The Cunning Blood

by Jeff Duntemann

  Geyl shook her head and smiled. "It's strange to see so much wildness. Nowhere on Earth has been this wild in hundreds of years. Maybe thousands."

  "It must be sad, Ma'am," Filer said.

  "Is it? I don't know. I saw some mastodons in Brookfield Zoo once, descendents of the first ones brought back from Numenor in Pelagius. Is it sad that they're gone from Earth? Or is it sad that we're trying to bring them back? I wish I knew."

  Two more days brought them well into the foothills of Those Damned Mountains, and—prematurely, Filer grumbled—to the end of the first barrel of diesel fuel. Filer tinkered the engine for half a day, trying to improve the injection timing and the fuel efficiency. The Scratch River was now a series of wild cataracts, tumbling between boulders the size of apartment buildings, down in a gorge that was over a hundred meters deep. The nights had gotten very cold, and Geyl routinely shared blankets with Filer, who nonetheless gently rebuffed her nightly invitations.

  "Suppose we meet some Moomoos," Geyl postulated the next morning, as the land rose quickly on both sides. "What are you going to do?"

  Filer shrugged, and the nonchalance on his face looked measured and slightly forced. "Who knows? Wave. Beg fuel. Introduce you as my babe."

  Geyl made a face. "I'd feel better about that if you'd just make me your babe and be done with it."

  "You are my babe, Ma'am. No making required." He leaned over and kissed her forehead. "Know the difference between eros and agape?" Geyl shook her head. "It's Greek. The difference between a babe and a burden. Once two people cross that particular divide, they can never go back." Geyl furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to object, when Filer pointed upward on the rock walls to the south. "Look there! A vein of blue schist!"

  Barely an hour after breaking camp the next day, Filer brought the railcar to a halt and leapt out the cab door, heading up the track at a run. Geyl, who had not slept well, had been dozing. She threw off her blanket, grabbed Filer's pistol, and stumbled after him.

  She came up behind him a few meters from the dark mouth of a tunnel, the first of five that Filer said they would pass on the way to Dis. At this point the Scratch was a smallish cataract, carving a steep gash in the mountains that veered away toward the north. To every side the rock walls ascended nearly vertically. A mist from the falling water drifted here and there over the tracks. The sun had not yet risen high enough to burn it away, and the tunnel mouth was still in shadow.

  But as her eyes grew used to the fainter light, she suddenly saw what had made Filer run from the railcar: The tunnel was full of rubble.

  Filer leaned into the dark opening and sniffed. "Dynamite. If I can still smell it, that means it wasn't that long ago. Less than a week. Maybe only days."

  "Great. And here we are, stuck on the set of Gotterdammerung. Any ideas?"

  Filer rubbed his chin. "Yes, Ma'am. But they're borrowed ideas. And they say it's bad luck borrowing ideas from dead men."

  "Maybe. But at least they won't be bothering us to pay them back. Spill it already!"

  Filer shook his head, and with a wan grin trotted back to the railcar, where he began pulling bundles from the deck, as well as the six mysterious propane tanks.

  Within an hour, Filer had assembled a strange device on the tracks behind the railcar, working from a small book tucked into one of the bundles. Geyl looked over his shoulder and shook her head. "This is insane!"

  "Moomoos are insane. By your standards, at least. But this should be at least as safe as taking potshots at assassins on a LPG tank with a missile launcher." He was grinning through his eyebrows at her; she made a suitably obscene gesture over a smile she could not suppress.

  The six slender tanks, each over two meters long, were arranged in a linear row, and held in place with slim perforated girders of an extremely light metal.

  "Magnesium. Aircraft grade. Definitely Ralpha Dog stuff."

  Geyl remained quiet. Evidently you could run from the Ralpha Dogs but you could never quite get away from them. Above the six tanks was a circular burner two decimeters in diameter, mounted above a small engine Filer described as having "flame-wire ignition." The engine drove a fan mounted just beneath the burner. Above the burner Filer had attached what appeared to be a large heap of filmy plastic, which had been the bulk of the bundle they had found lashed to the side of Chewy's saddle.

  In front of and behind the row of tanks were two canvas sling chairs. At the arm of one chair was a long bracket containing levers and valves, as well as an altimeter, gas pressure indicator, a clock, and a thermometer.

  "So you're going to do this."

  Filer's eyebrows rose. "I am. It's the quickest way to get where we're going—if it's still 'we' that's going there."

  Geyl gulped. "It is...but isn't there another way?"

  Filer nodded. "The mountains start to flatten out another few thousand klicks south. Long walk."

  Geyl's legs twinged as she weighed her options.

  Filer crossed his arms. "You're my babe, and I'll take you the long way if you won't chance it."

  Geyl found herself grinning. Peter would have had the burners on already, laughing with boyish delight. "Ok. No need to shame me. Harness up. Let's go."

  Half an hour later, Geyl stood with her back to the six propane tanks, the sling chair gripping her pelvis like a girdle. Lashed to the brackets holding the tanks together were several packs and bundles. She had cut a hole at the center of one of the woolen blankets taken from the cattle station, and it now draped her like a poncho. She had wrapped her head like a turban with three of Filer's scarves, and wore Filer's spare pair of gloves, huge as they were over her small hands.

  On the other side of the tanks, Filer was reaching upward to pull the cord revving the burner igniter. He was dressed in a thin parka, hood over his head. Geyl heard the rush of the flames as they leapt from the burner, and then the slow ascending whine of the engine.

  She looked up, and watched the plastic envelope pay itself smoothly out from the heap as the fan forced hot air upward. When the plastic caught the sun it glinted iridescently, with shimmering patterns of blue and yellow.

  "I get it now!" she shouted over the roar of the burner. "Those two sicariuses knew their bosses were going to blast the tunnel, and this was their way back over the mountains."

  "Sicarii, Ma'am."

  "Filer, you knew that!"

  "Suspected, Ma'am. Or feared."

  "You know way more than you're telling me. And stop calling me "ma'am." My name is Geyl."

  "I know you're a sicaria. So I can never be sure your name is Geyl."

  "Does it matter that much?"

  "It matters to agape. It doesn't matter to eros. There's respect in 'ma'am.' If I can never know your real name, respect will have to do."

  The tanks bucked as the wind began to catch the envelope, and the sling chair gripped her legs. Then all at once her breath chuffed out and they rose, with the roar of the burners echoing like a dragon's snarl across the river chasm.

  Geyl fought vertigo as the envelope turned with the wind, rising swiftly and making the last sight of the railcar vanish in the mist from the Scratch. On either side the rock walls drew back and then fell away. In minutes they were high enough to see the cattle plain receding to the east, with the rail line a silver thread glinting in the rising sun. On either side were unscalable peaks clothed in blinding white, with slopes punctuated black and gray, and further down, the dull green of the hearty pines that thrived below the tree line.

  Just as Geyl had gotten used to the vibrating roar of the burners, they ceased. Echoes followed them for moments from the chasm below, but then they rose in silence, caught by the easterly wind that blew over the coastal grasslands and through Springheels Pass toward the high plains of Dis in the west. The air was frigid, with a hint of the ocean's smell in it, moist and sharp.

  "Yo, Ma'am." Geyl expected Filer's voice from the other side of the tanks to be hollow or echoing; it surprised her how plain and loud it was in th
e sudden silence. "I was thinking about what you asked me to do last night. Maybe I've been too stubborn. Are you still interested? It's going to get cold up here and it would warm us both up…"

  "Filer!"

  Filer ran the burners periodically, taking them high enough to clear any of the rocks but not so high as to rise above the mountains entirely and lose the wind that blew through the pass. Geyl chewed a stick of jerky and tried to get used to looking down and seeing endless space opening up between her feet. The mountains seemed to go on forever, off to either side of them. Below in the pass the rails could be seen, punctuated here and there by the tunnels, and occasionally by narrow meadows where the way broadened out.

  Filer called out to her when he calculated that they had crossed the divide. The view west was hazy and marked by clouds, but the plain was now near enough so that what had been a blue-white horizon was now a vaguely yellow horizon.

  Geyl craned her neck as her view spun slowly toward the west. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something flash silver, something high and followed by a trail of white.

  "Filer, look!"

  An aircraft was coming in fast from the north, losing altitude and heading straight for them. Geyl heard Filer chamber a round in his rifle.

  A minute passed, and they watched the sleek delta-wing jet swing in a tight banked turn less than a kilometer away, its engines a shrill tearing at their ears. Geyl raised a small binoculars they had salvaged from the Moomoo sicarii's packs and followed the jet as it passed. On one wing was the unmistakable legend PAΔ.

  "It's the Ralpha Dogs!" she shouted.

  "Recon plane," Filer replied. "There should be a black spot on the bottom of the fuselage right between the wings."

  Geyl looked again. The jet was sweeping around them in a tight power loop, contrail a rippled band of swelling cotton. The hydrocarbon reek of jet fuel was suddenly strong. The jet's ventral side was toward them, and the black spot was where Filer said it would be.

  "So they know we're here."

  "Better. They know you're here," Filer said. "Rho Alpha Delta makes the best recon cameras you can buy. And they keep the best of the best for themselves."

  Geyl found herself trying to pull her blanket/poncho up over her face, realized it was far too late. If they knew, they knew. "Are their recon planes armed?"

  "Ma'am, everything the Ralpha Dogs make that moves is armed."

  "Do you think they'll kill us?"

  Filer paused. The jet was going around for another loop, closer this time. "Depends. Do they know where you're going?"

  Geyl sighed. What a mercy that she had not grown any closer to Peter! "No. I don't think so. I never told anyone here."

  "Then they won't kill us. But you can bet they're going to follow us."

  "Uggh. How long will they follow us?"

  Filer laughed, and there was some resignation in it. "Until they find out why you're going to all this trouble." The jet roared past Filer's side of the tanks. "I just waved to them."

  "Do they know who you are?"

  "Yes, Ma'am. And in their eyes, you and I must be the goldurndest couple."

  "And why would that be?"

  Finally, after one last loop, the jet peeled away, heading back north and gaining altitude. Back to report to Snitzius, doubtless, that Gina Novilio the spy was teaming up with Filer Fitzgerald, the smuggler and…sicarius.

  "Look down there, Ma'am. A glacier!"

  Peter strode the masterhouse halls beside Margaret Mae Hughes. His pace was brisk but hers was manic, and he had to press to keep pace with her, even though the top of her head didn't quite reach his shoulders. All along their path, the brothers and sisters of Rho Alpha Delta stood back out of their way.

  Out of her way, Peter reflected.

  Snitzius had brought her to Peter during the four long days the Sangruse Device had taken to reconstruct his leg. "They called me Nutty Meg when I was a kid," she said, gripping his hand. "So I started calling myself Nutmeg. It works."

  Her grip was vise-hard, her smile disarming. She had been the one who had ridden a rocket up a cable into the clouds on the back of a man she was repeatedly stabbing, then dispatched the pilot of the airship and brought the airship down to the roof of the Ralpha Dog masterhouse, with proof of its Moomoo origin.

  "My boss called me dangerous once," Peter had said to her from the hospital bed. "But I'm sure I can't touch you there."

  She had leaned down close to his face to reply, in a hoarse whisper. "I saw you fight the Moomoo shit that I slabbed. You can touch me anywhere you want."

  "Peter! Nutmeg!" A young man was running up from behind them, waving a leather folder. "We've found Geyl Shreve!" The messenger bowed to Peter and handed the folder to Nutmeg, who undid its clasp and removed several photographs and a topo map with a yellow target printed on it.

  The first photo showed two figures suspended beneath a transparent hot air balloon, somewhere over a mountain range. "They were a little past the divide, over Springheels Pass, moving toward Dis at forty klicks per hour." Subsequent photos increased the magnification. The final shot, though slightly blurred, plainly showed Geyl's face, her head wrapped in scarves.

  Other photos showed her companion: a craggy-faced young man in a parka, holding an assault rifle at ready. The messenger pointed at the man. "She's flying with..."

  Nutmeg nodded. "I know who she's flying with. Filer Fitzgerald."

  "Who's that?" Peter asked.

  "The second most dangerous living thing on Hell." She licked her lips and grinned ever so slightly. "After me, of course."

  A helicopter dropped Peter and several others on the helipad beside the dome of Hell's capitol, at the very center of Moloch. They reached the cavernous Moothall beneath the dome just as the confrontation was beginning. Peter and Nutmeg took seats in the row of five allocated to Rho Alpha Delta, surrounded by representatives from the other four-hundred-odd orders.

  Rho Alpha Delta had requested the confrontation, and Tofir Snitzius sat alone in one dock at the center of the floor. He faced the second dock, where two long-haired men sat with arms crossed, long knives resting on the table in front of them. Only blades were allowed in Moothall. The Moomoo representatives showed them openly. Snitzius, if he carried one, had chosen not to display it.

  The opening announcement had been made before they arrived. Peter and Nutmeg watched their abbot stand and face his opponents, and speak in a bellowing voice that needed no amplification.

  "Rho Alpha Delta comes here to accuse Mu Mu Mu of an act of war, and to demand an explanation. On Summer 74 of this year, a team of three Moomoo sicarii invaded our Grand Ball. We dispatched them, but not before several of our people were injured, and two killed, including the director of our Social Integrators."

  One of the Moomoo representatives in the dock stood. He was wiry and tall, with a squint and a smile that was mostly grimace. "Quit bitchin', codge. Three Moos for two Dogs. You came out ahead."

  "Caleb Fonda," Nutmeg whispered to Peter. "Crazy…like all of them. But more than most."

  Snitzius leaned forward, dropping his knuckles to the tabletop. "Bilenda Paton was worth more than every Moomoo who has ever lived. Would you care to present your explanation for the attack? And while you speak, will you tell us why, twenty days ago, the Mu Mu Mu orderhouse here in Moloch was abandoned? Or why, in recent days, all Mu Mu Mu installations east of the mountains have been evacuated? Our aircraft have observed continuous shuttle trains carrying men and equipment through Springheels Pass to Dis. Four days ago those shuttles ceased. You two gentlemen are the only brothers of Mu Mu Mu known to be on this side of Those Damned Mountains. On the other side of the mountains, we've photographed caravans of thousands of men and mastodons, all heading south. Your cattle have been abandoned. What insanity is Crispus McGaughey up to now?"

  As abruptly as he had stood, Tofir Snitzius now sat, hands flat on the table-top.

  Caleb Fonda rose, grimacing, and looked around Moothall. He tucked his br
oad-bladed machete in a leather scabbard on his belt, turned and left the dock. "Moomoos don't like being penned in," he said, walking toward the center of the space between the docks with an odd lifting of his heels. "We are free men. We go where we like. We do what we want. Our Boss is the freest of all of us. We’ll follow him anywhere. And we don't answer stupid questions from old farts who should have died twenty years ago."

  Fonda stood halfway between the two docks, hands on his hips, rocking on his heels, dirty half-gray hair streaming down his back past his waist.

  Snitzius met his squinting eyes, and spoke without rising. "Very well. Let me pose a question that may interest you more: Why should Rho Alpha Delta not declare war against Mu Mu Mu, and eradicate the order to the last man?"

  Caleb Fonda reached up and scratched the top of his head theatrically. He marched, bobbing on his heels, to within a meter of the dock where Snitzius sat. Peter looked down and saw Nutmeg's right hand draw a small black throwing knife from a boot scabbard. She held it in her lap.

  "Better question, old man! Number one: Nobody knows where all the Moomoos are. Nobody'll ever know. We hate cities, and we’ve been to places on this world nobody else has ever been, Dogs included. You can slab as many of us as you want. We'll just keep coming back.

  "Number two: We can shoot your planes down. Are you smart enough to know what a fluorine laser cannon is? We're smart enough to know that you ain't got 'em. Well, we got 'em. And we ain't gonna say where we got 'em."

  Snitzius looked to his right and around the curve of the galleries, to where the four representatives from Kappa Epsilon Mu sat. A gaunt middle-aged man with only one arm stood in response to the unspoken question. "It wasn't us, Tofir! We don't have any such thing! And if we had laser cannon we sure wouldn't sell them to Mu Mu Mu!"