Shadowplay

CELL 26

PAKOSEO PAKOSEO PAKOSEO The Serpentine grew and grew as it wound through the workers' quarters and burst into the streets where the Tawa merchants had their clan houses, the Tanak and Maka folk would not have dared this intrusion even a month ago, but the Pakoseo fervor was building among the despised and disenfranchised and beginning to catch among the young in the more advantaged castes. Shy and a little afraid, young Tawas, male and female alike, slipped from the dull-faced Tawa compounds, Pakoseo ribbons fluttering In their hands, tambours tied to their belts and sashes. They caught hold of Tanak and Maka hands they wouldn't have touched in ordinary times and raised their voices in the driving beat of the dance: PAKOSEO PAKOSEO PAKOSEO

A two-wheel racer went roaring and squealing through the filthy, rain-sodden streets of the laborers' quarter, In the factory town called Alomapoy. When it came to the town square, the rider reached back, slashed at the cords binding the bundle on the rack, then went racing off, leaving the mutilated body of the kipao sprawled on the worn cobbles.