by Steve Perry
In in in in ininininininin—!
Live live live live-!
Mine mine mine!
The Zonn sang and screeched and foamed and invaded Kifo, and he became one with them.
When the dawn was but an hour away, Brother Death stood, possessed still of the gods. Stood and walked to the nearest of the Zonn’s near-invulnerable walls. Then walked into the wall and vanished from the face of the planet.
He was back in what passed for a few seconds in the normal world, stepping from the blue-black wall as if it were no more than a curtain of air. The gods had departed, returned to where they dwelled, but the face of their servant was not quite what it had been. And the light that danced behind his eyes carried in it a faint but unmistakable sheen of madness.
Now he understood. Now knew what he had to do. The gods had grown impatient. He knew what to do, but he also had to hurry.
Before another year passed, the gods would again walk the worlds. Kifo had been chosen to be the door through which they would arrive. No man had ever been given a greater honor. The gods could do anything they wished.
Even raise a dog to be one of them.
Kifo would become a god!
Unless, of course, he failed. In which case he would suffer damnation and tortures beyond imagination for ten million times ten million years.
When the madness faded from his eyes, Kifo could even find some humor in his situation. Such stakes!
Godhood or eternal punishment.
Such a choice, was it not?
He laughed so loud that the vouch came bustling up to him as he walked from the chamber, and the guards ran to see what had happened.
Such a choice.
Chapter THIRTEEN
THE GUARD AT the gate to Ruul’s estate waved Taz through without a second glance. His employer had obviously told the man she was expected.
Once inside the high fence, Taz coaxed her flitter slowly along the winding flatway to the house’s front entrance. It truly was a mansion; you could put five of her house into it and have room left over, and that didn’t count the garage. She didn’t know how much he made or how much he was worth, but she’d once seen Ruul turn down an offer of thirty thousand stads for a one-night performance, an hour’s work. He had plans to go hiking that day, he had said, and he’d really been looking forward to the walk.
Jesu Christo, Ruul, she’d said, you sure have a hard life.
Yeah, it’s tough, all right. Want to screw?
She smiled at the memory. The smile faded as she dropped the flitter to the surface. Dust blew up and settled as the fans slowed, their soft whine dropping in pitch then to silence as they stopped. Got very quiet then. She could hear the insects chirping in the clipped lawn and carefully tended bushes and trees.
Hear the water flowing over the miniature falls in the amphibian ponds. And a din edging a distant walk with electric clippers.
Taz gripped the pheromone pump tightly in her left hand. Do it or not, she thought. Shit or get off it.
Decide—
The door to the mansion opened and Ruul stood there, outlined against the lights inside. Tall, slim, beautiful Ruul, wearing a couple thousand stads of hand-sewn gold silk, shining brightly as his family name. The shirt and pants draped precisely on him, his face reflected the colors, his hair damn near matched the outfit. His feet were bare. Ah, god, he looked perfect. Had he worried over what to wear?
Or had he just thrown on what had first come to hand when he opened his giant closet and looked?
Fuck it. She pushed the button, pointed the nozzle at herself.
The pheromone pump hummed. It ran for two seconds, then sputtered, hissed, ran dry and clicked to a stop. She’d used the whole charge. The chemical was designed to react to human skin, oils, perspiration.
Plenty of that last for it to mix with. It would become hers, the chem, augmenting her own hormones, and she wouldn’t be able to smell it any more than she could smell her own breath.
She stepped from the flitter, trying with every bit of muscle control she had to make it appear smooth and effortless. He’d always liked that about her, that she was strong and relatively graceful. Look at what you are missing, Ruul. I’m worth something.
She walked toward him, smiling. Fuck, she was nervous, yeah, no doubt about that, but she was glad to see him. There was another part of the handicap, part of this whole shitty situation. He wanted her, she wanted him, why couldn’t it be that simple?
“Hello, Tazzi.”
“Ruul.”
“Please, come in.”
She saw his nostrils dilate slightly, saw his eyes widen a hair. Imagined she could feel his sudden and unexpected surge of lust.
Suffer, dickhead. You deserve it.
She felt a pang of regret almost instantly. She didn’t want him to suffer. Well, yes, okay, she did a little.
It was a dull mind that couldn’t hold a couple of totally contradictory concepts at once, wasn’t it? After all, love and hate leaned on each other from opposite sides of a very thin line. Too thin to see sometimes, invisible to the touch. Ah, god, Ruul. Why are you so goddamn stupid about this?
He turned and she followed him into the house.
Someday, Bork thought, as he looked at his naked body in the mirror, someday your strength is gonna fade. One morning you’ll get up and set the weights on the bar and it won’t move. Age catches up with everybody in the end.
Bork turned away from the mirror. Yeah, and someday the universe is going to undergo heat-death, too.
Why worry if you couldn’t do anything about it?
He grinned. Be nice if it were that easy, wouldn’t it? Don’t worry, because it doesn’t do any good anyhow. Right. The major life lessons are always simple-but seldom easy. Big difference.
He went to do a few stretches. Time was when he could bend over and put his palms on the floor and press into a handstand; now he could barely manage to get his hands flat at all and he had to rock into it to make the straight press. The trick with muscle was to balance the strength and flexibility. He could walk the pattern okay and move as much weight as he ever could-so far-but he was stiffer than he’d been at twenty. Not a lot, but some, and it needed attention. Seemed like only yesterday that he’d been twenty, but it had been a while. More than a quarter of a century, actually.
Damn. Had it really been such a long time?
Yep. Sure had.
Bork reached for the ceiling, arched his back, bent forward. Well, he had traveled a lot of light-years and done a lot of things, he couldn’t complain. Been in love twice; a lot of people didn’t even get once. And he was stronger than Da had been. It might not mean much to anybody else, but it did to Bork. There came a time when he could have shown it to his father, demonstrated graphically that what the old man considered his greatest power was not so great. That his son, whom he had kept in line with slaps and backhands all his life, had surpassed his father. In that electric moment, Bork had realized that embarrassing the old man would have been sweet, oh, yeah, really sweet-but also the wrong thing to do.
That it was sometimes better to have strength and not use it. He’d always felt pretty good about that day.
He was not like his father, even though they looked alike, had very similar physical frames. Bork was proud of his physical strength, of the ability to pick up something heavy and move it when other men or mues couldn’t, but it wasn’t all he had. There was Veate and little Saval, and he’d do better by them than his own da had by his wife and kids, or fall over dead trying.
His back creaked as he raised from the stretch. He laughed. He hoped he wouldn’t fall over dead just yet.
The argument started and sped down the familiar roads, racing across territory Taz and Ruul had covered all too many times before. She knew his comments before he spoke them; he had to know hers.
Her anger rose, hot fluid piped in under high pressure, flooding her hollow places, turning her insides ragered. Both their volume controls went up, slowly b
ut inexorably, so the calm and reasoned voices quickly racheted into shouts. They had started out sitting on the couch, the couch made from the lizard-leather hides of giant cloned-dinosaurs raised on the Mason Reptile Farm, the couch that had cost enough to keep a middle-class cit family in high style for a year.
Now they both stood, facing each other across a meter of agitated, hostile air.
“-believe you won’t even fucking consider it! I’m not your goddamned father and you aren’t your mother!” he yelled.
“-you can’t buy fucking everything, rich man, I’m not for fucking sale and I won’t fucking do it-!”
And all of a moment he shut up and she shut up and she felt such a surge of pure lust bubble up in her that her breath stuck. She couldn’t even breathe she wanted him so bad! But he wouldn’t, they’d gone down that goddamned road too many times, too, she knew every centimeter of it
“I-oh, shit!” he said. “Oh, shit.”
She stared at him, hearing something she hadn’t expected in his voice. Something she’d hoped for, but didn’t really think would happen.
He sighed and practically leaped at her, arms stretched wide.
Yes!
Her reactions were good. She met him halfway.
He found her mouth with his, thrust his tongue between her lips. She chewed on it, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough for him to feel it.
He tore at her clothes, she at his. The golden silk of his shirt ripped next to the cro-tab, the cloth parting under her fingers as she slid her hands over his chest, around his back.
They dropped to their knees and she fell backward so he could peel her orthoskin pants off. With the pants still tangled around one boot, he bent and licked her clitoris; nibbled, all lips, and she screamed with the intensity of the sensation. The room seemed filled with flying clothes, panicked moths seeking to flee from a suddenly too-hot fire. Oh, god, she couldn’t get enough of him in her arms, she kept urging him to her, moving her hands up and down, feeling, massaging, her voice matching her hands in a soft croon: “Yes, yes, there, oh, yes, that, oh, oh, yes-!”
When he moved to untab her boot, she grabbed his erect penis and pulled it into her mouth, making wet noises as she slid her lips almost to his base. He vibrated like an off-center machine trying to balance on an unstable base.
“Oh, fuck!” It was more a moan than anything.
You got that right.
“I won’t last,” he said. “Come here.”
They twisted, turned, she felt the rough patterned leather scratch her buttocks as she moved and opened wide to receive him. He fumbled, missed, and she caught him and guided him into her. Wet? Any slicker and he would have slid right past her and onto the floor.
He thrust, sank to his limit, pulled back and began pumping with a frantic, urgent drive. He was close-
“Oh, god!” he said, as his climax wracked him.
Taz smiled over his shoulder as she hugged him to her, wrapped her legs across his back, her heels pressed to his sides That was quick. How long had it been for him? She could reach her orgasm later, he was very good about that, but it wasn’t necessary just now. In this moment, she was fulfilled, holding him like a lover, feeling as tender as if he were a child.
“Oh, Tazzi. I love you.”
“I know,” she said. “I know. It’s okay.”
But even in her triumph, she felt a sliver of guilt stick a sharp point into her soul, a bit of shame running down and staining the window of brightness there. She had won. But she had also cheated. The victory that should have been as solid and hard as steel rang hollow. She had seduced him and gotten what she wanted, but nothing had really changed, had it? When the morning light shined on them, he would feel ashamed at his weakness and she would feel guilty at having played to it, and it would be the same as it had been before. She knew him too well to believe otherwise.
But fuck it. That was in the morning. Might as well enjoy what the night had left in it. She kissed his neck, petted his back, and rocked him in the oldest and most wonderful of cradles, in the most ancient man-and-woman dance. Sang wordless things to him, and moved in the best of all rhythms. Felt him recharge and knew that for the moment, at least, he was hers.
Through the dwindling night the flitter carrying Kifo sped toward his temple. The driver must have been awed at what he had seen in Kifo’s face, for he had not spoken to the Unique. Next to him on the seat, even the vouch seemed subdued.
Well they should be. It was not given to many to look upon a god in the making.
Kifo stroked his personal com. “Brother Mkono,” he ordered the com.
The vice replied almost instantly, sharp, clear, awake even at this hour. “Yes.” No question in the word, but a readiness. Mkono was the best Hand the Few had ever possessed, no doubt of it.
“We have much to discuss,” Kifo said. “The gods have made themselves very clear to me this night. Our work must be doubled and redoubled.”
“I am the Hand. I do what must be done.”
Kifo smiled. Of course.
Chapter FOURTEEN
TAZ FELT WORSE than she’d thought she would. As she guided her flitter out through the gates of Ruul’s estate, it was as if a block of lead filled her belly, a solid indigestible lump that wanted to come up but could not. It held her to her seat like a pressor field. She felt as if she were a thousand years old and sick for the last five hundred.
After two hours of lovemaking, she and Ruul had fallen into a worn-out sleep, arms and legs twined, woven together in an exhausted but highly satisfied knot. But when she’d awakened just before dawn, he was gone. He was not in the fresher, nor was he close enough so that he responded to her nervous query.
It was then the dense metal chunk started growing in her. Yes, he had weakened, given in, done what he said he would not do, and yes, there had been a spark of joy in her at making him do it. But now the morning-after price must be paid, and there was no one to pay it for her.
Taz slid from the bed and went to the fresher. Stepped into the shower, ordered it to full, and was blasted by eight spiral-rigged nozzles of hot water. The needle spray cleaned her body well and quickly enough.
Too bad it couldn’t clean her conscience so easily.
She washed her hair with Ruul’s special shampoo blend, took her time under the blowers until she was dry. Padded barefoot and naked to the bedroom and began collecting her clothes. She had to follow the trail back to the lizard couch to find them all. Took her time dressing, giving Ruul ample opportunity to return from wherever he had gone.
She very much wanted for him to come back.
And she was terribly afraid he would-and she would have to face him and his wrath. He would be angry with her, but more so with himself, and she didn’t want to see it. Ah. Here’s that term again: mixed emotions.
He wasn’t in the kitchen, where she fixed herself a pan of eggs and soystrip bacon.
Wasn’t in the hallway on her way to the door.
Wasn’t outside anywhere near her flitter when she lifted.
Ah, damn.
The gates closed behind her and she headed for home. .
It reminded her of the old joke, about the needle-plant farmer. One day the farmer had gotten up, taken off all his clothes, and thrown himself into a thicket of the spiked plants. Impaled his naked body with thousands of tiny stinging spines. When the other farmers asked him why he’d done it, he said, “Well, it seemed appropriate at the time.”
Really? they asked.
“Yeah,” he said, picking a spine from his buttock and wincing, “but it doesn’t seem like such a hot idea now.”
Taz shook her head. Might as well go home and pick the needles out, woman. You have nobody to blame except yourself. First last and only.
The chirp of her com sent a sudden flash of terror through her. Ruul?
No. The Watch Commander. Thank all the gods.
“Good morning, Chief. We’ve got another com from our friend Guillotine.” He pronounce
d the word “gill-o-teen.”
“Jesu, WC, don’t use that term, it’s bad enough the media do it.”
“Sorry, Chief. I’ll drop it into your comp.”
It was a measure of how bad she felt that the call from the WC reporting a potential murder was actually a relief. She’d rather deal with a killer right now than with an unhappy Ruul. Especially since she’d made him that way.
She commed Saval.
“Morning, brother. We’ve got work to do.”
“Another threat?”
“Yep. I’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes.”
Saval didn’t ask about her evening. She was grateful to whichever deity was in charge of things for that, too.
As Taz drove, Bork called up the information from her flitter’s computer on the latest threat.
“Says here the woman’s name is Celona Jorine.”
Taz nodded. “High society,” she said. “About ninety T.S., plenty of money, father was Systems Governor long time back, in the Confederation high-water days. He retired twenty years before the revolution, backed the rebels with his power and money, came out smelling very nice after things settled down. Her brother took over the family fortunes, got the inside track on a lot of investments because the old man had backed the winners. When the brother died, Celona became nominal head of the foundation they established. Her grandnephew and granddaughter pretty much run things, have for years. She raises hothouse flowers, exotic blossoms and does a lot of charity work. Probably gave away five million and change last year to needy folks right here in the city. Not counting what she did elsewhere.”
Bork shook his head. “Sweet little old lady?”
“Not exactly, but it still doesn’t make any sense.”
“No doubt the threat is legit?”
“Not much. The thing was sent anonymously, but there’s a sig code on the com that matches the others.
Nobody is supposed to know the code but the com control simadams and the Supervisor. I don’t even know what it is.”
“Could have been leaked.”