Oath of Fealty

by Larry Niven

  He finished packing and took the suitcase out to the garage.

  "Good afternoon."

  Renn looked up, startled. The man stood lazily against the garage door. He smiled slightly, but there wasn't anything pleasant about the short-barreled shotgun he held. "Uh-"

  "No need to say anything at all. I have a message for you."

  "What-"

  "It's simple. Goodbye."

  Renn had just enough time to understand before the buckshot tore his chest apart.

  Vague sensations shaped themselves into a pattern. Cold. Grass tickling cheek. A distant moaning nearby. Slowly Vinnie came to awareness of them all, and more. Pain, sharpening, until it felt like the left side of his face and neck had been smashed to bloody mush.

  Like the long-faced creep with the empty pockets who'd cursed them in the subway, several weeks ago. He'd looked like Vinnie felt, when Vinnie got through with him. But Vinnie remembered his face, long and sullen and hating ... and another face flashed vivid lii his brain.

  Styled curly blond hair; broad, smooth clean-shaven face; new dark blue suit and vest, bas-relief tie in scarlet and dark brown; gold at both wrists, gold ring ... walking money. Seen only for an instant, with a look on his face such as Vinnie had never seen on a mark: unearthly joy, as the mark cocked his fist for another blow. The big fist with its big gold ring had just blasted Vinnie's neck to pulp, and was set to do it again.

  They hated him. Vinnie had never felt that before. They cringed, they tried to reason with him, they handed him wallet or watch or purse, they ran ... but they hated him. They would kill him if they could.

  He reached for another face, seen later through a haze of some drug. A face out of a nightmare. Seen in close-up, a woman with impossibly huge eyes, hair exploding around her head, fiendish grin ... and a tool in her hand, a needle tearing curves across his belly. He tried to scream and another needle jabbed his arm and it all went away.

  Vinnie tried to curl himself tighter; he moaned, and the moan became a yell as it tore his throat open.

  He was sitting upright, naked as a peeled egg. There were others around him, all naked, painted like so many Easter eggs. Six plus Vinnie. Some still sleeping; some staring about them in terror.

  Where are we? He sat up and looked around. Green shrubbery to one side. On the other- On the other, Todos Santos was a wall across the sky. The windows blazed like tens of thousands of eyes.

  Run. He had to run. He sprang to his feet and everything went blurry; he hardly felt the jar as he fell back. "How was I to know?" he shouted. "How did I know it was you people in the subway?"

  A voice from the distance mocked him. "THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION," the voice called.

  He looked behind him. There, across the field, over at the city street that bounded the Todos Santos greensward, was a large TV truck, with a cameraman standing on top. The camera, and other instruments, were pointed at Vinnie.

  What am I doing here? But there was no place to go. Not really. And he wasn't alone.

  Strangers ... no. That was Runner Carlos, clutching himself tight to make himself smaller. A small, hard man who sometimes raided the subways, whom Vinnie avoided when he could - very hard to recognize with no hair, no moustache, his whole body painted bluish-white. The great bulk of a man painted leaf green, sleeping peacefully on his side, would be Gadge, who ran with the Runner and took his orders. Vinnie had never seen him undressed. What he had taken for muscle on Gadge seemed to be mostly fat.

  But who were the other four? And what did it say across their chests? He strained to focus his eyes. THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION.

  Vinnie fought back a laugh. It would tear his throat, and annoy Gadge and Runner Carlos ... and Vinnie himself had been painted deep rose. His belly bore the same cartoon as the rest. Like a trade mark. He rubbed it, not understanding, and found a slight ridge, and understood.

  Tattoo, just healing. Vinnie remembered the woman with the needle-and, instantly, the man with the gold ring. He understood, then, that he would never see his belly in a mirror without remembering both: the huge-eyed woman with the needle, and the mark cocking his gold-decorated fist, ready to pound him to death.

  MacLean Stevens drove up to Lunan's camera truck. "What's going on?" he demanded.

  Thomas Lunan grinned. "Some sad people out there. All dressed up and no place to go."

  "Who are they?"

  "I think you'll find three of them are from the American Ecology Army. Underground types, wanted by the FBI. Three more are common crooks your cops will recognize."

  "You seem to know a lot-"

  "Shield law," Lunan chanted. "Shield law, shield law, shield law. No sources. But it's all true, and you really will want to arrest the three Ecology Army types. I doubt if you can charge the others."

  "But-why?" Stevens demanded. "Why are they there?"

  "If I had to guess," Lunan said, "I'd guess they annoyed Todos Santos."

  Stevens set his lips in a grim line. In the field across the street, the sleepers were stirring. They kept glancing nervously toward Stevens and Lunan. Mac waved to the police who'd come out with him. "Round them up. Indecent exposure will do to get them to the station house."

  The police sergeant laughed. "Right. Okay, troops, let's go ... "

  "So it finally happened," Stevens said.

  "What happened?" Lunan asked.

  "Todos Santos cut itself loose. Now they're completely above the law. They're judge and jury and executioner."

  "But they're not," Lunan said. "Don't you see, that's the whole message here." He lowered his voice. "I'm prepared to deny I ever said this. Mr. Stevens, some of those people did more than annoy the Saints. They kidnapped and abused one of their highest officials. They had her for several hours before the Todos Santos guards rescued her."

  Stevens frowned.

  Lunan nodded. "Exactly. They really could have been judge and jury and executioner. Who'd know? Instead, they've chosen to stay part of the human race. Oh sure, they're also protesting your brand of justice. They want to see it changed. But they haven't cut loose from humanity."

  "You can say that. You haven't just come from looking at Professor Renn's body."

  Lunan looked up sharply. "What?"

  "Somebody blew him away with a shotgun. You didn't know that, huh?"

  "No. But it wasn't Todos Santos."

  "Why is that, Lunan? Would they have used a death ray?"

  Lunan laughed. "They just didn't. Mac, you may want to be careful investigating Renn's murder. You might find your favorite City Councilman wasn't as sharp as he thinks he was."

  "Planchet? Planchet ... yeah. God knows he had motive. Lunan, do you know this?"

  "No. Sounds like a hired kill, though, doesn't it? That could be Planchet, or Diana Lauder's parents, or someone connected to the Ecology Army types Renn sent in to die. But I know what Todos Santos had in mind for Renn, and that wasn't it. They wanted to scare him out of the country."

  Stevens mulled that.

  The LAPD officers had just finished rounding up the gaily colored nudies. Stevens watched the last one loaded into a black and white. Then he looked past the greensward, past the orange grove, on to the enormous building beyond. Free society or termite hill? Or both?

  Is this really the wave of the future? "For now," he told Lunan. "Just for now and for this moment they haven't quite cut loose from the human race. But can you live in that and stay human forever?" His arm swept expressively to indicate the enormous city/building, its windows glaring orange-white in sunset light.

  The great orange banner was still there. "THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION." As they watched, it rippled and moved. Someone was lowering it.

  "You could live there, Lunan. You'd be welcome," Stevens said. "When are you planning to move in?"

  "No," said Lunan, and then he bellowed. "Aubry, get a camera sweep of those windows!" His voice dropped again. "That'll go nice. A hundred thousand eyes, but they're all looking inward. No pri
vacy at all, and no interest in what goes on out here. No, that's not my life style."

  "Not mine either-"

  "Why does it have to be? A Venice boatman would go crazy in there. So would a Maori tribesman, but that doesn't make him right. What would a Roman Legionnaire think of your life style? What would Thomas Jefferson think of me? There are a lot of ways to be human."

  "Maybe." Stevens turned, in time to see the great banner flutter down from the battlements and settle gently to the ground.