Bayley, Barrington J - Novel 10 (13 page)

 
          
That
would be when he showed her that the
zen
gun had a
facility for personalised targets. Once a target had been registered, it could
be invoked any time. The target could not hide. Anywhere it was—anywhere on
this planet, anyway— Pout had only to think of it and press the trigger stud.
The stitch beam would go glowing out, wavering in the air, round corners, to
anywhere in the world, to where that person was. He would prove it to her with
one of the
others,
would send him half a mile away and
fire while aiming in the other direction, so she could see the electric
stitches bend around and find their mark.

 
          
Then
he would register her and use the gun on her in the same way, would take his
pleasure for a while, in making her suffer.

 
          
Then
she would be his.

 
          
In
the morning Hesper woke by the embers of the fire, rose and stretched. The air
was slightly misty, the sun (a yellow sun, like her own at home) about twenty
degrees off the horizon.

 
          
After weeks of being cooped up in the police cruiser and breathing
its stale air, the freshness of the day was invigorating.
She began to
feel cheerful, a contrast to her mood of the night before. Lacey blew on the
embers, adding dried grass and bleached wood. The fire started, and he began to
cook a long-eared quadruped he had been saving for breakfast.

 
          
Pout
squatted on the ground, watching the proceedings and blinking soporifically. He
looked so pathetic Hesper felt she could have taken her scangun off him at any
moment, but she did not try it. It had already become clear Pout was not as
helpless as he looked.

 
          
The
kosho
did not seem to have moved a
finger since she had seen him the night before. Still he sat cross-legged,
spine erect, clad in all his accoutrements. The effect was weird. Curious,
Hesper left the group and walked slowly towards him.

 
          
Sinbiane
appeared by her side, strolling along with her. "Lady, what were you doing
in space?"

 
          
She
stopped, looking down at him. "Fighting a war," she said.
"Escoria has rebelled against the Empire. Didn't you know?"

 
          
Wonderingly
he shook his head. "So is Escoria free from the Empire now, lady?"

 
          
"No.
We lost. The Simplex knows what will happen now."

 
          
"It
won't make much difference here on Earth, lady."

 
          
Hesper
stepped closer to the
kosho
and
stared at him in fascination. His eyes were closed, as she presumed they had
been since she arrived. The bony cast of his face was accentuated by the way
his shiny black hair was swept back and tied in a bun at the back of his head.
It was like looking at a statue.

 
          
But
what was really striking was his collection of weapons, arranged all over the
harness he wore over his simple white gown. At his waist, stretched out now
along the ground, was a mortar tube which she recognised as capable of throwing
a bomb a good few miles. On his back was a whole rack of rifles whose muzzles
projected above the back of his head like railings (this puzzled her a little;
she would have expected them to be carried stocks uppermost). She was also
amused to see, half-hidden beneath the rifles, the flat shape of a curved sword
scabbard.

 
          
At
chest, belly and thighs he carried an armoury of smaller weapons, grenades,
bombs,
ammunition
pouches and fletched hand-thrown
darts. Hesper had never seen, even "imagined, such a warrior.

 
          
"Why
does he stay like that?" she murmured to Sinbiane. "Is he
asleep?"

 
          
"No,
lady, he is not asleep. He has depersonalised his consciousness."

 
          
"What
does that mean?"

 
          
"It
is a state of perfect repose, lady, even deeper than sleep. But he is not
oblivious."

 
          
"He's
still aware of his surroundings, then?"

 
          
"Only as you are aware of your little toe, lady."

 
          
It
was some sort of trance state, Hesper decided. "Does he stay like that all
the time?" she asked.

 
          
"Whenever
he does not need to act, lady
. '
Between actions,
timeless being.' I can do it too, but uncle says boys should stay active."

 
          
"Uncle?"

 
          
"This
is my uncle. I may be a
kosho
one
day."

 
          
"If
koshos
are such wonderful
warriors," Hesper said bitterly, her voice rising, "why don't they
fight with us against the Empire?"

 
          
"A
kosho
is a perfect individual, lady.
He does not fight for causes. He fights because every act is a conflict with
nature."

 
          
"What?"
This mystical talk, especially coming from someone so young,
confused and annoyed her.
"Then why is he a camp follower of—
that?"
She jerked her thumb to
indicate Pout. "Does the ape have him screwed down too?"

 
          
"He
is beholden to the chimera,
lady, that
is true."

 
          
"Just
what
is
it about that creature?"

 
          
The
boy did not answer for a moment. He seemed to be hesitating over something.
"Lady," he said suddenly, "was it your battle that interfered
with the moon?"

 
          
"Moon?
What moon?"

 
          
"We
have a moon here, lady. I have lived on Earth all my life and it has always
been the same size—about the size of the sun. Its phases have always been
regular, too. But lately something had been going wrong. First, a few weeks
ago, it shrank to only half its proper diameter. Then it started growing. The
night before last it was about ten times as large as the sun; last night it was
more like twenty
time
. It isn't following its proper
cycle, either." She
did
recall a
satellite, an unusually large one for the mass of the planet, registering on
her egg's screen in the last few seconds of her approach. It
had
seemed disproportionately close to
its primary, at that.

 
          
She
hadn't seen it since landing. Presumably it was on the other side of the planet
from the sun at present, only appearing at night when she had been asleep.

 
          
She
frowned. The boy was talking nonsense, of course. He had either been dreaming
or he didn't understand the satellite's orbit.

 
          
"No,"
she said slowly, "our battle didn't have anything to do with your moon. It
was out among the stars."

 
          
"Then
I wonder what is happening? Well, shall we have breakfast, lady?"

 
          
She
accompanied him back to the fire, where Lacey gave her a piece of meat from the
quadruped (which he called a
rabbit).
The
flavour was novel to her; discovering she was ravenously hungry, she gulped it
down and wished for more.

 
          
Pout
himself
then scattered the fire, stamping on flame and
ember with his bare feet, and ordering the group to begin the day's march. In
single file, Pout in the lead, they set out to the west.

 
          
Hesper
glanced behind her. The
kosho,
who
had not shared the breakfast, and to whom no one had spoken, rose from the
ground, picking up a small mat which had protected his buttocks from the ground
and tucking it away somewhere on his person. He walked well to the rear of the
rest of the line, and shortly was joined by Sinbiane.

 
          
Pout
proved to be an indefatigable pace-setter. The sun
rose
high in the sky and became hot, until Hesper, perspiring and fatigued, began to
strip off, unfastening the one-piece sheen suit they had adopted as uniform
aboard the
Shark,
quickly following
that by pulling off her undervest. Her boots she put back on and strode along
in those and her underpants, carrying her other clothing in one hand.

 
          
Pout,
glancing back, saw her so disrobed and reminded himself of his plans. A hitch
suddenly occurred to him. The boy Sinbiane had assured him they were only a
day's journey from the great level plain where the moving cities were. If they
found a city before he had set his seal on her, there would be nothing to hold
her to the group . . .

 
          
True,
there would be plenty of women in the cities, and perhaps female apes and
man-ape chimeras too. Still, the snag tussled in Pout's mind with his
impatience to reach
the
plain.

 
          
The
little band he had around him satisfied one aspect of Pout's nature: his desire
to revenge himself on the world by dominating those around him. But he found
his vagrant life of the past few months insufficient. Getting food was too
difficult. And it became boring, day after day in the wilderness. His lust for
life demanded closer, more colourful horizons.

 
          
He
was able to resolve the difficulty when, near the end of the day, the land
sloped down to meet the expected plain. They all stopped to stare when they had
a good view of it, for it was just Hke a grass sea, completely flat as far as
the eye could perceive, the more hilly terrain they had crossed curving round
it in coves and headlands.

 
          
"Is
it
natural?"
Hesper asked of no
one in particular.

 
          
"It
was a sea bottom once," the eldest of the sneakthief brothers told her.
"But
it was levelled off a bit,
too."

 
          
Sinbiane
had joined them. "Earth's is an ancient culture, lady, and has
peculiarities perhaps not found elsewhere. One of these is the culture of the
moving cities. For centuries they have roamed this plain."

 
          
"They
really move?
But why?"

 
          
"Come!"
ordered Pout. "Down onto the plain!"

 
          
They
descended. But instead of setting out immediately over the ocean of waving tall
grass, as Hesper had expected, Pout stopped and turned to her. From the
bib-like garment he wore he drew, not her scangun, but a different-looking gun
she had not seen before.

 
          
"Time
you joined our little gang properly," he told her in a thick voice,
curling back his protruding lips. "We have an initiation rite."

 
          
Hesper
stared blankly at the gun.

 
          
Lacey
was showing signs of distress, a pained look coming over his face. "Aw,
boss, not to a lady. It ain't right to a lady. She'll be a good girl, won'tcha,
lady? She'll do what she's told."

 
          
As
he said this he reached out his arm to Hesper. She drew away. Pout waved him
back. His gaze was fixed on Hesper's breast.

 
          
The
muzzle of the
zen
gun was barely a yard from her as he
pointed it at her left nipple.

 
          
"Look!"
cried Sinbiane.

 
          
He
was pointing to something that had appeared on
the
horizon: a hulking yellow shape that heaved itself up, like a
rising sun or moon, but which seemed almost too
big
to be coming over the horizon. It was as if it were only on the
other side of a table.