Acts of Conscience (18 page)

Somehow, that had never been part of my dreams. Maybe it would have distracted me from my dreams of matronly cunt, had the educational netvid producers thought to tell us the flesh of Green Heaven’s herbivores tasted like candy. Maybe I’d’ve dreamed about eating, and grown up to be a fat man.

After dinner, I went away for a long walk, escaping into the woodland alone. Not looking out for their guests, not caring for us properly? Hell, maybe there’s nothing around here that could or would hurt me? No way to know. Certainly not represented in the land of my dreams, hm?

Walking then, uselessly, aimlessly, under a clear black sky peppered with white stars, the familiar glossy stream of the Milky Way, black trees and far horizon no more than empty places where the stars were not, glow of the campfire always visible somewhere behind me, puddle of red light a beacon to guide me home when I finally got sick of reviling myself.

On the way back, sleepy, ready for my tent, I heard soft noises, crept through the trees then, silent, curious, parting underbrush stealthy so I could see...

Once again, I can’t imagine what I was expecting to see.

A little clearing, the black trunk of a fallen tree. Slim Évie sitting on the tree, skirt pulled up. That white scrap I see in her hand must be her underpants then. Évie sitting on the tree trunk, slim Claude kneeling between her legs, head thrust forward into her crotch, rocking back and forth. I hear little gobbling sounds, I think. Évie’s head is thrown back, face lit up white by the wan light of Wan, mouth open, a dark oval.

Oh. Oh, Claude. Little white hand on his soft black hair, guiding his movements, urging him on. Her voice, a high whisper, making sounds straight out of all those old dreams. How
did
they get to be dreams again? Real women once made those sounds for me. Now...

Hand on my shoulder, making me jerk, turn...

Gretel Blondinkruis holding me, grinning, shining eyes on my face. Soft whisper in my ear, face so close I can feel her breath on my skin, smell some sweet lingering residue of dinner. “Oh, Mr. du Cheyne. I don’t think you should be spying on them like this.”

Me silent, staring at her, intensely conscious of the way the front of my pants must be poking out, though she never once glanced down, eyes fixed on my face. Finally, she made a little snort through her nose, as of amusement, and said, “You seem like a nice enough fellow, Mr. du Cheyne, but... Well, I make a policy of never fucking with my paying guests you see. Sorry.”

Letting me go then, turning away. What the hell
was
I expecting? Probably, no more than to not be quite so ridiculously transparent.

o0o

In the morning, something a little bit like a double-decker bus came by, bench seats for passengers in the open upper deck, stalls for our ponies down below. Though clean, this bus retained a faint, apparently permanent smell of horseshit, and we went rumbling and whining away over the plains, in the direction of the white Koudloft mountains.

Just before noon, the transporter set us down at a much-used campsite in lightly forested hill country, maybe two hundred kilometers from the boerderij, Gretel’s people leading the ponies down the cargo ramp, putting on the saddles for us.

Gretel herself chattered merrily away, unloading the boxes of guns, telling us stuff we’d never remember, no matter how hard we tried, stuff about the forest country here, where the Koperveldt gave way to the foothills of the Koudloft, where the wildlife was still pretty much intact despite centuries of human depredation, though, of course, the vast herds of womfrogs that’d once roamed these plains were
somewhat
reduced...

When she handed me my rifle, I felt a familiar spark ignite, flood me with welcome warmth, spacesuit’s long-silent voice suddenly alive in my head, whispering specifications, suggesting a range of tools. Stock unclips from the gun mechanism just
so
, you see, and then you unseat the powerpack from its plug at the back of the magnetic induction catapult mount... look at that. Copper
wire
. Incredible. All right, the trigger mechanism, just a dummy for a somewhat antique solid-state switch
here
, comes off the control box like
this
, then you...

Gretel’s voice, at my shoulder, in my ear: “You seem rather familiar with our hunting rifles, Mr. du Cheyne.”

I looked up and was startled to see everyone else had stopped talking, stopped doing whatever they’d been doing, that I was surrounded by a silent, staring circle, people watching me dissect the silly thing. “Well, no. I never saw one before, but...”

Narrowed eyes, a funny sort of grin. “That’s a little hard to believe, Mr. du Cheyne. I’ve seen professional gunsmiths with clumsier hands than yours.”

Not very good gunsmiths then. I shrugged. “What can I say? It’s just a piece of machinery, I guess. Not very complicated.”

A long, measuring, still-suspicious look. “What did you do, back on Earth?”

Back on Earth, back on the Land,
de Aarde
their word for Sol System, because they still thought in terms of
worlds
, these colonials. “Do? Um.” Didn’t she believe I was just some nice, idle billionaire, touring all the worlds? “Take things apart. Put them back together.”

“Some kind of repairman?”

“Sort of.”

She said, “Can you put it back together?”

Starting to believe me? Maybe understanding anyone can take something apart until its just a pile of loose, unfamiliar-looking parts. I looked down at the box lid where I’d laid the dismantled hunting rifle. Sixteen major parts, some wires and plugs, a miscellany of connectors, mostly clips and thumbscrews, simple machinery designed by some kind of idiot.

Too many parts. Too easy to lose.

“I guess so. I...”

She sneered, and said, “Well, maybe I’d better...” Sort of reaching out now.

I picked up the MIC core, cold metal in my hand like the thunderbolts of Jove, unfinished, not quite ready for the god. Grinned at her, feeling a little wobbly on my feet for some reason, but... Sure. This here. That there. Snap. Click. Screw the screws. Clip the clips. Plug in the plugs. Fumble with the stock until you get it lined up...

I thumbed the igniter safety switch and felt the gun vibrate, listened to the soft whine of the condenser cascade charging up. “Um. Where are the ammunition clips?”

Gretel Blondinkruis standing there, hands on hips, looking at me, face expressionless, eyes in shadow. “Over in the green box, Mr. du Cheyne. There’s a belt for each of you.”

Behind me, I heard Évie whisper in French, presumably to Claude, and the translator echoed in my head: “There’s something rather
odd
about that man.”

Claude said, “
Pas merdez, Soeuriée
...”

o0o

I think, after a while, I started to get the hang of riding a live animal, convincing myself that the horse was a
being
, rather than some kind of machine. The problem, more or less, was expecting it to be like a spacesuit or toolbelt, responsive to my needs as soon as they surfaced, anticipating them when it could. I kept trying to
think
of what I wanted it to do, not quite able to grasp what I was supposed to do with a crude control mechanism consisting of leather ropes, connected to a studded cylinder laid across the poor fucker’s tongue, of issuing commands with subtle movements of my hands and feet.

The countryside around us was changing slowly, subtly, as we rode down the trail, trail that ever so slowly grew forested, riding through hills that slowly grew steeper, so that, more often than not, we could look out over the tops of the trees in whatever direction happened to be downhill. Outcroppings of rock now, gray slopes of granite, white knife-edges of quartz here and there, poking out of the dirt.

Finally, a long, distant view, out over the rolling hill country, facing southward, Tau Ceti now an orange-gold ball in the west, sliding toward some far horizon. The Koudloft looked a bit like an aerial view of the Himalaya’s I’d once seen, jumbled white mountains, but mountains with gentle, non-Alpine slopes, mountains more like hills in the nearer distance, rimed with white snow, shrouded in pale mist, mist hanging above dark valleys where...

Movement above, catching the corner of my eye. When I turned my head to look, up slope, in the direction of our local hill’s bald dome of pale gray stone... Something looking down at us, gray white, motionless against the rusted blue of a late afternoon sky... Again, that view from the zoo, that memory, fat white wolfen staring at me out of its cage, whispering a soft
werroowahh
... Not words. Not even a little bit like words...

Zzzippp
!

Sharp, loud in my ear, noise right beside me, making me jump, animal vanishing from the hilltop, then a little flash of light, remote
pop
! maybe ten meters from where it had been... Some fat Orikhalkisto whose name I’d not bothered to learn, astride his horse beside me, rifle still leveled, grinning. “Almost
got
the little bastard!”

Gretel then, a glint of anger in her eye: “Mr. Pandazides. Unless you want to alert the womfrogs we’re following, please keep your rifle in its holster ‘til I tell you to take it out.”

He lowered the thing, resentful of the reprimand. “How d’you know there’re womfrogs nearby?”

I snickered, looking at Gretel, feeling a crawl in my belly knowing I was, somehow, craving her approval. “Unless I miss my guess, those mossy-looking piles the horses keep stepping over are relatively fresh womfrog dung.”

Pandazides gave me a slightly sour look,
asshole
in his eyes.

Gretel smiled. “You continue to surprise me, Mr. du Cheyne.”

o0o

A couple of hours later, just as Tau Ceti was starting to scrape the horizon, downslope to the west, out beyond the Plains of Brass, we caught up with them.

We were riding along under a darkling sky, streamers of vermilion and red overwhelming the blue-green, purple looming in the east, presaging nightfall. And, quite suddenly, one of Gretel’s men, a plump, rat-faced fellow with whispy silver-blond hair and eyes so pale they looked almost white, reined in his horse, nose in the air, hand raised.

Évie said, “
Qu’est-que
...”

Breath of sound from motionless Gretel Blondinkruis, watching her man: “Sh.”

Silence.

Well, hell. If there’s silence, they’re listening for something. Images from old movies, Indian scout with his ear pressed to the ground.
Hear-um pounding hoofbeat in distance, Qui-mo-Sabe
...

The library AI took that as a cue and started cataloging the sounds it was getting, using my ears as a remote pickup. Sure. The wind in the
heidensaard
trees, a whisper we’d been listening to all day, to the point where it’d become soothing white noise. The faint, periodic
hooop
of a common segmented arthopod, something like a centipede, with the pleasantly illogical name
hoepslang
...

Horses breathing, moving, little snorts and clops and belly gurgles no training could suppress. Maybe one horse breathing a little louder than the others. Gretel whispered, “All right. They know we’re here. Don’t know we’ve heard them.”

Heard
what
, for... Oh. People breathing. Horses breathing. Something else breathing. I muttered, “Are you telling us they’re
hiding
somewhere nearby?” Image of the thing in the zoo, fingerless, staring down at me. Where, here, would you hide one or more giant elephant-crickets the size of school buses?

She said, “Yes. Keep your voices down. Get off your horses, take your guns.”

We made a great deal of noise, despite attempts at caution, the library AI telling me the unaccounted-for breathing had become rather softer, become intermittent. They, whatever, wherever, tightening up with fear, holding their breaths? Shhh. They’re coming. Be still...

We crept up the rocky path, hardly a trail anymore, though
something
regularly passed this way, Pandazides cursing softly, angrily, as he stepped on one of the mossy piles, breaking through its crisp integument, getting some kind of green-black goo on his boot, liberating a smell like rich licorice, tainted with nutmeg.

Gretel, “Shhh...”

Somehow, I was right behind her, walking in her footsteps, my shadow falling on her back. Is it wise to approach whatever from up-sun at dusk? Won’t they see us and... She stopped and I bumped into her gently, Gretel crouching before me, bent over. She looked over her shoulder, eyes more or less expressionless, motioned with her head for me to creep around her and look.

All right. The underbrush, rather moister here than it had been down on the plains, seemed to cooperate with my attempts at silence, falling to my knees on ground covered with broad, soft, wet, leaf-like things, crawling forward to what appeared to be the edge of a...

My head poked out of the underbrush. A rocky gorge, maybe six meters across, more trees on the other side, gloom down below, glint of ruddy evening light on shallow water and glittering, wet eyes. Sensation of my heart clamping, high up, almost in my throat, my own breathing stopped.

Looming below us like shadows, motionless, silent, legs folded close to their bodies, as if crouching. Yes, certainly crouching, making themselves as small as possible. Just the way a spider freezes when you look at it. Crouching just so. Ready to spring, watching you... Counting shadows. Six? Maybe seven if that little dark patch over there was a calf.

I watched the nearest womfrog’s eyes turn, tracking together, until they were looking up at me. Cold crawling on the back of my neck. Mottled, unearthly eyes looking right into mine. Seeing me.
Knowing
...

It sprang, earth crunching loud under its hooves, reaching up the face of the muddy cliff, twin trunks curling forward, black-tentacled hands reaching for my face... I recoiled, pulling back into the underbrush, stumbling against Gretel, for Christ sake I... Arm and hand slapping on the ground where I’d been , clutching a basketful of leaves, fingers like so many fat snakes, each one big enough to squeeze me like a movie python, I...