The Bleeding Man (3 page)

I got a cold
feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Are you trying to
tell me the reason we couldn't get a make on him is because he was already dead? Are you saying
he was dead when I picked him up

Into Every Rain, a
Little Life Must Fall

in my sector? That
we had no tape records of him because his files listed him as deceased?"

Commander Hartmann
shuddered and stared down at the blank surface of his desk. "I don't have an ex­planation. I'm
not sure I want one. Christ! Christ!" A nervous tic jerked one side of his face grotesquely. He
was struggling to maintain his grip on reality.

Jesus! I turned
away from Hartmann's monitor and stared at the corpse of Farris.

"He was dead three
hours before I punched into my shift! But . . . but . . . ." Words failed me. I couldn't move,
couldn't think. I sat in my womb couch, paralyzed.

I'm just a
wombcop, an extension of my computers, the driver of the car. My job's driving, punching in and
doing what I'm trained for, not explaining the engine. This was out of my league. I only know
what the computers know. Then I act on it. That's my job. That's all I want to do.

Commander Hartmann
was on the edge of hysteria.

"Command
decision!" he ordered, his voice ragged. It was a direct order.

I was confused.
Hell, I was scared. I was terrified. I knew the decision he expected me to make. I just sat there
stunned. I wanted to pretend I couldn't hear him, to pretend that I didn't know what the hell he
was talking about.

"I
said command decision!"
repeated Hartmann, shouting, his voice cracking with
emotion.

I punched into
Central, pressed the automatic filing code. I tried to stay calm but my hands shook as I dialed
in.

It was the hardest
thing I ever did, the most difficult command decision I ever made.

My voice sounded
distant and cold, as if it belonged to someone else as I punched in the only command decision I
could possibly make.
"Arrest Michael Ban­tam 
FOR THE 
MURDER OF JONATHAN  FARRIS.  CAPTURE

and execute on
sight. violation of criminal code, Section
81-4.
This is a priority command. Implement
immediately."

The report went to
Central. The first time, I hope the only time in my life, I had made a decision that wasn't based
on cold hard facts. You tell me what my decision was based on. An eyewitness account of a murder
from the victim? I'm not sure I know.

I waited for a
decision from Central. They had all the evidence I had. Trouble was, the information I acted on
would never compute, and I knew it. They could have my head for a thing like that. I was a mass
of jelly, a shock cube of raw nerves, waiting, just waiting.

The seconds
crawled by slowly. I could feel the sweat pouring from me, seeping into the soft cushion of the
womb couch at my back. An hour went by like an eternity bathed in my own sweat.

Central linked up.
"Surject: Command decision of wombcop
345-45
Stevens, Roger Davis, case number
87-41 la
(sector
8,
jurisdiction superceded, approved transfer command decision to sector 7)
homicide, decision on apprehension and execution of mlchael Bantam
. . . ."

There was a pause.
Oh God, no, I thought, here it comes . . .

Central   continued,  
"Approved.  
Michael  Bantam

APPREHENDED SECTOR
9. EXECUTED FOR VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL CODE, SECTION 81-4. CoNFffiMED. SPECIAL CI­
tation of merit issued this date, wombcop 345-45 Stevens, Roger Davis, for individual
effort with­out
AID OF COMPUTER ASSISTANCE. . . . CONGRATULA­TIONS."

What really
happened that rainy night? I'm not sure I really want to know. As a very good computer friend of
mine once said, it simply does not compute.

One Evening Old
Coat sat down in the fire. He did not wince or move his face. After a while the fire burned low.
No one spoke.

Old Coat's
daughter sat in the cornfield. Within her belly her sorrowing boy child knew it would be born
dead.

Uzmea the conjurer
came in the night. Uzmea, the throat spreader, killed her and put her head in a red clay pot. Now
the story begins.

Uzmea the taker of
sacrifices lived in a cave of no color. No warrior went seeking Uzmea. He lived in the mountains
among the strange gods and devices of his race.

One day of
blackness and ground clouds,  Uzmea came into Chota and stood silently by the village house.
Warriors, women and small ones gathered around him. No one dared move too close, for it was
rumored that arms would drop from hands that touched Uzmea.

Uzmea had lived in
the place of no color longer than the memory of the pretty women. He had been with our people
from back into the time of the big cold land. He was not of our way. He wore strange plates of
yellow metal around his chest. Upon his head was a strange metal shield with a tall bird plume.
Around his neck was a string of glass stones that were red and blue and glitter. He worshiped
strange gods. Gods of the sky and another more powerful, a snake god with feathers.

Twice had Uzmea
come into Chota. Twice had the ground shaken the roots of houses and trees down. Twice water in
the river had risen and fallen like the tide of the big water, the bottoms of lakes became hills,
the earth cracked with the great wounds and the hot foul breath of demons went into the
air.

And each time
Uzmea had spoken in a strange tongue to the sun. And then to us he spoke of this world-shake. It
was a warning that the land would have new masters, Uzmea said.

Now Uzmea stood in
the village again. Many hearts were tight with fear. Uzmea spoke to the sun in his strange
tongue. Then he turned to the real people and said in our tongue, "Listen and I shall tell you of
a time long ago. I am the not-alive and the not-dead. I came to this place many animal ages ago.
I made prophecy that the great white brothers would come. For the Delawares were upon you and
your fires had sunk low. I told your oldest fathers of this place and of the coming of the white
brothers who would keep your fires high. And I took blood that my prophecy would grow.

"It was many
lifetimes before the whites came. They were not the white brothers I had prophesied. These white
men came in ships across the big water. Uzmea sat in his cave dreaming and waiting. The real
people had forgotten him except in fire talk, but Uzmea did not forget.

"These white men
became your brothers, but they were not the white brothers of the time of need. Once again I
spoke to the oldest of your fathers. I said, The white man will take your land. He will point you
to the West, but there is no home for you there. He will make you become like him. He will say
your way is no good. He will make roads across your heart so that he may come and look at you. He
will teach you his tongue and the strange markings that are his you will learn. He will teach
your people to spin and weave clothes that cover what you are not. He will teach you not to hunt
and not to fight but to take food out of the ground. By these means he will destroy. He will
marry your women and the children will be born boneless and bloodless.

"Some believed
Uzmea and some did not. Hide, my children. -Go to sleep, I said. Those who believed Uzmea hid in
the caves and the high places. They stayed pure. Today I have come to this gathering place for
the last time.

"In the eyes of
the whites, you are outlaws, the ones who did not move West. Your hones are strong and your blood
sings. I have seen the clearness, the vision. I shall speak this once and go to the cave of my
race for all time. I have seen the white brother who is yet to come. Perhaps he will come quickly
or not in your breathing time. Time has no feeling to him. Years are days to this white brother.
But come now or for your children he will know your need. He will look upon your bodies that are
thin with hair. He will look at the blood of your children and it shall be his blood.

"His ways are
strange, but that which was taken from you the white brother will give back. He is mighty. He
comes across the place where no man walks. Give him the strange things of the ground so that your
brothers may live and breed in his home far from this place. This is my prophecy."

Then Uzmea
beckoned with his hand to Old Coat.

Old Coat did not
show fear as he walked toward Uzmea. He was walking to his death, he knew.

Uzmea stared at
Old Coat with ugly prophecy eyes and raised his hands in front of his unsleeping eyes. Old Coat
stood before Uzmea. He looked straight into Uzmea's eyes, his back straight. Uzmea's hands fell
upon Old Coat's face and Old Coat became as one dead. His eyes were dead fisheyes in his
head.

"Do you see?"
asked Uzmea.

Old Coat's voice
came from the faraway of the grave. "I see."

Uzmea drew his
robe about him. "Three deaths will feed this dream. Three blood lifes will grow my
prophecy."

As swift as hawk
shadow, Uzmea went away from them and disappeared into the hill trees.

Old Coat stood on
his dead legs. He began walking with stiffness and the real people parted and let him pass. He
went to his house and called his daughter's name. She lay within, heavy with child. She came out
and many were the people who gave moan. For she was dead, too.

Old Coat and his
dead daughter stood in front of the council fire. Old Coat lifted his arms and pointed at the
lights in the sky. "They are there," his voice said. "The home of the white brothers is in the
sky. The stars are their home. They shall come in round pots through the place where no man
walks. They shall give the false white brother the sickness and he will wither as in
winter.  We will live  as we did before.  The prophecy is spoken. We must fall
asleep and wait and watch the sky."

That night Old
Coat sat down in the fire. He did not wince or move his face. After a while the fire burned out.
No one spoke.

Old Coat's
daughter sat in the cornfield. Within her belly, her sorrowing boy child knew it would be born
dead.

Uzmea the conjurer
came in the night and killed her and put her head in a red clay pot. He set the pot high in the
mountains. Her eyes were pointed to the stars to guide the white brothers through the place where
no man walks. No one speaks of this. They are all asleep. Uzmea alone is awake. Uzmea waits and
watches beneath the stars.

The story has
begun.

It was strange and
spring and the clouds did barrel rolls overhead. He awoke before dawn and went into the empty
room where his waking life lived. The glassless windows brought the cool winds of the twin moon
season into the room and a chill worked into him slowly, a sleepless chill that moved through
him.

He faced himself
in the shaving mirror and remem­bered how it had been. There had been a time when he had taken
pride in his aloneness, in having no people of his own kind closer than fifty miles away. But the
dark-eyed young man he now faced in his mirror had been made over, had been changed by something
deep and restless within him. Five years of the new world, five years alone without the
compli­cation of living with other human beings.

He rolled his
tongue over his lips uneasily, disturbed by an unfamiliar taste, and his hand unconsciously
strayed to his cheek in an imagined caress.

Behind the cabin,
the stefel dogs moved restlessly on poison-tipped spines in the corral. They were strangely
sensitive to the moods of those around them, and now they shifted nervously, coiling and
uncoiling spinal tendrils in flowing sheaves around their brain pouches. Their seasonal
restlessness matched his own.

Gantry moved
through the doorless cabin entrance, picking up the feeding pails near the door. The metal armor
on his legs clanked together as he walked. At the sound of his approach, the stefel dogs began
moving together in the center of the corral. They massed their coils around a central core,
forming an interwoven tube dangling into the air like a cannon barrel.

Gantry moved into
the feeding shed near the corral and emerged with two pails of honey heavily laced with potassium
cynanide. The tube widened at the end as he leaned the bucket over the rail of the metal fence.
The poison spines hissed through the air, beat­ing against the fence at him. The spines bounced
off his leg armor. One spine grazed the bucket, nearly hitting his hand. He jumped back with a
curse, nearly dropping the bucket. The spines were instantly fatal. It was the second time in
three weeks that he had come near to getting stung. I'm getting careless, he told himself; either
that, or I don't care anymore.

He put the bucket
back to the fence, being a little more careful where he placed his hands this time. The tube of
coiled tendrils widened even further as he poured the sweet poison down the fleshy straw the
stefel dogs had formed. The honey mixture ran slowly down the tube and the blue beasts began the
first color change, turning a faint green as the poison began working through the cellular
walls.