10 One of the Good Guys
“Awmit?” The hand on her ankle felt like his. But he’d gone ahead . . .
The hand jerked at her leg. Hard. Trying to pull her down.
Oh, God.
Tompa kicked. The hand hung on. It tugged, loosening her grip on the rocks. She held on more fiercely and kicked again. The hand clung and yanked her leg.
Habit kept her from crying out; experience had taught her that shouting only brought more tormenters, not help. The Shon holding her was similarly silent. For several seconds they waged a hushed tug of war in the stifling darkness, swaying to and fro, with the Shon rhythmically jerking on her ankle to the beat of the distant chant. The maggoty creatures were a lot stronger than they looked.
Then Tompa’s fingertips slipped from their handholds. She fell backwards, tumbling forever in the dark, just like the time she leaped from a jagged second story window after being discovered in the act of robbing some gang members who’d extorted money from her a few days earlier. As always, she’d bought lottery tickets with her take, including, goddamn her piss-roach luck, the ticket that got her into this mess, and God, the rocks were going to hit her . . .
But just like that other time, she landed on something soft. This time it wasn’t a soggy mattress. It was her assailant. The Shon made a choked, whooshing groan that was loud in Tompa’s ears. The Shon groaned once more, its breath smelling like an old, wet paperback, and then was silent.
The fall left Tompa dazed and breathing heavily. Her head hurt like hell. With a groan that she couldn’t stifle, she lowered her head.
She awoke with a start, not sure if she’d really passed out or had just dreamed a minute of emptiness. The translator was whispering in her ear.
“Bez-Tattin smiles encouragingly.” Overlaying the translators’ whisper, Awmit’s faint voice bounced at her from all directions, making her forget which direction was which. Was she on top of the Shon, or underneath?
“Cave-hole ahead opens one-person size, graceful human, can be reached.”
“Awmit!” Tompa flinched from the roar of her own shout.
“Graceful human? Location where?”
Tompa forced her voice to a whisper. Other accusers must be close, scouting for her. “I’m down here. I can’t see.”
Footsteps approached, stopped. Awmit said nothing more.
Unless, of course, those weren’t his footsteps. “Awmit, is that you?”
“The smile of Bez-Tattin appears cruelly hoax,” he said, “showing escape coincident with herd discovering its prey.” She heard him clambering down the slope toward her. He touched her hair, and like a compass in the dark she suddenly knew which way was up.
“Light another candle, Awmit.”
“Time available equals zero.” He grabbed her hand and pulled. “This one leads quickly.”
“No, there’s enough time.” He tugged her to her feet. She stepped on the Shon who’d cushioned her fall. He let out a wispy groan but didn’t move. “He didn’t have a chance to call out to the others that he’d found me.”
“What need for words in prook-nah?” His hand on her head guided her up the slope.
“You mean the others know where we are?” The chant did seem louder. “You’re sure?”
“As falls the rain in my homeland forests. Humans know negatively prook-nah?”
Tompa started to stand, but froze in a crouch, afraid of rock outcrops. Awmit tugged at her hand. She edged forward, feeling her way in the darkness.
“That one must accelerate urgently,” Awmit said.
“But I can’t see!”
“Use eyes of the soul, graceful human.”
Tompa could feel her arm pulled taut as he urged her forward. She felt around, placed one foot carefully. “You don’t understand.”
“Trust this one.”
Trust? Oh, shit. That was what someone said just before they beat the crap out of you. But then the chant suddenly grew louder, as though the pursuing herd had turned a corner. Tompa moved a bit quicker—not out of trust, but desperation.
“Hurry, graceful human. Trust, follow, hurry!”
He tugged and she moved. Then again. With each step she expected to stumble or smash her face against rocks, but instead with each step they moved faster together. The chant, however, grew ever louder.
Awmit tugged her hand lower. She bent over, then went to hands and knees as he continued to guide her downward. Her hair brushed against low rocks. When his hand rose, she stood. When he pulled harder, she jogged. He tugged to the left and up, and she felt the ground slant upward and to the left. He pulled hard again, and this time she almost ran through the darkness. Instead of being scary, it was weirdly exhilarating.
She realized she could see Awmit as a dark silhouette against a grey glow. They must be approaching the opening of the cave. Behind her sounded not just the chant, but footsteps. Tompa ran faster, leaping over a small rockfall. Her heart was pounding and she was scared, but at least she was doing something instead of just waiting like a decrepit old dog with tail down, dumbly accepting the right of an enemy pack to tear out its throat. Awmit matched her sprint toward the light with the same surprising spryness she remembered from the afternoon of the grenade blast.
He let go of her hand when the cave opened to a spacious, gloriously lit room. On the far side, ten feet above the floor, was a small circle as blindingly bright as the sun itself. The cave wall rose steeply toward the opening, but it could be climbed. Awmit scooted up the slope as though the devil was after him. She followed only slightly more slowly. The blessed light dimmed as he crawled through the short passage leading to the exit.
Then it was Tompa’s turn. The rocks were as smooth as though polished. The last few feet angled sharply downward, making it hard to keep from squirting into the glare of daylight, but she managed to crawl rather than slide. There; the opening. Although she could hardly see, Tompa didn’t wait until her eyes adjusted. She plunged headfirst into the light.
Suddenly she was sliding on her belly down a hot, dusty slope. She threw out her arms to slow her fall. After perhaps ten feet, she stopped and lay there, panting. She roused herself only when the dust made her cough. She wiggled her hands and feet. Nothing broken.
Squinting, she sat upright. She was partway up the side of a rocky, twisting, colorless ravine that offered no long-distance views in any direction. Awmit had slid all the way to the bottom, where spiky, dead-looking vegetation huddled around a snake-like stream no more than six feet across. The only sounds were the tired murmur of the stream and the chant of the avengers, rendered hollow and ghostly by the mouth of the cave.
“You okay, Awmit?”
With his hands over his eyes, he sat up and muttered a series of phrases that the translator repeated without interpretation. She wondered if he was swearing.
A shadow passed over her. Startled, Tompa looked up and then cringed. Hovering above the ravine was some sort of elongated balloon with wings. “What the ratshit is that?”
When Awmit didn’t answer right away, she glanced over at him. He was peeking through spread fingers. “Ignorable television robot for broadcasting vicariously these ones’ sufferings. Cameras hid unmovably in cave, too.”
With a wary glance at the flying thing, Tompa stood and looked around, seeking an escape route. There was none.
The Shons would have to exit the cave one by one. Considering that Awmit still had his eyes covered, it must take Shons longer to adjust to the light, and that would gain her some time, too. Tompa turned in a circle, but couldn’t see beyond the walls of the ravine. Every possible route looked as bleak as the others. Running was usually smarter than standing and fighting, but not if you were ignorant of which streets were dead ends.
The black eye of the cave glared at her malevolently as the chant blossomed in volume. Her pursuers must have reached the room near the cave mouth.
They wanted a fight, they’d get it.
She half-ran and half-slid to the botto
m of the ravine. The biggest plants along the stream had rough, grey branches as thick as her arms, and a few of the branches had fallen to the ground. She picked one up and swung it. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but it would have to do. Brandishing the club, Tompa headed grimly back up the slope.
“Graceful human possesses grandly both intelligence and courage.”
The compliment almost made her want to cry, but there was no time for that. As she climbed, Tompa swung the club so fast it whistled through the air. When she reached the mouth of the cave, she looked down at Awmit. He was shading his eyes with his hands now, instead of covering them. “Do you have any better ideas? Like, if we were to run, which direction to go?”
“All paths of life lead equally to death, says wisely old proverb.” He rose and looked around. “This one stands suggestionlessly in face of hostile prook-nah, graceful human. This one possesses negatively graceful human’s daring and hubris to bludgeon ruthlessly the avengers as they emerge vulnerably. For himself, this one would wait patiently to die. The har-blash of this one rises in pride at having helped such a magnificent being.”
“You mean me?” She grinned at him. “That thing back in the cave, when you led me through the darkness. It was . . . weird. But fun.”
“The kiss of prook-nah, graceful human.”
Tompa tried to find the best spot near the cave mouth. She raised the club overhead. Whenever the Shons started coming, she was ready for them.
For what felt like a long time, nothing happened. Then the chant stopped. She tightened her grip on the club. The chant started again but it was different now, slower and more musical. “Awmit, what does it mean when the chant changes like that?”
He didn’t answer. She looked down, but he’d left his spot by the stream.
Up the ravine, movement caught her eye. It was Awmit. Running away at top speed. Abandoning her.
Tompa stared at his back, feeling as though someone had clubbed her. She stopped staring only when she could no long ignore the unmistakable sound of someone crawling down the passage leading to the cave mouth. Goddamn Awmit! Leaving her! She’d trusted him, and it had felt so roach-damned good not to be alone . . .
A Shon’s head poked out of the tunnel. She clubbed it as hard as she could. Every bone in her body felt the sickening crunch of the blow. The Shon slid out of the cave mouth and rolled to the bottom of the slope where it sprawled face down, legs and arms twitching.
“Come and get me, you cockroaches!” Another Shon edged out of the tunnel and she smashed it, all of her anger and resentment swelling into a torrent of profanity and violence. She swung and another Shon joined those at the bottom of the ravine, this one not even twitching. They kept coming, sometimes one after another and sometimes after a pause. She kept swinging. Five of them. Eight. Ten. Her world became a jumbled nightmare of rage and revenge. Tompa clubbed another Shon.
Her stick broke. She stared at the useless stub in her hand.
This time there was no pause before the next Shon crawled down the tunnel toward her. No time to search for another club.
“Graceful human!”
Tompa spun around so fast she stumbled several steps down the slope. It was Awmit, panting almost as hard as she was. He climbed laboriously up the slope, holding clubs piled so high in his stubby arms that he had to balance them against his chest.
“Awmit! I . . . I thought you left me.”
He staggered the rest of the way uphill. “Sticks of the dloh bush possess mediocrely competence. That one will need many.”
Tompa took a stick from the top of the pile. She opened her mouth to speak.
Suddenly Awmit dropped the remaining sticks and swung an imaginary club through the air. “Hurry, graceful human!”
Tompa glanced back at the cave in time to see a Shon slide completely out of the cave mouth. It was smaller and more slender than most of the Shons she’d bludgeoned. A youth? Her rage now spent, Tompa approached it slowly. By the time she reached the Shon, it was standing upright, facing her with what looked like terror in its eyes.
She followed the Shon’s gaze as it looked at the pile of bodies, which reached halfway up to the mouth of the cave. In that jumble of limbs, a hand moved feebly here, a pair of lips opened and shut there. A lone Shon crawled in the direction of the stream, moaning. The air was filled with the stench of alien blood—and also with flying cameras, circling like crows around a day-old corpse in Central Park.
Club raised, Tompa advanced on the terrified creature. “Damn it, you’re not supposed to be able to see so soon.”
“This one apologizes ironically, terror-inspiring one,” the Shon said. “Prook-nah teaches craftily the avengers to stare preparingly into candles.”
At these unexpected words, Tompa came to a full stop. This Shon had a translator, and for some reason that made it feel more . . . human. Intelligent, at least. She stood there, club still held high. But she couldn’t hit the Shon. Couldn’t hurt it.
The Shon must have sensed the change, for its features scrunched into a hideous leer and its long fingers curled into claws. Howling, it sprang into a twisting lunge at Tompa’s throat.
Reacting without thought, she swatted the Shon in midair. It fell at her feet. Tompa put her foot against the Shon’s shoulder and pushed it down the slope to join the others.
In quick succession, five more Shons emerged. Tompa clubbed them all before they’d slid halfway out of the tunnel. Her club broke, but Awmit had a fresh one ready to hand her. The two of them were a team again.
Finally, there was a pause. This had happened before; she didn’t for a moment think that her pursuers were giving up. She scanned the pile of bodies. One was trying to crawl down the slope. She raised her club.
“Fear them negatively,” Awmit said.
“But he might sneak up behind me and—”
“Prook-nah of these victims points single-mindedly to martyrdom, not attack,” Awmit insisted.
“You mean they wouldn’t have hurt me? The one with the translator tried to attack.”
“Their injury finishes honorably those ones’ role.”
“Well . . .” He wouldn’t lie to her, she didn’t think. With a frown at the crawling Shon, Tompa returned to the cave mouth to club the next Shon. “Why do they keep coming, Awmit? They must know I’m waiting for them.”
“Prook-nah uses for strategy called morg-shah-fah.”
“That tells me a lot.”
Awmit ran a hand over the kidney-shaped patch of skin where his ears should have been. “Morg-shah-fah exists martyrly as ritual offering of one’s body for injury with intent to erode guiltily the accusee’s sense of innocence. First result equals intensely lessened will to defend.” He waved a hand at the dozen or more cameras hovering over them. “Second result equals showing widely the evil of accusee to the world.”
“Are you saying they’re trying to make me feel so guilty I’ll give up?
Another Shon came through the cave mouth and met its ritual injury from Tompa’s club. Her right arm was so tired and sore that she needed both hands.
“Affirmative,” Awmit said.
“But don’t they care if they die?” she asked incredulously.
“The river matters,” Awmit said. “Not the drop.”
“Water . . .” It was a voice from the pile of bodies, which now rose two thirds of the way to the cave mouth. She had no idea which injured Shon had spoken.
“You mean,” she said “they’re trying to make me feel and look like an animal, a killer?”
“That one displays quickly intelligence.”
“They’ve succeeded,” she whispered. After a moment, a sob slipped through her lips.
Gordos acted as though everyone in Manhattan was a thug, murderer, or psychopath. In the shows, that was all you ever saw. Maybe that image soothed the gordo’s consciences about locking so many victims inside with the villains, but most street meat were decent people who acted out of desperation rather than twisted evil.
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And she’d been one of the good guys. Always. She didn’t hurt anyone unless they hurt her. She didn’t steal from anyone poorer than she was. She wasn’t a gang soldier, a whalie who slashed people while on drugs, or a doorman viciously punishing poor souls who happened to wander into a section of a building controlled by a squatter’s union. All she wanted was to be left in peace to dream her fantasies that a better life was possible.
A good guy. Really.
Another Shon slithered down the tunnel. Wearily, with a tear crawling down her cheek, Tompa raised her club in both arms and bashed it senseless. She burst into sobs.
A shadow passed over her. One of the cameras had floated low, on a level with her head, and was edging forward for a closeup of the evil madwoman. Before Tompa realized what she was doing, she raised the club and hurled it at the balloon.
She was sobbing so hard that she missed.