I looked at Nance. "I just want to know, is that rule worth the death of the whole Razai? The yard smarts would be to do what Garoit said. We can't save the world."
Nance folded her arms and let her head hang forward. "We're not in the yard now." She smiled and looked up at Garoit. "And we'll never know about saving the world until we try."
Garoit faced her and held out his hands. "What if all we do is get wiped? Remember, because of this stupid law against holding prisoners, Lacy Moore is over there right now filling Pau Avanti's ear with how many men and women and how many guns we have. There's no surprise working for us. Nothing. What about our right to live?"
Nance got to her feet, pushed back her hood, and scratched her scalp with both hands. After she fluffed up her hair, she placed her hands on her hips and looked toward the Hand's camp for a long time. When she was finished, she turned, looked down at Garoit, and asked, "Have you ever risked your life before?"
From Garoit's blush, I could see that Nance had tickled his macho. "Of course."
"That's right. You were a big time terrorist bomber, weren't you?"
"Yes.
"When you risked your life, bomber, was it always with a sure chance of winning and getting out alive?"
"No, but that was different. We weren't trying to conquer anyone; we were usually just making a statement."
"You mean you weren't out to overthrow a government or two?"
Garoit shook his head. "I'm not buying into this, Nance. Twist things around any way you want. The situations are different."
"Tell me, Garoit, you were willing to die for a statement?"
"Yes, but it was a statement of high principle. I was willing to die for the right of the people. I was willing to die for freedom."
Nance waved the front of her sheet in and out to circulate the air next to her body. "Maybe all we can do here is make a statement, Garoit. Maybe all we can do is die for that statement. Maybe it isn't high principle or sacred politics to you, but the statement goes like this: every man and woman has the right not to be raped. If all the Razai ever amounts to is to kill and die for that statement, my ghost'll be happy."
She looked around at the circle of faces. "I'm going to put this to the sharks, and if it goes my way, we are going to rock with the Hand." She faced Garoit. "We do have one big hunk of surprise left, Pussyface. The Razai is made up mostly of women, and the Hand knows that." Nance nodded. "But what is a woman? Macho man never did figure out that one."
As Nance spoke, I saw a vision. I cannot call it anything else. As soon as Nance made that macho-man remark, and that she was going to put the rescue to a vote, a complete plan bloomed in my head. It was so simple it had to work. Or, if it didn't work, I could be certain of not living long enough to call myself a failure.
"Chief," said Stays, "your head is smoking."
I nodded and looked up at Nance, "Either I've got a plan or I'm crazy." I looked at Stays. "You and Marietta sort out all the angel cakes and anyone who can pass. With the water we brought back, get the cakes bathed and their hair washed. Their clothes, too. But just the angel cakes."
"What are you trying to do, start a race riot?"
"Nance'll explain everything when she puts it to the vote. Get 'em washed up, and find out if anyone has any perfume. And combs. Combs and brushes, and we need someone who knows about fixing hair."
"You won't believe this," said Stays, "but Jim Bennet is a hairdresser."
"Great. Find out if he knows of anyone else who does hairdressing. There is going to be a lot of hair to fix. And see if you can find Herb Ollick. I need to talk to him right now."
Stays glanced at Nance, Nance nodded back at him, and he moved off as I rubbed my chin and looked around at the faces. "Does anyone know how much sleep I've had?"
"About five hours," answered Nance.
"In that case," I said, "it must be a plan. I've had too much sleep to be crazy."
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The Secret of Guido Abalone
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The point, flank, and rear guards were called in, as well as Nazzar's newly organized mobile force. A few listeners were left out to raise the alarm in case of attack. It was a big risk, but Nance wanted as many in on this vote as was possible.
Stays and Marietta had gotten the angel cake project moving in good order. Besides Jimmy, he had found one other man and six women who had experience hairdressing. While they tried to turn sand-and-sun-scoured straw piles into high fashion, others washed and dried the clothing, while still others attacked the clothing with razors and homemade cutters attempting to turn crowbar blues into playtime rompers.
A few lipsticks, compacts, and nail polishes were tracked down along with three bottles of perfume. Their brand names were: I'm Yours, Enchantment, and Night Fever. They all smelled the same to me.
There were four hundred and twenty-two angel cakes, and an additional fifty-seven who could pass, if the light wasn't too bright. By the time we had our town meeting, the chops, hows, chili peppers, and maus were a little microwaved, but once Nance explained the plan to everyone, however, tempers cooled.
Before she explained the plan, there was a security matter that needed to be covered. The first thing Nance put to the vote was the Law of Silence. She told the assembled Razai that those who stayed to listen to what she had to say must be sworn to secrecy.
Everyone knew the word omerta and knew what it meant. Anyone who broke the law of silence and betrayed what she said would draw max payback on the spot. Anyone who could not keep the silence was told to leave the meeting before it started. There was plenty of looking around, but no one left.
Nance then told them about the women prisoners held by the Hand, what was happening to them, and that they had asked us for help. Nance wanted helping them put to the vote.
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That was the day when why the witnesses were found guilty and thinned in Bennet v. Myerson was made our third law. What applied to us as individual members of the Razai applied to the Razai as a whole. If a crime is being committed, and the victim asks the Razai for help, the Razai must either help or be as guilty as the perp.
Garoit said his piece, and I could see his side of it. Every gang on Tartaros was probably committing crimes of some kind, and for each of those crimes there would be victims calling for help at some point. What was a tiny gang of two thousand that had only been in existence for a week supposed to do about the whole world?
However, at the moment, it wasn't the whole world we had to fight. It wasn't our tiny gang against all of the gangs of Tartaros. It was only this one spot in the Forever Sand, and it was the Razai against a small expedition from the Hand.
The sharks at that meeting were told everything, and there was a hot debate. The two cockroaches climbed into the argument with "Listen to me, I know what I'm talking about" attitudes, but they were on opposing sides, so there wasn't much point in listening to either of them.
Fighting the Hand, which seemed probable, might mean the end of the Razai. We could all wind up dead or slaves. The chances of us coming out on top really chewed. Were we going to fight and maybe die for this right not to be raped and killed, or were we going to play it smart. In the end, Nance got her vote. That big mobile stink, digging and scratching, voted to save the world.
Nance explained the plan and assigned parts and tasks to the members. Several of the professional women in our bunch were either assigned parts or served as technical consultants. My part was to play a pimp and go in to the main camp with the angel cakes, each one polished, perfumed, painted, powdered, and puffed for the event. Each bit was armed with a point or an edge of some kind, razors, cutters, ice picks. For my own edge, Nance lent me her personal clandestine blade. It was a wicked-looking eight-inch blade with the point of a needle and the edges of a razor.
After much persuasion, Minnie McDavies got me down on the ground and gave me a shave. She shaved m
y face, which I guessed was a real stretch for Minnie. With a clean face and slicked down hair, I assumed my role as Don Guido Abalone's number one pimp, Fidel Midol. The part of Don Guido, of course, went to Herb Ollick. In the play Mob Cinderella, Guido Abalone is the youthful suitor of Red Pete Argento's beautiful daughter, Maranta.
As the sun touched the horizon, the cooling shadows filled the valleys between the dunes. Soon it would be colder than ratbait in the black hole. When I thought about the coming cold of night, I wondered at the wisdom of my plan. It depended on the angel cakes looking sexy to macho goomba, which meant their outfits would be somewhat abbreviated. However, if all they were going to do was sniffle, chatter their teeth, and turn blue all over, maybe all they would do is turn off everybody.
I thought about it some, and I remembered vids of girls and women wearing those skimpy little skating outfits in subzero conditions on Earth. Then I remembered the hookers in Philly, the Apple, and up in the Combat Zone. The weather would be cold enough to geld every brass monkey in the northern hemisphere, and there would be the hookers on the sidewalks wearing high heels, short shorts, and a beauty spot. Then old Pepe Pimpo would come rolling up to collect his slice. He'd be wheeling a heated chrome machine with thermopane windows and be dressed in ear flaps and furs like Nanookie of the North.
There was something a bit once told me. She said that women have to be tougher than men just to survive. She said men only have to put up with women and other men. Women have to put up with how men treat women. She made her point.
I pondered these things and let go of them as Minnie finished shaving Herb. After his rinse, he stood before me with his hair oiled down, wearing a cut-down sheet tossed over his shoulders like a cape. It didn't matter what you did to Herb, he simply looked more and more like a loyal son of the Great Goomba. Shaved and caped he looked like Don Macho Di Capo himself.
He was Herb Ollick, petty con artist from Dayton, author of Mob Cinderella, holder of the Tartaros world supply of quartz rings. I remembered him asking about Marantha, and I asked him about the curious coincidence of how, back in the Crotch, the part of Maranta had been played by a woman named Marantha.
Herb smiled sadly and looked down. "The coincidence is even stranger than you might think. I've admired her ever since I saw the first of those stories about her on the vids. She is beautiful, of course, but courageous, too. And she has the integrity of a saint—an honest saint, of course."
"I understand."
"I watched every moment of those hearings, and watched as the MPs and the vid reporters and commentators shoveled mud on her, and she didn't flinch. Not once. She did her honest best, took the cards she was dealt, and played them without complaint. When she was condemned to Greeneville, I thought up Mob Cinderella and wrote the part of Maranta Argento just for her. The saddest day of my life was when the stains told me that women would have to play all the male parts in Cinderella, which meant I was out. The happiest day of my life was when I found out that Marantha had tried out for the part."
I shook my head at the overweight pseudo-Mafioso. "Ice Fingers, you've got yourself a crush on a cop!"
He held out his hands and shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Does she know? Have you told her?"
Herb shook his head and held his finger before his lips. "Omerta." He smiled that sad smile again, and asked, "Is she really all right, Bando?"
I frowned and spent a useless second or two checking my loaner blade from Nance. "I don't know, Herb. She's a hostage, except nobody's calling her a hostage. I figure she's safe until we either deliver the merchandise or Pau Avanti figures out what's going on."
"Is there much chance of that?"
"Herb, they've been two steps ahead of us since before we first ran into them." I placed my hand on his shoulder. "But as my little meditation book pointed out to me, don't waste time thinking about what might be or what might have been. Live in the moment. Right now you are Don Guido Abalone on his way to see his true love, Maranta Argento, and I am Fidel Midol, your trusty pimp."
"What are you doing with a meditation book?"
"It was a gift from Big Dave Cole."
Herb looked at where Minnie had Garoit down on the sand, shaving off his beard. "I wonder what Pussyface will look like without his beard. I guess it can't be helped." He looked back at me. "I, Don Guido Abalone, can't have my consigliere looking like an Old Testament prophet, can I?" He laughed a little. As his laughter faded, his face became very serious. He thought for a moment and frowned as he said, "This might be it."
"This might be what?" I asked.
"You, me, Garoit, Marantha, all of us. We all might be dead by this time tomorrow."
"Don Guido, that's true for everyone in the universe. What's also true is this time tomorrow, any or all of us might still be alive." I scratched the back of my neck for a moment, because there was something about Herb Ollick that puzzled me. "Herb, you're in love with a Jew cop, you're working closely with all kinds of maus and other types right now, and you just don't seem to be the type who'd sling around the 'N' word or pull a cutter on someone without a good reason. What was with you and Mojo Tenbene?"
Herb held out his hands. "Bando, you've seen me. I'm not a very muscular fellow. However I do have an imagination. When I was sent to the Crotch, there was no way that I could keep myself from getting bullied and boybunged by force. So I used my imagination. With a little hint here, a knowing nod there, I conned the whole Crotch into thinking I was connected. As long as they thought I was hooked up, they left me alone." He shook his head and grimaced. "I'd been playing the role of a mobster for so long, I guess I lost myself in the part. I just got carried away."
"That's some dangerous role-playing. You're real lucky that I came up with the victim performing his own payback when I did."
"Yes." His eyebrows went up as he expressed a chilling thought. "Do you think it might happen to me again as Don Guido? Do you think I could lose myself in the part?"
I stared at him for a few seconds. "Just keep in mind what we're trying to do. We want the prisoners, we want to stay alive, and if there is any kind of a fight, we want the Razai to come out on top. As long as that's what Don Guido Abalone wants, I don't care if you lose yourself in the part or not."
Herb frowned as a thought seemed to darken the doorway of his mind. "Bando, what are you going to do about afterward?"
"About what?"
"You haven't thought about it yet?"
"Thought about what?
Don Guido Abalone pointed a quartz-encrusted finger toward the Hand. "You've got hundreds—maybe thousands—of rape and murder cases to deal with out there. What're you going to do about them?"
My eyebrows went up. What he had said was true. What was I ever going to do about them? I rubbed my eyes and shook my head in despair. Right then the best-sounding answer I could think of depended on either wiping out the entire Hand or losing.
"Bando!"
I could hear Marietta's bellow calling me, and I hoped it wasn't any more trouble. Just what I didn't need right then was another trial. That was when it got through to me that I wasn't the only RC in the Razai. Stays, Cap, Marietta, they could all act as investigators. In fact, right now I could tell Marietta to run her own trial.
"Bando!" she repeated. "Over here!"
She came around a dune and as soon as she saw me, she frowned. She nodded at Herb and came to a stop in front of me. "I've been lookin' all over for you."
"So, you found me."
She shook her head. "I don't know any other way but to let you have it right between the eyes. I found Alna—"
"Where? Is she dead?"
"No, she's alive. I found her tracks going back the way we came. I chased her down and talked to her. She's lookin' for Nkuma and his bunch."
"Why? Because I let Abe Lyles say his piece?"
Marietta shrugged as she nodded. "Maybe. Mostly I think she misses her friends. Bein' lonely can make you do strange thin
gs."
"Lonely? She has me, doesn't she?"
Marietta looked at me in silence as she waited for me to answer my own question. It was true. She didn't have me. No one had me. I hadn't been available for anyone since before I could remember. I couldn't allow myself to get too close to anyone, because if they don't get close, they can't hurt you. The thing that was screaming at me right then was, if I hadn't allowed Alna to get close to me, why did her trying to leave hurt so damned much?
"Well, where is she? I want to talk to her."
"She's gone, Bando. She's headin' for Nkuma and the mirage."
I was stunned. "Why didn't you stop her?"
"Rule number two, Chief. She's got the right to go wherever she wants."
"What? To kill herself?" I demanded.
Marietta placed her hand on my shoulder. "We all got that right, Chief."
Stays came around a dune leading a party of twelve scantily-clad angel cakes. They were made up, and looked beautiful. They wore their sheets pulled up in front and thrown back over their shoulders. Their cut-down trousers were very short shorts and what was left of their shirts was hardly enough to qualify for a brassiere. If you concentrated on it, the only thing that looked silly was that they were still wearing their crowbar issue boots. It took me several looks before I recognized Bloody Sarah. She was perfection, and her image all but wiped out those memories of her ripping out the throats of those Suryian villagers.
I closed my eyes, feeling guilty as how I felt about Alna collided with how I felt about what I was seeing. Seconds after hearing my true love had taken off into the dunes, my tongue was in the sand panting after the angel cakes. No wonder Alna had left. She must've known about the rub-down bath in the Men's Hall. Maybe she didn't know about that, but could see inside of me and saw that I had the morals of a goat, and not half the good taste. Maybe it was because Alna couldn't see inside of me because I was afraid to let her know me. I couldn't deal with it right then.
INFINITY HOLD3 Page 24
