INFINITY HOLD3

by Longyear, Barry B.

  "What about running east?"

  "We're not ready to take on the Hand. If we did try to streak east, we'd get caught between both Kegel and the Hand, and that would be the end of Rico."

  "Rico?" asked the President.

  "Just a phrase," I answered. Turning toward Indimi I asked, "So what's the plan?"

  The Colonel nodded at Sarah. "As the major said, she'll try and stall Kegel and wear him down while we organize and train. Because of the signal flares that have been going up every hour each night, Kegel must have a fair fix on where we're headed. I suggest that we keep a small party headed east to put up the flares while our main body heads north for right now. It might draw them off and give us an extra two or three days."

  I frowned and rubbed my chin as I thought. If we kept heading east, our collective best guess was that we would make it to the Big Grass and water in six days, with maybe two days of slack, provided no one was there to give us a hard time about using the water. Every hour we spent going north would be shaved off our slim margin.

  Then I shrugged. If Kegel mauled us, we wouldn't need the reserve, and if we did Kegel we'd have his supplies and still wouldn't need the reserve. "Okay, Colonel, you got yourself a deal. Keep me in on what your up to." I looked at Sarah. "How're you going to keep in touch?"

  "Mounted couriers. I'll send at least one each night, more often when there's a need. You can communicate with me by return mail. During the daylight hours, if concealment isn't a priority, we can use the heliographs."

  "Heliographs?"

  She pulled a gleaming piece of metal from beneath her sheet and caught the light from the fire cube with it and flashed it into my eyes. "Heliographs. We made them from the box lids."

  I stood over her and offered her my hand. She took it and I pulled her to her feet. She studied my face. "What is it, Bando?"

  I scratched the back of my neck as I felt very uncomfortable. "I was the one who picked you out of the column to organize us an army."

  "Yes?"

  "Well," I moistened my lips and looked down at my feet. "Be careful out there. We're asking an awful lot of you, and if you got thinned, I'd feel—"

  She burst out laughing and put her arms around my neck and gave me a big hug. When she was finished, she held me out at arm's length. "There's something you don't understand Bando."

  "What's that?"

  She reached beneath her sheet and pulled out her personal cutter. As she passed the pad of her thumb across the edge of the blade she said, "This is what I do. This is why the gods invented steel and gave me hands. This is what I live for. I'm a warrior in Valhalla, my friend. A pig in slop heaven."

  She kissed my cheek, motioned to a few shadows, and left the circle. I could tell that the Colonel was mighty cranked about something. It might have been concern for Sarah. Then again it might have been plain envy because she and not he was riding off to fight a thirty thousand man mounted army with only a few hundred Razai. I wondered if I'd ever understand a mind like that; the kind that likes the fight, maybe even needs it. But then I didn't have to understand them. All I had to do was aim them.

  I looked at Stays, Paxati, Deadeye, and Jontine Ru. "I'll be moving back up the trail to meet the new sharks and welcome them to the Razai." I glanced at Stays. "I'm a little nervous about the pistachios Nkuma might be picking out for RCs. I want you to stick with the home column and run the cops."

  He nodded. "What about new rules?"

  "What new rules?"

  His shoulders gave a tiny heave. "I figure with all of the new sharks coming in and with you back in town, there's going to be lots of trials and plenty of new rules."

  "How's that thing worked out where all the RCs get together in a huddle to decide on new rules?"

  "We haven't had to use it yet. I don't think we can now with all the new sharks and the RCs spread out over such long distances. If all the investigators have to huddle over each new rule, our trials'll look less like justice and more like the juicer back on Earth."

  I nodded my agreement. "For right now, if a new rule comes up, I'll act as a clearing house." I thought real hard about what Nance had said. "On second thought, you be the clearing house."

  "Me?"

  "You. Also, have the RCs keep you posted about their trials. If you can't be there in person, have a runner there who can get you to the justice in a hurry."

  "Justice?" interrupted Jontine Ru. She was grinning and holding out her hands. "I apologize, but this seems to be a strange place for such a word."

  "And," Paxati joined in, "you seem like strange people to be using it."

  "Straightmeats," I heard Nazzar mutter.

  I looked at Lomon Paxati and half made up my mind about my choice for gang boss trainee and the reporter both. My first thought was, you judgmental assholes. My second thought was that it took a judgmental asshole to judge someone a judgmental asshole. Again that brought me back to who in the hell was Bando Nicos to be judging anyone about anything. I shook my head and looked at Show Biz.

  "So what do you call justice?"

  She glanced at the President and returned her gaze to me. "I'm not certain, exactly. What's right; what's fair and moral."

  "Justice," said Lomon Paxati, "is upholding what is just. In other words, in accordance with fair treatment and the law."

  I pursed my lips and nodded. "We word it different. In the Razai, justice is everybody getting exactly what they deserve as fast as possible."

  "How do you know what someone deserves?" Paxati looked at Stays. "I mean, how do you decide your laws?"

  "The laws are voted on," answered Stays. "We make up the rules as we go along."

  Show Biz shook her head. "By what standard? How can you know what someone deserves?"

  I felt cornered. It was Stays who answered. "I never thought about it before, but it's not really a conscious thing with cons. On the sand and back in the crowbars, every shark has burned into him a particular sense of right and wrong. In any given situation it's as obvious as hell to any brother or sister crowbar who should get what. I'm not talking about court games back in the system. There the sharks use the rules to escape payback. But inside the crowbars there is no escape. If you snitch, or if you steal from or kill a stand up shark, you get your payback."

  "And the payback in the crowbars," I continued, "usually fits the crime a lot better than the juicer does it. In the crowbars we don't get tangled up with cockroaches, black rags, and technicalities."

  "Cockroaches?" asked Jontine Ru, looking at Stays.

  "Lawyers."

  She looked at me. "All of those technicalities are designed to protect the rights of the guilty and the innocent alike, aren't they?"

  Stays and I both laughed, and we could hear the laughter from the shadows beyond the light of the fire cube. Like they say in CSA, there comes a time when you simply have to accept you can't turn the light bulb on in someone else's head. All the switches are on the inside. I pushed myself to my feet and began walking toward my critter.

  "If you're coming along, mount up." As the three of them got to their critters, I turned and looked at Stays, "Be seeing you, Watson."

  "Take care, Sherlock."

  I looked at my companions. "You keep listening and watching. It's the only way you're going to learn anything. And you got a lot to learn."

  I mounted up and headed west, wondering if this desperately lonely feeling was a permanent thing for those in charge.

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  ▫

  The Nicos Rabbinate

  ▫

  On the way through the walking column that night, I had Paxati, Deadeye, and Show Biz hit the supply sleds for water and what rations they could scrounge, while I hit the ordinance sled for a repaired rifle and a belt of ammo. Emmet and Gordo had already begun the conversions, so they were already collecting rag box shots for the ballistic check. They still didn't like it, which was no new thorns in my crown. An hour l
ater the color of blood filled the sky as we left the protection of the rear guard behind. The morning light made it easier to follow the trail back to the column from Kvasir and it melted the frost on our bones. Then it began melting our bones. I shucked my shirt and parka, and as I was bundling them up to sling on my back, Deadeye rode up beside me.

  "Back there. We're being followed."

  I pulled up, turned on the back of my critter, and squinted against the glare. Lots of dust. Riders. From the amount of dust it looked like a column of a few hundred sharks traveling at a trollop. If it was Kegel, that would be the end of Rico.

  "What do they want? Who are they?" the President demanded.

  Show Biz had her vidcam on them. "Hey, Flash," I said. "You got a zoom on that thing?"

  She nodded and showed me the little orange button to push on the side of the tiny box. I looked, fiddled with the button, and brought in the image of the riders. There were a couple hundred of them, all mounted and all armed. I could see they wore a mix of desert sheets. Some wore Kegel white, a few wore the color-marked sheets of the Hand, there were a bunch of the new sand-colored camouflage sheets as well as a half dozen of the Mihvihtian copper-colored rags. I handed the vidcam back to the reporter.

  "It's okay. With that mix they have to be Razai. Let's climb down and spell the animals."

  I dismounted and leaned on the back of my critter. Between my stench and the aroma of the lughox, it was whiff. I looked over and Deadeye was leaning on his own mount. "So you were a hitter, right?"

  He faced me, stared for a second, blinked, and nodded. "That's right."

  "How did it make you feel?"

  "How did what make me feel?"

  "All those people you killed. Did it bother you, killing them? Did you feel guilty after?"

  His eyebrows went up in surprise. "It was business. I wasn't emotionally involved." He cocked his head toward me. "What about you?"

  I looked back at the riders, but I wasn't seeing them. Instead I was seeing my ghost parade from Dick Irish to Deadeye's brother, David. "It bothers me. Killing bothers me."

  "You feel guilty about splashing my brother's brains?"

  Hoorah, hoorah. Finally we were going to talk about the white elephant that had been sitting on top of us. "Yeah. I feel guilty about it. There wasn't anything else I could do, but I feel bad."

  Deadeye shook his head. "Get yourself another line of work, chup. You don't get any points for feeling guilty. All you get is an ulcer."

  "So how do you feel about me dropping your brother in the grit?"

  Deadeye stared off in the distance, and twice his mouth started up with some smart crack, and twice he killed it. Finally he said, "Twenty years ago he was my brother. The pistachio you drilled was different. Talking to the shadows. He was more salted than Manson, he was a bundle of bent struts, and I didn't know him." He glanced at me. "You want me out of the RCs?"

  I shook my head and looked at the approaching riders. Why was it so hard for me to distinguish between having a good attitude and being a sociopath?

  When I could make out their faces, the column of riders began slowing down. In the lead was one of Bloody Sarah's grunt thumps, Zarika Yute. Another one of her officers was Bongo Lee, and next to them was Jak Edge. When the leaders reached us Zarika held up her right hand, halted the column, and gave the order to dismount. I almost held my breath waiting for the bad news, whatever it might be.

  "Hi, Bando," Zarika greeted with a big grin. She was pretty chunky, hauling maybe three hundred pounds on a five-ten frame. Like the other women in the column her dark hair was cut short.

  "Hi, yourself." I nodded at Jak, Bongo, and the others, then looked back at Zarika. "Let's have the bad news. What's happening?"

  Her thick eyebrows went up. "No bad news, Chief. Colonel Indimi sent my gang back to make like guards on the new loads of sharks." She nodded toward Bongo Lee. "He's running a training unit Indimi put together. We're all yours."

  Bongo grinned causing the ends of his Fu Manchu moustache to point outboard just a bit. He hailed from the Crotch and both he and Zarika were military ratbaits left over from the Suryian Revolt, like Bloody Sarah. He was probably the most evil looking chop I'd ever met in my whole life. "I'll be dividing up my training people among the newcomers and setting up programs. That way, by the time they have to tangle with Kegel or the Hand, they won't be absolute frog green."

  I felt like a jerk for not having thought of it myself. Of course, I reminded myself, my job isn't to think of it myself; my job was to appoint good people and get rid of the idiots. The flaw in the job description as I saw it was, what if I was one of the idiots I should be trying to get rid of? I gave her the nod and pushed my critter toward the west.

  The small column rode until the sky was white and the heat reflected from the sand torched the insides of our nostrils. I had my hood closed over my face with only a slit open for my eyes. Although I did my best to examine the surrounding dunes, the glare was much too bright to see anything. After awhile I remembered what Nance had said about trust. I had a guide, two hundred guards, thirty combat experts, and Deadeye for a bodyguard. I closed my eyes and made for the zeds. After a few minutes of fitful sleep, there was a voice. "Bando Nicos?"

  I uncovered my face and looked. Jak was up ahead and Paxati was riding beside me. The President hadn't said anything since we had left the main column. I had been too preoccupied with my own concerns to notice, so when he finally did speak, it startled me.

  "What?"

  "With all of the good that I am doing, I might as well have stayed with Nkuma. Why do you keep me with you? I have a right to know."

  Why did I keep him with me? A real good question. "I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time." I glanced at the President, and he was glaring at me. I shrugged. "It's the truth. Look, you must have some idea by now what we're facing here on the big beach. There hasn't been a waking minute during the past two weeks that I haven't been in it over my head."

  "What has that to do with me?"

  I looked at him and held out my hands. "You were elected the president of an entire planet, many millions of men and women. You must've thought you could handle it. All of those people who voted for you must've thought you could handle it. That's why I stole you from the welcome wagon. Nance Damas is hurt, and we need someone in charge who knows what he's doing. That was why."

  I was afraid he was going to ask that particular question, and he asked it. "If that is indeed the case, why have you had me just tagging along as though I were some sort of sidekick? Why don't you give me something to do?"

  I checked, and although she was listening, the reporter was not taping. Again I looked at Paxati while the truth, that in a society of sharks he didn't appear competent to make shit stink, scrolled behind my eyes. "On the job training," I finally answered. "You have a lot to learn about Tartaros, about sharks, and about the Razai."

  "I'll have you know, sir, that I hold doctorates both in political science and law, and have done extensive graduate work in criminology."

  "In that case, you just might be beyond hope," Deadeye muttered. The sharks around me laughed at the remark, and I headed for the night horse, leaving Paxati to play with his own problems.

  ▫

  I covered my face and wished for a piece of sleep featuring no ghosts. The sleep eventually came, but Tani Aduelo's bare little ass was there along with the rest of the spirit herd. Even David Ostrow was there and saying that sooner or later his brother Jay would burger Bando Nicos. All of them were still asking the same questions.

  Why am I dead?

  Who in the Hell was Bando Nicos to kill me?

  In my dream I yawned, said good night to the ghosts, turned over, and went to sleep. That's how I knew I was really tired.

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  ▫

  Nhandi v. Nhandi

  ▫

  "There they are," called Jak Edge from the front o
f the column. I uncovered my face and jabbed my critter forward. As we approached the limits of the point guard, the Kvasiri were in camp, beneath their sun shields, resting for the night's march. I turned on the back of my critter and motioned to Bongo Lee. He dug his heels into his critter's sides and was soon riding on my right, his Fu Manchu dancing in the breeze.

  "Yes, Chief?"

  "Bongo, get your gang busy. We're only going to be here for a few hours, then we're going on to meet the nuts from Cumaris."

  The chop pointed with his thumb back toward his team. "How many should I leave behind? I'm asking because I don't know how many more groups Nkuma's wagon is going to bring in before I get a refill of training officers."

  "How few can get the job done?"

  "For sixteen thousand sharks?" He frowned as he looked at the President. "And they really aren't sharks, are they?"

  "If you mean convicts," said the President, "you are quite correct. We have been convicted of nothing."

  Bongo cocked his head toward Paxati and raised his eyebrows. "If all of them think the same as this asshole, I don't think any number would be enough."

  "Why?" I asked. "You'd think a bunch of straights'd be smarter, easier to teach."

  Bongo shook his head and pointed his thumb at the President. "They don't speak Crowbar."

  The chop had put his finger on it sure enough. It wasn't that they couldn't understand the words. They didn't have the experience behind the walls that cuts through the fog. Their definitions came out of a dictionary. Ours came off the cell block wall. I couldn't even imagine what it would be like with the ship load of crazies from Cumaris.

  I faced Bongo. "We'll figure the two loads, so fifty-fifty. If more trainers are needed, we'll send for more." I gestured with my head for him to rejoin his troops.

  Jak Edge waited for us, and when me, Show Biz, the President, and Deadeye reached him he geared up his critter. "The group from Cumaris should be due west, maybe two hours past this bunch."

  I nodded in acknowledgment. "Let's get moving."