She stared at me, into me. I know what she saw, a kind of whirlwind, doubts and sorrows and joys all spun together like the whirlwinds on Mars. Joziré’s face, his eyes, the feel of his hands. The dragonfly ship. The woman in red. What I had left. What I had promised.
I heard myself say, “Even if all that is true, every word of it, I still choose Joziré. I still choose to be queen, to rule justly, to do what he would have me do.”
And that seemed to be answer enough. She stood up and gestured. A ship edged its way over the window in the dome and dropped a ladder down. Old as she looked, Lady Badness went up the ladder like a tree rat, and I went after her. The ship was piloted by the same woman in red who had brought me here with Joziré all those years ago. She smiled at me, indicating the older, one-eyed man with her. “Mr. Weathereye, Wilvia.” I bowed, he nodded, the ship moved away.
I was not conscious of time passing, which it must have done, before we saw an enormous highland centered upon a tall, white palace. We set down in the paved courtyard.
“These are the highlands of Fajnard,” said the one-eyed man, turning toward me. “Much work awaits you here. Do you think you’re up to it?”
I simply stared at him, my mouth open.
Lady Badness said, “I have seldom seen anyone work as hard as Wilvia has done. I have faith in her.” She leaned forward and pointed through the open door of the ship. “See, there!”
A man was approaching. I looked, and looked again. He was taller, and stronger-looking, and even more handsome, and…
“Joziré,” I cried, and went running toward him.
Behind us, the ship left very quietly.
I Am M’urgi/on B’yurngrad
I found my first housing on B’yurngrad in a hostel kept by the Siblinghood of Silence. The first person I met there was a tall, dark-haired, lean-faced fellow named Fernwold, who stared at me as though I was long-lost kin. He was, so he said, the sorter-out, the questioner and annoyer who fitted awkward pegs into weird-shaped holes wherever that was possible.
“First thing,” he said, looking me over from head to toe, “is for us to learn how you came here to B’yurngrad?’
I gritted my teeth and prepared to be terse. “I was twenty-two years old, on Earth, recently identified as an over-four, being shipped out. I might have ended up on a ship that went into Mercan space if I’d told them I speak Omniont and Mercan languages, so I kept my mouth shut. I was put on an Omniont ship that was scheduled to stop here on B’yurngrad to transship its cargo to various Omniont worlds.”
He cocked his head. “You stopped at this transshipment point, and…”
“…And the ship unloaded the bondspeople onto three smaller ships that had come to pick us up. Two ships left. I was on the last one, and while it was still sitting in the port it developed something called a core resonance. Does that happen?”
He nodded. “Often killing a lot of people.”
“The repairs were going to take a long time. The shipmaster was told to get rid of his cargo, as feeding us was expensive…”
“How did you know that? Did the shipmaster tell you?”
“Of course not. I heard him talking to his superiors, whomever. They said sell us if possible, but get rid of us. I inferred that meant kill us. It seemed logical.”
“So when you said you spoke alien languages, you meant you really speak them, not just know a few words?”
“I really speak them, yes. That was to have been my lifework. Translation. Diplomacy. Understanding. And why are you staring at me, what did you say your name was?”
“Fernwold. Ferni, for short. A good friend at the academy called me that. I’m staring because you look like him.”
I discounted this as unlikely. “Fernwold. Some person or group bought us or ransomed us—at least they paid something to get us released, or hosteled, whatever. The next person I met was you.”
“The Siblinghood of Silence ransomed you,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Thus moving you from bondservice into sibling service. What’s that old saying, from the roasting spit into the fire?”
I stared at him, openmouthed. “The who?”
“The Siblinghood of Silence. You haven’t heard of them?”
“I’ve heard of something called the Third Order…”
He put his finger to his lips, eyes conveying a definite message. “No. You haven’t. No matter how well you remember it, you haven’t heard of it, but you do remember the Siblinghood.”
“A bi-or multigender fraternity of some kind?”
I thought his responsive smile rather wolfish, hearkening back to my childhood love of animal books. His eyebrows were dark and extremely mobile, two physiognomic punctuation marks that leapt about to mark each utterance, parenthetical or exclamatory. Just now they were tented, conveying amused disbelief at my ignorance.
“Rather more than that, Salvage. It is on behalf of the Siblinghood that I am here to find out what each member of the ransomed cargo may be fit for. Some of them will be easy. They’ll be kitchen help. They’ll go to the workshops of the building crew. The High-house of the Siblinghood here on B’yurngrad is always in a state of reconstruction. Its work changes minute by minute and hour by hour.
“They’ll tell us to build a dormitory for fourteen Thrackians found floating, because maybe the Thrackians can give us some information about this, or that, or something else. Or they’ll say they need a new kitchen for the Pfillians who have ritual requirements for their food. Or, as now, they’ll tell me you Earthians habitually segregate by sex, so we need two temporary dormitories, please…”
He touched my shoulder lightly. “Of course, such segregation is fully voluntary. I have very nice quarters if you’re not intent on that old Earth rule.”
“I am quite intent on obeying all such rules,” I said, resentfully intractable. “Who are they, the Siblinghood?”
“What do you care, Salvage? Fate has dropped you into kinder hands. No real bondage for you.”
“My name is not Salvage. It’s Margaret. And I love it, the way you say no real bondage?” I laughed. “I don’t know what you call building walls and laying floors, Silencer, but bondage isn’t far from it.”
“So, give me a reason to assign you somewhere else, pretty one. I’m not hard to get around. Anyone with a warm heart can do it.”
I took a moment to think. “I’ve already said I know languages, Sibling. Several. Even many. Surely among all this important work your Siblinghood is busy doing, there must be a position open for a translator.”
“Hmmm.” He stood, stretched thoughtfully, glanced at the barred windows and doors, said, “Don’t go away,” in an amused voice, and left.
I was there for several days while all those around me were assigned here and there. I sat. I borrowed a book on the language and customs of the Hrass and read it cover to cover. When he returned, it was with a different demeanor. “I have your assignment,” he said. “Eventually, your language skills will be of great use. For the time being, however, you are to be trained by a shaman who has sent word you are to be renamed. This is necessary, I am told. You are to be called M’urgi.” He wrote it down for me. “It means ‘explorer’ in a dialect spoken here about. Pronounced as I did, MAR-gee.”
“Gee as in game,” I said witlessly. Something in what he had said had rung a bell in my brain. The reverberations made me tremble. “As in gossip, gamble, garden, or even Mar-gar-et, which is what the Mercan crewmen on the ship called me, with a giggle and a slither when they did so! Why must my name be changed?”
“Shamans on B’yurngrad always name their novices, and it’s customary to do it in advance of training so the novice can get used to it. That’s what we’ll all call you from now on…”
When I started to speak, he shook his head at me. “Don’t ask. I am as surprised as you are, and anything I might tell you could be wrong. You’re to wait here until your…ah, ‘mentor’ gets to someplace where you can safely be handed over to her. Meantime, you’re
to learn your new name and report to the supplies officer to be fitted out with clothes.”
“I have clothing with me,” I said.
“Not the kind you’ll be needing,” he replied with a wry, sideways grin. “Yours don’t smell right. Not smoky enough.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he was gone.
A shaman. Shamaness. Shamana. What was the female version? Did it matter? Why did it sound so very, very familiar?
It wasn’t until that night, when I was just falling asleep, that it came me with such force that I sat up, fully aware. A shaman. Of course. That was one of my people. Margy! M’urgi? Close enough. I lay down again in the quiet darkness, mind spinning with something weirdly like hope.
The next day, he came back.
“It will be a while, M’urgi,” he said. “Your future teacher is off on the edge of nowhere, seeing what the tribes are up to…”
“Tribes?”
“Bondsmen from Mercan planets who arrived here in no mood to settle down. Wildmen. They kidnapped a few shiploads of females, and they live out in the grasses in skin-covered huts, taking their herds north and south with the seasons and practicing a strange, violent, blood-and-honor religion. They come into the towns maybe once a year to sell their wool and hair and cheese. They learn nothing, for they’re convinced they know everything that matters. They’re boring. Even hearing about them is boring, so why don’t we relieve your boredom. And mine.”
We did so, finding much to talk of, much enjoyment in the talk. When I asked him to tell me about the Siblinghood, Fernwold said:
“Since you’re to be a shaman, I can tell you this, though we don’t speak of it usually. The Siblinghood is an organization of humans and Gentherans and a very few persons of other races. Most of the humans are a different kind we call Ghoss, though some of them are ordinary people, like me. Along with the humans and Gentherans are some extraordinary members who have strange and wonderful capabilities, men and women who are…something else.”
“And what does it do, this organization?”
“It helps out here and there, when the human race itself gets into trouble. Which we inevitably seem to do. And the Third Order is trying to achieve some other grand vision…”
“And you’re a member of this group?”
“A very, very minor member, yes.”
“If there’s a Third Order, I suppose there’s a first and second one.”
“Not any longer. Both existed; both were destroyed. The only thing I know about the Orders is they’re attempting to find a unique spacial configuration, some esoteric galactic connection. What they call a ‘cluster.’ The First Order found one, the Second Order found one, and both times it promptly broke apart and killed a lot of the Siblinghood people who were exploring it.”
“Someone broke it?”
“Maybe, or it may have just happened. The configurations they’re looking for are only temporary. Finding them is like finding dew on the grass. Just because it’s there at dawn doesn’t mean it’s going to be there ten minutes later. The Second Order operated much more secretly, just in case the first configuration was purposefully destroyed. They found over fifty partial configurations, but some of them were traps and others were just blind alleys. They discovered who set the traps and removed them, but by that time, they’d been delayed too long, and the cluster was gone again. The Third Order is being extremely security conscious. No one outside the Siblinghood knows who’s part of it, or what it’s found out, or even what it’s looking for, and even we insiders know almost nothing, and if you’re smart, you’ll keep your mouth shut about the nothing you know.”
The few days turned into twenty. By the end of the twenty, Fernwold and I were closer than friends. On the twenty-first day, I was sent away, to spend the journey time wondering who it was I had thought I loved, back on Earth, and why it was I thought I had loved him. Strangely enough, though I grieved to lose Ferni, I had gained a certain peace of mind. For Margaret, I had probably decided badly, but for M’urgi, the decision about Bryan had been the right one.
I Am Mar-agern/on Fajnard
When I arrived on Fajnard, in the Mercan Combine, I was still well shy of my twenty-third birthday. On arrival, our group of bondservants were chained together, though lightly, and escorted on foot across the port, which swarmed with races I had read of or heard about, and as many more I had never known existed. Our destination was a warehouse where a group of Bondsfolk Relief workers fed us and gave us bondservant clothing: trousers, shirts, long vests with pockets, a light jacket with pockets, a heavy, waterproof jacket with pockets, and a wide-brimmed waterproof hat, plus some softer material from which to make our own underwear.
Prior to our being sold, we were examined by two human doctors from Medecines Sans Limites who explained that they had volunteered to work on Mercan planets in order to care for those in bondage. Their existence in this far-off place brought Bryan vividly to my mind. Seeing my distress, the doctor asked me if I was injured or ill, I blurted out Bryan’s name, and what had happened, while the doctor regarded me, unmoved.
“Though I can understand your reluctance, from my point of view, you were a fool,” he said calmly. “None of us want to start a life from a position of indebtedness, even though everyone alive profits from the past. You’re here now, however, and if you’re to have any kind of life after you leave here, you must forget the past. Regret and nostalgia will result in depression, which is fatal on this planet. Pay attention to what I’m about to say: The most important rule is to repress how you feel about things and be supremely alert to what is happening around you. How you feel, what you think isn’t important. What you do, how you act, is important! Don’t act or speak until you have some inkling of what the result will be.
“I’m picking the first part of your own name, Mar, and I’m adding the suffix ‘agern’ to it. On Fajnard, long names are indicative of aristocracy or nobility. Bondsfolk are allowed the shortest possible names, and the suffix ‘agern’ means ‘slave.’ Your tag says Mar-agern! That’s your label! Repeat it over and over to yourself, keep it in mind so you can be quick when some Frossian utters it. When a Frossian yells ‘agern,’ it means whatever bondsfolk are closest, so be alert for that, too.
“Sleep whenever you can, wherever you can. Try to stay as clean as possible. The purchase contract specifies bathing facilities, but that doesn’t mean your buyers will have them, or that they’ll be sanitary, or that they won’t be frozen in winter. That means you sometimes use your drinking water to wash with, or the water that’s used to water stock, usually umoxen. Since they produce the finest wool among the known worlds, the Frossians are careful of them, and their water is probably kept clean. If you have any difficulty staying clean, cut your hair off, all of it, everywhere on your body, as that will reduce infestation.
“Frossians are a three-sex race. All the queens are on one planet, elsewhere. Never ask where. That question can get you killed. There are a few hundred breeding males on Fajnard, the workers and soldiers are neuters, and they’re the ones who’ll be ordering you around. They’re touchy, easy to anger, preoccupied with their own status in their own particular work crew. Anything you do wrong reflects on them, so don’t do anything wrong.
“Eat sparingly and save the least perishable of what you’re given in a pocket. If you don’t have a pocket, use the materials we gave you to contrive one. You may be given three meals today and only one or none tomorrow. If you feel just slightly unwell, don’t let it show. Even if you feel quite sick but can put on appearance of working, do so. This marks you as a noncomplainer and builds a store of tolerance among the overseers. Then, if you think you’re dying, kick up a real fuss, and if you’re loud enough, they’ll probably send for one of us, particularly before they’ve had their value out of you, that is, during the first ten to twelve years you’re here.”
“They send for one of you?”
“There are several MSL doctors here, male and female, and we’ve trai
ned some helpers who’ve worked out their bondage. The Frossians tolerate us because they get more work out of healthy servants. We’re certifying that you’re healthy to start with. If you’re careful, you may stay that way.”
That was my last earth-human contact. On the following day, our shipload of émigrés was sold. I had dreaded the poking and prying that I expected to accompany this process, but seemingly the buyers were not interested in touching the merchandise. A scaled, bone-crested, tailed, four-legged, two-armed Frossian emerged from a crowd of similar beings, put a rope around my neck, and led me and two others to a weirdly ornamented wheeled vehicle that lurched as though it had no gyros. We went through the city into the countryside, grasslands on all sides, occasional copses of strange, bulboustrunked trees with horizontal, cylindrical branches from which huge straplike leaves hung like shutters, turning as the sun moved. The end of each branch ended in something that looked very much like an eye, and the eyes followed the progress of our vehicle.
At the end of the journey, a cluster of shabby buildings in the midst of endless grass, another Frossian led me, still roped, to the barn. The ceilings were low enough that I knew I could touch them by reaching up. I did not reach up, for I had already learned that any voluntary motion on my part brought a choking jerk on the leash. A long aisle ran down the center of the building between open pens on either side, pens without fronts, just three walls dividing the structure into equal areas filled by huge animals.
They were furry…no, woolly. Enormous brown eyes peered at me with unmistakable intelligence. The ears were long enough to be amusing, even funny, and the horns were long enough to be dangerous. And the tails! Curving upward and forward, each of them spread long, fine wool in a perfect parasol above each animal or, when lowered, a blanket, so evenly distributed it might have been spread by some domestic who had just changed the linens. I could not see their feet, for the hind legs were bent under their bodies and the front feet were curled against the ponderous chests. Four-legged. Not unfamiliar, as though I might have seen their like in a book, or more likely their attributes. Horns like cattle. Faces like buffalo. Coat and ears like poodle dogs. Those marvelous umbrella tails? Giant anteaters came to mind, though as I recalled, their tails had been more brushlike. Of course, I knew them only from books.