The Furies

by Roger Zelazny

"How?"

  "A hoverglobe did it, with a sear-beam."

  "What of my pet? A Drillen . . ."

  "There was only you I found, sir-no one, nothing, else. Uh, it was almost a month-cycle ago that it happened.

  Corgo tried to sit up, failed, tried again, half-succeeded. He sat propped on his elbows.

  "What's the matter with me?"

  "You had some fractures, burns, lacerations, internal injuries-but you're going to be all right, now."

  "I wonder how they found me, so fast-again . . . ?"

  "I don't know, sir. Would you like to try some broth now?"

  "Later."

  "It's all warm and ready."

  "Okay, Emil. Suie, bring it on."

  He lay back and wondered.

  There was her voice. He had been dozing all day and he was part of a dream.

  "Corgo, are you there? Are you there, Corgo? Are you . . ."

  His hand! The ring!

  "Yes! Me! Corgo!" He activated it. "Mala! Where are you?"

  "In a cave, by the sea. Everyday I have called to you. Are you alive, or do you answer me from Elsewhere?"

  "I am alive. There is no magic to your collar. How have you kept yourself?"

  "I go out at night. Steal food from the large dwellings with the green windows like doors-for Dilk and myself."

  "The puppy? Alive, too?"

  "Yes. He was penned in the yard on that night. . . . Where are you?"

  "I do not know, precisely. . . .Near where our place was. A few blocks away-I'm with an old friend. . . ."

  "I must come."

  "Wait until dark, I'll get you directions.-No. I'll send him after you, my friend. . . . Where is your cave?"

  "Up the beach, past the red house you said was ugly. There are three rocks, pointed on top. Past them is a narrow path-the water comes up to it, sometimes covers it-and around a corner then, thirty-one of my steps, and the rock hangs overhead, too. It goes far back then, and there is a crack m the wall-small enough to squeeze through, but it widens. We are here."

  "My friend will come for you after dark."

  "You are hurt?"

  "I was. But I am better now. I'll see you later, talk more then."

  "Yes-"

  In the days that followed, his strength returned to him. He played chess with Emil and talked with him of their days together in the Guard. He laughed, for the first time in many years, at the tale of the Commander's wig, at the Big Brawl on Sordido III, some thirty-odd years before. . .

  Mala kept to herself, and to Dilk. Occasionally, Corgo would feel her eyes upon him. But whenever he turned, she was always looking in another direction. He realized that she had never seen him being friendly with anyone before. She seemed puzzled.

  He drank zimlak with Emil, they ventured off-key ballads together. . . .

  Then one day it struck him.

  "Emil, what are you using for money these days?"

  "Guard pension. Cap."

  "Flames! We've been eating you out of business! Food, and the medical supplies and all . ."

  "I had a little put away for foul weather days, Cap."

  "Good. But you shouldn't have been using it. There's quite a bit of money zipped up in my boots.-Here. Just a second . . . There! Take these!"

  "I can't. Cap. . . "

  "The hell, you say! Take them, that's an order!"

  "All right, sir, but you don't have to. . . ."

  "Emil, there is a price on my head-you know?"

  "I know."

  "A pretty large reward."

  "Yes."

  "It's yours, by right."

  "I couldn't turn you in, sir."

  "Nevertheless, the reward is yours. Twice over. I'll send you that amount-a few weeks after I leave here."

  "I couldn't take it, sir."

  "Nonsense; you will."

  "No, sir. I won't."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I just mean I couldn't take that money."

  "Why not? What's wrong with it?"

  "Nothing, exactly ... I just don't want any of it. I'll take this you gave me for the food and stuff. But no more, that's all."

  "Oh . . . All right, Emil. Any way you like it. I wasn't trying to force . . ."

  "I know. Cap."

  "Another game now? I'll spot you a bishop and three pawns this time."

  "Very good, sir."

  "We had some good time together, eh?"

  "You bet, Cap. Tau Ceti-three months' leave. Remember the Red River Valley-and the family native life-forms?"

  "Hah! And Cygnus VII-the purple world with the Rainbow Women?"

  "Took me three weeks to get that dye off me. Thought at first it was a new disease. Flames, I'd love to ship out again!"

  Corgo paused in mid-move.

  "Hmm . . . You know, Emil ... It might be that you could."

  "What do you mean?"

  Corgo finished his move.

  "Aboard the Wallaby. It's here, in Unassociated Territory, waiting for me. I'm Captain, and crew-and everything-all by myself, right now. Mala helps some, but-you know, I could use a First Mate. Be like old times."

  Emil replaced the knight he had raised, looked up, looked back down.

  "I-I don't know what to say. Cap. I never thought you'd offer me a berth. . . ."

  "Why not? I could use a good man. Lots of action, like the old days. Plenty cash. No cares. We want three months' leave on Tau Ceti and we write our own bloody orders. We take it!"

  "I-I do want to space again. Cap-bad. But-no, I couldn't, . . ."

  "Why not, Emil? Why not? It'd be just like before."

  "I don't know how to say it, Cap. . . . But when we-burnt places, before-well, it was criminals-pirates, Code-breakers-you know. Now . . . Well, now I hear you burn-just people. Uh, non-Code-breakers. Like, just plain civilians. Well-I could not."

  Corgo did not answer. Emil moved his knight. "I hate them, Emil," he said, after a time. "Every lovin' one of them, I hate them. Do you know what they did on Brild? To the Drillen?"

  "Yessir. But it wasn't civilians, and not the miners. It was not everybody. It wasn't every lovin' one. of them, sir.-I just couldn't. Don't be mad."

  "I'm not mad, Emil."

  "I mean, sir, there are some as I wouldn't mind burnin'. Code or no Code. But not the way you do it, sir. And I'd do it for free to those as have it coming."

  "Huh!"

  Corgo moved his one bishop.

  "That's why my money is no good with you?"

  "No, sir. That's not it, sir. Well maybe part . . . But only part. I just couldn't take pay for helping someone I-respected, admired."

  "You use the past tense."

  "Yessir. But I still think you got a raw deal, and what they did to the Drillen was wrong and bad and-evil-but you can't hate everybody for that, sir, because everybody didn't do it."

  "They countenanced it, Emil-which is just as bad. I am able to hate them all for that alone. And people are all alike, all the same. I burn without discrimination these days, because it doesn't really matter who. The guilt is equally distributed. Mankind is commonly culpable."

  "No, sir, begging your pardon, sir, but in a system as big as Interstel not everybody knows what everybody else is up to. There are those feeling the same way you do, and there are those as don't give a damn, and those who just don't know a lot of what's going on, but who would do something about it if they knew, soon enough."

  "It's your move, Emil."

  "Yessir."

  "You know, I wish you'd accepted a commission, Emil. You had the chance. You'd have been a good officer."

  "No, sir. I'd not have been a good officer. I'm too easy-going. The men would've walked all over me."

  "It's a pity. But it's always that way. You know? The good ones are too weak, too easy-going. Why is that?"

  "Dunno, sir."

  After a couple of moves:

  "You know, if I were to give it up-the burning, I mean-and just do some ordinary, decent smuggling with the Wallaby, i
t would be okay. With me. Now. I'm tired. I'm so damned tired I'd just like to sleep-oh, four, five, six years, I think. Supposing I stopped the burning and just shipped stuff here and there-would you sign on with me then?"

  "I'd have to think about it. Cap."

  "Do that, then. Please. I'd like to have you along."

  "Yessir. Your move, sir."

  It would not have happened that he'd have been found by his actions, because he did stop the burning; it would not have happened-because he was dead on ICI's books-that anyone would have been looking for him. It happened, though-because of a surfeit of xmili and good will on the part of the hunters.

  On the eve of the breaking of the fellowship, nostalgia followed high spirits.

  Benedick had never had a friend before, you must remember. Now he had three, and he was leaving them.

  The Lynx had ingested much good food and drink, and the good company of simple, maimed people, whose neuroses were unvitiated with normal sophistication-and he had enjoyed this.

  Sandor's sphere of human relations had been expanded by approximately a third, and he had slowly come to consider himself at least an honorary member of the vast flux which he had only known before as humanity, or Others.

  So, in the library, drinking, and eating and talking, they returned to the hunt. Dead tigers are always the best kind.

  Of course, it wasn't long before Benedick picked up the heart, and held it as a connoisseur would an art object-gently, and with a certain mingling of awe and affection.

  As they sat there, an odd sensation crept into the pudgy paranorm's stomach and rose slowly, like gas, until his eyes burned.

  "I-I'm reading," he said.

  "Of course"-the Lynx. '

  "Yes"-Sandor.

  "Really!"

  "Naturally"-the Lynx. "He is on Disten, fifth world of Blake's System, in a native hut outside Landear-"

  "No"-Sandor. "He is on Phillip's World, in Delles-by-the-Sea."

  They laughed, the Lynx a deep rumble, Sandor a gasping chuckle,

  "No," said Benedick. "He is in transit, aboard the Wallaby. He had just phased and his mind is still mainly awake. He is running a cargo of ambergris to the Tau Ceti system, fifth planet-Tholmen. After that he plans on vacationing in the Red River Valley of the third planet-Cardiff. Along with the Drillen and the puppy, he has a crewman with him this time. I can't read anything but that it's a retired Guardsman."

  "By the holy Light of the Great and Glorious Flame!"

  "We know they never did find his ship. . . ."

  ". . . And his body was not recovered.-Could you be mistaken. Benedick? Reading something, someone else. . . ?"

  "No."

  "What should we do. Lynx?"-Sandor.

  "An unethical person might be inclined to forget it. It is a closed case. We have been paid and dismissed."

  "True."

  "But think of when he strikes again. . . ."

  ". . . It would be because of us, our failure."

  "Yes."

  ". . . And many would die."

  ". . . And much machinery destroyed, and an insurance association defrauded."

  "Yes."

  ". . . Because of us."

  "Yes."

  "So we should report it."-Lynx.

  "Yes."

  "It is unfortunate. . . ."

  "Yes."

  ". . . But it will be good to have worked together this final time."

  "Yes. It will. Very."

  "Tholmen, in Tau Ceti, and he just phased?"-Lynx.

  "Yes."

  "I'll call, and they'll be waiting for him in T.C."

  "... I told you," said the weeping paranorm. "He wasn't ready to die."

  Sandor smiled and raised his glass with his flesh-colored hand.

  There was still some work to be done.

  When the Wallaby hit Tau Ceti all hell broke loose.

  Three fully-manned Guardships, like onto the Wallaby herself were waiting.

  ICI had quarantined the entire system for three days. There could be no mistaking the ebony toadstool when it appeared on the screen. No identification was solicited.

  The tractor beams missed it the first time, however, and the Wallaby's new First Mate fired every weapon aboard the ship simultaneously, in all directions, as soon as the alarm sounded. This had been one of Corgo's small alterations in fire-control, because of the size of his operations: no safety circuits; and it was a suicide-ship, if necessary: it was a lone wolf with no regard for any pack: one central control-touch it, and the Wallaby became a porcupine with laser-quills, stabbing into anything in every direction.

  Corgo prepared to phase again, but it took him forty-three seconds to do so.

  During that time he was struck twice by the surviving Guardship.

  Then he was gone.

  Time and Chance, which govern all things, and sometimes like to pass themselves off as Destiny, then seized upon the Wallaby, the puppy, the Drillen, First Mate Emil, and the man without a heart.

  Corgo had set no course when he had in-phased. There had been no time.

  The two blasts from the Guardship had radically altered the Wallaby's course, and had burnt out twenty-three fast-phase projectors.

  The Wallaby jumped blind, and with a broken leg.

  Continuum-impact racked the crew. The hull repaired rents in its skin.

  They continued for thirty-nine hours and twenty-three minutes, taking turns at sedation, watching for the first warning on the panel.

  The Wallaby held together, though.

  But where they had gotten to no one knew, least of all a weeping paranorm who had monitored the battle and all of Corgo's watches, despite the continuum-impact and a hangover.

  But suddenly Benedick knew fear:

  "He's about to phase-out. I'm going to have to drop him now."

  "Why?"-the Lynx.

  "Do you know where he is?"

  "No, of course not!"

  "Well, neither does he. Supposing he pops out in the middle of a sun, or in some atmosphere-moving at that speed?"

  "Well, supposing he does? He dies."

  "Exactly. Continuum-impact is bad enough. I've never been in a man's mind when he died-and I don't think I could take it. Sorry. I just won't do it. I think I might die myself if it happened. I'm so tired now. ... I'll just have to check him out later."

  With that he collapsed and could not be roused.

  So, Corgo's heart went back into its jar, and the jar went back into the lower right-hand drawer of Sandor's desk, and none of the hunters heard the words of Corgo's answer to his First Mate after the phasing-out:

  "Where are we?-The Comp says the nearest thing is a little ping-pong ball of a world called Dombeck, not noted for anything. We'll have to put down there for repairs, somewhere off the beaten track. We need projectors."

  So they landed the Wallaby and banged on its hull as the hunters slept, some five hundred forty-two miles away.

  They were grinding out the projector sockets shortly after Sandor had been tucked into his bed.

  They reinforced the hull in three places while the Lynx ate half a ham, three biscuits, two apples and a pear, and drank half a liter of Dombeck's best Mosel.

  They rewired shorted circuits as Benedick smiled and dreamt of Bright Bad Barby the Bouncing Baby, in the days of her youth.

  And Corgo took the light-boat and headed for a town three hundred miles away, just as the pale sun of Dombeck began to rise.

  "He's here!" cried Benedick, flinging wide the door to the Lynx's room and rushing up to the bedside. "He's-"

  Then he was unconscious, for the Lynx may not be approached suddenly as he sleeps.

  When he awakened five minutes later, he was lying on the bed and the entire household stood about him. There was a cold cloth on his forehead and his throat felt crushed.

  "My brother," said the Lynx, "you should never approach a sleeping man in such a manner."