Klein rushed up to Hyams and ripped the creature’s corpse off his chest. He could see Hyams’ muscles involuntarily shaking and could hear Hyams trying to form a sentence about something. “Ff.. f.f.. A… Llleexx… Bbbbbuuuurrrnnnnii,” he stuttered out as his body shook.
“We need a trolley to wheel him into the infirmary! Harris, get that one and bring it over here!”
“But that’s for the camera…” Spenser meekly protested as Harris casually brushed him aside and took the trolley. The camera fell off the trolley with a sickening crunch as Harris raced over to where Hyams had fallen.
“On three, lift and put him on there!” Klein yelled. “One…two…three!” They quickly lifted the shuddering Hyams on top of the trolley as he continued to attempt to form sentences. “Ssss…trrreeeee…” Hyams wheezed out as he was placed on the trolley.
“Guzman, other end of the trolley! To the infirmary!” Guzman and Klein moved the trolley as fast as they could, and for once Klein was surprised at the speed Guzman could muster in an emergency.
Almost immediately after they had left, the other men could hear the sound of Cashman’s approach. “What the hell just happened?” Cashman yelled as he arrived. “I leave you people alone to film a program that’s supposed to enhance the value of this place, make us all some good money, and you manage to completely FUBAR everything in a manner of hours! Why did I just get an emergency call?”
The shock of the event had caused Spenser to completely lose his nerve. In a normal frame of mind, he might have avoided instantly incriminating the individuals involved, respecting the convicts’ propensity for violence, if not their concepts of honor and omerta. In panic and confusion, his rational sense of self-preservation was lost. “It was Aleksandrov! He’s been giving me trouble all day, insubordination, being unreasonable, until Hyams finally called him out on it! Hyams challenged him, and fought like a lion!” Spenser exclaimed. “But that…that bastard Alek fought dirty, and knocked him onto some kind of weird alien toad monster! He probably put it there too, and was just waiting to put Hyams into that trap! That evil twisted bastard...”
“Shut up! Alek, is what he says true?”
Alek’s face was so hard and unmoving that it could have been a piece of iron. “He is lying. The man attacked me. I defended myself. I had no idea that toads lived on Domremy. All men should defend themselves,” he said succinctly.
“You know what that sounds like to me, Alek? That sounds like a bald-faced lie. Anyone here gonna tell me who threw the first punch, and why?” Cashman yelled. None of the men spoke. Omerta was based on fear far more than honor, and the men were more terrified of Aleksandrov than they were of Cashman, that distant schemer who had come to spend more time playing mental chess games and worrying about filming rights since Spenser had arrived. Spenser was horrified at the men’s response, and finally realized that his poorly planned tirade had actually made Alek look stronger. Before, he might have just seemed like a dim thug to them. After what I said about him planting the toad, he’ll seem like a much smarter strategic genius, and a much greater threat than Cashman, he realized as the rational aspect of his mind finally regained control.
“So, you want to play it that way? ‘Snitches get stitches’, huh? Well, this is what you’re gonna get from me! No more filming bonuses. And halved pay for six months! No more alcohol in the bar until I say so! And if I ever hear any of you so much as grumble while this man is filming, I will personally shoot you in your goddamn head myself! Understood?”
The men all nodded.
“Now get onto patrol! Filming today is over, because I said so! And Alek, if Hyams dies from whatever that toad put into him, so do you!”
As he left with the other men to go on patrol with Cashman, Aleksandrov stared at Spenser with his hard, steely eyes. There were no words spoken; Alek remembered Spenser’s command. But to Spenser, the harsh glare of Alek was scarier than any verbal threat could possibly be. Under the stare, Spenser felt the last of his courage and resolve melt away, replaced by a lurking persistent fear. Aleksandrov was angered. And as long as Spenser remained at the settlement, he was in danger of paying a terrible price for his mistake.
It had been a long, hard, unrewarding day. Cashman sat on his bed in his room sighing, taking a breather after the exhausting march he had forced his men – and himself – to perform as punishment for what had happened to Hyams. When he had stopped by the infirmary after the patrol, the Medrobo had told him that Hyams was in “critical, but stable” condition; the actual doctor, being shared between several settlements, was “not available to speak with currently.” Goddamn Medrobos with their flat voices, trying to play at emotion, Cashman thought. Only there ‘cause it’s so rare to get a real doc signed up for this colony…
His most loyal man, Hyams, had been severely injured and would probably die due to that undisciplined, savage thug Aleksandrov. Cashman knew that the man was guilty, but none of Alek’s peers would dare rat on him right to his face. Thanks to Spenser’s moronic rant, they’d probably be unlikely to incriminate him behind his back, either. Luckily for Cashman, Alek did have a major weakness: regardless of whether the men believed him to be a superman capable of brilliant premeditated revenge schemes, Cashman still knew he was nothing but a dim Slavic ox, a clod with no leadership potential and no grasp of strategy, who could be easily dispatched with enough cunning. Cashman had more pressing concerns at the moment, a different enemy who did have a grasp of strategic thought, and someone he had already let live far too long. To defeat such an enemy, he needed a means of monitoring their plans and learning what more information he could out of them before he could arrange a clean kill, a convenient accident that wouldn’t leave a mess that could implicate him. He picked up his phone…
“Hello there. I’d like to play a chess game soon. Maybe a few days, couple of weeks at most?” Though Cashman had no contact with the Religious Dissenters, he too knew that all calls on Domremy were monitored, and so had been forced to create his own crude code language so that he and his accomplice could communicate. It was far cruder than Crop Talk and could only convey a very limited set of meanings and ideas in comparison to the code language of the Dissenters, but it suited Cashman’s purposes well.
“Certainly. A week and a half sound good to you?” The voice on the phone was soft, feminine, whispered. It reeked of guile and scheming, and Cashman hated it, for it represented someone devious, intelligent, and most of all, unpredictable. Cashman hated intelligence, hated randomness, and despised underlings who possessed ambition. He preferred loyal, unwavering, predictable folk like Hyams.
“Quicker’s better. I’m really itching for a game.” Cashman hoped he wasn’t betraying his urgency too much. Seeming too anxious in his tone of voice wouldn’t only make him look cowardly to her, it would make him look suspicious to the people who were doubtless monitoring the conversation even now.”
“Don’t worry,” the voice giggled. “I’m sure we’re not talking Bobby Fisher.”
“All the same, you should tell me how it‘s played. That way, I’ll be sure to win big in our wagered game.”
A sense of greedy urgency crept into the feminine voice. “We will split the winnings just like you said, won’t we?”
It’ll be a snowy day in Hell before I split it with you like I promised, you manipulative bitch, Cashman thought. “Yes, just like I promised. I’m always willing to reward anyone who helps me win a big game. Be it football when I was back in high school, or chess now.”
“Which kind of football was that again?” The voice seemed puzzled, as if the concept was entirely alien to her. Cashman sighed. “The kind only Americans play, honey. The one where you use your hands more than your feet and everybody kicked that weird way until the 1970s, when they started kicking like everybody else.”
The voice became unexpectedly enthusiastic. “But I heard the Canadians and Australians play that way too…”
“Bye, darlin’.” Cashman ended the call. My
“great football” career consisted of sitting on a bench until my junior year of high school. I’m not sitting on a bench ever again. Now I play to win.
Klein was sitting in the bar thinking over the day’s events. He had little patience for conversation and small talk, especially after he had seen Hyams sent to the infirmary. But Guzman had decided to sit next to him, and was prattling on anyway, oblivious to the fact that Klein was not in a talking mood.
“Biggest damn frog I’ve ever seen, Klein! I swear that thing was the size of a cat! And it probably killed Hyams, too! Worse than chupacabra. We should kill every one of those goddamn things before anybody else dies! You agree with me, right?”
Klein tried his best to hide how tiresome he found the conversation by not sighing. “Hyams is still alive. I saw him in the infirmary. The Medrobo said his vitals were critical but stable, and no internal organs were ruptured. There was only the spine wounds and the venom. I think he’ll get better in time. We got him into the infirmary pretty quick.”
“Hope you’re right, Klein, but who knows how many of those toads are still out there? There’s probably dozens of ‘em past the town perimeter!”
“Well, if its anything like an Earth toad in terms of diet or lifestyle, there can’t be too many that big,” Klein said. I know as little as anybody else about the biology of these “toads,” but if it gives you any peace of mind, I’ll lie to make you feel better -- until my patience runs out. “For all we know, it could be a rare or endangered species, like the King Cobra on Earth. Big and scary, but rarely seen.”
Guzman took a huge swig of beer, as if he was unconvinced by Klein’s explanation and needed further persuasion. Klein was rapidly losing interest in the conversation and decided to go up to his room to get ready to sleep. He shrugged his shoulders. “You probably won’t see another one for a long time, if ever,” he said as he headed for the stairs. Before he went up, Klein could see Erskine motioning for him to come up to the bar. Klein wearily trudged over, wondering if there was some discrepancy on his bar tab.
“Got somethin’ I need to see you about. Come into the room behind the bar,” Erskine muttered, trying to be as low-key as possible. Klein followed him into the back room. It was a messy, disheveled place, with papers and mementos strewn about, and a dartboard with a picture of an old, white-haired judge on the wall adjacent to the door. It was a room seemingly reflective of carelessness and apathy, in sharp contrast to the anxious tone in Erskine’s voice.
“This afternoon, I heard a very interesting conversation coming from your room. There was this female voice coming out of your room…”
“Ixtara? I let her crash there this week. She claims she can’t find another place to stay, the other Forlani don’t like her much for some reason…”
“I couldn’t make out most of it, but I overheard something about football. I was gonna just ignore it, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way. When the hell did Forlani women start playing football? Nothing about it makes sense. Have you been talking to her about football lately?”
A nagging sense of anxiety began to form in the back of Klein’s mind. “Can’t say that I have, either American football or what you Americans call soccer, but I’m sure she has other clients.”
“That’s another thing,” Erskine said. “I’ve never seen her with another ‘client’ from the moment you brought her in. Most of the other Forlani women seem perfectly willing and able to go from man to man, but her—she only seems to spend time with you. There’s something really suspicious about her, she acts like no other Forlani woman I’ve seen or heard about in my time here.”
“You think she might be a spy from Hyperion?” Klein asked. He too was beginning to become unnerved by the sudden change in Ixtara’s behavior. Klein had never heard of the Corporation using Forlani as spies, but his short time on Domremy had convinced him that virtually anything could happen in the colony.
“I don’t think so, and that makes me even more anxious. Why would Hyperion go through all the trouble of recruiting a Forlani spy and sticking her in some crappy bar in the middle of nowhere? I don’t know what she’s doing, and that makes me even more anxious. I need you to send her away. Now.” Erskine’s sense of anxiety became more palpable to Klein as he became more emphatic. “You’ve been a big help keeping the local thugs from acting up, so Cashman stays off my back, but if you’re harboring people involved in some kind of weird conspiracy, I can’t let you have that room above the bar anymore!”
Klein responded, “I have no idea what she’s doing. I’ll make sure she’s gone by the end of the week, so you don’t have to worry about anything.”
“I’d better not hear about any suspicious goings on even after she leaves,” said Erskine. “This bar has a reputation to maintain, with you or without.”
As Klein went up to bed, he considered the potential reasons behind Ixtara’s strange behavior. Maybe Erskine was just being paranoid—running a business in Cashman’s “law and order town” would be a miserable experience for just about anyone, and if it ever got out that the place was a den of spies from Hyperion or anywhere else, customers would no longer see the bar as a place where they could safely complain with impunity about the misery of their personal lives. Business would be as good as dead if that happened. But Erskine did have a point…Ixtara had never demonstrated much interest in Earthly customs while she had been with him, and certainly nothing in sports. And if she did have another client, why would she be chatting with him in the afternoon, when most of the convicts on Domremy were still hard at work in the fields and the towns? Klein tried to reassure himself that it was just his nasty old habit of jealousy, his imposing of human customs and notions of morality onto the Forlani, but his mind wasn’t dominated by anger towards her; instead he felt a deep suspicion of her motivations. Erskine’s paranoia about a weird conspiracy began to seem less like a silly tinfoil hat fantasy and more an illustration of a potential threat.
He decided to give Ixtara a simple test as he came into his room. She was stretched out on his bed, smiling at him in an attempt to seduce him. Klein had other plans. “Hello, Klein,” she called to him softly. “Hi, Ixtara,” he said back in a tired voice, feigning apathy. “Not interested tonight?” she asked him, a crestfallen look on her face. “Maybe I should get you a nice Somega for sleep tonight.”
“No, I’ll get it myself tonight. I’m not that tired.” Klein thought he could see a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes for half a second, but it was gone before he blinked. Gonna need a little bit more of a test than that. “You know, I’ve always wondered,” Klein said as he stretched out on the bed, “why I’ve never seen a Forlani male. What exactly is it that they do?”
Ixtara had a questioning look on her face, as if she was puzzled by the notion that Forlani males had to do anything. Then she smiled and gave a musical giggle. “Forlani males aren’t like human males. They don’t have to do much of anything, certainly nothing that could compare to what you do, Klein. They are the Seed Bearers, the ones who anoint the females for the gift of Avesti, the Exquisite Moment that is the sacred duty of all women. For this gift, they are to be respected, protected, and cared for.”
“I’ve heard women describe pregnancy as a lot of things, but never ‘exquisite’,” Klein said.
“Ah, but it is, it is! The only thing that can compare with that is the day that a Forlani woman is Chosen as a man’s First Wife – if she is Chosen.” Klein sensed a very slight but palpable tension in her voice on the word if, as if there was some sort of ancient frustration buried deep within Ixtara’s memories. “But of course, you are also very valuable and precious to me, Klein.”
“I hope I’m not just valuable in the financial sense,” Klein said sarcastically.
“Oh, no! Certainly not, Klein! You very proficient in the pleasure-making arts as well and I enjoy our time together!”
Guess Forlani don’t have much room for romantic sweet talk in their culture, Klein thought. At least the women
certainly don’t. Enough beating around the bush, time for the test. “Ixtara, I’ve been on this world for what feels to me, at least, like a long time. I’ve been with a lot of Forlani women, but I feel like I’ve never truly understood them or their culture. On this Friday, would it be okay if, instead of just sleeping here and screwing each other with no real understanding, what if we went to the Forlani enclave and had a date there? You know, drink, talk about things, learn about each other, and then have sex instead of the other way around?”
Klein could sense Ixtara’s shock at his request. “W-well, Klein, I’m not sure if I’ve kept up the relationships I needed to in the Forlani community…
Boom. Now I know Ixtara’s trying to pull something, even if I still don’t know exactly what it is. “I’ll be the one arranging the trip. I’m sure the Forlani will take my money just as willingly as anybody else’s. Maybe we can even charm your way back into their good graces! I’ll make the arrangements so we can leave two days from now, on Friday night, and get back around Saturday afternoon. It’ll be great!”
Ixtara sat apart from him on the other end of the bed, silent and aloof. She didn’t even bother to look at Klein’s face. Klein saw only back of her head as he turned the lamp off. He stared at her shapely figure silhouetted in the darkness, but for once judged the lithe Forlani shape with a new objectivity. “Not giving me any tonight, sweetie?” Klein called to her. Ixtara said nothing. “Suit yourself, but I might just decide to dock your pay for tonight,” he told her. Still no response. Yep, something’s definitely up. Come Friday, I’ll figure out what that is.
On Thursday afternoon, Klein decided to check in on Hyams in the infirmary. It was far more poorly equipped than most hospitals on Earth, with only a few beds and an overall philosophy designed to get patients out as quickly as possible. There was no doctor permanently assigned to the facility, because Hyperion Corporation found it difficult to find doctors who would willingly sign up to get shot across the galaxy to work in a dismal penal colony and sever ties to all their friends and family on Earth. Domremy did have a few doctors, but they were far too few to for each settlement to have one on permanent assignment. Instead, each infirmary had a Medrobo to perform basic medical tasks and look after the patients, and doctors were only called in when absolutely necessary. The doctor who had stopped by to perform the toxicology report on Hyams was already long gone to another settlement, leaving only the Medrobo to look after the bedridden victim. Noticing Klein’s entry, it swiveled its head around and greeted him with a flat, placid, “Hello, Willie Klein.”
Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1) Page 9
