Watcher's Web (10 page)

Once more,
Ikay tugged her shirt. Clearly, Ikay wanted her to bathe before
eating. Jessica pulled the shirt over her shoulders and let it sink
on the steps. Dora hastened to pick it up.

Onlookers
pointed, murmured and snorted. Yes, she had no breasts to speak of.
Did they have a problem with that?

She kicked off
her shoes. Her right shoe bounced down the steps, the loose sole
flapping, and fell in the water. Oh bugger.

A boy dived
under the surface and came up a moment later with the shoe in his
hand. A few of his little friends mobbed him, and he swam off
across the pool, holding the shoe above his head.

“Hey, that’s
mine. Give it back.”

The boys paid
her no heed.

Jessica turned
to Ikay. “I need my shoe. Make him give it back.”

Ikay just
stared.

Jessica bent
to pick up her other shoe, but dropped it just as quickly. God, it
stank. But without shoes she could do nothing; her feet were much
too soft to go barefoot. And where was her shirt?

Dora was gone.
No shirt.

Ikay gestured
at her jeans.

Jessica
bristled. What? Take them off, too? And then what? Would she get
them back?

A breeze
carried the smell of roasting meat. Jessica’s stomach churned. What
was more important? Her pride or her survival?

Slowly, she
undid the button on her jeans, and pulled down the zip. The fabric
felt greasy and stiff under her hands, and when she pushed the
waist band down, the stench made her gag. God, if these people had
noses half as sensitive as hers, no wonder they wanted her to bathe
first.

Her jeans fell
on the floor, followed by her underpants. She used her foot to
scrunch them into a little heap, not daring to look at the crotch
of her undies. Maybe she could give her things a wash before she
put them back on. Surely no one was likely to run off with this lot
of clothes.

Ikay led
Jessica into the water. It was quite warm and enfolded her tired
body like a comforting blanket. The chatter of the Pengali faded
into the background. Someone tipped water over her head, and hands
rubbed her hair, lathering in a soap-like substance with a strong
smell of mint.

In between
buckets of water upturned over her head, Jessica glanced at the
steps. Her clothes had gone.

Chapter
9

B
ATHED AND
smelling of mint, Jessica followed Ikay and her Amazons back into
the main hall. A mass of people gathered, talking and waiting
around steaming pots. The white in their skin patterns showed up
brightly, as if the light had a strong ultraviolet component. Large
eyes glinted. Jessica felt vulnerable. After coming out of the
water, Ikay had given her a thin belt to wear around her waist, so
there was nowhere to hide. She was so tall, and her skin was so
white it almost glowed. People stared—they always did. A seventeen
year old girl in the body of an adolescent boy. No curves, no
femininity.

Hands, tails
and other body parts slithered past her as she struggled to keep up
with Ikay. Air stroked her skin in places normally well-covered.
Drops of water ran from her still-wet hair down her spine into her
bum-crack, leaving her with the uncomfortable feeling she had
pissed herself.

She scanned
the ever-moving crowd for a sign of her clothes, but there were so
many bodies and with their stripes and spots it was hard even to
tell them apart.

Under the
first floor gallery, a group of older males sat amongst bowls of
white and black paint, using fine brushes to accentuate skin
patterns on the backs of those seated before them. Others threaded
beads into each other’s hair.

Ikay pushed
Jessica down on pillows amongst the group. With a chatter of
vowel-deprived words, two males crawled over to apply black paint
to her shoulders, one using his tail, while the other passed her a
bowl from which rose a rich spicy smell. Finally, food. Jessica was
so hungry she gulped the fishy balls and gooey sauce without
wondering if they might contain poisons her body couldn’t
digest.

She gave the
empty bowl to a young boy who walked past collecting them. Ikay and
her Amazons had disappeared.

Jessica tried
to get up, but a wave of dizziness came over her. She stumbled; the
belch welling up from her stomach tasted of rancid fish and
acid.

Sweat broke
out all over her body. God—she wasn’t going to spew, was she? What
would she do? Over the heads of Pengali she identified two
emergency exits: the main entrance, guarded by two sentries, and an
archway into a dark room on the other side, where a steady stream
of people came and went.

In the middle
of the hall, a couple of youths dragged out drums and an impromptu
dance started. Males and females lined up to meet on the floor.
Under loud cheering, each couple so formed danced together before
moving aside for the next couple. Jessica was jostled to join in.
Onlookers brayed laughter, pointing at her fake skin patterns.

She shuffled
in the heaving mass of bodies smelling of the gunk that came from
the bottom of her mother’s outdoor fish pond. Thinking of what to
do when her stomach would no longer obey her orders, of what to do
when she got to the end of the line and was supposed to dance. And
the line before her kept getting shorter.

On the floor,
a leopard-spotted male met a young giggling girl, took her by the
hands in a whirling dance. The girl, eyes wide, laughed clear like
crystal. Then the man stopped, put his hands on her hips and kissed
her. The onlookers cheered.

The
grey-haired Amazon, Maire, who took the floor next, wasted no time
in getting herself into the arms of the handsome young male fate
dealt her. Sharing passionate kisses, they moved as one across the
floor, rocking in time to the drumbeats, their tails intertwined,
curling around their hips. When the onlookers cheered, the young
male grabbed Maire’s hand and pulled her after him through the
crowd.

The next
couple took the floor. Jessica panicked, felt bile rise in her
throat. Hands pushed her forward. No, she would not throw up. At
least not here.

Between the
mass of bodies, she glimpsed Maire on a pillow near a tree trunk,
her unmistakable leopard spotted back undulating in slow rhythmic
movements, her tail curling around hands that gripped her
sides.

Blood rushed
to Jessica’s cheeks.

Drumbeats
roared in her ears, reverberated in her chest. She swallowed hard.
Once, twice. Tried, driven by a mixture of revulsion and
fascination, to catch another glimpse of Maire’s spotted back, the
young male’s tail stroking it, in that same rocking movement.

The crowd
surged and Jessica found herself a few steps onto the dance floor.
Looked up. There, facing her, stood the pot-bellied male from this
afternoon. A wide grin splitting his face, he held his arms wide to
welcome her onto the dance floor. But she saw only his swaying, no
longer flaccid penis.

No.
She took
a deep gulp of air.
No way.
Took
a step back.

He grinned,
held out his hands, came closer.

The crowd
cheered.

Drumbeats and
cheering mingled in deafening, throbbing noise.

Her mouth
flooded with saliva.

No!

Clutching her
stomach, she turned away, and pushed herself between the onlookers.
She brushed past sweaty bodies; grasping and tails hands slid past
her. They were all cheering and laughing and their voices rose in
crescendo above the thumping of the drums.

Away,
away!

A tail gripped
her arm and a fierce-looking figure blocked her path. Alla. The
pot-bellied male waited behind her, a grin on his face. Jessica hit
at Alla’s tail. “Leave me alone! Let me go!”

Somewhere
behind her, a loud female voice shouted over the music, followed by
a sharp whistle. The drums fell silent.

Ikay walked
slowly to the centre of the floor, where people shuffled back to
form a circle around her. In the eerie light, her hair looked
almost green. She gestured to Alla, who pushed Jessica forward. The
pot-bellied male had retreated to the edge of the circle and
glowered at Ikay. His tail swayed, brushing the males behind him in
the face.

Ikay spoke. In
that tense silence, her voice sounded loud. Heads appeared in the
voids behind the gallery railings: wide-eyed faces of young
children. Four layers of tribespeople, all looking at Jessica, and
listening to Ikay.

The
sound of Ikay’s old voice carried well in that space. She gestured
with her hands like a politician giving a prepared speech. Jessica
strained her ears for the meagre words she had picked up in their
guttural language:
okkik
—food,
enggit
—the
creatures that produced the incessant noise in the reeds or
mohok
—settlement or tribe. Ikay’s speech
pattern flowed in a repetitive cadence, with short breaks after
every three words. Vowels, if any, were only short. Nothing of what
Ikay said made sense.

And all those
eyes glanced at her, especially those of the females. The
pot-bellied male leaned against a tree trunk, his arms crossed over
his chest. Every now and then, he would lash out his tail with a
crack like a whip.

Then
Ikay mentioned the name she had given Jessica: Anmi. Others
repeated it, until it travelled in a whisper around the
hall.
Anmi, Anmi,
Anmi.

Pengali around
Jessica backed away from her, as if she had some sort of disease,
or as if she was the subject of immense respect.

Oh yeah,
I’ll be like the Spaniards who were worshipped like gods by the
South American tribes.

But hadn’t
some of those explorers been killed to prove they were not
gods?

Whatever
these people thought about her, she didn’t want to deal with it.
She’d almost rather have been captured with Brian by gun-toting
aliens. Well—maybe not.
Oh, Brian, why did you have to be such a stupid stubborn
oaf?

Ikay gestured
for Jessica to come forward.

There was no
choice—what else could she do? Her legs felt like rubber, wobbly in
the knees. The whisper in the crowd surged around her.

Anmi,
Anmi, Anmi.

Ikay sat down,
nimble and agile like a cat. Jessica remained standing on the edge
of the circle. There was a pattern inlaid in the stone—a
five-pointed star in black and cream mosaic, with symbols at each
point, curled loops.

“What is
this?” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud.

Ikay
pointed to the stone and said something that sounded like,
Akkar.
Then she raised her finger to
Jessica and said,
“Avya.”

She motioned
for Jessica to sit down.

Jessica
hovered in indecision. Stared at the floor patterns. The symbolism
of the star gave her the creeps.

Her
father’s voice sounded in her mind.
Never sign a deal without reading the contract
first.
Well, it was
not as if this setup came with a how-to manual.

She didn’t
want to do this because she didn’t understand, and she did want to
do this because it looked like Ikay understood the web. But really,
she wanted to make her own decision. What could Ikay do to her?
Hypnotise her? Impose the tribe’s will on her with the web? There
was only one of her, and so many of them.

Jessica sat
down. The stone felt smooth and cool under her naked skin.

Ikay folded
her legs under her, and pressed her hands together in front of her
face in a kind of Buddhist monk position. She spoke a few words,
and when Jessica didn’t react, her tail wriggled out and pushed
Jessica’s hands up.

Ikay’s mouth
twitched into an expression that might or might not be a smile, if
these people smiled at all. Large gaps showed between her yellow
teeth, the two incisors much larger than the surrounding teeth, not
unlike a rabbit’s.

Ikay closed
her eyes; her face relaxed.

The air
tingled.

A rush of
warmth floated past, tugging at Jessica’s senses.

Ikay opened
her eyes and moved her hands apart . . .

Strands of
light snaked into the space between her hands and were sucked up
into a single bright spot of light.

Jessica tried
to fight the strand that curled around her, but she couldn’t. Her
senses warped, the web tugged at her. Strands of sparks flowed from
her unbidden, and flowed into that bright light. She sensed not
just one person on the other end of those strands, but many. One of
the focus points was much stronger than the others. It pulled her,
stronger than she could resist. Her awareness slid and then she was
in the mind of that man again.

*     *     *

He sat in a
room gloomy with artificial lighting. His elbows leaned on a metal
surface. Another man sat at the table, and a solidly built woman
stood behind him near something that looked like a stove. In a
corner, a pot hovered over a patch of glowing mist. Lights blinked
on a wall panel. The walls were shimmering purple.

A kitchen, but
not one like she had ever seen.

The man, Daya,
put his cup on the table with a clunk. He met the other man’s eyes.
His uncle, Jessica knew.

“By the way,
I’m going to be away for the next few days.” Nerves tightened his
voice, even though he tried to sound relaxed.

His uncle
raised heavy eyebrows. “You’ve just come back. There’s the year
reports to be done. There’s a board meeting on tomorrow, and—”