Songs of the Dancing Gods (5 page)

“Hey! What’s wrong with that? All the best, no work, and— wait a minute! That’d make me a prince!”

“It’s luxury, all right,” Joe agreed, “but it’s also a trap, a prison, and, believe me, if you think this is boring, you haven’t been a monarch. Your job is to cut ribbons and preside over boring meetings and stay apart from the common folks. That was the worst. Not even being able to walk down the street in my own city, go into a good pub and have a beer, talk to who I wanted, do what I felt like.”

“Yeah, maybe I’d hate it, but I didn’t even get the chance to try it. I mean—like, I thought kings and queens could do pretty much what they felt like.”

“Less than the stableboy,” Tiana told him.’ ‘You can’t change the system and you are what you are and you have to play the part. We couldn’t even sneak out for a night. The society detided we were demigods, half human, half divine. They erected thousands and thousands of huge statues of us in the nude in practically every public place. Everybody knew us—in the most intimate detail you can imagine. You’ve seen some in the towns we passed.”

The boy was thunderstruck. “Those two was you two?” He laughed.

“Uh-huh. And that’s why we decided to stick to the way we are now,” Tiana told him. “It wasn’t a radical change for your dad. He’s still big and handsome, just in a different way.”

“I’m in much better condition than Ruddygore found me,” Joe noted. “But, yeah, I’m still classed as your typical barbarian hero. That’s why he picked me off that road seconds before I would have died in a crash. Tiana, though, was born here to a royal family. I think she’s even prettier and sexier now than she was before, but it’s a very different life for her. From royalty to commoner, and inheriting the baggage the Rules placed on the new body before she had it.”

“I don’t mind if you don’t,” she told him sincerely. “In fact, because I was Ruddygore’s ward and educated on Earth, I had some feeling for what it was like among the common people. I haven’t missed it nearly as much as I thought I might. The only frustration I really have sometimes is that I used to be strong as an ox. Now I couldn’t lift my own shadow. I’m not used to having to depend on others to protect me, even in so simple a thing as walking down a street. Strange places, dark places, strange crowds all seem somehow threatening now. I guess most women grow up with that, but I didn’t, and I’m still learning how to cope with it. I’m still learning to be tough again, in a different way. That’s also been part of this trip. Not just for you to learn, but me as well.”

At the City-States, where they’d docked after crossing the Sea of Dreams, Joe had decided Irving needed experience. So he’d taken a long vacation while he, Tiana, and the boy rode up through Leander and High Pothique on horseback. During that time, Irving had turned thirteen. And now they were nearing the end of the journey.

The boy seemed puzzled. “I don’t get it. You say the fairy

folk got problems ‘cause they’re locked in to doin’ one thing while we’re not, then you say you’re just as locked in by them Rules as they is—are.”

“He’s got you there,” Joe said, somewhat approvingly of his boy’s debating logic.

The argument disturbed her.. “No, we have more potential before we’re locked in. We don’t have to turn out the way we do. We set out upon a path and only when that path is certain do the Rules specifically kick in for us.”

“Yeah, like Dad had a choice of whether or not to be a fighter, maybe? Or did you set out all along to be a dancer?”

She sighed. “No, but I had a choice of dancer or queen, at least. And your father’s personality, his mind and body, likes and dislikes, modes and inclinations, made him a mercenary when he came here. With an education, with skills, you can become all sorts of things.”

“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.

There was a momentary silence, and then a lot of clapping and yelling and cries of “More! More!” They, however, knew the traditions, and coins started being showered from the crowd all around her. Irving, with long street experience in his still short years, wasted no time in gathering them up so expertly they seemed almost to be vacuumed from the ground.

They weren’t quite that fired up yet; they wanted more and they’d paid for more. At this point, Joe was less worried than he was amazed, as always, that with all that leaping and whirling and twisting, Tiana wasn’t even breathing hard and had barely raised a sweat.

The second set was no mere repeat of the first, but a whole different routine, far more elaborate, erotic, and somewhat inflammatory. If she really was in control of herself when doing this, she could manage it better; but once she got started, all bets were off, and it had been some time since she’d danced for an appreciative crowd. The Rules didn’t just make you a dancer; you had to do it, all out, to the best of your ability, and hers was pretty damned good. The longer she went between shows, the more it built up inside her, like a tightly coiled spring, and when it was let out it was intense after this kind of layoff.

Hell, Joe didn’t think it was a big deal to turn on a bunch of drunken male river rats, but at this stage she could turn on almost anybody, and even the women with some of the men were showing real signs of bodily desire. He shifted his sword to the ready and moved into a better position.

Irv knew the dangers, and kept the second set short. This time the coins came faster and more furiously; this time they were demanding she go on and on. Between dances now, he could see Tiana’s face begin to pale as she sized up the crowd, many of whom were beginning to press closer to her, and she was already encircled. They had rehearsed a maneuver for this kind of situation, since it proved not that uncommon; a particular cue, a particular signal that Irv would make with the drums that would command this sort of finish. It depended, though, on her having the strength of will to break through that emotional trancelike dance state, to make the old Tiana control the new.

The one time they had tried it before, she’d managed it, but that spring inside her wasn’t totally uncoiled as yet, and it was no sure thing in this bigger crowd and rougher environment, either. He gave the signal to Irving, hoping the boy would catch it or have the sense of the crowd to do it anyway.