Ashamed, he remembered that he hadn’t bathed. He moved away.
“Don’t go away,” she said, alarmed.
But he left in panic and found another part of the ship where he could wash himself in salt water. He scrubbed the important parts of him until they were red. Then he came back with some old blankets so that she could have a pillow and found her struggling with the hand manacles. She was crying.
“You came back,” she said petulantly.
“I got blankets to make you more comfy.” And he put the blankets on the deck and molded her into them and tried to take her, but she kept her legs closed.
“How can I hold you if you don’t take off these damn hand manacles!” There was a thread of anger in her voice.
He hurried to unlock them, and she held him and they maneuvered for a less awkward position and he held her tightly while his lust commanded him because he was afraid that she might run away too soon. “You’re a pretty woman. I c’d go for you. You’re the prettiest I’ve ever had.” He kept talking to her to try to make her feel loved the way women liked, and the more passively she took his thrusts the more talkative he became. For a while he was swallowed up in his own pleasure but after the release came and he found this sweating woman in his arms, lying with her head tilted, her mind somewhere else, he grew affectionately worried. “What’re you thinkin’ ’bout, babe?”
“About my nose,” she said quietly.
She listened carefully as he told her how to escape. She had to wait until he was off watch. Then she had to count the next guard’s pacing. When he had passed the fourth time she was to count to fifty and then throw off her still unlocked shackles and push open the porthole, which Arap would have unlocked, and then jump into the sea and swim ashore.
The time came. She counted to fifty by the thumping of her heart and made for the tiny hole in the side of the ship and slithered out, hanging for a moment by her fingertips before she dropped feet first into the moonlit bay. She had never swum before in water over her head, nor in anything bigger than a river pool. It did not matter. She was ready to fly if she had to.
The salt water closed around her head and she bobbed to the surface, hearing cries from the upper deck. Her plunge had been seen. For one heartbeat she felt what it must have been like for her husbands to grow up in their creche, outwitting the death trials. Terror and hope. Then her o’Tghalie mind took over. This is what she had been bred for. This was a problem. Without even knowing how she did it, her body created a powerful swimming stroke that pulled her through the water at minimal energy cost.
17
The carnivorous nota-aemini will never attack one of its own kind and so that innocent and delicious beetle known as the false nota-aemini has prudently disguised itself to resemble its enemy. Yet life is too restless to allow a solution to exist for long. The narkie, a much smaller prey of the nota-aemini, now has a subspecies which imitates the harmless symbiotes of the false nota-aemini — but in order to survive this new home, where none of the narkie’s natural foodstuffs exist, it has developed a taste for its host’s brains,
GAET RODE THE FIFTH model of the gossamer skrei-wheel through Kaiel-hontokae, attracting stares and a wake of children who followed him for blocks on end with their high excited laughter. The tri-wheel had independent suspension for its two front wheels and nine gears in a compact gearbox plus a rudder wheel larger than on earlier models. The frame had been extended and was capable of carrying freight.
Sometimes Gaet had to lift it over obstacles, but it was well suited to the mountain roads maintained by the Ivieth. It was not the latest model. The best creators of the local og’Sieth clan were already working on a stripped down bi-wheel for rapid personal transport which had no suspension and was evidently capable of maintaining a vertical balance by gyroscopic action similar to the forces that balanced a top. Progress was being delayed by a problem with the new lightweight gears which should have worked well but in practice had an unfortunate tendency to jam and even snap.
The journey through the city reminded him of nothing so much as the shoulder-hitching he’d done on the backs of Ivieth runners as a child, except that on a straight stretch of the main road he could reach a terrifying speed that was faster than any man could run. He had been told by Benjie, the og’Sieth’s local craftsmaster, to give his skrei-wheel a rough workout since much more information about its wear modes was necessary before they dared put the device into production. It wouldn’t do to have fifty of them that all needed the same replacement part every week.
The buildings rushed by and the children couldn’t keep up and he kept to the streets between the hills of the city. He was thinking, as he took the cobblestone bumps, that if such vehicles became as common as footwear a man might not have to spend so much of his time away from his wives.
Ah, wives! There was his motive for hurrying! He was going to be glad to see Noe again. With Teenae away and Kathein interdicted and so much work to do, Hoemei and he had been reduced to near-celibacy.
Gaet left his skrei-wheel unattended outside the walls of the Great Cloister of Kaiel-hontokae. In a city where even the petty criminals were eaten and used for leather, theft might happen but it was no great preoccupation of the populace. The Great Cloister curved halfway around the base of a small hill, a formidable stone building. It was a Kaiel sanctum and the root of their technology. None but the true Kaiel walked within. After kneeling in the sacrarium and offering a prayer to the God of the Sky, Gaet headed straight for Noe’s cell. A faint odor of solvents was in the air. His walk took him past an ancient stained-glass window and rows of stone pillars. He had to climb stairs and walk through one wing of the building to get to yet a third wing.
On tiptoes he entered Noe’s room, which was fully equipped because she, as did many Getans, maintained several residences. She was asleep on large yellow and blue dyed pillows that took the shape of her body. He thought that perhaps he would not wake her, perhaps he would just delight in being with her for a few moments and then leave. Hoemei had mentioned how short of sleep she was.
“Hello,” she said lazily.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She motioned with her body for him to come to her. “My nap is over. I need your shaft to wake me up.” Slowly she began to undress him while he lay with her, but she gave up and let him finish, and then pulled him under the blankets.
“Mmmmm… you’re cool,” she said deliciously.
“You’re warm. I feel like a loaf of bread being baked.”
“Mmmmm…” She went back to sleep but a corner of her brain that stayed awake persisted in arousing him and they made love, she less and less passively, until she cried convulsively and sat up, hugging herself with her arms.
“What are you doing in the city? I thought you were in the mountains?”
“I’m chasing ball bearings.” Gaet laughed.
“Hoemei said you were making wagons. I didn’t believe him. He said they were light enough for two men to lift.”
“I can lift one myself. They’re fast. We are going to have fifty of them built, maybe seventy, in time for the coastal famine. But only if I can find the craftsmen to provide those damn ball bearings.”
She giggled. “Only Hoemei could get you to do trade clan labor.”
“Only Hoemei could get you to work at all,” he retorted.
“I must say dallying in the temple beats administering the labors of fifty juveniles fresh from the creches. The Cloister is a human pressure cooker! There is so much to do!”
“Getting anywhere?”
“You can bet your coins we are! I have them working in ten parallel teams. They are terrified of me. They think I’m going to make soup out of them if they don’t overachieve. Guess who saved us weeks of work?”