Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

Her neighbor on the right was a small fair woman. Huge eyes in an oval angular face with prominent cheekbones. Energetically thin. Sitting, she seemed in flight like some birds Aslan had known. Her hands were narrow and bony, rather too large for her slight form though she managed them gracefully, her feet were narrow and bony, distorted by the stigmata of a professional dancer. She was turning a music box around and around in her fingers though no sounds issued from it, if she disliked the dull muttering silence in the hold (the tension in her body and the fine-drawn look of her face suggested that she did), the music of the box would remind her of the restraints that kept her tethered to the cot, so she left it silent. Her mouth twitched into a smile so brief it was like the flash of a strobe light. “Kante Xalloor,” she said. Her voice was deep, husky, easy on the ears. “Dancer. Bolodo must have kept you stashed somewhere?”

“Aslan aici Adlaar. Xenoethnologist.”

“Yipe. What’s that when it’s home?”

Aslan tapped the Ridaar unit. “Sitting around listening to native remnants tell stories about how the world began.”

“Weird.” Xalloor looked past her at the sleeping youth. “You know him?”

“No. I don’t know anyone here. Back there, I saw four walls and an exercise mat. Bolodo didn’t want me talking about some things I got mixed up in.”

“Snatched you?”

“Not exactly. Bought me out of a trashing; I suppose I should be grateful, the maggots that did it were going to top me. You?”

“I was on Estilhass, I’d finished a situ with the Patraosh and had an offer of another on Menfi Menfur. Maybe you know the feeling, mishmosh and jigjag, hard to sleep, no reason to stay awake, nothing to do but wait for the ship to take me off. There was this stringman I met in a bar one night, I woke up in restraints on a Bolodo scout, no stringman in sight, just a pilot who looked in on me to see I was still alive, then ignored me. He wore Bolodo patches, made no mystery about who had me, which was hellishly depressing if you thought about it, and I didn’t have much else to do the next bunch of weeks till we got to the substation.” She shrugged with her whole body, a vivid electric summation of her feelings. “We’ll see what we see when they drop us. Him you were watching, he’s called Jaunniko, he says he thumps rocks for a living.” Her thin brows wriggled skeptically, then rose in wrinkled arcs as Aslan nodded agreement. “The big lump on the other side of him, the one with his nose in a book, that’s Parnalee, he’s always reading. He says he’s out of Proggerd, that’s in the Pit, the Omphalos Institute whatever that is, he got drunk the first night in the pens, he had a bottle of tiggah in his cases; he says he’s the best designer in fifty light years any direction, didn’t say what he designs. The three women next him, they’re a group, the Omperiannas, you heard of them? Ah well, it’s a big universe. They were my music the time I was touring the Dangle Stars. The little bald man who’s doing all the scribbling, the one who looks like he’s made of tarnished brass, he’s Churri the Bard.” She arched her mobile brows and converted her limber body into a question mark as Aslan’s eyes snapped wide. Aslan twisted around, leaned forward and stared at her father. Curiosity seethed in her and a bitter anger against him for abandoning her, though she knew it was idiotic to think like that, he didn’t know she existed; Adelaar had been careful to tell her that, her mother had a sentimental attachment to him which was both amusing and peculiar in a woman so icily unsentimental in other ways. That the man who’d fathered her could be sitting here so close to her, absorbed in his tablets, completely ignorant of their relationship, was absurd, it was the god she didn’t believe in playing games with her life. She sighed, settled back, gave Xalloor an encouraging nod.

The little dancer grinned, shrugged, a ripple of her body that said, what the hell, it’s your business. “I got Tom’perianne to set one of his poems to music, Lightsailor, you know that one?”

“I’ve read everything I could get hold of.” It was the truth, it was a way of getting close to her father without intruding on his life, something she was afraid of doing, afraid of what she’d find, afraid she wouldn’t like him, afraid she would, afraid he wouldn’t like her, she suppressed a shiver as she. contemplated weeks, maybe months in this sealed womb, having to look at him and wonder…

“It made a great dance. I got the Dangles Tour out of it. Why Bolodo snatched him, I can’t imagine. I mean if he ever gets loose and raises a stink, they’ve got more trouble than a swarm of vores up their backsides.” She shivered. “Don’t look good for us, eh?” She shivered again, exaggerating her fear, fighting it that way, a glint of laughter in her eyes as she watched herself perform, then she went back to naming the captives, those close enough to be visible in the pervasive blue gloom.

Bolodo Man live in love

gold fine gold

Bolodo Man live in love

pearl and emarald.

Churri’s rich resonant baritone filled the hold; around, beneath, above it, the Omperiannas improvised a driving support (Tom’perianne, lectric harp, Nym’perianne, tronc fiddle, Lam’perianne, the flute).

Tribulation, sufferation

Boring blaggard Bolodo Man

Sing I sing thee sing we

Bloody bane for Bolodo Man

Get cold get old, senility

Cankers chankers dropsy pox

Virus venin worm and tox

Bolodo Man live in love

gold fine gold

Bolodo Man live in love

pearl and emarald.

Kante Xalloor stretched her restraints to the utmost, standing on her cot, dancing with the twanging ties, her body singing a wordless answer to the chanted curse.

Malediction, imprecation,

Jerk his melts, the B’lodo Man,

Mockery, indignity, calumny and ban

Rash and rumor, rancid liver,

Bob Bob B’lodo Man

Rot and rancor, snarl and spoil

Ulcer, abcess, fester, boil,

Epilepsy, apoplexy,

Indigestion, inflammation,

Fecculence and fulmination

Dilapidation, moth and rust

Treachery, atrocity, malignity and lust

Bolodo Man live in love

gold fine gold

Bolodo Man live in love

pearl and emarald.

Jaunniko snapped thumb and forefinger, diving headlong into the music; when Churri paused and looked at him, he began his contribution:

Wa ha wa hunh

Sibasiba Bird

Come out

Come from the river come

Wa ha

The bird come from the river

Wa hunh

Sibasiba

Eat gold

Eat gold

Eat gold

Eat fat greedy soul.

The bird come from the river

Eat those pearl those emarald

Eat you bare, Bolodo Man

Bare ass, Bolodo Man.

Churri laughed, his booming laughter filling the hold, filling that echoing impossible space.

Execration, vituperation

Call your curses, raise them high

Bolodo Man live in love

gold fine gold

Bolodo Man live in love

pearl and emarald

Fulmination, imprecation

Curse him up and

Curse him down

Curse him neck and

Curse him thigh

Curse him heel and