It was one more thing adding to the strangeness, the sense of portentousness. Here at the edge of town was a much-prized rarity: a Gerias Kite, tethered low to a three-metre stanchion like a crippled manta. Someone had flown a ritual bird up from Lostnest for the festival, a Prince or some other privileged tribal leader allowed the dispensation of flight so they could be here for Colios.
Flight! I could scarcely believe it. The votive kite strained at the iron support, pulling this way and that against its land anchors so the cables slackened and bowed one moment, then drew taut as the great arrowhead-shaped flying machine shifted, as if it were testing them. Tonight I shall escape.
I couldn’t help but think of the aerotropts at Twilight Beach during that recent Koronai. This amazing craft was probably inert, probably didn’t have a mind greater than function-dedicated comp systems, but it reminded me and I cherished it.
‘This could do it,’ John said. ‘It can be programmed. It will have laser points, delivery systems for the pigments.’
We stood watching the great shape nudging the stanchion, guy lines thrumming in the strengthening wind.
‘See how the hull’s patterned underneath,’ John said, his gaze checking the land about us, as if intent on everything but the hull patterning. ‘The polymer over the flotation nacelles has totemic striations. Very beautiful. It only looks dark like this because of the ash from the fires. There could very well be vents for releasing pigment payloads under there too, laser directed, then laser activated with appropriate allowances for wind dispersal.’
And, taking his cue, suddenly realising what was intended, I moved in under the manta shape itself, avoiding the stabilising vanes.
When it covered us, creaking and straining barely a metre overhead, a vast ceiling, the young shaman held up his hand-set. ‘My scanner is dual function. But the hull screens us as well.’ His unsettling mannerisms had vanished just like that; his manic quality set aside.
‘They’ll send agents.’
‘But have to implement a suitable strategy.’ He spoke in a clear, low voice. ‘Discretion is important.’
‘Please, John, what is it?’
‘In setting up Teny in Dinetah, the Ab’Os needed to bring in resources: necessary tech, search systems, all an acceptable risk, but a risk nonetheless.’
‘Go on.’
‘Such a relocation had to create logistical problems, the security problems of any such major undertaking.’
‘Of course. John, what are you saying?’
‘That the Teny systems had little that was superfluous to the core task of studying the haldanes.’
‘So?’
‘Your name was there.’
‘John!’
‘Your profile. Your case. Coded, flagged highest security, but there.’
‘You hacked their systems.’
‘Acted according to my namesake, Captain. Coyote always plays a part. A troublemaker, true, but there is no civilisation without him.’
‘John, can we get back to—’
‘Nothing is sacred unless we both agree it is so. People say things are intrinsically sacred, but no. That is a yearning, a projection, a need for things to matter. No pharaoh has been left untouched in his tomb, no Celtic chieftain, no Manchu potentate or Persian queen. Nothing has saved them. Nothing is sacred, unless we agree: not life, not even the land. Coyote exists to remind them of that by bringing chaos. It’s his job.’
I saw the change of tack for what it was, that this mattered, was what ultimately drove this man. ‘Tell me.’
‘He’s the trickster, the mischievous, scheming outsider, the reviled thief and spoiler, the one who makes things go wrong to see what will happen.’ He spoke rapidly now, never raising his voice. ‘But he also sits in the doorway between this world and the other, between the spiritual world of the sacred hogan and the world out there. He keeps the door open, ultimately makes hozho possible by providing the chaos against which it is measured. He is Iai, the donkey-head in ancient Egyptian mythology who resists, who tests. The rebel. He is the fool without choice, ill-favoured, blessed and blasted, cursed and vital.’
‘John, what did you do? What did you find?’
‘The others do not know. It’s the real reason I am here, why I pestered them to let me come down to Waso. Because of what I learned there.’
‘Please!’
‘You were made. Scribed DNA. They wanted a National Clever Man, as you’ve suspected. They had to know one way or the other. You are like Teny in Dinetah, only as a person: a way of looking back at here. Of looking at the tribal achievement. The Dreaming Way.’
My gaze stayed locked on his. ‘The Dreaming Way?’ But I understood. ‘What else?’
‘You went to Tarpial?’
‘I did.’
‘You met Seren Selie, learned it was her face—’
‘She put it there.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘After a fashion.’
‘Don’t be coy, Captain. It was an attachment.’
‘She said.’
‘She lied. She is your sister in a sense. The female part of the experiment.’
‘What!’
‘Shut away in Tarpial. Working to bring you the truth.’
‘She’s Ab’O!’
‘Scribed to be that way. One more vital legacy of that ancient, splendidly co-opted Human Genome Project. Can you be sure you aren’t scribed to be another?’
‘You said—no, I can’t.’
‘Exactly. You’re National, deliberately that. But she was less clearly defined. She was temporised earlier too, brought into the world ten years before you. You were kept in the Madhouse.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘I can guess. She was part of a great new experiment, the darling of the life-houses, smart, precocious, no doubt a deliberate prodigy. She earned their trust, won their confidence, and ruined the other part of their experiment.’
‘John—’
‘Shut away in Tarpial she used what she could, found ways to circumvent their strictures. The Teny project was already underway. She linked to us in Tuba City; I agreed to act, a deformed outsider. I was already fated, had already been struck by lightning and spared. I was something of a pariah, a charmed yet blighted thing, even among my enlightened kind. I could easily assist. As Coyote, tradition sanctioned what I did. The bad things. The hard things.’
‘How did she ruin it? What did she do?’
‘All she had time for. Something simple. Added a third image to the three. Her own face.’
‘Her face!’
‘She knew something of scribing, had learned about keypoint insertions. She monitored your incept, added her own key template to the intended two when she could. Prioritised it.’
‘Then the Ship and the Star—’
‘The other way round.’
‘The Star and the Ship.’
‘Together!’
‘The Star—Starship!’
‘Was the activation code. They sent it again and again, by tech, via the mindline—’
‘On Lake Air.’ Thinking of Iain Summondamas and John Stone Grey, thinking of Arredeni Paxton Kemp and Anna, of Auer Rangan Anoki, all my confrontations with the Clever Men.
‘But it never worked. You never became the full Clever Man they intended. Tartalen persuaded them to turn you out, to see what you would become, what would happen in situ. It was all they could do. They waited, tested, sent things at you.’
Bolo May. Stoutheart Tiberias Kra. Naesé. A carefully laden torc at Pentecost. Ships on the Air. Mira Lari, an animate with that Face.
‘Let the Tree give me Blue.’
‘No. That was something they didn’t factor in. Couldn’t.’
It was good to have it confirmed. Needed right then.
‘They’ve tried to kill me. Countless times.’
‘Factions. Tribal groups acting on their own, angered by the giving of the Colours, by the Haldane Order’s reluctance to act. Even K
urdaitcha supposedly serving the life-houses. They see you as dangerous, as sacrilege.’
‘Others have died because of me. Other Captains. Massen.’
‘Then come in. Go public. Return to Twilight Beach. Or cross to Dinetah with us.’
‘Your colleagues from Waso will be at risk. They—’
‘Captain, they are here to provide an excuse. We’ve been tracking you too, as well as we could manage. It was so we could talk.’
‘But Jon Cipher—’
‘Resents the whole thing, yes. I have been struck by lightning. Ill-favoured. Unlucky. The risk to Waso and our people there concerns him. But a necessary part of the plan. They all know that whatever I tell you now is something we can give.’
‘You were struck twice. Outside Teny as well.’
‘Man-made lightning that time. There was a perimeter of angry hands.’
‘You tried to break in to Teny!’ I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
‘Three people in our cell did. Encountered difficulties. I tried to help.’
‘Your cell?’ One thing after another.
‘A group of Dineh and others trying to learn about the past. About the Tribation. It’s an international movement, non-violent, full of Buddhists, Sufis and historians. Ours is a damaged, plundered world, Captain. Slowly healing.’
‘You think the tribes know what happened?’
‘Some of it. Fragments. Information systems were the first to go during that terrible time. It’s verifying everything that’s important now.’
‘What do you have?’
John glanced at his scanner. ‘They’ll be coming for us, Captain. We should get away.’
‘What did you learn, John?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘None of it is certain. But how there was too much information. Truths were lost. Basic knowledge. How the Information Revolution became the Reality Crisis, a saturation of the data-sphere coupled with an intended flattening of effect. Fiction and falsehood more eloquent, more persuasive than available truth. People didn’t respond, didn’t know how to respond. It’s hard for us to conceive of it, to model it now. It got so the world no longer saw what was happening. Some insist it was more invasive, that waves of controlled microwave pulses brought down the global data-nets, isolated the nations again, that there were race-specific epidemics, ethnotropic plagues—’
‘Culling.’
‘Culling, yes. We’re almost certain. Culling and conditioning on a vast scale. Back and forth. Tom, we should go!’
The kite strained and heaved above us, lines creaking as it shifted with the wind.
But I couldn’t leave yet. ‘It’s why the arcologies were abandoned.’
‘Initially, yes. Or shut tight against the world.’
‘That didn’t save them. They became dead cities.’
‘Many did, Captain. Many have.’
‘And those millions, putting themselves into cryo. All the Cold People in those storage vaults—’
‘Against a better day, yes. Against plague viruses they knew were fixed term. But a logistics nightmare, you see. Now the revival tech just isn’t sufficient—’
‘The Ab’O, the Dineh—?’
‘Not all peoples were targeted. It seems these angels of death were very specific. Minorities were exempted. The Maori, the Fijians, the Dineh, other Athabascan peoples—’
‘The tribes weren’t affected—’
‘Captain, it’s important we maintain our cover. We must get back to the skypainting, safeguard Waso.’
‘Of course.’
I followed him numbly from under the striated hull, out past the mooring stanchion with its iron stairs leading up to the craft’s flight-deck. John resumed his disguise of darting glances and fearsome intensity, and we let ourselves be seen to be chatting, gesturing, indicating things, making it seem as if we had been discussing the kite all along and its role in creating this new skypainting.
About us eddies of smoke from the bale-fires plunged and curled, caught up in the blades of the rotors to the south of the town, spiralling out from the great ferris by the Colios carnival on Black Point. For a moment it seemed like a corner of hell where dust-devils and willy-willies were made and set off on their courses, sent to haunt the emptied cities, sink charvolants and ruin lives.
Like Koronai so far away, Colios now seemed an even bleaker thing, a festival remembering a blasted, tragic time. Bring out your dead!
John Dance had been right. Not just some interesting re-location of corn-doll surrogates and harvest rituals, but a festival recalling the rest of it: wholesale slaughter, the burning of the dead. The more things changed …
‘You! You there!’
We turned to see four tribesmen hurrying towards us, clearly more than festival custodians. They wore djellabas, had tribal sersifans and Japano swords. Two carried ritual woomeras for Unseen Spears.
‘Tom, nothing I do should surprise you,’ John said, and with a wink, immediately let his scarred face and dark eyes become wild again. This is how he had played Coyote in Dinetah, how he had gained access to Teny.
‘You are Tom Rynosseros,’ the leading tribesman said.
‘I am the Blue Captain. Honour it!’ I was tired, so tired of this.
‘You are a pirate. An outcast,’ the Ab’O said. He had bands of deep orange painted on his dusky cheeks: proclamation of intent. His hands were on his swords.
‘I am on walkabout and I stand for Blue. Who sent you?’
‘What?’ the young warrior demanded.
‘Which group? Who is your sponsor?’
‘I am a custodian here, pirate! It is my official task—’
‘You are about to disgrace your totems and your clans,’ I said. ‘Mark the Colour and name yourselves.’
I held him with my eyes, not daring to look away to see what John Coyote did, though I heard him muttering and gibbering at my side, playing the gifted sky-struck idiot.
It bought me seconds.
The young man glared, straightened. ‘This one is Aron Jarr Akita.’ The others exchanged quick glances with each other and followed suit, naming themselves in the lee of the Gerias Kite as at some embarkation ritual, John Coyote muttering all the while.
‘We are allowed vendetta,’ Akita said. ‘We are—’
‘Mark us!’ I cried, looking up at imagined listeners, at the tribal scanners and their watch crews who had to be there, the ultimate reason for these men. ‘You see this bearer of the gun of Ajan Bless Barratin, commander of the Exotic ship Gyges. I wear the sigil of Auer Rangan Anoki, murdered Clever Man of the Chitalice. I carry the living sword, Sen, once owned by Mati of the Chialis. In their names, too, I claim the lives of these who now dishonour Blue.’ And to the waiting warriors: ‘Be ready!’
In unison, a dazzling, practised flourish, they drew their swords and stood waiting for me to draw, but frowning, frowning now because of what I had said.
Instead of drawing, I reached up, moved Anoki’s medallion aside, and opened my jacket, then my shirt, revealed the cross-hatch of scars on my chest from where I had fed my sword.
I met their gazes then, saw the confusion and growing dread in their eyes, and imagined their thoughts. A living sword! What will be left of our lives for the noösphere, for the Dreamtime, for the ongoing? The living swords take everything.
Then, shocking us all, John howled and went rushing off for the wind-farm at the edge of town. It was an act that might have been misunderstood, might have triggered strike, but the warriors held. It gave more time.
‘You want to keep Teny in Dinetah?’ I said, ignoring the fighters and looking up at the unseen listeners. ‘Let anything happen to their divine fool and you’ll lose it all. Waso will be withdrawn. Teny ends.’
Decisions must have been made in seconds, relayed through implants, because the two young men with the woomeras sheathed their swords, turned and hurried after John, who had now reached the rotors and was cavorting among them, arms outstretched.
I
faced the remaining two and drew my sword, did it slowly, purposefully. ‘You are both forfeit. You will feed Sen.’
‘Captain, there has been a mistake,’ Akita said. ‘We didn’t know—’
‘Of course you did. You would have agreed to it eagerly. Let’s begin!’
‘Please, we—’
‘The Chialis do this all the time. Surely they are not braver. It’s two against one. Begin!’
‘We have been told not to engage,’ Akita said. ‘Ordered not to!’
‘You’ve drawn.’
‘It’s a command. We must obey.’
‘You’ve drawn. Your leaders know the forfeit.’
‘Why are you so determined?’ Akita said, which made me ask it of myself.
Because of old anger, old grief and new. Because of rage and frustration. Because Massen was dead and a young woman had been left inside a triga ring, because of Mira Lari and Anoki and Rynosseros so casually slain, because some aerotropts had been murdered at Twilight Beach and, once, at far-off Trale, a hybrid life-experiment had reached out and sent a message, a star to match my Star because it found it there in my mind, possibly even recognised a piece of itself. Because. Because.
‘Because sometimes I, too, believe I can win.’
‘What?’ Akita said. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘Of course you do, Aron Jarr Akita. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I don’t understand. You are mad! Both of you! You and that outlander!’
And my sword spoke, simple child words, but chilling to hear. ‘Sometimes I am mad too.’
They were its first words in weeks.
The tribesmen stared, and their blades lifted, as much in terror as anything else.
‘Captain, may I take their place?’
I turned to where the sun was westering beyond the colonnades of black smoke, saw a tall tribal woman in sand-robes, standing with two tribesman at her side.
‘Lady Dusein!’ Akita said. ‘We were—’
She stopped him with a gesture. ‘Excuse them, Captain. Let me blood your sword instead. Will you allow it?’
‘No, Lady!’ Akita cried, but she ignored him.
‘Captain?’
‘How is this your fight, Lady?’ I asked.
‘They are mine.’
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