by Steve Perry
That’s what dogs were for.
“Morning!” a walker going the other way called out.
Kifo glanced at the man, a short and heavyset balding local, tanned and smiling. “Morning,” he called back. He waved his walking stick as the man drew closer.
“The ruins are beautiful today,” the fat man said. “Yesterday’s rain has washed everything clean.”
Kifo nodded. Smiled. The fat man had no idea of what the ruins really represented. And he was not among the chosen to ever know, either, but still Kifo smiled. He was not intolerant of some things.
Ignorance was not in itself evil. With a few words, he could offer the man a status he could never hope to achieve on his own, could break through his shell of not-knowing and haul him out into the light, did he but choose to do so. But, no. He did not wish to offer that pearl to this swine. He could almost feel sorry for the hiker. No, ignorance was not necessarily evil, but it certainly was a lack, and why disturb this man’s foolish bliss, unfounded though it was? There were three kinds of people in the galaxy: those who worked for the gods, those who worked against them, and those who did neither. The first must be cared for, the second removed, and the third group was of no interest. Dogs were supposed to worry about the rats in their master’s compound, not those in the far fields, was this not so?
Ahead of him a panicked shrew scurried out onto the pedestrian walkway, right behind it a red treesnake, gaining. Kifo watched with interest as the snake, moving much faster than he would have thought possible, lunged and sank its fangs into the shrew. The little mammal spasmed, went rigid, then limp. After a few seconds the snake dislocated its jaws and began to swallow the shrew.
Kifo moved a bit nearer, treading carefully so as not to make too much noise.
The snake turned, the shrew half-eaten, and regarded the man. Perhaps it was his size, or maybe the vibrations from the repellor. Whatever, the snake slithered away into the bush quickly, winding its coils over the hard surface like a sine wave on a holoscope. In two seconds it was gone.
Kifo smiled. Some lesson here, he supposed, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Ah, well. Perhaps later when he sat to meditate it would come to him.
He continued his walk toward the ruins. Behind him the vouch hummed to itself and tagged along, ready to do its job at any hint of need.
When Taz padded out of the fresher from her shower, the call light was lit on her com, on the personal number. Someone had called while she was showering. She was pretty sure it wasn’t anybody from work; they’d have used the priority code. She regarded the light for a moment. Turned away from it.
She dressed. Silks under her loose-weaves and flexboots. She tucked her short double-charge backup hand wand into her boot pocket, put on her belt and holster, but left the spring pistol on the night table.
Stared again at the com and its tiny blue light. Chewed at her lip. Picked up her pistol. Began to leave the sleeproom. Stopped at the doorway, turned back, moved to the com. Sat on the bed and stared at the light for ten seconds.
“Fuck it,” she said, reaching for the control.
“Hello, Tazzi. I love you.”
The recording chip beeped once, indicating the end of the message, then gave her the date and time stamp. The caller hadn’t identified himself, but there was no need.
Ruul. God damn him. She’d known it would be him.
This was going to have to stop. She couldn’t stand it. Her heartbeat was too fast, her breathing too shallow, she felt as if she were in a fight-or-flight situation, her hormones flowing in danger mode.
Damn, damn. She sat and made an effort to slow her breathing. When she was calmer, at least on the surface, she stood.
In the kitchen, Saval prepared breakfast: soypro links, eggs, toast, cereal, fruit, juice.
“Hey, I’m the host,” she said. “I’m supposed to fix the meals.”
“I got here first. What the hell, I can cook as well as the next man.”
Taz looked at the meal. “Better than most, actually,” she said.
They ate, and Taz didn’t say anything about Ruul’s call.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” he asked, as he polished off the last of what had to be a dozen eggs.
“Well, there’s not much direct investigating we can do until we get lab results or more input. It’s about time for my monthly weapon qualification. I thought we’d go to the range and do that. Give me a chance to see if you can hit the side of a warehouse with those toys you carry.” She waved at Saval’s spetsdods.
He shrugged. “Sure. I’m not in Geneva’s class or even Emile’s, but I might be able to keep you up with you.”
Taz grinned. Saval was in for a little surprise at the range. She’d been combat pistol champion for the Leijona police force the last three years, had scored third in the planetary peace officer games last summer. And would have tied for first had not a magazine malfunction cost her six points during the final round shoot-off. She’d never mentioned any of this to Saval before.
“Hey, I’m just a small-talent local cool,” she said. “With a beat-up spring pistol. I hardly ever practice.”
He chuckled. “And your wrist is sore and your eyes are tired and you’ve been sick, too, right?”
Her laugh joined his. Good old Saval. Still sharp as a needle. “Come on, brother. Let’s go places and shoot things.”
The police range was in the training center near the west Kubwa River Bridge, only a few klicks from the station. It was state of the art, full holoprojics, with a full-time range master and two line officers.
Most of the police agencies onplanet used the place for matches and qualifications, but there were a couple slots open when Taz and Saval arrived. She signed them in, was assigned an alley and issued a couple hundred rounds of practice ammo by the RO. Saval also collected some blunt-nosed loads for his spetsdods.
“It’s a pretty good setup,” she told Saval as they moved toward the alley. “You can program the targetcomp to provide from one to a hundred attackers, any scenario you want to input, hostages, cover, whatever. The qualification runs require passing scores on five standard streetsits, with perps at ranges from point blank to fifty meters. Got some armed better than you, some in protective gear, like that.
Probably stuff you could do in your sleep.”
“Been a while since I did anything other than plinking at plastic cans,” Saval said. He exchanged his chemical dart magazines for the practice rounds.
She smiled. “Right, and your arms are sore, too?”
They both laughed.
The alley was short and narrow, smooth and hard walls tapering from a square large enough to allow three people to stand side by side next to a small armored box that caught the funneled shots. With the holographics lit, the scene could be any size.
Taz switched her spring gun’s magazine for the indoor target loads, holstered the pistol. “You want to warm up, shoot a few practice sessions?”
“Not unless you do,” he said.
“Let’s try it cold. You don’t get to practice on the street.”
She smiled to herself as she moved to stroke the computer to life. She knew the five standard runs real well, Saval didn’t, so she had an advantage right off. But hey, he was supposed to be the best, right?
After she beat him she would put the alley on scramble mode so neither of them would have an edge, just to be fair.
“I’ll set things so we’re shooting at identical scenarios. You take the right, I’ll do the left. Five setups.”
“Okay,” he said.
“What’s the effective range on those things?”
“Well, they will shoot to fifty meters okay. I don’t know if I can hit anything that far away.”
She finished the computer sequence. “Got ten seconds,” she said. She moved back to stand next to her brother. She wouldn’t see his targets from her angle, only her own, so she wouldn’t be distracted. The first round was a simple one. A shop interior in go
od lighting, one perp popping out from behind cover-exactly what cover was different each time the thing ran-with a handgun. You had two seconds max from the time the attacker showed until he started firing, and if he fired first, you lost, because the computer never missed at close-range encounters. Average combat distance of this run was seven meters, sometimes closer.
Since they were both using chemically augmented hand weapons, any hit on a target would count the same-you scored as much for a hand as a head-so the only things you had to worry about were missing and time. If you shot your opponent before he could shoot, you won the round. If you didn’t, you lost.
Simple.
Her half of the alley shimmered and turned into a clothing shop. Racks of coats and coveralls came into being, grew solid-looking. Taz shook her hand a little to relax it, moved it away from her body toward the holstered gun over her right hip.
A short, squatty man with wild eyes leaped out from behind a display of vat-leather capes and thrust a slug gun toward Taz. Screamed at her: “Die, fucker!”
Taz snatched at her spring pistol, the uncounted hours of practice over the years making the movement smooth and fast. She was concentrating on the attacker, but was aware enough of the unseen Saval on the other side of the holoproj to hear the cough of his spetsdod.
He shot before she even touched her own weapon.
Damn!
It didn’t delay her draw more than a half second, though, and she snapped her pistol out and fired, hitting the attacker solidly on the chest. He moaned very realistically and crumbled.
The scene held for five more seconds, then flicked off.
The next run began to fade in. She glanced over at her brother before the holoproj blocked her view. He wasn’t smiling; his face was serious.
Taz didn’t reholster her gun. Since the spetsdods were glued to the backs of Saval’s hands with plastic flesh, he didn’t have to draw, he just pointed his index finger and pap! there went the shot. If she wanted to beat him, she’d have to keep her gun out; otherwise he’d have a quarter, maybe a half second on her every round.
Yeah, well, in a one-attacker run, maybe that quarter second would make the difference, but in the later scenarios, thing got a little more complex. The second involved six attackers; the third had two with hostages as shields, two without; and the fourth had five guys in helmets and torso armor, so a body shot wouldn’t count-you had to hit an arm or leg. And the last run threw six gunmen at you at ranges from in your face to fifty meters, in various combinations, and if you didn’t stop and aim at the long-range guys, you’d miss, so that snap shot from the hip wouldn’t help much.
A woman slipped around the corner of the warehouse and pointed a shotgun at Taz-Taz shot herAs the woman fell, a man rolled out from behind a trash masher, stayed prone and partially covered by the masher’s rollup ramp, and aimed a pistol at her. As she swung to shoot him, another attacker screamed, jumped from the low roof, ran at Taz with an upraised knife-Taz ignored the knifeman, shot the pistoleer, then punched her spring pistol into her other hand in a double grip and put a pair of shots into the last one’s face. He fell, skidded to a halt right next to her feet.
The first times she’d fired this scenario, years ago, the screaming knifeman had distracted her long enough for the pistoleer to get her. That hadn’t happened in a long time. Six for six …
While the ‘proj was still lit, she ejected her magazine, pulled another from her belt and shoved it into place.
The rest of the exercise went well. Taz got faster during the final runs. She missed all the hostages-that was always embarrassing, to hit one of them, even if it didn’t matter with sublethal ammo-took out the bad guys cleanly. The fifth scenario was the most dangerous, and this time started with the closest attacker followed immediately by the one farthest away, then the mid-rangers. Adjusting from point blank, to fifty meters, then twenty meters in less than three seconds was tricky, but she was on top of it, and didn’t miss a beat.
As the final run popped off, Taz looked at the timer on the floor by her feet. The five standard qualification runs were cumulative. The computer started the clock when an attacker appeared, stopped it when he was hit. You could miss and still outshoot the bad guys, provided you could get off a second or third shot fast enough. She hadn’t missed any this session. The slowest you could go and pass was thirty-six seconds. The average speed for a qualification series was around twenty-eight. The record, set nine years ago by a cool Taz was certain had been circulating bacteria-aug or some kind of nerve-booster chem, was eighteen point two seconds. Her own personal best was nineteen-five, that the best time of three runs, after a week of intensive practice.
This run was at twenty point oh two seconds.
She smiled widely as she holstered her piece. A half second off her best, not bad for cold. Not bad, hell, it was fucking terrific.
She looked over at Saval, who was replacing the magazines in his spetsdods. “How’d you do?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Not too good. Shooting never was my real strength.”
Taz was prepared to be generous as she stepped over to look at his timer. To admit to her little secret of being combat champ, to offer to scramble the codes so they could start out even. But her smile went away when she looked down at the electronic numbers floating a handspan over the floor between his boots.
Seventeen seconds flat.
Damn!
He looked at her, and couldn’t hide the little grin, though he tried. “Maybe when I get loosened up, practice some, we can try it again.”
“You’re a dick, you know that?”
He gave up trying to hold the smile.
“You just beat the fucking record by almost a full second and you have the nerve to stand there and shuck embarrassed at me. I ought to hit you!”
“Sorry,” he said.
“You lie.” But she grinned as she said it. She knew about karma. It served her right, thinking she was going to put one past him. She’d shaded the odds in her favor, and still he’d won. That was appropriate.
And also impressive. If what he said was true, that there were other matadors who could outshoot him, that was even more impressive. And he hadn’t missed once, either.
Jesu Damn.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I think you’ve had enough practice for today.”
Chapter TEN
WHILE TAZ TALKED to the lab people regarding their findings in the latest locked-room killing, Bork found a com booth in the lobby. He checked the time zone schedule converter program and found that it would be late afternoon on the part of Muto Kato where his wife and son were. He fed his credit code into the unit, accessed the White Radio net, and called home.
It took about three minutes for the system to accomplish its magic, and when the holoproj blinked on, he found himself grinning at Veate light years away.
“Bork!”
The transmission delay was short, Muto Kato being a long way off. For some reason nobody could explain, White Radio worked better at longer distance than it did close up. Delay at fifty light-years was less than at ten LY.
“Hi,” he said. “How’s everything?”
“I’m glad you called. We’re lonely. You wait right there.”
She moved from the screen, and Bork was treated to a view of his main communal room at a cost, according to the running tally in one corner of the holoproj, of about a stad a second. A ten-minute conversation would total about six hundred standards. Talk, when it was between stellar systems, was not cheap. He and Veate wouldn’t be having any deep philosophical discussions at this price.
After what Bork guessed would cost his account forty stads, Veate returned with little Saval.
“Say hello to your father, brat.”
The three-month-old albino baby could not speak, of course, but he could see okay. He smiled. Gurgled.
Bork’s chest got tight. Not enough room for all the pride. “Hey, kid.” Then he frowned. “How come you’re calling him a brat?”
“Because he is, that’s why. He’s smiling at you like oleo wouldn’t melt in his mouth but he kept me awake all night. You have to come home; I can’t do anything with him. He’s a daddy’s boy.”
Little Saval waved his chubby fists excitedly, smiled and made another noise at the holoproj.
“I miss you both,” Bork said.
“Yeah, you big thug, we miss you, too. But I’m serious about the brat. Listen, I want you to sing him that song you do to put him to sleep.”
Bork glanced around. The lobby of the cool station was fairly busy, POs going back and forth, civilians, even a few arrestees. “What, now?”
“Yes. I’ll record it so I can play it back to him later. Maybe we can fool him with a holoproj at bedtime, too.”
“Uh. ..”
“Look, Bork, I stayed home with your son so you could go play, and you will sing to him so I can get some rest. Do it.”
Bork grinned. Well. If it would make her happy. He turned the booth dampers up to keep the sound from filtering out into the lobby. Sang the song. Cost about a hundred and fifty stads but hey, it was only money. The best-looking and brightest baby in the galaxy was certainly worth it.
Bork finished the song and leaned back. Came the sound of applause. He turned and saw Taz standing in front of a dozen cools, all of them clapping and grinning at him.
“The dampers are all shot in these booths,” Taz said. “Hi, Veate! I’m trying to keep him out of trouble.”
Bork blinked at his sister. And blushed.
At the end of Snake Road there was a trail that switchbacked down a rocky incline. The planetary agency in charge of the upkeep of national parks had installed guardrails along the trail, but left the rest of it alone. The path had been worn flat and smooth over the rocks by the passage of millions of feet, and there was little worry that plants would overgrow it.
As Kifo walked, his vouch tooling along behind him, he found himself part of a procession of people going to see the ruins. A dozen or so walkers were ahead of him, strung out in groups of two or three; at least that many more followed him, ambling down the switchbacks toward the first viewpoint just around the next curve in the trail. From where he now was the ruins were not visible, merely a vast expanse of tall and thick woods, a mottled green carpet that lay over the land all the way to the horizon.
