Romani Armada (3 page)

Fahmido studied him with an intense stare, then nodded. “You should rest...but so should we all. I’ve called for—”

“Ryan.” It was Nayara’s voice. He looked up to find her in the curtained doorway.

“There she is,” Fahmido finished.

Ryan feasted on the sight of her as Nayara stepped into the ‘room’ created by the convergence of two walls of rock and an old tarpaulin strung across the wider end. She studied him with the same intensity as Fahmido and exchanged glances with the albino woman.

“As far as I can tell, nothing seems to be wrong with him, now,” Fahmido said. “But then, I could find nothing wrong with him when he woke before, either.”

“Thank you,” Nayara told her. “Could I have the room?”

Fahmido nodded and stepped out past the tarpaulin. It drew Ryan’s attention beyond the flimsy barrier. He could hear people speaking in low tones, the sound of industry; digital equipment humming, the tap of old-fashioned keyboards.

“This is the second time I’ve slept?”

“You don’t remember the first time?”

Ryan frowned, trying to think back beyond the terrifying blankness that occupied his immediate memories. “There’s something….” He shook his head.

“Do you remember me bringing you here? From Cáel’s island, two weeks ago?” she asked.

Ryan rubbed his fingers through his hair, trying to distract himself from the hard knot of tension building in his chest and stomach. He thought of Cáel, of the island retreat. Heat, sun, the dappled shade of the quiet patio. A painful goodbye. “I remember,” he admitted. “How could I forget?” He made himself look at Nia. Her fingers were touching the base of her throat, where his pendant had rested for so many years. Cáel wore it now.

“If you remember that, then the rest will return, I’m sure,” she told him. “You fell asleep, if sleep it was, three days after I brought you here. You slept for four days. Four days after that, you slept again.”

“How long did I sleep this time?” Ryan asked. He cleared his throat as it tightened.

“Three days.” Nayara delivered the fact with her arms crossed and her gaze steady.

“Three…” He drew in a breath. “The cycle is diminishing each time,” he observed. “And the interval is lengthening.”

“Then you believe it is an effect from being hit by Gabriel’s weapon. That is the conclusion Fahmido reached, too.” She looked at him oddly.

“I remember Gabriel’s weapon,” he assured her.

Nayara turned and reached up to a metal shelf bolted right onto the rough wall, and brought down a long, rifle-shaped weapon. She rested the butt against the floor and held it by the tip of the barrel. “Recognize this?”

“No, but under the circumstances, I’d say this is the weapon Gabriel used against me. Who took it from him?”

“No one. Justin found the weapon lying on the floor of the station, at the very last moment just before the station blew. He picked it up because he thought it might be useful as none of his normal fighting skills were helping him.” Her full lips turned down. “That was before he got a good look at it.”

“Why? What is wrong with it?”

Nayara flipped the rifle up with expert moves and nestled it into her shoulder, aiming at him. Before Ryan could do more that widen his eyes, she pulled the trigger. There was a dry click and nothing else. “Look at the tip of the barrel,” she husked, still sighting along the length of it. Her single green eye visible above the rifle was somber.

Ryan looked at the barrel, then reached for it. “It’s solid!”

Nayara let him take the weapon. He laid it across his knees, examining it. “It’s shaped correctly, but it clearly was never intended to be a working gun,” he mused, operating the simplified trigger. “It won’t even crack open, so no shells, no ammunition....” He rubbed his temple hard, trying to recall when Gabriel had fired the weapon. “My back was turned,” he said. “I didn’t see what hit me.”

“I saw,” Nayara said quietly. “And it was nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No projectile. No plasma. Nothing that is normally projected by weapons of this nature, in today’s world.”

“No weapons we knew of until now,” Ryan finished. “We have to find out what this does. Maybe it’s dead like a battery and that’s why Gabriel gave it up. Unless we know how to recharge it, it’s a blunt object of normal lethalness.”

Nayara nodded. “Figuring that out is keeping Brenden occupied in the few moments he has spare.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Ryan said. “We’re supposed to be invincible. We have been virtually invincible for centuries.” He touch the rifle. “This…whatever it is…will have scared Brenden in a way that Ophelia and her temper never has.”

Nayara straightened up from her lean against the rocky wall. “Do you feel up to some light exercise?”

“I’ve been lying around flat on my back for four days. I think exercise is mandatory,” Ryan growled.

“It’s not like your muscles can atrophy. Your symbiot will see to that,” Nia teased him. “But I have a senior staff meeting and I wouldn’t mind the moral support, if you care to join me.”

“Since when did you need help herding those hell-raisers?” Ryan asked, but he pressed against the edge of the thin mattress, lifting himself back onto his feet. His symbiot had been working hard in the last few minutes he had emerged from whatever state he had been in for the last three days, for he could feel strength and energy flowing through him. He would have to feed soon, but Fahmido’s injection would hold him for a few hours more.

Nia’s lack of response made him look at her once more. She had a grim, sad look on her face.

“What?” he asked. “Why do you look like that? What am I missing?”

“Everything has changed, Ryan. You’ve only really been here for three days so you haven’t had a chance to see it.” She bit her lip and Ryan realized that more than simple sadness was driving her.

“We used to sit in our station and despair about how unfair life was, about how mean humans were and how hard we had it. Then Gabriel came along and took so much away from us that we didn’t know we had. We all look at each other and wonder, now. We all watch each other. We can’t have humans here because they’ll give us away to the Psi…and I
liked
having humans among us.”

Ryan reached for the cane he still needed for balance when he was walking. He was getting steadier on his feet, but it still wasn’t a complete given that his balance wouldn’t desert him from moment to moment, leaving him giddy and reeling.

He shuffled over to Nia and pulled her against him with his one free arm. “Stop it,” he told her. “Stop.”

Her arms wrapped around his neck and held on hard. “Everyone we trust and who likes us, we’ve had to send away into the past because that’s where it’s safest for them. It’s like Gabriel has forced us to punish those who are closest to us. He took baby Jack and he took away everything we value, all in one night.”

Ryan lifted her chin. “We still have each other,” he told her. “All of us has each other. We’ll get the rest back.”

Nia looked childlike with her bewildered expression. It made him add, “I
promise
, Nia. We’ll get everyone back here in the time they belong and we’ll see it all be as wonderful as it was, even if I have to move a few planets to do it.”

Chapter Two

Liping Village, East Yunnan Province, China, 2054 A.D.:
The perfectly symmetry of the arches and angles on the ancient bridge spanning the river was made for contemplation. So were the vistas of mountains, streams, wooded valleys and peaceful glens that sheltered terracotta-tiled rounded and arched homesteads and hideaways, all as ancient and peaceful-looking as the bridge.

They were all engineered and designed to invoke calm and a meditative state and the effect was utterly wasted upon Deonne as she strode across the span of bridge, heading for the meandering path that would eventually lead her to the big round farmhouse structure where she would, she hoped, find Mariana.

Deonne knew she was striding. She knew she was angry. She also knew that every postcard-worthy vignette she saw as she made her way across the village was having the opposite effect on her than the one the village elders and their environmental design consultants had intended. The placid peace wasn’t imparting calm and serenity. It was just pissing her off.

She wanted to stomp like a child but stomping would just slow her down. Besides, the bridge, while it looked like it was made of fragile, ancient wood beams, was actually made of plasteel and was likely to outlast vampires. She could stomp until the sun set and get nothing but bruises for her efforts.

Besides, there was no one around to see her stomping and stomping in flat shoes didn’t have nearly the same effect as stamping her feet while wearing heels.

She swung off the bridge and onto the worn, wide sandy path, into the shade of the big old trees that hung over the river here. The water gurgled along the bank, sounding cheerful and Deonne glared at it, determined not to let it improve her mood.

The big house where many of the Agency people were still staying looked like a centuries old farmhouse on the outside. It had the same big circular ochre-colored walls as many of the genuinely old buildings in the area, with a handful of smaller buildings grouped inside the protective walls, all of them topped off with the faded, curved terracotta tiles.

The narrow, intricately-carved double doors with their dragon’s mouth handles were thrown wide open in welcome and lay flat against the walls like shutters. Deonne walked through them into the tiny compound and directly over to the door of the room where Mariana had set up office.

Deonne rested her hand on the green round handle and took a deep breath. Then she pushed the door open and stepped through.

Mariana was at her desk. As usual. She looked up as Deonne entered and smiled. “Why, you look ever so lovely this morning!”

Deonne tried to smile. “Thank you.” She let her gaze flicker over Mariana’s appearance. Even though they were nearly two hundred years in the past, the woman seemed to have made no attempt to be stylish, even here where she had the resources of an entire wardrobe department to call upon. She wore the same three basic outfits the Agency wardrobe department had supplied her with when they had first arrived and kept her hair pulled back in the same unadorned braid that did nothing to flatter her face.

Mariana smiled briefly again. “Is there something you need, Deonne?”

Deonne pushed the sleeves of her jacket up. In this decade the sleeves were wide and anything but practical, but they did have a pretty effect when the arm was raised. But for right now they were in the way. “That moronic neighbor of mine is at it again.”

Mariana frowned for a moment. “The lute player?”

Deonne breathed hard. “It isn’t a lute! It’s a…whatever you call it. An erhu. And a whole flocking Chinese opera to go along with it. He was sawing away on it at three a.m., Mariana!
Three
a.m.”

Mariana pressed her fingertip against her lips. “Did you ask him to stop?” she said.

“Of
course
I asked him to stop!” Deonne pushed her fingers against her temples. “He doesn’t speak common. Or any language I know and I don’t speak Chinese. Any dialect. I pounded on the wall that separates our apartments, but apparently sign language isn’t a common language either.”

Mariana laughed, then pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry, but that was kinda funny.”

“It wasn’t remotely funny at three this morning,” Deonne told her, holding back the fury that wanted to boil all over the woman. She put her hands on her hips and squeezed her fingertips into her flesh. “Nayara saw fit to put you in charge while she’s not here—”

“Oh, I’m not in charge!” Mariana squeaked, looking alarmed.

“You do a good imitation of it, then,” Deonne told her dryly. “You fooled me. Why don’t you fool the administrators of this mental estate we’re all prisoners of and tell them
I want the idiot living next door to me evicted?”

Mariana smoothed her hands over the rudimentary controls on her desktop. “Deonne, I appreciate that you’re finding it difficult living back here in this time—”

“Do
not
handle me!”

Mariana blinked. “I wouldn’t do that—” she began.

“You would and you did,” Deonne snapped at her. “Even your voice changed. You could have been Nayara, for all the difference it made. You were very nearly copying her accent, too. Christ, Mariana, don’t you have a single individual corpuscle in your body? You admire them so much you have to channel them every time you open your mouth?”

Mariana swallowed. After a moment, she said quietly, “I am quite capable of thinking for myself, thank you.”

Deonne snorted. “You fooled me again, then.”

Mariana’s face reddened. “I do know how to be kind and empathetic, for example.”

Deonne drew in a sharp breath, shocked. She drew herself up straight as she realized that she was leaning over the small desk Mariana sat behind, in a classic intimidation posture. What did she think she was doing? Picking on the fat, ugly girl at the back of the classroom because she’d had a bad night? Deonne cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. I can’t even think of a good excuse for my behavior.”

Mariana gave her a small, tight smile. “I think a few nights’ lack of sleep has something to do with it. You may like to know that I have already complained to the complex administrators. I’m not the first, either. But I told them we would stop renting the apartment if it continued.”

Deonne opened her mouth to protest, alarmed at the idea of losing the privacy of her single occupant dwelling, no matter how small it might be.

Mariana shook her head. “Oh, it’s only a threat,” she assured her. “Call it an economic incentive. It’ll help them find a way to fix things. They told me they would look into the matter and report back to me with all haste. My Chinese is still quite weak, but I’m sure that’s what they meant.”

“We
own
this building. Can’t you do something more than complain?” Deonne spread her hands. “He’s doing it deliberately, you know.”