The Lady Zillabar glared at him, but she took the ration-bar from him and bit into it savagely. She never took her eyes from his. She didn’t have to speak, but Sawyer knew exactly which part of his anatomy she dreamed of tearing off with her teeth. He turned away, half in disgust, half so she wouldn’t see how visceral a reaction she had triggered in him.
Three-Dollar followed him to the other end of the casket where Sawyer pretended to busy himself checking on Finn. “You look like a man who has swallowed a live toad,” he said softly. “Twice.”
Sawyer glanced away, glanced down, glanced finally back to Three-Dollar. “All right, yes. I have. I did. I said I liked slapping her. I lied. I wanted to get even with her more than anything in the universe. And now that I have her here—in my power, under my control, where I can finally take my revenge against her—I see that I don’t like myself for what I’ve done or what I want to do to her in the future. And I blame you. Until I met you, I didn’t have to worry about scruples or consciences or things like that. I could just do the job and collect the money. And if occasionally, the universe offered me the opportunity for revenge, I could consider that a bonus.
“Now, however, I find myself thinking dangerous thoughts—that even beating up on a Vampire bitch who deserves it, who earned it fairly, who would kill us all in an instant if she could, carries no honor; only the stain of brutality and barbarism. You did that to me, you son of a bitch. You took away my pride in myself as a cruel bastard. You’ve destroyed me, you know.”
“I don’t think so,” said Three-Dollar. “If anything, I’ve given you the opportunity to reinvent yourself.”
“Oh, great—sure. What shall I turn into next? A poodle-boy?”
Three-Dollar grinned at the thought, but shook his head blandly. “No. I expect you might make a wonderful TimeBinder someday.”
“Huh? Who? Me? You’ve lost your mind, ‘Binder.”
Three-Dollar patted Sawyer on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I have no intention of dying any time soon. And I haven’t yet decided to name you as my heir.” He walked away, leaving Sawyer staring after him, wondering if the old man had just made a joke or a prediction.
Blacktrees
“All right,” said Lee. “I’ve paced this shelf long enough. I can’t find any secret passages, entrances to caves, hidden stairwells, or anything else. Where do we go from here?”
Sawyer grinned. “You didn’t look hard enough.”
“Huh?”
The tracker pointed at the wall of jungle. Lee glanced at it without seeing, then looked back to Sawyer. “Yeah? So?”
Sawyer looked annoyed. “Look again.”
Lee still didn’t see it.
Sawyer took him by the arm and led him to the edge of the shelf, where the huge branch of the closest blacktree reached out to form a curving avenue down into the leafy darkness.
“That?” asked Lee, incredulous.
“That,” confirmed Sawyer, blandly.
“We walk . . . ? Into the jungle?”
“Uh-huh. We walk. Into the jungle.”
“But—. . .” Lee pulled away abruptly. “That might have worked on Thoska-Roole, where the only predators you need to worry about wear police uniforms, but this—” The clone-brother couldn’t find the words to express his discomfort. “Do you know what things lurk in that blackness? I’ve heard stories of prowlers and growlers and bears—of beasties and goblins and long-legged thingies that go bump in the dark. I’ve heard of killer swarms and trap-door spiders, carnivorous shrike-vines, and even feral Chtorrans. People tell stories about pythons the size of shuttleboats and slithering panther-sharks and—and—. . . I don’t know what else. And you want us to just walk down into that unprotected and vulnerable?”
“Yep,” agreed Sawyer. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“Uh—” Lee blinked. After a moment, he managed to say, “I think one of us has a communication disorder.”
“And the other one has an unreasonable terror of the dark,” Sawyer replied coolly. “Which one do you want to lay claim to?”
Lee stopped as the meaning of Sawyer’s words sank in. “Cowardice? You accuse me of cowardice?”
“Of course not. I’ve seen you in battle.”
“Then what—?”
Sawyer held up a hand. “A coward would refuse to proceed. A courageous man just needs to know the nature of his fear before he confronts it.”
Lee took a step back, incredulous. “That won’t work. The Lees did not raise many fools. Or let me say it another way. The wise man studies the odds before he lays down his bet. I don’t feel like wagering my life against these odds.”
Sawyer nodded with understanding. “I hear you. We’ll have to proceed without you then.”
“No. We’ll have to find another way. Or another destination. We’ll go back up and recall the boat. We’ll fly. We don’t need to see this M’bele of yours. We can connect with the rebellion here on Dupa. I have some sources of my own—”
Sawyer shook his head. “We can’t fly to M’bele. I have no idea where he lives. This jungle highway provides the only access to him.” He advanced on Lee angrily. “Listen to me. We don’t have time to argue over this. If you can’t summon up the strength to confront a few miserable non-sentient appetites, then you sure as hell can’t summon up the strength to confront the Regency and its millions of sentient Phaestoric hungers! Now demonstrate the courage that you keep speaking or stay behind. Choose and choose now. We have no more time to waste.”
Sawyer stepped over to Finn’s coffin and switched on the levitators. He looked to Three-Dollar. “If you want to come with me, then let’s get moving. Otherwise, I’ll leave you behind and I’ll get Finn there on my own.”
Three-Dollar nodded. He nudged Zillabar and she stood up again; she had abandoned her mask of hostility. Now she walked proudly, like a queen. Sawyer noted the change in her attitude. That the Lady had now regained her presence meant that he would have to take extra precautions; it meant that she had begun planning ways to manage the course of events to her own advantage again. He grunted and strode over to where she stood.
He examined each of her bindings carefully. None showed any signs of tampering him; that worried him even more. Finally, he looked up into her eyes. She stared back at him with equanimity. “If you try to escape, I’ll kill you—and I’ll let the scavengers of pig-town feast on your remains. And I’ll have pictures of your final ignominy distributed to every inhabited world in the Cluster. Do you understand me?”
“You will do as you must,” she replied. “I will do as I must.”
“I didn’t ask you for a lesson in behavioral science,” Sawyer snapped. “Do you understand me?” He lifted a hand as if to strike her.
She glanced at his hand, then returned her pale dry gaze to his. “I understand you. Obviously, you don’t understand me.”
In reply, Sawyer spat sideways. He checked to see that the others had taken their places at the handles of the coffin and then gave the command to move. Moving carefully, they stepped out onto the broad expanse of the blacktree’s limb and began following it carefully down.
The branch of the tree presented itself as a broad curved highway; occasional sub-branches curled up off of it, big enough to look like independent trees themselves. They bent outward, forming wide pathways across to other branches. Sawyer led them past the first three branches, then had them cross a leftward-curving limb that stretched out over a deep gap in the forest canopy. “Don’t look down,” he cautioned.
Zillabar kept her eyes steadily forward. Three-Dollar glanced down once and didn’t react. Lee couldn’t help himself, he had to look, and instantly regretted it. He couldn’t see the ground below at all. It lay hidden in gloom, but what he could see presented such a horrifying sense of their height within the forest canopy that he involuntarily gasped and clutched the levitation casket beside him.
“I told you not to look,” Sawyer called from ahead.
Le
e gritted his teeth and followed the others. The branch on which they crossed seemed as wide as any mall or starship corridor—but the fact of its unprotected height made it seem much more terrifying to him. The clone-man wanted to drop to his knees and crawl along the length of it; but his pride overwon his fear and he began picking his steps carefully. Beside him, on the other side of the casket, Zillabar snorted in contempt.
“Fuck you with a pig’s dick,” Lee replied, and forced himself to match her haughty steps. Zillabar smiled to herself.
At last they reached a place where the branch lay across another horizontal highway and they lowered themselves down onto it. This limb sprung from another blacktree and they followed its leisurely rise upward to a wide gnarl, where Sawyer directed them to rest again. They had come close enough to the roof of the forest that the dingy light of the day actually sparkled through the green, blue, and black leaves above. The minty smell of the blacktrees pervaded the softly glowing air.
Sawyer paced the gnarl as if looking for something. It curled around them like an amphitheater, and he stepped up onto the wooden berm and began pacing off a measure. He stopped, scratched himself, looked around—”No, I can’t have made a mistake that stupid,” he said. He paced back the other way. He stopped again and stared up into the branches.
He climbed back down from the height of the gnarl and stood next to the casket, looking frustrated. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. He rubbed his cheek with the flat of his hand. He wiped his nose. He scratched under his arm. He scratched his head. “I could use a bath,” he remarked to no one in particular.
Three-Dollar looked at him blandly, patiently.
Lee-1169 did not have the same manners as the TimeBinder. “Have we reached the end of your plan? Or have you simply run out of ideas?”
Sawyer looked at him sharply, as if offended. He replied with an almost haughty tone, “Neither. Some things have changed here. I need to remember what to do. Leave me alone to think.” He didn’t wait for Lee’s reply, but strode to the opposite side of the wide gnarl. He gave it a frustrated kick, then turned and leaned against it, folding his arms across his chest. “Damn!” he said to himself. “I wish I had Finn here to talk to—”
Abruptly, he realized what he had said—and the horror and grief flooded in on him anew. He didn’t know whether to rage or cry. He lowered his head and bit his lip, trying to hold back the tears welling up in his eyes. This whole thing—he hated it. Frustrated, he gave up. He crossed to the casket and put his hands on the glass over his brother’s unconscious face, as if to touch him, as if to wake him. “Finn,” he whispered. “Please—I need you now. I spoke in error when I said I thought I could work faster without you. I can’t. I need you.”
Remembrance of Things Vast
Finn didn’t answer. He remained unconscious and Sawyer feared that Finn would never answer him again. He looked at the readouts on the casket and saw that Finn’s condition remained unchanged from the last time he had looked, and the time before that, and the time before that too.
Sawyer stood there for a long moment. He knew that Three-Dollar and Lee and Zillabar stood watching him, waiting for him to act. Each of them had their own thoughts and reactions to his . . . failure.
What had he missed? What had he forgotten here? What had he never known? Why hadn’t he paid closer attention the last time they’d come through here? He remembered that Finn and M’bele had—
He stopped. He straightened. He turned around. He stared.
The others looked at him with curiosity, startled by his sudden alertness.
Sawyer climbed slowly back to the top of the gnarl. He paced along the ridge, not counting, just looking. Eventually, he found a small shallow depression. “Aha. I knew I’d found the right place. I don’t make stupid mistakes.”
Sawyer opened the front of his trousers and began urinating into the depression. The yellow stream splashed away in warm spatters. He stood there, letting it flow and flow. He filled the depression in the berm until it overflowed, then forced himself to stop while he still had fluid left in his bladder. The rank smell of his urine reached his nostrils then and made him wonder what he’d eaten recently. Abruptly he remembered the food in the shuttleboat and shuddered uncomfortably.
He sealed up his pants again, jumped down off the berm, and returned to the others. Zillabar looked offended; he’d expected nothing less. Lee had a scornful expression on his face. Three-Dollar remained unmoved. Sawyer made himself comfortable at the head of the medical cabinet and waited.
He didn’t have long to wait. Very shortly, a sound came from the leaves above. The others didn’t notice it at first, it sounded like the wind. But Sawyer knew what to listen for and he recognized the steady rustling of something moving through the canopy above. So when the thing came screeching down from the trees, he betrayed no surprise. He did enjoy watching Lee-1169 flinch. He noticed with annoyance, however, that Zillabar had not reacted at all. She had heard the creature’s steady approach as surely as he had.
The beast had silvery fur, almost blue. The sheen of color glittered even here in the shadowy gloom. Large and flat, the creature had no head. Its eyes—all six of them—stared out from the center of its body, spaced equidistantly around its puckered mouth. It had long, ungainly arms, one at each corner; each arm ended in a bony claw-like hand. Breathing slits opened and closed along its sides. The creature looked like the hybrid progeny of an ape, a spider, and a nightmare.
It had dropped down from above, swinging on a leathery brown vine. It scuttled along the berm until it came to the depression that Sawyer had urinated into. It lowered itself over the remaining puddle as if sniffing. It hissed and backed away several steps, turning itself around and elevating that part of its body that Sawyer assumed operated as its hindquarters. It opened its cloaca and aimed a jet of oily dark fluid at the offending puddle of Sawyer’s urine.
Sawyer glanced over at Lee. The clone-man’s eyes had gone wide—with terror or amazement, Sawyer couldn’t tell. He took a step sideways and whispered, “Don’t move. Don’t say anything. Put your gun away. The natives call it a spiderman. It won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt it—and believe me, you don’t want to hurt it.”
The creature finished its task and backed away, whirling again and raising itself up on three of its legs to glare at the humans and the Vampire, as if waiting.
“My turn again,” Sawyer said, and climbed back up onto the berm. He walked around to the entire arc of the woody gnarl, all the while making snarling and snorting noises at the silver spiderman. “Kiss my rose red behind, you feeble excuse for a frightwig. Eat my shit.” He made horrible noises and waved his arms around in the air. He knew the creature couldn’t understand how he maneuvered on two legs only—the silver spiderman hissed, but took two cautious steps backward.
“Don’t you scream at me! I don’t believe in you either!” Sawyer bellowed. As he approached the disputed depression, he stamped each footstep as hard as he could. “I claim this territory. Not you! You can’t pee here! I pee here! Your pee smells like flowers! MY PEE SMELLS LIKE PEE SHOULD SMELL!” He knew the beast could not possibly understand his words, but it certainly understood his intent. It scuttled away another ten steps.
Sawyer opened his trousers again and finished the job he had started earlier. He forced the urine from his bladder so that it spattered away all traces of the darker oil of the spiderman. Then he took a few steps back to allow the other to sniff the depression again.
The spiderman approached cautiously, periodically pausing to raise itself up to look at Sawyer. At last, it reached the fresh urine and lowered its face close enough to sniff. It started to turn itself around, as if to repeat its previous performance, but at that point, Sawyer, charged three steps forward, shouting, “Don’t you even think of it, or I’ll have your silvery pelt for a rug, you stinking slime-bag excuse for a primate!”
It worked. The creature scuttled away, startled. It raised itself up, stared, blinked, then ro
lled over on its back and waved its long bony arms in the air for a moment.
“Good,” said Sawyer. “You have enough intelligence to see it my way.”
The spiderman folded itself into a sitting position and waited.
Sawyer stepped away from the stinking depression and faced Three-Dollar and Lee. They both looked amused. Sawyer returned their looks with a cockeyed grin. “Sometimes, you just gotta speak to them in their own language.” Abruptly, catching the motion of the spiderman out of the corner of his eye, he whirled and advanced again, stamping his feet, waving his arms, and screaming, “Oh, no, you don’t, you filthy little, flea-bitten, bag of hair! You come near my hole and I’ll feed you to the nearest Vampire, and if you don’t believe me, I’ve brought one with me!”
The spiderman scuttled back away again, this time farther than before. It made a rude noise and settled itself down to wait. Sawyer glanced down to Lee. “I gotta do that. I haven’t any piss left. Sooner or later, it’ll get the point.”
Lee spread his hands in a gesture of confusion. “You wanna explain it to me? I don’t get the point.”
“He has to claim this as his territory,” Three-Dollar said.
“But why?”
“Because he has to.”
Sawyer strode back and forth on the wooden crest of the gnarl, strutting and posturing for the watching spiderman.
“Does that thing have any intelligence?” Lee asked.
“Just enough to know that it shouldn’t try to pee in my hole,” Sawyer called back.
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sawyer reassured him. “I know what I have to do.”
A Covenant of Justice Page 11
