The 97th Step (16 page)

Too bad it had to be her."

The voice seemed to come from his left. Ferret took the revolver from his pocket and circled that way.

"You left me there, Ferret! Left me to the cools! I spent six years in a cage!"

The voice was definitely just ahead. Ferret thumbed the hammer back on the gun. He moved faster.

"You were my friend, Ferret! I loved you!"

Gworn had moved by the time Ferret reached the place where he thought the voice was coming from. To the right, now. Yeah, I loved you, Benny. But that was then.

"So you have to pay," Gworn yelled. "First your partner, then your woman. Are you suffering, Ferret? I want you to suffer, like I did!"

Gworn was moving as he talked, away and to the right again. Ferret circled to cut him off. He nearly ran into a shielded fan belt. Better watch where he was going, or the basement would get him instead of Gworn.

"I had six years to think about it, Ferret. You ran off and left me, and I learned to hate you above everything in the universe. I'm going to kill you a little at a time! I'll make it last, Ferret. I'm better than you, now. I’ve practiced with this spring gun for four years, almost every day! Your antique doesn't scare me! You still have it, don't you?"

Ferret almost answered him, but caught himself. I won't talk to you, Gworn. You killed Shanti and you killed Shar, and I'm going to kill you. My face will be the last thing you ever see.

"Ferret? Are you there? Or did you run away again? You're a
coward
. Ferret! But it doesn't matter if you run, because I will find you! I'm your shadow forever!"

He was closer, Ferret knew. Just ahead was a row of holding tanks, shunting some kind of liquid back and forth, gurgling and vibrating. The tanks were tall enough to conceal a man.

"Ferret! Goddammit, where the fuck
are
you?"

Ferret rounded the end of the row of tanks. There Gworn was, back to him. Ferret lowered the revolver, so that the barrel pointed straight down. "Right here, Gworn," he said, his voice quiet against the background drone.

The black man spun, dropping into a shooting crouch, shoving the spring gun out in front of himself. He was screaming something wordless, something primal and full of rage.

Ferret's gun hand came up, as if it had a life of its own. He never took his gaze from Gworn's snarling face. Even the shot sounded quiet against the overlay of machine noise. Gworn's spring gun
twanged
, but the dart went high; Gworn was already falling from the impact of the bullet. He fell, and dropped the spring gun. It clattered and slid three meters away. He clutched at his chest with both hands.

Ferret moved in, and stood over the prostrate man, staring down at him. Gworn was bleeding from around the edges of his hands, the fluid oozing bright red.

"It… wasn't—wasn't supposed to be like this."

"No," Ferret said.

Gworn blinked, and tears streamed from the corners of his eyes back and into his ears. "I hate you. I—I used to—to… love you, Ferret. I truly did."

"Yeah."

"I'm dying."

"Yeah."

"Well, fuck you, Ferret! You—you hear?" He coughed, and his leaking blood increased its flow.

Ferret looked at the bleeding man, then at the gun in his hand. Another killing. Everybody was dead or dying. He felt hollow, as if all his insides had been scooped out, leaving nothing but a thin shell, with no emotions, nothing but dull grayness, not even pain.

"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck—" Gworn stopped abruptly, as if the words had been measured and then cut with a razor-edged sword. His eyes rolled back and he let the last breath he would ever take escape in a bubbly moan.

Dead, Ferret knew. Now they are all gone. The only three friends I ever had. And it's my fault. I betrayed one and that cost me the other two. Now there is nothing. I'm nobody, I have nobody. They are all dead. I should be dead, too.

He raised the gun and stuck the end of the barrel under his chin. Just pull the trigger, Ferret. Make it six people you have killed. The mark, the cop, Shanti, Shar, Gworn and yourself. Go ahead, it'll be easy. A gentle squeeze, that's all it will take. It'll blast your damned head right off…

He stood there for five minutes, though it seemed like only an instant. Then he lowered the gun. He couldn't do it. Gworn was right. He was a coward. He didn't have the guts to do it. He didn't deserve to live, but he was afraid to die. He was running again, just like he had done before.

Like he had always done. Only this time, he couldn't outrun his pursuer. It wasn't his father and it wasn't Gworn, it was himself. He would never be fast enough to escape that follower, the shade of his own soul.

No matter where he ran, no matter how far, it would be right next to him, whispering into his ear day or night, whenever he paused to listen:
Right here, coward. I will always be right here
.

Forever and ever and ever…

He looked at the gun again, and realized what a fatal attraction it had held for him. As if it were possessed of some magical lure, a Siren of polished steel and wood, calling to the killer in his soul. But no more. He tossed the weapon at Gworn's body. It hit the dead man on the leg, bounced onto the floor and slid ten centimeters.

Gworn had given it to him, let Gworn have it back.

Part of Ferret turned and walked away.

Part of him would stay there in the basement.

Forever.

Fifteen

So FERRET WAS rich, but almost everybody who had ever meant anything to him was dead. All the money in the galaxy couldn't buy them back for even a minute.

There was nothing for him on Vishnu, and at least one corpse the cools would attribute to him. The gun next to Gworn was covered with his chemical and finger prints; he'd made no effort to wipe them away.

He might make a case for self-defense, maybe even beat the illegal weapon charge, using some of his money-as-power, but it wasn't worth the effort. Nothing was worth the effort. Everything was down the tubes. He couldn't stand being on Vishnu for another day, another hour. He had to get away.

He left his own ship and caught the first commercial liner leaving. He bought an open ticket, paid for it, and boarded. He didn't care where he was bound. It wasn't until they were half a dozen light-years away that he even bothered to ask what the next port of call was. Kalk, the steward had told him. In the Svare System.

Ferret sat in his tiny cabin, staring at the walls. The cosmic finger had jammed itself up his ass again. His home world, the giant moon Cibule, orbited Kalk. Actually, they might be said to orbit each other, given the size and gravity ratio, no matter that they were called moons, but that didn't matter.

It had been over fifteen years since he'd been on Cibule, and since it didn't matter where he was going, he figured he might as well be there as anywhere. Over the years, he had wondered about his parents.

Well. Now was the time to find out what had happened to them. The finger was urging him that way, and he had no better plans. He had no plans at all.

It was the only thought that even briefly stirred him from his depression, and then only with a dull curiosity. That was a measure of how he felt: the only destination he could think of now was a din-farm he had hated.

He stayed in his cabin, he stared at the wall, he ate if he remembered it. The blanket of grief that covered him was of thick lead, and it was an effort to do anything. He sat bowed under the weight of it, and thought about Stoll and Shar and Gworn. He had fucked it up and they were all dead. It was all his fault and there was no way to repair it, no way to make it right.

Nothing would ever be right again.

Part Two

The Siblings of the Shroud

Recognition of one's ignorance is the first step toward enlightenment.

-JINSOKU

Sixteen

THE EVERWEAR PLASTIC of the house belied its name—it looked worn; the green color of it had faded with the years and sunlight, and pieces of the topcoat had flaked away from the thicker base, giving the place a mottled appearance.

The house itself looked much smaller than Ferret remembered. There was a flitter parked under the open-walled shed and a tractor outside, next to it. The vehicles were not the same ones he had left, but by no twist of the imagination could they be called new. The flower and vegetable garden his mother had always kept so well tended was a stretch of dead and dried stalks, overcome by weeds. The
wembe
patch closest to the house was in similar condition, the gray-green of the spiked foliage dead or dying, with many of the tubers pulled up and left to rot.

Jesu, it looked terrible. What had happened?

Ferret parked the flitter he had bought and climbed out. The stink was the same, though somehow less intense.

He didn't bother to touch the announcer button. The door was unlocked, and he opened it and walked into the house in which he had been born.

Inside looked worse than outside. Cobwebs laden with dust fuzzed the corners; more dust lay on every exposed surface like fine powder; trash was strewn over the floor—empty food cartons, paper, drink containers. He couldn't believe his mother would allow it to deteriorate so, were she still capable of taking care of it.

He wandered through the house and his memories of it, failing to reconcile the two. This wreck had no place in his scenario—he had never lived
here
.

His father was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, a cup of tea in his hands. He sat so still that at first Ferret thought he might be asleep. After a moment, however, the man looked up.

He had weathered much like the house. Ferret saw. He was only in his seventies, still middle-aged, but he looked closer to a hundred. His hair, what there was of it, had gone white; his skin had been baked by the sun into a mass of wrinkled leather, spotted with darker pigment that made him look paint-spattered.

The sclera of his eyes were dirty yellow, and shot through with spidery vessels. Like the house, he had also shrunk with the years. Ferret felt a sense of amazement: How could he have ever feared this pitiful man?

Though his body had suffered, Matuta Kalamu's mind had not fled into senility. Ferret saw his father recognize him.

"So. You've come back." The old man's voice was flat, almost a monotone.

"Yes." He looked around. The kitchen was in no better shape than the rest of the house. "Where is mother?"

"Dead."

Ferret nodded. He had suspected. He was surprised at the feeling that suddenly touched him. He hadn't seen her in more than fifteen years, and had thought about her only a few times, but he found that knowing she was dead brought up feelings of unfinished business. There were things he should have said, questions he should have asked. As God had once ridden his shoulder, now it seemed Death had replaced Him. In an odd way, he took some comfort that his father was still alive.

Ferret said, "How long?"

"A year and a month. She caught a fever. It was a short illness. The medic says she should have lived."

There were a thousand things Ferret could say, a thousand more questions he could ask. He settled on the one that had dogged him the most over the years:

"On the day that I left, how did you know?"

The old man looked away from his son and stared at the cup of cold tea. "She told me. She knew."

"Why?"

His father sat there unspeaking for what seemed a long time before he answered. "To punish me, of course. She didn't think I would go after you. I did, you know."

"I know. I saw you."

"She hated me. Because of Jana."

For a moment, Ferret couldn't place the name. Then he remembered. "My sister?"

"She killed herself," the old man said.

Ferret blinked, surprised. His mother had always told him that Jana had died from pneumonia. "Why?"

His father twirled the teacup slowly in his hands. "She was going to run away. There was a boy."

"That's not worth suicide," Ferret said.

"I found out. She kept a diary. I had the boy arrested for having sex with her—she wrote of it, she boasted of it! It was a sin."

There was something there, in his father's voice, something he was not saying. Ferret had become a better judge of such things than he had been as a boy. "What else?" His voice sounded harsh in the small kitchen.

The old man seemed lost in his thoughts. He spoke as if seeing through time, as if from a great distance.

"She had no right to leave me. No right."

Ferret felt the hair stir on his neck. The meaning of the statement gave him a chill. "No right to leave
you
?"

His father looked up at Ferret. His face had aged even more in just a few moments. Tears gathered in his eyes. "She and I… we had, we were…"He trailed off.

There was no need to finish. Ferret knew.

"You molested my sister. Your own daughter."

"No. She loved me. She
did
love me."

"You hypocritical bastard! You were so goddamned holy and pure, strapping me if I breathed wrong, and you did
that
!"

"After she died, your mother was going to leave. But she didn't. She stayed. To torment me."

"How could she have allowed you to ever touch her again?"

The old man stared at his tea. "She did not."

"Then how…?" Ferret stopped. The enormity of it struck him like a physical blow. The room sharpened around him, as if he had taken a potent psychedelic. The universe was filled with razors, whirling, whirling, slicing and nicking him in a wind of steel, catching his attention, making him
aware
. He could see with absolute clarity.

His voice, when he found it again, was much more steady than he felt. "Who is my father?"

"I don't know. She never said. That was part of her punishment. It could be any man I met. Do you know how that made me feel? That any stranger who laughed could be laughing at me?"

Ferret turned away, suddenly unable to bear the sight of the man he had always thought of as his father.