Another dream fragment

I have written a couple of stories that were actually inspired by dreams. This one was from a high school dream about a group of prisoners held on an alien planet, who had developed their own language which involved the use of lots of suffixes that had different meanings. Yeah, I have weird dreams, sometimes.

I did not get very far with this story before jumping ahead to a later, more exciting scene (with plot elements stolen from John Varley), but I think it has potential. In looking back on it I find myself tempted to change the gender of characters, in order to write a strong female character.

Swamp (a fragment)

"Wake," rasped a voice, and Erythais did.
Roused out of sleep, he struck out blindly with fingers bent into claws, rolling on his pallet into a more defensible position. His hands touched nothing, and after a moment he pulled them in to himself and listened. It was the dead of night. He could hear the whistling of his own breath, the hum of the crawling mass of insects and a faint sound, as of a foot brushing stone.
"Who are you?" he whispered. The unknown voice might be a new prisoner, slung in here to scrabble his way to a bed in the darkness. He strained to see. After a moment he uncurled a little, slid a foot off the bed and onto the floor. It was sticky under his bare foot. "Who's there?" he whispered again, not loud enough to wake Seither or Willas. "Rovinas?" He allowed hope to creep into his voice.
"Rovinoi," the voice corrected harshly. "Don't move, I'm going to make a light." A spark flared in the dark, caught on a bit of paper. By the brief flicker of light he saw a square face and a pair of hands, big, with calloused knuckles.
"I know you," Erythais breathed. "You're Lannarei, the revolutionary." He wanted to fall away into darkness, he wanted to hide his face in shame. It was wrong for this one to see him here. And he could be killed for this meeting, though it was none of his doing. He'd be Erythoi, "lost to light" as the natives would say.
The other man laughed, a throaty sound like one of the night hunters, but not loud enough to wake the sleepers. His scrap of paper burned down to nothing and they were in darkness again. "I knew I'd find you, Erythais. Eryth Scanlon Morgan. Does that name mean anything anymore?"
"No." Erythais hunched himself back on his pallet, pulling his feet up onto the mouldy blanket. "Only Erythais... section 2D. Plantation worker."
"We'll see. I think I know you better than that, little schemer. Do you remember Shomis Three? The High Council Assassinations? I was your employer. I'd chosen you from hundreds... only you."
Erythais made a noise in his throat - denial. He had hoped this one wouldn't remember. Wouldn't make him remember. The heat; he concentrated on the heat, the hum of the insects, and tried not to hear the steady, impassioned whisper.
"They thought I was crazy to trust the job to one man. I knew better. Trust, Eryth. Trust me. Do you want to get out of here? I can do it. I'm planning, working with others. It's time for you to join us. I'll contact you when we need you next - best to keep things circumspect." His voice warmed with an attempt at humor. "Think about me. Til then." And he was gone; Erythais could sense the hole of empty air where the other man's body had been.
He curled tighter on his blanket, hands around his knees where the rough cloth had worn through. He was trying to concentrate on the dull details of here and now, trying very hard not to wonder how Lannarei had come in to the cell. The door was locked, the windows barred.
Trying to forget the man he had been.


He was crouched in knee-high water the next day, the handle of his hoe resting across his shoulders, when he saw Lannarei again. Two overseers wielding pike arcs were prodding him along. Lannarei's back was welted with electrical burns, but he moved slowly with a rictus grin of hate on his face, slogging through the paddy as though he owned it.
Erythais crouched lower, inching back into the thicker reeds and watched the revolutionary's profile as he marched by. His knees trembled. He wanted to sink into the brown water and disappear, like one of the slender black snakes that crawled through the water like a piece of string. They were so quick that no one could catch them, and they'd bite and disappear before the venom stung the fresh wound. He'd seen an overseer die from one. The big, ruddy man in spotless grey had been transformed in an instant, thrashing death throes in the muddy water. Erythais had seen his face when the natives came to carry him away; a grimace of agony still dripping blood where he'd bitten through his own tongue.
A motor purred, just out of sight behind the tangle of vegetation in the middle of the river. Erythais shifted his hoe into his hands and with a practiced motion returned to dredging the muddy bottoms. Others, Lannarei had said. What others? Willas and Seither were automatons.
I am an automaton, whispered a voice in his head.
I am not, he answered it, more from habit than conviction.
The knowledge of a silent, unknown network of dissidents slipping unseen through the prison superstructure... gods, was it suposed to be cheering? Should he feel happiness? Erythais bit his lip until blood flowed.


They were brought into the main compound for a noon meal, shambling in rows to their assigned seats. Erythais found himself searching for the revolutionary, eyes darting across the sea of hopeless faces. Lannarei was nowhere to be seen. The guards had probably taken him away to solitary confinement, perhaps lowered in a cage up to his neck in the river, or strapped into a tiny, cramping box. No, Lannarei would not be at lunch. Erythais wondered for the first time what the revolutionary had done to be lashed with the pike arcs, and then shuddered the thought from his mind and accepted his bowl of reconstituted food.
The man across the table from him met his eyes for a moment and then looked away. Erythais wondered if it meant something, and stole quick glances at him as they ate their slop. Like all of the prisoners his hair was shaved close to his head, reducing his face to its most common variables. Sharp nose, dark brows, mournful eyes turned down at the edges - was there anything familiar there? A flicker of recognition, of memory?
"You veljin?" he whispered after the edge of his hunger had been dulled, lapsing into the prison slang, a blend of nativespeak, english and words that had been invented solely for the purpose of describing their wretched existence. "Walk with the shades?"
Dark eyes met his and looked down again. "Jamisei," the stranger answered. "Section 5H, jungle crew. Five years..."
"Erythais. 2D, plantation worker. Life."
"Assassin, eh?" Jamisei's eyes lit with something resembling interest. "Foven liatna e karit?"
"Hai." Their eyes met, boring into each other with a feverish intensity. Coincidence or a hoax? Here was another revolutionary, so soon after his strange encounter with Lannarei. Revolutionaries were not the norm. Neither are assassins, whispered a traitorous voice in his head. Erythais chose to ignore it, but he couldn't ignore the ferret-bright eyes of the man across the table from him.
"Implant, eh?" said Jamisei. Erythais recoiled from the words, forced himself to nod. "Well. That does throw a wrench in things..."
"You with Lannarei?"
Dark eyes looked back to him with more interest. "Why?"
"I saw him."
Jamisei murmured as he scooped up the food, "The guards found him missing last night at second check."
"I saw him last night," Erythais said slowly. "How?"
"Doesn't matter. Did you listen to him?"
"Hai."
They ate for a while, as a guard stalked the length of the table and back again.
Then Jamisei stuck his fist out in the middle of the table, slowly turned it over and opened his hand. on his palm there was a design, tattooed, Erythais guessed, in red ink. A triangle with a small triangle at each corner. "You know it?" he whispered.
Erythais nodded.
"This is our sign. It will lead you to us when you're ready." Jamisei grinned.
"What makes you think--"
"I don't think. Lannarei does. Let him think for you, too. If you like."
Erythais remained staring at him, spoon suspended over his food. There was not a thought in his head; merely a dull conviction that nothing would ever become easier for him here.
"I didn't believe at first either," whispered Jamisei with unexpected understanding. He bent his attention suddenly to his food, and shortly thereafter the guard paced by. Eryth slowly stirred his bowl.