Genetopia (8 page)

Nico leaned over her, dripping water onto her face. “Be want Taneyes on Highway?” he asked.

She shook her head. Until now that had been exactly what she had wanted, but now she knew it was too risky. “No, Nico,” she said. “Taneyes done hurt Mas’ Torbern–Mas’ been want for teach her.” There was no way they could get Taneyes onto Harmony Highway when she was getting special attention from Mas’ Torbern.

~

“You have friends,” pleaded Taneyes. “I need your help!”

Dinah recoiled from the pretty one. She had marked this one down for trouble from the start and now she knew she had been right.

She remembered the words of Old Ellis. Some mutts were naturally clever and some scraped together an education. Some had an advantage because they had good blood in them, as she was convinced Dinah had–by good blood, she meant blood of the True, she meant that Dinah was the product of one of her mother’s liaisons with human men at Lady Leder’s leisure house.

But the cleverest mutts of all were those who concealed their intelligence, for humans never trusted a mutt who could think.

“Please, mas’?” Dinah said now, doing her best to look confused by Taneyes’ words.

“I don’t belong here. It’s all a mistake!”

Today was the day of smoke and flight and of all days Dinah did not want the pretty one causing trouble today. She knew this when she had seen the wisps of smoke curling up from the northern end of the island shortly after the day’s first light.

“We all looking for Harmony,” said Dinah, the sudden change in her tone silencing Taneyes. “Ain’t all of us able to find it, you hear me?”

“What can I do?” Softer now.

“You don’t cause trouble for the others, you hear?” Dinah was talking true talk now, breaking out of Mutter to get through to the pretty one. “You keep your thinking head together, you keep yourself ready for whatever happens, but you don’t ever do anything to cause trouble. You hear?”

Taneyes nodded, and suddenly Dinah felt a great rush of fear that for the first time in her life she had committed too far, given her trust to someone who now held her life in her hands.

~

The timing was all wrong.

Dinah looked around and knew that there was no way she could get warning to anyone. She remembered her words for Taneyes:
You keep your thinking head together, you keep yourself ready for whatever happens
.

That was all she could do.

She ducked her head and followed the small group: masters Torbern, Enchebern, Caltreco, Bereshbern and Treebesh; the mutts, Maddy, Tender and Wake; and the Lost, Taneyes and the girl, Lariss.

They followed the track at the foot of the stockade on the morning sun side of camp, Little Elver to their left, the causeway a short distance behind them. Here, the waters of the small river formed a wide swampy area between the island and the jungle. Great pools of sediment and slime were separated by ridges of wood and silt. Looking down from the stockade it was apparent that the pools were a human construction, a channelling and concentration of the tools of nature.

It was here that Stopover’s changing vats had been formed: clay-walled troughs, their sides lined with smartfibre, an arm-span wide and deep enough to submerge someone of Dinah’s stature. Or Taneyes’.

Mas’ Torbern had decided to dip the two Lost females, just as Dinah had anticipated. “One too sullen to be any good,” Dinah had heard him say this afternoon. “Just like her mother. And the other too damned spiteful.” Wipe them clean now and they might still be ready in time for sale at Farsamy Carnival.

But the timing!

Today was the day of smoke and flight, and the changing vats were only a short distance from what the fisherfolk called the Widdy Gates, where the mangrove swamp was at its thickest, where cover was best.

Dinah had seen the wisp of smoke scratching the upriver sky earlier today. A sign. On her rounds she had sung as usual, but today her song had been of Harmony and freedom and readiness, her Mutter-pidgin little different to the masters’ ears but loaded with meaning for a small number of those in the holding pens.

Mas’ Torbern drank from a bladder he had been carrying slung from a cord loop at his wrist. “Right,” he said. “Time for a fresh start for you!”

He gestured and Tender stepped over to Lariss and took the girl by the arm. Tender was bulky and almost hairless, bred for hard labour. His hand easily encircled the girl’s upper arm.

Dinah watched, horrified as ever at this spectacle, at the ease with which the masters would do such a thing. The changing brew they used here was distilled with the help of expertise from clan Treco: changing vectors would subdue and subvert anyone exposed to them, leaving them pliant and malleable, putty to be reformed and reshaped at will.

At a signal from Mas’ Torbern, Tender moved towards the changing vat and the girl shuffled along at his side. Enchebern took her now, and Torbern took her other arm. Between them they guided her to the top of the steps that led down into the changing brew.

Torbern pushed, and the girl teetered forward and placed a foot in the brew. Her expression never changed from one of blank incomprehension. Dinah wondered what horrors she had endured already: perhaps the change could be a blessing for some, she mused.

Taneyes was watching her, terror in her stained eyes.

Dinah went to her, offered her a drink of sweetwater from a bladder. It was her role to offer comfort and care, both before and after.

She wanted to look away, but didn’t. “We be no-powered under the Big Mas’,” she said, hoping her words conveyed her inability to offer more than comfort.

Taneyes swallowed, then looked across Dinah’s shoulder to where the girl was now knee-deep in the brew. “Before the little masters, too,” she said.

Dinah pictured, somewhere within the stockade, hands on smartfibre locks, the fibres relaxing in response to the touch. Holding pens opening. And later: questions and beatings, investigations to find who had accidentally left the four pens unsealed.

She looked away, down towards the thickening screen of trees, where mangroves clustered together. Some said the trees concealed convoluted ribbons of raised ground, paths that twisted through the swamp, away from Stopover Island. Dinah had never been closer than this before, had never had the chance, but she knew the stories to be true. She knew the paths through the swamps were the first stage on the Highway to Harmony, the path to liberty for those few mutts who were free of the gut-love for true humans that bound Dinah and her kind into service.

She looked up at the stockade, expecting at any moment to see figures there, voices raised, all going wrong because Mas’ Torbern had chosen this precise time to dip two recalcitrant Losts.

Nothing. Not yet.

“Make you brave,” Dinah murmured to Taneyes. “Me be look after you.”

The girl: waist-deep, pausing, turning her head to look at Mas’ Torbern, Mas’ Enchebern and the others. The same blank stare, not even accusation in her eyes.

“I feel it,” she said–the first words Dinah had heard pass the child’s lips. “Will it hurt, Daddy?”

Mas’ Torbern prodded her between the shoulder blades with a mutt-stick and the girl plunged forward, face down in the vat.

He held her below the slick green surface for the space of several breaths and Dinah imagined the changing bugs filling the child’s nose and mouth, surging deeper into her body. And then he released her. She floated to the surface, limp at first. Then she shuddered. Her arms broke free, a hand found the edge of the vat and she pulled herself upright.

Mas’ Torbern turned away from her, and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Right,” he said. “The other one. Let’s get this finished.”

The two big mutts, Tender and Wake, came and took a hold of Taneyes’ arms. Expecting trouble, Dinah supposed.

Instead, Taneyes shook her head and their hands fell away from her.

She stepped forward, her stride slow, measured, precise. She stopped and faced Mas’ Torbern. “I am True,” she said. “You have no right to do this to me. I will remember.”

Mas’ Torbern’s upper lip curled up to one side, and then he stepped towards her and spat in her face.

She flinched, made as if to wipe her face and then stopped herself. Straightening, she stepped forward.

Mas’ Torbern waved away the two mutts and seized Taneyes’ arm himself. Dinah saw whiteness spreading where he gripped her bare flesh, so tightly did he hold her.

By the steps to the dipping vat they stopped and he released her. “Say goodbye to yourself, bitch,” he said.

Just then, Dinah saw movement down by the mangroves. She shifted from foot to foot, spilling the sweetwater she carried. No more movement, but she knew it was all happening now, all likely to go wrong.

Mas’ Torbern pushed Taneyes and she set foot in the changing vat. “I feel it,” she taunted him, repeating the words uttered by the girl who had called him
Daddy
. “I will remember you.”

Dinah saw a sudden change in Taneyes’ expression, a movement of the eyes, an unspoken
Oh
. Dinah turned and saw figures down by the mangroves, just as Taneyes had seen.

Taneyes looked at Dinah now, questioning.

And Mas’ Torbern sensed that something was wrong. He glanced over his shoulder at Enchebern and the other masters. At any moment he would see what was happening by the mangroves and the alarm would be raised.

Taneyes’ arm snaked out and caught Mas’ Torbern’s clothes at the waist.

Both hands now, gripping his clothing, tugging, pulling in crude parody of his own clawing hands the night before.

She leaned back and he fell with her, arms flailing, mutt-stick flying off into the swamp.

The other masters shrank back as a great spray of changing brew splashed up out of the vat and then fell back, enfolding the two bodies entwined like lovers in the sickly brew.

Silence.

Long silence.

Then a sudden burst of confused exclamations.

And then the sound of moist partings, of bodies pulling clear of the thick, slimy brew. Two figures emerged, dripping the goo into the dirt. One lashed out, struck the other, and Dinah saw Taneyes sprawling on the ground.

The one who had struck out now stood in a low crouch, legs apart, arms spread.

“Well?” he screeched. “What are you waiting for? Someone get some water and
wash me off!
”

The masters huddled, keeping their distance. Then Mas’ Enchebern gestured and Wake hurried up the path to comply.

Dinah looked back towards the mangroves and saw only a dark tongue of jungle, spreading out across the swamp, silent and undisturbed.

~

None of them would go within a few paces of the two when they emerged from the changing vat.

Treebesh, the visiting master from Beshusa, berated the others. “You have that fine whipping post, don’t you?” he said. “Time we used it.”

“She’s changing,” Mas’ Enchebern pointed out, his voice calm, reasonable. He gestured at Taneyes, now kneeling, holding her head and groaning. “She’s gone already. She’s a blank. What is left to punish? Whipping’s only going to spoil stock.” Taneyes would fetch a better price at market if she left here in good condition.

Wake returned sloshing a bucket full of water. Mas’ Torbern took it and doused himself with the brown water, scrubbing manically at his hair with clawed hands. “It’s okay,” he gasped, as he did so. “I’m clean. It’s okay.”

Some time later, they walked back along the path at the foot of the stockade, the other masters keeping apart from Mas’ Torbern. They spoke little, but it was clear to Dinah that communication was taking place: an understanding shared.

Eventually, Torbern slowed, clutching at his head. Mas’ Enchebern gestured at Wake and Tender and the two mutts went to help their master.

“No,” he groaned. “Away.” He tried to straighten. “I’m okay.”

Wake and Tender backed off and the other masters continued on their way, unwilling to meet Torbern’s staring eyes.

A short time later, he staggered forward and almost fell. This time he didn’t object when the two mutts went to support him.

Back at the holding pens, a commotion was being raised. Men hurried about, calling and gesticulating. Mutts jabbered and chattered from their pens, excited and confused.

Amid the disarray, the party stopped by an empty pen.

Enchebern pointed at the pen. “In there with them,” he said. Lariss and Taneyes stumbled into its shade and slumped to the floor.

The two mutts holding Torbern hesitated. Enchebern gestured again. “All three of them,” he said. “Go on.”

By now, Torbern was too feeble to resist. “Let me out,” he gasped, as Wake and Tender backed out of the pen.

Enchebern merely stared at him.

“You have changed,” the master said. “Or, at least, you are in the process of changing. You belong with the Lost now, Tor.”

Just
Tor
–Enchebern had quite deliberately stripped the clan affiliation from the fallen master’s name.

~

The changed were tended in their holding pen by Dinah.

Through the night, the sounds of mutthounds came from beyond the stockade. The hunt was on for the escapees, but trails were hard to follow through the mangrove swamp, even for the hounds, and Dinah knew they had a good start on the Highway to Harmony. Once across the Little Elver it was unlikely they would be caught.

Dinah had more immediate concerns, though, as she sat with the three.

Of all of them, it was the girl, Lariss, who seemed most mildly affected by the change. She sat quietly, much as she had before. Occasionally, she spoke in a little girl voice. “Daddy?” she said, many times during the night. “Is that you, Daddy?”

Both her father, Tor, and Taneyes spent the night wracked with high fevers, crying out at sudden internal pains and traumas as the changing vectors worked on them.

So sudden and abrupt! Dinah heard cracking sounds as the bones in Tor’s skull shifted, his forehead doming outwards and then receding. Dinah had seen such drastic shifts before and on each occasion the victim had died from the trauma, but somehow Tor pulled through and in the morning lay quietly, shivering and sobbing.