The Strangers of Kindness (11 page)

Fear finally broke Jared’s wooden reserve. “Don’t cut out my tongue, Master—Pasha—please, I promise I won’t talk to any one ever, if you don’t want me to!”

“Crystals and shards! How could you think such a thing!”

“I’ve seen it done—”

“Never! I tell you, Jared, despite how you came here, what I need most of all is a friend. I haven’t the strength to do all alone the work I must do. If you promise not to betray me, I will believe you.”

“You would?” Incredulity, quickly covered. “I promise. What reason could I have for betraying you?” He said again, resigned, “I’m yours.”

Pasha felt enormous relief. It hadn’t anticipated how draining this interview would be, and the really difficult part was yet to come. It glanced over at the cheery blue
nalsha
sitting on a window-sill. “See that? I make those. That’s what I’ll teach you how to do. I need lots of them, dozens and dozens. But in order to do it, I must have the best workshop I can devise in this place. It will be under the floor, and that’s the first task. You’ll be digging a large cavity starting in that third sleeping-room. I’m afraid it’s very hard labor. When the space is made, you’ll be building me a large oven, which will have to be vented to the outside.

“Just around the edge of that door you can see I’ve started collecting sand. When the oven’s ready, you’ll be bringing in firewood. When we have the workshop, the oven, and enough sand, then you will begin learning how to make
nalshas
.” Jared listened with his mouth agape. When Pasha stopped, he swallowed hard, but remained silent.

Pasha leaned toward him. “But right now, I have more questions.” It reached over and ran its hand down Jared’s cheek, over his jaw, rested its hand on his shoulder with the thumb lightly stroking his throat, its alien mind preoccupied with the skin’s texture, thinking how to match it closer in its morph. Jared grew pale again.

“I told you I’m not from here. I need to see what you look like.” It pulled gently at the neck of Jared’s tunic. “Does this come off?”

Without a word, Jared stood up and took off the garment. His face was burning but when he glanced at his master, the wonder he saw there made him forget his embarrassment. “What is it, Pasha?” He looked down at himself, alarmed.
 

Nothing so amazing, as far as he could see.

“When I get it wrong, I really get it wrong!” Pasha breathed. With a child’s curious touch it reached out. “What is this?”

Jared gasped. He didn’t know what to say. Either his new Master was mad, or this was some cruel game. The touch continued exploring, insistent, and the result was inevitable. “My word!” Pasha exclaimed.
 

“Master, please—”

Pasha stopped immediately. “I’m sorry, was I hurting you?”

“Uh—not exactly,” Jared stammered, confused.

So Pasha resumed the examination. “What is the function of this limb?”

But Jared cried out just then and Pasha’s hands were suddenly wet. It lifted them, examining the fluid. Its eyes went back to Jared’s.

“I’m sorry, Pasha,” the young man murmured, miserable, humiliated.

“I don’t understand. Why should you apologize? What have you done? Explain to me what this is about.”

Jared’s voice was raw and desperate. “I haven’t any experience or skill with men, but if that’s what you want me for I’ll try. But—is it important to play this game, too?” He forced himself to look Pasha in the eye. The naked bafflement on his master’s face only worsened his own fear. “What is it you want of me?” He couldn’t stop his voice from shaking.

Pasha gestured in frustration, seeking some way to bridge this gap. But there was no way to make this a gentle shock. “Jared, I don’t mean to scare you. I know nothing about your kind. I am not like you. I’m only trying to learn about you.” It took Jared’s hand and guided the fingers to slide under the collar of its robe.

Where the morphed flesh folded from the shoulder, up to form the robe, Jared’s fingers stopped. Probed. Slid farther—then he jerked his hand away and shrank back.

“What—”

“It’s all me, all my body, just a disguise. I’m not even from this world, really I look nothing like you.”

Blind terror replaced the earlier fear on Jared’s face. He fell on his knees again, looking sick with dread. “You’ re not a man?”

“Is that what you people call yourselves? A man?”

“No,” Jared whispered, “We’ re human beings. Half of the people are men, half women.”

“What is that, ‘ women’ ?”

“Oh God, what are you? Why have you come here?”
 

“By accident, only that. I want to leave, go home, that’s why I need your help. Please don’t be so afraid of me, Jared, I won’t hurt you. These
nalshas
—” it pointed at the blue bowl—“I need a certain number of them, each with a certain—each made a certain way. When they’ re ready, I can leave this place and go home. That’s all I want.”

“What will you do with me, when you’ re done?” He shuddered when Pasha put a hand on his shoulder.

“Truth told, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. It will take awhile to get this workshop built, and to teach you the skills. By then we’ll think of something. Don’t be so afraid, oh please, Jared, I need a friend, a helper, so badly.”

The initial shock and horror had passed, and now Jared could hear the desperation that matched his own. “Whatever this Master is,” he thought, “I still have to serve him.”

He nodded at Pasha. “I’m yours,” he said once again. “What do you want me to do.”

Pasha’s arms flew up in joy. “Excellent creature! Oh, thank you Geilsharah, for sending me such a fine helper! Do you know, Jared,” it said, sitting down on the stool and pulling the young man closer, “I do think we may even have some fun while I’m here? Now look, answer some more questions for me. I’m full of them . . .”

And so Pasha finally had its eyes opened to the fact that this was a two-sexed species. When it realized this, and the source of Jared’s distress at Pasha’s unsuspecting experimentation with his sexual apparatus, it laughed uproariously. “What a silly nit I am! It’s really true—we find what we expect to find, blind to what’s right in front of us. Of course! Why not two sexes—I’ve got friends whose species have three—five— seven! Oh, my friends back home will laugh at me, to be sure.
 

“Now, however, I want to get this morph more in line with your species. Stand up, turn around, slowly, let me see how you’ re made, that’s a good ‘ un,” it murmured, not realizing the use of Kalda’s slang pronoun was in reality a contemptuous slur on a slave’s status. But Jared had by then realized his Master was really trying to fit in, and felt no offense.

“These patterns on your skin, are they part of your coloration, or are they decoration?”

“No, Pasha,” Jared said sadly, “Those are scars. Masters beat us sometimes.”

Pasha froze with its fingertips touching one of the old whip-marks. “Beat you? You can’t mean it— Scars? But, Jared, why?”

Jared turned around and looked at Pasha uncertainly. “May I ask, Pasha, where you come from, where there aren’t any slaves, and no one beats anyone else?”

“I wish I could take you there,” Pasha answered. “What could you have done that was so serious that your master wanted to hurt you like this? Even our criminals are dealt with compassionately.”

A faint smile played on Jared’s mouth. “It doesn’t take much. I stole some bread once, and was caught. Sometimes it only takes the master’s bad night of little sleep, or his losing an argument with his wife.” He saw something in Pasha’s earnest face that spurred him farther. “But I’ve earned most of the punishment I’ve had. I kept trying to run away.”
 

“Away? Where?”

“Home.”

“Home.” Pasha stared at him for a long time then, its eyes seeming to see the slave for the first time. Jared had never been scrutinized so deeply. Finally Pasha sighed. “You know, I can understand that. And will you run away from me?”
 

“I don’t know,” Jared said, marveling at his own nerve. “Will you beat me if you catch me?
 

“No. I probably couldn’t even catch you. I don’t know this world; wouldn’t know where to look.” It glanced toward the door. “Apparently the solution to my problem doesn’t lie in buying a slave. I’ll have to figure out some other way to get the work done.”

It moved a few paces away, and said carefully, “I’d like to show you some things, Jared. They’ re in the first sleeping-chamber. I’ll get them. It may take me quite a little while . . .” And it turned away deliberately and went around the corner of the short hallway, toward the bedrooms.

Jared stood there with his mouth open, disbelieving. It was clear that Pasha expected him to simply walk out the door and escape to freedom. Jared considered. He could get as far as the limits of town safely, by telling anyone who might ask, that he was sent on an errand by his master. What errand? Jared looked around, and spied several burlap sacks lying in the corner where the chains now lay in ugly repose. To fetch more sand for Pasha Sands. That would get him to the beach.

It was dusk. At a dead run he could make it there by dark. Darkness would increase his chances of getting away. It might be possible. This might be freedom.

A strange sound, so low he almost didn’t hear it, started from somewhere in the room with him. It rose in volume just enough to allow him to track it to its source. He went to the window-sill and peered at the little blue bowl. It was humming. No, moaning. The hair on the nape of his neck stood up. With shaking fingers he touched the bowl. And was filled with such excruciating loneliness—homesickness, despair—that he almost cried out. He looked down into the bowl’s interior. For several seconds his brain couldn’t interpret what he saw. A wavering image, then his eyes snapped into focus and he saw Pasha Sands, in a darkening room, kneeling at a bedside, its face cupped in its hands.

The scene drew Jared’s face right down to the bowl’s rim, and breathless he realized he was seeing what was happening at that very moment, in the first sleep-room. Pasha Sands was weeping.

When Jared straightened up a few minutes later, breaking the
nalsha
’s spell, his face, too, was wet.

Like a sleepwalker he went down the hallway to the door at the end. He hesitated, then coughed, twice, before entering. Pasha was back on its feet when Jared walked in. Its face was blank. “Jared?”

“Did you forget what you wanted to show me, Master?”
 

Pasha gasped. Stammered, “No—yes. Wait—they’ re over here. Can you bring a light?”

Jared went back to the main room and fetched a lantern. Its flame had more strength now that it was growing dark in the house.

Pasha had five
nalshas
arrayed upon the bed when he returned. They winked in pastel rainbows in the flickering lamp-light: blue, green, yellow, pink, purple, orange. Jared smiled and knelt by the bed to inspect them.

“Enchanting, aren’t they?”

“Grrr-up!”

“I beg your pardon?”

Jared blushed. “Sorry. That was my stomach. It does that when I’m hungry.”

Pasha looked stricken. “My word! How could I have forgotten—you people can’t eat sand—”

“Sand? No, Master,” Jared said, thinking this was one of Pasha’s strange jokes.

“—and I have nothing for you. Are you very hungry?” It peered anxiously at the young man, who only shook his head dismissively. “But how long has it been since they fed you?”
 

“It can wait until tomorrow,” Jared said but it was nearly drowned out by another complaint from his belly.

“We must feed you,” Pasha said. “But where can I get your food at this hour?” With its mind now full of this new problem, it wandered out of the bedroom and back to the main room.

“Really, Pasha, I can wait,” Jared said, “Won’t you show me your bowls?”

Noises from outside caught Pasha’s attention. It went to the door. “Kalda,” it murmured. “Putting their slave out for the night.” Jared joined it at the door and squinted to see across the street.

“Kalda!” Pasha called, and strode outdoors.

“Pasha Sands, hallo,” Kalda’s harsh voice answered. Jared watched his master cross to the other shop and disappear inside with the owner. It fretted him that Pasha was going to so much trouble, but it also gave him an oddly comforting feeling in the pit of his empty stomach.

Presently Pasha returned. There were some more noises from across the street as it told Jared, “He’s sending his slave over with a meal. I find him a very strange fellow. He’s been most friendly and helpful to me, but that poor slave of his . . . Come, Jared, perhaps you should cover up.”

By the time Anna came timidly knocking on the door, Jared had pulled his tunic on. Pasha went to the door, all smiles and gratitude. “Come in, come in, how kind. Here he is, my hungry one.”

Anna stepped forward and held a cloth-covered plate out to Jared. She didn’t look up at him. When he took the dish she nodded quickly and backed toward the door.

But Pasha’s curiosity was captured again, its bright eyes darting from Jared to Anna and back. “Please, don’t run right back,” it pleaded, “You should know one another. You might be seeing a lot of each other. Anna, this is Jared; Jared, Anna.” Jared studied the girl with pity. Even if Pasha hadn’t hinted that she was ill-treated, it would have been obvious. She was too thin, and from under the short sleeves of her threadbare shift he could see bruises. Dark hollows under her lowered eyes, trembling mouth. He put his hand out. “Maybe we’ll be friends, Anna,” he said softly.