Genetopia (9 page)

Taneyes curled into a ball, her head resting on Dinah’s lap. Dinah stroked her hair and cooed soothing songs and words into her ear. “You be okay,” she told her repeatedly. “You keep you in you head, baby Taneyes. You hear me? You hold onto you’self. Dinah help you know who you are, you hear?”

Over a period of several days the three stabilised. And slowly, Dinah realised that her love for Tor was dying. Changed, he was no longer her master and the gut thing had faded away. She felt no pangs of loss when time came for him to be shipped downriver to market.

~

They stood on the dock, the same group as the one that had set out for the dipping a few days before: the masters, Enchebern, Caltreco, Bereshbern and Treebesh; the mutts, Dinah, Maddy, Tender and Wake; and the changed, Taneyes, Lariss and Tor.

The haul-boat was full, only three more places to fill.

The masters stood a little apart, talking among themselves. They were fascinated by Tor, drawn to him and repelled by him. It was as if they were making sure that this was actually happening. Tor watched them, too, blankness in his eyes.

It really had gone. Dinah was certain now. The gut love of mutt for master had died as the changes wracked his body, and now he was nothing to her. He had his daughter, after all. Lariss remembered some things from before, as many changed could remember some things from before. The things that made a big impression, the things that hurt.

“Mama done live Sedgetress,” Lariss had told Dinah, referring to a settlement upriver. The girl had learnt quickly to talk Mutter and play dumb, absorbing Dinah’s advice with a wisdom beyond her years. For some, the change was a release and Dinah hoped it was so for Lariss.

“You remember you papa?”

Lariss had nodded grimly. “Remember well. Things papa done... Remember well.”

And now, as the three moved towards the haul-boat, Lariss smiled back at Dinah, a little hand on her father’s back, guiding him to the boat. “Bye, Dinah. Lariss done remember. Lariss make to look after papa, you hear?”

And Dinah wondered what, exactly, the girl meant by that.

Taneyes went, too. A changed woman, she had retained her self-contained bearing, but Dinah had little idea of how much else she had clung on to. She was stable, at least, the changes complete.

As the three were guided into their holding pen on the boat, Dinah noticed something. All around, it was as if the normal routines of the day had been suspended and everyone had stopped what they were doing. The masters on the quayside; the mutts labouring on the docks and on the clutch of six or seven boats; in the dusty road that led from dock to the main settlement small groups had paused en route. In the water, even, heads bobbing in the water: the fisherfolk, pausing in their work of un-fouling bladderpumps and screws.

All stopped to watch the departure of the fallen master.

Dinah turned away. The moment was gone, and normal activities resumed. When she looked back, the haul-boat was edging out into the river and the fisherfolk were not to be seen.

She hadn’t given this day a label, a hook to hang it on in her head. She didn’t like farewells.

She went back through the stockade and cut across the transit camp, heading for the track to the fisherfolks’ settlement. Nico would be there before her, waiting in the waters of their meeting place. More haul-boats were expected and Mas’ Enchebern had given her instructions to pass on to the water-mutts. She had the gut thing for Mas’ Enchebern now and he was a kinder master than Tor had ever been. But the love in her head for Nico was something of her own–
their
own–making.

She started to hum a tune, a song of Harmony, a song of love.

Chapter 7

Here at the aft of the haul-boat the stench from the mutt pens was little short of overpowering. Little wonder that the crew quarters were at the fore of the boat. There must have been a hundred of the creatures crammed into a line of pens in the bowels of the boat. The pens were half above deck and half below, shaded from the harsh sun only by a scattering of banana leaves weighted in place by rocks.

Flint settled back against the side-boarding and chewed on half a flatcake, trying to hold his breath as he ate in order to keep the food palatable.

Trader Gillambern would not feed him from the boat’s supplies–he had made that much clear–despite the money they had taken from Clarel to pay for Flint’s passage to Farsamy.

It was mid-afternoon now, and Greenwater was lost far up stream in the great meanders of the river Transom. By morning they would have reached the river Farsam, well on the way to the city of Farsamy itself.

He finished the flatcake and sipped from his water bladder, filled from the rainwater reservoir at the front of the boat. Gillam grudgingly allowed Flint water, at least.

It was four days now since Mesteb had returned from Trecosann with word only that Amber was still missing, and that both she and Flint were widely assumed to have run away from their father’s brutality.

“How will you get there?” Clarel had asked, again, the previous day. No longer did she ask what he intended, no longer did she try to dissuade him from continuing his search for Amber in the back streets and mutt auctions of Farsamy, no longer did she try to persuade him to settle here in Greenwater.

“Farsamy Way is a well-travelled route,” he told her. “Chances are that I will fall in with another group heading south.”

“Chances,” she said, dismissively. “You shouldn’t take chances in the wilds.”

Flint gestured with a hand: the still-receding floodwater with the cargo of river algae and the changing vectors it carried; the elypsian tree that grew from the water by the jetty, and the bulbous, diseased growths that had erupted overnight from its silver trunk; the kaleidoscope swarms of moths drawn to the corpses of fish stranded by the falling waters, attracted by the salt on their skin. “Risk is all around,” he said. “Chance. You can’t hide from it. I accept the risks of my journey to Farsamy.”

“It is Carnival soon.”

Flint nodded. Clans from all around would send delegations to Farsamy for Carnival, the greatest gathering of the year. Deals would be negotiated between clans that would bind them in trade for the year to come and beyond. Disputes would be settled, too. Clan Elders would debate matters that could not be settled locally. And, of course, the citizens of Farsamy would put on the biggest party they could manage.

“Mesteb travels to Carnival via Trecosann,” said Flint. “I will not travel with him. I will not return to Trecosann. I’ve asked him to pass on word of my good health to cousin Callum.” A thought occurred to him then: “How about the haul-boats?” he said. “They go downriver to Farsamy.”

Clarel nodded. “I could arrange passage for you,” she said. “Clan Beren depend on us for bladderpumps for their boats. I know the traders. They would take you far quicker than you would manage on foot. If Amber really is heading there you could well arrive before her.”

And so he found himself here, lurking at the back of one of the great haul-boats that plied the rivers Transom, Elver and Farsam, thankful that he had some meagre supplies of food in his pack and short and long knives at his belt.

~

Lisebern paused, atop the mutt pens partway down the boat, interrupting one of her occasional forays from the forecabin. She pulled at her cloak, raising it above her hips, squatting to expose great slab-like buttocks to the air. Flint saw a dark gash, a tangled pubic shadow, and then a stream of yellow liquid stabbed down through the roof of the pen. A squeal came from below, a nervous chattering.

All the time, Lise stared at Flint, smiling at his discomfort.

Flint had never seen such calculating cruelty in another person’s eyes as there was in Lise’s. He had never felt such an inner chill in the presence of another. She made her trading mate, Gillam, seem meek by comparison.

“You seen something you like, have you?” she said, approaching him casually, her long cane rattling the pen roofs behind her.

Now, she stood above him on the last of the pens, Flint still down on the ribbed deck at the rear of the haul-boat. She gripped her crotch and squeezed through the coarse swamp-cotton cloak. “It’s all Gill’s, see? You touch me, he’ll have you. If an’ he even catches you looking he’ll be feeding your balls to the snapping turtles.”

Flint looked away, skin burning.

“That’s right. You don’t look at what you can’t have.”

There was a sudden pained yelp and Flint looked back again to see Lise withdrawing her cane from between the pen’s bars. He saw one of the mutts cowering against the far side of the pen, others milling around it and eyeing the woman above them fearfully.

Lise laughed, turned with a wiggle of the hips, and made her way slowly forward.

~

Flint refused to walk over the tops of the cages as Gillam and Lise did. He had never really considered how mutts were treated, partly because their mistreatment was outside his experience: it was simple good husbandry to look after your mutts. Seeing them in these conditions, though...

To traverse the length of the haul-boat he walked along the narrow gangway at the side, hanging onto the pens with one hand to help balance. There was no barrier to catch him if he slipped and underfoot there was only the yielding, leathery surface of the decking. It would be easy to go overboard.

The waters of the Transom here were thick with silt, much of it scoured out from flooded vales and swamps in the aftermath of the wet season.

Now he paused and settled on his haunches, hanging on with both hands. He thought of the snapping turtles that followed the boat, his backside hanging out over the water in this position...

The level of the gangway was halfway up the pen’s side, so he had to look down into the interior. Within, in a space perhaps five paces across and as many long, there were fifteen mutts.

The smell seemed muted to him now, as evening settled. His senses had dulled to it after a time. Body odour, sweet manure, urine-soaked rushes and the ancient, oiled tubers from which the haul-boat had been grown combined in a smell quite unlike anything Flint had known before.

These mutts were more humanoid than many on the haul-boat. Probably only shoulder-high to Flint, they were powerful-looking creatures. They were all naked, but for filthy shorts, but their bodies were well protected by their thick, fleecy hides. Their faces were narrow–dog-like, in a way.

Nearby, two of the creatures were grooming: one stood patiently as the other ran fingers through its coat, picking out bugs and small pieces of broken rush and other debris.

“Listen up,” said Flint, interrupting their peace. All fifteen faces turned towards him immediately, their ingrained obedience to true humankind running deep.

“Me master outta Trecosann,” he said. “You speak Mutter? You been know me words? Me been look for mistress outta Trecosann. Her got red in hair, yellow in eye, she high like this.” He held his hand level with his chest. “If an’ you see her you treat her plenty good. You been know me words? Her find me Farsamy.”

He moved on, tried again.

There was a great diversity of mutts, even on this one haul-boat. Many were only distinguishable from humans by their general demeanours, by subtle differences in physique and, of course, by their inability to speak anything other than Mutter-pidgin. Lise had said earlier that these beasts had “good blood in them”, laughing again at his shocked reaction to her crude references to human-mutt interbreeding. She could not know that it made him think of his own mother, his own sister. He studied these mutts closely, but there was nothing in them that recalled Amber to his eyes: his sister was True, he was certain, even if her father might not be Tarn. Others of the mutts on the haul-boat were far more animal in form, moving about ape-like on foot and knuckle, little more than pack animals.

And in among them were the Lost.

The pen near to the forecabin held at least four mutts that were different. Flint came to that pen now, and told them all to listen up. Ten turned instantly, rapt in attention; four turned sullenly, slowly–suspicious and fearful.

Sometimes, when the changing fevers strike, there is left behind the empty shell of a human being: a blank with no memory, no desires, no spirit. A human become animal, a human become no more than a mutt, only fit to be traded.

Flint stared at the four blank faces, compelled by the thought of the individuals who had once lived in those bodies, the lives and memories lost forever.

“Me master outta Trecosann,” he went on. “You been know me words?”

As he spoke, he was aware that he was being observed with amusement by Gillam and Lise, but he went on to the end and, as ever, the only response was a few mutters, an enthusiastic nodding of heads, the mutts ever eager to please a true human.

“You gonna ask me if I seen you mistress outta Trecosann, are you?”

Flint turned to meet Gillam’s look. The trader was sitting in a fold of his cabin wall. The whole forecabin was a podhut grown in situ, fleshy walls merging with the haul-boat’s deck in an interlocking of tiny fibres.

“Have you seen her?” asked Flint. The trader had already heard his description of Amber.

Gillam shook his head. “She pretty?”

Flint shrugged.

“She is an’ she’ll fetch a good price.” Gillam cackled, and somewhere from the cabin Lise laughed too.

Flint turned.

“You wasting your time with the mutts,” said Gillam, more gently now. “They ain’t none of them so bright. Ain’t no one want to buy a brainy mutt.”

~

The haul-boat lay anchored for the night at the mouth of the river Transom. The waters were strangely calm here, before the turbulence where the Transom joined the great river Farsam.

Flint lay on his sleeping rug at the rear of the boat. Despite the day’s heat, the nights were cold and he savoured the slight warmth emanating from the deck. Now that they were no longer in motion, the smells from the mutt pens were not wafted back to him so intensely and instead he smelt sweet nectar from the trees overhanging the water.

He couldn’t get the four Lost out of his mind. He wondered how they had been so afflicted. The fevers, perhaps. Or punishment for heinous crimes–Flint knew only too well that such punishments were sometimes inflicted.

He turned onto his side.

Who might have changed them, he wondered? It was not only Clan Treco that had mastered the changing arts, after all. He remembered childhood tales of bogeymen–tallymen!–who kidnapped children and adults and changed them so that they could be traded as mutts.

He wondered again–as he had ever since the moment Greenwater had disappeared around a bend in the Transom–at the wisdom of travelling on a haul-boat, trusting his safe passage to the traders.

~

He woke to sudden turbulence. He scrambled to his feet and saw that they were under way already, the haul-boat kicking and bucking as it bore out from the mouth of the Transom and into the river Farsam. Looking up along the length of the boat, he could see that the craft itself was twisting in the waves, yielding to conflicting pressures.

Gulls screamed in a massed flock overhead, wheeling and swooping and darting down at the rough water for scraps of food. Flint had no idea what it was that they might be finding to eat.

He pulled the hat onto his head, the morning’s light interrupted by feathery clouds scudding across the face of the sun. He fastened his hat and cloak against the wind and pulled himself along the gangway–treading carefully–to join Gillam and Lise on the foredeck.

He had intended to ask if he could help in any way but as soon as he reached the foredeck, Gillam turned from the boat’s wheel and snarled, “Keep out of the way, or I’ll pen you with the mutts.”

Lise wasn’t here. She must either be in the forecabin or somewhere back with the mutts.

Flint retreated, deciding to brave the gangway again and return to the rear of the boat. He would bide out the rest of the journey there, he decided.

Lise was in one of the pens, about a third of the way back along the haul-boat. The gate was open, but none of the mutts tried to escape. Instead, they cowered flat against the cage sides, trying in vain to retreat from Lise.

As Flint watched, she raised her cane. Too cramped in the pen to draw it all the way back, instead she used the broad base as a club and smashed it into the temple of one of the mutts.

The creature whimpered and dropped to its knees.

Lise realised she was being watched and turned, smiling. “You leave them be,” she said. “They’re mine.”

“Okay,” said Flint, raising his free hand. “I’m just going past.”

But why was she treating them like that? Mutts couldn’t help but be obedient. She didn’t have to beat them to get their obedience.

Flint resumed his journey, but then paused as the mutt on its knees tried to get back to its feet and Lise snapped, “Don’t move!” She raised her cane again.

The mutts eyed her and the cane and fell still.

Flint stared at Lise. The mutts obeyed her because they feared her and not because they recognised her as a True human who must naturally be obeyed.

He had always thought it obvious: the difference between True and Lost. He stared at Lise in shock and wondered how much of the river trade was controlled by her kind, by outcasts from the world of the True–by those who had lost what it was that made them human. The very idea offended every rule of civilisation he had grown up with.

“What is it?”

He raised both hands this time. “Nothing. Nothing. I’m just...”

She seemed to recognise the understanding in his eyes. She raised her cane and advanced on him, but he had the advantage of height and position.

“Stop her,” he commanded and, instinctive obedience overcoming fear, the mutts stepped in front of Lise, forming a protective wall.