"Keep it there and press!"
Rosalind rushed to the fallen Empleado, horrified at the amount of blood the man had already lost, practically arcing away from his terrible wound in a fountain. On her knees, she seized a sofa cushion, slapped it over the entrance wound, and ordered the nearest available individual, Corporal Owen, to maintain the pressure.
"You got it, Doc!"
She was about to turn Empleado over to deal with the exit wound when something seized her by the wrist. She looked up and realized that Deshovich was standing over her. She hadn't even thought about the Banker once she'd seen her comrade fall.
"No you don't, bitch! When Nikola Deshovich kills somebody, he stays killed!"
Another metal claw reached for her face and she felt the serrated jaws begin to close on her cheekbones. She raised a hand to protect herself, but it was slapped away.
Owen was near enough to touch Rosalind but helpless, now holding two pillows to Empleado's body, unable to reach his weapon. Beside him, Toya was unarmed, having left her shotgun, which had materialized on the surface of the asteroid with her, by the front door. Others in the room were armed and had even drawn their weapons, but were afraid to fire for fear of hitting the doctor.
Only Horatio Gutierrez, fumbling in his pocket for the tiny Kahr K9 9mm pistol he carried all the time now, rose from where he sat, and strode to confront the Banker. However the former general was interrupted in midstep by a familiar voice.
"Release her or I'll let you live!"
The command was Eichra Oren's, although his form was hidden from Rosalind by the Banker's bulk.
To her astonishment, Deshovich did let gothe threat had been unique and appropriateand whirled to face the man, insane fury boiling in his remaining eye. Time seemed to stand still. Oddly aware of her surroundings, Rosalind watched Model 17 across the room, her many legs twitching strangely. Through the window, she even had a brief glimpse of Colonel Chuck Tai, still alive somehow, crawling slowly toward the house with murderous determination on his face. In another moment the giant centipede, Scutigera, would reach him.
Despite her age, both real and apparent, Eneri Relda's expression was exactly that of any mother watching her favorite son about to throw himself into harm's way. Everybody else in the room seemed frozen, unspeaking and unmoving as a photograph.
"And who might you be, little man," the Banker roared, breaking that silence, "to determine whether anybody lives or dies?" As the flesh-and-blood hand he had left made nasty, involuntary grasping motions, he lashed out with another mechanical claw toward the Antarctican, who stood his ground without so much as blinking.
There was a ringing sound, as if someone had struck a tuning fork, and the claw fell with a thump on the carpeted floor, its wrist-end sheared flat, reflective as a mirror.
"I'm a p'Nan moral debt assessor," Eichra Oren answered in a relaxed and even tone. He even gave the Banker a small, sympathetic smile. Stepping back a little for more room, however, he gripped his gleaming two-edged sword high on one shoulder, like a batter getting ready to hit a fastball. Rosalind noticed, perhaps irrelevantly, that he was wearing his transparent filmsuitits hood and faceplate pulled down onto his chestwhich seemed to be covered with a light green powder of some kind, beginning to flake off onto the carpet.
"It is my judgment, Nikola Deshovich," the assessor's tone was formal, almost ritualistic, "and a matter of my firsthand experiencethat you have incurred many serious moral debts, on this asteroid and to all appearances long before you arrived here. I refrain from mentioning what you did to my friend Sam; that's strictly personal and I'm professionally constrained. I'm here now to help you offer the customary token for those debts, like that owed to your murder victim S*bb*ts*rrh, which are inherently and profoundly unpayable."
"You can't be serious!" the Banker roared.
"They can be discharged in only one way under the philosophy and discipline of p'Na."
"Such a pretty speech!" The Banker leaned backward and laughed at the Antarctican. "But thanks to my Intelligence operatives, I know something of this cant, little man, and you may not strike except to save a lifeor unless your victim invites it. Put down your toy. It will all be over soon enough anyway."
"Why do you say that?" the Proprietor demanded, having sensed something ominous in Deshovich's words. Gutierrez scrutinized the Banker, too, waiting for him to drop the other shoe. There was also a look of concern on the face of Eneri Relda, standing between the giant mollusc and the amorphous form of the Eldest.
The Banker laughed again, his voice beginning to trail off hysterically. "School's out, as we used to say, for all of the little vermin on this rock who've been masquerading as real people! You freaks! You slimy, obscene freaks! The joke's on you!"
"Say what you mean, fool," the tone Mister Thoggosh used, one Rosalind had never heard before, would have struck fear into anybody who was sane, "and be done with it!"
Even Deshovich's reply was somewhat calmer. "At my insistence, Model 17 has employed that tachyon telescope of hers to send an emergency message to her Creators"
"What?" The word had been the Proprietor's but everybody else around him contributed their full share to the feeling of increased tension in Eichra Oren's living room.
"warning them that the Eldest has awakened! It is vulnerable, she's informed them, and can be destroyed, along with its multitude of variously shaped disgusting subcellsif only the Predecessors will return quickly enough and do it!"
Eneri Relda shook her head. "But that's a lie."
"What a charming and attractive creature you are. Of course it's a lie. In fact, it's two lies."
That the Eldest could be destroyed, Rosalind thought, despite the fact that apparently he was spread out over several alternative versions of the Solar System, and that all of the different sapients on 5023 Eris were merely parts of him.
"You lied to me about Mister Thoggosh being dead, and about Sam, too, didn't you?" Rosalind demanded, a feeling of relief flooding through her even before she received the Banker's answer.
"Pray don't begrudge me a falsehood or two, my dear. It's my chosen art form and practically the only weapon I have left."
"Except to deceive whole peoples into making war on one another!" It was the sapient plant, Llessure Knarrfic.
The Banker heaved a deep, dramatic sigh. "The likeliest outcome by far is that you and the so-called Predecessors will do the universe an enormous favor and exterminate each other. In the meantime . . ." He twisted around again to leer at Rosalind. Hating herself for it, she was afraid. "I intend simply to walk away from here. Perhaps we'll continue this another dayif we have time!"
"No!"
Despite his condition, the gravely wounded Empleado snatched the Witness from Owen's belt and immediately began pulling the trigger, emptying it into the great bowl formed by Deshovich's carapace. This time, unimpeded by the Banker's armored back, a dozen .45 caliber bullets, traveling just above the speed of sound, found vulnerable targets in the plastic-covered vital organs laid out within the circumference of the trilobite shell.
"You traitorous son of a bitch!" Deshovich staggered back, outraged, then lunged forward, clawing for Empleado's face with several of his metal manipulators. As the autopistol's slide locked back on an empty magazine, Rosalind, with help from Owen and Gutierrez, rolled the injured man out of the Banker's reach. Rosalind was vaguely aware of some small, heavy, chrome-shiny object falling to the floor as they pulled and pushed at the KGB agent's body, but whatever it was, and whoever had dropped it, it failed to register fully on her consciousness.
At the same time, Eichra Oren ducked underneath half a dozen outstretched artificial limbs, interposing his own body between the maddened Deshovich and his victim.
"Pick on someone your own size, Marxist scum!"
Injured though he was, and nearly insensate with rage, Deshovich's timing was still goodor Eichra Oren's luck was very badfor as the Banker furiously flailed a dozen or more of his arms, still determined to redden his claws on Empleado, he somehow caught the flat of the moral debt assessor's sword with the back of a manipulator and slapped it out of the startled Antarctican's grasp.
The razor-edged assessor's weapon sailed straight across the room and, with a low, clear tone resembling that of a church bell, suddenly stood quivering in the wall a few centimeters from the Proprietor's slit-pupiled left eye.
The instant the sword left his tingling, impact-deadened fingers, Eichra Oren was struggling to get at his little plasma pistol, but the Banker seemed to forget Empleado and seized the Antarctican instead, using several claws, and picked him up bodily, intending to dash him to the floor or crush him against the ceiling.
Abruptly, just beneath the assessor's body, a storm of gunfire erupted as several individuals began shooting at once, some few to good effect, others inadvertently striking Deshovich's hardened parts, creating noisy ricochets which caused still others in the crowded room to duck and flinch, screaming profanities and protests.
In a window-rattling voice, the Proprietor shouted for them all to cease fire at once.
Meanwhile somethinga bullet fragment or a bit of secondary shrapnelhad struck Eichra Oren in the forehead. Blood flowed instantly, blinding him as against superior strength he vainly applied every martial technique he knew to free himself.
Suddenly a sinuous, heavily muscled tentacle slapped one of the Banker's claws away from Eichra Oren's right arm as another slapped the grip of his sword back into his hand.
One velocity-blurred slash of that blade, ending in a metallic peal, and the man had freed his other arm.
Another and he was standing on his own feet again, confronting the once-human monster.
The Banker roared defiance.
Eichra Oren roared back and lunged.
For the first time in his long career, the debt assessor wielded his sword of office with relish.