The song filled the hangar. The flags billowed on the screens. Ensign Earth's hologram vanished halfway through, and the sergeant cursed and kicked the projector.
Chapter Thirty
City of Lost Souls
Maria walked through the city, so hungry, maybe starving.
She had no family. No roof over her head. No man aside from the cruel Ernesto, whom she had fled. Maybe no hope.
But right now, all of that faded.
Right now, she had no food. And her hunger consumed her.
"Please, Tita, food."
A toddler lay in a puddle, leaning against a cement curb, naked. He reached out a hand to Maria.
"Please, Tita, I'm hungry."
It was hard to tell his age. He was as small as a baby.
"I have no food," she whispered and walked on.
The toddler slumped into the puddle. A few steps away, older children were rummaging through a trash bin. They found chicken bones, let out cries of joy, and began nibbling on pieces of fat and skin, not even minding the flies.
Around the street rose concrete walls—cliffs of peeling paint, trickling rust, and billboards. On one billboard, a glamorous woman modeled a diamond necklace. Prostitutes leaned against the wall beneath her, boys and girls barely into their teens, smoking cigarettes. Another billboard advertised perfume. Naked children ran beneath it, covered in mud. A third billboard entreated Maria to BUY HER CHOCOLATES. A junkie sat beneath the sign on a cardboard throne, snorting shabu, the drug of lost souls.
Maria walked onward, leaving the concrete canyon, and entering a shantytown. She did not know if the ground here was soil or cement. Garbage covered it, rising halfway up her shins. A sea of plastic, paper, and rot. The shanties rolled across the hills, stacked three and four high. The squatters built them, collecting plywood, scraps of iron, and sheets of tarpaulin, constructing crude shelters. The metal was rusting. The wood was rotting. It was hard to distinguish the shanties from the trash; both were equally decayed.
When Maria passed by a river, she saw a towering figure walking along the bank, moving between the shanties. The figure seemed humanoid, but it was as tall as a tree, even taller than Earthlings. Its limbs were like poles, long and black, and its blank face swung from side to side, a single white eye in its center, bobbing and shining like an anglerfish lure. It was an alien, Maria realized. Life from beyond Bahay or Earth. Along with Earthlings, other life must have landed here. Perhaps this alien was a galactic scavenger or beggar, washed up in Mindao with the rest of the refugees. Maria paused for a moment, watching the slender giant as it waded through the river, then vanished behind a landfill. A shudder ran through her.
She continued to explore the city, hoping to see more aliens, to ask them of the worlds beyond, of the magical realms among the stars. But she saw no more. Only humans. Millions of humans, crammed together in the crucible.
A little girl in a red dress waded through the garbage, laughing, chasing a cat without a tail. Three toddlers sat on a tin roof, naked, nibbling on bones. A young woman in a pink dress was dancing, a ballerina of the slums. Perhaps in her mind, she danced on a stage in a grand concert hall. Another young woman, probably younger than Maria, was nursing a baby. Two of her older children sat beside her, crying, hungry, covered in flies.
There were few men.
The men were in the Kalayaan. Or in the Southern Bahayan Military, the force that served Earth. Or they were dead.
Most likely they were dead already.
"Was the city always like this?" Maria wondered aloud. "Or was this once a grand metropolis, clean and peaceful and prosperous, and the war broke it?"
Just more questions. Same old Maria with the big head.
Another question filled her mind.
"Will I be like this? Like the squatters and the trash people? Am I like this already?"
A voice boomed in the distance.
"Yeah, that one. No, no, not her! Oi—the little one, what with the long hair. Yeah, yeah, you. Come here."
Maria frowned. A voice speaking English, one of the common Earth languages.
She waded through the trash. Train tracks ran alongside a landfill, lined with squatters. Maria found the man there. An Earthling soldier with a blond mustache. He faced a mother with eight or nine children, all younger than Maria.
"Yeah, that one!" the Earthling said, pointing at a girl. "She's a pretty one. I'll give you a nice shiny Earth dollar for her. Oh, don't worry, I'm not buying her. Just renting her for the night." He licked his lips, scratched his crotch, and held up a coin.
The mother scrutinized him. All her children were hungry. They were naked. Desperate.
Finally the mother nodded and reached for the coin.
"Hey, stop that!" Maria ran toward them.
The Earthling turned toward her. His eyes widened, and he laughed. "Well, would you look at that. Another rat slit crawled out from the trash." He squeezed his crotch. His armored suit clanked. "You want some too, slitty?"
She drew her knife. "Get back!" She stabbed the air. "Back, back! The girl is not for sale. Nor am I."
The Earthling growled. "Everything's for sale here. You slits are fucking rats who sell your own kids for a dollar." He tossed the coin at Maria. "Go on, pick it up, slit. Bend down, pick it up, and then suck my—"
Maria stabbed him.
Right in the thigh. Right below the crotch where two armored plates came together.
The Earthling screamed. He clutched his wound, and blood gushed between his fingers.
"You fucking whore!" he shouted.
She waved the bloody knife. "I was aiming for your titi, but it was so little I missed. Go! Go away, or I'll try again!"
Cursing and spitting, the Earthling limped away.
Maria turned toward the mother. Her children huddled around her—including the girl the Earthling had favored. She was probably only eleven or twelve, her hair tangled and caked with mud, her limbs stick thin.
"Are you all right?" Maria said. "I—"
"Why did you scare him away?" the mother cried. "What business is it of yours? Are you a priest's daughter? No! You're just a squatter like us. No better! Go away! Go!" She began pelting Maria with trash. "Go, go!"
Maria winced. "But—"
The mother hurled more garbage at her. Maria fled.
But on her way, she picked up the dollar.
She wandered through the shantytown, seeking a place to wash. She had not bathed in weeks. The urge for clean water became as mighty as the hunger. There was plenty of water in Mindao. Gutters overflowed with it. Streams coursed through the city. But Maria could not even see the water, just the film of trash floating on it, rippling and undulating like the skin on a slithering snake.
A train chugged by, carving its way through the slums. Squatters ran alongside, begging. A few passengers tossed out scraps, and the squatters scrambled to catch them. But there wasn't enough for everyone, and soon fights broke out.
Maria walked along the tracks, this vein through the shantytown, home to thousands. She listened to snippets of conversation. Some people were refugees from North Bahay. But many had been born and raised here by the tracks. Children washed in plastic buckets. Women hung laundry from ropes that stretched between shanties. Everywhere, like barnacles, grew crude huts of rusting corrugated steel and crumbling plywood, stacked together, as many as four or five shanties high, swaying, sometimes collapsing in the breeze, being rebuilt, rising again and again like a child repairing his sandcastle after the waves.
There was an economy here, Maria realized. Some sold their flesh to Earthling soldiers. But they also bartered. A can of rainwater for an old chicken bone with some meat still clinging to it. A pinch of shabu for an old cabbage, the inner leaves barely rotten at all. A battery for a turn with the lice comb.
Food. Water. Sex. Drugs. They powered this city.
Back home, we had groves of papaya, banana, and mango trees, Maria reflected. We had rice paddies that covered the
hillsides. We had humble homes, but they were comfortable and warm. That world is gone. It feels like a dream.
"Pagpag?" An old woman approached her, carrying plastic bags. "Pagpag? Do you want to buy pagpag, girl?"
Maria frowned. "What's pagpag?"
The old woman held out a plastic bag. It was full of some kind of stew. Maria's stomach grumbled.
She held out her dollar. "Give me all this will buy."
The woman's eyes widened. She snatched the dollar, tossed Maria a bag, and hurried off. Soon the old woman was wandering across the tracks, chanting, "Pagpag, fresh pagpag for sale!"
Maria opened the bag. It was a sticky stew of meat, carrots, some cabbage. She devoured it. It tasted divine. It was the best meal she had ever eaten.
Her belly full, Maria wandered on, seeking shelter for the night. In an alleyway, she came across the pagpag vendor again. The old woman was kneeling over, fishing garbage from bins and gutters. When she came across chicken bones, the old woman plucked bits of meat off. She found a few rotten vegetables too. With wrinkly, stiff hands, the old woman set up a portable grill and began cooking the garbage.
A few children ran toward the cooking meal. "Mmm, pagpag!"
"Back, back!" The old woman swung a ladle at them. "Back!"
Maria's stomach churned. She covered her mouth.
I ate garbage, she realized. Cooked garbage.
She spent that night near the train tracks, but she did not sleep. All night, commotion rolled across the shantytown. Junkies danced and fought and shouted, eyes rolling back in euphoria. Prostitutes prowled, mostly young women, but children too, boys and girls, selling their diseased bodies for food, water, or drugs. A thief rummaged through bins, and a woman shouted, and mopeds roared by, and gunshots echoed in the night. Rats scurried everywhere.
Maria huddled against a wall of rusty iron, holding her knife before her. The Earthlings were gone, sleeping in their barracks, but new dangers filled the city, demons of drugs and disease, and blood spilled across the night, and the tears of Bahay flowed like a river along the train tracks.
An old man reached for Maria once, licking his lips, pawing at her breast, and she sliced his fingers. A boy tried to steal her only shoe, and she gave it to him. A crazed, drugged woman screamed at Maria, pointing at her, shouting, "Aswang, aswang!" Demon, demon! People laughed. The woman tried to stab Maria with a sharp stick, and Maria ran, her tail between her legs.
Finally she found shelter in an alleyway far from the tracks. She huddled between shanties, amid orphans, stray cats, and a snoring addict. Maria fell into a deep sleep, and in her dreams, she was trapped in a dark labyrinth, and there were no lights to guide her home.
"Give me, give me, give me…"
A voice rasped in her ears.
Claws clutched her leg.
Maria's eyes snapped open, and she scuttled back. An old man was pawing at her legs. His mouth opened in a lurid grin, revealing one brown tooth. Sores oozed across his face.
"Give me, give me…" He reached out, hand shaking. "Shabu, shabu, just a taste… Give me, give me."
"I have no drugs," Maria said.
The old man screeched and clawed at her, and Maria fled. She dared not sleep again, but stayed standing against a wall, knife held before her, until dawn.
Chapter Thirty-One
Welcome to Bahay
It was a long journey from Earth to Bahay.
For two weeks, Jon prowled the starship, feeling like a tiger in a cage. After the busy chaos of boot camp, it felt strange to have so much free time. Time to think. To worry. To miss home.
This was a military starship, and there was a strict routine. They woke up early in the morning. They sang the planetary anthem and saluted the flag. They exercised, and there was even a firing range on board, which they visited every day. They all had kitchen duty, cleaning duty, and laundry duty.
But most of the time, they just waited.
Every soldier found a way to spend the time. Many stayed in their bunks, where they could watch television or read books. Others spent hours in the ship's gym, while some socialized in the lounge.
Jon spent most of his time on the upper deck, a narrow observatory away from the crowd. Up here, in the shadows, he could hear the ship—the vibrating decks, the humming engines, the million moving metal parts. Wide viewports gave him a grand view of space all around. For hours, he would stand, listening, watching.
They were flying at warp speed, weaving spacetime into a bubble around them. The stars stretched into thin lines, delicate trails of light all around. Everyone else thought the view boring. But Jon found that he could stare into space for hours, lost in thought.
Music came to him—inspired by the starship's sounds and the beauty of the starlines. He bought a notebook in the commissary, and he wrote a song every day. He had no musical instruments. He could not play what he composed. But he wrote the notes, and he sang softly under his breath.
It was a reason to return home someday. To go into the basement with George and Kaelyn. To play this music of space on Earth.
He even wrote a flute part for Etty.
In some ways, it was nice to have this time to think, to compose, to return to himself. To become Jon the musician again, not just the exhausted, bruised, weary recruit.
But in many ways, this was harder than boot camp. On Roma Station, he could focus on nothing but pain and exhaustion. Here, aboard the starship Adiona? Here he had time to think. To remember home. To miss his parents. To miss Paul. Here there was no pain. Worse—there was grief. There was fear. And it made him miss the thoughtless agony of basic training.
At night, he lay in his bunk, along with the rest of his squad. As the others slept, Jon would gaze up at the dark ceiling, and Lieutenant Carter's words echoed.
Your brother was executed.
Every night, Jon conjured new images of his brother's killer. Sometimes Ernesto appeared like the Bahayan robots in the plastic jungle—a caricature, a wily slit, Fu Manchu mustache and all. Sometimes he appeared to Jon as demonic, one eye blinded by a cataract, mouth full of fangs, fingers sprouting claws, laughing as he killed. In his dreams, Jon found himself trapped in the labyrinth again, that strange realm of coiling branches and shadows, and Ernesto chased him, swiping with his claws, his fangs bright, a primordial vampire.
Two weeks after leaving Earth, a voice emerged from every speaker, filling the starship.
"All soldiers report to Lounge 13 in preparation for wormhole jump."
Jon was sitting in his bunk, scribbling notes on a music sheet. He glanced at his friends. Etty and George looked back. Nobody said anything. They didn't need to.
We're almost there, Jon thought.
This brief daze, this solace from violence—it was ending.
Wordlessly, they made their way to the lounge. It spread across the front of the ship, built above the bridge. The soldiers took formation in their units. Viewports stretched across the prow, forming a semicircle, affording a view of space. They were still flying at warp speed. The stars stretched in countless lines.
The voice emerged again from the speakers.
"Prepare for drop from warp. Entering normal spacetime."
Jon's head spun. He nearly fell. The lounge seemed to bend around him, to sway. He felt ten feet tall, then as small as a child. Everyone around him stretched out, shrank, stretched again, like reflections in fun house mirrors.
Jon was suddenly in his basement at home, playing music, and Paul was there.
He was a toddler, running in the yard, playing with his dog.
He was in a dirty little room, holding a woman in his arms, a young woman with brown skin and silky black hair—a Bahayan.
And then he was back in the lounge. He groaned.
"Whoa." Etty rubbed her temples. "What the hell just happened?"
"Spacetime bent around us," Jon said. "Not just the three spacial dimensions, but time too. I think we just saw the past." He shuddered, remembering the dirty
room and dark-eyed girl. "And the future."
Etty shivered. "I didn't see a future. Does that mean that…" She gulped.
"I saw you in my future," George said. "We were together among palm trees. I don't know where. Maybe Bahay." He groaned. "What a trip."
The starlines had vanished, becoming points again. The Milky Way spread across the viewpoint, a glimmering vista. Slowly the starship's prow rose, and there above…
Jon pointed. "The wormhole."
It appeared as a sphere of light, almost like a luminous moon. When Jon had been a child, his parents had bought him a plastic model of the Tree of Light, the galaxy's network of wormholes. He had connected dozens of wormhole portals, represented as yellow spheres, using blue tubes. When constructed, the model seemed like a tree with many branches, each node another part of the galaxy.
Nobody knew who had built the Wormhole Road. Jon was about to fly along a million-year-old highway.
The starship approached the wormhole. Across the lounge, everyone stared in awe. The wormhole grew larger and larger, soon taking over half the viewpoint. It swirled and shone like a star.
"I imagined it as a ring," George said.
"It's three-dimensional," Jon said. "Like a black hole. It's a type of black hole, in fact. A tear through spacetime."
"Hold on tight, boys!" Etty said. She grinned, but her grin was nervous, and she clutched Jon's hand. Hard.
The Adiona flew closer, closer, and the wormhole covered the entire viewport, and then—
Jon wobbled on shaky legs. A few soldiers swayed, and one crashed onto the deck.
The starship plunged down a tunnel of light.
"Woo!" Etty cried.
Jon winced. They raced forward, faster, faster, and walls of light streamed at their sides.
And then—it was over.
All at once, they were back in regular spacetime.
They had completed the jump. Within a single moment, they had leaped hundreds of light-years.
"That," Etty said, "was awesome."
George gulped. "I'm gonna throw up."
The Earthling (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 1) Page 22