Don’t Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee (little red riding hood ebook free .TXT) 📕

I caressed it, and promised to slay the terrible chieftain—the signal for my people to break loose and conquer the bewildered, leaderless enemy—or perish in the attempt. I was going to fall madly in love with him, of course, and not be able to do it, and he with me and not be able to punish me, and then our tribes were going to unite on equal terms, and everything was going to be derisann. Only things started going wrong.

It was all right to begin with. I stepped out, having concealed my knife in my scarlet sash, and strode between the campfires toward his imperious tent, positively glowing with pride and beauty. Slaves held the door flaps for me and in I went to this blue incense gloom and the rusty murk of torches. And there he sat, dark-skinned and black-haired and marvelous, and the drums started, and these thin pipe things, and cymbals, and dried seeds shaken around in clay pots, and I poised myself and started a slow and sensuous dance, guaranteed to hypnotize the place. The music got faster and faster, and I whirled and span, and then whipped out my knife and leaped at him. And I stopped short. I was meant to, but not for the reason I had. I was meant to halt because of his beauty, but actually I halted because there, on his cushioned chair, sat a great big furry ski-foot, gently flapping its ears.

I yelled and dropped my knife.

“Have some cactus-pineapple,” offered the ski-foot, indicating a silver dish. “Now, now, don’t be silly,” coaxed the ski-foot as I backed away. “I do so hate shyness.”

I looked around wildly and found the whole tent-full had changed into the most ridiculous things with fur and feathers, long ears and trailing whiskers, little twitchy noses and long twitchy noses, horns and antennae and various tails, and they were all quacking and clucking and grunting away at me encouragingly. I only sat down because my knees went weak.

“That’s much more cozy,” said the ski-foot. “Now, do tell me, why are you trying to kill me? Was it because of our raid?”

“You enslaved us,” I tried to choke out all my prearranged dialogue but really, it looked so earnest and furry and concerned. I giggled hysterically.

“Dear me, she’s hysterical,” observed a large plumed dragon on my left.

“Have some wine,” said the ski-foot, “you’ll feel better,” and it reached toward a side table. But the table had ideas of its own. It unfolded four furry legs and walked calmly out of the tent, the wine and stuff bouncing around on top of it.

“Stop it,” cried the ski-foot, and the assembled company gave chase, squawking and booming and falling over each other’s tails and apologizing. “Come along,” added my host. “I think they’ll need some help.” So it and I added ourselves to the chaos, and we all pounded after the table, through the coals of the campfires. The table broke into a run and we never seemed likely to catch it, though our pace didn’t slacken. We pounded over the dunes, under the white stars, whooping and hooting, and the ski-foot grabbed my hand in a large capable paw.

“Must keep together, you know,” it panted. The poor thing was quite out of breath already. It probably only wanted to hold hands so it didn’t get left behind.

Every so often something would fall off the table with a crash and we were soon rushing through thousands of silver dishes and goblets and crushed fruit.

“It’s no use,” the ski-foot suddenly said and sat down in the sand, pulling me with it Everyone else stopped and gathered around. The table gave a great kick of its furry heels and disappeared behind a rock.

“That’s the seventh we’ve lost in ten units,” said the ski-foot, and tears gushed from its eyes. “We can never catch them.”

Everybody started crying, and I started crying too.

And I woke up crying.

Oh, I complained. There was a terrible row at the Dream Rooms. Q-Rs rushed out and said I mustn’t upset everyone else. Eventually I was taken to this purple plush room full of robots, and this chief Q-R, also in purple, asked me to give them a full account of just what was wrong with my dream.

“Well, everything,” I cried. “I mean, it was a dream, an unprogrammed dream. And it really made me unhappy.”

They said they saw that and, oh dear, they just couldn’t understand it, it had never happened before, would I object to submitting to a mind reading? I said yes, I would object. They said the trouble was probably that I was thinking too hard about other things. I gave up eventually.

“I refuse to pay, though!” I added belligerently.

Of course, under the circumstances, they would not dream of charging me.

I went home.

Well, it was something to make history, I supposed.

I started to cry again, remembering those forlorn, zaradann animals, weeping over their lost table; then I saw the funny side as well, and started laughing at the same time.

Kley signaled me, looked frightened when she saw me, and hastily went away again and left me alone.

I wished I could leave me alone too.

3

I decided I could leave me alone, after all.

I’d been in this body a long while, even if it was two bodies, really, one a duplicate. I looked irritably at my scarlet hair. Gold would be nice for a change. I carefully never admitted that I knew no one would be bothered that I’d changed, no one would run away honking and hide its white fur and orange eyes among the silk grass, thinking I was someone else.

I knew Limbo would make a fuss if I asked for a change again. Humoring me was one thing, but I was a bit quieter now, and they might not be so anxious to help. I went and looked at the bubble, but I was bored by now with that way of dying. All right, I thought, I’ll admit it