The Blue-Spangled Blue (The Path Book 1)

by David Bowles

  But he had neither desire nor energy for training today. He trudged to his study and palmed the door open. A massive oak desk sat in its center, a holo projector on the floor beyond it. The walls were taken up by maps, electronic devices and bookshelves full of old medical texts and more modern data storage devices with detailed information on subjects as varied as gene manipulation and transactional physics. The desktop was cluttered with hardcopy, which Brando swept aside to get to the imbedded panel. He thumbed his system on, and the holographic display jumped to life.

  “Buon giorno, Brando.” Professor Calvino flowed upward out of the projector. A somatoid of him, that is. An artificial persona built upon what Brando remembered of his personality. Calvino himself had died some five years before. His family had sent many messages to D'Angelo, and he'd ignored them all.

  “Como stai, professore? Do me a favor, no? Pull the XID file on Konrau Beserra I got from that informant.”

  “Naturalmente. Konrau Beserra. Head of the Brotherhood, or in Kaló, L'ermandá. The principal syndicate presently infiltrating Jitsuan business and black-market spheres. Konrau was born to an unmarried miner on Tenochtitlan platform, which has orbited Jupiter in the Sol system for 250 years. Father was Sami Arredondo, a Brotherhood mademan, born at the fringes of an important family. Konrau spent little time with Arredondo, and the brotherhood lieutenant was imprisoned when his son was eight. He died in prison. Despite being forced to live his adolescence without financial support from the Brotherhood, Konrau rose to power as a young man, after eliminating the boss of a rival gang called Anhele d'Atlan, another of the syndicates suspected of presently scrabbling for a stronghold on Jitsu. This boss believed he had killed Konrau years before, having shot him in the eye. Konrau has spent twenty-two years as kasike of the Brotherhood, and his half-brother is...”

  “Dead.”

  “Updating files. Date of death?”

  “Today.”

  “Cause?”

  Brando leaned back in his chair.

  “Accidental sensory overload during interrogation.”

  “Very good. Felipe Beserra, it is suspected, was placed in charge of the infiltration about eight years ago after a string of previous underbosses were either eliminated by the ATS's Alpha Squad or by their own men. Felipe Beserra himself was eliminated on...”

  “Let's go back to Konrau. Why did that boss try to kill him? Did he move against the Angels?”

  “Insufficient data to know for certain, though several informants mention the involvement of the boss's daughter. Come Romeo e Giulietta, forse. The most plausible rumor is that he was working as a Brotherhood spy within the Angels’ hierarchy on Tenochtitlan when he became enamored of Jeini Andrade. It would appear that either she turned him over or by accident caused his identity to become known.”

  “I seem to remember intel about some psychosomatic illness of his.”

  “Yes. You got that information from your interrogation of Paulo Bega. It appears that Beserra imagines he feels pain where he was once wounded. Physiologically mpossible, but psychologically telling, as are his impulse to be alone in wide-open areas and his never getting married.”

  “Interesting. Shut down, professore. I can't think right now.”

  He stood up and began pacing about. The pressure was building in his head, the darkness swirling just at the periphery of his awareness.

  Item: Ben had known he was interrogating Beserra's half-brother.

  Item: Major Sosa wanted Beserra brought in to him, alive.

  Item: Beserra had ordered Tenshi and Tana's assassination at the behest of an arojin of some standing in the government.

  Item: the kewbox’s fail-safes had malfunctioned, and Brando suspected foul play.

  Item: Felipe had known the squad’s casque code, which clinched its being an inside job.

  The pieces were finally coming together, after seven years of Brando beating his head against every conceivable brick wall, but he had a sinking feeling that come tomorrow morning, he'd be stripped of his policing powers just when he needed them the most. In fact, there was a good chance that come tomorrow evening he'd be holed up in a detention cell awaiting trial.

  Need to get things ready. Might have to move fast once the shite starts to cycle.

  He scooted the desk to one side, knelt and keyed a well-camouflaged panel on the floor. Several tiles slid back, revealing a ladder leading into darkness. Down the ladder he went, into a claustrophobic tunnel, southward and gradually down, lights every four meters or so till he reached an airlock. He cycled through, passed alongside consoles, seats and equipment, pausing only to run his hand across two huge transparent cylinders and a refrigeration unit, until he came to a relatively small chamber.

  Inside was a large but ancient 'frame and a faux-life interface. He sat in the chair and activated the system, closing his eyes as the pink light played across his forehead and short-cropped hair.

  Tenshi's house was restored to its pristine, astonishing original beauty. Brando made his way to the garden out back, where Tenshi was building a play set for Tana, complete with swings and a slide, as their daughter lay on her stomach in the grass, drawing on a datapad. Her head turned toward him as he stepped onto the patio, and her eyes lit up.

  “Apa! You’re home!”

  She jumped up and ran into his arms. He spun her around like a transport at full, both of them laughing. Tenshi set down her hammer and joined them, kissing Brando as he set Tana down.

  “Hey, umpenzi. How was work?”

  “Good. Better than in a long time.”

  They sat at the granite table. Tana jumped up, ran inside, and came back with a deck of cards.

  “You promised, remember? Quality time with us, playing aguram.”

  He smiled and nodded. They played a couple of games, engaging in small talk about the weather and Tenshi's progress on the play set.

  After thirty minutes, the fail-safes D'Angelo had incorporated into this fantasy world kicked in, as they always did, preventing him from slipping into delusion. He'd had that much foresight, no matter how questionable his visits might be.

  Tana set her cards down, folded her hands together, and looked deep into his eyes, an expectant look on her beautiful face.

  “You catch them yet, apa?”

  “Not yet. But soon, sweetie. Soon. That's why I came so early today. This is the last time I visit you here. Don't be afraid, don't cry. I’ll still be with you, just differently.”

  Tenshi shook her head, smiling.

  “Brando, you programmed us to remind you that we aren't your real family. We don't think or feel a thing. We only exist to reinforce their fading echoes. That's what you told us. You also said to stress what was most important. Ona ra-Oni. The Oni Way. Don’t forget the jagen, Brando. You have to slay it. If the other stuff doesn't work out, that's life. At least you’ll avenge your wife and child. And give Jitsu justice. If you don't despair.”

  Brando nodded soberly. It would've been easy to slip into psychosis if he hadn't programmed the somatoids to constantly remind him who they were not.

  But without these visits, what might have happened? His siblings and teachers on the Path had kept him from suicide. But worse than death was forgetting. Moving on. Acceptance.

  For Brando had reached satori, had seen his spark his broken self aglow.

  And tangled in that teyo, that illuminated self, were the simran of his wife and child.

  During the first few months after their deaths, Brando had been devastated, utterly bereaved. He had sunk into a black Charybdis of despair of such depth he'd hardly eaten, much less attended to the pressing affairs that accompany all human passing, funeral arrangements and other rituals that serve to soften the anguish of survivors by forcing them to acknowledge how routinely normal death is.

  His mother-in-law had stepped in and taken charge, feeding him when he'd permit it and planning the cremation service. He did not attend. Could not accept what had happened. Was driven deeper and de
eper within himself, confronted with his many inadequacies, blamed for the murders by some self-hating part of his being that urged him to join them, the same voice than had urged him to plunge into the icy blue when his father left him years before.

  One day Meji Pishan had walked into Brando and Tenshi’s home. They had found Brando sitting on the floor of the great room, upon tiles still stained with his loved ones’ blood.

  “This won’t do,” the prefect had said. “You won’t hear her here. In fact, there’s nowhere you can go where her true voice will reach you from ra-Yindawo. But its echo is whispering within you. You walked the Path together, meditated together, explored your selves in the physical world together, building home and school and community. That which made her who she was she entrusted to you. Not her translated soul, no. Her teyo, that swirling mass of glowing self, has left a simran in your own. An afterimage that can guide you.”

  Brando’s eyes had looked up at them, the first time he’d acknowledge a person in weeks. “Where can I go to hear it?”

  “Lower than this,” Meji had said. “To the very bottom. The Well, Brando. Let’s go to the Well.”

  There in that darkness, in the disassociative grip of mohiyo, he had shut out the universe and listened to his heart.

  Faint but clear, a voice had rung out. Tenshi’s simran. Perhaps his spark

  “This is your response to our deaths? What good does it do our memory for you to surrender like this? To let entropy win? Did you learn nothing from me? Didn't you say that we were your world? Build, Brando. Build. Your self. Your future. Our people’s future. Find your own personal Way, one that uses our murder as a lever to thrust this world toward justice.”

  Indignation had begun to build within Brando, fueling his rise from the darkness. Back at home, he had begun a daily ritual of mohiyo consumption and contemplation of Dreschian kongan during deep meditation. He’d broken himself to pieces again and again and again, discarding all the weakness, all the sweetness, all the fumbling and useless intellect, until all that was left was his raging love, the poignant echoes of Tenshi and Tana, and an overpowering hunger for vengeance. For Justice.

  With the backing of the people of Kinguyama, for whom Tenshi and Tana had been converted into martyrs who strengthened the town’s pro-reform resolve, he'd taken an active part in the investigation of the murders. And when Civil Security could get no results, the leadership of the town successfully petitioned the Archon to transfer the case to the Anti-terrorism Squads.

  Despair had threatened to creep back in when the Squads were unsuccessful. Months of investigation into the private security firm responsible for Kinguyama’s defense grid had yielded no answers. The grid had been shut down remotely, and though the ATS and CS assumed control of the town’s security, neither could affix blame to Meji Pishan’s hired gendarmes alone: many people had had access to the equipment and computers, but the leads took the investigation nowhere.

  Brando had become convinced that it was the squads’ lack of passion that kept them from unraveling the case, and a roaring orange rage had threatened to consume him.

  Kongan 133 had come unbidden to his mind. “You seek to puppet others yet you will not pull the strings of your own limbs.”

  That was when Brando had finally understood. He would have to act. But he’d held back, afraid, unable to embrace the Way his inner Tenshi had signalled.

  The message of his spark kept echoing in his memory.

  “There’s a reason for the pain. Always remember. Your love matters.”

  Use my love to endure more pain. Yank myself into action. How can I do it? I am willing to shatter and remake myself once more. But I don’t have the skills or the knowledge. Who will take me seriously?

  But given the alternative, Brando had shaken off his fear.

  I’ll make you proud, Tenshi. Your life was not in vain.

  Brando had begged for a position on the Squads but was rejected because of his complete lack of experience and physical ineptness. He had found it hard to argue with this truth, and it set his resolve to teetering again. Depression had opened wide its maw.

  But then the ramatini had sent him a message. A single word.

  Come.

  Hekima Umchawi and the other clerics of the Shattering Way had attended to him during that second bout of despair. He had followed the same routine as Tenshi there on the Distant Isles—fishing, shaping boats, looking within to contemplate his misshapen self. When asked to be part of bahariro hija, he had gladly accepted. The ramatini had placed the kiyish in his hand, and he’d wept to feel the old spark that had often shocked him when his ring had touched Tenshi’s.

  During the two-month sea pilgrimage, Brando had studied the hidden scriptures: the Kitabu ra-Chiwaga or Book of Bricolage and Kiyik juya Shari, Blood upon Sand. In those arcane texts, he’d found passages that sketched a path to drastic transformation.

  He had remembered the fair, his speed and his strength, and had accepted the challenge required of him. Then he’d placed a call to Ambarina Lopes. While at first reluctant despite her own indignation at Tenshi's death, she agreed to supply him with the illegal tools he required.

  Brando didn't like to think about the rest of that year: leaving Ra-Koreji, cutting himself off from the town and everything he'd come to love, working every day for eighteen hours, enduring agony, shattering his body as well as his self.

  But he had remade himself, had become a man of action, had gone beyond through a disturbing metamorphosis.

  A grim satori. But the Path became clearer after that basic enlightenment.

  This was his Way. His Matapaye ra-Roho, the projection of his broken soul into the illusory world.

  A devastating, dangerous, inhuman machine.

  He’d discovered a way to survive the nothingness.

  At the end of the year, he had visited Pishan. The prefect had been shocked at the transformation. Brando had cut to the chase.

  “Put me on the Squads.”

  Meji had balked. “Brando-shi, what in the Grey Prison have you done to yourself?”

  “I have learned the Wende ra-Kobomaga.” The Deadly Blue Dance. Meji’s face had confirmed they knew what it entailed. “I will avenge them. I will pull Jitsu from their killer’s hands.”

  A shaken Meji had done all they could, but it had been Santo Koroma who’d become Brando’s benefactor. Tenshi’s uncle had stepped in and demanded of the Archon that he approve the commission. And he had.

  Santo, defying all Brando’s preconceptions of him, had helped the former professor enter the ATS.

  “Find the men that killed her, Brando-shi. She and I never got along, but she was my niece, and I’ll see justice done for her at last.”

  Arojin Koroma had provided him much information and support throughout the years. But though Alpha Squad successfully beat back many incursions by the demimundo during his first three years, there were no advances in the case. Absolutely none.

  Brando tracked down the survivors of Chago Martin’s team, five men with a powerful motive to wipe Tenshi from the face of the globe: revenge for the deaths of their seven fellow yaks. He’d tortured them all, pushed them nearly as hard as he’d pushed Felipe today, and he’d had to conclude they’d had nothing to do with it and knew even less. It was as if Tenshi and Tana had been randomly killed by someone who'd then disappeared from the demimundo completely, leaving no trace or informant to bribe.

  Then the Kunti had started trying to infiltrate Jitsu as well, and Alpha Squad had found itself frenetically trying to ward off attacks from sides that drew Brando further and further from his purpose.

  Worst of all, Tenshi's voice had fallen silent in his mind. He was becoming tired, and oblivion smiled at him temptingly. So, after he'd blackmailed a tech smuggler who supplied the yaks into 'giving' him a great deal of illegal equipment, including the 'frame that managed this faux-life, he'd been visiting this virtual home twice a week for the last four years.

  And he'd never forgotten.
Never allowed the image of their bloody bodies to fade in his mind. Never permitted the scrawled, incomprehensible message his daughter had written in her own blood to be erased from his memory. 7U, she had smeared with her little hand across the hardwood floors as her life bled away.

  How many databases had he scoured, how many yaks had he interrogated, trying to unravel the mystery? How many times had he stood before Ben, before the major, before Santo Koroma himself to try to justify his continued....

  His heart leapt. The pieces moved tantalizingly within his mind, reassembling themselves around the new bits of data. Stifling an urge to shout, Brando turned to his daughter's somatoid.

  “Tana, take apa to the living room, okay?”

  She grabbed his hand with a smile and skipped inside, pulling him along. He'd discovered long ago he couldn't face it without her by his side. He trembled like a child, and the darkness spun around him menacingly.

  “Query. The blood, please,” he muttered as they neared the spacious family area.

  His grip on Tana's hand tightened as he was met with the ruddy pools, the streaks and splashes on furniture and walls. And there, near the door—the smeared message his daughter had left for him with the last of her strength.

  Across the years, her mute voice screamed at him. He had never been able to hear what she wanted so desperately to tell him. But now, Felipe Beserra’s hateful words ringing in ears, his mind finally filled in what his daughter's weak hand had been unable to finish.

  Not 7U.

  The letter Z.

  The letter O.

  ZO.