Chapter Fourteen
New Manila Rose
When Maria woke up that morning, the general was already gone. She lay in his bed, the smell of his sweat and sex lingering on the sheets. A note lay on his pillow, along with a red rose.
Good morning, Maria, the last rose of summer.
She took a long shower, eyes closed, head lowered. She scrubbed herself again and again but could not remove the shame.
"I'm sorry, Jon," she whispered, the hot water flowing over her.
The memories of last night haunted her. How she obeyed the general, pleasured him, slept at his side. She did everything for him—his slave, his whore.
She placed a hand on her belly, and her tears flowed.
"I'm doing this for you, little one."
The general did not know. Maria had become good at sucking in her belly, at never revealing her profile. Wearing black helped. But she could not hide this pregnancy for long. Her bulge would keep growing, and sooner or later he would notice. Or he would become furious that she still refused intercourse, that she pleasured him in every way but the one he most deeply desired.
I must get information from him, she thought. A confession of his crimes. Only that can end this war. Yet he barely speaks to me. And I'm running out of time.
She looked again at the note. The last rose of summer. Beauty trapped forever in the dark.
She found a summer dress on the credenza, woven of rich white linen and brocaded with red roses. When she wore it, it pressed against her stomach, and the white color didn't help. It revealed her bulge more than the black gown of Orion silk. But she had promised to obey the general—to eat what he fed her, to wear what he bought her. So she wore the dress, sucking in her gut as best she could.
"Get under that ribcage, little baby!" she whispered to her reflection. "Curl up tight!"
The general had left her alone in his house. Should Maria snoop around? Find anything compromising? Something that could shame him? She bit her lip.
Does he have cameras here, secretly watching me? She glanced around and saw none. Does he trust me this much?
A horn honked. Maria started. She peaked through the window and saw a limousine waiting.
So much for snooping.
She stepped outside. For a moment, she just inhaled deeply, savoring the fresh air. Trees rustled. Birds sang. Here in Little Earth, even so close to the slums, the air smelled so fresh.
She turned toward the limousine. It was an Earth car, its hood ornament shaped like a leaping phoenix, symbol of the Human Defense Force. A Bahayan chauffeur in a tuxedo smiled, bowed, and opened the passenger door.
"Good morning, Ma'am."
He spoke in English, though she was clearly Bahayan too.
"Salamat," she said in Tagalog, entering the car.
The chauffeur bowed again, smiled, and closed the door. He might as well have been an android. Yet she caught a glimpse of skin between his white glove and black sleeve. She saw burn scars. A victim of war, perhaps a captive. There was fear in that forced smile.
The limo left Little Earth and entered Mindao. It felt like crossing a portal between planets. After days in Little Earth, an oasis of gardens and luxury and piece, Maria felt the culture shock like a bomb.
Once more, she saw sprawling shantytowns, decaying brothels, landfills crawling with urchins, and train tracks lined with squatters. Shirtless children ran alongside the limousine, hands outstretched, begging for food. They were all skinny, some scarred from fire or shrapnel, others covered in weeping sores. As the luxury car drove forward, rickshaws scuttled out of the way. A jeepney swerved aside, rammed into a kiosk, and overturned carts. Sheet of plywood and corrugated steel clattered across the road, shedding sawdust and rust. Guavas spilled from a wheelbarrow. At once a hundred urchins leaped toward the fallen fruit. Stray cats hissed. A few old women peeked from the gutters, shook their fists and cursed, then returned to sifting through trash for anything edible.
More than the poverty, the decay, the despair—what shocked Maria was the sheer density. So many people! Hundreds and hundreds of people crammed into each alleyway! They stood alongside the roads, they peered from shanties, they filled the jeepneys to bursting, they slept in concrete pipes, they covered roofs—millions of people all jammed into Mindao, squabbling for a spot to stand or lie.
Maria had lived in Mindao for a year. But after only a few days in Little Earth, she had forgotten. She had become used to big houses, sprawling yards, clean roads, and wide open spaces between people. She could view Mindao from a different perspective now. Almost like an Earthling.
They see us as barbarians, she realized.
But this was not their fault. This poverty, despair, overpopulation? The war had done this! The war had burned their villages, driving millions of refugees here. The war had wilted their crops, spreading famine across the world.
They never saw our beautiful villages and rice paddies, Maria thought. Unless they bothered to look down before releasing the bombs. They took our pride. They destroyed our humanity. They reduced us to an animal state. And now they call us primitive!
But not the general, she remembered. He had spoken of Bahay's nobility and strength.
And yet he was the ruler of the killers. The lord of death.
She touched the choker around her neck, fingered the diamond. Mother Mary's Tear. A rare diamond shaped like a teardrop. A diamond that had once shone in the Basalt Cathedral, the seat of the Red Cardinal, adorning the cheek of Mary's marble statue. She wondered how many families it could feed.
She began to remove her choker, prepared to toss it out the window, then paused.
I will need this diamond. I cannot give it up yet.
The plan began to formulate in her mind. She kept the diamond.
The limousine drove on, leaving the hungry behind, and Maria lowered her head.
After an hour in traffic, they reached New Manila, a neighborhood along the coast. They drove on wider streets now. Concrete buildings rose around them, some ten or even twenty stories high, covered with billboards and murals. This was the city's finest neighborhood. Teashops, restaurants, and boutiques lined the streets. Bahayans bustled between office buildings. Perhaps once New Manila had fostered the finest of Bahayan culture, but Earth culture had invaded this place. The restaurants boasted of authentic Earth cuisine—you could eat all the paninis and sushi you liked. Imported fresh from Earth, if you believed the signs. The shops played songs by Tristan, Earth's latest heartthrob pop star. The Bahayans who lived and worked here wore Earth clothes—business suits for the men, summer dresses for the women. Success meant looking Earthling. As if native Bahayan culture denoted barbarism.
Maria even saw a billboard advertising skin-whitening cream. LOOK AS BEAUTIFUL AS AN EARTHLING! A Bahayan model smiled from the billboard, holding a tub of cream. She still had Bahayan eyes, but her skin was pale, not brown like Maria's.
This too is the cost of war, Maria thought. Not just the loss of our lives but our culture.
The limo stopped by a tall white building on the coast, the tallest in Mindao. A few shanties spread across the beach and side streets like mushrooms growing around a tree. The chauffeur opened the door for Maria.
"My lady?"
He accompanied her into the building, where a concierge greeted them with a smile and bow. The chauffeur led Maria across a sparkling lobby and into the elevator. They rose to the penthouse on the twentieth floor.
There the chauffeur left her—in her gilded cage atop an ivory tower.
Maria spent a few moments exploring the penthouse. Spanning the building's entire top floor, it featured luxurious furniture. An oak bed with a soft mattress. Leather armchairs and couches. Bookcases containing works of Earthling literature. There was even a grand piano.
A memory pounded through Maria. Jon and her, sitting in a cafe a few weeks ago. There was a piano there too. Jon had played for her. At first his own music, songs from Falling Like the Rain, his uncompleted r
ock opera. And then he had played "Hey Jude" and other Beatles song, and everyone in the cafe had sung. But Maria knew he had played for her alone.
I wish you were here to play for me again, Jon, she thought.
The penthouse's coffee table caught her eye, pulling her back to the present. There were three items there. Gifts from the general? A red rose, perhaps a reference to Maria's song. An antique globe—pointedly, a globe of Earth, not Bahay, underscoring Earth's dominance over her life. And finally—a chess board. All the pieces were arranged in their opening positions aside from two pawns. One white and one black. Both had taken a single move forward.
This is the game he and I play, Maria thought. She turned away.
Floor to ceiling windows afforded a view of the city. To the east spread the ocean, glimmering blue, speckled with a handful of verdant islands, a thousand fishing boats, and a few Earth warships. To north and south rolled the city. From up here, Maria could barely even see roads and alleyways, just a million sheets of corrugated steel forming a patchwork of roofs like a field of rust. Only a few landmarks broke the shantytown sprawl. The Blue Boulevard, its neon lights sleeping in the day. The Cathedral of the Sky, rising proud from the slums, painted azure. Bustling Merkado Bayan, the city marketplace, its awnings fluttering with countless colors. And there in the distance, outside the city proper—Little Earth.
Maria faced the northern windows, squinted, and tried to see beyond the city. The war raged there. Jon fought there. But a haze cloaked the horizon, hiding the man she loved.
She turned away from the windows and entered the bedroom. The mattress was softer than the one back in her old maid's quarters. And definitely softer than her stone coffin in the city cemetery. Like she had back at Little Earth, Maria hid her knife under the mattress. In a world of uncertainly, her father's knife had become an anchor to home.
She lifted the rose the general had left on her pillow. It pricked her thumb, and she sucked the blood.
"So this will be my new home," Maria said to herself. "The general has a house of his own. No wife. No kids. And yet still he keeps me here like a mistress."
She wondered why, and then she understood. He saw her as an exotic rose, himself as a conquering emperor. But one could never live with a rose nor emperor. When you lived with someone, all their masks crumbled, and you saw who they truly were. You saw the crumbs around the kitchen table. You saw the mess in the bathroom. You heard them pass gas, snore, and chew too loudly. You saw them in the morning without makeup and before coffee, and you heard them belch and curse at the television. No, you could not live with a rose nor emperor. Such people just wore masks. And you could not wear a mask all day long.
The general wants us to keep wearing our masks, Maria thought. That's why we won't live together. Here I will be Maria, and in his home he will be Chuck, both our masks off. And when we meet, we will be the general and the last rose of summer.
She waited for a few moments. Just to make sure the chauffeur was gone, that she was alone.
Then she ripped the diamond off her neck.
She didn't have to meet the general until tonight. Until then she had work to do.
* * * * *
She was Maria de la Cruz, and she wore nice dresses, and she had a purse full of money, and she lived in a luxury penthouse in New Manila. And the first thing she did with her new wealth was visit the slums.
It took all morning. She passed from bar to bar, alley to alley, and walked along the train tracks and over the landfills.
Everyone here knew her. They told her where to look. And by noon, Maria found them.
The children of the imprisoned bargirls.
The guilt from that day still weighed upon Maria. The military police had raided the Goodbye Kisses booth, had destroyed the Bargirl Bureau. Only Maria had escaped. Her fellow spies now languished behind bars, leaving their children alone and hungry.
None had fathers around. Some of the fathers had joined the Kalayaan, were fighting or lying dead in the jungle. A few of the children were mestizos. Half-Earthlings. Their fathers were fighting alongside Jon up north, or they had returned to Earth, abandoning their Bahayan families. For a while, the children had survived the slums. Their mothers, working the bars, would bring home money. Now the urchins were eating trash.
Some were already selling their bodies in the sleazier brothels, the ones along Lollipop Lane. Even the bargirls of Blue Boulevard, their pride crushed long ago, spoke of Lollipop Lane in disgust, and they lived in terror of their children ending up there. Now the bargirls were behind bars, and their children stood in the shadowy alley, holding lollipops, waiting for titos with pesos. They were that desperate for food. Thirty thousand of prostitutes worked in Mindao, and here were the most miserable, some as young as six.
Maria gathered them all. She gathered these poor little souls. These filthy urchins. These children in rags, covered in filth, huge eyes peering between strands of ragged hair. Some were starving. Some were dying from STDs. They were all beautiful and kind and worth more than any diamond Maria could ever wear.
She took them to her penthouse, ignoring the concierge's consternated look. She bathed them. She clothed them. She fed them a hot meal. She gave them medicine. She comforted those who wept. And finally at night, Maria hugged them, tucked them into bed, kissed their foreheads, and told them stories until they slept. She had gathered twenty-six children into this penthouse, saved from the landfills and alleyways. The general had meant for only her to live here. But Maria would never dream of leaving the children in the slums.
When they were all sleeping, Maria stood in profile before the mirror, and she examined her growing bump.
In a few months, my own child will be born, she thought.
She was afraid. So afraid. Afraid that her baby would grow up in the shantytown too. That the child would end up on Lollipop Lane. A prostitute. A hungry little urchin on the street, eating from trash bins.
Maria remembered her journey in the rainforest, her night of fever dreams. The dreamtoad had spoken to her.
"It will be the only way to save her," the toad had said. "You must use his knife."
Maria understood now. The dreamtoad had foreseen her child. A girl. Maria still had her father's knife. But she did not know who to stab. She needed Jon with her. She needed Jon to save their daughter.
I can't let our child become a bargirl, she thought. She must not end up on the Blue Boulevard or Lollipop Lane. You must come back to me, Jon. We must be a real family. We must live together on Earth. In a little house among trees. Promise me, Jon. Promise you'll return.
She slept among the children that night, for the general did not summon her.
She woke up at dawn. She had a busy day. She had to save the world.
* * * * *
"I need a fake. A cubic zirconia that looks exactly the same. It must look perfect."
The gemcutter raised an eyebrow. He was an old Bahayan with wrinkly brown skin and a long white beard. "But my dear, this diamond! Such a precious jewel! This is Mother Mary's Tear. The most famous diamond on Bahay. It's priceless."
"I'll pay you well," she said. "After I sell the original. A thousand pesos."
The old man nodded. "Ah, I understand. I've seen this before. Your husband bought it for you. You need the money, but selling his precious gift would break his heart."
"Exactly," Maria said. "Can you make a fake? Can you make it so perfect that my husband won't notice?"
The gemcutter studied the diamond again. He whistled. "Such a beautiful jewel. See how it captures the light! No zirconia will ever glitter so beautifully." He gazed at Mother Mary's Tear wistfully, then looked at Maria. His tufted white eyebrows shadowed eyes like two glittering pieces of obsidian. "But yes, I can cut a convincing imitation. An experienced jeweler like me would spot the difference. You could tell from the brightness of the light. But nobody else would know."
"Perfect," Maria said. "And one more thing. I need the zirconia to be hollow.
Like a locket. With its inner chamber hidden from the outside."
He blinked at her. "A hollow zirconia?"
"I will pay you two thousand pesos."
The gemcutter glanced around his little shop. A thousand gems glittered in the lamplight. He leaned toward Maria.
"I don't want trouble, my dear. Whoever bought you Mother Mary's Tear is a powerful man. May I be correct in guessing… an Earthling?"
"I will pay you three thousand pesos. A perfect imitation. Hollow. And no questions."
The old man exhaled slowly. "I do love a mystery. Very well. Come back in a week, and it will be done."
"I will come back tomorrow with four thousand pesos, and it will be done."
"Very well! Leave the diamond with me, and—"
"No. I cannot part with it. Take photographs. Take a mold. But it does not leave my choker until I have a replacement. I will pay you five thousand pesos, and you will do this."
It was a small fortune. She would have to sell a few items from the penthouse. It was worth it.
She left the gemcutter's shop. She headed back to her building, where the limo was waiting. The chauffeur smiled and opened the door.
"The general requests your presence tonight, my lady."
She nodded and entered the limo.
She had moved another pawn in a long chess game. She would not rest until the king fell.
Chapter Fifteen
The Trial
As Lizzy walked toward the courthouse, the crowd howled.
"Traitor!"
"Slit-lover!"
"You should have died in Bahay!"
It was an Indian summer day, and the sun beat down, drying the autumn leaves to crispy brown. The courthouse rose ahead, its columns like the teeth of some primordial stone giant. Lizzy wanted to be anywhere else. But she had come here. To testify. To do her duty. To put that bastard behind bars.
You stand trial today, Clay Hagen, she thought. A year ago, I broke your arm. Now I'm going to doom you to life in prison.
Earthling's War (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 3) Page 12