“That got my full attention. The second voice said, ‘Why her? Why some smoke-flavored old shaman’s hag from the steppes of B’yurngrad.’ The first one said, ‘No hag, she’s young yet.’”
I frowned at him. “So, you put shaman, smoke-flavored, B’yurngrad, and suchlike together, assuming they meant your friend?”
“Exactly. I casually looked at the people around me. A dozen races at least, most of them speaking interlingua…”
“Any accent?”
“No lisping, so not K’Famir. They didn’t curse one another, so probably not Frossian. There was no discernible stink, probably not Hrass.” He paused. “There were a few elder races there, too, very strange old ones, the kind that make you go elsewhere when you see them coming, you know…”
“Quaatar? Baswoidin?”
“Quaatar? Yes, now you mention it. There were a couple of them.”
He sighed. “You’re at least taking me seriously.”
“It could be serious. Why, precisely, do you believe so?”
“Some time ago, the word filtered down through the Siblinghood that the leaders wanted to be informed if any of us caught wind of ‘Top-down threats to specific and seemingly harmless humans…’”
“If you’ve quoted the conversation correctly, the threat was definitely top down. It may be be smart to check on her, my friend.”
“She probably won’t even remember me.”
Oh, she’d remember him! “Come now. Unforgettable Ferni?”
My friend laughed ruefully. “Meantime, I’ll keep your puzzle in mind. Will the others be with you for a while?” As he dressed himself, he seemed to forget whatever the strangeness had been. He looked more like himself.
I said, “All during reunion. I’ll be there for even longer, because I’ve agreed to teach a course at Point Zibit.”
“Professor Noomi,” drawled Ferni. “Why, I knew him when he was only a worm.”
I Am Mar-agern/on Fajnard
As the end of my years of bondage approached, the enmity of the Frossian overseer increased, and its verbal hostility toward me became more frequent. It had not forgotten I could speak and understand Frossian, so I knew these open threats were part of its general plan of harassment.
“We agree,” said Deen-agern, the Ghoss, when I mentioned it to him. “Frossians do not forget much. They are completely ignorant of enormous areas of knowledge, but they don’t forget things that happen to them. It’s time we got you out of here, Mar-Mar.”
“I have less than a year of bondage left!”
The Ghoss raised a nostril. “You have only as long as they want you to have. Fifteen years is enough for most slaves: the bones are weakened, the back is bent, the strength is exhausted, and the Frossians are willing to let them go. Only draining the last of a slave’s strength at the end of its bondage proves they have gained their money’s worth: a full fifteen years of labor, with the least possible strength left over to go elsewhere, often just enough for the ex-slave to totter across the landing field to the colony ship. This is so well known that we counsel bondspeople to pretend greater and greater weakness during their last several years.”
“You’ve never told me that!”
“We had no reason to, even though you’ve stayed strong, and the Frossians have felt they weren’t getting full value for their money. Now, however, something new has happened. We’ve heard the Frossians talking. Some very important breeding male has communicated with the planetary leader here on Fajnard. It, in turn, has informed the least overlord that a bondswoman who speaks Frossian is to be killed, quickly and without delay. The least overlord has told the overseer, the one who keeps threatening you.”
“Why?” I cried. “The only Frossians I’ve ever seen are here, here on Fajnard. Why would some overlord care about me?”
“You don’t know; we don’t know. Certainly the least overlord doesn’t know or care, and the overseer doesn’t care because it was going to kill you anyhow. You’d be dead by now except for the umoxen. We know they warm you in winter, protect you at all times. They prevent the Frossians from stealing your clothes and food and from fouling your water. Is this not so?”
“You know it is.”
“Well, depend upon it, the overseer also knows it’s so. Very soon now, some Frossian or other will separate you from the umoxen, take you elsewhere, and you will not return.”
“The overseer hasn’t said this.”
“Of course not. The overseer knows you understand what it says. It says only what it means you to hear. To make you look in the wrong direction.”
I frowned, saying hesitantly, “Where am I to go? This is the only place on Fajnard that I know.”
“There’s a better place, and we’ll take you there. It’s the place we Ghoss go, when we are weary of serving the creatures.”
“Why you serve them at all is more than I can understand!”
“True. It is more than you can understand, at least for now. After a time in the hills, you may understand it.”
The next evening, when a plether of umoxen were pastured in the fields with only me to watch them, several of the huge creatures wandered over and began to hum at me. “Mar-Mar, time to go away.”
“You’ve been talking to the Ghoss,” I said.
“Ghoss been talking to us,” they remarked. “Time. You stay until tomorrow, something bad will happen, so, we go tonight. Get on up.” It knelt on its front legs, giving me a foreleg to step up on.
It was the first time one of them had offered to carry me, but I did not hesitate. The small group of them started for the fence between the pasture and the river bottom, all the rest of the plether following along. At the fence they simply leaned against the posts until they broke off, then amused themselves by trampling vast lengths of fence into the
