It was a knight in full armor. Not metal armor, but something glossy — OldTech plastic. The helmet was completely blank, no holes for mouth or nose, only a smoked-glass plate in front of the eyes. The violet fire surrounding him gave off no heat, but hissed softly like a sleeping snake.
Through the smoke, I saw Cappie weakly pull the Neut's machete out of the mud. Before she could use it, the knight kicked the knife lightly from her hand. " 'Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,' " he said. "That's from Othello, Act One, Scene Two. Not that I expect anyone to care. Centuries ago, my ancestors could impress the peasantry by quoting Shakespeare, but now it takes tear gas. Oh, well — time marches on. Hello."
TWO
A Finger Exercise for Master Disease
"Damn it, Rashid," the Neut croaked to the knight, "this isn't funny." It coughed deeply and spat.
"Don't fuss," the knight said. "You're perfectly all right."
The three of us in the water lifted our heads to stare at him, tears streaming from our eyes and vomit crusting our clothes.
"Some people should cultivate a sense of humor," the knight muttered. "Two days from now, you'll be stopping strangers in the street to tell them this story."
I heard a soft click and the violet fire around his armor winked out. Sighing, he slipped into the water beside us. I shied away, dragging myself farther along the bank though my arms were weak as twigs. The knight wasn't interested in me; he put his arm around the Neut's shoulders and helped the creature wade to the middle of the creek, away from the smoke near shore. There, he bent the Neut over and scooped water into Its weeping eyes.
"Let's get you washed up," the knight said. "You'll feel a hundred times better when you're clean."
The words jarred me worse than the choking smoke. A woman had said almost the same thing to me a year before, in circumstances that still made me cry out "No!" suddenly, day or night, when the memory came unbidden.
I had been down-peninsula in Sobble Beach, playing for a wedding dance. It was a good spring for weddings; I'd played three already and was scheduled for two more before solstice. The men of the town attended my performances enthusiastically — as a woman, I wasn't beautiful but I behaved as if I was and that fooled most people. One man in particular, a young carpenter named Yoskar, was always in the front row whenever I coy-smiled my way onto the podium. Between songs, Yoskar and I flirted. On my break, we even slipped out a side door and spent a tasty few minutes teasing flesh to flesh on the beach. Mouth and hands only, of course — I was always faithful to Cappie, even when he was far away.
It turned out that Yoskar had someone else in his life too. I met his other woman after the dance, as I walked under a shadowy aisle of cedars on my way to the boat that would take me home. The woman moved quietly and she had a knife.
Her first stab took me in the back, but high and off center, stopping itself against my shoulder bone. I nearly passed out; if she had immediately tugged back the knife and gone for my throat, Master Day would have welcomed a new violinist in the Fields of Gold. Luckily for me, the woman was as surprised as I was that she had actually plunged a blade into my body. She stood there stupidly, staring at me as I staggered about. By the time she had recovered enough to consider another attack, my head was clearing too. I had just enough time to squirm the knife from my back and throw it into the darkness before the woman was on top of me, clawing at my throat and scratching for my eyes.
I don't know if we fought for minutes or seconds. I remember heat: my body, hers, and the sweaty suffocation of clothes over my face as we grappled. At some point, the pain and screaming woke my male half, where he slept far off in Birds Home; carried on the wings of crows, his spirit raced in to take over my body. The moment it took possession I felt stronger, more in control. As a man, I knew how to fight and no woman could beat me. I began to punch instead of bite, to grab the woman's softest parts and twist.
Then people were separating us, Yoskar among them. He went to her, not me, babbling apologies and love. The male spirit in me vanished as quickly as it had come and I was left a discarded woman, weeping in rage. I wanted to start the fight again, just to rip Yoskar's pretty face with my fingernails, but the onlookers held me back. They carried me to a private room of the wedding pavilion and a woman wearing the purple scarf of a doctor stripped off my clothes to bathe my wounds.
"You'll feel a hundred times better when you're clean," she said.
She was in her early forties, a woman with confident voice and hands. Those hands ranged over my body, sewing up the stab wound in my back ("Very shallow — you're lucky") and tending multiple bites and scratches. All the while, she spoke of her admiration for my performance that night. "You have fire," the doctor said. "I've never seen such passion."
Gradually the pain and heat remaining from the fight changed. The doctor's hands were still at work. My head was growing dizzy; I could no longer remember wounds in the places she touched, but I let her continue. She kissed me on the right breast and whispered, "Passion." I felt my body twist toward her, wanting more.
I remember heat: my body, hers, the sweaty suffocation…
At dawn I woke alone, in the same room and lying under a thin blanket on the floor. Surprisingly, my male soul had come back to take charge of my female body; and I barely had time to roll onto my side before I threw up, appalled by what I had done. Obviously, the doctor had drugged me — that was the only explanation for how I could participate in such perversion. Two women! How could my female half have been so weak as to yield to such… no, I'd been drugged. Otherwise, I would never have…
I ran outside to the beach, frantic to scrub my flesh raw, to clean the doctor's smell from my face; but when I splashed on water, I stopped immediately. In my mind I could still hear the woman whispering in my ear, "You'll feel a hundred times better when you're clean."
Leaning against the bank in Cypress Marsh, I watched the knight tenderly washing the Neut's face. He whispered softly in the creature's ear; their faces were close and the knight's touch gentle.
I knew lovers when I saw them. If I'd had anything left in my stomach, I would have thrown up again.
What kind of man could bring himself to bed a Neut? One incapable of shame. A man who could openly wear OldTech plastic. The one and only time I'd worn plastic, I was eight and a group of us kids had found an OldTech dump in the forest, just off the Feliss City highway. We spent the afternoon digging through it and ornamenting ourselves with junk: bracelets twisted together from greenish wire and capes made of plastic sheets. I was proud of a plastic collar I found, shaped like a horseshoe but big enough to go around my neck like a yoke. We came back to the cove wearing our finery and huge grins, expecting the adults to praise our finds. Instead, they slapped us till our cheeks burned and promised we would be struck ill by the diseases that OldTech trash always carries.
A knight wearing plastic OldTech armor had to be a walking plague. The smoke bomb that made us sick was only the beginning — everywhere he went, he must leave behind poxes and pestilence. In fact, he might be Master Disease himself, god of evil, hater of life.
The thought chilled me… but the Elders told many tales of Master Disease walking the earth. To face him, you needed courage; to banish him, you needed the magic of the heart.
Painfully, I dragged myself out of the water onto the shore. The breeze had thinned the stink he called "tear gas"; my eyes were nearly swollen shut, but my strength was coming back. Off to my right, Cappie furtively gestured toward the knife, lying on reeds where the knight had kicked it. I ignored her — a mere knife couldn't hurt Master Disease. Even if it penetrated his armor, the blade would simply release a tornado of sickness to ravage our village.