Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014

by Penny Publications

  "No, I'm not ready. What's the point? This whole estate is cursed."

  "August, don't be that way." The stack of bracelets on her right wrist dropped to the middle of her arm with each gesture.

  "Our fortunes dwindle. Our family name is..."

  "Fine. It still carries much weight in the empire. The colonel still needs us." Ninky adjusted the drape of his cloth. She snapped her fingers and held out her hand without meeting Desmond's gaze. He unfurled his pocket kerchief and handed it to her. She dabbed at some imagined spot on August's collar. Though young, she was wise as a serpent. The rest of the staff feared being in her presence, as she had a bit of the dragon about her; however, Desmond was the personal attaché for August and didn't fear her wrath. He'd dealt with worse in his own mother.

  "You need to take better care of your charge."

  "Yes, mum." Desmond pocketed his kerchief. She hated to be called mum, complaining it made her sound old. Desmond insisted that it was about issuing the proper respect. Her irritation was a quiet benefit.

  "But for how long?" August brushed her fussing hands away.

  "Not all power is found in coffers," Ninky said, undeterred. "We have been invited to dine at the colonel's table tonight for a reason."

  "How can you be so calm?"

  "There's no point in treating it like a funeral dinner."

  "It might as well be a last supper."

  "Hush, my husband." Ninky fastened gold disks to her ears. She hooked her parasol to the crook of her arm. "Desmond, hurry up and get dressed, man.

  You will attend us tonight."

  "Yes mum. Thank you, mum." With one simple sentence, years of planning and waiting fell into place. He would finally be close enough to kill the colonel.

  II. Slave Driver

  Perched high up in the mountains, the St. Elizabeth parish in western Jamaica bordered the western parishes of St. James and Trelawny. Some stretches were a desperate collection of galvanized zinc-topped shacks dotting the hillside, working up the nerve to declare themselves a town. Desmond called this "the Jamaica within Jamaica," the areas that existed between the megapolises and the stately king homes, far from the intrusive view of tourists. They still had a ways to go before they arrived at Accompong Town, named for one of the seven leaders who helped to liberate Jamaica from Albion.

  The lush green of the hills was a sea of palmate plants. The sun hovered overhead. A smattering of rain burst from a seemingly cloudless sky, more of a sprinkling than a downpour, not even worth turning on the wiper blades. Desmond drove along the hard-packed dirt road—a one-way road with room enough for a single car—struck by how quiet the wealthy were when they had to be around each other. Stitched together by copper rivets, twin brass tubes outlined the body of the car. The vehicle wound along the tight roads, with Desmond availing himself liberally of the horn to alert on-coming vehicles or passers-by. Men walked along the roads armed with machetes, returning from their day's labor. Shirtless or with their shirt completely unbuttoned and untucked, they hard-eyed the conspicuous vehicle.

  Desmond wound around another bend and slowed as several cars blocked the road.

  "Is everything all right, Desmond?" August's voice cracked with concern. If he had his way, he'd either never leave his compound or be whisked by private airship to wherever he needed to go. That way he'd never have to risk his safety by mingling with common folk, as if secretly fearing that poverty was contagious.

  "Looks like a passa-passa. Nothing to worry about."

  "As if they can't entertain indoors like decent folk." Ninky craned about studying the burgeoning street party. "Well, I suppose they can't. Still, they shouldn't block the road. It's a public nuisance. Go see about it, Desmond."

  "Yes mum."

  The air smelled of fresh baked bread, body odor, and chiba smoke. Music swelled from the stack of speakers pressed into the cleft of the hill. Aggressive, angry drumbeats accompanied by electronic squalls focused through an electro-transmitter, its driving rhythms pounded the air. A rotating cylinder gyrated up and down within a glass-fronted cabinet, the delicate machinery protected by a brass framed cabinet. A series of antennae lined the top of the device, electricity arced between them. The charges climbed the spires, inching along like a self-winding string. Men shouted into the amplifier, toasting without hope, screaming the soundtrack to their life.

  Desmond approached a mud-coated box-shaped vehicle. Paint flecked from its copper-enhanced casing like it was eager to be free of it. A group of men, cloistered by shadows, ambled toward him. Their eyes darted back and forth calculating an internal gamble of how much money Desmond's charges represented. With the air of predators on the prowl, any last one of the gathered men would bash his brains in and leave him for dead, not bothering to drag his body out of the street. He adjusted the weight of his pistol. Ninky had insisted on him getting dressed, after all.

  Another man pushed through the throng. His cream breeches dirty and loose, he was of the bush. Several welts marred his shirtless torso, probably from thumpings meant to correct too much spirit. His nest of dreadlocks tumbled from a multi-colored knit cap onto his broad shoulders, a sign of his covenant as an Israelite. He walked tall, meeting everyone's eyes, commanding respect like he had a gun in his pocket. Hands wizened and scarred, calluses ridged his fingers. He used a machete to split a coconut to drink from, then stabbed the blade into the earth beside him before sauntering over to Desmond.

  "You fecka you! I should bust your jugular!" The man cocked his pock-marked face, fixing a cataract clouded eye on Desmond.

  "Who do you think you're talking to, you mawga foot Rasta?" Desmond demanded.

  The pair squared off against one another, wary eyes refusing to break their gaze. After a few heartbeats they broke up into laughter.

  "You rude youth. No manners at all."

  "Long time, Country."

  Desmond clasped hands with the Rastafarian. Country and the law had an understanding of sorts. He was a top ranker in the Presidential Posse gang. The Albion colony of America issued a warrant for his arrest for trafficking narcotics. The way he evaded dragnets, frustrated American intelligence, and returned to Jamaican soil made him a hero to the people. Former actor, now puppet for Albion, Viceroy Ronald of the United States pressured the colonel to sign an extradition order but was told "We're Jamaica. We handle our own." Despite the bounty on his head in America, Country was safe in Jamaica. Though his ties to the Obeahists made him an enemy of the Kabbalists and the Kabbalists didn't care about borders. Or legalities.

  "Where you off to with those waitamigls? "

  "Dinner with the colonel. I'm supposed to clear your passa-passa so we can head on."

  "You sup with the devil." Country sucked his teeth in disdain. "He would sell us to Babylon if he could."

  "I know my duty. Now, I need to make this look good." Desmond did not relish his role as attaché, a glorified servant. Whenever he dealt with any of his "of the field" brethren, he wondered how they viewed him. His heart was with them, but because he was "of the house," a gulf separated them. "Give me a nanny." Desmond handed him a five hundred dollar bank note that pictured Grandy Nanny, the great freedom fighter.

  "Nanny for Queen." Country held the note up to the firelight to make sure it wasn't a counterfeit bill. "You think me a thief now?" "Trust no shadow after dark."

  The headlights, jutting cans more ostentatious than aerodynamic, slowly extinguished once the engine shut off. Desmond opened the door for the Cobenas. Ninky adjusted her wrap, then opened her parasol, a well-rehearsed gesture that gave time for August to come around and take her arm. When they were in place, she nodded at Desmond.

  Desmond's lanky form bore the brown, single-breasted pinstripe suit with a scarecrow's bearing. Cut purposefully short, the jacket made his legs appear even longer. A pink shirt peeked from under the jacket, the corresponding pink stripes of the tie swirled against the alternating yellow stripes matching his pocket kerchief. The brown overlaid with ye
llow repeated on his two-toned wing-tipped shoes. Desmond donned a pair of sunglasses that hid a third of his face and placed an unlit pipe in his mouth. He twirled a tan-handled cane once, signaling they were ready to march, then strode ahead of the couple. Only the highest ranking of the bourgeois dandied their servants for such an entrance.

  Eschewing the gleaming metal structures of the Montego Bay and Kingston megapolises, immense white concrete buildings formed a court around Accompong Town's central palace complex, though functionally, the entire town was an extension of the palace proper. The people scurried about in frenzied anticipation. Every January 6—on the birthday of the rebel leader Cudjoe, brother to Nanny—the people came together for a festival in celebration of the peace treaty between Jamaica and Albion. A group of elders hunched over tables, slapping dominoes into place and making fun of each other's play. The women roasted a pig over an open fire. The ceremony required that they shred it, mix it with fresh rice—careful to add no salt to either—then go under the nearby cave to throw the food. Only after their ancestors' duppies were fed could they cook for themselves. Like the rhythm of waves crashing against a slave ship, music built in intensity as people sang of rebellion and emancipation. Others danced, invoking the spirit of their ancestors.

  Desmond never knew his own birthday nor even how many he should have celebrated.

  Giant stone lions policed the entrance to the palace. The stationed guards mirrored those of Albion's Buckingham Palace, except for black uniforms with gold epaulettes in place of Albion's eye-bleeding red. Despite Jamaica's independence, much of it echoed Albion. Even its flag, modeled on the St. Andrew's Cross, was reminiscent of the Union Jack except in black, gold, and green. Apologists claimed the intent was to jab a stick in the eye of the great British Empire, but Desmond had little use for Albion's fripperies.

  Two of the guards remained in position by either side of the main gate while a third approached them.

  "Who you with?" His gold cap tilted off to the side of his head as he scanned them.

  "The colonel."

  "Who you represent?"

  "August Cobena of the Cobena Park estate."

  Desmond didn't meet the man's hostility, which stopped just short of open aggression. The Maroon loved their jijifo, "evasive maneuvers" designed to wrong foot obroni. The more confused an outsider was, the more advantage the Maroon had. The guard relented without a smile.

  "No harm. Just conversing. Make sure you not here on bad business. Your weapon will be checked and returned upon departure."

  Desmond felt uneasy unarmed. He'd heard reports that Kabbalists were on the island. Despite being in the colonel's compound, he'd prefer to be able to address matters on his own if need be. But he wouldn't let that get in the way of his primary mission. He deposited his weapon into the waiting tray by his fingertips. They waited in the greeting hall of the palace, surrounded by the lacquered mahogany of curving banisters and the polished brass of the fixtures. Automata, constructed of porcelain with not even the slightest whir of machinery, took their coats.

  At the blowing of an abeng, a retinue of a half dozen men paraded into the large hallway and lined up to face one another. Wearing tall, cream-colored Brodie helmets, long red jackets, and cream-colored pantaloons, they withdrew the cutlasses that hung at their sides and held them aloft to form an arch. A squat, mahogany-skinned man entered next. An Albion admiral's hat, too large for his head, canted at an odd angle, revealing closely cropped hair. A white silk coat hung from his shoul ders in order to allow his dark blue jacket to be appreciated, with its long tails and gold tassels on the shoulders like an infantryman. A thick cravat bowed at his neck. His breeches and boots completed the quasi-military appearance. Colonel Malcolm Juba. Malcolm the First.

  Over-sized, black-rimmed glasses masked a face ravaged by pox. A thin Van Dyke framed his mouth. Thick-necked, his gait had a bear-like quality to it. He often acted in a strange, wild manner, but by all accounts he was a brilliant chieftain. The way the colonel adopted British culture as affectation disgusted Desmond. There were those in certain circles who considered his lack of ideological purity worrisome. "Elected" every five years, typically running unopposed, an osofu, thirty-two members appointed by the colonel, assisted the Maroon leader. Despite being the highest ranking members of the osofu, August and Ninky genuflected in his presence.

  The colonel stared through Desmond as if he wasn't in the room.

  "August. Ninky. I'm so glad you could dine with us tonight." Used to being obeyed, Malcolm's voice had a thumbscrew timber, pressing down on all who heard him.

  "We're honored," August said.

  "Malcolm." Ninky's voice held a tone of total pleasure as she offered her hand. Thus they began their courtship of societal niceties.

  "Please, come this way." Malcolm snapped his fingers.

  Desmond had never met a pharaoh, but imagined it being much like this. Malcolm projected the essence of power, creating an aura about him as if he were the incarnation of a god. The procession passed the royal altar. The façade took up nearly the entire wall. Brass heads honoring the past colonels outlined the frame. Within the woodwork itself, several images formed scenes. Ninky's hard gaze stopped on it, studying its details.

  "Do you know your history?"

  "Everything's always a test with you, Malcolm," Ninky said.

  "This time the question is a testament to the intricacy of the artisans' work."

  His hand swept over a portrait of boats about to lay siege to the island.

  "This was the forces of Albion in 1655, with their 'Western Design,' their offensive against the Spaniards who occupied Jamaica, two infant powers, wrestling over a tiny island plaything. But, even then, Albion revealed its hubris, sending only thirty-eight ships carrying eight thousand men—poorly equipped and poorly organized— to oust Spain's foothold. As if their mere appearance would carry the day. After all, who would dare oppose the will of the Queen?"

  The scene moved to that of people opening doors to pens and fleeing. Malcolm stepped with a deliberate ease, ensuring all attention was on him.

  "The sad reality of their overconfidence was that it worked on the Spanish. But before they retreated, the Spanish freed their slaves in hopes they would harry the English until they could return to re-conquer Jamaica. However, both sides underestimated the Maroon. To them we were savages and it was their duty to tame us. That was what the Spanish named us, you know. 'Cimarron' as in 'wild.' Untamed. We kept that name to show what the untamed spirit could do."

  "To the British we were the Coromantee, after the slave forts on the Koramantine coast of Africa," Desmond said.

  "Ashanti. Fanti. We were all the same shade of black to them. Your man knows his history, if not his place." "My place?" Four of the colonel's attendants assumed attack postures. Nothing too overt. August and Ninky probably didn't notice the spacing. They positioned themselves to neutralize Desmond with minimum fuss, but the cramped space worked to his advantage. He could think of eight ways to cripple them if they attacked. Nine if he wanted to damage the artwork. Desmond smirked in spite of himself. The colonel nodded ever so slightly and the men backed down, assuming closer ranks. "We don't attack obroni unless they move against us first. That is our way."

  "Is that what I am now? Obroni? "

  "It's all you ever were. You are a brown skinned man." Malcolm's voice held a sour note of disapproval. "Maroons are black."

  All eyes studied Desmond, awaiting his reaction. His instinct was to rush the colonel. None of his attendants could reach him before he wrenched the man's skull from his neck. However, not one of the Niyabingi had gained such access to the palace, and he was obligated to learn as much as he could before completing his task.

  Desmond swallowed hard before bowing. He stepped back, satisfying the colonel.

  "Come, now." August clapped his hands. "The music, the art, it all is to celebrate our Independence Day."

  "You're right, August. Come, we have much to discuss. A
nd celebrate."

  When they entered the dining room, Cuban mastiffs trotted up to greet the colonel. Such dogs at one time had been trained for man-hunting, unleashed on runaway slaves. Too many Maroons kept them as ironic pets. Custodians of their culture, the Maroon clung to the old ways as much as possible. All of the furniture was either mahogany or rosewood. Black lacquer cabinets accented with gaudy brass studs held sets of porcelain dolls. An empty Victorian birdcage stood in the corner. The entire design reminded Desmond of a plantation great house.

  The attendants seated them around a mahogany table in a spacious salon, then lined up in formation against the back wall. They stood at rigid attention without sound or movement while the guests ate. They permitted Desmond to sit at a table off to the side. His plate served after the Cobenas', he finished quickly and sipped his tea. It was the finest tea he'd ever tasted.

  An attendant poured Malcolm a libation from an array of bottles. Closing his eyes, he uttered a prayer in Asante-Twi. Desmond presumed this was to further remind him of his place as obroni. The Maroon loved their ceremonies.

  "It has been 250 years since the end of the Maroon Wars, when Jamaica claimed its rightful independence. Becoming a beacon of hope in the west for Africans, a safe haven for runaways. But despite being that golden city on a hill, Jamaica is not without her problems."

  "Do you mean the incident in Trenchtown?" August asked.

  "That incident caused us to declare a state of emergency. We had schools and businesses shut down while armed vigilantes roamed the streets. We arrested their 'top ranker,' but we were forced to ally ourselves with ghetto strongmen to keep the peace."

  "Such an action is not without precedent. We've always had community enforcers. Things have merely... evolved," Ninky said.

  Desmond stifled the need to shift in his seat, instead choosing to sip his tea and betray no emotions. His father had been one of those gang leaders. Although he was romanticized as the Robin Hood of Trenchtown, Desmond clung to no illusions: his father was a drug dealer and weapons trafficker. The infamous Nesta Coke, up to his elbows in blood in the Rastafarians' war with the Kabbalists. A man of the people, never leaving the streets he was born into, he had risen to such folkoric heights of popularity, he'd been immortalized in song. The colonel couldn't have him killed or disappeared. But rumor skittered about that Nesta's location had been leaked to the Kabbalists. In the middle of the night they broke in and whisked him back to the United States. His father was burned to death in a prison cell in the American colony. That was how the colonel managed his alliances.