Snake Oil - Waiting For The Galactic Bus - Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 48
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Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 48

"Come back, Charity - "

"No." Charity pulled away from Woody's grip. "I know what's in his head. I know. It's beautiful and horrible and - "

"I've seen it, too," Woody said. "And we can get up in the morning and live with it all day for the rest of our lives. He can't. That's the difference, Char. That was always the difference. Forget it."

No, she couldn't just walk on, walk away, but twisted around to see Roy because he hurt so. She prayed for him, the only kind of prayer she could believe in now: Simmy, take care of him. The light's too bright and the truth is too cruel.

Charity searched the sidewalk up and down the street on both sides. She thought she saw something move, but it was only a shadow in the thin fog wisping between her and the streetlight.

Roy felt marvelous, renewed power surging through him. Drunk with his own charisma, he didn't notice he wasn't breathing at all, didn't need to. His uniform was crisp and new as the day he swaggered out of the Whip & Jackboot. No voices but his own echoed in his head, and the adoration of the crowds. No other truth had ever disturbed that perfect balance. He remembered only the balcony, the reaching arms and hoarse voices raised to him - needing, loving, validating him. Making him God.

He was the Man now, Topside no problem, the Devil a fat little faggot. One day that little shit would get dumped on his ass, and when he looked around to see what hit him, there'd be Roy Stride in his chair.

His boots rang on the deserted sidewalk in cadence with the cleansing, conquering thought. He didn't hear the car round the corner behind him and purr silently to the curb.

"Leader Stride?" The cabby snaked out of the driver's seat and came around to open the passenger door. "Cab?"

"You got it." Sure of his destiny, Roy touched the whip to his cap. An image flickered in his memory wiped clean of everything else. The driver's face was familiar. He reminded Roy of some actor. "Don't I know you?"

"Sure you do." Judas lifted the money bag from his own breast and dropped it around Roy's neck. "We're practically blood brothers."

The small bag of silver coins was surprisingly heavy and would not come off.

37 - Doom at the top

If Sorlij and Maj were appalled at Topside, Below Stairs was sheer trauma. A rapid but thorough survey of Earthside records only darkened their findings. With each new aspect, the problem grew more complex. They weighed observations, consulted law precedents in their library banks and finally summoned the errant brothers to a meeting in the matter-phased ship poised to streak home across the universe.

Sorlij broached the inevitable. "I don't quite know how to begin."

Maj knew very well how. "A crime has been committed: of error or gross assumption, call it what you will. The only question is: which of you is guilty of what?"

Coyul pondered the deck under his feet and wished he was Below Stairs drinking with Dylan Thomas.

"The magnitude of your presumption," Sorlij accused Barion. "The rampant disregard for law or ethics. That emotional rain forest you call Topside - "

"That chaos you call Below Stairs," Maj added. "And Earth itself."

"And Earth," Sorlij echoed. "That garden of lethal delights, churning out art, morals and murder. Never . . . never in all my experience." Sorlij paced the deck, lower lip jutted out in deliberation. "The greatest crimes. The gravest charges."

"Sorlij," Coyul interjected casually, "did I ever tell you that you render pomposity into art?"

"I have no love for either of you, never did," Sorlij snapped. "What Maj and I had to work for, the little darlings of the gods had handed to them. I'm not blameless, I left you here. This will reflect on my career."

"And mine," said Maj. "We had attained some prominence."

"What a shame." Barion shrugged. "A bad day for the Kelp King."

"And his wife, the cosmic yuppie. Can you believe this, Barion? We're getting class struggle. A bas les aristos."

"Go ahead, laugh," Sorlij warned. "There'll be charges and conviction. I need not enlarge the consequences."

"And there are further complications," Maj took up the indictment. "If your post-life playpens are beyond description, Earth is not. In the midst of all that mess, there appears to be a great deal of healthy good. Admirable aspects. Some grasp, however inept, of real significance."

Sorlij agreed wearily. "An anomalous mutant."

"Transient is a better term, dear: halfway between what it was and whatever Barion wanted it to become. Quite unique."

"As anthropoids go," Sorlij qualified. "What you have is a weird neurotic balance. On the bottom end, this primitive dualism; on the high end, something I can only call sublime. If only they could grow up!"

"And that is our point." Maj's exquisite brows furrowed in a deep frown. "As one of their major languages puts it, you've painted yourself into a coroner."

"I think you mean corner," Coyul assisted delicately. "That's English, very metaphorical tongue. Yes, hoist by our own petard."

"Out on a limb with a power saw," said Barion, already seeing the barren vistas of the Rock.

A no-need-to-prolong-it glance passed between Sorlij and Maj. "The point is," Sorlij plunged into the thick, "these anthros are too good to waste.but far too unstable to be left unattended. However traumatic, they must be reeducated very quickly. Barion, I'm sorry" - Sorlij even managed to look it - "Coyul will be allowed some time at home before sentencing. You'll have to be left here. I doubt if anyone will be returning for you."

Barion expected to do time, but - "Never?"

"I doubt it," Sorlij judged. "The balance here is too delicate. They're not just a lab culture but humans with obvious and unexpected potential. We can't just leave them."

"No, we can't," Barion admitted, glancing at Coyul. He already missed his brother.

"You must finish what you started. Though honestly" - Sorlij gestured vaguely - "I would have thought it not only illegal but impossible. I don't know how you managed it."

"He didn't." Coyul rose, adjusting his tie. "I did. We needn't go on with this. I confess. Oh, Barion was tempted, but ..."

Sorlij and Maj were not minded to parse degrees of guilt; Coyul was in enough trouble already and Barion, they reminded him, had already confessed.

"Of course he would." Coyul grew more supercilious by the moment. "That mountainous ego won't share guilt any more than glory. Regarding humans, Barion was always more romantic than competent. He simply didn't realize the errors in our own technology."

"Didn't real - " Barion shot to his feet, stung and confused. "Look, I cleared you. I confessed."

"An egotist to the end. I did it, Sorlij. I had to do something until you paragons of responsibility came back for us."

Barion began to heat up. "He's lying through his teeth. Why are you doing this, Coyul?" He appealed to the inquisitors. "You remember him in school. Carbon-cycle life classes were his nap time. He couldn't augment a respectable paramecium without a crib sheet."

"Ha! Couldn't I?"

"The point is valid, Coyul. We have serious doubts, easily resolved." Sorlij activated a keyboard, fingers dancing over inductance pads that sprayed formulae over a large screen behind him. "The simple chemistry of primitive apse-to-synapse combination, with one minute error. Barion, find the error and restate."

Barion scanned the formulae, obvious as a child's cartoon, found the error in the amino-protein elements. He corrected and restated. "First-year stuff."

Sorlij wiped the screen. "Quite correct. Now - "

Coyul contradicted him. "Quite wrong."

"Coyul, don't be an ass," Barion beseeched. "Not now."