A Covenant of Justice (14 page)

She started to lift a hand—Sawyer knocked it away and slapped her again.

“This gives you pleasure!” Three-Dollar accused.

“Damn right it does!” Sawyer snarled back. “But even if it didn't give me pleasure, I'd still have to do this. Consider it a job-benefit that I get to beat on Vampire women!” He slapped the queen again.

Finally, at last—

Zillabar rose haughtily to her feet, her eyes glaring, her hands curled into defensive claws, her lips curled back from her teeth, her face contorted in rage and fury.
“How dare you lay a hand on me, you filthy barbarian beast! How dare you even presume to touch the sacred flesh of a Regency aristocrat! I'll have you filleted alive and served to the rats who eat the garbage of the street!
”

Sawyer ignored her rage. He took the ration-bar from Three-Dollar and held it out before her. “Eat. If you don't eat this, I'll cram it down your throat until you choke to death on it. If you ever again try to refuse an order from me or any of my companions, I'll strip you naked and parade you through the center of the dirtiest back alley of pig-town! You'll do exactly what we tell you or you'll discover the true meaning of dishonor—and you'd better believe it when I tell you that I know dishonor.”

“I believe it,” she replied haughtily.

“Yes, you should. I learned it all from watching Vampires at work and at play. I know what happened at Drydel's secret villa. So does Lee—and half a dozen other witnesses. So don't give me any more of your disgusting arrogance. You and your kind have no higher role to play than the stingflies that suck a man's blood in the forest. In my eyes, you live as a parasite, sucking the blood of others and giving nothing in return but death, disease, and despair. If you died right now, I'd dance on your corpse and sing a song of disgusting fornication. I know more than a few. But we need you alive and you'll stay alive! If you try again to will yourself to death, I promise you, you'll live just long enough to regret it.”

The Lady Zillabar glared at him, but she took the ration-bar from him and bit into it savagely. She never took her eyes from his. She didn't have to speak, but Sawyer knew exactly which part of his anatomy she dreamed of tearing off with her teeth. He turned away, half in disgust, half so she wouldn't see how visceral a reaction she had triggered in him.

Three-Dollar followed him to the other end of the casket where Sawyer pretended to busy himself checking on Finn. “You look like a man who has swallowed a live toad,” he said softly. “Twice.”

Sawyer glanced away, glanced down, glanced finally back to Three-Dollar. “All right, yes. I have. I did. I said I liked slapping her. I lied. I wanted to get even with her more than anything in the universe. And now that I have her here—in my power, under my control, where I can finally take my revenge against her—I see that I don't like myself for what I've done or what I want to do to her in the future. And I blame you. Until I met you, I didn't have to worry about scruples or consciences or things like that. I could just do the job and collect the money. And if occasionally, the universe offered me the opportunity for revenge, I could consider that a bonus.

“Now, however, I find myself thinking dangerous thoughts—that even beating up on a Vampire bitch who deserves it, who earned it fairly, who would kill us all in an instant if she could, carries no honor; only the stain of brutality and barbarism. You did that to me, you son of a bitch. You took away my pride in myself as a cruel bastard. You've destroyed me, you know.”

“I don't think so,” said Three-Dollar. “If anything, I've given you the opportunity to reinvent yourself.”

“Oh, great—sure. What shall I turn into next? A poodle-boy?”

Three-Dollar grinned at the thought, but shook his head blandly. “No. I expect you might make a wonderful TimeBinder someday.”

“Huh? Who? Me? You've lost your mind, ‘Binder.”

Three-Dollar patted Sawyer on the shoulder. “Don't worry about it. I have no intention of dying any time soon. And I haven't yet decided to name you as my heir.” He walked away, leaving Sawyer staring after him, wondering if the old man had just made a joke or a prediction.

“All right,” said Lee. “I've paced this shelf long enough. I can't find any secret passages, entrances to caves, hidden stairwells, or anything else. Where do we go from here?”

Sawyer grinned. “You didn't look hard enough.”

“Huh?”

The tracker pointed at the wall of jungle. Lee glanced at it without seeing, then looked back to Sawyer. “Yeah? So?”

Sawyer looked annoyed. “Look again.”

Lee still didn't see it.

Sawyer took him by the arm and led him to the edge of the shelf, where the huge branch of the closest blacktree reached out to form a curving avenue down into the leafy darkness.

“That?” asked Lee, incredulous.

“That,” confirmed Sawyer, blandly.

“We walk . . . ? Into the jungle?”

“Uh-huh. We walk. Into the jungle.”

“But—. . .” Lee pulled away abruptly. “That might have worked on Thoska-Roole, where the only predators you need to worry about wear police uniforms, but this—” The clone-brother couldn't find the words to express his discomfort. “Do you know what things lurk in that blackness? I've heard stories of prowlers and growlers and bears—of beasties and goblins and long-legged thingies that go bump in the dark. I've heard of killer swarms and trap-door spiders, carnivorous shrike-vines, and even feral Chtorrans. People tell stories about pythons the size of shuttleboats and slithering panther-sharks and—and—. . . I don't know what else. And you want us to just walk down into that unprotected and vulnerable?”

“Yep,” agreed Sawyer. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Uh—” Lee blinked. After a moment, he managed to say, “I think one of us has a communication disorder.”

“And the other one has an unreasonable terror of the dark,” Sawyer replied coolly. “Which one do you want to lay claim to?”

Lee stopped as the meaning of Sawyer's words sank in. “Cowardice? You accuse me of cowardice?”

“Of course not. I've seen you in battle.”

“Then what—?”

Sawyer held up a hand. “A coward would refuse to proceed. A courageous man just needs to know the nature of his fear before he confronts it.”

Lee took a step back, incredulous. “That won't work. The Lees did not raise many fools. Or let me say it another way. The wise man studies the odds before he lays down his bet. I don't feel like wagering my life against these odds.”

Sawyer nodded with understanding. “I hear you. We'll have to proceed without you then.”

“No. We'll have to find another way. Or another destination. We'll go back up and recall the boat. We'll fly. We don't need to see this M'bele of yours. We can connect with the rebellion here on Dupa. I have some sources of my own—”

Sawyer shook his head. “We can't fly to M'bele. I have no idea where he lives. This jungle highway provides the only access to him.” He advanced on Lee angrily. “Listen to me. We don't have time to argue over this. If you can't summon up the strength to confront a few miserable non-sentient appetites, then you sure as hell can't summon up the strength to confront the Regency and its millions of sentient Phaestoric hungers! Now demonstrate the courage that you keep speaking or stay behind. Choose and choose now. We have no more time to waste.”

Sawyer stepped over to Finn's coffin and switched on the levitators. He looked to Three-Dollar. “If you want to come with me, then let's get moving. Otherwise, I'll leave you behind and I'll get Finn there on my own.”

Three-Dollar nodded. He nudged Zillabar and she stood up again; she had abandoned her mask of hostility. Now she walked proudly, like a queen. Sawyer noted the change in her attitude. That the Lady had now regained her presence meant that he would have to take extra precautions; it meant that she had begun planning ways to manage the course of events to her own advantage again. He grunted and strode over to where she stood.

He examined each of her bindings carefully. None showed any signs of tampering him; that worried him even more. Finally, he looked up into her eyes. She stared back at him with equanimity. “If you try to escape, I'll kill you—and I'll let the scavengers of pig-town feast on your remains. And I'll have pictures of your final ignominy distributed to every inhabited world in the Cluster. Do you understand me?”

“You will do as you must,” she replied. “I will do as I must.”

“I didn't ask you for a lesson in behavioral science,” Sawyer snapped. “Do you understand me?” He lifted a hand as if to strike her.

She glanced at his hand, then returned her pale dry gaze to his. “I understand you. Obviously, you don't understand me.”

In reply, Sawyer spat sideways. He checked to see that the others had taken their places at the handles of the coffin and then gave the command to move. Moving carefully, they stepped out onto the broad expanse of the blacktree's limb and began following it carefully down.

The branch of the tree presented itself as a broad curved highway; occasional sub-branches curled up off of it, big enough to look like independent trees themselves. They bent outward, forming wide pathways across to other branches. Sawyer led them past the first three branches, then had them cross a leftward-curving limb that stretched out over a deep gap in the forest canopy. “Don't look down,” he cautioned.

Zillabar kept her eyes steadily forward. Three-Dollar glanced down once and didn't react. Lee couldn't help himself, he had to look, and instantly regretted it. He couldn't see the ground below at all. It lay hidden in gloom, but what he could see presented such a horrifying sense of their height within the forest canopy that he involuntarily gasped and clutched the levitation casket beside him.

“I told you not to look,” Sawyer called from ahead.

Lee gritted his teeth and followed the others. The branch on which they crossed seemed as wide as any mall or starship corridor—but the fact of its unprotected height made it seem much more terrifying to him. The clone-man wanted to drop to his knees and crawl along the length of it; but his pride overwon his fear and he began picking his steps carefully. Beside him, on the other side of the casket, Zillabar snorted in contempt.

“Fuck you with a pig's dick,” Lee replied, and forced himself to match her haughty steps. Zillabar smiled to herself.

At last they reached a place where the branch lay across another horizontal highway and they lowered themselves down onto it. This limb sprung from another blacktree and they followed its leisurely rise upward to a wide gnarl, where Sawyer directed them to rest again. They had come close enough to the roof of the forest that the dingy light of the day actually sparkled through the green, blue, and black leaves above. The minty smell of the blacktrees pervaded the softly glowing air.

Sawyer paced the gnarl as if looking for something. It curled around them like an amphitheater, and he stepped up onto the wooden berm and began pacing off a measure. He stopped, scratched himself, looked around—”No, I can't have made a mistake that stupid,” he said. He paced back the other way. He stopped again and stared up into the branches.

He climbed back down from the height of the gnarl and stood next to the casket, looking frustrated. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. He rubbed his cheek with the flat of his hand. He wiped his nose. He scratched under his arm. He scratched his head. “I could use a bath,” he remarked to no one in particular.

Three-Dollar looked at him blandly, patiently.

Lee-1169 did not have the same manners as the TimeBinder. “Have we reached the end of your plan? Or have you simply run out of ideas?”

Sawyer looked at him sharply, as if offended. He replied with an almost haughty tone, “Neither. Some things have changed here. I need to remember what to do. Leave me alone to think.” He didn't wait for Lee's reply, but strode to the opposite side of the wide gnarl. He gave it a frustrated kick, then turned and leaned against it, folding his arms across his chest. “Damn!” he said to himself. “I wish I had Finn here to talk to—”

Abruptly, he realized what he had said—and the horror and grief flooded in on him anew. He didn't know whether to rage or cry. He lowered his head and bit his lip, trying to hold back the tears welling up in his eyes. This whole thing—he hated it. Frustrated, he gave up. He crossed to the casket and put his hands on the glass over his brother's unconscious face, as if to touch him, as if to wake him. “Finn,” he whispered. “Please—I need you now. I spoke in error when I said I thought I could work faster without you. I can't. I need you.”

Finn didn't answer. He remained unconscious and Sawyer feared that Finn would never answer him again. He looked at the readouts on the casket and saw that Finn's condition remained unchanged from the last time he had looked, and the time before that, and the time before that too.

Sawyer stood there for a long moment. He knew that Three-Dollar and Lee and Zillabar stood watching him, waiting for him to act. Each of them had their own thoughts and reactions to his . . . failure.

What had he missed? What had he forgotten here? What had he never known? Why hadn't he paid closer attention the last time they'd come through here? He remembered that Finn and M'bele had—

He stopped. He straightened. He turned around. He stared.

The others looked at him with curiosity, startled by his sudden alertness.

Sawyer climbed slowly back to the top of the gnarl. He paced along the ridge, not counting, just looking. Eventually, he found a small shallow depression. “Aha. I knew I'd found the right place. I don't make
stupid
mistakes.”

Sawyer opened the front of his trousers and began urinating into the depression. The yellow stream splashed away in warm spatters. He stood there, letting it flow and flow. He filled the depression in the berm until it overflowed, then forced himself to stop while he still had fluid left in his bladder. The rank smell of his urine reached his nostrils then and made him wonder what he'd eaten recently. Abruptly he remembered the food in the shuttleboat and shuddered uncomfortably.