Under the Eye of God (17 page)

Imagine a crater far out on the plain beyond the towering mesa. Imagine a gray-metal dome over the crater, and carved out of the ground beneath it, a huge dark chamber. Imagine a dank underground lake spotted with junk, debris, and sewage. Imagine never-ending humidity and heat.

Now, let your imagination get baroque. Imagine a fetid stench, so strong it can peel the paint off walls. Install a scattering of flat circular islands in the lake, each one rising only a hand's width above the surface of the water—all made of stone, each one a different size. Imagine a bizarre rabble, spread across these islands—dirty, sullen, vicious, violent, and insane. Look up and see the catwalks of the guards hanging high over the prisoners.

The guards patrol ceaselessly. Here, day and night both look the same, a dull gray sheen. Imagine swarms of terrible hungry things swimming in the lake: sharklins, piranhoids, lawyer-fish, and other dark things that trouble the sleep of fishermen. Among the deadliest things found in this water lurk the deadly mayzel-fish.
³¹

The prison had only one real escape. Whenever a guest tired of the accommodations, he could go for a swim. Those who died of old age—or other causes—also left the prison the same way. The water would froth for a moment, and then become still again.

From above, a ramp lowered down to the largest island. And down this ramp came the Arbiter of Thoska-Roole, Justice Harry Mertz. Despite his circumstances, he wore had an unusually calm expression. With every step he took, he demonstrated his willingness to ride this horse in the direction it wanted to go.

He reached the bottom of the ramp. As he stepped off, it swung up quickly behind him. As he looked around at his new surroundings, his companions on the island also stood up to look at him. A more bizarre collection of life forms had not gathered in one place since the last Cluster-Con of biological engineers.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Harry said, addressing them all. “Justice Harry Mertz, at your service—” He bowed elegantly. “But do not expect justice from me, for my words no longer carry weight. Nor should you expect justice to arrive from above. It no longer lives on Thoska-Roole. When justice gets sent to prison, there you will also find the free men of society. You may quote me on that. It gives me great pleasure to make the acquaintance of each and every one of you. I had wondered where all the free men had disappeared to.”

A sudden realization swept across Harry's features—recognition followed by horror. “I know this place. I knew it in my youth—a thousand years ago.”

Several of the prisoners laughed at this bold claim. “You come here often, then?”

“Not if I can help it.” Harry joined in the laughter. “But—this place did not always serve as a prison. In my youth, people came to these chambers seeking arbitration and peace. The goddamned Vampires have desecrated a temple of true justice.”

Harry shook his head in despair and looked around for a place to sit. The floor presented itself as the only available furniture. Harry shrugged sadly. “You can tell a lot about a civilization by the quality of the people found in its jails.” His gaze fell upon two sad-looking warrior-lizards. Their name-badges identified them as Kask and Keeda. “For example,” he asked. “What crime did you commit?”

Keeda grumbled deep in his throat. “We committed the unpardonable sin of allowing the Lady Zillabar's gift to Lord Drydel to escape from our custody. They would not even allow us to commit Honorable Suicide.”

Harry nodded gravely. “There. You prove my point.”

The Dragons didn't understand and Harry had little eagerness to explain himself to them. He turned around and surveyed the rest of his companions—the scum of ninety worlds, if Lady Zillabar had spoken truthfully in her vivid description of his future accommodations. Among the inmates, Harry counted many humanoids, some androids, some bioforms, a few uplifts—but no particular emphasis on any one mix. The Vampires had no prejudices; they hated all other forms equally.

Harry noticed two men off to one side of the disk. They looked like natural humans to him; they wore the clothes of professional trackers. He stepped past them cautiously. They didn't even look up. The tall blond one seemed very concerned about his companion, a darker bulkier man who slept fitfully on a rumpled mat. He wiped at his partner's forehead with a damp handkerchief, until the other awoke and pushed his hand away in annoyance. “Stop that. You don't have to worry about me.”

Nearby, sitting glumly on its haunches, a LIX class bioform wearing the kind of jumpsuit most frequently seen aboard a starship, listened curiously to the angry rantings of a short, red man; his skin had the color of blood and leather. Harry recognized him as a member of a clone family, possibly one of the Lees, a mix of Chinese, Navajo, and Martian genes—and probably a political prisoner. The Lees had caused the Vampires no small amount of trouble.

Harry smiled as he listened. This little radical spoke like a one who knew his history. He understood his situation much too well. “You laugh, but I know the truth. I stand next in the succession. If anything happens to the TimeBinder of this world, I'll put on the headband. The Vampires can't afford to let me go free. The fact of my arrest proves that the Vampires plan to eliminate the office of the TimeBinder. If they do that on enough worlds—and they will—then we can never again call for a Gathering of all the Cluster worlds. If they can, they'll kill all thirteen remaining TimeBinders and prevent anyone from succeeding to the office.”

“But, what does this have to do with me—?” asked the LIX bioform?

“Listen, Ota—I subscribe to a very radical philosophy, in fact, a very
dangerous
idea. I believe that all of the races of the Cluster can unite together to throw off the heavy yoke of the Vampire aristocracy. The Regency has become oppressive under the rule of the Vampires; but the Vampires only rule because
we
let them.”

Nearby, listening to this rant, both Kask and Keeda reacted with annoyance. One snorted, the other
hmph
ed. “You know nothing about the Vampires,” Keeda rumbled.

“And you do? If you have such expertise, how did you and your brother end up here?”

“You spout dangerous ideas,” said Kask.

The red-skinned man answered with a grin. “What can they do to me? Throw me in jail?” This triggered a round of derisive hoots from all the other prisoners. Seeing two of the noble Dragon Guards disgraced gave them a great deal of satisfaction.

Then, the speaker noticed Sawyer Markham's interest in this discussion and pointed good-naturedly at him. “What do you think, tracker?”

Sawyer shook his head. “I don't believe in getting involved with governments—or resistance movements. My brother feels the same way.”

“I would have thought that you would sympathize with a rebellion.”

“All the rebels I've known,” said Sawyer, grinning, “have too much anger, too much intensity for their own good—and rarely liven up a party.”

The angry man, the intense man, poked Ota. “Listen to him. There, my friend, speaks the voice of a political illiterate.” That phrase caught Harry's interest, and he settled himself nearby to listen to the rest of this
ad hoc
seminar in revolution.

“This world had beauty once. And the Regency meant justice. Now, we see an empire in the final stages of collapse and decay. We have seen nothing but civil war for hundreds of years, a plague of oppression and death that sweeps from world to world in the Vampires' wake. Do you really need proof. Look around at Thoska-Roole's wasteland condition. That alone demonstrates the Regency's inability to maintain its own authority before the Vampires' hunger and greed.

“Once, the Dragons lived as the most respected moral authority in the Cluster. Now the Dragons grovel like everyone else—” He aimed this taunt deliberately at Kask and Keeda. “The Dragons serve the Vampires' wishes, not the Regency. Even their own Lord has fallen under the control of the Zashti family.” Kask and Keeda both let loose with warning rumbles at this. The prisoners around them began to edge away, but the leathery little man continued unafraid. “You wouldn't rumble at me unless you recognized the truth of it. If I spoke falsely, you'd have no need to warn me off.” Kask and Keeda looked at each other, uncertain. They fell back and continued listening.

The man with a cause said, “Once, the Vampires held the trust of every race and form within the Regency. Once, the Vampires lived among us all as equals. Now, they live as terrorists and Lords—a deadly combination.”

“But what do
you
want?” asked Harry. “What would serve the man who speaks?”

“Justice,” he replied simply.

Harry snorted. “Justice?” Amusement spread across his face. “Most people say they want justice, but they don't really want justice. They want revenge. They want to see the pain spread around equally. May I ask, what do you want?
Really?
”

The revolutionary looked up, startled. He seemed to notice Harry for the first time. “You seem to know a lot, old man. But have you ever fought in a revolution?”

Harry sidestepped the question with a shrug. “I've seen my share of wars, thank you. Only people who haven't lived through a war, advocate it so eagerly.”

“I don't advocate starting a war at all,” said the rebellious man. “I simply wish to win the one that already swirls around us—the war that the Vampires have inflicted on every other species in the Cluster.

“The Regency collapses around us, even as we blather,” he continued. “Civil war simmers on a thousand worlds throughout the Cluster. The Vampires commit atrocities in the open, unashamedly, no longer even bothering to keep their crimes a secret. Their fleets have plundered helpless worlds. Populations have vanished. Our civilization burns around us!

“The Call must go out, my friend, for a new Gathering of TimeBinders. The last Gathering gave us the Regency. This Gathering will dissolve the Regency and create a new republic, in which all species hold true and equal representation. Thirteen TimeBinders must issue the Call for a new Gathering. Twelve have already declared. Soon, the TimeBinder of Thoska-Roole will add his voice and then not even the Vampires will stop the sword of social justice.”

His eyes shone with the fire of true belief now. His voice took on a deeper resonance. The man with the fury spoke to all of them. “I give you this vision—an Alliance of Life, an alliance in which all sentient entities shall hold equal shares of responsibility and privilege, an alliance with a place for each and every one of us. Imagine—a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out.”

Some in his audience heard his passion and allowed themselves to share the tiniest bit of it. Others, however, had not yet climbed that high on the evolutionary ladder. His words brought hoots and catcalls of derision from some of the bitterest and most skeptical of the prisoners.

“Treat robots equal to humans? Machines? Pfah! I can still do one thing a machine can't,” hollered one squat, gray-looking man.

“And faster, too—” jibed his partner, an equally squat and gray-looking male.

“And what about androids and bioforms?” called another. “Shall we break our bread with them as well?”

“Not to mention clones and other synthetics. Would you want your brother to marry one?”

The man with the vision ignored the jokes. He held up a hand for silence. He stood up so everyone on the disk could see him. “
Every
life exists as a sacred spark. Every life, everywhere. We who believe in the values of the Resistance, hold this truth as a self-evident proposition.”

Harry looked around. Sawyer and Finn remained interested observers, but from a careful distance. Kask and Keeda looked angry. Clearly, they heard this radical speech as treason, and their Dragon Guard training demanded that they act. Kask mumbled something about seeing the man thrown in jail for his lies about the Regency; he did not realize the of the irony of his thought.

“Listen,” said the man with the vision. “Consider this—
imagine it
. Imagine that all the forms of the Cluster could put aside their differences and cooperate, even if only for a very short time. Imagine what we could accomplish! Dragons, for example—” Kask and Keeda perked up what they used for ears at this remark. “Without the Dragons, what power would the Vampires have? What could they impose upon the rest of us? As long as the servant races—all of the races, but especially the Dragons, continue to cooperate with the Vampire masters, they help—
we
help—them to perpetuate their power.”

He turned back to Ota now, a question on his face. The LIX class bioform shook its head. “I prefer not to have an opinion on this. The practice of war still lies beyond the horizon of my species, and I hope it stays that way forever. The business repels me.”

“May I remind you, gentle-beast,” the red man said, “that you now reside in the same jail as the rest of us, and that makes it your business too.”

“I refuse to accept this responsibility,” Ota said. “Humans created bioforms as servants, not warriors.”

He snorted in contempt, but Sawyer grinned and called. “The beast makes better sense than you. Take the money and run.”

“Hah! The tracker speaks—the voice of greed. The paid huntsman. Another kind of servant.” The scorn dripped from his voice. He added with contempt, “Another fool!”

Sawyer took no offense. He merely grinned and scratched himself. “Here we sit, my friend—both in the same prison. We must both look like fools to our masters, but given the choice, I'd rather look like my kind of fool than yours.”

Another inmate spoke up then. “I'll believe in an Alliance of Life when a fleet of ships arrives and wipes out the Vampires and their Marauder Squadrons.”

The red man finally allowed his frustration to show. “Don't you get it? The Alliance of Life starts with your declaration—not somebody else's. Ota? Surely you understand?”