“E-Tech Security is searching for you and Buff. Naturally, they have descriptions, but they still don’t know who you are.” The Lion sighed. “But once they identify Martha, they’ll begin putting things together. And that ‘Lord and Lady Valsacko’ cover story won’t hold up for very long. It’s possible that Inez—”
“You didn’t answer my question,” interrupted Gillian. “Do they know who was responsible?”
The Lion hesitated. “Shooter and Slasher—”
“Wrong answer.”
“I was responsible,” Nick said quietly. “That’s what he wants to hear. I’m the one he feels the urge to blame.”
Another harsh laugh escaped Gillian. “Urge to blame? Who the hell do you think you are? You’ve used me for so long that you can’t even imagine that I might be offended by it.”
Nick sighed. “I did what I had to do—”
“But not any more,” promised Gillian. “Not to me. You’ll have to find others to twist and manipulate. We’re finished.”
The midget’s eyes narrowed. “And just who is it that is announcing his independence?”
“You know who I am.”
“Give me a clue.”
“Don’t push it,” Gillian warned. “You sent me to a meeting with a man whom you knew to be the tway of this assassin. And you sent me unarmed, you little bastard!”
Nick drew a deep breath. “There was no choice. Your Cohe wand would probably have been discovered at the security desk. But I didn’t send you in there blind. I researched Venus Cluster and I made the best possible decision under a very difficult and complex set of circumstances.”
Gillian shook his head. “You can’t even imagine that you screwed up, can you?”
“I told you, I take full responsibility,” growled Nick. “You’re alive, so don’t feed me this crap. I sent you to a meeting with a man whom I suspected could be the tway of a Paratwa assassin because you were so messed up inside that you couldn’t see straight anymore. I gave you the opportunity to wake up. You needed action—”
The movement was almost too quick for the Lion to register—Gillian’s right arm blurred and then Nick was hoisted violently up off the table, his squat neck crushed by Gillian’s fingers, his own tiny hands clutching for his throat, trying to break the choking bond.
“Is this what you want?” hissed Gillian.
“Let him go!” ordered the Lion.
Another blur as Gillian twisted sideways, rammed Nick into the wall, held him there, two feet off the floor, their faces level with one another, only inches apart, two sets of eyes burning in mutual hatred.
“Gillian!” the Lion shouted.
The door opened and the two Costeau guards raced into the room with rifles unslung. Buff whipped out her salene and rammed the barrel up under the first guard’s chin.
“Not your problem,” warned Buff, her finger on the trigger. “And I’m in a real bad mood.”
The guards were well trained. And they were Costeaus. They turned calmly to the Lion, waiting for direction.
“Leave us,” snapped the Lion, not waiting to see whether the guards obeyed. He moved quickly, laying a hand on Gillian’s shoulder, squeezing, feeling the rigid whipcord muscles compress between his fingertips.
Nick was turning red under the choking grip. But the midget’s eyes remained frozen on Gillian: twin pools of fury, unafraid, eyes that said: Do what you will—I’ll give you no satisfaction.
“Gillian, release him,” said the Lion calmly. “This will accomplish nothing.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Gillian hissed, squeezing even harder. Nick’s eyes bulged wide.
The Lion shifted his hand to the back of Gillian’s neck. He gripped a chunk of skin between thumb and forefinger and pinched sharply.
“Remember that pinch,” whispered the Lion, leaning forward so that his mouth was almost against Gillian’s ear. “Remember the man who used that pinch to bring a small boy back to his senses. Remember that man’s words.
“He said to me: ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Jerem. But I won’t allow you to be a scuddie.’ That man saved me from a horrible fate. And a few days later, he saved my very life.”
Gillian turned to the Lion, saw the deep passion scribed across the aged face, remembered the terrified young boy in the Sirak-Brath apartment, the boy whom he had helped. To Gillian, the event had occurred only weeks ago; to Jerem Marth, a lifetime had elapsed.
He released his iron grip on Nick’s neck. The midget sank to his knees and fell back against the wall, chest heaving desperately as his lungs strained for oxygen.
At the doorway, Buff and the two guards remained frozen in a tableau of potential violence. The Lion spoke calmly. “Buff, please put away your weapon and permit my people to bring a doctor.”
Buff lowered the salene. The guards departed.
Gillian spoke quietly. “You’ve a good memory for an old man, Jerem.”
“My past serves me well.”
Gillian pointed to Nick. “Be careful of him in the future. There lies a man without scruples.”
Nick continued to gasp for air.
“You’ll be leaving,” concluded the Lion.
“Yes.”
“Where will you go?”
Gillian shrugged. “I don’t know. I really only came back to . . . get my things. My Cohe wand, in particular.” He stared at the Lion. “Are we going to have more problems?”
“It’s your weapon. And if I said no, would it stop you? But there’s been enough senseless violence for one day.”
“Yes, there has.”
The Lion turned to Buff. “You’ll be going with him?”
“I can no longer be of use to the Lion of Alexander.”
The Lion nodded. “Serve Gillian well.”
“I serve Martha,” whispered the Costeau.
“So be it.” The Lion gazed out upon his flower garden, at the patch of rose bushes, petals blue and gray mostly, colors beginning to diffuse under Irrya’s late afternoon sunlight. A gentle sadness crept over him. He’s going away again, leaving me, as he did fifty-six years ago. The intrinsic selfishness of the feeling conveyed a touch of guilt.
“I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” offered Gillian, understanding the Lion’s silence.
“Perhaps.” The Lion did not believe it. We may come face to face again, we may even speak. But in truth, there have been too many years placed between us. We can never again see each other as we once did. And he realized that in touching Gillian, in reaching out across the decades for that common memory, the raw power of his ancient obsession finally had met its match.
I am an old man, weighted with souvenirs of a time long gone. I will bear these feelings for the rest of my days, but they are, and will forever remain, mere emotional icons—markers on a path once tread. He found himself smiling. My past has finally caught up to me.
“Before I go,” said Gillian, “I do have . . . a favor to ask.”
“Of course.”
“If something should happen to me, Jerem . . . if I should become someone—something—an entity that you no longer recognize as Gillian . . .” He hesitated, struggling for the words, struggling to make clear that unnatural melding of consciousnesses that Empedocles so desired, but which Gillian still could comprehend only in the broadest and vaguest terms.
The Lion frowned. “You’re talking about your monarch?”
“I’m talking about Gillian going away and never coming back. Ever again.”
The Lion was not certain just what he was trying to say.
“If that should happen to me,” Gillian continued quickly, “and you’re sure that I can’t be brought back . . .”
The Lion raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Send your Costeaus out to find me.”
The Lion shook his head, still confused. “To bring you back.”
“No. Not to bring me back.”
“I think . . . that I understand.” The Lion swallowed. “I will do what my feelings
tell me is appropriate.”
“Spoken like a true Costeau.” Gillian managed a smile. “Live up to the name, Jerem Marth.”
“I will try.”
* * *
The Lion found Nick in the computer room, seated in front of the console, his legs drawn up tightly against his squat body, his neck girdled by a ragged swatch of white fabric. The equipment remained inactive, the screens opaque, the room itself dimmed to the barest level of illumination. Gillian and Buff had departed hours ago.
“Evolving new strategies?” asked the Lion.
“Ever wake up to find yourself wondering just what in the hell it is that you’ve been doing with your life?”
The Lion nodded.
“Good for you,” said Nick softly. “’Cause I haven’t. Not in the twentieth century, not in the twenty-first. Not fifty-six years ago. Not today. I always know what I’m doing with my life. I always know where I’m going.”
The Lion sat down beside him. “That sounds like a curse.”
“More like a crippled leg, maybe. It makes you walk a bit different from everyone else. Makes you stand out in a crowd. Makes you more aware of the millions who aren’t crippled. Lets you see them more clearly, more objectively. You stand apart. You’re able to judge character, perceive motivations, understand why they are the way they are.”
“You’re going to miss him,” said the Lion.
Nick sighed. “It’s not too often that you find another cripple who stumbles along the same way that you do. It makes you believe in destiny.”
“It makes you believe in humanity.”
Nick drew a deep breath. “Yeah. That too.”
The Lion found himself gazing at the blank monitors. “That meeting we had last week, with Gillian, Inez, and Adam. I remember you saying something about having a bad feeling . . . like we’re heading into a battle that we’ve already lost. Do you still believe that?”
“Maybe.”
The Lion hesitated. “If the Paratwa should conquer us, what would you do? I mean, assuming you survived, could you adapt to living under their domain?”
“No.”
“I feel the same way.”
For a long moment, they sat there, staring at the blank screens. Finally, Nick reached forward and depressed a set of keys. The system hummed to life; the monitors burst into sheets of color. The Lion stood up and headed for the door.
Nick said, “I don’t doubt my actions, Jerem. I can’t doubt them. I try not to hurt people. But I do what must be done.”
The Lion said nothing. He left the room, thinking about a time long ago and a future that might not be.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1989 by Christopher Hinz
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-1204-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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