25 The Wine of Orgy
A round, black insect with a drone like a bee stuck in a pop can wobbled through the air toward Tompa’s face. It whizzed away in terror when she jerked at its approach.
The bug was the most interesting thing that had happened in the three hours she’d been in the Temple. If this were indeed a place of justice, it must punish the guilty with terminal boredom. Still, Awmit insisted Bez-Tattin would protect her here because she was innocent, and this place had such an aura of age and purity that Tompa believed him. The only problem was that she wasn’t innocent. Not even close.
She sat in the shade of a large porch that jutted out from the center of the main Temple building. One of the six columns supporting the porch had narrow, deeply worn steps that spiraled around it, leading to a wooden trap door. Tompa sat on a step about twelve feet up this column, nestling the side of her head into one of the wide grooves that decorated the pillar. Directly overhead, like a ton of guilt, the statue of Bez-Tattin stood on the porch roof. A few minutes ago she’d tried the trap door, which must lead to the statue, but it was too heavy to open.
From her vantage point she couldn’t see the road but would certainly spot the camera balloons following any pursuers that approached. She could also see the entire courtyard—not that there was anything to see that hadn’t been there three hours ago. The Temple grounds were deserted. Empty.
Yet the main temple didn’t have the dead, choking smell of a deserted building, which Tompa knew so well. Furthermore, the dust of the courtyard, several acres of it, had been brushed to an impeccable smoothness—marred now, of course, by a few lonely footprints.
Awmit said he thought he’d heard that the most devout Servants of Bez-Tattin lived in the temple, but he wasn’t sure. Whether they lived in the myriad tiny rooms or merely cleaned and swept the place, they’d been here recently. The Servants showed up whenever needed—at the landslide, delivering food, and, according to Roussel, helping the wounded at the cave exit. They must have a sophisticated network of outposts, tunnels, and caves. This spooked Tompa. She imagined secret passages behind every wall, with Shons peering at her through spy holes. It made her stomach roil.
Tompa heaved a sigh and scratched idly at the welts on her calves. She was tired of keeping watch, tired of waiting for Roussel and the two Shons to return from exploring the smaller buildings scattered across the Temple courtyard. God, she hoped they found water. Her skin felt hot and her head throbbed from the dryness. Her lips were cracked, but the salty blood she sucked from the cracks did nothing to lessen her thirst
She rose with irritable haste and nearly fell off the pillar as dizziness battered her. She clung to the column, leaning against its time-roughened surface until the dizziness passed. Then, fitting her feet carefully into the narrow grooves worn into the stones, she started down the steps. After two complete spirals, she was still four feet off the ground. She jumped the rest of the way, causing her pleated skirt to billow like a collapsed parachute. Good thing Roussel wasn’t watching—but maybe the Servants were. Damn.
Tompa walked into the courtyard, aware of the interest the small flock of cameras showed in her movements. The ground here was soft and powdery, much like the par-tain where the trial had begun. Her steps raised puffs of dust as she headed toward the slab of rock she’d dubbed the execution table, in front of the porch. The twenty-foot square stone was stained auburn—from the blood of victims, she imagined. She stepped onto the knee-high surface and stood still, her heart pounding. Facing the Temple, she looked up at Bez-Tattin.
The statue’s expression was enigmatic, unreadable, blurred by hundreds of thousands of years. Its sword—and it was a real sword, so sharp and shiny that it must have been placed into a groove in the stone hands within the decade—was raised high, as though eager to strike her. She closed her eyes. She imagined the stone arm moving, slowly at first as it shook off petrification, then more swiftly as the sword struck her skull with an earth-shattering, volcanic screech of vengeance. She died, sundered from scalp to toes.
Tompa opened her eyes. The statue hadn’t moved, hadn’t screeched, hadn’t split her skull.
“Come on, big guy,” she challenged in a whisper. You wouldn’t have to talk loudly to a god, she figured. If they could hear prayers from thousands of miles away, they could hear a whisper from twenty feet. “What are you waiting for? Let’s get this judgment ratshit over with.”
Nothing happened.
Tompa sighed and got down from the table, then trudged back up the column stairs to resume her vigil. “Wimp,” she muttered.
As soon as the word was out of her mouth, though, she gave a worried glance in the direction of the trap door leading to Bez-Tattin’s statue.
“Dante human, come hastily.”
Awmit’s voice echoed to Dante’s ears off the stone walls—but from which room? On each of its two stories, this outbuilding had sixteen evenly sized rooms arranged in two rows, with no hall to facilitate traffic. You had to weave through three-foot-high doorways that led unpredictably from one room to the next. Some rooms were dead ends. Some had two doors, though you could never foretell on which walls. A few had doors on all interior walls as well as a ladder leading up or down. Each room was windowless except for a fist-sized hole near the low ceiling. Shons probably liked the murky gloom that resulted from the tiny window and dark paint covering the walls, ceilings, and floors, but Dante found it suffocating. All the rooms he’d seen so far were immaculate—someone had cleaned and dusted within the last few days. Immaculate, and empty.
“Keep talking, Awmit,” Dante said.
“Wine, Dante human. Tar-Thara has found excessively wine.”
Off to the left, Dante thought. He sank to all fours and crept through the doorway, emerging into an empty room with three doors and a frail rope ladder. “Awmit?”
“The thirsty youthful one,” echoes replied, “drank greedily an entire gor-shella before this one found and stopped emphatically the binge. Tar-Thara in soon future wobbles drunkenly, this one fears.”
Squatting, Dante peered through the room’s middle door. Tar-Thara was in the next room. Before he could react, she bounded to him and began rubbing her fingers through his hair.
“Cut that out,” he said.
She couldn’t understand him, of course. “This one desired doing experimentally this for entire day,” she said. She leaned her face against his forehead to balance herself and continued stroking this strange, alien feature: hair.
When Dante tried to get away from her, she gave a trilling snort and grabbed his ears. He disentangled himself and jerked back into the other room. Standing so the girl couldn’t reach his hair, he forgot to duck and whacked his head against the ceiling.
Tar-Thara pitched forward and rolled onto her back, half of her body in each room. She pointed at him in that emphatic, full-fingered way that Shons had and made rhythmic snorting sounds. “This one sees still huge human, huge human.”
Dante rubbed his head where he’d hit it. “Forget about ‘soon future,’ Awmit. She’s already drunk.”
“Agree sighingly, Dante human. Truth shines that drinking thirstily a gor-shella required muchly time before this one found her. Adjacent room holds feastingly food for many. The Servants prepared obviously for the hunters’ mass arrival and orgy dance on the bones of graceful human.”
Tar-Thara started singing a fast song in triple meter. Dante’s translator made no attempt to render the song in English.
“Let’s take some food and wine back to the temple,” Dante said in a voice loud enough to carry over Tar-Thara’s warbling. With a weary sigh, he ran a hand across his eyes, anticipating Tompa’s fiery reaction to him returning with aphrodisiacs. “I sure wish it was water instead of wine.”
“This one,” Tar-Thara said as she abruptly broke off her song, “feels thrillingly ready for first sex. Negatively too young for sex, spoilsport Awmit, negatively too young, young, young.” She repeated the words faster and faster
until they merged into the rhythm of her earlier song.
Yeah, Shon wine would do that to a person. And he was thirstier than he’d ever been in his life. Thinking of Tompa’s body, vehemently off-limits, Dante groaned.
And in the next room, Awmit made a noise that sounded like it expressed the same sentiment.
“We can’t just stay here,” Tompa muttered, “hoping the pursuers don’t show up.”
In answer, Roussel lifted a bottle of wine to his lips, taking an insulting amount of time before responding. “You’re the one who agreed with Awmit that this was the safest place.”
“That was before you started drinking.”
“I’m not drunk.” He grabbed an idle handful of dirt from the courtyard and let it sift through his fingers. “But if you want to go, you’ll have to go alone. She can’t”—he pointed with the hand holding the bottle to Tar-Thara, deep in a wine-induced slumber, arms akimbo and mouth open—“and he won’t.” He pointed toward the porch of the Temple, where Awmit had fled to get away from Tar-Thara. “That leaves me. And you’ve made it quite clear you don’t want to be alone with me.”
Tompa leaned her head against the wall of the Temple and stared up at the rich blue of the sky. In truth, there seemed no place to go.
No! That was ratshit fatalism. The human God supposedly helped those who helped themselves, and surely it was the same with Shon gods. Instead of waiting, they could hide, or maybe sit on the roof of the porch, which seemed to offer an escape route over the Temple roof to one of the hump-like peaks enclosing the courtyard. There wasn’t much longer until dark and after that they’d be safe, but until then . . .
Until then, what? Tompa ran both hands over her face, trying to rouse herself from the lassitude that had dulled her spirits since reaching the Temple. She didn’t need Roussel’s approval to hide or to try again to open the trapdoor leading to the roof where the statue stood. She was the one making no effort, as though she’d suddenly become resigned to whatever fate Bez-Tattin decided. Had thirst sapped her will to live?
“Sure you don’t want something to drink?”
Tompa didn’t bother to answer Roussel or even look at him. She hated the hot, burning feel of his gaze on her, expecting at any minute that he’d rise and advance on her panther-like from the place where he sat against a wall, staring at her. He’d been sipping Shon wine for the last half hour. When she refused to drink, he’d been apologetic about finding no water. After a few swallows, though, his apologies died and he began staring at her and sifting dirt through his fingers, staring and sifting. Remembering how the Shon wine had turned Paolo MacShallin into a one-horned monster, she’d moved away. Bottle in hand, he had followed.
Awmit would be no help. After drinking some wine, he ran off to the staired pillar to stand watch so he wouldn’t be tempted by the eager Tar-Thara. She was too young for orgy, he insisted as he climbed the stairs. The girl, snorting wildly, had been trying unsuccessfully to take off her clothes when she suddenly collapsed to the stone promenade in front of the Temple and, with one last snort, fell asleep.
Roussel lifted the bottle to his mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he took a swig.
“I hate you,” she growled at him.
He put the bottle down and said nothing. Just stared.
She started to stand up so she could walk away from him, but her legs somehow didn’t get the message. Why couldn’t she make herself hide from him?
Guilt.
The thought hit her like a jab to the face, making her jerk away from it. Guilt? What the hell did that mean?
She wasn’t used to thinking deeply or examining her motives, but suddenly she was plunged into a mental maelstrom of conflict and pain. Guilt. She couldn’t stop seeing blood, feeling pain. It was as though the ghosts of the Shons she’d killed wouldn’t let her. They blanketed her thoughts, demanded that she assure them their deaths had meaning beyond the survival of a solitary human animal. But how could she, a street meat, give meaning to anyone’s death? People died, constantly, randomly. End of story. Survival was the only way to keep your own story going. What the hell could make death meaningful? Or, for that matter, life?
And how in God’s name was she supposed to know the answers? She wasn’t . . . wasn’t . . . A quiet sob escaped her. She wasn’t wise enough to know.
But for the first time in her life, she knew that there were answers. Somewhere.
The hair on the back of her neck rose. She hunched over, feeling eyes boring into her back. It wasn’t Roussel—he was in front of her. She was afraid to look behind her. Bez-Tattin’s statue stood back there, holding his sharp sword of justice; she could see it, though her eyes were closed and she faced the opposite direction. She was flickin’ doomed. Cut my skull in half, Bez-Tattin, if that’s what is right. Maybe I deserve it.
No, she couldn’t allow herself to think like that. Running her hand over the back of her neck, she smoothed her dirty, tangled hair. She just had to learn to live without blind, stupid certainty. Something made her think of Dante’s moments of flap-happiness. At times, his eyes seemed overwhelmed by uncertainty. She couldn’t let herself be influenced by his uncertainty, even though he wasn’t as vicious as she’d thought. He seemed to care about her, too, and—
Tompa froze, shocked by the direction of her thoughts. What the hell was she thinking? He wasn’t here to help her or care about her. He was a roach, remember? A wine-swigging, traitorous roach whose eyes were filled with rape.
“Goddamn it, Roussel, stop staring at me!”
His eyes narrowed. He kept staring and sifting until something in the dirt distracted him. He held up something small and red that wiggled in his hand. “Look. A worm.”
Thinking of the gloves, she shivered and turned away. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the wine made him barbaric enough to eat the worm, like the Shons ate the gloves.
Though she tried to ignore him, her gaze kept flicking to the maroon wine bottle propped between Roussel’s legs. She tried to swallow, couldn’t. No. Don’t think about thirst. About liquid pouring over her parched gums and tongue, cascading like a waterfall down her throat—
Don’t think!
Tompa wished Roussel had had the same decency as Awmit to go away from her, get out of her sight. Instead he sat there, not drunk but not his usual self, either, staring at her. She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t act. Most of all, she couldn’t control her mind. Maybe this was what flap-happiness felt like from the inside.
“It’s nearly dark,” she said to fill the silence.
He said nothing.
God, she’d never make it through the night, knowing there was liquid available to slake her burning thirst. But she had to. So far Roussel had behaved himself, but that wouldn’t last, and she had to be ready to deal with her real enemy. Not those Shons out there somewhere, though they were dangerous. Not the Klicks, either, even if they did mastermind the bombing at the pub. Her real enemy was Man. Gordos. The policeman who’d sacrificed her to the Shons for the sake of profits.
Roussel.
Yeah. That felt right. Her earlier uncertainty melted away in the heat of anger. She rose and stood there for a moment, swaying until the dizziness went away. Dizziness was a sign of dehydration, Roussel had said when she asked if he had any pads that would help. Drinking, he’d continued, was the only thing that would get rid of the symptom.
He was lying, of course, because waiting with her eyes closed and teeth clenched also did the job, eventually.
When the wave of dizziness passed, Tompa walked to the porch, glancing over her shoulder occasionally because she’d promised Awmit she’d keep an eye on the girl. Roussel, surprisingly, didn’t follow. She stopped at the base of the column and looked up at her friend. “See anything, Awmit?”
He groaned. “Visions of females in eager wine-mind.”
Men. But at least this one didn’t feel threatening. “We shouldn’t just wait here,” she complained. “Why won’t you leave with me?”
“This one explained thoroughly. Duty to graceful human and to Tar-Thara both require remaining patiently near Bez-Tattin. Graceful human’s best hope exists in breathing the air of justice.”
“Then let’s go up on the roof. The air will be even stronger so close to the statue.”
“This one shrinks wiltingly from possible blasphemy as consequence of foray onto Bez-Tattin’s toes.”
“Well, at least help me open the trap door so I can see if it’s as good an escape route as it seems from down in the courtyard.”
Awmit still leaned back, staring up. “Wine and disinclination render dizzyingly this one inept for climbing so high.”
Tompa let out a loud sigh. The old coot was too damned eager, in her opinion, to trust an ancient statue. But she couldn’t leave him. She glanced toward Roussel. He was still staring at her—and it occurred to her that if she climbed to the trap door, he might come over and stare up her skirt. That sight would, she was sure, drive his lust over the edge.
Trapped. She slumped to sit on one of the lower stairs.
“When graceful human wins,” Awmit said after a moment’s silence, “consequence follows world-shatteringly that Kalikinikis exit disgracedly and humans replace tradingly them. Kalikinikis treated badly the Shons.”
“Really?” In some of the shows starring the Space Navy, Klicks were the bad guys, treating planet-bound peoples more like slaves than trading partners; the Navy charged in and saved the grateful locals from the clutches of the supercilious, arrogant lizards. The shows, she realized now, were Dumpsters full of fairy-tale ratshit. This expedition was the first time Consortium Earth had dared to send the Navy into Klick trading territory, and they’d sneaked the Vance in while no Klick ships were in the system. Seeing that everything else about the shows was a lie, she was surprised that the Klicks really were bad guys who treated natives poorly.
“This one imagines wonderingly,” Awmit said, “the improvements in selling trustingly with honorable space humans.”
“It won’t be any better.” Tompa’s voice was bitter. “Consortium Earth will grab as much wealth as possible without paying a roach-damned cent more than they have to.” She shut her eyes, thinking of Manhattan, condemned to isolation for the crime of poverty. “Things may even be worse for you.”
“Graceful human allows negatively this.”
“Huh?” She jerked her head up and leaned back to look at him. When the swirling dizziness stopped, she whispered, “What makes you think I can do anything about it?
“Graceful human breathes as a world-changing saint like Bez-Tattin, destined terribly for achievement of miracles.”
“Awmit, believe me, I won’t be able to do a thing to help your people.”
“Graceful human will find ingeniously a way to help.”
Tompa closed her eyes. Being around Awmit was no more relaxing than being around Roussel.
“Dante,” a voice said over his mumbler, “this is Carolyn. Can you hear me?”
He was so engrossed in the arousal burning in every inch of his body that the voice made no more sense at first than if he talked to Awmit with the translator out of his ear. When he dragged his mind away from desire long enough to understand, he was tempted not to answer. The lust coursing through his system reminded him all too vividly of Carolyn slipping him Shon wine. He was determined not to do a similar thing to Tompa—but God, was it hard.
“Dante,” Carolyn snapped, “answer me.”
There was no reason not to respond. Besides, maybe talking to Carolyn would get his mind off the memories of Tompa’s smooth young flesh, glimpsed when she had leaned too far forward, or lain sleeping with her skirt high up her thighs, or raised her skirt completely to scratch her buttocks . . .
He took a slow, deep breath through gritted teeth. “Roussel here,” he subvocalized. “Tell me.”
“How are you, Dante?” Carolyn asked in an abruptly pleasant voice.
Her tone surprised him. This afternoon she’d been furious because he’d helped bring down the bridge. Now she sounded friendly, almost ingratiating. His muscles tensed; he didn’t trust Carolyn when she was acting nice. “I’m okay,” he lied.
“You should be. It looks as though you might be in the clear.”
Her words made little sense. Only relief from desire made sense. “But I’m not the one on trial.”
“I mean that you may be safe from Major Krizink’s revenge. A delegation from Zee-Shode called the Vance. They wanted to talk to me because as the head of the mission they consider me Lee’s spokesman. There’s apparently a ritual about asking the opposing parties’ spokesmen three times during the course of the night if they’ll allow the trial to continue past the deadline. What’s interesting is that they also had a long talk with the Inspector. The Inspector was much more reasonable after that. She’s bound by the letter of Council Law to consider the locals’ wishes, and even though she leans toward the Kalikinikis, she’s apparently honest enough to abide by the outcome of the trial. Furthermore, if Lee is acquitted she won’t allow Krizink to charge you for the death of his kinsmen.”
“There’s justice in the galaxy, then?” That hadn’t come out right. It sounded as though all he cared about was himself. “What I mean is that Tompa is innocent.”
“And very pretty, too.”
What was she getting at? Dante ran a hand over his eyes, trying to bring his mind to full alert—but the effort was as futile as trying to paddle a canoe through the nothingness of space. He hated being a flap-hap.
Carolyn’s voice became more syrupy. “Don’t you agree that she’s pretty, Dante?”
“Well . . .” He searched for the right answer, but his gaze got stuck on the curve of Tompa’s calf as she sat on a bottom step of the column, talking with Awmit. She leaned back to look at the Shon, exposing several inches of thigh. “Yes.”
“I see.” There was a long pause, followed by a rattling sound. “Remember the poison pills I told you about?”
The rattling must be the pill bottle. With a massive effort, Dante tore his eyes off Tompa’s legs. “Yes.”
Carolyn gave a cold chuckle. “The Consortium picked me well, knowing I truly would prefer death to failure.”
Dante went cold. Yet the damned wine made him remember how Carolyn had been dressed, or rather undressed, when she showed him the pills.
“I’m telling you this so you’ll realize, dear Dante, that you shouldn’t cross me again.” She paused. “You’re to stay away from that little slut. You’re mine. You may be safe from the Klicks, Dante, but I have nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing at all.”
It took his stupid brain a moment to swing ponderously from thoughts of bare flesh to the realization that she was threatening him. He gulped a mouthful of wine “Carolyn,” he asked, “what do—”
An inhuman, high-pitched scream sliced through his question.
Tompa jerked to her feet when Awmit screamed. Dizziness overwhelmed her and she sank back to a sitting position, holding onto the pillar for dear life.
“Balloons,” Awmit shouted. “The pursuers arrive attackingly!”
Tompa opened one eye and looked at the sky. Dusk had scarcely begun; the attackers had plenty of time to kill her. Well, the flickin’ maggots wouldn’t find her easy to kill, damn their cockroach souls.
Awmit clattered down the winding steps and knocked her sprawling to the hard stone floor. The resulting wave of dizziness seemed to go on forever. She rose to her hands and knees, world spinning. Maybe she wouldn’t be so hard to kill after all.
Awmit was charging across the courtyard toward the gate of the Temple. “Stop,” Roussel shouted after him. “Don’t meet them in the open. Come back.”
And then Roussel was charging after Awmit, telling him to stop. She looked at the spot where Roussel had been. The wine bottle remained. The noise had woken Tar-Thara, who struggled for a moment to sit before flopping back down.
Tompa lurched toward the wine. If she was going to die, she wasn’t g
oing to die thirsty and dizzy. She held the bottle to her lips and drank. The sweet, sharp-tasting wine made her gag at first, but she tried again. It was wet and it helped her thirst a bit, but not as much as water would have. The bottle was two-thirds full. Strangely, Roussel hadn’t drunken very much after all.
As she drank, she picked up one of the clubs that she’d left out, just in case. Hearing a commotion at the gate, she headed toward where Awmit—precious, brave Awmit—stood beside Roussel, who was trying to pull him back from the approaching horde. Meeting the attackers on open ground was stupid, but brave. Really brave.
She was tired of running, tired of hiding. She staggered, trying to drink as she walked to join her courageous little friend. Wine ran down her chin and onto her uniform like fresh blood. She didn’t care.
By the time she neared the rainbow-colored arch, some of the dusty and bloodied survivors of the landslide were already in the courtyard. They didn’t immediately attack, as humans would have. Instead, they poured through the gate and stood in an ever-widening line, one-Shon deep, facing the temple. Floating cameras cast ominous shadows through the dusty air as they hovered like vultures, eager for the slaughter to begin. Awmit stood on his toes, quivering in readiness. Roussel crouched in readiness to fight.
They were so hopelessly outnumbered. Tompa touched Awmit’s shoulder. He glanced at her. Emotion distorted his face, but he stayed put. Confidence, or maybe it was just resignation, filled her with calmness. She couldn’t be such a horrible person if she had a friend willing to die for her.
The last of the attackers filed through the gate and took their places on either end of the long flank. Any second now they would attack.
Tompa raised the bottle and drained the last of the wine. She grasped it like a club and swung it back and forth while glaring at the line of Shons, who were so near that the sickly sweet smell of their unwashed bodies assaulted her nostrils. “Come and get me,” she whispered.
Nothing happened.
Why weren’t they attacking? What were they waiting for?
At the exact same moment, each of the hundred Shons began moving. Tompa jerked, then held both the club and the bottle overhead.
“Umph,” the Shons grunted in unison. They raised their arms and made gestures that seemed vaguely familiar. Tompa flexed her fingers on the club.
The Shons all reached back as though ready to throw imaginary spears, and suddenly she knew why the gestures looked familiar.
They’d converted.
Awmit let out a groan and sank to his knees. The army of Shons, a hundred strong, dissolved into a chattering horde of well-wishers, rushing forward without their usual clockwork precision. Hands patted her body everywhere. At first she tried to keep the hands off, but it was impossible and anyway it felt kind of good, so she took to putting her arms around the converts, instead. The Shons embraced her and each other, speaking in such a torrent that her translator was overwhelmed. She searched out Awmit in the crowd. The new converts were lifting him to his feet with reverent care.
As abruptly as it started, the mass hug ended. The Shons returned to their line and turned away from her. Then they went to hands and knees, presenting their backsides to her in case she wanted to kick them. She was tempted. The temptation started as a tingling in her midsection and spread throughout her body like a fire roaring up an elevator shaft. Her body must have registered victory before her dazed mind, because it felt so good to have won, so warm and melting and luxurious and sensual—
“Oh, no.” Tompa held the empty wine bottle at arm’s length as though it was an A-140 grenade in the process of exploding in fiery slow motion. “No.”
Mouth open in shock, she turned to Roussel. He stared at her from ten feet away, his gaze darker and hungrier than ever. The warmth in her limbs turned to fire, angry and ferocious.
“NO!” She reared back and threw the bottle at his eyes. With a sinuous, erotic movement, he dodged. The bottle hit the dirt, raising a mushroom cloud of dust, then bounced and hit the backside of one of the converts.
Sobbing, Tompa turned and dashed as though chased by an unholy trio of Madmonks across the dust toward the stern, chaste haven of Bez-Tattin’s Temple.
The Trial of Tompa Lee Page 26