INFINITY HOLD3

by Longyear, Barry B.

  Stays blinked once and said, "The Rhadmajani brothers. They're Siamese twins."

  Talk about pulling the Spider's leg. I rubbed my eyes as Pendril spoke up. "Nicos, these two brothers share intestines through a tube of skin that joins them just above their navels."

  "According to them," Stays interrupted, "separation would probably be very risky. We offered to let the Wolf give it a whack, but they refused separation. Without it, executing one means executing both."

  "We are a unique life," said Peris Rhadmajani. "I am not sure life would be worth living separated from my brother. To do that I would have to become someone else."

  Fucking Siamese twins. There are some days when it simply doesn't pay to open your eyes. This was the kind of thing stoned law students dream up for entertainment. I wondered how many different ways the Rhadmajanis had pulled this gag back in the juicer. Sending one to jail means sending them both to jail which means condemning an innocent man, yabba, yabba, yabba. The cockroaches must've had a lot of fun with the Rhadmajani brothers. I looked at Pendril and asked, "Cockroach, do you have anything to add?"

  "No. The case seems to be summed up rather well."

  Pendril had a shit eating grin on his face. Lane Rossiter had a bit of a grin on himself. Maybe I was reading the faces wrong, but it looked like someone was waiting for the Chief of the RCs to break down and hire a lawyer to unravel the knot. Either that or they were waiting, maybe praying, for the law to fail. Lewis Grahl, Tani Aduelo's old cockroach, stared at me out of a mask of hate that almost sparked. The roach brotherhood was there to get a piece of Bando Nicos. I didn't know for sure, but I half suspected that the roaches had put the Rhadmajani brothers up to it just for the sake of seeing Bando Nicos crack up on the rocks. If that was the case, my roach problem would be cleared up soon.

  That was when it finally dawned on me that none of the cockroaches had ever forgiven Nance Damas for not putting them in charge of the Razai's legal stuff. I could see it in Rossiter's face and in Pendril's. I figured Grahl was the best of a bad lot, but it was in his face, too. The law was their exclusive club, and this little uneducated killer and bank robber was crashing their party. It added a few names to the list of suspects who might have shot Nance and me. I noted for future reference that only Rossiter carried a piece.

  That pain stabbed into my right eye and I gently rubbed my right temple and shook my head. "Cockroaches," I muttered.

  Lewis Grahl stepped forward and looked up at me. Black as he was, I could see the heat in his face. "Nicos, cockroach is just a name. I'm damned sick of it. I want to know why you call lawyers cockroaches."

  I sighed. "Jesus, I don't know, Lou. I really don't mean to offend you assholes. I guess it's just because lawyers make a profit out of poverty and misery, they've done their best to make my planet hell so they can feed off it, and they don't give a shit."

  The twins had been given some free rides back in the juicer on Mihviht. Now it was time for the Rhadmajani boys to grab a smelly piece of the real world. It was as good a time as any to try out my new shooter, so I twisted the little square nut on the trigger housing to full automatic fire. I aimed my newly converted rifle at Nuris Rhadmajani, pulled the trigger, and stitched him from his belly button to his heart with about five slugs. It was pretty accurate for an automatic weapon, loud as hell, but I didn't lose any fingers and the recoil wasn't half what I expected. The Trolls did pretty good work.

  Nuris screamed before he dropped. His brother screamed, too. I thought Pendril and the other cockroaches were about to give each other hysterectomies.

  I slung my rifle and looked at Stays. He looked outraged. "Bando. What have you done?"

  "Justice." I said to him, "It's already in the law, Watson. If you murder, payback is the max."

  Stays pointed at the momentarily surviving brother. "What about him?"

  "What about me?" screamed Peris Rhadmajani.

  I faced the remaining Rhadmajani. "You made your own choice, hardwood. So it's you who's responsible for it. I'm not." I pointed at his dead brother. "You made a real bad bet, friend. Maybe back home it was a smart bet, but everyone here has been told that it's a new game. The cards you were dealt last hand don't play here. If your life depends on a murderer in the Razai not getting his payback, you are maggot meat."

  Pendril held out his shaking hands. "What about a pregnant woman?" he screamed. "Would you kill the mother and child both?"

  "I already answered that!" I screamed back at him. "If your life depends on a murderer getting off, you're dead." I jabbed Deadeye and climbed down from the sled. We mounted our critters and I looked down at Peris Rhadmajani.

  "Maybe you want to reconsider having that operation to separate you from your brother. You might even be able to use some of his parts, if Walt Hurack's heir doesn't want them. Just hope that the Wolf is as good a surgeon as they say he is. He got caught in the fight and now he's going to have to do the operation with one hand and standing on a bum leg."

  I turned my critter toward the south, stuck the greensticks in the umbrella against the increasing heat. "Stays, while I'm gone you're head of the RCs. Stop listening to the cockroaches. Take some time out and read The Law of the Razai. You wrote it. It's time you learned it."

  I waved my hand at Jak Edge and the posse. "Let's go."

  "Nicos!" I turned and Jontine Ru was holding up her camera. "I want to go, too."

  "Forget it."

  "I still have a night lens."

  I balanced being on camera against the ability to see at night. "Come on along."

  Jak led his critter next to mine and Deadeye's and the three of us followed Bug Eyes along the trail left by Kegel's raiding party. Jontine Ru rode behind us followed by the Nicos Mobile Home for the Homicidally Compulsive.

  I heard Lewis Grahl bellow as we left, "You'll pay, Nicos! This can't go on like this! Someday you'll pay!"

  I didn't look back, but it suddenly occurred to me that Lewis Grahl would make a great suspect in the Bando Nicos shooting, even if he didn't carry a piece. Maybe Deadeye was too obvious a suspect. The fact that the shooter missed sort of excluded a pro like Deadeye. A cockroach shooter would be a lot more likely to bounce a slug off my skull than a contract man.

  As we left the twins and their cockroaches behind, the sun beat down on us and bounced off the sand into our faces, making each breath a lung-ripper. That sizzling pain forced its way into my right eye and through the back of my head again and again. A laugh worked its way through the pain as I wondered if, when they visited me in my nightmares, the Rhadmajani brothers would be separated or joined as ghosts.

  There wasn't much time for that. There was a job to do. As the sun baked our heads and my wound throbbed, all I could see was Alna and the fear in her eyes. The pain sharpened, I took one roasting breath too many, and things began swimming in the dark before my eyes.

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  There were memories that came back that I thought had been burned out by time, pain, and hate. There was Anita, that sixteen year old bleached goddess with the pound of makeup on each eye that I worshipped when I was fourteen and had already put in three years in the crowbars. There were moments with her in the loft above her father's alk and drug saloon that exploded my mind. She had a body that drove me mad, and she fed off that madness until we both were insane. By the time I was seventeen, though, she was already an old woman, unsuccessfully attempting to sell her lumps of diseased flab for another bit of powder. Where was the right in that? Who could make it right?

  Another image pushed its way into my memory. I was nine years old again. There was that dying cop I'd found that winter night in the hell of South Philly's Free Fire Zone. Some street slick had run the bait and teased the stain into the alley where the slick's associates had been waiting. They had beaten in his head, ripped open his guts, and had taken the stain's badge, gun, jacket, gloves, belt, shoes, and wallet. By the time they left and I came out from behind the dumpsters, the cop's eyes were open, he was dying. He had to
know he was dying there in the freezing filth of that alley, his open belly steaming in the cold.

  Was he consumed with pain, or was he measuring the reality of his life against his expectations. As I rode on the trail of Nance, Alna, and Mercy Jane, I would've liked to have asked that cop how his life had totaled up. But I hadn't asked him. He was a haystack cop and I was a nine year old chili pepper living on the edge of death at the bottom of a sewer in a mau-controlled block. I was weak, frustrated, frightened, and full of hate.

  I looked down at that cop, pulled out my dick, pissed on him, and laughed as he died. The urine steamed in the cold, and I remembered how it smelled. Right then, eighteen years later in the middle of the Forever Sand, I couldn't have gotten that smell out of my nostrils with a flame thrower.

  Things seemed to slip from memory into dream land. There were no walls, no ceiling, nothing but whiteness. The cop was standing before me, holding in his guts with his hands. The whiteness around his feet was spattered with red.

  His eyes were looking at me, big and brown. Maybe he wasn't a haystack. Maybe he even had a little brown sugar. He was me.

  "Man," I cried, "What do you want?"

  "Make it right," the dead cop answered. "Make it right."

  I shook my head again and again as I felt myself slipping into the floor. "It wasn't me, man! I didn't kill you!"

  "You didn't kill me." He lifted a bloody hand to point at me as his voice burst at me from deep inside my own head. "You took my last seconds!"

  I sank into the stickiness of the floor, eager to pull the white over me.

  "Make it right. Make it right."

  ▫

  I opened my eyes and watched as the illusions, dreams, and phantasms combined and faded into the sand. I whispered to the dead cop, "I'm doing the best I can."

  I sat up, opened my eyes, and stared south toward the reflection of the sun on the dunes. Maybe south, there with Kegel, was where Bando Nicos would find his peace.

  The pain in my head pulled me into another sleep, and there my ghosts let me rest.

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  Book Three

  KEEP THE LAW

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  ▫

  An Evening With Bando Nicos

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  When I awakened the image of Alna's face was still hovering before my eyes. The sun was off the sand, but the sky was still light, turning from blue-green to deep purple as it darkened. I shook from chills and unbundled my shirt and parka that I had been using for a pillow. The damned shirt was so crusty I hated to put it on, but there wasn't any other choice. Once I had the parka on, I sealed the collar, which kept most of the whiff away from my nose.

  I took a sip of water and gnawed on a thing bar as I looked around at the camp. A third of the whacks were on guard, and the remaining two thirds were dug into positions on the camp perimeter. Jak was wrapped up in his desert sheet zoning out, Deadeye was nowhere to be seen, and Jontine was watching her own vidcam, working on her story. The stinking six-legged lughs waited patiently for food, death, or sunlight, whatever came first.

  When I placed the remainder of my thing bar back in my pack, I picked up my rifle and started cleaning it. Once we got going, I wouldn't have another chance. Jontine Ru faced me and asked, "Are you ready?"

  A piece of bad memory reminded me that I had agreed to be interviewed. "I guess. Where's Deadeye?"

  "He's checking up on the guard while Jak sleeps." She shut down her camera, removed the micro disk, replaced it with another, and aimed it at me.

  "Lets try a few warm up questions to relax, okay?"

  "Relax?" I jerked a shoulder in a minor grant of permission.

  She grinned and asked, "Your name is Bando Nicos?"

  "Yeah."

  "Is that a Spanish name?"

  "By way of Mexico and Philly. My family was in Philadelphia."

  "Was it tough being a Spanish-speaking kid there?"

  "I wouldn't know. I only know enough Spanish to order a taco on Broad Street." I shrugged at my lame joke and looked at her while I twisted the auto nut on my rifle to loosen it up a bit. "On the streets there were two schools of thought. One held that we were from Philly and belonged there. So we rejected the customs and speech of our fathers. That way we couldn't talk to anybody at home. The other school held that Philly sucked like a black hole. They rejected everything local, including the language. That way they couldn't talk to anybody except at home."

  "This was on Earth?"

  "Yeah. Earth. America." I pointed at myself with my thumb. "American."

  "What's an American?"

  I stared at her for a second, then laughed. "Hell, I don't know. I don't think there are any Americans anymore. There's nothing left on Earth but gangs. They call them nations, tribes, clubs, guilds, unions, teams, professional associations, churches, races, sexes, ins and outs, straights and not so straights, but they're all gangs. Americans died out a long time ago. Anyway, if they ever existed, they were just another big gang, like the French, and the Arabs. You understand?"

  "A word here and there. What about my question?"

  "I forget what it was."

  "Was it tough growing up?"

  "Yeah, it was tough growing up. Are we going to use up your micros on old home week?"

  "Does it make you uncomfortable to talk about your childhood?"

  I laughed out loud until my head was again splitting. "Jesus, I hate that word. Uncomfortable. When the hell was it that they started saying uncomfortable instead of pain, hurt, afraid, angry?" I sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees. "A crowbar dentist back in Greenville, he asked me that, once. It felt like the hook was running a thousand volts into my jaw, I'm putting permanent finger prints into the armrests of his chair, and he wants to know if I'm uncomfortable. I should've crushed his nuts and asked him back, "Hey, man, is that uncomfortable?'"

  She pulled out an extension from the bottom of the camera and stuck it into the sand. The camera's lens continued to follow me. She got up, sat next to me, and continued. "I understand that Nance Damas made you the head of the Razai Cops."

  "Yeah." I bobbed my head back and forth just to see the lens track me. "That's sharp."

  She reached out a hand to restrain me from moving about. "How did that happen?"

  "What?"

  "Nance making you head cop."

  "Yeah. Sorry." I searched the remainder of my head for a good answer, but there was nothing in there but echoes. "I always figured it was because I was last in line. Maybe you should ask Nance." I glanced at her, caught her expression, and sighed. "Okay. There weren't any cops. Nance was having an orgasm handing out orders, and when she got down to the bottom of the barrel she needed someone to take out the garbage. She told me to settle a beef that was holding up the column. I took in Stays to help. We took care of it. There was a killing soon after that. It was turning into a salt 'n pepper thing quick time, and Stays and me took in Marietta to help."

  "The one you call the Magic Mountain?" she asked.

  "Yeah, but not to her face. Only the Magic Mountain calls the Magic Mountain the Magic Mountain. The RCs grew out of that."

  The questions wandered around like that for awhile, and a couple of the whacks sat in to listen. At one point I told Jontine that cop meant either constable of the people or constable on patrol. One of the whacks said that he'd heard that cop meant conscience on patrol. Jontine had another theory to throw in. She said she'd heard that early stains back on earth had copper badges, and the name came from that. It was something else to add to my growing library of worthless law enforcement lore. That was when she asked, "How do you feel about killing the Siamese twins, Nuris and Peris Rhadmajani?"

  I must've jumped like a bug. Talk about shots from left field. "I didn't kill them. Nuris murdered, and I only collected Walt Hu
rack's payback. If Peris dies it'll be because he committed suicide."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning, he played a game to keep his brother alive. He lost." I shrugged. "Maybe the Wolf can snip Peris loose from the deadmeat."

  "What if he can't?"

  I looked her in the eyes. "Then that's the end of Rico. If you murder in the Razai, you die. If you have your wagon hitched to a murderer, when the killer goes down, you go down, too."

  "Even if it's not a person's choice, as with an unborn child?"

  "Even so."

  "That doesn't sound like justice to me."

  "It sounds like justice. What you don't like about it, Show Biz, is that it doesn't sound nice, kind, and fair to the goo goo, da da, poo poo, ca ca crowd. It doesn't have a bag of loopholes for the cutie poos to slide through."

  "But an unborn baby—"

  I pushed myself to my feet. "Here an unborn baby is not Razai. A Razai can go wherever he wants. Unborn babies can't do that. So either they're prisoners or not alive. Since we're forbidden to hold prisoners, that only leaves one thing: they're not alive enough to be Razai. An unborn baby that can't survive free of its mother is still a part of its mother, like a big toe. When a killer collects the max, his big toe dies too. If the mother is a murderer, that's the end of Rico."

  She looked down for a moment. She shook her head and looked up at me. "It sounds so cold-blooded."

  "Jam it to Jesus, lady! I didn't say I liked it! The law we got is just the way it is, that's all. It seems to work for us. It doesn't have to work anyplace else. Here in the middle of Hell, it seems to work. That's why the new exiles who hear about the law join the Razai."

  "I've read it, Nicos. Did you know that you have rules in there that would require the execution of an entire jury if it makes a bad decision?"

  "Yeah. I put those rules in there."

  "There's a Mihvihtian attorney back with the main column named Lewis Grahl. He thinks you're a monster. How do you react to that?"

  I gave her a bad look. "It makes my scrotum sweat." I pointed a finger at her. "If you've got a better way—if that cockroach has a better way—drop it in the nearest suggestion box."