The ambassador made a flapping one-man tent of his raincoat and held a handkerchief against his nose. In the dark alley there was no use in walking carefully. He stepped in puddles and slipped on spongy, slick piles of refuse. Fetid water splashed up his pants. At the third hut from the corner he stopped, pausing just a moment before he entered through the curtain. He'd been in Karee eighteen months and had not yet conquered the desire to knock. "Hello," he said in English as he entered, giving in to the niggling urge to announce himself. Even with that, he felt like a thief. The room was black with shadows and soot. A murky fire against the far wall glowed sullen, smoky red. To the ambassador, raised in Earth's parochial schools, the room was what Sister Mary Ignatius had once to1d him of hell. A Karee looked from the table where it had been cleaning shota. Its hands froze. The articulated bony ridges around its eyes flowered open in astonishment. For an instant the human and the Karee stared at each other; then the Karee absorbed itself once more in work. George watched for a few minutes. The three-fingered hand of the creature sorted through the pile of tiny, hard bodies, snapping off the heads with a wet click and then tossing them into the pan where they hit with a clatter. It never looked up. When the ambassador had first arrived, his staff had told him of the Karee's lack of privacy. The human understanding was flawed. It was just that the Karee had no sense of outward space. The privacy of their minds was absolute. "Besseh Yo?" George asked. Snap went the neck of a shota. Plink, it hit the pot. "I come to find Besseh Yo." The Karee didn't took up, but it laughed. George stood, water still dripping from the ends of his salt and pepper hair, and accepted the disdain of its amusement. Snap. The shota's head was tossed to the floor. "I bring money." The hand paused. The Karee finally looked up. Its eyebrows unhinged again. "What moneys is you bring?" "Platinum." George was irritated now, bored with the intricacies of Karee social rituals; angered by the cavalier attitude which made him feel like a fool. "Are you Besseh Yo?" Without answering directly, the Karee rose and went to an interior doorway. "Yuma here!" it shouted. There was an answering mumble from the other room. "Yuma!" the Karee repeated. With a jerk and a rattle the curtain was opened. George was staring at the oldest Karee he'd ever seen. Besseh Yo was bent by disease into a totuous S-shape. Its eye-joints had calcified into huge misshapen knots. At first the ambassador assumed it was blind, but then Besseh Yo tipped back its head to bring George into its narrowed line of sight. The magician laughed hugely. "Yuma," it said with something like humorous suspicion. "Why does a yuma come through here to find Besseh and throw platinum at us? You got shit on your shoes. Smell it, Tyoresh?" it asked the other, younger Karee. "You smell shit on the yuma?" Tyoresh wrinkled its nose, widening its nostrils so they covered half the width of its brown face. "Maybe yuma shit its pants." George fought the urge to check the soles of his shoes. If he even looked down, he knew the Karees would erupt into hurtful, loud merriment. "I hear Besseh Yo has magic," George said, coming right to the point. The old Karee scratched its bare stomach. It was naked. Folds of gray-brown skin hung from its waist, making a convenient skin of flesh. "I have come to buy this magic," George told him. Besseh turned, showing the cleft of its bare backside to George, and walked away. After a moment George followed. The bedroom was small aid dim. The oil in the single lamp threaded black, stinging smoke into the heavy air. "Money," Besseh said, gesturing to a table with an imperious wave. George tugged the sack from his pocket and tossed it on the bare wood. Instantly Besseh was on it, running its gnarled hands through the chips of metal. Tipping its head, Besseh studied the human through the slitted openings of its eyes. "Why do you come when yuma hate the Karee?" it asked softly enough so that the Karee in the other room could not hear. His instinct was to dispute what Besseh had said, but that was the result of his diplomatic training. Here, in the close confines of the room, all he could manage was the evasion of the truth. "I've lost my wife," George whispered. I've lost my wife, he remembered. The death was fresh enough so that even now he failed to believe it. The Karee hooted. "Where you lose her, yuma? You ain't so careful?" George had always disliked the Karee. Most of the diplomatic staffs did. Now, looking into the distorted face where bone grew cauliflower masses against the pebbled skin, he realized what he felt went beyond dislike. He hated them. "She died," he said in a strangled voice. Lauren of the quick eyes; the graceful neck; the elegant, wild stride of an antelope. It couldn't be, he thought just as he had thought the night they'd told him. Not Lauren. George didn't sleep much anymore; and sometimes, when he did, he would wake with a throat-cramping gasp and pass his disbelieving palm over her side of the bed. "But you say you lose her. She die and you put the body away someplace you can't remember where?" "Shut up!" George snapped. His anger caught Besseh by surprise. The Karee inched away. "Goddamn you, shut up! Is everything a joke with you people?" In the other room there was a clink and then silence. Besseh and George turned, knowing Tyoresh was listening. Suddenly Besseh chuckled. "You hate us, ta?" The only sound in he room was George's labored breathing. He licked his lips, tasting the tart residue of smoke and the moldy taste of Karee sweat. "Yes," he admitted. It was senseless to deny it. "I hate you. But I hear you'll do anything for money. If you don't help me, I'll take my money and go home." "Tyoresh!" Besseh shouted. George stiffened, suddenly afraid they would throw him out. They'd throw him out of the house and he'd never find Lauren again. |
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