7 The Bowels of Bez-Tattin
It was hard to stay an African Princess in total darkness. Fear, like rats and rapists and slimy, stinking vermin, thrived in the dark.
So Tompa jumped and jerked away when inhuman hands slithered down her arms to her wrists. The touches returned, almost gentle, urging rather than demanding, leading her down a tunnel that echoed her harsh breathing and the light footsteps of Shons. The tunnel opened onto a vast, hazy gloom filled with dust and a murmuring sense of menace. There was enough light now that she could see the checkerboard uniforms of the Shons on either side of her. One of them reached toward her ear. When she jerked her head away, the Shon pushed a translator into her hand. Ignoring the Shon’s gestures toward her head, she clutched it in her fist along with the comb.
The Shons tugged her down broad, shallow steps toward a fenced-in bench on the bottom tier of a bank of bleachers. The fence was only waist-high and its opening was ungated, but nonetheless she knew it was a jail cell. She looked for escape routes, but found none. The bleachers formed an irregular, six-sided shape around a central arena, like a sports stadium seen through the eyes of a sloop addict, with wrong angles and unnervingly alien proportions. A person could go mad in a place like this.
The light grew dimmer until the arena was darker than a nightmare. Strange, faint smells and shuffling, scratching sounds surrounded her, as though an army of rats were slinking toward her. She thrust aside horror. It was probably Shons filling the bleachers, not rats. But there must have been hundreds of them, by the eternity that the sound continued.
When a blinding light suddenly enveloped the arena, she shielded her eyes. Behind her, human voices gasped. Tompa opened an eye just enough to see that the group from the Vance was seated a half-dozen tiers behind her, with the intervening tiers empty. Schneider was there, and the roach Roussel. Tompa turned her back on her fellow humans and used Schneider’s comb to brush her tangled hair. It seemed like something a disdainful African princess would do.
In the arena, a dazzling, tightly focused spotlight sliced a cone downward through swirls of dust. For several seconds the floor of the arena was empty. Then a Shon dressed in orange and white ambled into the light, raising puffs of dust with each footstep. Behind him, the bleachers were crammed with pear-shaped bodies. Around Tompa, however, the bleachers were empty except for a lone guard off to her right. Like she carried disease or something.
The Shon in the arena made weird, sweeping gestures with both arms as he started speaking. His voice was amplified, but she could no more understand him than she could understand cockroaches. Probably ranting about her.
She still held the translator. She’d had one in her ear just that once, on shore leave, and it wasn’t obvious how to put it in. While she was turning it around in her hand, the spotlight died, leaving her in deep gloom. Startled, she dropped the translator. It clattered away.
After several seconds, another spotlight shot to life, this one spearing a group of Shons in the bleachers opposite her. As they talked, Tompa got on her hands and knees, searching for the translator on the rough concrete. The Shons paused for a moment and then, in perfect unison, shouted out something that she did understand:
“Tompa Lee!”
She looked up just in time for a spotlight to single her out. Momentarily blinded, she cringed into a protective curl. A whisper of Shon voices arose on all sides of her. The whisper grew to a hiss, then a roar. She put her hands to her ears.
When she was almost ready to scream, the light disappeared as abruptly as it had come. She squeezed her eyes shut and rested for a minute or two, oblivious to everything. Then, as another spotlight illuminated a far section of the arena, she took a deep breath and doggedly resumed her search for the translator. The area inside her slatted metal fence wasn’t large, maybe twelve feet by six. Surely she would find the roach-damned gizmo.
Several different Shons spoke, and each time the spotlight winked out and was replaced by a spotlight from a different angle, instantly and unerringly showcasing the new speaker. The thought that someone was overhead, directing the spotlights with meticulous perfection, made her skin crawl. So did the way the spotlight cast deep, gruesome shadows across the flat faces of the Shons. If the lights were meant to intimidate, they succeeded.
Where the ratshit was the flickin’ translator?
The spotlight blinked to a nearby position, casting her tier in brightness. Her guard reached over the low fence, holding the translator. Tompa didn’t hesitate this time when he motioned toward her head. She went to her knees and turned her ear toward him.
“Ouch!” Tompa batted at the hand that had thrust the device into her ear. The Shon appeared distressed that he’d hurt her, fluttering his supple fingers as though to caress her hair—though he didn’t quite make contact. “Thanks,” she said.
The Shon responded in a quiet bleat overlain by a tinny whisper in her ear. “Welcome indeed cautiously,” said the whisper, “to Tompa Lee, beast-like, most wretched accusee.”
Tompa blinked. The thing worked, sort of. At some level she hadn’t expected anything would work for her, ever again.
The spotlight flashed off, leaving her once more in pitch darkness. She felt her way back to her bench and sat down just as a spotlight showcased a Shon perched precariously on a high stool. “The high judge priest,” Tompa’s guard said.
The judge’s face was dried and wrinkled, with each wrinkle appearing as darker green on its face. Words came from the ancient creature’s mouth, and an instant later the gibberish was translated by the device in her ear.
“Bez-Tattin hears lovingly,” the judge said. “He noosh-oosh-tah-waz gently this trial. Now Bez-Tattin asks formally, do brave herdlings pledge weaponlessly their breath and soul against the accusee, Tompa Lee?”
A squadron of spotlights bombarded the middle of the courtroom and something like a bass drum began pounding. By the time Tompa’s eyes adjusted, dozens of Shons stood in the spotlights, with more hastening down from the bleachers. The guard leaned across the fence and whispered, “The par-tain floods swiftly with accusers wanting fiercely to kill you.”
“Gee, thanks for pointing that out.”
“Welcome indeed uncertainly.”
More Shons kept crowding into the par-tain, which she assumed meant the arena. After five minutes, she resumed combing her hair. By then, the accusers had raised so much dust that her eyes watered and she could see only a few dozen who were closest. Some of them limped or were bandaged; survivors of the grenade blast, she imagined. A mother with one arm carried a baby with a bandage over its eyes. Tompa turned away from the mother’s condemning glare.
The air was a blanket of choking dust as accusers continued to pile into the par-tain. Strangely, the more of them there were, the easier it was to maintain her African princess pose. “A lot of people want me dead,” she said as though discussing the weather.
“Abominable accusee pushes accurately insight to the dizzying heights of Bez-Tattin’s truth,” her guard responded.
“Oh, go to hell in a rat’s ass.”
The guard was silent for several seconds, then said, “This one declines confusedly.”
A sense of unreality overwhelmed her. She coughed and felt a twinge where her skull had been shattered. Her heightened awareness of the spot made it seem somehow different than her other bones, but it was almost free of pain, as though no injury had ever occurred and she simply might waken from a nightmare.
A buzz arose from the throng of accusers. At first Tompa saw nothing. Then seven Klicks strode out of the haze to stand together at the edge of the mob. She’d never seen one in the flesh; they were flickin’ huge, and even more intimidating than in the shows. They towered over the Shons like slender, seven-foot skyscrapers in a smoggy city of four-foot warehouses. The Shons, she noticed, gave the Klicks’ tails plenty of room to sway and twitch.
Tompa cringed when one of the Klicks pointed at her with its tail. “Human,” it called in blaring
English, “Major Krizink looks forward to doing battle with you.”
“What does he mean?” Tompa asked her guard.
“Kalikinikis hate fiercely humans’ attempt to trade plunderingly with the Shode. They, too, wish brutally the killing of you.”
Why not? Everyone else did.
Tompa laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. Major Krizink heard her. He stretched his arms menacingly and unsheathed the razor-sharp spike in his tail. The Klick could cut her to cockroach-sized bites with that spike, yet all she could do was laugh louder.
“Wretched accusee laughs haughtily at a Kalikiniki?” her guard asked.
The translator gave no hint of his feelings, so she didn’t know if the Shon admired her courage or was outraged that she mocked his ally. She didn’t answer, but she stopped laughing.
“Negatively more,” the Shon judge said. His high stool wobbled, and Tompa stifled a bubble of laughter as the judge struggled to maintain his balance. “Bez-Tattin notes formally the fulfilled maximum of three hundred accusers. Negatively more. Accusers march intently through the sphincters of Bez-Tattin.”
The lights vanished, leaving only a glowing, round opening at the far side of the arena. The sphincter, Tompa supposed. Her accusers lined up in orderly fashion and headed toward the glow. After ten minutes of an unnaturally quiet, single-file exit, she turned to her guard. “Where are they going?”
“The polyps of preparation.”
That told her a lot. But at least they were leaving. She was glad to see the Klicks, in particular, depart.
When the last accuser had finally left, the guard approached her through the gap in the fence. “Abominable accusee of heinous crime,” he said, “come peacefully.”
Escape was hopeless. The sphincter glowed mustard yellow, but it led to three hundred vengeful Shons and seven Klicks. She didn’t have the slightest idea how to retrace the route she’d taken to get in here. Peacefully, then, but coiled tightly inside, she followed the guard.
He led her to the powdery surface of the par-tain. Ashes to ashes, she thought as her feet sank to the ankle. Was this thick dust all that remained of past defendants? If she rooted through the dust, would she find teeth and shards of bone? She stepped on something. A pebble? Or a painful fragment of shattered skull?
The guard stopped. One of the damnable spotlights shot to life again, though not on her. After half an hour of gloom, her eyes took some time to adjust. When they did, she saw that the spotlight was trained on the judge. “Bez-Tattin asks formally, do any brave herdlings pledge weaponlessly breath and soul in support of the accusee, Tompa Lee?”
Spotlights bombarded the middle of the courtroom. Silence reigned.
Then a drum began tapping softly. From behind her came timid footsteps on concrete. She turned to look. A lone Shon, hesitant and quivering, was descending the bleachers. When he finally came into the light, she saw kidney-shaped patches of reddish hair on either side of his head.
“It’s the geezer.” Tompa turned to her guard. “The old guy who was waving a sign in my face. He was watching me the whole time. He knows I didn’t throw the grenade!” A sudden rush of hope left her limbs so weak she staggered.
The trek across the par-tain seemed to take all the old guy’s strength. A covering of dust gave him a ghostly look, and he walked with a downcast, curled-over posture. He clearly didn’t want to pledge weaponlessly for the unpopular human. But he was doing it regardless. He would testify she was innocent and the damned Shons would have to believe such a reluctant witness with no reason to lie, and she would actually wake up from this nightmare, and—
“Ahem.”
Tompa turned toward the sound of a human clearing her throat. A woman and two men in Navy dress whites stood at the edge of the par-tain.
“If it pleases the court,” the woman said in a loud voice rendered puny by the arena, “we’re counsel for the defense. We speak for Ship’s Ward Lee.”
The spotlight on the judge sprang back to life. “Pledge weaponlessly for the accusee? Against such odds, valor displays indeed in risking life uselessly.”
The three lawyers looked at each other. “Risking life?”
“Trials of Bez-Tattin exist prayerfully as trials of the fortitude of proponents of the opposing positions. Bez-Tattin shows divinely the truth by the success of their victories.”
The female lawyer looked in the direction of the bleachers where the rest of the humans sat, then toward the judge. “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps I can help,” a voice boomed in English. For once, a spotlight didn’t show the speaker immediately; the interruption must have been unexpected. After a few seconds, a light picked out Major Krizink, the Klick who’d spoken earlier. He stood on the bottom tier of the bleachers near the sphincter.
“The trials of my esteemed Shon-Wod-Zee brothers,” Krizink said, “are similar to earthly trials until just a few hundred years ago. Back then, generals prayed for their god to aid them in battle because victory was seen as a sign of divine favor. Guilt or innocence was determined in much the same way. An accused thief, for example, was tied up and thrown into water. If he sank, it was divine retribution. In like fashion, duels were seen not merely as contests of skill but of divine judgement.”
Krizink hopped gracefully from the bleacher to the par-tain, raising a cloud of dust that enveloped him like an unholy halo. “I tell you this so you humans do not judge my little brothers harshly. For this trial is . . .” He stared at Tompa with a fierce gaze that brought dry fear to her mouth, “. . . is trial by combat. A fight to the death between Tompa Lee and her accusers.”
Tompa went cold.
Krizink flicked his tail back and forth, heaving demonic spumes of dust to his left and right. “The odds of acquittal are three hundred to two—or five, if these fine lawyers are willing to fight and die for their client.”
But the lawyers had already scrambled away from the desiccated par-tain, leaving nothing but hollow footprints.
Tompa felt as though ice water ran through her heart. Two against three hundred? This was justice?
God damn them all.
The Trial of Tompa Lee Page 8
