If I’d thought the barbarian and his men would notice the way I was trying to insult them, I must have forgotten what l’lendaa were like. They paid no attention to anyone but the three women, who had changed from the day suits they’d been wearing to gaudy, almost nonexistent stage costumes. The outfits were very short and brief, barely more than multicolored lightning flashes at four cardinal points, and I’m sure none of the l’lendaa were able to notice the fine network of wires covering all three bodies, not with the largesse shown them. The costumes accented what the girls were naturally endowed with, and I was undoubtedly the only one to wonder what the wires were for.
The first girl took a tiny micro-recorder from her bag, turned it on, then went to stand with the other two, who were already in position in the middle of the floor. The three women formed a triangle, two in front of the six l’lendaa, one in front of Tammad, all three facing outward, left hands on hips, right arms straight up. When the opening strains of music began, their heads came up and their bodies grew poised, their stance graceful in the very high-heeled shoes they wore. The next minute they were moving slowly to the blary music, swaying sensuously, stepping about broadly and suggestively, swinging their bodies and bumping their hips. The Rimilian men laughed and shouted, entertained by the novel sort of movement and pleased by it, watching closely and appreciatively as the triangle became a circle to allow the women to shift about. All the men were danced to by all of the women, giving them a good time, but I didn’t share their enthusiasm. Despite Tammad’s belief to the contrary, I knew certain audience-appreciation dances too, most of them more subtly sensual than the out-and-out brassiness that the blondes were exhibiting. The dance’s I knew undoubtedly would have pleased Tammad, but he wasn’t going to know anything about them. I’d decided a long time earlier that I wasn’t about to be forced to dance for a barbarian.
The dancing went on for a good fifteen minutes, the men continuing in their vocal appreciation, their desire growing so high it was hard to believe the three women didn’t feel it as strongly as I did. The l’lendaa sat cross-legged in their places, laughing and occasionally reaching for the dancers, laughing even harder when the girls moved out of groping range. Tammad was enjoying himself as much as the others were, but be alone showed no desire to touch the women. He sat leaning back on his pillows, his face covered with a grin, his mind pleased but somewhat distracted. I had the feeling he was visualizing something other than the women in front of him, and I didn’t want to know what that something was. I would not be dancing for any barbarian!
The end of the dance was as much of a shock to me as it was to the men. One minute the women were bumping and twisting madly, apparently enjoying the men’s enthusiastic shouts of encouragement, and the next minute they had stopped dead, two in front of the six l’lendaa, one in front of Tammad. I could feel that something was about to happen, and abruptly it did—without seeing anything coming from the women, the men were suddenly covered with a foul-smelling sticky substance, brown-colored and nauseating, coating them as though it materialized out of thin air. Even I didn’t entirely understand what was happening—after all, set route induction fields are hardly in my province—but at least I finally understood what all those wires were for. Some dancers used the fields for effect in their routines, causing magical showers of glitter or flower substance to float gently down on their audiences. These dancers were obviously prepared to supply something other than audience delight, causing me to wonder what sort of audiences they were used to.
“Have a good taste of the L.M. routine!” the woman in front of Tammad shouted, not only to him but to all of the men. “The L.M. stands for Loud Mouth!” She and the others were laughing at the men’s outrage, continuing the spreading of the field even as their victims struggled to their feet. The l’lendaa were disgusted and offended as well as outraged, but I couldn’t help but find a certain poetic justice in their predicament. If you spend your life demanding things of others, you sometimes get more than you asked for.
“Stop that at once!” Tammad shouted, reaching through the haze of unseen spray to grab the woman nearest him by the arms. He didn’t know what was causing his problem, but be wasn’t simple enough not to know the women were responsible. As soon as he drew her to him the coating stopped, and he gestured his men to close with the other two women as well. All three women struggled, surprised and outraged that the men would dare to touch them like that, and then Tammad saw the wires on the woman he held. He couldn’t have known what the wires were for, but logic said they were the unknown in the equation, and Tammad was no stranger to logic. He began ripping them off the woman, causing the other l’lendaa to do the same, and the fury and outrage from both males and females was enough to give me a headache. I sat where I’d been sitting, on the outskirts of the battle, and tried to block out as much of the mental noise as possible.
In a matter of seconds, the women were no longer wired for mess. They were screaming as if they were birds whose feathers were being pulled out, but the screams still had no real sense of personal fear in them. If they knew nothing else, they knew that women in the Amalgamation were safe no matter what they did. I’m sure the smell they’d caused to be was turning their stomachs, but that was nothing more than to be expected. I put a heavily veiled wall between me and the others, and just watched to see what would happen.
“Just look what you did to our equipment!” the woman near Tammad screamed, so wild with anger her voice shook. “You jerks are going to pay for this, I swear you’ll pay!”
“You feel anger toward us?” Tammad demanded, his emotions so strong they surged through his attempts at control. He held the woman between his hands, and it seemed all he could do to keep from crushing her or tearing her apart. “You dared to soil us as you did, and yet you feel anger? It was not we who came in search of you, wenda, nor was it we who forced our presence upon those who sought us not! Had you merely danced for us, you would have been freed at journey’s end to return to the darayse you are accustomed to; now you will be punished and held as long as we wish.”
The woman was reverting to feelings of shock, but that didn’t stop her from being thrust toward the other two women. She stumbled from the push, but was kept from going down by two of the l’lendaa, who took her in tow the same way the other women were being held. Ail three were then started out of the common area amid screams and struggles, their minds beginning to be more than worried, and Tammad watched them disappear into three of the cabins before turning in my direction.
“I’m glad you insisted that I watch that,” I said as he stared at me, still angry. “It never would have occurred to me to please a man in that particular way. It seems I don’t know as much as I thought I did.”
“You are amused,” he rumbled, his mind quivering with near-illness at the sticky mess all over him. “You undoubtedly knew what would occur, yet saw no reason to warn me. Had you given warning, there would have been little amusement.”
“That odor allows for very little amusement altogether,” I said, close to a shudder from the repulsion in his mind. “Under other circumstances, I might at least have felt sorry for you.”
“I have no need for your pity,” be rasped, his light eyes growing hard. “There will be a reckoning for this.”
He turned away then and strode toward his cabin, anger and frustration and a tinge of hurt boiling around in his mind. It came as a shock that he would feel hurt, but then the shock turned to frustrated anger. No one but a barbarian would kidnap a woman, then feel disappointment when she refused to be loyal to him.