Acts of Conscience (34 page)

I kept expecting we would talk, that I’d find out something, at least, about the Kapellmeister’s promised trust, but, for the most part, we rode on in silence, watching the landscape go by, evolving slowly as we went on north.

No cities out here. Nothing but Opveldt and the undulating course of the Somber River for ten thousand kilometers, all the way from Vapaa on the edge of the antarctic highlands to Koromalluma at the head of Somberfjord, beyond the Mistibos Forest.

Be nice to see that? The travel shows always compared it to Kong Island, showing one remake or another of that cool, cruel old story. The reality? I don’t know. Something different, surely, the library telling me about herds of dwarf womfrogs living hidden in the dense woodland, safe from human predation. Dwarf womfrogs and a primitive species of green wolfen.

Once, in midafternoon, I lifted the camper high over the river, giving us a good view, speeding up, just as though I were really going someplace, rather than nowhere at all, golden-green Opveldt plains stretching out in all directions, going over the horizon in a way that made me swear I could see the curvature of the planet, effect heightened by the way the land came back up in the form of distant blue-gray mountains.

There. Something.

The Kapellmeister said, “A large herd of wild womfrogs. They are not quite so decimated here as back on the Koperveldt.”

Why not?

The library whispered, Apparently, forty percent of the Groenteboer population lives on the richer cropland of the Koperveldt. In addition, there is a great deal of hunting done by Compact tourists from the large cities of Orikhalkos and Midoriiro. The only Compact City on the Opveldt is Vapaa, not known for its hunters, nor as a tourist mecca.

What about the Koromallumans?

They do their hunting on the dry savannas north of the Mistibos, a region never colonized by Groenteboeren.

It made me picture the place, mountain and plain, river, forest, desert... Even an otherwise empty colony world, settled by humans only a few centuries back, is still a whole world, as much a world as any other. The netvid shows make us forget that, make us think that Green Heaven is just a place, a place where hunters go, because who cares about some crappy old cities or a dank forest where nobody goes?

Makes you wonder what else is out there, ignored because some corporate marketing executive has deemed it “uninteresting.” Here and now, this uninteresting world showed me a vista of dark shapes out on the shining plain, moving, oh-so-slowly, toward the north.

I wonder what’s there? Someplace they can be safe? I wonder what the hunters and tourists will do when the womfrogs are gone?

The spacesuit whispered, You’re coming up on a fairly large Groenteboer trading center, Gaetan. It would seem wise either to give Tegenzinstad a wide berth or else lower your altitude and speed.

Tegenzinstad
. Aversion City? Interesting name. I dropped the camper down toward the river road, throttling back as I did so. “I’d like to see this place,” I said, “way out here where they live, away from the influence of the... omgangers.” I suddenly realized I liked that term. Wouldn’t you rather be an omganger than a vreemdeling?

The Kapellmeister said, “It may be that I would attract rather too much attention...”

“I’ll open the popup before we go in. You should be all right in there.”

The spacesuit whispered, We can establish a link between your communications barrette and the pod software, if you’d like.

I started to speak, but the Kapellmeister suddenly said, “I’d like that.”

Interesting. Ship AIs talking to both of us? Why?

The town proved to be hardly anything at all, two rows of low wooden and plastic buildings lining a wide spot in the road by the river, ruts flattened out by heavier traffic, giving the place a main street of dry, hard-packed dirt. A few residential back streets here, some warf-and-warehouse structures on the waterfront.

I had a brief moment of inner quickening when I saw the small sternwheeler drawn up to one of the piers, thin black smoke drifting up from its funnels. A steamboat? None of those left on Earth. Not even in museums. However, a sharp look at the design and placement of the stacks told me it was a fake. Besides, I could smell the stench of burned diesel over the delicate mud and dogshit scent of the town.

I parked the camper at something that looked like a corral and stable on the outskirts of town, giving its excited owner a few Orikhalkan
drakhmai
in payment.

“We don’t get many omgangers
here
, I tell you!” But I could tell his main interest was the machine, standing out like a magic carpet in a dirt parking lot full of what looked like gas-turbine-drive off-road wheeled vehicles.

I walked downtown, if you could call it that, fancying myself as having been transported to the Old West, feeling like I ought to have big solid-propellant revolvers on my hips instead of a little gas-recoil dartgun in my pocket. Jingling spurs. Thumping boots, yessiree... Hell. There’s even a
horse
over there that little boy is...

The library whispered, It appears to be a local breed of Shetland pony.

Close enough. Didn’t Mongols ride ponies, for Christ’s sake?

A breed related to Przewalksky’s horse, perhaps.

Walked down a long sidewalk made of splintered gray boards, like the ones in the fake ghost towns they stuck under domes on Mars in the twenty-third century, when the interplanetary tourist trade was just getting started, not really thinking about where I was going, or what I intended to do.

Walking. Walking by myself in a street with real people... sudden prickling on the back of my neck when I realized people were... noticing me. Omganger, you could imagine them thinking. We don’t get many omgangers round here. Nobody seemed to be smiling.

Well. There’ll be a... what did they call it? A general store, somewhere around here. I can get some fresh food maybe, something to replace the canned shit still stocked in the camper. Get a few hemidozens of beer... my mouth started to feel dry at the thought. I...

Passed by an open door, doorway spilling warm golden light into the darkening street, street red-lit by the shifting sky of an impending sunset. Music. For a moment, I wished for the tinkling of a player piano... well, maybe not. There probably weren’t many player pianos in the Wild West of the 1880s. OK, one of those old uprights, some skinny guy in a bowler playing away, cigar jutting from the corner of his mouth at a jaunty angle, those armband things on his upper sleeves...

The library whispered, More a
fin de siècle
image, Gaetan.

In any event, the music coming out of the bar was like nothing I’d ever heard, with a rapid backbeat rather heavily into cymbals and tambourines, melody line dominated by what sounded like some hybrid between a sitar and a balalaika. I went in without another thought, ignoring the AIs’ unease, communicated like the ghost of a heartfelt pang. I’m armed. What the hell can happen to me?

Walked across the room, people at tables turning to look, thinking, In just another second, the piano player will stop playing, the whole place will grow quiet, people wondering about the Man With No Name. I squinted at the bartender, giving him my best imitation of a steely-eyed look.

Faint, faint inner voice: Everybody in this room can probably tell what you’re thinking. What makes odd people seem
odd
is the way they broadcast their...

The bartender said, “So? What the hell do you
want
, asshole?”

Behind me, I heard somebody whisper, “What the fuck is that in his hair? One of those things little girls wear?”

I said, “Um. Beer?”

Sudden hand on my shoulder, spinning me around. Tall, fat gray-haired man, big belly wobbling, loose jowls covered with two-day-old stubble. “My parents moved out here from the Koperveldt just to get away from you sons of bitches,” translator giving good account of itself, hardly letting me hear the real Groentans words at all. “Why don’t you just get the fuck out of here and go on back to your hunting lodge?”

The bartender said, “God damn it, Arie...”

“Shut the fuck up, Lars. Mind your business.” He gave me a hard shove and shouted, “Get the fuck out, Omganger!”

I staggered back, feeling my heart pound, got the dartgun out of my pocket and pointed it at his fat gut.

Click-crack
.

Narrow grin on Arie’s face.

I felt an odd tingling in my neck as I turned.

Found myself looking down the black barrel of a solid-propellant handgun.

Dim voice, maybe the library, maybe just some isolated cognitive driver separating out, trying to get my attention: Looks like that thing might throw a two-centimeter slug. You’d look awfully funny with nothing left of your head but a lower jaw.

The bartender said, “Mikah, you mess up my fucking saloon and I’ll...”

“Take it easy, Lars.” Mikah was a tall, skinny man with a big nose and unusually pale blue eyes, eyes so blue they looked white, pale irises making his scleral tissue look like yellow ivory. To me: “Why don’t you put that down, Omganger. On the bar. Nice and slow.”

Lines of dialog from ten thousand simplistic stories. What does the hero do now? I put my little dartgun down on the bar.

Mikah smiled and uncocked his revolver. “All yours, Arie.”

Arie screamed, “
Bastard
!”

I didn’t even look before I ducked, getting under his flailing fist. Punched him in the middle of the chest, turned to run as he sprawled on the floor... stood still, looking back down the barrel of Mikah’s gun.

Mikah said, “Arie’s not done with you, Omganger. Are you, Arie?”

I could hear him struggling to his feet behind me, hissing with rage.

All right. Just like any damn barroom brawl. Been through dozens of them, God damn it. If you can’t look after yourself, you don’t belong in the fucking company of working men and women.

I ducked again as I turned, listening to Arie grunt as he threw another haymaker. Poked him another good one, right where fat belly met flabby tits. Arie looked surprised, made a little fish face, going
ooh
,
oooh
as he went down again.

I looked back at Mikah. Fair fight? Can I go now?

Look of disgust on Mikah’s face, telling me, perhaps, this was going to come out all... He said, “
Gouden jesus juultijd
, Arie! Maybe you better lay off the beer, huh?”

From the floor, Arie said, “Ooop... oop...” He started to get up again, not looking like he was in any shape to launch another roundhouse blow at my face. I took a step toward the door, deciding I’d just forget about the damn dartgun and...

Mikah said, “Rip? Saadler?”

Two more men stepping up to the bar, one of them getting me by the right arm, the other by the left, turning me to face Arie, standing by, wobbly on his feet, still having trouble getting his breath.

Mikah said, “Go ahead. Arie. Get in your licks.”

They let him hit me six times, each time with progressively more weight behind the blow, then threw me in the street just as the camper pulled up in a cloud of dust.

Nice, nice starry sky overhead now. How did it get to be dark so soon?

I heard someone, Rip maybe, or Saadler, say, “What the fuck is
that
?”

The Kapellmeister’s voice said, “Can you stand up, Gaetan? Can you get in the vehicle?”

I said, “Uhhkh...”

Mikah’s gun went
click-crack
again, recognizable now as the sound of the hammer being thumbed back.

The Kapellmeister’s voice, powerfully amplified, speaking perfect Groentans, said, “
Try to use a weapon and I will kill you all
.”

Quick sharp echoes off the facades of nearby buildings, then only the sound of the wind, faraway voices from people still inside the bar. A faraway hoofbeat, going
klop
on the street.

“Get in the camper cab, Gaetan.”

Somehow, I got inside, lay back with my eyes shut as we drove away.

o0o

We drove northward another hundred kilometers or so before pulling off the road at a bend in the river, a little peninsula of sorts with a copse of tall, spreading trees that sort of hid the camper. By then, I’d made a partial recovery, enough to get out and go in back to take a look at the damage, admiring the bruised lumps on my face, feeling tender spots on my ribs.

OK. No loose teeth. Nothing broken. Arie must have been even flabbier than he looked. If it’d been me doing the punching, I’d sure as hell’ve taken out a few teeth, cracked a rib or two... I rinsed my mouth with mousepiss, started putting together the fixings for a cold cut and crudité dinner, grabbed my chair and went outside. Start a fire? Why the hell bother? I set up down by the river, watched the moons rise and listened to the water gurgle as I ate.

The Kapellmeister said, “Sorry I wasn’t able to come to your aid more quickly.”

“Forget it. All’s well, et fucking cetera.”

The Kapellmeister went away then, leaving me alone to munch my cold dinner and watch too-familiar stars wheel around an imaginary point in the southern sky, came back after a while with some wide-eyed little thing in its clutches, tentacles wrapped around its head.

Snip
.

Slurp
.

“Ahhh. Splendid.” The Kapellmeister’s ersatz voice imbued with the sound of sincere joy.

“What the hell do you get out of reading their minds as you kill them?”

A long silence, then: “The main purpose is to still their bodies, quiet their fears, mask the... final pain.” More silence. “And to detach their conscious minds from the... habit of existence.”

Meaningless? Perhaps. “What good does that do?”

“Their end is not so dreadful then.”

“How can death be dreadful once it’s over and done with?”

“How do
you
feel about the prospect of being eaten?”

I remembered the wolfen, and thought, Tou-fucking-shay.

The Kapellmeister said, “We are all eaten in the end. As living by a predator...” It paused to suck on the end of the thing’s bleeding neck. “...as a residual corpse by bacteria and fungi, if no other scavenger.” Right. Sophomoric bullshit. I said, “You never did tell me what
you
get out of the process.”