The Blue-Spangled Blue (The Path Book 1)
Page 27
“Oh, that’s the easy part,” she said. “But we need legislative approval. Meji can help us push a measure through the chamber. They’ll get the prefects to back us so the deputies are more receptive to the idea.”
Brando took her hand and kissed it. “Thanks, baby.”
Tenshi rubbed her temples slowly. “What a time for this to come up, huh? We’ve doing so well. But it’s a constant battle, no? The war is never won.”
He smiled weakly and lifted his hand to gently caress her cheek. “No, not ever. But I’ll be by your side throughout the fighting, and you by mine.”
Tenshi closed her eyes and leaned her face into his palm with a deep sigh.
“Yes. Thank Sopiya for that.”
CHAPTER 28
Konrau looked at the reptilian Neo gnostic’s face and smiled diplomatically at the man’s request for an update.
“Santo, with Nawabari Platform now under our control—we bought most of the administration there—we have a better base to launch crews from. We’ll keep hitting the reformer townships, and we’ve got some new contacts in Station City.”
The arojin’s doppelganger nodded at Konrau’s news.
“Good. Just don’t interfere directly with reformer political campaigns, okay?”
“Got it. That it?”
“Yes. You’ll tunnel me if there is a problem, right?”
“Course. Out.”
Konrau was pulled from the faux-conference. He blinked calmly at the brightness of his cavernous office. Security shells stood in the distance along the curve of the oval wall. The only sound was the slight hissing of the climate control unit.
So good to be alone.
It seemed only yesterday that he was running with a klika on Tenochtitlan, the crowded corridors of the platform his playground and his initiation into the life. There’d always been too many people: his cousins at home, the workers in the eateries, other squinks at the game centers. Most of his childhood, he had hardly been able to breathe. But he’d never let it show. Few had ever learned of this weakness.
He’d told Jeini, though. She hadn’t thought less of him for it. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of her visage in his mind. Months had gone by without an apparition. Thinking about her now could only serve to invoke her silent, accusing form again. When he was buried in his plans, making sure Felipe had a major role, all thought of her disappeared.
Konrau took this as a sign. Though he wasn’t nearly as devout as Nestor, he imagined the Blessed Child was trying to show him that only through his plan and his devotion to his brother would he absolve himself of his guilt. Perhaps when the Brotherhood was synonymous with human government, Felipe ruling it beside him, Jeini would forgive Konrau, and he would be at peace.
Unbidden, the whole train of images and memories came tumbling out from behind a seal in his mind: his infiltration of the Anhele, meeting Jeini at a party, their many rendezvous. He’d slipped up, then, muddled by emotions he’d never felt before. They’d found him out, told Bruno Andrade.
His hand went to the ghost of a scar at his temple. The pain began to well. His breathing quickened, got shorter.
“Shite.” He thumbed a connection to Nestor.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Shunt me the latest stuff Felipe sent on our moves against the Scarlet Chaos Triad on New Beijing. I want to take a look at it, see if we’re missing any angles. Need to get those bastards off.”
“Course. There it goes. Anything more, Konrau?”
“Nah, that’s it.”
Hands shaking, the kasike began to manipulate data in the projection field above his desk. Felipe had been quite brutal, but he was getting the job done. Helios was free of the stupid yaks, and soon Tau Ceti would too, despite the heavy AF presence there.
Konrau felt a surge of pride. He’d never had a family before. Not really. His mother didn’t count. Jeini—he shuddered with pain. Jeini might have been family, but—no. Now here was Felipe, part of the world Konrau had dedicated his life to, part of the community of brothers that he wanted to see ascend with himself at the head. Konrau’s clandestine plan no longer existed as simply a way for him to free himself from others: he had someone to share the power with. He had a greater purpose.
He had an heir for the empire he was going to build.
The pain subsided and his breathing returned to normal. Fidensio approved, it seemed. Konrau sighed, both relieved and agitated. Work had always been the answer. His plan stretched out before him in his mind’s eye, beautiful and perfect. The whole Consortium seemed befuddled and afraid. All the moles in the Brotherhood who had been expecting him to “go legit” nice and slow had failed to prepare their true masters for the sudden move against the other syndicates.
First you rip out the competition, then we go legit, he had lied to Nestor.
Disinformation and inexplicable tactics. He had controlled klikas that way as a boy, and he knew he could manipulate governments now. Another two or three years of pushing the yaks farther and farther outward, into the AF’s waiting arms, and the Flotilla would find itself at war with the demimundo. Then Konrau would make the Brotherhood go quiescent, focusing only on Jitsu while his enemies destroyed each other.
Then wait. Recuperate.
His strike would come long before anyone expected it. In other decade or so, he and the family heads would have amassed sufficient ships and weapons. And just when all the clever ones expected him to simply take Jitsu, he’d take it all.
The worlds around Nereus would fall quickly, and the battle would be joined. With his brother at his side, he would rumble as his predecessors had only dreamed of doing.
When he thought of this, his head not only quit hurting: it foamed with pleasure.
His com chimed. It was Nestor.
“Konrau, a message from your brother.”
“Connect me.”
The tattooed visage of Felipe Konrau regarded him with a puzzled look, an expression it seldom held.
“Konrau, you’re not gonna believe this. Aztlan Angels just pulled out. Stopped fighting, said nothing, and left. Bunch of AF ships saw the caravan take off, started following it. I contacted some of the other sub-kasikes, and guess what? Scarlet Chaos is retreating, too. Both syndicates are just up and leaving.”
Konrau shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. “Why the fuck would they do that?”
Felipe shrugged. “Only thing I can think of it is that they’ve started an alliance or something. Looks like we got a bigger problem than you thought, ermano.”
As Konrau struggled to understand how this could have happened, the pain in his eye gradually returned, throbbing insanely, the hammer of memory slamming against his skull.
“Right,” he gasped. “Okay, uh, tell you what. I’ll get back to you.”
Konrau slammed the connection shut as pain bored into his skull.
Immediately, the console beeped again.
“What?” he grunted.
“Weird message,” Nestor announced. “No source address. Computer says it was generated from within our own system. It’s for you; you want I should open it?”
“No, just shunt me the fucking thing.”
Konrau’s hands fumbled around for a vial of moku, knocking several items onto the floor. The screen darkened and flickered, then the message displayed itself.
You don’t know nothing, Konrau. Not for reals, anyhow. But that’s alright. I still love you, as fucked up as that sounds.
—Jeini
Clenching his hands against his skull, he strangled a scream and slipped from his seat onto the floor.
“No. I’ll fucking kill you, whoever wrote this shit,” he panted. “Better not be you, fucking Nestor.”
The pain clamped his eyes shut, and, remembering, he heard her voice, sweet and raspy.
You don’t know who I am.
So? You’re a hot bato, I’m a fem that wants some love. Fuck the rest.
You don’t understand, Jeini.
Ah, shite. Nobody understands nothing, not for reals. You act like you understand shite that I don’t know, but what do you know, eh? Nada.
Eso kres tu.
Only thing I think is that you need to come over here and do that to me again. Not that, the other thing… yes. Mother Mary, I think I could even love a bato like you.
You don’t even know my real name, fem.
You don’t know it neither. You don’t know nothing.
I know I want you.
For reals?
His eyes unfocused through tears that he strained to repress, Konrau saw her lying again before him, her head a bloody ruin, her legs and arms twisted unnaturally.
“Go away, you fucking bitch,” he moaned. “You’re just gonna lay there, ain’t it? Just gonna torture me with your corpse, you fucking demon whore daughter of a punking Angel.”
But her limbs stirred, and horrifyingly she sat up, regarding him with eyes full of blood. Bits of her skull were stuck to her brown hair, dyed nearly black on one side by gore.
That’s right. Blame me. Blame my pa. Blame everyone except your own self.
“It wasn’t my fault, perra!”
Makes you feel a little better, ain’t it. Calling me a bitch. Makes what did you did okay, huh.
“A question of honor. Of brotherhood. Of L’onda,” Konrau countered in a babbling tone as he scuttled away from the image, which began creeping forward.
So those crusty old superstitious fucks is what you live for? You sad little piece of shite. You don’t even get that all these pendehaaz that you’re doing, trying to turn the Brotherhood into an empire, is just you trying to justify this.
Jeini’s hand went to her head, pulled away a clump of hair and gray matter with a sickening sucking sound.
You loved me, and you threw that love away for a fucking useless organization that you could give a shite about, in reality. I know what you want for reals. You want to get enough power to erase me from your mind. But that shite ain’t gonna work, love. I’m here to stay. No matter how much empty space you put between you and the rest of the people—
“I’m gonna be right here.” Her voice rasped like death itself in the silence.
Jeini’s specter reached out, and Konrau found he could retreat no farther. Her cold, pale fingers splayed as her hand neared his trembling jaw, and then the room went swirling, faded to black, and her cold touch sent him into oblivion.
Konrau woke up in his bed. He immediately called for Nestor. The aging counselor looked even older as he quickly crossed the gravity-tiled floor.
“What happened?” Konrau asked.
“You went through some sort of attack. Doctors don’t know what it is. Been about twenty hours.”
Konrau nodded, the fog lifting from his head. The vision of Jeini had faded to a dull afterimage, an annoying psychic ghost that he could, at present, ignore. “What’s the deal with the syndicates?”
Nestor shrugged. “No one knows for sure, but Yen Bandera tells me that the Angels and Scarlet Chaos, they’re in league with each other. Regrouping out in the Chara system. He hears they’re gonna make a move against us, just doesn’t know when.”
“Fuck.”
“Konrau, if they come at us together, the two of them, we’re punked.”
“I know, damnit. Alright. Fuck. We need to pull together. They can’t come at us right away, so we’ve got time to prepare. Let’s bring as many ships as we can back here to the nebula. And get Felipe to handle Jitsu for a while. I need you to help me plan a defense, or even better, a preempt.”
As Nestor left to start making arrangements, Konrau leaned further back into the pillows. Something was wrong. He felt different. His plans were coming undone, but he felt no intense fear or despair. Just an odd grayness, as if nothing really mattered.
But if nothing matters, then I don’t have to worry. I just have to make the old magic happen. I always come back. Hell, I came back from the dead once: this shite ain’t nothing.
At the periphery of his vision, Jeini slowly shook her ruined head.
CHAPTER 29
on her fourth birthday, Tana—who was now learning lingala—asked for a visit with her “mama nkoko Makomo.”
Brando was reluctant. He’d only spoken to his mother twice since coming to Jitsu, and he’d terminated both conferences abruptly once she’d started criticizing his choice of a wife and his new faith. Brando had no need to put up with that crap from her, he reflected. Ra-Koreji and Tenshi’s mayorship gave him more than enough pressure, thank you very much.
“Brando,” Tenshi said as Tana licked icing from her lips. “She’s your mother. Tana’s grandmother. You can’t keep denying them a chance to meet.”
“It’s precisely because she’s my mother that I keep saying no,” Brando countered. “I mean, you’re not encouraging Tana to hang out with your father, either. And everytime you read Tana the emails that Marie-Thérèse sends, my gut churns with worry. What if she says something cruel or inappropriate.”
“I hear you,” Tenshi said, hugging him. “But some problems have to be faced head-on. Set up a faux-conference. Supervise the visit yourself. If she gets out of hand, just cut it short, umpenzi.”
“Okay, Tana-yi,” he announced. “Let me message your mama nkoko, see if she’s available.”
Despite his secret prayers, his mother answered right away, sending a link to her personal keshiki.
The conference room was pale blue, with comfortable furniture, a plush throw rug, and a coffee table that conveniently separated Brando from his mother. Above her smiling, touched-up doppelganger hung the fertile cross, cruciform within a sphere, the symbol of Wiccan Catholicism.
Tana’s doppel rushed over and hugged her grandmother, children being allowed to break faux protocol when under the age of twelve. The two of them chatted like old pals for about fifteen minutes: Tana described her friends at Ra-Koreji, her pet toto—a fuzzy koala-like creature she’d named Fata, short for La Fata Turchina, the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio—the books she’d read and so on.
Then Marie-Thérèse sweetly told her granddaughter, “You give me a couple of minutes with your papà? Time’s almost up, and I need to tell him something. I’ll write you soon, caro mio.”
When Tana had disconnected, Marie-Thérèse nodded slightly at Brando. “She has potential. Did her mother teach her that assertiveness?” Implying, of course, that Brando could not have.
“Suppose so.”
She clapped her hands delightedly. “That was ironic in such a delicious way, Brandino. No confirmation studies though, right?”
“No. Her parents are Pathwalkers. Our faith works differently.”
“I have to admit, this conversion of yours still befuddles me. How quickly you devoted yourself to that whorish clone of the Mother.”
Brando tried to stay calm. His old anger was beginning to bubble up. “Marie-Thérèse, whatever your opinion, this religion lets me think for myself, to follow a Way that works best for me. You, on the other hand, always wanted to do my thinking for me.”
His mother’s smile deepened. “Dear, only because you find it so difficult to think on your own. Your mind was made for the vague profundities of theory. You have trouble with the real world. Look at this Tenshi person you married. Doesn she not control your life? Whose was the idea of starting the school? You? Come, now. You’ve got a doctor’s degree in linguistics. I can’t believe you did that just to run a school, Brando.”
The worst thing about Marie-Thérèse and those of her ilk, Brando realized, was that they added just enough of the truth to their venom so that you sucked it down and let it poison your soul. Let her rot in her own self-righteous putrescence.
“Well, Reverend,” he replied icily, “now that you got that off your chest, I’ve got to go. Nice talking to you.”
He stepped out of the transmission beam, and thumbed the pink light off.
A minor municipal emergency required Tenshi’s attention, so Brando took Tana to Sta
tion City to visit her ‘uncle’ Modupe, to see a show and have some ice cream. They mounted a slidewalk afterwards, cruising through the shopping district, Tana wondering at the towering spires and asking questions about Earth.
The four-year-old got tired of standing, and Brando carried her in the crook of his arms, the soft soapy smell of her hair bringing tears to his eyes as he held her tightly. They got off at Anakwa Park and sat at a bench near the lake. Ducks, real ones imported from Earth, splashed around inside the faintly glowing force wall that surround the fountain.
“Apa,” Tana asked in Baryogo, “Where’s my bibinim?”
“Monchu? Inyoni? Baby, you know they’re living in Takuba prefecture now. We just visited them like a …”
“No, no.” She switched to Standard. “My other grampa. Your papà.”
Brando felt a tug at his heart that he hadn’t experienced in ages. His life was so full that his past sorrows had faded into the background, the faintest wisp of noxious gas in an otherwise clear blue sky. He slumped slightly and looked at Tana searchingly. Her eyes were wide open in expectation, and her black curls framed her oval face and gray-blue eyes like depths of space cradling a burgeoning world.
“Well, Giacobbe, that’s his name, he, uh, he left.”
She frowned. “You mean, he died or something?”
Brando decided to simply tell her the truth. He couldn’t stomach more lies, and she deserved to understand how people could be. “No, baby. You see, when I was fifteen, my papà left us. He went to another planet, started another family.”
Horror filled her eyes. “You mean he left you alone?”
“I had my mamma, and my brother Edoardo.”
“But why? Why he left yall?”
Brando put his arm around her. She was genuinely disturbed by what he’d told her.
“I don’t know, sweetie. He and Marie-Thérèse didn’t get along that well. He was a musician when she wanted him to work in the church. After a while, they just couldn’t be around each other. So he left.”