Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  I was born to be an intellectual. Before his illness and multiple breakdowns, my father was arguably the most famous anthropologist of the century; his book Tales of the First Folk is still the standard text on Primal oral culture. My mother, before her death, had been his brightest student. Even after the Social Police arrested him and busted us down to Labor, he was still trying to make me think like a Professional, teaching me out of books on the net. Even after my mother died. Even after the madness had him wholly in its grip; on his semilucid days, he would make me read and talk and read some more. But I did that only to keep him from beating me into bloody unconsciousness. Any real chance of growing up an intellectual was over for me by the time I was six. My real education was street school.

  I might have been born an intellectual, but I was raised a peasant.

  Which—along with what a number of people have described as lunatic self-confidence and a truly staggering degree of self-absorption—might explain why I wasn’t really worried.

  It was clear why they put me in the Buke. This was tactical. Because of all those years of visiting Dad here. They were expecting my presumed future to smother me in wet-wool layers of claustrophobia.

  Dickheads.

  I spent days hanging from a fucking cross. I spent fuck knows how long chained to the wall of the Shaft in Ankhana’s Donjon, dying of gangrene in a river of other people’s shit. Spending the rest of my life in a nice clean quiet cell is gonna scare me?

  Oh, yeah. Sure.

  One of the books that Dad made me read—one that I’ve read again a few times on my own, in fact—was The Art of War. Because, like a lot of those old-timey Chinese guys, Sun Tzu had a gift for metaphor. The book isn’t just about war, it’s about handling conflict. You could even say it’s about how to live well in a dangerous world.

  One of the things Master Sun wrote is that a general who knows his enemy and knows himself need not fear the outcomes of a thousand battles.

  I knew my enemy. That was my edge.

  When I finally got a visitor, he seemed a little surprised to find me smiling.

  His Professional’s suit and tie didn’t really fit—looked like it was cut for a guy with twenty extra pounds on him—and he scuffed the soles of his brown wingtips along the floor when he came through the door, but maybe it wasn’t the suit so much as it was my eyes.

  My eyes kept wanting to see his hair in a brown comb-over instead of grey strings waxed flat across bare scalp, and a dirt-colored stubble on thicker jowls instead of the stiff salty beard neatly trimmed. Age suited him, really: he’d lost weight and gained gravity.

  And he could walk straight in and just sit down and let me stare at him and get my mind around his existence, and he didn’t even have to do his goddamn coin tricks with nervous hands. He just kept them folded in his lap.

  I kept smiling. I didn’t have anyplace I had to be.

  Pretty soon he leaned forward. “You don’t seem to understand how much trouble you’re in.”

  My smile spread to an open grin. “And you’re looking good for a guy I last saw raining in pieces down the face of Hell.”

  He brushed that off with an irritable nod. “Ancient history.”

  “Feels like fucking yesterday”. He flushed, and his gaze flicked down toward his folded hands. His fingers twitched. “That was—” He shook his head and looked back at me. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to save your life.”

  I shrugged.

  “Capital Forcible Contact Upcaste, Michaelson. Were you awake enough to remember that part? You’re on full-sense log murdering a Leisureman—”

  I laughed at him.

  “You think this is funny?”

  “What am I supposed to call you? Rababàl? Simon Faller? Gofer?” He flushed darker. “Michaelson—”

  “That’s not my name.”

  His fingers twitched again. Missing that platinum coin, I bet. “What kind of game do you think you’re playing?”

  “Same as usual,” I told him. “The kind I win.”

  He stared at me, then swung that stare to my wrists and my diaper and my dead legs, the featureless walls and the blank inside of the door, inviting me to stare with him, to take in the reality of my cell, of the Buke, of Earth. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “There is,” I admitted, not without a certain pride, “a history of insanity in my family.”

  “You have one hope of coming out of this alive, Michaelson. One. And that is cooperation—”

  “I told you that’s not my name.”

  He rolled his eyes. “What am I supposed to call you, then? Caine? Shade?Tell me.”

  “Last time I was on Earth,” I said, “the proper mode of address from a Professional to an Administrator was sir.”

  He stared.

  “Let’s give it a try, shall we?”

  His mouth had to work for a while before it could chew out some words.

  “You are insane.”

  “And you can kiss my upcaste ass, you lackey fuck.”

  His lips started flapping. “Do you—are—you don’t—”

  “I’m not the one in trouble, Faller. You are. If the Board of Governors wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. I’d have never woken up. Instead somebody invested serious coin in neurosurgery, and instead of being the star of a show trial for killing Vilo, I’m sequestered with political prisoners. And instead of Soapy interrogators, I’ve got good old Rababàl here to have a chat with me about cooperation. Which means shit’s already going bad enough on Home that somebody thinks they need me to fix it. So start kissing my ass or kiss yours good-bye.” I batted my eyelids at him. “You pick.”

  His lips stopped flapping long enough to peel back off his teeth. “It’s not just you, Michaelson. We know about your daughter, and we know where she is—”

  “Simon, Simon, Simon.” I could peel lips too, and my teeth were bigger than his. “Do you really want to bring my family into this?”

  His lower lip snuck back up a little.

  I cocked my head toward him. “Not that I’m worried about her; Faith’s defended in ways you can’t imagine. But if you want to do the we’ll-hurt-your-family thing just on principle, I’m into it. Maybe you never saw the cube of what happened to Vinson Garrette.”

  His brows drew together and those lips tried for a disbelieving smile. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Nah. I was just thinking how, y’know, with these bedrails for leverage—having the bed anchored to the floor makes it a great platform, real stable, just perfect—from here I can kick your head right the fuck off your shoulders. Right off. Like a tee ball. Rrrip. Bounce bounce bounce.”

  His right eyelid flickered. Color drained down his cheeks into his beard. “I read your chart—your legs . . . your legs don’t—”

  “Yeah, Simon. That’s right. My legs don’t. You believe everything you read?”

  A sharp chuff—an aspiriated ki-ya—and a twist of my abdominals, which are real damn strong, snapped my diaper toward his face, and those nervous hands flew up like startled pigeons and he jerked away hard enough to slide sideways off the chair and dump himself ass-first on the floor, and he got up madder than a teargassed bear because of course neither of my dead legs even cleared the rail.

  “Just kidding.” I grinned at him. “And I was lying about your head coming off anyway. I’m an asshole like that.”

  He took a step toward me and one of those nervous hands made a fist that swung up by his shoulder. And paused. And hung there while rage-swollen veins writhed across his forehead.

  Which told me everything I’d been pretending to know had actually been true after all.

  My grin widened. “You can fuck off now, Faller. Don’t come back until the Bog’s ready to deal.”

  Those veins kept on writhing, but the fist opened, and the hand fell to his side.

  He lowered his head. “I don’t know what else I was expecting,” he muttered. “Why should it be different now?”

&
nbsp; He half sat, half fell back into the injection-molded chair and let himself slump against the edge of the desk. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Not one little bit. And why should you? Being exactly who you are has always gotten you exactly what you want.”

  What the hell was he playing at now? “I wouldn’t go that far—”

  “Probably work this time too.” He sounded like he was talking more to himself than to me. He kept his head down, like there was something on his face he didn’t want me to see. “Just tell me one thing, Michaelson. Caine. Whatever. Why is it only the bastards ever win?”

  I didn’t answer. I was pretty sure which bastard he was talking about. He just sat there with his head down and those once-nimble fingers laced together so he could twist them back and forth against each other, working them tight as his voice, and he went on.

  “Why is it the people who play by the rules—the people who just do their jobs and mind their manners and save their pay and really don’t want anything more out of life than one goddamned break end up working away their whole lives and every time it looks like one damned ray of sunshine might fall into their lives there’s some bastard with a shovel to tell you No, that’s just the mouth of your grave before he starts piling the dirt in on top of you.” His fingers twisted tight enough that his knuckles crackled like stiff cellophane.

  “That’s all I want to know, Michaelson. You explain it to me, then I’ll go tell the Board, and you can go ahead and cut my damned throat. Again.”

  “Cut your throat—did you play that fucking Adventure?”

  My voice came out thick, and so raw it surprised me. Twenty-five years later, and I here I was again, looking at his throat and wondering if he tasted like pork. “At least you lived through it, which is more than can be said for fucking near everybody else. What was the deal? You bird-dog us into there and get a free emergency transfer out when things get hairy? The Fireball fake-your-death bit was good, Rababàl. Smart. That’s what stopped me from hunting your jiggling ass.” Good thing I was strapped to the bed. Otherwise I’d have made a try for him, dead legs and all. “They hung me from a fucking cross. And Marade—”

  “I know.”

  His voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “I—have the cubes. All of them. They . . . didn’t tell me about the Black Knives. You have to believe that, Caine. I didn’t know, going in. I wouldn’t have done it, not even for—”

  “For what?” My breath had gone hot and harsh in my throat. “Not even for what?”

  “It was my shot, Caine. The only one I ever got. I’d been a location scout—a bird dog, yes; we know what Actors call us—for fifteen years. Because the Scheduling Board didn’t think I could be marketable as a leading man, and I, well, yes, I knew it; I didn’t have the sense of humor to be a funny sidekick. So I waited. And I worked. I put in my time. Paid my dues. And finally, at forty—when most Actors, the ones that live that long, are thinking of retirement . . .”

  He lifted his head then but didn’t look at me; he just shrugged and turned his face away. “That Adventure was my big break. It was my shot. What I’d been working toward for fifteen years. And then—and then you . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And then me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re angry about—that Adventure made you. It gave you the career I should have had.”

  “Except you’re not me.”

  “True.” He sighed. “Too true. The funny part is, you’re not you either.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.”

  He finally turned back to me and he was trying for an ironic smile but his lips were twisted like his fingers and his eyes were too bright and too wet. “Did you never figure this out? It wasn’t you, Michaelson. It was never you. It was the demon. What do you Monastics call them? Outside Powers. The one that runs the dil T’llan—that is the dil T’llan. I mean, Retreat from the Boedecken was the foundation of more than your career. It’s the foundation of your self-image. It made Caine into Caine. You think I didn’t watch you? You think I didn’t second-hand your adventures? How many times were you up against it and pulled yourself through by thinking of Retreat—how you’d been through worse and didn’t buckle? Retreat let you fool yourself into believing you were the baddest of the bad. The toughest of the tough. The guy who could take anything. Who could suck it up and spit it back out. And it was all because the first time you were really tested, you had a demon eating your fear. That’s what made you brave. It was eating your despair. That’s what made you strong. It was an illusion. A con. You were never that strong. You were never that brave. You’re no tougher than anybody else. Caine was a fake from the start—but you fooled yourself along with everybody else. You were just make-believe. That’s all. Make-believe.”

  I nodded. “Funny how shit works out, huh?”

  He stared at me with those wet eyes.

  “You think this was a mystery? I was Monastic, Rababàl. I knew it then.” I turned one of my strapped-down wrists so I could open a hand. “I take whatever edge I can find. That’s who I am.”

  Those wet eyes threatened to spill tears. “But—but then how . . .”

  I guess some things you never really get over.

  I should know.

  “If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been Marade,” I said. Softly. Gently. Because, y’know, I felt for him. I really did. It was too easy to imagine how I could have ended up him. “Or Stalton. Even Pretornio.”

  He shrugged helplessly.

  “It’s not complicated.” My open hand flexed and curled, once, like it belonged to somebody else. “Look, after you, uh, left, what happened? You went back to work, right?”

  He turned his face away from me, but he nodded.

  “So that’s what you’ve been doing for the last twenty-five years? Bird-dogging?”

  He shrugged. “Up till—well, you know. Assumption Day.”

  “Yeah.” Assumption Day changed things for a lot of people. “You married?”

  “Yes—thirty-three years—we’d celebrated our thirtieth anniversary just before—”

  “Children?”

  “Two. Five grandchildren . . .”

  “And that’s it,” I said. “Right there.”

  He turned back to me then, and instead of tears on his face there was the start of a frown of comprehension, which was a relief. For both of us, I’m betting.

  “You probably know how my marriage went. My daughter . . . well, our relationship is—complicated. The difference between you and me, Rababàl, is that I wanted to be a star more than I wanted to live. For you it was the other way around. We both got our wish. So even in the middle of those nights when we wake up and think about all the shit we wish we’d done, we both ought to shut the fuck up and just be grateful for what we got.”

  He shook his head. “And . . . that’s it? It’s that simple? If I’d wanted it more . . . ?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? The difference between me and Marade, me and Stalton or Pretornio . . . basically comes down to luck, as far as I’ve ever been able to see. They wanted it as much as me. They were as tough as I am, probably tougher—Marade sure as hell was—as smart or smarter. I was lucky. They weren’t. Imponderables. Shit falls one way, you’re a star. Shit falls another, you’re dinner.”

  “Luck? Just luck?”

  “That’s why you don’t see guys like me sitting around in our old age whining about what could have been. Because if we don’t get what we want, we’re not around to complain about it. We’re fucking well dead.”

  He looked thoughtful.

  “But you could say the same, y’know? You’re one of the lucky ones too. You’ve had a forty-year career in some of the most exotic and exciting places that exist, and you still got to have a real marriage, a family, a home . . . how many men get all that?”

  He nodded. “My wife says the same. I spend too much time thinking about what I don’t have, and not enough being grateful for what I do . . .”

  “Ye
ah, well,” I said, “a guy I met the other day was telling me that happy men are only half alive.”

  “He sounds like another bastard.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think you’d like him.”

  Abruptly he laughed, and then he was shaking his head again, but now in some kind of half-astonished amusement. “I came in here to—and then we’re talking about my wife and my grandkids, and you’re cheering me up—”

  I shrugged. I could feel myself flush a little. Embarrassed, I guess, at being so easy. “As a tactic, being human works pretty well.”

  “That’s not—it wasn’t part of my—”

  “You walked in doing the hard-on with pockets thing. Come at me like that, what do you think I’m gonna do? Swallow?”

  He nodded. “I just—I didn’t mean to dump my troubles on you, Michael-son. It’s a funny thing, but after all these years, it’s like I know you—”

  I nodded back. “Don’t take this wrong, Rababàl. Faller. I’m used to it.”

  He frowned at me.

  I sighed. “People who followed my Adventures all those years—lots of times when I’d do public appearances, people would start talking to me like we’re old friends. Kind of like you just did. Because Caine was part of their life. They’d known me so long, they just somehow figured—without ever really thinking about it—that I knew them too. It used to bug me. A lot. I hated it. Now I miss it.”

  He squinted at me. “Really?”

  “Really. Doesn’t happen on Home. Over there I’m, y’know, the Prophet of Ma’elKoth, or the hero of Ceraeno, or the Enemy or God or whateverthefuck.

  I’m a walking motherfucking Epic. People forget I’m a human being. I have to pretend to be somebody else just to have a normal goddamn conversation with a normal goddamn person.”

  “Be careful what you wish for, eh?”

  “Got that right.” I found myself chuckling. “Tan’elKoth—Ma’elKoth during his exile on Earth—he used to say, ‘When the gods would punish us, they answer our prayers.’ ”