Steve Perry - Matador 05 - The 97th Step

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2024-12-03 0 0 645.25KB 313 页 5.9玖币
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Perry, Steve - The 97th Step
Scanned by Highroller and proofed more or less by Highroller.
Part One
The Seeker Asleep
Since love and fear can hardly exist together, it is far safer to be feared than
loved.
-MACHIAVELLI
THE SLAVER WAS about to buy trouble, though he didn't know it yet.
It was a spacers' pub, set in the run-down port section of Chüsai Tomadachi, the
wheelworld that orbited the planet Tomadachi, in the Shin System. The stale air
was thick with flick-stick smoke and its smell of burned cashews, and the lighting
was cycled to dim, giving enough illumination to see but hiding the shabbiness of
the painted and scratched aluminum walls. The place thrummed with an
undercurrent of tough talk and menace, but it was outlaw swagger, and not the
force-backed brute power of the Confed—the upper castes would hardly demean
themselves by coming to a scum hole like this for recreation.
At a small expanded-aluminum mesh table against one wall, two men sat drinking
ale. Ashanti Khahil Stoll was a big man, pushing two meters, sheathed overall in a
thick layer of fat. He wore a plain gray orthoskin coverall that struggled to contain
his bulk, and he looked relatively harmless compared to many of the men and
mues in the pub.
His companion, also dressed in plain gray orthoskins, was something else. He was
called Ferret, and he had a cold look about him that seemed anything but harmless.
In his early thirties, he was perhaps three decades younger than Stoll. Ferret
viewed the scene through hard green eyes, and while his face and hands were pale,
neither looked soft. In a room full of dangerous men, these two were harder than
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Perry, Steve - The 97th Step
most, and those who knew the biz but didn't know Ferret and Stoll stayed away
from their table. Mean dogs know how to avoid meaner ones.
Near the exit, the slaver stood glaring at his thrall.
Ferret stared at the slaver, then sipped at his ale. Slavery was illegal, of course, but
none of the pub's patrons was apt to worry about law, save how best to break it
and profit. Were the local cools or the Confed military to implode-bomb this
place, the serious crime rate for five light-years would drop dramatically. Ferret
was merely a thief and smuggler like his friend Stoll, but there were others "Who
dealt in worse crimes. Some who made slavers look like saints, dark dancers on
the fringe of the fringe.
The slaver's voice rose as he used it to cut at the thin boy who stood with his head
bowed under the abuse.
Over the years, "Ferret had learned to mind his own business, sometimes the hard
way, and this was none of it.
None of his business at all, until the strap appeared.
The slaver, a bulky human mue with the look of a heavy-gravity childhood,
produced the strap from a belt pouch. It looked like hebi-skin in the dim light, soft
and pliable, but pebbled and rough like shark or ray hide, and it would be heavier
than it appeared, were that the case. The big mue meant to work on his thrall with
the strap, that much was obvious, and nobody in the pub was likely to stand in his
way. Why should they? Might draw attention, and who knew what that might
bring?
Ferret's grip tightened on the plastic ale stein; tendons raised on the back of his
hand.
Stoll must have caught the movement, subtle as it was. He said, "Easy, lad. There's
no profit to be made for the risk here."
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Ferret looked at his friend, and nodded. He relaxed his hold on the stein. "You're
right, Shanti." He struggled to calm the tension he felt. The slaver mue was big
and obviously violent, and there was no way to tell how good he was. Ferret had
learned not to judge from appearances. He'd studied close combat for more than a
year with Elvin Dindabe, who'd been rated a Top Player in the Musashi Flex
before he'd retired. Some men could kill you without raising their heartbeats, and
they looked like nothing. It was not his business, no, he wasn't some kind of
cosmic do-gooder, you got started on that and there was no end to it. But there was
that strap—
The slaver's mistake was in timing. At that precise instant, he flicked the supple
snakeskin strap up and snapped it at the cowering boy. The pop! of the leather as
the tip slapped against the boy's shoulder reached Ferret then, and all logic, self-
interest and thoughts of minding his own business fled before a fifteen-year-old
memory. Against that power, all else was blown away like pollen in a windstorm.
The past reached out and claimed him.
Ferret stood, muscles flexing into fighting mode.
Across the table, Stoll sighed. "Go," he said, sounding disgusted. "I'll watch your
back."
Ferret spared him a glance as he started for the slaver. From his belt, Stoll pulled a
focused-beam hand wand, quickly moving it under the table, out of sight.
"—Worthless dung-whelp!" the slaver said, using his wrist to clear the strap over
his shoulder for another lash. "You'll learn to move when I say move!" One of the
slaver's table-mates nodded. The slaver saw this, and he grinned. Now it was a
show, something to entertain his friends. He wiggled the strap and his smile
increased.
The slaver must have caught Ferret's motion peripherally, for he turned slightly to
look at the approaching man. Softly, he said, "You got a problem, flo'man?"
Ferret managed to keep his anger at a low simmer. He glanced at the strap and
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Perry, Steve - The 97th Step
said, "That. Better you shouldn't use it on the boy."
The slaver's smile never wavered. This must have happened to him before,
somebody sticking his nose in where it didn't belong. Ferret knew that the mue
wasn't afraid of what he saw: an average-sized pale human, no weapons visible,
jamming his face into the slaver's business without call. The smell of burned
cashews increased suddenly, now it seemed almost overwhelming, a hot stink that
lay over Ferret like the sudden quiet the confrontation had brought to the pub.
Men, women, humans and mues looked on, dogs watching to see if what went
down was bark or bite.
The slaver said, "Oh? And what would you have me do with it, Reverend?" He
flicked his wrist, and sent a spiral wave down the length of the strap. A practiced
move.
"Put it away."
"I got a better idea—how about I put it here!" With that, the slaver snapped the
short whip up and over, and brought it down on Ferret's face.
Or, rather, where Ferret's face had just been. By the time the strap whistled over
the mue's shoulder, Ferret was already moving. He V-stepped in, jerked his left
hand back in a counterbalance, and drove his right fist into the mue's solar plexus,
hard. The contact was solid, a rubbery give to the muscular flesh, and the force of
it stung the plexus of nerve tissue enough so that the slaver's face froze in shock.
He wouldn't be able to breathe for half a minute.
Ferret's mind fled. For the next six seconds, rage ruled him completely. He did not
see his fists and boots as they battered the stunned slaver, who tried vainly to draw
breath. Five, eight, twelve strikes—hands, elbows, knees, heels—fast, and harder
than would have seemed possible from a man his size. The thuds seemed distant,
the feel of flesh and bone under his blows unreal. The slaver tried to cover, but
every time he moved his hands and arms to one spot, he revealed another. Ferret
worked with trained instinct, choosing his targets for maximum damage. Three
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Perry, Steve - The 97th Step
seconds. Four. Five—
The mue, big and strong as he was, took it for six seconds before he fell, only
semiconscious. He would live, but he was damaged enough to need a few days in
a medical kiosk. Had he not fallen, Ferret would have kept pounding until he
exhausted himself, and that would have been no small time.
Still in the red haze, Ferret bent and snatched up the strap. Behind him, one of the
slaver's party stood, reaching for a bottle to smash Ferret.
The strap seemed to coil around his hands on its own. When it was wrapped
tightly, leaving only a few centimeters slack, Ferret screamed. The strap tightened
and became like the string of some instrument. The leather cut into his flesh.
There was a sharp huml as the strap stretched, found its breaking point, and
snapped, a dull, almost wet pop. It did not seem possible that a man could do such
a thing—hebi was much too strong for that. Much too strong.
Behind him, the slaver's friend put the bottle back onto the table, and licked
suddenly dry lips.
"A good idea, friend," Stoll said.
Ferret turned, to see the fat man standing nearby, pointing the hand wand loosely
in the direction of the slaver's table.
Stoll said, "You done?"
Ferret nodded, feeling the adrenaline ebb. "Almost." He turned to the slave. "Go,"
he said. "You have a few minutes. Find a cool or hit the lanes, whatever your
bent." Ferret glanced at the slaver on the dirty pub floor. "It's the only chance
you're likely to get, you copy? If you stay with him, he'll probably kill you for
this."
The boy nodded dumbly. He knew. He darted for the door. Ferret watched him go.
Maybe he could figure a way off the wheelworld. The Confed kept a tight fist
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Perry, Steve - The 97th Step
wrapped around galactic transportation, but there were ways, there were always
ways, if you had stads, or if you knew the game. Or he could go to the cools.
Locally, they were mostly honest, and if the slaver hadn't bought a pet in the shop,
maybe the boy had a chance in that direction. It didn't matter so much to Ferret
what the boy did, his concern had been less for the slave than for the way the
slaver had gone after him. He had bought the boy a chance; what he did with it
was his own worry.
Ferret had forgotten about the strap he still held. He glanced at it, now in two
pieces. He tossed them at the slaver. The mue made no sign he saw or felt the
broken strap when the sections of it hit him.
"We'll be going now," Stoll said. It came out as an announcement, as if he were a
king informing his subjects of some major policy. He waved the wand in an
offhand gesture. Some of the patrons flinched when the weapon's stubby barrel
tracked past them. A blast from a hand wand was good for a very nasty headache
when one awoke from the primary effect, itself not in the least pleasant.
"The drinks are okay, but stay away from the food in this place," Stoll said.
Ferret felt the urge to laugh, but he was still too wired to let it out. Stoll's comment
could not have made any sense to anyone else, unless they happened to know the
fat man was a gourmand of the most exotic rank, and what he said would have
been of little use, unless they trusted his taste.
Outside the pub, Stoll tucked the wand out of sight. He glanced at Ferret, whose
face was still flushed with the remains of his rage. "What was that all about?"
Ferret shook his head. "An old disk. Something that happened a long time ago."
Stoll nodded, but said nothing. The two men walked away from the pub in the
general direction of the port where their ship, the Don't Look Back, was berthed.
Ferret said, "I'll tell you about it someday."
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Perry, Steve - The 97th Step
Stoll nodded again.
Fifteen years, Ferret thought, and it all came back as if it we're only yesterday. So
many light- and real-time years away, and still as clear as bottled air. Like the
hand of God on his shoulder, he knew he would never be able to shake it, not if he
lived to be a thousand. He did not want the memory, but it lay ever there. The
strap had brought it back.
That goddamned strap.
TWO
His FATHER HAD been waiting with the strap when Mwili finally got home.
The boy's belly went hard and fluttery at the sight, and his bowels clenched
against the remembered pain.
Not the strap. Not tonight. Not after today.
Full dark had fallen across the dusty land of Cibule, bringing with it the night's
harder chill. Overhead, the Three Moons played their winter's variation on the
High Right Triangle, shedding their pale blue, pink and silvery white lights over
Cibule, itself a moon, and the largest of Kalk's four satellites. Kalk was below the
horizon this week, and its cloudy surface was invisible from the cold farm lands of
the Eastern Hemisphere. The rancid stink of the seed crop battled with the dry
odor of dust, and the air's stench was worse for the combination. Mwili had grown
up with these scents, and yet, every time he left and came back, it was as if he'd
inhaled them for the first time. They never smelled any better.
At sixteen terran-standard years, Mwili Kalamu was work-strong and sturdy, if not
tall, and within two centimeters and four kilos of his father's height and weight. He
could fight back and maybe even win, but that would be a mistake—Mafuta had
both God and the Law on his side, as he pointed out endlessly, and on Cibule, one
was the same as the other. Mwili's bare hands were cold, and the warmth of his
body leaked out through half a dozen worn spots on his heavy work gi and baggy
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Perry, Steve - The 97th Step
cotton twill pants. Fortunately, his boots were of cast dotic plastic, and proof
against the low temperatures. He had collected and sold tourist rock, saving every
demistad for seven months to buy those boots, and had been whipped for the sins
of Desire and Pride when he'd brought them home. Since they were custom-made,
his mother had finally prevailed upon his father to allow him to wear them. They
couldn't be returned, after all, and waste-not-want-not might not be a Holy Rule,
but it was a farmer's creed, right enough.
Despite the evening's hard chill, Mwili wiped muddy sweat from his forehead with
the back of one deeply tanned hand. Work-sweat, some, but mostly from fear.
Unlike most of the settlers on this moon, his ancestors had been of terran
Germanic/Nordic stock, and his natural skin color was pale, his eyes green, like
his mother's. Eyes that now fed a message to his brain it plainly did not wish to
accept, given the fight-or-flight reactions that brain was producing.
There, his father, dangling the strap.
When he was within two meters of the man, he stopped, and waited for Mafuta to
speak. He was the elder, and such was his right.
"You are late," his father said. He twitched the broad leather strap. The end raised
a small dust cloud where it touched the ground. The dust seemed to sparkle in the
house's big exterior HT lamps. Mwili saw the curtain move at the kitchen window.
That would be his mother, watching, even though she would have been ordered
not to.
Mwili had a valid reason, for once, but he held his tongue. Valid or not, his father
was just looking for a reason to swing the strap, and speaking before being given
leave was as good an excuse as any. He merely nodded. True. He was late. He
could not argue that.
His father said, "You were due back from the supply station four hours ago."
Again, Mwili nodded. His father would always state the obvious, as if he were
certain God Himself hung on every word, checking it for accuracy.
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"Jesu knows how much I have tried to do his work with you, boy." The man shook
his head. "And no matter how much I pray, you are always found wanting. I
cannot understand why He trials me this way. I have been a faithful servant, I
observe the Holy Rules, and yet you task me at every turn."
Mafuta spared the heavens a glance, as if expecting a direct reproach from God for
his complaints. He was quick to qualify them. "But it is not for man to understand
the ways of God. A man must accept his lot and strive for perfection in spite of it.
Such is the Rule."
Mwili nodded tiredly. "Such is the Rule," he echoed softly. Failure to speak that
would gain him a glare and a fast slash from the whistling strap. It seemed like
everything brought the strap. It was one of his earliest memories, and a constant
part of his daily life. His mates all suffered under the heavy hands and belts of
their parents, but that made bearing it no easier. None of them seemed to get it as
often as he did.
"Why, son, are you tardy this night?"
Finally. "The flitter broke down, Baba. The coil burned out again."
His father stared at him, not speaking.
It was all Mwili could do to stand there at attention, waiting for his father to make
his decision. The Jesu-damned flitter, old when Mwili was born, was a bucket of
junk. He had rewound the burned coil twice already, the last time only a week
past. It had taken half a day on the shop lathe, and his father had begrudged him
both the time and the copper for the wire. The flitter needed a new coil, it needed a
new inducer, and it needed at least four new repellor grids. If prayer had any
validity, then that must be what was holding the flitter together, because Mwili
prayed every time he cranked the rattletrap up. Taking the ancient craft on the fly
was an invitation to accident, and a broken head or worse. This time, fortunately,
he'd only been half a meter up and cruising slowly when the engine shut off. He'd
raised dust and a few bruises, but both he and the flitter had survived fairly
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undamaged otherwise.
"Where did this happen?" his father finally said.
"At Three Rocks."
Mafuta looked in that general direction, but Mwili knew that even if his father
wore spookeyes and scopes, he'd never be able to see the flitter. It was twenty-six
kilometers to the rocks. Twenty-six dusty kilometers and four weary hours on
foot, by way of the only road leading to their farm. A more boring stretch of land
could hardly be devised; God must have put his mind to it, and only He knew
why.
"Did you leave the road? Strain the engine?"
"No, Baba. I went straight to the post and came straight home."
"Why did you not return to the post and call me?"
Mwili sighed. It was nearly twenty klicks from the rocks to the supply post. He
would have saved all of an hour on the call, and still had to walk home—the
supply warden didn't give anything away for free, and Mafuta Kalamu would
never have agreed to pay for his son to ride home, not in ten times ten thousand
years. That would have been sixty-five kilometers he would have had to walk, and
that made no sense at all. But he wouldn't say that to his father. Instead, he said, "I
thought it would be better to come home. The distance is nearly the same, and I
could get started quicker on the repairs."
"You brought the coil?"
Mwili reached into his gi and pulled the coil out. It was the size of a drink can,
wrapped in a greasy rag. "Yes, sir."
Grudgingly, Mafuta said, "That was good." But the faint praise vanished as he
suddenly came to the point that Mwili had feared the most: "But—what of the
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Perry,Steve-The97thStepScannedbyHighrollerandproofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.PartOneTheSeekerAsleepSinceloveandfearcanhardlyexisttogether,itisfarsafertobefearedthanloved.-MACHIAVELLITHESLAVERWASabouttobuytrouble,thoughhedidn'tknowityet.Itwasaspacers'pub,setintherun-downportsectionofChüsaiTom\adachi,th...

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