BeeBee sent a microburst report: Silverback and Shinbone Ted were there, cooperative.
I decided not to wait for BeeBee’s return. I told the others, “I need to go test the waters.”
Lina, holding little Thonny, shook her head. “You need to wait for BeeBee.”
“We need to know if anyone can return, and we need to know before questions and maybe resentments begin to build. I’m going now. You know the discipline, Lina. Operation Coffee and Cream isn’t over yet.”
She hesitated, then nodded, subdued. She gave me one last hug before I headed back.
***
Not long before dark, I reached the Chimney Pipe entrance. Two guards on duty, Bonny-Anne in her leaf-camo pirate drag and tricorner hat, and Tan Gan, with his loincloth and giraffe-spots body paint, met me there, stone-faced. Tan Gan escorted me into the ’ganger-expanded cave and together we rode the rickety mesh-sided elevator down to the nearest rail car terminus.
Then it was a brief, quiet ride to the Canterbury chamber.
When we emerged into the chamber, the first thing I saw was Pothole Charlie. Not in person, of course—he really was on Granny Knot. But his big, homely face was up on one of the big wall-mounted monitors the Directors and their administrators used for news and public announcements. As we pulled to a halt and the metallic shrill of rail cars scraping across metal subsided, I could hear some of Pothole Charlie’s words: “... of the Operation Coffee and Cream conspirators. We’re on our way, and no force on Chiron can stop us.” His hard features softened just a little. “I don’t know how long it will take us ... but help is on the way. Don’t lose hope. When I get back, I don’t want to hear about any more Scrap-Walks. Ever.” Then he managed a smile, an effort that must have drained his battery. “Pothole Charlie out.” The screen darkened.
Tan Gan leaned to speak into my ear. “It’ll start again in two minutes. It’s been playing since the Granny Knot launched.”
“Really?” I gave him a curious look. “And who’s the bad guy in his account of the operation?”
He looked confused. “Bad guy?”
Several ’gangers topped the stairs that provided access to this rail-car station platform. They turned toward me and Tan Gan. In front were three members of the Directors, doubtless alerted to my presence by Tan Gan: Petal, slender dark-skinned elegance in a floor-length dress in vertical earth-color stripes, the King in his rhinestone-studded jumpsuit and sunglasses, and Mister Science, all leather-elbowed jacket, fuzzy red facial hair, and toy smoking pipe. Behind them came two more—Ko in his preposterously authentic samurai armor and Lloranda, her flawless tan skin and black hair contrasting with her usual white drape, which always looked like a funeral shroud. They led several of the Directors’ administrators.
They approached, and Petal opened her mouth to speak, but there was a sudden commotion from floor level, a rush of voices, shouts, even what sounded like applause. I looked down to see a dozen or more ’gangers below where the platform’s support struts met the concrete; the ’gangers were pointing up at me, shouting words I couldn’t make out, some clapping. And more ’gangers were rushing into join them. I realized, belatedly, that what I was seeing was being repeated, from another elevated angle off to one side, on one of the secondary monitors high on the walls.
Petal stepped close enough that I could hear her. She jerked her head toward the monitor Pothole Charlie’s face had previously occupied. “For such a gruff, antisocial old bastard, he can occasionally manage a decent speech.”
I nodded. The roar from the people below was growing louder as ’gangers streamed from surrounding streets and buildings to join the crowd.
Mister Science shook his head. He looked a little shocked, like someone who had just survived a huge explosion only centimeters away and had received only a little cosmetic damage. “I’d have sworn it couldn’t be done.”
I shrugged. “Necessity’s the fabricator of invention.”
And the King stuck out his hand. “Welcome home.”
***
So, yeah, there were changes and adaptations to make after that.
There were celebrations of the success of Coffee and Cream. Celebrations for the return from presumed death of Jitter and Shinbone Ted. Celebrations by the war-hawk ’gangers who rejoiced at the Battle of Akima Spaceport, a military victory of our forces over the humans. Most especially, there were celebrations for the launch of Granny Knot.
All of the surviving Coffee and Cream conspirators, returning home, were treated like heroes. Not so much by the remaining members of the Directors, who accorded us a sort of rueful acceptance, an “I wish you could have done this without making us look wrong” attitude, but by the general population. Pothole Charlie’s message of hope had resonated with them to a degree I couldn’t have imagined. I hadn’t realized how many of the ’gangers had joined the Revolution, had come to the Nest, not to live but to die on their own terms ... and now living was, to a slight degree, an improved possibility.
I did something humans do, but Dollgangers never had. I held a memorial ceremony for Parfait for the few ’gangers who’d been close to her, BeeBee especially. In my speech, I extolled her virtues and tried to put her failings, her pain and madness, into perspective. Later, I convinced the Directors to set aside a Nest chamber, distant from the Canterbury chamber, as a kind of memorial and mausoleum. I put up the first plaque, to Parfait, its metal surface inscribed with her face and name. Fingertip-sized indentations allowed visitors to jack in and receive images of her, texts about her life and history. Soon dozens of plaques devoted to other fallen ’gangers went up beside it.
BeeBee offered to put me up for a return to the Directors. I declined. Memnon, a hero of the Escape, went up instead, replacing Pothole Charlie.
The humans were apparently not as efficient as my paranoia generally made me think they were. Theft of the Granny Knot was reported, but Dollgangers were never mentioned in the report. Either the authorities were keeping mum about that or they hadn’t figured it out. As soon as Tink, Malibu, and Pothole Charlie began their campaign on distant worlds, Chiron’s leaders would learn the truth.
And the humans never captured or never decrypted the full range of Team Cream transmissions. How did we know? Security at the power plant was never improved. We waited, tense, for our little hidey-hole there to be sought and discovered, but it never was. So we began the process of setting it up as the advance station Parfait had promised her recruits it would be. We nicknamed it the Pothole.
A week after the launch of Granny Knot, there was another ceremony in the Nest—in my study, before the round Mayan calendar table. Once again Wolfe and Lina stood near me, and friends—their friends, my friends, mutual friends such as BeeBee—surrounded them. Once again I held little Thonny, but it was to Lina I spoke. “What we are changes the same way, transforming over time. We are continuity, not an unchanging now.” I took a deep breath. “By your permission and at your request, I, Chiang BinDoc Bowen Bow, name you Chiang BinBowen Lina. Welcome to my clan, Lina.”
She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a smile with innocent joy in it, one that was only for me. Then she held me close, burying her face in my shoulder, so I could no longer see her features. Behind her, the others applauded, Wolfe among them.
So that was how the last vestiges of Big Plush drifted away like the ashes of Parfait carried off by the wind, how the Chiron Dollganger Revolution reached space, and how I gained a daughter and a grandson.
A few months earlier, I hadn’t seen any of it coming, and now I was chest-deep in it. That’s life, I guess.
About the Author
New York Times bestselling writer Aaron Allston is the author of more than twenty novels and numerous short stories. His works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror often emphasize action and humor. He has also authored Plotting: A Novelist’s Workout Guide, a comprehensive textbook on the craft of plotting fiction, available from Amazon’s Kindle Store, the Apple iBookStore, and Al
lston’s sales page, www.archerrat.com. A lifelong Texan, Allston lives in the Austin area. Visit his web site at www.aaronallston.com.
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