01. When the Changewinds Blow (19 page)

Zenchur took them eventually to an area just off the waterfront and well away from those gleaming spires. It was clearly a low district, with narrow streets and grimy buildings. As darkness overtook the city the lights came on, including many for signs that looked just like home even if you couldn't read them, and the main streets were lit not by lamp posts but by long strips of indirect lighting running along the top of the first floor of buildings on both sides. The secondary streets and back alleys weren't lit at all and looked for that all the more menacing. They went through a district whose nature seemed no different than any back on their own Earth and very easy to spot. In the midst of joints and painted pictures of semi-naked women and muscle men were basically store fronts, lit from within, most having several young and heavily made up women in them, lounging and looking back out at the street, and here and there one with some well-built and well-oiled muscle men wearing only tights doing much the same thing. No white robes and masks around
here.

Just off this district, Zenchur pulled up to a creaky old place of brick and stone that might have been whitewashed regularly once upon a time, and stopped. It was five stories high and looked and smelled older inside than outside. The reception area was quite small, hardly a lobby and more just a registration desk behind which was a tough-looking middle-aged woman wearing a colorful if threadbare green flower print sack dress and scarf.

"Hello, handsome," she said upon seeing Zenchur. "Been a while since you was through here."

"I just need a room on the street for maybe two nights," the navigator responded. "One that sleeps three. And we have some baggage that's heavy."

She nodded. "Fourth floor, second on the left. Here's the key." She looked at Charley and smiled sweetly. "You know the house gets ten percent if you run anything for profit in the room."

"Nothing like that. Long story not worth the telling, but if you must know she ran away from one of the wedge villages far to the northwest and quickly regretted it, her young and impulsive brother went to find her-and did-and now I am helping them work things out if I can."

"Old story," the woman commented. "She's got all the nice moves and looks like a real nice body. The boy got much potential for anything useful?"

"He's bright but unskilled and neither of them knows the language."

"Well, if you want a quick turnover, you take 'em over to Boday. A little of Boday's universal love potion and some lessons and she'll be broke in perfect. The boy-without the language best he can do is get much the same treatment. There's a small bunch that likes 'em real young."

"I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do yet with them," Zenchur told her, possibly truthfully. "At any rate I'm going to need to find a good Pilot heading southwest." He took out two large, golden square coins and passed them to her. "This should cover it."

She nodded, picked up, then bit the coins, then stuck them in a slot in the desk, then turned to the back where there was a curtained-off doorway. "Zum!" she shouted. "Haul ass!"

The curtains parted and a huge man entered. He was close to seven feet and had to stoop to get through the doorway, but he was also enormously broad, the kind of man whose muscles had muscles. He was getting on, though; his hair was gray, his face was lined and wrinkled, the skin on his hands was tight, but most unsettling was the expression in his eyes and on his face, that of a rather childlike confusion.

The woman said something to him in an unintelligible tongue, and he grunted and gave an equally unintelligible reply and went immediately past them and out the doors.

Zenchur looked at Sam and Charley and cocked his finger, and after a moment they followed. He led them down a hall, then up four flights of creaky, narrow stairway. The key was one of those massive types, and he fitted it in a lock and opened the door to the room.

It was not exactly the Regency Plaza. A bare, round bulb burned when a button was pressed on an old wall plate illuminating a smelly room with two large windows covered by tattered drapes. There was a sink with a single long, curved pipe for a faucet, a worn bowl, and two porcelain cups both of which were chipped. There were also two beds the size of double beds, more or less, next to each other opposite the sink. Both had twin sets of small, round pillows, a bedspread that looked clean, and, under it, some dark sheets. Charley hoped that they hadn't been dyed to match the stains.

"The toilets are down the hall," Zenchur told them, "and I do mean just that. If you want a bath it's at a commercial bath house down here, and it's public, so I think Sam will have to wait and I wouldn't like to send Charley in alone. Don't
worry-
as you probably already know, bathing is not some-tiling done often here, even by the nobility."

Charley sat on the bed. It sank down unevenly, was lumpy, and creaked something awful. It definitely was both too old and not built like beds back home. She wasn't sure she wanted to find out how it was, or was not, put together, though.

There was a knock, and Zenchur opened it and found the huge man there carrying one of the heavy trunks in each hand and the duffel on his back. The navigator pointed and the man put them down, then took each one in one at a time and set them near the windows. Zenchur nodded, the man looked pleased, and left.

"What
is
that?"
Charley had to ask.

"Oh, that is Zum. At least he answers to that name. He has been here longer than anyone now at this hotel. He's from some Outland wedge, and he never was very bright and knows none of the language. You might have noticed that the woman downstairs used a different tongue for him if you have a good enough ear. Because of the language problems with such as him there is a straight and simple language-short, net nonsense, perhaps a few hundred real words-that is used by folks to communicate with such as him. He was probably taken here or wound up here as a boy, fell into selling his body-you saw the men in the windows-and then grew too old or perhaps impotent or both. Now he serves out his days doing the basics for this old hotel, just like the woman downstairs, Argua, who was once young and beautiful and had a thousand lovers before she grew old and fat. Zum will see to the horses and wagon, too."

"Speaking of fat, when do we eat? Or do we?" Sam asked.

"Yes, we do, and we might as well. As you might guess the service here is not that great, but there is a not very fancy tavern a few minutes' walk from here that serves some decent food and asks no questions. Come, if you are not too tired- but remain mute, particularly around here, when out of this room. No slips. Here the word will be getting around about you."

Sam glanced at Charley, knowing that her friend must be as dead as she was, but Charley said, "We'll go. I don't think I want to be alone in this place."

"Oh-you may change if you wish now, Charley," Zenchur told her. "In this neighborhood at this time of day a slit skirt, top, and scarf are appropriate, and it might make you more comfortable. Here-I will show you in the trunk."

Charley was of two minds about this. She didn't like the idea of his suggesting such a radical change-they would still be completely at his mercy and who knew what he might do with her?-but the outfit she'd been wearing was now so tight and uncomfortable she was dying to get out of it. She finally accepted his suggestion, choosing a long pattern skirt slit right up to the thigh and a pullover that matched, sort of, but was so clingy it left nothing to the imagination. Still, she had a freed of of movement in her legs that was more than welcome, and the stuff was dry and clean even if she was not.

"One more thing," Zenchur said warningly to Charley. "For your own safety, be solicitous of us. Open the doors ahead of us, pull our chairs out at the tavern before sitting, and when food and drink comes it will be on a serving tray and you will be expected to serve, always with a smile and no comments."

"Huh?"

"It isn't just sex people want down here. It would be best if it appeared that we were your clients and not merely your companions. That way it seems as if you are already working for someone and, therefore, no one else will make any moves on you. Understand?"

"Yeah," she sighed and looked at Sam. "You got all the luck."

6

Backup System

"Wait here just a couple of minutes. I will be right back," said Zenchur.

Sam's eyebrows rose. "Where you goin'?" she asked suspiciously.

"It has been a long day. Do you need such constant protection that I cannot go to the toilet?"

Sam shrugged, and Zenchur left.

"Think he's pulling anything?" Charley whispered.

"Maybe. He put us in this sleaze bucket in the worst part of town. I heard that woman down there suggest that he send you over to some bastard called Boday to get 'broken in.' They give ya some kind'a potion and you just sort'a love everybody and then they teach you all the right moves and that's it, sounds like."

Charley didn't like that. "Potions are just strong drugs in liquid form. He could slip either or both of us one any time and we wouldn't know. I don't like this, Sam. The way he was talkin' I really don't think he's made up his mind yet, but he's gettin' ideas. What a place! All them respectable folks wearin' fancy clothes and the women all wearin' them robes and virgins them white bags and masks and here we got a district where
anything
goes and no cops show. It's like they took everything bad in them and put it all in these few blocks and said, 'Okay, here's the place of sin. Stay here and we don't bother you.'"

"We got to figure something before he does," Sam said firmly, "and soon, 'cause it's pretty damned clear he's thinkin' real good. Damn it, I don't care
what
his reputation is, he's a flake and a whacko. I can't say I think too much of these wizards if they trust people like him."

She paused a moment and continued, "I dunno. It's kind'a funny, really. I think he was all set to do it, no real problems, and then, well, somethin' happened. He suddenly figured out what all this was about even though he wasn't supposed to. Figured it and changed. I wish we could get him to tell us what is was."

Charley frowned. "You know, he's taking an awful long time in the john, for a man. Damn! I don't like this! We
got
to eat and I got no place to run around here, but it's like in a slasher movie where you're huddled in the closet hoping against hope the slasher won't find you while all the time knowing he will. I wish we could grab that hypnotic jewel he's got. Then
he'd
dance
our
tune! Or at least something we could use as a weapon-just in case."

"I know what you mean. But I don't think he's gonna pull nothin' tonight. He's thinkin', and he's got a problem with us, too, remember. He wants to force
us
into a goof so he won't get the blame."

"You know, I kind of wonder why he just doesn't use that jewel of his on us," Charley mused. "I mean, we'd go out obediently stark naked in these streets and scream, 'Here we are! We're the ones the horned guy's looking for!' until somebody nabbed us. Or just keep mumbling the bad guy's name over and over until he came for us. I wonder why he hasn't? Or'has he and we just don't remember or notice. Now
there's
a mean thought."

"I don't think he did. He might if he has to, but for some reason he doesn't want to use that thing on us. Huh! Maybe it's from Boolean! Yeah, that'd explain it. Maybe he's scared that Boolean would know if he used it against us or something. It's a thought."

"Yeah, well I-oops! Here he comes-I hope."

It
was
Zenchur. "Sorry to have taken so long," he told them, "but it was occupied and I had a fair wait. Now, Charley-you remember. Open the doors for us, serve us, speak only when spoken to. Best docile behavior. You might get some propositions, but nobody will think beyond that."

"Seems to me I'm being told to be a sweet little old slave and I don't like it."

"Consider-what you do is not important. But if you do
not
do it, then many will wonder why and start to ask questions. They will start to compare your features to those out on the wanted contract, and they all know that I have done work for the Akhbreed sorcerers before. They may not be positive, but if the reward is large enough then they will ask questions later."

It was a good point. She opened the door for them and they walked out, her following. She definitely didn't like this stinking world, though, not one bit.

The big city was a bit eerie at night. Oh, the "adult entertainment district" was just what you'd expect, all lit up and very active, but beyond, only a few lights in some of the taller buildings gave a hint that any big city was even there. The contrast was odd but also somehow reassuring; the mere existence of a thriving "adult" district indicated that this place was not as lockjaw fundamentalist conservative as it had seemed to be.

The customers on this three-block walk were equally interesting. The men, mostly dressed in those fancy Robin Hood outfits, you expected, but in just the couple of blocks they saw at least two of the three-wheeled, horse-drawn cabs pull up and, inside, heavily robed women waited alone until the cabbie went to the door, knocked, and someone came out to open the cab door for the woman and usher her inside. Clearly for all the outward appearances to the contrary, women had a fair amount of freedom here and, in a society of anonymous, arranged marriages they took advantages of the services of some of those muscular and well-endowed males to get what their own husbands weren't giving them. Charley found the sight oddly satisfying, The men had been doing it for years; it was about time the women could, too, without falling into disastrous affairs with the postman or some neighbor.

This district, men, was the safety valve for a society that was simply too closed in and structured every place else. In this small area the rules were off; in this small area sin and pleasure were the norm, and frustrations and social claustrophobia could be relieved as needed. It wasn't a nice place; it was merely necessary.