Part 2 (1/2)

”The strange thing is,” Clatatol said, hesitating, then continuing strongly,' 'the strange thing is that all this does not seem to be because of a desire to conquer Talanac. No, the seizure of our city is a, what do you call it, a byproduct? The invaders seem to be determined to take the city only because they regard it as a pond which holds a very desirable fish.”

”Meaning me,” Kickaha said.

Clatatol nodded. ”I do not know why these people should want you so greatly. Do you?^'

Kickaha said, ”No. I could guess. But I won't. My speculations would only confuse you and take much time. The first thing for me is to get out and away. And that, my love, is where you come in.”

”Now you love me,” she said.

”If there were time ...” he replied.

”I can hide you where we will have all the time we need,” she said. ”Of course, there are the others ...”

Kickaha had been wondering if she was holding back. He wasn't in a position to get rough with her, but he did. He gripped her wrist and squeezed. She grimaced and tried to pull away.

”What others?”

”Quit hurting me, and 1*11 tell. Maybe. Give me a kiss, and I'll tell for sure.”

It was worthwhile to spend a few seconds, so he kissed her. The perfume from her mouth filled his nostrils and seemingly filtered down to the ends of his toes. He felt heady and began wondering if perhaps she didn't deserve a reward after all this time.

He laughed then and gently released himself. ”You are indeed the most beautiful and desirable woman I have ever seen and I have seen a thousand times a thousand,” he said. ”But death walks the streets, and he is looking for me.”

' * When you see this other woman...” she said.

She became coy again, and then he had to impress upon her that coyness automatically meant pain for her. She did not resent this, liked it, in fact, since, to her, erotic love meant a certain amount of roughness and pain.

IT SEEMED THAT three strangers had fled from the inmost parts of the temple of Ollimaml a few minutes ahead of von Turbat. They were white-skinned, also. One was the black haired woman whom Clatatot, a very jealous and deprecating woman, nevertheless said was the most beautiful she had ever seen. Her companions were a huge, very fat man and a short skinny man. All three were dressed strangely and none spoke Tishquetmoac. They did speak Wishpawaml, the liturgical language of the priests. Unfortunately, the thieves who had hidden the three knew only a few words of Wishpawaml; these were from the responses of the laity during services.

Kickaha knew then that the three were Lords. The liturgical language everywhere on this world was theirs.

Their flight from von Tiirbat indicated that they had been dispossessed of their own universes and had taken refuge in this. But what was the minor king, von Turbat, doing in an affair that involved Lords?

Kickaha said, ”Is there a reward for these three?”

”Yes. Ten thousand kwatluml. Apiece! For you, thirty thousand, and a high official post in the palace of the emperor. Perhaps, though this is only hinted at, marriage into the royal family.”

Kickaha was silent. Clatatol's stomach rumbled, as if ruminating the reward offers. Voices fluttered weakly through the air shafts in the ceiling. The room, which had been cool, was hot. Sweat seeped from his armpits; the woman's dark-bra.s.s skin hatched bra.s.s tadpoles. From the middle chamber, the kite hen-washroom-toilet, came gurgies of running water and little watery voices.

”You must have fainted at the thought of all that money,” Kickaha said finally. ”What's keeping you and your gang from collecting?”

”We are thieves and smugglers, killers even, but we are not traitors! The pinkfaces offered these ...”

She stopped when she saw Kickaha grinning. She grinned back. ”What I said is true. However, the sums are enormous! What made us hesitate, if you must know, you wise coyote, was what would happen after the pinkfaces left. Or if there is a revolt. We don't want to be torn to pieces by a mob or tortured because some people might think we were traitors.”

”Also . . . ?”

She smiled and said, ”Also, the three refugees have offered to pay us many times over what the pinkfaces offer if we get them out of the city.”

”And how will they do that?” Kickaha said. ”They haven't got a universe to their name.”

”What?”

”Can they offer you anything tangible-right now?”

”All were wearing jewels worth more than the rewards,” she said. ”Some-I've never seen anything like them. They're out of this world!”

Kickaha did not tell her that the cliche was literally true.

He was going to ask her if they had weapons but realized that she would not have recognized them as such if the three did have them. Certainly, the three wouldn't offer the information to their captors.

”And what of me?” he said, not asking her what the three had offered beyond their jewels.

”You, Kickaha, are beloved of the Lord, or so it is said. Besides, everybody says that you know where the treasures of the earth are hidden. Would a man who is poor have brought back the great emerald of Oshquatsmu?”

Kickaha said, ”The pinkfaces will be banging on your doors soon enough. This whole area is going to be unraveled. Where do we go from here?”

Clatatol insisted that he let her blindfold him and then cover him with a hood. In no position to argue, he agreed. She made sure he could not see and then turned him swiftly around a dozen times. After that, he got down on all fours at her order.

There was a creaking sound, stone turning on stone, and she guided him through a pa.s.sageway so narrow he sc.r.a.ped against both sides. Then he stood and, his hand in hers, stumbled up 150 steps, walked 280 paces down a slight decline, went down a ramp three hundred paces, and walked forty more on a straightway. Clatatol stopped him and removed the hood and blindfold.

He blinked. He was in a round green-and-black striated chamber with a forty foot diameter and a three foot wide air shaft above. Flames writhed at the ends of torches in wall fixtures. There were chairs of jade and wood, some chests, piles of cloth bolts and furs, barrels of spices, a barrel of water, a table with dishes, biscuits, meat, stinking cheese, and some sanitation furniture.

Six Tishquetmoac men squatted against the wall. Their glossy black bangs fell over their eyes. Some smoked little cigars. They were armed with daggers, swords, and hatchets.

Three fair-skinned people sat in chairs. One was short, gritty-skinned, large-nosed, and shark-mouthed. The second was a manatee of a man, spilling over the chair in cataracts of fat.

On seeing the third, Kickaha gasped. He said, ”Podarge!”

The woman was the most beautiful he had ever seen. But he had seen her before. That is, the face was in his past. But the body did not belong to that face.

”Podarge!” he said again, speaking the debased Mycenaean she and her eagles used. ”I didn't know that Wolff had taken you from your harpy's body and put you-your brain-in a woman's body. I ...”

He stopped. She was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Perhaps she did not want him to let the others know what had happened. And he, usually silent when the situation asked for it, had been so overcome that . . .

But Podarge had discovered that Wolff was in reality the Jadawin who had originally kidnapped her from the Peloponnese of 3200 years ago and put her brain into the body of a Harpy created in his biolab. She had refused to let him rectify the wrong; she hated him so much that she had stayed in her winged bird-legged body and had sworn to get revenge upon him.

What had made her change her mind?

Her voice, however, was not Podarge's. That, of course, would be the result of the soma transfer.

1 'What are you gibbering about, lebtabbiyT' she said in the speech of the Lords.

Kickaha felt like hitting her in the face. Leblab-biy was the Lords' perjorative for the human beings who inhabited their universes and over whom they G.o.dded it. Leblabbiy had been a small pet animal of the universe in which the Lords had originated. It ate the delicacies which its master offered, but it would also eat excrement at the first chance. And it often went mad.

”All right, Podarge, pretend you don't understand Mycenaean,” he said. ”But watch your tongue. I have no love for you.”

She seemed surprised. She said, ”Ah, you are a priest?”

Wolff, he had to admit, had certainly done a perfect job on her. Her body was magnificent; the skin as white and flawless as he remembered it; the hair as long, black, straight, and s.h.i.+ning. The features, of course, were not perfectly regular; there was a slight asymmetry which resulted in a beauty that under other circ.u.mstances would have made him ache.