Part 13 (1/2)
”He has one, too.”
”I know that also.”
”If you can kill him at all, you kill him without it.”
”Okay.”
”You do not trust me.”
”I don't trust anybody.”
”Do you remember the night you hired me?”
”Faintly.”
”It was the best meal I ever had in my life. Pork chops. Lots of them.”
”It comes back to me.”
”You told me of s.h.i.+mbo then. Invoke him and Shandon will invoke the other one. Too many variables. It may be fatal.”
”Maybe Shandon has gotten to you.”
”No. I am just measuring probabilities.”
”Could Yarl the Omnipotent create a stone he could not lift?” Green Green asked him.
”No,” said Courtcour.
”Why not?”
”He would not.”
”That is no answer.”
”Yes it is. Think about it. Would _you?_”
”I do not trust him,” said Green Green. ”He was normal when I brought him back, but I believe that perhaps Shandon has reached him.”
”No,” said Courtcour. ”I am trying to help you.”
”By telling Sandow he is going to die?”
”Well, he is.”
Green raised his hand, and suddenly he was holding my gun, which he must have teleported from my belt, in the same fas.h.i.+on as he had obtained the tapes. He fired twice and handed it back to me.
”Why did you do that?”
”He was lying to you, trying to confuse you. Trying to destroy your confidence.”
”He was once a close a.s.sociate of mine. He had trained himself to think like a computer. I think he was trying to be objective.”
”Get the tape and you can resurrect him.”
”Come on. I've got two hours and fifty-eight minutes.”
We walked away.
”Should I not have done that?” he asked me, after a time.
”No.”
”I am sorry.”
”Great. Don't kill anybody else unless I ask you to, huh?”
”All right. --You have killed many people, have you not, Frank?”
”Yes.”
”Why?”
”Them or me, and I'd rather it was them.”
”So?”
”You didn't have to kill Bodgis.”
”I thought--”
”Shut up. Just shut up.”
We walked on, pa.s.sing through a cleft of rock. Tendrils of mist snaked by, touched our garments. Another shadowy figure stood off to the side, at the place where we emerged upon a downward-sloping trail.
”. . . Coming to die,” she said, and I stopped and looked at her.
”Lady Karle.”
”Pa.s.s on, pa.s.s on,” she said. ”Hasten to your doom. You could not know what it means to me.”
”I loved you once,” I said, which was not the right thing to say at all.
She shook her head.
”The only thing you ever loved--besides yourself-- was money. You got it. You killed more people than I know of to keep your empire, Frank. Now there has finally come a man who can take you. I am proud to be present at your doom.”
I turned on the torch and shone it upon her. Her hair was so red and her features so white. . . . Her face was heart-shaped and her eyes were green, as I remembered them. For a moment, I ached for her.
”What if I take _him?_” I asked.