“Uh-huh. Like the law says ’cause I was born in America I could be president, but the real life said I was born poor and black with a choice of choosin’ up gangs or bein’ carved up by both of ’em. Uh-huh.”
Joe took pity on Tiana and decided to rescue her. “You just said it, Irv. Not too many people get choices no matter where they are. But some do—they’re smart enough or maybe they just luck out. It’s hard to say for sure. It’s lots of things we can’t control, from race to brains to breaks. But even folks who have all the right things sometimes wind up in the mud, and sometimes folks who have nothing really do wind up with it all. Not many, but some. Right now you’re coming up on that point. You can be a fighter if you have the guts—I know you got the makings in you, since you’re half Apache—or you can chicken out and become a laborer. That’s more choice than you were heading to back home. But when you’re locked in here, you’re locked in. The system depends on that, on nobody rocking too much of the boat, so they made sure nobody could rock it but so much.”
“Sounds just like back home,” the boy responded.
A little before midday the next morning, they went up high on a bluff and looked down on the river.
It was incredibly wide, perhaps more than a mile wide at this point, and swift-flowing; within its broad expanse you could see currents and small whirlpools and eddies. It was the aorta of Husaquahr, the source of its power and wealth and riches and of life itself. Virtually every drop of rain that fell for a thousand miles in any direction wound up in it; all other rivers and streams were its servants, its arteries. The people, both human and fairy, of this land thought of it less as a thing of nature than as something nearly divine; it was their mother, their companion, the one factor that linked them all together, no matter what their race or job, no matter their nationality or culture.
Even Irv was impressed. “Man! That’s some big wet sucker!”
Joe chuckled. “Can you swim?”
“In that! You got to be kiddin’!”
“Don’t worry—you won’t have to. Not that we could, anyway. That current is strong enough to sweep you miles downriver before flinging you against the next bend, and it’s plenty-deep.”
“What they got then? A bridge? ”
“Nobody here could possibly build a bridge that would stand up to it,” Joe replied. “Maybe way, way upstream, where it’s a lot narrower, they could, but they wouldn’t.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“It’s kind of—well, against their religion, you might say. Oh, they’ll bridge most any other river or creek and dam up the others and do all the usual things, but not the River of Dancing Gods.”
“So how do you cross it, then? I see some small boats out there but I don’t think none of ’em could make it regular here to there without no engine.”
“You’re probably right,” Tiana agreed, “but the river bends and twists like a snake for all its length. Where it bends, it slows and deposits its loads as well, which often narrow it. Just above those narrows it seems almost still, and at those points boats can cross without much problem. We’ll have to go up till we find such a point.”
“Yeah? And they take you across for nothin’?”
Joe looked at Tiana. “He’s got a point there. We’re back in civilization now—these are all farms and preserves and freeholds. No living off the land here. And we don’t want to blow half a year if I land a commission.”
She shrugged. “We both know the area here. We could reach Samachgast by nightfall. It is the kind of river port suited to my talents.”
“The kind of place where you can get yourself killed or worse,” Joe responded worriedly.
“Do you think I like it? Remember where I came from and how far I have come down. But, as the boy said, it is the Rules. In spite of it all, I am nearly driven to do it. Besides, I have my two protectors with me, do I not?”
She turned and kicked her horse to action, and they followed, going up the river road toward the distant town.
They were the typical rabble who worked ports and the sea; not nearly as rough or mean as ocean men, but a rough enough looking bunch to give anybody pause. Now, as they gathered around the torchlit posts and watched her dance, they gave the usual lewd and salty comments and obscene suggestions as she whirled.
Irving had early displayed a real talent for the drums; the ones they carried weren’t exactly first rate of their kind and were less than great as instruments in any event, being somewhat limited in range, but he got everything out of them that they were capable of.
The only thing Joe ever remembered being able to play well was a stereo system, and those were pretty far away right now, the only remnant the Peterbilt logo on his incongruous but ever-present trucker’s cowboy hat. He just stood well back, almost in the shadows, as always, having more than a few mixed feelings about all this, and nervously watching the men in the crowd.
Tiana was not merely any old dancer; her body was essentially built and honed to that one function above all others, and she could twist and turn in ways that would put most people into hospitals or homes or at least traction. Any part of her seemed capable of bending in any direction independent of the rest and, without thinking, any part of her could be rubber or steel as called for. It seemed as if there was little in the way of acrobatics she could not perform with those legs, and, as a performer, she was spellbinding, even hypnotic. It was all done essentially without thinking; when there was a rhythm she could dance to, some kind of switch just got thrown in her brain and from that point it was totally automatic, the routine always skilled but improvised, the pace increasingly frantic, timing and balance absolutely perfect.
If that had been all, Joe still wouldn’t have minded as much, but she wasn’t merely a great acrobatic dancer, either. She was almost pure animal, catlike, savage, magnetic. She was an erotic dancer.
One of the Books of Rules had something like two chapters strictly on erotic dancing, and that didn’t count the inevitable supplements and addenda they’d never seen or gotten to. Naturally, as soon as they’d hit a town, they sought out the library and looked it up. Trouble was, that was the first inkling of problems. He’d never learn to read that crap—they had a pictographic writing, like Chinese, only with even more symbols—and Tiana, who always could, had discovered now that she could not. A friendly librarian, used to the problem, read it for them.
Dancers danced. Period. The Rules removed or prohibited all things that might interfere with that function. Dancers did not need reading, writing, or the like, so that was simply eliminated as a possibility. Dancers could read and write music, however, if they desired to learn it. Yet they had quite an innate mathematical sense, something Tiana had heretofore lacked. It appeared that dancing involved a whole lot of instant, unthinking calculations.
Erotic dancers, in addition, turned people on. It did not necessarily mean lust for her, but that was certainly a factor and a possibility, even a probability in a crowd like this, already uninhibited, probably drunk, and out for a night on the town.
Irv had learned by now not to let her go on too long or it might cause riots. The idea was to give the crowd a real thrill so they’d toss money for more, then give them a little more, and so forth. She wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, stop until he did, and he brought it to a close and ended quickly, leaving her with a perfect split.