The 97th Step Read online

  THE 97th STEP

  The fifth book in the Matador series

  STEVE PERRY

  Table of Contents

  Part One: The Seeker Asleep

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Part Two: The Siblings of the Shroud

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Part Three: The Ninety-Seventh Step

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Fourty

  Part One

  The Seeker Asleep

  Since love and fear can hardly exist together, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

  —MACHIAVELLI

  One

  THE SLAVER WAS about to buy trouble, though he didn't know it yet.

  It was a spacers' pub, set in the run-down port section of Chüsai Tomadachi, the wheelworld that orbited the planet Tomadachi, in the Shin System. The stale air was thick with flick-stick smoke and its smell of burned cashews, and the lighting was cycled to dim, giving enough illumination to see but hiding the shabbiness of the painted and scratched aluminum walls. The place thrummed with an undercurrent of tough talk and menace, but it was outlaw swagger, and not the force-backed brute power of the Confed—the upper castes would hardly demean themselves by coming to a scum hole like this for recreation.

  At a small expanded-aluminum mesh table against one wall, two men sat drinking ale. Ashanti Khahil Stoll was a big man, pushing two meters, sheathed overall in a thick layer of fat. He wore a plain gray orthoskin coverall that struggled to contain his bulk, and he looked relatively harmless compared to many of the men and mues in the pub.

  His companion, also dressed in plain gray orthoskins, was something else. He was called Ferret, and he had a cold look about him that seemed anything but harmless. In his early thirties, he was perhaps three decades younger than Stoll. Ferret viewed the scene through hard green eyes, and while his face and hands were pale, neither looked soft. In a room full of dangerous men, these two were harder than most, and those who knew the biz but didn't know Ferret and Stoll stayed away from their table. Mean dogs know how to avoid meaner ones.

  Near the exit, the slaver stood glaring at his thrall.

  Ferret stared at the slaver, then sipped at his ale. Slavery was illegal, of course, but none of the pub's patrons was apt to worry about law, save how best to break it and profit. Were the local cools or the Confed military to implode-bomb this place, the serious crime rate for five light-years would drop dramatically. Ferret was merely a thief and smuggler like his friend Stoll, but there were others, who dealt in worse crimes. Some who made slavers look like saints, dark dancers on the fringe of the fringe.

  The slaver's voice rose as he used it to cut at the thin boy who stood with his head bowed under the abuse.

  Over the years, Ferret had learned to mind his own business, sometimes the hard way, and this was none of it.

  None of his business at all, until the strap appeared.

  The slaver, a bulky human mue with the look of a heavy-gravity childhood, produced the strap from a belt pouch. It looked like hebi-skin in the dim light, soft and pliable, but pebbled and rough like shark or ray hide, and it would be heavier than it appeared, were that the case. The big mue meant to work on his thrall with the strap, that much was obvious, and nobody in the pub was likely to stand in his way. Why should they? Might draw attention, and who knew what that might bring?

  Ferret's grip tightened on the plastic ale stein; tendons raised on the back of his hand.

  Stoll must have caught the movement, subtle as it was. He said, "Easy, lad. There's no profit to be made for the risk here."

  Ferret looked at his friend, and nodded. He relaxed his hold on the stein. "You're right, Shanti." He struggled to calm the tension he felt. The slaver mue was big and obviously violent, and there was no way to tell how good he was. Ferret had learned not to judge from appearances. He'd studied close combat for more than a year with Elvin Dindabe, who'd been rated a Top Player in the Musashi Flex before he'd retired. Some men could kill you without raising their heartbeats, and they looked like nothing. It was not his business, no, he wasn't some kind of cosmic do-gooder, you got started on that and there was no end to it. But there was that strap—

  The slaver's mistake was in timing. At that precise instant, he flicked the supple snakeskin strap up and snapped it at the cowering boy. The pop! of the leather as the tip slapped against the boy's shoulder reached Ferret then, and all logic, self-interest and thoughts of minding his own business fled before a fifteen-year-old memory. Against that power, all else was blown away like pollen in a windstorm. The past reached out and claimed him.

  Ferret stood, muscles flexing into fighting mode.

  Across the table, Stoll sighed. "Go," he said, sounding disgusted. "I'll watch your back."

  Ferret spared him a glance as he started for the slaver. From his belt, Stoll pulled a focused-beam hand wand, quickly moving it under the table, out of sight.

  "—Worthless dung-whelp!" the slaver said, using his wrist to clear the strap over his shoulder for another lash. "You'll learn to move when I say move!" One of the slaver's table-mates nodded. The slaver saw this, and he grinned. Now it was a show, something to entertain his friends. He wiggled the strap and his smile increased.

  The slaver must have caught Ferret's motion peripherally, for he turned slightly to look at the approaching man. Softly, he said, "You got a problem, flo'man?"

  Ferret managed to keep his anger at a low simmer. He glanced at the strap and said, "That. Better you shouldn't use it on the boy."

  The slaver's smile never wavered. This must have happened to him before, somebody sticking his nose in where it didn't belong. Ferret knew that the mue wasn't afraid of what he saw: an average-sized pale human, no weapons visible, jamming his face into the slaver's business without call. The smell of burned cashews increased suddenly, now it seemed almost overwhelming, a hot stink that lay over Ferret like the sudden quiet the confrontation had brought to the pub. Men, women, humans and mues looked on, dogs watching to see if what went down was bark or bite.

  The slaver said, "Oh? And what would you have me do with it, Reverend?" He flicked his wrist, and sent a spiral wave down the length of the strap. A practiced move.

  "Put it away."

  "I got a better idea—how about I put it here!" With that, the slaver snapped the short whip up and over, and brought it down on Ferret's face.

  Or, rather, where Ferret's face had just been. By the time the strap whistled over the mue's shoulder, Ferret was already moving. He V-stepped in, jerked his left hand back in a counterbalance, and drove his right fist into the mue's solar plexus, hard. The contact was solid, a rubbery give to the muscular flesh, and the force of it stung the plexus of nerve tissue enough so that the slaver's face froze in shock. He wouldn't be able to breathe for half a minute.

  Ferret's mind fled. For the next six seconds, rage ruled him completely. He did not
see his fists and boots as they battered the stunned slaver, who tried vainly to draw breath. Five, eight, twelve strikes—hands, elbows, knees, heels—fast, and harder than would have seemed possible from a man his size. The thuds seemed distant, the feel of flesh and bone under his blows unreal. The slaver tried to cover, but every time he moved his hands and arms to one spot, he revealed another. Ferret worked with trained instinct, choosing his targets for maximum damage. Three seconds. Four. Five—

  The mue, big and strong as he was, took it for six seconds before he fell, only semiconscious. He would live, but he was damaged enough to need a few days in a medical kiosk. Had he not fallen, Ferret would have kept pounding until he exhausted himself, and that would have been no small time.

  Still in the red haze, Ferret bent and snatched up the strap. Behind him, one of the slaver's party stood, reaching for a bottle to smash Ferret.

  The strap seemed to coil around his hands on its own. When it was wrapped tightly, leaving only a few centimeters slack, Ferret screamed. The strap tightened and became like the string of some instrument.

  The leather cut into his flesh. There was a sharp hum! as the strap stretched, found its breaking point, and snapped, a dull, almost wet pop. It did not seem possible that a man could do such a thing— hebi was much too strong for that. Much too strong.

  Behind him, the slaver's friend put the bottle back onto the table, and licked suddenly dry lips.

  "A good idea, friend," Stoll said.

  Ferret turned, to see the fat man standing nearby, pointing the hand wand loosely in the direction of the slaver's table.

  Stoll said, "You done?"

  Ferret nodded, feeling the adrenaline ebb. "Almost." He turned to the slave. "Go," he said. "You have a few minutes. Find a cool or hit the lanes, whatever your bent." Ferret glanced at the slaver on the dirty pub floor. "It's the only chance you're likely to get, you copy? If you stay with him, he'll probably kill you for this."

  The boy nodded dumbly. He knew. He darted for the door. Ferret watched him go. Maybe he could figure a way off the wheelworld. The Confed kept a tight fist wrapped around galactic transportation, but there were ways, there were always ways, if you had stads, or if you knew the game. Or he could go to the cools. Locally, they were mostly honest, and if the slaver hadn't bought a pet in the shop, maybe the boy had a chance in that direction. It didn't matter so much to Ferret what the boy did, his concern had been less for the slave than for the way the slaver had gone after him. He had bought the boy a chance; what he did with it was his own worry.

  Ferret had forgotten about the strap he still held. He glanced at it, now in two pieces. He tossed them at the slaver. The mue made no sign he saw or felt the broken strap when the sections of it hit him.

  "We'll be going now," Stoll said. It came out as an announcement, as if he were a king informing his subjects of some major policy. He waved the wand in an offhand gesture. Some of the patrons flinched when the weapon's stubby barrel tracked past them. A blast from a hand wand was good for a very nasty headache when one awoke from the primary effect, itself not in the least pleasant.

  "The drinks are okay, but stay away from the food in this place," Stoll said.

  Ferret felt the urge to laugh, but he was still too wired to let it out. Stoll's comment could not have made any sense to anyone else, unless they happened to know the fat man was a gourmand of the most exotic rank, and what he said would have been of little use, unless they trusted his taste.

  Outside the pub, Stoll tucked the wand out of sight. He glanced at Ferret, whose face was still flushed with the remains of his rage. "What was that all about?"

  Ferret shook his head. "An old disk. Something that happened a long time ago."

  Stoll nodded, but said nothing. The two men walked away from the pub in the general direction of the port where their ship, the Don't Look Back, was berthed.

  Ferret said, "I'll tell you about it someday."

  Stoll nodded again.

  Fifteen years, Ferret thought, and it all came back as if it we're only yesterday. So many light- and real-time years away, and still as clear as bottled air. Like the hand of God on his shoulder, he knew he would never be able to shake it, not if he lived to be a thousand. He did not want the memory, but it lay ever there. The strap had brought it back.

  That goddamned strap.

  Two

  His FATHER HAD been waiting with the strap when Mwili finally got home.

  The boy's belly went hard and fluttery at the sight, and his bowels clenched against the remembered pain.

  Not the strap. Not tonight. Not after today.

  Full dark had fallen across the dusty land of Cibule, bringing with it the night's harder chill. Overhead, the Three Moons played their winter's variation on the High Right Triangle, shedding their pale blue, pink and silvery white lights over Cibule, itself a moon, and the largest of Kalk's four satellites. Kalk was below the horizon this week, and its cloudy surface was invisible from the cold farm lands of the Eastern Hemisphere. The rancid stink of the seed crop battled with the dry odor of dust, and the air's stench was worse for the combination. Mwili had grown up with these scents, and yet, every time he left and came back, it was as if he'd inhaled them for the first time. They never smelled any better.

  At sixteen terran-standard years, Mwili Kalamu was work-strong and sturdy, if not tall, and within two centimeters and four kilos of his father's height and weight. He could fight back and maybe even win, but that would be a mistake—Mafuta had both God and the Law on his side, as he pointed out endlessly, and on Cibule, one was the same as the other. Mwili's bare hands were cold, and the warmth of his body leaked out through half a dozen worn spots on his heavy work gi and baggy cotton twill pants.

  Fortunately, his boots were of cast dotic plastic, and proof against the low temperatures. He had collected and sold tourist rock, saving every demistad for seven months to buy those boots, and had been whipped for the sins of Desire and Pride when he'd brought them home. Since they were custom-made, his mother had finally prevailed upon his father to allow him to wear them. They couldn't be returned, after all, and waste-not-want-not might not be a Holy Rule, but it was a farmer's creed, right enough.

  Despite the evening's hard chill, Mwili wiped muddy sweat from his forehead with the back of one deeply tanned hand. Work-sweat, some, but mostly from fear. Unlike most of the settlers on this moon, his ancestors had been of terran Germanic/Nordic stock, and his natural skin color was pale, his eyes green, like his mother's. Eyes that now fed a message to his brain it plainly did not wish to accept, given the fight-or-flight reactions that brain was producing.

  There, his father, dangling the strap.

  When he was within two meters of the man, he stopped, and waited for Mafuta to speak. He was the elder, and such was his right.

  "You are late," his father said. He twitched the broad leather strap. The end raised a small dust cloud where it touched the ground. The dust seemed to sparkle in the house's big exterior HT lamps. Mwili saw the curtain move at the kitchen window. That would be his mother, watching, even though she would have been ordered not to.

  Mwili had a valid reason, for once, but he held his tongue. Valid or not, his father was just looking for a reason to swing the strap, and speaking before being given leave was as good an excuse as any. He merely nodded. True. He was late. He could not argue that.

  His father said, "You were due back from the supply station four hours ago."

  Again, Mwili nodded. His father would always state the obvious, as if he were certain God Himself hung on every word, checking it for accuracy.

  "Jesu knows how much I have tried to do his work with you, boy." The man shook his head. "And no matter how much I pray, you are always found wanting. I cannot understand why He trials me this way. I have been a faithful servant, I observe the Holy Rules, and yet you task me at every turn."

  Mafuta spared the heavens a glance, as if expecting a direct reproach from God for his complaints. He was
quick to qualify them. "But it is not for man to understand the ways of God. A man must accept his lot and strive for perfection in spite of it. Such is the Rule."

  Mwili nodded tiredly. "Such is the Rule," he echoed softly. Failure to speak that would gain him a glare and a fast slash from the whistling strap. It seemed like everything brought the strap. It was one of his earliest memories, and a constant part of his daily life. His mates all suffered under the heavy hands and belts of their parents, but that made bearing it no easier. None of them seemed to get it as often as he did.

  "Why, son, are you tardy this night?"

  Finally. "The flitter broke down, Baba. The coil burned out again."

  His father stared at him, not speaking.

  It was all Mwili could do to stand there at attention, waiting for his father to make his decision. The Jesu-damned flitter, old when Mwili was born, was a bucket of junk. He had rewound the burned coil twice already, the last time only a week past. It had taken half a day on the shop lathe, and his father had begrudged him both the time and the copper for the wire. The flitter needed a new coil, it needed a new inducer, and it needed at least four new repellor grids. If prayer had any validity, then that must be what was holding the flitter together, because Mwili prayed every time he cranked the rattletrap up. Taking the ancient craft on the fly was an invitation to accident, and a broken head or worse. This time, fortunately, he'd only been half a meter up and cruising slowly when the engine shut off. He'd raised dust and a few bruises, but both he and the flitter had survived fairly undamaged otherwise.

  "Where did this happen?" his father finally said.

  "At Three Rocks."

  Mafuta looked in that general direction, but Mwili knew that even if his father wore spookeyes and scopes, he'd never be able to see the flitter. It was twenty-six kilometers to the rocks. Twenty-six dusty kilometers and four weary hours on foot, by way of the only road leading to their farm. A more boring stretch of land could hardly be devised; God must have put his mind to it, and only He knew why.

  "Did you leave the road? Strain the engine?"