Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

“I’d rather start working if that’s all right?”

“Sure, it’s all right. If you feel up to it. Oh! My name’s Cinnal Samineh, I’m Geri’s cousin and one of her isyas.” She whisked to the door, turned. “I’ll bring the clothes soon as I can find some that’ll fit, you’re kinda tall.” She darted away.

Aslan listened to her sandals pattering lightly on the reed mats. Nice child. She touched her lip, winced from the bare flesh where the skin was split. Isya. Isya. I remember seeing something… yes, Tra Meclin’s Hordar dictionary. A kind of blood sisterhood. Or oath-sister. Closer than kinship. Five to eight per isya. Wonder how close he comes to being right? Wonder if I can spot the other isyas in the group?

She picked up one of the krida and bit into it. Yum, rather like fried shrimp. But her mouth was too sore to enjoy it and the salt on it stung the cut on her lip. Some day, some day… She nibbled cautiously at more krida. Some day I’m going to pull that shithead’s teeth and make him eat nuts or starve. She grinned at the image, winced again as the stretching widened the cut. Ram sandburs up his asshole.

Carting a faldstool on a strap, Cinnal Samineh took Aslan on a slow tour of the village. She’d unfold the stool, sit Aslan on it and bring her anyone she wanted to talk with. There was a very different feeling to the village, as if everyone on the barges and in the boats had been let out of prison; the Farmers were still wary but inclined to be as friendly as they could in the circumstances. Aslan responded. This was the atmosphere she was accustomed to; for a moment she could dream herself free again, working again, studying a culture she found intriguing though it wasn’t her usual area of concentration.

The village was compact and complex, recycling was almost an art form and certainly a passion. You will be back, don’t trash your homeplace , they told her. All things are God, give them honor , they said. They said these things lightly, amused when she sighed as she heard them for the tenth time, but under the lightness they were very serious about this, Pradix wasn’t a prophet confined beneath a roof or shut between the covers of a book. Wistfully, filled with regret because she couldn’t share it, she observed their deeply internalized belief and made her notes. Her usual objectivity was gone. She wanted these people set free. She wanted that even more passionately than she wanted the Unntoualar protected from the foul things being done to them. When she was lying on the bed in the room they gave her (Cinnal Samineh insisted she rest for an hour after lunch and Aslan was tired enough to make her argument perfunctory), she contemplated her own reactions, picking them to bits, a habit of hers that was one of the things her mother used to flay her with. Identifying, that’s what she was doing. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Maybe because they liked her. Maybe because they were intelligent and interesting people with a basic kindness to them. Maybe because the Huvved she’d met were such miserable oppressive dreeps, the kind of people she’d hated from the moment she could walk. Her foster mother was a toe-licking social climber who ignored the contempt of the people she was trying to associate with and the callous way they used her, then dropped her. The Huvved were using her with that same kind of contempt for everything she valued about herself. Using her learning and her intelligence to further enslave these Hordar. She’d hated that when it was first proposed, now she loathed herself for giving in to Parnalee’s arguments, for letting herself be seduced by the work. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, what she could do, but she wasn’t going to log data any longer, nothing accurate anyway. Uncomfortably aware of the naivetй her mother deplored, she frowned at the ceiling, was distracted momentarily because she noticed for the first time the fine plaster-work, it was sculpted into intricate geometric patterns, then scolded herself back to the problem she was contemplating. Adelaar wouldn’t hesitate to cook the data and she’d know just how to do it indetectably. That was the problem. She had to fool Tra Yarta who knew these people a lot better than she ever would and Parnalee who no doubt could smell a fix from fifty paces. Intellectual integrity was devalued currency these days. She had a thought and started laughing; she had Efi Musvedd to thank for the time she needed. He was worth something after all; Tra Yarta got what he wanted, yes, but he lost far more than he gained. I hope, I hope, she told herself, she held up both hands with all her fingers crossed, a little trick she hadn’t practiced for a while. An omen, she thought, this is going to come out right. She laughed again and let her hands fall.

What do I need? Paper and pen, I can’t do this in my head and I can’t trust the computers here. She rubbed at her temples. It’s been what, ah… thirty years since studied sociometrics, I need references… Out of the question. Have to depend on my memory and my smarts, built up from the bases I’m familiar with. Rule of thumb. I hope my thumb’s not broke. I always thought I was cleverer than most, have to prove it now… Parnalee said he’d wring the neck of anyone who messed up his chances. His chances! She thought about what Gerilli Presij had told her. That was the end of her escape plans, she wasn’t getting aboard any ship liable to be vaporized the moment it got beyond the atmosphere. Over the hill and off, she thought, Parnalee or not, soon as I can manage it. Hmm. One of the cities of the Littoral. I need to go there next. Ayla gul Inci. Why not? I can make a good case for it; that’s the city where the Surge began. Must be some old memories there. Hmm. Maybe I can find a crack to crawl through. Yes. All right. From now on I’m working for me.

Cinnal Samineh flattened her hand on the desalinizer. “We bought this about ten years ago. It gives us all the fresh water we need.” She slanted a sly glance at Asian. “A tech slave the Imperator brought in built them for him. One of the few good things that came with the slaves.”

“What did you do before then?”

“Let me show you. It’s just next door.”

It was a long narrow barge with slat blinds over lots of glass. Cinnal Samineh cleared one section so they could look inside. Water was being pumped along deep, glass-lined channels, around and past thick stands of remarkably ugly, twisted plants; the stems were broad and pulpy, the leaves were stiff, dotted with thorns, succulent, coated with a thick waxy substance. They were brilliantly colored, red and purple, orange, gold and blue-green, poison colors. Aslan inspected them and decided she wouldn’t go in that place for a ticket home; she wasn’t about to suck in any air they polluted with their exudates and exhalations.

“Saltplants,” Cinnal Samineh said. “They extract minerals and salts from seawater. It’s slow but sure; by the time they’re finished with it and we pass it through a bit more filtration, it’s almost pure enough to drink. We used it for washing and that kind of thing, what we needed for drinking water we passed through a still. Even now, on Holy Days and Jubilations we drink water from here, not from the machine. Sort of celebrating the past and linking with the future. You see, don’t you?”

“I see.”

Cinnal grinned. “We have other reasons for keeping this going. Those leaves give us some of our best dyes. Poisonous, sheeh! you have to be very careful handling them, but the results are worth it. And the roots, you can’t see them, but they are very, very important. Our best filters are made from the pulp and membranes in those roots. Matter of fact, the Zerzevah Farm, it’s out around the bulge south of here, that’s their main source of income, their merm bed was wiped out a couple storms ago and the new bed won’t be producing for a decade or more.”