Caine's Law (31 page)

He’s about to find out. Everybody is.

Me too.

“Oh, sure, great guy, Atticus. Deep thinker. Gentle, kind, and rational. Civilized. Good for him. Bad for everybody else,” I say. “All his fine qualities accomplish a grand total of getting his client shot and his children knifed.”

“That’s not … I mean, that’s a little extreme …”

“When the kids are attacked—when some asshole with a grudge decides he’s gonna murder them both—Atticus is off somewhere being civilized. Law enforcement is off somewhere enforcing the law. Civil society is off being civilly social. When the real fucking world comes after two kids with a hunting knife, who’s there for them? Who’s the only fucking one who gets it? Who’s the only one paying attention to what the real world really
is
?”

“Really?” Faller’s eyes are still distant, but he’s lost the squint. He trades frowns with Gayle. “Boo Radley?”

“You’re fucking right Boo Radley. The monster down the block. That’s what
I
get from that book: when the real world comes after everything you love with a knife, you civilized fuckers better pray there’s a monster looking out for them. Fuck Atticus Finch and fuck his civilization. The only reason civilized Atticus has the luxury to
be
civilized is because he’s got a monster watching his back.”

“Boo Radley’s not a monster.”

“Well, yeah.” The hair on the back of my neck prickles, and there’s a faint whisper of crackling, like static electric discharge. “That’s the main difference between him and me.”

Okay. Remember that
It doesn’t feel like anything at all
thing I said before?

I take it back.

It seems the physical substance of the blind god trickling into me is kindling my blood. Not in a good way.

“Hari? Are you all right?” Gayle looks genuinely worried, but maybe not about me, as he’s currently edging backward to clear the secmen’s field of fire. “Is something wrong?”

Now I’m up against it and I still don’t know how to put words to this. There’s too much. I look over at Gayle again. “I want to say something. I want to say something to the Board, or the Leisure Congress, or whoever the fuck it is wiggling that hand up your ass. They’ll want to hear me. Believe it.”

Gayle frowns judiciously. “No harm in asking, I suppose.”

He reaches over to take the palmpad, carefully avoiding the reach of my stripcuffed arms, then steps back to fiddle with the controls. “Give me a moment.”

“Simon,” I say softly while Gayle tinkers with the palmpad. “Run.”

His head snaps up and his eyes goggle. “What?”

“Run. Now.”

“But—I don’t—”

“No time to explain. Remember the story I told you? The talk with t’Passe?”

His eyes go distant, looking inward. “Even your lies become truth …”

“That’s exactly fucking it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. If you live long enough. How long will it take you to get your ass in the air and pointed toward home?”

“I—I can’t. Not now.”

“Don’t even think about staying. You need to get your family away. All of them, if you can. Yourself too. You might have twenty-four hours, but I wouldn’t bet your grandkids’ lives on it.”

“Get … 
away
?”

“Hide. Dig a hole and pull it in after you. Bury yourselves somewhere far enough from the rest of the world that you and yours have a chance to live through this.”

He looks blank. “Live through this what?”

“The usual. Dead rising, seas boiling, moon to blood, you know the list. John the Apostle’s greatest hits.”

“You’re joking.”

“I live for comedy.”

“You can’t possibly—”

“You don’t have to believe me. The only reason I’m telling you this is so I won’t feel quite so bad after the Social Police torture your grandchildren to death.”

“They … But Michaelson … Hari—” His eyes bulge and his lips work like somebody tied a plastic bag over his head. “I
can’t
leave. We’re in lockdown. Nobody goes in or out while you’re here—and it’s a no-fly zone. Even if I can make it to my car, the Social Police will shoot me down.”

Of course. That would have been too easy.

“All right. Go to your quarters. Lock yourself in and don’t come out. For anything. And screen your family. This is probably your last chance to say good-bye.”

“Caine—Caine,
please—
”

“Gayle? We don’t need Faller anymore, do we?”

He looks up from the palmpad with a frown. I give him a
come on, take care of your people
toss of the head. “Give him a break, huh? Look at the guy—he’s dead on his feet. And he’s not looking forward to watching this, you know? Shit, Gayle, he’s known me half my life.”

“I don’t believe anything about this should make him feel—”

“Gayle, for fuck’s sake, put down the Company Man shit one minute, huh? To hell with what he
should
feel. Let him go.”

Gayle swiveled his frown over toward Faller, who pulled himself up unsteadily in a credible I’m Not Hurt good-soldier attitude. “Administrator,” he said faintly, “I’ll stay if you need or want me to. Don’t worry about me, sir. I’ll be all right.”

“No,” Gayle says abruptly. “You’re done for the day, Professional. With my thanks.”

Faller sways. “Thank you, sir.”

“Nothing to thank me for. Good work today, Faller.”

“Thank you, sir.” Faller ducks his head with a hint of flinch, just long enough to send me a look, then he stumbles for the door.

And there he goes.

There are three people still alive who knew me in my twenties. One of them is an immortal zombie meat puppet, another has wires where his eyes should be, and then there’s Faller. “So what is it? Cancer?”

Gayle is back fiddling with the palmpad. He’s not listening.

“He’s been coming back and forth here for a couple years, right? Before you types built shielded structures, the radiation must have been pretty harsh.”

“Mm?” He flicks me a look and then seems to recall what I’m talking about. “Mm, yes. Unfortunate. He’s a good man.”

“So it’s magick scary cancer, huh? You can’t cure him?”

“My impression is that upper management feels heroic measures aren’t likely to produce acceptable return on investment.”

“Jesus, Gayle, Ninth Circle of Hell much?”

Wrinkles flicker at the corners of his eyes. “This from a man made rich and famous by killing people for entertainment.”

“And that makes you less of a scumbag?”

“Less than you, at least.”

“Gayle. I am what I am. What does that have to do with what you are?”

He lowers the palmpad for a moment, frowning. “I too am what I am, I suppose.”

“Are you? Where’s that loyalty and friendship when Faller needs it?”

“We’re not going to have this argument, Hari.” He goes back to fiddling with the pad.

“How much longer?”

“I’m told they are attempting to assemble a quorum. You may be surprised to learn some of the wealthiest men and women on Earth have lives that aren’t spent waiting breathlessly for your next word.”

“Yeah, except they are. Waiting. Listening.”

I know they are. I can
feel
them.

The oil—they’re
inside
me now …

And I should have a speech ready, but I don’t, because I guess I’m just as stupid as they are. I guess I still believed it wouldn’t go this way. Or hoped, which is worse, because I fucking well know better.

Hope is for losers.

It’s like they forget, y’know? A few years go by, and they think I’m not that guy anymore. And what the hell: they’re right. I’m not that guy.

Funny thing, though: must be nobody sat down and really thought about it. Not one of them sat down and asked himself, “So if he’s not that guy anymore … what guy
is
he?”

An unasked question is a fucking dangerous thing. Since they didn’t ask that question, nobody made it to the next one. The real one.

Nobody thought to ask, “What if the guy he is now is worse?”

T
he witch-herd moved north with the spring; when spring edged into summer, the feral horses ranged the middle reaches of the eastern slopes of God’s Teeth, keeping to the high scrub above the tree line and below the snow. As the days stretched toward a month, the witch-herd had become increasingly restive. Irritable. Tense. Dominance challenges between stallions got bloody, sometimes lethal. Fights had broken out between rival mares. Three geldings and a stallion had been pushed over the lip of a cliff by a scuffle that had become a general brawl during a sudden thunderstorm. All but one gelding had been killed outright by their crash into the rocks below; the one that hadn’t had screamed in agony through too much of the storm. Violent winds and jagged ground-strikes of lightning delayed the horse-witch’s arrival; not even the horse-witch can sprint down a rocky mountainside in a black blind downpour. Hundreds of horses were screaming by the time the horse-witch could reach the injured gelding, and calm it, and send it beyond the memory of pain.

The witch-herd began to lose its cohesion, carving itself into smaller and smaller clusters that skittishly avoided contact with others. The horse-witch herself grew snappish; her fraying temper shortened with every passing day. One night when Orbek came into her camp for some of the jerky, beans, and cornmeal the local villagers had left out for her, he saw her suddenly backhand one of the old pots off the fire, spraying boiling
water into the night, and he heard her snarl an obscene profanity that would have made even his human brother blush.

“Hey.”

She crouched with her back to him, a black silhouette ringed with fire. “I’m sorry you saw that.”

“No problem.”

“I’m unhappy.”

“No surprise,” he said. “I’m here this whole time, hey?”

“I’m mad at him.”

“Happens to everybody,” Orbek said. “It’s how he is.”

“How he is sucks.”

“Want more water?”

“I worry for him.”

“Me too.”

“But I shouldn’t worry. I
never
worry.”

“Should’s nothing like is.” Orbek shrugged. “Don’t mind me saying, because he saves my life couple-three times a month and I love my brother and everything, but you carry a damn big load over some guy you meet one afternoon a month ago.”

“I didn’t worry before. I didn’t even remember how it felt. I don’t like it,” she said. “It’s not what I do.”

“It’s what friends do for friends.”

“Human friends suck.”

“You just now figure that out?”

She didn’t answer. Cold whispered down from the snowcap. Evergreen branches in the fire popped and spat sparks.

“I’m coming back with water, hey? I’m hungry.”

Her silhouette finally moved: she lowered her head. After a moment, she said, “Thank you.”

“Friends for friends, hey?”

“Friends for friends.”

In early summer in the God’s Teeth, night can fall with startling speed. The sky goes from blue to indigo sprayed with stardust, and the shadow of the mountains feels even darker than the coming night. At just this moment, Jonathan Fist came out from among the trees, squinted up at the scattered witch-herd, then shifted the bulging saddlebags draped over his shoulder and began to climb.

He moved slowly, and frequently paused to catch his breath. When he could walk, he did so with a slight limp that would steady out after a few
minutes, but stiffen up again after each brief rest. His clothing was new, rugged leather and heavy brocade. His boots still had a gleam of polish across their uppers, though it was gone from the toes and heels. His hair was barely a whisper over his sunburned scalp, and one patch of that scalp above his left ear still showed the dark smear of a partially healed burn.

He climbed silently, but still he heard the occasional nicker and hoof-drum as horses saw or smelled him and retreated. Eventually, the clatter of retreating horses diminished, leaving only the unsteady clop of a horse that instead approached, picking its way over the jumble of boulders.