A quick glance around showed Dalt that his initial assessment had been correct: a deserted alley. He peered down though the grate and saw Jon's face hovering in the darkness on the other side.
"Wait here, Jon. Get ready to open this thing as soon as you see me. I don't know what I'm going to find up here and I may want to get back down there in a big hurry."
"I will wait."
Dalt walked to where the alley merged with a narrow thoroughfare and looked about. Not much traffic this time of day. The civilians from the village down the hill had sold their wares or done their assigned tasks and were gradually filtering out of the fortress and returning to their homes. All were to be out of the fortress by sunset.
He watched two peasant types pass by and fell in behind them, dredging up his mannerism training and putting it to use.
Like most Cultural Survey Service operatives, he had been put through in-depth training in human behavior and mannerisms, the rationale being that humans will behave like humans no matter how long they have been separated from the rest of the race. There would always be exceptions, of course, but in general the CS theory had been proven correct on many a cut-off splinter world. Dalt had been taught to utilize an array of subtle, non-specific behavioral cues to give him an aura of belonging in any milieu. Calling on that training now as he walked the streets of Overlord Mekk's fortress, he appeared to be a civilian who was used to traveling within these walls and who knew exactly where he was going.
But he had no idea where he was going. He knew he did not want to go through the gate and down to the village, which was where the two men he was following were headed. He turned off at an intersection and went hunting for barracks or any other place where the troops might gather this time of day.
Near sunset he found a group of them clustered about the door to a tavern of sorts, sipping mugs of ale and laughing. Probably just off the day watch. Dalt approached and stood slightly off to one side, affecting an air of humble deference to their positions as defenders of the Overlord.
Finally someone deigned to notice him.
"What are you standing there for?" a trooper asked in a surly tone.
He was dark, middle-aged, with a big belly and no hint of kindness or mirth in his laughter.
Dalt avoided eye contact and said, "Sir, I –"
"Looking for a drink?"
The trooper casually flipped the dregs of his mug at Dalt who could have easily dodged the flying liquid, but chose instead to let it spatter across his jerkin.
He carefully brushed himself off while the troopers roared and slapped the fat one on the back. Adjusting his clothes, he checked on the position of the blaster tucked inside his belt. CSS regulations forbade carrying one, but he knew Mekk's troops were selected for their brutality and, regulations or no regulations, he had no intention of letting some barbarian swine stick a dirk between his ribs just for fun.
"I'm searching for Captain Ghentren," he said when the laughter had quieted enough for him to be heard.
"You won't find him here," the fat one said, more kindly disposed now toward a man he had embarrassed and degraded.
"I bring some of his personal effects from Lord Kitru's realm. He is awaiting them."
"Well then you'd better rush off and find him, little man!" the fat one roared and went to refill his mug.
Dalt took a gamble. "I'll find him sooner or later, and I'm sure he'll be glad to learn of all the help I received in carrying out his errand."
This brought a sudden change in mood to the group of troopers. Their laughter died and the fat enlisted man turned and studied Dalt. The gamble had paid off – Ghentren was not known as one of the more easy-going officers.
"He's quartered in the red building over there," he said, pointing. "But he's overseeing wall patrol now. Should be back right after sunset."
Dalt turned to see which building he meant, then walked the other way, leaving an uneasy knot of troopers behind him. Along the way he drew a mental map, picking out easy landmarks for Jon to follow in the darkness. A bell sounded from the direction of the gate – the warning signal for all civilians to leave the fortress.
He quickened his pace.
-XXV-
Jon found waiting for Tlad an agonizing experience. If Tlad was captured by the troopers for being inside the fortress without a pass, he would be dealt with harshly – perhaps lethally – and it would be the tery's fault.
And it had all been a bluff.
If Tlad had held firm and refused to go up into the fortress, Jon knew he would have had no choice but to place the bomb as he’d originally promised. But his intransigent posture, fueled by his genuine craving for revenge, had fooled Tlad.
As he watched the sky darken through the grate, he became increasingly apprehensive. He was about to promise himself that if Tlad returned unharmed he would abandon all plans to kill Ghentren and forget restoring the balance in exchange for Tlad's well-being, when he heard footsteps approaching. Tlad's voice whispered above him.
"Open up! Quick!"
Bursting with relief, Jon strained and pushed the grate upward until Tlad could slip under it, then let it down. For a few heartbeats both huddled in silence in the damp drainage pipe, then returned to the ventilation shaft and descended to the observation corridor.
"You found him?"
Jon’s resolution of a moment before was a quickly-fading memory. Knowledge that the debt incurred by the slaughter of the two beings in the world he had loved most was soon to be settled vibrated through his body, blotting out all other considerations.
Tlad nodded in the dim glow that washed through the wall from the Hole.
"Found him. But I'm warning you – don't do it. You won't be the same man when you come back."
"Tell me where he is." The tery's mind was on a single course now.
With obvious reluctance, Tlad knelt and drew a map in the dust on the floor, showing Jon which way to best travel without being seen.
"He's in a red building here. Just where in that particular building he'll be, I don't know." He looked up and caught the tery's eyes. "It's too risky for you, Jon. Don't go."
"I won't be long."
He turned away from Tlad's troubled face and glided smoothly up the ladder into the growing darkness above. He waited in the storm drain until dusk faded into night, then slipped up into the alley.
A terrible urgency consumed Jon as he moved from shadow to shadow along the narrow, ill-lit streets. He had to find the captain. The end of Ghentren consumed him, obsessed him, inflamed him. Everything would be put right when that man was dead – the sun would move more smoothly across the sky, the breeze would blow cleaner, the world would have brighter days. Ghentren had become a blot on all Creation, a defect that had to be removed.
Then...only then would everything again be as it should be.
He spotted the red building dead ahead, but it lay across a wide courtyard lined with off-duty troopers. Jon had to detour through three back alleys to reach the building from the side. Once there he stole from window to window, listening for a voice, looking for a face when he dared.
He found the captain in a corner room. He was seated on his cot. A woman stood before him.
"Pay me first," she said, giggling as she lifted the hem of her skirt. "That was our agreement."
"I could have you arrested for being within the walls after dark, you little sow," Ghentren said with a playful smile as he reached into the coin pouch at his belt.
"My sisters and I have been an exception to that rule, long before you ever came here."
A table with a lamp and a low wooden stool completed the furnishings of the room. The door to the left was closed and bolted.
Jon was through the window and standing in the middle of the tiny room before either of them noticed him. Ghentren shot to his feet as the girl began to scream but the tery was faster than either of them. With a single motion he shoved the girl back into the corner of the room where she huddled stunned and gaspin
g for breath, then he ripped the captain's reaching arm away from the hilt of his sword. Wrapping the fingers of his right hand around the man's throat, he lifted him clear of the floor and held him there.
"Look at me," Jon said in a low growl, his face a hand's breadth from the captain's.
Ghentren's eyes, already wide with fear, widened further with shock at the sound of coherent speech from the tery's throat.
Jon stared at him. A bloody haze closed in on him, narrowing the world's population to two individuals, the captain and himself. Nothing else existed at this moment, nothing else mattered. He could feel within his body the arrows that had killed his father, feel across his throat the bite of the blade that had cut off his mother's life. How he’d hungered for this moment.
"Do you remember me?" he hissed into the captain's terrified face.
Ghentren's mouth worked but no words passed the lips. He shook his head: No, he absolutely did not remember the beast that held him by the throat.
"Remember the two teries you killed near a cave when you were working for Kitru?"
He wanted Ghentren to remember. He must know why he was dying.
The captain shook his head again.
"Your archers killed the male and your swordsman nearly beheaded the female – remember?"
Still no light of recognition in the eyes.
Jon was appalled. Did it mean so little to this man? He had forever changed Jon's world, made it a dark, lonely and fearful place by killing the two people he had loved most, and Ghentren didn't even remember it! What sort of creature was this?
"And the son, the young tery who charged you with a club – remember what you did to him? Remember how you chased him and sliced him and left him for dead?"
Jon caught an impression of movement out of the corner of his right eye. The girl, still cringing in he corner, was rising slowly to her feet. He ignored her, and brought Ghentren's face closer to his own until their noses almost touched.
"He did not die!"
Ghentren remembered something now. It showed in his eyes along with a kind of disbelief that this could really be happening, that this beastial creature could actually be in his own quarters, speaking to him, threatening him. Jon acted to erase all doubt by tightening the pressure on Ghentren's windpipe.
"And what is more, I am not the dumb animal you thought. I am a man! And I have come to collect on a debt – in kind!"
Horror and mortal fear of a slow, agonizing death accentuated the terror already distorting the captain's features. Jon hoped he was feeling what his mother felt as she saw Ghentren and his men charge into her home with drawn swords.
More movement to Jon's right – the girl was edging the wall toward the door. He was about to reach for her, to thrust her back into the corner, when the man in his grasp did something that took the tery completely by surprise.
The captain began to cry.
Tears rolled from his eyes as his body jerked with deep, pitiful sobs. Jon released him and watched as he sank to his knees and tried to beg in his choked voice for mercy. His pants were soaked with urine down both legs and he shook with unconcealed terror.
Feeling as if he had been doused with icy water, Jon took a backward step and regarded his nemesis. The red haze had melted away, as had the rage. He was aware of the woman somewhere in the room behind him, bending toward the floor, but his mind was filled with wonder at his own stupidity.
Was this the man whose death was to restore the balance? Was this blubbering, groveling creature even worth slaying?
What a fool he had been. Risking Tlad's life and bartering with the lives of all the Talents just to put an end to the days of one man. Tlad had been right – Ghentren wasn't worth it. He was scum. Jon's right hand felt unclean now after touching him...
Turning to go, he caught a blur of movement behind him. Before he could react, the back of his head seemed to explode. His knees gave, and as he fell he saw the girl standing there with the heavy wooden stool in her hand. He tried to rise but Ghentren was up and had grabbed the stool from the girl. Jon saw him raise it, saw it descend, felt a crushing blow to his head, then saw nothing...but he could still hear the captain's voice.
"You think you're a man, do you? We'll have to find a fitting end for a hairy piece of dung like you."
Jon felt another blow, and the voice faded away.
-XXVI-
...pain in his hands and in his feet...can't move them... the cool night air on his face...opening his eyes and looking down on a cheering, jostling crowd of troopers...and beyond them, others...all watching him...a loud gong echoing through the darkness…
...wood against his spine and against the backs of his outstretched arms...he looks right and left and sees spikes through his palms, nailing him to the wood...the same with his feet...and there's rope around each of his arms to keep his considerable weight from sagging too much and ripping free of the spikes...
...he hangs outside the fortress on a cross of wood...
...a voice below, taunting him...Captain Ghentren...the man he had spared stands safe now below...
"Are you awake, tery? Good. I don't want you to sleep through this. We're honoring you, in a way. You think you're a man, so we've raised you up like one. Feel the spikes in your hands and feet? That's the way a human heretic dies. Pretending to be human makes you a heretic. But since you're really a tery, we can't just leave you hanging there."
...there's kindling below, around the foot of the cross... Captain Ghentren puts a torch to it and steps back...
"See this? Fire. That's the way we rid ourselves of filthy teries."
...no hope of escape...no one to save him...he sees that now...and resigns himself to what must be...
...light flickers off the faces of the men circled below...Ghentren the parent-slayer grins up at him...his features joyous and hate filled as he cheers the flames upward along with the others...
...men...humans...he had so wanted to be accepted as one of them...
...one of them?...why?
...look at them...look at their glee in the face of another's agony...why had he wanted to be a man at all?...better to have stayed a tery forever...
...and then he remembers Tlad and Komak and Rab...and Adriel, of course...it was their acceptance he had craved...they were the humanity he had sought...
"I AM A MAN!" he shouts to those below as the heat builds...
Suddenly there is silence...awed...shaken.
"I AM ONE OF YOU!"
...someone laughs, nervously...then another...a stone flies out of the darkness and lands on his right shoulder...then laughter and jeering all around...and more stones...
...he has to close his eyes now...the heat is too much...the fur on his legs is burning, but the pain seems far away...the Talents...he failed them...now Mekk will get the weapons and exterminate them once and for all...they counted on him and he failed them...what can they do now?
...the pain comes nearer...each breath seems to contain flame...thoughts run together...
Am I dying as a man or as a beast?...does it matter?...does anyone in the laughing darkness out there know that a man is dying up here?...does anyone care?...will anyone remember me?...does anyone who knows me know that I am dying?...will the Talents curse me and hate me for failing them?...not Adriel...please don't let her hate me...please let someone remember me fondly after I'm gone...
Please let someone say, just once, that here was a good man...
All became pain and confusion, and soon the pain passed beyond all comprehension...
...leaving only confusion.
-XXVII-
Jon was late.
The ominous sound of the gong made Dalt uneasy. Jon could have been back and forth to Ghentren's quarters three times by now. Faintly heard laughter drifted in from the far end of the alley as Dalt waited under the grate. A passing voice shouted something about "a special burning."
That did it. He was frightened now. Jon was in trouble – he was sure of it.
He pressed up against the grate but still could not budge it. Leaving the latching lever in the open position, Dalt descended as rapidly as he knew how and hit the floor running. If he was wrong, Jon would be able to lift the grate and get down the airshaft on his own when he returned. If his suspicions were correct and Jon was in trouble...
There had to be something he could do.
The ceaseless struggle for existence in the Hole went barely noticed through the viewing wall to his right as he ran down the corridor. He came to the opening where the rocks had been pulled away and climbed out into the fresh night air.
Rab was gone. He was supposed to be waiting here but Dalt could find no trace of him. He couldn’t waste time looking for him. Dalt ran the two kilometers along a ravine that led up a hill to the fortress.
He saw the flames as soon as he topped the bank, but wouldn't allow himself to think that Jon might be in any way involved. They leaped high, those flames – six or seven meters into the air. The conflagration stood to the right of the gate, a short distance from the outer wall, and was surrounded by a knot of people.
Why the fire? That was the crucifixion spot. They burned teries and Talents in the pit on the far side of the fortress. What was going on?
A trooper shouted to him as he ran up.
"Where have you been? All villagers are to report to the gate when they hear the gong. You should know that by now. Get up there and learn a lesson!"
Dalt made no reply as he hurried on. He noted that the civilians were keeping to the rear of the circle of spectators, most with averted eyes. The front ranks were taken up by troopers, cheering, laughing, and drinking as they watched the burning body affixed to the cross.
He suspended all emotion as he pushed his way to the front to confirm his worst fears. No facial features remained on that charred corpse. But none was needed. The barrel chest, the shape of the head and legs...unmistakable.
Jon, the tery, the man, was dead.
The Tery Page 13