"What principle?"
"You only ever learn to put together the names and faces of a few persons. Maybe two or three hundred at most. Even then, unless you see them every day to observe the changes that take place, you can't really tell by sight who belongs and who doesn't unless you use some kind of ID or password. Mostly belonging is judged by the look and feel of someone. Kegel doesn't use IDs or passwords. You belong down there if you look and sound like you belong down there."
Deadeye squatted next to me and said, "I knew a guy once who had over two hundred thousand names, faces, and bios on file in his head at any given time. I saw him walking through crowds, shaking hands, asking how's little Bunky's carbuncle, did Martha's loan come through, and congrats on little Elmer's graduation from tractor school. " He looked at me. "He was the campaign manager for a big time pol I hung a button on. He was my route to the shoot."
"The point, Deadeye," I prompted. "What's the point?"
"What if we run into a walking memory chip?"
"What do we do if Jak's in camp?" asked Show Biz. "He's probably in there. What do we do about him?"
I looked at Murphy. "Well?"
He shrugged. "If there weren't any risks, everybody would be in the commando business."
Show Biz reached out a hand and placed it on my arm. "You're going in, aren't you?"
"Maybe."
"I want to go, too." I was about to lay out a flat negative, but she got in there before me by holding up two fingers in a V sign. Rule 2.
"What do you know about pulling a con?"
"I've done a lot of undercover work before. I'm good, too."
I spent a split second trying to work up the argument that there are times when going wherever and whenever you want might be a violation of the Law of Silence, but I gave it up. I just can't think like a cockroach. I glanced at Brain Drain. He only shrugged and looked up at the sky.
"In that case," I answered, "we'd be thrilled by your company. One thing, though."
"What?"
"When you go, leave the camera and micros behind."
She looked like she was about to give birth to a litter of lughs. "I can't do that."
"Sure you can," I answered. "If you can't, then we'd be discovered about half a second after you whipped out your box to take a picture."
"What if I was very careful?"
I sighed and pointed down toward Kegel's camp. "Most of those yard eagles can make an undercover officer just by the smell. What you think they're going to make out of a vid star taking pictures? Hey, Guido, look. It's a tourist."
She smirked and said, "If they're so good at spotting police officers, what about you and your popcorn deputies? Aren't they going to make you?"
"We're not police officers, flash. We're RCs." I held out my hand. "The camera."
With a mean squint to her eyes, she dropped the camera into my hand, slung her piece, and walked off. I turned, trained the camera on the plain below, and studied the camp. I couldn't concentrate. There was something I just had to know. I lowered the camera and looked at Murphy.
"How'd it happen?"
"How did what happen?"
"You know."
He shook his head. "No, I don't."
"The brain eating thing, chup. How'd it happen?"
He looked down for a moment, thinking. He glanced at me and asked, "How did you become a rageaholic?"
"You don't become a rageaholic. Either you are or you aren't. If you are, then it all depends on when the symptoms pop up. It's a disease."
"That's what they figured I have, too." He snorted out a bitter little laugh. "A bunch of bad reviews. You should have seen the vids when I was top story."
I leaned closer to him. "Murphy, there had to be a first time. How'd it happen?"
He scratched the back of his neck, smiled, and looked up at me. "Chief, did you ever hear the story of Tydeus and Melanippus?"
"Were they big behind the crowbars?"
"No. Greek warriors. In the war of the Seven Against Thebes, Tydeus was fatally wounded by Melanippus."
"Bad news for Tydeus."
"Worse news for Melanippus. Before he died, Tydeus managed to kill Melanippus. Then he ate his brains."
I shook my head. "I don't get it. Why?"
"Some say it was the ultimate expression of the victor over the vanquished. Others say it was a way of trying to take Tydeus's power for himself."
"What'd he say?"
"He said it seemed like a good idea at the time." By the time the sun was up, he was still snickering.
Popcorns and pistachios. I had to give it a little smile myself, but it evaporated against the size of the thing I was thinking of doing, and Alna. Nance and Mercy Jane had the crowbar leather on their hearts. Alna was near shattered when she was at her best.
We'd go in. Somehow.
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Setting Up the Mark
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I placed Deadeye in charge of the group at the top of the bluff. With him we left behind Teheran, Peking, Power Tool, Exterminator, and Head Start to guard the critters and supplies, and to lay down a covering fire in case we had to beat it out of camp in a hurry. Keeper, Brain Drain, Prophet, and I removed our auto nuts and left them and our ammo clips, along with Show Biz's camera and micro discs, with the bunch that stayed behind. In case they had to make for safer parts, I told them to hide our supplies, mark the place, and then track on out of there.
After that, Brain Drain took us in hand and showed us why he was so effective behind enemy lines during his head hunting days. First he had us take grass stalks and dye the sand colored sides of our sheets a mottled green so that we could hide in the grass. After we'd done that, he led us down the bluff. We moved slowly and quietly through the grass to a spot near the clearing where we could watch and hear some guards talking. After listening to the first bunch for a few minutes, we worked our way around the perimeter until we could look at some more Kegeleros and listen to their conversation.
Any shark who ever spent time in the yard listening to the con artists knew what the Drain was doing. He was letting the marks set themselves up. Murphy was picking up and filing away names, relationships, details, forms of address, accents, slang, the news of the day, and current items of camp gossip. He was also picking up small bits of local fashion.
For example, just about everyone who had a walking guard post wore their sheets rolled under on the sides, leaving themselves uncovered from the shoulders down on the sides, although they wore their hoods up. When they slung their pieces, instead of carrying them vertical and behind, they carried them almost horizontal and to the side. They ate a bread made from something called a hard egg. The bread kept forever, but no one liked the taste. Everyone seemed depressed, and it was reflected in the most common greeting we heard. One would say, "Another day." The response was always, "The cryin' truth." All such items were very useful when you're trying to convince a total stranger that he not only knows you but owes you.
There were several names of guards: Mig, Vido, Ty, Sindar, and more names of sharks they were talking about. There was Kilost, who had made a big gambling win at a game called poke which none of us had ever heard of; there was Yulik who had just been promoted to some kind of sub chieftain position; and we heard a little about Anna Tane, the woman who seemed to have come out of nowhere to become a patrol leader, and was now running things, according to a few local lights. The men were afraid of Kegel. Anna Tane terrified them.
Kegel had a pet name among the men who liked him, and it was Kegs. The ones who disliked him called him Gutty. Our informal survey showed about four Guttys to every Kegs. The Gutty name had to do with the new form of discipline among the Kegeleros that'd been introduced by Anna Tane: gut stringing. We heard a couple of critter pilots describing it to some proto who had just been taken into the gang.
It went like this: First they'd build a strong tripod from bound bu
nches of stripped grass stalks. Kegel would have a couple of his yard monsters hold you down while he personally took a knife and opened your belly just enough to stick in a hook, snag a loop of gut, and pull out your entire intestines. If the edges of the cut bled too much, he'd have a red hot iron standing by to sear shut the bleeding edges. It did not serve his purposes to have a victim faint or die too soon from lack of blood.
With your guts pulled out, he'd make his own kind of cat's cradle. Anna invented a way of looping the intestines around your chest, below your arms, and around the knees. Then they'd hang you up on the tripod by your own guts to scream yourself hoarse, and then die of thirst as the grass skeeters covered you with stings and millions of hungry maggots. According to the overheard snatches of conversation that drifted our way, some victims lasted up to three or four days like that before they finally paid their fare for the dark ride.
The gut stringing hovered there in the backs of our minds as we moved to a new position and continued our research. There were two main items of news that seemed to be making the rounds. The first item was that the ambush they had set for us had backfired and that the ambush patrol had been burgered. The three survivors had reported that they had been attacked with automatic weapons, which was the cause of much amusement among the other sharks. Everyone knew that there was no way to convert those rifles to automatic fire weapons. Kegel's men were generally agreed, though, that the posse must have had at least six or seven hundred rifles, which was not found very amusing. "Why's Gutty got us sittin' here, then?" asked one guard. "We should be movin'."
His companion only said, "You want your guts on the sticks?"
Despite the failure to take the supply train, Bloody Sarah's raids had created a myth of invulnerability about the Razai. Of course the Razai was made up out of men, women, and children, which meant that they could be killed. Kegel's sharks knew that, at least in the fronts of their heads. Deep in their guts, however, there was another story being written, and us wiping out their ambush patrol had added another chapter.
We listened some more and there was a big news item about Bloody Sarah. It caused worried looks and explosions of anger wherever it played. On her second try it looked like Sarah had finally taken Kegel's supply train. It hadn't been confirmed yet, but the taps were all over the camp. Everybody knew things were getting slim, particularly in the food department. It would take another few days for more supplies to come from down south. They passed around a few names of the newly dead and wounded, and covered up their fears with badass looks.
I listened hard, and the way I heard it, most of Kegel's sharks were fed up with Anna Tane and this expedition against the Razai. They had homes and families. They had futures, however limited, and they didn't want to squander them trying to pay back the Razai for fighting back when they were attacked. Nothing made sense anymore.
One rough-looking yard monster said that the hostages they were holding were going to be nothing but more trouble. That perked up our ears. He said that the hostages had already cost them an entire patrol and he figured that wouldn't be the end of it. His name was Lemme and he had a wound on his left upper arm. Lemme told the shark named Sindar that the Razai doctor had bandaged up his arm and that they should at least let the doc go. Sindar looked around nervously for a second and told Lemme to shut up unless he wanted to have his guts hung. Lemme shut up, but he looked like the anger he was chewing on could digest hippo snot.
That was some good and some bad. The good was that Alna, Nance, and Mercy Jane were definitely in the camp. The bad was that they might not all be together if Mercy Jane was out patching up the bad guys. If we were going to sneak them out, it would double the trouble if they weren't together.
In the gossip department, two of the sharks who had said they were tired fighting the Razai, and had been brave enough to say it to Kegel, had been gut strung that morning. One of them had died from shock as soon as the blade opened his belly while the other had drifted into an unconscious state soon after his guts had been yanked out. There weren't even any screams or begging and Kegel was feeling mighty gypped. Two gut stringings without a single scream to show for it. You can't trust anybody nowadays.
Another item was about Millik Ita and Jev Base. Sooner or later they'd knife it out over a women named Pia if Millik could ever find Jev. Finally, rations would be cut again because of the loss of the supply wagons, and there hadn't been a whole lot to the rations before Sarah had run off with the groceries.
After completing his survey, Brain Drain moved us away from the clearing and told us to reverse our sheets to white and to roll the sides under, hoods up. From his squat in the grass, the Drain held out his hands toward us and said, "We're a guard detail coming back from the spring where this camp gets its water. I'm in charge and we're coming off special duty to get in some sack time. We're tired, hungry, full of bitches, and aren't about to take any chickenshit off anyone. Remember: when you walk, you own the place and you've been there forever. When you talk, be loud, be stupid, be tough, be whatever you want except meek, nervous, watchful, or shifty eyed. Look people straight in the eye, and when you talk to them, talk like it's to an old acquaintance or friend. Most of them would rather die than admit they can't exactly remember your name."
He looked at Prophet and Keeper. "It's just like with the shrinkers back at CICI. Give them what they expect and they'll leave you alone." He looked around our tiny circle. "Does anyone feel too nervous to carry it off?"
I looked around and no one seemed to be growing chicken feathers. We were ready to do it. Of course, Brain Drain had done this a thousand times before, Jontine had done undercover investigative reporting, Prophet and Keeper were insane, and I had a hole in the head.
We moved out and followed the trail around the camp that Brain Drain had made the day before. After a few minutes we reached an honest-to-God fresh water spring at the foot of the bluff. It was deserted and we indulged ourselves long enough to fill up. While I was drinking I noticed a crude wooden pipe under the surface that led off toward the camp. Running water. It told me that the Drain was probably right about this being a permanent base of some kind.
"Are you chups all done?" Brain Drain hollered out loud enough to flatten the grass. I was about to put out his lights with the stock of my weapon when I noticed ten of Kegel's men coming down to the spring. It was show time.
The headhunter led the way out, and as he passed the leader of the ten he said, "Another day."
"The cryin' truth," answered Kegel's man without as much as a look. The chup looked weary and bitter, as did most of his men. One of his men was a woman, which was the first one I'd ever seen carrying iron for Kegel. She was all angel cake and a rare enough thing that she grinned and waved when she saw Show Biz. The reporter grinned and waved back while a liter of acid dropped into my stomach.
What if there were only four or five women in the camp? Wouldn't Kegel's bit with the rifle know them all? She was white as rice. What if only one or two of the women were black and Jontine Ru didn't look like either. What if none of them were black and we were just waiting for some kind of cartoon light bulb to go on over the angel cake's head?
"Another day," greeted a strange voice, and I noticed that we were at the edge of the open fire zone on our way into the clearing.
"The cryin' truth," answered Brain Drain to the two guards. I spat on the ground and tried to walk like I was back in the yard. When we were right on them Murphy stopped and faced the guards as he pointed south. "Vido, any word yet on the new supply train?"
The guard named Vido shook his head and spat on the ground. "Maybe this job's already in Gutty's pocket too deep. We'll be eatin' it off the hoof before long."
"Hair, horn's 'n all," muttered his partner. The second guard's pock marked face had a big frown on and my best guess was that he was about to ask an embarrassing question. Before he could ask, however, Brain Drain stuck out his hand and said, "Sorry, but I can't remember your name. Mig something, isn't it?"
>
The guard nodded, his frown gone. "Mig Owens."
"Dean Murphy."
Mig nodded and grinned. "Yeah, that's it. What were you chups on out there, Murphy?"
"More of the same," answered the Drain. He looked at Vido. "There's no one out there. Someone ought to tell Yulik to pull the chicken feathers out of his ass."
Vido laughed, as did Mig, but they both held fingers to their lips. Mig said in a low voice, "Careful, Murphy. As long as Yulik has his nose up Gutty's bum, we should take care around chups with long ears and big mouths." He cocked his head to indicate everyone else in camp.
"At least until someone stretches Gutty," Vido added with a snicker.
Brain Drain brought his hand down in a gesture of disgust and headed toward the camp. We started to follow when I was brought up short by Mig's hand on my shoulder. "What's your tag, chup?"
My guts turned to water as I looked at him. "Nicos," I answered.
"That's it," Mig Owens said, grinning and nodding his head. "Right on the tip of my tongue and I couldn't think of it."
"It don't mean nothin'."
I turned and caught up with the others as they reached the edge of the guard perimeter. I grabbed the Drain by his arm and turned him around.
He looked down at me like he was being very irritated by a thick headed subordinate. "What?"
"I have to go to the bathroom."
He stared at me deadpan. "You should've thought of that before we left home."
I stuck the muzzle of my piece beneath his chin and said, "Get me to a crapper fast, popcorn, or I'll eat your brains and then do my dumper!"
He smiled and moved the muzzle of my weapon away with his fingertips. "You can't fire it without the auto nut, Chief." He pointed toward a screened off area to the west, near the edge of the camp. "Over there."
Prophet had to go, too, so we went together while the others waited.
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The Man On the Sticks
INFINITY HOLD3 Page 52