INFINITY HOLD3

by Longyear, Barry B.

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  My eyebrows went up as I read the final entry. According to policy number seventeen, Alna and I were married. I wondered what Alna would have to say about that when I told her.

  A niggle of something else was bothering me. It was about the whole policy making thing. It seemed like every time anyone made a decision, a new policy was made. So far it hadn't run us into trouble, but we had a couple of real crazy rules on the books. Thirteen and seventeen came to mind real fast. A threat being the same as the action threatened promised to get half the gang thinned for just working their blowholes the way sharks've done since the invention of crowbars.

  Sleeping together constituting some kind of marriage status promised to make for a lot of lonely nights. Either that, or it would make marriage into nothing. Then, I thought, what was marriage? It was a contract. And what did I know about contracts? They had super cash registers on Earth who did nothing but contracts.

  Any time I had ever brushed up against a contract, particularly if it involved black rags or money threads, it was like splitting fly hairs in the dark with a dull ax. Also, every time a money threads came at me with a contract and one of those smug "you don't have to worry about that provision," or "this item doesn't really mean anything," or "no one ever enforces those provisions," I know again some lawyer is going to get rich and Bando Nicos is going to wind up with empty pockets and a brand new asshole.

  I shook my head and decided to take things just as they came. One shovel full of shit at a time was all I could handle. Trying to deal with the whole mountain at once was overwhelming. I looked again at number seventeen. Someday, I thought, someone is going to demand that these things get voted up or down, and I just might be the one who does the demanding.

  I looked up from the notebook and turned to follow Marietta but she was out of sight. All of the dunes looked the same, and there were so many different trails and footmarks going off in all directions, I couldn't possibly figure out which trail was hers.

  For a second I felt lost. Then I realized that all I had to do was climb one of the dunes to see where I was. I was about to climb the nearest one when Marietta's voice rumbled behind me. "This way, Chief."

  I turned and saw her standing between two dunes, her rifle slung, her hands upon her massive hips. "Why didn't you follow my trail, chump?"

  "How was I supposed to tell which trail was yours? A footprint is a footprint."

  "A footprint is a footprint?" She shook her head. "Listen, chump—"

  "I believe they pronounce it chup—"

  "Listen, chump, I spent a month in court listenin' to lectures on footprints, complete with movies and plastic models. A footprint is what got me my numbers, chump, and sent my sorry ass to Tartaros. Don't tell me a footprint is a footprint! And don't tell me how to say chump, chump!"

  "Okay, I can follow the trail now."

  She shook her head. "You couldn't track a three-legged rhino through wet sand on a sunny day." She presented me her back and continued toward the column.

  Mighty touchy on the subject of footprints, she was. I mentally noted this particular area of Marietta's expertise in the unlikely event that the Razai Cops should someday find themselves in a land with enough water to make footprints possible.

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  Tenbene v. Ollick

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  The sides of three dunes faced each other, and there were, perhaps, five hundred spectators there availing themselves of the amusement benefits of policy number twelve (The Razai have the right to observe the judicial process). When I arrived there was even a tiny round of applause. We were entertainment.

  The vids and rads didn't work on Tartaros because there were no broadcasting stations. Batteries had just about all run out on the vid players, and the solar-powered outfits were just about burnt. Very few sharks had brought books along, and the few decks of cards there were could not be bought, borrowed, or stolen. For something to do, then, this left conversation and watching Bando Nicos make a fool out of himself.

  There was a clear place between the three dunes, and I slung my rifle and stood in the center. When the chatter eased off, I said, "Mojo? Mojo Tenbene, do you have a charge to make?"

  A tall dark man standing at the bottom of the dune to my left raised his hand. "I am Mojo Tenbene." He lowered his hand and pointed toward the dune to my right. Ice Fingers sat there, his face impassive, his fingers glittering. "This man, here, he took a blade and tried to thin your brother, Mojo."

  There were angry support noises coming from the crowd. Many of the comments suggested ill happenings upon my person should the trial not go to the threatener's liking. I pretended not to hear the threats. Instead I unslung my rifle and looked around at the spectators.

  "We have a rule. It's number thirteen. It says that a threat is a crime and that a threat carries as its penalty the performance of the threat upon the threatener. In other words, anyone who threatens to bust up my face is going to wind up with a busted face. If you threaten to kill me in the hopes that it will make this thing turn out the way you want, you die." I glanced back at Marietta. She held up her weapon, looked around, and the crowd got real quiet.

  "I think they got rule thirteen, Chief."

  I looked back at Mojo Tenbene. "Who do you say did it?"

  "Him! Herb Ollick! Ice Fingers! The big goomba from Block Nine." Mojo walked half of the way over to the right-hand dune and pointed at Ice Fingers. Herb Ollick's face was impassive. He didn't seem to be the least bit worried. It was almost as though he were still connected and all he had to do was wiggle his finger to fill the dunes with goons. I vaguely remembered him from the Crotch. Sometimes I'd catch a peek at him in the yard or on the galleries. I wondered if he really had been in the mob. Anyway, he was used to having others do his work for him. The cockroach was just his current garbage man.

  "What do you say, Ollick?"

  Herb Ollick held the stub of a cigar between his fingers and nodded at another man. The third man got to his feet, and I'll be best man at a lughox's wedding if his hair wasn't styled. This had to be Jason Pendril, the money threads for Ollick. In the middle of that desert, without any kind of a shower for weeks, the cash register managed to show up at court with styled hair.

  "Damn, will you look at the hair," I whispered.

  Marietta mumbled something.

  "What did you say?" I asked without taking my eyes off of Pendril.

  Without lifting her gaze from the crowd or lowering her weapon, she bent over and whispered into my ear, "It's a rug."

  "A what?"

  Marietta stood up and pulled at her own hair. "A rug. A hairpiece."

  "Oh." I nodded toward Pendril and asked out loud, "Your name?"

  "Jason Pendril for the defense."

  The man had an expression on his face that was very frustrating. It wasn't quite contempt, and it wasn't quite smirking. It was close, though.

  "So, how does Herb answer the charge?"

  Jason Pendril turned and spoke to the crowd, rather than to me. "As the unfortunate demise of Dick Irish has shown, Nicos, entering a plea with you may not be the healthiest thing we could do."

  There was laughter, and I felt an imaginary knife blade turn in my gut. When the laughter died down I looked at the smug expression on the cash register's face for a long time, realizing as I did so that I was seeing every cockroach meatwagon barnacle that had ever put on a lawyer suit to juice me and drop me into the black hole.

  It was important to me, as well as to Herb Ollick, that I not try to take out my entire revenge on the whole gang of money threads by crushing this one little cockroach and his client. Still, this little fantasy popped into my head. It wasn't anything complicated or subtle. Pendril would raise his hand, he would open his smirking mouth, and say to me, "I object." Then I would lift my rifle and blow off his head.

  I tried to shake the thought from my head as I whispered to Marie
tta. "Where are we?"

  "The roach doesn't want to enter a plea," she whispered back.

  I said to Pendril, "If your client refuses to say if he did it, I'll assume he tried to kill Mojo."

  "That is not how it is done in a court of law, Nicos."

  I really did feel like lifting my rifle. Aim. Boom. No head on the cockroach and Bando Nicos gallops over the dunes leaving nothing behind but a cloud of dust and a shrill cackle. I wrestled myself into the present moment. "Maybe it's not how it's done in the juicer, Pendril, but it is how it's done in the yard. You've been in the crowbars awhile. Silence is a plea of guilty there. Silence is a plea of guilty here."

  The money threads threw up his hands to indicate his helplessness before such a stupe. "In that case, of course he enters a plea of not guilty."

  Pendril showed no reaction to the hisses and boos of a few of the watchers. Marietta began walking around the clear area between the dunes, aiming her rifle and her face up into the crowds. They quieted down.

  I checked Stay's notebook, found what I wanted, and said, "Mojo, Herb, according to rule fourteen, if both of you agree to me settling this, I can take care of it. How about it?"

  Mojo nodded. "That is just dandy with me." There were murmurs of approval and disapproval from the crowd.

  I looked at Ollick, then at Pendril. The money threads was giving me his best patronizing smile. I wondered what rule I would create by running over, sticking my foot in Jason Pendril's face, and turning his kisser into tomato soup.

  Pendril again addressed the crowd instead of me. "My client chooses to have a jury of his peers decide his guilt or innocence."

  There were more murmurs of approval and disapproval, and then there was a voice that spoke up from the dune face behind me. "Bando, I'm not makin' a threat, understand? I'm just askin' a question."

  I turned around and looked. There was a wiry little bastard Mexican sonofabitch from the Crotch named Hector Diaz. For reasons I never understood, Hector and I hated each other at first sight.

  "So?"

  Hector grinned as he held his rifle in his arms like a baby. He stroked the weapon and asked, "What would happen if we just smoked you and the big sister crowbar there?" There were ugly chuckles and hisses from the spectators. "What if we just got tired of you playing little tin god and just thinned your brown-sugar ass?"

  The ugly sounds from the spectators were cut short by the sounds of three rifles levering fresh rounds into their firing chambers. I looked and saw Martin Stays standing at the top of Hector's dune. I turned and saw Cap Brady at the top of the dune behind Mojo, and a woman that had to be Marantha Silver standing at the top of the dune behind Herb Ollick. I nodded at her and she smiled back.

  I turned toward Hector Diaz and said, "My guess is that you'd be dead before your face hit the sand."

  Hector grinned and held out his hands. "Just asking," he said as he sat down to the laughs and jeers of the others.

  I knew I looked good right then, in front of the others. But I was grateful that no one could see the yellow feathers lining the inside of my stomach. As things quieted I looked at Ollick and Pendril. "How many do you and your cockroach want on the jury? Pick an odd number."

  Pendril frowned. "Odd number?"

  I nodded. "Majority rules here, and we don't want any ties." I looked around and called out to the crowd. "Anyone who wants to be on the jury, line up right here." I held my hand out indicating the space between Ollick's dune and the dune behind me. Perhaps fifty sharks began moving down to the jury line.

  Jason Pendril put on his most outraged is-this-what-you-call-justice voice. "Do you propose that verdicts be handed down on the basis of a majority vote?"

  "No," I answered. "I do not propose it. Majority vote is the way we do things in the Razai." I glanced at Stays's notebook. "Numbers three, four, and five."

  Pendril pointed at the notebook. "What is that?"

  I held up the open notebook and faced it around at the crowd. "This is a record of the votes and other decisions that have been made by us so far." I looked at the money threads. "For what it's worth, it's the law here."

  "May I see that?"

  "Pick a number, first, then while we're putting together the jury, you can go back to law school." My comment drew another chuckle from the crowd.

  Herb Ollick got to his feet and whispered into Pendril's ear. Pendril whispered back, then they seemed to fight in whispers for a bit before Ollick sat down and Pendril said, "Most of the men and women in that jury line aren't white."

  I stepped to one side, glanced down the line at the faces, and looked up at Marietta. She looked down the line and nodded. "He's right."

  I looked at Pendril and said, "You're right. And when you're right you're right. Pick a number."

  As we spoke a few haystacks got up to join the line, followed immediately by a few more maus, hows and a chop or two. Everyone was getting civic minded.

  "The point is," said Pendril, "how can my client receive a fair trial if most of the jurors are, say, of another ethnic persuasion?"

  After the hoots and catcalls died down, I looked at the jury line. The salts and the peppers were at it, jabbing and grabassing around, the whole thing a joke to them. But there was a life and a few other important issues at stake. One of those issues involved a possible fight the Razai was facing with the Hand. We had to prepare, and we couldn't afford to waste the whole day settling the Tenbene-Ollick hash.

  I said to the jury line, "I want you all to understand why we are here." I turned from the line, looked around at the crowd, and looked at Pendril, Ollick, and Tenbene. "We are all here for the same reason. That reason is to make certain that Mojo and Herb get exactly what's coming to them." I looked back at the jury line. "Herb is up for attempted murder. If you get to be part of this jury, your job will be to see to it that Herb gets what's coming to him."

  A number of black hands traded fives to the cruel laughter of a few sharks in the jury line and up on the dunes. Something occurred to me, and I continued, "Remember, if you say Herb is guilty, and we find out later that he isn't guilty, then all of you in the jury who voted for guilty will suffer the fate that Herb suffered."

  There was a rumble of exclamations from the crowd, and a few of the men and women in the jury line became less civic-minded and headed back to their seats on the dunes. "And it goes the same if you vote him innocent and he turns out to guilty. You will stand the punishment he should have stood."

  "Nicos," said Pendril, his voice loaded with scorn, "are you just making this up as you go along?"

  Since that was exactly what I was doing, I grimaced a bit as I sorted among my possible answers. I settled for one I must have heard a million times in front of some black rag's bench. "If you don't like the rules, change them." I turned to the crowd.

  "You elected Nance Damas, and Nance appointed me. If you aren't happy with the way I handle things, talk to Nance about it. If you aren't happy with the way she handles me, hold another election." I pointed at the jury line. "Now, let's get on with it."

  The jury line was pared down to about twenty-five or so who were prepared to back up their judgment with their lives. Maybe there might have been one or two who didn't think I was serious. There were a few salts, a few peppers, but mostly chili peppers, chops, and hows. I turned to Jason and Herb. They were still blowing hot whispers in each other's ears.

  "You two come up with a number yet?"

  "Not quite yet," answered Pendril.

  "Do thirteen!" came a shout from the dune behind Mojo. "That fits a jury of sharks! Thirteen!"

  The call went up, and a jury of thirteen appealed to the sharks. Since Pendril and his charge either couldn't or wouldn't come up with a number, thirteen it was. I held up my hands for quiet. "I make it thirteen," I called out.

  I looked around and found a pair of specs. They were on an old woman who might have been black pepper, might have been chili pepper. It was hard to tell when they got that old. I pointed at her and
asked, "Can you read and write?"

  "Yes." She stood and walked over to me. I handed her Stay's notebook. "Pick a fresh page and write down the names of the ones picked for the jury, understand?"

  "I understand." She pulled a writing instrument, perhaps a pen, out from under her sheet. She turned to the next page in the notebook, and waited. "Yes?"

  "What's your name?"

  "Ila Toussant."

  "Write your name in there, too, and thanks."

  Turning to the jury line I said, "Everybody get down and pick up some sand."

  I squatted over and picked up a handful. "When it's your turn, stand beside me and I'll hold both my fists out like this." I stood and held my arms to the front parallel to the ground.

  "Hold your fists out the same and we'll open our fists at the same time. I might have sand in both hands, only my left hand, only my right hand, or sand in neither hand. If your hands match mine, you are out. If your hands do not match mine, you are in."

  I pulled my hands in beneath my sheet and dumped my sand into my left hand. "First one. Let's go."

  The first one was a skinny female chili pepper. She stood to my right, we held out our fists, and opened up. She had sand in both hands. "You're in," I said. "Give your name to Ila. Next."

  In nineteen tries we had selected a thirteen-shark jury. There were nine women and four men. I had them stand where the jury line had been and looked up at the sun. It was getting to the point where we could begin expecting small metal objects to liquefy.

  "Okay, Mojo, let's have your story. Don't take all day."

  "One second," interrupted Pendril. "Don't I get the opportunity to question the jurors?"

  "Nope."

  Pendril went red in the face. "Do you call that justice?"

  "Nope."

  "What do you call it, then?"

  "I call it a jury, and I call it getting on with it." I pointed at the jurors. "Those men and women are backing up the decision they make with their lives. Is grilling them about their political beliefs, ethnic backgrounds, or tastes in music going to move things along any faster or fairer than that?"