by Steve Perry
Or, given how she was, maybe not. Maybe just tell the waiter to tell her.
But it was good, sure enough.
As the dusk thickened and darkened, a sauce with night added slowly to it, Kifo sat on a tree stump just outside the Gods’ Chamber. His repellor kept the tropical insects buzzing outside the force field’s range of a meter or so. The top of the stump, which had once supported a tree that must have been twenty meters around and probably almost a hundred meters high, was covered with thick green moss that cushioned the bare wood under his backside.
Kifo had already installed a temporary program in the vouch, to keep it from scooting in after him when he went into the chamber. Certainly the little machine would feel his mental agitation once he went into Communion, and while he appreciated the vouch’s doglike devotion to his safety, it would hardly do for it to start injecting chemicals to calm him at the wrong moment.
True, there was an override circuit in the vouch that wouldn’t let things get past a certain point. If death came close enough to claim Kifo, the vouch would seek to do battle no matter what he told it. Of course, if the Zonn wanted their subject dead, no bioelectronic viral/molecular computer on wheels would be able to stop it. Still, it was built to try, and over the years Kifo had come to feel a certain kind of affection for the vouch, even though it was only a biomechanical and not truly alive. People could do that, anthropomorphize almost anything. Hello, vouch. And how are we today?
A moment of humor to break the solemnity, that was good. Soon enough things would be a lot more serious.
A guard approached.
“The tourists and scientists have all left, Unique.”
“Good. Check once again and report back.”
The guard bowed slightly and hurried away. Kifo could have entered the chamber then, he knew. The guard would not have come had he not been sure of what he reported; still, there was no hurry. And though he was the highest of the chosen, the Unique of the Few, Kifo felt a tremor of fear dancing in him, slight, but there. He took a deep breath, let it escape, took another. It was not every day that a man spoke to the gods, and even though he knew in his heart and mind that he was a good servant, that in itself might not be enough. There were stories of those who had considered themselves worthy, who had been without apparent flaw, and who had displeased the Zonn in some manner when in Communion.
Men whose minds had been snapped like twigs, who had been retrieved gibbering and totally insane, gone to a plane from which they never returned. Kifo thought he was pure enough, but who could say what a god thought?
He hoped his fear was not so strong that it would shine through and cause him grief. But if it was the will of the Zonn that he be struck down, then so be it. He was a dog, and they were the masters, and that was as it should be.
Like a man chosen to placate an angry volcano, Kifo sat next to the edge of his destiny. The guard would return soon, and whatever would be, would be.
Chapter TWELVE
MIXED EMOTIONS DIDN’T even come close to describing how Taz felt as she dressed. She stared at her mirror. Her hair was too long; it needed to be trimmed. She hadn’t been working out enough; she was getting soft. How had Ruul ever found her attractive? She was ugly, too tall, too much muscle, too hairy; Christo, she was a fucking warehouse on legs.
The dark blue orthoskins, she decided. Dark would hide her better. And the new flexboots She blinked at her reflection. Dammit, woman, you’re going to go tell the man to leave you alone, to quit calling you, to get on about his life and stay out of yours, not to knock him flat with your beauty. You shouldn’t care a bug’s ass what he thinks of what you look like!
Shouldn’t. No, you definitely shouldn’t.
Her reflection smirked at her. Uh-huh. And who do you think you’re fooling here, Tazzimi Bork? Not me. Not for a Spandle second. I know what is in the drawer.
Fuck you.
It’s in the drawer, right where you left it.
Taz stared at the drawer on the left side of the dresser. To avoid thinking about what lay therein, she thought instead about the dresser, and how she had come by it.
The dresser had been an extravagant purchase, she’d had it for years, ever since the first week she’d joined the peace force. It was carved of a dark red fruitwood called namna ya tundo dogo, which was a local variant of cherry, save that the fruit produced by the trees was blue-black and the size of small apples. She’d spotted it at an outdoor market in Mende Town, and an old man blotched with sunlight and age stood next to it, smoking a smelly pipe. There were dozens of other booths, but there was just the one piece and the old man-he had to be a hundred T.S., easy-in his stall, nothing more.
After she’d paid her rent, she had all of three hundred stads left to her name, but she had a job and wanted to celebrate it. The dresser was low, had a mirror on the back, a slot for a chair, was rounded and polished to a dull shine, and she’d lusted after it on sight. It was the most beautiful piece of furniture she’d ever seen. A simple design, no knobs or loops or twirls or stuck-on decorations. Simple, functional, but it had to be worth five or six times what was in her account at the very least.
Still, she couldn’t not ask.
“How much?”
The old man smiled, revealing dazzling teeth that must be coated with the dental equivalent of nofric to stay so bright against the influx of greasy brown smoke from that awful pipe. Must be burning some kind of dung in the thing, it stank so bad. “How much do you have?”
“Not enough.”
“But that is for me to decide, is it not? How much?”
“Three hundred standards.”
The old man raised an eyebrow.
Yeah, I’d be insulted, too, grandda, I’d carved this and somebody waved that piddly amount at me.
“Only three hundred?” he said.
She pulled her credit cube, stroked it. A tiny one-side-only holoproj flickered dimly in the bright sunshine so it was visible to her alone. She turned the cube around so the old man could see the number.
“Three hundred and two stads and four demistads, to be exact.”
“Ah, well, that is another matter,” he said, shining his odorous smile at her. “I could not possibly let this piece go for a mere three hundred, but for three hundred and two and four tenths, it is yours.”
She blinked at him. “You serious?”
“Of course.”
There was in her a sudden desire to transfer the money, to grab the dresser and run. If the old man was that stupid, somebody was going to take advantage of him and she truly did love the piece. Then again, she was a newly minted cool, a peace officer, and to cheat the old man like that didn’t seem right. Maybe he didn’t know how valuable it was. Maybe somebody had left him to watch the store while they went to pee or something.
“It’s worth a lot more,” she said.
“I could take it to the market at Central City and get two thousand for it from a rich buyer,” he said.
“Three thousand, if I wanted to haggle. It is worth perhaps twice that offworld, and even after export taxes, I would clear four thousand.”
She didn’t understand. “If you could get five or six thousand stads for it, why in hell would you sell it to me for three hundred?”
“Three oh two point four,” he said. “Do you have any money other than that in your credit account?”
A highly personal question, one he didn’t have the right to ask. But she was intrigued. “Well, no.”
“Have you food supplies enough to last until you get paid again?”
She admitted that she did not.
“Then if you give me your three hundred and two and four tenths, how will you eat?”
She shook her head. “I dunno. Scrounge somehow. Maybe sell something else I own.”
“You would skip meals to own this dresser.”
“Yeah, sure. Look at it.” She touched the top lightly.
The old man’s smile increased. “In Central City, a fat merchant or
lumberlander would offer me much more money, but the amount would be but a tiny fraction of their wealth, a drop from a monied ocean.
You are willing to give all the money you have. Surely you see that this is a measure of real value?
“Too, I saw your face when you saw this dresser, saw light up in it the reason I make such things.
Money is nothing. I have more than I can spend. Your face reflects back to me what I put into the dresser. You will care for it, cherish it, enjoy it, is this not so?”
Taz grinned. Looked at the dresser, then back at the old man. She stroked the smooth wood softly, as he reached out and touched the opposite side at the same time. “Yeah,” she said. “You bet.”
“You and I, we have just made love, and this chunk of wood is the conduit of that energy. Such things are priceless. Money? Pah! When you look at this dresser, you will sometimes think of the crazy old man named Moyo with the smelly pipe and you will smile. And perhaps you will someday pass this poor wooden object to your child, and perhaps tell her the story of the old man. And maybe your daughter tells your granddaughter and she tells your great-granddaughter, and on and on and a thousand years from now, Moyo is long dead, Moyo is dust, but so in a small way, he still lives.
“An artist wishes his work to be appreciated. If you walked away now you would be still be the true owner of this piece, it was made for you. But I will take your money and you will take my creation and we will both be richer for it, no?”
And he smiled and she smiled and so it was.
Nearly every week after that, Taz went to the market to see Moyo. They became friends, she was invited to his studio, got to know his family and some of his friends. Twenty-four years she knew and liked him.
He worked right up until the day he died, keeled over next to a chair that he’d finished only minutes before. Moyo the artist passed away at the age of a hundred and thirty-three, and somebody suggested that a ceremony be held in his honor. He was well liked at the market in Mende Town. An announcement was made.
Taz had attended. As had nearly twelve thousand other people. Somehow, it didn’t really surprise her, but still:
Twelve thousand people.
And nobody had anything but good to say about the artist. Dead, maybe so, but Moyo was going to be around for a long, long time …
Taz shook her way loose from the memory, found that she was smiling. Ah, old man and smelly pipe.
What a joy.
That, however, was then. It was the now that concerned her at the moment.
She slid the drawer open. Reached inside. Withdrew the small plastic device. It was smaller than a pack of flicksticks, rectangular, a flat black with a single button on the side near one end. On the other end was a truncated cone the size of her little finger’s tip, a tiny hole in the center. That was the nozzle. The button was the control. You just had to point the nozzle and touch the button and the device would spray the most potent pheromone the local black market could obtain. Invisible once it was on, odorless save deep in the olfactories, supposedly an analog duplicate of what Saval’s wife could emit when excited.
Guaranteed to attract a normal human or mue better than anything else money could buy.
A pheromone pump. It was Saval’s comment about Pickle at the restaurant that made her think of it. It was easy enough to put in a com to one of her street people. It was in her mail slot when they’d gotten home.
There hadn’t been enough problems with them on Tembo to draw the notice of the Planetary Legislative Body, so possession of such a device here wasn’t against the law. Transportation on Republic ships was against the Galactic Penal Code, and worth a fat fine and possible imprisonment. Taz supposed that the pump could have been made onplanet, which would mean that she wasn’t abetting criminal activity. She hadn’t asked. It was only a matter of time until somebody seduced the wrong person, however, and pheromone pumps would be stuck on a schedule of proscribed chems.
That law wasn’t going to happen tonight, though.
Taz turned the pump in her fingers, looked at it. If she had any sense, she would drop it back in the drawer and shut it away. Better still, drop it in the disposal and be done with it. Yeah, it had cost a week’s pay, but she’d gotten better about tucking stads away over the years; she wouldn’t miss it that much.
Time stumbled again, something she was getting used to seeing lately. When it recovered its footing, Taz stood along with it.
And put the pheromone pump into her belt case.
Bork was coming back from the gym, pumped and sweating, heading for the shower when Taz appeared in the hall. She was dressed in a dark outfit, her hair washed and combed, her face clean.
“I-I’ve got to go out for a while,” she said.
“Sure.”
“Make yourself at home.”
“No problem.”
‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“See you.”
“Move safe, Taz.”
After she was gone and he’d finished his shower, Bork went to check the time zone computer. Even if it was the middle of the night, maybe he’d call and leave a message for Veate and the baby on the house comp. All of a sudden he was feeling real lonely.
Kifo sat in the middle of the Gods’ Chamber, the night hanging humidly over him like a damp sheet. The vouch prowled back and forth in front of the opening to the chamber; were he ascribing human characteristics to it, Kifo would have said it was frustrated.
The guards were posted throughout the ruins with instructions to come for him at dawn did they not see him sooner, but not before. The insects buzzed, the vouch hummed, and the sounds of his own heartbeat seemed loud in the darkness. Kifo pulled the Glyph from his pocket and held it in his hands, taking comfort from the familiar coldness of it. It had been more than two years since last he’d entered Communion. In daylight in the city, that seemed like a short time, a blink of an eye. Here and now, it seemed too long past to help him. He had achieved much during that time, moving as he saw fit, but there had been some failures. Most recently the matter of the policewoman who had gone offworld.
True, the one sent for her had been selected in haste and trained in yet greater haste, Mkono being busy elsewhere. But it was a small enough glitch, easily rectified. Surely the gods would not fault him fatally for it? What gnawed at Kifo more than the failure was the worry that perhaps he should have simply let well enough alone. The woman was adept enough, but had he let her continue to fumble around on her own, she would have likely failed to stop his plans. Now there was that offworld hired guard, the matador. He had heard about them, and there lay another worry
Came a faint tapping at the door to his mind. A thread of inquiry slithered tentaclelike to the entrance.
One could never predict how the gods would come, each time had been different. The first time they had thundered at him like malignant demons, cursing and hurling bolts of energy that made lightning seem pale and dim. The second time they had whispered so softly he could barely hear them. The third time they had done some of both, plus other things he could not put a name to.
Whither which who who who?
Testing him, for he knew they knew very well exactly who he was. Your servant, he formed in his mind.
Come for instructions.
Hie aaiiee who which which here now? came a second voice, distinct from the first.
Kifo had his eyes open, and ghostly lights played in the night air, soft greens and blue twinning together, flowing from the walls liquidly, oozing like heavy vapor to swirl around him.
Calls speaks calls listens listens! another voice said.
Yes, Kifo thought, I am listening. Sing to me your songs, Great Ones, speak to me of what must be done.
Key key key keykeykeykey! yet another of the Zonn chimed in.
Kifo rubbed the Glyph. Yes, I have the talisman. I have learned the lessons you gave me last time.
Open open open!
Free fre
e free freefreefree!
Complete! Complete!
These were things the Zonn had said before. He thought he understood some of them, but he wasn’t sure.
The refrain “Complete” was always part of what they had to say, and while he thought it meant his work in the temple, he was unsure. It felt as if it somehow meant more
A vision of himself at fourteen, stealing fruit from a stand and being chased by the vendor, flashed through his mind, as vivid and real as the day it happened. He could feel the sweat of fear staining his clothes, the smooth plastcrete under his flexible running shoes, hear the vendor’s angry yells. Every sensation was as fresh as a newborn still wet from its mother’s womb. The smell of the vegetables too long in the sun, the rotted and spoiled produce stacked in the battered aluminum composting bins, yesterday’s fish heads and guts and scales near the disposal drains that chopped them fine then piped and fed them to the neowheat fields a hundred kilometers away. So real
The city vanished and Kifo found himself in the Mende Town brothel where he’d sold himself for two years before he’d become one of the Few. The woman with him was rich, too beautiful to have to pay for her pleasures this way, but she enjoyed certain kinds of degradation she perhaps could not find in the expensive homes of other rich people. Kifo was but a nineteen-year-old whore when he reasoned this.
Foolish child not to know better.
“Yes,” she said, “yes! Put it there, hard-harder, oh, oh, oh, it hurts-harder!”
He obeyed, ramming himself into her. Wondering what the cook would fix the whores for dinner as the rich woman screamed under his thrusts. Still, it felt good
And now he was in the temple and the slap across the face Brother Pain gave him was hurtful but deserved, for he had questioned doctrine
And now he found himself sinking the ceremonial knife into the throat of one who had betrayed the temple
The air shifted, fluid with color that gleamed into the night, flowing, settling, forming a rainbow panoply, clothing him in light. The Armor of the Gods. It might eat him alive, but it would protect him from without.
