The Jagged Orbit (22 page)

For the last time she managed to force herself back into the normal frame of reference, and it stopped with the sight of the two gleaming metal shafts upraised to catch the light, the chair-made-shield and the curtain torn to make a tangling defense. The taste in the mouth of a last bad meal, a handful of sad olives, a wedge of stale unleavened bread and a few bites from a haunch of meat destined for the wolves but diverted by a lanista who had bet on today's contest of man and man, that had seemed only rancid but might as things went have been poisoned, for the world swayed horribly at every step and there was a rushing of blood in the ears that drowned out the cries of the crowd.

Lyla realized perfectly well what was happening to her. She had ingested a subcritical dose of the drug in the sibyl-pill and it was just taking her over the border from reality into whatever world she inhabited during her ordinary trances. It was what was happening to everyone else that she couldn't figure out. That tall blonde Germanic swordsman in the morion and cuirass and one vambrace and one greave and carrying a targe or buckler opposed to that retiarius with the stabbing trident and the cleverly wielded net...

Once more from the cages underneath the stands, the roar of angry lions.

Deft the net spread on the sand and a jab of the trident to force the other back, sword-struck aside by serving the purpose of placing one careless heel on the net and
heave
and the man's length measured on his own shadow by the overhead sun. From the side where wealthy spectators sat in the company of the Emperor, shaded by awnings whereas the plebs must sweat and screw their eyes up, applause mingled with cries of anger due to losing bettors.

(Meanwhile: Slob in spite of his hurt hand grabbing the whip while Madison's attention was distracted in tripping Putzi with the torn curtain.)

A shift and tilt of the universe, a sense of aeons grinding by in the wrong direction and screaming at every painful second of their progress. In a linen kilt not as low as the knee and with a beard hanging in coarse rat's-tails against his chest, a whip-wielder mouthing curses into an eternal desert silence. Dark and cold overlying the comprehended words: "Crocodiles and dogs shall share thy bones at dawn!"

Sensed on one's own breath, the foul of bad onions and the sour of beer no better than urine. Across the shoulders the tidy parallel lines of that same whip, on the hands the calluses plated with adobe dust and the blisters from hauling ropes, one burst and raw as though the palm had cupped a fresh coal from the fire an hour ago. Hobbled to the ankles, other ropes not serving to shift great blocks of stone but only to hinder rebellious slaves while the overseer stood back at whip-length distance.

Handy, a heavy sun-hardened brick, the size and shape of a loaf of that bread not given to quiet the grumbling of the stomach in more days than one knows how to count. Picked up, faster than whip can follow, and
hurled.

Through a chaotic haze of sickness, weakness, hate hate and
hate,
eyes belonging to Lyla but blurred with years of untended infection and stark sunlight and wind-borne dust out of the heart of Africa saw a chunk of the concrete which had earlier been smashed out of the apt's wall cut open' the scalp of Slob more neatly than a knife. He folded to his knees and bowed over the whip to anoint it with the blood his head was shedding.

(In the meantime: yelling for her men to come to her and be equipped Mikki at her Gottschalk cabinet, stocked with old and new weapons any of which might safely be used on Madison—the story tomorrow about the intrusive kneeblank, invited as a show of goodwill towards other races, turning nasty and betraying the primitive savagery which meant they must be shut away in Blackbury and Bantustan, dangerous to invite home like lions kept on the back porch hating their chains.)

But for Lyla a kaleidoscope, a sequence of instant frames cut out of time itself, not pictures only but a total set of sensory data—limb-weariness, apprehension marked by heart battering at the ribs to be let out, hunger ... and repletion, sickness and sobriety, hope and terror. . . .
Blink
the scarred wet green of a jousting-ground after a fall of rain, the grass slashed to reveal the brown earth underneath, a pavilion gay with long pennants, a dying horse screaming and unbelievable weight dragging down every limb and the world narrowed to a slit across the eyes and there a splintered lance of ashwood and coming down
a
morningstar, cruel spiked ball on chain on gleefully wielded pole.
Blink
the chill of snow and awkward encumbering furs hated but essential, the skin side chewed supple by teeth now worn to stubs and one of them aching so much it nearly blinded the right eye, hands respectively clutching a tree-branch club and hanging limp from a tendon-slashing bite gone septic under a plaster of bruised leaves; some menace out there in the whirling whiteness not clearly defined and one should be grateful.
Blink
under light rain with the awareness of painted designs on face and chest, not felt so much as visualized on identically painted companions, veiled hills framing a pass with a rutted track at the bottom and reaching out from this right shoulder here a crude worn tube on a wooden stock bound with rawhide thongs to halt a crack and cushion the impact of imminent explosion.
Blink
high vacancy and detachment, irritability, waiting for time over target in an itchy airtight suit with the world remote, glimpsed at third-hand by lights and dials, vague awareness diligently repressed of a man clothed in flame.

(Meantime: Lyla saying over and over with childish wonder at her own insight, "I met a man with seven brains, I met a man with seven brains!" First to be equipped, furious, the one labeled Pat grabbing blindly at what he found at hand and getting of all things a pike—when they had a customer capable of buying up everything from the expensive ranges the Gottschalks stopped at nothing, especially not at pleading the cause of a weapon which never needed to be re-loaded or reenergized. )

The swirling of images ceased and one steadied: a patch of level ground across which was marching with even tread a spear-carrying giant.

(Alerted by the fearful Hughie strangers from other rooms of the apt crowded into the doorway—there was no door—some giddy with sykes, some drunk, some just curious and greedy for sensation.)

The muscle-tensions of a calm body. The careful rolling in inexhaustible time of a long strip of cloth. Overlaid confusingly, the sensation of a horse between the knees and the bellowing of cattle in stampede. Memory signaled and Lyla realized: sling. The Balearic slingers boasted of being able to turn a running bull by bouncing a stone off one or other horn!

So what was that doing tangled up with the image of ... of Goliath?

Fsst.
The stone and its target. Crack at the side of the jaw with such force the head leapt back and in a sad yawn descended along with its body to the floor.

(And now a Blazer, the weapon recommended over Dan's warm corpse, with its wide fanned beam making it almost impossible to miss under a twenty-meter range.)

Blink so
fast she could not follow, like riffling cards and trying to inspect the pictures of the kings, an arquebus propped on its forked stand and the stink of the slowmatch, chest down and hands clawed in wet ground waiting for the eardrum-shattering slam of a grenade, cool waiting at the handles of a Vickers gun for the foolish marching lines of enemy to leave their trenches and be harvested by the scythe of death, cautious slow-motion maneuvering under water to stick a fatal message on a hull looming storm-cloud dark between here and the sun, the tweak on the plume of a cocked hat which signified it had been shortened by a musket-ball, the sun-gleam on the spokes of a chariot-wheel and the mane of the spirited horse drawing the chariot, three red drops from the tip of a barbed arrow cut loose by a surgeon keen edge hot fire musical twang pressure of fingertip on plastic stud agony of mending bone world fading under mask of blood ...

(And at appropriate points during the sequence, for the survivors doom. A javelined table-leg, one of the long-ago originals. Chunk of marble. Chunk of concrete. The Blazer lit the room but only slashed across the already mutilated face of the red-green dial and severed its single hand. The whip from a spot closer to the cabinet aimed not at anyone but at the racked weapons themselves, bringing them down in a tremendous clatter. Mikki grabbed for a laser-gun but the plastic insulation of the power-pack designed to last thirteen months precisely gave way and she jumped back screaming with her arm seared to the elbow, shedding great sheets of flayed skin. Madison finished her with the other table-leg almost casually. Remaining, Putzi, abandoning any attempt to arm himself.)

Suddenly, for the last time, the sequence of dazzling time-snippets steadied. A bare room with a wall missing. A stone-and-sand garden beyond. A group of thoughtful, silent watchers. A mat of plaited reeds occupying the center of the floor. Advancing from the far corner a man naked but for a loincloth.

"Ohhh ... !"

The sound of her own voice snatched Lyla from the unreal to the real. There was nausea in her belly and sweat on every inch of her skin and a wish to flee and hide in every fiber of mind and body. That wasn't fear, or rage, or anything so clean and normal. That wasn't lust. That was the pure naked unqualified desire to kill, dedication to death, a holy quest for the ending of a human life.

She looked for Madison and saw a machine: black steel limbs ending in cruel knives. Opposed to him merely a man, foolish, stupid, doomed. A leg bent, just enough, an arm reached out to take a grip, and
crash.

Lyla doubled over and vomited between her feet. Detachedly she told herself that Madison had thrown Putzi through the window from which he had torn away the drapes. Detachedly she heard someone scream, "Christ, we're forty-five stories high!" Detachedly she deduced that there was panic, because there were more screams and the sound of running feet and then in this room silence, though music was still playing elsewhere. Overhead no more dancing. She figured out that she was alone but for Madison and two or three other people too lost in syke-induced fantasy to notice anything as unimportant as a death.

But she sat with her head between her knees while the nausea passed off, thinking of Dan.

Eventually she looked up and she was right. Madison was standing beside the smashed window over which, automatically, steel shutters had slammed in response to the glass breaking. But not soon enough to halt Putzi's flight to the street. The knee was rigidly at attention, shoulders back, eyes fixed on nowhere.

Moving very carefully to avoid her own vomit, Lyla got up and stiffly hobbled towards him. There had been enough drug in the dose she had accidentally swallowed to induce the muscular spasms she usually gave way to and she had resisted them; she felt as though she had been systematically beaten over every centimeter of her body.

Mortally terrified, yet somehow driven, she approached him and said timidly, "Harry?"

He moved in response; she flinched and he caught the motion and said, "Don't worry, you're not on my target list for this assignment."

What? She shook her head in bewilderment. Foggily: He is crazy maybe, but it's more likely to be the sibyl-pill. But I never heard of it doing this to anyone, man or woman. What did happen to him? He beat eight men and a vicious woman single-handed and there are bodies and wounds to prove the fact. He won.

"You won," she said.

Not looking directly at her, but towards a point in space somewhere over her left shoulder, he answered without moving anything but his lips. "Even at this relatively late stage it was possible for an unarmed man of sufficient determination to overcome considerable opposition. It was not until after the Gottschalk coup of 2015 and the concomitant introduction of System C integrated weaponry that hand-to-hand combat became effectively pointless."

Dazed, Lyla shook her head. "2015?" she repeated foolishly. "But, Harry, it's only the summer of 2014 now."

Ignoring her, reciting as tonelessly as a cheap automatic, he said, "The equipment of individuals with armament adequate to level a medium-sized city nonetheless did not immediately put an end to such combats. For a while an attempt was made to codify human behavior on a basis analogous to the legendary Code of Chivalry; however, this represented such a radical reversal of current psychological trends that—"

Lyla's eyes widened in terror as she looked past him. A line of dull red had appeared across the steel shields closing the window. Beyond, no doubt, a hastily-summoned police skimmer, cutting through with a thermic lance.

"Harry!" She tugged at his arm but he was as immobile as a statue. His droning voice continued.

"—it was doomed from the start and thereafter it was inevitable—"

"Harry!"

The steel parted, and through the fine opening a cloud of pale vapor oozed.

"But they can't just gas us without talking to us!" Lyla cried. "They—"

SEVENTY-SEVEN
ONE KEEPS GOING SOMEHOW

through drought and wildfire and bad seasons for game, ice and flood and landslide, plague and phylloxera and the eruption of the friendly neighborhood volcano;

Aryans and Hyksos and Huns, Romans and Visigoths and Mongols, Moors and Christians and Saracens, Turks and Zulus and British, Americans and Germans and French;

the desecration of the holy places, the billeting of the incomprehensible troops, the silent horrid wafting of the sicknesses that ride the mists of night;

huddled in a draughty cave and the fire out in the midst of winter;

huddled in the tube-stations wincing as the bombs crash down;

huddled in the luxury ranch-style homes of Montego Bay knowing there will be no mercy for a skin that's merely tanned;

to the music of air-raid sirens;

to the drum-beat of waves on the beach;

to the melancholy choir of the wolves;

one keeps going somehow, one tries to say "Shibboleth" against all the odds, and somehow one keeps going, one at least;

escaping the line before the gas-chamber door one Jew who will remember;

escaping the cells beneath the Colosseum one Christian who won't forget;

escaping the mud-fields of the Marne one Tommy and one
poilu
and one Boche;

somehow, one at least keeps going;

fighting like rats over a crust in the wreckage of Hiroshima;

rising up on one knee with the other smashed to give a salute in the ruins of Dresden;

despising the diplodocus, the triceratops, and the smilodon, forgetting how many millions of years they bred their kind;

imagining our great-great-great-grandchildren as pillars of the faith with Bible in one hand and cross in the other;

incapable of envisaging the wheel of a fast car and a skirt lifted nearly to the hip;

one keeps going on the thin nourishment of illusion like watery soup;

a Hundred Years War or a Six Days War;

a vendetta from generation to generation or a transient moment of fury;

one limps but one keeps going somehow;

the army comes over the hill raping and slaughtering but one keeps going;

the priest casts lots in a bad season to name the virgins who shall die on the altar but one keeps going;

the torch is set to the house and the long trek starts to the unknown village with what possessions one can carry but one keeps going;

somehow one keeps going;

somehow;

where a not buried not-Caesar bled, some long-forgotten peasant, there's a rose;

where mute inglorious Miltons held their tongues there runs a concrete road;

where followers-not-leaders breathed their last a fused

glass disc extends like the mirror of some distorting telescope, looking forward into a fearful space-time;

and nothing grows on glass;

except a little pond-slime on the walls of the home aquarium for snails to crop, enviable snails whose world is small and whose house is on the back;

not shattered;

not open to the winds with the ceiling tilted at a crazy angle and the fireplace full of cold ashes;

not targeted in the gunsight of the sniper across the street;

not marked on the X Patriots' master plan as wholly inhabited by blanks;

not mortgaged, not lacking tiles from the roof;

somehow nonetheless one keeps going;

until one comes to a sign that says stop,

and being obedient, one ...