Captives of the Flame Part 6

She stopped and looked around. "Oh, there you are," she said, joining a young girl who stood back from the crowd, holding a box of trinkets like the other woman's.

"Rara, what happened?"

The birthmarked woman laughed. "You are watching the beginning of the transformation. Fear, hunger, a little more fear, no work, more fear, and every last one of these poor souls will be a first cla.s.s, grade-A citizen of the Devil's Pot. How much did you sell?"

"Just a couple of units worth," the girl answered. She was perhaps sixteen, with a strange combination of white hair, blue eyes, and skin that had tanned richly and quickly, giving her the large-eyed look of an exotic snow-maned animal. "Why are they running?"

"Some boy started a panic. The fence gave way and the rest followed him." A second surge of people rounded the corner. "Welcome to the New Land, the Island of Opportunity," Rara called out. Then she laughed.

"Where are they all going to go?" Alter asked.

"Into the holes in the ground, into the cracks in the street. The lucky men will get into the army. But even that won't absorb them all. The women, the children...?" She shrugged.

Just then a boy's voice came from halfway down the block. "Hey!"

They turned.

"Why that's the boy that broke the fence down," exclaimed Rara.

"What does he want?"

"I don't know. Before this afternoon I'd never seen him in my life."

He was dark, with black hair; but as he approached, they saw that his eyes were water-green. "You're the woman who was selling things, huh?"

Rara nodded. "What do you want to buy?"

"I don't want to buy anything," he said. "I want to sell something to you." He was barefoot; his pants frayed into nothing at mid-calf, and his sleeveless s.h.i.+rt had no fastenings.

"What do you want to sell?" she asked, her voice deepening with skepticism.

He reached into his pocket, and brought out a rag of green flannel, which he unwrapped now in his hand.

They had been polished to a milky hue, some streaked with gold and red, others run through with warm browns and yellows. Two had been rubbed down to pure mother-of-pearl, rubbed until their muted silver surfaces were clouded with pastel l.u.s.ters. There in the nest of green, they swirled around themselves, s.h.i.+mmering.

"They're nothing but sea sh.e.l.ls," Rara said.

Alter reached her forefinger out and touched a white periwinkle.

"They're lovely," she told him. "Where did you get them?" They ranged in size from the first joint of her thumb to the width of her pinky nail.

"By your departed mother, my own sister, we can't afford to give him a centiunit, Alter. I hardly sold a thing before that brute officer forced me away."

"I found them on the beach," the boy explained. "I was hiding on the boat and I didn't have nothing to do. So I polished them."

"What were you hiding for?" asked Rara, her voice suddenly sharp. "You don't mean you stowed away?"

"Un-huh," the boy nodded.

"How much do you want for them?" Alter asked.

"How much? How much would it cost to get a meal and a place to stay?"

"Much more than we can afford to pay," interrupted Rara. "Alter, come with me. This boy is going to talk you out of a unit or two yet, if you keep on listening to him."

"See," said the boy, pointing to the sh.e.l.ls. "I've put holes in them already. You can string them around your neck."

"If you want to get food and a place to sleep," said Alter, "you don't want money. You want friends. What's your name? And where are you from?"

The boy looked up from the handful of sh.e.l.ls, surprised. "My name is Tel," he said after a moment. "I come from the mainland coast. And I'm a fisherman's son. I thought when I came here I could get a job in the aquariums. That's all you hear about on the coast."

Alter smiled. "First of all you're sort of young ..."

"But I'm a good fisherman."

"... and also, it's very different from fis.h.i.+ng on a boat. I guess you'd say that there were a lot of jobs in the aquariums and the hydroponics gardens. But with all the immigrants, there are three people for every job."

The boy shrugged. "Well, I can try."

"That's right," said Alter. "Come on. Walk with us."

Rara huffed.

"We'll take him back to Geryn's place and see if we can get him some food. He can probably stay there a little while if Geryn takes a liking to him."

"You can't just take every homeless barnacle you find back to Geryn's.

You'll have it crawling with every shrimp in the Pot. And suppose he doesn't take a liking to him. Suppose he decides to kick us out in the street." The birthmark on her left cheek darkened.

"Aunt Rara, please," said Alter. "I'll handle Geryn."

Rara huffed once more. "How come when we're two weeks behind on the rent, you can't find a kind word in your mouth for the old man when he threatens to throw us onto the street? Yet for the sake of a handful of pretty sh.e.l.ls ..."

"_Please ..._"

A breeze seeped through the narrow street, picked a shock of Alter's white hair and flung it back from her shoulder.

"Anyway, Geryn may be able to use him. If Tel stowed away, that means he doesn't have any papers."

Tel frowned with puzzlement.

Rara frowned with chastis.e.m.e.nt in her eyes. "You are not supposed to refer to that, ever."

"Don't be silly," said Alter. "It's just a fantasy of Geryn's anyway.

It'll never happen. And without papers, Tel can't get a job at the aquariums, even if they wanted him. So if Geryn thinks he can fit him into his crazy plan, Tel will come out a lot better than if he had some old ten-unit-a-week factory job. Look, Rara, how can Geryn possibly kidnap ..."

"Be quiet," snapped Rara.

"And even if he did, what good is it going to do? It's not as if it were the king himself."

"I don't understand," said Tel.