He ate it anyhow, not allowing himself to be fussy, knowing he would have to keep strength and warmth and wits about him. When he had finished, he stayed beside the fire, soaking in the warmth.
Heavy footsteps approached, too heavy for the Gharm. It was Mugal Pye, returned. “Can you write?” he asked from the door.
“Of course I can write,” Jep said. “I’m not an infant.”
“On paper, with a brush, as well as on a stage?”
“I can,” Jep said.
“Then write.” The man put down sheets of paper, soft-edged, handmade. There was a woman in Settlement Two who made paper like that. She sold it to people who wished to make fancy, hand-lettered documents and memorials. “Write to Maire Girat. Tell her you are here, in Voorstod. Tell her no harm will come to you if she comes back to her home.”
“Her home is in Hobbs Land,” said Jep. “In Settlement One.”
“Write,” said the man, his lips quirking angrily at one side. “She will know what home is meant. Tell her also that she must not inform the Queen or the Authority, or you will surely die.” He set a pot of ink upon the table and held out a brush.
Jep took the brush he was offered and dipped it into the inkpot. Writing, as distinguished from entering information in words and symbols, was one of the decorative skills. Everyone was taught the decorative skills, though Jep was not very good at any of them. Saturday was far better at them than Jep was. The thought of her caught him unaware, beneath the ribs like a knife, and he gasped.
“What’s wrong?” demanded the gimlet-eyed man.
“I’m all alone,” Jep whispered. “My people are all far away.”
“Oh now, that’s true,” mocked Mugal Pye. “Tell that to Maire Girat. Tell her you’re lonely, and cold. Tell her you’re hungry. Tell her you will never be returned to Hobbs Land unless she comes to Voorstod once more. Comes, and sings.”
“She does not sing,” said Jep. “I know all the singers, and she is not one of them.”
“Does not sing?” said Pye, incredulously.
“She’s an old woman,” said Jep, laboriously writing the name of Maire Girat at the top of the page. “She’s an old woman, and she does not sing.”
He wrote as he had been directed. It was a difficult exercise, not something he did every day. The words were not simple ones to do with crops or animals, and the sense of the demands being made evaded him. Why Maire Girat should do something because he, Jep Wilm, was captive, he could not say. He could have used simplex form to make it easy—simplex was a phonic system with no room in it for interpretation, like taking dictation. He chose, instead, to use Phansure High Text, to show it was a serious matter. Between the lines, as he lettered the words of the message Mugal Pye intended, he added a superscription for Saturday, which told her, by allusion, that he loved her and needed her help. He could have directed his personal words to China or to Aunt Africa, but Saturday was a One Who, as he himself was.
“What’s this?” demanded Mugal Pye angrily, who understood enough High Text to read the message. “I didn’t tell you to write to your sweetheart.”
“I must,” Jep said. “She’d worry otherwise.”
“Damned brat,” said Mugal. “You’ve put it between the lines. I can’t even cut it off.”
“Leave it,” cried Jep desperately. “It won’t interfere with what you want!”
Mugal fumed for a moment, but decided after a time that the boy was right. Actually, the second message made the first one more poignant. While the first one had been dictated, the second one had come from the heart. They’d know the boy had written it himself, just from the pain in the words.
When the ink had been dried before the fire, Mugal Pye set bottle and brush upon the mantle and went away. Jep put his head down on his arms and wept. Gharm slipped through the door next to the fireplace like shadows, he and she again. He felt a soft hand on his arm, looked down into a pitying face.
“What are your names?” whispered Jep.
“Nils,” said the man.
“Pirva,” said the woman, holding out her hands. “Have you finished?”
He nodded, lifting the still-warm kettle into her arms. “Please don’t be afraid of me,” he begged. “I need someone to …”
“We know,” she said. “We were listening.”
“Are you slaves?” he asked.
The woman nodded, reaching up to pull her shirt away from her neck to show Jep the numbers branded there, along the top of her shoulder, the bare scars of the brand showing against the soft fur of her shoulder. Below the shoulder, the fur stopped, and Jep could see the skin of her chest. She had no breasts there, at least none that showed. Instead, her skin folded down her body, a long, vertical line. The Gharm were made differently from men. They were different about the ears, too, which were furry and flat. He flushed and looked away, noticing as he did so that she also wore a metal collar, with a ring in it, much like the ones used to tether livestock.
“Slaves.” He could scarcely believe it. He had no clear idea what it meant, except that they were not free, as he was, had been … might never be again. If slave meant captive, he, too, was a slave. “Why?”
Again that quick exchange of looks. “We’re not supposed to talk of it.”
“I won’t tell,” he promised. “I won’t tell you told me.”
“Because the men captured us and put us in cages and brought us with them when they came here,” said Nils. “They were bigger and stronger
