Day by Night Page 16

  Presently, the voice called from the walls again, giving names and areas of work, and certain people went away in response, as they had before.

  Vel Thaidis sat by the pillar. Sick and spent, her hands loose on the dusty stone, bound in the heat as if in a scalding bandage, she seemed to metamorphose and to die.

  So I shall die. Let me die. I am glad to die.

  She thought of the proffered gun and the surge of survival within her, and felt no surge any longer.

  The wine was still coming in, and boiled aqua; and later some food was brought from the kitchen on the hespan side of the market.

  Now and then, the voice called names and places.

  If it calls for me, how can I discover the street?

  But she did not really believe it would call for her.

  Every hour clocks all over the Slum clanged and roared simultaneously.

  Eighth hour of Jate. Twelfth. Fourteenth.

  Was she asleep or awake? Alive or dead?

  Was she Vel Thaidis Yune Hirz? Had she ever been?

  Abruptly she knew what the throw game in the circle entailed. They had prized some small insects from the cracks between the paving of the yard, and were throwing shards of pottery or rock to try to hit them as they scurried, betting on which would be struck, and whether killed or only maimed.

  The wanton viciousness was a predictable product of the vicious treatment fate had meted out to the Zenens of the Slum.

  Vel Thaidis shut her outer lids.

  At once Ceedres Yune Thar stood two hundred feet above her, and mountains flew from his hands to smash her spine.

  * * *

  • • •

  Not a mountain, but a shard, flung lightly in the sixteenth hour, caught her shoulder and roused her.

  A man was grinning at her from the insect-game circle. He was like all the rest of the men, burned-looking, unattractive, ragged, dirty, thin as sticks. Raw stripes showed on his naked arms—memento of a recent whipping, the legal penalty for minor theft.

  “Zenena!” he cried, as her eyes opened. “Go and get me some wine.”

  She stared at him blankly. Her mouth was parched, and no speech would come, even if she had any prepared.

  “I can’t go,” the man assured her. “These next throws are mine, and I’m winning.” Then he pushed out of the circle and came over and stood above her as Ceedres had. “Stinking gods,” he said, “you’re nice as a J’ara girl. Here’s a credit for the wine,” he spun it, a tiny tag of red plastum, into her lap. “Take a sip yourself, if you like.”

  It was like another dream, for truly he did not seem real to her. Once more he misinterpreted her quiet.

  “I’ll listen out for you, if it calls you. Though it’s nearly Maram; there won’t be many calls now. What name?”

  Perhaps the voice had called her while she slept.

  “Thaidis,” she said.

  She looked at the red tag, and at his skinny blistered legs. Obviously he would not go until she obeyed him. She wondered if he had been present when Dina Sirrid shouted “Princess!” And if he meant to hurt her.

  Then he leaned down and yanked her to her feet, almost pulling her arm from its socket. Impatient, he scolded: “Pretty but slow-witted, eh? Can you remember? The wine pitcher across the market?”

  “All right,” she said.

  She recalled she must slouch and lean as she went.

  There were fewer people about on the plateau. Many of the awnings were being dismantled and the sheds closed with unmechanical bolts and cage structures of steel. The pens of beasts were vacant. Of course, the man had said it was almost Maram. Areas such as this market would not keep J’ara. She crossed over and went to the iron arch from which the jar-symbol hung. The man with the barrel was still there. He grabbed the tag from her without inquiry, ladled the wine into a plastum cup, and thrust the cup, slopping its mauve scum, into her hand.

  The drink, disgusting as it appeared, caused her parched throat almost to close with its thirst. Ignoring the film and the shade of the wine, she swallowed a mouthful. Then had to fight to retain it, as it gnawed into her empty stomach. After a moment, the nausea faded, and she was stronger. She swallowed another mouthful, then bore the cup back to the yard of the house of labor allocation.

  The man was already throwing his shards. Each throw was a killing hit. Curses went up, and tags were thrust into the man’s hand. He turned away, brown teeth still showing, saw Vel Thaidis and ran over to grab the cup and drain it.

  “I thought you might have stolen my wine tag,” said the man. “I was thinking of going for a Lawguard. I yet might. You drank half my wine.”

  “You told me I could drink,” she said.

  “Sip, I said. A sip.”

  “It’s vile.”

  “It’s all there is. Was it better in your sector, then?”

  “You know I come from another sector?”

  “Oh yes. No Jate girls that look like you in hest-Uma. I’d have spotted them. Got to know them.”

  The wine fire was going out inside her.

  She had been trapped into the company of this man, through fright and confusion.

  “Did it call my name?” she asked, not meeting his eyes.

  “No. No work this Jate. Maybe next Jate.”

  “Thank you,” Vel Thaidis said. She turned to walk away, and the appalling blistered hand she had been dreading fastened on her wrist.

  “Where are you off to?”

  She faltered on the words cubicle, apartment, home. She could not even recollect the way.

  “I’ve got a lot of credits,” the man said. “Let’s share a J’ara, you and I. I’ll buy you food—you haven’t a credit to spit on, I think. Yes? And then you might come to like me.”

  “I’m not a prostitute,” Vel Thaidis said. Absurdly, she was angry; in the midst of fear and uncertainty, fury made her glare at him.

  “You look like one,” said the man. “You can always tell a whore by her looks. A haughty J’ara girl, that the aristos go with.”

  “If that were the case, I wouldn’t be here, seeking common labor.”

  He smiled rather foolishly.

  “I heard what Dirri yelled after you.”

  “Dirri. . . . ”

  “Dina Sirrid, the old Instation doggabitch. She said ‘Princess,’ which means you had a lover who had techs, or you had them—everyone knows that. So I suppose you won’t sleep with me for the fee of a meal.”

  “Release my wrist,” Vel Thaidis said.

  “Go to hell then,” the man said. “Fall in the jet-black land.”

  Conjured by these terms, the upper room of the Thar border temple manifested itself in her brain. The black air, the white flame, and Ceedres’ face, drawn by that flame.

  Then she was lying on the ground, and the man was kneeling by her, sadly stroking her forehead. He stank faintly, as the whole Slum did, of chemicals, sweat and live cooked flesh. But his eyes were astonished under their polarizing lids, and the hand was surprisingly gentle.

  “I didn’t mean it, girl,” he said. “I said fall, and you fell.”

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I want to give you a meal. Not for a fee. Just—I’ll just give it you. I can’t force you, girl. You’d tell the Law, wouldn’t you? I’ve had one whipping this tenjate. No more, I thank you.”

  “Why?” Vel Thaidis said. She had been taught an important fact. No human aided another without a reason.

  “Because I’d like to watch you eat,” the man said, strangely. “I’d like to watch you, that’s all.”

  Weakly, because she was denied tears, she laughed.

  * * *

  • • •

  He bought another cup of wine and made her drink half of it. It gave her the vitality to climb up a long street
with him, out of the smolderings of the lower city, to a building of many-colored brick. It was a J’ara eating house, gaudy but rough, for the patrons were natives, not aristos. There were no windows. Inside it was a hot somber box lit by irregular batches of anteline tallow candles that burned from the ceiling in a sour greenish drizzle.

  There was no choice of menu, unless you were in credits and could afford a steak. The man ordered steak, fruits, and bloodale, another of the potent fermentations of the Slum. His name was Sherner. He had worked in a series of manufacts, tanning leather, molding buckets, preparing chemical substances for the creation of aqua, and at a plastum still. This last job had terminated when his blisters from the always splashing white-hot plasta had forced him into a medical cubicle of the Instation. Out of work, he had foolishly stolen meat from a kitchen. The Lawguard came for him before he had done digesting it. The resultant fifteen lashes had laid him up again. He was still waiting for work, but the insect-killing game had won him enough credits to live gratis for three or four Jates and Marams.

  All this information he awarded Vel Thaidis, first as they toiled up the hill, and next as they sat on a bench under the greengage drizzle of candlelight. Vel Thaidis listened. His voice became the anchor she had needed. His voice, riddled by the coarsenesses and slovenly accent of the Slumopolis, erected a screen against chaos.

  When the food came, she ate slowly and not very much, for her weariness swept over her, and she drifted asleep, her shoulders on the grimy wall, beyond abashment, the lullaby of Sherner’s voice in her ears.

  She woke when the clocks of the Slum screamed the nineteenth hour, the third of Maram.

  “There, she’s awake,” said Sherner, and put the wooden beaker of bloodale to her lips. She drank the alcoholic gravy and coughed, and drank again.

  They were no longer alone.

  Vel Thaidis protested to herself with horror that anything might have happened, anyone might have arrived. A gang of Sherner’s less gentle cronies, enemies of all sorts. Fortunately, the newcomer was solitary, and female, though she had, undeniably, an enemy’s countenance. Startlingly attractive, narrow, sly, uncommunicative. The eyes slanted slightly at their outer corners, and the lids were painted with gold. The mouth was red and full, and the teeth were white. Nor was her hair the withered grass general in the Slum, but profuse, though dyed a hard raw yellow. The girl—she was about seventeen or eighteen, maybe younger, for here it was difficult to be sure of age—wore neither the faked drapery of officialdom nor the soulless tunic of the herd. Instead, she had a dress of golden tracery. She did not smell of manufacts or dirt, either, but of some floral scent. Her nails were each an inch long, and each had a tiny picture enameled on it, miniature flowers, minuscule cats, tinier chariots. There was no doubt as to what she must be—a girl from the J’ara mansions. Improperly awake though she was, Vel Thaidis looked up and beyond her, and sighed with a bizarre and desolate jealousy. For, standing a few feet from the J’ara girl was her attendant—a humanoid, aesthetically feminized robot.

  “You see,” said Sherner, “I have friends who move in exalted circles. Here is Tilaia, and, as you note, she has access to tech-credits. Look at the robot woman, Thaidis. Isn’t it fine? And it will do whatever Taia says it must.”

  Tilaia’s face realigned itself. The steely watch she had been keeping on Vel Thaidis was put aside. Majestically, she smiled.

  “Sherner sent me a message. It cost him ten tags. He must think a lot of you, Thaidis.”

  Stupidly, Vel Thaidis said, “How would you send a message?”

  Sherner grunted. “By public runner—how else? One drinks here.”

  “Don’t you want to know why Sherner contacted me?” Tilaia the J’ara girl said, arching her gilded brows. She played the aristocrat as only a Slumdweller could, to perfection, and a fraction beyond it.

  “Thaidis guesses,” said Sherner. “She’s so pretty. She guesses.”

  “Sherner,” said Tilaia, “trusts that I can find employment for you in the J’ara mansions. He assumes that in your gratitude, you will then support him from your tips and possible service credits. As to how he and I come to know each other, we are two of the few natural births, unlike twins—how unalike you perceive. But we grew in the same childhouse. It gives him some claim on me, I suppose, though not all the claims he wishes. I won’t keep him myself, you see. You can, if you’re sufficiently brainless.”

  “Then you’ll find her work?” Sherner demanded.

  “Perhaps,” said Tilaia. She examined the picture on one of her nails.

  Vel Thaidis struggled to collect herself.

  “I have said I will not—”

  “Won’t lie down with men. I know. He told me. There are other employments in the mansions. You can wait on tables, if you desire. But the women who do it must be lovely. Sherner says you are. He’s a man, I hear. He should know. Certainly, You’re rather better than most of the crones in hest-Uma sector.”

  “Oh, Taia,” said Sherner. “My sibling has a tongue which bites sharper than her teeth. Take no notice.”

  Tilaia yawned. All about, the people in the eating house gazed at her, malevolently envious and intrigued. Presumably, the Law and the robot servant made it secure for her to go abroad to such a rendezvous as this. The high heels of her sandals chimed as they brushed the floor, as Vel Thaidis’ sandals had done on the palace floors of Hirz.

  “This revolting food shop is boring me,” said Tilaia. “Does Thaidis say yes or no.”

  “Why,” Vel Thaidis said softly, “would you help me?”

  Tilaia’s features, features of an enemy, sly and beautiful, closed upon themselves as certain blooms of the veldt closed upon moisture.

  “If my house likes you, I will receive a bonus. If you’re grateful, I might be able to exact some errands, some support from you later on. One never knows where an accomplice may be of aid.”

  Vel Thaidis glanced aside from the hauteur of the enemy.

  It was pointless to debate. There seemed no other door but this.

  “Next Maram,” the girl said, “at the stroke of the seventeenth hour, come to the Basin, to Mansion Seta, the Black and Gold. I, or someone, will greet you and conduct you inside. Or, sit in the labor accommodation yard and listen to the voice and lose your apartment.”

  “Aristos,” Vel Thaidis said. She had to drink a mouthful of bloodale before she could conclude the sentence. “Do aristos come to your mansion?”

  “Of course,” Tilaia said. “How else do you think I got my maid, there? The mansions exist to please the aristos, or those who have their credits. The Yune Meks are our current patrons. Are you nervous of the aristos? Yours will be kitchen tasks, you’ll hardly see them. And even they must abide by the Law.”

  Yune Mek was a family Vel Thaidis had never had connection with. Even if a Domm or Ond or Chure were to enter the mansion, he would ignore her, possibly not actually recognize her. Or she might hide herself, behind a wall, behind paint and behind demeanor. Or yet—it stole over her that this venue, which could afford her the most trepidation and danger, also enticed. One Maram, might Velday come into the Black and Gold mansion? It was not one of the J’ara houses he had ever mentioned, but then he had mentioned to her little enough of the city or what he did there.

  To see him, in the distance. To be recognized after all? She might be able, now, to make him accept the truth—

  Perhaps they might meet often.

  Perhaps.

  “Maram, the seventeenth hour,” Tilaia said sharply. “Or else don’t trouble yourself.”

  Vel Thaidis was hallucinating, half asleep, Velday holding her hand. “I know it was a lie, my sister. We’ll prove it to them. I will get you free of this. Hirz will be yours again, and Ceedres will pay the price of his crime.”

  “Come,” said Velday, in Sherner’s Slum voice.

  Vel Thaidis raised her lids
. The green lights were sinking, dim, these were the last hours of Maram, and Tilaia had gone away. Drunkenly, Sherner murmured of a pallet in a shed.

  “No,” she said.

  “You are a doggabitch,” he informed her. “I’d only look at you.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe another time,” he mumbled incongruously. He lowered his head among the beakers of ale and snored.

  Outside the windowless restaurant, the eternal sunlight gouged her eyes.

  Smokes and steams still flooded up from the chimneys of the lower city, but not many people were abroad, and most of these were drunk or drugged. Here and there, persons lay huddled at some angle of a building, thick cloth set up haphazardly tent-wise for a Maram chamber.

  Across the top of the street, a single copper Lawguard passed, patrolling vertically on its jets, sinister and inimical.

  Vel Thaidis could not begin to assemble the route she should take to regain her apartment cubicle. She could reconstitute only the way to the plateau market. So she went back there, walking lamely and exhaustedly, and reaching the spot, seated herself in one of the deep-porched entries of the locked kitchen. Pulling a fold of her tunic over her eyes, huddled in the static, inadequate shade, she slept. No one intruded on her. Others slept as she did. The Lawguards prowled. The market place was otherwise deserted, save for rustling dusts and scraps of paper and plastum cups kicked by localized atmospheric winds.

  But as the first hour of Jate sounded, one of the ubiquitous queues began to form at the public cistern. A couple of dogga sleds rattled across the plateau, awnings slapped and sheds were unbolted.

  Vel Thaidis was conscious before her own shelter was despoiled. She rose and stared at the useless cistern whose fluid she had no means to boil. Her pride had prevented her from remaining with Sherner; Sherner who was food and drink, Sherner who demonstrated sympathy, for whatever selfish motive.