Two-Bit Heroes Read online

  I opened my eyes from a nap and saw the High Plateau filling the window. It had been visible for hours as a distant landmark, but now the top was too far above us to see— instead I had a clearer view of the rocky cliff that faced us. Somewhere along the way the road we were on would join with the Winding Road that led, after a long and (please gods) careful drive, to the city of Shaskala, halfway up.

  We were still traveling at a furious rate. We overtook a wagon being pulled by a bored-looking freight beast, with a farmer just as bored sitting on top. Ran gave them no opportunity to move to one side. Without slackening in the slightest, he zoomed around the wagon and back to his

  favored spot in the road. The driver glared at us from his position and waved a whip toward our car.

  Ran looked over, saw I was awake, and said, "Sorry."

  "I had no idea a single money order would make you this eager."

  "Theodora. Will you look at the sun? I wanted to get us to Shaskala before nightfall, but we're not going to make it. I don't think we'll get in before midnight."

  "What of it? We'll sleep late."

  "We'll have to drive up the Winding Road in the dark, tymon."

  My gaze went to that sheer cliff and its inhuman height.

  "Don't they have lights on that road?"

  "No."

  I cleared my throat. "Ah," I said.

  I found myself tracking how long it took the sun to reach the top of the plateau. It was difficult to fall back asleep.

  When I said Ran put up no resistance to the barbarians, I meant it—he performed all the duties of a temporary Athenan citizen. He honored all the rules and customs, outwardly. But as the drudgery of the academic year progressed I started to hear rumors about certain outlandish events that seemed to gather around Ran's vicinity. And I wasn't the only one who suspected him of being a disruptive force. Why, the dean of students actually asked me to—but that's not what I'm telling you about right now. My point is that Ran did everything he was supposed to do by his visa—a contract is a contract—and made it nearly impossible for anyone to expel him. I was amazed, in fact, at how tractable he was. This unnatural docility was brought home to me forcibly about half a year after our arrival.

  Ran was putting in his six weeks of compulsory labor, and I was on my way back from a long trip to Varengist Point (where he was cleaning out recycling tubes that couldn't be cleared automatically—I came out to visit him, sure he would say that this was the final straw. But he didn't) and I had a wait between connections. I sat up in the terminal for five hours until the dawn bullet for my cluster was due to leave.

  There was one other passenger waiting with me, a plain-

  looking, stocky, rather severe woman about thirty years my senior, her brown hair pulled back in a bun. After an hour without speaking she took out a flask of whiskey and offered me a drink. I accepted. Then I sat down on the hard bench beside her, trying to examine her without being obvious. She wore the circle-and-arrow pin of a full scholar; for her to carry a flask of alcohol was eccentric, and to offer it to a stranger was brave. We're rather puritanical on Athena.

  But I soon learned her reputation was beyond being harmed by this friendly gesture. I won't give her name here, it wouldn't be fair; but she was one of the greats of my field, close to a legend for the younger generation. She told me that she'd read my collection of Ivoran folktales and been impressed by it. (For all I know she may have been courteous enough to say something similar to every young scholar she met. Nevertheless, it was good to hear. She had some pleasant things to add about my Standard translation, which I will not bore you with here, but which I'll admit I've never forgotten.)

  We emptied the flask between us. And in the course of the next four hours she pinned me down, question after question, until not only had I revealed much of my research methods, but an enormous amount about Ran and me.

  "Do you think I'm crazy for believing in sorcery?" I asked.

  "I wouldn't presume to say so, dear," she replied, tilting back the flask for the last drops. Her view of reality was more flexible than mine—I don't think she really cared about the verifiability of sorcery from a scientific point of view. She was more interested in whether I was going back with Ran. I sidestepped that particular question as far as I was able.

  Finally, as the sun appeared over the Voltaire Dome Irrigation Fields, and we stood in the wind by the bullet, she reached out for my sleeve and pulled me closer. A bullet conductor was walking by, and she lowered her voice.

  "Honey," she said, "you're a top-drawer scholar. I can say that because I'm one myself, and I can tell you how important, and unimportant, it is." She watched until the conductor was out of earshot, the morning wind whipping her coat back. Her face was flushed from the whiskey.

  "They've misled you, though, sweetheart, and I'm going to tell you the truth. Doctorates are a dime a dozen, Theodora, but a good sexual partner is hard to find. If he makes your toes curl—" she used a more earthy expression here, "—then it's probably as good as it's going to get, and better than most people ever have."

  I was shocked at this coming from a conservative scholar, and one of her age. We were taught to put our work before anything. I said, "Surely you can't recommend marriage based on sexual attraction alone."

  "What do you mean, 'alone'? Didn't you tell me the man is cleaning out sewers for you right now? What more do you want? If you're waiting for a revelation from the gods—" The bullet's windows and doors shuttered open, signaling readiness for boarding. She kissed me hastily on the cheek. " 'Bye, honey. When you're not sure what to do, think about me. I'm living alone in two rooms over the cultural museum. Oh, I'm not crying, I've got a good life. But if I'd known what I know now, I'd've done a lot of things differently." She clicked off in her sensible bootheels for the express capsule, and I entered the third-class student compartment. I never saw the woman again.

  "Hang on, tymon," said Ran, as he made the first hairpin turn onto the Winding Road. His visual attention was wholly on the road, but he smiled and said, "If you want to close your eyes, or move to the emergency door, I won't take it as an insult."

  "Why would I do that?" I asked, keeping my gaze staunchly from the drop that fell away on my right.

  He scared me by withdrawing a hand from the controls long enough to pat mine. "We'll go together, anyway, and Kylla will give us a hell of a funeral."

  "Will they let her do that now that she's a Shikron?"

  "I'd like to see them try and stop her."

  After a minute he said, "It's not that bad. The cliff wall is reflective. I think we can go on."

  "You were planning on turning the car around on this little road if we couldn't?"

  He seemed surprised. "I had no idea you were so nervous about this, tymon. After all the aircars you've crashed in your time—"

  "One! Only one."

  His smile widened. I said, "Close shaves don't count."

  Have you ever heard some of the old legends of Earth? There was a people who lived in the ice and snow, on the edge of subsistence, and sometimes they would hunt for seals under the ice. A hunter would find a hole in the ice, and lie down with spear at the ready and wait until a seal came up for air. The hunter had to be inhumanly patient; he couldn't move or make a sound for hours, for fear of warning away the seal. And maybe one would never come up.

  Ran didn't make a single complaint about Athena. He listened to mine, though. After a while it began to seem petty of me to keep him waiting around when he'd much rather be on Ivory—never mind that I hadn't asked him to come. I was well aware of that, but it began to seem petty anyway.

  So, you may think, Ran waited until my guard was down and then suggested that we book passage for Ivory. No, he was better than that. I had to finally suggest it myself.

  I won't say that the woman with the rooms over the cultural museum didn't enter my mind. Mostly, though, I felt like a damned seal.

  And since I couldn't think of anything to do about it, I found my
self on the Queen Julia with a one-way ticket.

  When I spoke of my memories of Tuvin Province a while earlier I spoke, as most visitors do, of Shaskala, the only city there. Shaskala is a romantic name for an Ivoran city, but then it was settled mostly by Andulsines who came over the equator from the north, bringing their silly but delightful habit of drinking chocolate in the morning. They were either coming up or going down the Winding Road from the High Plateau (who knows which) when they decided to settle in the cleft by Don't-Look-Down Waterfall, and build there their Andulsine houses with real balconies (that looked out toward the street, as though oblivious of enemies). Some of the back balconies in the eastern quarter jut over the cliff. Children play on them as though the heights mean nothing, rolling painted balls and sticking their legs through the shaky iron railings. I don't know

  what shocked me more, those balconies or the ones facing the street.

  They tell me Shaskala is a beautiful city from a distance. I never saw it from a distance, since it was pitch-black by the time we turned off the Winding Road into the cut that leads to the main street of town. In the silence of night I could hear the waterfall muttering loudly somewhere to our left.

  "I just want to sleep," I said. Ran grunted and rubbed his eyes; he'd been peering out at the edges of the narrow road for the last few hours.

  Three candles in a window marked an inn, and we stopped the car in front of it.

  "Give me money," said Ran, and I counted him out some gold pieces from our purse and followed him inside.

  It ran on electricity, like most of Shaskala; the candles in the window were for tradition. The entrance hall was a bright and welcoming yellow. Sometimes I think I like etec-tricity better than the power packs that light the houses of the wealthy back in the capital; I know it's carcinogenic, but it's a different kind of light, very human-made. Power packs mimic sunlight too well. You never know if it's day or night.

  Ran hit the carved attention-stick against the block on the front desk and a minute later a clerk came out, looking sleepy.

  "I hope you have a room available," said Ran, putting a coin down on the counter.

  The clerk was young, short, and sandy-haired, unusual for an Ivoran; he ran a hand through his hair, shook his head as though to clear it, and focused on us. Then he stopped dead in his tracks and stared.

  I looked down at my robes; nothing wrong as far as I could tell. And he was staring at Ran, too, and Ran looked tired but normal. Now the clerk turned back to me, as though refreshing his memory.

  "Gracious sir?" said Ran.

  The gaze swung dumbly to my quarter-husband. Really, I suppose there can't be many travelers coming off the Winding Road in the middle of the night, but wasn't this a bit much?

  "A room for the night, and possibly longer," said Ran. "And we have a car outside."

  "You have a car?" asked the clerk. His voice was young and uncertain.

  "Why shouldn't we have a car?"

  The clerk swallowed. "No reason. Would you care to sign… uh, to sign in?"

  "Can we do it tomorrow?" asked Ran.

  "Uh, certainly. Of course. If the gracious, I mean the noble sir would come this way…"

  He started off toward the stairs and Ran followed. I picked up the carved attention-stick and examined it. It was brightly colored, and sculpted to resemble a caricature—of somebody real, I would bet. The figure was male and middle-aged and wore the mixed colors of a certain brand of hero from the Ivoran traveling theaters, a hero as much a butt of the gods as a force for good, and a bulbous nose seemed to be the main feature of the face. Putting someone on an attention-stick is not exactly an act of respect, when you think about what people do with that stick all day. The nose looked a lot more battered than it must have been when it was new.

  "Are you coming?" Ran's voice called.

  I put the stick back and went up to bed.

  An hour later I rolled off the mattress, quietly, so as not to disturb my bedmate. I was too overtired to sleep.

  "Where are you going?" asked Ran. His voice was wide awake.

  I was about to tell him I was going to pee, if he was so damned interested, but on impulse I decided to tell him the truth.

  "I feel like running the cards."

  He sat up. "I'll come with you."

  He padded after me into the sitting room. We had a two-room suite, thanks to Ran's standards and Tarkal's budget. I sat down cross-legged on the thick, multicolored carpet, and brought out the deck.

  Ran sat opposite and was silent. He never pushed at this stage.

  I started dealing out the cards. The first was a handsome young man in blue and crimson, carrying a sword: The

  Hero. I watched the card and waited till it changed, the handsome features melting into an older and uglier face with a bulbous nose… perhaps I was generating that from the figure on the attention-stick downstairs? I frowned at the card and the visage changed again, this time to a man with gray in his hair and the face of an accountant. Or anyway, to do that group justice, the face one expects of an accountant. I could see more of his body now; he was sitting on an embroidered cushion, looking thoughtfully at a piece of paper.

  I looked up and met Ran's eyes. "Nothing meaningful as yet."

  I set out the second card. "The Wheel," I said. "A change of fortune."

  "We just had a change of fortune with Tarkal's purse."

  "Umm." Maybe. Nothing specific from this card, so I drew another.

  The Fall, or The Height: A lone figure, too far away to tell its gender, standing on a precipice. Just the thing for Shaskala, I thought sourly, and as I watched the figure became Ran. He was wearing the clothes he'd worn today, but they were somehow more faded, or dirtier, or maybe it was the light; it was nighttime and his robes were blown back by the wind. He was going to fall, I knew it—

  I pushed away the card. "Nothing meaningful."

  "What was it?"

  "Stay away from heights." I let out a shaky breath.

  He waited, then said, "Are you going to do another?"

  "Not tonight. Gods, I'm tired all of a sudden."

  Ran started gathering the cards for me. He stood up and went to the cushion where I'd tossed my belt and wallet earlier, and bent over to retrieve them to replace the deck. I don't think I've mentioned it, but he was naked as the day he was born. I was wearing an underrobe. Unlike me, Ran was totally unself-conscious about being nude.

  It was a pity, I thought, as I watched him, that Ivoran clothing showed so little of the body's outline. I'd loved it when he wore Athenan shirts and tight pants.

  "What are you smiling about?" he asked.

  "I was remembering that black outfit you wore when you took me to the party on Athena."

  "Oh?" He smiled. "I seem to remember getting a very positive reaction to those clothes."

  "Certainly from me."

  He helped me to my feet and kissed me. He was showing a rather positive reaction himself, I noticed. We headed back to the other room, and Ran convinced me that I wasn't as tired as I'd thought. It was a question he was unusually good at debating.

  I woke early the next morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up quietly and padded out to the sitting room. Its two windows faced east, and broad bands of sunlight cut across the Andulsine carpet. I went to look out, and found myself looking down—and down—and down. I stepped back. Our inn was on the very edge of the cliff side. Maybe we even overhung, and had boards of wood propped against our underside to keep the whole inn from tumbling down to oblivion.

  I would rather not know. I pulled my gaze resolutely from the window and did some preliminary sa'ret stretches.

  There was a knock on the door. "Who is it?" I asked, keeping my tone low so as not to wake Ran.

  "Chambermaid, gracious lady," said a girl's voice.

  It was a little early in the game for anybody here to want to kill us, so I let her in; and I was rewarded for my trust with my first cup of hot Tuvin chocolate. The chambermaid was
about seventeen, with curly dark hair, and she carried two cups on a lacquer tray.

  "My husband's asleep," I said.

  She lowered her voice to match mine. "Will you be wanting a fresh cup for him later?" she asked.

  "Please. And, tell me, would it be possible for someone here to run out and get us some breakfast? We're both rather tired this morning."

  "Of course, gracious lady," she said, and held out her hand for the money. Ivorans are very obliging people, and never hold you to house rules if you're willing to pay extra. "If you like, this one can go to the stalls down the street and bring you back some fruit." (Pay no attention to the excessive honorifics; they mean little on Ivory, where they'll call you "gracious sir" while slitting open your purse. Or your throat.)

  "Thanks, I'd like that. And a slice of fresh bread, too." I gave her some coin and went to wash at the basin in the washroom.

  A short time later she returned with the fruit and bread on a plate, and another cup of chocolate. She inquired very courteously which I wanted her to taste, but I told her not to bother. I gave her more money—always correct behavior I'd learned—and she bowed and went away.

  I saved some of the fruit for Ran and put the plate down several feet from the window. I like a view on a nice morning, but this particular one was a bit overwhelming for my taste. This way I could glance at it from time to time as I ate, whenever I felt up to the experience. I sat sipping the cup of chocolate and let it drain down into my toes. It was, after all, a beautiful day; I had a new city to play tourist in; nobody was trying to kill us; and I was one-quarter married and in a mood to be pleased by that fact.

  I heard bare feet behind me.

  " 'Ware heights," said Ran, as he padded in. His hair was wet.

  "That was meant for you, not me."