them wonda what we been about them wonda bout we fire heartfire red and red not dead not we them canna tame we an I them canna tame I am too weight-I too long I wait I old song sad song dead song dead so them say so old cold deadNO!

I ya we I an we do stomp o press shun I an we this genna ray shun ay shun I shun we shun they I an we do stomp oppression I an we this generation "YA!" the crowd in the village shouted. "YA!" the rebels in the Smelter shouted. "No," they shouted, players and viewers, "Fireheart! Weight-I wait-I! NO! Shun," they shouted, players and viewers, "Press! Stomp! Shun! Stomp oppression, this generation, I an we, YES! YES! YES!"

Xalloor pinched Aslan's arm, then began wiggling through the crowd, heading for the door. Aslan blinked, then followed, crossing against the streams of adults who were moving toward the bar. Some of the older middlers were kicking the mats and cushions to one side to get ready for the dance that would go on until the musicians tuning up in a corner by the comset ran out of wind.

Others were standing around throwing verses back and forth, a kaleidoscope of clashing sounds. A number of the younger middlers weren't waiting for music but were already undulating in the preliminaries to one of their less comprehensible dances. Made Aslan feel her years; forget about the ananiles, they couldn't return that resilience of mind that only the very young possessed.

The wind was picking up outside, the tree limbs woven overhead groaned and creaked, the stiff thick leaves rubbed against each other, singing like crickets. The trees grew close together, blocking moonlight and starlight; whoever walked this path after dark carried light with him or her and blessed the trees for they ceiled the path to the Minemouth and hid the walkers on it from the Warmaster's wandering eye. Rod lights flickered like earthbound stars as clumps of middlers hurried toward the dance, brushing past Aslan and Xalloor without taking notice of them. When the rush diminished to a trickle, Aslan hurried to catch up with Xalloor.

"What ..."

The dancer looked round, her face lit by a flash of laughter, clickon clickoff, there and gone. She shook her head.

Aslan sighed, matched steps with her. "The script. Who won?"

"Me. Sort of." Xalloor thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacket and slowed a little, letting Aslan light the way for them both. "I told them, look, you go and on at people like that, they turn their heads off. Worse'n that, they turn you off. You want 'em to listen, you keep coming back at them all right, but you sugarcoat it, I mean you want to sneak it past 'em before they know what you're doing. I said, you want to see how it's done, look at one of those Spectacles, I mean really look, forget about the story, figure out what he's saying and how he's saying it. But you got to do it better, faster, don't forget how quick the bitbits'll be after you, you've got maybe ten minutes playing time before they locate the transfer station and trash your ca.s.sette. Lan, you should've seen that script, it'd send a wirehead into coma."

"When are they going to start the clandestines?"

"Things keep going like they are and they get hold of some more writers, which they really need, believe me, they natter on all the time about poets, but they don't recruit any, it's enough to make you throw up your hands and say h.e.l.l with everything. Amateurs! Couple months from now. That's what the plan is. Three months top limit." Another strobe grin. "Maybe.""Why maybe in that tone of voice?"

"Elmas's back. We were still arguing when she came in, she wanted to talk to Ewily, so we broke up. Just as well, Ylazar was starting to repeat himself and that could go on till entropy took us all."

"She say anything? What the tight-down was about?"

"Not in front of the nonnies, no." She clicked her tongue, wrinkled her nose.

Aslan sighed again, the familiar little sound stabbed a weak spot; she wanted her mother here, scold or not, wanted something from her old life, she was tired, so tired of improvising an existence.

Xalloor banged on the Minemouth door, stepped back while the keeper slid it open just wide enough to let them through one after the other. She got her lightrod out again and began almost galloping along the rough floor of the gallery, heading for the lift. There was a suppressed excitement about her, a wired-up energy that said clearer than words she had news, exciting maybe frightening news.

They went up two levels, followed Kele tunnel until they reached the stubby offshoot where they'd set up housekeeping. Xalloor stirred the fire to life, added more coal and crouched before the grate with the bellows, working with hard won expertise (her first attempt at a coal fire was unalloyed disaster, they had to run down a Hordar who knew about sea coal and iron grates and was willing to lend a hand so they didn't freeze before morning). As she coaxed tiny flames from the ashy lumps, some of the dank chill went off the room. It was a room, there was a yosstarp ceiling, wrinkled and sagging, walls of wood sc.r.a.p scavenged from the company houses, a wooden floor covered with lignin mats that Aslan had woven, putting to work one of the skills she'd learned a few a.s.signments back, a neat herringbone pattern that earned her some condescending praise from the much defter weavers among the outcasts. She'd made mats for a number of rooms like these, glad to have some way of pa.s.sing the time; besides, the scrip she earned brought her and Xalloor things they couldn't have acquired otherwise, like the gla.s.s and bronze oil lamps and the earthenware vase sitting on a crate in the corner by the fire, the nergi flowers in it adding dark rich red and orange tones to the drab gray of the tarp and the washed-out brown of the mats and the walls. There were two pallets raised from the floor on crude frames that Aslan and Xalloor had glued together from rusty tramrails and salvaged bricks, there were several cushions they'd gotten from one of the weavers in return for several weeks hard work carding yunk wool, blankets issued by the Council; sheets were a luxury few living here could afford. There was the crate which they used for storage and some smaller boxes that served as tables. Chilly drafts came wandering through the cracks no matter how often she or Xalloor pounded caulking between the boards. Not down the chimney, though, bless the local tech; Hordar filters were useful for more than purifying water. De- spite all this, they were surrounded by stone and earth and that was like living inside a block of ice.

While the dancer fussed with the fire, Aslan moved round the room, lifting the chimney gla.s.ses, telling herself she ought to wash them one of these days, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the wicks and lighting them. These lamps burned fish oil smuggled in from the Sea Farms and that oil announced its origins for several minutes after the wicks were lit; after that either the smell went away, or their noses went on strike. The soft amber light filled the room, chased away the shadows and gave an illusion of warmth. She poured some water in a kettle, hooked out the swing spit and clamped the bail in place. "Move over a bit, Loorie, let me get this on so we can have some tea. Did you get anything to eat over there?"

Xalloor tossed the bellows aside and came to her feet in that boneless ripple that made Aslan feel clumsy as a stone G.o.d. "It's going good enough, I-was just trying to catch some warm." She dropped onto her pallet. "Some sandwiches, I think they were, might have been relics of the Prophet. Why is is, Lan, that earnest types never have a palate?"

"Genetic, I suppose." Aslan got to her feet, brushed her hands against hertrousers. "I thought that might happen, so I begged some cold meat and rolls from Prismek, a minute, I'll fetch them." She pushed past the double tarp they used as a door and tied taut once they were in for the night, came back with a basket, its contents wrapped in old soft cloth. "He had some krida he was frying for breakfast, there's a sackful of those tucked under the rolls. And he threw in some green meelas and some cheese to go with them."

"I love you forever, Lan."

"So tell me what it is you didn't want to say out there."

"Remember I said we were still arguing?" Xalloor pulled a box across the slippery mat to her pallet and began laying out the feast.

"So?"

"I didn't exactly mean we, not when Elmas came in; there was some peculiar tea going round and it got me in the gut, I was out back in the facilities listening to my insides grumble and wondering if my knees were going to work right when I finished dropping my burden. Well, I don't need to go into that any more, but what happened was, when I came back Churri and Holz had gone off along with most the others. I was ticked, let me tell you, I could've used an arm to lean on right then, I was moving slow and careful. That must've been why they didn't hear me and stop talking." She popped a krida in her mouth and crunched happily at it, rolling her eyes with pleasure at the taste.

"Loorie!"

"Dearie dai, im pay shunt," Xalloor scooped out a handful of the krida and sat with her fingers crooked about the succulent fishlets, "pay and play.

Outside's in. Here and now. Not Bolodo."

Aslan closed her eyes^ After a moment, she heard a hissing as the water boiled and a few drops landed on the coals. She kicked a cushion across to the box, hooked the kettle away from the fire. As she made the tea, she did her best to not-think, not-feel. Behind her she could hear Xalloor eating steadily and was grateful the dancer didn't feel like talking right then. She left the tea steeping, stood leaning against the crate, her elbows behind her, resting on the top. "Outside's in?"

"You hear what Elmas 'n the isyas were after?"

"My students said she was going to blow the Brain. Get rid of the Sech's files. Make as much trouble as she could."

"Yah. That's where she 'n the isyas ran into 'em."

"Hmm." Aslan lifted the strainer, inspected the tea and decided it was ready.

She carried pot and bowls to the box, folded herself down onto the cushion and poured tea for herself and Xalloor. She cradled her bowl between her hands, glad of the warmth and the heaviness, it gave her something to hold onto.

"Exactly what did you hear, Loorie?"

"Le' me see, I'm supposed to be good with dialog. You been in the depot, you know how it's laid out; we were in the big room so we could walk through a scene whenever we fixed something and see how it played.

There's tarp hung all over, makes it hot sometimes, but no one fusses about that," she held up one of the krida, "frying's all right for fish, but me, I'd rather not, eh? There's a couple of old minecars in there, lot of junk, you had to navigate it in the dark, you'd end up with two broken legs and your face pushed in. What I mean, we don't try to light the whole place, so there's lots of shadows and it's easy to get lost round the edges. Well, I wasn't trying to get lost, it was just I wasn't making much noise and walking along like I was my grandmother after she outwore her ananiles. I fetched up by one of the cars and decided I'd better lean against it for a minute. Felt nice and cool against my face. I started to feel better. They were talking all that time, but I wasn't listening until I heard outsiders in that tone of voice, you know, when someone's about to be shoved head down in s.h.i.t and it won't be the locals. Being it was Elmas speaking and considering how the Council crawls around her, I got interested fast. I thought she was talking about us." She broke off to sip at the tea.

Aslan moved one hand carefully from the cup, pressed her heated palm againsther mouth. When the heat was gone, she lowered the hand. "Who was there?"

"Um, Elmas, that pilot what's his name, it'll come back to me in a minute, one of her isyas, the one that's living here all the time now, Lirrit I think's her name, Ewily and Ylazar. Pilot, ah! I knew I'd get it, Karrel Goza, yah, he didn't say anything, he doesn't talk much anytime. Ylazar said something, I didn't hear it, his back was to me and you know how he mumbles. The woman warned us, Elmas said. We had to get Skimmer undercover, she said. Or lose her, she said. Ylazar Falyan, we need a boat and yoss pods and enough fuel to fill Skimmer's tanks, we need it tonight, she said. Ylazar said something I didn't hear that time either, didn't need to hear it, you know him, if there's anything he hates worse than moving, it's moving fast. Do it, she said, now.

She gave him the mean eye and he got to his feet and went out, muttering to himself." Xalloor grinned. "She say hop, they jump and don't bother asking how high. The pilot, he got up and went out after Laza, said nothing, just left. Before they were out the door, Elmas started on Ewily. Get word out, she said, the woman jigged the Brain and set up open corridors for anyone who wants over the Wall, in or out. No melters, no alarms, no defenses at all. I'll get time, place and duration at the meeting with the outsiders, give it to you for distribution soon as we get back here. Evvily wasn't about to be tramped on like Ylazar. Do you trust her?

she said. It's your word going to guarantee this, she said. She makes a fool of you, it hurts us all." Xalloor jumped up and danced over to the storage crate; she got out the stone bottle with the rix brandy they kept for celebrating small triumphs, came back more soberly, her face and body shouting her nervousness. "Give me your bowl," she said.

"Why?"

"Always asking questions, aren't you. Just for once do what I say, eh?"

More apprehensive than ever, Aslan swallowed the last of the cold tea and pa.s.sed over the bowl.

Xalloor poured in enough brandy to cover the bottom. "Drink that. Now."

"Yes, Mama Loor."

Xalloor gave herself a scant teaspoon of the brandy, pushed the cork back in and settled on her pallet. "Where was I?"

"Evvily was saying do you trust her."

"Right." Xalloor sipped at the brandy, eyes closed. "Elmas laughed. / don't need to trust her, she said, / have two good locks on her. The outsiders want trade with us. They cheat us now and that shuts down on them fast, she said.

Rosepearls, she said. They want them like most people want air to beathe, she said. And they've come to take back the slaves Bolodo sold Pittipat, she said.

The woman more than the others. Her daughter is a slave, she said. She's here to get her back."

Aslan felt sick. She bent over until her foreheard was resting on the box.

"Cha! I knew this was going to happen." Xalloor came round the box on hands and knees, lifted Aslan against her, held her with her face tucked into the curve between neck and shoulder. She held Aslan until her shuddering stopped, stroking her back, smoothing a gentle hand over and over her short dark hair.

Finally Aslan sighed and pushed away. She filled her bowl again and drank the brandied tea for its double warmth. '"Go on," she said.

"Not much on to go. Soon as she said that, I thought of you and what you told me about your mum. Then I thought, hunh, don't jump so fast, Loor, lots of daughters hauled off here, I'm one myself though my mum wouldna crossed a street to fetch me home. Evvily was still being hard to convince. She might have lied, she said, she might have been playing games with you. No, Elmas said. The daughter is here now. At the Mines. Aslan, she said. We'll hold her, that way we can be sure the mother does what she's promised. Just then that idiot Mustakin came slamming back in, forgot his overcloak. They stopped talking. I suppose Elmas thought she'd said all she needed to, anyway they went out after Musti. By that time I'd forgotten the shakes and I took off as soon as I was sure no one would land on me. So there it is, your mum is here, looking for you." "They're not going to tell me about her, are they." "Nuh. Orher about you. What you going to do?" "Snoop. There's a meeting. ..." Aslan grinned, suddenly riding high. "Be a hoot if I turned up there and said hi mom. Pa.s.s that bottle and let's celebrate."

The Ridaar unit had three voice-activated pinears, ilddas in University jargon, inconspicuous-long-distance-data-collectors. Aslan slipped one into the mine chamber the Council used for their private meetings, she got one into Elmas Ofka's quarters. The third she hesitated over for some time, but she finally decided to keep it reserved for anything that turned up in the feed from the other two.

On the night of the day she planted the ilddas, the night after Gun Peygam, she came back alone after supper and played over what they'd picked up and transmitted to the Ridaar. There wasn't much from the ear in Elmas Ofka's quarters, but in the material from the other she found the Dalliss report to the special Council meeting and the discussion afterward. She learned the date and place of the next meeting with the outsiders, she learned about the plan to attack the Warmaster and the role she was meant to play in that. Hostage.

The breathing equivalent to a handful of rosepearls. Sold again, she told herself when she heard that. A slave is a slave is a slave.

Time crawled. She felt the feet of every minute walking across her skin, inescapable tickling torment. She taught her history seminar and kept her body easy and her face blank with an effort of will that left her drained. There was an itchiness in her students that she found hard to ignore, they stank of conspiracy, their questions were perfunctory or prods to get her talking on subjects all round the secret that excited them; she could not notice that excitement because she was not supposed to know about the plan to seize the Warmaster.

"How many rebellions have you studied, doctori-yaba.s.s?"

"Too many to narrate. I've told you about three, if you'll remember, examples of what can happen. The genocide on Alapacsin III, the Great-Father uprising on Tuufyak, the Placids on Ceeantap. If I have time the next few weeks, I'll fill some ca.s.settes with what I remember of other violent changes in leadership, show you variations on those three types of outcome."

"Which do you think we'll have here, doctori-yaba.s.s?"

"Depends on you and how you look at things. Please remember, people are capable of almost anything in the name of good."

"What's wrong with that, doctori-yaba.s.s?"

"So it's a game, eh? Whack your teacher, eh? Look to your prophet and learn.

Seems to me he said a thing or two about ends and means. At the start, all rebellions are rather much the same. I know, I've told you to avoid generalization, it's lazy thinking, but even that's not always true. They begin with pa.s.sion and ideals, fire in the belly, ambition in the brain. You, young Hordar, that's you I'm talking about. And they begin because there is a need that grows until it explodes one day. There you have the inklins. You here at the Mines, you're playing touch and run games, you tease the Huvved because you can't afford to slaughter them. The inklins on their yizzies are playing a deadlier game, they've nothing to lose. These feral children are a lit fuse; unless you can damp it, they'll force the Huvved to destroy everything you're trying to save."

"Huvved are crazy, doctori-yaba.s.s, are they that crazy? If they destroy us, they destroy themselves."

"Alapacsin three, read your notes. I have a ca.s.sette I want you to see. Some of you may remember the speaker, you can explain to the others later. Make notes if you wish, the segment is quite short."

I am KalaKallampak, a Morz of the Bahar. I have been here on Tairanna, a slave, for more than twelve years.

The Morz was sitting on his cot, his back against the wall, his heels dug into the thin mattress. As he talked, he was knitting, producing something shapeless, using the rhythmic swings of his hands to subdue the fury that knotted his jaw and set the veins throbbing at his temples. Yet when he spoke,his gravelly voice was mild, almost serene.

In the beginning my servitude weighed lightly on me. I was permitted to spend much time in the open ocean, when I studied the sea life and collected samples part of the day and part of the day I played, enjoying myself in water as fine as any I can remember.

He lowered his hands, bowed head and torso toward the lens.

For which I honor the Hordar who demand such purity. I was content, though not happy; who can be happy forceably separated from those he loves? But it was endurable. Then the Fehdaz who bought me died and his successor was a fussy nervous little cretin who was distressed at the thought of property so valuable roaming about loose. I was forbidden the open sea and I started to suffer. Day by slow day I grew heavier with anger and physical pain. Until my days were dreary and my nights were worse and sleep was fickle and had to be courted. During those years when salt smell on the wind was all I had of the sea and a brine tub all that kept my body whole, I searched for a way to keep my mind more supple than my misfortunate body. The habit of decades gave me the answer, I am as much a scholar by temperament as I am a technician by training. I began watching gul Brindar; day and night I found ways to see what was happening to the city. I set the things I saw and heard into the many-leveled intricately nuanced watersong of my people, polishing the periods of my mindbook into a poetry of sound and sense, writing into my memory the recent history of Ayla gul Brindar.

Eyes closed, he scratched absently at his wrists, then fumbled at the wool; the veins at his temples pulsed visibly. After a moment he lifted the needles and began knitting again.

For three years I did this, then one day there was a moment when I was loose upon the cliffs of Brindar with no one near enough to stop me. I did not care if I lived or if I died. I jumped and fell a hundred yards into a clash of rocks and weed and incoming tide, survived and swam the three thousand miles to surface here. You ask me to tell you my mindbook. I will do that, though turning the tale into the airgroan of Hordaradda erases all its grace.

The Troubles have their seed in things done long before Bolodo brought me here. I cannot speak of them. This is what I saw myself. Five years ago the treatment of yoss fibers was introduced, a slave like me was given a task and did it and in the doing crumbled what was already cracking. Because yunk wool rotted in the depots waiting for a buyer, many and many a landbound Hordar was pushed off the Raz where his family had been generation on generation, back to the Landing Time.

Where could they go? The Marginal Lands would not support them, there were many already claiming those. Young single men took their hunger to Littoral cities that glimmered with promise. Though that promise proved as illusory and fragile as soap bubbles, hungry families followed them. The cities began to bulge with dispossessed gra.s.slanders. They took any work they could get so they could feed themselves and their children, took work from Little Familes; living was already precarious for the city poor; those not affiliated with Great Families were as hungry as the gra.s.slanders who were not welcome or well treated.

He was rocking gently back and forth, like the sea rocking back and forth, his eyes were still closed, the needles clicked and clashed, the wood twitched and ran through his fingers.

The Duzzulkerin, what coin they had they were not about to waste on rent; in cities there are always and ever empty buildings. They lived in these until they were driven out, one family, two, ten, wherever there was an empty corner. Their unwilling landlords would call the city wards and evict them, but in a day or so, or a week, more families would come to take their places.

And when these moved on, more again would come, until finally the landlords gave up trying to reclaim their property and began charging rent which sometimes they managed to collect.

Incivility increased. City fought Gra.s.sland with fists and worse. Hordar are not violent, they are much like my folk in that, but there is a limit beyondwhich you cannot push them, especially youngers unseasoned by age and learning, the unsteady youngers who, looking forward, see only a bleakness growing worse.

Incivility was bred in the bare and boring shelters that would never be homes, where Duzzulka youngers were left alone to pa.s.s the days however they could. It would not happen to the least and poorest of the Morze Bahar, I take pride in that; plenty and poverty are shared alike, Morz to Morz, and children are hard won, a joyful blessing. When KariniKarm bore my son and daughter, I swam with her and stayed with her to care for them until they could leave the water and walk upon the land, breathing the thick wet air into new soft lungs. A full year I stayed with her and them, leaving work, weaving joy into the wide communal song.

Schooling on this world is Family business; where the families cannot do it, the children are unschooled; when their parents work all day and half the night for a meager sum that barely keeps them fed and clothed, how are they to teach their children to read and write and figure? If they never learned themselves, how are they to teach? Gra.s.slander youngers and city youngers alike, they are ignorant and unlettered, they are wasted. Is there no one who understands this? Is there no one out there who will find a cure for this obscenity?

He put the knitting down and rested fists on it, gazed grimly into the lens, his stare an accusation. When he spoke, the gravelly voice was hard with scorn.

Is it so strange, so unexpected that these so abandoned children melded in gangs and learned city ways in city streets? Is it so strange that they met there gangs of city poor, youngers who heard their elders cursing the gra.s.slanders who stole their jobs, is it so strange they fought, these children of the streets? Is it so strange they learned to rage at landlords and city wards and most of all at the Huvved Fehz? Is it so strange for youngers iooking at the struggles of their kin and the slow slipping of their elders' lives, is it so strange that they are filled with rage at everyone and everything, that they covet and seize what they cannot hope to earn, that they destroy what they cannot hope to seize? Is it so strange that these youngers call themselves inklins which means the unremembered, that they come to despise themselves as failures and worthless and turn that despite against the world?

He stopped talking, pressed his fingertips against his eyes. For over a minute he sat very still, his dark leathery skin twitching in several places. When he spoke he had put aside his agitation, his voice was mild again.

They are not stupid, these inklins, only unlearned; some are very clever indeed. It was an inklin who made the first yizzy. A boy in gul Inci, or sometimes the story says gul Brindar, or sometimes gul Samlikkan, a boy dreamed of flying, but lacked the guildfee for his training. So he stole yoss pods and bundled them in a bag net which also he stole and tied the net to a broomstick and strapped a minimotor (which, of course, he stole) to that stick. And he flew.

He leaned toward the lens, his face intent, his eyes glowing, as if he wanted to force his listeners to understand what he was saying.

The idea also flew. West to east, east to west, within the year inklins in all parts of the Littoral were building yizzies for themselves. Within two years inklin gangs were having skyfights; at first they used sticks to bang away at each other, then they made spears, then another clever inklin, some say it was a girl tired of getting banged about, discovered how to spray fire from a hose. The gas inside yoss pods is hydrogen, remember. There were mornings when the city was full of charred flesh and the screams of the not quite dead.

Even before I left, it was not only inklin flesh that burned. Sometimes the yizzy inklins drop fire on Houses and factories and when they feel like it, on the Fekkris; a Huvved in the street after dark is a target whenever inklins fly. The Fehdaz sends slaves to clean up when the mess is really bad and he does not want the extent of it to make the whisper circuit.Incivility increases. The cities are burning bit by bit.

What the inklins do not destroy the Huvved will; already they see poor folk as sharks circling them ready to attack, the time will come when they see every Hordar poor or not as enemy, when the only easing of their terror will come when there's no one left for them to fear. I see the time coming when the Warmaster will glide from city to city melting cities into bedrock slag.

I am uncomfortable here away from the ocean. I go to the Sea Farms; if they are fortunate, they will survive the Burning. Should the Huvved go entirely mad, they can scatter their barges and wait out the storm. May the data flow freely for you, Aslan A-tow-a-she, may your days be filled with meaning.

"Does this answer that question of yours, Hayal Halak?"

"I knew all that, doctori-yaba.s.s."

"If you knew, why did you ask?"

"You sound very serious today, doctori-yaba.s.s."

"Boring, you mean."

"Oh no, we'd never say that. Go on, tell us more. That was, not boring, no, depressing. Tell us something positive. Tell us about the rebels that win, doctori-yaba.s.s."

"I'm going to be boring again, and depressing, but listen to me anyway. The rebels that pull it off, they've done the easiest part. War simplifies things, choices are stark. After the war's over, well, life gets at them, chews them down. People don't change, not really. There are no instant angels. Ideology is for arguing about in bars, it's hopeless as a guide for government. Right thinking just does not do it, backsliding seems to be a necessary condition for intelligence. If the rebels who survive and are running things haven't allowed for that, there's fury and frustration and repression and things end up the way they were before, or worse."

"And if they allow for frailty, doctori-yaba.s.s?"