Darrell Bain

by The Y Factor (lit)

  "Impressive, huh?” Gene said.

  "Physically, at least,” I agreed.

  We found seats together as the last few people from both sides trickled in. As they did, I saw that Jeri was whispering something to Kyle with her lips very close to his ear. She plainly wanted no one other than him to hear her. His head was tilted to the side and he was listening intently and nodding his understanding of whatever she was saying. There were only a few Crispies present. I didn't know what their presence meant. No one had said they would be there, but then no one had said they wouldn't, either. Observers? Referees? Elders? No way of knowing since I still couldn't tell one Crispy from another. They all looked alike to me, except for some differences in fur color, although Jeri had told me there were as many distinguishing characteristics among them as among humans.

  Jeri looked like a midget beside the giant Indian. He stood with his mouth set in firm lines as he scanned the room. He then crossed his arms across his chest and spoke. Somehow the acoustics were fixed so that everyone could hear what was said from that middle space.

  "I am Kalki, Tenth Avatar of Vishnu the Preserver,” he announced in a firm, deep bass voice that rumbled like a giant cat pleased with himself and purring to show it.

  "You are a freak of a human who was once a Cresperian,” Jeri retorted just as strongly. “Your mind is deranged from converting too fast and without a human mentor. You should revert to your Cresperian form and seek the elders for mergent therapy."

  Kalki's black eyes glittered with scorn. “I was once Cresperian but no more. I am become as a god. And you are no longer Cresperian, but it is you who should seek therapy for associating with such mongrels as the English and Americans have become. Their day is done. Their star is falling. The power of Vishnu and Kalki will cleanse the Earth of their taint with the assistance of our worshippers and such Cresperians as recognize reality,” he paused, and somehow I detected menace for those Cresperians who didn't, “and then our Lakshmis will bring peace and prosperity."

  "You are mad.” Jeri shook her head in annoyance. “You are mad and your arrogance is not going to be allowed to prevail."

  I heard her say the words, but I wondered what on earth she intended to back them up with. There were more of them than us, the Crispies were as near pacifists as mattered and that big hulk looked strong enough to wipe up the floor with us all by himself. At least he didn't have four arms like most of their gods.

  "Allowed. Allowed!” Kalki burst into laughter that roared and crashed around the room. “And who is to stop me, little lover of stupid Americans? Yes, I have learned of your alliance with the one beside you. What is he compared to Vishnu or to me, Kalki The Warrior? Best for you to come to our side and take your place on Earth as one of the elite. You could become Lakshmi, a state others of our followers have attained.” He nodded his massive head toward the group of Indians.

  While I had been following his and Jeri's debate, the person he referred to had come in and all the Indians had risen to their feet. She was standing with their followers. Worshippers. It was very easy to spot her. She was seven feet tall, at least, but was proportioned as normally as he was. One of her breasts was covered by the white toga-like garment she wore, the other bare. I thought her boobs were too big and hips too wide but I suppose that could be the woman part of me assessing another. Had it not been for those little flaws she would have been beautiful despite her size.

  "I agree with my wife. You are mad, Kalki,” Kyle said with a calm forcefulness I could only admire, considering how close he was standing to that giant.

  I recognized his voice and turned my gaze from Lakshmi back to the center of the room as he continued.

  "You are mad and must be suppressed. Neither the Cresperians nor the people of Earth deserve such as you, nor do they want to follow your deranged philosophy."

  Kalki stared at Kyle with those unnerving, glittering obsidian eyes. Jeri made a motion toward Kyle as if holding him back. Well, that's what it looked like. But surely he's not thinking of fighting that man-mountain, I told myself. I could only imagine the results, because Kyle wasn't all that big. The disparity in size made it look as if Kalki could wad him up in his hands and toss him into a trash basket.

  "Ah, you think you are a warrior, do you, little man? Do you really believe the likes of you could defeat me, Kalki The Warrior? It is laughable. You are the one who is insane."

  "Not at all,” Kyle said pleasantly as he removed his jacket and began unbuttoning his shirt. “I see that the only way to convince you and your followers that you are unfit to show Cresperians the human way is to beat you to a pulp. If that doesn't do it, I'll have to kill you.” He tossed the garments to Jeri. “Are you ready?"

  "You? Kill me?” Kalki roared with laughter. “Come, then, little man! Come to your death!” He threw his head back and laughed again. No, he roared and ranted and bleated with mirth at the very thought that Kyle might defeat him. Or maybe he was laughing at the thought of killing Kyle and then turning his wrath onto Jeri and the rest of us.

  "Ah, shit,” Gene muttered. “I like him, but what can he possibly do against that giant?"

  "Especially without a slingshot,” I said inanely.

  "Try not to kill him, sweetheart,” Jeri said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  The instant that Kalki bowed his body forward, still laughing and holding his stomach, Kyle charged.

  I didn't believe it was happening. I was horrified. What was worse, Jeri quickly moved out of range, all the way back to the front seats with Gene and me, giving them room.

  The sound of the first blow Kyle struck was like a maul hitting a side of beef or the bursting of a melon dropped from a height. It would have felled an ordinary man and knocked him unconscious. Kalki barely moved. His laughter stopped abruptly, though, and he straightened up. He reached out as if to grab Kyle and crush him but his hands met empty air and another loud wet smack of a hard, calloused hand meeting unprotected flesh reverberated around the room.

  Kalki grunted and swung a fist. It hit nothing. By then Kyle's body was a blur of motion, and the sound of hands and feet, knees and elbows striking tissue so swift and hard it sounded like loud drums playing, a tune of violence so fast and furious I couldn't follow it. Kalki staggered and moved this way and that but Kyle was all over him, behind him, in front and to the side, bent low one moment and feet lashing out the next. He was constantly moving, whirling, striking and moving again, giving Kalki no chance to set himself or even think. It was awesome, like a man armed with only a revolver going up against a machine gunner—and winning.

  Blood spattered and flowed, and it all belonged to the giant Indian. His face was a red pulp, the black eyes swelling closed, and even his chest and back were split in places from the rain of blows Kyle had poured on him. And while he pummeled Kalki's head and chest, he struck what was the beginning of the end: a heel kick to the side of Kalki's knee. The sound was grisly. Even that giant couldn't stand with every tendon in his knee snapped. One leg folded the wrong way and the purported god staggered. Yet he was so solidly built that he still remained upright somehow. He spit blood from broken teeth and mangled lips and went into a defensive position, arms covering his head and upper body. It made no difference. Kyle kept moving, kept striking from different angles. Every blow drew a grunt of pain from Kalki. I could tell the giant was about done by the sluggishness of his moves, by the way he seemed to no longer know where he was or what was happening.

  I was so intent on the battle that I didn't know when Jeri grabbed my arm. She moved against me and I suddenly realized she was clutching me above the elbow and leaning heavily on my shoulder in order to keep herself upright. Her eyes were closed and she had a look of awful concentration on her face, as if some force was beating against her mind. While I was staring at her and wondering what on earth had happened to her, I saw Kyle deliver the coup de grace from the corner of my eye: a powerful heel kick to the side of the giant's remaining knee.

 
; Kalki simply toppled. He fell on his side and tried to prop himself up, but Kyle was having no part of it. His foot struck Kalki's chin. His massive head snapped back. Kyle whirled and his other foot lashed out, hitting him squarely on his neck, just to the side of his Adam's apple. It must have shattered his trachea. It would have killed an ordinary man and I had no doubt that was what Kyle intended. Somehow Kalki kept breathing, but not for long. His massive body was now undefended, in perfect position for a truly killing blow. I think Kyle might have delivered it; but before he could, Jeri shouted at him.

  "Kyle, watch out!"

  Her voice stopped him. He looked back just in time. He must have felt like a cowboy who had fallen off his horse in the middle of a stampede, for a Lakshmi was running toward him, and that had precipitated the other Indians to follow. She stopped suddenly as if she had momentarily forgotten what she was doing, but the other Indians came on. She recovered and followed. Kyle felled the first two or three, then went down under the swarm.

  Our marines were already moving to counteract the Indians, and Jeri, Gene and I followed in their wake, along with the rest of our group. Soon the center of the domed room became a mob scene with men and women striking blows, falling, getting up, shooting and being shot.

  Jeri was shouting, “Try not to kill them!” to the marines and then abruptly countermanded her own order.

  "Mai! The man in the blue shirt! Kill him!"

  My gun was already in my hand. I'd drawn it the moment I saw the mass exodus of the Indians from one side of the room toward where Kyle and Kalki had been fighting. Or rather where Kalki had been getting his ass pounded into the floor; the giant hadn't gotten in a single blow.

  I didn't question Jeri's order. The only reason I hesitated was so I could sort him out from the others and not kill someone else, because our people were intermingled with theirs and for a moment I couldn't see who she meant. Then his head raised up from where Kyle was lying on the floor and he was separated from the others for a second.

  I took my shot and fired. Something had already told me he was a Crispy who'd converted to human. His stance, or the inflection in Jeri's voice, and the fact that he was pointed out to me as obviously more dangerous than the others, all went into it. That was why I didn't aim for the body. A Crispy human could have kept going with a chest wound. His head was a much smaller target, but I didn't hesitate. His right eye blinked out and the back of his head exploded in a spray of blood and tissue, bone and brains.

  Killing that convert didn't change much. The fight went on in a tangle of intermingled bodies.

  "Don't kill them!” Jeri shouted as she saw an opening and ran toward Kyle's prostrate form. Amazingly, her voice rose over the mêlée, clearly understandable, but shots kept ringing out and screams and shouts mingled with the gunfire. Some of the Indians were armed, too. I ran after Jeri, and Gene was right beside me carrying a little automatic pistol. We threaded our way through the throng toward where Kyle and Kalki were lying.

  The opening where I'd seen Jeri kneeling beside Kyle closed and they disappeared from sight. The whole great room was in an uproar. I doubt that very many people understood what was going on. The impetus was to protect and succor our own people and if any Indians got in the way, too bad. I'm sure the Indians must have felt the same way, or perhaps worse. After all, their god had been defeated. Perhaps he was dead. He was as unmoving as Kyle. Maybe that hampered the Indians. I tried to simply fight my way toward Jeri and Kyle and let the marines take care of everything else, but I kept my pistol ready.

  Unfortunately, there were too few marines for them to do it all, especially with Jeri's admonition not to kill hampering them. It left room for one more converted Crispy to get close to Jeri. He came wading through the mass of bodies like a boat moving through rough water. People stopped whatever mayhem they were committing as he neared, just as they had for the Lakshmi earlier. I had lost sight of her after shooting the converted Crispy threatening Kyle and Jeri and then lost her again as I tried to keep my mind unhampered, knowing the new one was up to no good, and knowing what he was doing from past experience, but it didn't work. He was befuddling whoever got in his way by messing with their short-term memory, including mine.

  The next thing I knew Jeri was falling and Gene was shouting.

  "No!” he screamed and a shot rang out almost in my ear. It stunned me and took away my hearing, making me even more befuddled than I was from the loss of a tiny slice of my life, a few moments’ worth of memory.

  A huge body fell against me, taking us both to the floor with me on the bottom lying in a puddle of warm liquid that I dimly realized must be blood. When a seven-foot-tall woman lands on you there isn't much room for doubt about gravity being a force of nature. I was stunned into immobility while the fighting swirled around me. Amazingly, I still had my gun in my hand but even had I had the sense to use it right then, I didn't have a target. The Lakshmi was so large she was practically smothering me and her body mass prevented me from seeing what was going on around me. I struggled to get out from under her, using my enhanced muscles to shove her away.

  When I could see again I was on the floor beside Gene and Jeri, both lying very still. Kyle was just sitting up and crawling over to Jeri. We were surrounded by what was left of the squad of marines. Beyond them bodies lay helter skelter, most of them Indians. Crispies were streaming into the dome.

  Jeri blinked her eyes. Kyle gave a sigh of relief and knelt beside her. Her arms rose up and pulled his face down for a kiss. Afterward, she struggled to her feet with Kyle's support. I had thought they were both dead but they seemed to be relatively unharmed. Gene wasn't. He had been practically decapitated by a long, sharp curvy-bladed knife that was still impaled in his neck and if that hadn't been enough, he had also been shot in the head. Even Crispies couldn't help him. I looked bleakly at Jeri.

  "I'm sorry, Cherry. He took that knife in order to keep it from you. She came at us wielding it and a gun, too. Yours isn't the only life Gene saved, but it was you he was thinking about."

  I stared down at his body and let the tears flow unchecked. My God, he must have loved me. I shuddered at the thought of that knife blade entering his neck and practically slicing his head off. I found myself thinking through the tears that I was glad I'd given him that one night together. I would have felt worse than awful if I hadn't. Not after he died for me.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  For a while we didn't know what was going to happen. There had been more violence done in that dome in 15 minutes than the whole of Cresperia had seen in centuries. I knew it wasn't our fault but that didn't necessarily mean anything. It was almost certainly not what we, or the Crispies of any faction, had expected. It certainly wasn't what our group had wanted. I doubted the Indians thought it would get to the stage of fighting. They had probably thought Kalki would just awe us all into submission.

  The Crispies quickly began clearing the bodies out of the central dome with manipulator carts. Jeri told us not to worry, that they were being preserved until the various factions decided our fate.

  "Our fate?” Kyle questioned. He finished buttoning his shirt back up and slipped into his jacket.

  "Bad choice of words,” Jeri reassured him. “No one is going to hurt us, but there are a number of different factions discussing the situation with some elders of various persuasions. We need to wait here."

  We retreated from the bloody area to the seats. I made no suggestions at all but simply followed along. My mind was still numb over Gene's death. I just couldn't picture that energetic, congenial grin being gone forever.

  Someone brought coffee. I accepted a cup and sipped at it. The aroma told me before I tasted. It was heavily laced with something akin to brandy. I drank more of it and felt some of the numbness leaving my body. I blessed whoever thought of it. It gave me the energy to recuperate somewhat and take part in the discussion that followed.

  While we were waiting for the Cr
ispies to decide what they were going to do, Jeri and Kyle related their part in the fracas. Mostly it squared with what I remembered, but there were lots of questions. I asked a lot of them, simply to keep my mind off Gene.

  "What were you whispering to Kyle so urgently about right before he challenged Kalki?” I asked Jeri.

  "Oh, that. Kalki apparently never saw the need to enhance his musculature since he was so large. I noticed it right away and told Kyle I thought he could take him if it came to a fight, and that I could keep Kalki from using his perceptive sense if he tried. I really wasn't expecting it to come down to a brawl, though."

  "I was,” Kyle said. “I've met his kind before. He came into the dome prepared to dominate us and nothing would have prevented it except our complete surrender. I just decided to get it over with, since it was going to happen whether we liked it or not.” He shrugged like a little boy caught stealing cookies that would have been given to him anyway. “Jeri had already told me he was only proportionately strong for his size, and I was pretty sure he wasn't the type to have practiced any of the martial arts, like I have since way back when. And Jeri was going to keep his perceptive sense reined in."

  "You were that certain he would want to fight rather than compromise?"

  "Absolutely, although it wasn't much of a fight."

  "I agree now,” Jeri said. “I should have trusted Kyle when he whispered to me that Kalki wanted to demonstrate his superiority.” She leaned into him and he put an arm around her.

  "I guess that's why Jeri grabbed my arm, then. She must've been blocking Kalki. But what happened when you got buried under all the Indians?” I asked Kyle. “I thought for sure they had killed you."

  He chuckled but there was little mirth to it. “Once upon a time I saved my own life by playing dead. It was a long time ago, but I remembered how well it worked. All I had to do was lie there with my mouth gaping open and my tongue hanging out. They pummeled me a bit but didn't hurt me much—until someone conked me with a piece of firewood. That was about the same time Kalki recovered enough to know he was lying next to me."