Under the Eye of God

by David Gerrold

  Slash came over and sat down next to Finn. She reached over and stroked Ibaka and made reassuring noises. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Now, Lee came over and sat down too. He had an expression of great concern on his face. Finn looked at him curiously, but Lee held up a hand as if to say, “I have a thought here. Let me try something.”

  “Kask,” Lee said. “May I help you remember one thing?”

  The Dragon didn’t respond. He glared at Lee—the traitor, the man for whom his brother, Keeda, had died—but he didn’t turn away either.

  “You Dragons, you have a—a wonderful discipline. The whole family of warrior-lizards has a proud heritage. Everybody envies the strength of the Dragons. I don’t have to tell you that. You already know it. But I can tell you something that you don’t know. And that may help you make the right decision here.”

  Lee hesitated, waiting to see how or if the Dragon would respond. Kask merely continued staring at him.

  Lee-1169 took that as assent, and continued. “You have a tradition that one Dragon defends all, and all defend one. You belong to the family of Dragons. Well, the rest of us want to have that same kind of tradition in our lives—some people call it family, others call it community. I call it an alliance of life.”

  “You humans can’t know,” Kask protested, but without real enthusiasm.

  “Yes, I know. But if we could know,” Lee said, “we would want to have the same spirit among ourselves that you have among your brothers.” Lee stretched out his hand and laid it on the Dragon’s broad claw. “You can help teach us.”

  Kask looked up at that. “Teach? Me? What do I know?”

  “You know right from wrong. You know honor.”

  Finn touched Lee’s arm. “Let me say something. Kask—” The Dragon’s gaze shifted warily. “Your brother died for the honor of your family. You will too, if you have to. Let me ask you this—can you imagine an even greater honor? One worth living humbly for?”

  Kask didn’t answer, but both humans knew that he had heard their words. The great Dragon had actually begun considering the import of what they had said. After a moment, he grunted. “This confuses me. You start talking and I understand even less. If I had the honor of my family, I would have killed you both, long before this.”

  “Yet you trust me—as you trusted my brother—to hold the dog-child.”

  “I had no choice—”

  “Yes, you did,” said Finn. “You chose the honor of life instead of the honor of death.”

  “What you did,” explained Lee, “perfectly demonstrates this idea of an alliance of life. We helped each other, all of us.”

  “Dragons don’t help,” said Kask. “Helping fosters weakness. I have brought dishonor to the Dragon’s Claw.”

  “And gained a larger honor,” Finn put in quickly. “Can you imagine an honor held by all life? An honor so big that no individual race can hold it all?”

  “No,” admitted Kask. “I can’t.” And yet, even as he admitted that he couldn’t, the two humans saw his armored forehead furrowing in concern. Even as he shook his head in denial, still his patient mind had already begun trying to encompass such a strange and terrifying concept.

  Decision in the Desert

  By now, a small crowd had gathered around the group. One or two of the remaining prisoners grumbled, “Why waste time with the Dragon? Let’s go.” But others insisted on waiting. Finn glanced around, counting. He saw his brother, Slash, Harry, and three other men waiting nearby. He didn’t like it; they would make too large a group—too easy to spot, too slow to move. But . . . he and Sawyer had no choice. If nothing else, they owed a debt to Slash for showing them the sluice tube, and they could only repay it by achieving the freedom of the little dog-boy. Finn sighed. He hated situations like this.

  “I have a suggestion,” said Sawyer. He had put on his shoes again, and had slung his weapon over his shoulder.

  Kask looked up. A suggestion? Nobody ever suggested anything to a Dragon. They always ordered. He found the human’s courtesy an intriguing and disturbing new behavior.

  “Let’s get out of here before the Dragon Guards and the battle robots start tracking us. Postpone your decision for a while, Kask. Let’s all help each other to escape—then, maybe, we can help you find a way to regain your honor. If not this way, then maybe some better way. How does that sound?”

  Kask frowned and shook his head. He didn’t like it. Indecision represented weakness. But . . . so did everything else here. He said so to Finn, who he trusted more than Lee.

  “Humans call it a no-win situation, Kask. And yes, we find it just as troubling as you do.”

  Kask grunted, a sound without meaning.

  Finn stood up, hoping that Kask would take the hint and stand up too. “Sawyer’s suggestion makes sense. Come on. We have to get going.”

  “All right,” conceded Kask. He began levering himself back to his feet. “But I haven’t given up my claim to the dog-boy. I will carry him.” He bent down and plucked Ibaka from Finn’s grasp. Carefully, he put the dog-boy on his shoulder. “You will ride there, little one. You will show me your honor by not trying to escape? Do you understand?”

  Ibaka looked around the group. Finn and Lee both nodded to him. So did Sawyer and Harry Mertz. But only when Slash nodded her approval did Ibaka accept the situation. “All right,” he said softly. “But no growling, okay?”

  Kask considered. “No growling at you, unless you deserve it.”

  “Done,” said Finn. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Sawyer turned to Slash. “Lead the way, fair maiden—”

  Slash gave him a dirty look. “Sorry. Neither.”

  “My apologies—” Sawyer bowed politely. “But do please get us out of here?”

  “This way,” Slash pointed up the arroyo. She led them up and over the rocks and boulders until they reached a point where they could crawl onto the top of the enclosed sluice tube. From here, they had a much better view both up and down the gully. The pipe wound back and forth, up and down over the rocks, all the way down to the distant dome of the Old City detainment.

  “There—” Slash pointed. “See that?”

  “What?” Sawyer shielded his eyes against the glare of the Eye of God.

  “See where the canyon goes deep? See that cut in the side of the hill? We go up that cut, then down the other side to the old canal bed.”

  “We follow the canal bed?”

  “Not quite. The Guards patrol the canal, in case someone tries to attack the prison. We cross to the other side. See how the hills stretch all the way out into the desert; they block the view from the dome and from the canal. The ghouls live there, so we have to take care, but once you get past the dome, you can drop down into the canal bed and follow it all the way to—I don’t know, but you can follow it a long way.”

  Sawyer looked back at Finn. “What do you think, Finn?” He had a double purpose to his question. The concern showed in his eyes.

  Finn nodded reluctantly. His voice had a ragged edge to it. “I can handle it. I think I have a few more hours before I’ll need to rest again.”

  “Good. Harry? Lee?”

  The two men nodded. “But let’s get off this pipe. I feel awfully visible and awfully naked up here.”

  “Right.”

  Freebooters

  Star-Captain Neena Linn-Campbell stormed into the hangar where the shuttleboat of The Lady MacBeth rested. Her footsteps sounded like gunshots shattering the silence of the night. As she walked, she reeled off orders to Robin and Gito who hurried to keep up with her.

  Abruptly she stopped and stared at the shuttle suspiciously. “Shariba-Jen?” she called.

  The door to the shuttle’s airlock popped open, and the robot came gliding quickly across the intervening space. A work of industrial poetry, Shariba-Jen moved like a dancer. Its flexible copper skin glistened in the reflected glow of the night; the red and gold trim gave it a crisp, military appearance.
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  “Has anybody or anything entered this hangar since we’ve left?”

  The robot replied, “Nothing, Captain. Not even insects.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she snapped. To the Shariba-Jen, she explained, “I believe you, Jen. But I don’t trust them.” She spat out the last word like a curse. Campbell looked past him. The overhead lights gleamed off the shuttle’s shining hull, casting bright reflections across the tarmac. “Inside—” she pointed. “We have work to do.”

  Her crew followed her up into the airlock. As soon as the door popped shut behind them, she started issuing orders. “Sweep us for bugs—including nanos.”

  “In progress, even as we speak,” the Shariba-Jen reported. “We have 90% confidence. What else?”

  “Can you work in the dark? Of course, you can. We’ll need the boat repainted to make it look like a Regency patroller. Darken the hangar. Make it look deserted. As soon as the goddamn Eye of God sets, I want to get out of here.”

  The airlock finished cycling—a precautionary measure against airborne dust-probes—and the Captain pushed into the cramped quarters of the shuttle. She flung herself down at a workstation and thumbed the screens to life. “EDNA,” she demanded. “Update these maps and show me Ota’s location.”

  The starship’s computer replied immediately, its voice relayed directly from The Lady MacBeth. “Captain Campbell, I have a duty to warn you that an attempt to retrieve the LIX bioform by force will constitute a serious violation of local Regency statutes.”

  “Thank you, EDNA. As always, you offer valuable advice. However, the world of Thoska-Roole has already forsaken the law far beyond anything we intend to do. Log it, that here, the law serves the purposes of tyranny, not justice. Cooperation with the authorities of this world would only validate their crimes. Our commitment to a higher standard requires that we break the agreement to abide by their rules when those rules do not serve justice.”

  “May I also point out, Captain, that a rescue attempt will violate the Articles of Non-Interference by the Interstellar Operations Guild.”

  “Thank you, EDNA. For your information, I’ve turned in my Guild insignia. We cannot support a Guild that does not protect its members. In the future, this ship will function as an unlicensed trader. If we have to, we’ll establish our own code of standards and live on our own reputation. Please begin the necessary steps to register The Lady MacBeth as a freebooter.”

  “Yes, Captain. In progress.”

  “Now, show me the maps. Where have they taken Ota?”

  “At your orders Captain, each member of this crew carries an internal locator chip. To prevent against scanning, we have implanted organic-based transponders. To my best knowledge, the Regency did not detect the chip implanted in the bioform. Six hours ago, I began transmitting flash-burst signals to activate the device. On my first orbit, I detected no response; this falls within acceptable parameters. On the second orbit, I repeated my flash-burst transmissions in case the Regency had detained the bioform in a shielded location.

  “Twenty minutes ago,” EDNA continued, “I received a response from a location in the desert south of MesaPort.”

  Captain Campbell studied the screen. EDNA had superimposed the location on an expanded map, showing not only surface features, but also scanning and defense patterns as well as potentials for counterattack and pursuit.

  Robin looked over her Captain’s shoulder, a hard look on her face. She pointed at the map. “Come in here, just north of the camp, touch down, send in an assassin?”

  “Uh-huh,” agreed Captain Campbell. “And if I had an assassin to spare, I’d consider that.”

  “You want to go in blasting like hell?”

  “Look at that installation—” Campbell pointed. “Who do you think built it? And why?”

  “It looks like a farm to me,” said Robin. “Or a ranch.”

  “Precisely. Livestock.”

  “Livestock? What kind of—” And then she realized. “Oh, my God. You don’t think—”

  Campbell swiveled in her chair and looked at Robin, at Gito, and Shariba-Jen. “I don’t think anything. I just want to kill the Vampires who kidnapped Ota. How does that sound?”

  “I know what Ota would say,” Gito growled. “It doesn’t sound very enlightened.”

  “Well, Ota will just have to wait to vote—until after we rescue it.”

  Comfort

  When dawn crept over the edge of the world, Thoska-Roole grew dim. The Eye of God slid down in the west and the orange gloom of the day flooded in from the east. The desert turned red as if blood had poured across it. The sky became a ceiling of ruddy terror as the swollen orb of the primary rose above the horizon in bloated splendor.

  This far south, the canal bed flattened out as it approached its final destination, the great salt reservoir. From there, Lee-1169 suggested they should strike out overland to a remote transit station that the Resistance occasionally used as a temporary safe house. The rag-tag group of escapees still hadn’t agreed, but no one had come up with a better alternative—not even Kask, who remained curiously subdued. He even let Ibaka down to walk on his own, knowing that the puppy could not run away here—not without Kask quickly overtaking him.

  As the last of the starlight faded away, everything became a rosy blur. Finally, they decided among themselves to stop and rest for a few hours. They climbed up the sloping wall of the canal and found a place of tumbled rocks and ruins. Sawyer insisted that they had to stop. Finn had begun shaking again, suffering the onset of another one of his spells. He laid out a ragged blanket he had found with the stores, and Finn lay down on it gratefully. Against his better judgment, Lee switched on a thermal-pack and they all crowded close to its yellow warmth.

  They passed around ration-packs and speculated on the territory ahead. They had reached the limits of Slash’s knowledge and she had begun talking about heading back the way they had come, back up to her familiar canyon. Lee advised against it. The Regency would leave the battle-robots patrolling Death Canyon for a long time to come. She’d find no safety there.

  “By now, the Vampires will have catalogued the escapees, listing those killed, recaptured . . . or still missing. I intend to stay in the latter category, and I doubt that we can do that by heading back the way we came.”

  Slash grumbled and moved away from him. “Have it your own way. I can’t help you anymore.”

  Lacking hard information, most of the other prisoners stayed silent. Also, Finn’s apparent agonies unnerved them. They hadn’t seen his spells before, and they worried among themselves about contagion.

  Harry came over and sat down next to Sawyer. “This will pass, right?”

  Sawyer nodded. “He gets these spells. You don’t need to worry. He’ll shake for a while, but he’ll come back strong.”

  From across the glow of the thermal-pack, Lee said, “What does he have?”

  Sawyer fumbled with his answer. Finally, he said, “You can ask him when he gets better.”

  Lee spat to one side. “Tell the truth, tracker. Don’t hide behind your brother.”

  “I don’t speak for my brother. You can ask him tomorrow.”

  “He has the blood-burn, doesn’t he?” asked Harry. “I’ve seen it before.”

  Sawyer didn’t want to answer; it showed in his eyes. Harry and Lee exchanged a meaningful glance. Harry shrugged. Lee shook his head. Slash, sitting next to Lee, asked softly, “Blood-burn?”

  Lee whispered back, “Very bad. Very painful. It just gets worse and worse. And you take a long time to die.”

  “Does the blood-burn always kill?”

  “I’ve never met any survivors.”

  Slash shuddered. She got up and moved away from the glow, looking again toward Kask. The Dragon growled at her. He clearly didn’t trust her. He sat alone, with Ibaka jammed uncomfortably under one arm, while he peeled open ration packs and stuffed them into his mouth. “We should have let the Dragon go off by himself,” she said. “He eats too mu
ch.”

  “If we do,” said Lee, “he’ll take the pup.”

  “I know—”

  Slash called to Kask. “Hey—don’t get greedy, you big lizard! Give some of that to Ibaka.”

  Kask looked over at her and grunted. “Why?”

  Harry stood up then and approached. He put an arm on Slash’s shoulder to keep her from speaking out of turn. “Because the pup probably wants to eat, just the same as you. The last I heard, those little things get very hungry.”

  Kask reached into the sack beside him and pulled out another ration pack. He peeled it open and began feeding Ibaka like a doll. “You eat. You stay healthy. But you don’t try to escape again. You belong to the Lady, and until I can take you to her, you belong to me. You act with honor, all right?”

  “You and your honor—” one of the other escapees snorted, a tall spindly man named Arl-N.

  Kask growled deep in his throat. “You know nothing about honor,” he said. “All of you. What do you know? You talk of honor as if anyone can know it. Dragon honor comes from the—” Kask fumbled with the words. “—from the egg. Dragons do not dishonor their brothers from the nest. Can you understand that? No matter what anybody says, I have a personal honor to my brothers. No matter what the Lady says or anybody else—” His voice became uncertain as he remembered Captain Lax-Varney’s rebuttal of his claim. He shook it away angrily. “—No. It doesn’t matter. I have my own integrity. I will keep true to my brothers as they would to me.”

  At this, the small hairball under Kask’s arm began to whimper. Kask looked down at Ibaka curiously. “What troubles you?”

  “I miss my brothers—and my sisters.” The little dog-child started crying in piteous inconsolable yelps.

  Confused and startled, Kask held Ibaka before him and watched the little animal’s torrent of emotion. Finally, he ordered, “Stop crying. Crying demonstrates weakness.” Ibaka ignored him and continued to weep.

  Slash said to Kask, “Don’t you get it, you big wart? Whoever sold this pup to Lady Zillabar took him and his siblings right from their mother. You, at least, you had a chance to grow in your own nest. Somebody taught you honor. These dog-children never had even that much chance.”