Jack Chalker - Songs of the Dancing Gods

She shrugged. “I think about that sometimes, but, the fact is, I think most street dancers dream of being princesses or queens, and most princesses or queens find the life so boring and so meaningless they fantasize about being dancers. Right now I’m having more fun than I ever did the other way. It might not be the life I’d pick, but it’s better than the one I had.”

“Yeah, for now,” the boy responded sagely. “But, sooner or later, this life’s gonna go sour, and there ain’t gonna be no way for you to go back to bein’ queen again. One of these days you’re gonna wake up and suddenly see that you ain’t slummin’, you ain’t playin’ poor, that’s what you are.”

Joe stirred. “Huh? Wuzzit?” He groaned, rolled over, tried to sit up, made it on the second attempt, and opened his eyes blearily. “Don’t you two ever sleep!”

“Sure, and we did,” Tiana told him. “It’s not morning, love, it’s afternoon, and if we want to make any time at all today we’d better pack up and get started.”

“Huh? No breakfast?”

“We’ll have to get some on the way. We’re cleaned out as it is, but we’ve got a little money now.”

Irv frowned. “You sure it’s safe to go through that town again?”

“Sure, so long as we skirt the riverfront,” Joe answered, still half asleep. He rummaged in his pack and pulled out a small cloth satchel. Opening it, he removed four identical-looking loincloths, picked the one that looked cleanest, and put it on.

Tiana did not mount or prepare her horse. She usually finished up her morning routine with a brisk run of eight to ten kilometers. She wouldn’t have that much this morning, so she was taking what she could get, and at a real run. Those extremely long legs were pure muscle, and she meant to keep them that way. They actually had to urge their horses to a trot to keep up with her.

The port town looked different by daylight, but not improved. It was pretty seedy, really, with buildings of ramshackle wood and well-worn adobe intermixed with no thought or plan. It also smelted of garbage and feces and collective human sweat and was thick with all sorts of bugs, most particularly flies and roaches.

Through it all, the population was about. Away from the port and markets, the hard-packed dirt streets were filled with human traffic; carts going this way and that, donkeys, and lots of bare-chested women in colorful slit skirts, often with one or two small babies strapped to a front halter or carrier on their backs and other naked, dirty-looking toddlers bringing up the rear, carrying huge loads on top of their heads this way and that, trying to avoid the omnipresent horse dung that was always in the streets. The centers of each neighborhood were the communal wells with their pumps and pools held by crumbling adobe masonry. The women there all had kids, and it seemed like every other one was pregnant, even the ones with small crying babies.

It had taken Irving weeks to stop gagging every time he was around places like this. Somehow, all those sword-and-sandal epics on TV had never gotten to what those places smelled like. Now, though, he was almost getting used to it, and, in fact, he was no longer ogling every bare breast he saw, either. Tiana had a point about what was normal one place or another. The amazing thing was that it took so little time to get used to a new normality.

Most of the cafes and bars only opened during normal mealtimes, but they were able to find a small place off one of the squares with a big well that had some leftover stuff from lunch and was willing to let them have it cheap. Without refrigerators, you couldn’t keep much long around here. A trio of girls, the oldest of whom looked to be ten or eleven, seemed to do most things. It had also seemed odd to Irv at first that kids his age and even younger got served beer or wine, but, early on, when he saw a couple of little kids pissing in one of the wells, he understood and didn’t touch regular water again if he could help it.

Of course, when they had come over, Ruddygore had worked some sort of magic that had given him the immunity he’d have if he’d been born and grown up here, and that helped, but there was still a lot of sickness and a lot of young deaths here, and nobody was immune from the galloping runs.

Tiana, at least now, was a total vegetarian; she didn’t even drink milk or eat eggs. If it didn’t grow in the ground, she didn’t touch it. Fortunately, his father had no such problems, and in that, he most certainly decided, like father, like son. He, for one, didn’t know how the hell she got all that energy off cow fodder.

The proprietor was a fat little lady named Esaga who looked a lot older than she probably was. She wore only a rope tied loosely about her waist, with modesty coming from a utilitarian towel hanging over the front and another in back. She had the biggest boobs Irv thought he’d ever seen, and, even though she was really roly-poly, there was no question that she was pregnant and well along in it, too.

“I see what you mean about the ones that shouldn’t,” Irv whispered to Tiana.

“Oh, I doubt if that’s the reason,” she responded in the same low tone. “Most likely she’s got fires going for cooking in back and, considering how hot it is even out here in front, she’d drop from heat back there if she wore much more. The big thing to remember is, here, it doesn’t matter.”

“Madame,” Joe called to Esaga. “How far upriver is it to the ferry across? Do you know?”

“Mercy, sir, I couldn’t tell ya,” she responded in a deep, rich voice. “I been borned and riz right here and never had no time t’go no place else. Keepin’ this place stocked and a-goin’ every day of the week and seein’ t’my kids keeps me too busy fer much else. There’s a prefect house a block down and to the left, there, though. They’d know if anybody does.”

Even Joe had never quite gotten used to that, and Irving thought he never would. Nobody gave you anything here, least of all the government. You worked or you starved, and your kids did, too. Those had to be her daughters working here—they looked like sisters. How many kids had she had, and from what age? And how many survived to grow up? And what did their old man do other than knock up his old lady?

It didn’t seem right, somehow. Worse, it seemed pretty damned rough.

Joe’s soft heart made him try to overpay the very tiny bill, but they would have none of it. To them, tipping was charity, and if they had nothing else, they had their pride and their honor.

And that, of course, was what made this screwy world work in the end. They might not have much or be much, but they took pride in what they did have and what they earned, and so did most others. It was the one noticeable thing that seemed everywhere here, standing out even more because of the lack of such a sense back home. Hell, even the crooks had a code of honor here. In a way, it was the one thing about them that was superior to anybody he’d known back home. Finally, they did manage to give them a little extra money for some extra leftovers and an urn of wine; provisions for the journey north to the ferry.

The prefect house was like a small police station—very small, it turned out. The one guy on duty, sweltering in his threadbare but perfectly maintained fancy uniform, was pretty helpful. Yes, there was a ferry, about twelve miles north if you followed the river road. There were certainly others farther up, but even he hadn’t been farther than the first one and had certainly never ridden on it. No, he didn’t know where it went, but it was definitely somewhere in the Kingdom of Marquewood, since that was all the other shore, and it had to go somewhere worth going or they wouldn’t have a ferry there. He had a map of his own of High Pothique, or at least the coastal section, and all that showed was that they were farther south than they thought they were.