I Am Mar-agern, Going to Fajnard
“Outshippers, attention. If you speak any Omniont or Mercan languages, please report to your dormitory office at once.”
I heard it perfectly well. I sat up, stood up, paused, looking at my bags for a moment, then collected them and trudged down the long aisle toward the distant office. The sleepy-looking officer inside looked up when I entered.
“I speak some of the Omniont and Mercan languages,” I said.
“I’m sure that’s a great comfort to you,” snorted the officer. “Why tell me about it?”
Angrily, I snarled, “Because there’s a loudspeaker announcement that anyone who speaks those languages is supposed to report to the dormitory office. Is that here, or somewhere else?”
He sat up, shook himself, and went to his com, where he spoke in muted tones for some little time. “Come with me,” he said over his shoulder as he headed out the door. “They’re sending transport to take you to the elevators. Oh, by the way, what’s your number?”
“All I have is my bed number?”
“That’ll do. Give me your bed ticket. We can cross-check it to your identity. A Mercan ship was delayed here when their cargo translator for the voyage took sick. They can’t wait any longer to leave.”
“A Mercan ship?” I whispered. “Their cargo translator?”
“Mercan, right. When they say cargo translator, they mean the person who translates commands to the cargo, the bondslaves, the outshipped.”
I could not reply. Seemingly, all the fates in the universe were stacked against me, and I was absolutely incapable of making a beneficial decision about anything at all. The choices that had seemed best to me, possibilities that had shone with hope and encouragement, if only slightly, always turned to shit. Perhaps it would be better simply to take what came, refuse to choose anything, leave the choosing to others who were not damned as I was to do the wrong thing at every opportunity.
I Am Ongamar/on Cantardene
I, Ongamar the spy, was kneeling between the left feet of a K’Famir pleasure-female, pinning up her skirt so the gold-plated graspers above the pads would show seductively, when I realized I could hear the chatter from an adjacent fitting booth through the floor-level ventilation duct. The pleasure-female had been drinking xshum all morning, provided by House Mouselline. She was barely able to stand and would not have heard an earthquake, so I had no need to ask many loud questions about the fitting to disguise the fact I had heard what was going on. Human hearing was far better than that of the K’Famir. To normal human ears, they always sounded as though they were shouting.
“Tonight there will be a midnight sacrifice on Beelshi,” squealed the customer in the next booth. “I asked Wonbar to take me, but he said no females. I think they sacrifice females, that’s why they don’t want females watching.”
“Surely not,” said Lady Ephedra in a conciliatory tone. “We would hear of such a thing. People would disappear.”
“Pocomfis disappear all the time,” said the first voice. “They have no place to live, they work at ugly things, who cares if they disappear.”
“What God would accept the sacrifice of a pocomfis?” asked Lady Ephedra chidingly. “Sacrifices must be worthy, which means expensive. Half a flibit would buy a pocomfis. There now, move your upper arms, now the lower. Ah, it doesn’t bind, does it. Good. If you’ll take it off, I’ll have it ready for you by closing time tonight.”
Pocomfis were the maimed ones, those who had lost an arm, a leg, an eye, a sexual organ. If the lack could not be effectively disguised with a prosthesis, then one was an outcast. Being maimed was shameful, for it meant the gods had decided one was unnecessary, disposable, unimportant. What Lady Ephedra had said was quite true: pocomfis were cheap as dirt; cheap things were not a worthy sacrifice. A worthy sacrifice had to be expensive, very expensive: both vulnerable and without a family that would retaliate.
Beelshi was a low hill just outside the town, its slopes covered with the large earthenware jars in which the K’Famir dead were interred. Adille had attended a funerary ceremony there and described the place to me, her pet: a hilltop crowned by an ancient plaza, somewhat cracked and weedy, surrounded by temples and mausolea. A huge rounded boulder stood at its center and was stained, so Adille thought, with blood offerings people had made to Whirling Cloud of Darkness-Eater of the Dead, chief god of the K’Famir pantheon.
If true, such sacrifice would feed the thing for me! I could arrive at Beelshi early enough to hide among the funerary jars. Likely the sight would be enough to please it for some time. Though it had become too heavy for me to carry, it still insisted that I find something new every day, even as the number of unexplored sites and events grew smaller. I would go in the guise of a Hrass. I had the lengthened nose, a wrinkled protrusion that was almost hoselike. I could emulate the squinted eyes of a creature that avoided the light, the gray skin, the slightly scaly long-fingered hands. Add to this the voluminous dirty robes usually worn by Hrass, and I would be Hrass so far as the K’Famir were concerned.
Early that evening, I left my place through the alley gate, scurrying tight against the wall, the way Hrass usually moved. When they ate, walked, talked, bargained in the market, they always tried to have a solid wall behind them, and when they crossed open space, they moved as fast as possible. In general, the K’Famir disregarded them, for most of the Hrass on Cantardene were crew members of those disreputable ships that carried necessary but disgusting cargo: uncured flemp
