The 97th Step

by Steve Perry

  The house itself looked much smaller than Ferret remembered. There was a flitter parked under the open-walled shed and a tractor outside, next to it. The vehicles were not the same ones he had left, but by no twist of the imagination could they be called new. The flower and vegetable garden his mother had always kept so well tended was a stretch of dead and dried stalks, overcome by weeds. The wembe patch closest to the house was in similar condition, the gray-green of the spiked foliage dead or dying, with many of the tubers pulled up and left to rot.

  Jesu, it looked terrible. What had happened?

  Ferret parked the flitter he had bought and climbed out. The stink was the same, though somehow less intense.

  He didn't bother to touch the announcer button. The door was unlocked, and he opened it and walked into the house in which he had been born.

  Inside looked worse than outside. Cobwebs laden with dust fuzzed the corners; more dust lay on every exposed surface like fine powder; trash was strewn over the floor—empty food cartons, paper, drink containers. He couldn't believe his mother would allow it to deteriorate so, were she still capable of taking care of it.

  He wandered through the house and his memories of it, failing to reconcile the two. This wreck had no place in his scenario—he had never lived here.

  His father was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, a cup of tea in his hands. He sat so still that at first Ferret thought he might be asleep. After a moment, however, the man looked up.

  He had weathered much like the house. Ferret saw. He was only in his seventies, still middle-aged, but he looked closer to a hundred. His hair, what there was of it, had gone white; his skin had been baked by the sun into a mass of wrinkled leather, spotted with darker pigment that made him look paint-spattered.

  The sclera of his eyes were dirty yellow, and shot through with spidery vessels. Like the house, he had also shrunk with the years. Ferret felt a sense of amazement: How could he have ever feared this pitiful man?

  Though his body had suffered, Matuta Kalamu's mind had not fled into senility. Ferret saw his father recognize him.

  "So. You've come back." The old man's voice was flat, almost a monotone.

  "Yes." He looked around. The kitchen was in no better shape than the rest of the house. "Where is mother?"

  "Dead."

  Ferret nodded. He had suspected. He was surprised at the feeling that suddenly touched him. He hadn't seen her in more than fifteen years, and had thought about her only a few times, but he found that knowing she was dead brought up feelings of unfinished business. There were things he should have said, questions he should have asked. As God had once ridden his shoulder, now it seemed Death had replaced Him. In an odd way, he took some comfort that his father was still alive.

  Ferret said, "How long?"

  "A year and a month. She caught a fever. It was a short illness. The medic says she should have lived."

  There were a thousand things Ferret could say, a thousand more questions he could ask. He settled on the one that had dogged him the most over the years:

  "On the day that I left, how did you know?"

  The old man looked away from his son and stared at the cup of cold tea. "She told me. She knew."

  "Why?"

  His father sat there unspeaking for what seemed a long time before he answered. "To punish me, of course. She didn't think I would go after you. I did, you know."

  "I know. I saw you."

  "She hated me. Because of Jana."

  For a moment, Ferret couldn't place the name. Then he remembered. "My sister?"

  "She killed herself," the old man said.

  Ferret blinked, surprised. His mother had always told him that Jana had died from pneumonia. "Why?"

  His father twirled the teacup slowly in his hands. "She was going to run away. There was a boy."

  "That's not worth suicide," Ferret said.

  "I found out. She kept a diary. I had the boy arrested for having sex with her—she wrote of it, she boasted of it! It was a sin."

  There was something there, in his father's voice, something he was not saying. Ferret had become a better judge of such things than he had been as a boy. "What else?" His voice sounded harsh in the small kitchen.

  The old man seemed lost in his thoughts. He spoke as if seeing through time, as if from a great distance.

  "She had no right to leave me. No right."

  Ferret felt the hair stir on his neck. The meaning of the statement gave him a chill. "No right to leave you?"

  His father looked up at Ferret. His face had aged even more in just a few moments. Tears gathered in his eyes. "She and I… we had, we were…"He trailed off.

  There was no need to finish. Ferret knew.

  "You molested my sister. Your own daughter."

  "No. She loved me. She did love me."

  "You hypocritical bastard! You were so goddamned holy and pure, strapping me if I breathed wrong, and you did that!"

  "After she died, your mother was going to leave. But she didn't. She stayed. To torment me."

  "How could she have allowed you to ever touch her again?"

  The old man stared at his tea. "She did not."

  "Then how…?" Ferret stopped. The enormity of it struck him like a physical blow. The room sharpened around him, as if he had taken a potent psychedelic. The universe was filled with razors, whirling, whirling, slicing and nicking him in a wind of steel, catching his attention, making him aware. He could see with absolute clarity.

  His voice, when he found it again, was much more steady than he felt. "Who is my father?"

  "I don't know. She never said. That was part of her punishment. It could be any man I met. Do you know how that made me feel? That any stranger who laughed could be laughing at me?"

  Ferret turned away, suddenly unable to bear the sight of the man he had always thought of as his father.

  Behind him, the voice continued: "I repented. I tried to wash my soul clean with prayer and humility. But I couldn't forget. Every time I looked at you, I was reminded."

  Ferret felt the emotion well in him. He had thought his feelings crushed by the deaths of Stoll and Shar.

  He had thought that nothing could touch him. Now his mother was gone, and he had lost—for whatever it was worth—his father, too. Could there be a God? If so, he must surely have angered Him, to be cursed so. What had he done to deserve this?

  "Even after you left, she stayed. I had destroyed both of her children, you see, and she made sure I knew it. We did not speak of it, but her every gesture, her every breath conveyed it to me. It was my cross."

  Ferret turned back to face the old man. "You built it yourself."

  The old man nodded slowly. "Of course. We all build our own crosses." He looked up into Ferret's steady gaze. "Didn't you know that?"

  He left the flitter he had bought at the spaceport, left it parked with the ignition card sticking from the slot.

  Somebody would take it, but it wouldn't be stealing, as far as Ferret was concerned. He had no need for the vehicle; he would never set foot on this world again.

  On the ship—where was it going? It didn't matter—he used the room dispense to dial up various liquors.

  He drank without tasting the stuff, drank until he was fogged with alcohol, wrapped in a warm haze that shut out everything but the need to maintain it. Sometime later, he began ordering other drugs: powders, poppers, even one of the high-intensity radiants. It didn't matter. His credit was thick, and the machine dutifully supplied whatever he ordered. He didn't need food, he didn't need contact with anybody, he didn't need anything.

  In communion with the dispense, Ferret lost himself, while the light-years of distance sped past.

  Entombed inside a high-tech miracle of a vessel he sped, faster than light, traversing the near vacuum of-it all—but it was never fast enough. He could not get away, save for the drugs.

  Chem was slower, but it helped. He lost them, left Mwili behind, forgot for yawning spans of time who Ferret
was as he swirled into chemical byways, spiraling away from his conscious mind into fantasy. The dispense was his only friend and he worshipped at its altar, praying for the machine's promise of oblivion.

  Occasionally, he had a moment of lucidity, why or how he could not say, and he would wonder what he was going to do when the ship reached its final destination. Then, some chem would kick in, and he would smile. It didn't matter. There were other ships, other destinations. He could keep moving as long as his money lasted, and that would last long enough. Long enough for what? To forget?

  To forget what?

  Time passed. Exactly how much, Ferret did not know, but it felt like months, maybe even years. In a fresher somewhere, he washed his face; when he raised up to look into the mirror, he saw a stranger.

  The man looking back at him was gaunt, his clothes hanging loosely on him; this man had sharp features, the flesh honed away, leaving little more than skin over bone. The eyes were bloodshot and bleary, the mouth a thin-lipped line. His hair was straggly and dirty, and the beard-suppressant was beginning to wear off, allowing a few days' growth of whiskers to pattern his face. The man's hands shook as though he had palsy.

  A rare moment of clarity settled upon him. Where was he?

  He wandered from the fresher out into a pub. The room was long and narrow, focused around a polished wooden bar backed by racks of liquor and chem, reflected in a floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the gleaming bar. A smallish man tended the patrons there, and maybe two dozen additional customers sat at tables nearby, drinking, eating, talking—doing the things ordinary people did. A neon sign against the mirror had been shaped into the words: Electric Eel, obviously the name of the place.

  Why was he sober? He must have mixed his chem or drinks wrong. Sometimes that happened. One chem would balance another, like an acid with a base, and the net result was that neither accomplished anything. Well. He could remedy that fast enough. Although it might be mildly amusing to find out just where he was.

  Ferret moved to the bar, and perched upon an empty stool. Before the tender spotted him, he turned to the man seated next to him. "Pardon, flo'man, but I've become a little disoriented. Could you tell me where I am?"

  The man was big and dark-haired, wearing a freight handler's coverall. He grinned, showing stainless steel teeth. "The Electric Eel, pard. Smoketown."

  "Thank you. Ah—what planet?"

  The big man laughed, stainless steel flashing. "You are far orbit, pard. Thompson's Gazelle. You need the system, too?"

  "Thanks, no. Let me buy you something."

  Well. That was some twist of cosmic comedy. Back on Thompson's Gazelle. He felt no particular worry.

  Benny was dead, and his hired mercs would be long gone. Nobody would be looking for him under any name but the fake one he had used to pull the caper. However long ago it had been. He thought about asking the freight handler what the date was, but decided against it. The man might decide he was loopy enough to take outside to shake loose his credit cube. He had lost a few that way, and then had to stay sober long enough to get them replaced. A bad scene.

  "Tender, get my friend here whatever he's consuming."

  The pubtender moved toward them. Ferret turned back to acknowledge the freight handler's smile when he caught a movement peripherally. He reacted without thinking, thrusting his left hand up, fingers stiffened and extended, his thumb curled tightly against the palm under the base of his forefinger.

  The block was sloppy, slow, and weak, but it stopped the open-handed slap the pubtender had thrown.

  The man pulled his hand back.

  "Well," he said, "at least you aren't so far gone you can't remember any of your training."

  Ferret stared at the little man behind the bar, the freight handler forgotten. Recognition came, breaking through the months of alcoholic and rec chem overlay, and from under the weight of years since last he'd seen him.

  Elvin Dindabe. His Gura for nearly a year in the art of Sengat, the fasthand sting of power fighting from the Indonesian colony on Titan. Startled as he was. Ferret managed a grin of joy at seeing his old teacher.

  For a time, Dindabe had walked the Musashi Flex, a loose association of professional combat artists.

  The Flex moved from world to world, the fights were sometimes to the death, all in the name of some kind of modern bushido. A Flex player might run into another in some pub or alley somewhere and if there was a chance of an even fight, there would be one. Sometimes they were unarmed, sometimes weapons figured into it. The winner was the last player standing. Or breathing. Male, female, human, mues, there were all kinds of players, and it was not a pastime for the cowardly.

  The fighters reported the matches, honor was a big part in it, and somebody somewhere kept score. For a time, Dindabe Gura had been among the top five players on the circuit, and as such, had been one of the deadliest men in the Confed. Most worlds had little tolerance for the game, and it was illegal as well as dangerous.

  Dindabe had retired, spent a year on Vishnu where he had been born, enjoying monies he had won as a player. He'd taught classes to help keep his hand in. His rates were high, but he was the best available, and Ferret had felt the need to sharpen his own close combat skills. The techniques he had learned had saved his skin more than once, especially given his reluctance to use deadlier weapons.

  "What has happened to you?" Dindabe said.

  "It's a long story, Gura."

  Dindabe waved one hand. A tall and thick woman appeared and walked toward him. "Watch the bar,"

  he said. "I have something to do."

  Ferret raised an eyebrow. "You the manager?"

  "I own the place. And five others. Come with me."

  Ferret would have preferred not to, but there was no arguing with Dindabe Gura. Nobody ever argued with him.

  Dindabe circled around the bar, and Ferret followed him. The small man did not look back, nor was there need to do so. Ferret followed, afraid for what was to come.

  As well he should be: in Sengai, if a student failed at something, his teacher might feel responsible, depending on how much time and energy he had put into the student. Dindabe had worked with Ferret for a year. Ferret wondered how that stacked up in the code of the art.

  Seventeen

  THERE WAS NO point in even trying to block, this time. The smaller man's hand lanced in and cracked against Ferret's face, hard enough to sting, but not to injure. It was to get his attention. Ferret knew this, and he accepted the impact and subsequent heat without rancor. If Dindabe had wanted to hurt him, he would already be in pain.

  "I spent a year training you," the smaller man said. "Best you have a good excuse for your present state."

  Ferret remembered a student who had studied with him on Vishnu, a woman who was better than he, but prone to two-day chem voyages. Dindabe had disapproved. He had too few years left to waste his teaching on anybody who didn't appreciate it, the Gura had said. After one binge, the woman had returned to class and had five of her ribs broken while sparring with Dindabe. He had danced to one side and flat-slapped her, a strike that looked like nothing. 'Now, he'd said, now you have a reason to take chem.'

  Recalling that incident did not make Ferret's unease slacken. He took a deep breath, and began the story.

  The months of chemical abuse sloughed away as he spoke, and the wound was as fresh as it had been.

  Even as he spoke. Ferret knew his actions had been a waste of time. He had not faced his grief, but had only covered it. It lay buried under a thin layer of false forgetfulness, waiting for its chance. He cried as he spoke, not so much from self-pity, but from a sense of loss that time had not been allowed to dull.

  Finally, now, he grieved.

  When he finished, he heard Dindabe sigh.

  "I remember the dancer. She could have been a master as a fighter, had she chosen that road. And the fat thief had skill his bulk could not hide. But you went the wrong way, Ferret. The arts could have focused you, you could have burned the
sorrow away in a righteous fire; instead, you took the easy way."

  "I know, Gura. I was weak."

  Dindabe nodded. "A mistake need not follow you forever. How long since you worked out?"

  "I don't know. A few days before the caper."

  "Too long. Have you training clothes?"

  "No."

  "My sekolah is not far. All that you need is there. You are kaki, starting tomorrow. Six hundred. Tonight, you sleep here."

  Ferret felt his mouth go dry, and he nodded dumbly. There was no point in arguing. Dindabe would always be in training, and it seemed he had a school—sekolah—here. The literal translation of kaki was "foot," but what it meant in Sengat- style fighting was low student. Not a pleasant place to be, since such a position involved not only intense training every day, it also meant doing whatever chores the Gura chose to assign. Cleaning the sekolah's mats and mirrors, caring for the weapons, scrubbing the sidewalks, did the Gura desire that. It was a hard place to be, and the last time he'd been there, he'd been younger and in better shape. With the months of dissipation and chem, Ferret was in poor condition for even the lightest of exercises; no one had ever accused Dindabe of pampering his students.

  Ferret was afraid. At the same time, he felt a lifting of the burden he had been trying to pretend he could not feel. When Dindabe Gura was through with him, he would either be in top condition physically or dead; either way, it felt good in a way he had never hoped to feel again. A man can only stay down so long before he rises or loses everything that he is. At the very least, the choice was about to be made.

  Ferret wondered which it would be.

  One of the students—there were only three others—was a smuggler named Lyle Gatridge. He was a muscular man a few years younger than Ferret, and called "Red," for the usual reason. He moved well, and he had a fondness for the back-of-the-hand dart gun called spetsdod. A Flex player had to know weapons since some used them, and the spetsdod required a lot more skill than a hand wand or shot pistol. The little flechettes the thing fired could be loaded with half a dozen chems, ranging from simple to stun statics to killing poisons. It was rumored that the military had even developed a load that would cause more or less total voluntary muscular contractures for several months.