Brother Death (11 page)

God. What had she done? She had lost her mind!

Back at their table she didn't say anything to Saval about her conversation. He must have noticed that she was a lot paler and more subdued than when she left for the fresher, but he didn't speak to it. The fish and fried root nodules could have been wonderful, probably were, but for Taz it was like chewing raw and unseasoned soypulp, tasteless, odorless, bland.

She was going to see Ruul. At his house.

What the hell was she going to do?

Bork saw how shaken his sister was when she returned to their table. Had she run into somebody in the fresher? Only a couple of people had left the unisex unit, both of whom looked innocuous enough, and he kept glancing that way to see if anybody else had been inside with Taz, but it didn't seem as if they had. Something had rattled her, though.

Well. If she wanted him to know, she'd say something. She wasn't his baby sister any more, she was an adult and had been taking care of herself for a lot of years without his help. He was curious, but he wasn't going to pry.

The fish was great, and the fried potato things just about as good. Whatever else Pickle was, she set a pretty fine table.

Taz pushed her food around her plate, eating with a definite lack of gusto. She'd always been a big eater, all the Borks had been. He remembered watching her consume an entire mbwa cutlet once when she'd been thirteen, on a dare. Two kilos of dense meat, highly seasoned with hot spices and thick sauce. She'd thrown up later, but she'd enjoyed every bite of the meal while she was eating it. Whatever was bothering her must be fairly major that she would find no joy in the dinner before them.

He popped a chunk of the fish into his mouth. Well. She would tell him or she wouldn't. No point in his being worried about it.

As he chewed the delicious fish, he found he was still a little worried about it anyhow. He'd known Tazzimi longer than anybody else in his life, she'd been there since he was four, and if there was anything he could do to help, he wanted to do it.

But it was her move. If he'd learned nothing else in his years, he'd learned that there were times to move and times to sit still. Knowing when to do which was a fairly big lesson. Right now felt like it was time to wait, to watch, to keep his mouth shut. Except for eating this hammerfish. And to be polite, he'd have to tell Pickle how good it was.

Or, given how she was, maybe not. Maybe just tell the waiter to tell her.

But it was good, sure enough.

As the dusk thickened and darkened, a sauce with night added slowly to it, Kifo sat on a tree stump just outside the Gods' Chamber. His repellor kept the tropical insects buzzing outside the force field's range of a meter or so. The top of the stump, which had once supported a tree that must have been twenty meters around and probably almost a hundred meters high, was covered with thick green moss that cushioned the bare wood under his backside.

Kifo had already installed a temporary program in the vouch, to keep it from scooting in after him when he went into the chamber. Certainly the little machine would feel his mental agitation once he went into Communion, and while he appreciated the vouch's doglike devotion to his safety, it would hardly do for it to start injecting chemicals to calm him at the wrong moment.

True, there was an override circuit in the vouch that wouldn't let things get past a certain point. If death came close enough to claim Kifo, the vouch would seek to do battle no matter what he told it. Of course, if the Zonn wanted their subject dead, no bioelectronic viral/molecular computer on wheels would be able to stop it. Still, it was built to try, and over the years Kifo had come to feel a certain kind of affection for the vouch, even though it was only a biomechanical and not truly alive. People could do that, anthropomorphize almost anything. Hello, vouch. And how are we today?

A moment of humor to break the solemnity, that was good. Soon enough things would be a lot more serious.

A guard approached.

"The tourists and scientists have all left, Unique."

"Good. Check once again and report back."

The guard bowed slightly and hurried away. Kifo could have entered the chamber then, he knew. The guard would not have come had he not been sure of what he reported; still, there was no hurry. And though he was the highest of the chosen, the Unique of the Few, Kifo felt a tremor of fear dancing in him, slight, but there. He took a deep breath, let it escape, took another. It was not every day that a man spoke to the gods, and even though he knew in his heart and mind that he was a good servant, that in itself might not be enough. There were stories of those who had considered themselves worthy, who had been without apparent flaw, and who had displeased the Zonn in some manner when in Communion.

Men whose minds had been snapped like twigs, who had been retrieved gibbering and totally insane, gone to a plane from which they never returned. Kifo thought he was pure enough, but who could say what a god thought?

He hoped his fear was not so strong that it would shine through and cause him grief. But if it was the will of the Zonn that he be struck down, then so be it. He was a dog, and they were the masters, and that was as it should be.

Like a man chosen to placate an angry volcano, Kifo sat next to the edge of his destiny. The guard would return soon, and whatever would be, would be.

Chapter TWELVE

MIXED EMOTIONS DIDN'T even come close to describing how Taz felt as she dressed. She stared at her mirror. Her hair was too long; it needed to be trimmed. She hadn't been working out enough; she was getting soft. How had Ruul ever found her attractive? She was ugly, too tall, too much muscle, too hairy; Christo, she was a fucking warehouse on legs.

The dark blue orthoskins, she decided. Dark would hide her better. And the new flexboots She blinked at her reflection. Dammit, woman, you're going to go tell the man to leave you alone, to quit calling you, to get on about his life and stay out of yours, not to knock him flat with your beauty. You shouldn't care a bug's ass what he thinks of what you look like!

Shouldn't. No, you definitely shouldn't.

Her reflection smirked at her. Uh-huh. And who do you think you're fooling here, Tazzimi Bork? Not me. Not for a Spandle second. I know what is in the drawer.

Fuck you.

It's in the drawer, right where you left it.

Taz stared at the drawer on the left side of the dresser. To avoid thinking about what lay therein, she thought instead about the dresser, and how she had come by it.

The dresser had been an extravagant purchase, she'd had it for years, ever since the first week she'd joined the peace force. It was carved of a dark red fruitwood called namna ya tundo dogo, which was a local variant of cherry, save that the fruit produced by the trees was blue-black and the size of small apples. She'd spotted it at an outdoor market in Mende Town, and an old man blotched with sunlight and age stood next to it, smoking a smelly pipe. There were dozens of other booths, but there was just the one piece and the old man-he had to be a hundred T.S., easy-in his stall, nothing more.

After she'd paid her rent, she had all of three hundred stads left to her name, but she had a job and wanted to celebrate it. The dresser was low, had a mirror on the back, a slot for a chair, was rounded and polished to a dull shine, and she'd lusted after it on sight. It was the most beautiful piece of furniture she'd ever seen. A simple design, no knobs or loops or twirls or stuck-on decorations. Simple, functional, but it had to be worth five or six times what was in her account at the very least.

Still, she couldn't not ask.

"How much?"

The old man smiled, revealing dazzling teeth that must be coated with the dental equivalent of nofric to stay so bright against the influx of greasy brown smoke from that awful pipe. Must be burning some kind of dung in the thing, it stank so bad. "How much do you have?"

"Not enough."

"But that is for me to decide, is it not? How much?"

"Three hundred standards."

The old man raised an eyebrow.

Yeah, I'd be insulted, too, grandda, I'd carved this and somebody waved that piddly amount at me.

"Only three hundred?" he said.

She pulled her credit cube, stroked it. A tiny one-side-only holoproj flickered dimly in the bright sunshine so it was visible to her alone. She turned the cube around so the old man could see the number.

"Three hundred and two stads and four demistads, to be exact."

"Ah, well, that is another matter," he said, shining his odorous smile at her. "I could not possibly let this piece go for a mere three hundred, but for three hundred and two and four tenths, it is yours."

She blinked at him. "You serious?"

"Of course."

There was in her a sudden desire to transfer the money, to grab the dresser and run. If the old man was that stupid, somebody was going to take advantage of him and she truly did love the piece. Then again, she was a newly minted cool, a peace officer, and to cheat the old man like that didn't seem right. Maybe he didn't know how valuable it was. Maybe somebody had left him to watch the store while they went to pee or something.

"It's worth a lot more," she said.

"I could take it to the market at Central City and get two thousand for it from a rich buyer," he said.

"Three thousand, if I wanted to haggle. It is worth perhaps twice that offworld, and even after export taxes, I would clear four thousand."

She didn't understand. "If you could get five or six thousand stads for it, why in hell would you sell it to me for three hundred?"

"Three oh two point four," he said. "Do you have any money other than that in your credit account?"

A highly personal question, one he didn't have the right to ask. But she was intrigued. "Well, no."

"Have you food supplies enough to last until you get paid again?"

She admitted that she did not.

"Then if you give me your three hundred and two and four tenths, how will you eat?"

She shook her head. "I dunno. Scrounge somehow. Maybe sell something else I own."

"You would skip meals to own this dresser."

"Yeah, sure. Look at it." She touched the top lightly.

The old man's smile increased. "In Central City, a fat merchant or lumberlander would offer me much more money, but the amount would be but a tiny fraction of their wealth, a drop from a monied ocean.

You are willing to give all the money you have. Surely you see that this is a measure of real value?

"Too, I saw your face when you saw this dresser, saw light up in it the reason I make such things.

Money is nothing. I have more than I can spend. Your face reflects back to me what I put into the dresser. You will care for it, cherish it, enjoy it, is this not so?"

Taz grinned. Looked at the dresser, then back at the old man. She stroked the smooth wood softly, as he reached out and touched the opposite side at the same time. "Yeah," she said. "You bet."

"You and I, we have just made love, and this chunk of wood is the conduit of that energy. Such things are priceless. Money? Pah! When you look at this dresser, you will sometimes think of the crazy old man named Moyo with the smelly pipe and you will smile. And perhaps you will someday pass this poor wooden object to your child, and perhaps tell her the story of the old man. And maybe your daughter tells your granddaughter and she tells your great-granddaughter, and on and on and a thousand years from now, Moyo is long dead, Moyo is dust, but so in a small way, he still lives.

"An artist wishes his work to be appreciated. If you walked away now you would be still be the true owner of this piece, it was made for you. But I will take your money and you will take my creation and we will both be richer for it, no?"

And he smiled and she smiled and so it was.

Nearly every week after that, Taz went to the market to see Moyo. They became friends, she was invited to his studio, got to know his family and some of his friends. Twenty-four years she knew and liked him.

He worked right up until the day he died, keeled over next to a chair that he'd finished only minutes before. Moyo the artist passed away at the age of a hundred and thirty-three, and somebody suggested that a ceremony be held in his honor. He was well liked at the market in Mende Town. An announcement was made.

Taz had attended. As had nearly twelve thousand other people. Somehow, it didn't really surprise her, but still:

Twelve thousand people.

And nobody had anything but good to say about the artist. Dead, maybe so, but Moyo was going to be around for a long, long time . . .

Taz shook her way loose from the memory, found that she was smiling. Ah, old man and smelly pipe.

What a joy.

That, however, was then. It was the now that concerned her at the moment.

She slid the drawer open. Reached inside. Withdrew the small plastic device. It was smaller than a pack of flicksticks, rectangular, a flat black with a single button on the side near one end. On the other end was a truncated cone the size of her little finger's tip, a tiny hole in the center. That was the nozzle. The button was the control. You just had to point the nozzle and touch the button and the device would spray the most potent pheromone the local black market could obtain. Invisible once it was on, odorless save deep in the olfactories, supposedly an analog duplicate of what Saval's wife could emit when excited.

Guaranteed to attract a normal human or mue better than anything else money could buy.

A pheromone pump. It was Saval's comment about Pickle at the restaurant that made her think of it. It was easy enough to put in a com to one of her street people. It was in her mail slot when they'd gotten home.

There hadn't been enough problems with them on Tembo to draw the notice of the Planetary Legislative Body, so possession of such a device here wasn't against the law. Transportation on Republic ships was against the Galactic Penal Code, and worth a fat fine and possible imprisonment. Taz supposed that the pump could have been made onplanet, which would mean that she wasn't abetting criminal activity. She hadn't asked. It was only a matter of time until somebody seduced the wrong person, however, and pheromone pumps would be stuck on a schedule of proscribed chems.