The Trial of Tompa Lee

  28 The Judgment of Bez-Tattin

  As the three Klicks surrounded Dante, Tompa held her breath. This couldn’t be happening. It was supposed to be over!

  “Dante human fights evenly the Klicks,” Awmit said. He’d hobbled over to stand beside Tar-Thara with his hand on her shoulder. “Dante human exists wonderfully as magic.”

  “The fight isn’t even,” Tompa said, “and he’s just a man. Just a man.”

  “Existing strongly as a man like Dante human suffices clearly.”

  “But he’s no match for a Klick. No man is.” The Klicks surrounding Dante wouldn’t stay still for long and then . . .

  Dante was doing this to save her. All those converts out there had fought to save her, too. And she wasn’t worth it. No one was worth this carnage, and especially not her. Yet this was what she’d wanted back when she’d bought the lottery tickets that got her into the Navy. Someone to cover her back so she wouldn’t have to face life’s dangers alone. Someone to help her survive.

  What had Paolo MacShallin said? That she had no idea what being part of a team meant. He’d been right—but Dante knew. He lived and breathed the Naval way, the Naval heroism. And he was too precious to be risking death for her.

  “Dante Roussel,” the Klick at the top of the triangle shouted in excellent English, “you have slaughtered four of my chosen life partners. Now I will slaughter you.” He said something in his own language to the other two Klicks. Then he joined Dante on the execution stone.

  Tompa trembled, remembering standing on the stone as Dante did now, remembering how Bez-Tattin had loomed over her as though ready to cut her in two with his sharp sword—

  The sword. Yes!

  Tompa stepped back so she could see the top of the twenty-five-foot statue of Bez-Tattin. From here, it appeared the sword could simply be lifted out of the statue’s upraised hand. The blade was nearly as tall as she was, but thin enough that she thought she could wield it. With the sword, she could help Dante, save him.

  “I have told my remaining kin,” the Klick said, “not to interfere with my killing you.”

  Turning her back on the scene below, Tompa hopped onto the base of the statue, cursing the unsteadiness of her head. Damned, flickin’ wine. But then if she hadn’t gotten drunk last night she’d never have made love to Dante, never known what it was really like to be one with another person.

  “You have your nerve,” Dante said, “daring to come here, to the Temple of Justice, when your people are responsible for the bombing that started this trial.”

  Tompa climbed onto Bez-Tattin’s foot. That was the last of the easy part. She reached for a handhold in the rough, pitted surface of his leg and started pulling herself up.

  The Klick gave a wheezing laugh as he kicked the body of a Shon in a flame-patterned vest off the table. “These lifeless sacks of incompetence did the bombing, not us.”

  Tompa was clawing her feet against the ancient stone, desperate for a foothold, but she glanced down regardless at this startling statement from the Klick—in front of cameras, no less. Her arms started to tremble, though, so she found a foothold and moved up another six inches. “Ratshit,” she muttered as she turned away from the combat and reached for a weathered handhold on Bez-Tattin’s belly. Dante was risking his life for her. She had to return the favor and get that maggoty sword. Quickly.

  Dante grinned. Krizink was so consumed by vengeance that he’d forgotten about duty. Hopefully the admission about Peffer would make the council inspector suspicious. A confession had to count for something, despite the Shons’ reliance on trial by combat rather than evidence. “How would you know the pod-loogs were responsible unless your people supplied them with a human grenade, so as to discredit the Vance’s mission? Come on, Krizink, admit it.”

  Major Krizink moved a step closer and gave another wheeze; this one sounded more like a threat than a laugh. Even across the width of the huge table, Dante could smell the bitter, foreign tang of the alien’s breath. Strange; he’d never noticed the smell before, even though they’d been much closer together back in the polyps of preparation. But then, the Klick’s breath undoubtedly smelled worse after three days away from its equivalent of toothpaste.

  “I admit nothing,” Krizink said. “Your human mission is illegal and needs no discrediting.”

  “But you did it anyway, didn’t you? You knew the Shons hated you and might be ready to switch trading partners, and that made you nervous.” As he talked, Dante was filled with the sense of lightness that accompanied his rare moments of insight. He spoke louder so the cameras would be certain to capture his words. “Your people hate uncertainty, hate leaving anything to chance. Yeah. I don’t know why I never realized that about your race.” Perhaps the old Dante had indeed realized this about Klicks—the revelation seemed well-worn and comfortable, rather than new—but that didn’t matter right now. “You’d cheat and stack the deck even if the stakes weren’t so high, because you have to be certain you’ll win.”

  “In a way, you’re right.” Krizink’s rumbling voice was a threat. “Because, on the tails of my dead life-party, I’m certain I will win this fight.”

  Dante stood straighter and stared his opponent in the eye. Krizink looked gaunt, almost emaciated. Being so massive, the higher gravity here must bother him more, and Dante’d bet that he was ravenous because of the Shon-sized provisions the Servants had supplied. Dante grinned. Defending Tompa in this place of justice, against a weakened opponent, with Bez-Tattin himself at his back, he was invincible. Even against a Klick.

  “I understand you, Dante Roussel, even though I hate you. You humans are like us. Coming here to steal our trading rights, hoping the Council would forgive you because you were successful—that’s a plan to grace the career of a Kalikiniki. You don’t trust to justice, like the silly Shons do.”

  “I believe in justice.”

  “Then you, too, are a fool.” Krizink took another step forward. Two more steps and the fight could begin. “Although in truth, Shon justice is one of the few things about them my people comprehend. Their trials epitomize a wonderful human saying that was the first English phrase taught to me: Might makes right.”

  He spread his arms and twitched his tail, unsheathing the spike with its implanted three-inch blade of razor-sharp metal. Remembering how proud Krizink was of his tail’s speed and dexterity, Dante said, “Your spike’s awfully short isn’t it? Compared to other lizards, I mean.” He rose to the balls of his feet, ready for attack. “That must make you feel insecure.”

  Krizink wheezed a laugh, as though mocking Dante’s attempts to needle him. “Your human daydreams of justice don’t matter an atom as long as I”—suddenly he lunged forward, reaching for Dante—”kill all of you!”

  Dante dodged low and to his left, sliding under the Klick’s grasp. He slashed up at Krizink’s arm with the knife and felt a gratifying thud as the blade struck flesh. Dante’s satisfaction was short lived, though, because Krizink whipped his tail toward Dante’s neck with such speed that he barely avoided it.

  Momentum carried him to the edge of the execution table. One of the other Klicks moved quickly to keep him from escaping the table. Although it didn’t attack him, Dante didn’t dare turn his back on it. He darted away with a frown at his lack of maneuvering space.

  A human would probably start a fight such as this by feinting and jabbing to discover his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. But would a Klick do the same thing? Krizink claimed that humans and Klicks were alike, but that wasn’t true. They merely shared some of the same aggressive faults—which the aliens considered virtues. This might explain why Krizink felt kinship, while humans felt dislike. But aside from greed and deviousness, these aliens were as opaque and impenetrable as the execution stone underfoot. Trying without much hope to guess Krizink’s next move, Dante watched his opponent as they circled each other.

  His arm felt wet. He glanced down and saw his sleeve was bright red. Someone had cut him and he hadn’t
even noticed it. That was another proof of invincibility—even though he faced a creature who was stronger, taller, and possessed, for all purposes, a third arm.

  “You fear me,” Krizink said, breathing heavily. “You are smart to fear.”

  “Nah, I’m way too flap-happy to be afraid of you.”

  Krizink feinted to his left, then gave a throaty chuckle when Dante overcompensated by lunging to his left. “If flap-happy means you totter on death’s precipice, I agree.”

  “Ask Tompa Lee what it means. If you live that long.” Dante forced his attention away from Krizink’s torso, which is what he would watch in a human opponent, and watched the tail, instead.

  But nonetheless, the sudden lash of Krizink’s tail caught him by surprise. He avoided the spike, but the side of the tail smacked his cheekbone, narrowly missing his eye and sending him tumbling over the stone. The Klick pounced, but Dante was already diving away. Blood ran from his nose as he crouched to face his opponent. His cheek was numb and his ears were ringing like the giant gong back in the cavern. No time to think about that, though.

  He and Krizink started another wary dance around the table. The knife felt hard and comforting in his hand, though its blade was shorter than he liked. The table was small, only about twenty feet by twenty-five, which favored the Klick. In close quarters, his two arms could keep Dante busy while his tail dealt lethal blows. He needed to keep as much distance from the lizard as possible.

  Dante retreated from a couple of quick swipes, one from Krizink’s right hand and the other from his tail. Blood from a puddle splashed his leg as he stepped back. He was near the other Klick’s body, the one he’d knifed.

  Dante jabbed at Krizink, who dodged the blow easily. Still, that split second gave Dante the time he wanted to vault over the fallen alien. The body might be enough of a barrier to keep Krizink at bay, since he was too heavy to hop over it as easily as Dante had done. As long as it lay between them, he was relatively safe. Krizink edged to his left, then his right. Dante moved as well, keeping the body in the way. The ploy was working.

  Watching Krizink’s lower body and tail, Dante sensed that he was about to attack by dashing around his fallen comrade’s head. Dante started to move the other way.

  His leg wouldn’t move. He looked down. The fallen Klick, eyes nearly closed from the approach of death, had grasped his ankle.

  Dante’s sense of invincibility vanished. His stupid, stupid mind had forgotten the creature was still alive.

  Krizink roared in triumph. Dante yanked his ankle free from the fallen alien’s weak grip and turned to run, but Krizink’s hand closed like a vice on his wrist.

  “Tompa!” Dante called as Krizink lifted him off his feet and jerked him into a bear hug. His cut arm and battered cheek, numb until now, suddenly began to hurt. His nose was bleeding so much he couldn’t smell the alien’s fetid breath—a small scrap of grace that seemed both comforting and important.

  “Tompa!”

  As she climbed the statue’s upraised arm, Tompa jerked her head at Dante’s cry. She watched in horror as the Klick crushed Dante against its body and raised its tail to strike.

  Then, although Dante was being held so tightly that he could hardly move, he drew back the hand holding the knife and jabbed at the Klick’s side once, twice. Instead of letting go, the alien flicked the spike of its tail toward the offending hand. Dante cried out wordlessly. The knife dropped to the ground.

  Panting from fear, Tompa pulled herself along Bez-Tattin’s arm. Cameras floated so near on both sides that the breeze from their propellers ruffled her hair. Anger surged at the heartless machines. She wanted to tear their voyeuristic hides to pieces. But that would have to wait.

  Another cry drew her attention to the execution table. The Klick had jabbed Dante in the shoulder with its spike. Tompa tore her gaze away. Concentrate on the sword, the sword.

  Only one more yard. Move forward.

  Again. Almost there.

  She reached out for the sword. Her fingers came within a couple inches of the handle. She strained forward. There. Fingertips touched the sword’s warm metal. Not enough to be able to pull it out of Bez-Tattin’s hand, but almost.

  A cry of agony pierced the air. She looked down.

  The spike of the Klick’s tail was buried in Dante’s back.

  “No!” she shrieked. The Klick turned to stare up at her, its eyes burning with bloodlust.

  Don’t watch. Don’t freeze. Keep going. Ignoring Dante’s anguish and the deadly drop below her, Tompa stretched as far as possible toward the sword. She grasped its handle.

  A monstrous cracking sound assaulted her ears. The statue lurched, nearly throwing her from her tenuous perch. Abandoning the sword, she clung to Bez-Tattin’s arm as to life itself.

  Earthquake? Eruption?

  The statue moved again. For a moment she thought it had come alive, but then she realized it was tipping forward. Falling. Her weight had disturbed its millennia-old balance. Slowly at first, Bez-Tattin and Tompa Lee both began to plunge headfirst to the ground, four stories below.

  Dante was drowning in the pain and heat that flowed down his spine like lava. When he heard a rumble like the world breaking, he thought it was his body. But no. It was a pillar at the front of the porch roof, cracking in half. Even thinking about raising his head was agony, yet he somehow managed to shift his gaze to see that the statue of Bez-Tattin was falling. Tompa was dangling from one of its arms. Why?

  His limbs began to quake involuntarily, but he tried to keep watching Tompa.

  He failed.

  The statue plummeted toward the execution table. Tompa heard herself scream. Beside her, a camera was being carried down by the fall of the god and as her legs lost their grip on the statue’s arm, she reflexively grabbed the metal frame at the camera’s base. The camera jerked her away from the stone. Hanging by one arm as the camera dived, Tompa watched Bez-Tattin fall toward Dante and the Klick.

  The world shook and the air exploded as the statue hit. Billowing dust hid her view.

  The balloon was damaged and losing altitude quickly, but before it nosed into the dust, Tompa lost her grip and fell. She landed on her feet so hard she felt the pounding to the very roots of her teeth, then tumbled to her side and skidded. Spitting dust, she rose to her feet, but immediately sank back to her knees, staring toward where she thought the execution table must be.

  It was as though she was in a dream world enveloped in a cloud. Through the choking, swirling dust, nothing was complete, nothing looked real. The Temple was only a vague backdrop that vanished at the edges of her peripheral vision. The feet and legs of a dead Shon lay off to her right, but the rest of the body disappeared in the haze. Fist-sized pieces of the statue were everywhere; she recognized a chunk of the pitted grey stone lying beside her knee, but it had no shape or form and seemed utterly unconnected to the statue she’d been climbing just seconds ago. After a few small clatters as rocks landed, everything was utterly, totally silent.

  Was she dead?

  She rose to her feet. She couldn’t do that if she were dead. “Dante?” Her voice sounded hollow, muffled by the cloud.

  The dust in front of her swirled and parted enough for her to see a pile of rubble that was the decapitated remains of Bez-Tattin. She walked toward it.

  “Dante?”

  The dust thinned more. She saw him, kneeling at the edge of the rubble. Bez-Tattin’s sword had plunged deep into the table just in front of him. On either side of it lay a twitching, spurting mass of . . . something.

  It was the Klick. Bez-Tattin’s sword had cut it in half from head to toe.

  Tompa ran. “Dante, you’re alive!”

  He turned slightly and she saw, hanging from the back of his neck, wiggling like a fish in a net, the tip of the Klick’s tail. With a final, violent lurch, the spike of the tail jerked loose and joined the rest of its flesh among the debris.

  She ran faster. Dante started to fall to the side. She got to him just
in time to ease him to the stone. His eyes were closed.

  “I’m here, Dante,” she whispered. She stroked his cheek, matted with blood and dust.

  Struggling, he opened one eye. He opened his mouth, too, but nothing came out. After a moment, his eye slid shut.

  “Dante, listen to me.”

  His eyes remained closed.

  From all sides, Tompa heard a booming. At first she thought it was her ears throbbing from the statue’s fall, but the sound was regular and repeated. Drums? Someone was beating drums? As incomprehensible as that was, she didn’t take her gaze off Dante.

  “You won, Dante. The Klick is dead. You saved me.”

  One eye fluttered open. “Hero?”

  The word was so faint she wasn’t sure she heard right. Leaning closer, she said, “Yes. You’re a hero.”

  One side of his mouth twitched. She supposed it might have been a smile.

  The slow drumming grew louder. A rustling sound from all sides made her look up. The dust was settling, letting her see more of her surroundings through the surreal haze. The porch roof had collapsed as though hinged at the back where it joined the Temple. Awmit and Tar-Thara stood together at the edge of the ruins; they must have slid harmlessly down the roof-turned-ramp to the courtyard. Awmit shook his upper body, creating a halo of dust around his head.

  Behind them, an orderly crowd of Shons was emerging from the hundred doors of the Temple, four or five from each door, all of them dressed in orange and white tunics. Servants of Bez-Tattin. Several of them pounded huge drums in the rhythm of a slow dirge. Others carried large, rifle-like weapons designed by Klicks; she recognized them from the shows she’d watched so avidly. The Servants had been at the Temple all along, hiding in secret passageways.

  And last of all, ponderously climbing piles of debris, came the two remaining Klicks, headed toward her.

  “Halt immediately, marriage kin of the one slain by Bez-Tattin!” The command came from an old, wizened Shon who held up both arms. He said something in the Klick language. If it was a repetition of the order to stop, the two Klicks paid no heed.

  “Halt peacefully,” the Shon repeated. “Bez-Tattin decided unequivocally at devastating cost to himself.”

  The Klicks kept coming. Yesterday Tompa might not have understood why, but today she did. They had to avenge their loved one. Well, let them come; she had her own loss to avenge, or die trying. She rose to her feet and balled her fists, red with Dante’s blood.

  They were six feet away when the elderly Shon said, “Halt,” for the third time. Scarcely waiting for a response, the Shons holding the Klick weapons opened fire. They fired a second and third time, in rhythm with the beating of the drums. The two aliens reached toward each other, then crumpled. Their hands lay within half a foot of each other. With their last gush of life, they stretched so their fingertips touched.

  Tompa glanced at them, then knelt beside Dante.

  “It’s over. You’ll be all right. I promise.”

  The one eye that was working fluttered and managed to remain open. When his lips moved, she leaned closer. A dark, round spot appeared on the dust coating his chin. A tear from her eye.

  “You’ll be all right,” she repeated.

  When he didn’t answer, she drew back to look at his face.

  He was dead.

  “No,” she whispered. She’d long ago learned to recognize the immense difference between a live body and a dead one. A moment ago, his body had held life. Now, as obviously as the pain mushrooming behind her eyes, it held nothing.

  “No!” She hugged his face against her chest, rocking back and forth, vaguely aware of the gradually increasing speed and volume of the drumming but paying it no attention. Strangely, she felt nothing. Even the pain behind her eyes had abruptly dulled to a heavy, sullen weight. Shouldn’t she feel something? Shouldn’t she cry? But aside from that solitary tear that had fallen to his chin, she was empty.

  “Graceful human?”

  Tompa looked up. Awmit and Tar-Thara stood in front of her. Their faces were distorted with what she guessed must be grief. She should be feeling grief, too. Why couldn’t she?

  “He’s . . . he’s dead,” she managed.

  “True negatively,” Awmit said.

  She stared at him. Did the Shons have miracles available? Medical coffins? She was under the impression their technology wasn’t that advanced, but . . .

  “For years counting possibly half a million,” Awmit said, “the glory and heroism of Dante human will breathe vibrantly and inspire piously. That one dies never.”

  “Never,” Tar-Thara repeated.

  Oh. No medical miracles. Tompa bowed her head. She didn’t give a ratshit about half a million years from now. She cradled his head for several minutes more while her two friends stood patiently at her side. The drumming grew quieter, as though respecting her need for peace, but it never stopped.

  Never.

  Eventually, she straightened up and managed a deep breath. Four Servants scurried to put their hands under Dante’s head so it never touched the ground. Awmit and Tar-Thara helped her rise. The drumming grew louder and slightly faster. A hushed whisper, like the tiptoeing of souls out of a graveyard, sounded from all sides. The whisper kept time with the beating of the drums. It slowly became recognizable as a four-beat, monotone chant: “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee. Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee.” The rhythm remained the same, foursquare and never changing.

  Never.

  Hundreds of chanting Shons surrounded her at a respectful distance. The vast majority wore orange and white tunics, but scattered among the Servants were dozens of survivors of the carnage in the courtyard. A few of these stood on their own; most were held upright by Servants. All of them, even the injured, mouthed the chant.

  “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee. Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee.”

  She watched a squad of Servants labor to place Dante’s body onto a stretcher that was too long for him. Dully, she realized it must have been intended for Klicks. It seemed wrong, for him to lie on a Klick stretcher.

  The air was still thick with dust. Or was it more than that? Dante had died for her. So had many, many Shons. The denseness in the air, was it them?

  As if in answer, she felt the air gather into a heaviness that hovered over her, invisible yet more real than the sight of Dante’s corpse. Then, in an instant, it settled upon her body like a uniform. For the rest of her life, she sensed, she would wear this new uniform: duty toward the souls who had died to save her.

  “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee.” The chant was growing noticeably louder and quicker. “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee.”

  “Dear God,” she whispered to herself. “Dear Bez-Tattin. I hope I can be worthy of all this sacrifice.”

  The memory of Dante would help her. She glanced around, wondering how she knew that so certainly. She turned to Tar-Thara. “I love you, Tar-Thara.” The girl’s face writhed with emotion as she slipped to a sitting position and leaned her head forward reverently.

  Tompa turned to Awmit. It was harder to speak the words to him because there was too much feeling behind them.

  “This one knows heartfeltedly,” he said before she managed to get the words out. He, too, sat and lowered his head.

  “No, my friend.” She went to her knees beside him. “I kneel to you, instead.” She smiled, amazed that her lips could still do it. “I love you.” Together, she and Awmit stood up.

  “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee,” the throng continued to chant. “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee.” Faster, louder, never stopping, growing almost frenzied. She sensed an orgy coming on, not just here but around the planet, the biggest orgy this world had ever seen. Millions watching on television would need to bond with their fellows in the prook-nolah of the new era, seizing the hope that a fresh start offered—a hope that Tompa would dedicate her life to fulfilling. Duty would let her do nothing less.

  The old Shon who’d commanded the Klicks to stop walked toward her, stepping carefully over rocks and dead bodies. He paused in front of Tar-Thara, then sat on the ground and inclined
his head. He started to do the same in front of Awmit, but debris was in the way; he waited while a trio of younger Servants kicked the debris aside, then repeated his homage.

  When he got up and moved toward Tompa, something inside urged her to step to a spot that was free of debris. Such considerateness wasn’t typical of her, she realized with embarrassment. It must be part of her new sense of duty.

  The old Shon turned his head as though acknowledging her thoughtfulness, then sat in front of her. After inclining his head for a long time, he motioned toward the fallen statue of Bez-Tattin. She was unsure of what he meant, but Awmit knew. He led her toward the statue’s head and helped her mount it. She moved in a slow circle, facing in turn all the Shons chanting in the ancient, bloody Temple courtyard.

  “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee! Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee!”

  “What should I do, Dante?” she whispered. He knew all about duty. She knew nothing.

  Take a bow, his voice said.

  She looked around wildly.

  For all of us. he added.

  “What the— Where the ratshit are you, Dante?”

  Inside your head.

  “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee! Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee!”

  “But you’re dead.” She ran her hands, covered in his blood, through her hair, pulling until it hurt. “Maggoty cockroaches, I’ve gone mad. I get through all this, and I go crazy!”

  I’m not dead, and you aren’t crazy. You’re a goddess, that’s all.

  Awmit was looking at her oddly.

  “Goddess, yeah, right,” she said. “A crazy goddess!”

  Dante’s laugh rumbled in her bones like the soothing purr of a cat. As you wish. Take a bow, you crazy goddess, you.

  The Shons were all watching her now. “I’ve never taken a bow,” she whispered to herself. Or was it to him? She laid her forearm along her waist and bent forward, the way she’d seen an orchestra conductor do in a show.

  “Like this?”

  They love it, Madame Ambassador.

  And they did. The sound of the Shons’ chant swelled until it almost hurt her ears. Yet at the same time it buoyed her, raised her higher even than did the ancient god on whom she stood. Ambassador. The title was no stranger than the facts that she was surrounded by Shons chanting her name, and that she stood on the remains of a statue half a million years old—a statue that had come alive to defeat the Klicks.

  “Dante,” she whispered, “does being the ambassador mean I might have the chance to do some good for the Shons? Keep Consortium Earth from taking advantage of them the way the Klicks did?”

  If anyone can, it’s you.

  “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee! Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee!”

  Before today, all she’d ever had was the will to survive. Any animal had that. Now she had a destiny: keeping the Consortium from screwing the Shons. Amazing. That destiny poured through her in wave after wave of shivers, washing away hesitancy and self-absorption and filling her instead with light and hope and effortless energy.

  She bowed to the chanting Shons again, adding a grand flourish with her hand as she raised herself upright. “I’ll need your help with the duty thing, Dante. You won’t leave me, will you?”

  Never.

  Tears began to flow. Yet even as they rolled down her cheeks, she pumped her fist into the air and whooped with joy. The Shons imitated her gesture and shouted their own whoops that interrupted the pounding chant for only a moment. They began dancing as they sang.

  “Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee! Bez-Tom-Pa-Lee!

  “BEZ-TOM-PA-LEE!!!”