A Few Good Men

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  I’d assumed his reserve and oddness was from having lost Max so recently, and from the circumstances of it. But now I wasn’t sure. Now I wondered if they were simply part of being Nat Remy, who always did what was expected of him, even if the doing almost broke him in two.

  I turned the light off. I lay on the bed and tried to sleep. The bed smelled like Nat, too, though I’d only lain down atop the covers. By which I don’t mean that it smelled like it wasn’t washed, but more like a faint scent of Nat’s aftershave, and his cigarettes, and the undefinable smell that was him had stayed behind on the bedspread, from his spending so much time here.

  I wondered why he would spend time here. For Nat to be a broomer at all seemed an odd thing. It was hardly the behavior of a dutiful son, the scion of a respectable family.

  But then I suspected it had all started just like Ben and I had started at our lair. It was a place where you could go and be yourselves. Oh, not a place to have sex. That could be managed at home, or not too far, and in ultimate instance, a place could have been bought or procured. No, it was a place where other people knew of our relationship and accepted us as a couple. Broomers were many things, but it had never occurred to any broomer—not even the contrived upper-class broomers our friends were likely to be—to have any taboos on sex.

  It occurred to me that it was funny. Most of the others viewed the lair as a place to go and have all the offbeat sex you chose to have, while people like myself and Ben, and I suspected Nat and Max, went to the lair to be monogamous and in all but our genders conventional.

  What we cherished wasn’t the fact that no one would burst in on us while making love—which at any rate wasn’t true, since at least in our lair the sense of private space was a bit lacking and some people would not just approach but try to hold a conversation—but the fact that we could hold hands, or lean on each other. What was to other people a normal part of normal, public life, to us was the most rare of clandestine pleasures, and could only be purchased at the cost of becoming broomers.

  So, I understood Nat’s initial involvement with the lair. What I didn’t understand was why he’d continued coming here and practically living here when Not-Max held tenure. And then I got that too. When he was here, he could pretend everything was well at home and that Max was himself.

  I felt a great wave of sadness for those games of pretending, which I could completely understand. I had pretended for fourteen years that Ben was still alive and could still talk to me.

  Closing my eyes, I lay immobile on Nat’s bed, trying to sleep. I could do this. I had managed sleep, successfully, on many past occasions.

  My mind tried to spin on the problem of Coffers. Was it a trap? Or had these people failed to realize that I would still have acquaintances in the world of broomers? I hadn’t realized, until I thought about it hard, that I still had acquaintances in the world of broomers, so I could hardly blame them for not realizing it as well. But that meant— No, wait, what if they thought I wouldn’t dare approach any broomers anyway, not after they poisoned the well with their theory of my having had Max killed? Surely they would think that anyone meeting me would turn me in.

  They would never understand the webs, in layers, of deception and protection that were part of any broomers identity and particularly of the identity of any broomer who was up to something pleasantly—or for that matter unpleasantly—illegal.

  Half of the people we’d seen at the bars might have seen my picture on the holos and heard me referenced as Good Man Keeva or, what was the quaint phrase they were using? The Pretender to being Good Man Keeva. But it didn’t matter. Most of them simply wouldn’t associate a face seen outside a broomer context with a face seen inside it. Beyond that, even if they had figured out who I was, most of them would never tell. The brotherhood of broomers might rest on the fact that we all knew some appalling or illegal fact about the other, but it held nonetheless. To reveal a fellow broomer was to reveal yourself.

  But anyone who hadn’t been a broomer would never have found that out, and I suspected most Scrubbers and most people who worked for the Good Men had never been broomers. There were two very different mind sets there.

  Of course most children of Good Men were broomers. I stopped and frowned. But most children of Good Men died before they ever came to adulthood, and they weren’t the ones making the decisions. No, the ones hunting me and setting traps for me were Mules, those ancient horrors who had managed the Earth into destruction, and who hadn’t been young at any time when there were broomer lairs. Most of them hadn’t been young when there were brooms. And they were raised apart from the human race, as biological artifacts, not considered quite sentient. Their experience of life would be very different. They would certainly not know the codes that went with belonging to a lair.

  So . . . I thought, as I turned and tried to get comfortable on this bed that wasn’t mine, on the bed of a man who might even now be at the tender mercies of the best torturers that could be deployed by the council of Good Men, they might not have realized we could figure out their ruse. And if we hadn’t figured out their ruse—in fact, if we hadn’t come up with this possibility—the likelihood was that even now we’d be looking for maximum security or secret prisons in the stamp of Never-Never and trying to figure out how to get Nat out of one of them. We’d certainly never have stumbled onto Coffers as even a possibility.

  The idea that they’d set it up for us to hear of Coffers in broomer bars started to seem far-fetched. When I was very little, I thought that my father was this omnipotent being who saw and knew everything I did and that he could guess all my secrets and see everything I’d been doing. Then, as I got older, I realized that he didn’t know a quarter of what I was doing. Some of it he stumbled upon, but that part was only because I was so very bad at hiding.

  And I suspected the government of the Good Men was like that. It could stay powerful and in control simply because it was so large and it had so many and varied resources at its disposal. But it wasn’t supernatural. It couldn’t guess every unlikely turn our minds would take. And if they’d come up with the idea of hiding Nat in a lower security prison, they’d think they had done well enough, and they weren’t about to complicate it all by also adding a layer of disinformation.

  Or were they? The one thing you could say about the Good Men was that, having lived very long, they managed to grow crazier, more eccentric and certainly more paranoid as time went on. Perhaps this type of mind game was what they did for fun, in their spare time.

  I turned again. Then I sat up and realized my body had made a decision, even if my mind hadn’t. Sleep was not going to happen tonight. I’d just turn, and toss and turn again, and I’d not be able to sleep. Not while I knew what Nat was going through and could imagine in exquisite detail what he must be suffering and how hard it must be for him to keep from denouncing all his friends and his family too.

  I didn’t think he would denounce them. I suspected there were very few things in the world or out of it, for that matter, that could out-stubborn Nat Remy. But I knew he would have to suffer not to. And as someone who had undergone the best tortures of the best torturers, I could imagine what they were doing to him in vivid and unwholesome detail.

  Then I thought that at least with myself they had been restricted in their tender mercies by the fact that they could not damage me without regening me, because anything beyond minor scars would eliminate my body as an emergency host for my father, should he need it before Max was ready.

  No such restrictions hampered them with Nat. Not really. The normal execution for his type of crime was beheading and even if it was broadcast, they could tune in to his being positioned on the block. Hell, he wouldn’t even need to be alive for that.

  The idea caused a clenching of all my muscles, an instinctive protest in the pit of my stomach, and a rising rebellion along every fiber of my body.

  Like hell, I thought, Like hell they will do that. And it seemed to me that Ben’s voice echoed me.


  And then I was putting my boots back on, and moving rapidly out of the lair. I was halfway past the private cubicles area before it occurred to me that if someone—Simon, Jan, Martha and particularly Abigail—saw me, he or she would try to stop me. Which meant, I’d best be stealthy.

  I managed to slink, close to the shadows or the improvised interior walls. Well, as close to slinking as someone my size could do, which wasn’t terribly stealthy but was better than swaggering in full light, in the middle of the open space.

  At the door I faced a problem, because there was a guard. Okay, he was a young broomer, who—though the light didn’t allow me to verify that detail—probably still had more spots than beard, and whose posture and general look announced late teens or early twenties and diffident. But he had a burner in his hand, and in my experience it was just good policy not to crowd the man with the weapon. Particularly when he wasn’t quite a man yet. And particularly when he looked uncertain.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t supposed to keep people inside, was he? At least I doubted. Broomer lairs weren’t known for keeping their members prisoners inside, and a guard was there, usually, to give the alarm if someone tried to come in. On yet the other hand—what, you’re counting?—he might do no more than nod and shrug as I walked out, but he would be able to tell the others I had gone out. I doubted there were many people of my build and general looks around here.

  And if someone chanced to ask, or even the kid felt insecure enough to go and ask someone about my leaving the lair—since I was a stranger to him—he would probably get the others to come after me.

  While I’d come to the conclusion that I must try to save Nat right now, and that it was worth it to risk my life going to Coffers, where he might or might not be kept, I wasn’t willing to risk anyone else’s life on this.

  I could go back to the room where I’d eaten and where I’d met with the others. If I remembered, no one had bothered to clear the plates and glass. And one or two of those, lobbed far enough above the kid’s head, would rivet his attention on some place outside. And then I could run fast, behind him, the way he wasn’t looking.

  But just as I turned, to go look for something to throw, the kid shifted his position. The movement brought his face into light.

  It was a face I knew. It took me a moment to remember from where, because the last time I’d seen him, he was pale as death and streaming water. And telling me he couldn’t ride brooms. Apparently he could, however, lie. Well.

  But once I recognized him, I immediately experienced relief that John Jefferson had made it to a safe place and, presumably, to his daily life, and an immense relief, because I wouldn’t have to try stupid tricks from old holos. I could just talk to the boy and get him to let me go out, right? After all, he owed me his life.

  For I Was Lost

  I walked slowly into full light, and the kid spun around to look at me. For just a second there was a confused look on his face, as if he couldn’t quite place me, then recognition with just a hint of fear. I couldn’t blame him for the fear, either. When he’d last seen me, I’d been mowing down men like grass. But though his eyes remained apprehensive, he gave me a smile. “Hi,” he said, and then, as though at a loss for words, again, “Hi.”

  I smiled at him, trying to make my smile reassuring. I wasn’t absolutely sure I succeeded. Look, it’s been a long time since reassuring has been part of my repertoire. At least, I presume it failed, because he took a step back. But I suppose he remembered I saved his life, because he didn’t train that burner on me.

  Still, I could hear his breathing, shallow and fast, and his eyes were wide with panic. I said, keeping my voice low, “It’s okay. I’m here with friends. I’m not a member of the Doomers, but I’m visiting. Now, I want to go out for . . . for something. I’ll be back. If anyone asks if you saw me or anyone go out, would you mind horribly denying everything?”

  He blinked at me, as, I suppose, knowledge that I wanted to leave the lair warred with the memory of watching me kill several people and show very little emotion. He didn’t step away from the wall, but he lowered his head to me, not quite a bow, and not quite a nod, but something in between.

  I told him, “Thanks,” as I stepped gingerly past him into the darkness outside. I did think that perhaps the knowledge that I was now of his religion would reassure him, so I turned around and gave him the thumb-forefinger salute. By then, I couldn’t see his expression and perhaps it was a step too far.

  I stood in the middle of the street, thinking which way to go. I’d need a decent flyer. There were two options for this. One was to leave down-under, hit the stairs or the grav wells to upper levels, and look for flyers parked outside the nicer places. The problem with that, of course, is that everyone had seen broadcasts mentioning my presumed guilt in Max’s murder, and while that particular broadcast hadn’t shown my picture, I was sure others had. I figured I was somewhat safe in outlaw areas and areas where people had an arm’s-length relationship with law-enforcement. Beyond that . . . Beyond that, I’d have to look for another solution.

  Well, no large flyers could come through the spider. It was what made this area safe, that no police raids, no peacekeeper enforcement could get in here. But the place was filled with shops and factories, and even in the middle of the night, there were people everywhere and kids running around with miner’s lamps on their heads, playing games of the sort that kids have played since humans lived in caves.

  I put my hand in my pocket, to touch the box with the flag fragment, and tried to think things through. There were transports that brought stuff in. They were built peculiarly, narrow and long. Not unique. They were used for other sorts of applications, too, including transport for people who lived in the old streets, the ones where the houses dated back five hundred years and had been encased in clear dimatough inside and out to stay standing. Narrow flyers kept accidents there to a minimum.

  Of course, those narrow flyers accommodated only a couple of people and usually enough cargo space for, say, a dozen bags of groceries, or three smallish kids. By definition not enough for a peacekeeper force. Of course, I didn’t need a peacekeeper force. What I needed was a flyer I could fit in, and in which I could carry Nat. If he needed to be stretched out—I really didn’t want to think of what they might have done to him—he’d fit on the floor behind those front seats. And I’d seen those cars—whole fleets of them—in this area before, bringing supplies to factories, or stuff to sell, I presumed.

  The problem, though, was that most places down here worked around the clock. Which meant their cars would be in operation round the clock. And if things still worked down here like they used to work when I was young, then they would establish high justice with a flicker of the burner and very little thought. Not that it was a crime-ridden area. Even broomers with lairs here did their outlawing elsewhere. But any type of property or person crime was summarily punished. Which was probably why kids could play on the street, unsupervised, at all hours.

  I walked towards the end opposite the spider as I thought, and looked into every alleyway and corridor. The two were virtually indistinguishable down here, where the whole place was roofed over, and where building was totally unregulated. You could walk down a street, and suddenly find yourself in the middle of someone’s dining room—or restaurant, nor was the distinction between those two often blindingly clear—and then all you could do was apologize and back out.

  I passed some places like that, and I passed others that were clearly alleyways, outside factories or homes. But those factories were noisy and animated, and the homes had people flitting in and out. I walked on. Then it occurred to me that the place had a vertical dimension. It was a good seventy-five feet to the terrace that roofed it over. And in that space there were not only multistory buildings, but people had created multistory alleyways in between. They were accessible by broom and by rickety ladders affixed to the side of the buildings. In this case I took the ladder, because, like an idiot, I’d left my broo
m back in the lair. So I climbed the ladder up, one level, two, three. And then I realized that finally, here, I’d discovered Deep Under’s equivalent of residential streets. There were flyers—and brooms—parked outside silent, sleeping houses.

  I’m paranoid, right? It’s a perfectly logical outcome of my upbringing. So I went all the way to the topmost level, then shimmied along the wall, in the deepest shadow, to the backmost parked flyer. And then I got out my burner, and was just pointing it carefully at the gen lock—no that won’t cause the flyer to spring open, but it allows you to get your fingers in there and jiggle it open, when the most imperious whisper this side of a Good Man’s council room sounded.

  “Stop.”

  I stopped. Not because the whisper was that commanding—all right, maybe that, a little—but because down here if I didn’t stop, I might well be stopped with a shot through the head.

  Then I spun around, quickly, using my fast-movement ability, and pointed the burner.

  “Oh, for the love of heaven, Lucius. Stop that, too.” Abigail was on broomback, about ten feet from me, and looking—somehow, despite goggles and hood—furious. She hadn’t put on her oxygen mask. But even so, how someone can look furious, when all you can see of her is a bit of pointed nose, a little pointed chin and a slightly too pressed together mouth, all of this ten feet away and in semidark, I don’t know. Then again, she did look like Ben, and I used to read Ben pretty well.

  As I clumsily lowered the burner, she flew nearer, dismounted, clipped the broom to her belt, and glared up at me in a way that, had she been taller than I, would have had me cowering and covering my head. “Stupid,” she said.

  It was a final pronouncement, and yet it had a sort of indulgent tone, like an adult’s comment on a toddler’s embarrassing and endearing mistake. “You can’t burn the genlock without killing the alarm first,” she said. “You’d have had the whole street on us in another minute.”