I turned back and looked at Bhadri Nhandi. "And in the Razai if you force someone to have sex, no matter who it is, you get the max."
I looked down at Lauris. "What about it, kid? No one can fix it until you say it's broke."
Still holding Fodder's hand, she slowly shook her head. "I listened when the law was read," she whispered. "What happened before the landing is done past, like it never happened." Her head stopped shaking. "He hasn't done anything since we landed. I think he wants to start, but he hasn't done anything since the landing."
It was frustrating. I wanted to smoke Bhadri Nhandi out of his sox so bad I could taste it. Another piece of me knew that he was sick. The kiddie bungers at the CSA meetings had taught me that much. Still, I wanted to show Lauris that, despite Fanta Cerita's paid for decision, the law of the Razai could hear her tiny voice. But what happened before the landing was done past, and Bhadri Nhandi was in the clear.
I shrugged and said to the little girl, "That's it, Lauris. You're free." I looked at Fanta Cerita. "Now we take care of you."
Fodder whispered in the little girl's ear and let go of her hand. As he stood up he turned toward me and said, "I'm the RC here, Bando. It's my case."
I studied him. There was something different about his face, his voice, his bearing. He was light years away from the whining chup who met me on the trail with "I don't know what to do." Maybe he had figured out what to do. I sure as hell didn't know. Nance said I have to trust my people. Fodder was one of my people. I shrugged and got out of his way.
"So handle it."
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Smoking May Be Hazardous To Your Health
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I couldn't honestly say that I trusted Fodder right then a whole lot, but I suppose letting him do it was easier than doing it myself. I would've been real stupid to think that we'd never have a dirty cop, so I guess I was stupid. In my gut I felt that the law and what we had gone through in the crowbars and on Tartaros would make even the idea of an RC climbing on the cob unthinkable. I forgot that sharks are always thinking, even if they aren't sharks.
And what to do about it? Who was the victim? What was the payback? I was too confused to think, and I comforted myself with the fact that at least this case wasn't mine. I found myself a patch of sand on the side of a dune and put my ass on it.
Fodder nodded at the little girl. "Okay, Lauris, tell us what you saw."
"When I went to the RC to get away from my father, Fanta Cerita took me back to him. She argued with him for a little while, then he gave her something and told her to do the right thing."
"Right thing?"
"I guess he meant make me stay with him, because that's what she told me I had to do."
Fodder looked at Fanta Cerita. "Is it all right with you if I decide the matter, or do you want a jury?"
"Jury?" The tall woman laughed. "We are making a production out of nothing at all."
"It's me or a jury, Fanta."
She shrugged, glanced around, and answered. "Fine. You decide. The little girl came to me saying she wants to be rid of her family, maybe like only a couple of hundred million cranky kids a year want. Her father gave me a little present: a pack of cigarettes. Without the gift, my decision would have been the same. A child belongs with her parents."
To underscore her remarks, Fanta lit up a nail and blew out a cloud of white smoke. I never gave any credit to Fodder for having a sense of humor, but he said, "Didn't anyone ever tell you that those things can kill you?"
Then he aimed, fired, and drilled her right through her head, causing the back of her scalp to explode and spatter the spectators. Fanta was stretched out, face up on the sand, her eyes wide open, the nail still burning in her lips. The crowd was stunned as Fodder turned his rifle on Bhadri Nhandi and said, "Justice is everyone getting exactly what they deserve as fast as possible. Fanta Cerita decided against the law for a pack of cigarettes, which obstructs justice. You offered the cigarettes, which also obstructs justice. In the Razai, according to Rule forty-eight, obstructing justice draws the max."
Then Fodder drilled Bhadri Nhandi through his forehead. Amos really liked those head shots. He slung his rifle to the stunned silence of the crowd. I'd never thought of Rule 48. I walked over to him and patted him on his back.
"Fodder, I really think you're getting the hang of it."
The crowd broke up and went back to their shelters. The ex-priest and the little girl stood there together for the longest time. Lauris was crying silently. Her father had raped her, her mother had stood by and refused to believe the evidence of her own eyes, and now her father was dead. Even if your home is a horror show, outside in the dark is still scary. She reached out her hand, took Fodder's arm, and they walked off together.
In my head a thousand things said that Fodder and Lauris were not a good risk. A scared little girl and an old little girl rapist. But it was none of my business. My business was Rule 2 and keeping safe the choice to go wherever you wanted and with whoever you wanted.
An hour later we were mounted and ready to go. Jak Edge was on top of a tall dune getting a fix on the crazies from Cumaris. Bongo was leaving ten of his troops under a mau yard monster named Zua Crown to train the Kvasiri and to man the local heliograph operation. Zarika had cut loose fifty of her mounted rifles to stand guard, and I felt just fine about leaving Amos George in charge of the local law. I had to leave the President behind.
"Maybe I'm wrong, Paxati, but I don't think you could find sand in the desert if you were walking on your hands."
The President stared at the sand in front of his feet. "It's a nightmare. A bloody horrible nightmare." He looked over at Fodder, his body trembling. "You killed one of my closest friends. You blew his head to pieces, in front of everybody!"
I shook my head and answered the Pres. "Bhadri Nhandi committed suicide. So did Fanta Cerita. When you can see that without any help, maybe we can use you."
"The whole thing was blown out of all proportion. It was over nothing! It was only a pack of cigarettes. I've never heard of a culture that uses the death penalty to punish the taking of such a little bribe."
"I can think of one," I said. "Snitches and wires back in the crowbars. They take little bribes to roll over on a brother. On the women's side they nailed 'em to a post. When we'd catch one on the men's side, we'd give 'em a slab."
"We aren't convicts! You didn't kill a snitch or some kind of back alley pervert! My people aren't career criminals and mad killers! They're respectable men and women."
I thought about that for a bit. "Maybe that's the problem, Pres. We've had to come a lot farther to appreciate what we have. Maybe that's why we're real jealous about it." I mounted and sat back on my critter and looked around at the President's shipmates, most of them now hiding from the sun beneath their desert sheets. I faced Lomon Paxati.
"Right now you and your people are Razai. While you are, you'll go by the law. But maybe being Razai is something you might want to put to a vote. The no prisoners law applies to you people too. We don't keep anyone by force."
"Then what about Bhadri Nhandi and Fanta Cerita! What about them?"
"They already made all of their decisions." Nodding toward Zua Crown I said, "If his people decide to bug out of the Razai, be sure to pack up and make it back to the walking column. We don't want to waste all of this good training on people who don't want it."
"You got it, Chief."
Jak came down from the dune and signaled to me that he had a fix on the crazies and on the next load from Earth. I looked down at the President and said, "Pres, right now Boss Kegel is riding this way with thirty thousand armed soldiers. All they want from you is your food, your clothes, your ass, your belongings, and your lives. If he's in a good mood he might use some of your women before he kills 'em. Maybe he might just bundle up the survivors and use 'em for slaves. If the Hand gets you instead, forget it. They don't have much us
e for maus. They just kill them. Personally, I think you got a better deal with the Razai."
Lomon Paxati spat on the sand. "Nicos, you are the ones forcing a war with the Hand. How can we believe you about anything?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Do your own research." I turned my head and looked at Zua. "If this bunch does drop out, make sure our people get back to the main body. You understand the directions?"
She nodded. I looked down at the President. "Like I said, do your own research. Just remember, everything you hate about me and the Razai is there for a reason. You didn't put in the time on the sand and in the crowbars to understand what those reasons are, but if you live long enough, you'll see."
Paxati's face seemed to harden. "I can turn these people against your war, Nicos. It's not their war."
"Slavery makes it everybody's war, whether they fight or not."
I turned and saw Fodder standing on top of a tall dune, Lauris Nhandi standing beside him. I raised my hand and waved. They both waved back. I sat up and gave the high sign to Jak. Beneath the hellishly hot sun, we moved off to make contact with the crazies from Cumaris. Show Biz and Deadeye were as silent as death. I turned on my critter once and looked back. The Pres was gone, off to do what he had to do.
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Who Do You Trust?
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You ride in the sun long enough, that heat and that sidewise rocking motion turning your head into jelly, you numb out or start playing old tapes. Since the bio of Bando Nicos played real down, I numbed, half-listening to Jontine and Deadeye kick around the merits of Nhandi v. Nhandi. Show Biz thought I ought to be shot and Deadeye wasn't altogether certain. As they talked it came out that I had dusted Deadeye's brother, and Show Biz began salivating. She was onto a story. She put the grill on old Deadeye, and before she was done, we'd heard it all about Dave and Jay's childhood back in good old Crapheap, Illinois. They did hits from back in high school and had terribly interesting experiences slaughtering on contract. Eventually they were imported to Mihviht where they ran into a black rag and a set of crowbars.
Deadeye hadn't yet gotten to his alleged falling out with his brother when a rider came in from the direction of the main body riding hell for a hairy back. Beneath his sand-painted desert sheet the rider wore Greenville blues. Perspiration had cut trails through the dust on his young face, and he was near out of breath.
"Name's Elijah, Bando. Bloody Sarah sent me to let you know she's hit Kegel."
"Hit him? Already?"
"Ate him alive!" The kid was higher than Pill Phil on a five pound thumper. Zarika and Bongo joined us and we all listened. "About a half hour after sunrise. You wouldn't've heard much. Too far away. Maybe twenty-five keys south. Besides, there were only a couple of shots. Mostly we did cutters."
"What's the count?"
"Four Razai wounded." He grinned widely, displaying a few missing teeth. "Kegel lost eighty dead."
Jontine had her vidcam running and was turned on hotter than sunrise. Elijah gestured with his hand across his throat. "We hid under the sand during the night and ambushed their right flank guard. It was only a small bunch, but we got eighty more rifles and Kegel turned the column right to come looking for us. As soon as Kegel's point guard reached the next ambush, we took most of it out, too. Another sixty or so rifles. No one killed or wounded, and all of the new rifles and ammo are back with the Colonel."
"I'll be damned," I said.
As the others grilled young Elijah, I sat there in absolute wonder. It was working. If Bloody Sarah's raiders could keep Boss Kegel running around chasing shadows and dropping a few rifles here and there, we just might have enough time to rig the odds.
It amazed me. I was such a prepared loser I expected everything to fail at first. I always knew that any victory that Bando Nicos ever saw would be only after everything was lost so bad there wasn't any point. But, here it was. Sarah planned it, she said she was going to do it, and she did it—twice!
When I nodded at Elijah, I must've had the biggest grin on my face since the first fly discovered the south end on the first cow. "This is great, kid. You can come along with us."
"Hah! I gotta get back to the White Slice. There are throats to cut and skulls to explode. Busy, busy, busy. Any messages for her?"
I sat there on my critter, my teeth in my mouth, and damned little in my head. There should be fine words to paste onto such an event, and I couldn't think of a thing. I held out my hands, shrugged, and said. "What took you so long?"
Elijah laughed, turned his critter southeast, and dug in his heels. His lugh bolted and raced off between the dunes leaving nothing but some dust in the air and the grin on my face. When I turned forward, Jak Edge was looking back at me with the darkest scowl I'd ever seen on a haystack.
"What's your problem, chup?"
He continued scowling at me for a long time. When he finally moved his eyes, he looked down and spat on the sand. "I've got me a lot of friends with Kegel's riders." He glanced up at me. "Me brother Davi usually rides point when Boss Kegel's running the big column."
"I'm sorry."
He looked off into the distance for a couple of seconds, then gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders. "It's the way things go." Jak gestured with his hand. "The nuts're just up ahead." He faced forward and his critter began walking. I urged mine forward, and I studied our guide's back as I thought about our guide, Jak Edge, former patrol leader for Boss Kegel.
Who do you trust? With the possible exception of the maus from Kvasir and those who were born on Tartaros, all of us had criminal pasts of one kind or another. I'd done some picking and choosing about who would be in the RCs, but when Nkuma started appointing his own, that pretty much went out the window, which was something I'd have to change. I never wanted to see another Fanta Cerita.
But trusting Jak Edge, especially now after learning about his brother, made me very nervous. He had a wife and children down south in Kegel's territory, and the Razai had wiped out three hundred or more men in his command. He had to have had some friends there, as well.
As I looked at his back I could actually feel my trigger finger itching. Better to be safe than sorry. As the cautious man with the machine gun said one Valentine's day, a stitch in time drops nine. Better a dead friend than a live enemy.
The yard smarts would be to take him out, and if I was the boss of a regular gang, that's just what I would have done right then. But I wasn't the boss of a regular gang. I had a boss, which was the vote. And I had another boss, which was the law. I even had a third boss: Nance Damas. I didn't want to let down her, the Razai, or myself. But, damn, sometimes a slug between the shoulder blades seemed so clean and simple.
"You're head is smoking."
I turned to my right to see Deadeye Jay riding beside me. I shrugged and said, "You can't draw the max for what you think."
"What're you going to do about that load of whacks from Cumaris?"
I hadn't thought about them at all. Talk about being ridden by the dark horse. The whole subject of insanity yellowed me right down to my feathers. And these pistachios weren't just crazy. They were criminally insane, which meant that they'd done some real miff things while they were having their out of brain experiences.
How was the law going to handle the banana patch? What about doing a simple trial? When I stood in front of the Mihvihtians to execute Tani Aduelo, me holding the rifle didn't guarantee that I'd live. But it did guarantee that two or three attackers would splash before I did. It was enough to keep the sane sane. But what about a shipload of popcorns who really don't give a damn about living? What if they all were David Ostrows? I'd have to do Rule 13 with a flame thrower.
I shook my head at Deadeye. "I don't know what to do with them." I glanced out of the corner of my eye at him. "What would you do with them?"
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "They'd make great tax collectors."
It wasn't
really funny but I laughed like a fool. An excuse to release a world of tension, maybe. Jontine Ru just sat on her critter staring at us. Later she asked him, "I thought you said Nicos killed your brother David."
"He did."
"Why were you up there joking around with his killer?"
"I thought of a funny. Besides, Dave was a whack."
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The Shadow Talkers
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By the time we reached the bunch from Popcorn City it was late afternoon. The sun was just above the horizon giving the sky that brassy yellow color. The yellow heat was cooler than the white heat we'd get for most of the day, but for some reason it seemed hotter. The air was completely still and it didn't seem to have enough oxygen in it. Maybe it was just that we'd all reached the enough-is-enough stage.
The whacks called themselves "Cicis," pronounced "kee-kees," for the Cumaris Institute for the Criminally Insane. There were well over twelve thousand of them. There would've been more but a few hundred had wandered off into the desert by then. Some were chasing the Green Mountain Mirage. Most had internal mirages they followed. The RC for the popcorns was a Mihvihtian appointed by Nkuma. He was a how yard monster named Booker Dry. As soon as we arrived he pulled Deadeye Jay off of his mount and began spreading Deadeye's nose all over his face. Deadeye managed a few swings, once he got his feet beneath him, and soon he was sitting on top of Booker, grinding his face into the grit, trying to bend Booker's arm into a coat hanger.
The former inmates of the Tilton Hilton looked on with reactions ranging from dancing screams to stolid indifference. I knelt down next to the yard monster's face, where it was buried, and scooped away enough sand to allow me to communicate with him. "Man, what is your problem?"
He grunted, cursed, swore, threatened, and pretty much gibbered out of his gourd. The gist of his remarks centered around an old crowbar beef that Booker had sworn to avenge, in that the next time he saw Jay Ostrow, he would kill him.
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