by David Bowles
“Welcome to a meeting of vigilantes.”
Tenshi smiled. “People have always loved vigilantes, mayor. Let’s hope they love us enough to back us up as we take down the extremists.”
“No small talk, eh, Tenshi?” Pishan grabbed a cushion and eased onto the shining wood floor.
“No time for it, Anshyano. My uncle’s been busy, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, and we need to discuss what’s going to be done about him.”
The mayor sighed. “There’s no real evidence he’s involved. And his wife—”
Tenshi raised a hand to stop him. “I know the man better than you. Trust me. His hands are bloody.”
Mori cleared his throat. “I hear through the grapevine that Arojin Koroma wants to establish an anti-terrorism squad. With himself as its minister, I should add. He went directly to the Archon with the proposal, bypassing certain heated debate on Kikwete’s turf, and tried to get the Archon to set up the squad as an executive order in time of crisis, which our charter provides for.”
Kikwete’s face was expressionless. “What was Rawe’s response?”
“He refused to do it. But he apparently liked the idea of the squads. He’s drawing up a proposal, or rather, Bek is drawing it up. He’ll submit it to the Chamber next week.”
“By Domina, I’ll not put that power-hungry Koroma in charge of a bunch of soldiers. I’m sure we can fix things so that the minister in charge of the squads will either be selected by a majority of deputies or voted into office by the public at large.”
Umkapa interjected. “Where was Arojin Koroma planning on getting people for these squads? If Civil Security soldiers are sufficient for his proposal, why not simply use CS to quell any further terrorism?”
“He wants to pull in the surviving JLA members as officers and recruit off-world soldiers to serve under them.”
Mayor Chunhawan blinked incredulously.
“Off-worlders, Mori?”
“Yeah, Seni. Seems weird to me, too.”
“Don’t trust him.” Everyone turned to face Brando. What the hell am I doing? These people don’t need my advice.
“Want yall to meet Professor Brando D’Angelo of Milan, Earth.” Tenshi nodded at him to continue, her eyes glazing over with barely suppressed dread.
“Seems to me Koroma’s milking this as much’s he can. Squads full of off-worlders, patrolling the streets of Pathwalker towns… Anybody else think this will make anti-reform sentiment swell?”
“Shite.” Tenshi grimaced and closed her eyes. “The bastard’s thought of everything. If you hold passage of the measure up, Speaker, he’ll accuse you of endangering citizens in order to capitalize on the tragedy for political gain.”
“But that’s what he’s trying to do!”
“Right. Brilliant, no? Reformers want more off-worlders immigrating, Santo’s going show Jitsujin that they need to fear them through his spin on the massacre and placement of non-native soldiers in civilian areas. If the Chamber tries to make the squads more democratically controlled, he’ll say yall were using the massacre as an excuse to push more reform. Can’t win.”
Incredulous, Brando saw her bend her head ever so slightly forward as she turned her back to the group.
Defeated? Impossible.
Umkapa stood, visibly irritated. “We need to preempt him by calling an emergency meeting of the Chamber and proposing our own version of the squads before Bek, who we all know favors Santo, gets a chance to submit the Archon’s supposed proposal.”
“How early can we do this?” asked the Mayor
“We may be able to get everyone together tomorrow,” the Speaker mused, “but our best chance is early Monday morning.”
Tenshi shook her head. “Bad idea, yall.”
“You don’t trust us?” Kikwete asked. “Or do you not think deputy-controlled squads will be effective?”
“There’s a reason we don’t have police, Speaker. They end up trampling on citizens’ rights. Our system—community-based service providers and conflict resolvers coordinated by teyopan and overseen by each town’s Councity of Anshyano—works well enough. And bigger problems get dealt with well enough by Civil Security. Creating cops and putting them under the Chamber of Deputies is still creating cops. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.”
Yuki Umkapa gave a weak laugh. “Your ideological purity blinds you, Tenshi. If we don’t act, your uncle will police all of us. At least this way, we’re calling the shots. Or what do you suggest we do instead, huh?”
“Prefect Umkapa, I’ve told yall before: get the CPCC involved. I don’t understand why ambassador Enver’s not at this meeting. We are a valuable symbol for the Consortium: they want badly for us to join them, setting an example both for the other corporate holdings leaning toward secession and for the independent worlds that’ve been discovered recently. The consortium would do everything in their power to keep Jitsu open and free of the sort of bigotry my uncle espouses.”
It was Speaker Kwikete’s turn to shake his head. “Absolutely not. This is a local matter, Tenshi. I understand the affection you feel for the ambassador and her staff, but we have to keep local autonomy in peacekeeping work.”
“If you insist on beating Santo to the punch on this authoritarian scheme, you’d better move fast.” Tenshi’s voice was cold. “Monday will be too late. He must have already considered the possibility that you’d try to establish squads first.”
Nodding somberly, they all fell together around Kikwete’s comtable, hashing out the details of an anti-organized crime unit. Brando realized after a moment that Tenshi wasn’t around. Glancing about, he noticed curtains moving slowly in the evening breeze that blew in across a balcony contiguous to the room.
He waited through another couple of minutes of chatter and then excused himself. He found her outside, leaning against a column that held up the veranda's roof, pulling her hand languidly away from her mouth and exhaling smoke. It took him a moment to process what she was doing.
“Smoking a sikar,” he said a bit incredulously. The one substance more forbidden on Earth than sugar: tobacco.
Her head turned slightly as she took a final drag and flicked the remainder into the darkness.
“Yes, I am. Was. Nasty habit, I know, but we all have at least one. Tell me, what's yours?”
What a question.
“I spend too much time thinking,” he admitted.
“Ah, that's one of the worst, especially when you don't act on what you're thinking.”
“Did you come out to smoke or to avoid the planning?”
“Both. I’m frustrated, tired of the same old rhetoric. Lots of talk about stopping the ultra-Dominians. I prefer action. Why sit around discussing what we should do? If we should do it, then let's do it. If you only knew how many times they’ve talked about solutions before, about preempting the extremists...”
“But they are doing something this time, aren’t they?”
“Oh, Brando, they’re so damn slow. I’ve been telling these fools to eliminate him for years, but they never acted. Domina, I hate feeling so impotent. So I’m out here, relieving tension via nicotine.” She flashed a weak smile. “What's your excuse? Our backward theocracy strike you as idiotic?”
Brando laid his hands on the metal railing of the balcony. “Sorry, I have some history. I was brought up in a religious household: my aunt and my mom are clerics, my grandmother directed music. They used to make me sing and tell stories before the congregation. Church always came first. I have no more patience for religious politics.”
“Why'd you come Jitsu? Not to be mean, but it seems inane for an atheist, if that’s what you are, to come to this place. Are you punishing yourself?”
“No.” Oh, mothergod, yes. “And I’m not an atheist. Agnostic, let’s say. Searching. Besides, I hear you're not exactly the acme of Neo Gnosticism yourself.”
“Don’t believe the Dominian hype. I walk the Path better than most.” Her supernova eyes glinted in the starligh
t. “You’ve rejected Wiccan Catholicism, then. Do you still think people have souls?”
“As has been proven time and again, we’re biological and cultural animals. I don’t know that there's a way for us to be more eternal than what we leave behind us.”
Tenshi raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I like that.”
Brando wasn't sure whether she was serious.
“But answer my first question: why'd you come?” Tenshi waited for a response with unwavering gaze.
He mulled it over. “I came looking for, oh, what's the word,” he muttered as he flipped through mental databases and came up blank. “Damn it, my Baryogo is so terrible...”
“Say it in Standard, Professor. I do speak it, if you recall. Not as well as you, but...”
He barked, “Simplicity,” cutting her off, irritated yet pleased again at the sound of his title in Baryogo: Kyosu.
“Hmmm, guess you're looking for tanjun.”
“Wow. That's an old word. Yall still use that here.”
“Uh, yes. Never seen anyone get excited about a word before. Except maybe my uncle, but that's another story.”
“I'm a linguist: that's what we do. Tanjun. Interesting.”
“You're pronouncing it wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes. You do the exact same thing with all your 'oo' sounds. Sounds like you're trying to speak Solpat or something.”
“That's the way Baryogo's spoken closer to Sol. I've noticed the difference, of course, but there was no time to work on it.”
“Look,” she said, and reached out her hand to lightly grip his jaw. Her fingers were thin and soft, except for calluses at the tips and base. Brando felt a shock thrill through him at her touch, as if he'd been infused with electrical ichor from some stormy protogod. “Your lips have to—come on, loosen up—they have to purse out a little. Yes, that's it.”
Her fingertips brushed his lips for a tortuous second. “Now try it?”
“Tanjun.”
“No, still not right. Try again? Wait, think I see the problem.”
She cupped her hand against his larynx, an exquisite feeling he wished he had the power to slow down time to sustain. “Say it?”
“Okay, that’s what I thought. Here's the problem.” She reached down, took his hand, and placed it at the base of her own throat. Her neck was smooth and hard, like touching some ancient Enrico Butti sculpture in Milan, but warm and pliant, the blood throbbing rapidly through her jugular, a bronze statue come to life and thrumming with the heat of a thousand impassioned sculptors.
“Tanjun,” she said. “You feel? No vibration, Brando. Pure. Got to whisper the oos.” She returned her hand to his throat. His remained on hers, trembling now, quickened by her pulse. He noticed the close back unrounded vowel, unvoiced into a light whisper. It slipped, nearly imperceptible, between the B and the R of his name when she pronounced it with her husky voice.
That's the sound, he thought. Like a phantasm, almost not there, a shadow of a vowel.
“Do it?” she instructed.
He said the word with deliberate care, every centimeter of his flesh aware of her nearness to him, electric and warm.
She repeated it, her eyes fixed on his. Those supernovae forced all else from his field of vision, threatening to drown him in eternal joy.
Her hand slipped to the back of his neck, under the hair that brushed his shirt collar.
“Come here,” she murmured as she pulled him close. His right arm came up and he plunged both hands into the erinys darkness of her hair as their hungry mouths together, passionate and slow, desperate for the moment, but determined to let it last. After what could've been seconds or centuries, they slowly, reluctantly pulled apart.
“Five minutes and we're at my flat,” she mumbled hoarsely into his ear, her skin flush with a palpable desire.
Brando nodded, unable to speak, passion making him giddy with vertigo.
They ducked back inside. Tenshi’s colleagues were still immersed in a heated argument as to the composition of the squads
“I’m sorry, yall, but Professor D’Angelo needs to get back to campus. Loop me in on the comchain later, yeah?”
They all exchanged the briefest of goodbyes. Then Tenshi led Brando to the rooftop. Her transport was long and black and it ripped through the night like their passion rendered in speeding steel. The two stared at each other during the entire five-minute trip, hungry, silent.
As the Tarhiata autoed into the landing bay, they fell upon each other again. She keyed the lock with her eyes closed and didn't break from their embrace as she dragged him from the transport's interior. They crossed the bay, tugging at each other's clothes, desperate to get their hands on each other's flesh. The doors opened onto her suite and they spun inside, as if dancing, unwilling to let go for fear of losing the moment, through living room and kitchen and into the darkness of her bedroom, where their clothes finally came off and they spent hours becoming as acquainted with each other's bodies as they were with their own, by touch and smell and taste, the black swirling around them like the primal matrix, warm and wet and ubiquitous.
INTERCHAPTER B
Encrypted message
Intercepted by Al-Muzzamml outpost 13-ES
19 May, 2683 15:32:14 (SST)
Decrypted via Arietid quantum cipher
Sweet Secret Watcher,
All the pieces are on the board.
I know you want to swoop in, snatch me up. But yours is a patient soul. Wait.
If I have returned from beyond the Grey Prison, peeled myself from the Eight, it is to teach a lesson that humanity will never forget.
The Brotherhood. The Extremists who have strayed from the Path and yet dare call themselves Dominians. The self-righteous Reformers and their insufferable Architect.
The Consortium itself. Broken. Burning.
That future is what we strive toward. Tearing the false face from the cosmos.
I have found a better way to commune with you, Beloved. Soon.
Watch the news.
—Your Unblind Mistress
CHAPTER 11
The morning light filtered in, tinged peach by its passage through the bone-shaded drapes, making every curve and angle of Tenshi’s body and face stand out in an angelic glow. Brando lay at her side, propped on one elbow, regarding her longingly and trying to assess his feelings for her.
With a soft mumble, Tenshi stirred awake. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she crinkled them in the sincerest smile Brando’d ever seen.
“Morning. How long have you been like that?”
“Don’t know, forty-five minutes or so. You’re beautiful, know that?”
“Come on, shut up.” She made a grab for the silvery sheets, but Brando stopped her hands. Such self-conscious modesty seemed out of place in her.
“Serious,” he said. “You are.”
“I’m too short and too muscular. That’s what everyone says.”
“Since when have you paid attention to what people say?”
She tilted her head in mock cogitation, then nodded. “Good point.”
“Besides, they’re nuts. Your body is… well it’s perfect, that’s all.” He ran his fingers slowly between her breasts and down the firmly ridged softness of her abdomen. “To be frank, you’re a damn goddess. No idea why you’re interested in a bloke like me.”
Tenshi scowled. “Don’t put yourself down, Brando. What do you mean, a bloke like you? You’ve got to show more respect for yourself, you want others to. You’re handsome, intelligent, talented. All you need’s a little determination and fire, you’d be a perfect man.”
“Ah, so you admit I’m not.”
“None of us are perfect. Some of us strive for perfection, though. That’s what separates us from the rest.”
Brando nodded. “Didn’t think you’d warm to self-deprecation. Surprised to hear some from your own mouth, just moments ago.”
“Okay, okay. So I’m a little hypocritical when it comes to phy
sical appearance.” Kissing his chest, she added. “You’re also a pretty good lover, by the way. Guess I should’ve expected it.”
Rose tinting his olive brown skin, Brando glanced at the far wall, a broad expanse of white stucco broken by two abstract paintings in which colors swirled like his emotions. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re from Milan. Sei cattolico wiccano, vero?
“Ooh, she knows Italian!” Brando joked, wishing he could deflect what he knew was coming. “Did you pick up a little from—what was that biologist’s name? Spinelli?”
Tenshi laughed. “Jealous?”
“Maybe. But, yeah, I was raised Wiccan Catholic.”
“Isabella told me the Great Rite is at the heart of yall’s religion. Union of the Maiden and the Divine Lover. Sexual emancipation at age thirteen, classes on technique to draw down grace through climax, multiple partners by sixteen.”
Brando let his head fall back onto the pillow.
“Tenshi, I never exercised my sex rights. My parents were freaked, especially my mamma, who felt embarrassed when I didn’t attend classes at my aunt’s chapel.”
“Why didn’t you?” Tenshi folded a pillow under her locs, lifting her head up to look at him better.
“Okay, a little background. I grew up in the Quartiere Africano in the Loreto district of Milan, at the heart of a few busy blocks everyone called Piccolo Kinshasa. Trilingual childhood: Italian, Lingala and French. Standard taught in school. Dozens of other languages spoken throughout Loreto, one of the most diverse places in Italy. I became obsessed. Wanted to speak to everyone in their native tongue. People were amused at first, then they realized I was a prodigy.”
“Ah, your mind was elsewhere.”
“Exactly. By the time I was of age, it seemed frivolous to rut with every girl and boy the Church considered compatible. Also, around this time, I discovered Baryogo and, uh, began to fantasize about meeting a native speaker, perhaps from the Belt or platforms.”