across voices and, as it was this time, snores. (Some Ironfolk snore hardly at all, which is very strange. But, to make up for that, those that snore loudest make a deafening din.) Perhaps I was thinking too much of the fact that we were nearing the time when the Ten Per Cent Extra Free would throw herself clear of the Galaxy and set out across the gulf to the Spiral of Andromeda; that would be the moment when all of us knew that our last farewells had truly been said to our homeworlds. Perhaps I was too engaged in my delightful misery to hear what my ears were trying to tell me. Or perhaps I was, secretly, eager to be discovered – as if the part of me that did not enjoy the pain wanted an end of it, and of the little instrument that conjured it.
The door to our cabin – mine and my flass's – was not of the sort that slid away like a horse's pizzle, but it was of painted aluminum all right, and its crash against the painted aluminum wall as he threw it open returned me from wherever my sadness had blown me. I saw his eyes – his sightless Ironfolk eyes – bulge like a frog's when he saw what I was doing. In a second there was a heavy metal weapon in his hand – one of the spitting-weapons, that could be built light but are instead built heavy by the Ironfolk, to enhance their bullying demeanor. I sat on my bunk, half-raised, staring over my slumbering flass not so much at the intruder but at the serpent-eye black of his weapon's nozzle. I could hear his muscles tense as he prepared to make me die (although I kindly know he knew it not) with its dart, and I prepared myself for that; I would not have brought death willingly upon me, of course, but my sorrow was great enough that I had little regret about dying.
Which would have happened, except that the scream of metal against metal had woken my flass. Just as the guard's finger stressed she raised herself up on her elbows, taking the dart in the center of her forehead. At once the tiny metal point spread its evil cacophony all through her, and her body flailed its revulsion; the pain was overly great for her to scream before she died, or even to try to sing the notes of the Dying-song.
I think the guard was too terrified to shoot at me after that; I know he had not had the intention of bringing about a dying. The lives of we slaves had not been expensive up until now, but the Ten Per Cent Extra Free was close to the time of leaving the Galaxy, so hereafter our numbers could not be simply replenished by a raid or a trade. The Ironfolk forget that even their "harmless" trinket darts, loaded with synthetic stuffs that render Ironfolk themselves sleepy but not damaged, being tipped with metal are death to us. They also forget that they are all, sometimes, guilty of forgetting; the guard was likely to be punished for doing something that his punishers did as often as he. He had not a wish to add a further dying to the tally.
He gestured with his spitting-weapon at me, and I made my eyes flare as if in fear of it. I curbed the grief I felt for my flass, although I vowed that one day in the Spiral of Andromeda I would find a place far from the crafted metal so that I could sing for her her Dying-song in all its entirety. I picked myself off my bunk and moved away from her, as he had indicated. Another jerk of the weapon, and I threw my pitifully small harp towards him across the metal floor.
He crunched it underfoot, adding a second murder to his first; I heard its tiny scream as what little of the living music it had managed to hold fled from it.
Then we were walking along empty gray corridors, him at my back with his spitting-weapon still raised, as if there were somewhere that I could escape to. The odd thing was this: throughout all, I had been able to hear that, incredible as it still seems, there was music of a sort in the weapon. It was dull and barely thinking, like that of a fallen tree, and it was more of a malignant discord than anything else, but the fact
The door to our cabin – mine and my flass's – was not of the sort that slid away like a horse's pizzle, but it was of painted aluminum all right, and its crash against the painted aluminum wall as he threw it open returned me from wherever my sadness had blown me. I saw his eyes – his sightless Ironfolk eyes – bulge like a frog's when he saw what I was doing. In a second there was a heavy metal weapon in his hand – one of the spitting-weapons, that could be built light but are instead built heavy by the Ironfolk, to enhance their bullying demeanor. I sat on my bunk, half-raised, staring over my slumbering flass not so much at the intruder but at the serpent-eye black of his weapon's nozzle. I could hear his muscles tense as he prepared to make me die (although I kindly know he knew it not) with its dart, and I prepared myself for that; I would not have brought death willingly upon me, of course, but my sorrow was great enough that I had little regret about dying.
Which would have happened, except that the scream of metal against metal had woken my flass. Just as the guard's finger stressed she raised herself up on her elbows, taking the dart in the center of her forehead. At once the tiny metal point spread its evil cacophony all through her, and her body flailed its revulsion; the pain was overly great for her to scream before she died, or even to try to sing the notes of the Dying-song.
I think the guard was too terrified to shoot at me after that; I know he had not had the intention of bringing about a dying. The lives of we slaves had not been expensive up until now, but the Ten Per Cent Extra Free was close to the time of leaving the Galaxy, so hereafter our numbers could not be simply replenished by a raid or a trade. The Ironfolk forget that even their "harmless" trinket darts, loaded with synthetic stuffs that render Ironfolk themselves sleepy but not damaged, being tipped with metal are death to us. They also forget that they are all, sometimes, guilty of forgetting; the guard was likely to be punished for doing something that his punishers did as often as he. He had not a wish to add a further dying to the tally.
He gestured with his spitting-weapon at me, and I made my eyes flare as if in fear of it. I curbed the grief I felt for my flass, although I vowed that one day in the Spiral of Andromeda I would find a place far from the crafted metal so that I could sing for her her Dying-song in all its entirety. I picked myself off my bunk and moved away from her, as he had indicated. Another jerk of the weapon, and I threw my pitifully small harp towards him across the metal floor.
He crunched it underfoot, adding a second murder to his first; I heard its tiny scream as what little of the living music it had managed to hold fled from it.
Then we were walking along empty gray corridors, him at my back with his spitting-weapon still raised, as if there were somewhere that I could escape to. The odd thing was this: throughout all, I had been able to hear that, incredible as it still seems, there was music of a sort in the weapon. It was dull and barely thinking, like that of a fallen tree, and it was more of a malignant discord than anything else, but the fact
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