BREAK A HOLE IN THE STONE

1560 4D

The jiver was a soft little transparent hollow tube lined with hairball wiring. Rashua urged me. “Just stick it between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, with the tube ends looking out and in, and swallow.” She pantomimed.

We sat in their dressing room at Joovlies, several hours before we had to do the first show. I’d slept on a pad at Rashua and Naudi‘s place, leaving all the costume gear in place except for the corneals. Masinarin was gone.

“How do I get it out?” I rolled it in my fingers. It felt too big.

“Don’t worry, it’ll come out easily. Come on, we have to hurry. Got to run through the songs.”

“But––“

“Don’t worry.”

I put it in, swallowed. The jiver expanded and glued itself to the inside of my throat, gagging me. I doubled up.

Rashua ignored my bent-over position. “Now say ‘Ah’.”

“Aagh,” I replied, still bent over. The sound came out oddly changed, as if two voices were in me. I sat up. “Hey.”

This time the word squealed, and all of Thringe‘s bandmembers winced.

“Now you can talk some andro,” Naudi said. “Not fast like Thringe, but… just try it. Not so much breath this time.”

I practiced until I could make the range of andro sounds, high out of hearing range, and still talk normally.

“Now the songs,” Drasstar said. “You’ll need six or seven. We’ll cover the rest of the night.”

“You said three or four!”

“It’ll be better for all of us if you get more of them.”

I remembered my father. “I’ve still got to get the medicine back to my place. How can I do that if I have to stay here and practice?”

“Where do you think Masinarin went?” Drasstar inclined his head toward the door.

I reached down to where I’d set the bag with the arma and the other medicines. It was gone. “How does he know where to take it?”

“He knows who to ask. Now listen.” And Drasstar began to run through the lyrics, beating time with one hand on his knee, making me repeat them.

I fell right in time. Thringe‘s songs were all over the lower City, and I knew a lot of the words and the rhythms. I started into TESHILL SLOPE, softly at first:

“The City‘s hooking heart/Pump us through its hot corpse./Our souls feed its dark breath––“

This one was six syllables a line, explosive beats with slight shifts, a monotone for each line, moving andro tones high and almost out of human hearing.

Drasstar shook his head, stopping me. “No, no, no. Where are you? Dreaming? Stand up and attack. Break a hole in the stone. Where’s the bitch in you? Stand up!”

Again, this time on my feet.

Naudi and Grioskin shook their heads, hid smiles. Drasstar grabbed his arpy and pointed to Grioskin. “Let’s give her a push.”

“I can’t do this.” I sat down again.

Instantly Grioskin was in my face. “Get up,” he spat. “Get up and do it for her. She’s almost dead right now, and we’ve got to make this work, or they’ll think we’re hiding her. They’ll rip us apart.”

My frustration overflowed. “I’m not doing anything until I suss what this is. What’ll the blues do when they think I’m her? Pay me some coin to hear me sing?”

Drasstar came and towered over me. “If you knew what she knows, and they thought you did, and they wanted it, you’d tell all of it to them, electric style. Suss that?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “And right now I know where she is, and that puts me in just as much danger as anything else. Tell me why I’m doing all this, and I’ll do it.”

The room was silent for about three fast heartbeats. Then Grioskin said, “You suss relocs?”

“Oh, yes.” Relocations. When I’d been three, half my mother’s family had been relocated out of the City, off to some place on the surface, far north. We’d never heard from them again. Never. “I lost family.”

Grioskin nodded. “And what about andros?”

I thought about it. “I don’t know.”

He spun a hand in a mixing motion. “Recycled to the vats. Dead.”

“Come on, I’ve got to get her through the other songs,” Drasstar said.

“So you know she’s an andro?” I asked, looking at all of them in turn. They stared back at me.

“Of course,” Naudi said. He pointed at himself and Rashua, leaned closer to me, murmuring, “We’re half andro.”

“Don’t––” Grioskin warned, looking around the room.

Rashua added in a low tone, “If anyone finds out about that, we’ll be executed and recycled. Breaks Gene Law. Andros are supposed to be sterile.”

I nodded. “I was taught that. But my father knew better. He worked with andros, he and my mother, in the mines.”

“Songs!” Drasstar exploded. “Let’s get on with it!”

“The shipments are for the andros down in Sobi Zone,” Rashua said softly, “So they can get away before the next reloc, hit the surface, get lost in the wilds.”

“Andros in Sobi?” That much I didn’t know. The Zone was dangerous for anyone with a pale skin. But it hadn’t stopped Jeddin.

“Now!” Drasstar commanded. “Let’s save the rest for later. Get your tools, people. We’ve got to jack this lady up for the night. After we finish TESHILL, let’s do INFORMATION.”

This time the familiar intro to TESHILL SLOPE swelled insistently around me, and I caught the moment, flung the words and my anger into the stream of sound, and the syntrells and percussion drove my chant ahead. From some deep shaft inside me, rage and hope raced up and out. I banged Thringe‘s words against the dressing-room walls. Drasstar‘s eyes widened, and he bent over his arpy and hurled chords at me, and I flicked them aside with the magic of the brutal lyrics:

"…Find me on Teshill Slope/Selling virgin hopes, cheap…"

The song ended. I was panting into dead silence. They all stared at me.

“Woman, woman!” Grioskin said quietly. “It’s her.”

Rashua‘s eyes ran with tears.

“All right.” Drasstar straightened slowly, cleared a rasp from his voice. “Let’s try INFORMATION now.”

It was the same. I spat out the title, just the way Thringe did, and they all rolled in behind the first five-beat shattergun line: “Hot information/Stews, boils the City/Erupts like lava/Sets my bitch on fire/Eats rock like water/Makes lying from truth/And truth from nothing/She giggles, notches/My ear with her blade.”

Torment and devastation took me, and my body felt fire around it. The words ripped out of my heart and into the thrumming air. The anjive tones from the jiver in my throat bit harsh over my raised voice, crazing the music into shards of glass. We ran the wild song, finished, and I sat down, dizzy.

“Aw, shit.” Drasstar stared at me as if he was looking into the muzzle of a beam gun. “Where in this hell did you come from? It’s like she’s inside you.”

My body felt drained. “I don’t know. It just… fits.”

We flew through four more songs, and came to the soft slow one she had sung at me when I’d first seen her.

“Pale children, dumb bruised girls/My meds will heal your burning…"

As if I was singing to her now, with her lying on the floor at my father’s place. Anjive chords, soft and sweet as hot wires, came from the jiver in me, and the song wove its way to a final iridescent syntrell flourish from Rashua.

Drasstar heaved himself to his feet. “This is as ready as we need to be.” His eyes were reddened, and I knew how much he missed Thringe, how much he feared for her.

I went to him. “I’ll do whatever I can to help her,” I said.

His arms went around me. “Yah.” His chest expanded in a deep breath as he squeezed, and I felt the spasm of a sob from him.

He let go, and stood back, picking up his arpy again. “That’s all we’ll need for now. We’ve got a load of instrumentals we use when she’s not feeling good, and we’ll use them tonight. Get something to eat. Masinarin should be back before we go on, and he should have some news.”

Joovlies had the usual low-grade barhole kitchen, with the spiced tubers the best and nearly the only edible thing available. I ate in the dressing room with Grioskin. I had thrown a few chopped pepper stalks into my bowl as a spicer, and the scent burned my nose.

“How can you eat rep-peppers?” Grioskin asked me. “Those things take my head off. Andro food.”

“My father uses them all the time. I got used to it when I was a little girl.”

“Thringe loves them.” He took a big bite of a brown tuber slice, spicy sauce dripping off its edge.

Naudi looked in. “Place is filling up with women and couples. Big crowd, early. Is that cape cleaned?”

“Yah.” Grioskin had taken it and had it done; it looked fine. I blinked to try to stop the corneals from itching again.

Drasstar came to the door with his arpy in hand. He looked relieved. “Masinarin‘s back.” He came to me, bent down, whispered, “She’s doing a little better. Your father found seven flechettes in her. She got some blood, and some food, but the blues are all over the place. Just sing like you did before. I’ll do the talking on stage, all right?”

I nodded. That suited me perfectly. My throat was dry, and it scratched where the jiver had bonded itself in place. I wanted, just then, to be at home with my father.