But with the war over or not, it was too soon for a Ha Jiin man to be here within an Earth-established colony city. Oh, he might say he was a Jin Haa ally. With his skin color, he might even claim to be an Earther. But Cal knew better. The man was a spy. Or a terrorist. Right here, camouflaged by the city’s diversity of races, walking amongst these blind fools, and only Cal was aware of it. As though he wore his military surplus goggles, attuned to a wavelength of light that allowed him to see a creature invisible to others, but slithering through the air around them.
There were multiple lanes of traffic thronged with vehicles of every description, hovering or on wheels. To reach the opposite shore, he had to go further down Judas to a subway kiosk, then cross beneath the street and emerge on the other side. He recognized the building – as unremarkable in appearance as he was – by its graffiti, left most predominately by a gang called the Judas Street Hangmen.
Cal mounted its short flight of front steps, and touched a key on its entry panel. The screen displayed the names of the tenants. He was afraid that the man would have opted to remain anonymous, as some of the tenants had. He ran his finger down the list. A mix of human and alien names. He thought he could tell the alien names were Choom, with one Tikkihotto, from the sound of them. Nothing that sounded Jiinese, though from the man’s disguise that didn’t surprise him.
A woman came clicking her shoes up the steps, and Cal stepped away from the panel guiltily to let her buzz herself in. Dark, maybe with Indian blood given that a holographic eye was pasted on her forehead like a bindi. She gave him a sideways look. He hesitated, then asked, “Excuse me, ma’am? I’m trying to find someone...he has scars on his cheeks? He dropped this in the subway and I thought I saw him go in here.” From his back pocket he produced his own wallet.
“Third floor. I don’t know his name,” the woman said brusquely. The holographic third eye followed him distrustfully, and blinked. “But I can’t let you in with me.”
“Oh...okay, I understand.” He didn’t want to alarm her. He backed off some more while she buzzed herself inside. She watched him through the door’s window as she pushed it closed and made sure it locked.
Third floor. Cal activated the display monitor again. He isolated the names of those on the third floor. A few anonymous, but he copied the available male names onto a scrap of paper from his wallet. He would enter these names into his computer, in his own flat, and see what he might glean from them.
As he returned to the sidewalk, staring at the scrap of paper, another woman came near him and said something he didn’t get. Cal looked up, a bit startled, and she smiled at him with long red lips that curled forever. From her scanty clothing he could tell she was a prosty. But she was a Choom, not an Earther, not of Asian blood. That was good. Good for her, and good for him, too. He ignored her when she repeated her comment, hurrying off down the street toward the subway so that he might descend into the tunnels below the city – like those he had fought in not so long ago, among the ghostly ancestors of the enemy he sent to join them.
6
Neither tubes nor buses would make stops in the ghetto of Tin Town anymore, and any cabbie willing to do so would have to be so crazy that Jeremy Stake would have been more afraid of him than the ghetto’s denizens themselves – of which he had formerly been one. So he got as close as he could by hoverbus, and went the rest of the way on foot.
He walked past a series of tenement houses that had all burned into charred skeletons, looking like they’d been bombed. Children balanced along the girders of a floorless second floor as if they were putting on a circus performance. From the hugeness of one child’s head and the weirdly bent figure of another, it was clear they were mutants. Like his mother had been. Like himself.
Under his jacket he carried the Wolff .45. When two large men walking close together approached him on the sidewalk, he became extra-conscious of the holstered semiautomatic. But it was actually one man, with an overabundance of flesh and limbs, and he didn’t even glance at Stake as they passed each other. They were all ghosts of what they had been or what they could have been, in Tin Town.
He located the apartment building where he had last known his father to be living, but he wasn’t there anymore, and the tenant who had replaced him knew nothing of the former occupant. Stake was disappointed – not only because he wanted to see his father again after his four years away in another plane of existence, but because he had hoped that looking into the face of the man who had sired him would give him the jolt he needed to slip the alien mask that had fused itself onto his skull, the way a normal person’s face remained fixed. But that was not normal for him.
The best Stake could do, before leaving Tin Town, was to next seek out and stand before the place where his mother had been living when she died. Maybe the building’s familiar face would urge the shifting of his cells.
Yet, even the buildings were mutated. He passed through an old low income housing project, the buildings all bulging at their middles, and at their summits the plastic of which they were composed had been weirdly affected by pollution, teased out into intricate branches so that it seemed that Stake strolled down a rubble-strewn promenade of baobab trees.
He finally found the building he sought in this now transfigured neighborhood. He stared at the third floor windows through which his mother had once gazed, as if hoping that her face might appear there. As if hoping his own, younger face would appear there. But the restorative miracle he desired was not triggered.
Stake flinched when he heard the chatter of automatic gunfire, a few blocks over. The sky was going coppery as evening approached, and it was best even for a seasoned war vet like himself not to be out in the gangs’ combat zone after dark. So he turned back toward the border of the mutant slum. As he walked, someone called out to him and he paused warily, looked over. A man sat on the top step of a tenement doorway, arched and shadowy like an alcove. In the gloom, long appendages stirred; tentacles? The man gurgled, “Are you a Ha Jiin?”
“No,” Stake told him. “I’m not.”
As if he hadn’t even heard Stake, the mutant said, “You call us Earth people ghost-eaters, don’t you?” And then, without waiting for another reply, the man purposely gave out a long rumbling belch.
* * *
Jeremy Stake.
Cal Williams had found him, mostly by eliminating the others from his list. He learned little about the man from the net, but he had supposedly served as a corporal in the Colonial Forces in the Blue War. Oh, there was a picture...yet the man in the service ID photo looked absolutely nothing like the man Cal had followed to the apartment building. That only proved the point. This Corporal Stake had survived the war only to be killed here in his own dimension by the Ha Jiin terrorist, and have his identity stolen. In the more treacherous red tape jungle of bureaucracy, no one had become the wiser.
The man had recently begun phone service to the apartment on Judas Street. And his number was not unlisted.
Now, Cal felt his mission was more imperative than ever. He had to avenge this dead man. This murdered fellow war veteran named Jeremy Stake.
7
Stake had fallen asleep in his chair, seated in front of his new comp system. He had it in VT mode and had been watching a program on the Blue War cease-fire, and the return of most of the Colonial Forces. Vets and their families interviewed about being reunited. He had wondered if the ratings were as good now with the war over as they had been with it on. Some of its battles had been broadcast live, at times from the point of view of the soldiers’ goggles. Not those battles, of course, of deep penetration teams like his, particularly skirmishes in the gas tunnels. No – battles in support of the Jin Haa’s independence.
A staccato burst of automatic fire – from a drive-by shooting, perhaps – awakened him, and he grabbed the Wolff .45 that rested on the desk beside his keyboard. For a moment, he had thought he was back there. Not in the blue-leaved forests, but Tin Town, where he had grown up. Tin Town, from wh
ich he had escaped.
Still gripping the big pistol, with his free hand he reached up to touch his face. He felt the raised bands on his cheeks. He did not need to set his comp screen to mirror mode to confirm it. In fact, when he set his handgun down on the corner of the bed and squeezed into his minuscule bathroom to splash some icy water on his face, he could not even bring himself to lift his eyes to his reflection.
An extended beep from his computer system, followed two seconds later by another. Face dripping, Stake turned around. Someone was phoning him. He moved back toward his comp system, drying his hands as he went. Rather than seat himself in front of the screen, not expecting there to be anyone he really wanted to converse with at length, he leaned down over the back of his chair to check on the caller’s ID. It read: ANONYMOUS. In another mood he might not have answered, because it was likely some obnoxious marketer. Then again, what if the person who had taken over his father’s apartment had lied about not knowing him? What if that man had told his father someone claiming to be his son had come seeking him out? And what if his father had got his number, then, through the Veterans Administration?
A too-hopeful, illogical reasoning as he tapped a key to receive the call.
The comp’s screen changed to show him the caller, and to show the caller him. Stake saw a man leaning far back in a car seat, and pointing a rifle at him. He threw himself to one side as a dark purple beam of light launched itself straight out of the screen and burned a deep groove across his left hip.
* * *
Another of Cal’s gun’s tricks.
His new hovercar was not new. It had even been slathered with bright yellow graffiti already, last night when it was parked outside his flat. But its comp system worked fine. Before calling the imposter who claimed to be a man named Jeremy Stake, Cal had collapsed the stock of his rifle and its telescoping barrel, to make its use more practical in the vehicle’s confines. He leaned his back up against his door to give himself a bit more distance as he aimed his weapon at the monitor mounted on the dashboard.. His eye was pressed to the rubber cup shielding the scope’s tinier computer screen. His finger, on the trigger...
But his first shot had only grazed his target. The man was quick. And why not? He was obviously a soldier, too.
Cal twitched the gun’s barrel to follow him. He must not get excited. He must keep his cool. He was shooting fish in a barrel.
He fired a second ray bolt through his monitor. And then a third, resisting the temptation to switch to fully automatic. It was an art. He took pride in it. It was what he had been trained to do.
* * *
Stake tried to ignore the blazing pain along his hip, as he hit the floor and shoulder-rolled fast to his feet. Peripherally, as he came up, he saw a second bolt flash from the computer’s screen. It passed inches in front of his chest. He dove across his bed. A third bolt followed him, ploughing into the mattress. Before thudding to the floor on the opposite side, Stake scooped up the Wolff he had left on the bed before going into the bathroom.
A fourth ray burned straight through his bed and hit the wall; a blind shot, based on where the caller thought him to be. He was good, too, because the bolt almost skimmed Stake’s shoulder.
“Who are you?” Stake bellowed across the room.
His answer was a fifth beam, that passed so close to his face he felt its heat.
Sure that the sixth or seventh would kill him, Stake popped up from behind his bed with his own gun extended. The bulky pistol fired solid projectiles. And however elusive his unknown attacker was, the computer screen was a stationary object.
One good shot struck the screen dead-on. But Stake shot it two times more, just for good measure.
* * *
Cal swore under his breath as the connection was severed. But he had anticipated the possibility. That was why he had bought the hovercar.
He stepped out of it. Directly in front of his enemy’s apartment building. He had hoped not to make a public display of all this, but it couldn’t be helped now. It didn’t matter. He was doing his duty as a soldier. He was protecting this city. And avenging a comrade he had never known.
Cal had left his rifle in the car, but as he strode to the front door he tugged out his pistol. He had loaded it with illegal explosive bullets. He fired at the door as he came. A third blast did the trick. When he reached the decimated door, he kicked it aside, and was through.
* * *
Upstairs, on the third floor, Stake heard the three detonations, and knew that his enemy was close at hand.
He also knew he must not allow himself to be pinned down inside his tiny apartment a second time. So he rushed to his door, threw it open, and stepped out onto the landing overlooking the stairs, Wolff gripped in both hands. A woman cracked her own apartment’s door, saw him there, and ducked back inside.
Bluish smoke swirled at the bottom of the stairwell, but Stake saw a dark form darting through it. Starting up the stairs. He didn’t want to kill an innocent, and yet he didn’t even know what his enemy looked like. He couldn’t take the chance to hesitate a moment longer than he already had – so Jeremy Stake leaned over the railing, pointed the Wolff below, and fired shot after shot at the figure as it came racing up the second flight of steps.
He heard a cry. And then he threw himself to the floor as an explosive round took out most of the railing where he had been standing.
Stake lay on his belly, shell-shocked, expecting more of these explosions. But as the seconds ticked on, no more came. Was the man simply waiting for him to poke his head up? When Stake heard multiple voices murmuring to each other below, he realized the situation had changed. He got to his feet and descended the stairs, though he kept his pistol ready.
Another tenant had already taken the gun loaded with explosive bullets out of the man’s hand. He was not dead yet, but he lay on his back in a spreading pool of blood. Stake stood over him, looking straight down at him. And he thought the man looked familiar, though he couldn’t remember where he might have met him before. Then again, he had the close-cropped hair and nondescript look of so many men he had fought beside, not long ago at all.
A woman lay dead beside the bleeding man. From her terrible wounds, Stake guessed that she had been in the vestibule when the assassin had blasted away the door. The dying man turned his glassy eyes away from Stake to look at her. He groaned, and muttered something the others gathered there couldn’t hear. Stake hunched down closer.
“Sorry,” the dying man whispered to the dead woman. “I’m sorry...”
He turned his face to look up at Stake again. Stake expected to see anger there, but instead there was only a kind of bewilderment. And then, he realized the eyes weren’t seeing anything at all. This stranger who had tried to kill him was dead.
“Crazy,” one of the tenants said to another. “On drugs, or something.”
Stake contemplated the man for a few moments more. A tear that had formed before the life went out of him finally unbalanced and sped down the side of his face. The one tear more than the growing puddle of blood troubled Stake, and he rose to his feet. Turned around to face the other tenants, in the hopes that they might enlighten him. But when they saw him, this murderer, they all stepped back with a collective gasp.
Why? Was he the only killer in this city? And hadn’t he only been defending himself?
But then, as they stared at his face, he knew that wasn’t the reason. He reached up to touch his cheeks to confirm that the scars were no longer there. The dead Ha Jiin’s mask had melted away like an ice sculpture.
And Stake knew, without having to look at a mirror – knew, from the reflections of himself in the eyes of these confused tenants – what mask he now wore instead.
Relics
1
The other two buildings that made up the Triplex could be seen from various windows in her family’s apartment, but Cynth had never been inside them. Despite the fact that they were indistinguishable from the building she lived in, the eig
ht-year-old had no particular awareness of them – just as she had no real sense of the many apartments within her building, identical to her own. For Cynth, the two towers that completed the three points of the complex’s triangle blended into the overall skyline that constituted the city of Punktown. The multifarious structures of this colony – established by Earth on the world called Oasis – canceled each other out in their sheer profusion, a brain static that she dismissed as the background of her life. She preferred things simple, individual, one-on-one.
“Don’t dawdle, Cynthia, you’ll be late to school,” said Mr. Moon. Only he called her Cynthia.
Ghosts of Punktown Page 4