Requiem for the Conqueror

by W. Michael Gear

  Staffa choked at the sight of Peebal's body going limp, his eyes blinking in the sand, filling with stinging grit as the collar did its work. It didn't take long, no more than a minute; Peebal's frightened face stilled and the sandencrusted pupils stared sightlessly.

  "There," Anglo added reasonably. "No sense in making him suffer." He turned to Kaylla, heedless of Staffa, and thrust his hands under her loose garment to grope her. Then he kissed her long and hard before adding a cloying, "Until tonight, sweet meat."

  Unable to stand the shame in her face, Staffa lowered his gaze to the corpse.

  Peebal's gnomelike features had twisted into an eternal agony of final terror.

  The bladder and recturn relaxed in death.

  Anglo took a laser from his belt. With practiced ease, he cut Peebal's head from his body and picked up the collar. To Staffa, Anglo added, "You brought him here—you can carry him back. Stick him in that wide spot in the trench. The machines will bury him deep enough. If not, the siff ackals wil eat well." Anglo turned and walked back to his air-conditioned hut.

  "I'll kill him," Staffa promised, as he threw Peebal over his shoulder and wound his fingers into the thin hair to carry the head. "I'll gouge his eyes from his living body and rip his manhood from his fat crotch and feed it to him. Choke him with it."

  "No, you won't." Her tan stare bored into him as they stumbled out into the blasting sun. "He dies—and we all go. Not just you."

  He forced whistling air through gritted teeth, calming himself. "Skyla, By the Blessed Gods, I wish I knew how you do it?"

  "Another one of those days Tuff? You seeing your Skyla again?"

  He laughed sourly as Peebal's limp body swung. "Yeah, she keeps me going.

  Gives me a reason to survive." As do you.

  She nodded, hair blowing in the slight breeze. "That why you've never made advances?"

  He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "What?"

  "I've seen the want in your eyes. Is it for me ... or your Skyla? Doesn't matter which, I keep expecting you to take me."

  "Why?"

  She shrugged. "This is an age of abomination. Because of the violence, men die. But women? Women become property—possessions without souls or feelings.

  Objects to be raped, beaten, and degraded. Didn't used to be that way. or females, it's always worse."

  She shook her head. "I'm the only woman tough enough to make it out here. The others collapse and let the collars kill them rather than suffer the sand or the heat—let alone the constant rape." She worked her mouth as if from some foul taste. "So the men want me. Even you. But you don't act. Why?"

  He barked an angry laugh. "Maybe it's my honor."

  "Yeah, well, don't change your mind. I'm not big on men right now."

  Staffa filled his lungs against the resurgent anger. His throat had already gone dry. "Why keep fighting? Why not give in and die?"

  "Revenge, Tuff." She waved a hand at the blinding white around them. "God allowed us, humanity, to make all this a living perdition. Suffering? We create that. I never. . . . Ah, hell, it doesn't matter if you know, I guess.

  I never made it as far as I wanted in my studies. I don't know whether we send our souls to God straight after death or what, but I want that bastard to get a good dose of what suffering and humiliation and pain are all about when I die."

  "What are you talking about? Revenge on who?"

  "God," she whispered, head down, attention on where her callused feet sank in to the baking sand with each step.

  "You were Etarian? A Priestess?"

  "Seddi," she said evenly. "That's between you and me."

  He gave her a slow nod of agreement. Who am I to revile her for accursed practices of superstition? Who am I to despise her after all I've done?

  Perhaps we each pay for our crimes in our own ways.

  They settled the last remains of Peebal at the bottom of the trench. Staffa stood and hesitated for a second before he bent down and settled the tiny jeweler on his back, crossing his arms peacefully over his chest. Then he placed his head in its place, brushed th'e sand from the staring eyes, and pulled the lids shut. Together they collapsed sand over Peebal's body.

  Kaylla studied him intently. "Why do that for him?"

  "Dignity. Respect."

  "You're not just any slave, Tuff." She turned to walk down the trench. "Who are you?"

  "No one." To forestall further questions he handed her the locket. "Here, Peebal wanted you to have this."

  She glanced down and knotted the bright gold in her fist. A single tear etched the dusty corner of her face. He watched her throat move as she lowered her head.

  "Come on, we're late," he urged. "I'll miss him, too. He taught me. . . .

  Rotted Gods, nothing." He took her arm and pushed her on, seeing the crew placing the yokes under a long section of pipe,

  She looked at him, mouth hard. "You're not cut from a normal mold. You're someone different, powerful, haunted by more than this pus-sucking desert."

  He glared at her.

  She caught him by surprise when she handed him the locket. "Tuff," her voice broke, "keep it for me."

  He started to shake his head.

  "Just do it! Anglo will find it otherwise. I don't have anywhere. Peebal, he smuggled it out of Maika in his anus. Anglo will . . . well, you understand."

  "I'll guard it with my life. And give it back someday . . . when we're free."

  "Thanks, Tuff ... my friend."

  Staffa stepped over to the yoke and put his bruised shoulder under it. "Ho!"

  Kaylla called, grabbing up the tug strap. Staffa grunted under the weight, feeling the burden strain his muscles.

  The day wore on. He blinked against the sun that seared his back and tried to fry his brain. Sweat ran down from under his armpits, evaporating before it could even trickle to his elbows—the memory no more than white lines of salt.

  Kaylla? Skyla? They mixed in his imagination, each with that same knowing expression of suffering and endurance.

  "I never understood, Skyla," he croaked through his dry throat.

  "My poor Staffa." Skyla's voice twined out of the gusting wind. "You wanted to know what it is to be human? You'll know my scars next time."

  "I'll know everyone's."

  His thoughts centered on the time he'd removed his glove to hold her hand. At the time, the fluttering anxiety of his heart had unnerved him. She'd been perilously close to death, and it had frightened him. Why had he never reached for her again?

  "Because I couldn't see past a ghost . . . and everything came to me so easily." What have I made that's beautiful? Who's a better man, Peebal? You who leave such a precious piece of gold? Or Staffa, who was never defeated in war— and destroyed everything he ever loved?

  Memories of Peebal's wasted body lurked in his mind. He thought of how Anglo's fingers caressed Kaylla, and the disgust reflected in her expression. He remembered her husband, standing tall, his head exploding in a red haze from the pulse pistol while those beautiful children Kaylla had loved cried in terror at his feet. The demons in his imagination pictured Chrysla, the woman he'd cherished, charred by plasma, that precious body exploded in decompression.

  Loss swept at the corners of his soul as he fought the long section of pipe forward. All those years, he'd kept his distance from Skyla and what would come of it? Another dead body?

  "They'll kill me here, Skyla," he whispered. "I'll never look into your eyes again, never tell you what I've learned. You were the only one who ever understood me. The only one who ever cared. Why did I never see that? Blessed Gods, I should never have let you go!"

  It might have been the wind, but he swore he heard the Praetor's cackling laughter.

  CHAPTER 14

  "You have a wretched look about you, Butla. What has gone wrong?" Magister Bruen asked as he moved to the huge table and settled himself on a purple-cushioned grav chair. Around them the gray rock of Makarta made a comforting womb against the hurricane of
violence beyond the mountain.

  Butla Ret—already seated—slouched at the polished table with a granitelike brooding face. He twirled a thinbladed stiletto between thick ringers, the needle point spinning on the shiny black duraplast tabletop. Butla's gaze shifted slowly to Bruen's. "Arta is gone."

  Bruen's heart skipped. "Gone? What do you mean?"

  The assassin's hard eyes smoldered. A slight tick at the corner of his lip betrayed his iron control.

  "She wanted to love me, Bruen. I... I turned her down. Knowing what would. . . . She tried to—to seduce me. The results scared her. The subliminal training activated her revulsion. She fled. Ran out before I could stop her and disappeared into the streets."

  "Oh, Blessed Gods," Bruen whispered as his senses whirled. "We never anticipated she would develop an attraction to—"

  "Well, she did!" Butla exploded violently, slapping a callused palm on the table with a thunderous clap. He lifted the knife, eyes slitted and deadly.

  "And I came to love her, Bruen! You hear? I love her!" Corded jaw muscles knotted and jumped under sleek black skin while strong fingers clenched and unclenched around the menacing black dagger.

  Bruen fought to swallow. "No—oh, no. We must find her. Bring her back here. If you are separated, perhaps this fatal attraction will—"

  Butla Ret leaned forward, sighting down the stiletto with one buing eye. His voice came as a hissing threat. "Too late again, Bruen."

  Bruen closed his eyes, heart hammering.

  "She hid her trail well," the assassin's voice began in bass vibration. "It was the middle of the night. I don't know where she went, or how it happened, but some Regan soldiers got her—flesh peddlers, you see. Must have surprised her. That and she left my place preoccupied, worried about why I turned her down. Worried about her irrational fear of physical love, maybe feeling the trigger. Whatever it was, the reason doesn't matter anymore. They captured her."

  Bruen closed his eyes, imagining.

  "As far as I could determine, they raped her repeatedly. Time and time. ..."

  "God's curses." Bruen's blood seemed to slow in his veins.

  "Yes," Butla hissed, "God's curses on you, Bruen. Curses for what you did to that girl! You played with her brain! Played God with her mind, damn you.

  Well, now it's all come undone, Magister!" He spit the last. "Reap your benefits, you ... you despicable BASTARD!"

  Bruen recoiled as if struck. "Then it is undone Master Ret. And there is nothing we can do but grieve. For her— and ourselves."

  "Grieve? A curious word for a monster like yourself, Bruen."

  He nodded, accepting the horrid truth. "Perhaps I am a curious monster. Like Arta, I'm no more than the product of my times. Like her, I, too, am damned to do what I will with nothing more than blind trust. We're all puppets acting—"

  "Damn you! Butla Ret stopped the stiletto as it dimpled Bruen's wrinkled throat. Face-to-face they stared at each other.

  "Yes, Master Ret," Bruen crooned. "Look into my soul. See my pain? See my guilt? Yes, you understand, don't you? I loved her, too, Butla. Loved her!"

  Bruen felt the tip of the dagger waver and withdraw. Those implacable black eyes held his for an eternity. The big assassin took a deep breath and dropped back into the chair, violence and frustration seeping away into dejected weariness.

  "I came here to kill you," Ret said woodenly.

  Silence stretched while Bruen looked at his fragile hands and slowly rubbed his thumb across his fingertips.

  "What have we become, Magister?" Ret cried poignantly. He ran a hand nervously over his face before he shook his head. "I mean, where are we going? What kind of people are we? Where is our purpose in all this injustice, in the suffering? We had responsibilities once. Morals. Remember? Were those just empty words? Slogans?"

  "No, old friend." Bruen leaned back and his arthritic hip sent a twinge aong ancient nerves. "I still believe them to be truths. Morality? Responsibility?

  Two different words for the same principle." Bruen cocked his head and lifted a hand. "But something has happened. We are no longer in control. All the plans we laid so long ago are in disarray. Even talking to the Mag Comm, I get the impression the machine, too, is lost. It keeps asking for more and more data."

  "The machine! Always the machine. The quanta exceeded probable reality phase changes." Butla made an angry gesture. "Just the way we've always thought.

  It's damned us, Bruen. Damned us to a hell of its own making."

  Bruen let his blue-veined hand drop in defeat. "We don't know that for sure."

  I am so tired. If only I could go and sleep. I never asked for this mantle to be laid upon my shoulders. I never hungered for this damning power—to sit in judgment over humanity. Arta, my poor, poor Arta!

  Butla leaned on his elbows, covering his face with his palms. "Then all we can do is react." He blew a heavy sigh past his fingers. "You know what kind of strategy that is, Magister?"

  "The strategy of ruin," Bruen replied gloomily. "But tell me of Arta."

  "She killed them, of course. She got loose somehow and killed each and every one of them." Butla frowned. "She was thorough. I saw the bodies. Most horribly mutilated. All her frustrations, the anger, the violence you seeded into her brain exploded in a destructive frenzy. Her rage and confusion must have augmented the subliminal training. I won't go into the details.

  " take it from your tone that you don't think she'll be back?"

  Butla Ret shook his head slowly. "I gave her two days. She sent no word, Magister. Not a peep through any of the channels she knows to use in an emergency."

  "I see something else in your eyes, Butla."

  He fingered the dagger absently. "She's still out there, Magister. During those two days, Regan soldiers died one after another. Each one died in the streets—cut to pieces the same as her slave-trading rapists. A couple of witnesses saw her. They reported the killer to be a young woman, very beautiful, with auburn hair and amber eyes."

  Bruen's guts loosened with a sinking sensation. Sotto voce he added, "What terror have we wrought?" Magister Hyde's remembered words mocked, "The problem with a psychological weapon is that you never know when it will go off."

  * *

  "Don't do it, Tuff." Kaylla's warning brought him spinning on his heels, hands low, feet spread for balance.

  She walked up the side of the dune, her slim figure outlined against the glistening night sand. She stood before him, hands on hips, head tilted, eyes shadowed by wisps of blowing brown hair.

  Staffa straightened, drawing a deep breath. "Don't do what?"

  "Try and run away." She stepped easily to the dune crest and settled herself, legs dangling down the slip face. "I don't know what the range of the collars is, but—"

  "Twelve kilometers," Staffa told her blankly. "I could be well past that by morning."

  She looked up at him, soft starlight caressing her features. "Sit down." She patted the sand next to her.

  Staffa hesitated a moment, then dropped. "I could make it."

  Kaylla shook her head violently. "Fool, you'd be dead by noon tomorrow. Think about it. This air has no humidity. None. Sure, you're tough. You're strong as an Ashtan bull and you've got a hell of a lot of animal tenacity. You'd still be dead by noon tomorrow . . . sucked dry, leached of all the water in your body."

  "You know a lot about my abilities, woman."

  "Are all men so sensitive? Yeah, Tuff, I know what you can do. I've watched you haul pipe." Her cool hand came to rest on his shoulder. "But listen. I know what this desert can do. While Anglo's been pumping me, I've been pumping him back. Assuming you could find water—which you can't—you'd be walking for three weeks to make Etarus. Between here and there, you won't find a mouse's mouthful of water. They've looked with the finest sensors Rega can buy.

  Nothing's out there but sand. Not even siff jackals, for all Anglo's warnings."

  Staffa stared out over the endless white, so peaceful now in the starlight. I should go
. Take off now, run and run until I fall headfirst into the sand. It won't take long. Only the thirst will be unbearable. I won't die in pain or terror like so many I've killed. Would the ghosts rest with my death?

  "The collar would be easier." She said it so simply. "Or, if you'd like, Brak or one of the others could take a fitting wrench to your skull; you'd never feel it." She paused. "Why do you want to die?"

  He chuckled hollowly. "You wear the collar and you can ask that? Why do you want to live? Seriously, Kaylla, you can't believe that self-delusive nonsense about God."

  She leaned back, taking a deep breath. "Oh, but I do. Not only that, but I believe in responsibility and morality. Concepts alien to this horror-drenched age of darkness we've cloaked ourselves with."

  "Don't tell me you—"

  "Don't you think life has a purpose?" she asked levelly. "Why are you alive?

  Why do you experience the universe around you? What is the purpose of all this?" She picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers.

  "You tell me."

  "Knowledge," Kaylla whispered, looking up at the myriads of stars that wove a gray belt through the night sky. "The Seddi believe God became aware. That awareness started the universe in a brilliant instant eighteen billion years ago."

  "God? Aware? If I could believe in God, what would awareness mean?"

  "Observation." She rolled on her side, propping her head on one hand, fingers tracing through the white grains of sand. "What if the creation of the universe was God's realiation that it was aware? Its first observation, if you will."

  "Then God is aware. Why does it need us? It could float around and . . . and...."

  "That's right. You begin to see the problem. Any inquiry into the true nature of God always leads into circles of logic and assumption. How could God see itself if it were the only observer?"

  "Then the Seddi think that men are the mirrors of God?"

  "No, not exactly." Her fingers raked the sand into geometric designs. "Seddi accept that the mind of God is One, and, at the same time, it is infinitely divisible. The third law the Seddi accept is that mind—yours, mine, or God's, it doesn't matter—creates. We do that by observation. Everything comes from the Now moment of observation."