The Sheriff of Yrnameer (27 page)

“Wait!
Wait
!” screamed Cole, catching up to Joshua and grabbing him. “Don’t shoot! He has mental problems!”

The Yoin paused.

“I do not!”

“He does! He’s simpleminded and wets the bed!”

“I do not wet the bed!”

Cole pulled Joshua close and whispered in his ear through clenched teeth. “Keep your stupid mouth shut, or you’re gonna get someone killed.”

“I don’t wet the bed!”

“Shut up!”

“Where’s the mayor?” demanded the Yoin.

“Umm … that’s a very good question. We’ll see if we can go find him for you.” Cole turned to go, dragging Joshua with him.

“Stop!”

Cole didn’t stop.

“Keep going,” he whispered to Joshua. “Do
not
say no.”

“No,” said Joshua.

“You’re driving me
insane,”
hissed Cole.

“I said
stop
!” thundered the Yoin.

Cole did. He reluctantly turned back to face the intruders. He was aware of the silence, knowing that he was being watched by the townspeople, peering at him from dozens of hiding places.

“Who are you?” said the Yoin.

“He’s the sher
oof
!” said Joshua, as Cole elbowed him in the side.

“I’m just, uh …,” said Cole, scavenging about for the most uninteresting, nonthreatening identity he could imagine, “a poet.”

Cole had swiped his uncle’s skimmer and run away for good three and half weeks into his junior year of high school, no doubt a vanishingly minor and inconsequential branch point in the overall flow of history. For Cole’s
personal
history, however, it would indeed have a consequence, and that consequence was about to become manifest.

“A poet? Really?” said the Yoin, with far more interest than Cole had expected or hoped for. “I
like
poetry.”

Had Cole bothered to stay in school one more day, he would have been present for his second-period language arts class, which had included a brief but memorable discussion about the vital—life and death, really—importance of poetry in the Yoin culture.

“I
really
like poetry,” said the Yoin.

One of the other bandits sighed loudly. Another began massaging his temples as if warding off a looming headache.

“Oh. How … wonderful,” said Cole, starting to intuit that he’d made a very bad mistake.

“Why are you wearing a badge?” asked the Yoin.

“A badge? Oh, this old thing?”

“Poetic license?”

Cole stared at the armor-plated face of the Yoin, trying to discern if he was joking. He was not. The Yoin were very, very serious about their poetry.

“Yyyes?” ventured Cole.

The Yoin nodded in satisfaction. “Tell me a poem.”

“A poem.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I have to say, you seem like very busy people, and I suspect you’re here on some sort of important mission. Maybe I could help you with that?”

“First tell me a poem.”

“I really, uh, prefer to work from the page. If you want, I just had a collection published by a small press, and I could go get you a copy—”

The Yoin pointed the gun at him. “Okay, I’ll just shoot you.”

“You know, I could probably summon a few lines. …”

“Good.”

The Yoin leaned back against the skimmer, arms crossed. The other four bandits exchanged exasperated, long-suffering glances. One of them began idly sharpening his claws with a large knife, shaving down the tips like they were pencils.

“Okay,” said Cole. “Here we go. I hope you like it.”

“As my people say, if you’re alive at the end, I liked it.”

“Ah. Figure of speech?”

“No.”

“Right.”

“Begin!” said the Yoin. He leaned back again, chin up, head cocked to one side, eyes half closed in an attitude of critical appraisal.

Cole could feel the prickly sensation as perspiration beaded on his forehead. He scanned around, searching for something to inspire him. Now he was starting to catch glimpses of faces: Bacchi’s Storjan girlfriend, peering out of the shattered windows of her café with a few customers; Orwa, looking over the railing of his second-story roof deck; the purple guy whose name he could never remember.

“Nothing dactylic,” said the Yoin, interrupting his thoughts.

“No, of course not.”

Cole spotted MaryAnn, crouched behind a barrel. He held up a hand, motioning her to get back. She shook her head.

“No trisoptic decameters,” added the Yoin.

“Would you please?” said Cole.

“Sorry. When you’re ready.”

Cole could hear the bandit whittling his pointy claws into
pointier claws. Ideas were popping into Cole’s head, but they were less formally poetic and more shocking images of him getting shot to pieces.

The Yoin opened his eyes. “Well?”

“Just picking the best one.” He leaned close to Joshua again and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Do you know any poems?”

“Umm, uh … ‘There once was a Gan from Hanlukket. … ‘

“He’s probably heard that one before.”

Joshua seemed genuinely surprised. “Really? How?”

Maybe if he ran one way, and Joshua the other, one of them would make it. The general store was about three meters away and—why was Fred in there, waving to him? Cole gave him a hard glare, trying to send the signal to keep his big egg-shaped head down. Now Fred was murmuring something to him, and the AT was crackling, laboring to capture and analyze Fred’s voice. Cole made small but urgent hand gestures for him to shut up.

The Yoin sighed. “The promise of water in the desert,” he said, “the sun a wretched companion / the poem denied / the well / dry.” He looked at Cole expectantly.

“Uh … very nice,” said Cole.

“Thank you. What I meant by it is that I’m now going to shoot you.” The big black hole of the barrel came up again, centered right on Cole’s forehead.

“Dreaming leaves silent before the vision of the dawn
!” screamed Cole.

The Yoin paused. “Interesting. Continue.”

Cole continued, a torrent of impressionistic language flowing into his ear from the AT and directly out of his mouth without making so much as a courtesy stop in his neocortex. As he declaimed he slowly inched closer to the general store, so that he could hear Fred better.

Fred, unlike Cole, knew about Yoin culture. All Greys did. Poetry, to the Yoin, was what gambling was to the Greys, and by some accident of evolution and brain structure the Yoin were particularly enamored of the Greys’ speech patterns. A solid percentage of the gross planetary product of Fred’s home world, in fact, consisted of poetry exports to Yoi, or EnterCo, as the planet was known.

There was a saying in Fred’s language: “Like poetry for a Yoin.” It
was not a compliment. At the moment Fred was reading from the ingredient list of a candy bar wrapper that he’d found in his pocket. The Yoin was nodding appreciatively, grunting now and then in apparent satisfaction.

Fred ran out of text and began reciting menu items from his favorite pub. He listed every city he could remember. He improvised a weather report. He described the family pet.

After a half hour Cole was starting to feel hoarse. After forty-five minutes he took a seat on the porch of the general store, Joshua sitting next to him. An hour passed and Cole was still talking, relaying Fred’s words to the Yoin, who seemed quite content to while away the afternoon listening to poetry. Cole’s voice was getting croaky. One of the bandits was snoring.

And then suddenly the flow of words ceased, Cole stumbling a bit like he’d come to the end of a moving sidewalk.

The Yoin opened his eyes. “That’s it?” he said.

Cole nodded.

“A little short,” said the Yoin.

“That’s really sort of my métier,” said Cole.

“Hmm,” said the Yoin. “Hmm.” He closed his eyes again, making little nodding and head-tilting movements and occasionally mouthing some words, as if he were replaying choice passages of the poem internally. This went on for several more minutes. The other bandits looked like they’d been cudgeled into a near stupor.

“Come on,” whispered Cole, tugging at Joshua. They rose silently and began walking away.

“Freeze!” commanded the Yoin. They froze.

The Yoin began clapping in a polite, respectful manner. He nudged one of the other bandits. They began clapping, too, waking the one who was sleeping. He looked around blearily and joined in the applause.

“Very nice,” said the Yoin. “Interesting. Almost had elements of poetry by the Greys.”

“Qx”-x-’–’,” corrected Fred quietly from the interior of the store.

“So,” said the Yoin. “Back to the reason for our visit.” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “WHERE ARE OUR PEOPLE!” he bellowed. “WE SENT MESSENGERS HERE, AND THEY NEVER RETURNED! WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?”

“I’ll tell you what hap
pened
!” said Joshua as Cole stomped on his foot.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Cole. “No one came here. What is it you want?”

“You’re LYING!!” boomed the Yoin. Cole, five meters away, could feel his hair blowing back. “What have you done with our comrades?”

“Look at us!” said Cole. “We’re not warriors! We’re weak and helpless. We’re shopkeepers and farmers and humble poets and bed-wetting idiots!”

“I do
not
wet—”

“How could we have done any harm to your friends? If they’re half as strong as you are, they would have destroyed us!”

The Yoin considered this. He turned and had a quick conference with the others.

“THEN I WILL GIVE YOU THIS MESSAGE!”

“There’s really no need to shout,” said Cole.

“Right. Then
I
will give you this message,” repeated the Yoin. “We will be back in three weeks for your crops. You will feed us, or you will DIE!”

“Okay, that sounds pretty fair,” said Cole. “But have you thought about maybe getting a few agbots? They’re really pretty efficient with all the planting and harvesting and—”

“SILENCE!”

“Right. Sorry.”

“THREE WEEKS! CROPS OR DEATH!”

“We’re not gonna
aayiii
!
“
said Joshua. “Stop pinching me!” he said to Cole.

“There’s absolutely no problem,” said Cole. “We’ll get everything all set and ready to go for you.”

“GOOD!” said the Yoin. “By the way, nice poem again.”

“Thanks,” said Cole. “Well, I guess you’ll be on your way now. …”

“No!” said a voice, approaching from behind Cole.

“No
!” repeated the voice. A woman’s voice, older, resonant, full of strength. Cole turned. It was Daras Katim. She was striding toward the bandits, brimming with controlled, dignified fury.

“Daras,” he said as she passed, trying to stop her. She shook off his hand. Cole caught a whiff of healthy earth after a rain shower.

“We will
not
give you anything!”

Cole hurried after her. “Daras, please, this is not the time.” She shook him off again, turning to him.

“Excuse me,” she said. “You’re interrupting me.”

She said it with a tone of such stern command that Cole stopped in his tracks, uncertain of what to do. Daras, meanwhile, continued toward the bandits.

“Go back to your holes, and come back when you’ve learned how to behave in a civilized fashion!” she said.

At least two of the bandits sheepishly lowered their heads. But the Yoin was unfazed, staring at her expressionlessly. She walked directly up to him and stopped a short meter away.

“When you work for your food, growing it from the land like we have, then you can share it. But you’ll have none of ours. Do you understand?”

The Yoin didn’t move.

“Do. You. Understand?” said Daras.

Cole was frozen, still unsure of how to intervene.

“She’s so brave,” whispered Joshua.

The Yoin shot her dead.

They buried Daras, as per her wishes, at the top of a grassy hill at the base of the mountains. Orwa was selected to say a few words and said many, many of them. When they went to clear out Daras’s shop, they discovered that all the plants were shriveled up and brown.

That night there was another town meeting, this one more contentious then the others. Daras Katim’s death had fueled their anger and stiffened their resolve.

Cole, for his part, found himself wishing that he’d brought along some sort of recording device so that he could later review exactly what he had been saying, because he was starting to wonder if he was losing his mind. He’d
say
something like, Please, listen to me, I really don’t think we can stand up to the bandits, and the townspeople would apparently
hear
him say something like, We will resist and overcome, making the wrongdoers regret their rash actions!

No, you don’t understand, Cole would say, we simply don’t have the firepower.

Yes, you’re right! they’d respond, The purity of our intentions and the righteousness of our motives will suffice to defeat the enemy, albeit in the most measured and gentle fashion possible!

After several hours like this, Cole extricated himself from the excited discussion and slipped out of the town hall, taking a seat on the porch. He lay back and stared up at the stars, his legs dangling over the side.