Free Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas Page A

certain fems, a holding-back that had challenged him. He had never been able to extract anything from them other than a song or two, and often the fem who sang only half-comprehended the words, which were merely lamentations over hard work and the vagaries of the masters’ desires. Though he had considered dosing a fem with manna as an aid to interrogation, when it came down to it he never could bring himself to waste good stuff on them.
    In the Holdfast, fems accused of exercising powers inherited from
the terrible fems of Ancient times were burned as witches. Here in the dull yellow light of the wall lamps of Bayo, the existence of such powers seemed preposterous. Servan congratulated himself for his own scepticism.
    Yet, moving among so many of these bent, dull-eyed figures, he wasn’t sorry to have the Rovers along.
    Their guide stopped and indicated with a cringing gesture that their goal lay through the doorway to the right. The room beyond was sparsely furnished with clay tables and sitting-blocks. One old fem sat eating curdcake from a chipped bowl. She arose at once and hurried toward them, wiping her mouth and fingers on the hem of her smock so that they wouldn’t have to smell fem-food about her. She knelt in front of Servan. So far, all was in order.
    ‘Fossa presents herself, please-you-masters, with important news.’
    Servan was no kind of fanatic about fems and their proper place, but by addressing them first this old bitch (who should have known better) had committed a serious breach. Kelmz looked ready to break her skinny neck. It was not out of anger but to maintain propriety that Servan slapped her, hard.
    She rocked back from the blow, but went right on with the same astonishing forwardness: ‘Word came from Lammintown. The Pennelton masters watch for you masters. They seldom come to these quarters after sunset. Tonight, they have come twice.’
    The men looked at each other; Senior Bajerman must have heard about their encounter with the ’Wares and guessed something of their intent and their destination.
    Servan said, ‘Is there a place where the men never come?’
    ‘There is a place where they have never come before, please-you,’ replied the crone. She was even using hard-edged, manly speech, instead of the slurred softspeech of fems, so that there would be no misunderstanding.
    ‘Take us there,’ Servan said.
    Fossa was leathery from weather and work; teeth were missing from one side of her mouth so that her cheek had sunk in and her jaw was crooked. She scuttled ahead of them, bowed with age and humility. Yet something in the bearing of other fems towards her as they passed seemed to indicate respect. Servan was intrigued.
    They entered a series of low-ceilinged, dimly lit dormitories. Fems
slept or reclined in slit-eyed torpor in the beds. Some had small, blanketed bundles lying next to them. Servan was reminded of the brief trip that all boys made to the Hospital adjoining the Boyhouse, to be instructed about the grossly swollen fems due to drop cubs. The lights had been brighter in the Hospital, but the somnolent atmosphere had been much the same.
    One of the bundles began kicking, and it raised a thin cry. The fem next to it hiked up on her elbow, eyes still shut, and put her hand over the source of the sound. The kicking continued, but the wailing diminished to small grasping sounds that were succeeded by quiet. The fem rolled on her side and went back to sleep.
    Fossa gave Servan the cringing, ingratiating smile of a fem imparting information, so that he should be reassured that she claimed no credit for knowing something that he did not. ‘We teach fem-cubs to be quiet. It’s a good first lesson in obedience.’
    A number of fems were without cubs. Servan pointed to one of them and asked why she wasn’t back at work, having dropped her young and apparently lost it.
    Apologetically, the old fem said, ‘There are ways to continue the flow of milk even when there is no suckling