The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (21 page)

"Can't," Stone replied, sealing his coveralls.  "My shift is long over."  He fitted his cap to his head.  "Eftimiu has the board.  He will notify you when Hanoi confirms."  He rolled up his sleeve just to the edge of Snake's poised head.

"Ah.  Then, good."  Ángel turned to Cuza.  "Victor."  Cuza's head snapped up.  "Get to Maimonides.  He's to alert all the messes in every quadrant that it's time for the Djelfa ginger in tonight's kaskasa.  Then those who are with us will know by nightfall that tomorrow is the day."

Cuza set his beret at a rakish angle, grinning.  "Djelfa ginger!"  He lunged toward the trapdoor.

"Cuza!"  Cuza froze.  "Slowly, Cuza, slowly!"  Ángel reached up casually and touched the man's cheek with his forefinger.  "There's no rush, Brother Victor."  He looked steadily into Cuza's wide eyes.  "Is there, now?"  Cuza shook his head.  "Good," Ángel whispered.  Cuza shuddered.  "Walk with dignity, Victor Cuza.  A strong man always walks with dignity." 

"Yes, Ángel," Cuza croaked.

Ángel nodded slowly, smiling.  He dropped his finger and spread both hands wide in the movement of release.  "Good, Brother Victor!"

Cuza swallowed visibly, then moved carefully past Ángel, his eyes fixed on the trapdoor.  In an instant he was gone.

Stone turned away from the interaction, his innards quieting a sudden nausea.  Pounding rain drove its clamor against the distant outer walls of the building.  He could hear it gust and recede.  I'm riding the storm, he thought, and there's no stopping it now.  As if in response, the blustering wind rose again, deafening him with the authority of its destiny, the tumult of its urgency.  "
Now it comes,"
murmured Snake and Eagle.  "
Trust yourself,"
Tanya whispered.

Stone leaned toward Ángel and started to speak. 

Ángel preempted him.  "So, Brother Stone," he said, still watching Cuza's exit, "what did you mean by your pronoun?"

"My--"

"You said, 'Eftimiu will notify
you
when Hanoi confirms.'"  Ángel began removing the uzi's long barrel.  "Did you mean he will notify
'us
'?

Stone met Ángel's eyes.  "No," he said steadily.  "I meant he would notify you."

Ángel waited.

Stone spoke slowly.  "Count me out, Ángel."  His tattoos started dancing.

Still Ángel waited.

Stone leaned further over the table, his eyes level with those of the shorter man.  "Out, Ángel, out!" he rasped.  "I want no part of it!"

Languidly, Ángel tested the fit of a nine millimeter barrel into the uzi, removed it, and sighted against one of the candles down the short bore. 

In the next instant Stone half rose from the crate, his hand fisted and drawn back.  "
Baragiali!"
Tanya shouted.  For a moment he stood outside his body, in his softself.  "
Breathe!"
said Tanya.  He dropped his fist and clasped his left forearm, his shoulders hunched.

Ángel blew into the barrel and held it up to the candle again.  "There's no getting out, Brother Stone.  You are already in too deep."

Stone leaned on the table.  "Then lock me up," he whispered tightly, "so I can't rat on you until the whole thing's over."

Ángel laid down the uzi part and examined his thumb.  He frowned, then scooped free a curl of dirt from under a fingernail.  "You know I wouldn't do that, Brother Stone."  He rolled the dirt between his thumb and forefinger, then wiped it carefully on the rag. 

Stone was on him in an instant, his hands seizing the front panels of Ángel's fatigues.  He dragged the chunky man to his feet, setting the candles aflicker and sending the boxcap bouncing to the floor.  "Look at me, Ángel!" he roared.  "I am talking to you!"  

"And I am listening, Brother Stone."  Ángel's face radiated hurt astonishment. 

Stone shook him.  "You will not ignore me!"  His fist grew ready.

"Of course not, Brother Stone.  I made a mistake.  I apologize."  He spoke earnestly.

Stone searched the guileless face, then held his eyes closed a second.  He listened to the echo in his head.  "
No more violence
. 
Anywhere." 
Roughly he shoved Ángel back onto the chair and retrieved the boxcap from the floor.  He threw it in the man's lap and paced the length of the table.  For a moment he halted, distinctly aware of his tattoos applauding him.  He cleared his mind, and ran a hand over his bald head.

"Ángel," he said evenly, grasping for calm, "this is all  crazy.  The 'Darmes have too many response options and too many reinforcements, and even if we succeeded and took our hostages, who says Highcrotch Magister Lutu would ever listen to our demands?  Hell, we don't even agree on what we're demanding!"

"Sure we do."  The voice came from below his knees.  Stone looked down to see the shining face of Gabriel Girardon, and behind it the big physique pushing up through the trapdoor.  Gabe went on, smoothly, "We agree that the bodies of habitantes -- like free citizens's bodies -- have to be guaranteed safety from involuntary medical experiments."  He drew himself onto the edge of the opening and sat, looking for a drying cloth. 

Stone threw him a shirt.  "Gabe, I want out of the action.  I just told Ángel."

"So I heard."  Gabriel swiped his face, said something in French to a figure below, and in an easy motion spun himself out of the trapdoor to stand up.  Runnels of water coursed down the leg of his raineralls, making a puddle on the floor.  "Ángel," he said as he began stripping, "we can't budge now until we hear from all the wards.  You want me to prod them?"

"No, Brother Gabriel.  They will report in a timely fashion."  Ángel straightened in his chair.  He picked up a tiny  flask of oil and saturated the rag again.  "You've no optimism, Brother Stone," he said conversationally.  "Don't you see how God is protecting us in our venture?"

Stone's head snapped toward him.

Ángel held his hands wide.  "Did He not send the storm at precisely the moment we needed it?  Does He not continue to protect us with the chaos of the rain?  The foolish Femmedarmes don't suspect a thing.  Or even if they do, let them come!  All that needs to be done is being done right now.  By the time they get organized we will be model habitantes again, obeying orders."  Ángel leaned forward, pointing to the ceiling.  "Until our moment arrives!"

Stone folded his arms across his chest.  He articulated each word carefully.  "Ángel, your bloody revolt will only prove how violent we really are.  It'll make the world stand up and cheer for the Protocols."  "
Right!"
announced Eagle.  "
Yes!"
sang Snake.

Ángel's voice was cloying.  "
We
, judged as violent, Brother Stone?  We are only fighting for our rights!"

Stone kept himself from advancing on the little man.  "You don't give a rip-shit about the Testing or the Protocols, Ángel!  This whole revolt is nothing but an excuse for you to play with your toys!"  His arms were burning.  He rubbed them.

"Hey, Baldy!"  Girardon sealed the opening of his dry coveralls and laid his arm around Stone's neck.  "I been thinking," he said.  "You ought to tell Ángel the real reason you want out."

Deliberately, Ángel abandoned his uzi parts.  Carefully he wiped excess oil from his hands.  "Brother Gabriel," his silken voice said, "you and Brother Stone have been discussing this matter?"

Stone stopped Girardon's answer with an upraised hand.  "I told Gabe about it this morning, Ángel.  And now I'm telling you."  He moved behind the empty chair.  "Are you listening, Ángel?"

"Of course, Brother Stone."  Ángel folded his hands in his lap, leaning back in his chair.  "I will always listen to a comrade."  Gabriel stood behind him.

Stone glanced at Gabriel, then braced himself on the chairback.  "Then here's the real reason: I'm not going to help blow up this bailiwick, Ángel, because I don't want to be a part of that violence."  He paused.  "And I'm
not
going to have my head adjusted!"  His arms were singing praises now, so loud he was sure the other men must hear them.  He leaned forward urgently. 
"Nobody's
going to be tested, Ángel! 
Nobody's
going to have his head dinked with!  We don't have to do this lunatic revolt!  It is
unnecessary
!"

Ángel's eyes widened.

"So call it off, Ángel!" he shouted, "call it off!"  Snake and Eagle sang Stone's refrain: "
Call it off!"

"Stone!" 

"Shut up, Gabe!"  Gabe was crowding him, cutting off his space.  Stone gestured him away.

Girardon ignored him.  "Baldy, you don't understand these girls!  They're not about to back off from the Testing!  They want to know what
causes
people like us, what makes us tick!"

"Get out of my face, Gabe!"  Stone swept by him, and escaped to sit on the trough by the wall.  Inside his head he yelled, "Get him away from me, Tanya!  Don't let me go after my buddy!"  Elbows on his knees, he held onto his arms.

Gabe whirled toward Stone.  "No, listen up!  They're obsessed with us!  We're what they talk about nonstop!  You think they're going to quit now?  Now, when they think they've got an answer to it all?"  He bent over Stone, inches from his ear.  "I guarantee you, they
are
going to mess with our heads!"

Stone stared at the floor and spoke to his tattoos.  "One centimeter closer and I'll break his neck!"  Snake was coiling and hissing, Eagle dangerously shaking his wings.  Tanya's voice: "
Careful, Baragiali, careful!" 
Stone pressed his arms tight against his legs, breathing hard.  Aloud, he said evenly, "Shut up, Gabe."

Gabe leaned half a centimeter closer.  "Baldy, you know what they want?  They want to make us into zombies.  Quiet, empty, docile men without two braincells to rub together!"  Gabriel dropped to one knee by his friend, trying to look up into his face.  "Man, we can't let them do that to us!"  He shook Stone's shoulder.  "You got to help us stop them!  These cuntlickers want to take away our souls!"

Stone closed his eyes.  Sweat dripped from his temple.  With one last effort of restraint he spoke without looking at Gabriel. "Take your hand off me, Gabe."

Gabriel drew back, suddenly alert to the menace in Stone's voice.

Snake and Eagle released a small mutual sigh.  Stone sighed with them.

"My brothers!" exclaimed Ángel into the silence.  He surveyed the disassembled shotgun parts that Cuza had left on the table.  "You neglect the truth."  He stood and raised his hands over the gun parts.  "They cannot take away our souls!"  In a sequence of lightning moves, he set barrel to action, threw the mid-mounted locking bolt, keyed in the buttstock, and slid the sideplates into a fully-assembled weapon.  In three more swift motions he broke the breech, slipped a shell toward the bore, and snapped the shotgun closed again.  He arched his handiwork into an arm's length exhibit for their approval.  "Our souls belong to God!"

"Ángel, lay off--" Gabriel began.

"And God will protect our venture!"  Ángel hissed fiercely.  He snapped the shotgun's breech open and closed again.

In that instant, a landscape shifted in Habitante Stone Baragiali.  He found his deepest conviction, his purest rage, and the truest object of his loathing.  They all mounted together into a single purpose.  Stone felt his face widening into his best Crossover leer. 

Slowly he began to get to his feet.

In the distance he heard Tanya's pained protest, Eagle and Snake warning, "
No!" 
He sealed off the voices and turned to relish the bright-eyed countenance of Ángel Espartero.

"Hey!"  Gabriel stepped briskly between the two men.  "Hey!" he shouted louder, holding his flat hand up toward Ángel, then toward Stone.  Stone bent his head and halted.  From under his brow he looked patiently at his friend, humoring him, if only for the moment. 

Ángel smiled at Gabriel.  Carefully, he placed the gun on the table and made his gesture of release, his face a background of composure for his shining eyes.

Gabriel turned to Stone.  "Stone," he said. 

Stone watched Ángel. 

"Stone!" Gabriel said again, moving toward him. 

Even as he let Gabriel ease him back onto the trough, Stone kept his eyes riveted on Ángel. 

"Come on, man, pull it together now," Gabe insisted.  He tightened his arm around Stone's shoulder.  Stone's eyes narrowed, still on Ángel.

"Brother Stone cannot pull it together,"  Ángel said calmly, lowering his hands to the table. 

That voice cut through Stone's focus with a purifying asperity, laying open the vision of Ángel's slaughter of the Femmedarmes, that chilling laughter escalating with the splatter of soft flesh, the sting of fast blood.  The words started low in his gut and rose by tiny increments until they exploded into slow  pellets of rage.  "Ángel, you fucker!"  He shot to his feet and lunged toward the man beyond the table.  Suddenly, he stopped and listened intently.  His tattoos vibrated on his arms, singing the truth in his brain:
"No, don't, Big Stone!  He is our brother
!"

Across the stream, Little Lucio Baragiali saw the other little boy in a funny African print hat running desperately down a long road after a disappearing figure and crying like his heart would break.  The little boy fell, howled, and got up to run again, only to fall once more, this time lying in the dust, exhausted and sobbing.  Lucio crossed over the stream, reaching out his hand to the child to help him up. 

Ángel Espartero saw the big man's sudden stop and the subsequent softening of his features.  When Stone extended his hand in peace, Ángel studied his face, holding Stone's eyes with his own.  Then he picked up the shotgun and fired it point-blank into Stone's chest, rocking the closed little room with the sound and force of the explosion.

Stone's body hung motionless for an instant before it pivoted backwards.  He fell against Gabriel, who had stood up to stop him. 

During the instant of Stone's mid-air suspension, Gabriel covered his eyes, rubbed his ears, and shouted, "Ángel, you fucking fool!"  Then he fell under Stone, heaving him to the side just before their two bodies hit the floor.  "Stone!  Stone, man!"  His elbow dropped into the viscid cavern that had been Stone's chest.  He pulled himself over the blood and sticky flesh toward his friend's face.