Brother Death (12 page)

That law wasn't going to happen tonight, though.

Taz turned the pump in her fingers, looked at it. If she had any sense, she would drop it back in the drawer and shut it away. Better still, drop it in the disposal and be done with it. Yeah, it had cost a week's pay, but she'd gotten better about tucking stads away over the years; she wouldn't miss it that much.

Time stumbled again, something she was getting used to seeing lately. When it recovered its footing, Taz stood along with it.

And put the pheromone pump into her belt case.

Bork was coming back from the gym, pumped and sweating, heading for the shower when Taz appeared in the hall. She was dressed in a dark outfit, her hair washed and combed, her face clean.

"I-I've got to go out for a while," she said.

"Sure."

"Make yourself at home."

"No problem."

'I'm not sure when I'll be back."

He nodded. "Okay."

"See you."

"Move safe, Taz."

After she was gone and he'd finished his shower, Bork went to check the time zone computer. Even if it was the middle of the night, maybe he'd call and leave a message for Veate and the baby on the house comp. All of a sudden he was feeling real lonely.

Kifo sat in the middle of the Gods' Chamber, the night hanging humidly over him like a damp sheet. The vouch prowled back and forth in front of the opening to the chamber; were he ascribing human characteristics to it, Kifo would have said it was frustrated.

The guards were posted throughout the ruins with instructions to come for him at dawn did they not see him sooner, but not before. The insects buzzed, the vouch hummed, and the sounds of his own heartbeat seemed loud in the darkness. Kifo pulled the Glyph from his pocket and held it in his hands, taking comfort from the familiar coldness of it. It had been more than two years since last he'd entered Communion. In daylight in the city, that seemed like a short time, a blink of an eye. Here and now, it seemed too long past to help him. He had achieved much during that time, moving as he saw fit, but there had been some failures. Most recently the matter of the policewoman who had gone offworld.

True, the one sent for her had been selected in haste and trained in yet greater haste, Mkono being busy elsewhere. But it was a small enough glitch, easily rectified. Surely the gods would not fault him fatally for it? What gnawed at Kifo more than the failure was the worry that perhaps he should have simply let well enough alone. The woman was adept enough, but had he let her continue to fumble around on her own, she would have likely failed to stop his plans. Now there was that offworld hired guard, the matador. He had heard about them, and there lay another worry

Came a faint tapping at the door to his mind. A thread of inquiry slithered tentaclelike to the entrance.

One could never predict how the gods would come, each time had been different. The first time they had thundered at him like malignant demons, cursing and hurling bolts of energy that made lightning seem pale and dim. The second time they had whispered so softly he could barely hear them. The third time they had done some of both, plus other things he could not put a name to.

Whither which who who who?

Testing him, for he knew they knew very well exactly who he was. Your servant, he formed in his mind.

Come for instructions.

Hie aaiiee who which which here now? came a second voice, distinct from the first.

Kifo had his eyes open, and ghostly lights played in the night air, soft greens and blue twinning together, flowing from the walls liquidly, oozing like heavy vapor to swirl around him.

Calls speaks calls listens listens! another voice said.

Yes, Kifo thought, I am listening. Sing to me your songs, Great Ones, speak to me of what must be done.

Key key key keykeykeykey! yet another of the Zonn chimed in.

Kifo rubbed the Glyph. Yes, I have the talisman. I have learned the lessons you gave me last time.

Open open open!

Free free free freefreefree!

Complete! Complete!

These were things the Zonn had said before. He thought he understood some of them, but he wasn't sure.

The refrain "Complete" was always part of what they had to say, and while he thought it meant his work in the temple, he was unsure. It felt as if it somehow meant more

A vision of himself at fourteen, stealing fruit from a stand and being chased by the vendor, flashed through his mind, as vivid and real as the day it happened. He could feel the sweat of fear staining his clothes, the smooth plastcrete under his flexible running shoes, hear the vendor's angry yells. Every sensation was as fresh as a newborn still wet from its mother's womb. The smell of the vegetables too long in the sun, the rotted and spoiled produce stacked in the battered aluminum composting bins, yesterday's fish heads and guts and scales near the disposal drains that chopped them fine then piped and fed them to the neowheat fields a hundred kilometers away. So real

The city vanished and Kifo found himself in the Mende Town brothel where he'd sold himself for two years before he'd become one of the Few. The woman with him was rich, too beautiful to have to pay for her pleasures this way, but she enjoyed certain kinds of degradation she perhaps could not find in the expensive homes of other rich people. Kifo was but a nineteen-year-old whore when he reasoned this.

Foolish child not to know better.

"Yes," she said, "yes! Put it there, hard-harder, oh, oh, oh, it hurts-harder!"

He obeyed, ramming himself into her. Wondering what the cook would fix the whores for dinner as the rich woman screamed under his thrusts. Still, it felt good

And now he was in the temple and the slap across the face Brother Pain gave him was hurtful but deserved, for he had questioned doctrine

And now he found himself sinking the ceremonial knife into the throat of one who had betrayed the temple

The air shifted, fluid with color that gleamed into the night, flowing, settling, forming a rainbow panoply, clothing him in light. The Armor of the Gods. It might eat him alive, but it would protect him from without.

In in in in ininininininin--!

Live live live live-!

Mine mine mine!

The Zonn sang and screeched and foamed and invaded Kifo, and he became one with them.

When the dawn was but an hour away, Brother Death stood, possessed still of the gods. Stood and walked to the nearest of the Zonn's near-invulnerable walls. Then walked into the wall and vanished from the face of the planet.

He was back in what passed for a few seconds in the normal world, stepping from the blue-black wall as if it were no more than a curtain of air. The gods had departed, returned to where they dwelled, but the face of their servant was not quite what it had been. And the light that danced behind his eyes carried in it a faint but unmistakable sheen of madness.

Now he understood. Now knew what he had to do. The gods had grown impatient. He knew what to do, but he also had to hurry.

Before another year passed, the gods would again walk the worlds. Kifo had been chosen to be the door through which they would arrive. No man had ever been given a greater honor. The gods could do anything they wished.

Even raise a dog to be one of them.

Kifo would become a god!

Unless, of course, he failed. In which case he would suffer damnation and tortures beyond imagination for ten million times ten million years.

When the madness faded from his eyes, Kifo could even find some humor in his situation. Such stakes!

Godhood or eternal punishment.

Such a choice, was it not?

He laughed so loud that the vouch came bustling up to him as he walked from the chamber, and the guards ran to see what had happened.

Such a choice.

Chapter THIRTEEN

THE GUARD AT the gate to Ruul's estate waved Taz through without a second glance. His employer had obviously told the man she was expected.

Once inside the high fence, Taz coaxed her flitter slowly along the winding flatway to the house's front entrance. It truly was a mansion; you could put five of her house into it and have room left over, and that didn't count the garage. She didn't know how much he made or how much he was worth, but she'd once seen Ruul turn down an offer of thirty thousand stads for a one-night performance, an hour's work. He had plans to go hiking that day, he had said, and he'd really been looking forward to the walk.

Jesu Christo, Ruul, she'd said, you sure have a hard life.

Yeah, it's tough, all right. Want to screw?

She smiled at the memory. The smile faded as she dropped the flitter to the surface. Dust blew up and settled as the fans slowed, their soft whine dropping in pitch then to silence as they stopped. Got very quiet then. She could hear the insects chirping in the clipped lawn and carefully tended bushes and trees.

Hear the water flowing over the miniature falls in the amphibian ponds. And a din edging a distant walk with electric clippers.

Taz gripped the pheromone pump tightly in her left hand. Do it or not, she thought. Shit or get off it.

Decide-

The door to the mansion opened and Ruul stood there, outlined against the lights inside. Tall, slim, beautiful Ruul, wearing a couple thousand stads of hand-sewn gold silk, shining brightly as his family name. The shirt and pants draped precisely on him, his face reflected the colors, his hair damn near matched the outfit. His feet were bare. Ah, god, he looked perfect. Had he worried over what to wear?

Or had he just thrown on what had first come to hand when he opened his giant closet and looked?

Fuck it. She pushed the button, pointed the nozzle at herself.

The pheromone pump hummed. It ran for two seconds, then sputtered, hissed, ran dry and clicked to a stop. She'd used the whole charge. The chemical was designed to react to human skin, oils, perspiration.

Plenty of that last for it to mix with. It would become hers, the chem, augmenting her own hormones, and she wouldn't be able to smell it any more than she could smell her own breath.

She stepped from the flitter, trying with every bit of muscle control she had to make it appear smooth and effortless. He'd always liked that about her, that she was strong and relatively graceful. Look at what you are missing, Ruul. I'm worth something.

She walked toward him, smiling. Fuck, she was nervous, yeah, no doubt about that, but she was glad to see him. There was another part of the handicap, part of this whole shitty situation. He wanted her, she wanted him, why couldn't it be that simple?

"Hello, Tazzi."

"Ruul."

"Please, come in."

She saw his nostrils dilate slightly, saw his eyes widen a hair. Imagined she could feel his sudden and unexpected surge of lust.

Suffer, dickhead. You deserve it.

She felt a pang of regret almost instantly. She didn't want him to suffer. Well, yes, okay, she did a little.

It was a dull mind that couldn't hold a couple of totally contradictory concepts at once, wasn't it? After all, love and hate leaned on each other from opposite sides of a very thin line. Too thin to see sometimes, invisible to the touch. Ah, god, Ruul. Why are you so goddamn stupid about this?

He turned and she followed him into the house.

Someday, Bork thought, as he looked at his naked body in the mirror, someday your strength is gonna fade. One morning you'll get up and set the weights on the bar and it won't move. Age catches up with everybody in the end.

Bork turned away from the mirror. Yeah, and someday the universe is going to undergo heat-death, too.

Why worry if you couldn't do anything about it?

He grinned. Be nice if it were that easy, wouldn't it? Don't worry, because it doesn't do any good anyhow. Right. The major life lessons are always simple-but seldom easy. Big difference.

He went to do a few stretches. Time was when he could bend over and put his palms on the floor and press into a handstand; now he could barely manage to get his hands flat at all and he had to rock into it to make the straight press. The trick with muscle was to balance the strength and flexibility. He could walk the pattern okay and move as much weight as he ever could-so far-but he was stiffer than he'd been at twenty. Not a lot, but some, and it needed attention. Seemed like only yesterday that he'd been twenty, but it had been a while. More than a quarter of a century, actually.

Damn. Had it really been such a long time?

Yep. Sure had.

Bork reached for the ceiling, arched his back, bent forward. Well, he had traveled a lot of light-years and done a lot of things, he couldn't complain. Been in love twice; a lot of people didn't even get once. And he was stronger than Da had been. It might not mean much to anybody else, but it did to Bork. There came a time when he could have shown it to his father, demonstrated graphically that what the old man considered his greatest power was not so great. That his son, whom he had kept in line with slaps and backhands all his life, had surpassed his father. In that electric moment, Bork had realized that embarrassing the old man would have been sweet, oh, yeah, really sweet-but also the wrong thing to do.

That it was sometimes better to have strength and not use it. He'd always felt pretty good about that day.

He was not like his father, even though they looked alike, had very similar physical frames. Bork was proud of his physical strength, of the ability to pick up something heavy and move it when other men or mues couldn't, but it wasn't all he had. There was Veate and little Saval, and he'd do better by them than his own da had by his wife and kids, or fall over dead trying.

His back creaked as he raised from the stretch. He laughed. He hoped he wouldn't fall over dead just yet.

The argument started and sped down the familiar roads, racing across territory Taz and Ruul had covered all too many times before. She knew his comments before he spoke them; he had to know hers.

Her anger rose, hot fluid piped in under high pressure, flooding her hollow places, turning her insides rage-red. Both their volume controls went up, slowly but inexorably, so the calm and reasoned voices quickly racheted into shouts. They had started out sitting on the couch, the couch made from the lizard-leather hides of giant cloned-dinosaurs raised on the Mason Reptile Farm, the couch that had cost enough to keep a middle-class cit family in high style for a year.