The following week Rakkis brought four slim silver snakes. The sandkings dispatched them without much trouble.
Next he tried a large black bird. It ate more than thirty white mobiles, and its thrashing and blundering virtually destroyed that castle, but ultimately its wings grew tired, and the sandkings attacked in force wherever it landed.
After that it was a case of insects, armored beetles not too unlike the sandkings themselves. But stupid, stupid. An allied force of oranges and blacks broke their formation, divided them, and butchered them.
Rakkis began giving Kress promissory notes.
It was around that time that Kress met Cath m'Lane again, one evening when he was dining in Asgard at his favorite restaurant. He stopped at her table briefly and told her about the war games, inviting her to join them. She flushed, then regained control of herself and grew icy. 'Someone has to put a stop to you, Simon. I guess it's going to be me,' she said.
Kress shrugged and enjoyed a lovely meal and thought no more about her threat.
Until a week later, when a small, stout woman arrived at his door and showed him a police wristband. 'We've had complaints,' she said. 'Do you keep a tank full of dangerous insects, Kress?'
'Not insects,' he said, furious. 'Come, I'll show you.'
When she had seen the sandkings, she shook her head. 'This will never do. What do you know about these creatures anyway? Do you know what world they're from? Have they been cleared by the Ecological Board? Do you have a license for these things? We have a report that they're carnivores and possibly dangerous. We also have a report that they are semi sentient. Where did you get these creatures anyway?'
'From Wo and Shade,' Kress replied.
'Never heard of them,' the woman said. 'Probably smuggled them in, knowing our ecologists would never approve them. No, Kress, this won't do. I'm going to confiscate this tank and have it destroyed. And you're going to have to expect a few fines as well.'
Kress offered her a hundred standards to forget all about him and his sandkings.
She asked. 'Now I'll have to add attempted bribery to the charges against you.'
Not until he raised the figure to two thousand standards was she willing to be persuaded. 'It's not going to be easy, you know,' she said. 'There are forms to be altered, records to be wiped. And getting a forged license from the ecologists will be time-consuming. Not to mention dealing with the complainant. What if she calls again?'
'Leave her to me,' Kress said. 'Leave her to me.'
He thought about it for a while. That night he made some calls.
First he got t'Etherane the Petseller. 'I want to buy a dog,' he said. 'A puppy.'
The round-faced merchant gawked at him. 'A puppy? That is not like you, Simon. Why don't you come in? I have a lovely choice.'
'I want a very specific kind of puppy,' Kress said. 'Take notes. I'll describe to you what it must look like.'
Afterwards he punched for Idi Noreddian.- . 'Idi,' he said, 'I want you out here tonight with your holo equipment. I have a notion to record a sandking battle. A present for one of my friends.'
The night after they made the recording, Kress stayed up late. He absorbed a controversial new drama in his sensorium, fixed himself a small snack, smoked a couple of joy sticks, and broke out a bottle of wine. Feeling very happy with himself, he wandered into the living room, glass in hand.
The lights were out. The red glow of the terrarium made the shadows look flushed and feverish. Kress walked over to survey his domain, curious as to how the blacks were doing in the repairs of their castle. The puppy had left it in ruins.
The restoration went well. But as Kress inspected the work through his magnifiers, he chanced to glance close at the face on the sandcastle wall. It startled him.
He drew back, blinked, took a healthy gulp of wine, and looked again.
The face on the wall was still his. But it was all wrong, all twisted. His cheeks were bloated and piggish; his smile was a crooked leer. He looked impossibly malevolent.
Uneasy, he moved around the tank to inspect the other castles. They were each a bit different, but ultimately all the same.
The oranges had left out most of the fine detail, but the result still seemed monstrous, crude; a brutal mouth and mindless eyes.
The reds gave him a satanic, twitching sort of smile. His mouth did odd, unlovely things at its corners.
The whites, his favorites, had carved a cruel idiot god.
Kress flung his wine across the room in rage. 'You dare, ' he said under his breath. 'Now you won't eat for a week, you damned . . .' His voice was shrill. 'I'll teach you.'
He had an idea. He strode out of the room, then returned a moment later with an antique iron throwing sword in his hand. It was a meter long, and the point was still sharp. Kress smiled, climbed up, and moved the tank cover aside just enough to give him working room, exposing one corner of the desert. He leaned down and jabbed the sword at the white castle below him. He waved it back and forth, smashing towers and ramparts and walls. Sand and stone collapsed, burying the scrambling mobiles. A flick of his wrist obliterated the features of the insolent, insulting caricature that the sandkings had made of his face. Then he poised the point of the sword above the dark
mouth that opened down into the maw's chamber; he thrust with all his strength, meeting with resistance. He heard a soft, squishing sound. All the mobiles trembled and collapsed. Satisfied, Kress pulled back.
He watched for a moment, wondering whether he had killed the maw. The point of the throwing sword was wet and slimy. But finally the white sandkings began to move again feebly, slowly-but they moved.
He was preparing to slide the cover back into place and move on to a second castle when he felt something crawling on his hand.
He screamed, dropping the sword, and , brushed the sandking from his flesh. It fell to the carpet, and he ground it beneath his heel, . crushing it thoroughly long after it was dead. It had crunched when he stepped on it. After that, trembling, he hurriedly sealed the tank up again. He rushed off to shower and inspected j himself carefully. He boiled his clothing.
Later, after drinking several glasses of wine, he returned to the living room. He was a bit -: ashamed of the way he had been terrified by the sandking. But he was not about to open the tank again. From then on, the cover would stay sealed permanently. Still, he had to punish the others.
