Dealing in Futures Part 14

Noticeably less rampant. "This is unforgivable." He raised his arm to make the pa.s.s again; then checked it as Mizraith did the same. "Clothe me." A brick disappeared, and Marype was wearing a tunic of woven gold.

"Tell me you are not in the thrall of Markmor."

The boy's fists were clenched. "I am not."

"Are you quite certain?"

"We are friends, partners. He is teaching me things."

"You know I will teach you everything, eventually. But-"

Marype made a pa.s.s and the stack of gold turned to a heap of stinking dung.

"Cheap," Mizraith said, wrinkling his nose. He held his elbow a certain way and the gold came back. "Don't you see he wants to take advantage of you?"

"I can see that he wants access to you. He was quite open about that."

"Stefab," Mizraith whispered. "Nesteph."

"You need the help of my brothers?"

The two older brothers appeared, flanking Mizraith. "What I need is some sense out of you." To the others: "Stay him!"

Heavy golden chains bound his wrists and ankles to sudden rings in the floor. He strained and one broke; a block of blue ice encased him. The ice began to melt.

Mizraith turned to One-Thumb and Amoli. "You weaken us with your presence."

A bar of gold floated over to the woman. "That will compensate you. Lastel, you will have the krrf, once I take care of this. Be careful for the next few hours. Go."

As they backed out, other figures began to gather in the room. One-Thumb recognized the outline of Markmor flickering.

In the foyer, Amoli handed the gold to her eunuch. "Let's get back to the Maze,"

she said. "This place is dangerous."

One-Thumb sent the pirate cook home and spent the rest of the night in the familiar business of dispensing drink and krrf and haggling over rates of exchange.

He took a judicious amount of krrf himself-the domestic kind-to keep alert. But nothing supernatural happened, and nothing more exciting than a routine eye-gouging over a dice dispute. He did have to step over a deceased ex-patron when he went to lock up at dawn. At least he'd had the decency to die outside, so no report had to be made.

One reason he liked to take the death shift was the interesting ambience of Sanctuary in the early morning. The sunlight was hard, revealing rather than cleansing. Litter and excrement in the gutters. A few exhausted revelers, staggering in small groups or sitting half-awake, blade out, waiting for a bunk to clear at first bell. Dogs nosing the evening's remains. Decadent, stale, worn, mortal. He took dark pleasure in it. Double pleasure this morning, a light krrf overdose singing deathsong in his brain.

He almost went east, to check on Mizraith. "Be careful for the next few hours"- that must have meant his bond to Mizraith made him somehow vulnerable in the weird struggle with Markmor over Marype. But he had to go back to the estate and dispose of the bones in the dogs' troughs and then be Lastel for a noon meeting.

There was one drab wh.o.r.e in the waiting room of the Lily Garden, who gave him a thick smile and then recognized him and slumped back to doze. He went through the velvet curtain to where the eunuch sat with his back against the wall, glaive across his lap.

He didn't stand. "Any trouble, One-Thumb?"

"No trouble. No krrf, either." He heaved aside the bolt on the ma.s.sive door to the tunnel. "For all I know, it's still going on. If Mizraith had lost, I'd know by now, I think."

"Or if he'd won," the eunuch said.

"Possibly. I'll be in touch with your mistress if I have anything for her." One- Thumb lit the waiting lamp and swung the door closed behind him.

Before he'd reached the bottom of the stairs, he knew something was wrong. Too much light. He turned the wick all the way down; the air was slightly glowing. At the foot of the stairs, he set down the lamp, drew his rapier, and waited.

The glow coalesced into a fuzzy image of Mizraith. It whispered, "You are finally in dark, Lastel. One-Thumb. Listen: I may die soon. Your charm, I've transferred to Stefab, and it holds. Pay him as you've paid me. . . ." He wavered, disappeared, came back. "Your krrf is in this tunnel. It cost more than you can know." Darkness again.

One-Thumb waited a few minutes more in the darkness and silence (fifty steps from the light above) before relighting the lamp. The block of krrf was at his feet. He tucked it under his left arm and proceeded down the tunnel, rapier in hand. Not that steel would be much use against sorcery, if that was to be the end of this. But an empty hand was less.

The tunnel kinked every fifty steps or so, to restrict line-of-sight. One-Thumb went through three corners and thought he saw light at the fourth. He stopped, doused the lamp again, and listened. No footfalls. He set down the krrf and lamp and filled his left hand with a dagger, then headed for the light. It didn't have to be magic; three times he had surprised interlopers in the tunnel. Their husks were secreted here and there, adding to the musty odor.

But no stranger this time. He peered around the corner and saw Lastel, himself, waiting with sword out.

"Don't hold back there," his alter ego said. "Only one of us leaves this tunnel."

One-Thumb raised his rapier slowly. "Wait . . . if you kill me, you die forever. If I kill you, the same. This is a sorcerer's trap."

"No, Mizraith's dead."

"His son is holding the spell."

Lastel advanced, crabwise dueler's gait. "Then how am I here?"

One-Thumb struggled with his limited knowledge of the logic of sorcery. Instinct moved him forward, point in line, left-hand weapon ready for side parry or high block. He kept his eye on Lastel's point, krrf-steady as his own. The krrf sang doom and lifted his spirit.

It was like fencing with a mirror. Every attack drew instant parry, reprise, parry, reprise, parry, re-reprise, break to counter. For several minutes, a swift yet careful ballet, large twins mincing, the tunnel echoing clash.

One-Thumb knew he had to do something random, unpredictable; he lunged with a cutover, impressing to the right. Lastel knew he had to do something random, unpredictable; he lunged with a double-disengage, impressing to the right. They missed each other's blades.

Slammed home.

One-Thumb saw his red blade emerge from the rich brocade over Lastel's back, tried to shout, and coughed blood over his killer's shoulder. Lastel's rapier had cracked breastbone and heart and slit a lung as well.

They clung to each other. One-Thumb watched bright blood spurt from the other's back and heard his own blood falling, as the pain grew. The dagger still in his left hand, he stabbed, almost idly. Again he stabbed. It seemed to take a long time. The pain grew. The other man was doing the same. A third stab, he watched the blade rise and slowly fall, and inching slide back out of the flesh. With every second, the pain seemed to double; with every second, the flow of time slowed by half. Even the splash of blood was slowed, like a viscous oil falling through water as it sprayed away. And now it stopped completely, a thick scarlet web frozen there between his dagger and Lastel's back-his own back-and as the pain spread and grew, marrow itself on fire, he knew he would look at that forever. For a flickering moment he saw the image of two sorcerers, smiling.

I thought that was real clever, killing off One-Thumb like that. The best places to be in an anthology supposedly are the first story or the last story. If other people were going to be using One-Thumb, I reasoned, then by disposing of him I would force the editor to put my story last. Another consideration was that I knew there was going to be a sequel to the book, and I thought one sword-and-sorcery story was my limit.

With my main character dead, I was safe from being asked to do another.

Wrong, wrong. A person kilted by sorcery, they told me, can also be revived by sorcery. Not only did I not win the final position in the book, but when I refused to do a story for the sequel, they handed my character to another writer! A dirty trick, by Crom.

(Actually, I have no right to complain-the story was fun to write and it's made more money than most of the stories in this volume. Asprin turned Thieves' World into a board game and I get a percent or two of the profits, which are unseemly.) From the commercial and fun to the serious and rather painful. The novella that follows was originally the middle section of my novel The Forever War. I like it better than the version that got into print.

The Forever War wound up being my most successful novel, sweeping the science fiction awards for 1976, and still going strong in its umpteenth printing. But it wasn't an immediate success; it was turned down by eighteen publishers before St. Martin's Press took a chance on it. Most of the publishers felt it was an okay story, but n.o.body wanted to buy a book that was so transparently a metaphor about Vietnam.

While the outline-plus-sample-chapters package was being rejected by all those publishers, I of course continued writing the book. It's an episodic story, so I was able to sell the individual sections as more or less independent novellas. a.n.a.log magazine picked them up, and the editor, Ben Bova, was of immeasurable help, for moral support as well as canny storytelling advice. (In fact, it was Ben who convinced St.

Martin's, who did not at that time publish adult science fiction, to take a look at it.) He sent this novella back, though, with grave misgivings. Most of The Forever War is set in outer s.p.a.ce-where the war is-but most of this story takes place back on Earth. He felt that including it in the novel would slow it to a halt. Besides, the dystopian view of future America was too depressing.

Maybe he was right. After some thought I did set it aside, and wrote the shorter novelette "We Are Very Happy Here," of which less than five pages takes place in the United States, and that's what wound up in the book. It does move faster than it would have with this story, which is certainly a virtue in a novel of adventure. But I still like this one better as a story.

YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK

1.

I was scared enough.

Sub-major Stott was pacing back and forth behind the small podium in the a.s.sembly room/chop hall/gymnasium of the Anniversary. We had just made our final collapsar jump, from Tet-38 to Yod-4. We were decelerating at 1 1/2 gravities and our velocity relative to that collapsar was a respectable .90c. We were being chased.

"I wish you people would relax for a while and just trust the ship's computer. The Tauran vessel at any rate will not be within strike range for another two weeks.

Mandella!"

He was always very careful to call me "Sergeant" Mandella in front of the company. But everybody at this particular briefing was either a sergeant or a corporal: squad leaders. "Yes, sir."

"You're responsible for the psychological as well as the physical well-being of the men and women in your squad. a.s.suming that you are aware that there is a morale problem aboard this vessel, what have you done about it?"

"As far as my squad is concerned, sir?"

"Of course."

"We talk it out, sir.""And have you arrived at any cogent conclusion?"

"Meaning no disrespect, sir, I think the major problem is obvious. My people have been cooped up in this ship for fourteen-"

"Ridiculous! Every one of us has been adequately conditioned against the pressures of living in close quarters and the enlisted people have the privilege of confraternity." That was a delicate way of putting it. "Officers must remain celibate, and yet we have no morale problem."

If he thought his officers were celibate, he should sit down and have a long talk with Lieutenant Harmony. Maybe he just meant line officers, though. That would be just him and Cortez. Probably 50 percent right. Cortez was awfully friendly with Cor- poral Kamehameha.

"Sir, perhaps it was the detoxification back at Stargate; maybe-"

"No. The therapists only worked to erase the hate conditioning-everybody knows how I feel about that-and they may be misguided but they are skilled.

"Corporal Potter." He always called her by her rank to remind her why she hadn't been promoted as high as the rest of us. Too soft. "Have you 'talked it out' with your people, too?"

"We've discussed it, sir."

The sub-major could "glare mildly" at people. He glared mildly at Marygay until she elaborated.

"I don't believe it's the fault of the conditioning. My people are impatient, just tired of doing the same thing day after day."

"They're anxious for combat, then?" No sarcasm in his voice.

"They want to get off the ship, sir."

"They will get off the ship," he said, allowing himself a microscopic smile. "And then they'll probably be just as impatient to get back on."

It went back and forth like that for a long while. n.o.body wanted to come right out and say that their squad was scared: scared of the Tauran cruiser closing on us, scared of the landing on the portal planet. Sub-major Stott had a bad record of dealing with people who admitted fear.

I fingered the fresh T/O they had given us. It looked like this: I knew most of the people from the raid on Aleph, the first face-to-face contact between humans and Taurans. The only new people in my platoon were Luthuli and Heyrovsky. In the company as a whole (excuse me, the "strike force"), we had twenty replacements for the nineteen people we lost from the Aleph raid: one amputation, four deaders, fourteen psychotics.

I couldn't get over the "20 Mar 2007" at the bottom of the T/O. I'd been in the army ten years, though it felt like less than two. Time dilation, of course; even with the collapsar jumps, traveling from star to star eats up the calendar.

After this raid, I would probably be eligible for retirement, with full pay. If I lived through the raid, and if they didn't change the rules on us. Me a twenty-year man, and only twenty-five years old.

Stott was summing up when there was a knock on the door, a single loud rap.

"Enter," he said.

An ensign I knew vaguely walked in casually and handed Stott a slip of paper, without saying a word. He stood there while Stott read it, slumping with just the right degree of insolence. Technically, Stott was out of his chain of command; everybody in the navy disliked him anyhow.

Stott handed the paper back to the ensign and looked through him.

"You will alert your squads that preliminary evasive maneuvers will commence at 2010, fifty-eight minutes from now." He hadn't looked at his watch. "All personnel will be in acceleration sh.e.l.ls by 2000. Tench ... hut!"

We rose and, without enthusiasm, chorused, "f.u.c.k you, sir." Idiotic custom.

Stott strode out of the room and the ensign followed, smirking.

I turned my ring to my a.s.sistant squad leader's position and talked into it: "Tate, this is Mandella." Everyone else in the room was doing the same.

A tinny voice came out of the ring. "Tate here. What's up?" "Get ahold of the men and tell them we have to be in the sh.e.l.ls by 2000. Evasive maneuvers."

"c.r.a.p. They told us it would be days."

"I guess something new came up. Or maybe the Commodore has a bright idea."

"The Commodore can stuff it. You up in the lounge?"

"Yeah."

"Bring me back a cup when you come, okay? Little sugar?"

"Roger. Be down in about half an hour."

"Thanks. I'll get on it."

There was a general movement toward the coffee machine. I got in line behind Corporal Potter.

"What do you think, Marygay?"

"Maybe the Commodore just wants us to try out the sh.e.l.ls once more."