It was a lever-action piece, and I pumped and fired at anything in white until it was empty. Then it became a club. I ducked a flying blade and swung the weapon's stock into the blade-slinger's surprised look. His face splashed like a ripe tomato. Those animals were rearing up, bellowing, and screaming, pawing at the dust and smoke in the air, while we fought it out in the dust around their razor-sharp hooves.
I had my rifle across the neck of one of them, pinning the sheet to the sand, when it started getting very quiet. The fight was over. I lifted the piece, but the one in the white sheet didn't get up. I pulled the sheet off and stared at her. It was a woman and she was dead. I sat on the sand, looked around, and stared at the maggot convention. From defunct to departed it was a whole lot of death.
I hate death. When it tugs at my sleeve like it always did in the crowbars, I can almost ignore it. Then it just becomes a stiff neck, a backache, a sour stomach, or a jaggy attitude. But when death reaches up out of all those worms and rot with its stinking, wart-covered hand and rubs its shit straight in my face, I can't do anything but be scared.
For quite a while I wondered if I would toss my chow. Back when I thinned Danine's old man, I hurled my greens all over the crime scene. This time, though, I didn't lose it. Then I wondered what I must have become not to toss my chow. I still didn't lose it, which maybe made me a different kind of sick.
I saw some of the therapy-group perverts and deadheads hanging onto each other, and wished I had someone whose strength I could borrow. The lone part of that lone wolf thing was on me like blue. I heard a low snort and turned to look. One of those animals was giving me the eye, and I returned the favor. The creature was large, but chunky and built low to the ground like a rhino. It was covered with matted shag, had two huge horns that were more straight than curved, and red eyes like a cartoon bull with a bad attitude.
The hooves were curiously small and pointed, making it a priority not to have one of those critters step on your foot. Part way above the hoof, though, was a hair-covered joint that was easily six times wider than the hoof and acted like snowshoes in the sand. Between the snowshoes and those sharp hooves pegging the critters into the sand, they had to be one of the most sure-footed things in the desert.
As dry as it was, I couldn't accurately gauge the smell. What smell there was reminded me of the horse barn at Lancaster, which wasn't all that bad. It kind of reminded me of popcorn. The riders hadn't used saddles. The backs of the creatures were broad, flat, and amply upholstered with that shaggy fur. To climb up and to guide the mounts, the longer shag at the back of the neck had been braided into reins.
The animal gave another snort, it shuddered, and its legs collapsed. It gave off a weak cry of pain, and deep in the shag of its neck I saw that it had been shot. I found a second wound in its side, and was standing there with my teeth in my mouth trying to figure out how to help the critter when a rifle barked at my right and the animal became still. I looked and someone with a gun turned away and was looking for more wounded animals. I bet he was nice to his mother, too.
Garoit and Nance supervised a body count. Between the sheets we had attacked and our own people, we left six-hundred and some odd maggot chows on the sand. We had some sixty wounded, but if the heat didn't get them, I figured the cold at night would. We took around fifty of the white sheets prisoner and stripped the rest taking with us the sheets, the weapons and ammunition, sleeping rolls, the food, and the four hundred or so animals that were still in good shape.
We didn't take time to vote that day. Darrell Garoit just fell into running things. He aimed us toward the mountains.
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Alna
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With a little bit of encouragement we got some of the prisoners to talk, and the scraps of information we got didn't bring the mountains any closer. According to the sheets, the animals were called lughs or lughoxen, with the 'lugh' pronounced like the 'lose' in 'loser.' All of the riders came from Boss Kegel's gang, and when Kegel found out what we had done, that would be the end of the universe. "But you keep headin' f' them mountains, chup," one of the sheets said to Garoit. He was grinning as he said it, too.
We put the sheets to walking and learned how to start, stop, and steer the simple-minded animals. Garoit chose four scout leaders from among our selection of yard monsters. They were Nazzar, Dao, Vekk, and Rojas. I had to admit that the four he had picked were probably the only four sweetmeats who still had working brains.
The yard monsters chose up teams, and the ones on the animals rode scout ahead, both sides, and behind while the rest of us in the middle walked. We kept the prisoners with the walking column.
The point of the column moved toward the shimmering patch of green ahead. Those mountains hovered before us like something from the story I had found when I had looked up the name Tartaros. The story was of a loser named Tantalus who was doing the hardest time of all. He stood in water up to his chin, but every time he stooped down to drink, the water level would go down. He was dying of thirst. Above his head, hanging from branches over the pool, were luscious fruits: apples, figs, pears and more, and every time he reached up to pick one, the wind would lift them out of his reach. He was dying of thirst and hunger, yet he would never die, because he was doing infinity hold in Hell.
I kept watching those green mountains, imagining the shade of those trees, the cool waters trickling down those mountainside brooks, the fat berries to be plucked from the bushes. Yet the mountains never seemed to get any closer. I had to think about something else before I rented the gibber suite at the rubber hotel.
I had one of those white sheets on to keep off the sun. It fit like a poncho with a wide hood, but it was made of some rough-spun stuff that made burlap look sheer and there was only a little blood on the hem already dried chocolate brown. My shirt and parka were wrapped into a bundle, and slung on my back. I also had one of the leather kit bags, a water skin, and two of the ammo belts, in addition to my own kit bag.
The ammo for the rifles was made from blue plastic with a lead slug fixed on one end. When I looked at the rifle, instead of a hammer, there was a sparking mechanism that ran a tiny metal wheel over a piece of flint like an antique nail lighter. As near as I could figure out, all of the blue stuff was ignited by the sparker, firing out the slug. I looked down the muzzle of that piece to see how clean the ammo burned. There was only a slight haze on the smooth surface. There was also something else.
That barrel was grooved—rifled. I knew something about the old guns, and I'd seen rifling before. It was a good piece—accurate, hard-hitting, with a smooth operation. That put some questions in my head, because the only way those pieces could have come to be was to have been manufactured on Tartaros.
I was working on that one when I found myself walking next to a black sister wearing Greenville blues beneath one of those sheets. From the expression on her face, she was about to make reservations for the rubber hotel. She had a bad scrape on her left cheek that had opened up her skin, and she still had blood beneath her fingernails. Her eyes were wide, brown and frightened.
"What's your name?"
She almost jumped at my question. Then she looked at the feet of the person walking in front of her. "Alna. Alna Moah."
"Do you know me?"
She closed her eyes and nodded once. "I've seen you around, back in the hotel. Nicos, right?"
"Bando Nicos."
"That a spic name?"
I gave her a good study, but she hadn't meant anything by it.
"That's my name."
"I used to work the library in the Crotch. That's where I know you from. You read a lot."
"Yeah."
Her eyes darted in my direction, then back to the sand. "Those sheets we took prisoner. They say it's like this all over. It's like this all over the whole world. It's just like back in the Crotch. Find a big gang, crawl, kill, open your legs, bend over, and
take it to survive." She looked back at me. "I won't be raped again. I can't live like that. No one ought to have to live like that."
"Maybe we won't have to."
"Says who?"
"We were the ones doing the rocking today, sister."
She looked at the sand, closed her eyes, and kept walking. "Nicos, you ever kill anyone before?"
I shrugged, then nodded. "Yeah."
"Murder one?"
"Yes. So I've killed." I sighed and shook my head. God, I felt awful. "Nothing like this."
"I got to one of those guns," she said as though she hadn't heard me. "It just fell on the sand in front of me. I picked it up and started crying. I didn't want to kill anyone. Someone fired at me, then I aimed and fired back. It was a sister. You know what I mean? A black sister! And it meant nothing to her. She was aiming a gun to kill me so I fired. I saw her face when she knew she was dead. And it hurt! I could see that. I could see from her face that it hurt her horribly."
I nodded. "I imagine it hurts—"
"Then I brought down another one. And another. I was so scared." She held her hands over her face. "God. I don't even know how many I've killed. How can you not remember how many men and women you've killed?"
"There wasn't much time to take inventory."
She was just standing there, iron despair filling her universe. I half raised my arm to put it around her shoulders, but lots of things brought it down again. She was black, and her gang from Greenville might think I was trying to pull a dip. The black gang from the men's side might mark me for all I knew. They didn't like chili peppers rubbing on the mau sisters. The women from all of the hotels on the ship made up one big gang, and who knew what some gibbering female might accuse me of. Cool was smart. It hadn't been long since I'd seen the sisters in action.
The next thing I knew, her hands were grasping my arms and her face was buried in my chest, while sobs shook every inch of her body. I stood there like a totem pole for one of those century-long seconds, waiting to be thinned, then I just didn't care. I put my arms around her and buried my face in her neck. It took a second, and I felt like a baby, but I could feel my own tears dribbling into my mouth, and I didn't even know what was making me cry. We stayed that way for a long time.
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The Forever Sand
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At sunset we didn't look any closer to that patch of green than when we started. We were some discouraged, and the mountains still looked like only a day's walk away. As the light in the sky died, we broke up the prisoners into tiny groups so they couldn't start anything, and we settled down for another cold meal and frozen night's sleep.
Alna spread her sheet on the sand and we planned to use mine for a top cover. Don't conj up any ideas on that score, because dipping wasn't any part of it. Alna and I had cried together, which's a lot more intimate than dropping dip. Besides, she was half in shock still from the battle. Anyway, she was an old rape mark and all finished with men. More than that, she was as tired as last year's parole argument.
As for me, I had spent the last few years making certain that the last thing I ever thought about was sex of any kind. Back in the Crotch it helped keep me out of the white rubber room. It also made it impossible for me to feel certain things. I was tired, too. Both of us had our parkas on. Besides, Dom snored.
Alna wasn't hungry, and she sat with her arms around her knees, staring at the small group of prisoners nearest us. I watched her for awhile, thinking that she was very pretty, and that she hadn't said much of anything at all about herself. I didn't know her. I wondered what it had been that had paid for her reservation at Old Miss.
I began searching through the leather kit bag I'd liberated from one of the sheets during the battle. In the bag were thread and needles, a couple of pieces of cheap jewelry, a pair of dice, some cookies that weren't too bad, a really tough-chewing piece of cheese, some cooking and eating implements, and something that looked like hard candy. I popped it into my mouth. It had no taste at all. I bit it and whatever it was tasted like the warden's toejam. I spat it out and noticed one of the tied up prisoners giving me a big smirk.
"What's the tickle, sheet?" I demanded.
He just kept right on smirking as he looked away. I got up, tippied on over to him, and sat by his side. "You know, friend, it's real unfriendly not to share your joke, especially since I'm one who could use a good laugh right about now."
"Stiff off, chup." The rest of the prisoners chuckled at the comment.
I leaned over and unlaced one of the fellow's boots. With the long string in my hand, I doubled it, wrapped it around the sheet's neck and pushed the ends through the loop. Then I pulled on the lace until his eyes bugged out.
"You're getting unfriendlier by the second, Oswald." I gave the lace another yank. "Now, I can sort of figure out what 'stiff off' means, and I'm pretty sure I know what you're calling me when you say 'chup.' But there's something I think you ought to know. It looks like a real long way to those mountains, and who knows what we'll find there. Now, the only reason I can think of to keep you alive is to eat up our food and drink our water. So pretty soon now someone is going to figure out that those reasons aren't anywhere near good enough and you're going to be eating one of those dunes. So if you got something you want to say that might make you a little more valuable, maybe you better blow now. Do you read me, Oswald?"
I gave the lace another tug. "Talk to me."
"The blues," he coughed. "You don't eat 'em. Make fire with 'em."
"Blues?"
"Dolt out, Chup. The blues! The blue ice cubes? The fire cubes. You tried to eat one. They're not for eatin', chup. Make a fire."
My tongue found a piece of that foul-tasting stuff stuck between my teeth. I reached into the kit bag and found another piece of the hard candy.
"How do I light it?"
The sheet looked up like I was beyond all hope. I yanked on that lace and about pulled the dune shark out of his boots. "Fire, Oswald. Tell me how to light this damned thing right now or start inhaling through your asshole."
"Rub it—" Oswald coughed, and I eased up on the lace. "Rub it on some metal. You rub it on metal."
I let go of the lace and rubbed the fire cube against the barrel of my rifle. It began sparkling on one corner and I dropped the cube on the sand when it became too hot to hold. It burned hot, but not very bright. Alna moved close to the light and washed her face in the warmth as she stared at the glow.
"Thanks, Oswald. That was real helpful."
"My name's Suth, chup. Ondo Suth."
"Pleased to meet you, Ondo. My name is Bando Nicos. I should tell you that if you call me chup one more time, I'll slit open your belly and feed you your own guts."
"Term your hosties, fel." Ondo shook his head. "Chup don't mean nothin' in the sand. Nothin' bad. We just say chup like some say fel, buddy, or muthfuck."
"Just call me Bando and we'll be chill."
Alna looked up from the light at Ondo. "What are hosties?"
"Rep that?"
"You said 'term your hosties.' What's it mean?"
The sheet nodded and grinned. "Luv, it figures 'don't be angry."'
"Like in 'terminate your hostilities'?" I asked.
"You got it, chup."
I let the chup remark pass, took out what looked like a little pot, emptied one of my box chows into it, and held it over the fire. The smell and the light drew attention from the brothers and sisters. We told them how to light the fire cubes, and soon the dunes were covered with tiny pricks of deep orange light. In a few minutes Darrell Garoit appeared, his face lit by the orange of my fire cube.
He pointed at the light. "It doesn't seem very smart to make light at night. It's like an invitation to every dune shark within twenty miles."
I glanced up at him. "You might just be right." I returned to watching my chow cook. "I don't see how you can stop them, though. Too many
remember how cold it was last night."
"That's the way I see it. Anyway, maybe we're too big to attack, especially since we have weapons now. We're in between the dunes. That might hide us some." He pointed a finger at Ondo.
"You."
"Ondo Suth, chup."
Garoit squatted in front of the prisoner and stared him in the eyes. "How many more of you are there out on the dunes?"
"More of me, chup? I'm all of me there is."
I nodded at the boot lace still wrapped around his throat.
"Careful, Ondo. We can still reinstitute the oxygen conservation program."
The prisoner nodded and looked up at Darrell. "Well, chup, it's this way. Me gang numbers close onto a hundred thousand—"
"Pack it, Suth," commanded one of the other prisoners sitting behind Ondo. I stood until I could see a large blond man with dark chin whiskers glaring up at Garoit.
"Give me your name," Darrell demanded of the blond sheet.
"Stiff off, and with your face that shouldn't be too tough."
"What?"
I grinned as I turned to Darrell. "He just told you to go fuck yourself."
"He did?"
"Uh huh. Said you were ugly, too."
Alna laughed, and her tickle was picked up by a few listeners. Garoit walked over to the blond prisoner, hauled back his boot, and kicked the sheet hard in his thigh. The thump and the prisoner's cry could be heard all over the camp.
"Give me your name, feather head, or I'll spread your cheese all over the grit and leave you for the sand bats."
"His name's Edge," said Ondo. "Jak Edge."
"Pack it, Suth, else Boss'll march you certain as death."
Garoit squatted in front of the one called Edge. "You don't look stupe, but you sure act that way. What's your boss going to do to you that I can't?"
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