In Green's Jungles - Page 24/47

What was worse, Mora had made herself one of the messengers whose lives I had risked in the hope of securing peace. By this time she had presumably been captured and raped, I reflected, and was weeping in a dungeon much worse than this dream dungeon of mine.

Behind these lurked the greater problem: how could I make my way back to New Viron and you, Nettle, as I long to, without abandoning my friends here? All these problems plague me still, and none more than that.

Fava came to sit by me; and I, looking around at her and smiling, realized with a start that we had half the chamber to ourselves.

"I thought you might like some company." She returned my smile. "Somebody to talk to, even me."

"You think I'm your enemy." I shook my head. "I never was, Fava. While we were where we were, I could not be your friend; but I was never your enemy."

"That's what Mora said once."

"Mora was right. If we're going to be friends, tell me something now. Are you as young as you look?"

After a moment, she shook her head.

"I didn't think so. You're older, and very cunning-"

She laughed at that, and it was a girl's clear laughter.

"Too often, you let it show. Did you really try to free Inclito?"

She nodded. "He'd been nice to me. He let me live with his daughter in his house, and treated me almost as well as her. I'd hurt him and his mother, and if I could I wanted to make amends."

I smiled again, and tried not to let my smile become bitter. "Very few of us are that honorable."

"I'm not fooling you for a minute, am I?"

"To the contrary," I said. "I very much hoped that you were telling the truth."

"Well, I was. But I wanted to get even with Duko Rigoglio too. That message you gave me, I'll bet you thought I wouldn't deliver it."

"I hoped you would, and thought you very well might."

"I did. He had me arrested and was going to chop my head off for it."

I apologized and told her that I had not considered that he might react violently.

"You think I'm clever because you are. You think everybody against you must be clever too. If the Duko had been clever, he'd have wanted to keep me as a spy. I was counting on it, but everybody says he's more than half mad, and he got furiously angry when he thought I'd brought bad news."

I said that I would like to speak with him sometime.

"No you wouldn't." Fava sounded positive.

"So he was going to have you killed. I take it you escaped?"

She laughed again. "Did you think I couldn't? They put me in a little room with bars on the window, and as soon as they weren't looking, I went out between them. We can change our bodies a lot. You know that. I know you do, because you put it into my story that time."

I nodded. "I know you can lengthen your legs and widen your arms into wings."

"We can do lots of other things, too. Remember how Flosser tied my hands? I could have pulled them right out! Don't think I wasn't tempted to, either, just to see his face. We can even slip under doors if there's a big crack there. Want to see me make my neck long and open my hood? It's something we do here to make animals think we're bigger than we are."

I told her it was something that I would like very much to see, if she was confident that no one else would see it too.

"They're afraid even to look at you, and my hair will cover it. I'll only do it a little bit."

She turned to face me squarely, raised her head, and grinned. Nothing happened, and I told her, "We need not worry about their seeing that."

"I can't!"

"Neither can you fly," I said. I was guessing, but I was quite certain my guess was correct. "You can run and jump now, however; and if there were horses here, you might even learn to ride like Mora."

She stared. "What's happened?"

"I have fallen asleep, that's all. You and I sit talking in my dream, and you are as I think of you."

She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

When I had freed myself again I said that Krait had told me once that his life was a nightmare in which he was trapped in the body of a blood-drinking reptile.

"That's it! That's it exactly!"

"I don't think so, but I am not your judge. What you must realize-what we both need to realize-is that this really is a nightmare, whether it is mine alone or ours. Your mind has joined my own to produce it. I thought of you as a girl often, though I knew what you really were. And you must think of yourself as a girl frequently as well. Thus in our shared nightmare you actually-"

She had leaped to her feet and raced away, her long hair streaming behind her like a banner. I watched her, recalling how Mamelta had run in the Hall of Sleepers, possessed by a girl locked in a small and stinking bedroom-a girl far too starved and sick to run even if she had been free.

A second more, and Fava had disappeared into the dim farther reaches of the chamber. Another, and she was returning. I had said that she could no longer fly, but she seemed to fly as she raced back to me.

"Some men-" She dropped breathless to the floor. "Are coming. They saw me kiss you. The Soldese-" She pointed.

I looked. "Captain Sfido and Captain Kupus, and another officer."

"Zepter." She gasped. "He doesn't like us."

Zepter was the burly officer with the blond mustache. I muttered that under the circumstances I could hardly blame him, but I am not sure Fava heard me.

Sfido called, "May we speak to you, Rajan?"

"You may speak with me, of course; but I would rather you didn't address me like that."

"What should we call you?" He was advancing hesitantly; even so, he was well in front of the other two.

"In Blanko, the people call me Incanto."

They halted, the three of them looking at one another. "Call him Dervis," Fava suggested impishly. "It's a good name, and I don't think he'll mind."

"We-" Kupus began, and started over. "The men..." He cleared his throat.

"Sit down," Fava told him. "He doesn't like your standing over him like that." (They were still half a dozen strides away.) "Neither do I. Papa's just the same, and I'm sure he hasn't forgotten all those times you made us sit on the cold ground and yelled down at us."

"No insult was intended," Sfido told her smoothly. "I let you sit as a gesture of respect."

"You made us sit because you were afraid he'd kick you again! He would've, too!"

I rose. "These brave troopers haven't come to quarrel with us, I'm sure."

All three nodded, Sfido vigorously.

Fava declared, "These brave troopers wouldn't have come at all if I hadn't shown them you didn't bite."

Kupus said, "We want to make a bargain. You'll have to trust us-"

Fava snorted.

"And you can. You came during a truce, and no one tried to harm you. You exchanged yourself for a prisoner we held legitimately. You proposed the exchange yourself."

"I came voluntarily too," Fava told him, "and Incanto wanted to exchange for Papa and me."

I motioned her to silence. "At that time, I didn't know you could escape whenever you wanted; thus it made no real difference whether you stayed behind with me or left with Inclito. Let's not argue about that. Captain Kupus, what is your bargain?"

Zepter interposed. "The men are saying you carried us here by magic. Did you?"

"No," I told him.

Fava stamped her foot, "Incanto...!"

"I didn't. Would you want me to lie?"

"You-" Her face was flushed with rage.

I spoke to Kupus. "Now that we have settled that point, what is your bargain?"

"Can you carry us back where we were?"

"To that barren hillside in the snow? I'm surprised you don't prefer this."

Angry as she was, Fava giggled.

"He was an inhumu, wasn't he? The man whose servant knocked down Schreiner."

I nodded.

"Do you know where we are?"

"I believe so," I said. "Do you, Captain? Tell me, what whorl is this?"

Kupus shook his head. "Are you saying we're actually on Green? I don't believe it, magic or not."

After a moment Zepter asked, "Do they really have human servants here? I didn't know."

"They have human servants on our whorl, too," I told him. "You're a mercenary, Captain?"

"Lieutenant." He drew himself up. "Yes. I enjoy that honor."

"You serve Duko Rigoglio for a silver card every-"

"Three," Kupus told me. "Two cards per month for a sergeant and three for a lieutenant."

Fava told him, "Four for you," and he nodded.

I asked Zepter, "How many would it take to persuade you to serve the inhumi?"

"I wouldn't!"

"You insist I'm a strego, a male witch; so let me turn those silver cards to gold. Three cards of gold every month, Lieutenant Zepter. Wouldn't that be sufficient?"

Sfido said, "It would. More than enough. Don't deny it, Zepter. I saw your face." He turned to me. "Do you really believe the inhumi may have human servants on-where we came from?"

I shrugged. "I encountered some once in a place called Pajarocu, and it should be obvious by now that they could have them here if they wanted them and had the gold-still better, real cards enough. Or even silver, I imagine."

Fava asked, "Are you applying for work, Dervis? How much? When we get back, I'll see if I can't raise it."

Zepter said angrily, "You're no inhuma, you dirty little sprat, and-"

"Mora! My name's Mora, and it's a better name than yours!" Fava lifted her gown above her knees and danced, comically at first but soon gracefully. "Look at these legs. They're an inhuma's legs, aren't they? Here." Stopping, she gathered her hair behind her as though she were about to tie it up, and pressed the whole hank into his hand. "It's a wig.

Pull hard, and it comes right off."

Rising, I laid my hand upon her shoulder.

"No teeth, see?" She grinned at him, displaying two rows of white and very even teeth. "That's because we don't chew. Just fangs to suck up your blood. Want to see them?" Held to her mouth, her forefingers assumed the role.

To me Kupus said, "We came to talk to you about a serious matter."

I nodded. "What is it?"

"We've already-" He paused and drew breath. "We would like to return to the barren hillside you reproach us with." He looked at Sfido and Zepter, and both nodded. "If you can do that-"

I shook my head, and Fava crowed in triumph.

"You can't."

"No," I said. "Not now, at least."

Sfido stepped nearer me. "Later you might be able to?"

"Conceivably."

"How?" Zepter asked.

"You are trying to bargain with me," I told them, "so you can scarcely blame me if I bargain with you."

Kupus nodded. "Go ahead. Let's hear it."

"If you will return my staff-my own property, taken from me for no good reason-and if all three of you will concede that we are in fact on Green, a whorl that to most of us has never been more than a colored disk of light in the sky, I will tell you how we may be able to return to Blue."

Sfido nodded. "One of the men may have it. I'll ask. For myself, if you assert we've actually been taken to Green I'll accept it. Do you, Rajan?" Seeing my face, he gulped and hurried away.

Kupus said slowly, "It's hot in here. Very warm."

"We inhumas love it," Fava announced.

He ignored her. "But we're in a room in a building, after all. I'm old enough to remember the Long Sun Whorl, Incanto. So are you, as anyone can see. I don't know how it was in your city, but ours had buildings that were kept warm by a big furnace in the cellar."

I nodded. "I think the Prolocutor's Palace in Viron may have been heated in that fashion, although the Calde's was not. The floors of the Prolocutor's Palace were always warm in cool weather."

Grunting, Kupus bent to touch the floor on which I had been sitting earlier, and I assured him that it was cool in comparison to the air of the room.

"Are you saying that it's this warm outside?" "No."

Zepter asked, "Then why are you insisting that we're on Green?"

"I'm not," I told him, "but I remember this room, and it was on Green. I think it more likely that we are there than that it has been carried to Blue. Don't you?"

Kupus began, "A duplicate-"

I sat down again.

Fava said, "It won't be as hot as this outside because it will be a lot hotter, that's what he means. This's the cellar. Can't you see that?"

"It looks like one," Kupus admitted grudgingly.

"It is. We're underground, and so it's cooler here. It should be very nice outside."

Zepter crouched to speak to me. "I'm sorry about your staff, Dervis. Captain Sfido ordered it, and he represents our patron. The rest of us were merely following orders."

"I understand."

Heavily and rather awkwardly, Kupus sat down beside me. "Do you need it to bring us back?"

I shook my head. "It won't help in that way-a slug gun might be more useful."

Zepter began, "Without Sfido's-" Kupus silenced him.

"I don't actually want one," I told them. "Or at least I don't think I do, and especially not on those terms. I haven't quite made up my mind about it. I was hoping you'd return my staff because I miss Oreb. He likes to perch on it."

Zepter raised his eyebrows. "Your bird?"

"Yes." I closed my eyes. "You chased him away, some of you back there. I think the staff might make it easier." I tried to visualize the staff and Oreb fluttering down to land with a thump upon its T-shaped handle, as he had so often during the past few days.

Fava said, "Here comes that Soldese officer again, but he hasn't got it."