The Margarets (8 page)

The Quaatar race was convinced that humans should be eradicated, but they did not wish to be wiped out in their turn, so they conspired in secret, drawing upon the skills of their planetary kinsfolk, the Thongal, the Frossians, the K’Famir.

These races, long separated from Quaatar, were still similar to the Quaatar in many ways. None of them had an emotion equivalent to gratitude, but all of them had a mercantile respect for debits and credits. The Quaatar were credited for having given the Thongal, the K’famir, and the Frossians planets of their own. Winnowed by circumstance, these races were now far superior to the Quaatar, but they greeted their elders with well-feigned respect and rejoiced at joining in vendetta against Earthians. They wished to conduct this massacre without implicating themselves, so, in the Gathering, a similar alliance with similar concerns occurred among Whirling Cloud of Darkness-Eater of the Dead of the K’Famir, Flayed One-Drinker of Blood of the Frossians, and the head of the Quaatar pantheon: Dweller in Pain. As reinforcement of their intentions, the leaders of the four races met on Cantardene, where they sacrificed to their bloodthirsty gods and swore to create a weapon that would seek out and kill humans wherever they were. Cantardene is the home world of the K’Famir, but the Gardener learned of it, and she told me, Gretamara, while I shuddered and wished…almost wished I could return to childhood, back on Phobos again.

During the seemingly endless trip from Earth to Cantardene, young as I was, I served as translator between the cargo and the Mercan crew—an assorted bunch of them: vicious K’Famir, cringing Hrass, sleek and superior Elos, and boisterous K’Vasti. Because I was in a state I can describe only as continuous fury, I did not cringe, and I did not bow. I knew at the beginning of the trip that they had misread my number, that I had been put on a bondage ship rather than a colony one. I had had time to get over it, I thought I had gotten over it, only to feel rage boiling up again the moment we, the humans, arrived and were marched off across a plaza. We were not chained. We had been warned in advance (or, I had been warned and told to warn the others) that acting up by any one of us would result in removing the whole group from sale as light laborers for household use and selling all of us to the mines.

When this warning seemed to have little effect, I then regaled my fellow bondies with stories of the mines. I’d heard a good deal about them during the trip. A few of the bondies had rebelled during the trip. They’d been dealt with publicly and fatally, and I hadn’t been so stupid as to try to interfere. That memory and my description of the mines cowed the others into appropriate submission.

Trough-shaped fountains extended along the sides of
the plaza, most of them occupied by naked young K’Famir halfway between gill and lung stages of development. The young were of various colors: black, green, ocher, a few of dull red; all of them sleek and shining, exuberantly noisy, all eight limbs in motion at once as they sprawled and splashed, shrieking at one another in shrill, sibilant voices, conversations that I understood very well, having translated similar ones for what had seemed to be months. The K’Famir had a language of their own, but they used it only during religious observances and on very formal occasions. For commerce and daily life, they spoke Low Mercan, as did most of the vocal populations in the Combine. Though it was an ugly language, I was getting very, very fluent at gargling Low Mercan.

Up ahead of us we could see the bondage-block, a broad, low dais around which each servant offered for sale would be paraded. In a low voice, I reminded the group that we wanted to survive, and survival depended upon being servile. This was the intention I had started with: survive at all costs, do whatever was needful to get through the next fifteen years. I’d passed this intention on to the others. I’d told them, and myself, that anger could not help and might hurt our chances. We arrived at the block, and I breathed deeply, retreating into myself as I’d often done on Phobos.

My fellow servants were sold off, one by one, managing to do it without getting themselves whipped or beaten. By the time I was displayed, I’d managed to detach myself from the procedure. I walked about the dais while the auctioneer began the spiel I’d been hearing all morning: Young. Healthy. Strong. Almost immediately a heavily ornamented female thrust her way through the crowd of onlookers.

“I’ll see her,” the K’Famira called. “She may be what I want!”

“K’Famira Adille,” murmured the pitchman. “You need a house servant?”

“I have house servants,” she replied, throat pouch turning slightly pink in annoyance as she rearranged her voluminous scarves. “My housekeeper sees to them. I do not waste my time buying house servants. I want a pet.”

“Most buyers prefer them younger.”

“I don’t want one I have to house-train. Humans look like a per
son cut in half, but they’re said to be trainable. Walk it around again for me.”

Obediently, I walked, impressions falling into place like coins into slots. When one studied language, one also studied its speakers. The skin around the K’Famira’s eye sockets was not wrinkled: She was therefore young. A young K’Famira buying a pet was either a pleasure-female incapable of reproduction or a wife who had been warned not to attempt it. Infertility was a problem among city-dwelling K’Famir, exacerbated by the cultural prohibition against adoption. Male K’Famir accepted none but their own. Returning to the swamps for several seasons was usually an effective cure for the conditions, but that was not always possible.

I knew this in part because the Low Mercan vocabulary reflected the true situation: The word for city included the rootword for sterile; the word for swamp included the rootword for fecund. The word for a pleasure-female was made up of the words
urban
and
k’dawk
, a term for playful congress, indecent when used alone.
Playful
had been the word used in my glossary, but from what I now knew about the K’Famir, I doubted that any interchange between male and female could be playful. I now knew things I had not known I knew, for until now I’d had no mental hooks to hang them on. After a long voyage of listening to K’Famir talk, I had acquired hooks in plenty.

Because many K’Famira were sterile, pets were common. Any small, biddable creature would serve. Pets could be brought up in the family and kept for an unlimited time, or, when they reached adulthood, the pet could be freed to a colony. If the family didn’t free it, the pet could be sold again for fifteen years of labor. One of the more discouraging facts I had learned on the ship was that time spent as a pet did not count against the term of bondage unless the family wished it so. The one encouraging thing I had learned was that K’Famir males did not find Earthians sexually attractive or at all interesting.

So, I focused on these trivia, standing very still and ignoring the manipulators running over my body.

“What’s your name, human-female-young,” Adille asked in Mercan, waiting for the translator to convey this to me.

“Margaret,” I said, without waiting for the translator. “And I’m twelve Earth-years old.”

“You speak Mercan?” Adille sounded almost outraged.

“I do, Great Lady,” I said, focusing all my attention upon Adille’s speech in order to blank out her smell.

“Well, then. You would be a bargain, wouldn’t you?”

“I would seek to please the Great Lady,” I said.

The cargo manager on the ship had been kind enough to instruct me in what to say. Great Lady. Great Lord. My only desire is to give good service. What does the Lord require? And so on. I had taught these same phrases to those in the cargo, though only a few of them had learned to say the words in Low Mercan. The cargo manager had told me he much regretted that he could not buy me for himself, as an assistant during future voyages.

“And your name, again?” Adille demanded.

“Margaret.”

“Margaret. What a strange name, and yet, I suppose you’re used to it. We’ll keep some of it for you, wouldn’t that be nice? My last pet’s name was Onga. Suppose we call you Ongamar?”

And Ongamar I became. Ongamar who found her role not unfamiliar, for she fetched and carried, grateful to be frequently ignored, reconciled to being occasionally petted and fussed over, meantime listening to every word spoken in her presence and, when possible, those uttered behind closed doors. Thus I, she, expanded my Mercan vocabulary while learning a great deal about the K’Famir race and the Combine of which it was a member.

In general, I, as Ongamar, found the situation tolerable. The Mercan people were uniformly disagreeable, but simple pleasure-females—as distinguished from the breeding consorts of males in the hierarchy—had no dynastic ambitions and shared few of the more deadly K’Famir attributes. Though vicious if provoked, females were not routinely cruel; their interests were narrow and restricted to their own comfort; their servants and pets did not find them hard to please.

The males, however, were uniformly sly and vicious, even before they were sent to their male-only religious schools. By the time they left those schools, they were sufficiently menacing that pets, servants, and children stayed out of their way, and even consorts and pleasure-
women were careful of their demeanor. There was no K’Famir law against the negligent or purposeful slaying of children or wives by male K’Famir, or the slaying of male K’Famir by male K’Famir, though penalties were exacted for slaying the mates or children of other males, which was considered to be theft.

As Ongamar, I was allowed to take my own exercise unsupervised in the walled gardens, which were extensive. My usual food was a tasteless kibble, made especially for pets of several humanoid races, but I was also fed scraps from the table, many of them delicious, though some were revolting. Adille’s previous pet had been of another race, but Adille learned which foods were acceptable while I invented ways to avoid being stuffed with foods that made me ill. Vomiting on the carpets resulted in a beating with one of the special slave whips made of flemp hide. The skins had microscopic, hook-shaped scales on them that tore the flesh and prevented the wounds from healing. Pets were beaten for any “dirty” behavior such as tracking in soil or leaves or failing to put clothing away, or spotting anything with blood, which occurred when I began to menstruate, some little time after arrival.

The first bleeding upset Adille, and I was taken to a K’Famir veterinarian, who explained the biological function to Adille, not to Ongamar, and gave a kit of supplies to Adille, not to Ongamar, that Ongamar was to be trained to use. Thereafter Adille speculated from time to time whether it might not be fun to breed Ongamar and raise a litter of little ones. When she mentioned this in her current patron’s presence, however, his throat sac bulged to its fullest as he bellowed that one animal in the house was barely tolerable and there were to be no more.

The semiaquatic K’Famir wore clothing as protection when outdoors, or as adornment. While at home they were constantly in and out of the fountains with which most of the rooms were furnished, Clothing for pets was allowed. When my own clothing began to wear out, I begged Adille for fabric to make simple, long-sleeved shifts. In public, K’Famir and pets without fur or scales wore voluminous scarves to prevent sunburn.

During the first year of captivity, I accompanied Adille and her current patron, Bargom, to the pleasure quarter to meet some old friends. They stopped at various stalls, including one tiny one where
Adille saw a kind of bib lying under a glass bell. Made of many tiny beads, it created pictures.

“Bargom!” Adille cried. “Look at this! Doesn’t that look like you?” As it did, the bead colors shifting suddenly to create the very likeness of Bargom when he was startled, side-eyes very wide and angry.

“Nonsense,” he said. “It looks like your mother.”

I stepped a little to one side and saw what he meant. It did resemble Adille’s female parent, who from time to time cohabited with Adille.

“How does it do that?” cried Adille. “Oh, Bargom, look at the tag. It’s only twenty mantrim. You promised me something fun to amuse me during my molting. Buy it for me.”

“Surely it’s only a trick,” he said.

“Not at all,” murmured the stall owner, who had appeared from behind a curtain as they stared. “It portrays memories, which it captures from the minds of those who confront it. Each owner helps it develop more complexity. Here on Cantardene, K’Famir images mostly, though on occasion it will portray events.”

I recognized him as a Thongal, a serpentine, periodically sexless race that was occasionally seen in the Cantardene markets. I had been told of this race at school. This particular Thongal had tattered ears and abraded hollows below his eyes where his heat sensors and rudimentary sex organs should have been, routine punishment on the home planet. It lifted the glass bell so Adille could see the necklace more closely while she stroked the shining surface of the minute beads.

“A strange thing to be so cheaply priced,” said Bargom, peering at it but coming no nearer.

“A strange thing is not always much desired,” the Thongal said, with a deprecating snarl. “K’famir prefer the familiar.”

“Is it a necklace?” cried Adille.

“It could be, if one wished to wear it, though I am told it may become too heavy to be worn comfortably.”

Adille reached forward and picked it up from the velvet pad, hefting it between her palps, laughing. “Not heavy at all! Oh, Bargom, do get it for me.”

I reached up to stroke the glowing beads, running the tip of one finger over them, looking up to catch the Thongal’s eyes fixed upon me.

“Pretty pet the lady has,” said the Thongal. “May one ask its name?”

“Ongamar,” said Adille, casually. “Though it had another one. What was it, human?”

“Margaret,” I murmured, catching a peculiar expression in the Thongal’s eyes. Amusement? Glee? Satisfaction?

“Margaret,” it purred. “From Earth, no doubt.”

Bargom had found a forty-mantrim note in his pouch, and the Thongal took it with a gloved hand, passing the necklace and the change back to Adille in those same gloved hands. Adille waited while I fastened the clasp around her neck, then we went on to the evening entertainment: dinner at a restaurant, where I stood beside Adille’s place to cut her food, meantime watching her necklace shifting and changing, sometimes somber, sometimes violent in color and action.

After the meal, Adille and Bargom had front-row seats at a pouch-howling concert, while I waited in the “servant races” section, just far enough off the lobby to be spared the worst of the cacophony. When we reached home, the necklace was taken off and laid upon the ledge of Adille’s grooming trough.

“You know,” said Adille, rubbing her throat pouch, “it really is heavier than it feels. My neck is quite weary from it.”

I stood beside the trough, examining the necklace without touching it, for when I had touched it before, I had felt a threatening emanation, tangible as a smell, as though something dangerous had wakened and looked at me with recognition. As the Thongal stall owner had done. As though he knew of me, which was an unpleasant thought.

“Great Lady,” I murmured, “perhaps it might be best not to wear it very often.”

“Nonsense, Ongamar,” said the K’Famira. “It’s just that we’ve had a long day, and I’m a bit tired.”

I was unconvinced. To all the regrets I had brought from Earth,
I now added one more: a deep regret at having touched the thing at all. Somehow, though Adille had received the gift, I felt it had been intended for Margaret-by-any-name, as a trap intended for a particular victim might allow someone else to fall into it first. So Adille had been caught, but the trap was not dissatisfied, for it had caught me as well.