21 The Purring of Gloves
Tompa stared straight ahead, focusing on a bloodstain in the white cloth near where a button was missing from Roussel’s dress uniform. From the gap, a chest hair rose like a coiled serpent. His hands weighed on her shoulders, demanding her attention, but she refused to look into his face.
“You have your friend Awmit to thank for this,” Roussel said.
Without asking, she knew what he meant. Fornicate healingly. There was a word for phrases like that, when mutually exclusive terms smashed into each other. She wished she could remember what that word was.
“That bloodstain on your shirt,” she said. “Is it from when I clubbed you?”
“Yes,” he said without glancing down.
“Good.”
Roussel chuckled. “Something tells me you aren’t in the mood. Yet.”
Oxymoron, that was it. How appropriate, considering she was on the verge of being raped by an ox-like moron. Her eyes blurred with tears.
“Look at me, Tompa.” His voice was firm yet calm, with no trace of either uncertainty or flap-happiness. “Look at me.”
The shape of the bloodstain reminded her of the teeth of the mountain, back at the cliff. These, however were upper fangs, poised to bite down on her.
Roussel put his hand under her chin and tried to nudge her face up. She resisted. He seized her chin between rough, scabbed fingers and forced her head up. He was so huge that she couldn’t even see the sky. He kept his hand on her chin and put his other arm around her shoulders, then tilted his head to one side and leaned down to kiss her.
Halfway down, though, he paused. His lips touched her forehead, pressed her skin, lingered for a heartbeat.
Then he stepped back. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Tompa’s shoulders felt cool where his hands had rested; her forehead felt moist from his kiss. She looked away from him, her mind frozen.
“I make it a habit never to kiss a lady with tears in her eyes.” He gave a laugh that was soft and intimate, a laugh that implied something important had happened between them even though nothing had happened. “No, that’s not true. I’d kiss a woman to comfort her, but I’ve never kissed anyone who was tearful because I was going to kiss her. Of course, that’s never happened to me before. You’re a number one for me, Tompa. Unique.”
His hair ruffled in a gust. When she just stared at him, he said, “I’ll leave you now to head to the lookout point I told you about.” He gave her a mock salute and strode at right angles to the road, using the tail end of the rockslide as a ramp to the top of the bank.
When he was fifty feet away, Tompa finally roused herself. She cupped her hands around her mouth like a megaphone. “Asshole!”
Although he didn’t look back, she heard him laugh. That infuriated her more.
And then she was alone.
Which was the way she preferred it. Alone. She’d make better time on her own.
She did, too, reaching the ninth sharboo-cria within a quarter of an hour. It was the largest one yet, with waist-high, stone guard walls around the perimeter and numerous doghouse structures. The sharboo-cria extended away from the mountain onto a craggy, peninsula-like finger of rock that held the ruins of perhaps two buildings; it was hard to tell for sure where one building had left off and another began. The ruins were overgrown with weeds. On one of the walls, three furry, worm-like creatures slightly bigger than her middle finger arched and lowered their backs in a slow-motion rush, as though involved in a stately race against each other.
The higher she climbed, the more life the mountain seemed to support. Probably, she thought, because it was cooler up here.
She frowned. That sounded like something Roussel would say.
Her mouth was dry and her stomach rumbled with hunger. This was a better place than most to stop for a minute, so she walked onto the sharboo-cria, carefully avoiding the short, spiny weeds. She didn’t trust them.
Just like she didn’t trust Roussel. She finally decided why he’d kissed her on the forehead: to put himself in the right. Well, it wouldn’t work. Her grievances ran far too deep.
“Asshole.”
The three little creatures acted as though they heard her, for they humped their way into crevices between the rocks. Just as well. She didn’t trust them either.
She removed the rucksack. Because she might need to flee at any moment, she put the rucksack back on before unscrewing the lid of the water bottle. As she sipped the tepid, stagnant-tasting water, she studied her surroundings.
The three furry caterpillars were back. They didn’t look dangerous, but then neither had those roots. To her left, the road was visible all the way back to the toothy cliff. A few distant figures edged past the small rockslide—Awmit and his new friends. It had taken her fifteen minutes from there to here. The Shons were moving slower, so it would probably take them at least twenty minutes. As she screwed the lid back on the water bottle, something inside of her ached. She watched for a couple of minutes, trying to pick out Awmit from the other Shons, but failed.
She turned away from Awmit and tucked the water bottle between her arm and her ribs so she could unwrap the oiled, brown paper from a small loaf of food.
In the other direction, a gorge slashed through the mountain. The tenth sharboo-cria was visible on the far side of the gorge, probably only half a mile away if she could fly, several hours since she couldn’t. The road climbed ever more steeply until it disappeared around a curve.
Between here and there, at the head of the gorge, the road disappeared. So did the mountainside. Instead of the familiar tired grey, the rocks glistened with vivid maroon and black, like a jagged, open wound. This must be the landslide Roussel had mentioned. She shaded her eyes, looking for an easy route across the chaos of boulders and scree. None was obvious.
She broke off a chunk of the dried food. Pursing her lips at the bitter, shriveling taste, she stared longingly at the far side of the gorge.
A crumb fell to the ground. The three creatures from the wall hurried toward the tidbit with a comical, gallumphing gait like caterpillars stoked to the nose hairs on Sloop or Hippity—caterpillars with no head or eyes or legs. Only fur. They were bigger than she’d first thought.
She edged back out of caution rather than fear. They moved faster than she expected, but she could outrun them if she had to. Watching them push each other in a silent struggle over the crumb made her forget how bad the food tasted. Grateful for the distraction, she tossed another crumb their way.
They reminded her of fingers from the ‘pet gloves’ that had been a fad around the time the gordos abandoned Manhattan. Many of the gloves were left behind by people who’d tired of the craze or who believed the government’s assurances that the evacuation would be temporary. When you stroked the gloves or moved your hands inside them, their fur wiggled, supposedly like an animal pleased at being petted. Some even purred. It was cute the first time, less so the second time, dumb the third time. The silly things weren’t very warm, either. Gordos sure were stupid.
But these little animals—the name ‘gloves’ seemed as good as any—were a lot cuter than their namesakes. A half-dozen more were speeding toward the feast, so Tompa tossed some crumbs their way. Then she washed down the food with a swallow of water that did nothing to dispel the biting aftertaste.
Her gaze kept straying toward Awmit and the converts. She turned resolutely away. She narrowed her eyes, studying the landslide.
Now that she was alone, maybe she should try to stay that way. If she reached the landslide before Roussel, she could lose him in the jumble of boulders. Maybe she could cut across country after that instead of following the road, and keep away from him. With the back of her hand, she wiped her forehead where he’d kissed her.
Of course, that meant losing Awmit, too. Tompa heaved a sigh and glanced the way she’d come. Would he even miss her, now that he had new-found female buddies?
Something tickled her ankle. She looked down.
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“Eek!”
Instead of a handful of the gloves, there were now dozens, crawling all over each other. Some were even climbing her legs, perhaps smelling the food in her rucksack. She shook her legs one at a time but couldn’t dislodge them—and while she stood on one leg to shake the other, half a dozen more started climbing the stationary leg.
“Get off me!” After a moment of dread, she discovered that if she lifted straight up, the gloves came off with a light pop. By that time, however, some were already under her skirt. Dropping the food, which immediately disappeared under a wriggling hoard, she lifted her skirt and frantically pulled the creatures off.
“Get off me.” The water bottle fell and broke. “Get off!
The gloves didn’t bite like the rats of her dreams, but being swarmed over was a nightmare in itself. She hopped back again as more gloves advanced on her. Something crunched underfoot. A revolting, dead-body smell assaulted her.
She whirled. Hundreds more of the gloves were behind her, surrounding her. Some were as thick as her wrist. She kicked and swatted, then let out a yelp as one of them reached her crotch. Grabbing it, she flung it over the wall and down the mountainside. More of the creatures were appearing all the time from under the ugly shrubs, thousands of them. Her legs were so covered that her skin had almost disappeared. They were climbing onto her faster than she could pull them off. She had to get away, get away . . .
Sobbing, Tompa walked, bowlegged, as quickly as she could with the beasts covering her legs, thighs, and buttocks, making her skirt balloon as though she had Shon-like hips. The swarm followed her, so that she gained at most half a foot for each step she took. Every time she put her foot down, she squashed several gloves. Their stench clogged her nostrils.
Keep walking.
She was almost afraid to breathe. What if the gloves got past the barrier of her skirt and climbed into her nose?
Keep walking.
Getting to the edge of the swarm seemed to take forever. Her skin writhed and itched under the silent assault. As she finally neared the edge, she stepped on one of the bigger gloves. She lurched to one side, but she kept walking.
And suddenly, underfoot was rocky pavement instead of reeking gloves. She waddled a hundred feet more. Only then did she yank off her skirt with shaky hands so she could pull the beasts off her body.
She realized immediately that she’d made a mistake. The gloves start crawling under her blouse. She yanked off the rucksack and her blouse, too. One by one, she pulled off the gloves and pitched the horrid creatures over the brink—to their deaths, she hoped.
Tears covered her face by the time the pulled the last beast off. She stomped it underfoot, not caring about the smell. Then she scratched hurriedly at her legs and belly. Her skin itched where their suction pads had attached to her skin.
Downhill, the road seemed alive as the swarm rippled toward her. Now that they were closing in on her again, she noticed that they made a rustling sound as they crawled along the pavement, like a parody of the purring gloves. She started to leave, then retraced her steps to grab her clothes from the side of the road before the army of gloves reached them.
She couldn’t make herself look back. Itching, sobbing, naked, Tompa limped toward the landslide. She scratched her legs and belly; it helped for only a moment. Still walking, she searched her skirt and blouse to make sure none of the hateful gloves were hiding in the cloth.
Two of them were. She hurled them off the cliff as far as she could.
A camera whirred in for a close up. Tompa held the uniform over her breasts and resumed walking.
She managed to step into the skirt without falling down the mountain. The blouse was harder. The first sleeve wasn’t too bad, but in her distracted state she would have to stop to get her arm in the other sleeve. She kept walking for a couple more minutes.
Finally, she stopped. Taking a deep breath, she looked back.
The gloves no longer pursued her. Instead, a mountain of them crawled over the rucksack.
Tompa covered her eyes with her hands and let out a deep breath. Then she gave herself a thorough scratching before finishing getting dressed. After a last, shuddering look at the teeming pile of writhing beasts, she turned to face the landslide. Boulders loomed huge and close. She walked one step, then paused.
Oh, God.
She just realized—Awmit was headed up the road behind her, straight toward the gloves.
She turned around and took a couple of steps downhill, each step slower than the last until she stopped completely. “Awmit!”
He couldn’t hear her, of course. She stood there, scratching her bottom and watching in dread for her friend to round the bend of the sharboo-cria, where he would find himself in the middle of an army of gloves.
Dante pulled himself onto the top of the lookout point using just his arms. He could have used his feet to help, but it felt good to tax his muscles. For the same reason, he’d jogged almost all the way uphill to the crag. The finger of rock thrust straight up, much like the sharp hoodoos back at the cliff, and the footing was uneven, precarious. He welcomed the challenge, though. He felt as though he was on top of the world.
A gust tried to knock him over. His reflexes, still as fast as they’d ever been, compensated for the wind. His body had never let him down the way his brain had.
He picked his way to the edge and stood with his toes overhanging nothingness, daring the wind to topple him. It had been nice of Tompa to reassure him back at the cliff, but he didn’t fear heights. In fact, he wished a camera balloon would float close enough that he could grab it and glide all the way to the distant ocean.
From here, he could see everything worth seeing. To his right, in the direction they were headed, a deep canyon sliced into the mountain near the landslide. To his left, the mountainside was slightly concave for several miles, enabling him to see the road they’d taken. The arc ended almost directly below him in a point of land with a wide clearing beside the road. Tompa was just reaching the clearing. Three camera balloons hovered near her.
Scarcely a mile back, and worthy of only one camera, Awmit and the converts moved as a single, many-legged creature. As Dante watched, one of the converts fell to the road. The group went back and tried to pick her up, but after a moment they resumed their dogged march and left the fallen one behind. Dante grimaced, wondering what was going through the little creatures’ minds as they abandoned a comrade. The Navy would never do that.
Except, of course, that the Navy had. They’d abandoned Tompa Lee.
At least the convert wouldn’t have long to suffer. The main body of pursuers was less than a mile behind them. The hunters would stomp the fallen Shon into jelly and bone meal.
Damned shame. He liked these creatures—and that was extraordinary. All alien races were interesting, many were admirable, almost as many were unpleasant—but few inspired a warm emotional reaction. It bothered him that Shons would trample one of their own.
Suddenly, a thrill of recognition sped down his back.
Sex might not require regulation in Shon society, but prook-nah—ah, prook-nah was dangerous. Born of the wild urge for a herd to stampede together in the face of danger, prook-nah could roll right over anyone or anything in its path—helpless converts lying in the road, innocent human girls, governments, economic infrastructure.
Earthly herds stampeded away from danger, but that didn’t explain the Shons’ behavior. He’d bet their ancestors had also stampeded toward danger, attacking as well as fleeing. Yeah, that felt right.
In any case, for Shon society to exist peacefully, prook-nah must need to be channeled and restricted, just as sex was on earth. That would explain their trials. By Shon standards, trial by combat wasn’t barbaric; it formalized how injured parties could legally follow their prook-nah. Trial by jury, though more civilized by human standards, would present no safety valve for prook-nah. It would be emotionally and socially unsatisfactory.
Or would it? What about the c
ameras beaming the trial around the world? There must be some sort of vicarious prook-nah involved in having the entire Shon population watch this event.
Wishing he could share his insight with someone, he looked for Tompa’s white uniform. She was out of sight. He could see only a small part of the clearing, so he had no way of knowing if she’d moved a few feet or half a mile. In either case, of course, she was too far away to talk to.
As he turned to leave the top of the crag, movement at the far left drew his gaze. Two miles away, marching cross-country above the road, was a group of fifty Shons and, most notably, four Klicks. He couldn’t see flame-patterned scarves on the Shons, but he didn’t need to. Even he was smart enough to know they must be Peffer and his pod-loogs.
When Dante reached a ledge near the base of the crag, he laughed as revelation struck him.
Of course. Prook-nah was involved in the television broadcasts. Well, maybe not prook-nah, exactly, but that other kind of semi-telepathic sharing Awmit had mentioned last night. Prook-nolah? Something like that. It was a milder, more diffuse sense of agreement that allowed the Shons to govern themselves by consensus, without rulers or politicians. Carolyn had been frustrated by the lack of authority figures. How, she had complained, could she negotiate if she couldn’t talk with the decision makers? But the balloon cameras were communicating with the decision makers this very minute—the entire damned planet. A huge, global herd.
Furthermore, Dante suspected the Shon’s collective decision about interstellar trade would be made on the basis of this trial. That had to be why the trial was being broadcast, so the Shon populace could see humans—and Klicks, too—in action, and decide between them.
The Klicks must know all this. That’s why Krizink was part of the avenging group. The Klicks also knew they weren’t popular, so they’d found an ambitious group willing to help them frame Tompa Lee to make humans seem even worse than they were. “Yes,” he breathed. “That’s it.”
For the first time since his injury, he felt whole. With light feet, he climbed from the outcrop and began dashing downhill to meet Tompa at the edge of the landslide. He knew exactly which route to take to get there as quickly as possible, as well as where he could run and where it was best to walk. Since he needed to think so little about his trek, he tweaked the muscle in his arm that activated his mumbler.
Of the people on the Vance, his friend, Pradeep Singh, would be the best to tell these theories to. However, because his mumbler was working through a radio relay he didn’t have the option of calling Pradeep. He would have to settle for whoever was available.
The person manning the radio turned out to be one of his subordinates, Manager Third-Class Beyongo. “Vice President Pradeep is in his sleep cycle,” she told Dante in her rhythmic, African accent. “Do you want me to wake him?”
“No.” Dante scrambled down the banks of a gully that would lead him eventually to the road near the landslide. “Is this transmission being recorded?”
“Yes, sir.” Beyongo paused and spoke in a quieter voice. “At least it was. I just turned off the recorder.”
He grinned. He liked the people who worked for him and the feeling was reciprocated. The old Dante Roussel hadn’t had such good relationships, he thought. “No, that’s all right. I have some information about this trial that I want recorded. Make sure both Pradeep and Ambassador Schneider hear the recording, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Beyongo said. “By the way, everyone up here is rooting for you. There are televisions in all the mess halls, showing the trial. The Comm room has two TVs on right now.” She chuckled. “I don’t think Ambassador Schneider likes all the TVs.”
“Really? I wonder why?”
“Maybe she prefers being in complete control and resents the Navy.”
Dante studied the sides of the gully for signs of the bloodsucking roots, but aside from a few weeds and a caterpillar-like creature, the gully was barren of life. “I hope the recorder is still off, Beyongo.”
“It is.” She paused. “Will you tell Ship’s Ward Lee I’m proud of her, and that she hasn’t disgraced my uniform?”
“Oh?” He remembered now. Just before the trial he’d ordered Tompa to be cleaned up, and she’d come back wearing a female officer’s dress whites. With more pressing matters on his mind, he hadn’t inquired where it had come from. “She’s wearing your uniform?”
“Well . . . actually, sir, at this moment she isn’t.”
Dante frowned. The gully branched ahead, one branch heading uphill, the other down—and he didn’t remember this from his stored topographical memories. He hadn’t been paying close enough attention. “I don’t understand.”
“Never mind.” Beyongo chuckled again. “You said you had some information you wanted me to record?”
He shook his head, and he remembered. Head downhill. “Yes. Let me know when the recorder is on.”
“It’s on, sir.”
Dante started repeating his theories as he walked. They didn’t seem quite as brilliant as they had a few minutes ago, but he kept trying. Then he stumbled over a rock and lost his train of thought. He started over again, hoping that the Navy—and Carolyn—would take his ideas seriously even if they did come from an inarticulate, brain-damaged has-been.
Dante’s second explanation of his theories was even more halting and inadequate than the first. He didn’t have time to start over a third time. Probably just as well, because when words starting failing him like this he knew he’d just get worse and worse until he was reduced to incoherent muttering. Frustrated and furious with himself, he shut down his mumbler the instant he finished.
With little warning, he rounded a bend in the gully and found that the road lay directly in front of him. Tompa Lee was there, too, facing away from him. The torn and dirty skirt was raised to her waist so she could use both hands to scratch her splendidly rounded backside.