The Tatja Grimm's World Read Free Page A

magical, metal, and so heavy that an ordinary warrior could not lift it. The Tarulle version of Death was made of wood painted silver.
    “What about her costume?” Or lack of one.
    “Great. We still gotta do changes—ribbon armor is hard to fit — but she looks tremendous. Svektr Ramsey thinks so too.”
    “He saw her?” Guille looked stricken.
    “Don’t worry, Boss. The overeditor was amused. He told me to congratulate you for hiring her.”
    “Oh … . Well, let’s hope we’re all still amused when you put her on stage with other actors.”
    Cor gathered up the manuscripts they had chosen. She would take them, together with the production notes, over to the art deck. “No problem. You were right, she understands some Spräk. She can even speak it a little. I think she was just shy that first day. Onstage she’ll mainly scream gibberish—we won’t need a new script for each archipelagate.” Cor carried the papers to the door. “Besides, we get the chance to put it all together before we reach the Osterlais. We arrive at the Village of the Termite People in three days; I’ll have things ready by then.”
    Guille chuckled. The Termite People were scarcely your typical fans. “Okay, I look forward to it.”
    Cor stepped into the darkness, shut the hatch behind her. In fact, she was at least half as confident as she sounded. Things ought to work out, if she could just find time to coach Tatja Grimm. The giant little girl was stranger than Cor had admitted. She wasn’t really dumb, just totally deprived. She’d been born in some very primitive tribe. She’d been five years old before she ever saw a tree. Everything she saw now was a novelty. Cor remembered how the girl’s eyes had widened when Cor showed her a copy of Fantasie , and explained how spoken words could be saved with paper and ink. She had held the magazine upside down, paged back and forth through it, fascinated by both pictures and text.
    Worst of all, Tatja Grimm had no concept of polemic; she must have been an outsider even in her own tribe. She simply did not accept that dramatic skits could persuade. If Grimm could be
convinced of that single point, Cor was sure the Hrala campaign would be a spectacular success. If not, they might all end up with bat dreck on their faces.
     
    The day they were to land at the Village of the Termite People, Rey took the morning off. He walked around the top editorial deck, looking for a place sheltered from the wind and passersby. This would be his first chance to play with his telescope since Fair Haven.
    The marvelous weather still held. The sky was washed clean; widely spaced cumulus spread away forever. A Tarulle hydrofoil loitered about a mile ahead of the barge, its planes raised and sails mostly reefed. Guille knew there were others out there; most of the barge’s ’foil bays were empty. The fastboats had many uses. In civilized seas, they ranged ahead of and behind the bargemaking landfall arrangements, carrying job orders, picking up finished illustrations and manuscripts. In the wilderness east of Fair Haven, they had a different role: security. No pirates were going to sneak up on the barge. The catapults and petroleum bombs would be ready long before any hostile vessel broke the horizon.
    So far, all the traffic was friendly. Several times a day they met ships and barges coming from the east. Most were merchantmen. Only a few publishing companies had Tarulle’s worldwide scope. The hydrofoils reported that the Science was docked at the Village of the Termite People. That ship was much smaller than the Tarulle Barge, but it published its own journal. It was sponsored by universities in the Tsanarts as a sort of mobile research station.
Rey looked forward to spending a few hours on the other vessel. It would mean some sales, and would give him a chance to make contacts; these were people who appreciated the new things he was doing with Fantasie. Notwithstanding Cor’s Hrala project, seeing the