Then he fell into a defensive crouch, looking to see what damage he’d done. And finally he relaxed, straightened up, stepped back and folded his arms.
Both opponents were on the ground, one clutching his groin and groaning, rocking himself to and fro, and the other choking, sucking at the air, massaging his throat. They’d recover soon enough, but it would be a long time before they’d forget.
For a moment there was a stunned silence, then Lardis began clapping his hands in spontaneous applause. Many of the men with him followed suit, but not Arlek’s ex-gang. They sat very quietly, looking anywhere except at Jazz. To them he offered: ‘Well, is there anyone else would like to try me?’ But there were no takers.
‘I leave their punishment to you, Jazz,’ Lardis shouted. ‘What shall be done with them?’
‘You’ve shamed them enough,’ Jazz answered. ‘Arlek had his warnings, which he failed to heed. He’s paid for that. Now these men have been warned. If it’s my choice, then I say leave it at that.’
‘Good!’ Lardis barked his agreement.
Men at once stepped forward to help their two fallen colleagues to their feet. One of them was a mirror-bearer; he carefully laid his mirror down as he stooped to assist the man with the bruised throat. Jazz glanced at the large oval mirror where it lay face-down, then looked again – then pounced on it.’ What?’ he gasped. ‘What in all the – ?’
Zek had been moving toward him. Now she came flying. ‘Jazz, what is it?’
‘Lardis,’ he called out, ignoring her for the moment. ‘Lardis, where did you get these mirrors?’ And suddenly, quite out of character, his voice had a breathless, unbelieving quality.
Lardis came over. He was grinning ear to ear. ‘My new weapons!’ he answered, with something of pride. ‘I went to seek out the Dweller – and found him! As a sign of our friendship, he gave me these. Fortunate for you that he did . . .’
Jazz picked up the mirror, stared incredulously at its backing. ‘Fortunate indeed!’ he finally got the words out. ‘Maybe in more ways than you know.’ He licked his lips, looked at Zek for her confirmation that his eyes weren’t playing games with him.
She looked at what he held in his suddenly trembling hands and her jaw dropped. ‘My God!’ she said, very faintly.
For the mirror was unmistakably backed with chipboard, to which some Traveller had attached leather straps. What was more, it bore a manufacturer’s label, carrying the embossed legend:
MADE IN THE DDR.
KURT GEMMLER UND SOHN,
GUMMERSTR.,
EAST BERLIN.
14
Taschenka – Harry’s Quest – The Trek Begins
Taschenka Tassi’ Kirescu was nineteen, small and slim, completely unpolitical and very frightened.
Her skin was a little darker than that of the rest of her family; her eyes were large and very slightly tilted in an oval face; her hair was black and shiny to match her eyes, and she wore it in braids. Tassi’s father, Kazimir, whom she hadn’t seen since the night they were arrested, had used to explain jokingly that she was a throwback. There’s Mongol blood in you, girl,’ he’d told her, his eyes sparkling. ‘Blood of the great Khans who came this way all of those hundreds of years ago. Either that … or I don’t know your mother as well as I think I do!’ Following which Anna, Tassi’s mother, would invariably sputter furiously and chase him with whatever she could lay her hands on.
That, of course, had been in the good times, all of a few weeks ago, which now felt like several centuries.
Tassi had known nothing of Mikhail Simonov’s real reason for coming to Yelizinka in the Ural foothills; the story she’d heard was that he was a city boy who’d been something of a wild one, that he’d always been getting himself into one sort of trouble or another, until finally he’d been sent logging as a punishment, a penance guaranteed to cool him off. Well, places didn’t come much cooler than Yelizinka, not in the winter, anyway; but Tassi wasn’t at all sure that Mikhail’s blood had been cooled by it. In fact they’d very quickly become lovers, in a strange sort of way. Strange because he’d always been quick to warn her that it couldn’t last, and that therefore she mustn’t fall in love with him; strange, too, in that she’d felt exactly the same way about it: he’d serve his time here and wipe his record clean, and then he’d move on, probably back to the city, Moscow, and she would find herself a husband from the logging communities around.