INFINITY HOLD3

by Longyear, Barry B.

  Marietta's eyebrows went up. "You mean, like a spy or three?"

  "That's what I mean."

  Fodder lowered his voice. "It's not for public consumption, but Minnie McDavies is out there."

  "Nutwhacker Sweet?"

  "She and Herb Ollick are heading up our espionage and propaganda department."

  "Minnie sneaks and Herb sells," said Marietta.

  Minnie and Herb would be great out there. Minnie was as elusive as a shadow on a cloudy day, and Herb could sell heat to Hell. If there was something we should know, Minnie would hear it. The problem was, would her news get back to us in time? There was some housekeeping of my own to do.

  "Fodder, Nance grabbed Stays to be her understudy so I need a number two. Think you can handle it?"

  He stared at me for a long time, his gray eyes studying me for something. Was this Nicos character making fun of the frocked up priest? Was he gibbers? Could he possibly be serious? Hell, there wasn't enough self esteem in the entire Razai to butter a piece of toast. "Are you joking?" he asked.

  "No. Can you handle it?"

  His mouth twitched nervously for a second, then Marietta punched him in his shoulder, hard. "Yes!" He glared at Marietta and then faced me as he rubbed his shoulder. "Yes. I can handle it."

  "Good. Finger your number three as soon as you can. Promotions can come pretty fast in this outfit."

  "What about Marietta?" Her mouth fell open and for a crazy second there I thought she was going to go out with the vapors.

  "Good choice."

  I placed my hand on Fodder's shoulder, surprised at the bit of muscle beneath my fingers. Tartaros'd been good for him. "You stick close, Fodder. I'm going in there to talk to Nance and I figure I might need you real soon."

  "Very well."

  I headed for the steps to the sled wondering what was going on between Fodder and Lauris. After a second or two smoking my wig, the only thing I figured out was that it probably wasn't any of my business. I climbed the stairs, pushed through the crowd jamming Nance's door, and entered the sled.

  On the inside it was steaming hot, foul-smelling, the table crowded with faces. "Nance," I shouted, "we got to talk!"

  She was seated at the table, her face like stone. She waved a hand like she was chasing a fly away and commanded, "Later." She pointed at one of the walls. I settled down on the arm of one of the couches and listened. Loki Mears, the messenger from the scout expedition who'd brought back the news from Carlo, was sitting red-faced and excited, listening to the others blow wind at the particulars.

  Stays was sitting across from Loki, and the table was filled with a regular Razai who's who. Our generals, Habran Indimi, Rhome Nazzar, Yirbe Vekk, Ow Dao, and Match Rojas, were there. The renegade general from the Hand, Yani Comini, was there, along with his number two, Shava Ido, and generals I'd never heard of before.

  In the back of the compartment on the opposite side from me was Margo Hoyt. She was being very quiet for a perp croaker. I opened an ear and listened to the jaw music. The deal was that Carlo would release to the Razai as many of the Hand's workers who wanted to leave. They called them workers instead of slaves. In addition, the Hand would turn over to the Razai a piece of territory adequate to support the gang. The territory would include all of the Big Grass west of the Sunrise Mountains and north of the Sea of Stars. Moreover, Carlo would sign a non aggression agreement between the Hand and the Razai that would pledge the eternal friendship, trust, and mutual defense of both gangs.

  It sounded good. It sounded so good it probably was fattening, addictive, and a major cause of cavities, hair loss, and premature ejaculation. It reminded me, too, of how Carlo's son, Pau Avanti, had almost closed the lid on our jar by setting us up and suckering us in with only one piece of bait: by having the Hand become what we wanted it to become. Was Pau Avanti that clever, or had he learned at his father's cankered kneecap?

  The more I listened to them kick around the deal, the riper it smelled and the more my leg hurt. Nance didn't seem to be picking up on any of it. She just kept sitting there, her arms folded, her elbows on the edge of the table, her face like a brick wall. It was as if she was in another world, which was probably the case. I'd been in that world, constantly beating myself to death with the past. She seemed to have recovered from her bullet wound, but Kegel and Anna Tane had scarred her someplace else. They'd been real good at that. She was a million miles away.

  I glanced at Margo. She was looking back at me, her fingers holding her nose. She made a face and returned to observing the discussion. As a wave of dizziness passed, I let my gaze nail itself to Yani Comini's face as I tried to get a reading on the man.

  The talk was that Comini had been a military prisoner on Timsujinn and had participated in a revolt that ended in the deaths of a thousand or so pols, stains, hightowers, and squats. The stains on Timsujinn forgave them by setting them free—on Tartaros.

  He looked more like a general than any shark mokker we had. He was tall and graying, with one of those rugged, fatherly, you-can-trust-me-with-your-saving-account looks sported by the very best con artists. His eyes were the giveaway, though. He didn't seem to be able to look anyone in the face for long. The first thing a slick learns is how to give you that clear steady look in the eye while he smiles, lies through his teeth, empties your pockets with one hand, and poisons your dog with the other.

  Yani Comini was one of those persons who had a hidden agenda. I just wondered why no one but Margo and me could smell it. For me, I just didn't believe in happy endings. Margo had been a Hand slave since she was a little girl. Everyone else was so damn tired, hungry, filthy, and fought out that they were willing to believe in anyone who promised some rest and peace.

  After an hour or so, I was sicker than green from the heat and smells. At last Loki Mears had to get back to the scouts and the blowholers decided to take a break. I looked at Nance and she was burnt. Maybe Nance was shuffling dimensions but I counted on Stays to keep her picture tuned. Stays mumbled a few things to her and there were a couple of others who were waiting in line for Nance's time. If I'd waited any longer I would've tossed my chow all over the folk, so I got up, motioned to Margo to follow me, and cripped my way out of the sled, using my piece for a shaky crutch.

  On the back porch I looked down and saw Yani Comini talking quietly to Shava Ido and a couple of other former Hand jobs. There were more of his men scattered throughout the crowd around Nance's sled. I did a quick scan and located Fodder and Lauris having a jaw session with an RC I didn't recognize. I put my left arm around Margo's shoulders. "You don't mind being a crutch for a bit, do you?"

  "That's what you wanted me for?"

  "In part." I nodded toward Fodder. "Get me down there." We came up on them and I said to Fodder, "Where's Marietta?"

  He pointed toward a wagon that was flying a light blue streamer. "She went to the office to begin questioning the Kegel sheets about Anna Tane."

  "Office?"

  "That's RC headquarters."

  Go away for a few days and you lose track of everything. My dizziness upped a notch as everything appeared to get hotter and hotter. It was like being back in the middle of the bloody Forever Sand. I tried to moisten my lips as I faced Fodder. "Margo and me are going to have a little chat with General Comini. Make certain we aren't disturbed."

  Fodder's older companion, a haystack female with short red hair and a black patch over her left eye, frowned as she unslung her rifle. "Chief, I thought the general was on our side."

  "Who're you?"

  "Tzani Costel. I'm RC with the Black and Orange."

  Black and Orange. The units were naming themselves with colors. There was a joke in there somewhere—chicken yellows, Black and Blues—but it seemed too complicated to figure out. I tapped the left side of my head. "I just got a suspicious mind, Tzani. It's a character defect. I should really work on it."

  "Just in case we get suspicious, too, what should we do?"

  I pointed at Comini. "Keep an ey
e on us. He's got sixty thousand armed men in camp who like him and don't even know me."

  Fodder and Tzani nodded and I renewed my grip on Margo as we headed for the general. My leg was screaming. "Margo, tell me about Yani Comini."

  "I don't know much about him," she answered. "He was a pezzo big shot on the east side of the mountains. That's a long way from where I was. He and his soldiers faced the Lee gang for a few years. During the Hand slave revolt, he put it down. Then he was locked up. Carlo kills and locks up men and women all the time. He doesn't need a reason. I know a lot about Carlo. I don't see him giving up anything, ever."

  Although I couldn't get a lens on it, something about what she said left a shadow. I didn't have the time or the brain cells left to figure it out. I nodded in the general's direction. "Let's see the man." We reached the general, I took his arm, and we began pulling him away from his companions. "Come on, General, let's jaw."

  "Hold it!" commanded Shava Ido.

  The Hand jobs began bringing their rifles to the ready but froze when they heard Fodder say, "Think about it."

  Fodder and Tzani Costel had them covered with their autos. Comini nodded at Shava and faced me. "Everyone seems a mite tense this morning."

  "Caffeine," I answered. "We really ought to cut down." I held out my hand. "General, I'm Bando Nicos, Chief of the Razai Cops."

  "I've heard about you. You don't look well."

  "I think I got a bug."

  "I'm sorry. Am I under arrest?"

  "We're the Razai, general. We don't arrest anybody, remember? No prisoners."

  "Yes. The law." We shook hands and I pointed to a cleared space where some critters were being held.

  "Let's talk for a bit, general. Okay?"

  His back seemed to stiffen. He looked at Shava, nodded, and faced me. "Very well."

  Once the three of us were well away from the others, Fodder and Tzani waiting discreetly at the entrance to the corral, I gimped around and asked, "General, level with me. What do you think of Carlo's offer?"

  He hesitated just a moment, then as he looked at the ground he said, "It sounds very good. We can get everything we want without firing a shot. The war is over. Doesn't that sound good to you?"

  I nodded emphatically. "It sounds very good." I looked at Margo. "Does it sound good to you?"

  "Bando, the only deal that ever sounded better to me was when I heard about General Comini here bringing over a whole sixty thousand man army to help out the Razai just because he and a few of his boys read copies of the law and fell in love."

  "That's what I was about to say." I looked at him.

  Comini stopped, turned, and looked at Margo. His eyes were gray and crinkled at the corners. "Is there something you want to say?" The general faced me. "What is this?""

  I nodded as I drew down the corners of my mouth. "A couple of things, general."

  "For instance?"

  "Like, how's your family?"

  He straightened like he had the electric ice pick stuck in his spine. "My family?"

  "Sure, general. I bet you got yourself a sweet little bit up there in the mountains. Maybe a couple of little goombabinos?"

  He looked away from me, his face troubled. "I have a wife and four children. Three boys and a girl. Their mother is taking care of them. Is there anything else?"

  "A thing or two." Using Margo under one arm and leaning on Comini with the other, I turned us and continued cripping around the edge of the corral, keeping one eye on Comini and the other on the yellow piles of critter crap on the ground.

  "Now, general, you probably don't have a suspicious mind. I do. I'm real suspicious. It gets to be a real inconvenience at times. I can't even count the number of great deals I screwed myself out of because I have a problem with trust. There are some things that keep me up nights that probably wouldn't bother you."

  He gave a great sigh of impatience. "Such as?"

  "Such as," interrupted Margo, "what if you and your soldiers aren't quite what you pretend to be?"

  He jerked to a stop, killed my leg, and put on a quite convincing expression of outrage. "Now, you just—"

  "Just supposing," I repeated. "Hear us out." I waved my hand in the direction of the Sunrise Mountains. "Carlo was holding you prisoner, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Wouldn't it be a real smart move on Carlo's part to let you out of the crowbars and have you and your men infiltrate the Razai so you could kill us from the inside when the fight with the Hand finally comes?"

  The general was very quiet.

  We stopped, I glanced at him, and looked back at the mountains. They seemed to swim on the horizon. "You look pretty straight and corners to me, Yani Comini," I said. "That's why I figure the only way you could be bent into trying something like this is that old Carlo T.'s got your family. Maybe the families of Shava and a lot of your men, too." I looked at him and the corner of his eye had a tic.

  "Of course," said the general with a rough voice, "you're just supposing." Comini shook his head and looked toward the mountains for a long time. He suddenly looked very old. When he finally spoke he said, "Nicos, supposing what you suppose is fact. What would be the smart thing for me to do right now?"

  "If Carlo wasn't holding any hostages, you and your men could just ride off into the sunset and no harm done, except that in that direction is the meanest damned desert in the world. But supposing there are families that old Carlo is holding, I think your best bet would be for you and your squats to throw in your lot with the Razai."

  "And Carlo kills our families?"

  "There are no guarantees. Something to think about, though. If this plan of Carlo's works out just like it's supposed to, he'll still have your families and you'll still be in the crowbars. On the other hand, if the Razai's plan works out just the way it's supposed to, you and your families'll be free to go wherever you want."

  He turned his face from the mountains and looked at me, his eyes searching mine. "There might be a problem."

  "Such as?"

  "What if it's impossible for the Razai to win?"

  Margo reached around me and poked the general in the shoulder with an outstretched finger. "Suppose we stop supposin' and you tell us what you want to say?"

  Yani Comini looked at me as he pointed back toward the mountains. "On the other side of the Sunrise, between the mountains and the Golden Ocean, is Iron Lee's territory. Lee has more than seven hundred thousand mounted soldiers. A deal has been cut. When the Razai reaches the foothills of the Sunrise, Carlo will come down the mountains and attack you front on. At the same time Lee's gang will strike at you from the north and the south."

  "Lee has the soldiers," said Margo, "but Iron Lee hates Carlo worse than locks. They've been warring for years."

  "That's true," the general answered, "But both of them hate the Razai more than they hate each other. They made an agreement to crush the Razai."

  "Why?" I asked. "We've never had anything to do with this Lee character."

  "It's the Law, Nicos. Somehow copies made it to Lee's territory. He's forbidden his people to read it and he's executed dozens who were caught with copies."

  "I don't get it."

  "Nicos, the combination of the law and the Razai is the biggest threat to gang boss power since the first load of exiles was dumped on Tartaros. The bosses have to have an end to the Razai because they have to kill the Law."

  I scratched my chin and smoked my wig. It seemed to me like Carlo and Iron Lee were giving the Razai a lot more power than we rated. There were gears that just wouldn't mesh. Was Comini holding a couple of cards? He'd already told me enough to execute him. Holding back something wouldn't make any sense. But then it didn't make any sense to me that people would risk torture and death to read copies of the law. I faced Comini. "General, can you trust your men—all of your men?"

  He thought for a second. "There are a few I'd cut. Carlo isn't above putting spies into his own troops to help maintain loyalty."

  I closed my eyes and
nodded as my woozy feeling seemed to make the planet spin weird. "Go cut 'em out, general, and gather the rest. Get ready to vote on what you want to do. In or out. Margo and me have to go see Nance and arrange a few things. And, general?"

  "Yes?"

  "It's time to start trusting." I let go of his arm. "You better begin with me."

  Comini turned and marched out of the corral. Shava Ido was waiting for him. I nodded to Fodder and his eye-patched sidekick to keep tabs on the general and his number two.

  I looked at Margo. "So?"

  She was biting her lower lip. "Fifty-fifty," she said.

  "Those are the best odds we've gotten since we hit the grit. Let's get to Nance before I go craps." We turned and began gimping me toward Nance's sled, working our way through the people. A hand reached out of the crowd and stopped us along the way. "Deadeye said you wanted to see me, Nicos." I looked and it was Ratt Katz, my future executioner. He had a neat new star pinned to his Mihvihtian sun sheet. The little squirt still looked like he hated my guts, which was one thing that was still working. I made a crutch out of Ratt, sent Margo ahead to Nance's sled, and faced the punk.

  "Have you handled any cases yet?"

  "Yeah."

  "What kind?"

  "Two murders and a threatened murder under Rule 13."

  "How'd you handle them?"

  Ratt's right eyebrow went up. "I killed everybody. What is this shit? Check up time? Fodder was on my ass through all three investigations. He thinks I did pretty good."

  "How did you feel about killing them, Ratt?"

  "What're you talking about?"

  "You got any ghosts camped out in the back of your head?"

  Ratt's arched eyebrow descended and joined the other in a deep frown. "Ghosts? You sure you haven't been smoking something?"

  "I've made some maggot meat out there, kid, and my head is filled with ghosts. Sometimes they bother me a lot."

  The kid sneered at me and spat on the ground. "No, I don't have any ghosts." Ratt pulled out a copy of the law. "It's like a machine. You plug it in, stick your arm in it, and your arm gets burgered. You don't want your arm burgered, don't stick it in the machine. Me and the law is a meat grinder and those three powder puffs jumped into it." The kid smacked the edge of his right hand into his left palm. "Chomp, chomp, chomp, squirt, squirt, squirt. Three piles of burger. It doesn't bother a meat grinder, why should it bother me? If you've got a guilty thing working, Chief, maybe you ought to work another corner."