7th Sigma

by Steven Gould

  Deacon Rappaport stepped over to him and faced away from Kimble. He must’ve imagined he was speaking privately, but the curved wall of the pit beyond focused the sound. It was as if he was whispering in Kimble’s ear. “No! We have questions for him. We must know who he works for and what he has told them.” He turned around, crooked his finger in a come-hither motion at Kimble, and said in a loud voice, “Come on up, young man. I assure you, Brother Ronson could hit a fly at this range. And you wouldn’t want us to hurt your friend, here, would you?”

  Kimble didn’t trust himself to speak, but he tried anyway. “Thou shalt”—he emphasized the “t,” almost making it a second syllable—“not bear false witness.”

  Rappaport dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “And when the devil tempted our Lord in the wilderness he also quoted scripture.”

  Kimble’s fear faded under a wave of anger. “I’m not the murderer. I’ll believe you when you let him go.”

  Rappaport looked offended. “You dare to judge me?”

  “Think you’re the chosen one, do you? I can’t quote the Bible as well as you, but I do recall something about false prophets. You really think this is your promised land?”

  “Soon, yes.” He gestured overhead at the bugs buzzing through the open space and covering the walls. “And there came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants’ houses, and into all the land of Egypt: the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies.”

  “I read Exodus, once. Your people are in bondage? I’m not seeing that. Ask the guys in the shantytown who the local pharaoh is.”

  Rappaport’s smile faded. “Ronson, if he doesn’t start moving, shoot him.”

  Kimble shifted back. “That will answer your questions, won’t it? Who do I work for? What did I tell them?”

  Rappaport took a sudden step back, his eyes widening.

  Kimble added, “Maybe you’re not the only one God speaks to.”

  “Deacon?” Ronson lowered his rifle and looked over at Rappaport.

  Rappaport drew a ceramic knife from his belt and took a long step over to Pierce. He grabbed Pierce’s hair and kicked him in the back of his knee, dropping him into a kneeling position, and pressed the edge to Pierce’s throat. “You want me to let him go? How about I release him to his maker. Get up here!”

  Kimble’s stomach churned. Pierce had betrayed him but …

  “Do you want his death on your conscience?” asked Rappaport. He pointed the knife at Kimble as he said this and Pierce, desperate, threw himself to the side, wrenching his hair out of Rappaport’s grip and falling to the ground. He rolled away and Rappaport took a step after him. Pierce reversed direction, suddenly, trapping Rappaport’s foot and locking his knee. Rappaport squawked and fell backward, sitting down hard. He raised the knife and slammed it, hilt down, two emphatic thuds.

  Rappaport pointed back down toward the lake. “That way, dammit.”

  Ronson turned back to Kimble and raised the rifle again. He twitched the barrel slightly to the side and fired. Water fountained beside Kimble’s shoulder. “That was a deliberate miss,” Ronson said. He slid the fore stock, chambering another round. “Next one goes into your body.”

  Kimble sank straight down. He heard the splash as a gyro went into the water and the bubbling hiss of its rocket exhaust for a few seconds more. He’d taken in a large breath of air, but now he blew it out, making his body negatively buoyant. He turned and pulled himself across the bottom toward deeper water.

  He twisted around to his left, the way he’d come. Maybe I can make it to the tunnel. He ran out of breath and, rifle or not, he had to come up. He drew a deep breath and ducked. Two gyros in quick succession hit the water as he went under, one of them tugging at his shirt collar.

  He didn’t see any way he could make it from the shore’s edge up to the passage. He didn’t exhale this time, keeping all the air, but he had to keep from floating up by actively paddling with his hands. He felt around for something to grab, something to anchor him to the bottom. He went closer to the shore, remembering the tangle of material he’d waded through, his hands reaching out in front. He felt something cut the back of his wrist and he felt around carefully. It was a chunk of rebar sticking out of the silt, its end coming to the jagged point that had cut him. He grabbed it farther down, to anchor himself, and it shifted, then pulled completely free of the muck.

  Damn. The recoil brought him to the surface. A gyro went through his left bicep, spinning him around. He saw the blood in the water but it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it should, like someone had hit his arm with a club.

  “Next one goes through your head!” Rappaport yelled.

  Kimble froze. In his effort to find something to hold on to, he’d swum closer to the fallen trail, and Ronson and Rappaport had just run sideways fifty feet to close with him again. They were only thirty feet away, looking down over a ten-foot drop.

  Kimble stood up, waist deep in the water, arms hanging at his sides, his hands trailing beneath the water. The entire left side of his shirt was stained red and he felt faint looking down at it. If he hadn’t known where the wound was, he would’ve thought he’d been shot in a lung.

  Ronson lowered the rifle, apparently convinced he wouldn’t have to fire again. He gestured with the barrel back toward the slope where Kimble had tried to climb up onto the trail. “Come on, before you pass out from blood loss and drown. ’Cause I’m not going in after you if you do.”

  The cloud of bugs overhead buzzed louder and Kimble wondered if he was passing out. It seemed as if his vision was darkening, but it could’ve been that the cloud was thickening.

  Ronson glanced up and ducked. “What’s got into them?”

  Rappaport still stood upright. “Faith, Brother. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”

  Kimble lifted his right hand out of the water and threw the rebar as hard as he could, flinging himself forward, full length, to splash down in the water. Rappaport jumped to the side and the jagged point of the rebar struck Ronson instead, stabbing into his uniform blouse under his left armpit, where it hung, tangled in the cloth.

  “Hah! Missed,” Ronson said, ripping the rebar out of his shirt and holding it up triumphantly.

  The bugs fell on him like hail, like locusts, and the screaming began.

  Even at the water’s surface, the bugs whirled through the air, and Kimble stayed down, despite the searing pain he felt from the submerged gyro wound. He pressed his right hand against the torn flesh and lay back in the water, only his face above the surface. He took shallow breaths and tried not to pass out.

  Using his feet, Kimble scooted across the shallow water, pushing himself out from under the concentrated cloud of bugs. He floated parallel to the collapsed trail back to where they’d left Pierce. There, at the base of the slope, he crouched in the water for another twenty minutes, waiting for the air around him to clear of bugs. Then it took him a good ten minutes to get up the slope without sliding back down. His head was spinning as he dropped to his knees by Pierce. The man was still unconscious but he was alive, two massive bumps on his forehead.

  “Proud of yourself?”

  Kimble spun around. Rappaport was climbing up the far side of the collapsed ridge, bleeding nearly everywhere, hundreds of bug cuts, and his uniform was in tatters, but he still had his ceramic knife clenched in his left hand. He reached the top and stood, then walked forward slowly, but steadily.

  “Looks like the Plague of Boils,” Kimble said. “Are you sure you’re the chosen one and all that? I mean, if you are, I’d seriously consider asking the Lord to go choose someone else for a while.” He stepped toward the middle of the trail, putting some distance between himself and Pierce.

  Rappaport kept walking. “He tests me,” he said, his voice hoarse from screaming. “But my faith is strong. It’s my time in the wilderness, but I will cast Satan down.” He turned slightly, tracking Kimble.

  Kimble shook h
is head. “I’m not Satan. And you’re no prophet. But bring it on, Deacon. Let’s see if the Lord is with you.”

  The Lord, apparently, was not.

  With only one functioning arm, Kimble couldn’t afford to be gentle and Rappaport had no idea about how to fall safely.

  Rappaport thrust the blade forward, going for the gut, and Kimble spun out of the way, taking the wrist. He swept it up by his cheek, twisting and then reversed his hips in the other direction.

  Kimble kept the knife. Rappaport tumbled down the scree to the edge of the pond where he huddled in on himself, cradling his dislocated elbow and keening.

  Kimble cut Pierce’s bonds with the knife and looked over where the bugs still swarmed near the rebar. Ronson was down and unmoving. Guess the Lord wasn’t with him, either.

  Pierce groaned and Kimble shook his shoulder, trying to revive him. He tried slapping his cheeks lightly, but the big man remained unresponsive.

  Kimble eyed the steep slope up to ground level. He doubted if he could make it up, with his one arm out of commission, much less carry Pierce out. Or Rappaport?

  He walked back to the edge and looked down the slope to Rappaport.

  Rappaport looked back up at Kimble, struggled to his feet, and backed away, splashing through the shallows. When he’d gone a few yards, he turned and ran, following the shore to the far side where he disappeared into the dark shadow cast by the overhanging rim.

  Let Rappaport’s God help him.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to climb the slope. Rappaport’s men were probably still up there. They might even come down, looking for their leader. Kimble considered hiding, but it took all his remaining strength to bind up his bicep with strips of his shirt. If he hadn’t had Rappaport’s knife, he doubted he could’ve done it.

  He heard movement over the buzzing, from down in the far pit, the one without a pond. Rappaport’s men? Maybe someone else dropped down into the Pits by the explosion?

  Whoever it was wore a broad straw hat, tattered and torn, and a long coat. Kimble didn’t think he was one of Rappaport’s men. He didn’t have a rifle, at least, and those men had been dressed for the warmth above. Seeing the long coat made Kimble realize how cold he was, a combination of his time in the water and the blood loss. He eyed the coat covetously and a shiver that began in his shoulders traveled up his neck and his teeth chattered until he clenched them together.

  And then he realized the man was strolling across the bottom of the pit as casually as one would walk down a boulevard … and the pit was covered in bugs.

  Hallucinations? From the blood loss?

  The man came on and when he reached the broken slope leading up to the collapsed trail he looked up at Kimble without eyes.

  Oh.

  Not-dog. Not-steer. Not-mule. Not-man.

  One moment the not-man stood below and the next instant he was standing on the trail looking down at Kimble. Kimble didn’t think he’d blacked out, but admitted to himself it was possible.

  The not-man took off its coat—not like a human would, but by withdrawing its oily black arms up into the sleeves; then the hands came forward, past the lapels and the shoulders, one, two, and it walked forward out of the coat, which fell to the ground behind. It was wearing pants and a t-shirt. It tilted its head to one side, then ripped the shirt off and wrapped it over its upper left arm. It walked once around Kimble and then dropped to its knees in front of him and cradled its left arm with its right. It hunched in, rounding its shoulders.

  Kimble’s shivering increased.

  The not-man began shaking, too.

  “No. You don’t have to do that.”

  The not-man made a humming sound. It wasn’t words, but the tone and rhythm were like Kimble’s sentence.

  Kimble’s teeth chattered. He reached over and took the thing’s coat where it lay on the ground. It smelled faintly of dried blood and there were stains on it but, when he pulled it one-handed across his shoulders, it helped.

  The not-man tilted its head again and stretched out its hand and picked up the trailing end of the coat. Kimble expected it to pull its coat back, but instead, it shifted sideways, coming up under the coat right next to Kimble.

  The not-man was warm. Hot, even. Like pavement in early evening after a hot cloudless day, and it was all Kimble could do not to hug it to him. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to be hugged back. He wasn’t sure he would survive being hugged back.

  He dozed, and when he woke up, his legs were going to sleep but his pants were dry and the shivering had stopped. The not-man stirred when he did. Kimble carefully slid out from under the coat. It took him multiple tries to get to his feet, unwilling, as he was, to steady himself on the not-man’s shoulder.

  He bent down and grabbed Pierce’s collar and dragged him a few feet toward the steep slope. He sat down suddenly, dizzy. He waited for the world to stop spinning, then pulled again, without standing, scooting with his legs and dragging with his good arm.

  The not-man reached down and grabbed the collar. Kimble tried to ignore him but promptly fell over when the not-man dragged Pierce three yards in three seconds.

  “Okay, then.”

  Kimble didn’t really pull Pierce, but by keeping a hand on his elbow and struggling to get himself up the slope, the not-man kept pace with him, doing the real work, sometimes moving Kimble as well. It took over a half hour, but finally Kimble and Pierce lay on the edge of the prairie above.

  The not-man lay beside them, looking up into the sky as if it, too, was exhausted and couldn’t move another inch, but it lifted its head just like Kimble when four aircraft circled high overhead and dozens of parachutes blossomed.

  * * *

  “THE fireball and the smoke was imaged from orbit. I mean, they were looking, since Colonel Anson passed on your report, but when it went off and all those horses scattered, they scrambled the standby squads from both Texas and Eastern Colorado.”

  The not-man had disappeared down into the pit before the first of the Rapid Response Force arrived.

  Rappaport was found, semiconscious and raving, at the far end of the pond in the “wet” pit. The Rangers brought him out strapped to a fiberglass rescue stretcher. When they reached the top and he saw Kimble, Rappaport began thrashing back and forth so violently that the medtech sedated him.

  They airlifted Pierce and Rappaport out, snatching them off the ground with a cable lofted into the air by hot-air balloon and snagged by aircraft high above. After watching this operation, they offered the same ride to Kimble.

  “Do you think I’m insane?”

  The lieutenant in charge raised his eyebrows and said mildly, “I’ve done it dozens of times. It’s certainly a lot safer than igniting petroleum fumes in an underground tank.”

  The medtech stitched him up with a plastic needle under local anesthetic. Before the drugs wore off she put him in a sling, and then strapped the arm, sling and all, to his chest. “Lie down and sleep while you can. When that local wears off it won’t be so easy.”

  The RRF captured almost half of the PAC. They were all on foot, their mounts spooked by the explosion. The members who had not been separated from their horses had ridden for Pecosito.

  “Where they’re going to run into Colonel Anson’s men,” the lieutenant said. “Funny thing about radio. Speed of light still faster than horses.”

  Mrs. Perdicaris followed one of the squads back to the stand of cedars where they’d set up temporary camp. The Rangers had been warned by Kimble not to try catching her.

  “Weird thing,” one of them said. “When we first saw her, I could swear there were two mules.”

  Kimble fed her some of the PAC’s stored oats. He found his tack and saddlebags stacked with the PAC’s equipment, but the medic wouldn’t clear him to ride, so he ended up traveling back to the Pecosito Ranger barracks in one of their wagons, part of a cargo that included the burnt and twisted remains of the smuggled gyro rifles.

  They wanted to put him in the barracks dispens
ary, but Kimble talked to the colonel and the colonel radioed the major and the upshot of it was that he was released to Thây Hahn and, in his own cart, pulled by Mrs. P, traveled back to the Zen Center, where they put him in a bed in the hospice.

  * * *

  THREE afternoons later, he woke to find Ruth sitting at his bedside. “You’re not dying, are you?” she asked.

  “No, Sensei!”

  “Everyone else here is.”

  “Yes, Sensei. But not me. Not yet.” He rubbed his eyes. “Uh, you’re really here?”

  Ruth nodded. “Why do you ask?”

  He gestured at his bedside table, where a plastic bottle of pills sat. “Pain medication. I’ve, uh, actually talked to you before this.”

  “What did I say?”

  Kimble blushed. “You shouted at me for getting injured. For not being careful enough. For playing with matches and explosive fumes. And for not feeding the chickens and dusting the kamiza.”

  There were footsteps in the hall and a familiar voice said, “I heard that!”

  Thayet came to the door, gesturing to someone behind her. “In here.”

  Major Bentham rounded the doorway. “And did you have a similar conversation with me? About your general stupidity?”

  Thayet echoed brightly, “Stupidity!”

  Kimble glared at her and she said, “Uh, things to do, people to annoy.” She left.

  Kimble sank down in the bed and said to Bentham, “Similar, yes. More, uh, intense, though.”

  Major Bentham exchanged looks with Ruth and both seemed to exhale slowly.

  Ruth said, “Then I guess just repeating it all would be redundant.”

  Major Bentham opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He rubbed his chin. “Really? What about the satisfaction? I mean, I’ve rehearsed it and refined it every damn mile between here and the capital. Just coming up the hallway I added two more scathing phrases.”

  Ruth smiled. “Well, I enjoyed your last few variations, and while it was getting more flowery, clever words, I think your first version held more passion.”

  Kimble’s eyebrows raised. “You traveled together?”