“Everybody knows us for what we are,” Nyla said, glancing furtively up and down the street. “They’re all looking, though they are pretending not to. And if we go in there…”
She nodded at the dark stairwell leading into a place Luther Kenawabe had referred to as Obi’s Pit, an establishment not dissimilar to hundreds of others providing a gathering place for those with the need for diversion from their daily grind.
“They’d know what we are no matter what kind of clothes we wore,” Mac replied. “If anything they’d pay us even more attention; wondering why we’re trying to hide what we are. This way it’s all on the surface, and that comforts people, as much as anything around here can be comforting to anybody.”
He winked at her. Both their jumpsuits were covered in a layer of clinging dust that even the repellent surface layer was unable to stop from settling. Also, like he had known would happen, they were sweating profusely and the dust had gathered in the moisture and settled into the nooks and folds of their skins and dried into grubby patches on their necks and faces. This, much more than any disguise they might have adopted, helped to make them look ‘ordinary’. People didn’t stay clean on Kaleeb. It was a losing battle and only first-time visitors who didn’t know what to expect bothered fighting it.
“What are you looking at?” she wanted to know.
“The same thing a few hundred eyes are going to be looking at in a few moments.”
Nyla pulled a face and took a deep breath of the hot, dry air.
“And you’d better not do too much of that, because they’ll be swarming all over you like roaches.”
“Do what?”
He imitated her taking a deep breath.
“Oh, that.” Nyla looked down at herself. “Want me to zip it up more?”
“It’s nice as it is.” He motioned toward the stairwell. “Remember, these people like their women in their place. It’s all right to be feisty, but not too forcefully so. If anybody tries something with you and I’m not there to interfere, just twist his wrist so that it hurts or break a finger. Nothing that’ll be too humiliating. Nothing that’ll put his head lower than your groin. Definitely nothing that’ll throw them to the ground. And whatever you do, if they do end up on the floor, possibly because they’re drunk, don’t raise your foot and stomp on them. Never ever let them see the underside of your foot or boot. It’s a deadly insult. They’ll get really upset, and we’ll have a fight on our hands that must end in their or our death. And that’s more aggravation than we want, because we’re going in there to find us a ship to get us out of this place.”
“But I can break their fingers?”
“Any one or all.”
“Their wrists?” Here eyes were dancing in her head.
“Just be nice but tough.”
“Hmmff…”
She shook her head and followed him and he headed down the stairwell.

Elementary physics had led to a lot of living space being built below ground. It saved construction materials, which were scarce on Kaleeb and had to be imported at great cost. Also, the ground on which Malaville had been build was mostly hard soil, whose composition provided an unusually good protection against cosmic radiation. On a planet whose magnetic field was very weak this was an important benefit. Regens cost money, and without them, or some other form of partial or complete radiation protection, people’s lives were likely to be even shorter than they already were. Therefore, spending as much time as possible underground made excellent sense. It was probable that above the place they were heading into, a layer of MetaCer chips from dismantled ships was providing additional radiation shielding for those lurking below. MetaCer could not be recycled, but it could be broken up into small pieces; and there was no better known radiation insulator.
The stairwell was lit by a few dim bulbs, which provided just enough light to delineate the rough steps, which had been shaped and reinforced with metal, presumably salvaged from dismantled ships. Every twenty steps or so it made a right-angled turn to the left.
They were two turns down the stairwell, when there was the sound of footfall and voices from below.
Mac raised a hand and stopped.
“What?”
“Just wait. Don’t say anything, keep on the right side of the passage, don’t stare or look around, and make sure your feet are completely on the step you’re standing on.”
Around the corner appeared two men, dressed in vests of worn leather and loose, grimy pantaloons. When they saw Mac and Nyla, they ceased their conversation and proceeded to climb the steps until they were exactly one step above the one Nyla stood on. There they stopped.
Mac recommenced his descent, with Nyla following close behind. Behind them, the men stood still. When they had rounded the next turn Mac stopped.
“This is why the passage takes these turns,” he explained. “We were above them, so they could see the soles of our feet. We stopped. They ascended until they are slightly above us. We continued until we are out of sight.”
“This is laughable. Besides, now they are above us! Someone always has to be higher, or people could never pass each other on any stairs anywhere!”
“But we have our backs turned, and once we’re out of sight, everybody is free to go as they please. This is the convention, and everybody adheres to it.”
“It is a stupid ritual, and it makes no sense,” she muttered.
Mac chuckled. “Indeed it doesn’t. But people everywhere persist in following stupid rituals that make no sense. This here is one of the less noxious ones. And this is their world, so it behooves us to do at least conform to their customs, no matter how quaint.”

The stairs opened into square a room about eight by eighty feet and with a ceiling maybe half as high, which was supported by a framework of metal beams, radiating out from the center to the sides, and supported in the middle by a square column, made of more pieces of salvaged materials, which obviously had been cut up and then welded together again. Halfway up, around the periphery of the room, ran a broad balustrade, supported on a frame of more space-ship struts and beams. On it were tables and chairs, a few screened-off dark nooks and what looked like a performance stage, which was currently unused. On the lower level more tables and chairs, a bar that extended along the length of the rear wall. Above one of the two openings cut into the right side of the wall hung a sign depicting a crude but, Mac thought, imaginative variation of the universal symbol for ablution facilities.
He glanced sideways at Nyla, to see if she had noticed the sign, but then realized that among the impressions assaulting her here, this probably was the least significant. The place was busy and noisy. Mostly men, mostly intoxicated on whatever substances were peddled here; which still, after millennia of human existence, meant predominantly alcohol. But the smells told Mac that those sitting around the four large water-pipes were inhaling stronger narcotics, all of them quite possibly synthesized by the owner of this very establishment.
There was another stage at the lower level. Six women, dressed in skin-tight jumpsuits not unlike the one’s he and Nyla wore, were engaged in a fight of three-against-three. Each of the suits had on its chest a round blotch of color: yellow, purple, red, green, blue, white. The aim of the ‘battle’ appeared to be to remove the garments from the opponents. The cooperation between the members of each team varied, depending on the ebb and flow of the fight. The fight was in its early stages, as evidenced by the fact that everybody was still dressed.
Around the stage sat men, some of them fondling scantily-dressed whores in the most intimate of places, whistling, calling, yelling, gesticulating and occasionally handing small chits of exchange units to another man, who sat on a chair, with his back to the women on the stage.
“The game is rigged, in case you’re wondering,” Mac said to Nyla. “Everybody knows it, but nobody knows how; since the games-master has no eye contact with the fighting teams, and so ought not to be able to control their behavior or adjust the fight according to the betting. The fun is to out-guess the games-master and figure out who has been pre-selected to win before the fight started—and to watch the fight, of course.”
“Hmmff.”
Mac glanced at Nyla, whose face evinced disapproval at the proceedings.
A loud outcry—dismay from those who saw their funds lost; delight on the side of others, whose hope for winning had just been heightened; as well as general appreciation of the spectacle—went up as a thin, flat-chested blonde got hold of the top of the zipper of the suit of a redhead, whose prodigious mammaries threatened to burst the suit that was holding them in. The blonde woman jerked hard; the zipper slit apart; the so-far-hidden prodigies spilled forth to loud whoops, whistles and outcries of the spectators.
“This is despicable,” Nyla muttered.
She gave Mac a narrow-eyed look.
“You appear unsurprised by these displays.”
“I’ve seen them before before. Surely, you, too, have; on Tethys.”
“Not quite like this,” she muttered.
“This is very tame,” Mac told her. “These women could have been prostitutes and subject to the whim of every pervert who beds them. As it is, they are under the protection of the games-master, who, you may notice, carries a gun at his side—which he would happily use on anybody not keeping his—or her—distance from the women.”
A raucous roar went up from the watchers as the heavy-breasted woman took revenge on her skinny opponent by throwing her to the ground and herself on top, smothering the smaller woman with her breasts. She reached down between them, tore down the zip and, with one fluid motion, rolled around and pulled it down and between the legs to the back, rolled her futilely twisting opponent onto her belly, pulled the zipper all the way up until seam and jumpsuit came apart. The smaller woman screeched and tried to scramble away, but her foe grabbed hold of the sleeve of one side of the jumpsuit and tore it off.
The crowd went wild, and even the other women momentarily stopped their fight to watch this amazing display.
“Hey!”
Nyla dug her elbow into Mac’s side.
“Good moves,” he said. “You have to admit…”
One look at her face told him that it was probably a good time to say nothing more.
He hooked his arm under Nyla’s and pulled her away from the entrance and in among the crowd on the lower floor.
“You are in trouble,” she muttered into his ear.
Even so, she could hardly be heard above the din around them.
He slid his hand around her back.
“You’re not going to get out of it this way!”
The hand continued.
“I said…”
“It’s for show,” he whispered into her ear. “It establishes…belonging. Unless you want someone else to paw you or get otherwise interested.”
“Just wait until I get you alone,” she said dangerously.
Mac stopped and turned her so her face was only inches from his.
“Just keeping up appearances,” he whispered and kissed her hard and long.
Her resistance was very brief and perfunctory.
“You’re just saying that,” she gasped, when they came up for air.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t enjoyable. It always is.”
He grinned lasciviously and slapped her behind. The sound was clearly audible even in here. Several heads turned to eye them up and down; then turned away again.
Mac experienced a curious sensation he was unable to define; but it had an atavistic undertone that was quite new to him.
Old instincts never die.
He pushed Nyla toward the bar, ahead of him and keeping his hands on her hips. He managed to procure the least dangerous-appearing alcoholic beverage; which claimed to be ‘Imported Old Earth Cognac’, but if it had been it would have cost a hundred times as much as it did. Unless someone had salvaged a major haul from a shipwreck—or unless it was a corsair booty.
In any case, the stuff tasted about as genuine as Mac could make out, given his limited experience with such spirits.
Nyla took a small sip of Mac’s drink, twisted up her face and shook her head.
“Women in the Valley avoid intoxicants while pregnant. It harms the unborn.”
“This is true, but how do you know this?”
“Everybody knows it. Everybody always has.”
Interesting.
“Water,” Nyla said. “I’d like some water—ss long as it’s clean.”
She looked around. “Is there an aquecamera, I wonder?”
Mac nodded in the direction of the sign, just visible above the heads of the noisy crowd.
Nyla glanced at it; caught onto the symbolism; stared.
“That’s…” She shook her head.
Mac gave her a low-denomination chit.
“What for?”
“Nothing’s free; especially nothing involving water. This should cover it though. If anybody asks for more, slug them.”
Nyla grimaced and took the chit.
“Be careful,” he muttered. “Maybe I should…”
“I am capable of dealing with it,” she said firmly.
Mac hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. If something went wrong, he’d have to interfere; but so be it. He couldn’t watch her every step; this was as good a time as any to let her find her own way through the maze of life outside Tethys. There was a risk, of course, but there always was. It wouldn’t get any better.
“Just be careful,” he repeated. “Don’t let the attendant fleece you for all you’ve got. Pay what it says on the sign as you come in and no more.”
“How do you know there’s a sign?”
“It’s the rules. There’s always rules—even in the most ‘lawless’ of places. It’s just a question of who makes them.”
Nyla winked at him and pushed her way through the throng; and presently disappeared from sight.
Mac fought down a feeling of unease and returned his attention to the bar. A scrawny man whose bald pate, closely-set bulging eyes and long neck gave him the appearance of a plucked fowl came closer at Mac’s signal.
“Refill?”
Mac shook his head.
“Hamadayan.”
The chicken’s eyes narrowed slightly as he pondered the request.
“I know he’s here,” Mac said. “I just don’t know what he looks like.”
“Maybe he don’t want you to know what he looks like.”
“Maybe, but I will find out.”
“Not if nobody tells you.”
“Somebody will,” Mac said patiently. “Somebody always does.”
“Why would they?”
Mac shrugged.
The fowl’s head snapped up. He lost all interest in Mac—who realized that the sound level had suddenly decreased, and was continuing to do so. It was like a wave of silence that spread from somewhere near the entrance, across the room. Even the sounds of the women fighting ceased.
Mac’s back crawled with a chilly frisson.
The silence became near-complete.
Mac forced himself to turn slowly toward the entrance, where stood five men. The one in the center…
Mac’s heart started thumping as adrenaline flooded his system. The face…
What was Fayed doing here? Obi’s Pit was still, according to Luther Kenawabe at least, well outside Fayed-territory.
Had he decided on today, of all days, as the time to expand his reach?
Why?
Just bad luck?
Since Mac had last seen him, Fayed appeared to have not aged at all. The tightly-cropped black hair still covered his skull like a cap. A sharp olive face with near-black eyes and the slightly crooked hook nose. Under a skin-tight armless vest, probably lined with inertialite, his chest muscles twitched as his hands opened and closed in a restless, reflexive motion. Mac remembered it well. It had haunted his memories for years. One of those motions had ended with a trigger-pull that had resulted in a stream of bullets shredding Areena’s chest and throwing her across the field-bed and the injured man she had been trying to stitch together again.
The four men flanking behind Fayed; competent and deadly, each with a projectile hand-weapon in each hand. Ancient-style weapons that used explosive cartridges to propel pellets at lethal velocities. Ancient maybe, but in the end just as deadly as a needle projectors. Fayed had made the use of such weapons into his very own trademark.
Mac closed his eyes for a moment; attempted to recall faces associated with memories that made his insides churn.
Two of Fayed’s goons he knew. They, too, had been there.
“Carry on!” Fayed called out in a reedy but penetrating voice. “Just visiting.”
He peered around the crowd and his eyes stopped when they met Mac’s.
“Did you hear what I said?!” he snapped.
His escorts started to raise their guns.
From the corners of his eyes Mac saw the games-master signal to the women—who resumed their battle, albeit with less focus and intensity.
The guns came down again. Contemptuous grins from the escorts. Fayed’s face was as unreadable mask.
The spectators forced themselves to pretend that their attention was still on the battle, even though in truth everybody tried to keep track of the progress of Fayed and his escorts as they made their way through a magically-clearing throng toward where Mac stood at the bar.
By the time Fayed stood before him Mac had evaluated a number of possible scenarios that had led Fayed to this place at this time. Neither was good. All of them presaged bloodshed; possibly his own. If there was any saving grace about this situation it was that Nyla wasn’t here at this instant. Mac beseeched powers in whose existence he didn’t have a shred of faith to keep her out of harm’s way.
Don’t be stupid. Please don’t be stupid!
“Mac,” Fayed said. “What a surprise.”
“Do I know you?”
How could someone like Fayed possibly remember an insignificant incident from decades ago? He killed an interfering bitch of a doctor and battered her husband senseless, leaving him as the only one to live, so he could go back to wherever he’d come from and tell his tale to keep every other interfering do-gooder away from there.
Fayed’s mouth twitched, but the eyes were a steady as a snake’s.
“You look different,” Fayed said.
His eyes flicked to the pouch at Mac’s hip, then slowly traveled up until they met Mac’s gaze.
“You look like a man who, they tell me, killed two of my collectors at Ginza port. In fact…”
He signaled to one of the goons who handed him a hand-sized communicator.
Fayed held it up so Mac could see the screen.
“See?”
The image was grainy but unmistakable.
Mac shrugged.
“Long way from a doc to a killer, Mac,” Fayed said.
People were going to die.
Damn!
It had to be done soon. Any delay meant that Nyla would come out through that door back there and run straight into what might be her death.
“What are you talking about?” Mac asked Fayed.
If he dropped himself so he landed behind the man immediately beside him. He could reach the gun before he hit the ground. The man’s body would cover him; possibly absorb the occasional bullet aimed at his head.
Who to take out first?
Aim for the head. Always.
There was the slightest momentary flicker of doubt in the near-black eyes—but then the mouth twitched again.
“I never forget a face,” Fayed said. “It’s one of my many talents. Always had it.”
He shook his head. “Looking for me? If you are—here I am. This is your chance.”
“I just need a ship,” Mac said. “Got one for sale?”
Fayed raised an eyebrow.
“Do you? Well, you bring my men back to life first. I might let you live then and forget the inconvenience. Maybe we’ll even negotiate a sale.”
Mac nodded.
“All right.”
Fayed inclined his head quizzically.
“All right?”
“Suppose I bring them back to life? There are ways…”
Fayed’s face went very still. Maybe he’d read in Mac’s face that the words weren’t just banter. Not that it mattered what he thought, of course. As long as his mental attention was momentarily divided; a fatal distraction that would last at best for a heartbeat or two.
The one and only chance.
And so it ends—for some.
Please, let it not be me.

Nyla pushed her way through the crowd, heading for the aquecamera—or whatever they called it here. On the way she was forced to swat aside several groping hands, as well as one determined effort to pull her against a sweaty body, whose reek made her gag. The elementary, but simple and effective, moves Mac had taught her while on the way here helped her to get out of these situations without creating a major ruckus.
She stopped in front of the full-height swinging door of the aquecamera and looked up at the crude sign, a stylized person of undefined sex defecating a round blob of matter onto the ground underneath him—her? Nyla pulled a face and pushed against the door, which swung aside to reveal a passage maybe thirty paces long, with a high ceiling from which hung from which hung several bright light globes. At the far end of the ceiling was an dark hole, the width of a man’s shoulders. On the left and right of the passage were doors, four on each side. Nyla wrinkled her nose at the reek of human excrement; despite the ventilation which was provided by the opening in the ceiling.
On a chair near the entrance sat a pale-faced woman in a grubby tunic-like garment. Her age was indefinite; the face, pose and demeanor spoke of too many years of use and abuse.
She held out a hand and said something Nyla didn’t understand. The gesture was clear enough though. Nyla placed the chit Mac had given her into the hand and, without waiting for a sign of approval or signal of insufficiency, continued on down the passage, to the first door, made of some thin metal that had been dented many times by fists and kicks. Nyla prodded it with the tip of a finger and, when it yielded to the pressure, pushed it open. She forced down a gag when she saw the inside. Nowhere on her home world, in not one place, no matter how lowly or decrepit, had she encountered quite as much filth and such stench. The facility for human discharges was basically a large bucket with a lid that had a hole. The lid and the walls were stained with substances she didn’t care to analyze.
Nyla searched in vain for anything she could have used to clean herself after completing the procedure of voiding her bowels.
Form a nearby cubicle came the sounds of grunting from what had to be a man. Nyla backed out of the cubicle, went back to the woman and snatched for the chit she was about to put into a purse on her lap.
The woman fought her briefly, but Nyla twisted the hand. The woman winced in pain; the hand opened up.
There was the chit.
Nyla reached with her free hand to take it; hesitated; looked into the tired, vacant eyes; let go of the hand; headed for the door.
And stopped before opening it—
Something was not as it had been. Something was missing.
Sound.
The raucous roars had ceased—and even as she listened it seemed that everyone on the other side of that door had chosen to fall silent at the same moment.
Nyla’s hand pushed the door open just far enough so she could see out. It appeared that every person she could see was staring in the same direction. The expressions she had seen before; they were those of a crowd anticipating something to titillate their interest, or maybe something already in progress.
A nauseous pit formed somewhere in her belly. She had no faith in the benevolence of fate. If something unexpected happened it was probably not good. Meaning that somehow Mac was involved in all this attention, and…
Nyla’s hand slipped to the pouch at her waist and started to slide open the zip.
Behind her, a sound. She turned her head. A man emerged from one of the doors and started to head in her direction, his eyes lighting up in appreciation and maybe anticipation as he spotted her. His open-mouthed grin revealed a series of stained teeth.
Nyla reached into the pouch; her hand closed around the needle-projector and drew it out. She pointed it at the man.
“Stay away!” she hissed.
His eyes, set under hairless brows, widened.
Nyla raised the gun and twitched it. She felt her face twist into a snarl of anger and impatience.
The man backed away from her—while the woman on the chair stared at her from wide, surprised eyes.
Nyla returned her attention to the crowd outside.
Mac’s voice…
Whatever he said she couldn’t understand, but now another man spoke. The words were gibberish, but their tone was taunting, containing underlying threats, veiled violence waiting to burst into the open.
Nyla lowered the weapon and slowly pushed the door just wide enough so she could slip out.
Those she pushed aside, slowly but firmly and quietly, were too fascinated by what was happening between Mac and the other speaker to pay her much attention.
She came to a position where she could actually see Mac and the other man; and by the tiny shifts of his body and the sound of his voice she also knew that the conversation was about to come to a close.
Mac’s opponent was in plain view, but he was looking at Mac and away from her. Next to him stood four other men, whose hands were dangling at their sides, close to weapons not unlike her own, affixed to their belts.
Nyla, ignoring the astonished glances of those around her, raised her weapon and aimed across the shoulder of a man right in front of her. A voice, somewhere in the back of her mind, was screaming at her, reprimanding her for what she was about to do.
Be quiet!
Mac’s movements became almost languid; his face relaxed. He said something; his mouth twitched in a wry grin.
The opponent’s head inclined sideways in apparent puzzlement.
Now!
One part of her mind watched in curious fascination at how steady her hands were as she lined up the weapon on the man’s head and her right index finger pulled on the trigger lever.
The tiny plop of the discharge was followed almost instantly by the disintegration of the man’s skull, which shattered into a myriad pieces as his brains and blood were blown across the bystanders and his companion—who hesitated for a fateful surprised instant. Mac’s first shot hit one of them in the neck. The explosive projective tore open the man’s throat, spattering gristle, flesh and blood; the head tilted askew, the eyes still evincing a brief instant of stunned consciousness. A second shot took off the back on the other man’s head.
The third turned to face Nyla; started to raise his gun in her direction. She saw his astonished eyes at facing a woman, before she pulled the trigger again, and the face became a spray of blood, bones and gore.
The last man, faced with an impossible choice, hesitated too long. Mac killed him with a final shot to the head.
The whole thing was over so quickly that people hadn’t even had time to react before the body of the man Nyla had first killed hit the ground.
But now there were screams and shouts patrons scrambled away from the corpses and blood spreading across the floor.
Mac stood still, the gun still raised, looking around with the alertness of a plains elec.
“A fight isn’t over until it’s over.”
Nyla stood still, forcing herself to ignore the corpses, blood, stench of death and panic around them, with people bumping into her in their haste to scramble away.
She saw Mac exchange a glance with the burly man standing nearby behind the bar. The latter shook his head minutely. Mac glanced away again, but responded with an equally almost imperceptible nod.
Another few moments passed. Nyla stood alone now.
Mac twitched his head. She sidled over to him, trying to keep out of the spreading pool of blood. Her foot crunched on something that cracked under her weight. Nyla forced herself not to think about what she had just stepped on and presently stood beside Mac, facing the room and the gaping onlookers.
“Point the gun at the ground,” Mac said lowly. “Slowly—but keep it in your hand.”
Nyla did as she was told. A few moments later Mac followed suit.
Ignoring the corpses on the ground Mac turned toward the bar, and Nyla followed suit, even though there was an itch between her shoulder blades.
“You did good,” he muttered. “Thank you.”
He glanced at the man behind the bar and pointed at their glasses. The man hastened to comply and refilled their drinks.
Mac shook his head. “My, you’re a fierce one,” he muttered; his mouth twitching in a hint of a smile.
The surge of whatever it was that had made her do what she just had done was beginning to subside. She knew the feeling; things like this had happened before—and always it had been horrible. Without the support of the crazy rush of energy that accompanied such violent episodes, she felt emptied and soiled.
She braced herself against the onslaught of the letdown. This one would be worse than anything she’d ever experienced. There were five dead men behind her. And she had killed even before the first one ever had done anything whatsoever! What kind of a creature was she becoming?
She felt Mac touching her arm; looked at him sideway; saw the concern in his eyes.
And suddenly she knew that this time it would be different. No terror. Because without her action Mac might well be dead now. Which meant that she and their child would be dead as a consequence—sooner or later. And Tethys and its people would be destroyed.
Had she known all this when she made her decisions?
Maybe. Maybe not.
It didn’t matter.
“Do I need to hold onto the gun?” she said lowly.
Mac shook his head, and Nyla returned it to her pouch.

“We just wanted to buy a ship,” Mac said to the chicken-necked bartender.
The man shook his head. “Do you know who you just killed?”
“Somebody important?”
“You just…”
The man appeared at a loss for words to convey the significance of Mac and Nyla’s actions.
“Everything is different now,” he said, and took a deep breath, let it out again and leaned on the counter, peering at the corpses thoughtfully.
“Who are you?” he asked Mac.
“Someone who just wants to buy a ship and leave. I was looking for Hamadayan, remember?”
“He isn’t here tonight. Maybe I can help. Name’s Illyd.”
“You?”
“I tend this bar,” the man said, “but , Turk, who is my little brother, rebuilds and sells ships. Small ones. It’s just him and my cousins.”
“Small is good,” Mac replied. “As long as it travels true and gets us where we are going. If it has been modified so much that the Authority cannot identify its origins—” he shrugged”—so much the better.”
“I think Turk may have one of two which fit that specification.”

When they left, people gave them an even wider berth than they had given Fayed and his men. The corpses still littered the floor near the bar. Mac could see patrons glance at them furtively as he, Nyla and Illyd headed for the exit. They reached the opening and Illyd stopped, bowed slightly and motioned for them to continue.
“You are above me,” he said in a formal tone of voice.
“He’s saying,” Mac told Nyla, “that our status is such that seeing the underside of our shoes does not constitute an affront.”
“How is that possible?”
Mac chuckled. “Even the most rigid of rules often dissolve before ‘status’.”
He took her arm and they started to ascend the stairs.
“It also means he’s behind us,” Nyla noted.
Mac chuckled.
“You’re not concerned?”
“Illyd is more likely to profit from our association if we live. He has witnessed the dangers of crossing us and Fayed is no more.”
“You appear amused,” Nyla said. with a side glance. “We just…”
“I am—”
Mac hesitated, then shook his head as they continued up the steps.
“Universal justice sometimes takes its time, but…behold the irony! The man who killed Areena is killed in turn by the woman who is the lover of Areena’s former spouse—and who bears the child that Areena never really wanted to bear.”
Nyla stared at him open-mouthed.
“That man…”
“That man.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, if you had known it wouldn’t have been quite as ironic,” Mac muttered. “So I guess the cosmos or creation or whatever you want to call it may also have a sense of humor. Sometimes ‘coincidence’ seems like a woefully inadequate concept to explain confluences like this.”
He stopped, glanced at Illyd, who dutifully paused a few steps below them, his face discreetly averted; the gesture a careful balance between discretion and a kind of submission.
More than a thousand years in space, and nothing changes.
Kill the big dog and suddenly you’re the flavor of the day.
Mac’s right hand reached out for Nyla’s left. She took it and interlaced her fingers with his.
“I’m sorry it came to this,” he said lowly, hoping that Illyd wasn’t wearing a ‘fish. It was unlikely, there being no reason for it; not in his business. Besides, even if he did, the language spoken on Tethys was too archaic to be in any language database.
“Don’t be,” she said.
She hesitated. “Sometimes I am frightened of myself.”
“Don’t be.”
“I should feel something—about what we did down there. I should feel…remorse maybe? Regret? Disgust? Shame?
“But there’s nothing. It’s just like…”
“Come.”
He pulled her along with him as they resumed climbing.
“Your mind is protecting itself,” he said. “Terrible things are pushed into far corners, to be allowed to die in peace. For die they must; just like those we killed. Only that way can we live—and those who depend on us.”
The pressure of her fingers increased, then relaxed again.
Words alone aren’t going to help her.
But at this very instant they were all he had.
They reached the top of the staircase. As Mac had half-anticipated, there was a flitzer waiting here; one of the larger models, holding up to eight people. Its repulsors were inactive and it rested on the dusty ground, This one, too, had the cabin roof cut off, so it was open to the air. It never rained around these latitudes, and an open cabin meant that weapons were easy to aim and fire.
Two men waited beside the craft. One half-sat on the rear, the other paced up and down. Both hefted two-hand projectile weapons.
Mac stopped while they were still in the shadow of the stairwell.
If he’d been alone he would have taken the safe, expedient way out. He would have shot these guys from cover and be done with it.
Unsporting? Of course. But it wasn’t about fairness, but survival. You maximized your own chanced and minimized the other’s.
With Nyla here the situation changed. ‘Expedient’ lost some of its utility. She had enough guilt to cope with. Seeing him shoot two men in utterly cold and calculating blood…
“Wait here.”
“But.”
“But nothing.”
He glanced at Illyd and made a brief gesture. The man nodded and leaned against the wall.
Mac untangled his hand from hers. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but he shook his head.
She pulled a face.
“Trust me,” he said.
“I do,” she said and pulled the needle projector from her pouch. “I’m not going to lose you, because you’re doing something stupid and noble, just because you want to protect me.”
It’s like that, is it?
Mac sighed and stepped out into view of the two men.
A couple of passerby glanced at them and increased their pace and step length to get out of the way.
The man half-sitting on the flitzer rose. The weapon in his hand twitched, but as yet he didn’t point it. The other one stopped his pacing and slowly turned to face Mac.
Mac walked up to them without hesitation and stopped a about three paces away from them, at one corner of a rough equilateral triangle.
“I just killed Fayed,” he said, matter-of-factly, “and your other four buddies.”
They took it with a remarkable lack of perturbation. Which meant they were pragmatists; and that was all good. They realized that the mere fact that Mac was up here was sufficient proof that he was telling the truth.
“You killed Fayed,” the man on Mac’s right said.
“Actually—” Mac twitched his head in the direction of the stairwell entrance “—she did.”
He was certain that enough of Nyla and her weapon would be visible, and that the latter was probably aimed at somebody’s head.
The men’s attention flicked to where he’s indicated. A brief widening of the eyes, which presently returned to Mac.
“He wore armor,” one of them said. “Class A.”
“Not on his head.”
“She shot him in the head?”
“Sharp-shooter.”
A pause as they digested the information.
“So,” Mac continued, “I wonder. Is there going to be any more killing, or are we all going to go about our business?”
The man on Mac’s left shrugged and lowered his weapon. After the slightest hesitation the other followed suit.
Mac waited, alert and unmoving, until the two had thrown their weapons into the back of the flitzer and climbed in. The vehicle rose; swayed briefly, betraying the decrepit condition of its repulsor units; turned and departed.
Mac looked around to where Nyla emerged from the entrance, with Illyd following a few steps behind her.
“You’re acquiring a reputation around here,” he told her.
“I don’t much care for that,” she said. “I would prefer to acquire a ship-of-space and leave this place.”