Brother Death (25 page)

Let it be glass or cheap plastic, he thought. Don't let it be denscris or clearcarb, please-!

The window was a series of panes, three ovals across, three down, set in a larger oval of carved wood.

The ball hit the top center pane with enough force to punch a jagged hole through it.

Plastic. Good.

What was outside that wall? An alley he remembered, an underground refuse disposal chute covered by a grate, some crates stacked up

"Saval-?" Taz yelled. "What-?"

That was as far as she got. The wall surrounding the window grew a circular hollow; Bork felt his ears pop as the air pressure in the room dropped and the wall suddenly vanished in a perfect circle. There was a flash of bluish light dopplering away. With the supports gone, another section of the wall collapsed.

Came a terrible noise, a thousand shovels scraping on plastcrete. Dust ballooned into the room, was sucked out of sight as if by a giant vacuum cleaner. People screamed, tumbled to the floor, and Bork felt himself tugged by a giant's hand toward the hole in the wall. But the pull stopped almost immediately.

All over.

A big chunk of the building's wall was gone, absorbed by the implosion device, but nobody inside had died. Through the now-ragged hole, Bork saw the imploded ball of compacted material buried to half its depth in the hard surface of the alley floor. The outside of the ball was a mottled gray.

Close. Real close.

Spring came. Time melted and flowed normally again.

Pickle her silks torn from one shoulder, one surgically perfect breast exposed, came to stand in front of Bork. She stood on her toes, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him full on the mouth. She thrust her tongue through his lips and passion flowed hotly with it for a moment before she pulled back.

"I never saw anybody move like that before," she said. "You saved our lives. I was scared shitless. God, I want to fuck your brains out!"

Bork managed a nervous laugh.

Taz came up. "Another time, Pickle." To Bork she said, "We've got to go, Saval. The Supervisor just called and wants to talk to me. He must know about the toy Missel made for us. We've got to leave before he tells me not to."

Bork nodded. "Okay."

As they started for the door, Taz said, "You moved pretty good back there, brother. Thanks."

"All part of the service, sister."

Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

SANCTUARY.

Once, Kifo went with a rich jane on a vacation. Well, she had been on vacation, he had been working, but the place was a small island out in the middle of the Mafalme Ocean, toward the equator. The air temperature was perfect for running around naked, not too cool, not too hot, and with a little sunblock spray, that's what almost everybody did. Gentle breezes blew most of the time. Semitropical rains washed the place, usually in the evening about dusk, warm patters that nobody minded. Fruit grew naturally on the trees and bushes, there weren't any snakes or particularly nasty bugs or small beasts about, and the most industrious things Kifo had seen the entire trip-aside from other whores working, like himself-had been gecko lizards chasing moths on the thin screens of the but the client had rented. As the afternoons wound down, Kifo would make fruity alcohol drinks and he and the client would sit and watch the sun sink into the quiet ocean while he slowly pumped her from behind. It was his best memory as a young man. He had thought that isle the perfect place on the entire planet, perhaps in all the galaxy, until he first visited Sanctuary.

Sanctuary made the island paradise seem like hell.

He leaned on his walking stick and grinned at the rapture he could see in his flock. Not only were they safe here, they were probably feeling better than they had ever felt in all their lives.

Once you crossed into Sanctuary, there were fuzzy white walls off in the distance no matter which way you looked. Even right behind you, a step away from where you entered, it seemed that the wall was kilometers away. Did you turn and step back, you would find yourself outside again, without any real sense of having reached the boundary. Leaving the place was thus always quite a jolt-one second you were deep inside, the next instant, you were out. Like birth, perhaps, only faster.

The air in Sanctuary was heady, perfumed by some smoky, musky scent that always reminded Kifo of hot sex. It was as neutral a temperature as the island's had been, but without the worry of ultraviolet rays.

The light was soft, indirect, and he had never seen the source. Not, he would have to admit if pressed, that he had ever looked particularly hard. It was bad form to examine too closely a gift from one's gods.

The ground of Sanctuary was a cushion; it gave slightly underfoot but was like a firm mattress when one chose to lie upon it. Seamless, the ground was slightly darker than the distant fuzzy walls, almost a sand color, and had enough texture to feel slightly rough to a bare hand, though not rough enough to scratch naked buttocks. Because it was so benign a place, Kifo almost always stripped away his clothing when he entered, if not immediately then fairly soon thereafter.

Too, there was something in the air that gave one the sense of well-being that certain psychedelic chemicals did. Having experimented with mushroom intoxication as a young man, he knew the sensation, but this, of course, was better. He felt powerful, potent, grinned almost constantly, and sighed a great deal from the pure pleasure of breathing. Did one but concentrate upon the physical sensations, each respiration could seem akin-albeit somewhat distantly-to a sexual orgasm.

When the old books spoke of this place, they had described it but badly. The prophets of those days must have been speaking from other than personal experience, or else been terrible writers indeed.

Members of his flock had begun to discard their clothing. Some of them stood grinning, enjoying the feel of the place; others linked hands or touched each other or themselves and relished those sensations.

Kifo laughed; the sound flowed from him in silvery platinum peals. The body gloried in the joy of Sanctuary but there was much more ahead for him. Let his flock be distracted by cheap ecstacy; he had bigger goals in mind.

And so far, the gods had not chosen to gainsay them.

For now, he could pause and refresh himself. Then it would be time to proceed onward. To the heart of Sanctuary, a place no man had ever gone.

Only now, Kifo had become the Chosen One. Truly the Unique at last. He would go there.

Silver and platinum laughter glittered in the air.

Taz felt a little silly, carrying a wooden staff her own height. Crowed to her belt she had a sheathed knife with a fat blade as long as her hand, an eight-charge hand wand and four photon bombs, as well as a duplicate of the electronic device that allowed passage into the Zonn space. Saval had been adamant about that, and would have liked a third one for a spare, had they been able to get the parts in. He wasn't keen on being stuck in the other dimension, wherever it was.

"You ready?" Saval asked. He wore his spetsdods, even though they wouldn't be of much use if they behaved as before. Plus he had a stick and wand and photo blinders, too, as well as a simple magnetic compass, no electronics, and a line-of-sight marking laser.

"Yeah. Let's do it."

Even though the geometry and maybe the time and space were all screwed up in the land behind the wall-or maybe within the wall-they had elected to try and follow the Few directly. To that end, they had flittered to the Zonn Ruins. Saval lifted the flashing police evidence seal tape and Taz ducked under it.

He followed her.

They reached the wall quick enough. "Your toy or mine?" Taz said.

He waved at her. "Might as well be sure yours works."

She pointed the device at the gunmetal surface, pressed the control. Once again the material that blunted diamond drills swirled.

Inside, the terrain, if it could be properly called that, looked much the same as before. Sparks showered up when Taz took a step, and she smiled at that. It had a certain beauty to it. She walks in fire...

"Look at this," Saval said.

She turned, regarded the compass he held. It was a thin plastic circle, not much thicker than a stad coin, with a clear cover. A slender needle of steel pivoted on a sharp post, able to turn freely. The needle was magnetized, dark on one end, and would turn toward the northern pole of Tembo, the actual geographic point being close enough to the magnetic one to be accurate enough for general direction. Since the dark end of the needle always pointed that way, aligning itself with the planet's magnetic field, a compass was a simple, if crude, method to find one's way around. Not as good as a radio triangulator, which could pinpoint your location to within six meters anywhere on the world, or even to a broadcast field strength meter, which would relate your position to the nearest power beacon within ten meters.

The needle on Saval's compass spun like the blade of a gyrojet copter, so fast it was nothing more than a metallic blur.

"So much for that idea," Saval said. "Magnetism is fucked, let's see how light works." He peeled one of the photon bombs from his belt. This was a sphere about the size of a child's marble, black plastic coating the outside. Saval squeezed the orb, twice, then once again for a longer time. "Close your eyes," he said, "or better if you turn your back. That way."

She nodded as he tossed the little ball. Turned around and looked away. Three seconds later red light flared, barely visible even with her eyes opened. A pale shadow appeared then faded, the dim red dwindling back to the normal-such that passed for normal here-lighting.

"Well, that didn't seem particularly impressive."

Saval said, "The light shifted into the red; it should have been white. So much for light as a weapon."

"You want to shoot me with the hand wand to see if that works?"

He laughed. "Maybe later. I can use this if the need arises." He waved his staff. It was made of some springy dark wood, was as long, as he was tall, as big around as her wrist. "Their weapons won't be any better off than ours."

"Unless they know something we don't," she said.

Taz looked around. "I don't see any footprints."

"One direction is as good as another," he said. "Straight ahead until we come to something that suggests otherwise."

They started off.

Bork maintained a steady pace, not his fastest, but one Taz could keep up with easily. This was as weird a place as he had ever been, no doubt about that. Compass spun like a drive rotor, spetsdod darts moved like snails, no radio or com worked at all, the light bombs changed colors. He got the feeling that if he stood too long in one spot, he might start growing roots like Missel's light pen had. Yeah, it was fascinating and all, but not a place he'd put at the top of his vacation list. He supposed he could understand why the Few might think it connected to some religious purpose. It was unlike any world unmodified men lived on. Wonder what those hills were doing, moving back and forth like that? Or the significance of the sparks that sprayed every step they took? Maybe this Kifo guy had some answers.

Bork would ask him, once they caught him. Whatever his explanation, the scientists were gonna have conniptions when they got in here.

"You doing okay?" he asked Taz.

"Fine."

"Ready for a break?"

"Whenever you are."

They stopped. Bork pulled the water bottle from his belt, took a swig. Swished it around in his mouth, didn't like what it did, and spat it out.

"What-?" Taz began.

"Check this out." He poured a little water into his cupped palm. Five or six tadpolelike things swam around in the tiny puddle. Well, swam wasn't exactly right; it was more like they contorted about, snapping open and closed like little springblade knives.

"Uuughh!"

"Yeah." He tossed the polluted handful of water away, bent and set his bottle on the foggy blue ground.

The haze washed over the plastic, hiding it. "Things got through a watertight seal easy enough and grew up real fast."

"Going to limit how long we can stay in here," Taz said; as she examined the water from her own bottle.

He didn't need to see what poured out because Taz tossed the bottle away in disgust. "Yuk," she said.

Bork nodded, didn't say what else had occurred to him. If some kind of bug could go through watertight plastic to infect the liquid inside, what might be infecting them?

There was a pleasant thought.

"Better keep moving," he said.

Five or six of the Few had gathered themselves into a large naked clump and were engaging in assorted manners of sexual congress. Wet noises emerged from the mass as it undulated on the cushy ground as if it were a single being. Contented moans, groans and slurps rose and hung in the air, calling to any others who might wish to join the gestalt.

Kifo had removed his own clothes to better enjoy the air of Sanctuary, but he kept his walking stick, twirling it in his hands like a baton, keeping time to his internal music.

A dark figure loomed in the distance, coming from the nearest wall toward him.

The Unique felt a small something stir in him. A qualm? A bit of worry? Well, no, not really, this was Sanctuary, after all, but perhaps a hair of unease draped itself over him ever so lightly. Just a hair...

Mkono. The lumbering giant had come to Sanctuary.

Ah. That was good. He had a chore or two, Kifo recalled, and then he was to come here.

"My Unique," Mkono said. He smiled, something he did very infrequently back in the human world. It did not look especially good on him, the smile, but Kifo appreciated the energy behind it.

"Brother Hand. How goes it?"

"My efforts were of mixed results," he allowed. "The main tower at the religious institute fell to an implosion device as you ordered, as did the office of the Council of Freedom."

"This is good."

"The restaurant with the ungodly owner still stands. The policewoman and that matador were there.

They fired upon me. I triggered a bomb and left it, but it must have malfunctioned, for the building still stands."