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Authors: Suzy McKee Charnas
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strong neck, and she was almost the size of a fair-grown boy.
Servan addressed her close-cropped head. ‘Where are your masters?’
‘This fem feels that they are all in the men’s compound, please-you-master,’ she whined, slurring her words in the manner of fems. She sat back on her heels, so that now that he had acknowledged her presence, he might see her face if he wished to. ‘Is there something this fem might offer these masters?’
A trickle of white fluid ran off the lip of the pipe into the trough, setting off a to-do of shouting and wall-rapping from the fems working with the mesh.
‘She can offer her full attention,’ Servan snapped to the one before him. She kissed the ground again in apology. ‘Is there some fem here who’s been in Bayo for the past three five-years?’
‘This fem can try to take the masters to one such,’ she said, using the proper formula that avoided any suggestion of actual competence on her part. She arose at his gesture to guide them.
Then the outer door opened and Kelmz walked in. The two Rovers strode ahead of him, heads up and nostrils flaring.
Every fem in the room froze.
‘Christ,’ Servan groaned, ‘and his unfortunate father!’
Close up, the Rovers were impressive. Their heavy torsos gleamed, and the short capes they wore strained across their shoulders. They stood with their legs bent in an aggressive crouch. Each Rover had a knife in his right hand, and his defensively gloved left hand tensed before his belly, ready to lash out with a metal-studded
blow or to turn the slash of an enemy’s weapon.
‘Kelmz, you’re moon-mad to bring them in here!’ Servan said.
‘I can hold them,’ said the captain.
Eykar said sharply, ‘Will they be missed?’
Kelmz shook his head. ‘They’re fresh, probably just on duty an hour or so. Nobody will check them for a while. I think they’re worth the risk to us. You want to keep these bitches shivering when you have to go among them.’
His hands rested lightly on the Rovers’ shoulders; he stroked them a little, calming them. But he had an odd, abstracted air, as if he touched them from a great distance.
7
In his time Kelmz had done enough guard duty among workgangs of fems to be unfazed by them now. He attended to the Rovers, who padded warily along rolling their eyes and quivering under their scarred hides. To them, fems were drug-distorted demons.
Servan watched Eykar as they all proceeded through the fems’ quarters. Eykar’s eyes, that Servan knew to be remarkably keen and untiring, missed nothing; but his face remained austerely uncommunicative. Probably he was holding in his disgust. What he had been taught about fems in the Boyhouse (as Servan knew, having had the same lessons and having had opportunities since to prove them against reality) was not enough and not even particularly accurate. It was one thing to be told that fems were smelly, misshapen and alien-minded. It was another to be surrounded by them.
No fems ever went to Endpath. They had no souls, only inner cores of animating darkness shaped from the void beyond the stars. Their deaths had no significance. Some men believed that the same shadows returned again and again in successive fem-bodies in order to contest for the world with the souls of men, which came from light.
It was hard to connect these crude mud walls and their stunted inhabitants with the great witch-fems who had overthrown the Ancients’ mighty civilization. The Chants Historical told the tale: at the peak of their power, the men of Ancient times had been so fascinated with their own technical prowess that they had neglected
the supervision of their treacherous fems. Technics had seemed to offer the promise of overcoming the sullen chaos of the void itself by the extension of manly will from the face of the earth out among the stars. The Ancients had concentrated first on attacking the moon, through which the forces of the void were focussed on the world.
The
Servan addressed her close-cropped head. ‘Where are your masters?’
‘This fem feels that they are all in the men’s compound, please-you-master,’ she whined, slurring her words in the manner of fems. She sat back on her heels, so that now that he had acknowledged her presence, he might see her face if he wished to. ‘Is there something this fem might offer these masters?’
A trickle of white fluid ran off the lip of the pipe into the trough, setting off a to-do of shouting and wall-rapping from the fems working with the mesh.
‘She can offer her full attention,’ Servan snapped to the one before him. She kissed the ground again in apology. ‘Is there some fem here who’s been in Bayo for the past three five-years?’
‘This fem can try to take the masters to one such,’ she said, using the proper formula that avoided any suggestion of actual competence on her part. She arose at his gesture to guide them.
Then the outer door opened and Kelmz walked in. The two Rovers strode ahead of him, heads up and nostrils flaring.
Every fem in the room froze.
‘Christ,’ Servan groaned, ‘and his unfortunate father!’
Close up, the Rovers were impressive. Their heavy torsos gleamed, and the short capes they wore strained across their shoulders. They stood with their legs bent in an aggressive crouch. Each Rover had a knife in his right hand, and his defensively gloved left hand tensed before his belly, ready to lash out with a metal-studded
blow or to turn the slash of an enemy’s weapon.
‘Kelmz, you’re moon-mad to bring them in here!’ Servan said.
‘I can hold them,’ said the captain.
Eykar said sharply, ‘Will they be missed?’
Kelmz shook his head. ‘They’re fresh, probably just on duty an hour or so. Nobody will check them for a while. I think they’re worth the risk to us. You want to keep these bitches shivering when you have to go among them.’
His hands rested lightly on the Rovers’ shoulders; he stroked them a little, calming them. But he had an odd, abstracted air, as if he touched them from a great distance.
7
In his time Kelmz had done enough guard duty among workgangs of fems to be unfazed by them now. He attended to the Rovers, who padded warily along rolling their eyes and quivering under their scarred hides. To them, fems were drug-distorted demons.
Servan watched Eykar as they all proceeded through the fems’ quarters. Eykar’s eyes, that Servan knew to be remarkably keen and untiring, missed nothing; but his face remained austerely uncommunicative. Probably he was holding in his disgust. What he had been taught about fems in the Boyhouse (as Servan knew, having had the same lessons and having had opportunities since to prove them against reality) was not enough and not even particularly accurate. It was one thing to be told that fems were smelly, misshapen and alien-minded. It was another to be surrounded by them.
No fems ever went to Endpath. They had no souls, only inner cores of animating darkness shaped from the void beyond the stars. Their deaths had no significance. Some men believed that the same shadows returned again and again in successive fem-bodies in order to contest for the world with the souls of men, which came from light.
It was hard to connect these crude mud walls and their stunted inhabitants with the great witch-fems who had overthrown the Ancients’ mighty civilization. The Chants Historical told the tale: at the peak of their power, the men of Ancient times had been so fascinated with their own technical prowess that they had neglected
the supervision of their treacherous fems. Technics had seemed to offer the promise of overcoming the sullen chaos of the void itself by the extension of manly will from the face of the earth out among the stars. The Ancients had concentrated first on attacking the moon, through which the forces of the void were focussed on the world.
The
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