The Artifact of Foex (21 page)

As the day warmed, Chet grew cheerful enough
to start reciting poetry under his breath. Fenimore gave him an odd
look but didn’t interrupt. Encouraged, Chet began another classical
poem, this one written by the Magician Zang commemorating the
construction of the city-state of Door by the honey-eyed Magicians
and Foex. Fenimore joined in. Their emphases were different, and
some of the little words had been changed—flipped around in
translation?—but they were remarkably aligned with one another. At
the end, the Flame applauded.

“Not bad,” Journey said. “I’ve always felt
Zang was best recited by a choir rather than read on the page.”

Chet, recalling her background in the theater
arts, felt immensely cheered by this professional opinion.

Fenimore seemed to have his blood up. He
glanced at Chet over his shoulder. “Bet I can beat you in
recitations. We each recite a verse no less than twelve lines long,
and the other must guess the author and century written. Nothing
after my time, though. No cheating.”

“You’re on,” Chet said fiercely. Here was a
game which he might have a chance of beating Fenimore!

They began with the easy stuff. Chet laughed
out loud when Fenimore tried to trick him with the original
Maansterdam city-state anthem, nationalist garbage that was a far
cry from true classics. Fenimore, in turn, snorted when Chet just
about handed him a Tache poet from his own time period. The Flame
joined in after a while, and the game became truly hard. In the
end, Othnielia stumped everyone when she recited repeating stanzas
that sounded like they were from
The Book of Twelve
but
clearly weren’t.

Chet closed his eyes to think, then gasped.
“It’s from
Lament to the Metacors!
It’s attributed to the
mother of gods, Aerora herself, at the end of the Crimson Era. Say,
the 3800s? Foex’s millennium.”

Othnielia stared at him with respect, and
Knife whistled low. “You’re good,” Othnielia admitted. “I didn’t
know there were any copies left in the world.”

“Only one. It’s kept under glass in an
air-tight vault deep in the Eich Che Independent University
library. I gather they acquired it from the God Plain, though I
don’t know how or why. I was there on an entirely different
research project. Couldn’t resist taking a look, though. One of the
oldest written texts in existence, all that.” Chet nibbled on his
lip. “You knew those verses pretty well, Othnielia. Are you that
old?”

She laughed. “Abyss, no. No one is, except
the gods themselves and Aureate, I guess.”

“Chet, that was masterfully done. I think you
just won the game,” Journey said with the air of an umpire.

No one gainsaid this; even Fenimore looked a
little awed. Chet leaned back in the saddle, grinning with pride.
He didn’t get to show off his knowledge often, not even among
graduate students. No one wanted to talk about authors, poets,
historians and ancient scholars for
fun
. No one really
cared what they’d written beyond the immediately accessible
classics in mass-print paperback.

Feeling bubbly as carbonated water, Chet
glanced around and realized they were passing a series of buildings
surrounded by cherry orchards. It almost certainly an Acia Nun
convent; a small one, anyway. His sisters all belonged to a convent
more than six times that size in Fengfu. Chet noticed a billowing
line of Nun’s habits on a clothesline. They were bright green, as
per usual, with black trim. No one seemed to be around. Maybe the
Nuns were praying inside as they did several times a day.

Inspiration struck. He struggled to get his
leg over the ceros’s haunch, then slipped down—down, down!—to the
ground. Chet gasped and fell over, blood rushing to his head, his
legs aching. He ignored the others' questions as he stumbled to his
feet. Then he was off, running toward the clothesline in an
ungainly fashion. Chet snatched the nearest two habits and
headdresses and raced back, grinning like a boy.

“
What
are you
doing?
”
Othnielia hissed, scowling.

“Saving Journey and Knife some trouble.
Quick, let’s get going before they come outside.” Chet glanced
guiltily over his shoulder. Stealing from Nuns wasn’t the sort of
thing he usually did... Fenimore must be rubbing off on him.

Indeed, Fenimore seemed nonplussed but not at
all shocked. Chet wondered whether he was capable of feeling shock.
“That low-lying walnut tree should work as a mounting block.”

Chet was soon back in the saddle, aching and
splendidly happy about his discovery. “Don’t you see? If you Flame
are disguised as Nuns, no one will question or bother you. And with
headdresses you don’t
need
wigs.”

Journey and Knife exchanged uncertain looks,
and Knife shrugged. “Emulating another god affiliate is no worse
than the theft or murder charges, I suppose. The taboo would even
serve to make our disguises more believable.”

Othnielia still looked dour. “My family will
need to make quiet donations to the convent. A gift of pies and one
of my quilts, I should think. Bottles of Saemion’s mead and dark
ale, too. Look, I’m pretty non-political for a god affiliate, but
we don’t steal from Tutelary Party allies. The goddess Acia is on
our
side.”

She didn’t grumble for long, though, and no
one made Chet give the habits back.
Needs dictate,
he
thought smugly. Chet held onto the black-and-green bundles until
they stopped for lunch. The peaceful glen apparently represented
the last of the trees before the land flattened out into prairie.
Journey shook out both habits: one was short and the other...
shorter. And wide. Very wide.

Journey tossed this one to Knife with evident
glee. “I don’t have the body mass to fill that one, even at the
required height. You do. Congratulations, you get to be short and
fat for once.”

Knife blanched as he assessed the habit.
“Abyss,” he muttered. He shot Chet a dirty look. “You should have
made a more careful selection, Chet.”

Chet frowned at him. “I don’t understand. I
thought you could change your shape to just about anything.”

“Not so,” Journey said. “Our bodies aren’t
nearly as flexible as you might think. We can’t pour ourselves
through the eye of a needle or even a chain-link fence. Muscles and
tendons can be manipulated but still need space, and bones are
rigid no matter what. Anatomical structures exist for a reason, and
breaking those rules is painful. Back when I flattened myself out
in the car, I was in pain the whole time. As far as these outfits
go, we only have one body mass. Shape tall and you’re thin, shape
short and you’re fat. It all has to go somewhere. I weigh a little
under ten stone, but Knife is thirteen stone six. Ergo he gets the
smaller, fatter habit. He’ll need all that weight to shape
outwards, you see.”

“I hate being fat,” Knife grumbled. “I hate
big breasts. They
sweat
. And
jiggle
. I don’t like
the way men stare at them, either. You can’t even sleep on them;
it’s like sleeping on enormous, sweaty tumors. I like long legs,
the better to run fast and escape.”

“Too bad.” Journey grinned at him, stripping
down to her underclothes without a trace of self consciousness.
Chet realized everyone here had seen her naked before. “You don’t
mind the distraction of big breasts when you’re tracking a
mark.”

“That’s taking care of Pelin’s dirty laundry,
which is my passion. I’m willing to make sacrifices like that in
the short term, but I draw the line at having voluntary sex as a
woman with big breasts. Or as a woman at all, really.” Knife
shuddered. “The jiggling and pawing is enough to make me throw up.
Then when you throw in the issue of vaginal penetration... gah.
I’ll do it, just never ask me to like it.”

Othnielia and Journey giggled uproariously.
There was no other word for it: they clutched at one another’s arms
and gasped for breath. Knife, looking prim, went behind the bushes
to change into the habit.

Chet watched as Journey shaped herself
downward, simultaneously growing portly, aged and soft in the
process. With Othnielia’s help—as she didn’t have a mirror—Journey
shaped a slightly asymmetrical face with vague, watery eyes. She
looked like a Nun who’d never heard of the concept of makeup. The
headdress went on, and voila: one elderly Nun. As before, Chet
couldn’t see anything of Journey in that face, except maybe deep in
the eyes. He realized that he’d grown used to her preferred visage,
both in male and female forms. It seemed that Flame created a cozy
home space within their own bodies, remaining the same far more
than they became different.

Knife, when she—she!—came out from behind the
tree, was even more of a contrast. Chet snorted, his hand over his
mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Fenimore grinned, not
bothering to hide it. Knife was indeed short and quite fat now,
squat and maybe even bowlegged. Flaxen-skinned, she had shaped the
ugliest face Chet had ever seen. A completely asymmetrical, lumpy
visage with jowls, large bags under her eyes and a permanent scowl.
Her stitched boots seemed incongruous under the ankle-length habit;
Chet hoped no one would notice them.

Knife waddled over to her ceros and sighed.
“Someone want to give me a hand up?” she said in a warbling
alto.

As promised, the last leg was mostly flat and
hot under the clear, poppy-colored sky. Highway 1 appeared after a
time, a ribbon etched upon the rolls of prairie. Not long after
that, Othnielia pulled up her ceros. “You can find your way now. I
don’t want to get close to the road, as we’re too visible and
easily remembered like this.”

Chet slid awkwardly to the ground. His whole
body ached, even the little muscles he’d never knew existed. “Thank
you for everything," he said. The others made their goodbyes,
including the typical kiss from both Flame and a long hug from
Journey. Then Othnielia galloped away with her string of ceroses
behind her.

They reached the road an hour later. Knife
had worked out a reputable cover story as to why elderly Nuns and
young men were hitchhiking together: Chet and Fenimore were
supposedly volunteers who’d been driving them to the Fengfu Convent
on Acia’s business. They’d broken down up the road, and the elderly
Nuns had insisted upon continuing forward. It didn’t seem likely to
Chet, but he couldn’t think of a better story, so he kept his mouth
shut.

“Four is an awkward number to grab a ride,”
Journey sighed after a while.

Chet nodded agreement, turning once again to
stick out three fingers in the usual sign. He knew this highway
well. He’d driven it enough times, although he’d never picked up a
hitchhiker himself. Chet wondered whether his own reticence was
coming back to haunt him. At last, a big-rig truck slowed to a
stop, and they hustled—or waddled with dignity—up the road to meet
it. The rig had a closed cargo hold. Were they were all going to
climb into the back with the cargo?

The driver was a middle-aged man, oily and
unkempt. He looked exactly like the kind of man mothers warned
their teenage children about—Chet got chills just looking at him.
“Need a ride, sisters?” he said.

“Why, thank you, young man," Knife warbled,
wiping her face with a handkerchief. Knife explained their problem
as the driver opened up the back of his cargo hold. It was filled
with industrial barrels, the hold half full.

Was he a smuggler? Chet scrunched his
shoulders as little hairs on the back of his neck stirred.

“Everything is tied down, no problem,” he
said. “You sisters can bunk back here. One of you two young guys
come up front.” He gave Chet and Fenimore an appraising glance, his
eyes lingering on Chet.

Chet gulped. He instinctively knew that he
didn’t want to be the one up front. Fenimore patted him on the
shoulder and whispered in his ear, “You be a good girl for our
carriage driver now.”

Fenimore, slimy dium, turned away and made a
show of helping the awkward, elderly Nuns into the cargo hold, then
followed them inside. He was clearly uninterested in sitting up
front... with reason. Journey shot Chet a worried look. Chet tried
to smile back at her. He recalled her words back at the farm that
she would be the one “taking the hit.” Chet suddenly realized what
she’d meant: hitchhiking was free with some drivers, but not with
others. Bartering sexual favors was the coin of choice it seemed.
Swaddled by her habit, Journey was no longer the target here. Chet
was.

Apparently, it was time to take another one
for the team.

The cab smelled of stale beer and body odor.
There was a rumpled bed in the back of the tiny compartment covered
by dirty clothes. The man beside Chet kept giving him sideways
glances.