Shadow on the Sun (9 page)

CHAPTER 15

Tengu Monastery

Noctis Labyrinthus

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 12. 17:59

 

 

The pagoda tombs of the Tengu Monastery are a forest of hundreds of tall, narrow stone buildings, most under seven stories, each the tomb of a monk or an abbot who has passed beyond the veil into that undiscovered country from where travelers never return.

The mists are thick and swirling as Vienne stops beside a recently built pagoda, its pedestal painted bright pink—the cenotaph of Riki-Tiki. She drops to her knees and touches her forehead to the ground. “For a hundred days, I've told you I'm sorry, and for a thousand more, I'll beg your forgiveness.”

“It wouldn't take a thousand days,” Shoei says. “She would forgive you after one.”

“I wouldn't deserve it.”

“She would swat you for saying such a thing.” Shoei gives Vienne a swat. “And tell you to start forgiving yourself instead.” She places a bundle of clothes, several packets of rice, a long object swaddled in homespun cloth, and a medikit on the ground. “Here are your things.”

“How can I forgive myself? I killed her.”

“Ghannouj would tell you that Riki-Tiki chose her own path,” Shoei says. “I will tell you that your life is full of ghosts. You must learn to live with them, or they will haunt you to death. This old woman speaks from experience. So would Yadokai, if the fool wasn't too soft to tell you good-bye.” She strokes Vienne's hair and leaves her with a trembling kiss on the head.

Vienne watches until the mistress is gone. Then she unbundles the clothes and shakes out the symbiarmor. She pulls it on like a slip. Then the boots. Then the right glove before she hesitates.

She opens and closes her left hand. The deformed pinkie finger pops. The joint is imperfect. The skin is the shade of a sugar beet. It's attached to her body, but it isn't hers.

When CEO Stringfellow, the man who would become Lyme, ordered his own son to chop off a pinkie in a public ceremony, Vienne felt honor bound to follow her chief's destiny. It dishonored her to mutilate herself. It dishonored her more to become a
dalit
, an outcast Regulator, and that humiliation drove a wedge between her and Durango. She could never forgive him for that, even when they learned that the whole ceremony had been a sham from the start. Then years later, when Lyme's crony Archibald captured Vienne, he was able to break her spirit for one reason—the shame of being
dalit
. He promised to regrow her pinkie, and in return, she allowed herself to become a monster.

You can't unmake what has been made. You can't be made whole when you were never less than that. You can't stop being something you never were.

The first step is preparation. She sits in the lotus position, controlling her breathing, lowering her heart rate. She picks up the medikit and takes out a packet of clotting gel, topical painkiller, bandages, suture silk. She wraps the silk tightly around her left pinkie finger until the blood is completely restricted.

Heart in her throat, she sterilizes the knife and lays a length of bandage across a flat rock. Finding the notch between the knuckles with edge of the knife, she holds her breath and pushes down with all her strength.

It is done.

Quickly, before shock can hit, she rips open the packet of clotting gel and shoves the bloody stump inside. She grunts as the gel cauterizes the wound. A moment later, she scrapes the gel away and cuts the suture silk, allowing the wound to bleed out so that fluid doesn't engorge the stump.

She wraps the wound in a field dressing. The greatest enemy here is not the amputation but the shock that follows any traumatic injury. By controlling her body, she prevents it, and once that is done, she puts on the glove and then slides into her black robes, wearing the uniforms of both monk and Regulator, combining both halves of herself.

Later, after cleaning up, she looks past the pagodas and across the monastery grounds, far down the canyons that have been her home for the last six months.

She throws the rucksack over her shoulder. “It is time to go.”

 

When she returns to the front gate, there are now four men waiting for her—Nikolai and Zhuk, plus two others. They are dressed in the same mismatched, flamboyant uniforms. One is lanky, with a triangular face, round, wire-rimmed spectacles, and chopped-off bangs. The other is a blond with a cherubic face and not even a wisp of facial hair, clearly the youngest of the quartet.

“What's this about?” Vienne asks.

At the sound of her voice, they all look up, their collective expressions a mix of surprise, curiosity, and humor.

“Tere, ilus tüdruk,”
says the blond boy. He bows to her with the same sweeping gestures as Nikolai, who he's clearly copied. “I am Pushkin. Please to make acquaintance.” Then he takes Vienne's bandaged hand and tries to kiss it.

She grabs his face and pushes him away. “Dream on.”

“Ha!” Zhuk yells. “What did big brother tell you, lover boy?”

The third man wipes his glasses with a handkerchief. “Already, we are behind schedule.”

“Patience, Yakov,” Nikolai says “We will make up lost time.”

Vienne surveys them. They share no common features. In no way do they look related. “These two are your brothers?” she asks. “You're all brothers?”

“
Jaa
, we are Brothers Koumanov,” Nikolai says. “With us, you are very safe.”

Vienne hesitates. How does she know they're telling the truth? Maybe they're working for Lyme, and it's just an elaborate hoax? But there is danger everywhere, and she can't stay holed up inside these walls forever.

“What is wrong with hand?” Nikolai asks, pointing at her bandage.

“I cut it,” she says. “Which ride is mine?'

“Take pick,” he replies. “Except mine. Svetlana is very temperamental. Will only start for Nikolai.”

He named his bike? She rolls her eyes. Typical.

Pushkin pats the seat behind him and makes a kissy pout. “Come sit Pushkin's bike. Girl will enjoy ride,
jaa
?”

Vienne cocks her head. “Why not?”

As she walks toward his black Gorgon, a surprised but coy grin creeps across his face. It turns to shock when Vienne places a hand on his shoulder and shoves him off the seat. “Thanks.”

“Is okay.” Pushkin tries to throw his leg over the saddle. “I think Pushkin will take backseat.”

Vienne shoves him to the ground. “Think again.”

“Oy!” Pushkin cries. “Is my bike! Nikolai!”

“Is her bike now,” Nikolai says. “Ride with Zhuk,
poisike
.”

Face red with anger and embarrassment, Pushkin glares at Vienne. She flashes a smile. He stomps over to Zhuk, who shakes a hairy sausage finger at him.

“Touch seat, and Zhuk is making you eunuch,” Zhuk says.

“No fair!” Yakov stomps.

“Brother,” Nikolai says. “Ride with Yakov.”

“No, Yakov smell like borscht!”

“Better than to smell like Zhuk,” Nikolai says. “Ride with Yakov, or we leave you with monks. Monks will shave head and make you work fields.”

Pushkin shrugs, so what?

“Also,” Nikolai says, “you will have to wear dress like Vienne.”

“Jaa!”
Pushkin says. “Better I should die than wear that.”

She looks down at her cheongsam. “What's wrong with my clothes?”

“Nothing,” Pushkin says, “for prayer. But for blending in, you stick out like sore toe.”

“Why? Because I don't want to look anything like a Sister Koumanov?”

“Not to worry.” Pushkin says as he picks gravel out of his cheek. “You look nothing like sister. You are much too thin.”

“And,” Zhuk adds, “you have no beard.”

Pushkin looks to Nikolai, then to Yakov, then to Vienne, who arches her eyebrows and shakes her head. He gives up and jumps onto the back of Yakov's Gorgon with a huff.

“Need hand with controls?” Nikolai asks Vienne. “Gorgon is complex machine.”

Complex? she thinks. You should try riding a bike cobbled together by a mad genius that blows things up for fun. “This, I can handle myself.” She adjusts the pedal depth. The Gorgon's engine is just the music she wants to hear. “Where exactly are we going?”

“Someplace nice!” Nikolai shouts as his bike lurches onto the road, headed south on the Bishop's Highway. “How does
lapochka
feel about Scorpions?”

CHAPTER 16

Crossroads

Tharsis Plain

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 13. 05:03

 

 

Ja vitut,
are my dogs tired. I've not stopped walking since the Crucible strike, when a violent shock wave undid the ground, and even many kilometers away, I was thrown from my feet.

“Technically, they are not dogs,” Mimi reminds me as I emerge exhausted and crinkled by dehydration from an arroyo. “They are feet.”

“Yes, O wise one,” I say, and check for traffic.

I climb up to a dimly lit highway and use a road sign to hoist myself onto the berm. The only light is the dim neon glow of a roadhouse half a kilometer across the way, but I can make out a couple of vehicles parked in front. “I'm well aware of the difference between my feet and canine animals. It's something I've known since I was three. I'm even capable of tying my own boots.”

I take a step, trip on a loose lace, then stumble to the pavement. I catch myself by the elbows, saving my face a few layers of skin.

“I take it that those are not your boots,” she says.

“Har-har.”

I start to get up. Then think, forget it, and let my face sink down against the pavement. It's warm to the touch, and the night air is cold enough that my breath is freezing. I'm so bone tired that I take off my newfound straw hat and make a pillow of it. I'll sleep right here, thank you very much.

The road sign tells me that I'm at a crossroads. The Bishop's Highway goes north-south in an almost direct line from Christchurch to New Eden. The Founders Road takes a somewhat east-west route as it meanders from Nozomi to Bosporous. The Bishop will take me near the Tengu Monastery and, if the moons are aligned, Vienne. The Founders will take me to an old friend from Battle School, the only person I know who I think would understand the thing locked away in the case in my rucksack. She also hates Lyme enough that I can trust her not to rat me out.

“Do you know how much force a two-ton transport truck exerts on the road below?” Mimi asks me.

“How should I know?” I say. “And why do you care?”

“No reason,” she says. “I was only curious if the force would be great enough to crush your head like a melon when the truck rolls over you. In approximately ten seconds.”

My eyes pop open. “What?”

A hundred meters away, a transport truck rounds the bend, and its lights ignite the countryside. And me, lying like roadkill on the highway.

An air horn sounds.

“Re malaka!”
I scramble to my feet, then dive for the berm. My hands sink into the soft, loamy soil, and I come up with a mouthful. “Mimi! Why didn't you tell me a truck was coming?”

“I did.”

“I could've been a flat cat by the time you spat it out!”

“Unlikely,” she says, “since I calculated that it would take you four-point-seven seconds to leave the road and nine- point-six seconds for the truck to pass.”

Which it does, trumpeting its horn, whipping wind in my face, and blowing me backward. I step out onto the highway and raise a finger in salute to the driver.

“Would it hurt you,” I ask Mimi, “to just say, ‘Look out, truck coming'?”

“Look out! Truck coming!”

“Ha-carking-ha.”

“No!” she yells. “Truck! Move!”

In the half second it takes to turn my head, I realize two things: first, the sound of this truck's engine was drowned out by the honking, and two, it's running with no lights. Which is probably a good thing. Because as I'm diving yet again into the berm and coming up with a second mouthful of dirt, I note that it's a Noriker, and it's leading a convoy of military vehicles.

Lyme's army is on the move.

Headed south.

“Stay down,” Mimi says.

She doesn't have to tell me twice.

“Stay down,” she says.

“You already said that.”

“Then do as I say.”

I crawl closer for a better look-see. “Is that a battle tank in the back of that tractor?”

“Affirmative. Data suggests that there are over two hundred vehicles in the convoy. Find some cover and wait it out.”

I belly crawl backward down into the arroyo. No sense in letting them spot me now. “Without lights, how are they driving in the dark? Night vision?”

“Negative,” she says. “Night vision does not have the capability to process cold images such as the road. I suspect the answer to your question is all in your head.”

“No more riddles!” Then it hits me. “Oh! I get it. Dolly is directing the vehicles.”

“That is my theory.”

It's a carking terrifying theory. If Dolly has advanced her capabilities to the point of controlling Lyme's vehicles as they travel across country, who is to say that she can't control all of his armor vehicles and artillery, too?

“Astute observation, cowboy. But of course, that was Lyme's master plan for MUSE—to create an artificial intelligence with both strategic and tactical capabilities.”

“One that could self-program and learn from its mistakes?”

“Eventually.”

Sacre merde
. “How long would that take?”

“Indeterminate.”

“Knew you were going to say that.” There are too many factors in play for her to make an accurate assessment.

“I was going to say that, too,” she says. “But I can approximate a window of seven days or less.”

“Seven days?” Geez. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shake off the exhaustion. I look at the sign again. Bishop's Highway. The monastery. Vienne. My heart tells me to go there first.
Wángbā dàn! Wángbā dàn! Wángbā dàn!

I stare at the sky. At the twin moons Deimos and Phobos, named after the children of Ares and Aphrodite, the gods of war and love, locked in perpetual orbit together, one emotion trying to overrule the other. “I know how you guys feel.”

“Cowboy,” Mimi warns me. “They are moons. This is not a sign from the heavens.”

“It is if I want it to be.”

“The future of this war is literally—literally—in your hands.”

“I've put duty ahead of Vienne too many times.”

“Not that many times!”

“One time is too many.” I will be taking Bishop's Highway to the Tengu Monastery because what's a future without Vienne in it?

“Cowboy! If I could get my hands on your neck!”

“Then I would deserve whatever you wanted to do to me. But it's been six months since I last laid eyes on her, and because neither one of us is a fortune-teller, this may be the last chance I ever get. If you were in my boots, what would you do?”

“I would tie them myself.”

“Probably in knots, too. “ I sneak a look at the line of traffic. “As soon as this convoy passes, we're heading to the roadhouse over yonder.”

“There is a one in three chance that you will be recognized.”

“In this getup? Please. My own mother wouldn't recognize me.”

Mimi lets that one slide. My mother wouldn't recognize me because she's never seen me. I'm a product of in vitro fertilization. The woman who gave birth to me was a surrogate, nothing more. Mimi is the closest thing I've ever had to a maternal figure. When I was a Regulator, she was my chief. She took a spoiled Battle School brat and turned him into a soldier. Took a boy and turned him into a man. I hope.

“Me, too,” Mimi says.

I wait in silence until the last truck in the convoy has passed, then climb up to the highway.

“All clear,” Mimi says before I can ask. “Look both ways before you cross.”

‘Yes, ma'am.” The lights of the roadhouse seem dimmer. The sign is dark, and only the windows are visible now. “It's closing time.” I jog toward the building. “Perfect.”

Inside, a couple of customers are paying their bills at the counter. A tired-looking old man wipes the tables and a woman runs the register, her eyes puffy and dark. If that's what settling down looks like, I'd rather keep moving, thank you very much.

Over my symbiarmor, I'm wearing a pair of overalls and a blue workman's tunic that I found discarded along the road among dozens of other pieces of clothing, pots and pans, broken furniture, and a doll with no head. The stuff was abandoned by refugees, I'm sure, maybe left because it was too heavy to carry anymore. Or maybe they just gave up and walked away from what was left of their lives.

I step into the light near the entrance so they can see me. The first person out the door is a burly trucker in a synthetic fur parka and chukka boots. He sucks on a toothpick and shivers against the night air.

“Howzit, jack?” I say, raising a hand in greeting and trying to imitate the accent of a former mate named Fuse. “Give a bloke a ride, what's you say? I'm a bit down on the luck.”

The driver starts at the sound of my voice. He tries to spit around the toothpick. Then he shakes his head and keeps walking. “Don't take no refugees. You've walked this far. Expect you can keep right on hoofing it.”

“There's a fair dinkum way to treat a feller hopping about.” I wipe my mouth and try to look hungry, which isn't that hard. “Where's your heart and soul?”

Without turning, he shouts back, “Lost it the same place you lost that pinkie,
dalit
.”

A couple of seconds later, he fires up his truck and blasts me with the high beams. I hold up my left hand so he can get a good look at the stub he despises so much. It's amazing. Even after a flood destroyed the capital. Even with a war chewing up folks and their homes, some people hang on to the prejudices like they've got lockjaw.

He pulls out, and my real eye is still full of the ghosts of his headlights when the last driver leaves the roadhouse.

“See yas in a few days,” she calls back to the owners. “Keep my seat warm, yeah?”

Tucking my left hand in a pocket, I step up to greet her.

“Back off, ya poxer!” she yells, and lifts a fist.

“I'm so sorry.” I back away and forget to fake my accent. “I didn't mean any trouble.”

She gives me the up and down. Shakes her head at my overalls and the dirty tunic. “Bishop help us, ain't you a mess. Stay right there.” She heads back inside.

“Mimi?”

“Prepare yourself, cowboy. You are about to experience a sensation you have not enjoyed in exactly one hundred and eighty-one days.”

“What's that?”

“Kindness.”

A few seconds later, she emerges carrying a chunk of something wrapped in foil. She pushes it into my hands. “Tonight, ya won't go hungry.”

“Thank you.” My mouth starts watering. I wasn't so famished until I smelled the juicy, thick aroma of what must be a meat loaf. The square is warm and heavy in my hand. “But I was hoping for a ride. If you're driving the Bishop.”

“The Bishop?” She eyes me differently this time. “The company says we ain't supposed to take riders. Too much thieving and hijacking by the Scorpions and such.”

“The company's not here, right?” My stomach groans. “And I promise I'm not a Scorpion.”

“That's obvious,” she says. “Scorpions do that ugly thing to their heads. But now that I've a second look, you're no refugee, neither. Deserter?”

I shrug.

“Can't say as I blame ya. This war's going to be the end of all of us, one way or t'other. You ever killed a man?”

“Not as many as I could have,” I say, looking her in the eye so she'll know it's the truth.

She glances to the stars and shakes her head. “Expect I'm going to regret this, but wait till I start the truck up and then climb into the back. There's room among the ore. You'll want to eat that first. The stink of guanite will suck the appetite out of a starving man.”

Guanite?

I open the foil, take deep sniff of the meat loaf, drawing the steam into my nose, and then shove the whole meat cake into my mouth.

“Chew,” Mimi says.

“Iz hoz,” I say aloud, my tongue scalding from the heat.

“How did you ever manage without me?”

“I bid fine.” I try to chew and cool my mouth at the same time. But I have to wonder, How did I manage without her? What would I do if she ever went away?

The truck engine starts and the air horn sounds—my cue to haul butt. The taillights flash as I grab a lock chain and swing aboard. The bed of the truck contains six hoppers on either side. The hoppers are loaded with guanite, a pungent soft rock that contains enough organic matter to burn. In the days before terraforming ended, megatons of guanite were burned every day to intentionally pollute the atmosphere and increase the greenhouse effect to warm the planet and protect it from the sun's radiation.

There's a spot between the hoppers near the rear. I press my back against the wall and try to get comfortable. Which is impossible. “It smells like
kuso
back here.”

“I believe you were warned of that fact.”

“Why do think they started hauling guanite again? The ovens shut down a long time ago.”

“I do not have enough data to postulate a theory,” she says. “But when we reach our destination, I will endeavor—”

Before she can finish the sentence, exhaustion overwhelms me. “Say good-bye, Mimi.”

“Good night, Mimi,” she replies.

It's the last thing I hear before gunfire erupts.