Lee got the joke. He quit complaining.
Afterwards, they adjourned to the forward half of the cabin, where William Three-Dollar began banging around in the galley. “You want something to eat?” he called back to Sawyer. The tracker still sat alone with his brother.
“No thanks. What have you got?”
“I’ve got a goddamn well-stocked kitchen here. You can have just about anything you want—” A pause. “No, you won’t want that. Or that. Or that either. Hm. We’ll have to jettison some of this stuff if we want to keep our appetites for the rest.” He tossed several unopened packages into the discard.
Reluctantly, Sawyer turned away from Finn and went forward. Three-Dollar had unfolded a table and laid out steaming plates of sliced meat, sausages, pickles, steamed tubers, dipping sauces, and various unrecognizable vegetables. “Eat, drink, and make merry,” he said. “Because somebody else has paid the bill.”
“Lady Zillabar,” snorted Lee.
“She’ll have a good many hours of drooling unconsciousness, before we present the check,” said Three-Dollar, seating himself. He folded his hands in front of himself and bowed his head. Lee did likewise. In a quieter voice, Three-Dollar said, “For the gifts we have received in the past, we give thanks. For the gifts before us now, we give thanks. For the gifts still to come, we give thanks. Amen.” He started passing plates of food around.
Sawyer sat down with Lee and Three-Dollar and began picking at the food before him. After a moment, he looked up—the TimeBinder gazed at him with concern. “What?” he asked.
“After we eat, let me run a medical scan on you. Those blisters on your face don’t look good. Do you have any pain? Or numbness in your extremities?”
Sawyer shrugged. “I’ll recover. I’ve had worse.”
“Let me check you anyway.”
Sawyer shrugged again, this time in assent. He pushed some food around on his plate, then pushed the plate away and leaned back in his chair. “That thing you just said. About the gifts. And the thanks. Why did you say that? And to who?”
Three-Dollar and Lee exchanged glances. Sawyer couldn’t read the meaning of it. Their expressions seemed both amused and sad at the same time. Lee answered, “We call that a prayer.”
“I know about prayers. I didn’t think you believed in that nonsense—” Sawyer realized his gaffe too late. “I apologize,” he said quickly. “I have no right to question your beliefs.”
Three-Dollar held up a hand. “No, you have no reason to apologize. You only spoke your mind. Do you want an explanation, Sawyer Markham?”
Sawyer shrugged. “I’ll listen.”
The TimeBinder smiled wryly. “You have much more intelligence than your boyish countenance would suggest.” He paused to take a bite of food, then continued thoughtfully. “We do not pray for the benefit of God. Whatever form God may take, that form remains unknowable to us. We cannot comprehend the shape of something greater than ourselves.”
The tracker grunted. “Yeah, so?”
“If we cannot fathom the deity, neither can we fathom its plan, its purpose. Anything we might postulate—especially as it pertains to our own place in the universe—would probably express more vanity, more wishful thinking about ourselves, than holy truth.”
“Right. So why pray?”
“We pray not for the benefit of God, but for ourselves. In all likelihood, we can give nothing to God that God either needs or wants. And if God does need or want the mindless adulation of a species of naked apes, that God would certainly not deserve the respect of a species seeking intelligence, would it?” Three-Dollar smiled wryly. “Therefore, we speak our prayers for our wholeness, to remind ourselves of our place in God’s universe. We restore our sense of perspective. We restore our relationship with the universe around us. And in that way, at least, we connect to God in the only way possible for us. Does that answer your question, Sawyer?”
Sawyer nodded slowly. He remained silent while he chewed over the information. Finally, he remarked, “But all this depends on the existence of a God, doesn’t it? How do you prove that?”
“You don’t,” said Three-Dollar, smiling with surreal finality.
“Well, then if you have no way of knowing if God really does exist or not, why pray?”
“Why take chances?” grinned Lee-1169.
Three-Dollar held up a hand. “Why not?” he asked. “If the prayer provides a focus for individual meditation, does it matter if God hears it or not? The purpose still gets served. We restore ourselves and return to a sense of clarity about our purposes and goals. We enlarge our ability to function responsibly.”
“Hm,” said Sawyer. He pushed his plate away.
“Not hungry anymore?”
“Not for food.” Sawyer excused himself and went back to the maintenance cabinet where his brother lay in repose. He sat down beside it, put his hands together on the glass surface, and lowered his head onto them. If he prayed or merely grieved, Lee and Three-Dollar couldn’t tell.
Of Course
In the Lady’s absence, confusion and panic ruled on the bridge of The Golden Fury. Her Senior Captain, and six of his junior officers, had already committed dishonorable suicide—rather than risk the wrath of the Lady’s aides.
The Dragon Lord, still weak from the effects of Sawyer’s assault, had to physically prevent the seventh junior officer from committing suicide. He held him aloft and roared in his face. “The Lady Zillabar will not tolerate any more acts of cowardice aboard this vessel and neither will I! You may not kill yourself! You will immediately assume the responsibilities of the Captain of this vessel. I command it.”
The young Vampire had never had a Dragon roar into his face before. Indeed, few Vampires had ever seen a Dragon’s fury at such proximity and lived to tell about it. To his credit, the officer not only did not faint, he retained full control of his bowels.5
When the Dragon Lord lowered him to the ground again, the new Captain of The Golden Fury, Commander ‘Ga Lunik, swallowed hard, saluted nervously, and asked, “What do you bid, my lord? Shall we pursue the boat?”
The Dragon Lord considered his strategy, muttering dull curses as he did so. He realized with annoyance that he had grown too used to having the opinions and advice of others. He had allowed himself to depend on the conversations of the Lady to bend and shape his own strategies. He resolved never to allow that weakness to overpower his own reasoning again. The Dragons would serve the Vampires on their own terms only.
He turned to the trembling Captain. “No. I think not. Order three squads of Marauders to pursue. Order them to track the boat at a distance. Do not approach it. In no way interfere with it. As long as those damned rebels have the Lady, we dare not give them reason to harm her.” He added, “Keep all your other Marauders on alert.”
“You have a plan?”
“A Dragon always has a plan,” rumbled the Dragon Lord, turning away. He didn’t have one now, but he would soon. Those who had caused this embarrassment to the Lady—and especially to himself and the Dragon Guards—would live just long enough to scream their regrets.
Captain ‘Ga Lunik turned to his desperately depleted staff and began issuing the appropriate orders. Whatever would happen, would happen. He kept his expression bland. He would convey the Dragon Lord’s commands, maintain his personal discipline, and pray to die well. He could not see any other outcome for this disaster, no matter how he projected the course of events.
Shortly, he felt a faint series of thumps coming up through the deck beneath his boots. He counted them to himself. As each Marauder leapt away from the vessel, the clang of its departure reverberated upward to the bridge. Captain ‘Ga Lunik turned to the main screen and watched as each tiny assault vehicle streaked off into the darkness.
Somewhere ahead, lost in the dark side of Burihatin, the shuttle boat accelerated recklessly. Perhaps they would recapture it. Perhaps not. Perhaps the Lady would die. Perhaps she would escape. Perhaps they would rescue her. No matter wha
t, she would extract her retributions. He foresaw little chance of victory here, let alone survival. Therefore, he would die gallantly, as bravely as he could to bring honor to his family name.
That decision made, he studied the course displays thoughtfully and considered strategy. The acting astrogator stepped up beside him to report quietly, “The signal from the shuttle’s locator beacon remains strong. The Marauders will have no trouble tracking and closing.” He indicated a screen. “According to the information relayed by the boat’s system analysis sensors, the Lady remains alive, but unconscious.”
Captain ‘Ga Lunik turned to report this information to the Dragon Lord, but the great lizard waved him away. “I heard,” he said. “I think the rebels have made a stupid mistake keeping the Lady Zillabar alive. When she recovers her wits, keeping her restrained will become a very difficult task. Hmp. They would have shown more intelligence to kill her as soon as they got away. I would have done so. And,” he admitted with disgraceful candor, “it would have made things a lot easier for everybody all around.”
Captain ‘Ga Lunik believed that discretion represented the better part of survival. He decided to ignore the Dragon Lord’s seditious opinion. Instead, he said, “My Lord, the Marauders have the advantage of speed, but the shuttleboat has a much longer range. The Marauders might intercept the boat, but they won’t dare fire on it, not while the Lady Zillabar remains aboard. And if the Marauders can’t fire, the boat will simply outrun them; they’ll have to return.”
“I don’t expect the Marauders to catch them, Captain. I only want the rebels to believe that we pursue in earnest. It will keep them from making grandiose plans. They will head for Burihatin 14. Where else can they go? We will arrive there at the same time they do, and the locater in the boat will allow us to greet them where they land.”
“What about the Lady?”
The Dragon Lord shrugged. “Perhaps she will learn some humility from this episode. This will teach her not to play with her food. . . .”
Directions
Already three million kilometers ahead, the shuttle dipped into the shadow of giant Burihatin and began decelerating, altering its course as it approached the outermost ring.
“We’ll head directly across the rings,” Sawyer said to Lee-1169 and William Three-Dollar. The three men had gone forward to the shuttle’s cockpit to discuss their plans. They couldn’t risk having the Lady Zillabar overhear their conversation. They had all heard stories about Vampires in dreamtime. The Phaestor had the ability to remain conscious of everything that happened around them, even while comatose. None of them wanted to take the chance that Zillabar might still retain some awareness, despite her obviously drugged state.
Sawyer tapped the screen, indicating the schematic of the course he had plotted. “We’ll dip below them, then above, then below. I want to make it hard for those damn Marauders to close with us.” He pointed to the line of dots across the bottom of the display.
“They won’t dare fire on us,” said Lee. “And we have the range to outrun them.”
“I know that.”
“Then why not just head straight away as fast as we can?”
Sawyer studied the screens in front of him for a moment before he answered. “We need to shake them quickly. So we need to have them underestimate us. We have to make them think that we act in haste and stupidity. We have to act like scared rats for this plan to work.”
“Hmp,” Lee snorted. “I hope this plan works better than your last one.”
“So do I. Finn and I spend too much time in jail.” Sawyer finished programming the autopilot, locked it in, and swiveled around to look at Lee. “But this time we’ve got help.”
“Huh?”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
“I have,” said Three-Dollar. “The Dragon Lord let us go.”
Lee leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms skeptically across his chest. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
“I know the Dragons,” said Three-Dollar. He tapped the silver band around his head. “I have a thousand years of memories, remember?”
“All right,” said Lee, looking from one to the other. “Explain it to me.”
“At the moment we captured Zillabar, we dishonored him. Our success meant that he had failed to protect the Lady’s safety. The fact that her own stupidity made her vulnerable to us doesn’t mitigate his failure. The moment we seized her, his suicide became inevitable.”
“But he went into a death rage,” said Lee. “He would have killed us all—but not before we would have killed the Zillabitch. Correct me if I’ve figured this wrong, but that would have put an even bigger stain of dishonor on his family name. He would have had to commit immediate suicide, and probably all his heirs as well.”
“You’ve extrapolated it correctly,” Three-Dollar said. “At least, correctly by the best estimation a human can have about the way the minds of Dragons work. No matter what course of action he chose, either way he would have disgraced himself. At the core of it lies his failure to protect the Lady. We captured her—or we captured her and killed her. Either circumstance proves his ineptitude for the entire Cluster to see.
“So which course should he have taken? You or I, because of our commitment to the ideals of the Alliance of Life, would have acted to minimize the chances of death. But the Dragons don’t think the same way that we do. The Dragon Lord chose the greater of the two disgraces—death for the Lady while under his protection.”
Lee scratched his head in confusion. He admitted sadly, “Perhaps I have too much enmity for the Dragons. Out of the fear that either understanding or respect would lessen my ability to hate them and my willingness to kill them, I have never allowed myself either to understand them or respect them.”
“And that,” said Three-Dollar, reaching across the intervening space to tap Lee’s chest with one bony forefinger, “explains why your brothers have died by the hundreds. None of you have allowed yourself to know your enemy well enough to use his weaknesses against himself.”
Three-Dollar’s tone changed, he became a teacher again. “You need to understand this, my hot-blooded friend. The Dragons’ thinking has at its core an incredible drive toward Armageddon. It overwhelms the thought processes of even the mildest of Dragons—if you can imagine such a thing as a mild Dragon. If a Dragon cannot win, it will lose in the most destructive manner possible: destruction for itself and for everything and everybody else within range. The knowledge of that terrible urge to violence has made many of the Dragons’ opponents extremely cautious—as well as their employers.
“Zillabar became incautious,” Three-Dollar said. “The Dragon Lord must have seen her carelessness. The Dragons live for honor. They build their identities around it. The Dragon Lord had to have known the danger in which she had put him and all his heirs. He must have resented her profoundly for it. He would not have grieved over her death. Perhaps he even hates her. Whatever the case, he meant to take her down with him. He acted to pay back the disgrace.”
“When I fired—” said Sawyer. “When I stunned the Dragons, I saved his life, and possibly his honor.”
“That part, I don’t understand,” Lee admitted.
“Falling in battle carries no stain,” explained Three-Dollar. “The Dragon Lord had clearly made his choice. He had already stepped into his rage. Stopping a Dragon in his tracks, killing it or stunning it, does not stain the Dragon. It gives great credit to the rival without taking anything away from the warrior. When Sawyer fired, he elevated himself in the Dragons’ eyes—and us, by association—from annoying nuisances to courageous opponents. Thus the felling of the Dragon Lord does not stain him with the same disgrace as if he’d simply let us go.”
Lee considered that for a moment.
Now Sawyer added a thought of his own, “The Dragon Lord wanted me to fire. He meant his refusal to take off his armor as a direct challenge. He needed us to elevate ourselves in his esteem so he could avoid his disgrace.”<
br />
“But what about what you said a moment ago? About us having help?”
“The Dragon Lord needs us to look ferocious,” Sawyer explained. “So he has to let us run wild for a while. This will alarm the Vampires. It will terrify them that humans can so openly thwart their authority. They will demand that the Dragon Lord act. Perhaps they will even expand his authority—at the expense of their own.
“I have no intention of disappointing the Dragon Lord. At this moment, it serves us to serve his purpose. But also I have no illusions about his ultimate goals either. As soon as our freedom brings no more advantage to him, he’ll squash us like mice. Our best hope lies in having him underestimate our ability to elude his forces. We shall demonstrate just enough cleverness to serve his purpose—enough cleverness to demonstrate our ferocity, but no more than that, lest we cause him undue concern or alarm.”
Three-Dollar looked amused. “I see. And how much cleverness do you expect we’ll need to demonstrate?”
“As much as we have and at least ten times more than that,” Sawyer grinned. “We’ll probably have to work overtime.”
“Your contract doesn’t allow for overtime, tracker.”
“We don’t get paid by the hour, TimeBinder. We get paid for producing results.”
“Ahh,” said William Three-Dollar, nodding in satisfaction. Abruptly, he raised a finger in concern. “Wait—” he said, a sudden thought occurring to hm. “What happens if you overestimate how much cleverness you’ll need?”
Sawyer shook his head sadly. “We’ll just have to take that risk, won’t we?”
Locators
The shuttleboat dived through the outermost ring of Burihatin, ejected a wrapped package and abruptly changed course. The package continued along the shuttleboat’s original course.
Several hours later, the first of the pursuing Marauders caught up with the ejected package, matched trajectories, carefully scanned the suspicious object, and finally brought it aboard. A few moments later, after examining the contents of the package, the pilot of the Marauder sent a coded message back to The Golden Fury. “The ejected package contained one of the boat’s locater beacons—and the body of its copilot.”
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