The Strangers of Kindness (12 page)

She barely touched his hand with her fingers, and flashed him a frightened glance. “Eyes like midnight,” he thought, Whatever would they be like if she wasn’t so beaten down? She made some mumbled response but turned around and fled before he could draw her out further.

“Was that rude?” Pasha asked, staring after her.

“No, Master. She doesn’t dare stay away too long.”

“Well—anyway, now you can eat.” It waved Jared into a chair and sat down opposite him.

Kalda had sent a torn-off end of bread and a joint of lamb. Pasha watched him eat, fascinated. Once Jared stopped to ask, “Do you really eat sand, Pasha?”

“Mmm, yes, lovely sand,” Pasha said, “Shall I join you?”

Jared smiled bemused assent around a mouthful of bread. Pasha left and returned, smiling shyly, with a
nalsha
holding a small mound of sand. “This will look very strange to you,” it said. With a motion as though it was rolling up its sleeve, it peeled back the disguising flesh, literally rolled up the hand, revealing a delicate, translucent tendril. Jared recoiled, but kept staring.

The tentacle, supple and tender as a new fern-frond, ran its tip lightly around the rim of the bowl. Jared scowled in recognition as a dim, flute-like hum sounded from the bowl, and Pasha’s face took on a contented smile.

“They’ re our life-vessels, our tools, our connections to the inner world,” it said softly, “gifts from Geilsharah, friends and companions.” And the tendril coiled gracefully down into the pile of sand barely disturbing it. Jared’s eyes grew round in wonder watching the thing begin to glow and pulse. The sand grains at the apex of the pile shifted, a small depression appeared, and the sand gently, slowly, caved in from the top. The bowl’s hum continued for several minutes, and the little sand-meal diminished in size until all that was left was the tendril with a few sand crystals clinging to its damp surface. With a couple of lithe loops wiping up the last grains, Pasha finished its meal. It sat back with a happy sigh. Jared realized he’ d been staring, and quickly went back to his own meal. Pasha rolled its morph’s “hand” back in place. “So, tell me, is Anna of your sex?”

Jared blinked in surprise at the sudden change of subject.
 

“No. She’s a girl.”

“Ah? So the two of you could mate and produce small men-and-women, like the ones I see running all over in the market, peeking in at my windows?”

Jared flushed. “It would be possible, yes. But it’s not allowed. I belong to you, sir, and she to Kalda. We can’t choose mates for ourselves.”

Pasha’s expression was severe. “Indeed? But—” it looked sly now—“if you could choose, would you choose each other?”

“I, I don’t know, Pasha. It hadn’t occurred to me. Such thoughts are dangerous, they’ d only bring punishment.” He saw Pasha’s unhappy face. “She’s pretty, though,” he added, feeling he’ d somehow disappointed the alien, and was relieved to see the frown give way to a smile. “Can I ask, sir, how you ‘ eat’the sand? Does the little . . . snake . . . suck it up through the end?”

 
“No. It’s absorbed through the skin. Next time you won’t be so repulsed—no, it’s all right, you were perfectly polite—and can watch more closely. It’s only fair, no? Are you finished? Good—now, you can help me alter this morph so I can be more like you, and more comfortable.”

Pasha carried another lamp back to the sleeping-room. It arranged the
nalshas
on the floor and stood in the middle of the arrangement. “It would help me a great deal if you would disrobe,” it said to Jared. “I need to observe details during this process.”

Jared couldn’t tell if this was a command, or a request, but he figured he’ d better comply either way.

When he’ d dropped his tunic, Pasha fluttered its hands at him, making odd little steps in place within the circle of bowls. “Step back just a bit, Jared, that’s fine. Now you must be very still, and no matter what you see, or hear, make no sound, and don’t wiggle, please? Understand?”

“Yes, Pasha,” Jared answered, wondering what was about to happen. There was, he realized, more curiosity than fear in his anticipation, and that pleased him, obscurely.

The room, the night, were full dark now. The lanterns at the bedside glowed their golden beams across the room, putting Pasha in silhouette, but infusing the array of colored bowls with light like Jared had never seen. The rays illuminated some bowls’ interiors with eerie metallic highlights, bounced from the surface of others, through the depths of yet others, picking up and changing colors—

Jared gasped.

Like a living thing, the light of the lantern had braided its way from bowl to bowl, crosswise and around the circle, until it made a ring around the alien Pasha. When the last beam flashed to connect with the first bowl, completing the ring, the light uncannily intensified, became
more
—the colors the same but more concentrated, the iridescence more brilliant—and now the sheets of light grew, climbing vertically through the air, surrounding Pasha in a transparent veil.

Jared looked at his master’s face, and saw peace and joy there. He suddenly noticed that the bowls were humming, too, a slowly increasing vibration of harmony. The sound pushed up against Jared’s diaphragm, made his heart beat faster.
What’ s happening?

The light flared, nearly blinding him. In the seeming darker shadow afterward, he squinted trying to discern what had happened to Pasha. Something had happened; the outline within the curtains of light had changed.

Another flare, and Jared’s master was revealed in its true form. Jared stood staring open-mouthed.

The creature in the circle of light was partly transparent— clear as glass, and in no way resembling a human being. There were those—snake-like tendrils—a globular, pitted body. Jared in his terror took in details unconsciously: eyes on stalks, scattered over the blob of a body; spots which seemed less transparent, which distorted the light shining through so that it seemed to trick his eyes and he couldn’t really see
what
the thing looked like.

The light flared again, subsided, and Jared was again nearly blinded. He wanted to run, screaming, as far away as he could, but he willed his feet to stay rooted.

When the light faded to a normal level, Pasha’s silhouette was once more human. It stepped backward out of the circle of bowls, gesturing with its arms that Jared should approach. “Don’t be afraid, the change is finished.” Pasha’s voice was the same, speaking quietly. Near the lanterns it turned so that Jared could see the new form.

“Is this more like one of yours?” Pasha asked, and Jared was touched by the hopeful, anxious note in its voice. It was naked, this time, and Jared couldn’t help but smile. The body seemed a twin-likeness to his own. The head and face were the same, though, the high cheek-bones and small, crinkly eyes; the egg-bald head and equally smooth flat cheeks and square chin.

Jared found that Pasha Sands was the most intelligent, mentally organized master he’ d ever had. True, the work planned was daunting, but it knew exactly where to begin, and each step along the way.
 

Jared excavated a cave under the third sleeping-room, supported by beams he cut and installed himself. The chamber was almost as big in area as the house above it.

The labor was heavy, and the days were long, but Pasha fed him well and treated him kindly. When it gave him a sleeping-room to himself, with the first real bed he’ d ever been allowed, he thought he was dreaming.
 

With better food and rest, his energy and strength increased rapidly. Jared himself was surprised at how soon the subterranean glassblower’s workshop took shape.

Pasha worked, too, as hard as it was able to, but often left Jared to supervise himself. The alien still had some of the crude, open-fire bowls it had made on the beach for sale out front. It also made frequent forays into the town market. From the iron-monger, the herbalist, the jewelry-maker, the copper shop, it brought home small, mysterious packages.

Jared saw Anna quite often, but seldom under circumstances that allowed conversation. As he hauled barrow-loads of dirt out of the growing hole, and, later, of bricks and sand into the house, he saw her working across the street. Usually the welcome sight was accompanied by the most unwelcome sound of Kriessa’s crow-like voice abusing the girl.

One day he saw the bloated harridan beating her, and he left the barrow outside unemptied and rushed back into the house, down the ladder into the workshop pit.

Pasha looked up from the plans it had drawn for the kiln.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry, Master, can I wait a little while before going back out? I’m afraid my temper will get me in trouble.” He gripped the edge of the table like the rim of a cliff.
 

“Temper?” Pasha arched an eyebrow, interested. This was the first time Jared had displayed anything but docility.
 

“It’s Anna,” Jared moaned. “Her mistress—she’s hurting her. If I hadn’t come in, I would have gone over there. Let me calm down a little. I’ll make it up by working longer . . .”
 

“Of course. Go get yourself a drink of water.” Pasha watched its slave climb the ladder to the ground floor, then put aside its parchment and followed him. But instead of going to the pump room, where urns of drinking water chilled the air enough to store Jared’s food, it went to the front window and looked across the street to its neighbors’ .

There was no one to be seen now. But Pasha’s expression was thoughtful when Jared returned from the pump room. “Do you know, Jared,” Pasha told him, “I just realized, I have been unforgivably remiss in a social duty. I never gave my neighbors a wedding present. I think, once we have the workshop ready, that will be my first project.”

Copying the iron-monger’s wood-and-leather bellows gave Jared a few days’ relief from the heavy work. He put it together in the grassy, shady space behind the house. The river’s constant rushing chatter among the trees fifty yards away kept him company. An afternoon of fitting the bellows to the kiln set-up, and painstaking adjustment of the air flow, and Pasha declared it as good as the workshops they had on its home planet.

The final task was dismantling the winch they’d built to raise baskets of earth up to the ground floor for removal, and loads of bricks down to build the kiln. Jared chopped the beams into pieces to fit inside the kiln, and they fired it up.

Jared thought they’ d immediately commence making bowls, but first Pasha had him burn hardwood—expensive because it was imported—for an extra-hot oven. This fire had to be hotter, to achieve a ceramic that would withstand molten glass.

The alien then crafted a set of glassblowing instruments out of clay. To Jared’s ignorant eyes, by far the most ingenious tool was a series of clay tubes, in decreasing diameters, threaded on the inside of one end and the outside of the other. They screwed together to make a long pipe. Several hinged tongs came out of the kiln next, nearly as intriguing. Then a dozen paddles and spatulas for handling and shaping the molten glass.

At last Pasha allowed him to let the fires cool back. Jared was naked to the waist, slicked with sweat. The workshop was intolerably hot. Jared noted with wonder that the alien wasn’t sweating at all.

Patiently his master showed him how to pump the wood-and-leather bellows steadily to keep the fire at a constant temperature. Using one of the long-handled paddles, Pasha slid a clay pot full of sand into the mouth of the oven and closed the heavy door. Then the master retreated to a corner of the room and sat, while Jared worked the bellows.

He started to ask how long it would take but Pasha shushed him. “I’m not sure; I’m counting your strokes.”

Half an hour passed, and Jared’s arms and back were starting to ache when Pasha said, “Now, perhaps. Let’s peek.” The master’s instincts were perfect. They drew the pot of glowing, liquid glass out of the kiln and rested it on a fired-clay slab.

“Now you can rest,” Pasha told him. “Observe closely; you’ll be doing this soon.”
 

Dipping the small end of the pipe into the liquid glass, Pasha swirled it until a fist-sized glob adhered to the tip. It brought the pipe-end out and over the low work-bench, and using a paddle patted and pushed it into a rough sphere. Then Pasha inhaled, put the cold end of the pipe to its mouth, holding it with both hands, and began blowing.

Jared’s eyes widened as the blob of glass expanded slowly. Pasha rolled the pipe between its hands, keeping the globe uniform. Every few minutes it moved the glass into the mouth of the still-open oven door until it started to glow again, then moved it away for continued blowing and shaping. When the stretchy crystal bubble was as big as a man’s skull, Pasha took the pipe out of its mouth and lifted the whole unit over the clay slab to set the bubble on its bottom. With swift, graceful strokes it used a sharp-edged spatula to cut the bowl away from the pipe. Then another paddle to smooth the quickly-cooling rim. It set the pipe aside and stepped back to the small table next to Jared. The alien dipped into one of the several small burlap bags it had bought in the market, and pulled out a handful of grey powder that glinted with tiny metallic sparkles.

“This part you cannot do,” Pasha said. It dropped the dust back into the bag, leaving a thin coating on its fingers. It stepped back to the work-bench and thrust its hand inside the bowl.