The Final Planet Page 12

  The Tarans did not try to regulate the sex lives of their members. “We did try long ago,” the Abbess said crisply, “and it didn’t work.”

  Premarital experimentation was frowned upon officially, but when it happened, there were sighs and comments like “Ah, the boys won’t leave the girls alone.” Or vice versa. “The blood is hot at that age,” the Abbess would say.

  “And ’tis herself that would know about it,” some of her contemporaries would mutter behind her back.

  Extramarital sex was taken much more seriously because relationships were tough enough in the close quarters of a spaceship monastery on a pilgrimage that could last for decades. Men and women knew this and generally avoided complicating their own lives and other people’s. Not that nothing ever happened by way of adultery, but the participants were careful not to get caught.

  And when they were caught—“Sure they wouldn’t have been caught unless they wanted to be,” the Abbess would complain—the emphasis was not on punishment or retribution but on “working things out.”

  Not that the Tarans had figured out how to make sex work. “The species has never done that at all, at all,” Carmody complained. “But at least we don’t have too many hang-ups and some of us—” he smiled complacently “—even manage to be good enough at it to enjoy the game now and again.”

  “Do you now?” Seamus decided that he would be one of those. If only he could find the proper woman. Which had turned out to be a more difficult task than he had expected.

  Until the shapely shoulders of Marjetta had thrust themselves into his life.

  Shapely and strong, he thought, remembering; after all, she pulled me out of the sewer.

  Sammy and Ernie came back, arm in arm, glowing with satisfaction and complacency. So they, too, were good enough to enjoy the game. Good for them.

  Seamus pretended to be asleep so as not to embarrass them. Or himself.

  Finally, he made a great show of waking up and, without looking at them, announced that since he’d been promised that he would not have to walk back to the tower, he would exhaust himself altogether with one last swim.

  The sun sank slowly into the horizon beyond the towers of the City, bathing it in gold and purple. The long haze of twilight settled peacefully on the River and the Island. After what must have been the fifth swim and their tenth round of la-ir, O’Neill and his hosts were collapsed in satisfied exhaustion on the sand by their skiff.

  Sammy spoke finally. “Good Friend O’Neill, we must ask you another personal question.”

  “All right … I guess,” he agreed reluctantly.

  “You ask it, Gentle Mate. I have already said too many impulsive things.” She dug her tiny heels more deeply into the sand.

  “We like the ‘nicknames’ you have chosen for us. What do your good friends on Tara call you?” the Music Director asked hesitantly.

  Images of Tessie and Fergus Hennessey flashed across his memory. “Ah, well, I suppose you must know that my very best friends, the people I grew up with, call me ‘Jimmy.’”

  Sammy clapped her hands. “Geemie—what a marvelously funny name. Oh, it is perfect for you.”

  Maybe by the end of these holidays all Zylongi get a little slaphappy.

  The day was over. Reluctantly “Geemie” and his hosts gathered their clothes and their picnic equipment together and lumbered their way back toward the other side of the River. He handed Sammy her robe. She smiled a bit wickedly, for her, as she slipped it around her body. “Yes, I must wear it, but modesty is tiresome with one’s friends, is it not?” Glory be to God, can you imagine what would happen if I said that up there?

  He muttered a prayer to his patron St. James (the Greater, of course) that it really wasn’t herself lurking over at the monorail station. Not that there was any way of hiding from her when she wanted to keep her eyes on you.

  They were late returning to the City. Sammy and Ernie, perhaps reluctant to face the rigid, formal style of their City life, delayed on the river-bank, treating each other with exaggerated gentleness. O’Neill supposed he should have been embarrassed. That Sammy and Ernie could turn the words of ordinary conversation into caresses didn’t seem to fit the Zylongi personality.

  By the time they got to the garage, the attendant was gone, the underground lights were dim, the monorail station empty. Seamus was so sleepy from the exertions and emotions of the day that he paid no heed to his hosts’ nervousness as they waited for the monorail to respond to their signal.

  An ugly, hoarse cry; then O’Neill felt his arms pinned behind him and saw a knife slicing toward his throat.

  8

  Seamus was out of condition, weary from the day’s exercise, and long unpracticed in the skills of hand-to-hand combat. On the other hand, in addition to being a perhaps second-rate poet, he was one of the Wild Geese, the most respected warriors in the galaxy. “We Only Fight When We Have To” was one of their many mottoes. And another was “Don’t Make Us Mad.”

  Well, he had to fight now. And he was very mad indeed. These shitheads had been sneaking around behind him long enough.

  He quickly shifted his shoulders, ducked the knife, twisted it out of the hand of his assailant and threw him into the path of a second attacker. As the man crashed into the floor, Seamus heard a sickening thud. Ah, that’s the end of him, poor fellow.

  The second one rushed at Seamus with a big vicious pike, aiming straight at his chest. Seamus ducked. The man turned, backed him into a corner, and charged again. Seamus had no choice but to plunge the knife into his heart and twist it out again savagely.

  That was that.

  In less than half a minute, two black-hooded figures were dead on the station platform. O’Neill, panting for breath, stood over them, a knife dripping with blood held tightly in his hand.

  These idjits with the hoods made the mistake of taking on someone trained to kill if he had to.

  Sammy was screaming. Another hooded figure had her pinned to the wall, and a fourth had torn off her robe. Ernie lay unconscious, his head bleeding badly. O’Neill kicked an oncoming Hooded One in the stomach and sent him sprawling against the monorail car, which had appeared silently in the midst of the fight. He grabbed the two who were assaulting Sammy and cracked their skulls together. A quick knife thrust at the reviving attacker and there were five dead bodies on the platform. Ernie was still unconscious; Sammy’s back was pressed against the wall, her body shaking with shock.

  O’Neill grabbed her by the shoulders and yelled, “You look at Ernie, I’ll find the police!”

  Sammy willed herself calmer. “No, not the police. It will be the end of us all. You must do exactly as I say, Geemie. I will explain later.”

  She bent over Ernie, touched his head, lifted his eyelids. She steadied herself against O’Neill’s arm. “It is bad, Geemie. If I don’t get life serum he will not survive—my beloved. Quick, or he will die!”

  They pried open the door of the monorail car and lugged Ernie inside. They propped him up in the seat behind the control panel. “They are automatic this time of night,” she panted. “I think I can make it start. Get rid of those monsters. No, bring them on the car. And clean up the floor.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Seamus hopped to it, as he always did when a woman gave an order.

  He dragged the five Hooded Ones into the car, used the remnants of Sammy and Ernie’s clothes and a spray container from the station wall to clean up most of the blood, and buried the blood-soaked garments in the bottom of an overstuffed trash container.

  Inside, Sammy was desperately pushing at buttons. O’Neill watched helplessly. Ernie was hardly breathing. A goner, Seamus thought to himself.

  Then the lights went out, the vehicle leaped forward. “I think I’ve turned the override key for emergencies,” she shouted over the roar of the lumbering train. “It will take the car directly to the Body Institute; no other station can stop or divert it.”

  “Isn’t that nice now?”

&nbs
p; The car plunged through the pitch-black tunnels, speeding by dimly lit stations, until it swerved to the left off the main line and entered the Body Institute’s underground complex. Using manual controls, Sammy guided the car through a number of sliding doors that opened automatically when it approached. When they stopped, Sammy jumped out into the darkness and pressed a button on the wall.

  A panel slid aside to reveal a large, low-ceilinged chamber illuminated by a pale green light. Save for a walkway around its perimeter and what appeared to be a loading platform in front of the door, the entire room was a vat of thick, slowly bubbling liquid. It had the hideous smell of death.

  Sammy didn’t hesitate. “Quick, Geemie, our lives are lost if anyone sees us!” She began to pull one of the Hooded Ones toward the seething rolling substance. Seamus tried to remove the hood; she stopped him. “We do not want to know who they are. That would be too much.”

  As the first body struck the surface, a hissing vapor arose and partially obscured the disintegration of skin over muscle, muscle over bone, and the skeleton itself in the caustic action of the acid. As each body followed the last, the vapor rose higher. When Seamus dumped the last body into the vat, the surface was frosted by a thick layer of sickly greenish cloud.

  Sammy rushed around the edge of the vat to a panel halfway across the room, exclaiming, “I’m going to get serum for my mate!”

  O’Neill spent interminable minutes in the dank underground chamber directing prayers to Yahweh, Brigid, Patrick, Columcile, Finnbar, James, Brendan, Kevin, and any other Celtic saints who might have been listening, sparing just a few moments to point out to Yahweh’s local representative, Deirdre Cardinal Fitzgerald (a title to be used only when one wanted special psychic assistance) that help in this particular instance would be most appropriate. No answer from any of them. Ernie’s eyes flickered dangerously; his slight breathing became more labored.

  Not long to go. Seamus prayed all the harder.

  Sammy returned breathless with a large syringe in her hand. She plunged it into her mate’s chest. O’Neill watched anxiously as the fluid level went down. Sammy listened to his heart, her ear pressed to his chest. Seamus could see the movements in Ernie’s thin brown chest slowly become more regular; the blood which was still reddening his iron-gray hair stopped flowing.

  Sammy stood up. “He lives, Geemie,” she said wearily, and collapsed sobbing into O’Neill’s arms. Slowly and gently he caressed her to peacefulness. After a moment’s relaxation, she dashed back into the chamber and pulled out fresh robes from a closet. Sammy quickly and skillfully guided the monorail car back into the main tunnel.

  So the Honored Poet and his hosts returned to the living-space complex after a pleasant if slightly prolonged Zylongday outing on the Island. “A small accident with the car,” Sammy explained to a station attendant as they helped the now conscious but groggy Ernie out of the car and into the elevator of their living tower.

  “It is well that the trains run this late on Zylongday,” he replied with mild reproof.

  As they left the elevator, Sammy muttered, “He will report us, of course, but no one will know what happened.”

  Lots of spies around this place, aren’t there?

  Later, in the privacy of their living space, while his mate began her ministrations to his skull, Ernie painfully filled O’Neill in on their attackers. “The Hooded Ones,” he said, “are not the same as ‘those who are no longer with us.’ They are anarchists, not dissidents. They rarely appear in the daytime, although they have been seen more often at that time recently, it is reported. They attack after dark, then usually only isolated individuals or small groups like us. Recently the attacks have been both more vicious and more frequent. Their attacks are usually on the fringes of the City. Tonight’s attack, so near the main gate, was very unusual. Few people dare to go out after midnight because they fear attack. We were late coming back; still, it was before midnight.”

  Those who are no longer with us, mused Seamus. There’s more damned categories of baddies around here than a poor space bard can keep straight.

  “Why didn’t we go to the police? Why were we so afraid of being seen? Why did we cover up traces of the attack—as if we were guilty?” O’Neill was baffled.

  “The Hooded Ones,” said Sammy, carefully stitching her mate’s wound, “do not exist officially. Some of them may live as ordinary citizens during the day, but many more live in the caves beneath the underground system—which also do not exist officially. It is not wise to talk about what does not exist in public. If one reports an attack from something that does not exist, one is causing trouble for the City. If the police are forced to encounter something that does not exist, whoever is responsible is an enemy of the City. They will likely end up in a vat like the one you saw. Geemie, we came very close to being there ourselves tonight. I was running down a corridor in the Body Institute with the life serum when something seemed to tell me to turn into another corridor. It was lucky I did. There was a police patrol in the first one. Now, beloved, the stitching is over.” She touched his face with gentle affection.

  Seamus took a blind-leap guess. “Are the Hooded Ones the same as the Guardians?”

  Sammy paused with a medicine bottle in her hand. Ernie spoke: “We do not think so, although it is said that the Hooded Ones think of themselves as ‘Guardians of the Next Day.’ Of the ‘New Reconstruction.’”

  “Do they now?”

  “Still,” added Sammy, “they might occasionally cooperate—especially if there were a plan to eliminate an intruder who was no longer welcome.”

  “It is better not even to think that,” said Ernie very slowly. “Not at all, at all.”

  PART TWO

  THE COUNTRY

  9

  Seamus O’Neill, carbine at the ready, prowled the low hill just above Captain Pojoon’s encampment. There was no moonlight yet, only shadows against the stars. It was like blundering through the storerooms in the deep hold of the Iona, except that the only folks who lurked there were ghosts, so there was nothing to be afraid of if you didn’t believe in ghosts.

  The “carbine,” as he called it, was a light weapon which fired electrical charges that were strong enough to kill you if they hit you in a vital spot, not nearly as deadly as the automatic weapons or laser rifles the Wild Geese carried, but deadly enough.

  Seamus, of course, did believe in ghosts, but not in the same way that he believed in enemies lurking in the hills behind them. Ghosts could scare. The folks up in the hills might kill you.

  The Zylongi were too inept to set up camp in a proper place and too dumb to put out a proper system of guards. What a rotten bunch of soldiers. Herself was right: this society is falling apart.

  Sure they need help bad. And if it’s all the same to you, now would be the time to come and help them. And meself in the process.

  No word back. Not that he expected any. They’d forgotten about Seamus Finnbar O’Neill. The woman had other irons in the fire. So they’d sent him on a suicide mission? Well, Seamus always was a good one at taking care of himself. He would have to assure his own safety.

  The camp was a few feet below him; he could barely see the outline of the small tents that housed the troops. He yearned for the silver light from the tiny Zylong moons, billiard balls that bounced fretfully across the sky. The horses were invisible beyond the camp, but he could hear the nervous stamping of their hooves. Everyone but two guards was sound asleep. Nervously he fingered his gun.

  Perfect targets for an attack. An exposed camp with no pickets and no preparations for defense. “There are no dangers here at the foot of the mountains,” Pojoon said casually. “It is better that we get some sleep for tomorrow’s march.” Marjetta had no word of disagreement. Her attempts to turn the ragtag band of adolescent recruits into a marching column were cautious and discreet; she did not want to embarrass her future mate by suggesting in front of the Honored Guest that he was not much of an officer.

  Pride, woman.
That’s what it is. The terrible sin of pride. The sin of Eve.

  No, he got it wrong. Who was it that was guilty of the sin of pride? He couldn’t quite remember. Well, it doesn’t matter. Pojoon is a bum. No match for Seamus O’Neill at all, at all, even if she pretends I don’t exist—and bad luck to her for doing that.

  He considered carefully and asked leave to revoke the final wish. Nothing but good luck to the poor girl. Sure, she’s had more than enough bad luck for one life.

  O’Neill had tried to sleep in the stuffy little tent, but his psychic sense and trained military brain told him that tonight danger was very near. He didn’t have much psychic ability, but at least he could sniff danger. “A very useful trait in a Commandant,” the Lady Abbess had said dryly when she gave him his gold oak leaf badge of office—to be worn next to his tiny silver harp, of course.

  There was menace in these foothills whether the Zylongi proclaimed them officially safe or not. If an attack came, he would be ready for it, no matter what they did. Save Margie if no one else. Every noise among the rocks, every shift in the slight breeze increased his nervousness. He fingered the illumination grenade he had stolen from a store’s tent; he hoped it worked. The carbine that Marjetta gave him when they were switching from hovercraft to horseback at the edge of the desert was old but well maintained. It had been her responsibility, she’d told him curtly when he examined it; it would work well.

  She won’t look me in the eyes. Is she after blaming me for what happened that night? Sure she was into it as much as I was.

  Seamus cautiously reopened the weapon to make sure it was not jammed. The woman told the truth. Sure she’d be a good housewife, too, much better than those slatterns up on the Iona, worse luck to them for leaving me down here to be murdered in this terrible desert.

  Well, when whatever was going to happen did, he wasn’t going to have a jammed carbine on his hands.