Land of the Dead ittotss-3 Page 4

  Cursing, he paced back down the alley and retrieved the crystal, which had gone seemingly untouched. Now it seemed far too heavy in his palm.

  The little old Yaqui man sitting on the corner did not look up from stuffing his face with fried chapultin, nor show the slightest interest in the creature’s self-conscious scrabbling in the garbage bin, but the event had not gone unnoticed.

  Dumfries Post station

  Imperial Chartered Colony of New Aberdeen

  The leaden gray sky poured down rain as a small backwoods settlement lurched into view through streaming windows. Sitting quietly on a cracked dark green vinyl seat, Green Hummingbird watched weather-worn buildings roll past, their windows shuttered tight against a cold, damp summer. The transit bus slid to a halt before a terminal of patched glass and corroded metal. He climbed down behind a crowd of migrant lumbermen and waited patiently for his turn at the baggage claim.

  “Here y’go, graunfaither,” a red-faced clerk nodded politely, pushing a heavy leather satchel across the counter. “Welcome t’ Dumfries.”

  Hummingbird paused a moment inside the drafty arrival hall, letting the crowd of travelers carrying waterproof luggage tubs swirl past and out the doors. The crowd was mostly dour-faced humans wearing heavy clothing and knee-high boots. They scuffed across a hard-surfaced floor smeared with yellowish mud and out into the rainy afternoon. A collection of heavy-wheeled vans, crawlers, and logging tenders was waiting. There were no taxis or pedicabs in sight.

  When the locals had sorted themselves out, the Mexica put away his hand-comp and shrugged into a nondescript Imperial Army surplus poncho. His boots rattled on the slabbed logs making up the sidewalk. Somewhere out of sight, enormous tractors rumbled past heavy with newly cut lumber. Their passage made the puddles filling the street quiver and shake. On their way to docks at lakeside, he guessed.

  The identifying sign for Dumfries Technical College was far newer than any of the buildings, and each door was marked by irregular patches where older signs had been recently removed. Piles of crumbling, moss-eaten concrete lined the walkways between the classroom halls. Hummingbird passed from building to building, a steadily growing frown etching his face. None of the signage matched what he expected to see. At last, after passing through a grove of dour trueoak which had apparently grown up unplanned in one of the quadrangles, he found an unpainted wooden building turned dull silver with age.

  Now his hand-comp chimed quietly, indicating the outline of the old laundry matched a six-week-old Identicast from a Colonial Administration surveillance satellite.

  Through a scratched metal door at the end of a dirty hallway, in the basement of the building, Hummingbird found Gretchen Anderssen sitting behind stacks of archaic equipment, her desk covered with manila folders, stacks of memory crystals, and a relatively new comp-though he could see the device lacked a pochteca maker’s mark.

  “These computers were old when I was a young man,” he said by way of greeting.

  Gretchen did not look up. Her fingers, lined here and there by old scars, moved quickly on the old-style interface.

  “There’s a pitiful ghost in this corner,” the nauallis said, forcing himself to step through the door despite an uneasy stomach. “There’s no proper sign on your door, no windows… this whole building feels… ill.” He patted the chest of his poncho. “My guidebook says this was formerly the Territorial Prison.”

  “Then leave,” Gretchen said, not bothering to look up from her control slate. “I have work to do. Paying work to finish today.”

  He leaned over the table, reading her comp screen. Disaster Communications Protocols: Classroom Lockdowns. One of the side panes was filled with thumbnail-sized video feeds from cameras scattered around the campus. The rest of the display surface was filled with text-readers scrolling constant streams of log data. To his eye, even the fonts seemed archaic.

  Hummingbird moved a stack of printed manuals aside and sat down. “ISS will make it worthwhile to listen; I’ve found a contract for you-a lucrative one-if you’ve need of more quills than this place can afford.”

  Gretchen’s fingers paused in their movement. Now she did look at him, and her expression was cold. “Do you? Paying like the last one? Not a single quill? An oversupply of broken promises? What will it be this time? Do you know my son Duncan is… too old for calmecac, even if, at long-last, you came up with tuition and an open door!”

  Hummingbird stiffened slightly. “What is this? I kept my end of Chu-sa Hadeishi’s bargain, Dr. Anderssen.”

  Gretchen laughed harshly, her oval face suddenly chiseled with tight fury. “Duncan’s applications were lost, so the calmecac deans say. So sorry. It is too late, Dr. Anderssen. All the deadlines have passed. Perhaps when your son has obtained a certification from your local collegium, he can apply for graduate school?”

  Hummingbird sat quietly, his face still.

  Gretchen went on. “The colonial government denied us access to the tuition funds. Your so-subtle influences meant nothing to these institutions. You have no power over them. I have no delusion that you are capable of paying me anything for my work. Ever. Go away!”

  “How does it happen that you are not, at least, still working for The Honorable Company?”

  “I am working here because I fit with everything here. We are unaligned with any of the great families, the big corporations, or the Imperial government. We cater, in fact, to the sons and daughters of the timbering crews, the land-clearing gangs, the Batrax miners, and the local rural population.”

  She pointed to the door. “If you leave now, you can still catch the last bus. You’ll be back at your transport node by noon tomorrow. Find another fool for your dirty work.”

  Hummingbird did not stand up. He continued sitting quietly, watching her work. Twice, he attempted to dissipate the suffocating atmosphere of the cell-like room with a movement of his wrinkled hand.

  “Stop that!” Gretchen turned and gave him a sharp look. The blue flash of her eyes showed her pent-up anger had not abated. “I like it this way. It keeps managers and other carrion birds out of my hair.”

  Hummingbird smiled a little at her joke, but did not reply. Instead, he continued to wait.

  ***

  At last, Gretchen gathered her materials together and stood up. “Why are you still here? I told you ‘no.’”

  “I cannot leave until you accompany me.”

  She hissed in annoyance, and then shuffled through papers in one of the drawers. “See-” She handed him a closely printed page. “You must leave no later than tomorrow by eleven in the morning, or you’ll be stuck here for three days longer. The bus service only runs four days a week.”

  “ We should leave tomorrow, Dr. Anderssen. There are several transport changes between Dumfries and the Rim.”

  “The Rim.” Gretchen’s eyebrows twitched. Then she shook her head. “I’m late getting home already. You can’t stay here. The night watch would shoot you.”

  ***

  The Anderssen homestead hugged a ridge well above the town. Gretchen’s mother had picked the site-there was plenty of open space to discourage surprise attacks, and the house sat with its back to the wind among stands of imported spruce and fir. Night had already fallen under the eaves of the forest as they settled onto bare, rocky ground west of the house that served as a landing pad. Together, they pushed the aircar into a pole barn cut into the hillside. Heavy blocks of stone and turf formed three of the walls. Before crossing the garden-all rows of spindly beans on lattices, with some tomatoes and squash in between-Anderssen took a slow careful look around, hand light on the heavy revolver slung at her hip. “You carry a weapon, Crow?”

  Hummingbird shook his head, though her tension made him wary.

  “There are cats here big as jaguars. And half-humans with the same table manners. Out beyond the townfence, you should always go armed. Never know what might come roaming by.”

  “I don’t use them,” the old man said quietly, keeping clear
of her gun hand.

  ***

  Inside the house and behind a pair of locked, airlock-style doors, Gretchen started to relax. Curt introductions served to identify the Mexica to Grandmother Anderssen and the two girls. Isabelle and Tristan regarded Green Hummingbird with interest, but when the meal arrived, they quickly fell to whispered gossip from the day. Gretchen’s mother caught the wary look Hummingbird gave their sidearms and monofilament knives as she was setting the table for dinner.

  “Not the Center, eh?” Grandmother cracked a betel-nut and grinned at the old man. “Though we do occasionally put on a duel or blood feud for the tourists. Then it’s just like Anahuac, isn’t it?”

  Hummingbird ignored the aside, his attention fixed on the hulking gray reptilian shape squatting on a broad, leathery tail at the end of the table. Gretchen smiled wickedly at the old nauallis’ pained expression when Malakar snuffled around him, her snout wrinkled up in suspicion. Anderssen was in no mood to explain anything to the Crow.

  Why volunteer, she thought, that our old friend spends her nights crouched at my bedside with pen and parchment book, listening to me mutter and sing in my sleep, writing down all the fragmentary bits and pieces of Mokuilite poetry so revealed? It is the least I can do to repay her my life, and her friendship.

  After the plates were emptied and cleared away, and the night was fully upon the house, and with all eyes upon him, Hummingbird nodded to them each in turn and then faced Gretchen. “Your particular skills are urgently needed, Dr. Anderssen.”

  Both girls perked up at this, but Gretchen felt a cool thread of anger boil up in her chest. That’ll get you nowhere, Crow. She caught her mother scowling from the kitchen door and held up a finger for pause. “Excuse me.” Gretchen took a handheld scrambler from the pantry and set it on the table between them. The constellation of lights on the device flickered, formed a series of random geometric patterns, and then settled into a calm blue square.

  Hummingbird tilted his head to one side. He scrutinized the sturdy, if outdated, Vosk Model 12 for a moment, and then nodded approval. In a low voice he went on: “Imperial Scout Service has found something enormous, Anderssen, hidden back in the depths. Within an area of heavy interstellar dust clouds navigators name the kuub. Are you familiar with this place?”

  Gretchen blinked involuntarily in recognition, then eyed Isabelle and Tristan, who were sitting very quietly at the table, trying their best to remain invisible. “Why don’t you two show Malakar how to play that new coaling sim?”

  Twin pouts met the invitation, but the code for “make yourselves scarce, this is business,” was unmistakable. The disappointed girls left, gathering up their gunrigs and taking the shotguns with them. Gretchen frowned at Hummingbird.

  He responded to their exit by pulling a flat packet out of his vest pocket. Unfolded, the package proved to be another, far more modern, scrambler.

  “A something, Crow? You must have more than that? Something won’t get you anything here…”

  Hummingbird nodded slightly. He felt more at ease now, to Gretchen, as though the two girls had been a particularly hostile audience. And maybe they are…

  “There was a Survey mission. Telemetry was received.”

  “And-”

  “There seems to be a multiple singularity within the region.”

  “Black holes inside a dust cloud? Shouldn’t the particles have been drawn into the…”

  “It’s artificial. The whole arrangement has to be.” Hummingbird’s expression-though it had not appreciably changed-seemed pinched to her. His voice dropped even lower. “Something is holding the clouds at bay… and there’s a weapon that snuffed out three ships in as many breaths.”

  Gretchen felt a flush of heat on her hands and the back of her neck. “How old?”

  “You need ask, given the scale of the artifact?”

  “Well, yes, Crow, I do need ask. Are you asking me to look at a First or Second Sun creation that’ll fry my brain and that of all of my troublesome friends and relatives in a millisecond? Or something young enough it could actually be studied?”

  A ghostly smile flitted across Hummingbird’s face. “Old enough. Old enough to launch an Imperial task force. Under Mirror command.”

  Under the table, Gretchen clenched and unclenched her fist. So. A race. And the Hummingbird is not in the thick of it yet. “When are you leaving?”

  Hummingbird grimaced. “When you come with me. What we find… will be beyond my capacity to evaluate properly.”

  She considered her palms, and the glassy scars and nicks lining her fingers.

  “Huh. Well, when five hundred thousand quills are verified in my mother’s Riksbank account, then I’d be happy to go with you. And that will be in advance, if you please.”

  She felt his inward sigh of relief as a knot uncoiling. In the same moment, she felt a sharp pinch between her shoulder blades. Just the sort of feeling you got in the alpenstand when crossing the trail of a kilikat.

  Ay, she realized, sweating suddenly, that was an easy catch for him. Goddamnit! We need that money, though. No, they need it. Gretchen turned her head, relieved to see the girls and Malakar crouched in front of the 3-v, arguing about the loading capacities of the latest mine crawlers. I don’t need anything anymore.

  ***

  Much later, when Gretchen had sent out the last piece of reporting for her “paying work,” she stood up from the scarred kitchen table and turned off the dimming solar lamp.

  “ Hoooo, now.” The familiar alien voice spoke softly out of the shadows. “This old one does not trust this ‘friend’ of yours.”

  Gretchen nodded ruefully. The scrape and rustle of the Jehanan’s long furred coat filled the doorway to the main hall. “You shouldn’t. He is not a nice man.” She moved to pass by, but Malakar placed a long, broad-fingered hand on her shoulder. Though old and hunched, the alien still outweighed Anderssen by twenty or thirty kilos.

  “It stinks of disease and death.” The triply lidded eyes blinked slowly, revealing deep-set irises tucked into a bony integument. “Broken shells and ash-”

  Shinedo

  Winter clung tight to the city. Icy fogs daily filled the darkened streets, driving most inhabitants to hearth and bed. This day the prostitutes were asleep, the bartender dozing. Listless, Hadeishi sat on the stage in the empty tea house, plinking away at a mournful tune. He was regretting the lack of even a few quills to purchase sheet music. How am I supposed to entertain, when The traditional cloth curtain at the front of the main room parted with the slight shimmer of an environment field, allowing in a gust of chill air and a sleek-haired woman dressed in a conservative pale blue winter suit over a black sweater, pants, and high boots.

  “ Konnichi-wa,” she said, drawing a 3-v card from inside her jacket. The woman held up the tiny pasteboard, which flickered to life when pressed between her thumb and forefinger. After an instant of intense scrutiny-comparing his own face to the picture-she nodded in satisfaction.

  “Hadeishi- tzin? A pleasure to meet you.”

  Hadeishi laid aside his instrument and returned the bow.

  She tapped a modest pendant hanging at her neck, which generated a full-featured holo in the air before him. A duplicate of the woman’s face appeared, surrounded by blocks of text and a variety of commercial mon. In more refined circles, his comp would have exchanged greetings and security protocols with hers, verifying her identity. Here he was satisfied her amber-hued eyes matched tone and color from life to holocast.

  “I am Bela Imwa, representing the Rusman Corporation. We provide crews for the major shipping concerns and liner companies. I understand you are Listed as an engineer’s mate?”

  Hadeishi found himself nodding. Not for long years, woman “There is a ship-”

  Hadeishi was nonplussed. His mind raced, trying to frame some response, but the woman continued, blithely unaware of the abrupt struggle between pride and raw greed that seized hold of his tongue and held him helpless.

 
“A small ship, which has need of a junior engineer. If you are not already contracted here”-Imwa indicated the bar, the sleeping prostitutes, and the spiderwebbed curtains with a wave of her fine-boned hand-“then we may fulfill our obligation by arranging your service.”

  I’ve not served in Engineering since I was a cadet. My course seemed so promising then. Hadeishi realized he was gaping at her, while she waited patiently for his response. He resisted the urge to explain what he was doing playing samisen in a house of pleasure. Now it seems I cannot even rate as an officer on some tramp steamer.

  “When-when does she lift?” He croaked out at last.

  The Javan smiled prettily and drew a crisp-edged packet from the inner pocket of her jacket. “As soon as there are hands to fire the reactors.”

  “I will consider it,” he said, and with another bow the young woman left.

  Hadeishi scanned the papers to see if they were some kind of joke; then he sat down on the edge of the small, dark stage and read through them carefully. Now he regretted parting with his Fleet surplus comp and comm. Both would have made verifying the recruiting company and everything else about Miss Imwa and this… this ship… far easier.

  I will have to go see this scow for myself, he thought, amused.

  Then he realized just how tightly he was holding the papers, and how fast his heart was beating.

  ***

  Despite the poor weather-morning rains had turned to sleet and then a nasty, treacly slush in the streets-Mitsuharu found himself loitering across the cargo road from liftpad ninety-two later that afternoon. The bulk of the ship was visible behind a tattered razorwire fence and a series of tar-shingled warehouses held together by broadsheet advertisements.