INFINITY HOLD3

by Longyear, Barry B.

  I thought I saw her on the far side of the column. She was small and had modified one of the sun sheets to fit her tiny frame. As she walked along her attention was divided between searching for any kind of danger and her rifle. She had her weapon taken apart and it looked like she was cleaning it. As I watched her I realized I was a little afraid of her. Her story about why she thinned that village had been to neutralize a local rebel strong point. But I remembered the images.

  The viewers saw a blood-crazed shark in feeding frenzy searching desperately for live bodies to make dead. They even had some bits of vid taken by a reporter that had been with the team and who had remained behind when he learned that Sarah Hovit was staying back in the vill to win over a few hearts and minds.

  The reporter didn't live through the experience. The villagers, after all, were armed. But his tape was found during the investigation the next day, and the viewers were treated to scenes of Bloody Sarah darting from shadow to shadow, patiently seeking out and eliminating the maximum number of villagers with the minimum amount of effort. In the middle of her spree, she even stopped at one point and sharpened her knife. This is how we all learned that a standard issue UTR commando knife will hold an acceptable edge through seventy-seven throats.

  The one scene that the vids replayed thousands of times until Sarah was found guilty was the one where she ran past a villager as she was dashing from the right side of the main street to the left side. She passed by the armed man in a blur, leaving the Suryian rebel with a surprised look on his face. The expression became more pronounced as the fellow reached to his throat to find that it had been slit from ear to ear. You could see it on his face as clearly as if he had said the words: "I'm dead." He dropped his piece, turned, and looked for his assassin, but by then, Sarah was long gone.

  They would always follow the clip with a slow-mo replay showing Sarah flashing by the rebel. She would lift her arm as she came abreast of him, she'd position the knife in her hand, rip it across the man's throat, and continue past, all without even glancing at the mark. She had devoted less attention to slitting that guy's throat than you would spend swatting a mosquito. And he was left standing there with his teeth in his mouth, his blush gushing down his front, and that silly look on his face. It was that look more than anything else that convicted Bloody Sarah.

  No one seemed to be able to remember that the guy was carrying a weapon he wasn't supposed to have. All anyone could remember was the look on his face when he knew he was dead.

  Well, there she was. I had found our general. Now I had to chase down the administration to begin the process of placing the creation of an army before the voters. I got up, headed toward the front of the column, and began looking for Pussyface.

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  A Gathering of Monsters

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  As the light in the sky faded to that deep purple, we sat around one of those burning ice cubes. There was Garoit, Nance Damas, Bloody Sarah, Alna, Martin Stays, Ondo Suth, and the four yard monsters who led the four groups of armed riders.

  Rhome Nazzar had been bossing the point. The left flank leader was a golden mountain with an expressionless face named Tao Dao. He was a bandit chief who had been transferred to Greenville because the UTR facility at Shenyang was afraid of him. He looked like he could eat the crowbars out of a cell block and shit nails. He was called Ow Dao, but not to his face.

  The right flank leader was a black nightmare from the yard named Yirbe Vekk. There was a story around the Crotch about an escape attempt that Yirbe engineered years ago. The attempt failed and Yirbe was cooked once in the lung and once in the gut with a beam weapon. He was supposed to have taken the weapon from the stain that did the shooting and beat it to pieces, on top of him. I couldn't vouch for the story, but in the light from the ice cube I could see Yirbe's chest scar. He was called "Steel Jacket" and, curiously enough, Yirbe Vekk was in for his third stock swindling scam.

  The monster who bossed the rear guard was an Indian from Mexico. He was an arsonist who had been sent to the Crotch after he had burned down the UTR calaboose at Culiacan just to prove that he could do it. His name was Mig Rojas, and he was known as The Match.

  Pussyface was shaking his head. "Are you gibbering through your pores?" he asked me.

  "I take it you have some kind of objection to my proposal."

  "As soon as you put an army together, Nicos, the army runs things, which means whoever's in charge of the army runs things. Is that what you want?"

  I raised my eyebrows. "Garoit, if we don't put something together so we can get through Kegel, Kegel will be the one running whatever's left of us. That is, unless we get taken over by some other gang first."

  "That's just great," said Garoit. "The first thing we do with whatever freedom we have is to turn it over to a bloody fascist dictatorship."

  Nance Damas laughed. "No one elected you president, beard."

  "Yeah, but I'm not about to put everyone in jackboots and paint swastikas on their arms."

  "Pussyface, what are swastikas?" asked Vekk.

  "Forget it."

  I shook my head and looked at Garoit. "Either we put an army together, Pussyface, or you come up with another answer, fast. Remember those seventeen thousand corpses we saw today? We can't stay in the sand, and the only way out is through Kegel. How about it? Do you have another answer?"

  "Maybe Kegel won't push it to a fight. Maybe we can negotiate."

  "After what we did to his buzzard brigade?"

  Nance eyed Garoit and pointed at Ondo Suth. "This one's said it before, beard. The only thing we've got that Kegel wants is women."

  Garoit rubbed his eyes. When he brought his hand down he looked at Martin Stays. "How about you?"

  "To me it looks like a choice between forming an army or going into the slavery business."

  Nance pointed a finger at the beard. "Don't forget that those potential slaves outnumber the men in this gang five-to-one, and we have most of the guns, knives, and hatchets."

  Garoit waved his hands back and forth. "No one is going to sell anyone." He rubbed his eyes again. When he lowered his hand, he looked into the flame of the fire cube. "We have to stick together, and if we can't get around Kegel peacefully—"

  "Count on it," interrupted Ondo.

  "If we can't get around Kegel, then we'll have to fight." He looked at Sarah Hovit.

  "If we have to fight," she began, "we'll have to know how to fight. To do that, we have to train. To train we have to organize. To organize we have to be an army."

  "I guess you've got the know-how, Hovit." Garoit stood and pointed first at Nazzar, and next at Ow Dao. "But how are you going to get these sweetmeats to carry your banner?" He bent over, rested his hands on his knees, and spoke to Yirbe Vekk. "How about it? When this little bit here tells you to jump, what're you going to do?"

  "Nobody tells me to jump." He grinned as he glanced at Sarah. "But I've watched the vids. I've seen the major in motion. If she suggests something to me, chances are I'll take the suggestion, unless I need a real close shave."

  Bloody Sarah smiled at Vekk and Garoit looked at Rhome Nazzar. "What about you?"

  Nazzar chuckled. "Man, Garoit, I've never seen someone fight so hard to lose in my whole life."

  "What about it, sweetmeat? When this little white bit starts ordering you around, what are you going to tell her?"

  The yard monster grinned widely, "I watched the vids too, Garoit. I've seen the white slice move through a dozen armed hogs and come out the other end with a string of sausages and a whole trunk full of pork chops. I guess I'd tell her, 'yes'm.'"

  There was laughter around the circle. Garoit turned and looked down at Bloody Sarah. "What about you? If these four muscle heads can't do the job, do you have what it takes to fire them?"

  Sarah Hovit climbed to her feet and pushed her sun sheet behind her shoulders. With her hands on her hips she smiled gently a
t Garoit. "First let's see if there's any need."

  She turned and pointed a finger at Rhome Nazzar. "This is a little tactical test, Rhome. You're leading a group of fifty armed soldiers against an exposed uphill position held by two hundred of Kegel's best and I tell you to kill the enemy, what would you do?"

  "Kill them."

  There were quiet pump words from unseen faces in the shadows: Yaas, We do that. The man.

  She looked at Tao Dao. "You are in command of twenty worn out unarmed soldiers and are facing a superior enemy force that holds the high ground and is heavily armed. I tell you to kill them. What would you do?"

  "Kill them."

  Power talk. Dow take on the tower. Do. The shadows were getting cranked.

  She looked at Yirbe Vekk. "I order you to sneak into a heavily armed enemy camp by yourself and kill everyone in it, what would you do?"

  "Kill them."

  A distinct, "Hoo, doggies!" came from the left, all of us reacting with chuckles.

  She pointed her finger at Mig Rojas. "I'm dead, so is the beard, and so is everyone else in the gang. You're wounded, dying, and unarmed, and thousands of the enemy are closing on your position. What would you do?"

  "Kill them!" answered The Match along with a number of others within hearing, including me.

  Bloody Sarah paused as the circle and the shadows became very quiet. She turned around and smiled at Garoit.

  "I'll play these."

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  The New Order

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  After the night march and a brief nap, we gathered in the heat of the morning to become a people. Garoit explained what we had discussed the night before, and in a matter of seconds we had a fight on our hands. The main factions were divided between those who wanted the new organization and those who didn't, although there were a dozen variations.

  A proposal was shouted into the middle of the brawl, and I heard Martin Stays say, with a touch of wonder in his voice, "I'll be damned. We're going to have an election."

  There were three candidates. Garoit was already there, so he was up. A pro-army faction of the women put Nance Damas up, and the anti-army candidate was a shark named Neala Gates. We did the vote by raised hands, and it wasn't even close. Nance Damas came in first, followed by Neala Gates, with Darrell Garoit coming in a pitiful third. It was the only time I'd ever voted in my life, and it was a pity vote.

  There was some grumbling among a few of the men who objected to a woman bossing the gang, and there was more grumbling among a few of the women who objected to a bull-croc lizzie bossing the gang. There was no way of getting around the fact that the women were the majority, so those male grumblers were told to either like it or head for the dunes. When it became clear that sexual preference had nothing to do with bossing a gang, the straights chilled out and put it to rest.

  Later I saw Garoit. Pussyface looked really depressed. After the vote was settled and the talking was still loud, I overheard Nance Damas say to Garoit, "I need a number two. You interested?"

  I'd seen Garoit swallow a few since the landing, and this one just about choked him. I could almost see the space behind his eyes trying on a foot-stamping temper tantrum for a reply. Instead, he looked at me. I think he was remembering our ride together on the prison ship and his smug assurances that Darrell Garoit would be running things on Tartaros. I shrugged and felt embarrassed. I didn't know what to tell him. He turned his head and looked at Martin Stays.

  Stays shook his head and looked Garoit in the eyes. He asked, "Do you think you have anything to contribute?"

  Garoit flushed deep red. "Of course I do."

  "Then shut up and take Nance's offer. Quit taking everything so personally."

  Garoit took the job and walked off into the dunes to eat worms, if he could find any. Nance held up her hands for quiet and explained to the constituents how it was.

  "Sarah Hovit is in charge of the army, so she is in charge of you. You elected me, so you are in charge of me. I am in charge of Sarah. I have appointed Darrell Garoit my number two, and when I'm not around, he's in charge."

  She looked at the sky for a moment, then back down at the faces. "We have a fight coming up, and we have to work like hell to prepare for it. You now belong to Sarah Hovit. Anyone who has a problem with that can leave now. We aren't going to hold anyone prisoner."

  There was a lot of looking around, but no one walked. After another minute or two, Bloody Sarah stood in the center and began talking. She had a voice that could be heard throughout the camp. It was a special kind of voice that made you believe you could lift mountains. She ended with a strange speech.

  "The God Razai is the desert death lizard of the planet Surya," she said. "It can run all day in the hot sun and not thirst; it can run all night in the freezing cold and not tire; it can go for a month without food and not hunger. It can do all this, take on three times its number, and kill quickly, quietly, efficiently, and without mercy. Even if you should manage to kill one of them, the Razai's single-minded determination is such that, three months later, its sun-desiccated corpse can still jump, bite, and poison the fool who comes too close. I name you all for the Razai, and will see that you live up to your name."

  I was amazed to see the brothers and sisters raise a thundering cheer for their new commander. Even those who had voted against the army were cheering. As I remarked to Martin Stays later during the night march, "By definition those sharks can't take discipline. How is she going to get them to run all day and run all night and bite Kegel's boys three months after they're all dead and dried up? How is she going to get them to follow orders?"

  Stays thought for a long time before he spoke. "I disagree, Bando. They have discipline. It takes discipline to do your numbers in the crowbars and not go insane. Not only does the juicer want sharks to undergo eight different kinds of hell from rape to endless monotony while he does his numbers, the shark is supposed to do it without complaint. Not everyone can do it, which is why so many die behind the crowbars. But all of us made it, one way or the other. We have discipline, at least the kind Bloody Sarah needs."

  "What kind is that?"

  "We can endure."

  I shook my head. "Can you see Rhome Nazzar following orders?"

  "Maybe. Hovit is giving them the chance to bet it all for the right thing. Not just her generals, but the whole gang. She's giving them the chance to earn being good. Do you know what those sharks'd be willing to do to feel good about themselves? What would you do, Nicos, to feel good about Bando Nicos?"

  I jabbed my thumb at my own chest. "I feel just fine about me."

  "Not all of us are that lucky, Bando."

  Alna took my left hand in hers and held it gently as Martin Stays walked ahead. I squeezed her hand and said, "Pretty soon Nazzar and the other monsters will choose up sides. Think we might be separated?"

  "Would that bother you if we were?"

  "Sure."

  I looked at her as we walked, then I bent over and gave her a tiny kiss. She wrapped her hands around my left arm and rested her face against her hands.

  "What about you and fighting, Alna? The way you feel about it. What'll you do?"

  "I'm just going to trust Bloody Sarah. That's all." She continued to rest her head against my arm.

  We were that way when Nance Damas fell in beside me and said, "Nicos, there's been a razor job toward the back of the walking column. Things look ugly and we can't fight each other and Kegel both. Check into it."

  "Check into it?"

  "That's right."

  I stared at her for a moment because I was in shock. "What do you mean, check into it?"

  "Check into it is what I mean when I say check into it. You're not stupid. Clean out your ears."

  I pulled Alna to a halt and shouted at Nance, "Do you mean investigate?"

  "Yeah."

  My throat became very dry. "You mean, like a cop?"


  "Nicos, you're acting like this is your first day out of the rubber room. I don't care how you check into it, just so you wind up with the truth and settle it."

  She studied me for a bit as she rubbed her chin. "Maybe you should bring someone with you. The razor's name is Jobo Ramis, and he's a mountain looking for someone to fall on."

  "What if I tell you to go to hell?"

  "You're not a special character, Nicos. Either do the job or hit the dunes."

  She turned and left me standing there in shock. I heard a laugh and Martin Stays was holding his middle. "A cop! A stain! Bando Nicos, a po-leece-man!"

  When he calmed down enough to listen, I appointed him my deputy.

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  Here Comes the Judge

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  First, we scared up a gun for Stays. The sky was just growing light as we worked our way down the column to the part that wasn't moving. There was a crowd and in the center of the crowd was a bleeder. The guy leaking all the blush was white ex-prize fighter, Kid Scorpion.

  The name on his front office file was Abner Pandro. His forearm had been sliced real nice, and he was holding his right side in what looked to be a non-vital part. He was in the middle of a group of about fifty sharks that seemed to be growing larger.

  The sharks loved a fight they could watch without having to participate, and cutter fights were colorized. I could see what Nance meant. With a choice between watching two gorillas make hash out of each other or joining the army, not only might the ranks wind up pretty thin, something violent could get started here that might not be possible to stop. This had every possibility of turning into one of those forks in the trail marked with a heap of bodies.