Earthblood (36 page)

He felt a burning, terrible thirst, and went toward a smoky, liquory, loud-smelling bar. Inside it was hot, steamy, solid with noise that sawed at him like ragged knives. He sank down at a wobbly table and a green-toothed female slid into the seat beside him and elbowed him invitingly. Roan made a growling sound and she went away.

A huge, big-bellied Man was standing before him.

"What'll it be?" he growled in very bad Terran.

"Water," Roan said in a dry whisper. "Cold water."

"Water costs too," the Man said. He went away and came back with a thick, greasy tumbler, half full of grayish liquid.

"I have no money," Roan said. "Take this. . . ." He fumbled the golden clasp from his garment, tossed it on the table.

The barman picked it up, eyed it suspiciously, bit into it.

"Hey," he grunted. "That's real gold!"

"I need . . . a place to rest," Roan said. The sickness was back in full force now, washing up around him like water rising in a sinking ship. "Get me a doctor . . ."

"You sick, huh?" the Man was leaning toward him, leering; his eyes swelled until they were as big as saucers. Roan forced his eyes shut, then opened them, fighting to hold onto consciousness.

"I know . . . where there's more . . ." He could feel his mind cutting loose from his body again, ready to float away into a tossing sea of fever fantasies. But he couldn't—not yet. He tried to get to his feet, slammed back into the chair. The glass clashed against his teeth.

"Drink up, buddy," the thick voice was saying. "Yeah, I'll get a doc fer yuh. You know where there's more, eh?"

Roan gulped; the warmish, stagnant-smelling liquid gagged him. The Man brought more water, cold this time and in a slightly cleaner glass, as though he had wiped it on his shirt.

"Look, bo, you take it easy, huh? I'm Soup the Insider. Sure, I'll fix yuh up with a room. Swell room, bed and everything. Private. Only look around good before yuh close the door; yuh can never tell what yuh might be locking yourself in with." He guffawed.

"Got to have rest," Roan managed. "Be . . . all right in the morning. Find my friends. Hope Desiranne is all right. Then get out . . . this filthy place . . ."

"You just take it easy, bub. I'll fix yuh up good. Then we'll talk about where to get more of these little knickknacks. And you don't talk to nobody else, see?"

"Get me . . ." Roan gave up trying to talk and felt the big man's arm under his, leading him away . . .

He fought his way up from a nightmare of heat and pursuit and blood and cruelty and opened his eyes to see a spotted glare panel set in a blotched ceiling, casting a sick light on a threadbare velvet wall. An ancient, withered Man stood beside the bed, blinking down at him with eyes that were polished stones set in pockets of inflamed tissue.

"Sick, ye are, true enough, lad. Ye've got every ailment I ever heard of and six or eight I haven't, you."

Roan tried to sit up; his head barely twitched, and pain shot through it like an ax blow. He lay, waiting for the throbbing to subside. His stomach ached as though it had been stamped by booted feet, and a sickness seemed to fester through his body like sewage bubbling in a cesspool.

"Sore, hey?" the oldster cackled. "Well, it might be; ye've tossed up every meal ye've et sine ye learned to guide spoon to lip, you." Through the wall Roan heard an angry scream and a slap. "For half a copper I don't even smile!" a female voice shrilled, and a door slammed.

"Got to get out," Roan said. He tried to throw back the rough blanket, and the blackness swirled again.

". . . him something to make him talk," the thick voice of the big man was saying.

"Whatever ye say, Soup—but it'll kill him, it."

"Just so he talks first."

Roan felt a cold touch on his arm, a sharp stab of pain.

"Where's the loot, bo?" Soup's thick voice demanded.

"Ye'll have to wait a little hour, Soup. First he'll sleep a bit, eh, to get back the strength to talk, he."

"All right; but if you let him die before he spills, I'll squeeze that scrawny neck of yours."

"No fear o' that, Soup . . ."

Time passed, like a storm of yellow dust that choked and harried and would never cease. Sometimes voices stabbed at him, and he cursed them and struck out; and again he was running, falling, and far away on the floodlit stage the knife was cutting into Desiranne's white flesh, and he fought his way toward her, but always the sea of mad faces blocked his way until he screamed and clawed his way out of the dream—

". . . tell me now, before the blasted glutton comes back, he," a scratchy voice was saying. "Then I'll give ye more nice medicine, and ye'll sleep like a whelp at a bitch's teat."

"Get . . . away . . . me . . ." Roan managed. "Got . . . go . . ." Something sharp and painful poked his throat.

"Ah, ye felt that, then, lad? Good. Now speak once more, tell old Yagg where the pretty treasures lie. Not in Upper City, eh? For the dogs would tear a man to bits if ever he ventured there. Where, eh? Is there some house that's been missed, some buried trove—"

There was a great smash, and a bull roar.

"So! Yuh'd cheat Soup, would yuh? I'll rip your head off—"

"Now, Soup—you misjudge me, you! I was just trying to find out—for you. No harm, what?"

There was a growl and a sound of two heavy blows and a squeal. Then Soup's wide fame loomed over Roan, breathing foul breath and flecks of spittle.

"All right, give, bo! You ain't going to die and not tell Soup, not after he give yuh a place to die in!"

Roan croaked, and his hand moved feebly. "Tell . . . you . . . later . . ." The face faded and Soup's voice mumbled, drifted off into the insistent clamor of fever images.

Light again, and sounds.

". . . didn't you send for me sooner?" a tremulous voice was complaining.

"That quack Yagg like to killed him, with his poisons! He's full of disease!

Look at those sores—and see the swelling here. He'll die—mark my words, he's a goner—but we can do our best . . ."

"Yuh better . . ."

Stellaraire was standing by the bed, looking down at him. Her hair was burnt off and her face was scarred and blistered.

"Come with me, Roan," she said urgently. "We'll leave this 'zoo and go so far away they'll never find us. Come . . ." Then she was running away, and Henry Dread was shooting after her, the blaster bolts echoing along the steel corridor, echoing . . .

Henry Dread holstered the gun. "Damned Gooks," he said. "But you and I, Roan: we're different. We're Terries." His face changed, became small and petulant. "I trained her," Daryl said. "What higher art form can there be than destruction? And the destruction of one's self is its highest expression

. . ." Deftly, Daryl fitted a noose about his neck, hoisted himself up. His face became black and twisted and terrible. "You see?" he said pleasantly. He went on talking, and many voices chimed in, and they cheered and the dust cleared away and Iron Robert held up his arms, melted off at the elbow.

"Iron Robert born to fight, Roan," he said. "Can't fight, now. Time for Iron Robert to die." He turned and the iron door opened and he walked into the furnace. The flames leaped out of the open door, scorching Roan's face. He turned away, and rough hands pulled him back.

"Yuh can't die yet," Soup's voice said. "Yuh been laying here for two days and two nights, yelling to yourself. Now talk, damn you, or I'll choke the life out of yuh!" Hands like leather-covered stone-crushers closed on Roan's throat—

There was a terrible growling, and then a scream and suddenly the hands were gone and there were awful sounds of tearing flesh and threshing limbs and then Sostelle's face was leaning over him, and there was blood on the dog's jaws.

"Master! I came as quickly as I could!"

Roan cried out, turned away from the phantom.

"Master! It's your dog, Sostelle! And I have another with me. Look, Master .

. ."

A cool hand touched Roan's forehead. There was a faint odor of a delicate perfume, almost lost in the stench of the foul room. Roan opened his eyes. Desiranne looked down at him. Her face was pale and he could see the faint blue tracing of the veins in her eyelids. But she smiled at him.

"It's all right now, Roan," she said softly. "I am with you."

"Are you . . . real?"

"As real as any of us," she said.

"Your hand . . ."

She held it up, swathed in bandages. "I'm sorry I'm no longer perfect, Roan."

The dog doctor appeared, looking concerned. He talked, but Roan couldn't hear him for the thunder in his ears. He lay and watched Desiranne's face until she faded and dissolved in mist, and then the mist itself faded into darkness shot with lights, and the lights twinkled like distant stars, and then went out, one by one . . .

Roan was sitting up in bed. His arm, resting on the patched blanket over his knees, was so thin that his fingers met around it, and it was scarred with half-healed pockmarks. Desiranne sat by the bed, feeding him thin soup. Her face was thin and paler than ever, and her hair was cut short, held back by a simple scarf of clean cloth. Roan lifted his hand, took the spoon.

"I can do that now," he said. The spoon trembled, spilling soup; but he went on, emptied the bowl.

"I'm stronger now," he said. "I'm getting up."

"Roan, please rest a few days longer."

"No. We've got to get to the ship now, Desiranne. How long has it been?

Weeks? Maybe Askor and Sidis will be there, waiting for me. We'll leave this poisoned world and never come back." He had thrown back the blanket and put his feet down on the floor. His legs were so thin that a choked laugh grunted from him.

"I look like old Targ," he said. With Desiranne's hand under his arm, he stood, feeling his senses fade in vertigo from the effort. He took a step and fell, and Desiranne cried out and the Sostelle was there, helping him back into the rags of the cot.

It was a week later. Roan sat in a chair by the window, looking out at the decayed roofs and tottering walls of Lower Town. There was a sickly plant in a clay pot on the windowsill, and a fresh breeze brought odors of springtime and corruption.

Sostelle came in, carrying a patched cloak.

"This is all I could get, Master."

"I told you never to call me 'Master' again," Roan snapped. "My name is Roan."

"Yes . . . Roan. Here is a garment. But please—don't go. Not yet. The dogs are about again today—"

Roan stood, ignoring the dizziness. "We're going today. Askor and Sidis are probably waiting for me, wondering what happened. They probably think I'm dead." His fingers fumbled with the chipped buttons.

"Yes, Mas— Roan." The dog helped him with the cloak. It was a faded blue, of a rough weave that scratched Roan's pale skin. Desiranne appeared at the door.

"Roan—you're so weak . . ."

"I'm all right." He forced himself to smile gently at her, to walk without staggering across to her. "It's not far," he said. "We can do it." They went down patched stairs, ignoring the eyes that stared from half-concealment at the dog who had torn the throat out of the formidable Soup, and the pale Upper woman, and the sick madman. Out in the sun-bleached time-eroded street other faces, weather-burned and life-scarred, watched as they passed; and when one of the watchers ventured too close, Sostelle bared his fangs and they drew back. After half an hour, Roan and his escort stopped to rest at a dry fountain with broken carvings of Men with the tails of fish. Roan looked at them, and wondered on what world they lived. He and Desiranne sat on the carved stone lip of the monument, feeling the warmth of the sun, while Sostelle paced up and down, his human-like hands hooked in his leather belt. When Roan had rested, they went on.

It was late afternoon when they reached the raised avenue that ran past the port and on to the bright towers of Upper City. Roan shaded his eyes, staring past the orderly trees and the banked flowers in the distance.

"Where is it?" he said. "I don't see the ship." There was a new sick feeling in him now, not the fever of pain and infection, but the hollow sickness of terrible loss. He scrambled up the embankment, led the way along under the gentle trees. He could see parked flyers, the flash of color of moving chariots, the tiny figures of dogs at work; but Hell's Whore was gone.

"Perhaps the people, sir," Sostelle said. "Master Daryl and the others; they may have moved her . . ."

"They couldn't have," Roan said in a voice that almost broke. "Only Askor and Sidis knew how to open her ports—how to lift her."

"Roan—we must go back now." Desiranne's hand was on his arm. He touched the thin fingers, looking at Sostelle.

"You knew," he said.

"Roan—I could not be sure—and how could I have told you . . .?"

"It's all right." Roan tried desperately to hold his voice firm. "At least they got away. I knew those pansies couldn't hold them."

"Perhaps one day they'll come back, Roan," Sostelle said. "Perhaps—"

"No. They're gone, back to where they belong—out there." Roan tilted his head back, looking up into the bottomless blue of the deep sky. "I sent them away myself," he said. "I betrayed them to their enemies and then turned my back on them. There's nothing for them to come back for."

Roan sat with Desiranne and Sostelle at a small table in the bar that Soup the Insider had once owned. It was evening and the room was filled with yellow light and the last of the day's heat. In one corner, a Man with magic fingers caressed a stringed instrument that mourned for love and courage and other forgotten things. A one-eyed Man came in silently from the street, crossed to their table.

"I seen another patrol," he said accusingly. "You and yer woman and yer dog better pull out tonight."

Roan looked at him with an expression that was the absence of all expression.

"Yer calling 'em down on us," the Man said, his lips twisting with the hates that ate at him like crabs. "When the dogs get on a man's trail, they don't never quit. And long's they're in the Town, ain't nobody safe."

"They're not looking for me," Roan said. "Not after a year. I'm not that important."