by David Coy
“Good riddance,” she said under her breath, certain he couldn’t hear her.
“Well, he’s gone now, Rachel,” Donna said. “You can relax now.”
“Can I?” she replied.
As he walked slowly along, Jacob rehearsed, as he had for every waking minute over the last few days, precisely what he would say to this group of profane sinners, this Sacred Bond. He knew all he needed to know about their sacrilegious practices, thanks to the sinner called Donna.
As the truthful words, the real words of God, played over and over in his head, they grew in strength like a mighty oak. As God had promised, his thousand waited.
5
It was a summary execution, the tenth in as many days. The doomed man, a laborer named Duggings, had been accused of using foul language in the presence of a member of the Council. One of the ones who saw and heard what happened, said the foul language had not been used in the Council member’s vicinity but had been directed right at him—a fatal mistake.
“You can’t do this!” Joan yelled. “He didn’t do anything to you!”
“Shut up, Joan!” Bill snarled, shaking her arm. “You could be next!”
“This is bullshit,” someone else muttered. “Bullshit. I’m for taking my chances in the green.”
“Me, too,” another said. “Screw this. We should just gather up our stuff and march right outta here.”
“We’d last about a week,” someone said.
“They’re gonna kill us all if this keeps up. Then whose gonna do their work?”
“Look at those bastards,” another said. “Have you ever seen such bullshit?”
Execution at the hands of the Council’s guard wasn’t a pretty sight. The mode of execution was newly monstrous. But making the event as ugly and public as possible was as old as tyranny itself.
Duggings was in a steel cage just big enough to sit in. The look on his face wasn’t fear, but bemused arrogance. Duggings was braver, or more stupid, than any of them realized.
“Here they come,” someone said. “I can’t watch this.”
“You’d better stay and watch or they’ll put you in that thing,” someone offered.
“This is your goddamned Sacred Bond of the Bullshit Alliance. Fuck ‘em.”
Two men, covered in protective suits from head to foot, walked up to the cage. The Council members sat or stood some distance behind it all, carefully watching, or pretending to watch, the procedure.
One of the rubber-clad men held a flask of clear liquid, very carefully with both hands. They took up positions on either side of the cage, faced the crowd and waited, as executioners had always done, for the command to do their killing work. Duggings just scanned the crowd and shook his head as if it were somehow funny.
One of the leading Council members, the new one known as Jacob, stood up and addressed the crowd.
He was the strangest looking man Joan had ever seen. He frightened her to her core.
“This man is profane and has shown disrespect for the will of God,” he said gently. “He has used profanity to erode the Godliness of this holy body. The Lord God now will punish him for his transgression. Let this be a lesson to us all, not to trifle with the holy will of God and always to show respect to his agents seated here.”
What shallow crap, Joan thought. What absolute bullshit. If they’ll kill us for that, they’ll kill us for anything.
When he stopped speaking, the rubber-clad man holding the flask turned to Jacob for the signal, and Jacob nodded. The man began to pour the liquid over the head of Duggings. Duggings blinked as the liquid ran into his eyes, and then he wiped it away with a disgusted hand. He spat it away from his mouth and just tried to smile as the stream covered his head and upper body.
“Fuck you,” he said, spitting and trying to grin. “Fuck you and your Council, and I hope you go straight to Hell, since you believe in it so damned much. We all gotta die of something.”
“Go now,” Jacob said to the crowd, “and listen to the profane man die.”
It was dusk, and they knew that before dawn, they’d be hearing Duggings scream as the fecund juice from the Vilaroos plant penetrated his skin and turned his body into a living incubator for its seeds. Short of being burned or skinned alive, it was the most grisly death Joan could think of; slow and painful and hideous.
“Why don’t they just shoot him?” Joan wanted to know. “Dammit! They could just shoot him, couldn’t they? Assholes.”
“Joan, shut up,” Bill said, “unless you wanna be next in that goddamned cage.”
Habershaw happened to glance at Jacob and saw that he was looking their way, and thought for a brief, gut-churning second that Jacob could hear what he just said.
Jacob, they say, had walked in out of the jungle and become an immediate member of the Bondsmen’s Council. Some said it was just because he was strange, and the Council itself was strange so they matched right up. Others said it was because he carried with him a book called The Bible that had been printed almost a thousand years ago. The Bondsmen’s laws were supposedly based on that book and much of the original meaning, changed and watered down through the years, had been re-claimed, and rejuvenated from it. Now they said, they had the authentic document, the original blueprint. They said the Bondsmen’s scientists looked at it for a week before deciding it was genuine. There were other rumors about how Jacob was God’s Chosen One and destined to become High Priest. Almost everyone believed that one. The stuff about being in suspended animation for a thousand years got sideways looks most of the time.
He scared the hell out of everybody, even the other Council members. That part was true.
“Somebody ought to come out here tonight and kill Duggings,” Lavachek said. “That would be the humane thing to do.”
“You’d be right in there with him if they caught you,” Habershaw whispered. “Let’s get out of here. Maybe he’ll go
quick.”
“They never go quick,” Joan said as they turned away.
When Jacob came along some ninety Verdian days ago, things began to get much worse and much stranger fast. They couldn’t say or do certain things now and wear certain clothes—even certain colors on certain days. Rules had been applied to almost everything. Each day the bulletins would describe some weird-assed thing to be done. Things they’d taken for granted as commonplace suddenly couldn’t be done anymore. One of the worst offenses was speaking against the Council, and Joan constantly walked that razor’s edge. Habershaw worried constantly that she’d be taken away and executed. Oddly, no women had been executed yet, but there was always a first time. Habershaw prayed that Joan, with her quick tongue, wouldn’t be the one to set that unfortunate precedent.
“I heard today that Jacob found that thing he’s been looking for,” Lavachek said as they walked along.
“You know, that big-assed plant thing he’s been talking about. They found it over by the shore.”
“What kind of plant thing?” Joan asked. “There're lots of plant things on the planet.”
“I heard it was some huge hive or something. Big. We’re talking a half a kilometer big.”
“No plant’s that big,” Joan said.
“Hey, you asked,” Lavachek said with a shrug.
“What’s he going to do with it?” Habershaw asked.
“You won’t believe what I heard,” Lavachek said.
“Try us,” Habershaw said. “I’d believe just about anything that bastard did at this point.”
“Well, I heard he was going to move the entire settlement to it.”
“Now that is bullshit,” Habershaw said.
“That’s what I heard,” Lavachek said. “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“How would he do that?” Joan asked, mirroring Habershaw's disbelief.
“Well, if you stop to consider that the machinery is already
sitting on this ball to cut a road thirty meters wide—in one pass I might add—from here to the sea, it’s not such a
dumb idea.”
“You mean you and me cut the road is what you mean,” Habershaw asked to make sure he understood.
“That part’s possible.”
“Yep. Then the trucks start hauling the stuff over. The only thing is whether he can get the other Council members to go along with it. I heard they don’t have a choice.”
“Goddamn, Lavachek,” Joan said. “You hear it all, don’t you?"
“Hey, it pays to have your ear to the ground.”
“So it sounds like a done deal,” Habershaw said.
“I’d say so. Weird, huh?”
Joan shook her head in disgust. “Who is the sonofabitch that says he can do that to us? Somebody tell me.”
“He’s the Grand Poobah, is what he is,” Lavachek said. “He can do anything he wants. Did you hear the rumor about the women?”
Joan swallowed involuntarily. “No. What about them?”
“I heard he—excuse me there, Joan. I heard he wants to fuck all of them.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake, Lavachek,” Habershaw said, trying to put Joan at ease. “It’s bad enough without you making it up.”
“Hey, don’t blame me,” Lavachek grinned. “I’m just tellin’ you what I heard—I’m just the messenger.”
“They used to kill the messengers, too,” Joan said setting his coffee down hard in front of him. “Don’t you go repeating that little rumor. You’ll have every woman in the settlement in hysterics.”
Lavachek shrugged. “Fine, then.”
“So if you’re right we should be hearing about the road at any time,” Habershaw said, wanting to change the subject.
“Any day now, I expect.”
The phone buzzed and Habershaw picked it up. Joan and Lavachek looked at nothing and sipped coffee as Habershaw listened, I-see’d and uh-huh’d a few times. Finally he said, “We’ll be there.” Then he closed the connection.
When he was done, he drew a deep breath through his nose.
Joan knew the sign.
“Guess who that was, Mister Lavachek,” Habershaw said. “Who?” Joan asked.
“Someone who claims to be the Chief Engineer for the Sacred Bond, someone named Pen Patel.”
Lavachek pursed his lips knowingly.
“And . . . ”
“He says he has plans to cut a road from here west to the ocean. He wants us to go over the plan with him in the morning.”
Lavachek shook his head and chuckled silently. “It’s a bitch to be right all the goddamned time!"
“Kiss my hind part,” Habershaw said.
“Mine, too,” Joan added. “This isn’t funny.”
Lavachek kept a little smirk on his face. They didn’t say anything for a while.
“You can spend the night here if you want, Greg,” Habershaw said gently. “It’s farther from Duggings.”
Lavachek nodded his head that he’d like to stay. Listening to a man go mad with pain wasn’t the best way to get a good night’s sleep.
“We should do something, Bill,” Lavachek said. “I knew Duggings pretty good. He was a good man.”
“Do what?” Habershaw barked. “What should we do?”
“Sneak over there and put him out of his misery is what,” Joan said.
“That’s too goddamned risky,”
Habershaw said firmly, looking into Joan's willful eyes.
“Maybe we wouldn’t have to get too close,” Lavachek said. “If we had a gun, we could shoot him from a distance.”
“Well, we don’t have a gun. So forget it,” Habershaw said.
“I’ve got a gun,” Joan said abruptly.
Habershaw glared at her to shut her up.
“Well, I do,” she repeated. “I stole it. And I’m keeping it.”
“That’s it, then. We can use that,” Lavachek said. “Hell, I’ll do it.”
“Like hell you will,” Habershaw snapped. “If they catch you, they’ll find the gun, then they’ll find out where it came from—and we’ll all get Vilaroosed. Fuck that. You’ll stay right here.” Lavachek didn’t like the answer. But he took a sip of coffee in silent, tacit agreement. Habershaw was still his boss.
“It’s your call,” Lavachek finally said.
Later that night, as Joan and Habershaw lay in their bed, the sound of Duggings’ cries reached them over the jungle’s din. It came adrift on the wet air like a dark wisp. It wasn’t possible to close the windows or block one’s ears to keep it out; that would be turning your back on the man’s pain, turning his agony to nothing.
Bill and Joan tossed and turned fretfully; and when they weren’t tossing or turning, they lay unmoving, trying not to listen but listening still. Joan was having the worst time of it. Habershaw heard her sigh and groan slightly with each cry that seeped snakelike through the shelter’s screens.
At some point, Bill heard and felt Joan get up out of bed as slowly and softly as a cat. He heard her faint noises at the rear door and heard the slight click of the door shutting. He hoped to hell she wasn’t doing what he thought she was doing. He got out of bed and looked out the window in the direction of Duggings but didn’t see anything. He finally convinced himself she had gone for a walk, perhaps to distance herself from the sounds of suffering riding the jungle’s busy clamor.
When he heard the first shot, Habershaw went stiff, as if the bullet had gone through his brain. A moment later he heard another, then another. He went to the window and looked out. Duggings' cries had stopped, and the jungle’s buzz had shed that soulful rider. He could feel the settlement breathe a sigh of relief.
A few minutes later he heard the soft click of the door again. Joan slid cat-like back into bed. When her leg touched his, he felt cool sweat.
“That was stupid,” he said evenly.
She didn’t answer right away. “I doubt Duggings thought so,” she finally replied.
Sometime before dawn, they slept.
At breakfast the next morning, no one said a word for a long time.
“I guess he went quick after all,” Lavachek eventually said,
looking at Joan.
“Yeah,” Joan said. “He went quick.”
* * *
When Habershaw and Lavachek got to the Chief Engineer’s office, a man neither had met, nor had heard much about, greeted them. He was a small man, clad in the brown, clean, cotton commonly worn by those within the Council’s inner circles. The garb gave the man away. This had suddenly turned into a situation with unanticipated consequences.
The Council was the source of tyrannical rule; rules and instructions that had to be obeyed as if handed down by God personally. Here stood a friendly and diminutive fellow who wielded the power of the council by proxy and about to aim that power right at the domain of he and Lavachek. Under that neat and clean exterior was the heart and soul of the Council. He was the tyrant’s unsoiled, innocent-looking nephew, who could sling the Council’s violent power like a mad child if need be. Habershaw's previous resentment of having to answer to Patel was now minor compared to the foundation of fear that his umbrage rested on.
The next thing Habershaw noticed about him were his tiny hands. They were so small and feminine Habershaw wondered if he weren't actually a female in disguise. When he held out his hand for Habershaw to shake, the touch was moist and soft like a little girl’s. His voice possessed a hint of an Indian accent. It struck Habershaw as ironic that such a light touch had so much weight behind it.
After shaking Patel’s hand, Lavachek glanced at Habershaw with a troubled look. He’d felt it, too. There was a sense of androgynous softness about the man that had no roots in the domain of male or female, but there was intense power in him. To Habershaw and Lavachek, two men accustomed to obeying orders by alpha males a notch or two higher on the leadership scale than they themselves, the man seemed to possess an almost sycophantic malleability that just didn’t seem right for the position of Chief Engineer. None of that mattered. His high position with the Council had them spooked into submission without th
e manly leadership characteristics they were so accustomed to.
“Well, thank you for coming,” Patel said with a white smile. “We have an interesting project ahead of us, don’t you think?”
“Could be,” Habershaw said cautiously.
“Let me show you the plans I have made. These are from the direct orders of Jacob himself, so there is no question whatsoever about the importance of the project.”
He called up a topographic map on the large screen that detailed the terrain between the settlement and the ocean some two hundred kilometers to the west.
“Well, this speaks for itself, if you ask me,” Patel said. “This is where we are,” he pointed, “and this is where we need doo go.” He traced the route with a tiny finger. The course wound around the rolling terrain like a long, thin snake. Lavachek and Habershaw exchanged looks.
“Well, that’s a fairly long way to get there,” Habershaw said nodding his head. He didn’t want to offend the little guy. It could get him killed.
“Hmm,” Lavachek agreed.
The problem was that Patel had no idea what the Manitowoc was capable of. He had designed a road around little rolling hills and hummocks as if the Manitowoc was a toy, not the most powerful bulldozer ever built by humankind. Habershaw knew that the terrain between the settlement and the ocean had few natural obstacles that the dozer couldn’t just flatten. Going around them was plainly a waste of time. Patel’s winding, serpentine route was probably ten times as long as it had to be.
“Do you think there is a shorter route, then?” Patel asked in earnest. “I drew this up in some haste.”
Lavachek and Habershaw exchanged brief worried looks. “No. That one will do just fine I think, don’t you, Greg? We might have to modify it a little when we get to this elevation here,” he pointed, “but other than that, it looks real good to me.”
“Yeah, and maybe a little change here, too,” Lavachek pointed, “but I think we can work with that.”
“Perfect,” Habershaw said, crossing his legs comfortably.
“When do you want to get started then?”
