The 97th Step (19 page)

That chord touched Ferret to his depths. Those were the questions he had not dared ask, after the deaths of the only people who had ever meant anything to him. They had been his prostheses, his crutches against having to find out about himself. When they were gone, he had nothing to hide behind.

Who was he?

Why was he here?

Dindabe wasn't finished yet. "No, I don't think you're priest material either. I can't see what she sees in you. But it's your choice, Ferret. You don't have to go with her. You don't have to do anything. You can go back to being the way you were. You can drink or chem yourself into a warm stupor and let your life ebb back into what it was before: nothing. It's up to you. No man can make a choice like this for another, you have to decide. Do you want to risk becoming something more than a ferret? Or would you rather stay what you are, a pretense of a man?"

"Shut up!"

Ferret was stunned, both by Dindabe's longest-ever speech to him, and by his own outburst. His anger overwhelmed him, and his fear of Dindabe as a deadly foe fled before the rage. Yelling at the Gura was tantamount to suicide.

"Ah," Dindabe said, his voice softer, "I am sorry. Maybe I don't have the right to say these things to you."

Ferret shook his head. It was as if a door had been opened within his mind, showing passage to another land, a place so different from where he had lived before that it was more alien than any real planet in the galaxy. He could see into the new land, it was frightening, more terrifying than anything he had ever experienced, and it would never go away. Closing the door might hide the view, but it would not stop the memory. Therein lay a new way, and the risk to him was great. It would take more from him than anything he had to back away—or to go forward.

"You're right," Ferret said. "Truth cuts deep and it hurts, but you're right. I've fucked my life up pretty good, Gura." That, at least, was no revelation.

Dindabe put a calloused hand on Ferret's shoulder and shook him gently. "It's not too late, son. You have a chance to fix it. Not everybody gets that."

Ferret stared through his teacher, a far look that focused on infinity. Of a moment, he remembered what it had been like when first he had been taught of God. Of how good it had felt to think somebody wiser, more powerful and lovingly benevolent was in charge, watching out for him. And he recalled how he had felt when he rejected that concept. Something had been lacking since, though he had never consciously acknowledged it to himself. He missed God. He did not miss the piety of his father, neither the trappings of organized religion—those were the reasons he had first thrown God away—but he missed the warmth of something greater than himself. Maybe this was what had been lacking. Maybe he could find it again.

Maybe this priesthood had some answers. Maybe.

A day later. Ferret sat in Moon's private cabin onboard the starliner bound for Earth, watching the woman. He had determined from her voice and movements that she was young, his age or maybe a little one way or the other. He had not seen her face.

"Do you wear that shroud always?"

"Not always. We are allowed to remove them in private, for bathing or certain kinds of work, or in the presence of… loved ones."

"What is the point in wearing them?"

"Anonymity, for one. We take new names on entering the order, and we present a uniform appearance to outsiders. Our founder. Diamond, thought it appropriate to show our worth by our actions, and not our appearances."

"How interesting."

She laughed, a throaty and happy sound. "Oh, there are pragmatic reasons, as well. From time to time, the Siblings engage in actions that are somewhat… irregular. One might even say illegal. Wearing face cover and having generic names makes it somewhat difficult for certain oppressive authorities to know whom to detain."

"Somehow, I'm not getting a picture of typical holy men and women here. A highly effective combat form, skulking around in disguises, using phony names—it sounds a little odd. Surprising the Confed allows it to exist."

"What do you know about the Confederation government?"

"Not much," he admitted. "I've never been very political."

"You have much to learn, Ferret. Much to learn."

"All right. Indulge my curiosity. What was the fight in the Eel all about?"

"One of the crew members of this ship wanted to see what was under my robes. He chose to make his desire known in an out of the way part of the vessel where he found me alone. He was insistent. I discouraged him."

Ferret smiled. He could imagine. "And his friends thought to get even."

"Apparently so."

"Dindabe thinks highly of your fighting system. After seeing it, I understand why."

"It is a small part of our order, but necessary—we could accomplish little did we have to spend all of our time hiding from aggressors."

Ferret nodded. Her speech had a formal tang to it, it seemed very proper and aloof, and yet, beneath her words, he felt a current mixed of both humor and warmth. Here was a woman who was competent and dangerous, and, somehow, amused over something. That was an intriguing combination, not one he had ever run across in quite this way. While he was more curious about her, he also wondered about the system that produced such a woman.

Whatever else these Siblings might be, he doubted they would be
dull
.

The Confed's interstellar travel net was flung wide; sometimes, the net gaped. Bender ships had been assigned routes that, to the casual observer, often made no sense. Generally, travel between major systems was relatively short and direct, as might be expected. But sometimes, due to unexplained machinations generated by those who controlled such things, a trip that should be a single long jump became a series of shorter hops. For instance, a reasonable man would likely assume that a liner running from the Delta System (wherein Thompson's Gazelle spun around its primary star) would go straight to the Solar System, and Earth. The space in light-years was, as such things went, relatively short, and the Deltanian worlds exported a number of goods to the vicinity of Sol. But, no. Instead, a person traveling from Thompson's Gazelle to Earth via commercial starship would first bend space to the Haradali System, change ships at Wu or Tatsu, then be routed to either Dirisha or Mti, in the Ndama System and
then
Earth; or, worse, one could waste twice the time while parked in various orbits of the four-world Bruna System as passengers were ferried up. A direct jump that would take four or five days thus became a leisurely and roundabout slow-ship tour that took instead anywhere from two to three weeks.

Not, Ferret thought, as he sparred with the mirror in the ship's gym, that he was in any great hurry. The more he thought about it, and the more he heard about it, it seemed that this group was some kind of radical organization. He had always been apolitical, at least to the point of worrying little about local governments or Confederation intents, save where they intersected with his business. Somebody was always going to be in charge, and who they were and what they did had never bothered him greatly.

Yeah, the Confed was nasty, but he had always played outside of its bounds. Dancing on the fringe, it was called. They would squash him if they caught him, but that was the game, not being caught. Who gave a crap what the Confed did to citizens? A man with a name like Ferret was never going to be upstanding; let the cits worry about politics.

He shifted backward, watching his mirror-brother watch him. He blew out stale air, set himself, and made another run toward his image. Punch, punch, slide, step, kick, kick, and drop, ridge hand to the groin, there—!

Whatever laws the Confed spawned, Ferret intended to obey only the ones he chose. Yes, civilians were always bitching about repressive this and unjust that, but he had largely turned an uncaring ear to such noises. Cits were bound by things that laners and thieves shrugged off like a
kookileigh
shrugged off snow. There were, in Ferret's experience, two kinds of law: one law ruled the poor, an altogether different one more gently guided the rich. Enough money kept nearly everybody at bay. A sufficient bribe could almost always calm the most agitated official, and if it did not, that money could buy you a fast ship to points elsewhere. It was a big galaxy.

His mirror doppelganger looked knowingly at him. True enough, brother. Fuck politics, you got crime.

Ferret raised from his crouch, having just defeated another invisible enemy, and shuffled back a few meters. He set himself for another attack series.

Radical groups, however, tended to get themselves shut down. It was one thing to harbor opinions, another thing to stand up and speak them aloud. The Confed was not particularly tolerant when it came to dissent. So, if the shrouders were fire-breathing anarchists, they must be careful about where they blew their smoke, elsewise, they would be history. Moon had not exactly advocated any kind of military overthrow, though she had hinted that the order played fast and rather loose now and again. Not too bright, that. Ferret thought. For all she knew, he could be a Confed agent, looking to infiltrate the Siblings.

Jump, punch, chop, chop, spin, heel kick, hook kick and poke to the eyes—!

Ferret relaxed, shook tightness from his shoulders, and took a deep breath, letting it out with almost a sigh. Everything the woman said made him more curious. There was, it seemed, a whole galaxy full of things he had never even wondered about before, things he had not thought worth considering. He had died when Shar and then Gworn had died, and it was surprising to find out that he still cared about anything else.

The man in the mirror stared. What have we gotten ourselves into? Ferret wondered.

He watched Moon again, and shook his head. They were in the gym, and the dance seemed always the same; still, he could not follow it for more than a dozen steps before he lost the thread of it and became entranced with the beauty and complexity of the twirling, leaping figure. Some of the
kata
he had learned during his fight training had been intricate—in one set, he fought nine imaginary opponents at once—but those maneuvers seemed dull and slow compared to hers. Moon's steps were not merely light and quick and in perfect balance; they seemed to flow liquidly without pause. Her arms and hands fluttered and flitted in concert with her legs and feet, but the circles and waves thus described seemed not so much for balance as a kind of naturalistic art. Shar would have loved this priestess. They would have understood each other.

As Moon spun into another repetition of her wondrous flight. Ferret's unease gathered itself into a hard knot in his belly.

They were nearing the Solar System, and Earth. Soon, they would be approaching the home of the order to which Moon belonged. Ferret was, he realized, afraid; of what, he could not say. Moon had given him some bare facts: the form which she so beautifully practiced was called the Ninety-seven Steps, supposedly encompassing all of the most efficient fighting movements of which a human was capable. The commune to which they traveled was in Earth's Southern Hemisphere—an island in the Bismarck Sea, three hundred kilometers north and east of Wewak, New Guinea, a larger island itself north of the Australian continent. The names meant nothing to him, but with a thief's memory for detail. Ferret had filed them away. Manus was a tropical land, living in an eternal summer, too hot during the days, and slightly less hot during the nights. The place boasted dank swamps, steep hills, fast-running muddy streams, large amounts of rain, and thick forests, all buzzing with pestiferous insects and assorted small vermin. Only the coastal regions were habitable by other than a crazed recluse.

Why, Ferret had asked, had the Siblings established themselves on such a hellhole?

Moon had smiled. He could not see her face, but there was a wrinkling and slight movement of the shroud covering her features that he was certain indicated a smile. For just that reason, she had said.

Nobody else wanted it. The towns that had been there before lay largely abandoned; the property owners had been more than willing to sell to some insane collection of priests and priestesses willing to lay out a lot of stads for such real estate. The grateful populace took their money and moved quickly, before the mad priests could change their minds and renege. They fled to more hospitable climates, shaking their heads over the brain-damaged ones who actually
wanted
to live there!

The Siblings wanted privacy, Ferret said, understanding.

Just so. The order pays its taxes promptly and is largely left alone. To be official, the Confed sends a rep twice a year. The rep does a cursory inspection, gets stoned on local hemp, and takes a bribe to report what he would report anyway: the thick shrouds have made them all crazy with the heat—they're harmless.

A mistake, I take it?

Again, the hidden smile. But no answer, other than that.

The knot in his belly grew larger and more icy.

Whatever was going on here was much more than some splinter religious group in the middle of nowhere.

He felt it in his gut, coiling around like some kind of slithery reptile. Whatever it was, he was going to find out pretty soon.

Nineteen

THE QUESTION "WHY was he here?" took on a more specific meaning as Ferret and Moon left the air-conditioned coolness of the local port. The station was automated; he and Moon were the only people in it. When they exited, he didn't see any other pedestrians there, either. And no city, to speak of.

There were some weathered orange prefab buildings, storage sheds, they looked like, that clashed with the surrounding riot of greenery. A couple of other structures: a pub, what seemed to be a market. The air was heavy with heat and dampness, laced with tropical and alien smells. Ferret had been to Earth while running the lanes, but in another hemisphere and a different season. Within seconds, his light tunic and pants were wet with sweat, despite the polypropyl fabric guaranteed to wick away perspiration.

Gods, Moon must be roasting under that wrap she wore!