Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

“I have heard this said,” the bartender commented as he began washing glasses. “Men from hereabouts went out and settled New Vraddy.”

“They were the old Taņţamiž, who held the Mandate of Heaven after the Zhõgwó—those you once called the Cinakar.”

The others looked uncomfortable. “I’ve never called anyone Cinakar,” said the bartender, and his careful eye assured the others that they had never done so, either.

The Keener of Blades laughed. “It was the Cinakar who filled Dao Chetty. My friends here fear that if they mention certain things too often, the Names will hear and cause them to vanish.” He turned on his stool and called out into the empty bar, “Cinakar! Names! Commonwealth!” The others flinched.

The Keener laughed again and faced the bar. The bartender smiled and said in a whisper, “I note that you did not call upon Ulakaratcakan, the Savior of the World.”

But the Keener had an answer ready. “So, why push my luck?”

The Fudir said, “Who is Ulaka—” But he was cut off.

“He Who is Not Named is the One Who is to come at the end of days and restore the Commonwealth. But it will be the heavenly Commonwealth, not the earthly one. The Names do not understand that the Nameless One is not a rival Name. He is not even of their aetherial plane. His regency is not of this world. Meanwhile…” And the bartender reared back and spoke in a normal voice, “The clack dancers will come through tonight and entertain us. You will stay, of course, O Fudir?”

Of course he would. If only to learn what a clack dancer was.

They arrived just before sundown in a train of booger-vans with enormous tracked wheels, the sides of which were painted with colorful pictures of men like trees: smiling dancers with skin the texture of bark against a background of bright yellow and red. The folk who emerged from the vans wore veiled, ankle-length gowns that concealed even their feet. And they clacked when they walked.

“Clackers cannot wear ordinary shoes, you see,” the Keener explained to the Fudir, who did not see at all. Everyone filed into the theater, where the troupe’s grounds-crew had already set up the light and sound systems. These were a bad-skinned lot with warts on their faces and hands. “They came from Old Eighty-two,” the Keener said, leading the scarred man to a seat front and center of the stage, “along with the klattriya and all the other itarar .”

Klattriya must derive from kalatiyayttiriya, which meant “to lead a wandering life.” And itarar was a disparaging term for outlanders. Donovan wondered why his host was using fragments of the old Taņţamiž. To show solidarity? To hint that even here there was a clot of the Terran Brotherhood? Donovan leaned toward him.

“Knowest thou aught of the Shadow War?” he whispered in the Tongue.

The Keener smiled. “May each side slay the other, and the de’il eat the last.”

“Hast the Brotherhood chosen sides?”

“Brotherhood? Sahb! What Brotherhood be that?”

Donovan grunted. The Brotherhood was banned across the Confederation and it would be death to admit to membership. But if the Brotherhood had agreed to join the rebellion, as Oschous Dee had claimed, Donovan had yet to find a footprint of that agreement in the words of the Terrans he had bespoken on Zãddigah.

The dancers filed onto the stage and, in unison, dropped their concealing robes.

The farmers clapped with delight, for it is always cheering to look on people more unfortunate than oneself. The clack dancers were naked, though not that one could readily tell. Most of them were covered with warts, but such warts as the scarred man had never seen. They grew in massive clusters—on hands, ankles, torsos, arms, even faces—and indeed endowed the men with the appearance of tree bark. Some of the warts were long and sticklike, others were wide and flat, and all had the appearance of having been carefully shaped and cultured.

Cutaneous horns,said the Pedant, eager as ever to reveal his fund of knowledge. They were discovered by a man named Pappy Loma. An immune system deficiency allows Pappy Loma’s virus to take over the machinery of the skin to produce the horny growths.

The Silky Voice wondered what purpose the old Commonwealth engineers had had in creating a race of such people. Or had they viewed people only as objects, to be experimented upon, and done this simply because they could? The young man in the chlamys winced in pain. How heavy their hands and feet must be!

Then they began to dance. A percussionist used the rodlike growths on his fingers to work a variegated set of drums and cymbals. The dancers picked up the rhythm and began to shake their hands, feet, and bodies. The wide, flat horns on their torsos clapped in tempo; the rodlike horns rattled and rustled, as of shaking a whisk broom. The different timbres and tempos gave the clacking something like a harmony and a counterpoint. It was a wild clattering, a symphony of rhythm. Some dancers wore metallic clips on their horny extrusions, others wore bells, and for variety they would beat on various objects scattered about the stage. Now and then, feet would stomp the stage in unison, and the Sleuth noticed that none of the growths occurred on their soles or palms.

Some of the dancers had only the rods on their hands and ankles and their torsos were otherwise bare, save of moles. When the dance-line parted and let these through for a solo, the farmers in the audience whooped, for these dancers included women.

Donovan was not a man for cringing, and he blamed his discomfort on the young man in the chlamys. He “felt” for the dancers, their discomfort, their embarrassment, their shame at being reduced to making a spectacle of their infirmity.

And yet, said another part of him, they are no more abnormal than sharpies or foxies or Jugurthans. And who are we to tell them they must not make a living as dancers? What other sort of work might they perform, whose hands are as encumbered as these?

And I suppose, said the Silky Voice, that a colony of lepers might form a bell choir for the entertainment of strangers.

But there was something familiar about the rattling of the “drumsticks,” something that reminded him of …

… an old sugar-processing plant gone to seed. The cane has taken root and the wind blowing downriver rattles them like drumsticks. He staggers up on the western bank of the river, and throws himself to the ground among the cane. It is marshy here. He wants nothing more than to lie there and sleep undisturbed until morning. But there is a safe house in the O’erfluss District, if he can reach it.

He looks back the way he has swum and marvels that he had the reserves to cross the river. Flames light the sky over the Secret City, and the hissing of the fires blends with the murmur of the river’s current, the creaking of insects. He hears the distant crackle of bolt tanks and thud of buildings.

Not much left of the Revolution, he thinks.

But whatever you rescue from a burning house is a gain.

Motion through the riverside growth! He recedes into the shadows and slips a knife from his belt. A voice whispers his name.

His true name.

It has been years, a lifetime, since he has heard it. And he recognizes the voice.

In relief, he rises from the shadows and whispers urgently, “Over here.” He waits to see if he has made one last mistake but recognizes the other when he steps forth. “You made it out of the Chancellery, then.”

The other rebel steps forward and embraces him. “Glad to see you got free, chief. Are there any more with you?”