Acts of Conscience (19 page)

Gretel laughing, rising to her feet, the sharp whine of her rifle’s condenser drowned by her shout of, “
Tally-HO!!
”

Gretel Blondinkruis stepping over me, stepping right on that big black hand, stamping down hard on boneless fingers, some vast human voice, voice deeper than orchestral bass, bellowing, “
ArArArAr
!”

Gretel like a goddess in denim and khaki, aiming her gun down into the defile,
zzzip-POP
!

Agonized scream, as of a giant’s dog, hand snatched away just as Gretel raised her foot and let it go, and
zzzip-POP
! Something thrashing down below. More sounds from the defile, womfrog’s voices like so many panicking cellos,
ururur
...

Crunch
.

Shadow flying over us, vast, black against the sky, shadow with the merits of a flying elephant, the shape of a leaping frog.

Gretel: “
DenArrie
...”

One of the others:
zzzip
! Fire forming on the elephant-frog’s dark flank,
POP
! Shadow shape tumbling suddenly, seeming to fall down into the trees, hard crackle of breaking trunks and a dense shiver of moving earth.

Others coming forward, my excited comrades in arms, Pandizides, with his candyshit-flavored boot stumbling over me, seeming to aim a deliberate kick before stepping to the precipice, people aiming their guns, condensers snarling, and
zzzip
!
zzzip
!
zzzip
!

Sound of opera singers howling from the shadowy defile, interrupted by the heavy popping of explosive loads. I got up, stepped forward to stand beside Pandazides, fat man standing with his gun held high, recoiling in his hands as it sizzled away. Flashes of light down below, bullets bursting among the trapped womfrogs, womfrogs boiling around each other, big ones trampling the little ones, screaming, trying to leap away, falling back as the bullets tore them open.

Zzzip
.
Zzzip
.

Pop
.

Almost silence down below.

Soft rustling, less and less and...

A deep voice, choking on phlegm, whispered, “
Ooooohhhh
...”

Then nothing.

Gretel clicked off her rifle, listened to the gentle static susurrus of the condenser discharging back into the battery. “Well, that’s it then.”

Dark, motionless, hulking shadows down below.

Pandazides, rifle tucked under one arm, turned to grin at me. “Hey, you little shit, did you even
uk
!”

Eyes bugging out, dropping his rifle in the mud as I planted a quick kick in his crotch. “
Oooh
!” Soft whistle of Pandazides trying to catch his breath, astonished. Grabbed him by the shirt front, gave him a hard shove, watched as he toppled, flailing, shouting, and fell down into the ravine, falling right on the carcass of the nearest womfrog.

Gretel Blondinkruis said, “God damn. If one of them is still alive...”

I shrugged. “Well, that’d be something.”

Long stare. Shadow of a grin. “You are a peculiar fellow, du Cheyne. You know?”

All I could do was stare at her and wonder why she would think I might not know I was a little odd.

o0o

Somehow, by the time full night had fallen, familiar stars blazing overhead, hard and wintry-looking, we’d divided into two groups, some people gone back down the trail to where we’d left the horses, going with DenArrie to unpack the tents, start the cooking fires, visible now as a ruddy glow through the trees, generally set up the camp. I stayed with the second group, standing on the rim of the defile to watch the butchering of the womfrogs.

Down in the little valley, hardly more than a giant gully I suppose, Gretel Blondinkruis gathered her tourists around her, taking out her big
boeie
knife, chromed blade glinting like a mirror by the shifting light of twin moons Wan and Hope, showing them what to do, Mr. Pandazides an attentive pupil, watching her closely, keeping his back to me.

I could feel a smile tugging at my lips as I watched him, remembered the way he rose, hunched over, clutching his genitals with both hands, angry, blustering, staggering up the hill, slipping and falling on his face in the mud.

Claude and Évie were standing on the edge of the little cliff beside me now, preferring, I suppose, to watch, clean and dry, rather than go down and participate in the... meat cutting. Talking to one another in French:

She said, “This is a disgusting business. I wish we hadn’t come.”

A sigh from Claude. “I suppose so. These are disgusting people.”

Évie: “Especially that wretched Mr. Pandazides. I’m glad Mr. du Cheyne did what he did.”

A nod from her slim, handsome dark husband: “I too. Nice to see such an unpleasant bully get what’s coming to him.” Turning to me then, smiling, in heavily accented Greek he said, “He thought you were a coward, this Pandazides. The look on face when you threw him down the hill...”

The fear in his eyes when he looked back up the hill, saw me waiting with my hands dangling most capably by my sides, wishing to kill me, knowing what would happen to him if he tried. I shrugged, looking at the admiration evident in pretty little Évie’s dark eyes, and said, “It’s a common enough mistake.”

More common than I care to remember. This du Cheyne, you see, unresponsive and... afraid? It must seem so. Seem so until they act, until I... react. It makes them angry, but... courage is a figment of men’s imaginations. Most bold men are merely unafraid, which is a different thing entirely.

Évie, astonished: “You speak French?”

I said, “So it seems.”

Small, slim Claude, suddenly looking at his wife, nervous, seeing her look at me. What is he thinking? Is he wondering if she got wet between her legs, watching me kick Pandazides nuts and then throw him down the hill? Is he imagining her in my tent tonight, invisible in the darkness, sighing to me, sighing in French,
Oh
.
Oh, Gaetan
.
Que j’aime le soleil et les belle fleures
...

I grinned and shook my head, trying not to imagine what poor little Claude was making of my smile. The truth? Somewhere inside of me, on the other side of the adolescent idiot who still dreams of women throwing themselves upon him, there dwells a still larger idiot, making fun of the whole damned business.

Below, Gretel’s knife slid down the length of a dead womfrog’s belly, making a long, soft
wheep!
like an old-fashioned metal zipper, hairy, leathery hide parting like magic, glistening yellow fat showing through. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke again. The fat and muscles and fascia burst open and the womfrog’s guts came tumbling out, along with an overpowering stench of hot apple pie.

Évie said, “
Mon dieu, Claude
!”

o0o

Back at the campsite, I sat in a folding chair in front of my little tent, while the others milled around the fires, helping with camp chores, watching, smelling, laughing and talking, while bits of womfrog cooked, sliced steaks frying in little plastic pans, chunks of leg, haunches, calves, roasting as they turned on the mechanic spit this useful Mr. DenArrie had put together. Amazing what you can carry in the saddlebags of horses. Even with Green Heaven’s antique technology, camping equipment folds up small.

Gretel standing over there, leaning against a tree, arms folded across her breast, watching everything at once, more the goddess than ever. When I look at her, all I see is the angular, yet rounded outline of her classic shape, tilt of hips, length of thigh...

Mr. Pandazides sitting on a big rock away from the fire, still sullen.

Claude and Évie standing together, small and slim, hardly more than shadowy outlines by the fire, he with his arm around her shoulders, she leaning in close.
Mate-guarding behavior
, I remember the phrase from some old book.

Mr. DenArrie tending the fire, laughing and talking now, the center of tourist attention, it seems. Maybe he doesn’t follow quite the same rule as his boss. Maybe the women will come to his tent tonight and sigh and sigh and...

That little plump woman who’d seemed to be eying me earlier in the evening, the one whose name I can’t quite remember, hanging around DenArrie now... Abrupt memory of her riding on the bus, sitting with Mr. Pandazides, the two of them chatting merrily away.

Well. Sorry old boy. Sorry I threw your ass down the hill and made you look like such a putz. No pussy for you tonight, eh?

I found myself imagining the two of them together, perhaps for the first time, plump woman stripped down, confronting him with her nakedness, Mr. Pandazides with an erection perhaps, confronting her with his. There’s always a tension in that moment, when you watch them looking at you, paying so much attention to their reaction you hardly have time to appreciate what you’re seeing.

Brief memory of Jayanne in my bedroom on Mars, that first night we were together, standing there naked in the half light, dorm room in gloom, campus outdoor lighting shining through the blinds, painting us with little yellow-white stripes. Jayanne’s dark eyes, not quite in shadow, obviously afraid. Afraid of what? I couldn’t imagine.

I’d looked at her then, taking my eyes off her face, looking at her small, round breasts with their prominent pink nipples, gently domed belly telling me she wasn’t getting quite enough exercise, but then no one did at Syrtis Major, my own belly rather slack in those days, because we were all so busy studying and...

Long, lingering look at the rust-colored hair of her crotch, eyes trying to penetrate the deeper shadows, wishing I could make her lie back on the bed, turn on the little reading lamp, push her legs apart, lean in close and look and touch, probe with my fingers, smell her and taste her until I knew her as well as a man can ever know...

When I’d looked back at her face, what I saw there was stark terror.

I’d had the wit then to say, Oh Jayanne. You are so incredibly... lovely.

Jayanne closing her eyes, swallowing softly, breath exhaled gently, an astonishing sigh of relief.

Memory of our little life together, relationship passing in a fleeting kaleidoscope that seemed over in an instant, resolving on the image of our last night together, memories collapsing in on one another like so many imploding stars.

The day before, making my decision with a feeling of... horror. Well, yes, Jayanne. I will marry you.

Jayanne’s eyes on me, full of doubt.

Me, wandering around for the better part of a Martian sol, feeling lost, full of regret, imagining myself husband and father and... oh, you know the rest. That
trapped
story as old as humankind. This is the way that the world ends, etc. I’m sure I did more than my share of whimpering, that day.

And the next night?

Jayanne in my bed, naked, but strangely distant, avoiding my touch.

Come on. What’s wrong?

Urging myself on her, already erect, ready to just climb in the saddle and get it the hell over with. Damn it, Jayanne... Then, eyes on me, eyes in shadow, full of... something, she’d said, Well, Gaetan, I went to the clinic this afternoon and got rid of it.

What?
Why
? I thought we agreed...

Already, in that moment, even as I spoke my lines, I could feel a terrible flood of
relief
.

She’d shrugged and said, I just... don’t think you’re what I want for a husband. Afterwards, she went away, and I never saw her again.

Didn’t really mind, because I hadn’t really even
liked
her, you see, until a couple of days later, when I woke up one morning, alone.

I looked away from the leaping shapes inside the cooking fire, looked across the camp clearing at the tree where Gretel Blondinkruis had been standing. Not there anymore. Pandazides still on his rock, brooding into the fire. Hell, we must have looked like twins. Claude and Évie. DenArrie and the little plump woman...

I got up and walked off, away into the dark.

o0o

Up near the top of a steep hill, I found an exposed ledge, dry gray rock, and sat looking out across the nighttime world, cool wind blowing over me, hugging my knees to my chest. The stars filled the black sky, so bright and hard and untwinkling they seemed close, seemed to bring the sky down to hang right overhead, Milky Way a river of remote golden dust beyond the stars, Hope long set, Wan a pale crescent hanging over the northern horizon, seeming much larger than I knew it really was.

After a while I lay back, staring upward at nothing in particular.

Why the hell am I here?

Is it really because I have nowhere else to go?

I’m not so stupid that I imagined my childhood dreams had any validity. They never do. Maybe I just wanted to
see
. But it’s so stupid to just sit up here, crushed by a shallow, pointless malaise, wishing for... wishing for... Hell, that thing in your pants is getting hard again. You know what
it
wants. You know how to get what it wants. Go back down to Orikhalkos, where money will buy whatever there is to be had.

Then get aboard your ship and go back home.

Sell that asinine conglomeration of metal, plastic, and dreams.

Three million livres?

Christ Almighty, that will buy six thousand nights with the likes of Camilla Seldane.

I tried to picture that.

Is
that
what you want, Gaetan du Cheyne?

Why the fuck don’t you
know
?

Just then, Gretel’s voice said, “Nice night, hm?”

I didn’t jump, didn’t react, no pang in my chest or anything like that. It felt almost as though I’d been expecting her. Maybe those old dreams run deeper than I know.

She stood still for a while, facing away from me, looking out over the dark, empty lowlands, down into the Plains of Brass, while I stared, idiotically, at the shape of her rear end, wishing and wishing, saying nothing, fantasies growing more foolish with every passing second. The machines are telepathic. Why aren’t we?