Jack Chalker - Songs of the Dancing Gods

The third of the company was a young man, possibly not much past puberty, dressed much like the man. His skin was extremely dark, the deepest of browns without going to full black, like the Nubians of the Southern Continent, a trace of whose common features could also be seen in his face, yet his steely black hair was straight and long, like the big man’s. He was dressed in dark brown leather briefs and chest straps of the same, studded with ornamental bronze bolts, and matching leather boots.

“Man! This place is boooring!” the lad muttered, loud enough for the others to overhear. “I’m hot and sweaty and smellin’ like a stuck pig. This whole world smells like a horse’s ass! And this damn outfit’s rubbin’ my skin raw.”

“We’ve heard it all before,” the big man responded, not looking back. “As for the outfit, you’re the one who picked that out, remember, against our advice. Most of this world’s a lot warmer than back home.”

“Yeah, I know, I know, but it look baad!”

“ ‘ Looks,’ ” the woman corrected him. “It looks bad. How many times do we have to drill that into you?”

“You ain’t my mother!” the boy shot back. “You got no place speakin’ to me like that.”

“No, your mother let you run wild on the damned streets,” the big man responded. “Now I am your father, and I didn’t. carry you away—you came yourself when I gave you the chance. Your real mother, for what she’s worth, is so far away from us that she, or you, might as well be dead. Tiana’s my wife and your stepmother, and I’ll have no more of that. Unless, maybe, you want to take me on and show me who’s really boss, like last time?”

The boy glared, but did not immediately respond. He was still getting to know his father and unsure that he ever really would, deep down, but he sure as hell knew that the big man was the meanest, toughest dude he’d ever run across. He’d quickly learned that much the hard way and didn’t want to push it. Being a full-blooded Apache trucker was bad enough, but a guy who’d spent the past several years in this world as everything from mercenary to adventurer to ruler of a kingdom and seemed none the worse for it wasn’t anybody you wanted to screw around with. He decided to switch familiar gripes.

“Yeah, but where’s all the fun in this hole? I thought there’d be dragons and monsters and all that Conan stuff. What we seen most of is proof that white folks can live even worse here than black folks in Philadelphia.”

“They’re here,” the big man assured his son. “You’re just not ready to take them on yet.”

“That’s what parents always say, ain’t it? You’re ready, and you say you got all them big connections, but we’re movin’ ’round here and livin’ like runaways and eatin’ worse.”

“I’ve had my three big quests,” the father responded. “I’m a little tired of nearly getting killed every ten minutes. I needed a break. You wait until we run into something nasty. Then remember your complaining.”

“Yeah, well, it—it’s got to be better than Ms. Man! What a place! No electricity, no runnin’ water, no flush toilets, no cars, no guns, no rap, no rock, no soul, not even no TV!”

“You want out? Back to the streets? Back to running drugs for some street gang until somebody didn’t like the way you looked at him and blew you away? No future but death at a real young age? You didn’t have a future, Irv—you didn’t even have a present. The way you whine and complain, somebody in that crowd you ran with would’ve knocked you off within a year or so, anyway. You know it, and I know it.”

The boy looked sullen. “So?”

“So cut the crap! In a couple of days, we’ll reach the river, and not long after that we’ll be at Castle Terindell. Still nothing supermodern, but comfortable. Lots of good food, featherbeds, and the like.”

“Yeah? Why we goin’ there, though? Just for laughs or what?”

“Uh-uh. Time you went to school, son.”

“School! You ain’t said nothin’ ’bout no school!”

“Not the kind you’re thinking of, although, God knows, you sure could use one. The same kind of school I once went to at Terindell. Survival school, you might call it. Learning how to survive to my age around here.”

The boy was suddenly interested. “You mean fightin’? Like swords and knives and shi—er, stuff like that? O-boy!”

“I mean stuff exactly like that. Don’t get your hopes too high, though, tough boy. We’re gonna see just how tough you really are. And if you wash out, you might have a real future as a stablehand shoveling horse shit for the rest of your life.”

“Hey! Wait just a damn second! You sayin’ if I flunk out of this hero school I’m a nothin’? I might just not like it.”

“Oh, I guarantee you won’t like it, at least at the start,” his father assured him. “But nobody flunks out. You keep at it until you get it and you pass—or you get killed trying or you quit and walk out. The only one that flunks you is you. If you can’t hack this, then you can’t hack it anywhere on your own in this world, and anybody—I mean anybody— who can’t handle himself out here on his own winds up practically owned by somebody else. You’ve seen that already. There are only three kinds of people here. The rulers, maybe five in a hundred folks; the ruled, which is ninety-four point nine of the rest, and that tiny one in thousands who’s an independent like me. You weren’t born royal and -you haven’t shown any talent for magic, so being independent or one of the ruled is all you can get. And of the ruled, if you can’t fight, can’t read or write the chicken scratches they use here, and have no skills, you shovel shit. Hell, son, somebody’s got to do it.”

“Not me!”

“Yeah? Well, you prove it. Because if you walk, that’s the best you can hope for and I won’t stick around to help you do it. Do that or you’re dead. Those are the choices if you walk. Remember that.”

Irv seemed to have lost a lot of his confidence all of a sudden, but he still maintained a brave front. “ You got through it, didn’t you? If you can do it, I can do it!”

“Wagons coming, Joe,” Tiana cut in.

Joe pulled his horse up and looked at the oncoming traffic. It was less wagons than a wagon train, coming single file, pulled by massed teams of horses.

“Man!” Irv swore. “Whatever they’re carryin’, it’s heavy as gold and big as a subway!”

The boy wasn’t far off the mark in his comments on the load. When they got right up to the lead wagon, they could see the eight-horse team straining, the driver and brakeman working constantly to keep them straight, balanced, and in line.

“Hello!” Joe shouted to them. “What are you hauling?”

“Sorry! Can’t stop to chat!” the brakeman shouted back. He. gestured at the load in back of him. “ Rules change sheets! If we stop, there’ll be two more revisions of these right in back of us!”

Irv looked at the wagons. Five… six… seven of them. Each the size of a locomotive, or so it seemed. He knew what the Rules were—the crazy books of laws that governed everything and everybody in this nutty place. But— “What’re Rules change sheets?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“You know the history,” Tiana replied as they made way and watched the huge train go by. “In the Creation, Husaquahr was created in a kind of backwash, with the leftover energy from the creation of your world. The Creator Himself took charge of Earth, but He delegated Husaquahr to the lesser angels who weren’t as thorough or competent. They mated with the ones here and produced the first in the line of sorcerers, people of great power who were half human, half angel.”