He was used to Fourth People thinking of him as ugly. It still hurt, though. He retreated behind a curtain of flying hair, concealing himself from childish curiosity.

“Is Fssa all right?” asked Rheba, searching through her hair for the shy Fssireeme. “My dance didn’t hurt him?”

“He’s fine,” said Kirtn. “It would take a nova to light up his thick hide.”

Her fingers found Fssa’s supple body, “You’re beautiful, snake,” she whispered, knowing his vanity had been scraped by the girl’s question. “Even more beautiful than Rainbow,” she added when the snake still did not surface out of the depths of her hair.

Fssa’s head poked out as though to check her words against Rainbow’s multicolored reality. “It’s gone!” whistled Fssa shrilly.

Rheba stared at Kirtn’s chest. The Zaarain construct was no longer hanging around his neck. She felt Fssa begin the transformation that would let him probe the electromagnetic spectrum until he found his odd friend. She gritted her teeth in anticipation of the headache the snake’s search would cause.

“Where’s Rainbow?” she asked Kirtn quickly.

Kirtn looked down at his chest. Nothing decorated it but random patches of burned fur.

At the same instant, a terrible suspicion came to Kirtn and Rheba. As one, they looked toward the mirrored table where Ecstasy had held sway over a race of illusionists. The table was canted to one side. Some Stones were scattered randomly across the floor. Others had somehow managed to form a loose pile. In the center of that pile lay a double-stranded crystal necklace that flashed with every color Fourth People could see.

She shook Fssa out of his mushroom shape and pointed toward the pile of Ecstasy Stones.

“How did Rainbow get over there?” asked Fssa.

“I don’t know,” said Kirtn, pulling Rheba to her feet. He looked at her. “Do you want to know badly enough to have Fssa ask?”

“No,” she said curtly. “Even the thought of Fssireeme-Zaarain communication makes my skull shrink.”

Fssa twisted in silent protest, an act of astonishing restraint for the endlessly verbal snake.

Rheba walked up to the fallen Ecstasy Stones more confidently than Kirtn or the illusionists who followed her. Unlike them, she knew what the crystals had been and what they no longer were. Entropy had balanced ecstatic creation. The crystals were no longer dangerous—as long as the illusionists had the sense to keep them separated.

She and Kirtn stood quietly, staring down at the pile of crystals. Minor good wishes emanated from the Stones, wan reflections of former Ecstasy. For the moment, the Stones were as drained as the humans. It was not the crystals, however, that worried Rheba.

“It’s bigger,” she said, her voice as grim as her flattened lips.

“What?” said Kirtn.

“Rainbow is bigger. That rapacious Zaarain construct has swiped some Ecstasy Stones.”

Kirtn frowned and wished he could deny it, but he could not. There was no doubt that Rainbow was bigger than it had been. There was also no doubt where the increase had come from.

“That’s the end,” said Rheba flatly. “It might have been a Zaarain library once, but all that’s left of it is a thief and ripping headaches for me. Rainbow doesn’t go back on board the Devalon.”

Fssa made a distressed sound. He whistled urgently from his hiding place in her hair. “A few Ecstasy Stones won’t hurt you. Rainbow has them fully tuned and integrated into itself. Nothing bad will happen. You only need to worry if you get too many Ecstasy Stones together. If we take some away, we’re doing the Yhelles a favor.”

Before she could speak, more arguments rumbled out of the Fssireeme’s many-mouthed body. “Rainbow doesn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just rebuilding itself, trying to remember its past. It gets so lonely with no one to talk to. I’m the only one who understands it. Please, dancer, please ...?”

Fssa’s chorus of emotion-drenched Bre’n whistles defeated her. She groaned and gave in as she always had given in to the snake’s musical pleas for his odd friend. At least the silly Fssireeme had not fallen in love with a histamine Ghost.

She snatched up Rainbow and yanked it over Kirtn’s head. With small, musical sounds, the Zaarain construct settled itself on Kirtn’s chest.

“What about the rest of them?” said Kirtn, looking distrustfully at the remaining Stones. “They’re exhausted now, but—”

“Exactly,” said a voice from behind them.

Rheba spun around. “K’Masei! You’re alive!”

The illusionist bowed wryly, “Scorched, blistered and frightened out of the few illusions I had left, but alive—thanks to your advice and the inexhaustible Redis plumbing.” His smile faded as he looked down at the Ecstasy Stones glowing with innocent goodwill. “I’m dividing them into six piles, one for each island city. Serriolia’s Stones will be divided equally among the surviving clans.”

He waited, but no one disagreed. He bent over and began methodically sorting Stones. One by one, other illusionists came to help.

Rheba watched for a moment, then turned away. She had seen enough Ecstasy Stones for this or any other Cycle. Besides, she suspected that where there were Stones, there were Ghosts. She did not want to stand around and accidentally inhale one of the itchy devils.

She looked around quickly but saw nothing more she could do. The Ecstasy Stones were quiescent. The illusionists were home again, as safe as anyone in Serriolia. At the spaceport the Devalon waited, bulging with hopeful slaves. It was time to hold another lottery, redeem another promise, deliver more former slaves to their unique and uncertain futures .

And it was time to get on with her own future, time to find other survivors of Deva, time to find a new planet where Bre’ns and Senyasi could build a new life from the ashes of the old. She looked at the tall man beside her. Her fingertips savored the unique textures of his arm.

“Ready?” she asked softly.

He bent over and drank his dancer’s sweet-hot fire. “Yes.”

As they turned to leave, f’lTiri approached. I’sNara clung to his arm. Their youngest children trailed behind. He bowed formally to her and covered himself with his most obsequious illusion.

“We would like to go with you. Our clan is dead. There’s nothing but illusions for us in Serriolia now. And,” f’lTiri smiled faintly, “as you might have noticed, we were born with more than our share of illusions.”

Surprise flickered in Rheba’s akhenet lines.

“If there isn’t enough room for all of us,” said i’sNara quickly, “we’ll wait until the lottery brings you back this way.” She watched Rheba intently, trying but failing to conceal her eagerness beneath an illusion of indifference.

Rheba looked at the three children. All wore the same expression of burnished innocence. She tried to imagine what life on board the Devalon would be like with three little illusionists popping in and out of reality. She sighed and smiled crookedly. At least her Ghost no longer haunted her. “I already have a zoolipt, a Zaarain construct and a Fssireeme—who am I to choke on three small illusions?”

“Welcome home,” said Kirtn, smiling at the Yhelles. Then he added with a poet’s pragmatism, “Where we’re going, a few illusions might come in handy.”

“Where are we going?” asked the smallest illusion.

“I don’t know,” admitted the Bre’n.

“Then getting there will be very difficult.”

Rheba leaned against Kirtn and laughed weakly. Getting there was never the problem for dancer and Bre’n. Getting out alive was.

“Doesn’t anybody know where we’re going?” asked the child plaintively.

“Nobody knows,” began Rheba, then groaned and rubbed her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kirtn, pulling her close to him.

“My Ghost is back. It knows where we’re going.”

“Wonder if we’ll be safe there,” whistled the Bre’n, a sardonic twist to the notes.

Rheba’s eyes itched furiously, telling her more than she wanted to know.

About the Author

ANN MAXWELL lives in Southern California with her husband, Evan, and their two children. She is the author of a number of excellent science fiction novels and has coauthored many books with her husband on subjects ranging from historical fiction to thrillers to nonfiction. Some of her earlier works have been recommended for the Nebula Award and nominated for the TABA Award. Also available in Signet editions are Ann’s fine science fiction novels, The Jaws of Menu, Fire Dancer, and Dancer’s Luck.