Shadowplay

CELL 19

The wagon creaked out of the city and plunged into the throng of Pilgrims. Following the pattern drilled into her during practice sessions in the Kisa Misthakan, Shadith played the sacred Paleka Kitskew and sang the traditional Pakoseo songs, Miowee and Kayataki blending with her, their voices picked up and amplified by concealed lug-ikes.

As they plunged deeper and deeper into the Pilgrim throng, the people took hold of the song and began singing with them, the sound spreading and spreading until it filled the space under the bowl of the sky.

Sometime around mid-afternoon there was a disturbance by the right front corner of the wagon. A man as elaborately dressed as Rohant was screaming something that was partly drowned by the shouts of the guards and partly carried off by the wind. He tried to climb onto the bed of the wagon, laying about him in a frenzy of desire and determination with a seasoned quarterstaff, his strength multiplied by his insanity. In a lull when the wind dropped, Shadith heard what he was screaming: I am Nataminaho, I AM, not HIM, not that IMPOSTER. I AM NATAMINAHO, I AM ANOINTED BY OPPALATIN, I AM…

He was driven back, knocked down. A moment later she heard him scream as the broad wheels began to roll over him.

Ginbiryol scowled at 18 as he recognized the shouter, one of Puk's protйgйs, the country Plicik with the taste for torturing children; he had some effective scenes from that one, this would finish the tale, but there was a problem with the style of the end. He considered a moment, then isolated the sequence; a good many of his clients shared the tastes of that local and would be insulted by his ignoble death, seeing it as a judgment on them; however, there were two or three who had a sentimental gloss on their attitudes toward children, they'd enjoy the pain, the writhing, the blood, and feel a special glow of virtue as they also enjoyed the wretched end of the torturer. He dumped the sequence into a special file for a Limited Version of this Limited Edition. Though finishing the story off satisfied his aesthetic sense, it was a dangerous ploy. If he misjudged his audience, it wasn't merely a matter of refunding the purchase price; he would have some very unpleasant people angry with him, people who had a propensity for direct and bloody retaliation for anything they considered an insult.

He continued monitoring the Cells, brooding over timing as he watched. The emotional content of the scenes was intensifying to the point of exaltation and the autumnal odor of endphase was strong as burning leaves. Time is now, he thought, I had better set the Banger in place. He tapped his forefinger on the armrest. Ajeri wasn't here. She'd taken to avoiding the Bridge.

The kephalos tracked her and found her in the gym where she was exercising with grim determination, sweat rolling off her body, her face a grotesquerie of strain.

Ginbiryol watched a moment, decided to leave her where she was. He called up the record of what she'd already done with the Planet-Killer, nodded with satisfaction when he read its current status; he finished activating it and used servos to ease it into the drone' which Ajeri had already programmed. All he had to do was pop it out and send it down.