"Tomorrow, just before the sun shows itself, the sky will be a beautiful blue. It will start to warm up, and you'll give a little cheer. That will change. In minutes it will be too hot to breath. Getting out of the desert is all that you will be able to think about. You'll see some green mountains, and you'll head for them, even though they are thousands of miles away, you are on foot, and your water will run out in less than a week. But you'll keep going in that direction, because it is the only green thing you can see.
"By then, the gangs that miss you tonight will probably follow your tracks and catch up with you. If you belong to a small group, you will be eaten. If your group is large like mine was, perhaps you can turn the tables on them and fight back. But there are important issues you will need to settle. Who will boss the gang? How will you decide who will boss the gang? What about the races? What about the sexes?" There was a lewd giggle in the crowd.
"You women, and a lot of you men know what it's like to be raped—to be treated like a piece of meat. There was part of a gang on the dunes who specialized in doing just that. They held women as servants and slaves to provide them with sex on demand. The reluctant were beaten to death. The gang's name was the Hand." I slung my rifle. "I belong to the Razai. We wiped out that finger of the Hand."
I turned around and waited for one of Stay's fireworks displays. While I waited, the crowd mumbled among itself. One fellow yelled, "Do you mean we have to join the Razai?"
Alna answered. "No. You're free to join whoever you want or join no one at all."
"I see a chili pepper and two maus. Is your gang brown, black, white, yellow, red, or what?'
"We are the Razai!" Alna hissed. "We are human beings! If you are human beings, you are welcome."
"You're lyin' about them mountains, ain't you, man?"
"No," answered Nkuma. "I started in that direction with three hundred men and women. I was very lucky. I managed to make it back with seventeen left alive."
In the south I saw a white streak rise above the horizon. The sharks hushed as they saw it. I looked at them and pointed back over my shoulder. "Just to the right of that light is south. Unless you can get additional supplies somewhere, that is the only way out of this desert. If you go far enough in that direction, you'll run into the Big Grass and a very powerful armed gang bossed by a killer named Kegel.
"Or, if you want, you can join the Razai. That's who's sending up that white streak every hour or so. That streak seems to be moving more and more east every time I see it, so I guess that means we're going to the Sunrise Mountains to take on the rest of the Hand. The Hand holds slaves and looks upon rape as a pastime, like a lot of gangs on Tartaros. We're opposed to that."
"How long have you been here?" shouted a voice.
I thought about it—thought about lying. But decided to tell the truth. The truth seemed very strange, however. "This is our eighth day."
There were a great many laughs, and it did sound silly. I mean, it was like that old joke about the protomos in the issue line saying to the one standing just behind in line, "You're new."
Well, they all were new. We aged fast on Tartaros. After all, Tartaros had longer days. I nodded at them. "We've managed to cram enough experience into those eight days to fill a couple of lifetimes. You're welcome to follow me and my friends back to the Razai, or go ahead and form up your own gangs and do your own research. Here on Tartaros, you are free to either change your luck or rebuild your own Hell right smack down to the last splinter. It's your choice."
I clucked at my critter and Nkuma and I swung around to the south.
"Hey," yelled a voice, "What's the Razai got to offer that's any better than the other gangs?"
I turned around and looked past Alna. I grinned and reached into my shirt pocket. As I pulled out Martin Stays's silver star and pinned it to the outside of my sheet so that they all could see it, I said, "We have law, brother crowbar. We have law."
The three of us rode toward the white streak that night, and when we made camp before the sunrise, we had sixteen thousand new brothers and sisters for company.
Thus endeth the lesson.
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Book Two
KILL ALL THE LAWYERS
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The Job
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I looked through the eyes of a little boy. A wet winter night in the hell of South Philly's Free Fire Zone. The boy had watched as they ran the bait and teased the stain into the alley. They beat in the cop's head, ripped open his guts, and took the stain's badge, gun, jacket, gloves, belt, shoes, and wallet.
The cop's eyes were open. He had to know he was dying there in the freezing filth of that alley, his open belly steaming in the cold. The little boy pulled out his penis, pissed on the cop, and laughed at him as he died. . . .
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"Hey, pigfuzz. You got a killing."
The voice was strange. High, birdlike, and dripping with contempt. Like a little child I kept my eyes closed and buried my face in Alna's hair. It was hot beneath the desert sheet, Alna's hair stank, and at least a third of the desert's sand was in my mouth gritting between my teeth. Still, it was better than the deal I'd get from the voice that had interrupted my nightmares.
I didn't want to do a trial first thing in the evening. It was too early in the day to do ragtime, and I didn't need to kill anyone else. My cargo of ghosts already had my springs bent.
"You hear me, chili pepper? You got a stiff and a perp out there on the grit. You're the man with the star, the big talk, and the law. You gonna cop or cop out?" I felt a docker poke me in my arm.
I rolled over, pulled the sheet off my face, and looked up at a young kid about fourteen or fifteen, with pale skin, thin lips, and all the hate in the universe sitting in a pair of gray eyes. He was wearing one of the metallic copper Mihvihtian sun sheets with his cold-time togs bundled and slung on his back. Behind him was the brassy late afternoon sky of Tartaros.
"Who're you?" I asked.
"I'm the one who's bringing the bad news, pigfuzz. You got a killing over in the left flank guard. Are you going to do something?"
I sat up, and shook the sand out of my hair and off my sheet. The sun was almost to the western horizon. The furnace was beginning to turn down. In another couple of hours the night cold would shatter our bones. We'd have to get the column moving soon or freeze to death. I reached out a hand and shook Alna. She groaned and turned her back toward me. True love.
I got to my feet, shook more sand off me, and looked at the kid. "You got a name?"
"Yeah."
A real attitude. "You want to tell me what it is?"
"Ratt. Ratt Katz."
Those gray eyes were on me like green on twenties. Go ahead, they said. Just make a crack about my name. I'll rip out your lungs for water wings. "Okay. You seen Nkuma?"
"Your mau buddy with the other rifle?"
"That's right."
Ratt shook his head. A tiny grin parted those thin lips. "I figure one of the yard monsters did him for his piece."
"You got anything to go on, or is that just wishful thinking."
"I haven't seen him, pigfuzz. Not for days. So, what do you do now?"
"Now I wake up." I turned my back on him and picked up my cold night rags that I'd been using for a pillow. My skin was all rashed up from the sweat, grit, and no showers. I was obsessed with getting a bath when I could afford the time and find the water. Right then, however, there was a trial coming up and Nkuma was nowhere near.
I didn't figure anyone did Nkuma for his weapon. Getting killed so some hunk of meat could grab his rifle would've at least made some sense. Parching out on the dunes trying to save all the new convict-exiles from the desert out of guilt was rank stupe, so that was probably where he was: exactly where I'd told him not to go
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I looked back at the squib. "Who's the perp?"
"A little haystack bit named Tani Aduelo. She thinned one of the sisters for her rations."
"She killed a mau?"
"Pushed a cutter right between her ribs. Whacked out her pump and main ducts. Witnesses, too. I'm one of them."
"Are the natives getting restless?"
Ratt shook his head. "Nobody cares about Misi Pihn. She's the croakee. Give the angel cake a slap on the wrist and the maus'll be happy. Tani's got a cockroach. His name is Lewis Grahl."
My evening was complete. A lawyer. I bent over and began wrapping the strips of cloth around my ankles to keep the sand out of the tops of my crowbar dockers. "What's he want?"
"He said he just wants to make sure everything's done according to The Law of the Razai, just the way you read it to them." Ratt gave out with one of those cynical little snickers. "I think he figures on getting her off."
"This Misi Pihn. I take it she wasn't exactly crowbar prom queen."
Finally Ratt's mouth did something beside sneer. He actually looked angry. "Misi Pihn was a snitch. Her mouth hurt a lot of people back on juve block."
"Juve?" That got my attention. "How old was she?"
"A little younger than me. Maybe fifteen. We called her the Black Wire."
"Straight to the warden's ear?"
"A one mouth news net."
I picked up my rifle and kit bag. "So what're you? The local attitude problem?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean a snitch is dead, no one wants the perp in the grinder, and here you are blowholing to the cops."
"So?"
"Illuminate me, kid. What beam are you riding?"
Those eyes seemed to go wild for a split second, but the face didn't changed expression. Like most sharks in the crowbars, Ratt was half control and half gibber festival. "It's all air, isn't it? You, the Razai Cops, the law? I'll tell you what I do, pigfuzz. I find lies and I rub people's noses in 'em. Does that put a turd in your taco, chili pepper?"
Ratt Katz was maybe fifty kilos with a deep breath and his pockets full of sand. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how he'd lived as long as he had. Anyway, I didn't have to give in to the urge to kill him; not right then. And I didn't have to explain or prove anything to any wet-eared diaper rash with a jerk tag like Ratt Katz. There was a thought splinter though that was beginning to peeve my psyche. "This Tani Aduelo. How old is she?"
"Fourteen. She just turned fourteen."
"Fourteen." I began sweating grenades, trying to remember how big kids were at fourteen. How big, and how mean. "Fourteen years old?"
"Yeah. Pretty. Real popular, too. Maybe you can swap your mau bit and make her a deal for her young ass. You let it live, she lets you crawl inside."
As I fought down the desire to burger young Katz on the spot, I looked upon any hope that he'd get within striking distance of his sixteenth year as rank fantasy. I unclenched my fingers and wiggled them to work out the strangle strain.
"Bando," said Alna, her voice thick and sleepy. "What is it?"
I looked down at her. "There's trouble. I got to go to work."
I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out the homemade star with the words "Chief—Razai Police" scratched into the metal. I pinned it on the outside of my dirty white desert sheet, kissed Alna, and got back on my feet.
"Do you want me there?" she asked.
I held out my hand. "Yeah," I whispered. "I need you there. This perp's female, fourteen, and already I want to puke."
Alna took my hand and I pulled her to her feet. We held each other and she whispered in my ear, "You're a good man, Bando Nicos. You're going to do just fine."
Yeah, I thought. I could almost hear my ghosts laughing. We held each other a moment longer, then followed Ratt Katz as he struck out across the sand for the left flank guard camp.
We stopped as the white streak of a descending prison ship's exhaust trail headed toward the east to land in the dark. That load of sharks was getting a break being landed that close to the edge of the desert. Of course it wouldn't do them any good unless they knew what direction to follow. To find that out, they would have to be told.
I glanced at Alna. She was staring back at me, her eyes carrying more than a bit of accusation in them. "We already got more than we can handle, doll. Besides, they're too far away. We can't save 'em all."
"Maybe Nkuma sees them, too." She looked at the kid and asked me, "Who's this?"
I held out my hand, "Alna Moah, this is Ratt Katz, seeker of justice."
"You came to the right man," she said. She sounded like she meant it. The kid looked at her like she was garbage.
As Ratt lead the way over a dune, I could hear voices, whistles, laughter. I tried to work up enough spit to swallow as I held on to Alna and tried to wrestle my ghosts into the dark corners. It was ragtime.
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Pihn v. Aduelo
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The column of sharks was strung out over maybe two miles aimed toward the east and the Razai. They were organized Razai style with a main walking column headed by a point guard, flanked by wings, and brought up by a rear guard. Except for my rifle, the only weapons the sharks had were belt buckles, sand saps, and homemade cutters hand crafted back in the crowbars.
By the time we reached the left flank guard area, the sun was half under the desert's edge. The air was cool enough to breathe and everyone should've been packing up for the night's march. Instead the dunes were covered with sharks who wanted to watch another episode of "You Bet Your Life." I left Alna at the sidelines as I moved into the middle of the mob. Ratt walked with me, the muttered comments aimed in his direction drawing obscene gestures and comments in return. He'd save the ripest cracks for the biggest mokkers. Either the kid was real brave, real stupid, or a death addict.
Tani Aduelo was easy to spot. Even in the fading heat of the day, this girl was pretty. Lovely. Beautiful. Adorable. Maybe it was part sexual, part little girl parent protective, part I don't know what. I just wanted to wrap my arms around her, cuddle, and protect her from all the nastiness in the world, which is saying a lot on Tartaros.
She made me think of the wood nymphs and water nymphs I'd read about in the Crotch back when I was killing the clock reading Greek mythology. She was even more than that. She was the kind of deep pretty that made you need to be within sight of her, because to be in sight of her filled your heart with joy, and a crowbar shark needed that joy more than any drug.
Fourteen years old, with blond bobbed hair, bright blue eyes, and cheeks the color of strawberry cream. She looked like one of those antique china dolls. When she spoke, her voice was soft, sweet, and full of fun. When she laughed you could hear bells tinkling all over the galaxy. You just knew that when she came down the chute her parents had just sold themselves into slavery. What heartless bastard could've denied little Tani anything her little heart desired? You could tell that throughout her entire life she had been given the extra slack.
Now, there are people like Bando Nicos who get thumped by the stains even when they don't do anything simply because they look like they ought to get thumped. If I really hadn't done whatever it was, then the thump was still righteous because I had certainly done something in the past, or would do something in the future, that deserved it. If a body dropped dead from old age on the other side of the planet, the first question that would leap into the head of the local cops would be "Where's Bando Nicos?" Even with me on infinity hold I was sure the stains on Earth were still asking the same question.
People like Tani, however, get to fly in a friendlier sky. You just knew that if she had been caught standing over a stiff with her feet in a pool of blush and with a smoking piece in her mitt, the first question the stain would ask was "Who handed her that gun?" Then he'd ask, "Where's Bando Nicos?"
There wasn't anything left to do but do it. "
Ratt," I called out loud for the benefit of the crowd, "What's the charge?"
There was a noise from the spectators made up of laughter, snickers, rude comments, and a bunch of threats. I fired one of my precious few rounds up into the air to chill down the spectators. They iced to a low mumble and I looked around at the sharks.
"We read you all the law at least a couple of times," I yelled. "You crowbar blowholes with the big mouths, remember Rule Thirteen, the 'You Say It, You Pay It Rule'. A threat is a crime, and it carries as a penalty the performance of the threat upon the threatener." At last, complete silence.
In the quiet, Ratt Katz walked over until he was standing in front of me. It was rag time. "Where's the stiff?"
Ratt looked off to his left and I followed the direction of his gaze until I saw a prone shape covered with a Mihvihtian sun sheet at the foot of the dune to my right. I went over, and as I approached I saw that the copper-colored sheet was dotted with goobers. At least two or three hundred sharks had taken the opportunity to spit on the Pihn remains. The legacy of the snitch.
I unslung my piece and lifted the sheet with my rifle's front sight blade. There was Misi Pihn, former bigmouth. She was a mau, maybe fourteen or fifteen, skinny with eyes like a snake, still open. Her crowbar jacket was stained with a small amount of blood, and I could see where the cutter had gone through the cloth.
There wasn't any point in asking where the murder weapon was. To make a good cutter and smuggle it all the way to Tartaros under guard takes a lot of work and risk. It was a valuable item, and I had no doubt that Tani Aduelo's cutter was in the possession of pretty little Tani. I glanced up at the dune facing me, and those sharks that weren't looking down at Misi Pihn with narrowed eyes were transmitting high signs to perky little Tani.
INFINITY HOLD3 Page 29
