Attanasio, AA - In Other Worlds

The drunken sky, the winds motherly with grass scents and warm showers, powered glad feelings in him; and he affably did whatever he was told. Also, he had time to accustom himself to the seemingly endless depths of the Werld. Carl had always been nervous about heights and had avoided balcony . seats, Ferris wheels, and plane trips. But after a while on deck, he was enthralled by the rhapsodies of distance, and his fear dwindled.

Knowledge came not only from what the eld skyle had given him but also from those around him. A

kindly-face Foke physician taught him how to tell time. Units less than a week-twenty-five meals-did not officially exist; 5,555

"weeks" equaled one full rotation of the gravity rainbow that covered the Werld. The magnetic pole of the black hole, which was also the Rim, never varied in relation to the Werld, so with a compass one had a polar referent to watch the precession of the horizon's thin colors.

From other passengers, Carl learned that the zotl were in firm command of the Werld, and that they allowed the Foke to exist in exchange for their regular harvest of dream boles. The boles sedated a large segment of the herd city's populace and made zotl dominance easier to take and administer.

When the glass cupolas and silver minarets of Rhene appeared among the flamingo-tinted clouds, Carl was comfortable with the Foke way. Even Allin seemed less hostile.

Carl had learned that Allin had been a free child-that is, he was raised in a tribal commune, a rougher life than the family children brought up by parents or other individuals. The Foke who had died helping Carl were the people he had grown up with. Carl's understanding of that resolved a lot of tension between them.

Rhene was a city of terraced skyles, monorails, and geometric domes opalescent as serpents' eyes. The undersides of these skyles were netted with nacreous flares and web lights, and Carl's first vista of the city had an ethereal effect on him.

The air under the city glinted with the lights of individual flyers.

Carl had adjusted himself to his fate by this time, and he was eager to dock. Diatom-like flyers guided the barge into a colossal sky hangar of ribbon-contoured metal and moon-green spotlights. The Foke's wooden ship was primitive among the metal vessels honeycombing the dock, their shark bodies polished to black mirrors.

The technology amazed him. At the dock, androbs, squat mechanical stevedores, unloaded the holds. Scooters carried people across the wide marmoreal mall of androb-directed traffic to the clearing pavilion. Crystal parabolas arched through twenty stories of offices, coruscated' with elevators and jewel-lighted rampways.

"How many people are here?" Carl wanted to know.

"In this part of the Werld, millions." Disdain manacled Allin's face. "This is a matter I wish to conduct as quickly as possible, dropping, so stop gawking and keep up with me."

Getting through the clearing pavilion was not as easy as Allin had expected. Queues of passengers and baggage-laden androbs clogged the waiting mall, and Allin grumbled impatiently to himself.

The mall, like everything Carl had seen in the Werld, was lush with natural vegetation. Green birds flitted through the trees that lined the rampways, and waterfalls clear as wind whirred between the levels, slapping among rockgardens where scarlet grass shuddered in a breeze of mist and mudscents. But the tameness, the precise order of the place, was disturbing after such a long journey through the wild spaces.

Carl was gaping with apprehension at this city woven into the terrain when he noticed a woman standing at the lower level on a path among red and blue algal pools. She was a long, coltish woman in a black-and-coral shift. And she was staring at him.

That was not unusual, actually, since he was ganglier and ruddier than everyone else. But she wasn't goggling at him so much as looking for recognition from him. A tribal crowd carrying seedheads mounted on whip poles swept by her, blue birds flashing about them. After they had passed, she was gone.

Allin was seated on the androb in line ahead of

him, his concrete-colored eyes glazed over. Carl watched tiny, blue-bottomed mandrills prowl a brake of bamboo and reminisced nostalgically about Manhattan, where waiting in line was a way of life. He slept awhile among the baggage on the androb behind him, dreamed erotically of confronting Sheelagh with his new body and of her tugging at his clothes. He woke to find himself being stripped by coilringed metallic tentacles.

Carl howled and writhed, and Allin's big hand clapped onto his shoulder. "Ease up, dropping." His voice glinted with humor, and Carl knew then something unpleasant was going to happen.

"This is your medical exam. It's required before I can sell you.'

They were in a tiny room of flower-twined partitions, a padded slant table, and the green glaring lens of the tentacled ceiling. All of Carl's orifices were probed, blood was drawn from his arm, skin scraped from his abdomen, and the hair shaved from his face.

He saw himself in the androb's chrome surface, and again he didn't know himself. The face staring back at him was longboned and pugnacious.

Silk-textured garments tailored for his precise dimensions emerged from a wall panel. They were a white tunic shirt, loose black trousers, and corded leather sandals.

Carl dressed and was lea by Allin around the blossomed partition to a garishly lit chamber, reminiscent of a SoHo art gallery.

A group of a dozen people stared at him and began a swift numerical exchange. He was being sold.

The bargaining went quickly. Within moments, a bald and sinewy little man was clasping to Carl's wrist a sturdy strap attached to a thickly corded leash. The leash was metal-clamped to his belt.

Allin was pleased. "You've earned Tarfeather enough fiber cord for another counsel tent and two tree homes."

"That much?" Carl peered into his owner's coriaceous face. "What makes me worth anything to you? I don't have any skills. You haven't even interviewed me."

He looked at Carl distrustfully and then at Allin.

"Doesn't he know?"

"You'll be taking the place of Picwah's son in the lottery"

Allin informed Carl with his pyknic leer, "as well as working as his servant for one tenth of a cycle. After that, if you're still alive, you're free."

"Thanks."

`As part of the deal," Allin added, " I promised your lord Picwah that if you caused him any trouble I would cut off your ears." He grinned like a wolf. "You know, of course, I'd have traded you to the zotl themselves for a Foke. It's your fortune that the last prisoners were taken on to Galgul before we arrived. Farewell, dropping. Work hard."

Picwah snapped at Carl's wrist leash. "Come on-I have much to do."

"Wait!" The command cracked from across the gallery through the veils of muttering from other negotiations.

Carl heard it and looked. Picwah didn't and kept going.

His leash jerked taut against Carl's immobility, and the scrawny man was yanked to his haunches.

`Are you acting up already?" he almost-screamed, popping to his feet and glaring at Carl.

Carl thumbed his attention to the approaching figures. Ile woman he had seen earlier by the algal pools was rushing across the chamber. In her wake were two blue-robed, wide-bodied Foke.

"A wizan," Allin noted and dutifully bowed.

The fragrance of rose madder accompanied her as she stepped up to Carl, her gray-streaked eyes flecked with redgold regarding him as if his face were a mirror.

Carl played his gaze over her oak-brown hair and

the lynx angles of her face. "Evoe," he guessed in a wishful whisper. ,

Surprise swung across her face. " I do know you,' she breathed back. "But from where?"

The guards were watching her with anxiety. "How do you know her personal name?" one of them queried Carl.