“You’re not near finished. Why are you taking so long? He wants the chain and the wristlets ready for the Imperator’s Birthday.” The Vor Hoshin house steward was one of the Fehraz Vor Hoshin’s bastards, born to fuss at things he couldn’t understand. He poked with a nervous stubby finger at the emeralds set out on a linen cloth, at the soft gold chain, the links engraved and shaped with minor differences making each unique; he got in Ukomayile’s way with a persistence that had something of malice about it.
Ukomayile lowered his hands and waited. The steward noticed that after a while and got shrilly annoyed. “Why aren’t you working? Why are you sitting there? He’ll have you beaten again, you stupid beast.”
Ukomayile laced his fingers together and waited, his face impassive. He did not look at the steward, he said nothing, he simply sat there refusing to acknowledge anything the steward said or did. There was a time when he would have protested such treatment, he was a gifted artisan with an immense reputation and accustomed to being treated with respect and he hadn’t yet learned what it meant to be a slave. Ten years and innumerable beatings later, he no longer voiced his protest, he merely set himself like a rock and waited. He still hadn’t learned slave manners and he never would if he died for it.
After some more spiteful maneuvering, the steward withdrew; he knew Ukomayile wouldn’t explain or excuse himself for not finishing in time, but the Fehraz Vor Hoshin, sourmouthed wrinkled old snake, he’d nose out the steward’s interference and twist his tail for it; Vor Hoshin enjoyed that kind of thing and he’d been doing a lot of it lately. The steward knew he was hovering on the verge of dismissal; that he was the viper’s son meant nothing, there were plenty of that old horn’s get scattered about the Raz. In spite of that he couldn’t stop hectoring the slave; for reasons he didn’t try to explain, he hated Ukomayile with a passion that nearly tipped him into madness.
The sun went down. A maidservant tapped on the door with Ukomayile’s supper on a tray and a jug of mulled wine to warm the stiffness out of his muscles. He laid his tools in a neat row, brushed his hands together, then climbed down off his tool and hobbled to the table; one of those beatings had broken his leg and the boneman who’d set it had botched the job. He ate with the same close attention he gave to his work, finished everything on the tray, drank half a glass of the wine, then went back to the bench.
Gorruya rose, gibbous; she swam up across the window and vanished; Ruya nosed over the horizon. He kept working. The steward might be a malicious fool, but he was right enough about the Fehraz; he’d be mad as a sick viper if the chain wasn’t finished in time to show it off at the Fete. The emeralds were lovely stones, he liked handling them and the setting was a test of his skill to keep the variations subtle enough to be interesting but not vulgar. So he labored on while the night grew darker and older.
The door opened. He didn’t bother turning, he thought it was the steward coming back.
“Ukomayile, listen.”
Ukomayile’s hand jerked, the tool cut a crease in the gold. Interlingue. He turned slowly.
A man stood in the doorway, tall, tired face, mussed black hair, a dark gray shipsuit. How many years since he’d seen a clutch of zippers like that, pockets on pockets on an easy loose-fitting overall. The man wearing the shipsuit wasn’t anyone he knew. He watched in dull wonder as the stranger pulled the door shut. “Tikkan Ekital sent me.” More interlingue, wonderful how fast it came back to him. “They want you back. You want out?”
Ukomayile sat without moving; it was a while before he took in what the man was saying. “Yes,” he said finally. “A moment.” He slipped the loose emeralds into their carrycase, snapped it shut and slid it into a large leather bag. He folded the chain and the wristlets into the linen workcloth and tucked the roll into the bag beside the stones, drew the strings tight and looped them over his wrist. With the same quick neat movements he cleaned out the safe and gathered up his leather case. “All right. We can go. What do you want me to do?”
The man chuckled. “Right. Just follow me, we’re heading for the roof.”
3. HANU, POSA ALA, OTSUT.
Place: Comweb TRANSFER STATION in the UYDAGIN mountains that run west of Gilisim Gillin.
Headprices: Hanu: 900 gelders; Posa Ala: 3000 gelders; Otsut: 2500 gelders.
Hanu scowled, cleared the program, unclipped the powerpack. “Otsa, come over here, will you?” He spun the flies, slipped off the cover and began pulling cassettes and program boards, lining these up so the Froska could take a look at them.
Otsut yanked on the chain clamped around her neck and pulled it along the overhead slide until she could reach Hanu’s side. She moved the tip of a long thin finger across the first board, made a tutting sound. “Burnout, sabotage perhaps, perhaps faulty manufacture.” She had a high sweet voice like the chirping of a cicada; soft greenish skin fell in graceful folds between her arms and body; her eyes were a darker green, huge sad eyes. She was nocturnal, totally adapted to a darkness broken only by the fluctuating polarized light of a huge moon that was more like a companion world than a satellite. The light in the room was painful to her, but she endured the small torment because she must, endured it in silence because she was Froskin and they took pride in their stoicism. She was the key to the team; she could generate a weak current in her body and had been surgically altered so she could test-read flakes and boards without exterior, nonorganic aids. Hanu and Posa Ala didn’t mind being confined to nightwork, it left them more on their own, less contact with their masters; neither of them found it easy to accept being a slave, they did what they could to minimize the reminders, though the pen where they were caged when not working and the collars they wore at all times, the chains that tethered them when they were doing their analyses and repairs would not let them forget their status or settle too complacently into their new lives. Otsut worked quickly along the line, found three substandard boards and a totally unusable one, one cassette was useless and several of the others were flawed. “This is a larger degree of incapacity than we have found before, Anyo. Is it the transfer unit doing it?”
“There’s no sign of surges, no charring or smell or anything similar. Besides, aren’t these new units?”
“Most are new,” she chirped, “if the manifest is correct; I think it is not exactly correct, I think the supplier is enhancing his profit at the expense of quality.”
Hanu looked around. Posa Ala was at his post across the room and their guard was sitting in a chair with his feet up, eyes closed, mouth working as he chewed at green fyon, a local narcotic. “The more things change,” he said.
She let greenish parchment lids drop over her eyes. Such corruption was painful to her. The neckchain clinked softly as she shuddered, then she put off her distress. “Are there sufficient spare boards to finish the repairs?”
“Any of those near enough to standard for Posa to do some surgery on?”
She touched them again, picked a board up, played her fingers across it. “This one.” She set it down, apart from the rest. “The others, no. The software? Too much damage. You’ll have to replace every cassette.”
“Well, we can fix this unit, but that’s it for tonight. Have to put in a rec, I suppose and wait for supplies.” Hanu patted a yawn, got to his feet. “Eh, Posa, how you doing?”
“About the same as you from the look of it.”
“Why don’t you take a break and come over here? Otsa has a board for you to operate on.”
“That’s a break?” He chuckled, a deep rumbling sound. Still chuckling he slid down from his stool and came stumping over to them, jerking impatiently at the chain, making the slide squeal as it ran along its track. He was a stubby figure, legs so short his fingers nearly touched the floor when he stood erect. His shoulders and arms were powerful, thick in both dimensions: they looked as if he’d stolen them from a man three times his height. He had coarse shaggy hair he wore twisted into a spiky mane; his head was narrow and long, his mouth wide; his eyes gleamed in the dimness like molten gold, at once savage and filled with a sardonic amusement at the vagaries of life. A typical Kakeran. At home he’d have half a dozen docile wives and innumerable children running wild through the tree paths while he used up his abundant energy directing at least three companies and sitting on half a dozen local boards. Here, even the collar about his neck and the chain that tethered him failed to diminish the force of his personality or the nervousness of Hordar who had to work around him. A lot of the locals, Hordar and Huvved alike, sighed with relief when he was put on the night team and they didn’t have to deal with him any longer. “What’s this…”