He glanced at Deadeye and back at me, the sweat running down his face. "Cut me a deal. Cut me a deal, Nicos."
The blood leaking down my leg was making me light-headed and sick to my stomach. "You got something to sell?"
"I got something."
"Let's hear it."
"Anna Tane. You want her. I know you want her more'n you want me. Prob'ly more'n you want off this planet. She's the one who did all this, the gut stringin', even what happened to you. So, you want her, right?"
"Yeah. I want her."
"I tell you where Anna Tane is and you let me go. What say, Nicos?"
"I can't let you go. I do have some payback I can lift, though. You got a max against you I can lift."
"Yeah?"
"So where is she?
Kegel struggled to his feet. "I need some assurances, Nicos. Before I talk I want—"
I fired a burp into the wall behind him, making him jump and cover his face with his arms. "I already told you I got payback I can lift. You tell me where Anna Tane is, I'll lift it. You keep jerking me around and you're burger."
Kegel held his poor little hand to his chest and faced Deadeye. "You're a witness."
"You bet, man." Deadeye's expression never changed.
Deke Kegel looked down, gave a little shrug, and said, "She's off with the Hand. Right after you and the other guy left camp, she took two hundred men and rode east. She's hiding out with Carlo."
"I thought the Hand hated you people's guts."
"Not as much as Carlo hates you, Nicos. You got to die. You know that, don't you? You got to die. The Razai's got to die. She's with the Hand. Take my word for it."
An emptiness in my chest told me that I believed him. It just meant that it would take a little more time. That was something I had plenty of. She could've tried hiding out on the other side of the galaxy and she couldn't get away from me. "Okay, freakface."
"We got a deal, Nicos?"
"Sure. You're off the hook for raping me. I can do that because I'm still alive." I lifted my weapon and pointed it at his chest. "Alna Moah's dead, though. Rule Forty-two. 'When acting for a dead victim, the investigator will always choose the max.'"
"Nicos!" he shouted. "Do you have any idea how much money and stuff we have in here?"
"A bunch, I imagine. It's all mine now, though."
"What if I said there are six more treasure stores more impressive than this one? I can take you there. I know where they are!"
Six more? Bloody hell, the size of the crime was beyond understanding. "I'd say that makes you just about the most murderous son of a bitch I ever met."
"I can make you rich!"
"Clownface, I'm already paid as much as any boss in the Razai." Since nobody in the Razai was paid anything, that was true. Anyway, what was I going to do on Tartaros with unlimited wealth? Buy a new car? Buy a road to run it on? Buy the equipment to build the road? Hell, I couldn't even buy a taco at a billion each.
He smiled, that freakish scar making him look like some kind of ghoul. "C'mon. I saw you, Nicos. When you were looking around in here. I saw your face. When you looked at all of that money, you glowed. You saw those baskets of drugs and your heart beat faster. Your breath became short. It excited you, didn't it?"
"Actually I was looking for some aspirin."
"Nicos," he said, "you can't kill me!"
"You won't mind if I try anyway?"
Deke Kegel shook his head. "You can't kill me. We're the same, you and me. We're like two ends of the same rope."
That took me back. Kegel was probably as close to a profound truth as he would ever get in his entire life. I pursed my lips and nodded. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we are two ends of the same rope. But there's a big difference."
He stared at me and asked, "What difference?"
"Your end has the noose in it." I aimed and pulled the trigger. It was only one shot straight through the forehead. He crumpled onto the dirt floor with a splat. It was quiet, nothing but that tic-tic-tic sound to break the silence.
I turned and Marietta, Head Start, Power Tool, and Mummy were standing behind Deadeye, next to the ladder, waiting silently. I hadn't even heard them come down. I pointed toward the surface. "Get Kegel and these three Forks out and toss them on the fire. Then I want the trapdoor hooked shut and the hole filled in."
A sparkle caught my eye and I saw Pill Phil's bag of diamond drops sitting on top of a basket full of thumpers. I turned to Marietta. "Grab up a sack of each of these pills and any other medical supplies, food, or weapons you can find."
She only nodded. They didn't say a word as I painfully dragged my shot leg up the ladder and out into the air.
While Marietta and Power Tool loaded up the critters with pills and supplies from the chamber, Mummy and Idiot Son were busy tossing Kegel and the Forks into the flames, along with more grass leaves and fire cubes. Head Start was last to leave the chamber, and I watched as he kicked the ladder away from the trap and pulled the door shut with a rope. When it latched, he tossed the rope into the hole. As they finished filling in the hole, the dark came and Deadeye was frowning at me.
"What?" I asked him.
"Kegel. When you said you'd cut him a deal?"
"Yeah?"
"You didn't lie. I thought you were jerking him off when you said you'd deal, but you didn't even lie to him. You let him off one max and dropped him for another. When you did the payback, one shot, quick, no mess."
"So?"
The hitter shook his head and looked up at the night sky. "Just taking notes."
I couldn't take the time to wonder about the bent of Deadeye's current attitude. The Eyes of the Spider were out and I looked east. My eyes saw nothing but grass and that rift vanishing in the distance.
Out there somewhere was Anna Tane. I'd have to postpone my appointment with that little punk named Ratt. The execution of Bando Nicos would have to wait until Anna Tane was in the maggot trough. There were half a million armed soldiers between her and justice. Between her and me. First things first. Taking on the Hand was next in line.
"We're all packed up, Chief," Marietta announced.
I pulled my critter around and headed for the trail back to the column. It was the end of my forty sixth day on Tartaros.
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A Flag for Alna
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After we turned east to follow the column, we rode through the night until we reached another stretch of that rift that split the plain of the Big Grass. It looked too dangerous to negotiate in the dark, so we stopped there to rest the animals and chew a little chow. While we were standing on the edge of the bluff facing east, the Eyes of the Spider went over the western horizon and the sky went through its assortment of cool colors. As the sky began to turn to brass, we could see that the jagged edge of the Sunrise Mountains made up the eastern horizon.
After all that we'd done, after all that we'd been through, there were the mountains. I never allowed myself to believe that I'd ever see them for fear of being slammed by disappointment. It took me a long time to believe my eyes. On the lower plain, units of the Razai were spread out as far as I could see.
It was no mob. There was a purpose to the way the units were organized, how they were placed. No longer were we a raggedy gang of two thousand protos running in terror from rapists and killers. We were an army. More than that, we were a nation. Outnumbered or not, when we stuck our flag in the Hand's face, old Carlo T. wouldn't be laughing.
I looked down at the camp and shook my head as shame warmed my face. I really wasn't a part of it anymore. The Razai and the law. I was a murderer. Prophet's payback was way overdue. Every second I remained alive I did more to destroy the law than to protect it. I'd do myself. I wanted to, but first I had to erase a particular face from my mind.
She was in those mountains, Anna Tane. I tasted blood. I had been biting my lip. I felt dizzy and I looked down at my leg. Th
e bleeding hadn't started again. I had to get patched up anyway if I was going after the gut stringer. I frowned as everything ate at me. I could hardly stand myself. It was still first things first, however. All I had to do right then was make it through the day. The CSAs popped into my head. What I needed was a meeting.
"Mount up, people," I said to the posse. I braced myself against the pain in my leg, right-legged myself up on my critter, and fought the urge to faint as I waited for the others.
"We're ready, Chief," said Marietta.
"Yeah." I scratched the back of my neck as I thought for a ment. I glanced down at the camp and back at Marietta. "When we get in, grab a few RCs and toss the ex-Kegeleros who're still with us on the grill. I want you to find me some people who can tell me about Anna Tane. I want to know her history from the womb to now, and everything about her from her brand of douche to her docker size. Understand?"
"I got you, Chief." With her thumb she pointed back at the whacks. "Say somethin' to 'em."
I turned, faced them, and was surprised that I felt a little pain in my chest. Maybe this would be the end of working with them. They hadn't been bad for a bunch of homicidal maniacs.
"You people," I said. "You did okay." Or like Brain Drain used to say, no need to gush. I would've liked to have told them more, but Bando Nicos gets jaw lock when it comes to talking about feelings. Up until then I always considered it a gift. If you don't talk about it, maybe you don't feel it so much. Right then it didn't seem like such a treasure. "You did okay," I repeated.
I faced forward, urged my critter into motion, and guided it down the face of the bluff as I followed the trail left by the Razai. It was a better road than the one that went down to Kegel's old camp. The Colonel must have put himself together some kind of primo road engineering unit. They did good work. There were other changes, too.
As we came to the guard post at the western approach to the camp, we got our first look at the flag of the Razai. What with our name and who was in the gang, I'd always figured that when we did come up with a flag it would sport a nasty fanged lizard, or skulls and chains, or some other kind of badass biker flash to show how tough we were. This flag was a surprise.
It was midnight blue with a pair of four pointed silver-white stars in the middle. The star on the right was a little smaller and a little higher than the star on the left. They were the rising Eyes of the Spider. The guard said that Nance Damas had ordered the flags made with that design the first thing after her return to camp.
Nance had spent a long time tied up next to Alna. She would've told Nance. In between horrors Alna would've told Nance about how she could look at the Eyes of the Spider and know that Bando Nicos would be looking at them too. It helped her keep going. It reminded her that she was never alone. If a Razai could see that flag, the Razai would never be alone.
A pain the size of the universe rolled over in my gut. The tears came and there was no stopping them. I pulled up my hood to help hide my face.
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Never Alone
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Once we entered the camp, the whacks headed for RC headquarters, Marietta began sniffing out ex-Kegeleros with a line on Anna Tane, and I sent Deadeye to track down Ratt Katz. There were hundreds of thousands of sharks spread out all over the plain. When I was ready to payback Prophet, I didn't want to have to wear myself out chasing down some black mask.
I scanned that section of the camp. It was full of strange faces, strange uniforms, strange languages. There were so few of them I recognized I felt more like a stranger there than I had in Kegel's camp. I studied the passing pans until I spotted one of the deadheads from Rus Gades's CSA meeting. "Breed!"
The tall powder puff stopped, squinted up at me with dark eyes, and grew a gleaming smile beneath his huge hooked nose. "Mother, mother, what a flash! I thought you was dead, Bando."
"Why'd you think that?"
He held out his hands and arched his eyebrows. "You got shot in the head. I haven't seen you at any meetings for a long time. Call me crazy."
"Is there a meeting around here sometime soon? I could use one."
"You look like it."
I held my hand to the old bandage around my head and could speculate about the rest of my face. Then there was my leg. What the hell. I didn't have to justify my appearance to any yard eagle with a loose jaw and a couple of minutes to murder.
"Cut the inventory, clown. Where's the next meeting?"
"We got close to fifty regular meetings now."
"Fifty?"
"There's even some talk about putting together a gang intergroup. Let me look."
From just that one little meeting that Rus Gades and his sickos had started. You wouldn't think there'd be that many deadheads, perverts, and weenie-wavers who'd be honest enough with themselves to want to get better. Of course, I still had to remind myself a hundred times each day that this was Tartaros. The crowbars were done past, and the Razai had a real incentive program. Being sick was no ticket out of the max. In the Razai, the price of not getting help could be a shot in the head. It would be my shot in the head soon enough.
Breed reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a copy of Ila Toussant's The Taps. The newspaper was up to four sheets. Breed lowered the papers and looked around. Once he found what he was looking for he pointed toward the northeast. "Over there. See that red and silver pennant on the top of that tent?"
I squinted. About a hundred meters away one of the tents we'd salvaged from the Kegel raid was set up. On top it had a ragged red rag flying along with a hunk of silvered sun sheet. "Yeah."
"That's the ref for this part of the walking column. In there they can tell you where the Caravan group puts on its meeting. It should be starting real soon."
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Inside the tent were two RCs, each of them surrounded by sharks, each of them settling kitbag snatches. Two deputies were keeping records while a third stood guard on the tent flap. The ref, a shark named Bernie Gold, wasted no time in pressing the flesh and putting on the big smile. He was sleek, edging sixty, and had gleaming silver hair. Referee was an elective position, and Bernie was still high from winning his election two days before. His job was putting the issues before his bunch and taking their votes back to Nance. On his own he added providing a place for his bunch's RCs to settle the local hash, and he had copies of The Taps and The Law of the Razai for anyone who wanted them. Before the crowbars he had been a mortician with a layaway plan the courts simply couldn't abide. He had been on load twenty-six from Earth. He aimed me toward the CSA meeting.
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The Caravan Group was a small discussion meeting that had been formed by some sharks from Junayd. The mob from Junayd was only one of thirty or more loads Nkuma had brought in. It was strange to think about the hundreds of thousands of sharks who owed Nkuma their lives. I wondered if he carried that candle with him when he went on the dark and chilly. Probably not. He never could climb off that ghost he was riding.
The Caravan Group CSA meeting was different than the ones Rus Gades and his CSAs held. The thirty-odd members met out in the grass in a clearing. They squatted in a circle, kept their faces covered, only the eyes exposed, and they identified themselves by special meeting names like Desert Blossom and East Wind. These guys took the anonymous part of CSA real serious.
East Wind finished the opening prayer in some strange language that had a lot of throat clearing in it, and there was just a moment when I thought the meeting wasn't going to be in English. Then East Wind said in English, "Peace be with you and the mercy of God."
I looked around, and although everyone's face was covered, it was pretty clear from the different uniforms and desert sheets that everyone at the meeting wasn't from Junayd. There were Mihvihtians, some sharks from Earth and Duat, a couple of holdovers from Kvasir that hadn't gone off with Paxati and the cockroaches, a couple of whacks, and more outfits I didn't recognize.
Nevertheless, in keeping with the local group traditions, everyone kept his or her face covered and used an alias. Once you told them your alias, the entire meeting answered with, "Welcome."
From East Wind and Sandman, to Sun Princess and Red Death, the names worked their way around while I tried to think up an alias for Bando Nicos.
A hulk introduced himself as Star Rider with a very familiar voice, and I knew it was Dom. Some used names like Girl, Man, the Wig, and one called him or herself Cuter Neuter. When it was my turn I called myself Blue Fist. They said to me, "Welcome."
After the introductions, East Wind told her story. Her compulsion was getting into relationships with really sick jerks and trying to heal them. It had made her sick enough to kill, and it frightened me to see how her sickness made her attractive to me. It scared me enough to push Anna Tane out of my head.
I couldn't even see East Wind's face or body. All I knew about her was that she had dark eyes, she was terribly sick, and was taking that first hesitant step toward recovery. She was one more sicko, in a long parade of sickos, whose impossible collection of needs I could attempt to fill thereby earning her eternal gratitude, which may not be love, but it was the only thing I knew. That was how Alna and I had come together. Show me your sores and I'm yours.
Usually the loves I'd been in ended in ugly resentments, blistering fights, or worse, but I hadn't had enough time with Alna for us to destroy each other. It probably would've ended that way, though. It always had before. East Wind's story told me that rage wasn't my only addiction.
When East Wind talked about what might constitute recovery for her, she mentioned a future that might contain a healthy man and a healthy relationship based on mutual love, respect, and trust. I inwardly shook my head in wonder and despair because I truly had no idea what she was talking about. All of this health and normalcy seemed terribly alien. It was like I was missing the emotional parts necessary to understand what was being said. It didn't seem likely that I ever would learn what she was talking about.
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