Authors: Andrew Vachss
Tags: #Collections & Anthologies, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #General
Then a male child steps out of the shadows
.
FYYAH
(to the child)
I want Fiona. I want my sister.
The child runs away. Seconds pass before he is replaced by a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a prizefighter’s face. He speaks some unrecognizable word. The dogs part like a gate opening
.
He then turns and walks away wordlessly
.
Fyyah follows without hesitation. Hexon is a step behind her. Unlike Fyyah, he keeps looking back over his shoulder, and sees:
The dogs close in behind them, like cage doors slamming shut
.
The man keeps walking until they come to a honeycomb of caves. There is plenty of light, but its source is not obvious. The caves are full of children, one of which is the boy who had first approached them. They range in age; the youngest are tiny infants
.
The man steps aside. Fyyah carefully approaches the children, examining them one by one. Suddenly, she kneels and scoops up a chubby little girl, hugging the child to her chest
.
FYYAH
Fiona!
Fyyah backs away toward Hexon. She holds the child with one arm, uses the other to pull one of her razors free. Hexon immediately draws his blaster
.
FYYAH
(to the tall man)
We’re going. Don’t try to stop us.
FIONA
(struggling in Fyyah’s arm, screaming like a baby)
No! No go!
FYYAH
It’s okay, baby. We’re going to take you out of here.
FIONA
(frantically, waving her arms)
No! No! No!
Hexon turns and finds himself facing a solid blockade of dogs. They are completely calm. And clearly ready to kill
.
TALL MAN
(to Fiona)
Be still, child.
Fiona immediately stops crying and struggling
TALL MAN
(to Fyyah)
You can take her. But you have to pay.
HEXON
(stepping forward confidently—bargaining is his turf)
Credits, barter, or task?
TALL MAN
(his voice is completely neutral)
Tasks.
HEXON
(nodding)
Time tasks, or results tasks?
TALL MAN
Time tasks. One full cycle.
FYYAH
(standing on her toes, whispering to Hexon)
He means a woman’s cycle. About twenty-four days.
HEXON
(walking toward the Tall Man, hands open)
Done.
FYYAH
Hexon! You can’t—
HEXON
(to Fyyah, just short of commanding)
Take your sister and go. We made a bargain; sealed. They have to let me go when my time is over. Figure it’ll take me ten, maybe twelve 24’s to get back out. Take my pack. It’s got the sleep-tube and plenty of freeze-dry. My card’s in there, too. It’s my Trader’s Card, so it has about six hundred credits on it. Bring the kid to the West-Orange Medical Tunnel, get her a checkup.
FYYAH
But …
HEXON
(as if she had not spoken; one eye on the Tall Man)
You know you can’t bring a child to the Dancing Girls—you have to protect her yourself. My blaster’s in there, too.
I can’t know exactly how long it will take, so you keep watch for me by the Merchant Boys. When I come back, we can both keep your sister safe.
As Fyyah starts to say something, Hexon turns his back on her, ending any “discussion.” He strides away from her toward the Tall Man, dropping his duffel on the ground behind him, as if distancing himself from it. The Tall Man has not moved. Hexon steps close to him, holding out his wrists as if he expects to be cuffed
.
TALL MAN
(holding up his palm like a traffic cop)
Both
of you. One cycle.
HEXON
(to Fyyah, without turning his head)
Pull out my blaster, quick! Cover me!
HEXON
(to the Tall Man)
We made a bargain. Now let them go.
TALL MAN
You
offered
a bargain. You are a Merchant Boy. It is one of your tricks to seal a bargain before you have heard the other man’s terms. I just told you mine.
HEXON
(nodding ruefully, acknowledging he’s been caught)
Okay. But I’m all you’re getting. Look, I’ll just double my time. Two cycles. Deal?
TALL MAN
No.
(deliberately staring at Hexon’s blaster, which Fyyah now has trained on his chest)
I am not ready to die yet, but that isn’t important.
This
is: if you kill me, you will never leave.
(He points a long finger at the furry mass behind them)
You cannot frighten animals with weapons. And you cannot bargain with them, either.
FYYAH
(louder than a whisper, but very quietly)
Hexon, he’s right!
TALL MAN
Both of you. No bargaining, no dealing, no negotiating. Both of you, one full cycle. Yes or No?
FADE TO BLACK
Gradually open on the honeycomb of tunnels
.
HEXON
(V/O)
That was about a year ago. We learned the truth in those caves, and not from the Book Boys—we learned it by living it. This is a family, not a spray. The tall man never did tell us his name. He never talked much at all, except for one time. But some of the little ones called him Father, and we kind of got into the habit too.
Father knows the Outlaw Tunnels better than anyone. He showed me, a little at a time. Some of them run so close to the Charted Zone that you can just step across and step back, before anyone even knows.
I do that now. To get things we need. Sometimes I trade, sometimes I steal. It doesn’t matter. I’m not a Merchant Boy anymore—their rules don’t matter. Only my family does.
After a while, Father showed us how he gets the babies. It’s easy. Real easy.
FLASHBACK TO:
INT: Separate cave
Sparsely furnished, clearly, Father’s private headquarters. No children are present. Father is a man in perhaps his early fifties. He moves with the intuitive grace of a martial artist, but has no trace of “guru” in his mannerisms or affects
.
FATHER
(speaking to Hexon and Fyyah together)
I began by simply buying the Bad Babies. They weren’t worth much once the Word got out that all the transplants were failing. Then the Rulers ordered the implants, and fathers couldn’t make babies with their own daughters anymore.
The Book Boys wrote there
are
no Bad Babies. And that was true: the babies weren’t the bad ones; the bad one were the fathers who made them. And I knew, if there are bad fathers, there must be bad mothers, too.
Those are Closed Hearts. I began to take their children from them. Sometimes, I took their hearts, too. For that task, I had to learn many skills.
The Voice connects—it is now clear that Father was the Charter in previous scenes
.
FYYAH
(respectfully)
You were one of those … cage-fighters? I thought that whole thing was just one of the Myths.
FATHER
It was no myth, child. Even before the Rulers started calling children born of a girl and her own father the Bad Babies, there were others who carried that brand. Others like me. We were bad at birth. That’s what the Trainers said when they beat us. They started when we were very young. The first test was to stop crying. If you learned not to cry, they increased the pain—then you had to learn not to scream. After that, they used sticks. Clubs. Rocks. Anything that could tear flesh or break bone.
FYYAH
That’s—
FATHER
Yes. Whatever you were going to say would be true, but words don’t tell. Behavior is the only truth. The fathers who made the Bad Babies, didn’t they say they “loved” their daughters?
The Trainers always told us they were teaching us special skills. But, first, we had to learn pain tolerance. Only the ones who learned it
all
were allowed to remain. The others were disposed of. The Trainers called that “culling.” Only those who survived to the end of the teachings were permitted to fight in the cages.
HEXON
People
bet
on those fights?
FATHER
(mildly, but firmly)
Just as they bet on Traxyl fights now. Only Traxyls don’t have to be trained to attack each other. They don’t have to be … motivated. We were taught fighting skills, yes. But we always understood that the winner lives and the loser dies.
FYYAH
If they were … evil enough to do that. To do that to
babies
, what ever made them stop?
FATHER
They swallowed their own poison. Cage-fighters often escaped. Usually, it would be because they went mad. They would just run amok until the Police Squad executed them. But some ran in the other direction. They ran for the deep tunnels. And no one ever followed.
I don’t know what happened to any of the others who ran. I was somewhere in the Uncharted Zone when people from the Temple found me.
FYYAH
The Temple?
FATHER
The Temple is where the Book Boys are. They had older people there. Old, but with great skills. They taught me. I spent a long time there. Then it was my task to teach others. Every Book Boy knows capture looms each time they write. So
none may leave the Temple to write until they know how to do … certain things.
HEXON
But you didn’t stop the cage-fighting … not all by yourself, did you? I mean, how could …?
FATHER
I stopped nothing. The Rulers did. Every time they captured a Book Boy, they learned a truth of their own. It wasn’t only what the Book Boys wrote on the walls that made them dangerous; every Book Boy is dangerous, too. The Analysts did their calculations. They reasoned it out. They understood they could never find the Temple; it cannot
be
found, because it is not a place … it is wherever we are. But they did learn that the Book Boys were being trained in the death arts. And who best to train them but the escaped cage-fighters?
The Rulers could never stop the cage-fighters from escaping. Most, but not all. They tried having them fight inside their prisons, but nobody would bet on the matches unless they could see the fights up close. It cost too much to train a cage-fighter, and it wasn’t returning the investment. So the Rulers killed them all. Every one.
The Rulers know: if you don’t pull out the root, more will grow. So they killed everyone in the chain: breeders, inflicters, cullers … and the Trainers—they were the first to go.
The Rulers know: no matter how high the risk,
some people will take it if the possible reward is high enough. If the reward sought is a pure one, death is no deterrent. But if the reward is credits, death works perfectly. After the Rulers finished the killing, no one ever tried to start the cage-fighting business up again.
FYYAH
Why didn’t they just make a Rule?
FATHER
There is no need for a Rule against suicide. How do you punish the person who breaks it?
FADE OUT
COME IN ON Hexon, carrying a huge duffel over one shoulder, present tense:
HEXON
(V/O)
When I come back from the Charted Zone, I bring the things we need. And I know ways to get credits that I never dreamed of when I was a Merchant Boy.
Soon we are going to buy children. The ones in Year 8 that their parents want to sell to the work sites. All we have to do to get those Bad Babies is offer them more credits.
Fyyah cut the implant out of her own thigh. She said it was supposed to stop working after her Year 17, but she didn’t trust that. I told her that was crazy, but she wouldn’t listen:
CUT TO:
Fyyah, dressed only in a T-shirt and underpants, one leg braced on a low table, a gleaming razor in her hand
.
FYYAH
I don’t want them in my body, Hexon. Not any
part
of them. It’s time for what I
do
want. Just hold my hand; it’ll be quick.
FADE OUT
FADE IN
INT: Fyyah and Hexon walking together. Fyyah is obviously pregnant. The children around them are visibly older
.
HEXON
(V/O)
When I step across, I bring messages, too. Fyyah already knows three Dancing Girls who want to come and be with us. I know only one Merchant Boy so far, but there have to be others.
We’ll find them. They’ll find others.
By the time the Book Boys get to write about us on the walls, we’ll be too strong.
There will be too many of us.
The Rulers won’t come back here. And Father says he knows a way Outside.
FADE TO BLACK
BACK TO:
AXEL
This was once a Traveler’s Tale called “The Journey of Hexon and Fyyah.” It is now the Book of Obligations. Mine (touching his heart) and yours (pointing at the audience, somewhere between a message and a threat).